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ESSAYS ON THE POETS,
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OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS.
BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
AUTHOR OF
I CO.~FESSIOVS OF  AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER," ETC. ETC.
BOSTON:
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THURSTON, TORRY, AND EMERSON, PRINTERS.




CONTENTS.
PAGB
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH                                1
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.       39
JOHN KEATS....   75
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.....      99
ALEXANDER POPE....         145
WILLIAM GODWIN.....      205
JOHN FOSTER......  217
WILLIAM HAZLITT....      225
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR....  242








ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
HERETOFORE, upon one impulse or another, I have
retraced fugitive memorials of several persons celebrated in our own times; but I have never undertaken
an examination of any man's writings. The one labor
is, comparatively, without an effort; the other is both
difficult, and, with regard to contemporaries, is invidious. In genial moments the characteristic remembrances of men expand as fluently as buds travel into
blossoms; but criticism, if it is to be conscientious and
profound, and if it is applied to an object so unlimited
as poetry, must be almost as unattainable by any hasty
effort as fine poetry itself.'Thou hast convinced
me,' says Rasselas to Imlac,'that it is impossible to
be a poet;' so vast had appeared to be the array of
qualifications.  But, with the same ease, Imlac might
have convinced the prince that it was impossible to be
a critic. And hence it is, that, in the sense of absolute
and philosophic criticism, we have little or none; for,
before that can exist, we must have a good psychology; whereas, at present, we have none at all.
If, however, it is more difficult to write critical
sketches than sketches of personal recollections, often
1




2          ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY.
it is much less connected with painful scruples. Of
books, resting only on grounds which, in sincerity, you
believe to be true, and speaking without anger or
scorn, you can hardly say the thing which ought to be
taken amiss. But of men and women you dare not,
and must not, tell all that chance may have revealed
to you. Sometimes you are summoned to silence by
pity for that general human infirmity, which you also,
the writer, share. Sometimes you are checked by the
consideration, that perhaps your knowledge of the case
was originally gained under opportunities allowed by
confidence or by unsuspecting carelessness. Sometimes the disclosure would cause quarrels between
parties now at peace. Sometimes it would carry pain,
such as you could not feel justified in carrying, into
the mind of him who was its object. Sometimes,
again, if right to be told, it might be difficult to prove.
Thus, for one cause or another, some things are sacred,
and some things are perilous, amongst any personal
revelations that else you might have it in your power
to make. And seldom, indeed, is your own silent
retrospect of such connections altogether happy. 6 Put
not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes,'
-this has been the warning,-this has been the
farewell moral, winding up and pointing the experience
of dying statesmen. Not less truly it might be said -' Put not your trust in the intellectual princes of your
age:' form no connections too close with any who
live only in the atmosphere of admiration and praise.
The love or the friendship of such people rarely contracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You,
if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate;




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             3
you, if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, on the splendor of such idols as a passing
stranger. Look for a moment as one sharing in the
idolatry; but pass on before the splendor has been
sullied by human frailty, or before your own generous
homage has been confounded with offerings of weeds.
Safer, then, it is to scrutinize the works of eminent
poets, than long to connect yourself with themselves,
or to revive your remembrances of them  in any
personal record. Now, amongst all works that have
illustrated our own age, none can more deserve an
earnest notice than those of the Laureate; and on,
some grounds, peculiar to themselves, none so much.
Their merit in fact is not only supreme but unique;
not only supreme in their general class, but unique as
in a class of their own. And there is a challenge of
a separate nature to the curiosity of the readers, in the
remarkable contrast between the first stage of Wordsworth's acceptation with the public and that which he
enjoys at present. One original obstacle to the favorable impression of the Wlordsworthian poetry, and an
obstacle purely self-created, was his theory of poetic
diction. The diction itself, without the theory, was of
less consequence; for the mass of readers would have
been too blind or too careless to notice it. But the
preface to the second edition of his Poems, (2 vols.
1799-1800,) compelled them to notice it. Nothing
more injudicious was ever done by man. An unpopular truth would, at any rate, have been a bad inauguration, for what, on other accounts, the author had
announced as'an experiment.'  His poetry was
already an experiment as regarded the quality of the




4           ON WORDSWORTH' S POETRY.
subjects selected, and as regarded the mode of treating them.  That was surely trial enough for the
reader's untrained sensibilities, without the unpopular
truth besides, as to the diction. But, in the mean time,
this truth, besides being unpopular, was also, in part,
false: it was true, and it was not true. And it was
not true in a double way. Stating broadly, and allowing it to be taken for his meaning, that the diction of
ordinary life, in his own words,' the very language of
man,' was the proper diction for poetry, the writer
meant no such thing; for only a part of this diction,
according to his own subsequent restriction, was
available for such a use.  And, secondly, as his
own subsequent practice showed, even this part was
available only for peculiar classes of poetry. In his
own exquisite'Laodamia,' in his'Sonnets,' in his'Excursion,' few are his obligations to the idiomatic
language of life, as distinguished from that of books,
or of prescriptive usage. Coleridge remarked, justly,
that'The Excursion' bristles beyond most poems
with what are called'dictionary' words; that is,
polysyllabic words of Latin or Greek origin. And
so it must ever be, in meditative poetry upon solemn
philosophic themes.  The gamut of ideas needs a
corresponding gamut of expressions; the scale of the
thinking, which ranges through every key, exacts, for
the artist, an unlimited command over the entire scale
of the instrument which he employs. Never, in fact,
was there a more erroneous direction than that given
by a modern rector of the Glasgow University to the
students, - viz. that they should cultivate the Saxon
part of our language, at the cost of the Latin part.




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             5
Nonsense.  Both are indispensable; and, speaking
generally, without stopping to distinguish as to subjects, both are equally indispensable.  Pathos, in
situations which are homely, or at all connected with
domestic affections, naturally moves by Saxon words.
Lyrical emotion of every kind, which, (to merit the
name of lyrical,) must be in the state of flux and
reflux, or, generally, of agitation, also requires the
Saxon element of our language. And why? Be'cause
the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the basis, and
not the superstructure: consequently it comprehends
all the ideas which are natural to the heart of man
and to the elementary situations of life. And, although
the Latin often furnishes us with duplicates of these
ideas, yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has the
advantage of precedency in our use and knowledge;
for it is the language of the nursery, whether for
rich or poor, in which great philological academy
no toleration is given to words in' osity' or'ation.'
There is, therefore, a great advantage, as regards the
consecration to our feelings, settled, by usage and
custom, upon the Saxon strands, in the mixed yarn of
our native tongue.  And, universally, this may be
remarked - that, wherever the passion of a poem is
of that sort which uses, presumes, or postulates the
ideas, without seeking to extend them, Saxon will be
the'cocoon,' (to speak by the language applied to
silk-worms,) which the poem spins for itself. But, on
the other hand, where the motion of the feeling is
by and through the ideas, where, (as in religious or
meditative poetiy -Young's, for instance, or Cowper's,) the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the




6           ON WORDSWORTH' S POETRY.
very tissues of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate; and so much so that, whilst the flesh, the
blood and the muscle, will be often almost exclusively
Latin, the articulations only, or hinges of connection,
will be anglo-Saxon.
But a blunder, more perhaps from thoughtlessness
and careless reading, than from malice on the part of
the professional critics, ought to have roused Wordsworth into a firmer feeling of the entire question.
These critics have fancied that, in Wordsworth's estimate, whatsoever was plebeian was also poetically just
in diction; not as though the impassioned phrase were
sometimes the vernacular phrase, but as though the
vernacular phrase were universally the impassioned.
They naturally went on to suggest, as a corollary,
which Wordsworth could not refuse, that Dryden and
Pope must be translated into the flash diction of prisons
and the slang of streets, before they could be regarded
as poetically costumed. Now, so far as these critics
were concerned, the answer would have been -simply
to say, that much in the poets mentioned, but especially
of the racy Dryden, actually is in that vernacular diction for which Wordsworth contended; and, for the
other part, which is not, frequently it does require the
very purgation, (if that were possible,) which the
critics were presuming to be so absurd. In Pope, and
sometimes in Dryden, there is much of the unfeeling and the prescriptive slang which Wordsworth
denounced. During the eighty years between 1660
and 1740, grew up that scrofulous taint in our diction,
which was denounced-by Wordsworth as technically'poetic language;' and, if Dryden and Pope were




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             7
less infected than others, this was merely because
their understandings were finer.  Much there is in
both poets, as regards diction, which does require
correction. And if, so far, the critics should resist
Wordsworth's principle of reform, not he, but they,
would have been found the patrons of deformity. This
course would soon have turned the tables upon the
critics. For the poets, or the class of poets, whom
they unwisely selected as models, susceptible of no
correction, happen to be those who chiefly require it.
But their foolish selection ought not to have intercepted or clouded the question when put in another
shape, since in this shape it opens into a very troublesome dilemma. Spenser, Shakspeare, the Bible of
1610, and Milton, -how say you, William Wordsworth, - are these right and true as to diction, or
are they not? If you say they are, then what is it
that you are proposing to change?  What room for
a revolution?  Would you, as Sancho says, have'better bread than is made of wheat?' But if you
say, no, they are not; then, indeed, you open a
fearful range to your own artillery, but in a war
greater than you could, apparently, have contemplated. In the first case, that is, if the leading classics
of the English literature are, in quality of diction and
style, loyal to the canons of sound taste, then you cut
away the locus standi for yourself as a reformer:
the reformation applies only to secondary and recent
abuses. In the second, if they also are faulty, you
undertake an onus of hostility so vast that you will be
found fighting against the stars.
It is clear, therefore, that Wordsworth erred, and




8           ON WORDSWORTH' S POETRY.
caused unnecessary embarrassment, equally to the
attack and to the defence, by not assigning the names
of the parties offending, whom he had specially contemplated. The bodies of the criminals should have
been had into court. But much more he erred in
another point, where his neglect cannot be thought of
without astonishment. The whole appeal turned upon
a comparison between two modes of phraseology;
each of these, the bad and the good, should have been
extensively illustrated; and, until that is done, the
whole dispute is an aerial subtilty, equally beyond the
grasp of the best critic and the worst. How could a
man so much in earnest, and so deeply interested in
the question, commit so capital an oversight?. Tantamne rem  tam  negligenter?  The truth is, that, at
this day, after a lapse of forty-seven years, and some
discussion, the whole question moved by Wordsworth
is still a res integra. And for this reason, that no
sufficient specimen has ever been given of the particular phraseology which each party contemplates as
good or as bad: no man, in this dispute, steadily understands even himself; and, if he did, no other person
understands him for want of distinct illustrations. Not
only the answer, therefore, is still entirely in arrear,
but even the question has not yet practically explained
itself so as that an answer to it could be possible.
Passing from the diction of Wordsworth's poetry to
its matter, the least plausible objection ever brought
against it, was that of Mr. Hazlitt:'One would suppose,' he said,' from the tenor of his subjects, that on
this earth there was neither marrying nor giving in
marriage.' But as well might it be said of Aristo



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.            9
phanes:' One would suppose, that in Athens no such
thing had been known as sorrow and weeping.' Or
Wordsworth himself'might say reproachfully to some
of Mr. Hazlitt's more favored poets:'Judging by
your themes, a man must believe that there is no
such thing on our planet as fighting and kicking.'
Wordsworth has written many memorable poems,
(for instance,'On the Tyrolean and the Spanish
Insurrections;''On the Retreat from Moscow;'' On
the Feast of Brougham Castle,') all sympathizing
powerfully with the martial spirit. Other poets, favorites of Mr. Hazlitt, have never struck a solitary
note from this Tyrtoean lyre; and who blames them?
Surely, if every man finds his powers limited, every
man would do well to respect this silent admonition
of nature, by not travelling out of his appointed walk,
through any coxcombry of sporting a spurious versatility. And in this view, what Mr. Hazlitt made the
reproach of the poet, is amongst the first of his
praises. But there is another reason why Wordsworth could not meddle with festal raptures like the
glory of a wedding-day. These raptures are not only
too brief, but (which is worse) they tend downwards:
even for as long as they last, they do not move
upon an ascending scale. And even that is not their
worst fault: they do not diffuse or communicate themselves: the wretches chiefly interested in a marriage
are so selfish, that they keep all the rapture to themselves. Mere joy, that does not linger and reproduce
itself in reverberations or mirrors, is not fitted for
poetry. What would the sun be itself, if it were a
mere blank orb of fire that did not multiply its splen



10          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
dors through millions of rays refracted and reflected;
or if its glory were not endlessly caught, splintered,
and thrown back by atmospheric repercussions?
There is, besides, a still subtler reason, (and one
that ought not to have escaped the acuteness of Mr.
Hazlitt,) why the muse of Wordsworth could not
glorify a wedding festival. Poems no longer than a
sonnet he might derive from such an impulse: and
one such poem of his there really is.  But whosoever
looks searchingly into the characteristic genius of
Wordsworth, will see that he does not willingly deal
with a passion in its direct aspect, or presenting an
unmodified contour, but in forms more complex and
oblique, and when passing under the shadow of some
secondary passion. Joy, for instance, that wells up
from constitutional sources, joy that is ebullient from
youth to age, and cannot cease to sparkle, he yet
exhibits in the person of Matthew,' the village schoolmaster, as touched and overgloomed by memories of
sorrow.  In the poem  of''We are Seven,' which
brings into day for the first time a profound fact in
the abysses of human nature, namely, that the mind
of an infant cannot admit the idea of death, any more
than the fountain of light can comprehend the aboriginal darkness, [a truth on which Mr. Ferrier has
since commented beautifully in his'Philosophy of
Consciousness;'] the little mountaineer, who furnishes
the text for this lovely strain, she whose fulness of
See the exquisite poems, so little understood by the
commonplace reader, of The Two April llornings, and The
Fountain.




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.                11
life could not brook the gloomy faith in a grave, is
yet (for the effect upon the reader) brought into connection with the reflex shadows of the grave: and if
she herself has not, the reader has, the gloom of that
contemplation obliquely irradiated, as raised in relief
upon his imagination, even by her. Death and its
sunny antipole are forced into connection. I remember again to have heard a man complain, that in a
little poem having for its very subject the universal
diffusion and the gratuitous diffusion of joy-' Pleasure is spread through the earth,
In stray gifts to be claim'd by whoever shall find,'
a picture occurs which overpowered him with melancholy: it was this-'In sight of the spires
All alive with the fires
Of the sun going down to his rest,
In the broad open eye of the solitary sky,
They dance, - there are three, as jocund as free,While they dance on the calm river's breast.''
Undeniably there is [and without ground for complaint
there is] even here, where the spirit of gaiety is proColeridge had a grievous infirmity of mind as regarded
pain. He could not contemplate the shadows of fear, of
sorrow, of suffering, with any steadiness of gaze. He was,
in relation to that subject, what in Lancashire they call nesh,
i. e. soft, or effeminate. This frailty claimed indulgence, had
he not erected it at times into a ground of superiority. Accordingly, I remember that he also complained of this passage
in Wordsworth, and on the same ground, as being too overpoweringly depressing in the fourth line, when modified by
the other five.




12          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
fessedly invoked, an oblique though evanescent image
flashed upon us of a sadness that lies deep behind
the laughing figures, and of a solitude that is the
real possessor in fee of all things, but is waiting an
hour or so for the dispossession of the false dancing
tenants.
An inverse case, as regards the three just cited, is
found in the poem of' Hart-leap-well,' over which the
mysterious spirit of the noon-day, Pan, seems to brood.
Out of suffering is there evoked the image of peace.
Out of the cruel leap, and the agonizing race through
thirteen hours; out of the anguish in the perishing
brute, and the headlong courage of his final despair,'Not unobserved by sympathy divine,' —
out of the ruined lodge and the forgotten mansion,
bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasurehouses that are dust, the poet calls up a vision of
palingenesis; he interposes his solemn  images of
suffering, of decay, and ruin, only as a visionary haze
through which gleams transpire of a trembling dawn
far off, but surely on the road.
The pleasure-house is dust: behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature in due course of time once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.
She leaves these objects to a slow decay,
That what we are, and have been, may be known;
But, at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown.'
This influx of the joyous into the sad, and of the sad
into the joyous, this reciprocal entanglement of dark



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             13
ness in light, and of light in darkness, offers a subject
too occult for popular criticism; but merely to have
suggested it, may be sufficient to account for Wordsworth not having chosen a theme of pure garish
sunshine, such as the hurry of a wedding-day, so long
as others, more picturesque or more plastic, were to
be had. A wedding-day is, in many a life, the sunniest of its days. But unless it is overcast with some
event more tragic than could be wished, its uniformity
of blaze, without shade or relief, makes it insipid to
the mere bystander.  Accordingly, all epithalamia
seem to have been written under the inspiration of a
bank-note.
Far beyond these causes of repulsiveness to ordinary
readers was the class of subjects selected, and the
mode of treating them. The earliest line of readers,
the van in point of time, always includes a majority of
the young, the commonplace, and the unimpassioned.
Subsequently, these are sifted and winnowed, as the
rear ranks come forward in succession. But at first it
was sure to ruin any poems, that the situations treated
are not those which reproduce to the fancy of readers
their own hopes and prospects. The meditative are
interested by all that has an interest for human nature.
But what cares a young lady, dreaming of lovers
kneeling at her feet, for the agitations of a mother
forced into resigning her child? or of a shepherd at
eighty parting for ever amongst mountain solitudes
with an only son of seventeen, innocent and hopeful,
whom soon afterwards the guilty town seduces into
ruin irreparable? Romances and novels in verse constitute the poetry which is immediately successful;




14          ON WORDSWORTH' S POETRY.
and that is a poetry, it may be added, which, after
one generation, is unsuccessful for ever.
But this theme is too extensive.  Let us pass to the
separate works of Wordsworth; and, in deference to
the opinion of the world, let us begin with'The
Excursion.' This poem, as regards its opening, seems
to require a recast. The inaugurating story of Margaret is in a wrong key, and rests upon a false basis.
It is a case of sorrow from desertion.  So at least it is
represented. Margaret loses, in losing her husband,
the one sole friend of her heart. And the wanderer,
who is the presiding philosopher of the poem, in
retracing her story, sees nothing in the case but a
wasting away through sorrow, at once natural in its
kind, and preternatural in its degree.
There is a story somewhere told of a man who
complained, and his friends complained, that his face
looked almost always dirty. The man explained this
strange affection out of a mysterious idiosyncrasy in
the face itself, upon which the atmosphere so acted as
to force out stains or masses of gloomy suffusion, just
as it does upon some qualities of stone in vapory
weather. But, said his friend, had you no advice for
this strange affection?  Oh yes: surgeons had prescribed: chemistry had exhausted its secrets upon the
case: magnetism  had done its best: electricity had
done its worst. His friend mused for some time, and
then asked:'Pray, amongst these painful experiments,
did it ever happen to you to try one that I have read
of, viz. a basin of soap and water?' And perhaps,
on the same principle, it might be allowable to ask the
philosophic wanderer, who washes the case of Mar



ON WORDSWORTHSS POETRY.             15
garet with so many coats of metaphysical varnish, but
ends with finding all unavailing,' Pray, amongst your
other experiments, did you ever try the effect of a
guinea?' Supposing this, however, to be a remedy
beyond his fortitude, at least he might have offered a
little rational advice, which costs no more than civility.
Let us look steadily at the case. The particular
calamity under which Margaret groaned was, the loss
of her husband, who had enlisted. There is something, even on the husband's part, in this enlistment,
to which the reader can hardly extend his compassion.
The man had not gone off, it is true, as a heartless
deserter of his family, or in profligate quest of pleasure: cheerfully he would have stayed and worked,
had trade been good: but, as it was not, he found it
impossible to support the spectacle of domestic suffering: he takes the bounty of a recruiting sergeant,
-and off he marches with his regiment.  Nobody
reaches the summit of heartlessness at once: and,
accordingly, in this early stage of his desertion, we
are not surprised to find that part (but what part?) of
the bounty had been silently conveyed to his wife.
So far we are barely not indignant: but as time wears
on we become highly so; for no letter does he ever
send to his poor forsaken partner, either of tender
excuse, or of encouraging prospects. Yet, if he had
done this, still we must condemn him. Millions have
supported (and supported without praise or knowledge
of man) that trial from which he so weakly fled.
Even in this, and going no further, he was a voluptuary. Millions have heard and acknowledged, as a
secret call from Heaven, the summons, not only to




16          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
lake their own share of household suffering, as a mere
sacrifice to the spirit of manliness, but also to stand
the far sterner trial of witnessing the same privations
in a wife and little childen. To evade this, to slip his
neck out of the yoke, when God summons a poor man
to such a trial, is the worst form of cowardice. And
Margaret's husband, by adding to this cowardice subsequently an entire neglect of his family, not so much
as intimating the destination of the regiment, forfeits
his last hold upon our lingering sympathy. But with
him, it will be said, the poet has not connected the
leading thread of the interest. Certainly not: though
in some degree by a reaction from his character
depends the respectability of Margaret's grief. And
it is impossible to turn away from his case entirely,
because from the act of the enlistment is derived the
whole movement of the story. Here it is that we
must tax the wandering philosopher with treason.
He found so luxurious a pleasure in contemplating
a pathetic phthisis of heart in the abandoned wife,
that the one obvious counsel in her particular distress
which dotage could not have overlooked he suppresses. And yet this in the revolution of a week
would have brought her effectual relief. Surely the
regiment, into which her husband had enlisted, bore
some number: it was the king's'dirty half-hundred'
- or the rifle brigade -or some corps known to men
and the Horse Guards. Instead, therefore, of suffering
poor Margaret to loiter at a gate, looking for answers to
her questions from vagrant horsemen, a process which
reminds one of a sight, sometimes extorting at once
smiles and deep pity, in the crowded thoroughfares of




ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY.             17
London, namely, a little child innocently asking with
tearful eyes from strangers for the mother whom it
has lost in that vast wilderness- the wanderer should
at once have inquired for the station of that detachment which had enlisted him. This must have been
in the neighborhood. Here he would have obtained
all the particulars.  That same night he would have
written to the War-Office; and in a very few days, an
official answer, bearing the indorsement, On H. M.'s
Service, would have placed Margaret in communication with the truant. To have overlooked a point
of policy so broadly apparent as this, vitiates and
nullifies the very basis of the story.  Even for a
romance it will not do; far less for a philosophic
poem dealing with intense realities. No such case of
distress could have lived for one fortnight, nor have
survived a single interview with the rector, the curate,
the parish-clerk, with the schoolmaster, the doctor, the
attorney, the innkeeper, or the exciseman.
But, apart from the vicious mechanism of the incidents, the story is even more objectionable by the
doubtful quality of the leading character from which
it derives its pathos. Had any one of us readers held
the office of coroner in her neighborhood, he would
have found it his duty to hold an inquest upon the
body of her infhnt. This child, as every reader could
depose, (now when the details have been published by
the poet,) died of neglect; not through direct cruelty,
but through criminal self-indulgence.  Self-indulgence
in what?  Not in liquor, yet not altogether in fretting.
Sloth, and the habit of gadding abroad, were most in
fault. The wanderer himself might have been called
2




18          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
as a witness for the crown, to prove that the infant was
left to sleep in solitude for hours: the key even was
taken away, as if to intercept the possibility (except
through burglary) of those tender attentions from some
casual stranger, which the unfeeling mother had withdrawn. The child absolutely awoke whilst the philosopher was listening at the door. It cried; but finally
hushed itself to sleep. That looks like a case of Dalby's carminative. But this crisis could not have been
relied on: tragical catastrophes arise from neglected
crying; ruptures in the first place, a very common
result in infants; rolling out of bed, followed by dislocation of the neck; fits, and other short cuts to
death. It is hardly any praise to Margaret that she
carried the child to that consummation by a more lingering road.
This first tale, therefore, must and will, if Mr.
Wordsworth retains energy for such recasts of a laborious work, be cut away from its connection with' The
Excursion.' This is the more to be expected from a
poet aware of his own importance and anxious for the
perfection of his works, because nothing in the following books depends upon this narrative. No timbers
or main beams need to be sawed away; it is but a
bolt that is to be slipped, a rivet to be unscrewed.
And yet, on the other hand, if the connection is slight,
the injury is great: for we all complain heavily of
entering a temple dedicated to new combinations of
truth through a vestibule of falsehood. And the falsehood is double; falsehood in the adjustment of the
details, (however separately possible,) falsehood in the
character which, wearing the mask of profound sen



ON'WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.           19
timent, does apparently repose upon dyspepsy and
sloth.
Far different in value and in principle of composition is the next tale in' The Excursion.' This occupies the fourth book, and is the impassioned record
from the infidel solitary of those heart-shaking chapters in his own life which had made him what the
reader finds him. Once he had not been a solitary;
once he had not been an infidel: now he is both. He
lives in a little urn-like valley (a closet-recess from
Little Langdale by the description) amongst the homely
household of a yeoman: he is become a bitter cynic;
and not against man alone, or society alone, but against
the laws of hope or fear upon which both repose. If
he endures the society with which he is now connected,
it is because, being dull, that society is of few words;
it is because, being tied to hard labor, that society goes
early to bed, and packs up its dulness at eight, P. M.
in blankets; it is because, under the acute inflictions
of Sunday, or the chronic inflictions of the Christmas
holidays, that dull society is easily laid into a magnetic
sleep by three passes of metaphysical philosophy.
The narrative of this misanthrope is grand and impassioned; not creeping by details and minute touches,
but rolling through capital events, and uttering its
pathos through great representative abstractions. Nothing can be finer than when, upon the desolation of
his household, upon the utter emptying of his domestic
chambers by the successive deaths of children and,
youthful wife, just at that moment the mighty phantom
of the French Revolution rises solemnly above the
horizon; even then new earth and new heavens are




20          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
promised to human nature; and suddenly the solitary
man, translated by the frenzy of human grief into the
frenzy of supernatural hopes, adopts these radiant
visions for the darlings whom he has lost -'Society becomes his glittering bride,
And airy hopes his children.'
Yet it is a misfortune in the fate of this fine tragic
movement, rather than its structure, that it tends to
collapse: the latter strains, colored deeply by disappointment, do not correspond with the grandeur of the
first. And the hero of the record becomes even more
painfully a contrast to himself than the tenor of the
incidents to their earlier tenor.  Sneering and. querulous comments upon so broad a field as human folly,
make poor compensation for the magnificence of youthful enthusiasm. But may not this defect be redressed
in a future section of the poem? It is probable, from
a hint dropped by the author, that one collateral object
of the philosophical discussions is — the reconversion
of the splenetic infidel to his ancient creed in some
higher form, and to his ancient temper of benignant
hope: in which case, what now we feel to be a cheerless depression, will sweep round into a noble reascent
— quite on a level with the aspirations of youth, and
differing, not in degree, but only in quality of enthusiasm.  Yet, if this is the poet's plan, it seems to rest
upon a misconception. For how should the sneering
sceptic, who has actually found solace in Voltaire's' Candide,' be restored to the benignities of faith and
hope by argument? It was not in this way that he
lost his station amongst Christian believers..No false




ON WORDSWORTHSS POETRY.            21
philosophy it had been which wrecked his Christian
spirit of hope; but, on the contrary, his bankruptcy
in hope which wrecked his Christian philosophy.
Here, therefore, the poet will certainly find himself
in an' almighty fix:' because any possible treatment,
which could restore the solitary's former self, such as
a course of sea-bathing, could not interest the reader;
and reversely, any successful treatment through argument that could interest the philosophic reader, would
not, under the circumstances, seem a plausible restoration for the case.
What is it that has made the recluse a sceptic? Is
it the reading of bad books? In that case he may be
reclaimed by the arguments of those who have read
better. But not at all. He has become the unbeliev.
ing cynic that he is, 1st, through his own domestic
calamities predisposing him to gloomy views of human
nature; and, 2dly, through the overclouding of his
high-toned expectations from the French Revolution,
which has disposed him, in a spirit of revenge for his
own disappointment, to contemptuous views of human
nature. Now, surely the dejection which supports his
gloom, and the despondency which supports his contempt, are not of a nature to give way before philosophic reasonings.  Make him  happy by restoring
what he has lost, and his genial philosophy will return
of itself. Make him triumphant by realizing what had
seemed to him the golden promises of the French Revolution, and his political creed will moult her sickly
feathers. Do this, and he is still young enough for
hope; but less than this restoration of his morning
visions will not call back again his morning happiness;




22          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
and breaking spears with him in logical tournaments
will mend neither his hopes nor his temper.
Indirectly, besides, it ought not to be overlooked,
that, as respects the French Revolution, the whole
college of philosophy in' The Excursion,' who are
gathered together upon the case of the recluse, make
the same mistake that he makes. Why is the recluse
disgusted with the French Revolution? Because it
had not fulfilled many of his expectations; and, of,those which it had fulfilled, some had soon been darkened by reverses. But really this was childish impatience. If a man depends for the exuberance of his
harvest upon the splendor of the coming summer, you
do not excuse him for taking prussic acid because it
rains cats and dogs through the first ten days of April.
All in good time, we say; take it easy; make acquaintance with May and June before you do anything rash.
The French Revolution has not, even yet, [1845] come
into full action. It was the explosion of a prodigious
volcano, which scattered its lava over every kingdom
of every continent, everywhere silently manuring
them for social struggles; this lava is gradually fertilizing all; the revolutionary movement is moving
onwards at this hour as inexorably as ever. Listen,
if you have ears for such spiritual sounds, to the
mighty tide even now slowly coming up from the sea
to Milan, to Rome, to Naples, to Vienna. Hearken to
the gentle undulations alreadUy breaking against the
steps of that golden throne which stretches from St.
Petersburgh to Astrachan; - tremble at the hurricanes
which have long been mustering about the pavilions of
the Ottoman Padishah. All these are long swells set



ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY.            23
ting in from the French Revolution. Even as regards
France herself, that which gave the mortal offence to
the sympathies of the solitary was the Reign of Terror.
But how thoughtless to measure the. cycles of vast
national revolutions by metres that would not stretch
round. an ordinary human passion. Even to a frail
sweetheart, you would grant more indulgence than to
be off in a pet because some transitory cloud arose
between you. The Reign of Terror was a mere fleeting phasis. The Napoleon dynasty was nothing more.
Even that scourge, which was supposed by many to
have mastered the Revolution, has itself passed away
upon the wind, —leaving no wreck, relic, or record
behind, except precisely those changes which it worked,
not as an enemy to the Revolution, [which also it was,]
but as its servant and its tool. See, even whilst we
speak, the folly of that cynical sceptic who would not
allow time for great natural processes of purification
to travel onwards to their birth, or wait for the evolution of natural results; - the storm that shocked him
has wheeled away,; -the frost and the hail that offended him have done their office; —the rain is over
and gone; - happier days have descended upon
France; —the voice of the turtle is heard in all her.
forests; — man walks with his head erect; - bastiles
are'no more; - every cottage is searched by the
golden light of law; and the privileges of conscience
are consecrated for ever.
Here, then, the poet himself, the philosophic wanderer, the learned vicar, are all equally in fault with
the solitary sceptic; for they all agree in treating his
disappointment as sound and reasonable in itself; but




24           ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
blameable only in relation to those exalted hopes which
he never ought to have encouraged.  Right, (they
say,) to consider the French Revolution, now, as a
failure: but not right originally, to have expected that
it should succeed. Whereas, in fact, it has succeeded;
it is propagating its life; it is travelling on to new
births - conquering, and yet to conquer.
It is not easy to see, therefore, how the Laureate
can avoid making some change in the constitution of
his poem, were it only to rescue his philosophers, and,
therefore, his own philosophy, from the imputation of
precipitancy in judgment. They charge the sceptic
with rash judgment dc parte ante; and, meantime,
they themselves are more liable to that charge d parte
post. If he, at the first, hoped too much, (which is
not clear, but only that he hoped too impatiently,)
they afterwards recant too blindly. -And this error
they will not, themselves, fail to acknowledge, as soon
as they awaken to the truth, that the Revolution did
not close on the 18th Brumaire, 1799, at which time it
was only arrested or suspended, in one direction, by
military shackles, but is still mining under ground,
like the ghost in Hamlet, through every quarter of the
globe.''The reader must not understand the writer as unconditionally approving of the French Revolution. It is his belief that
the resistance to the Revolution was, in many high quarters,
a sacred duty; and that this resistance it was which forced
out, from the Revolution itself, the benefits which it has since
diffused. To speak by the language of mechanics, the case
was one which illustrated the composition of forces. N'either
the Revolution singly, nor the resistance to the Revolution




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.              25
In paying so much attention to'The Excursion,'
(of which, in a more extended notice, the two books
entitled,' The Churchyard amongst the Mountains,'
would have claimed the profoundest attention,) we
yield less to our own opinion than to that of the public.
Or, perhaps, it is not so much the public as the vulgar
opinion, governed entirely by the consideration that'The Excursion' is very much the longest poem of
its author; and, secondly, that it bears currently the
title of a philosophic poem; on which account it is
presumed to have a higher dignity. The big name
and the big size are allowed to settle its rank. But in
this there is much delusion. (In the very scheme and
movement of' The Excursion' there are two defects
which interfere greatly with its power to act upon the
mind as a whole, or with any effect of unity; so that,
infallibly, it will be read, by future generations, in
parts and fragments; and, being thus virtually dismembered into many small poems, it will scarcely
justify men in allowing it the rank of a long one. One
of these defects is the undulatory character of the
course pursued by the poem, which does not ascend
uniformly, or even keep one steady level, but trespasses, as if by forgetfulness, or chance, into topics
furnishing little inspiration, and not always closely
connected with the presiding theme.  In part this
singly, was calculated to regenerate social man. But the two
forces in union, where the one modified, mitigated, or even
neutralized the other, at times; and where, at times, each
entered into a happy combination with the other, yielded for
the world those benefits which, by its separate tendency, either
of the t'Yo was fitted to stifle.




26          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
arises from the accident that a slight tissue of narrative connects the different sections; and to this the
movement of the narrative, the fluctuations of the
speculative themes, are in part obedient: the succession of the incidents becomes a law for the succession
of the thoughts, as oftentimes it happens that these
incidents are the proximate occasions of the thoughts.
Yet, as the narrative is not of a nature to be moulded
by any determinate principle of coercing passion, but
bends easily to the caprices of chance and the moment, unavoidably it stamps, by reaction, a desultory
or even incoherent character upon the train of the
philosophic discussions. You know not what is coming next; and, when it does come, you do not always
know why it comes. This has the effect of crumbling
the poem into separate segments, and causes the whole
(when looked at as a whole), to appear a rope of sand.
A second defect lies in the colloquial form which the
poem sometimes assumes. It is dangerous to conduct
a philosophic discussion by talking. If the nature of
the argument could be supposed to roll through logical
quillets, or metaphysical conundrums, so that, on putting forward a problem, the interlocutor could bring
matters to a crisis, by saying,' Do you give it up?'in that case there might be a smart reciprocation of
dialogue, of swearing and denying, giving and taking,
butting, rebutting, and' surrebutting;' 1 and this would' Surrebutting:' this is not, directly, a term from Aristotle's mint, but indirectly it is; for it belongs to the old science
of'special pleading,' which, in part, is an offset from the
Aristotelian logic.




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             27
confer an interlocutory or amaebaean character upon
the process of altercation.  But the topics, and the
quality of the arguments being moral, in which always
the reconciliation of the feelings is to be secured
by gradual persuasion, rather than the understanding
to be floored by a solitary blow, inevitably it becomes
impossible that anything of this brilliant conversational
sword-play, cut-and-thrust,'carte' and' tierce,' can
make for itself an opening. Mere decorum requires
that the speakers should be prosy. And you yourself,
though sometimes disposed to say,' Do now, dear old
soul, cut it short,' are sensible that he cannot cut it
short. Disquisitions, in a certain key, can no more
turn round upon a sixpence than a coach-and-six.
They must have sea-room to' wear' ship, and to
tack. This in itself is often tedious; but it leads to a
worse tediousness: a practised eye sees from afar the
whole evolution of the coming argument; and then,
besides the pain of hearing the parties preach, you
hear them preach from a text which already in germ
had warned you of all the buds and blossoms which
it was laboriously to produce. And this second blemish, unavoidable if the method of dialogue is adopted,
becomes more painfully apparent through a third,
almost inalienable from the natural constitution of the
subjects concerned. It is, that in cases where a large
interest of human nature is treated, such as the position of man in this world, his duties, his difficulties,
many parts become necessary as transitional or connecting links, which, per se, are not attractive, nor can
by any art be made so. Treating the whole theme in
extenso, the poet is driven, by natural corollary, or by




28          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
objection too obvious to be evaded, into discussions not
chosen by his own taste, but dictated by the logic or
the tendencies of the question, and by the impossibility of dismissing with partiality any one branch of a
subject which is essential to the integrity of the speculation, simply because it is at war with the brilliancy
of its development.
Not, therefore, in'The Excursion' must we look
for that reversionary influence which awaits Wordsworth with posterity.  It is the vulgar superstition in
behalf of big books and sounding titles; it is the
weakness of supposing no book entitled to be considered a power in the literature of the land, unless
physically it is weighty, that must have prevailed upon
Coleridge and others to undervalue, by comparison
with the direct philosophic poetry of Wordsworth,
those earlier poems which are all short, but generally
scintillating with gems of far profounder truth. Let
the reader understand, however, that by'truth,' I
understand, not merely that truth which takes the
shape of a formal proposition, reducible to'mood'
and'figure;' but truth which suddenly strengthens
into solemnity an impression very feebly acknowledged previously, or truth which suddenly unveils a
connection between objects always before regarded as
irrelate and independent. In astronomy, to gain the
rank of discoverer, it is not required that you: should
reveal a star absolutely new: find out with respect to
an old star some new affection - as, for instance, that
it has an ascertainable parallax —and immediately
you bring it within the verge of a human interest; or
of some old familiar planet, that its satellites suffer pe



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.             29
riodical eclipses, and immediately you bring it within
the verge of terrestrial uses. Gleams of steadier
vision, that brighten into certainty appearances else
doubtful, or that unfold relations else unsuspected, are
not less discoveries of truth than the revelations of the
telescope, or the conquests of the diving bell. It is
astonishing how large a harvest of new truths would
be reaped, simply through the accident of a man's
feeling, or being made to feel, more deeply than other
men. He sees the same objects, neither more nor
fewer, but he sees them engraved in lines far stronger
and more determinate: and the difference in the
strength makes the whole difference between consciousness and sub-consciousness. And in questions
of the mere understanding, we see the same fact
illustrated: the author who rivets notice the most, is
not he that perplexes men by truths drawn from fountains of absolute novelty, — truths unsunned as yet,
and obscure from  that cause; but he that awakens
into illuminated consciousness old lineaments of truth
long slumbering in the mind, although too faint to have
extorted attention. Wordsworth has brought many a
truth into life both for the eye and for the understanding, which previously had slumbered indistinctly, for
all men.
For instance, as respects the eye, who does not
acknowledge instantaneously the strength of reality in
that saying upon a cataract seen from a station two
miles off, that it was' frozen by distance?' In all
nature, there is not an object so essentially at war with
the stiffening of frost, as the headlong and desperate
life of a cataract; and yet notoriously the effect of




30          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
distance is to lock up this frenzy of motion into the
most petrific column of stillness. This effect is perceived at once when pointed out; but how few are the
eyes that ever would have perceived it for themselves!
Twilight, again, —who before Wordsworth ever distinctly noticed its abstracting power?- that power of
removing, softening, harmonizing, by which a mode
of obscurity executes for the eye the same mysterious
office which the mind so often within its own stradowy
realms executes for itself. In the dim interspace between day and night, all disappears from our earthly
scenery, as if touched by an enchanter's rod, which is
either mean or inharmonious, or unquiet, or expressive
of temporary things. Leaning against a column of
rock, looking down upon a lake or river, and at intervals carrying your eyes forward' through a vista of
mountains, you become aware that your sight rests
upon the very same spectacle, unaltered in a single
feature, which once at the same hour was beheld by
the legionary Roman from his embattled camp, or by
the roving Briton in his' wolf-skin vest,' lying down to
sleep, and looking' through some leafy bower,
Before his eyes were closed.'
How magnificent is the summary or abstraction of
the elementary features in such a scene, as executed
by the poet himself, in illustration of this abstraction
daily executed by nature, through her handmaid Twilight! Listen, reader, to the closing strain, solemn as
twilight is solemn, and grand as the spectacle which it
describes -




ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY.                31'By him [i. e. the roving Briton] was seen,
The self-same vision which we now behold,
At thy meek bidding, shadowy Power, brought forth,
These mighty barriers, and the gulf between;
The floods, the stars, -a spectacle as old
As the beginning of the heavens and earth.'
Another great field there is amongst the pomps of
nature, which, if Wordsworth did not first notice, he
certainly has noticed most circumstantially. I speak
of cloud-scenery, or those pageants of sky-built architecture, which sometimes in summer, at noon-day, and
in all seasons about sunset, arrest or appal the meditative;' perplexing monarchs' with the spectacle of
armies manceuvring, or deepening the solemnity of
evening by towering edifices that mimic —but which
also in mimicking mock - the transitory grandeurs of
man. It is singular that these gorgeous phenomena,
not less than those of the Aurora Borealis, have been
so little noticed by poets. The Aurora was naturally
neglected by the southern poets of Greece and Rome,
as not much seen in their latitudes.1 But the cloud-'But then, says the reader, why was it not proportionably
the more noticed by poets of the north?  Certainly, that
question is fair. And the answer, it is scarcely possible to
doubt, is this: —That until the rise of Natural Philosophy,
in Charles the Second's reign, there was no name for the
appearance; on which account, some writers have been
absurd enough to believe that the Aurora did not exist, noticeably, until about 1690. Shakspeare, in his journey down
to Stratford, (always performed on horseback,) must often
have been belated: he must sometimes have seen, he could
not but have admired, the fiery skirmishing of the Aurora.
And yet, for want of a word to fix and identify the object,
how could he introduce it as an image or allusion in his
writings?




