LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWLN" P. WHIPPLE, 
 
 ENLARGED EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co. 
 
 1871.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, 
 
 BY '13. P. WHIFFLE, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 
 
 BY E. P. WHIFFLE, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., 
 CAMBRIDGE.
 
 Page 
 
 AUTHORS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO LIFE ... 7 
 
 NOVEL&.-AND NOVELISTS. CHARLES DICKENS . . 42 
 
 WIT AND HUMOR 84 
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE 122 
 
 .GENIUS 156 
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE . . . 186 
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS 219 
 
 WORDSWORTH . . 253 
 
 BRYANT . 303 
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM AND MALIGNANT REFORM 322
 
 AUTHOES IN THEIE EELATIONS TO 
 LIFE* 
 
 THERE has existed in all ages a class of men, called at 
 different periods by different names, but generally com- 
 prehended under the name of authors. They hold the 
 same relation to the mind of man that the agriculturist 
 and manufacturer bear to his body ; and by virtue of 
 their sway over the realms of thought and emotion, they 
 have exercised a vast influence upon human affairs, 
 which has too often been overlooked or denied by earth's 
 industrial and political sovereigns. Operating as they 
 do on unseen substances, and working silent and mys- 
 terious changes in the inward man, without altering 
 his external aspect, they have strangely puzzled the 
 whole horde of bigots and tyrants, and have written their 
 Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin on the walls of earth's 
 proudest palaces. On the occasion of a literary anni- 
 versary like yours, I am aware of no more appropriate 
 
 * Delivered before the Literary Societies of Brown University, 
 Sept. 1, 1846.
 
 <3 AUTHORS. 
 
 subject, none which is more likely to bear, remotely 
 or immediately, on your own future pursuits and profes- 
 sions, than this of Authors ; and in tracing out some 
 of their relations to life, I think I can inflict less tedious- 
 ness upon you than if I had selected some topic with a 
 more resounding name, and admitting of more ambitious 
 disquisition. My object will be to set forth their moral 
 and intellectual influence, the physical necessities which 
 have modified the direction of their powers, and the dis- 
 crepancies observable between their internal and external 
 existence. This will involve a consideration of their 
 relations to their age, to booksellers, and to domestic and 
 social life. You must pardon the remediless superficial- 
 ity of my view, as each division might well exhaust a 
 volume. 
 
 And first, let us refer to the influence of authors, and 
 the position they have occupied in the world. 
 
 Without taking into view the lives and thoughts of 
 authors, history becomes an enigma, or a many-volumed 
 lie. We read of wars, crusades, persecutions, ameliora- 
 tions, of mighty and convulsive changes in opinions and 
 manners, without obtaining any clue to the real causes 
 of events, any insight into the laws of God's providence. 
 Without inweaving literary into civil history, we gain no 
 knowledge of the annals of human nature. We have 
 the body of history without the soul, events without
 
 AUTHORS 9 
 
 ideas, effects without causes, the very atheism of 
 narrative. The abridgments we study at schools are 
 commonly made up of incidents jumbled together like 
 beads, and unconnected by any thread of reason and 
 reality. It is hardly possible for a boy, studying these 
 works, to grasp any other idea of man than the idea of 
 a being with legs, arms, and appetites. 
 
 Now it is a fact that Thought, true or false, bene- 
 ficial or pernicious, has borne the sceptre of influence 
 irt this world's affairs. Impulse, whim and chance, have 
 not been the blind guides of the generations of men. 
 Above all the fret and tumult of active existence, above 
 the decrees of earth's nominal sovereigns, above all the 
 violence and evil which render what is called history so 
 black a record of folly and crime above all these, there 
 have ever been certain luminous ideas, pillars of fire in 
 the night of time, which have guided and guarded the 
 great army of humanity, in its slow and hesitating, but 
 still onward, progress in knowledge and freedom. It is 
 not the ruler that makes the most noise in the world, that 
 most shapes the world's fortunes. Ten rockets, sent vio- 
 lently into the air, by their blaze and impotent fury, 
 attract all eyes, and seem much finer and grander than 
 the eternal stars ; but after their short and rushing life 
 has burnt out, and they have noised themselves into 
 nothingness, the stars still shine serenely on, and seem
 
 10 AUTHORS. 
 
 almost to look down with contempt on the crowd who 
 have been fooled into fear or admiration. Thus is it in 
 history. The being to whose commands is given a brief 
 omnipotence, whose single word moves myriads of 
 men, on whom power and glory are lavished without 
 measure, is often but the mere instrument of some 
 idea or principle, mightier than he ; and to find his mas- 
 ter and king, we must travel back years, and perhaps 
 ages, and seek him in the lonely cell of some poor and 
 despised student, whose busy brain is shaping in silence 
 those immaterial substances, destined to shake the world; 
 to fall like fire upon the hearts of men, and kindle in 
 them new life and energy ; to overthrow and to rebuild 
 thrones : to be the roots of new moral and intellectual 
 dynasties; and, keeping their way through generation 
 after generation, to come out in the end gloriously or in- 
 famously, according as they are founded in justice and 
 truth, or falsehood and wrong. Thus the thinker ever 
 precedes the actor. Thoughts ever have to battle them- 
 selves into institutions. The passage of a paradox into 
 a truism is attended with numberless commotions. With 
 these commotions, rather than with the ideas and feel- 
 ings whence they spring, history has chiefly chosen to 
 deal ; and it rarely notices the ten thousand agencies 
 operating on a nation's mind, until revolutions have 
 passed from thoughts into facts, and made themselves
 
 AUTHORS. 11 
 
 Known on fields of stricken battle. Every great origin- 
 ating mind produces in some way a change in society ; 
 every great originating mind whose exercise is controlled 
 by duty, effects a beneficial change. This effect may be 
 immediate, may be remote. A nation may be in a tumult 
 to-day, for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly 
 penned in his study more than two centuries ago. 
 Thought may be first written in an unintelligible jargon, 
 in Benthamese or Kantese, for instance; but every Ben- 
 tbam finds his Dumont, and every Kant his Cousin. An 
 author may affect his race through conductors. He may 
 be mysterious ; others will translate him to the people. 
 He may be a coward ; others will do the fighting. He 
 may be a wretch, studious of infamy ; Humanity takes 
 the thought, and spurns the man. Many poets who have 
 led lives of luxury and effeminacy, and sat honored 
 guests at the tables of tyrants, have still exalted our con- 
 ceptions of intellectual excellence, refined our manners, 
 extended the range of our sympathies. They have mod- 
 ified the institutions of society by modifying the mental 
 character of society, of which institutions are the out- 
 ward expression. A change in thought or prejudice 
 works out, in the end, a change in governments and 
 laws. " Beware," says a brilliant essayist, " when the 
 great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all 
 things are at risk."
 
 12 AUTHORS. 
 
 Authors are thus entitled to a prominent rank among 
 the producing classes, and their lives deserve a more 
 intelligent scrutiny from the practical men who stigma- 
 tize them as dreamers. Their importance has rarely 
 been correctly estimated, either in summing up a na- 
 tion's wealth or a nation's dangers. Society has played 
 with them its most capricious game of coquetry. The 
 same generation which neglects or tortures a man of 
 letters, will often supply a whole army of admiring com- 
 mentators to distort his works. 
 
 "Ten ancient towns contend for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread." 
 
 No language can fitly express the meanness, the base- 
 ness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated 
 its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is 
 worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by 
 persecution. Milton, in his own day, was " Mr. Milton, 
 the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's per- 
 son ;" and soon after, " the mighty orb of song." These 
 absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recogni- 
 tion just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, 
 sadden all intellectual history. Is it not strange that 
 the biography of authors should be so steeped in misery, 
 that while exercising the most despotic dominion 
 that man can wield over the fortunes of his race, 
 their own lives should so often present a melancholy
 
 AUTHORS. 13 
 
 spectacle of unrest, unhappmess, frailty, beggary, and 
 despair ? 
 
 What has been the fate of those who have striven 
 hard to bring the actual world nearer to ideal perfection ? 
 Has not fidelity to ideas, the exercise of moral courage 
 in the cause of truth, when it could not be pensioned 
 into apostacy, been too often rewarded with persecution 
 into heaven ? The cold, lifeless axiom, so inoffensively 
 ineffective, and so securely announced from the dull soul 
 of the pedant how has it been, when it came hissing hot 
 from the gushing heart of genius, tearing and ripping up 
 the surface concealments of tolerated sins ? Wherever a 
 great soul has raised the banner of revolt against accred- 
 ited fraud or honored duncery, thither has flown Igno- 
 rance with her bats and owls, thither has sped Power with 
 his racks and gibbets. Do you wonder that so much of 
 the world's intellect has been chained, like a galley- 
 slave, to the world's corruptions, when you find its free 
 and honest exercise so often thus rewarded with poverty 
 or death ? 
 
 Time, to be sure, that consecrates all things, conse- 
 crates even the lives of authors. When the great man 
 is laid in his grave, lies of malice are apt to give way to 
 lies of adulation. Men feel his genius more, and his 
 faults less. The cry then is, to bury the evil he has 
 done with his bones, to forbear dragging his frailties
 
 14 AUTHORS. 
 
 from their dread abode. Then steps forth a debonair 
 biographer, to varnish his errors or crimes, in order that 
 he may appear respectably before that dear public whose 
 stupidity or caprice may have urged him to their com- 
 mission. It is well, after calumny has feasted and 
 fattened on his name, that he should undergo the solemn 
 foolery of a verbal beatitude ! Indeed, it seems strange, 
 that the old maxim declaring no human being to have 
 arrived at perfection on earth should still be heard from 
 the pulpit, when even every newspaper obituary gives 
 it the lie ! 
 
 There is, indeed, a natural disposition with us to judge 
 an author's personal character by the character of his 
 works. We find it difficult to understand the common 
 antithesis of a good writer and a bad man. We dislike 
 to believe that any of those gifted beings who have been 
 the choicest companions of our best and happiest hours, 
 who have kindled or exalted our love of the beautiful and 
 good, who have given us knowledge and power, and 
 whose words rebuke us for our own moral as well as 
 mental inferiority, should have ugly spots of meanness 
 or baseness blotting their bright escutcheons. We in- 
 stinctively lend a greedy ear to the weakest apologies 
 offered in behalf of our favorites, and side with them 
 against any who may have been their adversaries or 
 victims. The greater the writer, the more pertinaciously
 
 AUTHORS. 15 
 
 we sophisticate away the faults of the man. We side 
 with Pope in his quarrel with Gibber, with Addison in 
 his quarrel with Steele. We give little credence to the 
 fact that Bacon took bribes, or that Byron took gin. No 
 notoriety given to Campbell's vices can make us believe 
 the creator of Gertrude, envious, malignant and sottish. 
 Let mediocrity commit similar, faults to those we pardon 
 in genius, and we should hurl at it our loudest thunders 
 of rebuke. Forgetting that writers are men, exposed to 
 more than common trials and temptations, we fondly 
 believe their external life always in harmony with theii 
 internal ideals. A little reflection teaches us that the 
 truisms of thought are the paradoxes of action. If this 
 be true, then the ideals of thought may be almost classed 
 among the prodigies of conduct; and in literature we 
 must often be indebted for priceless benefits to men 
 personally unworthy of our esteem ; to have our cour- 
 age kindled by the oratory of cowards ; our confidence 
 in virtue strengthened by the poetry of debauchees ; and 
 our loftiest sentiments of liberty and disinterestedness 
 ennobled by imaginations shaped by the servile and the 
 mean. 
 
 To reconcile this monstrous anomaly with nature, WP 
 must recollect two things : first, that the possession of 
 great energies of mind does not suppose the absence of 
 bad passions; and second, that authors are compelled,
 
 16 AUTHORS. 
 
 like other men, to labor for a subsistence. In some cases, 
 it is true, the man of genius is blasted from within ; his 
 genius becoming the slave of unbitted passions and 
 satanic pride. Thus Campbell compared the unwearied 
 fire that burned in the breast of Byron to the " robe and 
 golden crown which Medea, in Euripides, sends Glauce, 
 the wife of Jason ; their beauty and magic loveliness did 
 not prevent them from consuming to ashes the victim 
 whom they so gorgeously adorned." In some cases, too, 
 the lust of the intellect has been stronger than the lust 
 of the flesh, and put iron wills into evil hearts, 
 
 " Whose steep aim 
 
 Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile 
 Thoughts which should draw down thunder, and the flame 
 Of heaven." 
 
 But poverty, perhaps, has been the most fertile source 
 of literary crimes. Men of letters have ever displayed 
 the same strange indisposition to starve common to other 
 descendants of Adam. The law of supply and demand 
 operates in literature as in trade. For instance, if a 
 poor poet, rich only in the riches of thought, be placed in 
 an age which demands intellectual monstrosities, he is 
 tempted to pervert his powers to please the general taste. 
 This he must do or die, and this he should rather die 
 than do ; but still, if he hopes to live by his products, he 
 must produce what people will buy, and it is already
 
 AUTHORS. 17 
 
 supposed that nothing will be bought except what is 
 brainless or debasing. The opposite of this is likewise 
 true. If a man of mental power and moral weakness be 
 placed in an age which demands purity in its literature, 
 his writings may exhibit a seraphical aspect, while his 
 life is stained with folly and wickedness. Thus it is 
 that many writers who have lived decently good lives 
 have written indecently bad works ; and many who have 
 lived ^indecently bad lives have written decently good 
 works ; and the solution of the mystery lies not in the 
 brain, but in the physical necessities, of the man. Poets 
 are by no means wingless angels, fed with ambrosia 
 plucked from Olympus, or manna rained down from 
 heaven. 
 
 This brings us to one great division in every author's 
 life, his relation to the public. This can be best illus- 
 trated by a pertinent example from a corrupt age. John 
 Dryden had a clear perception of moral truth, and no 
 natural desire to injure his species. He was an eminent 
 professional author during the reign of Charles II. The 
 time in which he lived was one of great depravity of taste, 
 and greater depravity of manners. Authors seemed 
 banded in an insane crusade to exalt blasphemy and 
 profligacy to the vacant throne of piety and virtue. 
 Books were valuable according to the wickedness blended 
 with their talent. Mental power was lucrative only in 
 2
 
 18 AUTHORS. 
 
 its perversion. The public was ravenous for the witty 
 iniquities of the brain ; and, to use the energetic invec- 
 tive of South, laid hold of brilliant morsels of sin, with 
 "fire and brimstone flaming round them, and thus, as 
 it were, digested death itself, and made a meal upon per- 
 dition" Now, it is evident, in such a period as this, a 
 needy author was compelled to choose between virtue 
 attended by neglect, and vice lackeyed by popularity. 
 One of Sir Charles Sedley's profligate comedies, one of 
 Lord Rochester's ribald lampoons, possessed more mer- 
 cantile value than the Paradise Lost. In such a period 
 as this, the poet should have descended upon his time, 
 like Schiller's ideal artist, "not to delight it with his pres- 
 ence, but terrible, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify 
 it." Dryden was placed in this age, and, for a long period 
 of his life, was its pander and parasite. The author 
 of Alexander's Feast condescended to write comedies 
 whose ferocious licentiousness astounds and bewilders 
 the modern reader. Yet, had he lived in the reign of 
 George III., he would not have been more immoral than 
 Churchill; had he lived in our day, his muse would 
 have been as pure as that of Campbell. He could not, 
 or would not, learn that it is better to starve on honesty 
 than thrive on baseness. "It is hard," says an old 
 English divine, " to maintain truth, but still harder to 
 be maintained by it."
 
 AUTHORS. 19 
 
 Now this mercantile or economical element, this dispo- 
 sition to let out talent as a jaded hack in the service of 
 Satan, when Satan pays the price, looks out upon us con- 
 stantly from literary history. In this connection it would 
 be unjust not to pay a passing tribute to that long-eared 
 wisdom which obtains in our country, of starving authors 
 down into despair in order that they may be lifted thence 
 by sin that sagacious philosophy which sees no danger 
 inr neglecting a poor novelist or poet, and then contrives 
 to be astonished at the ability displayed in an atheistic 
 pamphlet or an agrarian harangue. The merchant, who 
 sneers at literary pursuits, shuts his purse when a new 
 volume appears, and clamors for the protection of all 
 manufactures but those of the mind, might, perhaps, 
 if he were logically inclined, trace some connection be- 
 tween his foolish illiberality and a financial storm which 
 stripped him of half his fortune, or a quack medicine 
 which poisoned his wife, or a bad book which ruined the 
 morals of his son. It is this senseless and disgraceful 
 contempt for the power of authors which causes much 
 of the perversion of talent so common in our day. Let 
 us suppose the case of a man who, led by some inscruta- 
 ble invvard impulse, adopts the profession of American 
 authorship. Of course, this act would furnish indubi- 
 table proof of insanity in any candid court of justice ; but 
 waiving that consideration, let us hear the advice given
 
 20 AUTHORS. 
 
 to him after his first book has gone the way of the trunk- 
 maker's, after a sale of ten copies. He is told that he 
 made a mistake in the selection of his subject; that 
 the people want something in the " flash line." It is 
 well for him if he can reconcile the flash line with the 
 line of duty. However, he proceeds in his course, until 
 all notion of the dignity of authorship vanishes from his 
 mind. Literature, to him, is the manufacture of ephem- 
 eral inanities and monstrous depravities, to serve as food 
 for fools and vagabonds. He is ready to write on any 
 subject which will afford him bread, moral or immoral, 
 religious or atheistic, solid or flash. He lets out his pen 
 to the highest bidder, as Captain Dalgetty let out his 
 sword. You may hire him to write transcendentalism ; 
 you may hire him to write brain-sick stories for namby- 
 pamby magazines; you may hire him to write quack 
 advertisements. And this is a successor of John Milton, 
 as Pope Joan was a successor of Saint Peter ! But 
 where lies the blame? The "respectable" portion of 
 society aver that the blame lies in the author ; reason 
 seems to assert that the blame lies in the " respectable " 
 portion of society. 
 
 Indeed, it seems impossible for men to realize the im- 
 portance and influence of authors, as purifiers or poison- 
 ers of the public taste and morals. For evil or good, 
 they exercise a vast and momentous dominion. But
 
 AUTHORS. 21 
 
 they are not generally men distinguished from Dther men 
 by superior strength of principle. If neglected and 
 despised, they teach the lesson, that if virtue and truth 
 decline paying wages to talent, falsehood and profligacy 
 are not so parsimonious. 
 
 Burke, no superficial reader of men and books, says, 
 in one of his immortal pamphlets, that " he can form a 
 tolerably correct estimate of what is likely to happen in 
 a character chiefly dependent for fame and fortune on 
 knowledge and talent, both in its morbid and perverted 
 state, and in that which is sound and natural. Natu- 
 rally, such men are the first gifts of Providence to the 
 world. But when they have once cast off the fear of 
 God, which in all ages has been too often the case, and 
 the fear of man, which is now the case ; and when, in 
 that state, they come to understand one another, and to 
 act in corps, a more fearful calamity cannot arise out of 
 hell to scourge mankind." Now, whether American 
 authors are to be scourges or blessings rests with 
 those who are to be injured or benefited. But one 
 thing is certain, that social order, good government, 
 correct morals, cannot long be preserved after well- 
 fed and well-principled mediocrity has divorced itself 
 from ill-fed and loose-principled talent. And it is per- 
 fectly right that it should be so. It is according to the 
 heaven-ordained constitution of things. A nation which
 
 22 AUTHORS. 
 
 places implicit reliance on steam-engines and mill-privi- 
 leges will find that in all that affects the weal or woe of 
 communities mind-power is greater than steam-power, 
 a truth which should be held up in the faces of our 
 shrewd and prudent worldlings, till, like the poet's mirror 
 of diamond, " it dazzle and pierce their misty eye-balls." 
 It is doubtless very pleasant, and very agreeable, to shoot 
 out the tongue at the mere mention of a national litera- 
 ture, to belittle and degrade the occupation of letters ; but 
 let those complacent gentlemen who practise the jest look 
 to it that the sparks they would trample under foot fly 
 not up in their own faces. " Literature," said Mr. Pitt to 
 Robert Southey, " will take care of itself." " Yes," was 
 the reply, " and take care of you too, if you do not see 
 to it." 
 
 But there is a class of authors different from those, 
 who cringe to prevalent tastes, and pander to degrading 
 passions ; men whom neither power can intimidate, nor 
 flattery deceive, nor wealth corrupt; the heroes of intel- 
 lectual history, who combine the martyr's courage with 
 the poet's genius, and who, in the strength of their fixed 
 wills and free hearts, might have scoffed as divinely at 
 the threats of earth-born power as the Virgin Martyr of 
 Massinger at the torturers of Diocletian and Maximi- 
 nua:
 
 AUTHORS. 23 
 
 " The visage of the hangman frights not me ! 
 The sight of whips, racks, gibbets, axes, fires, 
 Are scaffoldings on which my soul climbs up 
 To an eternal habitation." 
 
 This class, it must be confessed, is small. It does not 
 include many men of unquestioned genius. It does not 
 include many whose works will be read and loved forever. 
 But such an one was Dante, to whose raised spirit, 
 even in this life, the world had passed away. Such was 
 Schiller, toiling for twenty years up the topless pinnacle 
 of thought, unconquered by constant physical pain, his 
 upward eye ever fixed on his receding ideal. Such was 
 Shelley, who made his stricken life, with all its stern 
 agonies and cruel disappointments, 
 
 " A doom 
 As glorious as a fiery martyrdom." 
 
 Such was "Wordsworth, unmoved by ridicule and neglect 
 calmly writing poems for another generation to read. 
 And such, above all, was Milton. No eulogy, though 
 carved in marble, can rightly celebrate his character and 
 genius : 
 
 " Nothing can cover his high fame, but Heaven ; 
 No monument set off his memories, 
 But the eternal substance of his greatness." 
 
 The austere grandeur of his life may well excite the 
 wonder of the traders, panders and parasites of literature. 
 His patience and conscience were tried by all the calami-
 
 24 AUTHORS. 
 
 ties which break down the spirits of common men, by 
 sickness, by blindness, by poverty, by the ingratitude of 
 his children, by the hatred of the powerful, by the malice 
 of the base. But the might of his moral nature overcame 
 them all. No one can fitly reverence Milton who has not 
 studied the character of the age of Charles II., in which 
 his later fortunes were cast. He was Dryden's contem- 
 porary in time, but not his master or disciple in slavish- 
 ness. He was under the anathema of power : a repub- 
 lican, in days of abject servility ; a Christian, among men 
 whom it would be charity to call infidels ; a man of pure 
 life and high principle, among sensualists and rene- 
 gades. On nothing external could he lean for support. 
 In his own domain of imagination perhaps the greatest 
 poet that ever lived, he was still doomed to see such 
 pitiful and stupid poetasters as Shadwell and Settle 
 bear away the shining rewards of letters. "Well might 
 he declare that he had fallen on evil times ! He was 
 among his opposites, a despised and high-souled Puri^ 
 tan-poet, surrounded by a horde of desperate and disso- 
 lute scribblers, who can be compared, as an accomplished 
 critic has eloquently said, "to nothing so fitly as the 
 rabble in Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, 
 half human, dropping with wine, bloated with glut- 
 tony, reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his 
 muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the masque,
 
 AUTHORS. 25 
 
 lofty, spotless and serene, to be chattered at, and 
 pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rabble of satyrs 
 and goblins." Yet, from among such base environ- 
 ments, did Milton " soar in the high reason of his fan- 
 cies, with his garland and singing robes about him;" 
 and while suffering the bitterest penalties of honesty and 
 genius, in that age of shallow wit and profound villany, 
 his soul never ceased to glow with the grandeur of 
 that earlier day, when he had stood forth foremost 
 amoilg the champions of truth, and like his own invinci- 
 ble warrior, ZEAL, " a spirit of the largest size and 
 divinest mettle," had driven his fiery chariot over the 
 heads of " scarlet prelates," " bruising their stiff necks 
 under his flaming wheels." The genius of Milton is 
 indeed worthy all the admiration we award marvellous 
 intellectual endowment ; but how much more do we ven- 
 erate the whole man, when we find it riveted to that high 
 and hardy moral courage which makes his name thunder 
 rebuke to all power that betrays freedom, to all genius 
 that is false to virtue ! Dante, Schiller, Shelley, Milton, 
 poets, heroes, martyrs, must the mournful truth be 
 forced from our reluctant lips, 
 
 " Their mighty spirits 
 Lie raked up with their ashes hi their urns, 
 And not a spark of their eternal fire 
 Glows in a present bosom."
 
 26 AUTHORS. 
 
 The relation of an author to his age is the most impor- 
 tant of his life. We have seen what terrible temptations 
 beset him in this relation, how apt are his principles to 
 break like bubbles into air, when tried by want and oblo- 
 quy. But, perhaps, with him it is more properly a rela- 
 tion to his publisher ; and certainly few chapters of liter- 
 ary history are more curious than those relating to the 
 connection of writers and booksellers. In this division 
 of his life, the man of letters appears as a man of busi- 
 ness. No two classes connected by ties of interest have 
 hated each other more cordially than these ; and none 
 have had more reason. It is difficult to say which has 
 suffered most. The result of all inquiries may be 
 summed up in this, that booksellers have realized for- 
 tunes out of works they purchased for a pittance, and 
 that on a majority of published books there has been a 
 loss. "Learning," pithily says old Dr. Fuller, "has 
 made most by those books on which the printers have 
 lost." On one side, we are told that booksellers are 
 grasping and knavish; capitalists who loan money on 
 mortgages of brain and conscience; bon-vivants, who 
 drink their wine out of authors' skulls. That fine old 
 poet, Michael Drayton, calls them " a base company of 
 knaves, whom he scorns and kicks at." Epithets as 
 contemptuous swarm in all printed books. Indeed, the 
 author heretofore has shown little sagacity in his deal-
 
 AUTHORS. 27 
 
 ings with "the trade." He has sold his commodities 
 when spurred by pressing necessities ; and it is an uni- 
 versal rule, that when the author wants money the pub- 
 lisher never wants books. No writer who does not 
 desire to end his life in beggary and despair, should 
 ever treat with a bookseller when he is dunned by a 
 washerwoman or dogged by a sheriff. In the present 
 century, Scott, Byron, Moore, Mackintosh, and Dickens, 
 have shown in this far more tact and shrewdness than 
 their brethren of fonner times. Scott was nominally 
 paid nearly a million of dollars for his works. Byron 
 received ten dollars a line for the fourth canto of Childe 
 Harold. Moore obtained two thousand pounds for his 
 Life of Sheridan, three thousand pounds for Lalla Rookh, 
 four thousand pounds for his Life of Byron. The list 
 might be indefinitely extended. But, in fact, until the 
 latter part of the last century, the science of book- 
 making and book-publishing was imperfectly understood. 
 The " reading public " is a creation of the last eighty 
 years. Previously, writers depended for subsistence 
 chiefly on the theatre, the patronage of the noble, the 
 favor of sects and factions. The age of general intel- 
 ligence, which makes the great body of the nation the 
 dispensers of fame and fortune, had not commenced. 
 The work best remunerated during the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries was Pope's translation of the Iliad,
 
 28 AUTHORS. 
 
 for which he received about five thousand three hun- 
 dred pounds. Most of Pope's contemporaries were but 
 poorly paid for their literary tasks, and he himself re- 
 ceived but fifteen pounds for the Essay on Criticism, and 
 twenty-two pounds for the Rape of the Lock. Byron 
 calls the hacks of an eminent bookseller of that period 
 " Jacob Tonson's ragamuffins." Pope, in satirizing 
 them, dwelt with malicious emphasis on their rags 
 and their hunger. The age which succeeded that 
 of Queen Anne was still worse. The patronage of 
 nobles and politicians, which had been freely extended 
 to the best poets of the preceding generation, was 
 withdrawn. A large portion of the life of so eminent 
 a man as Dr. Johnson was spent in a desperate and 
 nearly fruitless attempt to keep up the connection be- 
 tween his body and soul, constantly threatened by 
 pressing want. The character of a considerable portion 
 of professional authors was little higher than that of 
 street beggars. Occasionally they would obtain a little 
 money. Kiot and gaming soon relieved them of it. 
 With the proceeds of a successful pamphlet or servile 
 dedication, to use the words of another, " they soon diced 
 themselves into spunging-houses, or drank themselves 
 into fevers." The art of dodging a bailiff and bilking a 
 landlord was more important to the poet than the art 
 of pointing an epigram or polishing a period. Some
 
 AUTHORS. 29 
 
 of these men were fortunate enough to have residences 
 in cellars or garrets ; but most of them, with the blue tent 
 of the sky pitched above their heads, must have waited 
 all night, with shivering frames, for the sweet influences 
 fabled to fall from Orion and the Pleiades. The gulf 
 that yawned between the mouth of a poet and the shop 
 of a baker was almost as deep and wide as that which 
 spread between Lazarus and Dives. Only by the fiercest 
 exertion could the chasm be abridged, and a frail com- 
 munication opened between the two. Of course, such 
 persons, with five ravenous senses unsupplied, were ready 
 to write anything which would afford them a few guineas. 
 The booksellers, under whose " inquisitorious and tyran- 
 nical duncery no free and splendid wit could flourish," 
 keeping them accurately poised between want and utter 
 starvation, employed them to celebrate any remarkable 
 event, any piece of domestic scandal, any assault upon 
 decorum and decency , 4 which would be likely to sell. 
 This era, the darkest and most dreary in English 
 letters, presents the most melancholy satire on author- 
 ship extant. There will you see the last infirmity and 
 profanation of intellect, sin shorn of its dazzling robes, 
 and strutting no longer on its Satanic stilts, but creeping, 
 shrivelled and shivering, to its slavish tasks, chained to 
 the ever restless wheel of its objectless drudgery, to be
 
 30 
 
 AUTHORS. 
 
 tumbled down at last into the dust with poverty and 
 shame. 
 
 We now come to a delicate part of the subject, which 
 every prudent man would wish to avoid, the relation 
 of authors to domestic life, their glory or shame as lovers 
 and husbands. One great fact here stares us in the 
 face, that the majority of those men who, from Homer 
 downwards, have done most to exalt woman into a 
 divinity, have either been bachelors or unfortunate hus- 
 bands. Prudence forbid that I should presume to give 
 the philosophy of this singular, and, doubtless, accidental 
 occurrence, or find any preestablished harmony be- 
 tween heaven-scaling imaginations and vixenish wives. 
 Still, it must be said, that not only with regard to poets, 
 but authors generally, a great many have been unhap- 
 pily married; and a great many more, perhaps you 
 would say, unhappily unmarried. The best treatise on 
 divorce was written by the laureate of Eve and the cre- 
 ator of the lady in Comus. The biography of scholars and 
 philosophers sometimes hints at voices neither soft nor 
 low piercing the ears of men meditating on Greek roots, 
 or framing theories of the moral sentiments. You all 
 know the aidful sympathy that Socrates received from 
 Xantippe, in his great task of confuting the lying inge- 
 nuities of the Greek sophists, and bringing down philos- 
 ophy from heaven to earth. The face of one of Eng-
 
 AUTHORS. 31 
 
 land's earliest and best linguists is reported to have often 
 exhibited crimson marks, traced by no loving fingers; 
 and Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and English, must often 
 have met and run together in his brain, as it reeled 
 beneath the confusing ring of a fair hand knocking at his 
 ears. The helpmates of Whitelocke and Bishop Coop- 
 er were tempestuous viragos, endowed with a genius 
 for scolding, who burnt their husbands' manuscripts, 
 
 and broke in upon their studies and meditations with 
 
 t 
 
 reproaches and threats. Hooker, the saint and sage of 
 English divinity, was married to an acute vixen, with a 
 temper compounded of vinegar and saltpetre, and a 
 tongue as explosive as gun-cotton. Addison espoused a 
 countess ; and spent the rest of his life in taverns, clubs, 
 tnd repentance. 
 
 Some men of genius, Moliere and Rousseau, for ex- 
 ample, have had unsympathizing wives. Sir Walter 
 Scott, walking once with his wife in the fields, called 
 her attention to some lambs, remarking that they were 
 beautiful. " Yes," echoed she, " lambs are beautiful, 
 boiled ! " That incomparable essayist and chirping phi- 
 losopher, Montaigne, married but once. When his good 
 wife left him, he shed the tears usual on such occasions, 
 and said he would not marry again, though it were to 
 Wisdom herself. A young painter of great promise 
 once told ftir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken a wife.
 
 32 AUTHORS. 
 
 "Married!" ejaculated the horrified Sir Joshua; "then 
 you are ruined as an artist." Michael Angelo, when 
 asked why he never married, replied, " I have espoused 
 my art, and that occasions me sufficient domestic cares ; 
 for my works shall be my children." The wives of 
 Dante, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Steele, shed no glory 
 on the sex, and brought no peace to their firesides. The 
 bitterest satires and noblest eulogies on married life have 
 come from poets. Love, indeed, has ever been the 
 inspiration of poetry. From Theocritus all the way 
 down to the young gentleman that drizzled in yesterday's 
 newspaper, it has provoked millions on millions of good 
 and bad verses, most of which have been kindly gathered 
 by Oblivion under her dusky wing. Among these 
 mountains of amatory poetry, there are doubtless some of 
 the finest imaginations and truest and noblest sentiments 
 ever breathed from the lips of genius ; but the greater 
 portion only prove, that if love softens the heart, it does 
 not always decline performing a similar service to the 
 head. I know a very sensible man who preserves in an 
 iron box some of these metrical indiscretions of his youth, 
 in order, if he is ever accused of a capital crime, that he 
 may produce them as furnishing indubitable proofs of 
 insanity. The most notable instance of inconstancy 
 related in the "loves of the poets" is that of Lucy 
 Sacheverell, to whom Col. Lovelace, the Philip Sidney
 
 AUTHORS. 33 
 
 of Charles I.'s court, was warmly attached. He cele- 
 brated her accomplishments m some exquisite poetry ; 
 but, on his being taken prisoner in one of the wars of the 
 time, and reported to be dead, she hastily married 
 another. He soon returned to his native land, impre- 
 cated divers anathemas on the sex, and declined into a 
 vagabond, dying perhaps of a malady, common enough 
 in dark ages, but now happily banished from genteeV 
 
 society;, a broken heart. 
 
 
 
 Perhaps the sweetest pictures in the poetry of human 
 life are those which represent the domestic felicity 
 of those authors who married happily. The wives 
 of Wieland, Buffon, Gesner, Herder, Priestley, Words- 
 worth, not to mention others, are especially honored 
 among women. Who has not sometimes seen, in the 
 wife of scholar or artist, that elusive and unutterable 
 charm, which has made his heart echo the praise of 
 Fletcher's ideal Panthea? 
 
 " She is not fair 
 
 Nor beautiful ; these words express her not : 
 They say her looks have something excellent, 
 That wants a name yet." 
 
 Wordsworth, with that pensive spiritualism which char- 
 acterizes all his poetry relating to the affections, has in 
 three lines fitly immortalized his own noble wife, as 
 
 3
 
 34 AUTHORS. 
 
 " She who dwells with me, whom I have loved 
 With such communion, that no place on earth 
 Can ever be a solitude to me." 
 
 Wherever, in fact, a noble spirit has been fortunate in 
 his domestic relations, he has left testimonials in his 
 writings that those human affections, which are the 
 monopoly of none, are more productive of solid happi- 
 ness than wealth, or power, or fame ; than learning that 
 comprehends all knowledge ; than understanding which 
 sweeps over the whole domain of thought ; than imag- 
 inations which rise and run over regions to which the 
 " heaven of heavens is but a veil." 
 
 Of the relations of authors to social life, of their habits, 
 manners, dispositions in society, as contrasted with those 
 displayed in their writings, a great deal that is interest- 
 ing might be said. A man of letters is often a man 
 with two natures, one a book nature, the other a human 
 nature. These often clash sadly. Seneca wrote in 
 praise of poverty, on a table formed of solid gold, with 
 two millions of pounds let out at usury. Sterne was a 
 very selfish man ; according to Warburton, an irreclaim- 
 able rascal ; yet a writer unexcelled for pathos and char- 
 ity. Sir Richard Steele wrote excellently well on tem- 
 perance, when he was sober. Dr. Johnson's essays on 
 politeness are admirable ; yet his " You lie, sir ! " and 
 " You don't understand the question, sir!" were too
 
 AUTHORS. 35 
 
 common characteristics of his colloquies. He and Dr. 
 Shebbeare were both pensioned at the same time. The 
 report immediately flew, that the king had pensioned 
 two bears, a he-bear and a she-bear. Young, whose 
 gloomy fancy cast such sombre tinges on life, was in 
 society a brisk, lively man, continually pelting his 
 hearers with puerile puns. Mrs. Carter, fresh from the 
 stern, dark grandeur of the Night Thoughts, expressed 
 her^ amazement at his flippancy. "Madam," said he, 
 " there is much difference between writing and talking." 
 The same poet's favorite theme was the nothingness of 
 worldly things ; his favorite pursuit was rank and riches. 
 Had Mrs. Carter noticed this incongruity, he might have 
 added, "Madam, there is much difference between 
 writing didactic poems and living didactic poems." 
 Bacon, the most comprehensive and forward-looking of 
 modern intellects, and in feeling one of the most benevo- 
 lent, was meanly and wickedly ambitious of place. Of 
 the antithesis between the thoughts of this great bene- 
 factor of mankind and the actions of this inquisitor and 
 supple politician, Macaulay remarks, in his short, sharp 
 way, " To be the leader of his race, in the career of 
 improvement, was in his reach. All this, however, 
 was of no avail while some quibbling special pleader 
 was promoted before him to the bench ; while some 
 heavy country gentleman took precedence of him by
 
 36 AUTHORS. 
 
 virtue of a purchased coronet; while some pander, 
 happy in a fair wife, could obtain a more cordial salute 
 from Buckingham; while some buffoon, versed in the 
 latest scandal of the court, could draw a louder laugh 
 from James." 
 
 But enough for the external life of authors. Their 
 inward life is what most concerns posterity, and consti- 
 tutes their immortal existence. We might, for instance, 
 speculate on the outward life of Shakspeare, and obtain 
 tolerably clear notions of his acts and conversation as 
 they appeared to his contemporaries ; but of those awful 
 periods when the conceptions of Lear and Hamlet, of 
 Macbeth and Timon, dawned upon his mind ; of those 
 moments when his shaping and fusing imagination trav- 
 ersed earth and heaven, "invisible but gazing;" of 
 those hours of meditation when the whole chart of exist- 
 ence lay before his inward eye, and he sounded all its 
 depths and shallows ; these we must seek in the im- 
 mortal pages wherein they are chronicled. And here 
 lies our indebtedness to authors, the undying benefactors 
 of all ages. How shall we fitly estimate this vast inher- 
 itance of the world's intellectual treasures, to which all 
 are born heirs ? What words can declare the immeas- 
 urable worth of books, what rhetoric set forth the im- 
 portance of that great invention which diffused them 
 over the whole earth to glad its myriads of minds ? The
 
 AUTHORS. 37 
 
 invention of printing added a new element of power to 
 the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the 
 brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, 
 hooks and not kings, were to rule the world ; and weap- 
 ons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than 
 the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle- 
 axe. The conflicts of the world were not to take place 
 altogether on the tented field ; but Ideas, leaping from a 
 world's^ awakened intellect, and burning all over with 
 indestructible life, were to be marshalled against princi- 
 palities and powers. The great and the good, whose 
 influence before had been chiefly over individual minds, 
 were now to be possessed of a magic, which, giving 
 wings to their thoughts, would waft them, like so many 
 carrier doves, on messages of hope and deliverance to 
 the nations. Words, springing fresh and bright from 
 the soul of a master-spirit, and dropping into congenial 
 hearts like so many sparks of fire, were no longer to lose 
 this being with the vibrations of the air they disturbed, 
 or moulder with the papyrus on which they were writ- 
 ten, but were to be graven in everlasting characters, 
 and rouse, strengthen, and illumine the minds of all 
 ages. There was to be a stern death-grapple between 
 Might and Right, between the heavy arm and the 
 ethereal thought, between that which was and that 
 which ought to be ; for there was a great spirit abroad in
 
 38 AUTHORS. 
 
 the world, whom dungeons could not confine, nor oceans 
 check, nor persecutions subdue, whose path lay through 
 the great region of ideas, and whose dominion was over 
 the mind. 
 
 If such were the tendency of that great invention 
 which leaped or bridged the barriers separating mind 
 from mind and heart from heart, who shall calculate its 
 effect in promoting private happiness ? Books, light- 
 houses erected in the great sea of time, books, the 
 precious depositories of the thoughts and creations of 
 genius, books, by whose sorcery times past become 
 time present, and the whole pageantry of the world's 
 history moves in solemn procession before our eyes ; 
 these were to visit the firesides of the humble, and lavish 
 the treasures of the intellect upon the poor. Could we 
 have Plato, and Shakspeare, and Milton, in our dwellings, 
 in the full vigor of their imaginations, in the full freshness 
 of their hearts, few scholars would be affluent enough to 
 afford them physical support; but the living images of 
 their minds are within the eyes of all. From their 
 pages their mighty souls look out upon us in all their 
 grandeur and beauty, undimmed by the faults and follies 
 of earthly existence, consecrated by time. Precious and 
 priceless are the blessings which books scatter around 
 our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the 
 noblest spirits, through the most sublime and enchanting
 
 AUTHORS. 39 
 
 regions, regions which, to all that is lovely in the 
 forms and colors of earth, 
 
 " Add the gleam, 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream." 
 
 A motion of the hand brings all Arcadia to sight. The 
 war of Troy can, at our bidding, rage in the narrowest 
 chamber. Without stirring from our firesides, we may 
 roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar 
 into realms where Spenser's shapes of unearthly beauty 
 flock to meet us, where Milton's angels peal in our ears 
 the choral hymns of Paradise. Science, art, literature, 
 philosophy, all that man has thought, all that man has 
 done, the experience that has been bought with the suf- 
 ferings of a hundred generations, all are garnered up 
 for us in the world of books. There, among realities, in a 
 " substantial world," we move with the crowned kings of 
 thought. There our minds have a free range, our hearts 
 a free utterance. Reason is confined within none of the 
 partitions which trammel it in life. The hard granite of 
 conventionalism melts away as a thin mist. We call 
 things by their right names. Our lips give not the lie 
 to our hearts. We bend the knee only to the great and 
 good. We despise only the despicable ; we honor only 
 the honorable. In that world, no divinity hedges a king,
 
 40 AUTHORS. 
 
 no accident of rank or fashion ennobles a dunce, or 
 shields a knave. There, and almost only there, do our 
 affections have free play. "We can select our compan- 
 ions from among the most richly gifted of the sons of 
 God, and they are companions who will not desert us in 
 poverty, or sickness, or disgrace. When everything 
 else fails, when fortune frowns, and friends cool, and 
 health forsakes us, when this great world of forms 
 and shows appears a " two-edged lie, which seems hut 
 ts not," when all our earth-clinging hopes and ambi- 
 tions melt away into nothingness, 
 
 " Like snow-falls on a river, 
 One moment white, then gone forever," 
 
 we are still not without friends to animate and console 
 us, friends, in whose immortal countenances, as they 
 look out upon us from books, we can discern no change ; 
 who will dignify low fortunes and humble life with 
 their kingly presence; who will people solitude with 
 shapes more glorious than ever glittered in palaces; 
 who will consecrate sorrow and take the sting from 
 care ; and who, in the long hours of despondency and 
 weakness, will send healing to the sick heart, and 
 energy to the wasted brain. Well might Milton exclaim, 
 in that impassioned speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed 
 Printing, where every word leaps with intellectual life, 
 " Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's
 
 AUTHORS. 41 
 
 image ; but who destroys a good book kills reason itself, 
 kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many 
 a man lives a burden upon the earth; but a good 
 book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, em- 
 balmed ana treasured up on purpose for a life beyond 
 life!"
 
 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS* 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 MUCH has been said and written on the uses and 
 abuses of fiction. Novel-writing and novel-reading have 
 commonly been held in low estimation by grave and 
 sensible people, or rather by people whose gravity has 
 been received as the appropriate garment of sense. 
 Many are both amused, and ashamed of being amused 
 by this class of compositions; and, accordingly, in the 
 libraries of well-regulated families, untouched volumes 
 of history and philosophy glitter on prominent book- 
 shelves in all the magnificence of burnished bindings, 
 while the poor, precious novel, dog's-eared and wasted 
 as it may be by constant handling, is banished to some 
 secret but accessible nook, in order that its modest 
 merit may not evoke polite horror. It thus becomes 
 a kind of humble companion, whose prattle is pleas- 
 
 * Delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, 
 December, 1844.
 
 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 43 
 
 ant enough when alone, but who must be cut in 
 genteel company. And thus, many a person whose 
 heart is beating hard in admiration of Mr. Richard 
 Turpin's ride to York, or whose imagination is filled 
 with the image of Mr. James's solitary horseman slowly 
 wending up the hill, still in public vehemently chatters 
 on subjects with which he has no sympathy, and on 
 books which he has never read. 
 
 Against good novels, that is, against vivid representa- 
 tions /5T idealizations of life, character, and manners, in 
 this or in any past age, there would seem to be no valid 
 objection ; but this department of literature has unfor- 
 tunately been a domain in which the whole hosts of 
 folly, stupidity, and immorality, have encamped. A 
 good portion of the feeble things purporting to be novels 
 are bad, and some of them execrably bad. Ink-wasters, 
 who could write nothing else, whom nature never in- 
 tended to write anything, have still considered them- 
 selves abundantly qualified to write fiction; conse- 
 quently, all the nonsense and fat-wittedness in poor 
 perverted human nature have been fully represented in 
 the congress of romance. Of all printed books that ever 
 vexed the wise and charmed the foolish, a bad novel is 
 probably that which best displays how far the mind can 
 descend in the sliding scale of sense and nature. In the 
 art of embodying imbecility of thought and pettiness of
 
 44 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 sentiment in a style correspondingly mean and gauzy, 
 all other men and women have been fairly distanced by 
 certain novelists, not altogether unblessed now with 
 popularity and influence. 
 
 This fact brings us to the distinctions existing between 
 the widely different works classed under the common 
 name of novels; namely, novels written by men of 
 genius ; novels written by commonplace men ; and novels 
 written by dunces. Commonplace and stupid novels, 
 and commonplace and stupid admirers of them, every 
 community can boast of possessing ; but prose fictions of 
 the higher class are rare. When, however, a man of 
 genius embodies his mind in this form, it is ridiculous to 
 allow any prejudice against the name to prevent us from 
 acquiring the knowledge and enjoying the delight he is 
 able to convey. If he be a great novelist, we may be 
 sure that he has succeeded in a department of letters 
 requiring a richly-gifted mind and heart, and that his 
 success entitles him to some of the proudest honors of 
 the intellect. 
 
 The novel, indeed, is one of the most effective, if not 
 most perfect forms of composition, through which a com- 
 prehensive mind can communicate itself to the world, 
 exhibiting, as it may, through sentiment, incident, and 
 character, a complete philosophy of life, and admitting a 
 dramatic and narrative expression of the abstract princi
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 45 
 
 pies of ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Its range is 
 theoretically as wide and deep as man and nature. Life 
 is its subject, life in all its changes and modifications, by 
 climate, by national and local manners, by conventional 
 usages, by individual peculiarities, by distance in time 
 and space, by every influence, in short, operating on the 
 complex nature of man. It is the most difficult of at 
 modes of composition, for, in its perfection, it requires a 
 mind capable of perceiving and representing all varieties 
 of life and character, of being tolerant to all, and of real- 
 izing them to the eye and heart with vivid and vital 
 truth. The great novelist should be a poet, philosopher, 
 and man of the world, fused into one. Understanding 
 man as well as men, the elements of human nature as 
 well as the laws of their combinations, he should possess 
 the most extensive practical knowledge of society, the 
 most universal sympathies with his kind, and a nature 
 at once shrewd and impassioned, observant and creative, 
 with large faculties harmoniously balanced. His enthusi- 
 asm should never hurry him into bigotry of any kind, not 
 even into bigoted hatred of bigotry ; for, never appearing 
 personally in his work as the champion of any of his 
 characters, representing all faithfully, and studious to 
 give even Satan his due, he must simply exhibit things 
 in their right relations, and trust that morality of effect 
 will result from truth of representation.
 
 46 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 It is evident that this exacting ideal of a novelist has 
 never been realized. In most of the novels written by 
 men of powerful talents, we have but eloquent expres- 
 sions of one-sided views of life. In some, the author 
 represents himself, ideals of himself, and negations of 
 himself, instead of mankind. Others are rhetorical ad- 
 dresses, in favor of vice or virtue, religion or irreligion, 
 clumsily cast into a narrative and colloquial form, in 
 which we have a view of the abstract feebly struggling 
 after the concrete, but unable to achieve its laudable pur- 
 pose. In some novels of a higher grade, we notice a 
 predominance of the poetical, or philanthropic, or moral 
 element, and though in these we may have pictures, the 
 author constantly appears as showman. Perhaps Scott, 
 of all novelists, approaches nearest to the ideal, as far as 
 his perceptions in the material and spiritual world ex- 
 tended. Whatever lay on the broad mirror of his imag- 
 ination he fairly painted ; but there were many things 
 which that mirror, glorious as it was, did not reflect. 
 Fielding, within the range of his mind, approaches near 
 absolute perfection ; and if he had possessed as keen a 
 sense of the supernatural as the natural, he might have 
 taken the highest rank among great constructive and 
 .-.reative minds; but he had no elevation of soul, and 
 little power of depicting it in imagination. As it is., 
 however, the life-like reality of the characters and scenes
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 47 
 
 he has painted, indicates that his genius was bounded 
 by nothing but his sentiments. Perhaps the greatest 
 single novel, judged by this standard of comprehensive- 
 ness, is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. It was the rich 
 result of ten years' labor; and there is hardly a faculty 
 of the mind, a feeling of the heart, or an aspiration of 
 the soul, which has not contributed something to its 
 interest, its value, or its beauty. Imagination, fancy, 
 passion, humor, sentiment, understanding, observation, 
 the shrewdest practical wisdom, the loftiest idealism, 
 the acutest and most genial criticism on art and litera- 
 ture, the keenest satire on social foibles, all have their 
 place within the limits of one novel, without producing 
 confusion or discord ; for they are all but ministers 
 working the will of one self-conscious and far-darting in- 
 telligence, that perceives with the clearest insight each 
 shape and shade of many-colored life, without being 
 swayed by any ; delineating everything, yet seemingly 
 advocating nothing; and allowing virtue and vice, knowl- 
 edge and ignorarice, enthusiasm and mockery, to meet 
 and jostle, with a provoking indifference, apparently, to 
 the triumph of either. But perhaps the range of the 
 characterization, including, as it does, so many varying 
 types of humanity, from the vulgar sensualist to the 
 mystic pietist, is more to be admired than the felicity 
 with which each is individualized; and the English
 
 48 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 reader especially, while he cannot but wonder at the 
 author's abundance of ideas, and be thrilled by the 
 transcendent dramatic excellence displayed in the delin- 
 eation of a few of the characters, will still miss that 
 solid, substantial, indisputable personality he ever finds, 
 not only in the creations of Shakspeare, but in those of 
 Addison and Goldsmith, of Fielding and Scott. In 
 Wilhelm Meister, we generally think more of the knowl- 
 edge of man and nature we acquire through the charac- 
 ters, than of the characters themselves, a sign that 
 the philosophic and the ideal have not been realized 
 throughout with sufficient intensity to produce perfect 
 forms of individual life. 
 
