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DE QUINCEY'S COLLECTED WRITINGS
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES
THE COLLECTED WRITINGS
OF
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
BY
DAVID MASSON,
PROFESSOR or englISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
VOL. XIV
MISCELLANEA AND INDEX
EDINBURGH
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1890
01¢ 576 519
CONTENTS OF VOL. XIV
PAGE
EDITOR'S PREFACE
1
EDUCATION OF BOYS IN LARGE NUMBERS
9
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER IN RELATION TO THE
SENSE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
46
KANT'S ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM
61
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH.
69
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE.
WALLADMOR: A PSEUDO-WAVERLEY NOVEL
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840
POSTSCRIPT ON THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
ON THE RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE USE OF CHLORO-
FORM
•
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY ON A NEW AND MORE APPRE-
HENSIBLE SYSTEM. IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A
LADY
•
FRENCH AND ENGLISH MANNERS
94
132
•
146
•
162
•
206
219
•
263
286
PRESENCE OF MIND. A FRAGMENT
294
327
335
•
vi
CONTENTS
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
ADDITIONS-
1. TRANSLATION OF HORACE'S ODE I 22
2. ON NOVELS
APPENDIX: CHRONOLOGICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
EPILOGUE
INDEX TO THE EDITION
PAGE
345
368
370
375
•
391
401
•
EDITOR'S PREFACE
It remains for the present volume to conclude the series of
De Quincey's MISCELLANEA and to add whatever else may be
necessary for the completion of the edition.
The paper entitled Education of Boys in Large Numbers
dates from as far back as 1824, when it appeared in the
"London Magazine." One hardly knows why, among De
Quincey's numerous contributions to that once famous
periodical, this particular paper should have been so long
overlooked. He seems to have attached some value to it
himself; it attracted some notice at the time; and it is of
some intrinsic interest still, both as a history of a notable
experiment in the art of school-management seventy years
ago by a family of great subsequent celebrity on other grounds,
and also as an exposition of not a few ideas of De Quincey's
own on the subject of Education. The most pungent portion
of it in this latter respect is the censure which it contains of
the traditional methods of teaching Latin and Greek.
By chronological accident it chances that the three papers
which follow are all translations from Kant. The first of
these, entitled Kant on National Character in Relation to the
Sense of the Sublime and Beautiful, is another of De Quincey's
old contributions to the "London Magazine," and, though not
reprinted by himself in his Collective Edition of his writings,
was added in 1871 in one of the supplementary volumes
to the reissue of that edition. The second, entitled Kant's
Abstract of Swedenborgianism, and containing a rather con-
temptuous estimate of the Swedish mystic by his great German
contemporary, is also from the old "London Magazine,” where
VOL. XIV
B
2
EDITOR'S PREFACE
it appeared in May 1824. It was not reprinted either in
De Quincey's Collective Edition or in the Supplement to it,
and is therefore one of the novelties in the present edition,-
completing, in fact, the entire series of reprints from the
"London Magazine" which the edition includes. The third
of the translations, entitled Kant on the Age of the Earth, was
a performance of considerably later date, not belonging to the
days of the "London Magazine" at all, but to the first years
of De Quincey's residence in Edinburgh. Although there is
a casual mention of this article in one of his later papers, it
had wholly disappeared from view, and may be said to have
been forgotten. It was with some satisfaction, therefore,
that I came upon it recently in "Tait's Magazine" for
November 1833. The reprint of it now will perhaps not be
the less welcome because it furnishes one more proof of De
Quincey's strong attraction to Kant and desire to do what he
could for the diffusion of some knowledge of Kant among
British readers. Of English expositions of Kant's main
metaphysical system there is no deficiency; but it may be
questioned whether even yet any one has done so much as
De Quincey to make his countrymen familiar with the
physiognomy and habits of the philosopher of Königsberg as
he sat in his study in his more ordinary hours, taking up topic
after topic by way of parergon, and diversifying his main
metaphysical labour with minor scientific speculations. Let
the reader remember, in addition to the three translations
from Kant now under notice, the various articles relating to
Kant that have appeared in the preceding volumes, and it
will not seem inopportune to have called attention now to
this particular service of De Quincey to English literature.
The very existence of such a paper by De Quincey as
that now reproduced under the title Recollections of Hannah
More has remained unknown hitherto, probably because, like
the last of the three Kant articles, it was an anonymous
contribution to "Tait's Magazine" preceding the commence-
ment of De Quincey's open and avowed connexion with that
magazine in 1834. It is reprinted now from the pages of
"Tait" for December 1833, with the omission only of some
passages of discursive and irrelevant minutiæ. In this
compact form it will be found to fill a gap in the series of
EDITOR'S PREFACE
3
De Quincey's Autobiographic Reminiscences which may have
been noted with some surprise. How was it that, although
Hannah More was an intimate friend of De Quincey's mother,
and a person of some importance therefore in the De Quincey
family-history, there should have been nothing about her
from De Quincey's pen but incidental mentions of her name
here and there in the course of his writings and the meagre
article (ante, Vol. II, pp. 446-454) describing one visit to
her house in Somersetshire while Mrs. Siddons was her guest ?
The explanation is now clear. De Quincey had already written
a pretty full memoir of Hannah More, and had said all he
had to say,
-severe enough on the whole,-about that cele-
brated lady.
For a reason given ante, Vol. III, p. 5, one paper in the
series of De Quincey's London Reminiscences as originally
published in "Tait's Magazine" was reserved for a fitter
place than in that connexion. The reason was that it re-
corded an incident of De Quincey's London literary life
wholly detached from the rest, and requiring some extra
information to make it duly intelligible. It appears now,
with sufficient annotation, under the title Walladmor: A
Pseudo-Waverley Novel. In this little paper, published in
"Tait's Magazine" for September 1838, De Quincey went
back upon the story of his involuntary concern fourteen years
previously with one of the most absurd and impudent literary
hoaxes of modern times, and told probably as much of the
story as he wished to be preserved.
If even from "Tait's Magazine," where most of De
Quincey's articles bore his name, it has been possible to
disinter articles of his hitherto unknown, the chance was
greater of something similar in the case of "Blackwood,"
where the signature of his articles was unusual. Accordingly,
having had private reasons for thinking that two old “Black-
wood" papers not hitherto known as De Quincey's might be
his, and having been obligingly informed by Messrs. Black-
wood that the surmise was perfectly correct, their books
showing that the paper in the magazine for September 1839
entitled The English Language, and that in the magazine for
June 1840 entitled The Opium and the China Question, were
both by De Quincey,-I have included these papers among
4
EDITOR'S PREFACE
the reprints in this volume. The first, being merely a pleasant
addition to the number of his purely literary articles, may
be left to recommend itself; but the second and much the
longer, entitled now The Opium Question with China in 1840,
to distinguish it chronologically from a later paper,-is of a
sort of which there has been no exact previous example in
our collection of De Quincey's writings. There has been
illustration enough indeed of the intensity, and sometimes
the acrimony, of his political partisanship; but we have
never before had from him such an elaborate argument on
a question of current party-politics as that which he con-
tributed to "Blackwood" in June 1840 on the occasion of the
then pending war with China on the question of the opium-
traffic. Strange that it should have been the English Opium-
Eater that then tried through the pages of "Blackwood" to
steer national opinion on so important a subject, discussing
every practical particular of the crisis, and lecturing even
the Tory party-leaders at headquarters as to their proper
course! This recollection of the importance conferred
on the article at the time by the place of its appearance
may help to reconcile the reader to a certain character of
obsoleteness which necessarily attends the resuscitation of
all such papers of current party-politics after the trans-
actions to which they refer, and the very names of the
persons implicated, have gone into the haze of the past.
In that respect, the present paper may fare better than
most of its kind, by reason of the strokes of De Quincey-
like ability and vividness which occur in it; and, at all
events, it has seemed right that there should be at least one
full representation in these volumes of De Quincey's craft in
political journalism. The long "Postscript," in which he
congratulates himself on the coincidence of his views with
those of the Duke of Wellington, and ends with a panegyric
on the great Duke generally, deserves especial attention.
A third "Blackwood" paper, which immediately succeeds,
has been hitherto all but equally forgotten; for, though it is
included in the American Collective Edition of De Quincey,
doubtless with his own sanction, if not by his positive direc-
tion, it has, so far as I am aware, escaped notice almost
absolutely on this side of the Atlantic. It will be news
EDITOR'S PREFACE
5
now, even in Scotland, that an article which appeared in
"Blackwood" for February 1844 under the title Secession
from the Church of Scotland, and which functioned then as
the conclusive judgment of that powerful organ of public
opinion on the famous Scottish Ecclesiastical Disruption of
May 1843, was not by any great Tory lawyer of the Scottish
Parliament House, but by the recluse and English De
Quincey. Having taken the same precaution for being sure
as in the other cases just mentioned, I can vouch, however,
that this is the fact. It is somewhat of a puzzle. True, it
was during the first twelve years or so of De Quincey's resi-
dence in Edinburgh that there transacted itself round about
him that movement in the Scottish National Church which,
beginning with an enactment of the Church modifying in a
popular direction the operation of the system of patronage in
parish-livings, and opening out into a long conflict between
the Church and the Civil Courts over the legality of this
enactment, and into a controversy on the subject which
convulsed all Scotland, ended in 1843 in that memorable
wrench in the Scottish body-politic which consisted in the
secession from the Establishment of 474 of the clergy (about
two-fifths of the total body), and in the institution of the
rival Church since known as the Free Church. But what
was De Quincey's special business with this momentous piece
of Scottish history? What was Hecuba to him, or he to
Hecuba? So far as one can see, it was simply because he
detested every movement of his time in which he could
detect anything of a democratic tendency. Therefore it was
that he penned his paper on the Scottish Disruption of
1843, nominally for the purpose of enlightening South-
British readers on a question which they could not be
expected to understand, but really for the purpose of
denouncing the "clerical agitators," as he called them, who
had led the movement, and for the purpose also of advocat-
ing the rigid preservation of the right of aristocratic nomina-
tion to vacant benefices, as one of those sacred rights of
property the tampering with which in the least iota would
be the letting in of the waters of an incalculable revolution-
ary deluge. It may be questioned whether a single soul in
Scotland, even among those who were on the same side as
6
EDITOR'S PREFACE
De Quincey in the general controversy, would have accepted
his paper at the time as even a fairly adequate grasp of the
subject by an English onlooker; and now, most certainly,
apart from some passages in it of permanent substance and
worth, its main interest is that of a very curious example of
De Quincey's opinionative audacity. One observes that within
five years after it was written his antipathy to those he had
attacked in it had so far abated that he had become a willing
enough contributor of articles to the North British Review, the
accredited Free Church organ (see ante, Vol. IV, pp. 14-15). A
small thing this, however, in comparison with another of the
strange revenges which have been brought about, in the same
connexion, by the whirligig of time! Not a rag or vestige
now remains in the Established Church of Scotland, any
more than in the Free Church, of that right of private or
aristocratic property in appointments to benefices for which
De Quincey contended as if it had been the very prop and
salvation of the Scottish social fabric. In lieu of that
slight modification of the practical working of the patronage
system the concession of which by the Legislature any time
before 1843 would have prevented the Disruption, there
arose at length within the Establishment itself an over-
whelming demand for the abolition of Patronage root and
branch; the Legislature yielded; Patronage in every form
and degree was swept away; and, had De Quincey been now
alive, he would have seen in the Established Church of
Scotland, no less than in the Free Church and the other
Presbyterian Churches, the people electing their own pastors,
sometimes perhaps with a good deal of wrangling, but yet
the heavens not falling after all.
Of the eight remaining articles of the volume, larger and
smaller, only three are new. My attention having been
called by the kindness of a colleague in the University of
Edinburgh to a little essay On the Religious Objections to
the Use of Chloroform which has been lying for more than
forty years in the library of the University in the form of
an appendage by De Quincey to the graduation-thesis of his
medical son Francis, I have thought this relic too character-
istic to be longer kept secret. Similarly, the two stray scraps
which have been put together at the very end for want of a
EDITOR'S PREFACE
7
more suitable previous place for them,-the juvenile Metrical
Translation of an Ode of Horace, and the trifle On Novels
written in 1830 for a lady's album,-have seemed worth the
extra page or two required for their insertion. The other
five articles are all republications from either the original
Collective Edition or Messrs. Black's Supplement to the
re-issue of that edition. National Temperance Movements,
which might haye been more fitly entitled "Hints in Aid of
the Self-Cure of Inebriates," is a waif from 1845. Memorial
Chronology was written in 1850, by way of familiar exposi-
tion of De Quincey's conceptions of the uses of free historical
scholarship for modification of the popular theology, and is,
though incomplete, a much more important and lively paper
than the title would indicate. French and English Manners
and the fragment called Presence of Mind were reprints, the
first certainly by De Quincey himself, the other only
dubiously so, from "Hogg's Weekly Instructor" of 1850.
Finally, the paper entitled China and the Chinese Question in
1857 is the core of a large quantity of new writing by De
Quincey,-partly in the monthly continuation of " Hogg's
Instructor" called " Titan," and partly in the form of a
separate pamphlet, on the occasion of another war between
Britain and the Celestial Nation. Only the core of the
straggling total of these new anti-Chinese invectives of 1857
was thought suitable for republication in 1871 in the second
supplementary volume to his Collected Writings; and, if that
arrangement sufficed then, much more may it suffice in the
present volume after the complete reprint which it contains
of De Quincey's hitherto forgotten paper about China in
1840. It will be hard if, between that long paper of 1840
and what is retained of the still longer disquisition of 1857,
the reader does not know as much as on any ground he
can want to know of De Quincey's opinions on the Chinese
Question.
The APPENDIX consists of a Chronology of all De Quincey's
writings collected in the present edition, together with such
relative information as may be desired by those who are
interested in all matters, however minute, appertaining to
the Bibliography of De Quincey. While it will there appear
8
EDITOR'S PREFACE
that the present edition is by far the most complete that has
yet been offered to the public, including as it does between
forty and fifty new articles or other substantive pieces of
writing, over and above all those accessible in the latest pre-
vious British edition, it has been deemed right to insert at
the same time a register of a few relics of De Quincey which
have been left unincluded in the present edition,—in some
cases because they are superfluous or have been cancelled,
in others because of unexpired rights of property in them
and uncertainty as to the possessors of those rights.
Certain final impressions of a biographical kind suggested
by the Chronological Conspectus, and which require that the
evidence of that conspectus should first be distinctly before
the reader's eye, are on that account reserved from the pre-
sent Preface, that they may form more appropriately matter
for a brief EPILOGUE.
The concluding ALPHABETICAL INDEX has been compiled
under the superintendence of Mr. H. B. Wheatley, F.S.A.,
who prepared the Index for Messrs. Black's previous Collect-
ive Edition in sixteen volumes, and whose name ought to
be a sufficient guarantee for the accuracy and thoroughness
of this portion of the work.
D. M.
EDUCATION OF BOYS IN LARGE NUMBERS ¹
THIS is the work of a very ingenious man, and records the
most original experiment in Education which, in this country
at least, has been attempted since the date of those com-
municated by the Edgeworths. We say designedly "in this
""
1 Appeared originally in the London Magazine for April and May
1824, under the more extended title "Education: Plans for the Instruc-
tion of Boys in large numbers," and in the form of a review of an octavo
volume which had been published in London in 1822 with the title
"Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in large
Numbers: Drawn from Experience. There was no reprint of the
paper either in De Quincey's own Collective Edition of his writings in
fourteen volumes or in Messrs. Black's enlarged re-issue of the same in
sixteen volumes; but it is duly included in the list of De Quincey's con-
tributions to the London Magazine given in Bohn's Edition of Lowndes's
Bibliographer's Manual, and the authorship is established otherwise
beyond a doubt. The occasion and circumstances of the paper were
as follows:-For a good many years before its appearance people in
England interested in educational reform had been hearing a good deal
of "The Hazelwood System,' -so called because it had been developed
and put in practice in Hazelwood School, near Birmingham, a large
and flourishing boarding-school for boys. The head of this school was
Mr. Thomas Wright Hill, a native of Kidderminster, who had settled
in Birmingham in his youth, and had been a member of Priestley's
Unitarian congregation there, and oue of Priestley's staunchest friends
and defenders on the occasion of the famous Birmingham "Church and
King Riots" of 1791, when Priestley's house and his chapel were burnt
down by the Birmingham mob. All this had become mere matter of
old memory at the time with which we are now concerned; and it was
on his own account, as a man of original and inventive mind, and as
head-master of Hazelwood School and originator of "The Hazelwood
System," that Mr. Thomas Wright Hill was then known about Bir-
mingham. Further celebrity, indeed, was to gather round him before
his death in 1851, at the age of eighty-nine,-by which time not only
10
MISCELLANEA
country"; because to compare it with some continental
schemes which have been only recently made known to the
English public (and not fully made known even yet) would
impose upon us a minute review of those schemes which
would be, first, disproportionate to our limits, secondly, out of
its best situation, because it would be desirable to examine
those schemes separately for the direct purpose of determining
their own absolute value, and not indirectly and incidentally
for the purpose of a comparison. The Madras system, again,
is excluded from the comparison-not so much for the reason
alleged by the author before us, as though that system were
essentially different from his own in its purpose and appli-
had the fame of his pedagogic system become more metropolitan by
the transference of his school, still under his own management or that
of his family, from Hazelwood, near Birmingham, to Bruce Castle,
Tottenham, near London, but three of his sons had exhibited the
transmitted family energy and inventiveness in careers independently
conspicuous. Matthew Davenport Hill, remembered now as Recorder
of Birmingham and an eminent Law-Reformer, Frederick Hill, of
Prison-Reform celebrity, and Sir Rowland Hill, inmortal in the annals
of Post-office Reform, were all sons of the worthy Unitarian school-
master who had been the friend of Priestley. In fact, all the three,
with two other sons of his, had begun life, if we do not misconstrue our
information, as under-teachers with him in Hazelwood School, and his
assistants in the management of the school,-young Rowland Hill,
more particularly, as the mathematical teacher. Ideas from them seem
to have blended with their father's ideas in the "Hazelwood System
when it was complete.-The exposition of that System which was put
forth in 1822 in the volume which De Quincey made the subject of his
paper was by Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, the eldest of the five sons.
At the time of its publication, however, he had ceased his own active
connexion with his father's school, and was living in London, at the
age of thirty, a rising young barrister of Lincoln's Inn, of ultra-liberal
opinions in politics, and on terms of friendship or pupilage with
Bentham, Brougham, and others of the Liberal chiefs.-It must have
been the subject of the volume that attracted De Quincey; for, when
he wrote his paper on it for the London Magazine, he did not know
Mr. Matthew D. Hill personally, and it was the paper itself that
brought them together. This appears from a letter of De Quincey's to
Professor Wilson, dated from London 24th February 1825, and published
by Professor Wilson's daughter, Mrs. Gordon, in her Life of her father.
"Some time ago, perhaps nearly two years ago, De Quincey there
writes, "Mr. Hill, a lawyer, published a book on Education, detailing
a plan on which his brothers had established a school at Hazelwood
"in Warwickshire. This book I reviewed in the London Magazine,
"and in consequence received a letter of thanks from the author; who,
EDUCATION OF BOYS
11
""
(C
(6
cation. The purpose of the Madras system is not exclusively
economy of expense, but in combination with that purpose
a far greater accuracy (and therefore reality) in the knowledge
communicated than could be obtained on the old systems.
On this account, therefore, the possible application of the
Madras system is not simply to the education of the poor,
though as yet the actual application of it may have been
chiefly to them, but also to the education of the rich; and in
fact it is well known that the Madras system (so far from
being essentially a system for the poor) has been adopted in
some of the great classical schools of the kingdom. The
difference is more logically stated thus:—that the Madras
on my coming to London about midsummer last year [i.e. midsummer
1824], called on me. I have since become intimate with him
; and,
excepting that he is a sad Jacobin (as I am obliged to tell him once or
twice a month), I have no one fault to find with him; for he is a very
clever, amiable, good creature, as ever existed, and, in particular, his
66 abilities strike me as really very great indeed. Well, his book has just
"been reviewed in the last Edinburgh Review (of which some copies have
"been in town about a week). This service has been done him, I sup-
pose, through some of his political friends-(for he is connected with
"Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, old Bentham, &c.)—but, I understand,
by Mr. Jeffrey. Mr. Hill, in common with multitudes in this
"Babylon, who will not put their trust in Blackwood as in God
(which, you know, he ought to do), yet privately adores him as the
Devil, and indeed, publicly too, is a great proneur of Blackwood.
"For, in spite of his Jacobinism, he is liberal, and inevitably just to
"real wit. His fear is that Blackwood may come as Nemesis and
"compel him to regorge any puffing and cramming which Jeff has put
"into his pocket; and he is earnest to have a letter addressed in an
"influential quarter to prevent this." The purpose of De Quincey's
letter, accordingly, is to request Wilson to do what he can to save Mr.
Hill's book from any outrageous attack in Blackwood.-Mr. Davenport
Hill, as we learn from this letter, and also from Mr. Charles Knight in
his Autobiography, was one of De Quincey's warmest and most attached
friends in his last days of literary struggle in London in 1824 and 1825.
In fact, in this very letter to Wilson, De Quincey, while announcing in
a desponding way his ill-success in London and his probable return
very soon to Grasmere, gives "care of M. D. Hill, Esq., 11 King's
Bench Walk, Temple," as his most convenient London address mean-
while.-M.
66
(6
1 The distinguishing excellence of the Madras system is not that
it lodges in the pupils themselves the functions which on the old
systems belong to the masters, and thus at the same blow by which
it secures greater accuracy of knowledge gets rid of a great expense in
masters for this, though a great merit, is a derivative merit. The
12
MISCELLANEA
system regards singly the quality of the knowledge given, and
(with a view to that) the mode of giving it; whereas the
system which we are going to review does not confine its view
to man as a being capable of knowledge, but extends it to man
as a being capable of action, moral or prudential: it is there-
fore a much more comprehensive system. The system before
us does not exclude the final purpose of the Madras system :
on the contrary, it is laudably solicitous for the fullest and
most accurate communication of knowledge, and suggests
many hints for the attainment of that end as just and as use-
ful as they are enlightened. But it does not stop here: it
goes further, and contemplates the whole man with a refer-
ence to his total means of usefulness and happiness in life.
And hence, by the way, it seems to us essential that the
whole child should on this system be surrendered to the
school,-i.e. that there should be no day-scholars; and this
principle we shall further on endeavour to establish on the
evidence of a case related by the author himself. On the
condition of the possibility of this advantage lies in a still greater-
viz. in the artificial mechanism of the system; by which, when once
established, the system works itself, and thus neutralises and sets at
defiance all difference of ability in the teachers which previously
determined the whole success of the school. Hence is obtained this
prodigious result-that henceforward the blessing of education in its
elementary parts is made independent of accident, and as much carried
out of the empire of luck as the manufacture of woollens or cottons.
That it is mechanic is no conditional praise (as alleged by the author
before us), but the absolute praise, of the Madras system: neither is
there any just ground of fear, as he and many others have insinuated,
that it should injure the freedom of the human intellect. [The pecu-
liarity of the Madras system of school education,—so called because it
was first put in operation by Dr. Andrew Bell in a school in Madras in
1795, but which is known also as the Monitorial system or the Mutual
Instruction system or the Lancastrian system (from Bell's follower, Joseph
Lancaster), is generally supposed,—this note of De Quincey's notwith-
standing, to have consisted in the large use made of the pupils them-
selves both in the teaching and in the management of the school.-M.]
1 We have since found that we have not room for it. The case is
stated and argued in the Appendix (pp. 220-227); but in our opinion
not fairly argued. The appellant's plea was sound, and ought not to
have been set aside. [The reference is to a report given by Mr. Hill,
in the Appendix to his volume, of a specimen case of the working of
that part of the Hazelwood School system which consisted in the formal
trial of cases of misdemeanour by a Court of Justice of the pupils
themselves.-M.]
EDUCATION OF BOYS
13
whole, therefore, we have designedly stated our general esti-
mate of the author's system with a reference to that of the
Edgeworths; not only because it has the same comprehen-
siveness of object, and is in some degree a further expansion
of their method and their principles; but also because the
author himself strikingly resembles the Edgeworths in style
and composition of mind,-with this single difference per-
haps, that the good sense and perception of propriety (of what
in French would be called les convenances) which in both is
the characteristic merit (and, when it comes into conflict with
any higher quality, the characteristic defect) in him is less
coloured by sarcastic and contemptuous feelings; which in
all cases are unamiable feelings, and argue some defect of
wisdom and magnanimity, but, when directed (as in the Edge-
worths they sometimes are) against principles in human
nature which lie far beyond the field of their limited phi-
losophy, recoil with their whole strength upon those who
utter them. It is upon this consideration of his intellectual
affinity with the Edgeworths that we are the less disposed to
marvel at his estimate of their labours: that, for instance, he
styles their work on education "inestimable,” and that, though
he stops short of proposing "divine honours" to Miss Edge-
worth, the course of his logic nevertheless binds him to mean
that on Grecian principles such honours are "due to her."
So much for the general classification and merits of the
author, of whom we know nothing more than that, from
succumb,"
his use of the Scotticisms "
compete," and "in
place of" for "instead of," he ought to be a Scotchman.
Now then for his system.
((
Of this we may judge by two criteria: experimentally by
its result, or a priori by its internal aptitude for attaining its
ends. Now, as to the result, it must be remembered that—
even if the author of any system could be relied on as an
impartial witness to its result-yet, because the result of a
system of education cannot express itself in any one insulated
fact, it will demand as much judgment to abstract from any
limited experience what really is the result as would have
sufficed to determine its merits a priori without waiting for
any result.
Consequently, as it would be impossible to
exonerate ourselves from the necessity of an elaborate act of
14
MISCELLANEA
judgment by any appeal to the practical test of the result,—
seeing that this result would again require an act of judgment
hardly less elaborate for its satisfactory settlement than the
a priori examination which it had been meant to supersede,
we may as well do that at first which we must do in the
end, and, relying upon our own understandings, say boldly
that the system is good or bad because on this argument it is
evidently calculated to do good or on that argument to do
evil, as blindly pronounce it is good or it is bad because it
has produced, or has failed of producing, such and such
effects, even if those effects were easy to collect. In fact, for
any conclusive purpose of a practical test, the experience is
only now beginning to accumulate.
And here we may take occasion to mention that we had our-
selves been misinformed as to the duration of the experiment.
For a period of four years, we were told, a school had existed
under the system here developed; but this must be a mistake,
founded perhaps on a footnote at p. 83 which says "The plan
has now been in operation more than four years." But the plan
there spoken of is not the general system, but a single feature
of it—viz. the abolition of corporal punishment. In the text
this plan had been represented as an immature experiment,
having then "had a trial of nine months" only: and therefore,
as more than three years and nine months had elapsed from
that time to the publication of the book, a note is properly
added declaring that the experiment had succeeded, and that
the author could "not imagine any motive strong enough to
force him back to the old practice." The system generally,
however, must have existed now (i.e. November 1823) for
nearly eight years at the least. So much is evident from a
note at p. 79, where a main regulation of the system is said
to have been established "early in 1816." Now, a period of
seven or eight years must have been sufficient to carry many
of the senior pupils into active life, and to carry many of the
juniors even into situations where they would be brought
into close comparison with the pupils of other systems. Con-
sequently, so much experience as is involved in the fact of
the systems outliving such a comparison, and in the continued
approbation of its founder, who is manifestly a very able and
a conscientious man,—so much experience, we say, may be
EDUCATION OF BOYS
15
premised for the satisfaction of those who demand practical
tests. For ourselves, we shall abide rather in our valuation of
the system by the internal evidence of its composition as stated
and interpreted by its author. An abstract of all that is
essential in this statement we shall now lay before our
readers.
=
A
What is the characteristic difference, in the fewest possible
words, of this system as opposed to all others?
We no-
where find this stated in a pointed manner,—the author has
left it rather to be collected from his general exposition,-
and therefore we conceive that we shall be entitled to his
thanks by placing it in a logical, if possible in an antithetic,
shape. In order to do this, we ask-What is a school?
school is a body of young persons, more or less perfectly
organised, which, by means of a certain constitution or system
of arrangements (A) aims at attaining a certain object (B).
Now, in all former schemes of education this A stood to B,
the positive quantity sought, in the relation of a logical
negative (ie. of a negation of quantity o), or even of a
mathematic negative (i.e. of — x); but on this new system of
the author before us (whom, for the want of a better name,
we shall call the Experimentalist) A for the first time bears
to B the relation of a positive quantity. The terms positive
and negative are sufficiently opposed to each other to confer
upon our contradistinction of this system from all others a
very marked and antithetic shape; and the only question
upon it which arises is this—Are these terms justified in
their application to this case? That they are will appear
thus-Amongst the positive objects (or B) of every school,
even the very worst, we must suppose the culture of morals
to be one. A mere day-school may perhaps reasonably con-
fine its pretensions to the disallowance of anything positively
bad; because here the presumption is that the parents under-
take the management of their children, excepting in what
regards their intellectual education: but, wherever the heads
of a school step into the full duties of a child's natural
guardians, they cannot absolve themselves from a responsi-
bility for his morals. Accordingly, this must be assumed of
course to exist amongst the positive objects of every board-
16
MISCELLANEA
(6
(C
ing-school. Yet, so far are the laws and arrangements of
existing schools from at all aiding and promoting this object.
that their very utmost pretension is that they do not injure
it. Much injustice and oppression, for example, takes place
in the intercourse of all boys with each other; and in most
schools "the stern edict against bearing tales" causes this to
go unredressed on the other hand, in a school where a
system of nursery-like surveillance was adopted, and "every
trifling injury was the subject of immediate appeal to the
supreme power," the case was still worse. "The indulgence
"of this. querulousness increased it beyond all endurance.
"Before the master had time to examine the justice of one
complaint his attention was called away to redress another
"until, wearied with investigation into offences which were
"either too trifling or too justly provoked for punishment,
"he treated all complainants with harshness, heard their
"accusations with incredulity, and thus tended, by a first
example, to the re-establishment of the old system." The
issue in any case was that, apart from what nature and the
education of real life did for the child's morals, the school
education did nothing at all except by the positive moral
instruction which the child might draw from his lessons—
i.e. from B. But, as to A, i.e. the school arrangements, either
at best their effect was 0 ; or possibly, by capricious inter-
ference for the regulation of what was beyond their power
to regulate, they actually disturbed the moral sense (ie. their
effect was = x). Now, on the new system of our Experi-
mentalist, the very laws and regulations which are in any
case necessary to the going on of a school have such an origin
and are so administered as to cultivate the sense of justice
and materially to enlarge the knowledge of justice. These
laws emanate from the boys themselves, and are administered
by the boys. That is to say, A (which on the old system is
at best a mere blank, or negation, and sometimes even an
absolute negative with regard to B) thus becomes a positive
agent in relation to B, i.e. to one of the main purposes of the
school. Again, to descend to an illustration of a lower order,
in most schools arithmetic is one part of B: now, on the new
system it is so contrived that what is technically termed call-
ing over,-which on any system is a necessary arrangement
EDUCATION OF BOYS
17
for the prevention of mischief, and which usually terminates
there (ie. in an effect 0),—becomes a positive means of
cultivating an elementary rule of arithmetic in the junior.
students, and an attention to accuracy in all: i.e. here again,
from being simply 0, A becomes +x in relation to B.
A school, in short, on this system, burns its own smoke,-
the mere negative conditions of its daily goings on, the mere
waste products of its machinery, being converted into the
positive pabulum of its life and motion. Such, then, we
affirm, is the brief abstract-antithetically expressed-of the
characteristic principle by which the system under review is
distinguished from all former systems.
In relation to B
x, or at
(which suppose 20 x) A, which heretofore was =
best 0, now becomes +x, or + 2 x, or + 3 x, as it may
happen. In this lies the merit of the conception: what re-
mains to be inquired is in what degree, and upon what parts
of B, it attains this conversion of A into a positive quantity ;
and this will determine the merit of the execution.
Let us
now therefore turn to the details of the book.
The book may be properly distributed into two parts:
the first of which, from page 1 to page 125 inclusively (com-
prehending the three first chapters), unfolds and reviews the
system all that remains from page 126 to page 218 in-
clusively (ie. to the end)-comprehending four chapters—
may be considered as a second or miscellaneous part, treating
of some general topics in the business of education, but with
a continual reference to the principles laid down in the first
part. An appendix of twenty pages contains a body of
illustrative documents. The first of the three chapters, com-
posing what we have called the first part, is entitled Outline
of the System: and, as it is very brief, we shall extract it
nearly entire :
"A schoolmaster being a governor as well as a teacher, we must
consider the boys both as a community and as a body of pupils. The
principle of our government is to leave, as much as possible, all power
in the hands of the boys themselves. To this end we permit them to
elect a committee, which enacts the laws of the school, subject how-
ever to the veto of the head-master. We have also courts of justice for
the trial of both civil and criminal causes, and a vigorous police for
the preservation of order. Our rewards consist of a few prizes given.
at the end of each half-year to those whose exertions have obtained
VOL. XIV
C
18
MISCELLANEA
2
for them the highest rank in the school, and certain marks which are
gained from time to time by exertions of talent and industry. These
marks are of two kinds: the most valuable, called premial¹ marks,
will purchase a holiday; the others are received in liquidation of for-
feits. Our punishments are fine and imprisonment. Impositions,
public disgrace, and corporeal pain, have been for some years discarded
among us.
To obtain rank is an object of great ambition among the
boys; with us it is entirely dependent on the state of their acquire-
ments; and our arrangements according to excellence are so frequent
that no one is safe, without constant exertion, from losing his place.
The boys learn almost every branch of study in classes, that the master
may have time for copious explanations; it being an object of great
anxiety with us that the pupil should be led to reason upon all his
operations. Economy of time is a matter of importance with us. We
look upon all restraint as an evil, and to young persons as a very
serious evil: we are therefore constantly in search of means for ensur-
ing the effective employment of every minute which is spent in the
school-room, that the boys may have ample time for exercise in the
open air.
The middle state between work and play is extremely un-
favourable to the habits of the pupil: we have succeeded, by great
attention to order and regularity, in reducing it almost to nothing.
We avoid much confusion by accustoming the boys to march; which
they do with great precision, headed by a band of young performers
from their own body."
3
Such is the outline of the system as sketched by the
author himself: to us, however, it appears an insufficient out-
line, even for "the general reader" to whom it is addressed.
Without having "any intention of reducing the system to
practice,” the most general reader, if he asks for any informa-
tion at all, will ask far more than this. We shall en-
deavour therefore to draw up an account of the plan somewhat
less meagre, by separating the important from the trivial
details. For this purpose we shall begin — 1, with the
GOVERNMENT of the school; i.e. with an account of the
legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers: where
lodged, held by what tenure, and how administered.
The legislative power is vested in a committee of boys
elected by the boys themselves. The members are elected
monthly the boy who ranks highest in the school electing
1 "Premial marks" :-This designation is vicious in point of logic:
how is it thus distinguished from the less valuable ?
:
2 "Our punishments," &c. :-This is inaccurate by p. 83 "dis-
ability to fill certain offices" is one of the punishments.
3 Habits" habits of what?
4 "Performers"! Musical performers, we presume.
EDUCATION OF BOYS
19
one member; the two next in rank another; the three next a
third; and so on. The head-master as well as all the under-
masters are members by virtue of their office.
This arrange-
ment might seem likely to throw a dangerous weight in the
deliberations of the "house" into the hands of the executive
power, especially as the head-master might pursue Queen
Anne's policy under the Tory ministers, and, by introducing
the fencing-master, the dancing-master, the riding-master, &c.,
under the unconstitutional equivocation of the word "teachers,”
carry a favourite measure in the teeth of the patriotic party.
Hitherto, however, the reigning sovereign has shown so
laudable a desire to strengthen those checks upon his own
authority which make him a limited monarch that "only one
teacher has been in the habit of attending the committee's
meetings": and, where any teacher himself happens to be
interested in the question before the house (e.g. in a case of
appeal from any decision of his), "it has lately been the
etiquette" for that one who does attend to decline voting.
Thus we see that the liberty of the subject is on the growth;
which is a sure argument that it has not been abused. In
fact, as a fresh proof of the eternal truth that in proportion
as human beings are honourably confided in they will in the
gross become worthy of confidence, it will give pleasure to the
reader to be informed that, though this committee "has the
formation of all the laws and regulations of the school (ex-
cepting such as determine the hours of attendance and the
regular amount of exercises to be performed)," yet
"the
master's assent has never even in a single instance been with-
held or even delayed." "I do not remember," says Sir
William Temple in 1683 to his son, "ever to have refused
anything you have desired of me; which I take to be a
greater compliment to you than to myself; since for a
tr young man to make none but reasonable desires is yet more
"extraordinary than for an old man to think them so." A
good arrangement has been adopted for the purpose of com-
bining the benefits of mature deliberation with the vigour
and dispatch necessary for sudden emergencies. By a stand-
ing order of the committee a week's notice must be given
before a new law can be introduced for discussion: in cases
of urgency, therefore, a sort of orders of council are passed by
66
((
20
MISCELLANEA
a sub-committee composed of two principal officers for the
time being. These may of course be intercepted in limine
by the veto of the master; and they may be annulled by the
general committee: in any case they expire in a fortnight;
and thus not only is a present necessity met, but also an
opportunity gained for trying the effect of a law before it is
formally proposed.
The executive body, exclusively of its standing members,
the upper and lower masters, is composed of a sheriff (whose
duties are to levy fines imposed by the court of justice and
to imprison on non-payment), of a magistrate, and of two
constables. All these officers are elected every month by the
committee immediately after its own election.
The magis-
trate is bound, in conjunction with his constables, to detect
all offences committed in the school: petty cases of dispute
he decides himself, and so far becomes a judicial officer; cases
beyond his own jurisdiction he sends to the attorney-general,
directing him to draw an impeachment against the offending
party: he also enforces all penalties below a certain amount.
Of the judicial body we shall speak a little more at length.
The principal officers of the court are the judge, who is
elected monthly by the committee, and the attorney-general,
who is appointed at the same time by the master. The court
assembles every week: and the jury, consisting of six, is
"chosen by lot from among the whole number of qualified
boys." Disqualifications arise in three ways: on account of
holding a judicial office; on account of conviction by the
court within the preceding month; and on account of youth
(or, what we presume to be tantamount, being "in certain
lower classes"). The jury choose their own foreman. The
attorney-general and the accused party, if the case be penal,
and each disputant, if civil, has a peremptory challenge of
three, and an unlimited right of challenge for cause. The
judge decides upon the validity of the objections. Such is
the constitution of the court: its forms of proceeding we
cannot state in fewer words than those of the Experimentalist,
which we shall therefore quote :—
"The officers of the court and the jury having taken their seats, the
defendant (when the cause is penal) is called to the bar by the crier of
the court, and placed between the constables. The clerk of the court
EDUCATION OF BOYS
21
then reads the indictment; at the close of which the defendant is
asked if he object to any of the jury-when he may make his challenges
(as before stated). The same question is put to the attorney-general.
A short time is then allowed the defendant to plead guilty, if he be so
disposed. He is asked no question, however, that he may not be
induced to tell a falsehood; but, in order to encourage an acknowledg-
ment of the fault, when he pleads guilty a small deduction is made
from the penalty appointed by the law for the offence. The conse-
quence is that at least five out of six of those who are justly accused
acknowledge the offence in the first instance. If the defendant be
determined to stand his trial, the attorney-general opens the case and
the trial proceeds. The defendant may either plead his own cause, or
employ a schoolfellow as counsel-which he sometimes does. The
judge takes notes of the evidence, to assist him in delivering his charge
to the jury in determining the sentence he is guided by the regula-
tions enacted by the committee, which affix punishments varying with
the magnitude of the offence and the age of the defendant, but invest
the judge with the power of increasing or diminishing the penalty to
the extent of one-fourth."
:
A copy of the sentence is laid before the master; who has
of course "the power of mitigation or pardon." From the
decision of the court there lies an appeal to the committee;
which is thus not only the legislative body, but also the
supreme court of judicature. Two such appeals, however,
are all that have yet occurred both were brought by the
attorney - general - of course therefore against verdicts of
acquittal and both verdicts were reversed.
:
Fresh evidence,
however, was in both cases laid before the committee, in
addition to that which had been heard in the court below ;
and on this as well as on other grounds there was good reason
to acquit the jury of all partiality. Whilst appeals have
thus been so rare from the verdicts of juries, appeals from
the decisions of the magistrate, and even from those of the
teachers, have been frequent generally indeed the decisions
have been affirmed by the committee; and, when they have
been reversed, in all but two cases the reversal has met with
the sanction of the teachers as a body. Even in these two
(where, by the way, the original decision was only modified
and not annulled), the Experimentalist is himself of opinion
that the non-concurrence of the teachers may possibly have
been owing to a partiality on their side. So far indeed as
his experience had then extended, the Experimentalist tells
us that "
one solitary instance only" had occurred in which
22
MISCELLANEA
the verdict of the jury did not coincide with his own opinion.
This judgment, deliberately pronounced by so competent a
judge, combined with the entire acquiescence in the verdict
of the jury which is argued by the non-existence of any
appeals except on the side of the crown (and then only in
two instances), is a very striking attestation to the spirit of
conscientious justice developed in the students by this confi-
dence in their incorruptible integrity. "Great," says the
Experimentalist, "great, but of course unexpressed, anxiety
"has more than once been felt by us, lest the influence of a
leading boy, which in every school must be considerable,
"should overcome the virtue of the jury; but our fears have
"been uniformly relieved, and the hopes of the offender
crushed, by the voice of the foreman pronouncing, in a
"shrill but steady tone, the awful word-Guilty!"
CC
Some persons who hate all innovations will pronounce all
this “mummery"; which is a very compendious piece of
criticism. For ourselves, though we cannot altogether agree
with the Experimentalist,-who seems to build too much on
an assumption that nature and increasing intercourse with
human life contribute nothing of themselves, without any
artificial discipline, to the evolution and culture of the sense
of justice and to the power of the understanding for discover-
ing where justice lies,—yet thus much is evident: 1, That
the intellectual faculties must be sharpened by the constant
habit of discriminating the just and the unjust in con-
crete cases such as a real experience of life produces; 2, That
the moral sense must be deepened, if it were only by looking
back upon so large a body of decisions, and thus measuring,
as it were, by the resistance which they had often overcome
arising out of their own immediate interest, the mightiness of
the conscientious power within which had compelled them to
such decisions; 3, That all sorts of forensic ability are thus
cherished, and much ability indeed of larger application:
thus, the logical faculty of abstracting the essential from the
accidental is involved in the summing up of the judge; in
the pleadings for and against are involved the rhetorical arts
of narrating facts perspicuously, of arranging arguments in
the best order of meeting (therefore of remembering) the
counter-arguments, of solving sophisms, of disentangling mis-
EDUCATION OF BOYS
23
representations, of weighing the value of probabilities-to say
nothing of elocution and the arts of style and diction, which
even the records of the court and the committee (as is urged
at p. 105) must tend to cultivate; 4, (to descend to a humbler
use) that in this way the master is absolved from the grievous
waste of time in administering justice,-which on the old
system was always imperfect justice, that it might waste but
little time, and which yet wasted much time though it was
imperfect justice. The author's own moral of this innovation
is as follows; and with this we shall leave the subject: "We
"shall be disappointed if the intelligent reader have not
already discovered that, by the establishment of a system of
legislation and jurisprudence wherein the power of the
"master is bounded by general rules, and the duties of the
"scholar accurately defined, and where the boys are called
upon to examine and decide upon the conduct of their
fellows, we have provided a course of instruction in the
"great code of morality which is likely to produce far
more powerful and lasting effects than any quantity of
mere precept."
66
((
((
(6
We now pass to the other characteristics of the new
system; which seem to lie chiefly in what relates to economy
of time, rewards and punishments, the motives to exertion, and
voluntary labour. For, as to the musical performances (which
occur more than twenty times a day), we see no practical use
in them except that they regulate the marching; and the
marching, it is said, teaches to measure time; and measuring
time accurately contributes "to the order and celerity with
which the various evolutions of the school are performed,"
and also to the conquest of "serious impediments of speech."
But, the latter case not occurring (we presume) very frequently,
and marching accurately not being wholly dependent on
music, it appears to us that a practice which tends to throw
an air of fanciful trifling over the excellent good sense of the
system in other respects would be better omitted. Division
into classes, again, though insisted on by the Experimentalist
in a way which would lead us to suppose it a novelty in his
own neighbourhood, is next to universal in England, and in
all the great grammar schools has been established for ages.
24
MISCELLANEA
All that distinguishes this arrangement in his use of it is
this,—that the classes are variable: that is, the school forms
by different combinations according to the subject of study;
the boys who study Greek together are not the same who
study arithmetic together. Dismissing therefore these two
arrangements as either not characteristic or not laudably
characteristic, we shall make a brief exposition of the others :—
1. ECONOMY OF TIME:-"We have been startled at the
reflection" (says the Experimentalist) "that, if, by a faulty
arrangement, one minute be lost to sixty of our boys, the
injury sustained would be equal to the waste of an hour by
a single individual." Hence, as the Experimentalist justly
argues, the use of classes; by means of which ten minutes
spent by the tutor in explaining a difficult point to a class of
ten boys become equal to 100 minutes distributed amongst
them severally. Great improvement in the economising of
time was on this system derived from exacting “an almost
superstitious punctuality" of the monitor, whose duty it is to
summon the school to all its changes of employment by
ringing a bell. It is worthy of notice, but to us not at all
surprising, that "when the duty of the monitor was easy, and
"he had time for play, the exact moment for ringing the bell
was but seldom observed; but, when, as the system grew
more complex, he was more constantly in requisition, it was
"found that with increased labour came increased perfection,
"and the same boy who had complained of the difficulty of
"being punctual when he had to ring the bell only ten times
"in the day found his duty comparatively easy when his memory
(( was taxed to a fourfold amount. It is amusing to see what
"a living timepiece the giddiest boy will become during his
"week of office. The succession of monitors gradually infuses a
"habit, and somewhat of a love, of punctuality into the body
"scholastic itself. The masters also cannot think of being absent
“when the scholars are waiting for them; and thus the nominal
"and the real hours of attendance become exactly the same."
(6
66
(6
2. MOTIVES TO EXERTION." After furnishing the pupil
"with the opportunity of spending his time to the greatest ad-
vantage, our next case was to examine how we had supplied
"him with motives" for so spending it (p. 92). These are
ranged under five heads, — “love of knowledge; love of
EDUCATION OF BOYS
25
66
(
employment; emulation; hope of reward; and fear of
punishment,”—and according to what the Experimentalist
rightly thinks "their order of excellence." The three last,
he alleges, are stimuli, and of necessity lose their power by
constant use. Love of employment, though a more durable
motive, leaves the pupil open to the attractions of any other
employment that may chance to offer itself in competition
with knowledge. Love of knowledge for its own sake
therefore is the mainspring relied on; insomuch that the
Experimentalist gives it as his opinion that, "if it were
possible for the pupil to acquire a love of knowledge, and
"that only, during the time he remained at school, he would
"have done more towards insuring a stock of knowledge in
maturer age than if he had been the recipient of as much
"learning as ever was infused into the passive schoolboy
by any means which fell short of generating such a principle
of exertion. We heartily agree with him; and we are further
of opinion that this love needs not to be generated as an
independent birth previously to our commencing the labour
of tuition, but that every system of tuition in proportion as
it approaches to a good one will inevitably involve the
generation of this love of knowledge concurrently with the
generation of knowledge itself. Most melancholy are the
cases which have come under our immediate notice of good
faculties wholly lost to their possessor, and an incurable
disgust for literature and knowledge founded, to our certain
knowledge, solely on the stupidity and false methods of the
teacher, who alike in what he knew or did not know was
incapable of connecting one spark of pleasurable feeling with
any science by leading his pupils' minds to react upon the
knowledge he attempted to convey. Being thus important,
how shall a love of knowledge be created? According to the
Experimentalist, first of all by combining the sense of obvious
utility with all the elementary exercises of the intellect;
secondly, by matching the difficulties of the learner exactly
with his capacity; thirdly, by connecting with the learner's
progress the sense of continual success; fourthly, by com-
municating clear, vivid, and accurate conceptions. The first
means is illustrated by a reference to the art of learning a
language, to arithmetic, to surveying, and to the writing of
1
26
MISCELLANEA
"themes." Can any boy, for instance, reconcile himself to
the loathsome effort of learning "Propria quæ maribus," by
any the dimmest sense of its future utility? No, we answer
with the Experimentalist: and we go farther even than the
Experimentalist is disposed to do; for we deny the existence
of any future utility. We, the reviewer of this book, at eight
years of age, though even then passionately fond of study
and disdainful of childish sports, passed some of the most
wretched and ungenial days of our life in "learning by
heart," as it is called (oh! most ironical misnomer !), Propria
quæ maribus," "Quæ genus," and "As in præsenti,”. —a three-
headed monster worse than Cerberus. We did learn them,
ad unguem; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling
to our memory as ineradicably as the golden lines of
Æschylus or Shakspere. And what was our profit from all
this loathsome labour, and the loathsome heap of rubbish thus
deposited in the memory? Attend, if you please, good
reader. The first professes to teach the irregularities of
nouns as to gender (ie. which nouns having a masculine
termination are yet feminine, &c.); the second to teach the
irregularities of nouns as to number (ie. which want the
singular, which the plural); the third to teach the irregularities
of verbs (ie. their deviations from the generic forms of the
preterite and the supine): this is what they profess to teach.
Suppose, then, their professions realised, what is the result?
Why, that you have laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly
which, if it do actually occur, could not possibly cost more
trouble to explain at the time of its occurrence than you
are thus premising. This is as if a man should sit down to
cull all the difficult cases of action which could ever occur to
him in his relations of son, father, citizen, neighbour, public
functionary, &c., under the plea that he would thus have got
over the labour of discussion before the case itself arrived.
Supposing that this could be accomplished, what would it
effect but to cancel a benevolent arrangement of providence,
by which the difficulties of life are distributed with tolerable
equality throughout its whole course, and obstinately to
accumulate them all upon a particular period? Sufficient for
the day is its own evil: despatch your business as it arises,
and every day clears itself; but suffer a few months of
EDUCATION OF BOYS
27
unaudited accounts, or of unanswered letters, to accumulate,
and a mountain of arrears is before you which years seem
insufficient to get rid of. This sort of accumulation arises in
the shape of arrears; but any accumulation of trouble out of
its proper place,-i.e. of a distributed trouble into a state of
convergement,—no matter whether in the shape of needless
anticipation or needless procrastination, has equally the
practical effect of converting a light trouble (or none at all)
into a heavy and hateful one. The daily experience of books,
actual intercourse with Latin authors, is sufficient to teach all
the irregularities of that language: just as the daily ex-
perience of an English child leads him without trouble into
all the anomalies of his own language. And,—to return to
the question which we put, "What was our profit from all
this loathsome labour?"-in this way it was, viz. in the way
of actual experience that we, the reviewer of this book, did
actually in the end come to the knowledge of those irregu-
larities which the three elegant poems in question profess to
communicate. Mark this, reader: the logic of what we are
saying is, first, that, if they did teach what they profess, they
would attain that end by an artificial means far more
laborious than the natural means: and, secondly, that in fact
they do not attain their end. The reason of this is partly the
perplexed and barbarous texture of the verse; which for
metrical purposes, i.e. to keep the promise of metre to the
mere technical scansion, is obliged to abandon all those
natural beauties of metre in the fluent connexion of the
words, in the rhythmus, cadence, cæsura, &c., which alone
recommend metre as a better or more rememberable form
for conveying knowledge than prose. Prose, if it has no
music, at any rate does not compel the most inartificial writer
to dislocate and distort it into non-intelligibility. Another
reason is that "As in præsenti" and its companions are not
so much adapted to the reading as to the writing of Latin.
For instance, I remember (we will suppose) this sequence of
"tango tetigi" from the "As in P." Now, if I am reading
Latin I meet either with the tense "tango
tango" or the tense
"tetigi." In the former case I have no difficulty; for there
is as yet no irregularity, and therefore it is impertinent to
offer assistance; in the latter case I do find a difficulty,-for,
28
MISCELLANEA
according to the models of verbs which I have learned in my
grammar, there is no possible verb which could yield tetigi,
for such a verb as tetigo even ought to yield tetixi. Here
therefore I should be glad of some assistance; but just here
it is that I obtain none: for, because I remember "tango
tetigi" in the direct order, it is quite contrary to the laws of
association which govern the memory in such a case to
suppose that I remember the inverted order of tetigi tango—
any more than the forward repetition of the Lord's Prayer
ensures its backward repetition. The practical applicability
of "As in præsenti" is therefore solely to the act of writing
Latin: for, having occasion to translate the words "I
touched," I search for the Latin equivalent to the English
word touch, find that it is tango, and then am reminded
(whilst forming the preterite) that tango makes not tanxi but
"tetigi." Such a use therefore I might by possibility derive.
from my long labours: meantime even here the service is in
all probability doubly superfluous; for, by the time that I
am called on to write Latin at all, experience will have
taught me that tango makes tetigi; or, supposing that I am
required to write Latin as one of the earliest means for
gaining experience, even in that case the very same dictionary
which teaches me what is Latin for "touch" teaches me what
is the irregular preterite and supine of tango. And thus the
upshot" (to use a homely word) of the whole business is
that an effort of memory, so great as to be capable otherwise
directed of mastering a science, and, secondly (because directed
to an unnatural composition, viz. an arrangement of metre
which is at once the rudest and the most elaborately arti-
ficial), so disgusting as that no accession of knowledge could
compensate the injury thus done to the simplicity of the
child's understanding, by connecting pain and a sense of
unintelligible mystery with his earliest steps in knowledge,
-all this hyperbolical apparatus and machinery is worked
for no one end or purpose that is not better answered by a
question to his tutor, by consulting his dictionary, or by the
insensible progress of daily experience. Even this argument
derived from its utter uselessness does not however weigh so
much with us as the other argument derived from the want
of common-sense involved in the wilful forestalling and arti-
((
EDUCATION OF BOYS'
29
ficial concentrating into one long rosary of anomalies what
else the nature of the case has by good luck dispersed over
the whole territory of the Latin language. To be consistent,
a tutor should take the same proleptical course with regard
to the prosody of the Latin language. Every Latin hyper-
dissyllable is manifestly accentuated according to the follow-
ing law if the penultimate be long, that syllable inevitably
claims the accent; if short, inevitably it rejects it-i.e. gives
it to the ante-penultimate. The determining syllable is
therefore the penultimate; and for the due reading of Latin
the sole question is about the quantity of the penultimate.
According to the logic, therefore, which could ever have
introduced "As in præsenti," the tutor ought to make his
pupils commit to memory every individual word in which
the quantity was not predetermined by a mechanical rule-
(as it is, e.g., in the gen. plural ōrum of the second declension,
the ērunt of the third per. plurals of the preterite, &c., or the
cases where the vowel is long by position). But what man
of sense would forbear to cry out in such a case—
"Leave
the poor child to his daily reading: practice, under correct
tuition, will give him insensibly and without effort all that
you would thus endeavour to communicate through a most
Herculean exertion." Whom has it cost any trouble to learn
the accentuation of his own language? How has he learned
that? Simply by copying others—and so much without
effort that the effort (and a very great effort) would have
been not to copy them. In that way let him learn the
quantity of Latin and Greek penultimates. That Edmund
Burke could violate the quantity of the word "vectigal" was
owing to his tutor's ignorance, who had allowed him so to
read it; that Lord North, and every other Etonian in the
house, knew better, was owing not to any disproportionate
effort of memory directed to that particular word, as though
they had committed to memory a rule enjoining them to
place the accent on the penultimate of the word vectigal :
their knowledge no more rested on such an anticipation by
express rules of their own experience than Burke's ignorance
of the quantity on the want of such anticipation.
anticipation was needless-coming from a tutor who knew
the quantity; and impossible—coming from a tutor who
The
30
MISCELLANEA
knew it not. At this moment a little boy (three years old)
is standing by our table, and repeatedly using the word mans
for men: his sister (five years old) at his age made the very
same mistake; but she is now correcting her brother's gram-
mar, which just at this moment he is stoutly defending—
conceiving his dignity involved in the assertion of his own
impeccability. Now, whence came the little girl's error and
its correction? Following blindly the general analogy of
the language, she formed her plural by adding an s to the
singular afterwards 'everybody about her became a daily
monitor a living Propria quæ maribus, as she is in her turn
to her brother-instructing her that this particular word
66 man
" swerved, as to this one particular point, from the
general analogy of the language. But the result is just as
inevitable from daily intercourse with Latin books as to the
parallel anomalies in that language. In proportion as any
case of anomaly could escape the practical regulation of such
an intercourse, just in that proportion it must be a rare case,
and less important to be known: whatsoever the future
experience will be most likely to demand the past experience
will be most likely to have furnished. All this we urge not
against the Eton grammar in particular: on the contrary, as
grammars go, we admire the Eton grammar,¹ and love it
with a filial partiality from early associations (always except-
ing, however, the three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, “Pro-
pria quæ maribus," &c. ; of which it is not extravagant to say
that the author, though possibly a good sort of man in his
way, has undoubtedly caused more human suffering than
Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human race).
Our opposition is to the general principle which lies at the
root of such treatises as the three which we have been con-
sidering. It will be observed that, making a proper allow-
ance for the smallness of the print, these three bodies of
absurd anticipations of exceptions are collectively about equal
1 Indeed an Etonian must in consistency condemn either the Latin
or the Greek grammar of Eton. For where is the Greek "Propria quæ
maribus,” “Quæ genus,” and “As in præsenti”? Either the Greek
grammar is defective, or the Latin redundant. We are surprised that
it has never struck the patrons of these three beautiful idylls that all
the anomalies of the Greek language are left to be collected from
practice.
EDUCATION OF BOYS
31
in quantity, and virtually for the effort to the memory far
more than equal, to the whole body of the rules contained in
the Accidence and the Syntax: i.e. that which exists on
account of many thousand cases is put on the same level of
value and burthen to the memory as that which exists on
account of itself alone. Here lies the original sin of gram-
mars, the mortal taint on which they all demand regeneration.
Whosoever would show himself a great artist in the profound
but as yet infant art of teaching should regard all arbitrary
taxes upon the memory with the same superstition that a
wise lawgiver should regard the punishment of death. The
lawgiver who sets out with little knowledge (and therefore
little veneration) of human nature is perpetually invoking
the thunders of the law to compensate the internal weakness
of his own laws; and the same spirit of levity disposes
inefficient teachers to put in motion the weightiest machinery
of the mind for the most trifling purposes. But we are con-
vinced that this law should be engraven on the title-page of
all elementary books-that the memory is degraded if it be
called in to deliver any individual fact, or any number of
individual facts, or for any less purpose than that of deliver-
ing a comprehensive law by means of which the understanding
is to produce the individual cases of knowledge wanted.
Wherever exceptions or insulated cases are noticed, except
in notes which are not designed to be committed to memory,
this rule is violated; and the Scotch expression for particular-
ising, viz. condescending upon, becomes applicable in a literal
When the Eton grammar, e.g., notices Deus as deviat-
ing in the vocative case from the general law for that declension,
the memory is summoned to an unreasonable act of conde-
scension—viz. to load itself almost as heavily for one particular
word in one particular case as it had done by the whole type
of that declension (i.e. the implicit law for all words con-
tained under it, which are possibly some thousands). But
how then would we have such exceptions learnt, if not by an
act of the memory? Precisely, we answer, as the meanings
of all the words in the language are learned. How are they
learned? They are known, and they are remembered; but
how? Not by any act or effort of the memory: they are
deposited in the memory from daily intercourse with them,
sense.
32
MISCELLANEA
just as the daily occurrences of our lives are recorded in our
memories: not through any exertion on our part, or in con-
sequence of previous determination on our parts that we will
remember them: on the contrary, we take no pains about
them, and often would willingly forget them but they stay
there in spite of us, and are pure depositions, settlings, or
sediments, with or without our concurrence, from the stream
of our daily experience.
:
as the
Returning from this long excursus on arbitrary taxations
of the memory, suggested to us by the mention of "Propria
quæ maribus," which the Experimentalist objects to as dis-
gusting to children before they have had experience of the
cases in which it furnishes assistance (but which we have
objected to as in any case barren of all power to assist), we
resume the course of our analysis. We left the Experi-
mentalist insisting on the benefit of directing the studies of
children into such channels as that the practical uses of their
labours may become apprehensible to themselves
first mode of producing a love of knowledge. In some cases
he admits that the pupil must pass through "dark defiles,"
confiding blindly in his tutor's "assurance that he will at
last emerge into light," but still contends that in many cases
it is possible, and where possible right-that he should
"catch a glimpse of the promised land." Thus, for example,
to construe the language he is learning is an act of “
respectability in his eyes," and its uses apparent: meantime
the uses of the grammar are not so apparent until experience
has brought him acquainted with the real cases to which it
applies. On this account, without laying aside the grammar,
let him be advanced to the dignity of actual translation upon
the very minimum of grammatical knowledge which will
admit of it. Again, in arithmetic, it is the received practice
to commence with "abstract numbers" but, instead of
risking injury to the child's intellect and to his temper by
thus calling upon him to add together "long rows of figures "
to which no meaning is attached, he is taught "to calculate
all the various little problems which may be constructed
respecting his tops and marbles, their price, and their com-
parative value." Here the Experimentalist turns aside for
about a page to acknowledge his obligations to what is
(C
:
some
EDUCATION OF BOYS
33
called Mental Arithmetic-that is, calculation without the
employment of written symbols." Jedediah Buxton's preter-
natural powers in this way have been long published to the
world, and may now be found recorded in Encyclopædias.
The Experimentalist refers also to the more recent cases of
Porson and the American youth Zerah Colborn: amongst his
own pupils it appears (p. 54) that this exercise is practised in
the morning twilight, which for any other study would not
furnish sufficient light. He does not pretend to any very
splendid marvels: but the following facts, previously recited
at pp. 16 and 17, he thinks may astonish "those who have
not estimated the combined power of youth, ardour, and
practice." The lower classes calculate, purely by the mind,
without any help from pen or pencil, questions respecting
interest; determine whether a given year be bissextile or
not, &c. &c. The upper classes determine the age of the
moon at any given time, the day of the week which corre-
sponds with any day of any month and year, and Easter
Sunday for a given year. They will square any number not
exceeding a thousand, extract the square root of a number of
not more than five places, determine the space through which
a body falls in a given time, the circumference and areas of
circles from their diameters, and solve many problems in
mensuration: they practise also Mental Algebra, &c. In
mental, no less than in written, Arithmetic, "by assimilating
the questions to those which actually occur in the transactions
of life," the pupil is made sensible that he is rising into the
usefulness and respectability of real business. The imitative
principle of man is thus made to blend with the motive
derived from the sense of utility. The same blended feelings,
combined with the pleasurable influences of open air, are
relied upon for creating the love of knowledge in the practice
of surveying. In this operation so large an aggregate of
subsidiary knowledge is demanded, of arithmetic, for in-
stance, of mensuration, of trigonometry, together with "the
manual facility of constructing maps and plans,”—that a
sudden revelation is made to the pupils of the uses and indis-
pensableness of many previous studies which hitherto they
had imperfectly appreciated; they also "exercise their dis-
"cretion in choosing points of observation; they learn
VOL. XIV
D
34
MISCELLANEA
((
expertness in the use, and care in the preservation, of
"instruments; and, above all, from this feeling that they
are really at work, they acquire that sobriety and steadiness
“of conduct in which the elder schoolboy is so often inferior
"to his less fortunate neighbour who has been removed at an
"carly age to the accompting-house."
(C
The value of the sense of utility the Experimentalist
brings home forcibly to every reader's recollections by remind-
ing him of the many cases in which a sudden desire for self-
education breaks out in a few months after the close of an
inefficient education. "And what," he asks, "produces the
change? The experience, however short, of the utility of
"acquisitions which were perhaps lately despised." Better
then "to spare the future man many moments of painful
retrospection," by cducing this sense of utility "while the
time and opportunity of improvement remain unimpaired."
Finally, the sense of utility is connected with the peculiar
exercises in composition: "a department of education
which we confess" (says the Experimentalist) "has often
caused us considerable uneasiness " an uneasiness which
we, on our part, look upon as groundless. For, — start-
ing ourselves from the same point with the Experi-
mentalist and the authority he alleges, viz. that the
matter of a good theme or essay altogether transcends the
reflective powers and the opportunities for observing of a raw
schoolboy, we yet come to a very different practical con-
clusion. The act of composition cannot, it is true, create
thoughts in a boy's head unless they exist previously. On
this consideration, let all questions of general speculation be
dismissed from school exercises: especially questions of moral
speculation, which usually furnish the thesis of a schoolboy's
essay.
Let us have no more themes on Justice, on Ambition,
on Benevolence, on the Love of Fame, &c. for all theses
such as these, which treat moral qualities as pure abstractions,
are stripped of their human interest; and few adults even
could write endurably upon such subjects in such a shape,
though many might have written very pleasingly and judici-
ously upon a moral case—i.e. on a moral question in concreto.
Grant that a schoolboy has no independent thoughts of any
value; yet every boy has thoughts dependent upon what he
EDUCATION OF BOYS
35
has read-thoughts involved in it-thoughts derived from
it: but these he will (cæteris paribus) be more or less able to
express as he has been more or less accustomed to express
them. The unevolved thoughts which pass through the
youngest, the rudest, the most inexperienced brain, are in-
numerable; not detached, voluntary thoughts, but thoughts
inherent in what is seen, talked of, experienced, or read of.
To evolve these, to make them apprehensible by others, and
often even to bring them within their own consciousness, is
very difficult to most people, and at times to all people; and
the power by which this difficulty is conquered admits of
endless culture: and amongst the modes of culture is that of
written composition. The true value of this exercise lies in
the necessity which it imposes of forming distinct ideas, of
connecting them, of disposing them into such an arrangement
as that they can be connected, of clothing them in words, and
many more acts of the mind, both analytic and synthetic.
All that is necessary is to determine for the young composer
his choice of matter. Require him therefore to narrate an
interesting story which he has formerly read; to rehearse
the most interesting particulars of a day's excursion in the
case of more advanced students, let them read one of the
English state trials, where the evidence is of a complex char-
acter (as the trials on Titus Oates's plot), or a critical disser-
tation on some interesting question, or anything in short
which admits of analysis, of abstraction, of expansion, or
exhibition in an altered shape. Subjects for all this are
innumerable; and, according to the selection made, more or
less opportunity is given for collecting valuable knowledge :
but this purpose is collateral to the one we are speaking of :
the direct purpose is to exercise the mind in unravelling its
own thoughts, which else lie huddled and tangled together in
a state unfit for use, and but dimly developed to the pos-
sessor's own consciousness.
The three other modes of producing a love of knowledge
which the Experimentalist relies on-viz. the proportioning
the difficulties to the capacity of the learner, the pleasure of
success, and the communication of clear, vivid, and accurate
conceptions,—are treated with good sense, but not with any
great originality. The last indeed (to speak scholastically)
36
MISCELLANEA
:
contains the other three eminenter: for he who has once
arrived at clear conceptions in relation to the various objects
of his study will not fail to generate for himself the pleasure
of success; and so of the rest. But the power of communi-
cating “accurate conceptions" involves so many other powers
that it is in strictness but another name for the faculty of
teaching in general. We fully agree with the Experimentalist
that the tutor would do well "to provide himself with the
various weights commonly spoken of, and the measures of
content and of length; to portion off upon his playground
a land-chain, a rood," &c., to furnish "maps" tracing "the
routes of armies," "plates exhibiting the costumes of dif-
ferent nations and more especially we agree with him that
in teaching the classics the tutor should have at hand "plates
or drawings of ships, temples, houses, altars, domestic and
sacred utensils, robes, and of every object of which they are
likely to read."
“It is,” as he says, “impossible to calculate
the injury which the minds of children suffer from the habit
of receiving imperfect ideas": and it is discreditable in the
highest degree to the majority of good classical scholars that
they have no accurate knowledge of the Roman calendar, and
no knowledge at all of the classical coinage, &c. : not one out
of every twenty scholars can state the relation of the sestertius
to the denarius, of the Roman denarius to the Attic drachma,
or express any of them in English money. All such defects
are weighty; but they are not adequate illustrations of the
injury which arises from inaccurate ideas in its most impor-
tant shape. It is a subject, however, which we have here no
room to enlarge upon.
II. REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.-It has already been
mentioned that corporal punishments are entirely abolished,¹
1 On this point there is, however, an exception made which amuses
us not a little. "In a few instances," says the Experimentalist, "it
"has been found or supposed necessary to resent insolence by a blow :
"but this may be rather called an assertion of private right than an
"official punishment. In these cases a single blow has almost always
"been found sufficient, even the rarity of the infliction rendering
"severity unnecessary." He insists therefore that this punishment
(which, we cannot but think, might have been commuted for a long
imprisonment) shall not be called a punishment, nor entered on the
public records as such in which case, however, it becomes a private
'turn-up," as the boxers call it, between the boy and his tutor.
EDUCATION OF BOYS
37
((
66
66
(6
"would
and upon the same principle all such disgrace as
destroy self-respect." Expulsion even has been resorted to,
" rather than a boy should be submitted to treatment which
might lead himself and his school-fellows to forget that he
was a gentleman." In this we think the Experimentalist
very wise and precisely upon this ground it was that Mr.
Coleridge in his lectures at the Royal Institution attacked
Mr. Lancaster's system, which deviated from the Madras
system chiefly in the complexity of the details, and by press-
ing so cruelly in its punishments upon the principle of shame.
"Public disgrace" (as the Experimentalist alleges) "is pain-
ful exactly in proportion to the good feeling of the offender":
and thus the good are more heavily punished than the bad.
Confinement, and certain disabilities, are the severest punish-
ments; but the former is as rare as possible, both
because it is attended with unavoidable disgrace" (but
what punishment is wholly free from this objection?)
"and because, unlike labour, it is pain without any utility."
The ordinary punishments therefore consist in the forfeiture
of rewards, which are certain counters obtained by various
kinds of merit. These are of two classes,—penal (so called from
being received as forfeits) and premial, which are obtained by
a higher degree of merit, and have higher powers attached to
them. Premial counters will purchase holidays, and will also
purchase rank (which in this system is of great importance).
A conflict is thus created between pleasure and ambition,
which generally terminates in favour of the latter: "a boy
"of fourteen, although constantly in the possession of marks
"sufficient to obtain a holiday per week, has bought but
"three-quarters of a day's relaxation during the whole of the
"last year.
The same boy purchased his place on the list
by a sacrifice of marks sufficient to have obtained for him
twenty-six half-holidays." The purchase of rank, the
reader must remember, is no way objectionable-considering
the means by which the purchase-money is obtained. One
chief means is by study during the hours of leisure—¿.e. by
voluntary labour. This is treated of (rather out of its place)
in Chap. VII; which ought to be considered as belonging to
the first part of the work, viz. to the exposition of the system.
Voluntary labour took its rise from the necessity of furnish-
(6
(6
38
MISCELLANEA
ing those boys who had no chance of obtaining rank through
their talents with some other means of distinguishing them-
selves. This is accomplished in two modes: first, by giving
rewards for industry exerted out of school hours and receiving
these rewards as the price of rank, making no other stipula-
tion than one, in addition to its being "tolerably well
executed "—viz. that it shall be in a state of completion.
The Experimentalist comments justly on "the mental dissi-
pation in which persons of talent often indulge" as being
"destructive beyond what can readily be imagined” and as
leading to "a life of shreds and patches."
"We take care ""
(says he) "to reward no boy for fragments, whatever may be
their excellence. We know nothing of his exertions until
they come before us in a state of completion." Hence,
besides gaining the "habit of finishing" in early youth, the
boy has an interest also in gaining the habit of measuring
his own powers: for he knows" that he can receive neither
fame nor profit by instalments," and therefore “undertakes
nothing which he has not a rational hope of accomplishing." "' 1
A second mode of preventing rank from being monopolised
by talents is by flinging the school into various arrangements,
one of which is founded on "propriety of manners and
general good conduct."
We have thus gone through a pretty full analysis, and a
very accurate one, of the new system as contained in the three
first chapters. Of the five miscellaneous chapters, the seventh
or last but one (on voluntary labour) has been interwoven
with our analysis; and the eighth, which contains a com-
parison of public and private education, we do not purpose to
notice. The question is very sensibly discussed; but it is
useless to discuss any question like this, which is a difficult
problem only because it is an unlimited problem. Let the
parent satisfy himself about the object he has in view for his
child, and let him consider the particular means which he
1 The details of the system in regard to the penal and premial
counters may be found from pp. 23 to 29. We have no room to ex-
tract them one remark only we must make-that we do not see how
it is possible to ascribe any peculiar and incommunicable privileges to
the premial as opposed to the penal counters, when it appears that
they may be exchanged for each other "at an established rate.'
EDUCATION OF BOYS
39
has at his disposal for securing a good private education; and
he may then determine it for himself. As far as the attain-
ment of knowledge is concerned, it is always possible to
secure a good public education, and not always possible to
secure a good private one. Where either is possible in-
differently, the comparison will proceed upon more equal
grounds, and inquiry may then be made about the child's
destination in future life: for many destinations a public
education being much more eligible than for others. Under
a perfect indetermination of everything relating to the child
the question is as indeterminable as— -Whether it is better to
go to the Bank through Holborn or through the Strand: the
particular case being given, it may then be possible to answer
the question; previously it is impossible.. -Three chapters,
therefore, remain: viz.-Chap. IV on Languages; Chap. V
on Elocution; and Chap. VI on Penmanship.
Chap. IV. On the best method of acquiring Languages. —The
Experimentalist had occasion to observe "that, in the Welsh
towns which are frequented by the English, even the children
speak both languages with fluency." This fact, contrasted
with the labour and pain entailed upon the boy who is learn-
ing Latin (to say nothing of the eventual disgust to literature
which is too often the remote consequence), and the drudgery
entailed upon the master who teaches Latin, and fortified
by the consideration that in the former instance the child
learns to speak a new language, but in the latter only to read
it,—first drew his attention to the natural mode of learning
languages, ¿.e. learning them from daily use. This mode
never fails with living languages; but how is it to be applied
to dead languages? The Experimentalist retorts by asking
what is essential to this mode? Partly the necessity which
the pupil is laid under of using the language daily for the
common intercourse of life, and partly his hearing it spoken
by those who thoroughly understand it. "Stimulus to
exertion, then, and good models, are the great advantages of
this mode of instruction"; and these, he thinks, are secured
even for a dead language by his system: the first by the
motives to exertion which have already been unfolded, and
the second by the acting of Latin dramas (which had been
previously noticed in his Exposition of the System).
But a
40
MISCELLANEA
(6
third imitation of the natural method he places in the use of
translations “which present the student with a dictionary
both of words and phrases arranged in the order in which he
wants them," and in an abstinence from all use of the
grammar until the learner himself shall come to feel the
want of it; i.e. using it with reference to an experience
already accumulated, and not as an anticipation of an ex-
perience yet to come. The ordinary objection to the use of
translations,—that they produce indolent habits,—he answers
thus: "We teach by the process of construing: and therefore,
(( even with the translation before him, the scholar will have
a task to perform in matching the English, word by word,
"with the language which he is learning." For this natural
method of learning languages he alleges the authority of
Locke, of Ascham, and of Pestalozzi. The best method, with
those who have advanced to some degree of proficiency,
he considers that of double translations-i.e. a translation
first of all into the mother tongue of the learner, and a re-
translation of this translation back into the language of the
original. These, with the help of extemporaneous construing,
i.e. construing any passage at random with the assistance of a
master who supplies the meaning of the unknown words as
they arise-(a method practised, it seems, by Le Febvre, the
father of Madame Dacier, by others before his time, and by
Condillac since)—compose the chief machinery which he
employs for the communication of dead languages.
Chap. V. On Elocution.In this chapter there is not
much which is very important. To read well, the Experi-
mentalist alleges, presupposes so much various knowledge,
especially of that kind which is best acquired by private
reading, and therefore most spares the labour of the tutor,
that it ought reasonably to bestow high rank in the school.
Private reading is most favourable to the rapid collection of
an author's meaning; but for reading well this is not
sufficient: two great constituents of that art remain to be
acquired Enunciation and Inflection. These are best
learned by Recitation. Thus far there is no great novelty:
the most interesting part of the chapter is what relates to
Stammering. This defect is held by the Experimentalist to
result from inattention to rhythmus: so much, he thinks,
EDUCATION OF BOYS
41
ぐ
​has been proved by Mr. Thelwall. Whatsoever therefore
compels the pupil to an efficient perception of time and
measure, as, for example, marching and music, he resorts to
for its correction. Stammerers, he observes, can all sing:
let them be taught to sing therefore, if not otherwise corri-
gible; and from this let them descend to recitative; then to
the recitation of verses distinguished by the simplicity of
their rhythmus, marching at the same time and marking the
accented syllables by the tread of the foot; from this to the
recitation of more difficult verses; from that to measured
prose; thence to ordinary prose; and lastly to narrative and
dialogue.
Chap. VI. Of Penmanship.—This is a subject on which
we profess no experience which could warrant us in contra-.
dicting a writer who should rest his innovations solely upon
that ground; but the writer before us does not rely on the
practical issue of his own experiment (he does not even tell
us what that issue was), but on certain a priori arguments,
which we conceive to be ill-reasoned. The amount of the
chapter is this-that to write a good running hand is the
main object to be aimed at in the art of caligraphy: we will
go farther, and concede that it is the sole object, unless where
the pupil is educated for a writing-master. Thus far we are
agreed; and the question is as to the best means of attaining
this object. On which question the plan here proposed differs
from those in use by the very natural error that what
is admitted to be the ultimate object this plan would make
the immediate object. The author starts from a false theory
of the practice amongst writing-masters. In order that their
pupils may write small and running hands well, writing-
masters (as is well known) begin by exacting from them a
long praxis in large hands. But the rationale of this praxis
escapes the Experimentalist: the large hand and the small
hand stand related to each other, in the estimate of the
masters, as a means to an end; whereas the Experimentalist
supposes them to be viewed in the relation simply of two co-
ordinate or collateral ends on which false presumption he
grounds what would on his own view be a very sound advice.
For, justly conceiving that the small hand is of incompar-
ably more use in life, he argues in effect thus: Let us
42
MISCELLANEA
:
:
communicate the main object, and then (if he has leisure and
taste for it) let the pupil direct his attention to the lower
object "when the running hand is accomplished," says he,
"the pupil may (if it be thought necessary) learn to write
the larger hands according to the received models.'
"" When
it is acquired! 'Ay, but in order that it may be acquired,"
-the writing-master will reply, "I must first teach the
larger hands." As well might the professor of dancing hold
out as a tempting innovation to the public—“I teach the
actual dances, the true practical synthesis of the steps and
movements, as it is in fact demanded by the usage of the
ball-room let others teach the analytic elements of the art
-the mere useless steps-to those who have time to waste
on superfluities." In either art (as in many others) that
which is first (or rather sole) in order of importance is last in
the order of attainment. As an object per se, the larger
hand is not wanted at all, either before or after the running
hand if it does really contribute nothing to the more
accurate formation of the letters, by compelling the pupil to
exhibit his aberrations from the ideal letter more clearly
because on a scale of greater magnitude (which yet in the
second sentence of this chapter our Experimentalist himself
admits), then let it be abandoned at once; for, not doing this
service, it does nothing at all. On the other hand, if this be
its specific service, then it is clear that, being no object per se,
but simply a means to an object, it must have precedency in
the order of communication. And the innovation of our Experi-
mentalist is so far (in the literal sense of that word) a preposterous
inversion of the old usage; and, this being the chief principle
of his "plan," we desire to know no more of it, and were
not sorry that we found him declining "to enter into a detail
of it."—The business of the chapter being finished, however,
there yet remains some little matter of curiosity. 1. The
Experimentalist affirms that "Langford's copper-plate copies,
or indeed any other which he has seen, fail" if tried by a
certain test. What test? Why this: that "the large hand,
seen through a diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into
the current hand, and the current hand, magnified, ought
to swell into a large hand"; whereas, on the contrary,
"the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped, and
EDUCATION OF BOYS
43
the magnified running hand appears little better than a
scrawl." Now, to us the result appears in a different light.
It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good
running hands according to the standard derived from the
actual practice of the world: but why? Simply because they
are too good: i.e. they are ideals, and in fact are meant to be
so, and have nothing characteristic: they are purely generic
hands, and therefore want individualisation: they are
abstractions; but, to affect us pleasurably, they should be
concrete expressions of some human qualities, moral or
intellectual. Perfect features in a human face, arranged with
perfect symmetry, affect us not at all, as is well known,
where there is nothing characteristic; the latency of the
individual in the generic, and of the generic in the
individual, is that which gives to each its power over our
human sensibilities. And this holds of caligraphy no less
than other arts. And that is the most perfect handwriting
which unites the minimum of deviation from the ideal
standard of beauty (as to the form and nexus of the letters)
with the maximum of characteristic expression. It has long
been practically felt, and even expressly affirmed (in some
instances even expanded into a distinct art and professed as
such), that it is possible to determine the human intellectual
character as to some of its features from the handwriting.
Books even have been written on this art,—as, e.g., the
Ideographia, or art of knowing the characters of men from
their handwritings, by Aldorisius; and, though this, in
common with all other modes of physiognomy, as Craniology,
Lavaterianism (usually called Physiognomy), &c. &c., has
laboured under the reproach of fancifulness, yet we ought not
to attribute this wholly to the groundlessness of the art as a
possible art—but to these two causes: partly to the pre-
cipitation and imperfect psychology of the professors; who,
like the craniologists, have been over-ready to determine the
indicantia before they had settled according to any tolerable
theory the indicanda,―i.e. have settled what A, what B, what
C, shall indicate, before they have inquired what it was
presumable upon any systematic development of human
nature would have a right to be indicated, and thus have
assigned an external characteristic to a faculty of the third
44
MISCELLANEA
order, suppose, (or perhaps a mere accidental effect of a
faculty or a mere imaginary faculty), whilst a primary faculty
went without any expression at all:-partly, I say, to this
cause, which is obviously not merely a subjective but also an
accidental cause; and partly also to the following cause,
which is objective (i.e. seated in the inherent imperfections of
the art itself, and not removable therefore by any future
improvements to be anticipated from a more matured
psychology),——viz. that the human mind transcends or over-
flows the gamut or scale of the art; in other words, that the
qualities, intellectual or moral, which ought to be expressed
are far more in number than the alphabet of signs or ex-
pressions by which they are to be enunciated. Hence it
follows as an inevitable dilemma that many qualities must
go unrepresented, or else be represented by signs common to
them with other qualities: in the first of which cases we
have an art imperfect from defect, in the other case im-
perfect from equivocal language. Thus, for example, deter-
mination of character is built in some cases upon mere
energy of the will (a moral cause), and again in other cases
upon capaciousness of judgment and freedom from all logical
perplexity (an intellectual cause). Yet it is possible that
either cause will modify the handwriting in the same way.
From the long analysis which we have thus given of the
book recording this new system of education, it is sufficiently
evident that we think very highly of it. In the hands of its
founder we are convinced that it is calculated to work
wonders; and so strong is the impression which his book
conveys that he is not only a man of very extraordinary
talents for the improvement of the science of education, but
also a very conscientious man, that, for our own parts, we should
confide a child to his care with that spirit of perfect con-
fidence which he has himself described at p. 74. There is
an air of gentlemanly feeling spread over the book which
tends still further to recommend the author. Meantime two
questions arise on the system :-first, Is it a good system?
which we have answered :-secondly, Is it a system adapted
for general diffusion? This question we dare not answer in
the affirmative, unless we could ensure the talents and energy
EDUCATION OF BOYS
45
of the original inventor in every other superintendent of
this system. In this we may be wrong; but, at all events,
it ought not to be considered as any deduction from the
merits of the author, as a very original thinker on the science
of education, that his system is not (like the Madras system)
independent of the teacher's ability, and therefore not uncon-
ditionally applicable.-Upon some future occasion we shall
perhaps take an opportunity of stating what is in our opinion
the great desideratum which is still to be supplied in the
art of education considered simply in its intellectual purposes
-viz. the communication of knowledge, and the development
of the intellectual faculties: purposes which have not been
as yet treated in sufficient insulation from the moral pur-
poses. For the present we shall conclude by recommending
to the notice of the Experimentalist the German writers on
Education. Basedow, who naturalised Rousseau in Germany,
was the first author who called the attention of the German
public to this important subject. Unfortunately Basedow
had a silly ambition of being reputed an infidel, and thus
created a great obstacle to his own success: he was also in
many other respects a sciolist and a trifler: but since his
time the subject has been much cultivated in Germany.
"Paedagogic" journals even have been published periodically,
like literary or philosophic journals, and, as might be antici-
pated from that love of children which so honourably dis-
tinguishes the Germans as a people, not without very
considerable success.
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER,
IN RELATION TO
THE SENSE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL¹
A TRANSLATION
["My purpose," says Kant, "is not to portray the characters
of different nations in detail: I sketch only a few features,
which may express the feeling in those characters for the
Sublime and the Beautiful. In such a portraiture it is
evident that only a tolerable accuracy can be demanded ;
that the prototypes of the features selected are prominent
only in the great crowd of those that make pretensions to
refined feelings; and that no nation is entirely wanting in
minds which unite the best qualities of both feelings. Any
blame, therefore, which may touch the character of a nation
in the course of these strictures ought not to offend any
one,—the blame being of such a nature that every man may
toss off the ball to his neighbour. Whether these national
distinctions are contingently dependent on the colour of the
times and the quality of the government, or are bound to
the climate by a certain necessity, I do not here inquire.”]
Among the nations of our quarter of the globe, the Italians
and the French are in my opinion those who are most dis-
tinguished for the sense of the Beautiful; the Germans, the
1 Appeared in the London Magazine for April 1824, with the
signature "X. Y. Z.": not included in De Quincey's own edition of
his Collected Writings; but reprinted in 1871 in the second of
Messrs. Black's supplementary volumes to that edition.-M.
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
47
English, and the Spaniards, for the sense of the Sublime.
Holland may be set down as a country in which neither
feeling is very observable.-The Beautiful is either fascinating
and affecting, or gay and enlivening. The first contains
something of the Sublime; and the mind, whilst under the
influence of this class of beauty, is meditative and enrap-
tured; but under the influence of the other laughing and
joyous. The first kind of beauty seems to be most congenial
to the Italian taste; the second to the French. The
Sublime, where it is expressed by the national character,
takes either a more terrific character, which verges a little to
the Adventurous and Romantic; or, secondly, it is a feeling
for the Noble; or, thirdly, for the Magnificent. Upon
certain grounds I feel warranted in ascribing the first style of
feeling to the Spaniard, the second to the Englishman, and
the third to the German. The feeling for the Magnificent is
not natively so original as the rest: and, although a spirit of
imitation may easily be connected with any other feeling, yet
it is more peculiarly connected with the glittering Sublime:
for this is a mixed feeling, composed of the sense for the
Beautiful and the Sublime, in which each considered separately
is colder, and the mind more at leisure to attend to examples,
and stands more in need of examples to excite and support
it. The German, therefore, has less feeling for the Beautiful
than the Frenchman, and less for the Sublime than the
Englishman: but in those cases where it is necessary that
both should appear united the result will be more congenial
to his mind; and he will also more readily avoid those
errors into which an extravagant degree of either feeling
exclusively is apt to fall.-The taste which I have attributed
to different nations is confirmed by the choice which they
severally make amongst the arts and sciences. The Italian
genius has distinguished itself especially in Music, Painting,
Sculpture, and Architecture. All these fine arts meet with
an equally refined culture in France,¹ although their beauty
1 To the judicious reader it needs not be said how strikingly in
opposition to facts is Kant's judgment on the French taste in the Fine
Arts. What the French poetry is most men know; the French music
is the jest of Europe; and, if we except the single name of Poussin,
there is no other in any of the Fine Arts which can impress any ear
with much reverence.
48
MISCELLANEA
is here less touching. Taste, in reference to the poetic or
rhetoric ideal, tends in France more to the Beautiful, in
England more to the Sublime. Elegant playfulness, comedy,
laughing satire, amorous trifling, and the light, cursory, and
fugitive style of writing are in France native and original.
In England, on the contrary, the natural products of the
national mind are thoughts of profound meaning, tragedy,
epic poetry, and generally the massy gold of wit, which under
the French hammer is beat out to thin leaves of greater
surface. In Germany the fine thinking of the nation even
yet gleams through a covering of false tinsel. Formerly
this reproach existed to a shocking degree; but latterly, by
better models, and the good sense of the people, the national
style has been raised to a character of higher grace and
nobility. But the grace has less naïveté than it has amongst
the French, and the nobility not so firm and confident a
movement as it has amongst the English. The tendency of
the Dutch taste to a painful elaborateness of arrangement,
and to a prettiness which is apt to settle into heaviness and
distraction, does not allow us to presume much sensibility
for the artless and freer movements of the genius, the pro-
ducts of which are only disfigured by too anxious a fear of
faults. To all the arts and sciences nothing can be more
hostile than the romantic or barbaresque taste; for this
distorts nature itself, which is the universal prototype of
the noble and the beautiful; and hence it is that the Spanish
nation has shown little feeling for the fine arts or the
sciences.
The national mind is in any case best expounded by the
direction of its moral feelings: I shall therefore next consider
the feelings of different nations in relation to the Sublime
and Beautiful from this point of view. -The Spaniard is
serious, reserved, and punctiliously faithful to his word.
There are few more upright merchants in the world than the
Spanish. The Spaniard has a proud soul, and more sym-
pathy with grandeur in actions than with those qualities of
action which come more under the title of the Beautiful.
Not much of benignity or gentleness is to be found in his
composition; and hence he is often harsh and even cruel.
The auto da fe keeps its ground in Spain not so much through
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
49
superstition as through the national passion for a barbaresque
grandeur, which is affected by the solemnities of a dreadful
procession, in the course of which the San Benito, painted
over with devilish forms, is delivered up to the flames which
a hideous bigotry has lit. It cannot be so properly said that
the Spaniard is prouder or more amorous than those of other
nations as that he displays both passions in a more barbaresque
manner. To leave the plough standing still, and to strut
about in a long sword and cloak until the traveller is past,
or, in a bull-fight, where the beauties of the land are for once
seen unveiled, to proclaim the lady of his affections by a
special salute, and then to seek to do honour to this lady by
precipitating himself into a dangerous contest with a savage
animal, are strange acts, and far remote from nature. The
Italian seems to have a mixed temperament, composed partly
of the French and partly of the Spanish: he has more sen-
sibility to the Beautiful than the Spaniard, and to the
Sublime than the Frenchman; and by this clue I am of
opinion that the other features of his moral character may be
explained.The Frenchman, in regard to all moral feelings,
has a domineering sense of the Beautiful. He has a fine
address, is courteous, and obliging. He readily assumes a
confidential tone; is playful and unconstrained in conversa-
tion; and he only who has the polite feelings of a French-
man can enter into the full meaning of the expression-a
man or a lady of good tone. Even the sublimer feelings of a
Frenchman, and he has many such, -are subordinated to
his sense of the Beautiful, and derive their strength from
their fusion with these. He is passionately fond of wit, and
will make no scruple of sacrificing a little truth to a happy
conceit. On the other hand, where there is no opportunity
for wit, a Frenchman displays a spirit of as radical and pro-
found investigation as men of any nation whatever: for
instance, in mathematics and in the other profound and
austere sciences. In the metaphysics, however, the ethics,
and the theology, of this nation it is impossible to be too
much upon one's guard. A delusive glitter commonly pre-
vails in such works, which cannot stand the test of sober
examination. A Frenchman loves the audacious in all his
opinions; but he who would arrive at the truth had need to
VOL. XIV
E
50
MISCELLANEA
be-not audacious, but cautious. French history tends
naturally to memoirs and anecdotes, in which there is no
improvement to desire but that they were-true. A bon mot
has not that fugitive value in France which it has elsewhere;
it is eagerly propagated, and treasured up in books, as if it
were the weightiest of events. The Frenchman is a peace-
able citizen, and revenges himself for any oppressive acts of
the Farmers-General by satires or by parliamentary remon-
strances ¹—which, having fulfilled their purposes by shedding
a patriotic éclat over the fathers of the people, are dismissed
to be celebrated by the poets. The great object to which the
meritorious qualities and national capacities of this people are
mainly referred is the female sex. Not that woman is in
France more loved or esteemed than elsewhere, but because
it is woman that furnishes the occasion for exhibiting in the
best attitude the darling talents of wit, good breeding, and
polished manners. In fact, a vain person loves in either sex
nobody but himself; all other persons are simply the engines
by which he makes the most favourable display of his own
advantages. As the French are not wanting in noble quali-
ties,—which, however, can be animated and excited only by
the feeling of the beautiful,—it is evident that the fair sex
would have it in its power to animate the men to noble
actions beyond what is seen in any other part of the world,
if there were any disposition to favour this direction of the
national temper. Pity that the lilies do not spin! The
fault to which the character of this nation most verges is the
tendency to trifling, or (to express it by a more courteous
expression) to levity. Matters of weight are treated as jests ;
and trifles serve for the most serious occupation of the
faculties. In old age the Frenchman is still singing songs of
pleasure, and to the best of his power is still gallant to the
women. In speaking thus I have high authorities to warrant
me from amongst the French themselves; and I shall
shelter myself from any displeasure which I might else incur
by pleading the sanction of a Montesquieu and a D'Alembert.
-The Englishman, at the commencement of every acquaint-
ance, is cold and reserved, and towards all strangers is in-
1 The reader must remember that this essay was written as early as
1764.
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
51
different. He has little inclination to show any complaisance
or obligingness in trifles on the other hand, where he feels
sincere friendship, he is disposed to express it by important
services. He gives himself very little trouble to display wit
in conversation, or to recommend himself by any politeness
of manner: on the other hand, his demeanour expresses high
good sense and sobriety of mind. The Englishman is bad at
imitation; he asks little about other people's opinions, and
follows nothing but his own taste and humour. In relation
to women he does not manifest the French spirit of courtly
homage, but nevertheless testifies far more of sincere respect
for them; indeed he pushes this too far, and in the married
state usually allows his wife an unlimited influence. He is
firm, at times even to obstinacy; bold and resolute, even to
rashness; and he acts in general upon principle in a degree
amounting almost to obduracy. He is prone to fall into
eccentricity of habits or opinions,-not from vanity, but be-
cause he has a slight regard for what others say or think, and
because he is not forward to put any force on his own inclina-
tions out of complaisance or out of imitation: on this account
he is rarely so much beloved as the Frenchman, but, when he
is once known, much more respected. The German has a
mixed temper, composed of the English and the French, but
partaking much more of the first; and, whenever a German
discovers a closer resemblance to the Frenchman, it is un-
doubtedly an artificial or mimical resemblance. He has a
happy equilibrium of sensibility to the Sublime and the
Beautiful; and, if he does not rival the Englishman in the
first nor the Frenchman in the second, yet he surpasses
either separately in so far as he combines them both. He
discovers more urbanity in social intercourse than the
Englishman; and, if he does not bring into company so
much wit and agreeable vivacity as the Frenchman, he
manifests more modesty and good sense. In love, as in every
other direction of taste, he is tolerably methodic; and, be-
cause he combines the sense of the Beautiful with the sense
of the Sublime, he is cold enough, in contemplating either
separately, to keep his head free for considerations of decorum,
of pomp, and show. Hence it is that, in his civil relations
no less than in love, family, rank, and titles are matters of
52
MISCELLANEA
The
supreme importance. He inquires far more earnestly than
either the Frenchman or the Englishman what people will
think of him; and, if there is any one feature of his character
which calls aloud for a capital improvement, it is this very weak-
ness,-which is the cause that he shrinks with timidity from
the hardiness of originality even when he has all the talents
for it; and, through this over-anxiety about the opinions of
others, his moral qualities lose all ground of stability, and
become fickle as the weather, hollow, and artificial.
Dutchman is of a regular and painstaking temper; and, look-
ing only to the useful, he has little sensibility to that which
in a finer sense is either Beautiful or Sublime. A great
man is equivalent in his vocabulary to a rich man; by a
friend he means a correspondent; and a visit is exceedingly
tedious to him, unless it returns some nett profit. He is the
ideal contrast to the Frenchman as well as to the Englishman,
and may be briefly described as a phlegmatic German.
If we make an attempt to apply these thoughts to any
particular case,—as for instance to the feeling for honour and
distinction, the following national differences discover
themselves. The sensibility to honour is in the Frenchman
vanity; in the Spaniard arrogance; in the Englishman
pride; in the German haughtiness; and in the Dutchman
(sit venia verbo !) pomposity. These expressions may seem
at first sight to be equipollent; but they denote very re-
markable differences. Vanity courts approbation, is inconstant
and changeable; but its outward demeanour is courteous.
The arrogant man is bloated with a false and pleasurable
conceit of himself, which he takes little trouble to support
by the approbation of others; his deportment is stiff and
unbending. Pride is, strictly speaking, nothing more than a
greater consciousness of one's own merits; and this conscious-
ness may often be very justly founded; whence it is that we
talk of a "noble pride"; but we can never attribute to à
man a noble arrogance, because this always indicates an ill-
founded and exaggerated self-estimation: the deportment of
the proud man towards others is cold and expressive of
indifference. The haughty man is a proud man that is at
the same time a vain one.1 The approbation, however,
1 It is by no means necessary that a haughty man should be at the
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
53
which he solicits from others must be shown in testimonies
of respect. Therefore it is that he would willingly glitter
with titles, genealogies, and external pageantry. The German
beyond all other people is infected with this infirmity. The
words "Gracious," "High-born, ""Well-born," and the rest
of that bombastic diction, made the German language stiff
and unwieldy, and stand in the way of that beautiful
simplicity which other nations have been able to communicate
to their style. The characteristic of the haughty man's
demeanour in company is-ceremoniousness.
The pompous
man is he who expresses his self-conceit by clear marks of
contempt for others. The characteristic of his behaviour is
coarseness. This wretched temper is of all the furthest
removed from polished taste, because obviously and un-
equivocally stupid; for assuredly it is no rational means of
gratifying the passion for honour to challenge everybody
about one by undisguised contempt to hatred and caustic
ridicule.
Religion, in our quarter of the globe, is not the offspring
of taste, but has a more venerable derivation. Hence it is
only the aberrations of men in religion, and that which may
be regarded as strictly of human origin, which can furnish
any means of determining the differences of national characters.
These abberrations I arrange under the following classes:
credulity, superstition, fanaticism, and indifference.-Credulity
is, for the most part, the characteristic of the uninformed
part of every nation, although they have no remarkable
fineness of feelings. Their convictions depend merely upon
hearsay and upon plausible appearances; and with the im-
pulses to these convictions no refinement of feeling is blended.
Illustrations of this must be sought for amongst the nations
of the north.-The credulous man, when his taste is at all
barbaresque, becomes superstitious. Nay, this taste is of itself
a ground of credulity; and, if we suppose the case of two
men, one of them infected with this taste and the other of a
same time an arrogant man-i.e. should make an exaggerated and
fanciful estimate of his advantages: it is possible that he may value
himself at no higher rate than his just worth. His error lies in a
false taste which presides over his manner of giving expression and
importance to his claims externally.
54
MISCELLANEA
1
colder and less passionate frame of mind, the first, even
though he should possess a much more powerful under-
standing, will nevertheless be sooner seduced by his pre-
dominant feeling to believe anything unnatural than the
other,—whom not his discernment but his commonplace
and phlegmatic feelings have preserved from this aberration
of the judgment. The superstitious man places between.
himself and the supreme object of his adoration certain mighty
and marvellous men-giants, if I may so express myself, of
religion-whom nature obeys, whose adjuring voice opens and
shuts the iron gate of Tartarus, and who, whilst with their
heads they reach the heavens, plant their feet upon the earth.
Intellectual culture will on this account have great obstacles
to overcome in Spain; not so much from the ignorance with
which it has to contend as because it is thwarted by a perverted
taste which never feels itself in a state of elevated emotion
unless where its object is barbaresque.-Fanaticism is a sort
of devout temerity, and is occasioned by a peculiar pride and
an excess of self-confidence, with the view of stepping nearer
to the divine nature, and raising itself above the ordinary
and prescribed course of things. The fanatic talks of nothing
but immediate revelations, and of direct intuitions; whereas
the superstitious man spreads before these great images a veil
of wonder-working saints, and rests his whole confidence
upon the imaginary and inimitable perfections of other
persons participating a common nature with himself. I
have before remarked that the intellectual aberrations carry
signs along with them of the national character of feeling;
and hence it is that fanaticism has been chiefly found (formerly
at least) in Germany and in England, and is to be regarded
as an unnatural product of the noble feeling which belongs
1 By the way, it has been noticed as a singular fact that so wise a
nation as the English are notwithstanding easily moved to put faith in
any marvellous and absurd statement which is boldly advanced; and
many examples of this are on record. But a bold style of intellect
like the English, previously trained by an extensive experience in
which many inexplicable difficulties occur to a meditative mind, bursts
more vigorously through all the little jealous considerations and
scruples by which a weak and mistrustful intellect is checked and
fettered in its assents; and thus the inferior mind, without any merit
of its own, is sometimes preserved from error.-Note of Kant's.
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
55
And let it be observed
to the characters of these two nations.
that fanaticism is not by many degrees so injurious as
superstition, although at first it is more outrageous: for the
fervours of a fanatical mind cool and effervesce by degrees,
and, agreeably to the general analogies of nature, must at
length subside to the ordinary level of temperature; whereas
superstition roots itself continually deeper and deeper in a
quiet and passive frame of mind, and robs the fettered being
of all the confidence requisite for ever liberating itself from a
pestilent delusion.-Finally, the vain and frivolous man is
always without any powerful feeling for the Sublime: his
religion, therefore, is unimpassioned, and generally an affair
of fashion, which he goes through with the utmost good-
breeding and entire cold-heartedness. This is practical
indifference; to which the French national mind seems to be
the most inclined. From this to the profanest mockery of
religion there is but one step: and, to say the truth, esti-
mated by its inner value, indifference seems but trivially
preferable to the entire rejection of religion.
If we throw a hasty glance over the other quarters of the
world, we find the Arabs the noblest people of the East,
but of a temperament in respect to taste which tends much
to the barbaresque and the unnaturally romantic. The
Arab is hospitable, magnanimous, and observant of his word;
but his fictions, and his history, and his whole feelings, are
veined and coloured with the marvellous. His inflamed
imagination presents objects in unnatural and distorted
images; and even the propagation of his religion was a great
romance. If the Arabs are as it were the Asiatic Spaniards,
the Persians are the Asiatic Frenchmen. They are good
poets, courteous, and of tolerably refined taste. They are
not rigorous followers of Islam; and they allow to their own
voluptuous tendencies a pretty latitudinarian interpretation
of the Koran. The Japanese may be regarded partially as
the Englishmen of the Oriental world; but hardly for any
other qualities than their firmness,—which degenerates into
obstinacy,—their courage, and their contempt of death.
all other respects they show few marks of the grand English
style of mind. The nations of India discover a domineering
taste for fooleries of that class which run into the barbaresque.
In
56
MISCELLANEA
Their religion is made up of fooleries. Idols of hideous
forms, the invaluable tooth of the mighty ape Hanumann,
the unnatural penances of the Fakir (the mendicant friar of
Paganism),—are all in this taste. The self-immolations of
women on the same funeral pile which consumes the corpses
of their husbands are abominable instances of the barbaresque.
What senseless fooleries are involved in the prolix and
elaborate compliments of the Chinese! Even their paintings.
are senseless, and exhibit marvellous forms that are nowhere
to be seen in nature. They have also, more than any people
on earth besides, traditional fooleries that are consecrated by
ancient usage; such for instance as the ceremony still retained
at Pekin, during an eclipse of the sun or the moon, of
driving away the dragon that is attempting to swallow up
those heavenly bodies,-a ceremony derived from the elder
ages of grossest ignorance, and still retained in defiance of
better information.
The Negroes of Africa have from nature no feeling which
transcends the childish level. Mr. Hume challenges any
man to allege a single case in which a negro has shown the
least talent; and maintains that, out of all the hundreds of
thousands of Blacks who have been transported from their
native homes to other countries, not one (though many 1
have been manumitted) has been found that has ever per-
formed anything great either in art, science, or any other
creditable path of exertion; whereas among the Whites many
are continually rising to distinction from the lowest classes
of the people: so radical is the difference between these two
races of men-a difference which seems to be not less in
regard to the intellectual faculties than in regard to colour.
The religion which is so widely diffused amongst them—
viz. the Fetish is probably that form of idolatry which
descends as profoundly into imbecile folly as human nature
can tolerate. A bird's feather, a cow's horn, a cockle-shell,
or any other trifle, is no sooner consecrated by a few words
1 IIow many, Mr. Professor Kant? And at what age? Be this as
it may, common sense demands that we should receive evidence to the
intellectual pretensions of the Blacks from the unprejudiced judges who
have lived amongst them,-not from those who are absurd enough to
look for proofs of negro talent in the shape of books.
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
57
than it becomes an object of adoration, and of adjuration in
the taking of oaths. The Blacks are very vain, but after a
negro fashion; and so talkative that it is necessary to cudgel
them asunder.
Amongst all savages there are no tribes which discover so
elevated a character as those of North America. They have
a strong passion for honour, and, whilst in chase of it, they
pursue wild adventures for hundreds of miles; they are
exceedingly cautious to avoid the slightest violations of it
when an enemy as stern as themselves, having succeeded in
making them prisoners, endeavours to extort from their
agonies signs of weakness and of fear.
The Canadian savage
is veracious and upright. The friendship which he contracts
is as romantic and as enthusiastic as anything which has
descended to us from the fabulous times of antiquity. He is
proud in excess, is sensible of the whole value of freedom,
and even through the period of education he brooks no treat-
ment which could subject him to a degrading submission.
Lycurgus in all probability gave laws to just such savages;
and, if a great lawgiver were to arise amongst the Six
Nations, the world would behold a Spartan republic arise
amongst the savages of the New World; as in fact the
voyage of the Argonauts is not very dissimilar to the military
expeditions of the Indians, and Jason has little advantage of
Attakakullakulla except in the honour of a Grecian name.
All these savages have little sensibility to the Beautiful in a
moral sense; and the magnanimous forgiveness of an injury,
which is at the same time noble and beautiful, is wholly
unknown to savages as a virtue, and despised as a miserable
weakness. Courage is the supreme merit of the savage; and
Revenge his sweetest pleasure. The other natives of this
quarter of the globe show few traces of a temperament open
to the finer impressions of sentiment; and, indeed, the
general characteristic of this division of mankind is an extra-
ordinary defect of sensibility.