32          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
architecture of the daylight belongs alike to north and
south. Accordingly, I remember one notice of it in
Hesiod, a case were the clouds exhibited'The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.'
Another there is, a thousand years later, in Lucan:
amongst the portents which prefigured the dreadful
convulsions destined to shake the earth at Pharsalia,
is noticed by him some fiery coruscation of arms in
the heavens; but, so far as I recollect, the appearances might have belonged equally to the workman.
ship of the clouds or the Aurora. Up and down the
next eight hundred years, are scattered evanescent
allusions to these vapory appearances; in Hamlet and
elsewhere, occur gleams of such allusions; but I
remember no distinct picture of one before that in
the'Antony and Cleopatra' of Shakspeare, beginning,'Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish.'
Subsequently to Shakspeare, these notices, as of all
phenomena whatsoever that demanded a familiarity
with nature in the spirit of love, became rarer and
rarer. At length, as the eighteenth century was winding up its accounts, forth stepped William Wordsworth,
of whom, as a reader of all pages in nature, it may
be said that, if we except Dampier, the admirable
buccaneer, and some few professional naturalists, he
first and he last looked at natural objects with the
eye that neither will be dazzled from without nor
cheated by preconceptions from within. MAost men
look at nature in the hurry of a confusion that dis



ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.                33
tinguishes nothing; their error is from without. Pope,
again, and many who live in towns,1 make such blunders as that of supposing the moon to tip with silver
the hills behind which she is rising, not by erroneous
use of their eyes, (for they use them not at all,) but
by  inveterate  preconceptions.   Scarcely  has there
been a poet with what could be called a learned eye,
or an eye extensively learned, before Wordsworth.
Much affectation there has been of that sort since his
rise, and at all times much counterfeit enthusiasm:
but the sum  of the matter is this, that Wordsworth
had his passion for nature fixed in his blood;- it
was a necessity, like that of the mulberry-leaf to the
silk-worm; and through his commerce with nature
did he live and breathe.  Hence it was, viz., from
the truth of his love, that his knowledge grew; whilst
most others, being merely hypocrites in their love,
have turned out merely charlatans in their knowledge.
This chapter, therefore, of sky scenery, may be said
to have been revivified amongst the resources of
poetry by Wordsworth — rekindled, if not absolutely
kindled. The sublime scene indorsed upon the draperies of the storm in'The Excursion,' -that wit1It was not, however, that all poets then lived in towns;
neither had Pope himself generally lived in towns. But it is
perfectly useless to be familiar with nature unless there is a
public trained to love and value nature. It is not what the
individual sees that will fix itself as beautiful in his recollections, but what he sees under a consciousness that others will
sympathize with his feelings. Under any other circumstances
familiarity does but realize the adage, and' breeds contempt.'
The great despisers of rural scenery are rustics.
3




34          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
nessed upon the passage of the Hamilton Hills in
Yorkshire, — the solemn'sky prospect' from the
fields of France, are unrivalled in that order of composition; and in one of these records Wordsworth has
given first of all the true key-note of the sentiment
belonging to these grand pageants. They are, says
the poet, speaking in a case where the appearance
had occurred towards night,'Meek nature's evening comment on the shows
And all the fuming vanities of earth.'
Yes, that is the secret moral whispered to the mind.
These mimicries express the laughter which is in
heaven at earthly pomps. Frail and vapory are the
glories of man, even as the parodies of those glories
are frail which nature weaves in clouds.
As another of those natural appearances which
must have haunted men's eyes since the Flood, but
yet had never forced itself into conscious notice until
arrested by Wordsworth, I may notice an effect of
iteration daily exhibited in the habits of cattle: —'The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising
There are forty feeding like one.'
Now, merely as a fact, and if it were nothing more,
this characteristic appearance in the habits of cows,
when all repeat the action of each, ought not to have
been overlooked by those who profess themselves
engaged in holding up a mirror to nature. But the
fact has also a profound meaning as a hieroglyphic.
In all animals which live under the protection of man
a life of peace and quietness, but do not share in his




ON WORDSWORTH S POETRY.             35
labors or in his pleasures, what we regard is the
species, and not the individual. Nobody but a grazier
ever looks at one cow amongst a field of cows, or at
one sheep in a flock. But as to those animals which
are more closely connected with man, not passively
connected, but actively, being partners in his toils and
perils and recreations, such as horses, dogs, falcons,
they are regarded as individuals, and are allowed the
benefit of an individual interest. It is not that cows
have not a differential character, each for herself;
and sheep, it is well known, have all a separate
physiognomy for the shepherd who has cultivated their
acquaintance.  But men generally have no opportunity or motive for studying the individualities of
creatures, however otherwise respectable, that are too
much regarded by all of us in the reversionary light
of milk, and beef, and mutton. Far otherwise it is
with horses, who share in man's martial risks, who
sympathize with man's frenzy in hunting, who divide
with man the burdens of noonday. Far otherwise it
is with dogs, that share the hearths of man, and adore
the footsteps of his children. These man loves: of
these he makes dear, though humble friends. These
often fight for him; and for them he will sometimes
fight. Of necessity, therefore, every horse and every
dog is an individual- has a sort of personality that
makes him separately interesting-has a beauty and
a character of his own. Go to Melton, therefore, and
what will you see? Every man, every horse, every
dog, glorying in the plentitude of life, is in a different
attitude, motion, gesture, action. It is not there the
sublime unity which you must seek, where forty are




36          ON WORDSWORTH' S POETRY.
like one; but the sublime infinity, like that of ocean,
like that of Flora, like that of nature, where no repetitions are endured, no leaf the copy of another leaf,
no absolute identity, and no painful tautologies. This
subject might be pursued into profounder recesses; but
in a popular discussion it is necessary to forbear.
A volume might be filled with such glimpses of
novelty as Wordsworth has first laid bare, even to the
apprehension of the senses. For the understanding,
when moving in the same track of human sensibilities,
he has done only not so much. How often (to give
an instance or two) must the human heart have felt
that there are sorrows which descend far below the
region in which tears gather; and yet who has ever
given utterance to this feeling until Wordsworth came
with his immortal line-'Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears?'
This sentiment, and others that might be adduced,
(such as' The child is father of the man,') have even
passed into the popular mind, and are often quoted by
those who know not whom they are quoting. Magnificent, again, is the sentiment, and yet an echo to one
which lurks amongst all hearts, in relation to the
frailty of merely human schemes for working good,
which so often droop and collapse through the unsteadiness of human energies, -' foundations must be laid
In Heaven.
How?  Foundations laid in realms that are above?
But that is at war with physics; —foundations must
be laid below. Yes; and even so the poet throws the




ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.            37
mind yet more forcibly on the hyperphysical character-on the grandeur transcending all physics —
of those shadowy foundations which alone are enduring.
But the great distinction of Wordsworth, and the
pledge of his increasing popularity, is the extent of
his sympathy with what is really permanent in human
feelings, and also the depth of this sympathy. Young
and Cowper, the two earlier leaders in the province
of meditative poetry, are too circumscribed in the
range of their sympathies, too exclusive, and oftentimes not sufficiently profound.  Both these poets
manifested the quality of their strength by the quality
of their public reception. Popular in some degree
from the first, they entered upon the inheritance of
their fame almost at once. Far different was the fate
of Wordsworth; for, in poetry of this class, which
appeals to what lies deepest in man, in proportion to
the native power of the poet, and his fitness for permanent life, is the strength of resistance in the public
taste. Whatever is too original will be hated at the
first. It must slowly mould a public for itself; and
the resistance of the early thoughtless judgments must
be overcome by a counter resistance to itself, in a
better audience slowly mustering against the first.
Forty and seven years it is since William Wordsworth
first appeared as an author. Twenty of those years
he was the scoff of the world, and his poetry a byword of scorn. Since then, and more than once,
senates have rung with acclamations to the echo of/
his name. Now at this moment, whilst we are talking
about him, he has entered upon his seventy-sixth year.




38          ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.
For himself, according to the course of nature, he
cannot be far from his setting; but his poetry is but
now clearing the clouds that gathered about its rising.
Meditative poetry is perhaps that which will finally
maintain most power upon generations more thoughtful; and in this department, at least, there is little
competition to be apprehended by Wordsworth from
anything that has appeared since the death of Shakspeare.




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THERE is no writer named amongst men, of whom,
so much as ot Percy Bysshe Shelley, it is difficult for
a conscientious critic to speak with the truth and the
respect due to his exalted powers, and yet without
offence to feelings the most sacred, which too memo.
rably he outraged. The indignation which this powerful young writer provoked, had its root in no personal
feelings- those might have been conciKated; in no
worldly feelings - those might have proved transitory;
but in feelings the holiest which brood over human
life, and which guard the sanctuary of religious truth.
Consequently, which is a melancholy thought for any
friend of Shelley's, the indignation is likely to be coextensive and co-enduring with the writings that provoked it. That bitterness of scorn and defiance which
still burns against his name in the most extensively
meditative section of English society, viz. the religious
section, is not of a nature to be propitiated: selfish
interts, being wounded, might be compensated;
merely human interests might be soothed; but interests that transcend all human valuation, being so insulted, must upon principle reject all human ransom




40           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
or conditions of human compromise. Less than penitential recantation could not be accepted: and that is
now impossible.' Will ye transactiT with God?' is
the indignant language of Milton in a case of that
nature. And in this case the language of many pious
men said aloud, -' It is for God to forgive: but we,
his servants, are bound to recollect, that this young
man offered to Christ and to Christianity the deepest
insult which ear has heard, or which it has entered into
the heart of man to conceive.' Others, as in Germany, had charged Christ with committing suicide, on
the principle that he who tempts or solicits death by
doctrines fitted to provoke that result, is virtually the
causer of his own destruction..., But in this sense every
man commits suicide, who will not betray an interest
confided to his keeping under menaces of death; the
martyr, who perishes for truth, when by deserting it
he might live; the patriot, who perishes for his country, when by betraying it he might win riches and
honor. And, were this even otherwise, the objection
would be nothing to Christians - who, recognising the
Deity in Christ, recognise his unlimited right over life.
Some, again, had pointed their insults at a part more
vital in Christianity, if it had happened to be as vulnerable as they fancied. The new doctrine introduced
by Christ, of forgiveness to those who injure or who
hate us,-on what footing was it placed? Once, at
least in appearance, on the idea, that by assisting or
forgiving an enemy, we should be eventually' heaping
coals of fire upon his head.' Mr. Howdon, in a very
clever book [Rational Investigation of the Principles
of Natural Philosophy: London, 1840,] calls this'a




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.              41
fiendish idea,' (p. 290): and I acknowledge that to
myself, in one part of my boyhood, it did seem a refinement of malice. My subtilizing habits, however,
even in those days, soon suggested to me that this aggravation of guilt in the object of our forgiveness was
not held out as the motive to the forgiveness, but as
the result of it; secondly, that perhaps no aggravation of his guilt was the point contemplated, but the
salutary stinging into life of his remorse, hitherto
sleeping; thirdly, that every doubtful or perplexing
expression must be overruled and determined by the
prevailing spirit of the system in which it stands. If
Mr. Howdon's sense were the true one, then this passage would be in pointed hostility to every other part
of the Christian ethics.2j
These were affronts to the Founder of Christianity,
offered too much in the temper of malignity. But
Shelley's was worse; more bitter, and with less of
countenance, even in show or shadow, from any fact,
or insinuation of a fact, that Scripture suggests. In
his' Queen Mab,' lie gives a dreadful portrait of God;
and that no question may arise, of what God? he
names him; it is Jehovah. He asserts his existence;
he affirms him to be'an almighty God, and vengeful
as almighty.' He goes on to describe him as the'omnipotent fiend,' who found'none but slaves' [Israel in Egypt, no doubt] to be' his tools,' and none
but' a murderer' [Moses, I presume]' to be his accomplice in crime.' He introduces this dreadful Almighty
as speaking, and as speaking thus, -'From an eternity of idleness
I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
From nothing; rested; and created man.'




42            PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
But man he hates; and he goes on to curse him; till
at the intercession of' the murderer,' who is electrified
into pity for the human race by the very horror of the
divine curses, God promises to send his son- only,
however, for the benefit of a few. This son appears;
the poet tells us that -
-' the Incarnate came; humbly he came,
Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard
Save by the rabble of his native town.'
The poet pursues this incarnate God as a teacher of
men; teaching,'in semblance,' justice, truth, and
peace; but underneath all this, kindling'quenchless
flames,' which eventually were destined
-' to satiate, with the blood
Of truth and freedom, his malignant soul.'
He follows him to his crucifixion; and describes him,
whilst hanging on the crosts, as shedding malice upon
a reviler, - malice on the cross!'A smile of godlike malice rei]llumined
His fading lineaments:'
and his parting breath is uttered in a memorable
curse.
This atrocious picture of the Deity, in his dealings
with man, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, is
certainly placed in the mouth of the wandering Jew.
But the internal evidence, as well as collateral evidence
from without, make it clear that the Jew, (whose
version of scriptural records nobody in the poem
disputes,) here represents the person of the poet.
Shelley had opened his career as an atheist; and as




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             43
a proselytizing atheist. But he was then a bov. At
the date of' Queen Mab' he was a young man. And
we now find him advanced from the station of an
atheist to the more intellectual one of a believer in
God and in the mission of Christ; but of one who
fancied himself called upon to defy and to hate both,
in so far as they had revealed their relations to
man.
Mr. Gilfillan* thinks that'Shelley was far too
harshly treated in his speculative boyhood;' and it
strikes him'that, had pity and kind-hearted expostulation been tried, instead of reproach and abrupt
expulsion, they might have weaned him from the
dry dugs of Atheism to the milky breast of the faith
and "worship of sorrow;" and the touching spectatacle had been renewed, of the demoniac sitting,
"'clothed, and in his right mind," at the feet of Jesus.'
I am not of that opinion: and it is an opinion which
seems to question the sincerity of Shelley,-that
quality which in him was deepest, so as to form the
basis of his nature, if we allow ourselves to think
that, by personal irritation, he had been piqued into
infidelity, or that by flattering conciliation he could
have been bribed back into a profession of Christianity. Like a wild horse of the Pampas, he would have
thrown up his heels, and whinnied his disdain of any
man coming to catch him with a bribe of oats.  He
had a constant vision of a manger and a halter in
the rear of all such caressing tempters, once having
scented the gales of what he thought perfect freedom,
*'Gallery of Literary Portraits.'




44           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
from the lawless desert. His feud with Christianity
was a craze derived from some early wrench of his
understanding, and made obstinate to the degree in
which we find it, from having rootted itself in certain
combinations of ideas that, once coalescing, could not
be shaken loose; such as, that Christianity underpropped the corruptions of the earth, in the shape of
wicked governments that might else have been overthrown, or of wicked priesthoods that, but for the
shelter of shadowy and spiritual terrors, must have
trembled before those whom they overawed. Kings
that were clothed in bloody robes; dark hierarchies
that scowled upon the poor children of the soil; these
objects took up a permanent station in the background
of Shelley's imagination, not to be dispossessed more
than the phantom of Banquo from the festival of Macbeth, and composed a towering Babylon of mystery
that, to his belief, could not have flourished, under any
umbrage less vast than that of Christianity. Such
was the inextricable association of images that domineered over Shelley's mind: such was the hatred
which he built upon that association,- an association
casual and capricious, yet fixed and petrified as if by
frost. Can we imagine the case of an angel touched
by lunacy? Have we ever seen the spectacle of a
human intellect, exquisite by its functions of creation,
yet in one chamber of its shadowy house already
ruined before the light of manhood had cleansed its
darkness?  ouch an angel, such a man, —if ever
such there were,-such a lunatic angel, such a ruined
man, was Shelley, whilst yet standing on the earliest
threshold of life.




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             45
Mr. Gilfillan, whose eye is quick to seize the lurking and the stealthy aspect of things, does not overlook
the absolute midsummer madness which possessed
Shelley upon the subject of Christianity. Shelley's
total nature was altered and darkened when that theme
arose: transfiguration fell upon him.  He that was so
gentle, became savage; he that breathed by the very
lungs of Christianity- that was so mercifill, so full of
tenderness and pity, of humility, of love and forgiveness, then raved and screamed like an idiot whom once
I personally knew, when offended by a strain of heav.
enly music at the full of the moon. In both cases, it
was the sense of perfect beauty revealed under the
sense of morbid estrangement. This it is, as I presume, which Mr. Gilfillan alludes to in the following
passage, (p. 104):' On all other subjects the wisest
of the wise, the gentlest of the gentle, the bravest of
the brave, yet, when one topic was introduced, he became straightway insane; his eyes glared, his voice
screamed, his hand vibrated frenzy.' But Mr. Gilfil.
lan is entirely in the wrong when he countenances the
notion that harsh treatment had any concern in riveting
the fanaticism  of Shelley.  On the contrary, he met
with an indulgence to the first manifestation of his
anti-Christian madness, better suited to the goodness
of the lunatic than to the pestilence of his lunacy. It
was at Oxford that this earliest explosion of Shelleyism
occurred; and though, with respect to secrets of prisonhouses, and to discussions that proceed'with closed
doors,' there is always a danger of being misinformed,.
I believe, from the uniformity of such accounts as have
reached myself, that the following brief of the matter




46           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
may be relied on. Shelley, being a venerable sage of
sixteen, or rather less, came to a resolution that he
would convert, and that it was his solemn duty to convert, the universal Christian church to Atheism or to
Pantheism, no great matter which. But, as such large
undertakings require time, twenty months, suppose, or
even two years,- for you know, reader, that a railway requires on an average little less, - Shelley was
determined to obey no impulse of youthful rashness.
Oh no! Down with presumption, down with levity,
down with boyish precipitation! Changes of religion
are awful things: people must have time to think. He
would move slowly and discreetly. So first he wrote
a pamphlet, clearly and satisfactorily explaining the
necessity of being an atheist; and, with his usual exemplary courage, (for, seriously, he was the leastfalse
of human creatures,) Shelley put his name to the
pamphlet, and the name of his college. His ultimate
object was to accomplish a general apostasy in the
Christian church of whatever name. But for one six
months, it was quite enough if he caused a revolt in
the Church of England. And as, before a great naval
action, when the enemy is approaching, you throw a
long shot or two by way of trying his range,- on that
principle Shelley had thrown out his tract in Oxford.
Oxford formed the advanced squadron of the English
Church; and, by way of a coup d'essai, though in
itself a bagatelle, what if he should begin with converting Oxford? To make any beginning at all is one
half the battle; or, as a writer in this magazine [June
1845] suggests, a good deal more. To speak seriously,
there is something even thus far in the boyish presump



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             47
tion of Shelley, not altogether without nobility.  He
affronted the armies of Christendom.  Had it been
possible for him to be jesting, it would not have been
noble. But here, even in the most monstrous of his
undertakings, here, as always, he was perfectly sincere and single-minded. Satisfied that Atheism was
the sheet anchor of the world, he was not the person
to speak by halves. Being a boy, he attacked those
[upon a point the most sure to irritate] who were gray;
having no station in society, he flew at the throats of
none but those who had; weaker than an infant for
the purpose before him, he planted his fist in the face
of a giant, saying,'Take that, you devil, and that,
and that.'.. _he pamphlet had been published; and
though an undergraduate of Oxford is not (technically
speaking) a member of the university as a responsible
corporation, still he bears a near relation to it. And
the heads of colleges felt a disagreeable summons to
an extra-meeting.  There are in Oxford five-andtwenty colleges, to say nothing of halls. Frequent
and full the heads assembled in Golgotha, a wellknown Oxonian chamber, which, being interpreted,
(as scripturally we know,) is'the place of a skull,'
and must, therefore, naturally be the place of a head.
There the heads met to deliberate. What was to be
done? Most of them were inclined to mercy: to
proceed at all -was to proceed to extremities; and,
(generally speaking,) to expel a man from Oxford, is
to ruin his prospects in any of the liberal professions.
Not, therefore, from consideration for Shelley's posi.
tion in society, but on the kindest motives of forbearance towards one so young, the heads decided for




48           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
declining all notice of the pamphlet. Levelled at
them, it was not specially addressed to them; and,
amongst the infinite children born every morning from
that mightiest of mothers, the press, why should Golgotha be supposed to have known anything, officially,
of this little brat? That evasion might suit some people, but not Percy Bysshe Shelley.'There was a flaw
(was there?) in his process; his pleading could not,
regularly, come up before the court. Very well —
he would heal that defect immediately. So he sent
his pamphlet, with five-and-twenty separate letters,
addressed to the five-and-twenty heads of colleges in
Golgotha assembled; courteously'inviting' all and
every of them to notify, at his earliest convenience,
his adhesion to the enclosed unanswerable arguments
for Atheism. Upon this, it is undeniable that Gol.
gotha looked black; and, after certain formalities,:invited' P. B. Shelley to consider himself expelled
from the University of Oxford. But, if this were
harsh, how would Mr. Gilfillan have had them to proceed? Already they had done, perhaps, too much in
the way of forbearance. There were many men in
Oxford who knew the standing of Shelley's family.
Already it was whispered that any man of obscure
connections would have been visited for his Atheism,
whether writing to Golgotha or not. And this whisper
would have strengthened, had any further neglect been
shown to formal letters, which requested a formal
answer. The authorities of Oxford, deeply responsible
to the nation in a matter of so much peril, could not
have acted otherwise than they aid. They were not
severe. The severity was extorted and imposed by




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             49
Shelley. But, on the other hand, in some palliation
of Shelley's conduct, it ought to be noticed that he is
unfairly placed, by the undistinguishing, on the manly
station of an ordinary Oxford student. The undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge are not' boys,' as
a considerable proportion must be, for good reasons,
in other universities, - the Scottish universities, for instance, of Glasgow and St. Andrews, and many of those
on the continent. Few of the English students even
begin their residence before eighteen; and the larger
proportion are at least twenty. Whereas Shelley was
really a boy at this era, and no man. He had entered
on his sixteenth year, and he was still in the earliest
part of his academic carect, when his obstinate and
reiterated attempt to inoculate the university with a
disease that he fancied indispensable to their mental
health, caused his expulsion.
I imagine that Mr. Gilfillan will find himself compelled, hereafter, not less by his own second thoughts,
than by the murmurs of some amongst his readers, to
revise that selection of memorial traits, whether acts or
habits, by which he seeks to bring Shelley, as a familiar
presence, within the field of ocular apprehension. The
acts selected, unless characteristic, - the habits selected, unless representative, - must be absolutely
impertinent to the true identification of the man; and
most of those rehearsed by Mr. Gilfillan, unless where
they happen to be merely accidents of bodily constitution, are such as all of us would be sorry to suppose
naturally belonging to Shelley. To' rush out of the
room in terror, as his wild imagination painted to him
a pair of eyes in a lady's breast,' is not so much a
4




50           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
movement of poetic frenzy, as of typhus fever —to' terrify an old lady out of her wits,' by assuming, in
a stage-coach, the situation of a regal sufferer from
Shakspeare, is not eccentricity so much as painful
discourtesy - and to request of Rowland Hill, a man
most pious and sincere,' the use of Surrey chapel,' as
a theatre for publishing infidelity, would have been so
thoroughly the act of a heartless coxcomb, that I, for
one, cannot bring myself to believe it an authentic
anecdote. Not that I doubt of Shelley's violating at
times his own better nature, as every man is capable
of doing, under youth too fervid, wine too potent, and
companions too misleading; but it strikes me that,
during Shelley's very earliest youth, the mere accident
of Rowland -Hill's being a man well-born and aristocratically connected, yet sacrificing these advantages to
what he thought the highest of services, spiritual service on behalf of poor laboring men, would have laid
a pathetic arrest upon any impulse of fun in one wh!o,
with the very same advantages of birth and position,
had the same deep reverence for the rights of the poor.
Willing, at all times, to forget his own pretensions in
the presence of those who seemed powerless - willing
in a degree that seems sublime - Shelley could not
but have honored the same nobility of feeling in another. And Rowland Hill, by his guileless simplicity,
had a separate hold upon a nature so childlike as Shelley's. He was full of love to man; so was Shelley.
He was full of humility; so was Shelley. Difference
of creed, however vast the interval which it created
between the men, could not have hid from Shelley's
eye the close approximation of their natures. Infidel




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             51
by his intellect, Shelley was a Christian in the tendencies of his heart. As to his'lying asleep on the
hearth-rug, with his small round head thrust almost
into the very fire,' this, like his' basking in the hottest
beams of an Italian sun,' illustrates nothing but his
physical temperament. That he should be seen'devouring large pieces of bread amid his profound abstractions,' simply recalls to my eye some hundred
thousands of children in the streets of great cities,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, whom I am daily detecting in the same unaccountable practice; and yet,
probably, with very little abstraction to excuse it;
whilst his'endless cups of tea,' in so tea-drinking a
land as ours, have really ceased to offer the attractions
of novelty which, eighty years ago, in the reign of
Dr. Johnson, and under a higher price of tea, they
might have secured. Such habits, however, are inoffensive, if not particularly mysterious, nor particularly significant. But that, in defect of a paper boat,
Shelley should launch upon the Serpentine a fifty
pound bank note, seems to my view an act of childishness, or else (which is worse) an act. of empty ostentation, not likely to proceed from one who generally exhibited in his outward deportment a sense of
true dignity.  He who, through his family,3 connected
himself with that' spirit without spot,' (as Shelley calls
him in the'Adonais,') Sir Philip Sidney, (a man how
like in gentleness, and in faculties of mind, to himself!)
- he that, by consequence, connected himself with
that later descendant of Penshurst, the noble martyr of
freedom, Algernon Sidney, could not have degraded
himself by a pride so mean as any which roots itself




52           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
in wealth. On the other hand, in the anecdote of his
repeating Dr. Johnson's benign act, by' lifting a poor
houseless outcast upon his back, and carrying her to a
place of refuge,' I read so strong a character of internal probability, that it would be gratifying to know
upon what external testimony it rests. i
The life of Shelley, according to the remark of Mr.
Gilfillan, was'among the most romantic in literary
story.' Everything was romantic in his short career;
everything wore a tragic interest. From his childhood he moved through a succession of afflictions.
Always craving for love, loving and seeking to be
loved, always he was destined to reap hatred from
those with whom life had connected him. If in the
darkness he raised up images of his departed hours,
he would behold his family disowning him, and the
home of his infancy knowing him no more; he would
behold his magnificent university, that under happier
circumstances would have gloried in his genius, rejecting him for ever; he would behold his first wife,
whom once he had loved passionately, through calamities arising from himself, called away to an early and
a tragic death. The peace after which his heart
panted for ever, in what dreadful contrast it stood
to the eternal contention upon which his restless
intellect or accidents of position threw him like a
passive victim! It seemed as if not any choice of
his, but some sad doom of opposition from without,
forced out, as by a magnet, struggles of frantic resistance from him, which as gladly he would have evaded,
as ever victim of epilepsy yearned to evade his convulsions! Gladly he would have slept in eternal




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.               53
seclusion, whilst eternally the trumpet summoned him
to battle. In storms unwillingly created by himself,
he lived; in a storm, cited by the finger of God, he
died.
It is affecting, —at least it is so for any one who
believes in the profound sincerity of Shelley, a man
(however erring) whom neither fear, nor hope, nor
vanity, nor hatred, ever seduced into falsehood, or
even into dissimulation, - to read the account which
he gives of a revolution occurring in his own mind
at school: so early did his struggles begin! It is in
verse, and forms part of those beautiful stanzas addressed to his second wife, which he prefixed to' The
Revolt of Islam.' Five or six of these stanzas may
be quoted with a certainty of pleasing many readers,
whilst they throw light on the early condition of
Shelley's feelings, and of his early anticipations with
regard to the promises and the menaces of life.
Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first
The clouds which wrap this world, from youth did pass.
I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep; a fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept -I knew not why; until there rose,
From the near school-room, voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes -
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around -
(But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground,)
So without shame I spake -I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies




54             PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Such power: for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check. I then controll'd
My tears; my heart grew calm; and I was meek and bold.
And from that hour did I with earnest thought
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore:
Yet nothing, that my tyrants knew or taught,
I cared to learn; but from that secret store
Wrought linked armor for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind:
Thus power and hope were strengthen'd more and more
Within me, till there came upon my mind
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.
Alas, that love should be a blight and snare
To those who seek all sympathies in one!Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone:
Yet never found I one not false to me,
Hard hearts and cold, like weights of icy stone
Which crush'd and wither'd mine, that could not be
Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee.
Thou, friend, whose presence on my wintry heart
Fell, like bright spring upon some herbless plain;
How beautiful and calm and free thou wert
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain
Of Custom 4 thou didst burst and rend in twain,
And walk'd as free as light the clouds among,
Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long.
No more alone through the world's wilderness,
Although I trod the paths of high intent,
I journey'd now: no more companionless,
Where solitude is like despair, I went.
*..... *        




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.              55
Now has descended a serener hour;
And, with inconstant fortune, friends return:
Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power
Which says - Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.
And from thy side two gentle babes are born
To fill our home with smiles; and thus are we
Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn;
And these delights and thou have been to me
The parents of the song I consecrate to thee.'
My own attention was first drawn to Shelley by the
report of his Oxford labors as a missionary in the
service of infidelity. Abstracted fr9m the absolute
sincerity and simplicity which governed that boyish
movement, qualities which could not be known to a
stranger, or even suspected in the midst of so much
extravagance, there was nothing in the Oxford reports
of him to create any interest beyond that of wonder
at his folly and presumption in pushing to such extremity what, naturally, all people viewed as an
elaborate jest. Some curiosity, however, even at that
time, must have gathered about his name; for I
remember seeing, in London, a little Indian ink sketch
of him in the academic costume of Oxford. The
sketch tallied pretty well with a verbal description
which I had heard of him in some company, viz.,
that he looked like an elegant and slender flower,
whose head drooped from being surcharged with rain.
This gave, to the chance observer, an impression that
he was tainted, even in his external deportment, by
some excess of sickly sentimentalism, from which I
believe that, in all stages of his life, he was remarkably free. Between two and three years after this
period, which was that of his expulsion from Oxford,




56           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
he married a beautiful girl named Westbrook. She
was respectably connected; but had not moved in a
rank corresponding to Shelley's; and that accident
brought him into my own neighborhood. For his
family, already estranged from him, were now thoroughly irritated by what they regarded as a mesalliance,
and withdrew, or greatly reduced, his pecuniary allowances. Such, at least, was the story current. In this
embarrassment, his wife's father made over to him an
annual income of ~200; and, as economy had become
important, the youthful pair — both, in fact, still
children - came down to the Lakes, supposing this
region of Cumberland and Westmoreland to be a
sequestered place, which it was, for eight months in
the year, and also to be a cheap place - which it was
not. Another motive to this choice arose with the
then Duke of Norfolk. He was an old friend of
Shelley's family, and generously refused to hear a
word of the young man's errors, except where he
could'do anything to relieve him from their consequences. His grace possessed the beautiful estate of
Gobarrow Park on Ulleswater, and other estates of
greater extent in the same two counties; 5 his own
agents he had directed to furnish any accommodations
that might meet Shelley's views; and he had written
to some gentlemen amongst his agricultural friends in
Cumberland, requesting them to pay such neighborly
attentions to the solitary young people as circumstances might place in their power. This bias, being
impressed upon Shelley's wanderings, naturally brought
him to Keswick as the most central and the largest
of the little towns dispersed amongst the lakes.




PERCY BYSSHE SIIELLEY.           57
Southey, made aware of the interest taken in Shelley
by the Duke of Norfolk, with his usual kindness
immediately called upon him; and the ladies of
Southey's family subsequently made an early call
upon Mrs. Shelley. One of them mentioned to me
as occurring in this first visit an amusing expression
of the youthful matron, which, four years later, when
I heard of her gloomy end, recalled with the force
of a pathetic contrast, that icy arrest then chaining up
her youthful feet for ever. The Shelleys had been
induced by one of their new friends to take part of a
house standing about half a mile out of Keswick, on
the Penrith road; more, I believe, in that friend's
intention for the sake of bringing them easily within
his hospitalities, than for any beauty in the place.
There was, however, a pretty garden attached to it.
And whilst walking in this, one of the Southey party
asked Mrs. Shelley if the garden had been let with
their part of the house.' Oh, no,' she replied,'the
garden is not ours; but then, you know, the people
let us run about in it whenever Percy and I are tired
of sitting in the house.' The naivete of this expres.
sion'run about,' contrasting so picturesquely with
the intermitting efforts of the girlish wife at support.
ing a matron-like gravity, now that she was doing the
honors of her house to married ladies, caused all the
party to smile. And me it caused profoundly to sigh,
four years later, when the gloomy death of this young
creature, now frozen in a distant grave, threw back
my remembrance upon her fawn-like - playfulness,
which, unconsciously to herself, the girlish phrase of
run about so naturally betrayed.




58           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
At that time I had a cottage myself in Grasmere,
just thirteen miles distant from Shelley's new abode.
As he had then written nothing of any interest, I had
no motive for calling upon him, except by way of
showing any little attentions in my power to a brother
Oxonian, and to a man of letters. These attentions,
indeed, he might have claimed simply in the character
of a neighbor. For as men living on the coast of
Mayo or Galway are apt to consider the dwellers on
the sea-board of North America in the light of nextdoor neighbors, divided only by a party-wall of crystal,
— and what if accidentally three thousand miles
thick?- on the same principle we amongst the
slender population of this lake region, and wherever
no ascent intervened between two parties higher than
Dunmail Raise and the spurs of Helvellyn, were apt
to take with each other the privileged tone of neighbors. Some neighborly advantages I might certainly
have placed at Shelley's disposal - Grasmere, for
instance, itself, which tempted at that time 6 by a
beauty that had not been sullied; Wordsworth, who
then lived in Grasmere; Elleray and Professor Wilson,
nine miles further; finally, my own library, which,
being rich in the wickedest of German speculations,
would naturally have been more to Shelley's taste
than the Spanish library of Southey.
But all these temptations were negatived for Shelley
by his sudden departure. Off he went in a hurry:
but why he went, or whither he went, I did not inquire;
not guessing the interest which he would create in
my mind, six years later, by his' Revolt of Islam.'
A life of Shelley, in a continental edition of his




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.            59
works, says that he went to Edinburgh and to Ireland.
Some time after, we at the lakes heard that he was
living in Wales.  Apparently he had the instinct
within him of his own Wandering Jew for eternal
restlessness. But events were now hurrying upon his
heart of hearts. Within less than ten years the whole
arrear of his life was destined to revolve.  Within
that space, he had the whole burden of life and death
to exhaust; he had all his suffering to suffer, and all
his work to work.
In about four years his first marriage was dissolved
by the death of his wife. She had brought to Shelley
two children. But feuds arose between them, owing
to incompatible habits of mind. They parted. And
it is one chief misery of a beautiful young woman,
separated from her natural protector, that her desolate
situation attracts and stimulates the calumnies of the
malicious. Stung by these calumnies, and oppressed
(as I have understood) by the loneliness of her abode,
perhaps also by the delirium of fever, she threw herself into a pond, and was drowned. The name under
which she first enchanted all eyes, and sported as the
most playful of nymph-like girls, is now forgotten
amongst men; and that other name, for a brief period
her ambition and her glory, is inscribed on her gravestone as the name under which she wept and she
despaired, — suffered and was buried, -turned away
even from the faces of her children, and sought a
hiding-place in darkness.
After this dreadful event, an anonymous life of
Shelley asserts that he was for some time deranged.
Pretending to no private and no circumstantial ac



60            PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
quaintance with the case, I cannot say how that really
was. There is a great difficulty besetting all sketches
of lives so steeped in trouble as was Shelley's. If
you have a confidential knowledge of the case, as a
dear friend privileged to stand by the bed-side of
raving grief, how base to use such advantages of
position for the gratification of a fugitive curiosity
in strangers! If you have no such knowledge, how
little qualified you must be for tracing the life with
the truth of sympathy, or for judging it with the truth
of charity! To me it appears, from the peace of
mind which Shelley is reported afterwards to have
recovered for a time, that he could not have had to
reproach himself with any harshness or neglect as
contributing to the shocking catastrophe.  Neither
ought any reproach to rest upon the memory of this
first wife, as respects her relation to Shelley. Nonconformity of tastes might easily arise between two
parties, without much blame to either, when one of
the two had received from nature an intellect and a
temperament so dangerously eccentric, and constitutionally carried, by delicacy so exquisite of organization, to eternal restlessness and irritability of nerves,
if not absolutely at times to lunacy.
About three years after this tragic event, Shelley,
in company with his second wife, the daughter of Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, passed over for a third
time to the Continent, from which he never came back.
On Monday, July 8; 1822, being then in his twentyninth year, he was returning from Leghorn to his home
at Lerici, in a schooner-rigged boat of his own, twentyfour feet long, eight in the beam, and drawing four




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.            61
feet water. His companions were only two, - Mr. Williams, formerly of the Eighth Dragoons, and Charles
Vivian, an English seaman in Shelley's service. The
run homewards would not have occupied more than
six or eight hours. But the Gulf of Spezia is peculiarly dangerous for small craft in bad weather; and
unfortunately a squall of about one hour's duration
came on, the wind at the same time shifting so as to
blow exactly in the teeth of the course to Lerici.
From the interesting narrative drawn up by Mr. Trelawney, well known at that time for his connection
with the Greek Revolution, it seems that for eight days
the fate- of the boat was unknown; and during that
time couriers had been dispatched along the whole line
of coast between Leghorn and Nice, under anxious
hopes that the voyagers might have run into some
creek for shelter. But at the end of the eight days
this suspense ceased. Some articles belonging to Shelley's boat had previously been washed ashore: these
might have been thrown overboard; but finally the
two bodies of Shelley and Mr. Williams came on shore
near Via Reggio, about four miles apart. Both were
in a state of advanced decomposition, but were fuilly
identified. Vivian's body was not recovered for three
weeks. From the state of the two corpses, it had
become difficult to remove them; and they were therefore burned by the seaside, on funeral pyres, with
the classic rites of paganism, four English gentlemen
being present, - Capt. Shenley of the navy, Mr. Leigh
Hunt, Lord Byron, and Mr. Trelawney. A circumstance is added by Mr. Gilfillan, which previous
accounts do not mention, viz., that Shelley's heart




62           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
remained unconsumed by the fire; but this is a phenomenon that has repeatedly occurred at judicial deaths
by fire. The remains of Mr. Williams, when collected from the fire, were conveyed to England; but
Shelley's were buried in the Protestant burying-ground
at Rome, not far from a child of his own, and Keats
the poet. It is remarkable that Shelley, in the preface
to his Adonais, dedicated to the memory of that young
poet, had spoken with delight of this cemetery,- as'An open space among the ruins' (of ancient Rome,)'covered in winter with violets and daisies;' adding,' It might make one in love with death, to think that
one should be buried in so sweet a place.'
I have allowed myself to abridge the circumstances
as reported by Mr. Trelawney and Mr. Hunt, partly
on the consideration that three-and-twenty years have
passed since the event, so that a new'generation has
had time to grow up - not feeling the interest of contemporaries in Shelley, and generally, therefore, unacquainted with the case; but partly for the purpose of
introducing the following comment of Mr. Gilfillan on
the striking points of a catastrophe,' which robbed
the world of this strange and great spirit,' and which
secretly tempts men to superstitious feelings, even
whilst they are denying them: —'Everybody knows that, on the arrival of Leigh
Hunt in Italy, Shelley hastened to meet him. During
all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant
spirits- to him ever a sure prognostic of coming evil.'
[That is, in the Scottish phrase, he wasfey.]' On his
return to his home and family, his skiff was overtaken
by a fearful hurricane, and all on board perished. To




PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.             63
a. gentleman, who, at the time, was with a glass surveying the sea, the scene of his drowning assumed a
very striking appearance. A great many vessels were
visible, and among them one small skiff, which attracted his particular attention.  Suddenly a dreadful
storm, attended by thunder and columns of lightning,
swept over the sea and eclipsed the prospect. When
it had passed, he looked again. The larger vessels
were all safe, riding upon the swell; the skiff only
had gone down for ever. And in that skiff was Alas.
tor!' Here he had met his fate.  Wert thou, oh
religious sea, only avenging on his head the cause of
thy denied and insulted Deity? Were ye, ye elements, in your courses, commissioned to destroy him?
Ah! there is no reply. The surge is silent; the elements have no voice. In the eternal councils the secret
is hid of the reason of the man's death. And there,
too, rests the still more tremendous secret of the character of his destiny.' 8
The last remark possibly pursues the scrutiny too
far; and, conscious that it tends beyond the limits of
charity, Mr. Gilfillan recalls himself from the attempt
to fathom  the unfathomable.  But undoubtedly the
temptation is great, in minds the least superstitious, to
read a significance, and a silent personality in such a
fate applied to such a defier of the Christian heavens.
As a shepherd by his dog fetches out one of his flock
from amongst five hundred, so did the holy hurricane
seem to fetch out from the multitude of sails that one
which carried him that hated the hopes of the world;
and the sea, which swelled and ran down within ar
hour, was present at the audit. We are reminde#




64           PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
forcibly of the sublime storm in the wilderness, (as
given in the fourth book of' Paradise Regained,')
and the remark upon it made by the mysterious
tempter -'This tempest at this desert most was bent,
Of men at thee.'
Undoubtedly, I do not understand Mr. Gilfillan, more
than myself, to read a'judgment' in this catastrophe.
But there is a solemn appeal to the thoughtful, in
a death of so much terrific grandeur following upon
defiances of such unparalleled audacity.  A~schylus
acknowledged the same sense of mysterious awe, and
all antiquity acknowledged it, in the story of Amphiaraus.9
Shelley, it must be remembered, carried his irreligion to a point beyond all others.  Of the darkest
beings we are told, that they' believe and tremble:'
but Shelley believed and hated; and his defiances
were meant to show that he did not tremble. Yet,
has he not the excuse of something like monomania
upon this subject?  I firmly believe it. But a superstition, old as the world, clings to the notion, that
words of deep meaning, uttered even by lunatics or by
idiots, execute themselves; and that also, when uttered
in presumption, they bring round their own retributive
chastisements.
On the other hand? however shocked at Shelley's
obstinate revolt from all religious sympathies with his
fellow-men, no man is entitled to deny the admirable
qualities of his moral nature, which were as striking
as his genius. Many people remarked something se



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.              65
raphic in the expression of his features; and something
seraphic there was in his nature. No man was better
qualified to have loved Christianity; and to no man,
resting under the shadow of that one darkness, would
Christianity have said more gladly- talis cum sis,
utinam noster esses! Shelley would, from his earliest
manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed to any
comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man.
He dismissed all injuries and insults from his memory.
He was the sincerest and the most truthful of human
creatures. He was also the purest. If he denounced
marriage as a vicious institution, that was but another
phasis of the partial lunacy which affected him: for to
no man were purity and fidelity more essential elements in his idea of real love. I agree, therefore,
heartily with Mr. Gilfillan, in protesting against the
thoughtless assertion of some writer in The Edinburgh
Review -that Shelley at all selected the story of his' Cenci' on account of its horrors, or that he has found
pleasure in dwelling on those horrors. So far from it,
he has retreated so entirely from the most shocking
feature of the story, viz., the incestuous violence of
Cenci the father, as actually to leave it doubtful
whether the murder were in punishment of the last
outrage committed, or in repulsion of a menace continually repeated.  The true motive of the selection of
such a story was - not its darkness, but (as Mr. Gilfillan, with so much penetration, perceives,) the light
which fights with the darkness: Shelley found the
whole attraction of this dreadful tale in the angelic
nature of Beatrice, as revealed in the portrait of her
by Guido.  Everybody who has read with under5




66            PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
standing the' Wallenstein' of Schiller, is aware of the
repose and the divine relief arising upon a background
of so much darkness, such a tumult of ruffians, bloody
intriguers, and assassins, from the situation of the two
lovers, Max. Piccolomini and the princess Thekla, both
yearning so profoundly after peace, both so noble, both
so young, and both destined to be so unhappy. The
same fine relief, the same light shining in darkness,
arises here from the touching beauty of Beatrice, from
her noble aspirations after deliverance, from the remorse which reaches her in the midst of real innocence, from her meekness, and from the agitation of
her inexpressible affliction.  Even the murder, even
the parricide, though proceeding from herself, do but
deepen that background of darkness, which throws
into fuller revelation the glory of that suffering face
immortalized by Guido.
Something of a similar effect arises to myself when
reviewing the general abstract of Shelley's life, -so
brief, so full of agitation, so full of strife. When one
thinks of the early misery which he suffered, and of
the insolent infidelity which, being yet so young, he
wooed with a lover's passion, then the darkness of
midnight begins to form a deep, impenetrable background, upon which the phantasmagoria of all that is
to come may arrange itself in troubled phosphoric
streams, and in sweeping processions of wo. Yet,
again, when one recurs to his gracious nature, his fearlessness, his truth, his purity from all fleshliness of
appetite, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love
and tenderness, - suddenly out of the darkness reveals
itself a morning of May, forests and thickets of roses




PERCY BYSSIE SHELLEY.           67
advance to the foreground, from the midst of them
looks out' the eternal lo child,' cleansed from his sorrow, radiant with joy, having power given him to forget
the misery which he suffered, power given him to forget the misery which he caused, and leaning with his
heart upon that dove-like faith against which his erring
intellect had rebelled.








NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 40.'TRANSACT:'- this word, used in this Roman sense, illustrates the particular mode of Milton's liberties with the English language: liberties which have never yet been properly
examined, collated, numbered, or appreciated. In the Roman
law, transigere expressed the case, where each of two conflicting parties conceded something of what originally he had
claimed as the rigor of his right; and transactio was the
technical name for a legal compromise.  Milton has here
introduced no new word into the English language, but has
given a new and more learned sense to an old one. Sometimes, it is true, as in the word sensuous, he introduces a pure
coinage of his own, and a very useful coinage: but generally
to re-endow an old foundation is the extent of his innovations.
M. de Tocqueville is therefore likely to be found wrong in
saying, that'Milton alone introduced more than six hundred
words into the English language, almost all derived from the
Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew.' The passage occurs in the
16th chapter of his' Democracy in America,' Part II., where
M. de Tocqueville is discussing the separate agencies through
which democratic life on the one hand, or aristocratic on the
other, affects the changes of language. His English translator, Mr. H. Reeve, an able and philosophic annotator,




70              PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
justly views this bold assertion as'startling and probably
erroneous.'
NOTE 2. Page 41.
Since the boyish period in which these redressing corrections occurred to me, I have seen some reason (upon considering the oriental practice of placing live coals in a pan upon
the head, and its meaning as still in use amongst the Turks)
to alter the whole interpretation of the passage. It would too
much interrupt the tenor of the subject to explain this at
length: but, if right, it would equally harmonize with the
spirit of Christian morals.
NOTE 3. Page 51.'Family:' i. e., The gens in the Roman sense, or collective
house. Shelley's own immediate branch of the house did not,
in a legal sense, represent the family of Penshurst, because
the rights of the lineal descent had settled upon another
branch. But his branch had a collateral participation in the
glory of the Sidney name, and might, by accidents possible
enough, have come to be its sole representative.
NOTE 4. Page 54.
Of Custom:'- This alludes to a theory of Shelley's, on the
subject of marriage as a vicious institution, and an attempt to
realize his theory by way of public example; which attempt
there is no use in noticing more particularly, as it was subsequently abandoned. Originally he had derived his theory
from the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of his
second wife, whose birth in fact had cost that mother her life.
But by the year 1812, (the year following his first marriage,)
he had so fortified, from other quarters, his previous opinions
upon the wickedness of all nuptial ties consecrated by law or
by the church, that he apologized to his friends for having
submitted to the marriage ceremony as for an offence; but
an offence; he pleaded, rendered necessary by the vicious constitution of society, for the comfort of his female partner.




