i'-'.^ '< 2J^IND3AY PL«E 1 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Fix lAbris ; C. K. OGDEN ^-^^1 FIRST GAL li K K Y LITKRARY IM) R T R A I T S. FIRST GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS. BT GEORGE GILFILLAN. ffiljivli lEtiition. EDINBURGH: JAMES HOGG. LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS. JIDCCCLI. ^^1 KUINBl'RGU; I'lCINTEO LY J. IIOGO ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. The Author of the following Sketches is aware that he may be accused of exaggeration and extravagance, particularly in his panegyrics of the various characters he has attempted to pour- tray, lie has only to plead, in mitigation of sentence, that his praise is perfectly sincere; that the men he has selected are, in his judgment, the leading lights — the decora et tutamina — of their age; that some of them are less known and less appreciated than they deserve ; and that he is not afraid, once for all, to avow himself, even in this late age, a " Hero-worshippei'," and to avow his conviction that, even now, there are many heroes. Perhaps the life of every thinking man may be divided into three eras — the era of admiration, the era of action, and the era of repose. Should this division be esteemed correct, the Author would beg leave, as an additional apology, to suggest that, in the following work, he hns garnered up the results of his young love and wonder for the masterpieces of his country's genius; that, with it, one mental pei'iod of his history is closing, and that it is for the public to decide whether he be encouraged to gird up his loins for some other more manlike, more solid, and strenuous achievement. Since this preface was written, the Author has issued two other volumes, seeking to develop his more mature and deliberate ii ADVERTISEMENT. views of tlie litterateurs of the age, and of the " Bards of the Bible." Othci- literary schemes of a somewhat different kind are looming before his mind, but he forbears at present to indi- cate their nature. He has only to thank his friends, the public, and the critics, generally, fur the kindness with which all his three works have been received. Dundee, January 23, 1851. CONTENTS. P.-IRP LORD JEFFREY ... ... ... ... ... ,.. 1 WILLIAM GODWIN ... ... ... ... ... 10 WILLIAM IIAZLITT ... ... ... ... ... 25 ROBERT HALL ... ... ... ... ... ... op PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 49 DR CHALMERS ... ... ... ... ... ... 70 THOMAS CARLYLE ^^ THOMAS DE QUINCEY ... ... ... ... ... 104 .JOHN FOSTER ... ... ... ... ... ... hq PROFESSOR WILSON ... ... ... ... ... 123 EDWARD IRVING, AND THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY ... 130 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ... ... ... ... 157 THOMAS CAMPBELL ... ... ... ... ... IQ[ LORD BROUGHAM ... ... ... ... ... ... 171 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ... ... ... ... 17Q RALPH WALDO EMERSON ... ... ... ... ... 595 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ... ... ... ... ... OQg ROBERT POLLOK ... CHARLES LAMB ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, AND THE RURAL POETS ... ... 234 EBENEZER ELLIOTT ... ... ... £48 JOHN KEATS 253 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 262 THOMAS AIRD ... ... ... ... ... ... 271 ROBERT SOUTHEY... ... ... ... ... ... 287 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART ... ... ... ... ... 294 217 230 FIRST GALLERY OP LITERAPtY PORTRAITS. LORD JEFFREY. Lord Jeffrey, like many remarkable men of our era, was a striking instance of many-sidedness: critic, lawyer, jjolitician, judge, are some of the phases in which he exhibited his spirit in the course of a long and active existence. As a critic, he stood in '■ glorious and Avell-foughteu field" side by side with the chivalry of Hazlitt. As a pleader, he was equalled at his native bar by Cockburn alone. As a philosopher, besides the general vein of subtle reflection which pervades all his writings, he, in one beautiful region of metaphysics, excelled the elegant Stewart and the captivating Alison. As a pt>litician, he was a model of uprightness and consistency. And as a judge, he has, it is univer- sally understood, gathered new and verdant laurels. With the name of Jeifrey, the idea of the " Edinburgh Review" is inseparably connected. For nearly thirty years he was its conductor; and, though backed by a host of varied talent, he might truly be called its life and soul: the spirit of the editor was seen in every article, in every page. Even the bolder, coarser, and more original writers who contributed to it, became insensibly tinctured by the pervading tone — of polite badinage, of refined sarcasm, of airy cleverness — which was the established esprit de corps. To tliis, the wild sallies of Sidney Smith, the fierce sarcasms and darker passions of Brougham, the eloquent gall of Hazlitt, had all to be subservient; and, smoothed down, they nmst often have been under the cautious and tasteful influence of the editor, ere they met the public eye. And hence the rapid and boundless popularity of the " Review." It succeeded, because it came forth, quarter after quarter, not a chaos of jarring though B 2 LORD JEFFREY. ingenious speculations, but a regular and brilliant whole; and the principle of fusion was unquestionably the accomplished mind of Jeffrey. During the earlier part of his career, he was the ideal of an editor, not wi'iting the half, or perhaps the tithe of his periodical, but, far better, breathing his own spirit as a re- fining and uniting principle over the whole. Lord Jeffrey's character, as a critic, is now very generally agreed on. When he criticised an author whom he thoroughly apiH'cciated, he was a refined, and just, and discriminating judge. He threw his whole spirit into the work; he executed his analysis in a fine and rapid style; he brought out not merely the meaning, but the soul of his author; he threw a number of pleasing, if not profound, lights upon his subject; he expressed the whole in beautiful and buoyant, rich and rapid diction; and there stood a criticism airy as the gossamer, brilliant as the glow-worm, j'et Bolid as the pillared firmament. Witness his reviews of Crabbe, which, by their timely aid, lifted the modest and exquisite, but half-forgotten, writer into his just place, threw a friendly veil over his frequent asperity and coarseness, and were, in sht)rt, his salvation as a poet, just as Burke's fatherly interference was his fortune as a man. Who that has read, retains not a vivid and pleasing memory of his reviews of Campbell's " Gertrude," and Campbell's " Specimens of the English Poets," particularl}- the latter; of his kindly and very eloquent panegyric on Hazlitt'.s '•' Characters of Shakspere's Plays;" of his lal)oured and mastei-!y analysis of Moore's "Lalla Rookli;" of his honest and powerful article on Lord Byron's Tragedies; and high above all these, of ])erhaps the finest piece of elegant philosophising in the language, the review of Alisou's " Taste," afterwards matured and expanded into the article " Beauty," in the "Encyclop;edia Britannica." Nor Avere his doings in the way of quiz and cutting-uj) at all inferior in their way. We will not soon forget that most witty and wicked running commentary which he kejtt up for many years on Southey's interminable productions ; nor did the laureate till his dying day. We entertain a keen memory of his annihilation of a host of poetasters, from drunken Dermody down to j)rosing Hayley ; Ins attempted demolition of that clever transgressor Tommy Little, who, however, showed fight ; and his incessant persevering, powerful, l)ut unsuccessful attenij)ts to make Samuel Tayhjr Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, the laughing-stoeks of the world. And this brings us to what would require a volume for its clueidation, the sore subject of the faults, errors, and dc- lin(pu>ncies of "Tlie Edinburgh Beview." Jn a word or two on the ungracious subject we must be indulged. Tlie great error of the early numbers was one incident to, ]ter- haps inseparal)le from, the age of its principal writers. It lay in an air of levity and dogmatism, added to a sneering, captious. LORD JEFFREY. O sceptical spirit, imbibed from intimacy with " Candide " and the ''Philosophical Dictionar)^" It seemed their aim to trausplaut the " Encyclopaidiast" spirit, in all its brilliant wickedness, into the Scottish soil. This appeared at first a hazardous experiment, Init it was done so dexterously and so boldly, as, for the time, to be completely successful. Pired by success, its authors dared everything, sneered at every one, attempted to solve the founda- tions of all things, in a flood of universal ridicule. They them- selves, young men though they were, proclaimed themselves ene- mies to enthusiasm, in all its forms — in politics, in poetry, in re- ligion. Whatever transcended the common standards of feeling and of thought, whatever toAvered up into the regions of the ex- travagantly sublime, diverged into the eccentric, struck into the original and the bold, or merged in the infinite, they sought to reduce and abate by the one sovereign receipt of indiscriminate and reckless sneering. The flower of German poetry, then open- ing its magnificent petals into day, they laughed to scorn, as if it had been a vulgar and gaudy weed, or a useless and noisome fungus. They assailed with bitter ridicule at once republicanism and methodism, careless of the fine spirit involved in, and extract- able from both. But especially, from the first, they applied all their energies to the demolition of the Lake Poets, whose revo- lutionary genius was then threatening to alter the whole tone and spirit, and matter and manner of our literature. Of these attaclcs upon Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, we have ever enter- tained one opinion. They were not savage and brutal assaults, like those of " The Quarterly " on Keats and Shelley, but they were, on this very account, the more formidable. Their sole aim, and it Avas for a while successful, was to make the Lakers, not hateful, but ridiculous; to hold them up as a set of harmless, crazy men, overflowing with vanity and childish verse ; not without genius, certainly, but their genius Avas by no means first-rate, and altogether neutralised by false taste and self-conceit. Such Avas the prevailing tone and style of those celebrated criticisms; and their eff"ect was, first of all, to intensify, almost to madness, the egotism and the resolution of the parties assailed, to dri^'e their works out of general circulation, to increase the attachment of their devoted adherents, and ultimately to provoke a reaction, the most signal and irreversible of Avhich Ave have any example in the history of letters. The men Avhose names Avere, for tAA'enty years, laughed at in every form of ridicule, and identified Avith all that Avas vain, silly, childish, egotistical, and affected, are noAV looked up to Avith universal loA'e and reverence, and have been hailed by acclamation as leading stars in the bright host of our literary heaven. Let it be a lesson to succeeding critics for ever ; and let us, in looking back upon the prophecies of those revicAvers, which have not been fulfilled ; their sneers, Avhich have fallen ^ LORD JEFFREY. powerless; their laughter, wliich has died away; their abuse, which time has I'obbed of its sting; their criticisms, on wliich experience has set the seal of worthlessness — blame not so much the men, as tlie false and bad system on which they acted, and draw the solid and sober inference, that ridicule is no more a test of poetry than it is of truth. But, to pass from this topic, on which, after all, we haA^e only touched, we would nov/, in order fully to convey our idea of Lord Jeffrey's criticism, compare it with that of some others of his co- adjutors and contempoi-aries. It wanted the racy originality, the springy strength, the tumultuous overflow of humour, which dis- tinguished the author of "Peter Plymley's Letters;" but, on the other hand, possessed always a subtlety of distinction, and often a splendour of illustration, to which >Sidney Smith had no pre- tensions. The one could no more have written a I'eview of " Styles," than the other the review of Alison. It had not the massive strength of Brougham; but was superior in refinement and flu- ency, and never fell into his more oflensive faults — the overbear- ing dogmatism, the arrogance, the fierce and truculent spirit, wliich breathes in more articles than in that on Don Pedro Ce- vallos. Less comprehensive, less judicial, less learned, than the criticism of Mackintosh, it was more lively, more varied, and ani- mated by a sweeter, purer, and more natural vein of eloquence. It was not so glowing, or so imaginative, as the criticism of Wilson : but more subtle in its thinking, and more sober in its style. It wanted the nerve, the antithesis, the rich literary allusion, the radiant fancy, the magnificent Isolated pictures of Macaulay's elaborate writings; but had far less of the air of efi'urt, of artifice, and of mannerism. It Avas inferior to that of Hazlitt, alike in solidity and in splendour. It had not his fierce sincerity; his intense but sinister acuteness ; his discrimination, infallible as an instinct; his easy vigour; but, on the other hand, it was ut)t disfigured by his fits of spleen, his bursts of egotistical passion, his deliberate paradoxes, his sudden bi'eaks, his ungainly apostrophes, his distortions, fantasies, and frenzies — the " pimples of red and blue corruption," wliich now and then bestud his un- easy and uneven, yet brilliant page. As specimens of pure and j)erfcct English, of refined sense, expressed in lucid language, and studded with modest and magnificent ornaments, Jcffi-ey ])roduced few comjiositions equal to those by which Kobert Hall in-adiated the early pages of " The Eclectic Beview." Nor had his criticism the ])ith and profundity of Foster; nor the chary but ])ieciou3 encomium, the humour, the unearthly stand of iauglwiig superiority to his author, assumed by Thomas Cai'lyle. But ill versatility and vivacity, and in that hajqiy conversational tone which can only 1)0 acquired by constant mingling with the best society, his works stood, and stand alouc. LOKD JEFFREY, Like Sidney Smith, Macaulay, and Carlyle, this accomplished man, not long before his death, did himself and his fame the justice of collecting his principal articles in "The Edinburgh Review" into a fixed and permanent shape. And we may perhaps affirm that he has thus reared a monument which shall only perish when the steam engine, which he has eulogised, has ceased its Titanic play — ceased to " ]uck up a pin and rend an oak. cut steel into ribbons, and proi>el a vessel against the fury of the winds and waves;" and v/hcn that principle of beauty, which lie has so finely analysed, has withered from the gTass, and the flower, and the deep soul of man itself. In the commencement of our sketch, Ave called the subject of it a philosopher; and, in employing with regard to him this term, we are ju-stified, not merely by that spirit of refined and subtle thinking which pervaded his writings, but by one distinct con- tribution he made to metaphysical science. We are aware that, in his theory of the Beautiful, he could not chiim the merit of originality; but v/hat we mean, in ascribing to Lord Jeffrey the credit of it, is, that he first made the theory at once intelligible and generally po})ular; and became, if not the richest and most copious, the most distinct, succinct, memorable, and eloquent ex- pounder of the astonishing conceptions involved in it. He first fully reconciled us, by his svd)tle argument and his glowing imagery, to what seemed the glaring paradox, or the insane ide'ai- ism, that beauty resides not so much in the object as in the mind; that " we receive but what we give;" that our own soul is the urn wliich sprinkles beauty upon the universe; that flovv^er and star are lovely, because the mind has breathed upon them; that the imacfination and the heart of man are the twin beautifiers of the creation; that the dwelling of beauty is not in the light of setting suns, nor in the beams of morning stars, nor in the waves of summer seas, but in the human spirit; that sublimity tabernacles not in the palaces of the thunder, walks not on the wings of the wind, rides not on the forked lightning, but that it is the soul which is lifted up there; that it is the soul which, in its high as- pirings, " yokes itself with whirlwinds and the northern blast," and scatters grandeur around it on its way. To him be the praise, along with Alison, of first popularising the conceptions which had passed before for the reveries of poets and philosophers, that the universe is but a great mirror of the mind of man; that, in contemplating the fairest scene, we are ourselves more than half creating its beauty; and that, in standing on a mountain summit, v»'e are " monarchs of all we survey," in a new sense, by shower- ing down, from our own central bosoms, on the gardens their freshness, on the lalres their spiritual calm, on the forests their majesty, on the torrents their tempestuous joy, on the distant snow-clad hills their look of serene eternity; nay, by lending the 6 LORD JEFFREY. light of imagination and of love to the clouds, and reflecting up- wards the depth and dignity of our own feelings, upon all the " dread magnificence of heaven." He also first brought fully into view that singular power we possess, of shedding beauty and interest on the darkest, the dreariest, and the tamest scenes and circumstances, by the mere magic of our own clustering associa- tions; so that there is no object in nature but may, to some eye, appear wreathed with a halo; so that not only the " meanest flower that blov,-s, can give tlioughts which do often lie too deep for tears," but even weeds, thorns, and thistles, may, to certain visions, appear lovelier than the fairest minions of the garden; so that such objects as single moss-covered stones, withered and stunted trees, grave-yards putrefying in the heart of populous cities, moors, cold and wet in winter time, sullen and shapeless hills, marshes given over to desolation fi*om immemorial ages, bones unearthed by the stony spade of the sexton, wo-begone and emaciated visages, cheeks burning in fevei", faces sharpened by hunger or decay, eyes glaring in frenzy, &c., may, in some minds, through tliis strange mental magic, excite more emotion and interest than the stars of the sky, than woods of loveliest umbrage, than the quiet kirk -yards of our pastoral solitudes, than sun-sprinkled lakes, than aerial and peaked summits, than bean or clover-fields at evening, than the mausoleums of monaix-hs, or than the shining faces of happy infants, rejoicing youths, bold bridegrooms, brides blushing and trembling at their own joy, poets smiling at the rising splendours of their imagery, enthusiasts start- ing from dreams of heaven; so that ugliness is henceforth not a positive, but a relative term, if it be not exhaled utterly from the universe; so tliat the soul of man becomes the true philosopher's stone, able to turn very .dross and defilement into gold; so that all the works of God thus, and thus only, appear to be " very good." Jefirey, we repeat, did not originate these wonderful ideas, biit he formed the first coin]>reliensive and intelligible diji'est of them. He first circulated them in a litiht and fascinat- ing form, and supported them by many original arguments and illusti-ations. Need we allude to what has ])n)bably occurred to the minds of our i-caders as the finest of all these — indeed one of the most Ijcantiful passages in our literature — the contrast drawn between tlie quiet, calm scenery of England, and the stern grandeur of a Highland landspai)e, with its "mountain echoes repeating the scream of the eagle and tlie roar of the cataract." As a pleader and ]»ublic speaker, he enjoyed for many years ere death wliat miglit be calh'd a great traditional re]iutati(in. Only tlie echoes of that elocjuence witli which the riirlianicnt- House, tlie Assembly Rooms, the Pantheon, were made to ring, long remained to tell what it had been. The author of this cri- tique heard him once, in peculiarly interesting circumstances. It LORD JEFFREY. / was at the meeting which took place in Edinburgh, immediately after the death of Bir Walter Scott, to commemorate his memory. There appeared at it the elite of Dunedin society; the flower of its literature, of its fashion, of its resident nobility. Men of all par- ties came that day to the Assembly Rooms (so Lord Jeffrey said), " as into the temple of the Deity," burying their animosities in the grave of the mighty Wizard, and consenting to mourn, as one man, their common and inestimable loss. Lord Jeffrey's speech was not long, or loud, or vehement; it was a calm, manly, discrimi- nating eloge, fit to be spoken by a great critic over the corpse of a greater poet, and delivered in tones which, now and then, qui- vered under the images they uttered, and under the burden of the occasion. And after him uprose the stalwart form, and pealed forth the solemn voice, of Professor Wilson, taking up his part in the threnody, and rolling out from his organ-chest a few deep notes of more passionate praise. We think we hear him still re- jjeating the couplet — Ne'er to those dwellings, where the mighty rest, Since their foundations came a nobler guest ; and after he had described the sun " smiting the column erected to the departed," closing by the prediction, that he would A mightier monument command — ■ The mountains of his native land. Lord Jeffrey's eloquence neither sought nor reached those giddy heights of imaginative and declamatory power which have ever been the element of Irish orators. It had not the pathos and rich diftusion of Curran, the antithesis and devouring energy of Grat- tan, Burke's prophetic fury, Sheridan's elaborate glare, or Shell's brilliant froth. Nor was it a specimen of what is called Scottish oratory: it had not the mastery, the ardent animation, the crush- ing force, the demoniac bitterness of sarcasm, the variety of re- sources, displayed by Brovigham; nor the philosophical tone and laboured vehemence of Mackintosh; nor the energy, boldness, and superb bursts of Erskine; nor, to compare him Avith his brethren at the bar, had he the legal lore of Jameson; the coarse, Cobbett-like strength of John Clerk; the massive intellectuality of Moncreiff; nor the humour, feeling, and natural eloquence of Henry Cockburn. Nor was it what has been termed English oratory — that happy medium between the vertiginous flights of the Irish school, and the comparatively unimpassioned and unima- ginative style of the Scottish: it had not the fervid excitement of Fox; nor the stately and sonorous roll of Pitt's oratory; nor the seductive and fascinating finish of Canning. It was a style entirely peculiar to himself— uncopied and inimitable — combin- ing more than the subtlety of the lawyer with more than the elo- quence of the barrister; uniting metaphysics and poetry, litera- 8 LORD JEFFREY. ture and law, in one subtle and winding whole; generally rai)id and urgent; often brilliant; never pathetic; and rarely over- powering. It resembled rather a gay exhibition of fencing skill, than an earnest combat. It never sounded the depths of j^assioij, nor did it scale the highest heaven of fancy. It possessed little stern sarcasm, no ebullient humoui", but a great deal of refined wit, which played about the surface, instead of searing to the cen- tre. His manner was the mere medium of his matter and his mind. His voice had not Brougham's thrilling whisper, or his high and harsh notes; nor the hoarse thunder of Chalmers; nor those wild and wailing cadences by which Wilson accomplishes his oratorical triumphs; but it was not devoid of a shrill yet mild melody, like that of a female tongue, which moved, pierced, and enthralled the spirit. Such was the oratory which, at one time, was the glory of the bar, of the bench, and of the public — the de- light at once of the ladies and of the literati of the Modern Athens. Everybody knows that Lord Jeffrey, like Home Tooke, Flood, and Sir Daniel Sandford, among the many whose fame had pre- ceded them there, and who entered in the glare of great expec- tation, failed in Parliament. It is curious noting the causes of these respective failures. Hoi'ne Tooke's was attributed, by himself, to the fact of his being a clergyman; it is ascribed, by Hazlitt, a faii-er judge in this case, to the coldness and pettiness of his man- ner, which was more that of a special pleader, than of a hearty and honest advocate. Small seemed the gimlet of his subtle dis- crimination and impalpable wit amid the terrible play of the axes and hammers which were then resounding within the walls of the British Senate; and what could a clever speechifier do, when planted beside the orators of England — Pitt, Fox, Slieridan, Windliam, and Burke? Flood Avas too coarse for the atniosphei-e of the English Parliament, although, like Grattan, he entered it in one of those deep lulls which succeed great storms of eloquence, and are peculiarly fiivoiirable to fresh aspirants. But then Grar- tan Avas a spirit of peculiar power, and cut his Avay into an Eng- lish reputation by the sheer saAV of his energy and his eye. Sir Daniel Sandford's failure surprised no one who knew hini. A better teacher, indeed, never sat in a professor's chair. Hardly, in the high sense, a man of genius, he was a genuine enthusiast; his enthusiasm proved itself true by uplifting a load of the green fuel of affectation and mannerism, and piercing it with living flame. His tones, the glances of liis dull yet speaking eye — the movements, somewhat theatrical, indeed, of his arms holding the plays of So])hocles, as you could conceive Sophocles himself to have held them, while reading one of tliem in his own behalf, all contributed to suck his students in within the mare magnum of Grecian lore, and to inspire a burning ardour of scholarship. He Lad not his predecessor, Youngs, fiery bursts or sonorous pomp LOKD JEFFREY. 9 of style, or quantity of erudition; but, as a teacher, he was incom- parably superior, and his soul lived along every line he read and word he uttered. But this was not suitable for the Parliament of our mechanical era. He failed, therefore, iguominiously — resented it bitterly — returned, like Lord Grenville, to "Plato and to the Iliad," a;id died (of typhus fever) reciting Homer. Poor fellow, methinks we hear him now, reading one of his Saturday lectures, with his yearning voice; and with that face of his, which threw out, as he warmed with the theme, a certain pallid spiri- tual radiance, reminding us of that which breaks forth from the countenance of our friend the " Alchymist," Avhen he has risen to the " height of his great argument," and sends out pure spirit, not blood, to report progress on his " dim and perilous way." Lord Jeffrey, again, ascribed his own failure on that dangerous floor, to his age. He Avas "too old," he said "to transplant." He had already, besides, secured all his great objects in life, and the ajiplause, even of a senate, could add nothing to the fortune, and little to the fame, of the autocrat of critics. And, if even a col- lege or provincial reputation be so prejudicial to the prospects of one who aspires to parliamentary renown, we can easily under- stand why the prestige of an European fame, should, in his case, have raised the expectation to a pitch where it could not be gra- tified, particularly in an excited crisis, when common men had become energetic, and eloquent men had become something higher than themselves. Perhaps, had he appeared on the arena ear- lier, and in more favourable circumstances, the result had justi- fied the most sanguine prognostications of his friends. Of society, Lord Jeffrey was well known to be a distinguished ornament. His talk was gay, lively, witty, abundant, thickly garnished with those French epithets and turns of phrase which were the fashion in his youth. He shone not in monologue, but in sharp, short dialogue. It is told, that, on one occasion, long be- fore he Avas Lord Advocate, pleading a case at the bar of the House of Lords, he broke down, and disappointed grievously the many clever men who had assembled to hear him; but, in the re- bound of his failure, had his revenge in the evenijig, at a private paity, where he astonished the same critics, by the brilliance of his conversational bravuras. By the testimony of his very ene- mies, he was a high-minded and generous man. His liberality to poor authors — his general courtesy and urbanity of manners — his gaiety of disposition — his constant flow of soul — his superio- rity to the vulgar feelings of envy, jealousy, and political spite, were universally conceded. In the close of his life, he commanded the avowed admiration and praise of his literary and political opponents. It was, for him, a proud moment, when the most formidable of these took the chair at a public dinner to his lio- U'jur; and a pleasing remembrance it is for all who grieve to see 10 WILLIAM GODWIN. men of worth and genius at variance, that the most eloquent and glowing panegyric ever pi'onounced on Francis Jefirey came from the lips of John Wilson.* WILLIAM GODWIN. "Who's Godwin r' said once a respectable person to us, while panegyrising in our OAvn way the venerable sage. As we hear the question echoed by some of our readers, we propose to tell them a little about him, and do not despair of getting them to love him, ere we be done. William Godwin was a philosopher, and a philosophical novelist, an essayist, a biographer, at one period a preacher, and the author of a volume of sermons, the writer of one or two defvmct tragedies, a historian, the foun- der of a small but distinguished school of winters, in England and America; and, in spite of his eiTors, an exceedingly candid, gene- rous, simple-minded, and honest man. His intellect was clear, searching, sagacious, and profound. He thought every subject out and out for himself, using, however, the while, the aids de- rived from an enlarged intimacy with still deeper and subtler understandings. His was not that one-sided intensity of original view which is at once the power and the weakness of a very rare order of minds. He had not the one huge glaring orb of a Cyclops, letting in a flood of rushing and furious splendour, and render- ing its possessor miserable in his might: his mental glance was mild, full, penetrating, and conqirehensive. He was not gifted with the power of adding any new truth to the i:)recious cata- logue. He was the eloquent interpreter and fearless follower out of the subtle speculations of such men as Berkeley, Hobbes,Hume, Colei'idge, and liicardo. There Avas a "daring consistency " in the mode by which he built up his system of the universe. Seiz- ing on the j)aradoxes of preceding philosophei-s, stones rejected by other builders, he put them together, interfused them with a certain cement of his own, and reared with them a toAvering and formidable structure. His " Theory of Political Justice " Avas a * This sketch was orifjinally written in Lord Jeffrey's lifetime. J^eldom did the death of a celebrated man jiroduce a more powerful impression on his own city and circle, and a less powerful inipressi(»n on the wide horizon of the world. In truth, he had outlived liinisidf. It had been very ditt'erent, had he passi.'d away thirty ye. rs a{,'o,wlien the " i';dued tones, a tale which mio-ht "rouse the dead to hear." Systematically, he rejects the use of supernatural machinery, pro- fuse" descriptions, and mere mechanical Jiorrors. Like Brockden Erown, he despises to summon up a ghost from the grave; he invokes the " miglitier might" of the passions of living flesh; he excites terror often, but it is the terror which dilated man wields 14 WILLIAM GODWIN. over his fellow, colossal and crushing but distinct; not the vagiie and shadowy form of fear which springs from preternatural Hgency. His path is not, like that of Monk Lewis and Maturin, sulphureous and slippery, as through some swart mine; it is a ierribil via, but clear, direct, above ground — a line of light pass- ing through forests, over mountains, and by the brink of preci- pices. He wants, of course, the multitudinous variety of tScott, the uniform sparkle of Bulwer, the wit of the author of " Anas- tasius," the light effervescent humour of Dickens, the oriental gusto and gorgeousness of Beckford, the severe truth of Mrs Inchbald and Miss Austin, the caustic vein and ripe scholarship of Lockhart, the refined elegance of Ward, the breadth of Cooper, the rough, sarcastic strength of jMarryatt, the grotesque horror of the Victor Hugo school; not to speak of the genial power of Cer- vantes, the humour of Le Sage, the farce of Smollett, Fielding's anatomising eye, liicliardson's mastery over the tragedies of the fireside, Defoe's minute and lingering touch; but, in one savage corner of the art, we see him seated, Salvator-like, among the fiercest forms of nature, scarcely seen, yet insensibly mingling with his thoughts, and directing his pencil — drawing with fear- less dash the ruins, not of cities, but of men — painting, to use his own words, the "sublime desolation of mighty souls," and search- ing, not, like Byron, the "dark bosoms" of pirates, and red-handed loi'ds, and men of genius exalted to the cold and dismal eleva- tion of universal doubt, and self-exiled and insulated sinners, mad with the memoiy of crime, changing the still bosom of Alpine solitudes into the howling bedlam of their own remorse, and shriving themselves amid eternal snow; but turning inside out the " dark bosoms " of dismissed body men, and moody solitarys, and chivalric murderers, and strong spirits soured into something more dreadful than misanthropy, and alchymists, cut off" by gold, as by a great gulf, from the sympathies of their fellow-men; in exploring such breasts, Godwin is one of the mightiest of mas- ters. His novels resemble the paintings of John i\Iai'tiu, being a gallery, nay, a world in themselves; and it is a gloomy gallery and a strange world. In both, monotony and mannerism are in- cessant, but the monotony is that of the sounding deep, the man- nerism that of the thunderbolts of heaven. Martin might append to his one continual flash of lightning, which is present in all his pictures, now to reveal a deluge, now to garland the brow of a fiend — now to rend the veil of a temple, and now to guide the in- vaders through the breach of a city — the Avords, "John ^Martin, his mark." ( Jodwin's novels are not less terribly distinguished, to those who understand their cipher — the deep scar of misery, branded, whether literally, as in " Mandeville," or figuratively, as in all his other tales, upon the brow of the " Victim of Society." Vi'e well remendjer our first reading of " Caleb Williams." We WILLIAM GODWIN. 15 commenced it about nine o'clock at night, sitting by om'selves in a lonely room — read on and on, forgetful of time, place, and of the fact, especially, that our candle was going out, till, alas! at one of the most enchaining of its situations, it suddenly dropped down, and we were in darkness ! It was a most provoking jDosi- tion. The family were " dead asleep," not a spark of light to be got, and there were we, sitting with the book we had been de- vouring in our hands, pressing it in our eagerness to our breast, and yet unable to see a syllable of its contents. It was, we re- member, in our seventeenth year, and we did not bear the disap- pointment so philosophically as we would now. We went to bed intensely chagrined, were long of sleeping — when we did sleep, dreamed stupid, miserable dreams about Hawkins and Tyrrell, and by earliest dawn Avere up and tearing out its heart. There is about it a stronger suction and swell of interest than in any novel we know, with the exception of one or two of 8ir Walter's. You are in it, ere you are aware. You put your hand playfully into a child's, and are surprised to find it held in the grasp of a giant. It becomes a fascination. Struggle you may, and kick — but he holds you by his glittering eye. There is no convulsion in the narrative either, few starts or spasms, no string of asterisks (that base modern device), to quicken your flagging curiosity; no frightful chasms yawn in your face; the stream is at once still as a mill-lead, and strong as a rapid. But it has higher merits than that of mere interest — a very subordinate kind of excellence, after all; for does not a will interest more than a "Waverley"?" — nay, the letter of a friend, more than the most sublime produc- tion of the human mind 1 There is a uniqueness in the whole conception of the tale; the incidents are imagined with much art, and succeed each other with breathless rapidity; the moral, so far as it respects the then wretched state of prison discipline and legal forms, is strongly pointed; and the writing, though far from elegant or finished, has in parts the rude power of those sentences which criminals and maniacs scrawl upon their walls or windows, in the eloquence of desperation. The characters are not English- men (none of Godwin's characters, indeed, seem to belong to any country; they are all, like their creator, philosophers, and citi- zens of the world, be they thieves or jailors, highwaymen or hags, ruffians or gentlemen), but they are generally men. We like Falkland least of all, though we tremble at him, as the terrible incarnation of the principle of honour. He is certainly a strik- ing creation; but resembles rather one of the fictitious beings of heraldry, than a real man. No such noble nature was ever so soured into a fiend; no such large heart was ever contracted into a scorpion-circle of fire, narrowing around its victim. Godwin's Falkland is in truth a more monstrous improbability than his daughter's Frankenstein. He is described as a paragon of bene- I'l WILLIAM GODWIN. voleuce and virtue; and yet to preserve, not the consciousness of honour, but, as Fuseli remarked, its mere reputation, he sets himself deliberately, by every despicable art, by every enormous energy of injustice, to blast a being whom, all the while, he re- spects and admires. And you are expected, throughout the whole career of the injury, to blend admiration of the iuflicter with sympathy for the victim. It is an attempt to reconcile the most glaring moral contradictions, an attempt worthy of the author of the far-famed chapter on " Necessity," and an attempt in which, strange to say, he nearly succeeds. You never altogether lose your regard for Falkland; and this chiefly because Caleb Williams him- self never does. To his eye, above the blood of Tyrrell, and the gal- lows of the Hawkins, and his own unparalleled wrongs^ the genius of Falkland continues to soar, and his spirit is " rebuked under it," as Mark Antony's was by Csesar. And how a(lecting his apparition towards the close; his head, covered with untimely snow, his frame palsied by contending passions, dying of a broken heart ! Caleb, though he be standing at bay, relents at the sight of the hell which suppressed feeling has cliaractered upon his forehead; and Falkland dies at length, forgiven by him, by you, by all. Williams himself is the creation of circumstances, and has all the projuinent points in his character struck out by the rude colli- sions he encounters. Originally, he is neither more nor less than a shrewd, inquisitive youth. He is never much more, indeed, than a foil to the power and interest of his principal. Tyi'rell is a brute, nor even an English brute; but a brute proper and posi- tive. He is drawn sternly and con amove. The other characters, Miss Melville, Raymond, Collins, &c., are very insipid, with the exception of Gines, the liloodhound, who is painted with the force, gusto, and almost inhuman sympathy of a Landseer; and the hag who attempts the life of Caleb in the robber's den, a dire figure, ])ointed into powerful relief by her butcher's cleaver, a coarser Clytemnestra, if great things may be likened to small. iSuch is " Caleb Williams," a work which made an era in the fictitious writing of the age, and which has not only created a school of imitators, but coloured insensibly many works which profess and possess independent claims; such as the Paul ClitFords, Eugene Arams, Rookwoods, and Oliver Twists, of Bulwer, Ainsworth, and Vhv/., which, but for it, we verily believe, had never been. Written with the care and consciousness of one who felt himself writing for immortality, it still keeps its place, amid the immense fry of ordinaiy tales, embalmed and insulated in the rough salt of its own essential and original power. If " Caleb Williams" be the most interesting and popular, " St L'.^on " is tlie most pathetic and imaginative of his tales. It does not, indeed, in our judgment, do full justice to the character of an alchymist; — a character whicli ought to attract more interest WILLIAM GODWIN. 17. nowadays, when chemistry has approached the verge of secrets nearly as wonderful as that which he sought by self-denial, and abstinence, and unwearied perseverance, and solemn prayer. A genuine seeker after gold, seems to us to have been one of the noblest characters in the darker ages. He was no wretched quacksalver, like Dousterswivel; no half dupe, half devil, deceiv- ing others no more than he was himself deceived, like Alasco — a being driven, by the pure malignity of his nature, to converse with the family of poisons, as with familiar spirits; seen, by fancy, surrounded by drugs as by demons, and enjoying a tingling lux- ury from handling all the concentrations of death; squeezing out from leaf, and flower, and mineral, their most secret subtleties of mischief; and liking no looking-glass for his pale features, so well as that which a cup of distilled destruction, forced from the hand of reluctant Nature, supplied. Nor was he a mere slave of ava- rice; he was a being of quite another order. He gloried, like the hunter, not so much in the prey as in the chase: it was not the glittering dross he cared for; but partly the excitement, the en- thusiasm, the teri'or, and the transport of the search; partly the power and the pleasure, the l)enevolent influence, and the glory, which were expected to result from the acquirement. He valued not the golden key, except that by it he hoped to open the vast folding doors, and to stand in the central halls of Nature's inmost temple — halls flaming with " diamond and with gold." The true alchymist was a " true man, with the deep Demetrian idea of matter, as a Proteus, living in his heart; an impracticable dialec- tics, instead of a working logic, in his hands; and an imagination, distracted and oppressed by the variance of these — the divine idea, and the meanness of his instrumentalitj^" He was no petty distiller, dissolvei-, and weigher; but the worthy ancestor of the true chemists who have followed in his track — the Stalils, the Priestleys, the Blacks, the Lavoisiers, the Daltons, Davys, and Faradays. It was not gold so much he sought, as the idea of gold. He looked on gold as the first bright round of the ladder of earthly perfection, the top of which reached into heaven. It was with him no ultimate eminence; but only a ':rou(rroj, whence he might move the world. As an attempt, too, to follow the most shadowy and sublime of Nature's footsteps; to take her in her form, to enter into her profoundest secrets, and learn her most unimaginable cipher — it required the severest training, habits of the minutest observation, the deepest study, combined with the most active and practical research. Nor was the alchymist, in our ideal of his character, one of those " fools who rush in where angels fear to tread." He sought not rashly to rend the robe of Nature, to gaze upon her "naked loveliness," or snatch the sceptre rudely from her hand. He was a modest and a holy worshipper; he lived on bread and water, he subdued the flesh, he mortified c 18 "WILLIAM GODWIN. the spirit, he fasted, he prayed; he went to his crucible, as to a shrine; he searched and tried his heart, as if he were ahout to celebrate a sacrament. Disappointed a thousand times, he still persevered; baffled by the tui-nings and windings of his goddess, he continued to follow her footsteps in the snuw, and never de- spaired of reaching her very home; rejected of her great com- munion again and again, again and again he stretched out his daring hand to the dread elements on her table; and, though de- feated in his ultimate end, verily he had his reward in the pangs of the purifying process, in the furnace of the refining affliction, in the glorious stoop of the attitude, which made him bend ever- more, like one that prayeth, over the rarest operations of God, and in the glimpses of truth which shone vipon him through the ruins of his hopes, and, at last, through the rents in his shattered frame. If Nature did not lead him to her bald and Pisgah pin- nacle, she did conduct him to many a towering elevation, and many a fair prospect she expanded before him. If she taught him not to create gold, she taught him to analyse air, to simplify the forms of matter, to Aveigh gases in scales, and atoms in a ba- lance. If she realised not his yet grander dream of living for ever, she combined, with the sounder hopes of Christianity, in qualify- ing him for an imearthly immortality, and she surrounded his death with an interest and a grandeur peculiar to herself. Yes, Alchymy had her martyrs, worthy of the name; and the exit of the sublime visionaiy was often in fine keeping with his character. He died, not like Alasco, by the glass mask breaking, and pe)'- mitting the fume of the poison to pierce his brain; nor by acci- dentally swallowing the draught he had prepared for others; nor by despairing suicide; but worn away to a skeleton by the watch- ings and fastings, the hopes and fears, the ecstasies and agonies, of many a studious year; on his cheek, the hectic of death con- tending with tlie flush of expectation: for have not the fingers of many dreams pointed to this night, as that when the liglit of gold is to break upon him, like a finer dawn fiom the ashes of the fur- nace, and the residuum of the process is to be the julep of im- ntortality — the time midnight; Arctui'us shining through tlie skylight of his solitary room; standing on the very thresJiold of his hopes; another blast but to be given, another ingredient but to be added, and all is gained: — see, then and there, the alchymist expires, with a light like the news of some great victory still shining on his features, ere they are settled into the rigidity of death! This is our ideal of an alchymist: and has Godwin satisfied this idcal'^ We must answer, No. St Leon is not a seeker for the philosophers stone, nor yet its finder. He gains it by no pro- tracted and })ainful ])rocess; he stumbles upon it by chance. It is not a reward; it is not a result; it drops at his feet as from tlie WILLIAM GODWIN. 19 clouds. He wears, therefore, its nl3^5tic crown awkwardly, and like a parvenu. He never, somehow, seems satisfied that he has a proper claim to it, nor are you. What right, you say, has this broken-down moody gambler and ex-count to a gift so i-are, which so many prophets and righteous men have desired in vain? Unworthy of its possession, no wonder that it avenges itself by making him the most miserable of men. The evils, too, of the successful alchy mist's position are, we think, somewhat overdrawn. Money, it is true, cannot unlock every dungeon, melt every re- fractory element, or quench the fury of devouring flames; but it is clearly not answerable for the calamities into which his own, recklessness or extravagance, or the savage superstitions of his age, plunge the Count St Leon. Because he neglects ordinary precautions, and indulges needless expense, must the pov^^er of gold, as an engine of vast benevolence and amelioration, be re- duced to a negative quantity ? Indeed, the book defeats its own apparent object. As a satire upon gold, it is dull and powerless. As a picture of its princely prerogatives, it is captivating in the extreme. More successfuilj^, still, though not niore justly, does he depict the misery of immortality on earth. He impresses us with the deepest sense of the dreary position of a man, whose stujjendous privileges have only rendered him "alone in the world." Vt^io does not pity St Leon burying his noble wife, bid- ding farewell to his charming daughters, and setting forward on bis solitary journey, "friendless, friendless, alone, alone T' Who weeps not with hiui, as he feels that his gift has insulated him for ever; that an immortal can form no abiding connection \vith "the ephemerou of an hour?" This is the impression which the author wishes to give, and he does give it; and it is most melancholy. But, perhaps, he has not brought out with due force the other side of the medal; — the consolations of such a solitude; a solitude like that of the brideless sun, diffusing, unweariedly, his tide of power and splendour; of the solitary stars; of the " cliildless cherubs." All truly great men, indeed, whatever were their connections, have felt the pleasures and the pangs of severe consecration to some high purpose; and that the former are not inferior to the latter. " Tiie lion is alone, and so are they." Tenderly do they lijve their kind; but they see them from too great an elevation, to expect or extend much reciprocity of feeling. Genius is es- sential solitude; and this solitude is sublime, if it be dreary. The man of (imagination l\as a crucible in the inner chamber of his soul, wliCre his heart is, and with which no stranger intermeddleth. Wordsworth was as lonely in the most brilliant coterie, as amid the caves of Helvellyn. Coleridge talked away; but his et/e was ever alone. Byron stood among the crowd — and such a crowd!— " among them, but net of them" — as if gazing down tiie corries of Loch-na-Car. Cl^-almers ])y his v/andering look 20 WILLIAM GODWIN. proclaimed tliathis spirit dwelt apart from his audience, even while thrillini:,- it into one soul. Hall, in his higher moments, seemed entirely unconscious of the presence of his congregation. Wil- son's voice, in the most crowded class-room, seems to go on alone, like a separate existence. iSuch a solitude who dares to pityl who envies not I And yet GodAvin expects us to sympathise with the child of immortality, merely because he is alone! Still, St Leon is a magnificent romance. We all remember the grand out- burst of his feelings after he knows the secret; though it rises less from the fact that the mysteries of nature are open, than that they are open to him. Hence, in the celebrated exclamation, " For me the wheels of the universe are made to roll backwards," we must lay the emphasis on the second word. But, better than this is that melancholy figure of the stranger, whose name is not given; whose history you must guess from the disconnected ex- pressions of his despair; whose nnsterious entrance is announced in words so significant and thrilling, like a blast of trumpets, and whom you doubt, in your perplexity, to be an incarnation of the fiend ; so disastrous is the influence he sheds on the cottage by tlie lake, and on the destiny of its inmates. He reminds us of Coleridge's "Ancient Marinere." Like him, he is nameless; like him, he passes "Like Night from land to land;" like him, he has strange power of speech; like him, he carries a deep burden of secret upon his breast, which he must disclose; like him, he has a special message to an individual, which colours all the after history of his being. Like the wedding guest, St Leon becomes a wiser and a sadder man. And then there is the noble INIarguerite de Damville, the ideal of a matron, a mother, a Avife, a woman; Avhose every step moves to the music of lofty purpose, and before whom her husband, even while holding the keys of nature and of immortal life, dwindles into insignificance. Blessings on tliee, AVilliam Godwin, for this fine creation! a creation realising all our fondest dreams of the majesty, purity, and wisdom, Avhich gracious Nature can build u]), Avhen she pleases, in one Avoman's form. She is the true magician of the tale; and you feel that a love like her's is stronger than death, and mightier than gold; and that God may give to the "insect of an hour" more of his oAA'n image and glory, than the most mysterious gifts, even eternal youth itself, can confer on the unwortliy. She reminds us of the lines descriptive of God- win's oAvn daughter, Avritten by her impassioned husband: — And what art thou ? I know, but dare not speak. 'J'itiH' uiav interpret to liis silent years. Yet in tlie jialeness of thy tlioiiLilitt'nl elieek, And in the- li;.;ht thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest sniile.s, and in thy tears. And in tliy gentle speech a proplitey WILLIAM GODWIN. 21 Is whispered to subdue my fondest fears. And through thine eyes, even in tliy soul, I see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. They say that thou wert lovdy from thy birth. Of glorious parents, thou aspiring child. I wonder not; for one then leit the earih Whose life was like a setting planet mild, Which clothed thee in the radiance uudefiled Of her departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter years; and thou canst claim The shelter from thy sire of an immortal name. Aucl wliile she is the loveliest, Bethlem Gabor is the most ter- rific character in this or in almost any tale. He is a " bear be- reaved of his whelps." His castle has been burned; his wife and babes, " all his pretty ones," murdered; and he steps up upon their corpses into a giant of misanthropy. His figure itself pro- claims his character. His stature is Titanic; his hair, a dead black; his face, all scarred and scorched with sword and flame; one eye is gone, but the other has gathered up into its solitary orb the fury which fell from it, and glares with a double portion of demimiac meaning. His voice is thunder; and as he talks in a torrent of imprecation against man, and nature, and Eternal Providence, his stature dilates, his breast swells and heaves like an angry wave, and a " supernatural eloquence seems to inspire and enshroud him." His every thought is tinctured with gall. " He never sees a festive board, without being tempted to over turn it; never a father surrounded with a smiling family, without feeling his soul thrill with suggestions of murder." Holding man to be a more mischievous reptile than any that craAvls on Africa's sands; a viler insect than any that floats in the thick atmosphere of India's jungles; a more malignant monster than any that roams over the Arabian desert; a more ravenous devourer than any that infests the Caribbean sea; — he has sworn, both loud and deep, to wage against him an unmitigated and eternal warfare. He looks demoniacally even into the faces of little children. He would willingly see the whole race enclosed in the hollow of one curse. He hates God, because he is the father of man; he hates himself, because he is a man. He has no pleasure from any source but hatred: none from the works of creation, on which he casts a malignant scowl; none from love, for he loves no one, not even liimself; none from devotion, for he will not Inieel; none from hope, for his element is despair; none from anticipation, unless he could expect that the throats of all men were contracted into one, and that one were within the reach of his eager axe. He is the Polyphemus of the miserable; and is drawn by those few rude touches which proclaim the hand of a master. He seems, like that fatal bark in Lycidas, to have been " built in the eclipse, and 22 WILLIAM GODWIN. rigged with ciii'ses dark;" conceived and finished in that gloomy hoiu- of life, which falk at some time or other upon all earnest sr-irits, from Avhich Shakspere himself did not escape, as Tinion testifies; and wliich, in Godwin, was produced or exaggerated by the disappointment of the fresh hopes of his youth, and by the ovei-throw of the pyramidal pile of Political Justice which he had reared at such perverted pains. Charles we do not admire; and all his intercourse with his disguised father is in wretched taste, and brings the tale to a lame and impotent close. Fine descrijD- tive passages are sprinkled throughout, such as that of " Gam- bling," the " Storm among the Mountains," &c. But the indivi- dual incidents are generally quite subordinate to the characters and the moral of the story. From this statement, however, we must except the escape from tlie Inquisition. Nothing in fiction, (except the robber-scene in " Count Fathom," which is quite des- titute of its moral grandeur) surpasses in interest St Leon's sud- den dash from the midst of the procession of the victims of the auto-da-fe, through an unexpected and momentary opening, down the lane; his afiair with the Jew, whom lie compels to secrete him, and purchase for his use the materials of the elixir of immortal life; his sudden and horrible feeling tliat he is dying; his haste in compounding the julep; the state of insensibility into which he sinks for a moment; th.e attempt he makes with the last efforts of expiring nature to swallow the draught of immortality; the sweet sleep, be-dropt with golden dreams, that follows; and his starting to consciousness, a new-made man, eternal youth rioting in his veins, the same Covmt Leon that he was on the morning of his marriage with Marguerite de Damville. We must dismiss this enchanting fiction, with its minor beau- ties of style, its use of Scripture allusions, which are in fine keep- ing with the spiritual cast of the story; its high tone of morality; its sympathy with all those private affections which the " Inquiry" denounced; its melting pathos. Xext to Ivanhoe, we consider it the most ideal and poetical romance in the English language. Mandeville is, like Bethlem Gabor, a misanthrope, but wants the energy and grandeur of that extraordinary character. He is not maddened into the feeling by circumstances; he hates, be- cause he has nothing else to do. It is but in him the escape of immeasureable ennui. Godwin was probably seduced into this miscreation by the success of Gabor, forgetting that to reproduce any character is dangerous, and that what will pass, nay, tell, in a sketch, may be involerable in a full-length portraiture. The })Ower of this tide — and it has great power — lie.< not in story, for story there is little; nor in variety, for variety there is none; nor in characters, fnr (character of any prominence thei-e is but one — !Mandeville himself; but in tlie minute and painstaking analysis of hatred, as it roots itself in the soil of one morbid spirit, and WILLIAM GODWIN. 23 grailually, as it grows, covers all with the blackness of darkness; and in the eloquence of certain insulated passages, collecting the i)ith of the fell passion, and reminding you of those dark, soundless wells in the wilderness, into which you tremble to look down at noonday. And what an exit the hero has at length, leaving the stage with that ghastly gash upon his face, which ijrins out the intellio-ence that Clifibrd has set his mark on him and that he is his for ever. We notice in this work, and in his yet later productions, a vaster wealth and profusion of imagery than in his earlier works. We notice this also in Burke's " Ilegicide Peace," and in Scott's " Life of Napoleon." Whether it spring from a desire to hide the baldness of age by forced and thickening laurels, or arise from the imaginative power rallying all its forces previous to dissolution, certainly the phenomenon is curious ; and the con- trast between the more than youthfid riot of figure, and exube- rance of language, and the age of the writer, produces in our minds strange and mournful emotions. Fleetwood and Cloudesley, with many beauties of thought and style, are but faint reflexes of tlie others, and we may silently drop both from the catalogue of the works, begirt by wliich he shall yet stand "before the dread tribunal of To-come," to re- ceive the verdict of immortality. His " Inquirer " is made up of orts and fragments which were over from the great feast of the " Inquiry." It contains " matter of much pith and moment," though it be too paradoxical, and stately, and dogmatic, to rank among the " Essays of England." His " Life of Chaucer " includes some ingenious dissertations, but is a total misnomer, inasmuch as it contains little or no biography. His " Essay on Sepulchres " is full of learning, and seems to have been a favourite with its author; but crushed down under its ominous title, it is now safely deposited in the tomb of the Capulets. His •' Lives of Milton's Nephews " were another still birth. He is better at writing the life of a fictitious, than a real personage. His sermons — -called curiously " Sketches from His- tory" — which Ave glanced over, a la Charles Lamb, at a book- stall in Glasgov/, a good many years ago, are rather dry, and we do not wonder that he soon ceased to be a preacher. His ti^a- gedies were sins of youth, and — would it were so with all such — are forgotten for ever. His "Life of Mary Wolstonecraft " is a slight but interesting sketch of a strange unhappy life. As an historian of the Commonwealth, he lal)ours under the deep dis- advantage of having little sympathy with the religious spirit of the period; nor does he narrate with peculiar interest or power, but is careful, inquisitive, ingenious, and rather cold and passion- less. His final " Thoughts on Man " were collected into a pos- thumous volume, which we never saw. He was one of the most 54 WILLIAM GODWIN, indefatigable of autliors, and has founded a school, including his son, a youth of promise early cut off; his daughter, the brilliant authoress of " Frankenstein," " The Last ]Man," &c. ; that rare American, afterwards to be commemorated, Brockden Bro-wTi, whose " Wieland," "Ormond," " Arthur Mervyn," "Edgar Huntly," &c., track liis path closely and daringly, yet possess a distinct originality of their own; and Shelley, whose eagle-winged genius did not disdain to " do errands in the vasty deep, and business i' the veins of earth," at the bidding of this potent Prospero, his father-in-law. Godwin was for a while a dissenting clergyman. What character he sustained as a preacher, or how and why he parted from his congregation, we know not. Traces of his early habits of thought and reading are to be found in his use of Scrip- ture language, in the dictatorial tone, and the measured and solemn march of his compositions. Coming to London, he acted for a while as a reporter for the public press. His genius seems to have remained totally unsuspected by his most intimate friends, till the publication of " Caleb Williams." They even thought him utterly destitute of " natural imagination !" i\Iary Wolstonecraft, that crazy, but excessively clever and brilliant creature, after flirtinrr with Fuseli and Southev, honoured Godwin with her hand. She died in giving birth to the present Mrs Shelley. In conversation, she was incomparably her husband's superior. This, indeed, was not his forte, and hence he was often put down by the stupid and superficial, as stupider and shallower than them- selves. He cared not; but, though out-crowed in coteries, he retired to his study, and wrote " immin'tal things," leaving them to talk themselves hoarse. Even Coleridge never did justice to Godwin's powers. Hearing him boast of having maintained a dispute with Mackintosh for several hours, the poet re])lied, " Had there been a man of genius in the room, he would have settled it in five minutes." When the same distinguished twain were on one occasion making light of Wordsworth, Coleridge said, "He strides on so far before you both, that he dwindles in the dis- tance." After Mary Wolstonecraft's death, he married a second time. His daughter spent a part of her youth among the sandy clifts, and on the smooth beach of liroughty Ferry; and we never pass the place, without sha])ing to our imagination the buoyant figure, and pale, radiant fiice of the young enthusiast maiden, destined afterwards to wed Alastor, and, ahis ! to weep tumultu- ous tears over his remains in the bay of Spezia, refusing to be comforted, because he who, to her at least, had been all that was aRectionate and amiable, "was not." One of Godwin's ])rinci]»al friends was Curran, who waxed ever eloquent in private, when defending him from the abuse it became fashionable to pour upon his head. He was one of the most candid of men, and spoke well of those who were trampling him to the dust. He did, in- WILLIAM HAZLITT. 25 deed, exhibit here and there, throughout his career, symptoms of a slight misanthropical tendency; but in general well sustained the dignity of the sage and the conscious immortal. He had courage, too, of no ordinary kind, and needed it all to sustain the reaction of prodigious popularity; every specious of attack, from the sun-shafts of Burke, Mackintosh, and Hall, to the rep- tile calumnies of meaner assailants; and a perpetual struggle with narrow circumstances. He enjoyed, we believe, however, a pension for a few years ere his death. He is now only a name; but it is a name as great as the ftime of " Caleb Williams," as wide as the civilised world, and as lasting as the literature of his native land. WILLIAM HAZLITT. We may begin by stating, that our principal qualification for writing about Hazlitt is, that we have learned to love him, in spite of himself This is no ordinary attainment. There is, at first sight, much that is repulsive about his works. There is a fierceness and intellectual intolerance about him by no means attractive. He dashes paradoxes like putting stones in your face. He now impales a literary reputation upon an antithesis, and now sends a political character limping away, with the point of a prose epigram sticking in its side. How he did fall foul of Rogers, for instance, in a description which must live in the annals of contemptuous criticism — it was so excessively like. It was a painting to the life of the weaknesses of that elegant, but finical poet. Moore, too, he has emljalmed — not Moore of " The Twopenny Post-bag," and " The Fudge Family," the most witty and subtle of satirists — but Moore of " The Loves of Angels," and "The Veiled Prophet;" the same, but oh, how different ! — the elegant ephemeral — the Bard of the Butterflies. How he dis- cusses Crabbe, " describing the house of a poor man like one sent there to distrain for rent !" " giving us the petrifaction of a sigh, and carving a tear to the life in marble !" There was much in- justice in all these attacks — all of them, at any rate, were pro- voking; but no matter; you remembered them; they stung and piqued you, though you could hardly at first love the savage hand which perpetrated such things. Yet we liked Plazlitt even in this wild work. He was honest in it. And there was a feeling of pity mingled with your admiration. You pitied power perversely and wantonly directed against popular idols, and doomed thus everlastingly to prevent its own popularity. He could denounce Moore for " changing the Harp of Erin into a musical snuft-box, and letting her tears of blood evaporate in lip-deep melodies;" 2G WILLIAM HAZLITT. ])iit Moore, meanvv^liile, was singing them in drawing-rooms, Avliere poor Hazlitt was not admitted. He could describe Moore bark- ing at kings like a " pug-dog from the carriage of a lady of qua- lity;" but Moore had his revenge in ridiculing a dear friend of Hazlitt's — Hunt, namely — by a wicked little poem concerning a lion and a pU2:»py dog. Hazlitt's criticisms might be immortal, ])ut they did not sell. " Cash, Corn, Currency, and Catholics," (lid. when you recollected this, you forgave the critic. The quan- tity of verjuice in Hazlitt's mind was indeed immense. How it breaks out perpetually upon his page, in sudden, fierce, and fan- tastic gushes ! How spleen burns in his declamations, darts athwart the pure light of his genius, imbitters his wit into satire, tinges his eloquence with frenzy, and sprip.kles his enthusiastic criticisms on poetry and painting with bitter jaundiced person- alities ! The effect of this upon his reputation has been pernicious. He has taught men to imagine him a riiisanthrope, a modern Timon, with more bile than brains ; a soured malignant cynic, Avho carried party and personal vindictiveness to the verge of madness. This, must we prove 1 — is but a segment of Hazlitt's character. He was a man, not a gall-bladder, though that need- ful organ Avas largely developed in his system. And he had deep wrongs to explain his spleen. Far are we from proposing liim as a faultless or exemplary character. But will his enemies now deny that he was, for whatever reasons, maile the mark of relentless and ramified persecution : and that his literary and moral sins were more than expiated by those torrents of inces- sant abuse which descended on his head, till his name became identical with all that was absurd in Cockneyism, and infamous in London life ? Why a man of keen warm temperament, with j>assions equal to his powers, and with a deep soul-rooted sense of Ids superiority to some, at least, of his assailants, should be exas- ])erated by such treatment, we can understand well, upon the ])rinciple of the stag turning on his hunters, and finding in those horns, which were meant only for ornament, means of defence and retaliation. Why, while others of his i)arty were treated with comparative gentleness, he was so specially victimised — why, while Jeffrey, for instance, was only ti]q)cd lightly with the lash, he was stripped naked and scourged to ril)ands — he himself never could understand, and it is yet a mystery to many. The explanation, perhaps, lies in the histcny of those unhappy times, wlicn the foul hoof of the demon of politics was still uHowed to pollute the stream of literatui^e, and poison Castalia itself. In the light of a better era, we api)roach the consideration of the character and genius of Hazlitt, as a great erring man, but one of whom it may truly be said, that he was more sinned against than sinning. And his first characteristic is that of absolute earnestness. In this respect, he has few equals. Verily it is the WILLIAM HAZLITT. 27 rarest of qualities. Shreds of sincerity are common enough. Bits of truth come out every now and then from the most artificial of the mock-earnest. Those men are v/rong, who think Byi-on ahvays affected in his proclamations of personal misery. Often he is so palpably; but, at other times, the words bespeak their own truthfulness. They are the mere wringings of the heart. V/ho can doubt that his brow, the index of his sovil, darkened, as he wrote that fearful curse, the burden of which is forgiveness ] or that he wept when he penned the last stanzas of the Second Canto of " Childe Harold," " Thou, too, art gone, thou loved and lovely one !" But, as a whole, his works are, as confessions, over- charged. No one, indeed, should write confessions in rhyme. There is too strong a temptation, while en^ploying the melody, to use the language of fiction. Not that Byron's letters are more faithful to his emotions than some of his poetry; they reflect the man in all his moods; but the "Dream" showed him in his reverie, in his trance of passion, and depth of inspiration. And that inar, sitting alone, and with tl;e warm tears falling upon the blurred and blotted pages — that man was Byron. But while he frequently counterfeited, Hazlitt is always in earnest. Writing in prose, he liad never to sacrifice a sentiment to a sound. His works are therefore a mirror of the heart. And we pardon their egotism, their spleen, their very rancour, for the sake of that eloquence of earnestness in which their every sentence is steeped. In this re- spect, as well as in agreeable gossip, he reminds us of Montaigne, the fi.ne old Gascon egotist, who possessed, however, a happier disposition, and whose lines fell in pleasanter places than the author of " Table Talk." Hazlitt's ruling faculty was unquestionably a discriminating intellect. His forte lay in fastening, by sure, swift instinct, upon the differential qu.rJity of the author, book, or picture, which was the topic of his criticism. And, in saying this, Ave intend to in- timate our belief that he does not belong to the very highest order of minds, in whom imagination, or, more properly, creative intellect, is ever the presiding power. Here we are aware of going in opposition to Foster, who, in his critical estimate of liobert Hall, asserts that, " except in the opinion of very young people, and second-rate poets, intellect is the first faculty in every great mind." At the risk of being included in one or other of the two classes thus contemptuously discriminated, we venture to contradict the critic. We ask, v/hat are the very highest minds, by universal admission, which have yet appeared among men ? Are they not those of Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakspere, Milton, Spenser; perhaps we should add, Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, ISTewton, and Lord Bacon ? Now, with the exception of the two last mentioned, can any one doubt that imagination, though far from being the sole, was the presiding, power in all those majes- 28 WILLIAM HAZLITT. tic minds. Was it not this faculty which animated that old bard who, on the Chi an strand, Bi'lield tlie Iliad and the Odyssee, Rise to the swelling of the voiceiiil sea? Was it not imagination which prompted the golden fantasies and eloquence of Plato 1 Was it not the same power, in a darker and more demoniac shape, which took down the mighty Florentine through the descending circles of damnation, and up the bright steps of celestial blessedness 1 Did not imagination bind in, like a glorious girdle, all the varied and numberless faculties of 8hakspere, the myriad-minded ? Dd it not show to Milton's inward eye, the secrets of eternity 1 Did it not pour all the "Arabian heaven" upon the nights and days of Spenser, whose pen was a limb of the rainbow 1 Did it not people the blank of the past with crowding forms and faces, to the exhaustless mind, and on the many-coloured page of Scott 1 Did not its magic robe bear Goethe harmless, as he entered with Faust and jNIephis- topheles amid the hurry and horror of the Walpurgis night 1 Nay, even in reference to Newton and Bacon, we can hardly per- suade ourselves that, in both their minds, it was not the riding, as we kuoAv in the latter it was a principal, facidty; that it did not attend the one in the giant leaps of his geometry, as well as assist the other in making out his map of all the provinces of science, and of all the capabilities of mind. In somewhat lower, but still lofty regions, we find the same faculty presiding over the rest: — as in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and Burke. In those writers who had the benefit of inspiration, it is the same. Think of Isaiah, with his glowing eloquence; Ezekiel, with his stupendous visions, tinged by the "terrible crystal;" the author of Job, with his gorgeous imagery; Daniel, with his allegory; David, with his lyric enthusiasm; and the author of the Apocalypse, where the events of time and the cycles of eter- nity are blended in one tremendous tragedy, and enacted on one obscure and visionary stage. Imagination thus seems, in its higher form, to be the sovereign faculty of the loftiest natures; not perhaps of critics and logicians, but certainly of pliilosophers and poets. Perhaps, after all, Foster, in iniderrating iniaginatimi, is only committing the common error of confounding it with fancy — confounding the fiiculty which sup- plies foliage with that finer ])Ower wliich produces fiuit — the faculty which is a mere foinitain of hnages and illustrations with that which is tlie parent of thought. Imagination, in our sense of the term, is at once illustrative and creative. It sees by intui- tion, it illustrates by mt'taphor, it speaks in music. All great thouglit links itself instantaneously to imagery, and comes forth, like Minerva, in a ])anoply of glittering armour. All great thought is, in a woril, poetical, and creates a rhythm of its own. WILLIAM HAZLITT. 