 Although English literature is now, in respect to 
 novels of character and manners, the richest in the 
 world, we still find that the novel had not acquired 
 much eminence as a department of imaginative litera- 
 ture until about the middle of the last century. Prose 
 fiction was generally abandoned to writers who lacked 
 the ability to embody their folly or indecency in verse. 
 Richardson was the first man of genius who put forth 
 his whole strength in this department of composition, 
 and Fielding began his admirable series of fictions rather 
 with the design of ridiculing Richardson than of forming 
 a new school of novelists. Smollett, without possessing 
 Fielding's depth and geniality of nature, or Richardson's
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 49 
 
 intense sentiment and hold upon the passions, still ex- 
 hibited so large a knowledge of the world, such immense 
 fertility of invention, such skill in the delineation of 
 humorists, and such power in awakening both laughter 
 and terror, that his works, though vitiated by the caustic 
 bitterness of his temper, and by a misanthropic vulgarity 
 calculated to inspire disgust rather than pleasure, have 
 won for him a position side by side with Richardson and 
 Fielding, as the founder of an influential school of nov- 
 elistst Following these great men in rapid succession, 
 came Sterne, Goldsmith, Charles Johnstone, Fanny 
 Burney, Walpole, Clara Reeve, Robert Bage, Macken- 
 zie, and Mrs. Radcliffe, each of them possessing a vein 
 of originality, and occupying some new department of 
 fiction ; and two of them, Sterne and Goldsmith, estab- 
 lishing a renown which promises to survive all mutations 
 of taste. As the tone of morality and delicacy in works 
 of fiction varies with the moral variations of society, and 
 as the Anglo-Saxon mind seems penetrated by an ine- 
 radicable love of coarseness, the writings of many men- 
 tioned on our list are not particularly characterized by 
 decorum. Indeed, until Miss Burney began to write, in 
 1778, decency was not considered a necessary ingredient 
 of romance. Richardson has a minute and ludicrously 
 formal method of dwelling upon licentious situations, and 
 
 Fielding and Smollett include a considerable amount of 
 4
 
 50 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 profanity and ribaldjy, which the least prudish reader 
 must pronounce superfluous. The dunces, as a matter 
 of course, adopted, with some additions, the vulgarity of 
 their betters, and superadded large quantities of stupidity 
 from their own minds. Novels, therefore, soon came 
 under the ban of the religious and prudent ; anathemas 
 were freely launched at them from the fireside and the 
 pulpit; and parents might be excused for some bitter- 
 ness of invective transcending the cool judgments of 
 criticism, especially if a son was engaged in running the 
 career of Peregrine Pickle, or a daughter was emulating 
 the little eccentricities of Lady Betty Careless. 
 
 But about the beginning of the present century, a new 
 order of fictions came into fashion. As novelties com- 
 monly succeed with the public, some enterprising authors 
 tried the speculation of discarding indecency. Senti- 
 mentality, the opposite evil, was substituted, and the 
 dynasty of rakes was succeeded by the dynasty of flats. 
 Lady Jane Brazenface, the former heroine, abdicated in 
 favor of Lady Arabella Dieaway. The bold, free, reck- 
 less libertine of the previous romances, now gave way to 
 a lavendered young gentleman, the very pink and 
 essence of propriety, faultless in features and in morals, 
 and the undisputed proprietor of crushed affections and 
 two thousand sterling a year. The inspiration of this 
 tribe of novelists was love and weak tea ; the soul-shat-
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 51 
 
 tering period of courtship was their field of action. Con- 
 sidered as a mirror of actual life, this school was inferior 
 to the worst specimens of that which it supplanted ; for 
 the human race deserves this equivocal compliment to its 
 intelligence, that it has more rogues than sentimentalists. 
 However, the thing, bad as it was, had its day. Santo 
 Sebastiano, Thaddeus of Warsaw, The Children of the 
 Abbey, and other dispensations of a similar kind, exer- 
 cised the despotism of sentimental cant over the circu- 
 lating libraries, and their painfully perfect Matildas, 
 Annas, Theresas, and Lauras, became the ideal of the 
 sex. It is evident that these novels, as we see them now 
 enveloped in their moist atmosphere of sickly sensibility, 
 required the smallest capital of intelligence that ever suf- 
 ficed for the business of literature. A hero, whose duty 
 it is to suffer impossible things and say foolish ones; 
 a heroine, oscillating between elegant miseries and gen- 
 teel ecstacies ; a testy old father, from whom the gout 
 occasionally forces a scrap of reason ; a talkative maiden 
 aunt, who imagines the hero to be in love with herself; 
 a pert chambermaid, who fibs and cheats for her mis- 
 tress, and, at the same time, looks after some John or 
 Peter on whom her own undying affections have settled ; 
 and a deep villain, who is the only sensible person in 
 the book; these shadows of character, which the 
 author has the impertinence to call men and women,
 
 52 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 joined to an unlimited power to create and demolish for- 
 tunes, constitute about all the matter we have been able 
 to find in some scores of these novels. The style is 
 bountifully sprinkled with a kind of interjectional pathos, 
 consisting mainly of a frequent repetition of ah ! and oh ! 
 The whole wretched mixture, despicable in every re- 
 spect, still passed for many years, with far the largest 
 portion of the reading public, for the genuine expression 
 of the human heart and imagination. 
 
 It is principally from this vapid class of novels that 
 the contemporary parental objection to works of fiction 
 has arisen. Even at the period of their popularity, they 
 were mostly esteemed by persons at a certain age of life 
 and a certain stage of intellectual development; and 
 there are doubtless many still living who can recollect 
 the peevish disdain with which the master, and the vol- 
 uble indignation with which the mistress, of a family, 
 beheld their entrance into the house. 
 
 But these fictions all fled, like mists before the sun 
 when Scott appeared with Waverley. Since then, the 
 novel has risen to a new importance in literature, and 
 exerted a great influence upon departments of intellect- 
 ual labor with which it seems to have little in common. 
 Thierry, one of the greatest of modern historians, con- 
 fesses that the reading of Ivanhoe revealed to him the 
 proper method of historical composition. From being
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 53 
 
 the weak companion of the laziest hours of the laziest 
 people, the novel, under the impulse it received from 
 Scott, became the illustrator of history, the mirror and 
 satirist of manners, the vehicle of controverted opinions 
 m philosophy, politics, and religion. In its delineations 
 of character and its romantic and heroical incidents, it 
 took the place of the drama and the epic. But in becom- 
 ing the most popular mode of communication with the 
 public, it induced an indiscriminate rush of mediocrity 
 and charlatanism into romance, so great as almost to 
 overwhelm the talent and genius travelling in the same 
 path. In addition to this multitude of rogues and dunces, 
 there was another multitude of preachers and controver- 
 sialists, eager to inculcate some system, good or bad, re- 
 lating to other departments of literature, and who should 
 have written treatises and sermons instead of novels. Mr. 
 Plumer Ward desires to answer some arguments against 
 Christianity, and forthwith publishes a novel. Professor 
 Sewall has a dislike to the law of supply and demand, 
 hates Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel, and con- 
 siders Romanists and Dissenters as criminals ; and the 
 result of these opinions and antipathies is a novel. Dr. 
 Croly desires to give a narrative of some political and 
 military events, and to analyze the characters of some 
 prominent statesmen, during the present century ; and 
 accordingly declaims, rhapsodizes, and pastes the purple
 
 54 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 patches of his rhetoric on a long colloquial dissertation, 
 and calls the agglomeration a novel. There is, of 
 course, no objection to the matter of their works, pro- 
 vided it were treated dramatically ; but this substitution 
 of opinions for characters and incidents, is altogether 
 from the purpose of novel-writing. 
 
 Of these various classes of fiction, that which, next to 
 Scott's, attained for a few years the most popularity and 
 influence, was the school of Bulwer, or the novel of fash- 
 ionable life. The publication of Pelham heralded a new 
 intellectual dynasty of fops and puppies. Bulwer's orig- 
 inal idea of a hero was the greatest satire ever written 
 by a man of talent on his own lack of mental elevation. 
 He attempted to reali2e in a fictitious character his no- 
 tion of what a man should be, and accordingly produced 
 an agglomeration of qualities, called Pelham, in which 
 the dandy, the scholar, the sentimentalist, the statesman, 
 the roue, and the blackguard, were all to be included in 
 one "many-sided" man, whose merits would win equal 
 applause from the hearty and the heartless, the lover and 
 the libertine. Among these, however, the dandy stood 
 preeminent; and scholarship, sentiment, politics, licen- 
 tiousness, and ruffianism, were all bedizened in the frip- 
 pery of Almacks. To this character Bulwer added 
 another, who may be described in general terms as a 
 man burning with hatred and revenge, misanthropical
 
 CHAIILES DICKENS. 55 
 
 and moody, whose life had been blasted by s6me terrible 
 wrong, and whose miserable hours were devoted to plots, 
 curses, lamentations, and "convulsing" his face. These 
 two types of character, the one unskilfully copied from 
 Don Juan, the other from Lara, both of them Byrornc as 
 far as Bulwer could understand Byron, reappeared, like 
 ghosts of ghosts, in most of his succeeding novels. How- 
 ever much his mind may have grown, and his experi- 
 ence of life increased, since his first plunge into romance, 
 he nas never yet fully emancipated himself from these 
 original shackles. Indeed, Bulwer is rather an eloquent 
 and accomplished rhetorician than a delineator of life 
 and character. His intellect and feelings are both nar- 
 rowed by his personal character, and things which clash 
 with his individual tastes he criticizes rather than delin- 
 eates. Everything that he touches is Bulwerized. A 
 man of large acquirements, and ever ready to copy or 
 pilfer from other authors, he discolors all that he borrows. 
 The two sisters in Eugene Aram are copied directly from 
 Scott's Minna and Brenda Troil, and their relative posi- 
 tion is preserved ; but throughout there is manifested an 
 inability to preserve the features of the originals in their 
 purity, and accordingly their natural bloom soon changes 
 to fashionable rouge. That a man thus without humor 
 and dramatic imagination should be able to attain a 
 wile reputation as a novelist, is a triumph of pretension
 
 56 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 which must give delight to all engaged in experimenting 
 on the discrimination of the public. If we compare 
 him with any novelist possessing a vivid perception of 
 the real, in actual or imaginary life, we see instantly the 
 gulf which separates his splendid narrative essays from 
 true novels ; and his unreal mockeries of men and wo- 
 men, quickly passing from individualities into generaliz- 
 ations, stand out as embodied opinions on life and char- 
 acter, not representations of life and character. 
 
 In regard to the question which has been raised as to 
 the morality of Bulwer's fictions, it is hardly possible for 
 any person who, in reading a book, is accustomed to 
 observe the biases of the author's mind, to come but to 
 one conclusion. Their general tendency is not only 
 immoral, but it is evident that the writer plumes himself 
 on being superior to that vulgar code of practical ethics 
 which keeps society from falling to pieces ; and, in its 
 place, favors us with a far more elegant system, of which 
 the prominent principle is a morbid voluptuousness, com- 
 pounded of sensuality and noble sentiments, and admit 
 ting many resounding epithets of virtue and religioi, 
 when they will serve either to dignify a meanness c 
 point a period. To those who have no objection t 
 devils provided they are painted, this peculiar fomi t 
 morality may have its attractions. Considered in rei> 
 tion to Bulwer's mind, it is one illustration of his defc"*
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 57 
 
 as novelist, especially as indicating his lack of intel- 
 lectual conscientiousness, of that fine sagacity which 
 detects the false through all disguises, and seizes on the 
 true and real with the felicity and speed of instinct. 
 Without this genius for the truth, no novelist can suc- 
 ceed in a consistent exhibition of character ; and its 
 absence in Bulwer is the cause of the unnatural mixture 
 of vices and virtues in the personages of his novels. In 
 the present day, at least, when immorality is not of itself 
 a paSsport to popularity, moral obliquity ever indicates 
 an intellectual defect. 
 
 The success of Bulwer stirred the emulation of a 
 crowd of imitators, and for a considerable period the 
 domain of fiction was deluged by a flood of fashionable 
 novels. Bulwer possessed shining talents, if not a kind 
 of morbid genius ; but most of those who followed in his 
 wake produced a class of vapid fictions, full of puppyism 
 and conceit, illumined by hardly a ray of common sense 
 or moral sense, and as unparalleled in their dulness as 
 in their debility. How such dreary trash contrived to 
 find readers, is one of those unexplained mental phenom- 
 ena not solvable by any received theory of the mind. 
 Fashionable life is, at the best, but a perversion of life, 
 and represents human nature in one of its most unnat- 
 ural attitudes; but still it is life, and affords a fair 
 though limited field for light satire and sketchy charac- .
 
 58 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 terization. The authorlings who essayed to delineate it, 
 from their parlors or their garrets, brought to the task a 
 large stock of impudence and French phrases, perfect 
 freedom from moral obligations, a weakness of feeling 
 which it would be a compliment to call feminine, and an 
 extensive acquaintance with the modes and mysteries of 
 wearing apparel. The drawing-room and the boudoir, 
 the coxcomb's drawl and the fine lady's simper, white 
 waistcoats and top-boots, these were their inspiring 
 themes. The leading merit of these authors consisted 
 in their complete knowledge of clothes; their leading 
 defect, in forgetting to put men and women into them. 
 Lady Montague, in reference to a titled family of her 
 day named Hervey, said that God had created men, 
 women, and Herveys. The fashionable novelists delin- 
 eated the Herveys. 
 
 About the time that this way of writing nonsense had 
 lost its attractiveness, and every respectable critic wel- 
 comed each new specimen of it with an ominous excla- 
 mation of disgust, Charles Dickens appeared with the 
 Pickwick Papers. The immediate and almost unprec- 
 edented popularity he attained was owing not more to 
 his own genius than to the general contempt for the 
 school he supplanted. After ten years of conventional 
 frippery and foppery, it was a relief to have once more a 
 view of the earth and firmament, to feel once more
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 59 
 
 one of those touches of nature " which make the whole 
 world kin." Here was a man, at last, with none of the 
 daintiness of genteel society in his manner, belonging to 
 no clique or sect, with sympathies embracing widely 
 varying conditions of humanity, and whose warm heart 
 and observant eye had been collecting from boyhood 
 those impressions of man and nature which afterwards 
 gushed out in exquisite descriptions of natural scenery, 
 or took shape in his Pickwicks, Wellers, Vardens, Peck- 
 sni&s,""and their innumerable brotherhood. 
 
 Dickens, as a novelist and prose poet, is to be classed 
 in the front rank of the noble company to which he be- 
 longs. He has revived the novel of genuine practical 
 life, as it existed in the works of Fielding, Smollett, and 
 Goldsmith, but at the same time has given to his mate- 
 rials an individual coloring and expression peculiarly his 
 own. His characters, like those of his great exemplars, 
 constitute a world of their own, whose truth to nature 
 every reader instinctively recognizes in connection with 
 their truth to Dickens. Fielding delineates with more 
 exquisite art, standing more as the spectator of his per- 
 sonages, and commenting on their actions with an ironi- 
 cal humor, and a seeming innocence of insight, which 
 pierces not only into but through their very nature, lay- 
 ing bare their inmost unconscious springs of action, and 
 in every instance indicating that he understands them
 
 60 NOVELS AKD NOVELISTS : 
 
 better than they understand themselves. It is this per- 
 fection of knowledge and insight which gives to his 
 novels their naturalness, their freedom of movement, and 
 their value as lessons in human nature as well as con- 
 summate representations of actual life. Dickens's eye 
 for the forms of things is as accurate as Fielding's, and 
 his range of vision more extended ; but he does not 
 probe so profoundly into the heart of what he sees, and 
 he is more led away from the simplicity of truth by a 
 tricksy spirit of fantastic exaggeration. Mentally he is 
 indisputably below Fielding; but in tenderness, in pathos, 
 in sweetness and purity of feeling, in that comprehen- 
 siveness of sympathy which springs from a sense of 
 brotherhood with mankind, he is as indisputably above 
 him. 
 
 The tendency of Dickens's genius, both in delineating 
 the actual and the imaginary, is to personify, to individu- 
 alize. This makes his page all alive with character. Not 
 only does he never treat of man in the abstract, but he 
 gives personality to the rudest shows of nature, every- 
 thing he touches becoming symbolic of human sympa- 
 thies or antipathies. There is no writer more deficient in 
 generalization. His comprehensiveness is altogether of 
 the heart, but that heart, like the intelligence of Bacon's 
 cosmopolite, is not " an island cut off from other men's 
 lands, but a continent which joins to them." His obser
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 61 
 
 vation of life thus beginning and ending with individuals, 
 it seems strange that those highly sensitive and patriotic 
 Americans who paid him the compliment of flying into 
 a passion with his peevish remarks on our institutions, 
 should have overlooked the fact that his mind was alto- 
 gether destitute of the generalizing qualities of a states- 
 man, and that an angry humorist might have made 
 equally ludicrous pictures of any existing society. When 
 his work on America was quoted in the French Chamber 
 of Deputies, M. de Tocqueville ridiculed the notion that 
 any opinions of Mr. Dickens should be referred to in that 
 place as authoritative. There is a great difference be- 
 tween the criticism of a statesman and the laughter of a 
 tourist, especially when the tourist laughs not from his 
 heart, but his bile. The statesman passes over individ- 
 ual peculiarities to seize on general principles, while the 
 whole force of the other lies in the description of individ- 
 ual peculiarities. Dickens, detecting with the nicest tact 
 the foibles of men, and capable of setting forth our Be- 
 vans, Colonel Tompkinses, and Jefferson Bricks, in all 
 the comic splendor of humorous exaggeration, is still 
 unqualified to abstract a general idea of national charac- 
 ter from his observation of persons. A man immeasur- 
 ably inferior to him in creative genius might easily 
 excel him in that operation of the mind. Indeed, were 
 Dickens's understanding as comprehensive as his heart,
 
 62 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 and ai, vigorous as his fancy, he would come near realiz- 
 ing the ideal of a novelist ; but, as it is, it is as ridicu- 
 lous to be angry with any generalizations of his on 
 American institutions and politics, as it would be to 
 inveigh against him for any heresies he might blunder 
 into about innate ideas, the freedom of the will, or origi- 
 nal sin. Besides, as Americans, we have a decided 
 advantage over our transatlantic friends, even in the 
 matter of being caricatured by the novelist whom both 
 are rivals in admiring; for certainly, if there be any 
 character in which Dickens has seized on a national 
 trait, that character is Pecksniff, and that national trait 
 is English. 
 
 The whole originality and power of Dickens lies in 
 this instinctive insight into individual character, to which 
 we have already referred. He has gleaned all his facts 
 from observation and sympathy, in a diligent scrutiny 
 of actual life, and no contemporary author is less in- 
 debted to books. His style is all his own, its quaint 
 texture of fancy and humor being spun altogether from 
 his own mind, with hardly a verbal felicity which bears 
 the mark of being stolen. In painting character he is 
 troubled by no uneasy sense of himself. When he is 
 busy with Sam Weller or Mrs. Nickleby, he forgets 
 Charles Dickens. Not taking his own character as the 
 test of character, but entering with genial warmth into
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 63 
 
 the peculiarities of others, and making their joys and 
 sorrows his own, his perceptions are not bounded by his 
 personality, but continually apprehend and interpret new 
 forms of individual being; and thus his mind, by the 
 readiness with which it genially assimilates other minds, 
 and the constancy with which it is fixed on objects exter- 
 nal to itself, grows with every exercise of its powers. 
 By this felicity of nature, the man who began his lit- 
 erary life with a condemned farce, a mediocre opera, and 
 some slight sketches of character, written in a style 
 which but feebly indicated the germs of genius, produced 
 before the expiration of eight years, The Pickwick Pa- 
 pers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curi- 
 osity Shop, and Martin Chuzzlewit, in a continually 
 ascending scale of intellectual excellence, and achieved a 
 fame not only gladly recognized wherever the English 
 tongue was spoken, but which extended into France, 
 Germany, Italy, and Holland, and caused the translation 
 of his works into languages of which he hardly under- 
 stood a word. Had he been an egotist, devoured by a 
 ravenous vanity for personal display, and eager to print 
 the image of himself on the popular imagination, his 
 talents would hardly have made him known beyond 
 the street in which he lived, and his mind by self-admi- 
 ration would soon have been self-consumed. His fellow- 
 feeling with his race is his genius.
 
 64 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 The humanity, the wide-ranging and healthy sympa- 
 thies, and, especially, the recognition of the virtues 
 which obtain among the poor and humble, so observable 
 in the works of Dickens, are in a great degree charac- 
 teristic of the age, and without them popularity can 
 hardly be won in imaginative literature. The sentiment 
 of humanity, indeed, or a hypocritical affectation of it, 
 has become infused into almost all literature and speech, 
 from the sermons of Dr. Channing to the feuilletons of 
 Eugene Sue. It is exceedingly difficult for a man to be 
 as narrow as he could have been had he lived a century 
 ago. No matter how bigoted may be the tendencies of 
 his nature, no matter how strong may be his desire to 
 dwell in a sulky isolation from his race, he cannot 
 breathe the atmosphere of his time without feeling occa- 
 sionally a generous sentiment springing to his lips, with- 
 out perceiving occasionally a liberal opinion stealing into 
 his understanding. He cannot creep into any nook or 
 corner of seclusion, but that some grand sentiment or 
 noble thought will hunt him out, and surprise his soul 
 with a disinterested emotion. In view of this fact, a 
 bigot, who desires to be a man of the tenth century, who 
 strives conscientiously to narrow his intellect and shut 
 his heart, who mumbles the exploded nonsense of past 
 tyranny and exclusiveness, but who is still forced into 
 some accommodation to the spirit of the age in which he
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 6 
 
 lives, is worthy rather of the tender commiseration than 
 the shrewish invective of the philanthropists whom he 
 hates but imitates. 
 
 Now Dickens has an open sense for all the liberal 
 influences of his time, and commonly surveys human 
 nature from the position of charity and love. For the 
 foibles of character he has a sort of laughing toleration ; 
 and goodness of heart, no matter how overlaid with ludi- 
 crous weaknesses, has received from him its strongest 
 and subtlest manifestations. He not only makes us love 
 our kind in its exhibitions of moral beauty, but also 
 when frailties mingle with its excellence. Distinguish- 
 ing, with the instinctive tact of genius, the moral differ- 
 ences of persons and actions, and having a nicely ad- 
 justed scale of the degrees of folly and wickedness, not 
 one of his characters is just as wise or as foolish, as 
 good or as bad, as another ; and he also contrives to effect 
 that reconciliation of charity and morality, by which our 
 sympathies with weakness and toleration of error never 
 run into a morbid sentimentality. He deals in no soph- 
 istries to make evil appear good, and the worse the bet- 
 ter reason. He does not, as Bulwer is apt to do, dress 
 up a crowd of sharpers and adulterers in the purple and 
 fine linen of rhetoric, and then demand us to wish them 
 well in their business, an example of abstinence from 
 
 a common peccadillo of romancers worthy of especial 
 5
 
 66 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 praise in an age which appreciates George Sand ani 
 Dumas. If he refrains from thus superadding noble sen- 
 timents to animal appetites, he evolves, with a sagacity 
 in which he is only excelled by Wordsworth, beautiful 
 and heroic qualities from humble souls, disguised though 
 they may be in unsightly forms, and surrounded by gro- 
 tesque accompaniments. He makes the fact that happi- 
 ness and virtue are not confined to any one class a real- 
 ity to the mind ; and, by shedding over his pictures the 
 consecrations of a heart full of the kindliest sympathies, 
 
 11 Rustic life and poverty 
 Grow beautiful beneath his touch." 
 
 Kit Nubbles, in the Old Curiosity Shop, is a pertinent 
 example, among numerous others, of this searching hu- 
 manity of Dickens. Here is a boy, rough, uneducated, 
 ill-favored, the son of a washer-woman, the very opposite 
 of a common novelist's idea of the interesting, with a 
 name which at once suggests the ludicrous; yet, as 
 enveloped in the loving humor of Dickens, he becomes 
 a person of more engrossing interest and affection than a 
 thousand of the stereotyped heroes of fiction. We not 
 only like him, but the whole family, Mrs. Nubbles, Jacob, 
 the baby and all ; and yet nothing is overcharged in the 
 description, and every circumstance calculated to make 
 Kit an object for laughter is freely used. The materials
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 67 
 
 for numberless characters equally as interesting are 
 within the reach of all novelists ; but most of them are 
 ridden by some nightmare of dignity or gentility, which 
 compels them to pass by the hero in the alley for somf 
 piece of etiquette and broadcloth in the drawing-room 
 It is not the least of Dickens's merits that he excelled al] 
 his contemporaries, not by attempting to rival them on 
 their own selected vantage-ground, but by availing him- 
 self of matter which they deemed only worthy of pitying 
 contempt. He introduced the people of England to its 
 aristocracy ; and though there were not wanting dainty 
 and vulgar spirits to call his novels " low," he soon not 
 only gained the popular voice, but he overthrew the 
 fashionable novelists in their own circles, and his Wel- 
 lers and Swivellers, edging their way into boudoirs and 
 parlors, supplanted Pelhams and Cecils in the estimation 
 of countesses. 
 
 In thus representing life and character, there are two 
 characteristics of his genius which startle every reader 
 by their obviousness and power, humor and pathos ; 
 but, in respect to the operation of these qualities in his 
 delineations, critics have sometimes objected that his 
 humor is apt to run into fantastic exaggeration, and his 
 pathos into sentimental excess. Indeed, in regard to his 
 humorous characters, it may be said that the vivid inten- 
 sity with which he conceives them, and the overflowing
 
 68 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 abundance of joy and merriment which springs instmc"** 
 ively up from the very fountains of his being at the 
 slightest hint of the ludicrous, sometimes lead him to the 
 very verge of caricature. He seems himself to be taken 
 by surprise, as his glad and genial fancies throng into 
 his brain, and to laugh and exult with the beings he has 
 called into existence, in the spirit of a man observing, 
 not creating. Squeers and Pecksniff, Sim Tappertit 
 and Mark Tapley, Tony Weller and old John Willett, 
 although painted with such distinctness that we seem to 
 see them with the bodily eye, we still feel to be some- 
 what overcharged in the description. They are carica- 
 tured more in appearance than reality, and if grotesque 
 in form, are true and natural at heart. Such caricature 
 as this is to character what epigram is to fact, a mode 
 of conveying truth more distinctly by suggesting it 
 through a brilliant exaggeration. When we say of a 
 man, that he goes for the greatest good of the greatest 
 number, but that the greatest number to him is number 
 one, we express the fact of his selfishness as much as 
 though we said it in a literal way. The mind of the 
 reader unconsciously limits the extravagance into which 
 Dickens sometimes runs, and, indeed, discerns the actual 
 features and lineaments of the character shining the 
 more clearly through it. Such extravagance is com- 
 monly a powerful stimulant to accurate perception, espec-
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 69 
 
 ially to readers who lack fineness and readiness of intel- 
 lect. It is not that caricature which has no foundation 
 but in 
 
 " The extravagancy 
 And crazy ribaldry of fancy ;" 
 
 but caricature based on the most piercing insight into 
 actual life ; so keen, indeed, that the mind finds relief or 
 pleasure in playing with its own conceptions. Shak- 
 speare often condescends to caricature in this way, and 
 so do Cervantes, Hogarth, Smollett, and Scott. Though 
 it hardly approaches our ideal of fine characterization, it 
 has its justification in the almost universal practice of 
 men whose genius for humorous delineation cannot be 
 questioned. 
 
 That Dickens is not led into this vein of exaggeration 
 by those qualities of wit and fancy which make the cari- 
 caturist, is proved by the solidity with which his works 
 rest on the deeper powers of imagination and humor. A 
 caricaturist rarely presents anything but a man's peculi- 
 arity, but Dickens ever presents the man. He so pre- 
 serves the keeping of character that everything said or 
 done by his personages is either on a level with the 
 original conception or develops it. They never go be- 
 yond the pitch of thought or feeling by which their per- 
 sonality is limited. Thus, Tony Weller, whose round 
 fat body seems to roll about in a sea of humor, makes us
 
 ""0 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 laugh at his sayings as much because he says them as 
 for any merriment they contain in themselves. His 
 oddities of remark are sufficiently queer to excite laugh- 
 ter, but they receive their peculiar unction from his con- 
 ception of his own importance and his belief in the 
 unreachable depths of his own wisdom. Mr. Pickwick 
 compliments the intelligence of his son Sam. " Werry 
 glad to hear of it, sir," he replies ; " I took a great deal 
 o' pains in his eddication, sir; let him run the streets 
 when he wos very young, and shift for hisself. It 's the 
 only way to make a boy sharp, sir." His infallibility in 
 matters relating to matrimony and widows is a good 
 instance of the method in which a novelist may produce 
 ludicrous effect by emphasizing an oddity of opinion, and 
 ^at the same time connect it with the substance of char- 
 acter. When Sam sends the Valentine to Mary, the 
 old man's forecasting mind sees the consequences, and 
 he bursts out in that affecting rebuke, " To see you 
 married, Sammy, to see you a deluded wictim, and 
 thinkin' in your innocence it 's all werry capital. It 's a 
 dreadful trial to a father's feelin's, that 'ere, Sammy." 
 He is troubled by an obstinate suspicion that he himself 
 is especially marked out as an object for the machina- 
 tions of widows. In a contemptuous account of a jour- 
 ney he made on a railroad, he says, " I wos locked up 
 in a close carriage with a living widdur ; and I believe
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 71 
 
 it wos only because we wos alone, and there wos no 
 clergyman in the conweyance, that that 'ere widdur 
 did n't marry me before we reached the half-way sta- 
 tion." He is a coachman of forty years, standing, and 
 accordingly has a wise scorn of all railroads. " As for 
 the ingein," he says, " as is always a pourin' out red hot 
 coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the sensiblest 
 thing it does, in my opinion, is ven there 's something in 
 the vay, and it sets up that frightful scream vich seems 
 to say, now here 's two hundred and forty passengers in 
 the werry greatest extremity of danger, and here 's their 
 two hundred and forty screams in vun." He is, indeed, 
 
 <r 
 
 the very Lord Burleigh of low life ; and from those par- 
 oxysms of inward chuckles, which generally termi- 
 nated in "as near an approach to a choke as an elderly 
 gentleman can with safety sustain," through all the 
 variety of his sayings and doings, to his earnest exhor- 
 tation that Sam should spell Weller with a V, he never 
 loses his substantial personality, never becomes anything 
 but Tony Weller. 
 
 Much of Dickens's most exquisite and most exube- 
 rant humor is displayed in representing characters com- 
 pounded of vanity, conceit, and assurance. His Artful 
 Dodgers and Mr. Baileys are cases in point. They re- 
 mind you of the child who ran away from his parents 
 when he was only a year old, because he understood
 
 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 they intended to call him Caleb. The little, thievish 
 ragged Dodger, when brought before the police court, 
 points to the judge, and politely requests to be informed 
 " who is that old file up there ;" and warns the court not 
 to keep him long, as he has an engagement to dine with 
 the " wice-president of the House of Commons." This 
 conceit, varied according to age and character, mingles 
 with the other peculiarities of the two Wellers, JohnWil- 
 lett, Mr. Mantalini, and a score of others. There is Sim 
 Tappertit, the sublime apprentice, conceit and bathos 
 embodied, who is troubled by his soul's getting into his 
 head, and disturbed by " inward workings after a higher 
 calling" than making locks. Mr. Kenwigs, in Nicholas 
 Nickleby, is an elderly Tappertit, whose discourse is 
 pitched on a more uniform key of fustian. But Mr. 
 Richard Swiveller is probably the most splendid speci- 
 men of the class, and is a fine example of the felicity 
 with which Dickens can tread the dizziest edges of char- 
 acterization without sinking into mere caricature. Dick 
 is a sort of shabby Sir Harry Wildair, a reckless, 
 feather-brained, good-natured vagabond, with no depth 
 of guile, and whose irregularities are the result of idle- 
 ness, vanity, egotism, and a great flow of spirits. With 
 a vast opinion of his own abilities, he is still overreached 
 by every knave he encounters, and his life is accordingly 
 a descent from one " crusher" to another. He is so vain
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 73 
 
 that he almost believes his own self-exalting lies ; and he 
 cannot possibly see things as they are. When the old 
 grandfather is disturbed by the demands of his graceless 
 grandson for money, Dick is very much surprised that 
 the "jolly old grandfather should decline to fork out 
 with that cheerful readiness which is always so pleasant 
 and agreeable at his time of life." His head is full of 
 scraps of songs and plays, which he has a singular felic- 
 itous infelicity in quoting to sustain the sentiment of 
 the moment ; and his slang, ever accompanying his sen- 
 timent, is as characteristic as the soil on his linen, or 
 the marks of Time's "effacing fingers" on his flash coat. 
 When jilted by Miss Wackles, he says, in parting, " I 
 go away with feelings that may be conceived, but cannot 
 be described, feeling within myself the desolating truth 
 that my best affections have received this night a sti- 
 fler;" but he then adds, from the promptings of his 
 vanity, and with reference to his proposed suit to little 
 Nell, " that a young girl of wealth and beauty is grow- 
 ing up at the present moment for me, and has requested 
 her next of kin to propose for my hand, which, having a 
 kindness for some members of her family, I have con- 
 sented to promise. It's a gratifying circumstance, that 
 you '11 be glad to hear, that a young and lovely girl is 
 growing into a woman expressly on my account, and is 
 now saving up for me." Dick's imaginative vanity
 
 74 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 absolutely deceives his own senses. He calls a fight, in 
 which his own face is damaged, a festive scene ; he asks 
 his companion in punch to pass the rosy wine ; he pays 
 for his liquor by solemnly advising the boy at the bar 
 never to touch spirits ; and tells a stranger, whom he 
 designs to dupe, that the wing of friendship must not 
 moult a feather. Sir Epicure Mammon himself hard\y 
 realizes with more fulness his gorgeous visions of glut- 
 tony and avarice, than the images of all that is unreal in 
 dissipation succeed each other as facts in poor Dick's 
 helter-skelter brain. 
 
 Among the various characters of Dickens, there is one 
 class, which, disagreeing in many things, agree in being 
 the tormentors of social life. They are persons whom 
 the law does not touch, but, compared with some of 
 them, highwaymen may be considered public benefac- 
 tors. As ladies always have the precedence, we will 
 pass over the currish attorney, Brass, and the coarse 
 scoundrel, Squeers; the snapping, hissing hatred of 
 Quilp, and the creamy villany of Pecksniff; in order to 
 do fit honor to that miracle of mingled weakness, pru- 
 dery, and malice, the incomparable Miss Miggs. She 
 is an elderly maiden, who, by some strange neglect on 
 the part of mankind, has been allowed to remain unmar- 
 ried. This neglect might in some small degree be ac- 
 counted for by the fact that her person and disposition
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 75 
 
 came within the range of Mr. Tappertit's epithet of 
 
 "scraggy." She had various ways of wreaking her 
 
 
 hatred upon the other sex, the most cruel of which waa 
 
 in often honoring them with her company and discourse, 
 Her feeling for the wrongs of woman was deep and 
 strong, and she had been known to wish that the whole 
 race would die off, that men might be brought to appre- 
 ciate the real value of the blessings by which they set 
 so little store ; and averred, " if she could obtain a fair 
 round number of virgins, say ten thousand, to follow her 
 example, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown, stab, 
 or poison herself, with a joy past expression." When 
 she watches at the window for the return of Sim Tap- 
 pertit, with the intention of betraying him, she is de- 
 scribed as "having an expression of face in which a 
 great number of opposite ingredients, such as mischief, 
 cunning, malice, triumph, and patient expectation, were 
 all mixed up together in a kind of physiognomical 
 punch ;" and as composing herself to wait and listen, 
 " like some fair ogress, who has set a trap, and was 
 waiting for a nibble from a plump young traveller." 
 Dickens, in this character, well represents how such 
 seemingly insignificant malignants as Miss Miggs can 
 become the pest of families ; and that, though full of 
 weakness and malignity, they can be proud of their vir-
 
 76 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 tue and religion, and make slander the prominent ele- 
 ment of their pious conversation. 
 
 Few novelists excel in the finer shades of character, 
 in the exhibition of those minor 'traits which the eye of 
 genius alone can detect. Much of the most refined 
 humor of Dickens comes from his insight into the subtle- 
 ties of the ludicrous. This penetration of vision is often 
 shown when the humor seems broad even to farcical 
 excess, and especially when he makes a transparent 
 hypocrite speak as if he were playing a deep game. 
 Squeers, for instance, is a thoroughly vulgar rascal, but 
 he has a dim sense that some men are swayed by moral 
 and sympathetic considerations, and he accordingly 
 adopts what he deems the language of virtue and reli- 
 gion when he intends some peculiarly infamous trick. 
 His mode of translating morality and affection into his 
 own vocabulary of villany is richly ludicrous. When 
 his hopeful son, Master Wackford Squeers, catches poor 
 Smike, the exulting parent exclaims, "You always 
 keep on the same path, and do things that you see 
 your father do, and when you die you will go right slap 
 to heaven, and be asked no questions." Snawley and 
 Squeers know each other to be scoundrels, yet they ever 
 preserve in their colloquies a clumsy affectation of senti- 
 ment and conscience. Snawley, who is hired to entrap 
 poor Smike, effects his purpose by claiming the boy as
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 77 
 
 his son. When he meets Squeers he indulges in a com- 
 mendable strain of snivelling eloquence on the beauty </ 
 natural affection. " It only shows what natur is, sir," 
 said Mr. Squeers. " She 's a rum 'un, is natur." " She 
 is a holy thing," murmured Snawley. "I believe you," 
 added Mr. Squeers, with a moral sigh ; " I should like 
 to know how we could get along without her. Natur," 
 he said, growing solemn, " is more easily conceived than 
 described. ! what a blessed thing, sir, to be in a state 
 of natur." 
 
 Brass, in the Old Curiosity Shop, a knave com- 
 pounded of hawk and puppy, who fawns, cheats, and 
 sentimentalizes through the whole book, has become so 
 accustomed to this grotesque affectation of excellence, 
 that it always flows from his lips when he speaks with- 
 out reflection. He lays a trap to make poor Kit Nubbles 
 appear a thief, and really appears measurelessly horror- 
 stricken when the money is found in the boy's posses- 
 sion. " And this," he cries, clasping his hands, " this is 
 the world, that turns upon its own axis, and has lunar 
 influences, and revolutions round hea-^nly bodies, and 
 various games of that sort ! This is human natur, is 
 it?" Pecksniff, again, is so thoroughly impregnated 
 with the spirit of falsehood, that he is moral even in 
 drunkenness, and canting even in shame and discovery. 
 
 Much of the humor of Dickens is identical with his
 
 78 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 style. In this the affluence of his fancy in suggestive 
 phrases and epithets is finely displayed ; and he often 
 flashes the impression of a character or a scene upon the 
 min4 by a few graphic verbal combinations. When 
 Ralph Nickleby says " God bless you," to his nephew, 
 " the words stick in his thoat, as if unused to the pas- 
 sage." When Tigg clasped Mr. Pecksniff in the dark, 
 that worthy gentleman " found himself collared by some- 
 thing which smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel 
 of beer, a cask of warm brandy and water, and a small 
 parlor full of tobacco-smoke, mixed." Mrs. lodgers, 
 when she desires to make Ruth Pinch know her station, 
 surveys her with a look of "genteel grimness." A 
 widow of a deceased brother of Martin Chuzzlewit is 
 described as one, who, " being almost supernaturally dis- 
 agreeable, and having a dreary face, a bony figure, and a 
 masculine voice, was, in right of these qualities, called a 
 strong-minded woman." Mr. Richard Swiveller no 
 sooner enters a room than the nostrils of the company 
 are saluted by a strong smell of gin and lemon-peel. 
 Mr. George Chuzzlewit, a person who over-fed himself, 
 is sketched as a gentleman with such an obvious dispo- 
 sition to pimples, that " the bright spots on his cravat, 
 the rich pattern of his waistcoat, and even his glittering 
 trinkets, seemed to have broken out upon him, and not 
 to have come into existence comfortably." Felicities like
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 79 
 
 these, Dickens squanders with a prodigality which re- 
 duces their relative value, and makes the generality of 
 style-mongers poor indeed. 
 
 It is difficult to say whether Dickens is more success- 
 ful in humor or pathos. Many prefer his serious to his 
 coaiic scenes. It is certain that his genius can as read- 
 ily draw tears as provoke laughter, Sorrow, want, pov- 
 erty, pain, and death ; the affections which cling to earth 
 and those which rise above it ; he represents always 
 with power, and often with marvellous skill. His style, 
 in the serious moods of his mind, has a harmony of flow 
 which often glides unconsciously into metrical arrange- 
 ment ; and is full of those words 
 
 " Which fall as soft as snow on the sea, 
 And melt in the heart as instantly." 
 
 One source of his pathos is the intense and purified con- 
 ception he has of moral beauty, of that beauty which 
 comes from a thoughtful brooding over the most solemn 
 and affecting realities of life. The character of little 
 Nell is an illustration. The simplicity of this creation, 
 framed as it is from the finest elements of human nature, 
 and the unambitious mode of its development through 
 the motley scenes ^ of the Old Curiosity Shop, are calcu- 
 lated to make us overlook its rare merit as a work of 
 high poetic genius. Amid the wolfish malignity of 
 Quilp, the sugared meanness of Brass, the roaring con-
 
 80 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS : 
 
 Triviality of Swiveller, amid scenes of selfishness and 
 shame, of passion and crime, this delicate creation moves 
 along, unsullied, purified, pursuing the good in the sim- 
 ple earnestness of a pure heart, gliding to the tomb as to 
 a sweet sleep, and leaving in every place that her pres- 
 ence beautifies the marks of celestial footprints. Sor- 
 rows such as hers, over which so fine a sentiment sheds 
 its consecrations, have been well said to be ill-bartered 
 for the garishness of joy ; " for they win us softly from 
 life, and fit us to die smiling." 
 
 In addition to this refined perception of moral beauty, 
 he has great tragic power. It would be useless, in our 
 limits, to attempt to give illustrations of his closeness to 
 nature in delineating the deeper passions ; his profound 
 observation of the workings of the soul when stained 
 with crime and looking forward to death ; his skill in 
 gifting remorse, fear, avarice, hatred and revenge, with 
 their appropriate language ; and his subtle appreciation 
 of the influence exercised by different moods of the mind 
 in modifying the appearances of external objects. In 
 these the poet always appears through the novelist, and 
 we hardly know whether imagination or observation con- 
 tributes most to the effect. 
 
 In closing these desultory remarks on Dickens, and 
 the department of literature of which he is the greatest 
 living representative, it may not be irrelevant to express
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 81 
 
 a regret that we have not a class of novels illustrative jf 
 American life and character, which does some justice to 
 both. Novelists we have in perilous abundance, as 
 Egypt had locusts ; some of them unexcelled in the art 
 of preparing a dish of fiction by a liberal admixture of 
 the horrible and sentimental ; and some few who display 
 talents and accomplishments of a higher order; but a 
 series of national novels, illustrative of the national life, 
 the production of men penetrated with an American 
 spirit, without being Americanisms, we can hardly plume 
 ourselves upon possessing. The American has hereto- 
 fore appeared in romance chiefly to be libeled or cari- 
 catured. He has been represented as an acute knave, 
 expressing the sentiments of a worldling in the slang of 
 an ale-house, and principally occupied in peddling Con- 
 necticut nutmegs, wooden clocks, and tin ware. That 
 Sam Slick, Nimrod Wildfire, and the Ethiopian Min- 
 strels, do not comprehend the whole wealth and raciness 
 of life as it is in the North, the South, and the West, 
 might easily be demonstrated if a man of power would 
 undertake the task. But one would almost suppose, 
 from hearing the usual despairing criticism of the day, 
 that in the United States the national novel was an 
 impossible creation. Are there, then, no materials here 
 for the romantic and heroic, nothing over which poe- 
 try can lovingly hover, nothing of sorrow for pathos to 
 6
 
 82 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS . 
 
 convert into beauty, no fresh individualities of disposi- 
 tion over which humor, born of pathos, can pour its 
 floods of genial mirth, no sweet household ties, no 
 domestic affections, no high thoughts, no great passions, 
 no sorrow, sin, and death ? Has our past no story to 
 tell ? Is there nothing of glory in the present, nothing 
 of hope in the future ? In no country, indeed, is there a 
 broader field opened to the delineator of character and 
 manners than in our own land. Look at our society, 
 the only society where the whole people are alive, 
 alive with intelligence and passion, every man's indi- 
 vidual life mingling with the life of the nation, ava- 
 rice, cruelty, pride, folly, ignorance, in a ceaseless con- 
 test with great virtues, and noble aims, and thoughts 
 that reach upward to the ideal. In the noise and tumult 
 of that tremendous struggle, a man of genius not blinded 
 by its dust or deafened by its din, at once an actor in 
 life and a spectator of it, might discover the materials of 
 the deepest tragedy and the finest and broadest humor ; 
 might hear, amid the roar and confusion, the " still, sad 
 music of humanity ;" might see, through all the rancor 
 and madness of partisan warfare, the slow evolution of 
 right principles ; might send his soul along that tide of 
 impetuous passion in which novelties are struggling with 
 prejudices, without being overwhelmed in its foaming 
 flood; and in the comprehensive grasp of his intellect
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 83 
 
 might include all classes, all sects, all professions, mak- 
 ing them stand out on his luminous page in the clear 
 light of reality, doing justice to all by allowing each its 
 own costume and language, compelling Falsehood to 
 give itself the lie, and Pride to stand abased before its 
 own image, and guided in all his pictures of life and 
 character by a spirit at once tolerant, just, generous, 
 humane, and national.
 
 WIT AM) HUMOR* 
 
 IT has been justly objected to New England society, 
 that it is too serious and prosaic. It cannot take a joke. 
 It demands the reason of all things, or their value in the 
 current coin of the land. It is nervous, fidgety, unre- 
 posing, full of trouble. Striving hard to make even reli- 
 gion a torment, it clothes in purple and fine linen its 
 apostles of despair. Business is followed with such a 
 devouring intensity of purpose, that it results as often in 
 dyspepsia as in wealth. We are so overcome with the 
 serious side of things, that our souls rarely come out in 
 irrepressible streams of merriment. The venerable King 
 Cole would find few subjects here to acknowledge his 
 monarchy of mirth. In the foppery of our utilitarianism, 
 we would frown down all recreations which have not a 
 logical connection with mental improvement or purse 
 improvement. For those necessary accompaniments of 
 
 * Delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, 
 December, 1845.
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. CO 
 
 all life out of the Insane Asylum, qualities which the 
 most serious and sublime of Christian poets has described 
 with the utmost witchery of his fancy, 
 
 "Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, 
 Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, 
 Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, 
 And Laughter holding both his sides," 
 
 for these we have the suspicious glance, the icy speech, 
 the self-involved and mysterious look. We are gulled 
 by all those pretences which require a vivid sense of the 
 ludicrous to be detected ; and with all our boasted intel- 
 ligence, there is hardly a form of quackery and fanati- 
 cism which does not thrive better by the side of our 
 schools and colleges than anywhere else. And the 
 reason is, we lack generally the faculty or feeling of 
 ridicule, the counterfeit-detector all over the world. 
 We have, perhaps, sufficient respect for the great, the 
 majestic, and the benevolent ; but we are deficient in the 
 humorous insight to detect roguery and pretence under 
 their external garbs. As we cannot laugh at our own 
 follies, so we cannot endure being laughed at. A Grub- 
 street scribbler, tossing at us from a London garret a 
 few lightning-bugs of jocularity, can set our whole pop- 
 ulation in a flame. Public indignation is the cheapest 
 article of domestic manufacture. There is no need of a 
 tariff to protect that. We thus give altogether too much
 
 86 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 importance to unimportant things, breaking butterflies 
 on the wheel, and cannonading grasshoppers ; and our 
 dignity continually exhales in our spasmodic efforts to 
 preserve it. 
 
 Now it is an undoubted fact that the principle of 
 Mirth is as innate in the mind as any other original 
 faculty. The absence of it, in individuals or communi- 
 ties, is a defect ; for there are various forms of error and 
 imposture which wit, and wit alone, can expose and 
 punish. Without a well-trained capacity to perceive the 
 ludicrous, the health suffers, both of the body and the 
 mind; seriousness dwindles into asceticism, sobriety 
 degenerates into bigotry, and the natural order of things 
 gives way to the vagaries of distempered imaginations. 
 " He who laughs," said the mother of Goethe, " can com- 
 mit no deadly sin." The Emperor Titus thought he had 
 lost a day if he had passed it without laughing. Sterne 
 contends that every laugh lengthens the term of our lives. 
 Wisdom, which represents the marriage of Truth and 
 Virtue, is by no means synonymous with gravity. She 
 is L'AUegro as well as II Penseroso, and jests as well 
 as preaches. The wise men of old have sent most of 
 their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff 
 of apothegm or epigram ; and the proverbs of nations, 
 which embody the common-sense of nations, have the 
 brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. Almost
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 87 
 
 every sensible remark on a folly is a witty remark. Wit 
 is thus often but the natural language of wisdom, view- 
 ing life with a piercing and passionless eye. Indeed, 
 nature and society are so replete with startling contrasts, 
 that wit often consists in the mere statement and com- 
 parison of facts ; as when Hume says, that the ancient 
 Muscovites wedded their wives with a whip instead of a 
 ring ; as when Voltaire remarks, that Penn's treaty with 
 the Indians was the only one ever made between civil- 
 ized men and savages not sanctioned by an oath, and 
 the only one that ever was kept. In the same vein of 
 wise sarcasm is the observation that France under the 
 Ancient Kegime was an absolute monarchy moderated 
 by songs, and that Kussia is a despotism tempered by 
 assassination ; or the old English proverb, that he who 
 preaches war is the devil's chaplain. 
 
 In view of this ludicrous side of things, perceived by 
 Wit and Humor, I propose in this lecture to discourse 
 of Mirth, its philosophy, its literature, its influence. 
 The breadth of the theme forbids a complete treatment 
 of it, for to Wit and Humor belong much that is impor- 
 tant in history and most agreeable in letters. The mere 
 mention of a few of the great wits and humorists of the 
 world will show the extent of the subject, viewed simply 
 in its literary aspect ; for to Mirth belong the exhaust- 
 less fancy and sky-piercing buffooneries of Aristophanes ;
 
 88 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 the matchless irony of Lucian ; the stern and terrible 
 satire of Juvenal ; the fun-drunken extravagances of 
 .Rabelais; the self-pleased chuckle of Montaigne; the 
 farcical caricature of Scarron ; the glowing and spark- 
 ling verse of Dryden ; the genial fun of Addison ; the 
 scoffing subtilties of Butler ; the aerial merriment of 
 Sterne ; the hard brilliancy and stinging emphasis of 
 Pope ; the patient glitter of Congreve ; the teasing 
 mockery of Voltaire ; the polished sharpness of Sheridan ; 
 the wise drolleries of Sydney Smith ; the sly, shy, elu- 
 sive, ethereal humor of Lamb ; the short, sharp, flashing 
 scorn of Macaulay ; the careless gayety of Beranger ; 
 the humorous sadness of Hood ; and the comic creations, 
 various almost as human nature, which have peopled the 
 imaginations of Europe with everlasting forms of the 
 ludicrous, from the time of Shakspeare and Cervantes 
 to that of Scott and Dickens. Now all these writers 
 either represented or influenced their age. Their works 
 are as valuable to the historian as to the lover of the 
 comic ; for they show us what people in different ages 
 laughed at, and thus indicate the periods at which forma 
 of faith and government, and social follies and vices, 
 passed from objects of reverence or respect into subjects 
 of ridicule and contempt. And only in Dr. Barrow's 
 celebrated description of facetiousness, "the greatest 
 proof of mastery over language," says Mackintosh, "ever
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 89 
 
 given by an English writer," can be represented the 
 manifold forms and almost infinite range of their mirth. 
 " Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or 
 in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging 
 an apposite tale ; sometimes it playeth in words and 
 phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their 
 sense or the affinity of their sound ; sometimes it is 
 wrapped up in a dress of humorous expression ; some- 
 times it lurketh under an odd similitude ; sometimes it 
 is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a 
 quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly 
 diverting or cleverly retorting an objection ; sometimes 
 it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, 
 in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plau- 
 sible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense ; 
 sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, 
 a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth 
 for it; sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a 
 presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being ; sometimes it 
 riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange ; 
 sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the 
 purpose. Often it consisteth in one hardly knows what, 
 and springeth up one can hardly tell how, being answer- 
 able to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of 
 language." 
 
 To this description, at once so subtle and so compre-
 
 90 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 hensive, little can be added. It remains, however, to 
 indicate some characteristics which separate wit from 
 humor. Neither seems a distinct faculty of the mind, 
 but rather a sportive exercise of intellect and fancy, 
 directed by the sentiment of Mirth, and changing its 
 character with the variations of individual passions and 
 peculiarities. The essence of the ludicrous consists in 
 surprise, in unexpected turns of feeling and explosions 
 of thought, often by bringing dissimilar things together 
 with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the 
 celebrated philosopher, the father of Chemistry and 
 brother of the Earl of Cork ; or as when the witty editor 
 of a penny paper took for the motto of his journal, 
 " The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the price of 
 the Star is only one cent." "When Northcote, the sculp- 
 tor, was asked what he thought of George the Fourth, he 
 answered that he did not know him. " But," persisted 
 his querist, " his majesty says he knows you." " Know 
 me," said Northcote, "pooh! pooh! that's all his brag!" 
 Again, Phillips, while travelling in this country, said 
 that he once met a republican so furious against mon- 
 archs that he would not even wear a crown to his hat. 
 The expression of uncontrolled self-will is often witty as 
 well as wicked, from this element of unexpectedness. 
 Peter the Great, observing the number of lawyers in 
 Westminster Hall, remarked that he had but two lawyers
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 91 
 
 in his whole dominions, and that he intended to hang 
 one of them as soon as he got home. 
 