NOTES.                       71
N OTE 5. Page 56.
Two counties:'- the frontier line between Westmoreland
and Cumberland, traverse obliquely the Lake of Ulleswater, so
that the banks on both sides lie partly in both counties.
NOTE 6. Page 58.'At that time!' -the reader will say, who happens to be
aware of the mighty barriers which engirdle Grasmere, Fairfield, Arthur's Chair, Seat Sandal, Steil Fell, &c. (the lowest
above two thousand, the higher above three thousand feet
high,) —'what then? do the mountains change, and the
mountain tarns?' Perhaps not: but, if they do not change
in substance or in form, they'change countenance' when
they are disfigured from below. One cotton-mill, planted by
the side of a torrent, disenchants the scene, and banishes the
ideal beauty even in the case where it leaves the physical
beauty untouched: a truth which, many years ago, I saw
illustrated in the little hamlet of Church Coniston. But is
there any cotton-mill in Grasmere? Not that I have heard:
But if no water has been filched away from Grasmere, there
is one water too much which has crept lately into that loveliest
of mountain chambers; and that is the'water-cure,' which
has built unto itself a sort of residence in that vale; whether
a rustic nest, or a lordly palace, I do not know. Meantime,
in honesty it must be owned, that many years ago the vale
was half ruined by an insane substruction carried along the
eastern margin of the lake as a basis for a mail-coach road.
This infernal mass of solid masonry swept away the loveliest
of sylvan recesses, and the most absolutely charmed against
intrusive foot or angry echoes. It did worse: it swept away
the stateliest of Flora's daughters, and swept away, at the
same time, the birth-place of a well known verse, describing
that stately plant, which is perhaps (as a separate line) the
most exquisite that the poetry of earth can-show. The plant
was the Osmunda regalis;'Plant lovelier in its own recess
Than Grecian Naiad seen at earliest dawn




72              PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Tending her fount, or lady of the lake
Sole-silting by the shores of old romance.'
It is this last line and a half which some have held to ascend
in beauty as much beyond any single line known to literature,
as the Osmunda ascends in luxury of splendor above other
ferns. I have restored the original word lake, which the poet
himself under an erroneous impression had dismissed for
mere. But the line rests no longer on an earthly reality - the
recess, which suggested it, is gone: the Osmunda has fled;
and a vile causeway, such as Sin and Death build in Milton
over Chaos, fastening it with'asphaltic slime' and'pins of
adamant,' having long displaced the loveliest chapel (as I may
call it) in the whole cathedral of Grasmere, I have since considered Grasmere itself a ruin of its former self.
NOTE 7. Page 63.'Alastor,' i. e. Shelley. Mr. Gilfillan names him thus from
the designation, self-assumed by Shelleyr, in one of the least
intelligible amongst his poems.
NOTE 8. Page 63.
The immediate cause of the catastrophe was supposed to be
this:- Shelley's boat had reached a distance of four miles
from the shore, when the storm suddenly arose, and the wind
suddenly shifted:' from excessive smoothness,' says Mr. Trelawney, all at once the sea was'foaming, breaking, and
getting up into a very heavy swell.' After one hour the swell
went down; and towards evening it was almost a calm. The
circumstances were all adverse: the gale, the current setting
into the gulf, the instantaneous change of wind, acting upon
an undecked boat, having all the sheets fast, overladen, and
no expert hands on board but one, made the foundering as
sudden as it was inevitable. The boat is supposed to have
filled to leeward, and (carrying two tons of ballast) to have
gone down like a shot. A book found in the pocket of Shelley,
and the unaltered state of the dress on all the corpses when




NOTES.                       73
washed on shore, sufficiently indicated that not a moment's
preparation for meeting the danger had been possible.
NOTE 9. Page 64.
See' The Seven against Thebes' of AEschylus.
NOTE 10. Page 67.
The eternal child:'- this beautiful expression, so true in its
application to Shelley, I borrow from Mr. Gilfillan; and I am
tempted to add the rest of his eloquent parallel between Shelley
and Lord Byron, so far as it relates to their external appearance:-' In the forehead and head of Byron there is more
massive power and breadth: Shelley's has a smooth, arched,
spiritual expression; wrinkle there seems none on his brow;
it is as if perpetual youth had there dropped its freshness.
Byron's eye seems the focus of pride and lust; Shelley's is
mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through the mist of
his own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steeps his full large lips: the lower features of Shelley's
face are frail, feminine, flexible. Byron's head is turned upwards; as if, having risen proudly above his contemporaries,
he were daring to claim kindred, or to demand a contest, with
a superior order of beings: Shelley's is half bent, in reverence
and humility, before some vast vision seen by his own eye
alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its retreat under
an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and pervading expression of Byron's countenance: - sorrow, softened
and shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a'" holier day "
of still moonshine upon that of Shelley. In the portrait of
Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural
age of premature passion; his hair is young, his dress is
youthful; but his face is old: — in Shelley you see the eternal
child, none the less that his hair is gray, and that "sorrow
seems half his immortality."'








JOHN KEATS.
MR. GILFILLAN * introduces this section with a dis.
cussion upon the constitutional peculiarities ascribed
to men of genius; such as nervousness of temperament, idleness, vanity, irritability, and other disagreeable tendencies ending in ty or in ness; one of the ties
being' poverty;' which disease is at least not amongst
those morbidly cherished by the patients. All that
can be asked from the most penitent man of genius
is, that he should humbly confess his own besetting
infirmities, and endeavor to hate them; and, as
respects this one infirmity at least, I never heard of
any man (however eccentric in genius) who did otherwise. But what special relation has such a preface
to Keats?,, iHis whole article occupies twelve pages;
and six of these are allotted to this preliminary discussion, which perhaps equally concerns every other
man in the household of literature.  Mr. Gilfillan
seems to have been acting here on celebrated precedents.'The' Omnes homines qui sese student prcestare
cceteris animalibus' has long been' smoked' by a
wicked posterity as an old hack of Sallust's fitted on
with paste and scissors to the Catilinarian conspiracy.
*'Gallery of Literary Portraits.'




76                 JOIIN KEATS.
Cicero candidly admits that he kept in his writing-desk
an assortment of movable prefaces, beautifully fitted
(by means of avoiding all questions but' the general
question') for parading, en grand costume, before any
conceivable book. And Coleridge, in his early days,
used the image of a man's' sleeping under a man.
chineel tree,' alternately with the case of Alexander's
killing his friend Clitus, as resources for illustration
which Providence had bountifully made inexhaustible
in their applications. No emergency could by possibility arise to puzzle the poet, or the orator, but one
of these similes (please Heaven!) should be made to
meet it. So long as the manchineel continued to
blister with poisonous dews those who confided in its
shelter, so long as Niebuhr should kindly forbear to
prove that Alexander of Macedon was a hoax, and
his friend Clitus a myth, so long was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge fixed and obdurate in his determination that
one or other of these images should come upon duty
whenever, as a youthful writer, he found himself on
the brink of insolvency.
But it is less the generality of this preface, or even
its disproportion, which fixes the eye, than the questionableness of its particular statements.  In that part
which reviews the idleness of authors, Horace is given
up as too notoriously indolent; the thing, it seems,
is past denying; but'not so Lucretius.' Indeed!
and how shall this be brought to proof?  Perhaps. the
reader has heard of that barbarian prince, who sent
to Europe for a large map of the world accompanied
by the best of English razors; and the clever use
which he made of his importation was, that, first
cutting out with exquisite accuracy the whole ring



JOHIN KEATS.                77
fence of his own dominions, and then doing the same
office, with the same equity, (barbarous or barber-ous,)
for the dominions of a hostile neighbor, next he proceeded to weigh off the rival segments against each
other in a pair of gold scales; after which; of course,
he arrived at a satisfactory algebraic equation between
himself and his enemy. Now, upon this principle
of comparison, if we should take any common edition
(as the Delphin or the Variorum) of Horace and
Lucretius, strictly shaving away all notes, prefaces,
editorial absurdities, &c., all' flotsom' and'jetsom'
that may have gathered like barnacles about the two
weather-beaten hulks; in that case we should have
the two old files undressed, and in puris naturalibus;
they would be prepared for being weighed; and,
going to the nearest grocer's, we might then settle the
point at once, as to which of the two had been the
idler man. I back Horace for my part; and it is my
private opinion that, in the case of a quarto edition,
the grocer would have to throw at least a two ounce
weight into the scale of Lucretius, before he could be
made to draw against the other. Yet, after all, this
would only be a collation of quantity against quantity;
whilst, upon a second collation of quality against quality, (I do not mean quality as regards the final merit
of the composition, but quality as regards the difficul.
ties in the process of composition,) the difference in
amount of labor would appear to be as between -the
weaving of a blanket and the weaving of an exquisite
cambric. The curiosa felicitas of Horace in his lyric
compositions, the elaborate delicacy of workmanship
in his thoughts and in his style, argue a scale of labor




78                 JOHN KEATS.
that, as against any equal number of lines in Lucretius,
would measure itself by months against days. There
are single odes in Horace that must have cost him a
six weeks' seclusion from the wickedness of Rome.
Do I then question the extraordinary power of Lucretius? On the contrary, I admire him as the first of
demoniacs; the frenzy of an earth-born or a hell-born
inspiration; divinity of stormy music sweeping round
us in eddies, in order to prove that for us there could
be nothing divine; the grandeur of a prophet's voice
rising in angry gusts, by way of convincing us that
prophets were swindlers; oracular scorn of oracles;
frantic efforts, such as might seem reasonable in one
who was scaling the heavens, for the purpose of
degrading all things, making man to be, the most
abject of necessities as regarded his causes, to be the
blindest of accidents as regarded his expectations;
these fierce antinomies expose a mode of insanity, but
of an insanity affecting a sublime intellect.l One
would suppose him partially mad by the savagery of
his headlong manner. And most people who read
Lucretius at all, are aware of the traditional story
current in Rome, that he did actually write in a delirious state; not under any figurative disturbance of
brain, but under a real physical disturbance caused by
philters administered to him without his own knowledge. But this kind of supernatural afflatus did not
deliver into words and metre by lingering oscillations,
and through processes of self-correction: it threw
itself forward, and precipitated its own utterance, with
the hurrying and bounding of a cataract. It was an
aostrum, a rapture, the bounding of a mcenad, by




JOHN KEATS.                79
which the muse of Lucretius lived and moved. So
much is known by the impression about him current
among his contemporaries: so much is evident in the
characteristic manner of his poem, if all anecdotes
had perished. And, upon the whole, let the proportions of power between Horace and Lucretius be what
they may, the proportions of labor are absolutely
incommensurable: in Horace the labor was directly
as the power, in Lucretius inversely as the power.
Whatsoever in Horace was best -had been obtained
by most labor; whatsoever in Lucretius was best - by
least. In Horace, the exquisite skill co-operated with
the exquisite nature; in Lucretius, the powerful nature
disdained the skill, which, indeed, would not have
been applicable to his theme, or to his treatment of
it, and triumphed by means of mere precipitation of
volume, and of headlong fury.
Another paradox of Mr. Gilfillan's, under this head,
is, that he classes Dr. Johnson as indolent; and it is
the more startling, because he does not utter it as a
careless opinion upon which he might have been
thrown by inconsideration, but as a concession extorted
from him reluctantly: he had sought to evade it, but
could not. Now, that Dr. Johnson had a morbid
predisposition to decline labor from his scrofulous
habit of body,2 is probable. The question for us,
however, is, not what nature prompted him to do, but
what he did. If he had an extra difficulty to fight
with in attempting to labor, the more was his merit
in the known result, that he did fight with that difficulty, and that he conquered it. This is undeniable.
And the attempt to deny it presents itself in a comic




80                 JOHN KEATS.
shape, when one imagines some ancient shelf in a
library, that has groaned for nearly a century under
the weight of the doctor's works, demanding,' How
say you? Is this Sam Johnson, whose Dictionary
alone is a load for a camel, one of those authors
whom you call idle? Then Heaven preserve us poor
oppressed book-shelves from such as you will consider
active.'  George III., in a compliment as happily
turned as if it had proceeded from Louis XIV.,
expressed his opinion upon this question of the doctor's
industry by saying, that he also should join in thinking
Johnson too voluminous a contributor to literature,
were it not for the extraordinary merit of his contributions. Now it would be an odd way of turning the
royal praise into a reproach, if we should say;'Sam,
had you been a pretty good writer, we, your countrymen, should have held you to be also an industrious
writer: but, because you are a very good writer,
therefore we pronounce you a lazy vagabond.'
Upon other points in this discussion there is some
room to differ from Mr. Gilfillan. For instance, with
respect to the question of the comparative happiness
enjoyed by men of genius, it is not necessary to argue,
nor does it seem possible to prove, even in the case of
any one individual poet, that, on the whole, he was
either more happy or less happy than the average
mass of his fellow-men: far less could this be argued
as to the whole class of poets. What seems really
open to proof, is, that men of genius have a larger
capacity of happiness, which capacity, both from
within and from without, may be defeated in ten thousand ways. This seems involved in the very word




JOHN KEATS.                  81
genius.  For, after all the pretended,and  hollow
attempts to distinguish genius from talent, I shall
continue to think (what heretofore I have explained)
that no distinction in the case is tenable for a moment
but this: viz. that genius is that mode of intellectual
power which moves in alliance with the genial nature,
i. e. with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas
talent has no vestige of such an alliance, and is perfectly independent of all human sensibilities. Consequently, genius is a voice or breathing that represents
the total nature of man; whilst, on the contrary, talent
represents only a single  function of that nature.
Genius is the language which interprets the synthesis
of the human spirit with the human intellect, each
acting through the other; whilst talent speaks only
from the insulated intellect. And hence also it is
that, besides its relation to suffering and enjoyment,
genius always implies a deeper relation to virtue and
vice: whereas talent has no shadow of a relation to
moral qualities, any more than it has to vital sensibilities. A man of the highest talent is often obtuse and
below the ordinary standard of men in his feelings;
but no man of genius can unyoke himself from the
society of moral perceptions that are brighter, and
sensibilities that are more tremulous, than those of
men in general.
As to the examples 3 by which Mr. Gilfillan supports
his prevailing views, they will be construed by any
ten thousand men in ten thousand separate modes.
The objections are so endless, that it would be abusing
the reader's time to urge them; especially as every
man of the ten thousand will be wrong, and will also
6




82                JOHN KEATS.
be right, in all varieties of proportion. Two only it
may be useful to notice as examples, involving some
degree of error, viz. Addison and Homer. As to the
first, the error, if an error, is one of fact only. Lord
Byron had said of Addison, that he' died drunk.'
This seems to Mr. Gilfillan a' horrible statement;'
for which he supposes that no authority can exist but'a rumor circulated by an inveterate gossip,' meaning
Horace Walpole. But gossips usually go upon some
foundation, broad or narrow; and, until the rumor had
been authentically put down, Mr. Gilfillan should not
have pronounced it a'malignant calumny.' Me this
story caused to laugh exceedingly; not at Addison,
whose fine genius extorts pity and tenderness towards
his infirmities; but at the characteristic misanthropy of
Lord Byron, who chuckles as he would do over a glass
of nectar, on this opportunity for confronting the old
solemn legend about Addison's sending for his stepson, Lord Warwick, to witness the peaceful death of
a Christian, with so rich a story as this, that he, the
said Christian,' died drunk.' Supposing that he did,
the mere physical fact of inebriation, in a stage of
debility where so small an excess of stimulating
liquor (though given medicinally) sometimes causes
such an appearance, would not infer the moral blame
of drunkenness; and if such a thing were ever said
by any person present at the bed-side, I should feel
next to certain that it was said in that spirit of
exaggeration to which most men are tempted by
circumstances unusually fitted to impress a startling
picturesqueness upon the statement.  But, without
insisting on Lord Byron's way of putting the case,




JOHN KEATS.                 83
I believe it is generally understood that, latterly,
Addison gave way to habits of intemperance. He
suffered, not only from his wife's dissatisfied temper,
but also (and probably much more) from ennui. He
did not walk one mile a day, and he ought to have
walked ten. Dyspepsy was, no doubt, the true ground
of his unhappiness: and he had nothing to hope for.
To remedy these evils, I have always understood that
every day (and especially towards night) he drank too
much of that French liquor, which, calling itself water
of life, nine times in ten proves the water of death.
He lived latterly at Kensington, viz. in Holland
House, the well-known residence of the late Lord
Holland; and the tradition attached to the gallery in
that house, is, that duly as the sun drew near to
setting, on two tables, one at each end of the long
ambulachtrum, the right honorable Joseph placed, or
caused to be placed, two tumblers of brandy, somewhat diluted with water; and those, the said vessels,
then and there did alternately to the lips of him, the
aforesaid Joseph, diligently apply, walking to and fro
during the process of exhaustion, and dividing his
attention between the two poles, arctic and antartic,
of his evening diaulos, with the impartiality to be
expected from a member of the Privy Council. How
often the two' blessed bears,' northern and southern,
were replenished, entered into no affidavit that ever
reached me. But so much I have always understood,
that in the gallery of Holland House, the ex-secretary
of state caught a decided hiccup, which never after.
wards subsided. In all this there would have been
little to shock people, had it not been for the syco



84                JOHN KEATS.
phancy which ascribed to Addison a religious reputation such as he neither merited nor wished to claim.
But one penal reaction of mendacious adulation, for
him who is weak enough to accept it, must ever be,
to impose restraints upon his own conduct, which
otherwise he would have been free to decline. How
lightly would Sir Roger de Coverley have thought of
a little sotting in any honest gentleman of right politics! And Addison would not, in that age, and as to
that point, have carried his scrupulosity higher than
his own Sir Roger. But such knaves as he who had
complimented Addison with the praise of having
written'no line which, dying, he could wish to blot,'.
whereas, in fact, Addison started in life by publishing
a translation of Petronius Arbiter, had painfully
coerced his free agency. This knave, I very much
fear, was Tickell the first; and the result of his
knavery was, to win for Addison a disagreeable sanctimonious reputation that was, 1st, founded in lies;
2d, that painfully limited Addison's free agency;
and, 3dly, that prepared insults to his memory, since
it pointed a censorious eye upon those things viewed
as the acts of a demure pretender to piety, which
would else have passed without notice as the most
venial of frailties in a layman.
Something I had to say also upon Homer, who
mingles amongst the examples cited by Mr. Gilfillan,
of apparent happiness connected with genius. But,
for want of room,4 I forbear to go further, than to
lodge my protest against imputing to Homer as any
personal merit, what belongs altogether to the stage of
society in which he lived.'They,' says Mr. Gilfillan,




JOHN KEATS.                 85
speaking of the' Iliad' and the'Odyssey,''are the
healthiest of works. There are in them no sullenness,
no querulous complaint, not one personal allusion.'
No; but how could there have been? Subjective
poetry had not an existence in those days. Not only
the powers for introverting the eye upon the spectator,
as himself, the spectaculum, were then undeveloped
and inconceivable, but the sympathies did not exist to
which such an innovation could have appealed.
Besides, and partly from the same cause, even as
objects, the human feelings and affeztions were too
broadly and grossly distinguished, had not reached
even the infancy of that stage in which the passions
begin their processes of intermodification, nor could
have reached it, from the simplicity of social life, as
well as from the barbarism of the Greek religion.
The author of the' Iliad,' or even of the' Odyssey,'
(though doubtless a product of a later period,) could
not have been' unhealthy,' or' sullen,' or' querulous,'
from  any cause, except psora or elephantiasis, or
scarcity of beef, or similar afflictions with which it is
quite impossible to inoculate poetry. The metrical
romances of the middle ages have the same shivering
character of starvation, as to the inner life of man;
and, if that constitutes a meritorious distinction, no
man ought to be excused for wanting what it is so easy
to obtain by simple neglect of culture. On the same
principle, a cannibal, if truculently indiscriminate in
his horrid diet, might win sentimental praises for his
temperance; others were picking and choosing, miserable epicures! but he, the saint upon earth, cared
not what he ate; any joint satisfied his moderate




86                  JOHN KEATS.
desires; shoulder of man, leg of child; anything, in
fact, that was nearest at hand, so long as it was good,
wholesome human flesh; and the more plainly dressed
the better.
But these topics, so various and so fruitful, I touch
only because they are introduced, amongst many
others, by Mr. Gilfillan. Separately viewed, some
of these would be more attractive than any merely
personal interest connected with Keats. His biography, stripped of its false coloring, offers little to win
attention: for he was not the victim of any systematic
malignity, as has been represented. He met, as I
have understood, with unusual kindness from his
liberal publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. He
met with unusual severity from a cynical reviewer, the
late Mr. Gifford, then editor of The Quarterly Review.
The story ran, that this article o)f Mr. G.'s had killed
Keats; upon which, with natural astonishment, Lord
Byron thus commented, in the 11th canto of Don
Juan:
John Keats who was kill'd off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, - without Greek,
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate:'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an Article.
Strange, indeed! and the friends, who honor Keats's
memory, should not lend themselves to a story so
degrading. He died, I believe, of pulmonary consumption; and would have died of it, probably, under




JOHN KEATS.                  87
any circumstances of prosperity as a poet. Doubtless, in a condition of languishing decay, slight causes
of irritation act powerfully. But it is hardly conceivable that one ebullition of splenetic bad feeling,
in a case so proverbially open to revision as the
pretensions of a poet, could have overthrown any
masculine life, unless where that life had already been
irrecoverably undermined by sickness.  As a man,
and viewed in relation to social objects, Keats was
nothing.  It was as mere an affectation when he
talked with apparent zeal of liberty, or human rights,
or human prospects, as is the hollow enthusiasm which
many people profess for music, or most poets for
external nature.  For these things Keats fancied that
he cared; but in reality he cared not at all. Upon
them, or any of their aspects, he had thought too
little, and too indeterminately, to feel for them as
personal concerns. Whereas Shelley, from his earliest
days, was mastered and shaken by the great moving
realities of life, as a prophet is by the burden of
wrath or of promise which he has been commissioned
to reveal. Had there been no such thing as literature,
Keats would have dwindled into a cipher.  Shelley, in
the same event, would hardly have lost one plume
from  his crest. It is in relation to literature, and to
the boundless questions as to the true and the false
arising out of literature and poetry, that Keats challenges a fluctuating interest; sometimes an interest
of strong disgust, sometimes of deep admiration.
There is not, I believe, a case on record throughout
European literature, where feelings so repulsive of
each other have centred in the same individual.




88                 JOHN KEATS.
The very midsummer madness of affectation, of false
vapory sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy, seemed
to me combined in Keats's Endymion, when I first
saw it near the close of 1821. The Italian poet,
Marino, had been reputed the greatest master of gossamery affectation in Europe. But his conceits showed
the palest of rosy blushes by the side of Keats's
bloody crimson. Naturally, I was discouraged from
looking further. But about a week later, by pure
accident, my eye fell upon his Hyperion. The first
feeling was that of incredulity that the two poems
could, under change of circumstances or lapse of
time, have emanated from the same mind. The
Endymion displays absolutely the most shocking revolt
against good sense and just feeling, that all literature
does now, or ever can, furnish. The Hyperion, as,
Mr. Gilfillan truly says,'is the greatest of poetical
torsos.' The first belongs essentially to the vilest
collections of wax-work filagree, or gilt gingerbread.
The other presents the majesty, the austere beauty,
and the simplicity of Grecian temples enriched with
Grecian sculpture...,
We have in this country a word, viz. the word Folly,
which has a technical appropriation to the case of
fantastic buildings. Any building is called'a folly,' 5
which mimics purposes incapable of being realized,
and makes a promise to the eye which it cannot keep
to the experience. The most impressive illustration
of this idea, which modern times have seen, was,
undoubtedly, the ice-palace of the Empress Eliza.
beth 6
That most magnificent and mighty freak,'




JOHN KEATS.                    89
which, about eighty years ago, was called up from the
depths of winter by'The imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ.'
Winter and the Czarina were, in this architecture,
fellow-laborers. She, by her servants, furnished the
blocks of ice, hewed them, dressed them, laid them:
winter furnished the cement, by freezing them together. The palace has long melted back into water;
and the poet who described it best, viz. Cowper, is not
so much read in this age, except by the religious. It
will, therefore, be a sort of resurrection for both the
palace and the poet, if I cite his description of this
gorgeous folly. It is a passage in which Cowper
assumes so much of a Miltonic tone, that, of the two,
it is better to have read his lasting description, than to
have seen, with bodily eyes, the fleeting reality. The
poet is apostrophizing the Empress Elizabeth.
-____' No forest fell,
When thou wouldst build: no quarry sent its stores
To enrich thy walls: but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose:
No sound of hammer or of saw was there:
Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts
Were soon conjoin'd, nor other cement ask'd
Than water interfus'd to make them one.
Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues,
Illumin'd every side; a watery light
Gleam'd through the clear transparency, that seem'd
Another moon new-risen:




90                   JOHN KEATS.
Nor wanted aught within
That royal residence might well befit
For grandeur or for use. Long weavy wreaths
Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth,
Blush'd on the panels. Mirror needed none,
Where all was vitreous: but in order due
Convivial table and commodious seat
(What seemn'd at least commodious seat) were there;
Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august.
The same lubricity was found in all,
And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene
Of evanescent glory, once a stream,
And soon to slide into a stream again.'
The poet concludes by viewing the whole as an
unintentional stroke of satire by the Czarina,'On her~own estate,
On human grandeur, and the courts of kings.'T was transient in its nature, as in show'T was durable; as worthless, as it seem'd
Intrinsically precious: to the foot
Treacherous and false, - it'smiled, and it was cold.'
Looking at this imperial plaything of ice in the
month of March, and recollecting that in May all its
crystal arcades would be weeping away into vernal
brooks, one would have been disposed to mourn over
a beauty so frail, and to marvel at a frailty so elaborate. Yet still there was some proportion observed:
the saloons were limited in number, though not limited
in splendor. It was a petit Trianon. But what if,
like Versailles, this glittering bauble, to which all the
science of Europe could not have secured a passport
into June, had contained six thousand separate rooms?
A'folly' on so gigantic a scale would have moved




JOHN KEATS.                  91
every man to indignation. For all that could be had,
the beauty to the eye, and the gratification to the
fancy, in seeing water tortured into every form'of
solidity, resulted from two or three suites of rooms, as
fully as from a thousand.
Now, such a folly, as would have been the Czarina's, if executed upon the scale of Versailles, or of
the new palace at St. Petersbugh, was the Endymion:
a gigantic edifice (for its tortuous enigmas of thought
multiplied every line of the four thousand into fifty)
reared upon a basis slighter and less apprehensible
than moonshine. As reasonably, and as hopefully in
regard to human sympathies, might a man undertake
an epic poem upon the loves of two butterflies. The
modes of existence in the two parties to the love-fable
of the Endymion, their relations to each other and to
us, their prospects finally, and the obstacles to the
instant realization of these prospects, - all these
things are more vague, and incomprehensible than
the reveries of an oyster.  Still the unhappy subject,
and its unhappy expansion, must be laid to the account
of childish years and childish inexperience. But there
is another fault in Keats, of the first magnitude, which
youth does not palliate, which youth even aggravates.
This lies in the most shocking abuse of his mothertongue. If there is one thing in this world that, next
after the flag of his country and its spotless honor,
should be wholly in the eyes of a young poet,- it is
the language of his country. He should spend the
third part of his life in studying this language, and
cultivating its total resources. He should be willing to
pluck out his right eye, or to circumnavigate the globe,




92                JOHN KEATS.
if by such a sacrifice, if by such an exertion, he could
attain to greater purity, precision, compass, or idiomatic-energy of diction. This if he were even a Kalmuck Tartar, who by the way has the good feeling
and patriotism to pride himself upon his beastly language.7 But Keats was an Englishman; Keats had
the honor to speak the language of Chaucer, Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton. The more awful was
the obligation of his allegiance. And yet upon this
mother tongue, upon this English language, has Keats
trampled as with the hoofs of a buffalo. With its
syntax, with its prosody, with its idiom, he has played
such fantastic tricks as could enter only into the heart
of a barbarian, and for which only the anarchy of
Chaos could furnish a forgiving audience. Verily it
required  the Hyperion to weigh against the deep
treason of these unparalleled offences.




NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 78.
THERE is one peculiarity about Lucretius which, even in the
absence of all anecdotes to that effect, would have led an
observing reader to suspect some unsoundness in his brain.
It is this, and it lies in his manner. In all poetic enthusiasm,
however grand and sweeping may be its compass, so lohg as
it is healthy and natural, there is a principle of self-restoration
in the opposite direction: there is a counter state of repose, a
compensatory state, as in the tides of the sea, which tends
continually to re-establish the equipoise. The lull is no less
intense than the fury of commotion. But in Lucretius there
is no lull. Nor would there seem to be any, were it not for two
accidents: 1st, the occasional pause in his raving tone enforced
by the interruption of an episode; 2dly, the restraints (or at
least the suspensions) imposed upon him by the difficulties of
argument conducted in verse.  To dispute metrically, is as
embarrassing as to run or dance when knee-deep in sand.
Else, and apart from these counteractions, the motion of the
style is not only stormy, but self-kindling and continually
accelerated.
NOTE 2. Page 79.'Habit of body:' but much more from mismanagement of
his body. Dr. Johnson tampered with medical studies, and
fancied himself learned enough to prescribe for his female




94                    JOHN KEATS.
correspondents. The affectionateness with which he sometimes did this is interesting; but his ignorance of the subject
is not the less apparent. In his own case he had the merit of
one heroic self-conquest; he weaned himself from wine, having once become convinced that it was injurious. But he
never brought himself to take regular exercise. He ate too
much at all times of his life. And in another point, he
betrayed a thoughtlessness, which (though really common as
laughter) is yet extravagantly childish. Every body knows
that Dr. Johnson was all his life reproaching himself with
lying too long in bed. Always he was sinning, (for he thought
it a sin;) always he was repenting; always he was vainly
endeavoring to reform. But why vainly? Cannot a resolute
man in six weeks bring himself to rise at any hour of the
twenty-four? Certainly he can; but not without appropriate
means. Now the Doctor rose about eleven, A. M. This, he
fancied, was shocking; he was determined to rise at eight, or
at seven. Very well; why not? But will it be credited that
the one sole change occuring to the Doctor's mind, was to take
a flying leap backwards from eleven to eight, without any
corresponding leap at the other terminus of his sleep. To
rise at eight instead of eleven, presupposes that a man goes
off to bed at twelve instead of three. Yet this recondite
truth, never to his dying day dawned on Dr. Johnson's mind.
The conscientious man continued to offend; continued to repent; continued to pave a disagreeable place with good intentions, and daily resolutions of amendment; but at length died
full of years, without having once seen the sun rise, except in
some Homeric description, written [as Mr. Fynes Clifton
makes it probable] thirty centuries before. The fact of the
sun's rising at all, the Doctor adopted as a point of faith, and
by no means of personal knowledge, from an insinuation to
that effect in the most ancient of Greek books.
NOTE 3. Page 81.
One of these examples is equivocal, in a way that Mr. Gilfillan is apparently not aware of. He cites Tickell,' whose




NOTES.                        95
very name' [he says]'savors of laughter,' as being,'in
fact, a very happy fellow.' In the first place, Tickell would
have been likly to' square' at Mr. Gilfillan for that liberty
taken with his name; or might even, in Falstaff's language,
have tried to'tickle his catastrophe.' It is a ticklish thing to
lark with honest men's names. But, secondly, which Tickell?
For there are two at the least in the field of English literature:
and if one of them was'very happy,' the chances are, according to D. Bernoulli and De Moivre, that the other was
particularly miserable. The first Tickell, who may be described as Addison's Tickell, never tickled anything, that I
know of, except Addison's vanity. But Tickell the second,
who came into working order about fifty years later, was
really a very pleasant fellow.  In the time of Burke he
diverted the whole nation by his poem of'Anticipation,' in
which he anticipated and dramatically rehearsed the course of
a whole Parliamentary debate, (on the king's speech,) which
did not take place till a week or two afterwards. Such a
mimicry was easy enough: but that did not prevent its fidelity
and characteristic truth from delighting the political world.
NOTE 4. Page 84.
For the same reason, I refrain from noticing the pretensions
of Savage. MIr. Gilfillan gives us to understand, that not
from want of room, but of time, he does not (which else he
could) prove him to be the man he pretended to be. For my
own part, 1 believe Savage to have been the vilest of swindlers; and in these days, under the surveillance of an active
police, he would have lost the chance which he earned of
being hanged, by having long previously been transported to
the Plantations. How can MIr. Gilfillan allow himself, in a
case of this nature, to speak of' universal impression' (if it
had really existed) as any separate ground of credibility for
Savage's tale? When the public have no access at all to
sound means of judging, what matters it in which direction
their'impression' lies, or how many thousands swell the




69                    JOHN KEATS.
belief, for which not one of all these thousands has anything
like a reason to offer?
NOTE 5. Page 88.'A folly.' We English limit the application of this term to
buildings: but the idea might as fitly be illustrated in other
objects. For instance, the famous galley presented to one of
the Ptolemies, which offered the luxurious accommodations of
capital cities, but required a little army of four thousand men
to row it, whilst its draught of water was too great to allow of
its often approaching the shore; this was'a folly' in our
English sense. So again was the Macedonian phalanx: the
Roman legion could form upon any ground: it was a true
working tool. But the phalanx was too fine and showy for
use. It required for its manceuvring a sort of opera stage, or
a select bowling-green, such as few fields of battle offered.
NOTE 6. Page 88.
I had written the'Empress Catherine;' but, on second
thoughts, it occurred to me that the'mighty freak' was, in
fact, due to the Empress Elizabeth. There is, however, a
freak connected with ice, not quite so' mighty,' but quite as
autocratic, and even more feminine in its caprice, which
belongs exclusively to the Empress Catherine. A lady had
engaged the affections of some young noblemen, who was
regarded favorably by the imperial eye. No'pretext offered
itself for interdicting the marriage; but, by way of freezing
it a little at the outset, the Czarina coupled with her permission this condition - that the wedding night should be passed
by the young couple on a mattress of her gift. The mattress
turned out to be a block of ice, elegantly cut, by the court
upholsterer, into the likeness of a well-stuffed Parisian mattress. One pities the poor bride, whilst it is difficult to avoid
laughing in the midst of one's sympathy. But it is to be hoped
that no ukase was issued against spreading seven Turkey carpets,
by way of under-blankets, over this amiable nuptial present.
Amongst others who have noticed the story, is Captain Colville
Frankland, of the navy.




NOTES.                       97
NOTE 7. Page 92.
Bergmann, the German traveller, in his account of his long
rambles and residence amongst the Kalmucks, makes us
acquainted with the delirious vanity which possesses these
demi-savages. Their notion is, that excellence of every kind,
perfection in the least things as in the greatest, is briefly
expressed by calling it IKalmuckish. Accordingly, their hideous
language, and their vast national poem, [doubtless equally
hideous,] they hold to be the immediate gifts of inspiration:
and for this I honor them, as each generation learns both from
the lips of their mothers. This great poem, by the way,
measures (if I remember) seventeen English miles in length;
but the most learned man amongst them, in fact a monster of
erudition, never read farther than the eighth mile-stone. What
he could repeat by heart was little more than a mile and a
half; and, indeed, that was found too much for the choleric
part of his audience. Even the Kalmuck face, which to us
foolish Europeans looks so unnecessarily flat and ogre-like,
these honest Tartars have ascertained to be the pure classical model of human beauty, - which, in fact, it is, upon the
principle of those people who hold that the chief use of a face
is - to frighten one's enemy.
7








OLIVER  GOLDSMITIJ.*
THIs book accomplishes a retribution which the
world has waited for through seventy and odd years.
Welcome at any rate by its purpose, it is trebly welcome by its execution, to all hearts that linger indulgently over the frailties of a national favorite once
wickedly exaggerated — to all hearts that brood indignantly over the powers of that favorite once
maliciously undervalued.
A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving
through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir,
lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two
separate theatres of interest: one in his personal
career; the other in his works and his intellectual
development. Both unfold together: and each bor.
rows a secondary interest from the other: the life
from the recollection of the works - the works from
the joy and sorrow of the life. There have, indeed,
been authors whose great creations, severely preconceived in a region of thought transcendent to all
impulses of earth, would have been pretty nearly
what they are under any possible changes in the'
* The Life and Adventures of Goldsmith, by John Forster.




100            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
dramatic arrangement of their lives. Happy or not
happy —gay or sad —these authors would equally
have fulfilled a mission too solemn and too stern in
its obligations to suffer any warping from chance, or
to bend before the accidents of life, whether dressed
in sunshine or in wintry gloom. But generally this
is otherwise. Children of Paradise, like the Miltons
of our planet, have the privilege of stars- to' dwell
apart.' But the children of flesh, whose pulses beat
too sympathetically with the agitations of motherearth, cannot sequester themselves in that way. They
walk in no such altitudes, but at elevations easily
reached by ground-winds of humble calamity. And
from that cup of sorrow, which upon all lips is pressed
in some proportion, they must submit, by the very
tenure on which they hold their gifts, to drink, if not
more profoundly than others, yet always with more
peril to the accomplishment of their earthly mission.
Amongst this household of children too tremulously
associated to the fluctuations of earth, stands forward
conspicuously Oliver Goldsmith. And there is a belief
current —that he was conspicuous, not only in the
sense of being constitutionally flexible to the impressions of sorrow and adversity, in case they had hap.
pened to occur, but also that he really had more than
his share of those afflictions.  We are disposed to
think that this was not so. Our trust is, that Goldsmith lived upon the whole a life which, though
troubled, was one of average enjoyment. Unquestionably, when reading at midnight, and in the middle
watch of a century which he never reached, this
record of one so amiable, so guileless, so upright, or




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             101
seeming to be otherwise for a moment only in the
eyes of those who did not know his difficulties, nor
could have understood them; when recurring also to
his admirable genius, to the sweet natural gaiety of
his oftentimes pathetic humor, and to the varied accomplishments from talent or erudition, by which he
gave effect to endowments so fascinating -one cannot
but sorrow over the strife which he sustained, and
over the wrong by which he suffered. A few natural
tears one sheds at the rehearsal of so much contumely
from fools, which he stood under unresistingly as one
bareheaded under a hail-storm;1 and worse to bear
than the scorn of fools, was the imperfect sympathy
and jealous self-distrusting esteem which he received
to the last from friends. Doubtless he suffered much
wrong; but so, in one way or other, do most men:
he suffered also this special wrong, that in his lifetime he never was fully appreciated by any one friend
— something of a counter-movement ever mingled
with praise for him - he never saw himself enthroned
in the heart of any young and fervent admirer, and
he was always overshadowed by men less deeply
genial, though more showy than himself: but these
things happen, and have happened to myriads amongst
the benefactors of earth. Their names ascend in
songs of thankful commemoration, but not until the
ears are deaf that would have thrilled to the music.
And these were the heaviest of Goldsmith's afflictions:
what are likely to be thought such, viz. the battles
which he fought for his daily bread, we do not number
amongst them. To struggle is not to suffer.  Heaven
grants to few of us a life of untroubled prosperity,




102             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
and grants it least of all to its favorites. Charles I.
carried, as it was thought by a keen Italian judge of
physiognomy, a predestination to misery written in
his features. And it is probable that if any Cornelius
Agrippa had then been living, to show him in early
life the strife, the bloodshed, the triumphs of enemies,
the treacheries of friends, the separation for ever from
the familiar faces of his hearth, which darkened the
years from 1642 to 1649, he would have said-' Prophet of wo! if I bear to live through this vista
of seven years, it is because at the further end of it
thou showest me the consolation of a scaffold.' And
yet our persuasion is, that in the midst of its deadly
agitations and its torments of suspense, probably
enough by the energies of hope, or even of anxiety
which exalted it, that period of bitter conflict was
found by the king a more ennobling life than he would
have found in the torpor of a prosperity too profound.
To be cloyed perpetually is a worse fate than sometimes to stand within the vestibule of starvation; and
we need go no further than the confidential letters
of the court ladies of this and other countries to satisfy
ourselves how much worse in its effects upon happiness than any condition of alarm and peril, is the
lethargic repose of luxury too monotonous, and of
security too absolute. If, therefore, Goldsmith's life
had been one of continual struggle, it would not follow
that it had therefore sunk below the standard of ordinary happiness. But the life-struggle of Goldsmith,
though severe enough (after all allowances) to challenge a feeling of tender compassion, was not in such
a degree severe as has been represented.2 He en



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.              103
joyed two great immunities from suffering that have
been much overlooked; and such immunities that, in
our opinion, four in five of all the people ever con.
nected with Goldsmith's works, as publishers, printers,
compositors (that is, men taken at random), have very
probably suffered more, upon the whole, than he.
The immunities were these: - 1st, From any bodily
taint of low spirits. He had a constitutional gaiety
of heart; an elastic hilarity; and, as he himself expresses it,' a knack of hoping'- which knack could
not be bought with Ormus and with Ind, nor hired for
a day with the peacock-throne of Delhi. How easy
was it to bear the brutal affront of being to his face
described as' Doctor minor,' when one hour or less
would dismiss the Doctor major, so invidiously contradistinguished from himself, to a struggle with scrofulous melancholy; whilst he, if returning to solitude
and a garret, was returning also to habitual cheerfulness. There lay one iwnmunity, beyond all price,
from a mode of strife to which others, by a large
majority, are doomed —strife with bodily wretchedness. Another immunity he had of almost equal
value, and yet almost equally forgotten by his biographers, viz., from the responsibilities of a family.
Wife and children he had not. They it is that, being
a man's chief blessings, create also for him the dead.
liest of his anxieties, that stuff his pillow with thorns,
that surround his daily path with snares. Suppose the
case of a man who has helpless dependents of this
class upon himself summoned to face some sudden
failure of his resources: how shattering to the power
of exertion, and, above all, of exertion by an organ




104            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
so delicate as the creative intellect, dealing with subjects so coy as those of imaginative sensibility, to
know that instant ruin attends his failure. Success in
such paths of literature might at the best be doubtful;
but success is impossible, with any powers whatever,
unless in a genial state of those powers; and this
geniality is to be sustained in the case supposed, whilst
the eyes are fixed upon the most frightful of abysses
yawning beneath his feet. He is to win his inspiration for poetry or romance from the prelusive cries
of infants clamoring for daily bread. Now, on the
other hand, in the case of an extremity equally sudden
alighting on the head of a man in Goldsmith's position, having no burden to support but the trivial one
of his own personal needs, the resources are endless
for gaining time enough to look around. Suppose
him ejected from his lodgings; let him walk into the
country, with a pencil and a sheet of paper; there
sitting under a hay-stack far one morning, he may
produce what will pay his expenses for a week: a
day's labor will carry the sustenance of ten days.
Poor may be the trade of authorship, but it is as good
as that of a slave in Brazil, whose one hour's work
will defray the twenty-four hours' living. As a reader,
or corrector of proofs, a good Latin and French scholar
(like Goldsmith) would always have enjoyed a preference, we presume, at any eminent printing-office.
This again would have given him time for looking
round; or, he might perhaps have obtained the same
advantage for deliberation from some confidential
friend's hospitality. In short, Goldsmith enjoyed the
two privileges, one subjective - the other objective -




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             105
which, when uniting in the same man, would prove
more than a match for all difficulties that could arise
in a literary career to him who was at once a man of
genius so popular, of talents so versatile, of reading
so various, and of opportunities so large for still more
extended reading. The subjective privilege lay in his
buoyancy of animal spirits; the objective in his freedom  from  responsibilities.  Goldsmith wanted very
little more than Diogenes: now Diogenes could only
have been robbed of his tub:3 which perhaps was
about as big as most of poor Goldsmith's sitting-rooms,
and far better ventilated. So that the liability of these
two men, cynic and non-cynic, to the kicks of fortune,
was pretty much on a par; whilst Goldsmith had the
advantage of a better temper for bearing them, though
certainly Diogenes had the better climate for soothing
his temper.
But it may be imagined, that if Goldsmith were
thus fortunately equipped for authorship, on the other
hand, the position of literature, as a money-making
resource, was in Goldsmith's days less advantageous
than ours. We are not of that opinion; and the representation by which Mr. Forster endeavors to sustain
it seems to us a showy but untenable refinement. The
outline of his argument is, that the aristocratic patron
had, in Goldsmith's day, by the progress of society,
disappeared; he belonged to the past -that the mercenary publisher had taken his place -he represented
the ugly present —but that the great reading public
(that true and equitable patron, as some fancy) had
not yet matured its means of effectual action upon
literature: this reading public virtually, perhaps, be



106            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
longed to the future. All this we steadfastly resist.
No doubt the old full-blown patron, en grand costume,
with his heraldic bearings emblazoned at the head of
the Dedication, was dying out, like the golden pippin.
But he still lingered in sheltered situations. And part
of the machinery by which patronage had ever moved,
viz. using influence for obtaining subscriptions, was
still in capital working order - a fact which we know
from Goldsmith himself (see the Enquiry); for he
tells us that a popular mode of publication amongst
bad authors, and certainly it needed no publisher's
countersign, was by means of subscription papers:
upon which, as we believe, a considerable instalment
was usually paid down when as yet the book existed
only by way of title-page, supposing that the whole
sum were not even paid up. Then as to the publisher
(a nuisance, we dare say, in all stages of his Natural
History), he could not have been a weed first springing
up in Goldsmith's time, but must always have been an
indispensable broker or middleman between the author
and tfie world. In the days even of Horace and Martial the book-seller (bibliopola) clearly acted as book.
publisher. Amongst other passages proving this, and
showing undeniably that Martial at least had sold the
copyright of his work to his publisher, is one arguing
pretty certainly that the price of a gay drawing-room
copy must have been hard upon ~1. Ils. 6d. Did ever
any man hear the like? A New York newspaper would
have been too happy to pirate the whole of Martial
had he been three times as big, and would have engaged to drive the bankrupt publisher into a madhouse
for twopence. Now, it cannot be supposed that Mar