29 Witli this explanation, we hold imagination to be the most god- like of human powers ; and being neither very young persons, nor yet guilty of the sin of verse, we can afford to retain our opinion, in defiance of the anathema of the late admired and elo- quent essayist. The subject of the present sketch Avas far from destitute of this faculty. He had more of it than he himself would believe. But though we have heard him charged, by those who knew nothing about him, with a superabundance of this very quality, his great strengtli lay neither in imagination, nor — to take the word in the philosophical sense — in reason, but in acute and discriminating understanding. Unable to reach the aerial heights of poetry — to grapple with the greater passions of the human soul — or to catch, on immortal canvass, either the features of the human face, the lineaments of nature, or the eloquent passages of history — he has become, nevertheless, through his blended discrimina- tion and enthusiasm, one of our best critics on poetry; and, his enemies themselves being judges, a first-rate, if not unrivalled, connoisseur of painting. Add to this, his knowledge of human nature — his deep dissections of life, in all its varieties — his in- genious but imperfect metaphysical aspirations — his memorable points, jutting out in vigorous projection from every page — the boldness of his paradoxes — the allusions to his past history, which, like flowers on " murk and haggard rocks," flash on you where you expect them not — his imagery, chiefly culled from his own experience, or from the pages of the early English dramatists — his delicious gossip — his passionate panegyrics, bursting out so obviously from the heart — his criticisms upon the drama, the fiincy, and every department of the fine arts — his frequent and vigorous irruptions into more abstruse regions of thought, such as the principles of human action, the Malthusian theory, legisla- tion, pulpit eloquence, and criminal law; and his style, with its point, its terseness, its brilliance, its resistless charm of playful ease, alternating with fierce earnestness, and its rich profusion of poetical quotation — take all this together, and we have a view of the sunny side of his literary character. His faults are — an oc- casional ambition to shine — ^to sparkle — to dazzle — a fondness for paradox, pushed to a passion — a lack of simplicity in his more elaborate, and of dignity in his more conversational passages — a delight in sudden breaks, marks of admiration, and other con- \nilsive spasms, which we hate, even in the ablest writers — a dis- play of strong prejudices, too plainly interfering with the dic- tates of his better judgment — a taste keen and sensitive, but capricious — a habit of quoting favourite authors, carried so far as to interfere with the unity, freedom, and force of his own style — occasional bursts of sheer fustian, like the bright sores of leprosy — frequent, though petty, pilferiugs from other authors; 30 WILLIAM HAZLITT. and, akin to this, a sad trick of stealing from himself, by per- petually repeating the same quotation, the same image, the same thought, or even the same long and laboured passage. Many of these faults arise from his circumstances, as a victim of proscription and a writer for bread. And his excellencies are more than enough to counterbalance them, and form the tombstone of their oblivion. AVilliam Hazlitt was the son of a dissenting minister in Wem, Shropshire. There he spent his speculative, aspiring, but un- easy youth; balancing between hope and despondency — the dread of divinity as a study, and the love of painting — obedience to his father, and the gratification of his ov/n tastes. There, too, as the first era of his mental life, he met with Coleridge, whom he walked ten miles in the mud to hear preach; and who, by that sermon — a sermon he tells us, on peace and war, on church and state, descriptive of those who " inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore" — startled and aroused the young spirit of Hazlitt as from deep slumber; an effect which the conversation of the gifted man, who came the next day to see the father, and predicted the future eminence of the son, greatly deepened and confirmed. What followed thereafter — Coleridge's wonderful and flowing talk — his appearance, with "long dark locks floating down his forehead — eyebrows light as if built of ivory, with eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre — nose small, insufficient, nothing — mouth open, eloquent, gross, voluptuous "—old Hazlitt's admiration expressed in silence, the son's in struggling sentences — his walk with the poet as he departed, in view of the Welch mountains, which skirted the pros- I)ect with their tempestuous confusion, and had heard no such mystic sounds since " Highborn Hoel's harp, and soft Llewellyn's lay " — his promised visit to Coleridge in spring — his return from his convoy, " pensive, but much pleased " — his metaphysical and poetical studies in the interval — his labouring in vain to expi-ess liis recondite and evanescent thoughts on paper — his shedding tears on tlie unfinished manuscript — the coming of that much desired spring — his departure — his reading " Paul and Virginia," for the fii'st time, in an inn by the way — his reception by the "noticeable man with large grey eyes," as eloquent, and to him as kind as ever — his journey with him along the shores of the Bristol Channel, sounding on his way as he went — their entering a little solitary ale-house, where Coleridge took up a well-thumbed copy of " Thomson's Seasons," and uttered the memorable words, " This is true fame " — their meeting with Word^iworth, his ho^nely dress and rugged recitation and manly eloquence; all this, and more, may be luund in '"My first acquaintance v»-ith Poets;" — to us the most dclightfr.l of all Hazlitt's essays, and whicli we can hardly read or recall to memory without tears, striking, as it doe.^, upon chords, and awakening reminiscences in our own WILLIAM HAZLITT. 31 Ijreasts, with which no stranger may intermeddle. The after incidents in his life were less pleasing. He went to London to reside with his brother. Deterred from the pursuit of painting, by the severity of his own standard, and the elevation of his own ideal, he became a professional author; in this capacity, he had the usual blending of struggle and success. He became known as a critic, first, by contributing to " The Morning Chronicle." He drew up various compilations for the booksellers; among others, a masterly abridgment of "Tucker's Light of Nature," giving the essence of seven volumes in one. He published the result of his youthful studies, in the shape of an " Essay on the Principles of Human Action." He became, at an early period, intimate with Charles Lamb, who thouQ-ht, and called him " one ol the wisest and finest spirits breathing;" and clung to him to the last. From his early idols of the Lake school, he was gra- dually estranged; but, though treated by them with coldness and contempt, he never ceased to be the warm admirer of their genius, and the intrepid advocate of their fame. About the year 1S16, he became connected with "The Edin- burgh Eeview," and strenuously did he draw that Ulysses bow, " heroic to all times." We have seen some of his articles quoted as Jeffrey's — which will be thought by many, though not by us, a great compliment to him. About the same time, he delivered seve- ral series of lectures at the Surrey Institution. Though he suffered, according to Sergeant Talfourd, from the imperfect sympathies of his audience, his lectures were very effective. His delivery re- minded Keats of Kean's. Having occasion to allude to Dr John- son's carrying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back, up Fleet Street, his hearers showed their sense and taste by bursting out into a titter, but were subdued into deep silence, when he added, in his sternest and most impressive manner, " an incident which realises the parable of the good Samaritan." He ■got keenly entangled, for a time, in the Malthusian controversy, as well as in the fiercer disputes of politics. He was one of the most laborious of v,^riters, and often cleared, by his writings, £600 a-year. His private character was neither better nor worse than was then that of the class to which he belonged. At one period, he had sunk so deeply into habits of intemperance, that, for " four years, he did not know the sensation of sobriety;" but, by a noble effort, he recovered himself, and, for fourteen years before his death, drank nothing stronger than very potent tea. Let charity hope that his other excesses sprung from no originally debased taste, but from the sheer abandonment and desperation of an ear- nest mind, seeking for truth, but finding none — yearning for, but never reaching any definite belief — "wandering over God's ver- dant earth like the unblessed over burning deserts, passionately digging wells, but drawing up only the dry quicksand; and, at 32 "WILLIAM HAZLITT. length, dying, and making no sign." In spite, however, of all this, and of a frightful exacerbation of temper, which hacked and hewed his countenance, rendered him preternaturally suspicious, and soured him against his kindest and oldest friends — we eon- cede him the possession originally of a noLle nature. In conver- sation, he was impetuous and eager, but wanted fluency. Yet it was fine, they tell us, to see his mind working and struggling out into expression — ^to see his strong-winged thoughts beating their pinions against the bars of a limited and ragged verbiage ! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kind, Thus beating up against the wind. He was careless in the extreme of his personal appearance, of his reputation, and of his money. His prejudices were strong, and bitter the breath of his angry speech; yet he could say, as well as do, generous things. Once, on hearing read a splendid passage in praise of Napoleon, from " Blackwood," he burst out, " That's fine, that's noble. I'll forgive the fellows all they've said of me." His face was pale, and earnest, almost to haggard- ness, yet finely formed; his eager eye, like that of one seeking to see, rather than seeing, into the strange mystery of being around him ; his l)row elevated, and worthy of Coleridge's encomium, jironounced in reference to his first interview — " For these two hours, though he spoke not, I was conversing with his forehead;" his hair dark and abundant. But we turn, from this short sum- mai'y of his perturbed personal existence; to glance at some of his principal works. His first production, published anonymously, and entitled "An Essay on the Principles of Human Action," sprung, as we have said, from his early and solitary studies. And this j)robably led its author to speak of it at all times, with parental pride, as his best. Certainly it is a shrewd and ingenious essay; but, without entering into its pi'etensions, as a defence of tlie natural benevo- lence of the liuman mind, its style — dry,stiff', and rigid — prevented altogether its popularity; but did not blind the sharp and candid eye of Sir James ^lackintosh from perceiving its merit, even amid the enervating heat of Hindostan, and testifying it in a way most gratifying to its author's feelings. As it is, not a thousand persons have probably ever seen or heard of it. It rests on the same forgotten shelf with two still more original and powerful metaphysical treatises, Sir William Drummond's "Academical Questions," and John Fearn's " Essay on Consciousness," first written on slips of bark, in the intervals of severe sickness, as the author sailed down the Ganges. His next considerable work was the "C-haractersof Shakspere's Plays;" and no one ever had a better right to speak of Shak- WILLIAM HAZLITT. 33 spere than Hazlitt, for no one ever understood him better, or loved him more warmly. His intention was not to exhaust the profound subject; but simply to supply short introductions to the separate plays, more worthy of Shakspere than the j^oor prefixes of Dr Johnson. Viewed in this light, they are admirable. They not only embalm, in more choice and eloquent diction, those merits which civilised man allows, but they find out Ijeauties which the watchful admiration of ages had not detected. And honour to him who discovers a new beauty lurking in the crevice of a great mind or work, more than to the discoverer of a new fossil or mineral. Thus had commentators and critics been talk- ing about and about Lear, but, till Charles Lamb, no one noticed that sublime identification of the old man's age with the heavens, in the exclamation — If ye do love old men, of your sweet sway, Htillow obedience, if yourselves are old: Make it your cause. So, if Hazlitt lias not stumbled upon any gem quite so precious, on what Voltaire is pleased to call the " enormous dunghill," he has, with throbbing finger, pointed out not a few modest and in- estimable pearls. The willows had wept over Ophelia's watery grave for ages, but no one had observed that they were " grey " below, save the " inevitable eye " of Shakspere, and of his conge- nial critic. And how thoroughly does he sympathise with his hero's boundless catholicity of mind — his power of " shooting his soul " from body to body, and spirit to spirit — of now ejaculating an Ariel, that arrow of the elements — now digging out a Caliban from the raw earth, and now forging a Faulc(jnbridge or a Hot- spur — whereby he was, "not one, but all mankind's ^epitome !" and had he let out from under the arch of his forehead,' an Eschy- lus and a Moliere, a Sophocles and a Sheridan, a Byron and a Burns, would have missed them not. Shakspere did not appear to Hazlitt, as to Coleridge, " a giant stripling, who had never come to his full height, else he had not been a man but a mon- ster." He seemed a full-grown and thoroughly expanded man, containing in him, moreover, the essence of all men; mirroring on that calm forehead and in that deep eye of his, the " great globe itself, and all which it inherits." Perhaps he is too eulogistic; and yet can the author of " Lear," " Timon," and " Macbeth," be over-praised 1 Enthusiasm here is sobriety, exaggeration truth. Without going the entire length of the Germans, who hold that King Shakspere can do no wrong, as a counterpart to their creed in the infallibility of Goethe, we confess, that, through hundreds of perusals, we have sought in vain to discover what are called his absurdities and his nonsense. What appears such, is either faithfully copied from the authors whom he fi'equeutly transcribes 34 WILLIAM HAZLITT, or is necessary to the development of particular characters. We prefer the critic who, approaching Shakspere, should feel like a man gazing on Ben Nevis or Mont Blanc, capable only of silent wonder, or bursting praise, having no wish or leisure to mark petty defoi'mities in masses so sublime. Hazlitt, elsewhere so acute aud distinctive, is here peculiarly characterised by this spirit. He does not criticise, but wonder; he does not examine, but adore. The "Piound Table" is a volume of Essays, not unworthy of the best days of that fine species of composition. In it he des- cants delightfully, as if from an ai-m-chair, upon a multitude of topics ; such as the " Love of the Country," " John Buncle," "Gusto," "Izaak Walton," &c.; but by no means exhibits either the full force or depth of his intellect. You see him in his night- gown and slippers, in the undress of his mind; and you are pleased t J find that a man who can now inveigh as fiercely and eloquently as if he had come from the tomb of Timon, aud now reason as acutely as if he had inherited tlie mantle of Hobbes, should sink down so smoothly into the chair of Addison and Steele, prattle so pleasantly; "babble of green fields;" and merge the stern and stalwart patriot so easily in the good fellow. " Table Talk " was a continuation of the " Round Table," and, while hardly less easy and gossiping, is a much more intense and vigorous production. Here, he strikes upon deeper chords, abounds more in pensive reminiscences, rises to finer bursts of eloquence, and reveals more of the strange machinery of his ov/n mind. It is a book full of thought, of character, and of himself. Its faults are personality and egotism. Among its various essays, we prefer those on the " Pleasures of Painting" — a fine theme, and finely handled ; on " Going a Journey;" on "Will-Making;" and on that striking peculiarity of his mind which led him to prefer the past to the future. Of all his works, this is the one we would prefer putting into the hands of those who are prejudiced against him. It shows him in the light of a genuine practical philosopher. It is a shield which, to borrow the allusion of Dr Johnson about the shield of Achilles in Homer, he may hold up against all his enemies. In a similar spirit and style, he has written the " Plain Speaker," " Characteristics " (a little book, containing a digest of his entire philosopliy, in the form of aphorisms), "Travels Abroad," " Con- versations with Northcote," &c. &c. But by these he is less gene- rally known, tlian by his Lectures delivered at the Surrey Insti- tution. As a lecturer, he proved more popular than v,'as expected by those who knew his uncom])romising scorn of all those tricks and petty artifices, which are frequently employed to pump up applause. His manner was somewhat abrupt and monotonous, but earnest and eneriretic. Lecturiuir has since become fashion- WILLIAM HAZLITT. 35 able among men of genius; though we doubt greatly if it tend either to their permanent credit or to the good of the public. It either seduces them into clap-trap, or presents them, unstudied in the art of oratory, in unfavourable and deteriorating lights; and, generally speaking, instead of instructing, it misleads and mystifies the public. The man stands up before his audience, '• half a prophet and half a play-actor;" in a position intensely and almost ludicrously false. How utter '•' Burdens," to such a promiscuous audience as assembles to while away an evening hour in a lecture room ! Conceive of an ancient prophet, deli- vered of one of his oracles through the established formula of "Ladies and gentlemen !" No; the lecture and the lecture-room are better fitted for the glib, clever, shov/y dcclaimer, avIio happens to have white hands and cultivated whiskers, than for the simple and strongly-inspired sons of genius. The " Surrey Lectures," when printed, were much abused and much read. They abound in fine and startling things, in elo- quent dogmatism, in the impertinence of conscious power, in l-ude electric shocks to popular prejudice, in passages of sound- ing declamation. " The savage," he says, " is a poet, when he paints his idol with blood; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow." Perliaps the best of his three series is that on the " Elizabethan Period." It is not easy to see the stars at noonday; but Lamb and Hazlitt possess a telescope which enables them to descry, through the burning blaze of Shakspere, his eclipsed but brilliant contemporaries — Marston the Avitty; ]\Iar- lowe, with his mighty line, " his lust of power," " his hunger and thirst after unrig Uteousness^'' his passionate pictures of maidens, " shadowing more beauty in their airy brows than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love," and one of whom " Apollo courted for her hair, and offered as a dower his burning throne;" Ben Johnson, the learned and saturnine, with that slow, deep sneer sculptured upon his lip; Webster, prince of the quaking border which di- vides the region of the terrible from that of the horrific; Fletcher, the picturesque and romantic; the severe and masculine Mas- singer. But neither Lamb nor Hazlitt have brought out suffi- ciently the "gentle Willy's" superiority to these, not merely in intellectual qualities, but in the purity of his moral tone. Nothing about Shakspere astonishes us so much as this. Some, indeed, there are who still prate of Shakspere's immorality; of his " being at home in Falstaff," of the "gross obscenities" in which his genius indulges. We bid the talkers of this pitiful nonsense to comjjare Shaks[)ere not only with his dramatic coevals — with the brutali- ties of Beaumont, Fletcher, and ^lassinger ; not only with the dramatists of Charles the Second's era, but with the preachers, theologians, and philosophers of his own day — to see how vastly clearer, purei', and healthier, is the stream of his morality; how 36 "WILLIAM HAZLITT. comparatively few in him the passages which shock propriety; and how distinct is the hirge moral of his principal plays — of " Othello," "Lear," and "JMacbeth," nay, of "Timon," "Measure for Measure," and the " Winter's Tale." In the close of this series, Lord Bacon, with his wisdom, rich and mellow, as if it had been accumulating throughout antenatal ages : Jeremy Taylor, the sweet, the quaint, the genial, prodigal of beauty and splendour as nature herself, with that waving and wondrous style of his, "untwisting all the chords which tie the hidden sovd of harmony," and who, in his youth, by his " sublime and raised discourses, and his young and florid beauty, made men take him for an angel newly descended from the climes of glory, his long curls tawny with the noons of paradise;" and Sir Thomas Browne, that Plato with a twist in his brains, oddest of humorists, most delicious of egotists, most charitable of men; translating the universe into one of its quaintest versions; forcing, in the fantastic devices of the " L"rn Burial," a grim smile frum the jaws of the gi-ave itself; feeding his ichim with every variety of learning and the rarest treasures of wisdom, till it grows gigantic and immeasureable; going to bed to the tune of " The huntsmen are up in Arabia, and they have already passed their first sleep in Persia;" and ex- pressing his strange thoughts in a dress of language so grotesque, yet so gorgeous, that you cry out, with the fool in Shakspere, " Motley's the only wear," and fall positively in love with the mother tongue of the " Chimeras;" — to this illustrious trium- virate, Hazlitt has done justice, " heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over." Whenever he has occasion to speak of a cluster of genius, he rises above himself, and his words carol and curvet " like proud seas under him." And how eloquent and melting he becomes, when he couples the reading of a favourite work with some incident of his past history, when he illumines their pages with the pale moonbeam of memory, recording the inn Avhere he first read "Paul and Virginia;" the era made in his existence by Schiller's "Piobbers," which "staggered him like a blow;" the delight with which he saw, in Goethe's page, "the enthusiast (Werter) coming up from the valley," aiul the "long grass waving over his sepulchre;" his first reading of Burke, of '•'Caleb Williams," and the "Man of Feeling." We like nothing better about Ha/.litt than his i-evcrting to the past. Sick of the noi.sy or nauseous now, he is for ever recurring to the glorious "has been." To him the past is more real, as well as dearer, than the future. The one is a cold blank, the other, a warm and thickly-inscribed page. He broods incessantly upon the ])assages of his jterished history, his early loves, hopes, fears, his raptures, and, even still dearer in the consecrating ray of recollection, his miseries and chagrins, and erics out for the revolution of the great Platonic year to bring them round again. Indeed^ hi.s WILLIAM HAZLITT. 37 love to his past self — his present he heartily hates and despises — is a kind of insanity. The "Spirit of the Age" was, in many respects, the best of Hazlitt's productions. It was the "Harvest Home" of his mind. He collected into it the gathered essence of his critical thought. It contains his mature and deliberate opinion of many of his con- temporai-ies, exjiressed in language "gorgeous as the sun at mid- summer." In reading it, you feel as when passing through a gallery of pictures. Here you see Jeremy Bentham, with quiet, far eye, " Meditating the coming age, and regarding the people around him no more than the flies of a summer day." There, lapped in deeper meditation still, and his eye lost in a far larger vista, with misty uncertain look, and voice as the " echo of the roar of the congregated thought of ages," sits the wizard Cole- ridge. Yonder is Elia, " ever turning pensive to the past." Wordsworth — Wordsworth of 1798 — with fustian jacket, "a se- vere worn pressure of thought about the tem[)Ies, and a fire in his eye, as if he savv something more in objects than other men," stalks moodily along, or stops, startled into boyish delight by the eight of a round, warm nest, in its inimitable completeness, its snug security, and with that calm look of mild confidence, which it sends up, as from an eye, to the encompassing heaven; or hears the rustle of a brown passing leaf, " as though a god rushed by." 8outhey passes with erect look, and " umln-ella in his hand in the finest weather." Irving launches his thunderbolts. Rogers polishes his pebbles. Moore minces his pretty sentimentalisms, or trans- fixes titled fools on his " diamond brooch." Giff"ord " strikes at the crutches of ^lary Eobinson." Eldon yawns out his slow syl- lables of decision. Chalmers " mouths an idea as a dog mouths a bone." Brougham utters his "high unmitigated voice, ap- proaching to a scream." Jeffrey creams, and bubbles, and sparkles, like his own champagne. Campbell plies his file, and Sheridan Knowles his fishing-rod, on this true painter's pictured page. Many disquisitions, too, are interspersed on important topics, which met him in his way. For instance, in the course of a few pages, he exhausts the Malthusian controversy. The book, in fine, would not be Hazlitt's, if it were not full of errors of judg- ment, exaggerations of statement, acerbities of temper, and splen- dida vitia of style. Of " The Liberal," Hazlitt was the home-editor. No one can have forgotten the history of this unfortunate periodical. It was meant for a bombshell, to be cast — and by such spirits ! Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt, and Hunt — among the inflammable materials of England; but went off prematurely, and scorched and blistered only their own hands. Byron's proud stomach sickened of it. Poor Shelley was drowned. Hunt became dyspeptic and dull. And to Hazlitt, already a broad mark for the arrows of political 38 WILLIAM HAZLITT. ami literary attack, was left the douMe and difficult task of bear- ing the brunt of its odium, and fulfilling the prestige of its fame. In fact, Avith the exception of the " Vision of Judgment," and the fragments by Shelley from "Faust," his essays are the only readable things in it; and whether we admire their sentiment or not, we are forced to admit their bold earnestness, and feel their burning vigour. As a critic on painting, his pretensions are high. Paintings were to him real existences; each figure in his favourite pieces he loved as well as though he had known it from infancy. With no single passage equal to one or two we could produce from Fuseli — destitute of that uniform manliness of taste and style which distinguished Allan Cunningham — without Lamb's subtlety, or Coleridge's grand general view of the design and morale of paint- ings — he has more enthusiasm, sympathies more unaffected and profound with the masters and masterpieces of the art, more discrimination and a finer tact in discerning latent beauties. Few have said such eloquent extravagances about the old masters, and yet none have more accurately analysed and painted their solid merits. The heavy dark of Rembrandt Aveighing down his pictures under the pressure of chiaro scvro, Claude's vivid skies, Titian's lovely landscapes, are dearer to him than even the car- toons of I'affaelle, or the frescos of Angelo. The silent splen- dours of that beautiful art lift him ever above himself, and touch his lips with living fire ! He is the prose-poet of painting. His "Life of Napoleon" Avas the last and the largest of his books. It had loomed before his vieAV for years, and he meant it fur a proud and monumental Avork. He loved Napoleon, as he loved all the other members of his intellectual seraglio, Avith idolatrous admiration. He saAv him, enlarged in the haze of the hatred Avith Avhicli he regarded the despotisms which he OA'erthrcAA' — the Messiah of Democracy, the pale, yet bold ])ilot of that fire-ship AA-liich the French Eevolution had launched amid its ocean of blood, to track tlirough the nations its path of dismay, ruin, and death ! But the book, written in the decay of his mind, full of hasty and huddled narrative. ])reathing more the spirit of the partisan than that of the calm and dignified liistorian, is confess- edly a failure, though redeemed by passages of ])aradoxica] acute- ness and passionate declamation, Avln'ch yet disjihiy rather the convulsion of strong disease, than the soA-ereign energy of healtli; more the last throes and staggeripgs of a ruined mind, than the sublime composure of a sjiirit about to be "made perfect." One descripti(Ui in it, of the Keign of Terror — a subject suited to the dark and permanent exas]K'ration of his mind — is more like a frag- iiuiit of Tacitus than anything Ave remember in modern history. There i'* in it the same glonmyconccntration and massivegrandenr. lie i)aints the scene as with the torch of the Furies: one or tAvo ROBERT HALL. 39 fierce waftures, and the thing is done. And although the work be imperfect and morbid, yet we believe that the memory of it ministered some consolation to poo" Hazlitt on his premature and unhappy death-bed. On whatever misconduct and mishaps he might look back, with whatever " dimness of anguish " he may have contemplated the gloomy Future, he had, in language how- ever rude and ragged, expressed his full idea of the idol of his soul, and so far was content. Poor fellow, he had many things to wound him: Let's own, since it can do no good on eartli; It was a trying moment, that which found him Standing alone, beside his desolate hearth, While all his household gods lay shivered round him. Well says Bulwer somewhere, that of all the mental wrecks which have occurred in our era, this was the most melancholy. Others may have been as unhappy in their domestic circum- stances, and gone down deeper places of dissipation than he; but they had meanwhile the breath of popularity, if not of wealth and station, to cive them a certain solace. It Avas so with Burns and Byron. But Hazlitt had absolutely nothmg to support and cheer him. With no hope, no fortune, no status in society, no certain popularity as a writer, no domestic peace, little sympathy from kindred spirits, little support from his political party, no moral management, no definite belief; with great powers, and great passions within, and with a host of powerful enemies with- out, it was his to enact one of the saddest tragedies which earth ever witnessed. Such is a faithful portraiture of an extraordinary man, whose restless intellect and stormy passions have now, for eighteen years, found that repose in the grave which was denied them above it. Let his enemies and friends divide between them twain this lesson, expressed in the language of another hapless son of genius, "tliat prudent, cautious self-control, is wisdom's root." But both vtdil readily concede now, that a subtle thinker, an eloquent writer, a lover of beauty, and poetry, and man, and truth, one of the best of critics, and not the worst of men, ex- pired in William Hazlitt. ROBEBT HALL. EoBEET Hall Avas the facile jn-inceps of English dissent. And though his merits have been enshrined and emblazoned in the criticism of Foster, Dugald Stewart, Southey, and John Scott, as well as of Mackintosh and Parr, we may yet, gleaning after thcna in a field so rich, find a few stray ears. Following in their wake, 40 ROBERT HALL. we may, perchance, pick up a few floating fragments from the path of such an argosie. As a preacher, he enjoys the traditional fame of having outstripped all his contemporaries. Some sturdy sons of the Scottish Establishment continued, indeed, long to stand up for the superiority of Chalmers; but their voice, if not drowned, was overwhelmed by the general verdict of public opinion. We believe, however, that, in the mere force of imme- diate impression, the Scottish preacher had the advantage. The rapidity of Hall's delivery, the ease with which finished sentences descended like a shower of pearls; the elevation of the sentiment, the purity of the composition, the earnestness of the manner, the piercing coruscations of the eye — all these taken together, pro- duced the effect of thi'illing every bosom, and enchaining every countenance. But there lacked the struggle and the agony, the prophetic fury, the insana vis, the wild and mystic glance, seeing the invisible, and (when the highest point of his oratory was reached) the " torrent rapture " of our countryman, " taking the reason prisoner," and hurrying tlie whole being as before a Avhirl- ■wind. In listening to Hall, you felt as under tlie influence of the "cup Avhich cheers but not inebriates." Hearing Chalmers Avas like tasting of the " insane root." Hall's oratory might be compared to a low but thrilling air; Chahnei's's to a loud and barbaric melody. Hall's excitement was fitful, varying with the state of his health and feelings; that of Chalmers was constant and screwed up to a prodigious pitch, as if by the force of frenzy. Hall's inspiration Avas elegant and Grecian; you said of Chalmers, as Hazlitt says of Byron, " He hath a demon, if he be not full of the God." We speak merely of instant impression. In most other points, Chalmers is inferior to Hall. When you rob the Avritings of the former of the Avild Avitchery of their delivery; when you take them into the closet; Avhen you read them Avith an eye undazzled by the blaze of his spoken and acted dechimation, they lose much of tlieir interest. You may, indeed, as some do, reproduce, by an oftbrt, the tone and rapid rhythm Avith Avhich they Avere uttered, and imagine that you liear liim all tlie wliik' you read. But still, Avho has not felt a sad sinking down in the })erusal of the Avriter's page, from the rapture Avith Avhich he had listened to the spoken style? It had the effect of disenchiintment. Sometinu's, Avhat seemed force became fustian; reasoning, soi>histry; imagination, A'crbiage. Beauties I)ointcd by the tone and manner, lost their meaning; and faults, hid in the diffiised eftulgence, loomed out in all their magnitude. A vast deal, indeed, that Avas excellent and eloquent renuiincd, but, on the whole, your regret Avas that he had ever published, or, at least, that you had ever read. Fur otherAvise Avith Hall. His sentinieiits and style Avere of a kind whirh needed little, saA-e mere enunciation, to produce their ai>pro])riate impression. He ROBERT HALL. 41 read as well as he spoke. The classical charm which enchanted his hearers was transferred entire to the printed page. We are not blind to the surpassing eloquence and power of Dr Chalmers' "Astronomical Discourses" — the only work quite worthy of its author's reputation. Like what we might conceive of a cataract in the sun, his soul rushes on rejoicing through the magnificent theme; and we feel, as we read, that the stars are the poetry and the religion of Heaven. The excitement of the sub- ject becomes a substitute for the intoxication of his manner: and we breathe the wish that Fontenelle, D'Alembert, and La Place, had read their scepticism away over the moving and glowing page. Nevertheless, a cool criticism will hesitate, ere it place a book, which is neither close in argument, nor profound in insight, nor finished in artistic execution, nor pure in style, beside writ- ings which form the finest models of the English tongue (con- sidered simply as the vehicle of mind), and which are as refined in thinking as they are exquisite in diction. The one, if it sur- vive, will survive as the catacomb of a strange variety of mind, worthy of preservation partly as a brilliant oddity. The others will live and shine, as vials containing the last refinement and quintessence of their land's language. Hall's preaching is distinct from every other school of Christian eloquence. It is not at all akin to that of the early giants of the English pulpit. He has none of Jeremy Taylor's quaint and strange beauties, of his flow and variety of style, or of his rich- ness of imagination, "as beautiful and bounding as a steed;" nor of Barrow's compass, and masterly and conscious ease of diction; nor of Hooker's profound learning, and that rugged rhythm which interpenetrates his huge folios with music; and does not rival John Howe in serene Platonic majesty, in the condjination of a golden vein of poetry with profound and practical strength, and in those great, swelling, and highly wrought passages which are the main merit of the majority of his works. With the writers of a ])eriod partly synchronising with, and partly succeeding, this — with the Owens, the Baxters, the Flavels, the Bateses, the Mantons, and the Charnocks — he has, except in sentiment, little in common. Still less does he resemble the principal preachers of Charles the Second's era in the English Church; and stands widely discriminated from the icy elegancies of Tillotson, the profound but cold-blooded speculations of Butler, the frostwork reasoning of Atterbury and Sherlock, the acid acumen of South, and the half-fledged Socinianism of Clarke. And though we may detect traces of the imitations of French models, now and then; and though here and there he equals Bossuet, Massillon, and Saurin, in their own giddy and perilous ■walk — that of appeal, apostrophe, and the varied prosopopeia of the pulpit — he is entirely free from their faults, their laborious 42 EGBERT HALL. and convulsive flights of fancy, their bursts and starts of counter- feited passion, their disdain of simplicity, their wilful exaggera- tions, their queries and adjurations, repeated till the hearers and the heavens are weary. Not less distinct is he from the polenu- cal — we had almost said, tlie pugilistic — school of preaching, of which Warburton and Horsley are types; and if destitute of their learning and controversial vigour, he has none of their paradoxi- cal bias, nor of their insufferable arrogance. He has been accused in certain quarters of wanting the unction of Newton, Romaine, Thomas Scott, &c., but he possesses all their evangelical senti- ment; and let him not be hastily condemned, if he has paid a little more attention than they did to the structure of his sen- tences, and to the beauty of his style. In more modern times, besides Chalmers, we have heard only four preachers mentioned in the same breath with him, namely, Alison, Irving, Wardlaw, and Andrew Thomson; but he is so distinct from all, as hardly to admit of comparison. He is less finical and more forcible than the first mentioned, not to speak of the far greater weight and abundance of his matter; without the physique, the stormy energy and earnestness of the second, he has all that he lacked — the curb of common sense, good taste, and a balance of faculties; not equal to Wardlaw in the acuteness and amenity of contro- versy, he is an orator as well as a debater, a man of genius as well as of talent; and though destitute of the sturdy force of the lamented Auti-apocry})hist, he possesses a refinement and an elevation, a subtlety and a splendour, which lift him up into quite another region. Hall's characteristics as a writer are not difficult to hit. His thinking is not that of one who is able to cast much new light upon abstruse topics; but of one wlio is ad- mirably adapted to take metaphysical soundings upon all subjects; his is a mind which the study of the abstract has strengthened, but not mystified — sulyugated, but not enslaved; and its insight, v/hile always distinct, and often deep, is never daring. His in- tellect was not merely imitative, but neither was it higlily inde- pendent. In this case, his style, we think, had been Jess exqui- sitely clear and terse. Original minds are rarely so j)ure and perspicuous. Tarns are dark. The ocean is sunless in its (iepths. " The infinite has difficulty in explaining itself to the finite." A certain shade of obscurity does adhere to the very highest oi'der of minds — to Tlatos, to Dantes. and Goethcs. We do not, then, rate Hall so highly as a thinker, as we do in his character of writer, orator, and talker. His thought was vigorous, manly, refined, but not strikingly original, and seldom com])rchcnsive In his celebrated "Sermon on Infidelity," there is, amid a ])rofu- sion of eloquence, not a new idea. Windham traced the greater ])art of its tiiiidassion winds not for a moment into those nooks and eddies of beauty in which Shakspere loves to linger : it Hows right forward in its sullen, yet glittering darkm-ss; it has the ])recision and terrible calmness of Alfieri, without his cold sterility of style; the power and pathos of our elder dramatists, \\ ithout their indecency, their PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 55 carelessness, and their inequality. We i*ecollect, indeed, but two of his considerable poems wliicli are either totally void of purpose, or where the purpose is buried in beauty, like the lark in a sepul- chre of sunshine, or like the nightingale in a grave of embower- ing leaves. We mean " Alastor" and "Episychidion." The first is a professed picture of the wanderings and death of a poet j but so enveloj^ed in visionary beauty, that you lose sight of the ob- ject altogether. It is like the history of the shadow of a cloud in its progress across meadow, forest, lake, river, hill, and ocean, written by itself: so is tlie dim hero driven through a succession of splendid scenes, most beautifully pictured, to die, at length, unlamented and unwept; for who can weep for the departure of a shade! The other is, perhaps, the most eloquent rhapsody in the language. It is the " wild-flower wine" of poetry: the mad- ness of rapture dances in its sounding measures; its " sky-tinc- tured" diction is like that of beings who bask under a brighter and hotter sun than this earth could bear — of the fiery-tressed inhabitants of Mercury or Venus, where a larger orb of day shines on mountains to which the Andes and Himalaya are pigmies; it is a chaos of beauty. No order reigns throughout; yet on its shadowy thread are strung rare and sparkling gems, such as that inimitable description of a Grecian island, beginning — It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as the wreck of Paradise. Nor can we find any substantial ground for the charge of mor- bidity in the choice of his subjects. We can discover no raking among forbidden things — no ghoul-like gluttony of evil — no pas- sion for dissecting depravity, peering into tombs, uplifting putrid shrouds, sitting down beside crumbling coffins, diving into the depth of asylums, eliciting a pliosphoric light from decayed and desolate brains, and, by the gross candle of corruption, thus kindled, inspecting the records of infamy, and sifting the evi- dences of incest. This description — and is it over-coloured.^ — applies to Monk Lewis, to Maturin, to Victor Hugo, but not to Slielley. It is characteristic of him, as it is also of Godwin, and the authoress of " Frankenstein," that they generally keep within the limit which divides terror from horror, the singular from the nnn'bid; and that, even when they touch upon interdicted topics, it is in a delicate and inoffensive style. The subject of " The Cenci," for instance, is almost too horrible for belief or allusion; and yet, so tenderly has he treated the theme, that, but for the known historical facts, you could not, with certainty, infer the nature of the crime which led to parricide. So far from dwelling with morbid avidity, as a late critic in " The Edinburgh Review" insinuates, upon the hideous subject, he throws a mystery ai'ound it; he represents it as something horrible, but nameless; n.i dis- tinct finger-jjost points to its nature; its name never occurs; and 56 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. the interest and power of the play are nearly independent of what is dark and disgusting in the theme. And we perceive that Shel- ley's motive in selecting the topic was not the wish for a strong and tei-rihle stimulus to animate his tragedy with convulsive life, nor was it a desperate desire to astonish and affright the public by the hardihood of his choice, and to gather round him the in- terest of a man who, as a bravado, touches red-hot iron, or walks on the brink of a precipice; but solely the impression made upon him by the portrait of the all-lovely Beatrice, which haunted his fancy till he shrined it in song. We will notice only one other absurd notion rather common about Shelley. He Avas, it seems, made for a translator, and it was very ridiculous in him to be anything else ! We grant freely that he is one of the best translators of the age — as witness both his "Cyclops" and his " May-day Night;" but who would like a man, if confessedly of original genius, to subside into a mere translator? Translation is very well, as the amusement of a strong spirit; but to set two such beings as Coleridge and Shelley to moil and drudge in rendering Homer or Goethe into English ! As soon ])ut lions to the plovigh, or war-chargers to draw carts or caravans! Garrick was not merely a great actor, but a first-rate mimic. What would you think of the wisdom which should regret that he had not cultivated the latter art exclusively? A translator is a mimic — a splendid mimic, if you will. But was not Garrick better employed in tearing his Avhite hair in " Lear," or l)eating Desdemona,with that unspeakable look, in "Othello," than though he had become the standing miracle of mimicry? And was not Shelley better occupied when hymning the " Skylark" — heaping sublime curses on the killer of Adonais — describing the plague, in the " Revolt of Islam" — mating Milton in his " Ode to Liberty" — or treading within the shadow of Shakspere in " The Cenci" — than in gutting the " Faust," or translating odes to Mercury, the god of commerce and of thieves? In examining Shelley's poetry, we must ever, in merest justice, remember his age. He died ere he had completed his twenty- ninth year! W"e do not wish to plead this so much in extenua- tion of his faults; far less, under the unprofitable regret that he had not done more, to slur over and under-rate his actual achieve- ments; Init simply as a necessary element in our adecpuvte esti- mate of tlieir cliaracter. The first thing which strikes his reader is the air of enthusiasm, wliich l»reathes around: you find yourself caught up from the Idw level of life into the atmosphere of moun- tain summits — a rarer, purer, pr^)uder element. As tliere was, we are told, much of tlie seraph in his face — a rapt s])iritual ex- pression — which no artist could fully convey to canvass, so, in liis verse, poetry is transligurod l)efore your sight. Everything with him is in extremes. He has not joy, but rapture — not grief, but PERCY EYSSHE SHELLEY. 57 despair — not love, but agony — not courage, but martyrdom — not anp-er, but Pythian rage. His admiration of nature and of the great works of man, is a fine and noble delirium. The ardour which some poets affect, and which others can only sustain throu;;h short and occasional flights, is in him the mere motion of his mind. There is no resting, no dallying delay, no sleeping upon the wing, no looking round upon the spectators. It is an unin- terrupted kindling flight, as if for existence. A lyrical poet sus- tains with difficulty his maddening rapture through a flight of some fifty or a hundred lines, and at the close sinks exhausted and panting on the ground; but few, save Shelley, could support the transport of the ode throughout twelve books of Spenserian verse. Here, indeed, is the grand fault of his poetry. It is not a majestic walk, nor even a rapid race; it is a long and stormy dance, in which few can keep up with the exhilarated and trans- ported bard. As another feature akin to this, you observe traces of profound earnestness. " The terms bard, and inspired," says Macaulay, " which seem so cold and affected, when applied to others, were perfectly applicable to him. He was not a versifier, but a bard: his poetry was not an art, but an inspiration." You remark, too, in all his writings, the complete and despotic predo- minance of the imaginative power, as in all truly great poets, from Homer to Scott: you see that over all his faculties and attain- ments — over his intellect, his erudition, his pomp and profusion of language — the great light of genius holds sway, like the still sun compelling his planets to obedience by a principle inherent in their own natures. He combines imagination, fresh as that of childhood, and strong as that of madness, with the powers of a manly understanding and the accomplishments of finished scholar- ship. You are amazed at the quantiti/ of his images. Like sparks from a conflagration, brilliant and thick amid the smoke of his mysticism, flashes out incessantly a stream, or storm, or whirl- wind of images. Such is the " Cloud," that fine tissue of poetical star-dust, and the " Witch of Atlas," which is throughout com- posed of the sparkling bul)bles of fancy — the Witch herself being a combination of Puck and Shakspere's Mab, full of aerial Avag- gery. You notice, too, the unearthly character of his images. They are culled from the rarest, the loftiest, and the wildest scenes of nature, from the grandest idealisms of art, from the most secret and unvisited chambers of the human soul, from the foam of hidden cataracts, from the ravines of lonely mountains, from snows untouched by the foot of man, from the " hiss of homeless streams," from the heart of sad and solitary Avoods, from the moan of midnight forests, from the " thousand harmo- nious sounds which nature creates in her solitudes," from the thrones of the thunder and the mansions of the dead, from Pome with its flowery ruins and gigantic death-smiles of art, from 58 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. sculjiture and frona painting, from the dim philosophy of Plato, and the tragic furies and fervours of Eschylus. From all those he has gathered colours which are not of earth — flowers of " arroinj odour," and figures of a colossal magnitude and sym- metry. He, and he principally, of the English poets of our age, has united the peculiarities of the Grecian and Gothic schools. " No writer," again we quote Macaulay, " of this era had so many of the qualities which distinguished the great ancient mastei'S. Had he lived to the full age of man, he would have produced a work of the very first rank in design and execution." You no- tice, as aforesaid, his prodigious command of language. A " re- luctant dragon" to many, it is an obedient vassal to him. What- ever he bids it do is done. Be it to beautify still more the lovely, or to aggravate the dreadful; to fix down the evanescent, or to decijiher the dark; to express either the last refinement of senti- ment or the utmost rapture of feeling; to paint homely horror or panic fear; beauteous dream or sad reality; scenes beyond the power of pencil, or such as a painter might copy in literal tran- script — a rich, varied, unaffected, free, and powerful diction is equally and ever ready. His style reminds you of the " large utterance of the early gods." It is a giant speech, handed down from Plato to Dante, from Dante to Bacon, from Bacon to Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and John Howe; from these to Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. It is the " speech in which Spenser Avrote his ' Faery Queen,' and Milton discoursed the Areopagitica to men, to angels, and to eternity." It is a speech of which we fear the type is failing among modern men. You observe, finally, about Shelley's poetry, the exceeding strength, sweetness, beauty, and music of his versification. His blank verse, without having i\Iil- tonic majesty, is elegance itself. His Spenserian stanza has not, except in parts, the mellifluous flow of Spenser, but it is less rugged and arbitrary than Byron's; and in energy, fire, and sweep of sound, leaves Beattie, Thomson, &c., far behind. But it is per- haps in his odes that his intensely lyrical genius has produced the principal effects of sweet or stormy melody. They I'ise or fall, sink or swell, linger or hurry, lull to rejjosc or awaken to tem- pestuous excitement, lap or pierce the soul, at the perfect ])lea- sure of the poet, who can " play well u]ion his instrument," be it pan-pi])e or lyre, Jew's-harp or organ, tiud)rel or trump. In order, however, to bring out more fully our idea of Shelley's subtle nature, let us, following a style of criticism which, though sometimes deceptive, and though we are said to be rather prone to it, casts strong light U])on the dijf'erences of character, coni])are him with the two of his contem])oraries whom hemo.st resend)led, Keats and Coleridge. It was for a long time customary to name liim with Jjyron, as if he were a minor discii)le in the same school, only out-Herodiug Herod, and " blaspheming an octave higher." PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 59 This was another of those erroneous notions about Shelley, which sprung from an utter ignorance of the subject. Between the two poets thus arbitrarily coupled together for a common doom, there existed as deep a difference as between a vulture and a dove. The one was the personification of sublime hatred, the other of mystic kindness. The broad tree of Byron's genius, with its many manner of fruits, some SAveet as grapes, and others sour as the star Wormwood, was rooted deep in the soil of selfish- ness: the vine of Shelley's mind grew out of a disinterested bene- volence. The secret of Byron's power was his sullen and con- centred passion, whereas sentiment was the soul of all the poetry of Shelley. The one was an inveterate sensualist j the other, during the larger part of his life, abstemious as a hermit. The one was perpetually offending delicacy in his writings, the other was horri- fied at whatever approached its limits. Byron's imagination was powerful, but poisoned and polluted; Shelley's was alike more copious and more pure. Both were sometimes called sublime maniacs; but while the madness of the one was the fruit of re- morse and the restlessness of a diseased spirit, Shelley's mania was that of a mild and sensitive mind; the one was the frenzy of Timon, the other of Hamlet. As a popular and passionate poet, as a wit, sitirist, and declaim er, if Byron have the advantage, Shelley would have had, if life had been granted, in our judgment, as decided a superiority, both as a genuine enthusiast and as a consummate artist, in originality of conception, and in dominion over the resources of language. Both stood aloof from their fel- low-men; but while retirement in Byron was the recoil of rage and scorn as of the stag at bay — in Shelley it was the retreat of the stricken deer to bleed and die. Byron reminds us of his own " Manfred," transferring his afiections, and willing, were it pos- sible, to transfer his relationship, his very being, from a shunned and hated race of " human mortals" to the mountains, or to their shadows, to the cataracts, or to their spray, to herbs, or stones, or eagles, or angels, or demons, or anything but man; nay, sometimes he reminds us of his own " Cain," hating and killing his brother because he cannot comprehend his God; whereas Shelley is Pro- metheus writhing on his rock, blasted by a thousand thunderbolts, yet retaining, amid torture, and the fear of deeper agony,' and solitude, and contempt, and madness, a love for the race of man. Byron ever reminds us of a demon, superior to us in power and misery, wearing his genius as a crown of pain, holding a sceptre of intellectual sovereignty which scorches his hand, baptised with poetic inspiration as with burning gold, wretched himself, and striving to breathe up his own wo upon the sun, the glad earth, the face of man, and the countenance of heaven; — To make the sun like Mood, the earth a tomb, The tomh a hell, aud hell itself a murkier gloom; 60 PERCY EYSSHE SHELLEY. •whereas SLellej' is a milder, more patient, and m.ore gentle being, who seeks to retain liis sadness and oirculale his joy, a ])layful, yet pensive Peri, wavering between Pandemonium and Paradise. We are looking this moment upon the portraits of the Twain, the " counterfeit presentment of two brothers," and cannot but see the difference of their character expressed in every lineament. In the forehead and head of Byron, there is more massive height and breadth: Shelley's has a smooth, arched, spiritual expression: wrinkle there seems none on his brow; it is as if perpetual youth had there dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems 'the focus of pride and power: Shelley's is mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through the mild mist of his own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steeps his full large lip: the lower features of Shelley's face are frail, feminine, flexible. Byron's head is turned upwards, as if, having risen proudly above all his contemporaries, he were daring to claim kindred, or to de- mand a contest, with a superior order of beings. Shelley's is half-bent, in reverence and humility, before some great vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery, erect and striving to cover its retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the perma- nent and pervading expression of Byron's countenance. Sorrow, shaded away and S(Mtened by hope and habit, lies like a "holier day" of still moonshine upoii that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of premature passion — his hair is young, his dress is youthful, but his face is that of a full-grown man. In Shelley, you sec the eternal child, none the less that his hair is grey, and that "sorrow seems half of his innnortality." Byron's face irresistibly suggests to your memory the words of Milton : — l)arlt d.iTintless courage, and conisiderate pride, Waiting rcvenjre. Shelley recalls to us the description of the disguise assumed by him afterwards (in him, however, no disguise): — .\nd now a spriglitly cber\d) Ik? appears, Kot of the prime, but sufli tliat in his face "N'outli siuil.>s celestial, and to every limb Snifalile grace diH'ns<'d. Under a eonmet, bis Howiiig hair In curls on either ciieek j)layed; wings he wore, Of many a ccdoured plume, sjirinkled with gold. Between Keats and Rhelley, there exist many more points of similarity. Both were men of trembling sen-^ihility, and a genius almost feminine in its delicacy: both sinned in point of extrava- PEHCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 61 gance of imagery; both exluLited a promise which the most ma- ture of their inoductions did not fullil; both were essentially young poets; both, nevertheless, have left behind them imperish- able monuments of their powers; both, throughout their chief being, had to struggle with the iuiirmities of a feeble body and a fevered spirit; and of both, alas! the "sun went down while it was yet day." They were, the one the Wordsworth, and the other the Coleridge, of a new school of Lakers, not inferior to the lirst; yet were they essentially distinct. Shelley attained early a manliness of thought and diction w hich Keats never altogether reached. His genius was fed, besides, by a far wider erudition, and came forth shining in the hues of German and Grecian lore, with neither of which the inspired apothecary's boy was acquaint- ed, save through the dull medium of translations. Sustained, too, by a more deiermiued and heroic spirit, Shelley bore the ordeal of attack much better than the trembling youth, who, when the bunch of early flowers, and " weeds of glorious feature," which he meekly presented, was spurned, had nothing left but to die. But if Keats could not have sustained the Ion-'' enthusiasm of tiie " Ke- volt of Islam," nor have elaborated the masterful '" Cenci," it lay alike out of the pov/er of Shelley, or perhaps of any of the poets of the day, to produce " Hyperion," in its colossal plan, its un- earthly calm, with its statuesque sliapes, its eloquence of desjjair, and all the dim beauties, austere splendours, and high original purpose, which excite your v/ouder that a dying boy could wear the buskins of Eschylus, the thunder-shod shaker of the Grecian stage. Superior as Shelley is in sustained stateliness, in sounding march, in extent of knowledge, culture of intellect, and purity of taste, and free as he is fi*om his rival's babyism of mannei", aiiec- tatious of style, endless sinkings away from the finest eloquence, to the sheerest drivel; all those faults, in short, which, in Keats's own woids, '■ denote a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accom- plished;" stiil, there aie, even in the worst works of the author of " Endymion," such quaint originalities, single lines so sweet, single thoughts so profound; so much, in fine, of that pure ele- ment of pow er which clings to the memory and the heart — accord- ing to his own line, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever" — as, taken in connection with his age, justify and conq>el the prog- nostic, that had he but outlived the fearful tenderness of his sensi- bilities, and out-soaied the onset of his foes, Adonais would, in the " heaven of song," have sat above Alastor. To Coleridge, Shelley bore a striking resemblance in the music of his verse, in the lyiical tone of his genius, in the ponqj and power of his language, in the strange selection of his images, in the heat of his blood, in the diffusion and felt facility of his com- position, and in that summer haze which swaddles so often the sun of his spirit. h>ut in '"' energic reason," in variety of know- 62 ■ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, ledge, in comprehension, in gleams of sudden and searching truth, clearing away centuries of gloom; in incalculable unexpectedness, in single passages, figures, and thoughts of extreme lustre, and in a certain mysterious magic which floated about all the strange man did, from his most elaborate composition to his most careless table-talk, Coleridge rises at once above him and all his country- men. As a poet, however, Shelley has displayed more variety of fancy, and is altogether swifter, sul)tler, more daring, more ec- centric, and ethereal. As a talker, Coleridge was slow, solemn, calm, and enchaining; Shelley, loud, animated, fast and fervid, shrieking out his winged words. In appearance, Coleridge Avas of middle size; in age, fat, unctuous, reclined, grey-haired, with dim metaphysic eye; brow lofty, and very prominent in the ob- serving organs; rich dreamy lips, and voice resembling the "crush of the wood-pigeon's note." Shelley was tall, slender, stooping, worn to spirit and Ijone; small-faced, with sweet mouth; the hectic of death blooming on his cheek, and the fire of a fine mad- ness rioting in his large open eye; with much of the peacock's V)eauty, he had also the peacock's voice, harsh and shrill in its higher notes, piercing in its whisper. As men, both were amiable, sensitive, forefivinof; but while in Coleridsfe there was a stronff tendency to sensual enjoyments, to irresolution, and to indolence, Slielley was purged, earnest, active, resolute, and stripped, as one who was soon to join a spiritual company. In one point, there was no comparison — Coleridge was a meek and lunuble disciple of Jesus Christ; and the latest cry of his penitent spirit was, " God be merciful to me a sinner." Shelley's first ])ublished writings were two novels, one of which only, " Zastrozzi," we have read.* It is quite unwox'thy of Shelley; nor, though written at fifteen, does it display any remarkable precocity of talents. Though full of ravings about deep bosoms, " scintillating eyes," tkc, it contains not a gleam of his peculiar genius. Yet, whether it was from some interest in the story, or from the fact of its being tlie first draught of the hand which wrote " The Cenci," we could not give it u]) till the close. How great the rise in two years, from this genuine product of the Minerva Press, to " Queen Mab." The middle part of that poem is, indeed, as bad as possible; full of insane trash against com- merce, monai-chy, «fec., as dull as it is disgusting; but the first two hundred lines, descriptive of the sleep of lanthc, and the ascent of tlie magic car, ai*e erpial, in sustained power, l)eauty, and melody, to anything in the English language. Through even the waste darkness of the metapliysics wliicli follow, are sprinkled some clear and picturesque descriptions. The figure • We have since read the "Rosicrucian." It is only a little better than tlie other — very crude and juvenile. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 63 of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, with his "non-essential sha- dow," is sublime; and a description of the millennium, written with transcendent eloquence, brings the poem to a golden close. And all this Shelley had accomplished at an age when few, even of clever boys, had hnished their first sonnet to Mary, or their monody over the death of a favourite terrier. About this time, having published an absurd pamphlet, he was taken before the grave and reverend seigniors of his university, and, refusing to retract, was formally expelled. He ran straightway, the young fair-haired, bright-eyed enthusiast, to the lodgings of his friend, the author of " Shelley at Oxford," shrieking out, with clasped hands, and streaming eyes, " I am expelled ! I am expelled ! " Thereafter he led a wild and wandering life, journeying through Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzerland, &c., restless and wretched as Cain: collected the materials of "Alastor;" and, anticipating early dissolution from his consumptive habit, closed it by the death of the shadowy and spirit-like poet. To the same dark period of his history — When black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the path in which he moved alone — belongs the hapless history of his first marriage. With the cir- cumstances of this unhappy afiair, we are not sufficiently acquaint- ed to pass on it any definite judgment. The marriage, first of all, was gone about with the utmost possible imprudence. Shel- ley then found, when it was too late, that there was an utter want of sympathy between him and his wife. We will not be- lieve that a man, so amiable to all others, could act cruelly to her; but certainly there ensued a coldness, then an estrange- ment, and ultimately a separation. And terribly did the business terminate — in the suicide of his wretched wife, and in his own temporary derangement: a retreat from the world, even into the cave of madness, being a positive blessing and relief to his tor- mented spirit. And, alas ! when he awoke from his dream, he found that his children, too, had been torn from his paternal em- brace, under a law surely far too stern and summary. In the "serener hour" which followed his marriage with the present Mrs Shelley, by the banks of the Thames, under the groves of Marlow, and in the " starlight smile " of the cliildren she bore him, he wrote the " Kevolt of Islam," by many thought the loftiest, as it is the largest of his works. It was written principally in the open air, as the beautiful being sat in the twilight of the summer woods, or weltering in his boat upon the summer waters. He wrote it, he tells us, in six months; but the thoughts and feelings it included had been slowly accumulating for as many years. It was the first we read — part of it on the half-moon 64 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. battery of Edinuurgli Castle, while a thunder-storm was coming up the west — and we continue to regard it witli all the ardour of early love. The melting music of the opening lines to Mary; the Spenser-like breadth and richness of its allegorical parts; its spiritual and ethereal tone; its raptures of natural description; the interest cast around the two lovers, who are its principal charac- ters; the energy of its language; the strangeness of its story; the power of its individual pictures — such as that of the fight between the serpent and the eagle; the horrors of the plague, and the death of Laon and Laone; above all, the daring and dreamy representa- tion of the future world, in which, notwithstanding his other errors, Shelley was a believer; all, taken together, produced on us a pro- found impression, and have rendered its perusal an interesting reminiscence in our intellectual history. We felt its occasional tediousness; the unsuitableness of its stanza for narrative; the length and labour with Avhich its allegories are spun out; the dithculty of keeping up such a high i)itch of enthusiasm in its readers so long; its failure as an epic; and its impotence as a moral or political engine; but we had, nevertheless, the pleasing, yet solemn impression throughout, of being in the presence of a searching, original, and sublime genius. "Rosalind and Helen" is a more pathetic, but mucli less powerful production. It is framed on an extremely simple plan. Two gentle females meet each other by the sides of Como's lake. A recognition follows. They had been friends in youth; but their paths had diverged, and their affections had been esti-auged from one another. They tell their stories in language reminding you of Avhat is softest in the style of Crabbe, and least peculiar in that of the Lakers. Both are tales of wo: one had married an old man, who, from his "jmtrid .shroud," had completed the misery which, in life, his tyranny had begun, by branding her in his will as an abandoned woman, from which dark blast of falsehood she tonk refuge in Italy. T!ie other had wedded a poet-lover, a tine and noble spirit, a fac-simile of Shelley, who, after persecution unheard of, had " died and left her desolate." They meet here; and by the interchange of their tales, are reconciled to each other, and to their sad and solitary doom. This slender stream of narrative the poet conducts through much green and fi-esh pathos, some homely tragedy, and some eloquent imagery. It is quite free from his besetting sin of allegory, and is altogether the most pleasing and life-;ike of his minor poems. Concerning "Prometheus Unbound," which he wrote under the bright blue sky of Jumio, and amid the vine-covered ruins of the JJatiis of Caracalla, opinions have widely varied. While some talk of it as a long spasmodic grasp at a height once attained, but to be reached by mortal no more, otliers vow, by all that's Grecian, that it ai)proaches Eschylus, iuid is, by far, Shelley's greatest work. VV'e incline to a medium view of the matter. Thau the PERCY BYSSHB SHELLEY. 