 Wit was originally a general name for all the intel- 
 lectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, per- 
 ceives, knows, understands ; it was gradually narrowed 
 in its signification to express merely the resemblance 
 between ideas ; and lastly, to note that resemblance 
 when it occasioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas, 
 
 lying wi(Je apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. 
 
 %^~ " 
 
 Humor originally meant moisture, a signification it met- 
 aphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, 
 oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilizing 
 wherever it falls. Wit exists by antipathy ; Humor by 
 sympathy. Wit laughs at things ; Humor laughs with 
 them. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly 
 exaggerates single foibles into character ; Humor glides 
 into the heart of its object, looks lovingly on the infirmi- 
 ties it detects, and represents the whole man. Wit is 
 abrupt, darting, scornful, and tosses its analogies in your 
 face ; Humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into 
 your heart. Wit is negative, analytical, destructive ; 
 Humor is creative. The couplets of Pope are witty, but 
 Sancho Panza is a humorous creation. Wit, when 
 earnest, has the earnestness of passion, seeking to de- 
 stroy ; Humor has the earnestness of affection, and would 
 lift up what is seemingly low into our charity and love.
 
 92 WIT AND HTJMOR. 
 
 "Wit, bright, rapid and blasting as the lightning, flashes, 
 strikes and vanishes, in an instant ; Humor, warm and 
 all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a 
 genial and abiding light. Wit implies hatred or con- 
 tempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk 
 shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the 
 branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, 
 teases, corrodes, undermines ; Humor implies a sure 
 conception of' the beautiful, the majestic and the true, by 
 whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is 
 an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged 
 inequalities of existence, promoting tolerant views of life, 
 bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from 
 the lowly, the great from the humble. Old Dr. Fuller's 
 remark, that a negro is " the image of God cut in ebony," 
 is humorous ; Horace Smith's inversion of it, that the 
 taskmaster is " the image of the devil cut in ivory," is 
 witty. Wit can coexist with fierce and malignant pas- 
 sions ; but Humor demands good feeling and fellow-feel- 
 ing, feeling not merely for what is above us, but for what 
 is around and beneath us. When Wit and Humor are 
 commingled, the result is a genial sharpness, dealing 
 with its object somewhat as old Izaak Walton dealt with 
 the irog he used for bait, running the hook neatly 
 through his mouth and out at his gills, and in so doing
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 93 
 
 " using him as though he loved him ! " Sydney Smith 
 and Shakspeare's Touchstone are examples. 
 
 Wit, then, being strictly an assailing and destructive 
 faculty, remorselessly shooting at things from an antag- 
 onist point of view, it not infrequently blends with great 
 passions ; and you ever find it gleaming in the van of 
 all radical and revolutionary iii^ nts against estab- 
 lished opinions and institutions. In this practical, exe- 
 cutive form, it is commonly called Satire ,* and in this 
 form it has exercised vast influence on human affairs. 
 Its character has varied with the character of individual 
 satirists ; in some taking the beak and talons of the 
 eagle or the hawk, in others putting on the wasp and the 
 dragon-fly. Too often it has but given a brighter and 
 sharper edge to hatred and malignity. In a classifica- 
 tion of satirical compositions, they may be included in 
 two great divisions, namely, satire on human nature, and 
 satire on the perversions and corruptions of human 
 nature. The first and most terrible of these, satire on 
 human nature, dipping its pen in " Scorn's fiery poison," 
 represents man as a bundle of vices and weaknesses, 
 considers his aspirations merely as provocatives of malig- 
 nant scoffing, and debases whatever is most beautiful 
 and majestic in life, by associating it with whatever is 
 vilest and most detestable. This is not satire on men, 
 but on Man. The laughter which it creates is impish
 
 94 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 and devilish, the very mirth of fiends, and its wit the 
 gleam and glare of infernal light. Two great dramatists, 
 Shakspeare and Goethe, have represented this phase of 
 satire artistically, in the characters of lago and Mephis- 
 topheles ; and Dean Swift and Lord Byron have done it 
 personally, in Gulliver and Don Juan ; Swift, from fol- 
 lowing the instincts of a diseased heart, and the analo- 
 gies of an impure fancy ; Byron, from recklessness and 
 capricious misanthropy. Only, however, in lago and 
 Mephistopheles do we find the perfection of this kind of 
 wit, keen, nimble, quick-sighted, feelingless, under- 
 mining all virtue and all beauty with foul suspicions and 
 fiendish mockeries. The subtle mind of lago glides. to 
 its object with the soft celerity of a panther's tread ; that 
 of Mephistopheles darts with the velocity of a tiger's 
 spring. Both are malignant intelligences, infinitely 
 ingenious in evil, infinitely merciless in purpose ; and 
 wherever their scorching sarcasm falls, it blights and 
 blackens all the humanities of life 
 
 Now for this indiscriminate jibing and scoffing at hu- 
 man nature there can be no excuse. There is no surer 
 sign of a bad heart than for a writer to find delight in 
 degrading his species. But still there are legitimate 
 objects for the most terrible and destructive weapons of 
 satire ; and these are the corruptions and crimes of the 
 world, whether embodied in persons or institutions.
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 95 
 
 Here wit has achieved great victories, victories for hu- 
 manity and truth. Brazen impudence and guilt have 
 been discrowned and blasted by its bolts. It has over- 
 thrown establishments where selfishness, profligacy and 
 meanness, had hived for ages. It has felt its way in 
 flame along every nerve and artery of social oppressors, 
 whose tough hearts had proved invulnerable to wail and 
 malediction. It has torn aside the masks which have 
 given temporary ascendency to every persecutor calling 
 himself Priest, and every robber calling himself King. 
 It has scourged the bigot and the hypocrite, and held up 
 to "grinning infamy" the knaveries and villanies of 
 corrupt governments. It has made many a pretension 
 of despotism, once unquestioned, a hissing and a by-word 
 all over the earth. Tyrannies, whose iron pressure had 
 nearly crushed out the life of a people, tyrannies, 
 which have feared neither man nor God, and withstood 
 prayers and curses which might almost have brought 
 down Heaven's answering lightnings, these, in the 
 very bravery of their guilt, in the full halloo of their 
 whole pack of unbridled passions, have been smitten by 
 the shaft of the satirist, and passed from objects of hatred 
 and terror into targets of ridicule and scorn. As men 
 neither fear nor respect what has been made contempti- 
 ble, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as 
 well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then ; and
 
 96 \V1T AND HTTMOR. 
 
 walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have 
 fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt. 
 
 Satirists generally appear in the dotage of opinions 
 and institutions, when the state has become an embodied 
 falsehood, and the church a name ; when society has 
 dwindled into a smooth lie, and routine has become 
 religion ; when appearance has taken the place of reality, 
 and wickedness has settled down into weakness. If we 
 take the great comic writers who represent their age, we 
 shall find that satire, with them, is the expression of 
 their contempt for the dead forms of a once living faith. 
 Faith in Paganism at the time of Homer as contrasted 
 with the time of Aristophanes, faith in Catholicism in 
 Dante's age as contrasted with the age of Voltaire, 
 faith in the creations of the imagination at the time of 
 Spenser as contrasted with the age of Pope, in some 
 degree measure the difference between these writers, and 
 explain why the ridicule of the one should be pitched at 
 what awakened the reverence of the other. Great satir- 
 ists, appearing in the decay of an old order of civiliza- 
 tion, descend on their time as ministers of vengeance, 
 intellectual Alarics, " planetary plagues," 
 
 " When Jove 
 
 Shall o'er some high-viced city hang his poison 
 In the sick air." 
 
 They prepare the way for better things by denouncing
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 97 
 
 what has become worn, and wasted, and corrupt, that 
 from the terrible wreck of old falsehoods may spring 
 " truths that wake to perish never." With invincible 
 courage they do their work, and wherever they see 
 accredited hypocrisy or shameless guilt, they will speak 
 
 to it, 
 
 " Though Hell itself should gape, 
 
 And bid them hold their peace." 
 
 Thus' we shall find that many satirists have been radi- 
 cal legislators, and that many jests have become history. 
 The annals of the eighteenth century would be very im- 
 perfect that did not give a large space to Voltaire, who 
 was as much a monarch as Charles the Twelfth or Louis 
 the Fourteenth. Satirical compositions, floating about 
 among a people, have more than once produced revolu- 
 tions. They are sown as dragon's teeth ; they spring up 
 armed men. The author of the ballad of Lilliburlero 
 boasted that he had rhymed King James the Second out 
 of his dominions. England, under Charles II., was 
 governed pretty equally by roues and wit-snappers. A 
 joke hazarded by royal lips on a regal object has some- 
 times plunged kingdoms into war ; for dull monarchs 
 generally make their repartees through the cannon's 
 mouth. The biting jests of Frederick the Great on the 
 Empress Elizabeth and Madame de Pompadour were 
 instrumental in bringing down upon his dominions the 
 7
 
 98 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 armies of Russia and France. The downfall of the 
 French monarchy was occasioned primarily by its becom- 
 ing contemptible through its vices. No government, 
 whether evil or good, can long exist after it has ceased 
 to excite respect and begun to excite hilarity. Ministers 
 of state have been repeatedly laughed out of office. 
 Where Scorn points its scoffing finger, Servility itself 
 may well be ashamed to fawn. In this connection, I 
 trust no one will consider me capable of making a politi- 
 cal allusion, or to be wanting in respect for the dead, if 
 I refer in illustration to a late administration of our own 
 government, I mean that which retired on the fourth 
 of March, 1845. Now, during that administration meas- 
 ures of the utmost importance were commenced or con- 
 summated ; the country was more generally prosperous 
 than it had been for years ; there were no spectacles of 
 gentlemen taking passage for France or Texas, with 
 bags of the public gold in their valises ; the executive 
 power was felt in every part of the land ; and yet the 
 whole thing was hailed with a shout of laughter, ringing 
 to the remotest villages of the east and the west. Every- 
 body laughed, and the only difference between its nomi- 
 nal supporters and its adversaries was. that whereas one 
 party laughed outright, the other laughed in their 
 sleeves. Nothing could have saved such an administra- 
 tion from downfall, for whatever may have been its
 
 WIT AJVD HUMOR. 
 
 99 
 
 intrinsic merits, it was still considered not so much a 
 government as a gigantic joke. 
 
 And now, in further illustration of the political impor- 
 tance of satirists, and their appearance in periods of 
 national degradation, allow me to present a few leaves 
 from literary history. The great satirical age of Eng- 
 lish literature, as you are all aware, dates from the resto- 
 ration e Charles II., in 1660, and runs to the reign of 
 George II., a period of about seventy years. During 
 this period nourished Dry den, Pope, Swift, Young, Gay, 
 and Arbuthnot, and during this period the national mo- 
 rality was at its lowest ebb. It was an age peculiarly 
 calculated to develop an assailing spirit in men of talent, 
 for there were numberless vices which deserved to be 
 assailed. Authors moved in, or very near, the circle of 
 high life and political life, in the full view of the follies 
 and crimes of both. They were accustomed to see Man 
 in his artificial state, busy in intrigue, pursuing selfish 
 ends by unscrupulous means, counting virtue and honor 
 as ornamental non-existences, looking on ligion as a 
 very good thing for the poor, conceiving of poetry as 
 lying far back in tradition or out somewhere in the coun- 
 try, hiding his hate in a smile, pocketing his infamy 
 with a bow. They saw that the star of the earl, the 
 ermine of the judge, and the surplice of the prelate, 
 instead of representing nobility, justice and piety, were
 
 100 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 often but the mere badge of apostasy, the mere livery o 
 Uberticide. They saw that every person seemed to have 
 his price, and that if a man ascertained that he himself 
 was not worth buying, he was perfectly willing to sell 
 his sister or his wife, and strutted about, after the sale, 
 bedizened with infamy, as happy and as pleasant a gen- 
 tleman as one would wish to meet on a summer's day. 
 It was from the depth of such infamy as this last that 
 the Duke of Marlborough emerged, the first general of 
 his time. In such a mass of dissimulation, effrontery, 
 peculation, fraud, in such a dearth of high thoughts 
 and great passions, in such a spectacle of moral non- 
 chalance, dignified imbecility, and elegant shamelessness, 
 the satirical poet could find numberless targets for the 
 scorn-winged arrows of his ridicule ; could sometimes 
 feel that he, too, had his part in the government of the 
 country ; and with honest delight could often exclaim, 
 with Pope, 
 
 " I own I 'm proud I must be proud, to see 
 Mn not afraid of God afraid of me." 
 
 Among these satirists, Pope, of the age of Queen 
 Anne, was by far the most independent, unflinching and 
 merciless. Inferior to Dryden, perhaps, in genius, he 
 was still placed in a position which rendered him more 
 independent of courts and parties, and his invective, 
 unlike that of Dryden, was shot directly at crime and
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 101 
 
 folly, without respect to persons. Although he was 
 terribly bitter when galled and goaded by personal oppo- 
 nents, and, in his satire, too often spent his strength 
 against mere imbecility and wretchedness ; yet, take him 
 as he is, the great representative writer of his time ; the 
 uncompromising smiter of powerful guilt, the sturdy 
 defender of humble virtue ; the satirist of dukes, but the 
 eulogi$ fcf the Man of Koss ; his works the most perfect 
 specimens of brilliant good sense, his life free from the 
 servility which hitherto had disgraced authorship ; and 
 though charity may find much in him that needs to be 
 forgiven, though justice may even sometimes class him 
 with those moral assassins who wear, like Cloten, their 
 daggers in their mouths, yet still great merit cannot be 
 denied to the poet and the man who scourged hypocrisy 
 and baseness, at a time when baseness paved the way 
 to power, and hypocrisy distributed the spoils of fraud. 
 The courage exercised by such a satirist was by no 
 means insignificant. The enmities which Pope provoked 
 were almost as numerous as knaves and fools. After 
 the publication of the Dunciad, he was generally accom- 
 panied in the street by a huge Irishman, armed with a 
 club, so that if any lean-witted rhymer or fat-fisted mem- 
 ber of Parliament, whom he had gibbeted with his sar- 
 casm, desired to be revenged on his person, the brawny 
 Hibernian had full commission to conduct that contro-
 
 102 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 w ersy, according to the most approved logic of the shil- 
 Jaleh. 
 
 The other great satirist of the age of Queen Arpe 
 was Dean Swift, a " darker and a fiercer spirit " than 
 Pope, and one who has been stigmatized as " the apos- 
 tate politician, the perjured lover, and the ribald priest, 
 a heart burning with hatred against the whole human 
 race, a mind richly laden with images from the gutter 
 and the lazar-house." Swift has been justly called 
 the greatest of libellers, a libeller of persons, a libeller 
 of human nature, and, we may add, a libeller of himself. 
 He delighted to drag all the graces and sanctities of life 
 through the pools and puddles of his own mind, and 
 after such a baptism of mud, to hold them up as speci- 
 mens of what dreamers called the inborn beauty of the 
 human soul. He was a bad man, depraved in the very 
 centre of his nature ; but he was still one of the greatest 
 wits, and, after a fashion, one of the greatest humorists, 
 that ever existed. His most effective weapon was irony, 
 a kind of saturnine, sardonic wit, having the self-posses- 
 sion, complexity and continuity of humor, without its 
 geniality ; and, in the case of Swift, steeped rather in 
 the vitriol of human bitterness than the milk of human 
 kindness. Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a 
 compliment ; insinuating the most galling satire undei 
 the phraseology of panegyric ; placing its victim naked
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 103 
 
 on a bed of briars and thistles, thinly covered with rose- 
 leaves ; adorning his brow with a crown of gold, which 
 burns into his brain ; teasing, and fretting, and riddling 
 him through and through, with incessant discharges of 
 hot shot from a masked battery ; laying bare the most 
 sensitive and shrinking nerves of his mind, and then 
 blandly touching them with ice, or smilingly pricking 
 them JKith needles. Wit, in this form, cannot be with- 
 stood, even by the hardest of heart and the emptiest of 
 head. It eats and rusts into its victim. Swift used it 
 with incomparable skill, sometimes against better men 
 than himself, sometimes against the public plunderer and 
 the titled knave, the frauds of quackery and the abuses 
 of government. His morose, mocking and cynical spirit, 
 combined with his sharp insight into practical life, ena- 
 bled him to preserve an inimitable coolness of manner, 
 while he stated the most nonsensical or atrocious para- 
 doxes as if they were self-evident truisms. He generally 
 destroyed his antagonists by ironically twisting their 
 opinions into a form of hideous caricature, and then set- 
 ting forth grave mockeries of argument in their defence ; 
 imputing, by inference, the most diabolical doctrines to 
 his opponents, and then soberly attempting to show that 
 they were the purest offspring of justice and benevolence. 
 Nothing can be more perfect of its kind, nothing more 
 vividly suggests the shallowness of moral and religious
 
 104 wrr AND HUMOR. 
 
 principle which characterized his age, nothing subjects 
 practical infidelity to an ordeal of more tormenting and 
 wasting ridicule, than his ironical tract, giving a state- 
 ment of reasons why, on the whole, it would be impolitic 
 to abolish the Christian religion in England. This is 
 considered by Mackintosh the finest piece of irony in the 
 English language. 
 
 Swift's most laughable specimen of " acute nonsense" 
 was his prophecy that a certain quack almanac-maker, 
 by the name of Partridge, would die on a certain day. 
 Partridge, who was but little disposed to die in order to 
 give validity to the prediction of a rival astrologer, came 
 out exultingly denying the truth of the prophecy, after 
 the period fixed for his decease, and not he, had expired. 
 Swift, nothing daunted, retorted in another tract, in 
 which he set forth a large array of quirkish reasons to 
 prove that Partridge was dead, and ingeniously argued 
 that the quack's own testimony to the contrary could not 
 be received, as he was too notorious a liar to be enti- 
 tled to belief on so important a point. 
 
 But perhaps the most exquisite piece of irony in mod- 
 ern literature, and, at the same time, the most terrible 
 satire on the misgovernment of Ireland, is Swift's pam- 
 phlet entitled, " A Modest Proposal to the Public, for 
 Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from 
 being a Burden to their Country, and for making them
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 105 
 
 Beneficial to the Public ;" which modest proposal con- 
 sisted in advising that the said children be used for food. 
 He commences with stating that the immense number 
 of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels, 
 of their starving mothers, has become a public grievance, 
 and that he would be a public benefactor who should 
 contrive some method of making them useful to the com- 
 monwealth. After showing that it is impossible to ex 
 pect tliat they should be able to pick up a livelihood by 
 stealing much before they are six years old, and saying 
 that he had been assured by merchants that a child 
 under twelve years was no saleable commodity, that 
 it would not bring on 'change more than three pounds, 
 while its rags and nutriments would cost four times that 
 amount, he proceeds to advise their use as food for their 
 more fortunate fellow-creatures ; and as this food, from 
 its delicacy, would be somewhat dear, he considers it all 
 the more proper for landlords, who, as they have already 
 devoured the parents, seem to have the best right to the 
 children. He answers all objections to his proposal by 
 mock arguments, and closes with solemnly protesting his 
 own disinterestedness in making it j and proves that he 
 has no personal interest in the matter, as he has not 
 himself a child by whom he can expect to get a penny, 
 the youngest being nine years old ! So admirably was 
 the irony sustained, that the pamphlet was quoted by a
 
 106 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 French writer of the time, as evidencing the hopeless 
 barbarity of the English nation. 
 
 It would be easy to trace the influence of satirical 
 compositions further down the course of English history; 
 but enough has already been said to indicate the check 
 which social and political criminals have received, from 
 the presence of men capable of holding them up to the 
 world's laughter and contempt. This satire, in all free 
 commonwealths, has a share in the legislation and policy 
 of the government ; and bad institutions and pernicious 
 opinions rarely fall, until they have been pierced by its 
 keen-edged mockeries, or smitten by its scathing invec- 
 tives. 
 
 The lighter follies and infirmities of human nature, as 
 seen in every-day life, have afforded numberless objects 
 for light-hearted or vinegar-hearted raillery, gibe, satire, 
 banter and caricature. Among the foibles of men, Wit 
 plays and glances, a tricksy Ariel of the intellect, full of 
 mirth and mischief, laughing at all, and inspiring all to 
 laugh at each other. Egotism and vanity are promi- 
 nent provocations of this dunce-demolishing fun ; for a 
 man, it has been truly said, is ridiculous " not so much 
 for what he is, as for pretending to be what he is not." 
 It is very rare to see a frank knave, or a blockhead who 
 knows himself. The life of most men is passed in an 
 attempt to misrepresent themselves, everybody being
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 107 
 
 bitten by an ambition to appear instead of to be. Ihus 
 few can visit sublime scenery without preparing before- 
 hand the emotions of wonder and awe they ought to feel, 
 and contriving the raptures into which they intend to 
 fall. We mourn, make love, console, sentimentalize, in 
 cant phrases. We guard with religious scrupulousness 
 against the temptation of being betrayed into a natural 
 expression of ourselves. A perception of the ludicrous 
 would make us ashamed of this self-exaggerating foible, 
 and save us from the cuffs and pats by which Wit occa- 
 sionally reminds us of it. " Dr. Parr," said a young 
 student once to the old linguist, "let's you and I 
 write a book." " Very well," replied the doctor, " put 
 in all that I know, and all that you don't know, and 
 we 'd make a big one." The doctor himself was not 
 free from the conceit he delighted to punish in others ; 
 for satire is apt to be a glass, " in which we see every 
 face but our own." He once said, in a miscellaneous 
 company, " England has produced three great classical 
 scholars ; the first was Bentley, the second was Person, 
 and the third modesty forbids me to mention." Occa- 
 sionally egotists will strike rather hard against each 
 other, as in the case of the strutting captain of a militia 
 company, who once, in a fit of temporary condescension, 
 invited a ragged negro to drink negus with him. " Oh ! 
 certainly," rejoined the negro ; " I 'm no* proud ; I 'd just
 
 108 WIT AND HTJMOR. 
 
 as lieves drink with a militia captain as anybody else." 
 Dr. Johnson was famous for smashing the thin egg-shells 
 of conceit which partly concealed the mental impotence 
 of some of his auditors. One of them once shook his 
 head gravely, and said he could not see the force and 
 application of one of the doctor's remarks. He was 
 crushed instantly by the gruff retort "It is my busi- 
 ness, sir, to give you arguments, not to give you brains." 
 Sometimes the ridiculousness of a remark springs 
 from the intense superficiality of its conventional conceit, 
 as in the case of the young lady, who, on being once 
 asked what she thought of Niagara, answered, aiat she 
 never had beheld the falls, but had always heard them 
 highly spoken of. Ignorance which deems itself pro- 
 foundly wise, is also exquisitely ludicrous. A German 
 prince once gave his subjects a free constitution ; at 
 which they murmured continually, saying that hereto- 
 fore they had paid taxes and been saved the trouble of 
 government, but that now they were not only taxed 
 but had to govern themselves. Wit easily unmasks the 
 hypocrisy and selfishness which underlie loyal and patri- 
 otic catchwords. Parr said that the toast " Church and 
 King" usually meant a " church without a gospel and a 
 king above the law ; " and Sydney Smith, while lashing 
 some tory placemen, ebullient with loyalty, observed that 
 " God save the King" meant too often, " God save my
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 109 
 
 pension and my place, God give my sisters an allowance 
 out of the privy-purse, make me clerk of the irons, let 
 me survey the meltings, let me live upon the fruits of 
 other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the 
 public." 
 
 Again, all snivelling hypocrisy in speculation, such as 
 that which, when discoursing of the world's evils, de- 
 lights ,$p call Man's sin God's providence, all boister- 
 
 f s 
 
 ous noodleism in reform, whose champions would take 
 scciety on their knee, as a Yankee takes a stick, and 
 whittle it into shape ; to these satire gravitates by a 
 natural law. The story told by Horace Smith of the 
 city miss is a good instance of a shock given to affected 
 and mincing elegance. She had read much of pastoral 
 life, and once made a visit into the country for the pur- 
 pose of communing with a real shepherd. She at last 
 discovered one, with the crook in his hand, the dog by 
 his side, and the sheep disposed romantically around 
 him; but he was without the indispensable musical 
 accompaniment of all poetic shepherds, the pastoral reed. 
 " Ah ! gentle shepherd," softly inquired she, " tell me 
 where 's your pipe." The bumpkin scratched his head, 
 and murmured brokenly, " I left it at home, miss, 'cause 
 T haint got no baccy ! " 
 
 Wit is infinitely ingenious in what Barrow calls " the 
 quirkish reason," and often pinches hard when it seems
 
 110 WIT AND HTTMOtt. 
 
 most seriously urbane. Thus a gentleman once warmly 
 eulogized the constancy of an absent husband in the 
 presence of his loving wife. " Yes ! yes ! " assented she ; 
 " he writes me letters full of the agony of affection, but 
 he never remits me any money." "I can conceive of 
 that," replied the other, " for I know his love to be unre- 
 mitting." Byron's defence of the selfish member of Par- 
 liament is another pertinent instance : 
 
 " has no heart, you say, but I deny it ; 
 
 He has a heart he gets his speeches by it." 
 
 Satire is famous for these quiet side cuts and sympa- 
 thetic impertinences. An officer of Louis XIV. was 
 continually pestering him for promotion, and at last 
 drew from him the peevish exclamation " You are the 
 most troublesome man in my army." " That, please 
 your majesty, is what your enemies are continually say- 
 ing," was the reply. When George Wither, the Puritan 
 poet, was taken prisoner by the Cavaliers, there was a 
 general disposition displayed to hang him at once ; but 
 Sir John Denham saved his life by saying to Charles 1. 
 "I hope your majesty will not hang poor George 
 Wither, for as long as he lives it can't be said that I am 
 the worst poet in England." Sheridan, it is well known, 
 was never free from pecuniary embarrassments. As he 
 was one day hacking his face with a dull razor, he 
 turned to his eldest son, and said, " Tom, if you open
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. Ill 
 
 \ 
 
 any more oysters with my razor, I '11 cut you off with a 
 shilling." " Very well, father," retorted Tom, "but 
 where will the shilling come from ? " 
 
 Thus into every avenue of life and character Wit 
 darts its porcupine quills, pinching the pompous, abas- 
 ing the proud, branding the shameless, knocking out the 
 teeth of Pretension. 'The foibles and crimes of men, 
 indeed, afford perpetual occasions for wit. As soon as 
 the JEiuman being becomes a moral agent, as soon as he 
 has put off the vesture of infancy and been fairly depos- 
 ited in trowsers, his life becomes a kind of tragi-comical 
 caricature of himself. Tetchy, capricious, wayward, 
 inconsistent, his ideas sparks of gunpowder which 
 explode at the first touch of fire, running the gauntlet 
 of experience, and getting cornered at every step, 
 making love to a Fanny Squeers, thinking her an 
 Imogen, and finding her a Mrs. Caudle, buffeting and 
 battling his way through countless disappointments and 
 ludicrous surprises, it is well for him if his misfortunes 
 of one year can constitute his mirth of the next. One 
 thing is certain, that if he cannot laugh as well as rail 
 if he cannot grow occasionally jubilant over his own 
 verdancy if he persists pragmatically in referring his 
 failures to the world's injustice instead of his own folly, 
 he will end in moroseness and egotism, in cant that 
 snivels and misanthropy that mouths. Even genius and
 
 112 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 philanthropy are incomplete, without they are accompa- 
 nied by some sense of the ludicrous ; for an extreme 
 sensitiveness to the evil and misery of society becomes a 
 maddening torture if not modified by a feeling of the 
 humorous, and urges its subjects into morbid exaggera- 
 tions of life's dark side. Thus many who, in our day, 
 leap headlong into benevolent reforms, merely caricature 
 philanthropy. Blinded by one idea, they miss their 
 mark, dash themselves insanely against immovable 
 rocks, and break up the whole stream of their life into 
 mere sputter and foam. A man of genius, intolerant of 
 the world's prose, or incompetent to perceive the humor 
 which underlies it, cannot represent life without distor- 
 tion and exaggeration. Had Shelley possessed humor, 
 -iis might have been the third name in English poetry. 
 The everlasting delight we take in Shakspeare and 
 Scott comes from the vivid perception they had of both 
 aspects of life, and their felicitous presentment of them, 
 as they jog against each other in the world. 
 
 As Wit in its practical executive form usually runs 
 into some of the modifications of satire, so Humor, which 
 includes Wit, generally blends with sympathetic feeling. 
 Humor takes no delight in the mere infliction of pain ; 
 it has no connection with the aggressive or destructive 
 passions. In the creation and delineation of comic char- 
 acter it is most delightedly employed, and here " Jona-
 
 WIT AWD HtJMOR. 113 
 
 than Wild is not too low for it, nor Lord Shaftsbury too 
 nigh ; " it deals with the nicest refinements of the ludi 
 crous, and also with what Sterling calls the " trivial and 
 the bombastic, the drivelling, squinting, sprawling clown- 
 eries of nature, with her worn out stage-properties and 
 rag-fair emblazonments." The man of humor, seeing, at 
 one glance, the majestic and the mean, the serious and 
 the laughable ; indeed, interpreting what is little or ridic- 
 ulous by light derived from its opposite idea ; delineates 
 character as he finds it in life, without any impertinent 
 intrusion of his own indignation or approval. He sees 
 deeply into human nature ; lays open the hidden struc- 
 ture and most complex machinery of the mind, and un- 
 derstands not merely the motives which guide actions, 
 but the processes by which they are concealed from the 
 actors. For instance, life is filled with what is called 
 hypocrisy, with the assignment of false motives to 
 actions. This is a constant source of the laughable in 
 conduct. Wit, judging simply from the act, treats it as 
 a vice, and holds it up to derision or execration ; but 
 Humor commonly considers it as a weakness, deluding 
 none so much as the actor, and in that self-delusion finds 
 food for its mirth. The character of old John Willett, in 
 Barnaby Rudge, so delicious as a piece of humor, would 
 be but a barren butt in the hands of Wit. Wit cannot 
 create character. It might, for instance, cluster innu- 
 8
 
 114 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 merable satirical associations around the abstract idea of 
 gluttony, but it could not picture to the eye such a per- 
 son as Don Quixote's squire. It cannot create even a 
 purely witty character, such as Thersites, Benedict or 
 Beatrice. In Congreve's plays, the characters are not so 
 much men and women as epigrammatic machines, whose 
 wit, incessant as a shower of fiery rain, still throws no 
 light into their heads or hearts. Now Humor will have 
 nothing to do with abstractions. It dwells snugly in 
 concrete personal substances, having no toleration either 
 for the unnaturally low or the factitiously sublime. It 
 remorselessly brings down Britannia to John Bull, Cale- 
 
 |Qh 
 
 donia to Sawney, Hibernia to Paddy, Columbia to Jona- 
 than. It hates all generalities. A benevolent lady, in a 
 work written to carry on a benevolent enterprise, com- 
 mended the project to the humanity, the enlightened 
 liberality, the enlarged Christian feeling, of the British 
 nation. The roguish and twinkling eye of Sydney 
 Smith lighted on this paragraph, and he cried out to her 
 to leave all that, and support her cause with ascertained 
 facts. " The English," said he, with inimitable humor, 
 " are a calm, reflecting nation ; they will give time and 
 money when they are convinced ; but they love dates, 
 names and certificates. In the midst of the most heart- 
 rending narratives, Bull inquires the day of the month, 
 the year of our Lord, the name of the parish, and the
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 115 
 
 countersign of three or four respectable householders. 
 After these affecting circumstances have been given, he 
 can no longer hold out ; but gives way to the kindness 
 of his nature, puffs, blubbers, and subscribes !" 
 
 There is probably no literature equal to the English 
 in the number and variety of its humorous characters, as 
 we find them in Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Fielding, 
 Goldsmith, Addison, Scott, and Dickens. There is 
 nothing so well calculated to make us cheerful and char- 
 itable, nothing which sinks so liquidly into the mind, 
 and floods it with such a rich sense of mirth and delight, 
 as these comic creations. How they flash upon our 
 inward world of thought, peopling it with forms and 
 faces whose beautiful facetiousness sheds light and 
 warmth over our whole being ! How their eyes twinkle 
 and wink with the very unction of mirth ! How they 
 roll and tumble about in a sea of delicious Fun, unwea- 
 ried in rogueries, and drolleries, and gamesome absurdi- 
 ties, and wheedling gibes, and loud-ringing extravagant 
 laughter, revelling and rioting in hilarity, with 
 countless jests and waggeries running and raining from 
 them in a sun-lit stream of jubilant merriment ! How 
 they flood life with mirth ! How they roll up pomposity 
 and pretence into great balls of caricature, and set them 
 sluggishly in motion before our eyes, to tear the laughter 
 from our lungs ! How Sir Toby Belch, and Sir Andrew
 
 116 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 Aguecheek, and Ancient Pistol, and Captain Bobadil, 
 and old Tony Weller, tumble into our sympathies! 
 What a sneaking kindness we have for Richard Swivel- 
 ler, and how deeply we speculate on the potential exist- 
 ence of Mrs. Gamp's Mrs. Harris ! How we stow away, 
 in some nook or cranny of our brain, some Master Si- 
 lence, or Starveling the tailor, or Autolychus the rogue, 
 whom it would not be genteel to exhibit to our Reason 
 or Conscience ! How we take some Dogberry, or Verges, 
 or Snug the joiner, tattooed and carbanadoed by the 
 world's wit, and lay him on the soft couch of our esteem ! 
 How we cuff that imp of mischief, Mr. Bailey, as though 
 we loved him ! How Peter Peebles, and Baillie Nicol 
 Jarvie, and Dominie Sampson, and old Andrew Fairser- 
 vice, push themselves into our imaginations, and imper- 
 tinently abide there, whether we will or no ! How 
 Beatrice and Benedict shoot wit at us from their eyes, 
 as the sun darts beams ! There is Touchstone, " swift 
 and sententious," bragging that he has " undone three 
 tailors, had four quarrels, and like to have fought one." 
 There is Sancho Panza, with his shrewd folly and selfish 
 chivalry, his passion for food an argument against the 
 dogma of the soul's residing in the head, a pestilent fine 
 knave and unrighteous good fellow, tossed about from 
 generation to generation, an object of perpetual merri- 
 ment. " That man," said King Philip, pointing to one
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 117 
 
 of his courtiers, rolling on the floor in convulsions of 
 laughter, " that man must either be mad, or reading 
 Don Quixote." 
 
 But what shall we say of FalstafF? filling up the 
 whole sense of mirth, his fat body "larding the lean 
 earth," as he walks along, coward, bully, thief, glut- 
 ton, all fused and molten in good humor, his talk one 
 incessant storm of " fiery and delectable shapes" from his 
 forgetive brain ! There, too, is Mercutio, the perfection 
 of intellectual spirits, the very soul of gayety, whose 
 wit seems to go on runners, the threads of his brain 
 light as gossamer and subtle as steel, his mirthful 
 sallies tingling and glancing and crinkling, like heat- 
 lightning, on all around him ! How his flashing badi- 
 nage plays with Romeo's love-forlornness ! " Romeo is 
 dead ! stabbed, with a white wench's black eye ! 
 Shot through the ear with a love-song ! The very pin 
 of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt shaft ! " 
 Look, too, at Thersites : his lithe jests piercing, 
 sharper than Trojan javelins, the brawny Ajax and 
 Agamemnon, and his hard " hits " battering their thick 
 skulls worse than Trojan battle-axes ! 
 
 If ye like not the sardonic Grecian, then cross from 
 Shakspeare to Scott, and shake hands with that bundle 
 of amiable weaknesses, Baillie Nicol Jarvie. Who can 
 resist the cogent logic by which he defends his free-
 
 118 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 booter kinsman, Rob Roy, from the taunts of his brother 
 magistrates? "I tauld them," said he, "that I would 
 vindicate nae man's faults ; but set apart what Rob had 
 done again the law, and the misfortune o' some folk 
 losing life by him, and he was an honester man than 
 stude on any o' their shanks ! " 
 
 Look ye now, for one moment, at the deep and deli- 
 cate humor of Goldsmith. How at his touch the venial 
 infirmities and simple vanity of the good Vicar of Wake- 
 field live lovingly before the mind's eye ! How we 
 sympathize with poor Moses in that deep trade of his 
 for the green spectacles ! How all our good wishes for 
 aspiring rusticity thrill for the showman, who would 
 let his bear dance only to the genteelest tunes ! There, 
 too, is Fielding. Who can forget the disputes of Square 
 and Thwackem ; the raging, galvanized imbecility of old 
 Squire Western ; the good, simple Parson Adams, who 
 thought schoolmasters the greatest of men, and himself 
 the greatest of schoolmasters ! 
 
 But why proceed in an enumeration of characters 
 whose name is Legion who spring up, at the slightest 
 call, like Rhoderick Dhu's men, from every bush and 
 brake of memory, and come thronging and crowding into 
 the brain ! There they are, nature's own capricious 
 offspring with the unfading rose in their puffed cheeks, 
 with the unfailing glee in their twinkling eyes :
 
 WIT AND HTJMOR. 119 
 
 " Age cannot wither, nor custom stale 
 Their infinite variety ! " 
 
 If " time and the hour" would admit, it would not be 
 out of place to refer to Wit as an auxiliary power in 
 contests of the intellect; to its influence in detecting 
 sophisms which elude serious reasoning, such as the sub- 
 stitution, so common among the prejudiced and the igno- 
 rant, q.4alse causes for striking effects. In Mirth, too, 
 are often expressed thoughts of the utmost seriousness, 
 feelings of the greatest depth. Many men are too sensi- 
 tive to give voice to their most profound or enthusiastic 
 emotions, except through the language of caricature, or 
 the grotesque forms of drollery. Tom Hood is an in- 
 stance. We often meet men whose jests convey truths 
 plucked from the bitterest personal experience, and whose 
 very laughter tells of the " secret wounds which bleed 
 beneath their cloaks." Whenever you find Humor, you 
 find Pathos close by its side. 
 
 Every student of English theological literature knows 
 that much of its best portions gleams with wit. Five 
 of the greatest humorists that ever made the world 
 ring with laughter were priests, Rabelais, Scarron, 
 Swift, Sterne, and Sydney Smith. The prose works 
 of Milton are radiant with satire of the sharpest kind. 
 Sydney Smith, one of the most benevolent, intelligent 
 and influential Englishmen of the nineteenth century,
 
 120 WIT AND HUMOR. 
 
 a man of the most accurate insight and extensive 
 information, embodied the large stores of his practical 
 wisdom in almost every form of the ludicrous. Many 
 of the most important reforms in England are directly 
 traceable to him. He really laughed his countrymen out 
 of some of their most cherished stupidities of legislation. 
 And now let us be just to Mirth. Let us be thankful 
 that we have in Wit a power before which the pride of 
 wealth and the insolence of office are abased ; which 
 can transfix bigotry and tyranny with arrows of light- 
 ning ; which can strike its object over thousands of miles 
 of space, across thousands of years of time ; and which, 
 through its sway over an universal weakness of man, is 
 an everlasting instrument to make the bad tremble and 
 the foolish wince. Let us be grateful for the social and 
 humanizing influences of Mirth. Amid the sorrow, dis- 
 appointment, agony and anguish of the world, over 
 dark thoughts and tempestuous passions, the gloomy ex- 
 aggerations of self-will, the enfeebling illusions of melan- 
 choly, Wit and Humor, light and lightning, shed their 
 soft radiance, or dart their electric flash. See how life 
 is warmed and illumined by Mirth ! See how the beings 
 of the mind, with which it has peopled our imaginations, 
 wrestle with the ills of existence, feeling their way 
 into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that 
 defy calamity ; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain ;
 
 WIT AND HUMOR. 121 
 
 hovering o'er the couch of sickness, with sunshine and 
 laughter in their beneficent faces ; softening the austerity 
 of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and darken the 
 brain, loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the 
 heart-strings ! Let us court the society of these game- 
 some, and genial, and sportive, and sparkling beings, 
 whom Genius has left to us as a priceless bequest ; push 
 them n/rtr- from the daily walks of the world's life ; let 
 them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of busi- 
 ness ; let them glide in through the open doors of the 
 heart; let their glee lighten up the feast, and gladden 
 the fireside of home : 
 
 " That the night may be filled with music, 
 
 And the cares that infest the day 
 May fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away."
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE* 
 
 IN a lecture on "Wit and Humor, which I had the honor 
 of delivering before this society last winter, I attempted 
 an analysis of those qualities, exhibited the influence of 
 Wit as a political weapon, and alluded to Humor as a 
 creator of comic character. This evening, I desire to ask 
 your attention to another department of the same exhaust- 
 less subject, The Ludicrous Side of Life j that is, those 
 aspects of crime, misery, folly and weakness, under which 
 they appear laughable as well as lamentable. The sub- 
 ject is so philosophical in its nature, presents so many of 
 the more remote and elusive points of character for 
 analysis, and demands so rigorous a classification of social 
 facts, that the audience must pardon me if the amuse- 
 ment suggested by the title of the lecture is not borne 
 out by a corresponding pleasantry in its treatment. 
 
 The ludicrous in life arises from the imperfection of 
 
 * Delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, 
 October, 1346.
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 123 
 
 human nature, from that perpetual contradiction between 
 our acts and aspirations which makes our ideas everlast- 
 ing satires on our deeds and institutions. If we consider 
 only the elements of human nature, we can ea?ily con- 
 ceive them so harmoniously combined as to constitute 
 perfection of character ; but the moment we pass from 
 thoughts to facts, we are amazed at the monstrous per- 
 versio*s"and misdirections of these elements. Instead 
 of a reciprocal action of coordinate powers, we find what 
 appears to be a mad jumble of conflicting opinions and 
 impulses. We see the seemingly self-centred being, who 
 goes under the name of Man, whirled continually from 
 his beckoning ideals by a thousand seductive external 
 impressions ; changing from " half dust, half deity," into 
 all dust and no deity ; and running the dark round of 
 weakness and wickedness, from the besotted stupidity of 
 the idiot, to the grinning malignity of the fiend. We 
 turn, heart-sick and brain-sick, to the past, only to find tht 
 same moral chaos, a confused mass of folly and crime, 
 dignified now with the title of expediency, now with that 
 of glory, Caligulas and Neros, Caesars and Napoleons, 
 James Stuarts and Frederick Williams, each experiment- 
 ing on the most efficacious way of ruining nations, each 
 playing off a gigantic game of theft or murder before an 
 admiring or reverential world. Vice on the throne, vir- 
 tue on the gibbet, there you have the two prominent
 
 124 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 figures in the grand historical picture painted on the 
 wide canvass of time. 
 
 Now, unless there were in the human mind certain 
 powers, by which all this wickedness and wretchedness 
 could be gazed at from a different point of view than that 
 of passion or conscience, there can be no doubt that 
 thought and observation would drive every good man 
 into insanity. We know this from the manner in which 
 excitable spirits all around us rave and fret at the world's 
 evil, even now. We may not say how thin is often the 
 partition which separates the caucus and reform meeting 
 from the strait-jacket and the maniac's cell; and in 
 how many hearts, on fire with an indignant hatred of 
 oppression and hypocrisy, there burns the impatient 
 impulse of the blind giant of old, to pull down the pillars 
 of 'the social edifice, if by so doing they might crush the 
 Philistines feasting within its walls. But the human 
 mind cannot long live on stilts, and nature therefore has 
 provided two powers by which the asperities of sensibility 
 may be softened, Imagination and Mirth : Imagination 
 cunningly substituting its own ideals for facts, and 
 smoothly cheering the mind with beautiful illusions; 
 Mirth looking facts right in the face, detecting their ludi- 
 crous side, and turning them into objects of genial glee 
 or scornful laughter. By a perception of human faults 
 and follies under the conditions of Humor, we lose our
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 125 
 
 indignant disgust, and regain our humanity; and by 
 seeing crime with the eye of Wit, we find that it is as 
 essentially mean, little and ridiculous, as it is hateful. 
 The serpent, it is true, still retains its form ; but its head 
 is no longer raised, its eyes no longer glitter, its fangs no 
 longer dart poison, but it crawls fearfully away to its foul 
 hiding-place, the trample and spurn of every contemptu- 
 ous heel and then it becomes our turn to hiss ! What, 
 indeed, can be more pitiably ridiculous than the spectacle 
 of a man, endowed at the best or worst with but a small 
 portion of a demon's venom or a demon's power, setting 
 himself up against God and the nature of things ! an 
 insignificant insect in the path of the lightning, sagely 
 bullying the bolt ! 
 
 Thus the crimes and infirmities of human nature, as 
 manifested in the million diversities of character a^d 
 peculiarities of action and position, can be made the sub 
 jects of merriment as well as moralizing. Change the 
 point of view, and the things which made us shriek will 
 make us laugh. From Lucifer to Jerry Sneak, there is 
 not an aspect of evil, imperfection and littleness, which 
 can elude the light of Humor or the lightning of Wit. 
 It would be impossible, in one or twenty lectures, to show 
 the unnumbered varieties of Mirth, from which these 
 crimes and infirmities may be viewed. I shall confine 
 myself, therefore, to the two extremes of Humor and Wit,
 
 126 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE, 
 
 the jovial and the bitter ; and I cannot better illustrate 
 them than by a consideration of the two great exponents 
 of these extremes, Rabelais and Shakspeare's Thersites. 
 Between these lie unnumbered varieties of mirth. Ra- 
 belais is all fun at human weakness ; Thersites, all gall 
 at human depravity. And first, let us look at Rabelais, 
 the wisest, shrewdest, coarsest, most fertile, most reckless, 
 of all humorists. Both his life and works were steeped 
 in fun to the very lips. Fun seemed the condition of his 
 being ; his genius, learning, passions, hopes, faith, all in- 
 stinctively fashioned themselves into some of the various 
 oddities of mirth. Hermes shook hands with Momus at 
 his nativity. The period in which he lived, the first half 
 of the sixteenth century, was one of amazing licentious- 
 ness ; and he has portrayed it with a vulgarity as amazing. 
 The religion of that age seemed to consist in the worship 
 of two deities from the heathen heaven, Mars and Bac- 
 chus, and two devils from the Christian pandemonium, 
 Moloch and Belial. Its enormities were calculated to pro- 
 voke a shudder rather than a smile. Yet to Rabelais, the 
 dark intrigues of poisoners and slabbers calling them- 
 selves statesmen, and the desolating wars waged by 
 sceptred highwaymen cfilling themselves kings, appeared 
 exquisitely ridiculous. All the actors in that infernal 
 farce, all who led up the giddy death-dance of the tyrants 
 and bacchanals, only drew from him roar upon roar of
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 127 
 
 elephantine laughter. His humor rushes from him like 
 an inundation, unfixing the solidest pyramids of human 
 pride, whelming everything away in a flood of ridicule. 
 All that was externally dignified in the church and state 
 of Europe, kings, queens, nobles, cardinals, he tum- 
 bles about like so many mischievous children, and makes 
 them indulge in the most insane freaks of elvish caprice. 
 But^4iere we must distinguish between the resistless 
 mirth of Rabelais, which is compatible with essential 
 humanity, and the monstrous glee of some base and 
 detestable tyrants, who have jested with human blood, 
 and found a demoniacal delight in laughing over deeds 
 which have consigned them to the execration of posterity. 
 Such was Nero, who saw in the burning of Rome, set on 
 fire by himself, only an occasion for exercising his musi- 
 cal talents. Such was Barrre, that miracle of cruelty 
 and baseness, who, amid all the horrors of the French 
 Revolution, never descended into the weakness of pity, 
 but performed the worst atrocities of oppression and mur- 
 der with a fiendish glee. Thus, to please an infamous 
 companion, he obtained the passage of a law denouncing 
 the wearing of a certain head-dress as a capital crime 
 against the state. He never told the story, says his 
 biographer, without going into convulsions of laughter, 
 which made his hearers hope he would choke; and 
 Macaulay adds, that there must have been something
 
 128 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 peculiarly tickling and exhilarating, to a mind like his, 
 " in this grotesque combination of the frivolous and the 
 horrible, false hair and curling-irons with spouting 
 arteries and reeking hatchets." Such laughter as this 
 might indeed make 
 
 " Hell's burning rafters 
 Unwillingly reecho laughters." 
 
 But such was not the mirth of Rabelais. He could not 
 have laughed with Nero and Barrere ; he could not have 
 helped laughing at them. 
 
 From the stories told of Rabelais, he must have been 
 in life the same strange, wise, sharp, and mirthful imp, 
 which he appears in his writings. He seems even to 
 have looked death in the face with a grin on his own. 
 As his friends were weeping round his bed, he exclaimed, 
 " Ah ! if I were to die ten times over. I should never 
 make you cry half so much as I have made you laugh." 
 Being pressed by some ravenous relations, who thought 
 him rich, to sign a will leaving them large legacies, he 
 at last complied, and on being asked where the money 
 could be found, he answered, " As for that, you must do 
 like the spaniel, look about and search." As he was 
 dying, a page entered from the Cardinal du Bellay, to 
 inquire after his health. The old humorist muttered in 
 reply, " Tell my lord in what circumstance you found 
 me ; I am just going to leap into the dark. He is up in
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 129 
 
 the cock-loft ; bid him stay where he is. As for thee, 
 thou 'It always be a fool. Let down the curtain ; the 
 farce is done." Immediately after his death, his relations 
 seized upon a sealed paper, purporting to be his last will 
 and testament, which, on being opened, was found to 
 contain three pithy articles : "I owe much ; I have noth- 
 ing : I leave the rest to the poor." 
 
 Many eminent and some virtuous men have left the 
 world with jests on their lips. Augustus Caesar appealed 
 to the friends round his dying bed, if he had not very 
 well acted the farce of life. Sir Thomas More joked on 
 the scaffold. The wit of Lord Dorset, in his last hours, 
 surprised even Congreve, the wittiest of English comic 
 dramatists. But Eabelais, in life and death, was the 
 most consistent of all the tribe of Democritus. His 
 deepest and subtlest meditations, his most earnest loves 
 and hatreds, were sportively expressed ; and when he came 
 to " leap into the dark," it was a jest that lit the way. 
 It would be easy to moralize out the rest of the hour on 
 such a mirthful monstrosity as this ; but that is not my 
 business here. There the old wag stands in literary history 
 a monument of mirth, with his large, unctuous brain, 
 his rosy and roguish face, his fat free-and-easiness ; a mad 
 jest lurking in every line of his lawless lips, a wild glee 
 leaping in every glance of his laughing eyes ! There is 
 
 but one Rabelais. 
 
 9
 
 130 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 Now Thersites, in Shakspeare's Trolius and Cres- 
 sida, is a man of an entirely different make. He repre- 
 sents the class of wits who hate and deride crime from 
 no love of virtue, and belittle greatness merely to glut 
 their waspish spleen. But he is perfect in his way. . He 
 talks a whole armory of swords and stilettos. His words 
 hurtle through the air like fire-tipped arrows. They 
 seem almost to hit the reader, so keen are they, and 
 sent with such unerring aim. He is the thorniest of all 
 wits. His bitter brilliancy bites into the very core of 
 things. The great-limbed Homeric heroes. Achilles, 
 Ajax, Agamemnon, look small enough in his stabbing 
 sentences. His railing is more executive than their 
 smiting arms ; and he tosses them up and down, riddling 
 them with his satire, almost impaling them with his 
 edged scorn. " Hector," he says to Ajax and Achilles, 
 " Hector will have a great catch if he knocks out either 
 of your brains ; 'a were as good crack a fusty nut with 
 no kernel." And then how his sharp malice exults over 
 these examples of " valiant ignorance," these " sodden- 
 witted lords, that wear their tongues in their arms ! " 
 His description of Ajax ruminating is perfect. " He 
 bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say 
 There were wit in this head an 't would out : and so there 
 is ; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which 
 will not show without knocking." Again, he calls him
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 131 
 
 the " idol of idiot worshippers," " a full dish of fool," " a 
 mongrel cur;" and the richly dressed Patroclus he 
 addresses as "Thou idle immaterial skein of sleive 
 silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel 
 of a prodigal's purse, thou ! Ah ! how the poor world is 
 pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature ! " 
 So fates it with " that same dog-fox, Ulysses, and that 
 stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nes*>r." Every one 
 who wishes to know the height and depth of railing 
 should give his days and nights to Thersites. He accu- 
 mulates round the objects of his hatred all images of 
 scorn and contumely ; and he hates everybody, not 
 excluding himself. Everything in him has turned to 
 spleen ; everything that comes from him is dipped in his 
 gall. His criticism of the persons and events of the 
 Trojan war, as they pass before his view, takes the heroic 
 element clean out of them. It is wonderfully edifying to 
 hear him discourse of Paris and Helen. With one stroke 
 of his tongue heroes descend into beef-witted bullies, 
 goddesses dwindle down into silly girls. He buzzes over 
 the Grecian camp like a hornet, and seizes every favora- 
 ble moment to dart down and sting. No matter how 
 much he is beaten by the brawny fist of his master Ajax 
 his tongue revenges every blow in a hail-storm of 
 scurrilous words. You can hear them patter on the 
 helmets of the Greeks, like a shower of Trojan stones.
 