If we examine the state of the sexual relations in these
various regions of the earth, we find that the European only
has discovered the secret of adorning the sensual attractions
of a mighty passion with so many flowers, and of interweaving
it with so much of moral feeling, that he has not only exalted
58
MISCELLANEA
its fascinations, but has also brought it entirely within the
limits of social decorum. The Orientalist is, in this point,
of very false taste. Having no idea of the morally Beautiful
that may be connected with this instinct, he forfeits even the
better part of the mere sensual pleasure; and his Harem
becomes to him a perpetual source of inquietude. Woman,
on her part, degraded to the level of the mere instrument and
means of sensual pleasures, loses all her dignity, and conse-
quently her personal rights. Whether as an unmarried
virgin, or as the wife of a jealous and intractable brute, she
is in the East eternally a prisoner.-Amongst the Blacks,
what can a man look for better than what in fact is every-
where found that is to say, the whole female sex in a state
of the profoundest slavery? A faint-hearted man is always
a severe master to his weaker dependents; just as with us
that man is sure to play the tyrant in his own kitchen who
has hardly courage enough to look anybody in the face when
he steps out of doors. Père Labat indeed tells us that a
negro gentleman, whom he had been reproaching with his
tyrannical treatment of his women, returned this answer:
"You Whites are downright fools: for you first of all allow
your wives too much liberty; and then you complain when
they abuse it and make your heads ache." At first sight it
might seem as if there was something in this remark which
merited a little attention: but, to cut the matter short, the
fellow was a Black-black as soot from head to foot: an un-
answerable proof that what he said was bestially stupid.—Of
all savages there are none amongst whom women enjoy more
real consideration and influence than the noble savages of
North America. In this point, indeed, perhaps the Canadian
women have the advantage of those even in our refined
quarter of the globe. I do not mean that any submissive
attentions and homage are there paid to women: these are
mere forms of hollow compliment. No, the Canadian women
enjoy actual power: they meet and deliberate upon the
weightiest ordinances of the nation-whether regarding peace
or war. Upon the result of their debates they despatch
delegates to the male council; and commonly it is their
voice which prevails. This privilege, however, they purchase
dearly all the household concerns are thrown on their
:
KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
59
shoulders, and they take their share in all the hardships and
toils of the men.
Finally, if we cast a glance over the page of History, we
perceive the taste of men, like a Proteus, everlastingly
assuming new and variable forms. The ancient times of the
Greeks and Romans exhibited unequivocal marks of a legiti-
mate feeling for the Beautiful as well as the Sublime in
Poetry, Sculpture, Architecture, Legislation, and even in
Morals. The government of the Roman Emperors changed
the noble as well as the beautiful simplicity into the mag-
nificent and gorgeous, and at length into that spurious glitter
of finery which still survives for our instruction in their
rhetoric, their poetry, and even in the history of their
manners. Gradually, and in sympathy with the general
decline of the state, even this bastard relique of the purer
taste was extinguished. The Barbarians, after they had
established their power on the ruins of the Empire, intro-
duced a peculiar form of corrupt taste which is styled the
Gothic, and is built upon the passion for the childish. This
passion displayed itself not merely in architecture, but in the
sciences and in the general spirit of the manners and usages.
The highest point to which human genius was able to soar
in its attempt to master the sublime was the Barbaresque.
Romances, both temporal and spiritual, were then exhibited
on the stage of nations; and oftentimes a disgusting and mon-
strous abortion of both in combination: monks, with the
mass-book in one hand and the warlike banner in the other,
followed by whole armies of deluded victims destined to lay
their bones in other climates and in a holier soil: conse-
crated warriors solemnly dedicated by vow to outrage and
the perpetration of crimes; and in their train a strange kind
of heroic visionaries, who styled themselves knights, and
were in search of adventures, tournaments, duels, and
romantic achievements. During this period Religion, together
with the Sciences, was disfigured by miserable follies; and
we have occasion to observe that taste does not easily degen-
erate on one side without giving clear indications of corrup-
tion in everything else that is connected with the finer
feelings. The conventual vows transformed a large body of
useful citizens into busy idlers, whose dreaming style of life
60
MISCELLANEA
fitted them to hatch a thousand scholastic absurdities,
which thence issued to the world and propagated their species.
Finally, after the genius of man has by a species of palin-
genesis toiled up from an almost entire desolation to its
former heights, we behold in our own days the just taste
for the Beautiful and the Noble blooming anew, as well in
the arts and sciences as in moral sentiment; and we have
now nothing left to wish for but that the false glitter, with
its easy and specious delusions, may not debauch us imper-
ceptibly from the grandeur of simplicity; more especially
that the still undiscovered secret of education may be extri-
cated from ancient abuses, so as to raise betimes the moral
sensibilities in the bosom of every youthful citizen to efficient
and operative feelings; and, for this happy result, that all
culture and refinement of taste may no longer terminate in
the fugitive and barren pleasure of pronouncing judgment,
with more or less good taste, upon what is external to our-
selves and alien from our highest interests.
KANT'S ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM 1
men,
A TRANSLATION
Bur now to my hero. If many a forgotten writer, or writer
destined to be forgotten, is on that account the more deserv-
ing of applause for having spared no cost of toil and intel-
lectual exertion upon his works, certainly Swedenborg of all
such writers is deserving of the most. Without doubt his
flask in the moon is full, and not at all less than any of those
which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the lost wits of
—so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every drop
of common sense. Nevertheless there prevails in every part
so wonderful an agreement with all that the most refined and
consistent sense under the same fantastic delusions could pro-
duce on the same subject that the reader will pardon me if
I here detect the same curiosities in the caprices of fancy
which many other virtuosi have detected in the caprices of
nature for instance, in variegated marble, where some have
discovered a holy family; or in stalactites and petrifactions,
where others have discovered monks, baptismal fonts, and
organs; or even in frozen window-panes, where our country-
man Liscow, the humourist, discovered the number of the
beast and the triple crown: things which he only is apt to
descry whose head is preoccupied with thoughts about them.
The main work of this writer is composed of eight quarto
volumes full of nonsense, which he presented to the world as
1
Appeared in the London Magazine for May 1824: not reprinted
in De Quincey's edition of his Collected Writings or in Messrs. Black's
extension of the same.-M.
62
MISCELLANEA
a new revelation under the title of Arcana Cœlestia. In this
work his visions are chiefly directed to the discovery of the
secret sense in the two first books of Moses, and to a similar
way of interpreting the whole of the Scripture. All these
fantastic interpretations are nothing to my present purpose:
those who have any curiosity may find some account of them
in the Bibliotheca Theologica of Dr. Ernesti.
All that I
design to extract are his audita et visa from the supplements
to his chapters-that which he saw with his own eyes and
heard with his own ears; for these parts of his dreams it is
which are to be considered as the foundation of all the rest.
Swedenborg's style is dull and mean. His narrations and
their whole contexture appear in fact to have originated in a
disorder of his sensitive faculty, and suggest no reason for
suspecting that the speculative delusions of a depraved in-
tellect have moved him to invent them. Viewed in this
light, they are really of some importance, and deserve to be
exhibited in a short abstract,—much more indeed than many
a brainless product of fantastic philosophers who swell our
journals with false subtleties; for a coherent delusion of the
senses is always a more remarkable phenomenon than a
delusion of the intellect, inasmuch as the grounds of this
latter delusion are well known, and the delusion itself cor-
rigible enough by self-exertion and by putting more check
upon the rash precipitation of the judgment; whereas a
delusion of the senses touches the original foundation of all
judgment, and where it exists is radically incapable of all
cure from logic. I distinguish therefore in our author his
craziness of sense from his crazy wits; and I pass over his
absurd and distorted reasonings in those parts where he
abandons his visions, for the same reason that in reading a
philosopher we are often obliged to separate his observations
from his arguments: and, generally, delusive experiences are
more instructive than delusive grounds of experience in the
reason. Whilst I thus rob the reader of some few moments,
--which otherwise perhaps he would have spent with no
greater profit in reading works of abstract philosophy that
are often of not less trivial import,—I have at the same time
provided for the delicacy of his taste by the omission of many
chimæras, and by concentrating the essence of the book into
KANT'S ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM
63
•
a few drops; and for this I anticipate no less gratitude from
him than (according to the old story) a patient expressed
towards his physicians,-who had contented themselves with
ordering him to eat the bark of the quinquina, when it was
clearly in their power to have insisted on his eating up the
whole tree.
Mr. Swedenborg divides his visions into three kinds; of
which the first consists in being liberated from the body—an
intermediate state between waking and sleeping, in which he
saw, heard, and felt spirits. This kind he has experienced
three or four times. The second consists in being carried
away by spirits. Whilst he continues to walk the streets
(suppose) without losing his way, meantime in spirit he is in
quite other regions, and sees distinctly houses, men, forests,
&c.; and all this for some hours long, until he suddenly finds
himself again in his true place. This has happened to him
two or three times. The third or ordinary kind of visions is
that which he has daily when wide awake; and from this
class his narrations are chiefly taken.
All men, according to Swedenborg, stand in an intimate
connexion with the spiritual world; only they are not
aware of it; and the difference between himself and others
consists simply in this-that his innermost nature is laid
open; of which gift he always speaks with the most devout
spirit of gratitude (datum mihi est ex divina Domini miseri-
cordia). From the context it is apparent that this gift con-
sists in the consciousness of those obscure representations
which the soul receives through its continual connexion with
the spiritual world. Accordingly, he distinguishes in men
between the external and the internal memory. The former
he enjoys as a person who belongs to the visible world, but
the latter in virtue of his intercourse with the spiritual
world. Upon this distinction is grounded also the distinction
between the outer and inner man; and Swedenborg's prero-
gative consists in this-that he stands already in this life in
the society of spirits, and is recognised by them as possessing
such a prerogative. In the inner memory is retained what-
soever has vanished from the outer; and of all which is pre-
sented to the consciousness of man nothing is ever lost. After
death the remembrance of all which ever entered his soul,
64
MISCELLANEA
and even all that had perished to himself, constitutes the
entire book of his life. The presence of spirits, it is true,
strikes only upon his inner sense. Nevertheless this is able
to excite an apparition of these spirits external to himself,
and even to invest them with a human figure. The language
of spirits is an immediate and unsymbolic communication of
ideas; notwithstanding which it is always clothed in the
semblance of that language which Swedenborg himself speaks,
and is represented as external to him. One spirit reads in
the memory of another spirit all the representations, whether
images or ideas, which it contains. Thus the spirits see in
Swedenborg all the representations which he has of this
world, and with so clear an intuition that they often deceive
themselves and fancy that they see the objects themselves
immediately,—which, however, is impossible, since no pure
spirit has the slightest perception of the material universe:
nay, they cannot gain any idea of it through intercourse with
the souls of other living men, because their inner nature
is not opened-i.e. their inner sense contains none but obscure
representations. Hence it arises that Mr. Swedenborg is the
true oracle of spirits; which are not at all less curious to
read in him the present condition of the world than he is to
view in their memory, as in a mirror, the marvels of the
spiritual world. Although these spirits stand in like manner
closely connected with all other souls of living men by a re-
ciprocal commerce of action and passion, yet they are as little
aware of this as men are aware of it. Spirits therefore ascribe
to themselves as the product of their own minds what in fact
results from the action of human souls upon them; just as
men during their lives imagine that all their thoughts, and
the motions of the will which take place within them, arise
from themselves, although in fact they oftentimes take their
origin in the spiritual world. Meantime every human soul,
even in this life, has its place and station in this spiritual
world, and belongs to a certain society which is always
adapted to its inner condition of truth and goodness,—that
is, to the condition of the understanding and the will.
the places of souls in relation to each other have nothing in
common with the material world; and therefore the soul of
a man in India is often in respect to spiritual situation next
But
KANT'S ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM
65
neighbour to the soul of another man in Europe; as, on the
contrary, very often those who dwell corporeally under the
same roof are with respect to their spiritual relations far
enough asunder. If a man dies, his soul does not on that
account change its place, but simply feels itself in that place
which in regard to other spirits it already held in this life.
For the rest, although the relation of spirits to each other is
no true relation of space, yet has it to them the appearance
of space; and their affinities or attractions for each other
assume the semblance of proximities, as their repulsions do of
distances; just as spirits themselves are not actually extended,
but yet present the appearance to each other of a human
figure. In this imaginary space there is an undisturbed
intercourse of spiritual natures. Mr. Swedenborg converses
with departed souls whenever he chooses, and reads in their
memory (he means to say in their representative faculty)
that very condition in which they contemplate themselves;
and this he sees as clearly as with his bodily eyes. More-
over, the enormous distance of the rational inhabitants of the
world is to be accounted as nothing in relation to the spiritual
universe; and to talk with an inhabitant of Saturn is just as
easy to him as to speak with a departed human soul. All
depends upon the relation of their inner condition in refer-
ence to their agreement in truth and goodness; but those
spirits which have weak affinities for each other can readily
come into intercourse through the inter-agency of others.
On this account it is not necessary that a man should actually
have dwelt on all the other heavenly bodies in order to know
them, together with all their wonders.
One presiding doctrine in Swedenborg's ravings is this:
Corporeal beings have no subsistence of their own, but exist
merely by and through the spiritual world,—although each
body not by means of one spirit alone, but of all taken to-
gether. Hence the knowledge of material things has two
meanings: an external meaning, referring to the inter-
dependencies of the matter upon itself; and an internal
meaning, in so far as they denote the powers of the spiritual
world which are their causes. Thus the body of man has a
system of parts related to each other agreeably to material
laws; but, in so far as it is supported by the spirit which
VOL. XIV
F
66
MISCELLANEA
lives, its limbs and their functions have a symbolic value as
expressions of those faculties in the soul from which they
derive their form, mode of activity, and power of enduring.
The same law holds with regard to all other things in the
visible universe: they have (as has been said) one meaning
as things—which is trivial-and another as signs—which is
far weightier. Hence by the way arises the source of those
new interpretations of Scripture which Swedenborg has intro-
duced. For the inner sense, that is, the symbolic relation
of all things there recorded to the spiritual world,—is, as he
conceits, the kernel of its value; all the rest being only its
shell. All spirits represent themselves to one another under
the appearance of extended forms; and the influences of all
these spiritual beings amongst one another raise to them at
the same time appearances of other extended beings, and as
it were of a material world. Swedenborg therefore speaks of
gardens, spacious regions, mansions, galleries, and arcades of
spirits, as of things seen by himself in the clearest light; and
he assures us that, having many times conversed with all his
friends after their death, he had almost always found in those
who had but lately died that they could scarcely convince
themselves that they had died, because they saw round about
them a world similar to the one they had quitted. He found
also that spiritual societies which had the same inner condi-
tion had the same apparition of space and of all things in
space, and that the change of their internal state was always
accompanied by the appearance of a change of place.
I have already noticed that, according to our author, the
various powers and properties of the soul stand in sympathy
with the organs of the body entrusted to its government.
The outer man therefore corresponds to the whole inner
man; and hence, whenever any remarkable spiritual influence
from the invisible world reaches one of these faculties of the
soul, he is sensible also harmonically of the apparent presence
of it in the corresponding members of his outer man.
this head, now, he refers a vast variety of sensations in his
body which are uniformly connected with spiritual intuition ;
but the absurdity of them is so enormous that I shall not
attempt to adduce even a single instance.
To
By all this a preparation is made for the strangest and
KANT'S ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM
67
most fantastic of his notions, in which all his ravings are
blended. As different powers and faculties constitute that
nnity which is the soul or inner man, so also different spirits
(whose leading characteristics bear the same relation to each
other as the various faculties of a spirit) constitute one
society, which exhibits the appearance of one great man;
and in this shadowy image every spirit is seen in that place
and in those visible members which are agreeable to its
proper function in such a spiritual body. And all spiritual
societies taken together, and the entire universe of all these
invisible beings, appear again in the form of a hugest and
ultra - enormous man-mountain. a monstrous and gigantic
fancy, which perhaps has grown out of the school mode of
representing a whole quarter of the world under the image
of a virgin sitting. In this immeasurable man is an entire
and inner commerce of each spirit with all, and of all with
each; and, let the position of men in reference to each other
be what it may, they take quite another position in this
enormous man—a position which they never change, and
which is only in appearance a local position in an im-
measurable space, but in fact a determinate kind of relation
and influence.
I
But I am weary of transcribing the delirious ravings of a
poor visionary, the craziest that has ever existed, or of
pursuing them in his descriptions of the state after death.
am checked also by other considerations. For, although in
forming a medical museum it is right to collect specimens
not only of natural but also of unnatural productions and
abortions, yet it is necessary to be cautious before whom you
show them; and amongst my readers there may happen to
be some in a crazy condition of nerves, and it would give me
pain to think that I had been the occasion of any mischief to
them. Having warned them, however, from the beginning,
I am not responsible for anything that may happen, and
must desire that no person will lay at my door the moon-
calves which may chance to arise from any teeming fancy
impregnated by Mr. Swedenborg's revelations.
In conclusion I have to say that I have not interpolated
my author's dreams with any surreptitious ones of my own,
but have laid a faithful abstract before the economic reader
68
MISCELLANEA
who might not be well pleased to pay seven pounds sterling
for a body of raving. I have indeed omitted many circum-
stantial pictures of his intuitions, because they could only
have served to disturb the reader's slumber; and the confused
sense of his revelations I have now and then clothed in a
more current diction. But all the important features of the
sketch I have preserved in their native integrity.
And thus I return with some little shame from my foolish
labours; from which I shall draw this moral: That it is
often a very easy thing to act prudentially, but alas! too
often only after we have toiled to our prudence through a
forest of delusions.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH¹
An interesting question arises to a thoughtful man upon the
age, in a virtual sense, of our Earth,—that is, its age in
analogy to the periods of infancy, youth, maturity, and
decay, in a human being, or other organized creature.
We
apostrophize this planet as our common mother; and some
have seriously regarded it as an animal, having an organic
structure, and, in ways more or less imperfect, as exercising
the functions of animal nature. But, at all events, we have
reason to suppose that, in common with "all which it in-
herits ”—mineral, vegetable, or animal-this planet, having
passed through stages of gradual development, or (as we may
call it) growth, in reaching its present condition, is subject
to the affections of youth and old age. A period may be
anticipated, whether near at hand or remote, in which the
earth will show signs of decay and paralysis, and gradually
become unfit for the large and important offices which at
present she discharges with so much credit to herself and so
much comfort to her numerous population. A question,
therefore, of very commanding interest presses itself upon
our attention, viz., In what stage of its life may we presume
this planet to be at present? Our “ common mother's" age,
1 Appeared in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine for November 1833,
without the author's name; and, as De Quincey did not reprint it in
the Collective Edition of his Writings, it has hitherto escaped notice.
It is, however, indubitably De Quincey's; for he himself playfully
refers to it as his in the opening sentences of his subsequent paper in
Tait for September 1846, entitled "System of the Heavens as revealed
by Lord Rosse's Telescopes." See ante, Vol. VIII, pp. 7-8, with notes
there.-M.
70
MISCELLANEA
a
we are all aware, is, upon any system of chronology which
appeals to astronomical data and not to fabulous traditions,
somewhere about six thousand years. Reading backwards
the history of the heavens, the records of our planetary
system, and the occasional notices of cometary intrusions,
and then collating with this sublime register the collateral
registers of sublunary events, as kept by different nations,
we find continually more and more reason for abiding by
the chronology of our Bibles; and we may presume ourselves
to be as near the exact truth as can ever be required for any
useful purpose, when we date our earth, and perhaps the
whole system of which she is so respectable a member, as
not very far from the conclusion of her sixth millennium.1
Six periods of a thousand years compose, as it may seem,
ripe and mature age; and we are apt to suppose that a
planet of these years must have done with frolics, and
sown her wild oats," as we usually express it. Deluges,
for instance, might sit well upon a juvenile planet; but we
look for no tricks of that sort in one who is on the verge of
her seventh millennium. Yet, after all, the mere positive
amount of the earth's years, in a naked numerical expres-
sion, goes for nothing as respects our problem for assigning
the period or stage of the earth's life. Six thousand
is a large number, positively considered, in estimating the
age of any object whatever which we have accustomed our-
selves to treat as a lady. But, relatively to a total duration
of possibly a thousand times that amount, it would seem a
pure bagatelle. Supposing the earth to have had its forces
and composition adjusted to an existence of a million years,
or even a quarter of that amount, then, in relation to her
whole capacity of duration, or what we will take leave again
to term her whole life, our earth could not be viewed as yet
beyond her infancy. Now, this is exactly our question:
numerically expressed, let the planet's years be what they
1 One observes here, and throughout the whole of the prefatory
paragraph, that De Quincey was disposed, or found it convenient, in
1833, and writing in Scotland, to abide by what was then perhaps
still the orthodox opinion among Scottish theologians as to the age of
the earth and the mundane system,-though certainly not then uni-
versal even among Scottish theologians. At a later date he would
probably have expressed himself otherwise on the subject.-M.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
71
may, let them tally with our modest western scale, as settled
alike by scriptural authority and by European scholarship,
or let them ascend that Jacob's ladder of aërial antiquity
which the gigantic scale of oriental traditions presumes;
still, upon either assumption, the question revolves, In what
stage of her progression is the earth at present? What
period of her total development, by analogy with the great
periods of animal growth, may she be reputed as now pass-
ing through? Speaking roundly, or kатa πλaтos, is she
old or young? And, if young, as we for our parts suspect
that she will be found, then, more particularly, how young?
To which in the various subdivisions of youth—infancy,
childhood, adolescence-does her present age correspond?
Finding, as we noticed above, that she has left off her early
tricks of deluging us all—a sort of escapade which seems to
characterise extreme infancy-we might, upon that single
indication, conjecture that she is now in early childhood, or
at a stage corresponding perhaps with the age of two or
three years in a human subject. And some loose conjecture
of this nature, sufficient to argue generally a state of child-
hood, though with considerable latitude as to the precise
year, is strengthened again by another analogy with animal
life, which might be illustrated at some length; but we
shall be satisfied with barely suggesting it. In the human
economy, as we all know, some organs obtain their full
development, or nearly so, in the stage of childhood: the
head, for example, is said to expand but little after a period
at which the great mass of the body and limbs have not
attained one-half of their development. Again, some organs
are perfect, as to quality, at the period of birth, and suffer
no changes afterwards but such as respect their size; others,
again, as the teeth, exist only in rudiment at the birth, and
require many months for their development. Now, upon
our earth, there are various indications of the same unequal
development; which seem to argue that this state of child-
hood is not yet passed. Omitting many other cases, in
which we can even yet trace a nisus towards a condition of
repose not yet perfectly attained-an effort at settling into
an equilibrium which is still not universally established—
rivers and their beds furnish striking presumptions that the
72
MISCELLANEA
earth has not yet travelled beyond her childhood, perhaps
not beyond a period corresponding to the stage of dentition
in man.
The beds of even European rivers are not all of
them in a state of settlement such as would argue a period
of maturity; and in America, which quarter of the earth is
probably younger by some thousands of years than the other
continents, the rivers and their beds are absolutely unfinished
(if we may take so bold an expression); neither is there much
prospect that they will be finished, or "turned out of hand,"
as artisans phrase it, for some centuries to come. Not to
trouble the reader with any wider range of references, he
may satisfy himself on this point by consulting a learned
and remarkably ingenious dissertation in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, under the head of Rivers. He will there find
that the beds of many rivers are slowly (some rapidly,
perhaps) tending to a condition not yet attained. And,
looking even with no eye of science, but with the superficial
eye of a tourist, or mercantile transporter of peltry, upon
these wild, harebrained American rivers, can he believe that
breakers and "snags," as the Americans call them, are excus-
able in any great stream, destined in after years to fill a
high place in commercial geography, except upon the plea of
extreme youth? Doubtless all such asperities, and even the
disgusting interruptions of portages, will disappear as the
planet improves and develops her organs in that quarter ;
neither can it be supposed that such rivers as the Mad River,
and others of the same furious denomination, will be suffered
to go on as they have done, when a few short centuries shall
have tamed them into sobriety by bringing them nearer to
years of discretion. The indications are many and loud
that in those regions at least the planet is in her childhood.
And other regions there may be which have not yet reached
the stages of birth and infancy-those, for instance, where
the coral insect is spinning upwards from the depths of
ocean, and knitting into future continents whole archi-
pelagoes of islands, by a sort of crystallization more deli-
cate than frost-work, and stronger than granite; under-
1 Written, as we have been informed, by the late Professor Robison.
[John Robison (1739-1805), Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh from 1774 to 1805.-M.]
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
73
laying, in short, some embryo America with columns and
rafters that are to span the depths and breadths of the
Pacific. Our earth, therefore, when considered as a surface,
may not be everywhere of the same age: parts there may
be, as we have just said, absolutely unborn at this day.
And even upon that hypothesis we might construct another
argument in support of the earth's childhood. For, suppose
the great habitable chambers of the earth,-Asia, Africa,
Europe, America, Polynesia, &c.,-to have come forward at
periodical intervals of 500 or 1000 years, then, as it is
probable that all, as parts of the same planet, will have the
same period of existence a parte post,—i.e. will have a
common termination,-it may be fairly argued that in the
scheme or plan of their existence they are designed and
assumed as co-existences, having a common beginning, and
that the differences of a few centuries between the times of
their several nativities are neglected as trifling or evanescent
quantities. Now, we argue that, when the cycle of existence
is such that in respect of its total duration five or ten cen-
turies can be neglected, as bearing no sensible proportion to
it, there we are forced to assume that cycle as of such vast
dimensions that six thousand years could not be regarded as
analogically equal to more than a very brief childhood.
This style of argument, however, may be taxed with subtlety
—and that is a charge which, upon a subject so plain and
intelligible, though otherwise curious and interesting, we are
anxious to avoid. One remark only we shall add of the
same character, and shall then pass to the direct physical
arguments drawn from any part of Natural Philosophy for
determining, by approximation, the earth's age. The
remark is this: That, as (on the one hand), if any reasons
should appear for thinking that our planet is not yet beyond
the stage of childhood, that will amount to a proof almost
that its total duration will be very long (and especially that
it will far exceed the term assigned conjecturally by most
expounders of the sacred Prophecies), so, on the other
hand, versa vice, if any argument should arise for attributing
to this planet a vast duration, in that case the small portion
of that duration already settled, upon the best warrant, as
having passed away, will merely have, by its proportion to
74
MISCELLANEA
the whole evidence, its title to be considered the childhood
of our planet. But now let us come to the physical argu-
ments on this question. These have been ably urged by a
great German philosopher; whose lights, however, were
greater in mathematics, and in mechanics, than in chemistry
or pneumatology. For the benefit of our readers we
have digested the sum of what he has said into a brief
memoir.
If in any case it is our purpose to determine whether a
thing be old, very old, or as yet young, we must value its
age not by the number of years which it has lasted, but by
the proportion which these years bear to the sum of its
natural duration under favourable circumstances. The very
same period of years which, for one class of creatures, is
an expression of an advanced age, is not so for another.
That same lapse of time which suffices to superannuate a
dog carries a man little beyond his childhood; and the
oaks, or the cedars upon Lebanon, have not reached their
meridian strength when the linden trees and the firs are
already old and in decay. Any scale transferred from
beings of a different nature is liable to error; but the com-
monest case of this erroneous transfer is where man, in
coming amongst the great scenes of divine workmanship,
applies as the mete-wand of their age a scale drawn from the
succession of human generations. In some judgments
which have proceeded on these principles there is reason to
fear that the conclusion has been of the same quality as that
so elaborately drawn by the Roses in Fontenelle :—“Our
gardener," said they, "is a very old man ; within the memory
of roses, he has been the same that he ever was. In fact he
is not liable to death; no, nor so much as to change."
Indeed, upon considering the capacity of vast duration which
is found throughout the whole scheme of creation in the
capital members of the system, and that this duration comes
very near to absolute infinity, one is disposed to think that
possibly the flux of five or six thousand years is, by compari-
son with that duration which has been destined to our
earth, short of a year in relation to the period of man's life.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
75
To confess the truth, it is not in revealed religion that we
must seek for any data whatever from which we can
possibly deduce whether the earth may be regarded as being
at this time young or old,-whether as in the plenitude and
bloom of her perfections, or as in the total decay of her
powers. True, indeed, that revelation has disclosed to us
the period of her creation and development, and has punc-
tually ascertained the season of her infancy 1; but, for all
that, we know not to which term of her duration,-whether
to the anterior or the posterior, to the beginning or the end,
-she is now nearer. Being, therefore, so wholly forsaken in
this point by revelation, it does strike me as a proper subject
for investigation under the light of Natural Philosophy, and
not unworthy of our pains, to settle the question, Whether
in reality this planet of ours be liable to old age, and whether
she be approaching continually, by gradual decay of her
forces, to the term of utter extinction? whether, again, at
this present moment she has arrived within the current of
her fatal declension, or, on the contrary, her constitution of
natural forces be still in its period of prosperous vigour? or,
finally, whether even the meridian altitude has yet been
ascended the zenith of that perfection which she is privi-
leged to expect by the law of her original constitution—and
whether, consequently, she has as yet surmounted the period
of her childhood ?
If we hearken to the complaints of aged people, we shall
hear that nature is perceptibly growing old, and that the
very steps may be punctually traced which mark her descent
into superannuation. The very seasons, say they, are no
longer seasonably adjusted as heretofore. The powers of
nature are exhausted; her beauty and her truth are in
decay. Men are neither as strong nor as old as formerly.
And this declension, it is alleged, may be observed not
merely in the physical constitution of the earth; it has pro-
pagated itself into moral qualities. The ancient virtues are
extinct; modish vices have stept into their places; and the
1 Like De Quincey himself (see footnote, p. 70), Kant seems here
to acquiesce in the orthodox theological estimate of 6000 years or
thereabouts as the period of time during which our earth and the
present mundane system have been in existence. —M.
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MISCELLANEA
affecting a body which, by means of its own inherent powers,
has developed itself into a state of perfection under the
modifying influences of the elements.
We are not to suppose that the particular state of old age,
in that succession of changes through which an organized
creature revolves, is an insulated condition, produced by the
action of external and violent causes. On the contrary, the
self-same causes which carry a thing to its highest perfection,
and which maintain it there, bring it round, by the steps of
imperceptible changes, to final extinction. To this law all
natural things are subject,-That the self-same mechanism
which originally laboured for their perfection, having once
carried them to that point, simply because it cannot intermit
its activity, but still perseveres in its series of changes, does,
and cannot but, carry it continually further and further from
the conditions of a good constitution, and finally delivers it
over to ruin. The very same impulse which causes trees to
grow brings death upon them after they have completed
their growth. When the vessels and tubes are capable of no
further expansion, the nourishing sap, still persisting to
introduce itself, by a natural consequence begins to clog the
interior of the passages, and finally to cause decay and death
by the stoppage of the natural juices. A process of the
same nature goes on in animal life: there, also, the same
mechanism which originally ministered to the full develop-
ment of the animal afterwards, under a change of circum-
stances, comes to react upon it for purposes of destruction.
Just so is the gradual decay of the earth so interwoven with
the series of changes which originally operated for its perfec-
tion that it can never become an object of notice until after
a long lapse of time.
The earth, when it arose out of chaos, had inevitably
been in a previous state of fluidity, by means of which it was
enabled to adapt itself readily to that figure which is neces-
sary to the equilibrium of its parts. Out of this fluid state
it passed into a state of solidity; and, in fact, we see irre-
fragable traces that the upper surface must have hardened
first. In the interior of the earth's mass, where the same
efforts were going on for the establishment of an equilibrium,
the elastic element of air, continually sent upwards and dis-
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
79
engaged, led through a natural series of changes to the
inequalities of the earth's surface-to hills and valleys. The
sea, in the very process of clearing out its own bed, threw
up shores and barriers to curb its own fury; the rivers wore
themselves suitable beds and canals; universal equilibrium
was established; order and beauty resulted; and fertility
soon created the marvels of her wealth upon every side.
Meantime, this development of the earth's natural powers
was far from being equally distributed. In some regions
her surface is still raw and imperfect; whilst others are in
the very acme of their prosperity; and others, again, having
already survived this condition, are now approaching to
decay. In general, the high grounds are the eldest, which
first attained fulness of development; the low grounds are
younger, and have arrived later at perfection. In the same
order of succession they may expect to be visited by decay.
The first regions in which men settled were the highest
among those which are habitable; it was only at a later
period that they descended upon the plains; and they were
obliged to apply their powers to the acceleration of Nature,
which was too slow in her developments to meet their rapid
multiplication. Egypt, that fine creation of the Nile, was
in its Upper Districts a settled and populous region whilst
the half of Lower Egypt and the entire Delta were yet a
desolate morass.
All this is now reversed: the ancient
Thebais has nothing left of its once exclusive fertility, which
raised it to such unexampled prosperity; whilst all its ad-
vantages have passed downwards, and settled upon the lower
parts of the country. Low Germany, again, which is a
creation of the Rhine, being, in fact, a deposition of that
river, together with the flattest parts of Lower Saxony, and
that part of Prussia where the Weichsel divides into so many
branches, and seems incessantly striving to lay under water
the adjacent districts, which in part have been won back by
the industry of man-all this region alike wears the appear-
ance of being younger, richer, and more blooming than the
high lands at the head of these streams; which, however,
were already peopled at a time when the former were still
in the condition of morasses, or, in the neighbourhood of the
sea, were so many vast estuaries.
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MISCELLANEA
This revolution (or, more accurately speaking, this uniform
series of evolution) in the course of nature deserves explana-
tion. In the earliest times, when as yet the dry land was
but recently quitted by the sea, the rivers did not at first
find suitable channels prepared for them, nor that uniform
declivity which they required in their passage to the sea.
Hence, in many places they overflowed, formed standing
sheets of water, and made the land useless. Gradually, and
wherever they happened to find soil more soft and yielding
than usual, they hollowed out channels for themselves; and,
with the mud which they washed up from these channels by
the force of their currents, they raised on each side banks
which, in seasons of low water, were sufficient to confine
their streams, but which, as often as they were overflowed
by the rising of the waters, were again raised by the deposi-
tions of mud, &c., until the river-beds were, by the continued
repetition of this process, so far matured as to be in a condi-
tion for carrying down to sea, with a moderate but uniform
descent, whatever waters were delivered into them by the
circumjacent lands. Now, it must necessarily have happened
that the high-lying regions about the sources of great rivers
would be the first to benefit by this process of natural
development, and would therefore be the first to attract
inhabitants; the same process would descend by gradual
successions to the lower regions seaward; and those which
lay nearest the mouths of rivers would be still involved in
the struggle of development long after the highest ground's
had attained their stage of maturity. But it is observable
that this disadvantage of situation, as originally it really is,
brings with it in the end a rich compensation: the very
same lowness of position which had thrown them so far
back in the race of development afterwards enabling them
to grow rich upon the spoils of the high lands. For the
rivers, bearing along in high floods a rich freightage of mud
and slime, overflow their banks, and deposit the whole upon
the lower grounds. These are, in this way, at one and the
same time manured and raised; and a transfer of fertility
takes place of the same kind, if not in the same degree, as
that memorable one which we have before noticed between
the Thebais and the Delta.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
81
Natural processes, running through a regular progression
or cycle of this sort, make it easy to understand the remark-
able depopulations which have sometimes taken place, as
also the transfers of population and of agriculture which
have occurred, between ancient and modern times. But the
natural process by which we have here explained these
phenomena applies more peculiarly to those lands which
labour under the privation of rain water, and would, there-
fore, but for periodical overflows of some great river, want
the requisite moisture, and in such a condition must rapidly
be converted into arid uninhabitable deserts. That dreadful
catastrophe might be brought about by other means than the
failure or the declension of the river waters; for instance,
by the general elevation of the circumjacent soil through the
continual depositions of the annual overflow.
In this way
a country might be suddenly ruined by the accumulation of
its own chief wealth; and, in fact, a most celebrated land
is at this time threatened apparently by such a catastrophe.
That land is Egypt; which, as it illustrates better than
any other the process by which Nature, using the agency of
rivers, first creates a rich and habitable soil, with a great
population in its train, and, secondly, the continuation of
the same process by which she propels this wealth and
population from the highlands to the lowlands,—so, finally,
it seems destined to illustrate that closing process by which
she swallows up and confounds her own finest creations.
The change wrought by the Nile, co-operating with Time, in
the elevation of this valley (for Egypt is, in fact, one long
but narrow valley, bisected by the Nile), is the great
parent of its long prosperity and of its present danger.
According to the testimony of Herodotus, at a period which
preceded his visit to Egypt by about 900 years, a rise in
the Nile of not more than eight feet sufficed to overflow the
whole of the country. In his time fifteen feet of increase in
the river level was requisite to accomplish the same universal
irrigation. But at present nothing short of twenty-four feet
is adequate to the end. Now, without further inquiry, it is
evident that, if the elevation of the soil by means of annual
depositions from the river go on indefinitely without any
corresponding rise in the river, whether in our time or not,
VOL. XIV
G
82
MISCELLANEA
sooner or later, the river will become useless in its main
function. A finite power measuring itself against one which
is in its nature infinite must be defeated; and it will appear
that it must vi termini, merely by a nominal explanation of
the two forces concerned, without further argument.
Were all countries, then, under the peculiar circumstances
of Egypt, the possibility of old age as an affection belonging
to our planet would be established, and at the same time the
mode of its approach explained; and thus our problem
would at once be solved. But, since the natural process
which takes place in that instance applies to very few parts
of the earth's surface, and the total result must therefore be
regarded as trivial and inconsiderable, we have still to deter-
mine the question in reference to the planet as a whole; and
with that view it is our business first of all to examine those
causes from which the majority of natural philosophers have
deduced old age as a natural or possible effect, and by which
they have fancied themselves warranted to predict the final
and general decay of our planet.
The FIRST of these causes is that implied in the hypo-
thesis which ascribes the saltness of the sea to rivers. These,
it is alleged, carry downward to the sea all the salt extracted
from the earth, and washed by the rain into their currents;
and in the sea it is left by means of continual evaporation,
and is then gradually accumulated, and in that way has all
the salt been obtained which the sea now holds in solution.
Now, it is an obvious inference from this doctrine that, salt
being the principal agent of growth and fertility, the earth,
being thus gradually robbed of her powers, must finally be
utterly impoverished and reduced to a condition of substan-
tial death.
The SECOND cause lies in the tendencies of rain and rivers
to wash away the soil and carry it off into the sea, which
thus appears to be continually loaded with riches at the
expense of the terra firma; and fear has been expressed that
the sea, having its level in this way continually raised, must
finally again surmount and cover the dry land which was
heretofore withdrawn from its dominion.
There is a THIRD conjectural opinion advanced by those
who, having noticed that the sea withdraws itself perceptibly
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
83
from most shores in long periods of time, and leaves exposed
as dry land many tracts of ground which heretofore lay
within the marine empire, either apprehend an actual con-
sumption of this fluid element by some sort of mysterious
conversion into a more solid state, or else explain this
diminution of the sea out of the operation of other causes
which have interrupted the rain in its return to that vast
reservoir from which it had arisen by evaporation.
A FOURTH and last opinion there is, which assumes as the
great organ of nature an anima mundi, or principle of
universal activity, though nowhere directly perceptible,
whose emanations, however subtle, being yet material, must
finally be exhausted by incessant generation of new births;
and Nature herself, concurrently with this exhaustion of her
organ, must be exposed to old age and death.
These opinions I will briefly examine, and will then
attempt to establish that which to myself appears to be the
true one.
Were there any truth in the first opinion, it would follow
that all salt with which the waters of the ocean and mediter-
ranean seas are impregnated had previously been mingled
with the soil which covers the terra firma, and that, having
been washed out of it by rains, it had then been carried off
by rivers, and so perpetually introduced into the great
marine reservoir by the same means. But, fortunately for
the earth, this conjecture is groundless. For, premising that
the mean quantity of rain water which falls upon the earth
in one year is 18 inches deep, a quantity pretty nearly equal
to what has been found to fall in the temperate zone, and
presupposing that all rivers arise and are fed by rain water;
also that, of that rain which falls upon the terra firma, only
two-thirds return into the sea through rivers, the other
third being in part exhaled and in part spent upon the
growth of plants; lastly, assuming that the sea occupies but
one-half of the total superficies of the earth, an assumption
which is below the truth: in that case we shall have placed
the hypothesis in question upon the most advantageous foot-
ing; and yet, even then, all the rivers of the earth will have
poured into the sea only one foot deep of water, and there-
fore, upon the assumption that its mean depth were not
84
MISCELLANEA
more than a hundred fathoms, would have filled its basin in
six hundred years, after it had been emptied in the same
number of years by evaporation. According to this calcula-
tion, the united contributions of all brooks and rivers since
the creation would have filled the sea's basin just ten times;
and the salt, therefore, could amount to no more than ten
times as much as that with which river water is naturally
endowed under its present circumstances. Hence, we obtain
this inference, that, in order to settle the actual degree of
saltness in the sea, we have only to subject ten cubic feet of
river water to evaporation, when the salt left behind must
amount to just as much as the product from a cubic foot of
sea water after evaporation. Now, this is, prima facie, far
too improbable to obtain the assent of the rudest judge; for,
according to the computations of Wallerius,¹ the water of the
North Sea, in parts where few rivers fall into it, contains
one-tenth part of salt, sometimes even a seventh; and even
in the Bothnic Gulf, where it is greatly diluted with river-
water, it still contains a fortieth. The earth, therefore, is
sufficiently guaranteed against this particular risk of losing
its salt by the agency of rain and rivers: that point is
settled by fact and absolute experiment. In reality, so far
from robbing the land of its saline parts, there is good
reason to believe that the sea bountifully transfers to it some
portion of its own; for, although evaporation leaves behind
the gross salt, it does, however, raise and carry off part of
that which has been volatilized, which floats with vapours
over the terra firma, and communicates to the rain that
fertilizing quality by which it is advantageously distinguished
from the water of streams.
So much for the first hypothesis. The second is more self-
consistent, and generally has more credibility. Manfred 2
has thought it worthy of a very learned examination in the
commentarium of the Bolognese Institute. In the course of
this review he remarks that the old foundation of the
Cathedral at Ravenna, which is found below the modern
one covered with rubbish, is eight feet lower than the high-
water mark of the sea; and, therefore, at the period when
1 Wallerius, Swedish chemist, 1709-1785.-M.
2 Eustace Manfredi, Italian astronomer, 1674-1739. — M.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
85
that foundation was first constructed, at every tide of flood
it must have been laid under water, unless we suppose the
sea to have been lower at that time than at present; for
there is evidence enough that the sea came up as close to the
city in those days as it does now. In confirmation of his
opinion that the height of the sea has been constantly on
the increase, he cites the case of St. Mark's Church at
Venice, which is now so low that its ground-floor, as well as
St. Mark's Place itself, when the lagoon happens to be
flooded, are laid under water: an accident to which we may
reasonably presume that it could not have been liable at the
time of its foundation. He appeals also to the marble
terrace carried round the Senate House of St. Mark, probably
for the benefit of those who were going on shipboard, in
order to allow of their coming to the water's edge in
carriages—a purpose which is now entirely defeated, since
moderately high tides lay it half a foot under water. This
tendency of the sea-level to rise continually higher he
explains out of the accumulations of mud and other deposi-
tions from the fresh water, which, by continually raising the
bed of the sea, must, as a natural consequence, force up its
surface to a higher level. In order to establish the agree-
ment between these marks, or positive facts of experience, on
the one hand, and the elevating power as determined by
calculation on the other, he endeavoured to value the
quantity of mud which the streams carry along with them
when most turbid. Accordingly, towards the end of Febru-
ary, he took up water from the river which flows past
Bologna, and, suffering the mud to settle, he found it to be
the 1-174th part of the water. From this result, coupled
with the amount of water which the rivers in one year
deliver into the sea, he deduced a valuation of the elevating
power, agreeably to which it appeared that in a course of
348 years the sea would be raised by five inches. But, by
pursuing this investigation, and extending his calculation to
the sand, stones, &c., which accompany the mud, Manfred
found reason to carry the elevating force much higher, inso-
much that in 230 years it would raise the level by twelve
inches. On this footing, the great catastrophe of the earth
would be approaching with pretty rapid steps; and yet, even
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MISCELLANEA
thus, he was more cautious in his estimate than Hartsoecker,1
who, upon a course of similar investigations with respect to
the Rhine, announced the final ruin of the earth within ten
millennia-a course of time sufficient, in his estimate, to
wash away the whole inhabitable parts of the terra firma,
and to diffuse the sea over its entire surface as one uniform
mirror, broken only by naked rocks here and there rising
above the waters.
The true error of this hypothesis lies only in degree;
else, as regards its principle, it is well founded. It is true
that the rain and the rivers wash away the earth, and carry
it off into the sea; but it is far enough from the truth that
they do this to the extent assumed by the author. He
assumed arbitrarily that the rivers flow as turbidly the whole
year through as they do in those days when the snow, melt-
ing from the mountains, causes violent torrents, and when
the soil, rendered peculiarly friable by the previous action
of frost, is washed away with more than usual ease. Had
he coupled this consideration with the proper regard to the
distinction between rivers descending from mountainous
regions full of torrents and those which are fed by flat
countries, his computation would have been so far modified
that, perhaps, he would have dismissed it as no longer a
sufficient basis for his purpose. Had he considered further
that determinate tendency in the sea's motion to carry shore-
wards all substances not having an equal mobility with
itself, to prevent therefore all accumulations of mud upon
its own bed, and by continual depositions of such floating
matter to increase the terra firma,-in that case his fear of
seeing the marine basin filled up would have given way to
a well-founded hope of obtaining continual accessions of new
land from the spoils of the high lands of the globe. For the
fact is that in all gulfs, as, for example, in that which bears
the name of the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Venice, the sea
is gradually retiring from the interior end, and the dry land
is making continual usurpations upon the kingdom of
Neptune.
But, with regard to the cause of the alleged depression in
the shores of the Adriatic, as this might be supposed to arise
¹ Nicholas Hartsoecker, Dutch naturalist, 1656-1725.—M.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
87
indifferently from a real elevation of the sea or a real sink-
ing of the land, I would account for it (supposing always
that the facts are accurately reported) by appealing to a
peculiar and special circumstance affecting the very consti-
tution of the ground in the Italian peninsula. We know
that this country rests upon subterranean vaults; and the
rage of earthquakes, although it has manifested itself most
violently in the southern provinces, has yet run along to the
north, and far out below the sea, with power enough to
expound even there the cavernous constitution of the land,
and the vast intercommunications of subterraneous galleries
and chambers. Is it not, therefore, probable that, through
the action of continual shocks, the entire soil of Italy-or
roof, as I may call it, resting upon this enormous system of
arches has silently given way, and settled down upon its
supporting columns ?
That THIRD hypothesis which regards the increase of dry
land and gradual limitation of the waters upon this globe as
a forerunner of its ruin may plead as plausible attestations
as the preceding hypothesis from the records of experience,
though not so intelligible a cause for their explanation.
For, though at first sight it might seem that the sea, whilst
withdrawing on one side and exposing fresh surfaces of dry
land, would in some other quarter possess itself, by gradual
encroachment, of counterbalancing areas, and thus, upon the
whole, obtain indemnification, yet it is certain that the old
tracts which the sea relinquishes are far more extensive
than the new ones which it appropriates. The sea is
peculiarly apt to quit low grounds, whilst it frets, with
aspiring waves, against the higher and steeper shores. That
fact alone might be sufficient to demonstrate that the surface
of the sea, taken generally, is not in a course of elevation ;
for in that case the difference of level would be most
evidently perceptible on shores with a very gradual and
slight declivity. In such a situation a very trifling elevation
of level, as even of a few feet, would lay under water a vast
surface of land, whereas the very opposite result is observ-
able. Thus, for example, the Prussian "Nährungen," and
the Downs upon the Dutch and English coasts, are so many
sand-hills, which, in former times, the sea threw up in its
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MISCELLANEA
daily path, but which now serve for lofty ramparts against
its intrusions.
Now, in which of the three following modes are we to
solve this phenomenon? Shall we ascribe this depression of
the sea to an actual evanescence of the fluid element and its
conversion into some more solid form; or, secondly, to a
percolation and filtering of the rain-water into the bowels of
the planet; or, thirdly, to a continual deepening of the sea's
basin in consequence of its everlasting motion? The first
cause, though likely to have the smallest share in any per-
ceptible change, is not, however, so much opposed to a sound
Natural Philosophy as might seem. For, as other fluid
bodies, quicksilver and air for instance, sometimes assume a
form of more solidity without therefore losing their essence,
so beyond all doubt does water; the particles of which
element seem, in the formation of vegetables, to lay aside
their fluidity. The very driest wood, upon chemical analysis,
still yields water; and thus it becomes probable that some
part of the waters of this globe is converted into the sub-
stances of a vegetable growth, and never again returns to the
ocean. The second cause, speaking rigorously, can as little
be disputed as the first. Rain water, it is true, that part I
mean which the earth imbibes, sinks generally no farther
than to those denser strata which, refusing to let it pass,
force it to pursue the inclinations of the ground in search of
an outlet, and thus to feed springs. But it will always in
some partial degree trickle down to the rocky strata; and
even in these will penetrate through crevices, and make
those gatherings of subterraneous waters which, upon occa-
sion of earthquakes, have sometimes spouted upwards and
deluged whole tracts of country. Possibly the amount of
sea water lost in this way may not be inconsiderable; and
it merits a more accurate valuation. But it is the third cause
which apparently has the largest and least disputable share
in the depression of the sea's level: that level must continu-
ally sink in proportion as the bed of the sea is more pro-
foundly hollowed. But in this way of approach not the
slightest advance is made towards the earth's destruction.
What then is the result of the examination we have pur-
sued with regard to the hypotheses hitherto brought forward?
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
89
1. The
The first three we have dismissed as insufficient.
earth loses nothing of its saline quality through the ablutions
of the brooks and the rain. 2. The rich soil is not washed
away into the sea by rivers with irreparable loss, and with
the effect of saturating the ocean and thus raising its waters
above the habitable land. True, the rivers carry into the
sea the spoils of the elevated regions; but the sea avails
itself of these spoils, only to make farther depositions on the
margin of the terra firma. 3. The opposite notion of an
actual decrease in the waters of the ocean, however plausible,
is too conjectural a speculation, and supported by too little
grounds drawn from positive experience, to challenge a
philosophic attention.-There is, indeed, as regards a change
in the earth's form, one operative cause still remaining upon
which we may reckon with certainty; and that is the
tendency of rain and of brooks, by continually gnawing at the
soil and washing it down from the higher regions to the lower,
gradually to level the eminences, and to rob the globe of its
inequalities. This process and its effect are certain; and the
earth cannot be delivered from the action of this cause until
that era when, all the looser strata having been washed away,
nothing will remain in the shape of eminences or inequalities
except only the rocky framework or foundation insusceptible
of further change. This is a revolution in the earth's form to be
viewed with reasonable dread as a cause of impending ruin not
only by means of the transposition of strata, the most fertile
of which are gradually buried under successive depositions
of worse soil, but in a yet higher degree by the abolition of
those inequalities upon the earth's surface to which we are
indebted for the indispensable distinction of hills and vales.
Looking at the present constitution of our globe, and the
distribution of its inequalities, we are struck with wonder
and intense admiration at the order which presides amongst
disorder, and the exquisite regularity with which all the
irregularities on the earth's surface are made to co-operate
towards one and the same systematic purpose. Vast tracts
of country, for instance, lying perhaps in aërial altitudes,
are yet all provided with regular successions of declivities,
tending, for leagues, towards the basin of lakes; or else, by
means of brooks which serve as pipes, deliver their waste
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MISCELLANEA
water into the large conduits and sewers of mighty rivers;
which again are furnished with other successions of declivity
sufficient to carry down their contents to the ocean. And it
is observable that this beautiful arrangement, by which the
ground is liberated from all superfluities of rain water,
depends for much of its efficacy upon the particular degrees
of the declivities in relation to the height and the form of
the superior grounds. Were the descent greater and more
precipitous than it is, then the water (so necessary as one
great condition of fructification) would be carried off too
rapidly and in too large a proportion. Were it less, the
water would be apt to stagnate in ruinous accumulations.
Now, it is undeniable that a process is silently at work
through all ages, operating by means of the rain and
torrents in the way described above, for gradually impairing
and finally effacing the fine symmetry of the arrangements
here insisted on; since it is evident to the understanding, as
well as demonstrated by experience, that in exact proportion
as the higher eminences are washed away, and the lower
grounds elevated by the eternal depositions of these moun-
tainous dilapidations, must the earth approximate in form to
that condition in which it would have been had hills and
valleys never existed. And the same effects must follow.
That is, the rain water, no longer met by a regular scale of
declivities for carrying down its superfluities, must settle
upon the ground, and thus soak and saturate it in a degree
which must soon obliterate its fructifying powers, and render
the globe uninhabitable. To the eye of philosophy, nothing
is trivial or little which can, by continual summation of its
never-ending series, amount finally to any great result; nor
can it be reasonable to overlook, or to dismiss as unworthy of
notice, any natural process or tendency towards the ruin of
our planet in which time only is wanted as a condition for
maturing its efficacy. And, even as regards that condition,
it cannot be said that the noiseless steps of this natural
process are altogether imperceptible at present; already some
sensible advance in this process can be exhibited. One
instance shall be cited from my own native country of Upper
Prussia. Let me premise, however, by way of making it
intelligible, that, as the high lands and eminences of any
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
91
region are silently wasting away by dilapidation, concurrently
with that effect, and in due proportion to it, will the afflux
of water to the lower grounds, by means of which lakes and
rivers are fed, continually diminish, and thus it will happen
that these lakes and rivers must, by their own changes,
become regular exponents of the advances made by Nature
in the process alluded to. Now, the Upper part of Prussia
is full of lakes; and of these rarely can one be found which
has not, in close contiguity, large smooth expanses of dead
levels, bearing all the marks of having once been accessory
portions of the adjacent lake. What cause was it which
exposed their beds to the atmosphere, and converted them
into dry land? Manifestly the diminished supply of water,
and the contracted channels of the feeding streams.
To give
one example: according to the best authenticated evidence,
the Prussian lake known by the name of the Drausensee did,
in former ages, extend to the city of Prussian-Holland, and
was even made available for purposes of navigation;
whereas, at present, it has withdrawn itself from that city by
a space of nearly five English miles, though still indicating
its ancient bed by a long mirror-like plain, whose elevated
shores are even yet distinctly visible on both sides. Here
then, in a well-attested case of gradual change, we have the
first links in a series whose last may possibly be at an
infinite distance from the beginning, and (I will add) may
perhaps never be reached; for Revelation announces to the
planet which we inhabit a sudden and violent catastrophe,
such as may interrupt its duration in the very acme of pros-
perity, and may leave it no time for travelling through the
regular stages of superannuation, or for dying (so to speak)
by a natural death.
Meantime, I am still in arrear, whilst treating of the
several hypotheses which have been proposed (or may be
proposed) on the question of the earth's natural life and age,
as regards my answer to one of them: I mean the FOURTH.
This hypothesis assumes, as my reader will recollect, that
the active force which constitutes, in some measure, the life
of Nature, and which, though not visibly manifesting its
presence, is yet busily at work in every act of natural
generation and in the whole economy of the three natural
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MISCELLANEA
kingdoms, may, by degrees, suffer decay and exhaustion, and
may thus, by consequence, cause the superannuation of
Nature. Those who assume a universal Spirit of the World
in the sense here indicated do not understand by it any
immaterial power, any anima mundi, or plastic natures,-
which are all creatures of the imagination; but a subtle and
universally-operative matter, which, in all formations of
Nature, constitutes the active principle, and possesses a
Proteus capacity for assuming all shapes and forms. Such
an idea is not so much at war with a sound Natural
Philosophy, or with actual experience, as might be supposed.
If it be considered that, in the vegetable kingdom, Nature
has invested the most powerful and spiritual part of her
creations in a certain oil, whose volatility is fixed and
arrested by its peculiar viscous quality, and whose dispersion,
either by evaporation or by chemical processes, is followed
by no sensible loss of weight, though in other respects it
leaves the body a mere caput mortuum; if, again, it be con-
sidered how this spiritus rector, as chemists term it, this fifth
essence, which constitutes the specific characteristic of every
vegetable growth, is everywhere produced with equal ease
by the nutriment of plants, viz. pure water and air; if, again,
we consider the volatile acid universally diffused through the
atmosphere, that principle of activity in most kinds of salts,
the essential part in combustion, whose forces of attraction
and repulsion are so clearly manifested in electricity: throw-
ing these random glances over this Proteus of Nature, we
shall be inclined to conjecture with some probability one
universal instrument in the hands of Nature, in the shape of
a subtle matter infinitely active, of that description which is
usually termed a spirit of the world; but, at the same time,
we shall have cause to apprehend that everlasting generations,
or acts of birth, may consume more of it than is restored in
the dissolution of natural products. The equilibrium may
possibly not be maintained; and, by the enormity of her
expenditure, Nature may perhaps be continually suffering
attaint and loss in her vital forces.
For my part, when I consider that instinct of high action
which possessed the nations of antiquity; when I look back
upon that vast enthusiasm of ambition, of virtue, and of
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
93
patriotism, and above all, that love of liberty, which became
to them a demoniac possession, as it were, and a salient
spring of grand thinking, raising them so unspeakably above
themselves, and above the standards of poor ordinary human
nature: thinking of these things, and comparing the aspect
of those times with the limitary and frigid qualities of
humanity seen under its present phasis, I feel disposed
certainly to congratulate our present age upon a revolution
which, after all, is favourable both to moral interests and to
the interests of science; but yet, at the same time, I am
tempted to conjecture that possibly this great change may
be an indication of a real depression in the temperature of
that subtle fire which animated human nature and supplied
it with the very pabulum of its life. On the other hand,
when I advert to the vast influence which forms of govern-
ment, education, and example, exercise upon morals and
moral feelings, I distrust my own conclusions, and am again
reduced to doubt whether these equivocal symptoms can be
allowed any weight in establishing an absolute deterioration
of Nature.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
[Hannah More, as the reader knows, was a person of some conse-
quence in De Quincey's life. She was his mother's neighbour and
intimate friend for a number of years, and it was under her influence
that his mother adopted those strict views of religion-the so-called
"Evangelical Theology" professed by Wilberforce and his associates
of "the Clapham Sect," which, co-operating with something of a
Roman severity in her natural character, were not without unpleasant
effects at times on her maternal relations to De Quincey. Accordingly,
besides several incidental mentions of Hannah More here and there in
the course of De Quincey's writings, there remains the little paper of
more express notice of her which appeared originally in Tait's Edin-
burgh Magazine for August 1840 as part of the series of De Quincey's
Autobiographic Sketches, and a reprint of which will be found
ante, Vol. II, pp. 446-454. In that little paper De Quincey tells us
that, in his visits to his "relative's house" (i.e. to his mother's) in
Somersetshire from about 1808 onwards, he "never failed to see Mrs.
Hannah More," and "seldom suffered a week to pass without calling
to pay his respects"; and he proceeds to give an account in especial
of one visit, "either in 1813 or 1814," in which he had the pleasure
of meeting Mrs. Siddons as Mrs. Hannah More's guest. It is Mrs.
Siddons that figures chiefly in the little paper; and there is less
about Hannah More herself than might have been expected. The
reason,―unknown to me when I passed that little paper through the
press for Vol. II,—is now apparent. It has been generally assumed
hitherto that De Quincey's connexion with Tait's Magazine began in
1834, when the magazine was able to advertise as one of its attractions
then and thenceforward the series of "Sketches of Men and Manners
from the Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater. Chancing
recently, however, to turn over an old copy of one of the volumes of
Tait for 1833, I found in it two previous articles, indubitably De
Quincey's, though without his name. One, in the November number,
was the translation of Kant's Essay "On the Age of the Earth," so
long missing, and now reprinted in the immediately preceding pages.
The other, in the next or December number, was an original paper of
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
95
some length, entitled "Mrs. Hannah More. It revealed itself as De
Quincey's on the first glance; and this will be so self-evident to the
´reader that there is no need whatever to argue the point.-Hannah
More had died in September 1833, aged 88 years; and here, within
three months of her death, was De Quincey's Memoir of the venerable
lady!
A somewhat severe Memoir it is, as the reader will see; but
certainly worthy of reproduction here, if not on Hannah More's
account, at all events on De Quincey's own. It is a real addition to
his Autobiography,-giving us glimpses of him in those years of his
youth, just after he had left Oxford, when he was hovering between
London and the Lakes, preceded wherever he went by a reputation
already for extraordinary learning and intellectual precocity of all
kinds, and also, no doubt, in some circles, by more private rumours
of his vagrant and troublesome boyhood, his eccentricity at the Uni-
versity, and his habit of opium-taking. That we should have these
glimpses in the particular form of recollections of his meetings with
Hannah More, and conversations with her during his visits to his
mother in her Somersetshire home, increases their significance. Often
and often, we may be sure, had his mother talked with Hannah More
about her wayward boy, her anxieties with him in his school-days, and
her anxieties still as to his religious condition and his future prospects.
De Quincey must have known this; and it must have been with this
knowledge in his mind that he looked at the famous Hannah when
they first met, and studied her, and regulated his own deportment
towards her, plying his logic and his stores of learning upon her, as he
tells us, even more pugnaciously and ostentatiously than usual, so as
to assert himself and show that he could take her real measure.
Hence, in part, probably, the somewhat unsympathetic tone of his
Memoir of her, written many years afterwards. That this Memoir
of 1833 was published anonymously, and that it was never openly
reclaimed by him, so that his slighter notice of Hannah More pub-
lished in the same magazine in 1840 has passed hitherto as his sole
account of the celebrated lady,—may have been owing to the fact that
his mother, Hannah More's friend, was alive till 1846. She would have
hardly relished such a Memoir of her old friend from her son's hands.
True, there was no longer this objection when he began the edition of
his Collected Writings in 1853; and the Memoir might have been
included in one of the volumes of that edition. As he can hardly
have forgotten it, the probability is that it was one of the papers he
was holding back for an opportunity of revision. He cannot have
been dissatisfied with the literary quality of the paper; for in that
respect it is excellent; few things of De Quincey's are better in its
kind or more curiously characteristic.-In any revision of the original
paper by De Quincey himself, he would, however, I am pretty sure,
have shortened it by omissions and condensation. There are passages
in the original, at all events, that are so tediously and minutely
digressive as to mar the general effect. Several times, it is as if De
Quincey had been bent on filling out his paper anyhow to the extent
of a certain desirable money's worth of magazine pages, and had
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MISCELLANEA
ingeniously accomplished this by starting off from any topic reported
as having occurred in his conversations with Hannah More, and
inserting all that he could independently say or remember in con-
nexion with that topic, Hannah More or no Hannah More. What
makes these digressions less acceptable than similar digressions in
some of his other other papers is that they consist for the most part
of crambe recocta,-matter to be found, in liberal enough quantity,
elsewhere in his pages. In our reprint of the paper, accordingly,
these digressive passages are omitted, with the result, it is believed,
that De Quincey's Memoir of Hannah More is now presented in more
coherent and readable form than if the passages had been retained,
and perhaps in very much the form in which its reproduction would
have had De Quincey's own sanction.—M.]
I KNEW the late Mrs. Hannah More tolerably well, perhaps
as well as it was possible that any man should know her who
had not won her confidence by enrolling himself amongst
her admirers. In these last words I mean no offence: for
I respect her memory, and I respect the feelings of the
many and excellent friends who survive her. But it cannot
reasonably offend the warmest of Mrs. More's friends if I
say that she, in common with most other female writers,
required some homage-expected, in fact, to have some
court paid to her, before she would divest herself of that
reserve which clings more or less to all thoughtful people in
England. There was nothing to complain of in this; on
the contrary, it is not easy to think well of a woman
who has so little self-respect as to extend her confidence to
one who has taken no pains to win it, nor manifested by
any signs that he would value it if offered.
For my part,
I had no title to any peculiar or confidential mark of Mrs.
More's regard. I had shown no disposition to conciliate her
friendship; I had never paid her a compliment; I had
expressed no interest in her works; I had not so much as
appeared to know that she was an author; and, even when
calling upon her to acquit myself of those customary atten-
tions which were challenged by her sex, age, and station in
society, I had never travelled one hair's-breadth beyond the
line of distant and frigid politeness. Indeed, on looking
back from this distance of time, I am afraid that I must even
have appeared churlish in my too punctilious care to have it
understood how little I participated in the blind feelings of
admiration which congregated so many strangers in her
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
97
house.
I now
I am far from defending my own conduct.
begin to fear that it was almost atrocious. I ought to have
allowed a great deal more weight than I did to her many
excellent qualities; and with respect to some of her opinions
which disgusted me I might certainly have considered that
they arose naturally from the constitution of her own mind,
and from the sort of company which she had always kept;
and, at all events, I ought to have exercised, in behalf of so
amiable a woman, and a woman so clever as she certainly
was, a little more of that catholic toleration which one
learns in passing through this world, and which she possibly,
on her part, might sometimes feel called on to exercise
towards myself. But I was young in those days. I had
strong opinions; I had profound feelings; and the subjects
which to me appeared important above all others were
exactly those on which Mrs. H. More knew absolutely
nothing at all, and some of which she affected to despise.
Indeed, considering Mrs. More's early history, it must have
been surprising if she had formed any opinions at all upon
subjects which do not enter the range of ordinary conversa-
tion. Whatever opinions she had, I am fully persuaded,
were pure, mirror-like reflections from the conversation of
the people with whom she associated in her youth; and her
own ability was shown chiefly in illustrating their tend-
encies, or delivering their substance in a graceful manner.
But I am anticipating.
1
The occasion which drew me within Mrs. H. More's circle
was this:-In the year 1808, or 1809, a lady with whose
family I maintained a very intimate acquaintance had then
recently begun to build a villa in the beautiful valley of
Wrington ¹; and in this valley, not above a mile and a half
from my friend's rising house, stood the pretty cottage of Mrs.
H. More and her sisters. The valley of Wrington lies in the
county of Somerset; which is still an interesting district of
England, but was then much more so on account of one
1 The lady here mentioned in such circuitous phraseology was, the
reader now understands, De Quincey's own mother. She had recently
left her residence at the Priory, Chester, for another residence in
Somersetshire, the villa in Wrington Valley here described. See
ante, Vol. IV, p. 3; also Vol. I, pp. 406-408, and Vol. II, p. 446.
-M.
VOL. XIV
H
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MISCELLANEA
romantic feature which it possessed, if not exclusively (for
Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and other counties of the south
shared in that distinction), yet in pre-eminent beauty-I
mean the Downs; which have now, I fear, one and all¹ dis-
appeared under Local Enclosure Bills. The vale of Wring-
ton was generally approached from Bristol, leaving that city
by the highroad to Plymouth. About the ninth milestone
you begin to descend into a richly wooded vale stretching
westward for about ten or twelve miles, until it meets a
boundary in the shores of the Bristol Channel.
The high-
road winds along the base of the hills which guard the
valley on the left, and, after a course of some miles, gradu-
ally wheels away to the south, by crossing over this range
of hills to Axbridge and Cross, in the long champaign of
Bridgewater. But, a little below the point at which this
great road from Bristol first enters the valley, another road,
in appearance a mere lane, diverges to the right. Widening
its distance continually from the main road as the valley
expands in width, this rustic lane steals along the foot of
the steep pastoral hills which form the right barrier of the
valley. Within a mile and a half, perhaps, from its first
commencement, it passes under the shrubbery wall of what
was then Mrs. More's cottage; half a mile further, it con-
nects itself, by a cross-road to the left, with the little town
of Wrington, which stands out in the open area of the vale,
aloof from either range of hills; three miles further, it
passes through the little town of Congresbury (pronounced
Coomsbury); somewhere in the neighbourhood of which it
divides into two branches, one pursuing the same direction
as before to Weston-super-mare, a little sequestered bathing-
place on the Bristol Channel, whilst the other winds round
the base of the hills, at the point where the range terminates,
into the collateral valley of Brockley, upon the other side of
the hills to the right. On the summit of these hills, and
1 If any specimen of these most beautiful pastoral lawns is still to
be found, I presume that it must be the small down at Clifton, on the
hills immediately above the Hotwells of Bristol. This, I imagine, will
be spared on account of its contiguity to a place so much the resort of
invalids. But it is ill fitted for transmitting to the next generation
any representative picture of a down.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
99
overhanging Mrs. More's cottage, together with the whole
line of the sequestered road which I have been describing,
ran a most beautiful series of downs, upon which you might
roam for miles, without the slightest interruption of hedge,
ditch, or fence of any kind. They presented the appearance
of vast lawns, eaten close by sheep, except only where
they were traversed by large breadths of fern, intersected,
however, by smooth grassy sheep-tracks in every direction.
Over these downs it was possible to travel by private paths
to the very suburbs of Bristol. Guide-posts, or houses,
there were none; but, as a more conspicuous means of
directing the perplexed traveller, especially in snowy
weather, at intervals of half-a-mile or so were planted, in
a continued series, belts of Scotch fir, whose gloomy masses,
at so short a distance, could be discovered by the eye almost
in any state of the atmosphere. Rarely can a highly cul-
tured and densely peopled land like England have offered
such ample facilities. for solitary walks and rides as these
particular downs. The ascent to them was usually steep,
but not above half-a-mile in length. And, once at the
summit, so animating were the breezes, so elastic the turf,
that few horses were dull and spiritless enough to resist the
inspiration of so many genial influences. The first step
npon the soft springy turf operated as a summons to a
gallop, or to restless caprioles of animal delight. Approach-
ing to either side of these downs, you looked down into
valleys of exuberant wealth and beauty, and inevitably pre-
senting to view almost in every village some specimen of
that rich ecclesiastical architecture for which, next after the
county of Lincoln, Somersetshire is, I believe, the most
advantageously distinguished of any province in the island.
At a distance of eight or a dozen miles, you saw the Bristol
Channel, glancing restlessly, and throwing up white sails
every moment to the sun; whilst, in the midst of all this
life and splendour, gleaming upwards from the whole wide
circumference of the horizon, your own immediate plateau or
terrace was, even at noon-day, as silent as the grave: no
sound, except the sweet-toned tinkling of the sheep-bell, or
the murmur of a passing bee, ever occurring to break the
silence upon those aerial solitudes. Such was the character
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of an English down; and I have described it because it is
now extinct, all has been extinguished by Act of Parlia-
ment. The spacious lawns have been cut up into potato
fields; the Scotch firs have been burned for fuel; the sheep
have gone the way of all mutton; their bells have been
long since wrought up into men-traps and spring-guns; and
neither Bristol Channel, nor shipping, valley, nor churches
could be seen when I was last there, in consequence of walls,
ten feet high, which bounded each side of the very strait
and formal road now traversing these once romantic grounds.
No such changes, however, had then been made; and
the character of the scenery amidst which Mrs. More
had, in old age, taken up her residence wore as yet those
features I have described of primitive and under-peopled
England. She had previously occupied a house detached
from the hills on either side, and not far, I think, from the
centre of the vale. This place was called by the somewhat
vulgar and sentimental name of Cowslip Green. But her
present dwelling, standing under the shelter of the hills,
bore the incoherent one of Barley Wood.
What had been the course of her previous life I know
only in the most general outline. Originally, I have under-
stood, she and her sisters conducted a boarding-school for
young ladies in Bristol. There can be no doubt that it was
well managed; for all the sisters, five in number when I
first knew them, were in different ways women of some
talent. The ample fortune which they were supposed to
have made must have been founded on the success of their
school, though doubtless increased afterwards by Mrs. H.
More's literary emoluments. But it was not as an author
that Mrs. H. More had originally forced her way either to
fortune or to notoriety. She was one of those persons who
owed her reputation partly, it is true, to literary talent,
and that talent such that, cultivated and directed as
it afterwards was, and allied with religious principles
of peculiar strictness, it might have found its own
road to distinction, but which, in fact, was not,
nor could be, from circumstances of position, exposed
to that severe trial. From her earliest efforts to her
latest, Mrs. H. More was never suffered to swim alone, but
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
101
was held above water by such powerful hands as made it
impossible that she should sink. I know not how soon in
her career, but certainly whilst yet considered a young
woman, she had been introduced to the domestic society of
the Duchess of Beaufort, and of Mrs. Montagu, so famous
at one period for her Essay on Shakspere (against the cavils
and laughable mistranslations of Voltaire), for her literary
parties, and for her generous patronage of the London
chimney-sweepers. Of these ladies I had myself occasion to
hear a good deal in conversation with Mrs. More; and of
Mrs. Montagu, in particular, I remember that she told me,
more than once, and with an emphasis very unusual to her,
that in the whole course of her long life,—which, either at
Bath or London, had placed her in contact, through nearly
half a century, with almost every celebrated person of her
own country, whether political or literary, and with a large
proportion of the distinguished foreigners who had visited
this country during that period, she had never met with one
person of either sex who made the smallest approach to Mrs.
Montagu in genuine wit, or in felicity of conversation. She
did not even make an exception in favour of Madame de
Staël. This report of Mrs. Montagu's brilliancy, I confess,
surprised me; but, of course, it did not become me, who
had never so much as seen that lady, to dispute Mrs. More's
opinion which, after all, may have been true; for we all
know how little proportion there sometimes is between the
same person's talents for talking and for writing.
Beginning life, then, in her character of author, under
such patronage, we can easily understand how very little
merit would suffice,-less indeed by a great deal than she
really had,—to push the young and agreeable Miss Hannah
More into a vast deal of notoriety. Not merely noticed,
but caressed, by two potent leaders of society in London, she
could not fail of commanding at once a pretty extensive popu-
larity. It is true that forced reputations usually decline
faster even than they have risen. And there can be no
doubt that some such reaction will operate powerfully upon
the posthumous fame of Mrs. More; and I counsel every
man who has funded money in her works to sell now,-for
assuredly five years will bring them down to a heavy dis-
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MISCELLANEA
count. But in her lifetime it was scarcely possible that any
revolution of that nature could affect her; for the same
artificial forces which had originally been put in motion to
elevate her unduly were continually at work to sustain their
own creation. And, very naturally, they acted with increas-
ing advantage at every step, and with accelerated power. For
Mrs. More was prudent and vigilant in the management of
her interest. An old friend she never lost, except by death;
and she was continually strengthening her influence by new
friends in the same sphere of life. Her letters and atten-
tions she planted judiciously; nor did she ever forget to be
pointedly encouraging in her manners, or to make her society
and her house as agreeable as possible, to the rising generation
of noble families. Her epistolary correspondence was exten-
sive; and there, again, the learned in such branches of
petty politics know well the refinements of art by which
adroit tacticians vary and masque the modes of winning a
powerful person to their aid, by giving him a motive for
reading passages from their letters, or for appealing to their
opinions, and thus eventually for giving currency to their
names, and sustaining their authority. One letter, we may
suppose, expresses some forcible opinions upon a great ques-
tion, or an eminent person, just at that moment occupying
the public mind. Everybody is eager to deliver his opinion
upon it; and it secures an attentive audience to say, "I
will tell you what Mrs. Hannah More says about it." Even
people not particularly under the influence of her name are
apt to listen, under the belief that they will at least hear a
natural and unbiassed judgment, as from one who is a mere
looker-on, living in retirement, and not warped, it may be
presumed, by any disturbing forces of partisanship. Then
another letter accompanies the present of a new work, just
fresh from the press; and this perhaps contains thanks for
valuable hints which, doubtless, really had been given, but
only are prodigiously over-rated in value. A third letter,
again, is not directly addressed to the person at whom it is
mainly levelled to this person is sent, circuitously, a
message; which form of address makes it possible to say far
more complimentary things than could decently be said to
his face, with this farther advantage to his vanity, that a
1
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
103
message, being communicated at the next rencontre, which is
probably at a party, ensures to the flattering expressions
something like a publication. But all this, it will be said, is
absolutely intrigue, or manoeuvring chicanery; and can I
mean to tax Mrs. Hannah More with anything so mean and
worldly-minded as this? Intrigue is an ugly word. What
I mean to describe, and in a certain degree to charge upon
Mrs. More, is not liable to any harsher name than that of
finessing. It is that sort of diplomacy which, practised for
public ends, and upon a broader scale, would be held strictly
honourable, and looks mean only because it is practised for
a somewhat selfish, and, by comparison, a trivial purpose,—
that of sustaining a name, or a certain amount of notoriety,
by furnishing people of eminent stations with motives for
talking about one's self, and by engaging their kind feelings
in one's behalf. After all, I contend that the fault lies in
the degré. Had Mrs. More dedicated extraordinary pains
and much of her time to these artifices, or had she employed
a very complex and elaborate machinery for the purpose, in
that case she would have stood open to deep moral censure.
As it was, and considering what powerful conductors there
had arisen latterly for calling off public attention from her-
self,—considering what perilous rivals she had in Bonaparte,
in Lord Byron, in Mr. Canning, and a thousand other over-
stimulating themes, all tending to reduce less agitating
names and memorials to one common level of insipidity,—
Mrs. More was warranted in sustaining so much talk about
herself in the London influential circles as might just serve
to apprise people that she belonged to the living generation.
Otherwise, as Mrs. Hannah More had known Dr. Johnson,
and as that fact happened to have been well advertised by
Boswell, many people were apt to think of her as the late
Mrs. Hannah More," who had been buried perhaps with all
her works before the French Revolution. But, apart from
this excuse, and supposing that she really had been under no
prudential obligation for refreshing the world's remembrance
of herself, I must confess that even flattery the most direct
has always appeared to me a far more venial offence, and
meriting far more indulgence than it usually receives except
from its objects. This much at least I can say with truth,-
66
104
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that, in every case of flattery which it has ever happened to
me personally to witness, nine-tenths of it, to say the least,
have been pure overflowings of courtesy, or perhaps of
benignity. And I am convinced that, where people decline
to express, on a proper occasion arising, the just esteem
which they entertain for a person's meritorious qualities,
merely because that person is present, we may rely upon it
that this forbearance is to be set down either to downright
mauvaise honte, or at the least to natural reserve; very often
to coldness of heart, or to sullen moroseness of temper.
Recurring to my own experience in this matter, I may say
that Miss Seward was the only person within my knowledge
whose flattery did not seem to be the involuntary overflow
of generous sympathy with its object. That lady seemed to
flatter, so far as respected her motive, merely upon a previous
calculation of its expedience or its necessity,—either because
she believed that it was expected, or guessed that it might
be profitable; and, as respected the scale or measure of her
flattery, apparently she had no guide at all but a tentative
approach by degrees (and not very slow ones) to the maximum
of what she imagined that the party would bear. Thus, for
instance, her public meetings with Lord (then Mr.) Erskine
at Buxton were as good as a comedy to the assembled public.
Each particular assault she prefaced with a look of doubt
and distress, thrown round the circle, which seemed to say,
"He has stood much will he stand this?" He, although
he had, from a habit of complimenting himself, gained the
name of Mr. Counsellor Ego, so little relished the quality of
Miss Seward's adulation that at length he was seen to hide
himself behind a broad-backed man, and, when the back
failed, behind a pillar, in order to elude his pursuer. But,
with this single exception, all the flattery which it has been
my fortune to witness might fairly be set down to the
account of genuine sympathy with real and undoubted merit.
The merit might be over-rated, and the sympathy itself might
be exaggerated as to degree in the expression of it ; but
generally there was some real foundation for both the one
and the other. And the true principle at work, after all,
was pure goodness of heart, or (at the very least) courtesy
seeking to deliver itself of a debt by acknowledging those
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
105
claims to which the public voice seemed to give the right of
challenging acknowledgment. These opinions of mine with
regard to flattery make it less offensive to avow an over-
ruling belief that Mrs. More's reputation as an author had
first commenced in a reciprocal intercourse of flattery, and
that in some degree it was kept alive by means of the same
quality. And, therefore, when it is said to me, "Do you
mean to tax Mrs. More with worldly-mindedness ?" I answer,
Certainly I do: in spite of her sincere piety, and her
earnest wish to attain a higher standard of religious practice,
I believe her to have been, in some considerable degree,
though not immoderately, a woman of worldly mind; that
is, involuntarily laying too much stress on rank, public
honours, and, above all, on public opinion; and, what is
more, I believe her to have been conscious of this infirmity,
and to have struggled meritoriously against it, as against 'the
sin which did too easily beset her.'
However, to revert to her early life, I suppose that
nobody at this time of day will think her early efforts in
literature adequate of themselves to account for her early
reputation. The way in which her position amongst people
of rank was made to assist her is not exactly understood,
even when it is made known as a fact. People will object
that no countenance from the aristocracy could avail to warp
or disturb either the public or the critical appreciation of
her works. But the way in which a large body of fashion-
able supporters can be made to assist an author is this:—A
woman of rank goes about canvassing for subscribers or for
purchasers, as the case may be: "An interesting young
friend of mine,” she says, "has written a sweet little thing
called Bas Bleu; and positively I must have your name
down on my list of patronisers to her genius." Now, with
as much influence as belonged either to Mrs. Montagu or to
the Duchess of Beaufort, it was easy to collect names enough
to carry off three or four impressions. Then mark what
follows. The fact, the naked fact, without comment or
explanation, that three or four editions of a book have
been carried off in three or four days, being reported in
every newspaper, travels with the speed of light all over the
kingdom. People in the provinces are naturally anxious to
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MISCELLANEA
see what is reported to have made so deep an impression on
the metropolis; and very often, doubtless, they create for
themselves all that they have been taught to expect. I
myself, within my own narrow experience, have known
many instances where a book was bought (as, in particular,
Mrs. More's Calebs) for no other reason than because some
startling amount of editions had already been sold in
London; and this I have known done by people who, had
they happened to be in the secret, and to have been aware
that the first three editions, which operated, by their rapid
sale, as the decoy editions to the public, had been really
bought almost exclusively by distinguished friends of the
author, prepared for months before its appearance to expect
the book, and who had in fact bespoke their copies, would
undoubtedly have allowed no weight at all to the startling
phenomenon of the sudden sale.
To return to Mrs. Hannah More's history :-By means as
artificial as I have here described she had first emerged
from obscurity. But in the progress of her life, at what
point of it I cannot pretend to say, she had greatly
strengthened her pretensions to public notice by stepping
forward as the organiser of Sunday schools, upon a scale of
unusual extent with relation to the means at her disposal.
This chapter in her life was afterwards dwelt upon, I sus-
pect, by herself, with more inward self-satisfaction than all the
rest put together; for her motives were pure, originating, as
I heartily believe, in no love of power, but in a conscientious
sense of public duty: her purpose was noble-being that of
elevating the condition of human nature amongst the poorest
and the humblest of her fellow - creatures. The means
which she adopted were, perhaps, as good as could be had;
and, finally, her success, both directly within her own
peculiar field, and remotely as a precedent which rapidly
diffused and multiplied itself, was so great as to attain
almost a national value. When I speak doubtfully upon
the single head of the means which she employed, I do so
with a reference to the Blagdon controversy, which (accord-
ing to my slight remembrance of it) turned entirely upon the
quality of Mrs. More's machinery in setting forward her new
institution, and not at all upon the final causes of their
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
107
establishment, or upon the objects which they proposed to
realise. Blagdon is a village about four miles, I think,
from Wrington, lying amongst the beautiful hills on the left
of that vale in going westwards: and either the incumbent
of that parish, or (as I rather think) the curate, starting from
some personal grievance of mortified pride, or of professional
influence unduly disturbed, attacked Mrs. More and her pro-
ceedings with a virulence which ultimately, I believe,
recoiled upon himself. The merits of that dispute I am
quite unable to state. But I remember that it raged
so long and so loudly that all England became aware
of its existence and progress. What surprises me,
at this moment, in recurring to it, is that Mrs. More
should have left any opening for ill-will, springing
originally, without a doubt, under whatever public
disguises, from some sense of personal slight. For in her
policy the wisdom of the serpent did certainly prevail, to
say the least, as much as the simplicity of the dove. She
could not but be sensible of the prudential obligation under
which her whole purpose laid her of conciliating the spiritual
leader of the parish. The public character and the authority
with which the English parochial clergy are invested by
their official stations make their favour at least, if not their
actual co-operation, almost a sine qua non towards any
tolerable success in schemes of education like those of Mrs.
Hannah More. And with her known interest, in this point,
exactly coincided her natural courtesy of disposition.
Such was the whole amount of Hannah More's history as
known to myself, except as to one incident, perhaps to her-
self the most interesting in her life. This was her marriage
disappointment. What were the exact circumstances under
which it took place I have never been able to ascertain.
However, there certainly was some story of a delicate nature
(in the belief of Mrs. More's best friends). And I have
received the following as the true fact from a clergyman of
great respectability, and a fervent friend of Mrs. H. More's:
The morning was fixed for the marriage; Mrs. More's
friends were
all in attendance, and, after breakfasting
together, had actually proceeded to the church where, by
appointment, they were to meet the bridegroom. They
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MISCELLANEA
actually waited above an hour in the porch, looking out for
his arrival, and as yet with no suspicion of his dis-
honourable intentions. At length a single horseman was
seen approaching; he advanced to the steps, dismounted, and
presented to Miss More a letter, in which the gentleman
pleaded simply, as a reason for receding from his engage-
ments, that he could not bring his mind, at the hour of
crisis, to so solemn and so irrevocable a contract. He
offered, however, to make such reparation as could be made,
in a pecuniary sense, to Miss More; but this intention, if he
really had it at the time, would, no doubt, have died away
as soon as the immediate difficulty was overcome.
friends of Miss More, aware of that, pressed him vigorously,
and would grant no delay. The sequel was that, rather
than stand a prosecution, he settled on Miss More a hand-
some provision,—my informant believes, not less, but rather
more, than £400 per annum for life.
The
-) on a
I now return to my own personal acquaintance with Mrs.
H. More. My first introduction to her was under the
following circumstances :-In the year 1809, I had come
down to Westhay (the villa of my friend Mrs.
visit of some months.1 The time of year might be May, or
early in June; and the particular morning was one of
peculiar splendour. Sitting by accident at a window of my
dressing-room, which looked out upon the approach to the
house, I observed a plain-looking carriage coming up the
grounds, at the rate of about four miles an hour. In those
days the eye was familiar enough with the image of languid
motion under all possible varieties; even the Bristol mail,
"of this sentence
1 As the reader understands, the “Mrs.
was his own mother. Westhay was the name she had given to her
new villa in Wrington Valley, Somersetshire, -in recollection, no
doubt, of Greenhay, the country-house near Manchester where she
passed the last years of her married life and the first of her widow-
hood, and had brought up her children. See ante, Vol. I, p. 57, and
pp. 68-69,—also Vol. III, p. 243. But see more particularly Vol. I,
p. 404; where there is this distinct statement respecting his mother
and her changes of residence :-"It happened that amongst the few
"infirmities besetting my mother's habits and constitution of mind
(( was the costly one of seeking her chief intellectual excitement in
"architectural erections. She individually might be said to have
"built Greenhay; since to her views of domestic elegance and pro-
P.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
109
the swiftest in the kingdom, did not then perform much
above seven miles an hour. But a pace so very cautious
indicated the presence of ladies, probably of old ladies; and
a sudden recollection that it was yet scarcely twelve o'clock
argued that the party must be a privileged one; how else ven-
ture to present itself on a morning call at an hour so ante-
diluvian? Antediluvian, indeed, were all things inside and out-
side the equipage. "Castor and Pollux ! " exclaimed a young
Oxonian of the Westhay family, "what a set out!"; yet, at
least, it wore an air of harmony in its self-consistency. The
horses were manifestly pets, sleek and dull, crammed up to
the throats, and apparently worked at the rate of thirty
miles a month. The coachman seemed, after his kind, a pet
also; consequently, sleek and dull, crammed up to the
throat, and worked on the same severe scale. He wore a
look of demure solemnity, which it was his intention to pass
off for the expression of exceeding religious devotion. Unfor-
tunately, it conveyed rather an opposite impression of
exceeding knavery; and, a knave he was, of the first water
a fourbe fourbissime, in the language of Moliere, or rascal
rascalissimus, as I had afterwards occasion to know. The
carriage itself had the air of being also a pet. It was hung
low, was sad-coloured, roomy and considerate in its dimen-
sions, allowing ample scope and verge enough for the most
Dutch proportions, and seemed so well furnished with
cushions, or squabs, to speak technically, and those squabs,
again, so luxuriously plump and downy, that one could not
figure to one's self for such a carriage any harsher destiny
than that of carrying forth some podagrous bishop upon his
gentle matutinal airings in seasons when all the zephyrs
priety my father had resigned almost everything. This was her
coup d'essai; secondly, she built the complement to the Priory in
"Cheshire, which cost about £1000; thirdly, Westhay, in Somerset-
shire, about twelve miles from Bristol, which, including the land
attached to the house, cost £12,500 (not including subsequent
" additions),—but this was built at the cost of my uncle.' -In 1809
(the date of that visit of De Quincey to his mother's Somersetshire
home which he goes on to describe) Hannah More, the reader will do
well to remember, was sixty-four years of age, while De Quincey was
only in his twenty-fourth year, fresh from Oxford, the Kantian meta-
physics, London literary society, and the raptures of his first visit to
Wordsworth and the Lakes.—M.
("
>>
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MISCELLANEA
were abroad. Bishop, however, it was not, but the friend
of bishops, whom it now conveyed. We had continued
speculating upon its probable contents as the lazy equipage.
moved towards the house; and at last my young Oxonian
friend, exclaiming suddenly to me, "By the powers, it is
Holy Hannah coming to look at your premises," shot down-
wards to present his arm to the ladies in executing the very
difficult manœuvre of alighting.
Imagine, then, at length, the portly carriage solemnly
anchored alongside the main entrance of the house, the
carriage door opened, and the steps duly unfolded to the
very last, which grazed the surface of the ground, in prepar-
ation for discharging its jolly freightage of dames. Jolly
they were, in every acceptation of that word; ample and
roomy as their carriage; and absolutely noisy in their ex-
pressions of gaiety and good humour. Such, at least, was
the description of the two sisters who on that morning
accompanied Mrs. Hannah More, but not of Mrs. Hannah
herself she was neither large in person nor joyous in her
manner. Her deportment was lady-like and pleasing; but
marked with thoughtfulness, and sometimes, perhaps, with a
shade of sadness; or, to express both traits by a single word,
at least of pensiveness. People who are consciously the
objects of much notice and curiosity wherever they appear
rarely obtain so complete a mastery over their feelings as to
disembarrass themselves entirely of that constraint and awk-
ward reserve which accompany such a situation when con-
tinually forced upon the consciousness. Certainly, for a
woman who had mixed so largely in the world, Mrs. H.
More seemed to have made as small advances towards such a
state of callous self-possession as any one person whom it has
been my fortune to know. She had even a tremor in her
manner, and at times, upon first presenting herself, a mau-
vaise honte, which almost amounted to agitation. But I am
anticipating.—The visit, as it appeared, really was to myself,
none being due at that time to the family whom I was
visiting. In saying this, I arrogate no particular import-
ance beyond what Mrs. More's courtesy allowed to every
scholar; and such I was reputed. My fame had been some-
what increased also, as I am ashamed to say, by a report
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
111
current at that time which imputed to me, most untruly,
some shape or other-I know not exactly what of infidel
philosophy.
My curiosity was, at any rate, sufficiently strong to have
carried me down to the drawing-room; and, as it appeared
that the visit was really to myself, it became my duty to
descend. Of course, I did not keep the ladies waiting; and
I had presented myself before they so leisurely in their
movements-had completed the process of seating themselves.
All eyes directed me to the lion, or rather lioness, of the
occasion. The lady of the house did me the favour to
present me in form to her favourable notice. She received
me with most gracious and winning smiles; and I took my
seat upon a sofa by her side. I had previously seen almost
everybody in England who enjoyed any great reputation for
conversational talent; and I expected little in that way
which could dazzle me from Mrs. H. More. In justice, I must
say, that I found no more than I expected. Madame de
Staël I had seen, but that was all. Virgilium vidi tantum.
I could, through more channels than one, have commanded
an introduction; but this my pride prevented me from seek-
ing. Backed by no book of my own composition, I should
have appeared to her a mere boy, and could not have
interested her vanity in making a display before one so
obscure. She, however, when she chose, or when she was
adequately excited, could really perform with effect and
execution; and, at times, she executed bravuras, or passages
of colloquial effect, which electrified all who heard. Mrs.
H. More was the most opposite creature in the world.
She was modest, feminine, and, by nature, retiring. Her
manners, which were those of a well-bred woman, ac-
customed to good society, and therefore free from all
bustle, hurry, and excitement, supported the natural expres-
sion of her mind. It was only by a most unnatural and
transient effort that she ever attempted to shine. On the
other hand, to the eye, she was a far more pleasing woman
than the masculine De Staël. That most pretending of
God's women was a hideous-looking creature, with a huge
structure of bones about the shoulders, fitter for a Mammoth
or a Megatherium than a reasonable woman.
Her chest,
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MISCELLANEA
especially when viewed en profile, was, as a London wit
remarked, like a chest of drawers. And her black hair,
floating in masses about her temples, her fierce eyes, and her
impassioned gestures, gave her, when declaiming, the air of
a Pythoness upon her tripod, or of some dark sibyl thirsting
for the blood of Edipus. Add whiskers and mustachios,
and, without a doubt, she would have frightened and put to
flight the advanced posts of an army.
But Mrs. H. More
was soft, delicate, and agreeable; and, in youth, must have
been pretty. Her eyes only were too bright for absolute
repose of countenance; else hers would have been nearly
quiescent. Her sisters were, if not more interesting, at least
more entertaining; especially Mrs. Sally, who had exuberant
spirits, mirth, and good nature: and Mrs. Patty, who was
distinguished for humour, or at least drollery; and from her
pen had proceeded many of the most lively amongst the
Repository Tracts.
The times in which I had thus become acquainted with
Mrs. H. More were times of profound political interest,—I
may truly say, describing my own feelings, times of awful
agitation. A power had arisen in France which, going on
through stages of transmigration from one horrid birth to
another, was at length settled, as might seem, in its final
development, having obtained an organization more potent
than ever this world had seen for evil, and for the propaga-
tion of evil. Until the era of the Consulate, the French
Revolution had passed through many forms-all bad, and
some weak. . . . Under circumstances like these, and at a
crisis so appalling, those who felt the interest appropriate to
the times had leisure for no other interest; and the first
question which arose with regard to any person on whom
much attention was fixed concerned the nature and quality
of their views upon foreign politics. Accordingly, my own
first impulse, as regarded Mrs. H. More, was to apply some
mete-wand to the state of her sentiments upon all that
regarded Napoleon Bonaparte. I knew already, by the
general tone of her Cheap Repository Tracts, and particularly
by her Will Chip, or Village Politics,1 that she was loyal,
1 For which tract, I have heard (but I will not vouch for the fact)
that Mrs. H. More received the thanks of Messrs. Pitt and Dundas.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
113
•
and well-affected to the Government,—that she was an Anti-
gallican, that she was an Antijacobin. I judged, besides,
from the quality of her connexions, that she was, of course,
a Pittite.
Yet, having said this, I have said all that
does credit to her political firmness or sagacity; for, in other
respects, she was deeply enslaved to the meanest superstitions
of the day. There was at that time, and ever since the
year 1796 there had been, a most ridiculous prostration of
the English mind to the prestige of French generalship.
People had a notion that French strategics differed, not only
as to degree, but also by some special privilege of kind, from
all other, and that, somehow or other, without ever being
able to tell how, generals of any school but that of Paris
would inevitably, in contact with a French commander, find
themselves pretty much in the relation of a fly to a spider:
sooner or later, they would be enmeshed in his fine-:
- spun
webs, without a chance of evading them by skill, or break-
ing them by force. This was an abject and pitiable super-
stition; and often had I occasion to combat it in conversation,
without finding a single ally, until the triumphs of the
Peninsular War, beginning to dawn in 1808, first gave me
some vantage-ground. With Mrs. H. More I argued in the same
key, but absolutely without effect. "I grant," she would often
say, "everything you can urge for British courage; but
and then came the old story of courage matched against the
magic of talent, &c.; the whole amount of which was this, when
put into plainer language, as I repeatedly told her, that
we British were in effect a race of brainless bull-dogs, with
animal courage enough and to spare, but without sense or
sagacity to guide it; whilst the French had credit, not
merely for all the talent, but absolutely for a sort of magic,
and of supernatural art, by which effects were produced
beyond the reach of ordinary tactics to explain. Those
days were the days of my fervid youth. I was then calidus
juventa, Consule Planco; at which period of life a man's
patience is not his most shining virtue. And very often, I
confess, absolutely I shivered with wrath when I heard, by
insinuation, such disparagement offered to the mighty nation
amongst whom I gloried to have been born. Brute force!
animal qualities of facing peril, or enduring pain! Were
VOL. XIV
I
114
MISCELLANEA
these, then, the highest attributes of that "princeps populus'
who had been hailed from the orient to the setting sun as
the great leading nation in arts and arms, the tutor and
forerunner of men's race in civilization? Such character-
istics might aptly delineate the Russian or Scythian boor
but for that thrice-famous island whose sons had so long
shone as the vanward host in the army of nations,—whose
colonies possessed, by circles of longitude and latitude, the
supreme section of the New World,-under the shadow of
whose mighty sceptre the hundred millions of Hindostan
reposed,—the people whom, when cited up ideally before the
true and mirror-like sensibility of Goldsmith, that poet had
beheld sweeping by, over the stage of life, in such majestic
pomp and precedency as to challenge tears from Dr. Johnson
whensoever he read the lines
"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by "!
Contrasting the mighty object thus insulted with the trivial
insulter (a blue-stocking manufacturer of sentiment), I
acknowledge that I gradually became more careless of Mrs.
H. More's acquaintance than I had even originally been,
and still more insensible of any merit which she possessed.
However, I determined that she should not mistake me
for a mere John Bull, fierce upon his imagined superi-
ority without knowing anything of the grounds which
sustain it. Not enduring to talk much with her upon
such a theme, I threw into what I meant for my part-
ing colloquies some hits which, I was well assured, she
could not parry; and I was truly delighted to see that I
stung her beyond all power of dissembling.¹ . . . Finally,
having multiplied my cases of this nature against Mrs.
Hannah More, and mortified her on public grounds,
observe-to the utmost extent of my opportunities, I took
1 He entertained her, he tells us, with illustrations of the British
superiority to the French even in strategy, drawn from the wars and
battles of the great Marlborough, and from more recent British mili-
tary enterprises and expeditions, Sir Arthur Wellesley's latest Penin-
sular actions included,—the illustrations the less worth repeating now,
however, because there is much to the same effect in De Quincey's
later and better-known writings. —-M.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
115
leave of the subject with this remark :-The admiration for
military talent was built, I contended, upon a psychological
delusion. No sort of talent is more vulgar in itself, or of
more plentiful growth; in fact, it is produced to order in any
quantity required. Witness the Thirty Years' War, witness
the age of Republican France. In both periods there was a
great market for the sale of such talent: and, accordingly, in
both periods there was a large supply immediately sown,
reaped, and brought to market. In reality, the mere art-
or knack rather-of strategic movements, if it could be
detached and altogether abstracted from the great conse-
quences dependent on such movements, would be viewed as
one of the meanest amongst the mechanic arts: not much, if
at all, above carpentry. But it happens that great events,
thrones raised and dynasties dissolved, are often the direct
results of military operations. Hence, by a natural psycho-
logical process (vitium subreptionis) we transfer upon the
mind achieving the splendour which really belongs to the
things achieved. But, at all events, it is fatal to all ideas of
rarity or intrinsic value in the talent itself that as much of
it is produced, and as rapidly and as certainly, at any era of
particular demand for such qualities as of any one assignable
product of manufacturing industry. Mrs. Hannah More
never professed any talents for disputation: still less upon a
philosophic question. And such a dogma as this last, simply
because it contradicted the commonplace current on the
subject, she would, at any rate, have shrunk from as a
paradox.¹
•
Here, then, at the very outset of my intimacy with Mrs.
H. More, was laid a solid foundation for mutual dislike.
((
(C
1 From the long digressive passage which follows here in the
original text, this may be worth preserving, but, as it disturbs the
chronology of the text, comes better in footnote form :-" Happening
again to be engaged in political conversation with Mrs. H. More,
after an interval of some years, during which the national ear had
"been stunned and deafened by the rapid succession of our victories,
suddenly it recurred to me that I had never claimed or enjoyed my
just triumph [in the former argument with her], and that I could
have it now. Powers of justice! conceive my astonishment when I
heard Mrs. H. More disown all the sentiments I ascribed to her and
"the whole part which she had really borne in our disputes. Nay, I
"did not entirely satisfy her that our separate parts and relations in
116
MISCELLANEA
ance.
""
We began our acquaintance with no great love; and, to use
Mr. Slender's account of his progress with fair Mistress Ann
Page, “it pleased God to decrease it upon further acquaint-
But, upon the very second visit which I paid her,
another indication was drawn forth of Mrs. More's intellect,
which sealed my disgust. Having called at Barley Wood in
the morning, I had received an invitation to spend the even-
ing there,—an invitation which I willingly accepted, as two
or three of the sisters were conspicuous for their high spirits
and amiable temper, always ready to amuse and to be
amused; besides which, one might generally rely upon
meeting some agreeable society from the neighbouring
families of the vale. On such occasions it was usual to go
early; for the ladies dined at four o'clock, and were glad to
see their friends as soon as possible after five. On this par-
ticular occasion I remember that I found a large party of
young ladies assembled on the lawn. In the course of the
evening some conversation had arisen in which one of the
company had built some argument upon, or drawn some
illustrations from, poetry. Upon this Mrs. Hannah More,
with the air of one who is delivering some brilliant propos,
had taken upon herself to say, "Poetry! oh! as to poetry, I
forswore that, and I think everybody else should forswear
it, together with pink ribbons"; meaning, I suppose, in
youth. Mr. Wordsworth has remarked, as one feature of a
luxurious and feeble condition of society in an intellectual
sense, that the grandest functions of the human mind are
degraded into the mere ministers of stimulation or of trivial
ornament, and that people talk of a "taste" for poetry as
they would of a taste for Frontiniac or for rope-dancing. I,
however, had learned to think higher by far, and with
"these disputes were not (to speak mathematically) the mere reci-
"procal or absolute inversion of what I represented. 'Surely it
"must have been herself who stood up for England,—oh yes: on
"recollection it must be so; she had always been for England; and,
on further recollection, she fancied (though in that she might be
mistaken) that I had shocked her very much,—or at least some-
"body had, and surely it must be myself,-by the keenness of my
"anti-national principles, and the excess of my admiration for
"French tactics. Oh! Goddess Rhamnusia had I lived to hear
" that?
And was this my retribution? I dropped the subject, and
"for that day I was silent."-M.
(C
((
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
117
mysterious reverence, of the genial art: I had learned to
view it as the science of human passion in all its fluxes and
refluxes in its wondrous depths below depths, and its
starry altitudes that ascended to the gates of heaven. Mrs.
H. More would talk learnedly in her books upon the dignity
of human nature: she could not do otherwise; for, though
she delighted also to talk of its degradation and corruption,
yet, unless originally and indefeasibly it possessed some un-
speakable grandeur, how or with what propriety could its
restoration have become the subject of a mysterious scheme
in the councils of Heaven? Such, however, was her incon-
sistency that the very art which kept the golden keys for
unlocking the whole economy of the human heart,-that
world of hopes and fears, of heights and shadowy depths, of
laughter and of tears,—was dismissed to her chiffonier,
or rag depot, together with old filigree, paste pearls,
and obsolete bracelets. I burned to speak in reply ;
and to myself I murmured secretly,-"Oh! woman,
that this were not thy house, or that our meeting
could be adjourned to Salisbury Plain! Something,
indeed, as it was, without violating any restraints of
politeness, I might have said. But I had this infirmity-
that, whenever I spoke (if it were but a word) upon a theme
which challenged any peculiar depth of sympathy from its
importance, inevitably my voice trembled. This effect,
which I could not dissemble, made a pause and a "sensation"
in the conversation, by too pointedly arresting the attention
of the company; which was not in the right key of well-
bred society. It made something too like a scene. On this
account I was silent. But, just at the moment when it
seemed certain that Mrs. H. More was to bear off her pretty
remark, neither "noted" nor protested," forth stepped a
young lady, "severe in youthful beauty," and, with a modest
but yet not a timid air, put in this unanswerable demurrer :
66
>>
"Really, Mrs. Hannah More, I could never presume so
far as to look upon anything in the light of a trifle which
Milton had not disdained to spend his life in cultivating.
Surely I ought not to rank the Paradise Lost with pink
ribbons?" Here was a duplic (in the lawyers' phrase) to
which it was vain for Mrs. More to attempt a triplie. This
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MISCELLANEA
was a smasher; and I could have kissed the lovely girl, if I
durst, for so seasonable a service. As to Mrs. Hannah More,
I am sorry to say that she took the reproof with no very
charitable expression of eye; she was silent per force; for
what could she have said? But her eye said for her as
plainly as possible,-"You are a very impertinent young
woman!" However, Milton v. the Author of the Search
after Happiness was a case admitting of no reply.
Pretty much about the same time I learned another
feature of Mrs. Hannah More's character, which was peculiarly
revolting to my mind; or, rather, I ought to say, that I
now learned a peculiarly revolting case, illustrating a weak-
ness which I was already aware of. There was in Bristol an
author, of very estimable private character, and, judging by
the sale of his works, not altogether without claims to be
considered as a favourite of the public. Indeed I have
heard the most original poet of modern times acknowledge
that his works were rich in gleams of native genius, though
he was disposed to pronounce them heavy as a whole. Some
class, however, there must have been among the reading
public to whom his writings were acceptable; for, without
much favour amongst the professional critics, and with no
private partisanship, assuredly, at work on his behalf,
repeated impressions had been called for of those amongst
his works which were at all fitted for popularity by their
subject. This author had originally been a bookseller and a
publisher; and I have understood that, having been in
some way or other unfortunate, he had retired-but with no
loss of character at an early period of life, from all his
speculations as a tradesman. I called upon him, whenever
I passed through Bristol, simply as a man of letters; and I
thought him a very agreeable companion; for he wore upon
the face of his manners an air of integrity: he was kind and
courteous; and about his literary pursuits and plans he was
communicative or not according to the interest, more or
less, which his visitor manifested in such topics.1 This
gentleman, and his sisters, with whom he lived, were
1 Can this be Joseph Cottle, the Bristol bookseller who had pub-
lished Coleridge's first volume of poems in 1796, and the Lyrical
Ballads of Coleridge and Wordsworth in 1798, and who had retired
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
119
uniformly in the habit of professing great esteem for Mrs.
H. More, and admiration—more by a good deal than I could
see any ground for-of her writings. In birth they were
very probably on a level with that lady; and, as to profes-
sional pursuits, there could be no difference of rank, seeing
that the sisters presided over a large and brilliant establish-
ment for educating young ladies, exactly as Mrs. Hannah
More and her sisters had done many years before. Not
understanding, therefore, what barrier it was which could
divide people so united as they were in religious opinions,
and with so much reverence on the one side towards the
other, I said, one day, when paying my respects at this
house, “Pray, Mr. X. Z., what is the reason that, thinking as
I know you think about Mrs. H. More, you do not cultivate
her acquaintance? How is it that, amongst all the legions
of gay people whom I meet at Barley Wood, never yet, by
any accident, have I seen there either you or your sisters?"