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             107
tial, a gay light-hearted fellow, willing to let the public
have his book for a shilling, or perhaps for love, had
been the person to put that ridiculous price upon it.
We may conclude that it was the publisher. As to
the public, that respectable character must always
have presided over the true and final court of appeal,
silently defying alike the prestige of patronage and the
intriguing mysteries of publishing. Lordly patronage
might fill the sails of one edition, and masterly publishing of three. But the books that ran contagiously
through the educated circles, or that lingered amongst
them for a generation, must have owed their success
to the unbiassed feelings of the reader - not overawed
by authority, not mystified by artifice. Varying, hoxwever, in whatever proportion as to power, the three
possible parties to an act of publication will always be
seen intermittingly at work_ the voluptuous selfindulging public, and the insidious publisher, of course;
but even the brow-beating patron still exists in a new
avatar. Formerly he made his descent upon earth in
the shape of Dedicatee; and it is true that this august
being, to whom dedications burned incense upon an
altar, withdrew into sunset and twilight during Goldsmith's period; but he still revisits the glimpses of the
moon in the shape of author. When the auctoritas of
a peer could no longer sell a book by standing at the
head of a dedication, it lost none of its power when
standing on the title-page as the author. Vast catalogues might be composed of books and pamphlets that
have owed a transient success to no other cause on
earth than the sonorous title, or the distinguished position of those who wrote them. Ceasing to patronize




108             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
other people's books, the grandee has still power to
patronize his own. All celebrities have this form of
patronage.  And, for instance, had the boy Jones4
(otherwise called inigo Jones) possessed enough of
book-making skill to forge a plausible curtain-lecture,
as overheard by himself when concealed in Her Majesty's bed-room, ten steam-presses working day and
night would not have supplied the public demand; and
even Her Majesty must herself have sent for a largepaper copy, were it only to keep herself au courant
of English literature. In short, first, the extrinsic
patronage of books; secondly, the self-patronage of
books in right of their merits; and thirdly, the artificial machineries for diffusing the knowledge of their
existence, are three forces in current literature that
ever have existed and must exist, in some imperfect
degree.  Horace recognises them in his' Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnse.'
The Di are the paramount public, arbitrating finally
on the fates of books, and generally on some just
ground of judgment, though it may be fearfully exaggerated on the scale of importance. The homines are
the publishers; and a sad homo the publisher sometimes is, particularly when he commits insolvency.
But the columna, are those pillars of state, the grandees
of our own age, or any other patrons, that support the
golden canopy of our transitory pomps, and thus shed
an alien glory of colored light from above upon the
books falling within that privileged area.
We are not therefore of Mr. Forster's opinion, that
Goldsmith fell upon an age less favorable to the ex



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.              109
pansion of literary powers, or to the attainment of
literary distinction, than any other. The patron might
be a tradition —but the public was not therefore a
prophecy.  My lord's trumpets had ceased to sound,
but the vox populi was not therefore muffled. The
means indeed of diffusive advertisement and of rapid
circulation, the combinations of readers into reading societies, and of roads into iron net-works,
were as yet imperfectly developed. These gave a
potent stimulus to periodic literature. And a still more
operative difference between ourselves and them is -
that a new class of people has since then entered our
reading public, viz. - the class of artisans and of all
below the gentry, which (taken generally) was in
Goldsmith's day a cipher as regarded any real encouragement to literature. In our days, if The Vicar
of Wakefield had been published as a Christmas tale,
it would have produced a fortune to the writer. In
Goldsmith's time, few below the gentry were readers
on any large scale. So far there really was a disadvantage. But it was a disadvantage which applied
chiefly to novels. The new influx of readers in our
times, the collateral affluents into the main stream
from the mechanic and provincial sections of our
population, which have centupled the volume of the
original current, cannot be held as telling favorably
upon literature, or telling at all, except in the departments of popularized science, of religion, of fictitious
tales, and of journalism. To be a reader, is no longer
as once it was, to be of a meditative turn. To be a
very popular author is no longer that honorary distinction which once it might have been amongst a more




110             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
elevated because more select body of readers. We
do not say this invidiously, or with any special refer.
ence. But it is evident that writers and readers must
often act and react for reciprocal degradation. A
writer of this day, either in France or England, to be
very popular, must be a story-teller; which is a function of literature neither very noble in itself, nor,
secondly, tending to permanence. All novels whatever, the best equally with the worst, have faded almost
with the generation that produced them. This is a
curse written as a superscription above the whole class.
The modes of combining characters, the particular
objects selected for sympathy, the diction, and often
the manners,5 hold up an imperfect mirror to any,generation that is not their own. And the reader of
novels belonging to an obsolete era, whilst acknowledging the skill of the groupings, or the beauty of the
situations, misses the echo to that particular revelation
of human nature which has met him in the social
aspects of his own day; or too often he is perplexed
by an expression which, having dropped into a lower
use, disturbs the unity of the impression, or is revolted
by a coarse sentiment, which increasing refinement
has made unsuitable to the sex or to the rank of the
character. How bestial and degrading at this day
seem many of the scenes in Smollett! How coarse
are the ideals of Fielding! - his odious Squire Western, his odious Tom Jones! What a gallery of histrionic masqueraders is thrown open in the novels of
Richardson, powerful as they were once found by the
two leading nations of the earth.  A popular writer,
therefore, who, in order to be popular, must speak




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             111
through novels, speaks to what is least permanent in
human sensibilities. That is already to, be self-degraded. Secondly, because the novel-reading class is
by far the most comprehensive one, and being such,
must count as a large majority amongst its members
those who are poor in capacities of thinking, and
are passively resigned to the instinct of immediate
pleasure — to these the writer must chiefly humble
himself: he must study their sympathies, must assume
them, must give them back. In our days, he must
give them back even their own street slang; so servile
is the modern novelist's dependence on his canaille of
an audience. In France, amongst the Sues, &c., it
has been found necessary to give back even the closest
portraits of obscene atrocities that shun the light, and
burrow only in the charnel-houses of vast manufacturing towns. Finally, the very principle of commanding attention only by the interest of a tale, which
means the interest of a momentary curiosity that is to
vanish for ever in a sense of satiation, and of a momentary suspense that, having once collapsed, can
never be rekindled, is in itself a confession of reliance upon the meaner offices of the mind] The result
from  all which is — that to be popular in the most
extensive walk of popularity, that is, as a novelist, a
writer must generally be in a very considerable degree
self-degraded by sycophancy to the lowest order of
minds, and cannot (except for mercenary purposes)
think himself advantageously placed.
To have missed, therefore, this enormous expansion
of the reading public, however unfortunate for Goldsmith's purse, was a great escape for his intellectual




112            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
purity. Every man has two-edged tendencies lurking
within himself, pointing in one direction to what will
expand the elevating principles of his nature, pointing
in another to what will tempt him to its degradation.
A mob is a dreadful audience for chafing and irritating the latent vulgarisms of the human heart.
Exaggeration and caricature, before such a tribunal,
become inevitable, and  sometimes almost a duty.
The genial but not very delicate humor of Goldsmith
would in such circumstances have slipped, by the most
natural of transitions, into buffoonery; the unaffected
pathos of Goldsmith would, by a monster audience,
have been debauched into theatrical sentimentality.
All the motions of Goldsmith's nature moved in the
direction of the true, the natural, the sweet, the gentle.
In the quiet times, politically speaking, through which
his course of life travelled, he found a musical echo
to the tenor of his own original sensibilities —in the
architecture of European history, as it unfolded its
proportions along the line of his own particular experience, there was a symmetry with the proportions of
his own unpretending mind. Our revolutionary age
would have unsettled his brain. The colossal movements of nations, from within and from without; the
sorrow of the times, which searches so deeply; the
grandeur of the times, which aspires so loftily; these
forces, acting for the last fifty years by secret sympathy upon our fountains of thinking and impassioned
speculation, have raised them from depths never
visited by our fathers, into altitudes too dizzy for
their contemplating. This generation and the last,
with their dreadful records, would have untuned Gold



OLIVER GOLDSMITII.              113
smith for writing in the key that suited him; and us
they would have untuned for understanding his music,
had we not learned to understand it in childhood,
before the mutfering hurricanes in the upper air had
begun to reach our young ears, and forced them away
to the thundering overhead, from the carolling of birds
amongst earthly bowers.
* Goldsmith, therefore, as regards the political aspects
of his own times, was fortunately placed; a thrush or
a nightingale is hushed by the thunderings which are
awakening to Jove's eagle.  But an author stands in
relation to other influences than political; and some
of these are described by Mr. Forster as peculiarly
unfavorable to comfort and respectability at the era of
Goldsmith's novitiate in literature. Will Mr. Forster
excuse us for quarrelling with his whole doctrine upon
this subject — a subject and a doctrine continually
forced upon our attention in these days, by the extending lines of our own literary order, and continually
refreshed in warmth of coloring by the contrast as
regards social consideration, between our literary body
and the corresponding order in France. The questions arising have really a general interest, as well as
a special one, in connection with Goldsmith; and
therefore we shall stir them a little, not with any view
of exhausting the philosophy that is applicable to the
case, but simply of amusing some readers (since
Pliny's remark on history is much more true of literature or literary gossip, viz., that' quoquo modo scripta
delectat;') and with the more ambitious purpose of
recalling some other readers from precipitate conclu8




114            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
sions upon a subject where nearly all that is most
plausible bappens to be most untrue.
Mr. Forster, in his views upon the social rights of
literature, is rowing pretty nearly in the same boat as
Mr. Carlyle in his views upon the rights of labor.
Each denounces, or by implication denounces, as an
oppression and a nuisance, what we believe to be a
necessity inalienable from the economy and structure
of our society. Some years ago Mr. Carlyle offended
us all (or all of us that were interested in social philosophy) by enlarging on a social affliction, which few
indeed needed to see exposed, but most men would
have rejoiced to see remedied, if it were but on paper,
and by way of tentative suggestion. Precisely at that
point, however, where his aid was invoked, Mr. Carlyle
halted. So does Mr. Forster with regard to his grievance; he states it, and we partly understand him - as
ancient Pistol says-' We hear him with ears;' and
when we wait for him to go on, saying -' XWell, here's
a sort of evil in life, how would you redress it? you've
shown, or you've made another hole in the tin-kettle
of society; how do you propose to tinker it?'behold! he is suddenly almost silent. But this cannot
be allowed. The right to insist upon a well known
grievance cannot be granted to that man (Mr. Carlyle,
for instance, or Mr. Forster) who uses it as matter of
blame and denunciation, unless, at the same time, he
points out the methods by which it could have been
prevented. He that simply bemoans an evil has a
right to his moan, though he should make no pretensions to a remedy; but he that criminates, that
imputes the evil as a fault, that charges the evil upon




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.              115
selfishness or neglect lurking in some alterable arrangements of society, has no right to do so, unless he can
instantly sketch the remedy; for the very first step by
which he could have learned that the evil involved a
blame, the first step that could have entitled him to
denounce it as a wrong, must have been that step
which brought him within the knowledge (wanting to
everybody else) that it admitted of a cure. A wrong
it could not have been even in his eyes, so long as it
was a necessity, nor a ground of complaint until the
cure appeared to him a possibility. And the overriding motto for these parallel speculations of Messrs.
Carlyle and Forster, in relation to the frailties of our
social system, ought to have been —' Sanabilibus
acgrotamus malls.' Unless with this watchword they
had no right to commence their crusading march.
Curable evils justify clamorous complaints; the incurable justify only prayers.
Why it was that Mr. Carlyle, in particular, halted so
steadily at the point where his work of love was first
beginning, it is not difficult to guess. As the' Statutes
at large' have not one word against the liberty of
unlicensed hypothesis, it is conceivable that Mr. C.
might have indulged a little in that agreeable pastime:
but this, he was well aware, would have brought him
in one moment under the fire of Political Economy,
from the whole vast line of its modern batteries.
These gentlemen, the economists, would have torn to
ribbons, within fifteen minutes, any positive speculation for amending the evil. It was better, therefore,
to keep within the trenches of the blank negative,
pointing to everything as wrong -horribly wrong, but




116             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
never hinting at the mysterious right: which, to this
day, we grieve to say, remains as mysterious as
ever.6
Passing to Mr. Forster, who (being capable of a
splendor so original) disappoints us most when he
reminds us of Mr. Carlyle, by the most disagreeable
of that gentleman's phraseological forms; and, in this
instance, by a speculation twin-sister to the economic
one just noticed; we beg to premise that in anything
here said, it is far from our wish to express disaffection
to the cause of our literary brothers. We grudge
them nothing that they are ever likely to get. We
wish even that the House of Commons would see
cause for creating majorats in behalf of us all; only
whispering in the ear of that honorable House to
appoint a Benjamin's portion to ourselves, as the parties
who suggested the idea. But what is the use of benevolently bequeathing larks for dinner to all literary
men, in all time coming, if the sky must fall before
they can bag our bequest?  We shall discuss Mr.
Forster's views, not perhaps according to any arrangement of his, but according to the order in which they
come back to our own remembrance.
Goldsmith's period, Mr. F. thinks, was bad - not
merely by the transitional misfortune (before noticed)
of coming too late for the patron, and too soon for the
public, (which is the compound ill-luck of being a day
after one fair, and a month too soon for the next,) -
but also by some co-operation in this evil destiny
through misconduct on the part of authors themselves
(p. 70.)  Not'the circumstances' only of authors
were damaged, but the'literary character' itself.




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.              117
We are sorry to hear that. But, as long as they did
not commit murder, we have a great indulgence for
the frailties of authors. If ever the' benefit of clergy'
could be fairly pleaded, it might have been by Grub
Street for petty larceny. The'clergy' they surely
could have pleaded; and the call for larceny was so
audible in their condition, that in them it might be
called an instinct of self-preservation, which surely
was not implanted in man to be disobeyed. One word
allow us to say on these three topics: - 1. The condition of the literary body in its hard-working section
at the time when Goldsmith belonged to it. 2. Upon
the condition of that body in England as compared
with that of the corresponding body in France. 3.
Upon the condition of the body in relation to patronage purely political.
1. The pauperized (or Grub Street) section of the
literary body, at the date of Goldsmith's taking service
amongst it, was (in Mr. Forster's estimate) at its very
lo*est point of depression. And one comic presumption in favor of that notion we ourselves remember;
viz. that Smart, the prose translator of Horace, and a
well-built scholar, actually let himself out to a monthly
journal on a regular lease of ninety-nine years.7 What
could move the rapacious publisher to draw the lease
for this monstrous term of years, we cannot conjecture. Surely the villain might have been content with
threescore years and ten. But think, reader, of poor
Smart two years after, upon another publisher's applying to him vainly for contributions, and angrily
demanding what possible objection could be made to
offers so liberal, being reduced to answer.-' No objec



118             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
tion, sir, whatever, except an unexpired term of ninetyseven years yet to run.' The bookseller saw that he
must not apply again in that century; and, in fact,
Smart could no longer let himself, but must be sublet
(if let at all) by the original lessee. Query nowwas Smart entitled to vote as a freeholder, and Smart's
children (if any were born during the currency of
the lease) would they be serfs, and ascripti prelo?
Goldsmith's own terms of self-conveyance to Griffiths
- the terms we mean on which he' conveyed' his person and free-agency to the uses of the said Griffiths
(or his assigns?) - do not appear to have been much
more dignified than Smart's in the quality of the conditions, though considerably so in the duration of the
term; Goldsmith's lease being only for one year, and
not for ninety-nine, so that he had (as the reader perceives) a clear ninety-eight years at his own disposal.
We suspect that poor Oliver, in his guileless heart,
never congratulated himself on having made a more
felicitous bargain. Indeed, it was not so bad, if everything be considered; Goldsmith's situation at the time
was bad; and for that very reason the lease (otherwise
monstrous) was not bad. -He was to have lodging,
board, and'a small salary,' very small, we suspect;
and in return for all these blessings, he had nothing to
do, but to sit still at a table, to work hard from an
early hour in the morning until 2 P. M. (at which elegant hour we presume that the parenthesis of dinner
occurred,) butt also - which, not being an article in the
lease, might have set aside, on a motion before the
King's Bench - to endure without mutiny the correction and revisal of all his MSS. by Mrs. Griffiths,




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             119
wife to Dr. G. the lessee. This affliction of Mrs. Dr.
G. surmounting his shoulders, and controlling his pen,
seems to us not at all less dreadful than that of Sinbad
when indorsed with the old man of the sea; and we,
in Goldsmith's place, should certainly have tried how
far Sinbad's method of abating the nuisance had lost
its efficacy by time, viz. the tempting our oppressor to
get drunk once or twice a day, and then suddenly
throwing Mrs. Dr. G. off her perch. From that' bad
eminence,' which she had audaciously usurped, what
harm could there be in thus dismounting this' old
woman of the sea?' And as to an occasional thump
or so on the head, which Mrs. Dr. G. might have
caught in tumbling, that was her look-out; and might
besides have improved her style. For really now if,
the candid reader will believe us, we know a case, odd
certainly but very true, where a young man, an author
by trade,8 who wrote pretty well, happening to tumble
out of a first-floor in London, was afterwards observed
to grow very perplexed and almost unintelligible in his
style; until some years later, having the good fortune
(like Wallenstein at Vienna) to tumble out of a two-pair
of stairs window, he slightly fractured his skull, but on
the other hand, recovered the brilliancy of his long
fractured style. Some people there are of our acquaintance who would need to tumble out of the attic
story before they could seriously improve their style.
Certainly these conditions - the hard work, the being
chained by the leg to the writing-table, and above all
the having one's pen chained to that of Mrs. Dr. Grif.
fiths, do seem to countenance Mr. F.'s idea, that Goldsmith's period was the purgatory of authors. And we




120             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
freely confess — that excepting Smart's ninety-nine
years' lease, or the contract between the Devil and Dr.
Faustus, we never heard of a harder bargain driven
with any literary man. Smart, Faustus, and Goldsmith,
were clearly overreached.  Yet after all, was this treatment in any important point (exccpting as regards Dr.
Faustus) worse than that given to the whole college of
Grub Street, in the days of Pope?  The first edition
of the Dunciad dates from 1727: Goldsmith's matricalculation in Grub Street dates from 1757- just thirty
years later; which is one generation. And it is important to remember that Goldsmith, at this time in his
twenty-ninth year, was simply an usher at an obscure
boarding-school; had never practised writing for the
press; and had not even himself any faith at all in
his own capacity for writing. It is a singular fact,
which we have on Goldsmith's own authority, that until
his thirtieth year (that is, the year he spent with Dr.
and Mrs. Griffiths) it never entered into his head that
literature was his natural vocation. That vanity, which
has been so uncandidly and sometimes so falsely attributed to Goldsmith, was compatible, we see, if at all it
existed, with the humblest estimate of himself. Still,
however much this deepens our regard for a man of so
much genius united with so much simplicity and unassumingness, humility would not be likely to raise his
salary; and we must not forget that his own want of
self-esteem would reasonably operate on the terms
offered by Griffiths. A man, who regarded himself as
little more than an amanuensis, could not expect much
better wages than an under-gardener, which perhaps
he had. And, weighing all this, we see little to have




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             121
altered in the lease -that was fair enongh; only as
regarded the execution of the lease, we really must
have protested, under any circumstances, against Mrs.
Doctor Griffiths. That woman would have broken the
back of a camel, which must be supposed tougher than
the heart of an usher. There we should have made a
ferocious stand; and should have struck for much
higher wages, before we could have brought our mind
to think of capitulation. It is remarkable, however,
that this year of humble servitude was not only (or, as
if by accident) the epoch of Goldsmith's intellectual
development, but also the occasion of it. Nay, if all
were known, perhaps it may have been to Mrs. Doctor
Griffiths in particular, that we owe that revolution in
his self-estimation which made Goldsmith an author
by deliberate choice. Hag-ridden every day, he must
have plunged and kicked violently to break loose from
this harness; but, not impossibly, the very effort of
contending with the hag, when brought into collision
with his natural desire to soothe the hag, and the inevitable counter-impulse in any continued practice of
composition, towards the satisfaction at the same time
of his own reason and taste, must have furnished a
most salutary palcestra for the education of his literary
powers.  When one lives at Rome, one must do as
they do at Rome: when one lives with a hag, one
must accommodate oneself to haggish caprices; besides, that once in a month the hag might be right; or
if not, and supposing her always in the wrong, which
perhaps is too much to assume even of Mrs. Dr. G.,
that would but multiply the difficulties of reconciling
her demands with the demands of the general reader




122             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
and of Goldsmith's own judgment. And in the pressure of these difficulties would lie the very value of this
rough Spartan education. Rope-dancing cannot be
very agreeable in its elementary lessons; but it must
be a capital process for calling out the agilities that
slumber in a man's legs.
Still, though these hardships turned out so beneficially to Goldsmith's intellectual interests, and, consequently, so much to the advantage of all who have
since delighted in his works, not the less on that account they were hardships, and hardships that imposed
heavy degradation. So far, therefore, they would seem
to justify Mr. Forster's characterization of Goldsmith's
period by comparison with Addison's period9 on the
one side, and our own on the other. But, on better
examination, it will be found that this theory is sustained only by an unfair selection of the antithetic
objects in the comparison. Compare Addison's age
generally with Goldsmith's - authors, prosperous or
unprosperous, in each age taken indiscriminately -
and the two ages will be found to offer' much of a
muchness.' But, if you take the paupers of one generation to contrast with the grandees of another, how is
there any justice in the result?  Goldsmith at starting
was a penniless man. Except by random accidents,
he had not money enough to buy a rope, in case he
had fancied himself in want of such a thing. Addison,
on the contrary, was the son of a tolerably rich man;
lived gaily at a most aristocratic college (Magdalen),
in a most aristocratic university; formed early and
brilliant connections with the political party that were
magnificently preponderant until the last four years of




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             123
Queen Anne; travelled on the Continent, not as a
pedestrian mendicant, housing with owls, and thankful
for the bounties of a village'fair, but with the appointments and introduction of a young nobleman; and
became a secretary of state, not by means of his'delicate humor,' as Mr. Forster chooses to suppose,
but through splendid patronage, and (speaking Hibernice) through a'strong back.' His bad verses, his
Blenheim, his Cato, in later days, and other rubbish,
had been the only part of his works that aided his rise;
and even these would have availed him little, had he
not originally possessed a locus standi, from which he
could serve his artilleries of personal flatteries with
commanding effect, and could profit by his successes.
As to the really exquisite part of his writings, that did
him no yeoman's service at all, nor could have done;
for he was a made man, and had almost received
notice to quit this world of prosperous whiggery,
before he had finished those exquisite prose miscellanies. Pope, Swift, Gay, Prior, &c. all owed their
social positions to early accidents of good connections
and sometimes of luck, which would not indeed, have
supplied the place of personal merit, but which gave
lustre and effect to merit where it existed in strength.
There were authors quite as poor as Goldsmith in the
Addisonian age; there were authors quite as rich as
Pope, Steele, &c. in Goldsmith's age, and having the
same social standing.  Goldsmith struggled with so
much distress, not because his period was more inauspicious, but because his connections and starting
advantages were incomparably less important. His




124             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
profits were so trivial, because his capital was next to
none.
So far, as regards the comparison between Gold.
smith's age and the one immediately before it. But
now, as regards the comparison with our own, removed
by two generations - can it be said truly that the literary profession has risen in estimation, or is rising?
There is a difficulty in making such an appraisement;
and from different minds there would proceed very
different appraisements; and even from  the same
mind, surveying the case at different stations.  For,
on the one hand, if a greater breadth of social respect.
ability catches the eye on looking carelessly over the
body of our modern literati, which may be owing
chiefly to the large increase of gentlemen that in our
day have entered the field of literature; on the other
hand, the hacks and handicraftsmen whom the shallow
education of newspaper journalism has introduced to
the press, and whom poverty compels to labors not
meriting the name of literature, are correspondingly
expanding their files. There is, however, one reason
from analogy, which may incline us to suppose that a
higher consideration is now generally conceded to the
purposes of literature, and, consequently, a juster estimate made of the persons who minister to those purposes. Literature - provided we use that word not
for the mere literature of knowledge, but for the literature of power — using it for literature as it speaks
to what is genial in man, viz. -to the human spirit,
and not for literature (falsely so called) as it speaks to
the meagre understanding-is a fine art; and not onily
so, it is the supreme of the fine arts; nobler, for




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             125
instance, potentially, than painting, or sculpture, or
architecture. i Now all the fine arts, that popularly are
called suc(1;iave risen in esteem within the last generation. The most aristocratic of men will now ask
into his own society an artist, whom fifty years ago he
would have transferred to the house-steward's table.
And why? Not simply because more attention having been directed to the arts, more notoriety has gathered about the artist; for that sort of e'clat would not
work any durable change; but it is because the interest in the arts having gradually become much more
of an enlightened interest, the public has been slowly
trained to fix its attention upon the intellect which is
presupposed in the arts, rather than upon the offices of
pleasure to which they minister. The'fine arts have
now come to be regarded, rather as powers that are to
mould, than as luxuries that are to embellish.  And it
has followed that artists are valued more by the elaborate agencies which they guide, than by the fugitive
sensations of wonder or sympathy which they evoke.
Now this is a change honorable to both sides. The
public has altered its estimate of certain men; and
yet has not been able to do so, without previously enlarging its idea of the means through which those men
operate. It could not elevate the men, without previously elevating itself. But, if so, then, in correcting
their appreciation of the fine arts, the public must simultaneously have corrected their appreciation of literature; because whether men have or have not been in
the habit of regarding literature as a fine art, this they
must have felt, viz., that literature, in its more genial
functions, works by the very same organs as the liberal




126             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
arts, speaks to the same heart, operates through the
same compound nature, and educates the same deep
sympathies with mysterious ideals of beauty.  There
lies the province of the arts usually acknowledged as
fine or liberal: there lies the province of fine or liberal
literature. And with justifiable pride a litterateur may
say —that his fine art wields a sceptre more potent
than any other; literature is more potent than other
fine arts, because deeper in its impressions according
to the usual tenor of human sensibilities; because
more extensive, in the degree that books are more
diffused than pictures or statues; because more dura.
ble, in the degree that language is durable beyond
marble or canvas, and in the degree that vicarious
powers are opened to books for renewing their phoenix
immortality through unlimited translations: powers
denied to painting except through copies that are
feeble, and denied to sculpture except to casts that are
costly.
We infer that, as the fine arts have been rising,
literature (on the secret feeling that essentially it
moves by the same powers) must also have been
rising; that, as the arts will continue to rise, literature
will continue to rise; and that, in both cases, the men,
the ministers, must ascend in social consideration as
the things, the ministrations, ascend. But there is
another form, in which the same result offers itself to
our notice; and this should naturally be the last paragraph in this section 1, but, as we have little room to
spare, it may do equally well as the first paragraph in
section 2, viz., on the condition of our own literary
body by comparison with the same body in France.




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             127
2. Who were the people amongst ourselves, that,
throughout the eighteenth century, chiefly came forward as undervaluers of literature? They belonged
to two very different classes - the aristocracy and the
commercial body, who agreed in the thing, but on
very different impulses. To the mercantile man, the
author was an object of ridicule, from natural poverty;
natural, because there was no regular connection between literature and any mode of money-making. By
accident the author might not be poor, but professionally, or according to any obvious opening for an income,
he was. Poverty was the badge of all his tribe. Amongst
the aristocracy, the instinct of contempt, or at least of
slight regard towards literature, was supported by the
irrelation of literature to the state. Aristocracy itself
was the flower and fruitage of the state; a nobility
was possible only in the ratio of the grandeur and
magnificence developed for social results; so that a
poor and unpopulous nation cannot create a great aristocracy: the flower and foliation must be in relation
to the stem and the radix out of which they germinate.
Inevitably, therefore, a nobility so great as the English
- that not in pride, but in the mere logic of its politi.
cal relations, felt its order to be a sort of heraldic
shield, charged with the trophies and ancestral glories
of the nation -could not but in its public scale of
appreciation estimate every profession and rank of
men by the mode of their natural connection with
the state. Law and arms, for instance, were honored,
not because any capricious precedent had been established of a title to public honor in favor of those professions, but because, through their essential functions,




128              OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
they opened for themselves a permanent necessity of
introsusception into the organism of the state. A great
law officer, a great military leader, a popular admiral,
is already, by virtue of his functions, a noble in men's
account, whether you gave or refused him a title; and
in such cases it has always been the policy of an aristocratic state to confer, or even impose the title, lest
the disjunction of the virtual nobility from the titular
should gradually disturb the estimate of the latter.
But literature, by its very grandeur, is degraded socially; for its relations are essentially cosmopolitan, or,
speaking more strictly, not cosmopolitan, which might
mean to all other peoples considered as national states,
whereas literature has no relation to any sections or
social schisms amongst men -its relations are to the
race. In proportion as any literary work rises in its
pretensions; for instance, if it works by the highest
forms of passion, its nisus, its natural effort is to
address the race, and not any individual nation. That
it found a bar to this nisus, in a limited language, was
but an accident: the essential relations of every great
intellectual work are to those capacities in man by
which he tends to brotherhood, and not to those by
which he tends to alienation.  Mlan is ever coming
nearer to agreement, ever narrowing his differences,
notwithstanding that the interspace may cost an eternity to traverse. Where the agreement is, not where
the difference is, in the centre of man's affinities, not
of his repulsions, there lies the magnetic centre towards
which all poetry that is potent, and all philosophy
that is faithful, are eternally travelling by natural tendency. Consequently, if indirectly literature may hold




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.              129
a patriotic value as a gay plumage in the cap of a
nation, directly, and, by a far deeper tendency, literature is essentially alien. A poet, a book, a system of
religion, belongs to the nation best qualified for appreciating their powers, and not to the nation that, perhaps by accident, gave them birth. How, then, is it
wonderful that an intense organ of the social principle in a nation, viz., a nobility, should fail, in their
professional character, to rate highly, or even to recognise, as having any proper existence, a fine art which
is by tendency anti-social (anti-social in this sense,
that what it seeks, it seeks by transcending all social
barriers and separations)? Yet it is remarkable that
in England, where the aristocracy for three centuries
(16th, 17th, 18th) paid so little honor, in their public
or corporate capacity, to literature, privately they honored it with a rare courtesy. That same grandee,
who would have looked upon Camden, Ben Jonson,
Selden, or Hobbes, as an audacious intruder, if occu.
pying any prominent station at a state festival, would
have received him with a kind of filial reverence in
his own mansion; for in this place, as having no
national reference, as sacred to hospitality, which
regards the human tie, and not the civic tie, he would
be at liberty to regard the man of letters in his cosmopolitan character. And on the same instinct, a
prince in the very meanest State, would, in a statepageant commemorating the national honors, assign
a distinguished place to the national high admiral,
though he were the most stupid of men, and would
utterly neglect the stranger Columbus.  But in his
own palace, and at his own table, he would perhaps
9




130             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
invert this order of precedency, and would place
Columbus at his own right hand.
Some such principle, as is here explained, did
certainly prevail in the practice (whether consciously
perceived or not in the philosophy) of that England,
which extended through the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. First, in the eighteenth century all honor
to literature, under any relation, began to give way.
And why? Because expanding politics, expanding
partisanship, and expanding journalism, then first
called into the field of literature an inferior class of
laborers. Then first it was that, from the noblest of
professions, literature became a trade.  Literature it
was that gave the first wound to literature; the hack
scribbler it was that first degraded the lofty literary
artist. For a century and a half we have lived under
the shade of this fatal revolution. But, however painful such a state of things may be to the keen sensibilities of men pursuing the finest of vocations —
carrying forward as inheritors from past generations
the eternal chase after truth, and power, and beautystill we must hold that the dishonor to literature has
issued from internal sources proper to herself, and
not from without. The nobility of England have, for
three and a half centuries, personally practised literature as an elevated accomplishment: our royal and
noble authors are numerous; and they would have
continued the same cordial attentions to the literary
body, had that body maintained the same honorable
composition. But a litterateur, simply as such, it is
no longer safe to distinguish with favor; once, but not
now, he was liable to no misjudgment. Once he was




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             131
pretty sure to be a man of some genius, or, at the
least, of unusual scholarship. Now, on the contrary,
a mob of traitors have mingled with the true men;
and the loyal perish with the disloyal, because it is
impossible in a mob, so vast and fluctuating, for the
artillery of avenging scorn to select its victims.
All this, bitter in itself, has become more bitter from
the contrast furnished by France. We know that
literature has long been misappreciated amongst ourselves. In France it has long been otherwise appreciated -more advantageously appreciated. And we
infer that therefore it is in France more wisely appreciated. But this does not follow. We have ever been
of opinion that the valuation of literature in France,
or at least of current literature, and as it shows itself
in the treatment of literary men, is unsound, extravagant, and that it rests upon a basis originally false.
Simply to have been the translator from the English
of some prose book, a history or a memoir, neither
requiring nor admitting any display of mastery over
the resources of language, conferred, throughout the
eighteenth century, so advantageous a position in
society upon one whom we English should view as a
literary scrub or mechanic drudge, that we really had
a right to expect the laws of France and the court
ceremonies to reflect this feature of public manners.
Naturally, for instance, any man honored so preposterously ought in law to have enjoyed, in right of his
book, the jus trium liberorum, and perpetual immunity
from taxes. Or again, as regards ceremonial honors,
on any fair scale of proportions, it was reasonable to
expect that to any man who had gone into a fourth




132             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
edition, the royal sentinels should present arms; that
to the author of a successful tragedy, the guard should
everywhere turn out; and that an epic poet, if ever
such a difficult birth should make its epiphany in Paris,
must look to have his approach towards a soiree'
announced by a salvo of a hundred and one guns.
Our space will not allow us to go into the illustrative
details of this monstrous anomaly in French society.
We confine ourselves to its cause-as sufficiently
explaining why it is that no imitation of such absurdities can or ought to prosper in England. The same
state of things, under a different modification, takes
place in Germany; and from the very same cause.
Is it not monstrous, or was it not until within recent
days, to find every German city drawing the pedantic
materials, and the pedantic interest of its staple conversation from the systems and the conflicts of a few
rival academic professors?  Generally these paramount lords of German conversation, that swayed its
movements this way or that, as a lively breeze sways
a cornfield, were metaphysicians; Fichte, for instance, and Hegel. These were the arid sands that
bibulously absorbed all the perennial gushings of German enthusiasm. France of the last century and the
modern Germany were, as to this point, on the same
level of foolishness. But France had greatly the advantage in point of liberality. For general literature
furnishes topics a thousand times more graceful and
fitted to blend with social pleasure, than the sapless
problems of ontological systems meant only for scholastic use.
But what then was the cause of this social defor



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             133
mity?  Why was literature allowed  eventually to
disfigure itself by disturbing the natural currents oI
conversation, to make itself odious by usurpation, and
thus virtually to operate as a mode of pedantry? It
was because in neither land had the people any power
of free discussion. It was because every question
growing out of religion, or connecting itself with
laws, or with government, or with governors, with
political interests or political machineries, or with
judicial courts, was an interdicted theme. The mind
sought in despair for some free area wide enough to
allow of boundless openings for individualities of sentiment - human enough to sustain the interests of
festive discussion.  That open  area was found in
books. In Paris to talk of politics was to talk of the
king; l'e'tat c'est moi; to talk of the king in any
spirit of discussion, to talk of that Jupiter optimus
maximus, from whom all fountains flowed of good and
evil things, before whom stood the two golden urns,
one filled with lettres de cachet - the other with
crosses, pensions, offices, what was it but to dance
on the margin of a volcano, or to swim cotillons in
the suction of a maelstrom?  Hence it was that
literature became the only safe colloquial subject of
a general nature in old France; hence it was that
literature furnished the only' open questions;' and
hence it is that the mode and the expression of honor
to literature in France has continued to this hour
tainted with false and histrionic feeling, because originally it grew up from spurious roots, prospered unnaturally upon deep abuses in the system, and at this
day (so far as it still lingers) memorializes the politi



134             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
cal bondage of the nation.  Cleanse therefore- is
our prayer — cleanse, oh, unknown Hercules, this
Augean stable of our English current literature, rich in
dunghills, rich therefore in precipitate mushroom and
fraudulent fungus, yet rich also (if we may utter our
real thoughts) - rich pre-eminently at this hour in
seed-plots of immortal growths, and in secret vegetations of volcanic strength; - cleanse it (oh coming
man!) but not by turning through it any river of
Lethe, such as for two centuries swept over the literature of France. Purifying waters were these in one
sense; they banished the accumulated depositions of
barbarism; they banished Gothic tastes; yes, but they
did this by laying asleep the nobler activities of a
great people, and reconciling them to forgetfulness of
all which commanded them as duties, or whispered to
them as rights.
If, therefore, the false homage of France towards
literature still survives, it is no object for imitation
amongst us; since it arose upon a vicious element
in the social composition of that people. Partially it
does survive, as we all know by the experience of the
last twenty years, during which authors, and as authors
(not like Mirabeau or Talleyrand in spite of authorship), have been transferred from libraries to senates
and privy councils.  This has done no service to
literature, but, on the contrary, has degraded it by
seducing the children of literature from their proper
ambition. It is the glory of literature to rise as if on
wings into an atmosphere nobler than that of political
intrigue. And the whole result to French literature
has been, —that some ten or twelve of the leading




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             135
literati have been tempted away by bribes from their
appropriate duties, while some five thousand have been
made envious and discontented.
At this point, when warned suddenly that the hourglass is running out, which measures our residuum of
flying minutes, we first perceive on looking round, that
we have actually been skirmishing with Mr. Forster,
from the beginning of our paper to this very line;
and thus we have left ourselves but a corner for the
main purpose (to which our other purpose of'arglebargling' was altogether subordinate) of expressing
emphatically our thanks to him for this successful
labor of love in restoring a half-subverted statue to its
upright position. We are satisfied that many thousands
of readers will utter the same thanks to him, with
equal fervor and with the same sincerity. Admiration
for the versatile ability with which he has pursued his
object is swallowed up for the moment in gratitude for
his perfect success. It might have been imagined,
that exquisite truth of household pathos, and of humor,
with happy graces of style plastic as the air or the
surface of a lake to the pure impulses of nature,
sweeping them by the motions of her eternal breath,
were qualities authorized to justify themselves before
the hearts of men, in defiance of all that sickly scorn
or the condescension of masquerading envy could
avail for their disturbance. And so they are: and
left to plead for themselves at such a bar as unbiassed
human hearts, they could not have their natural influences intercepted. But in the case of Goldsmith,
literary traditions have not left these qualities to their
natural influences.  ft is a fact that up to this hour the




136             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
contemporary falsehoods at Goldsmith's expense, alwi
(worse perhaps than those falsehoods) the malicious
constructions of incidents partly true, having wings
lent to them by the levity and amusing gossip of Boswell, continue to obstruct the full ratification of Goldsmith's pretensions. To this hour the scorn from many
of his own age, runs side by side with the misgiving
sense of his real native power. A feeling still survives, originally derived from his own age, that the'inspired idiot,' wherever he succeeded, ought not to
have succeeded, — having owed his success to accident, or even to some inexplicable perverseness in
running counter to his own nature. It was by shooting
awry that he had hit the mark; and, when most he
came near to the bull's eye, most of all' by rights'
he ought to have missed it. He had blundered into
the Traveller, into Mr. Croaker, into Tony Lumkin;
and not satisfied with such dreadful blunders as these,
he had consummated his guilt by blundering into the
Vicar of Wakefield, and the Deserted Village; atrocities over which, in effect, we are requested to drop
the veil of human charity; since the more gem-like
we may choose to think these works, the more unnatural, audacious, and indeed treasonable, it was in an
idiot to produce them.
In this condition of Goldsmith's traditionary character, so injuriously disturbing to the natural effect of his
inimitable works, (for in its own class each of his best
works is inimitable,) Mr. Forster steps forward with a
three-fold exposure of the falsehood inherent in the
anecdotes upon which this traditional character has
arisen. Some of these anecdotes he challenges as




OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             137
literally false; others as virtually so; they are true,
perhaps, but under such a version of their circumstances as would altogether take out the sting of their
offensive interpretation. For others again, and this is
a profounder service, he furnishes a most just and
philosophic explanation, that brings them at once
within the reader's toleration, nay, sometimes within
a deep reaction of pity. As a case, for instance, of
downright falsehood, we may cite the well known story
told by Boswell, —that, when Goldsmith travelled in
France with some beautiful young English women
(meaning the Miss Hornecks), he was seriously uneasy
at the attentions which they received from the gallantry
of Frenchmen, as intruding upon his own claims.
Now this story, in logical phrase, proves too much.
For the man who could have expressed such feelings
in such a situation, must have been ripe for Bedlam.
Coleridge mentions a man who entertained so exalted
an opinion of himself, and of his own right to apothe.
osis, that he never uttered that great pronoun'I,'
without solemnly taking off his hat. Even to the
oblique case'me,' which no compositor ever honors
with a capital M, and to the possessive pronoun my
and mine, he held it a duty to kiss his hand. Yet this
bedlamite would not have been a competitor with a
lady for the attentions paid to her in right of her sex.
In Goldsmith's case, the whole allegation was dissipated in the most decisive way. Some years after
Goldsmith's death, one of the sisters personally concerned in the case, was unaffectedly shocked at the
printed story when coming to her knowledge, as a
gross calumny; her sorrow made it evident that the




138             OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
whole had been a malicious distortion of some lighthearted gaiety uttered by Goldsmith. There is little
doubt that the story of the bloom-colored coat, and of
the puppet-show, rose on a similar basis - the calumnious perversion of a jest.
But in other cases, where there really may have
been some fretful expression of' self-esteem, Mr. Forster's explanation transfers the foible to a truer and
a more pathetic station. Goldsmith's own precipitancy, his overmastering defect in proper reserve, in
self-control, and in presence of mind, falling in with
the habitual undervaluation of many amongst his
associates, placed him at a great disadvantage in
animated  conversation.  His very truthfulness, his
simplicity, his frankness, his hurry of feeling, all told
against him. They betrayed him into inconsiderate
expressions that lent a color of plausibility to the
malicious ridicule of those who disliked him the more,
from being compelled, after all, to respect him. His
own understanding oftentimes sided with his disparagers.  He saw that he had been in the wrong; whilst
secretly he felt that his meaning —if properly explained - had been right. Defrauded in this way, and
by his own co-operation, of distinctions that naturallybelonged to him, he was driven unconsciously to
attempt some restoration of the balance, by claiming
for a moment distinctions to which he had no real
pretensions. The whole was a trick of sorrow, and
of sorrowing perplexity: he felt that no justice had
been done to him, and that he himself had made an
opening for the wrong: the result he saw, but the
process he could not disentangle; and, in the con



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.             139
fusion of his distress, natural irritation threw him
upon blind efforts to recover his ground by unfounded
claims, when claims so well founded had been maliciously disallowed.
But a day of accounting comes at last, — a day of
rehearing for the cause, and of revision for the judgment. The longer this review has been delayed, the
more impressive it becomes in the changes which it
works. Welcome is the spectacle when, after threefourths of a century have passed away, a writer —
qualified for such a task, by ample knowledge of
things and persons, by great powers for a comprehensive estimate of the case, and for a splendid exposition
of its results, with deep sensibility to the merits of the
man chiefly concerned in the issue, enthusiastic, but
without partisanship - comes forward to unsettle false
verdicts, to recombine misarranged circumstances, and
to explain anew misinterpreted facts. Such a man
wields the authority of heraldic marshals. Like the
Otho of the Roman theatre, he has power to raise or
to degrade-to give or to take away precedency.
But, like this Otho, he has so much power, because he
exercises it on known principles, and without caprice.
To the man of true genius, like Goldsmith, when
seating himself in humility on the lowest bench, he
says, —' Go thou up to a higher place. Seat thyself
above those proud men, that once trampled thee in the
dust. Be thy memorial upon earth, — not (as of some
who scorned thee) " the whistling of a name." Be
thou remembered amongst men by tears of tenderness,
by happy laughter untainted with malice, and by the
benedictions of those that, reverencing man's nature,
see gladly its frailties brought within the gracious




140            OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
smile of human charity, and its nobilities levelled to
the apprehension of simplicity and innocence.'
Over every grave, even though tenanted by guilt
and shame, the human heart, when circumstantially
made acquainted with its silent records of suffering or
temptation, yearns in love or in forgiveness to breathe
a solemn Requiescat! how much more, then, over the
grave of a benefactor to the human race! But it is a
natural feeling, with respect to such a prayer, that,
however fervent and sincere, it has no perfect faith in
its own validity, so long as any unsettled feud from
ancient calumny hangs over the buried perdon. The
undressed wrong seems to haunt the sepulchre in the
shape of a perpetual disturbance to its rest. First of
all, when this wrong has been adjudicated and expiated, is.the Requiescat uttered with a perfect faith in
itself. By a natural confusion we then transfer our
own feelings to the occupant of the grave. The tranquillization to our own wounded sense of justice seems
like an atonement to his: the peace for us transforms
itself under a fiction of tenderness into a peace for
him: the reconciliation between the world that did the
wrong and the grave that seemed to suffer it, is
accomplished; the reconciler, in such a case, whoever
he may be, seems a double benefactor -to him that
endured the injury - to us that resented it; and in the
particular case now before the public, we shall all be
ready to agree that this reconciling friend, who might
have entitled his work Vindicie Oliveriance, has, by
the piety of his service to a man of exquisite genius,
so long and so foully misrepresented, earned a right to
interweave for ever his own cipher and cognisance in
filial union with those of OLIVER GOLDSMITH




NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 101.
WE do not allude chiefly to his experience in childhood,
when he is reported to have been a general butt of mockery for
his ugliness and his supposed stupidity; since as regarded the
latter reproach, he could not have suffered very long, having
already at a childish age vindicated his intellectual place by
the verses which opened to him an academic destination. We
allude to his mature life, and the supercilious condescension
with which even his reputed friends doled out their praises to
him.
NOTE 2. Page 102.
We point this remark, not at Mr. Forster, who, upon the
whole, shares our opinion as to the tolerable comfort of Goldsmith's life; he speaks indeed elsewhere of Goldsmith's depressions; but the question still remains - were they of frequent recurrence, and had they any constitutional settlement?
We are inclined to say no in both cases.
NOTE 3. Page 105.
Which tub the reader may fancy to have been only an old
tar barrel; if so, he is wrong. Isaac Casaubon, after severe
researches into the nature of that tub, ascertained to the general satisfaction of Christendom that it was not of wood, or
within the restorative powers of a cooper, but of earthenware,
and once shattered by a horse's kick, quite past repair. In




142               OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
fact, it was a large oil jar, such as the remnant of the forty
thieves lurked in, when waiting for their captain's signal from
Ali Baba's house; and in Attica, it must have cost fifteen shillings, supposing that the philosopher did not steal it. Consequently a week's loss of house-room and credit to Oliver Goldsmith, at the rate of living then prevalent in Grub street, was
pretty much the same thing in money value as the loss to
Diogenes of his crockery house by burglary, or in any nocturnal lark of young Attic wine-bibbers. The underwriters would
have done an insurance upon either man at pretty much the
same premium.
NOTE 4. Page 108.
It may be necessary to explain, for the sake of the many
persons who have come amongst the reading public since the
period of the incident referred to, that this was a boy called
Jones, who was continually entering Buckingham Palace clandestinely, was as regularly ejected by the police, but with respectable pertinacity constantly returned, and on one occasion
effected a lodgment in the royal bedchamber. Some happy
wit, in just admiration of such perseverance and impudence,
christened him In-I-go Jones.
NOTE 5. Page 110.
Often, but not so uniformly (the reader will think) as the
diction, because the manners are sometimes not those of the
writer's own age, being ingenious adaptations to meet the
modern writer's conjectural ideas of ancient manners. These,'
however, (even in Sir Walter Scott,) are precisely the most
mouldering parts in the entire architecture, being always (as,
for instance, in Ivanhoe) fantastic, caricatured, and betraying
the true modern ground gleaming through the artificial tarnish
of antiquity. All novels, in every language, are hurrying to
decay; and hurrying by internal changes, were those all;
but, in the meantime, the everlasting life and fertility of the
human mind is for ever accelerating this hurry by superseding
them, i. e. by an external change. Old forms, fading from the




NOTES.                     143
interest, or even from the apprehension, have no chance at all
as against new forms embodying the same passions. It is only
in the grander passions of poetry, allying themselves with
forms more abstract and permanent, that such a conflict of the
old with the new is possible.
NOTE 6.. Page 116.
It ought, by this time, to be known equally amongst governments and philosophers —that for the State to promise with
sincerity the absorption of surplus labor, as fast as it accumulates, cannot be postulated as a duty, until it can first be
demonstrated as a possibility. This was forgotten, however,
by Mr. C., whose vehement complaints, that the arable field,
without a ploughman, should be in one county, whilst in
another county was the stout ploughman without a field; and
sometimes (which was worse still) that the surplus ploughmen should far outnumber the surplus fields, certainly proceeded on the secret assumption that all this was within the
remedial powers of the state. The same doctrine was more
openly avowed by various sections of our radicals, who (in
their occasionally insolent petitions to parliament) many times
asserted that one main use and function of a government was,
to find work for everybody. At length (February and March,
1848) we see this doctrine solemnly adopted by a French
body of rulers, self-appointed, indeed, or perhaps appointed by
their wives, and so far sure, in a few weeks, to be answerable
for nothing; but, on the other hand, adopting it as a practical
undertaking, in the lawyer's sense, and by no means as a mere
gaiety of rhetoric. Meantime, they themselves will be' broken'
before they will have had time for being reproached with
broken promises; though neither fracture is likely to require
much above the length of a quarantine.
NOTE 7. Page 117.
When writing this passage, we were not aware (as we now
are) that Mr. Forster had himself noticed the case.