 132 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 Thersites is an everlasting proof of the resistless power 
 of the tongue. He lashes both armies with a whip of 
 words, and leaves his jests sticking in their flesh like so 
 many thorns and thistles. The fine audacity of Shaks- 
 peare's world-wide genius could hardly have been more 
 splendidly displayed than thus in placing the bitterest of 
 human satirists side by side with the most poetical of 
 human heroes. 
 
 In looking at the laughable side of life, it might be 
 dangerous to depict it d la Rabelais or d la Thersites. 
 But between these extremes are numberless varieties ; 
 and it is from some half-way station, perhaps, that we 
 may obtain the best view. We have already seen that 
 it is from the inharmoniousness and consequent perver- 
 sion of the human mind that the ludicrous in human 
 life has its source, and in proportion to the vividness 
 with which we perceive the original laws and principles 
 thus perverted, will be the clearness of our insight into 
 the ridiculousness of the perversions. Now everything 
 morbid, diseased and one-sided, everything out of its due 
 relations, all excess in the development of any one faculty 
 or opinion, go to make up the vast mass of life's bombast 
 and bathos. The slightest glance at society reveals the 
 most contemptible shams strutting under borrowed names. 
 Nothing in itself good but is transformed by the cunning 
 alchemy of selfishness into some portentous evil or pitiful
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 133 
 
 deception, transparent to the eye of Mirth, but full of 
 sacredness to the eye of Wonder. There is a great 
 difference, says Coleridge, " between an egg and an egg- 
 shell; but at a distance they look remarkably alike." 
 Now, to question these deceptions, to pierce these bubbles 
 with shafts that disclose their emptiness, generally raises 
 the *rnost discordant cackling among the world's geese. 
 Miss Pigeon is so charmed with the attentions of Captain 
 Rook, that she grows amazingly indignant at the voice 
 which forbids the banns. Appearances have so long been 
 confounded with realities, that an attack on the one is too 
 commonly taken as evidence of enmity to the other; and, 
 like the charmed bullet of the hunter, strikes the shepherd, 
 though directed at the wolf. Everybody knows that 
 fanaticism is religion caricatured ; bears, indeed, about the 
 same relation to it that a monkey bears to a man ; yet, 
 with many, contempt of fanaticism is received as a sure 
 sign of hostility to religion. Thus things go moaning 
 up and down for their lost words, and words are perpetu- 
 ally engaged in dodging things ; and it becomes exceed- 
 ingly dangerous for a prudent man to discriminate 
 between a truth and its distortion between prudence 
 and avarice, acuteness and cunning, sentiment and sen- 
 timentality, sanctity and sanctimoniousness, justice and 
 "Revised Statutes," the dignity of human nature and
 
 134 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 the Hon. Mr. ; yet it is just in this discrimina- 
 tion that the ludicrous side of life is revealed. 
 
 And now let us glance at this heaving sea of human 
 life, with its pride, its vanity, its hypocrisy, its selfishness, 
 its match-making, its scandal-mongering, its substitution 
 of the plausible for the true, the respectable for the good, 
 and pick out a few of its leading falsehoods for comment. 
 The first quality that strikes us here is human pride, with 
 its long trains of hypocrisy and selfishness. " This comes 
 of walking on the earth," said the Spanish hidalgo of 
 Quevedo, when he fell upon the ground. Alas! that 
 Tom Moore's bitter pleasantry on the peacock politician 
 should apply to so large a portion of mankind : 
 
 " The best speculation that the market holds forth, 
 To any enlightened lover of pelf, 
 
 Is to buy up at the price he is worth, 
 
 And sell him at that he puts on himself." 
 
 Now this pride, this self-exaggeration, the parent of all 
 spiritual sins, tracing its long lineage up to Lucifer him- 
 self, is as ridiculous as it is malignant. From our well- 
 bred horror of the Satanic, the devil to us is a sublimely 
 wicked object ; but I can conceive of Rabelais as rushing 
 into convulsions of laughter at the folly of Satan, at 
 the mere idea of imperfect evil waging its weak war 
 against omnipotent Good ! 
 
 What a lesson, indeed, is all history, and all life,
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 135 
 
 to the folly and fruitlessness of pride ! The Egyp- 
 tian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in 
 massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. 
 In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack 
 medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel ! " The 
 Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or Time hath 
 spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become 
 merchandise. Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is 
 sold for balsams." Pride and vanity have raised those 
 iron walls of separation between men, that division of 
 humanity into classes and ranks, which neither benevo- 
 lence nor religion can leap. The artificial distinctions 
 of society, the parents of numberless fooleries of bigotry 
 and prejudice, will probably afford matter of everlasting 
 moralizing to the preacher, and everlasting merriment to 
 the wit. " I considered him," said a witness in Thur- 
 tell's trial, "I considered him a very respectable man." 
 " What do you mean by respectable ? " " Why, he kept 
 a gig ! " Rank, birth, wealth, saith the worldling, thou 
 shalt have no other gods but these. Genius and virtue 
 are good only when they are genteel. The brother of 
 Beethoven was of this creed. He signed his name, to 
 
 distinguish himself from his landless brother, " 
 
 Von Beethoven, Land-owner." The immortal composer 
 retorted by signing his, " Ludwig Von Beethoven, Brain- 
 owner." We often hear in society the magical death*
 
 136 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 warrant pronounced " He does not belong to our class 
 she does not belong to our set" as if those words 
 cast out the condemned into another species, as if the 
 class or set included all in the world we are bound to 
 esteem, all whose rights we are bound to respect. The 
 huntsman, in Joseph Andrews, calls off his hounds from 
 chasing the poor parson, because they would be injured 
 by following vermin ! The ludicrous bigotries, the stu- 
 pendous stupidities, which this isblation from the race 
 engenders, are often perfectly amazing instances of human 
 folly. " When a country squire," says Sydney Smith, 
 " hears of an ape, his first impulse is to give it nuts and 
 apples; when he hears of a dissenter, his immediate 
 impulse is to commit it to the county jail, to shave its 
 head, to alter its customary food, and to have it privately 
 whipped." In Christian England the feeling of caste is 
 nearly as potent as in heathen India. The nobleman 
 hardly realizes that he belongs to the same original spe- 
 cies, and has part in the same original sin, as the miner 
 and cotton-spinner; though nothing would seem to be 
 more evident than that 
 
 " Prom yon blue heaven above us bent, 
 The gardener Adam and his wife 
 Smile at the claims of long descent." 
 
 But we need not cross the Atlantic to discover these 
 division lines between the vulgar little and the vulgar
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 137 
 
 great. The weakness of the American people is the 
 absurd importance they attach to gentility. To gain 
 this, they sacrifice health, strength, comfort, and often 
 honor. As a man here, however, must have power as 
 well as caste, his life oscillates between two ambitions ; 
 the ambition to be popular, and the ambition to be gen- 
 teel. '"Tie accordingly puts his " universal brotherhood " 
 into sermons, his patriotism into Fourth of July orations, 
 and his life and soul into " our set." It is curious to see 
 the agency of this gentility in formalizing even love and 
 hatred. " What will Mrs. Grundy say ? " this pertinent 
 interrogation has sorcery enough to robe malice in smiles, 
 and freeze affection into haughtiness. As there can be no 
 happiness in marriage without station and style, the old 
 worship of Cupid, the god, is transferred to cupidity, the 
 demon ; the test question, not what a person is, but what 
 a person has ; and the motive, not so much love as an 
 establishment. This has become so common that it is no 
 longer called sin, but prudence. The fact is so glaring 
 that it has even found its way into the weak heads of 
 sentimental novelists. The last result of all this foolery 
 is that kind of intellectual death going under the name 
 of fashionable life; the declaration that man is not a 
 mysterious compound of body and soul, but of coat and 
 pantaloons ; and the final triumph of dandy nature over 
 human nature. " Nature," says the coxcomb in Colman's
 
 138 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 comedy, to the blooming country girl, " Nature is very 
 clever, for she made you ; but nature never could have 
 made me ! " 
 
 The two pillars which support this edifice of human 
 pride are impudence and hypocrisy, or shameless preten- 
 sion and canting pretension. " Words," said a cunning 
 old politician, a few days before his withdrawal from the 
 palace to the tomb, " words were given to conceal, not to 
 express, thought." Of how large a portion of mankind 
 may it be said, that they do not so much live as pretend ? 
 Raise the cry of any reform, and crowds of sharpers and 
 dunces rush to pick pockets and talk nonsense under its 
 broad banners, and the satirist stands by to declare, with 
 South, how much of this liberty of conscience means 
 liberty from conscience, or, with Colton, how much of this 
 freedom of thought means freedom from thought. Con- 
 servatism is a very good thing ; but how many conserva- 
 tives announce principles which might have shocked 
 Dick Turpin, or nonsensicalities flat enough to have 
 raised contempt in Jerry Sneak ! " A conservative," says 
 Douglas Jerrold, " is a man who will not look at the new 
 moon, out of respect for that ' ancient institution,' the old 
 one." Radicalism or reform is another very good thing ; 
 but, quaintly says old Doctor Fuller, " many hope that 
 the tree will be felled, who hope to gather chips by the 
 fall." When Johnson asserted patriotism to be the last
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 139 
 
 refuge of the scoundrel, he said something not more than 
 half true. Would we could aver that he said something 
 more than half wrong. Philanthropy is another very 
 good thing, perhaps the best of all good things ; but much 
 of it which we see is of a cheap kind ; a compounding of 
 " sins we are inclined to," by condemning those " we 
 nave^Be mind to;" an elegant recreation of conscience, 
 calling for no self-sacrifice, and admitting the union of 
 noble sentiments with ignoble acts. The English mer- 
 chant professes to be horror-struck at the atrocities of 
 southern slavery ; the slaveholder curses England for her 
 starvation policy to labor; the Yankee is liberal of 
 rebukes to both. Now this inexpensive moral indignation 
 may produce good results ; but shall we throw up our 
 caps in admiration of the philanthropy of either ? No ! 
 for on the broad and beautiful brow of true philanthropy 
 is written self-denial, self-sacrifice. It says, the system 
 which enriches me harms another, and therefore I repu- 
 diate it, therefore I will do all in my power to put it 
 down. 
 
 This conscious hypocrisy it is very easy to understand ; 
 but there is, in a large number of minds, an unconscious 
 hypocrisy, which presents an almost insoluble problem to 
 the investigator. In some cases it is self-deceit, resulting 
 from weakness or ignorance. In others, it indicates the 
 passage of the hypocrite from being false into falsehood
 
 140 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LITE. 
 
 itself; the quack believing in his own impostures, the 
 hypocrisy, once on the surface, eating into the very soul 
 of the man, and lying him at last into an organic lie. 
 These two aspects of character can be perceived, but not 
 analyzed. They baffle the metaphysician, only to shine 
 more resplendently on the page of the humorist. What 
 a Leibnitz or Butler could but imperfectly convey, looks 
 out upon us in living forms from the picture-gallery of 
 Cervantes and Shakspeare, of Addison and Steele, of 
 Goldsmith and Dickens. Without recurring to these, 
 instances can be readily adduced from every-day life. 
 Benevolence and malignity often coexist in retailers of 
 scandal ; persons, who can be fitly described only in the 
 verbal paradoxes launched by Timon at his " smiling, 
 smooth, detested" parasites, "courteous destroyers, 
 affable wolves, meek bears." Tears are copiously show- 
 ered over frailties the discoverer takes a malicious delight 
 in circulating ; and thus, all granite on one side of the 
 heart, and all milk on the other, the unsexed scandal- 
 monger hies from house to house, pouring balm from its 
 weeping eyes on the wounds it inflicts with its Stabbing 
 tongue. Again, you all know, that, a short time 
 since, when a fear was expressed that the Bible would be 
 banished from the public schools, how much horror and 
 indignation thereat emitted itself in the lustiest profane 
 swearing. But perhaps the finest instance of this uncon-
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 141 
 
 scious hypocrisy is the fact related of the simple southern 
 clergyman. He owned half of a negro slave ; and in his 
 prayers, therefore, he prayed that the Lord would preserve 
 his house, his land, his family, and his half of Pomp. 
 
 It would be impossible to note a thousandth part of the 
 hypocrisies, conscious or unconscious, woven into the 
 very fexture of every-day life, and having their source in 
 the desire of men to appear better than they are. Popu- 
 lar as are the realities of avarice, malice, falsehood and 
 chicane, nothing is more unpopular than their appear- 
 ances. License, therefore, must talk the language of 
 freedom ; knavery must stalk on the stilts of philan- 
 thropy; public plunder and national degradation must 
 wear the guise of glory and patriotism. Some have 
 almost reached the perfection of South's ideal hypocrite, 
 "who never opens his mouth in earnest, but when he 
 eats or breathes." Everywhere, cant ; nowhere, a plain 
 avowal of folly or selfishness. Oliver Cromwell cannot 
 butcher a couple of poor Irish garrisons, without doing it 
 
 for the glory of God ; the Hon. Mr. cannot argue 
 
 in favor of perpetual slavery, without doing it for the 
 good of the slave. O ! never talk of rewarding virtue, 
 for virtue never can be paid in the world's sugar-plums ; 
 but if life cannot be carried on without roguery, would it 
 not be well to place a bounty on courageous, uncanting 
 rascality, and, passing by a heap of tongue-virtuous
 
 142 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 hypocrites, select that man for office who dares to 
 acknowledge himself a rogue ! 
 
 Among the countless deceptions passed off on our 
 sham-ridden race, let me direct your attention to the 
 deception of dignity, as it is one which includes many 
 others. Among those terms which have long ceased to 
 have any vital meaning, the word dignity deserves a dis- 
 graceful prominence. No word has fallen so readily as 
 this into the designs of cant, imposture and pretence ; 
 none has played so well the part of verbal scarecrow, to 
 frighten children of all ages and both sexes. It is at 
 once the thinnest and most effective of all the coverings 
 under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. Most of the 
 men of dignity, who awe or bore their more genial 
 brethren, are simply men possessing the art of passing 
 off their insensibility for wisdom, their dulness for depth ; 
 and of concealing imbecility of intellect under haughti- 
 ness of manner. Their success in this small game is one 
 of the stereotyped satires on mankind. Once strip from 
 these pretenders their stolen garments, once disconnect 
 their show of dignity from their real meanness, and they 
 would stand shivering and defenceless, objects of the tears 
 of pity, or targets for the arrows of scorn. But it is the 
 misfortune of this world's affairs, that offices, fitly occu- 
 pied only by talent and genius, which despise pretence, 
 should be filled by respectable stupidity and dignified
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 143 
 
 emptiness, to whom pretence is the very soul of life. 
 Manner triumphs over matter ; and throughout society, 
 politics, letters and science, we are doomed to meet a 
 swarm of dunces and windbags, disguised as gentlemen, 
 statesmen and scholars. Coleridge once saw, at a dinner 
 table, a dignified man with a face wise as the moon's. 
 The jnvful charm of his manner was not broken until 
 the muffins appeared, and then the imp of gluttony forced 
 from him the exclamation, "Them's the jockeys for 
 me ! " A good number of such dignitarians remain 
 undiscovered. 
 
 It is curious to note how these pompous gentlemen 
 rule in society and government. How often do history 
 and the newspapers exhibit to us the spectacle of a 
 heavy-headed stupiditarian in official station, veiling the 
 sheerest incompetency in a mysterious sublimity of car- 
 riage, solemnly trifling away the interests of the state, 
 the dupe of his own obstinate ignorance, and engaged, 
 year after year, in ruining a people after the most digni- 
 fied fashion ! You have all seen that inscrutable dispen- 
 sation known by the name of the dignified gentleman : 
 an embodied tediousness, which society is apt not only 
 to tolerate but worship ; a person who announces the 
 stale commonplaces of conversation with the awful pre- 
 cision of one bringing down to the valleys of thought 
 bright truths plucked on its summits; who is so pro-
 
 144 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 foundly deep and painfully solid on the weather, the last 
 novel, or some other nothing of the day ; who is inex- 
 pressibly shocked if your eternal gratitude does not repay 
 him for the trite information he consumed your hour in 
 imparting ; and who, if you insinuate that his calm, con- 
 tented, imperturbable stupidity is preying upon your 
 patience, instantly stands upon his dignity, and puts on a 
 face. Yet this man, with just enough knowledge " to 
 raise himself from the insignificance of a dunce to the 
 dignity of a bore," is still in high favor even with those 
 whose animation he checks and chills, why? Because 
 he has, all say, so much of the dignity of a gentleman ! 
 The poor, bright, good-natured man, who has done all in 
 his power to be agreeable, joins in the cry of praise, and 
 feelingly regrets that nature has not adorned him, too, 
 with dulness as a robe, so that he likewise might freeze 
 the volatile into respect, and be held up as a model spoon 
 for all dunces to imitate. This dignity, which so many 
 view with reverential despair, must have twinned, " two 
 at a birth," with that ursine vanity mentioned by Cole- 
 ridge, " which keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of 
 its own self-importance." The Duke of Somerset was 
 one of these dignified gentlemen. His second wife was 
 the most beautiful woman in England. She once sud- 
 denly threw her arms round his neck, and gave him a 
 kiss which might have gladdened the heart of an empe-
 
 THE LUL1CROTJS SIDE OF LIFE. 145 
 
 tor. The duke, lifting his heavy head awfully up, and 
 giving his shoulders an aristocratic square, lowly said, 
 " Madam, my first wife was a Howard, and she never 
 would have taken such a liberty." 
 
 This absurd importance attached to dignity is a fertile 
 source of bombast in life. It not only exalts the bad or 
 brainiest into high position, but it is apt to convert emi- 
 nent men into embodied hyperboles ; for, to fulfil the 
 popular requisitions of greatness, you will sometimes see 
 statesmen descend into this poor deception, and, though 
 giants in action or speculation, condescend to become 
 charlatans in manner. Lord Chatham and Napoleon 
 were as much actors as Garrick or Talma. Now, an 
 imposing air should always be taken as evidence of 
 imposition. Dignity is often a veil between us and the 
 real truth of things. Wit pierces this veil with its glit- 
 tering shafts, and lets in the " insolent light." Humor 
 carelessly lifts the curtain, swaggers jauntily into the 
 place itself, salutes the amazed wire-pullers with a know- 
 ing nod, and ends with slapping Dignity on the back, 
 with a " How are ye, my old boy ?" 
 
 In truth, the factitious elevation we give to some per- 
 sons comes from identifying the actual and the idea!, 
 the imagination cunningly suppressing minor faults, 
 exaggerating certain qualities into colossal size, and call- 
 ing those qualities by the name of men. The characters 
 10
 
 146 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 of distinguished personages are generally drawn in this 
 way. It is the vice of most biographies, and gires a 
 wooden and unnatural aspect to most characters in his- 
 tory. The difference between the truth and deception, in 
 this regard, is the difference between a character drawn 
 by Kacine and a character drawn by Shakspeare or 
 Scott. This factitious dignity cannot stand a moment 
 the test of ridicule. One of the most externally awful 
 and imposing persons in the world is the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons. There once happened to be a dead 
 silence in the house, when its members were all present. 
 This was broken by a startling hiccough in the gal- 
 lery, and the voice of a drunken reporter putting the 
 stunning interrogative, " Mr. Speaker, will you favor us 
 with a song ? " 
 
 The dainty portions of literature are ever liable to 
 overturn from the shocks of prose. Not only has life its 
 ludicrous side, but its serious side has its ludicrous 
 point. Poetry itself is often an exquisitely ironical 
 comment upon actual life, but few seem to take the joke. 
 The original of Goethe's Werther, whose " sorrows " 
 have become immortal, was a dull fellow, with nothing 
 in his face indicative of sentiment or intelligence. A 
 person who visited him remarked, that nobody would 
 know he had any brains, if the poet had not informed us 
 he had blown them out. Halleck's notion of Wyoming,
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 147 
 
 drawn from observation, is different from Campbell's, 
 drawn from fancy. The Gertrude of Halleck is found 
 "hoeing corn." Pastoral life can hardly be found in 
 pastures. All heroism, even, which depends on external 
 costume or form, is ever in danger of being killed by 
 little actualities. "The Iliad," says Sydney Smith, 
 " would never have come down to these times if Aga- 
 memnon had given Achilles a box on the ear. We should 
 have trembled for the jEneid if some Trojan nobleman 
 had kicked the pious JEneas in the Fourth Book. ./Eneas 
 may have deserved it ; but he could not have founded 
 the Roman empire after so distressing an accident." 
 And we have all seen how an American general, singed 
 and scarred with the fire of desperately contested battles, 
 came near being extinguished at last, from a slightly 
 increased alacrity in the disposition of his soup. 
 
 From this confounding of substance with form, this 
 universal tendency to individual exaggeration and bom- 
 bast, this stilted way of carrying on life, it has become 
 customary to identify mirth with frivolity. Without 
 insisting upon the depth and wisdom of the great Wits 
 and Humorists of the world, it is evident that the best 
 arguments are often condensed into epigrams, and that 
 good jokes are often comprehensive axioms. 
 
 The narrowness of utilitarianism was never made so 
 evident as in the remark, that " we do not estimate the
 
 148 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 value of the sun by the amount it saves us in gas." 
 Carivle's whole theory of government is contained in a 
 quibble, that nations are not governed by the able 
 man, but the man able to get appointed. Superstitions, 
 exploded by knowledge, often exist as puns. Thus some 
 of the ancients, who believed the soul to be made of fire, 
 considered death by drowning to be remediless water 
 putting the soul out. An epigram often flashes light 
 into regions where reason shines but dimly. Holmes 
 disposed of the bigot at once, when he compared his 
 mind to the pupil of the eye, "the more light you let 
 into it, the more it contracts." Nothing better exhibits 
 the horrors of capricious despotism than the humorous 
 statement of the King of Candia's habits : " If his tea is 
 not sweet enough, he impales his footman ; and smites 
 off the head of half a dozen noblemen, if he has a pain 
 in his own." In this connection, also, it is not inappro- 
 priate to refer to the importance of a vivid perception of 
 the ludicrous as a weapon of self-defence. That habit 
 of instantaneous analysis which we call readiness has 
 saved thousands from contempt or mortification. The 
 dexterous leap of thought, by which the mind escapes 
 from a seemingly hopeless dilemma, is worth all the 
 vestments of dignity which the world holds. It was 
 this readiness in repartee which continually saved Vol- 
 taire from social overturn. He once praised another
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 149 
 
 writer very heartily to a third person. "It is very 
 strange," was the reply, " that you speak so well of him, 
 for he says that you are a charlatan." "0!" replied 
 Voltaire, " I think it very likely that both of us may be 
 mistaken." Again, you must all have heard the anecdote 
 of the young gentleman who was discoursing very dog- 
 matically about the appropriate sphere of woman. "And 
 
 ^ ( 
 
 pray, sir," screamed out an old lady, " what is the appro- 
 priate sphere of woman ? " "A celestial sphere, mad- 
 am ! " Robert Hall did not lose his power of retort even 
 in madness. A hypocritical condoler with his misfor- 
 tunes once visited him in the mad-house, and said, in a 
 whining tone, "What brought you here, Mr. Hall?" 
 Hall significantly touched his brow with his finger, 
 and replied, "What '11 never bring you, sir too much 
 brain ! " A rapid change from enthusiasm to nonchalance 
 is often necessary in society. Thus a person once elo- 
 quently eulogizing the angelic qualities of Joan of Arc, 
 was suddenly met by the petulant question, what was 
 Joan of Arc made of ? " She was Maid of Orleans." 
 A Yankee is never upset by the astonishing. He walks 
 among the Alps with his hands in his pockets, and the 
 smoke of his cigar is seen among the mists of Niagara. 
 One of this class sauntered into the office of the light- 
 ning telegraph, and asked how long it would take to 
 transmit a message to Washington. " Ten minutes,"
 
 - 150 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 was the reply. " I can't wait," was his rejoinder. Sher- 
 idan never was without a reason, never failed to extricate 
 himself in any emergency by his wit. At a country 
 house, where he was once on a visit, an elderly maiden 
 lady desired to be his companion in a walk. He excused 
 himself at first on the ground of the badness of the 
 weather. She soon afterwards, however, intercepted 
 him in an attempt to escape without her. " Well," she 
 said, " it has cleared up, I see." " Why yes," he an- 
 swered, " it has cleared up enough for one, but not enough 
 for two." It was this readiness which made John Ran- 
 dolph so terrible in retort. He was the Thersites of 
 Congress, a tongue-stabber. No hyperbole of con- 
 tempt or scorn could be launched against him, but he 
 could overtop it with something more scornful and con- 
 temptuous. Opposition only maddened him into more 
 brilliant bitterness. " Is n't it a shame, Mr. President," 
 said he one day in the senate, " that the noble bull-dogs 
 of the administration should be wasting their precious 
 time in worrying the rats of the opposition." Immedi- 
 ately the senate was in an uproar, and he was clamor- 
 ously called to order. The presiding officer, however, 
 sustained him ; and, pointing his long, skinny finger at 
 his opponents, Randolph screamed out, "Rats, did I 
 say ? mice, mice ! " 
 
 The ludicrous side of life, like the serious side, has its
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 151 
 
 literature, and it is a literature of untold wealth. Mirth 
 is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the 
 thousand diversities of individual character, from the 
 most superficial gayety to the deepest, most earnest 
 humor. Thus the wit of the airy, feather-brained Far- 
 quhar glances and gleams like heat lightning ; that of 
 Miltoa blasts and burns like the bolt. Let us glance 
 carelessly over this wide field of comic writers, who have 
 drawn new forms of mirthful being from life's ludicrous 
 side, and note, here and there, a wit or humorist. There 
 is the humor of Goethe, like his own summer morning, 
 mirthfully clear ; and there is the tough and knotty 
 humor of old Ben Jonson, at times ground down at the 
 edge to a sharp cutting scorn, and occasionally hissing 
 out stinging words, which seem, like his own Mercury's, 
 " steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like 
 salt in fire." There is the incessant brilliancy of Sheri- 
 dan, 
 
 " Whose humor, as gay as the fire-fly's light, 
 
 Played round every subject, and shone as it played ; 
 Whose wit, in the combat as gentle as bright, 
 Ne'e'r carried a heart-stain away on its blade." 
 
 There is the uncouth mirth, that winds, stutters, wrig- 
 gles and screams, dark, scornful and savage, amon^ the 
 dislocated joints of Carlyle's spavined sentences. Thf5re 
 is the lithe, springy sarcasm, the hilarious badinage, the
 
 152 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 brilliant careless disdain, which sparkle and scorch along 
 the glistening page of Holmes. There is the sleepy smile 
 that sometimes lies so benignly on the sweet and serious 
 diction of old Izaak Walton. There is the mirth of 
 Dickens, twinkling now in some ironical insinuation, 
 and anon winking at you with pleasant maliciousness, its 
 distended cheeks fat with suppressed glee, and then, 
 again, coming out in broad gushes of humor, overflowing 
 all banks and bounds of conventional decorum. There 
 is Sydney Smith, sly, sleek, swift, subtle, a mo- 
 ment's motion, and the human mouse is in his paw ! 
 Mark, in contrast with him, the beautiful heedlessness 
 with which the Ariel-like spirit of Gay pours itself out 
 in benevolent mockeries of human folly. There, in a 
 corner, look at that petulant little man, his features 
 working with thought and pain, his lips wrinkled with a 
 sardonic smile ; and, see ! the immortal personality has 
 received its last point and polish in that toiling brain, 
 and, in a straight, luminous line, with a twang like 
 Scorn's own arrow, hisses through the air the unerring 
 shaft of Pope, to 
 
 " Dash the proud gamester from his gilded car," 
 And, 
 
 " Bare the base heart that lurks beneath a star." 
 
 There, a little above Pope, see Dryden, keenly dissecting
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 153 
 
 the inconsistencies of Buckingham's volatile mind, or 
 leisurely crushing out the insect life of Shad well, 
 
 " Owned, without dispute, 
 Throughout the realms of Nonsense absolute." 
 
 There, moving gracefully through that carpeted parlor, 
 mark that dapper, diminutive Irish gentleman. The 
 momejit you look at him, your eyes are dazzled with the 
 whizzing rockets and hissing wheels, streaking the air 
 with a million sparks, from the pyrotechnic hrain of 
 Anacreon Moore. Again, cast your eyes from that blind- 
 ing glare and glitter, to the soft and beautiful brilliancy, 
 the winning grace, the bland banter, the gliding wit, the 
 diffusive humor, which make you in love with all man- 
 kind in the charming pages of Washington Irving. And 
 now, for another change, glance at the jerks and jets 
 of satire, the mirthful audacities, the fretting and teasing 
 mockeries, of that fat, sharp imp, half Mephistopheles, 
 half FalstafF, that cross between Beelzebub and Rabelais, 
 known, in all lands, as the matchless Mr. Punch. No 
 English statesman, however great his power, no English 
 nobleman, however high his rank, but knows tnat every 
 week he may be pointed at by the scoffing finger of that 
 omnipotent buffoon, and consigned to the ridicule of the 
 world. The pride of intellect, the pride of wealth, the 
 power to oppress nothing can save the dunce or crim- 
 inal from being pounced upon by Punch, and held up to
 
 154 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE. 
 
 a derision or execration, which shall ring from London to 
 St. Petersburg, from the Ganges to the Oregon. From 
 the vitriol pleasantries of this arch-fiend of Momus, let 
 us turn to the benevolent mirth of Addison and Steele, 
 whose glory it was to redeem polite literature from moral 
 depravity, by showing that wit could chime merrily in 
 with the voice of virtue, and who smoothly laughed away 
 many a vice of the national character, by that humor 
 which tenderly touches the sensitive point with an evan- 
 escent grace and genial glee. And here let us not forget 
 Goldsmith, whose delicious mirth is of that rare quality 
 which lies too deep for laughter, which melts softly 
 
 into the mind, suffusing it with inexpressible delight, and 
 
 sending the soul dancing joyously into the eyes, to utter 
 
 its merriment in liquid glances, passing all the expression 
 of tone. And here, though we cannot do him justice, 
 let us remember the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 deserving a place second to none in that band of humor- 
 ists whose beautiful depth of cheerful feeling is the very 
 poetry of mirth. In ease, grace, delicate sharpness of 
 satire, in a felicity of touch which often surpasses the 
 felicity of Addison, in a subtlety of insight which often 
 reaches further than the subtlety of Steele, the humor 
 of Hawthorne presents traits so fine as to be almost too 
 excellent for popularity, as, to every one who has at- 
 tempted their criticism, they are too refined for state-
 
 THE LUDICROUS SIDE OF LIFE 155 
 
 ment. The brilliant atoms flit, hover, and glance before 
 our minds, but the remote sources of their ethereal light 
 lie beyond our analysis, 
 
 " And no speed of ours avails 
 To hunt upon their shining trails." 
 
 And now let us breathe a benison to these, our mirthful 
 benfelactors, these fine revellers among human weak- 
 nesses, these stern, keen satirists of human depravity. 
 Wherever Humor smiles away the fretting thoughts of 
 care, or supplies that antidote which cleanses 
 
 " The stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart," 
 
 wherever Wit riddles folly, abases pride, or stings iniqui- 
 ty, there glides the cheerful spirit, or glitters the flash- 
 ing thought, of these bright enemies of stupidity and 
 gloom. Thanks to them, hearty thanks, for teaching us 
 that the ludicrous side of life is its wicked side no less 
 than its foolish ; that, in a lying world, there is still no 
 mercy for falsehood ; that Guilt, however high it may 
 lift its brazen front, is never beyond the lightnings of 
 Scorn ; and that the lesson they teach agrees with the 
 lesson taught by all experience, that life in harmony 
 with reason is the only life safe from laughter, that life 
 in harmony with virtue is the only life safe from con- 
 tempt.
 
 GENIUS/ 
 
 THERE is one law inwoven into the constitution of 
 things, which declares that force of mind and character 
 must rule the world. This truth glares out upon us 
 from daily life, from history, from science, art, letters, 
 from all the agencies which influence conduct and 
 opinion. The whole existing order of things is one 
 vast monument to the supremacy of mind. The exte- 
 rior appearance of human life is but the material em- 
 bodiment, the substantial expression, of thought, the 
 hieroglyphic writing of the soul. The fixed facts of 
 society, laws, institutions, positive knowledge, were once 
 ideas in a projector's brain thoughts which have been 
 forced into facts. The scouted hypothesis of the fifteenth 
 century is the time-honored institution of the nineteenth ; 
 the heresy of yesterday is the commonplace of to-day. 
 We perceive, in every stage of this great movement, a 
 certain vital force, a spiritual power, to which we give 
 
 * Delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, 
 February, 1848.
 
 GENIUS. 157 
 
 the name of Genius. From the period when our present 
 civilized races ran wild and naked in the woods, and 
 dined and supped on each other, to the present time, the 
 generality of mankind have been contented with things 
 as they were. A small number have conceived of some- 
 thing better, or something new. From these come the 
 moti9.rrand ferment of life ; to them we owe it that exist- 
 ence is not a bog but a stream. These are men of genius. 
 There are, therefore, two fields for human thought 
 and action, the actual and the possible, the realized 
 and the real. In the actual, the tangible, the real- 
 ized, the vast proportion of mankind abide. The great 
 region of the possible, whence all discovery, invention, 
 creation, proceed, and which is to the actual as a 
 universe to a planet, is the chosen region of Genius. As 
 almost everything which is now actual was once only 
 possible, as our present facts and axioms were originally 
 inventions or discoveries, it is, under God, to Genius that 
 we owe our present blessings. In the past, it created the 
 present; in the present, it is creating the future. It 
 builds habitations for us, but its own place is on the van- 
 ishing points of human intelligence, 
 
 " A motion toiling in the gloom, 
 The spirit of the years to come, 
 Yearning to mix itself with life." 
 
 The sphere and the influence of Genius it is easier to
 
 158 GENIUS. 
 
 ascertain than to define its nature. What is Genius ? 
 It has been often defined, but each definition has included 
 but a portion of its phenomena. According to Dr. John- 
 son, it is general force of mind accidentally directed to a 
 particular pursuit ; but this does not cover the compre- 
 hensive genius of Shakspeare, Leibnitz and Goethe ; 
 and, besides, accident, circumstance, do not determine 
 the direction of narrower minds, but simply furnish the 
 occasion on which an inward tendency is manifested. 
 The most popular definition is that of Coleridge, who 
 calls genius the power of carrying the feelings of child- 
 hood into the powers of manhood. Such a power may 
 indicate the genius of Coleridge and Wordsworth, but 
 did Napoleon conquer at Austerlitz, Newton discover the 
 law of gravitation, Shakspeare create Macbeth, by carry- 
 ing the feelings of childhood into the powers of man- 
 hood ? This mode of defining by individual instances 
 is like drawing a map of Massachusetts, and calling it the 
 globe a thing we are very apt to do. 
 
 Indeed, Genius has commonly been incompletely de- 
 fined, because each definition has been but a description 
 of some order of genius. A true definition would be a 
 generalization, made up from many minds, and broad 
 enough to include all the results of genius in action and 
 thought. Genius is not a single power, but a combina- 
 tion of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning
 
 GENIUS. 159 
 
 it judges, but it is not judgment ; it imagines, but it is 
 not imagination ; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not 
 passion. It is neither, because it is all. It is another 
 name for the perfection of human nature, for Genius is 
 not a fact but an ideal. It is nothing less than the 
 possession of all the powers and impulses of humanity, 
 in heir greatest possible strength and most harmonious 
 combination; and the genius of any particular man is 
 great in proportion as he approaches this ideal of univer- 
 sal genius. Conceive of a mind in which the powers of 
 Napoleon and Howard, Dante and Newton, Luther and 
 Shakspeare, Kant and Fulton, were so combined as to 
 act in perfect harmony ; a mind, vital in every part, con- 
 ceiving everything with intensity and yet conceiving 
 everything under its due relations, as swift in its volitions 
 as in its thoughts, conceive of a mind like this, and 
 you will have a definition of genius. As it is, it requires 
 the energies of all men of genius to produce the results 
 of genius. It exists somewhat in fragments. No one 
 human mind comprehends all its elements. The nearest 
 approach to universality of genius in intellect is Shaks- 
 peare ; in will, Napoleon ; in harmony of combination, 
 Washington. It is singular that Washington is not 
 generally classed among men of genius. Lord Brougham 
 declares him to be the greatest man that ever lived, but 
 of moderate talents, as if being the soul of a revolution
 
 160 GENIUS. 
 
 and the creator of a country, did not suppose energies 
 equal to those employed in the creation of a poem, as 
 if there were any other certain test of genius but its 
 influence, any other measure of the power of a cause 
 but the magnitude of its effects ! 
 
 But to return. Genius, in its highest meaning, being 
 thus an Ideal, which the most powerful natures have but 
 approached, which, while it comprehends all men of 
 genius, is itself comprehended by none, the question still 
 arises, what common quality distinguishes men of genius 
 from other men, in practical life, in science, in letters, in 
 every department of human thought and action ? This 
 common quality is vital energy of mind, inherent, 
 original force of thought and vitality of conception ; a 
 quality equally distinguishing the genius of action and 
 meditation, making the mind in which it abides alive, 
 and capable of communicating intellectual and moral life 
 to others. Men in whom this energy glows seem to 
 spurn the limitations of matter; to dive beneath the 
 forms and appearances to the spirit of things ; to leap the 
 gulf which separates positive knowledge from discovery, 
 the actual from the possible ; and, in their grasp of spir- 
 itual realities, in their intense life, they seem to demon- 
 strate the immortality of the soul that burns within 
 them. They give palpable evidence of infinite capacity, 
 of indefinite power of growth. It seems a mockery to
 
 GENIUS. 161 
 
 limit their life by years, to suppose that fiery essence 
 can ever hum out or be extinguished. This life, this 
 energy, this uprising, aspiring flame of thought, 
 
 "This mind, this spirit, this Promethean spark, 
 This lightning of their being," 
 
 has been variously called power of combination, inven- 
 tion^ 'creation, insight; but in the last analysis it is 
 resolved into vital energy of soul, to think and to do. 
 
 This quality of genius is sometimes difficult to be 
 distinguished from talent, because high genius includes 
 talent. It is talent and something more. The usual 
 distinction between genius and talent is, that one repre- 
 sents creative thought, the other practical skill ; one 
 invents, the other applies. But the truth is, that high 
 genius applies its own inventions better than talent alone 
 can do. A man who has mastered the higher mathe- 
 matics does not on that account lose his knowledge of 
 arithmetic. Hannibal, Napoleon, Shakspeare, Newton, 
 Scott, Burke, Arkwright, were they not men of talent 
 as well as men of genius ? Because a great man does 
 not always do what many smaller men can often do as 
 well, smaller men must not, therefore, affect to pity him 
 as a visionary, and pretend to lick into shape his form- 
 less theories. 
 
 But still there doubtless is a marked distinction be- 
 tween men of genius and men simply of talent. Talent 
 11
 
 162 GENIUS. 
 
 repeats ; Genius creates. Talent is a cistern ; Genius, a 
 fountain. Talent deals with the actual, with discovered 
 and realized truths, analyzing, arranging, combining, 
 applying positive knowledge, and in action looking to 
 precedents. Genius deals with the possible, creates new 
 combinations, discovers new laws, and acts from an 
 insight into principles. Talent jogs to conclusions to 
 which Genius takes giant leaps. Talent accumulates 
 knowledge, and has it packed up in the memory ; Genius 
 assimilates it with its own substance, grows with every 
 new accession, and converts knowledge into power. 
 Talent gives out what it has taken in ; Genius, what has 
 risen from its unsounded wells of living thought. Talent, 
 in difficult situations, strives to untie knots, which Genius 
 instantly cuts, with one swift decision. Talent is full of 
 thoughts ; Genius, of thought : one has definite acquisi- 
 tions ; the other, indefinite power. 
 
 But the most important distinction between the two 
 qualities is this : one, in conception, follows mechanical 
 processes ; the other, vital. Talent feebly conceives ob- 
 jects with the senses and understanding ; Genius, fusing 
 all its powers together in the alembic of an impassioned 
 imagination, clutches everything in the concrete, con- 
 ceives objects as living realities, gives body to spiritual 
 abstractions and spirit to bodily appearances, and, like
 
 GENIUS. 16? 
 
 " A gate of steel 
 
 Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 
 His figure and his heat ! " 
 
 It is thus the glorious prerogative of Genius to conceive 
 and to present everything as alive; and here is the secret 
 of its power. It leads and sways because it communi- 
 cates Jiving energy, and strikes directly at the soul, 
 searching out the very sources of our volitions, bowing 
 our weak wills before its strong arm, awakening, animat- 
 ing, forcing us along its path of thought, or over its waves 
 of passion. It commands us because it knows better 
 than we what is within us. Soul itself, it knows that, 
 in spite of our contemptible disguises, we too have souls 
 which must leap up at its voice, and follow whithersoever 
 it leads. It claims its rightful mastery over our spirits, 
 by awakening us to a sense of our spiritual existence. 
 It speaks to us, in our captivity, in the long-forgotten 
 language of our native land. It sees us wrapped up in 
 the dead cerements of custom, rusting away in the sep- 
 ulchre of being, and it cries to us, " Come forth ! " It 
 speaks to us, and we hear; it touches us, and we spring 
 to our feet. A crowd of spirits from the realms of the 
 deathless come thronging around us ; from the battle- 
 field, where Liberty went down under the brutal hoofs 
 of Power, its immortal image trampled in the dust, 
 from the legislative hall, where, amid the collision of
 
 164 GENIUS. 
 
 adverse intellects, the orator poured his torrent of fire, 
 from the rack and the stake, where the spirit of man 
 chanted rapturous hymns in its fierce agonies, and met 
 death smiling, from the cell of the thinker, where 
 mind grappled with the mysterious unknown, piercing, 
 with its thought of light, the dark veil of unrealized 
 knowledge and possible combinations ; from every 
 scene where the soul has been really alive, arid impa- 
 tiently tossed aside the material conditions which would 
 stifle or limit its energies, come the Genii of Thought 
 and Action, to rouse us from ouj- sleep of death, to tear 
 aside the thin delusions of our conceit, and to pour into 
 the shrunken veins of our discrowned spirits the fresh 
 tides of mental life. It is this influence of Genius which 
 has given motion and progress to society; prevented the 
 ossification of the human heart and brain ; and though, 
 in its processes, it may not ever have followed the rules 
 laid down in primers, it has at least saved history from 
 being the region of geology, and our present society from 
 being a collection of fossil remains. 
 
 Thus, of the three requisitions of Genius, the first is 
 soul, and the second, soul, and the third, soul. We have 
 already seen that almost all genius is particular, with an 
 inborn direction to particular pursuits. The tendency 
 of its vital force is generally perceived in childhood. I 
 can devote but little space to the youth of genius, though
 
 GENIUS. 265 
 
 the subject is tempting, and furnishes numberless anec- 
 dotes of the earnestness, the intensity, with which the 
 great mind early abandons itself to its irrepressible im- 
 pulses. Carnot, who, as one of the Committee of Public 
 Saiety during the French Revolution, directed the opera- 
 tions of fourteen armies, and hurled back the tide of 
 invasion which came rolling in over the Alps, the Pyre- 
 nees and the Rhine, was taken, when a child, to the 
 theatre, where some siege was clumsily represented. 
 Seeing that the attacking party were so placed as to be 
 commanded by a battery, he astonished the audience by 
 demanding that the general should change his position, 
 and cried out to him that his men were in fire. The 
 young genius early exults in the contemplation of power 
 and beauty. During Scott's childhood, a frightful thun- 
 der-storm raged at Edinburgh, which made his brothers 
 and the domestics huddle together in one room, shiver- 
 ing with fear at every peal. Young Walter was found 
 lying on his back in the garden, the rain pitilessly pelt- 
 ing his face, while he, almost convulsed with delight, 
 shouted at every flash, " bonnie ! bonnie ! " Schiller 
 was found by his father, on a similar occasion, perched 
 upon a tree ; and on being harshly questioned as to his 
 object, whimpered out that he wanted to see where the 
 thunder came from. Byron's first verses, when a child 
 of four or five years, displayed the same perverseness
 
 166 GENIUS. 
 
 and unbridled vehemence which afterwards flamed out 
 in Manfred and Cain. An old lady near his house, who 
 entertained the belief that on her death her soul would 
 reside in the moon, bothered him considerably in his 
 childish pranks. He revenged himself in four lines : 
 
 " In Nottingham County there lives, at Swan Green, 
 As curst an old lady as ever was seen ; 
 And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, 
 She firmly believes she will go to the moon." 
 
 It would be needless to multiply instances, familiar to 
 everybody, that the man's genius is born with him. 
 Legislator, reformer, soldier, poet, artist, thinker, the 
 child is still " the father of the man." In some instances, 
 it must be admitted, the whole man does not grow. Na- 
 poleon's youth prefigured his maturity, and something 
 else. The sovereign who crushed the heart of his queen 
 in his mailed hand, was once a man of sentiment. 
 When quite young, he fell in love with a young maiden ; 
 they contrived little meetings ; and he afterwards averred 
 that their whole happiness then consisted in eating cher- 
 ries together. 
 
 We have seen that genius is vital energy of soul. In 
 itself it supposes a harmonious combination of will, intel- 
 lect and sensibility ; but, as manifested in men of genius, 
 this combination is not perfect. Hence the division of 
 powerful natures into men of action and men of medita
 
 GENIUS. 167 
 
 tion; men in whom will predominates, and men in whom 
 thought predominates. In the one case, the vital energy 
 of the mind takes a practical direction, works visibly on 
 society, and produces events. In the other, it takes the 
 direction of meditation, influences society by methods 
 more strictly spiritual, and produces poetry, science, the 
 fine fffts, everything that stimulates and gratifies the 
 inward sense of truth, beauty, and power. 
 
 And first let us refer to the genius of action, to genius 
 whose thoughts are read in deeds. Men of action may 
 be classed in three divisions : those who exercise their 
 energies for what they deem the truth ; those who exer- 
 cise them for personal interest and ambition ; and those 
 in whom selfish and disinterested motives are strangely 
 blended. The greatness of action includes immoral as 
 well as moral greatness, Cortes and Napoleon, as well 
 as Luther and Washington. Its highest exemplification 
 is where energy of will carries out a great original 
 thought to a practical result, with uprightness of moral 
 intention ; and perhaps the noblest example of this is in 
 Columbus. Its lowest exemplification is where great en- 
 ergies of will are divorced from conscience and human- 
 ity; and perhaps the lowest example of this is in Pizarro. 
 But neither by the side of Columbus nor Pizarro can we 
 place the moral trimmer, without any definite purpose, 
 whose heart is continually aching for the crimes of the
 
 168 GENIUS. 
 
 bad, but whose will is too infirm to battle bravely for the 
 good. Such a person may shine among well meaning 
 people, but his claims to greatness of any kind are ridic- 
 ulous. Pizarro was a buccaneer, but he had, at least, an 
 object, which was to him dearer than life, and to compass 
 it he displayed the valor of a knight and the endurance of 
 a martyr. How strangely does his conduct at the island 
 of Gallo contrast with the tongue-valiant cowardice 
 which characterizes the feebly good ! After suffering all 
 that fatigue, famine and pestilence could inflict, short of 
 death, a vessel arrived which offered to carry him and 
 his companions back to Panama. To go was to abandon 
 forever the project of conquering and plundering Peru. 
 Pizarro drew his sword, and traced a line on the sand 
 with it from east to west. Then turning to the south, 
 he said to his band of immortal pirates : " Friends and 
 comrades ! on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the 
 drenching storm, desertion and death ; on this side, ease 
 and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches ; here, 
 Panama with its poverty. Choose, each man, what best 
 becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the 
 south." Now, as long as bad men display qualities like 
 these, so long will they rule ; for to qualities like these 
 is given the dominion of the world. Such men, to be 
 checked, are not to be talked about, but to be wrestled 
 with, to be bravely met by superior force of will, and
 
 GENIUS. 169 
 
 overthrown. Never will this be done by the moral bab- 
 ble of men who wish to serve God, and wish, at the same 
 time, to live comfortably all their days. Well has the 
 great Christian poet of the age affirmed, 
 
 " The law 
 
 By which mankind now suffers is most just. 
 * **' For, by superior energies, more strict 
 Affiance in each other, faith more firm 
 ID their unhallowed principles, the bad 
 Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak, 
 The vacillating, inconsistent good." 
 
 The great characteristic of men of active genius is a 
 sublime self-confidence, springing, not from self-conceit, 
 but from an intense identification of the man with his 
 object, which lifts him altogether above the fear of dan- 
 ger and death, which gives to his enterprise a character 
 of insanity to the common eye, and which communicates 
 an almost superhuman audacity to his will. Men of this 
 stamp seem to have a clear and bright vision of what is 
 hidden from other men, and to push instinctively forward, 
 through every obstacle, to its attainment. They seem to 
 hear voices crying to them from the mysterious unknown, 
 and to answer the call in flashes of supernatural energy. 
 They ever give the impression of spirits, to whom mate- 
 rial obstacles are as flax in the fire. Judge from their 
 words and their deeds, and you would suppose their
 
 170 GENIUS. 
 
 bodies partook, like Milton's angels, of incorporeal sub- 
 stance, which, if pierced or cloven, would instantly re- 
 unite. They have no fear of death, because their souls 
 are thoroughly alive ; and the idea of death never occurs 
 to a live mind. In following the career of one of these 
 fierce and flashing intelligences, our astonishment finds 
 vent in some such words as the heroism of Duke Sopho- 
 cles forced from Fletcher's honest centurion : 
 
 " By Romulus, he is all soul, I think ; 
 He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved." 
 
 Such men, also, dart their souls into vast bodies of men, 
 become the animating spirit of great enterprises, and 
 communicate vitality even to those whose submission 
 they enforce. Every soldier in the army of Caesar and 
 Napoleon, felt the soul of Caesar or Napoleon glowing 
 within his own breast. While obeying another will, new 
 life seemed poured into his own. Audacity and a beau- 
 tiful contempt of death breathe and burn in the words 
 and deeds of such commanders. " My lads," said Napo- 
 leon to some raw recruits, " you must not fear death ; 
 when soldiers brave death, they drive him into the 
 enemy's ranks." The great Conde, when twice repulsed 
 with frightful slaughter at Fribourg, led his soldiers up 
 in person to the mouths of the enemy's cannon, and 
 hurled his marshal's baton over the intrenchments. 
 Nothing could resist the impetuosity of French soldiers,
 
 GENIUS. 17J 
 
 after such a spur had been given to their energies. 
 "Follow my plume!" said Henry the Fourth to his 
 knights ; " you will always find it on the road to vic- 
 tory." " Hang thyself, brave Crillon," said he, in the 
 same spirit of chivalry ; " we have fought at Arques, and 
 thou wast not there." Speak thus to the higher senti- 
 ments of men on great occasions, and you will find their 
 sSuls will instinctively mount up to their native region. 
 When the -Spanish Armada threatened England, the 
 Queen of England spoke to her troops in words warm 
 from her own lion heart. She did not tell them that an 
 invasion would prejudice their interests, or even their 
 liberties, but she tvondered that Parma and proud Spain 
 should dare to invade her dominions. The success of 
 Luther was in a great degree owing to his indomitable 
 will, a will which forced its way through obstacles 
 which might have daunted armies, and gave to his char- 
 acter that moral intensity, which fitted him to be the 
 leader in what Guizot calls, " the great insurrection of 
 human thought against authority." When advised not 
 to go to a city, notoriously thronged with his enemies, 
 he said, " Were there as many devils there as roof-tiles, 
 I would on ! " This is the feeling of the great reformer 
 everywhere; to make life a battle for the truth; to 
 strike heavier blows for the Right than others can for the 
 Wrong ; in one word, to DARE ! This principle has been
 
 172 GENros. 
 
 repeatedly caricatured by those who have pretended to 
 represent it. It was vilely caricatured in that infernal 
 farce, the French Revolution, in which audacity and 
 mediocrity formed a hideous union. But it is no less the 
 virtue of genius because it is the vice of folly. There is 
 a great difference between the dogmatism of knowledge 
 and the dogmatism of ignorance. Kepler might say, 
 that if God had waited five thousand years before he had 
 raised up a man capable of comprehending His wonderful 
 works, he could wait a thousand for men to comprehend 
 his discoveries ; but such language as this is impotent 
 trash, worthy only to be received with a storm of hisses, 
 when uttered by pretentious mediocrity. 
 