-He smiled, and answered thus: "My answer is partly
anticipated in your question; it is precisely on account
of those legions of gay people that I do not go to Barley
Wood. I will own to you, very frankly, that I am not quite
at home in such society. Some people of the very highest rank,
in whose way I have sometimes fallen casually, have treated
me with great affability; but, generally speaking, the
fashionable mob whom one is liable to find at Barley Wood
on a fine morning those, I mean, who come over from
Bath-look strangely upon me; and, doubtless, I suit them
as little as they suit me. Meantime, you are to understand
that in former times I did visit Mrs. Hannah More; and
whether I gave up that practice on a sufficient reason, speak-
ing in my own case, I will not take upon me to say: you
shall judge. One day I was sitting alone with Mrs. Hannahı
More; and I believe that on that particular morning she
did not expect any visitors. Suddenly I saw the heads of
the leaders to a travelling carriage fairly looking in at the
drawing-room windows before any noise of approach had
reached us; and, in the next moment, a servant announced
from business not long afterwards. For De Quincey's acquaintance
with him in 1827 see ante, Vol. II, p. 163. He lived till 1853,-i.e.
till twenty years after the publication of the present article.—M.
120
MISCELLANEA
دو
66
their Royal Highnesses the Princess A, Prince W. of
G——, and some lady of rank in attendance upon the
G-
Princess. Great was my perplexity as to what I ought to
do. It appeared to me that Mrs. H. More, by a little decent
exertion of firmness and self-respect, might have delivered
both herself and me from all embarrassment. She, however,
appeared flurried; not, as I fancied, from any trepidation
about facing people of this distinguished rank, but at being
here detected in a tête-à-tête with a man of my unfashionable
air. She looked at me, then at the window, then at the fire-
place, until, really, a strange fancy came over me that she
wished me to jump out of the window, or to get up the
chimney. Up the chimney, to say the truth, I would have
been too happy to go, both for her sake and for my own.
But the weather was cold; there was a hot fire, my dear
Sir; and under those circumstances,
'Say no
more, my friend: under no circumstances ought the most
good-natured of men to go up a chimney, not though it were
to oblige the Pope and the Dalai Lama. But did Mrs. H.
More take it ill, then, that you blinked the question as to
the chimney?". "Really it would be hard to say what she
wished at that moment; but, doubtless, she wished fervently
that Providence had called me on any other road that
morning. Meantime, as Damien observed, no agony lasts for
ever. I was attempting an exit by the door, when I saw the
royal party advancing through the passage. To pass them
was impossible without absolute rudeness. I waited until
they had entered. The ladies advanced up to Mrs. H. More,
and did not seem at all to observe me; but the Prince, who
was in the rear, very courteously bowed to me as he
advanced up the room. I made my acknowledgments by
gestures; and, immediately after, making my way to the
door, I opened it, and then, turning round, without speaking,
I bowed once or twice with an air of reverence to the whole
party, and made my exit. Afterwards, I called, as usual, on
Mrs. H. More; but she received me with coldness; and,
though I could well perceive this, I did not resent it, but
paid her my usual respectful attentions; until at length I
found myself a second time in the very same dilemma. A
large party came in suddenly: this time it was not a royal
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
121
party; but I heard the sounds of 'Your Ladyship' and 'My
Lord' bandied about; and, from the number of outriders,
&c., doubtless they were some great people or other. I
never staid to ask who; for, seeing, as before, a marked
expression of vexation on Hannah More's countenance, I
took my hat without saying a word, satisfied that nobody
would miss me, and quitted her house, never again to enter
it. That vow I made at the moment; that vow I have
kept; and keep it I shall. I esteem, value, and highly
admire Mrs. H. More; but I have also some respect for
myself; and I will go no more to a house where I am
tolerated only in a surreptitious way, and become a subject
of scandal and offence if for one moment a collision occurs
between myself and more privileged friends."
Such was my friend's statement; which explained every-
thing, and shocked me exceedingly. Never yet could I
tolerate this double countenance and double tongue by
which a man is welcomed as a friend in one situation, and
frowned upon or disowned in another. And, doubtless,
Mrs. H. More would have found secretly more respect from
her great friends if she had protected her unassuming visitor,
and had said firmly, "This gentleman, or that gentleman
for he would have absented himself, no doubt, immediately
"is a very respectable and old friend of mine.”
I think it might be in 1811 or 1812 that Hannah
More acquainted me with the fact of her having declined
the place of sub-governess to the Princess Charlotte of
Wales. When the offer had been made, and whether at the
time it were Lady de Clifford or Lady Elgin who had the
post of principal governess, I do not know. What were the
reasons which induced Mrs. H. More to decline a situation
which would have given her some power, and a great deal of
distinction, I did not inquire. Most people found a sufficient
justification of her refusal in the ample comforts of her
present situation as a private woman, which could not have
been increased by any public station however lucrative,
whilst her liberty of action would have been greatly abridged,
and a responsibility undertaken beyond the warrant of any
powers conferred upon the place. I have said that I made
no inquiries of Mrs. H. More, or her sisters, as to the motives
122
MISCELLANEA
SO.
which guided her,-in fact, the terms on which I stood with
the family were not confidential enough to allow of my doing
But Mrs. H. More herself related to me a little anecdote
at this time, which might, I suspect, have had some share in
sharpening her objections to the place. The opening made
for Mrs. H. More had arisen out of the retirement (whether
resignation or dismissal I cannot say) of a Miss Hayes.
This lady, as it happened, was acquainted with the family at
Barley Wood, and had recently made them a visit. Naturally
enough the conversation had fallen upon the nature of the
vacant office, and the kind of duties attached to it. In the
course of these communications it had come out that a great
deal of intriguing went on amongst the household of the
young Princess, and that, in a recent instance, one very
respectable man had fallen a victim to it. Dr.
officiated, under the then Bishop of Salisbury (Dr. Fisher), as
the acting tutor of Her Royal Highness with regard to some
particular portions of her studies. This gentleman Miss
Hayes described as an upright, honourable man, guileless in
all respects, but too simple-minded and unpractised in the
ways of courts. He had neglected to plant his attentions and
his deference in the right, that is, the influential quarter.
Hence, probably, what followed. One day, in conversing
upon the History of England, and the gradual developments
of English law in concurrence with the continual increase
in the expansion and variety of English property, the
youthful Princess came upon the subject of donations and
testamentary dispositions of property.
What were the
various modes by which people could legally acquire or
alienate property? What conditions were essential to the
framing of a will? Particularly, at what age could a
person of either sex make a will that should be binding
in law ? Upon all these points the learned Doctor
gave such answers as were suitable: such, in short, as
were in a manner extorted from him by his royal pupil.
She had, at the same time, pressed her inquiries upon the
nature of property and upon the legal extent of her own.
With respect to most of her instances, the Doctor had replied
that the property was hers only in a sense of courtesy.
Were her trinkets, then, were her books,-in short (speaking
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
123
pettishly), was anything,-hers? The Doctor replied that
such things, being too inconsiderable to come within the
notice of her Royal Father, probably would be so considered;
at least, that her own disposal of them would not be dis-
turbed. Out of this conversation, which upon the tutor's
part was a mere act of duty and submission to Her Royal
Highness's pleasure, arose his ruin. Within a few days it
transpired that the Princess had made her will.
The singu-
larity of such a caprice attracted a good deal of attention;
and much anxiety was testified, by different members of her
establishment, to get a sight of it. In fact, it was justly
regarded as a sort of index to her personal preferences, and a
scale regularly graduated, for expressing the exact place
which each individual there mentioned held in her esteem.
There might also, for anything I know, be satirical bequests
to particular persons whom she disliked, upon the model of
that celebrated metrical will composed by Dr. Donne in the
time of James I.1 At all events, her sub-tutor, the worthy
Dr. was honoured by an especial notice-the whole of
her library being bequeathed to him. This was immediately
connected with the recent conversation; an occasion was
thence derived for colouring the whole transaction as а
jesuitical contrivance for interested purposes on the part of
Dr. ; the matter was reported to the Regent, who, with-
out very much sifting, frowned, at any rate, upon so dis-
proportionate a mark of attachment shown to an obscure
person; and, briefly, the Doctor was dismissed.
Such a
story as this was not likely to recommend the office to
Hannah More's ambition.
I believe it was by way of a peace-offering for having
declined it, and in some imperfect way to supply the defect
of her own personal superintendence, that Mrs. Hannah More
1 The reference, I suppose, is to Dr. Donne's poem of fifty-four
lines entitled "The Will." It begins-
"Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love! some legacies";
and the rest specifies his bequests,-e.g. his "constancy
constancy" to the
planets, his "ingenuity and openness to the Jesuits, his "pensive-
ness to buffoons, his "faith" to Roman Catholics, and his "good
works" to the schismatics of Amsterdam.-M.
""
124
MISCELLANEA
now composed her "Hints on the Education of a Princess." I
dare say that this work may have been useful; because,
however otherwise shallow and superficial, it appeals, as all
Mrs. Hannah More's works do, to a higher standard of
morals than usually is ever heard of in the courts of princes.
Doubtless it must do good, and must influence favourably
many a moment of sadness or of solitary meditation, and
must have a chance for turning to a moral account many a
heart-ache, such as palaces are heirs to no less than cottages,
to know or to remember as even among real existences the
fact of a Christian ideal in morals, loftier, purer, and more
holy, whilst by the great machinery of the Christian scheme
it is made also far more practically applicable to human
necessities, than the aerial altitudes of Stoical ethics; though
that scheme, also, was the grandest speculation of uninspired
human nature. Else, and apart from this use in suggesting
higher moral motives, I have often wondered at the shallow-
ness of the soil which could be supposed capable of receiving
much culture or much manuring from instructions so slight,
and so unsustained even by extensive reading, as Mrs.
Hannah More's. The whole stream of her illustrations was
naturally derived from History; and yet on how narrow a
basis reposed her acquaintance with that prodigious body of
records, and in the choice of her reading how little had she
shown of research or of desire to visit the fountain-heads!
One day I happened, in conversation with her, to mention
Coligni, the well-known Protestant leader in the times of
Charles IX. To my great surprise, she seemed perplexed,
and quite at fault. Coligni," I repeated, "the Admiral :
he, you know, who became substantially the head of the
Protestants after the assassination of Condé": and then, see-
ing that she still looked confused, I added, "the very chief
of those who suffered at Paris in the St. Bartholomew
butchery." "Oh! yes," she replied, "the conspiracy of St.
Bartholomew; I remember: that was a shocking affair."
But, though she remembered the name and designation
of this great event, it was evident that she had no remem-
brance at all of the great persons who had figured in it,
whether as actors or as sufferers.1 At length Mrs. H.
1 Further illustrations follow of her deplorable ignorance of history,
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
125
More began to complain that all history would unsettle its
foundations, and nothing be left to rely upon, if such a
spirit of scrutiny were encouraged. But this was no better
objection to the justice of such a course than it would be in
a magistrate to allege that some great criminal investigation
must be stifled as likely to involve too many or too dis-
tinguished persons in its consequences. On the whole,
however, I ascertained that she was neither well-read in
History (the only distinct branch of knowledge, excepting
theology, which she professed), nor willing to encounter the
pains of steadily supplying her deficiencies. Often, indeed,
I had occasion to remember the cynical remark of Swift-
that, after all, as respects mere learning, the most accom-
plished woman is hardly on a level with a schoolboy. In
quoting this saying, I have restricted it so as to offer no
offence to the female sex intellectually considered. Swift
probably meant to undervalue women generally. Now, I am
well aware that they have their peculiar province. But
that province does not extend to learning, technically so
called.
No woman ever was or will be a polyhistor, like
Salmasius, for example; nor a philosopher; nor in fact any-
thing whatsoever, called by what name you like, which
demands either of these two combinations which follow:
1, great powers of combination, that is, of massing or group-
ing under large comprehensive principles; or, 2, severe
logic.l
1
The reason that Mrs. H. More had so slender an ac-
quaintance with History was, in fact, that she had no philo-
sophical principles; none of any sort; and from the very
name and offices of all such knowledge she retreated with
horror. Hence it was, and not from want of reading, that
she knew little or nothing of the true steps by which Europe
had attained her present state of civilization. There
is no way for retaining the mere facts of history, and the
prodigious succession of similar events, unless by attach-
and especially of the real characters of such historical personages
as Henri IV, Sully, and Lord Clarendon : all having the effect now
of very forced and disproportionate digression.—M.
1 Hence, by the way, i.e. from this last postulate, the difficulty
that a woman should be a Political Economist,—that is, in a rigid
sense.
126
MISCELLANEA
ing them as illustrations to previous theories of the forces,
powers, and agencies then operating and moulding the
course both of things and persons without any distinct
consciousness on the part of those who forward the general
process. Hannah More had no such theories,—no general
principles, I mean, of any kind, unless in theology; and
upon that subject only, clothed in the wisdom of others, she
did occasionally talk wisely.
Notwithstanding all this, it has been often remarked that
so essentially are the final difficulties in all great questions
relating to man and his primary interests fastened as it were
to philosophy, and in many cases even to that abstruser
branch of philosophy which is called metaphysics, that even
amongst the most frivolous people,-nay, even amongst people
as little cultured as savages,-questions of philosophy, and
very often of pure metaphysics, will and do continually force
themselves on the attention. Witness, in morals, the ques-
tions of free will, fate, chance; in theology, the nature of
God, and thousands of others. Hence it happened that even
Mrs. H. More could not always repel the intrusion of such
questions. And it happened, also, as a further occasion for
provoking such discussions, that the adjacent little town of
Wrington (hardly one-half mile from her own gates) had
been the birthplace of Locke. Him, in some sense, she
venerated; having no better reason for doing so than
because, upon tentatively groping about to ascertain his
public estimation, she found that he was (though declining
in authority) still classed amongst those who had done
honour to their country. With regard to his religious
opinions, I believe she was aware how lax and indulgent
they were as compared with her own. As to myself, know-
ing that I was a philosophical student, she so far did
violence to her own tastes (or possibly in those particular
instances she might really feel some curiosity) as twice to
seek my aid in metaphysical embarrassments.
Once was
with respect to the philosophic scheme of Immanuel Kant:
without minute details, she wished for a general rude outline
of its purposes and its machinery. The other case regarded
the Humian doctrine of cause and effect, which had accident-
ally been brought forward with a practical purpose of
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
127
partisanship on occasion of the
occasion of the late Professor Leslie's
canvass amongst the electors to some one of the chairs in the
University of Edinburgh. On that occasion the late Dr.
Thomas Brown had written an anonymous pamphlet, which
he afterwards expanded into a large volume.¹ The same
Dr. Brown had also written an anonymous paper, in a very
early number of the Edinburgh Review, upon the other sub-
ject of Mrs. Hannah More's curiosity, Kant's philosophy.
The task which Mrs. More had imposed, over and above its
general difficulties, had a special one as regarded my very
fastidious pupil, who came already disgusted to the subject.
However, I succeeded in realizing the old proverb and kill-
ing two birds with one stone; for I so dovetailed the two
answers together that the explanation of Kant was made to
arise naturally and easily out of the mere statement of
Hume's problem on the idea of necessary connexion: a
problem which Mr. Coleridge has traced to Thomas Aquinas ;
but which, whether excogitated proprio marte or not by
Hume, is unquestionably the most remarkable contribution
to philosophy ever made by man. And I may add, in justi-
fication of my dovetailing process, that, as a matter of fact,
Kant's whole philosophy did originally arise upon the
suggestion of that famous discovery. My answer, though
short indeed for so vast a subject, was, however, too long to
be inserted in this place. Probably I shall publish it in a
separate form.
In another instance, Mrs. H. More paid a compliment to
my philosophic pretensions which I could well have dis-
pensed with. An Irish gentleman, reputed to be of brilliant
talents, who had once filled the office of confidential secretary
to the late Lord Londonderry (then Castlereagh), when
1 The famous controversy occasioned by the candidature of Mr.
(afterwards Sir John) Leslie for the Chair of Mathematics in the
University of Edinburgh was in 1805. He was opposed by the clergy
on the ground of his religious heterodoxy, as supposed to be proved
by a note in his Essay on Heat in which he had expressed his appro-
bation of Hume's Theory of Cause and Effect. Among those who
appeared to his rescue was Thomas Brown (afterwards his colleague
in the University), who published an Essay in Leslie's interest in the
shape of a defence of the philosophical accuracy of Hume's theory.
-M.
128
MISCELLANEA
Chancellor of the Exchequer, &c., in Ireland, happened to be
domesticated at Barley Wood upon a visit of a week or two.
I, in company with part of the family from Westhay, had
the honour of being invited to meet him at dinner. Suppose,
then, the fade process of introduction, of drinking wine with
each other, of dining, in short,-all gone through, and the
servants withdrawn: suddenly, as by a preconcerted move-
ment, Mrs. H. More rose up from the chair which she occupied
between the Irishman and myself, begged me to exchange
seats with her; and, having by this movement brought the
lion and myself into immediate contact, she laid her com-
mands upon us to commence disputing-upon what? De
quolibet ente was manifestly her purpose. But, as we were
both shy of "coming to the scratch" upon so vague an
invitation, she drew forward, from past remembrances, some
proposition of mine, I know not what, upon the different
attempts to demonstrate the existence of God. The glove
being thus thrown down, to it we went like bull and bull-
dog. One minute, however, sufficed to awaken me to the
ridicule of a situation in which two persons were to exhibit
as gladiators before a party chiefly female, to the entire
interruption of all general conversation, and of all social
pleasure. Disputation of any kind, and on any subject,
had always held abominable in mixed parties, and in the
very worst tone of underbred society. How, indeed, Mrs.
H. More could trespass so far upon all the rules of social
propriety—she who had so fine a tact for refinement in
manners—I cannot guess. Perhaps she sought the stimulus
of a sparring-match at any price. Be that as it might, my
part was plain-to back out of the dispute by the first
honourable evasion. But, as none immediately offered, and
I grew hotter and hotter in my purgatory, and thought with
more and more horror of bestowing my tediousness upon the
long line of amiable female faces which I saw ranged upon the
other side of the table, and listening, as it seemed, “in sad
civility," I adopted the following desperate expedient for
hastening the catastrophe:-I mustered up all the hard
words from every quarter,-from the seraphic and the in-
expugnable doctors, from Albertus Magnus, from Jacob
Boehmen, and from Immanuel Kant; and of these such a
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
129
cataract did I precipitate upon my unhappy antagonist-
such a Niagara-that under the pitiless drenching he
scarcely ventured to lift up his head. It was a perfect hail-
storm chorus. Then came his rejoinder, solemn and con-
scientious that he did not altogether understand me.
Miraculous, indeed, and by divine assistance, it must have
been if he had. "For instance," said he, “in applying the
term pathologically considered to the To ens, what might be
your precise meaning?" I replied that certainly it merited
some deliberation to determine exactly what it was or might
be to consider the To ens in its pathological relations; but
that, as we seemed to be not quite agreed about the definition
or use of our terms, perhaps it might be as well to adjourn
our discussion to some future day, when we might have
more leisure to arrange preliminaries. He was a good-
natured man, and perhaps he saw through my stratagem
and its purpose. For he smiled, and agreed with me that we
had better define our terms more at leisure. We bowed to
each other; and, the contest being thus understood to be
suspended, general conversation recommenced. This match,
in the language of the ring, I believe that Mrs. H. More
viewed as a cross 1: for my part, I can never help laughing
when I think either of the original absurdity of my position,
in being regularly pitted as a game-cock in single duel with
this distinguished guest of Mrs. H. More's, or of that second
tissue of absurdities by which I delivered myself from the
first.
But I am insensibly wandering beyond the limits
assigned me. I was on the point of sketching the principal
figures in that polished society which was generally met
with at Barley Wood; but I forbear. In saying so much
as I have already done upon the central figure in the group-
Mrs. Hannah More herself-I could not disguise from myself
one difficulty which has met me at every turn. Inevitably
I could not but place myself in somewhat of an advantageous
position as regarded our conversations; for, with all true
humility, I affect none which is false. Mrs. H. More was
not a woman to say brilliant things: if there were any
1 A cross is when, by some collusion, either party evades the
battle, either by making little resistance or by any other stratagem.
VOL. XIV
K
130
MISCELLANEA
novelties of opinion offered in conversation, assuredly they
did not come from her. And, being myself a perfect Talus,¹
or iron man, as to equity, and as to logic (which is in fact
equity in the intellect), I could not without great affectation
feel any weakness or fears in the presence of one who had
really no masculine power about her, and who continually
laid herself open to attack and to defeat, if a man had
carried so foolish a purpose into her company. She was, in
fact, to sum up her pretensions, an agreeable, an amiable,
and a clever woman, who had been a little spoiled by
flattery, and had been pushed forward by feeble-minded
women of rank to assume a station of authority which did
not naturally belong to her, and which was never manifested
without seeming particularly unbecoming as associated with
those retiring qualities of modesty and reserve which did
really cling to her inmost nature. As a writer, how
eminently artificial she was, notwithstanding some imaginary
admiration which she always professed for simplicity, is
evident from the very structure of her sentences; which are
all turned as in a lathe, and are so entirely dependent for
their effect upon antithesis, or direct contraposition in the
words, even where there is little or none in the thoughts,
that once a great poet, opening one of her works and read-
ing a paragraph, made this remark to me,-"These feeble
thinkers dare not trust a single thought to its native powers:
so afraid are they of seeming dull, and so conscious of no innate
right to challenge or support attention, that each particular
sentence is polished into a sparkling and independent whole ;
so that, open the book where you will, all has an exterior
brilliancy, and will bear being detached without any injury.
to its effect, having no sort of natural cohesion with the con-
text, or dependency upon what goes before." Her Calebs,
again, showed in another way her artificial way of thinking;
for, assuredly, her natural delicacy would have made her
revolt from the grossness implied in the whole plan of that
novel, and expressed in its very title, "Calebs in Search of a
Wife." Such a search would, in real life, cover any man
with ridicule, and the woman on whom his preference settled
1 See Spenser's fiction of Talus, in the Faery Queene, derived how-
ever from an older fiction of Paganism.
RECOLLECTIONS OF HANNAH MORE
131
with shame. But, with all these ineradicable disadvantages,
Mrs. More's works have their value. The very dilution of
their thoughts recommends them, and adapts them to those
who would shrink from severer or profounder speculations,
and who seek, in all they read, to see their own ordinary
sentiments reflected. Still, even thus, Mrs. H. More is not
destined to any long existence. The species, the class, of such
writers, it is true, will always be in demand; but the indi-
vidual perishes, because each successive generation looks for
specific adaptation to itself, for illustrations drawn from the
objects moving upon its own peculiar field of experience, and
possessing that sort of interest which is always attached pre-
eminently to a living writer.¹
1 The following is a chronological list of the chief publications of
Hannah More:-Search after Happiness, a Pastoral Drama, 1773;
The Inflexible Captive, a Tragedy, 1774; Sir Eldred of the Bower,
&c., 1776; Percy, a Tragedy, 1777; Essays on Various Subjects,
principally designed for Young Ladies, 1778; The Fatal Falsehood, a
Tragedy, 1779; Sacred Dramas, &c., 1782; Florio, a Tale for Fine
Gentlemen and Fine Ladies, 1786; The Bas Bleu, a Conversation (a
Eulogy on Mrs. Montagu's Ladies' Literary Club), 1786; Thoughts on
the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, 1788:
Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World, 1790: Village
Politics, 1793; The Cheap Repository (a monthly miscellany), 1795-
8; Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1799;
Hints towards Forming the Character of a Princess, 1805; Calebs in
Search of a Wife, 1809; Practical Piety, 1811; Christian Morals,
1812; Essay on the Character and Writings of St. Paul, 1815;
Stories for the Middle Ranks of Society, 1818; Tales for the Common
People, 1818; Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opinions and Manners,
with Reflections on Prayer, 1819; Bible Rhymes, 1821; The Spirit of
Prayer, 1825. All these were immediately and extremely popular,
-some of them enormously so.-M.
WALLADMOR¹
A PSEUDO-WAVERLEY NOVEL
Now let me pass to a part of my London literary life interest-
ing in its circumstances; and a part it was which interested
Charles Lamb, though I doubt whether he ever went so far
in his interest as to look into the book which records my
share in the affair. This affair had thus far a general in-
terest,—that it was undoubtedly the most complete hoax that
ever can have been perpetrated. The circumstances are
these :-After the author of Waverley had for a considerable
succession of years delighted the world with one or two
novels annually, the demand for Waverley novels came to be
felt as a periodical craving all over Europe; just as, in the
case of Napoleon, some bloody battle by land or by sea was
indispensable, after each few months' interval, to pacify the
public taste for blood, long irritated by copious gratification.
Now, it happened in 1823 that no Waverley novel was in
readiness, or likely to be in readiness, for the Leipsic fair at
Michaelmas. Upon which a cry arose amongst the German
booksellers-Forge one! "Presumptuous enough that," the
reader will say.
Doubtless! However, the thing was done.
A German, and (to better the case) a German of ultra-dul-
¹ Originally published in Tait's Magazine for September 1838 as
an article in the series of De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches: not
included by De Quincey among his Collected Writings; but reprinted
in 1871 in the second of the Supplementary Volumes to Messrs. Black's
reissue of the Collected Writings. The paper has been reserved for
the present place because of the insulated nature of its subject and
because of the need of some additional information to make it properly
intelligible. This is supplied in footnotes.-M.
WALLADMOR
133
:
ness, set to work upon a novel.
He called it Walladmor,-
a name, by the way, to be accentuated not upon the penulti-
mate, "Walládmor," but upon the ante-penultimate or first
syllable, viz. "Wálladmor," as appears from the old rhymes
connected with the tale,—e.g.,
"When black men storm the outer door,
Grief shall be over at Walladmor
""
where all would be spoiled if the accent were thrown on the
penultimate. Well, this book, this Walladmor, made its
appearance in the German language, not as what it really
was-a German novel, written by a German novelist-but
as a translation from an English original of Sir Walter Scott.
In this character it appeared at Leipsic; in this character it
was instantly dispersed over the length and breadth of Ger-
many; and in this character it crossed the sea to London.
I must here stop to mention that other tricks had been
meditated upon Sir Walter; and I will venture to say that,
sooner or later, one of these tricks will be tried. In a
country like England, where (by means of our exquisite
organisation through newspapers, &c., and our consequent
unity of feeling) an author may acquire a more intense
popularity, and more rapidly, than he ever can upon the
Continent, there will always be a motive for pirating such an
author, or for counterfeiting him, beyond what is ever likely
to exist upon the Continent. In Sir Walter Scott's case, it
is true, there was a mystery which added greatly to the
popularity. But still it strikes me that, simply from the
unifying powers at work amongst ourselves, more intense
popularity will continually arise in this country than can
elsewhere. The everlasting reverberation of a name from a
dense population, furnished with the artificial means for pro-
longing and repeating the echoes, must lead to a result quite
inconceivable amongst the non-conducting and frittered
population of Germany. There will, therefore, arise in
the course of the next century continual temptations for
repeating the trick of counterfeiting, and also that other
trick meditated upon Sir Walter (or rather upon the house
of Constable ¹) which I am going to mention.-It had been
1 Scott's Edinburgh publisher, Archibald Constable, the Napoleon
of the British publishing world of those days.-M.
134
MISCELLANEA
much agitated 1 in Germany, and I believe also in France,
whether if a translation were made of a Waverley novel
into a foreign language, and afterwards that translation
(German, suppose, or French) were translated back into
English by a person who had never seen the original, and
who consequently would give a sufficient colouring of differ-
ence to the style-whether, I say, that retranslation might
not be lawfully introduced into England, and lawfully sustain
itself as a saleable commodity in the character of a foreign
book.
Meantime, whilst this suggestion was under debate-
a suggestion which applied entirely to the case of a true
Waverley novel one bookseller hit upon another, more
directly applying to the present case of September 1824, the
unexpected case of no Waverley novel offering to appear.
He, therefore, this enterprising bibliopole, Herr Herbig of
1 This was a question almost sure to be suggested, if it were only
by the intense book-trade interest that had gradually connected itself
with the priority of importation, and the priority of translation, on
any occasion of a Waverley novel. Bribes were offered by commission
for the furtive transmission of proof-sheets from the Edinburgh press;
expresses were kept sleeping in boots and spurs, to forward the earliest
copies; translators were preoccupied by retaining-fees,—for instance,
Lindau, Methusalem, Müller, Dr. Spieker, Lotz, Von Halem, and
many others; and between these translators the most furious races
were run-all in order to insure an earlier entrance into the market
;
for, though Leipsic, in its half-yearly fairs, was the general market,
still, in a special call like this, there were extraordinary means of get-
ting into circulation. Hence, and from a competition so burning, it
may be readily supposed that many errors would creep into the trans-
lations, and especially where imperfect parts of volumes happened to
be transmitted of which there is an amusing instance mentioned by
the German author of Walladmor in his dedication to Sir Walter
Scott: Ah, Sir Walter! did you but know to what straits the poor
"German translator of a Walter-Scottish novel is reduced, you would
pardon greater liberties than any I have taken. Ecoutez. First of
"all, comes the publisher, and cheapens a translator in the very cheapest
"market of translation-jobbers that can be supposed likely to do any
justice to the work. Next come the sheets, dripping wet from the
"Edinburgh press, with or without sense and connexion, just as chance
may order it. Nay, it happens not unfrequently that, if a sheet should
"chance to end with one or two syllables of an unfinished word,
66 we Germans are obliged to translate this first instalment of a future
meaning; and, by the time the next sheet arrives with the syllables
"in arrear, we first learn into what confounded scrapes we have
66
66
""
:
WALLADMOR
135
•
Berlin, resolved to have one forged; and without delay he
hired the man that should forge it. Well, this forgery was
perpetrated, and, the better to hoax the German public, in
three volumes.1 London it reached on a certain day in the
autumn of 1824, towards the close of September or of
October, I really forget which; but this I remember,-that
there was barely a space of forty-eight hours for reading and
reviewing the book, a book of a thousand pages, before the
literary journals of the month would be closed of necessity
against further contributions. One copy only had been
received as yet in London; and this was bespoke for Sir
Walter Scott. Somebody's interest, I know not whose, pro-
cured it for me, as a man who read German fluently; and
within the time allowed I had completed a tolerably long
article for the London Magazine.2 It may be supposed that
reading the book was quite out of the question for one who
"fallen by guessing and translating at haphazard. Nomina sunt
“odiosa: else—! But I shall content myself with reminding the
public of the well-known and sad mishap which occurred in the
"translation of Kenilworth. This is sufficiently notorious. Another
"is more recent: I will relate it :-The sheet, as it was received from
Edinburgh, closed unfortunately thus :-' To save himself from these
disasters, he became an agent of Smith-'; and we all translated-
"Um sich aus diesen trübseligkeiten zu erreten wurde er agent bei
"einem Schmiedemeister'; that is, 'he became foreman to a black-
"smith.' Now, sad it is to tell what followed. We had dashed at it,
"and we waited in trembling hope for the result. Next morning's
"( post arrived, and showed that all Germany had been basely betrayed
"by a catch-word of Mr. Constable's. For the next sheet took up
"the imperfect catchword thus:-'field matches (i.e. Smithfield
"matches), or marriages contracted for money'; and the German
sentence should have been cobbled and put to rights as follows:
"Er negocirte um sich aufzuhelfen die sogenannten Smithfields heir-
"athen, &c. Should have been, I say; but, woe is me for all Ger-
many! it was too late; the translated sheet had been already
finished off with the blacksmith in it-Heaven confound him! And
"the blacksmith is there to this day, and cannot be ejected."
((
((
"
1 The title was "Walladmor. Frei nach dem Englischen des
Walter Scott. Von W. . . . Berlin: bei F. A. Herbig. 1824. 3
Bände (Walladmor: freely translated from the English of Walter
Scott. By W.
Berlin F. A. Herbig, 1824.
:
""
volumes).-M.
•
In three
2 This anonymous article of De Quincey's filled thirty pages
(double columns) of the London Magazine for October 1824, and was
entitled "Walladmor: Sir Walter Scott's German Novel."-M.
136
MISCELLANEA
had in so brief a time to write a long paper upon it. The
course I pursued, therefore, was this:-I drew up a some-
what rhetorical account of the German hoax; explained the
drift of it; and then gave a translation of such passages as
had happened to strike me. To the best of my remembrance,
I selected three: one, the opening chapter, which introduces.
the two heroes of the novel, as sole survivors of a steamer
which had blown up in the Bristol Channel, swimming in
company, then engaged in a murderous conflict for a barrel,
and finally reconciled, by mutual acts of generosity, into
giving each other all the assistance within their power.
This was a truly German scene. The next was a snow-
storm amongst the mountains of Merionethshire, and not
without some interest. The last described the committal of
a principal person in the tale to an ancient castle (Walladmor)
on a charge of treason. And, in this case, the incidents
moved amongst picturesque circumstances of mountain
scenery, with the adjuncts of storm and moonlight, not ill
described.1
>>
1 This brief account by De Quincey of his article in the London
Magazine is pretty exact, but may here be a little extended :-The
article began by at once announcing that the book appearing as “Sir
Walter Scott's German Novel" was a huge hoax-"the boldest hoax
of our times are the words. Not the less,-after some pages of
( chaff on the audacity of the hoax, in the course of which the
impudent dedication by the soi-disant translator to Sir Walter Scott,
given in specimen only in last footnote, is quoted at full length,—the
article proceeds to a sketch of the story of the forged novel. The
sketch is incoherent and confused, showing that De Quincey, in his
extreme hurry to get the article ready in time for the magazine, had
grasped the substance of the book but very imperfectly; but it
sufficiently appears that the story was one of wildly absurd adventure
in Wales and the West of England, including somehow the London
Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820, and with a Sir Morgan Walladmor
of Walladmor Castle at the centre of it, and his long-lost and
smuggler-bred son for the hero, and an old gypsy woman named Gillie
Godber (a kind of Meg Merrilies) and a Mr. Bertram (also a Guy
Mannering recollection) and a Mr. Dulberry and a Sir Charles
Davenant among the minor characters. Translated specimen extracts,
as De Quincey says, were bedded in the sketch,—not three only, as De
Quincey recollects, but, shorter taken with longer, about twelve in all.
In keeping with the amount of the smuggler element thrown ashore, to
permeate the story by wandering over the Welsh scenery, there is a
good deal of ruffianly language of the Dirk Hatteraick sort in the
colloquies in these extracts. After these extracts, and the general
WALLADMOR
137
How it could have happened I do not know, but it did
happen that I had stumbled by pure accident upon almost
every passage in the whole course of the thousand pages
which could be considered tolerable. Naturally enough, the
publishers of the London Magazine were encouraged by these
specimens to hope well of the book; and, at their request, I
undertook to translate it. Confident in my powers of rapid
translation, I undertook even to keep up with the printer.
Three sheets, or forty-eight pages, I made sure of producing
daily; at which rate a volume would be finished in a week,
and three weeks might see the whole work ready for the
public. Never was there such a disappointment, or such a
perplexity. Not until the printing had actually commenced,
with arrangements for keeping several compositors at work,
did I come to understand the hopeless task I had undertaken.
Such rubbish-such "almighty" nonsense (to speak trans-
atlanticè)—no eye has ever beheld as nine hundred and fifty,
to say the very least, of these thousand pages. To translate
them was perfectly out of the question; the very devils and
review of the book, De Quincey points out some of its most absurd
anachronisms and mistakes in British topography, and closes the
article with a paragraph of mixed jest and rebuke. "But now, dear
"German hoaxer," the paragraph begins, "a word or two to you at
parting. And mistake us not for any of those dull people qui
"n'entendent pas la raillerie. On the contrary, we are extravagantly
"fond of sport; la bagatelle is what we doat on; and many a time
"have we risked our character as philosophers by the exorbitance of
our thirst after 'fun.' Nay, we patronise even hoaxing and quizzing,
"when they are witty and half as good as yours. But all this within
"certain eternal limits; which limits are good nature and justice.
These limits, he goes on to say, had certainly been transgressed in
Walladmor in some particulars; and both Sir Walter and the British
public generally had been treated with an amount of disrespect needing
very considerable apology.—Sir Walter must certainly have been sur-
prised when a copy of the German fabrication in imitation of himself
reached him at Abbotsford. His first impression, on seeing the
advertisements of the book, had been, Lockhart informs us, that
sheets of his Welsh novel The Betrothed, the publication of which had
been deferred because of his dissatisfaction with it, had been purloined
from the Edinburgh printing office and smuggled into Germany; and,
though the actual sight of the clumsy fabrication convinced him that
this was not the case, it left no doubt that some one had communicated
the fact that a forthcoming novel of Scott's was to be on Welsh
ground.-M.
76
MISCELLANEA
old-fashioned integrity finds its functions usurped by false-
hood and imposture. This conceit hardly merits contradic-
tion: neither is it so much a result of error as of self-love.
Those worthy greybeards who are so happy in their self-
estimation as to persuade themselves that Providence has
interposed for their welfare by bringing them into the world
during its most palmy state cannot readily submit to believe
that, after their own removal, things will go on as prosper-
ously as before they were born. They would fain imagine
that nature lapses into dotage concurrently with themselves;
and this with the very natural purpose of evading all sorrow
for leaving a world which is already arrived at the very
brink of her ruin.1
Groundless as this fancy is for seeking to measure the
age and duration of nature by standards derived from any
single human generation, there is, however, another conjec-
ture which is far from seeming so absurd, viz. that in a
course of some millennia perhaps a change in the constitu-
tion of the earth might arise sufficient to become perceptible.
Here let it be remarked that it is not enough to allege with
Fontenelle that the trees of the past age were not larger
than at present, the men neither older nor more vigorous;
these objections are not sufficient to establish the fact that
Nature is not liable to old age, or that in reality she is not
growing old. Qualities, such as those of age and strength,
have their fixed limits prescribed to them, beyond which
not even the most blooming condition of nature can propel
them. In all climates there is here no difference. The
richest soils, and those most happily situated, have in this
respect no privilege beyond the poorest and most barren.
1 In connexion with the matter of this paragraph, I may repeat my
reference (see ante, Vol. VIII, p. 10, footnote) to Milton's striking
Latin poem Naturam Non Pati Senium ("That Nature is not liable
to Old Age"). That poem was a Cambridge academic exercise,
written by Milton in 1628 expressly in refutation, though in highly
imaginative fashion, of a then current speculation in the European
philosophical world exactly to the same effect as that here restated
and ridiculed by Kant,-viz. that Nature or the mundane system of
things was already in decrepitude, all that was noblest lying in the
past, and the present and the future exhibiting nothing but decay and
degeneracy.-M.
KANT ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
77
But whether, supposing the case that between well-attested
accounts of past times and the most accurate observation of
our own a comparison were carefully instituted, some differ-
ence would not be observed in their several rates of produc-
tiveness; whether, in fact, the earth have not heretofore
stood in need of less care and tending in order to yield food
to the human race: this, if it could be determined, seems to
promise some light to the problem before us.
Such an
answer would, in fact, be tantamount to laying before our
eyes the first steps in a long series or progression, by means
of which we should have it in our power to ascertain what
was the final point to which the earth is tending; what the
latter steps in that same series or progress towards which
Nature, in her dark voyage, is for ever insensibly making
way. The sort of comparison, however, which I am here
supposing to be instituted between two remote periods of
time is little to be relied on, or
or rather is altogether
impossible. So much in the productiveness of our earth
depends upon human industry that, after all, it could
hardly in any one case be determined satisfactorily whether,
in the desolation and depopulation of countries which once
were flourishing seats of prosperity, any, and what propor-
tion, of the ruin should be ascribed to the decay of Nature,
and whether any, and what, to the negligence of man. Such
an investigation I will recommend to those who have more
ability and more inclination than myself for searching the
records and examining the monuments of past times. For
my own part, I purpose to treat the question simply as a
natural philosopher, with a view to arriving, if possible, by
this approach at some glimpse of the truth.
Most naturalists who have sketched theories of the earth
tend to this conclusion:-That its productiveness is slowly
decaying; that, by tardy steps, it is approaching to that con-
dition in which it will become desolate and depopulated;
and that time only is wanted to exhibit the sad spectacle of
Nature superannuated, and expiring amidst the utter ex-
haustion of her powers. The problem is a weighty one;
and it will amply reward our pains to approximate cautiously
to a solution. First of all, however, let us accurately deter-
mine the idea which is to be formed of superannuation, as
140
MISCELLANEA
many a kind thing was done to me in poor men's cottages, which, to
my dying day, I shall never be able to repay individually. Hence, as
occasions offer, I would seek to make my acknowledgments generally
to the country. Upon Penmorfa sands I once had an interesting ad-
venture; and I have accordingly commemorated Penmorfa. To the
little town of Machynleth I am indebted for various hospitalities; and
I think Machynleth will acknowledge itself indebted to me exclusively
for its mayor and corporation. Others there are besides, in that
neighbourhood, both towns and men, that, when they shall read my
St. David's Day, will hardly know whether they are standing on their
head or their heels. As for the Bishop of Bangor of those same days,
I owed his Lordship no particular favour¹; and therefore, you will
observe, I have now taken my vengeance on that see for ever, by
making it do suit and service to the house of Walladmor. But enough
of St. David's Day! There are some other little changes which I have
been obliged to make, in deference to the taste of this country. In the
case of Captain le Harnois, it appears to me that, from imperfect
knowledge of the English language, you have confounded the words
'sailor' and 'tailor'; for you make the Captain talk very much like
the latter. There is, however, a great deal of difference in the habits.
of the two animals, according to our English naturalists; and, there-
fore, I have retouched the Captain, and curled his whiskers. I have
also taken the liberty of curing Miss Walladmor of an hysterical affec-
tion. What purpose it answered I believe you would find it hard to
say; and I am sure she has enough to bear without that.
Your
geography, let me tell you, was none of the best; and I have brushed
it up myself. Something the public will bear: topographical sins are
venial in a romance; and no candid people look very sharply after the
hydrography of a novel. But still, my dear sir, it did strike me that
the case of a man's swimming on his back from Bristol to the Isle of
Anglesea was a little beyond the privilege granted by the most mater-
nal public. No: pardon me, that rather exceeds the public swallow.
Besides, it would have exposed us both to illiberal attacks in the
Quarterly Review from Mr. Barrow of the Admiralty, your weak point
being his strong one; and particularly because I have taken liberties
with Mr. Croker,2 who is a colleague and old crony of his. Your
chronology, by the way, was also damaged; but that has gone to the
watchmaker's, and is now regulated, so as to go as well as the Horse-
Guards. Now, finally, 'Mine dear sare,' could you not translate me
back into German, and darn me as I have darned you? But you
must not sweat' me down in the same ratio that I have 'sweated'
you; for, if you do that, I fear that my 'dimensions will become in-
visible to any thick sight' in Germany, and I shall present no mark'
1 See ante, Vol. III, pp. 322-328.—M.
2 I had called him Ally Croker, in allusion to an old joke of Mr.
Southey, Mr. Croker having used the word ally and allies in his
poem of "Talavera" more Hibernico, with the accent on the first
syllable.
WALLADMOR
141
to the critical enemy. Darn me into two portly volumes; and then,
perhaps, I will translate you back again into English, and darn you
with silk so hyperlustrous that, were Dolly and Professor Kant to rise
from the dead, Dolly should grow jealous of me, and the professor con-
fess himself more thoroughly puzzled and confounded, as to the matter
of personal identity, by the final Walladmor, than ever he had been by
the Cutlerian stockings. Jusqu'au revoir, my dear principal, hoping
that you will soon invest me with that character in relation to your-
self, and that you will then sign, as it is now my turn to sign-Your
obedient (but not very faithful) TRANSLATOR.
It will be observed that in this dedication I have not
ventured to state the nature of my alterations in their whole
extent. This I could not do in prudence; for, though I
should really have made myself a party to a gross fraud upon
the public purse by smuggling into circulation a load of
hideous trash under the momentary attraction of its con-
nexion with Sir Walter Scott (an attraction which might have
sold one edition before its nature was discovered)—though I
could not do this, and therefore took the only honourable
course open to me in so strange a dilemma-viz. that of sub-
stituting a readable, and at all events not dull, novel for the
abortion I had been betrayed into sanctioning,—yet it might
too much have repelled readers if I had frankly stated before-
hand the extent to which I had been compelled to recompose
this German hoax. In a postscript, however, when the
reader might be supposed to have finished the book, I spoke
a little more plainly. And, as there will be some amusement
to many readers in what I said—which (owing to the very
imperfect publication ¹ of the book) is, in reality, nearly
good as manuscript”—I shall here quote a part of it :
as
"E quovis ligno non fit Mercurius," or, to express this Roman
proverb by our own homely one-" You cannot make a silk purse out
of a sow's ear. Certainly it is difficult to do so, and none can speak
""
1 The system of quack-puffing, applied to books, and, above all, the
artifice of seducing a reader into the reading of paragraphs which else
he would shun, by holding out false expectation in the heading—all
this, in common with other literary men, I deem disgraceful to litera-
ture. Such practices lower an honourable profession to the level of a
mechanic trade. But the system of soliciting public attention by plain
unvarnished advertisements-that is rendered indispensable to the pub-
lication of a book. That wanting (as in Walladmor), the book is not
published.
142
MISCELLANEA
to that more feelingly than myself: but not impossible, as I hope that
my "Walladmor" will show, compared with the original. This is a
point which, on another account, demands a word or two of explana-
tion, as the reader will else find it difficult to understand upon what
principle of translation three thick-set German volumes can have shrunk
into two English ones of somewhat meagre proportion.
I then go on to explain that the German pseudo-Scott had
chosen three, not because his matter naturally extended so far,
but on the principle of exact imitation.
A Scotch novel from the Constable press, and not in three
volumes, would have been detected in limine as a hoax and a counter-
feit. Such a novel would be as ominous and prodigious as "double
Thebes ; as perverse as drinking a man's health with two times two
(which, in fact, would be an insult); as palpably fraudulent as a sub-
scription of £99: 19s. (where it would be clear that some man had
pocketed a shilling); and as contrary to all natural history as that
twenty-seven tailors should make either more or fewer than the cube-
root of that number. What may be the occult law of the Constable
press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be hard
to explain. Mr. Kant himself, with all his subtlety, could never
make up his mind, in his Königsberg lectures on that subject, why it
is that no man thinks of presenting a lady with a service of twenty-
three cups and saucers, though evidently she is just as likely to have
a party of twenty-three people as twenty-four. Nay, if the reader
himself were to make such a present to an English grand jury, when
the party never could be more than twenty-three, he would infallibly
order a service of twenty-four, though he must, in his own conscience,
be aware that the twenty-fourth cup and saucer was a mere Irish bull,
and a disgusting pleonasm; a twenty-fourth grand-jury-man being as
entirely a chimera as the "abstract lord mayor" of Scriblerus on a 30th
of February. Not only without a reason, therefore, but even against
reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain numbers; and
Mr. Constable has a right to his superstition,—which, after all, may be
the classical one that three happens to be the number of the Graces.
This compliment, by the way, was delicate enough to
merit an acknowledgment from the Constable press. So
much then being settled-that, as a prima facie step towards
sustaining the hoax, three must be the number of the volumes
-I then went on to say:
"But what if there was not time to complete so many volumes so
as to appear at the Leipsic fair? In that case two men must do what
one could not. Yet, as the second man could not possibly know what
his leader was about, he must, of necessity, produce his under stratum
without the least earthly reference to the upper, his thorough bass
WALLADMOR
143
without relation to the melodies in the treble. This was awkward;
and, to meet the difficulty, it appears to me that the upper man said
to the lower, 'Write me a huge heap of speeches upon politics and
Welsh genealogy; write me loads of rubbish, astrological, cosmological,
and diabolical' (as Mrs. Malaprop has it). Have these ready. I, mean-
time, have two characters (Sir Morgan and Mr. Dulberry the Radical)
upon whom I can hang all that you write. You make hooks enough,
I'll make eyes; and, what between my men and your speeches, my
eyes and your hooks, it's odds but we make a very pretty novel. Such
I conceive to have been the pleasant arrangement upon which the
machinery was worked, so as to fetch up the way before the
Michaelmas Fair began. And thus were two (perhaps three) men's
labours dovetailed into one German romance. Aliter non fit, Avite,
liber. When the rest of the rigging was complete, the politics,
genealogy, astrology, &c., were mounted as 'royals' and 'sky-scrapers';
the ship weighed, and soon after made Leipsic and London under a
press of sail."
66
Then, having protested that this trash was absolutely
beyond hope, and that I should have made myself a party to
the author's folly or his knavery by translating it, I offered,
however, in the case of my reader's complaining of these
large retrenchments, to translate the whole for a considera-
tion "
; to cast it upon the complainant's premises, and to
shovel it into the coal-cellar, or any more appropriate place.
But thus, I explained, did in fact arise the difference in size,
as well as quality, between the German and the English
Walladmor. And henceforwards I shall think the better of
the German author as well as myself so long as I live: of
him for an unrivalled artist of sows' ears; and of myself for
a very respectable manufacturer of silk purses :—
Thus much to account for my omissions; which, however, some
readers may facetiously regard, far from needing apology, as my
only merits; and that would be as cruel as Lessing's suggestion
to an author for his table of errata-" Apropos of errata, suppose
you were to put your whole book into the list of errata. More
candid readers, I am inclined to hope, will blame me for not having
made even larger alterations in the book; and that would be a flatter-
ing critique, as it must presume that I could have improved it;
and compliment never wears so delightful an aspect as when it takes
the shape of blame. The truth is, I have altered; yes, altered and
altered, until I became alarmed. The ghost of Sir John Cutler, of Sir
John's stockings, of Sir Francis Drake's ship,-nay, of Jason's ship,
and other ghosts even than these-all illustrating the same perplexing
question, began to haunt me. Metaphysical doubts fell upon me, and
I came to fear that, if to a new beginning and a new catastrophe I
144
MISCELLANEA
were to add a new middle, possibly there might come some evil-
minded person who might say that I also was a hoaxer, an English
hoaxer building upon a German hoaxer. Then I paused. But still I
have gone too far; for it is a most delicate operation to take work out
of another man's loom and put work in joinings and sections will
sometimes appear; colours will not always match. In general, I
would request the reader to consider himself indebted to me for any-
thing he may find particularly good, and, in any case, to load my
unhappy "principal" with the blame of everything that is wrong.
Coming upon any passage which he thinks superlatively bad, let him
be assured that I had no hand in it. Should he change his opinion
upon it, I may be disposed to reconsider whether I had not some
hand in it. This will be the more reasonable in him, as the critics
will "feel it their duty" (oh! of course, "their duty ") to take the very
opposite course. However, if he reads German, my German Wallad-
mor is at his service, and he can judge for himself.
Not reading
German, let him take my word when I apply to the English Walladmor
the spirit of the old bull-
"Had you seen but these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your eyes, and bless Marshal Wade."
Here closed my explanations; but, as a l'envoy or quod
bene vortat to the whole concern, I added something-a vale-
diction and an ave in the same breath-which, for the sake
of the Spenserian allusion, many people will relish; and
even yet I pique myself upon it as a felicitous passage. It
began with a quotation; and this quotation, as pretty broadly
I hinted, was from myself-myself as the reviewer in the
London Magazine. Thus it was :—
"A friend of mine (so we all say when we are looking out for some
masquerade dress under which to praise ourselves, or to abuse some
dear friend), a friend of mine has written a very long review (or
analysis rather) of the German Walladmor, in a literary journal of the
metropolis. He concludes with the following passage, which I choose
to quote on account of the graceful allusion it contains, partly also
because it gives me an opportunity for trying my hand at an allusion
to the same romantic legend :-'Now, turning back from the hoaxer
to the hoax,' we shall conclude with this proposition :-All readers of
Spenser must know that the true Florimel lost her girdle, which, they
will remember, was found by Sir Satyrane, and was adjudged by a
whole assemblage of knights to the false Florimel, although it did not
quite fit her. She-viz. the showy or false Florimel-
'exceedingly did fret,
And, snatching from his hand half angrily
The belt again, about her body 'gan it tie.
WALLADMOR
145
Yet nathemore would it her body fit;
Yet natheless to her, as her due right,
It yielded was by them that judgèd it.
Faery Queene, b. iv. c. 5.1
1 The words from "Now, turning back from the hoaxer" to the
end are, as De Quincey says, a quotation from his original paper in the
London Magazine,-where, however, the lines from Spenser are not
given with absolute correctness. -On the whole, my impression is
that De Quincey was a little ashamed of his connexion in 1824 with
the absurd and impudent Walladmor hoax, first by his too lenient
treatment of it in his magazine-article, and then by the laborious
extra-mystification of his professed translation of the wretched German
abortion into two volumes English; and that he meant the present paper
of September 1838 in Tait's Magazine to supersede and cover up, as
far as possible, those older memorials of so ridiculous a transaction.
Although De Quincey was familiar with Edinburgh and with Edinburgh
people long before Scott's death in 1832, and was habitually resident
in Edinburgh for some time before that event, I find no trace of his
having ever come into personal relations with Scott. Any knowledge
he may have had of the look and figure of his great Edinburgh
contemporary must have been, like Carlyle's, by casual sights of him
in the street or in other public places of resort. —M.
L
VOL. XIV
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1
FRENCH and English Literature, which have now been in a
high state of activity for two entire centuries, and perhaps
as nearly as possible have been subject to the same allowance
for lulls arising out of civil agitations, cannot reasonably be
supposed to have left any nook or shy recess in the broad
field of national interest at this day unvisited. Long after
the main highway of waters has felt the full power of the
tide, channels running far inland, with thousands of little
collateral creeks, may be still under the very process of filling;
for two powers are required to those final effects of the tide,
the general hydrostatic power for maintaining the equilibrium,
and also hydraulic power for searching narrow conduits. On
the same analogy many human interests, less obvious or less
general, may long linger unnoticed, and survive for a time.
the widest expansion of intellectual activity. Possibly the
aspects of society must shift materially before even the
1 Professor Ferrier, one of De Quincey's friends and admirers, and a
fellow-contributor of his to Blackwood (with which, indeed, he had a
specially close connexion through his father-in-law " Christopher
North"), had taken the trouble to cut out from the magazine De
Quincey's contributions to it during the four years or so ranging from
1839 to 1842, and to have these bound by themselves in a volume
lettered on the back "Papers by De Quincey." The volume having
come into my possession, I was interested by finding in it two papers
not hitherto known as De Quincey's: viz. one in Blackwood for April
1839 entitled "The English Language," and one in Blackwood for
June 1840 entitled "The Opium and the China Question." Applica-
tion having been made to Messrs. Blackwood, they have obligingly
informed me that their books show that De Quincey was the writer of
these two papers.-M.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
147
human consciousness, far less a human interest of curiosity,
settles upon them with steadiness enough to light up and
vivify their relations. For example, odd as it may seem to
us, it is certain that in the Elizabethan age Political
Economy was not yet viewed by any mind,-no, not by Lord
Bacon's,—as even a possible mode of speculation. The whole
accidents of value and its functions were not as yet separated
into a distinct conscious object; nor, if they had been,
would it have been supposed possible to trace laws and fixed
relations amongst forms apparently so impalpable, and com-
binations so fleeting. With the growth of society, gradually
the same phenomena revolved more and more frequently;
something like order and connexion was dimly descried;
philosophic suspicion began to stir; observation was steadily
applied; reasoning and disputation ran their circle; and at
last a science was matured-definite as mechanics, though
(like that) narrow in its elementary laws.
Thus it is with all topics of general interest. Through
several generations they may escape notice; for there must
be an interest of social necessity visibly connected with them
before a mere vagrant curiosity will attract culture to their
laws. And this interest may fail to arise until society has
been made to move through various changes, and human
needs have assumed attitudes too commanding and too per-
manent to be neglected. The laws of the drama,—that is, of
the dramatic fable,-how subtle are they! How impercep-
tible-how absolutely non-existences-in any rude state of
society! But let a national theatre arise, let the mighty
artist come forward to shake men's hearts with scenic agita-
tions, how inevitably are these laws brightened to the
apprehension, searched, probed, analysed. Sint Mœcenates,
it has been said, non deerunt (Flacce) Marones.1 That may be
doubted; and nearer to the probabilities it would be to
invert the order of succession. But, however this may be, it
is certain from manifold experience that invariably there
will follow on the very traces and fresh footing of the
mighty agent (mighty, but possibly blind) the sagacious
theorist of his functions-in the very wake and visible path
1 A favourite quotation of De Quincey's. See ante, Vol. XIII,
p. 36.-M.
148
MISCELLANEA
1
of the awful Eschylus, or the tear-compelling Euripides,
producing their colossal effects in alliance with dark forces
slumbering in human nature, will step forth the torch-bear-
ing Aristotle, that pure starry intelligence, bent upon
searching into those effects, and measuring (when possible)
those forces. The same age, accordingly, beheld the first
pompous exhibitions of dramatic power which beheld also
the great speculator arise to trace its limits, proportions, and
the parts of its shadowy empire. "I came, I saw, I con-
quered ”—such might have been Aristotle's vaunt in review-
ing his own analysis of the Athenian drama; one generation,
or nearly so, having witnessed the creation of the Grecian
theatre as a fact, and the finest contemplative survey which
has yet been taken of the same fact viewed as a problem,-
of the dramatic laws, functions, powers, and limits.
No great number of generations, therefore, is requisite for
the exhaustion of all capital interests in their capital aspects.
And it may be presumed, with tolerable certainty, that by
this time the plough has turned up every angle of soil, pro-
perly national, alike in England or in France. Not that
many parts will not need to be tilled over again, and often
absolutely de novo. Much of what has been done has been
done so ill that it is as if it had not been done at all. For
instance, the history of neither kingdom has yet been written
in a way to last, or in a way worthy of the subject. Either
it has been slightly written as to research,-witness Hume
and Mézerai, Smollett and Père Daniel (not but some of
these writers lay claim to antiquarian merits); or written
inartificially and feebly as regards effect; or written with-
out knowledge as regards the political forces which moved.
underground at the great eras of our national development.
Still, after one fashion or another, almost every great
theme has received its treatment in both English literature
and French; though many are those on which, in the words
of the German adage upon psychology, we may truly affirm
that "the first sensible word is yet to be spoken." The soil
is not absolutely a virgin soil; the mine is not absolutely
1 "That pure starry intelligence":-Aristotle was sometimes called o
voûs, the intellect; and elsewhere, as Suidas records, he was said to dip
his pen into the very intellect and its fountains.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
149
unworked; although the main body of the precious ore is
yet to be extracted.
Meantime, one capital subject there is, and a domestic
subject besides, on which, strange to say, neither nation has
thought fit to raise any monument of learning and patriot-
ism. Rich, at several eras, in all kinds of learning, neither
England nor France has any great work to show upon her
own vernacular language. Res est in integro: no Hickes in
England, no Malesherbes or Menage in France, has chosen to
connect his own glory with the investigation and history of
his native tongue. And yet each language has brilliant
merits of a very different order; and we speak thoughtfully
when we say that, confining ourselves to our own, the most
learned work which the circumstances of any known or
obvious case allow, the work which presupposes the
amplest accomplishments of judgment and enormous
erudition, would be a History of the English Language,
from its earliest rudiments, through all the periods-
of its growth, to its stationary condition. Great rivers,
as they advance and receive vast tributary influxes,
change their direction, their character, their very name;
and the pompous inland sea bearing navies on its bosom
has had leisure, through a thousand leagues of meander-
ing, utterly to forget and disown the rocky mountain bed
and the violent rapids which made its infant state unfitted
to bear even the light canoe. The analogy is striking
between this case and that of the English language. In its
elementary period it takes a different name-the name of
Anglo-Saxon; and so rude was it and barren at one stage of
this rudimental form that in the Saxon Chronicle we find not
more than a few hundred words, perhaps from six to eight
hundred words, perpetually revolving, and most of which
express some idea in close relation to the state of war. The
narrow purposes of the Chronicler may, in part, it is true,
have determined the narrow choice of words; but it is
certain, on the other hand, that the scanty vocabulary which
then existed mainly determined the limited range of his
purposes. It is remarkable, also, that the idiomatic forms
and phrases are as scanty in this ancient Chronicle as the
ideas, the images, and the logical forms of connexion or
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MISCELLANEA
1
transition. Such is the shallow brook or rivulet of our
language in its infant stage. Thence it devolves a stream
continually enlarging down to the Norman era. Through
five centuries (commencing with the century of Bede) used
as the vernacular idiom for the intercourse of life by a nation
expanding gradually under the ripening influence of a pure
religion and a wise jurisprudence,-benefiting, besides, by the
culture it received from a large succession of learned ecclesi-
astics, who too often adopted the Latin for the vehicle of
their literary commerce with the Continent, but also in cases
past all numbering ¹ wrote (like the great patriot Alfred) for
popular purposes in Saxon,—even this rude dialect grew and
widened its foundations, until it became adequate to general
intellectual purposes. Still, even in this improved state, it
would have been found incommensurate to its great destiny.
It could not have been an organ corresponding to the grandeur
of those intellects which, in the fulness of time, were to com-
municate with mankind in oracles of truth or of power. It
could not have offered moulds ample enough for receiving
that vast literature which, in less than another five hundred
years, was beginning to well forth from the national genius.
Here, at the very first entrance upon this interesting
theme, we stumble upon what we may now understand to
have been the blindest of human follies. The peculiar, and
without exaggeration we may say the providential, felicity of
the English language has been made its capital reproach-
that, whilst yet ductile and capable of new impressions, it
received a fresh and large infusion of alien wealth.
It is,
say the imbecile, a "bastard" language, a "hybrid" lan-
guage, and so forth.
And thus, for a metaphor, for a name,
for a sound, they overlook, as far as depends on their will
1 "In cases past all numbering":-To go no further than the one
branch of religious literature, vast masses of sacred poetry in the Saxon
language are yet slumbering, unused, unstudied, almost unknown to the
student, amongst our manuscript treasures. ["Vast masses
" is too
strong a phrase. Grein's Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie, pub-
lished in 1857-8, and containing the entire body of Anglo-Saxon
verse-remains, religious or secular, known to be then extant, consists
of two moderately-sized octavo volumes of text. It is, however, not
to the credit of English scholarship that it remained for a German to
make and edit this collection.—M.]
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
151
they sign away, the main prerogative and dowry of their
mother tongue. It is time to have done with these follies.
Let us open our eyes to our own advantages. Let us recog-
nise with thankfulness that fortunate inheritance of collateral
wealth which, by inoculating our Anglo-Saxon stem with
the mixed dialect of Neustria, laid open an avenue mediately
through which the whole opulence of Roman, and ulti-
mately of Grecian, thought plays freely through the pulses of
our native English. Most fortunately, the Saxon language
was yet plastic and unfrozen at the era of the Norman
invasion. The language was thrown again into the crucible,
and new elements were intermingled with its own when
brought into a state of fusion.1 And this final process it
was, making the language at once rich in matter and malle-
able in form, which created that composite and multiform
speech-fitted, like a mirror, to reflect the thoughts of the
myriad-minded Shakspere (å åvnp μúpiovovs), and yet at
the same time with enough remaining of its old forest
stamina for imparting a masculine depth to the sublimities
of Milton or the Hebrew Prophets, and a patriarchal
simplicity to the Historic Scriptures.
Such being the value, such the slow development, of our
noble language, through a period of more than twice six
hundred years, how strange it must be thought that not only
we possess at this day no history, no circumstantial annals,
of its growth and condition at different eras,—a defect which
even the German literature of our language has partially
supplied,—but that, with one solitary exception, no eminent
scholar has applied himself even to a single function of this
elaborate service. The solitary exception, we need scarcely
say, points to Dr. Johnson-whose merits and whose de-
merits, whose qualifications and disqualifications, for a task
of this nature, are now too notorious to require any illustra-
tion from us. The slenderness of Dr. Johnson's philological
1 "When brought into a state of fusion" :—Let not the reader look
upon this image, when applied to an unsettled language, as pure fanciful
metaphor. Were there nothing more due to a superinduction of one
language upon another, merely the confusion of inflexional forms.
between the two orders of declensions, conjugations, &c., would tend
to recast a language, and virtually to throw it anew into a furnace of
secondary formation, by unsettling the old familiar forms.
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MISCELLANEA
attainments, and his blank ignorance of that particular
philology which the case particularly required-the philology
of the northern languages-are as much matters of record, and
as undeniable, as, in the opposite scale, are his logical skill,
his curious felicity of distinction, and his masculine vigour
of definition. Working under, or over, a commission of men
more learned than himself, he would have been the ablest
of agents for digesting and organising their materials. To
inform, or invest with form, in the sense of logicians--in
other words, to impress the sense and trace the presence of
principles-that was Dr. Johnson's peculiar province; but to
assign the matter, whether that consisted in originating the
elements of thought, or in gathering the affinities of lan-
guages, was suited neither to his nature nor to his habits of
study. And, of necessity, therefore, his famous dictionary is
a monument of powers unequally yoked together in one task:
skill in one function of his duty "full ten times as much
as there needs”; skill in others sometimes feeble, sometimes
none at all.
Of inferior attempts to illustrate the language, we have
Ben Jonson's Grammar, early in the seventeenth century;
Wallis the mathematician's Grammar (written in Latin, and
patriotically designed as a polemic grammar against the errors
of foreigners), towards the end of the same century; Bishop
Lowth's little School-Grammar in the eighteenth century;
Archdeacon Nares's Orthoepy; Dr. Crombie's Etymology and
Syntax; Noah Webster's various essays on the same subject,
followed by his elaborate Dictionary, all written and first
published in America. We have also, and we mention it on
account of its great but most unmerited popularity, the
grammar of Lindley Murray-an American, by the way, as
well as the eccentric Noah. This book, full of atrocious
blunders (some of which, but with little systematic learning,
were exposed in a work of the late Mr. Hazlitt's ¹), reigns
despotically through the young - ladies' schools from the
Orkneys to the Cornish Scillys. And of the other critical
grammars, such as the huge 4to of Green, the smaller one of
Dr. Priestley, many little abstracts prefixed to portable
dictionaries, &c., there may be gathered, since the year 1680,
1 See ante, Vol. XI, p. 352.-M.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
153
from 250 to 300; not one of which is absolutely 1 without
value—some raising new and curious questions, others show-
ing their talent in solving old ones.
Add to these the occa-
sional notices of grammatical niceties in the critical editions
of our old poets; and there we have the total amount of what
has hitherto been contributed towards the investigation of
our English language in its grammatical theory. As to the
investigation of its history, of its gradual rise and progress,
and its relations to neighbouring languages, that is a total
blank,—a title pointing to a duty absolutely in arrear, rather
than to any performance ever undertaken as yet even by
way of tentative essay. At least, any fractional attempt in
that direction is such as would barely form a single section
or sub-section in a general history. For instance, we have
critical essays of some value on the successive translations
into English of the Bible. But these rather express, in
modulo parvo, the burden of laborious research which awaits
such a task pursued comprehensively than materially diminish
it. Even the history of Slang, whether of domestic or foreign
growth, and the record of the capricious influxes, at particular
epochs, from the Spanish, the French,2 &c., would furnish
1 So little is the absolute value and learning of such books to be
measured by the critical pretensions of the class in which they rank
themselves, or by the promises of their title-pages, that we remember
to have seen some very acute remarks on pronunciation, on the value
of letters, &c., in a little Edinburgh book of rudiments, meant only
for children of four or five years old. It was called, we think, The
Child's Ladder.
2 By the way, it has long been customary (and partly in compliance
with foreign criticism, unlearned in our elder literature, and quite
incompetent to understand it) to style the period of Queen Anne and
the succeeding decade of years our Augustan age. The graver errors
of thought in such a doctrine are no present concern of ours. But, as
respects the purity of our language, and its dignity, never did either
suffer so long and gloomy an eclipse as in that period of our annals.
The German language, as written at that time in books, is positively
so disfigured by French and Latin embroideries that it becomes
difficult at times to say which language is meant for the ground, and
which for the decoration. Our English is never so bad as that; but
the ludicrous introduction of foreign forms, such, for example, as
"his
Intimados,' his Privados," goes far to denationalize the tone of the
diction. Even the familiar allusions and abbreviations of that age,
some of which became indispensable to the evasion of what was deemed
pedantry, such as 'tis and 'twas, are rank with meanness. In Shak-
154
MISCELLANEA
materials for a separate work. But we forbear to enter
upon the long list of parts, chapters, and sections, which
must compose the architectural system of so elaborate a
work, seeing that the whole edifice itself is hitherto a great
idea in nubibus, as regards our own language. The French,
as we have observed, have little more to boast of. And, in
fact, the Germans and the Italians, of all nations the two
who most cordially hate and despise each other, in this
point agree that they only have constructed many pre-
paratory works, have reared something more than mere
scaffolding, towards such a systematic and national monu-
ment.
1. It is painful and humiliating to an Englishman that,
whilst all other nations show their patriotism severally in
connexion with their own separate mother tongues, claiming
for them often merits which they have not, and overlooking
none of those which they have, his own countrymen show
themselves ever ready, with a dishonourable levity, to under-
value the English language, and always upon no fixed
principles. Nothing to ourselves seems so remarkable as
that men should dogmatise upon the pretensions of this and
that language in particular without having any general
notions previously of what it is that constitutes the value of
a language universally. Without some preliminary notion,
abstractedly, of the precise qualities to be sought for in a
language, how are we to know whether the main object of
our question is found, or not found, in any given language
offered for examination? The Castilian is pronounced fine,
the Italian effeminate, the English harsh, by many a man
who has no shadow of a reason for his opinions beyond some
vague association of chivalresque qualities with the personal
bearing of Spaniards, or, again, of special adaptation to
operatic music in the Italian, or (as regards the English)
because he has heard, perhaps, that the letter s and crowded
clusters of consonants and monosyllabic words prevail in it.
spere's age the diction of books was far more pure, more compatible
with simplicity, and more dignified. Amongst our many national
blessings, never let us forget to be thankful that in that age was made
our final translation of the Bible, under the State authority. How
ignoble, how unscriptural, would have been a translation made in the
age of Pope!
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
155
Such random and fantastic notions would be entitled to
little attention; but, unfortunately, we find that men of
distinguished genius-men who have contributed to sustain
and extend the glory of this very English language—are
sometimes amongst its notorious depreciators. Addison, in
a well-known passage of his critical essays, calls the English,
in competition with the Greek language, brick against
marble. Now, that there is a vocal¹ beauty in the Greek
which raises it in that particular point above all modern
languages, and not exclusively above the English, cannot be
denied; but this is the lowest merit of a language-being
merely its sensuous merit (to borrow a word of Milton's);
and, beyond all doubt, as respects the higher or intellectual
qualities of a language, the English greatly excels the Greek,
and especially in that very case which provoked the remark
of Addison; for it happens that some leading ideas in the
Paradise Lost-ideas essential to the very integrity of the
fable—cannot be expressed in Greek, or not so expressed as
to convey the same thought impregnated with the same
weight of passion. But let not our reverence for the exquisite
humour of Addison, and his admirable delicacy of pencil in
delineating the traits of character, hide from us the fact that
he was a very thoughtless and irreflective critic; that his
criticisms, when just, rested not upon principles, but upon
mere fineness of tact; that he was an absolute ignoramus as
regarded the literature of his own country; and that he was
a mere bigot as regarded the antique literature of Pagan
Greece or Rome. In fact, the eternal and inevitable schism
1 "A vocal beauty in the Greek language":-This arises partly
from the musical effect of the mere inflexions of the verbs and parti-
ciples, in which so many dactylic successions of accent are inter-
changed with spondaic arrangements, and partly also from the
remarkable variety of the vowel sounds, which run through the whole
gamut of possible varieties in that point, and give more luxury of
sound to the ear than in any other known language. For the fact is
that these varieties of vowel or diphthong sounds succeed to each
other more immediately and more constantly than in any other
southern dialect of Europe which universally have a distinction in
mere vocal or audible beauty not approached by any northern
language, unless (as some people allege) by the Russian; and this,
with the other dialects of the Slavonian family, is to be classed as
belonging to Eastern, rather than to Northern, Europe.
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MISCELLANEA
between the Romanticists and the Classicists, though not in
name, had already commenced in substance; and, where
Milton was not free from grievous error and consequent
injustice, both to the writers of his country and to the
language, how could it be expected that the far feebler mind
of Addison should work itself clear of a bigotry and a
narrowness of sympathy as regards the antique which the
discipline and training of his whole life had established?
Even the merit of Addison is not sufficient to waive his
liability to one plain retort from an offended Englishman
-viz. that, before he signed away with such flagrant levity
the pretensions of his native language, at all events it was
incumbent upon him to show that he had fathomed the
powers of that language, had exhausted its capacity, and had
wielded it with commanding effect. Whereas we all know
that Addison was a master of the humble and unpretending
English demanded, or indeed suffered, by his themes, but
for that very reason little familiar with its higher or im-
passioned movements.
2. But Addison, like most other critics on languages,
overlooked one great truth, which should have made such
sweeping undervaluations impossible as applied to any
language. This truth is that every language, every language
at least in a state of culture and development, has its own
separate and incommunicable qualities of superiority. The
French itself, which in some weighty respects is amongst
the poorest of languages, had yet its own peculiar merits,
not attainable or approachable by any other. For the whole
purposes of what the French understand by the word causer,
for all the delicacies of social intercourse, and the nuances of
manners, no language but the French possesses the requisite
vocabulary. The word causer itself is an illustration.
Marivaux and other novelists, tedious enough otherwise, are
mere repertories of phrases untranslatable, irrepresentable, by
equivalents in any European language. And some of our own
fashionable English novels, which have been fiercely arraigned
for their French embroidery as well as for other supposed
faults, are thus far justifiable-that, in a majority of instances,
the English could not have furnished a corresponding phrase
with equal point or piquancy—sometimes not at all.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
157
3. If even the French has its function of superiority, so,
and in a higher sense, have the English and other languages
more decidedly northern. But the English, in particular,
has a special dowry of power in its double-headed origin.
The Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of functions,
the Latin another. Meantime it is a great error on the part
of Lord Brougham (and we remember the same error in
others) to direct the student in his choice of words towards
the Saxon part of the language by preference. Nothing can
be more unphilosophic, or built on more thorough miscon-
ception of the case. Neither part of the language is good or
bad absolutely, but in its relation to the subject, and accord-
ing to the treatment which the subject is meant to receive.
It is an error even to say that the Saxon part is more
advantageously used for cases of passion. Even that requires
further limitation. Simple narration, and a pathos resting
upon artless circumstances,-elementary feelings,-homely
and household affections,-these are most suitably managed
by the old indigenous Saxon vocabulary. But a passion
which rises into grandeur, which is complex, elaborate, and
interveined with high meditative feelings, would languish or
absolutely halt without aid from the Latin moiety of our
language. Mr. Coleridge remarks that the writings of all
reflective or highly subjective poets overflow with Latin
and Greek polysyllables, or what the uneducated term
"dictionary words."
4. Again, if there is no such thing in rerum natura as a
language radically and universally without specific powers,
if every language, in short, is and must be, according to the
circumstances under which it is moulded, an organ sui
generis, and fitted to sustain with effect some function or
other of the human intellect,-so, on the other hand, the
very advantages of a language, those which are most vaunted,
become defects under opposite relations. The power of
running easily into composition, for instance, on which the
Germans show so much fierté when stating the pretensions
of their own mother tongue, is in itself injurious to the sim-
plicity and natural power of their poetry, besides being a
snare in many cases to the ordinary narrator or describer,
and tempting him aside into efforts of display which mar the
158
MISCELLANEA
effect of his composition. In the early stages of every litera-
ture, not simplicity (as it is thought), but elaboration and
complexity, and tumid artifice in the structure of the diction,
are the besetting vices of the poet: witness the Roman frag-
ments of poetry anterior to Ennius. Now, the fusile capacity
of a language for running into ready coalitions of poly-
syllables aids this tendency, and almost of itself creates such
a tendency.
5. The process by which languages grow is worthy of
deep attention. So profound is the error of some men on
this subject that they talk familiarly of language as of a
thing deliberately and consciously "invented" by the people
who use it. A language never was invented 1 by any people:
that part which is not borrowed from adjacent nations arises
under instincts of necessity and convenience. We will illus-
trate the matter by mentioning three such modes of instinct
in which has lain the parentage of at least three words out
of four in every language: first, the instinct of abbrevi-
ation, prompted continually by hurry or by impatience;
secondly, the instinct of onomatopaia, or, more generally, the
instinct of imitation applied directly to sounds, indirectly to
motion, and by the aid of analogies more or less obvious
applied to many other classes of objects; thirdly, the
instinct of distinction, sometimes for purposes of necessity,
sometimes of convenience. This process claims by far the
largest application of words in every language. Thus, from
1 Meantime, a few insulated words have been continually nourished
by authors,—that is, transferred to other uses, or formed by thought-
ful composition and decomposition, or by skilful alterations of form
and inflexion. Thus Mr. Coleridge introduced the fine word ancestral,
in lieu of the lumbering word ancestorial, about the year 1798.
Milton introduced the indispensable word sensuous. Daniel, the
truly philosophic poet and historian, introduced the splendid class of
words with the affix of inter, to denote reciprocation, e.g. interpene-
trate, to express mutual or interchangeable penetration, -a form of
composition which is deeply beneficial to the language, and has been
extensively adopted by Coleridge. We ourselves may boast to have
introduced the word orchestric; which we regard with parental pride,
as a word expressive of that artificial and pompous music which
attends, for instance, the elaborate hexameter verse of Rome and
Greece in comparison with the simpler rhyme of the more exclusively
accentual metres in modern languages, or expressive of any organised
music in opposition to the natural warbling of the woods.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
159
propriety (or the abstract idea of annexation between two
things by means of fitness or adaptation) was struck off, by a
more rapid pronunciation and a throwing back of the accent,
the modern word property, in which the same general idea
is limited to appropriations of pecuniary value; which, how-
ever, was long expressed by the original word propriety,
under a modified enunciation. So, again, major as a military
designation, and mayor as a civil one, have split off from the
very same original word by varied pronunciations. And
these divergencies into multiplied derivatives from some
single radix are, in fact, the great source of opulence to one
language by preference to another. And it is clear that the
difference in this respect between nation and nation will be
in a compound ratio of the complexity and variety of situa-
tions into which men are thrown (whence the necessity of a
complex condition of society to the growth of a truly fine
language) in the ratio, we say, of this complexity on the
one hand, and, on the other, of the intellectual activity put
forth to seize and apprehend these fleeting relations of
things and persons. Whence, according to the vast inequali-
ties of national minds, the vast disparity of languages.
6. Hence we see the monstrosity of claiming a fine or
copious language for any rude or uncultivated, much more for
any savage, people, or even for a people of mountaineers, or
for a nation subsisting chiefly by hunting, or by agriculture
and rural life exclusively, or in any way sequestered
and monotonous in their habits. It is philosophically im-
possible that the Gaelic, or the Hebrew, or the Welsh, or
the Manx, or the Armoric, could at any stage have been
languages of compass or general poetic power. In relation
to a few objects peculiar to their own climates, or habits, or
superstitions, any of these languages may have been occa-
sionally gifted with a peculiar power of expression: what
language is not with regard to some class of objects? But a
language of power and compass cannot arise except amongst
cities and the habits of luxurious people. “They talked,”
says John Paul, speaking of two rustic characters in one of
his sketches," they talked, as country people are apt to
talk, concerning nothing." And the fact is, universally, that
rural occupations and habits, unless counteracted determinately
160
MISCELLANEA
by intellectual pursuits, tend violently to torpor. Social gather-
ings, social activity, social pleasure-these are the parents
of language. And there is but the one following exception
to the rule that, such as is the activity of the national
intellect in arresting fugitive relations, such will be the
language resulting; and this exception lies in the mechanical
advantages offered by some inflections compared with others
for generating and educing the possible modifications of each
primitive idea. Some modes of inflections easily lend them-
selves, by their very mechanism, to the adjuncts expressing
degrees, expressing the relations of time, past, present, and
future, expressing the modes of will, desire, intention, &c.
For instance, the Italians have terminal forms, ino, ello,
acchio, &c., expressing all gradations of size above or below
the ordinary standard. The Romans, again, had frequentative
forms, inceptive forms, forms expressing futurition and de-
sire, &c. These shorthand expressions performed the office
of natural symbols, or hieroglyphics, which custom had made
universally intelligible. Now, in some cases this machinery
is large, and therefore extensively auxiliary to the popular
intellect in building up the towering pile of a language; in
others it is meagre, and so far it is possible that, from want
of concurrency in the mechanic aids, the language may, in
some respects, not be strictly commensurate to the fineness of
the national genius.
7. Another question which arises upon all languages
respects their degrees of fitness for poetic and imaginative
purposes. The mere question of fact is interesting; and the
question as to the causal agency which has led to such a
result is still more so. In this place we shall content our-
selves with drawing the reader's attention to a general phe-
nomenon which comes forward in all non-poetic languages—
viz. that the separation of the two great fields, prose and
poetry, or of the mind impassioned or unimpassioned, is
never perfectly accomplished. This phenomenon is most
striking in the Oriental languages; where the common edicts
of government or provincial regulations of police assume a
ridiculous masquerade dress of rhetorical or even of poetic
animation. But amongst European languages this capital
defect is most noticeable in the French, which has no
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
161
resources for elevating its diction when applied to cases and
situations the most lofty or the most affecting. The single
misfortune of having no neuter gender, by compelling the
mind to distribute the colouring of life universally, and by
sexualising in all cases, neutralises the effect, as a special
effect, for any case. To this one capital deformity, which
presents itself in every line, many others have concurred.
And it might be shown convincingly that the very power
of the French language, as a language for social intercourse,
is built on its impotence for purposes of passion, grandeur,
and native simplicity. The English, on the other hand,
besides its double fountain of words, which furnishes at once
two separate keys of feeling, and the ready means of obtain-
ing distinct movements for the same general passion, enjoys
the great advantage above southern languages of having a
neuter gender, which, from the very first establishing a
mode of shade, establishes, by a natural consequence, the
means of creating light, and a more potent vitality.
M
VOL. XIV
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840¹
WE claim attention from the public on the state of our
relations present and to come with China. We pretend to
no private materials upon the subject; but in this respect
we stand upon the same footing as the leaders of our public
counsels. All speak from the text furnished to them by
Captain Elliot's correspondence, as published in the news-
papers. So far we stand upon the universal level. But it
is astonishing how much advantage one man may gain over
another, even where all start from the same basis of infor-
((
((
""
1 Appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for June 1840 under the title
of "The Opium and the China Question. For the authentication of
the paper as De Quincey's, see footnote ante, p. 146. The occasion
and circumstances will be sufficiently explained by the following dated
notes from Irving's "Annals of our Time":-April 15, 1839.-"The
(( Imperial Commissioner Lin issues an edict, addressed to foreigners,
prohibiting the importation of opium into Chinese ports under
severe penalties." April 15.-"Captain Elliot and several British
"merchants imprisoned at Canton by Commissioner Lin." May 4.-
"The opium in the British factories at China having been all delivered
up, Captain Elliot, with some difficulty, obtains the release of the
"merchants and others held in confinement under the orders of
"Commissioner Lin." May 24.-"Captain Elliot and the British
"merchants leave Canton.' Nov. 6.-" H. M. frigates Volage and
"Hyacinth attacked by a squadron of twenty-eight Chinese junks
"at Hong Kong. The effects of our shots were soon visible, one junk
having blown up," &c. Dec. 6.-"Edict of Emperor of China
putting an end to British trade: last servant of East India Com-
pany leaves.
Jan. 5, 1840.-" Edict of Emperor of China termin-
ating for ever all trade and intercourse with England." Jan. 15.-
"The Chinese Commissioner Lin publishes a letter to the Queen of
"England for the purpose of giving her clear and distinct informa-
"tion.' Passing in review the various attempts of the Emperor to
((
""
""
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 163
mation, simply by these two differences-1st, by watching
the oversights of his competitors, most of whom are apt to
seize upon certain features of the case with an entire neglect
of others; 2dly, by combining his own past experience,
gathered from books or whatever sources, with the existing
phenomena of the case, as the best means of deciphering
their meaning or of calculating their remote effects.
We do not wish to disguise that our views tend to the
policy of war-war conducted with exemplary vigour. It
is better to meet openly from the first an impression (current
amongst the hasty and undistinguishing) that in such views
there is a lurking opposition to the opinions of the Con-
servatives. Were that true, we should hesitate.
It is a
matter of great delicacy to differ with one's party; and it is
questionable whether, even in extreme cases, it can be right
to publish such a difference. Once satisfied that the general
policy of our party is clamorously demanded by the welfare of
the country, and in this particular case of the Tory preten-
sions finding them sustained by the very extraordinary fact
that even out of office they are not out of power, but do
really impress the Conservative mind upon one-half of the
public measures, whilst of the other half a large proportion
((
"(
repress the opium trade, he concludes by an abstract of the new
"law about to be put in force: Any foreigner bringing opium to the
"Celestial Land with a design to sell the same, the principals shall
"most assuredly be decapitated and the accessories strangled, and all
66 property found on board the ship shall be confiscated. The space
"of a year and a half is granted within which, if any bringing opium
by mistake shall voluntarily deliver the same, he shall be absolved
from all consequences of the crime.'" April 24.-" Meeting in
"the Freemasons' Hall, Earl Stanhope in the chair, to petition Parlia-
"ment against the continuance of the Opium War." It was at this
commencement of that memorable war with China of 1840-42 which
led to the re-establishment of British commerce with China on more
favourable conditions and on a wider scale than ever before that De
Quincey contributed his article to Blackwood. Not only was public
opinion divided on the question of the legitimacy of a war originating
in the opium-traffic, but the relations of the two Parliamentary parties
to each other had been considerably perplexed by the recent events.
It was in the Whig Ministry of Lord Melbourne that the British opium
had been surrendered and the war had begun what was to be the
attitude of the Conservatives for the moment, and what their policy
for the future? De Quincey's article was an exposition of what he
thought the proper attitude and the proper policy.—M.
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MISCELLANEA
is carried only by their sufferance, by their forbearance, or
by their direct co-operation,-under such circumstances an
honourable party-man will not think himself justified, for
any insulated point of opinion or even of practice, to load his
party with the reproach of internal discord. Every party,
bound together by principles of public fellowship, and work-
ing towards public objects, is entitled to all the strength
which can arise from union, or the reputation of union. It
is a scandal to have it said "You are disunited-you can-
not agree amongst yourselves"; and the man who sends
abroad dissentient opinions through any powerful organ of
the press is the willing author of such a scandal. No gain
upon the solitary truth concerned can balance the loss upon
the total reputation of his party for internal harmony.
Meantime, as too constantly is the case in mixed ques-
tions, when there is much to distinguish, it is a very great
blunder to suppose the Conservative party to set their faces
against a Chinese War. That party, with Sir Robert Peel for
their leader, have in the House of Commons recorded a
strong vote against our recent Chinese Policy: so far is
true; but not against a Chinese War. Such a war, un-
happily, is all the more necessary in consequence of that
late policy, a policy which provided for nothing, foresaw
nothing, and in the most pacific of its acts laid a foundation
and a necessity that hostilities should redress them.
There is another mistake current—a most important mis-
take: viz. about the relation which the Opium Question bears
to the total dispute with China. It is supposed by many
persons that, if we should grant the Chinese Government to
have been in the right upon the opium affair, it will follow
of course that we condemn the principle of any war or of
any hostile demonstrations against China. Not at all. This
would be a complete non sequitur. I. China might be
right in her object, and yet wrong, insufferably wrong,
in the means by which she pursued it. In the
first of the resolutions moved on the 2d of May
by the Company of Edinburgh Merchants (Mr. Oliphant
chairman) it is assumed that the opium lost by the
British was a sacrifice to the " more effectual execution
of the Chinese laws"; which is a gross fiction. The opium
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 165
was transferred voluntarily by the British; on what under-
standing is one of the points we are going to consider. II.
There is a causa belli quite apart from the opium question;
a ground of war which is continually growing more urgent;
a ground which would survive all disputes about opium,
and would have existed had China been right in those dis-
putes from beginning to end.
Yet it is good to pause for a moment, and to look at this
opium dispute so far as the documents give us any light for dis-
cussing it. The apologists of China say that the Pekin Govern-
ment has laboured for some time to put down the national
abuse of opium. Why, and under what view of that abuse?
As a mode of luxury, it is replied, pressing upon the general
health, and, for a second reason, as pressing seriously upon
the national energies. This last we put down in candour as
a separate consideration; because, though all unwholesome
luxuries must be supposed indirectly to operate upon the
cheerfulness and industry of those who use them, with respect
to opium in particular it must be allowed that this secondary
action is often the main one, and takes place in a far larger
proportion than simply according to the disturbances of
health. There is a specific effect known to follow the habitual
use of opium, by which it speedily induces a deadly torpor
and disrelish of all exertion, and in most cases long before
the health is deranged, and even in those constitutions which
are by nature so congenially predisposed to this narcotic as
never to be much shaken by its uttermost abuse.
Thus far, and assuming all for truth which the Chinese
tell us, we have before us the spectacle of a wise and paternal
Government; and it recommends such wisdom powerfully to
a moral people like ours that we seem to see it exerting itself
unpopularly,―nobly stemming a tide of public hatred, and
determined to make its citizens happy in their own despite.
Fresh from this contemplation of disinterested virtue, how
shocked we all feel on seeing our own scamps of sailors work-
ing an immense machinery for thwarting so beneficent a
Government! A great conflagration is undermining all the
social virtues in China; the Emperor and Commissioner Lin
are working vast fire-engines for throwing water upon the
flames; and, on the other hand, our people are discharging
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MISCELLANEA
columns of sulphur for the avowed purpose of feeding the
combustion!
"Scandalous!" we all exclaim; but, as the loveliest
romances are not always the truest, let us now hear the other
party. Plaintiff has spoken; Defendant must now have his
turn.
For the defendant then it is urged :-
That the Chinese Government, having long connived at
the opium trade, has now found three purely selfish reasons
against it.
1st, As having at length a rival interest of its own.-Lin
and others are said to have some thousands of acres laid
down as poppy plantations. Now, the English opium, and
that of Malwa, as an old concern, is managed much more
cheaply. To exclude the foreign growth is essential, there-
fore, as the first step towards a protection to the infancy of
the home growth. On this view of the case we would
recommend a sliding duty, such as that of our corn laws, to
the Celestial opium-growers.
2dly, That this foreign opium caused a yearly drain of
silver. From the small range of Chinese commerce, it is im-
possible for China to draw upon foreign states; much of the
imports must now be paid for in hard downright silver,—
which is the more disgusting as formerly the current of
silver ran precisely in the other direction.
3dly, That the English have become objects of intense
jealousy at the court of Pekin.—Indeed, it is time for that
Cabinet to look about with some alarm, were it only that a
great predominating power has arisen in India—a conquer-
ing power and a harmonizing power where heretofore there
was that sort of balance maintained amongst the many Indian
principalities which Milton ascribes to the anarchy of Chaos :
one might rise superior for a moment, but the restlessness of
change, and the tremulous libration of the equipoise, guaran-
teed its speedy downfall. Here, therefore, and in this
English predominance, is cause enough for alarm; how
much more since the war against Nepaul, in virtue of which
the English advance has pushed forward the English out-
posts within musket-range of the Chinese, and against the
Burman Empire, in virtue of which great interposing masses
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 167
have been seriously weakened? It is become reasonable
that China should fear us; and, fearing us, she must allow-
ably seek to increase her own means of annoyance, as well
as to blunt or to repel ours. Much of ours must lie in the
funds by which we support our vast Indian establishment;
and towards those funds it is understood that the opium
trade contributes upwards of three millions sterling per
annum. In mere prudence, therefore, the Cabinet of Pekin
sets itself to reduce our power by reducing our money
resources, and to reduce our money resources by refusing our
opium.
Such are the three reasons upon which it has been
alleged that Lin and his master have been proceeding.
And
now, if it were so, what has any man to say against these
reasons? Have not nations a right to protect their own
interests? Is the path of safety not open to them because it
happens to lead away from British objects? Why, as to
that, measures are not always allowable in a second or third
stage of intercourse which might have been so in the first.
But for the present we meditate no attack on these measures.
Let them be supposed purely within the privilege of a
defensive policy. Only let us have things placed on their
right footing, and called by their right names; and let us
not be summoned to admire, as acts of heroic virtue which
put to shame our Christianity, what under this second view
appears to be a mere resort of selfish prudence.
But, then, is it certain that this second view of the case
is the correct view? Why, we have before acknowledged
that documents are wanting for either view: any inference,
for or against the Chinese, will be found too large for the
premises. The materials do not justify a vote either of
acquittal or of impeachment; but, as this is so, let us
English have the benefit of this indistinctness in the
proofs equally with the Chinese. So much, at the
very least, is fair to ask, and something more; for,
upon the face of this Chinese solicitude for the national
virtue, some things appear suspicious. Nemo repente fuit
turpissimus, Nobody mounts in a moment to the excess
of profligacy; and it is equally probable that Nemo repente
fuit sanctissimus. This sudden leap into the anxieties of
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MISCELLANEA
parental care is a suspicious fact against the Chinese Govern-
ment.
Then, again, is it, or can it be, true that in any country
the labouring class should be seriously tainted by opium?
Can any indulgence so costly as this have struck root so
deeply as to have reached the subsoil of the general national
industry? Can we shut our eyes to this gross dilemma?
Using much opium, how can the poor labourer support the
expense, using little, how can he suffer in his energies or
his animal spirits? In many districts of Hindostan, as well
as of the Deccan, it is well known that the consumption of
opium is enormous: but amongst what class?
Does it ever
palpably affect the public industry? The question would be.
found ludicrous. Our own working class finds a great
providential check on its intemperance in the costliness of
intoxicating liquors. Cheap as they seem, it is impossible
for the working man (burdened with average claims) to use
them to excess, unless with such intervals as redress the evil
to the constitution. This stern benediction of Providence,
this salutary operation of poverty, has made it impossible
for one generation to shatter the health of the next. Now,
for the opium-eater this counteracting provision presses much
more severely. Wages are far lower in the opium countries;
and the quantity of opium required in any case where it can
have been abused is continually increasing, whereas the dose
of alcohol continues pretty stationary for years.
These things incline a neutral spectator to suspect griev-
ously some very earthly motives to be working below the
manœuvres of the Celestial Commissioner, since it really
appears to be impossible that the lower Chinese should much
abuse the luxury of opium; and, as to the higher, what a
chimerical undertaking to make war upon their habits of
domestic indulgence! With these classes, and in such a
point, no Government would have the folly to measure its
strength. And, as to the classes connected with public
industry, we repeat and maintain that it is impossible (for
the reason explained) to suppose them seriously tainted; so
that a delusion seems to lie at the very root of this Chinese
representation.
But, apart from all that, we see two pinching dilemmas
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 169
even in this opium case-dilemmas that screw like a vice—
which tell powerfully in favour of our Tory views: first, as
criminating the present Whig administration beyond all hope
of apology; secondly, as criminating the Chinese administra-
tion. The first clenches the argument moved by Sir James
Graham on the criminal want of foresight and provision in
our own Cabinet; and we are surprised that it could have
been forgotten in the debate. The second goes far to justify
our right of war against China.
We will take these dilemmas in the inverse order, putting
forward the latter dilemma first.
((
a
I. When Lin seized the British opium, and in one day
pillaged our British merchants to the extent of more than
two millions sterling, by what means was it that Lin got
hank" over
over so much alien property? The opium was
freighted on board various ships; and these ships were lying
at various distances in the waters of the Bocca Tigris. No
considerable part of it was on shore or in the Canton factory.
What is our inference from this? Why, that the opium was
not in Lin's power. Indeed, we are sure of that by another
argument; for Lin begs from Captain Elliot the interposition
of his authority towards getting the opium transferred to
Chinese custody—a thing which most assuredly he would not
have done had he seen the slightest hopes of its coming into
his possession by violence. Merely the despair of success in
any attempt to seize it prevailed with him to proceed by this
circuitous course. Captain Elliot, for reasons not fully
explained, granted this request. Now, then, what we ask
is that all who advocate the Chinese cause would be pleased
to state the terms on which this deliberate transfer of British
property was made over to Lin-what were the terms under-
stood by the party surrendering, and by the party receiving,
viz. Lin? That monosyllabic hero did, or he did not, make
terms with Captain Elliot. Now, if you say he did not, you
say a thing more severe, by twenty times, against the Whig
Superintendent than any of us Tories, in or out of Parlia-
ment, has ever hinted at. What a British agent, sent to
protect British interests, giving up British property by whole-
sale-sacrificing millions of British pounds sterling-without
an effort to obtain an equivalent, without a protest, without
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MISCELLANEA
a remonstrance! Why, a diplomatist acting for the most
petty interests gives up nothing without a consideration,-
nothing at all without a struggle at the first, without an
equivalent at the last. Quid pro quo is the very meaning
and essence of diplomacy. And observe that Captain Elliot
does far more than sanction the surrender. It is not as though
Chinese artillery had been ready to enforce a seizure, and
Captain Elliot, for peace's sake, interfered to substitute a
milder course.
Nothing of the sort: but for him the opium
would not and could not have passed into Chinese hands.
In such circumstances-for of course he insisted for some
equivalent—you cannot suppose the first horn of the dilemma
-that he did not. That is too incredible. Suppose, there-
fore, the other horn of the dilemma. You must suppose it.
Mere decency binds us to suppose that Captain Elliot, in
compliance with the most flagrant demands of duty, did make
terms. What were those terms? What was the equivalent?
This we have a right to know, because hitherto (and, by
Lin's account, the affair is now terminated) no equivalent at
all, no terms of any kind, have been reported as offered by
the Chinese or as accepted by the British. Sundry of the
Chinese have, indeed, since that time made an awkward
attempt at cutting sundry British throats, and have had their
own cut instead,—a result for which we heartily grieve, as
the poor victims were no willing parties to this outrage upon
our rights. But this could hardly be the equivalent demanded
by Elliot. And, as to any other, it is needless to inquire
about it, since nothing of any kind has been offered to the
British except outrages and insults. Here, then, is a short
two-edged argument, which it will be difficult to parry:—Lin
agreed to a stipulation for equivalents; in which case he must
have broken it. Lin did not agree; in which case we have a
heavier charge against the superintendent,—that is, the repre-
sentative of our own Government,—than any which has yet
been put forward.
II. But worse, far worse, as respects our own Government,
is the second dilemma. It is this:-Those who had charge
of the opium surrendered it on the most solemn official
guarantee of indemnification. Now, in offering that guar-
antee, was Captain Elliot authorized by his Government?
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 171
or was he not authorized? Practically, there is no such
indulgent alternative now open to the Government; because
the time is now past in which that Government could
claim the benefit of a disavowal. Instantly to have disavowed
Captain Elliot was the sole course by which the Whig Govern-
ment could retrieve their position and evade the responsi-
bility created for them by their agent. When they first
appointed him, they had delegated their responsibility to
him; they had notified that delegation to all whom it might
concern. It must be an extreme case, indeed, which can
warrant a minister in disavowing his own agent, so deliber-
ately selected, and much more when the distance is so vast.
In no case can this be done unless where it can be demon-
strated that the agent has flagrantly exceeded his powers.
But, in cases of money guarantees, or the drawing of bills,
it is hardly possible that an agent should do so: such cases
are not mixed up with the refinements of politics about which
the varieties of opinion are likely to arise. Always, and in
all situations, an agent knows what are the limits of his
powers as to so definite a subject as money. And, were it
otherwise, what would become of the innumerable bills drawn
upon the British Treasury by consuls and naval officers in
ports of countries the most remote? Nobody would take
such bills: no ship in our navy, no shipwrecked crew, could
obtain aid under the worst circumstances, if a practice existed
of disavowing authorized agents, or resisting bills when pre-
sented for payment. The Elliot guarantee, therefore, was
hardly within the privilege of disavowal by Lord Melbourne's
Government. They it was who sent the agent-who clothed
him with authority-who called upon all men in the East
to recognise him as representing themselves-who proclaimed
aloud, "Behold the man whom the Queen delighteth to
honour: what he does is as if done by ourselves: his words
are our words: his seal is our seal !"
Captain
The argument, therefore, will stand thus:
Elliot solemnly undertook to the British merchants, in order
to gain a favourite point for Lin, that no fraction of the
money at which the opium had been valued should finally
be lost. On the faith of that undertaking the surrender was
made quietly which else, confessedly, would not have been
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MISCELLANEA
made at all. Now, in making that perilous engagement--so
startling by the amount of property concerned that no man
could pretend to have acted inconsiderately-was Captain
Elliot exceeding his powers or not? Did the Government
disavow his act, even in thought, on first hearing it reported;
or did they not? If they did-if privately they were shocked
to find the enormity of responsible obligation which Elliot
had pledged on their behalf-if they felt that he had created
no right in the persons who held his engagements-why did
they not instantly publish that fact? Mere honesty, as in a
commercial transaction, requires this. If a man draws on
you unwarrantably for an immense sum, you never think of
replying, “I have not money enough to meet this demand."
You say to the holders of the bills, and you say it in-
dignantly, and you say it instantly—without taking time to
finesse, or leaving time for the creditor to lose his remedy—
"This man has no authority whatever to draw upon me. I
neither am myself his debtor, nor do I hold the funds of any
third party who is." But what was the answer of the
English Government, when summoned to make good the
engagements of their agent? Did they say boldly "We
disavow this agent: we disown his debt: we desire that these
bills may be noted and protested"? No: but, evasively,
perfidiously, as speaking to ruined men, they reply :—“ Oh,
really, we have not funds to meet these bills; and, if we
should go to Parliament for funds, we have a notion that
there will be the deuce to pay for contracting so large a
debt!" Like a riotous heir, they dare not show to their
public guardians the wild havoc of funds which they have
authorized.
The sole evasion of this argument would be if it could be
alleged that the bills were bad bills,—that they were given
without a consideration. But that can be maintained only
by those who are misinformed as to the facts. Were it the
case that Lin could have seized the opium, though in honour
the Government would still be answerable for the acts of
their agent, and though a contract is a contract, still it might
have been said that the British merchants, after all, had been
placed in no worse situation by the act of Captain Elliot.
But, as the case really stands, the total loss-every shilling
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 173
of it was a pure creation of Elliot's. The ships were not
in the situation of an army having to stand the hazard of a
battle before they could carry off the contested property; in
which case it might have been wise to pay some fine for
escaping a struggle, however certain the issue. No: they
had but to raise their anchors and spread their sails. A lunar
month would have seen the opium safe in the waters of
Bengal, from which it would have been landed to await the
better market of the following year.
But, say some extravagant people, the Chinese had the
right of seizure, though not the power to enforce that right;
and the inference which they would wish us to draw from
that is that it was the duty of the British merchants to show
respect for the laws and maritime rights of China. What!
at the cost of two and a half millions sterling? Verily, the
respect for China must be somewhat idolatrous which would
express itself on this magnificent scale. But, waiving that,
mark the reply:-Nobody doubts the right of China to seize
contraband goods when they are landed, or in the course of
landing; because by that time the final destination of the
goods is apparent. And our own Government at home-but
having power to sustain their claim-go somewhat further;
they make prize at sea of cargoes which are self-demonstrated
as contraband. But who in his senses ever held the monstrous
doctrine that a smuggler is under some obligation of con-
science to sail into an English port, and there deliver up his
vessel as a victim to the majesty of the offended revenue
laws? The very most that China could in reason have asked
was that the opium ships should sail away, and not hover
on the coasts. Even this is a great deal more than China
had a right to ask-conceding also throughout that China
had not herself for years invited this contraband commerce,
cherished it, nursed it, honoured it-because it is certain that
a maritime kingdom without a revenue fleet has no more
right to complain of smugglers in its defensive diplomacy
than offensively it has to declare a port or a line of coast
under blockade without bona fide efforts and means to enforce
that blockade. Certainly not, it will be said; and the
English opium ships were acting under no recognised mari-
time law when they so foolishly surrendered their cargoes.
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MISCELLANEA
But it will be alleged in apology for that rash surrender that
perhaps it might not be merely the Elliot indemnification
which persuaded them to this act that barely made it a safe
act. What made it a politic act was probably the belief
that for any less price they could not purchase back the
general renewal of Chinese commerce. Ay, now we come to
the truth! This was the equivalent, beyond a doubt, under-
stood between Lin and Elliot as the condition upon which
the surrender was to take effect. Well understood most
assuredly it was; and, if it was not expressed, was not reduced
to writing, the blame of that is to be divided (in such pro-
portions as may hereafter be settled) between the confiding
folly of our English dupe and the exquisite knavery of the
Celestial Lin. Non nostrum tantas componere lites.
We have stated these two dilemmas more diffusely—and
yet not diffusely, since nothing has been said twice over,
but more, however, in detail than else might have been
necessary—because a transaction of this kind, unless kept
steadily before the eye for some time, is too easily forgotten,
and no proper impression of its nature is retained. But the
broad result from the whole is that Lin used Captain Elliot
as an engine for cheating Englishmen. The roasting chest-
nuts could not be extracted from the fire: Lin knew that:
he was well aware that he must have burned his own paws
in attempting it; and, like the monkey in the fable, he wisely
used Elliot as his cat's-paw. 2dly, That Lin also cheated the
English out of that commerce the restoration of which he
had in effect sold to them, and again through Elliot. And,
3dly, That the English Government has cheated the English
merchants out of two and a half millions of pounds sterling
—again, for the third time, through Elliot; and, in fact,
were it a case at Bow Street against the swell mob, the
English Government would have been found in rank collusion
with Lin. Lin picks the left-hand pocket, first of opium,
and secondly of trade: the Government then step in whilst
the merchants are all gazing at Lin, and pick the other
pocket of money: both speaking at first through Elliot, but
finally speaking directly in their own persons.
Even this is not all. There is something still worse and
more jesuitical in the conduct of our Home Government.
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 175
They proceed to decree reprisals against China. But why?
Very fit it is that so arrogant a people should be brought to
their senses; and notorious it is that in Eastern lands no
appeal to the sense of justice will ever be made available
which does not speak through their fears. We, therefore,
are the last persons to say one word against this ultima ratio,
if conducted on motives applying to the case. By all means
thump them well: it is your only chance-it is the only
logic which penetrates the fog of so conceited a people. But
is that the explanation of war given by Government? No,
no. They offer it as the only means in their power of keep-
ing faith with the opium-dealers and not breaking with
Elliot. "What do you want?" they say at the Treasury,—
"Is it money? Well, we have none; but we can take a
purse for you on the Queen's highway, and that we will soon
do." Observe, therefore, you have them confessing to the
debt. They do not pretend to deny that. Why, then, what
dishonesty it was to say in the first instance to the bill-
holders "We have no funds"! They had then, it seems,
been authorizing engagements, knowing at the time that in
respect of those engagements they were not solvent.
This is the first thing that meets us: viz. that, at all
events, they had meditated fraud. But, when, after some
months' importunity for payment, a Treasury attorney suggests
this new fashion of paying just debts,—which is in effect to go
and kick up a spree in the Oriental seas, and to fetch back
the missing funds out of all the poor rogues whom they can
find abroad,-note this above all things: Letters of marque
and reprisals may be fair enough against European nations,
because as much commercial shipping as they have afloat so
much warlike shipping they have to protect it. The one is in
regular proportion to the other; fair warning is given. We
say, "Take care of yourselves; your war shipping ought to
protect your commercial shipping; and, if it cannot, the result
will be a fair expression that we have measured forces against
each other, nation against nation; the result will be one of
fair open fighting." Now, in the Chinese seas there are none
but commercial ships. There are no fighting ships worth
speaking of. Consequently no part of the loss will fall on
the state.