65 figure of Prometheus, and liis opening soliloquy, and many of his after speeches, nothing can be UKjre austere and antique : he is the very being whom the father of the Grecian stage had in his eye; mild, majestic, casting a loveliness from his meek face upon the rocks which hear his groans, and the vulture which drinks his blood; a being between man, demon, and Deity, far diflerent from the Satan of Milton, or the Lucifer of Byron; without the enormous pride of the one, or the lurid malignity of the other. The language, too, put into his mouth is worthy of him; free from the sulphurous foam of passion, "champing the bit," and from the writhing sneers of crushed malice ; it is calm amid its misery, dignified in the very depths of its wo. In describing the scenery of the Caucasus, the air of eternitv, the " brip^ht and burnint; cold," the dizzy ravines, the snowy sheen, the loneliness and the unspeakable age of the mountain, are admirably caught in the abrupt and tortured grandeur of Shelley's blank verse. And there is one short scene, descriptive of the downfall of Jupiter, sinking under the weight of Demogorgon, and of his final look, Like the last i^lare of day's red agony, Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds, Burns far along the tempest- wrinkled deep— which reaches the acme of the sublime. How the cry of drown- ing Deity " Ai! Ai!" rings in our ears. But the poem has great and incurable blemishes. It is utterly void of human interest. It is crushed under a load of thick allegorical darkness. As a catapult aimed at principalities and powers, it is feeble in its very hugeness, and " like a devilish engine back recoils." And even as a work of art it fails, from attempting too much. It is too like Eschylus to be equal to Eschylus. It reads, in parts, like a translation from the Greek; and this is fatal to its success. What essayist would succeed now by writing in the style of Plato i or what epic poet, by giving a duplicate of Homer? Besides, even as a i-evival of the Grecian cb'ama, the work is imperfect. In the first part, Eschylus is emulated; but ere the close, the genius of Shelley irresistibly breaking out in all its peculiarities of abstract thought, and in all its extravagancies of lyrical license, mars the verisimilitude. Still, if not the finest, this is the most ambitious and daring production of his pen, and perhaps calcu- lated to give the highest impression of its author's powers, and the deepest sorrow for their premature obscuration. Nowhere do we find more strongly than in its lyrics, a specimen of the Pythian oisrpog, the rush of poetic numbers, the tremendous gallop of an infuriated imagination. " Adonais" is an elegy over John Keats, in the style of Lycidas, full of sweetness, sublimity and ])athos, but entangled with " wheel within wheel" of complicated allegory and thick-piled darkness F 66 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. The best passage is that describing the procession of the moun- tain shepherds to mourn the death of their lost brother, " their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent." Byron comes, the " pil- grim of eternity, veiling all the lightnings of his song in sorrow," a proud and melancholy mourner. Moore disdains not to follow the hearse of the author of the " Pot of Basil," and thus is his presence described : — From her wilds lerne sent The sweetest Ivrist of her saddest wrong, And love taught grief to fall in music from his tongue. "What gentler form is hushed over the dead?" It is Leigh Hunt, the discoverer of the boy-poet, who found him as a natura- list finds a new variety of violet, while gazing on its native stream, amid the silent woods; and who, " taught, loved, honoured, the departed one." And in the rear of the laurelled com})any, lo ! a strange, shadowy being, alone among the multitude. It is the poet of Prometheus, mourning with thin, spirit-like wail, the de- parture of his friend. Listen to Shelley's picture of himself — one of those betrayals of personal emotion into which he is some- times hurried, for he loved too many things, and thoughts, and beings, to be an egotist: — Mid others of less note came one frail form, A phantom amongst men — eonipanionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm. Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness, Acticon like, and then he fled astray With feeble steps, o'er the world's wilderness, While his own tlioughts along that rugged way Pursncd like raging hounds their father and tlieir prey. A pardlike s|(irit, beautiful and swift, A love in desolation masked, a power Girt round by weakness. Of that crew, Ho came the last, neglected and apart, A herd-abandoned deer, pierced by the hunter's dart. The close of the poem is remarkable for containing the predic- tion, or presentiment, that as Keats and he had been alike in their lives, so in their deaths they were not long to be divided: — I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar, While, burning thi-ough the inmost viil of Heaven, The soul of .Vdonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode wliere the eternal are. It has been fulfilled. All of the gifted two that could die, lies now side by side in the same churcliyard, under the blue of the same Italian sky. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 67 Our space forbids us dilating* on the Cenci more than we have done already. It would require a lengthened article to do justice to its conception of character ; its firm and fearless, yet modest and dainty, depiction of the monstrous old man, whose gust of evil is so intense, and whose joy is so purely diabolical; of his feeble and broken-hearted wife, like a redbreast wedded to a vulture; above all, of Beatrice, that " loveliest specimen of the workmanship of God," with her "eyes swollen with wee})ing, and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene;" her "head bound with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape and fall down about her neck;" her "forehead large and clear; her eyebrows distinct and arched; her lips with that peniianent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suttering has not repressed, and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish;" and preserving, amid the circle of giddy hor- rors which revolves around her, the purity and gi-eatness of her own soul. Nor must we dwell on its rigid and strong stream of purpose — its deep and quiet glances into the core of the human heart — the energetic simplicity of its style — the power of the murder scene — the one exquisite bit, no more, of natural de- scription which occurs in it — and the art by which the fiendish horrors of the beginning prepare for, and melt away into the heartrending j^athos of the end. How beautiful and affecting the last words of Beatrice, as she is being led along with her mother to early and horrible death: — Give yourself no unnecessary pain. My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair In any simple knot: ay, that does well, And yours, I see, is coming down. How often Have we done this for one another! now We shall not do it any more. My Lord, We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well. Meant for the first of a series, it stands alone, the best of Shelley's productions; the first tragedy since Shakspere, and one of the first poems in this or any age. "Hellas," the poet himself called a mere improvise, but it is full of a rapid, torrent-like eloquence. As a drama, it limps; l)ut as a poem it storms and hurries on like a very Phlegethon. The revolution in Greece — in Greece ! a country which had become a standing example, and moral, and monument of degeneracy, bursting out suddenly as if its stagnant waters had been disturbed by an angel plunging amid them from the battlements of Heaven — roused" the soul of Shelley, then just falling asleep in its misery. It was " Vesuvius wakening Etna," and the result is before us in this the most vigorous and volcanic of his secondary poems, in which the lava stream of his feelings, scattering away his frequent 68 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. mists, runs, and rushes, and roars, with a motion like that of Byron's iierce genius, when it produced the " Siege of Corinth." In a kindred strain of rapid vehemence, does Shelley exult over the downfall of the Turks, and predict the resurrection of old Greece. It is a wild prophetic impromptu, half-white foam, and half-red fire, lyrical withal, and only shadowed by the mystic shape of Ahasuerus; for here he takes a final farewell of the " Wandering; Jew," a figure which had haunted his ueuius all along from '' Queen Mab," and another yet earlier poem, which he wrote along with Medwin, down to his " positively last ap- pearance " in " Hellas." What strange charm the idea had over Shelley's mind we cannot tell; unless, perhaps, a resemblance between his own destiny and crime, and those of this fugitive and vagabond on the face of the earth. As it is, he makes in " Hellas " a very noble exit, indeed, and we would back him against a century of " Undying ones," fabricated upon the \)er- petual motion principle, save the mark ! by Mrs Norton. Shelley's smaller pieces are very various in style and merit; some of them most ingeniously and ineftably impenetrable; others as lovely and lively, or as soft and plaintive little morsels as ever dropt from human pen. Such, for instance, are tlie sweet and pure Anacreontic, beginning, " The fountains mingle with the river;" the " Lines to an Indian Air;" the " Lines written in de- jection at Naples;" the " Hymn to a Skylark," which might be set to that blythest of birds' own music, and whose words dance like a fay in the silver shine of the moon; the " Sensitive Plant," the sweetest, strangest, dreamiest, holiest thing in all his poetry, with that figure of the nameless lady in it, glorifying her garden for evermore; tlie " Ode to Naples," mounting into the very dome of the Temple of the Lyric Muse; the " Poem on the Aziola," and her "sad cry;" the "Lines on the Euganean Hills," with their eloquent remonstrance to the " Swan of Albion," then soiling his desperate wing in the " sins and slavei-ies foul" of the sea-Sodom; the " Mont Blanc;" " Julian and Maddalo," with its fine portraiture of Byron and himself in the undress of their Titanic souls, "rolling billiard bails about," instead of pointing their batteries against the wide-mouthed artillery of Heaven; and, lastly, " Peter Bell the Third," which, published since his death, has discovered an under- current of burning sarcasm to have run on in secret under the lake of his genius. Shelley's prose works must not be omitted froin the catalogue, if works they can be called, which were never meant for anything else than occasional effusions. They include two or three trans- lations from Plato, the prefaces to his various poems, a few essays and criticisms, published posthumously, and a selection from his correspondence. Yet, brief and unlaboured as they are, they raijc our estimation of the man. They are free from the fever PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 69 and wilclness of his poetry. Their sentiment is finely generous and discriminating. Their tone of criticism contrasts well with the exclusiveness of the Lakers. Shelley had an intensely catholic taste, tremblingly alive to every variety and degree of excellence, equally fond of the Grecian and the Gothic schools; loving at once Keats and Moore, Bowles and Byron, Leigh Hunt and Coleridge, Hogarth and Leonardo de Vinci. His criticisms bring out the jieculiarities of his authors or painters, amid a blaze of native beauty, a halo communicated by his own mind. Kaffaelle Avas his especial favourite; and he held strong opinions as to his superiority to Michael Angelo, whose st}'le he thought hard, coarse, and savage. His estimates of the remains of the classic school — of the Minerva — the Niobe, " shielding her chil- dren from some divine and inevitable wrong " — the Bacchantes, with their " hair caught in the whirlwind of their tempestuous dance " — are confessedly superior even to Winkelman's. They are distinguished by chaste and Grecian beauty. His prefaces are undoubtedly too presumptuous, too plainly prejudicating the case, and flinging down defiance in the face of the public. Now, without wishing that he had descended to indite any servile apology — of such feeble deprecation of doom, he was, indeed, in- capable — we could have liked if he had followed a more just and modest taste in this matter; — if, stung though he was by depre- ciation into an intense and almost insane consciousness of him- self, he had copied the example of John Keats, whose preface to "Endymion" is, in our judgment, an ideal specimen of such things, filled, as it is, Avith a proud and noble humility. "No feeling man," he says, " will be forward to inflict punishment on me; he will leave me alone, knowing tliat there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object." Still the tone of iShelley's prefaces is trumpet-like, their march stately and majestic, their criticism profound. Thus loftily does he describe his poetical education : — " I have been familiar from boyhood with moun- tains and lakes, and the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my play- mate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have ])een a wanderer among distant fields; I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen popu- lous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war; cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished on their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Home, and modern 70" PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Italy, and our own country, lias been, to me, like external nature, a passion and enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the imageiy of my poems is generally drawn." The correspondence of Shelley is distinguished by all his cha- racteristics — his fancy, feeling, fire, purity of sentiment, feminine delicacy of taste, mild stateliness of diction, and, in addition to all this, by a piercing sagacity of observation, and instinctive propriety of sentiment, on every-day topics, which you could never have expected from the visionary cast of his poetry. How clearly he sees through Lord Byron, amid his admiration ! — how awake is he to his foibles ! — how honest in his advices ! — how alive to his true power, his true fame, and happiness ! — how deeply chagrined and disgusted at his miserable desecration of noble powers and amplest opportunities ! How different from the crawling sycophants, Avho were glad to lick the very slime of sin from his proud feet ! What tender gleams, too, are cast, in the same correspondence, upon Shelley's domestic feelings and habits, on his love to his wife and family, on his amiable, forgiving, and benevolent disposition. Altogether — to parody an expression of Dr Johnson's — let him Avho would attain an English style, chaste but not cold, classical but not stiff, energetic but never extrava- gant, clear Init never shallow, profound l)ut never mystic, give his days and liis niglits to the })rose of Shelley. We are writing a criticism, not a life. But we would refer those who would know more alxmt his personal and private manners, to Leigh Hunt's and ^Icdwin's "Reminiscences;" to Talfourd's " Oration in Defence of Moxon;" to a series of papers which appeared in the " New Monthly Magazine," entitled, "Shelley at Oxford;" and to the recent life l)y his early friend, Captain Medwin. All agree in describing him as the most warm- hearted, the most disinterested, the most childlike, and, withal, the most eccentric of human beings. Whether lying asleep on the hearth-rug, with his small round head thrust into almost the very fire; or launching on the Serpentine, in defect of a paper boat, a fifty-pound note; or devouring large jiieces of dry bread, amid his 2'i'<)f()und abstractions; or stalking along the streets of Lon- don, with his long and quiet steps; or snatching a child from its nurse's arms, sliaking, the while, his long fair locks, and ask- ing what it remombcrod of its antenatal state; or now scalding, and now half-iioisoiiiiig himself with chemical experiments; or discussing a ])oint in Plato, under the twilight trees, Avith far- lieard shriclxiiig voice; or taking Leigh Hunt by the two hands, and asking him, with the most comical earnestness and grief — "Can you tell me the amount of the national debt?" or, another time, in a stage-coach, unintentionally terrifying an old lady out of her wits, by saying suddenly to his com])anion, in <|uotation from Shaks^jcre, '' Hunt, I pray thee, let us sit upon the ground, PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 71 and tell strange stories of the deaths of kings;" or, rushing out of the room, in sweltering terror, as his wild imagination painted to him a pair of eyes in a lady's breast; or, writing to Rowland Hill for the use of Surrey Chapel to preach his peculiar views in; or, like Dr Johnson, lifting a poor houseless outcast upon his back, and cari-yiug lier to a place of refuge; or running about from cottage to cottage, in Marlow, visiting and helping the sick; or swallowing endless cu})s of tea; or basking in the hottest beams of an Italian sun, till he had made men suspect that he had been designed for the planet Mercury; or, though on all other subjects the wisest of the wise, the gentlest of the gentle, the bravest of the brave, yet, when one topic was introduced, be- coming straightway insane, his eyes glaring, his voice scream- ing, his hand vibrating frenzy; ov, sailing in his crazy, Charon- like boat, upon the 8erchio; or seen entering a wood near Pisa, a little before his death, at a time when he was miles away — his character, on the Avhole, was one of the most interesting, and his life among the most romantic in literary story. Every one must remember the catastrophe which robbed the world of this won- derful being. Everybody knows that, on the news of the arrival of Leigh Hunt in Italy, Shelley hastened to meet him. During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits — to him ever a sure prognostic of coming evil. On his return to his home and family, his skiff was overtaken by a fear- ful hurricane, and all on board perished. His body, when found, was in a state unfit for removal. It was, therefore, under the auspices of Byron and Hunt, burned on the sea-shore, all but the heart, which would not consume. To a gentleman who, at the time, was with a glass surveying the sea, the scene of his drowning assumed a very striking appearance. A great many vessels were visible, and among them one small skiff, which attracted his particular attention. Suddenly a dreadful storm, attended by thunder and columns of lightning, swept over the sea, and eclipsed the prospect. When it had passed, he looked again. The larger vessels were all safe, riding upon the swell, the skiff only had gone down for ever. And in that skiff was Alastor ! Here he had met his fate. Wert thou, oh " religious sea," only avenging on his head the cause of thy denied and insulted Deity ^ Were ye, ye elements, in your courses, commissioned to destroy him I Ah, there is no reply. The surge is silent. The ele- ments have no voice. In the eternal councils the secret is hid of the reason of this man's death. iVnd there, too, rests the still more tremendous secret of the character of his destiny. Let us shut the book, and clasp the clasp. 72 DR CHALMERS. We have somewhei-e heard the indolence of true genius de- plored. But certainly the charge does not apply to men of genius in our day. In an age distinguished above all others for fervid excitement and unrelaxing energy, it was to be expected that the brighter and loftier spirits should share in the general ac- tivity. And so verily it is. There is scarcely such a being now- a-days as your sluggish and slumbering literateur, reposing under the ])etty shadow of his laurels, dreaming of immortality, and soothing his soul with the pleasing idea that, because he is the stare of a coterie, he is the '■ observed of all observers;" and that everybody else is as intensely conscious of his minute merits as a happy vanity has rendered himself. Nor are there, on the other hand, many specimens now-a-days of a still sadder species of il- lusion — a man of fancied genius, dividing his days between the study and the tavern, enacting the part of Savage and Dermody, without a ray of their talent. This disgusting kind of absurdity is dead and buried. Genius, in our time, is up and doing, " work- ing while it is day." The most vigorous are now also the most active, and, may we not say, the most A'irtuous of minds. And were Ave to name one quality amid the assemblage of pe- culiarities which distinguished the subject of this sketch, as more than another his, it would be that of activity : of restless, burning, unappeasable activity. Some necessity of action seemed laid upon liim. Some invisible scourge seemed suspended over his head, urging him onwards. This quality was as strong on him when the grey hairs of age, like a crown of glory, gathered round his head, as it was in his fiery youth. " A great river, in its ordi- nary state, is equal to a small one when swollen into a torrent." So the aged and ordinary state of Dr Chalmers's feelings was equal to the extremes, the jjaroxysms, the juvenile raptures of less energetic minds. What others shrink from as the very brink of insanity, was his starting point — the first step of his aspiring spirit. ~ We heard him once addressing an audience of two thousand persons. The audience was exciting, and we saw from the first that he was to be sucked into the maelstrom of his passion sooner than was ordinary with him. Generally he rose by distinct and gradual stages into the full swell of his power; but in the present case, after a few intrtxluctory remarks, he rushed at once into liis most rapid smd fervid maimer. Kre the middle of his two hours' speech, he had reached a climax whence to rise seemed ]io])eless. Like an eagle wlio has reached his highest limit, and who remits and lowers his strong flight, so he consented to let himself down to a less giddy elevation, to dally with, if not to DR CHALMERS. , 73 slur over his subject. A yawn began to spread through the au- dience. There were ominous revertings to the door; watches, so appalling to orators, were beginning to appear; and there were fearful whispers, with "dry lips," "When will he closer' And soon it became apparent that he was closing; he suddenly struck again his former high key-note; he quoted the lines of Burns, " From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs," &c. It was answered by a burst of ajiplause. He replied by a ten mi- nutes' torrent of the most brilliant eloquence, and sat down amid thunders of acclamations. The triumph of the orator Avas com- plete. Dr Chalmers found his level, and it was one equally removed from the over-estimates of partial friends, and the depreciation of party — he had no personal foes. A great thinker, enkindling original thought into eloquence, he can hardly be called. To Burke he has been often compared, though we could never well understand why. The only point of resemblance we can perceive between the two, is a certain hurrying, impetuous motion of style, which denotes the extreme degree of possible excitement; which reveals in both the contortions of the sybil along with the inspiration. We notice this particularly in Burke's later and Chalmers's earlier works. In their fierce pages, the very con- necting particles — the very " ands" — seem inspired and enkindled by the surrounding fury. But, bating this similarity, which is one rather of temperament than of genius, no two intellects can be more different than those of Burke and Chalmers. The great forte of Chalmers is immediate impi-ession. Burke's speeches were, we know, generally delivered to empty benches. Chalmers's intellect is spacious and lofty, but in everything like depth and comxprehensiveness, inferior to Burke's. Chalmers's fancy is bold; but in its colours there is a sameness as well as splendour. Those of Burke are varied and brilliant as the hues of nature; his " im.^ perial imagination" has brought the universe within its range. Of almost all styles, that of Chalmers is the most tinctured with mannerism. Burke's is much more diversified; it wanders at will, like the wind which bloweth where it listeth, now uttei'ing sounds of deepest fervour, and now of tenderest beauty. It is, like Shakspere's, a style not to be anticipated, which changes upon you evermore, uncertain and unexpected. In the course of Chalmers's writings, there are many many passages over which you hang and pause, in breathless admiration; but there are few striking things, few ct>nq)act and aphoristic sentences, at which you start, which fix themselves down upon yt/ur memory, and which, once heard, are never forgotten. What you do carry away is generally a forcible alliteration. It is, on the other hand, the charm of Edmund Burke, that his winged words are heavy with golden ideas, that he scatters sentences of the most memo- 74 DR CHALMERS. rable character and precious worth, embodying in them lessons of profound and practical wisdom, amid the rushing whirlwind of his eloquence. Chalmers writes a barbarous and Babylonish diction, redeemed by great energy, and steeped in genuine en- thusiasm, and set off with rugged ornaments. Burke's style is English, or, if ever he coins new words, or makes new combina- tions, it is because the resources of the language are sometimes all unequal to the double demand of his understanding and his genius. While admitting Chalmers to be the most powerful Christian orator (Irving excepted), our country has ])roduced for two cen- turies, we must place him, as a writer, in the second rank, alike of past and present preachers. When you compare his style with Barrow's, you are ashamed to think that, in the course of two hundred years, the language seems so to have retrograded ; the contrast is so great between the true taste, the copiousness, and the power of at once cutting the most delicate discriminations, and catching the freshest colours, which belongs to the diction of the one, and the comparative coarseness, scantiness, and manner- ism of the otiier. When you compare his imagination with Jeremy Taylor's, you become sensible of the difference between a strong, but bounded, and an inexhaustible faculty. When you put his discourses as wholes beside those of Horsley in their manly vigour, they seem imperfect, spasmodic, and monotonous. As a thinker, he is, compared to Fostei-, hackneyed, and to Isaac Taylor, timorous. But as an orator, hurried away himself by a demoniac energy, his faculties and his heart alike subservient to, and swimming in a current of ungovernable ehxjuence; and with the power of conveying entire to others his most pecidiar emo- tions, and of breathing out upon tliem, as from snorting nostrils, his contagious fire; not only does he stand alone in this age, but we question if in any period, in this single (luality, his equal has appeared. Demosthenes, everybody knows, had immense energy, but his ^iivoTTtg had rarely the rushing fluency we mean to ascribe to Chalmers. Cicero is ornate and elal)orate; he is a river cut through an artificial bed, rather than a mountain torrent. Jere- my Taylor's stream meanders, " gliding at its own sweet will," rather tlian swoops right onward to the sea of its object. Barrow, to vary the figure, takes sometimes the gallop in grand style, but his eye never gets red in the race, nor do his nostrils breathe fire or sjn'inif blood. Howe makes every now and thou a noble leap, ami then sul)sides into a (|uiet and deliberate i)ace. Burke is next Chalmers in this (piality. Curran, Grattan, Sheil, and I'liiilips, fro(piontly exliil)it this rai)id and involuntary movement of mind and style; but it is marred in the first ])y ditlusion; in the two next by a certain irregular and starting motion, spring- ing from their continual antithesis; and in the last by the enor- DR CHALMERS. 75 mous degree in which he possesses his country's diseases, of in- tellectual incontinence, and plethora verhorum. Hall occasionally rises to this style, as in the close of his sermon on the threatened invasion; hut is too fastidious and careful of minvite elegancies to sustain it long or reach it often. Irving shines in brief and pas- sionate bursts, but never indulges in long and strong sweeps through the gulfs of ether. But with Chalmers such perilous movement is a mere necessity of his mind : his works read like one long sentence; a unique enthusiasm inspirits with one deep glow all his sermons, and all his volumes; and so far from need- ing to lash, or sting himself into this rapid rate, he must pursue a break-neck pace, or come to a full stop. Animation is a poor word for describing either his style or manner. Excitement, convulsion, are fit, yet feeble terms for his appeai'ance, either at the desk or the pulpit. And yet, what painter has ever ventured to draw him preaching? And hence the dulness and paltriness of almost all the prints (we except Duncan's admirable portrait); they show the sibyl off the stool, the eye dim and meaningless, not shot with excitement, and glaring at vacancy; the lion sleep- ing, not the mane-shaking, tail-tossing, and sand-spvirning lord of the desert. In repose, neither his face nor form are much better than an unstrung bow or an unlighted lustre. After all that Chalmers has written, the " Astronomical Dis- courses" are, as we have stated already, in our opinion, his best and greatest work. They owe not a little, it is true, to their subject — Astronomy, that "star-eyed science " which, of all others, most denotes the grandeur of our destiny, and pkimes our wing for the researches and the flights of unembodied existence; which, even in its infancy, has set a crown upon the head of man — worthy of an angelic brow — a crown of stars; which has recently made such marvellous revelations of the firmaments scattered throughout immensity, their multitude, their strange shapes, and the obscure laws wliicli seem to regulate their motions, and explain their forms; of the double stars and their supposed Annus Afagnits of revolution round each other, a period which dwarfs even the Chinese chronologies into insignificance; of those changes which appear to be going on above, on a scale so amaz- ing, by which sheeted heavens are seemingly split or splitting up into individualised portions, suns torn away by handfuls from an abyss or ocean of kindred orbs, old stars extinguished by a power of which we cannnot even conceive, and others hurried to and fro, at a rate so swift, and on a stream of energy so prodigious, as to bewilder and appal us; of the Milky Way, that unbanked river of stars; of the sun, and that faint train of zodiacal light which he carries as a finger pointing back to the mode of his creation, and how wonderful it is that he has retained so many thousands of years the heat which he received from the one 76 DR CHALMERS. Breath, which bade him Be — be bright, be warm, and shine till time be no more; of the telescope, that angel-eye by which man converses with the '" loftiest star of unascended heaven;" of comets, those nondescript births of our system; of the probable size of the creation, a size so stupendous, as to justify the figure of the poet, who compares all we see of it, even through the telescope, to "a drop of dew, filling in the morning new some eved flower, whose voung leaves waken on an uuima^ined world:" — Astronomy, which is advancing at a ratio of speed and splen- dour that promises results of which gravitation was only the gemn, even the discoveries of Herschel, like the ^lay blade to the Sep- tember corn; which is telling us, through the approximate solution of the problem of the .Stellar Parallax, of suns so distant from us, that the distance betwixt the earth and Sirius is but one unit in the awful sum of their surpassing and ineflfiible remoteness; which, grasping in its giant hand the telescope of Lord Eosse, is about to sound the heavens with a far more powerful j^lummet than was twenty years ago even imagined; and has thaAved down the most obstinate Xebulse into heavens and " heavens of heavens." All this opens up a field so vast and magnificent, that it was im- possible for a mind like that of Dr Chalmers altogether to fail in its exposition. And, so far as the Newtonian astronomy goes, the poetry, as well as the religion of the sky, never found before such a worthy and enthusiastic expounder. Kindling his soul at those "street-lamps in the city of God," he descants upon ci-ea- tion in a style of glowing and unaffected aixlour. He sets the "Principia" to music. He leaves earth behind him, and now drifts across the red light of Mars; now rests his foot upon the bright bosom of Sirius; now bespeaks the wild comet; and now rushes in to spike the guns of that battery against the Bil^le, which the boM hands of sceptical speculators have planted upon the stars. But it was reserved for Professor Nichol, as the Aaron to Her- schel, the Moses of the science, to meet us at the place where Chalmers left us, and lift us up on subtler and softer, if not stronger pinions into far loftier regions, where imagination reels and breathes hard, as it comes into the chill, clear air of infinity, and sees the universe around it as " one plain, the spaces between its orbs appearing no more than the interstices between grains of dust or sand." Hazlitt has recorded, with much gusto, his first perusal of Chalmers's enchanting volume, under an apple tree in the garden at Hoxhill. We shall not soon forget the time and circumstances in which we first read it, in the solitude of a mountainous country, and at the age of fifteen. Fontenelle had previously taught us the doctrine of a plurality of worlds; but Chalmers drew first fully the curtain from tlie glories of the creation, and showed our young soul some of the secrets of that abyss which is foaming DR CHALMERS. with worlds. We felt lifted up on his style, as on wings, into those regions " calm, of mild and serene air, where burn the innu- merous and eternal stars." We learned, speaking it reverently, to take up earth and all its isles, as a " very little thing." Such was the effect of the perusal of the first sermon of the series. But, stranger still it was, how those that followed brought back our thouglits and affections to this "dim spot which men call earth," seemed to invest it and its reptile race with a new and awful importance; and how the orator, by his " so potent art," made the very stars, in their courses, attest the dignity, and set their seal to the hopes of man. It is worth while recording even such boyish impressions, if they be of that profound and permanent cast Avhich colour after life; and perhaps one of the most memorable moments in every man's existence is that in which, by whatever hand, the veil of the universe is withdrawn, and the true starry scheme is seen in its unmeasured proportions, and unutterable grandeur. What though the heavens thus seem to "go farther off f What though the poet laments that childhood's "lovely visions" yield their place to " cold material laws V Such laws may be material, but they are not cold. They are not dead and sullen principles. They are wai-m as the light of the orbs which they regulate; they are living as the inhabitants, if such there be, of the worlds which roll in their sway. It is a proud and lofty moment when the imagination first launches away into that great ocean, every wave in which is a world ! And we shall cherish its memory for ever. We were not then aware that the logic of these sermons was principally derived from a book entitled the "Gospel its own \Vitnetis," by Andrew Fuller; nor do we even now lay much stress upon the circumstance; for so may the full and golden train be traced to the bare and cold seed-corn — the crowned oak to the acorn ! Andrew Fuller, a cold, acute, clear-headed man, perhaps made out the logic of the thing; but who supplied the imagina- tion, the passion, the overpowering declamation, all the qualities, in short, which made the book what it is? They came — whence could they have come, but from the blood and brain of Chalmers? A similar cry of plagiarism has assailed such names as Shakspere, Milton, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, and Mirabeau. Shakspere found, fursooth, his plots in Cynthio's novels, and the skeleton of some of his speeches in Plutarch; but where found he his sentnnent, his imagery, his language, the flesh and blood with which he clothed those dead bones, and the magic of the word of genius by which he made them living men? Milton drew, sometimes, out of other men's wells with a golden pitcher, which consecrated and hallowed whatever he drew, Coleridge, in momentary halluci- nation, copied down some pages of mystic metaphysics from Schellingj but whence deduced he " Christabel," whence " Kubla 78 DR CHALMERS. Khan," whence aught but the mere germinal idea of the " Aun- ciente Marinere/" To what fountain are we to trace the river of his matchless talk? And from whom did he borrow the tarn of his mjstei-ious eye, or the "i-ich thunder of his voice f Scott, too, borrowed, from black letter, everything — except his style, his spirit, his sympathies, and his genius. Byron caught up, from the crowd, cei'tain fine floating thoughts, and set them to the proud music of his own song, even as Apollo might be supposed to set earthly tunes to his celestial lyre, or to place arrows cut from the woods of Delphi upon his own golden bow; Init who lent the " Pythian of the age," " Cain," or " The Corsair," or " The Giaour," or " Don Juan," or those little pieces which are like audible beatings of his own heart 1 Mirabeau submitted to be primed and loaded by others; but were they the less pigmies, and he a giant ? Whether is he the author of the flame, who lays down the fuel, or Avho applies the torch ? Is an orator the less eloquent because he uses common words — a writer the less powerful because he employs the alphabet — or a warrior the less brave, who, in a mortal struggle, snatches a dagger from a com- mon soldier, and wields it with his own strong arm ? Dumont supplied Mirabeau with sentiments and speeches; did he give him his black boar's head, his stamp of power, the energy of his gesticulation, the lightning of his eye, his short and passionate sentences, "winged with wrath?" Did he stand by him on his deathbed, prompting him with those sublime and terrible bursts which told that a "gigantic Heathen and Titan was stumbling down, undismayed, to his rest ?" But, whether borrowed or not, the logic of the Astronomical Discourses is not very much to our taste. We have a quarrel with him, first of all, for digging out an obscure objection, and slaying, ])ublicly, what was long before dead and buried. Nor do we tliink he has stated the sceptical ol)jection so fully and frankly as he might. Here is his version of it : — " Is it likely," says the infidel, " that God would send his Eternal Son to die for the puny occupiers of so insignificant a province in the mighty field of liis creation ? Are we the befitting ol)jects of so groat and so signal an interposition 1 Does not the largeness of that field, which astronomy lays open to the view of modern science, throw a suspicion over the truth of the Gospel history; and how sliall we reconcile the greatness of that wonderful move- ment which was made in heaven for the redemption of fallen man, with the c()m])arative meanness and oljscurity of our species?" Now, ])erhaps it might be more explicitly stated thus: — It is impossible that he who made all these worlds, should have sent his Son to die for one so insignificant as earth; — that he who created and sustains the universe, should liave stooi)ed so far as to beget a son " from the family of David; " — that a field so nar- DR CHALMERS. 79 row, should have been selected for God's greatest work; — and that, among the innumerable inhabitants of teeming space, God should have selected the insect man for communion the most intimate, and supreme exaltation. " The king of a universe like this," they say, " looking up to the stars, select a Jewish carpenter to be the vessel of his own indwelling and infinite glory ! He whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, shrink himself up into the shell of Joseph's reputed son ! He who made all these vast worlds, suffer and die on a cross, in the meanest of them all ! No; it is an affront to reason — it is an outrage to common sense — it is some- thing the absurdity of which no language can express, and the truth of which a miracle could hardly prove." And to this they sometimes add, " If the universe be so large, why does Scripture not seem apprised of its vastness 1 If peopled, why does Scripture not inform us with whom f Such is a fair statement of the ob- jection. And how does Chalmers meet it I By two truisms, and three assumptions. The first truism is, that genuine science is modest — too modest to dogmatise on the moral history of other worlds; too modest, he might have added, to dogmatise on the fact of those worlds being peopled at all. Science may, and does hope, that each fair star has its own beautitul and ha2:)py race of immortal intelligences; but science does not know. For aught science knows, there may be no immortal intelligences but men in the wide creation. For aught she knows, those suns and systems may be seen only by our eyes and our telescopes. For aught she knows, the universe may only yet be beginning to be peopled, and earth have been selected as the first spot for the great colonisation. The peopling of our own planet was a gradual process; why not that of the universe, of which it is a part 1 Are appearance and analogy pleaded l Appearance and analogy utter an uncertain sound; for, are not all the continents of the creation seemingly burning masses, uninhabitable by any beings we can conceive of; and do not many of the island-planets appear either too near or too remote from the central blaze, to support any existence similar to ours '? Here science, therefore, is silent, or utters only a faltering Perhaps. Is it said, that but for intelligent inhabitants space Avould be empty 1 How empty ] asks science, if it contain an entire Deity in its every particle. Is God not society enough for his own creation 1 Count you a room empty where sits and meditates one immortal man? And can space be empty if the Infinite be everywhere present within it, though he were present alone 1 Science, at the same time, grants it prohable that some parts of the universe are peopled already, but she grants no more. The second truism is, that God, having condescended to create, condescends to care for every being he has made. This was not the question at issue. The real difficulty lay in the mode, and 80 DR CHALMERS. not in the extent of the condescension. The real question was, why did he so condescend 1 And to this the niicroscojie can re- turn no reply. In fact, if the inquiry were about mere extent, the effect of the revelations of the microscope were to lessen the point of David's exclamation, " What is man, that thou ai't mind- ful of him I" for, assuredly, the series of being discovered below is prodigiously longer than that as yet detected above the human family. In fact, it mattered not to whom the Deity condescended, for the gulf between him and the Archangel is infinite; and that between him and the insect is nothing more. In the strange and stupendous manner of the condescension — the marriage between the finite and the Infinite — the creature and the Creator, in order to achieve the salvation of the one and increase the glory of the other — lies the wonder and the mystery; a wonder above the sweep of the telescope — a mystery beneath the microscope's keenest scrutiny. In the fourth discourse, he assumes, without an atom of substantial evidence, that man's moral history is known in distant parts of the creation, because known to angels, wlio, as ministei'ing spirits, are "walking the earth, unseen, both when we Avake and when we sleep;" that as by beacon-fires, all the events which occur in our earth are telegraphed across the universe, to teach lessons of instruction, and to circulate thrills of warning. How far more likely the idea of Isaac Taylor, that, to secure the more perfect probation of moral beings, space has been broken up into fragments, all insulated from and un- known to each other. In the fifth, he leaps in a similar way from the revealed sympathy of angels with men, to the supposi- tion that the creation, in its Avidest sense, is groaning and travel- ing in pain, because of his sin and misery; a most dismal idea, and destitute of every kind or degree of proof. And, in the sixth, he describes all the intelligent beings of the universe, bending over earth to witness a contest for an ascendency over man, amongst the higher orders of intelligence; thus gratuitously transferring anxiety and suspense, and other earthly, if not evil feelings, to the iniiabitants of those high and serene stars, which seem so happy in their clearness, their order, their multitude, and their immortality. And this is really all the argument which those famed discourses contain ! We think, with submission, that the true way of meeting this objection, had been by asserting the ineffable dignity of that human sjiirit which the Son of God died to redeem. The creation — large as it is, magnificent as it is — is not e<|i!al in grandeur and value to one immortal sjjirit. Majestic the universe; hut can it think or feel, imagine or reason? "Talk to mc of the sun !" one might say, "he is not alive: he is but a dead luminary after all. }»ut I am alive; I never was dead; 1 never can die; and I could there- fore put my foot upon that proud orb, and say, ' I am greater DR CHALMERS. 81 than thou !' The sun cannot understand the geometry of his own motion, or read the laws of his own radiating light. I can do hoth; and am therefore immeasurably greater than the sun. The sun cannot, with all his rays, write on flower or grass, or the broad page of ocean, the name of his Maker : a child of seven can, and is therein greater than the sun. The sun cannot, from all his vast surface, utter an articulate sound : he is dumb in his magniticence; but ' out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God perfects praise.' The sun cannot love one of the planets which revolve around his ray; I can love all being. The sun shall ])erish; but I have tliat within me that shall never die. And if gi'eater than the sun, I am greater than the whole mate- rial imiverse. It indeed ' might arise and crush me; but I would know it was destroying me, while it would crush unconsciously. I would be conscious of the defeat, it would not be conscious of the victory.' The universe may be too great now for the grasp of my intellect ; but my mind, I vfeel, can grow to grasp it. The universe, in fact, is only the nursery to my infant soul; and whether is greater, the nursery or the child 1 The universe — you may call it what you please; you may lavish epithet after epithet of splendour upon it, if you please, but you cannot call it one thing — you cannot call it a spirit : and if not a spirit, it is but a great and glorious clod. But I am a spirit, though a spirit disguised; an immortality, though an immortality veiled; a beam from the Father of Light, though a beam that has gone astray; and therefore I dare to predicate, even of my own fallen nature, that it is of more dignity, grandeur, and value, than the whole creation; and that, to save no more than me, it had been worth while for the Saviour to have descended and to have died." His subordinate works — his " Evidences," his " Tron Church," and " 8t John's," and " Occasional Discourses," &g. &c. &c. — are all marked by the same peculiarities : the prominence of one idea, round which cluster and gravitate a thousand lesser par- ticles of illustration and image ; incessant and furious move- ment, without progress; a trick of confronting opposite ideas so pertinaciously, that they seem ashamed of looking so long in each other's faces; an emphasis, given frequently, as by the in- tonations of madness, to common truths; a lavish supply of loose and dissonant diction; a perpetual and systematic appeal to the "artful aid of alliteration;" a melody in the general result of the style, strangely co-existing with barbarous discord in its particular parts; sentences of breathless movement, and porten- tous length, rolling and revolving systematically, as if their mo- tion were balanced between the centripetal and centrifugal forces; a riveting interest, which drags you after him, go wherever he Avill; and an air of frank, fearless earnestness, v/hich secures to G 82 DR CHALMERS. his writings the charm and expression of " a bright-eyed face that hiughs out openly." Among his separate single sermons, we prefer that " On Cruelty to Animals," as the purest in style, and the most elevated in sen- timent. One sentence from it, of perfect beauty, has lingered in our memory — "The lioness, robbed of lier whelps, makes the wilderness to ring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; and the bird, whose little household has been stolen, fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos." Such sentences, so sim])le and so memorable, are, it must be confessed, rare in his writings. From the questions connected with his political and church career, we must abstain. His great fault has ever been, that his brain has been a caravansera of crotchets. Indeed, considering the ready welcome he has given to each new, intellectual guest, our wonder is, that his course has not been much more erratic, capricious, and inconsistent. It can hardly be necessary to do more than allude to the events of his life, or to the manner of his public speaking. He was born in Anstruther, Fife, and educated at St Andrews, where he distinguished himself much in the mathematical and chemical classes. When licensed to preach the Gospel, he was settled in the parish of Kilmeny, the kirk of which staiuls so picturesquely among its embosoming woods, and by its still, rural burying- place. There, for many years, he is said to have paid more at- tention to his philoso])hieal studies tlian to his flock. A story is yet current in Fife, that he was one Sabbath, during the interval of the service, botanising in the woods, when the bells rung for church. Huddling on his hat, full of specimens, earth, Arc, he ran to the pulpit; but, as he went up the stair, imprudently took it off, and the grasses and flowers, tund)ling a])out liis ears, be- trayed the secret of his unclerical pursuits to his gaping congre- gation. Some time ere leaving Kilmeny, a remarkable change took place in his cliaracter and deportment. Partly through the circumstance of being requested to write on the " Evidences of Christianity," for the " Edinburgh Encycloi)iedia," liis mind was deeply and permanently imi)resst'd with a sense of religion. He felt that his ])reaching had hitherto been a " sliam." With cha- racteristic determination, he altered it from its fuundatiou. Ceas- ing to be an " Ai)c of Epictetus," he became, for the first time, a preacher of Christ crucified. The consequence was, tliat his l)opularity not only increased in the district, but fur cities began to hear of his faTiie. After having preached a number of overwhelming public ser- mons in Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, &c., he was translated to the Tron Clun-cli in the last-immed city. Here he was attended by great crowds; and, by all accounts, his i)rcaching deserved its DR CHALMERS. 83 populavity. Those who heard him, have told us, that we have no idea of what he was then from his more recent exhibitions. He " laid about him like a man inspired." He spoke with the freshness and fervour of one to whom all things had become new. His eye seemed to see the invisible. His body trembled and panted under the burden of the present God. He proclaimed openly and aloud the nuptials of science and faith. He took up the peculiarities of Calvinism, and bound them as a crown unto him. He assailed the money-loving and the sceptical spirit which then prevailed in our western metropolis. He set in mo- tion, at the saine time, a thousand schemes of benevolence. Glasgow was planet-struck: its gayest and most dissipated young men were arrested, and hung upon his lips like "bees on moun- tain flowers." It became suddenly a religious, or, at least, an ec- clesiastical city, and with all its mills and machineries, seemed to revolve for a season round the one pulpit of Chalmers. I^ot the least striking tribute to the power of his eloquence were the tears which he drew from Professor Young's old eyes ! It was fine, they say, to see the stern Grecian's face, first radiant with rapture, and then dissolved and bedewed, under the power of an eloquence still higher than his own. His subsequent translation to St John's, his removal to the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in St Andrews, the impulse he gave to that then stagnant and grass-grown city, his transference to the Divinity chair of Edin- burgh, &c., are well known. As a divine, his reputation is not of the highest order. He has cast no new light upon any topic within the range of the science. He is not a master of Exegesis : his critical knowledge of the Scriptures is limited. A plain and practical logician upon theo- logical topics, his temperament forbids him ever to be. A pro- found metaphysician he is not called by his warmest admirers. What is he to Jonathan Edwards, that master of metaphysical theology; or to Paley, so profoundly versed in the " Christian Evidences;" or to Andrew Thomson, in all that constitutes a proficient in Christian logic; or to Barrow, in quantity and com- pass of thought; or to Horsley, in ease and vigour of style; or to Jeremy Taylor, in the richness and splendour of illustration; or to Leighton, in the sweetness and savour of practical bearing? And yet, as a divinity professoi", we grant him much merit. Called by circumstances, rather than choice, to the theological chair, unprepared by previous training and habits of study for its peculiar duties, he yet resolutely set himself and the resources of his mind to " do what he could." He read, and he made his students read. He taught himself while instructing them. He relieved the occasional sameness of his own style and imagery, by large and grateful excerpts from leading theological Avriters. He threw the glow of his genius into all that vvas done. He 84 THOMAS CARLYLE. shook from tlie professorial chair the dust of ages. He evoked the spirit of great departed worthies. His enthusiasm became infectious : the most commonplace of his students caught it. The more ambitious "out-Heroded Herod"' in imitations of his style, and manner, and voice: — Many wlio strove to imitate his flight, With weaker wing, unearthly fluttering made. Still much good was done, and an impression produced which has formed an era in the history of the Scottish Church, and of the entire religious world. His appearance and mode of speaking have been often desci-ibed. His eye, especially when excited, had a grey glare of insanity about it; his brow was broad, rather than lofty; his step quick and eager; his accents fast and hurrying; his pronunciation barbarous; his gesture awkward; his delivery monotonous; but, need we say 1 all these defects were forgotten and drowned in the fierce and rapid stream of his eloquence. We have seen his face flushing wp, like a crystal goblet when filled with wine, as he warmed with his theme : his eye the while almost starting out of its socket, as if determined, in spite of itself, to become eloquent. No one quotes poetry with more effect, and we have heard him give to a doggrel hymn an effect almost sublime. In pinvate, he was the most benign and cordial of men : a generous critic, and a warm sympathiser Avith every species of genuine excellence. Altogether, though with many of his peculiar views we do not coincide; though with the flatteries of his indiscrimi- nate admirers we do not agree; though we do not think him a Jeremy Taylor, nor a Barrow, nor a Chrysostom, nor a Burke; we are free to confess that he Avas a good, a wise, an honest, and a great man. THOMAS CAELYLE. Thomas Carlyle is tlie truest Diogenes of these times. Pushed aside at the time, by tlic strong hand of a peculiar genius into a corner, he has thence marked and remarked strangely, angularly, yet truly, upon man and the universe; and to that corner men are now beginning to flock, and the tul) is towering into an oracle, and those rugged and fiery words are fast becoming law ! In the course of his career, his mind has gone througli two differ- ent ])hase3. In the first, he was litth- more than the chief inter- preter l)ctween the Clermun and the I'^nglish minil; in the second, lie has "shot upwards like a j)yramid of fire," into a gigantic original. In the first, he was only a distinguished member of the curjjs literaire; in the second, he has started from the ranks, THOMAS CARLYLE. 85 and become a separate and independent principality in the king- dom of letters. We propose to include both those aspects in our notice. It is a Avell-known saying of Jean Paul Eichter, that, while the French have the dominion of the land, and the English of the sea, to the Germans belong the empire of the air : they inhabit " cloud- land, gorgeous land." They have found a home, now in the abysses of infinity, and now in the abysses of their own strange and specu- lative intellects. Their poetry, their philosophy, and their reli- gion, are all dreams; scientifically constructed, indeed, and gor- geously coloured, but still dreams of the wildest and most mystic character. These peculiarities they have carried, not merely into their romances, epics, and metaphysical treatises, but into their books of science and their practical works. Their very spelling- books might, like the primer of the unfortunate schoolmaster, commemorated by Dr Johnson, be dedicated to the universe ! Intermixed with such singularities, which stamp a cloudy charac- ter upon the literature of Germany, we need not, at this time of day, dilate upon its conspicuous merits; its dejith, its truth, its splendour of imagination; its fine blending of the romantic and the everyday in sentiment, and of grandeur and simplicity in style; its reverent fearlessness, or its infinite variety. Nor need "we enlarge on its principal writers : the strong simplicity of Lessing; the Burns-like qvialities of Burger; the richness and diffusion of Klopstock; the voluptuous grace and laughing devil of Wieland; Schlegel's aspiring sesthetics; Schiller's high-wrought enthusiasm; Goethe's profound calm, like the light of sculpture, or of snow; and the tumultuous glories of style and image, the warmth of all-embracing charity, the soft, cheerful piety, the boundless fancy and humour, the rambling, riotous energy, Avhich glistened in the eye, reigned in the heart, and revelled on the page, of Jean Pavil Richter, the German of the Germans, the most perfect specimen of the powers and peculiarities of that country, which he loved so dearly. There was a time when, if simple and humble folks like our- selves had talked in this style, we should instantly have been ranked with the Germans themselves, at the foot of the gamut of existence, or, rather, on the frontier line which se])arates the rea- sonable from the insane. Who has altered all that 1 Who has redeemed Germans, and the admirers of the German mind, from the coarse stigmas which had been so long affixed to their names'? Who has bridged across the gulf which divided us from the huge continent of their literature? Thomas Carlyle, in his first charac- ter as translator and illustrator of the German poetic sages. Not that he did it by his single arm: he was anticipated by Coleridge, and strongly backed, if not preceded, by De Quincey, Dr Beddoes, Moir, and others; but notwithstanding that German litei'ature is 86 THOMAS CARLYLE, no longer a sealed book, 1)iit an open fountain, and that German intellect has been at length fairly appreciated among us, we be- lieve to be mainly owing to his persevering and undaunted efforts. And to this end, his very eiTors, and exaggerations, and over-esti- mates, and too obvious emulation of some of the faults of his fa- vourites, have contributed. Carlyle is a Scottish German : he has grafted on a strong original stock of Scottish earnestness, simplicity, shrewdness, and humoux*, much of the mysticism, exaggeration, and eccentricity of his adopted country. Even though he had never read a page of the Teutonic grammar, he would have been distinguished as a man of original powers, profound sincerity, and indomitable per- severance. But, having studied and swam, for years together, in the sea of German learning, like a leviathan, he has become a kind of literary monster, German above and Scottish Ijelow. The " voice is Jacob's, the hands are Esau's." He is a hybrid. The main tissue of his mind is homely worsted; but he has dyed it in the stranoest colours, derived from Weimar and Bavreuth. Endued by nature with a " strong in-kneed soul," and fitted to be a prose Burns, he has become a British Eichter. We have sometimes doubted if he did not think in German. Assuredly, he writes in it, uses its idioms, practises its pecidiarities of construction; not merely defends, but exemplifies its most daring liberties, and spreads his broad shield over its glaring defects. Although pos- sessed of undoubted originality, he long contented himself with being an echo-cliff to the varied notes of the German Ipe, ren- dering back its harsh discords, as well as its soft and soul-like sounds. And here lies at once the source of his defects and his mei'its. One who is unacquainted with German authors, reads Carlyle with the utmost amazement, he is so utterly different from every other writer. His unmeasured sentences; his startling asseverations; his endless repetitions; the levity in which his most solemn and serious statements seem to swim; the air of mild, yet decisive scorn, with wliich he tosses about his thoughts, and characters, and the incidents of his story; the rapid succes- sion and strange lustre of his shifting panoramas; his peculiar, and ]iatched-up dialect; the singular terms and terminations which he uses, in unscrupulous abundance; the far and foreign strain of his allusions and associations; the recondite quality of liis learning; arid those liursts of eloqucTit mysticism which alter- nate with yet wilder bursts of uncontrollable n)irth and fuliginous irony — produce an " altogetherness" of impression exceedingly startling. But, to one acquainted with German, the mystery is explained. Some, at least, of the peculiarities we have mentioned, are seen to be those of a wliole literature, not of a solitary litera- teiiv ; and he who lauglis at Carlyle must be prepared to extend his derision to the sum and substance of German genius. THOMAS CARLYLE. 87 The defects to which we have referred, belnp; chiefly of style and manner, rarely of substance, and never of spirit, form but a feeble counterpoise to his merits; his "pictorial omnipotence;" his insight into the motives and minds of men; his art of depict- ing character, often by one lightning word; his sardonic and savage humour; his intense hatred of the false, and love of the true; his bursts of indignant declamation and spiritual pathos; his sympathies with all power which is genuine; all genius which is unaifected, and all virtue which is merciful; his philosophy, at once mystic and homely — obscure, indeed, in its premises, but most px'actical'in its results; and, above all, that almost religious earnestness, which casts over all his writings the shadow of deep seriousness. We know not what Carlyle's creed may be, but we lionour his reverence for the religious principle iu man. No one has a deeper sense of the Intiuite and of the Eternal; no one has knelt with more solemn awe, under the soul-quelling shadow of the universe, or looked up with more adoring eye to the " silent immensity and palace of the Eternal, of which our sun is but a porch-lamp." No one has expressed a higher reve- rence for the "Worship of Sorrow;" and it was "woi^th a thousand homilies " to hear him, as we were privileged to do, talking for four miles of moonlit road, with his earnest, sagacious voice, of religion, baring, ever and anon, his head, as if in worship, amid the warm, slumberous August air. And who that has read his spiritual autobiography in " Sartor," v/hether he adopt or under- stand his conclusions or not, can resist admiration for the fervour, and the struggle discovered in that inniiortal search 1 A singular change, indeed, has, within these few years, taken place in the religious sentiments of literary men. Five-and- twenty, or even tifteen years ago, what was the spectacle 1 Lite- rature and faith at variance; the leading Review of the country steeped so strongly in a cold materialistic scepticism, that pious men took it up with hesitation, and laid it clown with disgust; the great body of literateurs either the fierce and open enemies, or the secret and insidious assailants of all revelation; and, on the other hand, the religious public loathing that literature of which Bj^ron and the Edinburgh reviewers were at the head, anathematising its idols, and carefully excluding its style, and spirit, and sentiment, from the most distant contact with their own productions and periodicals. 'Twas a divorce, or rather exorcisation; the spirit of religion having been cast out of lite- rature, the religious revenged themselves by casting out the spirit of literature from religion. The consequence was, as might have been foreseen, the production of a searching but uu- baptised science, a brilliant but Satanic poetry, a witty but wicked criticism on the one side, and of a feeble, fanatical, illibe- ral, intolerant, religious literature on the other. Thus, both 88 THOMAS CARLYLE, parties suffered from their separation; but religion most. Such was the case: it is very different now. Advances towards a i-e- conciliation have been made. Men of letters, in general, have di-opped their animosities to religion, and, if thev have not all yet given in their adherence to any jjarticular form of Christianity, they are seeking truth, and have turned their faces in the proper direction. The Reviews now, without exception, speak of reli- gion with affection or respect. That sneering cold-blooded, Gibbonic style, once the rage, has withered out of our literature. JMean while, we admit, that the religious community is not reci- procating good understanding so fully as we would wish. There is still too nuich of jealousy and fear in the aspect with which they regard the literature and science of the day. Why should it be so ? Why should two powers so similar, not interchange amicable offices 1 Why should two chords, placed so near in the yt]olian harp of creation, not sound in harmony ? Why should two sunbeams, both derived from the same bright eternal source, not mingle their radiance ? But to return to Carlyle: the first light in Avhich he appeared before the public, was as a translator. He is more faithful in liis versions than Coleridge; but inferior in the resources of stvle, and in that irrepressible s})ring of fancy which was e^er spark- ling out from the poet, communicating new charms to the beauti- ful, new terrors to the dreadfid, and adding graces which his author never gave. If Coleridge must be confessed to have plagiarised from the German, it ought not to be forgotten that he returned what he stole with interest, and has, in translating, improved, beautified, and filled up the ideal of iSchiller. Besides " Wilhelm jMeister " (a work which, by the way, con- tains, according to Carlyle and Edward Irving, the best charac- ter of Christ ever written), he has published specimens of the German novels, accompanied by critical notices, which, though inferior to his after works in power and pecTdiarity, are quite equal, we think, to anything he has written, in subtlety of dis- crimination, and superior in siniplieity and idiomatic beauty of language. Carlyle's style was then not so deeply tinged with its idiosyncratic qualities, and in the m(n-e nxii/iium of Teutonic literature he had only as yet dipped his shoe. He was then obliged to conform more to tlie tastes and predilections of his readers. Ever since, although his thinking has been getting more independent and profouuil, and his elociueiice more earnest and overpowering, his diction as a medium of communieatiou has certainly not improved. TMs " Miseelljinies." recently collected, appeared principnlly ill the Milinbui'gli, Fori'ign. and J''oreigu <,^uai'tei'ly Ivcviews. Though full of faults, and all a-blaze with the splendid sins of their author's diction, they are, nevcrtlieless, masterpieces of wit THOMAS CARLYLE. 89 and wisdom, of strength and brilliance; the crushed essence of tliought is in them, and the sparkling foam of fancy; and in their truthfulness, enthusiasm, and barbaric vigour, they leave on us the impression of something vast, abysmal, obscure, and formi- dable. Indeed, were a mountain to speak, or, to use his own bold language, " were the rocks of the sea to burst silence, and to tell Avhat they had been thinking on from immemorial ages," we imagine they would speak in some such rugged and prodigious style. Amid his many papers in the " Edinburgh," we pi efer his first on "Jean Paul," dear, dreaming, delirious Jean Paul, Avho used to write in the same poor apartment where his mother and sisters cooked, and his pigeons cooed, and they all huddled; who was seldom seen on the street without a flower on his breast; who, when once he visited Schiller, dressed fantastically in green, complained, that he frowned him oft" from his brow, " as from a precipice;" who taught wisdom after the maddest fashion yet known among men — now recreating under the " ci-anium of a giantess," and now selecting from the " papers of the devil " — but whose woi'ks are at once the richest and the dee^^est in the German language, glittering above like the spires of Golconda, and concealing below treasures sumless as the mines of Peru. The article excited at the time (182G) a sensation. Not merely was it a splendid piece of writing, but it was the first which fairly committed the Review in favour of that German taste and genius which it had been reviling from its commencement; the first thunderbolt to the old regime of criticism, and the first in- troduction to the English public of the name and character and Avritings of one of the most extraordinary men which an age, fertile in real and in pretended prodigies, has hitherto produced. Next to this, we love his panegyric on Burns, written as he sojourned in the neighbourhood of that district which derives its glory and its shame from the memory of the great poet. We recalled it -keenly to memory as, in his own company, we gazed with dee}) emotion upon Burns's house in Dvimfries — the scene of the dread tragedy which was transacted there while the still gold of an autumnal sunset was gilding its humble roof, and touching the window through which had so often rolled and flowed the ardent eye of the poet — the poet of whom Scotia, while " pale " Avith grief at his errors, is proud to ecstasy as she repairs to his grave — whose tongue was only a produced heart, and whose heart loved all that he saw, from the sun to 'the sickle which he grasped in his hot hand; from the star of his Mary to the mousie running from his ploughshare — whose soul by the side of a sounding wood, " rose to Him that walketh on the wings of the wind" — who, "walking in glory and joy behind his plough upon the mountain-side," often drew that joy from nature, and that glory from song — and whose follies and sins, if they never 90 THOMAS CARLYLE, can, and never oiig-lit to he forgotten, sliould, at least, he for- given. Carlyle, like Wilson, always rises above himself when he speaks of Burns. And the secret is, that both see and love the man, for his many manly qualities, as well as admire the poet. Altogether, indeed, Burns has been fortunate in his critics, although Jeffrey did try to trip up his heels, and Wordsworth made but a clumsy attempt to break his fall, forgetting that such an attempt was needless, for, falling at the plough, where could he light but on the fresh, soft, strong earth, and how could he rise but in the attitude of an Antseiis 1 His paper on the " Signs of the Times," contains an exposition of the difference between a mechanical and a dynamical age — ingenious, but hardly just. We wonder that a man of Carlyle's calibre can chime in with the cant against mechanism, raised by " mechanical salt butter rogues." Men, it is true, now-a-days, use more machines than they did, but are they therefore more machines themselves ! Was James Watt an automaton 1 Has the Press become less an object of wonder or fear since it was worked by steam 1 Imagination, even, and mechanism are good friends. How sublime the stoppage of a mail as the index of re- bellion ! Luther's Bible was printed l)y a machine. The organ, as it heaves up earth's only fit reply to the thunder, is but a machine. A mechanical age ! What do its steam-carriages convey ? Is it not newspapers, magazines, reviews, poems 1 Are they not in this way the conductors of the fire of intellect and passion ? Is not mechanism just the short-hand of poetry ? Thomas Carlyle fears that the brood hen will yet be superseded ! We deem this fear superfluous, and for our parts, never expect to sup on steam chickens, or breakfast on steam-laid eggs. His last paper in the " Edinburgh " (save one on Ebenezer Elliott) was entitled "Characteristics," and of its author, at least, was eminently charact-'ristic. It might, in fiict, be proposed as a Pons Asinonim to all those who presume to approach the study of this remarkable man. It adds all the pecidiarities of his philosophy to all the i)eculiarities of his style, and the result is a bit of pure unmixed Carlylism, which many of his admirers dote on as a fragment of heaven-born j)hilosopliy, and his de- tractors defame as a slice of chaos, but which we value ])rincipally as a revelation of the Juan. Whatever were its merits, it ])n)ved too strong and mystic food for the osition, of which its author is said now to be a little ashamed. We can see no more reason for this than for the preference which he since habitually gives to Goethe above the Author of " The Robbers." THOMAS CAELYLE. 