144               OLIVER GOLDSMITII.
NOTE 8. Page 119.
His name began with A, and ended with N; there are but
three more letters in the name, and if doubt arises upon our
story, in the public mind, we shall publish them.
NOTE 9. Page 122.
If Addison died (as we think he did) in 1717, then because
Goldsmith commenced authorship in 1757, there would be
forty years between the two periods. But, as it would be fairer
to measure from the centre of Addison's literary career, i. e.
from 1707, the difference would be just half a century.




ALEXANDER POPE.*
EVERY great classic in our native language should
from time to time be reviewed anew; and especially if he belongs in any considerable extent to
that section of the literature which connects itself
with manners; and if his reputation originally, or his
style of composition, is likely to have been much influenced by the transient fashions of his own age. The
withdrawal, for instance, from a dramatic poet, or a
satirist, of any false lustre which he has owed to his
momentary connection with what we may call the
personalities of a fleeting generation, or of any undue
shelter to his errors which may have gathered round
them from political bias, or from intellectual infirmities amongst his partisans, will sometimes seriously
modify, after a century or so, the fairest original
appreciation of a fine writer. A window, composed
of Claude Lorraineglasses, spreads over the landscape outside a disturbing effect, which not the most
practised eye can evade.  The eidola theatri affect us
all. No man escapes the contagion from his contemporary bystanders. And the reader may see further
* The Works of Pope, by Roscoe.
10




146             ALEXANDER POPE.
on, that, had Pope been merely a satiric poet, he must
in these times have laid down much of the splendor
which surrounds him in our traditional estimate of his
merit. Such a renunciation would be a forfeit- not
always to errors in himself — but sometimes to errors
in that stage of English society, which forced the
ablest writer into a collusion with its own meretricious
tastes. The antithetical prose'characters,' as they
were technically termed, which circulated amongst the
aristocracy in the early part of the last century, the
style of the dialogue in such comedy as was then popular, and much of the occasional poetry in that age,
expose an immoderate craving for glittering effects
from contrasts too harsh to be natural, too sudden to be
durable, and too fantastic to be harmonious. To meet
this vicious taste, from which (as from any diffusive
taste) it is vain to look for perfect immunity in any
writer lying immediately under its beams, Pppe sacrificed, in one mode of composition, the simplicities of
nature and sincerity; and had he practised no other
mode, we repeat that now he must have descended
from his pedestal. To some extent he is degraded
even as it is; for the reader cannot avoid whispering
to himself-what quality of thinking must that be
which allies itself so naturally (as will be shown) with
distortions of fact or of philosophic truth? But, had
his whole writings been of that same cast, he must
have been degraded altogether, and a star would have
fallen from our English galaxy of poets.
We mention this particular ease as a reason generally for renewing by intervals the examiination of
great writers, and liberating the -erdict of their con.




ALEXANDER POPE.               147
temporaries from the casual disturbances to which
every age is liable in its judgments, and in its tastes.
As books multiply to an unmanageable excess, selection becomes more and more a necessity for readers,
and the power of selection more and more a desperate
problem for the busy part of readers. The possibility
of selecting wisely is becoming continually more hopeless, as the necessity for selection is becoming continually more crying. Exactly as the growing weight of
books overlays and stifles the powsel of comparison, pari
passu is the call for comparison the more clamorous;
and thus arises a duty correspondingly more urgent, of
searching and revising until everything spurious has
been weeded out from amongst the Flora of our highest
literature; and until the waste of time for those who
have so little at their command, is reduced to a minimum. For, where the good cannot be read in its twentieth part, the more requisite it is that no part of the
bad should steal an hour of the available time; and it
is not to be endured that people without a minute to
spare, should be obliged first of all to read a book
before they can ascertain whether it was at all worth
reading. The public cannot read by proxy as regardsthe good which it is to appropriate, but it can as regards the poison which is' to escape. And thus, as
literature expands, becoming continually more of a
household necessity, the duty resting upon critics (who
are the vicarious readers for the public) becomes continually more urgent — of reviewing all works that
may be supposed tQ have benefited too much or too
indiscriminately by the superstition of a name. The
prcegustatores should have tasted of every cup, and




148    -         ALEXANDER POPE.
reported its quality, before the public call for it; and,
above all, they should have done this in all cases of the
higher literature — that is, of literature properly so
called.
What is it that we mean by literature?  Popularly,
and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in a book. Little logic is required
to disturb that definition; the most thoughtless person
is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one
essential element is, - some relation to a general and
common interest of man, so that what applies only
to a local, or professional, or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a
book, will not belong to literature. 2 So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded.
For not only is much that takes a station in books not
literature; but inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly
sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature
which acts so extensively upon the popular mind - to
warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm, does
not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten thousandth part of its extent. The drama again, as for
instance, the finest of Shakspeare's plays in England,
and all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the
Attic stage, operated as a literature on the public mind,
and were (according to the strictest letter of that term)
published through the audiences that witnessed 1 their
representation some time before they were published
as things to be read; and they were published in this
scenical mode of publication with much more effect




ALEXANDER POPE.               149
than they could have had as books, during ages of
costly copying or of costly printing.
Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea co-extensive
and interchangeable with the idea of literature; since
much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic, (as from
lecturers and public orators,) may never come into
books; and much that does come into books, may
connect itself with no literary interest. But a far more
important correction, applicable to the common vague
idea of literature, is to be sought- not so much in a
better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinction of the two functions which it fulfils. In that great
social organ, which collectively we call literature, there
may be distinguished two separate offices that may
blend and often do so, but capable severally of a severe
insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion.
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly,
the literature of power. The function of the first is -
to teach; the function of the second is - to move: the
first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The
first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the
second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher
understanding or reason, but always through affections
of pleasure and sympathy.  Remotely, it may travel
towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry
light; but proximately it does and must operate, else
it ceases to be a literature of power, on and through
that humid light which clothes itself in the mists and
glittering iris of human passions, desires, and genial
emotions. Men have so little reflected on the higher
functions of literature, as to find it a paradox if one
should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of




150             ALEXANDER POPE.
books to give information. But this is a paradox only
in the sense whichi mak'es it honorable to be paradoxical.  Whenever we talk in ordinary language of
seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which
can occupy a very high place in human interests, that
it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds:
it exists eternally by way of germ or latent principle
in the lowest as-in the highest, needing to be developed
but never to be planted. To be capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that
ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a
rarer thing than truth, namely, pae, t.or — deep sympathy with truth. What is the effect, for instance, upon
society, of children?   By the pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which
connect themselves with the helplessness, with the
innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not
only are the primal affections strengthened and continually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest
in the sight of heaven - the frailty, for instance, which
appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most
alien from the worldly, are kept up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed.
A purpose of the same nature is answered by the
higher literature, viz., the literature of power. What
do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all.
What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something
new, something that you did not know before, in every
paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched




ALEXANDER POPE.               151
cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the
divine poem?  What you owe to Milton is not any
knowledge, of which a million separate items are still
but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly
level; what you owe, is power, that is, exercise and:
expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy
with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate
influx is a step upwards - a step ascending as upon a
Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above
the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to
last, carry you further on the same plane, but could
never raise you one foot above your ancient level of
earth: whereas, the veryfirst step in power is a flight
- is an ascending into another element where earth
is forgotten.
Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated
and continually called out into exercise by the great
phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves
through chance and change, or of literature as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry,
romance, &c., it is certain that,like any animal power
or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in
relation to these great moral capacities of man that the
literature of power, as contradisti.nguished from that
of knowledge, lives and has its field of action. It is
concerned with what is highest in man: for the Scriptures themselves never condescended to deal by suggestion or co-operation, with the mere discursive
understanding: when speaking of man in his intellectual capacity, the Scriptures speak not of the understanding, but of' the understanding heart,' - making




152              ALEXANDER POPE.
the heart, i. e. the great intuitive (or non-discursive)
organ, to be the interchangeable formula for man in
his highest state of capacity for the infinite. Tragedy,
romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore to
man's mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of
mercy, of retribution, which else (left to the support
of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of
sufficient illustration.  What is meant, for instance, by
poetic justice? - It does not mean a justice that differs
by its object from the ordinary justice of human jurisprudence; for then it must be confessedly a very bad
kind of justice; but it means a justice that differs from
common forensic justice by the degree in which it
attains its object, a justice that is more omnipotent
over its own ends, as dealing - not with the refractory
elements of earthly life — but with elements of its
own creation, and witlmaterials flexible to its own
purest preconceptions. IIt's certain that, were it not
for the literature of power, these ideals would often
remain amongst us as mere arid national forms;
whereas, by the creative forces of man put forth in
literature, they gain a vernal life of restoration, and
germinate into vital activities. The commonest novel
by moving in alliance with human fears and hopes,
with human instincts of wrong and right, sustains and
quickens those affections.  Calling them  into action,
it rescues them from torpor. And hence the pre.
eminency over all authors that merely teach, of the
meanest that moves; or that teaches, if at all, indi,
rectly by moving. The very highest work that has
ever existed in the literature of knowledge, is but a
provisional work: a book upon trial and sufferance,




ALEXANDER POPE.              153
and quamdiu bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be
even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay,
even let its teaching be but placed in a better order,
and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest
works in the literature of power, surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men. For
instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a
book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of
its progress it would have to fight for its existence:
1st, as regards absolute truth; 2dly, when that combat
is over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the
truth. And as soon as a La Place, or anybody else,
builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book,
effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay
and darkness; by weapons won from this book he
superannuates and destroys this book, so that sbon the
name of Newton remains, as a mere nominis umbra,
but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into
other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the
Prometheus of AEschylus, - the Othello or King Lear,
-the Elamlet or Macbeth,- and the Paradise Lost,
are not militant but triumphant for ever as long as the
languages exist in which they speak or can be taught
to speak. They never can transmigrate into new
incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or
variations, even if in some things they should be irn.
proved, would be to plagiarize. i A good steam-engine
is properly superseded by a-qetter. But one lovely
pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a
statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.
These things are not separated by imparity, but by
disparity. They are not thought of as unequal under




154             ALEXANDER POPE.
the same standard, but as different in kind, and as
equal under a different standard. Human works of
immortal beauty and works of nature in one respect
stand on the same footing: they never absolutely
repeat each other; never approach so near as not to
differ; and they differ not as better and worse, or
simply by more and less: they differ by undecipherable and incommunicable differences, that cannot be
caught by mimicries, nor be reflected in the mirror of
copies, nor become ponderable in the scales of vulgar
comparison.
Applying these principles to Pope, as a representative of fine literature in general, we would wish to
remark the claim' which he has, or which any equal
writer has, to the attention and jealous winnowing of
those critics in particular who watch over public
morals. Clergymen, and all the organs of public
criticism put in motion by clergymen, are more especially concerned in the just appreciation of such
writers, if the two canons are remembered, which we
have endeavored to illustrate, viz., that all works in
this class, as opposed to those in the literature of
knowledge, 1st, work by far deeper agencies; and,
2dly, are more permanent; in the strictest sense they
are xr.,tara i;  t: and what evil they do, or what good
they do, is commensurate with the national language,
sometimes long after the nation has departed. At this
hour, five hundred years since their creation, the tales
of Chaucer,2 never equalled on this earth for their
tenderness, and for life of picturesqueness, are read
familiarly by many in the charming language of their
natal day, and by others in the modernizations of




ALEXANDER POPE.              155
Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour,
one thousand eight hundred years since their creation,
the Pagan tales of Ovid, never equalled on this earth
for the gaiety of their movement and the capricious
graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom.
This man's people and their monuments are dust: but
he is alive: he has survived them, as he told us that
he had it in his commission to do, by a thousand years;
and shall a thousand more.'
All the literature of knowledge builds only groundnests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded
by the plough; but the literature of power builds nests
in aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or
of forests inaccessible to fraud.  This is a great prerogative of the power literature; and it is a greater
which lies in the mode of its influence. The knowledge literature, like the fashion of this world, passeth
away. An Encyclopoedia is its abstract; and, in this
respect, it may be taken for its speaking symbol —
that, before one generation has passed, an Encyclopmedia is superannuated; for it speaks through the
dead memory and unimpassioned understanding, which
have not the rest of higher faculties, but are continually enlarging and varying their phylacteries. But all
literature, properly so called —literature xrz' i'oxjv,
for the very same reason that it is so much more
durable than the literature of knowledge, is (and by
the very same proportion it is) more intense and electrically searching in its impressions. The directions
in which the tragedy of this planet has trained our
human feelings to play, and the combinations into
which the poetry of this planet has thrown our human




156             ALEXANDER POPE.
passions of love and hatred, of admiration and contempt, exercise a power bad or good over human life,
that cannot be contemplated, when stretching through
many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe.3
And of this let every one be assured -that he owes
to the impassioned books which he has read, many a
thousand more of emotions than he can consciously
trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these
emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life
like the forgotten incidents of childhood.
In making a revaluation of Pope as regards some
of his principal works, we should have been glad to
examine more closely than we shall be able to do,
some popular errors affecting his whole intellectual
position; and especially these two, first, That he belonged to what is idly called the French School of our
literature; secondly, That he was specially distinguished from preceding poets by correctness. The
first error has infected the whole criticism of Eurqpe.
The Schlegels, with all their false airs of subtlety, fall
into this error in discussing every literature of Christendom. But, if by a mere accident of life any poet
had first turned his thoughts into a particular channel
on the suggestion of some French book, that would
not justify our classing what belongs to universal nature, and what inevitably arises at a certain stage of
social progress, under the category of a French creation. Somebody must have been first in point of time
upon every field; but this casual precedency establishes no title whatever to authority, or plea of original
dominion over fields that lie within the inevitable line
of march upon which nations are moving. Had it




ALEXANDER POPE.`              157
happened that the first European writer on the higher
geometry was a Graco-Sicilian, that would not have
made it rational to call geometry the Graeco-Sicilian
Science. In every nation first comes the higher form
of passion, next the lower.  This is the mere order of
nature in governing the movements of human intellect,
as connected with social evolution; this is'therefore
the universal order, that in the earliest stages of litera.
ture, men deal with the great elementary grandeurs of
passion, of conscience, of the will in self-conflict;
they deal with the capital struggle of the human
race in raising empires, or in overthrowing them —in
vindicating their religion (as by crusades), or with the
more mysterious struggles amongst spiritual races
allied to our own, that have been dimly revealed to
us. We have an Iliad, a Jerusalem Delivered, a Paradise Lost. These great subjects exhausted, or exhausted in their more inviting manifestations, inevitably
by the mere endless motion of society, there succeeds
a lower key of passion. Expanding social intercourse
in towns, multiplied and crowded more and more,:
banishes those gloomier and grander phases of human
history from literature. The understanding is quickened; the lower faculties of the mind -fancy, and
the habit of mlnute distinction, are applied to the contemplation of society and manners. Passion begins
to wheel in lower flights, and to combine itself with
interests that in part are addressed to the insulated
tunderstanding - observing, refining, reQJting.ng This
may be called the minor key of literature in opposition to the major, as cultivated by Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton. But this key arises spontaneously in every




158             ALEXANDER POPE.
people, and by a necessity as sure as any that moulds
the progress of civilization. Milton and Spenser were
not of any Italian school. Their Italian studies were
the result and not the cause of the determination given
to their minds by nature working in conjunction with
their -oea period. It is equally childish to say of
Dryden and Pope, that they belonged to any French
school. That thing which they did, they would have
done though France had been at the back of China.
(The school to which they belonged, was a school developed at a certain stage of progress in all nations
alike by the lhman heart as modified by the human
understanding: it is a school depending on the peculiar
diiretion given to the sensibilities by the reflecting
faculty, and by the new phases of society. Even as
a fact, (though a change as to the fact could not make
any change at all in the philosophy of the case,) it is
not true that either Dryden or Pope was influenced by
French literature. Both of them had a very imperfect
acquaintance with the French language. Dryden ridi.
culed French literature; and Pope, except for some
purposes connected with his Homeric translations, read
as little of it as convenience would allow. But, had
this been otherwise, the philosophy of the case stands
good; that, after the primary formations of the fermenting intellect, come everywhere -in Thebes or
Athens, France or England, the secondary; that, after
the creating passion comes the reflecting and recom.
bining passion; that after the solemnities and cloistral
grandeurs of life - solitary and self-conflicting, comes
the recoil of a self-observing and self-dissecting stage,
derived from life social and gregarious.  After the




ALEXANDER POPE.              159
Iliad, but doubtless many generations after, comes a
Batrachomyomachia: after the gorgeous masque of
our forefathers came always the anti-masque, that
threw off echoes as from some devil's laughter in
mockery of the hollow and transitory pomps that went
before.
It is an error equally gross, and an error in which
Pope himself participated, that his plume of distinction
from  preceding poets consisted in correctness. Correctness in what? Think of the admirable qualifica.
tions for settling the scale of such critical distinctions
which that man must have had who turned out upon
this vast world the single oracular word' correctness'
to shift for itself, and explain its own meaning to all
generations. Did he mean logical correctness in maturing and connecting thoughts? But of all poets that
have practised reasoning in verse, Pope is the one most
inconsequential in the deduction of his thoughts, and
the most severely distressed in any effort to effect or to
explain the dependency of their parts. There are not
ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infir.
mity. All his thinking proceeded by insulated and
discontinuous jets ) and the only resource for him, or
chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty
of stringing his aphoristic thoughts like pearls, having_
no relation to each other but that of contiguity. To
set them like diamonds was for Pope to risk distraction;
to systematize was ruin. On the other hand, if this
elliptical word correctness is to be understood with
such a complimentary qualification as would restrict it
to Pope's use of language, that construction is even
more untenable than the other -more conspicuously




160             ALEXANDER POPE.
untenable -for many are they who have erred by illogical thinking, or by distracted evolution of thoughts:
but rare is the man amongst classical writers in any
language who has disfigured his meaning more remarkably than Pope by imperfect expyession.  We do not
speak of plebeian phrases, of exotic phrases, of slang,
from which Pope was not free, though more free than
many of his contemporaries. From vulgarism indeed
he was shielded, though imperfectly, by the aristocratic
society he kept: they being right, he was right: and
he erred only in the cases where they misled him; for
even the refinement of that age was oftentimes coarse
and vulgar.  His grammar, indeed, is often vicious:
preterites and participles he constantly confounds, and
registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron
index of rhymes that never can mend. But worse
than this mode of viciousness is his syntax, which is
so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other
times to defeat it. But these were errors cleaving to
his times; and it would be unfair to exact from Pope
a better quality of diction than belonged to his contemporaries. Still it is indisputable that a better model
of diction and of grammar prevailed a century before
Pope. In Spenser, in Shakspeare, in the Bible of King
James's reign, and in Milton, there are very few grammatical errors.4  But Pope's defect in language was
almost peculiar to himself. It lay in an inability,
nursed doubtless by indolence, to carry out and perfect
the expression of the thought he wishes to communicate. The languagcdoes naot realize the. idea:. it
simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to give a single
illustration: 




ALEXANDER POPE.               161'Know, God and Nature only are the same:
In man the judgment shoots at flying game.'
The first line one would naturally construe into this:
that God and Nature were in harmony, whilst all other
objects were scattered into incoherency by difference
and disunion.  Not at all; it means nothing of the
kind; but that God and Nature only are exempted
from the infirmities of change. They only continue
uniform  and  self-consistent.  This  might mislead
many readers; but the second line must do so: for
who would not understand the syntax to be, that the
judgment, as it exists in man, shoots at flying game?
But, in fact, the meaning is, that the judgment, in
aiming its calculations at man, aims at an object that
is still on the wing, and never for a moment stationary.
We give this as a specimen of a fault in diction, the
very worst amongst all that are possible; to write bad
grammar or colloquial slang does not necessarily obscure the sense; but a fault like this is a treachery,
and hides the true meaning under the cloud of aco
nndrumi: nay worse; for even a conundrum  has
fixed conditions for determining its solution, but this
sort of mutilated expression is left to the solutions of
conjecture.
There are endless varieties of this fault in Pope, by
which he sought relief for himself from half-an-hour's
labor, at the price of utter darkness to his reader.
One editor distinguishes amongst the epistles that
which Pope addressed to Lord Oxford some years
after his fall, as about the most'correct, musical,
dignified, and affecting' that the poet has left. Now,
even as a specimen of vernacular English, it is con11




162              ALEXANDER POPE.
spicuously bad: the shocking gallicism, for instance,
of' attend,' for' wait his leisure,' in the line' For
him, i. e. on his behalf, thou oft hast bid the world
attend,' would alone degrade the verses. To bid the
world attend - is to bid the world listen attentively;
whereas what Pope means is, that Lord Oxford bade
the world wait in his ante-chamber, until he had leisure
from his important conferences with a poet, to throw
a glance upon affairs so trivial as those of the human
race.  This use of the word attend is a shocking
violation of the English idiom; and even the slightest
would be an unpardonable blemish in a poem  of
only forty lines, which ought to be polished as exquisitely js a cameo. It is a still worse disfiguration of
the very same class, viz. a silent confession of defeat,
in a regular wrestling match with the difficulties of a
metrical expression, that the poem terminates thus' Nor fears to tell that 3l1ortirner is he;'
why should he fear? Really there is no very desperate courage required for telling the most horrible of
secrets about Mortimer. Had Mortimer even been so
wicked as to set the Thames on fire, safely it might
have been published by Mortimer's bosom friend to all
magistrates, sheriffs and constables; for not a man of
them would have guessed in what hiding-place to look
for Mortimer, or who Mortimer might be. True it is,
that a secondary earldom, conferred by Queen Anne
upon Robert Harley, was that of Mortimer; but it
lurked unknown to the public ear; it was a coronet
that lay hid under the beams of Oxford —a title
so long familiar to English ears, when descending




ALEXANDER POPE.                163
through six-and-twenty generations of de Veres. Quite
as reasonable it would be in a birth-day ode to tile
Prince of Wales, if he were addressed as my Lord
of Chester, or Baron of Renfrew, or your Grace
of Cornwall. To express a thing in cipher may do
for a conspirator; but a poet's correctness is shown in
his intelligibility.
A rnongst the early poems of Pope, the' ELOISA TO
ABELARD' has a special interest of a double order:
first, it has a personal interest as the poem of Pope,
because indicating the original destination of Pope's
intellect, and the strength of his native vocation to a
class of poetry in deeper keys of passion than any
which he systematically cultivated.  For itself also,
and abstracting from its connection with Pope's natural
destination, this poem has a second interest, an in.
trinsic interest, that will always make it dear to impassioned minds.  The self-conflict   Ihe flux and reflux
of the poor agitated heart-  the spectacle of Eloisa
now bending penitentially before the sliadowy austerities of a monastic future, now raving upon the remembrances of' the guilty past-one moment reconciled
by the very anguish of her soul to the grandeurs of
religion and of prostrate adoration, the next moment
revolting  to perilous retrospects of her treacherous
happiness - the recognition by shining gleams through
the very storm and darkness evoked by her earthly
sensibilities, of a sensibility deeper far in its ground,
and that trembled towards holier objects - the lyrical
tumult of the changes, the hope, the tears, the rapture, the penitence, the despair - place the reader in
tumultuous sympathy with the poor distracted nun.




164              ALEXANDER POPE.
Exquisitely imagined, among the passages towards the
end, is the introduction of a voice speaking to Eloisa
from the grave of some sister nun, that, in long.
forgotten years, once had struggled and suffered like
herself,'Once (like herself) that trembled, wept, and prayed,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid.'
Exquisite is the passage in which she prefigures a visit
yet to come from Abelard to herself- no more in the
character of a lover, but as a priest, ministering by
spiritual consolations to her dying hours, pointing her
thoughts to heaven, presenting the Cross to her
through the mists of death, and fighting for her as a
spiritual ally against the torments of flesh.  That
anticipation was not gratified.  Abelard died long
before her; and the hour never arrived for him of
which with such tenderness she says, —'It will be then no crime to gaze on me.'
But another anticipation has been fulfilled in a degree
that she could hardly have contemplated; the anticipation, namely, -'That ages hence, when all her woes were o'er,
And that rebellious heart should beat no more,'
wandering feet should be attracted from afar'To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,'
as the common resting-place and everlasting marriages
bed of Abelard and Eloisa; that the eyes of many
that had been touched by their story, by the memory
of their extraordinary accomplishments in an age of




ALEXANDER POPE.               165
darkness, and by the calamitous issue of their attachment, should seek, first and last, for the grave in
which the lovers trusted to meet again in peace; and
should seek it with interest so absorbing, that even
amidst the ascent of hosannahs from the choir, amidst
the grandeurs of high mass, the raising of the host,
and' the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,' sometimes these
wandering eyes should steal aside to the solemn
abiding-place of Abelard and his Eloisa, offering so
pathetic a contrast, by its peaceful silence, to the agitations of their lives; and that there, amidst thoughts
which by right were all due and dedicated'to heaven,
One human tear should drop and be forgiven.'
We may properly close this subject of Abelard
and Eloisa, by citing, in English, the solemn Latin
inscription placed in the last century, six hundred
years after their departure from earth, over their common remains. They were buried in the same grave,
Abelard dying first by a few weeks more than twentyone years; his tomb was opened again to admit the
coffin of Eloisa; and the tradition at Quincey, the
parish near Nogent-sur-Seine, in which the monastery
of the Paraclete is situated, was, that at the moment
of interment Abelard opened his arms to receive the
impassioned creature that once had loved him so frantically, and whom he had loved with a remorse so
memorable. The epitaph is singularly solemn in its
brief simplicity, considering that it came from Paris,
and from academic wits:'Here, under the same
marble slab, lie the founder of this monastery, Peter




166             ALEXANDER POPE.
Abelard, and its earliest Abbess, Heloisa - once united
in studies, in love, in their unhappy nuptial engagements, and in penitential sorrow; but now, our hope
is, reinited for ever in bless.'
The SATIRES of Pope, and what under another name
are satires, viz. his MORAL EPISTLES, offer a second
variety of evidence to his voluptuous indolence. They
offend against philosophic truth more heavily than the
Essay on Man; but not in the same way. The Essay
on Man sins chiefly by want of central principle, and
by want therefore of all coherency amongst the separate thoughts. But taken as separate thoughts, viewed
in the light of fragments and brilliant aphorisms, the
majority of the passages have a mode of truth; not of
truth central and coherent, but of truth angular and
splintered. The Satires, on the other hand, were of
false origin. They arose in a sense of talent for caustic effects, unsupported by any satiric heart. Pope had
neither the malice (except in the most fugitive form)
which thirsts for leaving wounds, nor, on the other
hand, the deep moral indignation which burns in men
whom Providence has from time to time armed with
scourges for cleansing the sanctuaries of truth or justice. He was contented enough with society as he
found it: bad it might be, but it was good enough for
him: and it was the merest self-delusion if at any
moment the instinct of glorying his satiric mission (the
magnificabo apostolatum meum) persuaded him that in
his case it might be said — Facit indignatio versum.
The indignation of Juvenal was not always very noble
in its origin, or pure in its purpose: it was sometimes
mean in its quality, false in its direction, extravagant




ALEXANDER POPE.               167
in its expression: but it was tremendous in the roll of
its thunders, and as withering as the scowl of a Mephistopheles. Pope having no such internal principle of
wrath boiling in his breast, being really (if one must
speak the truth) in the most pacific and charitable
frame of mind towards all scoundrels whatever, except
such as might take it into their heads to injure a
particular Twickenham  grotto, was unavoidably a
hypocrite of the first magnitude when he affected (or
sometimes really conceited himself) to be in a dreadful passion with offer;ders as a body. It provokes fits
of laughter, in a man who knows Pope's real nature,
to watch him in the process of brewing the storm that
spontaneously will not come; whistling, like a mariner,
for a wind to fill his satiric sails; and pumping up into
his face hideous grimaces in order to appear convulsed
with histrionic rage. Pope should have been counselled never to write satire, except on those evenings
when he was suffering horribly from indigestion.  By
this means the indignation would have been readymade. The rancor against all mankind would have
been sincere; and there would have needed to be no
extra expense in getting up the steam.  As it is, the
short puffs of anger, the uneasy snorts of fury in Pope's
satires, give one painfully the feeling of a steam-engTine
with unsound lungs. Passion of any kind may become
in some degree ludicrous, when disproportioned to its
exciting occasions. But it is never entirely ludicrous,
until it is self-betrayed as counterfeit.  Sudden collapses of the manufactured wrath, sudden oblivion of
the criminal, announce Pope's as always counterfeit.
Meantime insincerity is contagious. One falsehood




168              ALEXANDER POPE.
draws on another. And having begun by taking a
station of moral censorship, which was in the uttermost degree a self-delusion, Pope w  ent on to other
self-delusions in reading history the mast familiar, or
in reporting facts the most notorious.  Warburton had
more to do with Pope's satires as an original suggester,5 and not merely as a commentator, than with
any other section of his works. Pope and he hunted
in couples over this field: and those who know the
absolute craziness of Warburton's mind, the perfect
frenzy and Iymphaticus error which possessed him
for leaving all high-roads of truth and simplicity, in
order to trespass over hedge and ditch after coveys of
shy paradoxes, cannot be surprised that Pope's good
sense should often have quitted him under such guidance. —There is, amongst the earliest poems of
Wordsworth, one which has interested many readers
by its mixed strain of humor and tenderness. It describes two thieves who act in concert with each other.
One is a very aged man, and the other is his greatgrandson of three years old:'There are ninety good years of fair and foul weather
Between them, and both go a stealing together.'
What reconciles the reader to this social iniquity, is
the imperfect accountability of the parties; the one
being far advanced in dotage, and the other an infant.
And thus' Into what sin soever the couple may fall,
This child but half-knows it, and that not at all.'
Nobody besides suffers from their propensities: since
the child's mother makes good in excess all their




ALEXANDER POPE.                169
depredations; and nobody is duped for an instant by
their gross attempts at fraud; for' Wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.'
There was not the same disparity of years between
Pope and Warburton as between old Daniel and his
descendant in the third generation: Warburton was
but ten years younger. And there was also this difference, that in the case of the two thieves neither was
official ringleader: on the contrary, they took it turn
about; great-grandpapa was ringleader to day, and
the little great-grandson to-morrow:'Each in his turn was both leader and led:'
whereas, in the connection of the two literary accomplices, the Doctor was latterly always the instigator to
any outrage on good sense; and Pope, from mere
habit of deference to the Doctor's theology and theological wig, as well as from gratitude for the Doctor's
pugnacity in his defence, (since Warburton really was
as good as a bull-dog in protecting Pope's advance or
retreat,) followed with docility the leading of his reverend friend into any excess of folly. It is true, that
oftentimes in earlier days Pope had run into scrapes
from his own heedlessness: and the Doctor had not
the merit of suggesting the escapade, but only of defending it; which he always does (as sailors express
it)'with a will:' for he never shows his teeth so
much, or growls so ferociously, as when he suspects
the case to be desperate. But in the satires, although
the original absurdity comes forward in the text of
Pope, and the Warburtonian note in defence is a ppar



170              ALEXANDER POPE.
ently no more than an afterthought of the good Doctor,
in his usual style of threatening to cudgel anybody
who disputes his friend's assertion; yet sometitnes the
thought expressed and adorned by the poet had been
prompted by the divine. This only can account for
the savage crotchets, paradoxes, and conceits, which
disfigure Pope's later edition of his satires.
Truth, even of the most appreciable order, truth of
history, goes to wreck continually under the perversities of Pope's satire applied to celebrated men; and
as to the higher truth of philosophy, it was still less
likely to survive amongst the struggles for striking
effects and startling contrasts.  But worse are Pope's
satiric sketches of women, as carrying the same outrages on good sense to a far greater excess; and as
these expose the false principles on which he worked
more brightly, and have really been the chief ground
of tainting Pope's memory with the reputation of a
woman-hater, (which he was not,) they are worthy of
separate notice.
It is painful to follow a man of genius through a
succession of inanities descending into absolute nonsense, and of vulgarities sometimes terminating in
brutalities.  These are harsh words, but not harsh
enough by half as applied to Pope's gallery of female
portraits. What is the key to his failure? It is simply
that, throughout this whole satiric section, not one
word is spoken in sincerity of heart, or with any
vestige of self-belief.  The case was one of those
so often witnessed, where either the indiscretion of
friends, or some impulse of erring vanity in the writer,
had put him upon undertaking a task in which he had




ALEXANDER POPE.              171
too little natural interest to have either thought upon it
with originality, or observed upon it with fidelity.
Sometimes the mere coercion of system drives a man
into such a folly. He treats a subject which branches
into A, B, and C. Having discussed A and B, upon
which he really had something to offer, he thinks it
necessary to integrate his work by going forward to
C, on which he knows nothing at all, and, what is even
worse, for which in his heart he cares nothing at all.
Fatal is all falsehood. Nothing is so sure to betray
a man into the abject degradation of self-exposure as
pretending to a knowledge which he has not, or to an
enthusiasm which is counterfeit. By whatever mistake
Pope found himself pledged to write upon the characters of women, it was singularly unfortunate that he
had begun by denying to women any characters at
all.' Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
Well for him if he had stuck to that liberal doctrine:' Least said, soonest mended.' And much he could
not easily have said upon a subject that he had pronounced all but a nonentity. In Van Troil's work, or
in Horrebow's, upon Iceland, there is a well known
chapter regularly booked in the index —Concerning
the Snakes of Iceland. This is the title, the running
rubric; and the body of the chapter consists of these
words -' There are no snakes in Iceland.'  That
chapter is soon studied, and furnishes very little opening for foot-notes or supplements. Some people have
thought that Mr. Van T. might with advantage have
amputated this unsnaky chapter on snakes; but at




172             ALEXANDER POPE.
least nobody can accuse him of forgetting his own
extermination of snakes from Iceland, and proceeding immediately to describe such horrible snakes as
eye had never beheld amongst the afflictions of the
island. Snakes there are none, he had protested; and,
true to his word, the faithful man never wanders into
any description of Icelandic snakes. Not so our satiric
poet.  He, with Mahometan liberality, had denied
characters, i. e. souls, to women.'Most women,' he
says,'have no character at all;'6 yet, for all that,
finding himself pledged to treat this very subject of
female characters, he introduces us to a museum of
monsters in that department, such as few fancies could
create, and no logic can rationally explain. What
was he to do? He had entered upon a theme con-,cerning which, as the result has shown, he had not!one solitary thought-good, bad, or indifferent. Total
bankruptcy was impending. Yet he was aware of a
deep interest connected with this section of his satires;
and, to meet this interest, he invented what was pungent, when he found nothing to record which was
true.
It is a consequence of this desperate resource —
this plunge into absolute fiction - that the true objection to Pope's satiric sketches of the other sex ought
not to arise amongst women, as the people that suffered
by his malice, but amongst readers generally, as the
people that suffered by his fraud. He has promised
one thing, and done another. He has promised a
chapter in the zoology of nature, and he gives us a
chapter in the fabulous zoology of the herald's college.
A tigress is not much within ordinary experience, still




ALEXANDER rPOPE.               173
there is such a creature; and in default of a better
choice, that is, of a choice settling on a more familiar
object, we are content to accept a good description of
a tigress. We are reconciled; but we are not reconciled to a description, however spirited, of a basilisk.
A viper might do; but not, if you please, a dragoness
or a harpy. The describer knows, as well as any of
us the spectators know, that he is romancing; the
incredulus odi overmasters us all; and we cannot
submit to be detained by a picture which, according
to the shifting humor of the poet, angry or laughing,
is a lie where it is not a jest, is an affront to the truth
of nature, where it is not confessedly an extravagance
of drollery. In a playful fiction, we can submit with
pleasure to the most enormous exaggerations; but
then they must be offered as such. These of Pope's
are not so offered, but as serious portraits; and in
that character they affect us as odious and malignant
libels. The malignity was not real, — as indeed
nothing was real, but a condiment for hiding insipidity. Let us examine two or three of them, equally
with a view to the possibility of the object described,
and to the delicacy of the description.'How soft is Silia! fearful to offend;
The frail one's advocate, the weak one's friend.
To her Calista proved her conduct nice;
And good Simplicius asks of her advice.'
Here we have the general outline of Silia's character; not particularly striking, but intelligible. She has
a suavity of disposition that accommodates itself to
all infirmities. And the worst thing one apprehends in
her is — falseness: people with such honeyed breath




174              ALEXANDER POPE.
for present frailties, are apt to exhale their rancor upon
them when a little out of hearing. But really now
this is no foible of Silia's. One likes her very well,
and would be glad of her company to tea. For the
dramatic reader knows who Calista is; and if Silia
has indulgence for her, she must be a thoroughly
tolerant creature. Where is her fault, then? You
shall hear-'Sudden she storms! she raves! - You tip the wink;
But spare your censure; Silia does not drink.
All eyes may see from what the change arose:
All eyes may see - (see what?) - a pimple on her nose.'
Silia, the dulcet, is suddenly transformed into Silia the
fury. But why? The guest replies to that question
by winking at his fellow-guest; which most atrocious
of vulgarities is expressed by the most odiously vulgar of phrases - he tips the wink - meaning to tip
an insinuation that Silia is intoxicated. Not so, says
the poet — drinking is no fault of hers-everybody
may see [.why not the winker then?] that what upsets
her temper is a pimple on the nose. Let us understand you, Mr. Pope. A pimple!- what, do you
mean to say that pimples jump up on ladies' faces at
the unfurling of a fan?  If they really did so in the
12th of George 11., and a lady, not having a pimple
on leaving her dressing-room, might grow one whilst
taking tea, then we think that a saint might be excused
for storming a little.  But how is it that the wretch
who winks, does not see the pimple, the causa teterrima of tile sudden wrath; and Silia, who has no
looking-glass at her girdle, does?  And then who is it




ALEXANDER POPE.                 175
that Silia' storms' at -  the company, or the pimple?
If at the company, we cannot defend her; but if at
the pimple- oh, by all means- storm and welcomeshe can't say anything worse than it deserves. Wrong
or right, however, what moral does Silia illustrate
more profound than this — that a particular lady,
otherwise very amiable, falls into a passion upon
suddenly finding her face disfigured? But then one
remembers the song —' My face is my fortune, sir,
she said, sir, she said'- it is a part of every woman's
fortune, so long as she is young. Now to find one's
fortune dilapidating by changes so rapid as thispimples rising as suddenly as April clouds-is far too
trying a calamity, that a little fretfulness should merit
either reproach or sneer. Dr. Johnson's opinion was,
that the man who cared little for dinner, could not be
reasonably supposed to care much for anything. More
truly it may be said, that the woman who is reckless
about her face must be an unsafe person to trust with
a secret. But seriously, what moral, what philosophic
thought can be exemplified by a case so insipid, and so
imperfectly explained as this? But we must move on.
Next, then, let us come to the case of Narcissa: —'Odious! in wroollen?7'Twould a saint provoke,'
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.' No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face;
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead:
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red.'
Well, what's the matter now? What's amiss with
Narcissa, that a satirist must be called in to hold an
inquest upon her corpse, and take Betty's evidence




176              ALEXANDER POPE.
against her mistress? Upon hearing any such question, Pope would have started up in the character
(very unusual with him) of religious censor, and
demanded whether one approved of a woman's fixing
her last dying thought upon the attractions of a person
so soon to dwell with darkness and worms? Was
that right —to provide for coquetting in her coffin?
Why no, not strictly right, its impropriety cannot be
denied; but what strikes one even more is, the
suspicion that it may be a lie. Be this as it may,
there are two insurmountable objections to the case of
Narcissa, even supposing it not fictitious —viz. first,
that so far as it offends at all, it offends the religious
sense, and not any sense of which satire takes charge;
secondly, that without reference to the special functions of satire, any form of poetry whatever, or any
mode of moral censure, concerns itself not at all with
anomalies. If the anecdote of Narcissa were other
than a fiction, then it was a case too peculiar and
idiosyncratic to furnish'a poetic illustration; neither
moral philosophy nor poetry condescends to the monstrous or the abnormal; both one and the other deal
with the catholic and the representative.
There is another Narcissa amongst Pnpclslipbeds of ladies, who is even more open to criticism -
because offering not so much an anomaly in one
single trait of her character, as an utter anarchy in all.
F'lavia and Philomede again present the same multitude of features with the same absence of all central
principle for locking them into unity. They must
have been distracting to themselves; and they are dis.
tracting to us a century later. Philomede, by the way,




ALEXANDER POPE.              177
stands for the second Duchess of Marlborough,7 daughter of the great Duke. And these names lead us
naturally to Sarah, the original, and (one may call
her) the historical Duchess, who is libelled under the
name of Atossa. This character amongst all Pope's
satiric sketches has been celebrated the most, with the
single exception of his Atticus.  But the Atticus
rested upon a different basis - it was true; and it was
noble. Addison really had the infirmities of envious
jealousy, of stimulated friendship, and of treacherous
collusion with his friend's enemies — which Pope
imputed to him under the happy parisyllabic name of
Atticus; and the mode of imputation, the tone of
expostulation — indignant as regarded Pope's own
injuries, but yet full of respect for Addison, and even
of sorrowful tenderness; all this in combination with
the interest attached to a feud between two men so
eminent, has sustained the 4tticus as a classic remembrance in satiric literature. But the Atossa is a mere
c  lffaos' —6f^.incompatibilities, thrown together as into
some witch's cauldron. The witch, however, had
sometimes an unaffected malignity, a sincerity of
venom in her wrath, which acted chemically as a
solvent for combining the hetorogeneous ingredients in
her kettle; whereas the want of truth and earnestness
in Pope leave the incongruities in his kettle of description to their natural incoherent operation on the reader.
We have a great love for the great Duchess of Marlborough, though too young by a hundred years s8 or so
to have been that true and faithful friend which, as
contemporaries, we might have been.
What we love Sarah for, is partly that she has been
12