Our losses in opium will be made good by the
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MISCELLANEA
ruin of innumerable private traders. That cannot be satis-
factory to any party; and quite as little can it satisfy our
British notions of justice that the rascally Government, and
that "sublime of rascals" Lin, will escape without a wound.
Little teasings about the extremities of so great a power, and
yet, in a warlike sense, so unmaritime a power, as China, will
be mere flea-bites to the central government at Pekin,—not
more than the arrows of Liliput in the toes of Gulliver, which
he mistook for some tickling or the irritation of chilblains.
Are we then comparing our own naval power, the most
awful concentration of power and the most variously applic-
able power which the earth has witnessed, to the efforts of
Liliput? Not so, reader; but of what avail is any power
under circumstances which forbid it to act? The power of
gravitation is the greatest we know of; yet it is nothing at
all if you would apply it to the sending up of rockets. The
English navy might as reasonably throw bomb-shells into the
crater of Vesuvius, by way of bidding it be quiet, or into the
Kingdom of the Birds above us, as seek to make any deep
impression upon such a vast callous hulk as the Chinese
Empire. It is defended by its essential non-irritability, arising
out of the intense non-development of its resources. Were it
better developed, China would become an organized state, a
power like Britain: at present it is an inorganic mass-some-
thing to be kicked, but which cannot kick again-having no
commerce worth counting, no vast establishments of mari-
time industry, no arsenals, no shipbuilding towns, no Ports-
mouths, Deals, Deptfords, Woolwiches, Sunderlands, New-
castles, Liverpools, Bristols, Glasgows,—in short, no vital
parts, no organs, no heart, no lungs. As well deliver your
broadsides against the impassive air, or, in Prospero's words,
"Stab the still closing waters
With all-bemock'd-at wounds." 1
Indeed, it is a more hopeful concern to make war upon the
winds and the waters; for both are known to suffer great
1 Quoted from memory, and incorrectly.
iii. 3) are:-
"May as well
The words (Tempest,
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters."-M.
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 177
changes during some time after the continued cannonading
of a great sea-fight; whereas China is, like Russia, defensible,
without effort of her men, by her own immeasurable extent,
combined with the fact of having no vulnerable organs-no
local concentrations of the national power in which a mortal
wound can be planted. There lay the mistake of Napoleon
in his desperate anabasis to Moscow. In the whole area of
interminable Muscovy, which centuries could not effectually
traverse with armies, there was but one weak or vulnerable
place; and that was the heart of the Czar. But it was too
deadly a stake to throw upon that single chance the fate of
so vast an army, and the future prestige of the French military
name. Moscow having perished,-which, after all, was a flea-
bite even as regarded the annual income of the land, for it
contained little more than gilt furniture and boxes of sweet-
meats (see Segur),—all had perished that could perish for
Russia; after which every loss must be a French loss. Even
without the winter, the French army was a condemned body
after that. There surely was a deadly miscalculation. And
such a miscalculation is ours in meditating the retrieval of
our losses by war upon this inert and most lubberly of
masses.
But perhaps it will be said we shall not altogether depend
on sea-captures. We shall seize the island of Formosa; may-
be we shall seize Canton! But even in those places we shall
find no such accumulations of government stores as would be
found in any of our active and warlike European states.
Some old fixtures in the shape of buildings, palaces, halls of
justice, &c., will be the most that we can count upon as
government property; or perhaps Lin, in his hurry of
absconding, may leave his snuff-box behind, his opium-box,
or his peacock's feather. But we can hardly hope to bring
the Celestial fixtures to a Demerara “vendue.” It is true
there are the revenues. These we can divert, either in
Canton or in Formosa, to our own exchequer. But, unless
we adopt the French plan of instant requisitions (which, if
at any time fair, would surely be far otherwise in a case
where there is no shadow of a quarrel with the people, but
only with the Government), we must stay for some years to
gather in any considerable harvest; because the great source
VOL. XIV
N
178
MISCELLANEA
of Canton wealth will be dried up by the inland embargo
upon the tea provinces, and the Formosa prosperity depends.
much upon coasting commerce with the mainland of China,
which will now be subject to all the hazards of a contraband
trade. Besides, these two occupations will require a land
force; and the very expenses of such occupations may very
easily be such that we shall all think it a happy thing if the
interrupted local revenues should satisfy them.
But, finally, in dismissing this opium part of the general
question, we would wish to press upon the attention of any
interested parties that they should not look at the several
parts of the affair as insulated cases, but should review the
entire series as a whole, in which the last stage is adapted to
the first, in which the first movement contemplates the end.
This war upon China may be otherwise useful we ourselves
believe it will, and for purposes which we are going to notice.
But at present we are dealing with it as a measure adopted
by our Government to meet certain difficulties created (with
or without reason) by themselves, and defended upon specific
grounds. It is those grounds we speak to; we argue ad
hominem. The defence put forward for this war is that
thus we shall recover the value of the surrendered opium.
By whom surrendered? Not, as one might think, by some
former thoughtless Tory administration; no, but by them-
selves, and a very few months ago. Was ever such a Pene-
lope's policy, such weaving and unweaving, adopted by any
rational Government? They (for of necessity their undis-
avowed agent is they) one fine day give up like lambs more
than £2,000,000 worth of property; and on another fine day
like tigers they say, "Let us fetch it back by war. We did
a most drunken act last night: we gave up our watch and
purse to a fellow because he had the impudence to ask it.
This morning, being sober, let us 'pitch into' him and fetch
it back."
Upon every principle of plain dealing, every British mer-
chant who surrendered his opium will have a right to say
-indemnified or not indemnified by a war, he will have the
right to say "Captain Elliot, as commissioner of the British
Government, as an honourable Englishman, one of a nation
that is generous and noble (be its faults otherwise what they
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 179
may) and that disdains all trickery, can you lay your hand
upon your heart and look me in the face whilst you say that
either I ought to have understood, or that you thought I
understood, by that solemn guarantee to see me reimbursed,
simply this remote, this contingent, this fractional chance
from such a war as we can wage with China?
Will you say
that, for my children's bread, as a thing understood and
recognised between us, I was to exchange a certain property,
in absolute possession, for some aerial claims upon some
distant fighting excursion against some place or places un-
known, in a kingdom almost belonging to another planet ?”
The thing is too monstrous for evasion: it speaks for itself.
No reimbursement can clear the honour of the parties guar-
anteeing that is now impossible. But, were it not so, two
home considerations remain :—1st, How many mercantile
establishments, or their creditors, may have gone down whilst
waiting? 2d, If the money principal of the war is to pay
the merchants in the first place, and to leave the costs of the
expeditions as a charge against the country, why not, by a
simpler process, have created the charge, in the first place, as
a direct indemnification to the merchants, and then after-
wards go a-campaigning for glory and repayment? Unless
the proceeds from the expeditions shall be found to cover
both debts, what is this but to create a secondary debt for
the purpose of covering a primary debt, and with the vast
disadvantage of certain intermediate bloodshed, with a pro-
digious waste of energy, and by a process most absurdly
lingering as well as childishly circuitous ?
So much for the opium question; which, when probed,.
does not seem to colour the state of our foreign relations very
favourably for the present Administration. But, as it may
be thought that the general bearing of this review is un-
favourable also to the entertainment of a Chinese War, we
will now turn to that side of the question.
War, as a measure of finance, as a mere resource of a
delinquent and failing exchequer, is certainly less likely to
succeed with an empire like China, so compact, so contin-
ental, so remote—and, beyond all other disqualifying circum-
stances, so inorganic-than with any other in the known
world.
The French have an expression for a man who is
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MISCELLANEA
much mixed up in social relations-that he is repandu dans
le monde, or, as Lord Bolingbroke once said of Pope, by
translating that phrase, scattered and diffused in society. Now,
this is the very description of our own English condition as
a people; and, above all other facts, it proclaims our indomit-
able energy, and our courageous self-dependence. Of all
nations that ever have been heard of, we are the most
scattered and exposed. We are to be reached by a thousand
wounds in thousands of outlying extremities; the very out-
posts of civilisation are held by Englishmen, everywhere
maintaining a reserve of reliance upon the mighty mother in
Europe-everywhere looking to her in the last extremities
for aid, or for summary vengeance in the case of her aid
coming too late; but all alike, in the ordinary state of
things, relying upon themselves against all enemies, and
thinking it sufficient matter of gratitude to England that she
has sent them out with stout arms, with a reverence for
laws, with constitutional energy, and, above all, with a pure
religion. Such are we English people-such is the English
condition. Now, what we are in the very supreme degree,
that is China in the lowest. We are the least defended by
massy concentration; she the most so. We have the colonial
instinct in the strongest degree; China in the lowest. With
us the impulses of expatriation are almost morbid in their
activity; in China they are undoubtedly morbid in their
torpor. At one time, and it may be so still, the Chinese
Government absolutely refused to treat, on the cheapest
terms, for the redemption of certain Chinese captives, or even
to defray their return home-on the Roman plea that they
had abjured their country. But how? Not upon the Roman
principle that, having fled in battle, or having yielded to
captivity, they had disgraced their sacred mother-country
and ceased to be her children: no; but because, having
exiled themselves in quest of bread, they had dared to think
any other more hopeful than the Celestial soil. With such
principles it is not to be supposed that Chinese colonies can
ever prosper, or ever become other than a degraded limb of
the Chinese state. It is vain to expect much energy in a
direction which is habitually frowned upon by the Chinese
authorities and institutions. And, accordingly, not now only,
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 181
but for a very long futurity, we must expect to see sailors,
shipbuilders, colonists, foreign capitalists, merchants, &c.,
thriving only as those thrive who are a despised class of
offcasts. There is not motion enough in the stagnant state
of Chinese society to hope for any material change. And to
China as it is—not China as it might be—we must adapt
our future relations; which are annually becoming more
important.
A war for money, a war for indemnities, cannot be a
hopeful war against a lazy, torpid body, without colonies,
ships, commerce, and consequently without any great mari-
time depots. A rich seaside, a golden coast,—that is what we
need to make a naval war lucrative. But what then? We
need war for other purposes than instant gain. And these
purposes it is our next duty to press upon the attention.
All our misfortunes or disgraces at Canton have arisen
out of one original vice in the foundation of our intercourse.
This began under the unhappy baptism of two unequal con-
tracting sponsors,—a great and most arrogant emperor on the
one side, a narrow company of mercantile adventurers on the
other. In Europe, governments treat with governments,
merchants with merchants. All, therefore, goes rightly.
But in Asia, until we also became a great Asiatic potentate,
the case was constantly as between the Roman logician armed
with a book and his imperial opponent backed by thirty
legions. In China, for local reasons of shyness towards all
foreigners, the case was worse than elsewhere.
There was a
simple counting-house and ledger on the one side; there was
a great throne and its satellites on the other. Every cause
of dispute and repulsion was called into action between the
parties, mutual religious horror being superadded; and for a
cement, for a link, for reciprocal attraction, there was but
the one mean principle of reciprocal gain.
Here, however, we pause to notice one capital oversight
in political economy. It has been said many scores of times,
in derision of our English hold upon China, that in so vast
a territory our tea demand, large as it seems, must be a
bagatelle. Must it so? Now mark how three sentences
shall put that down.
1. Our demand is not little in any sense it is great
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MISCELLANEA
relatively, it is great absolutely. So poor are the majority
of the Chinese that they never taste such a beverage as tea,
more than Hungarian peasants drink tokay, or French
peasants champagne. And it has been repeatedly computed
that our English exportation is one clear moiety of the crop.
2. But, if it were barely a tenth instead of a half, nay a
fiftieth, it would operate most powerfully on the Chinese
funds, were it only for this reason, that the tea provinces are
but a small part of China. Consequently, whatever loss
follows any decay of English purchases falls (after allowing
for the profits of carriers and the Canton establishments) not
upon all China, in which case the vast subdivision might
make it a trifle to each individual, but upon a few provinces
enjoying a particular soil and climate; and even in those
provinces, as much land is unfitted for the culture of tea, it
falls exclusively upon one class of proprietors. Now, it is
idle to say that an English demand annually for forty
millions of pounds suddenly subtracted could be a trifle to
any single body of men in any state upon earth. Gathered
in its whole thunders upon one limited class of proprietors,
so large a loss, and so sudden a loss, would be overwhelming.
3. This last rectification arises by simply substituting for
all China the really small class amongst whom the loss must
be divided. But there is another and a worse rectification
which blows to atoms the notion that our custom is a matter
of indifference to China... Very probably Lin thinks So,
because Lin is not much read in Ricardo. But a second
year's experience will tell another tale even to Lin. It is
shameful that men preaching the doctrines of Ricardo should
have overlooked their application to China. Suffice it in
this place to say that, if, instead of forty million pounds,
England called for only a few hundred thousands, even that
small addition to the previous demand might force into
culture some inferior soil which would necessarily give the
regulating price for the whole; immediately after which a
rent would take place on the penultimate quality of tea-
ground, a double rent upon the ante-penultimate, a triple
rent upon the pre-ante-penultimate, and so on through all
the gradations upwards. By parity of process, on the with-
drawal of this English stimulus, a corresponding retrocession
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 183
will take place on every quality of soil; every quality must
sink in rent instantly; for the delay by means of written
leases will only transfer the loss from proprietor to farmer;
and the lower qualities, which have only been called into
use because a smaller range could not furnish the total
demand, will be entirely withdrawn in so far as that
demand is contracted. So far from not feeling the loss of
our English custom, myriads will be ruined by it out and out.
Jails will be filled, suicides will multiply, taxes will be
unpaid, opium-eating will prosper, and the full hailstorm of
wrath will descend upon the bare skull of Lin, until his
Tartar pigtail rises in affright and streams like a meteor to
the troubled air. All the logic in this world will not get
over these three rectifications of the notion that, because
China is big, therefore an English demand for tea must be
insignificant. The truth is, England is not to be valued as
to riches upon any scale derived from her extent. If there
are a hundred million families in China, of which ninety
barely replace their own consumption, there is no wealth
except upon the ten millions who do more. Wealth is the
surplus arising after consumption is replaced. Now,
certain that upon every British family, not being paupers,
such a surplus arises. But upon the vast body of the
Chinese, living on rivers, and eating the garbage rejected by
the meanest of the comfortable classes, though not paupers,
yet no surplus at all arises. No multiplication of such
classes, in a non-military state, is any real increase of
strength. Not every twenty-fifth man is a cipher in this
respect to England; probably not every tenth man is any-
thing else in China,—that is, if he does not lessen the
national funds, he does not increase them.
is
From this digression upon our purely commercial rela-
tions to China, as affected by British custom, we recur to
the subject of our social standing amongst the same people.
Merchants are also men. Now, in the commercial conduct
of the Chinese there is not so much to complain of. The
institution of the Hong is, no doubt, tyrannical; certain
usages, also, and prescriptions (local or national) of the
Canton trade may be unjust, or may need revision as im-
politic. But, in general, the Hong merchants are admitted
184
MISCELLANEA
to be honest. It is in the social (not the commercial) treat-
ment of our countrymen that wrongs and indignities have
been offered to the British name. And the initial reason is
what we have before stated: viz., that for two centuries our
connexion has been maintained by unequal contracting
parties. A sovereign who affects to make a footstool of the
terraqueous globe, and to view all foreigners as barbarians,
could not be approached with advantage by a body of manly
Englishmen. In their character of merchants they were
already contemptible in Oriental eyes; and the language of
respectful homage, when coupled with the tone of self-
respect, was viewed with indignation. Such a prince could
be propitiated only by the Eastern style of servile prostra-
tion; and, were this style even steadily adopted, under the
infinite caprice of absolute despots it would but the more
certainly court the vilest occasional outrages. Some of our
anti-national scribblers at home-as, of course, in vast capitals
every variety of human nature will be developed-insisted
upon it, that our English ambassador ought to have per-
formed the kotou; that it was a mere form; and that the
Pekin court usage was the law for those who had occasion to
visit Pekin. Had Lord Amherst submitted to such a degrad-
ation, the next thing would have been a requisition from the
English Factory of beautiful English women, according to a
fixed description, as annual presents to the Emperor. It is
painful to add that, according to the degradation which too.
naturally takes place in Canton councils, there have been
times when such a condition would have been favourably
received; and the sole demur would have been raised on the
possibility of trepanning any fit succession of their fair com-
patriots. We know what we are saying. We must all hope
that our modern merchants are far too lofty in principle and
feeling for compliances so abject. But we are speaking of the
general tendencies which take place in such eastern mercan-
tile bodies, when so far removed from the salutary control of
English opinion. Our object is to state the evil influences
which are operating and long have operated at all our
Oriental settlements where the British society is not numerous
enough to hold a "potential voice" of moral control. It
cannot be disguised that the interests and honour of England
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 185
sometimes require to be supported against the British mer-
chants as well as against the despotic sovereign of China.
The evil, we have already said, began in the unnatural posi-
tion, perfectly ruinous to the growth of all high-toned honour,
between contracting parties so disproportionately assorted,
who could not approach each other, and who, differing in
religion, in the modes of their civilisation, and in language,
not less than they did in rank, had really no one common
principle of appeal in their standards of morality. To these
original defects of position was added the total neglect of
every successive Government at home. Our furious party
disputes in England, so unspeakably valuable in sustaining
the vigilance and sincerity of our political interests, have yet
this one collateral disadvantage-that they leave no leisure
or care for remote colonial questions. This very natural
indifference was sustained by the enormous distance-
virtually double for the last generation. A voyage of fifteen
thousand miles and back made it impossible, in the old state
of our Oriental navigation, to receive an answer to a letter
of inquiry, at the very earliest, in less than twelve calendar
months. The old calculation of an Idumean prince, when
threatened by a Jewish rival with an allied force from Rome,
viz. that, according to ali human chances, before three such
enemies could have combined a hostile rencontre, either the
Jewish threatener, or his Roman ally, or the object of their
hostilities, one or all, must naturally have perished, and the
combination fallen through either by failure in the means, or
by the extinction of the purpose,—this mode of argument
applied with triple force to all schemes for connecting
Eastern affairs with Parliamentary politics. And thus it
happened that for just 150 years our Eastern settlements
were all alike neglected. The distance, the obscurity of the
interests, the claims, or the intrigues, together with the local
peculiarities of thing, person, name, usage—all united to
separate us from these splendid theatres of English enterprise
as totally as if they had belonged to the planet Jupiter. At
length came Lord Clive's magnificent career; another empire
was created for England; this empire expanded rapidly;
vast fortunes were brought home from India. Much of this
money, nay, even the money of native Indian princes, was
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MISCELLANEA
applied to the support of a Parliamentary influence. Charles
Fox grew ambitious of legislating for India. A far greater
man, but in this instance a petty one, Edmund Burke, grew
interested in the Indian Government by his personal hatreds.
The light of inquiry began to unveil the importance of these
settlements; the English Government would no longer
permit such mighty interests to be regulated by merchants;
an overruling participation in the power was demanded; a
domestic board of control was established; and finally, by
many further changes, of which not the least has been the
gradual reduction of the Bengal voyage from six months to
three, and the organization of overland routes from Bombay
in still shorter space of time, the great Indian Colonies have
long been placed under the close supervision of English
domestic councils.
But that case was a splendid and a natural exception.
There it was no longer a commerce, no longer a provincial
factory, but a vast empire which was concerned,—an einpire
that in many parts had resumed the throne and place of the
Moguls, the only sovereigns in the Mahometan line who
have ever approached to a general sovereignty over India.
The great circumstances accounted for the great change. But
elsewhere things continued as they had been.
At Canton,
especially, no symptom of an improved surveillance has been
manifested. The greater distance, the lesser value at stake,
explain this neglect for the present. But steam, in conjunc-
tion with railway, is rapidly annihilating the first; and
circumstances which we are now to indicate will so vary the
last that a great revolution must now be looked for.
We
shall be compelled to change our system, or ruin is at hand
for English interests in China. The nature of the changes
to be expected we shall briefly state.
Up to the year 1785 it is not worth while to trace the
little oscillations of our Canton history. It is merely the
history of a counting-house, except for the interest attached
to national indignities. Little real variation could take
place in our relations with the Chinese court when all
trembled before a power that by one word could annihilate
their prosperity, unless when some lion-hearted sailor, such
as Lord (then Commodore) Anson, touched at Macao for the
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 187
sake of repairs or refreshments. This gallant race of men,
having no alien interests of a money nature to mislead the
simplicity of their English feeling, treated the insolence of
the Chinese authorities with the disdain it merited; and
Lord Anson, in particular, on finding a puny opposition pre-
pared to his passage, smashed their "crockery ware" (as he
irreverently styled their forts at the Bocca) in such a sum-
mary style with the guns of his old storm-shaken ship the
Centurion that all the tails in Canton stood on end with
horror. Frightened as the British factory was at this
explosion of naval spirit, they could not hide from them-
selves that it succeeded for the moment, and left a useful
impression behind it for a pretty long period. It was, in fact,
the results from this demonstration of Anson's that subse-
quently suggested the two embassies of the Lords Macartney
and Amherst. But, previously to the era even of Lord
Macartney's mission, an affair of the year 1785 had put into
everlasting characters of shame, had inscribed deeply upon a
poor murdered victim's gravestone, what is the capacity
for evil, how infinite the possible degradation, under a venal
spirit of money-making, when not counteracted and overruled
by the public opinion of an honourable Christian community.
The case, a memorable one for our English instruction, was
this:-Either in firing a salute of honour, or on some festal
occasion, a ball from one of the great guns on board an
English Indiaman unfortunately killed a Chinese. Never
in the history of human affairs was there a more absolute
accident as respected the man who fired the gun.
The man
who loaded it was never discovered. But this wicked nation,
who are so thoroughly demoralized as to perceive no moral
difference between the purest case of misfortune terminating
in a man's death and the vilest murder of premeditating
malice, demanded (according to their practice) all the men
to be given up who had in any way been parties to the load-
ing, the priming, or the firing of the gun. The English
factory, whose very cowardice had taken a lesson in the
policy of making some resistance to monstrous demands,
kicked a little at this summons. But the Chinese, being so
thoroughly in the wrong, were of course thoroughly in
earnest. The usual circle of remonstrances was run through
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MISCELLANEA
""
by the factory; the usual insolent retorts came from the
Lins of 1785; the usual steps were taken through the Hong
for "closing the trade ; and then upon that magical
sesame—all scruples of honour, justice, Christian feeling,
gave way at once; wide open flew English doors to the vile
Chinese murderers; and, to the everlasting shame of poor
dishonoured England, the innocent man, who had acted in
obedience to absolute orders from his captain, was given up
to these Canton devils, in order that they, under colour of
avenging an imaginary murder, might perpetrate as real and
foul a murder as human annals record. The man who had
fired the gun was professionally the gunner of the vessel; and
to our feeling it adds to the inhuman baseness of the sur-
render that he was an elderly Portuguese, who had for
many years sought by preference the service of the British
flag. When the wretches came to seek him, he was on board
his ship. The boat being ready, he was called to take his
place in her. Well he knew whither he was going, and what
would be his fate. The officer was present under whose
orders he had acted; yet he uttered not a murmur. He took
his place modestly at a distance from the officers; and, when
called to take a more honourable seat by their side, again he
obeyed the order. One of the captains, pitying the man's
case, and admiring his meekness, humility, and fortitude,
uttered some words of consolation; and other captains,
adding lies to their perfidy and their cowardice, assured him
that not a hair of his head should be touched.
But the poor
Portuguese knew better: he understood the case; he knew
the brutal stupidity of the Chinese; and he read his fate in
the obstinacy of their pursuit. Still he murmured not;
only at those delusive assurances, which added mockery to
murder, he shook his head with a mournful significancy.
The sequel is soon told. This humble servant of the British
flag was solemnly delivered up to his assassins. Some of the
better Chinese were themselves startled at the approaching
tragedy; for, let it be observed, there was no deviation from
the statement here made, even in credulous Canton.
Chinese version of the story differed in no iota from the
English. Murmurs began to creep through that timid, ser-
vile city. The man's deportment, so humble and submissive,
The
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 189
conciliated some pity even from the fools who thought him a
criminal. It was found expedient to despatch a courier to
Pekin for further orders. In due course, the fatal mandate
returned for the execution to proceed; and this poor injured
man suffered on a Chinese gallows by hanging for having
fulfilled his duty on the deck of a British ship. Baseness
and faint-heartedness so complicated, we willingly believe,
cannot often have been repeated by British authorities even
in a factory. We would even hope that the case must be
unique. But it is proper that we should know what are the
atrocities which, under the spirit of gain, even free-born
Britons can commit, and which, under their accursed system
of law, the Chinese can exact.
These precedents, it will be said, belong to a past age.
Certainly, as regards the British share in the disgrace; but
not as regards the Chinese share in the terror.
The same
scenes are eternally impending. The Chinese laws do not
change. It is the very expression of their improgressive
state that they cannot. Centuries make no reforms in a land
open to no light. That same monstrous principle upon
which a poor dependant of England was then given up to an
ignominious death-the principle that in a certain event
inevitable misfortune and malice aforethought are equally
criminal, punishable equally by the death of a dog-this
principle will never be abandoned. This principle has, since
the year 1785, again and again brought us into terrific em-
barrassments; and it is idle to suppose that in a seaport,
the resort of sailors from the highest-spirited nation upon
the earth, and liable to perpetual insults from Chinese vaga-
bonds, any vigilance can ever close or seal up this opening
to occasional manslaughters. We do not mention as a
separate evil the liability of our people to be confounded
with the Americans: from the identity of their naval
costume, this must continually happen: but amongst Chinese
idolaters we view the Americans as one with ourselves.
They are Christians; they have our British blood in their
veins; and they have inherited from ourselves, as children
of enlightened liberty, the same intolerance of wrong. It
would be a petty clannish form of nationality to separate our
cause from theirs.
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But now mark:-As yet, or at least until the last few
years, this horrible Chinese degeneration of moral distinc-
tions has operated only upon a known, distinct and concen-
trated surface, upon a body of men under the eye, and
partially reined up tightly by the hand, of cautious superiors.
Had any other been the case, long before this the very stones in
England would have mutinied for vengeance-such would
have been the judicial atrocities committed by the Chinese.
At present all things are changing in the aspect of English
colonization and of our Asiatic commerce. The mere ex-
pansion of our Indian Empire, and the widening circle of
our Asiatic relations, would gradually multiply our shipping,
our social necessities, and our points of contact with foreigners
in all Eastern seas. But, apart from India, the following
important changes have recently begun to open :—
1st, The colonial importance of New South Wales is now
annually strengthening, so much as to send off sub-depend-
encies to other parts of the same great continent. The
insular colonies of Van Diemen's Land will add another
nucleus in the same region; which already is connecting
itself, by numerous threads, with important settlements in
every part of the Eastern Ocean.
2dly, The infant colony of New Zealand will soon, of
itself, form another and a separate nucleus in the same
region of that ocean. This colony has been treated with
contradictory harshness by Lord John Russell,—now drawing
back from the most reasonable interposition of Government,
now volunteering the most hostile; this day refusing the
slightest expression of maternal grace from England, next
day placing England towards her own suppliant children
in the attitude of a malignant stepmother. But, for all that,
New Zealand is destined to a giant's career. It is a youthful
Hercules that will throttle the snakes about its cradle.
climate, not too relaxing, the soil, the waters, the inter-
connexion between the noblest children of civilisation, and
by very much the noblest race of savages in the world-
these great advantages, combined with two others-(the first
being that a large proportion of capitalists will be concerned
in this colonial edifice and the second that convicts will be
excluded)—compose a body of inauguration for this enterprise
The
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 191
which wears a promise hardly within the compass of dis-
appointment. The long infancy of all other colonies will be
spared to this: 1st, in consequence of the power and light
which are now directed upon the general subject of colonization
from the centres of European civilisation; 2dly, in consequence
of the peculiar local endowments; and, lastly, in consequence
of the magical revolution in the arts of locomotion.
3dly, The missionary efforts from Christian England are
now annually expanding their means, and organizing their
forces. Were it merely through the growing knowledge of
Eastern languages, this religious interest must go on at a
pace liable to sudden accelerations of speed. It is in the
nature of such undertakings to kindle as they advance, and
as the separate centres of radiation begin to link on to each
other, gradually interknitting as a chain of posts in active
intercommunication.
All these concurring causes will soon multiply our Oriental
shipping by twenty-fold. In fact, fresh emporia, such as
Singapore, have been rising of late years. Ceylon has been
rising rapidly in importance. Our increasing intercourse
with the Red Sea (now strengthened by military stations)
will further abbreviate the intercourse between Europe and
the Indian Ocean. These causes, taken by themselves, and
apart from the fact that the missionaries have been applying
themselves with peculiar energy to the vast unguarded sea-
coast of China, will avail to carry into Chinese jurisdiction
a score of British ships for one that has had occasion to face
that danger. Occasional shipwrecks, or calls under stress of
weather, will increase in the same proportion. And of this
we may be assured, that opportunities for retaliation in a
twenty-fold proportion will henceforwards offer to this
ignoble people in every case where their monstrous laws may
happen to be infringed.
It is a subject of just alarm that not only will the
occasions for revenge be multiplied, but the chances of
provoking revenge by offending those unnatural laws will
even outrun our increased scale of intercourse. For it
must never be forgotten that the opening of the trade to
China-were there no other change in operation-has by
itself utterly deranged the old local authority of any
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MISCELLANEA
superintendents whom the new condition of the commerce
will endure. Hitherto the enterprising parties (the final
controllers) have been cautious and intelligent capitalists;
now they will be desperate adventurers. The trade, as it
now stands, has succeeded to an inheritance of some ancient
forms; but it has inherited no part of the ancient obedience.
The obedience paid to Captain Elliot was, in all its circum-
stances, as different from that which once corresponded to
the demands of China as the new condition of the China
seas will be from those of the eighteenth century. This
obedience heretofore was compulsory; now it is prudential,
and (in the literal sense of that word) precarious, for it
depended upon the entreaties of Captain Elliot. Heretofore
it was instant; now it followed after long deliberation.
Heretofore it was unconditional; now it took the shape of a
capitulation. So much obedience was sold for so much
indemnification. And most undoubtedly even this form of
submission would have been refused, had the quality of the
indemnification been known, or its distance suspected. In
future, every man will govern himself according to his separate
views of Chinese policy, or his own facilities for evading it.
But, amongst these facilities, the most tempting will be the
unprotected state of the Chinese coast as regards the coercion
of smuggling. With the inefficacy of Chinese administration
will grow the cruelty of Chinese revenge, in order that
vengeance may redress the weakness of foresight, and
barbarous punishments make up for defective precautions.
This people, who are bestial enough to think the will and the
intention no necessary element in the moral quality of an
act, are also savage enough to punish vicariously. A smuggler
will be caught and impaled within sight of his ship: his
comrades, by way of furious revenge, will land, will burn a
dozen or two of villages, and massacre the flying inhabitants.
These particular criminals will probably escape. But the
ship that goes next on shore in China will meet the full
storm of Chinese vengeance. And, if some colonial ship
freighted with immigrants, or some packet with passengers,
should be driven out of her course, and touch at a Chinese
port, as sure as we live some horrid record will convulse us
all with the intelligence that our brave countrymen, our
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 193
gentle countrywomen and their innocent children, have been
subjected to the torture by this accursed state.
No it is vain to dissemble. Even without the irritations
of contraband trade, and without the extension of our
Eastern intercourse now opening before us, it is too certain
that the humiliation and the national crime of 1785 will
revolve upon us.
Many times we have been on the brink of
the same tragedy. And, knowing those facts, it is scarcely
to be forgiven that our Government should not long ago
have taken steps in a most decided way to place our relations
with this immoral state upon a footing of European security.
Things have at last taken a turn which, on other grounds, has
induced our Government to meditate an armed negotiation
with China. Now, therefore, it will be most important to
combine this ancient and lasting purpose of security with
the accidental purpose of the moment, and, whilst healing a
present wound of our own infliction (for the indemnity we are
seeking corresponds to a surrender volunteered by ourselves),
to obtain a lasting guarantee, once and for ever, against far
worse wounds to character, as well as property, which have
continually impended over our Canton connexion.
Let us now consider in what way this great object can be
compassed, and how it may be possible to extract from an
ill-advised rupture not merely a satisfaction for the momentary
grievance, but such concessions in regard to our permanent
perils as may reconcile us all to the rashness of Captain
Elliot, and may turn the opium loss (were that even past
retrieval) into a mere pepper-corn rent for the very amplest
conditions of commercial privilege.
What we want with Oriental powers like China, in-
capable of a true civilisation, semi-refined in manners and
mechanic arts, but incurably savage in the moral sense, is a
full explanation of our meaning under an adequate demon-
stration of our power. We have never obtained either the
one or the other. Our two embassies were faithfully executed,
but erroneously planned.¹ To pause at the outset upon what
may be thought a trifle, but it is really no trifle in dealing
with Oriental princes,—even the presents in those embassies
1 The Embassies meant are (1) that of Lord Macartney to China in
1792, (2) that of Lord Amherst in 1816.-M.
VOL. XIV
Q
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MISCELLANEA
were not childishly, so much as ruinously, selected. Certain
departments of public business have immemorially been con-
ducted as jobs in Great Britain: for instance, the building
of palaces, and the regulation of national presents. The
first, instead of being confided to a national superintendence,
has constantly settled upon the individual caprice of the
existing prince; which caprice taking every variety of direc-
tion, it has naturally followed that more money has been
spent in merely undoing and pulling down walls than
availed in France to build the Louvre, the Tuileries, and
Versailles, and with this final result, that, excepting
Windsor, we have no palace worthy of the nation. The
same hole-and-corner influence has mismanaged the depart-
ment of presents. For no reason upon earth, beyond an old
precedent, thousand-guinea diamond-boxes were at one time
given to a variety of people on every occasion of signing a
treaty; and, in Mr. Canning's brief administration, when
that minister was questioned about them, it actually came
out that no person was officially responsible for the boxes
being worth anything approaching to the price paid by
the nation. In another case, and a very important one-viz.
the Algerine presents-we have the evidence of a most
respectable consul, Mr. Broughton, who made large personal
sacrifices for the British honour, that blunders the most
childish were committed-blunders interpreted as insults.
Had an old frigate, or even a corvette, of which so many
were going to decay "in ordinary," been sent to the Dey,
the present would have been received thankfully as a royal
one: instead of which an assortment of bijouterie was offered
by which the Dey thought himself mocked. The diamond-
box concern had interfered as usual. A musical snuff-box,
valued to the nation at five hundred guineas, was scornfully
tossed by the Dey to his cook; and the only article which
he thought worthy of himself was a brace of finely finished
pistols, which probably had not cost above fifty guineas.
Thus highly does the nation pay to found a lasting sense of
injury in the minds of foreign princes.
As respected China the matter was worse. Amongst the
presents assorted for the Celestial Emperor was actually a
complex apparatus (suited to the bedchamber of an invalid)
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 195
which cannot be mentioned with decorum. Oriental princes
will not believe that the sovereign who is nominally the
presenter of such offerings has not a personal cognisance of
the affront. In their own establishments every trifle of this
nature is duly reported and discussed, as one means of
relieving the dire monotony which besieges the sensual lives
of the East. And, besides, not to have had cognisance of
what concerned a brother potentate is already an affront.
That preliminary being first of all settled,-which requires
great tact in the case of China, from the jealousy with which
they regard our superiority in the mechanic arts and their
entire incapacity for the liberal arts,—a project is suggested
by our present exigencies which has slightly been entertained
in former times. It is now certain that we must have some
sort of military expedition against China. It is also certain
that we can never have full explanations exchanged, or the
basis of any treaty laid, without a solemn diplomatic con-
gress between the two nations. What if the two appeals
were combined? Embassies have failed in the East partly
because, speaking from no apparent station of power, and
appealing to no previous knowledge of our European rank,
they could not command the requisite attention and respect.
On the other hand, a warlike invasion is too openly an
expression of coercion to found a settlement that will last.
But what if the feelings of an arrogant state were so far con-
sulted as to allow her some colourable varnish for wounded
vanity? What if, instead of a negotiating army, we were to
send an armed negotiator?-instead of an army with an
ambassador in its rear, an ambassador followed by an army
for his train? Such retinues are not unknown in many
Eastern lands. A column of
A column of 14,000 men, with a suitable
train of artillery, it is understood to be the opinion of mili-
tary men, would easily march to Pekin, if landed at the
nearest point. One person, indeed, assures us that we under-
rate the Chinese Tartar troops. An experienced native, it
seems, of Nepaul had told him "that the Chinese scimitar
cuts deeply." Now, if this officer confined his remark liter-
ally to the swords (and not using the word as a general symbol
for martial power), there is no doubt, and it is surprising,
that the Oriental weapons of steel are generally much
196
MISCELLANEA
superior to our own. In the suite of the French General
Gardane, sent ambassador by Napoleon to the court of
Teheran, there were many military men who reported that
the best Damascus blades were better than the very best
Toledos. But, as these could only be purchased from
Turkish enemies, the Shah had patronised two native manu-
factories, at Ispahan and in Chorasan, which were in their
turn as much superior to the Syrian arms as those to the
Spanish. One officer put the rival qualities to a test which
was decisive; and M. Jancoigne (who afterwards published a
French report on the Persian armies) says expressly-"The
swords they use, much superior to ours in temper, make
wide and deep wounds, which are generally mortal.
>> The
advantage belongs to all Oriental armies which import
Persian sabres. But what of that? It still remains true of
all Oriental armies that, even as to weapons, they are badly
armed,―badly as respects the class and selection of the arms,
whatever may be their quality as manufactures. The
Persian armies have been beaten into some useful reforms by
the Russians, and trained into others by Sir H. Bethune.
The armies of India have been gradually improved by the
example of the English. With these exceptions, no Eastern
armies can so much as face European troops, where all
arms of the service are complete, in almost any disproportion.
A few brave mountain clans do not amount to a serious
exception. One universal error in the composition of
Eastern armies is the vast preponderance of the cavalry.
The Persian cavalry, taking the quality of men, horses, and
arms conjointly, thirty years ago, was the most splendid in
Asia. Yet an agent of Napoleon's reported thus on the
question of their serviceableness—“This brilliant cavalry
cannot fight in battle array"; and then, after describing
their excellent qualities as individual horsemen or acting as
partisans "for turning the flanks of an army and as skir-
mishers," this Frenchman concludes thus :- "But the perfec-
tion of European tactics would not permit the élite even of
the Persian cavalry to support the impetuosity of heavy
dragoons, French or English: they are unequal to the regu-
lar shock of our cavalry of the line, and they are unequal
to the task of breaking our infantry." Yet this cavalry, we
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840
197
repeat, was, by unanimous consent, at the head of all Asiatic
cavalry. As to the infantry, until recently in Persia and
in Hindostan, it is everywhere a rabble of tumultuary levies
in Asiatic armies.
Upon many people's minds it will rest as an unpleasant
augury, what Sir Robert Peel said of our engaging in a war
with three hundred and fifty millions of men. We think
Sir Robert must have smiled when he used that argument.
One of Shakspere's clowns, hearing of a man having
suffered or having threatened a million of stripes, says,
"A million of stripes may come to a great matter."
And certainly three hundred and fifty millions of
cudgelings "would come to a great matter," which would
not improve our position, though it might strengthen
the demand for opium. But, seriously, of all nations
the Chinese is the most sedentary, and the least avail-
able for a locomotive war-such as we can always make
it. The fourth part of their three hundred and fifty
millions,—which in a nation wholly barbarous ought to
express the number of males disposable for war,-would be
too many for the purpose by a thousandfold, if they could
be applied to the service, or, being applied, were of the
martial quality required. But the improgressive and imper-
fect civilisation of this nation is precisely of that kind which
most effectually prevents the abstraction of men from their
daily industry. Nations cannot starve in order to fight;
and the position of China, exposed for some generations to
no potent enemy on her frontiers, is precisely such as to
prevent her nominal army from being, in a true military
sense, seasoned to war, or, in military phrase, “aguerrie.”
An armed police is the utmost, from mere defect of enemies,
that any Chinese army can long have been. And, were it
even otherwise,—had the Chinese a large army (like our
Indian establishment) continually exercised in field duties
and in sharp fighting by a large family of ambitious neigh-
bours,—still the great questions would recur:-1. Have they
a good INFANTRY? 2. Presuming all the advantages of ex-
perience and seasoning in the field, are the men efficiently
ARMED? 3. Have they the magical—almost the spiritual—
power of DISCIPLINE to bind the individuals into unity? 4.
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MISCELLANEA
Have they an engineering establishment? Have they an
ARTILLERY?
A quarterly journal of eminence in our land absolutely
attempts to startle the country, as regards this last ques-
tion, by pointing attention to the awful fact that the
Chinese had thrown a twelve-pound ball into the mast
of the Volage or the Hyacinthe! Wonderful! — and the
poor mast has to undergo an operation in lithotomy before
it can be pronounced out of danger! Why, Persia her-
self, whose whole field artillery consisted of certain drome-
daries with a swivel mounted on the hump (zemboureks
they were called),—which swivel being once fired, to the im-
minent hazard of the cannonier and his neighbour, the regular
manœuvre was for the dromedary to wheel to the right about,
and gallop off for a day's march to the rear, in order to in-
sure the concern against capture, -even Persia had some
capital cannon in her arsenals. And how acquired? They
had been left behind by the Portuguese when they evacuated
the island of Ormus. And most other Asiatic powers have
come into an odd assortment of Christian artillery and other
old iron, as derelicts of us Europeans. Why, then, should it
astonish us that China, by robbery or purchase, or in the
way of jetsam and flotsam, should come into possession of a
Christian hulk or so with its heavy guns? This argues
nothing for her native skill in engineering. One discharge
of a rocket brigade, should our expedition make a hourrah
upon any great city, will be a sufficient reply to all such
alarmists.
It is in no other way than as an armed body that an
English embassy can ever prevail at Pekin. It is in no
other character than as an ambassadorial body that an English
army can fail to leave behind a very lasting impression of
irritation at Pekin. Either form of approach taken separately
would thwart our views: the purely martial form would
terminate in hostility; the purely diplomatic would terminate
in smoke. But, if the two could be dexterously blended, if
the one could be so used as to masque the other, from the
twofold engine we might expect a great and a permanent
result. Eastern princes, when they receive alimony as sup-
pliants from others at a distance, call it before their own
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 199
subjects tribute which they have levied. And, when they
really pay tribute, they call it alimony which they have
granted. To a certain extent we may wink at such evasions
in China. But we must not any longer allow our ambassa-
dors to be called tribute-bearers, as were Lords Macartney
and Amherst. We must not any longer allow ourselves to
be called barbarians. It is doubtful, indeed, as to this last
term, what is the exact value of the Chinese word so rendered.
In the use of the Greek word Barbaroi, besides the four stages
through which it is traced by Gibbon (chap. li. vol. ix., foot-
note pp. 463-4), it is certain that in each separate stage the
word admitted of some modifications, which mitigated the
insult, and caused it to be sometimes self-assumed as a mere
name of distinction, equivalent to alien or non-Grecian. Some
such misunderstanding may operate here. But misunder-
standings, one and all, we must have cleared up. They are
perilous with two sorts of nations—with insolent nations,
and with dishonest nations. And the very first rule in deal-
ing with such a nation is-Better to be cheated than to be
insulted.
We
The first thing is to look out for really skilful, but in
any case really honest, interpreters. Want of skill may be
remedied. One or two circumlocutions, or varying repeti-
tions, will always make the meaning clear, if any doubt arises
upon a separate word: and generally things, substantial things,
are too much interwoven with the points in dispute to allow
any large range for mistake. But there is no guarding
against the perfidy of a native Chinese whose cowardice
suggests to him some evasion of a strong English idea.
must have a letter first of all, full and circumstantial, written
to the Emperor; and, because it is said that he feels it a
degradation to have been addressed of late by a Viceroy (the
Governor-General of India), this letter must speak directly
from her Majesty, the Queen that now is, to his Imperial
Majesty. This will be also the better course for another
important reason. It will justify a frank language; it will
prevent the language of kindness and respectful conciliation
from seeming adulatory; it will prevent the language of
plain-dealing from seeming insolent. A very great aid would
be rendered to the cause if a short sketch could be sent with
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MISCELLANEA
this letter describing the great leading points in our social
polity showing the value which we also set upon human
life (which otherwise the stupid Chinese fancy peculiar to
themselves); but showing also that we value other things
still more highly, such as equity, human rights and duties as
measured by intention, &c., and stating the nature of a re-
presentative government,-how far it limits the powers of a
sovereign, but in what a high degree it provides for the honour
and dignity and usefulness of the sovereign. Such a sketch
would prepare the Emperor to understand in future that
special requests which he might make of our Queen, as tests
of her sincerity, are liable to refusal from the nature of
popular rights, without any failure in respect or in sincerity
of good-will.
The Chinese understand by this time,-which formerly
they did not,-soinething of the truth in relation to our civil
grandeur. This they have learned indirectly, and by a sort
of logical sorites. Our Indian Empire, which they see and
tremble at, is an exponent to their understandings of that
England which they cannot see. To know that this mighty
colonial possession is but a remote dependency on England;
to know that it is so little essential to the splendour of our
English crown as never to have been visited by any of the
royal family; to know also that the whole vast line of com-
munication between India and England has always been kept
open by our ships, and consequently (let French emissaries
traduce us as much as they will) that, by a practical test
continually applied, we must always have been "too many
for our European enemies through a long line of thirteen
thousand miles: all this must convey a gorgeous impression
of British power to the minds of the Pekin counsellors.
What we now want is to connect this power with our in-
terests in Canton. Contrasting so enormous a power with
the mean submissions and the precarious tenure of our
Chinese factory, what else can the Emperor naturally con-
clude than that we (like himself) throw off from parental
care those who, for the sake of gain, have consented to
expatriate themselves into corners where they hold no one
privilege,—not so much as air, as water, as fire,—but upon
insolent sufferance and capricious indulgence?
"
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 201
This must be set to rights. An explanation must be given,
difficult to devise, of our long inattention to these Chinese
rights. We must also speak plainly on the terms of equality
which we mean to hold in negotiating. This is not quite
unprecedented in the East. In Ferishta's Hindostan, as
abridged by Colonel Dow, will be seen a case where a King
of Persia was so offended at the arrogant style of a great
Mogul Sovereign that he insisted on explanations; which
accordingly were given to this effect :—that, if he used vain-
glorious titles, they were meant only for his own subjects, not
at all in disparagement of his brother princes. Those are
weak people who think such points of titular honour, of
rank, of precedency, to be trifles anywhere. Cromwell did
not think them such: he most wisely refused to treat in
French, though otherwise a trifle, because it would be used
as an argument that we British had submitted to take a
secondary place and to receive a sort of law from our
enemies. The first Cæsars did not think them such, who
cashiered magistrates for using the Greek language on the
tribunal. But in Asia all external forms are more important
by many degrees. In Europe the prevalent good sense, and
the diffusion of truth as to all possible relations of power,
&c., give a perpetual limitation to the gasconades of French
proclamations, French bulletins, &c., which makes nugatory
their false pretensions. But in all Asiatic despotisms no
truth is current. Ignorance that is total, credulity that is
beyond European conception, combine to support all delu-
sions which are not put down with a strong hand by us who
are the most certain to suffer from them.
Among the presents (which to all Eastern princes, but
especially to such as only play at making war, ought chiefly
to be articles of warlike use) none can be so well adapted to
dazzle the Chinese as a train of our field artillery, with its
entire establishment of horses, &c. This, after doing its
appropriate service to the ambassador's "retinue" to and
from the point of debarkation, might be left as a present
with the Emperor. As to mere philosophical instruments,
how could these dazzle a people incapable of using them?
There lay the error of Napoleon, who made Monge exhibit
chemical experiments before the Mamelukes and the Arab
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MISCELLANEA
Sheiks. Not having the very elements of science so as to com-
prehend more than that there had been a flash, or an effer-
vescence, or an explosion, the solemn blockheads naturally
said "Ay, this is very well; but can he do what our
magicians can do? Can he make us jump into Abyssinia and
back again in an hour?"
But, by whatever presents and explanatory letters we court
the personal favour of the Emperor, the strength of our
impression will rest upon our visible demonstration of power
contrasted with our extreme forbearance in using it. That
must make a favourable impression. And it is obvious that
we are now arrived at a crisis in which some powerful im-
pression is indispensable, in order not only to make the
further progress which is challenged by our position in Asia,
but to continue our hold on the progress which is made
already,—not only for those objects even, but to meet the
certain danger to our fellow-subjects from casual collisions
with the Chinese laws. It is obvious enough that the
Chinese commerce, if it were not ours already, ought to be
procured by treaty, considering the clamorous instincts
which propel us in our great Asiatic career. It is obvious
that this Chinese commerce, having long been ours, will be
pursued now at whatever hazard, and that it is the duty of
our Government to make that intercourse secure and honour-
able which it has long been out of their power to prevent.
Lastly, it is obvious that, even if this commerce were extin-
guished by the violence of the Chinese, we should still need
a treaty and a previous demonstration of our power, in order
to protect our ships, with their increasing crews and
passengers, from casual collisions with a cruel nation.
These arguments for an armed interference apply to any
period of that vast system on which our Asiatic interests
have been for some years expanding. But they apply at this
moment beyond others for a separate reason: viz. on account
of two injurious acts on the part of the Commissioner Lin,
which have suddenly created a crisis: the first of these
acts being the seizure of our opium (since a peaceable sur-
render under a virtual condition not fulfilled is a seizure);
the second of these acts being the violent, summary, and (as
Lin says) everlasting exclusion of the British name from
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 203
China. There were at any rate, and already, three general
arguments for an interposition of our Government, pointing
to the future; there is now a fourth argument, pointing to
the past,—the reprisals called for against special and recent
outrages. This last reason we have treated as itself furnish-
ing strong matter against our own Government; but that
does not acquit the Chinese Government. It is only in
collusion with the Chinese Commissioner that our own
Government has been wrong. To seek indemnities, where
we ourselves created the necessity for those indemnities by
submitting to the wrong, criminates the Government under
whose impulse and misrepresentation we did submit to that
wrong; but it does not acquit Lin, under whose breach of
faith that submission has turned out to be an illusory act.
Lin is guilty, and our own Government in a measure the
accomplice of Lin. Yet, self-created as is our present
necessity for indemnities, by pursuing that object in con-
nexion with the other great objects indicated by the constant
state of our danger from China, the Government will have
its only chance of effacing past folly. We may forgive the
absurdity and the fraud by which our merchants were
decoyed into a supererogatory surrender of two birds in the
hand by way of obtaining an uncertain reversion upon one
bird in the bush. This and much besides we may forgive,
and even rejoice in our own losses, as well as the blunders of
our Government, if they should turn out to be the happy
occasion of forcing a stream of light upon our Chinese
position, and winning something more than a momentary
indemnification for the British factory: winning honour for
the name of Britain, winning a secure settlement planted
in law and self-respect for our establishments in China, for
ever taking away from British merchants all temptations to
co-operate in legal murder, for ever guaranteeing our own
brothers and sisters from liability to torture.
We have taken no notice of one feature in our Chinese
relations which threatens us beyond China. We have been
alarmed recently on the matter of Khiva. There is a mono-
mania in this country as regards the Emperor of Russia!
Because the Poles were conspirators, he must be a tyrant;
and every man is suspected of aiming at a snuff-box through
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MISCELLANEA
the Russian ambassador who speaks a word of truth on behalf
of his Russian Majesty! All that we shall say therefore is
that the expedition to Khiva can hardly have any relation to
the British movement upon Cabul. It was planned and
talked of two good years before we crossed the Indus. The
Khan of Khiva is the common nuisance of central Asia,-
equally offensive to Russia as a disturber of her commerce in
its natural channels, and a common Algerine pirate as regards
her peaceful subjects on the Caspian. As regards India, if
Russia could venture to assault with mere war an empire
founded on both the war and the diplomacy of eighty years,
how could she take an effectual departure from the Jaxartes,
when she cannot reach it without the sacrifice of despair?
not to mention that Russia cannot spare troops for an Indian
campaign, has not a battalion that is acclimatized,-cannot
wish for an empire so distant as to demand a new centre of
administration. Now, on the other hand, if China could
become more warlike, the peril which we vainly look for on
the Western Himalaya will seriously reach us from the
Eastern.
We have taken no notice of a feature in the domestic
circumstances of China which may happen to favour us. A
secret and revolutionary society of vast ramifications, some-
times called the Society of the Triad, diffused through every
province of maritime China, and having for its object to
overthrow the existing Tartar dynasty and government, has
been noticed by English travellers of late years.
This may
happen to co-operate with our purposes. But we rely upon
no obscure features, whether for hope or for fear. We rely
upon the condition of China-full of insolence, full of error,
needing to be enlightened, and open to our attacks on every
side. A popular Review has pronounced recently an apotheosis
of China,—finding out that she is distinguished for her skill
in the arts (but obscure mechanic arts), and that she was so
when our ancestors lived in the forests of Germany. True;
and no fact could better have measured the difference between
us. The Review takes a retrospect of 1500 years. All the
world sees how we have used that interval. We British
have traversed the whole distance from savage life to the
summit of civilisation. China, starting with such advantages,
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 205
has yet to learn even the elements of law and justice, with-
out counting on doubtful advantages. We rely upon this
known and attested state of Chinese society; which needs a
diplomatic interference to make it endurable.
We rely upon
our past position at Canton; which was always full of
temptations to partnership in murder. We rely upon our
injuries; which are recent. We rely upon our honour,
trampled under foot. We rely upon our interests; which,
alike for commerce and for person, are now finally at
stake.
POSTSCRIPT
ON THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S VIEWS
ON the 11th of May this article went to press. And on the
15th day of May, the Lords' debate being then circulated
through Edinburgh, it first became known to us that between
our views on this remarkable question and those of the
Duke of Wellington as now brought forward by party
collision, there were some pointed concidences. Any man in
the world may be proud of a coincidence, in a matter so
complex, with the illustrious Duke. And the business of
this Postscript is accordingly :-
First of all, To establish and claim the benefit of that
coincidence: to show that it was such; and that our agree-
ments with the Duke are not consequent upon any com-
munication that we could have had with the noble Duke's
opinions. The statement of dates, as given above, shows
satisfactorily that our speculations upon this great Oriental
crisis—however closely approaching to the Duke's—must
have had a separate and independent origin. Indirectly,
also, we are proud to establish our claims in this way,
as having fairly appreciated the probable course of Tory
doctrines upon so elaborate a question, and of Tory policy, at
a time when neither one nor the other had been circum-
stantially developed,-when it was not yet fully known
where the Tory blame and praise would settle as to the
past, nor in what precise channel the Tory policy would
travel as to the future.
Secondly, To explain any case, however subordinate, in
which we appear to have differed from the Duke, and in
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 207
which, according to the extent of our differences, the pre-
sumption is that we must be wrong.
Thirdly, Without reference to any claim or any explanation
on our own account, it is a purpose of this Postscript to tell
the general reader, who cares not for the person saying, but
simply for the thing said, how far we have found reason to
modify any opinion previously delivered after the benefit we
acknowledge to have received from this discussion before so
enlightened a senate as the House of Lords, and, more par-
ticularly, whether we have any fresh views to offer after the
affair has been brought under the review of the most sagacious
and the most experienced amongst modern statesmen.
Amidst the sharp musketry of a Parliamentary debate it
is the general feeling that the Duke of Wellington's opinions
or suggestions tell like cannon-shot. Whatsoever falls from
him is received by the country as having an oracular value.
And in this present instance of the China debate his
authority has told so effectually as to have crushed by
anticipation a second debate pending contingently in the
House of Commons. Notice of a motion on this subject has
been expressly withdrawn, upon the ground of the powerful
impression made by the Duke of Wellington. It becomes,
therefore, the more important that we should draw a glance
over the points established by His Grace, as they accord so
entirely with our own previous view, and strengthen so
greatly the opinions, and the grounds of those opinions,
which we had already expressed in print.
The whole field of the questions concerned divides into
two great sections-the past, and the future: the past, in
relation to the criminality which has brought on the crisis-
how that criminality is to be distributed amongst the several
parties to the transaction; the future, in relation to the policy
which must now be applied to the successful unravelling of
this crisis. What is past undoubtedly cannot be recalled :
but it is not the less important to understand it thoroughly,
both for the purpose of framing measures to prevent its
recurrence, and because our whole policy, even where it is
and must be of a warlike character, will undoubtedly need
to be shaped very differently accordingly as it contemplates.
a case of mixed aggressions, partly British, partly Chinese, or
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a case of horrible outrage (in the way we have maintained,
and in the way it now appears that the Duke of Wellington
maintains) exclusively Chinese, and utterly unprovoked.
The parties liable to inculpation, as having participated.
in the proceedings at some stage or other, are three :—the
Chinese Government, the British Opium-dealers, and our own
Domestic Administration. Let us pass them in rapid review,
and weigh the distribution of blame amongst these three
parties as awarded by the illustrious Duke :-
I. The Chinese Government. Here the Duke's statements
are not only, as we described them to be generally, like
cannon-shot in their effect, but are like such shot in its
course and mode of progress as described in Schiller's
Wallenstein—“ shattering what it reaches, and shattering that
it may reach." Not only does he shatter the object of his
attack-the immoral government of China; but, in his road
to that object, he goes right through the centre of all who
have in this country undertaken the apology of that govern-
ment. Had the Chinese even stood upon any fair ground of
right in the first stages of the case, they would have forfeited
that advantage in the last: "for," says the Duke, “in all the
"fifty years of my own experience as a servant of my country
-no, nor in any part of my reading-have I met with such
“another case of outrage as that authorized by the rulers of
"China to our accredited agent." And, if some people object
((
"Oh! but the Chinese would not recognise Captain Elliot
as an accredited agent, they would not receive a British official
representative ❞—in that case so much the worse; because then
Captain Elliot had the rights of a private individual, and there
was no more plea open to the Chinese Government for making
him responsible than any obscure sailor taken at random.
So much for the last stages of the Chinese conduct; and
here the Duke does but strengthen an impression which is
open to us all. But, as to the first stages, by reference to
sources of information more special and personal, he cuts the
ground from below the feet of the Chinese Government in a
way peculiar to himself. We could but suspect; for we had
no documents. The Duke proves he had ample documents.
In papers furnished to the Lords he had seen, in a Committee
of the Lords he had heard, direct evidence-proof not to be
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 209
gainsaid or shaken that the acting administration of China,
those persons, one and all, whom we aliens are required to
consider and to treat as the responsible government of the
land, had through a series of years encouraged the importation of
opium. There flutters to the winds a whole library of polemic
pamphlets. After this, is it anything to us whether in such
a case, and many another case, the Emperor is or is not
kept in the dark by the mandarins? We are bound to
know the Emperor's pleasure through those whom he deputes
to us as his representatives. We can know it in no other
way.
The internal abuses of their Government are for their
own consciences. To us they are nothing. And there, at one
blow from the mace of the iron Duke, lies in splinters upon
the floor almost every pro-Chinese pleading which has taken
up the ground of morality.
II. The British Opium-Dealers.-Upon this head the
Duke is overwhelming. Their acquittal, indeed, is involved
in the fact which has been just stated on the Duke's authority
with regard to the Chinese Administration.
If that body
encouraged importation, in respect of them the importers
cannot be wrongdoers. There might be room for some wrong
in relation to our British Government; because, if they had
happened to forbid the opium traffic, wisely or foolishly, then
it might have been a fair plea at home-"Look for no
British aid if China should injure you in respect to an
interest which we have discountenanced."
So much room,
and no more, there might have been for wrong on the side of
the opium merchants. There might have been; but was
there? Hear the all-shattering Duke :
First he declares that, so far from even looking gloomily
upon this opium commerce, Parliament had cherished it,
suggested its extension, and deliberately examined the means
at their disposal for promoting its success, as a favoured
resource both of finance and of trade. The Duke reminds
the House that he himself, with other patriotic peers, had
been parties to a committee of which one main business was
to recommend and introduce (by way of substitution for the
privileges lost to the East India Company on throwing open
their trade) some modified form of a monopoly with regard
to opium.
VOL. XIV
P
210
MISCELLANEA
Secondly, if this should be thought to shift the blame
from the merchants to the British Parliament,—in order, to
make it any duty of our legislators that they should interfere
to stop the opium traffic, first of all we must have such a
measure made out to be a possibility. Now, the Duke puts
down the notion ex abundanti. For, at a time when certain
intolerable treaties with native princes had armed us with a
machinery towards this result, such as we never shall have
again and never ought to have had, even then we could not
succeed in operating upon the trade, except after the follow-
ing fashion :—Our Indian Government proclaimed restric-
tions; our merchants, native as well as British, evaded
them. Our Government made another move in the game,
evading the evasions. Our merchants, wide-awake, counter-
evaded the evasions of their own evasions. And thus the
sport proceeded, the two parties doubling upon each other,
and dodging like an old experienced hare against a grey-
hound, until at last, upon a necessity arising for the
Government to abolish the treaties, we were obliged to whip
off the dogs, and the game party of merchants had it all their
own way. Lord Ellenborough, whose former experience at
the Board of Control made his evidence irresistible on this
point, confirmed all that the Duke had said; with circum-
stantial illustrations of this vain race with the merchants,
and showing that, even for that ineffectual trial of strength,
our Indian Government enjoyed some momentary advantages
which it must never count upon for the future. We have
seen the best of our facilities for such a conflict with private
interest. Even then it was a hopeless conflict: a fortiori
it will be so hereafter. Impossibilities are no subjects for
legislation. By civil law, nemo tenetur facere impossibilia."
Thirdly, But, possible or not in a practical and executive.
sense, if it is our duty to restrain any given social nuisance,
we must not plead our impotence in bar of complaints
against us; and, in default of our own restraints, we must
not complain if others suffering by the nuisance take that
remedy into their own hands which we profess to have
found too difficult for ours. Other checks failing, let us not
complain of those for redressing the evil who suffer by the
annoyance! Certainly not. Nor do we complain. Nor is
(C
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840
211
there anything to that effect involved in any one British act,
We
or in any one argument that has been built upon it.
quarrel with no nation for enforcing her rights of domestic
policy, so long as she keeps herself within the methods of
international justice. But, with respect to China, we make
two demurs. We refuse to hear of any people raising their
separate municipal law into a code of international law: it
is not merely insolence, but it is contradictory folly, to
suppose that, in a dispute between two independent parties,
one of the parties is to constitute himself umpire for both.
This demur we make in the first place. And, secondly, we
say that, apart from her savage modes of redressing civil
wrongs, China has, in this instance, forfeited her claim to
any redress from her long collusion with the wrongdoers whom
now in caprice she accuses; and because not only she par-
ticipated through every class of her population in the opium
traffic,—which with us rested on the support of those only
who were naturally, inevitably, without bribes, the agents of
such a traffic,—but also because she was the original tempter,
inviter, hirer, clamorous suborner, of that intercourse which
now she denounces. Roguery, like other tastes, has its
fashions. Chinese roguery and court intrigue are now, it
seems, blowing from some fresh point of the compass. Be it
So. We argue not against any nation's caprices. But we
refuse to hear of our merchants and our sailors being made
the victims to such caprices, this year inviting the man
whom next year they crucify.
That duty, therefore, which so many are urging against
us, as binding our faith and tying our hands in the collision
with China, the Duke of Wellington disowns as being a pure
chimera under the circumstances of the case. But, on the
other hand, says the Duke, whilst these men argue for an
obligation of conscience which cannot be sustained, observe
the real and solemn obligations, some notorious, some implied
in treaties, which these disputants are goading us to trample.
under foot. That duty of superintendence applied to opium,
which is merely fanciful as regards China under the circum-
stances created by herself, we really do owe, and shall for
many years owe, to native powers of Hindostan.
We came
under such obligations by contracts, by cessions in our
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MISCELLANEA
favour, by diplomatic acts, long since locked up into the
public diplomacy of India. We cannot disturb those
arrangements without a sympathetic violence running
through the whole tenure, guarantees, compensations of all
Indian chanceries. We were long ago pledged to the
protection of many vested interests rooted in the poppy-
growing districts. If we should co-operate with China in
vainly attempting to exclude Indian opium from the vast
unprotected coasts of China, we undertake the following
series of follies: we lend ourselves to a caprice of a hostile
government, to a caprice levelled at our own power; we
undertake to do for China what she is laughably impotent to
do for herself; we take upon ourselves the expense of an act
so purely hostile to ourselves,-which expense would also soon
recall China to her senses; and, lastly, as if such a course of
follies were not complete without an appendix of spoliation, we
purchase the means of this aid to our enemy by the sacrifice
of debts, duties, contracts, guarantees to the closest of our
neighbours, and, amongst our Indian allies, to some of the
oldest and most hopeful. The Duke of Wellington, we
must remember, is at home in the affairs of India. And
this particular suggestion, as to the rights and interests of
provinces likely to be affected by any compromises with
China, belongs entirely to his Grace. Until this vein of
interests had been exposed, it was supposed that a policy of
concession to China would simply pledge us to a maniacal
course, whereas the Duke has shown that it would pledge
us also to perfidy, to a general infraction of treaties, and
to a convulsion of industry and political economy through
many channels in which they are now prosperously flowing.
Such is the circuit of the Duke's logic. Travelling round
the circle of parties concerned, when he hears it said of the
Chinese "They have received an injury amounting to a
cause of war," "By no means," he replies: "they courted
what they complain of; I have proof that they did." When
he hears it said of the merchants "Their trade must be
stopped," he replies "I defy you to stop it: the thing has
been tried, and was laid aside as impossible." When it is
retorted "Well, if it is an inveterate abuse, at least it is an
abuse," the Duke rejoins "No abuse at all: Parliament
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 213
recognised an old right, created a new one, in the opium-
growers." "But, at least, justice to China requires that
the right should be forborne in that instance." "On the
contrary," the Duke again instructs us, "justice to India
requires that in that instance, above all others, the right
should be protected and favoured." Thus pertinaciously
does this champion of truth and scourge of false pretensions
ride round the ring, and sustain the assault against all
comers who would make a breach through the barriers of
equity or civil policy.
But, after all these parties are disposed of, there still
remains
III. Our Domestic Administration.-Now, in what degree
the Duke of Wellington condemns their policy, in its want
of foresight, may be gathered from his special complaints,
both now and formerly, of the twofold defects at Canton,-
defect of naval force, defect of naval judicatories,—and, more
generally, from his complaint that far too great an onus was
thrown upon the responsibilities of Captain Elliot,-too
much, in fact, for any one man unrelieved by a council to
support. His objections, indeed, to the Ministry come for-
ward indirectly in the errors which he exposes and the
cautions which he suggests. But the reasons why the Duke
makes no pointed attack on Lord Melbourne's government
are, first of all, the general principles which govern this
great servant of the state in all movements: viz. his anxiety
for ever to look round the wide horizon for some national
benefit, rather than into a local corner for some party
triumph; and, secondly, because upon this particular question
of China the present Ministry are not so much opposed to
the Tories as to a fantastic party of moral sentimentalists,
who, by force of investing the Chinese with feelings unin-
telligible to Pagans (substituting at the same time a romance
for the facts of the case), have terminated in forcing upon the
public eye a false position of the whole interest at stake,
a position in which all the relations of person are inverted,
in which things are confounded, and our duties (otherwise
so clear) are utterly perplexed. It is this anti-national party
who, on these questions of Opium and China, form the true
antagonist pole to the Ministry. As to us Tories, we are
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MISCELLANEA
here opposed to the party in office only in so far as they
have conceded to the Chinese. Where they have met this
arrogant people with an English resistance, we praise them,
honour them, support them. And exactly upon that mixed
principle of judgment it has been that the Duke, seeing the
strong primary demand that he should support them, has less
diligently sought out those secondary cases in which it would
have been necessary for him to blame or to condemn them.
Thus far with regard to the past, and the general distri-
bution of blame which that review must prompt. As to the
future, and the particular courses of Oriental policy which
any speculation pointed in that direction must suggest for
comparison, it will be remarked, as a singularity in so great
a soldier when facing a question so purely martial, that the
Duke of Wellington declines to offer any opinion whatever
on the possible varieties of warfare, on the modes of com-
bining the land and sea forces, on the local opportunities for
applying them with effect, on the best general chances of
success, or the permanent object to be kept in view. But let
us not misinterpret this high-principled reserve. Some
persons have drawn the inference so as to load the Duke of
Wellington with the responsibility of having doubted whether
a warlike course were, in our circumstances, an advisable
course. Nothing of the sort. Not war, but this war; not a
warlike policy as generally indicated by our situation, but
that kind of policy as governed by our present disposable
means, and moving under some particular plan of which the
very outline is yet unknown and the scale is yet unassigned :
that it is which the Duke drew back from appreciating. Know-
ing the immense weight which must follow any opinion from
himself upon a matter so professionally falling within his right
of judgment, he forbore to prejudge a scheme of war as to
which Europe was hanging on his lips. But, as to war generally,
that the Duke does not encourage doubts of the necessity to
support our pacific relation at all times by showy demonstra-
tions of our readiness for fighting is evident from the constant
recurrence in his own Chinese state-papers of warlike sugges-
tions. It is almost comic to observe what stress he lays, in
sketching the line of argument to be employed by British
negotiators with China, upon a stout frigate” within hail.
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 215
th
In one point only we are reminded, whilst closing, of a
difference between the Duke of Wellington's views and those
which we had previously expressed. As this point respects.
an individual officer, it is fit that we should do him justice by
the whole vast preponderance which belongs to the Duke of
Wellington's praise over any man's censure. We had blamed
Captain Elliot: the Duke praises him, with a fervour that
must constitute Captain Elliot's proudest recollection through
life. But the truth is, we speak of different things. We
spoke of Captain Elliot as identified with his principals, and
as representing their line of policy. The Duke speaks of him
as a separate individual, acting, in a moment of danger,
according to a true British sense of duty upon sudden emer-
gencies for which he could have received no instructions
from England. In his firm refusals to give up Mr. Dent, and
afterwards the six sailors demanded by Lin, Captain Elliot's
conduct was worthy of his country. And the Duke of
Wellington, who is always right, reminds us, by his fervent
commendation, of our own error in having neglected to place
those acts in that light of exemplary merit which belongs. to
them.
And here we cannot help saying a word or two of one of
the few men in any period who have lived to see their own
consecration in human affections, and have had a foretaste
of their own immortality on earth. Let us briefly notice the
Duke of Wellington's present position amongst us,-which
is remarkable, and almost unique.
Until within these few years this great man had been
adequately appreciated according to the means which the
nation then possessed for framing a judgment of his
merits. We measured him by his acts. Europe had seen
him as a soldier; had seen him as an ambassador - no
ceremonial ambassador, but, in a general congress of nations
still rocking with the agitations of convulsions without a
parallel, as a mediatorial ambassador for adjudicating the
rights of the world: finally, Europe had seen him as a
prime minister of England. In the first character, as the
leader of "the faithful armies" which, under whatever
name, did in reality sustain the interests of human nature
and the cause of civilisation upon earth, it would be idle
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MISCELLANEA
to speak of him. In the two last characters it was the
general feeling of England that the Duke of Wellington had
exemplified "the majesty of plain dealing" upon a scale
never before witnessed, and in functions to which such a
spirit of dealing was hardly supposed applicable. Thus far
we all did him right. But we also did him a great wrong;
and it was inevitable that we should do so.
It was a wrong
which he bore cheerfully, and with the submission which he
felt to be one of his duties as a public servant in a free
country. But it must have been bitter and trying to his
secret sense of justice, seeing that subsequent revelations
have exposed to view a peculiar and preternatural strength,
a compass of power absolutely without precedent, in that
very organ of his character to which our popular error ascribed
an elementary weakness.
Nobody can look back for a space of six or eight years
but must remember as a general notion prevailing against
the Duke of Wellington,—a taunt often urged by our politi-
cal opponents, often silently conceded by ourselves,-that,
either from habits of long usage or from original vice of tem-
perament, he was too rigid in his political opinions,—in his
demeanour too peremptory, too uncivic; that with the highest
virtues of the military character he combined some of its
worst disqualifications for political life; that his notions
tended to impress too martial a character of discipline upon
the public service; that even his virtues of a civic order
were alloyed with this spirit, his directness and plain-
dealing being but another aspect of that peremptory spirit
which finds its proper place in a camp; and that, finally, as
to the substantial merits of national wants or grievances,
apart from the mode and manner of his administration, not
less by temper than by his modes of experience, the Duke
was incapacitated for estimating the spirit of his age, and
stood aloof from all popular sympathies.
Thus stood public opinion when a memorable act of retri-
bution was rendered to the Duke's merits, and a monument
raised to his reputation such as will co-exist with our language,
in the series of his Despatches &c. published by Colonel Gur-
wood. The effect was profound. The Duke of Wellington had
long been raised as far beyond the benefits as he is beyond
THE OPIUM QUESTION WITH CHINA IN 1840 217
the need of any trivial enthusiasm derived from momentary
sources or vulgar arts; and this book was fitted to engage
the attention of none but the highly cultivated.
The rever-
ence of the land for the Duke's character, the gratitude of
the land for the Duke's services, scarcely seemed open to
increase. But undoubtedly a depth of tone and a solemnity
approaching to awe were impressed henceforth upon the
feelings with which all thoughtful men regarded the Duke of
Wellington as an intellectual being. Now first it was under-
stood what quality of intellect had been engaged in our
service, moving amongst what multiplied embarrassments,
thwarted by what conflicts even in friendly quarters, winning
its way by what flexibility of address, watching all obstacles
by what large compass of talents, and compensating every
disadvantage for the public service by what willing sacrifices
of selfish feeling. Were it not for the singleness of purpose,
for the perfect integrity, for the absolute self-dedication and
the sublime simplicity, we should say―Here is a Machiavelian
subtlety of understanding! With an apostolical grandeur of
purpose there is here combined the address of a finished
intriguer; and, for a service of nations upon the grandest
scale, we see displayed a restless and a versatile spirit of
submission to circumstances and to characters, which, accord-
ing to all the experience of this world, belongs naturally to
modes of selfishness the most intense. The wisdom of long-
suffering; the policy of allowance in matters of practice;
the spirit of indulgence to errors that were redeemable; the
transcendent power to draw into unity of effect elements the
most heterogeneous and tempers the most incompatible; in
short, that spirit of civic accommodation to the times in
which we had supposed him to have been most wanting, and
that spirit of regard to the bold national temperament of the
armies he led which was held most irreconcilable with martial
discipline :—precisely these were the qualities which the
Gurwood correspondence has exposed as the foremost of the
Duke's endowments, in any case the very rarest endow-
ments, and in this case, amongst an army so high-spirited,
the most operative for the final success. In short, to sum up
the truth by the sharpest antithesis, instead of ruling in his
civic administration by means of military maxims, the Duke
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MISCELLANEA
of Wellington applied to military measures and to the conduct
of armies that spirit of civic policy which, in times less
critical by far, had not been attempted by generals of nations
the most democratic.
Such is the retributory service, late but perfect, rendered
to the Duke's character. The shades of evening are now
stealing over his life; and for him also that night is coming
in which no man can work. But as yet no abatement is
visible in his energies of public duty. Tenderness, as towards
a ward of the nation, is now beginning to mingle with our
veneration. And, in the course of nature, the anxieties of a
mighty people will soon be suspended on his health, as they
have long been suspended on his majestic wisdom.
Meantime there is a kind of duty-upon every question
of politics to which the Duke of Wellington has been con-
structively a party-of looking towards him as the centre
upon which our public counsels revolve. But in Asiatic
questions he has a closer interest, and a sort of property by
various tenures. Through his elder brother, as a brilliant
administrator of our British Empire in India, and through
his own memorable share in raising that empire, he has ob-
tained a distinct cognisance of Indian rights which makes
him their natural guardian. And of this Opium Dispute he
has himself demonstrated that in its rebound it is more
truly a question for our Indian friends than for our Chinese
antagonists. To the Duke, therefore, at any rate, we look
in this emergency, as one which lies originally within his
field. And it is with the view of exhibiting the man as
matched against the crisis, of equalising the authority with
the occasion, that we have digressed into this act of critical
justice to the Duke's merits. But, if that course would have
been a matter of propriety whilst merely looking with a
general political deference to the Duke's authority, much
more it is become such after the Duke's comprehensive exa-
mination of the case, and after the effect of that examination
has been put on record by so public a test as instantly fol-
lowed some persons having silently, some avowedly, with-
drawn from the further prosecution of a question which, in
this stage at least, had been laid to rest by his Grace's exposi-
tion of its merits.
66
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
The
[The following paper appeared originally in Blackwood for February
1844, and has never heretofore been reprinted in this country, though
it is included in the American Collective Edition of De Quincey's
Writings. See remarks in Editor's Preface. For readers out of
Scotland a few words of preliminary explanation may be neces-
sary respecting the causes and circumstances of that event of 1843
which is the subject of the article. Within Scotland itself it
is familiarly known by the name of THE DISRUPTION; and it is
certainly the most serious event by far in the recent history of the
Scottish nation.-Through the last century and the earlier part of the
present there had been a struggle between what was called the "Evan-
gelical" party among the Scottish clergy, which was also the party of
popular leanings, and what was called the "Moderate" party, who
were of more Tory politics, and professed a more cool theology.
struggle having at last resulted in the numerical ascendency of the
Evangelical" party, and strength having been added at any rate to
the popular sympathies of that party by the recent Reform Movement
in state-politics and its triumph in the Reform Bill of 1832, the
General Assembly or Supreme Court of the Scottish Church, at its
meeting in May 1834, passed an Act modifying in a popular direction
the traditional system of patronage in Church-livings. By this Act,
called "The Veto Act," it was regulated that, when any parish-living
became vacant, and the people of the parish, as represented by a
majority of the male heads of families, objected to the person
presented by the patron, then that refusal should ipso facto, even if
there were no reasons assigned, be a sufficient warrant to the presby-
tery of the district for rejecting the presentee. Two or three vacancies
having soon occurred in which the legality of this Act was challenged
both by patron and presentee, and the Civil Courts having been
appealed to and having pronounced the Veto Act illegal, Scotland was
greatly agitated for a while by what, in this stage, was called The Non-
Intrusion Controversy,—the matter in dispute being the right of con-
gregations to resist the "intrusion" of unacceptable ministers upon
them by the patrons. As the controversy proceeded, however,-
220
MISCELLANEA
successive General Assemblies still standing by the Veto Act as the
law of the Church, and the Civil Courts still treating it as contrary to
the law of the land,-the mere Non-Intrusion question became merged
in the more general question of the Spiritual Independence of the
Church Judicatories. Were not the enactments of the Church of
supreme authority in matters purely spiritual; and so, in any case
where the Civil Courts might decide in favour of a presentce rejected
under the Veto Act, would not the proper course be to let that pre-
sentee have all the temporalities of the benefice, since so the State willed
it, the manse, the glebe, the stipend, but at the same time to
recognise the right of the Church to withhold from him the spiritual
pastorship of the parish? In conflict after conflict, this theory of a
possible severance, in any case, between the spiritualities and the
temporalities in a parochial charge in the Established Church was
scouted by the Civil Courts as unconstitutional; and, the war
between the Church Courts and the Civil Courts becoming more and
more aggravated by the measures taken on both sides to enforce the
views maintained, -the Church Courts inflicting spiritual censures on
individual presbyters who disobeyed the Church law, and the Civil
Courts retaliating by threats of pains and penalties on individual Non-
Intrusionist clergymen for defiances of judicial decrees that had been
pronounced, Scotland from end to end was in convulsion. Efforts
had from time to time been made,-notably by a bill of Lord Aberdeen
in 1840,-to bring about a settlement by legislative interference; but,
all such efforts having failed, there seemed no possible solution but by
a secession from the Church of as many of the Non-Intrusionist clergy
and their adherents among the people as were still irreconcilable.
As, on the part of the clergy, this involved the sacrifice of their
manses, glebes, and stipends, with all the worldly status that had
belonged to them as ministers of an Established and Endowed Church,
and the casting of themselves and families at once upon the hazards of
a future livelihood by means yet unforeseen and uncertain, there were
considerable doubts as to the proportion of the clergy that would go to
this extreme. To as late as the beginning of 1843 there were still
doubts on the subject, even in Scotland. As Sir Robert Peel and a
Conservative Government were then in office, and the break-up of one
of the two Established Churches of Great Britain was hardly the kind
of event that a Conservative Government could be supposed to con-
template with satisfaction as happening during its own lease of power,
it might have been expected that even at this last moment some new
effort would have been made to avert the catastrophe. It is supposed
now that there must have been misinformation at head-quarters, to the
effect that only a dozen or so of the more resolute leaders among the Non-
Intrusionist clergy would go out, and that then the Church would be at
peace. At all events the catastrophe was not averted. On the 18th of
May 1843 there was a memorable sight in the streets of Edinburgh. On
that day, the annual General Assembly of the Scottish Church having
met as usual in one of the City churches, and Dr. David Welsh, the
moderator or president of the Assembly, having read, in presence of
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
221
Her Majesty's Lord High Commissioner, a prepared protest, in which
he declared that he and those who adhered to him could no longer
belong to the Established Church, and having then, arm in arm
with Dr. Chalmers, and followed by a long line of others, left the
building and emerged into the adjacent street, the waiting crowds
in that street, and in other streets for more than half a mile,
witnessed the procession of seceding clergy (474 in number when
the tale was complete) on their way to the hall where, with
their adhering lay-elders, they were to hold a General Assembly of
their own, and found what has been since known as THE FREE
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.-Such was the famous ScoTTISH DISRUPTION
of 1843. Why should De Quincey have concerned himself with it so
zealously? In the first place, his politics being strongly anti-demo-
cratic, and the Veto Act having therefore been an offence to him from
the first, he had watched the proceedings of its authors and supporters
with no good will; in the second place, though a Church of England
man himself, he extended his favourable regards in a secondary way to
the Church of Scotland, as, if not so good as the Church of England,
yet meritorious enough to be the corresponding established institution
in North Britain, and was wroth, therefore, with those who had dis-
turbed its routine and brought about its rupture; and, in the third
place, he was a writer in Blackwood, and on the outlook for subjects.
Hence, or somehow else, it had happened that when, nine months
after the great Secession of May 1843, Blackwood came out with a
conclusive article on the subject, that article was not by any eminent
Scottish lawyer or cleric, or by any other Scottish contributor whatever,
but by the little English alien whom chance had domiciled reclusely so
long among the Edinburgh folk.-The article, though ill-organised and
rambling, is of striking ingenuity in some parts, and was avowedly
written for the instruction of English readers on a Scottish subject
the very nomenclature of which must have been outlandish to them.
For Scottish readers of the present day, it walks over what are still
ignes suppositi; and, while it is on one side that there will naturally
be most complaint, I am not sure but there will be agreement on
both sides that De Quincey had meddled with a subject for which he
lacked the qualification of native knowledge and native instincts, and
so did not get down to the depths and roots of the business. With that,
however, we have nothing to do. The paper is De Quincey's, and must
be reproduced just as he wrote it.—M.]
A GREAT Revolution has taken place in Scotland. A greater
has been threatened. Nor is that danger even yet certainly
gone by. Upon the accidents of such events as may arise
for the next five years, whether fitted or not fitted to revive
discussions in which many of the Non-Seceders went in
various degrees along with the Seceders, depends the final
(and, in a strict sense, the very awful) question, What is to
222
MISCELLANEA
be the fate of the Scottish Church? Lord Aberdeen's Act is
well qualified to tranquillize the agitations of that body, and
at an earlier stage, if not intercepted by Lord Melbourne,
might have prevented them in part. But Lord Aberdeen
has no power to stifle a conflagration once thoroughly kindled.
That must depend in a great degree upon the favourable
aspect of events yet in the rear.
Meantime these great disturbances are not understood
in England, and chiefly from the differences between the
two nations as to the language of their several Churches and
Law Courts. The process of ordination and induction is
totally different under the different ecclesiastical administra-
tions of the two kingdoms. And the Church Courts of
Scotland do not exist in England. We write, therefore,
with an express view to the better information of England
proper. And, with this purpose, we shall lead the discussion
through four capital questions :—
I. What is it that has been done by the moving party?
II. How was it done? By what agencies and influence?
III. What were the immediate results of these acts?
IV. What are the remote results yet to be apprehended?
I. First, then, WHAT is it that has been done?
Up to the month of May in 1834 the fathers and
brothers of the "Kirk "
were in harmony as great as
humanity can hope to see. Since May 1834 the Church
has been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of
her bosom one-third of her children; and these children are
no sooner born into their earthly atmosphere than they
turn, with unnatural passions, to the destruction of their
brethren. What can be the
be the grounds upon which an
acharnement so deadly has arisen ?
It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experi-
ment upon his credulity if we tell the simple truth. Being
incredible, however, it is not the less true, and, being
monstrous, it will yet be recorded in history,-that the
Scottish Church has split into mortal feuds upon two points
absolutely without interest to the nation: first, upon a
demand for creating clergymen by a new process; secondly,
upon a demand for Papal latitude of jurisdiction.
Even the
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 223
order of succession in these things is not without meaning.
Had the second demand stood first, it would have seemed
possible that the two demands might have grown up inde-
pendently, and so far conscientiously. But, according to the
realities of the case, this is not possible: the second demand
grew out of the first.
The interest of the Seceders, as locked
up in their earliest requisition, was that which prompted
their second. Almost everybody was contented with the
existing mode of creating the pastoral relation. Search
through Christendom, lengthways and breadthways, there
was not a public usage, an institution, an economy, which
more profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favour
or of civil prosperity than the peculiar mode authorised
and practised in Scotland of appointing to every parish
its several pastor. Here and there an ultra-Presbyterian
spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the wise and
intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate-
that is, the religious-interest confessed that it was practically
successful. From whom, then, came the attempt to change?
Why, from those only who had an alien interest, an indirect
interest, an interest of ambition in its subversion. As
matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each
benefice, acting under the severest restraints, restraints
which (if the Church Courts did their duty) left no room or
possibility for an unfit man to creep in, nominated the
incumbent. In a spiritual sense, the Church had all power.
By refusing, first of all, to "license" unqualified persons,
secondly, by refusing to
"admit "" out of these licensed
persons such as might have become warped from the proper
standard of pastoral fitness,—the Church had a negative voice,
all-potential in the creation of clergymen : the Church could
exclude whom she pleased. But this contented her not.
Simply to shut out was an ungracious office, though mighty
for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The
children of this world who became the agitators of the
Church clamoured for something more. They desired for
the Church that she should become a lady patroness: that
she should give as well as take away; that she should wield
a sceptre courted for its bounties, and not merely feared for
its austerities. Yet how should this be accomplished?
224
MISCELLANEA
**
Openly to translate upon the Church the present power of
patrons, that were too revolutionary, that would have
exposed its own object. For the present, therefore, let this
device prevail: Let the power nominally be transferred to
congregations; let this be done upon the plea that each
congregation understands best what mode of ministrations
tends to its own edification. There lies the semblance of a
Christian plea. The congregation, it is said, has become
anxious for itself; the Church has become anxious for the
congregation. And then, if the translation should be
effected, the Church has already devised a means for appro-
priating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits
this power to the communicants at the sacramental table.
Now, in Scotland, though not in England, the character of
communicants is notoriously created or suspended by the
clergyman of each parish, so that, by the briefest of
circuits, the Church causes the power to revolve into her
own hands.
That was the first change,-a change full of Jacobinism,
and for which to be published was to be denounced.
It was
necessary, therefore, to place this Jacobin change upon a
basis privileged from attack. How should that be done?
The object was to create a new clerical power,—to shift the
election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and
usage had lodged it, and, under a plausible mask of making
the election popular, circuitously to make it ecclesiastical.
Yet, if the existing patrons of church benefices should see
themselves suddenly denuded of their rights, and within a
year or two should see these rights settling determinately
into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent pur-
pose, and the fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in
gross proportions too palpably revealed. In this dilemma
the reverend agitators devised a second scheme. It was a
scheme bearing triple harvests; for, at one and the same
time, it furnished the motive which gave a constructive
coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it threw a
solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose,
and it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of
the same nature as yet undeveloped. The device was this :—
In Scotland, as in England, the total process by which a
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
225
parish clergyman is created subdivides itself into several suc-
cessive acts. The initial act belongs to the patron of the bene-
fice. He must "present": that is, he notifies the fact of his
having conferred the benefice upon A B to a public body which
officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body is, not the
particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the district
in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal,
of the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed.
These steps are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and
even by the Non-Intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.
But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously
defined by law or usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform
interpretation of their value.
In practice they had long
sunk into forms. But ancient forms easily lend themselves
to a revivification by meanings and applications, new or old,
under the galvanism of democratic forces. The disturbers of
the Church, passing by the act of "presentation " as an
obstacle too formidable to be separately attacked on its own
account, made their stand upon one of the two acts which
lie next in succession. It is the regular routine that the
presbytery, having been warned of the patron's appointment,
and having “received" (in technical language) the presentee
—that is, having formally recognised him in that character
-next appoint a day on which he is to preach before the
congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by
which it is accompanied, constitutes the probationary act
according to some views, but according to the general
theory simply the inaugural act, by which the new pastor
places himself officially before his future parishioners.
Decorum and the sense of proportion seem to require that
to every commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing
new duties, there should be a corresponding and ceremonial
entrance. The new pastor, until this public introduction,
could not be legitimately assumed for known to the
parishioners. And accordingly at this point it was— viz.
subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it
-that, in the case of any grievous scandal known to the
parish as outstanding against him, arose the proper oppor-
tunity furnished by the Church for lodging the accusation
and for investigating it before the church court. In default,
VOL. XIV
226
MISCELLANEA
however, of any grave objection to the presentee, he was
next summoned by the presbytery to what really was a pro-
bationary act at their bar, viz. an examination of his
theological sufficiency. But in this it could not be expected
that he should fail, because he must previously have satisfied
the requisitions of the Church in his original examination for
a licence to preach. Once dismissed with credit from this
bar, he was now beyond all further probation whatsoever;
in technical phrase, he was entitled to "admission." Such
were the steps, according to their orderly succession, by
which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular
parish. And all of these steps subsequent to the "reception"
and inaugural preaching were now summarily characterised
by the revolutionists as "spiritual," for the sake of sequester-
ing them into their own hands. As to the initiatory act of
presentation, that might be secular, and to be dealt with by
a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged not to
a kingdom of this world. "These,"-with a new-born scrupu-
losity never heard of until the Revolution of 1834 clamoured
for new casuistries," these," said the agitators, we cannot
consent any longer to leave in their state of collapse as mere
inert or ceremonial forms. They must be revivified. By
all means let the patron present as heretofore. But the acts
of 'examination' and 'admission,' together with the power of
altogether refusing to enter upon either under a protest against
the candidate from a clear majority of the parishioners-
these are acts falling within the spiritual jurisdiction of the
Church. And these powers we must, for the future, see
exercised according to spiritual views."
((
Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for
their own previous revolutionary doctrine upon the creation
of parish clergymen. This new scruple was, in relation to
former scruples, a perfect linch-pin for locking their machinery
into cohesion. For vainly would they have sought to defeat
the patron's right of presenting, unless through this sudden
pause and interdict imposed upon the latter acts in the
process of induction, under the pretext that these were acts
competent only to a spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its
tendency, rounded and secured all that they had yet advanced
in the way of claim. But, at the same time, though indis-
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
227
pensable negatively, positively it stretched so much further
than any necessity or interest inherent in their present
innovations that not improbably they faltered and shrank
back at first from the immeasurable field of consequences
upon which it opened. They would willingly have accepted
less. But, unfortunately, it sometimes happens that, to gain
as much as is needful in one direction, you must take a great
deal more than you wish for in another. Any principle
which could carry them over the immediate difficulty would,
by a mere necessity, carry them incalculably beyond it. For,
if every act bearing in any one direction a spiritual aspect,
showing at any angle a relation to spiritual things, is therefore
to be held spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of
the civil power, there falls to the ground at once the whole
fabric of civil authority in any independent form. Accord-
ingly, we are satisfied that the claim to a spiritual juris-
diction in collision with the claims of the state would not
probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators
otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pre-
tension of appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The
one claim was found to be the integration or sine qua non
complement of the other. In order to sustain the power of
appointment in their own courts, it was necessary that they
should defeat the patron's power; and, in order to defeat the
patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it would)
under the law of the land, it was necessary that they should
decline that struggle by attempting to take the question out
of all secular jurisdictions whatever.
In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has
been convulsing the Scottish Church since 1834: first, the
audacious attempt to disturb the settled mode of appointing
the parish clergy through a silent robbery perpetrated on the
crown and great landed aristocracy; secondly, and in pro-
secution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt
to renew in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating
the forum of Christendom as to the bounds of civil and
spiritual power.
In our rehearsal of the stages through which the process
of induction ordinarily travels we have purposely omitted
one possible interlude or parenthesis in the series,—not as
228
MISCELLANEA
(6
It
wishing to conceal it, but for the very opposite reason.
is right to withdraw from a representative account of any
transaction such varieties of the routine as occur but seldom :
in this way they are more pointedly exposed. Now, having
made that explanation, we go on to inform the southern
reader that an old traditionary usage has prevailed in
Scotland, but not systematically or uniformly, of sending to
the presentee, through the presbytery, what is designated a
call," subscribed by members of the parish congregation.
This call is simply an invitation to the office of their pastor.
It arose in the disorders of the seventeenth century; but in
practice it is generally admitted to have sunk into a mere
formality throughout the eighteenth century; and the very
position which it holds in the succession of steps, not usually
coming forward until after the presentation has been notified
(supposing that it comes forward at all), compels us to regard
it in that light. Apparently it bears the same relation to
the patron's act as the Address of the two Houses to the
Speech from the Throne: it is rather a courteous echo to the
personal compliment involved in the presentation than
capable of being regarded as any original act of invitation.
And yet, in defiance of that notorious fact, some people go so
far as to assert that a call is not good unless where it is sub-
scribed by a clear majority of the congregation. This is
amusing. We have already explained that, except as a
liberal courtesy, the very idea of a call destined to be
inoperative is and must be moonshine. Yet between two
moonshines some people, it seems, can tell which is the
denser. We have all heard of Barmecide banquets, where,
out of tureens filled to the brim with nothing, the fortunate
guest was helped to vast messes of air. For a hungry
guest to take this tantalisation in good part was the sure
way to win the esteem of the noble Barmecide. But the
Barmecide himself would hardly approve of a duel turning
upon a comparison between two of his tureens,-question
being which had been the fuller, or of two nihilities which
had been seasoned the more judiciously. Yet this, in effect,
is the reasoning of those who say that a call signed by
fifty-one persons out of a hundred is more valid than
another signed only by twenty-six or by nobody, it being
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
229
in the meantime fully understood that neither is valid in the
least possible degree. But, if the "call" was a Barmecide
call, there was another act open to the congregation which
was not so.
For the English reader must now understand that, over
and above the passive and less invidious mode of discounte-
nancing or forbearing to countenance a presentee by with-
drawing from the direct "call" upon him, usage has
sanctioned another and stronger sort of protest,—one which
takes the shape of distinct and clamorous objections. We are
speaking of the routine in this place according to the course
which it did travel or could travel under that law and that
practice which furnished the pleas for complaint. Now, it
was upon these "objections," as may well be supposed, that
the main battle arose. Simply to want the "call," being a
mere zero, could not much lay hold upon public feeling. It
was a case not fitted for effect. You cannot bring a blank
privation strongly before the public eye. The "call" did.
not take place last week; well, perhaps it will take place
next week. Or, again, if it should never take place, perhaps
it may be religious carelessness on the part of the parish.
Many parishes notoriously feel no interest in their pastor,
except as a quiet member of their community. Consequently,
in two or three cases that might occur, there was nothing to
excite the public: the parish had either agreed with the
patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the third
case of positive "objections," which (in order to justify
themselves as not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with
peculiar emphasis, the attention of all men was arrested.
Newspapers reverberated the fact; sympathetic groans arose;
the patron was an oppressor; the parish was under per-
secution and the poor clergyman, whose case was the most
to be pitied, as being in a measure endowed with a lasting
fund of dislike, had the mortification to find, over and above
this resistance from within, that he bore the name of
"intruder" from without. He was supposed by the fiction
of the case to be in league with his patron for the persecution
of a godly parish, whilst in reality the godly parish was
persecuting him and hallooing the world ab extra to join in
the hunt.
230
MISCELLANEA
In such cases of pretended objections to men who have
not been tried, we need scarcely tell the reader that usually
they are mere cabals and worldly intrigues. It is next to
impossible that any parish or congregation should sincerely
agree in their opinion of a clergyman. What one man likes
in such cases another man detests. Mr. A., with an ardent
nature and something of a histrionic turn, doats upon a fine
rhetorical display. Mr. B., with more simplicity of taste,
pronounces this little better than theatrical ostentation. Mr.
C. requires a good deal of critical scholarship. Mr. D.
quarrels with this as unsuitable to a rustic congregation.
Mrs. X., who is "under concern" for sin, demands a search-
ing and (as she expresses it) a "faithful" style of dealing
with consciences. Mrs. Y., an aristocratic lady, who cannot
bear to be mixed up in any common charge together with
low people, abominates such words as "sin," and wills that
the parson should confine his "observations" to the "shock-
ing demoralisation of the lower orders."
Now, having stated the practice of Scottish induction as
it was formerly sustained in its first stage by law, in its
second stage by usage, let us finish that part of the subject
by reporting the existing practice as regulated in all its stages
by law. What law? The law as laid down in Lord Aber-
deen's late Act of Parliament. This statement should,
historically speaking, have found itself under our third head,
as being one amongst the consequences immediately following
the final rupture. But it is better placed at this point,
because it closes the whole review of that topic, and
because it reflects light upon the former practice, - the
practice which led to the whole mutinous tumult: every
alteration forcing more keenly upon the reader's attention
what had been the previous custom, and in what respect it
was held by any man to be a grievance.
This Act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's, removes all legal
effect from the "call" Common sense required that. For
what was to be done with patronage ? Was it to be sus-
tained, or was it not? If not, then why quarrel with the
Non-Intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place in the
Church? Give legal effect to the "call," and the original
cause of quarrel is gone. For, with respect to the opponents
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
231
of the Non-Intrusionists, they would bow to the law. On the
other hand, if patronage is to be sustained, then why allow
of any lingering or doubtful force to what must often operate
as a conflicting claim? A "call" which carries with it any
legal force annihilates patronage. Patronage would thus be
exercised only on sufferance. Do we mean, then, that a
"call" should sink into a pure fiction of ceremony, like the
English congé d'elire addressed to a dean and chapter, calling
on them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows that
already the see has been filled by a nomination from the
crown? Not at all. A moral weight will still attach to
the "call,” though no legal coercion; and,-what is chiefly
important,—all those doubts will be removed by express
legislation which could not but arise between a practice
pointing sometimes in one direction and sometimes in
another,—between legal decisions upholding one view whilst
something very like legal prescription was occasionally
pleaded for the other. Behold the evil of written laws not
rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary law
founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice! And
here, by the way, arises the place for explaining to the
reader that irreconcilable dispute amongst Parliamentary
lawyers as to the question whether Lord Aberdeen's bill were
enactory,—that is, created a new law,—or declaratory,—that
is, simply expounded an old one. If enactory, then why did
the House of Lords give judgment against those who allowed
weight to the "call"? That might need altering; that
might be highly inexpedient; but, if it required a new law
to make it illegal, how could those parties be held in the
wrong previously to the new act of legislation ? On the
other hand, if declaratory, then show us any old law which
made the "call" illegal.
The fact is that no man can
decide whether the act established a new law or merely
expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot is
this :—The practice, the usage, which often is the law, had
grown up variously during the troubles of the seventeenth
century. In many places political reasons had dictated that
the elders should nominate the incumbent. But the ancient
practice had authorised patronage: by the Act of Queen
Anne (10th chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet
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The presumptions
The more modern
Now, we all know
are created by pre-
the patron in known instances was said to have waived his
right in deference to the "call." But why? Did he do so
in courteous compliance with the parish, as a party whose
reasonable wishes ought, for the sake of all parties, to meet
with attention? Or did he do so in humble submission to
the parish, as having by their majorities a legal right to the
presentation? There lay the question.
from antiquity were all against the call.
practice had occasionally been for it.
how many colourable claims of right
scription. What was the exact force of the “call” no man
could say.
In like manner, the exact character and limit of
allowable objections had been ill-defined in practice, and
rested more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule.
This also made it hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's
Act were enactory or declaratory, -a predicament, however,
which equally affects all statutes for removing doubts.
The "call," then, we consider as no longer recognised by
law. But did Lord Aberdeen by that change establish the
right of the patron as an unconditional right? By no
means. He made it strictly a conditional right. The pre-
sentee is now a candidate, and no more. He has the most
important vote in his favour, it is true; but that vote may
still be set aside, though still only with the effect of com-
pelling the patron to a new choice.
"Calls" are no longer
doubtful in their meaning; but "objections" have a fair field
laid open to them. All reasonable objections are to be
weighed. But who is to judge whether they are reasonable ?
The presbytery of the district. And now pursue the action
of the law, and see how little ground it leaves upon which
to hang a complaint. Everybody's rights are secured.
Whatever be the event, first of all the presentee cannot
complain if he is rejected only for proved insufficiency.
He is put on his trial as to these points only: 1. Is he
orthodox ? 2. Is he of good moral reputation? 3. Is he
sufficiently learned? And note this (which in fact Sir
James Graham remarked in his official letter to the Assembly):
strictly speaking, he ought not to be under challenge as
respects the third point, for it is your own fault, the fault of
your own licensing courts (the presbyteries), if he is not
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
233
qualified so far. You should not have created him a
licentiate, should not have given him a licence to preach, as
must have been done in an earlier stage of his progress, if he
were not learned enough. Once learned, a man is learned
for life. As to the other points, he may change, and
therefore it is that an examination is requisite. But how can
he complain if he is found by an impartial court of venerable
men objectionable on any score ? If it were possible, how-
ever, that he should be wronged, he has his appeal. Secondly,
how can the patron complain? His case is the same as his
presentee's case; his injuries the same; his relief the same.
Besides, if his man is rejected, it is not the parish man that
takes his place. No; but a second man of his own choice:
and, if again he chooses amiss, who is to blame for that?
Thirdly, can the congregation complain? They have a
general interest in their spiritual guide. But, as to the pre-
ference for oratory, for loud or musical voice, for peculiar
views in religion-these things are special: they interest
but an exceedingly small minority in any parish; and, what
is worse, that which pleases one is often offensive to another.
There are cases in which a parish would reject a man for
being a married man: some of the parish have unmarried
daughters. But this case clearly belongs to the small
minority; and we have little doubt that, where the objections
lay "for cause not shown," it was often for this cause.
Fourthly, can the Church complain? Her interest is repre-
sented, 1, not by the presentee, 2, not by the patron, 3,
not by the congregation, but, 4, by the presbytery. And,
whatever the presbytery say, that is supported. Speaking
either for the patron, for the presentee, for the congregation,
or for themselves as conservators of the Church, that court is
heard; what more would they have? And thus in turn
every interest is protected. Now, the point to be remarked
is that each party in turn has a separate influence. But
on any other plan, giving to one party out of the four an abso-
lute or unconditional power-no matter which of the four
it be-all the rest have none at all. Lord Aberdeen has
reconciled the rights of patrons for the first time with those
of all other parties interested. Nobody has more than a
conditional power. Everybody has that.
And the patron, as
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MISCELLANEA
necessity requires if property is to be protected, has in all
circumstances the revisionary power.
II. Secondly, How were these things done?
By what
means were the hands of any party strengthened so as to
find this revolution possible?
We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of
moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to
sketch the history of Religion, which is the greatest of
moral forces,—as it sank and rose in this Island through the
last two hundred years.
It is well known that the two great Revolutions of the
Seventeenth Century—that in 1649, accomplished by the
Parliament armies (including its reaction in 1660), and,
secondly, that in 1688-9—did much to unsettle the religious
tone of public morals. Historians and satirists ascribe a
large effect in this change to the personal influence of
Charles II and the foreign character of his Court. We do
not share in their views; and one eminent proof that they are
wrong lies in the following fact―viz. that the sublimest act
of self-sacrifice which the world has ever seen arose precisely
in the most triumphant season of Charles's career, a time
when the reaction of hatred had not yet neutralized the
sunny joyousness of his Restoration. Surely the reader
cannot be at a loss to know what we mean,--the renunciation
in one hour, on St. Bartholomew's Day in 1662, of two
thousand benefices by the nonconforming clergymen of
England. In the same year occurred a similar renunciation
of three hundred and sixty benefices in Scotland. These
great sacrifices, whether called for or not, argue a great
strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the
decay of external religion towards the close of that century
is proved incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge
this upon two causes: first, that the times were controversial,
and usually it happens that, where too much energy is
carried into the controversies or intellectual part of religion,
a very diminished fervour attends the culture of its moral
and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the
dispute with the Papal Church, partly perhaps with a secret
reference to the rumoured apostasy of the royal family, was
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
235
pursued more eagerly in the latter half of the seventeenth
than even in any section of the sixteenth century. But,
doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character of
the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by
intestine wars, and by instability in a government. The
actual duration of war in England was not indeed longer
than three and a half years: viz. from Edgehill Fight in the
autumn of 1642 to the defeat of the king's last force under
Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-walds in the spring of 1646.
Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere in-
sulated and discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every
government between 1638 and 1702 kept the popular mind
in a state of fermentation. Accordingly, Queen Anne's reign
might be said to open upon an irreligious people. The con-
dition of things was further strengthened by the unavoidable
interweaving at that time of Politics with Religion. They
could not keep separate; and the favour shown even by
religious people to such partisan zealots as Dr. Sacheverell
evidenced, and at the same time promoted, the public irre-
ligion. This was the period in which the clergy thought too
little of their duties, but too much of their professional rights;
and, if we may credit the indirect report of the contemporary
literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for the extension
of religion was in those days a thing unknown.
It may
seem unaccountable to many that the same state of things
should have spread in those days to Scotland; but this is
no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to
expect. Thus we know that the instincts of religious reform-
ation ripened everywhere at the same period of the sixteenth
century from one end of Europe to the other; although
between most of the European kingdoms there was nothing
like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland
in the eighteenth century. In both countries a cold and
lifeless state of public religion prevailed up to the American
and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock
everywhere to the meditative, and consequently to the
religious, impulses of men. And in the meantime an irregular
channel had been already opened to these impulses by the
two founders of Methodism. A century has now passed
since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more spiritual
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MISCELLANEA
machinery of preaching than could then be found in England.
for the benefit of the poor and labouring classes. These
Methodist institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing
amongst the poor and the neglected at any time, much more
when contrasted with the deep slumbers of the Established
Church. And another ground of prosperity soon arose out
of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes
of men grew up under that system humble enough by the
quality of their education to accept with thankfulness the
ministrations of Methodism, and rich enough to react upon
that beneficent institution by continued endowments in
money. Gradually, even the Church herself, that mighty
establishment under the cold shade of which Methodism
had grown up as a neglected weed, began to acknowledge.
the power of an extending Methodistic influence which
originally she had haughtily despised. First, she murmured;
then she grew anxious or fearful; and, finally, she began to
find herself invaded or modified from within by influences
springing up from Methodism. This last effect became more
conspicuously evident after the French Revolution. The Church
of Scotland, which as a whole had exhibited, with much un-
obtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the Church of
England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a correspond-
ing resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this
present century both of these National Churches began to show
a marked rekindling of religious fervour. In what extent this
change in the Scottish Church had been due, mediately or im-
mediately, to Methodism we do not pretend to calculate ; that
is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But mediately
the Scottish Church must have been affected, because she was
greatly affected by her intercourse with the English Church
(as, e.g., in Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.); and the
English Church had been previously affected by Methodism.