 This energy and audacity of will characterizes all rul- 
 ing public men, statesmen, generals, reformers, orators. 
 In the great orator, especially, it is seen in the condensa- 
 tion, the burning vehemence, the brief, stern strokes, with 
 which he pierces through the reason and through the 
 passions of his audience, directly at their volitions, 
 spurning, trampling, upon all opposing wills, hurrying the 
 souls whom he has taken captive onward, ever onward, 
 to the insatiable object which impatiently beckons in the 
 distance ! Demosthenes, the greatest of orators, is the 
 great master of this intense and rapid movement. He 
 never repeats ; never, says Brougham, comes back upon 
 the ground, "which he has once utterly wasted and
 
 GENIUS. 173 
 
 withered up by the tide of fire he has rolled over it." 
 It was this intense will, this force of being, which chiefly 
 distinguished the arrogant and ruling genius of Chatham. 
 He cowed those whom he could neither convince nor 
 persuade. A country member of Parliament once rose to 
 accuse him of a palpable inconsistency in his conduct. 
 /He had hardly mumbled a few words before he was 
 looked down into his seat by the steady scorn which 
 blazed upon him from Chatham's eye. It was this force 
 which gave such audacity to his bursts of blended opinion 
 and passion as in that well-known exclamation in the 
 House of Lords, "They tell me that America has 
 resisted. I am rejoiced to hear it ! " " Sugar, my 
 lords," said he, on another occasion, in his deep, grave 
 voice. A well-bred sneer instantly smiled on the lips of 
 his noble auditors, at the disparity between the term and 
 the tone. Chatham saw it, kindled at the insult, and 
 repeated sugar three times, in his fiercest tones and with 
 his most violent gesticulations, until he awed them into 
 putting on civil faces. He then asked, derisively, " "Who 
 will laugh at sugar now?" We sometimes see this 
 power exercised in private life, and controversies settled 
 by force of will, instead of force of argument. Dr. John- 
 son wielded it with admirable energy. The records of 
 Robert Hall's conversation boil over with an audacity of 
 expression, which cuts clean through the " linen decen-
 
 174 GENITTS. 
 
 cies" of polite life. " Mr. Hall," said one of his parish- 
 ioners, "I understand you are going to marry Miss 
 
 ." " I marry Miss ! I would as soon 
 
 marry Beelzebub's eldest daughter, and go home and live 
 with the old folks." Again, speaking of Dr. Ryland, he 
 exclaimed, " Why, sir, Dr. Ryland 's all piety ; all piety 
 together, sir. If there were not room in heaven, God 
 would turn out an archangel for him." His proposal to 
 his housekeeper had a similar wildness. " Betty, do you 
 love the Lord Jesus ? " " Yes, sir." " And Betty, do 
 you love me ? " " Yes, sir." They were married at once. 
 Perhaps the most wonderful example of this audacity 
 In a mind at once vast and flexible, intense and compre- 
 hensive, is in Caesar, a man to whose commanding 
 genius empire seemed but another term for action. 
 Compared with him, Alexander seems but a hot-headed 
 boy, and even Napoleon "pales his uneffectual fire." 
 The amazing strength of his mind is not so remarkable 
 as its plastic character the ease with which it accom- 
 modated itself to every emergency its wonderful fusion 
 of will, intelligence and passion. It never hardened in 
 any part, and all its powers were thus capable of instan- 
 taneous concentration. Though his determinations were 
 as sure as they were swift, we still never speak of his 
 iron will, feeling that such a term would not express its 
 ethereal strength, and its felicity of adaptation to every
 
 GENIUS. 175 
 
 occasion. The acts of Caesar affect us like unexpected 
 flashes of imagination in a great poem. At the age of 
 seventeen, in flying from the power of Sylla, he fell into 
 the clutches of pirates. They fixed his ransom at twenty 
 talents. "It is too little," he said; "you shall have 
 fifty ; but once free, I will crucify every one of you ;" 
 and he did it. When his favorite legion mutinied, he 
 abandoned them before they could abandon him, and they 
 followed him like spaniels, suing for forgiveness. In 
 Spain, his legions would obey neither his entreaties nor 
 commands to attack the vast army opposed to them. 
 But they knew not the resources of their commander. 
 Seizing a shield, he cried, " I will die here ! " and rushed 
 singly upon the Spanish ranks. Two hundred arrows 
 flew against him, when within ten paces of the enemy, 
 and his soldiers could not but charge in his support. At 
 Rome, when he heard of plots to assassinate him, he 
 proudly dismissed his guards, and ever afterwards walked 
 through the streets alone and unarmed. Well might his 
 " honorable murderers " have wondered, as that withered 
 frame lay before them, pierced with twenty stabs, that a 
 body so worn and weak could have contained so vast and 
 vehement a soul. In all history we have no other 
 instance of a mind of such ethereal make, divorced from 
 moral principle. The Romans thought him a god, and 
 to all posterity he will be the great, bad man of the world.
 
 176 GENitrs. 
 
 Interpenetrate the will of Luther, the benevolence of 
 Howard, the religion of Fenelon, with the mind of 
 Goethe, and you would have a man as resistless for duty 
 as Ceesar was for glory. But, you may say, this military 
 courage is not spiritual, but physical. Let us hear the 
 testimony of one qualified to speak to this point, of 
 one who was both warrior and writer, the testimony 
 of the great tragic poet of Greece. How run the lines 
 written by himself to serve for his own epitaph ? 
 
 "Athenian ^Eschylus, Eurphorian's son, 
 
 Buried in Geta's fields, these words declare ; 
 His deeds are registered at Marathon, 
 Known to tne deep-haired Mede who met him there." 
 
 Have we not here the same stern, fiery, invulnerable 
 soul, which clothed in verse of such imperishable grand- 
 eur the awful agonies of the chained Prometheus ? 
 
 But to return : Brutus has been placed above Csesar 
 in greatness by those who write books for children. 
 Now, Brutus had no genius ; was simply a proud, 
 inflexible, hard-minded and narrow-minded patrician, 
 whose notion of liberty was below that of Russia's 
 autocrat, and whose notion of virtue was worse than his 
 notion of liberty. "Virtue," said he, just before his 
 death, "vain word, futile shadow, slave of chance' 
 Alas ! I believed in thee ! " Here a heroical soul ! Hen 
 a great moral genius ! Why, Csesar would not have said
 
 GENIUS. 177 
 
 such a thing even of vice ! No man who had vitally con- 
 ceived virtue, as a living reality, ever identified him- 
 self with it, could thus have mocked its awful immor- 
 tality with his peevish atheism. He called virtue a 
 word, because to him it was a barren proposition about 
 virtue, to which his understanding assented, not a liv- 
 igTp realization of virtue, which his whole nature adored. 
 How mean does such a man appear by the side of such 
 a woman as Joan of Arc, the saint of France ! How 
 much more force dwelt in the little peasant maiden than 
 in Rome's proud patrician ! She, in the might and the 
 simplicity of her nature, identified herself with duty, 
 and, armed in her intelligence and faith, was, in her 
 sphere, as resistless as Caesar, because her mind was 
 as vital. From the time her soul first caught the sound 
 of the cathedral bells, chiming above her cottage home, 
 to the period when she fell into the gripe of the grim 
 English wolves, her life was one expression of holiness, 
 purity and action. Viewed in connection with the 
 Satanic passions of that dark period, she seems to de- 
 scend upon her age as a heavenly visitant, with celestial 
 beauty and celestial strength. France has no nobler 
 boast than her heroic genius ; England no fouler stain 
 than her brutal murder. She is among the greatest of 
 the great of action. It is almost needless to say that in 
 English history she appears variously as witch, wanton, 
 12
 
 178 GENIUS. 
 
 sorceress and fanatic, not as the wisest, purest, ablest 
 intelligence of her time. 
 
 We have seen, so far, that vital energy of soul is the 
 great characteristic of the genius of action. It is not 
 less so of the genius of meditation. We call the one 
 force of character ; the other, force of mind : but vital 
 thought is at heart of both. True depth and strength 
 of character is in proportion to the living spiritual prin- 
 ciple within the man. Force, power, dominion, are 
 traced in letters of fire on the brow of the thinker, as on 
 the crown of the actor. From both come those kindling, 
 quickening influences, which move the world. But to 
 the thinker, the range of the man of action is all too nar- 
 row to satisfy the creative energy of his intellect. The 
 reformer, the soldier, the patriot, each commonly over- 
 estimates the importance of his special object, from not 
 vitally conceiving its relations as well as itself. Shaks- 
 peare cannot do the work of Luther, because he is on 
 an eminence where Luther's work falls into its right 
 relations to other possible reforms, which Luther feebly 
 conceives or fiercely underestimates. To Luther it is 
 the thing to be done ; to Shakspeare, only one thing to 
 be done. Shakspeare, again, would not expend his ener- 
 gies for the objects of Napoleon, because he sees further 
 and deeper than Napoleon into their nature. Yet we 
 are not from this to conclude that the force exercised in
 
 GENIUS. 179 
 
 the region whence events indirectly spring, is not as 
 great as that exercised in the region whence events 
 directly spring. Influence is the measure of power ; and 
 he must be a dealer in hardy assertions who shall say 
 that the influence on mankind of men of action has been 
 greater than men of thought. In truth, action is influ- 
 ential, as meditation is influential, just in proportion to 
 the vital thought it embodies and represents. 
 
 It may be as well here to mention a common preju- 
 dice against genius, that it is a quality of idle, lazy men ; 
 of clever vagabonds, who have a knack of seizing some 
 things by intuition which others obtain by logic ; of men. 
 who spontaneously perceive what others laboriously inves- 
 tigate. If a child flouts at parental authority, abhors 
 study, investigates the condition of hen-roosts, and prac- 
 tically illustrates new views of property, his sloth, trickery 
 and thieving, are apt to be laid to his genius. All mis- 
 erable pretenders, poetasters, quacks, ranters, disciples 
 of disorder everywhere, are considered to be fools and 
 vagabonds in virtue of their genius. The general feeling 
 is well expressed in an anecdote told of Mason. Some 
 person brought him a subscription paper for the poems of 
 Ann Yearsley, the inspired milk-maid, describing her as 
 a heaven-born genius. He gave four-and-sixpence, 
 " four shillings," he said, " for charity, and the odd six- 
 pence for her heaven-born genius." The work-house,
 
 180 GENIUS. 
 
 the jail, the penitentiary, are considered to be full of men 
 of genius. The quality is held to be naturally opposed 
 to order, to common-sense, and to worldly success. 
 Even where a man like Burns, or Otway, or Cowper, 
 filled a nation with his fame, it is still remembered that 
 Otway starved to death, that Burns died drunk, that 
 Cowper died mad. " There 's small choice," cries Medi- 
 ocrity, "in rotten apples." People therefore consider 
 genius, at the best, a doubtful benefit : 
 
 " The booby father craves a booby son, 
 And by Heaven's blessing thinks himself undone." 
 
 Now, admitting that Genius, working in bad organiza- 
 tions, and exposed to a continual conflict with surround- 
 ing malignity and stupidity, may end in " despondency 
 and madness," may seem, as Rousseau's did to Byron, 
 
 "A tree 
 
 On fire with lightning, with ethereal flame 
 Kindled and blasted," 
 
 yet the fault is not in having too much genius, but in 
 not having genius enough. Take Milton, the invincible ; 
 that adamantine strength of will which made such 
 wild work among the sensualists and renegades of his 
 time, was not that a portion of his genius ? When a 
 great man sinks into despondency, or fear, or inaction, 
 his genius slumbers or has departed. He is an Achilles,
 
 GENIUS. 181 
 
 dozing in luxurious sloth, while the plains are ringing 
 with war ; and to him should be addressed the trumpet 
 call of Patroc.us : 
 
 " Sweet, 
 
 Rouse thyself ; and the weak, wanton Cupid 
 Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
 And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
 *""** Be shook to air ! " 
 
 Indeed, genius in thought supposes energy of will to 
 rouse energies of intellect, and is the exact opposite of 
 laziness or indulgence. It is self-directed power; energy, 
 which, if it do not come spontaneously, must be induced. 
 As far as it is genius it is labor, the hardest work that 
 man can do, and its discoveries and combinations are 
 earned by the very sweat of the brain. It is true, thoughts 
 seem sometimes to fall into the mind of the poet, like 
 stray birds of paradise ; but be sure they have been lured 
 thither by the poet's potent spells. Again, in the exter- 
 nal activity of men of genius there are great differences, 
 from the physical inertia of Thomson, lazily biting the 
 ripe side of a peach on the tree, his hands thrust immov- 
 ably in his pockets, to the hurricane movement of Byron, 
 who had, if we may believe Mr. Gilfillan, " the activity 
 of a scalded fiend ; " yet the Seasons were as much 
 the result of inward energy as Childe Harold. But the 
 thought of genius, you may say, comes spontaneously,
 
 182 GENIUS. 
 
 swift as lightning. Yes ; but that gathering together 
 of forces, which precedes and causes the lightning, what 
 is that ? The thought of the law of gravitation flashed 
 acrors the mind of Newton ; but the mental labor which 
 for years preceded it, the millions of thoughts which 
 came from that exhaustless fountain before the right one 
 flashed, there was the work of a giant. The mind of 
 genius, being vital, grows with exercise; assimilates 
 knowledge into the very life-blood of thought, every new 
 acquisition becoming additional power ; and though the 
 last result may seem simple, the processes by which it is 
 mastered are complex and mighty. In view of the diffi- 
 culties to be overcome, and the annoyances to be tossed 
 aside, by the original thinker, Buffon defined genius as 
 patience. In the power of patient labor, Newton mod- 
 estly saw the difference between himself and other men. 
 He did not consider that this power of patient labor was 
 his genius ; that continuity and concentration of thought 
 are in proportion to the size and vitality of the thinking 
 principle. Let those who prate about indolent genius 
 conceive of the energy of Scott. At the age of fifty-six 
 he resolutely braced up his' energies of mind to pay a 
 debt of six or seven hundred thousand dollars, by litera- 
 ture. In three years he produced thirty volumes. His 
 frame began to break down. Dr. Abercrombie implored 
 him to desist from writing. " I tell you what it is, doc-
 
 GENIUS. 183 
 
 tor," said Scott, " when Molly puts the kettle on, you 
 might as well say, don't boil ! " 
 
 This living energy of mind, it is hard to kindle. How 
 many go down to the grave without having known, dur- 
 ing a long life, what thought is ! How many abide in 
 miserable superstitions, victims of every quack in religion, 
 politics and literature, their minds mere collections of 
 chips and hearsays, feeling their degradation, yet prefer- 
 ring it to the labor of mental effort ! This slavery of the 
 soul, these chains clanking upon every utterance of opin- 
 ion, can only be broken by the strength within the man. 
 It is a comparatively easy task to induce men to sacrifice 
 comfort and wealth, to be fanatics, and very brave fanat- 
 ics, for any cruel nonsense which has obtained in the 
 world, but to induce them to think, oh ! that is 
 requiring too much for the energies of mortal man ! 
 And yet, forsooth, the world is becoming too intellectual ! 
 We educate the intellect too much! "My friends," said 
 Dr. Johnson, " clear your minds of cant ! " 
 
 Indeed, education can hardly be too intellectual, unless 
 by intellectual you mean parrot knowledge, and other 
 modes of mind-slaughter. No education deserves the 
 name, unless it develops thought, unless it pierces 
 down to the mysterious spiritual principle of mind, and 
 starts that into activity and growth. There, all educa- 
 tion, intellectual, moral, religious, begins ; for morality,
 
 184 GENITTS. 
 
 religion, intelligence, have all one foundation in vital 
 thought ; that is, in thought which conceives all ob- 
 jects with which it deals, whether temporal or eternal, 
 visible or invisible, as living realities, not as barren 
 propositions. Here is the vital principle of all growth 
 in learning, in virtue, in intelligence, in holiness. If this 
 fail, there is no hope : 
 
 " The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 Thus force of being, to labor, to create, to pluck out 
 the heart of nature's mystery, this is the law of genius. 
 It would be impossible here to follow this live and life- 
 giving thought of man in its invasion of the possible and 
 the unknown. Its result is human knowledge, the 
 sciences of mind and matter, poetry and the plastic arts, 
 with their myriad untraceable influences upon society 
 and individual character. Genius, mental power, wher- 
 ever you look, you see the radiant footprints of its victo- 
 rious progress. It has surrounded your homes with com- 
 fort ; it has given you the command of the blind forces 
 of matter ; it has exalted and consecrated your affections; 
 it has brought God's immeasurable universe nearer to 
 your hearts and imaginations ; it has made flowers of 
 paradise spring up even in poor men's gardens. And, 
 above all, it is never stationary ; its course being ever 
 onward to new triumphs, its repose but har.nonious ac-
 
 GENIUS. 185 
 
 tivity, its acquisitions but stimulants to discoveries. 
 Answering to nothing but the soul's illimitable energies, 
 it is always the preacher of hope, and brave endeavor, 
 and unwearied, elastic effort. It is hard to rouse in their 
 might these energies of thought; but when once roused, 
 when felt tingling- along every nerve of sensation, the 
 whjjle inward being thrilling with their enkindling inspi- 
 ration, 
 
 " And all the God comes rushing on the soul," 
 
 there seem to be no limits to their capacity, and obsta- 
 cles shrivel into ashes in their fiery path. This deep feel- 
 ing of power and joy, this ecstasy of the living soul, this 
 untamed and untamable energy of Genius, you can- 
 not check its victorious career as it leaps exultingly from 
 discovery to discovery, new truths ever beckoning implor- 
 ingly in the dim distance, a universe ever opening and 
 expanding before it, and above all a Voice still crying, 
 On J on ! On ! though the clay fall from the soul's 
 struggling powers ! On ! though the spirit burn through 
 its garment of flesh, as the sun through mist ! On ! 
 on! 
 
 " Alonij the line of limitless desires."
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE* 
 
 A PROMINENT characteristic of the present day, and in 
 many respects an admirable one, is the universal atten- 
 tion given to the subject of bodily health ; but, like many 
 other movements founded on half-truths, it has been 
 pushed by fanaticism into ludicrous perversions. Physi- 
 ology has been systematized into a kind of popular gos- 
 pel, in whose doctrines the soul seems of little import- 
 ance in comparison with the gastric juice. Physic hav- 
 ing become a fashion, a valetudinary air is now the sign 
 of your true coxcomb ; and every idle person has his pet 
 complaint, which he nurses in some genteel infirmary. 
 There is an universal cant about health ; every city and 
 hamlet is beleaguered by the hosts of Hippocrates, the 
 floods of Hydropathy, and the animalculae of Homeop- 
 athy ; and no person can venture into the street without 
 being assaulted by some Hygeian highwayman, who 
 
 * Delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College 
 July 25, 1849.
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 187 
 
 presents a phial to his head, and demands his patience 
 or his purse. Now, the practical consequence of this 
 deification of the body and worship of dietetics, is to 
 bring men under the dominion of a sickly selfishness and 
 a craven cowardice, while pretending to teach them the 
 physical laws of their being. Man obeys the highest law 
 of vhis being when he takes his life in his hand, and 
 boldly ventures it for something he values more than 
 self. Life cast away for truth or duty, even for fame or 
 knowledge, is better than life saved for the sake of living. 
 But your true disciple of physiological religion, with his 
 morbid consciousness of that collection of veins, bones, 
 muscles and appetites, which he calls himself, would 
 consider it a monstrous violation of the physical laws of 
 his being to obey a benevolent impulse which endangered 
 a blood-vessel, or to purchase the discovery of a new 
 truth at the expense of deranged digestion : and he would 
 survey with lazy wonder the strange ignorance of How- 
 ard, penetrating into pestilential prisons ; of Washington, 
 exposing his person to a storm of bullets ; of Ridley, 
 serenely yielding his frame to that baptism of fire which 
 enrolled him forever in the glorious army of martyrs. 
 Such acts as these were doubtless violations of physical 
 laws, and prove that heroes are not framed on accurate 
 physiological principles. 
 
 Indeed, health and disease, in their highest meaning,
 
 188 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 refer more to the mind than to the body. A code of 
 ethics built on physical laws can but inculcate a selfish, 
 superficial prudence ; and prudence, except in weaklings, 
 will not restrain self-indulgence, and ought not to restrain 
 self-sacrifice. There are no duties, therefore, which are 
 not resolvable into moral duties ; no vices which have 
 not their scorpion nest in the heart. Do you suppose 
 that any knowing prattle about the breathing or digesting 
 apparatus will still the hoarse clamor of gluttony and 
 sensuality ? Will it relax the grasp of Satanic pride ? In 
 truth, you will find that prudence without conscience 
 holds but a rein of flax on the wild war-horses of passion. 
 But it is a characteristic weakness of the day to super- 
 ficialize evil ; to spread a little cold cream over Pande- 
 monium, erect a nice little earthly paradise upon it, and 
 then to rush into misanthropy because the thin structure 
 instantly melts. Indeed, it is at the very core of the 
 mind that we must search for the principles of health and 
 disease, in the mysteries of will, intelligence, senti- 
 ment and passion, rather than in the organs which are 
 their instruments or victims. Besides, bodily maladies 
 may be badges of disgrace, or titles of honor; your 
 drunkard and your philosopher may both take their " leap 
 into the dark" from apoplexy ; and there is a great dif- 
 ference between Milton, sacrificing his eyesight from the
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 189 
 
 love of liberty, and Byron, sacrificing his digestion from 
 the love of gin. 
 
 The subject, therefore, to which 1 would call your 
 attention, is intellectual health and disease, as it exists in 
 individuals and in nations. To one who reflects on the 
 nature and capacity of the human mind, there is some- 
 thing inconceivably awful in its perversions. Look at it 
 as incomes, fresh and plastic, from its Maker ; look at it 
 as it returns, stained and hardened, to its Maker. Con- 
 ceive of a mind, a living soul, with the germs of faculties 
 which infinity cannot exhaust, as it first beams upon you 
 in its glad morning of existence ; quivering with life and 
 joy; exulting in the bounding sense of its developing 
 energies ; beautiful, and brave, and generous, and joyous, 
 and free, the clear, pure spirit bathed in the auroral 
 light of its unconscious immortality : and then follow it, 
 in its dark passage through life, as it stifles and kills, one 
 by one, every inspiration and aspiration of its being, until 
 it becomes but a dead soul entombed in a living frame. 
 It may be that a selfish frivolity has sunk it into con- 
 tented worldliness, or given it the vapid air of complacent 
 imbecility. It may be that it is marred and disfigured 
 by the hoof-prints of appetite, its humanity extinguished 
 in the mad tyranny of animal ferocities. It may be that 
 pride has stamped the scowl of hatred upon its front ; that 
 avarice and revenge, set on fire of hell, have blasted and
 
 190 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 blackened its unselfish affections. The warm sensibility 
 gushing spontaneously out in world-wide sympathies, 
 the bright and strong intellect, eager for action and 
 thirsting for truth, the rapturous devotion, mounting 
 upwards in a pillar of flame to God, all gone, and 
 only remembered as childish enthusiasm, to point the 
 sneer of the shrewd, and the scoff of the brutal ! Where, 
 in this hard mass of animated clay, wrinkled by cunning 
 or brutalized by selfishness, are the power and joy proph- 
 esied in the aspirations of youth ? 
 
 " Whither hath fled thg visionary gleam 1 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? " 
 
 To give the philosophy of this mental disease, to sub- 
 ject the mind to that scrutiny which shall account for its 
 perversions, we must pass behind its ordinary operations 
 of understanding, sensibility and imagination, and attempt 
 to clutch its inmost spirit and essence. Now, an analysis 
 of our consciousness, or rather a contemplation of the 
 mysterious processes of our inward life, reveals no facul- 
 ties and no impulses which can be disconnected from 
 our personality. The mind is no collection of self-acting 
 powers and passions, but a vital, indissoluble unit and 
 person, capable, it is true, of great variety of manifesta- 
 tion, but still in its nature a unit, not an aggregate. 
 For the purposes of science, or verbal convenience, 
 we may call its various operations by different names,
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 19x 
 
 according as it perceives, feels, understands or imag- 
 ines ; but the moment science breaks it up into a 
 series of disconnected parts, and considers each part 
 by itself as a separate power, that moment the living 
 principle of mind is lost, and the result is an anar- 
 chy of faculties. Fortunately, however, we cannot free 
 ourselves, by any craft of analysis, from personal pro- 
 noftns. A man who speaks or acts, instinctively men- 
 tions it as I said, I did. We do not say that Milton's 
 imagination wrote Paradise Lost, but that Milton wrote 
 it. There is no mental operation in which the whole 
 mind is not present ; nothing produced but by the joint 
 action of all its faculties, under the direction of its central 
 personality. This central principle of mind is spiritual 
 force, capacity to cause, to create, to assimilate, to be. 
 This underlies all faculties ; interpenetrates, fuses, directs 
 all faculties. This thinks, this feels, this imagines, this 
 worships ; this is what glows with health, this is what is 
 enfeebled and corrupted by disease. Call it what you 
 please, will, personality, individuality, character, force 
 of being; but recognize it as the true spiritual power 
 which constitutes a living soul. This is the only pecu- 
 liarity which separates the impersonal existence of a 
 vegetable from the personal life of a man. The material 
 universe is instinct with spiritual existence, but only in 
 man is il individualized into spiritual life.
 
 192 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 Now, there is no such thing as faculty which has not 
 its root in this personal force. Without this, thought is 
 but insanity, and action, fate. Men do not stumble, and 
 blunder, and happen into Iliads, and JEneids, and Divina 
 Commedias, and Othellos, in a drunken dream of poetic 
 inspiration, but work and grow up to them. It is com- 
 mon, I know, to point to some lazy gentleman, and say 
 that there is a protuberance on his forehead or temple 
 sufficiently large to produce a Hamlet or a Principia, if 
 he only had an active temperament. But the thing 
 which produces Hamlets and Principias is not physical 
 temperament, but spiritual power. What a man does 
 is the real test of what a man is ; and to declare that 
 he has great capacity but nothing great to set his 
 capacity in motion, is an absurdity in terms. 
 
 This mind, this free spiritual force, cannot grow, 
 cannot even exist, by itself. It can only grow by assim- 
 ilating something external to itself, the very condition of 
 mental life being the exercise of power within on objects 
 without. The form and superficial qualities of objects it 
 perceives ; their life and spirit it conceives. Only what 
 the mind conceives, it assimilates and draws into its own 
 life ; intellectual conception indicating a penetrating 
 vision into the heart of things, through a fierce, firm 
 exertion of vital creative force. In this distinction 
 between perception and conception, we have a principle
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 193 
 
 which accounts for the limited degree in which so many 
 persons grow in intelligence and character, in grace and 
 gracelessness. Here, also, is the distinction between 
 assent and faith, theory and practice. In the one case, 
 opinions lie on the surface of the mind, mere objects, the 
 truth of which it perceives, but which do not influence 
 its will ; in the other, ideas penetrate into the very sub- 
 stance of the mind, become one with it, and are springs 
 of living thought and action. For instance, you may 
 cram whole folios of morality and divinity into the 
 heads of Dick Turpin and Captain Kidd, and both will 
 cordially assent to their truth ; but the captives of Dick's 
 blunderbuss will still have to give up their purses, and 
 the prisoners of Kidd's piracy will still have to walk the 
 plank. On the other hand, you may pour all varieties 
 of immoral opinions and images into the understanding 
 of a pure and high nature, and there they will remain, 
 unassimilated, uncorrupting ; his mind, like that of Ion, 
 
 " Though shapes of ill 
 May hover round its surface, glides in light, 
 And takes no shadow from them." 
 
 In accordance with the same principle, all knowledge, 
 however imposing in its appearance, is but superficial 
 knowledge, if it be merely the mind's furniture, not the 
 mind's nutriment. It must be transmuted into mind, as 
 food is into blood, to become wisdom and power. There 
 13
 
 194 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 is many a human parrot and memory-monger, who 
 has read and who recollects more history than Webster ; 
 but in Webster, history has become judgment, foresight, 
 executive force, mind. That seemingly instinctive sa- 
 gacity, by which an able man does exactly the right thing 
 at the right moment, is nothing but a collection of facts 
 thus assimilated into thought. This power of instanta- 
 neous action without reflection is the only thing which 
 saves men in great emergencies ; but far from being inde- 
 pendent of knowledge and experience, it is their noblest 
 result. Many of the generals opposed to Napoleon 
 understood military science as well as he did ; but he 
 beat them on every occasion where victory depended on 
 a wise movement made at a moment's thought, because 
 science had been transfused into his mind, while it was 
 only attached to theirs. Every truly practical man, 
 whether he be merchant, mechanic, or agriculturalist, 
 thus transmutes his experience into intelligence, until his 
 will operates with the celerity of instinct. In the order 
 of intellectual development, intuition does not precede 
 observation and reflection, but is their last perfection. 
 First, slow steps, cautious examination, comparison, rea- 
 soning ; then, thought and action, swift, sharp and sure, 
 as the lightning. 
 
 If the mind thus grows by assimilating external 
 objects, it is plain that the character of the objects it
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 195 
 
 assimilates will determine the form of its development, 
 and its health or disease. Mental health consists in the 
 self-direction of mental power, in the capacity to perceive 
 its own relations to objects and the relations of objects to 
 each other, and to choose those which will conduce to its 
 enlargement and elevation. Disease occurs both when it 
 loses its self-direction, and its self-distrust. When it loses 
 its self-direction, it surrenders itself to every outward 
 impression ; when it loses its self-distrust, it surrenders 
 itself to every inward whim. In the one case, it loses all 
 moral and intellectual character, becomes unstrung, sen- 
 timental, dissolute, with feebleness at the very heart of 
 its being ; in the other, it perversely misconceives and 
 discolors external things, views every object as a mirror 
 of self, and, having no reverence for aught above itself, 
 subsides into a poisonous mass of egotism, conceit, and 
 falsehood. Thus disease occurs both when the mind loses 
 itself in objects, and when objects are lost in it, when 
 it parts with will, and when it becomes wilful. The last 
 consequence of will submerged is sensuality, brutality, 
 slavishness ; the last consequence of will perverted is 
 Satanic pride. Now, it is an almost universal law, that 
 the diseased weak, the men of unrestrained appetites, 
 shall become the victims and slaves of the diseased strong, 
 the men of unrestrained wills, and that the result of this 
 relation shall be misery, decay and death, to both. Here
 
 196 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 is Ae principle of all slavery, political, intellectual, and 
 religious, in individuals and in communities. 
 
 Thus if the primitive principle of mind be simply the 
 capacity to assimilate external objects, and if objects in 
 this process become mind and character, it is obvious 
 that self-direction, the power to choose, to resist, to act 
 in reference to law, and not from the impulse of desire, 
 is the condition of health and enduring strength. Let 
 us now consider how these objects, which may be 
 included under the general terms of nature and other 
 minds, influence for evil or good the individual soul, 
 according as their impulse is blindly followed, wilfully 
 perverted, or genially assimilated. 
 
 The objects which have the most power over the mind 
 are probably those in visible nature which refer to appe- 
 tite and passion. These are continually striving to draw 
 the mind into themselves, to weaken the force at its cen- 
 tre and soul, to reduce it into mere perception and sen- 
 sation, and to destroy its individual life. The emotion 
 which accompanies this yielding of the mind to death 
 has, with a bitterness of irony never excelled by man or 
 demon, been called pleasure. Now, it is a mistake which 
 is apt to vitiate theology, to confound will with wilful- 
 ness, and to make destruction of will the condition of 
 rising to God. But will weakened, or will destroyed, 
 ever goes downwards. It delivers itself to sensuality, 01
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 197 
 
 to fanaticism, which is the sensuality of the religious 
 sentiment, not to spirituality, not to Deity. A being 
 placed like man among strong and captivating visible 
 objects, becomes, the moment he loses self-direction, a 
 slave, in the most terribly comprehensive meaning of 
 that all-annihilating word ; and I believe the doctrine 
 rftns not that we are slaves, but children of God. 
 
 Will is also often confounded with wilfulness in the 
 metaphysics of that aesthetic criticism which deals with 
 the grandest creations of genius. The highest mood of 
 the mind is declared to be that where it loses its individ- 
 uality in the objects it contemplates ; where it becomes 
 objective and healthy, in distinction from subjective or 
 morbid. This objectiveness is confounded with self- 
 abandonment, and thus causative force is absurdly denied 
 while treating of the soul's creative acts. But it is not 
 by self-abandonment that the far-darting, all-assimilating 
 intellect of Genius identifies itself for the moment with 
 its conceptions ; it is rather by the sublimest exercise 
 of will and central force. Let us take, in illustration, 
 three poets, in an ascending scale of intellectual prece- 
 dence ; Keats, the representative of sensitiveness ; By- 
 ron, of wilfulness ; Shakspeare, of self-direction. Now, 
 in Keats, a mind of immense spontaneous fruitfulness, 
 a certain class of objects take his intellect captive, 
 melt and merge his individual being in themselves, are
 
 193 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 stronger than he, and hold him in a state of soft diffu- 
 sion in their own nature. The impression left on the 
 imagination is of sensuous beauty, but spiritual weak- 
 ness. Then Byron, arrogant, domineering, egotistic, 
 diseased, viewing nature and man altogether in rektion 
 to himself, and spurning the objective laws of things, 
 forces objects, with autocratic insolence, into the shape 
 of his own morbid nature, stamps them with his mark, 
 and leaves the impression of intense, narrow, wilful 
 energy. But Shakspeare, the strongest of creative intel- 
 lects, and comprehensive because he was strong, passes, 
 by the gigantic force of his will, into the heart of other 
 natures ; is sensuous, impassioned, witty, beautiful, sub- 
 lime, and terrible, at pleasure ; rises by the same force 
 with which he stoops ; in his most prodigious exertions 
 of energy ever observes laws instead of obeying caprice ; 
 comprehends all his creations without being compre- 
 hended by them ; and comes out at the end, not Fal- 
 staff, or Faulconbridge, or Hamlet, or Timon, or Lear, 
 or Perdita, but Shakspeare, the beneficent and august 
 intellect which includes them all. The difference be- 
 tween him and other poets is, that, in virtue of passing 
 into another life by force of will, not by being drawn in 
 by force of the object, he could escape from it with ease, 
 and proceed to animate other existences, thus keeping 
 his mind constantly assimilating and working with
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 199 
 
 nature. Keats was drawn into his particular class of 
 objects, and could not get out. Byron drew objects into 
 himself, and then poisoned them by capriciously distort- 
 ing and discoloring their essential character. Keats 
 would have stayed with Perdita ; Byron, with Timon. 
 
 Let us next consider, in further illustration of our 
 4lT"eme, those potent forces which come, through history, 
 through literature, and through social communion, from 
 other minds, and from whose action a continual stream 
 of influences is pouring in upon the individual soul. 
 Those which proceed from society, to benefit or corrupt, 
 are so obvious that it is needless to emphasize their 
 power. Look around any community, and you find it 
 dotted over with men, marked and ticketed as not belong- 
 ing to themselves, but to some other man, from whom 
 they take their literature, their politics, -their religion. 
 They are willing captives of a stronger nature ; feed on 
 his life as though it were miraculous manna rained from 
 heaven ; complacently parade his name as an adjective 
 to point out their own ; and give wonderful pertinence 
 to that nursery rhyme, whose esoteric depth irradiates 
 even its exoteric expression : 
 
 " Whose dog are you ? 
 
 I am Billy Patton's dog, 
 
 Whose dog are you ? " 
 
 This social servility, as seen in its annual harvest of
 
 200 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 dwindled souls, abject in everything, from the tie of a 
 neckcloth to the points of a creed, is a sufficiently strong 
 indication of the tyranny which a few forcible persons 
 can establish in any of our " free and enlightened " com- 
 munities ; but perhaps a more subtle influence than that 
 which proceeds from social relations, comes from that 
 abstract and epitome of the whole mind of the whole 
 world, which we find in history and literature. Here the 
 thought and action of the race are brought home to the 
 individual intelligence ; and the danger is, that we make 
 what should be our emancipation an instrument of servi- 
 tude, fall a victim to one author or one age, and lose the 
 power of learning from many minds, by sinking into the 
 contented vassal of one ; and end, at last, in an intellectual 
 resemblance to that gentleman who only knew two tunes, 
 " one of which," he said, " was Old Hundred, and the 
 other was n't." The danger to individuality, in reading , 
 is not that we repeat an author's opinions or expressions 
 but that we be magnetized by his spirit to the extent of 
 being drawn into his stronger life, and losing our partic- 
 ular being. Now, no man is benefited by being con- 
 quered; and the most modest might say to the mightiest, 
 to Homer, to Dante, to Milton, to Goethe, " Keep 
 off, gentlemen, not so near, if you please; you can do 
 me vast service, provided you do not swallow me up ; my 
 personal being is small, but allow me to say of it, as
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 201 
 
 Touchstone said of Audrey, his wife, ' A poor thing, sir, 
 but mine own.' " 
 
 Indeed, we can never fully realize and reverence a 
 great nature, never grow through a reception of his spirit, 
 unless we keep our individuality distinct from his. In 
 the case of a large and diseased mind, the caution be- 
 comes more important. The most popular poet of the 
 present century is so in consequence of the weakness of 
 his readers, who are not so much his pupils as his slaves. 
 Byron, in virtue of his superior force, breaks into their 
 natures, so to speak, passes into the very core of their 
 moral and intellectual being, makes them live, in 
 thought, his life, Byronizes them: and the result of 
 the conquest is a horde of minor Byrons, with their thir? 
 dilutions of misanthropy and licentiousness, not half so 
 good as the original Peter and John they have delivered 
 up. " It was nae great head in itsell," said the old 
 Scotchwoman, as that of Duke Hamilton rolled from the 
 block, " but it was a sair loss to him." In view of the 
 enfeebling and corrupting influence exercised by a mor- 
 bid nature, one is reminded of the anecdote told of White- 
 field, the preacher. A drunkard once reeled up to him, 
 with the remark, "Mr. Whitefield, I am one of your 
 converts." "I think it very likely," was the reply, " for 
 I am sure you are none of God's." 
 
 The truth probably is, that the fallacies on this subject
 
 202 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 cf will and personality, in matters pertaining both to 
 intellect and morals, have their source in man's hatred to 
 work, to the independent exercise of power ; accordingly 
 he tries, cunningly enough, to ignore the fact that work 
 is the law by which the mind grows, and affects reverie, 
 the opium-eating of the intellect, and calls it thinking. 
 Theology and philosophy are both apt to be pervaded by 
 a kind of pantheism, in which the perfection of our nature 
 is represented to consist in merging the soul in universal 
 being, and its heaven a state where it loses itself in a sea 
 of delicious sensations. It is needless to add that many 
 realize a tolerable heaven of their kind on earth. 
 
 Passing from the individual to the community, let us 
 now survey the two forms of mental disease, self-worship 
 and self-abandonment, as expressed in the history of 
 states. A nation is no more a mere collection of indi- 
 viduals, than an individual is a mere collection of facul- 
 ties. It has a national life, more or less peculiar in its 
 features, and subject to disease and decay ; and of this 
 national life its form of civilization is the embodiment. 
 Now, in the earlier ages of the world, in the childhood of 
 humanity, the characteristic form of mental disease is 
 feebleness of personal faing, and the consequent absorp- 
 tion of the individual in surrounding objects. He deifies 
 and worships every form and expression of external 
 power, perceiving a god, audible or visible, in every out-
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 203 
 
 ward force. He is, of course, the natural prey of craft, 
 ferocity, and tyranny, and his weakness is perverted into 
 a besotted superstition, and a worship even of beasts and 
 inanimate idols. Such were the myriads of that dark 
 Egypt, which looms so gloomily up above the clouds of 
 oblivion, the very image of disease and death. The 
 civilization of India had the same inherent weakness ; 
 the popular mythology, a medley of picturesque brutali- 
 ties ; the learned philosophy, a dreamy pantheism, wast- 
 ing .nd withering the primitive springs of action, its first 
 principle the immersion of the individual soul in the Infi- 
 nite. India fell by a law as certain as gravitation before 
 the fe ocity of Mahometan conquest, and the Mahometan 
 conquerors as certainly before the energy of England. 
 
 The civilization of the Asiatics, indeed, was a sys- 
 tematizv.d anarchy of wretchedness and rapine, a 
 monstrous agglomeration, representing a despot, a priest- 
 hood, and t huddled mass of human creatures with slave 
 written upon and burnt into their inmost being. The 
 vices of the tyrant are caprice, self-exaggeration, defiance 
 of restraint; the vices of the slave are falsehood, pol- 
 troonery, and sensuality : and a national life composed of 
 such elements, demoniacal vices on the one hand, and 
 abject vices on the other, must sink 'mto imbecility, and 
 totter to the tomb. 
 
 In passing from the simple forms of Asiatic life to the
 
 204 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 complex civilization of Greece, a more difficult problem 
 presents itself. The Greek Mind, with its combination 
 of energy and objectiveness, its open sense to all the 
 influences of nature, its wonderful adaptation to philoso- 
 phy, and art, and arms, where, it may be asked, can 
 you detect disease in that ? The answer to this ques- 
 tion is fortunately partly contained in the statement of a 
 fact. Greek civilization is dead ; the Greek mind died 
 out more than two thousand years ago ; a race of heroes 
 declined into a race of sycophants, sophists, and slaves ; 
 and no galvanic action of modern sympathy has ever yet 
 convulsed it into even a resemblance of its old life. Now, 
 if it died, it must have died of disease ; for nothing else 
 has power to kill a nation. In considering the causes of 
 the decay of a national mind so orderly, comprehensive 
 and creative as the Greek, we must keep steadily 
 prominent the fact that it began in Satanic energy, 
 and that it is an universal law that this energy in the 
 end consumes itself. Perhaps the history of the Greek 
 Mind is best read in the characteristics of its three 
 great dramatists, sublime and wilful in jEschylus, 
 beautiful in Sophocles, sentimental in Euripides. The 
 Greek deified Man, first as an object of religion, then as 
 an object of art. Now, as it is a consequence of high 
 culture, that a superstition, having its source in human 
 passions, shall subside from a religion into an art, the
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 205 
 
 Greek became atheistical as he grew intelligent. He 
 had, so to speak, a taste for divinities, but no belief in 
 them. He acknowledged nothing higher than his own 
 mind ; waxed measurelessly proud and conceited ; wor- 
 shipped, in fact, himself. He had opinions on morals, 
 but he assimilated no moral ideas. Now, the moment he 
 
 became an atheist, the moment he ceased to rise above 
 
 f 
 himself, he began to decay. The strength at the heart 
 
 of a nation, which keeps it alive, must either grow or 
 dwindle ; and, after a certain stage in its progress, it can 
 only grow by assimilating moral and religious truth. 
 Moral corruption, which is the result of wilful energy, 
 eats into the very substance and core of intellectual life. 
 Energy, it is true, is requisite to all greatness of soul ; but 
 the energy of health, while it has the strength and fear- 
 lessness of Prometheus chained to the rock, or Satan 
 buffeting the billows of fire, is also meek, aspiring and 
 reverential. Its spirit is that of the stout old martyr, who 
 told the trembling brethren of the faith who clustered 
 around his funeral pyre, that if his soul was serene in its 
 last struggle with death, he would lift up his hands to 
 them as a sign. They watched, with tremulous eager- 
 ness, the fierce element, as it swept along and over his 
 withered frame, and, in the awful agonies of that moment 
 when he was encircled with fire, and wholly hidden from
 
 206 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 their view, two thin hands quivered up above fagot and 
 flame, and closed in the form of prayer. 
 
 In the Greek mind, the wilful element took the form 
 of conceit rather than pride, and it is therefore in the 
 civilization of Rome that we must seek for the best 
 expression of the power and tne weakness of Satanic 
 passion. The myth, which declares its founders to have 
 been suckled by a wolf, aptly symbolizes that base of 
 ferocity and iron will on which its colossal dominion was 
 raised. The Roman mind, if we look at it in relation to 
 its all-conquering 1 courage and intelligence, had many 
 sublime qualities ; but pride, hard, fierce, remorseless, 
 invulnerable pride and contempt of right, was its ruling 
 characteristic. It existed just as long as it had power to 
 crush opposition. But avarice, licentiousness, effemi- 
 nacy, the whole brood of the abject vices, are sure at 
 last to fasten on the conqueror, humbling his proud will, 
 and turning his strength into weakness. The heart of 
 that vast empire was ulcerated long before it fell. The 
 sensuality of a Mark Antony is a more frightful thing 
 than the sensuality of a savage ; and when self-abandon- 
 ment thus succeeds to self-worship, and men are literally 
 riven over to their lusts, a state of society exists which, 
 in its demoniacal contempt of restraint, sets all descrip- 
 tion at defiance. The irruption of barbarian energy into 
 that worn-out empire, the fierce horde of savages
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 20"* 
 
 that swept in a devouring flame over its plains and 
 cities, we view with something of the grim satisfaction 
 with which an old Hebrew might have surveyed the 
 engulfing of Pharaoh and his host in the waters of the 
 Red Sea. 
 
 In the dark ages which succeeded the overthrow of the 
 ^Roman empire, modern civilization had its birth; and 
 with those ages it is still connected by an organic bond. 
 This civilization is the most complex that ever existed. 
 If we pass back to its youth, we find in it two grand 
 leading principles of order and disorder, of health and 
 disease, whose contact, collision and union, almost con- 
 stitute its history. These are, the Feudal System and 
 the Christian Church. Now, feudalism is the embodi- 
 ment of Satanic pride. Its will is its law. It does 
 everything it has power to do, without regard lo the 
 judgment of heaven or earth. It plants its iron heel firm 
 upon the weak, and lifts its iron front firm upon the 
 strong, and says, in its pitiless valor, " What I obtained 
 by force take by force, if you can." I speak not of the 
 feudalism of romance, but of history ; not as we find it in 
 Miss Porter's novels, but as we find it in the pages of 
 Proissart and Monstrelet, of Michelet and Thierry. 
 Feudalism, as a fact, was a cruel and remorseless oligar- 
 chy, in which a horde of independent barons, acknowl- 
 edging allegiance to a central power in the state, but
 
 208 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 nullifying the decisions of that power at their own pleas- 
 ure, wielded a merciless dominion over a nation of serfs. 
 Now, this relation of master and slave, this division of 
 tyranny into many parts, and making each man a tyrant 
 in his own domain, is the devil's own contrivance for 
 ruining both the oppressor and the oppressed. It cor- 
 rupts, corrodes, and consumes the inmost principle of 
 national life. Accordingly, the chronicles of the middle 
 ages teem with crimes, which almost realize a good- 
 natured man's idea of the bottomless pit. Hatred, rapine, 
 revenge, lust, blasphemy, all those ferocious and suici- 
 dal vices which slowly consume the vigor whence they 
 spring, rage and revel there, with that peculiar demo- 
 niacal scorn of restraint, which characterizes the brutali- 
 ties of a spiritual being. The popular insurrections of the 
 period reveal, as by a flash of lightning, the condition of 
 that vaunted society where capital owns labor. For a 
 moment you see the serf burst his bonds, pass from the 
 brute into the maniac, and rush into the insanest excesses 
 of licentiousness ; and then comes the mailed baron, cool, 
 collected, ruthless in his ferocity, trampling him down 
 again with the diabolical malignity of inhuman strength. 
 But hatred indulged to inferiors eventually generates 
 hatred to equals, and poisons at last the domestic rela- 
 tion itself. The unnatural crimes which blacken the 
 annals of so many families, ironically styled noble,
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 209 
 
 father arrayed against son, brother against brother, and 
 murder staining the very hearth-stones of the baronial 
 castle, are but the final results of pampered self-will 
 conducting us into the black depths of minds, in whom 
 hatred and moody pride have extinguished the last 
 instinct to which reverence can cling. 
 
 Still, you may contend, in these old barons there 
 dwelt a tremendous force. True : but was it durable ? 
 Who are their descendants ? Mere weaklings in com- 
 parison with the descendants of their former serfs. 
 Where is their system ? Why, its fossil remains blew 
 up not eighteen months ago, and a wondering people, 
 who had long been scared by its frowning looks, found it 
 to be a mere miserable shell and sham, its life and sub- 
 stance all eaten away, " self-fed and self-consumed." 
 
 But side by side with this Feudalism was established 
 the Christian Church. Thus Pandemonium and Heaven 
 were both, so to speak, organized on earth ; acted and 
 reacted on each other, and passed into each other's life. 
 The consequence of this mixture of principles was, that 
 the church was corrupted, and feudalism improved, even- 
 tually to be destroyed. There was at least the recognition 
 of something higher than man, something which the 
 soul might reverence. This was the salvation of modem 
 society, as it, continually poured into veins, shrunken and 
 withered by moral evil, some rills of moral life. The 
 14
 
 210 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 leading characteristic, however, of religion, at the period 
 of which we are speaking, consisted in its being an 
 opinion or a fanaticism. The feudal baron would have 
 been shocked had you called him an atheist, even while 
 performing acts and pampering passions which are the 
 essence of atheism, for he held to Christianity as an 
 opinion ; and when some overpowering calamity broke 
 down his stubborn will, and Remorse fixed its fangs upon 
 his heart, he was as liable as the most slavish of his serfs 
 to be swept away in a torrent of fanaticism. But this 
 fanaticism, though itself a disease, and representing a 
 will in ruins rather than a character built up, is still a 
 reaction against pride, and limits the ravages of moral 
 evil, as physical suffering limits unbridled appetites. 
 
 Now, if we examine modern history with a view to 
 observe the working of the religious element in its events, 
 watching this element as it mingles with the harsher 
 qualities of that mass of humanity of whose life it forms 
 apart, we cannot -fail to notice its agency in every 
 great social convulsion which has saved modern civiliza 
 tion from the death of the ancient, and saved it by 
 toppling down the institutions in which its social disease 
 had come to a head. But we shall also see that each 
 reform and revolution has partaken of the corruption of 
 the community in which it originated ; has been but an 
 inadequate expression of moral force ; and has exhibited
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 211 
 
 unmistakable signs of the Satanic element blended with 
 its beneficent purpose. In short, modern civilization, in 
 regard to its life, is a corrupted Christianity. It has 
 opinions more or less true, but it has imperfectly assimi- 
 lated truth. It assents to perfect doctrines, but it lives a 
 kind of Christian diabolism. Consequently, all the great 
 movements of the European mind have been but fits 
 of splendid fanaticism, followed by reactions towards 
 apathy ; and have indicated little more than the desperate 
 moral disease they partially eradicated. The Crusades, 
 the Reformation, the English Revolutions of 1640 and 
 1688, the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, all 
 prove that a community cannot lift itself by a convulsive 
 throe above the high water mark of its practical life. Its 
 contortions are signs of vitality, but of vitality struggling 
 with death. There has been progress in European 
 society, if we reckon it not by years but centuries ; but it 
 has been a progress marked by jerks rather than by steps. 
 It has not yet arrived at that degree of spiritual force, 
 that momentum of moral energy, which is the condition 
 of healthy motion, of steady, temperate, determined, 
 onward, ever onward movement. At the present time it 
 presents no spectacle of order, but rather of disorder after 
 stagnation. Peace it does not deserve, and peace it will 
 not obtain. Repose is harmonious activity, the top and 
 crown of the highest force, leaning for support on eternal
 
 212 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 laws ; not that sultry and sluggish apathy which lazily 
 welters in fleeting expedients. The legitimist, who 
 would establish apathy under the forms of monarchy ; the 
 agrarian, who would establish apathy under the forms 01 
 communism ; are both mistaking immobility for order, 
 and seeking material happiness through intellectual 
 death. Comfort is the god of this world, but comfort it 
 will never obtain by making it an object. 
 