91 We retain, too, a lively memory of a paper on Diderot, em- bodying- a severe and masterly dissection of that brilliant cliarla- tan — of another, containing a con amore account of Mirabeau — of various articles on Goethe — and of a paper on 8ir Walter Scott, where we find his familiar features shown us in a new and strange light, as if in the gleam of an apothecary's evening win- dow. To "Fraser's Magazine" he has contributed much — among other things, a review of Crocker's " Boswell," " The Diamond Neck- lace," &c. In the print of the " Fraserians," his face was not forgotten, though, amid the boisterous revelry and waggish worldly countenances around, it seemed wofully out of place. We asked ourselves as we gazed, Avhat business has that still, earnest, spiritual face there ? And we put the same query still more strongly about tv/o others included in the same scene — Coleridge, with his great grey misty eyes, like an embodied ab- straction; and Edward Irving, with his black locks tangled in gorgonic confusion, and in his eye the glare of insanity contend- ing with the fire of coming death ! In " Fraser," also [much to the annoyance (on dit) of a sapient nobleman, who asked the publisher when that " stupid series of articles by the tailor were to be done?"], appeared the first draught of " Sartor Ptesartus." We were rather late in becom- ing acquainted with this singular production, but few books have ever moved us more. It turned up our wlsole soul like a tem- pest. It reminded us of nothing so much as of Bunyan's Auto- biography. With a like earnest dreadfulness, does Carlyle de- scribe his pilgrimage from the "Everlasting No " of darkness and defiance — his City of Destruction — on to that final Beulah belief, that " Blessedness is better than happiness," which he calls the " Everlasting Yea." and on which, as on a pillow, he seems dis- posed to rest his head against eternity. In Avriting it, he has written, not his own life alone, but the spiritual history of many thinking and sincere men of the time. Whoever has struggled with doubts and difiiculties almost to strangling — whoever has tossed for nights upon his pillow, and in helpless wretchedness cried out with shrieks of agony to the God of heaven— whoever has covered with his cloak a Gehenna of bitter disappointment and misery, and walked out, nevertheless, firm, and calm, and silent, among his fellow-men — whoever has mourned for " all the oppressions which are done under the sun," and been " mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see " — whoever has bowed down at night upon his pillow, in belief that he was the most wretched and God-forsaken of mortal men — whoever has felt all the " wan- derer in his soul," and a sense of the deepest solitude, even when mingling in the business and the crowded thoroughfares of his kind — whoever at one time has leaned over the precipices of 92 THOMAS CARLYLE. Mount Danger, and at another adventured a step or two on that dreary path of Destruction, " which led to a wide field full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no more;" and at a third, walked a gloom amid the glooms of the valley and the shadow of death — whoever has at last attained, not peace, not happiness, not assurance, but childlike submission, child- like faith, and meek-eyed ''blessedness" — let him approach, and study, and press to his breast, and carry to his bed, and bedew with his tears, " Sartor Resartus," and bless the while its brave and true-hearted author. But whoever has not had a portion of this experience, let him pass on — the book has nothing to say to him, and he has nothing to do with the book. It is above him like a star — it is apart from him like a spirit. Let him laugh at it, if he will — a1)use it, if he will — call it German trash, transcen- dental Neologism, if he Avill — only let him not read it. Its sweet and solemn " Evangel " — its deep pathos — its earnestness — its trenchant and terrible anatomy of not the least singular or least sincere of human hearts — its individual passages and pictures, unsurpassed in power and grandeur, as that of the " Night Thoughts " of Teufelsdrockh, when he sat in his high attic, " alone with his stars " — the description of liis appearance on the North Cape, " behind him all Europe and Africa fast asleep, and before him the silent immensity and palace of the Eternal, to which our sun is but a porch lamp " — the discovery to him of the glories of nature, as he felt for the " first time that she was his mother, and divine " — his wanderings in vain effort to " escape from his own shadow " — the picture of the power and mystery of symbols — witli all this, what has he, the reader of " IMartin Chuzzle\\^t" and "The New Monthly," to do? Let him go, however, and chuckle over the sketch of the " worst of all possi- l)le Universities," Edinburgh, as Carlyle found it, and its picture of the two sects — of dandies and poor Irish slaves. These he may comprehend and enjoy, but he had better let the other alone. We like his " Lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship," princi- pally as a specimen of his conversational powers. They are just his recorded talk — the elotpient drojipings of his mind. To them we could refer all who have never met him, and wlio wouhl wish to form some idea of his conversation — the richest and strongest essence we ever took in withal. Tliey were delivered to a very select audience, including several bishops, many clergymen, fasliionable ladies, and the elite of the literature of London. Tlie lecturer ap])carcd at first somewhat timid, irresolute, bowed down, whetlicr Ix-fore tlie weight of tl)c subject, or the imposing aspect of the audience, l)ut soon recovered his self-jiosscssion; gradually, in the fine old Puritanic plirase, became " enlarged;" and was enabled, in firm, manly, flowing, almost warbling accents, THOMAS CARLYLE, 9 o to utter the truth and the feeling which were in him. The lec- tures themselves contain many " strange matters." How he heats the old mythologies, and expiscates the meaning which lay within their cloudy wrappages ! How he paints " Canopus shining down upon the wild Ishmaelitish man, with its blue spiritual brightness, like an eye from the depths of immensity !" What desperate battle he does for that " deep-hearted son of the wilderness, with the black, beaming eyes," Mahomet, till you say with Charles Lamb, who, after listening to a long harangue in defence of him of Mecca, by an enthusiastic youth, asked, as they were taking their hats to leave the house, " Where have you put your turban 1" And how thoroughly does he sympathise with the severe and saturnine graces of Dante — Avith Shakspere's kind- hearted laughter — with Johnson's rugged honesty — with Eous- seau's fantastic earnestness— with Napoleon's apocalyptic revela- tion of the power and mystery of force — and above all, with Cromwell's iron-handed and robust unity of purpose. The great moral fault of the book is, that he sometimes seems to idolise enei'gy and earnestness in themselves, and apart from the mo- tives in which they move, and the ends to which they point. " Chartism," and " Past and Present," are valuable as revealing many of darker symptoms of our political and social disease. The remedy is nowhere to be found within them. It is charac- teristic of Carlyle, that he not unfrequently tantalises his reader by glimpses, rather than satisfies him by distinct masses of thought. Does a difficulty occur 1 He shows every ordinary mode of solution to be false, but does not supply the true. Is a character to be described 1 He often, after darting scorn upon all common conceptions of it, leaves it to shift for itself, or only indicates his opinion. Why is this 1 Is he like Home Tooke, Avho used to start puzzling questions at the Sunday meetings of his friends, and deferred their solution, that he might have the pleasure of keeping them in suspense till a week had revolved ? Or is it, that he is only endowed Avith an energy of destruction, and is rather a tornado to overtui-n, than an architect to build ? One negative message, at any rate, has been given him above all other men to deliver — that of human ignorance. He is the prophet at once of the poAver and the Aveakness, the greatness and the littleness of man. Fixing his foot firmly on the extreme limit of Avhat man kens and cans, he tells him in one oracular voice Avliat he kens and Avhat he kens not, nor ever in this Avorld shall ken — Avhat he cans and Avhat he cans not, nor ever on this side eternity can. " KnoAv thyself ! thyself thou Avilt never knoAv — knoAv thy Avork, Avhich were more to the purpose." " Know God ! it Avill take thee, I suspect, to eternity to learn even the rudiments of this awful science; more to the point to know Avhat God bids thee do, and to do it." " KnoAV Nature ! never ! thou 94 THOMAS CARLYLE. mayest babble about electricity, for instance, but what is it? whence comes it ? whither goes it ? Thou canst not tell; but thou canst tell how to elevate thy lightning rod, and how to make the terrible thing, though all the while it remain a mystery to thee, to trickle along it tamely, as a woman's tear." Thus we paraphrase the avowed purpose of this prophet of the " Age of Tools." It is, as with the precision and insight of a visiter from another world, to declare the business of man's life, and to settle the boundaries of man's understanding. " The French Revolution, a History," as his largest, and in every way his greatest work, we have reserved for a more lengthened description. We must premise, that our remarks concern it merely as a literary production, not as a historical work. We do not mean to decide as to the accuracy of its matter-of-tact details. But we flatter ourselves that we are not unable to appreciate its merit, as the moralising of a peculiar mind on the most singular series of transactions that earth ever saw — the most enormous " world-whirlpool " which ever boiled, and raved, and cast its bloody spray far up into the black hollow of night ! The first thing that struck us about it, was the strangeness of the titles of its chapters. All of them are entitled, not, as in the common way, from the principal event recorded therein, but from some one word or phrase in the beginning, middle, or end, which has hit the writer's fancy, and given him an outlet for liis pecu- liar sarcasm, such as " Astnea liedux;" " Asjfcrsea Redux without cash;" "Flame Picture;" "Danton no weakness;" "Go down to." If this be affectation, thought we, it is a new and a very clever kind of it. The best way of seeing the force and fun of these titles, is by reading them by themselves right down — no shrink- ing — from " Louis the Well-beloved " to " Yendemiaire." We remember a heroic youth, who stated his intention of reading all Gibbon's notes apart from the text, for the sake of the learning crushed and crammed into them. The task of reading Carlyle's titles were easier, and far more amusing. Our next subject of wonder was the style, which reads as though the writer had sat down deliberately to caricature his former works. It could only be adequately described by itself. Fuliginous-flaming, prose- poetic, mock-heroic-earnest, Germanic-Scotch, colloquial-chaotic, satiric-seriou.s, luminous-obscure — all these epithets are true, and e(|ually true of it, and of it alone. We read part of it to a person tlie other day, who, at every other sentence, cried out, " The nian's mad." We read on, till Ave shook him soul and Itody by its power. We noticed, too, concerning this same strange style, that it is a style now, at all events, necessary to the man's mind, and no more affected tlian Jean Pauls, Johnson's, and Milton's, and like theirs may be called the " hurley-burley nonsense of a giant, not to be used with impunity by any one less " — that it is , THOMAS CARLYLE. 95 a style, iudeed, defying imitation, except in its glaring defects — and that on all great occasions it rises above its faults, throws them off as men do garments in a mortal struggle, and reaches a certain purity, and displays a naked nerve, and produces a rugged music. We observed, too, that it is a style in intense keeping with the subject. Deep calleth unto deep. Demogorgou paints chaos. A turbid theme requires a turbid style. To write the story of the French Revolution, demanded a pen of a cloudy and colossal character, which should despise petty beauties, and lay iron grasp on the more pi'ominent points. How would the whirling movements, the giddy and dream-like mutations, the gigantic virtues, and the black atrocities of intoxicated France, Ijear to be represented in neat and classical language, in measured and balanced periods, in the style of a state paper, or in the frip- peries of brilliant antithesis 1 Who would like to see the dying gladiator, or the Laocoon, clothed in the mode of the day 1 No ! show us them naked, or if oniaments be added, let them be severe and stony, in keeping with the original. So Carlyle's style, from its very faults, its mistiness, its repetitions, its savage boldness, its wild humour blent with yet wilder pathos, its encir- cling air of ridicule, its startling abruptness, itself a revolution, is fitted better than the simple style of Scott, or the brilliant in- vective of Burke, or the unhealthy heat and laboured splendour of Hazlitt, to mirror in its unequal but broad surface the scenery and circumstances of the wondrous era. Its great sin as a nar- rative is, that it presumes too much on the reader's previous acquaintance with the details of the period, and deals more in glancing allusion than in direct statement. We noticed, too, and felt its enthralling interest. Once you are accustomed to the manner and style, you will find no historian who casts stronger ligaments of interest around you. We have heard an instance of this. An eminent man of the day got hold of the book about three in the afternoon. He began to read, and could not lay it aside till four in the morning — thirteen hours at a stretch. We know nothing like this since the story of Sir Joshua Reynolds reading the " Life of Savage " in a country inn, standing till his arm was stiff, cold, and glued to the mantel-piece. Like the suction of a whirlpool, the book draws you in, vt'hether you will or no. Its very faults, like scars on the face of a warrior, con- tribute to rivet your attention. And even to those familiar with the events of the period, everything seems new in the glare of Carlyle's savage genius. We noticed, too, its epic character. It is the epic poem, rather than the history of the Revolution. The author, ere writing it, seems to have read over, not Thucydides, but Homer, and truly the old Homeric fire burns in its every chapter. Sometimes it is mock-heroic rather than epic, and re- minds us more of Fielding's introductory chapters, or the better 96 THOMAS CARLYLE. parts of Ossian, tlian of Melesigenes. But its spirit is epic, its figures are epic, its epithets are epic, and above all, its repetitions are quite in Homer's way. The description of Louis' flight is a fine episode, kindling in parts into highest poetry, as when he says, " O Louis, this all around thee is the great slumbering earth, and overhead the great watchful Heaven. But right ahead, the great north-east sends up evermore his grey brindled dawn; from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute the coming sun. Stars fade out, and galaxies, street- lamps in the city of God. The universe, my brother, is fling- ing wide its portals for the levee of the Great High King." And though the age of epics be gone, yet if histories like those of Car- lyle take their place, we can have no reason to mourn their depar- ture. Like Chapman, he "speaks out loud and bold." He tramples upon petty beauties, and the fear of petty blemishes, and the shame of leaving a sentence unpolished, and the pride of round- ing off a period, and all the miserable millineries of an artiflcial style. His strength, as that of every genuine epic poet should, does not lie in the elegance and polish of particular parts, so much as in the grand general result and merit of the whole. One bad ur middling line is unpardonable in a sonnet or epigram, but a hundred such cannot hurt the effect of a lengthened poem. So Carlyle, leaving minuteness of finish to the Lilliputians of litera- ture — to the authors of single sermons, short articles, &c. — con- tents himself with throwing forth from his " fire-bosom " a gi- gantic tout ensemble. Und()ul)tcdly, were he to combine delicacy with energy of execution. Titanic ]iower with Pygm:ean polish, he were a far "more perfect and popular writer. But how few have exhibited an instance of such a combination. Not Shakspere, not Eschylus, hardly Milton — perhaps, if we except Dante and Goethe, not one. Few great writers are fine writers (understand- ing this in the sense of finished), and few fine writers are great. They who have much to say care less for the mode of saying it, and though the most perfect specimens of writing, after all, occur in their writings, it is through a sort of chance — they are there be- cause their writers could not help it, not because they wished to be especially fine. Jeremy Taylor was not a fine writer, nor Burke, nor is Wilson; yet, who w()uld prefer to them, with all their mannerisin and carelessness, the writings of P>lair or Alison, though they be, in jxiint of style, almost faultless monsters ? We, for our part, ])refer soul to style, and like rough diamonds far better than polished pebbles. We noticed, again, its tone of strange charity. This principle, even while passini; through the bloody chaos and mon- ster-gallery of the worst pi'riod of the iievolution, never foiNakes him. Is the brand-mark of universal reprobation on any brow ? That brow, be sure, he stoops down and kisses with a pitying and pardoning affection. For Danton he has an enthusiastic ad- THOMAS CARLYLE. 97 miration; for Robespierre a slight but marked penchant; and even for Marat a lurking tenderness. The Avorld generally has set these men down for monsters — or, in the mildest point of view, madmen — and classed them in that corner of the moral museum railed in for lusi/s naturae. But here comes Thomas Carlyle to this abhorred and shunned corner, snuffing the tainted air, wondering at the singular formations, nay, reclaiming them to the catalogue of men. " Robespierre's poor landlord, the ca- binet-maker in the Rue St Honore, loved him; his brother died for him. May God be merciful to him and to us !" Now, for our part, we like this spirit, Avere it for nothing but its rarity; and, like Carlyle, we are no believers in monstrous births. We believe that millions of respectable and selfish men of the world have in them the elements of Marats, Robespierres, and Neros. We hear, every day, instances of petty tyranny, and minute and malignant cruelty, which, to our mind, let down a fiercer and farther light into the blackness of our depraved nature than a myriad of nnassacres done, net in cold, but in boiling blood, amid the heavings of a moral earthquake, and under the canopy of re- volutionary night. The longer we live, the less we need extreme cases, to convince us that the heart is desperately wicked, and that he who has sounded the grave, the ocean, the darkest moun- tain tarn, cannot fathom the bottomless blackness of his ov\u heart. We do not then join with Carlyle's Edinburgh reviewer, in his grave rebuke of his charity: j&i, perhaps, it is carried too far sometimes. Perhaps it is expressed in a tone of too much levity, and the sang froid he assumes is rather Satanic; perhaps for a mere man too lofty a point of view is assumed; perha])s a hatred of cant, jirofound as the profound thing itself (cant is abysmal), has seduced him into a minor cantilena of his own. We have amused ourselves in imaginincc how he would treat some of the Roman emperors ; and have fancied him swallowing Nero, after a considerable gulp; saying civil things of Heliogabalus; and finding a revelation on the tip of Domitian's bodkin, Avhere- with he amused his ennui in transfixing files ! Seriously, how- ever, we like this spirit. It reminds us, not unpleasantly, of Charles Lamb, who, we are told, never thoroughly loved a man till he had been thrown at his door by tlie blast of general con- tempt and execration. This spirit, we cannot help thinking, contrasts well Avith that of Dr Croly. In talking of the actors in the French Revolution, he often uses language unworthy of a Christian minister. He speaks of them too often — though it partly springs from his temperament — in a tone of savage and truculent fury. This, in a contemporary like Burke, was excus- able; but, now that the men are dead, and have received their verdict from the lips of Eternal Justice, why do more than add a solemn "Amen" to the sentence, whatever it be, which has fixed 98 THOMAS CARLYLE. their destiny? It may be too much in Cavlyle to breathe a sigh over a dead ruffian, who died amid the roar of liberated France, and the curses of mothers and chihlren; but of two extremes it is decidedly the better. We noticed, too, that his prime favourites, next to Charlotte Corday and Madame Eoland, whom everybody admires, are Mirabeau and Danton. His style rises whenever he speaks of these gigantic men. Nor do we Avonder, for surely they tower Titanically above all the actors in that scene of " cinders and blood." Strong and loud must be the steps, which, like theirs, become audible amid an earthquake. Others appear passive in the scene, whirletl about like straws in the vortex. But revolu- tion is their element. They alone can ride upon its wild waters; no vulgar democrats are they; no petty, peddling retail revolu- tionists; they resemble rather the Pandemonian Princes, or the dethroned giants of the Saturnian reign, to whom Jupiter was but a beardless boy. Black as Erebus, ugly as sin, large, lowering, with tones of thunder, and looks of tire, seared con- sciences, and death-defying, yet death-expecting attitude, they stand up, tilling the eye and the imagination, and their huge forms are never lost sight of for a moment, during the wildest turmoil and blackest tempest of the Kevolution : civilians both, armed only with the bayonets of their eyes, and the artillery of their eloquence, and therefore to us more interesting than the little bustling, bloody Toulon officer, the " name of whom is Napoleon Bonaparte." Of the two, Carlyle prefers Mirabeau; "we, with deference, Danton. Of course, the former filled a much larger space, and played a far more conspicuous part on the stage of Jaistory; but we speak of native manhood and capacity; of what Danton was, and might have become. Mirabeau was a count, and had not a little of the old noblesse strut; Danton was of " good farmer people," dug out of the fresh ground, " of the earth earthy." Mirabeau was intensely theatrical, an actor, fond of splendid clap-trajis, and too conscious of himself; Danton was an earnest, simple barbarian, a modern Maximin, or Milo, and spoke and acted from the fulness of an honest, though much mis- taken zeal; Mirabeau was moveable by a kiss from female majesty; Daiitdii was a tower, with tliis inscription, "No weakness:" some- times, indeed, he accepted sops from the government, and then " walked on his own way." Mirabeau was a plagiarist, a sublime thief, suliniitted to be crammed, primed, loaded by others; Dan- ton's burning sentences were all his own; no friend ctmld have lent thoin, any more than a quarry an aerolite. Mirabeau is a splendid charlatan; l^anton a noble saA'age. Both S])oke in short and striking sentences; but while jMirabeau's were si>irit-stirring and electric, Danton's were terribly sublime. The one on his deathbed, pointing to the sun, could say, " If lie be not God, he THOMAS CARLYLE. 99 is his cousin-german;" the other, " The coalesced kings threaten lis: we hurl at them, in gage of battle, the head of a king." Mii-abeau was perpetually protruding himself upon public notice. Danton was a " large nature that could rest;" he sat silent in his place on the Mountain for weeks, till a case of real emergency occurred, till his country was in danger; and then rose up, uttered from his lion throat a few strong words, and sat down again; his country safe, himself silent as before. The vices of both, like their powers, were gigantic. Those of Mirabeau were profligacy and vanity, which marked him out amid the vainest and most dissolute nation on the face of the earth. Danton's were a lust for gold, and an indifference to blood. Mirabeau died of the consequences of his dissipation. Danton had a grander death, and never did the guillotine shear off" a stronger head. Is it fan- ciful to call the one the Byron, and the other the Burns of the period ? We cannot get out of our mind that last visit of Danton to his native village. We see him visiting, for the last time, Arcis sur Aube, the spot where his mother bore him, " for he, too, had a mother, and lay warm in his cradle like the rest of us" — where his vast form grew up, and the wild dream of libeii;y first crossed his daring soul. We see him straying along his native stream, in " haunts which knew him when a boy;" leaning down his Hercu- lean stature upon its bank; the stream the while mirroring his black locks and moody brow; "silent, the great Titan! and won- dering what the end of these things will be;" musing upon the bloody past, and looking forward gloomily to the future, and starting up suddenly with fierce energy and tempestuous resolve, as some wandering wind appeal's to whisper, "Bobespierre;" or as to his awakened fears the guillotine seems to glass itself in the passing waters. And with beating heart we follow him from this to the tribunal of Fouquier, and tremble as he gives in his address, "My name is Danton! a name tolerably well known in the Eevolution. My dwelling shall soon be with annihilation, but I shall live in the Pantheon of history;" or as we hear his voice for the last time reverberating from the domes, in " words piercing from their wild sincerity, winged with wrath, fire flash- ing from the eyes of him, piercing to all republican hearts, higher and higher till the lion voice of him dies away in his throat;" or as we follow him to the guillotine, " carrying a high look in the death-cart" — saying to Camille Desmoulins, as he struggles and writhes, " Courage, my friend, heed not that vile canaille" — to himself, "Oh, my dear wife, shall I never see thee more, then! but, Danton, no weakness" — to the executioner, " Thou wilt show my head to the people — it is worth showing." Surely this man had in him the elements of a noble being, and, had he lived, would, as effectually as even Napoleon, have backed 100 THOMAS CARLYLE. and bridled the Bucephalus of the Revolution, " Thus ])asses, like a gigantic mass of valour, fury, ostentation, and wild revo- lutionary manhood, this Danton to his unknown home. He had many sins, but one worst sin he had not, that of cant. No hol- low formalist, but a very man — with all his dross he was a man — fiery-real, from the great fire-bosom of nature herself. He saved France from Brunswick — he walked straicfht his own wild road, whither it led him. He may live for some generations in the memory of men." The Edinburgh Reviewer seems to have a strong liking for Robespierre, and takes our author to task for his treatment of that " sea-green incorruptible." This liking on the part of the reviewer seems to us affected as well as absurd: for if there be one character to whom we cannot extend our just-defended prin- ciple of charity, it is he. He grounds it upon the fact that he Avas incorruptible, and was a worshipper after a fiishion of his own. Two pitiful pillars for bolstering up a character bowed down by the weight of Danton's blood, by the execrations of humanity, by the unanimous voice of female France, re-echoing the woman's wild cry, " Go down to hell with the cui-ses of all wives and mo- thers." But, oh ! he was above a bribe ! Nay, he was only beneath it; and so is a hyena. He died a poor man; but so fur from mak- ing him an Andrew Marvel therefore, let us rather say with Hall, that "ambition in his mind had, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up the whole fry of petty propensities;" and that there are ''other virtues besides that of dying poor." ]\[iserable counterbalance ! incorruptibility against treachery, ingratitude, infernal cruelty, and systematic hypocrisy — one virtue to a thousand crimes. But he was a worshipper, it seems. Of what? Of Wisdom in the shape of a smoked statue ! And this most ridiculous and mon- sti'ous of all farces ever enacted in this world — this tom -foolery of hell, with its ghastly ceremonies and ghastlier high-priest, "in sky-blue coat and black breeches," decreeing the existence of a Supreme Being with one foot in Dnnton's blood, and the immortality of the soul with another on the brink of ruin — this cowardly acknowledgment, more hoi-rible than the blasphemous denial — this patronage of Deity by one of the worst and meanest of his creatures — has at length met with an admirer in the shape of a contributor to " The Edinl)urgh lUview !" "O shame, where is thy blush f But he had a party who died with him, while Danton stood almost alone. Why, Xero had his friends. " Some hand unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb." The brood of a tiger probably regard their parent as an amiable character — nuich misrepresented. Satan has his ]»arty. Can we wonder, then, tliat a set of miscreants, driven to desperation, should cling to each other, and to the greatest villain of their nundjer ? And as to Danton, not only had he, too, his devoted adherents, Ca- THOMAS CARLYLE. 101 mille Desmoulins, Herault De Seclielles, ifec, but the galleries had nearly rushed down and rescued him. His fall secured llobes- pierre's ruin; and when the wretch attempted to speak in his own behalf, what cry rung in his ears, telling how deeply the people had felt and mourned their Titan's deaths "Danton's blood chokes him." We noticed, too, and wondered at his epithets, and the curious art he has of compounding and recompounding them, till the re- sources of style stagger, and the reader's eye, familiarised to the ordered and measured tameness of the common run of writers, becomes dim Avith astonishment. Take some specimens which occur on opening the book: — " Fountain-ocean, flame-image, star- galaxies, sharp-bustling, kind-sparkling, Tantalus-Ixion, Ama- zonian-graceful, bushy-whiskered, fire-radiant, high-pendant, self- distractive, land-surging, waste-flashing, honour-worthy, famous- infamous, real-imagiuary, pale-dim." iSuch are a few, and but a few, of the strange, half-mad, contradictory and chaotic epithets, which furnish a barbaric garnish to the feast which Carlyle has spread before us. Whether in these he had Homer in his eye, or whether he has rather imitated his hero Mirabeau, who, we know, was very fond of such combinations as Grandison-Cromwell, Crispin-Catiline, &c., we cannot tell; but, while questioning their taste, we honestly admit that we love the book all the better for them, and would miss them much were they away. To such faults (as men to the taste of tobacco) we not only become recon- ciled, for the sake of the pleasure connected with them, but we learn positively to love what seemed at first to breathe the very essence of afl'cctation. It is just as when you have formed a friendship for a man, you love him all the better for his oddities, and value as parts of him all his singulai'ities, from the twist in his temper and the crack in his brain, to the cast in his eye and the stutter in his speech. So, Carlyle's epithets are not beautiful, but they are his. We noticed, too, his passion for the personal. His ideas of all his characters are connected with vivid images of their personal appearance. He is not like Grant, of the " Random Recol- lections," whose soul is swallowed up in the minutijie of dress, and whose " talk is of" buttons. Carlyle is infinitely above this. But in the strength of his imagination, and the profound philo- sophical conviction, that nature has written her idea of character and intellect upon countenance and person, and that " faces never lie," he avails himself of all the traditionary and historical notices which he can collect; and the result is the addition of the charms of painting to those of histoxy. His book will never need an il- lustrated edition. It is illustrated beforehand, in his graphic and perpetually repeated pictures. Mirabeau lifts up, on his canvass, his black boar's head, and carbuncled and grimpitted visage, like 102 THOMAS CARLYLE. " a tiger that had had tlie small-pox." Eobespierre shows his sea- green coiinteDauce and Ijilious eyue, through spectacles, and, ere his fall, is " seen wandering in the fields with an intensely medi- tative air, and eyes blood-spotted, fruit of extreme bile." Dan- ton strides along heavily, as if shod with thunder, and shaking, above his mighty stature, profuse and "coal-black" locks. Marat croaks hoarse, with " bleared soul, looking through Ideared, dull, acrid, wo-struck face," " redolent of soot and horse-drugs." Ca- mille Desmoulins stalks on with " long curling locks, and face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with genius, as if a Baphtha lamp burnt within it." Abbe Sieves, a "light thin" man, " elastic, wiry," weaves his everlasting constitutions of still flimsier materials than himself Bailly " trembles under the guillotine with cold." Vergniaud, during his last night in prison, sings "tumultuous songs." Gross iJavid shows his " swoln cheek," type of genius, in a " state of convulsion." Charlotte Corday hies to Paris, a " stately Norman figure, with beautiful still coun- tenance." Louis stands on the edge of the scaffold, speaking in dumb show, his "face very red." Marie Antoinette, Theresa's daughter, skims along, touching not the ground, till she drops down on it a corpse. Madame Thei-oigne flutters about, a " brown-locked figure," that might win laughter from the grim guillotine itself. Barbaroux, " beautiful as Antinous," " looks into Madame Roland's eyes, and in silence, in tragical renunciance, feels that she is all too lovely." And last, not least, stands at the foot of the scaffold Madame Eoland herself, " a noble white vision, with high cpieenly face, soft proud eyes, and long black hair flowing down to her girdle." Thus do all Carlyle's charac- ters live and move; no stufled figures, or breathing corpses, but animated and flesh and blood humanities. And it is this intense love of the picturesque and personal which gives such a deej) and dramatic interest to the book, and makes it above all comparison the most lively and eloquent history of the period which has ap- peared. We might have dwelt, too, on the sardonic air which pervades the greater part of it. Carlyle's sarcasm is (juite peculiar to himself. It is like that of an intelligence avIio has the power of viewing a great many grave matters at a strange sinister angle, which turns them into figures of mirth. The author of " Don Juan" describes the horrors of a shipwreck like a demon who liad, iiivisil)lt', sat amid the shrouds, choked with laughter: — with inmieasurable glee had heard the wild farewell rising from sea to sky; — bad leaped into the long boat, as it put ofl' with its pale crew; — had gloated over the cannibal repast; — had leered, un- seen, into the " dim eyes of those shipwrecked men," and, with a loud and savage burst of derision, had seen them, at length, sinkiui; into the waves. Carlvle's lautrhter is not that of a fiend THOMAS CARLYLE. 103 but resemliles the neigh of a homeless steed. More truly than Byron might he say, " And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep." For our parts, we love to see him, as he stands beside the boiling abyss of the French Revolution; not, like many, raving in sympathy; nor, like others, coolly sounding the tumultuous surge; nor, like others, vituperating the wild waters; but veiling the profoundest pity, love, terror, and wonder in inextinguishable peals of laughter. This laughter may be hearty, but assuredly it is not heartless. We remarked, in fine, its singular compression of events, scarce one prominent point in the whole complicated history being omitted ; — the art he has of stripping off the proud flesh, and giving the marrow of history; — his want of prejudice and bias, producing, on the one hand, in him, a perfect and ideal im- partiality, and, on the other, in you, an unsatisfied and tantalised feeling, which prompts you to ask, "What, after all, does this man want us to think of the French Revolution, — to love or to hate, to bless or to ban iti" — the appositeness and point of his quotations, which, like strong tributaries, mingle congenially with the main current of his narrative, and are drawn from remote regions; — and his habitual use of the present tense, thus complet- ing the epic cast of his work, giving a freshness and startling life to its every page, and producing an effect as different from the tame jxist of other writers, as the smoothed locks of a coxcomb are from the roused hair of a Moenad or an Apollo standing bright in the breath of Olympus. Such is our estimate of a book which, though no model in style, nor yet a final and conclusive history of the period, can never, as long as originality, power, and genius are admired, pass from the memories of men. We trust we shall live to see its grand sequel in the shape of a life of Napoleon, from the same pen. May it be worthy of the subject and the author, and come forth in the fine words of Symmous: — Thiiiidering the moral of his story, And rolhiig boundless as his glory. Altogether, in an age of singularities, Thomas Cai'lyle stands peculiarly alone. Generally known, and warmly appreciated, he has of late become — popular, in the strict sense, he is not, and may never be. His works may never climb the family library, nor his name become a household word; but while the Thomsons and the Campbells shed their gentle genius, like light into the hall and the hovel, — the shop of the artisan and the sheiling of the shepherd — Carlyle, like the Landors and Lambs of this age, and the Brownes and Burtons of a past, will exert a more limited but profounder power, — cast a dimmer but more gorgeous radiance, — attract fewer but more devoted admirers, and obtain an equal, and perhaps more enviable immortality. 104 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Conceive a small, pale-faced, -wo-begone, and attenuated man, oj)ening the door of liis room in street, advancing to- wards you with hurried movement, and half- recognising glance; saluting you in low and hesitating tones, asking you to be seated; and after he has taken a seat opposite you, but without looking you in the face, beginning to pour into your willing ear, a stream of learning and wisdom as long as you are content to listen, or to lend him the slightest cue. Who is it? 'Tis De Quincey, the celebrated Opium-eater, the friend and interpreter of Coleridge and "Wordsworth, the sounder of metaphysic depths, and the dreamer of imaginative dreams, the most learned and most sin- gular man alive, the most gifted of scholars, the most scholar-like of men. of genius. He has come from his desk, where he has been prosecuting his profound researches, or, peradventure, in- diting a lively paper for " Tait," or a recondite paper for " Black- wood." Your first feeling, as he enters, is. Can this be he ? Is this the distinguished scholar? Is this the impassioned auto- biographer? Is this the man who has recorded such gorgeous visions, seen by him while shut up in the Patmos of a laudanum phial? His head — how can it carry all he knows? His brow is singular in shape, but not jiarticularly large or prominent: where lias nature expressed his majestic intellect? His eyes — they sparkle not, they shine not, they are lustreless : nay, they have a slight habit — tlie one of occasionally looking in a different direc- tion from the other; there is nothing else particular about tliem; there is not even the glare which lights up sometimes dull eyes into elo(iuence; and yet, even at first, the tuvt ensemble strikes you as that of no common man, and you say, ere he has opened his lips, " He is either mad or inspired." But sit and listen to him; hear his small, thin, yet piercing voice, winding out so distinctly his subtleties of thought and feel- ing; his long and strange sentences, evolving like a piece of con-- plicated music, and including everything in their comprehensive swecj); his interminable digressions, striking oil" at every possible angle from the main stream of his discourse, and ever returnintr to it agam; las quotations from favourite authors, so perpetual and so appropriate; his recitation of passages from the poets in a tone of tremulous earnestness; his vast stores of learning, peeping out every now aud then through the loopholes of his small an J searcliing talk; his occasional bursts of enthusiasm; his rich col- lection of anecdote; his uniform urlianity and willingness to allow you your full share in the conversation. Witness all this for an iiour together, and you will say at the close, " This is the best living image of Burke and Coleridge — this is an extraordinary THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 105 man." You sit and listen, and, as the evening steals on, bis sen- tences get longer and longer, and yet your inclination to weary gets less and less. Your attention is fixed by books of steel, and at tbree in tbe morning j'ou rise unsatiated. You leave bim on bis way to bis desk, to study till peep of dawn; and, going bome, your dreams are baunted by tbe curious man, and you seem still to bear bim, witb bis keen, low voice, out-Kanting Kant, or out- mystifying Coleridge, or demolisbing some ricketty literary rej)U- tation, or quoting, in bis deep and quiet under-tone, some of tbe burning words of Sbelley or Wordswortb. De Quincey bas a powerful but imperfect mind. In one sense, indeed, it seems one of tbe most well-furuisbed of understandings. It bas imagination in a biob measure. It bas a still larger sbare of sympatby with tbe imagination of others. It has a most subtle and searching intellect. It has varied information. It has a dic- tatorial command of language. Where, then, lies its imperfection? It lies, we think, in the want of unity and proper compactness among bis various faculties. They are all powerfully developed, but not properly balanced. Tbe consequence is, that tbe one sometimes usurps the province of tbe other. He sometimes de- claims when he should analyse, and sometimes analyses when be should describe. And hence, too, all his effoi'ts have been frag- mentary — each fragment colossal, indeed, and, so far as it goes, finished (for it is easy distinguishing tbe rude fragment of a rock from the splinter of a statue), but still a fragment. He bas pro- duced no perfect and consummate whole. This was to be expected in his autobiographical sketches, but Ave find it pervading all bis Avritings. and his only completed work (" Klosterbeim") is a com- pleted failure. Perhaps tbe necessities of bis lot, and bis late un- fortunate propensity, account for this. Perhaps, also, there is, amid bis endowments, an infirmity of purpose, one weak place which has damaged the whole, one leak in tbe stately vessel, which bas, if not sunk it, at least abridged its voyages, and les- sened its power. The " Confessions of an Opium-Eater" took the public by storm. Its popularity was immediate and boundless; nor, even yet, has it declined. The copy of it we first read was from a circulating library, and had nearly crumbled away. Tbe sources of its success were obvious enough. First of all, the thing was written with prodigious force and spirit. People who judge of De Quineey's style from his contributions to " Tait ' and " Black- wood," have no proper idea of it. There, generally, the " line labours, and the words move slow." It is tbe noble charger jaded and worn out. In tbe " Confessions," he is seen rioting in bis strength. In bis magazine articles, tbe effort is visible; while the " Confessions" are sketched witb a pencil of fire. Tbe starvation scenes in London; the story of Ann, the poor street-stroller, who saved bis life, and whom, in tbe strong gratitude of his heart, be 106 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. would pursue into the central darkness of a London brothel, or into the deeper darkness of the grave; and, above all, the horrors of o]iium, and the sublime and dreary visions with which it drugged his spirit, were told so graphically, and with such easy and ener- getic skill, that they set him immediately at the head of the long list of those who have shown their moral and spiritual wounds to the pity and wonder of the passers-by. They wanted the bon- liommie of Augustine, the minute and passionate anatomy of Rousseau, the quaint and literal vigour of Chai'les Lamb; but they were free from the indelicacy of the repentant father; they were not sullied by the affectation and blasphemy of Jean Jacques; they treated a topic more attractive than Elia's " Confessions of a Drunkard," and gave glimpses of a learning more profound, and a genius more daring, than any of the three. There was another reason. The practice of opium-eating was then little known in England ('tis otherwise now), and was invested wath an Oi-iental haze of romantic interest. It was regarded as Turkisli tobacco; and, viewed in this mild light, the confessions of one who indulged in it awakened instant curiosity and attention. Besides, many thought it a novel, and read it with avidity as an agreeable change from Col burn's last. But, whatever were the reasons, popular the book was, and popular it deserved to be, whether we look to its moral or literary value, whether we regard it as a most faith- ful and impressive statement of the evils of the pai-ticular inilul- gence, or as a picture of a nature originally ncjble, suffering, in such circumstances as may never occur again (to use his own words), " a dire eclipse, and labouring in a dread extremity." Probably many thousands have had dreams as strange as those of De Quincey, but few could have described them as he has done — could have retained and expressed on paper their slumbrous charm — preserved their volatile and evanishing interest — dipped his pen in their unearthly gloom, and voiced forth that feeling of un- utterable mysteiy, which makes the dreaming land so tenible and dear to all imaginative spirits. To this even their fragmentary character contributed; for, as a Inist gives us, from its abrupt termination, an idea of the infinite which a full-length statue never can suggest; so dreams best retain their mystic power when reflected as on the pieces of a broken miiTor, and described iu gasps of shuddering recollection. Perhaps the continuation of these disclosures, recently published, and entitled, " Suspiria de profundis,"' is still finer. tSighs, truly wails and bitter groans they are, from the depths of his incom- municable misery, soimding like notes of the pibroch, borne on the breeze as on a bier, and eloquent and earnest beyond all his former earnestness and eloquence. Next to the " Confessions," it is by his articles in periodicals that De Quincey is best known to the literary world. They con- THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 107 sist partly of translations, and partly of original articles. Among the more prominent of the foi'mer, we recollect some translations from Jean Paul in the " Old London Magazine," and some from Lessing in " Blackwood." His knowledge of the literature of Germany is extensive; his judgments upon it discriminating. He has not that blind and ignorant hatred of all that is German, which was manifested even by such men as Dugald Stewart and Sir Wil- liam Drummond, but neither has he the almost idolatrous feelings of Moir and Carlyle. He strikes, we think, a fair and fine medium, and we love him for preferring liichter to Goethe. But why does he not prefer Schiller to both — Schiller, the most lovely character, the most heroic spirit, and the most exalted genius of his country] To enumerate all his original articles, within reasonable bounds, were a vain attempt. He has written some droppings of criticism in the " Old London;" among others, a paper on the Knocking in " Macbeth," which is much admired (unfortunately, however, we believe, the scene thus eloquently criticised is now discovered to be an interpolation! no matter!); many masterly papers in the " Encycloptedia Britannica;" laboured articles in " Blackwood" on history and political economy by the thousand, amid which a series on the Ciesars stands prominent; several jenx d'esprit in the same magazine, among others, the far-famed " Lecture on Murder con- sidered as one of the Fine Arts," since continued by him unsuc- cessfully; and not a few papers on Hannah More, Animal Mag- netism, &c., besides his autobiographies, in " Tait." His general character as a periodical writer may be summed up in a few words. He is remarkable, first of all, for the most decided and dogmatical assertion of his opinions. Were it not for the stores of learning by which he is manifestly backed, and for the visible and constant play of a strong intellect, you would charge him with extreme and offensive arrogance. As it is, you know not sometimes wliether more to admire the acuteness, or to wonder at the acerbity of his sti'ictures. He throws a paradox at you like a sledge-hammer — he pulls down a favourite idol with as little ceremony or remorse as you would snap a poppy which has shed its flowers. Witness his onset, in the " London," at Grotius, or, as he perversely persisted in calling him, Groot, from which, we fear, the fame of that greatly over-rated personage never can recover. Witness his perpetual sneers at Parr, and all that class of mere scholars ! Witness the abating process he so dexterously applied to Watson, and with less success to Roscoe, and with least of all to Goethe ! Nor does this habit spring from any feeling like envy, or the desire to detract. De Quincey is altogether above such feelings; but the truth is, the current of his literary sympathies, though strong as a cataract, and profound as an abyss, is narrow as a footpath. He is too much engrossed in the admiration of two or three models of supreme ex- cellence, to have much to spare for aught inferior. And for mere 108 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. notoriety, and mere popularity, he has the most absolute con- tempt. He has studied Kant too closely to care much for Paley, and appreciated Wordsworth too intensely to admire the poetry of Aloore. Another characteristic of his criticism, is its conver- sational cast; and hence its endless digressions, and its imperfect and unfinished character; and yet hence, too, its interest and its ease. His philosophy may he called a sublime gossip; and finely doth she chirp over her cups, and garnish the most abstruse spe- culations with tid-bits of literary scandal, and with a rich anec- dotage, teeming from the stores of a most circumstantial memory. In all his writings, we find a lavish display of learning. You see it bursting out, whether he will or no ; never dragged in as by cart-ropes : and his allusions, glancing in all directions, show, even more than his direct quotations, that his knowledge is en- cyclopfedic. His book of reference is the brain. Nor must we forget his style. It is massive, masculine, and energetic; pon- derous in its construction, slow in its motion, thoroughly Eng- lish, yet thickly sprinkled with archaisms and " big words," pep- pered to just the proper degree with the condiments of simile, metaphor, and poetical quotation; select, without being fasti- dious ; strong, without being harsh ; elaborate, without being starched into formal and false precision. Its great faults are an air of effort, and a frequent use of scholastic terms, and the forms of logic. It is, as nearly as may be, the vehicle of his strong, subtle, fiery, and learned nature. Nor does it disdain frequently to express an elephantine humour — more rich and racy, howevei', than choice or delicate. It is a style, in short, adapted well for pure metaphysical discussion, — better still for philosophical criti- cism and biography, — and, perhaps, best of all for the sublime yet shifting i)urposes of some large national history. We refer those who doubt his capacity for this last undertak- ing, to a description he has written of the Exodus of a Tartar tril»e from tlieir nntive hind to the paternal sway of the Emj)cror of China, which they will find in "Blackwood" for July, 1^37, which, however, they will in vain seek in full in any other quar- ter, but which, for broad and massive grandeur of historical de- piction, we have never seen surpassed. In fact, the man has hitlierto done comparatively nothing witli his powers. In com- mon with all who know him, we deem him to have been capable of the loftiest things, whetlier in the field of psychology, or in more verdant and popular regions. Especially was he (pialified by his classical learning, by the taste and tendency of his mind, by the graver graces of liis diction, by his intimacy wllli tlie sjiirit and jjliilosophy of Itoman story, and by his belief in the (.'I.risliaii faith, for the proud task of writing the history of the Fourth Monarchy. Gibbon, no one knows better than De Quincey, has not nearly exhausted the magnificent theme. He i.s, no doubt, THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 109 a great, strutting, splendid writer, rolling on his large periods, scattering his fiery sneers, mouthing out his oracular dogmatism, and spreading forth the riches of his ostentatious learning. But his work is not only disfigured by the blue and blistering venom of scepticism; not only does it keep up a bitter, running fire against the blessed faith of Ohrist, from every corner and point, in the great guns of the celebrated two chapters, in the glancing side- fire of the text, and in the base bush-fighting of the notes, but it has other important blemishes; stupendous as it is, it is incomplete; it abounds Avith inaccuracies and indelicate al- lusions; it wants a true and profound insight into the causes of Roman decline; as a narrative, it is indirect, cumbrous, and fre- quently obscure; as a composition, its colours are often false, barbaric, and overlaid, and though sparkling with sudden bril- liancies, it has no sustained power or splendour. What a differ- ent, and, in many respects, what a superior and monumental work of it might De Quincey have made, had he, ten or twenty years ago, set himself resolutely to the task! In the year 1831), after long absence from the arena of " Blackwood's Magazine," he leaped down upon it again, as with a thunder-tramp. He is the author of that series of scholai'ly articles which appeared since then, on " Milton," " The Philosophy of Eoman History," " Dinner, Real and Reputed," " The Essenes," " Style," " The Opium Question,^' "Ricardo made easy," &c. &c. And a marvellous series it is, when you take it in connection with his advanced age and shat- tered system. We were particularly interested by his paper on the "Essenes." It is in the style of the best of Horsley's ser- mons. He begins, as that prelate was wont, by the statement of what seems a hopeless and dangerous error; but, ere he be done, he has surrounded it with such plausible analogies, he has darted upon it such a glare of learning, he has so fenced it in with bristling dilemmas, he has so cut the diflSculties, and strangled the objections started against it, that you lay down the paper, believing, or, at least, wishing to believe, that the Essenes and the Christians were identical. Besides this, Mr De Quincey has written a long series of sketches in " Tait's Magazine," of contemporary characters, of various merit, but some of which (we refer particularly to those of Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lamb, Hannah More, and Charles Lloyd) are quite worthy of his versatile and vigorous pen. De Quincey ! farewell ! Many pleasing hours have we spent in the perusal of thy eloquent page, and not a few in listening to thy piercing words. Not a few tears have we given to thy early Borrows. With no little emotion have we followed the current of thy romantic narrative, now gliding by the " Towers of Julius," reflecting the abhorred agonies of hunger and abandonment, and mirroring the countenance of the lost Anne; now darkened by 110 JOHN FOSTER. the shadow of the Welsh mountains, and af^ain by the deeper darkness of thine own diseased and dream-haunted spirit; and now murmuring cahuer measures in rocky Cuml^erhxnd, ^\^th the high front of Wordsworth, and the dim eye of Coleridge, like a nebulous star, looking down upon the still water. May it close its race in splendour. May thine be the golden evening which often succeeds a troubled and tempestuous day. Again, fare- thee-well ! JOHN FOSTER. " The Essay," wrote a bookseller to a friend of the author, " is a species of composition for which there is now little demand." And there cannot be a doubt that the sagacious bibliopole spoke the result of his experience, though to account for the fact might not a little have puzzled his acuteness. Why is it that this once most popular and delightful kind of literature, with all its slip- shod ease and fireside graces, has died with Elia, or, if alive, pre- serves only a precarious and ricketty existence 1 Why, while treatise, poem, tragedy, speech, sermon, in short, every other kind of literary composition, preserves its pristine and palmy honours, have essays and epics gone together to the sepulclii-e I Why, while the classics in this department retain their proper niche in the library, and are read with eagerness and delight by those who go rather farther back in their literary researches than Nickleby and Jack Shepherd, is no one ambitious of adding to their number; of treading that quiet path where Addison, and Steele, and Fi^anklin, and Hunt, and Lamb, have walked before; of recasting their limited but magic circle; swaying their tiny, but potent rod; emulating their nameless, but numberless graces, their good nature, their elegant railleiy, their conversational ease, their tine shiftings to and fro, from tender sportiveness to spor- tive pathos, or their varied and idiomatic style? Nay, who, though ambitious of this, could find a fit audience, if he found an au- dience at all ? Is it that the cast of mind, of which the essay was the delicate offshoot, has disappeared from among men 1 Or is it that the essay is a kind of vegetable mule, like that from the Dianthus Superbus, which can ])e propagated, to a limited extent, but which, in the long run, dies away from lack of masculine vigour and real root in the literary herbarium 'I Or is it that the public has, from mere wantonness and caprice, " made a point," as poor OohUniith has it, to read essays no more, however excellent in themselves I We think the cause lies somewhat deeper; though, after all, it is not very far from the surface. JOHN FOSTER, 111 The essay was always a sort of literary light-horsemanship. It neither tested the highest powei'S of mind, nor did it propose to itself the noblest and profoundest purposes. Cast in a medium between the formality of a ti-eatise, and the carelessness of a let- ter, it wanted the satisfactory completeness of the one, and the confidential charm of the other. It was suited eminently to an indolent and easy-minded age, like that on whose breakfast-tables shone the " Tatlers," the " Spectators," and the " Guardians." For the amusement of the big-wigged and luxurious generation of Queen Anne, the essay was as admirably adapted as the sofa, that paradise of the parlour. In the days of the Miltons, the Vanes, and the Seldens, it would have attracted no more notice than the flutter of an ephemeron's wings. The idea is ludicrous of Cromwell lounging over a number of the " Adventurer," or of Milton's dauf^hter reading to him the account of the Club of little men. That age of high intellects, of strong and stormy pas- sions, of deep religious purpose, was an age for Areopagiticas, not essays. Their light and elegant structure was better fitted for an age of French di-ess, small intrigue, modish manners, quiet, not keen literary tastes, perfect politeness, and profound internal peace; — ^when, for Cromwells, we had Bolingbrokes; for Miltons, Popes; for Seldens, Steeles; for goblets bubbling with royal blood, cups and saucers, brimful of the innocent novelty of tea ! And it was clear that, if a more earnest and enthusiastic period were ever to dawn, the beautiful but somewhat ilimsy jjinions of the essay would be scorched in its radiance. It turned out as might have been expected. The French Revolution threw down, en passant, the old landmarks of literatures — changed the very style of the world, Avhich began to heave and hurry, as if the hands of the writers were shaken by an earthquake, and to gloAv as if with a reflection of the furnace heat of the surrounding excitement, and for the essay substituted the review, a far more pliable and powerful instrument. Since, various attempts have been made to revive that faded form of writing; and, unquestionably, in the "Round Table" of Hazlitt, the "Indicator" and "Com- panion " of Hunt, and the " Reflector " and " Elia " of Lamb, we find many of the graces, and much of the spirit of our elder essayists, blended with a deeper insight, and a warmer imagina- tion; but still the age of essays, as of chivalry, is too obviously gone. In reviews, we have not essays but dissertations. In magazines, their place is supplied by tales and sketches. In the pages of our cheap literature, they still partially survive. The truth is, our age is not sufiiciently at its ease to relish the essay. It is too much occupied in devouring newspapers, glancing over reviews, bolting novels, and tearing out the heart of treatises of mechaiiical science, to read, as it runs, such short, delicate, and refined productions. To be taught or to be amused, to probe 112 JOHN FOSTER. practical questions to the bottom, or to be lapped over head and ears in dreams of romance, is the tendency of the popular taste at present. The essay answers but indifferently any of these ends. And if ever, as is possible, we shall see it restored to its former — and more than its former — popularity, we must first see the public mmd in a less excited, a less eager, and a more equable frame. The subject of the following sketch was generally known as Foster the Essayist. But, in truth, the title was a misnomer. For )iis tone, style, purpose, beauties, and faults, alike marked him out from the ordinary herd of essayists, and from the gay writers of Queen Anne, and their imitators. Indeed, it is not easy to say to what precise species of composition his extraordinary pro- ductions behjug. They are not sermons, though they have much of the sermonising vehemence, earnestness, and oracularity. They are not treatises, yet are elaborate, lengthy, and exhaustive. They are hardly essays, though they bear the name, and have much point, brilliance, and sarcastic wit. Part of them profess to be letters to a friend; but all are greatly deficient in epistolary ease and grace. They are of the composite order of intellectual architecture; and, as such, require a severer criticism than the common run of essays; but one less ligid than Avould be requisite for works of greater pretensions and prouder name. John Foster was, unquestionably, an original man. He had as distinct a faculty of seeing everything through his om'u medium as any writer of his day. Were the medium dim, or i)arty- coloured, as it sometimes was, or were it vivid and lustrous, it was always his own. Authors, characters, books, the face of nature, were all seen and shown by him in a new, strange, and strikinut just by the fairy lustre round his own head." His thought had a stamp about it altogether his own. With no air of affected singularity, with no desi)eratc efforts at solving the inscrutable and sounding the fathomless, with little mctai)hysical verl)iage, and with few carefully wrapt up commonplaces, ins train of thinking ever sought the i)rofound as iU natural element. A necessity was laid upon his mind not to think shallowly, or like other men: and even when he did bring up half truths, or whole errors, like seaweed instead of coral, there was something in its very worthlessness which spoke of the depths, and betrayed the vigour and wind of the diver. He was one of the few writers, in an age of mystification, whose obscurities were entirely invo- luntary and unassumed — neither formed by the imitation of false models, nor by personal affectation, but by the necessities of his intellect, or the peculiarities of a stylo which Avas sometimes an insufficient organ to his thouglit. His thinking was not that of the mere metaphysician, nor of the mere " logical grind-mill," nor JOHN FOSTER. 113 of the mere poet, nor of the mere theologian; it was that of a mind at once acute, imaginative, and tinctured with a solemn and pe- culiar piety. His defects as a thinker were as essential as his merits; they were, an occasional one-sidedness of view, an ha- bitual preference for the gloomy side of things, a morbidity of moral thinking, a dark estimate of human character, and a dreadful habit of dealing out perdition upon all who do not reach a certain standard, or hold a certain set of theoretical opinions. The force and comprehensiveness of his intellect were injured, too, not only by the party influences of one of the straitest sects of our religion, but by the limitation of his knowledge, which was apparently not proportionate to his powers. And your surprise was, that with such school-boy resources his mind could do so much; that, with a plaything for a club, this brawny Hercules could work such wonders of enerjxetic thinking. He had of course read much and variedly. Still you missed that indescribable something, connected with a thoroughly learned mind, those far- flashing allusions, that general rich result in style and imagery, of a most multifarious scholarship, which charms us in Burke and in Macaulay. Had he been as ripe and good a scholar as he wa.^ a vigorous and eloquent thinker, he would probably have occu- pied a still higher place in the literary firmament. Foster's style, like his thought, was his own. And in saying this, we state its principal, not its only merit. It was not periodic, measured, or elaborately polished; its sentences were of all lengths, and of all shapes, — sometimes extremely short, and often strag- gling along whole pages; now and then beautifully simple, but generally complicated and perplexed. It was a bony, muscular, masculine style, solid as iron, yet richly set with massive ornament, reminding us often in its rough sublimity of old John Scott, who wrote the " Christian Life," though it never reached that author's higher raptures, which, like the " old poets, are all air and fire." Its defects were very obvious, — its involution, its slow and cum- brous march, its unwieldy periods, grappling together huge masses of thought, its curious combination of some of the worst faults of sermon-writing, with some of the worst in epistolary style, and a certain barbarous dissonance, betokening the want of a fine ear, and murdering the music of almost all his periods. We were always struck with the difficulty, and iron toil, with which he manifestly expressed his thoughts. The task of Sisyphus was a joke com- pared to the labour dire and weary wo with which this very able man, and rather voluminous author, composed to the last. Language with him was no delicate Ariel, but a drudging Caliban, doing the behests of his magic mind with slow and unconquerable reluctance. The effort, however, was of an interesting kind. It did not resemble the spasmodic struggle of mediocrists to dive into depths beyond their reach, nor the throes of the highest I 114 JOHN FOSTER. order of poetic genius to bring forth its giant progeny, nor the difficulty of retired and recluse students to seize, detain, and fix down their thoughts. It was a difficulty not in fashioning full- grown conceptions within, but in giving them form and pressure on the written page. We mark this strange struggle particularly in his " Essay on Popular Ignorance," where he gasps and tosses about in a sea of gloomy speculation and turbid words. The tone of Foster's mind, and the cast of his writing, were ex- ceedingly sombre. Some gay and brilliant passages occur. Little sunny spots lie at intervals, like patches of summer green amid forests of pine. Curlings of a playful humour pass transiently over his lips; veins of sarcasm are disclosed here and there; but a mood of abstraction, of dark investigation, and of awful piety, lies like a shadow over all his works, and tinges the soul of his reader with the same sad and solemn hue. From the shades of early scepticism, he passed into another, though a tenderer and holier darkness. In this respect, he resembles Dr Johnson more than any other writer. Even the Gospel gave but a troubled glad- ness to Foster's spirit. By a strange instinct, he turned away from Goshen, to the surrounding and impervious darkness, and brooded with painful yet pious feelings under its sable canopy. The inscru- table decrees of God, the existence and the ravages of moral evil in this fair universe, the secrets of the place of punishment, the evils of ignorance, the abuses of talent; such subjects possessed for him a dreary attraction, and drew him ii'resisti])ly towai'd the centre of these abysses of gloomy meditation, which they now oj^en, and now seem to shut with violence in the face of the inquirer. No writer of this age has described so well the majesty of moral dark- ness, the horrors of idolatiy pressing down ages and continents under its demoniacal domination, the evils of perverted power, of national infatuation, and of national ignorance. And no one has ever turned a more reverent, yet a more eager and im- ploring eye, toward those ultimate questions which are folded up in their own inscrutability. No one has hung with such anxious steps and beseeching looks around the confines of that mystery which envelopes us on every side; the problem of all ages, the origin of evil, lies like a tangiljle weight on his mind, which it agitates to an injurious and distressing degree. When speak- ing, in his critical estimate of Kobert Hall, of those whose very devotion is endangered by such speculations, he had manifestly himself in his eye. Not that he was less ])ious on this account — far from it — but his reli^'ion caufjht from such cofjitations a cast and colour of its own, and became a light shining amid darkness. The text, " God is love," was rw) text for him; God a consuming fire, earth a wilderness of sin, masses of human beings, hurried by the grasp of moral destroyers off" this into a darker stage, " the who^e of human hopes, and wishes, and efforts, and projects, JOHN FOSTER. 