Immediately she must also have been affected by Methodism,
because Whitefield had been invited to preach in Scotland,
and did preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been
the cause of this awakening from slumber in the two
Established Churches of this island, the fact is so little to be
denied that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those
most interested in denying it. The two Churches slept the
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
237
sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century so much of
the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two
Churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the
dawning of the nineteenth century: this second half of the
fact is acknowledged by their opponents.
The Wesleyan
Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales,
who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of
spiritual drones, have for many years hailed a very large
section in that establishment-viz. the section technically
known by the name of the Evangelical Clergy—as brothers
after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own
strictest model of a spiritual clergy. That section again,—
the Evangelical section in the English Church,-as men more
highly educated, took a direct interest in the Scottish Clergy,
upon general principles of liberal interest in all that could
affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the Method-
ists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and re-
action between the two classical Churches of the British soil.
Such was the varying condition, when sketched in out-
line, of the Scottish and English Churches. Two centuries
ago, and for half a century beyond that, we find both Churches
in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation, and of sacrifices for
conscience, which involved every fifth or sixth beneficiary.
Then came a century of languor, and the carelessness which
belongs to settled prosperity. And, finally, for both has
arisen a half-century of new light, new zeal, and, spirit-
ually speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was
necessary to bring down, in order to explain the new power
which arose to the Scottish Church during the last generation
of, suppose, thirty years.
When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted
to the genius and needs of its several people, are pulling
together powerfully towards one great spiritual object, vast
must be the results. Our ancestors would have stood aghast,
as at some fabulous legend or some mighty miracle, could
they have heard of the scale on which our modern contribu-
tions proceed for the purposes of missions to barbarous
nations, of circulating the Scriptures (whether through the
Bible Society, i.e. the National Society, or Provincial So-
cieties), of translating the Scriptures into languages scarcely
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MISCELLANEA
known by name to scholars, of converting Jews, of organizing
and propagating education. Towards these great objects the
Scottish clergy had worked with energy, and with little dis-
turbance to their unanimity. Confidence was universally
felt in their piety and in their discretion. This confidence
even reached the supreme rulers of the state. Very much
through ecclesiastical influence, new plans for extending the
religious power of the Scottish Church, and indirectly of
extending their secular power, were countenanced by the
government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the upright
conduct of the Scottish Clergy, and their remarkable freedom
hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that
the temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to
all intriguing, or modes of temporal ascendency, in ecclesiasti-
cal bodies. The nation, therefore, was in some degree held
as a guarantee for the discretion of their clergy. And hence
it arose that much less caution was applied to the first
encroachment of the Non-Intrusionists than would have been
applied under circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence
it arose that a confidence from the Scottish nation was ex-
tended to this clergy which too certainly has been abused.
In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts "for
building additional places of worship in the Highlands and
Islands of Scotland." These acts may be looked upon as one
section in that general extension of religious machinery which
the British people, by their government and their legislature,
have for many years been promoting. Not, as is ordinarily
said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them
simply through their own treacherous neglect of it during the
latter half of the eighteenth century; but that no reasonable
attention to that duty could have kept pace with the scale
upon which the claims of a new manufacturing population
had increased. In mere equity we must admit—not that
the British nation had fallen behind its duties (though natur-
ally it might have done so under the religious torpor
prevalent at the original era of manufacturing extension),
but that the duties had outstripped all human power of over-
taking them. The efforts, however, have been prodigious in
this direction for many years. Amongst those applied to
Scotland, it had been settled by Parliament that forty-two
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 239
new churches should be raised in the Highlands, with an
endowment from the government of £120 annually for
each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred
chapels of ease to be founded; and towards this scheme the
Scottish public subscribed largely. The money was intrusted
to the clergy. That was right; but mark what followed. It
had been expressly provided by Parliament that any district
or circumjacent territory allotted to such parliamentary
churches as the range within which the incumbent was to
exercise his spiritual ministration should not be separate
parishes for any civil or legal effects. Here surely the inten-
tions and directions of the legislature were plain enough and
decisive enough.
How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected
all these jurisdictions into bona fide "parishes," enjoying the
plenary rights (as to Church government) of the other parishes,
and distinguished from them in a merely nominal way as
parishes quoad sacra. There were added at once to the
presbyteries, which are the organs of the Church power, two
hundred and three clerical persons for the chapels of ease
and forty-two for the Highland churches—making a total of
two hundred and forty-five new members. By the constitu-
tion of the Scottish Church, an equal number of lay elders
(called ruling elders) accompany the clerical elders. Conse-
quently four hundred and ninety new members were intro-
duced at once into that particular class of courts (presbyteries)
which form the electoral bodies in relation to the highest
court of General Assembly. The effect of this change, made
in the very teeth of the law, was twofold. First, it threw
into many separate presbyteries a considerable accession of
voters—all owing their appointments to the General Assembly.
This would at once give a large bias favourable to their party
views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly.
Even upon an Assembly numerically limited this innovation
would have told most abusively. But the Assembly was not
limited; and therefore the whole effect was, at the same
moment, greatly to extend the electors and the elected.
Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction
worked. They drew that power from Scotland rekindled
into a temper of religious anxiety which they never could
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MISCELLANEA
have drawn from Scotland lying torpid as she had lain
through the eighteenth century. The new machinery
(created by Parliament in order to meet the wishes of the
Scottish nation), the money of that nation, the awakened zeal
of that nation: all these were employed honourably in one
sense, that is, not turned aside into private channels for
purposes of individuals,—but factiously in the result, as being
for the benefit of a faction; honourably as regarded the
open mode of applying such influence,—a mode which did not
shrink from exposure,—but most dishonourably in so far as
privileges which had been conceded altogether for a spiritual
object were abusively transferred to the furtherance of a tem-
poral intrigue. Such were the methods by which the new-
born ambition of the clergy moved; and that ambition had
become active simply because it had suddenly seemed to
become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the effectual
electoral bodies, are really the mainsprings of the ecclesiasti-
cal administration. To govern them was in effect to govern
the Church. A new scheme for extending religion had
opened a new avenue to this control over the presbyteries.
That opening was notoriously unlawful. But not the less
the Church faction precipitated themselves ardently upon it;
and, but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they would
never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly
acquired. Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the
Scottish clergy into a power of which, hitherto, they had
never enjoyed a fraction. It was a movement per saltum,
beyond all that history has recorded. At cock-crow they had
no power at all; when the sun went down, they had gained
(if they could have held) a papal supremacy.
And a
thing not less memorably strange is that even yet the am-
bitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had gained
was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly
adhering to a higher object, but forming no part at all of
what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny of law
courts to unmask and decompose their true object. The
obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real animus of the
attempt. It was an attempt which, in connexion with the
Veto Act (supposing that to have prospered), would have laid
the whole power of the Church at their feet. What the law
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
241
had distributed amongst three powers,-patron, parish, and
presbyter, would have been concentrated in themselves. The
quoad sacra parishes would have riveted their majorities in
the presbyteries; and the presbyteries, under the real action
of the Veto, would have appointed nearly every incumbent
in Scotland. And this is the answer to the question, when
treated merely in outline-How were these things done? The
religion of the times had created new machineries for pro-
pagating a new religious influence. These fell into the
hands of the clergy; and the temptation to abuse these
advantages led them into revolution.
III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as How
it was done, let us estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts:
under this present or third section reviewing the immediate
consequences which have taken effect already, and under the
next section anticipating the more remote consequences yet
to be expected.
In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained,
the General Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolu-
tionize the Church, and (as a preliminary towards that) on
the attempt to revolutionize the property of patronage.
There lay the extravagance of the attempt: its short-sighted-
ness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its audacity,
if they did. It was one revolution marching to its object
through another; it was a vote which, if at all sustained,
must entail a long inheritance of contests with the whole civil
polity of Scotland.
"Heu quantum fati parva tabella vehit!"
It might seem to strangers a trivial thing that an obscure
court, like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of
induction by one routine rather than by another; but was
it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen
should lapse into this perilous dilemma,-either that it
should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and
thus that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created,
disposing of incomes which in the aggregate approach to
half a million annually, or, on the other hand, that this
dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should settle
VOL. XIV
R
242
MISCELLANEA
into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was that trivial?
Doubtless, the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal,
nor nearly equal, to the English. Still it is true that Scot-
land, supposing all her benefices equalized, gives a larger
average to each incumbent than England of the year 1830.
England in that year gave an average of £299 to each
beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of £303. That body,
therefore, which wields patronage in Scotland wields a
greater relative power than the corresponding body in
England. Now, this body in Scotland must finally have
been the clerus; but, supposing the patronage to have settled
nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would
have settled into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr.
Forsyth has justly remarked that in such a case the hired
ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that quit their
engagements at Martinmas, and can have no filial interest in
the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergy-
man. That man would be elected generally who had can-
vassed the parish with the arts and means of an electioneering
candidate; or else the struggle would lie between the pro-
perty and the Jacobinism of the district.
In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is
much altered from what it was. Pauperism and great towns
have worked “strange defeatures" in Scottish society. A
vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with the first-
rate capitals of the Continent-with Vienna or with Naples;
far superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more
than equal to Rome and Milan, or again to Munich and
Dresden, taken by couples; and in this point beyond com-
parison with any one of these capitals,-that, whilst they are
connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glas-
gow keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast
laboratories of encouragement to manual skill, too often
dissociated from consideration of character; armies of
mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion.
amongst their endless files of any gradations corresponding
to a system of controlling officers: these spectacles, which
are permanently offered by the castra stativa of combined
mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies (Paisley, Greenock,
&c.), supported by similar districts, and by turbulent collieries
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
243
in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now
developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena
for popular movements which once she was, with a people
that were scattered and habits that were pastoral. And, at
this moment, so fearfully increased is the overbearance of
democratic impulses in Scotland that perhaps in no European
nation-hardly excepting France has it become more im-
portant to hang weights and retarding forces upon popular
movements amongst the labouring classes.
This being so, we have never been able to understand the
apparent apathy with which the landed body met the first
promulgation of the Veto Act in May 1834. Of this apathy
two insufficient explanations suggest themselves :—1st, It
seemed a matter of delicacy to confront the General Assembly
upon a field which they had clamorously challenged for their
own. The question at issue was tempestuously published to
Scotland as a question exclusively spiritual. And by whom
was it thus published? The Southern reader must here not
be careless of dates. At present-viz. in 1844-those who
fulminate such views of spiritual jurisdiction are simply
dissenters, and those who vehemently withstand them are
the Church, armed with the powers of the Church. Such
are the relations between the parties in 1844. But in 1834
the revolutionary party were not only in the Church, but
(being the majority) they came forward as the Church. The
new doctrines presented themselves at first not as those of a
faction, but of the Scottish Kirk assembled in her highest
court. The prestige of that advantage has vanished since
then; for this faction, after first of all falling into a minority,
afterwards ceased to be any part or section of the Church.
But in that year 1834 such a prestige did really operate ;
and this must be received as one of the reasons which par-
tially explain the torpor of the landed body. No one liked
to move first, even amongst those who meant to move.
another reason we find in the conscientious scruples of many
landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a question
then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest
was by so many degrees the largest.
But
These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem
hardly sufficient for not having solemnly protested against
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MISCELLANEA
the Veto Act immediately upon its passing the Assembly.
Whatever doubts a few persons might harbour upon the
expediency of such an act, evidently it was contrary to the
law of the land. The General Assembly could have no
power to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the
realm. But probably it was the deep sense of that truth
which reined up the national resistance. Sure of a speedy
collision between some patron and the infringers of his
right, other parties stood back for the present, to watch the
form which such a collision might assume.
In that same year of 1834, not many months after the
passing of the Assembly's Act, came on the first case of
collision; and some time subsequently a second. These two
cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch, commenced in the very
same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged as widely
as was possible. In both cases the rights of the patron and
of the presentee were challenged peremptorily,—that is to
say, in both cases parishioners objected to the presentee
without reason shown. The conduct of the people was the
same in one case as in the other; that of the two presby-
teries travelled upon lines diametrically opposite. The first
case was that of Auchterarder. The parish and presbytery
concerned both belonged to Auchterarder; and there the
presbytery obeyed the new law of the Assembly: they
rejected the presentee, refusing to take him on trial of his
qualifications. And why? We cannot too often repeat-
simply because a majority of a rustic congregation had
rejected him, without attempting to show reason for his
rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for their part in
this affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the
injured parties-Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr. Young,
the presentee. Twice, upon a different form of action, the
Court of Session gave judgment against the presbytery;
twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords; twice the
Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the
other case, of Marnoch, the presbytery of Strathbogie took
precisely the opposite course. So far from abetting the
unjust congregation of rustics, they rebelled against the new
law of the Assembly, and declared, by seven of their number
against three, that they were ready to proceed with the
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 245
trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found qualified)
into the benefice. Upon this the General Assembly sus-
pended the seven members of presbytery. By that mode of
proceeding the Assembly fancied that they should be able to
elude the intentions of the presbytery,-it being supposed
that, whilst suspended, the presbytery had no power to
ordain, and that without ordination there was no possibility
of giving induction. But here the Assembly had mis-
calculated. Suspension would indeed have had the effects
ascribed to it; but in the meantime the suspension, as being
originally illegal, was found to be void; and the presentee,
on that ground, obtained a decree from the Court of Session
ordaining the presbytery of Strathbogie to proceed with the
settlement. Three of the ten members composing this
presbytery resisted; and they were found liable in expenses.
The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form.
Here was plain rebellion, and rebellion triumphant ! If
this were allowed, all was gone! What should the Assembly
do for the vindication of their authority? Upon delibera-
tion, they deposed the contumacious presbytery from their
functions as clergymen, and declared their churches vacant.
But this sentence was found to be a brutum fulmen. The
crime was no crime, the punishment turned out no punish-
ment; and a minority even in this very Assembly declared
publicly that they would not consent to regard this sentence
as any sentence at all, but would act in all respects as if no
such sentence had been carried by vote. Within their own
high Court of Assembly it is, however, difficult to see how
this refusal to recognise a sentence voted by a majority
could be valid. Outside, the civil courts came into play;
but within the Assembly surely its own laws and votes
prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little
comfort to the Assembly at present; for the illegality of the
deposal was now past all dispute; and the attempt to
punish, or even ruin, a number of professional brethren for
not enforcing a bylaw when the bylaw itself had been
found irreconcilable to the law of the land greatly displeased
the public, as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the pur-
poses of the Assembly.
Nothing was gained except the putting on record an im-
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placability that was confessedly impotent. This was the very
lunacy of malice. Mortifying it might certainly seem for
the members of a supreme court like the General Assembly
to be baffled by those of a subordinate court; but still, since
each party must be regarded as representing far larger
interests than any personal to themselves,—trying, on either
side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available
resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really
seemed no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for
triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men
in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively
of chance.
From this period it is probable that the faction of Non-
Intrusionists resolved upon abandoning the Church. It was
the one sole resource left for sustaining their own importance
to men who were now sinking fast in public estimation. At
the latter end of 1842 they summoned a convocation in
Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was
generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan
for going out from the Church in the event of their failing
to alarm the Government by the notification of this design.
We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is
known to everybody is that on the annual meeting of the
General Assembly in May 1843 the great body of the
Non-Intrusionists moved out in procession.
The sort of
theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a
few hurried days in May was of a kind which should natur-
ally have made wise men both ashamed and disgusted.
was the merest effervescence from that state of excitement
which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the vague
anticipation of a "scene," possibly of a quarrel, together with
the natural interest in seeing men whose names had been
long before the public in books and periodical journals.
It
The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves
into a pseudo General Assembly. When there are two suns
visible, or two moons, the real one and its duplicate, we call
the mock sun a parhelios, and the mock moon a paraselene.
On that principle, we must call this mock Assembly a para-
synodos. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the Seceders in the
fabrication of names. They distinguish as quoad sacra
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 247
parishes those which were peculiarly quoad politica parishes;
for in that view only they had been interesting to the Non-
Intrusionists. Again, they style themselves The Free Church,
by way of taunting the other side with being a servile
Church. But how are they any Church at all? By the
courtesies of Europe, and according to usage, a Church
means a religious incorporation, protected and privileged by
the State. Those who are not so privileged are usually con-
tent with the title of Separatists, Dissenters, or Noncon-
formists. No wise man will see either good sense or dignity
in assuming titles not appropriate. The very position and
aspect towards the Church (legally so called) which has been
assumed by the Non-Intrusionists,-viz. the position of pro-
testers against that body, not merely as bearing, amongst
other features, a certain relation to the State, but specifically
because they bear that relation,—makes it incongruous, and
even absurd, for these Dissenters to denominate themselves a
"Church." But there is another objection to this denomina-
tion. The "Free Church" have no peculiar and separate
Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are their credenda
-what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either.
as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they
reply-“Oh! as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever
we did profess when members of the Scottish Kirk "—then
in effect they are hardly so much as a dissenting body, ex-
cept in some elliptic sense. There is a grievous hiatus in
their own title-deeds and archives; they supply it by re-
ferring people to the muniment chest of the Kirk. Would it
not be a scandal to a Protestant Church if she should say to
communicants-"We have no sacramental vessels, or even
ritual; but you may borrow both from Papal Rome"? Not
only, however, is the Kirk to lend her Confession, &c.; but
even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess how many
parts in his Confession are, or may be, affected by the "reform-
ation" of the Non-Intrusionists. "Surely," he will think,
"if this reformation were so vast that it drove them out of the
National Church, absolutely exploded them, then it follows
that it must have intervened and indirectly modified innu-
merable questions: a difference that was punctually limited
to this one or these two clauses could not be such a difference
248
MISCELLANEA
13
as justified a rupture. Besides, if they have altered this one
or these two clauses, or have altered their interpretation, how
is any man to know (except from a distinct Confession of
Faith) that they have not even directly altered much more?
Notoriety through newspapers is surely no ground to stand
upon in religion." And now it appears that the unlettered
rustic needs two guides: one to show him exactly how much
they have altered, whether two points or two hundred, as
well as which two or two hundred; another to teach him
how far these original changes may have carried with them
secondary changes as consequences into other parts of the
Christian system. One of the known changes,—viz. the doc-
trine of popular election as the proper qualification for parish
clergymen,possibly is not fitted to expand itself or ramify,
except by analogy. But the other change, the infinity which
has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the
doctrine and application of spirituality seems fitted for
derivative effects that are innumerable. Consequently, we
say of the Non-Intrusionists not only that they are no
Church, but that they are not even any separate body of
Dissenters, until they have published a "Confession" or a
revised edition of the Scottish Confession.
IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the ultimate
consequences of these things. Let us pursue them to the end
of the vista.First in order stands the dreadful shock to the
National Church Establishment; and that is twofold: it is
a shock from without, acting through opinion, and a shock
from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each
case is separately perfect. Through the opinion of men
standing outside of the Church, the Church herself suffers
wrong in her authority. Through the contagion of sympathy
stealing over men inside of the Church, peril arises of other
shocks in a second series, which would so exhaust the Church
by reiterated convulsions as to leave her virtually dismem-
bered and shattered for all her great national functions.
As to that evil which acts through opinion, it acts by a
machinery,—viz. the press and social centralisation in great
cities,—which in these days is perfect. Right or wrong, jus-
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
249
tified or not justified by the acts of the majority, it is certain
that every public body-how much more, then, a body
charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its
standard-suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any
feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This
is what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in
new ideas, first introduced under the name of scandal,—that
is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the weak or
to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the
opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual
authorities. Now, here in Scotland is a feud past all
arbitration; here is a schism no longer theoretic, neither
beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is a change
of doctrine, on one side or the other, which throws a sad
umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation
of the Church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence
there must always be henceforward in great religious incor-
porations. Was there any such incorporation reputed to be
more internally harmonious than the Scottish Church?
None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any Church
more deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has
split asunder so irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel,
could any questions or speculations be found so little fitted
for a popular interference? Yet no breach of unity has
ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and irrevocable.
One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit
the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane.
In 1834, the first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon
-a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. In 1843, the evil
had "travelled on from birth to birth." Already it had
failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had
entered upon a second-viz. to rear up an Anti-Kirk, or
spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-
like folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a
Roman vinea surmounted the fortifications which it belea-
guered; and which, under whatsoever practical issue for the
contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the
true Church for ever. Even this brief period of develop-
ment would have been briefer had not the law-courts inter-
posed many delays. Demurs of law-process imposed checks
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MISCELLANEA
upon the uncharitable haste of the odium theologicum; and,
though in a question of schism it would be a petitio principii
for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been
originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say
that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to
that sad issue of a final separation. The Establishment
would have been well content to stop short of that consum-
mation; and temperaments might have been found, com-
promises both safe and honourable, had the minority built
less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful
martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming and,
that they might be martyrs, it was necessary for them to
secede. That Europe thinks at present with less reverence
of Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago is due to
one of these institutions in particular--viz. to the Scottish
Kirk, and specifically to the minority in that body. They
it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all brotherly in-
dulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in the
other. Consequently upon their consciences lies the responsi-
bility of having weakened the pillars of the Reformed Churches
throughout Christendom.
Had those abuses been really such which the Seceders
denounced,-were it possible that a primary law of pure
Christianity had been set aside for generations,—how came it
that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of reproach before
1834? How came it that no aurora of early light, no pre-
lusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had
run before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or
now there must have been huge error, on their own showing.
Heretofore they must have been traitorously below their
duty, or now mutinously beyond it.
Such conclusions are irresistible; and upon any path,
seceding or not seceding, they menace the worldly credit of
ecclesiastical bodies. That evil is now past remedy. As for
the other evil,—that which acts upon Church establishments,
not through simple failure in the guarantees of public
opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition,
-here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish
Church from the very gates to the centre.
And unhappily
the same chasm which marks a division of the Church in-
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 251
ternally is a link connecting it externally with the Seceders.
For how stands the case? Did the Scottish Kirk, at the late
crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections?
Was there one of these bisections which said Yes whilst the
other responded No? Was the affirmative and negative
shared between them as between the black chessmen and the
white? Not so; and unhappily not so. The two extremes
there were, but these shaded off into each other. Many were
the nuances; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a
section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three
exceptions; there stood another that went the whole length
as to this change, but no part of the way as to that; between
these sections arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or
eclectically, that is, by no law generally recognised. And
behind this eclectic school were grouped others who had
voted for all novelties up to a certain day, but after that had
refused to go further with a movement party whose tendencies
they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore, the
divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident
of having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of
conscientious alarm. The principles upon which men had
divided were various, and these various principles were
variously combined. But, on the other hand, those who
have gone out were the men who approved totally, not par-
tially unconditionally, not within limits-up to the end,
and not to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in
comprehended all the shades and degrees which the men of
violence excluded. The Seceders were unanimous to a man,
and of necessity; for he who approves the last act, the ex-
treme act, which is naturally the most violent act, a fortiori
approves all lesser acts. But the Establishment, by parity
of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modi-
fications, all who had exercised a wise discretion,——who, in so
great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious,-
whose casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who
had preferred an interest of conscience to a triumph of par-
tisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot
hide from ourselves that the very principle which makes
such a policy honourable at the moment makes it dangerous
in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives,
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MISCELLANEA
he once resisted a temptation to schism makes known by that
avowal that he still harbours in his mind the germ of such a
temptation; and to that scruple which once he resisted here-
after he may see reason for yielding. The principles of
schism, which for the moment were suppressed, are still
latent in the Church. It is urged that, in quest of unity,
many of these men succeeded in resisting the instincts of dis-
sension at the moment of crisis. True but this might be
because they presumed on winning from their own party
equal concessions by means less violent than schism; or
because they attached less weight to the principle concerned
than they may see cause for attaching upon future considera-
tions; or because they would not allow themselves to sanction
the cause of the late Secession by going out in company with
men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose
manner of supporting those principles they abhorred. Uni-
versally it is evident that little stress is to be laid on a
negative act. Simply to have declined going out with the
Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act
which may cover indifferently a marked hostility to the
Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness
not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this
negative act may be equivocal in a different way. The friend-
liness may not only have existed, but may have existed in
sufficient strength for any test whatever. Not the principles
of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical mode of asserting
them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion to
many.
What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from
these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone
past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of
the general tendency in all dangers to come round by success-
ive and reiterated shocks-
66
The earthquake is not satisfied at once.
All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers ;
they intermit only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse
are periodically eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843,
when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut in, perhaps,
more of the infected than at the time she succeeded in
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 253
shutting out. As respected the opinion of the world outside,
it seemed advisable to shut out the least number possible;
for in proportion to the number of the Seceders was the
danger that they should carry with them an authentic
impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected
a greater danger (the danger from internal contagion), it
seemed advisable that the Church should have shut out (if
she could) very many of those who, for the present, adhered
to her. The broader the separation, and the more absolute,
between the Church and the Secession, so much the less
anxiety there would have survived lest the rent should
spread. That the anxiety in this respect is not visionary
the reader may satisfy himself by looking over a remarkable
pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the wheat
from the chaff 1 By the "wheat," in the view of this writer,
is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their
recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All
who stopped short of that consummation (on whatever plea),
are the "chaff." The writer is something of an incendiary,
or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with regard
to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his
details as to extort admiration of his energy and of his
patience in research. But the reason for which we notice
this pamphlet is with a view to the proof of that large
intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of
the Scottish Establishment. No proof, in a question of that
nature, can be so showy and ostensive to a stranger as that
which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every
past vote recording a scruple is the pledge of a scruple still
existing, though for the moment suppressed. Since the
Secession nearly four hundred and fifty new men may have
entered the Church.. This supplementary body has probably
diluted the strength of the revolutionary principles. But
they also may, perhaps, have partaken to some extent in the
contagion of these principles. True, there is this guarantee
for caution on the part of these new men,—that as yet they
are pledged to nothing, and that, seeing experimentally how
1 This, I think, was a pamphlet cataloguing all who had ranked
as Non-Intrusionists, and specifying those who had shrunk back at
last.-M.
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MISCELLANEA
fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be
fettered by the past, they have every possible motive for
reserve in committing themselves, either by their votes or
by their pens. In their situation there is a special induce-
ment to prudence, because there is a prospect that for them
prudence is in time to be effectual. But for many of the
older men prudence comes too late. They are already
fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the atten-
tion of our readers is that by the past, by the absolute votes
of the past, too sorrowfully it is made evident that the
Scottish Church is deeply tainted with the principles of the
Secession. These germs of evil and of revolution, speaking
of them in a personal sense, cannot be purged off entirely
until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking
of them as principles capable of vegetation, these germs may
or may not expand into whole forests of evil, according to
the accidents of coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize
our billowy aspects of society, or, on the other hand, largely
to fertilize the many occasions of agitation which political
fermentations are too sure to throw off. Let this chance
turn out as it may, we repeat, for the information of
Southerns, that the Church, by shutting off the persons of
particular agitators, has not shut off the principles of agita-
tion, and that the cordon sanitaire, supposing the spontaneous
exile of the Non-Intrusionists to be regarded in that light,
was not drawn about the Church until the disease had spread
widely within the lines.
Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future
course of action; warned in time, such a man may stand
neutral in practice; but thus far they poison the fountains
of wholesome unanimity—that, if a man can evade the neces-
sity of squaring particular actions to his past opinions, at
least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions them-
selves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too
notoriously have placed on record by his votes.
But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in
the Establishment so long as men survive in that Establish-
ment who feel upbraided by past votes, and so long as enemies
survive who will not suffer these upbraidings to slumber-
dangers which much mutual forbearance and charity can
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 255
alone disarm—on the other hand how much profounder is
the inconsistency to which the Free Church is doomed?
They have rent the unity of that Church to which they had
pledged their faith-but on what plea? On the plea that in
cases purely spiritual they could not in conscience submit to
the award of the secular magistrate. Yet how merely im-
practicable is this principle as an abiding principle of action!
Churches, that is, the charge of particular congregations,-
will be with them (as with other religious communities) the
means of livelihood. Grounds innumerable will arise for ex-
cluding or attempting to exclude each other from these official
stations. No possible form regulating the business of ordina-
tion, or of induction, can anticipate the infinite objections.
which may arise. But no man interested in such a case will
submit to a judge appointed by insufficient authority. Daily
bread for his family is what few men will resign without a
struggle. And that struggle will of necessity come for final
adjudication to the law courts of the land, whose interference
in any question affecting a spiritual interest the Free Church
has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case sup-
posed she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be
cited before the tribunals, and can elude that citation in no
way but by surrendering the point in litigation; and, if she
should adopt the notion that it is better for her to do that
than to acknowledge a sufficient authority in the court by
pleading at its bar, upon this principle, once made public, she
will soon be stripped of everything, and will cease to be a
Church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository of any
faith, or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means of
defending her own incorporations. But how can she main-
tain the defenders of her rights, or the dispensers of her
truths, if she refuses, upon immutable principle, to call in the
aid of the magistrate on behalf of rights which, under any
aspect, regard spiritual relations? Attempting to maintain
these rights by private arbitration within a forum of her
own, she will soon find such arbitration not binding at all
upon the party who conceives himself aggrieved. The issue
will be as in Mr. O'Connell's courts, where the parties played
at going to law. From the moment when they ceased to play,
and no longer "made believe" to be disputing, the award of
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MISCELLANEA
the judge became as entire a mockery as any stage mimicry
of such a transaction.
This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and
the probable evasion of that destructive consummation to
which she is carried by her principles will be that, as soon
as her feelings of rancour shall have cooled down, these princi-
ples will silently drop out of use, and the very reason will
be suffered to perish for which she ever became a dissenting
body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are no-
ways concerned.
But an evil in which we are concerned is
the headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all
Churches adulterating with her principle, to an issue not
merely dangerous in a political sense, but ruinous in an anti-
social sense. The artifice of the Free Church lies in pleading
a spiritual relation of any case whatever, whether of doing or
suffering, whether positive or negative, as a reason for taking
it out of all civil control. Now, we may illustrate the peril
of this artifice by a reality at this time impending over
society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh,
has undertaken, upon this very plea of a spiritual power not
amenable to civil control, a sort of warfare with Government
upon the question of their power to suspend or defeat the
O'Connell agitation. For, says he, if Government should
succeed in thus intercepting the direct power of haranguing
mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and
cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the
same topics, from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate
extension of this principle would be that every disaffected
clergyman in the three kingdoms would lecture his congre-
gation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he would
denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad govern-
ment would become, in his language, the most sacred of
duties. In any argument with such a man, he would be
found immediately falling back upon the principle of the
Free Church; he would insist upon it as a spiritual right, as
a case entirely between his conscience and God, whether he
should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though
tending to the instant disorganisation of society. To lecture
against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war,
would wear a most colourable air of truth amongst all weak-
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
257
minded persons.
And these would soon appear to have been
but the first elements of confusion under the improved views
of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the Levellers in Crom-
well's time, of the Anabaptists in Luther's time, would exalt
themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were
weak enough to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest
of their initial advances. If it were possible to suppose such
chimeras prevailing, the natural redress would soon be seen
to lie through secret tribunals, like those of the dreadful
Fehmgericht in the Middle Ages. It would be absurd, how-
ever, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras through
their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush
so monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered when the
necessity of such insupportable consequences is shown to link
itself with that distinction upon which the Free Church has
laid the foundations of its own establishment. Once for all,
there is no act or function belonging to an officer of a Church
which is not spiritual by one of its two Janus faces. And
every examination of the case convinces us more and more
that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction as to acts
spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or
more, but under a simple necessity of finding some evasion
or other which should meet and embody the whole rancour of
the moment.
Yet
But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the
Free Church is the appalling spirit of Jacobinism which
accompanies their whole conduct, and which latterly has
avowed itself in their words. The case began Jacobinically,
for it began in attacks upon the rights of property. But,
since the defeat of this faction by the law-courts, language
seems to fail them for the expression of their hatred and
affected scorn towards the leading nobility of Scotland.
why? The case lies in the narrowest compass. The Duke
of Sutherland, and other great landholders, had refused sites
for their new churches. Upon this occurred a strong fact,
and strong in both directions: first, for the Seceders;
secondly, upon better information, against them. The Record
newspaper, a religious journal, ably and conscientiously con-
ducted, took part with the Secession, and very energetically;
for they denounced the noble duke's refusal of land as an act
VOL. XIV
8
258
MISCELLANEA
intolerance as might easily
Intolerance, however, is not
casuistry of the question is
But this is not necessary;
of "persecution"; and upon this principle-that, in a county
where his grace was pretty nearly the sole landed proprietor,
to refuse land (assuming that a fair price had been tendered
for it) was in effect to show such
tend to the suppression of truth.
persecution; and, if it were, the
open still to much discussion.
for the ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason
for refusing the land comes to be stated. He had refused it,
not unconditionally, not, in the spirit of non-intrusion courts,
“without reason shown," but on this unanswerable argument
—that the whole efforts of the new Church were pointed
(and professedly pointed) to the one object of destroying the
Establishment and "sweeping it from the land." Could any
guardian of public interests, under so wicked a threat,
hesitate as to the line of his duty? By granting the land to
parties uttering such menaces, the Duke of Sutherland would
have made himself an accomplice in the unchristian con-
spiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the strongest
defence which we can offer for the duke that in a day or
two after this charge of "persecution" the Record was forced
to attack the Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the
duke. And this not in any spirit of levity, but under mere
conscientious constraint. For no journal has entered so
powerfully or so eloquently into the defence of the general
principle involved in the Secession (although questioning its
expediency) as this particular Record. Consequently, any
word of condemnation from so earnest a friend comes against
the Seceders with triple emphasis. And this is shown in the
tone of the expostulations addressed to the Record by some of
the Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of
quoting the vile language uttered by members of the Free
Church Assembly if we say that the neutral witnesses of such
unchristian outrages have murmured, remonstrated, protested
in every direction, and that Dr. Macfarlane, who has since cor-
responded with the Duke of Sutherland upon the whole case
-viz. upon the petition for land as affected by the shocking
menaces of the Seceders-has in no other way been able to
evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the
indefensible and at the same time of losing the land irre-
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 259
trievably than by affecting an unconsciousness of language
used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling or to
the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is un-
happy for the Seceders that the only disavowal of the most
fiendish sentiments heard in our days has come from an
individual not authorised or at all commissioned by his party
—from an individual not showing any readiness to face the
whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them,
and finally offering his very feeble disclaimer, which equivo-
cates between a denial and a palliation, not until after he
found himself in the position of a petitioner for favours.
Specifically the great evil of our days is the abiding
temptation, in every direction, to popular discontent, to
agitation, and to systematic sedition. Now, we say it with
sorrow that from no other incendiaries have we heard senti-
ments so wild, fierce, or maliciously democratic, as from the
leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform Bill of 1832,
and the accompanying agitation, which first suggested the
Veto agitation of 1834, and prescribed its tone. From all
classes of our population in turn there have come forward
individuals to disgrace themselves by volunteering their aid
to the chief conspirators of the age. We have earls, we have
marquesses, coming forward as Corn-League agents; we have
magistrates by scores angling for popularity as Repealers.
But these have been private parties, insulated, disconnected,
disowned. When we hear of Christianity prostituted to the
service of Jacobinism, of divinity becoming the handmaid to
insurrection, and of clergymen in masses offering themselves
as promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that
ominous organisation of irreligion which gave its most fearful
aspects to the French Revolution.
Other evils are in the rear, as likely to arise out of the
funds provided for the new Seceders, were the distribution of
those funds confessedly unobjectionable, but more immediately
under the present murmurs against that distribution. There
are two funds: one subscribed expressly for the building of
churches; the other limited to the "sustentation" of incum-
bents. And the complaint is that this latter fund has
been invaded for purposes connected with the first. The
reader can easily see the motive to this injustice: it is a
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MISCELLANEA
motive of ambition. Far more display of power is made by
the annunciation to the world of six hundred churches built
than of any difference this way or that in the comfort and
decorous condition of the clergy. This last is a domestic
feature of the case, not fitted for public effect. But the
number of the churches will resound through Europe.
Meantime, at present, the allowance to the great body of
Seceding clergy averages but £80 a year; and the allegation
is that, but for the improper interference with the fund on
the motive stated, it would have averaged £150 a year. If
anywhere a town parish has raised a much larger provision
for its pastor, even that has now become a part of the general
grievance. For it is said that all such special contributions
ought to have been thrown into one general fund liable to
one general principle of distribution. Yet, again, will even
this fund, partially as it seems to have been divided, continue
to be available? Much of it lies in annual subscriptions.
Now, in the next generation of subscribers a son will possibly
not adopt the views of his father; but assuredly he will not
adopt his father's zeal. Here, however (though this is not prob-
able), there may arise some compensatory cases of subscribers
altogether new. But another question is pressing for deci-
sion, which menaces a frightful shock to the schismatical
Church. Female agency has been hitherto all-potent in pro-
moting the subscriptions; and a demand has been made in
consequence that women shall be allowed to vote in the
Church courts. Grant this demand,—for it cannot be evaded,-
and what becomes of the model for Church government as
handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it, and
what becomes of the future subscriptions?
But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders.
Not so.
We are all interested in the respectability of the
national teachers, whatever be their denomination: we are
all interested in the maintenance of a high standard for
theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at
any rate.
But it is even a worse result which we may
count on from the changes that a practical approximation
is thus already made to what is technically known as
Voluntaryism.
The "United Secession,"—that is, the old collective body
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 261
of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are
carried into this voluntary system, already exult that
this consummation of the case cannot be far off. Indeed,
so far as the Seceders are dependent upon annual sub-
scriptions, and coupling that relation to the public with
the great doctrine of these Seceders that congregations are
universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see
how such an issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the
new Secession all protest against Voluntaryism; but to that
complexion of things they travel rapidly by the mere
mechanic action of their dependent (or semi - dependent)
situation, combined with one of their two characteristic
principles.
And
The same United Secession journal openly anticipates
another and more diffusive result from this great movement
—viz. the general disruption of Church Establishments. We
trust that this anticipation will be signally defeated.
yet there is one view of the case which saddens us when we
turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and
expostulations of the Schismatic Church, one that struck us
as the most eminently hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was
this “You ought,” said they, when addressing the Govern-
ment, and exposing the error of the law proceedings, “to
have stripped us of the temporalities arising from the Church,
stipend, glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual functions.
We had no right to the emoluments of our stations when
the law-courts had decided against us, but we had a right to
the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity could
refuse to smile at this complaint-verbally so much in the
spirit of primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so
insidious. For could it be possible that a competitor intro-
duced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral
office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should
not be hooted on the public roads by many who might
otherwise have taken no part in the feud? This specious
claim was a sure and brief way to secure the hatefulness of
their successors. Now, we cannot conceal from ourselves
that something like this invidious condition of things might
be realised under two further revolutions. We have said
that a second schism in the Scottish Church is not impossible.
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MISCELLANEA
It is also but too possible that Puseyism may yet rend the
English Establishment by a similar convulsion. But in
such contingencies we should see a very large proportion of
the spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to
the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the
treacherous proposal of the late Seceders-viz. the spectacle
of one party performing much of the difficult duties and
another party enjoying the inain emoluments. This would
be a most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism.
Falling in with the infirmities of many in these days, such a
spectacle would give probably a fatal bias to that system in
our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This would move
the sorrow of the Seceders themselves; for they have pro-
tested against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence
which that party even complain of as excessive. Their
leaders have many times avowed that any system which
should leave to men in general the estimate of their own
religious wants as a pecuniary interest would be fatal to the
Christian tone of our national morals. Checked and over-
awed by the example of an Establishment, the Voluntaries
themselves are far more fervent in their Christian exertions
than they could be when liberated from that contrast. The
religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a
change would droop for generations; and in that one evil,-
let us hope, the remotest and least probable of the many
evils threatened by the late schism,-these nations would
have reason by comparison almost to forget the rest.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS 1
THE most remarkable instance of a combined movement in
society which History perhaps will be summoned to notice
is that which in our own days has applied itself to the abate-
ment of intemperance. Naturally, or by any direct process,
the machinery set in motion would seem irrelevant to the
object. If one hundred men unite to elevate the standard of
temperance, they can do this with effect only by improve-
ments in their own separate cases: each individual, for such
an effort of self-conquest, can draw upon no resources but his
own. One member in a combination of one hundred, when
running a race, can hope for no co-operation from his ninety-
nine associates; and yet, by a secondary action, such com-
binations are found eminently successful. Having obtained
from every confederate a pledge, in some shape or other, that
he will give them his support, thenceforwards they bring the
passions of shame and self-esteem to bear upon each mem-
ber's personal perseverance. Not only they keep alive and
continually refresh in his thoughts the general purpose, which
else might fade; but they also point the action of public
contempt and of self-contempt at any defaulter much more
potently, and with more acknowledged right to do so, when
they use this influence under a licence, volunteered, and
signed and sealed by the man's own hand. They first con-
ciliate his countenance through his intellectual perceptions of
what is right; and next they sustain it through his con-
1 Appeared originally in Tait's Magazine for October 1845: re-
printed by De Quincey in 1859 in vol. xii of his Collected Writings.
-M.
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MISCELLANEA
science (the strongest of his internal forces), and even through
the weakest of his human sensibilities. That revolution,
therefore, which no combination of men can further by
abating the original impulse of temptations they often
accomplish happily by maturing the secondary energies of
resistance.
1
Already in their earliest stage these temperance move-
ments had obtained, both at home and abroad, a national
range of grandeur. More than ten years ago, when M. de
Tocqueville was resident in the United States, the principal
American society counted two hundred and seventy thousand
members; and in one single state (Pennsylvania) the annual
diminution in the use of spirits had very soon reached half
a million of gallons. Now, a machinery must be so far good
which accomplishes in that large extent its difficult purpose,
-the means are meritorious for so much as they effect.
Even to strengthen a feeble resolution by the aid of other
infirmities, such as shame or the very servility and cowardice
of deference to public opinion, becomes prudent and laudable
in the service of so great an interest. Nay, sometimes to
make public profession of self-distrust by assuming the
coercion of public pledges-even as we see in one large
section of the Christian Church men voluntarily assuming
the yoke of strict sequestration, and young women some-
times, with full knowledge and absolute good faith, wooing
the severest conventual restraints-may become an expression
of frank courage, or even of noble principle, not fearing the
shame of confessing the whole vast powers of sensual tempta-
tion, when from such a confession any new or indirect aid
can apparently be drawn towards a victorious resistance.
Yet still, so far as it is possible, every man sighs for a still
higher victory over himself, a victory not tainted by bribes,
and won from no impulses but those inspired by his own
higher nature and his own mysterious force of will-powers
that in no creature are fully developed.
This being so, it is well that from time to time every man
should throw out any hints that have occurred to his ex-
perience,―suggesting such as may be new, refreshing such
as may be old,—towards the encouragement or the informa-
1 This was written in 1845.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
265
My own
tion of persons engaged in so great a struggle.
experience had never travelled in that course which could
much instruct me in the miseries from wine, or in the re-
sources for struggling with it. I had repeatedly been obliged,
indeed, to lay it aside altogether; but in this I never found
room for more than seven or ten days' struggle: excesses I
had never practised in the use of wine; simply the habit of
using it at all, and the collateral habits formed by excessive
use of opium, had produced any difficulty at resigning it even
on an hour's notice. From opium I derive my right of offer-
ing hints at all upon the subjects of abstinence in other
forms. But the modes of suffering from the evil, and the
separate modes of suffering from the effort of self-conquest,
together with errors of judgment incident to such states of trans-
itional torment, are nearly all allied,-practically analogous
as regards the remedies, even if characteristically distinguished
to the inner consciousness. I make no scruple, therefore, of
speaking as from a station of high experience, and of most
watchful attention which never remitted even under suffer-
ings that were at times absolutely frantic.
I. The first hint which I offer is one that has been often
suggested more or less doubtfully: viz. the diminution of the
particular liquor used by the introduction into each glass of
some inert substance, ascertained in bulk, and equally increas-
ing in amount from day to day. But this plan has often been
intercepted by an accident: shot, or sometimes bullets, were
the substances nearest at hand: an objection arose from too
scrupulous a caution of chemistry as to the action upon lead
of the vinous acid. Yet all objection of this kind might be
removed at once by using beads in a case where small decre-
ments were wanted, and the marbles of schoolboys if it were
thought advisable to use larger. Once for all, however, in
cases deeply rooted, no advances ought ever to be made but
by small stages; for the effect, which is insensible at first,
by the tenth, twelfth, or fifteenth day generally accumulates
unendurably under any bolder deductions. I must not stop
to illustrate this point; but certain it is that by an error of
this nature at the outset, most natural to human impatience
under exquisite suffering, too generally the trial is abruptly
brought to an end through the crisis of a passionate relapse.
266
MISCELLANEA
II. Another object, and one to which the gladiator matched
in single duel with intemperance must direct a religious
vigilance, is the digestibility of his food. It must be digestible,
not only by its original qualities, but also by its culinary
preparation. In this last point we are all of us Manicheans;
all of us yield a cordial assent to that Manichean proverb
which refers the meats and the cooks of this world to two
opposite fountains of light and of darkness. Oromasdes it
is, or the good principle, that sends the food; Ahrimanes, or
the evil principle, that everywhere sends the cooks. Man
has been repeatedly described, or even defined, as, by differ-
ential privilege of his nature, "a cooking animal." Brutes,
it is said, have faces; man only has a countenance: brutes
are as well able to eat as man; man only is able to cook
what he eats. Such are the romances of self-flattery. I, on
the contrary, maintain that many thousands of years have
not availed, in this point, to raise our race generally to the
level of ingenious savages. The natives of the Society and
the Friendly Isles, or of New Zealand, and other favoured
spots, had, and still have, an art of cookery, though very
limited in its range; the French ¹ have an art, and a real art,
and very much more extensive; but we English are about upon
a level (as regards this science) with the ape, to whom an
instinct whispers that chestnuts may be roasted, or with the
aboriginal Chinese of Charles Lamb's story, to whom the
experience of many centuries had revealed thus much-viz.
that a dish very much beyond the raw flesh of their ancestors
might be had by burning down the family mansion and thus
roasting the pigsty. Rudest of barbarous devices is English
cookery, and not much in advance of this primitive Chinese
step--a fact which it would not be worth while to lament
were it not for the sake of the poor trembling deserter from
the banners of intoxication, who is thus, and by no other
cause, so often thrown back beneath the yoke which he had
abjured. Past counting are the victims of alcohol that,
having by vast efforts emancipated themselves for a season,
J
1
1 But judge not, reader, of French skill by the attempts of
fourth rate artists; and understand me to speak with respect of
this skill, not as it is the tool of luxury, but as it is the handmaid of
health.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
267
The
are violently forced into relapsing by the nervous irritations
of demoniac cookery. Unhappily for them, the horrors of
indigestion are relieved for the moment, however ultimately
strengthened, by strong liquors: the relief is immediate, and
cannot fail to be perceived; but the aggravation, being
removed to a distance, is not always referred to its proper
cause. This is the capital rock and stumbling-block in the
path of him who is hurrying back to the camps of temper-
ance; and many a reader is likely to misapprehend the case
through the habit he has acquired of supposing indigestion to
lurk chiefly amongst luxurious dishes; but, on the contrary,
it is amongst the plainest, simplest, and commonest dishes
that such misery lurks in England. Let us glance at three
articles of diet, beyond all comparison of most ordinary
occurrence-viz. potatoes, bread, and butchers' meat.
art of preparing potatoes for human use is utterly unknown,
except in certain provinces of our empire and amongst certain
sections of the labouring class. In our great cities,—London,
Edinburgh, &c.,—the sort of things which you see offered at
table under the name and reputation of potatoes are such
that, if you could suppose the company to be composed of
Centaurs and Lapithæ, or any other quarrelsome people, it
would become necessary for the police to interfere. The
potato of cities is a very dangerous missile, and, if thrown
with an accurate aim by an angry hand, will fracture any
known skull. In volume and consistency it is very like a
paving stone; only that, I should say, the paving stone had
the advantage in point of tenderness; and upon this horrid
basis, which youthful ostriches would repent of swallowing,
the trembling, palpitating invalid, fresh from the scourging
of alcohol, is requested to build the superstructure of his
dinner. The proverb says that three flittings are as bad as
a fire; and on that model I conceive that three potatoes, as
they are found at the majority of British dinner tables, would
be equal, in principle of ruin, to two glasses of vitriol. The
same savage ignorance appears, and only not so often, in the
bread of this island. Myriads of families eat it in that early
state of sponge which bread assumes during the process of
baking; but less than sixty hours will not fit this dangerous
article of human diet to be eaten; and those who are
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MISCELLANEA
acquainted with the works of Parmentier, of Count Rumford,
or other learned investigators of bread and of the baker's art,
must be aware that this quality of sponginess (though quite
equal to the ruin of the digestive organs) is but one in a
legion of vices to which the article is liable. A German of
much research wrote a book on the conceivable faults in a
pair of shoes, which he found to be about six hundred and
sixty-six, many of them, as he observed, requiring a very
delicate process of study to find out; whereas the possible
faults in bread, which are not less in number, being also, I
conceive, about equal to the number of the beast, require no
study at all for the detection they publish themselves
through all varieties of misery. But the perfection of bar-
barism, as regards our island cookery, is reserved for animal
food; and the two poles of Oromasdes and Ahrimanes are
nowhere so conspicuously exhibited. Our insular sheep, for
instance, are so far superior to any which the Continent-
produces that the present Prussian minister at our court is in
the habit of questioning a man's right to talk of mutton as
anything beyond a great idea, unless he can prove a residence
in Great Britain. One sole case he cites of a dinner on the Elbe
where a particular leg of mutton really struck him as rivalling
any which he had known in England. The mystery seemed
inexplicable; but, upon inquiry, it turned out to be an import-
ation from Leith. Yet this incomparable article, to produce
which the skill of the feeder must co-operate with the peculiar
bounty of Nature, calls forth the most dangerous refinements
of barbarism in its cookery. A Frenchman requires, as the
primary qualification of flesh meat, that it should be tender.
We English universally, but especially the Scots, treat that
quality with indifference or with bare toleration. What we,
what nous autres les barbares, require is that it should be
fresh,—that is, recently killed (in which state it cannot be
digestible except by a crocodile, or perhaps here and there a
leopard); and we present it at table in a transition state of
leather, demanding the teeth of a tiger to rend it in pieces,
and the stomach of a tiger to digest it.
With these habits amongst our countrymen, exemplified
daily in the articles of widest use, it is evident that the
sufferer from intemperance has a harder quarantine in this
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
269
island to support, during the effort of restoration, than he
could have anywhere else in Christendom. In Persia, and
perhaps there only on this terraqueous planet, matters are
even worse; for, whilst we English neglect the machinery
of digestion, as a matter entitled to little consideration, the
people of Teheran seem unaware that there is any such
machinery. So, at least, one might presume from cases on
record, and especially from the reckless folly, under severe
illness, of the three Persian princes who lately visited this
country. I take their case from the report of their official
mehmander, Mr. Fraser. With us, the excess of ignorance
upon this subject betrays itself oftenest in that vainglorious
answer made by the people who at any time are admonished
of the sufferings which they are preparing for themselves by
these outrages upon the most delicate of human organs.
They, for their parts, "know not if they have a stomach ;
they know not what it is that dyspepsy means"; forgetting
that, in thus vaunting their strength of stomach, they are at
the same time proclaiming its coarseness, and showing them-
selves unaware that precisely those whom such coarseness of
organisation reprieves from immediate and seasonable reaction
of suffering are the favourite subjects of that heavier reaction
which takes the shape of delirium tremens, of palsy, and of
lunacy. It is but a fanciful advantage which they enjoy for
whom the immediate impunity avails only to hide the final
horrors which are gathering upon them from the gloomy rear.
Better by far that more of immediate discomfort had guar-
anteed to them less of reversionary anguish. It may be
safely asserted that few indeed are the suicides amongst us to
which the miseries of indigestion have not been a large con-
curring cause; and, even where nothing so dreadful as that
occurs, always these miseries are the chief hindrance of the
self-reforming drunkard, and the commonest cause of his
relapse. It is certain, also, that misanthropic gloom and
bad temper besiege that class, by preference, to whom peculiar
Mr.
1 "Lately" :—This was written nearly fourteen years ago.
Fraser, I believe, has been dead for some years. [The book referred
to is, I suppose, Mr. James Baillie Fraser's Narrative of the Residence
of the Persian Princes in London, 1835 and 1836, with an Account
of their Journey from Persia. Mr. Fraser died in 1856.-M.]
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MISCELLANEA
coarseness or obtuse sensibility of organisation has denied the
salutary warnings and early prelibations of punishment which,
happily for most men, besiege the more direct and obvious
frailties of the digestive apparatus, and which, by besieging,
intercept very often the ultimate more dreadful frailties in
the rear.
The whole process and elaborate machinery of digestion
are felt to be mean and humiliating when viewed in relation
to our mere animal economy; but they rise into dignity and
assert their own supreme importance when they are studied
from another station-viz. in relation to the intellect and
temper no man dares then to despise them. It is then
seen that these functions of the human system form the
essential basis upon which the strength and health of our
higher nature repose, and that upon these functions chiefly
the general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules of
prudence or gifts of experience that life can accumulate will
never do as much for human comfort and welfare as would
be done by a stricter attention and a wiser science directed
to the digestive system. In this attention lies the key to
any perfect restoration for the victim of intemperance; and,
considering the peculiar hostility to the digestive health
which exists in the dietetic habits of our own country, it may
be feared that nowhere upon earth has the reclaimed victim
of intemperance so difficult a combat to sustain; nowhere,
therefore, is it so important to direct the attention upon an
artificial culture of those resources which naturally, and by
the established habits of the land, are surest to be neglected.
The sheet-anchor for the storm-beaten sufferer who is labour-
ing to recover a haven of rest from the agonies of intemper-
ance, and who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison which
ruined him, but which also for brief intervals offered him
his only consolation, lies, beyond all doubt, in a most anxious
regard to everything connected with this supreme function of
our animal economy. And, as few men that are not regularly
trained to medical studies can have the complex knowledge
requisite for such a duty, some printed guide should be
sought of a regular professional order. Twenty years ago,1
1 Twenty years ago"--but now (viz. March 31, 1859) nearer to
forty.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
271
Dr. Wilson Philip published a most valuable book of this
class, which united a wide range of practical directions as to
the choice of diet, and as to the qualities and tendencies of
all esculent articles likely to be found at British tables, with
some ingenious speculations (not, however, merely specu-
lative, being aided by experimental investigations of the
analogous digesting processes in rabbits) upon the still myste-
rious theory of digestion. These had originally been com-
municated by him to the Royal Society of London, who
judged them worthy of publication in their Transactions.
I notice them chiefly for the sake of remarking that the
rationale of digestion, as here suggested, explains the reason
of a fact which, merely as a fact, and altogether apart from
its theory, had not been known until modern times-viz. the
injuriousness to enfeebled stomachs of all fluid.
Fifty years
ago-and still lingering inveterately amongst nurses and
other ignorant persons-there prevailed a notion that "slops"
must be the proper resource of the valetudinarian; and the
same erroneous notion appears in the common expression of
ignorant wonder at the sort of breakfasts usual amongst
women of rank in the times of Queen Elizabeth.
"What
robust stomachs they must have had, to support such
solid meals!”´ As to the question of fact, whether the stomachs
were more or less robust in those days than at the present,
there is no need to offer an opinion; but the question of prin-
ciple concerned in scientific dietetics points in the very opposite
direction. By how much the organs of digestion are feebler,
by so much is it the more indispensable that solid food
and animal food should be adopted. A robust stomach may
be equal to the trying task of supporting a fluid, such as tea,
for breakfast; but for a feeble stomach, and still more for a
stomach artificially enfeebled by bad habits, broiled beef, or
something equally solid and animal, but not too much sub-
jected to the action of fire, is the only tolerable diet. This,
indeed, is the one capital rule for a sufferer from habitual
intoxication,—who must inevitably labour under an impaired
digestion, that as little as possible he should use of any
fluid diet, and as little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef
and a little bread (at least sixty hours old), or game—only
that it is an unfeeling mockery to suggest such rare and
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MISCELLANEA
costly articles (articles, besides, found at all only in one
season of the year) to the use of those who are not rich-
compose the privileged bill of fare for his breakfast. But
precisely, by the way, in relation to this earliest meal it is
that human folly has in one or two instances shown itself
most ruinously inventive. The less variety there is at that
meal, the more is the danger from any single luxury; and
there is one, known by the name of "muffins," which has
repeatedly manifested itself to be a plain and direct bounty
upon suicide. Darwin, in his Zoönomia, reports the case of
an officer, holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel, who could
not tolerate a breakfast in which this odious article was
wanting; but, as a savage retribution invariably supervened
within an hour or two upon this act of insane sensuality, he
came to a resolution that life was intolerable with muffins,
but still more intolerable without muffins. He would stand
the nuisance no longer; but yet, being a just man, he would
give Nature one final chance of reforming her dyspeptic
atrocities. Muffins, therefore, being laid at one angle of the
breakfast table, and loaded pistols at another, with rigid
equity the colonel awaited the result. This was naturally
pretty much as usual; and then the poor man, incapable of
retreating from his word of honour, committed suicide-
having previously left a line for posterity to the effect (though
I forget the expression) "that a muffinless world was no
world for him: better no life at all than a life dismantled of
muffins." Dr. Darwin was a showy philosopher, and fond
of producing effect; so that some allowance must be made in
construing the affair. Strictly speaking, it is probable that
not the special want of muffins, but the general torment of
indigestion, was the curse from which the unhappy sufferer
sought relief by suicide. And the colonel was not the first
by many a million that has fled from the very same form of
wretchedness, or fled from its effects upon the genial spirits,
to the same gloomy refuge. It should never be forgotten
that, although some other more overt vexation is generally
assigned as the proximate cause of suicide, and often may be
so as regards the immediate occasion, too generally this
vexation borrowed its whole power to annoy from the habitual
atmosphere of irritation in which the system had been kept
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
273
by indigestion; so that, indirectly and virtually, perhaps all
suicides may be traced to mismanaged digestion. Meantime,
in alluding at all to so dreadful a subject as suicide, I do so
only by way of giving deeper effect to the opinion expressed
above upon the chief cause of relapse into habits of intem-
perance amongst those who have once accomplished their
deliverance. Errors of digestion, either from impaired
powers, or from powers not so much enfeebled as deranged,
is the one immeasurable source both of disease and of secret
wretchedness to the human race. Life is laid waste by the
eternal fretting of the vital forces emanating from this one
cause. And it may well be conceived that, if cases so end-
less, even of suicide, in every generation, are virtually trace-
able to this main root, much more must it be able to shake
and undermine the yet palpitating frame of the poor fugitive
from intemperance; since indigestion in every mode and
variety of its changes irresistibly upholds the temptation to
that form of excitement which, though one foremost cause of
indigestion, is yet unhappily its sole immediate palliation.
III. Next after the most vigorous attention, and a scientific
attention, to the digestive system in power of operation,
stands exercise. Here, however, most people have their own
separate habits with respect to the time of exercise, the
duration, and the particular mode, on which a stranger
cannot venture to intrude with his advice. Some will not
endure the steady patience required for walking exercise;
many benefit most by riding on horseback; and, in days
when roads were more rugged and the springs of carriages
less improved, I have known people who found most advan-
tage in the vibrations communicated to the frame by a heavy,
rumbling carriage. For myself, under the ravages of opium,
I have found walking the most beneficial exercise; besides
that it requires no previous notice or preparation of any
kind; and this is a capital advantage in a state of drooping
energies or of impatient and unresting agitation. I may
mention, as possibly an accident of my individual tempera-
ment, but possibly also no accident at all, that the relief
obtained by walking was always most sensibly brought home
to my consciousness when some part of it (at least a mile
and a half) had been performed before breakfast. In this
VOL. XIV
T
274
MISCELLANEA
+
there soon ceased to be any difficulty; for, whilst under the
full oppression of opium it was impossible for me to rise at
any hour that could, by the most indulgent courtesy, be
described as within the pale of morning, no sooner had
there been established any considerable relief from this
oppression than the tendency was in the opposite direction,-
the difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even to
a reasonable hour. Having once accomplished the feat of
waking at 9 A.M., I backed, in a space of seven or eight
months, to eight o'clock, to seven, to six, five, four, three ;
until at this point a metaphysical fear fell upon me that I
was actually backing into "yesterday," and should soon have
no sleep at all. Below three, however, I did not descend;
and for a couple of years three and a-half hours' sleep was all
that I could obtain in the twenty-four hours. From this no
particular suffering arose, except the nervous impatience of
lying in bed for one moment after awaking. Consequently
the habit of walking before breakfast became at length trouble-
some no longer as a most odious duty, but, on the contrary,
as a temptation that could hardly be resisted on the wettest
mornings. As to the quantity of the exercise, I found that
six miles a day formed the minimum which would support
permanently a particular standard of animal spirits, evidenced
to myself by certain apparent symptoms. I averaged about
nine and a-half miles a day, but ascended on particular days
to fifteen or sixteen, and more rarely to twenty-three or
twenty-four-a quantity which did not produce fatigue; on
the contrary, it spread a sense of improvement through almost
the whole week that followed. But usually, in the night
immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost much of
my sleep—a privation that, under the circumstances explained,
deterred me from trying the experiment too often; for, in
addition to the sleeplessness, great distress arose, for hours
after one of these excesses in walking, from achings in the
bones below the knee. Let me add to this slight abstract of
my own experience, in a point where it is really difficult to
offer any useful advice (the tastes and habits of men varying
so much in this chapter of exercise), that one caution seems
applicable to the case of all persons suffering from nervous
irritability—viz. that a secluded space should be measured
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
275
off accurately in some private grounds not liable to the inter-
ruption or notice of chance intruders; for these annoyances
are unendurable to the invalid who is nervously restless.
To be questioned upon trivial things is death to him, and
the perpetual anticipation of such annoyances is little less
distressing. Some plan must also be adopted for registering
the number of rounds performed. I once walked for eighteen
months in a circuit so confined that forty revolutions were
needed to complete a mile. These I counted at one time by
a rosary of beads-every tenth round being marked by draw-
ing a blue bead, the other nine by drawing white beads. But
this plan I found in practice more troublesome and inaccurate
than that of using ten detached counters, stones, or anything
else that was large enough and solid. These were applied to
the separate bars of a garden chair—the first bar indicating of
itself the first decade, the second bar the second decade, and
so on. In fact, I used the chair in some measure as a Roman
abacus, but on a still simpler plan; and, as the chair offered
sixteen bars, it followed that, on covering the last bar of the
series with the ten markers, I perceived, without any trouble
of calculation, the accomplishment of my fourth mile.
A necessity meantime more painful to me by far than that
of taking continued exercise arose out of a cause which
applies, perhaps, with the same intensity only to opium cases,
but must also apply in some degree to all cases of debilitation
from morbid stimulation of the nerves, whether by means of
wine, or opium, or distilled liquors. In travelling on the
outside of mails during my youthful days,—for I could not
endure the inside,-occasionally, during the night-time, I
suffered naturally from cold; no cloaks, &c., were always
sufficient to relieve this; and I then made the discovery that
opium, after an hour or so, diffuses a warmth deeper and far
more permanent than could be had from any other known
source. I mention this to explain, in some measure, the
awful passion of cold which for some years haunted the
inverse process of laying aside the opium. It was a perfect
frenzy of misery: cold was a sensation which then first, as a
mode of torment, seemed to have been revealed. In the
months of July and August, and not at all the less during
the very middle watch of the day, I sat in the closest
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MISCELLANEA
proximity to a blazing fire; cloaks, blankets, counterpanes,
hearth-rugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders,
but with hardly a glimmering of relief. At night, and
after taking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could some-
times afford to smile at the resemblance of my own case
to that of Harry Gill.¹ But, secretly, I was struck with
awe at the revelation of powers so unsearchably new lurking
within old affections so familiarly known as cold. Upon
the analogy of this case it might be suspected that nothing
whatever had yet been truly and seriously felt by man;
nothing searched or probed by human sensibilities to a depth
below the surface. If cold could give out mysteries of
suffering so novel, all things in the world might be yet
unvisited by the truth of human sensations. All experience
worthy of the name was perhaps yet to begin. Meantime
the external phenomenon by which the cold expressed itself
was a sense (but with little reality) of external freezing
perspiration. From this I was never free; and at length,
from finding one general ablution insufficient for one day, I
was thrown upon the irritating necessity of repeating it more
1 "Harry Gill" :- Many readers in this generation may not be
aware of this ballad as one amongst the early poems of Wordsworth.
Thirty or forty years ago it was the object of some insipid ridicule,
which ought, perhaps, in another place to be noticed; and doubtless
this ridicule was heightened by the false impression that the story had
been some old woman's superstitious fiction, meant to illustrate a
supernatural judgment on hard-heartedness. But the story was a
physiologic fact; and originally it had been brought forward in a
philosophic work by Darwin, who had the reputation of an irreligious
man, and even of an infidel. A bold freethinker he certainly was;
a Deist at the least; and, by public repute, founded on the internal
evidence of his writings as well as of his daily conversation, something
Dr. Darwin, by the way, was one of the temperance fanatics
long before temperance societies arose, and is supposed to have paid
for his fanaticism with his life. He practised as a physician with
great success and eminent reputation at Ashbourn in Derbyshire ;
but, being a man of many crotchets, amongst them was this—that,
when other men called for wine, the Doctor called (0 Bacchus !)
for cream. Suddenly, on one fine golden morning, the Doctor was
attacked by a spasmodic affection. A glass of old brandy was earnestly
suggested. Thirty years having fled since the Doctor had tasted
alcohol in any shape, it was imagined that old cognac would have a
magical effect. But no: the Doctor called loudly for cream; and
alas! Death called still more loudly for the Doctor.
more.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
277
frequently than would seem credible if stated. At this time
I used always hot water; and a thought occurred to me very
seriously that it would be best to live constantly, and perhaps
to sleep, in a bath. What caused me to renounce this plan
was an accident that compelled me for one day to use cold
water. This first of all communicated any lasting warmth h;
so that ever afterwards I used none but cold water. Now,
to live in a cold bath in our climate, and in my own state of
preternatural sensibility to cold, was not an idea to dally
with. I wish to mention, however, for the information of
other sufferers in the same way, one change in the mode of
applying the water, which led to a considerable and sudden
improvement in the conditions of my feelings. I had
endeavoured to procure a child's battledore, as an easy means
(when clothed with sponge) of reaching the interspace between
the shoulders: which interspace, by the way, is a sort of
Bokhara, so provokingly situated that it will neither suffer
itself to be reached from the north,-in which direction even
the Czar, with his long arms, has only singed his own fingers
and lost six thousand camels,-nor at all better from the
south, upon which line of approach the greatest potentate in
Southern Asia-viz. No. something (shall we say No.
unknown?) in Leadenhall Street has found it the best
policy to pocket the little khan's murderous defiances and
persevering insults.1 There is no battledore long enough to
1 It is literally true that even the Khan of Khiva, a territory
between Bokhara and the Caspian, and a much more insignificant
state, relying simply on its own position and inaccessibility-too far
north for England, too far south for Russia, -has offered insults and
outrages to that lubberly empire for one hundred and forty years,
commencing its aggressions in the reign of Peter the Great, as some
people call him; who, being a true bully, pocketed his affronts in
moody silence.
The most ludicrous part of our own relations with
Khiva is this: - The war with Affghanistan in 1838 and three
following years, which cost us eighteen millions sterling, and pretty
nearly exterminated the whole race of camels through all Central Asia
(some say thirty thousand), was undertaken purely on the conceit that
Russia might assault us on the Indus. Meantime, Russia was unable
to reach even the little Khan of Khiva-a thousand miles north-west
of the Indus. And it is a most laughable feature of the Affghan war
that only through the intercession of a single English cavalry officer
(Sir Richmond Shakspear) was Russia able to obtain from the Khan a
surrender of those unhappy Russians whom, by various accidents on
the Caspian, he had treacherously made captives.
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MISCELLANEA
reach him in either way. In my own difficulty I felt
almost as perplexed as the Honourable East India Company
when I found that no battledore was to be had; for no town
was near at hand. In default of a battledore, therefore, my
necessity threw my experiment upon a long hair brush; and
this eventually proved of much greater service than any
sponge or any battledore; for the friction of the brush
caused an irritation on the surface of the skin which, more
than anything else, had gradually diminished the once con-
tinual misery of unrelenting frost, although even yet it
renews itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals.
on.
IV. I counsel the patient not to make the mistake of
supposing that his amendment will necessarily proceed con-
tinuously or by equal increments; because this, which is a
common notion, will certainly lead to dangerous disappoint-
ments. How frequently I have heard people encouraging a
self-reformer by such language as this: "When you have
got over the fourth day of abstinence, which suppose to be
Sunday, then Monday will find you a trifle better; Tuesday
better still,—though still it should be only by a trifle,—and so
You may at least rely on never going back; you may
assure yourself of having seen the worst; and the positive
improvements, if trifles separately, must soon gather into a
sensible magnitude." This may be true in a case of short
standing; but as a general rule it is perilously delusive. On
the contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometri-
cal construction, would describe an ascending path upon the
whole, but with frequent retrocessions into descending curves,
which, compared with the point of ascent that had been pre-
viously gained and so vexatiously interrupted, would some-
times seem deeper than the original point of starting. This
mortifying tendency I can report from experience many
times repeated with regard to opium,-and so unaccountably,
as regarded all the previous grounds of expectation, that I
am compelled to suppose it a tendency inherent in the very
nature of all self-restorations for animal systems. They
move perhaps necessarily per saltum, by intermitting spasms
and pulsations of unequal energy.
V. I counsel the patient frequently to call back before
his thoughts-when suffering sorrowful collapses that seem
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
279
unmerited by anything done or neglected—that such, and
far worse perhaps, must have been his experience, and with
no reversion of hope behind, had he persisted in his intem-
perate indulgences. These also suffer their own collapses, and
(so far as things not co-present can be compared) by many
degrees more shocking to the genial instincts.
VI. I exhort him to believe that no movement on his own
part, not the smallest conceivable, towards the restoration of
his healthy state, can by possibility perish. Nothing in this
direction is finally lost, but often it disappears and hides
itself, suddenly, however, to reappear, and in unexpected
strength, and much more hopefully; because such minute
elements of improvement, by reappearing at a remoter stage,
show themselves to have combined with other elements of
the same kind; so that, equally by their gathering tendency
and their duration through intervals of apparent darkness
and below the current of what seemed absolute interruption,
they argue themselves to be settled in the system. There is
no good gift that does not come from God; almost His
greatest is health, with the peace which it inherits; and man
must reap this on the same terms as he was told to reap God's
earliest gift, the fruits of the earth, viz. "in the sweat of his
brow ",-through labour, often through sorrow, through dis-
appointment, but still through imperishable perseverance,
and hoping under clouds when all hope seems darkened.
VII. It is difficult, in selecting from many memoranda of
warning and encouragement, to know which to prefer when
the space disposable is limited. But it seems to me import-
ant not to omit this particular caution :-The patient will
be naturally anxious, as he goes on, frequently to test the
amount of his advance, and its rate, if that were possible.
But this he will see no mode of doing except through tenta-
tive balancings of his feelings, and generally of the moral
atmosphere around him, as to pleasure and hope, against the
corresponding states, so far as he can recall them from his
periods of intemperance. But these comparisons, I warn
him, are fallacious when made in this way. The two states
are incommensurable on any plan of direct comparison.
Some common measure must be found, and out of himself,-
some positive fact, that will not bend to his own delusive
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MISCELLANEA
feeling at the moment: as, for instance, in what degree he
finds tolerable what heretofore was not so- the effort of
writing letters, or transacting business, or undertaking a
journey, or overtaking the arrears of labour that had been
once thrown off to a distance. If in these things he finds
himself improved, by tests that cannot be disputed, he may
safely disregard any sceptical whispers from a wayward
sensibility which cannot yet perhaps have recovered its
normal health, however much improved. His inner feelings
may not yet point steadily to the truth, though they may
vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that some-
times very manifest advances, such as any medical man would
perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation
and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be
less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now, when a man
is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line
of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own con-
dition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Tooth-
ache extorts more groans than dropsy.
VIII. Another important caution is not to confound with
the effects of intemperance any other natural effects of
debility from advancing years. Many a man, having begun.
to be intemperate at thirty, enters at sixty or upwards upon
a career of self-restoration; and by self-restoration he under-
stands a renewal of that state in which he was when first
swerving from temperance. But that state, for his memory, is
coincident with his state of youth. The two states are
coadunated. In his recollections they are intertwisted too
closely. But life, without any intemperance at all, would
soon have untwisted them. Charles Lamb, for instance, at
forty-five, and Coleridge at sixty, measured their several con-
ditions by such tests as the loss of all disposition to involuntary
murmuring of musical airs or fragments when rising from
bed. Once they had sung when rising in the morning light ;
now they sang no more. The vocal utterance of joy for them
was silenced for ever. But these are amongst the changes
that life, stern power! inflicts at any rate; these would
have happened, and above all to men worn by the unequal
irritations of too much thinking, and by those modes of
care
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
281
"That kill the bloom before its time
And blanch without the owner's crime
The most resplendent hair,"
not at all the less had the one drunk no brandy nor the
other any laudanum. A man must submit to the conditions
of humanity, and not quarrel with a cure as being incomplete
because in his climacteric year of sixty-three-i.e. 7 times 9,
both held dangerous numbers in the ladder of life by our
dear enlightened great-grandfathers he cannot recover
entirely the vivacities of thirty-five. If, by dipping seven
times in Jordan, he had cleansed his whole leprosy of
intemperance — if, by going down into Bethesda, he were
able to mount again upon the pinions of his youth—even
then he might querulously say, "But, after all these marvels
in my favour, I suppose that one of these fine mornings I,
like other people, shall have to bespeak a coffin." Why, yes,
undoubtedly he will, or somebody for him. But privileges
so especial were not promised even by the mysterious waters
of Palestine. Die he must; and counsels tendered to the
intemperate do not hope to accomplish what might have been
beyond the baths of Jordan or Bethesda. They do enough
if, being executed by efforts in the spirit of earnest sincerity,
they make a life of growing misery moderately happy for the
patient, and, through that great change, perhaps more than
moderately useful for others.
IX. One final remark I will make-pointed to the case,
not of the yet struggling patient, but of him who is fully
re-established; and the more so, because I (who am no
hypocrite, but rather frank to an infirmity) acknowledge
in myself the trembling tendency at intervals which would,
if permitted, sweep round into currents that might be hard
to overrule. After the absolute restoration to health, a man
is very apt to say, “Now, then, how shall I use my health?
To what delightful purpose shall I apply it? Surely it is
idle to carry a fine jewel in one's watch-pocket, and never to
astonish the weak minds of this world by wearing it and
flashing it in their eyes." "But how?" retorts his philo-
sophic friend.
My good fellow, are you not using it at this
moment? Breathing, for instance, talking to me (though
rather absurdly), and airing your legs at a glowing fire?"
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MISCELLANEA
"Why, yes," the other confesses, "that is all true; but I am
dull, and, if you will pardon my rudeness, even in spite of
your too philosophic presence. It is painful to say so; but,
sincerely, if I had the power at this moment to turn you by
magic into a bottle of old port wine, so corrupt is my nature
that really I fear lest the exchange might for the moment
strike me as agreeable." Such a mood, I apprehend, is apt
to revolve upon many of us at intervals, however firmly
married to temperance; and the propensity to it has a root
in certain analogies running through our nature. If the
reader will permit me for a moment the use of what, without
such an apology, might seem pedantic, I would call it the
instinct of focalising which prompts such random desires.
Feeling is diffused over the whole surface of the body; but
light is focalised in the eye, sound in the ear. The organisa-
tion of a sense or a pleasure seems diluted and imperfect
unless it is gathered by some machinery into one focus, or
local centre. And thus it is that a general state of pleasurable
feeling sometimes seems too superficially diffused, and one has
a craving to intensify or brighten it by concentration through
some sufficient stimulant. I, for my part, have tried every-
thing in this world except "bang," which I believe is
obtained from hemp. There are other preparations of hemp
which have been found to give great relief from ennui; not
ropes, but something lately introduced, which acts upon the
system as the laughing gas (nitrous oxide) acts at times. One
farmer in Mid-Lothian was mentioned to me eight months
ago as having taken it, and ever since annoyed his neighbours
by immoderate fits of laughter; so that in January it was
agreed to present him to the sheriff as a nuisance. But, for
some reason, the plan was laid aside; and now, eight months
later, I hear that the farmer is laughing more rapturously
than ever, continues in the happiest frame of mind, the
kindest of creatures, and the general torment of his neighbour-
hood. Now, I confess to having had a lurking interest in
this extract of hemp when first I heard of it; and at intervals
a desire will continue to make itself felt for some deeper
compression or centralisation of the genial feelings than
1 But, since writing this, I have received from a young friend a
present of bang; upon which I will report hereafter.
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
283
ordinary life affords. But old things will not avail; and
new things I am now able to resist. Still, as the occasional
craving does really arise in most men, it is well to notice it,
and chiefly for the purpose of saying that this dangerous.
feeling wears off by degrees, and oftentimes for long periods
it intermits so entirely as to be even displaced by a profound
disgust to all modes of artificial stimulation. At those times
I have remarked that the pleasurable conditions of health do
not seem weakened by its want of centralisation. It seems to
form a thousand centres. This it is well to know, because
there are many who would resist effectually if they were
aware of any natural change going on silently in favour of
their own efforts such as would finally ratify the success.
Towards such a result they would gladly contribute by
waiting and forbearing; whilst, under despondency as to
this result, they might more easily yield to some chance
temptation.
Finally, there is something to interest us in the time at
which this Temperance Movement has begun to stir. Let
me close with a slight notice of what chiefly impresses
myself in the relation between this time and the other
circumstances of the case. In reviewing History, we may
see something more than mere convenience in distributing
it into three chambers: Ancient History, ending in the
space between the Western Empire falling and Mohammed
arising; Modern History, from that time to this; and a
New Modern History, arising at present, or from the French
Revolution. Two great races of men,-our own in a two-
headed form, British and American, and, secondly, the
Russian, are those which, like rising deluges, already
reveal their mission to overflow the earth. Both these
races, partly through climate or through derivation of blood,
and partly through the contagion of habits inevitable to
brothers of the same nation, are tainted carnally with the
appetite for brandy, for slings, for juleps; and no fire racing
through the forests of Nova Scotia for three hundred miles
in the direction of some doomed city ever moved so fiercely
as the infection of habits amongst the dense and fiery popula-
tions of republican North America.
But it is remarkable that the whole ancient system of
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MISCELLANEA
civilisation,—all the miracles of Greece and Rome, Persia and
Egypt,―moved by the machinery of races that were not tainted
with any such popular marasmus. The taste was slightly
sowed, as an artificial taste, amongst luxurious individuals,
but never ran through the labouring classes, through armies,
through cities. The blood and the climate forbade it. In
this earliest era of History, all the great races, consequently
all the great empires, threw themselves, by accumulation,
upon the genial climates of the south,-having, in fact, the
magnificent lake of the Mediterranean for their general centre
of evolutions. Round this lake, in a zone of varying depth,
towered the whole grandeurs of the Pagan Earth. But in
such climates man is naturally, is almost necessarily, temperate.
He is so by physical coercion and for the necessities of rest
and coolness. The Spaniard, or the Moor, or the Arab, has
no merit in his temperance. The effort, for him, would be
to form the taste for alcohol. He has a vast foreground of
disgust to traverse before he can reach a taste so remote and
alien. No need for resistance in his will where Nature resists
on his behalf. Sherbet, shaddocks, grapes, — these were
innocent applications to thirst; and the great Republic of
antiquity said to her legionary sons, "Soldier, if you thirst,
there is the river ",-Nile, suppose, or Ebro. "Better drink
there cannot be. Of this you must take 'at discretion.' Or,
if wait till the impedimenta come up, you may draw your
ration of posca." What is posca? It was, in fact, acidulated
water-three parts of superfine water to one part of the very
best vinegar. Nothing stronger did Rome, that awful mother,
allow to her dearest children, i.e. her legions: truest of bless-
ings, that, veiling itself in seeming sternness, drove away the
wicked phantoms that haunt the couches of greater nations.
"The blessings of the evil genii," says an Eastern proverb,
"which are curses, rest upon thy head for retribution !
And the stern refusals of wisely-loving mothers,-these are
the mightiest of gifts.
you
>>
Now, on the other hand, our northern climates have uni-
versally the taste,-latent, if not developed,—for powerful
liquors; and through their blood, as also through the natural
tendency of the imitative principle amongst compatriots,
from these high latitudes the greatest of our modern nations
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS
285
propagate the contagion to their brothers, though colonising
warm climates. And it is remarkable that our modern pre-
parations of liquors, even when harmless in their earliest
stages, are fitted, like stepping-stones, for making the transi-
tion to higher stages that are not harmless. The weakest
preparations from malt lead, by graduated steps, to the
strongest, until we arrive at the intoxicating porter of
London, which, under its local name (so insidiously delusive)
of "beer," diffuses the most extensive ravages.
Under these marked circumstances of difference between
the ruling races of antiquity and of our modern times, it
now happens that the greatest era by far of human expansion
is opening upon us. Two vast movements are hurrying
into action by velocities continually accelerated, -the great
revolutionary movement from political causes concurring with
the great physical movement in locomotion and social inter-
course from the gigantic (though still infant) powers of
steam. No such Titan resources for modifying each other
were ever before dreamed of by nations; and the next
hundred years will have changed the face of the world. At
the opening of such a crisis, had no third movement arisen
of resistance to intemperate habits, there would have been
ground for despondency as to the amelioration of the human
race; but, as the case stands, the new principle of resistance
nationally to bad habits has arisen almost concurrently with
the new powers of national intercourse; and henceforward,
by a change equally sudden and unlooked for, that new
machinery, which would else most surely have multiplied the
ruins of intoxication, has been the strongest agency for
hastening its extirpation.
ON THE RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE USE OF
CHLOROFORM ¹
•
MY DEAR FRANCIS,-Lay this fact to your heart (whether
a great fact, a middle-sized fact, or a little fact, I know not,
but a fact it is),—that between sending a letter to Astrachan,
or to the Imaum of Muscat, and sending a letter to your
shoemaker in George Street, Edinburgh, the difference, as to
trouble of body, as to anxiety of mind, and indeed as to post-
age, is next door to nothing. The shoemaker, it is true,
receives your letter, if once it is lodged in the post-office,
without further trouble on your part. But so does His
Highness of Muscat. The true point of difficulty is—and in
that stage of the transaction the shoemaker costs you quite as
1 This little paper sees the light now for the first time. The
circumstances are these :-Among the graduates in medicine in the
University of Edinburgh in the year 1849 was De Quincey's son
Francis, who had then completed the usual course of medical studies
in the University (see ante, Vol. IV, p. 8 and p. 11). Each candidate
for the degree must have sent in a satisfactory thesis on some medical
subject; and the theses so sent in are kept in the University, and are
its property. The graduation-thesis of Francis De Quincey is now
before me, and bears this title: "On the Religious Objections to the
Use of Chloroform in Obstetric Medicine. By Francis John De Quincey.
31st March 1849." At the end of the thesis itself,—which consists
of sixty-five pages of manuscript,-is an appendage, in the same hand,
introduced thus: "Soon after the discovery of chloroform I wrote to
my father upon the subject of the religious objections, and in reply
"received from him the following letter.' The date of the letter, it
will be observed, is "December 1847": i.e. it had been written just
after the announcement of the great discovery of the anesthetic uses
of chloroform by Professor Simpson of the University of Edinburgh
(afterwards Sir James Y. Simpson). The date of that announcement was
15th November 1847; and there had immediately followed a tract by
the Professor himself in answer to the religious objections. De Quincey,
who was then living at Lasswade, had been much interested.-M.
RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO USE OF CHLOROFORM 287
much trouble as the Imaum-first of all to reach the post-office.
Hic labor, hoc opus est.
And for us especially it is so. The
interval, remember, between us and this particular post-office
at Lasswade (meaning by interval the total "diaulos" of to
and fro, outward and homeward voyage) is a good three miles.
Hence my delay, and also from this other cause: that, having
mislaid your jotting of doubts and queries, I had lost the
only guide to my own replies and suggestions.
As to Dr. Simpson's citation from the dramatic poet
Middleton, I feel satisfied (from the internal evidence) that
it is genuine. The only demur connects itself with the date
1657. If you are right in reporting that as the date, it
puzzles me. What motive or encouragement could a pub-
lisher have for bringing out any book connected with the stage
between 1640 and 1660? Cromwell died in 1658; and
certainly the period of his Protectorate was not the gloomiest
of that Puritanical Vicennium; but it was gloomy enough.
There was no motive of gain at that time, and there might
be some dangers, in publishing what were viewed as wicked
books by the dominant party.2
But why should there be any difficulty as to Middleton's
having noticed a fact which Dr. Simpson, I think, shows
(but here I am speaking from memory) to have been known
amongst the Greek physicians?
Medicine was much attended to by the literary men of the
seventeenth century. For instance, the use of friction, the
application of the metallic tractors, as practised forty or fifty
years ago by the American empiric—all this was elaborately
anticipated by Greatorex in Charles II's reign. He again
had certainly been anticipated by Greeks and Romans.
Somewhere in Plautus I remember a jesting allusion to the
medical treatment by traction, in which allusion the adverb
1 The lines cited were from Middleton's Women Beware Women :-
"I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons
To this lost limb,-who, ere they show their art,
Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part.”—M.
2 The explanation is that the play was posthumously published.
Middleton died about 1626; but this play of his was not printed till
1657. I may add that the cessation of the theatres in 1642 by no
means stopped the supply of readers with printed dramas.-M.
288
MISCELLANEA
anactim occurs as part of the expression. And subsequently
I remember to have met with cryptical allusions to most of
the medical raving which we regard as most peculiarly of
modern growth in Greek writers before the ninth century of
our era. I must also have pointed out to you the still more
singular fact that Hahnemann's doctrine¹ (not as to infinitesimal
doses but) as to Homoiopathy and Alloiopathy is most dis-
tinctly stated and ably exemplified by Milton about 1671,—
viz. in the preface to his Samson Agonistes.2 It is clear that
Milton had reflected deeply on Physiology and other branches
of your splendid and infinite profession.
Any reader of this assertion will naturally be startled even
more by the situation of such a strange hypothesis than by
its authorship, by its local connexion with a Hebrew
tragedy than by its personal connexion with Milton.
Strange enough in all conscience that a great poet of the
seventeenth century should anticipate the German medical
innovator of the nineteenth century; but stranger still that
for a medical or physiological hypothesis this great poet
should have devised no more suitable situation than in a
critical disputation on the principles of art concerned in the
Greek Tragic Drama. So it is, however; and really the
Miltonic Hahnemannism is more satisfactory than the Mil-
tonic criticism upon Grecian Art. Those difficult questions
that arise upon the Greek ideas of Tragedy are but grazed or
ruffled upon the surface. True, there was not room for doing
much more.
But then the room was even less that was
disposable for Hahnemann; and yet in the very few words
uttered a most comprehensive outline of the doctrine is
sketched, which scarcely allows of improvement. Neither is
the introduction of this medical digression, after all, so
1 Samuel Hahnemann, 1755-1843, father of Homœopathy.-M.
2 << Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore
"said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear or terror,
"to purge the mind of those and such-like passions,—that is, to temper
"and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight stirred up
by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature
"wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion; for so, in
"physic, changes of melancholy hue and quality are used against
"melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours."-M.
RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO USE OF CHLOROFORM 289
violent an intrusion as one imagines beforehand. It arises
naturally enough upon the well-known but obscure passage
in Aristotle ascribing to Tragedy the office of purifying the
The first
passions by ministrations of pity and terror.
demur of any note upon this passage is "How ?-purify
a passion by a passion ?” Why, yes!—even so,” is virtually
Milton's reply. It seems a strange rationale of medical
practice; but in effect it is the very logic Nature prompts us
to in the treatment of our own bodily morbid affections.
(C
Now, as regards the monstrous objections, calling them-
selves religious, to Dr. Simpson's immortal discovery (which
discovery, I should think, will be found to have done more
for human comfort, and for the mitigation of animal suffer-
ing, than any other discovery whatever), the Doctor's own
arguments seem quite sufficient. In the same spirit as these
arguments might be suggested such as the following :—
I. "Threescore years and ten."-This is the limit assigned
to human life in the Psalms: consequently, in the logic of
these religious" cavillers, it must be impious to prescribe
for a man of eighty, and the whole science of macrobiotics
must rank with withcraft and necromancy in point of
wickedness. Lord Bacon thought otherwise.
II. "
Poverty shall never cease from the land."-Ergo, it
must be profane to attempt the limitation of poverty, and
absolutely blasphemous to effect its extirpation, as was once
done in the New England States and elsewhere.
((
III. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth."-Dr. Simpson's
improved interpretation of the Hebrew word, making it to
indicate the muscular exertion which attends parturition (and
attends it so pre-eminently in the human female), rather than
to indicate the pain generally connected with this exertion,
seems quite sufficient for the occasion.
Another argument
suggests itself: viz. that, if all pain, when carried to the
stage which we call agony (or intense struggle amongst vital
functions), brings with it some danger to life (as I presume
must be the case), then it will follow that knowingly to
reject a means of mitigating or wholly cancelling the danger,
now that such a means has been discovered and tested, travels
on the road towards suicide. If I am right in supposing a
VOL. XIV
U
290
MISCELLANEA
danger to life lying in this direction, then clearly the act of
rejecting the remedy, being wilful, lies in a suicidal direction.
It is even worse than an ordinary movement in that direction ;
because it makes God an accomplice, through the Scriptures, in
this suicidal movement, the primal instigator to it by means
of a supposed curse interdicting the use of any means whatever
(though revealed by Himself) for annulling that curse. This
turns the tables upon the religiosity people,-landing them in
the guilt of abetting what will henceforward be regarded as a
step towards suicide: viz. by abetting the rejection of a known
anodyne, potent enough to reduce the chances of a fatal issue.
IV. On the argument which would forbid the use of this
almost magical anodyne, all the prophylactic means hitherto
used for lessening the violence of symptoms in parturition
must have been lawful only in the inverse ratio of their
efficacy. To be altogether clear of guilt, the means used
must be confessedly and altogether ineffective.
I do not pre-
tend to any knowledge upon this subject; but I have a
general impression that bleeding and other means are em-
ployed in long stages antecedent to childbirth, for the pur-
pose of disarming the symptoms beforehand of their violence,
and preparing an easier course of gestation, as well as an
easier delivery. Now, if so, what wretches these practitioners
must suddenly have discovered themselves to have been!
Do they fancy that it is any different offence to disarm a
sting partially and beforehand from that newly discovered
offence of plucking out the sting completely at the moment
of its hostile action? Is it their only excuse for this long
series of crime that, after all, their work was done imperfectly?
That they failed to give relief,-is that their plea? My
advice to these villains is to remember the old argument "In
for a penny, in for a pound." They are already up to the
lips in guilt: let them therefore, like sensible reprobates, go
the whole hog by patronising chloroform.
V.. There is a case parallel to this in the Popish codes of
Casuistry. Is it not a Scriptural doctrine that we should
mortify the flesh? Certainly it is. No Protestant denies it.
And upon that argument many a young woman in convents,
with the sanction of her directors and confessors, has founded
a reputation for saintliness upon the practice of swallowing
RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO USE OF CHLOROFORM 291
the most revolting selections of filth. Southey illustrated a
shocking case of that nature in the Quarterly Review. But
in the Dublin newspapers,-and I think about the same time,
occurred a case of the same kind that terminated in
consequences over which no veils of cloister secrecy could be
drawn. A young girl, under some popish superstition, ate
large quantities of the earth around the grave of some priest
who had died in the odour of sanctity. This odour, meantime,
had not availed to banish the larvæ of some hideous beetles.
These established themselves in the poor girl's intestines. A
dreadful illness ensued,-with what final result I do not re-
member. Now, this mode of mortifying the flesh by positive acts,
viz. by eating vermin, resembles the present anti-chloroform
mode of mortifying the flesh by negative acts-viz. by abstain-
ing from chloroform. In the final consequences, both modes
augment the chance of death, and therefore load with the
guilt of suicide those who knowingly become parties to either.
The two practices are akin also in this-that both have drawn
a furious support from superstition. Both plead Scriptural
words for practices that are essentially unscriptural.
VI. Dr. Simpson's notice of the exemption from the worst
sufferings of childbirth enjoyed by some races of women is
much strengthened by various Polynesian experiences. I
fancy that Ellis notices these cases in his Polynesian
Researches. In a separate work (not by Ellis) on the particular
Island of Tonga (i.e. Tonga ta boo, or "Tonga the Sacred")
I remember a case of total immunity from pain, or even
momentary lassitude, in a native woman during parturition.
VII. Now, addressing myself no longer to everybody, but
to you in particular, I am of opinion that your own exegesis,
or suggestion for a proper exegesis, of the original curse is
plausible, and will be thought so by Dr. Simpson. No. VI.
argues that the curse is not unconditional, but is perhaps
dependent on conditions of diet, of habits engrafted on
civilization, &c. Once removed, the curse loses its sanctity.
Dr. Simpson, again, by his new version of the Hebrew word,¹
1 Dr. Simpson's contention was that the Hebrew word 'etzebh,
translated sorrow in the English text-"In sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children ",-meant properly, like the English word labour, great
effort of any kind.-M.
:
%
292
MISCELLANEA
so transmutes the whole bearings of the passage as to dis-
connect it from all liability to these religious scruples against
chloroform in childbirth: nothing is disturbed by the
chloroform that ever was fixed by the primal decree.
Next comes your own suggestion,—which, while retaining the
curse, evades it by a new interpretation. If it were said
"In sorrow shalt thou eat thy bread," we should not under-
stand the sorrow as settling upon the act of taking food,
which on the contrary is one of the commonest enjoyments of
life; but we should understand that life itself, as a general
function of the body, was described by one of its most general
necessities. So also in this case you understand the curse
addressed to woman,- being simply that she, not less than
her partner man, should sorrow through life. But life in
her is described by a variation of phrase suited to her sexual
differences. In man it had been expressed by his peculiar
and separate form of activity,-viz. by labour applied to the
creation of food. In woman,
the characteristic and
differential form of activity being applied not to the gaining
of a livelihood, but to the necessities, cares, innumerable
duties, connected with the bringing into the world and the
rearing of children, the expression of the curse has varied
itself correspondingly. The two modes of expression vary
with the sex ; but the thing expressed is exactly the same,
viz. the whole tenor of life; denoted in each by the function
which lies upon the surface and strikes the understanding as
most distinguishing. It might have been said, with the
same exact meaning, to man, “Thou shalt plough the ground
in sorrow," to woman, Thou shalt spin the garments of thy
household in sorrow ; but the scriptural expression has
settled upon still wider forms for indicating most compre-
hensively the process of life. The curse, therefore, is by you
so read as to extend itself to life generally, and not as
limiting itself to the sources of sorrow involved in the
production of children. But, lastly, if the curse were so
limited,—I say, if the curse were understood as limited to
the evils arising through maternity,—why should those evils
be contemplated as lying chiefly in the very transient and
physical act of parturition? Agonizing as the sufferings
from childbirth have occasionally proved (as many great
""
RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO USE OF CHLOROFORM 293
obstetric surgeons have assured us), expressing their fury
sometimes by sudden lunacy the most frantic, sometimes by
infanticide unconscious or semiconscious,—consequences that
henceforth are doomed to subside as the billows of the tor-
mented Red Sea before the uplifted rod of Amram's son,—still
these sufferings are transitory as compared with the lifelong
fears, cares, and trepidations connected with the rearing, train-
ing, and disposal of children. There lies the sorrow, there the
opening for a real curse,-viz. in the moral and not in the
mere physical woe: in the moral woe that lasts through a life-
time, and not in the physical woe that, after a few days' fear-
ful heaving and convulsion, is hushed into a deep rest from the
storm,—either that rest which lies in restoration to health,
or the deeper rest which lies in the Sabbath of Death.
A
VIII. If it were possible that, in this age of the world,
religious scruples such as those now passed in review could
maintain their ground, it is certain that a conflict absolutely
without precedent, and shocking to contemplate, would arise
between the scrupulous practitioner and his patients.
general knowledge of the new anodyne, and of its instantaneous
efficacy, will be diffused with a rapidity corresponding to the
extensive field of its application. The whole female sex
have within a few weeks come into possession of a great
inheritance,—of a talisman, suddenly, as it were, revealed to
them;
and the powers of this talisman apply themselves to
the very class of cases that naturally besiege the terrified
imaginations of females beyond all others. A new anchor
has been made known, fitted for the special order of storms
that are the most widely appalling to females, as being the
catholic inheritance of their sex. This they will now demand
when suffering in extremity. To refuse would be to create
scenes the most dreadful of feud between the medical
attendant and his patients. The issue of such feuds could
not be long doubtful. But in the meantime they would
create a scandal shocking to a profession of gentlemen.
IX. And, finally, is there any real religious scruple at the
bottom of these objections? Is it not a jealousy of Professor
Simpson's great discovery that really speaks through this
Jesuitical masquerade of conscientious scruples?
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
December 1847.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
ON A
NEW AND MORE APPREHENSIBLE SYSTEM
IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A LADY 1
[NOTICE TO THE READER.-The young lady to whom these
letters were really addressed died within three years of their
composition. Naturally, therefore, on the impulse of his
own feelings, the writer would have wished to recast them,-
so far, at least, as to remove the tone of levity or playfulness
which sometimes marks the passages applying personally to
his fair correspondent. Indeed this tone had been originally
suggested not by his own choice, but by the known opinions.
of this young lady, sportively exaggerated by herself in con-
versation, or suggested by counter-letters of her own; which
excuses (conversations alike and letters) are here unavoidably
suppressed. All this, as a matter unknown to the general
reader, might have been left in silence: a trespass not known
needed no apology. But in the meantime an explanation
was thought requisite, in deference to several persons who,
1 First published in 1871 in the second of the two supplementary
volumes to Messrs. Black's edition of De Quincey's Collected Writings,
with this explanatory note :-"This article was written about twenty
years ago (1850), and it is printed here for the first time from the
"Author's MS. It was his intention to have continued the subject;
"but this was never done." As it stands, it is complete enough;
but one can perceive the direction in which De Quincey meant to
extend it.-M.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
295
memory.
having been acquainted originally with the circumstances of
the case, must otherwise think the manner of the letters
hardly reconcilable with the tenderness due to that lady's
The writer shares in their feelings, and, so far as
he found himself able, has removed a good deal of what was
most objectionable in that respect. But the effort to do so
was not always successful. In some parts the raillery or
jesting allusion was too inextricably interwoven with the
development of the subject to allow of such a remedy with-
out extensive disturbances of the text. Illness prevented
this. Nervousness in a most distressing shape, which for
some years has made composition of every kind, and gener-
ally all effort for the disentangling of ideas, painful to the
writer, and at times impossible, compelled him either to
retain generally the original form of the letters, or else to
abandon the idea of publishing them at all. Under such an
alternative—satisfied on the one hand that, after this explan-
ation, no disrespect can even seem to express itself towards
one who, for the general reader, is but a shadow, and, on the
other hand, that a public interest of education is involved
(and most deeply involved) in every feasible attempt to place
the study of Chronology within the grasp of an easy exertion
-the writer has felt it allowable to publish the little work,
after making such retrenchments only as were easily accom-
plished without drawing after them too many other changes,
and such as did not, by affecting its didactic value, disturb
its primary purpose.]
LETTER I
I HAVE heard you say, my dear Caroline, that in your
opinion (your humble opinion you were pleased to call it) no
man could be entitled to give himself airs in Chronology, or
to lay down the law as from a judgment-seat, unless he wore
a wig. A decent member of society such a man might be,—
that you admitted; but really, for your part, you had no
notion of surrendering your views upon dates or epochs in
deference to any man, so long as he persisted in wearing his
own hair. I had my private reasons for believing this
doctrine to have arisen in a mere personality, meant for the
296
MISCELLANEA
<<
((
use and annoyance of one particular individual. Such
levity seemed to argue an improper frame of mind; and, at
my request, the late rector of your parish addressed you in a
letter of expostulation a letter which he described as
objurgatory, comminatory" (you know what comminations
are by our English Church-service for Ash-Wednesday),
and, lastly, as dehortatory." The reverend gentleman had
the kindness to allow of my reading his letter, and, where I
thought that it might do any good amongst modern young
ladies, of quoting it. But, as what he imagined to be a
corrected copy of the letter turned out, in fact, to be his own
rough sketch or brouillon towards the composition of such a
letter, I had the benefit of all the various readings and vari-
ations, fluctuations and oscillations in the text, which second
thoughts and third thoughts are apt to suggest. Originally
the letter had begun thus: “Most presumptuous of Young
Women!" But this was too harsh; and he had substituted
as his second reading "Most irreverential of Girls!” That
was better: irreverentialism, according to the great anatomi-
cal doctors of Vienna, being a mere craniological abnormity—
no fault of yours, but a fault lodged in the turgescences or
expansive tendencies, up or down, right or left, of that
medullary substance which constitutes the unmanageable
brain.
Yet even here the word girls grates harshly upon
one's ear; it is too familiar. Buffalo gals don't much
regard it. But, generally speaking, to complain of
irreverentialism through an irreverential word, that is
the old Roman case of the Gracchi, those nursing
patrons of sedition the breath of whose nostrils had been
inhaled from the very atmosphere of sedition, claiming
one's sympathy against insurrectionary politics.1 The
1 "Quis tulerit Gracchos," says Juvenal in a well-known line,
"de seditione querentes ?" To my correspondent, as being a "gal," I
shall not be offering any affront in translating this line. It means in
English- Who would endure the Gracchi making a querulous denunci-
ation of sedition? And for its usual rhetorical purpose it answers as
well as it ever did. But meantime, as Roman History is more and
more inquiringly studied,-than which history none has been more
insufficiently weighed,―more and more there is heard a sullen mutter-
ing of demur to this specious assumption against the two splendid
Gracchi. It was important to keep the two mutineers constantly
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
297
doctor was probably a pedant; but a pedant is often
a respectable man, and what should hinder him from
being a gentleman? Being such in reality-so at least
I have always believed-the doctor became aware of the
offending word, and in his third revision of the text this
word had disappeared, the approved reading being now—
“Most irreflective of Young Ladies !” What reason he could
have for disturbing that lection is inconceivable. Aristarchus
could have found no blemish in it; and you, Caroline, in
particular, certainly could not. However, whether on that
day the learned gentleman found himself more dyspeptic
(consequently more irritable) than usual, or how else I know
not; but so it was that five times more the text of the
initial line had been unsettled by scruples small and great ;
and apparently the postman was not yet born for whom fate
had reserved the honour of conveying that letter to your
own fair hands. But, finally, and most abruptly, the
dehortatory” epistle, before it had yet traversed one fourth
part of the ground which fell within the compass of its
plan, terminated its career in a sort of panic, a mixed
paroxysm of indignation and terror, upon my reporting to
him your last sally of defiance (counterfeit, I trust) against
the rights and dignities of Chronology. This occurred on a
day (two years it may be ago) when you may remember that
we visited the Ch- cliffs and caves in company with a
large picnic party; and, upon my remarking that you had
just said a thing involving a chronological blunder of 270
years, your answer amounted to this-that 270 years did
not signify much in any case, but that females were entitled
to a regular allowance of error (what in commercial arith-
metic, I believe, is called tare and tret), and that you had
not by any means exhausted your allowance. And then,
with such a winning air of goodness, you went on to entice
me into a scheme of the most nefarious public robbery.
Nefarious, you call it?" was your cool rejoinder. "Yes,"
suspended before the Roman eye as traitorous criminals. Their
offence was of a kind eternally to solicit Roman ambition, but also
eternally to solicit Roman patriotism through a casuistry that even
now, under no bias to mislead our neutrality, seems more than
plausible.
298
MISCELLANEA
""
I replied, "nefarious.
I do call it so." And the reader
shall judge between us. It was a scheme for falsifying all
ancient records. Your notion was that I might be destined,
by means of some quarto volume too big and too ponderous
for human reading, to become a great authority on the
science of Chronology; in which character, and by means of
the foolish confidence which the public would be led to
repose in me, I might “crib
I might “crib” a thousand years or so (be the
same more or less) from human records,-especially from
that wearisome part of them which lies between the Flood
and the Crusades. ((
'Why, it's shocking," I said; "it's a
wholesale scheme for robbing the human race." Not at all,
you insisted on proving to me. Who was it that could suffer
by it?
Would any man make affidavit before the Quarter
Sessions that he was out of pocket by it, or likely to suffer
in his peace of mind by any of its results? And, if ever it
should be discovered that I had been "cooking the accounts
(as this sort of trespass is now technically termed by railway
directors), all sensible men would see the policy of hushing
up the matter, and pocketing the bonus which my little
misdemeanour had been the means of procuring for them.
At this point of my report the Reverend Doctor borrowed
some dreadful ejaculations from Grecian Tragedy — ća, ča :
φεύ, φεῦ: ὀτοττοτοι. Since the days of Herostratus, who
burned the temple of Ephesus,¹ he protested that no criminal
idea so gigantic had been thrown out upon the ocean of
speculative wickedness. "It makes one's hair stand on
end," was my remark. But the Doctor could not go along
with me there, because he had no hair—any hair which
adorned his cranium having formed itself into a wig; which
does not participate in its owner's emotions with that
generous sensibility animating the honest old hair of one's
native growth. For instance, the hair of one's wig never
stands on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine, as does
one's own legitimate hair, a fact which natural philosophy
has not failed to observe, and will, perhaps, eventually
account for ! Any conspiracy against Chronology might, as
I undertook to show you, have fatal consequences. Some of
these I dwelt upon.
But the sole reply on your part,—a
1 B.O. 356.-M.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
299
reply never heard of by the Stagirite,- was a loud resonant
fiddle-de-dee. We were then standing near the mouth of that
particular cave which replies to every voice by so long a
chain of reverberations. This vast system of echoes got
into play in a moment-right, left; left, right: I was
saluted alternately on each ear, as I hastened into the open
air, by this aërial (or, I may say, ghostly) persecution of
fiddle-de-dees. Like phantom boxes on the ear, they buffeted
me larboard and starboard, until I escaped from the cave.
One of the guide-books says that there are sixty-four re-
percussions. But a rival guide describes them as "unlimited" ;
and this guide is probably the more accurate, if a friend of
mine is right, who assures me that three weeks later, on
visiting the cave, he heard the fiddle-de-dees still going on,-
only that they were shortened by the last syllable. So far
they had dwindled; which makes me hope that by this time
(eighteen months having now elapsed) perhaps they are
extinct.