 In considering the national life of our own country, I 
 would wish to treat it neither in the style of a Jeremiad, 
 nor in the style of a Fourth of July oration. Our national 
 life is peculiar, not only as a composite formed from an 
 imperfect fusion of different races, but it is open to influ- 
 ences from all ages and all times. Though a civiliza- 
 tion may die, it leaves imperishable records of itself in 
 history and in literature, and these, after the nation 
 itself is dead, become living and active agents m mould- 
 ing the natures of all with whom they come in contact. 
 Accordingly, as everybody here reads or listens, India, 
 Greece, and Rome, as well as Germany, France, and 
 England, rush into our national life through a thousand 
 conductors, their diseased as well as healthy elements 
 becoming objects which we assimilate, and which palpa- 
 bly affect our conduct. The conceit of Greece, the pride 
 of Rome, the arrogance of feudal Europe, speak and act 
 in America to-day, from the lips and in the lives of dem-
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 213 
 
 ocrat and moneycrat, of philanthropist and misanthrope. 
 The national life, in short, is to a certain extent diseased, 
 and our people more or less believe in the capital error 
 that they can thrive by selfishness, injustice, and energy 
 unregulated by law. 
 
 This wilful element is so modified by institutions, that 
 itf~the northerner it appears as conceit, in the southerner 
 ns pride. Both doubtless possess great virtues, but as 
 ooth are sufficiently well acquainted with that fact, let 
 us here dwell ungraciously on the vices of each. The 
 leading defect of the Yankee consists in the gulf which 
 separates his moral opinions from his moral principles. 
 His talk about virtue in the abstract would pass as sound 
 in a nation of saints, but he still contrives that his inter- 
 ests shall not suffer by the rigidity of his maxims. He 
 goes, so to speak, for the linen decencies of sin ; and the 
 Evil One, being an accommodating personage, will as 
 readily appear in satin slippers as in cloven hoofs. Your 
 true Yankee, indeed, has a spruce, clean, Pecksniffian 
 way of doing a wrong, which is inimitable. He passes 
 resolutions declaring himself the most moral and relig- 
 ious man in the land, and then, with the solemn strut of 
 an Alsatian hero, proceeds to the practical business of 
 life. Believing, after a certain fashion, in justice and 
 retribution, he still thinks that a sly, shrewd, keen, sup- 
 ple gentleman like himself, can dodge, in a quiet way,
 
 !il4 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 the moral laws of the universe, without any particular 
 pother being made about it. He is a self-admiration 
 society in one. He will never be first in a scheme of 
 rapine ; but, once drawn in, to him, as to Macbeth, re- 
 turning is as tedious as go on. If you ask his opinion 
 about a recent war, he will put on a moral face, declare 
 bloodshed to be an exceedingly naughty business, and 
 roll off a series of resounding schoolboy commonplaces, 
 as though he expected a choir of descending angels had 
 paused in mid air to hear and be edified ; but then, he 
 adds, with a compromising chuckle, that it was an amaz- 
 ingly bright thing though, that whipping of the Mexi- 
 cans ! Here it is, he really believes in whipping the 
 weak. He loves energy in itself, apart from the pur- 
 poses which make energy beneficent; and as he is apt to 
 deem his intelligence appropriately employed in preying 
 on those who have less, his practical philosophy has some- 
 times found vent in that profound and elegant maxim, 
 " Every one for himself, and Satan catch the hindmost." 
 True, Satan does catch the hindmost, but all history 
 teaches that in the end he catches the foremost also. 
 
 But, I think I hear you ask, what say you of our phi- 
 lanthropy ? Certainly nothing here as to its beneficent 
 action, but a word as to its diseased aspect. It is to be 
 feared that our benevolence is more opinion than life, 
 and, accordingly, it is apt to degenerate into sentiment-
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 215 
 
 ality or malice ; to be mere inoffensively ineffective 
 primer morality and elegant recreation of conscience, or 
 morose, snappish and snarling invective ; in other words, 
 to lack will, or to be wilful. In a community whose life 
 is in any way diseased, it is difficult for the best men to 
 escape the ruling contagion ; to oppose an evil without 
 
 "cajching it ; to war with the devil without using the 
 * 
 devil's own weapons. 
 
 But perhaps the chief Satanic element in our national 
 life comes from the south. There, in the "full tide" of 
 unsuccessful " experiment," is a feudal system, modified 
 by modern humanity, but modified also by modern thrift. 
 The feudal baron did not sell his serfs. Now, this pecu- 
 liar institution has one vital evil which alone would ruin 
 any country outside of Adam's paradise, it makes 
 labor disreputable. But it is bad in every respect, cor- 
 rupting the life both of master and slave ; and it will in- 
 evitably end, if allowed to work out its own damnation, in 
 a storm of fire and blood, or in mental and moral sterility 
 and death. Looking at it, not sentimentally or shrewishly, 
 much less with any mean feeling of local exultation, but 
 simply with the eye of reason, what is it but a rude and 
 shallow system of government, which has been tried over 
 and over again, and exploded over and over again, the 
 mere cast-off nonsense of extinct civilizations, bearing on 
 its front the sign of being a more stupid blunder than it
 
 216 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
 
 is a crime? Now, we can sympathize with a person whc 
 has had the gout transmitted to him, the only legacy of 
 a loving father; but that a man should go deliberately tc 
 work, bottle in hand, to establish the gout in his own 
 system, is an absurdity which touches the Quixotic ir 
 diabolism. Yet this, or something like to this, has beer 
 gravely proposed, and some of our southern brethren 
 have requested us to aid in the ludicrously iniquitous 
 work. No ; we should say to these gentlemen, If you 
 have a taste for the ingenuities of mischief, plant, if you 
 will, on your new territory, small-pox and typhus fever 
 plant plague, cholera and pestilence, but refrain, if noi 
 from common honesty, at least from common intelligence, 
 from planting a moral disease infinitely more destructive 
 and which will make the world shake with laughter 01 
 execrations, according as men consider the madness of 
 its folly, or the brazen impudence of its guilt. 
 
 In these remarks on Intellectual Disease, I have refer- 
 red all along, negatively at least, to Intellectual Health. 
 We have seen that this health consists neither in the 
 self-abandonment of the sensitively weak, nor the self- 
 worship of the wilfully strong. A few words more, tc 
 guard against some possible misconceptions. Self-direc- 
 tion of mental power, which has been assumed as the 
 condition of healthy mind, is the only possible means of 
 ^lf-devotion, of self-sacrifice, of rising above self. It
 
 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE. 217 
 
 indicates a mind serene, cheerful, hopeful, courageous, 
 ever active, ever aspiring, with reverence for all above 
 itself, and genial love, not bitter contempt, for all below. 
 But I might well be accused of shallow philosophy, did I 
 leave the subject here. Mind, it is true, is free spiritual 
 force, but it is inscrutably dependent on the Force which 
 .-"created it. It is a cause, but a limited cause ; a power, 
 constituted such by an Infinite Power ; and it grows 
 mightier as it ascends to its Source. In this connection, 
 let me not presume to speak, but call witnesses from the 
 mountain peaks and pinnacles of intellect, beings who 
 rose thither in virtue of an amazing force directed up- 
 wards, that they may testify to their deep sense of 
 ;his mysterious dependence. Thus Newton closes the 
 greatest work of pure science which ever came from the 
 nind of man, with an affecting thanksgiving to that Infi- 
 lite Intelligence who bestowed the power which produced 
 t. Thus Spenser, with his exhaustless opulence of fan- 
 iful creation, and burning sense of the loveliness of 
 hings, can still find in the world of nature and the world 
 pf imagination no fit symbols of the Vision which haunts 
 iis soul, until it is lifted up in a " Hymn to Heavenly 
 Jeauty." Thus Milton, in whom glowed a spirit that 
 raved every storm of fortune and spurned every touch 
 f fear, from whose brow glanced harmless the thunders 
 f dominant hierarchies, and who opposed to unnatural
 
 218 INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AISD DISEASE. 
 
 persecution adamantine will, still never " soared in the 
 high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing 
 robes about him," without first, in his own divine words, 
 " pouring out his soul in devout prayer to that Eternal 
 Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, 
 and sends out His Seraphim, with the hallowed fire of 
 His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He 
 pleases." And from one of England's most curious and 
 not least sceptical of intellects, a deep and prying 
 inquirer into the mysteries of his consciousness, comes 
 that burst of mournful rapture, which has awed and 
 thrilled every soul in which it has entered, that "there 
 is a common spirit which plays within us yet makes no 
 part of us, the Spirit of God, the fire and scintillation of 
 that noble and mighty essence which is the life and 
 radical heat of all minds ; and," he adds, " whosoever 
 feels not the warm breath and gentle ventilation of this 
 spirit, (though I feel his pulse,) I cannot say he lives 
 for, truly, without this, to me there is no heat under the 
 tropic, and no light, though I dwelt in the very body of 
 the sun."
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WOKDS* 
 
 WE congratulate that large, respectable, inexpressive, 
 and unexpressed class of thinkers, who are continually 
 complaining of the barrenness of their vocabulary as 
 compared with the affluence of their ideas, on the ap- 
 pearance of Dr. Roget's volume. If it does nothing else, 
 it will bring a popular theory of verbal expression to 
 the test ; and if that theory be correct, we count upon 
 witnessing a mob of previously mute Miltons and Ba- 
 cons, and speechless Chathams and Burkes, crowding 
 and tramping into print. Dr. Roget, for a moderate 
 fee, prescribes the verbal medicine which will relieve 
 the congestion of their thoughts. All the tools and 
 
 * Thesaurus of English Words, so classified and arranged as to 
 facilitate the Expression of Ideas and assist in Literary Composi- 
 tion. By Peter Mark Roget, late Secretary of the Royal Society, 
 Author of the Bridgewater Treatise on Animal and Vegetable 
 Physiology, etc. Revised and edited, with a List of Foreign Words, 
 defined in English, and other Additions, by Barnas Scars, D. D., 
 Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Boston : 
 Gould and Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 468.
 
 220 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 implements employed by all the poets and philosophers 
 of England can be obtained at his shop. The idea being 
 given, he guarantees in every case to supply the word. 
 Dr. Sears, the American editor, has, it is true, deemed 
 it his duty to retrench the exuberance of the original 
 in the phraseology of slang, and has thus made it a use- 
 less book to a numerous and constantly increasing class 
 of beaux-esprits, whose conceptions and passions would 
 find no adequate vent in any dialect milder and clean- 
 lier than that which derives its force and flavor from 
 Billingsgate and Wapping ; but for all ordinary pur- 
 poses, either of copiousness or condensation, of elegance 
 or energy, Dr. Roget's volume, as weeded by Dr. Sears, 
 will be found to be amply sufficient. Indeed, if the apt 
 use of words be a mechanical exercise, we cannot doubt 
 that this immense mass of the raw material of expres- 
 sion will be rapidly manufactured into histpry, philoso- 
 phy, poetry, and eloquence. 
 
 Seriously, we consider this book as one of the best 
 of a numerous class, whose aim is to secure the results 
 without imposing the tasks of labor, to arrive at ends 
 by a dexterous dodging of means, to accelerate the 
 tongue without accelerating the faculties. It is an out- 
 side remedy for an inward defect. In our opinion, the 
 work mistakes the whole process by which living thought 
 makes its way into living words, and it might be thor-
 
 USE AND MISUSE OP WORDS 221 
 
 oughly mastered without conveying any real power or 
 facility of expression. In saying this, we do not mean 
 that the knack of mechanical rhetoric may not be more 
 readily caught, and that fluency in the use of words may 
 not be increased, by its study. But rhetoric is not a 
 knack, and fluency is not expression. The crop of 
 'ready writers, of correct writers, of elegant writers, of 
 writers capable of using words in every mode but the 
 right one, is already sufficiently large to meet the cur- 
 rent demand for intellectual husk, chaff, and stubble. 
 The tendency of the time to divorce the body of words 
 from the soul of expression, and to shrivel up language 
 into a mummy of thought, would seem to need the rein 
 rather than the whip. The most cursory glance over 
 much of the " literature " of the day, so called, will 
 indicate the peculiar form of marasmus under which 
 the life of language is in danger of being slowly con- 
 sumed. The most hopeless characteristic of this literar 
 ture is its complacent exhibition of distressing excel- 
 lences, its evident incapacity to rise into promising 
 faults. The terms are such as are employed by the 
 best writers, the grammar is good, the morality excel- 
 lent, the information accurate, the reflections sensible, 
 yet the whole composition neither contains nor can 
 communicate intellectual or moral life ; and a critical 
 eulogium on its merits sounds like the certificate of a
 
 222 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 schoolmaster as to the negative virtues of his pupils. 
 This fluent debility, which never stumbles into ideas 
 nor stutters into passion, which calls its commonplace 
 comprehensiveness, and styles its sedate languor repose, 
 would, if put upon a short allowance of words, and 
 compelled to purchase language at the expense of con- 
 quering obstacles, be likely to evince some spasms of 
 genuine expression ; but it is hardly reasonable to expect 
 such verbal abstemiousness at a period when the whole 
 wealth of the English tongue is placed at the disposal 
 of the puniest whipsters of rhetoric, when the art of 
 writing is avowedly taught on the principle of imitating 
 the " best models," when words are worked into the 
 ears of the young in the hope that something will be 
 found answering to them in their brains, and when 
 Dr. Peter Mark Roget, who never happened on a verbal 
 felicity or uttered a " thought-executing " word in the 
 course of his long and useful life, rushes about, book in 
 hand, to tempt unthinking and unimpassioned medioc- 
 rity into the delusion, that its disconnected glimpses of 
 truths never fairly grasped, and its faint movements of 
 embryo aspirations which never broke their shell, can 
 be worded by his specifics into creative thought and 
 passion. The bill of fare is indeed immense ; what a 
 pity that the absence of such insignificant elements as 
 mouths, stomachs, and the appetite of hunger may pre- 
 clude the possibility of a feast !
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 223 
 
 Far, therefore, from being disposed to increase the 
 vocabulary of such writers, and students of the art of 
 writing, by books like this "Thesaurus," we grudge 
 them the words they have already pressed into their 
 service. They have not earned the right to use their 
 words by exercising any inward energy of thought on 
 J$ie things to which they relate. The first condition of 
 true expression is an effort of mind, which restrains 
 rather than stimulates fluency. The ease with which 
 accredited maxims derived through the ear can be 
 attached to words which have been decoyed through 
 the same populous thoroughfare, offers a desperate 
 temptation to avoid the trouble equally of thinking 
 and expressing. The ears write. Take, for example, 
 the truths of morality and religion, which unrealizing 
 minds and rapid pens have so hardened into truisms, 
 that it has become a mark of genius to restore and re- 
 vivify their original freshness and power. Now there 
 are few creatures so pitiable as to need information on 
 these topics, and few writers so stupid as to be unable 
 to give it. What is required is, not information, but 
 inspiration. The maxims and doctrines are the com- 
 monest furniture of the commonest minds. The office, 
 therefore, of the moralist is to impart, not moral tru- 
 isms, but moral life. The office of the preacher is, not 
 to communicate the forms of religious doctrine, but to
 
 224: tfSE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 infuse the substance of religious vitality. All moral- 
 izin and all preaching are ineffective which do not 
 thus strike through the understanding directly at the 
 will, and purify and invigorate the sources of moral and 
 religious action. But to do this requires a face-to-fr.ce 
 knowledge of the truths to be driven home, vivid in- 
 ward experience poured out in living, breathing, palpi- 
 tating words. The man who eliminates from these 
 universal principles their divine significance and awful 
 beauty, and prattles about them as truisms, soon be- 
 comes as dull, dry, and feeble as his topics, and his 
 poverty of soul is just as evident when his diction is 
 elegant and copious as when it is mean and pinched. 
 The treasures of language, poured into such a mind, 
 are " like money dropped into a dead man's hand." 
 
 What is really wanted, therefore, " to facilitate the 
 expression of ideas," is something which will facilitate 
 the conception of ideas. What is really wanted " to 
 assist in literary composition," is a true philosophy of 
 expression, founded on a knowledge of the nature and 
 operations of the mind, and of the vital processes by 
 which thought incarnates itself in words. Expression 
 is a purely mental act, the work of the same blended 
 force and insight, will and intelligence, that thinks. Its 
 power and clearness answer to the power and clearness 
 of the mind whence it proceeds. Its peculiarities cor-
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 225 
 
 respond to the peculiarities of the individual nature it 
 represents. Its perfection consists in identifying words 
 with things, in bending language to the form, and 
 pervading it with the vitality, of the thought it aims to 
 arrest and embody. In those cases where thought 
 transcends the sensuous capacities of language to utter 
 i| conceptions, the expression will still magically sug- 
 
 r 
 
 gest the idea or mood it cannot directly convey, just as 
 a more than earthly beauty looks out from the beautiful 
 faces of Raphael's Madonnas, indicating the subtile pas- 
 sage into form of a soul and sentiment which no mere 
 form could express. There are no more simple words 
 than " green," " sweetness," and " rest," yet what depth 
 and intensity of significance shines in Chaucei*'s "green," 
 what a still ecstasy of religious bliss irradiates 
 " sweetness," as it drops from the pen of Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, what celestial repose beams from " rest " as 
 it lies on the page of Barrow ! The moods seem to 
 transcend the resources of language, yet they are ex- 
 pressed in common words, 'transfigured, sanctified, im- 
 paradised, by the spiritual vitality which streams through 
 them. The words are among the cheapest articles in 
 Dr. Roget's voluminous catalogue ; but where is the 
 cunning rhetorician who can obtain them there ? 
 
 Expression, then, whether direct or suggestive, is 
 thought in the words or through the words, and not 
 15 
 
 
 i 
 
 V-
 
 226 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 thought and the words. Thought implies two elements, 
 the subject thinking and the object thought. "When the 
 process of thinking reaches that degree of intensity in 
 which the object of thought is seen in clear vision, 
 when the thinking mind comes into direct contact with 
 the objective thing or idea it has " felt after " and found, 
 the words which it then weaves "into the visible gar- 
 ment of its mingled emotion and conception are words 
 surcharged and flooded with life, words which are 
 living things, endowed with the power, not only to com- 
 municate ideas, but to convey, as by spiritual conduc- 
 tors, the shock and thrill which attended their concep- 
 tion. Instead of being mere barren signs of abstract 
 notions, they become media through which the life of 
 one mind is radiated into other minds. They inspire as 
 well as inform ; invigorate as well as enlighten. Such 
 language is the spiritual body of the thinker, which 
 never dies or grows old, but has a relative immortality 
 on earth, and makes him a contemporary with all suc- 
 ceeding generations ; for in such language not only are 
 thoughts embodied, but words are ensouled. 
 
 The fact that expression like this is beyond the power 
 of ordinary minds does not affect its value as a guiding 
 principle of rhetorical education. The difficulty is that 
 the principle is not generally admitted. It is supposed 
 that the development and the discipline of thought are to
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 22T 
 
 be conducted apart from the development and discipline 
 of the power of expressing thought. Fill your head 
 with words, and when you get an idea -fit it to them, 
 this is the current mode, prolific in famished intellects 
 and starveling expressions. Hence the prevailing lack 
 of intellectual conscientiousness, or closeness of expres- 
 /-sion to the thing, a palpable interval between them 
 being revealed at the first probe of analysis. Words 
 and things having thus no vital principle of union, be- 
 ing, in fact, attached or tied together, they can be easily 
 detached or unbound, and the expression accordingly 
 bears but the similitude of life. 
 
 But it is honorable to human nature that men hate 
 to write unless inspired to write. As soon as rhetoric 
 becomes a mechanical exercise it becomes a joyless 
 drudgery, and drudgery ends in a mental disgust which 
 impairs even the power to drudge. There is conse- 
 quently a continual tendency to rebel against common- 
 place, even among those engaged in its service. But 
 the passage from this intellectual apathy to intellectual 
 character commonly lies through intellectual anarchy. 
 The literature of facts connected by truisms, and the 
 literature of things connected by principles, are divided 
 by a wide, chaotic domain, appropriated to the literature 
 of desperation ; and generally the first token that a writ- 
 er has become disgusted with the truisms of the under-
 
 228 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 standing is his ostentatious parade of the paradoxes of 
 sensibility. He begins to rave the moment he ceases 
 to repeat. 
 
 Now the vital processes of thought and expression are 
 processes of no single faculty or impulse, but of a whole 
 nature, and mere sensibility, or mere understanding, or 
 mere imagination, or 'mere will, can never of itself pro- 
 duce the effects of that collected, concentrated, personal 
 power, in which will, intellect, and sensibility are all 
 consolidated in one individuality. The utmost strain 
 and stir of the impulses can but mimic strength, when 
 they are disconnected from character. Passion, in the 
 minds of the anarchists of letters, instead of being poured 
 through the intellect to stimulate intelligence into power, 
 frets and foams into mere passionateness. It does not 
 condense the faculty in which it inheres, but diffuses 
 the faculty to which it coheres. It makes especial claim 
 to force ; but the force of simple sensibility is a preten- 
 tious force, evincing no general might of nature, no 
 innate, original, self-centred energy. It blusters furi- 
 ously about its personal vigor, and lays a bullying em- 
 phasis on the " ME," but its self-assertion is without 
 self-poise or self-might The grand object of its tem- 
 pestuous conceit is to make a little nature, split into 
 fragmentary faculties and impulses, look like a great 
 nature, stirred by strong passions, illumined by positive
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 229 
 
 ideas, and directed to definite ends. And it must be 
 admitted that, so far as the public is concerned, it often 
 succeeds in the deception. Commonplace, though crazed 
 into strange shapes by the delirium tremens of sensibility, 
 and uttering itself in strange shrieks and screams, is 
 essentially commonplace still ; but it often passes for the 
 fte frenzy and upward, rocket-like rush of impassioned 
 imagination. The writer, therefore, who is enabled, by 
 a felicitous deformity of nature, to indulge in it, contrives 
 to make many sensible people guilty of the blasphemy 
 of calling him a genius ; if he have the knack of rhym- 
 ing, and can set to music his agonies of weakness 
 and ecstasies of imbecility, he is puffed as a great poet, 
 superior to all the restraints of artistic law ; and he is 
 allowed to huddle together appetite and aspiration, earth 
 and heaven, man and God, in a truculent fashion pe- 
 culiarly his own. Hence such "popular" poems as 
 Mr. Bailey's " Festus " and Mr. Robert Montgomery's 
 " Satan." 
 
 The misuse of words in this literature of ungoverned 
 or ungovernable sensibility has become so general as to 
 threaten the validity of all definitions. The connection 
 between sign and thing signified has been so severed 
 that it resembles the logic of that eminent master of 
 argumentation, of whom it was said, " that his premises 
 might be afflicted with the confluent small-pox without
 
 230 USE AND MISUSE OF -WORDS. 
 
 his conclusion being in any danger of catching it." 
 Objects are distorted, relations disturbed, language put 
 upon the rack to torment it into intensity, and the whole 
 composition seems, like Tennyson's organ, to be " groan- 
 ing for power," yet the result both of the mental and 
 verbal bombast is simply a feverish feebleness, equally 
 infecting thought and style. Big and passionate as are 
 the words, and terrible as has been their execution in 
 competent hands, they resolutely refuse to do the work 
 of dunces and maniacs. The spirits are called, but 
 they decline to come. 
 
 Yet this resounding emptiness of diction is not with- 
 out popularity and influence, though its popularity has 
 no deep roots and its influence is shallow. Its superfi- 
 cial effectiveness is indicated, not more by the success 
 of the passionate men who fall naturally into it, than by 
 the success of the shrewd men who coldly imitate it. 
 Thus Sheridan, who of all orators had the least sensi- 
 bility and the most wit and cunning, adopted in many 
 of his speeches a style as bloated as his own face, full 
 of fustian deliberately manufactured, and rant betraying 
 the most painful elaboration. Our own legislative elo- 
 quence is singularly rich in speeches whose diction is 
 a happy compound of politic wrath and flimsy fancies, 
 glowing with rage worthy of Counsellor Phillips's phi- 
 lippics, and spangled with flowers that might have been
 
 USE AND MISUSE OP WORDS. 231 
 
 gathered in the garden of Mr. Hervey's " Meditations." 
 But we should do great injustice to these orators if we 
 supposed them as foolish as they try to make themselves 
 appear in their eloquence ; and it is safe to impute more 
 than ordinary reptile sagacity, and more than ordinary 
 skill in party management, to those politicians who in- 
 dulge in more than ordinary nonsense in their declama- 
 tions. The incapacity to feel, which their bombast 
 evinces, proves they are in no danger of being whirled 
 into imprudences by the mad emotions they affect. 
 Such oratory, however, has a brassy taint and ring in- 
 expressibly distasteful both to the physical and intellec- 
 tual sense, and its deliberate hypocrisy of feeling is a 
 sure sign of profligacy of mind. 
 
 It is only, however, when sensibility is genuine and 
 predominant, that it produces that anarchy of the intel- 
 lect in which the literature of desperation, as contrasted 
 with the literature of inspiration, has its source. The 
 chief characteristic of this literature is absence of re- 
 straint. Its law is lawlessness. It is developed accord- 
 ing to no interior principle of growth ; it adapts itself 
 to no exterior principle of art. In view of this, it is 
 somewhat singular that so large a portion of its products 
 should be characterized by such essential mediocrity, 
 since it might be supposed that an ordinary nature, 
 disordered by passion, and unrestrained by law, with a
 
 232 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 brain made irritable, if not sensitive, by internal rage, 
 would exhibit some hysteric bursts of genius. But a 
 sharp inspection reveals, in a majority of cases, that it 
 is the old commonplace galvanized. Its heat is not that 
 of fire, but of hot water, and no fusing power is per- 
 ceptible in its weltering expanse. We are reluctantly 
 compelled to admit that chaos cannot create, and that 
 a great display of fussiness may be consistent with a 
 lamentable lack of force. 
 
 Even in those writers in whom this sensibility is 
 connected with some genius, and the elements of whose 
 minds exhibit marks of spontaneous power, we are con- 
 tinually impressed with the impotence of anarchy to 
 create, or combine, or portray. They never present the 
 thing itself about which they rave, but only their feel- 
 ings about the thing. They project into nature and life 
 the same confusion of objects and relations which exists 
 in their own minds, and stir without satisfying. That 
 misrepresentation is a mental as well as moral offence, 
 and that no intellect is sound unless it be conscientiously 
 close to the truth of things in perception and expres- 
 sion, are maxims which they scorn to allow as checks 
 on their freedom of impulse. But with all their bluster, 
 they cannot conceal the limitation of their natures in 
 the impudence of their claims. 
 
 And this brings us to the consideration of words as
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 233 
 
 media for the emission and transpiration of character, 
 as expressions, not simply of thoughts or emotions, 
 but of natures, as modes by which literature is per- 
 vaded with vitality and peopled with men, so that a 
 criticism on styles is resolved into an exposition of 
 persons. This function of language seems to us its 
 odMest, because its honestest function. "Words, to be 
 sure, never really lie, though appearances are sometimes 
 strongly against them. The truth leaks out from the 
 most hypocritical sentences; and we have repeatedly 
 read books, manufactured on Dr. Roget's pattern, in 
 which the words seemed to feel degraded by the drudg- 
 ery they were engaged in ; to a practised ear audibly 
 grumbled at being turned from " nimble servitors " into 
 stupid slaves ; and every moment eagerly gave in evi- 
 dence against their taskmasters. Again, it is undoubt- 
 edly true, that a good portion of the sensuality, vulgar- 
 ity, misanthropy, malignity, and littleness of soul, which 
 take a literary form, is communicated in the phrases and 
 images of their opposites, but communicated almost as 
 effectively as if the words were drawn from the fish- 
 market, instead of being drawn from the Bible. Indeed, 
 if there be any animating life behind or within a com- 
 position, that peculiar life, and no other, will escape 
 into the consciousness of the reader, without regard to 
 the nature of the opinions or the language in which
 
 234 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 they are clothed. A Satanic drop in the blood makes a 
 clergyman preach diabolism from scriptural texts, and a 
 philanthropist inculcate misanthropy from the rostrum 
 of reform. It is all love in words, all hatred in spirit ; 
 and the Devil is content. An oversight of this obvious 
 principle converts criticism into a mere gibberish. Take, 
 for instance, such writers as P. J. Bailey and Alexan- 
 der Smith, two of the most hopeful desperadoes of 
 "young literature," quick in apprehension, fertile in 
 fancy, ravenous in impulse, and whose sad baggage of 
 a muse has been loudly hailed as the true celestial 
 maiden on the sole evidence of her robes. Doubtless, 
 through the crack in their heads split by passion, we 
 have a view of quite a splendid anarchy of faculties and 
 sensibilities, doubtless they are adorned with some of 
 the most gorgeous trappings of poetry, but still they 
 are not essentially poets. They give us, not poetry, 
 but a poetic debauch. They evince an appetite for the 
 ideal, rather than a sentiment for it, and whether it 
 pleases them to soar into heaven or dive into hell, 
 whether they take us among saints or sinners, a pre- 
 dominant animalism, penetrating every shining phrase 
 and image, is the impression they stamp upon the mind. 
 The thing does not taste well in the mouth, gives no 
 ideal pleasure or satisfaction ; and, for our own part, we 
 confess a preference for Dante, Milton, and Goethe on
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 235 
 
 the same themes, though we cheerfully admit their 
 inferiority in intellectual topsy-turviness and the blaze 
 of words. Were the powers and passions of these des- 
 perate gentlemen harmonized into unity, we should see 
 at once how moderate is the real size and weight of 
 natures, which appear of such astounding dimensions and 
 force in their shattered state. By this compression, 
 however, they might dwindle into poets, poets of 
 the second class, it is true, but still poets, which they 
 are altogether too splendid and sublime to be at 
 present. 
 
 If the latent nature of a writer thus struggles through 
 his words, and hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious, in 
 his mode of writing, fails to conceal his disposition, 
 if mental anarchy, though wielding all the external 
 resources of language, can still express only itself, 
 there would seem to be very strong inducements in 
 literature for authors to be honest. Many a poor wight, 
 who struts in the purple and fine linen of verbiage, a 
 target for criticism, would be an interesting object if he 
 were content with the homely suits which exactly fit 
 his conceptions. Every writer whose aim is not to 
 appear, but to be, and who directs his powers to the 
 expression of what he really is, succeeds, at least, in 
 making himself readable ; for such a writer urges no 
 opinions which have not been domesticated in his own
 
 236 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 understanding, testifies to no facts which are not reali- 
 ties to his own consciousness, and uses no words which 
 he has not earned the right to use by testing their con- 
 formity to his own impressions or insight. And it is 
 curious how flexible language becomes when a writer's 
 vocabulary is thus limited by his intellectual character, 
 and with what ease a few words do the whole business 
 of expression. A presiding personality, indeed, acts as 
 a magnet; all related words come tripping to it, as 
 if eager and glad to leave their limbo of generality and 
 to form part of a new organism ; to feel through their 
 shrunken veins the flow and throb of fresh, warm blood, 
 and to partake in the rapture of individual existence. 
 Then language really becomes alive, and thus, too, 
 books attain the power to live. All others, after a few 
 convulsive efforts, die and are forgotten, or are known 
 only to the antiquary who prowls among the cemeteries 
 of letters, reading inscriptions on tombstones. 
 
 We do not, of course, mean to assert that all indi- 
 vidualities that take a literary form become conspicuous 
 in becoming genuine. The compositions which embody 
 poverty and littleness of individual being must exist in 
 the obscurity in which they were born ; but they still 
 exist. The benevolent literary historian who visits 
 them in their dingy paper hovels always finds them in 
 a wretched condition, but always finds them alive.
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 237 
 
 Perhaps the lowest form of what we call intellectual 
 character is visible in the pamphlets of those political 
 hacks, who, from Walpole's time to that of Lord Chat- 
 ham, were employed by booksellers and statesmen to 
 enlighten the British public on national affairs, in 
 other words, to do the dirty work of politics. These 
 nWn undoubtedly exhibit singular littleness of nature, 
 and singular feebleness of vitality ; but still their minds 
 act as units, and every sentence is steeped in the mean- 
 ness and malevolence in which their whole life seems 
 to have been absorbed. We are afraid that a dispas- 
 sionate criticism must give them the appellation of raga- 
 muffins and sneaks ; but yet it is due to them to say 
 that they are not ashamed of their characters, whether 
 they were natural from their cradles, or acquired in the 
 garrets of Osborne and Mist. They are most assuredly 
 stupid, very stupid ; but then their stupidity is a posi- 
 tive, and not a negative quality. Throughout their 
 writings we observe quite a laudable persistence in 
 kind and fidelity to type, without any eccentric rhetor- 
 ical deviations into brilliancy or decency. As we read 
 them, even at this late day, their natures appear to 
 ooze or dribble out in the vapid emphasis of every 
 italicized word, in the sly venom of every insinuated 
 scandal, in the limping movement of every dismal witti- 
 cism, in the lowness of all the lying statements, in the
 
 238 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 impotence of all the toothless sarcasms, in the vagabond 
 disorder of all the rags of rhetoric. But then it is 
 pleasant occasionally to be in the company of dunces 
 who are so complacent in their duncery, who are stirred 
 by no fretful aspiration to be fine writers, who are so 
 thoroughly content with the puddle in which they live, 
 and who, as true artists of the little and the low, would 
 disdain to borrow the snapping terseness of Pope's 
 verse, or the flowing richness of Bolingbroke's prose, 
 or the manner of any other " eminent hands " and " per- 
 sons of honor," in order to give their lean thoughts and 
 reptile dispositions a more splendid verbal raiment than 
 the characteristic one supplied from their own ward- 
 robes. These writers, too, are by far the most honest 
 of their kind. Minds as small and natures as mean as 
 theirs have since addressed themselves to similar tasks 
 without displaying similar frankness. From the time 
 of Junius and Burke, the tomtits of English politics 
 have sported the beaks and talons, and arrayed them- 
 selves in the plumage, of the vultures and the eagles. 
 The feeblest rancor aspires to wear the aspect of rave- 
 nous malignity, and the weakest pugnacity would tower 
 and scream in the regions of imaginative passion. 
 
 The next form of intellectual character, whose verbal 
 expression rewards analysis, is found in those men who 
 deal with obvious facts and principles, but really grasp
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 239 
 
 and handle them. Their sense is common sense, but 
 common sense as character, not as hearsay. All their 
 notions are organized into abilities and written out in 
 their lives ; truisms from their lips have the effect of 
 original perceptions ; and old saws and proverbs, worn 
 to shreds by constant repetition, startle the ear like 
 brilliant fancies, when uttered by men whose disposi- 
 tions <they have formed and whose actions theyMve 
 guided. Such persons are commonly narrow and big- 
 oted, and profess great contempt for everything that lies 
 beyond the range of their vision. They delight, indeed, 
 to call their opinions " views," in order, it would seem, 
 to suggest the test of sight to which they have been 
 subjected ; and they give them additional emphasis by 
 putting them in the possessive case. They are not 
 general " views," but " my views." These opinions 
 have not been argued into their heads, and history and 
 experience afford no instance of their having been ever 
 argued out of them. Solidified as they are into muscle 
 and bone, their hard tenacity of hold, impregnable to 
 f he syllogism, would almost resist the axe or the batter- 
 ing-ram. To change the " views " of such minds is a 
 task resembling the boring of tunnels or the blasting of 
 rocks. Their phraseology, when its organic pith and 
 substance are uncorrupted by the schoolmaster, is, of 
 course, singularly close, compact, and vital, indicating
 
 24:0 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 an interior perception of, and familiar acquaintance with, 
 the matters about which they talk. In English litera- 
 ture, these thinkers and rhetoricians of humble life are 
 contemptuously referred to as " the vulgar," and young 
 students are pathetically adjured not to catch the infec- 
 tion of their speech ; but it seems to us that they hint 
 the true philosophy of rhetoric better than Dr. Camp- 
 bell directly teaches it ; for their words are always 
 things, and the aim of the loftiest creative thinker is, in 
 expression, to give solidity to spiritual facts. Even in 
 the use of tropes they evince a more subtile knowledge 
 of the vital processes of figurative expression than most 
 of the poetasters who sniff at them. " That horse of 
 yours," said a friend of ours to a farmer, " is very hand- 
 some." " Yes," was the drawling reply, " but he is 
 as slow as cold molasses." We doubt if an 
 analyst could find, out of the great poets, a better exam- 
 ple than this on which to exercise his skill in giving 
 the genesis of an imaginative analogy. The idea, as 
 Bacon would say, is thoroughly " immersed in matter." 
 The authors who have studied the modes of thinking 
 and expression characteristic of " the vulgar," have 
 always exercised a wide influence ; for in that school 
 they learned to think in the concrete, and to give to 
 thoughts the form and significance of visible realities. 
 The reserved power always underlying the sparse speech
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 241 
 
 of ordinary men, imparts tenfold meaning and force to 
 their words and images. Sir Edward Coke, a man of 
 prodigious ability and acquirement, but still essentially 
 commonplace in his intellect and prejudices, was once 
 goaded by rage and hatred into an imagination in which 
 his whole massive nature seemed to emit itself in a 
 Titanic stutter of passion. We refer, of course, to his 
 calling Sir Walter Raleigh a "spider of hell," an 
 image in which loathing became executive, and palpably 
 smit its object on the cheek. It was from the fact that 
 imagination was so small an element in his general 
 power, and required the utmost depth of passion to be 
 pushed into prominence, that it acted so like a bolt 
 when it did flame fiercely out. The image may be a 
 small matter in itself, but it becomes tremendous when 
 we see the whole roused might of Sir Edward Coke 
 glare terribly through it. The spider, indeed, appears 
 to be a favorite symbol of ordinary fancies to express 
 spite. Thus Henry Fox, in a hot attack on Lord 
 Chancellor Hardwicke, who was supposed to have no 
 desire to reform the many abuses of his office, exclaimed : 
 " Touch but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old 
 spider of the Law is out upon you, with all his vermin 
 at his heels." This image makes the flesh creep. 
 
 Common sense, as embodied in character, has a 
 downright directness of expression often offensively 
 16
 
 212 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 dogmatic, though the dogmatism is not without justifica- 
 tion in the evident certainty the iron clutch of its 
 hold upon things. But in men of coarse strength of 
 nature, endowed with broad perceptions on low levels 
 of thought, this practical sagacity is apt to wax into 
 conceit with itself, to be developed in connection with 
 pride and self-will, and gradually to degenerate into a 
 bearish arrogance of self-assertion, in which a good 
 portion of its original clearness of view is obscured. 
 The moment this divorce between force and insight 
 occurs, will is pampered at the expense of understand- 
 ing, and the result is a wilfulness, whose expression is 
 marked by an overbearing dogmatism, hateful to all 
 who delight in the dominion of reason over animal 
 vigor and effrontery. Men of this stamp often preserve 
 more than an ordinary degree of intellect ; but intellect 
 is still a tool to be used, not a torch to guide. Both in 
 literature and in life, they are the swashbucklers, bullies, 
 and bravos of speech, unscrupulous, despotic, wrong- 
 headed, ambitious to conquer rather than anxious to 
 convince, and indisposed, indeed, to give any reasons 
 for saying or doing a thing, so long as they can " bid 
 their will avouch it." They are often very effective as 
 writers, orators, statesmen, theologians, from their war- 
 like attitude and tactics, using words as bullets, 
 throwing off statements and arguments like successive
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 243 
 
 discharges of cannon, and thoroughly understanding 
 the art of rapidly concentrating the heaviest mass of 
 invective on the weakest point of resistance. Lord 
 Chancellor Thurlow is a shining example of the method 
 by which opponents may be cowed or scattered by 
 abuse, and offices of trust and honor taken by assault. 
 By sheer strength of imperious, indomitable impudence, 
 ,}re pushed himself into high station, and, what is more, 
 did what he pleased after he attained it. He was not 
 content to rule ; he was unhappy unless he could 
 domineer. During the time that he hung, " like a low, 
 black cloud," over the House of Lords, the proudest 
 peers were abashed by the scowl of his shaggy brow, 
 the ominous growl of his voice, "like thunder heard 
 remote," and the impending lightnings which seemed 
 ready to dart from his eyes at the slightest touch of 
 provocation. His means of success were immense 
 confidence in himself, immense assumed contempt for 
 others, and the favor of his Most Wilful Majesty, 
 George III., who was attracted to him by a kindred 
 spirit. He would have his own way. He unhesitat- 
 ingly plotted against administrations of which he was 
 himself a member, hectored statesmen of his own party, 
 gave judgments in chancery without condescending to 
 state reasons for them, and fairly bullied his contempo- 
 raries into the opinion that he was a great statesman
 
 241 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 and a great jurist. There was a fascination in his 
 towering effrontery. George III. and his queen were 
 eminently moral people, yet Thurlow was a favorite of 
 both, though he openly defied moral restraints. When 
 Chancellor, he was " keeper of the King's conscience " 
 and of a mistress, paraded his illegitimate children in 
 public, and swore more terribly than ever did "our 
 army in Flanders." At one time, when the King was 
 threatened with insanity, and was palpably incompetent 
 to understand the acts which the Chancellor carried to 
 him for his approval, Thurlow became impatient at the 
 demands of his Majesty to have their purport explained 
 to him. " It 's all nonsense," said the gruff Chan- 
 cellor, " to try to make your Majesty understand them, 
 and you had better consent to them at once." He 
 sometimes employed Mr. Justice Buller, a judge in 
 every respect his superior, to sit for him in the Court 
 of Chancery, and praised his decisions publicly ; but on 
 its being said to him that it was remarkable that a 
 Common Law judge should be so familiar with Equity, 
 Thurlow exclaimed, " Equity ! he knows no more of it 
 than a horse ; but he disposes somehow of the cases, 
 and I seldom hear of them again." When Mr. Pitt's 
 
 death was announced to him, he remarked, "A 
 
 good hand at turning a period ! " This insolent as- 
 sumption of superiority is stamped on all his speeches,
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 245 
 
 public and private ; but it must be admitted that he 
 had completely mastered the art of individualizing lan- 
 guage, and of making words perform the office of blows 
 and stabs. 
 
 There are many people who cannot recognize the 
 presence of a powerful personality, except it be thus 
 exhibited in salient personal traits. But personal force, 
 in its healthy development, purifies itself from obtrusive 
 
 fr 
 
 individualities in proportion to the singleness and vigor 
 of its aim and purpose ; and in works of simple state- 
 ment and argumentation we often feel the presence of 
 character as a moving power, when it fails to be visible 
 in obstructive singularities. It is character that states 
 and reasons, though character broadened into under- 
 standing, and seemingly as impersonal as the facts and 
 principles it grasps and expounds. Dr. Samuel Clarke, 
 John Stuart Mill, Sir William Hamilton, and Daniel 
 Webster are instances in point. In the language of 
 these men we observe an austere conscientiousness of 
 phrase, as if every word had been severely tested and 
 kept subordinate to the thought which it is used to con- 
 vey. The sober and solid tramp of their style reflects 
 the movement of intellects that palpably respect the 
 relations and dimensions of things, and to which exag- 
 geration would be immorality. We should hesitate to 
 call them creative thinkers, and equally to place them
 
 246 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 in point of greatness below any but creative thinkers 
 of the first class. It is indeed with a sigh of regret, 
 that a critic who has studied Sir William Hamilton is 
 compelled to station him not even abreast of Hobbes 
 and Locke. 
 
 In passing from intellectual character of this testing 
 and reasoning, but not especially originating, species to 
 creative power, we do not at first ascend. Natures 
 comparatively little often exhibit faculties which are 
 fine in kind, though limited in degree, and exhibit them 
 also as centred in character. In their expression there 
 is none of the hardness which distinguishes the tough 
 vitality and vigor of men in whom understanding pre- 
 dominates. The little there is in them melts, flows, 
 fuses, shines. They can create and combine, though 
 their creations and combinations be petty and of small 
 account ; and they leave the permanent print of their 
 natures in those sly corners and crevices of the litera- 
 ture of a language, which the omnivorous general reader 
 delights to explore. Colley Gibber, for instance, is a 
 small creature enough, but still an indissoluble unit and 
 representative of flippant character, endowed with a 
 delightful little imagination exactly answering to the 
 demands of his little nature, and fertile in little crea- 
 tions and bright and shallow gossip, always meaning 
 well and never meaning much. Horace Walpole, a
 
 USE AND MISUSE OP WORDS. 247 
 
 higher example of the same flippancy, built up, 
 through an assimilation of all the frippery of literature 
 and all the frippery of fashionable life, a character per- 
 fect in its kind, and within its sphere undoubtedly crea- 
 tive. The affectation of his style has its roots in the 
 affectation of his nature, and it is an admirable style for 
 him. The sarcastic pertness of his diction, in which 
 wit and observation tend to crystallize in words, and 
 become brittle as they grow sparkling, shows a nature 
 not so fluid as Gibber's, and acting more by starts and 
 flings of fanciful inspiration. His wit is unmistakably 
 original, sometimes in kind. An old and pious lady, 
 into whose hands some of Lord Rochester's licentious 
 letters came, burned them, "for which," Walpole 
 petulantly says, "she is now burning in heaven." 
 Occasionally a single word does the work of a para- 
 graph. " Lady ," he remarks in one of his let- 
 ters, " looks ghastly and going" 
 
 Geniality is a finishing grace to intellectual character, 
 and we especially feel its sweetness in natures of great 
 reach and depth ; but in minds whose endowments are , 
 by no means extraordinary, it sometimes amounts to 
 a weakness. Leigh Hunt is an example of what we 
 should call a fondling character, and a great master 
 of its verbal expression. Language in his hands is 
 the most flexible of instruments to convey dainty and
 
 248 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 pleasant sensations. His self-content is so great that 
 it flows out in content with all the world. He fon- 
 dles everything and everybody. Shakespeare, Spenser, 
 Shelley, Coleridge, he dandles on his knee, as if they 
 were babies, paws them, and would fill their dear little 
 mouths with sugared epithets of eulogy. This he seems 
 to think is genial criticism. Even divine things cannot 
 escape his all-tolerating kindliness ; for, whatever sects 
 and churches may say, he knows that the world was 
 made after the image of Leigh Hunt. The Deity with 
 him is not so much Infinite Goodness as infinite good- 
 nature, and we believe he published a devotional book 
 to inculcate that doctrine. He talks very cosily about 
 Dante, and appeals to the readers whom he conducts 
 through 'the "Inferno," if they really can believe that 
 such fine fellows as they there behold in torments ought 
 to be treated in that way. Throughout his writings, 
 indeed, he seems to think that the wax taper, which he 
 holds so jauntily, can light up all the gloom and dark- 
 ness of the moral universe. This foppery is of a differ- 
 ent kind from Walpole's, and is much more delightful ; 
 but it is still foppery, though the foppery of philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 We have, doubtless, said more than enough respecting 
 words as media for the transpiration of character, and 
 it would be a waste of illustration to trace the working
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 249 
 
 of the principle through other forms of personality, such 
 as the sentimental, the Satanic, the eccentric, the relig- 
 ious, and the heroic. In all of these, however, language 
 is moulded into the organic body of thought, and the 
 organisms stand out in literature with the distinctness 
 and the diversity of organic forms in nature. The 
 words are veined, and full of the lifeblood of the creative 
 individualities projected into them with un withholding 
 energy. In criticising such works we soon discover 
 that what we at first call faults of style are in reality 
 faults of character. But such individualities are more 
 or less narrow and peculiar; and it is only when we 
 arrive at those rare natures, with sensibility, reason, 
 fancy, wit, humor, imagination, all included in the op- 
 erations of one mighty, spiritual force, which we feel to 
 be greater than one or all of the faculties and passions, 
 that we compass the full meaning of intellectual char- 
 acter in apprehending its highest form. Such men 
 Shakespeare, for example appear to be impersonal 
 simply because their personality is so broad. They are 
 impersonal relatively, not positively. Capable of dis- 
 cerning, interpreting, representing, the actual and possi- 
 ble peculiarities of human character, they seem to have 
 few peculiarities of their own. They have no leading 
 idea, because they have so many ideas ; no master pas- 
 sion, because they have so many passions ; no hobby,
 
 250 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 great or little, sublime or mean, because they possess a 
 vital conception of relations, as well as a vital conception 
 of things and persons. But they never really pass, as 
 creative minds, beyond the limits of their characters ; 
 for it is always men that create, not some vagrant 
 faculty of men. 
 
 It is sometimes doubted if the style of such writers 
 can be taken as the measure of their power and variety 
 of power. Now there is in the smallest individual in- 
 telligence an abstract possibility which is never realized 
 in any mode of expression while he is in the body, and 
 this limitation is especially felt when we read the works 
 of the greatest individualized intelligences. So far, and 
 only so far, are we inclined to concede that the great 
 masters and creators of language find in words but a 
 partial expression of their natures. What is directly 
 conveyed in words and images, according to their literal 
 interpretation, is, of course, inadequate to fix and em- 
 body a mind like Shakespeare's ; but then- the marvel 
 of Shakespeare's diction is its immense suggest! ven ess, 
 his power of radiating through new verbal combina- 
 tions or through single expressions a life and meaning 
 which they do not retain in their removal to diction- 
 aries. When the thought is so subtile, or the emotion 
 so evanescent, or the imagination so remote, that it 
 cannot be flashed upon the " inward eye," it is hinted
 
 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 251 
 
 to the inward ear by some exquisite variation of tone. 
 These irradiations and melodies of thought and feeling 
 are seen and heard only by those who think into the 
 words, but they are nevertheless there, whether per- 
 ceived or not. An American essayist on Shakespeare, 
 Mr. Emerson, in speaking of the impossibility of acting 
 or reciting his plays, refers to this magical suggestive- 
 n.v-s in a sentence almost as remarkable as the thing it 
 describes. " The recitation," he says, " begins : one 
 golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted 
 pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its 
 own inaccessible homes!" He who has not felt this 
 witchery in Shakespeare's style has never read him. 
 He may have looked at the words, but has never 
 looked into them. 
 
 We have been able, in these hasty observations 
 on the use and misuse of words, to touch upon only 
 a few topics connected with our theme. There are 
 many others that would repay investigation, which we 
 have hardly named, such as the intimate connec- 
 tion between clearness and freshness of expression, 
 the sources of the pleasure we take in style apart from 
 the importance of the matter it conveys, the differ- 
 ence between an author's expressing an idea to himself 
 and expressing it to others, the power of words, as 
 wielded by a man of genius, to create or evoke in
 
 252 USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 another mind the thought or emotion they embody, 
 the peculiar vitality and the amazing mystical signifi- 
 cance of language when used as the organ for express- 
 ing the phenomena of rapture and ecstasy, and the 
 interior laws which regulate the construction and move- 
 ment of style, according as the purpose is to narrate, 
 describe, reason, or invent. But we have not space at 
 present to consider these topics with the attention they 
 deserve. In the somewhat extended remark- into 
 which we have been provoked by the publication of 
 Dr. Roget's " Thesaurus," we have confined ourselves 
 to a few obvious principles, and have labored to show 
 the hopelessness of all attempts to make language really 
 express anything finer, deeper, higher, or more forcible 
 than what lives in the mind and character of the writer 
 who uses it. Especially in all that relates to strength 
 of diction, we think it will be found that the utmost 
 affluence in energetic terms will, of itself, fail to impress 
 on style any vital energy of soul ; for this energy, 
 whether it work like lightning or like light, whether it 
 smite and blast, or illumine and invigorate, ever comes 
 from the presence of the man in the words.
 
 WOEDSWOETH* 
 
 . THE death of this eminent poet, after an honorable 
 and useful life, prolonged to eighty years, will doubt- 
 less provoke a new conflict of opinions regarding the 
 nature and influence of his great and peculiar mind. 
 The universal feeling among all lovers of what is deep 
 and delicate and genuine in poetry must be, 
 
 " That there has passed away a glory from the earth " ; 
 and not until literature receives an original impulse 
 from a nature equally profound and powerful will it be 
 called upon to mourn such a departure. His death was 
 worthy of an earthly career consecrated by devout and 
 beautiful meditations to a life beyond life, his soul, 
 so long the serene guest of his mortal frame, meekly 
 withdrawing itself at the end to a world not unfamiliar 
 to his raised vision here below. 
 
 We confess, at the outset, to an admiration for 
 Wordsworth's genius bordering on veneration, but we 
 
 * Written when the news came of his death.
 