178             ALEXANDER POPE.
ill used by all subsequent authors, one copying from
another a fury against her which even in the first of
these authors was not real. And a second thing which
we love is her very violence, qualified as it was. Sulphureous vapors of wrath rose up in columns from the
crater of her tempestuous nature against him that
deeply offended her, but she neglected petty wrongs.
Wait, however, let the volcanic lava have time to cool,
and all returned to absolute repose. It has been said
that she did not write her own book. We are of a
different opinion. The mutilations of the book were
from other and inferior hands: but the main texture
of the narrative and of the comments were, and must
have been, from herself, since there could have been
no adequate motive for altering them, and nobody else
could have had the same motive for uttering them. It
is singular that, in the case of the Duchess, as well as
that of the Lady M. W. Montagu, the same two men,
without concert, were the original aggressors amongst
the gens de plume, viz. Pope, and subsequently Horace
Walpole. Pope suffered more from his own libellous
assault upon Atossa, through a calumny against himself rebounding from it, than Atossa could have done
from the point-blank shot of fifty such batteries. The
calumny circulated was, that he had been bribed by
the Duchess with a thousand pounds to suppress the
character- which of itself was bad enough; but as
the consummation of baseness it was added, that after
all, in spite of the bribe, he caused it to be published.
This calumny we believe to have been utterly without
foundation. It is repelled by Pope's character, incapable of any act so vile, and by his position, needing




ALEXANDER POPE.              179
no bribes. But what we wish to add is, that the
calumny is equally repelled by Sarah's character,
incapable of any propitiation so abject. Pope wanted
no thousand pounds; but neither'did Sarah want his
clemency. He would have rejected the X1000 cheque
with scorn; but she would have scorned to offer it.
Pope cared little for Sarah; but Sarah cared less for
Pope.
What is offensive, and truly so, to every generous
reader, may be expressed in two items: first, not pretending to have been himself injured by the Duchess,
Pope was in this instance meanly adopting some third
person's malice, which sort of intrusion into other
people's quarrels is a sycophantic act, even where
it may not have rested upon a sycophantic motive;
secondly, that even as a second-hand malice it is not
sincere. More shocking than the malice is the selfimposture of the malice: in the very act of puffing out
his cheeks like AEolus, with ebullient fury, and conceiting himself to be in a passion perfectly diabolic,
Pope is really unmoved, or angry only by favor of
dyspepsy; and at a word cf kind flattery from Sarah,
(whom he was quite the man to love,) though not at
the clink of her thousand guineas, he would have
fallen at her feet, and kissed her beautiful hand with
rapture. To enter a house of hatred as a junior partner, and to take the stock of malice at a valuation -
(we copy from advertisements) - that is an ignoble
act. But then how much worse in the midst of all
this unprovoked wrath, real as regards the persecution
which it meditates, but false as the flatteries of a slave
in relation to its pretended grounds, for the spectator




180              ALEXANDER POPE.
to find its malice counterfeit, and the fury only a
plagiarism from some personated fury in an opera.
There is no truth in Pope's satiric sketches of
women - not even colorable truth; but if there were,
how frivolous, how hollow, to erect into solemn monumental protestations against the whole female sex
what, if examined, turn out to be pure casual eccentricities, or else personal idiosyncrasies, or else foibles
shockingly caricatured, but, above all, to be such
foibles as could not have connected themselves with
sincere feelings of indignation in any rational mind.
The length and breadth [almost we might saythe depth] of the shallowness, which characterizes
Pope's Philosophy, cannot be better reflected than
from the four well known lines-'For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right:
For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best.'
In the first couplet, what Pope says is, that a life,
which is irreproachable on a human scale of appreciation, neutralizes and practically cancels all possible
errors of creed, opinion, or theory. But this schism
between the moral life of man and his moral faith,
which takes for granted that either may possibly be
true, whilst the other is entirely false, can wear a
moment's plausibility only by understanding life in so
limited a sense as the sum of a man's external actions,
appreciable by man. He whose life is in the right,
cannot, says Pope, in any sense calling for blame,
have a wrong faith; that is, if his life were right, his
creed might be disregarded.  But the answer is- that




ALEXANDER POPE.             181
his life, according to any adequate idea of life in a
moral creature, cannot be in the right unless in so far
as it bends to the influences of a true faith. How
feeble a conception must that man have of the infinity
which lurks in a human spirit, who can persuade himself that its total capacities of life are exhaustible by
the few gross acts incident to social relations or open to
human valuation! An act, which may be necessarily
limited and without opening for variety, may involve
a large variety of motives - motives again, meaning
grounds of action that are distinctly recognised for
such, may (numerically speaking) amount to nothing
at all when compared with the absolutely infinite
influxes of feeling or combinations of feeling that vary
the thoughts of man; and the true internal acts of
moral man are his thoughts - his yearnings - his
aspirations -his sympathies - his repulsions of heart.
This is the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly
eyes.  The scale of an alphabet —how narrow is
that!  Four or six and twenty letters, and all is
finished. Syllables range through a wider compass.
Words are yet more than syllables. But what are
words to thoughts? Every word has a thought corresponding to it, so that not by so much as one solitary
counter can the words outrun the thoughts. But every
thought has not a word corresponding to it: so that
the thoughts may outrun the words by many a thousand counters. In a developed nature they do so.
But what are the thoughts when set against the modifications of thoughts by feelings, hidden even from him
that feels them- or against the inter-combinations of
such modifications with others — complex with com



182             ALEXANDER POPE.
plex, decomplex with decomplex -these can be unravelled by no human eye! This is the infinite music
that God only can read upon the vast harp of the
human heart. Some have fancied that musical combinations might be exhausted. A new Mozart might
be impossible. All that he could do, might already
have been done. Music laughs at that, as the sea
laughs at palsy for its billows, as the morning laughs
at old age and wrinkles for itself. But a harp, though
a world in itself, is but a narrow world by comparison
with the world of a human heart.
Now these thoughts, tinctured subtly with the perfume and coloring of human affections, make up the
sum of what merits xwr' d*oxv the name of life: and
these in a vast proportion depend for their possibilities
of truth upon the degree of approach which the thinker
makes to the appropriation of a pure faith. A man is
thinking all day long, and putting thoughts into words:
he is acting comparatively seldom. But are any man's
thoughts brought into conformity with the openings to
truth that a faith like the Christian's faith suggests?
Far from it. Probably there never was one thought,
from the foundation of the earth, that has passed
through the mind of man, which did not offer some
blemish, some sorrowful shadow of pollution, when it
came up for review before a heavenly tribunal: that
is, supposing it a thought entangled at all with human
interests or human passions.  But it is the key in
which the thoughts move, that determines the stage
of moral advancement. So long as we are human,
many among the numerous and evanescent elements
that enter (half-observed or not observed at all) into




ALEXANDER POPE.              183
our thoughts, cannot but be tainted. But the governing, the predominant element it is which gives the
character and the tendency to the thought: and this
must become such, must become a governing element,
through the quality of the ideals deposited in the heart
by the quality of the religious faith. One pointed
illustration of this suggests itself from another poem
of Pope's, in which he reiterates his shallow doctrine.
In his Universal Prayer he informs us, that it can
matter little whether we pray to Jehovah or to Jove,
so long as in either case we pray to the First Cause.
To contemplate God under that purely ontological
relation to the world, would have little more operative
value for what is most important in man, than if he
prayed to gravitation. And it would have been more
honest in Pope to say, as virtually he has said in the
couplet under examination, that it can matter little
whether man prays at all to any being. It deepens
the scandal of this sentiment, coming from a poet
professing Christianity, that a clergyman (holding
preferment in the English Church) viz., Dr. Joseph
Warton, justifies Pope for this Pagan opinion, upon
the ground that an ancient philosopher had uttered the
same opinion long before. What sort of philosopher?
A Christian?  No: but a Pagan. What then is the
value of the justification? To a Pagan it could be
no blame that he should avow a reasonable Pagan
doctrine.  In Irish phrase, it was'true for him.'
Amongst gods that were all utterly alienated from
any scheme of moral government, all equally remote
from  the executive powers for sustaining such a
government, so long as there was a practical anarchy




184             ALEXANDER POPE.
and rivalship amongst themselves, there could be no
sufficient reason for addressing vows to one rather
than to another.  The whole pantheon collectively
could do nothing for moral influences; a fortiori, no
separate individual amongst them. Pope indirectly
confesses this elsewhere by his own impassioned
expression of Christian feelings, though implicitly
denying it here by his mere understanding. For he
reverberates elsewhere, by deep echoes, that power in
Christianity, which even in a legendary tale he durst
not on mere principles of good sense and taste have
ascribed to Paganism. For instance, how could a
God, having no rebellion to complain of in man,
pretend to any occasion of large forgiveness of man,
or of framing means for reconciling this forgiveness
with his own attribute of perfect holiness? What
room, therefore, for ideals of mercy, tenderness, longsuffering, under any Pagan religion - under any worship of Jove!  How  again  from  gods, disfigured
by fleshly voluptuousness in every mode, could any
countenance be derived to an awful ideal of purity?
Accordingly we find, that even among the Romans
(the most advanced, as regards moral principle, of
all heathen nations) neither the deep fountain of
benignity, nor that of purity, was unsealed in man's
heart. So much of either was sanctioned as could
fall within the purposes of the magistrate, but beyond
that level neither fountain could have been permitted
to throw up its column of water, nor could in fact have
had any impulse to sustain it in ascending; and not
merely because it would have been repressed by
ridicule as a deliration of the human mind, but also




ALEXANDER POPE.              185
because it would have been frowned upon gravely by
the very principle of the Roman polity, as wandering
away from civic objects. Even for so much of these
great restorative ventilations as Rome enjoyed, she
was indebted not to her religion, but to elder forces
that act in spite of her religion, viz. the original law
written upon the human heart. Now, on the other
hand, Christianity has left a separate system of ideals
amongst men, which (as regards their development)
are continually growing in authority.  Waters, after
whatever course of wandering, rise to the level of
their original springs. Christianity lying so far above
all other fountains of religious influence, no wonder
that its irrigations rise to altitudes otherwise unknown,
and from which the distribution to every level of
society becomes comparatively easy. Those men are
reached oftentimes — choosing or not choosing —by
the healing streams, who have not sought them nor
even recognised them. Infidels of the most determined class talk in Christian lands the morals of
Christianity, and exact that morality with their hearts,
constantly mistaking it for a morality co-extensive with
man; and why? Simply from having been moulded
unawares by its universal pressure through infancy,
childhood, manhood, in the nursery, in the school, in
the market-place. Pope himself, not by system or by
affectation an infidel, not in any coherent sense a
doubter, but a careless and indolent assenter to such
doctrines of Christianity as his own Church prominently
put forward, or as social respectability seemed to
enjoin, - Pope, therefore, so far a very lukewarm
Christian, was yet unconsciously to himself searched




186              ALEXANDER POPE.
profoundly by the Christian types of purity. This we
may read in his' Hark, the herald angels say,
- Sister spirit, come away!'
Or, again, as some persons read the great lessons of
spiritual ethics more pathetically in those that have
transgressed them than in those that have been faithful
to the end —read them in the Magdalen that fades
away in penitential tears rather than in the virgin
martyr triumphant on the scaffold - we may see in
his own Eloisa, and in her fighting with the dread
powers let loose upon her tempestuous soul, how
profoundly Pope also had drunk from the streams
of Christian sentiment through which a new fountain
of truth had ripened a new vegetation upon earth.
What was it that Eloisa fought with? What power
afflicted her trembling nature, that any Pagan religions
could have evoked? The human love,' the nympholepsy of the fond despair,' might have existed in a
Vestal Virgin of ancient Rome: but in the Vestal what
counter-influence could have come into conflict with
the passion of love through any operation whatever of
religion? None of any ennobling character that could
reach the Vestal's own heart. The way in which religion connected itself with the case was through a traditional superstition -not built upon any fine spiritual
sense of female chastity as dear to heaven - but upon
a gross fear of alienating a tutelary goddess by offering
an imperfect sacrifice. This sacrifice, the sacrifice
of the natural household9 charities in a few injured
women on the altar of the goddess, was selfish in all




ALEXANDER POPE.              187
its stages - selfish in the dark deity that could be
pleased by the sufferings of a human being simply as
sufferings, and not at all under any fiction that they
were voluntary ebullitions of religious devotion —
selfish in the senate and people who demanded these
sufferings as a ransom paid through sighs and tears for
their ambition - selfish in the Vestal herself, as sustained altogether by fear of a punishment too terrific
to face, sustained therefore by the meanest principle
in her nature. But in Eloisa how grand is the collision between deep religious aspirations and the persecuting phantoms of her undying human passion!
The Vestal feared to be walled up alive - abandoned
to the pangs of hunger - to the trepidations of darkness - to the echoes of her own lingering groans -
to the torments perhaps of frenzy rekindling at intervals the decaying agonies of flesh. Was that what
Eloisa feared? Punishment she had none to apprehend: the crime was past, and remembered only by
the criminals: there was none to accuse but herself:
there was none to judge but God. Wherefore should
Eloisa fear? Wherefore and with what should she
fight? She fought by turns against herself and against
God, against her human nature and against her spiritual yearnings. How grand were the mysteries of her
faith, how gracious and forgiving its condescensions!
How deep had been her human love, how imperishable
its remembrance on earth!' What is it,' the Roman
Vestal would have said,'that this Christian lady is
afraid of? What is the phantom that she seems to
see?' Vestal! it is not fear, but grief. She sees an
immeasurable heaven that seems to touch her eyes: so




188             ALEXANDER POPE.
near is she to its love. Suddenly, an Abelard — the
glory of his race - appears, that seems to touch her
lips. The heavens recede and diminish to a starry
point twinkling in an unfathomable abyss; they are all
but lost for her. Fire, it is in Eloisa that searches
fire: the holy that fights with the earthly; fire that
cleanses with fire that consumes: like cavalry the two
fires wheel and counterwheel, advancing and retreating, charging and countercharging through and through
each other. Eloisa trembles, but she trembles as a
guilty creature before a tribunal unveiled within the
secrecy of her own nature: there was no such trembling in the heathen worlds, for there was no such
secret tribunal. Eloisa fights with a shadowy enemy:
there was no such fighting for Roman Vestals: because
all the temples of our earth, (which is the crowned
Vesta,) no, nor all the glory of her altars, nor all the
pomp of her cruelties, could cite from the depths of a
human spirit any such fearful shadow as Christian
faith evokes from an afflicted conscience.
Pope, therefore, wheresoever his heart speaks loudly,
shows how deep had been his early impressions from
Christianity. That is shown in his intimacy with Crashaw, in his Eloisa, in his Messiah, in his adaptation to
Christian purposes of the Dying Adrian, &c. It is
remarkable also, that Pope betrays, in all places where
he has occasion to argue about Christianity, how much
grander and more faithful to that great theme were the
subconscious perceptions of his heart than the explicit
commentaries of his understanding. He, like so many
others, was unable to read or interpret the testimonies
of his own heart, which is a deep over which diviner




ALEXANDER POPE.               189
agencies brood than are legible to the intellect. The
cipher written on his heaven-visited heart was deeper
than his understanding could interpret.
If the question were asked, What ought to have
been the best among Pope's poems? most people
would answer, the Essay on Man. If the question
were asked, What is the worst? all people of judgment would say, the Essay on Man. Whilst yet in its
rudiments, this poem claimed the first place by the
promise of its subject; when finished, by the utter
failure of its execution, it fell into the last. The case
possesses a triple interest — first, as illustrating the
character of Pope modified by his situation; secondly,
as illustrating the true nature of that' didactic' poetry
to which this particular poem is usually referral;
thirdly, as illustrating the anomalous condition to which
a poem so grand in its ambition has been reduced by
the double disturbance of its proper movement; one
disturbance through the position of Pope, another
through his total misconception of didactic poetry.
First, as regards Pope's situation, it may seem odd -
but it is not so —that a man's social position should
overrule his intellect. The scriptural denunciation of
riches, as a snare to any man that is striving to rise
above worldly views, applies not at all less to the intellect, and to any man seeking to ascend by some
airial arch of flight above ordinary intellectual efforts.
Riches are fatal to those continuities of energy without
which there is no success of that magnitude. Pope
had ~800 a year. That seems not so much. No,
certainly not, with a wife and six children: but by
accident Pope had no wife and no children. He was




190              ALEXANDER POPE.
luxuriously at his ease: and this accident of his position in life fell in with a constitutional infirmity that
predisposed him to indolence. Even his religious faith,
by shutting him out from those public employments
which else his great friends would have been too
happy to obtain for him, aided his idleness, or sometimes invested it with a false character of conscientious
self-denial. He cherished his religion confessedly as
a plea for idleness. The result of all this was, that in
his habits of thinking and of study, (if study we can
call a style of reading so desultory as his,) Pope became a pure dilettante; in his intellectual eclecticism'he was a mere eptlcure, toying with the delicacies and
varieties of literature; revelling in the first bloom of
mdral speculations, but sated immediately; fastidiously
retreating from all that threatened labor, or that exacted continuous attention; fathoming, throughout all
his vagrancies amongst books, no foundation; filling
up no chasms; and with all his fertility of thought
expanding no germs of _ew life.
This caree'rof luxurious indolence was the result of
early luck which made it possible, and of bodily constitution which made it tempting. And when we remember his youthful introduction to the highest circles
in the metropolis, where he never lost his footing, we
cannot wonder that, without any sufficient motive for
resistance, he should have sunk passively under his
constitutional propensities, and should have fluttered
amongst the flower-beds of literature or philosophy far
more in the character of a libertine butterfly for casual
enjoyment, than of a hard-working bee pursuing a
premeditated purpose.




ALEXANDER POPE.              191
Such a character, strengthened by such a situation,
would at any rate have disqualified Pope for composing a work severely philosophic, or where philosophy
did more than throw a colored light of pensiveness
upon some sentimental subject. If it weie necessary
that the philosophy should enter substantially into the
very texture of the poem, furnishing its interest and
prescribing its movement, in that case Pope's combining and theorizing faculty would have shrunk as
from the labor of building a pyramid. And wo to him
where it did not, as really happened in the case of the
Essay on Man. For his faculty of execution was
under an absolute necessity of shrinking in horror
from the enormous details of such an enterprise to
which so rashly he had pledged himself. He was
sure to find himself, as find himself he did, landed in
the most dreadful embarrassment upon reviewing his
own work. A work, which, when finished, was not
even begun; whose arches wanted their key-stones;
whose parts had no coherency; and whose pillars, in
the very moment of being thrown open to public view,
were already crumbling into ruins. This utter prostration of Pope in a work so ambitious as an Essay on
Man —a prostration predetermined from the first by
the personal circumstances which we have noticed —
was rendered still more irresistible in the second place
by the general misconception in which Pope shared
as to the very meaning of' didactic' poetry. Upon
which point we pause to make an exposition of our
own views.
What is didactic poetry?  What does'didactic'
mean when applied as a distinguishing epithet to such




192              ALEXANDER POPE.
an idea as a poem? The predicate destroys the subject: it is a case of what logicians call contradictio in
adjecto - the unsaying by means of an attribute the
very thing which is the subject of that attribute you
have just affirmed. LNo poetry can have.the.funetion
of teaching  It is im-possible that a variety of species
should contradict the very purpose which contradistinguishes its genus. The several species differ partially;
but not by the whole idea which differentiates their
class. Poetry, or any one of the fine arts, (all of which
alike speak through the genial nature of man and his
excited sensibilities,) can teach only as nature teaches,
as forests teach, as the sea teaches, as infancy
teaches, viz. by deep impulse, by hieroglyphic suggestion.  Their teaching is not direct or explicit, but lurking, implicit, masked in deep incarnations.. To teach
formally and professedly, is to abandon the very differential character and principle of poetry.+ If poetry
could condescend to teach anything, it would be truths
moral or religious. But even these it can utter only
through symbols and actions. The great moral, for
instance, the last result of the Paradise Lost, is once
formally announced: but it teaches itself only by diffusing its lesson through the entire poem in the total
succession of events and purposes: and even this succession teaches it only when the whole is gathered into
unity by a reflex act of meditation; just as the pulsation of the physical heart can exist only when all the
parts in an animal system are locked into one organization.
To address the insulated understanding is to lay
aside the Prospero's robe of poetry. The objection,




ALEXANDER POPE.              193
therefore, to didactic poetry, as vulgarly understood,
would be fatal even if there were none but this logical
objection derived from its definition. To be in selfcontradiction is, for any idea whatever, sufficiently to
destroy itself. But it betrays a more obvious and practical contradiction when a little searched. If the true
purpose of a man's writing a didactic poem were to
teach, by what suggestion of idiocy should he choose
to begin by putting on fetters? wherefore should the
simple man volunteer to handcuff and manacle himself, were it only by the encumbrances of metre, and
perhaps of rhyme? But these he will find the very
least of his encumbrances. A far greater exists in the
sheer necessity of omitting in any poem a vast variety
of details, and even capital sections of the subject,
unless they will bend to purposes of ornament. Now
this collision between two purposes, the-purpose of use
in mere teaching, and the purpose of poetic delight,
shows, by the uniformity of its solution, which is the
true purpose, and which the merely ostensible purpose.
Had the true purpose been instruction, the moment that
this was found incompatible with a poetic treatment, as
soon as it was seen that the sound education of the
reader-pupil could not make way without loitering to
gather poetic flowers, the stern cry of'duty' would
oblige the poet to remember that he had dedicated
himself to a didactic mission, and that he differed from
other poets, as a monk from other men, by his vows of
self-surrender to harsh ascetic functions. But, on the
contrary, in the very teeth of this rule, wherever such
a collision does really take place, and one or other of
the supposed objects must give way, it is always the
13




194              ALEXANDER POPE.
vulgar object of teaching (the pedagogue's object)
which goes to the rear, whilst the higher object of
poetic emotion moves on triumphantly. In reality not
one didactic poet has ever yet attempted to use any
parts or processes of the particular art which he made
his theme, unless in so far as they seemed susceptible
of poetic treatment, and only because they seemed so.
Look at the poem of Cyder, by Philips, of the Fleece
of Dyer or (which is a still weightier example) at the
Georgics of Virgil, - does any of these poets show
the least anxiety for the correctness of your principles,
or the delicacy of your manipulations in the worshipful
arts they affect to teach? No; but they pursue these
arts through every stage that offers any attractions of
beauty. And in the very teeth of all anxiety for teaching, if there existed traditionally any very absurd way of
doing a thing which happened to be eminently picturesque, and, if opposed to this, there were some improved mode that had recommended itself to poetic
hatred by being dirty and ugly, the poet (if a good
one) would pretend never to have heard of this disagreeable improvement. Or if obliged, by some rival
poet, not absolutely to ignore it, he would allow that
such a thing could be done, but hint that it was hateful
to the Muses or Graces, and very likely to breed a
pestilence.
This subordination of the properly didactic function
to the poetic, which, leaving the old essential distinction of poetry [viz. its sympathy with the genial
motions of man's heart] to override all accidents of
special variation, and showing that the essence of
poetry never can be set aside by its casual modifica



ALEXANDER POPE.               195
tions, - will be compromised by some loose thinkers,
under the idea that in didactic poetry the element of
instruction is in fact one element, though subordinate
and secondary. Not at all. What we are denying
is, that the element of instruction enters at all into
didactic poetry. The subject of the Georgics, for
instance, is Rural Economy as practised by Italian'farmers: but Virgil not only omits altogether innumerable points of instruction insisted on as articles of religious necessity by Varro, Cato, Columella, &c., but,
even as to those instructions which he does communicate, he is careless whether they are made technically
intelligible or not. He takes very little pains to keep
you from capital mistakes in practising his instructions; but he takes good care that you shall not miss
any strong impression for the eye or the heart to which
the rural process, or rural scene, may naturally lead.
He pretends to give you a lecture on farming, in order
to have an excuse for carrying you all round the beautiful farm. He pretends to show you a good plan for
a farm-house, as the readiest means of veiling his im.
pertinence in showing you the farmer's wife and her
rosy children. It is an excellent plea for getting a
peep at the bonny milk-maids to propose an inspection
of a model dairy. You pass through the poultry-yard,
under whatever pretence, in reality to see the peacock
and his harem. And so on to the very end, the pretended instruction is but in secret the connecting tie
which holds together the laughing flowers going off
from it to the right and to the left; whilst if ever at
intervals this prosy thread of pure didactics is brought
forward more obtrusively, it is so by way of foil, to




196              ALEXANDER POPE.
make more effective upon the eye the prodigality of
the floral magnificence.
We affirm, therefore, that the didactic poet is so far
from seeking even a secondary or remote object in the
particular points of information which he may happen
to communicate, that much rather he would prefer the
having communicated none at all. We will explain
ourselves by means of a little illustration from Pope,
which will at the same time furnish us with a miniature
type of what we ourselves mean by a didactic poem,
both in reference to what it is and to what it is not.
In the Rape of the Lock there is a game at cards
played, and played with a brilliancy of effect and felicity of selection, applied to the circumstances, which
make it a sort of gem within a gem. This game was
not in the first edition of the poem, but was an afterthought of Pope's, labored therefore with more than
usual care. We regret that ombre, the game described,
is no longer played, so that the entire skill with which
the mimic battle is fought cannot be so fully appreciated as in Pope's days. The strategies have partly
perished, which really Pope ought not to complain of,
since he suffers only as Hannibal, Marius, Sertorius,
suffered before him. Enough, however, survives of
what will tell its own story. For what is it, let us ask,
that a poet has to do in such a case, supposing that he
were disposed to weave a didactic poem out of a pack
of cards, as Vida has out of the chess-board? In describing any particular game he does not seek to teach
you that game -he postulates it as already known to
you - but he relies upon separate resources.  1st, he
will revive in the reader's eye, for picturesque effect,




ALEXANDER POPE.                197
the well-known personal distinctions of the several
kings, knaves, &c., their appearances and their powers.
2dly, he will choose some game in which he may display a happy selection applied to the chances and turns
of fortune, to the manceuvres, to the situations of doubt,
of brightening expectation, of sudden danger, of critical deliverance, or of final defeat. The interest of a
war will be rehearsed - Hs est de paupere regno -
that is true; but the depth of the agitation on such
occasions, whether at chess, at draughts, or at cards,
is not measured of necessity by the grandeur of the
stake; he selects, in short, whatever fascinates the eye
or agitates the heart by mimicry of life; but so far
from teaching, he presupposes the reader already
ta~ught, in order that he may go along with the movement of the descriptions.
Now, in treating a subject so vast, indeed so inexhaustible, as man, this eclecticism ceases to be possible. Every part depends upon every other part:
in such a nexus of truths to insulate is to annihilate.
Severed from each other the parts lose their support,
their coherence, their very meaning; you have no
liberty to reject or to choose. > Besides, in treating the
ordinary themes proper for what is called didactic
poetry — say, for instance, that it were the art of
rearing silk-worms or bees —or suppose it to be horticulture, landscape-gardening, hunting, or hawking,
rarely does there occur anything polemic; or if a
slight controversy does arise, it is easily hushed asleep
— it is stated in a line, it is answered in a couplet.
But in the themes of Lucretius and Pope everything is
polemic —you move only through dispute, you pros



198             ALEXANDER POPE.
per only by argument and never-ending controversy.
There is not positively one capital proposition or doctrine about man, about his origin, his nature, his
relations to God, or his prospects, but must be fought
for with energy, watched at every turn with vigilance,
and followed into endless mazes, not under the choice
of the writer, but under the inexorable dictation of the
argument.
Such a poem, so unwieldy, whilst at the same time
so austere in its philosophy, together with the innumerable polemic parts essential to its good faith and even
to its evolution, would be absolutely unmanageable
from  excess and from  disproportion, since often a
secondary demur would occupy far more space than
a principled section.  Here lay the impracticable
dilemma for Pope's Essay on Man. To satisfy the
demands of the subject, was to defeat the objects of
poetry. To evade the demands in the way that Pope
has done, is to offer us a ruin for a palace. The very
same dilemma existed for Lucretius, and with the very
same result. The De Rerum Naturd (which might,
agreeably to its theme, have been entitled De Omnibus
Rebus), and the Essay on Man (which might equally
have borne the Lucretian title De Rerum Naturd), are
both, and from the same cause, fragments that could
not have been completed. Both are accumulations of
diamond-dust without principles of coherency. In a
succession of pictures, such as usually form the materials of didactic poems, the slightest thread of interdependency is sufficient. But, in works essentially
and everywhere argumentative and polemic, to omit
the connecting links, as often as they are insusceptible




ALEXANDER POPE.                199
of poetic effect, is to break up the unity of the parts,
and to undermine the foundations, in what expressly
offers itself as a systematic and architectural whole.
Pope's poem has suffered even more than that of
Lucretius from this want of cohesion. It is indeed
the realization of anarchy; and one amusing test of
this may be found in the fact, that different commentators have deduced from it the very opposite doctrines. In some instances this apparent antinomy is
doubtful, and dependent on the ambiguities or obscurities of the expression. But in others it is fairly
deducible: and the cause lies in the elliptical structure
of the work: the ellipsis, or (as sometimes it may be
called) the chasm, may be filled up in two different
modes essentially hostile: and he that supplies the
hiatus, in effect determines the bias of the poem this
way or that — to a religious or to a sceptical result.
In this edition the commentary of Warburton has been
retained, which ought certainly to have been dismissed.
The Essay is, in effect, a Hebrew word with the vowelpoints omitted: and Warburton supplies one set of
vowels, whilst Crousaz with equal right supplies a
contradictory set.
As a whole, the edition before us is certainly the
most agreeable of all that we possess. The fidelity of
Mr. Roscoe to the interests of Pope's reputation, contrasts pleasingly with the harshness at times of Bowles,
and the reckless neutrality of Warton. In the editor
of a great classic, we view it as a virtue, wearing the
grace of loyalty, that he should refuse to expose
frailties or defects in a spirit of exultation.  Mr.
Roscoe's own notes are written with a peculiar good




200              ALEXANDER POPE.
sense, temperance, and kind feeling. The only objection to them, which applies, however, still more to
the notes of the former editors, is the want of compactness. They are not written under that austere
instinct of compression and verbal parsimony, as the
ideal merit in an annotator, which ought to govern all
such ministerial labors in our days. Books are becoming too much the oppression of the intellect, and
cannot endure any longer the accumulation of undigested commentaries, or that species of diffusion in
editors which roots itself in laziness: the efforts of
condensation  and selection are painful; and they
are luxuriously evaded by reprinting indiscriminately
whole masses of notes —though often in substance
reiterating each other.  But the interests of readers
clamorously call for the amendment of this system.
The principle of selection must now be applied even
to the text of great authors. It is no longer advisable
to reprint the whole of either Dryden or Pope. Not
that we would wish to see their works mutilated. Let
such as are selected be printed in the fullest integrity
of the text.  But some have lost their interest; 10
others, by the elevation of public morals since the
days of those great wits, are felt to be now utterly
unfit for general reading. Equally for the reader's
sake and the poet's, the time has arrived when they
may be advantageously retrenched: for they are painfully at war with those feelings of entire and honorable
esteem with which all lovers of exquisite intellectual
brilliancy must wish to surround the name and memory of POPE.




NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 148.
Charles I., for example, when Prince of Wales, and many
others in his father's court, gained their known familiarity
with Shakspeare - not through the original quartos, so slenderly diffused, nor through the first folio of 1623, but through
the court representations of his chief dramas at Whitehall.
NOTE 2. Page 154.
The Canterbury Tales were not made public until 1380 or
thereabouts: but the composition must have cost thirty or
more years; not to mention that the work had probably been
finished for some years before it was divulged.
NOTE 3. Page 156.
The reason why the broad distinctions between the two
literatures of power and knowledge so little fix the attention,
lies in the fact, that a vast proportion of books —history,
biography, travels, miscellaneous essays, &c., lying in a
middle zone, confound these distinctions by interblending
them. All that we call'amusement' or'entertainment,'
is a diluted form  of the power belonging to passion, and
also a mixed form; and where threads of direct instruction
intermingle in the texture with these threads of power, this
absorption of the duality into one representative nuance




202                ALEXANDER POPE.
neutralizes the separate perception of either. Fused into a
tertium quid, or neutral state, they disappear to the popular
eye as the repelling forces, which in fact they are.
NOTE 4. Page 160.
And this purity of diction shows'itself in many points
arguing great vigilance of attention, and also great anxiety
for using the language powerfully as the most venerable of
traditions, when treating the most venerable of subjects. For
instance, the Bible never condescends to the mean colloquial
preterites of chid for did chide, or writ for did write, but always
uses the full-dress word chode, and wrote. Pope might have
been happier had he read his Bible more: but assuredly he
would have improved his English. A. question naturally
arises —how it was that the elder writers —Shakspeare in
particular, (who had seen so little of higher society when he
wrote his youthful poems of Lucrece and Adonis,) should
have maintained so much purer a grammar? Dr. Johnson
indeed, but most falsely, says that Shakspeare's grammar
is licentious.'The style of Shakspeare' (these are the
exact words of the Doctor in his preface)'was in itself
ungrammatical, perplexed, and  obscure.'  An  audacious
misrepresentation! In the doctor himself, a legislator for
the language, we undertake to show more numerically of
trespasses against grammar, but (which is worse still) more
unscholarlike trespasses.  Shakspeare is singularly correct
in grammar. One reason, we believe, was this: from the
restoration of Charles II. decayed the ceremonious exteriors
of society.  Stiffness and reserve melted away before the
familiarity and impudence of French manners. Social meetings grew far more numerous as towns expanded; social
pleasure far more began now to depend upon conversation;
and conversation, growing less formal, quickened its pace.
Hence came the call for rapid abbreviations: the'tis and'twas, the can't and don't of the two post-MIiltonic generations
arose under this impulse; and the general impression has
ever since subsisted amongst English writers -that language,
instead of being an exquisitely beautiful vehicle for the




NOTES.                      203
thoughts - a robe that never can be adorned with too much
care or piety - is in fact a dirty high-road which all people
detest whilst all are forced to use it, and to the keeping of
which in repair no rational man ever contributes a trifle that
is not forced from him by some severity of Quarter Sessions.
The great corrupter of English was the conversational instinct
for rapidity. A more honorable source of corruption lay in
the growth of new ideas, and the continual influx of foreign
words to meet them. Spanish words arose, like reformado,
prizado, desperado, and French ones past counting. But as
these retained their foreign forms of structure, they reacted to
vitiate the language still more by introducing a piebald aspect
of books which it seemed a matter of necessity to tolerate for
the interests of wider thinking. The perfection of this horror
was never attained -except amongst the Germans.
NOTE 5. Page 168.
It was after his connection with Warburton that Pope introduced several of his living portraits into the Satires.
NOTE 6. Page 172.
By what might seem a strange oversight, but which in fact
is a very natural oversight to one who was not uttering one
word in which he seriously believed, Pope, in a prose note on
verse 207, roundly asserts'that the particular characters of
women are more various than those of men.' It is no evasion
of this insufferable contradiction, that he couples with the
greater variety of characters in women a greater uniformity in
what he presumes to be their ruling passion. Even as to this
ruling. passion he cannot agree with himself for ten minutes;
generally he says, that it is the love of pleasure; but sometimes (as at verse 208) forgetting this monotony, he ascribes
to women a dualism of passions - love of pleasure and love
of power - which dualism of itself must be a source of selfconflict, and therefore of inexhaustible variety in character:' Those only fix'd, they first or last obey -
The love of pleasure and the love of sway.'




204                ALEXANDER POPE.
NOTE 7. Page 175.
This refers to the Act of Parliament for burying corpses in
woollen, which greatly disturbed the fashionable costume in
coffins commne il faut.
NOTE 7. Page 177.
The sons of the Duke having died, the title and estates were
so settled as to descend through this daughter, who married
the Earl of Sunderland. In consequence of this arrangement,
Spenser (until lately) displaced the great name of Churchill;
and the Earl became that second Duke of Marlborough, about
whom Smollett tells us in his History of England (Reign of
George II.) so remarkable and to this hour so mysterious a
story.
NOTE 8. Page 177.
The Duchess died in the same year as Pope, viz. just in
time by a few months to miss the Rebellion of 1745, and the
second Pretender; spectacles which for little reasons (vindictive or otherwise) both of them would have enjoyed until the
spring of 1746.
NOTE 9. Page 186.
The Vestals not only renounced marriage, at least for those
years in which marriage could be a natural blessing, but also
left their fathers' houses at an age the most trying to the
human heart as regards the pangs of separation.
NOTE 10. Page 200.
We do not include the DUNCIAD in this list. On the contrary,
the arguments by which it has been generally undervalued, as
though antiquated by lapse of time and by the fading of
names, are all unsound.  We ourselves hold it to be the
greatest of Pope's efforts. But for that very reason we retire
from the examination of it, which we had designed, as being
wholly disproportioned to the narrow limits remaining to us.




WILLIAM  GODWIN. *
IT is no duty of a notice so cursory, to discuss Mr.
Godwin as a philosopher. Mr. Gilfillan admits, that
in this character he did not earn much popularity by
any absolute originality; and of such popularity as
he may have snatched surreptitiously without it,
clearly all must have long since exhaled before it
could be possible for'a respectable person' to demand of Mr. Gilfillan'Who's Godwin?' A question which Mr. Gilfillan justly thinks it possible that'some readers,' of the present day, November, 1845,
may repeat. That is, we must presume, not who is
Godwin the novelist? but who is Godwin the political
philosopher? In that character he is now forgotten.
And yet in that he carried one single shock into the
bosom of English society, fearful but momentary, like
that from the electric blow of the gymnotus; or, perhaps, the intensity of the brief panic which, fifty years
ago, he impressed on the public mind, may be more
adequately expressed by the case of a ship in the
middle ocean suddenly scraping, with her keel, a rag*'A Gallery of Literary Portraits.' By George Gilfillan.




206             WILLIAM GODWIN.
ged rock, hanging for one moment, as if impaled upon
the teeth of the dreadful sierra, then, by the mere
impetus of her mighty sails, grinding audibly, to
powder, the fangs of this accursed submarine harrow,
leaping into deep water again, and causing the panic
of ruin to be simultaneous with the deep sense of deliverance. In the quarto (that is, the original) edition
of his' Political Justice,' Mr. Godwin advanced against
thrones and dominations, powers and principalities,
with the air of some Titan slinger or monarchist
from Thebes and Troy, saying, —' Come hither, ye
wretches, that I may give your flesh to the fowls of
the air.' But, in the second, or octave edition, - and
under what motive has never been explained, —he
recoiled, absolutely, from the sound himself had made:
everybody else was appalled by the fury of the challenge; and, through the strangest of accidents, Mr.
Godwin also was appalled. The second edition, as
regards principles, is not a recast, but absolutely a travesty of the first: nay, it is all but a palinode. In this
collapse of a tense excitement, I myself find the true
reason for the utter extinction of the' Political Justice,' and of its author considered as a philosopher.
Subsequently, he came forward as a philosophical
speculator, in'The Enquirer,' and elsewhere; but
here it was always some minor question which he
raised, or some mixed question, rather allied to philosophy than philosophical. As regarded the main creative nisus of his philosophy, it remained undeniable
that, in relation to the hostility of the world, he was
like one who, in some piratical ship, should drop his
anchor before Portsmouth, - should defy the navies of




WILLIAM GODWIN.               207
England to come out and fight, and then, whilst a
thousand vessels were contending for the preference
in blowing him out of the seas, should suddenly slip
his cables and run.
But it is as a novelist, not as a political theorist, that
Mr. Gilfillan values Godwin; and specially for his novel
of' Caleb Williams.' Now, if this were the eccentric
judgment of one unsupported man, however able, and
had received no countenance at all from others, it
might be injudicious to detain the reader upon it. It
happens, however, that other men of talent have raised' Caleb Williams' to a station in the first rank of novels: whilst many more, amongst whom I am compelled to class myself, can see in it no merit of any kind.
A schism, which is really perplexing, exists in this
particular case; and, that the reader may judge for
himself, I will state the outline of the plot, out of which
it is that the whole interest must be supposed to grow;
for the characters are nothing, being mere generalities,
and very slightly developed. Thirty-five years it is
since 1 read the book; but the nakedness of the incidents
makes them easily rememberable. - Falkland, who
passes for a man of high-minded and delicate honor,
but is, in fact, distinguished only by acute sensibil.
ity to the opinion of the world, receives a dreadful
insult in a most public situation. It is, indeed, more
than an insult, being the most brutal of outrages. In
a ball-room, where the local gentry and his neighbors
are assembled, he is knocked down, kicked, dragged
along the floor, by a ruffian squire, named Tyrrel. It
is vain to resist; he himself is slightly built, and his
antagonist is a powerful man. In these circumstances,




208             WILLIAM GODWIN.
and under the eyes of all the ladies in the county
witnessing every step of his humiliation, no man could
severely have blamed him, nor would our English law
have severely punished him, if, in the frenzy of his
agitation, he had seized a poker and laid his assailant
dead upon the spot. Such allowance does the natural
feeling of men, such allowance does the sternness of
the judgment-seat make for human infirmity when
tried to extremity by devilish provocation. But Falkland does not avenge himself thus: he goes out, makes
his little arrangements, and, at a later hour of the
night, he comes, by surprise, upon Tyrrel, and murders him in the darkness.  Here is the first vice in the
story. With any gleam of generosity in his nature,
no man in pursuit of vengeance would have found it
in such a catastrophe. That an enemy should die by
apoplexy, or by lightning, would be no gratification
of wrath to an impassioned pursuer: to make it a
retribution for him, he himself must be associated to
the catastrophe in the consciousness of his victim.
Falkland for some time evades or tramples on detection. But his evil genius at last appears in the shape
of Caleb Williams; and the agency through which
Mr. Caleb accomplishes his mission is not that of any
grand passion, but of vile eavesdropping inquisitiveness. Mr. Falkland had hired him as an amanuensis;
and in that character Caleb had occasion to observe
that some painful remembrance weighed upon his
master's mind; and that something or other - documents or personal memorials connected with this re.
membrance - were deposited in a trunk visited at
intervals by Falkland. But of what nature could these




WILLIAM GODWIN.              209
memorials be? Surely Mr. Falkland would not keep
in brandy the gory head of Tyrrel; and anything
short of that could not proclaim any murder at all,
much less the particular murder. Strictly speaking,
nothing could be in the trunk, of a nature to connect
Falkland with the murder more closely than the circumstances had already connected him; and those
circumstances, as we know, had been insufficient. It
puzzles one, therefore, to imagine any evidence which
the trunk could yield, unless there were secreted within
it some known personal property of Tyrrel's; in which
case the aspiring Falkland had committed a larceny
as well as a murder.  Caleb, meantime, wastes no
labor in hypothetic reasonings, but resolves to have
ocular satisfaction in the matter.  An opportunity
offers: an alarm of fire is given in the day-time; and
whilst Mr. Falkland, with his people, is employed on
the lawn manning the buckets, Caleb skulks off to the
trunk; feeling, probably, that his first duty was to
himself, by extinguishing the burning fire of curiosity
in his own heart, after which there might be time
enough for his second duty, of assisting to extinguish
the fire in his master's mansion. Falkland, however,
misses the absentee. To pursue him, to collar him,
and, we may hope, to kick him, are the work of a
moment. Had Caleb found time for accomplishing
his inquest? I really forget; but no matter: either
now, or at some luckier hour, he does so: he becomes
master of Falkland's secret; consequently, as both
fancy, of Falkland's life. At this point commences a
flight of Caleb, and a chasing of Falkland, in order to
watch his motions, which forms the most spirited part
14




210              WILLIAM GODWIN.
of the story. Mr. Godwin tells us that he derived this
situation, the continual flight and continual pursuit,
from a South American tradition of some Spanish
vengeance. Always the Spaniard was riding in to
any given town on the road, when his destined victim
was riding out at the other end; so that the relations
of'whereabouts' were never for a moment lost: the
trail was perfect. Now, this might be possible in certain countries; but in England! - heavens! could
not Caleb double upon his master, or dodge round a
gate (like Falkland when he murdered Mr. Tyrrel), or
take a headlong plunge into London, where the scent
might have lain cold for forty years? *  Other accidents by thousands would interrupt the chase. On the
hundredth day, for instance, after the flying parties
had become well known on the road, Mr. Falkland
would drive furiously up to some King's Head or
White Lion, putting his one question to the waiter,'Where's Caleb?'  And the waiter would reply,'Where's Mr. Caleb, did you say, Sir?   Why, he
went off at five by the Highflyer, booked inside the
whole way to Doncaster; and Mr. Caleb is-now, Sir,
precisely forty-five miles a-head.' Then would Falk.
land furiously demand'four horses on;' and then
would the waiter plead a contested election in excuse
for having no horses at all.  Really, for dramatic
*'Forty years:' so long, according to my recollection of
Boswell, did Dr. Johnson walk about London before he met an
old Derbyshire friend, who also had been walking about London with the same punctual regularity for every day of the
same forty years. The nodes of intersection did not come
round sooner.