On returning home, I could not help laughing at the
amount of sportive mischief which may lurk by possibility
in the female mind. For I am certain, Caroline, that you
knew of that thousand-barrelled echo as haunting that par-
ticular spot at which your sonorous fiddle-de-dee exploded.
One moment sooner or later, and your insulting reply would
have missed fire. And, in fact, you showed the dexterity
and the malice which a schoolboy shows in throwing a
cracker amidst a bevy of girls, when every zigzag bounce
and explosion follows the motions of some fugitive petticoat.
The Doctor and I came to different conclusions upon this
Occurrence. His conclusion was that your case was past
relief; that the "comminations" would be thrown away;
and that the text of his letter required no further revision.
Mine, on the contrary, was too grave, you will think, for
the occasion. For it struck me that the disgust which lies
at the root of all you say on the subject of Chronology is no
fault of yours, but due, in fact, to the dulness and somnolence
of those who hitherto have treated Chronology. This threw
me upon devising a better scheme of Chronology—a better
scheme, I mean, for teaching it. Better it must be if it does
not shock your sense of elegance by its unwieldiness, and
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does not confound your faculty of remembering by its per-
plexity. A man does not offend by vanity who says that
the road which he proposes is shorter or is cheaper. Com-
parative shortness and cheapness are matters of fact which
cannot be disputed or evaded. And that a scheme for com-
municating a particular branch of knowledge is apprehended
without effort, and not forgotten without difficulty,-these are
pretensions not liable to caprices of taste, but settled by a
ready appeal to practical experiments.
You will not ask me now why I address this little work
to yourself in part that has been explained already, by
showing that you originally suggested such a labour to me.
There is, however, another reason for so addressing it,-worth
attention, in circumstances which allow it to be heard. Not
impossibly in such a work a necessity may occasionally arise
for citing a passage in Greek or Latin. Now, in such a case,
a lady is privileged to call for a translation. She, therefore,
stands between the author and the wrath of his male readers,
one section of whom will otherwise in any case be offended
with him, let him take what course he will.
Are they
classical scholars ?--In that case their pride is mortified by
the superfluous aid if he does translate them. Are they no
scholars, or imperfect ones ?—In that case they are still more
reasonably offended if he does not translate them. For they
suffer not merely in their pride, but also in their interests
and their rights, when finding secrets locked up in Greek
and Latin against themselves, though parts (and, for anything
they know, essential parts) of a work which they have paid
for. To those who haughtily reject the translator's aid this
aid volunteered becomes an insult. To those who angrily
demand it this aid withheld becomes a swindle. But the
presiding influence of a lady silences all objections, and re-
conciles all feuds. The scholar submits to what, no longer
understood as addressed to him, is no longer an insult. And
he that has small Latin, with perhaps less Greek, though not
quite sure that the lamps were lighted on his account, is
appeased by the unrestricted admission to their benefits. It
is, Caroline, becoming more and more a necessity of our
times to consult even in literature the tastes or the interests
of the multitude. And, wherever a counter-interest rears its
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
301
head in rivalship, so as to endanger a schism menacing to
the author, it is (you will admit) a Machiavelian stroke of
policy if this schism can be hushed by so simple an expedient
as that of placing the presiding patronage of the work in the
hands of a lady,-whose wishes, being absolute commands,
leave no room for murmurs to the male part of the audience,
whether otherwise they would have approved of them or not.
:
This, however, you will say, is offering a compliment to
your sex generally, and not to yourself as an individual.
But, if as yet there is no compliment to you, there shall be
before you and I are a quarter of a page older. And here it
comes so hold out your beautiful hands, and catch it.
Simply by compelling Greek to talk English, you exert no
greater influence, it is true, over this little work than belongs
rightfully to your sex. But I, by placing your name at its
head,—which now I do, christening it Letters to Caroline on
Chronology, acknowledge and proclaim you for its sole and
individual inspirer: When a lady has, by deep impressions
of her beauty and intelligence, caused any man to write a
book which otherwise most certainly he would not have
written, that lady for that book and for that author becomes
a suggesting muse, -as much so as ever Melpomene to
Sophocles, or Urania to Milton. You stand in that relation
to myself; and, whatever splendour the work may obtain
(which doubtless will be dazzling and blinding to my
enemies), and whatever taste of immortality (which it would
be sinful to think of as stretching through less than three
millennia, by which time it will require, as Jonathan says,
"considerable of" an appendix), I here protest before the
venerable and never-else-than-judicious public that this
splendour and this immortality are to be regarded in the
light of honours not so much shared by you as appropriated
and originally radiated by you. The title which I have
announced," Letters to Caroline on Chronology,"-is, in fact,
a plagiarism. In the last two generations there was a
French work, popular in France and partially so in England,
entitled Lettres à Emilie sur la Mythologie. The author was,
according to my present remembrance, M. Demoustier.1
Now, Caroline, I feel and avow a confidence that these
1 Charles Albert Demoustier, 1760-1801.-M.
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Letters to Caroline will take a higher flight than the Lettres à
Emilie,—in some small degree on account of the several
subjects, but far more on account of the several inspirations
under which the two works arose. You will not imagine,
Caroline, that I am making love to one so youthful as your-
self. You know me too well for that. But, as you have
done me the gracious office of an inspiring muse, I will
return it in the romantic spirit of an earthly knight-errant.
He, you are aware, oftentimes made solemn proclamation
that the lady whom he honoured excelled in beauty and
virtue by inexpressible degrees all other ladies of an entire
province or (it might be) kingdom, though not pretending
that he had ever seen those other ladies, or that he could
have had any opportunity of making a comparison. I, fol-
lowing his excellent example, and labouring under a similar
disadvantage in never having seen Monsieur Demoustier's
Emilie, nevertheless avow and publish my belief that in her
best days she was not worthy of holding a candle to you, and
that, if M. Demoustier's book were otherwise superior to
mine, not the less mine is entitled to the precedence in virtue
of its superior sanction and loftier inspiration. I wish to
publish in the ears of a misbelieving or sceptical age, and by
sound of trumpet if that were possible,
"That thou art a girl as much finer than she,
As he" (the aforesaid Demoustier) "was a writer sublimer than
me."
These lines are by our English wit, Matthew Prior (the
man whom Bishop Burnet called "our Prior "), and rather
damaged, as you may observe, in the last word as to the
matter of grammar. Prior was then making a double com-
parison: viz. of himself, as a poet, with the great Roman
poet Horace; and of the English lady who accepted his own
homage with Lydia, or Lesbia, or some one of those many
Mediterranean ladies to whom the fickle Roman was for the
moment presenting his. And Prior contended (justly, I doubt
not) that, immeasurably as Rome went ahead of England in
this particular contest of the two poets, not in any less pro-
portion did England take the lead when the contest was
transferred to the two ladies. I, you see,-content, like
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
303
Prior, with the victory of my particular patroness,—have
submitted to have my own relation to Demoustier governed
and settled by that of Prior to Horace. One victory is
enough for me. Else, on looking back to M. Demoustier's
style of composition, I might really find ground for demurring.
But no matter for that. If, as some people imagine, the
steam-engine is to make all things new, of course it will soon
manufacture a new Literature,-in which case, we writers of
the old dynasty are sure to be kicked out of the library into
some distant lumber-room. I understand that in the
Advocates' and Signet Libraries at Edinburgh they have or
had a large clothes-basket, or rag-basket,—a sort of chiffonière,
-into the keeping of which the custom was to consign all
books regarded as rubbish which they receive (or once did
receive) gratuitously under an old statute. At stated intervals
the basket was transferred to subterraneous vaults, and never
again visited by any inquest but that of rats.1 Demoustier
and I, in such a revolution of dynasties, are destined to the
same fate.
We shall both be "basketed" to a certainty. He,
not less than I, will have to march down in state to the
dismal crypts where cobwebs and rats predominate. In such
a descent it will avail him little that I, in obedience to a
precedent ruled by Mat Prior, had yielded the pas to him on
the question of composition; whereas me it would avail
much,-possibly to the extent of a reprieve altogether from
the basket,—if I could succeed in consecrating my little book
by a faithful portrait of the lovely Caroline. Or, supposing
that both of us should at intervals be summoned back to the
regions above, with a view to our separate notions upon
some disputed question, Demoustier (it is clear), with his
1 It is a curious fact, and worth recording amongst the delicia and
facetic of literature, especially because it serves to measure the
enormous revolutions continually going on in the vast worlds of
opinion and taste, that Wordsworth's Excursion was amongst the
books condemned to the basket, and did actually in that honourable
conveyance go down to Hades. Under whose award, I am not certain ;
but, as I heard, of Dr. Irving, the chief librarian at that time.
[Dr. David Irving, b. 1778, d. 1860, long librarian to the Faculty of
Advocates in Edinburgh, author of a History of Scottish Poetry, &c.,
was a man of letters of the old school, and had probably taken his
opinions of Wordsworth from Jeffrey.-M.]
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lugubrious portrait of Emilie, could never hope to be hauled
out from the cobwebs with any instrument better than the
kitchen fire-tongs; whereas me no man that had ever felt the
witchery of that sweet inaugurating Carolinian miniature
would dream of touching but with the rarest pair of sugar-
tongs, made of gold by Benvenuto Cellini, or by some more
recent artist in the service of Rundle and Bridge.
Oh, dear C., I know you doat upon nonsense. So do I.
But now, in my next letter, I will endeavour to talk weighty
ponderous sense,-heavy as lead. And it shall go hard but
I will make myself as dull as ditch-water.
LETTER II
A necessity arises at this point that something should be
said, and some errors dissipated, with respect to the uses of
Chronology.
Bear with me, Caroline, in this trespass on your patience.
You have heard me at times deriding the rhetorical pro-
pensity of book-makers, and too often of people much above
the necessities of that trade, to detain and tease the reader by
a flowery pleading (usually quite superfluous) on the value,
the benefits, or the precedency in point of honour, belonging
to any branch of science or erudition which they are treating.
Continually, in such cases, the question arises, why not
assume its value as a thing that nobody disputes? Why
not postulate, in one emphatic sentence, what it would argue
a rare eccentricity, or some disturbance of the understanding,
in any man to doubt? Wherefore abuse a reader's good
nature by seducing him into a preliminary chapter of de-
monstration that History, for instance, or that Geography, is
an indispensable study? The reader, be assured, if left to
his own choice, would make no demand for hearing counsel
upon that point. And, in reality, throughout my whole life,
I have met with only one man who deliberately and solemnly
valued himself upon not being acquainted with History.¹
Upon that one crotcheteer, or some lurking brother of his,
would it be worth while to waste powder and shot? con-
1 See ante, Vol. V, pp. 352-3. But it has been suggested to me that
Sir Anthony Carlisle may have been the surgeon there meant.-M.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
305
sidering, also, that what in this case answers to "powder and
shot,”—viz. time and the effort of arraying arguments, &c.-
not only entails a costly expenditure, but at the cost of every
separate reader (counted, perhaps, by thousands), and not
simply of the individual writer. Under these circumstances,
it is fair to quote the brief criticism of the ancient cynic
(which under other circumstances might not be fair) upon a
laboured Eulogy of Hercules-“Quis vituperavit ?”
“Why,
who (if you please) has been blaming him?" And I fear,
Caroline, that your malicious memory will call back that
laughing remark of mine upon this occasion, if but a moment's
delay should be made for the sake of vindicating its own
place and appreciation to Chronology. "Who, if you please,"
will be your objection, "has been undervaluing Chronology?"
Why, no, not expressly and formally undervaluing it;
but, oftentimes, in the very praises given to any object,
whether thing or person, is involved virtually a dispraise.
If it had happened that the deepest services of the ancient
Hercules were of a kind to retreat from popular notice or
from popular esteem, and that those chiefly forced themselves
into the foreground which were showy in their display or
which connected themselves with local vainglory by their
results, the victorious answer to the cynic would have been
"Who blamed him, do you say? Why, everybody has
blamed him, and is blaming him at this moment, who praises
him amiss,—that is, who praises him on false grounds, or who
distributes his praise on a false scale of proportions." I do
not pretend to say, nor is it important to say, how far that
was true of the mythical personage called Hercules; but of
Chronology it is certainly true. Whosoever praises it under
the ordinary conception of its purposes mispraises it; whosoever
praises it under the notion that, like geography, it contributes a
share to what may be called the arrondissement, or the orbicular
completion, of historical accuracy, and that it is valuable, there-
fore, exactly in the degree in which it executes that purpose,
is wrong, and by a logical necessity is wrong.
The man
whose error commences in a false idea of his theme, whose
fault is laid in the very germ of the conception from which he
starts, must be more and more erroneous in proportion as he
is more and more true to himself.
Inconsequence and want
VOL. XIV
X
306
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of fidelity to his own principle offer to him his only chance
for wandering into truth. Nobody, you say, has blamed
Chronology; and for that reason nobody has any excuse for
lauding it. True, nobody has set himself with "malice afore-
thought" to vilify, slander, or traitorously behind its back to
blacken, the character of Chronology. But, if, in affecting to
commend it, almost every writer dwells with an insidious
emphasis upon a trivial function of that same Chronology, or
what comparatively is trivial,—there and then, and in that
misplaced praise, he couches (meaning or not meaning to do
so) a virtual disparagement, which justifies me or any neutral
bystander in coming forward with a determinate assertion of
its real value. In the studied commendation of your friend
for a secondary distinction has not unfrequently been involved
the secret denial of your friend's claim to some paramount
distinction. The praise has been offered, and practically that
praise has operated, as a searching calumny. And the cases
are not few in which it has become necessary to come forward
with hostile demonstrations against this sincere eulogist as
against the bitterest of slanderers.
Do not fancy this to be a bare fantastic possibility,
sketched in some scholastic debating hall of Laputa. That
case is too notoriously possible which has been realised, and
too notoriously real which has locally been successful. Dr.
Andrew Bell, the first sufficient observer, the first improver,
the first importer into our British Isles of what was called
the Madras System for the cheap, the rapid, and the accurate
sowing of knowledge broadcast,¹ was attacked slanderously,
and most of all by those who came forward in the character
of ostentatious eulogists. He was praised, he was oppressed
with praise, as one who had popularised, or (if not popu-
larised) had brought under aristocratic patronage the sup-
posed system of Mr. Lancaster, 2-the purpose of this
perfidious praise being fraudulently to draw away the eyes of
men from the broad fact that Mr. Lancaster had dishonour-
ably appropriated the discoveries and adaptations of Dr. Bell,
and in that way to secure for him the profit in a pecuniary
and for his own religious sect the credit (in an intel-
sense,
1 See ante, pp. 11-12 n. ; also Vol. II, p. 185 n.—M.
2 See ante, p. 12 and p. 37.-M.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
307
lectual sense), of novelties which, even then, were beginning
to wear the promise of national benefits. Strange it is, or
strange it would be to man without positive experience to
correct his natural preconceptions, that under our system of
press illumination,-living, as we all fancy, under the broad
glare of noontide, with no artificial darkness to mislead us,
no darkness (we all fondly conceit) beyond what the limita-
tion of our faculties necessitates,-such a delusion as that
which respects the relative pretensions of Bell and Lancaster
should have been possible for a month. Much more was it
strange that this delusion should prosper when it had to
make head against a champion so unrivalled as Southey.
But stranger even than that was the conflict between the rival
pretensions of Clarkson and Wilberforce as to the leadership
in the ever-memorable crusade against the African Slave
Trade. There could, I presume, be no opening amongst
those who really venerated truth for any dispute as to the
allocation in that case of the homage due, whether as to kind
or as to degree. Clarkson, in so far as the question regarded
time, was the inaugurator of the great conflict. That was his
just claim.
He broke the ground, and formed the earliest
camp, in that field; and to men that should succeed he left
no possibility of ranking higher than his followers or imita-
tors. To this coronet of deathless flowers could it be
imagined possible to add another hue of glory? Yes, and it
was that the earliest step taken in this mighty movement,
which terminated in the tearing and scattering to the winds
of that "bloody writing by all nations known," had been
taken by him when a student at Cambridge. A juvenile
prize essay, expanded by his own further researches, formed
the corner-stone of that mighty temple which at this day
throws its shadow over all lands. Nevertheless, in defiance
of all this, and the notoriety of all this, it suited the policy
of a faction in the House of Commons, it suited also the
obstinate prejudices of certain religious sectarians, and it
suited the pecuniary interests of a celebrated Review, that
Wilberforce should carry off the primitic from this great
field. And for a long season this profligate contempt of
justice did really triumph. Eventually, as in all cases, the
truth asserted its rights. But this was after the personal
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interests in falsehood had been extinguished by the changes
of the grave.
Short of the grave was no power found
amongst the belligerent forces equal to the task of righting
an individual, and equitably distributing the praise in a cause
which, through all its stages, had moved scenically and pom-
pously before the eyes of a vast national audience, sitting in
the very centre of light.
These cases of the Madras System and of the African
Slave Trade I mention, not as having any direct connexion
with the subject before us, but as yielding the most flagrant
proof that, under the mask of a false insidious praise, it is
very possible to suppress the true one. If such a result can
be accomplished in the case of persons, backed by living parti-
sans, how much more in the case of things and abstract
interests ! Bell and Clarkson were not blamed; they were
ardently praised; but they were praised on such pretended
claims as involved covertly the denial of their real claims.
He that was complimented as having diffused or popularised
could not be supposed to have introduced. And, in like
manner, if Chronology does really add no more than an out-
side grace of finish and correctness to History, in the same
way as it adds a decoration to the biography of a great man
when a sketch is given of the house in which he was born, in
that case it can hardly be supposed to enter into the very
constitution of History as one of its internal elements.
Yet this it does. It enters into the important parts of
History as one of the main conditions under which History
itself is intelligible, or under which History makes other
things intelligible for any profitable purpose. Here, there-
fore, and under this leading idea, I will put briefly the
separate functions by which Chronology either combines
with the facts of History, so as to create them into a new
life and to impress upon them a moral meaning such as
nakedly and separately those facts would not possess, or else
forms a machinery for recalling and facilitating the memorial
conquest of historical facts in their orderly succession.
What is the substantial error committed in anachronisms?
It is that such modes of blunder disturb the moral relations
of things; for, if an anachronism has no effect of that sort,
and is merely shown to be such by some appeal to an almanac
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
309
or register of dates, it is pure pedantry much to insist upon
it as a fault. If a man should describe an Argonaut as
guiding himself on the Euxine by the mariner's compass, un-
known probably to Greece for twenty-five centuries later,
undeniably he commits an anachronism. But it is one of
little importance. The Argonaut guided himself by the
polar constellations, though he had no means of assigning
them in cloudy weather. Even in making an Argonaut call
the Black Sea by the name of Euxine there is probably an
anachronism, since originally it was called by a name indi-
cating its inhospitable character, and the Euxine (or hospit-
able) Sea was a mere superstitious euphemism for the
propitiation of the dark power which made that sea treacherous
and dangerous. It was by anachronisms of this character
that Bentley detected the spuriousness of the letters ascribed
to Phalaris. Sicilian towns, &c., were in those letters called
by names that did not arise until that prince had been dead
for centuries. Manufactures were mentioned that were of
much later invention. As handles for the exposure of a
systematic forgery, which oftentimes had a moral significance,
these indications were valuable, and gave excessive brilliancy
to that immortal dissertation of Bentley's. But separately,
for themselves, they were often harmless and inert; not pro-
ductive, I mean to say, of any consequences startling to the
general system and coherency of our ideas. But, on the
other hand, when Shakspere (Troilus and Cresida, Act ii.
Sc. 2) makes Hector say in reproach to two of his brothers,
that they had spoken
"superficially; not much
Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy".
he shocks and untunes our whole system of moral associa-
tions. If it were possible that a philosopher so exquisitely
subtle as Aristotle, whose works in any line presuppose a
meditative generation disciplined to intellectual exercises,
could really have coexisted with the race of barbarous warriors
that beleaguered Troy, in that case the relations of thought
to manners and usages would melt into a mere chaos and
unintelligible anarchy of elements. Parallelisms of a corre-
sponding character may be shown at every turn in geographical
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MISCELLANEA
blunders, or what might be called anatopisms. In the
Winter's Tale it is a most pardonable blunder that Bohemia
is represented as a maritime country. The mistake was
natural. For in maps on a small scale the capital letters
which indicate the great divisions of kingdoms generally
enough, under the rude engraving and typography of Shak-
spere's age, sprawl away into regions utterly alien. The
word Bohemia I have myself seen stretching in a curve from
the Baltic to the Adriatic. And the disturbing consequences
of such a mistake are none at all. But, when De Foe, with
no reason whatever, places the solitary island of Robinson
Crusoe on the wrong side of America-viz. on the eastern
side,―he ruins the holy sequestration from man and populous
cities which is the very nidus (that word means nest, Caroline)
in which only the imaginative elements of Crusoe's situation
can prosper. The Atlantic, even in those days, was as much
vulgarised by human hurryings and impertinent transits as
Fleet Street or the Palais Royal. Non-liability to intrusion,
so essential a feature in the desolation of Robinson Crusoe,
was at one blow annihilated by this inexplicable caprice.
Chronology, now, it is which makes large and virtual
anachronisms impossible: not by arbitrary annexations of
numerical dates to such or such names,—a process which the
giddy Carolines of this earth forget as fast as they learn;
but by grouping together and interlocking into the same
system of action, or the same dramatic situations, the leading
men who carry on, at any particular era, the business and
moving pantomime of the world. For instance, at the great
revolutionary era in Rome, which preceded our Christian era
by about half a century, there were two great volcanic
impulses at work. One was the impulse tending outwards
to the subjugation of the known- potentates lying round the
Mediterranean. This moved under a secret instinct-under
a necessity that could not have been evaded by Pagan Rome.
But the other impulse, working within, moved towards a
reconstitution of Roman society. Cæsar, the sole real patriot
of his day, was not (as people fancy) a democrat. His main
object was to reorganise a powerful and healthy aristocracy,
that should no longer find a necessity for turning itself into
an oligarchy, and for turning the democracy into a mass of
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
311
inevitable hirelings. This central pivot of the Roman policy
at that era, once apprehended, assigns to all the leading
factions their place, as in a drama. The history itself weaves
the web of the chronology; and the chronology, once appre-
hended as a thing involved in the facts, when understood
and constructed into systematic meaning, easily reacts upon
the history by such slight efforts.
LETTER III
You, Caroline, are unaffectedly religious; nor could you
be esteemed as you are esteemed if you were not. Irreligion
(by which I mean the want of a devotional temper in the
presence of mysterious and consecrated ideas), or even a
tendency to latitudinarian thinking upon such ideas, is viewed
with little toleration in a woman. The believing and con-
fiding instinct is originally stronger in the female mind than
in ours. There is much in the sexual position of woman to
unfold this instinct. And any attempt to work against this
apparent purpose of nature is felt by the delicate perceptions
of woman to sit ungracefully upon herself, as an audacity of
an unsexual character. Are men, therefore, privileged to be
sceptical? Is the general robustness of the masculine intel-
lect, which may be taken as a sort of natural invitation to
men for confronting with boldness such speculations as seem
dangerous, or for pursuing with energy such as are intricate
and thorny, to be interpreted also as a warrant or natural
licence for pressing onwards in that path, until all religious
awe may have been swallowed up in doubt or mere distrac-
tion? Certainly not. Men have no licence stretching to
that extent. Beyond the boundary and ring-fence of an
ultimate faith in the capital articles of revealed truth no man
can trespass without a risk of losing his compass; he cannot
speculate safely so far as that. But within this boundary,
and up to its extremest limits, lies an immense field of invita-
tion to the energies of the speculative understanding—a field
fertile in problems of every class. And, as to these problems,
what I assert is that men lawfully, and even laudably, under-
take their investigation; whereas in ladies it is more becom-
ing, as being more in harmony with the retiring graces of
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their sexual character, that they should practise a general
rule of submission to the traditional belief of their own
separate church, even where that belief has long been
notoriously challenged as erroneous.
A case of this nature presents itself at the very threshold
of Chronology. You, as a person justly scrupulous, and even
timorous, on all paths that tend towards the great debating
fields of religion, naturally would give me small thanks for
seeking to unsettle your belief in any opinion whatever,
important or not important, which seemed able to plead any
scriptural sanction. But I, whose licence of inquiry (for the
reason mentioned) stretches further, feel myself entitled to
examine how far that opinion, seemingly authorised by Scrip-
ture, really is so in virtue and design.
The opinion which I controvert, am controverting, and do
controvert, is this—that a Chronology for the first millennia
is expressly delivered by the Old Testament. Now, every
man who knows me, or knows anything of my peculiar pro-
pensities and predispositions in questions of religious belief,
will be aware that whatsoever can be alleged from any book
legitimately included in the canon of the Old Testament,—
with one sole reserve, viz. as to the accuracy of the transla-
tion, commands my homage and silent deference, even in
those cases where I do not entirely understand it.
Men are
not to pick and choose the parts of the Bible which it may
suit their taste to accept. Acceptable or not, luminous or
obscure, I submit to every proposition in the Scriptures
which is really and truly there under any sound and learned
interpretation. But I am not bound to recognise as properly
there what can be shown to be falsely translated, or to
have been introduced under any preconception, either as
to facts or opinions, which is now known to be erroneous.
Not only am I not bound to recognise what falls under these
conditions; but, where I know it to do so, or suspect that
it does, I am under a stern obligation to reject it.
who have read the Bible with attention must remember
that, in the very closing words of its closing book (Rev.
xxii. 18, 19), a curse the profoundest is suspended over that
presumptuous person who shall take away from the words
uttered in the Scriptures, or-which happens to be the case
All
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313
here-shall add to them. It was with a view to an absolute
foreclosure of such frauds, and under the idea of making them
impossible, that pious Jews at one era kept an exact numerical
register of the words, and even the letters, contained in the
Law and the acknowledged Prophets. How many were the
words, which was the central word (or the two central words
in any case where the whole ran to an even number), what
word began what word ended each particular book: all these
details were carefully commemorated in that register. Standard
copies in the custody of the priesthood were of little avail
against frauds emanating from the priests themselves, or
against the destruction of such authentic copies during the
confusions of war and national captivity. But it was
imagined that a register of the particulars I have mentioned
was of avail. Such a precaution seemed to offer the same
sort of security against fraud or oversight in multiplying
transcripts of the Scriptures as once existed for another pur-
pose in our English Exchequer tallies, or in the irregular
vandyking of indentures (when, upon any fraud, the salient
angles in the original would not correspond to the re-entrant
angles in the counterpart).1 But it is the destiny of all
1 A better illustration perhaps would be found in the Lacedæmonian
scytale. Suppose that secret orders were sent to a Spartan general
commanding at a great distance (as in Asia-Minor), -consequently
under considerable risk of being intercepted by the enemy. Let these
orders be written upon a ribbon,-which ribbon (according to previous
concert) is to be wound spirally round a staff or truncheon confided to
the general at starting. Now, in such a case all depends, as regards
the legibility of the ribbon, upon the correspondence in thickness of
the truncheon used by the general in relation to the particular truncheon
kept at Sparta. Suppose the home truncheon to be four and a quarter
inches in diameter, then the ribbon, when wound about a truncheon
chosen at hap-hazard by an enemy (as, for instance, three inches in
diameter), will not bring its consecutive spiral folds into proper corre-
spondence the whole text of the despatch would be mystified into
Babylonian confusion, something like what we see continually in a
London daily paper, where, from hurry at the press, a false crease (or
unintentional folding of the paper for a few inches) has had the effect
of bringing the initial words of several lines successively into a higher
level than the remainders of those lines; so that the fourth line, for
instance, in its beginning, lies level with the ending of the first line;
and so on. To read across the several spires of the ribbon, it is clear
that these spires must be brought into contact at the proper points of
junction; which can be effected only by a staff or cylinder whose
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human arts for securing protection against violence or fraud
to be met and baffled by counter-arts. No fortress was ever
so defended by engineering skill but that, by corresponding
skill in the arts of assault, under some advantages of strength
or opportunity, it might with deadly certainty be captured.
And in the case before us one evasion is obvious and easy :
-Supposing a long state of public confusion to throw out
openings and suggestions for interested forgeries, it would
always be easy, by a little management, to keep the words.
and the letters numerically equal to their original amount in
the register; and in such a case the register itself operated
as a collusive ally of the forger, by giving an apparent attesta-
tion to the non-disturbance of the text. Even at this hour,
when our means of rigorously ascertaining the identity of
standards from age to age is so prodigiously increased, civil
confusions and intestine wars might, in a course of fifty
years, defeat the whole strength of our resources. Neither
brass, nor iron, nor even glass, is rigorously self-consistent
as regards the simple standards of extension; all expand, all
contract. And, as regards the standards of identity for the
great records of human thought, of human experience, or of
divine revelation, not any one of us has, singly, much ad-
vantage above our rude predecessors in the periods of Hebrew
antiquity. Our only absolute advantage lies in the multipli-
diameter has previously been adjusted to the particular spiral sweep
assumed by the writer. This was the first rude artifice invented
towards a cipher. It is true that, by trying the ribbon upon a series
of cylinders, gradually increasing in diameter, the solution of the diffi-
culty would at length be attained. But it is equally true that no
cipher, the most exquisite, is impregnable to the deciphering skill of
the mathematician, as was demonstrated in 1645 by Wallis, when
applying his science to the cabinet of letters captured in the king's
coach at Naseby. [See ante, Vol. VIII, p. 279.-M.] However short
of perfection, each of these contrivances-the ancient Spartan scytale,
and the modern European cipher-interposes alike an obstacle between
our own despatches and the enemy's power to read them; which
obstacle may sometimes baffle the skill of the enemy, but must
always have retarded him. And, even as regards that single advantage
of time, there were instances in the great war with Napoleon where
officers were killed in carrying hasty orders to distant quarters of the
field, and the orders, of course, counteracted by the enemy; which
orders, if kept in darkness for but one hour, would probably have
changed the face of the campaign.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
315
cation of Christian and intellectual nations, since thus the
wrecks and the abolition of accurate remembrance effected
amongst any one people by popular convulsions are insulated
and narrowed in respect to their desolating results: all re-
cords having a common interest for the whole family of
civilised man being now sealed, as it were, and countersigned,
amongst the archives of every separate nation.
Of old, however, when one single people,—not very
numerous, not very powerful, and yet exposed to continual
danger by its own warlike instincts, and by its unfortunate
position amongst greater nations,—was the sole depositary of
religious truth during a long period of war, chequered by a
captivity of two generations and a translation to a distant
land, it became impossible, unless through such miracles as are
nowhere alleged, that the scriptural records should not undergo
many changes, were it only through accommodation of the
language to the changes worked by time, and still more when
time was aided by the interfusion of alien dialects on the
banks of the Euphrates. Why is it now that, in spite of
such calamities, apparently such ruinous calamities, we believe
the Hebrew Scriptures, in all capital features, to have come
out from that trying furnace in their native integrity, un-
scorched, and even unsinged? That many corruptions have
crept into its text, that changes uncounted have disturbed
names and successions of families, I cannot doubt. But what
are such changes to us? For the Jew, so long as his memory
or his traditions reached back with accuracy to the real
events, and the real historical actors in those events, it
was important that the text of the Scriptures should be
maintained in rigorous purity; because accuracy in such
points, though trivial for itself, or for any intrinsic value
that it could claim, stood in a collateral function for a
voucher of other and higher events, secret transactions
between God, on the one part, and lawgivers, leaders,
prophets, on the other, representing the Hebrew people,-
towards which, oftentimes, the main accrediting evidence lay
in the authentic character and position of the narrator; so
that, if wrong even as to trifles that were popularly known
in their true and minute circumstances, he would have for-
feited his claim generally to the oracular station of one
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speaking from God, and interpreting the hidden counsels of
God. Nothing could be trivial which stood by possibility
in any relation to an issue so solemn. But, after the Baby-
lonish Captivity, all this changed its aspects. That great.
and sorrowful transplantation of Jerusalem and her children
to an alien land,¹ a land of exile and captivity, from which
the vast majority never more returned, was the first great
historical event which could thoroughly have broken up and
confounded the Hebrew historical traditions. But this
happened precisely at a time when those traditions ceased to
be of any importance. What I mean is that, by a noticeable
arrangement of Providence, the austere accuracy of the scrip-
tural text in points of trivial importance, or of no importance
at all if regarded separately for themselves, but which the
bigoted and self-conceited Jew never could have been brought
to esteem as trivial, gave way exactly under this catastrophe,
which took away even this secondary and incidental value.
The children of the Captivity, rudely shaken loose from their old
remembrances, could no longer, in any later generation, find any
use or purpose in recurring to these remembrances as collateral
vouchers for the accuracy of other passages which rested on
no such remembrances. The severe critical text of the Scrip-
tures, therefore, precisely as to those points which were
always trivial, and precisely at the time which destroyed
even the trivial value, underwent a great disturbance. The
1 "An alien land" :-What land? With regard to the earlier
captivity of the ten tribes, this question has often been raised as in-
volving a great mystery. And, in particular, of late years, an Ameri-
can missionary, Dr. Asahel Grant, has applied himself in a separate
book to its solution. But the story of the last migration, the exodus,
and dispersion of the two tribes, is not at all better known. Dispersed
they certainly were; and the traces of Hebrew remembrances linger-
ing to this day in the names of mountains, and (as it is said) in the
physiognomy of the nations amongst the mountains, of Affghanistan,
of Beloochistan, and other regions approaching to the Indus, make it
not improbable that, according to the Oriental custom (a custom illus-
trated occasionally to this day in Asiatic Muscovy), a large propor-
tion of these Hebrew exiles in both captivities had been applied to the
purpose of making good some casual depopulation from famine or dis-
ease in the easternmost parts of the Median Empire. At all events, the
enigma is as clamorous in the one case as in the other, since the children
of the second captivity, the house of Jacob and Benjamin, no more ex-
perienced any commensurate restoration than the children of the first.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
317
difficulty of establishing the titles of descent and the genea-
logical succession even in princely families, at the time
when the partial return to Jerusalem took place, and the
second temple arose, satisfies me that much of the old tra-
ditional legends, which had clung, doubtless, for a time, to
the Hebrew records, and for a time had done a real service
in the way of strengthening the national confidence in the
written annals, melted away under fervid affliction, which
burned up all but grand realities. A people dislocated from
each other in a multitude of cases, and not merely from
their ancient home,-scattered, uncombined by any political
tie, and bending under a yoke of hopeless slavery,—had no
leisure for heraldic luxuries; and by the waters of Babylon
they could have no heart for legendary memorials decorating
a history which, for them, was travelling towards oblivion.
In the extinction of all reasonable hope for those who
looked forward, there must have perished all pleasurable
sympathy with past glories for those who looked back.
And, at such an era, we may be sure that all the gaieties and
superfluities of Hebrew History must have gone to wreck,
whilst that part of the national records that could survive
such shocks must have been exactly that which is intrinsic-
ally indestructible: viz. the great monuments of God's
intercourse with their ancestors, the imperishable grounds
of the pure monotheism which distinguished themselves
amongst nations, and that theory of man's relation to God
which, commencing in the idea of a dreadful rebellion on
the human side, ended in the idea of a corresponding restor-
ation to be expected from the Divine goodness concurring
with some mysterious agency in a Hebrew female.
How, then, I ask again, in the searching purification of
the Jewish annals and traditional tales, did the divine parts
of their scriptural records maintain themselves unaltered?
Simply from this cause-that, resting upon eternal realities,
once made known as truths to the human heart, they could
not afterwards sink into oblivion or collapse. Whatsoever
is fanciful and capricious falls within the empire of change.
But for 'ideas that, by some supernatural illumination, once
and for ever had opened upon the heart of one privileged
people, whilst for all other peoples these ideas lay in the
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MISCELLANEA
profoundest darkness, change is not an affection to be appre-
hended. The reason why no verbal corruptions of the text
could ever disturb any capital doctrine of the Bible is
because such a truth is not of a nature to be reached by
partial, gradual, and stealthy corruptions. That is the
reason also why no mistranslations, such as exist abundantly
in all European versions of the Scriptures, ever have availed,
or can avail, to unsettle or for a moment to hide any cardinal
truth belonging to the Christian scheme. Such a truth is
not of a nature to be partially eclipsed. Dishonestly, it may
be altogether suppressed. It may be hidden and withdrawn;
but, uttered at all, howsoever imperfectly, it cannot be muti-
lated. By its own light it shines; and the least scintillation
of it, being suffered to escape, immediately integrates itself
into the orbicular whole.
Now, contrast (as regards the capacity of being altered,
lawlessly interpolated, or in any way used corruptly) with
such imperishable truths as these the ridiculous conceit of a
scriptural chronology, or a scriptural cosmogony, under their
ordinary representations; and you see at once that, whilst
the awful truth cannot by any ingenuity be disguised or
altered, on the other hand the fantastic fable cannot pre-
serve the same features steadily through any two versions.
The objections to a scriptural chronology are these: First,
that any scheme of that nature, considered as a revelation, is
unspeakably degrading to the majesty of God. Why should
he reveal a chronology, more than a geography, more than a
spelling-book? No purpose higher than the gratification of
an impertinent curiosity could be answered by such a revela-
tion. Liberal we sometimes call a curiosity of that nature.
Yes, liberal as amongst ourselves, as amongst human interests.
Any curiosity, not selfish, not mercenary, and not petty, but
having regard to a general human concern, may laudably
pass for liberal under a presupposed comparison with such
other modes of curiosity as point to base, to brutal, or to
childish purposes. But, as entering any category of desires
connected with divine objects, all curiosity whatsoever is a
profane and unspeakably irreverential affection. I remember
that in the book of Esdras, when looking about for the
motives which might have excluded it from the canon and
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
319
degraded it to an apocryphal rank, I stumbled upon a verse
which at once settled in my mind the propriety of that
adjudication. In this verse Esdras has the audacity to pro-
pound the following little query for God's consideration,
hoping for an answer at his earliest convenience. Time,
universal time, the total period of duration for this planet-
suppose it to be figured as an ocean, some vast Atlantic or
Pacific. That being arranged, then what Mr. Esdras
modestly requires of God is that He would be pleased to
reveal the whereabouts of the said Esdras, his position in
this vast ocean; or, according to the old Cambridge problem,
"Given the captain's name, to determine the ship's latitude
and longitude." Sailing, in short, upon this vast expanse,
shoreless as regarded his optics, and unfathomable for any
plummet of his, Esdras is suddenly tickled with an itch of
curiosity, viz. upon this point- Was he half-way over?
Supposing some mathematic line to bisect this huge ocean,
had the Squire (Esdras to wit) crossed this equatorial line?
Or was he, perhaps, in the very act of crossing it?
Or was
this act still in a remote futurity? Such is the problem
when developed. But, more briefly, he asks-Was the time
from the Creation to Esdras precisely equal to the time from
Esdras to the destruction of the planet? Or, if unequal,
was it by more or by less? On which side lay the balance?
This, now, I call impudence, and not far short of profane-
ness. For what possible relation has the inquiry to any
interest of morals or religion? How if he had demanded to
know the cube-root of all the dead donkeys lying in the
continent of Asia? Could that question have been consistent
with the dignity even of human science? How mighty
then must be its descent below the level of a Divine
philosophy! And, measured by such a standard, Chronology
is not at all a more elevated speculation. This is the first
argument against a revealed Chronology-viz. that such a
theme is far below the majesty of a heavenly revelation. A
second argument is that such a revelation is impossible
without a continued succession of miracles for maintaining
its accuracy. Divine doctrines, doctrines that without pre-
sumption we can ascribe to God as their author, spontaneously
maintain themselves (as I have recently attempted to explain)
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MISCELLANEA
against all the varieties of error likely to arise from the
ignorance of translators, or the narrow nonconformity and
unmalleability of languages. Every language of man, along
with its own characteristic merits, has its own separate
sources of confusion and misconception. And yet the
Hebrew Scriptures have triumphed over these resisting
forces in all the accessible languages of the earth.
In no
language or jargon do we hear of any spiritual truth failing 1
to establish itself, and to shine by its own light. And,
without miracles, or anything approaching to miracles,
exactly as any truth is of divine origin and nature is it
capable of self-support. But truths so entirely without
natural relation to the human heart as those of Chronology,
-truths so arbitrary and casual, holding their place, there-
fore, by no anchorage in the human affections,—have no
power of recovering themselves in case of disturbance from
errors of transcription, or other modes of human infirmity.
Truth, seated in the heart or in the reason, has a natural
power of self-restoration under any accident of momentary
obscuration. But truths of mere casual experience, once
unsettled, have no principle of self-recall. If, therefore, any
chronology had been sanctioned by the Scriptures, a hundred
and a thousand times it would have perished under this
incapacity of righting itself against the accidents, continually
recurring, of direct falsification and careless transcription.
To talk of collating the transcription with some supposed
standard copy is to forget that, in the great majority of cases,
all relations of standard and transcript are immediately lost
and confounded. And, to show you, Caroline, the absolute
physical impossibility of transmitting even a short fragment
of a chronological record with any guarantee against ruinous
1 This is true, at least, when the reference is to cultivated and
intellectual languages. Meantime, I have a great jealousy that serious
misapprehensions may have been diffused through barbarous and
half-developed languages. Christianity is itself the great organ of
improvement and expansion for uncultured languages. But for that
very reason the language of an uncivilised people, when first applied
to so spiritual a purpose as that of translating the Scriptures, is as yet
presumably in an unspiritual and unexpanded condition of its powers.
Not used hitherto for any spiritual purpose, it is not yet in a state of
development.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
321
errors, I will say a word or two upon a case of chronology
actually introduced into the New Testament, viz. the descent
traced for our Saviour through three periods of fourteen
generations.
Even this, short and direct as it might beforehand have
been presumed to be, is disfigured by errors. I do not
speak of errors indicated by German infidels, but of such as
are acknowledged by orthodox theologians of our own country.¹
Let us take, for instance, that particular genealogy adopted by
St. Matthew. I do not stop to notice the perplexing incon-
sistency of this document with the prevailing theory of
Christ's incarnation. The immediate purpose contemplated
by the genealogist was to establish the Messiahship of Christ.
Now, it was a prevailing postulate amongst the Jews that
the Messiah must come from the house of David. To David,
therefore, Christ is traced; but through whom? Through
Joseph. But, as Joseph's paternity is utterly denied by the
catholic doctrine of the incarnation, the whole genealogy on
this argument alone becomes so much waste paper for us who
are orthodox. This, however, as I promised, suffer me to
neglect. But, next, looking at the genealogy separately for
itself, we find three distinct links, insisted on by the Old
Testament annals, actually overlooked or dropped out through
inadvertence. Three generations, or about an entire century,
go to wreck in that single error. Elsewhere we find the
relationship of father and grandfather interchanged by
mistake. But, beyond all this, I affirm that not one single
clause in the whole pedigree is unequivocal, unless by an
indulgent concession on the part of the reader. "C was the
son of B, who was the son of A,”—seems plain enough to a
modern European reader; but in Oriental phrase nothing is
more vague. Christ is continually called the son of David,
and yet is removed from David by a thousand years. David
again is called the son of Abraham, and yet is removed from
1 "Of our own country":—I was not thinking, at the time when I
wrote, of any one particular divine; but, as some personal example
may be demanded, I will cite that of Dr. S. Bloomfield, in his
critical edition of the Greek Testament,—a work of much labour
and learning, and specially designed as a bulwark against infidel
speculations.
VOL. XIV
Y
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MISCELLANEA
Abraham by a thousand years.1 The result is this that by
no effort of human ingenuity could an ancient writer, Hebrew
or Greek, have drawn up a pedigree through which any
clever attorney could not (in the old English phrase) have
instantly driven a coach-and-six. I affirm that there is an a
priori obstacle (that is, Caroline, a causal obstacle, an obstacle
lying in causes that are present), an obstacle, therefore,
absolutely insurmountable in the very imperfections of
ancient languages,-to any precise chronology founded upon
the deduction of family descents. It is, strictly and literally,
impossible to give such a severity to a chronological record in
its phraseology as would suffice to bar all objections,—and
not legal objections only, but the plain summary objections
of logic and simple good sense.
But, coming now, lastly, to this particular question before
us from the first-viz. the supposed Chronology of the Bible
-it will be said that here a double system of computation
has been adopted, in which each system becomes a check
upon the other.
For instance, A had for his son B, and B
had C. This gives the succession of separate generations
and then, to obviate all ambiguity or cavil from the sense in
which "son" is used, it is immediately added through what
number of years each of the successive individuals lived. A,
for instance, lived 900 years, B lived 850 years, and so on.
Now, first of all, we know nothing at all, and have no means
of guessing even, as to the particular sense in which the
vague word "year" is employed. But, were this otherwise,
the capital objection remains-that even in Greek annals,
and far more so in those of the Hebrews, no scholar ever
dreams of relying at this day on numerical estimates, no
matter whether expressed in words or figures, unless when
the value happens to be checked and guaranteed by some
1 Writing to a young lady, I could not separately and pointedly
notice the form, "A begot (¿yevvnoe) B, B begot C," etc.; and this
form may be fancied to heal the ambiguity in the word son. Not at
all. Both forms are equally ambiguous. It might be said, and often
was said, "Abraham begot David, David begot Christ"-taking leaps
of a thousand years, or thirty generations, at one bound. The in-
adequacy of ancient languages to the definite expressions of consan-
guinity is absolutely beyond the healing resources of all human skill or
dexterity.
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
323
collateral and independent evidence. Except in the case of
inscriptions deeply chiselled upon natural panels of rock, it
may be taken for granted that we of this day do not in the
very oldest MSS. read the numbers stated by the original
writer, but, on the contrary, some expression that has been
doctored many hundred times before reaching our generation,
and has been adjusted at each several era to the particular
editor's preconceptions of the matter. Add to this insur-
mountable objection the impossibility of supposing that it
could further any Divine purpose to register the chronologi-
cal periods of people often known to us only as names and
shadows, or that (failing all moral uses in such a record,
which, besides, could not be kept strictly self-consistent with-
out a perpetual miracle) God would condescend to cater for
our literary curiosity; and we arrive finally not merely at a
probable inference that the supposed Biblical Chronology is
a pure chimera, but at the mere necessity of pronouncing it
a false and degrading interpolation. Degrading I call it,
meaning that it is so doubly: first, in relation to God; and,
secondly, in relation to man. God it dishonours, by im-
puting to him a solemn revelation for no conceivable purpose
beyond that of idle amusement for man. Man, again, it
dishonours, by narrowing the vast drama of which he is the
central principle from that vast wheeling orbit of innumer-
able centuries which probably have already measured the
flight of earthly time into a poor hungry fraction of hours,
that could not by possibility have sufficed for the evolution
of man, or for the growth and decay of the mighty empires
that rose and sank between the Deluge and the Argonautic
period of Greece.
We are speaking now of time as measured against the
career of man's development. Else, and if we were speaking
of it as measured against the development of man's dwelling-
place, the earth, you are aware, Caroline, that we should have
to postulate vast periods of time as corresponding to the
enormous geological agencies now known to have been at
work in preparing our planet for life-vegetable, brutal,
human. This subject is not at present before us. But I
refer to it as furnishing us with another illustration of the
false policy pursued by the unwise defenders (because un-
:
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MISCELLANEA
sound interpreters) of the biblical philosophy. The old error
of the Romish (but not at all less of the Protestant) Church
in relation to Galileo is repeated to the life at this time in
relation to the new science of geology. In the days of
Galileo, the Church, by staking the authority of the Bible
falsely and wickedly upon the credit of their own ridiculous
hostility to Galileo, made it necessary for themselves, in all
honour and candour, to acknowledge that philosopher finally
in the character of a victor over the Bible. Was he such?
No; nor did he pretend to any such vain distinction. They
it was, his Church enemies, that practically gave him such a
triumph, which, for himself, he neither sought nor gained.
They it was that insisted senselessly upon matching the
philosopher in an imaginary duel with the Bible.
The same
case essentially is revolving upon us with regard to the geo-
logists. Between them and the Old Testament there is not
even a verbal or a seeming collision. In six days God
created the heavens and the earth. But the word "day" is
uniformly a mystical word in Scripture. The 1260 days of
Daniel, for instance, who has ever been weak enough to
understand as the days which measure the rotation of the
earth upon its own axis? The word "day" does mean this
in such passages of the Bible as concern the dealings of man
with man. But invariably in passages that concern the
dealings of God with man it bears a mystical sense, in which,
evidently, it expresses some vast compass of time. Taken in
this sense, the measurement of the cosmogony as accomplished
in six days is no doubt philosophically exact, pointing to six
great stages of unknown duration through which the planet
itself as man's dwelling, secondly, the furniture of that dwell-
ing, and, thirdly, man himself, as its tenant, were slowly
matured. Between Geology and the Mosaical Cosmogony of
Genesis there is not the shadow of any real hostility. But
mark the mischief which is worked for the Bible by its pre-
tended defenders. You might suppose the worst result to be
that their efforts at defence where no defence was called for
would be found superfluous. Not so. By planting the
Bible in a position of supposed antagonism to the advancing
science then, as it is past all doubt that the science will
establish its own doctrines, simply through these false
MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY
325
champions it will be brought about (as already it has been to
some limited extent) that every victory on the part of
Geology (victory I mean over ancient ignorance and dark-
ness) will sound to the popular ear as a defeat of the Bible,
simply through this weak (and, one might think, perfidious)
trick of finding out an imaginary enmity in the Scriptures
to every novelty in science that, for one moment, and whilst
imperfectly developed, wears a shape of inconsistency.
Not with the Bible, but with most ignorant interpretations
of the Bible, has it happened that scientific progress has seemed
to be won at the cost of religious truth. The real relations
of Christian truth to the truths of science and philosophy,
and for what reason it became a mere necessity that Christ
should acquiesce passively in popular errors-upon astronomy,
for instance—I have endeavoured to explain elsewhere.¹
One reason was that his mission had no reference to the in-
terests of science, and would have degraded itself by descend-
ing to such interests. But the paramount reason lay in this
that any concession, the very slightest, in that direction,
even to the extent of using accurate language in speaking of
astronomical phenomena, would instantly have landed him
in the necessity of explanations, justifications, disputes,
refutations, that would have exhausted his entire time,
had it been ten thousand times more than it was, in
speculations utterly foreign to his real business on earth.
People thoughtlessly imagine that he might once for all
have set himself right by the tenor of his own language
in relation to the futurities of science, and thenceforward
have neglected the subject. But they forget that he
would not have been allowed to neglect it. The shock
given to people's prejudices by the extreme singularity
of a language in the teeth of all that was supposed true or
even possible would have drawn off the universal attention
from moral questions to physical. A fiery persecution of
dispute and ridicule would have baited him, from which he
would have vainly sought for retreat, unless in the acknow-
ledgment that he had spoken rashly or even deliriously;
which acknowledgment would surely have done no service
1 See ante, Vol. VIII, pp. 35-41, and pp. 280-284, where the same
view is expounded more at length.—M.
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to his pretensions as a moral preacher and the inaugurator
of a mighty spiritual revolution. Under this crushing
necessity, and then only to the extent of complying with the
popular language—a compliance, observe, which the greatest
astronomers practise at this day, rather than appear pedantic-
ally correct-there may have been the shadow of a sanction
given in the Scriptures to false notions in science. Farther
than this, or the suspicion of this, it is impossible to charge
upon Scripture one solitary expression of discountenance to
scientific truth. Yet, in the Galileo case, this was the effect
of the policy pursued by those who attacked him as at war
with the science of the Bible. By their mode of treating the
case, they not only did in effect charge the Scriptures with
such a discountenance, but, if they had been right in insisting
upon an antinomy between the Tuscan philosopher and the
Scriptures, they ended by scandalously inflicting upon those
Scriptures the opprobrium of a defeat. Galileo triumphed ;
and, if (as they alleged) he was in polar opposition to the
Bible, then he triumphed over the Bible. This result they
had not generally the candour to acknowledge, but stole
silently away from the contest when it was no longer tenable.
The same issue will attend the Geology dispute. The reason-
able and candid amongst the anti-geologists will gradually
be won over to see that the opposition of the Mosaic
hypothesis is merely a pretended opposition, founded on a
puerile literality in the interpretation of the Mosaic phrase-
ology; and gradually the most religious men will come to
perceive a mystical harmony between the views of Genesis
and the views of austere science. Others, on the contrary,
obstinate to the last, will contend as long as they can, and
then retire without owning any defeat. The same game will
be played as to Chronology. As an ancient bed-ridden faith,
it will be maintained as an inert and idle hypothesis ;
though, beyond a doubt, as a mere interpolation of man, it
stands under the curse denounced upon those who add fictions
of their own to the finished Oracles of Scripture.
FRENCH AND ENGLISH MANNERS 1
An impression prevails pretty generally that the manners of
our French neighbours are more polished than our own; and
by most people this is assumed as a thing conceded even
amongst ourselves, who are the persons most interested in
denying it. A concession, however, made in ignorance avails
nothing. Such a concession argues the candour of the con-
ceding party, but not therefore the truth of the charge. We
English are ready enough to tax our countrymen with such
vices of deportment or habits as are flagrantly obtrusive, and
sometimes even with such as are altogether imaginary.2 A
fault is not necessarily a real one because it happens to be
denounced by English people as an English fault; nor, if it
1 Appeared originally in one of the numbers of Hogg's Instructor
for 1850 (vol. v, new series, pp. 33-35): reprinted by De Quincey in
1858, in vol. ix of his Collected Writings.-M.
2 Witness the malicious charge against all of us English, so current
in the mouths of both Frenchmen and the English themselves, that,
from aristocratic jealousies as to the rank and pretensions of parties
not personally known and guaranteed to us, we avoid on the Continent
beyond all other society that of our own countrymen. If this were
even true, there might be alleged some reasons for it not altogether
illiberal. Meantime it happens that the very contradictory charge to
this exists as a standing reproach to the English in our own literature.
From Lord Chesterfield's days downwards to this present era, it has
been made an argument of our national absurdity that we English herd
only with our countrymen-that we do not virtually quit England—
and that in this way we only of all European nations fail to improve
by travel; refusing, in fact, to benefit by that extended experience
which originally had been the ostensible object of our travels.
Malignant calumniator, whether foreign or (as too often happens)
native English, reconcile these charges, if you can !
i
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MISCELLANEA
were so, ought we to lay any great stress upon it, so long as
it is demonstrable that these same English accusers have
overlooked the counterbalancing fault in the particular nation
with which they are comparing us. We, for our part, can-
not afford to be so candid as all that. Candour is a very
costly virtue it costs us a most distressing effort of mind to
confess anything, however true, against ourselves or against
our country, unless when we have a "consideration" for doing
so. In the present case we shall find this consideration in the
power of retaliation upon the French by means of correspond-
ing exceptions to their manners. Luckily, if we offend in one
way, they offend not less conspicuously in another. Having
this set-off against our ancient enemy, we are not indisposed
to admit the truth against ourselves; which else it would
have been quite out of the question to expect of us.
The idea involved in what we call manners is a very com-
plex one; and in some of its elements, as we may have occasion
to show farther on, it represents qualities of character (or also
of temperament) that are perfectly neutral as regards the social
expression of manners. This social expression, which is the
chief thing that men think of when describing manners as
good or bad, lies in two capital features: first of all, in respect
for others; secondly, in self-respect. Now, the English fail
too often in the first, the French in the second. There is the
balance. The French have reason to take us for models in
all which regards the second; we them as regards the first.
The term "respect for others" may seem too strong for
the case.
Respect, in its graver expressions, may have no
opening for itself in casual intercourse with strangers. But
simple decency of appearance, and decorum of manner, war-
rant that limited mode of respect which expresses itself by
courtesy and affability. You listen to the stranger with com-
plaisance; you answer him with cheerfulness. So much of
attention might be justified in the most aristocratic country
by a decent exterior, by a demeanour not brutal, and by a
style of conversation not absolutely repulsive. Here it is,
and in all cases where the relation between strangers rests
upon the simple footing of their common humanity, that the
Frenchman has so great an advantage over the Englishman.
Every Frenchman has been trained from his infancy to re-
FRENCH AND ENGLISH MANNERS
329
cognise in all human beings an indefeasible claim upon his
civility. To listen without visible impatience upon being
asked by a stranger for information,-to answer without
abruptness or marked expression of hurry,—the Frenchman
considers a mere debt to the universal rights of human nature;
and to refuse the payment of a debt so easily settled he would
regard as a dishonour to himself. The Englishman, on the
other hand, in the same circumstances, is too often morose
and churlish; he answers fretfully, hurriedly, and briefly, as
to one who is interrupting him unseasonably, or even robbing
him of his time; and at any rate it is rare that he answers
as if he had a pleasure in giving the information asked.
This tone of harshness and incivility it is that constantly
deters people of quick sensibility from addressing themselves
at random, in any case of difficulty, to the street-passengers
in London. Often have we observed timid or nervous people
drawing up into a corner, and anxiously reviewing the stream
of passing faces, in order to select one that might promise
patience enough and kindness for enduring the interruption.
This repulsive aspect of British manners wears even an ex-
aggerated shape in Scotland. London is not half so uncivilized
in this respect as some of the Lowland Scottish cities.
a question of ten successive passengers, and nine of the
answers will give you reason to wish that you had held your
tongue. Even sexual gallantry avails not always to prompt
courtesy. A handsome young lady from the Northern High-
lands of Scotland, used to the courtesy of her Celtic country-
men (for the Scotch Highlanders have no resemblance in this
point to the Lowland Scotch), told us that on her first visit
to Glasgow, happening to inquire her way of a working-man,
instead of any direction whatever, she received a lecture for
her presumption in supposing that "folk" had nothing else
to do but to answer idle people's questions. This was her
first application. Her second was less mortifying, but equally
unprofitable. The man in that second case uttered no word
at all, civil or uncivil; but, with a semicircular wave back-
wards of his right arm, jerked his right thumb over his right
shoulder; after which he repeated the same manœuvre with
his left arm, left thumb, and left shoulder-leaving the young
Inverness-shire lady utterly mystified by his hieroglyphics,
Ask
330
MISCELLANEA
which to this hour she has not solved, though still thankful
that he had forborne to lecture her.
1
At first sight, then, it may be easily imagined how fas-
cinating ¹ is the aspect of a society moulded by French
courtesy, coming in direct succession to that harsher form
which society wears in the streets of this island.
And yet
even this French courtesy has been the object of suspicion in
reference to its real origin. Mr. Scott of Aberdeen, a cele-
brated man in his day,2 was assured, during one of his French
tours, and not by any envious foreigner, but by a discerning
Frenchman, that the true ground of French affability was not
any superior kindness of heart disposable for petty occasions,
but the national love of talking. A Frenchwoman comes out
of her road, or leaves her shop, in order to finish her in-
structions as to your proper route, so that mistake shall be
impossible. She does this with an empressement that seems
truly amiable, because apparently altogether disinterested.
"By no means," said her cynical countryman to Mr. Scott;
1 A Glasgow or Paisley man, who published an account of his tour
to Paris some 16 or 18 years ago, furnishes a memorable illustration
of the profound impression made on him by a sudden transition from
his native country to France. He professes himself a rigid Presby-
terian, and everywhere shows a bigoted hatred of Popery, which at
times expresses itself most indecorously. For instance, as one shocking
and abominable expression of his own rancorous bigotry (which it is
to be hoped that the most frantic of Presbyterian zealots would in-
dignantly disown as at all within the limits of toleration), he acknow-
ledges a vehement impulse driving him towards some public outrage
or expression of scorn to the ceremonial and public services of the
national religion; in particular he owns a rabid desire to spit into the
vessel of holy water at the church-doors. Yet, in spite of this insane
bigotry, such was his astonishment at the general courtesy amongst
the French, and such was his sense of the public peace produced by
this courtesy, combined with general sobriety, that he seriously pro-
pounds the question: whether even the sacrifice of Protestant purity,
and the adoption of Popery, would not be a cheap price to pay, if by
such changes-changes, remember, in what he considers the supreme
of all truths—it were possible to purchase these French advantages of
quiet and refinement.
He
2 "His day" :-viz. the day of Waterloo and six years later.
died in 1821 from the consequences of a duel fought in a hot summer
season with cooler weather, his wounds were not of a dangerous class.
He published two celebrated Tours to the Continent: one after the
first conquest of Paris in 1814, and a second after Waterloo. [See
ante, Vol. III, p. 127, footnote.-M.]
FRENCH AND ENGLISH MANNERS
331
"not all disinterested. What she seeks to gratify is far less
any temper of general kindliness than the furious passion for
hearing herself talk. Garrulity is what you gentlemen from
England have mistaken for diffusive courtesy." There is so
far a foundation for this caustic remark, that undoubtedly
the French are the most garrulous people upon earth. Look
into the novels of Eugene Sue and of Dumas,—which reflect
pretty accurately the external features of Parisian society,-
and you will perceive how indispensable to the daily comfort
of the general population is copious talking and unlimited in-
dulgence of petty personal curiosity. These habits naturally
support and strengthen the auxiliary habit of cheerful politeness.
To tempt others into the spirit of communicativeness, it is in-
dispensable to open their hearts by courteous and genial treat-
ment. But, allowing for this undoubted national infirmity,
viz. the intense predisposition to gossiping and commérage, it
still remains undeniable that the French, with less of a pro-
found or impassioned benignity than some of their neighbours,
have more by a great deal of that light-hearted surface good-
nature which applies itself to trivial and uncostly services.
The garrulity of the French temperament, therefore, if it
mingles a little as a selfish element in the French affability,
is yet so far valuable as it offers a collateral pledge for its
continuance. This demur, therefore, will not seriously dis-
turb the pretensions of the French to the most amiable form
of national politeness that has ever descended deeply amongst
the body of the people. But another demur there is,—not
suggested by any countryman of their own, but irresistibly
forced upon the notice of us islanders by the clamorous
contrast with our own manners, which does undoubtedly
probe the value of their refinement in a way painfully
humiliating. Ask any candid and observing tourist in France
for the result of his experience, and he will agree that
generally at the table-d'hôte, and especially when the company
is composed chiefly of flying travellers, the French manifest
a selfishness and an exclusiveness of attention to their own
comfort which is shocking to a native of this country. In
thorough contradiction to the prevailing notions of this
country, — which, on such subjects, are almost uniformly
unsound, the French, nationally, are great eaters. They
332
MISCELLANEA
and the Germans are the two most gormandizing races in
Europe. This gratification is not for a moment laid under
any restraint by the verbal sacrifices to civility. The dishes
are rifled of their best luxuries in the same unblushing
spirit of selfishness which would govern most of us in escaping
from a burning theatre. Of course no individual experience
is sufficient for sustaining this as a national charge; but we
have heard concurrent testimonies from many travellers to
the same effect, all tending to show a general selfishness
amongst the French in any similar case of competition
which the cloak of external and verbal politeness does but
the more powerfully expose. Such an exposure, if true and
unexaggerated, stands out in violent contrast to all that we
have ourselves observed of British life. Through a course of
many years' familiarity with our own mails and other public
carriages, we never once witnessed a dinner at which the
spirit of mutual attention and self-sacrifice did not preside.
Even in respect for others, therefore, where generally the
French so much excel ourselves, yet, when a selfish interest
thwarts the natural tendency of their manners, this tendency
appears to give way. But it is in self-respect that the
French most of all betray their inferiority; and here it is
that the countervailing excellence of British manners asserts
itself. The stern and too often surly Briton, whether Eng-
lishman or Scotchman, is saved by this very form of un-
amiableness from the pettiness of garrulity. If sometimes he
is disagreeable, at least he is not undignified; if he presents
an unattractive phasis to society, at any rate he is not
unmanly. Now, of all unmanliness,—intellectually, though
not morally, speaking, the habits of gossip and loquacious-
ness are about the most degrading.
Yet gossiping and garrulity are not the most prominent
infirmities by which the French betray their deficient self-
respect. Gesticulation, as an inseparable organ of French
conversation, is even more immediately disfiguring to the
ideal of personal dignity. A gesticulating nation cannot be
a dignified nation. A running accompaniment of pantomime
may be picturesque, and in harmony with the general vivacity
amongst harlequins and columbines, but cannot for a moment
reconcile itself with any authentic standard of human dignity.
FRENCH AND ENGLISH MANNERS
333
The French have been notorious through generations for
their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic
precedents; and yet, beyond all other races known to history,
the Roman is that which it would be most difficult to repre-
sent as expressing the grandeur of its purposes by gesticula-
tion or histrionic pantomime.
This feature of French manners, and the essential degrada-
tion which cleaves to it, ought to be kept before the public
eye at this moment, when not only the increasing intercourse
with France, but also the insensible contagion from our own
popular novels,-too often written by those who are semi-
denizens of Paris,-violently tend to the transfiguration of
our own ideals, so greatly superior in this particular to those
of France. In many of these novels we have it said as a
matter of course that A or B "shrugged his shoulders." But
what Englishman, unless ridiculously metamorphosed by
Paris, so as absolutely to have forgotten his own native
usages, ever uses this odious gesture, or could use it with
any hope of not disgusting his audience? not to mention
other forms of pantomime still more degrading, though
countenanced by good society in Paris (such, for example, as
the application of the finger to the side of the nostrils,
together with an accompanying advancement of the face, by
way of expressing a signal of knowingness or insinuation of
secret understanding). Even the words and phrases imported
by our novels, and which are already settling into vernacular
use, are sometimes fitted to import also the vulgar sentiment
which they embody. Twenty-five years ago the vile ejacula-
tion “Bah!” was utterly unknown to the English public.
Now, and entirely through the currency given to it by our
own novels, it has become the most popular expression for
dismissing with contempt any opinion or suggestion of the
person with whom you are conversing. Sir Edward Lytton
was amongst the earliest and deepest offenders. Anything
more brutal or more insolent, in the way of summary con-
tempt, cannot be imagined. To reject your companion's
thoughts may sometimes be requisite in mere sincerity; but
to do so with this plebeian want of consideration, leaving
behind it the same sense of a stinging insult as would follow
the act of puffing the smoke from a tobacco-pipe into your
334
MISCELLANEA
face, is a striking instance of the real coarseness which too
often creeps amongst the refinements of the French.
This instance, by the way, illustrates also the fact that
the French swerve at times from the law of respect to others
not less grossly (though less frequently) than from the law of
self-respect; and it is worthy of remark that they swerve
uniformly from the proper tone of respect for others when it
happens that this respect is precluded from expressing itself
(as between equals it does) by means of kindness and courtesy.
Thus in the intercourse between master and servant the
French always hold a false tone, whether in real life, or in
the imitations of the drama. The French master is never
dignified, though he may chance to be tyrannical; and the
French servant, without meaning to be so, is always dis-
respectfully familiar. The late Lady Blessington well illus
trated the difference between a French and an English foot-
man. "If," said she, "I ask my English servant any question
"about the residence and occupation of a petitioner who may
"have called to solicit charity, he answers rigorously to the
particular questions I put; not by one hair's-breadth does
"he allow himself to wander into circumstances about which
"I have not questioned him. But the Frenchman fancies
"himself called upon to give his opinion upon every point,
"however remotely connected with my inquiries. He lives
“himself in volumes of garrulity, and, without designing any
disrespect, practically by his voluble manner forgets that
"he is speaking to his mistress."
66
((
To the manners of a nation belong also its usages; and
some of these amongst the French are essentially vulgar.
That field would lead us too far. But in the meantime,
when peace and the increasing facilities of locomotion are
annually bringing us more and more within French influence,
it may have a reasonable use to direct the thoughts upon the
current prejudice that French manners furnish any absolute
model,—to separate that which is really good and beautiful
from that which rests upon false foundations,—and, by sug-
gesting a spirit of jealous discrimination in relation to foreign
manners, eventually to warn us against exotic forms of
coxcombry, and sometimes against exotic forms of sheer
slang and brutality.
PRESENCE OF MIND
A FRAGMENT 1
THE Roman formula for summoning an earnest concentration
of the faculties upon any object whatever that happened to
be critically urgent was Hoc age, "Mind this!" or, in other
words, do not mind that. The antithetic formula was "aliud
agere," to mind something alien, or remote from the interest
then clamouring for attention. Our modern military orders
of "Attention!" and "Eyes straight!" were both included in
the Hoc age.
In the stern peremptoriness of this Roman
formula we read a picturesque expression of the Roman
character both as to its strength and its weakness of the
energy which brooked no faltering or delay (for beyond all
other races the Roman was natus rebus agendis), and also of
the morbid craving for action which was intolerant of any-
thing but the intensely practical. In modern times it is we
of the Anglo-Saxon blood,—that is, the British and the
Americans of the United States,-who inherit the Roman
temperament, with its vices and its fearful advantages of
power. In the ancient Roman these vices appeared more
barbarously conspicuous. We, the countrymen of Lord
Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton, and at one time the leaders of
austere thinking, cannot be supposed to shrink from the
speculative through any native incapacity for sounding its
depths. But the Roman had a real inaptitude for the specu-
1 Appeared originally in one of the numbers of Hogg's Instructor
for 1850 (vol. v, new series, pp. 193-195): reprinted in 1860 in the
last volume of De Quincey's edition of his Collective Writings.-M.
336
MISCELLANEA
lative; to him nothing was real that was not practical. He
had no metaphysics; he wanted the metaphysical instinct. It
is a strange distinction amongst races and nations that, of men
having a literature, the Roman, and the Roman only, had no
metaphysics. There was no school of native Roman philosophy:
the Roman was merely an eclectic or dilettante, picking up the
crumbs which fell from Grecian tables; and even mathematics
was so repulsive in its sublimer aspects to the Roman mind
that the very word mathematics had in Rome collapsed into
another name for the dotages of astrology. The mathe-
matician was a mere variety of expression for the wizard or
the conjuror.
From this unfavourable aspect of the Roman intellect it
is but justice that we should turn away to contemplate those
situations in which that same intellect showed itself preter-
naturally strong. To face a sudden danger by a correspond-
ing weight of sudden counsel or sudden evasion,-that was a
privilege essentially lodged in the Roman mind. But in
every nation some minds much more than others are repre-
sentative of the national type: they are normal minds,
reflecting, as in a focus, the characteristics of the race. Thus
Louis XIV has been held to be the idealized expression of
the French character; and amongst the Romans there can-
not be a doubt that the first Cæsar offers in a rare perfection
the revelation of that peculiar grandeur which belonged to
the children of Romulus.
We do not need, in this
One feature will suffice for
What was that grandeur?
place, to attempt its analysis.
our purpose. The late celebrated John Foster, in his essay
on Decision of Character,¹ amongst the accidents of life which
might serve to strengthen the natural tendencies to such a
character, or to promote its development, rightly insists on
desertion. To find itself in solitude, and still more to find
itself thrown upon that state of abandonment by sudden
treachery, crushes the feeble mind, but rouses a terrific re-
action of haughty self-assertion in that order of spirits which
matches and measures itself against difficulty and danger.
There is something corresponding to this case of human
treachery in the sudden caprices of fortune. A danger offer-
¹ See ante, Vol. XI, pp. 335-341.—M.
PRESENCE OF MIND
337
ing itself unexpectedly in some momentary change of blind
external agencies assumes to the feelings the character of a
perfidy accomplished by mysterious powers, and calls forth
something of the same resentment, and in a gladiatorial in-
tellect something of the same spontaneous resistance. A
sword that breaks in the very crisis of a duel, a horse killed
by a flash of lightning in the moment of collision with the
enemy, a bridge carried away by an avalanche at the instant
of a commencing retreat, affect the feelings like dramatic
incidents emanating from a human will. This man they
confound and paralyse; that man they rouse into resistance
as by a personal provocation and insult. And, if it happens
that these opposite effects show themselves in cases wearing
a national importance, they raise what would else have been
a mere casualty into the tragic or the epic grandeur of a
fatality. The superb character, for instance, of Cæsar's in-
tellect throws a colossal shadow, as of predestination, over
the most trivial incidents of his career. On the morning of
Pharsalia, every man who reads a record of that mighty event
feels, by a secret instinct,¹ that an earthquake is approaching
which must determine the final distribution of the ground,
and the relations amongst the whole family of man through
a thousand generations. Precisely the inverse case is realised
in some modern sections of history, where the feebleness or the
inertia of the presiding intellect communicates a character
of triviality to events that otherwise are of paramount his-
torical importance. In Cæsar's case, simply through the
perfection of his preparations arrayed against all conceivable
contingencies, there is an impression left as of some incarnate
Providence, veiled in a human form, ranging through the
ranks of the legions; whilst, on the contrary, in the modern
cases to which we allude, a mission, seemingly authorized by
inspiration, is suddenly quenched, like a torch falling into
water, by the careless character of the superintending
intellect. Neither case is without its appropriate interest.
1 "Feels by a secret instinct":-A sentiment of this nature is
finely expressed by Lucan in the passage beginning, "Advenisse
diem," &c. The circumstance by which Lucan chiefly defeats the
grandeur and simplicities of the truth is the monstrous numerical
exaggeration of the combatants and the killed at Pharsalia.
VOL. XIV
7
338
MISCELLANEA
The spectacle of a vast historical dependency pre-organized
by an intellect of unusual grandeur wears the grace of con-
gruity and reciprocal proportion. And, on the other hand,
a series of mighty events contingent upon the motion this
way or that of a frivolous hand, or suspended on the breath
of caprice, suggests the wild and fantastic disproportions of
ordinary life, where the mighty masquerade moves on for ever
through successions of the gay and the solemn, of the petty
and the majestic.
Cæsar's cast of character owed its impressiveness to the
combination which it offered of moral grandeur and monu-
mental immobility, such as we see in Marius, with the
dazzling intellectual versatility found in the Gracchi, in
Sylla, in Catiline, in Antony. The comprehension and
the absolute perfection of his prescience did not escape
the eye of Lucan, who describes him as "nil actum reputans
si quid superesset agendum." A fine lambent gleam of his
character escapes also in that magnificent fraction of a like
sketch where he is described as one incapable of learning the
style and sentiments suited to a private interest, "indocilis
privata loqui."
There has been a disposition manifested amongst modern
writers to disturb the traditional characters of Cæsar and his
chief antagonist. Audaciously to disparage Cæsar, and, with-
out a shadow of any new historic grounds, to exalt his feeble
competitor, has been adopted as the best chance for filling up
the mighty gulf between them. Lord Brougham, for instance,
on occasion of a dinner given by the Cinque Ports at Dover
to the Duke of Wellington, vainly attempted to raise our
countryman by unfounded and romantic depreciations of
Cæsar. He alleged that Cæsar had contended only with
barbarians. Now, that happens to be the literal truth as
regards Pompey. The victories on which his early reputation
was built were won from semi-barbarians: luxurious, it is
true, but also effeminate in a degree never suspected at Rome
until the next generation. The slight but summary contest
of Cæsar with Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, dissipated
at once the cloud of ignorance in which Rome had been
involved on this subject by the vast distance and the total
want of familiarity with Oriental habits. But Cæsar's chief
PRESENCE OF MIND
339
antagonists, those whom Lord Brougham specially indicated,
viz. the Gauls, were not barbarians. As a military people,
they were in a state of civilisation next to that of the
Romans. They were quite as much aguerris, hardened and
seasoned to war, as the children of Rome. In certain mili-
tary habits they were even superior. For purposes of war
four races were then pre-eminent in Europe: viz. the Romans,
the Macedonians, certain select tribes amongst the mixed
population of the Spanish Peninsula, and finally the Gauls.
These were all open to the recruiting-parties of Cæsar; and
amongst them all he had deliberately assigned his preference
to the Gauls. The famous legion who carried the Alauda
(the lark) upon their helmets was raised in Gaul from Cæsar's
private funds. They composed a select and favoured division
in his army, and, together with the famous tenth legion,
constituted a third part of his forces,—a third numerically
on the day of battle, but virtually a half. Even the rest of
Cæsar's army had been for so long a space recruited in the
Gauls, Transalpine as well as Cisalpine, that at Pharsalia the
bulk of his forces is known to have been Gaulish. There were
more reasons than one for concealing that fact. The policy of
Cæsar was to conceal it not less from Rome than from the
army itself.
But the truth became known at last to all wary
observers. Lord Brougham's objection to the quality of
Cæsar's enemies falls away at once when it is collated with
the deliberate composition of Cæsar's own army. Besides
that, Cæsar's enemies were not in any exclusive sense Gauls.
The German tribes, the Spanish, the Helvetian, the Illyrian,
Africans of every race and Moors, the islanders of the
Mediterranean, and the mixed populations of Asia, had all
been faced by Cæsar. And, if it is alleged that the forces of
Pompey, however superior in numbers, were at Pharsalia
largely composed of an Asiatic rabble, the answer is that
precisely of such a rabble were the hostile armies composed
from which he had won his laurels. False and windy re-
putations are sown thickly in history; but never was there
a reputation more thoroughly histrionic than that of Pompey.
The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, amongst a million of other
crotchets, did (it is true) make a pet of Pompey; and he was
encouraged in this caprice (which had for its origin the
340
MISCELLANEA
doctor's political1 animosity to Cesar) by one military critic,
viz. Sir William Napier. This distinguished soldier con-
veyed messages to Dr. Arnold warning him against the
popular notion that Pompey was a poor strategist. Now, had
there been any Roman state-paper office which Sir William
could be supposed to have searched and weighed against the
statements of surviving history, we might, in deference to
Sir William's great experience and talents, have consented to
a rehearing of the case. Unfortunately, no new materials
have been discovered; nor is it alleged that the old ones are
capable of being thrown into new combinations, so as to
reverse or to suspend the old adjudications. The judgment of
history stands; and amongst the records which it involves
none is more striking than this--that, whilst Cæsar-and
Pompey were equally assaulted by sudden surprises, the
first invariably met the sudden danger (sudden, but never un-
looked for) by counter-resources of evasion. He showed a
new front as often as his situation exposed a new peril. At
Pharsalia, where the cavalry of Pompey was far superior to
1 It is very evident that Dr. Arnold could not have understood the
position of politics in Rome. when he allowed himself to make a
favourite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the
gates of Erebus. Now, Pompey was not only the leader of a most
selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not
bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated
his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again,
though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of
tools. Cæsar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the sense of work-
ing by democratic agencies, was bending all his efforts to the recon-
struction of a new, purer, and enlarged aristocracy, no longer reduced
to the necessity of buying and selling the people in mere self-defence.
The everlasting war of bribery, operating upon universal poverty, the
internal disease of Roman society, would have been redressed by
Cæsar's measures, and was redressed according to the degree in which
those measures were really brought into action. New judicatures
were wanted, new judicial laws, a new aristocracy, by slow degrees a
new people, and the right of suffrage exercised within new restrictions:
all these things were needed for the cleansing of Rome; and that
Cæsar would have accomplished this labour of Hercules was the true
cause of his assassination. The scoundrels of the oligarchy felt their
doom to be approaching. It was the just remark of Napoleon that
Brutus (but still more, we may say, Cicero), though falsely accredited
as a patriot, was, in fact, the most exclusive and the most selfish of
aristocrats.
PRESENCE OF MIND
341
his own, he anticipated and was in full readiness for the
particular manœuvre by which it was attempted to make this
superiority available against himself. By a new formation
of his troops he foiled the attack, and caused it to recoil
upon the enemy. Had Pompey, then, no rejoinder ready for
meeting this reply? No. His one arrow being shot, his
quiver was exhausted. Without an effort at parrying any
longer, the mighty game was surrendered as desperate.
"Check to the king!" was heard in silent submission; and
no further stratagem was invoked, even in silent prayer, but
the stratagem of flight. Yet Cæsar himself, objects a cele-
brated doctor (viz. Bishop Warburton), was reduced by his
own rashness at Alexandria to a condition of peril and
embarrassment not less alarming than the condition of Pompey
at Pharsalia. How far this surprise might be reconcilable
with Cæsar's military credit is a question yet undecided; but
this at least is certain, that he was equal to the occasion; and,
if the surprise was all but fatal, the evasion was all but mira-
culous. Many were the sudden surprises which Cæsar had
to face before and after this-on the shores of Britain, at
Marseilles, at Munda, at Thapsus; from all of which he issued
triumphantly, failing only as to that final one from which
he had in pure nobility of heart announced his determination
to shelter himself under no precautions.
Such cases of personal danger and escape are exciting to
the imagination, from the disproportion between the interests
of an individual and the interests of a whole nation which
for the moment happen to be concurrent. The death or the
escape of Cæsar at one moment rather than another would
make a difference in the destiny of the human race. And
in kind, though not in degree, the same interest has fre-
quently attached to the fortunes of a prince or military
leader. Effectually the same dramatic character belongs to
any struggle with sudden danger, though not (like Cæsar's)
successful. That it was not successful becomes a new reason
for pursuing it with interest; since equally in that result as
in one more triumphant we read the altered course by which
History is henceforward destined to flow.
For instance, how much depended—what a weight of his-
tory hung in suspense-upon the evasions, or attempts at
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MISCELLANEA
evasion, of Charles I. He was a prince of great ability; and
yet it confounds us to observe with how little of foresight, or
of circumstantial inquiry, either as regarded things or per-
sons, he entered upon those difficult enterprises of escape
from the vigilance of military guardians. His first escape,
viz. that into the Scottish camp before Newark, was not
surrounded with any circumstances of difficulty. His second
escape, from Hampton Court, had become a matter of more
urgent policy, and was proportionally more difficult of execu-
tion. He was attended on that occasion by two gentlemen
(Berkley and Ashburnham) upon whose qualities of courage.
and readiness, and upon whose acquaintance with the acci-
dents, local or personal, that surrounded their path, all was
staked. Yet one of these gentlemen was always suspected of
treachery; and both were imbecile as regarded that sort of
wisdom on which it was possible for a royal person to rely.
Had the questions likely to arise been such as belong to a
masquerading adventure, these gentlemen might have been
qualified for the situation. As it was, they sank in mere
distraction under the responsibilities of the occasion. The
King was as yet in safety. At Lord Southampton's country
mansion he enjoyed the protection of a loyal family ready to
face any risk in his behalf; and his retreat was entirely con-
cealed. Suddenly this scene changes. The military com-
mander in the Isle of Wight is gratuitously made acquainted
with the king's situation, and brought into his presence,
together with a military guard, though no effort had been
made to exact securities from his honour in behalf of the
king. His single object was evidently to arrest the king.
His military honour, his duty to the Parliament, his private
interest, all pointed to the same result, viz. the immediate
apprehension of the fugitive prince. What was there in the
opposite scale to set against these notorious motives? Simply
the fact that he was nephew to the king's favourite chaplain,
Dr. Hammond. What rational man, in a case of that nature,
would have relied upon so poor a trifle? Yet even this in-
considerable bias was much more than balanced by another
of the same kind, but in the opposite direction. Colonel
Hammond was nephew to the king's chaplain; so far good;
but in the meantime he was the husband of Cromwell's
PRESENCE OF MIND
343
niece; and upon Cromwell privately, and the whole faction
of the Independents politically, he relied for all his hopes of
advancement. The result was that, from mere inertia of
mind and criminal negligence in his two attendants, the poor
king had run right into the custody of the very jailer whom
his enemies would have selected by preference.
Thus, then, from fear of being made a prisoner, Charles
had quietly walked into the military rat-trap of Carisbrook
Castle. The very security of this prison, however, might
throw the governor off his guard. Another escape might be
possible; and again an escape was arranged. It reads like
some leaf torn from the records of a lunatic hospital, to hear
its circumstances, and the particular point upon which it
founded. Charles was to make his exit through a window.
This window, however, was fenced by iron bars; and these
bars had been to a certain extent eaten through with aqua-
fortis. The king had succeeded in pushing his head through,
and upon that result he relied for his escape; for he con-
nected this trial with the following strange maxim or
postulate, viz. that wheresoever the head could pass there
the whole person could pass. It needs not to be said that, in
the final experiment, this absurd rule was found not to hold
good. The king stuck fast about the chest and shoulders,
and was extricated with some difficulty. Had it even been
otherwise, the attempt would have failed; for, on looking
down from amidst the iron bars, the king beheld, in the
imperfect light, a number of people who were not amongst
his accomplices.
Equal in fatuity, almost one hundred and fifty years later,
were the several attempts at escape concerted on behalf of
the French royal family. The abortive escape to Varennes
is now familiarly known to all the world, and impeaches the
good sense of the king himself not less than of his friends.
The arrangements for the falling in with the cavalry escort
could not have been worse managed had they been intrusted
to children. But even the general outline of the scheme,—an
escape in a collective family party, father, mother, children
and servants—and the king himself, whose features, by means
of the coinage, were known to millions, not even withdraw-
ing himself from the public gaze at the stations for changing
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MISCELLANEA
horses, all this is calculated to perplex and sadden the pity-
ing reader with the idea that some supernatural infatuation
had bewildered the predestined victims. Meantime an earlier
escape than this to Varennes had been planned, viz. to
Brussels. The preparations for this, which have been
narrated by Madame de Campan, were conducted with a
disregard of concealment even more astounding to people of
ordinary good sense. 'Do you really need to escape at all ?”
would have been the question of many a lunatic: "if you
do, surely you need also to disguise your preparations for
escape."
But alike the madness or the providential wisdom of such
attempts commands our profoundest interest: alike whether
conducted by a Cæsar or by the helpless members of families
utterly unfitted to act independently for themselves. These
attempts belong to History, and it is in that relation that
they become philosophically so impressive. Generations
through an infinite series are contemplated by us as silently
awaiting the turning of a sentinel round a corner, or the
casual echo of a footstep. Dynasties have trepidated on the
chances of a sudden cry from an infant carried in a basket;
and the safety of Empires has been suspended, like the de-
scent of an avalanche, upon the moment earlier or the moment
later of a cough or a sneeze. And, high above all, ascends
solemnly the philosophic truth that the least things and the
greatest are bound together as elements equally essential to
the mysterious universe.
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
[BRITISH Commerce with China, the real beginnings of which date
from the early part of the seventeenth century, had been long impeded
and crippled by being confined, in conformity with the traditional
Chinese policy of exclusiveness, to the single port of Canton. Two
famous embassies from George III to the Chinese Emperor,—that of
Lord Macartney in 1792, and that of Lord Amherst in 1816,—had
failed to bring about any appreciable change in this state of matters;
and the restriction became more intolerable than ever after 1834, when
the monopoly of the East India Company in the trade with China
came to an end, and business with Canton was open to private
British merchants. At length, in 1839, certain bickerings between the
Chinese mandarins and the British traders, nominally on the subject of
the smuggling of opium into China by British subjects, led to an actual
war,—the war which forms the subject of De Quincey's previous article
on China in this volume. That war lasted till 1842; in the August of
which year, after severe losses inflicted on the Chinese, a treaty of peace
was agreed upon between Sir Henry Pottinger and the Commissioner
for the Chinese Emperor. By this treaty not only was a large money
indemnity obtained from the Emperor for the costs of the war, but the
four additional ports of Amoy, Foo-chow, Ning-po, and Shanghai were
declared open for the future to British trade, and the Island of Hong-
Kong was ceded in perpetuity to Great Britain.
On this footing
things went on, though not without strain, till 1856, when a new war
broke out. The immediate cause was the seizure by the Chinese, on
the 8th of October in that year, of the crew of a Hong-Kong “lorcha
or trading vessel called The Arrow, followed by certain other high-
handed proceedings of contempt and defiance by the Chinese Imperial
Commissioner Yeh. Not till June 1858 were the Chinese compelled
into submission and into the signing of another treaty,-called the
Treaty of Tien-Tsin,-by which not only was liberty of travel over the
interior of China granted to British subjects, with access for com-
mercial purposes and right of residence in certain Chinese cities in
addition to the five of the previous treaty, but toleration of Christianity
in China was guaranteed, and direct diplomatic intercourse was
>>
346
MISCELLANEA
established between her Britannic Majesty and the Chinese Emperor
himself at Peking. It was this war of 1856-8, while it was yet only
in its beginnings, and hardly in actual progress, that drew from De
Quincey a new expression of the strong views which he had long enter-
tained on the subject of British relations with China. No man of his
generation had more of the "John Bull" spirit, or, as it is now called,
the "Jingo" spirit, in his notions of the proper behaviour of Britain
under any insult from a foreign power; China, as known to him by
his readings, had always been an object of his special abomination;
and it is just possible that the fact that one of his sons had died in
China in military service (see ante, Vol. IV, p. 8) had imparted a
tinge of bitter personal interest to this theoretical antipathy. At all
events, no sooner had he heard of the affair of the seizure of the lorcha
in October 1856, aud of Commissioner Yeh's subsequent defiances of
British power and the British flag, than he was up in flame. Though the
Collective Edition of his Writings was then on hand,-only five of the
volumes out, and the publisher, Mr. Hogg, waiting anxiously for the
rest, he interrupted that labour in order to contribute to Mr. Hogg's
then current Edinburgh periodical called Titan (described ante, Vol. I,
p. xiv, as a continuation in monthly form of the previous Edinburgh
weekly called Hogg's Instructor) two articles on China and the China
Question. The first appeared in the number of Titan for February
1857, and the second in the April number. Then, not content with
such magazine circulation of his views, he republished the two
articles, with a Preliminary Note, a Preface, and other additions,
in the form of an independent pamphlet. Nor did this suffice. He
recurred to the subject in a third article for Titan, published in July
1857. Altogether, in the first half of 1857, he had written as much on
the subject of the new British war with China as would make, if printed
entire, about 90 pages of the text of the present volume. He did
not himself reprint any portion of all this Chinese matter in any of
the volumes of his Collective Edition that occupied his remaining and
last years, but left the whole lying in the condition in which it had
been produced,—namely, as a separate piece of literary industry
collateral by chance with the middle volumes of his Collective Edition.
Naturally this was not satisfactory; and, when Messrs. Black com-
pleted their new issue of the collected writings by the publication in
1871 of the second of their supplementary volumes, care was taken to
include in the volume that central portion of the straggle of successively
published matter which De Quincey himself had entitled simply
China, " and which might be supposed therefore to contain the
permanent core of his disquisitions as distinct from the ephemeral
appendages. It is even more unnecessary to reproduce in the present
volume,—already containing as it does the whole of De Quincey's long
and hitherto forgotten dissertation on the previous war with China,-
the entire aggregate of what he wrote in 1857 on the occasion of the
second Chinese War. Much of what he then wrote was but repetition
and reapplication of the views of his previous paper, or is otherwise
now defunct; and it is enough therefore to conserve that most sub-
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
347
stantial and novel portion of the whole which was reprinted under
the title "China"-De Quincey's own title for it,-in Messrs. Black's
re-issue of the Collective Edition. This is, indeed, the sole portion
that has now the interest of literary value. To distinguish this
Chinese article of 1857 from its predecessor of 1840, we have, however,
enlarged the form of the title.-M.]
In
In the days of Grecian Paganism, when morals (whether social
or domestic) had no connexion whatever with the National
Religion, it followed that there could be no organ corre-
sponding to our modern PULPIT (Christian or Mahometan)
for teaching and illustrating the principles of morality.
Those principles, it was supposed, taught and explained.
themselves. Every man's understanding, heart, and con-
science, furnished him surely with light enough for his guid-
ance on a path so plain, within a field so limited, as the
daily life of a citizen-Spartan, Theban, or Athenian.
reality, this field was even more limited than at first sight
appeared. Suppose the case of a Jew, living in pre-Christian
Judea, under the legal code of Deuteronomy and Leviticus;
or suppose a Mussulman at this day, living under the control
of Mahometan laws. He finds himself left to his own moral
discretion hardly in one action out of fifty; so thoroughly
has the municipal law of his country (the Pentateuch in the
one case, the Koran in the other) superseded and swallowed
up the freedom of individual movement. Very much of the
same legal restraint tied up the fancied autonomy of the
Grecian citizen. Not the moral censor, but the constable,
was at his heels, if he allowed himself too large a licence.
In fact, so small a portion of his actions was really resigned
to his own discretion that the very humblest intellect was
equal to the call upon its energies. Under these circum-
stances what need for any public and official lecturer upon
distinctions so few, so plain, so little open to casuistic
doubts? To abstain from assault and battery; not to
run away from battle relicta non bene parmula; not to
ignore the deposit confided to his care: these made up
the sum of cases that life brought with it as possibilities
in any ordinary experience. As an office, therefore, the
task of teaching morality was amongst the ancients wholly
superfluous. Pulpit there was none, nor any public teacher
348
MISCELLANEA
of morality. As regarded his own moral responsibility,
every man walked in broad daylight, needed no guide, and
found none.
But Athens, the marvellous city that in all things ran
ahead of her envious and sullen contemporaries, here also
made known her supremacy. Civilisation, not as a word,
not as an idea, but as a thing, but as a power, was known in
Athens. She only through all the world had a theatre, and
in the service of this theatre she retained the mightiest by
far of her creative intellects. Teach she could not in those
fields where no man was unlearned; light was impossible
where there could be no darkness; and to guide was a hope-
less pretension when all aberrations must be wilful. But, if
it were a vain and arrogant assumption to illuminate, as
regarded those primal truths which, like the stars, are hung
aloft, and shine for all alike,¹ neither vain nor arrogant was
it to fly her falcons at game almost as high. If not light,
yet life; if not absolute birth, yet moral regeneration, and
fructifying warmth: these were quickening forces which
abundantly she was able to engraft upon truths else slumber-
ing and inert. Not affecting to teach the new, she could yet
vivify the old. Those moral echoes, so solemn and pathetic,
that lingered in the ear from her stately tragedies, all spoke
with the authority of voices from the grave.
The great
phantoms that crossed her stage all pointed with shadowy
fingers to shattered dynasties and the ruins of once-regal
houses, Pelopidæ or Labdacidæ, as monuments of sufferings
in expiation of violated morals, or sometimes—which even
more thrillingly spoke to human sensibilities-of guilt too
awful to be expiated. And, in the midst of these appalling
records, what is their ultimate solution? From what key-
note does Athenian Tragedy trace the expansion of its own
dark impassioned music? Yẞpis (hybris) the spirit of out-
rage and arrogant self-assertion-in that temper lurks the
original impulse towards wrong; and to that temper the
Greek Drama adapts its monitory legends. The doctrine of
1 I quote a sentiment of Wordsworth's in "The Excursion," but
cannot remember its expression. [The expression is "The primal
duties shine aloft, like stars." It is in Book IX of The Excursion.-
M.]
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
349
the Hebrew Scriptures as to vicarious retribution is at times
discovered secretly moving through the scenic poetry of
Athens. His own crime is seen hunting a man through five
generations, and finding him finally in the persons of his
innocent descendants. Curses, like young fowls, come
home in the evening to roost." This warning doctrine,
adopted by Southey as a motto to his "Kehama,” is dimly
to be read moving in shadows through the Greek legends
and semi-historic traditions. In other words, atrocious
crime of any man towards others in his stages of power
comes round upon him with vengeance in the darkening
twilight of his evening. And, accordingly, upon no one
feature of moral temper is the Greek Tragedy more frequent
or earnest in its denunciations than upon all expressions
of self-glorification or of arrogant disparagement applied to
others.
What nation is it, beyond all that ever have played a part
on this stage of Earth, which ought, supposing its vision
cleansed for the better appreciation of things and persons, to
feel itself primarily interested in these Grecian denunciations?
What other than China? When Coleridge, in lyric fury,
apostrophised his mother-country in terms of hyperbolic
wrath, almost of frenzy-
"The nations hate thee!"
every person who knew him was aware that in this savage
denunciation he was simply obeying the blind impulse of
momentary partisanship; and nobody laughed more heartily
than Coleridge himself, some few moons later, at his own
violence. But in the case of China this apostrophe-The
nations hate thee !--would pass by acclamation, without need-
ing the formality of a vote. Such has been the inhuman
insolence of this vilest and silliest amongst nations towards
the whole household of man that (upon the same principle
as governs our sympathy with the persons and incidents of a
novel or a drama) we are pledged to a moral detestation of
all who can be supposed to have participated in its constant
explosions of unprovoked contumely to ourselves.
A man
who should profess esteem for Shakspere's Iago would him-
self become an object of disgust and suspicion. Yet Iago is
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MISCELLANEA
but a fabulous agent; it was but a dream in which he
played so diabolic a part. But the offending Chinese not
only supported that flesh-and-blood existence which Iago had
not, but also are likely (which Iago is not in any man's
dreams) to repeat their atrocious insolences as often as oppor-
tunities offer. Our business at present with the Chinese is
to speculate a little upon the future immediately before us,
so far as it is sure to be coloured by the known dispositions
of that people, and so far as it ought to be coloured by
changes in our inter-relations, dictated by our improved
knowledge of the case, and by that larger experience of
Chinese character which has been acquired since our last
treaty with their treacherous executive. Meantime, for one
moment let us fix our attention upon a remarkable verifica-
tion of the old saying, adopted by Southey, that “ curses
come home to roost."
Two centuries have elapsed, and something more,
since our national expansion brought us into a painful
necessity of connecting ourselves with the conceited and
most ignorant inhabitants of China.
From the very
first our connexion had its foundations laid in malignity
so far as the Chinese were concerned, in affected disdain, and
in continual outbreaks of brutal inhospitality.
That we
should have reconciled ourselves to such treatment formed,
indeed, one-half of that apology which might have been
pleaded on behalf of the Chinese. But why, then, did we
reconcile ourselves? Simply for a reason which offers the
other half of the apology-namely, that no thoroughly
respectable section of the English nation ever presented
itself at Canton in those early days as candidates for any
share in so humiliating a commerce. On reviewing that
memorable fact, we must acknowledge that it offers some
inadequate excuse on behalf of the Chinese. They had seen
nothing whatever of our national grandeur; nothing of our
power; of our enlightened and steadfast constitutional
system; of our good faith; of our magnificent and ancient
literature; of our colossal charities and provision for every
form of human calamity; of our insurance system, which so
vastly enlarged our moneyed power; of our facilities for
combining and using the powers of all (as in our banks the
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
351
money of all) for common purposes; of our mighty shipping
interest; of our docks, arsenals, lighthouses, manufactories,
private or national. Much beside there was that they could
not have understood, so that not to have seen it was of small
moment; but these material and palpable indications of
power and antiquity even Chinamen, -even Changs and
Fangs, Chungs and Fungs,-could have appreciated. Yet all
these noble monuments of wisdom and persevering energy
they had seen absolutely not at all; and the men of our
nation who had resorted to Canton were too few at any time
to suggest an impression of national greatness. Numerically,
we must have seemed a mere vagrant tribe; and,—as the
Chinese, even in 1851, and in the council-chamber of the
Emperor, settled it as the most plausible hypothesis that the
English People had no territorial home, but made a shift
(like some birds) to float upon the sea in fine weather, and in
rougher seasons to run for "holes," upon the whole we
English are worse off than are the naked creatures that
affront the elements.
"If on windy days the raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less he loves his haven
On the bosom of a cliff.
Though almost with eagle pinion
O'er the rocks the chamois roam,
Yet he has some small dominion
Which no doubt he calls his home."
Yes, no doubt. But, worse off than all these than sea-
horse, raven, chamois-the Englishman, it seems, of Chinese
ethnography has not a home, except in crevices of rocks.
What are we to think of that nation which by its supreme
councils could accredit such follies? We in fact suffer from
the same cause, a thousandfold exaggerated, as that which
injured the French in past times amongst ourselves. Up to
the time when Voltaire came twice to England, no French-
man of eminence or distinguished talents had ever found a
sufficient motive for resisting his home-loving indolence so
far as to pay us a visit. The court had been visited in the
days of James I. by Sully; in those of Charles II by De
Grammont; but the nation for itself, and with an honour-
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MISCELLANEA
able enthusiasm, first of all by Voltaire. What was the
consequence ? No Frenchman ever coming amongst us,
except (1) as a cook, (2) as a hairdresser, (3) as a dancing-
master-was it unnatural in the English to appreciate the
French nation accordingly ?—
"Paulum sepultæ distat inertiæ
Celata virtus."
What they showed us, that, in commercial phrase, we carried
to their account; what they gave, for that we credited them;
and it was unreasonable to complain of our injustice in a
case where so determinately they were unjust to themselves.
Not until lately have we in England done any justice to the
noble qualities of our French neighbours. But yet, for this
natural result of the intercourse between us, the French have
to thank themselves.
With Canton the case was otherwise. Nobody having
freedom could be expected to visit such a dog-kennel, where
all alike were muzzled, and where the neutral ground for
exercise measured about fifteen pocket-handkerchiefs. Accord-
ingly, the select few who had it not in their power to stay
away proclaimed themselves ipso facto as belonging to that
class of persons who were willing to purchase the privilege
of raising a fortune at any price, and through any sacrifice
of dignity, personal or national. Almost excusably, there-
fore, the British were confounded for a time with the
Portuguese and the Dutch, who had notoriously practised.
sycophantic arts, carried to shocking extremities. The first
person who taught the astonished Chinese what difference
might happen to lurk between nation and nation was Lord
Anson not yet a lord; in fact, a simple commodore, and in
a crazy old hulk; but who, in that same superannuated ship,
had managed to plough up the timbers of the Acapulco
galleon, though by repute bullet-proof, and eventually to
1 "By repute":-The crew of the Centurion were so persuaded
that these treasure-galleons were impregnable to ordinary cannon-balls
that the commodore found it advisable to reason with them and such
was their confidence in him that, upon his promise to find a road
into the ship if they would only lay him alongside of her, they
unanimously voted the superstition a Spanish lie.
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
353
""
make prize of considerably more than half-a-million sterling
for himself and his crew. Having accomplished this little
feat, the commodore was not likely to put much value upon
the "crockery ware (as he termed the forts) of the
Chinese. Not come, however, upon any martial mission, he
confined himself to so much of warlike demonstration as
sufficed for his own immediate purposes. To place our
Chinese establishments upon a more dignified footing was
indeed a most urgent work, but work for councils more
As
deliberate, and for armaments on a far larger scale.
regarded the present, such was the vast distance between
Canton and Peking that there was no time for this Anson
aggression to reach the ears of the Emperor's Council before
all had passed off. It was but a momentary typhoon, that
thoroughly frightened the Flowery People, but was gone
before it could influence their policy. By a pleasant
accident, the Manilla treasure captured by Anson was pass-
ing in waggons in the rear of St. James's Palace during the
natal hour of the Prince of Wales (George IV); consequently
we are within sight, chronologically, of the period which
will round the century dated from Lord Anson's assault.
Within that century is comprised all that has ever been done
by war or by negotiation to bring down upon their knees
this ultra-gasconading, but also ultra-pusillanimous, nation.
Some thirty and more years after the Anson skirmish, it was
resolved that the best way to give weight and splendour to
our diplomatic overtures was by a solemn embassy, headed
by a man of rank. At that time the East India Company
had a monopoly interest in the tea trade of Canton, as sub-
What we had to ask from
sequently in the opium trade.
the Chinese was generally so reasonable, and so indispensable
to the establishment of our national name upon any footing
of equality, that it ought not for a moment to have been
tolerated as any subject for debate. There is a difficulty
often experienced even in civilised Europe of making out
any just equations between the titular honours of different
states. Ignorant people are constantly guided in such
The acrimonious
questions by mere vocal resemblances.
Prince Pückler Muskau, so much irritated at being mistaken
in France for an Englishman, and in fifty ways betraying
VOL. XIV
2 A
354
MISCELLANEA
1
his mortifying remembrances connected with England,
charges us with being immoderately addicted to a reveren-
tial homage towards the title of "Prince"; in which, to any
thoughtful man, there would be found no subject for blame ;
since with us there can be no prince ¹ that is not by blood
connected with the royal family; so that such a homage is
paid under an erroneous impression as to the fact, but not the
less under an honourable feeling as to the purpose,-which
is that of testifying the peculiar respect in a free country
cheerfully paid to a constitutional throne. But, if we had
been familiarised with the mock princes of Sicily and Russia
(amongst which last are found some reputed to have earned
a living in St. Petersburg as barbers), we should certainly
moderate our respect towards the bearers of princely honours.
Every man of the world knows how little a French marquise
or comtesse can pretend to rank with a British marchioness
or countess; as reasonably might you suppose an equation
between a modern consul of commerce and the old Roman
consul of the awful S.P.Q.R.
In dealing with a vile trickster like the Chinese executive
-unacquainted with any one restraint of decorum or hon-
ourable sensibility-it is necessary for a diplomatist to be
constantly upon his guard, and to have investigated all these
cases of international equation, before coming abruptly to any
call for a decision in some actual case. Cromwell was not
the man to have attached much importance to the question
of choosing a language for the embodying of a treaty, or for
the intercourse of the hostile envoys in settling the terms of
such a treaty; and yet, when he ascertained that the French
Court made it a point of honour to use their own language
in the event of any modern language being tolerated, he
insisted upon the adoption of Latin as the language of the
treaty. With the Chinese a special, almost a superstitiously
2
1 "Can be no prince" :- In the technical heraldic usage a duke in
our peerage is styled a prince. But this book-honour finds no accept-
ation or echo in the usage of life; not even in cases like those of
Marlborough and Wellington, where the dukes have received prince-
doms from foreign sovereigns, and might, under the sanction of their
own sovereign, assume their continental honours.
2 This tells favourably for Cromwell, as an instance of fair and
honourable nationality in one direction; and yet in the counter-direc-
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
355
minute, attention to punctilios is requisite, because it has
now become notorious that they assign a symbolic and repre-
sentative value to every act of intercourse between their
official deputies and all foreign ambassadors.
Does the am-
bassador dine at some imperial table, the Emperor has been
feeding the barbarians! Do some of the court mandarins
dine with the ambassador, then the Emperor has deigned
to restore happiness to the barbarians by sending those who
represent his person to speak words of hope and consolation!
Does the ambassador convey presents from his own sovereign
to the emperor,-the people of Peking are officially informed
that the Barbarians are bringing their tribute ! Does the
Emperor make presents to the ambassador,—in that case his
Majesty has been furnishing the means of livelihood to bar-
barians exhausted by pestilence, and by the failure of crops !
Huc, the French missionary, who travelled in the highest
north latitudes of China, traversing the whole of the frightful
deserts between Peking and Lassa (or, in his nomenclature,
La Sae), the capital of Thibet, and who, speaking the Mongol
language, had the rare advantage of passing for a native sub-
ject of the Chinese Emperor, and therefore of conciliating
unreserved confidence, tells us of some desperate artifices
practised by the imperial government. In particular, he
mentions this :-Towards the close of the British War a
Tartar general, reputed invincible, had been summoned from a
very distant post in the north to Peking, and thence immediately
despatched against the detested enemy. Upon this man's
prestige of invincibility, and upon the notorious fact that he
really had been successful in repressing some predatory
aggressors in one of the Tartarys, great hopes were built of
laurel crops to be harvested without end, and of a dreadful
tion, how ill it tells for his discernment that, in forecasting a memoir
on his own career for continental use, and therefore properly to be
written in Latin, his thoughts turned (under some accountable bias) to
continental writers, descending even to such a fellow as Meric Casaubon,
-the son, indeed, of an illustrious scholar, but himself a man of poor
pretensions, and all the while this English-hearted Protector utterly
overlooked his own immortal secretary. [The use of Latin in all
diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers had begun under the
English Commonwealth before Cromwell's accession to the sovereignty;
and he only continued it.--M.]