115 brought down in a long abortive series, by the torrent of ages, to be lost in final despair;" such subjects incessantly recurred, and were treated in a style so far removed from vulgar fanaticism, cowardly complaint, or blasphemous objurgation, — in a style so mournful, yet so submissive, as at once to depress and elevate, to sadden and sublimate, the mind of his reader. Perhaps, after all, his forte lay in his microscopic observation of human character. Through his caustic and severe humour, as through a lens of subtlest power, he saw into the marrow of man, and his hand was as firm to dissect, as his vision was piercing to see. Possessing; almost the insij>;ht of a Fieldinjj into the tor- tuosities of motive, he turned it to a veiy different account. The heart was the true field of Foster's power, and deep his knowledge of its vagaries, its self-deceptions, its devious windings, its vain ambitions, the varying shades which make up the blackness of its darkness. Perhaps he errs in the excessive refinement of his scrutiny, is too stern and sinister in his inferences, makes too little allowance for that tremendous press of tendency to evil, in which, the Avhile, he so firmly believes, exaggerates the darker hues, is too rapid and uniform in his generalisation of character, and flourishes too exultingly the knife, by which he " pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart." We have reason to know, that the same searching power which distinguished the author, marked the man, and have heard of those who knew him, while testifying abun- dantly to his amiable and unassuming depoi'tment, confessing that they have sometimes trembled at the weight of piercing silent scrutiny, like that of a spirit, which his looks told was involuntarily brought to bear upon themselves. His first essays are the best, and also the most popular of his productions. Perhaps, after Hall's exquisite criticism (one giant hand of genius held forth to welcome another), it maybe presump- tuous to pass any verdict on those very racy and original produc- tions. They were written to the lady of his love, who stirred him up to produce a work which should prove him to the world, what she knew him to be. a man of genius. This roused his sluggish spirit. It awoke in its strength, and sank not down into con- genial indolence, till it had secured a bride, and made itself im- mortal ! But such love letters ! Compared to ordinary ones, they resemble the stupendous missives of Brobdignagian swains, when put beside the penny-post productions of the lovers in Lilliput. Theyhave no pretty nonsense; nofine-spun compliments; no high-flown gallantry; no lisping tenderness. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand females could not have under- stood them. But they were addressed to a kindred spirit — a mind little inferior to Foster's own — and which inhabited a frame, high, cold, pale, beautiful, and majestic — like a statue; 11§ JOHN FOSTER. but, as he himself comphiined, " like a statue too surrounded by au iron railing," which it required these essays to break down. Alas ! some time ere his own departure, she, before Avhom he laid the first powerful productions of his intellect, and whose smiles he won by the sheer force of his intellect, became a cold corpse. The essays are more than worthy of the inspiration. In reading them, we feel like one who, travelling over a dull champaign, is suddenly let down into a mine of gold; or it is a pleasure like that of the heroine of " The Revolt of Islam," who is carried by a " diver, lean and strong, " down amid the glo- ries, the " mighty shapes, and mightier shadows," of a coral sea. The contrast between the dull and sickening sameness, the tame or turgid language, the cautious, creeping, or silly and ranting tone of ordinary religious literature, and the energy, the fresh- ness, boldness, and grandeur-, of the author of the " Essay on Decision of Character," is immense. It is an eagle intermingling with a dance of twilight bats. It is a trumpet sounding suddenly amid a twang of Jews' harps. It is the ship of Heaven, described by Southey, shell-shaped, rigged with a rainbow, coloured Avith the green light of evening, bearing away boldly for the Swerga from amongst a batch of river craft, which are creeping along the shore. That these figures do not too strongly express tlie differ- ence, will be admitted by every one who knows the state of reli- gious literature at the time these essays appeared, or is capable of api)reciating the vast toto coelo distinction between the cold, narrow, illiterate mode of presenting the truths of Christianity, which then prevailed, and the new, brilliant, and firmamental light, which the genius of Foster has poured around them. '" On Decision of Charactei" has been the most popular of the four essays; though, in passages, we think inferior to any of the rest. It abounds in illustrations, many of them taken from the most commonjilace classical sources, but all steeped in the author's native originality, and all subservient to his main end. Foster is essentially a moralist — indeed the last specimen of that class who have occupied the border ground between literature and theology — and, though not so elegant as Addison, nor so sonorous as John- son, he is the expounder of as profound a wisdom, and of a nobler, stricter, more ethereal, and more Christian ethics. If effect be a test of true power, this essay meets it as effectually as anything we know within the same compass. We have heard of those whose wavering inclinations it has fixed, whose scattered faculties it has condensed into one tleep j)urj)Ose — who have risen from its perusal " sadder and wiser" men, pledged as by a sacrament to a more consistent, independent, and energetic course of existence. Per- haps he overrates the force of a determined intellect. He fre- quently, indeed, ])rotests against its abuse, yet he so much admires and ardently eulogises the quality itself, as to give it a dangerous JOHN FOSTER. 117 prominence, and to wreath round it a seductive charm. There can be no question, that, while decision of character, in a virtuous spirit, is beneficial in the highest degree, it becomes, in a vicious character, the source and centre of immense evil. But Foster, in teaching us to idolize this quality, teaches us in effect, though not in intention, to regard it as a blind to errors, and an excuse for enormities which are distinguished by a daring decision. For one Howard or Whitiield, there have been a hundred Catilines and Bonapartes. Decision of character, in short, is not strictly a moral power, and it is extremely dangerous to pay that homage to any intellectual quality which is sacred to virtue alone. The essay on a " Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself " has always been our chief favourite among Foster's writings. Less finished in execution, and less sustained in mere style, than the former, it has a far deeper energy of thinking, and rises in parts to an overwhelming sublimity, and awfulness of tone. Who has forgot his demonstration, in a few sentences, of the folly and pre- sumption of the atheist (or rather, to use Dr Chalmers's distinction, of the autitheist, who would deny the very possibility of a Su- preme Being), conveying to him a rebuke as if from the chambers of the thunder 1 We admire too in this essay the deep side glances into the core of human nature; the fierce bitterness of sarcasm which tinges many of its sentences, and repays with rich interest the scoff of profane witlings; the profound earnestness which per- vades it, and the peculiar freshness of its originality, like the taste of virgin honey, or the smell of a strong soil turned up by the plough. Some passages, too, are written in a style of plaintive tenderness, and many of his thoughts flower into poetry. " Where," he asks of the aged man, " are all those vernal fancies which once had so much power to touch the heart 1 They died like the singing birds of that time, which now sing no more." The essay " On the term Romantic" is not as a whole successful. It is an attempt, with what seems a total waste of force, to trans- pierce those bright bubbles which arise in young and visionary minds, and which are sure but too speedily to fall asunder of themselves. There is little risk of the world ever becomingf over romantic. And is not the sport cruel which singles out for savage chase those innocent illusions, which, if they do sometimes veil the real responsibilities, more frequently disguise the real cala- mities of existence ? In fact, it is not worth while. No use of throwing a great stone among the bonny bells which arise in their brief beauty on the surface of the mountain pool. They will soon sink into the black abyss whence they rose. One passage, how- ever, on the absurdity of Utopian schemes for the regeneration of the world, is written with much energy, and a certain mournful grandeur, which nearly melt us to tears. Various projects, aspir- ing each to the character of the true panacea, pass in review be- 118 JOHN FOSTER. fore the stern observer, who keenly eyes, briefly questions, and dismisses them with the waive of summary disdain. His verdict is sometimes, we fear, too harsh and hasty, and he does but bare justice to the benevolence and self-sacrifice which shine through the worst of those schemes; and, though we cordially agree with him in thinking that the help of the world must in the main come from above, and be wrought out by means as independent of human forethought as the " rising of the sun," we plead guilty to a lurking tenderness for those sincere enthusiasts, typified by the heroic Knight of La Mancha, who have sought, often by tears, and tortures, and blood, to stanch the wounds of this " poor ter- restrial citadel of man. " We cannot, in a world so selfish as this, afford to sacrifice the disinterestedness, self-devotion, and honesty to be found in the annals of projectorism, even to the keenest and raciest of sneers. We are romantic enough to prefer the sublime visionary to the utilitarian philosopher, to the calculating slave of worldly prudence, and to those who — from motives very differ- ent from Foster's — pour indiscriminate derision upon all the efforts, noble, though ever defeated, of Poor humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless dc stiny. The essay " On the Causes of Aversion in men of Taste to Evan- gelical Eeligion, " is the most elaborate and complete, if not the finest of his efforts. An outcry was raised against it, because it ridicules the use of the old theological phraseology, and omits to dwell on the grand cause of aversion — the depravity of human nature. Both charges are unjust. Foster does not ridicule the use, but the abuse of technical language, as applied todivinethiugs; and proposes, modestly, and merely as an experiment, to translate it in accommodation to fastidious tastes. And if he does not dilate on the depravity of man, he takes it for granted, and pro- ceeds to examine the subordinate causes which tend to ajrjjravate the virus of the corruption. Why blame him for not doing what he never meant to do ? for not writing a " Fourfold State, " or a " Whole Duty of Man, " when he merely intended an ethical es.say ? Ko one has ever expressed in terms of more entire conviction, or piercing eloquence, his belief in the radical depravity of human nature. But he does not protrude the doctrine in every page. This could only have l)een desired by the merest slaves of system. That part of the essay devoted to a review of the literature of ancient and modern times might, we think, have been objected to with greater justice. It a])plies far too stern and rigid a stan- dard. Would not even the " Paradise Lost " shrink from angelic criticism ? But here Homer, Virgil, and Lucan are tried, not by their f)wn law, the law of nature, but by the measure of a light in which they were not permitted to walk. Homer's heroes are tho JOHN FOSTER. 119 very men of Homer's age — sublime and sanguinary barbarians — ■ what else could they have been expected to be ? The traits of jus- tice and of generosity, of pity and mildness, which they exhibit, are often given them by the pure grant of the poet, and in some measure serve to counteract the ferocious lessons taught by their vices. It will never do to apply the standard of Heaven's own purity to the two old works of a Pagan poet, and to complain that a " Greek gazette " breathes not a gospel spirit, and contains not the essence of a gospel morality. The same harshness of tone characterises his view of Modern Literature. We surrender to him Pope's " Essay on Man, " et hoc omne genus, also the spawn of playwrights and the odes of demi- reps, on which he passes so sage and solemn a sentence. But we are not so willing to give up our belief in the Christianity of Addisou and Johnson. True, they were not quite orthodox; but neither was Milton, whose genius Foster deems " worthy to have mingled with that of the angels who proclaimed the coming of Christ upon the plain of Bethlehem; to have shamed to silence the muses of Paganism, or softened the pains of a Christian martyr. " True, they were not professed theologians, and did not protrude the pecu- liarities of the Gospel into miscellaneous and desultory papers; but neither has always Foster himself. With I'egard to the private cha- racters of the men, they had their faults — who wants them '] But they were sincere believers, and died in the faith of Christ. And more, they shrank not, in spite of Foster's assertion, from express- ing their convictions of the truth of religion, on every proper op- portunity, and in defiance of the scorn of a sneering and sceptical age. Dr Johnson's impressions were profound as death; and, in his last moments, he recommended a volume of sermons as fullest on the doctrine of a propitiation. How long will it be till Christians understand the meaning of the words, " He that is not against us, is on our part;" and, " the greatest of these is charity 1" We blush for those feelings which induced a mind like John Foster's to cast cold-blooded doubts upon the religion of two such men, merely because they differed from him in this jot and yonder tittle of their creed, or because their mode of articulating their faith was more lax and less accurate than his own. The " Essay on Popular Ignorance " is, in point of style and execution, decidedly the worst of all his productions. Clumsy in structure, cumbrous in style, obscure in purpose, and spasmodic in movement, it requires almost a martyr's patience to read it through. " He has run, " said Hall, " a race after obscurity, and gained it. " But if we look within the rough and awkward out- skle, we will be richly rewarded by its perusal. We will admire its benevolent intent, its grasp of thought, the thunders of in- dignation which are heard from its cloudy tabernacle against the kings, and priests, and statesmen, who have kept the people in 120 JOHN FOSTER. the bondage of ignorance; and will view with interest even the gigantic gropiugs of his mind amid the gloomy subject, like those of the Cyclops in the cave, or of Samson stretching at the pillars. We will admit, however, that his tints are too uniform and too sombre; that he allows not sufficiently for that wild natural know- ledge which (like the unconsolidated ether of the heavens) has been diffused at every period, in the shape of common sense, or iinu superstition, or floating poetry; that he expects too much from the accumulation of mere unassimilated, unkindled, unbap- tised information; and that he overrates the influence and re- sponsibility of governments in the matter, forgetting that the primary end of all such institutions is to manage the temporal concerns and provide for the temporal wants of their subjects; that, in the wants and diseases of the spiritual nature, " the patient best ministers to himself; " that the exact value of mere mental education, as a means of morality and happiness, is not yet settled; and that the difficulties connected with its mode and manaa'cment have always been so numerous and formidable, as to explain, if not excuse, the reluctance of many of the ablest and wisest of state- physicians to intermeddle with a case so delicate and perilous. The book has been lately re-written and re-printed. We mention this for the purpose of noting Foster's character as a redacteur of his own works. He reminds us in it of some huge animal walk- ing backwards. Expressions originally clumsy are rubbed down, and left in a state of more awkward and helpless clumsiness than before; immusical periods are torninto harsher discord; obscurities are blotched into more hopeless obscurity still; his intricacies he deems he has clarified, when he has cast them into other and more perplexed arrangement. Some of his finest illustrations he spoils by addition; some of his strongest expressions he emasculates by sub- traction; and leaves the whole uncongenial business with a shrug, half of chagrin, and half of ludicrous gratitude, that, if he has made it no better, he has not left it much worse than it w'as before. He published, so far as we are aware, but one sermon, if sermon it can be called, which is, in fact, an essay Mith a text at top. This ■was his celebrated discourse on Indian Idolatry. We never so fully saw its merit as when listening a while ago to some missionaries professing to give an account of Hindooism. In their hands, it became simply ludicrous and silly, instead of being an object of grave scorn and hatred; and the farce was completed by their hold- ing up a specimen of an idol, which was received with a shout of laughter. But Foster grapples with the real and comprehensive character of tlie system. While treating with all tlie austerity of his colossal contempt the multitudinous fooleries of its mytho- logy, he concedes to it, although too reluctantly and sparingly, the po.sscssion of a certain sultlimity, springing from its antiquity, its prevalence, its power, and the splendour, as of mingled blood and JOHN FOSTER. 121 fire, which surrounds its temples, and confirms its reign. By pro- claiming its possession of such attributes, he desires to awaken against it efforts commensurate with its greatness, and an animo- sity profound as its age. We never make sufficient exertions to oppose an enemy we despise. We must fear ere we can foil the foe. Nor can that system be purely ridiculous and contemptible which has gathered round it the grandeur and the associations of centuries, which chains to its throne millions of immortals, which has •' established castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through immemorial tracts of time," and " barriers of utter ab- horrence" between various classes, which have remained unbroken for ages, and cemented its foundations by many and many a Ganges of human blood. Poor expedient for kindling ire against " an ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate " religion like this, the exhibition of one of its idols to a gaping and laughing audience ! It was not, besides, giving the system its due. The idol, which here, in the grasp of an enemy, and held up in its naked absurdity before an audience of enemies, was merely ridiculous, would, were we to change the scene, and see it the centre of a million flash- ing eyes, surrounded by the pomps of its ceremonial, overhung by the canopy of its burning heaven, mirrored in its gigantic stream, and perfumed by the incense of its swarthy adorers, be- come infinitely more respected, as well as infinitely more the ob- ject of terror and hatred. The half of this sermon is written in Poster's best style, is dipt in the deepest dye of his philosophy, and radiant with all the poetry of his nature. His picture of war is the best we have read, not excepting that very different one in Gulliver; but who can hope, in a sermon or sentence, to describe adequately the profound and prodigious thing — war! As easily have collected all the blood of Borodino or Waterloo in a basin. In the latter half, he entangles himself with supposed objections, urged by fatalists against missions, as if one who had drunk the " coal-black wine " of that miserable delusion were to be reasoned with any more than a wild beast or a maniac. He is the author, moreover, of a very long and very characte- ristic Preface to Doddridge's " Rise and Progress." We admire particularly its introduction, wherein he muses on a library in a peculiar and most impressive style, spreading the genius and the gloom of his mind over the place, where a silent people have fixed their abode, filling the populous solitude of books with his reveries, and weaving a cobweb of melancholy cogitation over the crowded shelves. Books talk to him, as he sits pensive and alone : they tell him the history of those who read and those who wrote them; names inscribed centuries ago upon their margins or blank pages suggest strange surmises as to the fate of those who bore them; and the vices or virtues, the weal or the wo, of tlieir de- ceased authors, seem to cluster round, or to flash out, from the dumb 122 JOHN FOSTKR. volumes, and to stir the leaves with " airs from heaven or blasts from hell. " It is the day-dream of a strange but holy soul. And turning round from his books, how closely does he grapple in a series of interrogations with the hearts and consciences of his readers! It is like a spirit talking to us of eternity, over the mouth of the grave, and by the light of a waning moon. How strict yet tender the questionings! The conscience, a discoloured form, is naked and bare before the questioner's eye, and WTithes visibly in the force of his tremendous investigation. He has written, besides all this, a series of very unequal articles in "The Eclectic Review" (since collected into volumes), where, amid much that was weighty and profound, he perpetrated a great deal of unwieldy, slovenly, dreary, and leaden prose. In them he has painted, with much force, what he calls the " Tragedy " of Hume's deathbed; — he has made a desperate but unsuccessful effort to solve the problem of Coleridge's genius — a subject on which few but Hazlitt have hitherto written adequately, who seemed created to criticise Coleridge; — he has written a long analysis and panegyric of Southey's prodigious poem, " The Curse of Kehama;" and condescended to break the butterfly, Mrs Montague, on his austere wheel, and to moralise on the memoirs of the miserable Foote. We recollect, too, with much zest, some articles intensely and terribly sarcastic on the Hindoo mythologies, and their Eng- lish defenders. His style, ponderous, powerful like the trample of an elephant, constantly bewrayed him; but it is a proud reflec- tion for his admirers, the more especially since his departure, that all his writings, anonymous or acknowledged, had the welfare of the human race as their grand object; that, too peculiar, too unj bent, before the Dagon of conventional taste, to be popular, in the ordinary sense at present, they bide their time; that, as it is, tliey have secured for him already an earthly immortality; and, what is far more, they are, doubtless, destined, from their moral and religious influences, to lend lustre to that crown of eternal life of which he was the eager but humble expectant. For full parti- culars concerning his private history, we refer our readers to his recently puldished life. In his youth, as we have hinted, he is said to have been tinged with sceptical sentiments, which were gradually exchanged for a consistent and genuine, though a gloomy, form of religion. One of the first tilings that attracted notice to his early discourses was a remarkable expression in one of them — "It was as impossible for Christ's boily to have rested in the sepulchre, as for snow to remain, unmelted, on the surface of the sun." He became a preacher; but not a poi)ular one. His matter was too profound fur the appreliension of his audience, his manner stifl' anreaching but what contains a string of ai)peal3 and <|uerios, and adjurations, unconnected with priiicipl(;s, unsup- ported by reasoning, and loose as a rope of sand. This is called, though falsely, practical preaching. Another wants a sermon to be a series of electrical shocks — one burst from beginning to end; the clouds returning after the rain, and no cotton .so thick, and no conscience so hard, as to exclude or resist the perpetual tumult. This is the clap-trap idea of preaching. Another wants flowers, • We bcp leave, as supplyinfj our brevity and lack of service, to point our readers to two papcra on VVilson's poetry, which ai)i»earcd in " Ilogtj's JnHtioic- tor," as tlio best on tlie stiijjcct we have read. 'I'lity were written, we under- fctaiid, by that strange and subtle being, the Rev. 1'. Laudreth, Cupar- File. THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 131 whether natural and fresh from the soil, or artificial and faded, it does not matter; if he do but get flowers, and hear them rust- ling about his ears, in the breeze of brilliant declamation, he is quite satisfied, whether they keep him languishingly awake, or lull him into dreamy repose. This is the florid, or Corinthian idea of preaching. Another is content with exclamations: he is not pleased unless every other sentence begin with Oh; the inter- jection Ah has to him a peculiarly pathetic sound: it seems to melt into his midriff" like snow; and that preacher would be his Magnus Apollo, who should say, " Oh, we remark in the next place." This is the interjectional idea of preaching. Another desiderates chiefly delivery: no minister is a favourite unless his voice be musical, and his attitude smack of the boards; unless he indulge in a profusion of studied declamation, pointing to the four winds when he names them, and laying his hand gently on the heart, when he wishes to indicate that interesting organ. This is the material or "Anthropomorphic" idea of preaching. Another judges of a sermon by its length, and likes it, either be- cause it is an hour, or because it is only the half of the time. This is the arithmetical idea of preaching. One man abuses a sermon, because he does not understand it; another admires it, because he does understand it; and a third admires it, because he does not understand it. One man constantly asks, ere giving his verdict. What do the best judges say ? Another, with some favourite model in his eye, says, What is this to Hall, or Chalmers, or Thomson 1 One man likes a discourse to be as full of ideas as a pudding of plums. Another prefers a sermon in which the gold, or even the brass, is beat so thin, that it trembles before the zephyr. A third likes one great, general idea to pervade a ser- mon, and to gather round it, by the force of attraction, a host of illustrations. One likes a discourse endlessly subdivided, all hedges and ditches. Another would have it limitless, free, and unenclosed, as a moor or a mountain. One wishes it to be gemmed with Scripture, and with nothing else. Another likes to see the Cairngorm pebbles of earthly poetry sparingly intermixed with the inestimable jewels of celestial song. One would hem a sermon in within very straight-laced limitations. Another would allow it a wide and varied range ; to draw illustrations from the meanest and from the loftiest objects — from the flower and the star — from the ant and the leviathan — from the glow-worm under the hedge, and from the final conflagration. And so on, ad infi- nitum. What our idea of preaching is, we do not mean at present to state; but, in lieu of this, to sketch, rapidly, the characters of some of the principal preachers of the day, closing with the greatest of them all — one who " strove," says Carlyle, "to be a Christian priest in an age most alien to the character " — one who reminded the subtle Coleridge of Luther and Paul — one who 132 EDWARD IRVING, AND stormed on the solitary whirlwind of his eloquence into the very heart of London popularity, and hovered there unequalled and unapproached, till his own wild breath turned the current — one whose errors were all of the blood, and none of the spirit — the Herculean, misguided, but magnificent man — Edward Ir\nng. We may begin with the late Dr Andrew Thomson. Rarely has there been a man in Scotland whose bodily and mental linea- ments made so distinct and definite an impression upon the pub- lic mind. There could be no mistake about him. He was one of the best representatives of the national intellect and the na- tional character, which has ever appeared. No dreaming pedant, no vain declaimer, was he. An intense virility marked all the structure of his understanding, and strung together all the nerves of his soul. His intellect, if not of the profoundest cast, was one of the strongest and clearest that ever wrought. His logic, un- taught by the schools, and disdaining their petty jargons, was the mere result of this masculine understanding. His common sense was of that quick instinctive kind which verges on genius. His learning was not exceedingly varied or profound, but what he knew he knew thoroughly, and could use with complete and ab- solute mastery. Disdaining, perhaps too much, mysticism, as well as refinement, he struck on all the hard, strong points of his subject. His memory was enormous; his command of it was still more remarkable. His language was the perfect organ of Lis mind — always sharp, and clear, and strong, and knotty, fi'e- quently eloquent, never soft, and seldom beautiful. His sarcasm wanted the refinement and condensed accumulated bitterness of Junius (whom he read continually), but was steeped in a broad and original humour. His invective could be now as overbear- ing asHorsley's, and now as rancorous as Burke's. His imagination was strong, l)ut far inferior to his intellect. Fancy, he had little or none. His diction was seldom coloured; and the colours he did use were often coarse. His power over the sterner passions was great: over the finer feelings, limited. Pity he seldom pro- duced: terror often, but generally by the reiteration of the strong facts of Scripture — seldom by the aggregation of energetic images of his own. He had little poetry in his blood, but he had much music; his own voice was a fine instrument, giving out rather level vigorous tones than soft cadences or lofty bursts of sf)und. All those various powers were plunged, not into the pool of ima- gination, but into tlie genium perfervidum Scotonim — into the pas- sions of a hot and iiolde heart. As a preaclier, witli few sliining points or breathless l)ursts or rapid and kindling splendour, with no recondite trains of reasoning, with no violent appeals to feel- ing, with little imagery, and with less declamation, he was simple, searching, scriptural, strong. The subject lay before him, and THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 133 he transferred his view of it fully and easily to his audience. The march of his mind through his discourse was not forced or rapid, neither was it slow and reluctant: it was moderate, masterly, grave, and" majestic. The heat he felt and kindled was not of furnace fierceness, but steady and growing. His argument in the pulpit was clear; his reply to objections signally short, rapid, and conclusive; his appeals at the close, irresistible. He always com- manded attention; and he often produced deep and permanent effect. If he disappointed the lovers of the gaudy, the ornamental, the far-fetched, and the convulsive, he pleased the pious, he en- lightened the ignorant, he satisfied the inquiring, he overawed the sceptical. " And fools who came to laugh remained to pray." As a platform speaker, he allowed himself greater scope and liberty. He gave his wit full play; and who that ever heard, has forgot its side-splitting coruscations 1 How did he, in his playful ire, delight to scarify the unlucky dunderheads who crossed his terrible via. It was then, Hurrah, hurrah ! avoid the way of the avenging Childe, Often, however, his coarseness, his virulence, the bull-dog tena- cit}^ with which he pinned down his victim to the earth, and the reckless audacity of his assertions, injured the eft'ect he intended, and produced sympathy, instead of sneers. In his speeches, he rai'ely meddled with general principles: with their energies he could not grapple, nor unfold their consequences; but then, how he did deal with particular facts ! It were hard to tell whether the minuteness with which he recollected, or the logical clearness with which he stated them, were the moi'e admirable. On the platform, his oratory came out in all its manly splendour. He delighted in the stimulus, the badgering, and the excitement of a public meeting. His nerve was prodigious: opposition never failed to rouse him. Even in preaching, he told our informant, that " he never got on till he came to answer objections." He was never so great as when turning up his brawny face against a storm of attack; and the knife of his opponents alone could bring out the purest and richest blood of his eloquence. At the close of a train of triumphant argumentation, and having obtained thus the confidence, and commanded the respect of his hearers, there were no darings of declamation which he might not successfully attempt. Then it was that he could carry all before him by that splendid piece of egotism, " There is a reward for my exertions here, and there is a reward for them yonder !" pointing to the heaven which was, ere long, to receive him into its bosom. Then it was that he could electrify his audience by the burst, " Give me the hurricane, rather than the pestilence;" a figure only infe- rior to Lord Erskine's (from which it was unquestionably imi- tated), " Tempests may shake our dwellings and dissipate our 134 EDWARD IRVIXG, AND commerce, but they scourge before them the lazy elements which otherwise would stagnate into pestilence." On such occasions, he rose above his pulpit-levelj he laid about him as a man inspired; he proved that there is no oratory so impressive as that into which an intellectual man is roused and betrayed. He left an impression upon the souls and tingling ears of his auditors \rhich many of them will carry to the grave; and, as the sun broadens and becomes a more imaginative object when near the setting, so was it with his eloquence, which never assumed a phase of more mellow and majestic splendour thau when the orator stood a de- voted man on the brink of the great precipice, and when his tongue was about to be arrested and stifiened for ever in the frost of death. As a writer, we do not deem him destined for enduring repu- tation. Not merely has he bequeathed no elaborate or complete work, but there are few separable passages which might survive the works to whicli they belonged. His works were all written for, and admirably adapted to the nonce; but lack that tight com- pression which is the life of so many productions, and, as a Avhole, are destitute of the preserving salt of original genius. The last time we saw him was in the year 1829, at a little bridge near the source of the Eiver Earn, in Perthshire. He had come up from Dunira to fish; and there he was, eyeing the stream Avith as much determined pertinacity as though he were mauling a shoal of Apocryj)hists, and more eager, apparently, to get a glorious nibble in the Earn, thau ever he was to awaken a cheer in the Assembly Rooms. We think we see him now, his massive face bent dowuAvards, his eye gleaming with almost boyish eager- ness, the fishing-rod held firmly and strongly in his nervous hand. The fish would not take; and, after some vain ctforts, he stalked away with an aspect and attitude of impatience. We saw him no more. Alas, the winding-sheet was even then well up on his breast! That manly fisher had meddled with more troubled ■waters than those of the Earn — darker passions than angling had possessed his soul; his constitution sunk and his " heart cracked " beneath their fury. In ly;31, he died — and died in a moment; but not till he had made himself a name imperishable as shall be the freedom of the Negro, and glorious as the unadulterated book of CJod. Dr Gordon's popularity was, at one time, nearly as great as Dr Thomson's, though founded upon quite another basis. Gordon's Bi)here was solely the pulpit, and his apjxiinince was mudi in his favour. Beautiful was the rei)ose of his lofty l)row, dark eye, and a.spect of soft iind melancholy meaning. It was "sun-light sheathed." It was a face from which every evil and earthly passion seemed jiurged. His eye, in Aird's fine language, was " as a pro- phet's burdened eye." A decj) gravity lay upon his countenance. THE PREACHERS OP THE DAY. 135 which had the solemnity, without the sternness, of one of our old reformers. You could almost fancy a halo completing its apos- tolic character. This calm and reverend aspect was generally re- tained through the whole course of his preaching, though some- times, under high excitement, it threw out a more intense and eloquent meaning. We were never so fortunate as to hear him in his best days, but have abundant testimony to the force and impression of his oi-atory. His matter is never brilliant, but generally weighty and instructive. He excels in lecturing, as might have been expected, from the close, clear character of his mind, and its training. His reasoning is candid and comprehen- sive, but never subtle, and inferior to that of Horsley or Thom- son in manliness and mastery; — of imagination he is nearly de- void. His passion is great, but its source lies deep, and it i"e- quires unusual circumstances to bring it up. Seldom impassioned, he is always in earnest. His style is his own — no echo — no dupli- cate — but entirely and absolutely the expression of his intellect. This, in truth, is its sole merit. It is destitute of the gay colom-s of fancy — has no beauty, and little lucidus ordo. His sermons were, at first, voted a disappointment, though they have passed since through four or five editions. They contain, indeed, much good matter, but few striking things — are heavy and lumbering — have no marked and memorable passages — no " single stones of lustre from the brook" — no gleams of profound or original thought. You miss, as you read them, the chai-m of the man's gravity — the solemn and sepulchral notes of his voice — the point commu- nicated by his eye — the meaning, which lies like still winter sun- shine upon his lofty forehead, and the eloquence of the thin and silvery locks which cluster round it. Of Drs Candlish, Cunninghame, Guthi'ie, of the Free Church, and Drs Cook, Robertson, &c., of the Established Church, not being able to speak from personal observation, we prefer not to speak at all. Of Dr Chalmers, we have spoken at large already. We pass to a special favourite of ours, the Rev. John Bruce, of Free St Andrew's Church. The first feeling with which he was saluted in Edinburgh was that of general disappointment. His size was rather diminutive, his voice harsh, his accent pure Forfar, his style complicated and perplexed, his action outre dind extrava- gant. But, with all those disadvantages, it was soon discovered that Bruce was a bold, independent thinker, and had the power of thrilling his audience through and through; in short, that he was a man of genius. We remember visiting his chapel a good many years ago. Our expectations, as usually happens, had pre- pared us for something altogether different from the real bond fide man. We expected a florid declaimer — there was not, so it hap- pened, one figure or flower in the whole lecture. We expected a high-wrought style — we got no style at all; his discourse was 136 EDWARD IRVING, AND one long, loose, lumbering sentence. We expected great fire of action and utterance — on that particular morning, he read in a rather rapid but quite excited manner — once or twice, indeed, he uttered some favourite word with strong emphasis, and accom- panied it with a glare of his eye. His matter seemed, to us, to be rather a round-about way of arriving at ordinary truth, than absolutely new. On the whole, we were disappointed. We came back, however, and learned at length to feel the admiration which not a few were counterfeiting. We found that this first had not been a full or favourable specimen of his preaching; that, in fact, he had three manners and styles: first, the impali)ably obscure; secondly, the darkness visible; and, thirdly, the lumi- nous and lofty. Sometimes his soul was wading through its subject, and you saw vigorous motion without definite result. And singular it was to see the man getting the more animated and furious as he became the more obscure — fighting desperately with the shadows of his own thoughts — floundering amid a " sun- less sea" of strange and dreamy speculation; and, at last, con- fessing, with genuine naivete, " that he feared he had not made himself perfectly intelligible." This, however, was his worst manner. At other times, even if he did not keep quite clear throuichout the whole course of his argument — if now and then he dipt out of sight, he was sure to come up at the close, and, by some striking burst or figure, to add a fiery sting to the long and serpentine coil of his thought. We remember him closing a metaj)hysical discussion, on the nature and attempted proof of the eternity of faith, by the following words: — "But for faith, the righteous would have no security for the continuance of tlicir heavenly joy; — but for faith, they would stop and tremble on the streets of the New Jerusalem, lest these New Heavens should pass away, and that New Earth be melted with fer- vent heat." The effect was electric. Another time, speaking of the importance of the Doctrine of Christ's Deity, he thus broke out: — " Were a conspiracy formed in hell, to destroy the planetary system, how would they carry it into execu- tion ? Would they first seek to blot out one planet and tlien another ? No — but by a master blow they would strike the sun from the centre. So would the dcniors of the divinity of Jesus." Such bursts, brief, unexpected, sjiring out in a mo- ment, with volcanic fury, and as suddenly subsiding into the dark stern ground-work of his discourses, had a peculiar power in awak- ening attention, in relieving the dry train of his reasonings, and burning in the results of his long processes of thought upon the mind and memory. And we liked to see his mind working itself up into one of tliose paroxysms, catching convulsively at some new and striking illustration, and, amid dead silence, labouring to set it before the audience in all its breadth and brilliance: hia THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 137 face, the while, flushing with a dusky fire — his eye kindling like an angry star — his voice almost yelling out its words — his head bending low to the writing before him — his small figure distend- ing and dilated by his emotion, and the foam of his furor flying oft' from his lips upon his manuscript, and far away among the assembly ! The strangest thing about such jets of eloquence was the suddenness with which they arose. This moment, the man was perfectly calm, pursuing, perhaps, a cold and misty train of reasoning; in five minutes, he was in a half-mad state of excite- ment — his whole being in combustion, and his audience jerked suddenly away with him, like the passengers in a railway train, who, in a few moments, exchange pei'fect rest for impetuous mo- tion. Once, in particular, we recollect him preaching on the words, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God." He was investigating, after his usual fashion, the nature of sonship. The audience were altogether unmoved and listless, when, of a sudden, the preacher's voice began to rise; his face was flushing in the coming storm; he had got hold of some racy illustration, or, rather, it had got hold of him, for, during the five following minutes, we have sel- dom seen a speaker so thoroughly possessed and filled by an idea; it "toi'e him as fire tears a thunder-cloud;" he absolutely shrieked out his words — the most listless were aroused, and the whole audience almost trembled at the excitement of the speaker, without, perhaps, fully perceiving his meaning, or comprehending the sudden sjiring which, touched by the hand of his demon, had set him off" at such a rate. The idea he brought out was to the fol- lowing eff"ect: — "Were a riotous rabble collected amid the dark- ness of the night, and were the officers of the law breaking in upon and dispersing them, would they concern themselves about bringing the miscreants to their homes? No — they cared not whether the poor beings had homes at all: it was enough for them that there should be midnight silence; nay, perhaps, they would tell them, in their fury, to go and starve — to go and be hanged: when they had quelled the riot, and dispersed the rab- ble, their duty was done. Far otherwise with the ministers of the Gospel — true peace-officers; they came to the scenes of sin and strife, not only to quell confusion, but to point the rioters to a happy and eternal home — to tell them that they were children — that they had a Father in heaven — that children's bread was pro- vided for them, and to allure them, by every argument and every entreaty, to go home." This is an outline of what he said; but we despair of giving any idea of the half-inspired fury with which he wrought it up, and brought it out. And no sooner was it over, than he returned to his reasonings', and his audience to their repose. Perhaps the misty glimmer which was cast around the greater part of Brace's sermons, added to our impression of their great- 138 EDWARD IRVING, AND ness. But there wei-e occasions when he soared to a sustained and luminous elevation — when, throughout an entire sermon, he kept up a train of clear and masterly thought, now mounting to rugged sublimity, and now melting to pathos — when the orb of his mind, clearing away the mists which at once obscured and dilated it, shone out in its proper dimensions — when he kindled at one time into wild poetry, at another threw a solemn shadow over every face, and again touched the sacred fountain, and awakened the blessed flow of tears. Mr Bruce has published little. We are aware of nothing but a lecture on " Church Establishments," some " Sermons on the Sabbath," and a sermon preached on the death of Mr Martin, who, after Dr Thomson, for a short time occupied the pulpit of St George's. This last is infinitely worthy of its author. As an exposition of the theme, it may be, in the cant of common theo- logic criticism, imperfect — that is, it does not profess to exhaust a subject which, possibly, in all its bearings, is not exhaustible by human intellect; norisit a finically finished piece of elegant inanity: but it abounds in beautiful thoughts, produced a prodigious eff"ect when delivered, and may be for some time remembered, both as a specimen of his very peculiar style, and as a memorial of the " meek and most holy" man over whose ashes it was preached. Thus may Bruce, amid the dearth of truly original preachers which this age, fertile in imitations and surface idiosyncrasies, exhibits, be called a native well, somewhat turbid, indeed, in its colour, rough and stern in its site, as dnimly as it is deep, but living, springing fresh from the soil, communicating with the centre, and reflecting the stars; or, to vary the figure, if no spire of surpassing oratory, pointing to the sky, like Chalmers — no classic dome, shattered by the lightnings of heaven, like Hall — no grand Cothic ruin, standing gloomy under the moon, like Irving — no castellated fastness of intellectual might, lording it over subject lands by the terror of its artillery, like Thomson — no parish kirk, strong in its simplicity, and venerable from its age, like Gordon — to a lonely tower let us liken him, set sternly on its beaked promontory, overlooking a waste of waters, and " holding dark communion with the cloud." On the principle of contrast and variety, we name next Dr George Croly. And were we seeking to characterise him in one word, we might call liim the Burke of theology. If far less searching and comprclicnsivc in thought, and less easy and varied in diction, he liiis much of his master's splendour of imagery, and more than his pomp and profusion of language. His great merit is intensity: he never lowers his flight, nor checks his pride; and yet, notwithstanding all the gigantic figures which his imagina- tion loves, and the kindling pace at which his mind moves, his thought never loses its strength or clearness, nor is his language THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 139 often, though sometimes, turgid. Intellect bears up the mass of weighty words and images. The huge trump of his style is filled with the blast of genius. This peculiar passion for the grand and lofty — this preference for the great side of every dilemma, the sti'onger of any two words, the vaster of any two images — distinguishes all his writings alike. It gives a stately, statuesque air to his smallest poem. " His little fishes talk like whales." It colours, with the hues of stormy sunshine, all the pages of that marvellous narrative which Salathiel tells, with lips which are never to kiss the ice-cold cup of death. It copes with the gran- deurs of the French Revolution — an event which haunts his ima- gination, and heaves in his style. It makes him a congenial bio- grapher of Burke, and conducts him, with eye unblenched and foot untrembling, through the muttering thunders, the bursting trumpets, the slow opening seals, the dark descending vials, the voices, tempests, tumultuating glories, mixing metaphors, shifting scenes, and palpable darkness, of the Apocalypse. Connected with this characteristic love of the lofty, is his principal defect as a writer. He wants repose; he has few resting-places; he loves the magnificent too exclusively; he sometimes fatigues us by too long flights, and sometimes dazzles and stupifies us with too much splendour. Not that we would visit such faults so severely as would some timid and cold critics, who have talked, in dolorous terms, of excess, and a " table-land being a plain," and the mischiefs springing from perpetual excellence. If in such a case there be an excess, it is an excess of glory; if a table-land be merely a plain, it is an elevated plain, nearer the mountains and the stars; if all be excellent, what if some parts be divine? If Croly's style be uniformly splendid, it is as uniformly his own; if his figures be numerous, they are new; if his imagination x'un riot, its gambols are gigantic; if you cannot read his three volumes, or one volume, at a sitting, try several; if you cannot at several, then, depend upon it, you yourself are to blame. " Salathiel, or the Wandering Jew," had the disadvantage of a theme at once difiicult and hackneyed. He that sought to breathe fresh interest on a topic so old, had no easy task. For just think how often this strange figure had appeared in modern literature, from poems and novels, down to ballads and penny pamphlets. In spite of all this, Croly has put a bold hand to the plough. His book wants unity of purpose and continuance of interest: it is a series of glowing pictures, strung somewhat loosely together, often over-drawn and over-coloured, but full of life, and fire, and imagery, and passion; and, in parts and passages, laying an irre- sistible hold upon your attention, and hurrying you away, as the hero of the story was hurried, in that ghastly galley, the blaze of misery in his immortal eye outshining the tlames which were glaring around him. 140 EDWARD IRVING, AND How like, yet how different, Salathiel from St Leon ! Both are the sport of a terrible destiny, and have reason to curse the Nessus shirt of immortality which wraps them round. But while Salathiel frequently forgets, and causes you to forget, that he is the Wandering Jew at all, St Leon never loses sight, nor you for a moment, of the blasting gift of the stranger. It is this frag- mentary and disjointed character of Salathiel, which has prevented its popularity, and toi some extent neutralised the brilliance of its description, and the passionate pomp of its style, the fine oriental cast of its scenery, and the bustling rapidity of its narra- tive. It is, on the other hand, the pertinacity of purpose, the unity of object, the strong gravitation of every thought, and in- cident, and image, and word, round one central design, which, in this, as in Godwin's other works, explains their magical power, makes up for comparative meagreness of style and monotony of fancy, and weaves the chains of soft, yet strong interest, which, bind you to his pages. Still is " Salathiel" a noble production. We may call it, in allusion to the subject, a stately evergreen, a high holly tree, looking over the withered hedges and ungrowing grasses of the winter landscape.* His " Commentary on the Kevelation " is his principal contri- bution to the literature of his own profession, and makes a bold attempt to grapple ^\^th the difficulties of this singular book, and to evolve certain steady pillars of truth from its broken abysses of light and shadow. The Apocalypse ! what magic and mysteiy are included in the name ! The gi-andeur of the stage, a solitary island "placed far amid the melancholy main;" the sole specta- tor, a grey-haired apostle .of Jesus Christ, who had once, ia happier days, lain on that dear bosom which bled for us, but wha is now alone in the world; the time, the Lord's day, acquiring a deeper sacredness from the surrounding scenery, and the silence of nature; the trumpet voice, heard behind the nipt apostle; the appearance of the universal Bishop, clothed in the glories of eter-. nity, gold-girt, head, foot, face, and eye blazing with unutterable splendour, and with a two-edged sword, and a voice like many waters issuing from his mouth; his charges to the churches, so simple, affectionate, and awful; the opening of one of the doors of heaven, on " golden hinges turning;" the rainbow-surrounded throne, stretching its great shadow across the sea of glass, illumed by lightnings, based on crowding thunders, echoing mystic voices, fringed by the seven lamps of fire, and perfumed by the incense of ten thousand times ten thousand of the happy dead; the open- ing of the seals by the Lion-Lamb; the giant steeds: one milk- • We have reason to know that Sniathiel is very popular among the re- fined and intellectual classes in America. THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 141 white as the banner of the cross, one red as blood, one black as the face of the famine-bitten, one pale with the paleness of death; the trump and fire-armed angels, blowing their blasts through the silent universe; the blood-dipped hailstones; the mountain of fire, dropped like a spark into the sea; the opening of the bottomless pit, as if in reply to the opening of heaven, and send- ing forth a sun-darkening smoke, and a cloud of scorpion locusts; the nmstering and march of those horrible hybrids of hell, headed by Apollyon, their king; the rising of the two beasts of crowned blasphemy; the huge clusters of the vine of the earth, cast into the wine-press of wrath; the vintage of blood; the coming forth, from the " smoke of the glory of God," of the seven angels, clothed in linen, girded with virgin gold, and holding in hands, unharmed and untrembling, the seven vials, containing the seven last plagues: one for the earth, one for the sea, one for the rivers, one for the sun, to feed his old flame into tenfold fierceness, one for the seat of the beast, one for Euphrates, and one for the darkened, fire-tormented, and earthquake-listening air; the woman, retiring on eagle wings to the desert, majestic and terrible in her very retreat; the other woman, drunk and drenched in holy blood; the gathering of the armies for the day of decision; the cry from the angel in the sun, for the fowls to prepare against the supper of the great God; the battle; the rout of the rebels, driven back upon the lake of fire; the binding of the serpent; the millennium; the last struggle of the enemy; the uprising, behind his defeat, of the great white throne; and the ultimate and everlasting "bridal of the earth and sky;" — these form the constituents of a drama which we fearlessly call the most sublime production of the human mind: they form, we believe, the hieroglyphics of the history of all time, and thus, by a twofold magnetism, have they attracted to its research a great host of erudite and pious spirits. Add to this, the prodigious penumbra of diflftculty which hangs about the book — the number of attempts which have been made to solve its Gordian riddles — the fact that some exalted spirits, such as Luther, Calvin, and Hall, have shrunk back from its mys- tic pages — and the sight which fancy sees of so many pale faces, eager eyes, and attenuated forms bending over the inscrutable page, and beseeching the obstinate oracle — and you can account for the attraction which has led a lofty and daring mind like Croly's to the Apocalypse, or Revelation of Jesus Christ. And whatever we may think of some of his views, his Commen- tary is succinct, clear, and decided. As a history of the events symbolised, it is admirably compressed. As an explanation, it fails from a love of simplicity. One event, the French Revolu- tion, being uppermost in his mind, he concludes it uppermost in the mind of the apostle, too; and hence has sprung some harsh twisting of figures, and some puerile trifling with words. Surely the 142 EDWARD IRVING, AND supposed coincidence between the words Apollyon and Napoleon is not in good taste. As a literary work, it is one of the few books of the kind worth reading for its composition. No pai't of Sci-ip- ture had been so unfortunate in the temperament of its expositors as the Revelation. In general, the contrast between the super- human splendours of the text and the creeping character of tlie comment was glaring. But Croly is on fire throughout — carries a thread of burning gold through his coldest calculations, and finds congenial employment in painting, as with the pencil of Martin, the gigantic glooms and glories of the theme. Irving may be named; but his four volumes on the Revelation are the poorest of all his productions, imperfect in form and substance, while the gleams of eloquence which occur are few and far between, spotting a deep and melancholy darkness. His wing is worn, and his eye dim; whereas Croly is fresh and strong as a mountain eagle " newly bathed," and is seen against the beams of prophetic day, like an " angel standing in the sun." Altogether, though there be more pleasing, polished, and po- pular preachers in London than Dr Croly, we question if there be one who, taking him all in all, as poet, biographer, commen- tator, novelist, miscellaneous writer, public speaker, preacher, and talker, can be named in the same sentence. The late Dr M'AU, of Manchestei', was one of those men whose eloquence would not bear transference from the pulpit or plat- form to the written page. Authentic accounts exist of extraor- dinary effects produced by his oratory. A speaking countenance, a voice at once of sweetness and commanding compass, rai)id flow of sound, andgront affluence of language — Avere the elements of the boundless popularity and influence which he gained among his party. He had also the possession of that highest kind of encomium, laiidari a laudato viro. Robert Hall admired him to enthusiasm, and said once of the Liverpool people, "What a parcel of pigs they must be not to like M'AU." But as Charles Lamb was wont to say, " print settles all;" and, in an evil hour, the friends of this distinguished man printed his sermons; ser- mons, too, wliioh liad, when delivered, produced an overwhelniing impression, and liad been written out by their author with tlie greatest care. And nmsical is the linked sweetness of their long and sounding sentences, and amazing their command of elegant and sparkling diction — but tlicre tlieir merit comes to ji full stop. Their seiitiiuent is commonplace, seeking self-oblivion amid a cloud of words; a faint rich mist of philosopliical verbiage steeps the whole composition; there is continual flow and fluency, but rarely elo(|uence; his sentences perpetually "threaten to move and astonish, but never do;" few " live coals" of burning trutli lie upon the even and monotonous surface; the language is often tawdrv, and the magnificent sound, like the swell of the THE PREACHERS OF THE DAY. 143 organ, gives you a vague emotion of delight, but utters no arti- culate and memorable meaning. He has been compared to Dr Thomas Brown — and has certainly his involution, but not his subtlety — his diffusion, but not his depth — his sparkle, but not Lis splendour — intellect and imagination, interpenetrating each other, as in the writings of Brown, but intellect less refined in energy, and imagination more limited in range. It is the gilded sheath without the sword. An orator, however, of a high order, M'AU must have been. We will not soon forget the de- lightful story told of him by Wardlaw. At a missionary meeting where he was present, some one told of a Negro boy, who, when informed by his teacher, that God had sent his Son to die for the world, replied, " Oh, massa, me no wonder at that — it be just like him." M'All kindled at the story, rose up, and uttered a noble extempore harangue on the text the boy had given him; dilating on Nature, Providence, and Redemption, and closing the other and the other paragraph with the words, " It be just like him." We love M'All, too, as one who struggled up his way to distinction, against prejudice and proscription, which were dis- graceful only to the parties by whom they were employed. It was a fine saying of him, as, under the deep darkness of youthful doubt, he paced the beach at Dysart, and said to his friend, " Oh, this heart of mine is black enough to pollute all that ocean ! " As a thinker and writer, we deem Hamilton of Leeds superior to M'All. His appearance was somewhat against him. He was a huge tun of a person, " a round, fat, oily man of God," with gross unspiritual face, and monotonous, though fluent delivery. But there was a rich and racy originality about him — a bold indepen- dence of thinking, and an irregular gorgeousness of style. He was the Hazlitt of the pulpit. He affected an abrupt and jagged mode of uttei-ance. His sentences reminded you of the curt and clipped tail of a racer. He dealt in quaint antithesis, and ela- borate accumulations of natural imagery. He had the genuine blood of a poet in his veins; but, in forcing itself through his curious materialism, no wonder though it had assumed forms some- what odd and fantastic. Perhaps never, since Thomson of the " Sea- sons," did the Parnassian spark — divince particula aura; — so com- pletely cushion itself in soft and flabby flesh. He was withal a very amiable, good-humoured, companionable, and pious person, ancl preaclied to a large and flourishing congregation in Leeds. He had a strong literary turn, and besides his " Sermons," " Essay on Missions," &c., printed a book, entitled " Nugoe Literaruv" an odd, clever, characteristic, and very learned medley of prose and verse, for which the University of Glasgow dignified him with an honorary degree. Dr Harris, of Cheshunt College, the author of " Mammon," the " Great Teacher," &c., claims a notice in those rapid sketches. lii EDWARD IRVING, AND As a man, he is said to be below middle size, rather spare, fair, witli fair hair, slightly browned, with curls on his neck and about his ears — a genial, not remarkable face. His conversation is illustrative, not creative; chary, not abundant; fanciful, and by no means imaginative; humorous and good-humoured; the con- versation, says one, " of a man, who is accustomed to teach in the play-ground of a school, rather than learn in the world of a uni- verse — and is accordingly more dogmatic than is very tolerable, and less thirsty-minded than one loves to see." His great power is the exhaustion and ingenious illustration of topics. His manner of writing has a quiet earnestness about it, which is very impres- sive, and which characterises his mode of public address. He de- serves great praise for the lively graces of " Mammon," for the manful and masterful execution of the " Great Teacher," a book which contains the most successful full-length portraiture of the Divine Man we have ever read, and, since the first edition of this work appeared, for two very ingenious and original books, on the " Preadamitic Earth," and " Man Primeval." Passing by those very powerful and popular preachers, Parsons of York, Thomas Binney, Thomas Dale, noble minds." Too many besides Thomas Campbell tarry in the Calypso island till the sun be down, and Ithaca is still afar. And yet we readily admit that this triie poet began his career "with a strong and pure love, if not the profoundest insight into the meaning and mystery of his art. Nowhere shall we find the poetical feeling more beautifully linked to the joyous rapture of youth than in the " Pleasures of Hope." It is tlie outburst of genuine enthusiasm; and even its glitter we love, as reminding us of the " shining morning face " of a schoolboy. But our ob- jection to Campbell is, that this precipitate shine of fame upon his young head dazzled his eyes, satisfied his ambition, chilled his love of his art, and excites the suspicion, that his real object all along had been the dowry of the muse, and not herself. The " Pleasures of Hope " bears no more proportion to the powers of its author than does the " Robbers " to those of Schiller, or " Werter " to those of Goethe. But where is Campbell's " Wal- leustein," or his " Faust 1 " We have instead only such glimpses — the more tantalising that they are beautiful — of a rare and real vein of original genius, as are furnished in the "Last Man," " Hohenlindeu," and '" O'Connor's Child." Campbell's great power was enthusiasm — subdued. His tem- pest moves on graccfnlly, and as to the sound of music. You see liim arranging the dishevelled and streaming hair, smoothing the furrowed forehead, compressing the full and thrilling li{)3 of in- spiration. He arrests the fury of his turl)ulent vein by stretch- ing forth the calm hand of taste, as an escaped lunatic is abated in a moment by the whisper of his keeper, or by his more terri- ble tap of quiet, imperious command. There is a perpetual alternation going on in Ids mind. He is this moment possess(>d by his Lmagiuatiouj the next, he masters and tames it, to walk THOMAS CAMPBELL. 163 meekly in the harness of his purpose; or, to use his own fine image, while his genius is flaming above, his taste below, " like the dial's silent power," Measures inspiration's hour, And tells its height in heaven. He is inferior thus to the very first class of poets, whose taste and art are unconscious. His are at once conscious to himself and visible to others. Their works, like Nature's, arrange them- selves into elegance and order, amid their impetuous and ecstatic motion; their apparent extravagancies obey a law of their own, and create a taste for their appreciation; their hair, shed on the whirlwind, falls abroad, through its own divine instinct, in lines of waving beauty; their flashing eye enriches the day; their wild, uncontrollable step " brings from the dust the sound of liberty." But, if Campbell be too measured, and timid, and self-watchful, to appertain to those Demi-urgi of poetry, he is fiir less to be classed witli the imitative and the cold — the schools of Boileau and Pope. He not only belongs to no school.; but, in short, d^^ gushes of genuine genius — in single thoughts, where you do not know whether more to admire the felicity of the conception, or the delicate and tremulous finish of the expression — in drops of spirit- stirring or melting song — and in a general manliness and chas- tity of manner, Campbell was perhaps the finest Artist of his day. His mind had the refinement of the female intellect, added to the energy of the classic man. His taste was not of the Gothic order, neither was it of the Roman; it was that of a Greek, neither grotesque nor finically fastidious. His imagery was select not abundant; out of a multitude of figures which throng on his mind, he had the resolution to choose only the one which, by pre-established harmony, seemed destined to enshrine the idea. His sentiment was sweet, without being mawkish, and recherche, without being aflected. Here, indeed, is Campbell's fine distinction. He never becomes metaphysical in discriminating the various shades, nor morbid in painting the darker moods of sentiment. He preserves continually the line of demarcation be- tween sentiment and passion. With the latter, in its turbulence — its selfish engrossment — the unvaried, but gorgeous colouring which it flings across all objects — the flames of speech which break out from its lips, he rarely meddles. But of that quieter and nobler feeling, which may be called, from its stillness, its subdued tone, its whispered accents, its shade of pensiveness, the moonshine of the mind, he is pre-eminently the poet. His lines on " Revisiting a Scene in Argyleshire," and those on " Leaving a Scene in Bavaria," are the perfection of this species of poetry. They are meditations, imbued at once with all the tenderness of moonlight, and all the strength of sunshine. Manly is his melan- 164 THOMAS CAMPBELL. choly, and even his sigh proclaims the breadth and dejith of the chest from which it is upheaved. "To bear is to conquer our fate," is the motto of this brave philosophy, which contrasts well with the wayward kicking of Byron against the pricks — with the whimper of poor Keats — with the unearthly shriek by which you track Shelley through his wild- est wanderings in the mist — and with the sad propensity of the Lakers to analyse their tears ere they permit them to fall to the ground; to refine away their robust emotions into shadow; and to cover from their eyes the real calamities of existence by a veil of dream. Campbell is par excellence the poet of the fair sex. There are no works which are more relished by cultivated females. His flight rises precisely to that pitch where they are able fully and gracefully to follow. The manly elegance, moreover, of his men- tal costume; the unaffected and becoming purity of his speech, so distinct from finical jyvnsm; the homage done to the private affections and gentle domestic ties — these being the qualities which please them in a man, are sure to fascinate them in a poet. " Gertrude of Wyoming " has brought this enviable kind of popularity to a point. It strives to embody all the quiet, with- out the insipidity of domestic life; and by the picturesque accom- paniments of American woods, flageolets echoing from romantic towns, war-drums heard in the distance, tomahawks flashing in the sunset, Indians bursting across the stage, it docs, to some ex- tent, relieve that tedium and conmionplace, through which too often "glides the calm current of domestic joy." It is not, how- ever, on the whole, an artistically finished work. It has no story; at least the tale it tells has little interest or novelty, and is some- what wire-drawn. The characters are rather insipid. Gertrude's fatlier is a volcano burnt out. Gertrude herself is a pretty, romantic Miss of Pall Mall, dropt down by the side of the Sus- queliannah, where, undismayed by the sight of the dim aborigi- nal woods, she pulls out her illustrated copy of Shakspere, and, with rapt look, and hand elegantly lost in the tangles of her hair, proceeds to study the character of Imogen, or Lady Macbeth, or Mrs Ann Page. Her lover is a " curled darling," who has gone the grand tour — has seen the world, and returned, like a good- mannered youth, from the saloons of London, and the carnivals of Venice, in search of this beauty of the woods. Of I>randt, something might have been niatle, but nothing is. The poet thinks him hardly company for Master Henry the picturesque, and Miss Gertrude the romantic. Even Outalissi, ere qualified for intercourse with tliese i)aragons, must have his wliiskcrs clipped, his nails pared, and become a sentimental .>^avage, who shall go off witli a fine nasal twang (talking in his pathetic death- song, by the way, of a clock that liad found out the perpetual THOMAS CAMPBELL. 1 G5 motibn; for surely more than eight days had elapsed from the departure of the happy pair to the last song of the Indian, and yet he says, " Unheard their clock repeats its hours"). Never- theless, the poem contains some of Campbell's finest things — brief and sudden escapes of his richest vein. What can be finer than such lines as the following: — Led by his dusky guide, like morning brought by night. Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone. Nor far some Andalusian saraband Would sound to many a native roundelay; But who is he that yet a dearer land Remembers, over hills and far away. Green Albyn, &c. Oh, earthly pleasure, what art thou in sooth \ The torrent's smoothness, ere it dash below. That fled composure's intellectual ray. As Etna's tires gi'ow dim before the rising day. And the exquisite words of Outalissi to his Henry: — But thee, my flower, whose breath was givea By milder genii o'er the deep, The spirits of the white man's heaven Forbid not thee to weep. The dying speech of Gei'trude is beautifully tender; but a few sobbed out Avords, in the circumstances, would have been more natural, and far more affecting. Shakspere or Schiller would have made a monosyllable unlock the human heart as effectually as Campbell does by all the eloquence and linked sweetness of this artifircial harangue. Let poets remember that the most affecting, and, on the whole, the most powerful words ever writ- ten by man, are probably those in Lear, " Prithee undo this button; thank you, sir." The opening description of " Wyoming" reminds us, at a distance, of that which commences the " Castle of Indolence;" but is less distinct in its grouping, less rich in its colouring, and unluckily, no more than it, resembles any actual scenery. So, at least, declare all Americans. It were ridiculous, therefore, to speak of Gertrude as a great poem. It is only a second-rate poem containing many first-rate things; a soft and tremulous string, supporting many inestimable pearls. Its tone is feeble; its spirit apologetic; the author is evidently afraid of his reputation. With gleams of truer genius than anything in the " Pleasures of Hope," it wants its frank, fearless, and manly enthusiasm, and neither has been, nor has deserved to be, one tithe so popular; except, indeed, with those who prefer it, because in preferring it they stand alone. In " Theodric," again, and the " Pilgrim of Glencoe," you find the same sensitiveness as to renown, and sense of inferiority to 166 THOMAS CAMPBELL. his former self, attempting to conceal themselves imiler, we know not what, of a jaunty air of nonchalance and affected defiance. Intensely aware of the ludicrous aspect an old man would pre- sent mounted on a boy's stilts, he goes to the opposite extreme, and assumes a garrulous, free and easy, and somewhat pert and snappish tone, which we cordially dislike. " Theodric," indeed, is quite unworthy of its author's reputation, has scarcely a fine thing in it, and is little else than middling prose twisted into un- musical and shambling metre. In the other, you see now and then robust vigour; but, on the whole, the wicked exclamation, " Eheu quantum mutatus ah illo" forces itself up into your lips at every turning of the bald and spiritless page. It is with a mix- ture of feelings, half pleasurable, half melancholy, that you revert from this faint reflection of the tartan to " Lochiel's Warnins," the most sublime and spirit-stirring of all Campbell's minor poems. Nowhere, save in some of Scott's battle scenes, or in Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome," do we find the old Homeric spirit in finer preservation. The poet has shot into it all his High- land blood, like the insani vim leonis by which Prometheus in- spired his primitive man. No one but a descendant of the Cal- lummore — who had slept in his plaid nights together mid the mists — who had crossed the foaming friths of the Hebrides while the spirit of the storm was shrieking above the white waves — who had been lost for weeks among the mountains — who had sallied forth with Christopher North, in dead of winter, from Glasgow College to Campsie Glen, and spent three days in making a snow man, " a great fellow, with a noble phrenological development, and face after the most approved Lavater shajje," and then spent other three in taking him down — who had shuddered at broad- day at finding himself alone with the ravens and the streams on the solitary hillside, and trembled lest his every footfall, as it startled the deep silence, might awaken something more fearful than a ghost — who had thrilled to the scalj) at hearing in the ut a " quiet tune " — his instrument not a lyre, but a rustic reed — his poetic potation not Hippocrene, but simple water from the stream — his demon no Alecto or Tisiphone, but a sting-armed insect of the air — his emblem on earth not the gaudy tulip nor the luscious rose, but the bean-flower, with its modest, yet arrowy odour — his emblem in the aky, not the glaring sun, nor the gay star of morn- ing, nor the ''sun of the sleepless, melancholy star," nor the " star of Jove, so beautiful and large " — it is the mild and lonely moon shining down through groves of yew upon pastoral graves. The mind of Wordsworth Avas a combination of the intellectual, the imaginative, and the personal. His intellect, though large and powerful, does not preside over the other faculties with such marked superiority as in the case of Milton, the most intellectual of all poets; but it maintains its ground, and never submits to a degrading vassalage. Destitute of Milton's scholastic training, it has evidently gone through the still severer crucible of a self- taught and sublime metaphysics. His imagination, again, is not rich and copious like Spenser's, nor is it omnivorous and omnific like Shakspere's, nor does it ever reach the sublimity of Milton's, nor is it the mere handmaid of the passions like Byron's, nor vo- luptuous and volatile like Moore's, nor fastidious like Campbell's, nor fantastic like Southey's. It is calm, profound, still, obscure, like the black eye of one of his own tarns. The objects he sets before us are few; the colours he uses are uniform; the tone is somewhat sombre, but the impression and intensity with which they stamp themselves on the view are immense. A sonnet with Wordsworth often goes as far as an ordinary epic; a single line does the work of an ordinary canto. This power of concentration, however, is only occasional, and alternates with a fine difi'usion, so that, while at one time he compresses meaning into his words, as with the Bramah press of Young, at another, his poetry is as loosely and beautifully dispread as the blank verse of Wilson or Graham. But that which undoubtedly gives to the poetry of Wordsworth its principal power is its personal interest. Hia works are all confessions, not of crimes (unless to love nature too well be a sin), but of all the peculiarities of a poetical tempera- ment. He retains and reproduces the boyish feelings which others lose with their leading-strings; — he carries forward the first fresh emotions of childhood into the powers and passions of manhood 212 WILLIAM wordswort::!. — lie links the cradle to the crutch by the strong tie of his genius. Nothing which reminds him of his own youth — which awakens some old memory — which paints on an airy canvass some once fa- miliar face — which vibrates on some half-forgotten string, comes amiss to Wordsworth. His antiquity may be said to begin with his own birth; his futurity to extend to the day of his own funeral. His philosophy may be summed up in the one sentence, "the child is father of the man." If we were to try to express our idea of Wordsworth's poetry in a word, we might call it microscopic. Many apply a telescope to nature, to enlarge the great: he employs a microscope to mag- nify the small. Many, in their daring flights, treat a constellation with as much familiarity as if it were a bunch of violets: he leans over a violet with as much interest and reverence as if it were a star. Talk of the Pleiades! "Lo! five blue eggs are gleaming there," to him a dearer sight. He turns to the works of nature the same minutely magnifying lens as Pope to the works of art. The difference is, that while the bard of Twickenham uses his mi- croscope to a lady's lock, or to a gentleman's clouded cane, the poet of Windermere applies it to a mountain daisy or a worn-out spade. In speaking of Wordsworth's writings, we must not omit a ju- venile volume of poems, which we have never seen, but which we believe is chiefly remarkable as showing how late his genius was of flowering, and how far in youth he was from having sounded the true depths of his understanding. We have somewhere read extracts from it, which convinced us, that, at an age when Camp- bell wrote his '•' Pleasures of Hope," Pope his sparkling " Essay on Criticism," Keats his " Hyperion " — Wordsworth, so far from being a like miracle of precocity, could only produce certain puerile ])rettinesses, with all the merit which arises from absence of fault, but with all the fault which arises from absence of merit. The " Ijyrical Ballads " was the first effiision of his mind which bore the broad arrow of a ])eculiar genius; the first to cluster round him troops of devoted friends, and the first to raise against liim that storm of ridiciile, badinage, abuse, and misrepresenta- tion, which has so recently been laid for ever. And, looking back upon this production through the vista of yeai's, we cannot wonder that it should so have struck the minds of the public. Poetry was reduced to its beggarly elements. In the florid aff"ectation of Dar- win, and the tame, yet tu]-gid verse of Hayley, it was breathing its last. Cowper, meanwhile, had left the stage. It was not surprising, that in tln' dreary dearth which succeeded, a small bunch of wild- floAvers, with the scent of the moors, and the tints of the sun, and the freshness of the dew upon them, shot suddenly into the hands of the public, should attract iiiimciliate notice: — that, Avliile they disgusted th'e fastidious, they should refresh the dispirited lovers WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 213 of truth and natui*e; that, while the vain and the worldly tore and trampled them under foot with fierce shouts of laughter, the sim- ple-hearted took them up, and folded them to their bosoms; and that, while the old, prepossessed in favour of Pope and Voltaire, threw them aside as insipid, the youny gleams of real poetry, and the " White Doe of Rylstone," with this single remark, that, of all the severe criticisms inflicted on Wordsworth, the review of this par- ticular poem in the "Edinburgh" stsmds facile princeps for glar- ing injustice; and his series of " Sonnets on the River Duddon," a most happy thought, which we would like to see applied to other streams, as the Tay, the Earn, the Nith, the Dee, &c. — passing over one smaller poem of exquisite beauty on the "Eclipse in Italy," and 214 WILLIAM WORDSWOKTH. ■with still more reluctance '• Laodamia," the most chaste and classic of his strains, and which, says one, " might have been read aloud in Elysium to the happy dead" — we would offer a few remarks upon the huge half-finished pile called the " Excursion," the na- tional monument of its author's mind. It professes to be part of a poem called the " Kecluse." So many witty, or would-be witty, things have been said about this profession by so many critics and ci-iticasters, that we have not a single joke to crack on the subject. The magnitude of the entire poem is to us, as well as to them, a wonder and a mystery. Its matter is a topic more attractive. We remember asking De Quincey if he had seen the " Eecluse," and why it was not given to the world? He answered, that he had read, or heard read, large portions of it; that the principal reason for its non- publica- tion as yet was, that it contained (who would have expected if?) much that was political, if not personal, and drew with a strong and unflattering hand some of the leading characters of the day. He added, that it abounded with passages equal to anything in the " Excursion," and instanced one, descriptive of France during the Revolution, contrasting the beauty and fertility of its vine- covered valleys and summer landscapes with the dark and infernal passions which were then working like lava in the minds of its inhabitants, as magnificent.* So much for the "Recluse," which the people of the Millen- nium may possibly see. The " Excursion," professing to be only part of a poem, was, nevertheless, criticised as a finished produc- lion, and condemned accordingly. A finished production it cer- tainly is not. Cumbrous, digressive, unwieldy, abounding with bulky blemishes, not so witty as " Candide," nor so readable as " Nicholas Nickleby," — these are charges which must be allowed. But, after granting this, what remains? Exquisite pathos, pro- found philosophy, classic dignity, high-toned devotion, the moral sublime. The tale of Margaret is so simple, that you are almost ashamed to leave so quiet a thing pointed and starred with tears, and yet cannot help it. The account of the first ])rilliant sun- burst of the French Revolution is sublime. The description of the churchyard among the mountains, with its tender memories and grass-green graves, would float many such volumes. But far the finest passage is that on the origin of the Pagan mythology. And yet we never feel so much, as when reading it, the greater grandeur which our system possesses from its central principle, the Unity of the Divine Nature; a doctrine which collects all the scattered rays of beauty and excellence from every quarter of the universe, and condenses them into one august and overpowering * Part of the " Recluse" h.ns since appeared as '• Tlie Prelude." For our notion of it, bce the " Eclectic" for November, IfioO. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 215 conception; which traces back the innumerable rills of thought and feeling to the ocean of an infinite mind, and thus surpasses the most elegant and ethereal polytheism infinitely more than the sun does the " cinders of the element." However beautiful the mythology of Greece, as interpreted by "Wordsworth — how- ever instinct it was with imaofination — however it seemed to breathe a supernatural soul into the creation, and to rouse and startle it all into life — to fill the throne of the sun with a divine tenant — to hide a Naiad in eveiy fountain — to crown every rock with its Oread — to deify shadows and storms — and to send sweep- ing across "old ocean's grey and melancholy waste" a celestial emperor, — it must yield, Avithout a struggle, to the thought of a great one Spirit, feeding by his perpetual presence the lamp of the universe, speaking in all its voices, listening in all its silence, storming in its rage, reposing in its calm, its light the shadow of his greatness, its gloom the hiding-place of his power, its verdure the trace of his steps, its fire the breath of his nostrils, its motion the circulation of his untiring energies, its warmth the eflfluence of his love, its mountains the altars of his worship, and its oceans the " mirrors" where his form " glasses itself in tempests." Com- pared to this idea, how does the fine dream of the Pagan Mythos tremble and melt away — Olympus, with its multitude of stately, celestial natures, dwindle before the solitary, immutable throne of Jehovah — the poetry, as well as the philosophy of Greece, shrink before the single sentence, " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" — and Wordsworth's description of the origin of its multitudinous gods, look tame beside the mighty lines of Milton !— The oracles are dumb No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine. Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. He feels from Judah's land The dreadful Infant's hand. The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne. Nor all the gods beside Dare longer now abide ; Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine. Our Babe, to sliow his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling-bands control the damned crew. Shall we rob ourselves of the varied beauties of the " Excur- sion," because one of the dramatis persona; is a pedlar, and because the book was originally a quarto of the largest size ? No. Words- worth is, like his own cloud, ponderous, and " moveth altogether, if he move at all." His excursions are not those of an epheme- 216 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. ron, and disdain duodecimos. We dare not put this chefd'mivre of his genius on the same shelf with the "Paradise Lost;" but there are passages in both which claim kindred, and the minds of the twain dwell not very far apart. Having no wish to sacrifice one great man to the manes of another — to pull down the liv- ing, that we may set up the cold idol of the dead — we may ven- ture to affirm, that, if ]\Iilton was more than the Wordsworth of the seventeenth, Wordsworth was the Milton of the nineteenth century. Among his later and smaller poems, the best, perhaps, is his " Ode on the Power of Sound." It is laboured and involved, but the labour is that of a giant birth, and the involution is that of close-piled magnificence. Up the gamut of sound how does he travel, from the sprinkling of earth on the coffin-lid to the note of the eagle, who rises over the arch of the rainbow, singing his own Avild song; from the Ave Maria of the pilgrim to the voice of the lion, coming up vast and hollow on the winds of the mid- night wilderness; from the trill of the blackbird to the thunder speaking from his black orchestra to the echoing heavens; from the Distress-gun on a leeward shore, Repeated, heard, and heard no more, to the murmur of the main — for well The tow'ring headlands crown'd wiih mist, Their feet among the billows, know That ocean is a mighty harmonist; from the faintest sigh that stirs the stagnant air of the dungeon to the " word which cannot pass away," and on which the earth and the heavens are suspended. This were, but for its appearance of heaving effort, a lyric fit to be placed beside Shelley's " Ode to Liberty," and Coleridge's " France." Appropriately, it has a swell of sound, and a pomp of numbers, such as he has exhibited in no other of his poems; and yet there are moods in which we would prefer his " We are Seven," or one of his little poems on Lucy, to all its laboured vehemence and cruddcd splendour. Wordsworth had a forehead broad and high, and bent under the weight of brooding thought; a few grey hairs streaming over it; an eye which, when still, seemed to " see more in nature than the eyes of other men," and when roused beamed forth with sin- gular meaning; a face furrowed with thought; a form bent with study; a healthy glow upon his cheek, which told of moorland walks and mountain solitude; a deep-toned voice; he excelled in reading his own poetry; was temperate in his habits; serene in his disposition; was fortunate in his circumstances and family connections; and lived and died one of the happiest of men. His ROBERT POLLOK. 217 religion was clieerful, sanguine, habitual; and we need not say how much it did to colour his poetry, and to regulate his life. It is much to have one's fame connected vitally with the im- perishable objects of nature. It is so with Burns, who has written his name upon Coila's plains, and rivers, and woods, in characters Avhich shall never die. It is so with Scott, who has for monument the " mountains of his native land," and the rustling of the heather of Caledonia as a perpetual pibroch of lament over his ashes. So we believe that the memory of the great man whose character we have been depicting, is linked indissolubly with the scenery of the Lakes, and that men in far future ages, when awed in spirit by the gloom of Helvellyn — when enchanted by the paradisal prospects of the vale of Keswick — when catching the first gleam of the waters of Windermere — or when taking the last look of Skiddaw, the giant of the region — shall mingle with every blessing they utter, and every prayer they breathe, the name of William Wordsworth. ROBERT POLLOK. Our readers are aware that there once existed a strong prejudice against what was called religious poetry. The causes of this feeling were long to tell and wearisome to trace. Not the least of them was the authority of Dr Johnson, who, though enamoured of the sanctimonious stupidity of Blackmore, had yet an inve- terate prejudice against religious poetry per se, and was at the pains to enshrine this "folly of the wise" in some of the tersest and most energetic sentences which ever dropped from his authoritative pen. Another cause lay, we think, in the supreme badness of the greater part of the soi-clisant poetry which pro- fessed to be religious. Lumbering versions of the winged Avords of inspired men of God — verses steeped in maudlin sentiment, when not touched into convulsive life by fanaticism — hymnp, how different from those of Milton or of the Catholic litany, full of sickly unction, or of babyish prattle; — such was, during the eighteenth century, the staple of our sacred song. If any one thinks our statement overcharged, let him put it to the test, by taking up one of our old hymn-books, and comparing it, in its pert jingle and impudent familiarities, to the " strains which once did sweet in Zion glide," to our own rough but manly ver- 218 ROBEKT POLLOK. sion of the Psalms, or to the later hymns of Cowper and Mont- gomery. It is like a twopenny trump, or a musical snufF-box, beside the lyre of David, or the organ of Isaiah. And just when the splendid success of Cowper, Montgomery, &c., had wiped out this bad impression of religious poetry, and when the oracular dogma of the lexicographer was dying into echo, a new source of prejudice was opened in the uprise of a set of pretended pious poets, or poetasters — who, approaching the horns of the altar, not only held, but tugged with all their might — who treated Divine things with the utmost coolness of familiarity — I'ushing within the hallowed circle of Scripture truth to snatch a selfish excite- ment — passing their own tame thouglits across the flame of the sanctuary, if they might thus kindle them into life; and doing all in their power to render the great little, the reverend ridiculous, and the divine disgusting. These mock Miltons, though they had established a railway communication with the lower regions, and took monthly " Descents into hell " — were quite intimate with the angel Gabriel, and conflagrated the creation as coolly as you would set up a rocket — made no very deep impression upon the public mind. Dismay and disgust, dying into laughter, were the abiding feeling with which they were regarded. And we know no better proof of Robert Pollok's essential superiority, than the fact, that his poem, amid the general nausea of such things, has retained its place; that the sins of his imitators have not been visited on his head; and that, while their tiny tapers have been all eclipsed, his solemn star shines on undimmed, reminding us, in its sombre splendour, of Mars, that dark red hermit of the heavens. In examining Pollok's character as a poet, we are greatly helped by the compact unity of his actual achievement. When we speak of PoUok, we mean the " Course of Time." He did not, like many of greater mark, fritter down his powers in fugitive effusions. He is not remembered or forgotten as the author of literary remains, occasional essays, or posthumous fragments. He has incontestably written a book aspiring to completeness, of proud pretensions, hewn out of the quarry of his own soul, begun early, prosecuted with heroic perseverance, and cemented by his own life's-blood. Whatever we may think of the design or the execution, of the taste or the style, honour to the man who, in this age of frag- ments, and fractions of fragments, and first drafts, and tentative and tantalising experiments, has written an undeniable book! Nor let us forget the age of the writer. The fact, that a youth so impressed, by one effort of his mind, many, who were not straightway deemed insane, as to draw forth the daring of equal- ling him with Milton, and his work with " Paradise Lost," sj)eak3 much in its favour. Ere the majority of educated men have com- pleted their mental training, or even formed the first vague dream ROBERT POLLOK.. 219 of a magnum opvs, his was resolved, revolved, rolled over in his mind for years, written, re-written, published, praised, and the author himself was away! Was not this much? And whatever malignity may say or " shriek," the mere unbounded and un- equalled popularity of the book does prove a little more. We, indeed, look upon the nineteenth century as a very young century in the world's history — as but a babe in leading-strings. Still we do not think so little of it, after all, as to deem that a tissue of wordy worthlessness would run like wildfire — pass through some score of editions in less than eighteen years, and take its place, if not with the " Paradise Lost," with which it ought never to be named, yet certainly with the " Grave" and the " Night Thoughts." Let those who, in the face of the general estimate of a tolerably enlightened public, deny the "Course of Time" any merit, be "choked with their own bile!" There were, indeed, we admit, certain circumstances which, in some measure, ex])lained the popularity of the poem, apart altogether from its intrinsic merit. First of all, it was a religious poem, and this at once awakened a wide and warm interest in its favour. Galled by the godless ridicule of Byron, and chagrined by what they thought the vague and mystic piety of the Lakers, the religious community hailed the appearance of a new and true poet, who was ashamed of none of the peculiarities of one of the straitest of all their sects, with a tumult of applause. It was, besides, a poem by a dissenter. And betAveen the gentle but timid genius of Michael Bruce, and the far more energetic song of PoUok, no poetry deserving the name had been produced among them. It was natural, therefore, that when, at length, a l)rilliant star broke forth in their firmament, they should salute its arrival with lawful and general pride. A few, indeed, of the more malignant of those who found themselves eclipsed, felt hatred, and pretended to feel contempt, for the poem. But the principal cause of its popularity was the pre- mature death of the poet. This lent instantly a consecrating magic to its eveiy line — passed over it like a pitying hand, hiding its bulky faults — caused the poisoned arrows of many an intended critic to fall powerless from his grasp — aroused a tide of univer- sal sympathy, and sympathy is akin to applause — put, in a word, the copestone on its trium})h. Still the book had much merit of its own. It was, in the first place, on the whole, an original pro- duction. There were, it is true, as in all youthful works, traces of resemblance, and even imitation of favourite authors. Here, Milton's majestic tones and awful sanctity were emulated; there, a shadow of a shade of Dante's terrible gloom was caught. In another place, the ej)igrammatic turns of Young were less suc- cessfully mimicked. Many passages resembled Blair's " Grave" in their rough vigour of style and unsparing anatomy of human feel- ings and foibles. Cowper's sarcasm and strong simplicity had also 220 ROBERT POLLOK. been studied to some purpose. Nor had the autlior feared to sharpen his holy weapons at the forge of Byron — that Philistine, who had come forth to defy the armies of the living God. Of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, he seemed to know little, else, perhaps, his tone had been more ethereal, and his verse more har- monious. And yet, notwithstanding such resemblances, and con- scious or unconscious imitations, you felt, from the first, that you had to do with a man who thought, and looked, and wrote for him- self. A strong and searching intellect looked out on you from the whole poem. And, scattered throughout, in nooks and corners of its scathed surface, were gleams of genuine genius — touches of natural pathos — strange and Avild imaginings — rays of strong truthfulness in moral sentiment — lines memorable as if written in red characters, which, even more than its long and laboured passages, "gave the world assurance of a man." And thus, though the design was somewhat clumsy, and the painting coarse, and some parts of the execution little better than deliberate daubings, there was, nevertheless, a soul in the entire picture — an eye looking forth from it which followed, pierced, and detained you. Another striking quality was its truth. It was no " sham, but a reality." Here was an honest, earnest man, talking to you, in solemn tones, of the most solemn things, and believing every word which he uttered. The awful truths of our faith had made, early, a profound impression upon his mind. The doctrine of future punishment, especially, had seized hold on his imagination as with iron talons, and had found a fit commentary in the wild and desolate scenery where his infancy was nurtured. He never, for a moment, falters in pronouncing the tidings of wo against transgressors: he is full of the terrors of the Lord; and, with pro- phetic earnestness, and prophetic severity, he voices them fear- lessly forth, and we seem to hear the thunder talking to us of the eternal decrees, and describing to us the everlasting burnings. His descriptions of hell, show a man who had long brooded over the overwhelming thought — who had rolled the red idea in the furnace of his mind, till it was rounded into fearful distinctness of shape and symmetry — who had studied the scenery of Pande- monium, under the canopy of the thunder-cloud, in lone and wizard glens, in desolate moors, in sullen tarns, miniatures of the " last lake of God's wrath," in midnight dream, and drearier midnight wakefulness on his own pillow. And all such dark broodings he has collected and condensed into the savage figures which he has sculptured on the wall of the dwelling-place of the second death. And his pictures of punishment, though often tasteless, exaggerated, and unideal, are redeemed by their intense and burning sincerity. There is, indeed, around the whole poem, what we may call a flush of hectic truth; and you fancy mind and body crumbling down a step further to the tomb, in every sue- ROBERT POLLOK. 221 ceeding syllable of the sepulchral work. It is, verily, written with his heart's blood. We find the same quality in a work of far more artistic, though fragmentary merit — written, too, by a dying hand, namely, " Hyperion," where the splendours are all hectic, and the power projected forward from eternity. The next quality we find in the " Course of Time " is its gloomy cast and tone. Save the " Night Thoughts," and, perhaps, the "Inferno," it is the most mournful of books; indeed more so than either. A load of darkness lies upon the whole. In vain lie struggles to smile; his smiles remind you of those whicli hideously disguise the tortures of the wrack-writhen victim. His sarcasms are searing; his invectives Tartarean; and, to our minds, the enumeration of the pleasures of earth, in the fifth book, is the most melancholy passage of the poem. It is a cold forced labouring against the grain. It is a collection of dead joys, pumped up artificially, not welling freely forth from a glad soul. How different from L'Allegro, or even Byron's enumeration of sweets. So faded and forlorn are the pleasures he recounts, that you hardly wonder that he introduces among them a description of a sister's deathbed. And when he tries, at the close, to sing the Millennial glory, his harp seems to refuse its ofllice; and, as if prophetically conscious of the after-arrear of woes, it is "turned into mourning, and into the voice of those that weep." The poet's fingers seem paralysed — able only to take down the Glasgow Geography, whence to transci'ibe the names of the nations who shall come to its light, but not to roll out the full diapason of a world's joy. The gloom of Pollok's poetry is evidently, like Dante's, indigenous. The darkness of Milton's mind sprung from excess of light ; Blair's was the result of subject; Young's, of cir- cumstances; Cowper's, of nervous disease; whereas Pollok's is Hung from the forehead of his soul. It is no acquired or afiected melancholy: like one of the stars described by Origen, he "rays out darkness " from the central gloom of his own heart; and not only the flowers of earth, but the splendours of heaven, crossed by the wind of his spirit, " darken like water in the breeze." Now, we regret exceedingly that he had not done more justice to the bright side of the picture. Nothing, we think, has injured Chris- tianity more than the melancholy and miserable tone of the greater part of its authorship. We attribute much of the pre- judice which exists against religion, to the severe and sombre light in which many of its poets constantly represent that gospel, which means, " News that it is well." Shame to those who, by the infused blackness of their own bile, have turned the fountain of the water of life into a Marah — the river of salvation into an Acheron — and have cast the shadow of their own disappointment, or disquiet, or disgust, upon the crystal transparency of the Sea of Glass and the golden pavement of the City of Glory ! Thus 222 ROBERT POLLOK. has Dante carried the gloom of Gehenna with him into the hea- ven of heavens, and dared to darken with his frown the throne of the universe. Thus has Young breathed up his own personal sorrow upon the midnight sky, and seen the stars, those bright milestones on the Avay to immortality, through the mist of his own burning tears. Thus has Cowper seen little in Scripture save the grim reflection of his own mania, and read it chiefly as the charter of his perdition. And thus has PoUok discoloured the long track of Millennial day by the shadow of his personal melancholy, leaving the " Pleasures of Piety " to be sung by a far feebler minstrel. The book, again, is remarkable for its lofty and daring tone. Perhaps, indeed, this is a blemish rather than a beauty. Milton was lofty, because he could not help it. Sublimity is the shadow of his soul. It fiills off gigantic from all his motions. He was daring, because in his glorious blindness the veil between heaven and earth was dropped. The medium of the interjacent universe was removed. Heaven became lus mind's home, and he might be said to " lie in Abraham's bosom all the year." Dante's dar- ing is that of a wounded and desperate spirit, treading upon terrible thoughts as upon burning ploughshares; with frightful accuracy and minuteness, writing the diary, and becoming the De Foe of Perdition. In all the calm of disgust and hopelessness, he treads alike the marvellous lio-ht of heaven, the twiliy-ht of purgatory, and the gloom of that "other place." About Pol- lok's loftiness, there lies an air of effort; and about his daring, a slight taint of presumption. A youth, though of " great reli- gious soul, retired in voluntary loneliness, and dipping oft his pen to write immortal things," may not be permitted the privileges of an old demigod of song, whose sole sun was the Shcchiuah, and whose only stars were the eyes of angels looking in upon his holy darkness; or of a deep-browed, eagle-eyed Italian, who, after his poem appeared, was pointed out in the streets as the " man who had been in hell." Still, if overdaring, he is original in his aspirings. His hell is not jVIilton's hell, nor Qucvedo's, nor Dante's, nor Bunyan's. It is Pollok's own; and came to him in the night visions of his own spirit. We envy him not his pro- perty in the two terrible figures on the wall of the place. These are miscreations; spasmodic beyond the worst of Michael Angelo's. How far inferior to that one inscription in Dante, " Who enters here leaves hope behind." Substanti;illy the two (the Worm that dieth not, and Internal Death) are the same thing; and yet after describing at fidl length the first, he says of the second, as if it were worse, " For ever undescribed let it remain." Both, nevertheless, are the product of his own mind. His heaven, too, is tlie l)uilding of his own genius; and his conception of wastes and wildernesses existing even there is one of the finest in the EGBERT POLLOK. 223 poem : one gifted spirit we know loved it for nothing else. His angels and devils play no conspicuous or important part. Per- haps the first are too prying and curious to be sublime : the others too hateful to excite our sympathies. His pictures of earth, its scenery, and its characters, are too dark to be true. His conception of the universe, as possessed of two centres — the one drawing up its subject orbs in the direction of heaven, and the other sucking down sinners to where " attraction turns the other way, and all things to some infernal centre tend" — is com- pounded of two images or theories, one occurring in Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope," where the creation is represented revolving- round the throne of God, and the other in Scott's " Christian Life" (a book much in favour with Pollok), where all things evil and abhorred are described as " pressing down by a necessity of their own nature," in search of some hidden magnet. How many efforts has the human mind made to figure to itself that vasti- tude of material existence Avhich is above, and below, and around it! And how few even approach to the grandeur of the subject! Orreries are contemptible; at best pretty playthings. Worse still the image of a vast machine, as if space were only an enor- mous factory. Somewhat better the image of an immense book — the stars letters, the constellations words, and the firmaments leaves of glory. Better still, the fine thought of Campbell, if it indeed originated with him. Another, partly suggested by the old Scandinavian idea, came forcibly on us lately while riding through dark fir woods in a moonlight autumn night: why not call the creation a tree, its root the throne, its leaves the stars, earth one withered leaf amid the green constellations, growing upwai'ds towards boundless, measureless perfection; and the music of the spheres just the waving of the eternal boughs, in the one wind-like spirit which pervades them alii The " future," says Eahel, the celebrated Germaness, " does not come from before to meet us, but comes streaming from behind over our heads." So, streaming up from the uncreated root which we call the First cause, does creation germinate, and for ever grow ! Pollok's book, too, is remarkable in general for its clearness and simplicity of thought and style; so much so, that we almost long for a little more of that fine German mysticism, without which it is, perhaps, after all, impossible to speak of the deepest and the loftiest — of eternity, space, night, infinitude. This ele- ment i§ too rare for Pollok's wing. When he tries to be obscure and profound, his fluttering is, to use his own term, " unearthly." Nay, sometimes, like Satan in the war of chaotic elements, he plumps down, fathoms and fathoms more, into a vague, void, and unimaginative darkness. Many of Milton's lines he might have written; but how far above the path of his genius were such words as these, "The dreaded Name of Demogorgonf And 224 ROBERT POLLOK. Avhat abject nonsense he perpetrates in the description of the " atom Avhich God had made superfluously, and needed not to build creation with, but cast aside with everlasting sense that once it was?" His peculiar power is understanding : he ratiocinates, declaims, inveighs, but rarely feels on his half-blinded eyes flashes of intuitive and transcendental truth. His is a thoroughly Scottish soul, clear even in its extravagancies, common sense even in its wildness. His description of the resurrection, though vivid and vigorous, is as coarse as though done by a resurrection-maru We notice, too, the awful holiness of the spirit of this poem. There are few books in the language over whose frontispiece the inscription is so legibly written — " Off", ye profane;" if not the still more solemn motto — " Holiness to the Lord." We feel tread- ing on ground consecrated by the shadow of the great Tribunal. Even Milton sometimes quits his Lebanon for Pindus, disports himself with the dreams of the Pagan mythology, and " wreathes his lithe proboscis" into giant mirth at the follies of the schools. Young, in multitudinous tropes and glittering anthitheses, often trifles with his tremendous themes. Sometimes, across the most solemn and spiritual pages of Cowper, humour steals like a guilty thing. Blair's piety is sincere, but hangs round him in light and easy folds. But, with Pollok, there is no mirth, no trifling, and not a particle of genuine playfulness: all is severe and saturnine to repulsion and dismay. You are disposed to ask, Is this really piety, after all? Is she not a gladder, franker, milder, more amiable thing? Whether has this gloomy limner, or Jeremy Taylor, Howe, Milton, and Hall, succeeded in drawing the truer likeness? Is this she whom Jesus has represented in the divine Sermon on the Mount, or any one of the three fair sisters painted by Paul : Faith, with eagle-eye, contemplating the Invisible ; Hope, looking as beautiful and happy as if a breeze from heaven were playing around her temples, and stirring her golden hair; and Charity, weeping over a perishing world, and all the more lovely for her tears? Must there not be some mistake, or has Pollok's temperament, or the disease which was preying on his vitals as he wrote the poem, somewhat dimmed and distorted the features of the Bride of Heaven? Assuredly, holy ought to have l)een the spirit which dared to roll such withering numbers, and pass such sweeping verdicts down the " tide of time." Akin to this, the poem is distinguished l)y its tone of in tellectual and spiritual assurance. In a kind of divine dogma- tism, it more resembles Milton's great work than in anything else. There is no doubt, nor shadow of a doubt, upon his mind; first, as to every j)art of his creed; and next, as to his individual capacity for expounding the same. No grand Perhaps is ever uttered; the very word never occurs. Sawing his path through difficulties, cutting Gordian knots, striking down all opponents, ROBEUT POLLOK. 225 without modesty and without hesitation, he builds up his system, and clears his way. He addresses himself with unfaltering conti- dence to greatest things. He has no momentary misgivings of his own fitness. He seems leaping up to meet the descending mantle half-way. Like Milton, he is intensely conscious of his dignity and size. And it is not his fault that his port is less princely, his panoply less terrible, his preparation less severe, his afHatus less powerful, and his stature less gigantic. A pleasing feature of the poem, is the vein of fine egotism which pervades it, and breaks out frequently in personal allusions and pensive reminiscences. This is one principal cause of its popularity. The poet who makes a harp of his own heart, and strikes its ruddy chords with skilful fearlessness, is sure of awak- ening the sympathies of the public. What so affecting in Milton as his allusions to his solitary position, " ftiUen on evil days and evil tongues;" or the melancholy magnanimity with which he touches, as it were, his blind orbs, and mourns over their prema- ture eclipse 1 What finer in Cowper, than his " Castaway," or than his description of the "sti'icken deer that left the herd;" or in Burns, than his " Vision," and his picture of himself, the in- spired boy, in the lines, The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide Amang tlie bearded bear; I turned the clipper-weeds aside, And spared the symbol dear. So in Pollok there is nothing to our minds so beautiful as his allusions to " Scotia's northern battlement of hills," seen from his father's house, in " morn of life," or than the brief history of himself which occurs in the earlier part of the poem. It adds to the effect of such passages, that the plan of the poem leads us to regard them as the reminiscences of a spirit shrined in heaven, and yet, from the centre of eternal glories, looking back with a moist eye and a full heart to the experiences of its earthly pil- grimage. And to sum up the excellencies of the book, there are in it some sustained and eloquent passages, which were alone sufficient to buoy up the entire poem, were it much more cum- brous, unequal, and faulty, than it is. The " Byron" will occur to the mind of every reader — a picture in which the artist seems for a season to become the subject as he paints him. The red source of Byron's genius, shut in death, sullenly opens at his spell, and, dipping his pencil in it, the painter hastily limns him in burning colours; and it closes again for ever. Byron has never himself described one of his burning heroes better, than Pollok the soul which created them. How well has he caught, especially, the self-involved and haughty repulsion of his spirit, " stooping to touch the loftiest thought," the education by which his soul was nurtured into poetry, and the waste and howling Q 226 ROBERT POLLOK. wilderness of its ixltimate misery. Not so well, we think, has he given the characteristics of his genius. Byron is not the ethereal being whom he describes. He is not at " home where angels bashful look;" he is at home rather where demons pale and ti-emble. He is not an " old acquaintance of Nature." He has not the freedom of that city of God ; it is but a city of refuge to him : he has been driven to it by disgust and agony. A " eomet " he is, reverenced by the stars and responded to by the volcanoes of creation, but he is no " bird of heavenly plumage fair," de- scended from higher regions : he has " laboured up from beneath," and his wing wears the darkest soil of earthly passion. He " talks with the thunder as friend to frie^id," not because it is his most congenial companion, but because his miseries have left him no choice — the countenance of man is averted from him, and he is glad to gaze on the face of the thunder-cloud; his laurels withered or torn away, he must hide his bald head with a garland of the lightning's wing. He lays his hand upon the " ocean's mane; " but it is in despair, not familiarity. These, however, are petty blemishes in this noble passage. As a whole, it is powerfully conceived, and most powerfully expressed. Its words are winged, forked, and tempest-tuned : its motion is free, bold, vaulting : it is a rough, rapid, masculine, moral sketch, done apparently at one fierce sitting. Other splendid passages we might name; such as that descrip- tive of the preparations for the Eesurrection, the Address to the Ocean, &c. But we hasten to the less gracious task of pointing out a few of the faults of this remarkable book. And here a malig- nant critic might find " ample room and verge enough." Let us touch them as tenderly as we can. The book, first of all, is the most unequal of all works. While some parts of it are pure poetry, others are little better than stilted and stumbling prose. In aim- ing at the bare and bald simplicity of Homer, Dante, and Milton, its author sinks sometimes into sheer drivel. If Homer nods, Pollok must snore. The work is altogether, too, of a loose and shambling structure. It is a straggling street rather than a solid fortress. If a poem mean a piece of mental masonry, firm, com- pact, complete, the " Course of Time " is no poem at all. It is, in fact, a nondescript. It is not epic, it is not didactic. It has no story, and an exceedingly imperfect plan. In defect of incident, it is full of descrij)tions and moral portraitures, of all varieties and all merits, strung together on a dusky thread called the Course of Time. Consequently, as a whole, it lacks interest. Your eye kindles, and your heart heaves, over certain passages; but over the rest you yawn j>ortontously. Its moral pictures are repeated till you sicken, and sj)un out till you weary. Sometimes they are too general to be true, and are always painted in a chiaro- scuro, which, though true to principles, is false to fact. Often, he EGBERT POLLOK. 227 states common truths with ridiculous emphasis, and heaps strong words, like too much fuel on a little tire, till it is utterly quenched. His imagination has force, but little richness; his intellect strength, but not subtlety; his language pith, but no melting beauty. He can command terror, but seldom tears. His genius has grasp, but no refinement. His tone, in reference to sinners, is far too harsh and exulting. He seems s'ometimes to insult and trample on their eternal sepulchre, as if the pressure of Almighty ven- geance were not enough without the makeweight of his tread. His flames are fiercer than those of Dante and Milton; and he leaves none of their lingering touches of beauty and pathos on the sur- face of the lurid lake. Though writing in tlie nineteenth century, he has not sought to grapple with the grand moral aspects of pun- ishment — never ventured beyond the familiar images of material pain — never tried to paint the successive descending stages of de- gradation in a spiritual being, given up to itself, as into the hands of a dire tormentor. This is a task which lies over for some pro- founder artist. He is better, too, at sounding the key-note than at finishing the melody. His prefatory flourishes are startling, but the anthem is not always worthy of the prelude. Had he ventured to describe the Flood, he would have expended his strength in the gathering of the animals and the elements: his pen had faltered in describing the unchained deluge — the dark- ened sun — the torrents of rain cleaving the gloom — the varied groups of drowning wretchedness — the ark riding in melancholy grandeur on the topmost billow of an ocean planet. As it is, he sweeps the stage nobly, for the "great vision of the guarded throne;" he excites a shrill of shuddering expectation; on the tremendous lyre of judgment, he strikes some brief strong notes, but recoils from the sounds he himself has made; and from an attempt to lift up his hand to the last trembling cords, he falls back exhausted and helpless. In fact, the poet reaches his climax at the sixth book. After this, he sinks down, struggling sore, but vainly, to break his fall. The last six books might almost have been spared. The subject, like strong sun-light, presses too heavily on his eye. He has a " vision of his own," but it is not, on the whole, a happy vision. It does not fill and satisfy his own imagi- nation, and how can it satisfy his reader's? Indeed, the theme is too majestic for pencil or for pen. We felt this strongly when look- ing at Danby's grand, but glaring, " Opening of the Sixth Seal." Notwithstanding the prodigality of blazing colour, the energy of some of the figures, and the mingled modesty and daring of the design, we not only felt a sense of oppressive splendour, but an overpowering sense of the unfitness of the topic for any pictorial representation. Danby very properly, it is true, ventures not to di'aw the features of that face from which heaven and eaa-th are fleeing away; a small quiet cross alone, surrounded by the divine 228 ROBERT POLLOK. glory, gives the meaning and moral of the picture; but how feeble a simulacrum, even of the other features of the scene, is, after all, presented ! What idea does that one Avave of volcanic fire give of a world in " fiery deluge and without an ark?" — that flash of lightning splitting the rocks, of the thousand thunders on which the Judge shall be enthroned '? — those scattered groups of surprised men and women, of the inhabitants of the whole earth arrested by the crash of doom ? — that city toppling, of the capitals of the world reeling into ruin? — that one slave lilting up his arms to the morning of liberty which is dawning, of Ethiopia stretching out her hands unto Grod 1 Nor, in the compass of poetry, do we know any thing, save the Dies tree, entirely worthy of the overwhelming subject. Prose pictures of it are common in sermons; and, when well delivered, they may tell in the pulpit, but are perfectly power- less in print. Even in the pulpit, it is ridiculous enough to see a well dressed youth, in gown and bands, Avith elaborately arranged hair, and elaborately balanced periods, and " start theatric prac- tised at the glass," setting about the destruction of the universe — deliberately snuffing out its stars, like tapers — applying his match to the pillars of the globe — springing a mine under its cities, wiping away its oceans, as easily as, with cambric handker- chief, he does the sweat drops from his lady- like brow; and clos- ing, with a smile of supreme complacency, by quoting the Avords of Robert Montgomery — Creation shudders with sublime dismay, And, in a blazing tempest, whirls away. Poets, too, and poetasters, have here alike signally failed. Young flutters toward it like a bird Avhose strong Aving has been broken. The author of Satan rushes u}>, at first, with screams of ambitious agony; but, in fine, subsides and falls flat as a log. Pollok, as we have seen, gives the subject the slip, shrinking back, paralysed by its sublimity. Had Byron been a believer, he might have done it in the style of his " Darkness." But not till another Mil- ton arise can we hope to see the epic of Tliat day of wrath — that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall i>ass away. Upon the whole, this poem, though it be no finished piece of art, and no impetuous sunburst of nature — though its blemishes outnunilter its beauties — nmst yet be admitted a ])()worful produc- tion, full of "things Avhich the Avorld will not Avillingly let die," and Avhich, separated, possibly, from their context, and floating on the waters into Avhich the volume itself shall haA'C gone down, may long preserve the memory of the ambitious and resolute spirit Avhence they emanated. Class it Avith the higliest produc- tions of the human mind — Avith the Iliad, the Prometheus \ inctus, the Lear, and the Paradise Lost, Ave may not, as long as the moon ROBERT POLLOK. 229 may not be ranked with the sun, nor Ceres with Sirius. PLaee it even in the second file of poetical masterpieces — with the Man- fred, the Cenei, the Paradise Regained, and the Excursion — we dare not, so long as " Jove's satellites are less than Jove." But let it have its praise as belonging to the oi'der which we may call " third among the sons of light," and its place on a slop- ing perch, at the top of which shines, in its starry lustre, the " Night Thoughts :"— Like some dark beauteous biril, whose plume Is sparkling with a thousand eyes. Robert Pollok was, himself, a remarkable man. All the anec- dotes we have heard of him, leave the impression of a strong minded, courageous, determined, sarcastic, earnest, and somewhat dogmatic spirit; with a thoroughly formed and fledged opinion of himself — with a hectic heat in his blood — holy contempt, rather than love, the element of his soul; and with a gay and bitter principle alternating in his mind and talk, now eliciting stormy glee, and now severe and pungent sarcasm. At college, he scarcely signalised himself at all;- — how could he, whose thoughts were already consecrated to the " Course of Time?" He was no great prizeman; none of those who effloresce early and die away soon — who sell the chance of immortality for a gilded book — who leave college loaded with laurels, and are never heard of more. For this he was at once too modest and too proud. Yet, during his curriculum, he wrote those little tales, " Helen of the Glen," &c., which, though full of fine descriptive touches, are hardly equal to "Arcades" and "Lycidas;" and will never, even in the deep wake of " The Course of Time," sail on to posterity. Every one has heard the fate of his first sermon in the hall — the loud and silly laughter with which that boyish burst was re- ceived — the fierce retort which broke from his lips, and the lofty indignation with which he drew back the first feeler of his poem into the den, and sheathed, for years, the bright weapon of his imagination. Every one knows, too, the effect which the buzz- ing announcement of a great forthcoming work made, in Seces- sion circles especially, and all the particulars of its after history. The despised of the hall '' awoke one morning and found himself famous." He was straightway fawned on, and crouched to, by many who had derided him before. He bore ill the strictures of honest and sincere friends. A review of the poem appeared in " Blackwood," written by a friend of our own, which, though by many thought too favourable, roused PoUok's ire, and terminated their friendship. Meanwhile the arrow of death had fixed itself deeply in his vitals. He resolved on many plans of works never to be accomplished; among others, a huge libel upon the ancient heathen world, which he wanted the learning to have executed; 230 CHARLES LAMB. and which would have been the grave of his reputation. He died at length, in a strange land, unknowing and unknown; but we are consoled, when, thinking of his premature end, by the reflec- tion that he did not foresee the fooleries of admiration which were to be perpetrated by his friends, nor the miserable life which was to be written of him by his brother. CHARLES LAMB. It is a singular circumstance, in the present day, that the com- mercial and the literary character have, in certain instances, been blended, without destroying each other. Literature, in our strange era, has entered the covinting-i-oom. Wit, of the rarest grain, has assisted in unpacking bales of goods. Genius, of a liigh order, has seated itself upon the tall three-legged stool, ami worn a quill, instead of laurel, behind its " trembling ears." The genius, thus enthroned, has not, to be sure, been of the most romantic or ethereal kind. The idea is ridiculous, of a clerk, now with fire and fury inditing a Mystery, and now taking in a con- signment of muslin; — dropping the pen, which had been dashing down the terrible syllables of a Walpurgis night, to make out an invoice of yarns. With all reverence for ti-ade, in its various de- partments, Ave cannot believe it possible for a Goethe or a Schiller, a Byron or a Shelley, a Coleridge or a Wilson, to have been bred in a warehouse. Had they not been " wild and woodland rovers," known, through broad lands, to " every star and every wind that blows," with foot free to tread, as it listed, the deck or the lieather, the soft sod or the incrusted lava, the sand or the snow, and, with faces embrowned by the sunbeams which had smote them by day, and spiritualised by the starry eyes which had shot down influence upon them by night — they could not have been what, to the honour of their species and the glory of tlie universe, they have become. Only conceive Goethe, with that lofty fore- liead and stately form, bending over a ledger; or the wizard Coleridge, with those dreamy eyes, deep in calculation of tlie price of stocks. And yet Charles Lamb, Coleridge's dear friend, thus spent the greater portion of his life. But then Cliarles Lamb, though as true a genius as any of those we have named, was a genius of (piite a difl'erent and inferior order. And we. know not liow much greater he might have Ijecome, had ho re- ceived a divers training, and instead of being the slave of a CHARLES LAMB. 231 counting-room, had been free of that city, the buikler and maker of which is God. Meanwhile k^t us be thankful for him as he was. If not a passionate, and earnest, and high-toned poet, he was a gay and chirruping rhymster — the quaintest of humorists — the most delicate and refined of critics — the most delightful of essayists — the most genial of companions. We have a theory — nor do we hold it alone — that heart and soul are always found together — that a man sees as he loves, and loves as he sees: that the distinction between cherubim, knowing ones, and seraphnn, burning ones, must be spurned away, as we mount up along the ladder of being, to the throne of Him, all whose perfections meet in that one transcendent love, which is his essence and his all. The heart has an eye of its own, and its vision is clear, far, and true. In Charles Lamb, at least, the two qualities were one. He reasoned with his heart — with his heart he loved, with his heart he laughed, in heart he lived, moved, and had his being. And what a strange, wild, hot, large heart Lamb's was 1 It was only less than that which lies in Dumfries kirk-yard, belonging to the man of whom it was said, that, if you touched his hand, it would have burnt yours. And, as this heart taught him to love the outcasts of society, to associate with its excommunicates, to cry halves to every pelt of calumny which assailed their devoted heads, so it led him, in search of matter for his genius, into the oddest and most out-of-the-way corners. From the beaten track of authorship, he turned aside into a narrow zig-zag footpath, where he has, hitherto, had no follower. He shunned aerial heights of speculation, and vertigo raptures of passion; he cut no Gordian knots; he winked hard at all abstruse questions; he babbled not about green fields; he detested politics; he had small sympathies with the spirit and literature of his age; but he sat still in his study, with Ben Jonson and Webster, or he puffed out poetry from his inseparable pipe — or he looked into Mary's face, till quiet tears bedimmed his eyelids — or he mounted the old Margate hoy, and enjoyed its strange humours — or he strolled forth alone into the sweet " security of streets " — or he bent over a book-stall, rather in search of his former self than to read — or he threw in puns like small crackers between the cannonades of Coleridge's talk — or he shook poor Hazlitt by the hand till the blood was like to ooze out at his finger nails — or he threw forth the deepest strokes of sense and sagacity, as if he were ashamed of them — or he came out with the strangest, wildest paradoxes, rtil he made some people take him for a madman, and others for an atheist — or he reVelled like a Rabelais in the regions of abysmal nonsense. Lamb's works excel all men's in this, that they fully reflect and embalm his own singular character. Every line, every word, is just like him. In fact, he could write nothing that was not instinct with himself. In his smallest composition you 232 CHARLES LAMB, find all his qualities — his serious laugh — his quaint originality — his intolerance of cant — his instinctive attachment to all odd things, and all queer ambiguous people — his "very ti'agical mirth," the border of fun that edges his most serious speculations • — his hatred of solitude — his love of cities — his shyness of all con- tested questions — his style so antique, yet racy, imitative, yet ori- ginal — his passion for old English authors — his enjoyment of hidden beauties, and the fine subtlety of his critical judgment. His poetry is the least poetical thing he has written. He wants the highest form of the " vision and the faculty divine." And that very veering between the serious and the comic, which renders it difficult for you to tell whether he be in jest or earnest, though it be the life of his prose, is hurtful to his poetry. A poet must either be manifestly in earnest, or manifestly in sport. Lamb is neither bard nor jester; or, rather, the jingle of the cap and bells mingles with and mars the melody of the lyre. Yet there is much that is genuinely poetical in his verse, and more that is richly and uproariously comic. At our first reading of " Eosamund Gray," we failed to see its beauty, but have since given it that tribute in tears which we had denied it in words. There is about it almost a scriptural simpli- city and pathos. As a critic. Lamb's forte lay in seeing and showing new and unsuspected beauties in his author. He hangs and broods over the page, till all the secrets of its spirit are open to him. As Hei'schel seldom looked at the larger stars with that mighty telescope which sAvept the remoter firmaments, so Lamb's eye turns from the glare of the more prominent and dazzling quali- ties, to those far deep nooks and corners, in which the very mar- row of meaning is or seems to be collected. Often, indeed, he attributes emphasis and intention to particular passages which never belonged to the author. And, as is natural to a discoverer, he sometimes exaggerates the value of what he has found. No man has ever seen Hogarth so clearly, or brought out so elo- quently the moral and tragical qualities which lie like abysses beneath the thin, light, transparent ice of his humour. Of the "Essays" of Elia, why need we say anything? They are " nests of spicery," sweet, subtle extracts from that rarest of hearts, and most curiously-unique of intellects. Best in them, we like those reminiscences by Avhich they are garnished : of his own early days, of Christ-church school, of his young companions witli whom he paced the cloisters, of the clerks who sat with him in the old 8outh-8ea House, of dear sister Bridget, and, above all, of Samuel Ta} lor Coleridge, " logician, metaphysician, bard; while Hope still rose before him like a fiery column, the dark side not yet turned." Lamb is the last essayist of England, and fitly and beautifully closes the fine line which Steele and Addison began. CHARLES LAMB. 233 It was to be expected that, as the essayist merges naturally into the letter-writer, the letters of Lamb should be worthy of his fame. We wish we could say something of this elegant spe- cies of literature, the letter; of the beauty of the first idea of extracting the private passages of one's life, recording, rolling up, sealing down into compact unity, and sending oft' by trusty transmission, little fragments of one's soul; of circulating the tinier griefs and fainter joys and more evanescent emotions, as Avell as the larger incidents and deeper passions of existence; of adding wings to conversation, and, by the soft soundless touch of a paper-wand, and the wave of a rod of feather, annihilating time and space, truly a "delicate thought, and softly bodied forth;" of the motley freightage which this little ark, once launched, has been compelled to bear : now called on to transmit a weight of written tears, and now of eager and expansive joys; now to " waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole," and now to echo a com- pliment or circulate a sneer; now to convey the gall of malice, and now to reflect the " bloom of young desire and purple light of love;" now to popularise the cogitations of the philosopher, and now to creak and tremble under the awful burdens of the inspired Apostle : — of the principal writers of this fine species of composition — of Gray with his ease, purity of style, and pictu- resqueness of description — of the letters of Cowper, with their refined simplicity, and their depth of humour — of Burns's, written on the top of deal tables, or chests of drawers, in wayside inns, and in the fire of potations pottle-deep, coarse, consequently, wild, extravagant, but bold, forcible, sincere — of the epistolary vein which at length opened in Byron, like the minor mouth of a volcano, and prompted those melancholy yet instructive mis- sives of Venetian lewdness, infamy, and despair, over which the elite of London society met regularly to chuckle, in John Murray's back shop — of Shelley's letters, so simple, refined, and eloquent — of Sir Walter Scott's plain, downright, business-like style of letter — of Conversation Sharp's nice little morsels — of Miss Seward's pert prettinesses — of Mrs Grant's lively and most femi- nine epistles — and of the two finest letters ever written, both, strange to tell, proceeding from an artificial and scholastic man — we refer to those addressed by Mackintosh to Hall, on his re- covery from derangement. Solemn as offerings on a shrine, tinged with reverence toward the great spirit which had just come down from the " thunder hill" of Frenzy, touching with a bold, yet tender finger, the delicate and dangerous toi)ic — breath- ing the purest spirit of attachment, and written with an elegance, a purity, and a pathos superior to aught in his more elaborate productions, — they form among the sublimest memorials which genius has ever consecrated to friendship. What a cheering wel- come did they furnish to the smitten and bewildered being as he 234 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, came back from that wild land to the experiences of the cold common world, and found his oldest and most congenial friend waiting on the border with a pressure of hand so soft and thril- ling, and a smile of welcome so gravely sweet and reverently solemn, as must have melted his " strong man " to tears. Lamb's letters are full of himself, and of his usual, incessant, and delightful mannerism. They abound in heart, peculiarity, unworldly pathos, humour, irony, fun, nonsense, balderdash, mad- ness; yet all so deliciously fresh and rich, so peppered with old world condiments, so brimful of the sparkling " wine of life," so tartly singular in their spirit and style, that you sigh to think that they are included in that everything which has an end. Elia ! we must reluctantly bid thee adieu ! We have not done justice to thy inimitable merits, but, assuredly, it is from no defect of love ! We feel almost as if we had known thee personally, sat at thy bounteous board, seen thy dark noble countenance, the " painful sweetness" of thy smile, thy small, slight, quivering form, seen by thy side, Mary, thy more than sister, linked to thee in " dual loneliness," thy tender nurse, thy mild companion, sometimes, alas ! in her turn, the object of thy deep solicitude and awful care, as if we had seen around the table " many glittering faces looking on" — the faces of immortals, the serene front of Wordsworth, the mild mystic gaze of Coleridge, Hazlitt's pallid face and eager eye, Southey's Koman carriage. Hunt's thoughtful, yet joyous visage — as if we had heard the colloquies Avhich hung wings of gold upon each dark hour, as it chased the other away. For the dead, we may not, and need not pray; but surely, as we w^ave farewell, we may say — Blessings on thy kind heart, oblivion to thy errors, immortality to thy name. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, AND THE RURAL POETS, " God made the country, and man made the town," says Cowper, in his brief, blunt, decisive way. It is a daring commonplace. It is a line which no man would have ventured to utter if he had lived all his days in cities, if he had not, like Peter Bell, set his face against the open sky " on mountains and on lonely moors." It contains in it a profound truth; for, as long as the architecture of the heavens surpasses the masonry of men, and the dome of the sky is nobler than that of St IVul's, and the smoke of the solitary cottage, ascending with its waving tongue as from the altar of the morning sacrifice, is more spiritual than the huge black column vomited from the mill, and leaves glancing in the sunbeams are AND THE RURAL POETS. 235 more beautiful than red bricks, and torrents flashing in the red light of the receding storm are more glorious to behold than the putrid puddles and mud-cataracts of the streets, and avenues of oaks, of " old prodigious growth," better than dirty and vicious lanes, and mighty glens mantled with sunshine or with shade, and the solemn streets of forests, and the deep hollows of the everlasting hills, and the wild paths cut by cataracts for their own irresistible way, and rocks, the gigantic gateways of the thunder, are finer than squares however splendid, and streets however broad, and spires however lofty — as long as the span of the rain- bow surpasses the arch of the bridge, and the harmonies of nature are more musical than the roar of vice arising from the twilight town, and the colour of health on the cheek of the peasant, more pleasing than the cadaverous hue of disease whitening the cheek of the artisan, and man leaning over the fresh reeking earth, is a more natui*al object than man bending above the forge and the furnace— shall we, with Cowper, continue to prefer the country to the town, and for the same reason — the one is the production of the gross breath of miserable man; the other, each ncAV morning, is the new emanation of eternal love and wisdom. " God made the country, and man made the town." True, O bard of Olney ! But true, too, it is, that God made the country poet, and man only the town. The anointing, at least, of the former, is of a purer and richer kind. And all greatest poets, ac- cordingly, have been more or less rural. How did Homer love this green earth, and that ever-sounding sea! And what a host of glad or terrible images has he culled from woody Ida, reedy Simois, Scamander's roaring waves, and the scenery of that Chian strand, whereon standing, he saw The Iliad and the Odyssee Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. And how numerous the descriptions of nature which abound in the Greek tragedians; in Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion; in Lucretius, who loved the rounded wholes as well as the sifted atoms of the universe; in Virgil, whose " Georgics," next to the " Seasons," is the finest commentary genius has ever written upon nature; in Dante, who was haunted by images of " trim gardens" and golden fruitage, all down the descending circles of the In- ferno; in Shakspere, who created the forest of Arden, and the island of Prospero, and dreamed the "Midsummer Night's Dream;" in Milton, the Milton of " Paradise" and " Comus;" in Spenser, who " lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by stiller streams, and fairer meadows;" in Bunyan, whose little bits of scenery, from that " very solitary place, the Valley of Humiliation," and the green meadow called Ease, up to the high platform of Mount Clear, and the precipices of Mount Danger, and the table-land of 23G ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, Beulali, are done in the finest style of simple pastoral painting; in Dryden, even, and Pope, who are masters in describing — the one, the plain bold majesty of English landscapes, the pomp of avenues, the sweep of tree-surrounded parks; the other, all arti- ficial glooms which man can, in grove, and grotto, and monastic aisle, and concealed cascade, create in mimicry of the mightier shadows which nature throws around her solitudes; in Byron, who, like a demon-painter, pounces upon all congenial objects, the mountain-peak islanded in perpetual snow, the glacier asleep in its old path of ruin, all " hells of waters," the tormented river, the possessed cataract, the ocean in its hour of exorcism, " wallow- ing and foaming again," the " sun of the sleepless," or the blind staggering scenery of a darkened universe; and in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wilson, Southey, Keats, &c., who aim at catching, not the external face, nor the pervading expression merely, but the inmost soul, the subtlest meaning of nature's solemn countenance. But there is a class of poets who have come still more closely in contact witli nature; who may be called naked, native men, newly dug out, and panting with the first strong throbbings of God-given existence. Such are Burns, Bloomfield, Clare, Hogg, and Cunningham. These all fall spontaneously into one bright cluster, which we may call the Constellation of the Plough. They are all, in current phrase, self-educated, though verily we like not the phrase. Either all men are self-educated or none. We incline to the latter alternative. A poor weakling were one who, in the strict sense, could be called a self-educated man. To edu- cate any man it takes a universe ; for what is any man but the complex resvdt or focus of ten thousand lines of education, coming in from the extremities of the creation to meet in him? Call the men of whom we speak not self, but heaven-taught men, and you approximate the truth. Such an one, stepping forth into con- sciousness, finds himself in an illustrious academy, and his head schoolmaster is the sun. Subordinate teachers he has not a few, in the silent stars, the whispering breezes, the waving trees, the sparkling waters, and the voices within his own soul, which respond to these in pre-established harmony. And thus does his education go on briskly with the revolving seasons, till his over- flowing thoughts " voluntarily move harmonious numbers;" and because he cannot speak, he sings his emotions. Speak ! — he cannot speak; but neither can a nightingale. Like her, he pours out the modulations of rude and artless melody — " He lisps in numbers, for tlie numbers come." We select, as specimens of this class, James Hogg and Allan Cunningham. And first, for the Ettrick Shepherd. Had he not been a shepherd, he had never been the peculiar poet he was — he would never have passed by acclamation into the post of poet-laureate to the "Fairy Queen," with gallons of dew, collected into the cool basins of the rocks, AND THE RURAL POETS. 