WILLIAM GODWIN.              211
effect, it is a pity that the tale were not translated forward to the days of railroads. Sublime would look
the fiery pursuit, and the panic-stricken flight, when
racing from Fleetwood to Liverpool, to Birmingham,
to London; then smoking along the Great Western,
where Mr. Caleb's forty-five miles a-head would avail
him little, to Bristol, to Exeter; thence doubling back
upon London, like the steam leg in Mr. H. G. Bell's
admirable story.
But, after all, what was the object, and what the
result of all this racing? Once I saw two young men
facing each other upon a high road, but at a furlong's
distance, and playing upon the foolish terrors of a
young woman, by continually heading her back from
one to the other, as alternately she approached towards
either. Signals of some dreadful danger in the north
being made by the northern man, back the poor girl
flew towards the southern, who, in his turn, threw out
pantomimic warnings of an equal danger to the south.
And thus, like a tennis-ball, the simple creature kept
rebounding from one to the other, until she could move
no farther through sheer fatigue; and then first the
question occurred to her, What was it that she had
been running from?  The same question seems to
have struck at last upon the obtuse mind of Mr. Caleb;
it was quite as easy to play the part of hunter, as that
of hunted game, and likely to be cheaper. He turns
therefore sharp round upon his master, who in his turn
is disposed to fly, when suddenly the sport is brought
to a dead lock by a constable, who tells the murdering
squire that he is' wanted.' Caleb has lodged informations; all parties meet for a final'reunion' before the




212              WILLIAM GODWIN.
magistrate; Mr. Falkland, oddly enough, regards himself in the light of an ill-used man; which theory of
the case, even more oddly, seems to be adopted by
Mr. Gilfillan; but, for all that he can say, Mr. Falkland is fully committed: and as laws were made for
every degree, it is plain that Mr. Falkland (however
much of a pattern-man) is in some danger of swinging. But this catastrophe is intercepted: a novelist
may raise his hero to the peerage; he may even confer the garter upon him; but it shocks against usage
and courtesy that he should hang him. The circulating libraries would rise in mutiny, if he did. And
therefore it is satisfactory to believe, (for all along I
speak from memory,) that Mr. Falkland reprieves himself from the gallows by dying of exhaustion from his
travels.
Such is the fable of' Caleb Williams,' upon which
by the way is built, I think, Colman's drama of' The
Iron Chest.'  I have thought it worth the trouble
(whether for the reader, or for myself,) of a flying
abstract; and chiefly with a view to the strange collision of opinions as to the merit of the wo*k; some,
as I have said, exalting it to the highest class of novels,
others depressing it below the lowest of those which
achieve any notoriety. They who vote against it are
in a large majority. The Germans, whose literature
offers a free port to all the eccentricities of the earth,
have never welcomed' Caleb Williams.' Chenier, the
ruling litterateur of Paris, in the days of Napoleon,
when reviewing the literature of his own day, dismisses Caleb contemptuously as coarse and vulgar.
It is not therefore to the German taste, it is not to the




WILLIAM GODWIN.              213
French. And as to our own country, Mr. Gilfillan is
undoubtedly wrong in supposing that it'is in every
circulating library, and needs more frequently, than
almost any novel, to be replaced.' If this were so, in
presence of the immortal novels which for one hundred and fifty years have been gathering into the
garners of our English literature, I should look next
to see the race of men returning from venison and
wheat to their primitive diet of acorns. But I believe
that the number of editions yet published, would at
once discredit this account of the book's popularity.
Neither is it likely, 2 priori, that such a popularity
could arise even for a moment. The interest from
secret and vindictive murder, though coarse, is undoubtedly deep. What would make us thrill in real
life, the case for instance of a neighbor lying under
the suspicion of such a murder, would make us thrill
in a novel. But then it must be managed with art,
and covered with mystery.  For a long time it must
continue doubtful, both as to the fact, and the circumstances, and the motive.  Whereas, in the case of
Mr. Falkland, there is little mystery of any kind; not
much, and only for a short time, to Caleb; and none
at all to the reader, who could have relieved the curiosity of Mr. Caleb from the first, if he were placed in
communication with him.
Differing so much from Mr. Gilfillan, as to the
effectiveness of the novel, I am only the more impressed with the eloquent images and expressions by
which he has conveyed his own sense of its power.
Power there must be, though many of us cannot
discern it, to react upon us, through impressions so




214             WILLIAM GODWIN.
powerful in other minds. Some of Mr. Gilfillan's impressions, as they are clothed in striking images by
himself, I will here quote: —' His,' Godwin's,' heat is
never that of the sun with all his beams around him;
but of the round rayless orb seen shining from the
summit of Mont Blanc, still and stripped in the black
ether. He has more passion than imagination. And
even his passion he has learned more by sympathy
than by personal feeling. And amid his most tempestuous scenes, you see the calm and stern eye of
philosophic analysis looking on. His imagery is not
copious, nor always original; but its sparseness is its
strength, the flash comes sudden as the lightning. No
preparatory flourish, or preliminary sound: no sheets
of useless splendor: each figure is a fork of fire,
which strikes and needs no second blow. Nay, often
his images are singularly common-place, and you
wonder how they move you so, till you resolve this
into the power of the hand which jaculates its own
energy in them.' And again,'His novels resemble
the paintings of John Martin, being a gallery, nay a
world, in themselves. In both, monotony and mannerism are incessant: but the monotony is that of the
sounding deep, the mannerism that of the thunderbolts
of heaven. Martin might append to his one continual
flash of lightning, which is present in all his picturesnow to reveal a deluge, now to garland the brow of a
fiend - now to rend the veil of a temple, and now to
guide the invaders through the breach of a city -the
words, John Martin, his mark. Godwin's novels are
not less terribly distinguished to those who understand




WILLIAM GODWIN.               215
their cipher —the deep scar of misery branded upon
the brow of the' victim of society.'
And as to the earliest of these novels, the' Caleb
Williams,' he says,' There is about it a stronger
suction and swell of interest than in any novel we
know, with the exception of one or two of Sir
Walter's. You are in it ere you are aware. You
put your hand playfully into a child's, and are surprised to find it held in the grasp of a giant.  It
becomes a fascination. Struggle you may, and kick,
but he holds you by his glittering eye.' In reference,
again, to' St. Leon,' the next most popular of Godwin's novels, there is a splendid passage upon the
glory and pretensions of the ancient alchemist, in the
infancy of scientific chemistry. It rescues the character from vulgarity, and displays it idealized as
sometimes, perhaps, it must have been. I am sorry
that it is too long for extracting; but, in compensation
to the reader, I quote two very picturesque sentences,
describing what, to Mr. Gilfillan, appears the quality
of Godwin's style: —' It is a smooth succession of short
and simple sentences, each clear as crystal, and none
ever distracting the attention from the subject to its
own construction. It is a style in which you cannot
explain how the total effect rises out of the individual
parts, and which is forgotten as entirely during perusal
as is the pane of glass through which you gaze at a
comet or a star.' Elsewhere, and limiting his remark
to the style of the' Caleb Williams,' he says finely:-'The writing, though far from elegant or finished, has
in parts the rude power of those sentences which




216              WILLIAM GODWIN.
criminals, martyrs, and maniacs, scrawl upon their
walls or windows in the eloquence of desperation.' *
These things perplex me. The possibility that any
individual in the minority can have regarded Godwin
with such an eye, seems to argue that we of the
majority must be wrong. Deep impressions seem to
justify themselves.  We may have failed to perceive
things which are in the object; but it is not so easy
for others to perceive things which are not; or, at
least, hardly in a case like this, where (though a
minority) these' others' still exist in number sufficient
to check and to confirm each other. On the other
hand, Godwin's name seems sinking out of remembrance; and he is remembered less by the novels that
succeeded, or by the philosophy that he abjured, than
as the man that had Mary Wolstonecraft for his wife,
Mrs. Shelley for his daughter, and the immortal Shelley
as his son-in-law.
*'Desperation.'  Yet, as martyrs are concerned in the
picture, it ought to have been said,'of desperation and of
farewell to earth,' or something equivalent.




JOHN FOSTER.
MR. GILFILLAN * possibly overrates the power of this
essayist, and the hold which he has upon the public
mind. It is singular, meantime, that whatever might
be its degree, much or little, originally his influence
was due to an accident of position which in some
countries would have tended to destroy it. He was a
Dissenter. Now, in England, that sometimes operates
as an advantage. To dissent from the established
form of religion, which could not affect the value of a
writer's speculations, may easily become the means
of diffusing their reputation, as well as of facilitating
their introduction. And in the following way: The
great mass of the reading population are absolutely indifferent to such deflexions from the national standard.
The man, suppose, is a Baptist: but to be a Baptist is
still to be a Protestant, and a Protestant agreeing with
his countrymen in every thing essential to purity of
life and faith. So far there is the most entire neutrality
in the public mind, and readiness to receive any impression which the man's powers enable him to make.
*'Gallery of Literary Portraits.'




218                JOHN FOSTER.
There is, indeed, so absolute a carelessness for all
inoperative shades of religious difference lurking in
the background, that even the ostentatiously liberal
hardly feel it a case for parading their liberality. But,
on the other hand, his own sectarian party are as
energetic to push him forward as all others are passive.
They favor him as a brother, and also as one whose
credit will react upon their common sect. And this
favor, pressing like a wedge upon the unresisting
neutrality of the public, soon succeeds in gaining for
any able writer among sectarians an exaggerated reputation. Nobody is against him; and a small section
acts for him in a spirit of resolute partisanship.
To this accident of social position, and to his connection with the Eclectic Review, Mr. Foster owed
his first advantageous presentation before the public.
The misfortune of many an able writer is, not that he
is rejected by the world, but that virtually he is never
brought conspicuously before them: he is not dismissed unfavorably, but he is never effectually introduced. From this calamity at the outset, Foster was
saved by his party. I happened myself to be in
Bristol at the moment when his four essays were first
issuing from the press; and everywhere I heard so
pointed an account of the expectations connected with
Foster by his religious party, that I made it a duty to
read his book without delay.  It is a distant incident
to look back upon; gone by for more than thirty
years; but I remember my first impressions, which
were these: - first, That the novelty or weight of the
thinking was hardly sufficient to account for the sudden
popularity, without some extra influence at work; and,




JOHN FOSTER.               219
secondly, That the contrast was remarkable between
the uncolored style of his general diction, and the
brilliant felicity of occasional images embroidered
upon the sober ground of his text. The splendor did
not seem spontaneous, or growing up as part of the
texture within the loom; it was intermitting, and
seemed as extraneous to the substance as the flowers
which are chalked for an evening upon the floors of
ball-rooms.
Subsequently, I remarked two other features of
difference in his manner, neither of which has been
overlooked by Mr. Gilfillan, viz. first, The unsocial
gloom of his eye, travelling over all things with
dissatisfaction; second, (Which in our days seemed
unaccountable,) the remarkable limitation of his know.
ledge. You might suppose the man, equally by his
ignorance of passing things and by his ungenial
moroseness, to be a specimen newly turned out from
the silent cloisters of La Trappe. A monk he seemed
by the repulsion of his cloistral feelings, and a monk
by the superannuation of his knowledge. Both peculiarities he drew in part from that same sectarian
position, operating for evil, to which, in another
direction as a conspicuous advantage, he had been
indebted for his favorable public introduction. It is
not that Foster was generally misanthropic; neither
was he, as a sectarian,'a good hater' at any special
angle; that is, he was not a zealous hater; but, by
temperament, and in some measure by situation, as
one pledged to a polemic attitude by his sect, he was
a general disliker and a general suspecter. His confidence in human nature was small; for he saw the




220                JOHN FOSTER.
clay of the composite statue, but not its gold; and
apparently his satisfaction with himself was not much
greater. Inexhaustible was his jealousy; and for that
reason his philanthropy was everywhere checked by
frost and wintry chills. This blight of asceticism in
his nature is not of a kind to be briefly illustrated, for
it lies diffused through the texture of his writings.  But
of his other monkish characteristic, his abstraction
from the movement and life of his own age, I may
give this instance, which I observed by accident about
a year since in some late edition of his Essays.
He was speaking of the term radical as used to
designate a large political party; but so slightly was
he acquainted with the history of that party, so little
had he watched the growth of this important interest
in our political system, that he supposes the term'Radical' to express a mere scoff or movement of
irony from  the antagonists of that party.  It stands,
as he fancies, upon the same footing as'Puritan,''Roundhead,' &c. amongst our fathers, or' Swaddler,'
applied to the Evangelicals amongst ourselves. This
may seem a trifle; nor do I mention the mistake for
any evil which it can lead to, but for the dreamy inattention which it argues to what was most important in
the agitations around him. It may cause nothing; but
how much does it presume? Could a man, interested
in the motion of human principles, or the revolutions of
his own country, have failed to notice the rise of a new
party which loudly proclaimed its own mission and
purposes in the very name which it assumed? The
term'Radical' was used elliptically: Mr. Hunt, and
all about him, constantly gave out that they were




JOHN FOSTER.                221
reformers who went to the root -radical reformers;
whilst all previous political parties they held to be
merely masquerading as reformers, or, at least, wanting in the determination to go deep enough. The
party-name' Radical' was no insult of enemies; it
was a cognizance self-adopted by the party which it
designates, and worn with pride; and whatever might
be the degree of personal weight belonging to Mr.
Hunt, no man, who saw into the composition of society
amongst ourselves, could doubt that his principles were
destined to a most extensive diffusion- were sure of
a permanent settlement amongst the great party interests -and, therefore, sure of disturbing thenceforwards for ever the previous equilibrium of forces in
our English social system. To mistake the origin or
history of a word -is nothing; but to mistake it when
that history of a word ran along with the history of a
thing destined to change all the aspects of our English
present and future -implies a -sleep of Epimenides
amongst the shocks which are unsettling the realities
of earth.
The four original essays, by which Foster was first
known to the public, are those by which he is still best
known. It cannot be said of them that they have any
practical character calculated to serve the uses of life.
They terminate in speculations that apply themselves
little enough to any business of the world.  Whether
a man should write memoirs of himself cannot have
any personal interest for one reader in a myriad.
And two of the essays have even a misleading tendency. That upon' Decision of Character' places a
very exaggerated valuation upon one quality of human




222                JOHN FOSTER.
temperament, which is neither rare, nor at all necessarily allied with the most elevated features of moral
grandeur. Coleridge, because he had no business talb
ents himself, admired them preposterously in others;
or fancied them vast when they existed only in a slight
degree. And, upon the same principle, I suspect that
Mr. Foster rated so highly the quality of decision in
matters of action, chiefly because he wanted it himself.
Obstinacy is a gift more extensively sown than Foster
was willing to admit. And his scale of appreciation,
if it were practically applied to the men of history,
would lead to judgments immoderately perverse. Milton would rank far below Luther. In reality, as Mr.
Gilfillan justly remarks,' Decision of character is not,
strictly, a moral power; and it is extremely dangerous
to pay that homage to any intellectual quality, which is
sacred to virtue alone.' But even this estimate must
often tend to exaggeration; for the most inexorable
decision is much more closely connected with bodily
differences of temperament than with any superiority
of mind. It rests too much upon a physical basis;
and of all qualities whatever, it is the most liable to
vicious varieties of degeneration. The worst result
from this essay is not merely speculative; it trains the
feelings to false admirations; and upon a path which
is the more dangerous, as the besetting temptation of
our English life lies already towards an estimate much
too high of all qualities bearing upon the active and
the practical. We need no spur in that direction. 
The essay upon the use of technically religious
language seems even worse by its tendency, although
the necessities of the subject will for ever neutralize




JOHN FOSTER.                223
Foster's advice. Mr. Gilfillan is, in this instance, disposed to defend him:'Foster does not ridicule the
use, but the abuse, of technical language, as applied
to divine things; and proposes, merely as an experiment, to translate it, in accommodation to fastidious
tastes.' Safely, however, it may be assumed, that, in
all such cases, the fastidious taste is but another aspect
of hatred to religious themes,- a hatred which there
is neither justice nor use in attempting to propitiate.
Cant words ought certainly to be proscribed, as degrading to the majesty of religion; the word' prayer.
ful,' for instance, so commonly used of late years,
seems objectionable; and such words as'savory,'
which is one of those cited by Foster himself, are
absolutely abominable, when applied to spiritual or
intellectual objects. It is not fastidiousness, but manliness and good feeling, which are outraged by such
vulgarities.  On the other hand, the word'grace'
expresses an idea so exclusively belonging to Christianity, and so indispensable to the wholeness of its
philosophy, that any attempt to seek for equivalent terms of mere human growth, or amongst the
vocabularies of mere worldly usage, must terminate in
conscious failure, or else in utter self-delusion. Christianity, having introduced many ideas that are absolutely new, such as faith, charity, holiness, the nature
of God, of human frailty, &c. is as much entitled
(nay as much obliged and pledged) to a peculiar language and terminology as chemistry. Let a man try
if he can find a word in the market-place fitted to be
the substitute for the word gas or alkali. The danger,
in fact, lies exactly in the opposite direction to that




224                 JOHN FOSTER.
indicated by Foster. No fear that men of elegant
taste should be revolted by the use of what, after all,
is scriptural language; for it is plain that he who could
be so revolted, wants nothing seriously with religion.
But there is great fear that any general disposition to
angle for readers of extra refinement, or to court the
effeminately fastidious by sacrificing the majestic simplicities of scriptural diction, would and must end in
a ruinous dilution of religious truths; along with the
characteristic language of Christian philosophy, would
exhale its characteristic doctrines.




WILLIAM  IIAZLITT.*
Tins man, who would have drawn in the scales
against a select vestry of Fosters, is for the present
deeper in the world's oblivion than the man with whom
I here connect his name. That seems puzzling. For,
if Hazlitt were misanthropic, so was Foster: both as
writers were splenetic and more than peevish; but
Hazlitt requited his reader for the pain of travelling
through so gloomy an atmosphere, by the rich vegetation which his teeming intellect threw up as it moved
along. The soil in his brain was of a volcanic fertility;
whereas, in Foster, as in some tenacious clay, if the
life were deep, it was slow and sullen in its throes.
The reason for at all speaking of them in connection is, that both were essayists; neither in fact writing
anything of note except essays, moral or critical; and
both were bred at the feet of Dissenters. But how
different were the results from that connection! Foster
turned it to a blessing, winning the jewel that is most
of all to be coveted, peace and the fallentis semita
vitce. Hazlitt, on the other hand, sailed wilfully away
*'Gallery of Literary Portraits.' By George Gilfillan.
15




226              WILLIAM HAZLITT.
from this sheltering harbor of his father's profession, —
for sheltering it might have proved to him, and did
prove to his youth, - only to toss ever afterwards as a
drifting wreck at the mercy of storms. Hazlitt was
not one of those who could have illustrated the benefits
of a connection with a sect, i. e. with a small confederation hostile by position to a larger; for the hostility
from without, in order to react, presumes a concord
from within. Nor does his case impeach the correctness of what I have said on that subject in speaking of
Foster. He owed no introduction to the Dissenters;
but it was because he would owe none. The Ishmaelite, whose hand is against every man, yet smiles at
the approach of a brother, and gives the salutation of'Peace be with you!' to the tribe of his father. But
Hazlitt smiled upon no man, nor exchanged tokens of
peace with the nearest of fraternities. Wieland in his
Oberon,' says of a benign patriarch -'His eye a smile on all creation beam'd.'
Travestied as to one word, the line would have described Hazlitt-'His eye a scowl on all creation beam'd.'
This inveterate misanthropy was constitutional; exasperated it certainly had been by accidents of life, by
disappointments, by mortifications, by insults, and still
more by having wilfully placed himself in collision
from the first with all the interests that were in the
sunshine of this world, and with all the persons that
were then powerful in England.,,rBut my impression
was, if I had a right to have any impression with regard
to one whom I knew so slightly, that no change of




WILLIAM HAZLITT.             227
position or of fortunes could have brought Hazlitt into
reconciliation with the fashion of this world, or of this
England, or' this now.' It seemed to me that he hated
those whom hollow custom obliged him to call his'friends,' considerably more than those whom notorious differences of opinion entitled him to rank as his
enemies. At least within the ring of politics this was
so. Between those particular Whigs whom literature
had connected him with, and the whole gang of us
Conservatives, he showed the same difference in his
mode of fencing and parrying, and even in his style of
civilities, as between the domestic traitor, hiding a
stiletto among his robes of peace, and the bold enemy
who sends a trumpet before him, and rides up swordin-hand against your gates.- Whatever is - so much
I conceive to have been a fundamental lemma for
Hazlitt - is wrong. So much he thought it safe to
postulate. How it was wrong, might require an impracticable investigation; you might fail for a century
to discover: but that it was wrong, he nailed down as
a point of faith, that could stand out against all counterpresumptions from argument, or counter-evidences from
experience. A friend of his it was, a friend wishing
to love him, and admiring him almost to extravagance,
who told me, in illustration of the dark sinister gloom
which sat for ever upon Hazlitt's countenance and
gestures, that involuntarily when Hazlitt put his hand
within his waistcoat, (as a mere unconscious trick of
habit,) he himself felt a sudden recoil of fear, as from
one who was searching for a hidden dagger. Like' a
Moor of Malabar,' as described in the Faery Queen,
at intervals Hazlitt threw up his angry eyes, and dark




228             WILLIAM HAZLITT.
locks, as if wishing to affront the sun, or to search the
air for hostility. And the same friend, on another
occasion, described the sort of feudal fidelity to his
belligerent duties, which in company seemed to animate Hazlitt, as though he were mounting guard on all
the citadels of malignity, under some sacramentum
militaire, by the following trait, - that, if it had happened to Hazlitt to be called out of the room, or to be
withdrawn for a moment from the current of the general conversation, by a fit of abstraction, or by a
private whisper to himself from some person sitting at
his elbow, always on resuming his place as a party to
what might be called the public business of the company, he looked round him with a mixed air of suspicion
and defiance, such as seemed to challenge everybody
by some stern adjuration into revealing whether, during his own absence or inattention, anything had been
said demanding condign punishment at his hands.' Has any man uttered or presumed to insinuate,' he
seemed to insist upon knowing,' during this interregnum, things that I ought to proceed against as treasonable to the interests which I defend?' He had the
unresting irritability of Rousseau, but in a nobler shape;
for Rousseau transfigured every possible act or design
of his acquaintan es into some personal relation to,
himself. The vile act was obviously meant, as a child
could understand, to injure the person of Rousseau, or
his interests, or his reputation. It was meant to wound
his feelings, or to misrepresent his acts calumniously,
or secretly to supplant his footing. But, on the contrary, Hazlitt viewed all personal affronts or casual
slights towards himself, as tending to something more




WILLIAM  HAZLITT.               229
general, and masquing under a pretended horror of
Hazlitt, the author, a real hatred, deeper than it was
always safe to avow, for those social interests which he
was reputed to defend.'It was not Hazlitt whom the
wretches struck at; no, no- it was democracy, or it
was freedom, or it was Napoleon, whose shadow they
saw in the rear of Hazlitt; and Napoleon, not for anything in him that might be really bad, but in revenge
of that consuming wrath against the thrones of Christendom, for which (said Hazlitt) let us glorify his
name eternally.'
Yet Hazlitt, like other men, and perhaps with more
bitterness than other men, sought for love and for
intervals of rest, in which all anger might sleep, and
enmity might be laid aside like a travelling dress,
after tumultuous journeys:..,'Though the sea-horse on the ocean
Own no dear domestic cave,
Yet he slumbers without motion
On the still and halcyon wave.
If, on windy days, the raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less he loves his haven
On the bosom of a cliff.
If almost with eagle pinion
O'er the Alps the chamois roam,
Yet he has some small dominion,
Which, no doubt, he calls his home.'
But Hazlitt, restless as the sea-horse, as the raven,
as the chamois, found not their respites from storm;
he sought, but sought in vain.  And for him  the




230              WILLIAM IAZLITT.
closing stanza of that little poem remained true to
his dying hour: in the person of the'Wandering
Jew,' he might complain, -'Day and night my toils redouble:
Never nearer to the goal,
Night and day I feel the trouble
Of the wanderer in my soul.'
Domicile he had not, round whose hearth his affections
might gather: rest he had not, for the sole of his
burning foot. O:ne chance of regaining some peace,
or a chance as he trusted for a time, was torn from
him at the moment of gathering its blossoms. He
had been divorced from his wife, not by the law of
England, which would have argued criminality in her,
but by Scottish law, satisfied with some proof of
frailty in himself. Subsequently he became deeply
fascinated by a young woman, in no very elevated
rank, for she held some domestic office of superintendence in a boarding-house kept by her father, but
of interesting person, and endowed with strong intellectual sensibilities. She had encouraged Hazlitt;
had gratified him by reading his works with intelligent
sympathy; and, under what form of duplicity it is
hard to say, had partly engaged her faith to Hazlitt
as his future wife, whilst secretly she was holding a
correspondence, too tender to be misinterpreted, with
a gentleman resident in the same establishment. Suspicions were put aside for a time; but they returned,
and gathered too thickly for Hazlitt's penetration to
cheat itself any longer. Once and for ever he resolved to satisfy himself. On a Sunday, fatal to him




WILLIAM HAZLITT.             231
and his farewell hopes of domestic happiness, he had
reason to believe that she, whom  he now loved to
excess, had made some appointment out-of doors with
his rival. It was in London; and through the crowds
of London, Hazlitt followed her steps to the rendez.
vous. Fancying herself lost in the multitude that
streamed through Lincolns-inn-fields, the treacherous
young woman met her more favored lover without
alarm, and betrayed, too clearly for any further deception, the state of her affections by the tenderness of
her manner.  There went out the last light that threw
a guiding ray over the storm-vexed course of Hazlitt.
He was too much in earnest, and he had witnessed
too much, to be deceived or appeased.' I whistled
her down the wind,' was his own account of the catastrophe: but, in doing so, he had torn his own heartstrings, entangled with her'jesses.' Neither did he,
as others would have done, seek to disguise his misfortune. On the contrary, he cared not for the ridicule
attached to such a situation amongst the unfeeling:
the wrench within had been too profound to leave
room for sensibility to the sneers outside. A fast
friend of his at that time, and one who never ceased
to be his apologist, described him to me as having
become absolutely maniacal during the first pressure
of this affliction. He went about proclaiming the
case,, and insisting on its details, to every stranger
that would listen. He even published the whole story
to the world, in his' Modern Pygmalion.' And people generally, who could not be aware of his feelings,
or the way in which this treachery acted upon his
mind as a ratification of all other treacheries and




232              WILLIAM HAZLITT.
wrongs that he had suffered through life, laughed at
him, or expressed disgust for him as too coarsely
indelicate in making such disclosures. But there was
no indelicacy in such an act of confidence, growing,
as it did, out of his lacerated heart. It was an explosion of frenzy.  He threw out his clamorous anguish
to the clouds, and to the winds, and to the air; caring
not who might listen, who might sympathize, or who
might sneer. Pity was no demand of his; laughter
was no wrong: the sole necessity for him was —to
empty his over-burdened spirit.
After this desolating experience, the exasperation
of Hazlitt's political temper grew fiercer, darker,
steadier. His' Life of Napoleon' was prosecuted
subsequently to this, and perhaps under this remembrance, as a reservoir that might receive all the vast
overflows of his wrath, much of which was not merely
political, or in a spirit of bacchanalian partisanship,
but. was even morbidly anti-social. He hated, with
all his heart, every institution of man, and all his
pretensions.  He loathed  his own  relation to the
human race.
It was but on a few occasions that I ever met Mr.
Hazlitt myself; and those occasions, or all but one,
were some time subsequent to the case of female
treachery which I have here described. Twice, I
think, or it might be three times, we walked for -a
few miles together: it was in London, late at night,
and after leaving a party. Though depressed by the
spectacle of a mind always in agitation from the
gloomier passions, I was yet amused by the perti.
nacity with which he clung, through bad reasons or




WJLLIAM  HAZLITT.            233
no reasons, to any public slander floating against men
in power, or in the highest rank. No feather, or dowl
of a feather, but was heavy enough for him. Amongst
other instances of this willingness to be deluded by
rumors, if they took a direction favorable to his own
bias, Hazlitt had adopted the whole strength of popular hatred which for many years ran violently against
the King of Hanover, at that time Duke of Cumberland. A dark calumny had arisen against this prince,
amongst the populace of London, as though he had
been accessary to the death of his valet. This valet
[Sellis] had, in fact, attempted to murder the prince;
and all that can be said in palliation of his act, is,
that he believed himself to have sustained, in the
person of his beautiful wife, the heaviest dishonor
incident to man. How that matter stood, I pretend
not to know: the attempt at murder was baffled; and
the valet then destroyed himself with a razor. All
this had been regularly sifted by a coroner's inquest;
and I remarked to Hazlitt, that the witnesses seemed
to have been called, indifferently, from all quarters
likely to have known the facts; so that, if this inquest
had failed to elicit the truth, we might, with equal
reason, presume as much of all other inquests. From
the verdict of a jury, except in very peculiar cases,
no candid and temperate man will allow himself to
believe any appeal sustainable: for, having the witnesses before them face to face, and hearing the whole
of the evidence, a jury have always some means of
forming a judgment which cannot be open to him who
depends upon an abridged report. But, on this subject, Hazlitt would hear no reason. He said -' No:




234             WILLIAM HAZLITT.
all the princely houses of Europe have the instinct
of murder running in their blood; — they cherish it
through their privilege of making war, which being
wholesale murder, once having reconciled themselves
to that, they think of retail murder, committed on
you or me, as of no crime at all.' Under this obstinate prejudice against the duke, Hazlitt read everything that he did, or did not do, in a perverse spirit.
And, in one of these nightly walks, he mentioned to
me, as something quite worthy of a murderer, the
following little trait of casuistry in the royal duke's
distribution of courtesies.' I saw it myself,' said
Hazlitt,'so no coroner's jury can put me down.' His
royal highness had rooms in St. James's; and, one
day, as he was issuing from the palace into Pall-Mall,
Hazlitt happened to be immediately behind him; he
could therefore watch his motions along the whole
line of his progress. It is the custom in England,
wheresoever the persons of the royal family are familiar to the public eye, as at Windsor, &c., that all
passengers in the streets, on seeing them, walk bareheaded, or make some signal of dutiful respect. On
this occasion, all the men, who met the prince, took
off their hats; the prince acknowledging every such
obeisance by a separate bow. Pall-Mall being finished, and its whole harvest of royal salutations gathered in, next the duke came to Cockspur street. But
here, and taking a station close to the crossing, which
daily he beautified and polished with his broom, stood
a Negro sweep. If human at all, which some people
doubted, he was pretty nearly as abject a representative of our human family divine as can ever have




WILLIAM HAZLITT.                235
existed. Still he was held to be a man by the law of
the land, which would have hanged any person, gentle
or simple, for cutting his throat. Law, (it is certain,)
conceived him to be a man, however poor a one;
though Medicine, in an under-tone, muttered, sometimes, a demur to that opinion. But here the sweep
was, whether man or beast, standing humbly in the
path of royalty: vanish he would not; he was, (as
The Times says of the Corn-League,)'a great fact,'
if rather a muddy one; and though, by his own confession, (repeated one thousand times a day,) both'a nigger' and a sweep, ['Remember poor nigger,
your honor!'' remember poor sweep!'] yet the creature could take. off his rag of a hat, and earn the bow
of a prince, as well as any white native of St. James's.
What was to be done? A great case of conscience
was on the point of being raised in the person of a
paralytic nigger; nay, possibly a state questionOught a son of England,* could a son of England,
*'Son of England;' i. e., prince of the blood in the direct,
and not in the collateral, line. I mention this for the sake of
some readers, who may not be aware that this beautiful formula, so well known in France, is often transferred by the
French writers of memoirs to our English princes, though little
used amongst ourselves. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of
Louis XIV., was' a son of France,' as being a child of Louis
XIII. But the son of Gaston, viz., the Regent Duke of
Orleans, was a grandson of France. The first wife of Gaston,
our Princess Henrietta, was called'_Fille d'Angleterre,' as
being a daughter of Charles I. The Princess Charlotte, again,
was a daughter of England; her present majesty, a granddaughter of England. But all these ladies collectively would
be called, on the French principle, the children of England.




236             WILLIAM HAZLITT.
descend from his majestic pedestal to gild with the
rays of his condescension such a grub, such a very
doubtful grub, as this? Total Pall-Mall was sagacious
of the coming crisis; judgment was going to be delivered; a precedent to be raised; and Pall-Mall stood
still, with Hazlitt at its head, to learn the issue. How
if the black should be a Jacobin, and (in the event of
the duke's bowing) should have a bas-relief sculptured
on his tomb, exhibiting an English prince, and a German king, as two separate personages, in the act of
worshipping his broom?  Luckily, it was not the
black's province to settle the case. The Duke of
Cumberland, seeing no counsel at hand to argue either
the pro or the contra, found himself obliged to settle
the question de plano; so, drawing out his purse, he
kept his hat as rigidly settled on his head, as William
Penn and Mead did before the Recorder of London.
All Pall-Mall applauded: contradicente Gulielmo Hazlitt, and Hazlitt only.  The black swore that the
prince gave him half-a-crown; but whether he regarded this in the light of a god-send to his avarice,
or a shipwreck to his ambition -whether he was more
thankful for the money gained, or angry for the honor
lost - did not transpire..' No matter,' said Hazlitt,' the black might be a fool; but I insist upon it, that
he was entitled to the bow, since all Pall-Mall had it
before him; and that it was unprincely to refuse it.'
Either as a black or as a scavenger, Hazlitt held him'qualified' for sustaining a royal bow: as a black,
was he not a specimen (if rather a damaged one) of
the homo sapiens described by Linnaus? As a sweep,
in possession (by whatever title) of a lucrative cross



WILLIAM HAZLITT.             237
ing, had he not a kind of estate in London? Was he
not, said Hazlitt, a fellow-subject, capable of committing treason, and paying taxes into the treasury?
Not perhaps in any direct shape, but indirect taxes
most certainly on his tobacco — and even on his
broom?
These things could not be denied. But still, when
my turn came for speaking, I confessed frankly that
(politics apart) my feeling in the case went along with
the duke's. The bow would not be so useful to the
black as the half-crown: he could not possibly have
both; for how could any man make a bow to a beggar
when in the act of giving him half-a-crown? Then,
on the other hand, this bow, so useless to the sweep,
and (to speak by a vulgar adage) as superfluous as a
side-pocket to a cow, would react upon the other bows
distributed along the line of Pall-Mall, so as to neutralize them one and all. No honor could continue such
in which a paralytic negro sweep was associated. This
distinction, however, occurred to me; that if, instead
of a prince and a subject, the royal dispenser of bows
had been a king, he ought not to have excluded the
black from participation; because, as the common
father of his people, he ought not to know of any difference amongst those who are equally his children.
And in illustration of that opinion, I sketched a little
scene which I had myself witnessed, and with great
pleasure, upon occasion of a visit made to Drury Lane
by George IV. when regent. At another time I may
tell it to the reader.  Hazlitt, however, listened fretfully to me when praising the deportment and beautiful
gestures of one conservative leader; though he had




238             WILLIAM HAZLITT.
compelled me to hear the most disadvantageous comments on another.
As a lecturer, I do not know what Hazlitt was, having never had an opportunity of hearing him. Some
qualities in his style of composition were calculated to
assist the purposes of a le'cturer, who must produce an
effect oftentimes by independent sentences and paragraphs, who must glitter and surprise, who must turn
round within the narrowest compass, and cannot rely,
upon any sort of attention that would cost an effort.
Mr. Gilfillan says, that' He proved more popular than
was expected by those who knew his uncompromising
scorn of all those tricks and petty artifices which are
frequently employed to pump up applause. His manner was somewhat abrupt and monotonous, but earnest
and energetic.' At the same time, Mr. Gilfillan takes
an occasion to express some opinions, which appear
very just, upon the unfitness (generally speaking) of
men whom he describes as' fiercely inspired,' for this
mode of display. The truth is, that all genius implies
originality, and sometimes uncontrollable singularity,
in the habits of thinking, and in the modes of viewing,
as well as of estimating objects. Whereas a miscellaneous audience is best conciliated by that sort of talent
which reflects the average mind, which is not overweighted in any one direction, is not tempted into any
extreme, and is able to preserve a steady, rope-dancer's
equilibrium of posture upon themes where a man of
genius is most apt to lose it.
It would be interesting to have a full and accurate
list of Hazlitt's works, including, of course, his contributions to journals and encyclopedias. These last,




WILLIAM IIAZL1TT.             239
as shorter, and oftener springing from an impromptu
effort, are more likely, than his regular books, to have
been written with a pleasurable enthusiasm: and the
writer's proportion of pleasure, in such cases, very
often becomes the regulating law for his reader's.
Amongst the philosophical works of Hazlitt, I do not
observe that Mr. Gilfillan is aware of two that are
likely to be specially interesting. One is an examination of David Hartley, at least as to his law of association. Thirty years ago, I looked into it slightly; but
my reverence for Hartley offended me with its tone;
and afterwards, hearing that Coleridge challenged for
his own most of what was important in the thoughts, I
lost all interest in the essay.  Hazlitt, having heard
Coleridge talk on this theme, must have approached it
with a mind largely preoccupied as regarded the weak
points in Hartley, and the particular tactics for assailing them. But still the great talents for speculative
research which Hazlitt had from nature, without having
given to them the benefit of much culture or much
exercise, would justify our attentive examination of the
work. It forms part of the volume which contains the' Essay on Human Action;' which volume, by the
way, Mr. Gilfillan supposes to have won the special
applause of Sir James Mackintosh, then in Bengal.
This, if accurately stated, is creditable to Sir James's
generosity: for, in this particular volume it is, that
Hazlitt makes a pointed assault, in sneering terms, and
very unnecessarily, upon Sir James.
The other little work unnoticed by Mr. Gilfillan, is
an examination (but under what title I cannot say) of
Lindley Murray's English Grammar. This may seem,




240              WILLIAM HAZLITT.
by its subject, a trifle; yet Hazlitt could hardly have
had a motive for such an effort but in some philosophic
perception of the ignorance betrayed by many grammars of our language, and sometimes by that of
Lindley Murray; which Lindley, by the way, though
resident in England, was an American. There is great
room for a useful display of philosophic subtlety in an
English grammar, even though meant for schools.
Hazlitt could not but have furnished something of
value towards such a display. And if (as I was once
told) his book was suppressed, I imagine that this suppression must have been purchased by some powerful
publisher interested in keeping up the current reputation of Murray.' Strange stories,' says Mr. Gilfillan,' are told about
his [Hazlitt's] latter days, and his death-bed.' I know
not whether I properly understand Mr. Gilfillan. The
stories which I myself have happened to hear, were
not so much'strange,' since they arose, naturally
enough, out of pecuniary embarrassments, as they
were afflicting in the turn they took. Dramatically
viewed, if a man were speaking of things so far removed from our own times and interests as to excuse
that sort of language, the circumstances of Hazlitt's
last hours might rivet the gaze of a critic as fitted,
harmoniously, with almost scenic art, to the whole
tenor of his life; fitted equally to rouse his wrath, to
deepen his dejection, and in the hour of death to justify
his misanthropy. But I have no wish to utter a word
on things which I know only at second-hand, and cannot speak upon without risk of;misstating facts or




WILLIAM HAZLITT.              241
doing injustice to persons,. I prefer closing this section
with the words of Mr. Gilfillan:' Well says Bulwer, that of all the mental wrecks
which have occurred in our era, this was the most melancholy. Others may have been as unhappy in their
domestic circumstances, and gone down steeper places
of dissipation than he; but they had meanwhile the
breath of popularity, if not of wealth and station, to
give them a certain solace.' What had -Iazlitt of this
nature? Mr. Gilfillan answers, -' Absolutely nothing
to support and cheer him. With no hope, no fortune,
no status in society; no certain popularity as a writer,
no domestic peace, little sympathy from kindred spirits,
little support from his political party, no moral management, no definite belief; with great powers, and
great passions within, and with a host of powerful
enemies without, it was his to enact one of the saddest
tragedies on which the sun ever shone.  Such is a
faithful portraiture of an extraordinary man, whose
restless intellect and stormy passions have now, for
fifteen years, found that repose in the grave which was
denied them above it.' Mr. Gilfillan concludes with
expressing his conviction, in which I desire to concur,
that both enemies and friends will now join in admiration for the man;' both will readily concede now, that
a subtle thinker, an eloquent writer, a lover of beauty
and poetry, and man and truth, one of the best of
critics, and not the worst of men, expired in William
Hazlitt.' Requiescat in pace!
16




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.*
NOBODY in this generation reads The Spectator.
There are, however, several people still surviving
who have read No. 1; in which No. 1 a strange
mistake is made. It is there asserted, as a general
affection of human nature, that it is impossible to
read a book with satisfaction, until one has ascertained
whether the author of it be tall or short, corpulent or
thin, and as to complexion, whether he be a' black'
man, (which, in the Spectator's time, was the absurd
expression for a swarthy man,) or a fair man, or a
sallow man, or perhaps a green man, which Southey
affirmed 1 to be the proper description of many stout
artificers in Birmingham, too much given to work in
metallic fumes; on which account the name of Southey
is an abomination to this day in certain furnaces of
Warwickshire. But can anything be more untrue than
this Spectatorial doctrine? Did ever the youngest of
female novel readers, on a sultry day, decline to eat a
bunch of grapes until she knew whether the fruiterer
were a good-looking man? Which of us ever heard
a stranger inquiring for a' Guide to the Trosachs,'
* The Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols.




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    243
but saying,' I scruple, however, to pay for this book,
until I know whether the author is heather-legged.'
On this principle, if any such principle prevailed, we
authors should be liable to as strict a revision of our
physics before having any right to be read, as we all
are before having our lives insured from the medical
advisers of insurance offices; fellows that examine one
with stethescopes; that pinch one, that actually punch
one in the ribs, until a man becomes savage, and - in
case the insurance should miss fire in consequence of
the medical report — speculates on the propriety of
prosecuting the medical ruffian for an assault, for a
most unprovoked assault and battery, and, if possible,
including in the indictment the now odious insurance
office as an accomplice before the fact. Meantime
the odd thing is, not that Addison should have made
a mistake, but that he and his readers should, in this
mistake, have recognised a hidden truth,- the sudden
illumination of a propensity latent in all people, but
now first exposed; for it happens that there really is a
propensity in all of us, very like what Addison describes very different, and yet, after one correction,
the very same. No reader cares about an author's
person before reading his book: it is after reading it,
and supposing the book to reveal something of the
writer's moral nature, as modifying his intellect; it is
for his fun, his fancy, his sadness, possibly his craziness, that any reader cares about seeing the author in
person. Afflicted with the very satyriasis of curiosity,
no man ever wished to see the author of a Ready
Reckoner, or of a treatise on the Agistment Tithe,
or on the Present deplorable Dry-rot in Potatoes.




244     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
Bundle off, Sir, as fast as you can,' the most diligent
reader would say to such an author, in case he insisted
on submitting his charms to inspection.'I have had
quite enough distress of mind from reading your
works, without needing the additional dry-rot of your
bodily presence.' Neither does any man, on descending from a railway train, turn to look whether the
carriage in which he has ridden happens to be a goodlooking carriage, or wish for an introduction to the
coach-maker. Satisfied that the one has not broken
his bones, and that the other has no writ against his
person, he dismisses with the same frigid scowl both
the carriage and the author of its existence.
But, with respect to Mr. Landor, as at all connected
with this reformed doctrine of the Spectator, a difficulty arises. He is a man of great genius, and, as such,
he ought to interest the public. More than enough
appears of his strong, eccentric nature, through every
page of his now extensive writings, to win, amongst
those who have read him, a corresponding interest in
all that concerns him personally; in his social relations, in his biography, in his manners, in his appearance. Out of two conditions for attracting a personal
interest, he has powerfully realized one. His moral
nature, shining with colored light through the crystal
shrine of his thoughts, will not allow of your forgetting
it. A sunset of Claude, or a dying dolphin can be
forgotten, and generally is forgotten; but not the fiery
radiations of a human spirit, built by nature to animate
a leader in storms, a martyr, a national reformer, an
arch-rebel, as circumstances might dictate, but whom
too much wealth,2 and the accidents of education, have




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    245
turned aside into a contemplative recluse. Had Mr.
Landor, therefore, been read in any extent answering
to his merits, he must have become, for the English
public, an object of prodigious personal interest. We
should have had novels upon him, lampoons upon him,
libels upon him; he would have been shown up dramatically on the stage; he would, according to the old
joke, have been' traduced' in French, and also'overset' in Dutch. Meantime he has not been read. It
would be an affectation to think it. Many a writer is,
by the sycophancy of literature, reputed to be read,
whom in all Europe not six eyes settle upon through
the revolving year. Literature, with its cowardly falsehoods, exhibits the largest field of conscious Phrygian
adulation that human life has ever exposed to the derision of the heavens. Demosthenes, for instance, or
Plato, is not read to the extent of twenty pages annually by ten people in Europe. The sale of their works
would not account for three readers; the other six or
seven are generally conceded as possibilities furnished
by the great public libraries. But, then, 1Walter Savage
Landor, though writing a little in Latin, and a very
little in Italian, does not write at all in Greek. So far
he has some advantage over Plato; and, if he writes
chiefly in dialogue, which few people love to read any
more than novels in the shape of letters, that is a crime
common to both. So that he has the d —l's luck
and his own, all Plato's chances, and one of his own
beside -viz. his English. Still, it is no use counting
chances; facts are the thing.  And printing-presses,
whether of Europe or of England, bear witness that
neither Plato nor Landor is a marketable commodity.