 254 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 trust that we can speak of it without substituting 
 hyperbole for analysis, without burying the essential 
 facts of his mental constitution under a load of pane- 
 gyric. It appears to us that these facts alone convict 
 his depreciating critics of malice or ignorance ; that 
 the kind of criticism to which he was originally sub- 
 jected, and which even now occasionally reappears 
 with something of the sting of its old flippancy, is 
 essentially superficial and untenable, failing to cover 
 the ground it pretends to occupy, and disguising non- 
 sense under a garb of shrewdness and discrimination. 
 The opinion of a man of ability on subjects which he 
 understands, and on objects he really discerns, is en- 
 titled to respect, and we do not deny that Jeffrey's 
 opinions on many important matters are sound and 
 valuable ; but, in relation to Wordsworth, whom he 
 perversely misunderstood, he appears presumptuously 
 incompetent and undiscerning throughout his much 
 vaunted criticisms ; in every case missing the peculiari- 
 ties which constituted "Wordsworth's originality, and 
 satirizing himself in almost every sarcasm he launched 
 at the poet. The usual defence set up for such a critic 
 is, that he judges by the rules of common sense; but 
 every poet who deserves the name is to be judged by 
 the common sense of the creative imagination, not by 
 the common sense of the practical understanding ; and
 
 WORDSWORTH. 255 
 
 mere police of letters, we imagine that Wordsworth 
 will readily assume his place as the greatest of English 
 poets since Milton. 
 
 In claiming for him a position in that line of English 
 poets which contains no other names than those of 
 Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, we imply 
 that he is not only great as an individual writer, but 
 tli at he is the head and founder of a new school of 
 poets ; that he is the point from which the future his- 
 torian of English letters will consider the poetry of the 
 age ; that he introduced into English literature new ele- 
 ments, whose inspiration has not yet spent itself, but 
 continues to influence almost every poet of the day; 
 
 that 
 
 " Thither, as to their fountain, other stars 
 Repairing, in their golden urns draw light." 
 
 This fact can be chronologically proved. In the " Lines 
 on Revisiting Tinturn Abbey," written as far back as 
 1798, and in which we have the key-note of Words- 
 worth's whole system of viewing nature and man, we 
 perceive not only a new element of thought added to 
 English poetry, but an element which appeared after- 
 ward in Shelley and Byron modified, of course, by 
 their individuality and still appears, with decreasing 
 force, in Tennyson and Browning. Plato and Lord 
 Bacon are not more decidedly originators of new
 
 256 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 scientific methods than "Wordsworth is the originator 
 of a new poetical method. Even if we dislike him, 
 and neglect his poetry, we cannot emancipate our- 
 selves from his influence, as long as we are thrilled 
 by the most magnificent and ethereal passages in 
 Shelley and Byron. We may be offended at the 
 man, but we cannot escape from his method, unless 
 our reading of the poets stops with Goldsmith and 
 Cowper. ' ' 
 
 The vital poems of Wordsworth those which are 
 really inspired with his spirit and life, and not mere 
 accretions attached to his works form a complete 
 whole pervaded by one living soul, and, amid all their 
 variety of subject, related to one leading idea, namely, 
 the marriage of the soul of man to the external universe, 
 whose " spousal hymn " the poet chants. They consti- 
 tute together the spiritual body of his mind, exhibiting 
 it as it grew into beautiful and melodious form through 
 thirty years of intense contemplation. To a person 
 who has studied his works with sufficient care to obtain 
 a conception of the author's personality, every little 
 lyric is alive with his spirit, and is organically con- 
 nected with the long narrative and didactive poems. 
 This body of verse is, we think, a new creation in liter- 
 ature, differing from others not only in degree but in 
 kind ; an organism, having its own interior laws, growing
 
 WORDSWORTH. 25t 
 
 from one central principle, and differing from Spenser 
 and Milton as a swan differs from an eagle, or a rose 
 from a lily. 
 
 We need hardly say that the central power and 
 principle of this organic body of verse is Wordsworth 
 himself. He is at its heart and circumference, and 
 through all its veins and arteries, as the vivifying and 
 organizing force, coloring everything with his pecu- 
 liar individuality, representing man and nature through 
 the medium of his own original and originating genius, 
 and creating, as it were, a new world of forms and 
 beings, idealized from hints given by the actual appear- 
 ances of things. This world is not so various as that 
 of Shakespeare or Scott, nor so supernatural as that 
 of Milton ; but it is still Wordsworth's world, a world 
 conceived by himself, and in which he lived and moved 
 and had his being. A true criticism of his works, 
 therefore, should be a biography of his mind, exhibiting 
 the vital processes of its growth, and indicating the 
 necessary connection between its gradual interior de- 
 velopment and the imaginative forms in which it was 
 expressed. This we cannot pretend to do, having 
 neither the insight nor the materials for such a task, 
 and we shall be content with attempting a faint outline 
 of his mental character, with especial reference to those 
 qualities which dwelt near the heart of his being, and 
 17
 
 258 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 which seem to have been woven into the texture of his 
 mind at birth. 
 
 Wordsworth was bora in April, 1770, of parents suf- 
 ficiently rich to give him the advantages of the usual 
 school and collegiate education of English youth. He 
 early manifested a love for study, but it may be inferred 
 that his studies were such as mostly ministered to the 
 imagination, as he displayed, from his earliest years, 
 a passion for poetry, and never seems to have had a 
 thought of choosing a profession. At the University of 
 Cambridge he appears to have read the classics with 
 the divining eye and assimilating mind of a poet, and if 
 he did not attain the first position as a classical scholar, 
 he certainly drank in beyond all his fellows the spirit 
 of the great writers of Greece and Rome. In a mind 
 so observing, studious, thoughtful, imaginative, and stead- 
 fast as his, the power of which consisted more in con- 
 centration of view than rapidity of movement, the 
 images of classical poetry must have been firmly held 
 and lovingly contemplated ; and to his collegiate culture 
 we doubtless owe the exquisite poems of Dion and 
 Laodamia, the grand interpretative, uplifting mythologi- 
 cal passage in The Excursion, and the general felicity of 
 the classical allusions and images throughout his works. 
 He probably wrote much as well as meditated deeply 
 at college, but very few of his juvenile pieces have
 
 WORDSWORTH. 259 
 
 been preserved, and those which are preserved seem 
 little more than exercises in expression. On leaving 
 college he formed the determination of educating his 
 poetical faculty by a communion with the forms of 
 nature, as others study law and theology. He resided 
 for some time in the West of England, and at about the 
 age of twenty made the tour of France, Italy, Switzer- 
 land, and Germany, travelling mostly on foot, diving 
 into forests, lingering by lakes, penetrating into the 
 cottages of Italian peasants and German boors, and 
 alternating the whole by a residence in the great 
 European cities. This seems to have occupied nearly 
 two years of his life ; its immediate, but not its only 
 result, was the publication of his " Descriptive Sketches 
 in Verse," indicating accurate observation rather than 
 shaping imagination, and undistinguished by any marked 
 peculiarities of thought or diction. We next hear of 
 him at Bristol, the companion of Coleridge and Southey, 
 and discussing with those eager and daring spirits the 
 essential falsehood of current poetry as a representation 
 of nature. The sensible conclusion of all three was this : 
 that the worn-out epithets and images then in vogue ' 
 among the rhymers were meaningless ; that poetry was 
 to be sought in nature and man ; and that the language 
 of poetry was not a tinsel rhetoric, but an impassioned 
 utterance of thoughts and emotions awakened by a
 
 260 -WORDSWORTH. 
 
 direct contact of the mind with the objects it described. 
 Of these propositions, the last was one of primary im- 
 portance, and in a mind so grave, deep, and contem- 
 plative as Wordsworth's, with an instinctive ambition 
 to be one of " Nature's Privy Council," and dive into 
 the secrets of those visible forms which had ever thrilled 
 his soul with a vague and aching rapture, the mere 
 critical opinion passed into a motive and an inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 "The Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, and to 
 which Southey and Coleridge contributed, were the first 
 poems which indicated Wordsworth's peculiar powers 
 and passions, giving the first hints of his poetical phi- 
 losophy, and the first startling shock to the tastes of 
 the day. They were mostly written at Allfoxden, near 
 the Bristol Channel, in one of the deepest solitudes in 
 England, amid woods, glens, streams, and hills. Here 
 Wordsworth had retired with his sister ; and Coleridge 
 was only five miles distant at Stowey. Cottle relates 
 some amusing anecdotes of the ignorance of the country 
 people in regard to them, and to poets and lovers of 
 the picturesque generally. Southey, Coleridge and his 
 wife, Lamb, and the two Wedgewoods, visited Words- 
 worth in his retirement, and the whole company used 
 to wander about the woods, and by the sea, to the great 
 wonder of all the honest people they met. As they
 
 WORDSWORTH. 261 
 
 were often out at night, it was supposed they led a 
 dissolute life; and it is said that there are respectable 
 people in Bristol who believe now that Mrs. Coleridge 
 and Miss Wordsworth were disreputable women, from 
 a remembrance of the scandalous tattle circulating then. 
 Cottle asserts that Wordsworth was driven from the 
 place by the suspicions which his habits provoked, 
 being refused a continuance of his lease of the Allfox- 
 den house by the good man who had the letting of it, 
 on the ground that he was a criminal in the disguise of 
 an idler. One of the villagers said, " that he had seen 
 him wander about at night and look rather strangely at 
 the moon! And then he roamed over the hills like 
 a partridge." Another testified "he had heard him 
 mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that 
 nobody could understand." This last, we suppose, is 
 the rustic version of the poet's own statement, 
 
 " He murmurs near the running brooks 
 A music sweeter than their own." 
 
 Others, however, took a different view of his habits, as 
 little flattering to his morals as the other view to his 
 sense. One wiseacre remarked confidently : " I know 
 what he is. We have all met him tramping away 
 toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all 
 that trouble to look at a parcel of water ? I think he
 
 262 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 carries on a snug business in the smugglipg line, and, in 
 these journeys, is on the lookout for some wet cargo." 
 Another, carrying out this bright idea, added, " I know 
 he has got a private still in his cellar ; for I once passed 
 his house at a little better than a hundred yards' dis- 
 tance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an ashen 
 fagot at Christmas." But the charge which probably 
 had the most weight in those times was the last. " I 
 know," said one, " that he is surely a desperd French 
 Jacobin ; for he is so silent and dark that no one ever 
 heard him say one word about politics." The result of 
 all these various rumors and scandals was the removal 
 of Wordsworth from the village. It is curious that, 
 with such an experience of English country-people, 
 Wordsworth should never have looked at them dramati- 
 cally, and represented them as vulgar and prejudiced 
 human beings as well as immortal souls. It proves 
 that humor did not enter at all into the constitution of 
 his nature ; that man interested him more than men ; 
 and that his spiritual affections, connecting humanity 
 constantly with its divine origin, shed over the simplest 
 villager a light and atmosphere not of earth. 
 
 While the ludicrous tattle to which we have referred 
 was sounding all around him, he was meditating Peter 
 Bell and the Lyrical Ballads, in the depths of the 
 Allfoxden woods, and consecrating the rustics who
 
 WORDSWORTH. 263 
 
 were scandalizing him. The great Poet of the Poor, 
 who has made the peasant a grander object of contem- 
 plation than the peer, and who saw through vulgar 
 externals and humble occupations to the inmost soul of 
 the man, had sufficient provocations to be the satirist of 
 those he idealized. 
 
 In these Lyrical Ballads, and in the poems written at 
 thfc same period of their publication, we perceive both 
 the greatness and the limitations of Wordsworth, the 
 vital and the mechanical elements in his poetry. As 
 far as his theory of poetic diction was unimaginative, as 
 far as its application was wilful, it became a mere mat- 
 ter of the understanding, productive of little else than 
 shocks to the poetic sense, and indicating the perversity 
 of a powerful intellect, pushing preconceived theories to 
 the violation of ideal laws, rather than the rapt inspira- 
 tion of the bard, flooding common words and objects 
 with new life and divine meanings. It is useless to 
 say that the passages to which we object would not 
 provoke a smile if read in the spirit of the author. 
 They are ludicrous in themselves, and would have 
 made the author himself laugh had he possessed a mod- 
 erate sense of the humorous. But the gravest objection 
 against them is, that they do not harmonize with the 
 poems in which they appear, are not vitally connected 
 with them, but stand as excrescences plastered on them,
 
 264 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 and instantly suggest the theorizer expressing his 
 scorn of an opposite vice of expression, by deliberately 
 substituting for affected elegance a simplicity just as 
 much tainted with affectation. Wordsworth's true sim- 
 plicity, the simplicity which was the natural vehicle of 
 his grand and solemn thoughts, the simplicity which 
 came from writing close to the truth of things, and 
 making the word rise out of the idea conceived, cannot 
 be too much commended ; but in respect to his false 
 simplicity, his simplicity for the sake of being simple, 
 we can only say that it has given some point to the sar- 
 casm, " that Chaucer writes like a child, but Words- 
 worth writes childishly." * These objectionable pas- 
 sages, however, are very few ; they stand apart from 
 his works and apart from what was essential in him ; 
 and they are to be pardoned, as we pardon the occa- 
 sional caprices of other great poets. 
 
 Another objection to the Lyrical Ballads, and to 
 Wordsworth's poems generally, is an objection which 
 relates to his noblest creations. He never appears to. 
 have thoroughly realized that other men were not 
 Wordsworths, and accordingly he not infrequently vio- 
 lates the law of expression, which we take to be the 
 expression of a man to others, not the expression of a 
 
 * Thackeray, insensible to his real genius, always called him 
 "Daddy Wordsworth."
 
 WORDSWORTH. 265 
 
 man to himself. He speaks, as it were, too much to his 
 own ear, and having associated certain words with sub- 
 tile thoughts and moods peculiar to himself, he does not 
 seem aware that the words may not of themselves con- 
 vey his meaning to minds differently constituted, and 
 accustomed to take the expressions at their lexicon 
 value. In this he differs from Coleridge, whose words 
 and music have more instantaneous power in evoking 
 the mood addressed, and thread with more force and 
 certainty all the mental labyrinths of other minds, and 
 act with a tingling and inevitable touch on the finest 
 nerves of spiritual perception. The Ancient Mariner 
 and Christobel almost create the moods in which they 
 are to be read, and surprise the reader with a revela- 
 tion of the strange and preternatural elements lying far 
 back in his own consciousness. Wordsworth has much 
 of this wondrous wizard power, but it operates with 
 less direct energy, and is not felt in all its witchery 
 until we have thought into his mind, become enveloped 
 in its atmosphere, and been initiated into the " sugges- 
 tive sorcery " of his language. Then, it appears to us, 
 he is even more satisfying than Coleridge, moving as he 
 does in the transcendental region of thought with a calmer 
 and more assured step, and giving evidence of having 
 steadily gazed on those spiritual realities which Cole- 
 ridge seems to have casually seen by flashes of light-
 
 266 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ning. His language consequently is more temperate, 
 as befits a man observing objects familiar to his mind 
 by frequent contemplation ; but, to common readers, it 
 would be more effective if it had the suddenness and 
 startling energy coming from the first bright vision 
 of supernatural objects. As it is, however, his style 
 proves that his mind had grown up to those heights of 
 contemplation to which the mind of Coleridge only oc- 
 casionally darted, under the winged impulses of imagi- 
 nation ; and therefore Wordsworth gives more serene 
 and permanent delight, more " sober certainty of waking 
 bliss," than Coleridge, however much the latter may 
 excel in instantaneousness of effect. 
 
 The originality of the Lyrical Ballads consisted not 
 so much in an accurate observation of Nature as in an 
 absolute communion with her, and interpretation of the 
 spirit of her forms. They combine in a remarkable 
 degree ecstasy with reflection, and are marvellously 
 refined both in their perception of the life of nature and 
 the subtile workings of human affections. Those elu- 
 sive emotions which flit dimly before ordinary imagina- 
 tions and then instantly disappear, Wordsworth arrests 
 and embodies ; and the remotest shades of feeling and 
 thought, which play on the vanishing edges of concep- 
 tion, he connects with familiar objects, and brings home 
 to our common contemplations. In the sphere of the
 
 WORDSWORTH. 267 
 
 affections he is confessedly great. The still, simple, 
 searching pathos of " We are Seven " ; the mysterious, 
 tragic interest gathered around " The Thorn " ; and the 
 evanescent touch of an elusive mood in " The Anecdote 
 for Fathers," indicate a vision into the deepest sources 
 of emotion. The poems entitled, " Expostulation and 
 
 Reply," "The Tables Turned," "Lines Written in 
 
 < 
 Early Spring," " To My Sister," and several others, 
 
 referring to this period of 1798, evince many of the 
 peculiar qualities of his philosophy, and combine depth 
 of insight with a most exquisite simplicity of phrase. 
 The following extracts contain hints of his whole sys- 
 tem of thought, expressing that belief in the life of 
 nature, and the mode by which that life is communi- 
 cated to the mind, which reappear, variously modified, 
 throughout his writings : 
 
 Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
 Which of themselves our minds impress ; 
 
 That we can feel this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness. 
 
 And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings! 
 
 He, too, is no mean preacher : 
 Come forth into the light of things, 
 
 Let Nature be your teacher. 
 
 She has a world of ready wealth, 
 Our minds and hearts to bless,
 
 268 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
 Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good 
 
 Than aU the sages can. 
 
 Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; 
 
 Our meddling intellect 
 Misshapes the beauteous forms of things, 
 
 We murder to dissect. 
 
 Enough of Science and of Art ; 
 
 Close up those barren leaves ; 
 Come forth and bring with you a heart 
 
 That watches and receives. 
 
 I beard a thousand blended notes, 
 While in a grove I sat reclined, 
 
 In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
 Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 
 
 Through primrose tufts in that sweet bower, 
 The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ; 
 
 And '< is my faith that every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes. 
 
 There is a blessing in the air 
 Which seems a sense of joy to yield 
 
 To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 
 And grass in the green field. 
 
 One moment now may give us more 
 Than years of toiling reason :
 
 WORDSWORTH. . 269 
 
 Our minds shall drink at every pore 
 The spirit of the season. 
 
 Some silent laws our hearts icitt wake, 
 
 Which they shall long obey : 
 We for the year to come may take 
 
 Our temper from to-day. 
 
 But the most remarkable poem written at this period 
 of Wordsworth's life is that on Tintern Abbey, " Lines 
 composed on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye." We 
 have here that spiritualization of nature, that mysterious 
 sense of the Being pervading the whole universe of 
 mattter and mind, that feeling of the vital connection 
 between all the various forms and kinds of creation, 
 and that marriage of the soul of man with the visible 
 universe, which constitute the depth and the charm of 
 Wordsworth's "divine philosophy." After describing 
 the landscape which he now revisits, he proceeds to 
 develop the influence it has exerted on his spirit : 
 
 These beauteous forms, 
 Through a long absence, have not been to me, 
 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : 
 But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 
 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 
 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
 Fell in the blood, and felt along the heart, 
 And passing even into my purer mind 
 With tranquil restoration ; feelings, too, 
 Of unremembered pleasure ; such, perhaps,
 
 270 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 As have no slight and trivial influence 
 On that best portion of a good man's life, 
 His little nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 
 To them I may have owed another gift 
 Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened ; that serene and blessed mood, 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, 
 Until the breath of this corporeal frame, 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 4lmost suspended, ice are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul; 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 He then proceeds to describe the passionate fascina- 
 tion which Nature exerted over his youth, and the 
 change which had come over him by a deeper and 
 more thoughtful communion with her spirit. When we 
 consider that Wordsworth, at this time, was only twenty- 
 eight, and that even the emotions described in the first 
 part of our extract had no existence in contemporary 
 poetry, we can form some idea of his giant leap in 
 advance of his age, as indicated by the unspeakable 
 beauty and novelty of the concluding portion. The 
 reader will notice that although the style becomes
 
 WORDSWORTH. 271 
 
 almost transfigured by the intense and brooding imagi- 
 nation which permeates it, the diction is still as simple 
 as prose. 
 
 I cannot paint 
 
 What then I was. The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
 An appetite, a feeling, and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, nor any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, 
 And all its aching joys are now no more, 
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
 Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts 
 Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, 
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something still more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All living things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
 
 272 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth; of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear both what they half create 
 And what perceive; well pleased to recognize 
 In nature and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the muse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 It is this " sense sublime of something still more 
 deeply interfused " that gives to a well-known passage 
 in the concluding portion of the poem its particular 
 significance. 
 
 Nature never did betray 
 The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege, 
 Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
 From joy to joy ; for she can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall- e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings. 
 
 In Wordsworth's use of the word Nature, it must 
 always be borne in mind that he means, to use his own 
 phrase,
 
 WORDSWORTH. 273 
 
 The Original of human art, 
 Heaven-prompted Nature. 
 
 This poem, the seed-thought of all the poetry of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century, enables us to un- 
 derstand the process by which so peculiar a nature as 
 Wordsworth's grew to its spiritual stature. It was by 
 placing his mind in direct contact with natural objects, 
 'passively receiving their impressions in the still hours 
 of contemplation, and bringing his own soul into such 
 sweet relations to the soul of nature as to " see into the 
 life of things " ; or, as he expresses it, in another con- 
 nection, " his soul had sight " of those spiritual realities, 
 of which visible forms and hues are but the embodiment 
 and symbolical language. Nature to him was therefore 
 always alive, spiritually as well as visibly existing ; and 
 he felt the correspondence between his own life and 
 her life, from perceiving that one spirit penetrated both. 
 Not only did he perceive this, but he mastered the 
 secret alphabet by which man converses with nature, 
 and to his soul she spoke an audible language. Indeed, 
 his mind's ear was even more acute than his mind's 
 eye ; and no poet has excelled him in the subtle per- 
 ception of the most remote relations of tone. Often, 
 when he is on the peaks of spiritual contemplation, he 
 hears voices when he cannot see shapes, and mutters 
 mystically of his whereabouts in words which suggest 
 18
 
 274: WORDS-WORTH. 
 
 rather than embody meaning. He grew in spiritual 
 strength and height by assimilating the life of nature, 
 as bodies grow by assimilating her grosser elements ; 
 and this process was little disturbed by communion with 
 other minds, either through books or society. He 
 took nothing at second-hand ; and his Nature is not the 
 Nature of Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Milton, 
 or Scott, but essentially the Nature of Wordsworth, the 
 Nature which he saw with his own eyes, and shaped 
 with his own imagination. His humanity sprang from 
 this insight, for not until he became impressed with the 
 spirit of Nature, and divined its perfect adaptation to 
 nourish and elevate the human mind, did he perceive 
 the worth and dignity of Man. Then simple humanity 
 assumed in his mind a mysterious grandeur, and humble 
 life was spiritualized by his consecrating and affection- 
 ate imagination. He might then say, with something 
 of a proud content, 
 
 The moving accident is not my trade ; 
 
 To freeze the blood I have no ready arts ; 
 ' T is my delight alone in summer snade, 
 
 To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts. 
 
 The passages in which this thoughtful humanity and 
 far-sighted spiritual vision appear in beautiful union 
 are too numerous for quotation, or even for reference. 
 We will give but two, and extract them as hints of his 
 spiritual biography and the growth of his mind.
 
 WORDSWORTH. 275 
 
 Love he had found in huts where poor men lie; 
 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 But who is He with modest looks, 
 
 And clad in homely russet brown ? 
 He murmurs near the running brooks 
 
 A music sweeter than their own. 
 
 He is retired as noontide dew, 
 
 Or fountain in a noonday grove; 
 And you must love him, ere to you 
 
 He will seem worthy of your love. 
 
 % 
 The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 
 Of hill and valley, he had viewed ; 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 Had come to him in solitude. 
 
 In common things that round us lie 
 Some random truths he can impart, 
 
 The harvest of a quiet eye 
 That sleeps and broods on his own heart. 
 
 "We shall give but one more extract ; illustrative of 
 the moral wisdom which the poetic recluse had drunk in 
 from Nature, and incorporated with his own character. 
 It was written at the age of twenty-five. 
 
 If thou be one whose heart the holy forms 
 
 Of young imagination have kept pure, 
 
 Stranger! henceforth be warned ; and know that pride, 
 
 Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
 
 276 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt 
 
 For any living thing, hath faculties 
 
 Which he has never used ; that thought with him 
 
 Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one, 
 
 The least of nature's works, one who might move 
 
 The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
 
 Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, Thou ! 
 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love ; 
 
 True dignity abides with him alone 
 
 Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
 
 Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
 
 In lowliness of heart. 
 
 We have dwelt thus long on Wordsworth's first 
 characteristic publication, because it expresses so well 
 the nature of his own mind, and because it gave an 
 original impulse to poetical literature. These Lyrical 
 Ballads were published in the summer of 1798, and 
 though they attracted no general attention corresponding 
 to their original merit, they exercised great influence 
 upon all the young minds who were afterwards to in- 
 fluence the age. In September, 1798, in company with 
 Coleridge, he visited Germany, and on his return he 
 settled at Grasmere, in Westmoreland ; a spot well 
 known to all readers of his poetry, and where he con- 
 tinued to reside for fifteen years. In 1803 he married 
 a Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith. Neither was 
 wealthy, their joint income being but 100 a year.
 
 WORDSWORTH. 277 
 
 Of his wife we know little, except that she was of small 
 stature and gentle manners, and was loved by her hus- 
 band with that still, deep devotion characteristic of his 
 affections. He refers to her, in a poem written in his 
 old age, as 
 
 She who dwells with me, whom I have loved 
 ^ With such communion, that no place on earth 
 
 Can ever be a solitude to me. 
 
 Between 1803 and 1807, when a second volume of 
 Lyrical Ballads was published, he wrote many of the 
 most beautiful and sublime poems in his whole works. 
 To this period belong " The Memorials of a Tour in 
 Scotland" (1803), containing "The Solitary Reaper," 
 "The Highland Girl," "Ellen Irwin," "Rob Roy's 
 Grave," and other exquisite and glowing impersonations, 
 his grand sonnets dedicated to "National Indepen- 
 dence and Liberty," "The Horn of Egremont Castle," 
 " Heart-Leap Well," " Character of a Happy "Warrior," 
 " A Poet's Epitaph," " Vandracour and Julia," the 
 " Ode to Duty," and, above all, the sublime " Ode on 
 the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections 
 of Childhood,"* which appears not to have been struck 
 off at one heat, but to have been composed at various 
 periods between the years 1803 and 1806. * 
 
 * In the opinion of Mr. Emerson, " the high-water mark which 
 the intellect has reached in this age."
 
 278 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 There are no events, in the common acceptation of 
 the term, in Wordsworth's life after the period of his 
 marriage, except the publication of his various works, 
 and the pertinacious war waged against them by the 
 influential critics. Though his means were at first lim- 
 ited, he soon, through the friendship of the Earl of Lons- 
 dale, received the appointment of Distributor of Stamps 
 for the ^counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, a 
 sinecure office, the duties of which were done by clerks, 
 but which seems to have given him an income sufficient 
 for his wants. In 1809 he published a prose work on 
 the " Convention of Cintra," which, though designed as 
 a popular appeal in favor of the oppressed Spaniards, 
 \vas little read at the time, and is now forgotten. 
 Southey, whose mind was on fire with sympathy for the 
 Spanish cause, says of this pamphlet, in a letter to 
 Scott : " Wordsworth's pamphlet will fail of producing 
 any general effect, because the sentences are long and 
 involved ; and his friend, De Quincey, who corrected 
 the press, has rendered them more obscure by an 
 unsound system of punctuation. This fault will out- 
 weigh all its merits. The public never can like any- 
 thing which they feel it difficult to understand I 
 
 impute Wordsworth's want of perspicuity to two causes, 
 his admiration of Milton's prose, and his habit of 
 dictating instead of writing : if he were his .own scribe 
 his eye would tell him where to stop."
 
 WORDSWORTH. 279 
 
 But the great work to which Wordsworth was de- 
 voting the best years of his life, was his long philosoph- 
 ical poem of " The Recluse," designed to give an account 
 of the growth of his own mind, and to develop all the 
 peculiarities, poetical, ethical, and religious, of his system 
 of thought. A large portion of this remains unpublished, 
 but tUe second part was issued in quarto, in 1814, under 
 the title of "The Excursion," and was immediately 
 seized upon by all the wit-snappers and critics of the 
 old school, and mercilessly " probed, vexed, and criti- 
 cised." Jeffrey, who began his celebrated review of 
 it in the Edinburgh with the sentence, " This will 
 never do," was successful in ridiculing some of its weak 
 points, but made the mistake of stigmatizing its sub- 
 limest passages as " unintelligible ravings." The choice 
 of a pedler as the hero of a philosophical poem, though 
 it was based on facts coming within the author's knowl- 
 edge, was a violation of ideal laws, because it had not 
 sufficient general truth to justify the selection. A pedler 
 may be a poet, moralist, and metaphysician, but such 
 examples are for biography rather than poetry, and 
 indicate singularity more than originality in the poet 
 who chooses them. Allowing for this error, subtract- 
 ing some puerile lines, and protesting against the ten- 
 dency to diffusion in the style, " The Excursion " still 
 remains as a noble work, rich in description, in narra-
 
 280 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 live, in sentiment, fancy, and imagination, and replete 
 with some of the highest and rarest attributes of poe- 
 try. To one who has been an attentive reader of it, 
 grand and inspiring passages crowd into the memory 
 
 at the mere mention of its title. It is, more perhaps 
 
 i 
 
 than any other of Wordsworth's works, enveloped in 
 the atmosphere of his soul, and vital with his individual 
 life ; and in all sympathetic minds, in all minds formed 
 to feel its solemn thoughts and holy raptures, it feeds 
 
 " A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire." 
 
 "The Excursion" was followed, in 1815, by the 
 "White Doe of Rylstone," a narrative poem, which 
 Jeffrey said deserved the distinction of being the worst 
 poem ever printed in a quarto volume, and which ap- 
 peai's to us one of the very best. We do not believe 
 the " White Doe " is much read, and its exceeding 
 beauty, its subtle grace, its profound significance, are 
 not perceived in a hasty perusal. It is instinct with the 
 most refined and ethereal imagination, and could have 
 risen from the depths of no mind in which moral beauty 
 had not been organized into moral character. Its ten- 
 derness, tempered by " thoughts whose sternness makes 
 them sweet," pierces into the very core of the heart. 
 The purpose of the poem is to exhibit suffering as a 
 purifier of character, and the ministry of sympathies,
 
 WORDSWORTH. 281 
 
 " Aloft ascending, and descending quite 
 Even unto inferior kinds," 
 
 in allaying suffering ; and this is done by a story suf- 
 ficiently interesting of itself to engage the attention, 
 apart from its indwelling soul of holiness. In the repre- 
 sentation of the Nortons we have the best specimens 
 of Wordsworth's power of characterization, a power 
 in which he is generally deficient, but which he here 
 exhibits with almost dramatic force and objective- 
 ness. 
 
 " Peter Bell " and " The Wagoner," which appeared 
 in 1819, were executed in a spirit very different from 
 that which animates the " White Doe. " They were 
 originally written to illustrate a system, and seem to 
 have been published, at this period, to furnish the 
 enemies of Wordsworth some plausible excuse for at- 
 tacking his growing reputation. " Peter Bell" was con- 
 ceived and composed as far back as 1798, and though 
 it exhibits much power and refinement of imagina- 
 tion, the treatment of the story is essentially ludicrous. 
 But still it contains passages of description which are 
 eminently Wordsworthian, and which the most accom- 
 plished of Wordsworth's defamers never equalled. 
 With what depth, delicacy, sweetness, ana simplicity 
 are the following verses, for instance, conceived and 
 expressed :
 
 282 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 He roved among the vales and streams, 
 
 In the green wood and hollow dell ; 
 They were his dwellings night and day, 
 But Nature ne'er could find the way 
 
 Into the heart of Peter BelL 
 
 In vain, through every changeful year, 
 
 Did Nature lead him as before ; 
 A primrose ly the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him. 
 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 At noon, when by the forest's edge 
 
 He lay beneath the branches high, 
 The soft blue sky did never melt 
 Into his heart ; he never felt 
 
 The witchery of the soft blue sky. 
 
 On a fair prospect some have looked 
 
 And felt, a.s I have heard them say, 
 As if the moving time had been 
 A thing as steadfast as the scene 
 
 On which they gazed themselves away. 
 
 There was a hardness in his cheek, 
 
 There was a hardness in his eye, 
 As if the man had fixed his face, 
 In many a solitary place, 
 
 Against the wind and open sky. 
 
 " The Wagoner " is altogether unworthy of Words- 
 worth's genius. It is an attempt of a poet without 
 humor to be gay and jocular, and very dismal gayety it
 
 WORDSWORTH. 283 
 
 is. But even this poem is not to be dismissed without 
 a reference to its one exquisite passage, that in which 
 he describes the obligation upon him to write it : 
 
 Nor is it I who play the part, 
 
 But a shy spirit in my heart, 
 
 That comes and goes will sometimes leap 
 
 From hiding-places ten years deep ; 
 
 Or haunts me with familiar face, 
 
 Returning, like a ghost unlaid, 
 
 Until the debt I owe be paid. 
 
 The next volume of Wordsworth was a series of 
 sonnets, under the general title of " The River Duddon," 
 published in 1820, and singularly pure in style and 
 fresh in conception. This was followed, in 1821, by 
 " Itinerary Sonnets," chronicling a journey to the Con- 
 tinent ; " Ecclesiastical Sonnets," in 1822, celebrating 
 events and characters in the history of the English 
 church ; and " Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems," in 
 1834. In old age he still preserved his young love for 
 Nature, and lost none of his power of interpreting her 
 teachings. In a poem entitled " Devotional Incitements," 
 written at the age of sixty-two, and distinguished for the 
 delicate keenness of its insight, no less than its lyric 
 rapture, it will be perceived that natural objects were 
 still visible and audible to his heart and imagination. 
 " Where," he exclaims,
 
 284 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Where will they stop, those breathing powers, 
 
 The spirits of the new-born flowers ? 
 
 They wander with the breeze, they wind 
 
 Where'er the streams a passage find ; 
 
 Up from their native ground they rise 
 
 In mute aerial harmonies ; 
 
 From humble violet modest thyme 
 
 Exhaled, the essential odors climb, 
 
 As if no space below the sky 
 
 Their subtle flight could satisfy : 
 
 Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride 
 
 If like ambition be their guide. 
 
 Roused by the kindliest of May-showers, 
 The spirit quickener of the flowers, 
 That with moist virtue softly cleaves 
 The buds, and freshens the young leaves, 
 The birds pour forth their souls in notes 
 Of rapture from a thousand throats 
 Here checked by too impetuous haste, 
 While there the music runs to waste, 
 With bounty more and more enlarged 
 Till the whole air is overcharged. 
 Give ear, man, to their appeal, 
 And thirst for no inferior zeal, 
 Thou, who canst think as well as feel. 
 
 Alas ! the sanctities combined 
 
 By art to unsensualize the mind, 
 
 Decay and languish ; or, as creeds 
 
 And humors change, are spurned like weeds: 
 
 And priests are from their altars thrust ; 
 
 Temples are levelled with the dust j
 
 WORDSWORTH. 285 
 
 And solemn rites and awful forms 
 Founder amid fanatic storms, 
 Yet evermore, through years renewed 
 In undisturbed vicissitude, 
 Of seasons balancing their flight 
 On the swift wings of day and night, 
 Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door 
 Wide open for the scattered Poor, 
 Where flower-breathed incense to the skies 
 Is wafted in mule harmonies ; 
 And ground fresh cloven by the plough 
 Is fragrant with a humbler vow ; 
 Where birds and brooks from leafy dells 
 Chime forth unwearied canticles, 
 And vapors magnify and spread 
 The glory of the sun's bright head 
 Still constant in her worship, still 
 Conforming to the eternal Will, 
 Whether men sow or reap the fields 
 Divine monition Nature yields, 
 That not by bread alone we live, 
 Or what a hand of flesh can give ; 
 That every day should leave some part 
 Free for a sabbath of the heart. 
 
 On the death of Southey, "Wordsworth was appointed 
 Poet Laureate. The latter years of his life were 
 passed in undisturbed serenity, and he appears to have 
 retained his faculties to the last. His old age, like his 
 youth and mature manhood, illustrated the truth of his 
 poetic teachings, and proves that poetry had taught him
 
 286 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 the true theory of life. One cannot contemplate him 
 during the last ten years of his existence, without being 
 forcibly impressed with his own doctrine regarding the 
 lover of nature : 
 
 Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, 
 Nor leave thee when old age is nigh 
 
 A melancholy slave ; 
 But an old age serene, and bright, 
 And lovely as a Lapland night, 
 
 Shall lead thee to thy grave. 
 
 The predominating characteristic of Wordsworth's 
 poetry is thoughtfulness, a thoughtfulness in which every 
 faculty of his mind and every disposition of his heart 
 meet and mingle ; and the result is an atmosphere of 
 thought, giving a softening charm to all the objects it 
 surrounds and permeates. This atmosphere is some- 
 times sparkingly clear, as if the airs and dews and sun- 
 shine of a May morning had found a home in his im- 
 agination ; but, in his philosophical poems, where he 
 penetrates into a region of thought above the ken of 
 ordinary mortals, this atmosphere is touched by an ideal 
 radiance which slightly obscures as well as consecrates 
 the objects seen through it, and occasionally it thickens 
 into mystical obscurity. No person can thoroughly 
 enjoy Wordsworth who does not feel the subtle effect 
 of this atmosphere of thought, as it communicates an
 
 WORDSWORTH. 287 
 
 air of freshness and originality even to the common- 
 places of his thinking, and apparels his loftier concep- 
 tions in celestial light, 
 
 " The gleam, 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream." 
 
 The first and grandest exercise, therefore, of his 
 imagination is the creation of this harmonizing atmos- 
 phere, enveloping as it does the world of his creation 
 with that peculiar light and air, indescribable but un- 
 mistakable, which enable us at once to recognize and to 
 class a poem by "Wordsworth. We do not hesitate to 
 say that, in its peculiarity, there is nothing identical 
 with it in literature, that it constitutes an absolutely 
 new kind of poetry, in the Platonic sense of the word 
 " kind." An imagination which can thus fuse all the fac- 
 ulties and emotions into one individuality, so that all the 
 vital products of that individuality are characterized by 
 unity of effect, is an imagination of the highest kind. 
 The next question to be considered is the variety which 
 this unity includes : for Shakespeare himself, the most 
 comprehensively creative of human beings, never goes 
 beyond the unity of his individuality, his multifarious 
 variety always answering to the breadth of his person- 
 ality. He is like the banyan-tree in the marvellous 
 fertility of his creativeness, and the province of human-
 
 288 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ity he covers ; but the fertility all comes from one root 
 and trunk, and indicates simply the greatness of the 
 kind, as compared with other kinds of trees. The 
 variety in the operation of Wordsworth's imagination 
 we will consider first in its emotional, and second in its 
 intellectual, manifestation, of course, using these words 
 as terms of distinction, not of division, because when we 
 employ the word " imagination " we desire to imply a 
 fusion of the whole nature of the man into one living 
 power. In the emotional operation of Wordsworth's 
 imagination we discern his Sentiment. No term has 
 been more misused than this, its common acceptation 
 being a weak affectionateness ; and, at best, it is con- 
 sidered as an instinct of the sensibility, as a simple, 
 indivisible element of humanity. The truth is that 
 sentiment is a complex thing, the issue of sensibility 
 and imagination ; and without imagination sentiment is 
 impossible. We often meet excellent and intelligent 
 people, whose affections are warm, whose judgments are 
 accurate, and whose lives are irreproachable, but who 
 lack in their religion, morality, and affections an elusive 
 something which is felt to be the last grace of character. 
 The solution of the problem is found in their want of 
 Sentiment, in their want of that attribute by winch 
 past scenes and events, and absent faces, and remote 
 spiritual realities, affect the mind like objects which are
 
 WORDSWORTH. 289 
 
 visibly present. Now, without this Sentiment no man 
 can be a poet, either in feelirfg or faculty ; and Words- 
 worth has it in a transcendent degree. In him it is 
 revealed, not only in his idealizing whatever in nature 
 or life had passed into his memory, but in his religious 
 feeling and in his creative art. Scenes which he had 
 viewed years before, he tells us, still 
 
 Flash upon that inward eye, 
 Which is the bliss of solitude. 
 
 Thus Sentiment is that operation of imagination which 
 recalls, in a rnore vivid light, things absent from the 
 bodily eye, and makes them act upon the will with 
 more force and inspiration than they originally exerted 
 in their first passionate or thoughtful perception ; and 
 trom its power of extracting the essence and height- 
 ening the beauty of what has passed away from the 
 senses and passed into memory, it gives the impulse 
 which sends the creative imagination far beyond the 
 boundaries of actual life into the regions of the ideal, to 
 see what is most beautiful here 
 
 Imaged there 
 In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, 
 
 An ampler ether, a diviner air, 
 And fields invested with purpureal gleams, 
 Climes, which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 
 Earth knows, is all unwoi-ihy to survey. 
 19
 
 290 WOBDSWORTH 
 
 It is needless to adduce passages to prove the depth 
 and delicacy of Wordsworth's sentiment, sanctifying as 
 it does. natural objects and the humblest life, and lend- 
 ing to his religious faith a mysterious, ineffable beauty 
 and holiness. In our view of the quality it must 
 necessarily be the limitation of a poet's creativeness, 
 for the imagination cannot represent or create objects 
 to which it does not tend by a sentiment ; and Words- 
 worth, while he has a sentiment for visible nature, a 
 religious sentiment, a sentiment of humanity, is still 
 confined to the serious side of things, and has no senti- 
 ment of humor. If he had humor as a sentiment, he, 
 dowered as he is with imagination, would have it as a 
 creative faculty, for humor is simply the imagination 
 inspired by the sentiment of mirth. 
 
 Let us now survey the power and scope of Words- 
 worth's imagination, considered in its intellectual man- 
 ifestation. Here nothing bounds its activity but its 
 sentiments. It is descriptive, pictorial, reflective, shap- 
 ing, creative, and ecstatic ; it can body forth abstract 
 ideas in sensible imagery ; it can organize, as in the 
 " White Doe," a whole poem around one central idea ; 
 it can make audible in the melody of words shades of 
 feeling and thought which elude the grasp of imagery ; 
 it can fuse and diffuse itself at pleasure, animating, col- 
 oring, vitalizing everything it touches. In description
 
 WORDSWORTH. 291 
 
 it approaches near absolute perfection, giving not only 
 the scene as it lies upon the clear mirror of the per- 
 ceptive imagination, but representing it in its life and 
 motion as well as form. The following, from " The 
 Night Piece," is one out of a multitude of instances : 
 
 He looks up the clouds are split 
 Asunder and above his head he sees 
 The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. 
 There, in a black blue vault she sails along, 
 Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small 
 And sharp and bright, along the dark abyss 
 Drive as she drives. 
 
 In the description of the appearance of the " White 
 Doe," we have not only form, hue, and motion, but the 
 feeling of wonder that the fair creature excites, and 
 the rhythm which musically expresses the supernatural 
 character of the visitant, all embodied in one vivid 
 picture : 
 
 The only voice that you can hear 
 
 Is ihe river murmuring near. 
 
 When soft ! the dusky trees between, 
 
 And down the path through the open green, 
 
 Where is no living thing to be seen; 
 
 And through yon gateway, where is found, 
 
 Beneath the arch with ivy bound, 
 
 Free entrance to the church-yard ground 
 
 Comes gliding in with lovely gltam, 
 
 Comes gliding in serene and slow,
 
 292 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Soft and silent as a dream, 
 
 A solitary Doe ! 
 
 White she is as lily of June, 
 
 And beauteous as the silver moon 
 
 When out of sight the clouds are driven 
 
 And she is left alone in heaven ; 
 
 Or like a ship, some gentle duy, 
 
 In sunshine sailing far away, 
 
 A glittering ship that hath the plain 
 
 Of ocean for her own domain. 
 
 In the following we have a mental description, so 
 subtle and so sweet as to make the " sense of satisfac- 
 tion ache " with its felicity : 
 
 And she has smiles to earth unknown, 
 Smiles that, with motion of their own, 
 
 Do spread and sink and rise; 
 That come and go, with endless play, 
 And ever as they pass away, 
 
 Are hidden in her eyes. 
 
 This is from the little poem to " Louisa." It is curi- 
 ous that Wordsworth, in the octavo edition of his works, 
 published when he was seventy-seven years old, omits 
 this stanza. It was so refined that he had probably 
 lost the power to perceive its delicate beauty, and dis- 
 missed it as meaningless. 
 
 In describing Nature, as connected with, and em- 
 bodied in human thoughts and sentiments, Words- 
 worth's descriptive power rises with the complexity of
 
 WORDSWORTH. 293 
 
 the theme. Thus, in the poem of Ruth, we have an 
 example of the perversion of her energizing power: 
 
 The wind, the tempest roaring high, 
 The tumult of a tropic sky, 
 
 Might well be dangerous food 
 For him, a youth to whom was given 
 So much of earth so much of heaven, 
 
 And such impetuous blood. 
 
 Whatever in those climes he found 
 Irregular in sight or sound, 
 
 Did to his mind impart 
 A kindred impulse, seemed allied 
 To his own powers, and justified 
 
 The workings of his heart. 
 
 Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought, 
 The beauteous forms of nature wrought, 
 
 Fair trees and gorgeous flowers ; 
 The breezes their own languor lent; 
 The stars had feelings, which they sent 
 
 Into those favored bowers. 
 
 In another poem, we have an opposite and purer 
 representation of Nature's vital work, in an ideal im- 
 personation which has nothing like it in the lan- 
 guage : 
 
 Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
 Then Nature said, a lovelier flower 
 
 On earth was never sown ; 
 This child I to myself will take ;
 
 294 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 A lady of my own. 
 
 Myself will to my darling be 
 
 th law and impulse : and with me 
 
 The girl in rock and plain, 
 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 
 To kindle or restrain. 
 
 She shall be sportive as the fawn, 
 That wild with glee across the lawn, 
 
 Or up the mountain springs ; 
 
 nd hers shall be the breathing balm, 
 
 id hers the silence and the calm 
 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her; for her the willow bend; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the Storm, 
 Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 The stars of midnight shall be dear 
 To her; and she shall lean her ear 
 
 In many a secret place 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 And beauty born of murmuring sound 
 
 Shall pass into her face. 
 
 But the most common exercise of Wordsworth's im- 
 agination is what we may call its meditative action,
 
 WORDSWORTH. 295 
 
 its still, calm, searching insight into spiritual truth, and 
 into the spirit of Nature. In these, analysis and re- 
 flection become imaginative, and the "more than rea- 
 soning mind " of the poet overleaps the boundaries of 
 positive knowledge, and, steadying itself on the vanish- 
 ing points of human intelligence, scans the " life of 
 things." In the poems in which meditation predomi- 
 nates, there is a beautiful union of tender feeling with 
 austere principles, and this austerity prevents his ten- 
 derness from ever becoming morbid. As his meditative 
 poems more especially relate to practice, and contain 
 his theory of life, they grow upon a studious reader's 
 mind with each new perusal. In them the Christian 
 virtues and graces are represented in something of their 
 own celestial beauty and power, and the poet's " vision 
 and faculty divine " are tasked to the utmost in giving 
 them vivid and melodious expression. He is not, in 
 this meditative mood, a mere moralizing dreamer, a 
 vague and puerile rhapsodist, as some have maliciously 
 asserted, but a true poetic philosopher, whose wisdom 
 is alive with the throbs of holy passion ; and 
 
 Beauty a living Presence of the earth 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms 
 Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed 
 From earth's materials waits upon his steps; 
 Pitches her tents before him as he moves, 
 An hourly neighbor.
 
 296 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 * 
 
 But though these poems are essentially meditative 
 in spirit, they are continually verging on two forms of 
 the highest poetic expression, abstract imagination and 
 ecstasy ; and the clear, serene, intense vision which is 
 their ordinary characteristic, is the appropriate mood 
 out of which such forms of imagination naturally pro- 
 ceed. Let us first give a specimen of the creativeness 
 of his imagination in its calmly contemplative mood, 
 and we will select one of his many hundred sonnets : 
 
 Tranquillity ! the sovereign aim wert thou 
 
 In heathen schools of philosophic lore; 
 
 Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore 
 The Tragic Muse thee served with thoughtful vow; 
 And what of hope Elysium could allow 
 
 Was fondly seized by Sculpture to restore 
 
 Peace to the Mourner. But when He who wore 
 The crown of thorns around his bleeding brow 
 
 Warmed our sad being with celestial light, 
 Then Arts, which still had drawn a softening grace 
 
 From shadowy fountains of the Infinite, 
 Communed with that Idea face to face : 
 And move around it now as planets run, 
 Each in its orbit round the central sun. 
 
 We will not stop to comment on the wealth of thought 
 contained in this sonnet, or the lingering suggestiveness 
 of that wonderful line, 
 
 " Warmed our sad being with celestial light,"
 
 WORDSWORTH. 297 
 
 but proceed to give another example, fragrant with the 
 deepest spirit of meditation : 
 
 More sweet than odors oaught by him who sails 
 
 Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, 
 
 A thousand times more exquisitely sweet, 
 
 The freight of holy feeling which we meet 
 
 In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales 
 
 From fields where good men walk, and bowers wherein they rest. 
 
 The following sonnet may be commended to warriors 
 and statesmen, as containing a wisdom as practical in 
 its application as it is lofty in its conception : 
 
 I grieved for Bonaparte" with a vain 
 
 And an unthinking grief! The tenderest mood 
 
 Of that man's mind what can it be ? What food 
 Fed his first hopes ? What knowledge could he gain ? 
 'T is not in battles that from youth we train 
 
 The Governor who must be wise and good, 
 And temper with the sternness of the brain 
 
 Thoughts motherly and meek as womanhood. 
 
 Wisdom doth live with children round her knees; 
 Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk 
 Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk 
 
 Of the mind's business; these are the degrees 
 By which true sway doth mount; this is the stalk 
 
 True Power doth grow on ; and her rights are these. 
 
 We will now extract a magnificent example of ab- 
 'stract imagination, growing out of the meditative imagi- 
 nation, and penetrated by it. It is the " Thought of a
 
 298 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland"; the "two 
 voices " are England and Switzerland. 
 
 Two Voices are there ; one is of the sea, 
 One of the mountains ; each a mighty Voice : 
 In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 
 
 They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! 
 
 There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee 
 Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven: 
 Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, 
 
 Where not a torrent murmurs, heard by thee 
 Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft: 
 Then cleave, cleave to that which still is left; 
 
 For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be 
 That mountain Floods should thunder as before, 
 And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore, 
 
 And neither awful Voice be heard by thee ! 
 
 Of the ecstatic movement of Wordsworth's imagina- 
 tion, we might extract numberless instances, rushing up, 
 as it does, from the level of his meditations, throughout 
 his poetry. Take the following, from the "Ode to 
 Duty " : 
 
 Stern Lawgiver ! yet thon dost wear 
 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 
 As is the smile upon thy face ; 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads : 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And the most ancient heavens through thee arefretk and strong.
 
 WORDSWORTH. 299 
 
 In a descriptive poem called " The Gypsies," there is 
 a very striking instance of rapture immediately succeed- 
 ing calmness : 
 
 The weary sun betook himself to rest ; 
 Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west, 
 Outshining like a risible God 
 The glorious path in which he trod. 
 
 Again, observe how the imagination kindles and 
 melts into rapturous idealization, and impetuously dei- 
 fies the object of its sentiment, in the following short 
 reference to the death of Coleridge : 
 
 Nor has the rolling year twice measured, 
 From sign to sign, its steadfast course, 
 
 Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
 Was frozen at its marvellous source ; 
 
 The ''rapt One of the godlike forehead, 
 
 The heaven-eyed creature. 
 
 In the sonnet which we now extract we have a 
 specimen of that still ecstasy, so calm and so intense, 
 in which Wordsworth stands almost alone among modern 
 
 poets. 
 
 A fairer face of evening cannot be ; 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration; the broad sun 
 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 
 The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea : 
 Listen ! the mighty being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make
 
 300 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly. 
 
 Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkest with me here, 
 If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 
 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; 
 And worship'st at the temple's inner shrine, 
 God being with thee when we know it not. 
 
 It is, however, in the sublime " Ode on the Intima- 
 tions of Immortality from the Recollections of Child- 
 hood," that we best perceive the power of Wordsworth's 
 imagination in all the various modes of its expression 
 descriptive, analytic, meditative, interpretative, ab- 
 stract, and ecstatic ; and in this ode each of these modes 
 helps the other; the grand choral harmonies of the 
 rapturous upward movement seeming to be born out 
 of the intense contemplation, that hovers dizzily over 
 the outmost bounds of human conception, to scrutinize, 
 in the dim dawn of consciousness, 
 
 Those first affections, 
 Those shadowy recollections, 
 Which be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing. 
 