356
MISCELLANEA
retribution awaiting the doomed barbarian enemy. Naturally
this poor man, in collision with the English forces, met the
customary fate. M. Huc felt, therefore, a special curiosity
to learn in what way the Chinese Government had varnished
the result in this particular case, upon which so very much
of public interest had settled. This interest being in its
nature so personal, and the name of the Tartar hero so noto-
rious, it had been found impossible for the imperial govern-
ment to throw their mendacity into its usual form of blank
denial applied to the total result, or of intricate transformation
applied to the details. The Barbarians, it was confessed, had
for the present escaped. The British defeat had not been
of that vast extent which was desirable. But why? The
reason was that, in the very paroxysm of martial fury, on
coming within sight of the Barbarians, the Tartar general
was seized by the very impertinent¹ passion of pity. He
pitied the poor wretches; through which mistake in his
passions the red-haired devils effected their escape, doing,
however, various acts of mischief in the course of the said
escape such being the English mode of gratitude for past
favours.
With a Government capable of frauds like these, and a
People (at least in the mandarin class) trained through cen-
turies to a conformity of temper with their Government, we
shall find, in the event of any more extended intercourse
with China, the greatest difficulty in maintaining the just
equations of rank and privilege. But the difficulty as regards
the people of the two nations promises to be a trifle by com-
parison with that which besets the relations between the two
crowns. We came to know something more circumstantially
about this question during the second decennium of this
nineteenth century. The unsatisfactoriness of our social
position had suggested the necessity of a second embassy.
Probably it was simply an accidental difference in the temper
of those forming at that time the imperial council which
caused the ceremonial ko-tou of court presentation to be
debated with so much more of rancorous bigotry. Lord
Amherst was now the ambassador, a man of spirit and dignity,
1 66 Impertinent" :-That is, according to an old and approved
Parliamentary explanation, not pertinent, irrelevant.
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
357
to whom the honour of his country might have been safely
confided, had he stood in a natural and intelligible position;
but it was the inevitable curse of an ambassador to Peking
that his official station had contradictory aspects, and threw
him upon incompatible duties. His first duty was to his
country; and nobody, in so many words, denied that. But
this patriotic duty, though a conditio sine qua non for his
diplomatic functions, and a perpetual restraint upon their
exercise, was not the true and efficient cause of his mission.
That lay in the commercial interests of a great Company.
This secondary duty was clearly his paramount duty as
regarded the good sense of the situation. Yet the other was
the paramount duty as regarded the sanctity of its obligation,
and the impossibility of compromising it by so much as the
shadow of a doubt or the tremor of a hesitation. Neverthe-
less, Lord Amherst was plied with secret whispers (more
importunate than the British public knew) from the East
India Company, suggesting that it was childish to lay too
much stress on a pure ceremonial usage, of no more weight
than a bow or a curtsey, and which pledged neither himself
nor his country to any consequences. But, in its own nature,
the homage was that of a slave. Genuflexions, prostrations,
and knockings of the ground nine times with the forehead,
were not modes of homage to be asked from the citizen of
a free state, far less from that citizen when acting as the
acknowledged representative of that state.
For one moment, let us pause to review this hideous
degradation of human nature which has always disgraced
the East. That no Asiatic state has ever debarbarised itself
is evident from the condition of WOMAN at this hour all
over Asia, and from this very abject form of homage which
already in the days of Darius and Xerxes we find estab-
lished, and extorted from the compatriots of Miltiades and
Themistocles.1
1 We may see by the recorded stratagem of an individual Greek,
cunning enough, but, on the other hand, not at all less base than that
which he sought to escape, that these prostrations (to which Euripides
alludes with such lyrical and impassioned scorn, in a chorus of his
Orestes," as fitted only for Phrygian slaves) must have been exacted
from all Greeks alike, as the sine qua non for admission to the royal
presence. Some Spartan it was, already slavish enough by his train-
"
358
MISCELLANEA
There cannot be any doubt that the ko-tou had descended
to the court of Susa and Persepolis from the elder court of
Babylon, and to that from the yet elder court of Nineveh.
Man in his native grandeur, standing erect, and with his
countenance raised to the heavens
(Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri),
presents a more awful contrast to man when passing through
the shadow of this particular degradation than under any or
all of the other symbols at any time devised for the sensuous
expression of a servile condition-scourges, ergastula, infibu-
lation, or the neck-chains and ankle-chains of the Roman
atriensis. The "bloody writing" is far more legible in this
than any other language by which the slavish condition is or
can be published to the world, because in this only the sufferer
of the degradation is himself a party to it, an accomplice in
his own dishonour. All else may have been the stern doom
of calamitous necessity. Here only we recognise, without an
opening for disguise or equivocation, the man's own deliberate
act. He has not been branded passively (personal resistance
being vain) with the record of a master's ownership, like a
sheep, a mnle, or any other chattel, but has solemnly branded
himself. Wearing, therefore, so peculiar and differential a
character, to whom is it in modern days that this bestial
yoke of servitude as regards Christendom owes its revival?
Without hope, the Chinese despot would not have attempted
ing, who tried the artifice of dropping a ring, and affecting to pass off
his prostrations as simply so many efforts to search for and to recover
his ring. But, to the feelings of any honourable man, this stratagem
would not avail him. One baseness cannot be evaded by another.
The anecdote is useful, however; for this picturesque case, combined
with others, satisfactorily proves that the sons of Greece could and
did submit to the ko-tou for the furtherance of what seemed to them
an adequate purpose. Had newspapers existed in those days, this
self-degradation would have purchased more infamy in Greece than
benefit in Persia. The attempted evasion by this miserable Greek,
who sought to have the benefits of the ko-tou without paying its price,
-thinking, in fact, that honour could be saved by swindling, seems
on a level with that baseness ascribed (untruly, it may be hoped) to
Galileo; whom some persons represent as seeking to evade his own
formal recantation of the doctrine as to the earth's motion by mutter-
ing inaudibly, "But it does move, for all that." This would have.
been the trick of the Grecian ring-dropper.
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
359
to enforce such a Moloch vassalage upon the western world.
Through whom, therefore, and through whose facile com-
pliance with the insolent exaction, did he first conceive this
hope?
It has not been observed, so far as we know, that it was
Peter I of Russia, vulgarly called Peter the Great, who pre-
pared for us that fierce necessity of conflict, past and yet to
come, through which we British, standing alone—but hence-
forth, we may hope, energetically supported by the United
States, if not by France-have, on behalf of the whole
Western Nations, victoriously resisted the arrogant preten-
sions of the East. About four years after the death of our
Queen Anne, Peter despatched from St. Petersburg (his new
capital, yet raw and unfinished) a very elaborate embassy to
Peking, by a route which measured at least ten thousand
versts, or, in English miles, about two-thirds of that dis-
tance. It was, in fact, a vast caravan, or train of caravans,
moving so slowly that it occupied sixteen calendar months
in the journey. Peter was by natural disposition a bully.
Offering outrages of every kind upon the slightest impulse,
no man was so easily frightened into a retreat and abject
concessions as this drunken prince. He had at the very time
of this embassy submitted tamely to a most atrocious injury
from the eastern side of the Caspian. The Khan of Khiva
-a place since made known to us all as the foulest of
murdering dens-had seduced by perfidy the credulous little
army despatched by Peter into quarters so widely scattered that
with little difficulty he had there massacred nearly the whole
force; about three or four hundreds out of so many thousands
being all that had recovered their vessels on the Caspian.
This atrocity Peter had pocketed, and apparently found his
esteem for the Khan greatly increased by such an instance
of energy. He was now meditating, by this great Peking
embassy, two objects: first, the ordinary objects of a
trading mission, together with the adjustment of several
disputes affecting the Russian frontier towards Chinese
Tartary and Thibet; but, secondly, and more earnestly,
the privilege of having a resident minister at the capital
of the Chinese Emperors. This last purpose was con-
nected with an evil result for all the rest of Christendom.
360
MISCELLANEA
It is well known to all who have taken any pains in study-
ing the Chinese temper and character that obstinacy
obstinacy like that of mules-is one of its foremost features.
And it is also known, by a multiplied experience, that the
very greatest importance attaches in Chinese estimate to the
initial movement. Once having conceded a point, you need
not hope to recover your lost ground. The Chinese are, as
may easily be read in their official papers and acts, intellectu-
ally a very imbecile people; and their peculiar style of
obstinacy is often found in connexion with a feeble brain,
and also (though it may seem paradoxical) with a feeble moral
energy. Apparently, a secret feeling of their own irresolution
throws them for a vicarious support upon a mechanic resource
of artificial obstinacy. This peculiar constitution of character
it was, on the part of the Chinese, which gave such vast
importance to what might now be done by the Russian
ambassador. Who was he? He was called M. de Ismaeloff,
an officer in the Russian guards, and somewhat of a favourite
with the Czar. What impressed so deep a value upon this
gentleman's acts at this special moment was that a great crisis
had now arisen for the appraisal of the Christian Nations.
None hitherto had put forward any large or ostentatious display
of their national pretensions. Generally, for the scale of
rank as amongst the Chinese, who know nothing of Europe,
they stood much upon the casual proportions of their coin-
merce, and in a small degree upon old concessions of some
past Chinese ruler, or upon occasional encroachments that
had become settled through lapse of time. But in the East
all things masqueraded and belied their home character.
Popish peoples were, at times, the firmest allies of bigoted
Protestants; and the Dutch,—that in Europe had played the
noblest of parts as the feeble (yet eventually the triumphant)
asserters of national rights,—everywhere in Asia, through
mean jealousy of England, had become but a representative
word for hellish patrons of slavery and torture.
All was
confusion between the two scales of appreciation, domestic
and foreign, European and Asiatic. But now was coming
one that would settle all this in a transcendent way; for
Russia would carry in her train, and compromise by her
decision, most of the other Christian states.
The very
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
361
frontier line of Russia, often conterminous with that of
China, and the sixteen months' journey, furnished in them-
selves exponents of the Russian grandeur. China needed no
interpreter for that. She herself was great in pure virtue of
her bigness. But here was a brother bigger than herself. We
have known and witnessed the case where a bully, whom it was
found desirable to eject from a coffee-room, upon opening the
window for that purpose, was found too big to pass, and also
nearly too heavy to raise, unless by machinery; so that in the
issue the bully maintained his ground by virtue of his tonnage.
That was really the case oftentimes of China. Russia seemed
to stand upon the same basis of right as to aggression.
China, therefore, understood her, and admired her, but, for
all that, meant to make a handle of her. She judged that
Russia, in coming with so much pomp, had something to
ask. So had China. China, during that long period when
M. de Ismaeloff was painfully making way across the steppes
of Asia, had leisure to think what it was that she would ask,
and through what temptation she would ask it.
There was
little room for doubting. Russia, being incomparably the
biggest potentate in Christendom (for as yet the United
States had no existence), seemed, therefore, to the Chinese
mind the greatest, and virtually to include all the rest.
What Russia did, the rest would do. M. de Ismaeloff meant
doubtless to ask for something. No matter what it might
be, he should have it. At length the ambassador arrived.
All his trunks were unpacked; and then M. de Ismaeloff
unpacked to the last wrapper his own little request. The
feeble-minded are generally cunning; and therefore it was
that the Chinese Council did not at once say yes, but pre-
tended to find great difficulties in the request,—which was
simply to arrange some disorders on the frontier, but chiefly
to allow of a permanent ambassador from the Czar taking up
his residence at Peking. At last this demand was granted
—but granted conditionally. And what now might be the
little condition? "O, my dear fellow, between you and me,
such old friends," said the Chinese minister, “a bauble not
worth speaking of: would you oblige me, when presented
to the Emperor, by knocking that handsome head of yours
nine times—that is, you know, three times three-against
362
MISCELLANEA
the floor? I would take it very kindly of you; and the
floor is padded to prevent contusions." Ismaeloff pondered
till the next day; but on that next day he said, "I will do
it."-"Do what, my friend?""I will knock my forehead
nine times against the padded floor." Mr. Bell of Antermony
(which, at times, he writes Auchtermony) accompanied the
Russian ambassador, as a leading person in his suite.
A con-
siderable section of his travels is occupied with this embassy.
But, perhaps from private regard to the ambassador, whose
character suffers so much by this transaction, we do not
recollect that he tells us in so many words of this Russian con-
cession. But M. de Lange, a Swedish officer, subsequently
employed by the Czar Peter, does. A solemn court-day was
held. M. de Ismaeloff attended. Thither came the Allegada,
or Chinese Prime Minister; thither came the ambassador's
friends and acquaintances; thither came, as having the
official entrée, the ambassador's friend Hum-Hum, and also his
friend Bug-Bug; and, when all is said and done, this truth
is undeniable-that there and then (namely, in the imperial
city of Peking, and in Anno Domini 1720) M. de Ismaeloff
did knock his forehead nine times against the floor of the
Tartar Khan's palace. M. de Lange's report on this matter
has been published separately; neither has the fact of the
prostration and the forehead-knockings to the amount of nine
ever been called in question.
Now, it will be asked, did Ismaeloff absolutely consent to
elongate himself on the floor, as if preparing to take a swim,
and then knock his forehead repeatedly, as if weary of life
-somebody counting all the while with a stop watch No.
1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on? Did he do all this without
capitulating: that is, stipulating for some ceremonial return
upon the part of the Chinese ?
O no! The Russian ambassador, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and our own at the end of it, both bar-
gained for equal returns; and here are the terms:-
:-The
Russian had, with good faith, and through all its nine sec-
tions, executed the ko-tou; and he stipulated, before he did
this, that any Chinese seeking a presentation to the Czar
should, in coming to St. Petersburg, go through exactly the
same ceremony. The Chinese present all replied with good
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
363
faith, though doubtless stifling a little laughter, that when
they or any of them should come to St. Petersburg the
ko-tou should be religiously performed. The English lords,
on the other hand,—Lord Macartney, and subsequently Lord
Amherst,-declined the ko-tou, but were willing to make
profound obeisances to the Emperor, provided these obei-
sances were simultaneously addressed by a high mandarin to
the portrait of George III. In both cases a man is shocked:
by the perfidy of the Chinese in offering, by the folly of the
Christian envoys in accepting, a mockery so unmeaning.
Certainly the English case is better our Envoy escaped the
degradation of the ko-tou, and obtained a shadow; he paid
less, and he got in exchange what many would think more.
Homage paid to a picture, when counted against homage
paid to a living man, is but a shadow; yet a shadow wears
some semblance of a reality. But, on the other hand, for
the Russian who submitted to an abject degradation, under
no hope of any equivalent except in a contingency that was
notoriously impossible, the mockery was full of insult. The
Chinese do not travel; by the laws of China they cannot
leave the country. None but starving and desperate men
ever do leave the country. All the Chinese emigrants
now in Australia, and the great body at this time quitting
California in order to evade the pressure of American
laws against them, are liable to very severe punishment
(probably to decapitation) on re-entering China. Had
Ismaeloff known what a scornful jest the Emperor and
his Council were enacting at his expense, probably he
would have bambooed some of these honourable gentlemen,
on catching them within the enclosed court of his private
residence. 1
1 There seems to have been a strange blunder at the bottom of all
our diplomatic approaches to the Court of China, if we are to believe
what the lexicographers tell us,-namely, that the very word in
Chinese which we translate ambassador means tribute-bearer. If this
should be true, it will follow that we have all along been supposed to
approach the Emperor in a character of which the meaning and obliga-
tions were well known to us, but which we had haughtily resolved to
violate. There is, besides, another consideration which calls upon us
to investigate this subject. It would certainly be a ludicrous dis-
covery if it should be found that we and the Chinese have been at
cross-purposes for so long a time. Yet such things have occurred,
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MISCELLANEA
However, in a very circuitous way, Ismaeloff has had his
revenge; for the first step in that retribution which we
described as overtaking the Chinese was certainly taken by
him. Russia, according to Chinese ideas of greatness, is the
greatest (that is, broadest and longest) of Christian states.
Yet, being such, she has taken her dose of ko-tou. It fol-
lowed, then, a fortiori, that Great Britain should take hers.
Into this logic China was misled by Ismaeloff. The English
were waited for. Slowly the occasions arrived; and it was
found by the Chinese, first doubtfully, secondly beyond all
doubt, that the ko-tou would not do. The game was up.
Out of this catastrophe, and the wrath which followed it,
grew ultimately the opium-frenzy of Lin, the mad Com-
missioner of Canton; then the vengeance which followed;
next the war, and the miserable defeats of the Chinese.
this followed out of the attempt to enforce the ko-tou;
which attempt never would have been made but for the
encouragement derived from Ismaeloff, the ambassador of so
great a power as Russia. But, finally, to complete the great
retribution, the war has left behind, amongst other dreadful
consequences, the ruin of their army. In the official corre-
spondence of a great officer with the present Emperor,
reporting the events of the Tae-ping Rebellion, it is re-
peatedly declared that the royal troops will not fight,—run
All
and in the East are peculiarly likely to occur, so radically incompatible
is our high civilisation with their rude barbarism; and precisely out
of this barbarism grows the very consideration we have adverted to as
laying an arrest upon all that else we should have a right to think.
It is this:-So mean and unrefined are the notions of oriental nations
that, according to those, it is very doubtful indeed whether an eastern
potentate would be able to understand or figure to himself any busi-
ness or office belonging to an ambassador except that of declaring war
and defiance, or, secondly, of humbly bringing tribute! Hence, we
presume, arises the Chinese rigour in demanding to know the sub-
stance of any letter before admitting the bearer of it to the imperial
presence; since, if it should happen to contain a defiance, in that case
they presume that the messenger might indulge himself in insolence
and this it might not be safe to punish in any nation where the
sanctity of heralds still lingers, and a faith in the mysterious perils
overtaking all who violate that sanctity. Wherever there are but two
categories-war and tributary submission-into which the idea of
ambassador subdivides, then it must be difficult for the Chinese to
understand in which it is that we mean to present ourselves at Peking.
;
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
365
away upon the slightest pretext, and in fact have been left
bankrupt in hope and spirit by the results of their battles
with the British. Concurrently with this ruin of the army,
the avowed object of this great Rebellion is to exterminate
the reigning dynasty; and, if that event should be accom-
plished, then the whole of this ruin will have been due
exclusively to its memorable insolence (the demoniac hybris
of Greek Tragedy) towards ourselves. Should, on the other
hand, the Tae-ping Rebellion, which has now stood its
ground for five years [written in 1857], be finally crushed,
not the less an enormous revolution-possibly a greater
revolution—will then have been accomplished in China,
virtually our own work; and fortunately it will not be in
our power to retreat, as hitherto, in a false spirit of forbear-
ance, from the great duties which will await us. The Tae-
ping faction, however, though deadly and tiger-like in the
spirit of its designs, offers but one element amongst many
that are now fermenting in the bosom of Chinese society.
We British, as Mr. Meadows informs us (The Chinese and
their Rebellions), were regarded by the late Emperor-by him
who conducted the war against us-as the instruments
employed "by Heaven" for executing judgment on his
house. He was in the right to think so; and our hope is
that in a very few years we shall proclaim ourselves through
Southern Asia as even more absolutely the destroyers of the
wicked government which dared to promote and otherwise
to reward that child of hell who actually flayed alive the un-
happy Mr. Stead. That same Government passed over
without displeasure the similar atrocity of the man who
decapitated nearly two hundred persons,—white, brown, and
black, but all subjects of Great Britain, and all confessedly
and necessarily unoffending,-as being simply shipwrecked
passengers thrown on the shore of China from the Ner-
budda Indiaman. That same Government gave titles,
money, and decorations to a most cowardly officer, on the
sole assumption (whether simply false or only exaggerated)
that he had secretly poisoned one thousand British troops
stationed in the island of Chusan.1
1 In the 26th Regiment alone eight hundred men died. This, it is
true, was chiefly at Hong-Kong: but the disease was mysterious; for
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MISCELLANEA
A dreadful echo lingers on the air from our past dealings
with the Chinese-an echo from the cry of innocent blood
shed many years ago by us British, adulterating wickedly
with Chinese wickedness. Not Chinese blood it is that
cries from the earth for vengeance, but blood of our own
dependent, a poor, humble serving man, whom we British
were bound to have protected, but whom, in a spirit of
timid and sordid servility to Cantonese insolence, we,
trembling for our Factory, menaced by that same wicked
mob that even now is too likely to win a triumph over us,
and coerced by the agents of the East India Company (always
upright and noble in its Indian, always timid and cringing
in its Chinese policy), surrendered to the Moloch that de-
manded him. The case was this : Always, as against
aliens, the Chinese have held the infamous doctrine that
the intention, the motive, signifies nothing. If you, being
a foreigner, should, by the bursting of your rifle, most
unwillingly cause the death of a Chinese, you must die.
Luckily we have, since 1841, cudgelled them out of this
hellish doctrine; but such was the doctrine up to 1840.
Whilst this law prevailed-namely, in 1784- an elderly
Portuguese gunner, on board a Chinaman of ours lying close
to Whampoa, was ordered to fire a salute in honour of the
day, which happened to be June 4, the birthday of George
III.
The case was an extreme one; for the gunner was not
firing a musket or a pistol for his own amusement, but a
ship's gun under positive orders. It happened, however,
that some wretched Chinese was killed. Immediately
followed the usual insolent demand for the unfortunate
gunner. Some resistance was made; some disputing and
wrangling followed, -the Mephistopheles governor looking
on with a smile of deadly derision. A life was what he
wanted-blood was what he howled for: whose life, whose
blood, was nothing to him. "Settle it amongst yourselves,"
said he to the gentlemen of the Factory. They did settle it;
the poor, passive gunner, who had been obliged to obey, was
foully surrendered was murdered by the Chinese, under
the stationary inhabitants of Hong-Kong did not die. Is it not
therefore open to reasonable conjecture that the men had swallowed a
slow poison?
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN 1857
367
British connivance; and things appeared to fall back into
their old track.1
Since then our commerce has leaped forward by memor-
able expansions. I that write these words am not super-
stitious; but this one superstition has ever haunted me—
that foundations laid in the blood of innocent men are not
likely to prosper.
1 De Quincey had told this story before (ante, pp. 187-189); but
the repetition of it here is significant.-M.
ADDITIONS
I. TRANSLATION OF HORACE'S ODE I. 22
[IN the chapter of De Quincey's Autobiography entitled "The Nation
of London" he makes mention of a copy of verses written by him when
he was a boy at the Rev. Edward Spencer's boarding-school at Wink-
field, in Wiltshire, and for which he obtained the third prize in a
public competition unconnected with the school. See ante, Vol I,
pp. 192-194, and also p. 161 note. Mr. Richard Garnett, in his
excellent reproduction of the first edition of the Confessions of an
Opium-Eater (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1885), has cleared
up the whole matter by recovering the actual verses and explaining
the circumstances. The competition, it appears, was for prizes offered
by the conductors of a London periodical called The Juvenile Library
for the three best translations of Horace's Ode I. 22 by boys under
a certain age.
De Quincey's translation having been sent from Wink-
field School, with this attestation under Mr. Spencer's hand, dated
3d June 1800,-"The aforegoing is the unassisted translation of
Master Thomas Quincey, a student in this academy, under the age
of fifteen years," the third prize was awarded to it,
"the first being
won by another youth of precocious genius, Leigh Hunt.
Garnett reports, adding that in his judgment, with both the pieces
before him, De Quincey's deserved the first place. The following is a
copy of the piece as reprinted by Dr. Garnett from vol. i, pp. 349-350,
of the Juvenile Library.-M.]
THIRD PRIZE TRANSLATION
OF HORACE, ODE 22, LIB. 1
BY THOMAS QUINCEY, AGED 15
Of Mr. Spencer's Academy, Winckfield, Wilts.
FUSCUS! the man whose heart is pure,
Whose life unsullied by offence,
Needs not the jav'lines of the Moor
In his defence.
So Dr.
ADDITIONS
369
Should he o'er Libya's burning sands
Fainting pursue his breathless way,
No bow he'd seek to arm his hands
Against dismay.
Quivers of poisoned shafts he'd scorn,
Nor, though unarmed, would feel a dread
To pass where Caucasus forlorn
Rears his huge head.
In his own conscious worth secure,
Fearless he'd roam amidst his foes,
Where fabulous Hydaspes pure
Romantic flows.
For, late as in the Sabine wood
Singing my Lalage I strayed,-
Unarmed I was,—a wolf there stood:
He fled afraid.
Larger than which one ne'er was seen
In warlike Daunia's beechen groves,
Nor yet in Juba's land, where e'en
The lion roves.
Send me to dreary barren lands
Where never summer zephyrs play,
Where never sun dissolves the bands
Of ice away:
Send me again to scorching realms
Where not one cot affords a seat,
And where no shady pines or elms
Keep off the heat :
In every clime, in every isle,
Me Lalage shall still rejoice;
I'll think of her enchanting smile,
And of her voice.
VOL. XIV
2 B
370
MISCELLANEA
II. ON NOVELS¹
A FALSE ridicule has settled upon Novels, and upon Young
Ladies as the readers of novels. Love, we are told authori-
tatively, has not that importance in the actual practice of
life, nor that extensive influence upon human affairs, which
novel-writers postulate, and which the interest of novels
presumes. Something to this effect has been said by an
eminent writer; and the law is generally laid down upon
these principles by cynical old men, and envious blue-
stockings who have outlived their personal attractions. The
sentiment, however, is false even for the present condition
of society; and it will become continually more false as
society improves. For what is the great commanding event,
the one sole revolution, in a woman's life ? Marriage.
Viewing her course from the cradle to the grave in the light
of a drama, I am entitled to say that her wedding-day is
its catastrophe, or, in technical language, its peripeteia:
whatever else is important to her in succeeding years
has its origin in that event. So much for that sex.
For the other, it is admitted that Love is not, in the same
exclusive sense, the governing principle under which their
lives move; but what then are the concurrent forces which
sometimes happen to coöperate with that agency, but more
frequently disturb it? They are two, Ambition and
Avarice. Now, for the vast majority of men, Ambition, or
the passion for personal distinction, has too narrow a stage of
action, its grounds of hope are too fugitive and unsteady, to
furnish any durable or domineering influence upon the course
of life. Avarice, again, is so repulsive to the native nobility
of the human heart that it rarely obtains the dignity of a
passion: great energy of character is requisite to form a
1 Mr. Hogg, who reprints the trifle in his Uncollected Writings of
De Quincey (1890), informs us that it was written originally in a lady's
album in 1830, and "was published in facsimile from the original
MS. in The Archivist and Autograph Review, edited by S. Davey,
F.R.S.L.," in June 1888."--M.
ON NOVELS
371
consistent and accomplished miser; and of the mass of men
it may be said that, if the beneficence of nature has in some
measure raised them above avarice by the necessity of those
social instincts which she has impressed upon their hearts, in
some measure also they sink below it by their deficiencies in
that austerity of self-denial and that savage strength of will
which are indispensable qualifications for the role of heroic
miser. A perfect miser in fact is a great man, and therefore
a very rare one. Take away, then, the two forces of Ambition
and Avarice,—what remains even to the male sex as a
capital and overruling influence in life, except the much
nobler force of Love? History confirms this view. The self-
devotions and the voluntary martyrdoms of all other passions
collectively have been few by comparison with those which
have been offered at the altar of Love. If society should
ever make any great advance, and man as a species grow
conspicuously nobler, Love also will grow nobler; and a
passion which at present is possible in any elevated form for
one perhaps in a hundred will then be coexistent with the
human heart.
On this view of the grandeur which belongs to the passion
of Sexual Love in the economy of life, as it is and as it may
be, Novels have an all-sufficient justification; and Novel-
readers are obeying a higher and more philosophic impulse
than they are aware of. They seek an imaginary world
where the harsh hindrances which in the real one too often
fret and disturb the "course of true love" may be forced to
bend to the claims of justice and the pleadings of the heart.
In company with the agitations and the dread suspense, the
anguish and the tears, which so often wait upon the uncer-
tainties of earthly love, they demand at the hands of the
Novelist a final event corresponding to the natural award of
celestial wisdom and benignity. What they are striving
after, in short, is to realize an ideal, and to reproduce the
actual world under more harmonious arrangements. This is
the secret craving of the reader; and Novels are shaped to
meet it. With what success, is a separate and independent
question. The execution cannot prejudice the estimate of
their aim and essential purpose.
Fair and unknown Owner of this Album, whom perhaps I
372
MISCELLANEA
have never seen,-whom perhaps I never shall see,—pardon
me for wasting two pages of your elegant manual upon this
semi-metaphysical disquisition. Let the subject plead my
excuse. And believe that I am, Fair Incognita,
Your faithful servant,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
Professor Wilson's-Gloucester Place, Edinburgh:
Friday night, December 3, 1830.
APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
CHRONOLOGICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
In order that this Appendix may contain all requisite or
desirable information of a bibliographical kind, it is divided
into four portions, as follows:-I. Chronology of De Quincey's
Writings as collected in the present Edition; II. Syllabus of
the Contents of De Quincey's own Collective fourteen-volume
Edition; III. Syllabus of the Contents of Messrs. Black's
Enlarged Collective Edition in sixteen volumes; IV. Register
of some still unincluded De Quincey Relics.
I. CHRONOLOGY OF DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS AS
COLLECTED IN THIS EDITION
Each entry gives (1) the date of the writing, (2) its title or description
in the present edition, (3) the place or form of its original appear-
ance, (4) the volume of the present edition where it will be found.
The prefixed mark* indicates that the article is an addition in the
present Edition to the matter of the previous Collective British
Editions.
The age of De Quincey in each year is computed from his birthday,—
i.e. the 15th of August,-in that year.
Within each year the papers are arranged generally in the order of
their appearance; but not absolutely so in all cases.
Vol.
1800 (ætat. 15) *Translation from Horace. Juvenile Library XIV
1819 (ætat. 34) *Danish Origin of the Lake-Country Dialect.
Westmorland Gazette
1821 (ætat. 36) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: First
and Briefer Edition (now absorbed into the Enlarged
Edition of 1856).
London Magazine ;
and in separate book-form in 1822.
John Paul Frederick Richter.
London Magazine
XIII
III
XI
376
APPENDIX
Analects from Richter, viz. (1) The Happy Life of a
Parish Priest in Sweden, (2) *Last Will and Testa-
ment, or the House of Weeping. London Magazine
1823 (ætat. 38) Letters to a Young Man whose Education
has been neglected (Five Articles). London Magazine
Anecdotage: Miss Hawkins's Anecdotes.
Vol.
XI
X
London Magazine
London Magazine
V
IV
Herder.
Notes from the Pocket-Book of a late Opium-Eater,
viz. -* *Anglo-German Dictionaries; *Prefigurations of
Moral Effects of Revolutions; Eng-
Remote Events
*
lish Dictionaries; Reformadoes; Proverbs; Antagonism;
To the Lakers.
London Magazine
X
*Mr. Schnackenberger or Two Masters for One Dog
(from the German).
London Magazine
XII
The Dice (from the German).
London Magazine
XII
Walking Stewart (earlier paper).
London Magazine
III
On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.
London Magazine
X
Malthus on Population.
London Magazine
IX
Kant's Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical
Plan (from the German).
London Magazine
IX
On Suicide.
London Magazine
VIII
The King of Hayti (from the German).
*Letter on Malthus in Reply to Hazlitt.
London Magazine
XII
London Magazine
London Magazine
IX
IX
XII
Malthus on the Measure of Value.
The Fatal Marksman (from the German).
Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations
1824 (ætat. 39) Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of
the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons (a Digest from the
German, in Four Articles).
London Magazine XIII
Analects from Richter continued, viz.-(3) Complaint of
the Bird in a Darkened Cage; (4) On the Death of
Young Children; (5) The Prophetic Dew-Drops; (6)
On Death; (7) Imagination untamed by the Coarser
Realities of Life; (8) Satirical Notice of Reviewers; (9)
Female Tongues; (10) Forgiveness; (11) Nameless
Heroes; (12) The Grandeur of Man in his Littleness
(13) Night; (14) The Stars; (15) Martyrdom; (16)
The Quarrels of Friends; (17) Dreaming; (18) Two
Divisions of Philosophic Minds; (19) Dignity of Man
in Self-Sacrifice; (20) *Fancy; (21) *Innate Feeling and
Acquisition; (22) *Use of Opposites; (23) *Deafness;
(24) Dream upon the Universe. London Magazine
Notes from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium-Eater, con-
tinued, viz. False Distinctions; Madness; English
Physiology; Superficial Knowledge; Manuscripts of
Melmoth; Scriptural Allusion Explained.
London Magazine
ΧΙ
X
APPENDIX
377
Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy:
*Introduction-On the Services of Mr. Ricardo to the
Science of Political Economy.
Advertisement to the Dialogues.
Preliminary Dialogue, and Dialogues I, II, III, IV, V, VI
London Magazine
*Education of Boys in Large Numbers (Two Articles)
Vol.
IX
London Magazine XIV
Kant on National Character in Relation to the Sense of
the Sublime and Beautiful (a Translation)
London Magazine
*Kant's Abstract of Swedenborgianism. London Magazine
Goethe as reflected in his Novel of Wilhelm Meister.
Falsification of English History.
The Incognito, or Count Fitz-Hum (from the German).
XIV
XIV
London Magazine
London Magazine
ΧΙ
IX
Knight's Quarterly Magazine
XII
1825 (ætat. 40) *The Love-Charm (from the German of Tieck).
1826-7 (ætat. 41-42) Lessing:
Laocoon (Two Articles).
The Last Days of Immanuel Kant. Blackwood's Magazine
On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts (First Paper).
Blackwood's Magazine XIII
1828 (ætat. 43) Toilette of the Hebrew Lady (a Digest from
the German)
Rhetoric.
1829 (ætat. 44) *Professor Wilson (First Paper).
1830 (ætat. 45) Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays.
Knight's Quarterly Magazine
with a Translation from his
Blackwood's Magazine
XII
ΧΙ
IV
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
VI
X
Edinburgh Literary Gazette
V
Richard Bentley (in Two Parts).
*On Novels.
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
In a Lady's Album
VIII
IV
XIV
1831 (ætat. 46) Samuel Parr, or Whiggism in its Relations to
Literature (in Four Parts).
Blackwood's Magazine
1832 (ætat. 47) *Klosterheim, or The Masque A Romance.
Charlemagne.
:
In separate Volume
Blackwood's Magazine
The Caesars (Introduction, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus).
V
XII
V
Blackwood's Magazine
VI
1833 (ætat. 48) The Caesars continued (Caligula, Nero, and
Others).
Blackwood's Magazine
VI
Revolution of Greece, and Supplement on the Suliotes.
*Kant on the Age of the Earth.
*Recollections of Hannah More.
1834 (ætat. 49)
"Sketches of Men and Manners from the
Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater": a series
of Seven Articles, including the following portions of
what now forms the "Autobiography"
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
Tait's Magazine
XIV
Tait's Magazine
XIV
378
APPENDIX
*Chap I. "Parentage and the Paternal Home."
Rudiments or First Drafts of the following Chapters:
"The Affliction of Childhood" (Chap. II); "The
Female Infidel " (Chap. V); "I am Introduced to
the Warfare of a Public School" (Chap. VI); "I
Enter the World" (Chap. VII); The Nation of
London" (Chap. VIII); "Dublin (Chap. IX);
"First Irish Rebellion of 1798" (Chap. X); "French
Invasion of Ireland and Second Rebellion of 1798 "
(Chap. XI); " Travelling in England in Old Days"
(Chap. XII); "Premature Manhood" (Chap. XIV).
Tait's Magazine
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Three Articles (now included in
Chap. II of "Literary and Lake Reminiscences ").
Tait's Magazine
1835 (ætat. 50) *Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Concluding Article
(now included in Chap. II of "Literary and Lake Re-
miniscences").
*Autobiographic Sketches continued:
Articles).
""
Vol.
I
II
Tait's Magazine
Oxford (Two
Tait's Magazine
II
II
IX
II
A Tory's Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism
(Two Articles).
Tait's Magazine
1836 (ætat. 51) Autobiographic Sketches continued:
*German Studies and Kant in particular. Tait's Magazine
1837 (œtat. 52) *A Manchester Swedenborgian and a Liverpool
Literary Coterie (Literary and Lake Reminiscences).
Tait's Magazine
*Sir Humphry Davy: Mr. Godwin: Mrs. Grant of Lag-
gan (London Reminiscences).
Revolt of the Tartars.
Political Parties of Modern England.
Life of Goethe (this year, or earlier).
Life of Pope.
Tait's Magazine
1838 (ætat. 53) *The Household Wreck (a Tale).
Blackwood's Magazine
*Recollections of Charles Lamb: Two Articles (London
Reminiscences).
My Brother Pink (Rudiments of Chap. XIII of Autobio-
graphy).
II
III
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
In MS. till 1863
IX
Encycl. Britannica
IV
Encycl. Britannica
IV
XII
Tait's Magazine
III
The Avenger (a Tale)
Walladmor: A Pseudo-Waverley Novel. Tait's Magazine
*A Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its Foremost
Pretensions (First Article).
Tait's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
I
XII
XIV
Tait's Magazine
Life of Schiller.
Encycl. Britannica
IV
Life of Shakespeare.
Encycl. Britannica
Life of Milton. Distinguished Men of Modern Times
1839 (ætat. 54) William Wordsworth (Three Articles) (Liter-
*222
IV
IV
cences).
ary and Lake Reminiscences).
Wordsworth and Southey (Literary and Lake Reminis-
Tait's Magazine
Tait's Magazine
II
II
APPENDIX
379
*Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge (Literary and Lake
Reminiscences).
*The Saracen's Head (Literary and Lake Reminiscences).
Early Memorials of Grasmere.
*A Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its Foremost
Pretensions (Second Article).
Vol.-
Tait's Magazine
II
Tait's Magazine
II
Tait's Magazine
XIII
Tait's Magazine
X
*The English Language.
Miracles as Subjects of Testimony.
Casuistry (First Part).
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine VIII
XIV
VIII
On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts (Second
Paper).
Blackwood's Magazine XIII
Philosophy of Roman History.
Blackwood's Magazine
VI
Casuistry of Roman Meals.
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
On Milton.
Blackwood's Magazine
X
1840 (œtat. 55) *Westmorland and the Dalesmen: Society of
the Lakes (Literary and Lake Reminiscences).
*Society of the Lakes: Charles Lloyd (Literary and Lake
Reminiscences).
*Society of the Lakes: Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, &c. (Liter-
Tait's Magazine
II
Tait's Magazine
II
ary and Lake Reminiscences).
Tait's Magazine
II
*Society of the Lakes: Professor Wilson, &c.
Tait's Magazine
II
*Rambles from the Lakes: Mrs. Siddons and Mrs.
Hannah More.
*Walking Stewart: Later Paper (London Reminiscences).
Tait's Magazine
*Edward Irving (London Reminiscences). Tait's Magazine
*Talfourd: The "London Magazine": Mr. Taylor and his
Book on
Junius" Clare: Allan Cunningham (Lon-
Tait's Magazine
don Reminiscences).
*Gradual Estrangement from Wordsworth (London Remi-
niscences).
Tait's Magazine
The Essenes -Part I. The Tradition from Josephus;
*Part II. Of Josephus generally; Part III. The Essenes
historically.
III
III
Tait's Magazine
II
ΞΕ
III
III
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
Theory of Greek Tragedy.
Blackwood's Magazine
X
Casuistry (Second Part).
Blackwood's Magazine VIII
Modern Superstition.
Blackwood's Magazine
VIII
*The Opium Question with China in 1840 with Post-
:
script on the Duke of Wellington.
Blackwood's Magazine
XIV
Style (First Three Articles).
Blackwood's Magazine
X
1841 (ætat. 56) *Story of a Libel, with Thoughts on Duelling
Plato's Republic.
Tait's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine VIII
(London Reminiscences).
Style (Concluding Article).
Homer and the Homerida (Three
Articles).
Blackwood's Magazine VI
III
Blackwood's Magazine
X
380
APPENDIX
1842 (ætat. 57) Philosophy of Herodotus. Blackwood's Magazine
Vol
VI
The Pagan Oracles.
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
Cicero.
Blackwood's Magazine
VI
Modern Greece.
Blackwood's Magazine VII
*Ricardo and Adam Smith.
Blackwood's Magazine
IX
1843 (ætat. 58) Ceylon.
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
1844 (ætat. 59) *Secession from the Church of Scotland.
On Wordsworth's Poetry.
National Temperance Movements.
Greece under the Romans.
Logic of Political Economy.
1845 (ætat. 60) Coleridge and Opium-Eating.
"The
"The
Blackwood's Magazine
Suspiria de Profundis :-Part I. Consisting of Introduc-
tory Notice," "The Affliction of Childhood,"
Palimpsest,' ""Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,"
Apparition of the Brocken," and " Savannah-la-Mar,
with some untitled paragraphs; Part II. Commenced,
but left fragmentary.
Blackwood's Magazine
XIII
Tait's Magazine
ΧΙ
Tait's Magazine
XIV
Blackwood's Magazine
XIV
Blackwood's Magazine
VII
Separate Treatise
IX
V
Notes on Gilfillan's Gallery of Literary Portraits :-I.
William Godwin; II. John Foster; III. William
Hazlitt.
Tait's Magazine
XI
1846 (ætat. 61) Notes on Gilfillan's
Portraits:
IV. Percy Bysshe
Keats.
Gallery of Literary
Shelley; V. John
Tait's Magazine
XI
The Marquess Wellesley.
The Antigone of Sophocles as represented on the Edin-
burgh Stage.
On Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement (Two
Articles).
Glance at the Works of Mackintosh.
System of the Heavens, as revealed
Telescopes.
1847 (ætat. 62) Notes on Walter
Articles).
Orthographic Mutineers.
Milton versus Southey and Landor.
Joan of Arc (Two Articles).
The Spanish Military Nun (in Three
Tait's Magazine
Tait's Magazine
X
V
Tait's Magazine
Tait's Magazine
VIII
VIII
by Lord Rosse's
Tait's Magazine VIII
Savage Landor (Two
Tait's Magazine
ΧΙ
Tait's Magazine
XI
Tait's Magazine
XI
Tait's Magazine
V
Instalments)
Tait's Magazine XIII
Secret Societies (Two Articles).
Tait's Magazine
VII
Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteenth Century
(Two Articles).
Tait's Magazine
XI
Conversation.
Tait's Magazine
X
Protestantism: First Two Parts.
Tait's Magazine
VIII
*On the Religious Objections to the Use of Chloroform.
MS. in Edinburgh University Library
XIV
1848 (ætat. 63) Protestantism: Concluding Part.
Tait's Magazine VIII
APPENDIX
381
Sortilege and Astrology.
Oliver Goldsmith.
The Poetry of Pope.
Vol.
Album of Glasgow Athenæum
North British Review
XIII
IV
North British Review
XI
North British Review
V
Charles Lamb.
1849 (ælat. 64) The English Mail-Coach (Three Parts).
Blackwood's Magazine XIII
1850 (ætat. 65) Conversation (a Second Article with this title,
afterwards annexed to the previous Article of 1847 in
Tait's Magazine).
The Theban Sphinx.
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
X
VI
Professor Wilson (later Paper).
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
V
French and English Manners.
Presence of Mind.
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
XIV
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
XIV
Memorial Chronology on a New and More Apprehensible
System in a Series of Letters to a Lady.
In MS. till 1871
XIV
ΧΙ
X
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
I
California.
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
V
IX
I
1851 (ætat. 66) Lord Carlisle on Pope (Four Articles).
Tait's Magazine
Language (under the title "On the Present State of the
English Language ").
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
A Sketch of Childhood: First Part (afterwards incorporated
in the Autobiography).
1852 (ætat. 67) Sir William Hamilton (Three Articles).
A Sketch from Childhood continued (afterwards incor-
porated in the Autobiography). Hogg's Weekly Instructor
1853 (ætat. 68) Judas Iscariot. Hogg's Weekly Instructor
*Dryden's Hexastich on Milton.
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
The Gold-Digging Mania (afterwards annexed to the article
on California).
Hogg's Weekly Instructor
[IN 1853 began the issue of De Quincey's Edinburgh Edition
of his Collected Writings; and from that date till his
death his chief industry was in the superintendence of
the successive volumes of that Collective Edition. In
what follows we shall (1) record the general progress of
that Edition, noting the more important additions of
new matter in the course of De Quincey's editorial
operations on volume after volume; (2) complete the
list of those independent magazine-articles which our
present Edition includes.]
1853 (ætat. 68) Revision, recast, and enlargement of the Auto-
biographic Articles which had appeared in Tait's Maga-
zine of 1834 and 1838, Blackwood's Magazine of 1845,
and Hogg's Weekly Instructor of 1851-2, -as far as to
the end of Chapter XIV of Vol I of the present Edition.
Vol. I of Author's Collective Edition
VIII
X
IX
I
382
APPENDIX
Vol.
1854 (ætat. 69) The three closing chapters of the Autobio-
graphy in Vol. I of the present Edition: viz. "Laxton
Northamptonshire, " "At Manchester Grammar School,"
and "The Priory, Chester."
Vol. II of Author's Collective Edition
Postscript to the paper on the "System of the Heavens,
""
· I
entitled "On the True Relations of the Bible to merely
Human Science." Vol. III of Author's Collective Edition VIII
The long annex to the Essays on Murder as one of the Fine
Arts now entitled "Postscript: with an Account of the
Williams and M'Kean Murders." Possibly also the
paper "On War" (for which no earlier original has been
found). Vol. IV of Author's Collective Edition XIII & VIII
1856 (œtat. 71) New and Enlarged Edition of the Con-
fessions of an English Opium-Eater, absorbing all the
matter of the original Edition of 1822, and quite super-
seding it; also the annexed little paper of phantasy
entitled The Daughter of Lebanon.
Vol. V of Author's Collective Edition
1857 (ætat. 72) Vol. VI of the Collective Edition, with
Postscripts to some of the articles.
Ælius Lamia (under the title "Suetonius Unravelled ").
t
Titan
Supplement on the Essenes appended to article on Secret
Societies." Vol. VII of Author's Collective Edition
1858 (ætat. 73) Vol. VIII of the Collective Edition, with
Additions to some of the articles.
III
VI
The Chinese Question in 1857 (under the title "China").
Titan
XIV
Vol. IX of Collective Edition, with Postscripts to some of
the articles.
1859 (ætat. 74) Vol. X of the Collective Edition.
Addition to the article on Milton, entitled Postscript on
Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton.
Vol. XI of Author's Collective Edition
Vol. XII of the Collective Edition.
Vol. XIII of the Collective Edition.
IV
Vol. XIV of the Collective Edition (partly prepared this year,
before De Quincey's death, December 8, but not published till
1860).
APPENDIX
383
II. SYLLABUS OF THE CONTENTS OF THE ORIGINAL
COLLECTIVE EDITION
The following is taken from Bohn's edition of Lowndes's Biblio-
grapher's Manual, only with the insertion of the dates of the successive
volumes :-
VOLUME I (1853).—AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES: 1. The Affliction of
Childhood Dream - Echoes of these Infant Experiences
Dream-Echoes Fifty Years later. 2. Introduction. to the World
of Strife. 3. Infant Literature. 4. The Female Infidel. 5.
Introduced to the Warfare of a Public School. 6. Enters the
World. 7. The Nation of London. 8. Dublin. 9. First Re-
bellion. 10. French Invasion of Ireland, and Second Rebellion.
11. Travelling. 12. My Brother. 13. Premature Manhood.
VOLUME II (1854).—AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES, WITH RECOLLEC-
TIONS OF THE LAKES: 1. Laxton, containing Cymon and Iphigenia,
The Orphan Heiress, and Female Students in Theology. 2. The
Priory. 3. Early Memorials of Grasmere. 4. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. 5. William Wordsworth. 6. Wordsworth and
Southey.
5.
VOLUME III (1854).—MISCELLANIES, CHIEFLY NARRATIVE: 1. Spanish
Military Nun. 2. Last Days of Kant. 3. System of the Heavens
as revealed by Lord Rosse's Telescope. 4. Joan of Arc.
Casuistry of Roman Meals. 6. Modern Superstition.
VOLUME IV (1854).-MISCELLANIES: 1. Revolt of the Tartars; or,
Flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his People from the Russian
Territories to the Frontiers of China. 2. On Murder considered
as one of the Fine Arts. 3. Dialogues of Three Templars on
Political Economy, chiefly in relation to the Principles of Mr.
Ricardo. 3. On War. 4. The English Mail Coach: (1) The Glory
of Motion; (2) The Vision of Sudden Death; (3) Dream Fugue.
VOLUME V (1856).-CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM - EATER,
revised by the Author, and greatly enlarged, to which is appended
"The Daughter of Lebanon," forming part of "Suspiria de
Profundis.
VOLUME VI (1857). -SKETCHES, CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHIC: 1. Percy
Bysshe Shelley. 2. Oliver Goldsmith. 3. On Wordsworth's
Poetry. 4. Whiggism in its Relations to Literature. 5. John
Keats. 6. Homer and the Homerida.
VOLUME VII (1857).-STUDIES ON SECRET RECORDS, PERSONAL and
HISTORIC: 1. Judas Iscariot. 2. Richard Bentley. 3. Cicero.
4. Secret Societies. 5. Milton.
VOLUME VIII (1858).-ESSAYS, SCEPTICAL AND ANTI-SCEPTICAL, OR
PROBLEMS NEGLECTED OR MISCONCEIVED: 1. Protestantism. 2.
Pagan Oracles. 3. Miracles as Subjects of Testimony. 4. Casu-
istry. 5. Greece under the Romans. 6. Walking Stewart. 7.
Schlosser's Literary History of the 18th Century. 8. The
Marquess Wellesley.
384
APPENDIX
VOLUME IX (1858).-LEADERS IN LITERATURE, WITH A NOTICE OF
TRADITIONAL ERRORS AFFECTING THEM: 1. Alexander Pope. 2.
Theory of Greek Tragedy. 3. Language. 4. French and
English Manners. 5. Charles Lamb. 6. Philosophy of Hero-
dotus. 7. Plato's Republic. 8. Sortilege and Astrology. 9.
Walter Savage Landor.
VOLUME X (1859).—CLASSIC RECORDS, REVIEWED OR DECIPHERED:
1. The Cæsars. 2. The Theban Sphinx. 3. Ælius Lamia. 4.
On the Pretended Essenes.
VOLUME XI (1859).—CRITICAL SUGGESTIONS ON STYLE AND RHETORIC,
WITH GERMAN TALES: 1. Rhetoric. 2. Life of Milton. 3.
Incognito, or Count Fitz-Hum. 4. Revolution of Greece. 5.
Style. 6. The Dice.
VOLUME XII (1859).-SPECULATIONS, LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHIC,
WITH GERMAN TALES: 1. Ceylon. 2. King of Hayti. 3. Cole-
ridge and Opium - Eating. 4. Fatal Marksman. 5. National
Temperance Movements. 6. Milton versus Southey and Landor.
7. Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement. 8. Toilette
of the Hebrew Lady. 9. Falsification of English History. 10.
Notes on Gilfillan's Literary Portraits-Godwin, Foster, Hazlitt.
VOLUME XIII (1859).-SPECULATIONS, LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHIC :
1. Lord Carlisle on Pope. 2. Anecdotage. 3. Herder. 4. A
Glance at the Works of Mackintosh. 5. The Idea of a Universal
History on a Cosmo-Political Plan. 6. Charlemagne. 7. Goethe.
8. Lessing.
VOLUME XIV (1860).-LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN WHOSE EDUCATION
HAS BEEN NEGLECTED, AND OTHER PAPERS: 1. Letters to a Youngs
Man. 2. Orthographic Mutineers. 3. John Paul Frederick
Richter. 4. Conversation. 5. Presence of Mind. 6. On the
Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. 7. The Antigone of Sopho-
cles. 8. Traditions of the Rabbins. 9. Modern Greece.
A glance at the above will verify the character given of De Quincey's
own Collective Edition of his writings (ante, Vol. I, p. xxi), when it
was described as exhibiting "the most provoking jumble in the con-
tents of the fourteen volumes: mixed kinds of matter in the same
volume, and dispersion of the same kinds of matter over volumes wide
apart, and yet all with a pretence of grouping, and with factitious
sub-titles invented for the separate volumes on the spur of the
moment." After the first two volumes, it is clear that he steered
himself in his editorship by no principle whatever, chronological or
classifying, but by the mere accident of what he had at hand from
time to time.-I may note also that the paper published in the last
and posthumous volume under the title "Traditions of the Rabbins "
It was
(reprinted from Blackwood) was not by De Quincey at all.
by the Rev. Dr. Croly.
APPENDIX
385
III. SYLLABUS OF THE CONTENTS OF THE REISSUED
COLLECTIVE EDITION IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES.
[N.B.-The titles of the Papers added in this Edition are
printed in Italics.]
VOLUME I.-The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (enlarged
edition)-The Daughter of Lebanon.
VOLUME II.-Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets: con-
sisting of Early Memorials of Grasmere, and Papers on Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and Southey.
VOLUME III.-The Spanish Military Nun-The Last Days of Immanuel
Kant-System of the Heavens as revealed by Lord Rosse's
Telescopes Joan of Arc-The Casuistry of Roman Meals-
Modern Superstition.
VOLUME IV.-On Murder, considered as one of the Fine Arts-Revolt
of the Tartars-Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy,
chiefly in Relation to the Principles of Mr. Ricardo-On War-
The English Mail Coach.
VOLUME V.-Percy Bysshe Shelley-Dr. Parr; or, Whiggism in its
Relations to Literature - Oliver Goldsmith-On Wordsworth's
Poetry-John Keats-Homer and the Homeridae.
VOLUME VI. — Judas Iscariot - Richard Bentley - Cicero Secret
Societies-On Milton.
VOLUME VII.-Walking Stewart (the earlier Paper)-The Marquess
Wellesley Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteenth
Century-Protestantism-The Pagan Oracles-Miracles as Sub-
jects of Testimony-Casuistry-Greece under the Romans.
VOLUME VIII.-Alexander Pope (Article on the Poetry of Pope)—
Theory of Greek Tragedy Language French and English
Manners Charles Lamb - Philosophy of Herodotus — Plato's
Republic - Sortilege and Astrology — Notes on Walter Savage
Landor.
VOLUME IX. The Cæsars The Theban Sphinx The Essenes
Aelius Lamia.
VOLUME X.-The Incognito; or, Count Fitz-Hum-Rhetoric-Life of
Milton-The Revolution of Greece-Style-The Dice.
·
VOLUME XI.-Ceylon-The King of Hayti-Coleridge and Opium-
Eating Toilette of the Hebrew Lady National Temperance
Movements - Mllton versus Southey and Landor - The Fatal
Marksman-On Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement-
Notes on Godwin, Foster, and Hazlitt-Falsification of English
History.
VOLUME XII. —Lord Carlisle on Pope-Glance at the Works of
Mackintosh-Anecdotage-Herder-Idea of a Universal History
on a Cosmo-Political Plan - Charlemagne Goethe's Wilhelm
Meister Lessing (with Translation from his "Laocoon")—Kant
in his Miscellaneous Essays.
VOL. XIV
2 C
386
APPENDIX
VOLUME XIII.-Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been
Neglected Orthographic Mutineers John Paul Frederick
Richter-Conversation-Presence of Mind-On the Knocking at
the Gate in Macbeth-The Antigone of Sophocles-The Logic of
Political Economy-Modern Greece.
VOLUME XIV. - Autobiographic Sketches (the Autobiography in
Fifteen Chapters).
VOLUME XV.-Biographies of Shakspeare, Pope, Goethe, and Schiller
-A Tory's Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism-
On the Political Parties of Modern England.
VOLUME XVI. Suspiria de Profundis
Memorial Chronology
Professor Wilson (the later sketch) Sir William Hamilton-
California-China-Walladmor-The Juggernaut of Social Life
(first paragraphs of "The Household Wreck ")--The Avenger-
Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and
Freemasons Kant on National Character Notes from the
Pocket-Book of a late Opium-Eater.
IV. REGISTER OF UNINCLUDED DE QUINCEY RELICS.
1809 (ætat. 24).-NOTES TO WORDSWORTH'S PAMPHLET ON THE CON-
VENTION OF CINTRA :-De Quincey, whose acquaintance with
Wordsworth had begun in that memorable visit of his to the Lakes
in November 1807 when he acted as escort to Mrs. Coleridge and
her children on their way to take up their abode with Southey at
Keswick, had paid a second visit to the Lake district in November
1808, and had then seen more of Wordsworth. The poet was
then full of mixed enthusiasm and anxiety over the chequered
beginnings of the great Peninsular War against Napoleon, and
especially over the "Convention of Cintra," i.e. an agreement
made in September 1808 between the British and French com-
manders-in-chief in Portugal for the evacuation of Portugal by
the French troops. Two letters of Wordsworth on that subject
were sent to London for publication in the Courier newspaper, and
appeared there, the first in December 1808, and the second
in January 1809,—while De Quincey was still with him at Gras-
mere, and on fire with the same feelings. Accordingly, when De
Quincey returned to London in February 1809 (not to take up
his permanent residence at the Lakes till the end of that year), it
was on this eager young admirer that Wordsworth devolved the
care of seeing through the press in London the large pamphlet,—
including the two Courier letters, but with great extensions and
additions of matter,—which he intended to be a kind of trumpet-
blast to his countrymen at that crisis of the war with Napoleon.
De Quincey did more than merely see the pamphlet through
the press; for, when it appeared in May 1809 under the title
Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal,
as affected by the Convention of Cintra, the Appendix contained
certain explanatory notes supplied by De Quincey on the latest
APPENDIX
387
These
phases and incidents of the Spanish part of the business.
were introduced by a statement to the effect that the Author of
the pamphlet, being desirous that such notes should be included,
but being prevented by distance and the inaccessibility of docu-
ments from writing them himself, had, it is De Quincey who
writes, “honoured the friend who corrects the press-errors by
making over that task to him." It is on record that Wordsworth
acknowledged that this service had been "done in a masterly
manner," and that Dorothy Wordsworth thanked De Quincey
warmly for it on her brother's account, saying he had been
a treasure to them both," and hoping he would soon be again
with them at Grasmere.--The Notes to Wordsworth's pamphlet
of 1809 are not of a kind to be effective, or even intelligible, apart
from the pamphlet itself. Original copies of the pamphlet (which
seems to have fallen quite dead on the public, Wordsworth's high
expectations from it notwithstanding) are now excessively rare ;
but readers who may be interested will find a reprint of it,
together with De Quincey's notes, in vol. i. pp. 33-194 of Dr.
Grosart's three-volume edition in 1876 of Wordsworth's Prose
Works. The complete title of the pamphlet as there given is
Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal
to Each Other, and to the Common Enemy, at this Crisis: and
specifically as affected by the Convention of Cintra: the whole
brought to the test of those Principles, by which alone the Independ-
ence and Freedom of Nations can be Preserved or Recovered.
1818-19 (ætat. 33-34).-EDITORIAL ARTICLES IN THE WESTMORLAND
GAZETTE :-A specimen of these has been given, ante, Vol. XIII,
pp. 373-383, in the paper entitled "Danish Origin of the Lake-
Country Dialect," taken from Mr. Charles Pollitt's memoir of
1890 entitled De Quincey's Editorship of the Westmorland Gazette:
July 1818 to November 1819. Of the specimens there given by
Mr. Pollitt of De Quincey's editorial articles, this seemed the
only one suitable on literary grounds for reproduction in the
present Collective Edition; but readers who may desire further
specimens, in the shape of some of De Quincey's notices of current
topics and his sparrings with the editor of the rival newspaper at
Kendal, will find them in Mr. Pollitt's pamphlet.-In the first
edition of Dr. Japp's Life of De Quincey in 1877 there had already
been given several extracts of biographical interest from De
Quincey's contributions to the old columns of the Westmorland
Gazette during his brief editorship.
1824 (ætat. 39):- ARTICLE IN THE LONDON MAGAZINE ON
THE PSEUDO-WAVERLEY NOVEL WALLADMOR, AND PRO-
FESSED COMPLETE TRANSLATION OF THAT HOAX IN TWO
VOLUMES FOR MESSRS. TAYLOR & HESSEY:-For the story of
these two exertions of De Quincey in 1824, see his subsequent
paper on Walladmor in Tait's Magazine as reprinted ante, pp.
132-145 of the present volume. That paper, together with the
annotations to it, is all that need survive, or that De Quincey
wished to survive, of those two London escapades of his in 1824;
388
APPENDIX
and the reader who may want more must contrive to see vol. x
of the old London Magazine, and may be left to search for a
copy (some copies must be extant, for the present Editor glanced
over one somewhere ten years ago) of the two-volume abortion
which was palmed off as a translation in full of the German
forgery.
1829-30 (ætat. 44-45):-POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE Edinburgh
EDINBURGH
LITERARY GAZETTE :-An account of this periodical, whose brief
fourteen months of existence coincided with the time of De
Quincey's first settlement in Edinburgh for convenience of his
then established contributorship to Blackwood, has been given,
ante, Vol. V, p. 259 footnote, in connexion with one paper
reproduced from it: viz. the first and best of De Quincey's
sketches of Professor Wilson. From a passage in the life of
Wilson by his daughter Mrs. Gordon, published in 1862, it might
be inferred, however, that De Quincey's contributions to this
periodical were frequent, if not constant, so long as it lasted.
As De Quincey was at this time domiciled with Wilson (see the
dating of his little scrap "On Novels " ante, p. 370), the recol-
lections of Wilson's daughter on such a point were not to be
neglected. Accordingly, I have examined rather carefully, for
the purposes of the present edition, a complete file of the
Edinburgh Literary Gazette, paying special attention to a series
of short first articles running through the successive numbers in
the form of what might be called "literary leaders." The result
has been that, with the exception of the sketch of Wilson, I have
found nothing in the old columns that I could recognise as certainly,
or even presumably, De Quincey's. The other literary articles,
though pleasant and scholarly enough, and going over a good
deal of that field of Literary History and Biography in which De
Quincey was at home, are of a very mild and subdued character,
with hardly anything of that peculiar ictus in them which we
know anywhere as De Quincey's, and which is perfectly discernible
in the Wilson sketch. Moreover, if any of them were De
Quincey's, they would not be worth reproduction now, having
been superseded by later expatiations of his over the same
ground.
1842 (ætat. 57): - SERIES OF THREE PAPERS ON RICARDO IN
BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.-As has been explained, ante, Vol. IX,
pp. 5-6, and p. 71, there were among De Quincey's contributions to
Blackwood in this year three papers under the general title of
Ricardo made Easy, the first in September, the second in October,
and the third in December. These, however, it was explained, were
at once all but entirely superseded, -nearly the whole of their
matter having been absorbed into De Quincey's Logic of Political
Economy published by Messrs. Blackwood as a separate treatise
in 1844. All that remained not so superseded being a portion of
the first paper, and this having been reproduced in Vol. IX under
the title Ricardo and Adam Smith, it is enough here to have
made this new mention of the forgotten series.
APPENDIX
389
In
1850-1859 (ætat. 65-74):-SUPERNUMERARY ARTICLES IN HOGG'S
EDINBURGH WEEKLY INSTRUCTOR AND ITS MONTHLY CON-
TINUATION CALLED TITAN.- -De Quincey's long connexion with
Blackwood, much slackened since 1845, had ceased altogether,
for some cause or other, in 1849; and his hardly less important
connexion with Tait's Magazine had all but come to an end
(from causes equally unexplained) about the same time.
these circumstances he had turned to the popular Edinburgh
weekly called Hogg's Instructor as a convenient receptacle for
such small occasional articles as he still cared to write, a
transfer of his industry which was all the more important because
it led to the project of the publication by Mr. Hogg, the pro-
prietor of the Instructor, of that Collective British Edition
of De Quincey's writings which was to run parallel with the
American Collective Edition commenced by Messrs. Ticknor &
Fields of Boston. About a dozen little papers of De Quincey
had appeared in the Instructor before the issue of vol. i of
this Collective British Edition in 1853; and, through the remain-
ing six years of his life, what little leisure he had from the labour
of bringing out the remaining volumes of the Collective Edition
was employed in further contributions to the same Instructor,
or to the half- crown Edinburgh monthly, called Titan, into
which it was transmuted in the course of 1856. Of the entire
series of these Hogg's Instructor and Titan articles, the pro-
duction of De Quincey in his last years from 1850 to 1859,
the larger proportion was incorporated by him in the volumes
of the Collected Edition of his writings then in progress, and
have therefore been accounted for in the preceding Chronology.
A few, however, remained unincluded, whether because he thought
them too slight, or because the Collective Edition was stopped by
his death before they could be overtaken. Of these the following
is the most complete list I have been able to make from a careful
inspection of a now rather rare set of all the volumes of the
two Edinburgh periodicals concerned :-(1) In Hogg's Instructor
for 1850, a short letter to the editor commenting jocularly on a
daguerreotype portrait of himself which had just been published
in the Instructor, and introducing at the same time the first
portion of his "Sketches from Childhood." (2) Also in Hogg's
Instructor for 1850, an article entitled Logic, but really a com-
pound of remarks on the defects of Modern Schoolbooks and
on the Aristotelian Syllogism. (3) In Hogg's Instructor for
1853, a short article entitled On the Supposed Scriptural Ex-
pression for Eternity, arguing that the Scriptural word Aionian
does not imply "eternal" in the modern popular sense, and
therefore that the ordinary doctrine of eternal punishment falls.
to the ground. (4) In Hogg's Instructor for 1854, a fragment
entitled How to Write English, intended as the beginning of a
series of papers on that subject, but not itself reaching the sub-
ject in the least, or doing more than comment on the extraor-
dinary diffusion of the English tongue. (5) In Titan for 1856,
390
APPENDIX
""
a morsel entitled Shakespeare's Text, suggesting an emendation
or two on the received text: this morsel conjoined in the same
article with the scrap entitled "Suetonius Unravelled which
De Quincey afterwards detached for reappearance in his Collective
Edition under the changed title of "Elius Lamia." (6) Also
in Titan for 1856, a notice of the first two volumes of Froude's
History of England, under the title Storms in English History :
A Glance at the Reign of Henry VIII,--the glance being, first,
at the Dissolution of the Religious Houses and the causes of it,
and, secondly, at the question of Queen Anne Boleyn's guilt.
(7) In Titan for 1857, a letter to the Editor entitled The Lake
Dialect, repeating those views as to the Danish origin of the Lake-
Country Dialect which he had formerly expounded, and much more
exactly and brightly, in the columns of The Westmorland Gazette.
(8) Also in Titan for 1857,-but with farther extension in a
separate pamphlet, those more ephemeral appendages to his
main paper on China, reprinted in the present volume under the
title "The Chinese Question in 1857," of which mention has
been made ante, p. 345, in the introductory note to that paper.
(9) Also in Titan for 1857, but continued into January 1858,
a series of three articles entitled severally "Hurried Notices on
Indian Affairs,' Passing Notices on Indian Affairs," and "Sug-
gestions upon the Secret of the Mutiny"-which might bear the
collective title of Notes on the Indian Mutiny, and the chief in-
terest of which now is that they exhibit, though in the form of
ragged current jottings, the feverish personal anxiety with which
the septuagenarian De Quincey (whose daughter, Mrs. Baird
Smith, was in India, with her husband Major Baird Smith,
throughout the Mutiny, and exposed to its dangers) scanned,
month after month, the contents of the Indian mails.
Portions at least of these nine relics of De Quincey in his last
years might have been included among the additions made in the
present Collective Edition to the contents of its predecessors, but
for the cause explained in the Preface. For seven of them, in
whole or in part, readers may be referred to Mr. James Hogg's
"Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey" published during
the progress of the present Edition. Nos. 2 and 3 of our list,
however, are wanting even there.
>"
D. M.
EPILOGUE
IN the General Preface to this Edition (Vol. I, pp. 1X-
xxvii) stress was laid on the fact that a peculiarity of De
Quincey's literary life, distinguishing him from most of his
literary contemporaries, was that "his writings had been,
with hardly an exception, in the one form of fugitive contri-
butions to magazines and other periodicals." That statement
is verified remarkably by the foregoing bibliographical con-
spectus. It shows that, with the exception of the little
romance called Klosterheim, published in a separate volume
in 1832, to which may be added, if the reader chooses, the
wretched piece of hack-work done in 1824 in the form of a
translation of a German Pseudo- Waverley Novel,—all the
writings by which De Quincey is now remembered appeared
originally as articles in magazines or other serials, or were
but recasts and extensions of such originals for subsequent
republication.
But the conspectus enables us to be more precise still.
If we omit the first three-and-thirty years of De Quincey's
life, during which he had no thought as yet of being in any
ordinary sense a man of letters, but was only an eccentric private
scholar and thinker, storing his mind and exercising it for
his own satisfaction, and if we skip also the next three years,
marked by the collapse of his inherited means and his con-
sequent experiment in Tory provincial editorship,-then his
real literary life begins in September 1821, when he was
heard of, in his thirty-seventh year, as "The English Opium-
Eater," and it extends thence to his death in December 1859.
It was during the thirty-eight years included between these
392
EPILOGUE
((
66
two dates that De Quincey gave to the world, and all but
solely in magazines or other periodicals, that long series of
articles, of such diverse kinds and ranging over such a
variety of subjects, which have entitled him to be regarded
as one of the classics of English Prose Literature. Of how
many articles did the entire series consist? In our General
Preface we conjectured the number roughly as
about one
hundred and fifty in all." That calculation may be now
amended. Longer and shorter taken together, and every
"part" of a continued " paper counted as a separate
article, my reading of the conspectus (which can hardly be
wrong by more than a digit or two) makes out the total
number of De Quincey's ascertained contributions to periodi-
cals during the entire thirty-eight years of his literary industry
to have been two hundred and fifteen. Further, and as if to
signalise still more strongly the main fact that De Quincey's
literary activity from first to last was all but exclusively in
the one form of contributorship to periodicals, the conspectus
divides for us De Quincey's complete thirty-eight years of such
activity into three distinct periods, and waves over each of these
periods the flag, as it were, of that particular magazine-con-
nexion which furnished its opportunities and emoluments:
—(1) The first four years of the thirty-eight, or from 1821
to 1825, were the period of his London Magazine Connexion,
during which, going and coming between Grasmere and
London, he supplied to that magazine, or incidentally to one
other, forty-eight articles of the registered total of two
hundred and fifteen. (2) Next comes the longer stretch of
twenty-five years, from 1826 to 1850, during which, first
only tending from Grasmere to Edinburgh, but soon trans-
ferring himself and his family to Edinburgh definitively, he
ceased to look to his native England for his means of income,
and became reconciled, on that account, to residence for all
the rest of his life in or near the Scottish capital. This may
be called the period of his Blackwood and Tait Connexion,-
his excursions beyond the bounds of that main connexion
being but few and occasional. It was a very productive
period on the whole, including one hundred and forty-four
articles out of the total of two hundred and fifteen, and not a
few of these among his most substantial and important.
(3)
EPILOGUE
393
Finally, there is the period of the closing nine years of his
Edinburgh life, from 1850 to 1859, during which, having
cut himself adrift, or been cut adrift, from Blackwood and
Tait, he found refuge in Hogg's Edinburgh Weekly Instructor
and its monthly continuation called Titan. To this period
belong twenty-three articles of the total two hundred and
fifteen, and these mostly short and slight. It is to be remem-
bered, however, that an outgrowth of this last of his publish-
ing connexions was the first British Edition of his Collected
Writings, brought out under the care of Mr. Hogg, and that
De Quincey's main occupation through the greater part of the
nine years was in the labour required for this Edition.
What may have been the average annual amount of
De Quincey's literary earnings? In trying to answer
this question, better to reserve for a moment the last of
the three divisions of his literary life, and attend to the
thirty years or so comprehended in the two preceding
divisions. Those thirty years, from 1821 to 1850, bringing
De Quincey from the thirty-seventh year of his age to the
sixty-sixth, were the time of his magazine-industry pure and
simple, whereas in the last nine years there was a complication
of circumstances. The question may therefore be: How much
money did he earn by his writings during those thirty years?
Having done my best to make a computation, I cannot
estimate his total receipts from his literary activity during
those thirty years, so far as our conspectus represents it, at more
than £3000. Distributed over the thirty years, this would give
an average of but £100 a year. Remembering, however,
that there may have been items of literary earning not
represented in our conspectus (say by articles now and then
in newspapers), and also that De Quincey may have been
paid for some of his magazine-articles above the ordinary
rate, we may perhaps raise the estimate,-though of this I
am dubious,—to £150 a year. In more prolific years, as the
conspectus will suggest, the sum may have been considerably
higher, and in other years it may have sunk to almost nil; but
£150 a year at the utmost may stand as the computed
average. This at first sight may look startling. A great
English writer persevering in his craft, and doing his best in
it, for an average recompense of £150 a year, or £3 a week!
394
EPILOGUE
But, for those who are acquainted with the commerce of
literature, there is nothing so startling in the report after
all. It is through the avenue of what we have called
magazine-industry pure and simple,-.e. by writing for
magazines, reviews, and literary journals,-that almost all
literary aspirants that are not in possession of independent
means do and must make their way into the world of
literature in general; and it is a safe assertion that even the
most acceptable and successful practitioner of this kind of
industry, so long as he does not annex to it an editorship, or
an engagement on a newspaper-staff, or something else of
the sort, or does not advance into further publicity as
the author of more or less popular books, cannot earn by
it, in these days, more than about £200 a year regularly.
Exceptional cases there may be, or may have been,—such as
that of Southey, who had a special retainer for the Quarterly,
and that of Macaulay, who had a special retainer for the
Edinburgh; but the rule is as has been stated. Carlyle, so
long as he remained in the probationary stage of contributor-
ship to magazines and reviews, did not earn, by his exertions
of that kind, more than £200 a year, if so much. Now, the
peculiarity in De Quincey's case was that this form of literary
employment, which in so many cases has been but pro-
bationary,—an avenue to larger things, detained him, and
sufficed him, for nearly the whole of his life. Nor, while
remaining in the avenue, had he any faculty for annexing to
his special industry in it, as so many others have done,
auxiliary engagements and occupations. Hence the pheno-
menon of thirty years of such rare literary exertion for such
small wages.
Of course, it is necessary to suppose that there
must have been supplements to this income, all the while,
or occasionally at least, from independent sources. There
are glimpses to that effect in the family correspondence; but
the particulars are unknown.
It mattered supremely little to De Quincey himself.
Though he had been driven originally into literature by
stress of means, and though his literary life through the
first division of it, and nearly the whole of the second, was
agitated by a succession of troublesome little difficulties about
money, he never really cared for money. He would have
EPILOGUE
395
.
been more at home in a world in which money was not an
institution. An "intellectual creature" from his birth, as
he defined himself, dedicated wholly to "intellectual pursuits
and pleasures," and finding these by preference in frequent
or habitual solitude, he went through the world accordingly.
Perhaps nothing great or fine in literature has ever been
produced, or ever can be produced, without the liberty and
practice of solitude in considerable amount, either daily or
at intervals. But in De Quincey's case the amount of
habitual self-seclusion, of disconnexion from all the customs
and conventions of ordinary society, of placid persistence in
a state of non-relatedness to other human beings, was abnormal
to the verge of the incredible. One remembers, indeed, his
enthusiastic early attachments to Coleridge and Wordsworth,
his later liking for Charles Lamb, and his long friendship
with Wilson; but even these seem gradually to have faded;
and from the time of the commencement of his own literary
life almost his sole tie to the world, apart from his ever-
increasing affection for his children, seems to have consisted
in the opportunities it afforded him for new observation and
speculation, and for the prosecution of the literary industry
which fate had made his one business. Though he could be
lured into company sometimes, and on such occasions would
charm all by the exquisite and ornate politeness of his
manner no less than by the copious splendours of his talk,
he evaded such distractions as much as possible, sent excuses
ten times for once that he appeared, and often left his place
of domicile for months together a matter of conjecture.
Wherever he might be domiciled, he would live on con-
tentedly by himself, attired in any loose kind of old raiment
he had in possession, penning his magazine articles on any
corner of his table that had been left free from the general
litter of books and papers, and making his irregular meals of
tea, coffee, soup, or some morsel of soft animal food, with
only his indispensable modicum of opium for additional
stimulant or luxury. Such, with the variations of long and
furtive walks, still all by himself, either in the late after-
noons, or more frequently after it was dark, was the daily
routine for many years of this singularly anomalous life.
Nowhere in the records of recent literature can one point to
396
EPILOGUE
a life more pathetically frugal, or of fewer personal needs ;
and, while this fact helps to explain the extreme tenuity of
the money-earnings by which a career of such memorable
literary achievement was sustained, it throws back more
honour upon that struggling career itself than has perhaps
been accorded to it by ethical critics. One grows angry,
it
is true, or at least impatient, in the contemplation of such
protracted and infant-like helplessness; the opium-eating,
which was radically the cause, has been too much blazoned
to the world by De Quincey himself to be ever forgotten;
but was there not something to admire in the uncomplaining
steadiness with which the marvellous little man accepted the
small recompense which the world chose to bestow upon him
for his exertions, and endeavoured to make it adequate?
Not only endeavoured, it would appear, but,—the supple-
ments above hinted at having here, however, to be taken
into the account,-actually succeeded! It is the belief, at
all events, of those who have had the best means of judging
of De Quincey's private affairs, that many of those little
money-embarrassments of which we hear in the memoirs of
him were either hallucinations of his own over - sensitive
fancy or arose from extortionate attempts of unprincipled
persons to take advantage of his feebleness, and that even at
those times when the embarrassment was most real he was
never so much behindhand but that £50 would have set him
right. Eventually, it is inferred, no one suffered loss by his
default. But, even were the summing-up less satisfactory in
that particular than such testimony seems to warrant, would
there not be some compensation in the finding from another
point of view? Rightly or wrongly, De Quincey dissented
from that ideal of a literary life which Sir Walter Scott was
so fond of impressing upon young literary aspirants, and
which Scott's authority and general observation of the perils
and distresses of authorship have made universally current,
-to wit, that literature should be only the side-occupation,
the occupation of the leisure bye-hours, of a life sufficiently
provided for by some other form of business. De Quincey
held, on the other hand, that in some cases at least it is
necessary, and also advantageous to society, that the whole
life of a man should be devoted to the intellectual occupa-
EPILOGUE
397
tions for which he is specially fitted, and that, at all events,
if any one chooses to act on this principle, and to accept its
hazards, he is entitled to respect. He had accepted the
principle for himself, or had drifted into a life requiring that
principle for its explanation and vindication; and what one
observes is that he was faithful to the strictest rule of literary
duty which the principle implied. His writings are of vari-
ous degrees of worth on the whole,-some of them hurried,
or otherwise not up to the mark of those produced when his
vein was in its finest and fullest phrenzy; but it may be said
of him more confidently than of most men of letters that he
always did his best up to the possibilities of the moment, and
never consciously scamped his workmanship.
The nine final years of De Quincey's literary life were the
most peaceful and prosperous of all. If the products of his
pen in the shape of new magazine articles through this
period were comparatively few, it was because he was
absorbed in the editorial labour over the Collective Edition
of his writings. What with the substitution then of some
definite amount of pecuniary interest in this editorial labour
(one knows not how much) for the more precarious previous
income from his mere magazine contributions, what with the
voluntary transfer to him by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields of
some share in the profits of the American Collective Edition,
and what with some fallings-in about this time, or a little
before, of family inheritances or bequests, his circumstances
became easier than they had ever been since the early and
as yet unclouded days of his residence at Grasmere. And
with this change there were others. First the announcement
of the Collective Edition, and then the appearance of volume
after volume of it at intervals, recalled attention to De
Quincey, and to the extent and miscellaneousness of his
contributions to English literature. He had distinctly
emerged at last from the "avenue," and had come out into
the open.
People in Edinburgh who had heard of him
before but vaguely were wakened up to the fact that such a
notability had been long living amongst them; and admirers
from a distance, English and American, when chance brought
them to Edinburgh, were eager for a sight of him. Though
still morbidly evasive of all such encounters, he could not
398
EPILOGUE
*
avoid response now in some degree, and was consequently
more visible and accessible than formerly. This, in fact, was
the time of those visits to him and experiences of the
courteous hospitalities of him and his daughters in their
pleasant family-home at Lasswade, and of those calls upon
him by a privileged few of his Edinburgh friends in the more
guarded privacy of his lodgings and permanent editorial
workshop in Lothian Street, of which there have been so
many published reminiscences. Mr. J. R. Findlay's Personal
Recollections of De Quincey are among the most interesting of
these; and, as it was Mr. Findlay's little book that furnished
us, in our General Preface in Volume I, with the most exact
and authentic sketch we could find of De Quincey and his
Edinburgh ways generally in his last years, so we may recur
to it for what more is wanted in this Epilogue.
((
Mr. Findlay's first introduction to De Quincey was at
Lasswade in January 1852; but the later notes in his book
refer to calls he made on De Quincey in his Lothian Street
lodgings from 1854 onwards, or to meetings with De Quincey
on the rare occasions when he was persuaded to leave those
lodgings for a small dinner-party at the house of Mr. Findlay's
uncle, Mr. John Ritchie, in George Square. Under the date
2d May 1855 one of the notes runs thus :
"Called on
"De Quincey at Lothian Street.
Found him in his room,
"with a small glass half filled with liquor of the colour of
pale port, and a phial of undiluted laudanum beside it, on
"the table, which was covered as usual with books and
"papers. He complained of pain in his left arm, which, as
"he described it, seemed like rheumatism. It prevented his
sleeping, and, unfortunately, he said, laudanum had no
"effect upon it." Again, under the date 17th November
1856, the note runs :- "Called on De Quincey in Lothian
"Street about five. Found him at tea; his room littered
"with MSS., books, &c.; small glass of laudanum in one
hand, teacup in other. I called to ask him to dine with.
us, to meet Thackeray, on the following Saturday. He
"said he would do his best to come, but had work on hand
"which he must have finished this week, and also that he
"had not been out of the house since May." To Thackeray's
great disappointment, Mr. Findlay adds, De Quincey did not
66
((
EPILOGUE
399
appear at the time fixed, but sent his apology. He was then
seventy-one years of age, and the lassitude which had kept
him from going out for so many months of that year increased
upon him thenceforward so much that for the next year or
two he continued the recluse habit and hardly moved out of
doors. Still there were no signs of absolute break-up; and,
till his last illness came upon him in October 1859, when he
had entered his seventy-fifth year, it seemed as if the vitality
might battle with the feebleness for some while longer.
is for Mr. Findlay to tell the rest:
It
During his last illness he sent for me, and I saw him several
times. On the last occasion I remained only a few minutes, as he was
extremely feeble; yet in all his weakness his wonted courtesy
prompted him, on my rising to leave, to deplore that, from inability
to rise, or even to turn fully in bed, he was unable to ring, and that
so I was left to show myself out. His youngest and only unmarried
daughter, Emily, was with him at this time, and she promised to let
me know if I, or any of our family, could be of any service. We did
not therefore risk disturbing them by sending or calling often; and
indeed, having had experience of his surprising recoveries from
previous illnesses, we were not fully alive to the gravity of this one.
Most unfortunately, two notes which Miss De Quincey posted to me
failed, through being imperfectly addressed, to reach me in time. On
the afternoon of the 8th December 1859 a rumour reached me that
De Quincey was dead, and I hastened to Lothian Street, in some hope,
however faint, that rumour lied. 'Is what I hear true?' I said to
the kind landlady, Mrs. Wilson, who opened the door. Without
answering, she ushered me at once into the chamber of death. On
the simple uncurtained pallet, whence in that last interview he
had smilingly, with all those delicately polite regrets, said good-
bye, the tiny frame of this great dreamer lay stretched in his last
long dreamless sleep. Attenuated to an extreme degree, the body
looked infantile in size, a very slender stem for the shapely and
massive head that crowned it. The face was little changed; its
delicate bloom indeed was gone, but the sweet expression lingered,
and the finely-chiselled features were unaltered. was profoundly
impressed."
The obituary notices of De Quincey in the newspapers in
the week after his death were nothing like so abundant as
those which came out on the occasion of the death of his
junior contemporary Macaulay in the same month twenty
days afterwards. Even in Edinburgh the event was but
slightly chronicled. They buried him in a quiet corner
in St. Cuthbert's Churchyard, at the west end of Princes
400
EPILOGUE
Street, in the same grave in which the body of his wife
had been laid two-and-twenty years before; and a simple
Sacred
TO THE MEMORY OF
THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
WHO WAS BORn at GreenhAY,
NEAR MANCHESTER,
AUGUST 15TH, 1785,
AND DIED IN EDINBURGH
DECEMBER STH, 1859:
AND OF MARGARET, HIS WIFE,
WHO DIED
AUGUST 7TH, 1837.
circular-headed stone tablet,
projecting from a piece of old.
wall, now indicates the spot,
and bears the few lines of
inscribed epitaph.
Strange that this epitaph
should contain what was till
lately the common error of
all De Quincey's biographers
as to the place of his birth !
He was born in Manchester,
and not at Greenhay,—which
was remembered by him only
as the place where he passed
the dreamy years of his early
boyhood. It matters the less
because Greenhay, though then
some little way out of Man-
chester, has long been part
and parcel of the much-ex-
tended city. Otherwise the
sepulchral monument, though
simple, answers its purpose.
There has been talk, indeed,
of late, of something finer,
to be erected by public sub-
scription; but, though that
would be no ungraceful act,
The best monument to
it is not at all indispensable.
De Quincey consists of the writings he has left.

DAVID MASSON.
EDINBURGH: December 1890.
INDEX
2 D
VOL. XIV
INDEX
A, on the sounds of the letter in
the English language, vii 221
note
Abeken's "Cicero in seinen Briefen,"
vi 186, 190
Aches, Kemble's pronunciation of
the word, xi 464
Actors, illiberal prejudice against,
iv 35
raised to the rank of His Ma-
jesty's servants, iv 67
Addison, Joseph, not well ac-
quainted with the literature of
his country, iv 22
a thoughtless critic, xiv 155
criticism of his works, xi 19-29
his charges against Milton, x
407
his opinion of Shakespeare's
genius, iv 24 note
never quoted from Shakespeare,
iv 24, 232 note, xi 19 note
his period compared with that of
Goldsmith, iv 307
question of his religious reputa-
tion and habits of intemper-
ance, xi 383
wrong in his feud with Pope, iv
277
Pope's retort upon, iv 279,
286 note
wrong in the principle of his
condemnation of the Italian
Opera, x 368
Adelberg, Andreä made Abbot of,
xiii 407
Adelung's "Mithridates," notice
of, x 33, 362
Adjectives, capricious limitation of
the use of, in the English lan-
guage, ix 53 note
Advocates' and Signet Libraries,
Edinburgh, xiv 303
Ady, Joseph, and his letters about
unclaimed dividends, vii 192
Elius Lamia, vi 4, 421-428
Elius Verus, his luxury and vices,
vi 325
Æschylus, his Agamemnon, i 108
his Prometheus, xi 170 note
Esop, Phædrus on the statue of,
i 125
Africa of Herodotus, vi 123
African negroes' character, xiv 56
Agrippa, Herod, viii 319 note, 430
his death foretold by the omen
of a bird, viii 430
Akte (Geographical) of Greece, vi
135
Aladdin, the story of, analysed,
i 128
Alchemy and Cabbalism in Free-
masonry, xiii 399
Aldermen not necessarily gluttons,
xi 103
Alexander and the Oracle at Delphi,
viii 419
Alexander I. of Russia, iii 63
404
INDEX
Ali Pacha, Vizier of Yannina, vii | Anecdotes, on a pair of stockings,
302, 324
Alison, Dr. W. P., v 188 note
Allegoric, the, in art, xi 198 note, 201
Allegory of Solomon's house, xiii
429
Altamont, Earl of, i 211
Altrincham, iii 299
Ambassador, Chinese translation of
our word, xiv 363 note
America, length of distances in,
xiii 295 note
possibly known to the Romans,
vi 332 note
rivers of, unfinished, xiv 72
iv 60
on eating peas with a knife, i
323 note
on praying for the Pretender, v
155
first importation of Brazilian
emeralds into Europe, ix 409
illustration of sensation of drown-
ing, xiii 347
Middleton and plagiarism, iv
125 note
the patient and the doctor's fee,
v 153
the tailor and his goose, v 184
Amherst, Lord, Ambassador to Anglo-German Dictionaries, x 426-
China, xiv 184, 363
Anabaptists, xiii 412
Anachronisms, errors committed in,
xiv 308
"Anastasius
398 notes
Andrea, John Valentine, author of
the "Confessio Fraternitatis
Rosea Crucis," xiii 405
his "Menippus,” xiii 417
Anecdotage, v 1, 146-164
Anecdotes, all false, viii 375
on opium, iii 384,
of Abbess and Nun, xiii 337
of Madame de Campan and Louis
XV, i 162
of Rev. John Coleridge, ii 165
of S. T. Coleridge, v 186
of Mrs. Garrick and the ducks,
v 148
of Grecian ring-dropper, xiv 358
note
of Dr. Johnson and Miss Knight,
v 151
of Bishop Stock's plate, i 251
|
428
Anglo-Saxon language, gradual ex-
pansion of the, xiv 149
Animals, do they commit suicide!
viii 337, 401
Ankle bells used by the Hebrew
lady, vi 161
Ann, De Quincey's fellow-sufferer in
London, iii 360, 374, 441, 445
parting with her, iii 367
Anson, Lord, xiv 186, 352
Antagonism, x 436-437
Anti-Christians excluded from so-
ciety of Freemasons, xiii 390
Antigone of Sophocles as repre-
sented on the Edinburgh stage,
x 7, 360-388
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, vi
335-353
Antoninus Pius, vi 330-335
Antony, Mark, vi 271, 283 note
Apartment, not apartments, the
correct term, i 409 note; ii
336 note
of William III and the peas, ii | Apel, J. A., The Fatal Marksman,
349
of Cardinal York, v 155
of a favourite dish and a spoiled
boy, v 156
of a plum-pudding, v 156
of the German equivalent for
dead," v 200; x 427
xii 3, 287-313
Apocalypse of St. John, ideas and
imagery adopted by Studion
and others, xiii 400
Apollo's literary reputation, decay
of, viii 202 note, 231
"Arabian Nights" criticised, i 127
of the Lady nicknamed the Sara- | Arabs and their connexion with
cen's head, ii 349
Freemasonry, xiii 398
INDEX
405
Arabs, character of the, xiv 55
Ararat, Mount, vi 9
Arden, Mary, Shakespeare's mother,
iv 39
Aristocracy, feelings of the, with
regard to letting their houses,
vi 391 note
British and German compared,
ii 37
manners of, i 20
and their bearing to those be-
neath them, xi 102
Aristotle's Rhetoric, v 339; x 3,
83, 217
Arithmetic, on teaching, xiv 32
Armatoles, Greek bandits, vii 295
Armies of the East, xiv 196
Aureola, or glory of the painters,
i 35 note
Aurora Borealis discovered by
Halley, viii 32 note
little noticed by poets, xi 317
Authors not to be judged by the
bulk of their writings, v 295
seldom popular out of their own
country, iv 69 note
Authorship,
advantages
women, ii 300
literature and, x 9-22
of, to
the trade of, iv 292; x 12, 19
Autobiography, 1785-1803, i 1, 17-
416
1803-1808, ii 1, 9-109
epilogue, xiv 391
Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, iii 243; xi | Avenger, The, xii 2, 234-285
101
Art, nothing done well without, x
264
Art, Fine, not an imitation but an
idealisation of nature, x 368
Arts, Fine, essay on the, by Lessing,
xi 3, 164-214
Arthur, Prince, brother of Henry
VIII, his christening, iv 19
note
Arundel marbles, Bentley's correc-
tion of inscription on, iv 208,
213
Asbies, Shakespeare's mother's por-
tion, value of, iv 39, 82 note
Ashmole, the antiquary, one of the
earliest Freemasons, xiii 425
Ass, sublimity of the, viii 406
Assassin, etymology of the word,
xiii 21 note
Astrology, xiii 259-269
Astronomy (System of the Heavens),
viii 7-41
Athens, population of, x 376
the early seat of civilisation, xiv
348
Attorneys, "Old Bailey," iii 166
Augury, Echo, i 123 note
Augustus Cæsar, vi 268-281, 282
note, 304 note
Aurelian, Emperor, vi 398
Aurelius, Marcus, vi 335-353
|
Avidius Cassius, revolt of, vi 346
Awister's "Effects of Opium," iii
213
BACCHUS represented with horns,
xi 197
Bacon, Lord, his oratory, x 336
his rhetoric, x 109 note
his style, v 95, 144 note
on conversation, x 26-28
his romantic fiction of Bensalem,
xiii 429
Baggage, literary, v 294
Bailey, Dr., and his Hebrew Gram-
mar, i 394
Balkan, feat of crossing the, per-
formed by the Emperor Claud-
ius, vi 397
Ball, Sir Alexander, ii 185; v 199
Ballot, differences of opinion re-
garding the, ix 351
Bangor, iii 322, 326 note
Banking, modern, vii 91
Banks of the Greeks, vii 88
Banks' tragedy, "Charles I," x 353
Banquets, Roman, sacrifices to the
gods, viii 219
Baphomet, meaning of, in Free-
masonry, xiii 444
Baptism, on performance of the
rite soon after birth, iv 18
Baptismal regeneration, viii 290
406
INDEX
Barbarian, origin of the word, x | Bellenden, William, v 140 note
252
Barbauld, Mrs., i 127; xi 219
note
Barclay, William, on resistance in
cases of extremity, viii 111
Barker's, E. H., Parriana re-
viewed, v 9
Barnard, Lady, Shakespeare's
granddaughter, iv 19, 36, 68
Barnard, Frederick Augusta, half-
brother of George III, i 170
Barnes, Professor, Bentley's con-
duct to, iv 123 note
Barruel's History of Jacobinism,
vii 173
Bath, i 156, 329, 404
Bath-col, or the Daughter-voice, i
123; viii 423
Baths, Roman, vii 33
Battels at Oxford, ii 47
Battle trophies of the Greeks, their
fugitive character, vii 87 note
Baxter, Richard, as a pulpit orator,
iii 241
Beaupuis, General, his character
and position in the French
Revolution, ii 276
Beauvais, Bishop of, the conductor
of the trial of Joan of Arc, v
403, 442
Beck, derivation of the word, xiii
380
Bed, early retirement to, of the
Ancients, vii 13
Beddoes, Dr., iv 343 note
Bee, vision of the, viii 298 note
Bees in chimneys, iii 393
Beetle, three-man, for driving pav-
ing stones, i 305, v 154, 180
note
Begbie, W., murder of, xiii 49 note
Belgrave, Lord, quoted Greek in
the House of Commons, i 364
Bell, Dr. Andrew, and his wife, ii
185 note; v 196
first importer into England of
the Madras system of educa-
tion, xiv 12 note, 306
Bell-ringing, v 138 note
Parr's preface to his "De Statu,"
v 88, 98, 140 note
Belles Lettres not self-sufficing to
the mind, x 14
Belzoni, the traveller, v 325 note
Bennett's, J. W., Ceylon and its
Capabilities reviewed, vii 427
Bentley, Richard, iv 14, 118-239
his massacre of the "Paradise
Lost," i 92 note; iv 191, 226;
xi 465
on a hiatus in Homer, vi 13
on the spurious Epistles ascribed
to Phalaris, xiii 388; xiv 309
Berkeley, Bishop, his "Siris," ii 153
the murderer of Malebranche,
xiii 32
Berners Street, xiii 13
Bewick's Quadrupeds, vii 69 note
Bible, self-sufficingness, etc., of, viii
257
inspiration, viii 264
different versions, viii 269
philological development, viii
295
philosophic development, viii 295
chronology, viii 96, 283; xiv 312,
322
does not profess to teach science,
viii 282
a knowledge of Greek necessary
for studying the, i 374
on the true relations of the, to
merely human science, viii 2,
34-41
reason why not disturbed by
verbal corruptions or mis-
translations, xiv 318
Bibliolatry, viii 263
Bird, Richter's Complaint of, in a
darkened cage, xi 284
Birmingham, i 267; ii 151, 386
used in the sense "spurious," i
95; ii 172, 208; iii 320; x
71, 96, 114, 171, 302 note
Black Art, the, and Freemasonry,
xiii 399
Blackburne, Archdeacon, viii 248
note
INDEX
407
Blackwood's Magazine and Pro- | Breakfasts not known in ancient
fessor Wilson, v 293
Blair, Dr. Alexander, ii 193, 373
Bloodshed, merciful, of the Old
Testament, viii 395 note
Rome, vii 15
Bride in Germany, the affianced
one, xii 303 note
Bridge of Sighs, i 74 note
Bloomfield's Greek Testament, xiv Bridges, Dr., his arrangement for
321 note
Blucher's, Marshal, visit to London,
iii 66
Blue-books, xi 54 note
exchange of parishes with Dr.
Parr, and their doctrinal op-
position, v 26
Bridgewater, Duke of, i 21
Blue-stocking, supposed origin of Bristol Mail, the best in the king-
the name, i 322 note
Bobo, Mrs, the biscuit-maker, xiii
179 note
Boccalini's "Raguglio di Parnasso,"
xiii 409
Bodmer, his influence upon German
literature, iv 426
Boehmen's, Jacob, works, anno-
tated by Coleridge, v 183 note
Boeotia, Attic prejudice against the
natives of, xi 103
dom, iii 368
British Crown, its titles require
alteration, i 163 note
British nation nobler than the
French, v 375 note
Brocken, spectre of the, i 51
Bromley, Pope's satire upon, iv
284 note
Broome's connection with Pope as
a translator of the "Odyssey,"
iv 263
Bons-mots, constant revival of, viii Brotoffer, Radtich, xiii 414
275
Bookbinding as a Fine Art, vii 188
Boothby's, Sir Brooke, daughter,
epitaph on, v 106; xi 180 note
"Bore on the River Dee, iii 305
Borneo, supply of gold from, ix
407 note
Boudet, Captain, i 255
Boughton, Sir T., murder of, xiii 38
Bouterwek, F., historian of Euro-
pean literature, x 41, 43
Bowyer, Master of Christ's Hospital,
v 197
Boyle Lecture, foundation of, iv
135
Boys, Education of, in Large Num-
bers, xiv 9-45
|
Brougham, Hon. Maria, Marquess
Wellesley's epitaph on, v 176
De Quincey's inscription on, v178
Brown, Dr. John, his "Estimate of
the Manners and Principles of
the Times" noticed, vii 99
Brown, Dr. Thomas, v 296; xiv 127
Browne, Dr. Peter, Dean of Ferns,
i 250, 335
Browne's, Sir Thomas, rhetoric, x
104
Bruce Castle Academy, i 295; xiv
10 note
Brunell, an attorney, iii 350, 356
Brunonian theory in Germany, iv
342
Bryant, Jacob, v 312
Bracelets of the Hebrew women, Buckingham, Duke of, Pope's libel-
vi 161
Brain, human, compared to a pal-
impsest, xiii 346
Brandy, use of, in extreme cases
of illness, xiii 206 note
Brasenoge College, Oxford, iii 323
note
Bread eaten in an early stage of
sponge, xiv 267
lous outrage upon, xi 131-
135, 147
Buckingham, J. S., his political
agitation, ix 341
Buckinghamshire, Sheffield, Duke
of, a pompous grandee, iv 246
his reasons for not being Duke
of Buckingham, iv 246 note;
xi 133 note
408
INDEX
Buhle's work on Freemasonry, xiii | Cæsar, Julius, vi 196, 242-267,
385
Bull, chase after a, v 269
Bull, Irish, what is it? i 219 note
Bulls, Milton's, x 415
Bunbury, Lady Sarah, i 175
Burglars of the Greeks, vii 86
Burke, Edmund, compared with
Fox; his fame growing since
his death, xi 35-40
the supreme writer of his century,
x 114, 125 note
his opinions regarding the French
Revolution, ix 368
his opinion of the relation be-
tween Whigs and Tories, ix
372, 378
his appeal to the old Whigs, ix
349
and Johnson, their colloquial
talents contrasted, v 134 note;
x 269
and Mackintosh contrasted, viii
129
Burke and Hare murders, xiii 60,
66
Burnet, Bishop, famous for his gift
of lying, x 318
Burnet, Dr., of the Charterhouse,
xi 34 note
Burns, Robert, a
craze
subject of, ii 130
""
282 note
his presence of mind, xiv 338
contrasted with Pompey, xiv 340
Caesars, the, i 12; vi 1, 225-420
Cagots, Pyrenean, a race of pariahs,
conjectures as to their origin,
etc., i 100
Cain, the first murderer, xiii 17, 64
"Caleb Williams" analysed, xi 329
Caliban, Shakespeare's, not yet
thoroughly fathomed, iv 77,
85 note
California and the Gold-digging
Mania, ix 10, 395-427
Caligraphy, the art of, xiv 41
Caligula, vi 282-286, 313 note
"Call" in the Church of Scotland,
xiv 228
Calvert, Raisley, friend of Words-
worth, ii 289
Calvin and Melanchthon, xi 412
and Servetus, viii 256
Camel in needle's eye, simile of, i
243 note; viii 272 note
Campan, Madame de, anecdote of,
i 162
Campanella's work on the Spanish
monarchy, xiii 417
Campis, Julianus à, xiii 413
on the Campo Santo at Pisa, xiii 323 note
Canadian savage, character of, xiv 57
Canning, the last of the rhetori-
cians, x 120
his Jacobinism, ii 132
Bursaries at continental universi-
ties, i 380 note
Buttermere, beauty of, ii 180
Byrom's, Dr., equivocating im-
promptu, iii 250 note
Byron, Lord, his blunder concern-
ing the Lake poets, ii 438
his patronage of Pope, xi 114
his plagiarism, iii 205 note
and Shelley, their external ap-
pearance contrasted, xi 377
note
C, the Roman, always equal to our
K, viii 305 note
century, xiii 400
his extreme sensitiveness, i 158
Canton, Lord Anson's bombard-
ment of, xiv 187
Capital as affecting value, modes
of, ix 196-199
Capodistria, Count, his organisa-
tion of the Hetaria as a poli-
tical secret society, vii 298
Carbery, Lady, i 329 et seq.; iii
280
Carlisle, Sir Anthony (?), his con-
tempt for history, v 352; xiv
304
Carlisle, Lord, on Pope, xi 1,98-155
Cabbalism towards end of sixteenth Carlyle, Thomas, on the rights of
labour, iv 300
INDEX
409
Carlyle, Thomas, his translations | Charles I., his relations towards his
of Wilhelm Meister reviewed,
iii 174; xi 222
De Quincey's friendship for, iv
6; xi. 223 note
Caroline, Princess, daughter of
George II, anecdote of, v 159
Caroline, Queen, and Sir Walter
Scott, v 69, 139 note
Carriage, cost of keeping a, i 406
Carriages, travelling, part of the
military baggage of war, i 271
Carus, Emperor, vi 406
Cary, Sir Robert, afterwards Lord
Monmouth, his ride from
Richmond to Holyrood, i 273
Cassius, Avidius, revolt of, vi 346
Castlereagh, Lord. See London-
derry (the second lord)
Casuistry, viii 6, 310-368
of Roman meals, vii 1, 11-43
ill-founded objections to, x 30 note
and the Church of Rome, iii 160
of duelling, iii 180
meaning of the word, xi 116
Cathedral cities, on the society of,
iv 399
Catherine, Empress, of Russia,
anecdote of, xi 389 note
Catholics, Roman, in Pope's time,
iv 243
Caution money at Oxford, ii 28, 51
Cellini as a murderer, vii 187
forgery of his work, x 294
Censorship, revival of the, by the
Emperor Decius, vi 389 note
Ceylon, vii 3, 427-456
legend of the granite cippus of,
viii 370
Chaldæa and Persia in connexion
with Freemasonry, xiii 396
Charity a Christian virtue, vii 259,
viii 302
Charlemagne, v 1, 352-383
Charles I., case of, viii 365-368
falsification of the history of his
reign, ix 295
his want of foresight, xiv 342
ill omens that occurred to, viii
447
parliaments, vi 211; ix 325
an accomplished man and an ad-
mirer of Shakespeare, iv 28
and the "Eikon Basiliké," iv 28
note; viii 147-155
and sortilegy, viii 421
Charles II, restoration of, in con-
nexion with Freemasonry, xiii
431, 437
Charlotte of Wales, Princess, and
her will, xiv 121
Charost, Lieut.-Colonel, an officer
of the French invading army
in Ireland, i 254
Chateaubriand's estimate of Milton,
iii 265; v 409 note
Chaucer, his language not obsolete,
vi 70
and Homer, the works of, com-
pared, x 309, 311
"Chemical nuptials of Christian
Rosycross, by Andrea, xiii
406, 409, 416
""
Childbirth, the curse on, xiv 291
Children, on the death of young,
by Richter, xi 284
of France and England, applica-
tion of the term to the royal
families of, xi 348 note
Chimneys in the Lake District, iii
393 note
China, Opium Question with, in
1840, xiv 7, 146 note, 162-205
on the views of the Duke of
Wellington on, xiv 205-218
effect of the loss of English trade
on, xiv 181
means of arriving at an under-
standing with, xiv 199
George III's present of a state-
coach to the Emperor of, xiii
276
Kien Long, Emperor of, vii 410,
422
Chinese characteristics, xiv 56
a British sailor given up to be
executed by the, xiv 187
Question in 1857, xiv 7, 345-367
revenge, xiv 192, 366
410
INDEX
Chloroform, Religious Objections to | Church of England, its varying his-
the use of, xiv 6, 286-293
Chorus, Greek, x 354 note, 359, 372
Christ as a healer or physician, vii
160, viii 178 note, 205
genealogy of, xiv 321
Christ's Hospital, v 223
Christenings, Royal, often hurried,
iv 19 note
Christian VII of Denmark, his
marriage with the Princess
Matilda, his idiocy, etc., viii 130
Christian truth and its relation to
the truths of science and phil-
osophy, viii 35, 282; xiv 325
Christians, Early, considered as
Essenes, vii 101-172
Christianity as an organ of Poli-
tical Movement, viii 4, 207-
243
judged by a heathen, vi 345 note
its impregnation of symbols, iii
289-293
development of, vii 62, 104, viii
289-295
the organ of improvement for
uncultured languages, xiv 320
note
the true basis of all philosophy,
ii 156
Kant's hostility to, viii 94, 99
Chronological meridians, Pericles
and Alexander, x 204 et seq.