237 instead of butts of sack — had lie not innumerable times seen their misty scarfs exchanged by the morning hills for the sunny mantles of dawn, and a hundred streams surprised into glory bv the fresh upland day — had he not a thousand times watched alone, and with kindling eye, the old struggle of the sun and the mist, ever renewed, never ending, on the hill — had he not slept all night in his plaid amid the coves of Ben-macdhui, and heard in half dream the sough of the " spirit of the storm" — had he not shouted on its top, in the triumphant intuition that he stood on the highest land in Britain — had he not seen six times double at its base, magnifying Loch Avon from two miles to twenty- four in length (an assertion in which he persisted to the last) — had he not revelled with the fairies in the green moonlight, and met v/ith ghosts past reckoning, and seen his own image, mist-mag- nified and l)owing to him from an opposite mountain, and slid down on ice from the top to the bottom of the huge Benmore, and thrust his arm into the solid snow of a storm tumbling down en masse from the blackest of heavens — had he not, in short, been born and bred, nursed and dandled in the arms of sublime super- stition, and in the cradle of the forest, he had never been any more than a shrewd gossip, or the vain and vulgar burgess of a country town. But for the accidental circumstances and scenery of his birth, the one wild vein given him would never have bled. Off the greensward or the heather, for on both he was at home, though most on the former — out of the mist and the spray of the linn — he was the very commonest of men. The Grey Mare's Tail was the lock of his strength, the maud his mantle of inspira- tion. To talk of 8ir Walter Scott being strong only on the heather, is absurd; he was equally so on the turf of Sherwood Forest, amid the lilies of France, and on the sands of Syria. But Hogg could not transplant : the mountain air was the very ne- cessity of his intellectual life, and the mystic ring of superstition the limit of his power. Out of this dread circle, he resembled, not the magician, but the magician's victim — weak, panting, powerless. JSTo man has written such loads of dull insensate trash. No man was ever so careless of his reputation, or knew less wherein, not merely his great strength, but his poetic identity, lay; but no man, at the same time, could so easily and rapidly regain the position where he was all-powerful. He had but to shut his eyes — to touch his organ of wonder — to name the name diablerie — to tap on the wall, whence the death-tick was coming thick and strong, for a ghost, and James Hogg was himself again. Call not this, after all, a narrow range — it was unmeasured as superstition— it included in its dark span the domains of Faery Land — the grave — O' Hell, Hades, Heaven, the eternal How and Wliei-e, The glory of the dead, aud their despair. 238 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, He was emphatically a " minion of the moon." Had that shadowy orb not existed (discovered now to be, for all her shy and timid ways, little else than one great volcano, with enormous perforated craters in her, ready to bombard eafth on the first opportunity, and in the meantime laughing in her green sleeves at the silly praises she has been receiving from immemorial scribblers, as the " mild moon," the " mild Hecla !" the " pensive moon," the " pen- sive Vesuvius !" the "sweet moon," "sweet Mount Etna !"), neither had the " Queen's Wake." Hogg writes with a moonbeam on the semi-transparent leaves of the forest trees. " Labour dire it is, and weary wo," to climb with his celestial wanderers in their pil- grimage to the sun. His genius is not supernal enough to climb to that old flame — to overleap his dazzling fence of rays — to rest on his round, black ball — to look up to the arch of overhanging glory, shutting out from him the universe — to enter his metro- polis — to follow his march, " lingering not, hasting not," in the train of some vaster luminary — or to anticipate the results of that swift suction, by which he may yet draw all his subject worlds into his one whirlpool solitude; stripping himself of his own august retinue; rolling himself together, to be, in his turn, ingulfed in the stream of some distant vortex. Better, though still with a coarse pencil, does he depict that lonely traveller, that Cain-world, which, thrust out of his native sphere, dreaded of men and angels, pursues his hideous way, "showering thin flame " through the solitudes of space. It was a stroke of genius trans- ferring the conception of a wandering Jew to the heavens, though the description of his progress, " clattering down the steei)3 of night for ever," reminds us, in its grotesque familiarity, of the worst style of Blair and Pollok. It is curious, however, that, though so elegant and refined in almost all his pictures of the supernatural on earth, he is so coarse and commonplace in mat- ing with the magnificence of the heavens. Why does a man, who must so often, lying on his back on a midnight hill, have seen the whole ocean of stars, now twinkling and shivering in the frosty ail-, now seemingly swept and burnished by the wind, now crossed l)y sudden meteors shooting like sea-mews over the bosom of the deep, always looking as if they wished to sparkle down some deep intelligence to man, whom they love and pity, but are for ever unable — so calm in their high eternity, so fixed yet fluctu- ating in their aspect, so fantastic and ideal in their forms — why does he, who miist so often (like an artist on the floor of the 8istine Chapel, looking aloft at the spells which are pictured there) have studied in such favourable circumstances this gallery of Heaven's own paintings, never describe, in language more choice than that of Sturm or Hervey, his impi'essions of their grandeur so unspeakable, their silence so profound, their sej)ara- tiou frcmi the world below and from each other go entire, their AND THE RURAL POETS. 239 multitude so immense, their lustre so brilliant, tlieir order so regular, their motions so majestic and so calm ? The reason perhaps lies in a theory we hold, which is, that mere genius, without what is usually called education, can never enter fully into the severe and spiritual beauty of the heavenly bodies. Either there is an aristocracy about the science of the stars which repels that class of minds of which we are now discours- ing, or it may be, that, loving earth so well, the countenance of the sky is to them far, foreign, and insipid. Certain it is, we find little smypathy with the discoveries of modern science in this high field in any of their writings. Their allusions to them are few, and not very happy. To them the low fire on the hearth is more interesting than a sun when he shineth in his strength. Burns himself, sooth to say, has no great liking to the day-star, under whose beams he has so often sweltered: he loves him prin- cipally as the evening sun, lighting him home to his cottage, or beckoning him to his assignation, what time the " plantain tops are tinged wi' goud by yon burnside." He likes the moon chiefiy as it shines through the stacks in the barn-yard, or on the corn rigs, amid which he is courting his -Jean — the morning star as it reminds him of the dread day his " Mary from his soul was torn." He watches with more interest the flight of trooping plovers on a grey October morning, than the roll of systems; and the soli- tary cry of a curlew affects him more than the " thunder-psalm " of a thousand worlds. Bloomfield and Clare fly lower still; and a gorse-bush, bending under its buds of gold, is to them a more enchanting sight than the " milky-way." To Hogg, again, the moon is just the fairies' lamp, when she is not the accomplice of the ghost, or shines not with fond, consenting ray upon the •witches' cauldron; the sun himself a plaything for the power of sorcery — the stars not nearly such imaginative objects as the " fairy ringlets " he meets upon the hill. Omitting any special notice of the " Mountain Bard," " Madoc of the Moor," " Queen Hynde," " Winter Evening Tales," etc., &c., we have a word, and no more, to say of the " Queen's Wake." Its framework, so much admired at the time, and so essential to the immediate popularity of the book, is now little else than a pretty impertinence. The power has shrunk up into one or two of the separate ballads, which, embalmed in their own wild odour, shall find their floating way into all after time. " Kilmeny" we love, like all the world, for its sweetness and spirituality; a sweetness more unearthly, a spirituality more intense, than are to be found anywhere else in the language of men, save (at a vast distance of superiority on Shakspere's part) in the songs of Ariel in the " Tem- pest." We love it, too, because we know well, and from infancy have known, the glen up which went alone the maid in the " pride of her purity." It lies along a deep, green valley, sunk in between two 240 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, high chains of hills — those of Abruchill and Dundurn — lifting their " giant-snouted " crags on the south, and on the north the hills of Crappich and Cluan, piled up like leaning Titans. This valley has evidently been once a part of Loch Earn. It is level, but spi-inkled with little wooded eminences, once, no doubt, islets, and toward its western end rises a remarkable hill, called the hill of St Fillans, strangely contrasting with the black and heathery mountains which tower above it. It is green, roundheaded, grassy, like a young Ochil which had been flung down among the gloomy Grampians. At the foot of the northern bulwark of the valley lies Duuira, alluded to in the poem ("It was na to meet me wi' Dunira's men "), a place where the utmost refinement of art, in the form of a whitewashed mansion, rich lawns, " shaven by the scythe and smoothed by the roller," fine shrubbery and elegant garden, is brought into contact, contrast, yet harmony, with the utmost wildness and grandeur of nature — a bare, knotted hill before, and behind it a mountain, wooded almost to the summit, like some awful countenance veiled but speaking in the tongues of a hundred waterfalls, which you hear, but see not dashing, leaping, and murmuring down their downright and headlong course, till, reaching the plain, they hush their voices, and become " stillest streams watering fairest meadows." To the west of this lovely place, lies the blue sheet of Loch Earn, back from which retires Benvoirlich, like a monarch, almost unseen by the lake, which yet owns his sway. We have seen this scene from the summit of Dunmore and the side of Melville's monument, which stands upon it: seen it at all hours, in all circumstances, and in all seasons — in the clear morn- ing, while the smoke of a thousand cottages was seen rising through the dewy air, and when the mountains seemed not tho- roughly awakened from their night's repose — in the garish noon- day, when the feeling of mystery was removed by the open clear- ness, but that of majesty in form and outline remained — in the af- ternoon, with its sunbeams streaking huge shadows, and Avriting characters of fire upon all the hills — in the golden evening, when the sun was sroine: down over Benmore in blood — in the dim even- -•• '111 ing, to us dearer still, when a faint rich mist was steeping all the landscape in religious hues — in the waste night, while the moon was rising red in the north-east, like a torch uplifted by some giant hand — under the breezes and bashful green of spring — in the laughing luxuriance of summer — under the yellow shade of autumn — at the close of autumn, when the woods were red and the stubble sovereign of the fields — and again when hill, valley, and wood were spotted with snow, have seen it in a hush so i)ro- found, that you might have imagined nature listening for some mysterious tidings, and hai'dly dared to breathe; and in the cloudy and dark day, while the thunder was shaking the column AND THE RURAL POETS. 241, and the lightning painting the Landscape. And gazing at it, whether in glimmer or in gloom, have we sometimes fancied that we saw that fearless form " gaeing " up through the plains of Dal- whinnie and the fairy plantations of I)unira, To pu' the cress-flower from the well, The scarlet hvp and tlie hynd berrye, And the nut that hang frae the hazel-tree, For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be. And when gloaming especially had poured her dim divine lustre over the dark hills and white castle of Abruchill, and allowed the last lingering ray of sunshine to rest on the crest of Benvoirlich, and hushed the streams of Glenlednick behind, and drawn a dewy veil over the plain of Dalginross before, and softened the call of the Cauldron in the glen below, and suffused over all the land- scape of earth and heaven a sense unutterable of peace, and intro- duced into the scene, as a last glorious touch, the moon, to en- hance the sense of solemnity, and to deepen the feeling of repose, have we, reclining on the hill, and seeing the stars coming out above the silent column, thought of the " eve in a sinless world," when. In ecstasy of sweet devotion, Oh then the glen was all in motion; and owned the power of the " consecration," and felt the might of the " poet's dream." Since we began the composition of these little sketches, Allan Cunningham, the honest, genial, dark-eyed, eloquent spirit, has departed. He is gone, not to his tryste beside " Arbigland tree," but to a darker assignation. No more he sings in firm, unquak- ing voice — There's tempest in yon horned moon, And lightning in yon cloud, And hark the music, marineres, The wind is piping loud, but has become himself a pale and piping shade. With his memory are connected tender and unmingled emotions. He was a genuine " son of the soil." Nationality was his princi- pal characteristic. His blood was as deeply imbued with Scottish feeling as one of our own upland rivers with the colour and flavour of the moss. In this respect he was a Burns — but a Burns shorn of all that was troubled and lurid in his idiosyncrasy. With Burns, he must have breathed the wish, That he, for poor auld Scotland's sake. Some usefu' plan or book niicht make, Or sing a sang at least. R 242 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM And, like Burns, his wish was granted; and many a sang, sweet ^,nd strong, pathetic and bold, shall continue to link his name with that of his country. His genius was not only national, but pro- vincial. It clung to Criffel, and swam in Solway, and haunted the groves and scaurs of the Nith to the last. Dumfries-shire has reason to be proud of Allan Cunningham, and prouder because, in distance and absence, he never allowed his imagination, or his heart, to travel away from her well-beloved fields. Cunningham's mind was essentially lyrical; but the airy strings of his lyre were set in a strong, rough, oaken frame. Masculine boldness, verging often on extravagance, was his leading feature as a writer. You saw the strong stone-cutter in all that he did. He hewed out his way through a subject as he was wont to do through many a block of granite and marble. Yet is his execu- tion hardly so exact, and finished, and harmonious as you might have expected from one whose trade brought him so closely in contact with the proportions of things. It is often loose, dis- jointed, uneven; more like the work of a common mason, thought- ful only of the position of separate stones, than of an architect solicitous of the effect and grand outline of the whole. The Pa- gans represented their gods each with a musical instrument in his hand, denoting thus the exquisite and eternal harmony which prevails throughout the universe. So should all great artists be pictured, at once inspiring and controlling their conceptions, awakening and soothing their fires to the measured modulations of music. In this high sense Allan Cunningham was not an artist at all. He never felt on his intellect the control of the " spirit of law," that serene omnipresence winch surrounds the steps of the highest genius, wherever it goes, and invests its own ideal of excellence with the authority of conscience. His mind wanders untamed, like a giant of the infant world, striding, with large uneven steps, through the monstrous wildernesses of that early time — startling, with careless step, the coiled-up dragons of the desert — dipping his fearless foot into the wet nest of the scorpion and the centipede — shouting from the volcanic summit to some huge being unknown, sitting, silent, on the opposite peak — laying his lubber length on the dry bald burning rock, and snorting out from his deep chest terrific slumber; listening now and then to some snatch of melody from a distant vale, and controlling for a while his wild stej) to its tone, or even dancing to its music; but relapsing as fitfully into his eccentric and iu- controlhible motion. So particularly in Sir Marmaduke Maxwell and Michael Scott does his genius run riot in conscious and glory- ing error. His wanderings have about them this peculiarity — they are never those of the speculative intellect, moonstruck, and gathering mist as it deviates, but of the mere young fancy, burdening itself with a jtrufusion of harmless flowers, lie never t> AND THE RURAL POETS. 243 returns, like some of your Germans and Germanised French, laden with poisons, mandragora and hemlock, opium and night- shade, nux vomica and henl)ane, which they have culled in the glooms of nature, and baptised in the blat^pheming bitterness of their own spirits. His wanderings are those of hopeful and happy youth, not of fever, escaped from its keepers, g,rro\ving the awe- struck woods, or eudim>- its ajjonies in the embrace of the " melan- choly main." Health, indeed, genial robust health, was the moral element of Cunningham's being. You say, as you read him, this is the handwriting of a happy man. Pleasure he has known; but he is not, manifestly, that degraded and most unblessed being who has said to pleasure, thou art my god; and you never find in his writings that stimulating and well-nigh putrid flavour which indulgence bequeaths. His abiding feeling, judging from liis works, is a happiness compounded of " many simples," of a fine bodily temperament — enthusiasm fresh, but never fierce — wishes moderate and subdued — speculative intellect quiescent — habits of thought and action well intermingled, and both well adjusted — a quiet, deep principle of common sense intermingling with imagination, and an enacted consciousness of the Gud-like fact, that the strong arm of man is the " sceptre of this planet; " and that he has a strong arm. He was a poet, a novelist, a sketcher, and a critic. As a poet he stood higli in the second class. He never ventured the con- ception or execution of any piece of rhymed heroism — any mas- sive structure, rising slowly with elaborate pomp, and far-seen stress, and far-heard panting of divine endeavour; or else rushing up, with startling haste, lilie an exhalation. His erections are small and scattered, though denoting a muscular power equal to greater things. How fine those ballads in Cromek's collection in their rude simplicity, their touches of fearless pathos, their originality, but slenderly disguised under the pretext of imita- tion — their quaint turns of expression, and their frequent escapes into real daring and grandeur of conception and language ! Tliey remind us, at a great interval, of the ballads of Schiller. They possess the abruptness, the direct dealing, the strong simplicity, the enthusiasm, of those extraordinary compositions; but have none of their depth of thought, their width of philosophic view, or the power and pressure, as if on the very sense, of their indi- vidual descriptions. Cunningham brings us no tidings from the " innermost main," where Schiller, a " diver lean and strong," disports himself among the mighty shapes and mightier shadows; • — the salamanders, snakes, dragons; hammerfish " darkening the dark of the sea;" and "terrible sharks, the hyenas of ocean;" giving to the depths of the sea a life more dreadful than utter death — a motion more appalling than the uniformity of eternal silence. Yet Allan was a genuine lover of old ocean. Love t.) 244 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, her, rather than that other feeling shadowed in Wordsworth's line, " of the old sea some reverential fear," in all her changing moods and Protean forms, was one of the ruling passions of his nature; and of him it might have been said, that His march was o'er the mountain wave, His home was on the deep. Hence those foam-drops of song, such as " A wet sheet and a flowing sea," which are in everybody's mouth, and his more ela- borate romance of " Paul Jones," which nautical men blame as not smelling strongly enough of the brine, and which critics coin- cide in censuring as having rather the fade flavour of a cask of salt water carted inwards than that of the real ocean, Rolling the wild profound eternal bass In Nature's harmonies. It can hardly be said, with all its occasional splendour and incessant energy, to have become a romance of even average popularity. " Every man carries in him a madman." So is every author big with some mad project or other, which sooner or later blos- soms into a deranged, or demi-deranged, volume. Sometimes it is its author's first, and then it either hurries him, before a storm of laughter, into oblivion, or it gains him only so much ridicule as to rouse him, if he be a brave man, l)y the rebound of indigna- tion, into after excellence and immortal fame. Sometimes it is his last, and shelters under the charitable presumption of dotage. Sometimes it is mistaken for a quiz; and sometimes it is par- doned for the method, meaning, and otherwise inexpressible con- fidence which, as in Sartor Piesartus, its fantastic structure faintly conceals. Under none of those pleas can " Michael Scott " be defended. It is neither a sin of youth, nor a drivel of age — neither a quiz nor a splendid quaintness. It was written in sober earnest, and as a trial of strength; and yet, with all its wasted power and spilt splendour, can be likened to nothing in earth, sea, or air, but the cauldron of a Canidia or a Hecate, with thick sparkles interpiercing a thick smoke, through which you see, or seem to see, amid a tremendous " bubl)le and squeak," a hell-broth in the act of cookery, which a Cerberus might, with sputtering noise, reject; and which you are thankful that no power in air, earth, or sea, can compel you to swallow. How different the " Maid of Elvar," with its soft shine of ima- gery, its lapse of Spenserian rhyme, its picturings of towered, and treed, and cottage-belted scenery, its murnmring tone, as of a "noontide bee," and all the separate beauties which nestle so thickly among its embowering branches ! How difierent, too, that series of traditions, tales, and sketches, which he wrote in the " London Magazine," and by which he turned up, with a share AND THE RURAL POETS. 2i5 at once bold and tender, a tilth as yet rich and untried. Truly it was a palmy periodical during its brief reign, that same " Lon- don Magazine," whence the elegant genius and Addisonian style of John Scott had departed, early quenched, alas ! and quenched in bloodj where Hazlitt's penetrating pen was scratching as in scorn his rude immortalities; where De Quincey was transcribing, with tremulous hand, the most sublime and terrific dreams which opium and genius (things too kin to marry) had ever bred be- tween them by unnatural union; where Reynolds was edging in among graver matters his clever Cockneyisms; where Lamb was lisping his wise and witty small talk; and where the idiomatic mind of Allan Cunningham was adding a flavour of Scottish ro- mance, as of mountain honey, to the fine medley. As a cz'itic, his character may be estimated from his Y>en and ink sketches in the " New Monthly," his life of Burns, his critique on Thomson, and his " Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects of Great Britain." His leading quality was constant healthiness of taste. He had no profound insight into principles, but neither was he ever misled into one-sided judgments; he was not endowed with profound discrimination, nor do you ever find in him volcanic bursts of enthusiasm, the violence of which is proportioned to the depth of dreary depression from which they spring, and which remind you of the snatches which a miserable man takes of all the pleasures within his reach, eager, short, hurrying. His criticisms are sweet-toned, sensible, generous; and as the building proceeds, the chisel ever and anon tunes itself to sudden impulse, and moves quick as to some unseen power, and you feel that the builder is a poet. He excels rather in critical talk than criticism. He seldom hazards a new opinion; never a paradox. He is content to catch the cream of common opinion into his own silver cup. His originality lies in the power of modifying the opinions of others, and in that fine forge of imagery which stands permanently in his own mind. His book on Painters is a gallery in itself. The English artists were pre- cisely the theme for him. We question if he could have coped so worthily with the great Italians, in their knotty muscle, dar- ing liberties, ethereal combinations, or in that palpable determi- nation they evince to find their sole religion in their art — a de- termination so plain, that we could conceive them breaking up the true CVoss for pencils, as we know they crucified slaves for subjects. Leaving them to the tingling brush of Fuseli, Cun- ningham shows us, in a fine mellow light, Gainsborough seated silent on his stile; Morland among his pigs; Barry propounding his canons of austere criticism, and cooking the while his steak; West arranging the tail of the Giant steed to be bestrode by Death, As told iu the Apocalypse, 245 ALLAN CUNNIXGIIAM, with as much coolness as he would his own cravat; Wilson with his hand trembling at his palette, half with enthusiasm, half with brandy; dear enthusiastic Blake painting Satan from the life — asking, " Jane Boucher, do you love me, lass ? " and there at once a beginning and an end of the courtship; or seeing the great vision pictured in the lines — Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forest of tlie night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry? In what distant depths or skies Burnt the fervour of thine eyes? Did he that made the lamb make theel Opie lying all night awake with rapture, after his successful debut as a lecturer; or retorting the frown Peter Pindar some- times cast at him from his enormous brows; Keynolds shift- ing his trumpet, or gazing with blandest look on his beauteous " child-cherubs;" Flaxman cherishing his lofty ideals; Fuseli ris- ing on tiptoe, the bursting little man, towards the creations of the giant Italians, or bristling up against the Academy in such sort as to teach them that an inspired prophet of Lilliput was Avorth a whole Brobdignag of blockheads. Thus are Allan's figures not set still and stiff at their palettes, but live, move, breathe, battle, love, burn, and die. We are thankful to Cunningham for this book, not only because it is a monument of his own powers, but because it does justice to the claims of British art; — an art which, considering the dis- advantages of climate and sky, and national coldness of feeling, and taste, and bigoted religious prejudices, with which it has had to contend, when compared with the Italian school, is perhaps the greater wonder of the two. We admit that we have had no prodigies like Michael Angelo and Leonardo Da Yinci — those kings of the beautiful, who I'uled with sway so absolute over all its regions, and shot their souls with equal ease and energy into a tower and a tune, a picture or a statue, a dome or a son- net. These were monsters rather than men. We grant, too, that there has been but one Ptaftaelle — who Avas a man and no monster — and who of all men knew best the art of lifting man and woman (juite out of earth " within the vail," and of shower- ing on their face, and form, and bosom, and dress, beauty which is not of this cold clime — lustre unborrowed of that dim king of earthly day — meanings travelling out from eyes which seem set in eternity — motions of supernal grace and dignity — and who seemed made to sup])ly the Christian's most craving desire after a pictured innige of that face which was more marred than that of man — that form bent under the burden of a world's AND THE RURAL POETS. 247 atonement, in a bend more glorious than the bend of the rainbow — those arms which were instinct and vibrating with everlasting love those long curling locks which seemed to twine lovingly round the thorns which pierced his pale majestic brow. No Kaffaelle have we: the world has but one. Let Italy boast in him the Milton of painting, we have the Shakspere. Hogarth is ours — in his comic lights and tragic shadov^'s — in his humour, force, variety, truth, abscjlute oi'iginality, quaint, but strong moral, and in that alchemy, all his own, by which, from the very worst ma- terials, he deduces the richest laughter, or a sense of moral subli- mity which is more precious than pure gold. And, not to speak of many others, we can challenge the Avorld from the beginning to show a genius more unique, more insulated in his craggy soli- tude — like a volcanic cliff shot up as by unseen and unbounded catapult from the depth of the sea — less prefigured by any pre- ceding mind — less likely to be eclipsed by any other — more signally demonstrative in his single self of the truth, that the human mind is sometimes a native voice speaking immediately from the deep to the day — than the painter, the poet, the creator of the Deluge and Belshazzar's Feast. We thank him, in fine, for this book, because, like ourselves, he loves the painter. We know nothing of the technicalities of the "serene and silent art:" we leave these to the "artist and his ape; let such describe the indescribable." But we dearly love our own ideal of the painter — as a graceful alius of the poet — as a genuine and bending worshipper of the forms by which the Great Artist has redeemed his creation from chaos, and of the colours by which he has enchanted it into heaven — as himself, one of the finest figures in the landscapes of earth, sitting motion- less under the rainbow; or dumb as the pencil of the lightning is dashing its fiery lines upon the black scroll of the thunder-cloud; or copying in severe sympathy from the cataract; or seated " knitting " the mountain to the sky, on a crag above the eagle's eyrie; or leaning over the rural bridge, over which, perchance, in his reverie he bedrops his pencil into the still water; or mixing unnoticed in the triumphal show, which, after living its little hour on the troubled street-page, shall live on his canvass for evermore; or gazing like a spirit into the eye of genius or on the brow and blush of beauty; or in his still studio, sitting alone, chcAving the cud of those sweet and 1)itter fancies he is afterwards to embody in form; or looking through hopeless, yet happy teai-s, at the works of elder masters; or spreading before him the large canvass which he must cause to glow into a princely paint- ing, or perish in the attempt; or even drooping over an abortive design; or dashing his brush across it in the heat of his spirit; or maddening in love to the fair creation of his hands; ^ or haunted by some terrible figure of his own drawing; or filling 248 EBEXEZER ELLIOTT. his asylum-cell with the chimeras of his soul; or dying with the last touch given to an immortal work, and with no wish for any epitaph but this, " I also was a painter." " Somewhat too much of thisj" therefore, dear Allan Cunningham, farewell ! Perhaps in some far future land We yet may meet — we yet may dwell — If not, from oti' this mortal strand, Immortal, fare-thee-well! EBENEZER ELLIOTT. We have sometimes wondered that the forge has not sooner sent forth its poetical representative. It is undoubtedly one of the most imaginative of the objects of artificial life, especially when standing solitary, and on the edge of a dark wood. Hear how a man of genius describes it: — " As I rode through the Schwarzald, I said to myself. That little fire, which glows across the dark-grow- ing moor, where the sooty smith bends over the anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole universe, or indissolubly united to the whole"? Thou fool! that smithy fire was primarily kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge — from beyond the dog-star — therein, with iron force, and coal force, and the far stronger force of man, are battles and victories of force brought about. It is a little ganglion or nervous centre in the great system of immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an uncon- scious altar, kindled on tlie bosom of the All, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All — whose diiigy priest, not by word, but by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force." A smith, surrounded by an atmosphere of sparkles — sending out that thick tluinder which Schiller seems to have loved above all other music — presiding at the wild wedlock of iron and flame, and baptising the progeny of tlie terrible Hy- men in tlie hissing tx'ough — so independent in his lonely stithy — lord of his hammer and his right arm — carrying back your imagination to the days when the hammer of Tubal-Cain awoke the virgin echoes of the iuitediluviau world, in first bending the stiff neck of the iron and the brass — or to the bowels of Etna and Vulcan — or to the groves and lucid streams of Damascus — or to Spain, and the Ebro, and Andrew Ferrara — while, perhaps, swoops before the mind's eye a procession of the instruments of death, from the first sha])cless mass of iron, fitted to the rough EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 249 band of a son of Cain, down through the Grecian javelin; tlie Koman spear; the Persian scimitar; the Saracen blade, bright and sharp as the crescent-moon; the great two-handed sword of the midclle ages; the bayonet, which bored a passage for the armies of Turenne; the pike; the battle-axe; the claymore of Caledonia: thus does imagination pile up a pedestal, on which the smith, his dusky visage, his uplifted hammer, and his patient anvil, look absolutely ideal; and the wonder is excited why till of late no " Message fi^om the Forge " has been conveyed to the ears of men beyond its own incessant and victorious sound. And yet the forge had wrought and raved for ages, and amid all its fiery products reared no poet till it was said, " Let Ebenezer Elliott be." And though he stood forward somewhat ostenta- tiously as the self-chosen deputy to Parnassus of the entire manu- facturing class, it is easy to find, in the large rough grasp of his intellect, in the daring of his imagination, in the untameable fire of his uneven, yet nervous line, in his impatient and contemptu- ous use of language, traces of the special trade over which he long presided; of the impression which a constant circle of fire made upon his imagination; and of the savage power which taught him at one time to wield the hammer and the pen with little difference in degree of animal exertion and mental fury. We can never divest our minds as we read him of the image of a grim son of the furnace, black as Erebus, riving, tearing, and smiting at his reluctant words; storming now and then at the disobedient ends of sentences; clutching his broad-nibbed quill, and closing the other and the other paragraph with the flourish of one who brings down upon the anvil a last sure and success- ful blow. Elliott was unquestionably one of the most masculine men of our era. His poorest copy of verses; his wildest sins against good taste and propriety; his most truculent invective; and even the witless personalities by which it pleases him so often to poison his poetry and his prose, will not conceal the brawny muscle, the strong intellect, and the stronger passions of a man. Burns, in his haughtiest moment, never grasped the sickle with a sturdier independence. From the side of his furnace he spoke in a tone of authority; and stern, decisive, and oracular, are his sentences. Indeed, his dogmatism is so incessant and so fierce, that were it not backed by such manifest power and earnestness, it would excite no feelings but disgust or pity. But we defy you to pity a man who points his abuse by shaking such a strong fist in your face. You feel, too, that your pity were quite thrown away, since he would not feel it through his tough hide. Re- straining therefore your pity, and biting down the lip of your disgust, you start back, and keep at a respectful distance from a customer so formidable. Glancing critically at the inspired iron- 2.50 EBENEZER ELLIOTT. monger, you see at once that strength is his principal characte- ristic; nor do you care to settle the question whether it be strength of intellect, or passion, or imagination, or a triple twist of all three. You are tempted, indeed, while looking at him, to believe that a really strong man is strong all around; and what- ever fatal flaw may run through all his faculties, they must all support each other — intellect supplying the material, imagina- tion the light, passion the flame, of the one conflagration. You say as you look at him, whether hewing his way through nervous verse or rugged prose, here is a workman that needeth not to be ashamed — a Demi-urgus, like those strong three in Eaffaelle's Building the Ark, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, sawing at the mas- sive timbers which are to swim the Deluge and rest on Ararat, with a force, a gusto, and a majesty suitable to the tenants of an undrowned world; or, like those " Vulcanian three, that in sound- ing caverns under Mongibello, wrought in fire — Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon." So stands, leans, labours, growls and curses at times, not loud but deep, Avith foot firmly planted, and down -bent flaming eye, this " Titan of the age of tools." You see, too, that he has the true vision of the poet — that mysterious eyesight which sees the spiritual as well as the material shadow which falls from off" all things, and which to the bard alone is naked and bare. Be this penetrating and incommunicable glance a blessing or a curse; and, as in the case of the second-sight, it is the one or the other, according to the objects presented — . being, if a genial temperament show the unseen border of beauty which edges and flowers all things, one of the greatest of bless- ings; but if accident, or position, or a black bilious medium dis- cover the halo of misery which invisibly surrounds every object in this strange world, one of the greatest of curses : be it the one or the other, it has, and for ever, unsealed his eye. You regret to perceive, on more narrow inspection, that he has fixed his piercing gaze too much on the dark side of things — that his view is angular, not comprehensive — that passion has given his eye now a portentous squint, and now a ferocious glare — that he has seen through " shams," not in the sense of seeing what even they contain of good and true, but seen through them as through empty spaces into the black, hollow, and hideous night. You acknowledge, too, the presence of the "feculty "as well as the divine vision. His sight is not a struggling but an open sight. He has found, though a self-educated man, as it is called, fit and noble expression for his' burning thoughts. His language is not rich, fluent, refined, or co])ious, Imt knotty, direct, and with a marrowy race and strength al)Out it which are truly re- freshing to those who are tired of reflection after reflection of a great native style, fading gradually aAvay (like those small faint segments of rainbows mimicking the bow of heaven), till all is EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 251 gloom. Elliott's language reminds you of the blue and nervous veins of a strong hand, so surcharged are his words with the blood of thought and passion. And when it rises to the breath of his indignation, when he mounts on the full whirlwind of his soul, you are irresistibly reminded of that impetuous prophet who gazed on the " terrible crystal," and stood below the shadow of the visionary wheels, and walked barefoot upon the stones of fire, and saw in the ])orcli the " dark idolatries of alienated Judah," and plucked down forks of the lightning for words to express the fury of his ire, and heaved up from his breast burdens that " made the i^agan mountains shake and Zion's cedars bow." Elliott has unquestionably, as the spirit moves him, at times, if not all the inspiration, all the fury of the prophet, his forgetfulness of self, his heat of spirit, the contortions and spasms by which he was delivered of his message, as of a demon. And yet, when it chooses him to " look abroad into universality," and instead of inveighing against a corn-law, to walk forth into the corn-fields; to pierce the shady solitude of the lane; to converse with " cloud, gorse, and whirlwind on the gorgeous moor;" to spend his solitary Sab- bath upon the mountain; to bare his heated brow in the fresh breeze, as an act — as an altar of worship to the poor man's God; — what a delightful companion does the stern iron-worker become ! You can scarcely believe that it is the same person, or that such bland and balmy accents could floAV from the lips which, a little before, you saw white with foam, and wi'ithen with denunciations. Striking, with large strides, through the silent suburbs of the morning city, he gets into the clear country; selects, from some imaginative motive, one among the many quiet paths which would be proud of the presence and ennobling step of a poet; absolutely shivers with the joy, springing from a sense of security and soli- tude; enacts, in the fulness of his heart, a thousand wild vagaries; leaps aloft, or throws himself down, at large, upon the green bank, or talks eloquently to himself; or bespeaks the patient cow, or big-browed bull, in the pasture; or sits motionless upon the stile, "gazing himself aAvay" at some point in the distant land- scape; or plunges, at noon, into a wood, and lies dissolved in its shady coolness; emerges, and pursues his way; reaches some " Kirk of Ulpha," with trees shadowing its horologe, and a river laving its churchyard wall; enters, with sturdy yet reverend step; bends his anointed head under the consecrated roof; amazes the simple worshippers, who see, from his eye and brow, that he is no common wanderer; climbs a hill behind, and has all the su- blime savage reborn within him, at the sight of the far-off city, and heaves out, like an opened crater, some wild and angry breathings; returns wearied, yet heart-full, in the evening sha- dows; dreams it all over in his bed, and rises in the morning to his strong hammer and fierce philippics again. 252 EBENEZER ELLIOTT. You are impressed always, as you consider this strong man, with the respect — the almost awe, which perfect honesty inspires. Here, you say, is one who has trampled down the Python False- hood, and all whose utterances come from the sincere and boiling heart within. Here is one who can bear all the charges of im- prudence, recklessness, folly, or madness, with which an honest man is sure to be saluted, as he ploughs on his straight, strong furrow through the field of the world. Here is one who covets no other epitaph upon his sepulchre than the words, " Here lies one Avho, in an age of brazen-faced falsehood, of colossal cant, lived and died an honest man." Reverting to his poetical and literary character, you miss much that might complete the character of the accomplished artist. Not only have you no great work, but no conception of it — no panting after it — no spirit of design adequate to even its idea. There is much muscular power, but it is an Apollyon, not an ar- tistic energy. What a rare " Architect of Ruin," you say, would he be in a work of wncreation; but no Amphion lyre does he, or can he sway. He is not one of the "kings of melody;" his song has no linked sweetness — no long reach of swelling power — only transient touches, rude and sudden strokes, endangering the in- tegrity of the instrument — groans and half blasphemies instead of airs, wrung out from its chords as from a spirit in pain, con- fess the hand of the master. You discern, too, a concentration of interest, eddying round one egotistic centre, which renders his genius essentially undramatic, and his dramas failures. In that massed up midnight of the primeval forests, depicted in Kerho- nah, for instance, Elliott walks with uncertain step, and seems to miss the greensward of the English lane, the springy heath of the English upland, and the breezy clearness of the English day. You are not surprised, in fine, to find him not only an original poet, but a generous and eloquent critic. His criticism is that of a fresh and fearless mind; never balancing his praise against his blame, in petty grocer-like scales — never checking a current of eulogium by some small jet of carping snarl — never doling out his praise in meagre modica — never passing, with the bound of malignant exultation, from drops of preliminary and extorted approbation to the more congenial work of wholesale detraction — never wra])ping up his oracular praise or censure (as is becom- ing the fashion) in mysterious and unmeaning verbiage — never determinedly i)rai.sing a man for what he possesses 7iot, but stamp- ing, at once, either the broad arrow of his approbation, or the broad black seal of his disgust, upon the particular author or book, and there an end. His verdicts have all the gusto of a native mind unhackneyed in the ways of literature — uninitiated in the mystery of ])uffery, and in the darker mystery of slander. They are written out, too, with tlic flourishes and dashes of a JOHN KEATS. 253 poet's hand writ iug, and remind usof Bui-ns's frank and fire-blooded panegyrics. His rhymes and hymns carry the seed of oblivion within them- selves; but there is much in the Corn-law Rhymer which the world will not so readily let die. Above all, it will cherish the memory of the man; as, when was a true man ever forgotten? Mists may, for a season, hide or exaggerate his proportions; winds of abuse may blow him out of sight; he may be riddled with calumny, or starved to death; his ashes may fly, " no marble tells us whither;" but, sooner or later (for "a man in the lono- run has, and is, just what he is and has "), he will be revealed in his proper dimensions, his contribution to the great stock of manly thoughts and utterances accurately ascertained, his niche settled and railed in, his statue elevated, and set unalterably upon its own base. High prospect to the true and the manly, and to them alone ! The earth has never yet had so many real men as to afford to be able to drop even one of them from its list; and Elliott, too, we believe, felt that " the Great Soul of the world is just." JOHN" KEATS. A GREAT deal of nonsense has been written about the morale of men of genius. A nervous temperament has been ascribed to them, to which, as causes of unhappiness, are added indolence, vanity, irritability, insulation, and poverty. D'Israeli, in his " Calamities of Authors," has taken up the doleful Jeremiad, and made a book of it. He could have made just as large a book about the calamities of carters. Our own experience of men of genius, and we have known not a few, is, that they are very much like their neighbours, in the qualities and circumstances referred to. Let us try the point by a brief induction of facts, ere proceeding to the unfortunate child of genius, Avhose name heads the sketch. And, first, as to indolence. Homer seems to have been as active as most ballad-singers; and, verily, their trade is no sinecure. Eschylus was a tragedian, a leader of armies, and a writer of ninety plays. Demosthenes talked per- petually; and, to talk, at his pitch, for a lifetime, was something. Pindar added the activity of an Olympic jockey to the fury of a Pythoness. Virgil polished aAvay all his life, and the labour of the file is no trifle. On what subject has Cicero not written? and an encyclopsediast is not thought the most indolent of animals. 2-j4 JOHN KEATS. Horace, we admit, was indolent; not so Lucretius, who, besides other things, was at the pains of building up an entire system of the universe, in a long and lofty poem. Michael Angelo, RafFaelle, and all the great painters of Italy, worked without ceasing. Dante was far too fierce and restless a spirit to be indolent. Erasmus made a book while on a journey. Shakspere wi-ote thirty plays ere he was fifty. Milton felt himself ever in his "great taskmaster's eye;" need we add, that he laboured? Dryden is one of the most voluminous of writers. Pope wrote much and polished more. Daniel De Foe was one of the most active men of his age. Goldsmith had too much writhing vanity to remain at repose. Johnson and Thomson were, indeed, indolent; but, in the former, it sprang from disease, and it pre- vented neither from doing great things. Cowper was indolent only when the fit of derangement was upon him. Alfieri might be called the galloping genius, and clearing thousands of miles, and writing tragedies by the dozen, are no despicable affairs. Han- del, Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber, were never done with their graceful labours. Byron had all the activity of a scalded fiend. Wordsworth has been called indolent. He has, however, written " The Piccluse;" and it is long since Jeff'rey sought for a " power- ful calculus " to compute its colossal magnitude. Southey was the most regularly industrious man of the day. Coleridge was of an indolent constitution; and yet, besides talking incessantly, he wrote a great deal. Shelley gave himself no rest till his glorious eyes were shut, and his warm heart hushed in death. He had drank poison, and he slept no more. The names of Scott, Goethe, Godwin, Schiller, Richter, Chalmers, t to become harsh, elliptic, abrupt, obscure, at once to stuff" too much thouglit into his words, and to pack it too closely together. His groat power lies in description — knotty, minute, comprehensive, and piercing portraiture. He has hardly the constructive faculty, is perhaps unable to produce a whole; but what a sti'auge, unearthly light he casts on the jagged edges and angles of things ! Inevital^ly does he leave the inq)res- sion upon you, as you read, whether it be to l^lame or to praise, this is no echo, but a native voice, sounding from tlie inner pene- tralia of nature's own temple. " His mind," says Wilson, " dwells THOMAS AIED. 273 in a lofty sphere." He breathes freely an air which it is difficult for inferior men to respire. He is drawn by a native attraction to the snowy summits of high and holy thought. There, as the " moon glazes the savage pines" around, as the wind lifts the un- resisting snow at his feet, as the melancholy song of the Aurora sounds past him like the pant of spirits, he meditates strangely, and with folded arms, upon life and death — "Erebus and old Nox," Chaos and Demogorgon — wild shapes, meanwhile, sweeping by, in the wan moonlight; demoniacs from Galilee, who seem already to " dwell mid horned flames and blasphemy in the red range of hell;" gibbering ghosts, with " hre-curled cinder-crusted tongues;" a Father's form, dilating wrathfully as it comes; sooty negroes, with black enormous trumpets at their lips; Nebuchadnezzar, with insane eyes, lightening through his feathery hairs; and bring- ing up the rear, the " Grizzly terror" himself, the fiend-dreamer on Mount Aksbeck, " like fiery arrow shot aloft from some unmea- sured bow." This sphere is certainly lofty, but remote from human sympathies; as solitary as it is sublime, a " dread circle," carved by the magician, like a scalp on a snowy and savage hill, and across which few, save congenial spirits, can ever break. Aird's genius, indeed, is not, like that of Milton, one, to the appreciation of Avhich men must and will grow. It is rather, in its intense pe- culiarity, like that of Coleridge or Shelley, which, if you hate, you hate at once and for ever; which, if you love, you love at first sight, and " even to the end." Hopeless of his works ever becoming popular in any sense, we do no despair of seeing them take up, in the hearts of a select few, the place due to their originality, their power, their daring, and their religious spirit. His faults are ob- scurity, mannerism, a want of flow and fluency of verse, a style often cumbered and perplexed, and an air — it is no more — of elaborate search after peculiarities of thought and expression. Such are, however, we believe, nothing but excrescences upon the robust oak of his essential originality. It is the struggle of a native mind to convey itself in a vehicle so imperfect as words, which has begot all those minute strangenesses of style, which are but the wild veerings of a strong-winged bird, beat- ing up against a contrary wind. Nature has given Aird genius in high measure, but ai't has not added the calm and completeness of an equal empire over words. His power over them is great; but it is a convulsive despotism, rather than a mild, steady, and legitimate sway. His language is picturesque and powerful; but comes from far, and comes as a captive. His obscurity, the grievous fault of his earlier productions, has been manfully sifted out of his later writings. His mannerism he has not been able altogether to remove. It adheres to him, and will, as the burr did to the voice of Coleridge, equally natural, and equally cureless. T 274 THOMAS AIRD. Such is the short porti-aiture of a unique, who, had his ambition been equal to his powers, might have taken, long ere now, a much higher place; one who is strong and rounded in his originality as in a castle, but who has laid down all the peculiarities of that genius, and all the keys of that castle, meekly and gently at the foot of the Cross; who has never, we believe, sung one strain which did not mount, ere its close, as if by instinct, to heaven. He is, in the true sense, a religious poet; not merely making an occasional^ irruption into the consecrated region with some; not singing with others certain sickly strains of loathsome sweetness and affected unction; not, with a third class, " breaking into blank the gospel of St Luke, and boldy pilfering from the Pen- tateuch," but viewing the Cross through the medium of his own genius. His soul dwells in the haunted climes of Palestine, "tosses its golden head afar on the snowy mountains cold" of Mount Le- banon, reclines on the banks of the Lake of Galilee, mounts Tabor hill, and sees, with kindling rapture, the eclipsed light of heaven bursting forth from every pore of the Saviour's transfigured frame — his form, long bent under a weight of wo, erecting itself like a palm-tree from pressure; his eye shining out like a sun from the Bkirts of a departed cloud; his brow expanding into its true di- mensions, its wrinkles fleeing away, its sweat-drops of climbing toil changed by that sudden radiance into bright bubbles of glory, when Light o'erflow'd him Hke a sea, and raised his shining brow, And the voice came forth that bade all worlds the Son of God avow. In another and a darker mood, he follows the demoniac amid the tombs, or traces him along the crackling margin of the Dead Sea, or pursues Nebuchadnezzar into the wilderness, or catches the skirts of Ezekiel, advancing under the very ring of the wheels, BO high that they were dreadful; or reverently, tenderly, and from afar off, follows the footsteps of the awful sufferer into the gloom of Gethsemane, or up the ascent of Calvary's quaking hill. He hascaught much of the spirit of the olden Hebrew prophet bards; their abruptness, austere imagination, and shadowy sanctities. He has drunk out his inspiration from those deep springs, which at the rod of prophecy sprang out of the Syrian wilderness. His genius, as it is said of Buuyan, has not been dipped in dews of Castalie, but baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire. His first work (beyond a volume of juvenile poems, inclusive of" Murtzoufle," a tragedy, discovering no dramatic, though nmch poetic power), is entitled " Eeligious Characteristics." It attracted at the time considerable notice, and is still fresh in the memories and much in the hands of those who allowed their generous pene- tration to pierce i)ast the rough rind of its style, into the rare power and beauty which its core contained. Among these, we THOMAS AIRD. 275 can enumerate Wilson, who introduced it to the world, in one of those glowing panegyrics which, able to stamp s^^lendour upon mediocrity itself, are ever sure to wreathe round genius a supple- mentary halo, and accomplish the paradox of the poet, by gilding refined gold, painting the lily, and perfuming the violet. Dr Chalmers, too, we have occasion to know, has expressed his sym- pathy in terms of high approbation. If the public did not, to the full, corroborate these high verdicts, the fault was not with the substance of the book, but lay partly in the loose, crude, and elliptic style in which its conceptions were cloudily involved, and partly in the disjointed and fragmentary character of the plan. It seemed less a book, growing up from the seed of the first concep- tion, into one regular and living whole, like a tree with one root, one trunk, one circulating sap, and one apex, than a succession of loose, brilliant leaves, shed down on the tempest — some fresh and vivid, othei's withered and dark, and others red with fiery and con- vulsive life. Its power, therefore, lay in parts, as its weakness was in the total and ultimate effect. It contained the crowding and unmethodised thoughts of a young and ardent mind, on the most solemn of subjects, and showed how deeply such meditations had already wrought themselves into the tissue of his thoughts. It testified, too, to his early intimacy with the olden giants of English theology, especially with the " glad prose " of Jeremy Taylor; and the thought, in its unexpectedness and elevation, and quaintness, and the style, in its rugged involutions, and careless splendour, and frequent alternation of blotches and beauties, bore a striking resemblance to " all of dark and bright" which met in theirs. Besides sudden sparkles of that beautiful and peculiar imagery in which all Aird's conceptions immediately, and of ne- cessity, incarnate themselves, there were two or three passages long, sustained, gathering a glow from the friction of their own majestic movement, which ought alone to have bouyed up the book. We refer to one especially in a chapter on Christian Prin- ciples, inclusive, in its long and sounding sweep, of a panegyric on the character of Christ, which equals Rousseau, at once in genuine appreciation and in eloquence, and, by a strange and ra- pid transition, of a picture of the place of punishment, which, in gloom intertangled with gloom, like yew branches in a storm, and a dreary pathos breathing around all, and language sweating under the demands of the stern moral limner, leaves all prose poi-trai- tures of the ghastly thing behind. Not Jeremy Taylor, not John Scott, not John Howe, not Baxter, not Smith, in his description of the sinner " with the crown of vengeance set upon his head, and many glittering faces looking on," has surpassed Aird's woodcut of that " Other place," as he drearily calls it, with its " soliloquies that fearfully mouth the far off heavens;" its "sounding rains of fire that come ever on;" its Ambition, " lashed with a bigger and 276 THOMAS AIRD. redder billovs;" its "Avarice crying through hell for all his gold to buy off the sharking worm that will not die nor let him alone;" its "awful laver of fierce but unregenerating fire." We have read this passage — itself a poem — to ourselves, till our blood ran cold; we have read it to others, till, shaken by its power, from shivering crown to trembling toe, they have implored us to read no more. It is, indeed, in Wilson's language, " a grand and a magnificent strain, not easy to be surpassed." Another similar burst closes the volume. It is a dream of the Millennium, which, painting itself on the retina of a poet's eye, towers up, a rainbow above the gloomy future. In this animated sketch, after a short struggle between intellect and genius, tlie latter, a fierce-eyed charioteer, mounts the car, snatches the reins, and rushes forward impetuously with sounding thongs and wheels, that " bicker and burn to gain the expected goal." The description everywhere effloresces into poetry, and emulates those found in "The Task" and "The Course of Time;" but, no more than these, contains any deep, distinct, and philosophical plan of the probable phenomena of a realised Millennium. This is a di- sideratum reserved for such an intensely methodical mind as that of Isaac Taylor, the author of the " Physical Theory of Another Life." He, we think, could, using Scripture images as stepping- stones, bridge the chasm -which separates us from the latter- day glory, and give us firm footing on its aerial continents. It is the part of poets to build up each his own Utopia, " like gay castles in the clouds, that pass for ever flushing round a summer sky," to wax eloquent in picturing the splendid sunset of the world's day, the golden pinnacle in which its rising fabric is to terminate, the airy dome catching the colours of heaven Avhich is to be suspended o'er its finished temple, the glories, half of earth and half of a loftier climate, which are to change it into a Beulah- world, risen from its place nearer to the sun, moving in more so- lemn yet swifter paces in the galaxy of its Creator's favour, and " rolling the rapturous hosanna round " of its Redeemer's praise. To show us all this through an atmosphere of imagination, is easy for a mind like Aird'.s or PoUok's; but — to accumulate sedate probabilities, to follow the future germination of great principles into great results, to reduce the estimates of exaggeration to a calm and modest amount, to settle the questions as to the begin- ning, the duration, the nature, and the close of this expected period; to remove, by an induction at once philosoj)hic and re- ligious, the difficulticH which ()])])ose, and the doubts which deny the progress and perfectiljility of the species; to trace the various lines of prediction, inspired and uninspired, all meeting in this ultimate focus; to unravel the dazzling hieroglyphics of poetic language, and to substitute for their cloudy light the clear, chaste, and consumniatc radiance of Christianised philoso2)hy — this would THOMAS AIRD. 277 require powers almost Baconian in their depth and range. And even though such powers thus exerted did produce a theory of a Millennium, still more exquisitely vraisemblable than the afore- said of Taylor's, their possessor would probably be mortified to iiud the structure he had raised mistaken for a vagary of a vaster and more perplexed, and less pleasing character, than the poet's — deemed a vision equally with his, but shorn of all that makes a vision valuable, lovely, or dear. Mr Aird's next work of size is the " Captive of Fez." It is a tale of love, intrigue, captivity, and battle. As a story, its inte- rest is slight, and rendei-ed less by the obscurity in which many of its strongest points are sheathed, and by the extreme perplex- ity, obliqueness, and involution of the purely dramatic part of the volume. The light of the narrative, which often, in condensation and rapid energy, reminds you of " The Corsair," is carefully clouded by the speeches. Strangest peculiarities of expression and epithet are needlessly introduced, as if for the purpose of marring the classic force and dignity of the diction. There are, however, single lines of much force and picturesqueness, certain situations and scenes of barbaric impressiveness; two or three of the cliaracters show that not in vain have they breathed the atmosphere of Africa, felt its sands scorch their feet, and its suns smite their cheeks, and its heat, like lion's blood, injected into their veins; and here, too, as in all Mr Aird's works, the descrip- tive passages are uniformly excellent — terse, peculiar, yet genuine transcripts of whatever scene presents itself to his eye. Were the " Captive of Fez " re-written, its smaller kuottinesses lopped off, its dense dialogue clarified, its narrative and description retained, we know no poem in heroic rhyme more worthy to be placed beside Dryden's " Palamon and Arcite," and Byron's " Lara." The larger portion of his other poems have appeared in " Blackwood." From these, we single out three for special notice : — "The Devil's Dream on Mount Aksbeck," "The Demoniac," and " Nebuchadnezzar." Of all Mr Aird's productions, the first of these impresses us with the deepest respect for his genius. It is one of the most original poems in this or any language. It has evidently been poured out entire, "as from a mould," burning, molten. It is a pure creation. Standing alone at midnight, he turns his visionary eye to the north, the most poetical quarter of tlie sky, and perceives a glow suffusing it, as though a sun were about to rise where sun never rose before. At the same time, a noise as of trampling waves is heard. He continues to gaze, till, lo! no sun, or star, or even lurid comet, but a "grizzly terror," starting up from below. Who can it be? It is no obedient seraph, calmly cleaving the air on some great behest of the Eter- nal King. No : it is an unclean spirit, whose wild hurry pro- 278 THOMAS AIRD. claims his hell. It is he who erst alighted on " Niphates' Mount." It is the Infernal King. And up he went, from native might, or holy sufferance given, As if to strike the slurry boss of the high and vaulted heaven. Following with eager, yet cowering eye, the terrible parabola of his flight, he descries him, after scouring the Syrian wilder- ness, and catching, as in a mirage, one joyful glimpse of the triumphs of Mahomet, his chosen child, perching upon Tabor Hill, still hallowed by memories of the hour when Jesus, on its sum- mit, became unretentive of his hidden glory, and let it out in a sea-like flood. Startled at the thought of this, and shrink- ing even from the image of that awful brow, the fiend can find no rest there for the sole of his feet any more than in the immediate shadow of the throne ; and down, a diver in search of oblivion, he plunges over " Tabor's trees." Westward, then, and right on, like a raven seeking her twilight crag, he "tracks his earnest way." Rising, next, till lost in the beams of day, he flits like a cloud over Africa, and exults in the seen slavery of her sable children. Again he mounts the chariot of the Night, and sails with her till Mount Aksbeck, shining through the gloom, attracts his eye. The poet stays not to tell us where Aksbeck is, or that it is nowhere but in his own imaginationj not in Caucasus, not in Himmaleh, not in the Andes, perhaps in the Delectable Moimtains, Avhere Mount Clear looks through crys- talline air, right upward to the golden gates of heaven, and where Mount Danger, shuddering, looks down evermore its own dark precipices: suffice it, an Aksbeck was needed, and from the depth of the poet's soul an Aksbeck was upheaved, and there the wild traveller " closed at length his weary wing, and touched the shin- ing hill." As he pauses, and rests on the mountain, the poet pauses, too, to trace more closely the features of his own sublime reproduction; to see "Care a shadow" far down in the pool of his " proud immortal eye;" to count the "spots of glory" which here and there has "saddened aspect mock;" to jnvss his finger across the deep scars of the old thunder unoftaccd on his brow; to sound the " master-passions " which within are weaving the "tempest of his sold;" and to mark a sullen slumber, a "grim and breathless gleam," stealing over his lurid and dragon-lidded eyes. Yes, the Fiend sleeps, and dreams — and such a dream ! It represents, in three dread galleries, his future history. In the first, he finds himself borne away VViicre Lethe's slippery wave Creeps like a black and shining snake into a silent cave. It is a place of " still and pictured life;" its roof is " ebon air;" and, drearily down, sliining through it, "blasted as with dim eclipse," the ghosts of the sun and the moon " are there." It is the THOMAS AIRD. 279 grave of the lost world; and the Fiend exults as he sees the workmanship of his own hands, " beauty caught by blight;" the thunder-fires of heaven hanging like snow upon the cedar- branches above; beneath the simulacrum of the creation shrunk and travailing in ])ain, and all around diffused the silent river of Oblivion. Short-lived the joy of the Demon over this place of " God's first wrath." He is hurried on to the place of wliich his throne is the centre, and never did it look so ghastly to him as now, through the light of his " Dream." In the midst of this second lake, his soul, as with " meshes of fire," is bowed down, to mark what may thence he seen above and around. And there folloAvs a picture of the place of punishment as tremendous in its condensation, its hieroglyphic horror, as anything even in Dante; it may be called, indeed, the essence of the "Inferno," and reminds us of Hall's daring expression, "distilled damnation." " Far oft", upon the fire-burnt coast," some beings are seen stand- ing. They are naked; and o'er them rests no red sheet of fire, nor are there wafted down upon them from above, as in Dante, flakes of flame, but, like a " stream of mist," in mockery of coolness, the "wrath is seen to brood." Half-way stands an angel-form, covering his face with his wing (ah! how like, yet how different from the attitude of the cherubim on high, veiling their faces with their wings!), "intent to shield his special suffering." Nearer, as if from above, rueful voices are heard, which, in reality come from the depths of the lake. And — but it were wrong not to quote the following stanza: — And ever as, with grizzly gleam, the crested waves came on, Uprose a melancholy form, with short impatient moan, Whose eyes like living jewels shone, clear-purged by the flame, And sore the salted tires had wash'd the thin immortal frame; And backward, in sore agony, the being stripp'd its locks, As maiden in her beauty's pride her clasped tresses strokes. There is nothing in Dante superior to this. Imagination shrieks as she sees through the hideous surge, ever and anon, the eyes of Eternal Torture shining out, like " living jewels." And what a picture is this of the being stripping its locks, as a maiden her clasped tresses ! The revulsion here from the thin, shivering, withered, writhing hairs of this lost one, to the thick and clustering tresses of beauty, is appalling. Meanwhile, around the lake, high hills seem reeling in sympathy with the breaking waves, a circumstance reminding us of Hogarth's houses in Gin Alley, sharing in the fell spirit, and tumbling in the contagious drunkenness of the scene; and above there is a dance of lightnings, Crossing ever more, Till, like a red bewildered map, the sky is scribbled o'er ; a line of inspired coarseness; and in the unseen cupola over all 280 THOMAS AIRD. are heard the mutterings of the mustering stores and thunders of wrath. Nor must the Fiend rest even here. From the company, and the sounds, and the bustle, dreary as they are, of the second lake, he is " stormed away " to experience the tormenting powers which are folded up in Idleness and Silence. At first, the vision sweeps through soft and unsubstantial shades, till, in the gloom, he descries, like a " red and angry plate," a lake, a lonely lake, prepared for his abode. It is the " last lake of God's wrath," and may well therefore be A mirror where Jehovah's wrath ill mnjesty alone Comes in the Night of Worlds to see its armour girded on. " Thou glorious mirror," says Byron, " where the Almighty's form glasses itself in tempests;" but grander than even the stormy ocean, catching the dim contour of Deity, is this grim Lake looking-glass for the Wrath of the Eternal, travelling from afar to see its " armour girded on." " All here is solemn idle- ness:" Silence guards the coast, and broods over the lake; no islands begem that ocean, no sun shines above — one " rim of restless halo marking the internal heat," is all the illumination; " no lonely harper comes to harp upon that fiery coast," and the Fiend feels, as he enters it, that, " he is the first that ever burst upon that silent sea." Ten