 It is from these that we have ecstasy almost as a 
 logical conclusion ; for 
 
 Hence in a season of calm weather, 
 Though inland far we be,
 
 WORDSWORTH. 301 
 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 We have no space to particularize the felicity of 
 Wordsworth's muse in dealing with the affections, or 
 the depth and power of his pathos. Before leaving the 
 subject of his genius, however, we cannot withhold a 
 reference to his " Ode on the Power of Sound," which 
 appears to be little known even to readers of the poet, 
 though in the thronging abundance of its ideas and 
 images, in the exquisite variety of its music, and in the 
 soul of imagination which animates it throughout, it 
 yields the palm to no ode in the language. 
 
 Wordsworth is most assuredly not a popular poet in 
 the sense in which Moore and Byron are popular ; and 
 he probably never will be so among those readers who 
 do not distinguish between being passionate and being 
 impassioned, and who prefer the strength of convulsion 
 to the strength of repose ; readers who will attend only 
 to what stirs and startles the sensibility, who read 
 poetry not for its nourishing but its inflaming qualities, 
 and who look upon poetic fire as properly consuming 
 the mind it animates. Wordsworth is not for them, 
 except they go to him as a spiritual physician, in search
 
 302 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 of "balm for hurt minds." Placed in a period of time 
 wheif great passions in the heart generated monstrous 
 paradoxes in the brain, he clung to those simple but 
 essential elements of human nature on which true power 
 and true elevation must rest; and, while all around 
 him sounded the whine of sentimentality and the hiss 
 of Satanic pride, his mission, like that of his own beau- 
 tiful blue streamlet, the Duddon, was " to heal and 
 cleanse, not madden and pollute." His rich and radiant 
 imagination cast its consecrating and protecting light 
 on all those dear immunities of humanity, which others 
 were seeking to discard for the delusions of haughty 
 error, or the fancies of ripe sensations. Accordingly, 
 though many other poets of the time have a fiercer or 
 fonder charm for young and unrestrained minds, he alone 
 grows upon and grows into the intellect, and " hangs 
 upon the beatings of the heart," as the soul advances in 
 age and reflection; for there is a rich substance of 
 spiritual thought in his poetry to meet the wants of 
 actual life consolations for sorrow, help for infirmity, 
 sympathy for bereavement, a holy gleam of awful 
 splendor to irradiate the dark fear of death ; a poetry, 
 indeed, which purifies as well as pleases, and penetrates 
 into the vitalities of our being as wisdom no less than 
 loveliness.
 
 BETANT. 
 
 THE name of Bryant cannot be mentioned by any 
 friend to American letters without respect as well as 
 admiration. The instinctive feeling of the critic is to 
 celebrate his positive qualities, rather than to indicate 
 his limitations, or discuss his claims to be considered 
 the greatest of American poets. A good portion of the 
 jnen of the present generation read his most character- 
 istic poems when they were boys, and object to any 
 attempt to have their " pleasures of memory " disturbed. 
 The Ages," Thanatopsis," " Green Eiver," " Monu- 
 ment Mountain," are so blended with their most cher- 
 ished sentiments and principles, and their power to 
 purify and tranquillize the mind has been subjected to 
 such tests of experience, that an interpretative criticism 
 is slighted as needless, and a captious criticism is 
 resented as impertinent. 
 
 The hold that Bryant thus has on the profoundest 
 feelings of so large a portion of his countrymen is to be 
 referred to the genuineness, delicacy, depth, and purity
 
 304 BRYANT. 
 
 of his sentiment. A few other American poets may 
 exfcel him in affluence of imagery and variety of tone 
 and subject, but probably none is so essentially poetical 
 in nature. He is so genuine that he testifies to nothing, 
 in scenery or human life, of which he has not had a 
 direct personal consciousness. He follows the primitive 
 bias of his nature rather than the caprices of fancy. 
 His sincerity is the sincerity of character, and not 
 merely the sincerity of a swift imagination, that believes 
 only while it is creating. He does not appear to have 
 the capacity to assume various points of view, to project 
 himself into forms of being different from his own, to 
 follow any inspiration other than that which springs up 
 in his own individual heart. As a poet, his nature is^ 
 not broad, sensitive, and genial, but intense, serious, 
 and deep ; and we should suppose that his sensibility, 
 pure and earnest as it is, within the bounds of his own 
 individual emotions, would cool from sympathy into 
 antipathy, when exercised on objects beyond its self- 
 limited range. The charge of coldness, which is some- 
 times brought against him, must have reference to the 
 limitation, not the force of his sympathies. The fire in 
 his characteristic poems, though it may not roar and 
 redden in a kind of conflagation of the passions, has a 
 pure, intense, white heat, indicating the steady glow of 
 feeling, which has fused together all the faculties of the
 
 BRYANT. 305 
 
 man. His passion would appear to have more force if 
 it were less purified from the recklessness of impulse 
 and the taint and stain of appetite. 
 
 To this singular purity and depth of sentiment, he 
 adds a corresponding simplicity, closeness, clearness, and 
 beauty of expression. In language, indeed, he is so 
 great an artist that no general terms can do justice to 
 his felicity. The very atmosphere of his sentiment, the 
 subtlest tone of his thought, the most refined modifica- 
 tions which feeling and reflection receive from individ- 
 uality, are all tranfused into his style with unobtrusive 
 ease. His style is literally himself. It has the form 
 and follows the movement of his nature, and is shaped 
 into the expression of the exact mood, sentiment, and 
 thought out of which the poem springs. His composi- 
 tions, therefore, with all their elegance and finish, 
 their " superb propriety " of diction, always leave the 
 impression of having been born, not manufactured or 
 made. No melody of tone is ever introduced merely 
 for the music, no flush of the hues of language is ever 
 used merely to give the expression a bright coloring, 
 but all is characteristic and artistic, indicating the sub- 
 ordination of the materials to the man, the poetry to the 
 poet. It is for this reason that Bryant is so valuable a 
 guide to young lyrists, who are so prone to be carried 
 away by words, and who emerge from their tangled 
 20
 
 306 BRYANT. 
 
 wilderness of verbal sweets and beauties, without any 
 essential sweetness and beauty of sentiment and imagi- 
 nation, and become, at best, authors of poetical lines and 
 images rather than poems. A real poet, like Bryant, 
 accepting the limitations of his nature, and never going 
 beyond the point which separates inspiration from aspi- 
 ration, creativeness from impressibility, the power of 
 vital conception from the power of vividly appreciat- 
 ing the conceptions of others, may appear small in com- 
 parison with those adventurous spirits who would fuse 
 Shakespeare, Spenser, and Shelley into their own little 
 individuality, and by so doing lose their particular 
 genius, instead of gaining the universality they seek. 
 The genuineness of Bryant is, perhaps, too austerely 
 conscientious, and, if any fault can be found with him 
 in this respect, it is his repression of poetic instincts, 
 which might, if cultivated, have given more variety 
 to his muse. Surely, the little poem of ''The Mos- 
 quito " indicates a vein of sentiment, delicate, playful, 
 and genial, that might have been developed into many 
 a piece of exquisite poetical wit and gracefully fanciful 
 humor, which would have relieved the sad, sweet, ear- 
 nest tone of his ordinary meditations. 
 
 Another characteristic of Bryant's poetical diction is 
 its fulness of matter. Every line is loaded with mean- 
 ing. This weight and wealth and compactness of
 
 BRYANT. 307 
 
 thought sometimes fail to impress the reader in his 
 blank verse, on account of its swift and slipping freedom 
 of movement ; but in his ringing rhyme they are forced 
 upon the attention. Take his lines in memory of Wil- 
 liam Leggett, and read them with a lingering emphasis 
 on the substantives and the substantial epithets, and 
 note how much life and meaning is condensed in the 
 four sounding stanzas : 
 
 " The earth may ring from shore to shore 
 
 With echoes of a glorious name, 
 But he whose loss our tears deplore 
 Has left behind him more than fame. 
 
 " For when the death-frost came to lie 
 
 On Leggett's warm and mighty heart, 
 And quench his bold and friendly eye, 
 His spirit did not all depart. 
 
 " The words of fire that from his pen 
 Were flung upon the fervid page, 
 Still move, still shake the hearts of men, 
 Amid a cold and coward age. 
 
 " His love of truth, too warm, too strong, 
 
 For Hope or Fear to chain or chill, 
 His hate of tyranny and wrong, 
 Burn in the breasts he kindled still." 
 
 This solidity of thought is perhaps exhibited too 
 much in one direction, but still the one-sidedness
 
 308 BRYANT. 
 
 proceeds from a limitation of poetical sympathy, not 
 from a limitation of intellectual power. It is, after all, 
 the variety of sentiments bound up in a man's individ- 
 ual being which gives variety to his intellectual mani- 
 festation. Thus we find in Bryant all the faculties in 
 vigorous manhood, observation, judgment, understand- 
 ing, fancy, imagination, but, in poetry, obeying the 
 direction of a few sentiments. Those who have followed 
 his career as an editor, and have read his masterly 
 prose articles on the principles, persons, and events of 
 the time, know that the resources of his large, forcible, 
 and teeming intellect are not confined to meditations 
 like those which charm us in " Thanatopsis," but are 
 equal to all the demands of statement, argument, and 
 controversy ; and that political opponents come from 
 the perusal of one of his scorching leaders in a less 
 tranquil mood than that in which they come from the 
 perusal of one of his tranquillizing poems. But doubt- 
 less the finer essence of the man's being is in his 
 metrical compositions, though they may not fully in- 
 dicate the diversity of his intellectual gifts. 
 
 In using the term " sentiment," in speaking of the di- 
 rection of Bryant's genius, it may be as well to state 
 what we mean. In our sense of the word it is the in- 
 stinctive movement of the poet's mind to the objects 
 which have a kind of magnetic affinity with its genius.
 
 BRYANT. 309 
 
 A poet, therefore, with a controlling sentiment, may 
 almost reach perfection in the representation of some 
 things, and be very mediocre the moment his mind is 
 exercised on other things. Bryant has a true sentiment 
 for external nature, and for the great ideas, abstracted 
 from actual life and actual men, which the contempla- 
 tion of nature evokes and nourishes ; but he has not, in 
 addition to these, the sentiments which lead the intel- 
 lect to explore the depths of human character, and find 
 a joy in the concrete facts of human life. There are 
 men who are said to have a feeling for nature simply 
 because they yield naturally to the impressions which 
 scenery excites in the most ordinary minds, impres- 
 sions which a city street or a masked ball will expel 
 for others, which, in their turn, will not survive the 
 hour. They require the actual presence of the forms, 
 colors, hues, and sounds of objects, in order to receive 
 their gladness or their gloom. This is not sentiment 
 either for nature or for society. The poet of nature 
 would be haunted by the images he saw and the sensa- 
 tions he experienced, in the absence of what excited 
 them ; the poet of social life, or the dramatist, would 
 be haunted in solitude by his perceptions gathered in 
 the street and the ball-room. In both cases, the 
 impressions would be lodged in the imagination, take a 
 new and finer life there, be brooded over with delight,
 
 310 BRYANT. 
 
 provoke more intense and deeper feelings as perceptions 
 transformed than as perceptions immediately received, 
 and at last would kindle the whole mind into activity 
 into a " noble rage " to give them expression in 
 language. This is the process by which nature is 
 poetically described ; this the process by which human 
 life and character is poetically delineated. It is the 
 same whether the object be a daisy or an Alp, a 
 Dogberry or a Hamlet. 
 
 Now we think it is plain that Bryant, as a poet, has 
 not a sentiment for human life and character, though he 
 has a deep one for external nature. There is no genial 
 delineation of men and women, as individuals, in his 
 writings. When he glows at the mention of a name, 
 we find it is not a person he is celebrating, but some 
 qualities of that person, abstracted from his personality, 
 and idealized. His general tone toward society is 
 harsh. Could he have seen the individual that hinted 
 Falstaff, or Parolles, or Bottom, to Shakespeare, such a 
 person would in him have excited simple aversion or 
 contempt, as a hateful profligate, a lying braggart, or a 
 stupid bore. In his poems he continually speaks of 
 escaping from the crowd, of despising the frivolity of 
 society, of hating the every-day work by which man, 
 in this life, keeps up that interesting and slightly 
 important connection between body and soul called
 
 BRYANT. 311 
 
 " getting a living." In this we are, of course, speaking 
 of Bryant as a poet, and of the feelings which animate 
 him as he contrasts the nature he poetically conceives 
 with the social life he prosaically apprehends. The 
 result is that, though perhaps the first of poets in 
 America, he is not especially an American poet, for 
 what nationalizes genius is not so much the scenery it 
 describes as the human life it idealizes. Why, Mr. 
 Jefferson Brick inquires, why so much about Ameri- 
 can woods, fields, flowers, birds, beasts, ocean, and sky, 
 and so little that is characteristic about American men ? 
 Indeed, the real concrete life of the nation, that na- 
 tional life which even in meditative English poets, like 
 Wordsworth, forms the basis and inspiration of so many 
 lofty idealizations, that peculiar something in almost 
 all English poets, which proves that their " limbs were 
 made in England," seems to have no place in the 
 genius of Bryant. He appears rather to have for it a 
 subtle and supercilious antipathy, when, as a poet, he 
 gives himself up to the influences of nature. It is no 
 answer to this that some of his most glorious poems are 
 dedicated to what are called American ideas and senti- 
 ments, to Right, Truth, Independence, Freedom; for 
 these appear in his verse as abstracted, not only from 
 Americans, but almost from men, and smack of nothing 
 learned in town-meeting, or caucus, or congress, or
 
 312 BRYANT. 
 
 church, or assembly of reformers. A seraph singing in 
 the air could hardly be more stainless and less charac- 
 teristic. 
 
 We made these remarks in order to show all the 
 more clearly the depth and intensity of the sentiment 
 by which Bryant is led to nature and through which 
 he becomes, not merely a worshipper at her shrine, 
 but a priest of her mysteries, and an interpreter of her 
 symbolical language to man. Though he resembles 
 Wordsworth in this bias of his genius, he resembles 
 him in little else, and imitates nobody. His thoughts, 
 emotions, language, are all his own. He has earned 
 the right to them by the contact of his mind with the 
 objects to which they relate. The power of nature to 
 heal, to gladden, to inspire, to sublime, to lift the mind 
 above all anxious cares and petty ambitions, he has 
 tested by consciousness. And it is not merely the 
 external forms, but the internal spirit, with which he 
 has communed. He sees and hears with his soul, as 
 well as with his eye and ear. Nature to him is alive, 
 and her life has coursed through the finest veins and 
 passed into the inmost recesses of his moral being. It 
 is this which compels us to mingle veneration and 
 wonder with admiration and delight, in reading his 
 works ; it is this which gives his poems their character 
 of depth.
 
 BRYANT. 313 
 
 Our readers may consider it an impertinence to give 
 them extracts from Bryant's poems ; and, indeed, the 
 poems from which extracts would naturally be made 
 are so generally known that we almost fear to try the 
 experiment. But surely, the following lines on the 
 " Summer Wind " have in them a spirit of life and 
 beauty which keeps them ever young ; and although we 
 have known them from a boy, they seem to us as fresh 
 as though they were now published for the first time. 
 Let the reader note how perfect the piece is as descrip- 
 tion, how completely it calls up the images and sen- 
 sations of the scene to his own mind, and how the 
 various details melt into unity of effect, both in the 
 sense of impressing one picture on the imagination and 
 one mood on the heart, and he will not regret reading 
 it for the twentieth time, if thereby he obtains a clear 
 idea of the difference between true description, and that 
 incongruous jumble of details which often takes its 
 
 name. 
 
 " It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk 
 The dew that lay upon the morning grass; 
 There is no rustling in the lofty elm 
 That canopies my dwelling, and its shade 
 Scarces cools me. All is silent save the faint 
 And interrupted murmur of the bee, 
 Settling on the sick flowers, and then again 
 Instantly on the wing. The plants around 
 Feel the too potent fervors; the tall maize
 
 314 BRYANT. 
 
 Rolls up its long, green leaves; the clover droops 
 Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms; 
 But far, in the fierce sunshine tower the hills, 
 With nil their growth of woods, silent and stern; 
 As if the scorching heat and dazzling light 
 Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds, 
 Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven, 
 Their bases on the mountains, their white tops 
 Shining in the far ether fire the air, 
 With a reflected radiance, and make turn 
 The gazer's eyes awry. For me, I lie 
 Languidly in the shade, where the thick tnrf, 
 Yet virgin with the kisses of the sun, 
 Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind 
 That still delays his coming. Why so slow, 
 Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? 
 0, come and breathe upon the fainting earth 
 Coolness and life ! Is it that in his caves 
 He bears me? See, on yonder woody ridge, 
 The pine is hending his proud top, and now 
 Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak 
 Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes ! 
 Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves ! 
 The deep distressful silence of the scene 
 Breaks up with mingling of unnnmhered sounds 
 And universal motion. He is come, 
 Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs, 
 And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings 
 Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs, 
 And sound of swaying branches, and the voice 
 Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs 
 Are stirring in his breath ; a thousand flowers,
 
 BRYANT. 315 
 
 By the roadside nnd the borders of the brook, 
 Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves 
 Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew 
 Were on them yet, and silver waters break 
 Into small waves aud sparkle as he comes." 
 
 This is the true magic of poetry. How is it that the 
 whcls scene is thus made to "gush" into the reader's 
 mind ? How is it that every small detail flows softly 
 into its proper place to the sound of its own music, and, 
 at the end, we are blessed with a summer picture, so 
 alive with the inmost spirit of the reality that we 
 hardly realize it is December as we read ? It is this 
 unanalyzable, inscrutable thing we call genius, that 
 makes the critic, when he comes to the real mystery of 
 the matter, throw by his pen in despair, and console his 
 mortified analysis, as best he may, with Emerson's fine 
 saying, " that it is the essence of poetry to spring, like 
 the rainbow-daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to 
 abolish the past, and refuse all history." 
 
 The healing power there is in Bryant's philosophic 
 meditation on life, the fine avenues through which his 
 thought penetrates to what is deepest in the soul, and 
 the beautiful serenity he not only feels but communi- 
 cates, all are well illustrated in his poem on "The 
 Return of Youth." With what winning sweetness of 
 mingled reflection and imagination he smiles away all
 
 316 BRYANT. 
 
 the ugly associations connected with declining years, in 
 the following stanzas : 
 
 " Yet grieve thou not, nor think thy youth is gone, 
 
 Nor deem that glorious season e'er could die. 
 Thy pleasant youth, a little while withdrawn, 
 
 Waits on the horizon of a brighter sky; 
 Waits, like the morn, that folds her wing and hides 
 
 Till the slow stars bring back the dawning hour; 
 Waits like the vanished spring, that slumbering bides 
 
 Her own sweet time to waken bud and flower. 
 
 " There shall he welcome thee, when thou shnlt stand 
 
 On his bright morning hills, with smiles more sweet 
 Than when at first he took thee by the hand 
 
 Through the fair earth to lead thy tender feet. 
 He shall bring back, but brighter, broader still, 
 
 Life's early glory to thine eyes again, 
 Shall clothe thy spirit with new strength, and fill 
 
 Thy leaping heart with warmer love than then. 
 
 " Hast thou not glimpses, in the twilight here, 
 
 Of mountains where immortal morn prevails ? 
 Comes there not, through the silence, to thine ear 
 
 A gentle rustling of the morning gales; 
 A murmur, wafted from that glorious shore, 
 
 Of streams, that water banks forever fair, 
 And voices of the loved ones gone before, 
 
 More musical in that celestial air? " 
 
 In regard to the versification of this poem, the 
 reader should note the movement and music of the
 
 BRYANT. 31 f 
 
 monosyllables. Contrast Pope's fleer at monosyllabic 
 words : 
 
 " And ten low words oft creep in one dull line," 
 
 with this grand example of their felicitous use by Bry- 
 ant: 
 
 " Waits, like the morn, that folds her wing and hides 
 * Till the slow stars bring back her dawning hour." 
 
 From the noble poem on the "Antiquity of Free- 
 dom," we extract a passage made of sterner stuff: 
 
 " Freedom ! thou art not, as poets dream, 
 A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, 
 And wavy tresses gushing from the cap 
 With which the Roman master crowned his slave 
 When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, 
 Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand 
 Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; thy brow, 
 Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred 
 With tokens of old wars ; thy massive limbs 
 Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched 
 His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; 
 They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. 
 Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, 
 And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, 
 Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, 
 The links are shivered, and the prison walls 
 Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, 
 As springs the flame above a burning pile, 
 And shoutest to the nations, who return 
 Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies."
 
 318 BRYANT. 
 
 In the last line we have a pertinent example of the 
 amount of suggestion which can be conveyed by the 
 movement of verse, independent of the exact meaning 
 of the words. What a sneaking and snakelike sug- 
 gestion there is in the way the verse slinks and halts, 
 close on to its previous joyous tumult, 
 
 " While the pale oppressors/lies." 
 
 The concluding paragraphs of this poem we cannot 
 resist the temptation to extract. The poet has just 
 been speaking of the superior Antiquity of Freedom to 
 Tyranny, and proceeds to detail the refinements that 
 the latter learns in an advanced and civilized period 
 of the world : 
 
 " Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years, 
 But he shall fade into a feebler age ; 
 Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares, 
 And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap 
 His withered hands, tind from their ambush call 
 His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send 
 Quaint maskers, wearing fair and gallant forms 
 To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words 
 To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth, 
 Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread 
 That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms 
 Withchainscoucealedinchaplets. Oh! not yet 
 Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet, nor lay by 
 Thy sword; nor yet, Freedom! close thy lids
 
 BRYANT. 319 
 
 In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps. 
 
 And thou must watch and combat till the day 
 
 Of the new earth and heaven. But wouldst thou rest 
 
 Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, 
 
 These old and friendly solitudes invite 
 
 Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees 
 
 Were young upon the unviolated earth, 
 
 And yet the moss stains on the rock were new, 
 
 Beheld thy glorious childhood and rejoiced." 
 
 But for sweetness, melody, rich description, rapt 
 meditation, and high philosophy, all bathed in that 
 softening and harmonizing light " which never was on 
 sea or land," for pure thought and emotion embodied 
 in pure beauty of form, we love the "Land of 
 Dreams " almost beyond any other of Bryant's poems. 
 Even those of our readers who have it by heart, and 
 in their hearts, will pardon its reappearance to their 
 eyes : 
 
 " A mighty realm is the Land of Dreams, 
 
 With steeps that hang in the twilight sky, 
 And weltering oceans and trailing streams, 
 That gleam where the dusky valleys lie. 
 
 " But over its shadowy border flow 
 
 Sweet rays from the world of endless morn, 
 And the nearer fountains catch the glow, 
 And flowers in the nearer fields are born. 
 
 " The souls of the happy dead repair, 
 
 From their bowers of light, to that bordering land,
 
 320 BRYANT. 
 
 And walk in the fainter glory there, 
 With the souls of the living hand in hand. 
 
 " One calm, sweet smile, in that shadowy sphere, 
 
 From eyes that open on earth no more, 
 One warning word from a voice once dear, 
 How they rise in the memory o'er and o'er ! 
 
 "Far off from those hills that shine by day, 
 
 And fields that bloom in the heavenly gales, 
 The Land of Dreams goes stretching away 
 To dimmer mountains and darker vales. 
 
 "There lie the chambers of guilty delight, 
 There walk the spectres of guilty fear, 
 And soft low voices, that float through the night, 
 Are whispering sin in the helpless ear. 
 
 "Dear maid, in thy childhood's opening flower, 
 
 Scarce weaned from the love of childish play! 
 The tears on whose cheeks are but the shower 
 That freshens the early bloom of May ! 
 
 " Thine eyes are closed, and over thy brow 
 
 Pass thoughtful shadows and joyous gleams, 
 And I know, by thy moving lips, that now 
 Thy spirit strays in the Land of Dreams. 
 
 " Light-hearted maiden, 0, heed thy feet! 
 
 O, keep where that beam of Paradise falls, 
 And only wander where thou mayst meet 
 The blessed ones from its shining walls. 
 
 " So shalt thou come from the Land of Dreams, 
 With love and peace to this world of strife;
 
 BRYANT. 321 
 
 And the light that over that border streams 
 Shall lie on the path of thy daily life." 
 
 In this notice of Bryant's poems, we have not done 
 justice to our conceptions of his poetic character and 
 genius, and, indeed, have attempted to do little more 
 than to assist, if possible, the circulation of his writings 
 among classes of readers to whom he may be still com- 
 paratively unknown. There is a great deal of positive 
 intellectual and spiritual good which the American peo- 
 ple can obtain from Bryant ; for Bryant has, in large 
 measure, the very qualities in which the American peo- 
 ple are deficient. His works are wholesome food for 
 the mind and heart ; and although their circulation has 
 been extensive, in the sense in which we use that word 
 in speaking of the circulation of books of poem?, it 
 has not been extensive in the sense of penetrating the 
 masses of that vast army of readers which, in our day, 
 we have seen engaged on one book. We should be 
 delighted, as philanthropists as well as critics, to learn 
 that his poems were in every home in the land ; for, 
 unlike many books that by some means get into homes, 
 their mission is 
 
 " To heal and cleanse, not madden and pollute." 
 
 21
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM AND MALIG- 
 NANT EEFORM. 
 
 THE most comprehensive division of the human race 
 is into men who have common sense and men who 
 have not This common sense has its general mani- 
 festation in individuals of mediocre but balanced minds, 
 who possess moderate powers orderly related; but its 
 noblest expression is in men of the highest order of 
 genius, who possess large powers harmoniously com- 
 bined. Both in genius and mediocrity, however, the 
 distinguishing characteristic of the quality is modera- 
 tion, the perception of things in their right relations, 
 and the refusal of the will to be whirled away by im- 
 pulses from truths passionately misunderstood. The 
 general sum of intelligence and virtue in a community 
 is indicated by the degree of moderation evinced in the 
 conduct of its practical affairs. As this moderation in- 
 cludes in itself the whole science of limitations, and is 
 the condition of moral and mental health, wherever it 
 is absent principles subside into generalities, and virtues 
 fret themselves into vices.
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 323 
 
 Now it is one of the most significant characteristics 
 of our day that this moderation is confounded on its 
 moral side with pusillanimity, and on its mental side 
 with commonplace. The natural consequence of this 
 is, that all men who desire to obtain a reputation for 
 virtue and intelligence we say reputation, for virtue 
 arid intelligence themselves are not apt to have such a 
 desire predominant instinctively despise the common 
 and rush off into some extreme. Intemperance in the 
 advocacy of temperance, illiberality in the advocacy of 
 liberalism, intolerance in sustaining toleration, are now 
 the chief signs of that strange masquerade of the pas- 
 sions which passes with some, who are not by instinct 
 philanthropists, under the name of philanthropy. To 
 push one virtue to a fanatical excess and disturb the 
 objective relations of things ; to pour out a passionate 
 flood of indignation at every seeming evil; to indulge 
 more in invectives than facts, in interjections than 
 arguments ; to be, in short, a fifth-rate dialectician, 
 and a first-rate word-piler, these, the appropriate 
 marks of the boy and the shrew, are now deemed the 
 shining characteristics of a mind free from antiquated 
 prejudices, and centuries in advance of the age. In a 
 society which recognizes sensibility and the lungs as 
 the grand peculiarities which distinguish human from 
 brute nature, and which deifies the tongue to the
 
 324 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 denial of thought, it is almost impossible for common 
 sense to obtain a hearing. The opposition of the sensi- 
 tive is crushed by a storm of abuse ; the opposition of 
 the prudent is vented in an exclamation of disgust; 
 and, accordingly, the noisiest babbler that blows the 
 penny-trumpet of his rage is heard far above the still 
 small voice of a community's conscience and intelli- 
 gence, and seems, to some wondering gapers, the great 
 man he affects. The difference between a ball and a 
 bubble is, that one can stand the thrust of analysis, the 
 other collapses into suds the moment it is pricked. 
 Perhaps it would be well not to confine this test to 
 bubbles which have sprung from the marriage of soap 
 and water, but to extend it to those which have their 
 being in moral froth and mental wind. 
 
 The first obstacle to a trial of this process is the 
 sensitiveness of pretension, and the clatter which the 
 mere mention of examination rouses among its cham- 
 pions. A person is sure to be honored with the invec- 
 tive of every professor of benevolence, if he attempt to 
 discuss the bad tendencies of any popular philanthropy, 
 from any position midway between fat and stupid con- 
 servatism and lean and malignant reform. In every 
 age of the world, the fiercer class of tories and radicals, 
 that is, the class of men who do not reason, have 
 monopolized the vocabulary of passion, and plentifully
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 325 
 
 distributed the phrases of malice. Accordingly, those 
 persons who have doubted the divine right of kings and 
 the divine right of regicides, who have withstood the 
 dictation of tyranny and the insolence of anarchy, who 
 have, in short, striven hard to avoid being wrecked on 
 the opposite shores of nonsense, have paid the penalty 
 of their moderation in being placed between the two 
 fires of fanaticism. It was a remark of Swift, that an 
 honest man could be distinguished, from the fact that 
 all the rogues were in confederacy against him. It 
 is certain that a sensible one needs no other tribute to 
 his intelligence than the vituperation of the insensible 
 and the bigoted. 
 
 On the first blush it appears unjust to accuse any 
 man, engaged in an assault on the evil of the world, 
 and seemingly conscientious in his maddest outpourings 
 of abuse, of envy, pride, and malice ; but no student of 
 history and human nature can have missed the fact, 
 that the opinions of a saint and the actions of a savage 
 are often found in the same person, and that when any 
 portentous crime has been perpetrated, it has been 
 commonly done on the plea of serving some great and 
 just purpose. The world has had its full share of 
 honest bigots and sincere tyrants ; of men like Ximenes, 
 who wished to rid the world of infidels ; of men like 
 Robespierre, who wished to rid the world of oppressors.
 
 326 STUPID CONSERVATISM. . 
 
 The principles of religion and liberty have ever been 
 Ihe cloaks of atheistical and despotic deeds. No man 
 can act without some regard to his own conscience and 
 the opinion of mankind; and few enormities have ever 
 been committed without some fair pretext, which more 
 or less deceived the author. Thus Caspar conquered 
 barbarous nations on the plea of civilizing them, and 
 enslaved his country on the plea of reforming it ; and 
 the blood of a million men, shed to slake the measure- 
 less thirst of his ambition, was nominally a sacrifice to 
 the genius of progress. Thus Cromwell easily con- 
 nected the overthrow of the enemies of God with the 
 triumph of the Parliamentarians, and his own con- 
 quest of the Parliament as the same military theol- 
 ogy carried to its holiest logical consequences. Thus 
 Napoleon never concluded to perform some act of self- 
 aggrandizement, which involved a disregard or betrayal 
 of the rights of others, without placing himself in the 
 attitude of an injured man, and fiercely inveighing 
 against the rascality or perfidy of his victims. These 
 wolf-lambs and hawk-doves have cast ominous doubt 
 on professions. The antithesis between tongue and 
 heart, word and thing, is an old arrangement of de- 
 pravity, a pinchbeck gem from the antique which 
 has lost none of its sparkle from age. 
 
 In treating this subject of Stupid Conservatism and
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 327 
 
 Malignant Reform, it is important to yoke them together, 
 for they commonly exist as cause and effect. It is the 
 peculiarity of both that they have no real vitality, no 
 conception of the life and purpose of things, no percep- 
 tion of the organic in nature or society, no power of 
 communicating intellectual and moral life. Apathy is 
 the ''characteristic of the .stupid phase of conservatism, 
 anarchy is the characteristic of the malignant phase of 
 reform. They both produce and detest each other ; 
 and, perhaps, if either could come to self-consciousness, 
 it would detest itself. The moment any considerable 
 number of men in a social system lose all perception 
 of the spiritual bond which unites them, and become 
 slaves to the forms of their concrete existence, they 
 are ever sure to lapse into a contented, self-sufficing, 
 stupid state, which inevitably stimulates the hatred and 
 disgust of another class, who have loftier opinions of 
 life, without ever having realized loftier ideas of it. 
 Facts, institutions, social arrangements, are embodied 
 ideas, thoughts which originally were gifted with cre- 
 ative power, and forced themselves into tilings. Facts 
 are either living or dead according as they are or are 
 not animated and informed by idea;?. Now the stu- 
 pid conservative has no conception of the principles 
 whence the institutions he defends draw their life, but 
 simply has a hard prejudice for the forms in which he
 
 328 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 finds them cast ; resents all alteration of the forms even 
 when that alteration is merely the result of natural 
 growth ; and, finding no safety for society except in 
 apathy, is the stagnant exponent and sluggish champion 
 of mental death, never so much delighted as when the 
 whole social body has the repose of a corpse. The 
 vices developed by such a state of mind are those natu- 
 rally engendered by selfishness of purpose and littleness 
 of thought. They have produced, and are producing, 
 vast evils in the world ; and among their many mischie- 
 vous fruits we may emphasize the insurrection they 
 excite among sour, excitable, and self-willed spirits, 
 quick-witted enough to detect and despise the stupidities 
 of conservative selfishness, but without sufficient sweet- 
 ness of disposition, depth of insight, and elevation of 
 character, to escape a virulent selfishness of another 
 kind. The theories and actions of stupid conservatism 
 are thus met and matched by the theories and actions 
 of malignant reform; enemies of each other, they are 
 jointly enemies of all the true wisdom, intelligence, and 
 moderation of the community in which their feuds rage 
 and foam ; and together they do all in their power to 
 discredit and bring into contempt both the cause of 
 conservatism and the cause of reform. 
 
 Influence, good or bad, comes not from the opinions 
 a man professes, but from the character he has formed,
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 329 
 
 and the life he leads ; and malice uttering the common- 
 places of meekness, or selfishness prating glibly in the 
 phraseology of benevolence, can only communicate to 
 others the life of malice and selfishness ; and thus it is 
 that so much of the Satanic in disposition finds a vent in 
 the propositions of charity and love, and that opinions 
 on which angels might gossip often come from lips 
 touched with a fire not from heaven. Now the source 
 of popular misjudgments in this matter is in confound- 
 ing moral commonplaces with moral character, and in 
 calling a man of philanthropical or reforming opinions 
 by the name of philanthropist or reformer, without re- 
 gard to his possession of the ideas, sentiment, spirit, and 
 character which distinguish philanthropy from misan- 
 thropy, and reform from lawlessness. The inward, 
 essential life of the man, which is the real thing to be 
 computed, as it is the real thing communicated, is over- 
 looked in doing homage to the abstract truth of his 
 propositions ; and thus, in the popular estimation, a 
 person gifted only with the form without the spirit of 
 philanthropy is considered a philanthropist, just as a 
 person doggedly blind to everything but the form of 
 conservatism, is dignified by the title of conservative. 
 
 But perhaps the great strength of the malignants who 
 infest the profession of benevolence proceeds from the 
 ingenious combination of truth and falsehood in their
 
 330 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 opinions. A system of thought compounded of truisms 
 and paradoxes, one part intended to flatter the sagacity 
 of superficial understandings, and the other part to 
 foment the passions of discontented hearts, and both 
 parts true to nothing in the concrete life of the com- 
 munity it is shaped to disturb, exactly realizes that 
 union of shallow thought and vehement sensibility 
 which is the condition of mental and moral anarchy. 
 Facts and things being the creation, not of mechanical 
 understandings but of living men, and as organisms 
 rejecting the tests of exterior rules and principles, can- 
 not stand a criticism which does not recognize their 
 root in human nature, their appropriateness to the ends 
 they were created to serve, or the internal processes by 
 which they are to be renovated and reformed. Here 
 is the work of the human race, there are the opinions 
 of Mr. Somebody, himself no better than the majority 
 of the race, and without any power in himself to create 
 anything; and we are informed that because facts do 
 not square with his notions, have not been manufactured 
 after his pattern, and do not agree with his arithmetic, 
 that they are only worthy of being the objects of his 
 indignant rhetoric, which is degrading them, indeed. 
 In addition to this, we are told that the imperfections 
 he detects in existing institutions are not visible to 
 other men, but that the discovery was the precious re-
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 331 
 
 ward of his superior insight; whereas, in fact, his whole 
 system of thought proceeds on the principle of rejecting 
 insight, vision into the interior constitution of things, 
 for a string of generalities which any child can as read- 
 ily perceive, and as triumphantly apply as himself. He 
 criticizes society, indeed, as Rhymer or Dennis criti- 
 ci/.^d Shakespeare, and the generalities of his sterile eth- 
 ics are about on a par with the generalities of their 
 barren taste. 
 
 Now if a man of moderate mental and moral powers, 
 neither better nor worse than the majority of the com- 
 munity in which he lives, starts with the capital mistake 
 of ignoring facts and deifying opinion?, the process by 
 which he gradually sours into a malignant reformer is 
 exceedingly simple. His character is not up to what 
 he is pleased to call his principles, and the moment he 
 announces the latter he is subjected to annoyances cal- 
 culated to fret his temper and stimulate his pugnacity. 
 Convinced in his own mind of the truth of his darling 
 propositions, he finds to his amazement that they are 
 doubted by some, denounced by others, treated with 
 a certain smiling indifference by still more; and lie 
 knows no readier way of solving the problem of this 
 opposition than by charitably imputing it to selfishness, 
 knavery, or folly. His conceit of his own virtue, be- 
 nevolence, and wisdom enlarges with each consignment
 
 332 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 of other people into the category of knaves and fools ; 
 and, accordingly, in an extremely limited period we 
 find him chuckling over the discovery that he is some 
 centuries in advance of his age, and glorying in the 
 greatness of being a prophet of the future. While he 
 is revelling in this soft delirium of vanity, up starts fat- 
 witted conservatism, and in an agony of fear for the 
 salvation of stupidity, pitches at him all the moss- 
 covered phrases of its antique vocabulary ; and while the 
 words " fool," " incendiary," " rebel," and " fanatic " are 
 whizzing over his head, they flash into it the delicious 
 thought that he is a martyr. This last revelation fin- 
 ishes his education. From that moment he takes out 
 a patent for execration, and devotes his time to hating 
 men and loving man, misanthropy eating into his heart 
 as fast as philanthropy dances from his tongue. 
 
 In truth, it is not sufficiently considered that to be a 
 philanthropist is to reach that highest grace of charac- 
 ter in which strength is united to sweetness, power to 
 love ; that the severest trial of philanthropy is to war 
 with selfishness without catching the disease ; that it 
 begins in love to individuals, and widens gradually into 
 love for mankind ; that by a certain divine felicity of 
 nature it returns magnanimity for meanness, love for 
 hatred, meekness for arrogance ; that it is hopeful, 
 genial, disinterested, patient, forbearing, persistent, in-
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 333 
 
 flnential, radiating light and warmth from its own ful- 
 ness of life, and above the littleness of wreaking the 
 grudges of vanity and self-will in the invectives of 
 malice. In short, the thing itself is still rare, although 
 the word has been amazingly cheapened ; and the word 
 has power to stir associations so beautiful, elevated, and 
 sevene, that it would be a worthy ambition for some 
 knight-errant of language to rescue it from the con- 
 tempt into which it has fallen, since it has been made 
 the convenient cover of so much acid and acrimonious 
 misanthropy. 
 
 But it may be objected to all this celebration of the 
 virtues peculiar to philanthropy, that it is a cheap way of 
 avoiding the responsibility of doing anything for man- 
 kind, and that the serpent of selfish indifference peeps out 
 from among its rose-leaves of rhetoric. A sour reformer 
 might retort that the practical question is, how are we 
 to upset the stupidities and rascalities of society and 
 government, strong as they are in all the strength of 
 stupidity, keen as they are in all the keenness of ras- 
 cality? Will bright words, and beautiful sentiments, 
 and sweet rebukes do it ? No ; the rack and the hot 
 iron must be called in ; and the whole set subjected 
 to a torture which, if it result not in victory, " will 
 be at least revenge." The real fact of the case, our 
 opponent would argue, is this, that the whole affair
 
 834 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 is a dog-and-cat fight between rascality and honesty, 
 and that in such a contest we must scratch and bite 
 and snarl with a beautiful adaptation of our powers to 
 the exigency of the occasion. Stupidity has a force of 
 its own, against which the gods themselves are power- 
 less ; it cannot be reached by weapons forged in celes- 
 tial armories ; and, accordingly, we prefer to dart scorn 
 and hatred at it, to fret, tease, caricature, and torment 
 it, and, as it is insensible to the honey of benevolence, 
 to make it wince under the sting. If the fight be thus 
 a fight between stupidity and malice, the two nega- 
 tives in the social sentence, we do not know but that 
 the majority of sensible people should be as blandly 
 indifferent to the issue as was the amiable old lady who 
 witnessed her husband's struggle with the bear. At 
 any rate, it is curious that a man should claim to be a 
 philanthropist on the ground that he has renounced the 
 first principle of philanthropy, and considers moral 
 power as too valuable a thing to be wasted on the 
 rogues he would still convert. The assumption re- 
 minds us of a theory which regulates the epistolary 
 compositions of a gentleman of our acquaintance, who 
 considers grammar and orthography as too expensive 
 luxuries to be squandered in his private correspond- 
 ence. 
 
 As these remarks are strictly confined to the ma-
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 335 
 
 lignants of benevolence, to those small, sharp, aggres- 
 sive minds, who glory in the conceit of being prophets 
 and martyr-:, in virtue of dipping soulless ethical truisms 
 in the gall of unloving hearts, we shall not attempt an 
 analysis of that phase of philanthropy in which a real 
 enthusiasm for right and duty, springing from compre- 
 hensiveness of feeling, is combined with intense and 
 elevated, but somewhat narrow thought in conceiving 
 plans. Philanthropists of this kind do not always bear 
 the shock of collision with what is base and stupid, 
 without having their austerity sour into moroseness, 
 and without infusing a little vitriol into their virtue ; 
 but they still draw their inspiration from the benevolent 
 instead of the malignant instincts, have few opinions 
 which are not vitalized into principles and organized 
 into character, and are of course to be discriminated 
 from that other class who are engaged in a scheme of 
 cheapening all the moral virtues by a process which 
 dilutes love and condenses malice. 
 
 It is evident that in our enlightened age, so given 
 up to the brag of benevolence, a malevolent spirit 
 could not animate so many reforming schemes without 
 breaking into literature, and insisting on having its rep- 
 resentatives in romance. The form it has commonly 
 assumed, in order to push its doctrines, is that best 
 calculated to reach the largest number of
 
 336 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 namely, the novel; and certainly it has displayed in 
 this -a good deal of shrewdness, for if it had relied on 
 its plain ethics and metaphysics, it would simply have 
 increased the number of deaths by gaping. It has, 
 however, succeeded to a great extent in corrupting 
 romance with a new nonsense and a new immorality ; 
 and though many of its productions are as stupid as 
 they are brazen, and are about the dearest things which 
 a prodigal can obtain for his shilling, some of them 
 bear the signs of misdirected talent and morbid genius. 
 So extensive has the evil become, that one can hardly 
 take up a new novel without some expectation of being 
 conducted through a series of imagined characters and 
 events in which virtue is exhibited as mere conven- 
 tional convenience, and crime as the road by which 
 great souls reach the knowledge of their natural rights. 
 As the didactive malignants would overturn existing 
 facts and institutions, in order to satisfy the anarchical 
 demands of their truisms, so the romantic malignants 
 would subvert the organized morality and religion 
 of society, by paradoxes which are merely inverted 
 truisms. 
 
 Now this literature has been for a considerable period 
 creating the taste which it addresses. From its book- 
 stall intreuchments it has invaded kitchens, fought its 
 way into parlors, and now constitutes a large portion
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 337 
 
 of the people's reading. Altogether, it has come to be 
 a greater public evil than smooth scholars and dainty 
 critics are inclined to believe, as it is day by day 
 forming in the public mind thoughts which eventually 
 promise to be things. England is kind enough to fur- 
 nish ruffians, and France to furnish philosophies, to help 
 on the Satanic cause both with representatives and 
 systems of diabolism ; and Jonathan Wild can here fra- 
 ternize with George Sand. Every element of black- 
 guardism and false sentiment which our country can 
 furnish is blended with the importation, and the result 
 is a compound mass of passionate nonsense, immorality, 
 and irreligion, passing under the nickname of popular 
 literature. 
 
 Now it is evident that the extension of such a taste 
 as these monstrosities of romance pander to will soon 
 be more or less felt throughout the profession of letters. 
 The purity of literature depends on the decency of 
 readers ; authors, relying on the public for their subsist- 
 ence, must furnish the article most in demand ; and if 
 blasphemy, ribaldry, and licentiousness be the demand, 
 blasphemy, ribaldry, and licentiousness will be the 
 supply. Such appears to be the most universal law 
 which can be generalized from literary history ; but 
 stupid conservatism has an instinctive contempt for the 
 power as well as the profession of letters, is utterly 
 22
 
 338 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 blind to the influence of literary talent, both in its good 
 and its perverted exercise, and has ever done its 
 best to drive needy authors to that perilous point, 
 where they are compelled to choose between starva- 
 tion and the prostitution of their powers. But it has 
 done even more than to stigmatize authors and refuse 
 its patronage to their works. It not only delights to 
 force talent into discreditable shifts for existence, but 
 it furnishes within itself the social abuses on which 
 perverted talent bases its opposition to social institu- 
 tions. Thus the irruption of celebrated murderers and 
 highwaymen into romance might be traced to the 
 abuses of English criminal law. Stupid conservatism 
 treated the suspected or convicted felon with unwise 
 severity ; as a matter of course, malignant reform lifted 
 him into the object of its peculiar interest and affection ; 
 and then nothing was left for the novelist to do but to 
 exalt him into a hero. 
 
 Among the many writers belonging to this Satanic 
 and sensual school of romance, there are doubtless 
 some whose talents are brilliant, and whose inten- 
 tions are not consciously bad. "With opinionated un- 
 derstandings directed by imbittered sentiments, they are 
 continually mistaking their passionate hatred of wrong 
 for an impassioned love of right, and their pampered 
 egotism for a conscience emancipated from prejudice.
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 339 
 
 Deceived by their own sophistries, they take a moody 
 delight in detaching the minds of their readers from all 
 those institutions in which morality and religion are 
 organized, and in enticing them into a freer region of 
 thought and action, where each may follow out his 
 instincts without any impertinent intrusion of fear or 
 remorse, two emotions which are apt to disturb the 
 equanimity of free souls in actual life. Moral princi- 
 ples underlie, animate, and shape social institutions ; 
 the power and life of those principles are indicated by 
 their having sufficient force to pass out of abstractions 
 into things ; and, as far as regards the welfare of the 
 generality of men, an assault on the institutions in 
 which morality is embodied is an assault on moral 
 principles. However imperfect may be the body of 
 institutions in which morality is organized, they at least 
 recognize the truth that man is not to be governed by 
 will and impulse, but by law. Now the leading charac- 
 teristic of the malignants and sentimentalists of romance 
 is the denial of law and deification of impulse. Every- 
 thing is brought to the test of individual will or individ- 
 ual whim. Their system excludes the ideas of truth, 
 obedience, self-denial, and the like, for it always exalts 
 the subject thinking or feeling over all the objects 
 of thought and emotion. Thus these gentlemen love 
 truth ; but their truth is ever a darling paradox of their
 
 340 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 own minds, declining the authority of any common 
 standard, and therefore nothing but a subtle egotism 
 and love of self. The same principle runs through 
 all their notions of virtue and excellence. Disinterest- 
 edness with them is never sacrifice of individual com- 
 fort for the benefit of others, but sacrifice of individual 
 comfort for the delights of individual opinion. The 
 result of such a morbid selfishness, tricked out in the 
 most flaring sentimentalities of emotion and the gaudi- 
 est sophistries of thought, is to make obedience to self 
 the highest virtue ; and thus sensuality and wilfulness, 
 the lust of the heart and the lust of the brain, are 
 practically inculcated as the proper springs of conduct. 
 Such a code inevitably brings them into opposition to 
 all the concrete morality of civilized society, for the 
 peculiar excellence of that morality consists in its being 
 a system of checks equally upon the caprices of thought 
 and passion. In order to make their opposition pala- 
 table, they strive to pervert the natural action of con- 
 science ; and here the egotistic character of their sys- 
 tem becomes curiously manifest, for conscience with 
 them only gives a certain sacredness to selfishness, and 
 baptizes their passionate impulses as inalienable rights. 
 Duty is lost sight of except as an underling to selfish- 
 ness, a man's duty consisting in battling for his rights. 
 In this the romancers have altogether distanced the
 
 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 341 
 
 metaphysicians ; for the austerest of transcendental 
 thinkers has said that conscience both commands and 
 allows; what it commands is duty, what it allows is 
 right. But with the romancers, conscience is the mere 
 pimp of passion, allowing everything, and command- 
 ing U'a-to obtain everything it allows. Their theories, 
 however, are principally obnoxious for the practical 
 result to which they lead, namely, the disconnection of 
 individual conscience from institutions in which the 
 general conscience is embodied. The conscience of a 
 community naturally reposes on things, is educated 
 and sustained by institutions, and would die out if it 
 had no other sustenance than moral opinions, however 
 elevated. This is proved by the readiness with which 
 the majority of men give way to sensual excesses, when 
 the restraints of civilized society are withdrawn, and 
 "you ought" is altogether substituted for "you shall." 
 Those persons are therefore to be suspected who, on 
 the ground that institutions are imperfect, would substi- 
 tute moral theories for facts and things which embody 
 morality. Unless their characters and lives are obvi- 
 ously higher than what they attack, it is a shrewd con- 
 jecture that their quarrel with institutions is on account 
 of the imperfection of their evil, rather than the imper- 
 fection of their good. A man whose notions of human 
 rights leads him to call property theft must be consid-
 
 342 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 ered as opposed to the laws which protect property, 
 because they shackle his desire to thieve rather than 
 his power to bless ; and a romancer who prates against 
 the institution of marriage because it does not always 
 unite souls commonly ends in exalting adultery into a 
 virtue. Indeed, the universal process of the malignants 
 of letters is dexterously to exaggerate the abuses of 
 social institutions, to confound abuses with uses, and 
 then to apply a rose-colored theory of duty, which 
 dispenses with self-denial, and identifies right with 
 pleasure. Injustice to individuals is the great social 
 wrong, disorganization of society is their great social 
 remedy ; but to disorganize is to deprave, however 
 seemingly fine may be the sentiments and abstractly 
 true the propositions, on which the disorganization pro- 
 ceeds. Society is really improved and reformed only 
 by communicating to it a higher life, a life which 
 penetrates into its organic substance, mixes with and 
 modifies its inmost spiritual character, and there, at the 
 heart of things, creatively shapes new forms, or puts 
 new vitality into old ones. Such a life, it is true, can 
 never proceed from a stupid, apathetic, purblind con- 
 servatism, without faith, without energy, without any- 
 thing deserving the name of life ; but neither can it be 
 communicated by morbid and acrid spirits, who announce 
 elevated opinions from a low level of character, and
 
 BTUPID COXSERVATISM. 343 
 
 whose opposition to social institutions results from that 
 good element in them which checks the caprices of 
 their self-will and bridles their aggressive passions. 
 
 These hurried remarks on a prevailing imposture of 
 the day have occasionally, we fear, betrayed in their 
 style of expression a combination of the dulness of the 
 conservative with the bitterness of the reformer, which 
 vividly exemplifies the faults they have attacked. We 
 have not pretended, however, to quarrel with any sys- 
 tem, conservative or philanthropic, which justifies its 
 adoption of the name by illustrating the qualities of the 
 thing, but simply to express the dislike of a somewhat 
 enraged common sense against two forms of selfishness, 
 the apathetic and the malignant, which now strut and 
 bluster as the chosen champions of order and liberty. 
 If order consists in social stupidity and mental death, if 
 liberty be nothing more than the triumph of malevolent 
 mediocrity, then the sooner they destroy each other, 
 and their names are dismissed from the dictionaries, 
 the better it will be for all that is real in order and 
 inspiring in liberty. But it would seem that their 
 hostility is not so much calculated to be mutually 
 destructive, as it is to inflame the worst qualities of 
 each. The men who stand between the two, in a 
 medium position, are distinguished for the moderation 
 of their opinions rather than for possessing the life of
 
 344 STUPID CONSERVATISM. 
 
 moderation, and they therefore have little influence as 
 positive forces. Vital moderation is what is wanted; 
 a moderation which discerns the essential relations of 
 things, and acts in accordance with its insight, a 
 moderation which is not synonymous with common- 
 place but with comprehensiveness. Such a moderation 
 would be too austerely just and too broadly intelli- 
 gent, to defend existing institutions or advance benefi- 
 cent reforms on any other principles than those of jus- 
 tice and intelligence ; and in its vigorous grasp of 
 things, and comprehensive discernment of relations, it 
 could afford to dispense with that rabble of resounding 
 words which the poisonous vitality of opinionated malev- 
 olence has now almost organized into a vocabulary 
 of execration. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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