Chronology, Memorial, on a new
and more Apprehensible Sys-
tem, xiv 7, 295-326
a main condition under which
history is intelligible, xiv 308
makes large anachronisms im-
possible, xiv 310
objections to Scriptural, xiv 318
of New Testament, xiv 321
of Herodotus, vi 136
Biblical, viii 96, 283; xiv 312, 322
Chrysom children, explanation of
the term, vii 164 note
Chumship, practice of, at Oxford,
ii 30
Church of England, hostility to, iii
129
tory, ix 364-367
the only learned church, ix 365
Church of Rome and casuistry, iii
160
Church of Scotland, iii 156
Secession from the, xiv 5, 219-
262
process by which a parish clergy-
man is created, xiv 224
Free, formation of the, xiv 247
incomes of its clergy, xiv 262
Cicero, i 13; vi 1, 179-224
Cineas, his repartee to Pyrrhus, vii
178
Cipher, first rude artifice invention,
xiv 314 note
Circle, squaring the, viii 120 note
Cities, ancient, reason for their
having secret names which
were rigorously concealed, i
88 note
Civilian, improper use of the word,
iv 154 note, v 97 note
Clare, John (Poet), iii 143-145
Clarendon, Lord, on Charles I.'s
army of reserve in Devonshire,
vi 204
Clarke, Mr., banker, ii 123, 126
Clarkson and Wilberforce, xiv 307
Classical, the term, x 295 note
studies, advantage of, iv 172
Claudius, Emperor, vi 397
Clayton's, Sir Richard, translation
of Tenhove, i 386
Cleaver, Dr., bishop of Bangor,
iii 322
(6
Clepsydra," as a check on long
talkers, x 286
Clergy of the Church of England,
falsification of history charged
to the, ix 8, 298, 305, 309
average income of the, in Eng-
land and Scotland, xiv 242
Clowes, Rev. John, of Manchester,
i 137, ii 113-122
Clubs, Everlasting, vii 182
Co and con, law regulating their
use as prefixes, iv 231 note
Coaches, light and heavy, iii 343
INDEX
411
心
​Cobden's idea of war, ix 409
"Cock and Bull story," national
origin of the term, xi 152 note
Coena, the Roman, or dinner, ii
305; vi 334; vii 28, 34, 40
Coffee, atrocious in England, iv
346 note
Cognosced," meaning of the term,
viii 130 note
Coins, Indian, vii 186; viii 190
note
Colbatch's "Jus Academicum," iv
157
Cold, intense sensation of, iii 354;
xi 275
Coleridge's, Hartley, dilatoriness,
i 88
Coleridge, Rev. John, ii 164
Coleridge, S. T., ii 3, 138-228, 232,
335-347
his plagiarisms, ii 142, 226 note
and opium-eating, v 1, 179-214
his use of two illustrations which
he considered inexhaustible in
their applications, xi 378
((
Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," v
190
his personal appearance, v 184
note, 213
his face, iii 423
as a conversationalist, v 204; x
281
as a connoisseur of fire, xiii 14
Coleridge, S. T., his dislike to Sir
H. Davy, iii 16, 21
and Herder compared, iv 381
and Johnson compared, iii 19
and Wordsworth, first meeting
of, ii 282
Coleridge, Mrs., ii 157, 168 note
Coleridge, Mrs. Sara, ii 233 note;
iv 393 note
problem cited by, v 332, 348 note
College headships, ii 25; iv 144
note
discipline, ii 48
See Oxford
Colonisation, science of, vii 427
over, a mysterior offence, xi 457
Roman method of, vi 356 note
Combe, John, epitaph on, absurdly
attributed to Shakespeare, iv
62
Comedy, the father of, iv 207
Commodus, Emperor, vi 238, 363-
370
Commoners, ii 51
Commons, House of, growth of its
power, ix 324, 384
deterioration in the social status
of members of, since the Re-
form Bill, ix 346
Composition, on teaching, xiv 34
"Confessio Fraternitatis Roseæ
Crucis," etc., work so named,
xiii 404, 405 note
as an opium-eater, ii 184, 189, | Confession, auricular, iii 162
|
211; iii 74, 224-231; v 205- Confessions of an English Opium-
211
his dislike to pain, xi 302 note
his scholarlike use of words, x
432
his scholarship, v 200-204
his want of training, x 17, 77
his review of Malthus, ix 17
his opinion of Bentley's classical
emendations, iv 226
on the Kantean philosophy, x 77
on the trade of authorship, x 12,
19
his "Ancient Mariner " criticised
by Lamb, iii 43
marginal notes of, ii 314
Eater, i x, 14; iii 5, 209-449;
iv 3; xiii 7
appendix, iii 6, 457-472
Sequel to, xiii 331-369
Constantine the First, the originator
of public charity to the poor,
viii 302 note
Constantinople, advantages of its
site, etc., viii 303 note
notice of its history, vii 263
Constitution, British, growth of, ix
320-326
Consumption, opium and the treat-
ment of, iii 214, 421-426
Contempt, yearning after, i 59
412
INDEX
Conversation, x 4, 264-288
art of, iii 332
in England and France contrasted,
x 155
Cook's translation of Gray's Elegy,
v 202
of
Cookery, English, the rudest
barbarous devices, xiv 266
Cooper, Sir Astley (?), his contempt
for history, v 352; xiv 304
Copyright Law, abuses connected
with the, i 188 note
Corneille's Pompey, supposed effect
upon English literature, xi 140,
144, 154
Cornwallis, Lord, i 214
Corporal punishment, arguments
against, viii 400
Cromwell, Oliver, no tyrant, ix 303
his insistance of the adoption of
Latin for treaties, xiv 354
not the founder of Free-
masonry, xiii 434
Croton oil, on, ix 169
Cruelty, national acts of, vii 316,
323 et seq., 446; viii 322, 395
note; xi 405-412; xiv 357
Cullen, Dr., ii 369
Cumberland, Duke of, slander
against, xi 347
Cunningham, Allan, iii 146-159
Cunninghams, two Alexander, iv
124 note
Curll, the
new terror of death,"
iv 269, 272
Currie, Dr. James, ii 130
hatefulness of, i 288, 293; iv 84 Curses, come home to roost, xiv 349
note
Costard, Rev. George, v 147
Cusco, city of, description of the,
xiii 230 note
Costume, Hebrew female, vi 155- Cuvier considered as a humbug, v
178
professional, x 343 note
xiv 118
195
Cottle, Joseph, of Bristol, ii 163; DACIER, André and Madame, x 291
Dahra, atrocity of, xi 405-412
Country - dance, derivation of the Dale, Antonius van, De Ethnico-
word, i 196 note
party, ix 392
Courage, i 245 note
Cowper's spelling of the word
Greecian, xi 439
Craig, Mrs., the author's daughter,
i xix; iv 9
Craik, G. L., on a line in "Paradise
Regained," xi 467 note
Credulity of character, xiv 53
Creole, incorrect use of the term,
xiii 209 note
rum Oraculis," vii 51
Dale, derivation of the word, xiii 380
Damascus, first-born of cities, iii
450
Dance, beauty of the, i 196
Dancing in Greek tragedy, x 372
Danish Origin of the Lake Country
Dialect, xiii 8, 373-383
Danish element in the English
language, x 60 note
De Quincey's knowledge of, i 314
Danube of Herodotus, vi 118
Crete, Homer's probable connection Darwin, Dr., a cream-drinker, xiv
with, vi 35
Crichton's, Admirable, accomplish-
ments, vulgar and trivial, i
378
Criticism of translated works, xi 5
Crocodiles in their relation to man,
xiii 287
Croly's "Salathiel," vii 42
276 note
Dates, use of the double date for
the months January-March in
old records, from the variance
of the civil and ecclesiastical
years, iv 282 note
Daughter of Lebanon, The, iii 450-
456; xiii 7, 332
Cromwell, "Hatless," the beau, Dauphin, son of Louis XVI, omens
iv 255 note
at his birth, i 299 note
INDEX
413
Davie's, Major, surrender to the De Quincey, Francis John, the
Kandyan chief, vii 440, 442
author's son, iv 8; xiv 286 note
Davy, Sir Humphry, iii 13-23
Dawes, Richard, author of "Mis-
cellanea Critica," iii 257
De
Quincey, Horace, the author's
son, iv 8
De
Quincey, Jane, her death, i 28
note, 33
Day, the word, as used in Scripture,
xiv 324
Dead, charity to the, v 11 note
Deafness (by Richter), xi 290
Death, ou (by Richter), xi 285
De Quincey, Margaret, the author's
daughter, i xix; iv 9
De Quincey, Margaret, the author's
wife, ii 355; iii 377 note; iv 5
more affecting in summer than in De Quincey, Mary, the author's
sister, iii 310
the other seasons, i 38
fear of, i 245 note
De
instances of presentiment of, i 191
Quincey, Paul Frederick, the
author's son, iv 8
symbols of, ii 73
De
Quincey, Richard, "Pink," his
Vision of Sudden (English Mail-
Coach), xiii 300-318, 329
eventful life, i 287-315; iii
57, 313; iv 2
Deciphering, art of, viii 279
De
Decius, Emperor, vi 385
Dee, deluge of the river, iii 305
Deer, red, in England, i 358 note
Roe, congregate in families, xiii
289 note
De Foe's "Memoirs of a Cavalier,"
i 343, 415; vi 84
Dégérando's account of the Kant-
ean philosophy of no authority,
x 69
Degradation of human nature in the
East, xiv 357
Dell, the Jew money-lender, iii 364
Delphic Oracle, vi 143; vii 54, 62,
79; viii 201
Demagogues at Athens, x 242
Demosthenes, the study of, ii 63
as an orator, x 325
Demoustier's "Lettres sur la Myth-
ologie," xiv 301
De Quincey, origin of the family, i
167; iii 286, 457 note
De Quincey, Elizabeth, the author's
mother, i 18, 404 et seq.; iv 2;
xiv 94, 109 note
De Quincey, Elizabeth, her death,
and its effect upon her brother
Thomas, i 33 note, 35-50
De Quincey, Emily, the author's
daughter, iv 10
De Quincey, Florence, the author's
daughter, i. xvii; iv 10
Quincey, Thomas, biographic
summary, iv 1-14
early childhood, i 17-133; iii 1,
223 et seq.
school life at Bath, i 149-160
visits Lord Westport at Eton, i
161-177
second visit to Eton, iii 370
first visit to London, i 178-210
visit to Lord Altamont in Dub-
lin, i 211-226
visit to Laxton, i 332-377
placed in the Manchester Gram-
mar School, i 378-398; iii
247-297
elopes from school and visits
Chester and North Wales, i
398; iii 30, 299-344; iv 2
residence in London and subse-
quent suffering in the metro-
polis, i 399; iii 350-378
returns to his mother's house,
St. John's Priory, i 400-416
error as to his birthplace, i 34
note
Findlay's description of, i. xxiv;
xiv 398
first takes opium, iii 379
at Oxford, ii 9-80; iv 3
his German studies, and Kant in
particular, ii 2, 81-109
meeting with Ann, iii 360 et seq.
as a humourist, xiii 2
414
INDEX
De Quincey, Thomas, his gift to | Diomedes, his account of the collec-
Coleridge, ii 163
his literary earnings, xiv 393
his personal appearance, v 19 note
his reply to Hazlitt's letter on
Malthus on Population ix 23-31
his translation of Horace's ode I
22; xiv 368
his editorship of the "Westmor-
land Gazette," xiii 8, 95 note,
373; xiv 387
tion of the dispersed works of
Homer by Pisistratus, vi 56
D'Israeli, I., on the English Revo-
lution, ix 300 note
Dissipation, xiii 335
Ditton's, H., book on the resurrec-
tion, viii 95
•
Doddridge, Dr., and providential
guidance, viii 422
Dog, mad, hunt after a, i 117
chronology of his writings, xiv | Dogs in Greece, a nuisance, vii 337 .
Domestic relations in ancient Rome,
iii 233
375
collective and American editions
of his writings, i. ix-xx, 5; xiv | Domitian, petty cruelties of, vi
383, 397
after-life, i 396-456
his grave, i. xix; xiv 400
De Quincey, William, his extraordi-
nary character, i 58 et seq.; iv 1
Desart, Earl of, iii 374
Des Cartes almost murdered, xiii
24
his Latin, v 95, 144 note
|
425 note
Donaldson's, Dr., " Vindication of
Protestant Principles," sub-
stance of, viii 244
Donne, Dr., his palliation of
suicide, viii 335
as a rhetorician, x 100
his "Biathanatos," viii 335 note,
398
Development, Newman's theory of, Dorothy and Theodora, the names,
viii 289
Devonshire men good-looking, xiii
82 note
Dew-drops, the prophetic (by Rich-
ter), xi 284
Dialects, distinction of various, i
344
Dictionaries, Anglo-German, x 426-
428
English, x 430-435
Dice, the, xii 3, 364-390
Didactic poetry. See Poetry
Diet, standards of, of the lower
classes of various countries, ix
209 note
Digestion, machinery of, neglected
by the English, xiv 269
Dinner, change of the time of, in
England and in France, vii 24, 38
the Roman, or Cœna, vi 334; vii
28, 34, 40
Dinners given by Kant, iv 330
at Oxford, ii 47
Dioclesian, Emperor, vi 408
Diogenes' tub, iv 293 note
ii 296 note
Doubles, iv 124 note; xi 460
Drama, English and French, no
connexion between, xi 142
Greek tragic, x 364, 374
the relations of Greek to the
modern, x 315
female characters of the Greek,
contrasted with those of Shake-
speare, iv 70
see Comedy, Theatre, Tragedy
Dream Fugue (English Mail Coach),
xiii 318-327, 329
echoes, i 49, 51
Dreams, opium, iii 433-446
Dreaming, xiii 333-340
by Richter, xi 288
Dress, the author's neglect of, at
Oxford, ii 14
as a mechanical and as a fine art,
xi 194 note
Drink, tendency of, to produce
sensibility to cold, viii 61
Drinks of the North and South, xiv
284
INDEX
415
Drowning, recollections of feelings
during, iii 435
sensations of, described, xiii 347
Drury Lane Theatre burned down,
xiii 72
Dryden, his hexastich on Milton,
x 8, 421-424
an admirer of Shakespeare, iv 25
his epigram on the three poets,
x 299, 421
and Pope contrasted, xi 119
Dublin, i 211
Duelling, Story of a Libel, with
Thoughts on, iii 160-196
reason why not in vogue among
the Greeks and Romans, iii
188; viii 338-340
Dunciad," Pope's, iv 270, 273,
280
Du Perron's, Cardinal, leap, v 266
Dutch character, xiv 52
EAR-RINGS of the Hebrew women,
vi 158, 168
Earth, Kant on the Age of the,
xiv 69-93
changes in the form of the, xiv 89
is the, young or old? vii 13 note;
viii 7
is its productiveness decaying?
xiv 77, 82
its formation, xiv 78
non-planetary, of Herodotus, in
its relation to the planetary
sun, vi 113
Earthquake at Lisbon, its effect in
Germany, to make many call
in question the justice of God,
iv 402
Easedale, valley of, in the Lake
district, xiii 126
Echo augury, i 123 note
Echoes, price of, iii 320
Economy, political.
Economy
See Political
Edinburgh, the author's residence
in, i. xvi; iv 10
'Edinburgh Annual Register,"
Southey and the, ii 319, 333
note
Edinburgh Literary Gazette," v
259 note; xiv 388
"Edinburgh Review
on the Kant-
ean Philosophy, x 68
Education of Boys in Large Num-
bers, xiv 1, 9-45
Hazelwood system of, xiv 9 note
Madras system of, ii 185 note;
xiv 10, 12 note, 306
University, not beneficial, except
for the young, x 11
see Schools
Educo, meaning of the word, xiii
363
Edward VI, his christening shortly
after his birth, iv 19 note
Egmont, Lord, an admirer of Cole-
ridge, ii 148
Egyptian history in connexion with
Freemasonry, xiii 395
"Eicon Basiliké," authorship of, ii
257 note; iv 28 note; viii
147-155; x 409 note
impression produced by, unpar-
alleled in the century, iv 94
Eleusinian mysteries, i 371; vii
191; xiii 395
Elizabeth, Queen, conduct towards
her Parliament, ix 322
Elizabeth's, Empress, ice palace, xi
389
Elleray, Professor Wilson's resi-
dence, v 275-280
Elocution, on teaching, xiv 40
Eloquence, English and Greek, com-
pared, x 328
Parliamentary, x 98, 110
see Oratory
Endor, witch of, viii 286
England, act of homage to, from
the Sovereigns of Europe after
the capture of Paris, iii 60-70
growth of the constitution, ix
320-326
history of, not yet written in a
way to last, xiv 148
struggles between Charles I. and
the Parliament, vi 211; ix 325
travelling in, in the old days, i
267-286
416
INDEX
England, Church of. See Church | Etna, Mount, height of, vi 9 note
of England
Civil War 1642-5, ix 386
Modern, on the Political Parties
of, ix 9, 354-394
English character, xiv 50, 54 note
not phlegmatic, iii 104
Dictionaries, x 430-435
geutry, morals of, i 20
History, Falsification of, ix 7,
295-312; x 425
language, the, xiv 3, 146-161
universality of, ii 251
Danish element in, x 60 note
no great work on the, xiv 149
literature unrivalled, i 342; iii
266
Eton, the author's visits to, i 161;
iii 370
grammar, xiv 30
Euripides, Heracleida, x 354 note
and Sophocles contrasted, x 371
note
Evans, Mrs., the De Quinceys'
housekeeper, i 84
Everton, De Quincey's residence at,
ii 122
Evil eye, the, i 86; viii 286 note
"Examiner, The," ix 317
Exchange value, on the two modes
of, ix 158-178
on the principal forms of, ix 179-
186
French school in, xi 60, 97 Exercise an improver of the diges-
note; xi, 137-145
tion, xiv 273
Pope's fables on the origin of, Exhibitions at the English Univer-
xi 135, 152
Mail-Coach, The, xiii 1, 7, 270- Exorcise, meaning of the word, xiii
330, 332
sities, i 380 note
345 note
merchants contemptible in orien- Eyelids and eyebrows, vi 157
tal eyes, xiv 184
Physiology, x 447-448
Enthymeme, its use in rhetoric, x
86, 133
Epichristian, meaning of the term,
vii 117 note
Epitaphs, remarks on, v 99-107,
144 note
Erauso, Catalina de, xiii 159-250
portrait of, xiii 180 note, 242,
246 note
authenticity of her memoirs, xiii
239, 245 note
Errol, Earl of, his death, i 321
Esdras, and its place in the canon
of Scripture, xiv 318
Esemplastic, on the word, ii 226 note
Essay, De Quincey's definition of
the term, vi 1
Essenes, The, i 10, vii 2, 7, 101-
172, 202-246
and Therapeuta, difference be-
tween the two sects, xiii 397
Ethical Philosophy, Mackintosh's
Dissertation on the Progress
of, viii 135-142
|
FABRICIUS, Albert, xiii 409
Facciolati, Jacopo, on the Enthy-
meme, v 339; x 88, 133
Faces, shapes of, ii 244
Fagging at Winchester, i 201
Fairies, as represented by Shake-
speare, iv 77
False Distinctions, x 439-445
Falstaff's death, Mrs. Quickly's
account of, xi 263
"Fama Fraternitatis of the meri-
torious order of the Rosy
Cross," work so entitled de-
scribed, xiii 403, 405 note
Family, meaning of the word, viii
189 note
Fanaticism, xiv 54
Fanciful and Fantastic, their deriva-
tion, x 72 note
Fancy, by Richter, xi 289
and Imagination distinguished,
x 72 note
Fanny of the Bath Road, xiii
285
Farmer, Dr., anecdote of, v 152
INDEX
417
Farrers, the, of Little Gidding, ii | Forgiveness, by Richter, xi 286
Fork, Silver, School, origin of the
name, i 323 note
117; vii 185
Fatal Marksman, The, xii 2, 287-313
Faucit, Helen, now Lady Martin,
as Antigone, x 282
Fealty, a trisyllable, x 396 note, xi
444
Feeling and acquisition, innate, by
Richter, xi 289
Fellow-commoner, v 293 note
Fells, derivation of the word, xiii 380
Female characters of Goethe, xi
229-247, 256 note
of Shakespeare, a wonderful re-
velation of beauty, iv 70
tongues, by Richter, xi 286
Fenelon's "Telemachus," an unread
book, ii 297 note
Fenton's connexion with Pope as a
translator of the "Odyssey,"
iv 263
Ferrier, Professor, of St. Andrews,
v 297
Feudal system, depression of, by
Henry VII, ix 321 note, 383
Field's, Rev. W., Memoirs of Parr
reviewed, v 9
Fielding's libel on the country
gentleman, i 344
Fine Art, not an imitation but an
idealisation of nature, x 368
Fine Arts, essay on the, by Lessing,
xi 3, 164-214
Finlay's, George, Greece under the
Romans, reviewed, vii 250
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, i 233
Fitz-Hum, Count, The Incognito;
or, xii 4, 417-433
Fleas in Greece, vii 336
Flesh, mortifying the, xiv 290
Flibustiers, proper spelling of the
word, i 304 note; iii 228 note; |
xi 318 note
Flogging in schools, i 291-295; v
10 note, 58, 85, 197
Fludd, the father of Freemasonry
in England, xiii 421
Food and population, geometrical
and arithmetical ratios, Mal-
thus, ix 11-14, 20, 23, 28
VOL. XIV
Forster's "Life of Goldsmith," re-
viewed, iv 289
Fortunes, immense, of Roman Patri-
cians, vi 402
Foster, "Good" Dr., his portrait,
v 158
Foster, Rev. John, xi 335-341
his essays, v 143 note; x 110;
xi 337
Fox, C. J., letter of, on Burke's
conduct to him, v 72
compared with Burke: his fame
declining since his death, xi
35-40
on the introduction of the party
distinctions of Whig and Tory,
ix 389
his views on the Regency ques-
tion, v 170; ix 363, 379
France and corporal punishment,
viii 401 note
sense of the beautiful among the
people of, xiv 49
history of, not yet written in a
way to last, xiv 148
literature of, x 441 note
never had influence over English
literature, xi 97 note, 137-145
as one of the titles of the British
Crown, i 163 note
republicanism in, ii 219
See French
Francis, Sir Philip, the author of
"Junius," iii 132-143; x 118;
xi 41-49
Frankfort-on-the-Maine, antiquity
of the city and its society, iv
397
Frederick the Great and the seven
years' war, iv 406
an unbeliever in the possibility
of a German literature, iv
430
Frederick William II of Prussia, his
letter of rebuke to Kant, ii 155
Freemasonry a hoax, vii 200-202;
viii 103
2 E
418
INDEX
Freemasonry, history of, in Ger- | GALILEANS, who were they? vii 152
many, xiii 410-420
origin of, in England, xiii 420-
426
results of inquiry into origin and
nature, xiii 426
modern, xiii 435
degree of master, xiii 431
French degrees, xiii 439
Scotch degree, xiii 435
Freemasons (Rosicrucians and the)
Historico-critical inquiry into
the origin of the, xiii 8, 384-
448
old exclusions, xiii 389, 427
mysteries, xiii 391
signs, xiii 392
public profession of beneficence,
and other external characteris-
tics, xiii 393
why, and when first so called,
xiii 422. See Mason
French, the, as rhetoricians, x 121,
124
English injustice to the, xiv 351
garrulity of the, x 157; xiv 331
martial gallantry of the, viii 396
language, rich for the purpose of
social intercourse, x 256, 283;
xiv 156
misfortune of having no neuter
gender, xiv 161
no great work on the, xiv 149
literature, poverty of, xi 260
national character, xiv 49
Pope's knowledge of, iv 245
Galileo, case of, xiv 324, 326
Galleries in churches not always
bad, i 46 note
Gallienus, Emperor, vi 392
Ganges, the river, viii 10 note
Garasse's ridicule of Rosicrucianism,
xiii 419 note
Garrulity of the French, x 157;
xiv 331
Gassendi's "Exercitatio Epistolica,"
xiii 422
Gauden, Dr., and the Eicon, ii 257
note; viii 149
"Gebir," Landor's, xi 399, 457
Genealogical succession, Jewish,
difficulty of establishing, xiv
317
Genealogy of Jesus Christ, xiv 321
Generation, on the length of a, x
204 note
Genius, supposed aggregation of,
in groups during successive
periods of history, x 196
and talent, the difference between,
discriminated, i 194 note; iii
34 note; xi 383
Gentlemen commoners, ii 51 ; V
274, 292 note
Gentry, a growth of the Tudor
days, ix 322
increase of the, in the reign of
Charles I. a cause of the growth
of Parliamentary power, ix 324,
383
Geology and Scripture, xiv 324
revolution, ii 273; ix 313; xi George III, De Quincey's interview
310
not unpopular with the Tories,
ix 334, 368
see France
with, i 167
his library, i 168
George IV's accession, Pall Mall
inauguration of, i 185 note
Frend, Rev. William, expelled from German character, xiv 51
his fellowship, ii 167
Fricker, Miss, ii 159
"Friend, The," account of the pub-
lication of, ii 191, 371; iii 75
Friends, the quarrels of, by Richter,
xi 288
Funeral Service of the Church of
England, beauty of, i 44
hoax of a novel by Sir Walter
Scott, xiv 132
language, its growth, iv 324 note
its richness, but want of style
in the management of, by
German authors, x 257
literature, total anarchy of, iv
396
INDEX
419
German literature, notice of, before Godwin, William, iii 23-26; xi
Schiller, iv 422-431
philosophy, review of, x 64
rhetoric, an illusion, x 121, 159
advice to learners of, ii 82
Anglo- Dictionaries, x 426-428
Germany, intellectual activity of,
ii 85; x 62
the rank of the leading profes-
sions in, ii 38
in 1816, xii 234
Gerrald, Joseph, v 76, 121, 139
note
Ghosts of Shakespeare, iv 76
Gibbon and Southey, comparison
between, ii 338
Gibson's, Bishop, "Chronicon Pre-
ciosum," viii 332-335
Gilfillan's Literary Portraits, notes
on, xi 4, 326-393
Gillies, Robert Pearce, v 322
his
326-335
"Political Justice," and
novel "Caleb Williams," xi
327
Malthus's answer to, ix 14, 30
Goethe, Life, from the Encyclopædia
Britannica, iv 14, 395-421;
xi 222 note
as reflected in Wilhelm Meister,
xi 3, 222-258
his father an obstinate man, iv
400
Gold, depreciation in the value of,
ix 423
value of, how determined, ix 404
Gold-digging Mania, California
and the, ix 10, 395-427
mania, on the final catastrophe of
the, ix 412
Gold-mines, ix 197
Gillman's Life of Coleridge, re- Goldsmith, Oliver, iv 14, 289-322
viewed, v 179
Girdle of the Hebrew lady, vi 173
Gladiatorial spectacles controlled
by Marcus Aurelius, vi 336
note
Glamorgan's, Lord, negotiations,
viii 152
Glanvill's "Lux Orientalis," x 454
Glasgow, dearness of lodgings in,
iii 349 note
observatory, viii 27
Glomeration, on the word, viii 253
note
Gloucester, Duke of, Shakespeare's
account of the murder of, xiii
18 note
Gloves, custom of presenting, to
judges, iv 37
God, man in his relations to, viii
231, 232
Gods of a Nation, the representa-
tives of its ideal, viii 220, 228
of the Greeks and Romans, viii
224, 231
of the Greeks open to bribery,
vii 184 note
Godfrey, Sir Edmundbury, murder
of, xiii 35
"Vicar of Wakefield" read as
truth by a country girl, xiii
238
Gombroon, the author's imaginary
kingdom, i 88 et seq.
Gordon, Rev. Lockhart, i 143
Gordon, Louden, i 143
Gordon's, Thomas, History of the
Greek Revolution reviewed, vii
279
Gothic taste, introduction of, xiv
59
Goths, first eruption of the, into
the Roman Empire, vi 284
Gough, Mr., lost at Helvellyn, and
the fidelity of his dog, xiii 150
note
Gracchi, the, patrons of sedition,
xiv 296 note
Grace, Prevenient, viii 164 note
Grammar schools, meaning of the
term, i 150 note, iii 255
Grammatical errors, xi 63
Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, iii 26-30
Grasmere, Early Memorials of, xiii
1, 125-158
beauty of the scenery, ii 230;
iii 406; xi 369
420
INDEX
Grasmere, the author's residence | Greek and Roman literature, ii 62 ;
at, iv 5
Grassini, the contralto, iii 389
Gray's Elegy, Cook's Greek trans-
lation of, v 202
Grecian mysteries, xiii 395
ring-dropper, xiv 358 note
Greece under the Romans, vii 3, 6,
250-278
battle trophies of, their fugitive
character and its cause, vii 87
note
x 51, 54
orators, x 323-341
poets and prose-writers, x 289-
323
Tragedy, Theory of, x 7; 342-
359
See Greece
Greek Street, De Quincey's quar-
ters in, iii 354
Green, Agnes, precocious heroism
of, xiii 136
Ancient, its people a nation of Green, George and Sarah, account
swindlers, vi 215
Modern, vii 3, 331-367
Revolution of, vii 3, 279-330
See Greek
Greek travel, expenses of, vii 349
people, their origin, vii 354
scenery, vii 364
antiquities, vii 365
scholarship in England, v 201
of the New Testament, viii 211
note
drama, its relation to the mo-
dern, x 315
tragic drama, ii 72; x 364, 374
language, Lord Monboddo on
the, i 94
known but to few readers, ii
71; x 361
date of its consummation, vi
68
vocal beauty of the, xiv 155
note
Pope's ignorance of, iv 247
quoted in the House of Com-
mons, i 364
of their loss in the snow at
Langdale, xiii 129
Greenhay, a country house of the
author's father, i 34 note, 57,
68, 116, 149, 358 note; iii 243
note
Gresset's "Ver-Vert," x 440 note
Grief in children, xiii 363
luxury of, i 44
Grotius, Hugo, arguments relative
to the character of his "Evi-
dences of Christianity," iii 260
on resistance in cases of ex-
tremity, viii 110
Guardians, responsibility of, i 149;
iii 233
H., Rev. Samuel, one of De Quin-
cey's guardians, i 69, 137;
iii 237-243
Habeas Corpus Act, suspension of,
ix 380
Hadrian, Emperor, vi 315-330
Hair, dressing of the, among He-
brew ladies, vi 168
as a vehicle for familiar inter- Hall, Dr. John, son-in-law of
course, iii 256, 325
and Hebrew languages
trasted, x 250
Shakespeare, iv 68
con- Hall, Susanna, Shakespeare's
daughter, her birth, iv 50
Literature, a Brief Appraisal of
the, in its Foremost Preten-
sions, x 4, 289-341
and Art of the time of Pericles,
x 204
of the time of Alexander the
Great, x 204
influence of style upon, x 219
Hamilton, Lady, ii 209
Hamilton, Sir William, v 1, 303-
351
his discoveries in logic, v 337
his disrespect of Dr. Brown, v
297
Hammer's, von, "Geschichte des
Assassinen," xiii 62
INDEX
421
Hammer - cloth, a corruption of | Hebrew Scriptures, text of, xiv
hamper-cloth, ii 83
Hamnet, the name of Shakespeare's
son, iv 65
Hanway, Jonas, his attack upon
tea, iii 408 note
Hare and Burke murders, xiii 60, 66
Haren, De, friend of the author,
iii 333
""
Hartley and the Hartleian theory,
ii 153
Hartmann's "Hebrew Woman at
her Toilette translated, vi
152-178
Hatfield the post-office forger, ii
175
Hathaway, Anne, the spelling of
her name, iv 80 note
Shakespeare's marriage with, iv
48
|
315
warfare, merciful bloodshed, viii
395 note
and Greek Languages contrasted,
x 250
Hedonist, origin of the word, iii 428
Heliogabalus, his preparations for
committing suicide imperially,
viii 336 note
Helvellyn, ascent of, x 438
Hemp as a relief for ennui, xiv 282
"Hen and Chickens at Birming-
ham, i 268
Henderson, John, the conversation-
alist, xi 226
Henley (Orator), anecdote of, v 353
Henry VII, his attempts to depress
the feudal aristocracy, ix 321
note, 383
Hawkins's, Miss, Anecdotes re- Henry IV of France, omens of his
viewed, iii 175; v 146
Hawkins's, Henry, Greek and Latin
verses, v 161
Hawkshead grammar-school, Words-
worth at, ii 260
Hawse, derivation of the word, xiii
381
Hayti, The King of, xii 3, 391-416
Hazlitt, William, xi 341-354
not a great thinker, v 231
not eloquent, v 231
faults in his composition, v 236
and Miss
iii 79; xi 345
Lamb's estimate of, iii 82
his letter respecting De Quincey's
paper on Malthus on Popula-
tion, ix 3, 20-22
Head-dresses of the Hebrew ladies,
vi 171
Health, bodily, necessities of its
preservation, as a preservative
of mental sanity, viii 345-355
Heath, Benjamin, headmaster of
Harrow, v 39, 135 note
Heavens, System of the, as revealed
by Lord Rosse's Telescopes,
viii 1, 7-41
Hebrew Lady, Toilet of the, vi 4,
152-178
death, viii 446
Herder, iv 14, 380-394
Hereditary right, security of, vi
383
Hermes Trismegistus, writings at-
tributed to, xiii 396
Herodotus, Philosophy of, vi 3,
96-138
value of his history, i 375; vii
229 note; x 317
and Thucydides contrasted, x
174
Heroes, nameless, by Richter, xi
286
Heroism in private life, xi 287
Heron's "Letters of Literature'
""
referred to, xi 444 note
Hetæria ('Eraipla), the Greek Secret
Society, so called, its history,
vii 297
Heyne, his scholarship compared
with that of Dr. Parr, v 85,
140 note
Highlanders, their emigration to
the British colonies after the
rebellion of 1745-6, ix 323
Highlands, additional places of
worship in, xiv 238
Highwaymen, on, i 389
422
INDEX
Hill's, Matthew Davenport, Plans | Homer, little read in the present
for the Government and Liberal
Instruction of Boys in Large
Numbers reviewed, xiv 9
Hill, Rev. Rowland, and Shelley,
xi 363
Hill, Thomas Wright, originator of
the Hazelwood System, xiv 9
note
Hiram of Tyre, a type of Christ,
xiii 424
the eldest mason, xiii 434
Historico-Critical Inquiry into the
origin of Rosicrucians and
Freemasons, xiii 8, 384-448
History, Roman, Philosophy of, vi
4, 429-447
Universal, Kant's Idea of a,
on a Cosmopolitical Plan, ix
10, 428-444
science of, vii 250
and chronology, xiv 308
its different forms, v 354-359
Mrs. H. More's ignorance of, xiv
124
Sir Astley Cooper's (?) contempt
for, v 352
modern, when it commences, v
361
problems in, outstanding, xiii 384
Hoarders of money, ix 416
Hobbes not murdered, xiii 28
"Hogg's Instructor," the author's
portrait in, i. xiii
contributions to, xiv 389
day, iv 84 note
appraisal of the works of, x 296-
312
his diction, vi 75
his metre, vi 76
his formulæ, vi 80
and Chaucer, the works of, com-
pared, x 309, 311
see Iliad, Odyssey
Homeric warriors, their distress at
bodily pain, xi 168
Homicide distinct from murder,
viii 399
Honour, Court of, on the establish-
ment of a, iii 189
law of, iii 184 note; viii 140
"Hope, Hon. Augustus," story of,
ii 175
Hope, Thomas, on opium, iii 384,
398 notes
Horace and Lucretius contrasted,
xi 378
and Pope contrasted, xi 121 note
Ode 22, Lib. I, De Quincey's
translation of, xiv 7, 368
Horses, Turkish, ix 163
weeping, vi 36
Horsley, Bishop, his high character
as a theologian and controver-
sialist, v 31
Hospitality, laws of, in collision
with civic duties, viii 355-357
Hotels, colossal, of America, i 268
note
Holm, derivation of the word, xiii | Household Wreck, The, xii 2, 157-
380
Holy Ghost, House of, meeting-
place of the brethren of the
Rosy Cross, xii 430
Holyhead mail, iii 348
Homer and the Homeridæ, vi 3, 7-
95
descriptive powers of, xi 209
account of the collection of his
poems by Pisistratus, vi 56
on the death of Hector, v 103
account of Pope's translation of,
and the remuneration he re-
ceived for it, iv 247, 263
233
Howship, John, xiii 14
Huc, the Chinese traveller, xiv 315
Hugh of Lincoln, murder of, xiii
20
Human brain compared to a palimp-
sest, xiii 346
nature degraded by corporal
punishment, viii 400
Humbert, General, commander-in-
chief of the French army in
Ireland, 1798, i 252
Hume, his argument against mir-
acles, viii 157
INDEX
423
Hume, misstatement of, relating to | Index Expurgatorius of the Church
Cromwell's army, ix 310
Humourist, De Quincey as a, xiii 2
Hunters as against race-horses, ix
172
Hunting, fox, i 346
tiger, buffalo, and lion, i 340 note
Hurd, Bishop, account of Dr.
Parr's unprovoked attack on,
relative to Leland and Jortin,
v 108, 145 note
compared by Dr. Parr as
a
Greek scholar with Archbishop
Markham, v 54, 136 note
Hutchinson's, Lord, Frenchified
diction, v 194
Hutchinson, Mary, afterwards Mrs.
Wordsworth, ii 236, 282
Hutchison, Mrs., of Nottingham, x
443
Hydra, city of, vii 315
ICON BASILIKÉ, authorship of, ii
257 note; iv 28 note; viii 147-
155; x 409 note
impression produced by, unparal-
leled in the century, iv 94
Ignore, revived use of the word, iv
233; x 247
Ilgen on Homer, vi 30
Iliad, The," vi 42-53
no moral in the, xi 455
Pope's, publication of, iv 265
see Homer
Imagination
untamed by the
coarser realities of life, by
Richter, xi 285
"Imitatione, De, Christi," v 409
note; vi 95
popularity of the, i 5; xi 141 note
Imperator, origin of the title, xi
424-431
a military title, vi 308; xi 428
its character changed by Dio-
clesian, vi 408
Implicit, meaning of the word, x 431
Improbus, meaning of the word, iii
15 note
|
|
of Rome, viii 247 note
India of the old world, vi 116 note
as a field for fortunes, i 412
India House, Lamb at, iii 38; v
226
Indian character, xiv 55
empire, foundation of, xiv 185
Infidel, the female, i 134-148
Inspiration of the Bible, viii 264
Insurance of infants, v 249
offices and opium-eaters, iii 426
Interest, the Roman, 1 per cent
monthly, not annual, and so
equal to 12 per cent, vi 330
Ireland, W. H., his Shakespearian
forgeries referred to, xi 270
his blunder in giving accounts of
the time of Shakespeare com-
puted in guineas, iv 40 note
Ireland, Ratification of the Union, i
216
first rebellion of, 1798, i 227-
248
French invasion of, and second
rebellion of, 1798, i 249-266
Irish politics, personalities of, i 265
note
Irishmen, Association of United, i
229
Irving, Rev. Edward, iii 121-125
Isocrates as an orator, x 323
longevity of, x 210
Italian rhetoric, x 123
temperament, xiv 49
Italics, use of, in the authorised
version of the Bible, xi 445
JACHIN and Boaz, the two pillars,
xiii 424
Jackson, Dr. Cyril, Dean of Christ
Church, ii 25
Jacob's "Modern
Literature of
England," x 17 note
Jaffa massacre, case of the, v 379;
viii 315-328; xi 410
James II, evil omens at the com-
mencement of his reign, viii 448
Incognito, The; or Count Fitz- James's, G. P. R., History of Charle-
Hum, xii 4, 417-433
magne reviewed, v 352
424
INDEX
Janus, double-faced, xi 472
Jordan, Mrs., death of, ii 454
Japanese, the Englishmen of the Josephus's account of the Essenes
Oriental world, xiv 55
Jebb, Sir Richard, anecdote of, v
153
criticised, vii 106, 207
character and credibility, vii 131-
149
Jersey criminals, transportation of, Journals, inconveniences of contri-
to England, viii 386
buting to, i 6
Jerusalem of Herodotus, vii 221 Jubilee, Golden, i 137 note
note
the heart of Judea, vii 162
Jests, their immortality, viii 376
Jewish captivity, xiv 316
murders, xiii 20
connexion with Freemasonry
questioned, xiii 390, 397, 427
Jews, traditions of the, vii 226
note
Joan of Arc, v 1, 239-242, 384-416
John o' Groat's house, iii 254
Johnson, Dr., anecdote of, v 151
a faulty writer, x 128
not indolent, xi 380
his conversation contrasted with
that of Burke, v 134 note; x
269
his impressions of Paris, x 274
his Parliamentary debates, trans-
lated and published periodic-
ally in Germany, iv 425
his philological attainments, xiv
151
✓ his libel on Milton, iv 88, 89; x
407
studied nothing, x 274 note
contrasted with Dr. Parr, v 16,
56, 62, 65
at dinner, an indecent spectacle,
vii 35
as a tea-drinker, iii 408 note
and Coleridge compared, iii 19
his Life of Milton, Postscript re-
specting, iv 104-117
Johnstone's, Dr. John, Works of
Parr reviewed, v 9
Jones, In-i-go, who entered Buck-
ingham Palace clandestinely,
iv 295
Jones, Sir William, his scholarship
compared with that of Parr, v
81, 97, 140 note
year of the Roman Catholic
Church, xiii 234 note
Judas Iscariot, viii 4, 177-206
Julius Cæsar. See Cæsar
Jung the mathematician, the re-
puted founder of the sect of
Rosicrucians, xiii 409
"Junius," Sir Philip Francis, iii
132-143; x 118; xi 41-49
K-family, The, ii 425-431
Kalmuck Khan, Flight of the, and
his People from the Russian
Territories to the Frontiers of
China, vii 3, 8, 368-426
Kalmucks, their hideous language,
xi 392 note
Kant, Immanuel, Idea of a Univer-
sal IIistory on a Cosmopolitical
Plan, ix 10, 428-444
Last days of, iv 14, 323-379
in his Miscellaneous Essays, viii
3, 84-126
review of his philosophy, ii 90;
x 64-80
his philosophy attacked by Her-
der, iv 393
his revival of logic, v 336
On the Age of the Earth, viii 7;
xiv 2, 69-93
on National Character in rela-
tion to the sense of the sub-
lime and the beautiful, xiv 1,
46-60
his antinomies, vii 181; viii 264
his vicious prose style, x 122,
160, 259, 262
his extreme views on veracity,
viii 140, 364; xiii 13 note
nearly murdered, viii 365 note;
xiii 34
Schlosser on, xi 12 note
INDEX
425
Kant, Immanuel, his terminology, | Kant, Immanuel, an
x 70 note, 72, 75
his Latinity, v 143 note
his era stimulated by the French
Revolution, xi 262
his influence on religious philo-
sophy predicted by De Quincey,
x 160
his introduction of positive and
negative quantity into philo-
sophy, xi 12 note, 288
on the proofs of God's existence,
viii 261
his use of the words "transcend-
ental,' "transcendent,' and
""
""
immanent," x 262 note
his admiration of the English
character, viii 364; x 262 note
his Essay towards realizing the
idea of Perpetual Peace, viii
119, 235, 388
his Abstract of Swedenborgian-
ism, xiv 1, 61-68
his opinion of Swedenborg, i 138
his admiration of Hippel, iii 333
his definition of history, vi 102
his philosophy an orbicular sys-
tem, viii 45
his use of the word apperception,
ii 202; x 75 note
his era stimulated by the French
Revolution, x 200, 259, 262
Coleridge's knowledge of, v 185
note
his suspected atheism, ii 155
reproved and warned by his king,
ii 155
his conjecture respecting the
planetoids, iv 334
his opinion as to the inhabitants
of Jupiter, xi 269
his remarks on the inscription on
the Temple of Isis, xi 293
note
his opinion on vaccination, iv
343
Wasianski's account of, iv 328
Bouterwek and Schlegel ignorant
of, v 41, 44 note
on Christianity, iii 49 note
|
enemy to
Christianity, viii 94, 99
his sincerity, x 262 note
the author's studies of, ii 81-109;
iii 402
his attack on the English nation,
viii 113
his want of reading, viii 93, 116
note
his essay on the Common Saying,
that such or such a thing may
be true in Theory but does not
hold good in Practice noticed,
viii 106
Keats, John, xi 4, 326 note, 377-
393
his "Endymion," xi 392
his "Hyperion," xi 458
Kempis. See Thomas à Kempis
"Kenilworth," error in the Ger-
man translation of, xiv 135
note
Kett, "Horse," his notice of Parr's
contributions to White's Bamp-
ton Lectures, v 113, 145 note
Khiva, Khan of, xiv 277 note
Killala, French occupation of, in
1798, i 251
King can do no wrong," change
of its meaning, ix 296, 327,
388
King's Evil, touching for the, i 86
note
Kingly dignity, apotheosis of, vii
215 note
Kinsale, Lord, the privilege of, v
223
Kirkstone Pass, ii 307
Kiss, farewell, of the dying, iv 375
note
Kissing, custom of, in Germany,
xii 403 note
Klopstock, his influence
upon
German literature, iv 426
interview between, Coleridge and
Wordsworth, ii 170
Klosterheim, or, the Masque, i. x;
xii 1, 5-156
Knight, Miss, author of "Dinarbas,"
v 151, 294
426
INDEX
Knight's Quarterly Magazine," | Landscape-painting not known to
xii 4
Knowledge, Superficial, x 449-452
Koster, Mr. and the Misses, ii 233;
xii 422 note
Ko-tou, the Chinese ceremonial,
xiv 184, 356, 363
LADIES' seals, xiii 363 note
La Fontaine and his fables, iii 89
Lake Country Dialect, Danish
Origin of the, xiii 8, 273-283
(Literary and) Reminiscences, ii
3, 113-454
Poets, the, ii 229-347
District, beauty of, iii 281
school, absurdity of the name, ii
173
Lakers, To the, x 437-439
Lakes, Rambles from the, ii 446-454
Society of the, ii 367-445
a
and North Wales, their scenery
contrasted, i 204
Lamb, Charles, v 1, 215-258
Recollections of, iii 34-92
his parody on "Letters to
Young Man whose Education
has been neglected,” x 1
Wordsworth's allusions to his
"chequered" life, iii 53
Lamb, John, father of Charles, v
221
Lamb, Mary, v 225
Lambert's "Organon," the author's
intention to publish an appen-
dix to, v 339
Lamia, Ælius, vi 4, 421-428
Lampe, Kant's man-servant, iv 351
Lancaster, Joseph, and education,
xiv 12 note, 37, 306
Land, value of, iv 41; ix 177
Landor, Walter Savage, Ortho-
graphic Mutineers, with a
special reference to the Works
of, xi 4, 395 note, 437-452
Southey and, Milton versus, xi
4,395 note, 453-474
notes on, xi 4, 394-436
his attentions to the De Quincey
family, xi 473 note
the ancients, x 169
Wordsworth's sonnet on, xi 178
note
Language, x 4, 246-263
the incarnation of thought, x
230
on the use of the New Testament
in learning a, ii 81
reasons for learning a, i 24
foul, unlimited license of, among
the Greeks and Romans, iii
188
Languages, on, x 33-63
learning, a necessary evil, x 34
methods of acquiring, xiv 39
non-poetic, xiv 160
processes by which they grow,
xiv 158
see English, French, German,
Greek, Latin, etc.
Laocoon, an essay on the Fine
Arts, xi 3, 164-214
Larceny, literary, ii 125, 142, 226
note
Lasswade, the author's residence
at, i xv ; iv 8, 13
Latin, construction of, i 94 note; v
86; x 129, 251 note
Language, x 254
use of the, for treaties, xiv 354
universality of, v 87
scholarship deficient in England,
v 82
verbs, on learning, xiv 28
Pope's knowledge of, iv 249
Laun, Friedrich (Pseud.), The In-
cognito; or, Count Fitz-Hum,
xii 4, 417-433
Lauzun, Duc de, memoirs, i 176
note
Lawson, Charles, headmaster of
Manchester Grammar School,
notices of, i 382; iii 249, 273,
293
Lawyers, dilatoriness of, iii 352
Laxton, the Northamptonshire seat
of Lord Carbery, i 332-377
the library at, i 340
Learning by heart, xiv 26
INDEX
427
Lebanon, the Daughter of, iii 450- | Life, what is it? xii 158
456; xiii 7, 332
Lee, Antonia Dashwood, the female
infidel, i 134-148
Lee, the Misses, their "Canterbury
Tales," iii 204
Leibnitz, died partly from the fear
of not being murdered, xiii 33
his doctrine that there is no
absolute repetition in nature, v
357
his "Principium indiscernibili-
um," x 129
his letters, v 95
a Polyhistor, or Catholic student,
x 16
problem to M. Foucher, cited
by Mrs. S. Coleridge, v 332,
348 note
Lennox, Lady Sarah, afterwards
Bunbury, i 175
Lessing, xi 3, 156-221
his influence on German litera-
ture, iv 428
on Freemasonry, xiii 439
Letter-writers, i 310
Letter-writing, good and bad, iv 256
Letters to a Young Man whose
Education has been neglected,
x 1, 9-80
Lettsom, Dr., Lord Erskine's epi-
gram on, v 163 note
Lisbon earthquake, and its effect
on the religion of Germany, iv
402
Literary and Lake Reminiscences,
ii 3, 113-454
body, Republican simplicity of
the, iv 395
forgery of Walladmor, xiv 132
men, condition of, in England,
compared with that of France,
iv 310-316
Society, ii 123
Literature, meaning of the term, x
46, xi 53
its hopeless extent, x 38, 276
Pagan and Christian, contrasted,
i 370
of power, as opposed to the
literature of knowledge, x 47;
xi 54, 59 note
effect of patronage upon, iv 293
Lamb's place in, iii 87-91
and authorship, x 9-22
Lithgow's, William, "Travels," iii
448 note
Liverpool Literary Coterie, ii 122-
137
great fire at, xiii 72
Livery, Royal, not by right belong-
ing to the mail coachmen, xiii
285 note
Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, | Llangollen, the ladies of = Miss
xiii 2, 362-369
Levees, origin of, vii 15 note
Lewthwaite, Barbara, the heroine
of "We are Seven;" iii 403,
460 notes
Libau, Andrew, xiii 412
Libraries, National, system of re-
striction in their use, i 188
private, in the provinces, iii 340 |
Libel, Story of a, with Thoughts on
Duelling, iii 160-196
Life, Vision of, xiii 350-351
instance of long-sustained powers
of, in a murdered woman, vii
441
in a wounded corporal in Cey-
lon, vii 441
Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor
Butler, ii 410; iii 321
Lloyd, Charles, "Edmund Oliver,'
ii 167, 381-402
""
his conversational powers, ii 300
Locke "On the Human Under-
standing," x 28, 30
his birthplace, xiv 126
Logic of Political Economy, i x;
ix 6, 118-294
lively examples of, v 327
on the true relations in, of the ex-
pressions U and D, xi 146-157
Sir W. Hamilton's discoveries in,
v 337
Logical see-saws, v 333
Lombard Street, iv 251
428
INDEX
London Reminiscences, iii 1, 13-206 | Mackean, murder by the brothers,
the nation of, i 178-210
vii 441, xiii 38, 46, 118-123
percentage of murders in, in the Mackintosh, Sir James, Glance at
17th century, xiii 36
population of, i 179 note; vi 225
Magazine, iii 3, 127, 143
Londonderry, the second Lord,
libels against, i 265 note
his nervous seizure and its tragical
catastrophe, viii 347
Longinus, "Of the Sublime,” x 300
Lonsdale, the "bad" Lord, ii 252
Lords, House of, importance of, in
government of the country, ix
256
on reform of, ix 357
|
the Works of, viii 3, 127-
156
and Burke contrasted, viii 129
Macnamara, Captain, and Colonel
Montgomery, duel between,
iii 192, 194
Madness, x 445-447
Magazine Writing, the author's
apology for, vii 5
Magdeburg, sack of, xi 411 note
Magi, Persian, xiii 396
Magliabecchi, Antonio, v 311
Mahomet not a great man, vii 272
Louis XIV, his bribery of the Mahomet II, the reformer of
English, ix 390
Louis XVI, his futile attempts to
escape, xiv 343
Loutherbourg, P. J. de, R.A., i 114
Love-Charm, The, xii 4, 434-446
Lovell, Mrs., ii 336
Lowe's statistics of England, ix 32
note
Lowth, Bishop, his scholarship com- |
pared with that of Parr, v 81,
97
Lucretius and Horace contrasted,
xi 378
unsound in his brain, xi 379 note
Lucy, Sir Thomas, and Shakespeare,
slanders relating to, iv 58
Luther's seal, xiii 399
example, xiii 407
Lycophron's
note
Cassandra," x 214
his diction not obscure, xi 269
Lycurgus, what did he do for
Homer? vi 54, 94
Lynch Law, remarkable case of, ix
400 note
"Lyrical Ballads," effect of, on
De Quincey, ii 138
MACAULAY, Mrs., x 435
Macbeth, On the Knocking at the
Gate in, x 8, 389-394, 425
Machiavel, Mackintosh on, viii 142-
147
Turkey, vii 289
Mahometan religion, viii 297; x
169 note
Maier, Michael, the transplanter of
Rosicrucianism into England,
xiii 414
his "Silentium post clamores,"
xiii 415
Mail-Coach, The English, xiii 1,7,
270-330, 332
Mainatts, a race of Grecian robbers
and pirates; their origin, vii
310 note
Malay, visit of a, to De Quincey,
iii 402
Malebranche murdered by Bishop
Berkeley !! xiii 32
Malelas, Joannes, Antiochenus,
publication of his chronicle
and controversy as to his
name, iv 130
Malone on Shakespeare's life, iv 21
Malthus on Population, ix 3, 6,
11-31; x 425
on the Measure of Value, ix 4,
6, 32-36
his doctrine of value, ix 79 et seq.
his view of pauperism, vii 260
Man, dignity of, in self-sacrifice,
by Richter, xi 289
grandeur of, in his littleness, by
Richter, xi 287
Manchester, i 68, 108
INDEX
429
Manchester, consecration of St. | Masonry, meaning of English word,
Peter's church at, iii 239
Grammar School, iii 247
De Quincey at, i 378-399
merchants, their style of living,
i 23
the Portico, iii 400
Swedenborgian, A, ii 113-122
Manhood, when does it commence?
i, 317
Mankind, fallacy of supposing, to
have degenerated, i 96, 185
Manners (French and English),
xiv 7, 327-334
Mapletou, Dr., removed his three
sons from Winchester School
an account of the system of
fagging, i 201
Marius, Caius, in prison, x 56
Mark Antony, vi 271, 283 note
Market Value, On, ix 200-207
Markham, Archbishop, compared
as a Greek scholar with Bishop
Hurd, v 54, 136 note
Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of,
Pope's libel on, xi 77
Marriage, Shakespeare's opinion
with regard to, iv 51
Shelley's dislike of, xi 366 note
the event in a woman's life,
xiv 370
xiii 441
see Freemasonry
Massey, Lord and Lady, i 333 et seq.
Mater Lachrymarum, Suspiriorum,
Tenebrarum, xiii 365-369
Mathematics, very easy and very
important, x 31
Mathias's "Pursuits of Literature,"
v 88, 142 note, 202; vi 112
note; x 45; xi 417 note
Matilda, Queen of Christian VII of
Denmark, charge against, viii
129
Matthews's "Diary of an Invalid"
referred to, xi 251
Maximin, Emperor, vi 379
Meals, Roman, Casuistry of, vii 1,
11-43
Measure of Value, ix 4, 6, 32-36
Meat, barbarous cookery of, in Great
Britain, xiv 268
eating raw, in order to dream, iii
440
Medicine, importance of, to the
evangelist, vii 159
Meiners upon the mysteries of the
ancients, xiii 395 note
Melanchthon, criticism on Landor's
imaginary conversation of, xi
412
Marrs, murder of the, x 391; xiii Melmoth, Manuscripts of, x 453-454
43, 58, 74-118
Marsh, Bishop Herbert, causes of
Dr. Parr's hostility to, v 30
Martyrdom, by Richter, xi 287
not suicide, viii 336
Martyrs of the Christian Church
and Suicide, viii 398
Mary-le-bone, the word grammati-
cal, i 197 note
Masks required in the Greek drama
owing to the size of the theatre,
x 376
Mason, rise of the allegoric name,
xiii 422
Masons' Hall, London, xiii 425
Masonic expression, "Son of the
Widow," origin of, xiii 431,
433
|
Memnon, note on the head of, i 41
Memorial Chronology on a new and
more apprehensible system, xiv
294-326
Suspiria, xiii 351-359
Memory concentrated on scenes of
childhood, xiii 349
taxations of the, xiv 26-32
Mendelssohn's music to "Antigone,"
x 383
"Phædon," x 384
Mendip Lodge, the residence of Dr.
Wh- ii 447
Merchants, English, their style of
living, i 31
Mere, derivation of the word, xiii 380
Mersenne's rejoinder to Fludd, xiii
422
430
INDEX
Messiah, no allusion in Josephus to | Milton, his orthographic innova-
the prophetic doctrine of a, vii
138
widespread expectation of a, at
the time of Christ, vii 124
Metanoia, (μeтávola), its true mean-
ing, i 369; vii 246 note; viii
217 note
Metaphysics and Psychology, dis-
tinction between, x 221
Methodists, xiv 236
Metre, the earliest form of speech,
x 171
Meyrick, Lady Lucy, account of
her runaway marriage, v 159
Mezzofanti, Cardinal, v 313
Michelet's account of Joan of Arc,
criticism of, v 7, 239 note, 386
fury against the English, v 408
note
Middleton, the dramatic poet, xiv
287
Middleton, Conyers, iv 124 note;
vi 186
Millar, Mrs., ii 370
iv
Miller, Edmund, as champion of
the opponents of Bentley,
148
Milne, Isaac, Dean of Carlisle, iii
212, 215 notes; v 24
Milton, x 8, 395-413
Life of, iv 14, 87-103
Postscript, respecting Johnson's
Life of, iv 104-117
Question as to Actual Slips in,
x 8, 414-420
Dryden's Hexastich on, x 8, 421-
424
versus Southey and Landor, xi 4,
395 note, 453-474
tions, xi 444
his knowledge of physiology, xiv
288
his phrase, "Darkness Visible,"
vii 44 note
portraits of, ii 247 note
his rhetoric, x 102-104
his "Samson Agonistes," x 372;
xiv 288 note
an admirer of Shakespeare, iv 28
his supposed flagellation at school,
iv 84 note
his mention of Taprobane, i 165
note; vii 430
and religious toleration, xiii 427
note
and Wordsworth, likeness be-
tween, ii 248
see Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained
Miltonic Adam, reference to, xiii
402
Mines, on females working in, viii
300 note
Minshul, Elizabeth, Milton's third
wife, iv 99
Miracles as Subjects of Testimony,
viii 4, 157-176
Mirrors, Hebrew, vi 170
Mitford's "History of Greece," xi
440 note
Mithridates, vi 201
"Mithridates
of Adelung, notice
of, x 33, 362
Mochinahante, the Welsh astro-
loger, xiii 259
Modern, Shakespeare's use of the
word, ii 66
Monarchies, universal, vi 231
Bentley's edition of his works, iv Monasteries, suppression of, by
191
his blindness, iv 97
Chateaubriand's estimate of, iii
265; v 409 note
Johnson's critique on, iv 114
Lauder's impostures on, vii 211
musical voluntaries compared
with his eloquence, x 269
his diction, ii 69 note
Henry VIII, the cause of the
growth of pauperism in Eng-
land, ix 320 note
Monboddo, James Burnet, Lord, his
work on language, ape hypo-
thesis, etc., i 93-100
Money-lenders, their delay, iii 349
Monk's, Bishop, Life of Bentley,
reviewed, iv 118
INDEX
431
Monk, General, xiii 436
"Monsieur Monsieur" as a French
address, iii 285
Montagu, Mrs., Mrs. H.
account of, xiv 101
Montagu, Basil, and water-drinking,
ii 206
More's
Montgomery, Colonel, and Captain
Macnamara, duel between, iii
192, 194
Moon's rotation, iv 137
Moral, meaning of the word in
Scotland, v 287 note
Moralist, what is a ? xi 114
Moran, a malicious position, i 336
|
|
Mure's Tour in Greece reviewed,
vii 330
Murray, Dr. Alexander, the self-
taught linguist, x 34
Murray's, Lindley, Grammar, x
127; xi 352; xiv 152
Murray's, William, revival of
Antigone," x 379
Murrhine vases, vi 341 note
Music, English obtuseness to good,
x 135
its effect on an idiot, iv 24
insensibility to, iii 44
festal, i 197
Greek, x 383
More, Hannah, Recollections of, Musical studies, iii 270
x 440 note; xiv 2, 94-131
De Quincey's conversations
with, xiv 111, 115 note
More, Henry, the Platonist, ii 203;
x 454
Mysteries of the Ancients, xiii 395
Mythologia Christiana, xiii 413 note
Morecamb Bay, ii 281
Morhof on the Rosicrucian orders,
xiii 409
Morton, Earl of, singular death of
his affianced bride three days
before the wedding day, i 191
Morus and the Milton controversy,
iv 97
Mosaic cosmogony, viii 34, 283
note; xiv 324
Mothers, what great men owe to
their, iv 38
Motion, Glory of (English Mail
Coach), xiii 270-300, 329
Mountains, secrecy of the summits
of, iv 227
Mueller, Wilhelm, on Homer, vi 44
Muffins, eating, a cause of suicide,
xiv 372
Mummy, Mr. White's, i 387
NAMES, on the invention of, x 143
on the various ways of spelling
proper, xi 446
French Christian, v 389 note
secret, i 88 note
Napoleon contrasted with Charle-
magne, v 6, 363 et seq.
instance of his superstition when
before Acre, viii 415
his interview with the Duchess of
Weimar, iv 413
National Character, Kant on, xiv
46-52
debt, Joseph Ady and the, vii 192
note
Naudé's works on Rosicrucianism,
xiii 419 note
Necklaces of the Hebrew women,
vi 160, 164
Negroes of Africa, character of, xiv
56
Nero, vi 283 note, 287-300, 418
Munckley, Dr., anecdotes of, v 153 New Atlantis of Bacon, xiii 429
Murat, anecdote of, x 373
Murder considered as one of the
Fine Arts, xiii 1, 3, 9-124
art of, i 392; vi 287; vii 187;
viii 145, 364; x 210, 390; xi
347, 461
derivation of the word, xiii 19
note
New Zealand destined to a giant's
career, xiv 190
Newland, Abraham, xiii 47
Newmanism, theory of development,
etc., viii 289
Newspapers, the fearfulness of their
contents, i 101
printed on one side only, i 231
432
INDEX
Newspapers, effect of, on colloquial | Oil, use of, by the Jews, vii 161
and written style, x 148
hasty writing for, ix 360
talent displayed in, ix 315
of America, i 269 note
Newton's, Sir Isaac, dinner, vii 23
Nice, meaning of the word, x 433
note
Nichol's Thoughts on the System of
the World noticed, viii 7
Nick, Old, not derived from the
name of Machiavelli, viii 147
Nicolai's hypothesis about Free-
masons, xiii 429 et seq.
Night, by Richter, xi 287
Nile, changes caused by the, xiv 81
Nitzsch on Homer, vi 16
his account of the Kantean
Philosophy, x 65
Nobility, meaning of the word, ii
36
Norfolk, Duke of, friend of Fox, iii |
388 note
North, Christopher, see Wilson,
Professor
Notes from the Pocket-Book of a late
Opium-Eater, x 8, 425-455
Notes, foot, on their use, x 165
Nose-rings among the Hebrews, vi
159, 168
Novels, On, xiv 370-372
causes of their fading with
the generation which produces
them, iv 297
professedly historical, iv 90 note
Nun, The Spanish Military, xiii
1, 3, 159-250
Nympholeptoi, ancient superstition
concerning, viii 438, 442
OATH, a Baptist minister's, x 329
O'Connell's, Daniel, indomitable
will, ix 314
"Odyssey," explanation of a passage
in the, vii 342, 346
Pope's, publication of, iv 265
Edipus, story of, vi 139
Officers, no Roman term expressing
the distinction of, vi 320 note;
vii 213 note
Old maids, x 145
Oliver, hanged for murder, v 76, 78
Olympiads, rule for computing, iv
200 note
Omen, Roman, of the twelve vul-
tures, viii 303 note
Omens, i 303; viii 413
at the birth of the Dauphin, son
of Louis XVI, i 299 note
Opera, pleasures of the, iii 389
Italian, its likeness to the Greek
drama, x 368
Opitz, the only name of note in the
German literature of the seven-
teenth century, iv 423
Opium, Pleasures of, iii 379-411,
465
Pains of, iii 412-449, 465
abuse of, xiv 168
effects of, iii 73, 77; xiv 165
Opium-eater, Notes from the Pocket-
Book of a late, x 8, 425-455
Confessions of an English, i. x,
14; iii 5, 209-449; iv 3;
xiii 7
appendix, iii 6, 457-472
Opium-eaters, celebrated, iii 211
-eating, Coleridge and, v 179-214
Question with China in 1840,
xiv 3, 146 note, 162-218
Opposites, use of, by Richter, xi
289
Oracles, Delphic, vi 143; vii 54,
62, 79; viii 201
Pagan, vii 1, 6, 44-100
Orators, Greek, x 323, 338
Oratory, different styles of, x 83
note, 226
parliamentary, x 333, 337
distinctions between
Grecian,
Roman, and British, x 330
religious, x 335
See Eloquence
Orford, Horace Walpole, Lord,
described by Miss Hawkins, v
149
Orion, description of the nebula in,
viii 18
Ornithomancy, instances of, viii 429
INDEX
433
Orphan heiresses, i 348-366
Orthographic Mutineers, xi 4, 395
note, 437-452
Orthography, badness of French,
iii 287; x 257 note
Othello not a sufferer from jealousy,
i 174 note
Ossian, iii 148
Oxford, age of students at, ii 43
list of colleges and halls at,
ii 24
De Quincey at, ii 1, 9-80
change of the dinner-hour at, vii
39
cost of an education at, ii 29
et seq.
tutors and professors of, ii 30
Oxford Street, ii 55; iii 375
Oubacha, Khan of the Kalmuck
Tartars, vii 370, 423
Pagan Oracles, vii 1, 6, 44-100
prayers always corrupt, viii 217
religions unconnected with moral-
ity, viii 212
never proselytise, viii 215
Painting and sculpture contrasted,
xi 202
and poetry contrasted, xi 204
landscape, not known to the
ancients, x 169
Wordsworth's sonnet on, xi
178 note
Pantheon, "Stately," Oxford Street,
iii 380
Pantisocracy,
Coleridge and
Southey's plan of migrating to
America, ii 173
Paper, its scarcity at Athens, x 238
more plentiful at Rome, x 238
Paracelsus, Theophrastus, influence
of his writings, xiii 401
Paradise of Scripture, was it Ceylon?
vii 433
"Paradise Lost," Addison's appre-
ciation of, xi 22
Bentley's criticism of, i 92 note;
xi 466
massacre of, iv 191, 226
criticised by Bouterwek
and
Schlegel without having been
read by them, x 44 note
moral of, xi 456
reference in, to the death of Abel,
xiii 17
a weak point in, iv 383
and "Regained," their respective
merits, iv 100, 113
"Paradise Regained," on some lines
in, xi 467, 470
applications of passage in, i 165
note; v 400
see Milton
Paradox, what is a? i 199; vii 5,
205
Pariahs of the world, i 100
Paley, Dr., the author's opinion of, Park, Mungo, the African traveller,
ii 62, 74
his casuistry, x 30 note
philosophically hated by Cole-
ridge, v 193
refuted by Mackintosh, viii 140
Parr's dislike to, v 120
the value of his "Moral Philo-
sophy," iii 163
Palimpsest, The, of the Human
Brain, xiii 340-349
-
Pall Mall, pronunciation of the
word, xi 442
Palmer, John, inventor of mail-
coaches, xiii 270
Palmyra, destruction of, by Aurelian,
vi 399
VOL. XIV
v 291 note
Parliament, growth of the power
of, ix 324, 383
Parliamentary debates, Dr. Johu-
son's, translated and published
periodically in Germany, iv 425
oratory, x 333
Parr, Dr. Samuel; or Whiggism in
its Relations to Literature, v
1, 9-145
unworthy of being murdered, xiii
34
on the word sublime, x 301 note
his scholarship compared with
that of Benjamin Heath, v 39,
135 note
2 F
434
INDEX
Parr, Dr. Samuel; his scholar- | Phædrus, sublime passage in, i 125
ship compared with that of Phalaris controversy, iv 138, 195-
Heyne,'v 85, 140 note,-with
that of
Johnson, v 62, 65
225
Phantoms of the desert, viii 437
Pharisees, the, vii 237
Sir William Jones, v 81, 97, Phidias, the divine artist, x 208
140 note
Bishop Lowth, v 81, 97
Bentley and Porson, iv 226;
v 95 note
Parties, on the Political, of Modern
England, ix 9, 354-394
Paterculus, Velleius, "Historia Ro-
mana" noticed, x 194
Patronage in the Church of Scot-
land, xiv 230
Patten, meaning of the word, xiii
374, 381
Pauperism in early times, vii 257
Malthus's view of, vii 260
origin of, in the suppression of
the monasteries by Henry VIII,
ix 320 note
Peace, Kant's Essay towards realis-
ing the idea of Perpetual, sub-
stance of, viii 119
Societies, absurdity of, viii 369,393
Pearce's Memoirs of the Marquess
Wellesley, notice of, v 165-178
Pedestrianism, guilt of, iii 342
Penson, Elizabeth, the author's
mother, i 18, 404 et seq.; iv 2;
xiv 94, 109 note
Penson, Thomas, the author's uncle,
400; iii 312; iv 2, 4
Percival, Dr., i 9 note, 123
note
Philip the Arab, vi 382
Philip, Dr. Wilson, on indigestion,
xiv 271
Philips, Ambrose, Pope's ridicule
of, iv 260
Philological development of the
Scriptures, viii 295
Philosophic minds, two divisions of,
by Richter, xi 288
Philosophy of Roman History, vi 4,
429-447
Phoenix, fable of the, xiii 345
Physiology, English, x 447-448
Pig-grunting, mimicry of, x 294
Pindar, lyric poet, x 314
on Homer, vi 66
"Pink." See De Quincey, Richard
Pinkerton's, John, orthographic
barbarities, xi 443
Piracy, viii 328-330
Piranesi's "Dreams," iii 438
Piron's epitaph on himself, v 243
Pisistratus, account of his collec-
tion of the dispersed works of
Homer, vi 56
Pitt's approval of the French Re-
volution, ix 333, 367
views on the regency question,
v 171; ix 363, 379
Perfectibility of man, doctrine of, Planetary system, Kant's conjecture
ix 14-16, 21, 23
Perfumes, Hebrew, vi 167, 169
Persia in connexion with Free-
masonry, xiii 396
Persian character, xiv 55
Perspire, incapacity to,-connected
with insanity? iv 339 note
Pertinax, Emperor, vi 370
Pestalozzi washed, xi 419
Peter the Great, originator of our
conflicts in the East, xiv 359
statue of, at St. Petersburg, vii
195 note
of an hiatus in, iv 334 note
Plato's Republic, viii 2, 42-83
Plum-pudding, French manufacture
of, v 156
Plutarch's Lives, a favourite of
Wordsworth's, ii 288
inaccuracy of dates in, x 322
Poetry not to be distinguished from
prose, x 131 note
and painting contrasted, xi 204
Mrs. H. More's views on, xiv 116
didactic, meaning of, x 26; xi
88, 97
INDEX
435
Poetry, didactic, a suicidal notion, | Porson, Richard, character of his
xi 380 note
postscript on, xi 215-221
Poets, Greek, x 289
Polemic, misuse of the word, ii 340
note; ix 53 note
Political Economy, Dialogues of
Three Templars on, ix 4, 32-
112
Logic of, i. x; ix 6, 118-294
Coleridge's dislike to, v 187
commentary on, ix 257-270
Prolegomena to all future sys-
tems of, iii 432; ix 2
on the services of Ricardo to the
science of, ix 2, 4, 37
Political Parties of Modern Eng-
land, on the, ix 9, 354-394
Pompey, vi 198, 222; xi 429
note
contrasted with Cæsar, xiv 340
Ponson, an officer of the French
army in Ireland, 1798, i 255
Poole, Mr., description of, ii 141
Poor laws, vice of, ix 18
Pope, Alexander, Life from the
Encyclopædia Britannica, iv
14, 237-287
Lord Carlisle on, xi 1, 98-155
The Poetry of, xi 1, 51-97
his birthday, iv 237, 281 note
his knowledge of French,
245
iv
his knowledge of Latin, iv 249
his ignorance of Greek, iv 247
his removal from Twyford School,
iv 241, 284 note
a good son, iv 253, 277
as a scholar, iv 285 note
Christianity considered with re-
ference to, xi 81-86
on Schlosser's criticism of his
poetry, xi 29-35
and Dryden contrasted, xi 119
and Horace contrasted, xi 121
note
Population, Malthus on, ix 3, 6,
11-31; x 425
supposed criticism on Words-
worth, etc., in "Landor's Con-
versations," xi 416
his intemperance, xi 416
his indifference to real poetry,
xi 417
his knowledge of English limited,
xi 421
his grossness of speech, xi 421-423
his letters to Travis, iv 123, 186;
viii 274 note
his jeux d'esprit, iv 226
his Latinity infelicitous, v 95 note,
98
Potatoes, art of cooking, unknown,
xiv 267
Pottinger's sneer at Pope's pedi-
gree, iv 239
Poverty, Pope on, xi 125
tries true friends, iv 43
Powell, Mary, Milton's first wife,
iv 90
Prandium of the Romans, vii 25
properly translated by the word
moonshine, vii 21
Prayer, Pope on, xi 82
Prefigurations of Remote Events, x
428-429
Presence of Mind, xiv 7, 335-344
Present time compared to a drop,
xiii 360
Prices, History of, "Bishop Gib-
son's Chronicon," viii 332
Priestley, Dr., storming of his
house by the Birmingham mob
on account of his revolutionary
opinions, v 118
Prince, title of, in England, xiv
354 note
Printing, early secret of, xiii 341
not so complete a form of publi-
cation as the Greek theatre,
x 237
Prior, Matthew, xiv 302
Priory, the, Chester, i 400-416; iii
311 note
Probus, Emperor, vi 404
Pork, Lamb's account of the origin | Profits, on, ix 270-294
of roast, in China, vii 15
Pronunciation, alterations in, xi 464
436
INDEX
Prophecy, meaning of the term, vii
96, 273; viii 203 note
"Travels of Cyrus," disserta-
tion on Freemasons, xiii 438
Prophet, character of a, iii 452 Ramsay, William Wardlaw, cata-
note
strophe to, viii 441.
meaning of the word, v 289 note; Ravenna, foundations of the Cathe-
vii 96
Prose, origin of, vi 100; x 169
composition, secrets in the art
of, ii 65
Prostrations in the East, xiv 357
Protestant concessions, viii 99
Protestantism, viii 5, 244-309
Proverbs, x 436
Psychology and metaphysics, dis-
tinction between, x 221
Publication, what is it? i 5; vi 94;
x 231
Punch, introduction of the drink,
xiii 27
Punctual, meaning of the word, x
434
Punctuation, x 164
Punishments in schools, xiv 36
Purple, the Roman, what was it?
i 360 note; vi 340 note
Purse of the Hebrew lady, vi 174
Puseyism, viii 289
Pyment, attorney's clerk, iii 351
QUAKERS, their custom of restrain-
ing natural feelings, ii 384
on the use of the term, ii 385
note
the dress of, ii 386
Quotations, the large number of,
from Shakespeare, iv 32 note
Quincey, Thomas, the author's
father, i 17, 21, 56; iv 1
his library, i 24
Quiney, Thomas, son-in-law of
Shakespeare, iv 68
RADICAL, the party name, xi 338
Radicalism, a Tory's Account of
Toryism, Whiggism, and, ix
8, 313-353
continuation, On the Political
Parties of Modern England,
ix 354-394
Ramsay, Andrew Michael, author of
dral at, xiv 84
Readers, actors usually bad, iii 430
Reading, evils of desultory, v 234;
x 162-167
rarity of good, iii 430
Reason and imagination, x 440
Recupero, Canon, viii 8 note
"Rees's Cyclopædia" noticed, v 68
note
Reform Bill, a national object, ix
344
Reformadoes, x 435
Regency question, v 170; ix 363,
378
"Religion," the word, among the
Romans, viii 209 note
what it is, among Christians, viii
211
sketch of the history of, xiv
234
of Christianity and Paganism,
difference between, i 370; ii
73; viii 302
of the Greeks, vi 141
of the Romans, vi 141, 425
in Europe, xiv 53
in woman greater than in man,
xiv 311
Religions, all, true to a Pagan, viii
214
Religious objections to the use of
Chloroform, xiv 6, 286-293
Reliques, Popish, value of, ix 178
Rennell, Major, on Herodotus, vi
123
Rent, on, iv 41; ix 226-256
doctrine of, ix 405
Repentance, on the use of the word,
in the New Testament, i 369;
vii 246 note; viii 217 note
Restoration of Charles II as con-
nected with origin of Free-
masonry, xiii 431
first concerted in a society of
Freemasons, xiii 437
INDEX
437
'Revelation, a new, by HIM," a
pamphlet under this title
noticed, i 63 note
Revenge, a noble instance of, i 132
Reviewers, satirical notice of, by
Richter, xi 285
Reviewing, De Quincey's dislike of,
iii 174
Revolution of 1688, both Whigs
and Tories concurred in, ix
336, 369, 374
Kant's attack on the English
nation for their political, viii
113
Revolutions, Moral Effects of, x 429-
430
Rewards in schools, xiv 38
Reynolds, Thomas, traitor to the
United Irishmen, i 232
Rhabdomancy, or searching for
wells by the rod of divination,
iii 290 note; viii 435
Rhetoric, x 2, 81-133; xiii 5
see Style
Rhinoceros, first sale of a, ix 162
Ricardo and Adam Smith, ix 7,
113-117; xiv 388
and Malthus, ix 4, 34
on his views of Political Economy,
iii 431; ix 44
on his services to the science
of Political Economy, ix, 2, 4,
37
Richter, John Paul Frederick, xi
3, 259-272
Analects from, xi 3, 273-293
on Herder, iv 390
his "Dream upon the Universe,"
viii 33
Ringelberg's "De Ratione Studii'
noticed, x 26 note
Rings of the Hebrew women, vi 174
Ritson, Joseph, controversy with
Bishop Percy on the condition
of the minstrel, vi 22
his orthographic atrocities, xi 441
"Roberte the Devill" referred to,
xi 437 note
Robinson Crusoe's island, i 308
Roderick the Goth, vii 77 note
Roland, Madame, x 443
Rolls of parchment, xiii 342
Roman History, Philosophy of, vi
4, 429-447
Meals, Casuistry of, vii 1, 11-43
bon-mots, x 55
intellect, xiv 337
politics, vi 215
literature after the first twelve
Cæsars, vi 438
statesmen, morality of expediency
employed by, vi 218
writers of the Silver, more truly
Roman than those of the
Golden age, x 58
Greek and, literature, ii 62; x
51, 54
See Rome
Romans, king of the, inauguration
and coronation of, 1763-64, at
Frankfort, iv 405
Romances in real life very frequent,
i 207
Rome, barbarism of, vi 438
constitution and discipline of the
army, vi 320, vii 213 note
continued repetition of convul-
sions in the state of, vi 219
destruction of, vi 289
government of, not representative,
viii 237
history of, under the Cæsars, vi
225-420
judicial system of, vi 217
license of public libelling in, vi
217
power of the Emperors, vi 233
provisional administration of, vi
215
universal depravity of, vi 305
Church of, and casuistry, iii 160
and London, their relative sizes,
i 179 note; vi 225
ancient, public service of, vi
213
reasons in favour of the fabu-
lousness of the early history
of, x 54 note
domestic relations in, iii 233
See Roman
438
INDEX
Rope- dancers, humane regulation
of Marcus Aurelius, vi 338 note
Roscoe, William, ii 127, 129
his Works of Pope reviewed,
xi 51
Rose and cross symbols, xiii 399
Rosicrucians and the Freemasons,
Historico-critical Inquiry into
origin of the, xiii 8, 384-448
Rosse's, Lord, Telescopes, System of
the Heavens as revealed by, viii
1, 7-41
Rousseau and sortilegy, viii 426
Roxburghe Library, sale of, ix 167
Royal Society of London, origin of,
xiii 429
Ruscombe, Mrs., of Bristol, murder
of, i 392; xiii 36
Russell, Lord John, an aristocratic
reformer, ix 353
Russia in relation to our connec-
tion with the East, xiv 359
rapid growth of, vii 289
Russian gold-mines, ix 407
S., Dr., domestic tragedy of the
two deaf idiot daughters of, i
103
Sabbath, Jewish, vii 61
Sandal, Hebrew, vi 162
Saracen's Head, The, ii 348-359
Savage, R., Pope's benevolent con-
duct to, iv 276 note
an impostor and swindler, xi 386
note
Savages, poetry and eloquence of,
x 443
of North America, character of,
xiv 57
Savannah-la-Mar, xiii 359-361
Saxon Chronicle, narrow choice of
words in, xiv 149
Scale, Cumberland meaning of the
verb to, xiii 133 note
Scaliger on the supposed English
horror of cold water, i 284
Scaligers, the, Hamilton compared
with, v 315
Schiller, Caspar, father of the poet,
and author of "Die Baumzucht
im Grosser," iv 431
Schiller, John Christopher Frederick
von, Life from the Encyclopædia
Britannica, iv 14, 422-439
on the æsthetic education of men,
x 452 note
Schlegel, Frederick, his criticisms
worthless, x 42-44
Sabbaths, Jewish and Christian, vii Schlosser's Literary History of the
166
Sadducees, the, vii 238
Sadler, Robert, baker, as a creditor
of John Shakespeare, iv 43
Sailors notoriously superstitious, i
302
St. John's Priory, Chester, i 400-
416; iii 311 note
St. Patrick, installation of the
Knights of, i 215
St. Paul's Cathedral and whispering
gallery, i 186; iii 295
Sale of household furniture iu
Westmorland, xiii 129
Salford as a part of Manchester,
iii 237 note
Salmasius's controversy with Milton,
iv 96
18th Century, xi 1, 5-50
Schmidt, the beau-ideal of Kantean
commentators, x 67 note
Schnackenberger, Mr.; or
Two
Masters for one Dog, xii 3,
314-363
Scholastic Philosophy, x 220
School, Grammar, origin of the
name, i 150 note; iii 255
Schools, Public, their good effect
upon the character of boys,
i 36, 151
in England, iii 264
antiquity of, v 224
Schreiber, Mrs., i 352, 383
Schulz, F., The Incognito; or, the
Count Fitz-Hum, xii 4, 417-
433
"Samson Agonistes," x 372; xiv Science and its relation to the Bible,
288
}
viii 34-41
INDEX
439
Science, influence of trifles on, x, Serpents considered by the Hebrews
267
Scotch Manners, xiv 329
Masonry, Bonneville's work on,
xiii 440 note
and English, no love lost between,
iii 150
Scotland, Church of. See Church
of Scotland
342
as amulets, vi 166
Servants, giving characters to, who
have misconducted themselves,
viii 357-359
criminal prosecution of, fraudu-
lent, viii 360-362
England the paradise of house-
hold, i 31
Scotland's offence against logic, v Servetus, death of, viii 256
Servitors at Oxford, ii 46
Scotsmen's dislike of the term Seven ages of man, note explanatory
Scotchman, iii 150 note
between, iii 127 note
of, ii 68
xiii 401
Scott, John, and Mr. Christie, duel Seven wise men of Greece, story of,
Scott, Sir Walter, and Allan Cun- Severus, Alexander, vi 376
ningham, iii 153
Dr. Parr's depreciation of, v 69
and Queen Caroline, v 69, 139
note
novel of, forged, "Walladmor,"
xiv 132-145
Scriptural Allusion Explained, x
454-455
Scripture development, viii 296
Scriptures, text of the, xiv 315
records how maintained, xiv 317
Sculpture and Painting contrasted,
xi 202
drapery in, xi 193
Scytale, Spartan, xiv 313 note
Sea not sublime, vii 70 note
causes of depression of the, xiv
88
the saltness of the, xiv 82, 83
Seamanship and shipmanship, i 306
note
Sea-sickness in old sailors, iii 420
Secret, difficulty of keeping a, i 210
note
Societies, i 230, vii 2, 7, 173-249
Sedan-chairs, convenience of, i 406
Sedition and the Gracchi, xiv 296
note
"See-Saw, Margery Daw," iii 417
Selkirk, Lord, on the emigration of
the Scotch Highlanders to the
British Colonies, ix 323 note
Semler's History of the Rosicrucians,
xiii 399
Seward's, Miss, flattery, xiv 104
Seymour, Sir Edward, the proud
Speaker, xi 427
Shaftesbury, Lord, author of the
"Characteristics,” iv 25
and Lessing, parallel between,
xi 158
Shakespeare, John, grant of arms
to, iv 42, 67
his occupation, iv 36
his position in Stratford, iv 37
Shakspeare, William, iv 17-85
On the Knocking at the Gate in
Macbeth, x 8, 389-394, 425
unread by Addison, iv 22, 232
note; xi 19 note
George III's love of, i 169
two offences of Goldsmith against,
iv 321
Mrs. Quickly's account of Fal-
staff's death, xi 263
on the orthography of his name,
iv 80 note
Pope's edition of his works, iv
266
Richter compared with, xi 271
his reputation always in a pro-
gressive state, iv 31, 81 note
his rhetoric, x 108 note
his station in literature, iv 69,
84 note
his
८८
Hamlet," the
player's
scene, compared with the Greek
Tragedy, x 345, 347
440
INDEX
Shakspeare, William, his "Hamlet," | Smith, Adam, his "Wealth of
remarks on a passage in, viii
272 note
his "
Othello," i 174 note
his "King Lear,” x 49
Nations" noticed, ix 67 note
Smith, Bobus, notice of his am-
bitious designs and failure in
Parliament, v 13
"Titus Andronicus " not the Smith, Miss Elizabeth, ii 403-420
work of, x 304
his share in the authorship of
the "Two Noble Kinsmen," x
108 note; xi 221 note
Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, at
Oxford, ii 28 note
Sharpe, Richard, his cognomen of
"River" Sharpe, and his story
relative to Burke's MSS., xi
37 note
Sheep-bells,
none in Northern
England, ii 403
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, xi 4, 326
note, 354-377
Shepherd, Rev. William, ii 128
Sheridan, R. B., a charlatan, x 112
his impromptu in ridiculing Lord
Belgrave in Parliament, i 363
Shrewsbury, adventure at an inn
at, iii 345
Sibylline books, superannuation of,
viii 444
Sicarii, the Jewish, vii 150; xiii
63
Siddons, Mrs., ii 446-454
Smith, Mrs. F. Baird, the author's
daughter, i. xvii; iv 10
Smith's, Captain George, use and
abuse of Freemasonry, xiii 340
note
Smith, Sir Sidney, at Bath, i 155-
159
Snobs and nobs, origin of the
terms, xiii 275 note
Snow-drifts, loss of shepherds in
the, and plan to remedy the
evil, xiii 154
Societies, Secret, i 230; vii 2, 7,
173-249
Society of the Lakes, ii 367-445
introductions into fashionable, iii
17, 20
Socrates and his pupils, x 180
Solitude essential to man, i 48
Solomon's Temple, Freemasonry
represented under the form of,
xiii 424, 426
Bacon's allegory of, xiii 429
Solon, what did he do for Homer?
vi 53
Simlah, or upper garment, of the Sophocles, Antigone of, as repre-
Hebrews, vi 175
Simond,
ii 374
Simpson, Margaret, De Quincey's
wife, ii 355; iii 377 note; iv 5
Sizars at Cambridge, ii 47
Skiddaw, ascent of, x 439
Skies, deep blue of Italian, viii 27
note
Sky-scenery, xi 317
Slang, x 247, 426
Slave-trade, i 18; xiv 307
Slaves, value of, ix 174
Smart, Christopher, translator of
Horace, iv 303
Smith, Miss, daughter of General
Smith, i 350
sented on the Edinburgh Stage,
x 7, 360-388
and Euripides contrasted, x 371
note
Philoctetes of, xi 168, 183 et
seq.
Trachiniæ of, xi 170, 176, 190
Sorrow, three sisters of, xiii 364
Sortes Virgilianæ, i 124; viii 423
Sortilege and Astrology, xiii 1, 3,
251-269
Sortilegy, or books opened at ran-
dom, viii 420
Soult, Marshal, insolence of, to-
wards the English, relative to
Waterloo, xiii 292 note
Smith, Adam, Ricardo and, ix 7, South Sea Bubble, Pope's invest-
113-117
ment in, iv 267
INDEX
441
Southey, Herbert, why so called, ii Sterne contrasted with Richter, xi
330 note
Southey, Robert, ii 4, 303-347
and Landor, Milton versus, xi 4,
395 note, 453-474
comparison
his "Joan of Arc," v 238, 397
and Gibbon, comparison be-
tween, ii 338
and Wordsworth,
between, ii 328
Spanish aristocracy, physical de-
gradation of, iii 236
Military Nun, xiii 1, 3, 159-250
monarchy, Campanella's work
on, xiii 417
national character, xiv 48
rhetoric, x 123
Spartan warfare, viii 384 note
"Spectator, the," xi 19
Sphinx, the Theban, vi 4, 139-151
Spinoza, his "B. D. S. Opera Pos-
thuma," iv 136
was murdered, xiii 27
Spitting, art of, x 265
Spontaneous combustion, iii 418
Sprat's "History of the Royal
Society," x 434
Squatters, xi 457 note
Staël, Madame de, on the Kantean
philosophy, x 77
spoken of disparagingly by Cole-
ridge, Goethe, and Schiller,
probably owing to their ignor-
ance of oral French, x 281
compared with Mrs. H. More,
xiv 111
Stair, Lord, gentlemanly conduct
of, v 138 note
Stammering, method of curing, xiv
40
Stars, the, by Richter, xi 287
jewellery of, viii 21 note
periodic shooting, viii 31 note
Statius, on Pope's translation of,
iv 249, 285 note
Statues, equestrian, the prescrip-
tive right of kings, xi 472 note
Steele's papers in the "Spectator,"
xi 19 note
Steevens on Shakespeare's life, iv 21
265
Stewart, Dugald, v 296
studied the Kantean philosophy
through the French, x 69
Stewart, Rev. Mr., an Irish poet,
absurdly praised by Dr. Parr,
v 70
Stewart, Walking, iii 4, 93-120;
viii 128; x 425
Stillingfleet, Bishop, iv 128
Stimulants, use of, in extreme cases
of illness, xiii 206 note
Stock, Dr., Bishop of Killala, his
account of the French invasion
of Ireland, i 250
Stowell, Lord, the oracle of the
Admiralty Courts during the
war with Napoleon, v 61 note
Struensee, Count, examination of
Mackintosh's account of the
conspiracy against, viii 129-
135
Strulbrugs, Swift's, i 105 note; vii
275 note
Studion's work "Naometria,” xiii
399 note
Study, works on a system of, re-
viewed, x 26
Style, x 3, 134-245
want of, among German writers,
x 258
value and importance of, in
literary composition, x 260
the French superior to the
English in, x 126, 154
See Rhetoric
Sublime, meaning of the word, x
300 note, 301 nole, 400
goddesses, xiii 368 note
Suetonius, explanation of a passage
in, vi 421
Suffrage, universal, would be the
ruin of England, ix 393
Suicide, on, viii 398-403; x 425
palliation of, by Dr. Donne,
martyrdom not suicide, etc.,
viii 335-338
Suliotes, sketch of their history, vii.
319-330
442
INDEX
Summer, resurrection of, iii 343; | Tait, Mr., the author's letter to,
iv 236 note
Superficial Knowledge, x 449-452
Supernatural world, on Shake-
speare's introduction of the,
into his dramas, iv 76
Superstition among the Jews, vii
74
modern, viii 6, 404-451
Suspiria de Profundis: being a
Sequel to the Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater, i 14, iii
450, xiii 2, 7, 328, 331
Dreaming, xiii 333-340
relating to payment for the
article on Toryism, etc., ix 356
note
Talavera, battle of, xiii 299
Talent and genius, distinction be-
tween, i 194 note; iii 34 note ;
xi 383
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, iii 126-127
his Memorials of Lamb reviewed,
v 215
Talk, too much, in the world, x 267
Talleyrand's jests not original, viii
375
Levana and Our Ladies of Sor- Taprobane, of the Romans, was it
row, xiii 2, 362-369
Memorial Suspiria, xiii 351-359
Palimpsest of the Human Brain,
the, xiii 340-349
Savannah-la-Mar, xiii 359-361
Vision of Life, xiii 350-351
Sutherland, Duke of, refuses land
for the Free Church of Scot-
land, xiv 257
Sweden, happy life of a parish
priest in, by Richter, xi 273-
277
Swedenborgianism, ii 113-122
Kant's abstract of, xiv 61-68
Swift's works, criticism of Schlos-
ser's notices of, xi 12-19
Strulbrugs, i 105 note; vii 275
note
and Pope's miscellanies, iv 269
proposal for disposing of child-
ren, xiii 71
Swindle in California, ix 397
Symbolic interest of Freemasonry,
xiii 425, 426
Sympathy, barbarous use of the
word, x 391 note
Symposiarch, the Athenian, x 264,
286
Sympson Family, The, ii 420-425
Synonyms, use of, x 72
TACITUS, Emperor, vi 402
Tae-ping Rebellion, xiv 364
Ceylon? vii 430
Tarn, derivation of the word, iv 118
note; xiii 128 note, 382
Tartars, Revolt of the, vii 3, 8, 368-
426
Tate, Nahum, improvement of
"King Lear," iv 22
Taylor, Bishop Jeremy, x 104, 125
and religious toleration, xiii 427
note
Heber's life of, i 348 note
his "Life of Christ," viii 189
on Protestantism and Papists,
viii 100
Taylor, John, and his book on
Junius, iii 128-143
on the letters of Junius, xi 43
Tchitchagoff, the Russian Admiral,
vii 298 note
Tea, the beverage of the intellectual,
iii 408
Teaspoons, varieties in their size,
iii 402, 414 notes
Telescopes, System of the Heavens as
revealed by Lord Rosse's, viii
1, 7-41
Temperance, National, Movements,
xiv 7, 263-285
Templars, Dialogues of Three, on
Political Economy, ix 4, 32-
112
Knights, connected with Free-
masonry, xiii 400, 438
Tails originally a human appendage,
Temple, Inner and Outer,
in
masonry, xiii 400 note
i 98
INDEX
443
Temple's, Sir W., conversation with Tieck, Ludwig, his Love-Charm, xii
Charles II, ix 300
434-463
Ten tribes, mystery of, xiv 316 | Tigrosylvania, W., De Quincey's
note
Thames, River, not a mere sewer,
i 357 note
Theatre as a means of publication,
x 236, 243
See Drama
Theban Sphinx, The, vi 4, 139-151
Thebes, the two, iii 396 note
pronunciation of the word, x 379
note
imaginary kingdom, i 88 et seq.
Timanthes' picture of the Sacrifice
of Iphigenia, xi 174
Time, power of opium in amplifying
its dimensions, iii 435; xiii 338
rapid flight of, x 274
Timomachus, paintings of, xi 180
"Titus Andronicus" not the work
of Shakespeare, x 304
Toad, is it venomous? vii 68 note
Theodora and Dorothy, the names, Toga, a symbol of Roman idleness,
ii 296 note
vii 31
Theology, female students in, i 367- Toilette of the Hebrew Lady, vi 4,
377
Theory as it differs from Hypothesis,
viii 106 note
true in, but does not hold good in
practice, Kant's essay on, viii
106
Therapeutæ, sect, vii 165; viii 198;
xiii 397
Thereafter, Scottish use of the
word, viii 225
Thieves of Greece, vii 331
Thirlwall's, Bishop, orthography,
xi 441
Thirty Years' War, viii 394 note;
xiii 406
Thirty-nine articles, meaning of
subscription to, v 299
Thomas à Kempis, "De Imitatione
Christi," i 5; v 409 note; vi
95; xi141 note
Thorane, Comte, at Goethe's house
at Frankfort, iv 407
Three Heavenly Witnesses of St.
John, iv 123, 186; viii 274
note, 281
Thucydides, his history, x 317
and Herodotus contrasted, x 174
Thug, confessions of a, viii 428
note
Thurtell as a professor of murder,
xiii 43
Tiberius Cæsar, vi 313
Tickells, the two, xi 383 note
Tieck, Ludwig, xii 463-467 note
152-178
Toleration, Religious, called by
Baxter soul-murder, iii 241
note
discountenanced until latter end
of 17th century, xiii 427 note
Protestant doctrine of, viii 257
Toothache, that terrific curse, iii
226 note
Tory, meaning of the word, ix 329
Toryism, Whiggism, and Radi-
calism, a Tory's account of, ix
8, 313-353
continuation, on the Political
Parties of Modern England,
ix 354-394
Tradesman, the word liable to great
ambiguity of meaning, iii 187
Traditions of the Jews, vii 226 note
Tragedy, the age of, iv 212
beauty of, x 364
Greek, Theory of, x 7, 342-359
contrasted with the English, x
374
Transact, use of the word by Milton,
ii 69 note; xi 354 note
Transcendental meaning of the
word, viii 88; x 262 note
Translation really impossible, viii
285
Travelling by night, Roman mode
of, vi 247 note, 274
at the close of the eighteenth
century, i 213
444
INDEX
Travelling in England in the old | Utility and beauty in writing con-
days, i 267-286
Treasure, superstition relating to
the discoverer of buried, viii
436
Treaty presents, xiv 194
Triad, society of the, xiv 204
Trinity College, Cambridge, iv 143
note; viii 291
Troy, chronology of the siege of, vi
17, 27
Truckle-bed, origin of the term, i
408 note
Trumbull, Sir William, as a friend
of Pope, iv 258, 262
Truth stranger than fiction, xiii
238
Turkish Empire, rise and decay of,
vii 287-293
horses, ix 163
"Two Noble Kinsmen," x 108
note; xi 221 note
UNDERGRADUATE, income required.
by an, iii 277
"Undertake," old use of the word,
iv 266 note
trasted, v 92
VACCINATION, Kant's opinion on,
iv 343
Valdarfer Boccaccio, ix 167
Valerian, Emperor, vi 392, 395
Valois, Duc de, superstition con-
nected with the title, viii 413
Valtezza, battle of, vii 312
Value, Malthus on the Measure of,
ix 4, 6, 32-36
on market, ix 200-207
on the principal forms of ex-
change, ix 179-186
on the two modes of exchange,
ix 158-178
in the generic sense, ix 122-129
in exchange, xi 129-145
in use, on the technical term,
ix 186-196
modes of capital as affecting, ix
196-199
distinctions in the theory of, ix
78
doctrine of, ix 54
of gold, how determined, ix 404
Unitarianism of Coleridge, etc., ii Vases, Murrhine, vi 341 note
154
United States and California, ix 396
"Universal Reformation of the
whole Wide World," work so
named, xiii 401
suffrage would dissolve any large
community, ix 393
Universe, dream upon the, by
Richter, viii 33; xi 290-293
Universities in England and else-
where compared, ii 32
English, Scotch, and Continental,
differences of, v 272-274, 298
University, the functions of a, ii 16
education not beneficial, except
for the young, x 11
and College, confusion of the
words, ii 15
Vatican, number of the chambers
in the, vi 408 note
Vectigal, Burke's pronunciation of
the word, xiv 29
Veil used by the Hebrew Lady, vi
164
Vellum rolls, how used for succes-
sions of writings, xiii 342
Venetian wine glasses, action of
poisons on, vii 59
-
Venice, sea level at, alterations in,
xiv 85
Venus under the passion of anger,
xi 198
Veracity a marked feature in the
English character, viii 362-365
absurd doctrine of Kant relative
to, viii 104, 364
Urquiza, a Spanish tailor, xiii 180 | Vespasian, Emperor, vii 136
Usury, viii 330-332
Utility as a test, or as a ground of
morality, viii 138
Veterinary, origin of the word, i
341 note
Veto Act, xiv 217, 243
INDEX
445
"Vicar of Wakefield" read as truth, Waterton's adventure with a croco-
by a country girl, xiii 382
Virgil, Laocoon of, xi 165 et seq.
why the Eneid should be chosen
as a medium of sortilegy, i 124
note; viii 420
Vision of Life, xiii 350-351
of Sudden Death, xiii 300-318,
329
Vitis, the staff of the centurion, vi
322 note
Voltaire on Pope's knowledge of
French, iv 245
Voss, J. H., on Homer, vi 11
WAGES, On, ix 208-225
Wainewright Janus Weathercock,
the poisoner, v 246-250
Wainsbury, Mrs., Pope's "Unfor-
tunate Lady" (?) iv 261
Wale, meaning of the word, xi 407
note
|
dile, xiii 288
Watson, Dr., Bishop of Llandaff,
account of, ii 194
compared with Bentley, iv 233
Watson, Miss, afterwards Lady
Carbery, i 329, 350; iii 280
Wattépolowa, massacre at, vii 440
Watts' "On the Improvement of
the Mind" the most imbecile
of books, x 28, 278
Waverley Novel, spurious, xiv 132
Waves, ancient theory of, the
greater dimensions of every
tenth wave, vii 67 note
Wax-lights at inns, iii 345
Weare, W., murder of, xiii 43 note
Weapons, oriental, of steel, xiv 195
Weber's "Der Freischütz,” xii 2
Webster's, Noah, orthography, xi
441
dictionary, xiv 152
Wales, cheapness of the inns in, i Wedgwood, Thomas, ii 168
398; iii 30, 334
North, defects in its scenery,
i 203
pedestrianism in, iii 328
Wallachian tribe, vii 343
Walladmor, a Pseudo- Waverley
novel, xiv 3, 132-145, 387
Waller's, Sir William,
tion," ix 301
Vindica-
Wallis as a decipherer, viii 279
note
Walpole, Horace, described, v 149
War, On, viii 6, 369-397
depreciation, ix 182 note
its extinguishment by Christ-
ianity, viii 233
Wars, continuance of, ix 409
Warburton, Bishop, his "Divine
Legation of Moses," vii 195
his assistance to Pope, iv 274;
xi 69
his literary quarrel with Dr.
Parr, v 108
Ward, Rev. John, his notice of
Shakespeare, iv 68 note
Weimar, Grand Duke of, and
Goethe's connexion with him,
iv 412-415
Wellesley, origin of the name, v
165
Wellesley, Marquess, v 2, 165-178;
supposed vanity of, in the
power of his eye, v 133 note
Wellington, Duke of, xiv 215
on his views on the China-opium
question, xiv 206-218
Welsh and Lake scenery con-
trasted, i 204
Weseloff, a Russian, at the Court
of the Khan of the Kalmuck
Tartars, vii 405
Wesley, Miss, governess to De
Quincey's sister, i 135 note
Wesleys, The, v 169
Westmorland and the Dalesmen,
ii 360-367
"Westmorland Gazette," De Quin-
cey's editorship of the, xiii 8,
95 note, 373; xiv 387
Westport, Lord, i 161 et seq., 336
Wasianski's account of Kant, iv Whately's Elements of Rhetoric
328
reviewed, x 81
446
INDEX
Whig, meaning of the word, ix 329 | Winkfield, De Quincey at school at,
Whiggism in its Relations to Litera-
ture, v 9
and Radicalism, A Tory's Ac-
count of Toryism, ix 8, 313-
353
continuation, On the Political
Parties of Modern England,
ix 354-394
Whiston, "Wicked" Will, iv 146
note; vii 108, 207 note
White, Charles, distinguished sur-
geon, i 35 note, 383
his museum, i 386; xiii 37
White's, Dr. Joseph, Bampton
Lectures, controversy as to
their partial compilation by
Mr. Badcock and Dr. Parr, v
112, 145 note
Whitehead, Paul, anecdotes of, v
152
Wilberforce and Clarkson, xiv 307
Wieland, the Voltaire of Germany,
iv 428; xi 19
Wilhelm Meister, Goethe as reflected
in, xi 3, 222-258
Wilkes the painter's mistake in
taking the likeness of Mr.
Morris, supposing him to be
Dr. Foster, v 158
Wilkins, Bishop, his book on the
possibility of a voyage to the
moon, i 65, 202
Wilkinson, Thomas, ii 413, 419
Will and Testament, Last, — The
House of Weeping, by Richter,
xi 277-283
Williams, Archdeacon, on the Iliad,
vi 142 note; xi 456
i 160; iii 247
Winter-evening, description of a, iii
407
Wit and humour, distinction be-
tween, xi 270
Witchcraft, discussion on the mean-
ing of the Biblical term, viii
284
Witches of Shakespeare, iv 77
Wolf, Fred. Augustus, on Homer,
vi 10
Woman, excluded from Society of
Freemasons, xiii 389
as regarded by different nations,
xiv 58
with reference to imagination, x
441
Womanhood, effect of the ideal of,
upon man, i 319
regard for, in England, iv 47,
83 note
Women, advantages of authorship
to, ii 300
can die grandly, v 407
degradation of, in Asia, xiv 357;
in France, viii 401 note
learning of, the author's opinion
of the, xiv 125
Pope's sketches of, xi, 73, 128
purity of the written and spoken
language of educated, x 144
Shakespeare unequalled as a de-
lineator of, iv 70-76
treatment of, in Greece, viii 69
note
Woodcock,
Catherine,
second wife, iv 98
Milton's
Woolman, John, the Quaker, v 196
Williams, Eleazer, the supposed dau- Words, foreign, approximation of,
phin, i 301 note
Williams's murder of the Marrs, x
390; xiii 43, 58, 74-118, 124
Williamsons, murder of the, xiii 97
Wilson, Professor, ii 432-437; v 2,
259-302
notice of his powers as a natu-
ralist, his examination of the
theory of the tenth wave, etc.,
vii 68 note
|
to the orthography of the lan-
guage in which they are intro-
duced, i 196 note
Wordsworth, Mrs., ii 236, 282
Wordsworth, Dr. Christopher, viii
291
notice of his position and works,
ii 256
his "Ecclesiastical Biography,"
ix 298, 307
INDEX
447
Wordsworth, Dorothy, ii 238, 293- Wordsworth, William, his theo-
logical principles, anecdote,
viii 290
302; xiii 126
Wordsworth, Captain John, called
"the philosopher," and the
original of Wordsworth's
Happy Warrior," ii 257
Wordsworth's Little Kate, death of,
ii 440-445; xiii 147
Wordsworth, William, ii 4, 229-347,
437; iii 283, 439; v 308; xi
458-463; xiv 386
his scholarlike use of words, x/
432
and Milton, likeness between, ii
248
and Southey, comparison between,
ii 328
Worsley, Lady, Jacobite bon-mot
of, v 155
Gradual estrangement from, iii Wotton, William, iv 127
197-206; v 5
on his poetry, xi 3, 294-325
the author's allegiance to, v 2
the author's appreciation of, ii 59
fall of his house, "Allan Bank,"
ii 358
his letter on Burns, ii 131
his sonnet on landscape-painting,
xi 178 note
his "Excursion" condemned at
the Advocates' Library, xiv
303 note
his "Redbreast chasing the
Butterfly," iii 26
his poem of "Ruth
301
iii 251,
his "We are Seven," iii 403,
460 notes
Wren, Sir Christopher, a Free-
mason, xiii 442
Wrington, scenery of the neigh-
bourhood of, xiv 97
Writing and speaking, difference
between, x 139
Wynne, Sir Watkin aud Charles, ii
321
XENOPHON, his history, x 319
YANKEE, meaning of the term, x
143 note; xi 441
York, Cardinal, anecdote of, v 155
Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander, vii
304
ZEBEK-DORCHI, vii 372, 419
his image of the revolving wheel, Ziph language (!!), i 201
xiii 363
Zoroaster, doctrine of, xiii 396
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