thousand years of tranced agony pass away, when, lo ! "a change comes o'er the spirit of his dream:" a sound is in his ears, breaking the hot and hideous silence. It is the sound as of the "green-leaved earth," and there is balm and moisture in every accent; a form of beauty, Boft and cool, flits into the gloom — A low sweet voice is in his ear, thrills through his inmost soul, And these the words that bow his heart with softly-sad control. And there follow words worthy of cherubic lips, like the drop- pings of Hybla's honey or as the dew of Hermon; Avords beauti- ful exceedingly in themselves, in the rich flow of their nmsic, in their melting tenderness, in their chastened imagery; but far more beautiful from the stern and awful groundwork amid which they are set, and the contrast they supply to the harsh and diffi- cult numbers which crash and jar out the music of perdition after and before. They rise like an island of flowers upon the surface of the burning lake; they are like moonbeams softening and pal- ing the light of the eternal flames: — No sister e'er hath been to thee, with pearly eyes of love — No mother e'er hath wept for thee, an outcast from above — No hand hath come from out the cloud, to wash thy scarred face — No voice to bid tliee lie in peace, the noblest of thy race. Hut bow thyself to God of love, and all shall yet be well; And yet in days of holy peace and love thy soul shall dwell; And thou shalt dwell 'mid leaves and rills, far from this torrid heat, And 1, with streams of cooling milk, will bathe thy blister'd feet. THOMAS AIRD. 281 And when the unbidden tears shall start, to think of all the past, My mouth must haste to kiss them off, and chase thy sorrows fast. And thou shall walk in soft white light, with kinr/s and priests abroad, And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the hills of God. And while those sweetest accents are fallins; like snow upon his parched ears, " dewy lips " are kissing his, till his " lava breast is cool." He wakes, and behold it is a dream ! He wakes in dread revulsion, " as from a mighty blow." He wakes, and springs a moment upon his wing, to know if his wonted strength has left him. He wakes, and all the fiend is re-born within his breast. Haunted by the image of that last lake, with its tide of " idle, dull" eternity approaching, he would bury himself in blank oblivion — but " from his fear recoils again, in pride like mighty bow." Turning his eyes up to the silent night, he sees, not as his ambition would desire, trouble and terror shed from his pre- sence over the works of God — no flying angels watching his career, but all silently, scornfully calm. The "planets, undisturbed by him, are shining in the sky;" and, as they shine, they seem ' to smile out still — infinite, eternal contempt upon him. Every star is as a finger of scorn pointed at his head. And, on his great lurid wing, that living thunder-cloud, the dews are distill- ing as on the blade of summer grass. This, oh ! this stings him to madness. The silent magnanimity of Nature and her God With anguish smote his haughty soul, and sent his hell abroad. This calm universal neglect is to him more horrible than the liorned flames of hell. Has he for this " led the embattled sera- phim to war" — fronted the thunder of Jehovah — felt the down- griding sword of Michael — seen the rushing chariot of Immanuel — sat for ages unshrinking on the burning throne — borne, on his solitary shoulder, the Atlantean weight of the Infernal Empire — for this ! to be no more noticed in the silent universe than is one leaf of nettle, or nightshade, carelessly floating on the breeze. And this shall he continue to bear! No; no more tame truces. He shall do open battle once more for his old domains. He shall upward go, and pluck the windows of high heaven, And stir their calm insulting peace, though tenfold hell be given. Like the lightning which, in " haste, licks up the life of man," aloft he springs, and is lost to sight in the far upper ether. The poet's heart now heaves high, expecting some signal judgment to go forth from the bosses of the Almighty's buckler, on which the fiend has rushed so madly. But he waits in vain. No disturb- ance "blenches the golden tress, or dims the eye sublime" of the stars, " those watchers, and holy ones," shining aloft in the fields of air. No red arm of anger is bared against their assailant. " Down headlong through the firmament he falls upon the north/' 2S2 THOMAS AIRD. with drooping pinion, reversed arms, desj^airing eye, he sets where he rose; 'Twas God that gave the fiend a space, to prove him still the same, Then bade wild hell, with hideous laugh, be stirr'd its prey to claim. Such is a faint analysis of a very remarkable production, which bears no resemblance to the majority of so-called poems, than does a meteoric stone, hissing from the upper air, to a piece of vulgar whinstone. It is enough of itself to make a reputation. A single poem can do this in one of three cases — when it is the only production of its author's mind, as in the case of Pickens' '• Donochthead;" or when it is either exquisitely excellent, or in- tensely peculiar, as with Wolf's " Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore," and Christopher Smart's " David." Now, " The Devil's Dream" has both the latter recommendations. It is altogether unlike any other poem ever written; and it is possessed, besides, of exalted merit. Everything is in intense keeping. Its large volume of verse — its rugged rhythm — the impenetrable obscuri- ties which, like jet-black ornaments, are wreathed around it — its severe and awful spirit — its unearthly diction — the throes and labours of its execution — the daring homeliness of its imagery, and the whole conception of the character of its hero, are terribly true to each other, and entitle it to rank with any one book of the " Inferno." As in that great poem, too, beauty, like a vein of vegetation led along the margin of the eternal pit, and down its very sides, wins its irresistible way into the centre of the horror. How would honest Jean Paul, that dear dreamer of all gorgeous and grotesque chimeras, have rejoiced over this Bowden emu- lation of his Baireuth inspirations! He would have dreamed it over again, with variations, all his own, rays shooting still far- ther and more daringly into the abysses of night. Yet we doubt if even he could have c07npressed so much mystic meaning into the same compass — have struck oft', from the mint of his imagination, an infernal medal so thickly inscribed. And it is clear that the Scotsman has not copied from the German. The resemblances- are produced by a kindred genius, the peculiarity of which, per- haps, is, that its wing loves, in serious sport, to dip into the dark- ness whicli envelops the left side of Mirza's ocean of eternity. Both are birds of the tempest, but it is that storm which beats upon the shore which is " heaped with the damned like pebbles." Both " affect the shade;" but it is of the worm that dieth not, and eternal darkness. The " Demoniac" is distinguished by a bare and nervous simpli- city, which sorts well with the scene and the time of the story — the scene being Judea; the time, when it was being consecrated by the tread of blessed feet and the baptism of divine blood. THOMAS AIKD. 283 The riot of imagmation, the pomp of words, the melody of num- bers, are exchanged for a breathless air, a severe reserve, a pro- saic literality, which fall with the precision and power of statuary upon the soul. The tale is told, as it might have been, by one to his fellow standing under the darkness, which, above the cross, blottetl out the universe ! Thus, in guttural pantings, in rude interjections, in sounds straggling and simple, is the powerful, strange, and most melting story disclosed. We admire, especially, the picture of the fiend-jwssessed, into the sad secrets of whose very soul the poet seems privileged to pierce; and surely never was tliere finer subject for idealising verse than those ancient demoniacs, Avith their wild locks floating in the wind of hell — " tormented before the time," with Satan instead of soul, all lu- minous with unearthly light, pacing the tombs, or plunging into the lake of Sodom, or crunching the salt ashes, by its sides, or driven away, away, on the breath of their dreadful inmates, or crying to the rocks to cover them; or, in the intervals of their bondage, waiting with breathless hearts and bloodshot staring eyne, for the coming of their tormentors; or wallowing and foam- ing in the pangs of their exorcism; or, in a milder light, after- wards, clothed and in their i-ight mind, at the feet of their de- liverer. All this Aird has included in the one figure of Herman, whose young, fresh, joyous hunter soul is supplanted by a demon, till breathed back by Jesus. We like, too, the modesty with which the poet has abstained from a subject so tempting to the rash and reckless, as the Crucifixion. Feeling that this is a sub- ject too " solemn for fiction, too majestic for ornament " — a scene across which a curtain should be sacredly stretched — he stands, like Peter, " afar off"." His genius, he feels, may disport itself ujjon the breakers of the burning lake, but here must furl its plume of fire. And yet how impressive his representation, and how worthy of a great artist ! He watches the tragedy of the universe, through the eyes of Herman's heart-sick mother, who disappointed in her search for Christ to cure her son, has entered a wood in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, when " a horror of great darkness falls, the quenched day is done;" and through that darkness sounds first a dull deep shock, as of some far-fallen pile of ages, and then " steps, as if shod with thimder," are heard amid the gloom; and then outsprings from that brief eclipse the day, with livelier, fresher beam, as if from the womb of the morn- ing; and seems to ray out, even to her half-taught soul, the in- telligence that the burden is borne, the battle won, the tragedy over, and the great sufferer away. We like this looking at the cross, as men do to the sun, through the half shut eye. It contrasts well with the impudent familia- rities of French preachers, and of not a few modern poets. It reminds us of the turning aside from this great sight of Milton 284 THOMAS AIRD. himself, who, not choosing to look at it, even as Aird does, through the double darkness of a forest and a quenched sun, has, in his " Paradise Eegained," avoided the subject altogether. The close of the poem, again, is just the calm of the mildest of sun- sets, transferred to the page, which softly pictures the evening life of the heroine, " setting in the bosom of her God;'' and is, we know, almost the only passage in all his works which satisfies the fastidious taste of the author. A nobler subject than Nebuchadnezzar, for tragedy or epic, )Scripture does not furnish. There is an Oriental gusto about all he does, a passionate pomp, a wild vein of poetry running up through his proud heart, which invest him, from first to last, with a dream-like magnificence. Whether Ave see him, that patient Apollyon ! growing grey with his soldiers before the indomitable Tyre — nursing in his breast, the while, a deadly revenge for his deferred hopes; or riding into the affronted temple of Jehovah; or rising, in affright, from his dream of the dreadful image and the more dreadful stone that smote it to dust; or rearing, in mimicry of his vision, the image on the plains of Dura; or, with flushed face, looking into the burning fiery furnace, and seeing four men walking therein; or listening, again, in the land of dream, to the fell cry, " Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches;" or walking in the palace of Babylon; or driven from men, with dew for his perfumes, grass for his delicate bread, fea- thers instead of hairs, claws digging into the dust, instead of nails dyed in henna; or, in fine, a meek worshipper of him who remov- eth kings; he furnishes scope the most abundant for artistic treat- ment, and for more than Mr Aird has accomplished. He has written neither a tragedy nor an epic; but the most finished of all his poems; a firm, nervous, and manly narrative; with fewer prominent beauties, or glaring defects, than some of his other works. We like in it the strong simplicity of the diction; the wild energy of parts of the dialogue; the precision and pomp of some individual descriptions; the conception of Ezekiel, turning from men to mountains, as more congenial companions, and con- tinuing, even in the wilderness, very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, and of Cyra, sweetest daughter of Israel. She, indeed, is one of the finest of female natures. Her love is wonderful, passing that of women; but the soul of Deborah mounts often to her wild eyes. Her lips have never been kissed but by " a prophetess' fire." Every inch a woman — nay, a child — the hand of God is on her head; and it is no secular fury which slumbers in those fairy fingers, and amid the strings of that lightsome lyre, by whicli she soothes the soul of the imperial ma- niac. That maniac himself, perhaps, is not drawn in such vivid and startling colours as we should have liked. He is too tame, too submissive; lacks the touch of insane grandeur which would have THOMAS AIRD. 285 befitted his character — should have been made to fight his battles o'er again in the desert, to have taken a rock for the platform of his palace — a pool for the sea which laved imperial Tyre — and have tossed from his white lips the eloquence of a noble despair. Nor do we much admire the conception or execution of the under- plot of the piece — the attempt on the king's life. It violates probability; who durst have sought a life protected by the in- violate saeredness of madness? circled in by the curse of the Eternal? Thank God, bad as human nature is, that curse has generally been a hedge round its victim, a hedge at least as strong as his blessing. Few have sought to " break those whom God hath bowed before." It distracts, too, the tissue and inte- rest of the tale. The apparition of the king, in his own palace, at the critical moment, is, however, managed with much art and energy. The close has that unexpectedness of simplicity which distinguishes one or two of Hall's perorations; that, for instance, in the sermon on the death of the Princess Charlotte, in which you are permitted, contrary to what you supposed from the elaboration of previous parts, to slide gently down from the subject, not hurled headlong from the back of a rolling period. Altogether, it is an epic in miniature, though the poetry mantles most around the bushy locks of Ezekiel, and the subtle lyre of Cyra. We must not dilate on Mr Aird's other poems — on his " Father's Curse," with the calm sweet stream of its commencement, and the red torrent of energy which forms its close; on his " Mother's Grave" — lines more tender than any, since Cowper's, on the re- ceipt of his " Mother's Picture," though without the uniform sim- plicity and clearness of that delicious poem; on his " Mother's Blessing" — a series of beautiful descriptions, suspended on the string of a rather improbable and mediocre story; on his " Byron" — ^a high mettled gallop upon an old road, with more flow of sound, and less energy of sense, than his wont; or on his " Churchyard Eclogues," which may be compared to apple-trees growing near a graveyard, rich with the fatness of death. One figure in the second of those strange poems, we i)articularly re- member. It is that of a lost one, whose eternal employment is, on the sand of his " own place, aye to write his mother's name," and for ever does a horned tongue of flame pass by which erases that sad literature, and chases the wretch along the waste. 'Tis a dreary figure, and may be called a " character omitted in the ' Devil's Dream.' " Othuriel, again, is the ghost of Nebuchad- nezzar, with all its simplicity, but without its strength. The tale is somewhat tamely told; and, as you read, the fear will not flee. "Has his strength gone out from him? has he become weak as other men?" He has written, besides, in " Blackwood" and " Eraser," some prose stories of great power. Who that has read, has forgot 286 THOMAS AIRD. " Buy a Broom," the most poetical of tales, and one of the most interesting. A tale is seldom read twice; but this tale has a charm besides the story — that of exquisite description, and fine, rich, mellow, and musical writing. Oh, for a century, a Decameron, of such stories ! They would positively raise the standard of the kind of composition. A strong prejudice exists against a tale; when once it " has been told," it is treated with contempt. And yet tales have constituted some of the finest productions of the human mind. What is the "Falcon?" — a tale. What "Tarn O'Shanter?" — a tale. What one of Shakspere's finest dramas? — ■ the " Winter's Tale." What the noblest flight of Scott in the region of the supernatural? — " Wandering Willie's Tale." A tale is the germ of every other kind of composition — of novel, tragedy, comedy, epic, and all. It is the first key to turn the infant heart, which swells up to the very eyes at its mother's tale. It is often tlie last to win its way into the fastness of age, which weeps, and thrills, and shakes its grey locks at nothing so much as at a tale. Kemember, ye sneerers at stories, the " Tale of Troy Divine," the " Arabian Nights," the tales told by Turcomans to rapt audiences, in the glorious eveningsof the East; the tales of the " Great Spirit," and the " Great Waters," recounted by half-inspired red men to their children, in the forest, and by the beacon-fires of the West. Mr Aird is a native of Bowden, Roxburghshire. His parents, who still live, are in humble circumstances, but of the most amiable and respectable characters. He was originally intended for the church, but chose to turn aside into the flowery by-paths of literature. He was much distinguished at college; and his productions in " Blackwood " gained him a large share of notice among the more discriminating. He was employed for some time in editing the " Edinburgh Weekly Journal," after the death of James Ballantyne. He passed from thence to the editorship of the " Dumfries Herald" — an office Avhich he still fills with great ability, Mr Aird is a man of simple, unassuming manners, and high moral character. In Dumfries, no man is more respected and loved. His appeai'ance is striking. His figure is erect and manly. His head is well developed, especially in the moral organs. His lips are singularly rich and expressive. His whole appearance denotes a man whose " soul is like a star, and dwells apart." Pity that he is not in a sphere wortliier of his talents. Deeper pity still that, from his connection with politics, we are obliged to apply to liini the words of Goldsmith, originally uttered about Bui'ke — Who, bom for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for maniiind. Note. — Mr Aird has rocontly, we are glad to learn, rewritten, and intends to I'epubiiah, his " Cluiraeteristics." He has issued lately a nice little medley. ROBERT SOUTHEY. 287 entitled " The Old Bachelor," including a number of his tales and sketches, which has been more generally popular than his former works; and a collection of all his poetical works. We were glad to see, in the " Life of Dr Macnish," by Delta, that both those excellent judges so fully coincide in our estimate of Mr Aird's genius and character. " No writer," says the latter," of such power, has been so little appreciated." It is, we add, a disgrace to the age, that, while 60 many writers of glib mediocrity and industrious selfishness are making immense fortunes, and acquiring great fame — lionised and feted in every corner of the country — a person of surpassing originality and genius should have been so long neglected, and that the introduction of his name into our " Gallery" was, by certain parties, resented as an impertinence. ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D. Alas, now, for the glories of the Lake country ! Some score of years ago, proudly did it lift its head above the champaign of England to the south, and even toss northwards defiance from its Skiddaw and Saddleback towards " stately Edinburgh throned on crags," and the waving outline of the Grampian giants. Not only did it enclose, in its fine sweep, peaceful lakes, valleys " flat as the floor of a temple," tarns of austere beauty, forces flashing amid greenest umbrage, or bedewing grim rocks with an ever- lasting baptism; mountains, carrying ofl" and up, by fine grada- tion (as if the one grew into the other while you gazed), beauty into grandeur; but it had attracted to its bosom a cluster of the wisest and rarest spirits then breathing in Britain. Sheltering the most of them from the non-appreciation or contempt of the critics of the era — an era which was " neither light nor dark," but lying betwixt the gross darkness of Darwin and Hayley, and the broad and blood-red uprise of Byron — they had sought a re- fuge from the mountains and the woods, which was not denied them. There stalked or sat, as it suited his quaint humour, and " murmured to the running brooks a music sweeter than their own," Wordsworth, the quiet tune of his verse not yet become a harmony, to which nations listened in reverence. There Cole- ridge " talked like an angel, and did nothing at all." There Southey pursued his indefatigable labours, under the sting of that long impulse which was so characteristic of him. There Wilson, De Quincey, Lloyd, and Hartley Coleridge, to say nothing of Bishop Watson, &c., were content and proud to be Dii Minorum Gentium. And now, where is all this illustrious company? Cole- ridge is dead, and died far from the murmur of Grasmere springs, and the rustle of the heath of Helvellyn. Wilson's princely figure is seen no more among the woods of Elleray. De Quincey 288 ROBERT SOUTHEY, is now a denizen of tlie sweet village of Lasswade. Bishop Watson has left the plantations of Calgarth for ever. Lloyd is dead — a maniac. Hartley Coleridge, too, is departed. And, for some years, Wordsworth was left absolutely alone, Southey, first sending his mind before him, having at last sighed out his animal breath, and " returned to God who gave him." Long did the Avorld sympathise with that mysterious obscuration which rested on his powers; and when the trembling hand of his wife drew half aside the curtain of his malady, many were the tears shed; but now the eclipse has passed away, and the orb with it. It were idle, and worse than idle, to grieve. More entirely, perhaps, than any man of his generation, except Wordsworth, Scott, and Goethe, had Southey done the work allotted him to do, and given the world assurance, full and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and of what was meant, by his existence. While the premature departure of a Schiller, a Byron, and a Keats, gives you emotions similar to those wherewith you would behold the crescent moon snatched away, as by some " insatiate archer," up into the infinite, ere it grew into its entire glory, Southey, with his three great contem- poraries, was permitted to till his full sphere, as broad, if not so bright, as theirs. It was given to this illustrious man to unite powers usually deemed incompatible — a wild and daring fancy, a clear and ample intellect, unequalled perseverance of pursuit, attainments marvellous for variety, and minute mastery of their details, a flaming genius, and a patient reseai'ch, a tone of mind the most ethereal, and habits of action the most mechanical; the utmost exaggeration, as a poet, to the utmost propriety, and elegance, and minute grace, as a writer of prose. As an author, he was at once the most eccentric and the most industrious. He is now as lawless as Shelley, and now as graceful as Addison; now erratic as Coleridge, and now plodding as Blackmore. His castles in the clouds are of solid masonry; his very abortions have marks of care and elaboration. This probably has injured our conception of his power. We hate to see a wizard for ever astride on his broomstick. We wish piles of magic to rise magically, and not by slow and laborious accumulation. We hear of the building of the Ark, but not of that of Jacob's ladder. It was let down, flashing suddenly its spiritual light across the desert and the brow of the sleeping patriarch. Southcy's supernaturalisms smell too much of the oil — there's " magic in the web;" but the web is 80 vast, that the witchery thins away, by diffusion, into shadow; he forgets that tedium is the antithesis of terror, that it is the eticjuette of ghosts to make short calls; that, when they stay too long, we think them bores, and that a yawn is more effectual in reuuuiding them to limbo than even the crowing of the cock. ROBERT SOUTHEY. 289 We refer, in these remarks, partly to " Thalaba," but princi- pally to the " Curse of Kehaiua," which is little else than a magnificent mistake, and where, while admiring the quantity of imagery and language, many of the separate incidents, and the lovely female character of Kailyal, we own, with something like a sigh, that not more are the pomps of Indian ceremonial thrown away on the idol, sitting stolid in the midst, than is all this Avealth of mind lavished upon a legend so incredible. In this, and in one or two other of his larger poems, his mind fol- lows that stream of tendency which, some years ago,^ drew our higher poetical genius towards the east, as if the font of Castalia were a travelling spring, and had thither transferred its waters. And there are in that region very potent attractions to the imagination. Its associations, as the cradle of the human race; as the seat of the primeval Paradise; as the throne of defunct em- pires; as the scene of miracles at which the cheek of man still turns pale; as the stage on which angels, prophets, and sages, played their parts; as the fountain of the three Faiths (how divers in character !) which have principally swayed the minds of intel- ligent man — Judaism, Mahometauism, and Christianity — as the parent, besides, of those enormous superstitions, which appear indigenous as its tigers and reptiles, immense effluvia springing from the heat of its imagination, as these fi'oin the heat of its climate; as the land of the sun, who casts over it all a glare of severe approj^riation, from Jerusalem to Japan; as swarming with vices and crimes, which surround it with a haze of moral horror; as teeming with wild and wondrous poetry; as the source of almost all pestilence and sweeping judgments; as abounding in barbaric wealth, " from its earth coming bread, and under it, turned up, as it wei-e, fire — the stones of it sapphires, and the dust thereof gold;" and, above all, as nurturing a gorgeous scenery of wide-spread jungle, great sweeping rivers, deserts naked and bare, vast lonely plains, large tracts of territory strip- ped of their cities, peeled of their verdure, sucked dry of their rivers, and given up to eternal barrenness; and of mountains, every name of which is a poem, from where Lebanon looks down through his cedars to Calvary, to where Caucasus gazes on the Caspian, with his eye of snow; and to where, again, the Hima- layan hills, supreme in height, Avithdrawn, as if in scorn, into their own inaccessible summits, carry up the outline of our planet nearest to the heavens. Associations of this kind have invested the East with a varied charm, and drawn toward it Byron, Moore, Southey, Croly, Beckford, the author of " Anastasius," and a host of others, in search of the inspiration still supposed to linger about its sparkling waters and its golden groves. And while Moore has caught its sunny spirit, its efiervesceut liveliness of fancy, its elegance of costume, its profusion of colour, and its u 290 ROBERT SOUTHEY. voluptuousness of tone; and Byron bathed in its darker fountains of passion, and revived its faded blasphemies, and sucked poison from its brilliant flowers — Southey has aspired to mate with the mightier and elder shapes of its superstition; to reanimate the cold idols of its worship; to climb its Swerga, to dive into its dreary Domdaniel caves, to rekindle the huge heaps of its ashes, or to rear over them a mausoleum, proud, large, and elaborate, as their own forms. In this attempt he has had little sympathy. Hindooism is too far gone in dotage and death, to bleed the generous life-blood of poetry to any lancet. Its forms are too numerous, capricious, and ugly; its mythology too intricate, its mummeries too ridiculous, its colouring of blood too imiform. Byron and Moore knew this; and, while the former, except in one instance, where he bursts into the neighbourhood of Eden, has never gone farther east than Turkey; the other flits about the fire summits of Persia, and seeks to collect in his crystal goblet no element more potent or hazardovis than the poetical essence of the faith of Mahomet. In " Madoc," again, Southey has gone to the opposite quarter of the globe, has leaped into the new world, disturbed by his foot a silence unbroken from the creation, and led us amid those abysses of primeval darkness into which a path for the sunbeams had to be hewn, and amid which the lightning, sole visiter since the deluge, entered trembling, and Avithdrew in haste. Tearing, without remorse, the crown of discovery from the head of Columbus, he guides the bark of Madoc, a Welsh prince, through silent seas, to the American continent, and recounts many strange adventures which befell him there. There is much boldness, some poetry, and more tediousness in the attempt; and we could have wished that the shade of Columbus had appeared (like that dire figure in Scott's noble picture of Vasco di Gama passing the Cape) to his slum- bering spirit, and warned him oft" the forbidden shores. " Wat Tyler " is a feverish cff'usiou of youth, love, and revolutionary mania. " Joan of Arc " we have never read. Many of his smaller poems are fine, particularly the " Holly Tree." Ah ! he fore- saw not that the high smooth leaves on its top were to be withered and blackened wliere they grew! But "Roderick, the last of the Goths," is the main pillar of his poetical reputation. It is a deep, sober, solenni narrative, less ambitious and more successful than his others. The author, as well as the hero, ap- pears in it, a penitent for his former sins of subject and treatment. A shade of jx'iisive piety hovers meekly over it. It is written all in a quiet under tunc, whicli were monotonous, but for the varied and picturesque story it tells. And behind it, in noble back- ground, lies the scenery of Spain, with its mountain mosses, cork- tree groves, orange tints, and dancing fireflies — the country of Cervantes and Don Quixote, where they still sing, as they go ROBERT SOUTHEY. 291 forth to labour, the " ancient baUad of Roncesvalles." His lau- reate odes are in general failures. Who can write poems any more than " yield reasons upon compulsion, Hal 1" It is an incubus of obligation, under which the wings of genius higher than Southey's might succumb. We have sometimes figured to ourselves the horrible plight of one who was conipelled to produce two poems in a week, as a minister has to preach two sermons. Scarce in- ferior to such a slavery, is that of a laureate who must sweat poetry out of every birth, baptism, burial, and battle, that occurs in the circle of the royal household or in the public history of the country. " The Vision of Judgment " l)rings this deplorable bondage to a point. We know not whether its design or its execution, its spirit or its versification, be more unworthy of the writer. It is half ludicrous, half melancholy, to see it now pre- serving its sole existence in the notes of Byron's parody. There, degraded as if to the kitchen of that powerful but wicked jeu d'esjmt, it serves only to sauce its poignancy. When shall the lines on the " Burial of Sir John Moore," or the " Dream," or Campbell's "Last Man," be thus kicked down stairs by their caricatui-es? Never. Had not Southey's poem been worthless it would have defied fifty parodies to laugh it out of circula- tion. The leading qualities of his poetry are exuberance of imagery; diff"usion of style; manifest facility of execution; a somewhat os- tentatious display of intimacy with the costume, or history, of the theme, or period; a wild, varied, and often exquisite versification; a frequent looseness and vagueness of phrase, strangely connected with an utter absence and abhorrence of mysticism, in the proper sense of the term; a sluggishness of occasional move- ment; a general want of condensation and artistic finish; and a pervading tone of moral and religious principle. His genius emits a deep, steady, permanent glow — never sharp tongues of flame. His poems, excellent in most of their parts, are heavy as wholes : and he must have been mortified, but need not have been surprised, that, while the brilliant pampldets of Byron were racing on through instant popularity to eternal fame before his very eyes, his own larger, equally genuine, and far more laboured works, were so slowly gaining their way to a disputed immor- tality. After all, his principal defect as a poet is size — his ghosts are too tall — his quaintnesses are in quarto. — his airy verse, which had been admirable in short effusions, wearies when reverberated throughout the long vista of interminable narratives — his geniu3 wears a train — with it has been entangled, and over it has well- nigh fallen. Very different it is with his prose. Here his fatal facility of verse forsakes him. He knows where to stop; and his language is pure, pellucid, simple, proper words dropping as by instinct into proper places. We prefer his style to Hall's, as less 292 ROBERT SOUTHEY, finished, but more natural, and better adapted for the uses of every-day composition. You never, go as early as you please, catch the one in undress; the other always wears an elegant dis- habille. Had Hall written a history or biography, it had been a stiff brocade business. Southey tells his story almost as well as Herodotus or Walter Scott. His lives of Henry Kirke White and Nelson, attest this; but so do also his other works — the " Life of Wesley," the " Book of the Church," the " Doctor" (con- taining, besides, so many odd fancies, and so much quaint humour, that men were slow to believe it his), his " Colloquies on So- ciety," his " Lives" of Cowper and Bunyan, and his articles in the " Quarterly," all of which were purchased cheaply at £'100 each. We love him for his liking to dear old John Bunyan, though it cost him a wry face or two to digest the tough old Baptist. Next to the Bible, the " Pilgrim's Progress " is to us the Book. Never, while our soul is in time or eternity, can we forget thee, " ingenious dreamer," or that immortal road which thy genius has mapped out. Never can we forget the cave where thou dreamest, Dante-like, thy dream — the man with the book in his hand — the Slough of Despond — the apparition of Help — the sigh with which we saw Pliable turning round on the wrong side — the starry wicket-gate shining through the darkness — the cliffs of Sinai overhanging the bewildered wanderer — the Interpreter's house, with its wondrous visions — the man in the cage, and Him, the nameless, rising from the vision of the Judgment for evermore — the Hill Difficulty, with the two dreary roads. Danger and Destruction, diverging from its base — the arbour half-way up — the lions on the summit — the house Beautiful — that very solitary place the Valley of Humiliation, with now Apollyon spreading his dragon-wings in the gloom, and now, how sweet the contrast ! the boy with the herb "heart's- ease" in his bosom, and that soft hymn u])un his lips, reclining fearless among its gentle shades — that " other place," the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with its shuddering horrors — the town of Vanity — the dungeons of Despair — the Delectable Mountains, overtoi)ped by Mount Clear, and that again by the golden gates of the city^the short cut to hell — the enchanted ground — Beulah, that lovely land, where the 6un shineth night and day — the dark river over which there is no bridge, the ridges of the Everlasting Hills rising beyond. As to the characters, we love them all — Christian with his burden, and the key called Promise in his bosom; Hopeful, ever answer- ijig to his name; Faithful, mounting on his fiery whii-lwind tlie nearest way to the Celestial Gate; good Evangelist; manly Great- heart; Valiant-for-truth, with his " right Damascus blade " cleav- ing in blood to his hand; Little-faith grasping his jewels; Fear- ing, wallowing in his slough; Despondency and Much-afraid; even ROBERT SOUTHEY. 293 green-headed Ignorance and his complacent ferry-man; and have a slight tenderness for Byeuds himself, and that strange figure Old Atheist, Avith his hollow laughter; and " one will we mention d earer than the rest," Mercy, wliom we love for the sweet name she bears, and because she approaches the very ideal of woman- liness and modesty of character. " O rare John Bunyan !" what a particle of power Avas deposited in thy rude body and ruder soul ! With a " burnt stick for a pencil," what graphic, pathetic, powerful, tender, true, and terrible pictures, hast thou drawn ! Thou hast extorted admiration from infidels and hiah church- men; from boys and bearded men; from a clown and a Cole- ridge (who read it now as a critic, regarding it as the first of allegories; now as a theologian, considering it the best system of divinity; and again as a boy, surrendering himself to the stream of the story); from a Thomas Campbell and a Kobert Southey. Southey was a very eloquent and generous critic, when no prejudice stood in the way. As a thinker, he was clear, rather than profound; fond of ci'otchets, and infected with a most unac- countable and unreasonable aversion to the periodical press. As a religionist, his views were exceedingly definite and decided. His formula of Church of Englandism fitted his mind exactly as a glove his hand. He had no patience with the mystic piety of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and would have recoiled from the transcendental charity of Carlyle. His opinions on all subjects were sharp, narrow, and prominent, as the corners of a triangular hat. Perhaps he had been yet more amiable, if his virtues had hung about him in softer and easier folds; if they had not been gathered in around him with such austere and Roman precision; and if they had rendered him more tolerant to the failings of others. Fiercely assailed by William Smith and Lord Byron, his retorts, keen and eloquent as they were, showed too plainly that the iron had entered into his soul. His change of political principle we hope to have been the result of conscientious convic- tion. The only blot on his escutcheon we know was his conduct to poor Shelley. We do not refer to his transcription and circu- lation of the mad post-fix in the album at Montanvert, but to the dark hints he threw out in one of his letters in reference to dis- closures Shelley had made to him about himself, in the confidence of private communication. No ])rovocation could justify such a breach of trust towards one Avho, as a " pilgrim of his genius," had visited his home. The obscurity of the insinuations only makes the matter worse. Southey had much, it is said, of the poet in his appearance — was stately in form — had the " eye of the hawk and the fire therein" — a Roman nose forming his most expressive feature. On the whole, if not the greatest poet, he was the most indus- trious and accomplished literateur of the day; and, if not the 294 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. most marked, or unique, or attractive, was probably the most faultless of its literary characters. Note. — Our recent reading of Cottle's " Recollections" has confirmed us in our verdict on Southey. He was undoubtedly harsh in his judgments both of Coleridge and Shelley. Possessed himself of a firm belief, he could not sympathise with the frantic but sincere struggles of one unhappily destitute of it; and, enjoying perfect self-control, he had not sufficient allowance to make for one in whose nature it had been omitted, and who could as soon have acquired a new sense. His hinting to Cottle that he knew the whole of Shelley's early history (which he got from himself, communicated in the im- petuous fulness of a spirit that knew no disguise), and which he pronounces " execrable," was itself a piece of " execrable" meanness. His tone, too, in his correspondence, in reference to poor Coleridge, is stern, cold, and haughty. JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. There is a certain stern, masculine, and caustic type of mind which is, we think, disappearing from the higher walks of our literature. It is as if the English element were departing from the English mind, and were being exchanged, partly for good and partly for evil, for an infusion of foreign blood. Our national peculiarities of thought are fast melting down into the great general stream of European literature. Where now that rugged Saxon strength, sagacity, and sarcastic vein — that simple manly style — that clear logical method — that dogged adherence to the point in hand — that fearless avowal of national prejudices, hatreds, and contempts — that thorough-going insular spirit which distin- guished the Drydens, the Swifts, and, in part, the Johnsons of a bygone period'? They are, in a great measure, gone; and in their stead we have the vagueness, the mistiness, the exaggera- tion, the motley and mosaic diction, along with the earnestness, the breadth, and the cosmopolitanism, " wide and general as the casing air," of Germany, transferred or transfused into our Eng- lish tongue. It were vain to protest against, or to seek to retard, an influence which is fast assuming the character of an irresistible infection. There is no disguisinfj the fact. For better or for worse, our poetry and our prose, our history and our criticism, our profane and our sacrod literature, are fast charging with Germanism, as clouds with thunder. Be this potent element a devil's elixir, or the wine of life, the thinkers of both Britsiin and America seem determined to dare the experiment of drain- ing its cup to the dregs. And at this stage of the trial, it is JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 295 enough for us to note the pregnant fact, and also to record the names of thpse among our higher writers, who have kept them- selves clear "from, if they have not opposed and counteracted, this " mighty stream of tendency." Prominent among these stand Byron, Southey, Macaulay, and Lockhart, who all, amid their variety of gifts, are distinguished by an intense Anglicanism of spirit and style. Byron — spurned by England, and spurning England in return — yet bore with him into his banishment all the peculiarities of his country's litera- ture: its directness, its dogmatism, its clearness, and its occa- sional caprice. And never is he so heartily and thoroughly English as when he is denouncing or ridiculing the land of his fathers. It is impossible to conceive of him, in any circumstances, sinking down to the level of an Italian improvisatore, or sublim- ing into a German mystic, or of being aught but what he was — a strange compound of English blackguard, English peer, and English poet. His knowledge of German was limited; and even when he stole from it, it was what it had stolen from the elder authors of England. His admiration of Goethe was about as genuine and profound as a schoolboy's of Homer, who has read a few pages of the Iliad in Greek, and has not read Pope's or Cow- per's translation. And though he talked of writing his magnum opus in Italian, after he had fully mastered the language, it was easy to perceive that to his " land's language" he in reality de- sired to commit the perpetuity of his fame, and that England was the imaginary threatre before which he went through his attitudes of enthusiasm, and assumed his postures of despair. Southey, again, in creed, in character, in purpose, in genius, and in diction, was English to exclusiveness. Macaulay's Avritings, starred so richly with allusions to every other part of eveiy other literature, do not, we are positive, above half-a-dozen times, recognise the existence of the German — a single sneer is all he vouchsafes to our modern Germanised English authors: his strongest sympathies are with our native literature; and his sharp, succinct, and ner- vous manner, is the exact antithesis of that which is the rajje of the Continent. And Lockhart, the subject of this notice, though he is versant with foreign tongues — though he has translated from the Spanish, has travelled in Germany, and gazed en the Jove-like forehead of the author of " Faust," was, is, and is likely to continue a Saxon to the backbone. We had almost called Lockhart the Dryden of his day. Cer- tainly, he has much of glorious John's robust and careless sti'ength of style, and of his easy and vaulting vigour of versification. Like Dryden, too, whether lauding his friends, or vituperating his foes — whether applying the caustic of satire, or inditing the tiery lyric — whether bursting into brief and chaiy raptures, or sneering behind the back of his own enthusiasm, he is always manly, mea- 29G JOHN GIBSON- LOCKHAET. surecl, disdainful alike of petty faults and petty beauties. Like Dryden, he is never greater than when, in translation or adapta- tion, he is rekindling the embers of other writers. X,ike Dryden, he is never or rarely caught into the " seventh heaven of inven- tion;" he is sometimes majestic, but never sublime; and has little pure passion, no dramatic vein, and but occasional command over the fountain of tears. From Dryden, however, he differs in this, that while he is equally good at reasoning in rhyme, or expressing didactic truth, as at painting character or scenery, Lockhart's great strength lies in picturesque and powerful description of the oddities of character, of the darker vagaries of the human heart, or of the broader and more general features of Nature. The two main characteristics of this writer's mind are, we think, sympathy with the sterner passions, and scorn for the lighter foibles and frailties of man. From the first have sprung those energetic, though somewhat overcharged, pictures, which startle and appal us in "Adam Blair" and " Matthew Wald." To the latter we owe the sparkling humour, the bitter satire, and the brilliant badinage of " Peter's Letters," " Eeginald Dalton," and all his splendid sins in the pages of " Blackwood." Besides those master features, he possesses, beyond all question, a strong and sagacious intellect, a clear and discriminating vein of criticism, a vigorous rather than a copious imagination, thorough rather than profound leaniing, and a style, destitute, indeed, of grace or elegance, but native, nervous, and powerful. He has, withal, no great subtlety of view, or width of comprehension, or generosity of feeling, and not a particle of that childlike simi)licity, earnest- ness, and abandonment, which are so often the accompaniments of genius. Indeed, if genius be, as we deem it is, a voice from the depths of the human spirit; the utterance, native and irresistible, of one possessed by an influence Avhich, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth; comes, he knows not whence; and goes, he knows not whither — a fainter degree of that inspiration which, to the rapt eye of the ancient prophet, made the future present, and the distant near — a lingering echo of that infinite ocean from which we have all come — the briofht limit between the hig-hest form of the intellectual, and the lowest form of the divine — if the man under its influence be a " maker," working out, in imitation of the great demiurgic artist, certain imitations of his own; a " declar- er," more or less distinctly, of the awful will of the unseen Law- giver, seated within his soid — a string to an invisible liarper — a pen guided by a superhuman hand — a trumpet filled with a voice which is as the sound of many waters: — if this definition of genius be admitted, we (juestion if he possesses it at all; if it be not, in truth, only high talent which sharpens his keen nostril, and ani- mates the vigorous motions of his understanding. As a novelist, liis first production was " Valerius," which he JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 297 read, Willis tells us, sheet after sheet, as it was written, to Chris- topher North, and was encouraged by his approbation to put it to press. It is a stern and literal re-production of the classical periods. Its style has, in general, the coldness and chastcness of a translation from the Latin. Its best passage is that descrip- tive of the amphitheatre, which is written with a rugged power worthy of the scene, in which the Buzz of eager nations ran In murniur'd pity or out-roarVl applause, As man was slaughter'd by liis fellow-man. And wherefore slaughter'd ? Wherefore, but because Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasui'e. And yet we question if one line of" Childe Harold," or one stanza of the " Prophecy of Capys," do not more to i^eflesh the Titanic skeleton of ancient Rome to the imagination and heart, than the entire novel of " Valerius." In " Adam Blair," he strikes upon a deeper and darker chord. It is a tale of guilt, misery, and repentance. " Adam Blair," the happy father, husband, and minister, becomes, in the providence of God, a prostrate widower; and afterwards, in a sudden gust of infatuated passion, a miserable sinner. He repents in sackcloth and ashes — receives, in himself, that reward of his error which Avas meet — retires into private life — and dies a humbled, but happy man. Over the whole tale, as Mrs Johnstone somewhere says, there lies the " shadow of the hour and power of darkness." We will not soon forget that figure of the new-made widower, tossing, amid the twilight trees, while, in moments of time, " ages of agony are passing over his bruised spirit." But with deeper interest imagination follows Adam Blair rushing from the scene of his guilt, into the heart of the Highland wilderness, where the dark eye of a tarn stares up at him, like a reflection of his own guilty conscience; and where he curdles, into one gloomy rehearsal, all the after experiences of humiliation, and madness, and misery, which are before him. Suddenly the scene changes: a milder but solenm light falls upon the picture, as, a sadder and Aviser man, the culprit enters the assembly of his brethren, and himself declares the fact and circumstances of his fearful fall. It is a scene for a great moral painter. The assembly met in full conclave — a " crown of glory" rising here and there on a hoary patriarchal head — the entrance, like that of a stray spirit, of the bewildered man — the solemn faces, " darkening like water in the breeze," as his appearance outruns his words, in telling the dis- mal tale — might well inspire the truest and finest of pencils. The moral of this story has been objected to, but we think without sufticient grounds. What is the real moral of any tale ? Is it not its permanent impression — the last burning trace it 298 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. leaves upon the soul? And who ever read " Adam Blair" with- out rising from the perusal saddened, solemnised, smit with a profound horror at the sin which had wrought such hasty havock in a character so pure, and a nature so noble? This effect pro- duced, surely the tale has not been told in vain. " Matthew Wald" is a Series of brief and tragic sketches, end- ing in melo-dramatic madness and horror. Matthew is a soured, disappointed man. His wife, Joan, answers to that best descrip- tion of a good wife — a leaning prop to her husband. Katherine Wald, his early but lost love, comes and goes, like a si^lendid apparition. A sadder shadow (poor Perling Joan) passes to perish below the chariot wheels of her proud seducer. Her tale is told with exquisite beauty and pathos. But by far the most powerful thing in the book, is the murder in Glasgow. Matthew Wald goes to reside with an old and, seemingly, pious couple, John ]\Iacewan, a shoemaker, and his wife. They are very indus- trious, but very poor. One market-day, John brings in a drover with him to his inner apartment, and, after a short talk, goes out again, telling his wife and lodger, who are in the kitchen, that the drover is drunk, has gone to bed, and must not be disturbed for a while. In a little, Matthew notices a dark something creeping toward him, from the door of the room. It is a stream of blood. He bursts open the door, and finds the drover robbed and mur- dered. Meanwhile John pursues his way westward; comes, at evening, to a cottage on a lonely moor; enters to ask a drink of water; discovers a woman dying; kneels down by her bedside, and prays a " long, a powerful, an awful, a terrible prayer;" rises, and pursues his way. He is arrested in Arran, tried, and con- demned, protesting that it was a " sair temptation of the evil one." He is brought to the scaffold; the people hoot, and cast dead cats in his face; he says only — " Poor things, they kenna what they do." Wald, the moment ere he is turned off, feels the old mui-dcrer's pulse; its beat is as calm, even, and iron as his own. The whole story is recounted with a sort of medical cool- ness, wJiich renders it appalling. We forget the exact date of " Reginald Dalton;" but, from in- ternal evidence, we might almost conclude that it was written during, or shortly after, the author's lioneymoon, amid the groves of Chiefswood, and with the murmurs of the Tweed, and tlie voice of the gentle Sopliia 8cott mingling in his ear. " Valerius" was the flower of his early scholarship; " Adam Blair," and " Matthew Wald," seem to liave been both conceived, if not botli written, in that dark j)assage through which often the youth of high intellect enters into manhood. But " Reginald Dalton," gay, lively, varied, only slenderly shadowed with the hues of sorrow, is the work of a matured and married man, wliose aims in life are taken, and whose prospects in it are fair. It is one of the most agreeable of JOHN GIBSON LOCKHAKT. 299 tales. With no passages in it so powerful as some in "Adam Blair" and " Matthew Wald," framed of a less unique and indi- visible structure than " Valerius," which reads like one letter found in Pompeii, it is much more bustling, and animated, and readable than any of the three. The scene is chiefly, and the in- terest entirely, in Oxford. The step of the author becomes quickened so soon as it touches the streets of the old city. And, while deeply reverent of his Alma Mater, he is not afraid to dash a strong and fejirless light upon her errors of discipline, and abuses of practice. The incidents of the tale, however, are rather improbable and involved. Its love scenes are tedious — its pathos feeble — its characters, with the signal exception of the Edinburgh writer, neither striking nor new. The merit lies entirely in the truth and vigour of the description — in the lively manner in which the tale is told, and in the incessant stream of clever and sparkling things which runs down throughout the whole. " Peter's Letters" excited a prodigious sensation at the time of its appearance. It Avas so personal, so quizzical, so impudent, and so desperately clever. Its illustrations were so good, and so grotesque withal. And then there was the slightest possible shade of mystification about the fact of the authorship, to give a last tart tinge to the interest. It, accordingly, ran like Avildfire. Steamers and track-boats were not considered complete without a copy. It supplanted guide-books in inns. A hundred country towns, aware that a " chield was taking notes " among them, were on the daily look-out for the redoubtable Peter, with his spec- tacles, his Welsh accent, his Toryism, his inordinate thirst for draught porter, and his everlasting shandry-dan. Playfair, Leslie, &c., writhed under its personalities, but much more un- der its pictures. It became so po})ular in Leicester, that Pobert Hall actually attacked it from the pulpit. After all, it is one of the most harmless and amusing of brochures. We bear with even its broad unblushing and unwinking bigotry, and like the hearty openness with which he brandishes his knife and fork; the force of its more elaborate sketches (such as those of John Clerk and Dr Chalmers); his famous funny pictures of the Burns dinner; the day at Craigcrook; and, above all, the Monday dinner, of thirty years ago, given to, and a little beyond, the life; and, better still, the faces and heads seen as if through a microscope, which lent their left-handed illustration to the whole. Those of Jeffrey, Hogg, and Chalmers, alias the " wee reekit deil of criti- cism," the " inspired sheepshead," and the " eloquent gravedig- ger," were particularly felicitous. In the year 1826, Lockhart left the bar, where he had paid unsuccessful homage to Themis, for the editorship of " the Quar- terly Ileview." On the occasion of leaving Edinburgh for London, a dinner was given him, where he happily enough excused him 300 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. self from making a long speech, on the plea that if he could have made such a speech, no such occasion had ever occurred. Great expectations were formed about his management of that powerful periodical. Gilford had only a little before dropped his bloody ferula in death; and it became an eager question with the literaiy world, whether Lockhart would introduce a milder regime, or only exchange whips for scorpions. Not a few expected the latter to be the more probable consequence. We remember a periodical writer at the time raising a warning cry to the Cock- neys, whose enemy was now coming up among them. Lockhart, however, knew better than to occupy all the ground and per- petuate all the feuds of his predecessor. The times, too, had changed, and with the times the tastes. The objects, moreover, of assault were noAv hors de combat. Shelley was dead; Hunt Avas bankrupt and broken-hearted; Hazlitt was desperate and at bay, and a rumour ran that his horns were tipped with poison; the minor writers of the school had perished under the crush of their ponderous enemy; Lamb's gentle luminary had slowly risen into "a star among the stars of mortal night;" and it was not now safe to clamour at Hesperus. Besides, Lockhart was a man of another spirit from his forerunner; and it must be admitted, that though he has several times sinned, and sinned deeply, yet that, on the whole, his management of "The Quarterly" has been manly and open, as Avell as able and energetic. If he has not, on the one hand, been a pervading genius, giving life and unity to the entire journal, neither has he been a mere string of red tape, tying the articles together; and far less an omnipresent poison, collecting here and there into a centre its deadlier virus, and tinging the whole with its dilution of death. As a biographer, he has written lives of Burns, of Napoleon, and of his great father-in-law. His biography of Burns is rather a thick and strongly-chiselled inscription upon his tombstone, than a minute, careful, and complete estimate of his character and genius; or call it rather a rude but true bust of the poet, and, like all busts, it contains the intellect, but omits the heart. It 2)ossesses, however, one or two striking passages, and altoge- ther forms a fit introduction to Allan Cunningham's loving and lingering biography, and to the rich marginal conmientaries of Carlyle and Wilson. His Life of Napoleon (in the " Family Library ") is also no more than a sketch, though a vigorous, faithful, and con ainore contri- bution to the preparations for a yet unwritten life of the Corsican ])rodigy. Lockiiart, as wi'll as Croly, Wilson, and all the abler conservative writers, does full justice to the genius of Napoleon. Like Madame de Stiiel, he is ready to exclaim, " It will never do to tell us that all Europe was for years at the mercy of a coward and a fool." lie thinks it intensely ridiculous for writers to try JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 301 to show, by lengthy argumentation, how absurd it was for a man to have gained the battles which, by all the rules of wai-, he ought to have lost; what a pity it was that the Archduke Charles and Blucher had not learned the all-important lesson, '•' never to know when they were beaten; " and that, on the whole, Napoleon was the stupidest man in Europe, and his career little else than one glorious blunder ! This, with minds like Lockhart's, Croly's, and Wilson's, verily, "will never do." If Napoleon v/ere a block- head, what a "thrice double ass" was that vast mooncalf of a world, which, from California to Japan, either trembled at or adored him ! In writing the " Life of Scott," the Napoleon of the Novelists, Lockhart undertook a far more difficult and delicate task. And, without pretending that he has solved altogether the problem of the mighty wizard's life, and without entering at all into the moot points and fretting details of the execution, we feel thank- ful for the work, on the whole, as furnishing a variety of interest- ing and select facts. The philosophy of the life it was not his part, else it was fully in his power, to have contributed. And if the panegyric be now and then too unsparing, and the style here and there be a little careless, and the tone be sometimes too snap- pish and overbearing; and if he seem, once or twice, to lean back too ostentatiously upon the merits of his subject and the advan- tages of his position; and if his general estimate of his hero be rather that of the son-in-law than of the critic, let us, remember- ing the difficulties of the undertaking, forgive its defects. It were unpardonable to omit notice of his " Spanish Ballads;" some of which the hero of that romantic land might sing, as he was rushing into the midst of the fray; while others might be chanted by the labourer going forth to his toil, mingling on his lips with the " Ancient Ballad of Roncesvalles," and others by the village beauty, mourning the loss of her " ear-rings," which have dx'opt into the envious wayside well. They are, to use a fine distinction, not translations but transfusions of the soul and spirit of the original Spanish. After all, why are the powers which have done all this not doing more? Why do we recognise his "fine Roman hand" so seldom even in his own review? Above all, why have we no more " Adam Blairs," " Reginald Daltons," and " Spanish," or other " Ballads?" Why must we close this short sketch by the complaint — " Why slumbers Lockhart?" once was asked in vain; " Why slumbers Lockhart?" now is ask'd again. Thus closes our first " Gallery of Contemporary Genius." We have acted in it on the general principal of selecting those who 302 CONCLUSION. have departed from the arena, or who have been so long in it, that their fame may be considered established. We might have included the familiar and brilliant names of Byron, Scott, Crabbe, Moore, Rogers, Joanna Baillie, JMrs Hemans, Mrs Johnstone, Sir J. Mackintosh, Fonblanque, Leigh Hunt, Edward Lytton Bulwer, Isaac Taylor, Dr MacGinn, &c., but refrained from some of them, because the field was completely exhausted by other critics; and from others, because our sympathies with them were but partial, and perhaps our knowledge of them imperfect. We would have had much pleasure in extending our notices to the rising spirits of the time: — to have enriched our Gallery with the names of Charles Dickens; of Mary Howitt; of Lady Blessington; of Henry Taylor, the profound and classic creator of " Philip Van Artevelde" and " Edwin the Fair;" of Alfred Tennyson, who seems the lawful heir of our Lost Hyperion; of Robert Browning, who will yet redeem his bright pledge of" Paracelsus;" of John Robert- son, Talfourd, Home, D'Israeli, itc; and of our own extraordinary friend Samuel Brown, who, apart from his reputation as a chemist, is the author of a production, " Lay Sermons by a Society of Brethren," wdiich contains glimpses into the very deepest, and of whom we never think without recalling the words of Keats — And other spirits there do stand apart, Upon the forehead of the age to come; These, these will give the world another heart And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings I Listen a while, ye nations, and be dumb. We never, however, intended the book to be a complete literary history of the period, but only a desultory record of our own ap- preciation of some of its more illustrious luminaries. As such it is now finished; and " To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new." EDIKBimaH : l-RUfTED BY J. HOOO 10/6 Works published by J. Hogg, Edinburgh. THE BARDS OF THE BIBLE. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. " There is very little to oliject to, and very nuich to a(lniire„in ' The Barda of the Bible.' It is a beautiful ' poem,' in the sense in which our author himself often employs this word. . . . The introductory chapter is a noble and beautiful assertion of the peculiarities and glories of the Bible. . . . We thank Mr Gilfillan for his manly and noble defence of Revela- tion, in bis chapter on the Future Destiny of the Bible. Anything more powerful or strik- ing than his ' visions,' we have not read for many a day. . . . We cannot close the volume before us without thanking its author for bis contribution to both the illustration and defence of the Holy Book. We trust it will win the attention and friendly regards of many wor- shippers of genius to a book which combines the inspiration of genius with inspiration of a still higher and diviner order. It will remind the theological student that biblical criticism is only a means to an end ; and that, when languages have been acquired, and the structure of sentences has been studied, there remains the spirit, the truth, and the life of the whole, to be received into a believing mind ami a loving heart ; and it will make the intelligent reader of every class go to his Bible with a freshness of interest, and a vivid sense of reality, which ' he will not willingly let die.' " — Cltristian Times. " It is impossible to read this work without feeling thankful for another instance of con- secrated genius. ' The Bards of the Bible,' whether viewed through the medium of poetry, philosophy, or theology, is one of the most attractive works that has issued from the press fur a lengthened period. It will go far to remove the aversion of men of taste to evangelical religion. It will read many a useful lesson to ministers of the Gospel. It will teach the aspirants after the noble, the pure, and the grand, that their ever-welling fountain is the glorious book of God. It will gladden the humble Christian by the exalted views which it gives of his Lord. The book, as a whole, is a triumph of genius." — Christian Spectator. " Among modern critical writers, there is perhaps no one who evinces a more thorough and hearty appreciation of the beautiful in literature, than the author of the ' Bards of tl!9 Bible.' Poetry seems to be unto him an absolute essential of existence — a kind of vital air, without which the energies of his being would droop, and ultimately die. Although not professedly a poet, his prose contains a suffiiuency of poetic imagery to set up half-a dozen of ordinary rbyrasters. Indeed, the great fault of his style— if fault he will permit it to be called— is a uniform elevation of t(jne, an overflowing excess of light, that leaves the gorgeous poetic prose of a Jeremy Taylor, or a Christopher North, tame and insipid in the comparison. .... Mr Gilfillan, with his rich imagination, and inexhaustible command of superlatives, has, in the present instance, been fortunate in his selection of a subject, and we are mistaken if the work does not prove more eenerally and more lastingly popular than any former produc- tion of his pen." — Glasi/ow Citizen. " This was clearly not work for 'prentice hands. In every view, it required those of a master, and what it required, it has obtained. The Author has bathed his very soul in the font cf Inspiration. He seems filled with an overflowing sense of its greatness and glory, and its instrumental adaptation to the work of redemption. For many years he has literally shone as a star, and occasionally blazed as a meteor, in the literary heavens. He early made a timely discovery of the peculiar nature of his powers, and he has wisely followed the bent of his inspiration. Of all the men of genius in these realms now alive, George Gilfillan alone could have produced this volume. Adequately to treat the work itself, would require our whole sheet, and still leave something further to be done. We trust, however, we have said and cited enough to prompt in multitudes the desire to possess the work for themselves. In the meantime, we hasten to .join the ranks of the author's friends, who will doubtless forthwith press forward to congratulate him on the success which has attended his endeavour to serve the interests of the Inspired Volume, and of that great salvation which it brings to a lost world. We cannot doubt that he has succeeded to excite in thousands, who have hitherto neglected it, a disposition which, on mere literary grounds, may induce them to consult this most ancient, multifarious, magnificent, profound, and holy of all books. As such service is to be classed with the highest that man can render on earth to man, we pre- dict with confidence that the Author will have a very large reward in the acceptance of his work, and the approbation of the wise and good of every section of the Church of God." — British Banner. " Some of the passages with which it abounds are full of religious fervour, and others are replete with indications of earnest sincerity and devotedness of purpose." — Bell s Weekly Messrnijer. " The five most eloquent writers of the present day, are Wilson, Carlyle, Gilfillan, Croly, and Macaulay. A great quincunx — enough to glorify any single age. ... In ' The Bards of the Bible,' Gilfillan is mated with a theme worthy of the full powers of his manhood in their full play. The result is a book far beyond any he has yet produced. It swells into majesty every now and then, as all his literary sketches do; but it has all the composite varieties of a work properly so called, constructed with a comprehensive breadth aiid unity of purpose. . . . rhia remarkable volume is the most complete of its kind that has yet appeared." — Dum- fries Herald. 10/6 2/ A SECOND GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. TALES AND SKETCHES OF SCOTTISH LIFE. BY PASTOR. Works published by J. Hogg, Edinburgh. Ar^l THE CLANS OF THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND. ^^1 WITH COLOURED DELINEATIONS OF THE VARIOUS TARTANS. • BY THOMAS SMIBEKT. " This is truly a splendid volume. Whether we look to its exterior— to the pink cover de- corated with the golden thistle ' to Scotia dear,' or to the many beautiful specimens of Tar- tans which add a rainhow of lustre to its pages — or to the plain clear type — or to the inte- resting, varied, and richly anecdotical letterpress, we have seen few ornamental books for years which can vie with it. The object of the book is to give to the Gael, or Highlanders of Scotland, a succinct history of their various clans, with representations of their various Tartans, correctly delineated and coloured. The books hitherto issued on the subject have been for the few and the wealthy, not for the community at large. The numberless Highlanil families, moreover, who have long left the region of their sires, and have disused its lan- guage, will find the present publication has been expressly drawn up to meet their accepta- tion. . . . Sufiice it to say, that every page teems with facts ; that the whole forms one of the best after-dinner books of the season ; such a book, in short, as Sir Walter Scot* would have read with pleasure, and reviewed with gusto." — Eclectic Review. " Legibly, even learnedly puttogether.' — .4t/ien«((»i. 2/6 THE WATER-LILY OF SOUTH AMERICA, AND THE WATER-LILIES OF OUR OWN LAND. BY GEORGE LAWSON, F. B. S. Illustrated by Coloured Drawiwjs of the Victoria Rejina and the ]]Tiite Water- Lily of Britain. " Prettily got-up, and pleasingly written. . . . The whole is interspersed with anecdotes, and contains useful hints on the management of aquatic plants in cultivation." — Botanical Gazette. " We recommend it without any reservation to our readers." — Cottage Gardener. 4/ THE TRAGEDY OF GALILEO GALILEL BY DR SAMUEL BROWN. " It is seldom that we meet with a first essay in dramatic composition possessing such genuine claims on attention as the work before us. ... It is developed with unusual art, and symbolises a too frequent condition in the experience oi Renins."— Athenceum., 9/p THE SACRED HARMONIST: ■^/'^ BEING A SELECTION OF ALL THE MOST POPULAR PSALM AND HYMN TUNES, DOXOLOGIES, ETC. EDITED BY W. H. M'FARLANE. 2/G MEMORIALS OF WORTH. BY THE REV. ROBERT SIMPSON, SANQUHAR. In preparation, POEMS. BY THOMAS SMIBERT. DICTIONARY OF RHYMES: FOR THE USE OF YOUNG POETS. WITH SPECIMENS OF THE DIFFERENT ENGLISH MEASURES OF VERSE. Second Edition, enlarged, AUTUMNAL RAMBLES AMONG THE SCOTTISH MOUNTAINS. BY THE REV. THOMAS GRIERSON, MINISTER OF KIRKBEAN. THE TOURIST'S GUIDE THROUGH THE LAND OF SCOTT \ND BURNS. BY JOHN G^TEVE, SURVEYOR, SMAILHOLM. ■::i.«i; University of California souther"n"r|g,onalubRABv;ac.u^^^ I \ 7^ 000 595 811 1 If