246    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
In fact, these two men resemble each other in more
particulars than it is at present necessary to say.
Especially they were both inclined to be luxurious:
both had a hankering after purple and fine linen;
both hated' filthy dowlas' with the hatred of Falstaff,
whether in appareling themselves or their diction; and
both bestowed pains as elaborate upon the secret art
of a dialogue, as a lapidary would upon the cutting of
a sultan's rubies.
But might not a man build a reputation on the basis
of not being read? To be read is undoubtedly something: to be read by an odd million or so, is a sort of
feather in a man's cap; but it is also a distinction that
he has been read absolutely by nobody at all. There
have been cases, and one or two in modern times,
where an author could point to a vast array of his own
works, concerning which no evidence existed that so
much as one had been opened by human hand, or
glanced at by human eye. That was awful: such a
sleep of pages by thousands in one eternal darkness,
never to be visited by light; such a rare immunity
from the villanies of misconstruction; such a Sabbath
from the impertinencies of critics! You shuddered
to reflect that, for anything known to the contrary,
there might lurk jewels of truth explored in vain, or
treasure for ever intercepted to the interests of man.
But such a sublimity supposes total defect of readers;
whereas it can be proved against Mr. Landor, that he
has been read by at least a score of people, all wide
awake; and if any treason is buried in a page of his,
thank Heaven, by this time it must have been found
out and reported to the authorities. So that neither




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    247
can Landor plead the unlimited popularity of a novelist, aided by the interest of a tale, and by an artist,
nor the total obscuration of a German metaphysician.
Neither do mobs read him, as they do M. Sue; nor do
all men turn away their eyes from him, as they do
from Hegel.3
This, however, is true only of Mr. Landor's prose
works. His first work was a poem, viz. Gebir; and
it had the sublime distinction, for some time, of having
enjoyed only two readers; which two were Southey
and myself. It was on first entering at Oxford that I
found'Gebir' printed and (nominally) published;
whereas, in fact, all its advertisements of birth and
continued existence, were but so many notifications of
its intense privacy. Not knowing Southey at that
time, I vainly conceited myself to be the one sole purchaser and reader of this. poem.  I even fancied
myself to have been pointed out in the streets of
Oxford, where the Landors had been well known in
times preceding my own, as the one inexplicable man
authentically known to possess'Gebir,' or even (it
might be whispered mysteriously) to have read' Gebir.' It was not clear but this reputation might stand
in lieu of any independent fame, and might raise
me to literary distinction. The preceding generation
had greatly esteemed the man called'Single-Speech
Hamilton;' not at all for the speech (which, though
good, very few people had read,) but entirely for the
supposed fact that he had exhausted himself in that
one speech, and had become physically incapable of
making a second: so that afterwards, when he really
did make a second, everybody was incredulous; until,




248     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
the thing being past denial, naturally the world was
disgusted, and most people dropped his acquaintance.
To be a Mono-Gebirist was quite as good a title to
notoriety; and five years after, when I found that I
had' a brother near the throne,' viz. Southey, mortification would have led me willingly to resign altogether in his favor. Shall I make the reader acquainted
with the story. of Gebir?
Gebir is the king of Gibraltar; which, however, it
would be an anachronism to call Gibraltar, since it
drew that name from this very Gebir; and doubtless,
by way of honor to his memory. Mussulmans tell a
different story: but who cares for what is said by
infidel dogs? King, then, let us call him of Calpe;
and a very good king he is; young, brave, of upright
intentions; but being also warlike, and inflamed by
popular remembrances of ancient wrongs, he resolves
to seek reparation from the children's children of the
wrong-doers; and he weighs anchor in search of Mr.
Pitt's'indemnity for the past,' though not much regarding that right honorable gentlemran's' security for
the future.' Egypt was the land that sheltered the
wretches that represented the ancestors that had done
the wrong.  To Egypt, therefore, does king Gebir
steer his expedition, which counted ten thousand
picked men:
Incenst
By meditating on primeval wrongs,
He blew his battle-horn; at which uprose
Whole nations: here ten thousand of most might
He called aloud; and soon Charoba saw
Hlis dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile.'




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    249
Who is Charoba? As respects the reader, she is the
heroine of the poem: as respects Egypt, she is queen
by the grace of God, defender of the faith, and so
forth. Young and accustomed to unlimited obedience,
how could she be otherwise than alarmed by the
descent of a host far more martial than her own effeminate people, and assuming a religious character —
avengers of wrong in some forgotten age? In her
trepidation, she turns for aid and counsel to her nurse
Dalica. Dalica, by the way, considered as a word, is
a dactyle; that is, you must not lay the accent on the
i, but on the first syllable. Dalica, considered as a
woman, is about as bad a one as even Egypt could
furnish. She is a thorough gipsy; a fortune-teller,
and something worse, in fact. She is a sorceress,' stiff in opinion:' and it needs not Pope's authority to
infer that -- of course she' is always in the wrong.'
By her advice, but for a purpose known best to herself,
an interview is arranged betweed' Charoba and the
invading monarch. At this interview, the two youthful sovereigns, Charoba the queen of hearts and Gebir
the king of clubs, fall irrevocably in love with each
other. There's an end of club law: and Gebir is ever
afterwards disarmed. But Dalica, that wicked Dalica,
that sad old dactyle, who sees everything clearly that
happens to be twenty years distant, cannot see a pikestaff if it is close before her nose; and of course she
mistakes Charoba's agitations of love for paroxysms of
anger. Charoba is herself partly to blame for this;
but you must excuse her. The poor child readily
confided her terrors to Dalica; but how can she be
expected to make a love confidante of a tawny old




250    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
witch like her? Upon this mistake, however, proceeds
the whole remaining plot. Dr. Dalica (which means
doctor D., and by no means dear D.,) having totally
mistaken the symptoms, the diagnosis, the prognosis,
and everything that ends in osis, necessarily mistakes
also the treatment of the case, and, like some other
doctors, failing to make a cure, covers up her blunders
by a general slaughter. She visits her sister, a sorceress more potent than herself, living'Deep in the wilderness of woe, Masar.'
Between them they concert hellish incantations. From
these issues a venomous robe, like that of the centaur
Nessus. This, at a festal meeting between the two
nations and their princes, is given by Charoba to her
lover -her lover, but as yet not recognised as such by
her, nor until the moment of his death, avowed as such
by himself. Gebir dies - the accursed robe, dipped
in the' viscous poin' exuding from the gums of the
grey cerastes, and tempered by other venomous juices
of plant and animal, proves too much for his rocky
constitution - Gibraltar is found not impregnable —
the blunders of Dalica, the wicked nurse, and the arts
of her sister Myrthyr, the wicked witch, are found too
potent; and in one moment the union of two nations,
with the happiness of two sovereigns, is wrecked for
ever. The closing situation of the parties - monarch
and monarch, nation and nation, youthful king and
youthful queen, dying or despairing —nation and
nation that had been reconciled, starting asunder once
again amidst festival and flowers — these objects are
scenically effective. The conception of the grouping




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    251
is good; the mise en scene is good; but, from want of
pains-taking, not sufficiently brought out into strong
relief; and the dying words of Gebir, which wind up
the whole, are too bookish; they seem to be part of
some article which he had been writing for the Gibraltar Quarterly.
There are two episodes, composing jointly about
two-sevenths of the poem, and by no means its weakest parts. One describes the descent of Gebir to
Hades. His guide is a man -who is this man?'Living - they called him Aroar.'
Is he not living, then?  No. Is he dead, then?  No,
nor dead either. Poor Aroar cannot live, and cannot
die —so that he is in an almighty fix. In this disagreeable dilemma, he contrives to amuse himself
with politics - and, rather of a jacobinical cast: like
the Virgilian AEneas, Gebir is introduced not to the
shades of the past only, but of the future. He sees
the pre-existing ghosts of gentlemen who are yet to
come, silent as ghosts ought to be, but destined at some
far distant time to make a considerable noise in our
upper world. Amongst these is our worthy old George
III., who (strange to say!) is not foreseen as galloping
from Windsor to Kew, surrounded by an escort of
dragoons, nor in a scarlet coat riding after a fox, nor
taking his morning rounds amongst his sheep and his
turnips; but in the likeness of some savage creature,
whom really, were it not for his eyebrows and his'slanting' forehead, the reader would never recognise:




252      NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.'Aroar! what wretch that nearest us? what wretch
Is that, with eyebrows white and slanting brow?
0 king!
Iberia bore him; but the breed accurst
Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east.'
Iberia is spiritual England; and north-east is mystical
Hanover. But what, then, were the' wretch's' crimes?
The white eyebrows I confess to; those were certainly crimes of considerable magnitude: but what
else? Gebir has the same curiosity as myself, and
propounds something like the same fishing question:' He was a warrior then, nor feared the gods?'
To which Aroar answers'Gebir! he feared the demons, not the gods;
Though them, indeed, his daily face ador'd,
And was no warrior; yet the thousand lives
Squander'd as if to exercise a sling, &c. &c.'
Really Aroar is too Tom-Painish, and seems up to a
little treason. He makes the poor king answerable
for more than his own share of national offences, if
such they were. All of us in the last generation were
rather fond of fighting and assisting at fights in the
character of mere spectators. I am sure I was. But
if that is any fault, so was Plato, who (though probably
inferior as a philosopher to you and me, reader,) was
much superior to either of us as a cock-fighter.  So
was Socrates in the preceding age; for, as he notoriously haunted the company of Alcibiades at all hours,
lie must often have found his pupil diverting himself
with these fighting quails which he kept in such
numbers. Be assured that the oracle's'wisest of




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    253
men' lent a hand very cheerfully to putting on the
spurs when a main was to be fought; and, as to betting, probably that was the reason that Xantippe was
so often down upon him when he went home at night.
To come home reeling from a fight, without a drachma
left in his pocket, would naturally provoke any woman.
Posterity has been very much misinformed about these
things; and, no doubt, about Xantippe, poor woman,
in particular. If she had had a disciple to write books,
as her cock-fighting husband had, perhaps we should
have read a very different story. By the way, the
propensity to scandalum magnatum in Aroar was one
of the things that fixed my youthful attention, and
perhaps my admiration, upon Gebir. For myself, as
perhaps the reader may have heard, I was and am a
Tory; and in some remote geological tera, my bones
may be dug up by some future Buckland as a specimen
of the fossil Tory. Yet, for all that, I loved audacity;
and I gazed with some indefinite shade of approbation
upon a poet whom the attorney-general might have
occasion to speak with.
This, however, was a mere condiment to the main
attraction of the poem.  That lay in the picturesqueness of the images, attitudes, groups, dispersed everywhere.  The eye seemed to rest everywhere upon
festal processions, upon the panels of Theban gates,
or upon sculptured vases. The very first lines that by
accident met my eye, were those which follow. I cite
them in mere obedience to the fact as it really was;
else there are more striking illustrations of this sculpturesque faculty in Mr. Landor; and for this faculty
it was that both Southey and myself separately and




254      NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
independently had named him the English Valerius
Flaccus.
GEBIR ON REPAIRING TO tIIS FIRST INTERVIEW WITH
CHAROBA.
But Gebir, when he heard of her approach,
Laid by his orbed shield: his vizor helm,
His buckler and his corslet he laid by,
And bade that none attend him: at his side
Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course,
Shaggy, deep-chested, croucht; the crocodile,
Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears,
And push their heads within their master's hand.
There was a lightning paleness in his face,
Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks
Shower'd on the lonely Latmian; on his brow
Sorrow there was, but there was nought severe.''And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand
Lay like a jasper column half up-rear'd.''The king, who sate before his tent, descried
The dust rise redden'd from the setting sun.'
Now let us pass to the imaginary dialogues:Marshal Bugeaud and  Arab  Chieftain.-  This
dialogue, which is amongst the shortest, would not
challenge a separate notice, were it not for the freshness in the public mind, and the yet uncicatrized
rawness  of that atrocity  which it commemorates.
Here is an official account from the commander-inchief: -' Of seven hundred refractory  and rebellious who took refuge in the caravans, thirty,' [says
the glory-hunting Marshal],' and thirty only, are
alive; and of these thirty there are four only who are
capable of labor, or indeed of motion.' How precious
to the Marshal's heart must be that harvest of misery




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    255
from which he so reluctantly allows the discount of
about one-half per cent. Four only out of seven hundred, he is happy to assure Christendom, remain capable of hopping about; as to working, or getting honest
bread, or doing any service in this world to themselves
or others, it is truly delightful to announce, for public
information, that all such practices are put a stop to
for ever.
Amongst the fortunate four, who retain the power
of hopping, we must reckon the Arab Chieftain, who
is introduced into the colloquy in the character of
respondent.  He can hop, of course, ex hypothesi,
being one of the ever lucky quaternion; he can hop a
little also as a rhetorician; indeed, as to that he is too
much for the Marshal; but on the other hand he cannot see; the cave has cured him of any such impertinence as staring into other people's faces; he is also
lame, the cave has shown him the absurdity of rambling about;- and, finally, he is a beggar; or, if he
will not allow himself to be called by that name, upon
the argument [which seems plausible] that he cannot
be a beggar if he never begs, it is not the less certain
that, in case of betting a sixpence, the chieftain would
find it inconvenient to stake the cash.
The Marshal, who apparently does not pique himsef' upon politeness, addresses the Arab by the following assortment of names-' Thief, assassin, traitor!
blind greybeard! lame beggar!'  The three first
titles being probably mistaken for compliments, the
Arab pockets in silence; but to the double-barrelled
discharges of the two last he replies thus: -' Cease
there. Thou canst never make me beg for bread, for




256     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
water, or for life; my grey beard is from God; my
blindness and lameness are from  thee.'  This is a
pleasant way of doing business; rarely does one find
little accounts so expeditiously settled and receipted.
Beggar?  But how if I do not beg?  Greybeard?
Put that down to the account of God. Cripple?  Put
that down to your own.  Getting sulky under this
mode of fencing from thb desert-born, the Marshal
invites him to enter one of his new-made law courts,
where he will hear of something probably not to his
advantage. Our Arab friend, however, is no connoisseur in courts of law: small wale 4 of courts in
the desert; he does not so much'do himself the honor
to decline' as he turns a deaf ear to this proposal, and
on /his part presents a little counter invitation to the
Marshal for a pic-nic party to the caves of Dahra.'Enter' (says the unsparing Sheik)'and sing and
whistle in the cavern where the bones of brave men
are never to bleach, are never to decay. Go, where
the mother and infant are inseparable for ever - one
mass of charcoal; the breasts that gave life, the lips
that received it -all, all, save only where two arms,
in color and hardness like corroded iron, cling round
a brittle stem, shrunken, warped, and where two heads
are calcined. Even this massacre, no doubt, will find
defenders in your country, for it is the custom of your
country, to cover blood with lies, and lies with blood.''And (says the facetious French Marshal) here and
there a sprinkling of ashes over both.' ARAB.' Ending
in merriment, as befits ye. But is it ended?' But
is it ended? Aye; the wilderness beyond Algiers
returns an echo to those ominous words of the blind




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    257
and mutilated chieftain. No, brave Arab, although
the Marshal scoffingly rejoins that at least it is ended
for you, ended it is not; for the great quarrel by which
human nature pleads with such a fiendish spirit of
warfare, carried on under the countenance of him who
stands first in authority under the nation that stands
second in authority amongst the leaders of civilization; —quarrel of that sort, once arising, does not
go to sleep again until it is righted for ever. As the
English martyr at Oxford said to his fellow martyr —' Brother, be of good cheer, for we shall this day light
up a fire in England that, by the blessing of God, cannot be extinguished for ever,'- even so the atrocities
of these hybrid campaigns between baffled civilization and barbarism, provoked into frenzy, will, like
the horrors of the middle passage rising up from the
Atlantic deep, suddenly, at the bar of the British
senate, sooner or later reproduce themselves, in strong
reactions of the social mind throughout Christendom,
upon all the horrors of war that are wilful and superfluous. In that case there will be a consolation in
reserve for the compatriots of those, the brave men,
the women, and the innocent children, who died in
that fiery furnace at Dahra.'Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven.' 5
The caves of Dahra repeated the woe to the hills,
and the hills to God. But such a furnace, though
fierce, may be viewed as brief indeed if it shall terminate in permanently pointing the wrath of nations,
17




258     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
(as in this dialogue it has pointed the wrath of genius,)
to the particular outrage and class of outrages which
it concerns. The wrath of nations is a consuming
wrath, and the scorn of intellect is a withering scorn,
for all abuses upon which either one or the other is
led, by strength of circumstances, to settle itself systematically. The danger is for the most part that the
very violence of public feeling should rock it asleep
— the tempest exhausts itself by its own excesses —
and the thunder of one or two immediate explosions,
by satisfying the first clamors of human justice and
indignation, is too apt to intercept that sustained roll of
artillery which is requisite for the effectual assault of
long established abuses.  Luckily in the present case
of the Dahra massacre there is the less danger of such
a result, as the bloody scene has happened to fall
in with a very awakened state of the public sensibility
as to the evils of war generally, and with a state of
expectation almost romantically excited as to the possibility of readily or soon exterminating these evils.
Hope meantime, even if unreasonable, becomes
wise and holy when it points along a path of purposes
that are more than usually beneficent. According to
a fine illustration of Sir Phillip Sidney's, drawn from
the practice of archery, by attempting more than we
can possibly accomplish, we shall yet reach farther
than ever we should have reached with a less ambitious
aim; we shall do much for the purification of war, if
nothing at all for its abolition; and atrocities of this
Algerine order are amongst the earliest that will give
way. They will sink before the growing illumination,
and (what is equally important) before the growing




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    259
combination of minds acting simultaneously from various centres, in nations otherwise the most at variance.
By a rate of motion continually accelerated, the gathering power of the press, falling in with the growing
facilities of personal intercourse, is, day by day, bringing Europe more and more into a state of fusion, in
which the sublime name of Christendom will continually become more and more significant, and will
express a unity of the most awful order, viz., in the
midst of strife, long surviving as to inferior interests
and subordinate opinions, will express an agreement
continually more close, and an agreement continually
more operative, upon all capital questions affecting
human rights, duties, and the interests of human progress. Before that tribunal, which every throb of
every steam engine, in printing houses and on railroads,
is hurrying to establish, all flagrant abuses of belligerent powers will fall prostrate; and, in particular, no
form of pure undisguised murder will be any longer
allowed to confound itself with the necessities of honorable warfare.
Much already has been accomplished on this path;
more than people are aware of; so gradual and silent
has been the advance. How noiseless is the growth
of corn! Watch it night and day for a week, and you
will never see it growing; but return after two months,
and you will find it all whitening for the harvest. Such,
and so imperceptible, in the stages of their motion, are
the victories of the press. Here is one instance. Just
forty-seven years ago, on the shores of Syria, was
celebrated by Napoleon Bonaparte, the most damnable
carnival of murder that romance has fabled, or that




260    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
history has recorded. Rather more than four thousand
men - not, (like Tyrolese or Spanish guerillas,) even
in pretence,'insurgent rustics,' but regular troops,
serving the Pacha and the Ottoman Sultan, not old men
that might by odd fractions have been thankful for
dismissal from a life of care or sorrow, but all young
Albanians, in the early morning of manhood, the oldest
not twenty-four —were exterminated by successive
rolls of musketry, when helpless as infants, having
their arms pinioned behind their backs like felons on
the scaffold, and having surrendered their muskets,
(which else would have made so desperate a resisttance,) on the faith that they were dealing with soldiers
and men of honor. I have elsewhere examined, as a
question in casuistry, the frivolous pretences for this
infamous carnage, but that examination I have here no
wish to repeat; for it would draw off the attention
from one feature of the case, which I desire to bring
before the reader, as giving to this Jaffa tragedy a
depth of atrocity wanting in that of Dahra. The four
thousand and odd young Albanians had been seduced,
trepanned, fraudulently decoyed, from a post of considerable strength, in which they could and would have
sold their lives at a bloody rate, by a solemn promise
of safety from authorized French officers.'But,'
said Napoleon, in part of excuse,'these men, my
aides-de-camp, were poltroons: to save their own lives,
they made promises which they ought not to have
made.' Suppose it so; and suppose the case one in
which the supreme authority has a right to disavow his
agents; what then? This entitles that authority to
refuse his ratification to the terms agreed on; but this,




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    261
at the same time, obliges him to replace the hostile
parties in the advantages from which his agents had
wiled them by these terms. A robber, who even owns
himself such, will not pretend that he may refuse the
price of the jewel as exorbitant, and yet keep possession of the jewel. And next comes a fraudulent
advantage, not obtained by a knavery in the aid-decamp, but in the leader himself. The surrender of the
weapons, and the submission to the fettering of the
arms, were not concessions from the Albanians, filched
by the representatives of Napoleon, acting (as he
says) without orders, but by express falsehoods, ema.
nating from  himself.  The officer commanding at
Dahra could not have reached his enemy without the
shocking resource which he employed: Napoleon
could. The officer at Dahra violated no covenant:
Napoleon did. The officer at Dahra had not by lies
seduced his victims from their natural advantages:
Napoleon had. Such was the atrocity of Jaffa in the
year 1799. Now, the relation of that great carnage
to the press, the secret argument through which that
vast massacre connects itself with the progress of the
press, is this - That in 1799, and the two following
years, when most it had become important to search
the character and acts of Napoleon, excepting Sir
Robert Wilson, no writer in Europe, no section of the
press, cared much to insist upon this, by so many
degrees, the worst deed of modern6 military life.
From that deed all the waters of the Atlantic would
not have cleansed him; and yet, since 1804, we have
heard much oftener of the sick men whom he poisoned
in his Syrian hospital, (an act of merely erroneous




262     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
humanity,) and more of the Duc d'Enghien's execution than of either; though this, savage as it was,
admits of such palliations as belong to doubtful provocations in the sufferer, and to extreme personal terror
in the inflicter. Here then, we have a case of wholesale military murder, emanating from Christendom,
and not less treacherous than the worst which have
been ascribed to the Mahometan Timur, or even to any
Hindoo Rajah, which hardly moved a vibration of
anger, or a solitary outcry of protestation from the
European press, (then, perhaps, having the excuse of
deadly fear for herself,) or even from the press of
moral England, having no such excuse. Fifty years
have passed; a less enormity is perpetrated, but again
by a French leader: and, behold! Europe is now convulsed from side to side by unaffected indignation! So
travels the press to victory: such is the light, and so
broad, which it diffuses: such is the strength for action
by which it combines the hearts of nations.
MELANCTHON AND CALVIN.
Of Mr. Landor's notions in religion it would be useless, and without polemic arguments it would be arrogant, to say that they are false. It is sufficient to say
that they are degrading.  In the dialogue between
Melancthon and Calvin, it is clear that the former represents Mr. L. himself, and is not at all the Melancthon
whom we may gather from his writings. Mr. Landor
has heard that he was gentle and timid in action; and
he exhibits him as a mere development of that keynote; as a compromiser of all that is severe in doctrine; and as an effeminate picker and chooser in




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    263
morals. God, in his conception of him, is not a father
so much as a benign, but somewhat weak, old grandfather; and we, his grandchildren, being now and then
rather naughty, are to be tickled with a rod made of
feathers, but, upon the whole, may rely upon an eternity of sugar-plums. For instance, take the puny idea
ascribed to Melancthon upon IdoZatry; and consider,
for one moment, how little it corresponds to the vast
machinery reared up by God himself against this
secret poison and dreadful temptation of human nature. Melanctlhon cannot mean to question the truth
or the importance of the Old Testament; and yet, if
his view of idolatry (as reported by L.) be sound, the
Bible must have been at the root of the worst mischief
ever yet produced by idolatry. He begins by describing idolatry as' Jewish;' insinuating that it was
an irregularity chiefly besetting the Jews. But how
perverse a fancy! In the Jews, idolatry was a disease; in Pagan nations, it was the normal state. In a
nation (if any such nation could exist) of cretins or of
lepers, nobody would talk of cretinism or leprosy as
of any morbid affection; that would be the regular
and natural condition of man. But where either was
spoken of with horror as a ruinous taint in human flesh,
it would argue that naturally (and, perhaps, by a large
majority) the people were uninfected. Amongst Pagans, nobody talked of idolatry -no such idea existed
- because that was the regular form of religious worship. To be named at all, idolatry must be viewed as
standing in opposition to some higher worship that is
not idolatry. But, next, as we are all agreed that in
idolatry there is something evil, and differ only as to




264    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
the propriety of considering it a Jewish evil - in what
does this evil lie? It lies, according to the profound
Landorian Melancthon, in this-that different idolaters
figure the Deity under different forms: if they could
all agree upon one and the same mode of figuring the
invisible Being, there need be no quarrelling; and in
this case, consequently, there would be no harm in
idolatry — none whatever. But, unhappily, it seems
each nation, or sometimes section of a nation, has a
different fancy: they get to disputing; and from that
they get to boxing, in which, it is argued, lies the true
evil of idolatry. It is an extra cause of broken heads.
One tribe of men represent the Deity as a beautiful
young man, with a lyre and a golden bow; another as
a snake; and a third —'Egyptians, for instance, of
old - as a beetle or an onion; these last, according to
Juvenal's remark, having the happy privilege of growing their own gods in their own kitchen-gardens. In
all this there would be no harm, were it not for subsequent polemics and polemical assaults. Such, if we
listen to Mr. L., is Melancthon's profound theory 7 of
a false idolatrous religion. Were the police everywhere on an English footing, and the magistrates as
unlike as possible to Turkish Cadis, nothing could be
less objectionable; but, as things are, the beetleworshipper despises the onion-worshipper; which
breeds ill blood; whence grows a cudgel; and from
the cudgel a constable; and from the constable an
unjust magistrate. Not so, Mr. Landor; thus did not
Melancthon speak: and if he did, and would defend
it for a thousand times, then for a thousand times he
would deserve to be trampled by posterity into that




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    265
German mire which he sought to evade by his Grecian
disguise.8 The true evil of idolatry is this: There is
one sole idea of God, which corresponds adequately
to his total'nature. Of this idea, two things may be
affirmed: the first being - that it is at the root of all
absolute grandeur, of all truth, and of all moral perfection; the second being - that, natural and easy as
it seems when once unfolded, it could only have been
unfolded by revelation; and, to all eternity, he that
started with a false conception of God, could not,
through any effort of his own, have exchanged it for a
true one. All idolaters alike, though not all in equal
degrees, by intercepting the idea of God through the
prism of some representative creature that partially
resembles God, refract, splinter, and distort that idea.
Even the idea of light, of the pure, solar light - the old
Persian symbol of God —has that depraving necessity. Light itself, besides being an imperfect symbol,
is an incarnation for us. However pure itself, or in
its original divine manifestation, for us it is incarnated
in forms and in matter that are not pure: it gravitates
towards physical alliances, and therefore towards unspiritual pollutions. And all experience shows that
the tendency for man, left to his own imagination, is
downwards. The purest symbol, derived from created
things, can and will condescend to the grossness of
inferior human natures, by submitting to mirror itself
in more and more carnal representative symbols, until
finally the mixed element of resemblance to God is
altogether buried and lost. God, by this succession of
imperfect interceptions, falls more and more under the
taint and limitation of the alien elements associated




266    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
with all created things; and, for the ruin of all moral
grandeur in man, every idolatrous nation left to itself
will gradually bring round the idea of God into the
idea of a powerful demon. Many things check and
disturb this tendency for a time; but finally, and under
that intense civilization to which man intellectually is
always hurrying under the eternal evolution of physical knowledge, such a degradation of God's idea,
ruinous to the moral capacities of man, would undoubtedly perfect itself, were it not for the kindling of
a purer standard by revelation. Idolatry, therefore, is
not merely an evil, and one utterly beyond the power
of social institutions to redress, but, in fact, it is the
fountain of all other evil that seriously menaces the
destiny of the human race.
PORSON AND SOUTHEY.
The two dialogues between Southey and Porson
relate to Wordsworth; and they connect Mr. Landor
with a body of groundless criticism, for which vainly
he will seek to evade his responsibility by pleading the
caution posted up at the head of his Conversations,
viz. -' Avoid a mistake in attributing to the writer
any opinions in this book but what are spoken under
his own name.' If Porson, therefore, should happen
to utter villanies that are indictable, that (you are to
understand) is Porson's affair. Render unto Landor
the eloquence of the dialogue, but render unto Porson
any kicks which Porson may have merited by his
atrocities against a man whom assuredly he never
heard of, and probably never saw.  Now, unless
Wordsworth ran into Porson in the streets of Cam



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    267
bridge on some dark night about the era of the French
Revolution, and capsized him into the kennel —a
thing which is exceedingly improbable, considering
that Wordsworth was never tipsy except once in his
life, yet, on the other hand, is exceeding probable,
considering that Porson was very seldom otherwise -
barring this one opening for a collision, there is no
human possibility or contingency known to insurance
offices, through which Porson ever could have been
brought to trouble his head about Wordsworth.  It
would have taken three witches, and three broomsticks, clattering about his head, to have extorted from
Porson any attention to a contemporary poet that did
not give first-rate feeds. And a man that, besides his
criminal conduct in respect of dinners, actually made
it a principle to drink nothing but water, would have
seemed so depraved a character in Porson's eyes that,
out of regard to public decency, he would never have
mentioned his name, had he even happened to know
it.'Oh no! he never mentioned him.' Be assured
of that. As to Poetry, be it known that Porson read
none whatever, unless it were either political or obscene. With no seasoning of either sort,' wherefore,'
he would ask indignantly,'should I waste my time
upon a poem?' Porson had read the Rolliad, because
it concerned his political party; he had read the epistle
of Obereea, Queen of Otaheite, to Sir Joseph Banks,
because, if Joseph was rather too demure, the poem was
not. Else, and with such exceptions, he condescended
not to any metrical writer subsequent to the era of Pope,
whose Eloisa to Abelard he could say by heart, and
could even sing from beginning to end; which, indeed,




268     NOTES ON WALTER -SAVAGE LANDOR.
he would do, whether you chose it or not, after a sufficient charge of brandy, and sometimes even though
threatened with a cudgel, in case he persisted in his
molestations.  Waller he had also read, and occasionally quoted with effect. But as to a critique on Wordsworth, whose name had not begun to mount from the
ground when Porson died,9 as reasonably and characteristically might it have been put into the mouth of
the Hetman Platoff. Instead of Porson's criticisms on
writings which he never saw, let us hear Porson's
account of a fashionable rout in an aristocratic London
mansion: it was the only party of distinction that this
hirsute but most learned Theban ever visited; and his
history of what passed (comic alike and tragic) is
better worth preserving than' Brantome,' or even than
Swift's' Memoirs of a Parish Clerk.' It was by the
hoax of a young Cantab that the Professor was ever
decoyed into such a party: the thing was a swindle;
but his report of its natural philosophy is not on that
account the less picturesque: —
SOUTIIEY. — Why do you repeat the word rout so often?
PORSON. — I was once at one by mistake; and really I
saw there what you describe: and this made me repeat the
word and smile. You seem curious.
SOUTIIEY.- Rather, indeed.
PoRsoN. —I had been dining out; there were some who
smoked after dinner: within a few hours, the fumes of their
pipes produced such an effect on my head that I was willing
to go into the air a little. Still I continued hot and thirsty;
and an undergraduate, whose tutor was my old acquaintance,
proposed that we should turn into an oyster-cellar, and refresh
ourselves with oysters and porter. The rogue, instead of this,
conducted me to a fashionable house in the neighborhood of St.




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.           269
James's; and, although I expostulated with him, and insisted
that we were going up stairs and not dorwn, he appeared to me
so ingenuous in his protestations to the contrary that I could
well disbelieve him no longer. Nevertheless, receiving on the
stairs many shoves and elbowings, I could not help telling him
plainly - that, if indeed it rvas the oyster-cellar in Fleet Street,
the company was much altered for the worse; and that, in
future, I should frequent another. When the fumes of the
pipes had left me, I discovered the deceit by the brilliancy and
indecency of the dresses; and was resolved not to fall into
temptation. Although, to my great satisfaction, no immodest
proposal was directly made to me, I looked about anxious that
no other man should know me beside him whose wantonness
had conducted me thither; and I would have escaped, if I
could have found the door, from which every effort I made
appeared to remove me farther and farther. * * * A
pretty woman said loudly,'He has no gloves on!''What
nails the creature has!' replied an older one -' Piano-forte
keys wanting the white.'
I pause to say that this, by all accounts which have
reached posterity, was really no slander. The Professor's forks had become rather of the dingiest, probably
Ithrough inveterate habits of scratching up Greek roots
from diluvian mould, some of it older than Deucalion's
flood, and very good, perhaps, for turnips, but less so
for the digits which turn up turnips. What followed,
however, if it were of a nature to be circumstantially
repeated, must have been more trying to the sensibilities of the Greek oracle, and to the blushes of the
policeman dispersed throughout the rooms, than even
the harsh critique upon his nails; which, let the wits
say what they would in their malice, were no doubt
washed regularly enough once every three years.
And, even if they were not, I should say that this is not




270     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
so strong a fact as some that are reported about many
a continental professor. Mrs. Cl —nt, with the twofold neatness of an Englishwoman and a Quaker, told
me that, on visiting Pestalozzi, the celebrated education
professor, at Yverdun, about 1820, her first impression,
from a distant view of his dilapidated premises, was
profound horror at the grimness of his complexion,
which struck her as no complexion formed by nature,
but as a deposition from half a century of atmospheric
rust-a most ancient eerugo. She insisted on a radical
purification, as a sine qua non towards any interview
with herself. The mock professor consented. Mrs. Cl.
hired a stout Swiss charwoman, used to the scouring of
staircases, kitchen floors, &c.; the professor, whom, on
this occasion, one may call' the prisoner,' was accommodated with a seat (as prisoners at the bar sometimes
are with us) in the centre of a mighty washing-tub, and
then scoured through a long summer forenoon, by the
strength of a brawny Helvetian arm.'And now, my
dear friends,' said Mrs. Cl. to myself,' is it thy opinion
that this was cruel?  Some people say it was; and I
wish to disguise nothing; — it was not mere soap
that I had him scoured with, but soap and sand; so,
say honestly, dost thee call that cruel?' Laughing no
more than the frailty of my human nature compelled
me, I replied,' Far from it; on the contrary, everybody must be charmed with her consideration for the
professor, in not having him cleaned on the same
principle as her carriage, viz., taken to the stable-yard,
mopped severely,' [' mobbed, dost thee say?' she exclaimed;'No, no,' I said,'not mobbed, but mopped,
until the gravel should be all gone,']' then pelted with




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    271
buckets of water by firemen, and, finally, currycombed
and rubbed down by two grooms, keeping a sharp
susurrus between them, so as to soothe his wounded
feelings; after all which, a feed of oats might not have
been amiss.' The result, however, of this scouring
extraordinary was probably as fatal as to Mambrino's
helmet in Don Quixote. Pestalozzi issued, indeed,
from the washing-tub like Aeson from Medea's kettle;
he took his station amongst a younger and fairer generation; and the dispute was now settled whether he
belonged to the Caucasian or Mongolian race. But
his intellect was thought to have suffered seriously.
The tarnish of fifty or sixty years seemed to have
acquired powers of re-acting as a stimulant upon the
professor's fancy, through the rete mucosum, or through
- heaven knows what. He was too old to be converted to cleanliness; the Paganism of a neglected person
at seventy becomes a sort of religion interwoven with
the nervous system - just as the well known Plica Polonica from which the French armies suffered so much
in Poland, during 1807-8, though produced by neglect
of the hair, will not be cured by extirpation of the hair.
The hair becomes matted into Medusa locks, or what
look like snakes; and to cut these off is oftentimes to
cause nervous frenzy, or other great constitutional
disturbance.  I never heard, indeed, that Pestalozzi
suffered apoplexy from his scouring; but certainly his
ideas on education grew bewildered, and will be found
essentially damaged, after that great epoch - his baptism by water and sand.
Now, in comparison of an Orson like this man of
Yverdun - this great Swiss reformer, who might, per



272     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
haps, have bred a pet variety of typhus fever for his
own separate use -what signify nails, though worse
than Caliban's or Nebuchadnezzar's?
This Greek professor Porson - whose knowledge of
English was so limited that his total cargo might have
been embarked on board a walnut-shell, on the bosom
of a slop bason, and insured for three halfpence —
astonishes me, that have been studying English for
thirty years and upwards, by the strange discoveries
that he announces in this field. One and all, I fear,
are mares' nests. He discovered, for instance, on his
first and last reception amongst aristocratic people, that
in this region of society a female bosom is called her
neck. But, if it really had been so called, I see no
objection to the principle concerned in such disguises;
and I see the greatest to that savage frankness which
virtually is indicated with applause in the Porsonian
remark. Let us consider. It is not that we cannot
speak freely of the female bosom, and we do so daily.
In discussing a statue, we do so without reserve; and
in the act of suckling an infant, the bosom of every
woman is an idea so sheltered by the tenderness and
sanctity with which all but ruffians invest the organ
of maternity, that no man scruples to name it, if the
occasion warrants it.  He suppresses it only as he
suppresses the name of God; not as an idea that can
itself contain any indecorum, but, on the contrary, as
making other and more trivial ideas to become indecorous when associated with a conception rising so
much above their own standard. Equally, the words,
affliction, guilt, penitence, remorse, &c., are proscribed
from the ordinary current of conversation amongst




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    273
mere acquaintances; and for the same reason, viz.,
that they touch chords too impassioned and profound
for harmonizing with the key in which the mere social
civilities of life are exchanged. Meantime, it is not
true that any custom ever prevailed in any class of
calling a woman's bosom her neck. Porson goes on
to say, that, for his part, he was born in an age when
people had thighs. Well, a great many people have
thighs still. But in all ages there must have been
many of whom it is lawful to suspect such a fact zoologically; and yet, as men honoring our own race,
and all its veils of mystery, not too openly to insist
upon it, which, luckily, there is seldom any occasion
to do.
Mr. Landor conceives that we are growing worse in
the pedantries of false delicacy. I think not. His
own residence in Italy has injured his sense of discrimination.  It is not his countrymen that have grown
conspicuously more demure and prudish, but he himself
that has grown in Italy more tolerant of what is really
a blameable coarseness. Various instances occur in
these volumes of that faulty compliance with Southern
grossness. The tendencies of the age, among ourselves, lie certainly in one channel towards excessive
refinement. So far, however, they do but balance the
opposite tendencies in some other channels.  The
craving for instant effect in style - as it brings forward
many disgusting Germanisms and other barbarismsas it transplants into literature much slang from the
street- as it re-acts painfully upon the grandeurs of the
antique scriptural diction, by recalling into colloquial
use many consecrated words which thus lose their
18




274    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
Gothic beauty- also operates daily amongst journalists, by the temptations of apparent strength that lurk
in plain speaking or even in brutality. What other
temptation, for instance, can be supposed to govern
those who, in speaking of hunger as it affects our
paupers, so needlessly affect us by the very coarsest
English word for the Latin word venter? Surely the
word stomach would be intelligible to everybody, and
yet disgust nobody. It would do for him that affects
plain speaking; it would do for you and me that revolt
from gross speaking. Signs from abroad speak the
very same language, as to the liberal tendencies (in
this point) of the nineteenth century.  Formerly, it
was treason for a Spaniard, even in a laudatory copy
of verses, to suppose his own Queen lowered to the
level of other females by the possession of legs! Constitutionally, the Queen was incapable of legs. How
else her Majesty contrived to walk, or to dance, the
Inquisition soon taught the poet was no concern of his.
Royal legs for females were an inconceivable thing -
except amongst Protestant nations; some of whom the
Spanish Church affirmed to be even disfigured by tails!
Having tails, of course they might have legs. But not
Catholic Queens. Now-a-days, so changed is all this,
that if you should even express your, homage to her
Most Catholic Majesty, by sending her a pair of embroidered garters - which certainly pre-suppose legs
— there is no doubt that the Spanish Minister of
Finance would gratefully carry them to account - on
the principle that'every little helps.' Mr. Porson is
equally wrong, as I conceive, in another illustration
of this matter, drawn from the human toes, and speci



NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    275
fically from the great toe. It is true, that, in refined
society, upon any rare necessity arising for alluding to
so inconsiderable a member of the human statue, generally this is done at present by the French term doigtde-pied - though not always - as may be seen in
various. honorary certificates granted to chiropodists
within the last twenty months. And whereas Mr. Porson asks pathetically - What harm has the great toe
done, that it is never to be named? I answer - The
greatest harm; as may be seen in the first act of'Coriolanus,' where Menenius justly complains, that
this arrogant subaltern of the crural system,: Being basest, meanest, vilest,
Still goeth foremost.'
Even in the villany of running away from battle, this
unworthy servant still asserts precedency. I repeat,
however, that the general tendencies of the age, as to
the just limits of parrhesia, (using the Greek word in a
sense wider than of old,) are moving at present upon
two opposite tracks; which fact it is, as in some other
cases, that makes the final judgment difficult.
ROMAN IMPERATOR.
Mr. Landor, though really learned, often puts his
learning into his pocket.
Thus, with respect to the German Empire, Mr. L.
asserts that it was a chimaera; that the Imperium Germanicum was a mere usage of speech, founded (if I
understand him) not even in a legal fiction, but in a
blunder; that a German Imperator never had a true
historical existence; and, finally, that even the Roman




276     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
title of Imperator - which, unquestionably, surmounted
in grandeur all titles of honor that ever were or will bQ
ranged in dignity below the title of Rex.
I believe him wrong in every one of these doctrines;
let us confine ourselves to the last. The title of Imperator was not originally either above or below the title
of Rex, or even upon the same level; it was what
logicians call disparate - it radiated from a different
centre, precisely as the modern title of Decanus, or
Dean, which is originally astrological, [see the elder
Scaliger on Manilius,] has no relation, whether of
superiority or equality or inferiority, to the title of
Colonel, nor the title of Cardinal any such relation to
that of Field-Marshal; and quite as little had Rex to
Imperator. Masters of Ceremonies, or Lord Chamberlains, may certainly create a precedency in favor of
any title whatever in regard to any other title; but
such a precedency for any of the cases before us would
be arbitrary, and not growing out of any internal principle, though useful for purposes of convenience. As
regards the Roman Imperator, originally like the Roman Prcetor - this title and the official rank pointed
exclusively to military distinctions. In process of time,
the Praetor came to be a legal officer, and the Imperator to be the supreme political officer. But the motive
for assuming the title of Imperator, as the badge or
cognizance of the sovereign authority, when the great
transfiguration of the Republic took place, seems to
have been this.  An essentially new distribution of
political powers had become necessary, and this change
masqued itself to Romans, published itself in menaces
and muttering thunder to foreign states, through the




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    277
martial title of Imperator.  A new equilibrium was
demanded by the changes which time and luxury and
pauperism had silently worked in the composition of
Roman society. If Rome was to be saved from herself
-if she was to be saved from the eternal flux and
reflux - action and re-action - amongst her oligarchy
of immense estates [which condition of things it was
that forced on the great sine qua non reforms of Caesar,
against all the babble of the selfish Cicero, of the
wicked Cato, and of the debt-ridden Senate] - then it
was indispensable that a new order of powers should
be combined for bridling her internal convulsions. To
carry her off from her own s'elf-generated vortex,
which would, in a very few years, have engulphed her
and drawn her down into fragments, some machinery
as new as steam-power was required: her own native
sails filled in the wrong direction. There were already
powers in the constitution equal to the work, but distracted and falsely lodged. These must be gathered
into one hand. And, yet, as names are all-powerful
upon our frail race, this recast must be verbally disguised. The title must be such as, whilst flattering
the Roman pride, might yet announce to Oriental
powers a plenipotentiary of Rome who argued all disputed points, not so much strongly as (an Irish phrase)
with'a strong back'- not so much piquing himself
on Aristotelian syllogisms that came within Barbary
and Celarent, as upon thirty legions that stood within
call. The Consulship was good for little; that, with
some reservations, could be safely resigned into subordinate hands. The Consular name, and the name of
Senate, which was still suffered to retain an obscure




278    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
vitality and power of resurrection, continued to throw
a popular lustre over the government. Millions were
duped. But the essential offices, the offices in which
settled the organs of all the life in the administration,
were these: — 1, of Military Commander-in-Chief (including such a partition of the provinces as might seal
the authority in this officer's hands, and yet flatter the
people through the Senate); 2, of Censor, so as to
watch the action of morals and social usages upon
politics; 3, of Pontifex Maximus; 4, and finally,
of Tribune.  The tribunitial power, next after the
military power, occupied the earliest anxieties of the
Cuesars. All these pofwers, and some others belonging
to less dignified functions, were made to run through
the same central rings (or what in mail-coach harness
is called the turrets): the' ribbons' were tossed up to
one and the same imperial coachman, looking as amiable as he could, but, in fact, a very truculent personage, having powers more unlimited than was always
safe for himself. And now, after all this change of
things, what was to be the name? By what title should
men know him? Much depended upon that. The
tremendous symbols of S. P. Q. R. still remained; nor
had they lost their power. On the contrary, the great
idea of the Roman destiny, as of some vast phantom
moving under God to some unknown end, was greater
than ever: the idea was now so great, that it had
outgrown all its representative realities.  Consul and
Proconsul would no longer answer, because they represented too exclusively the interior or domestic fountains of power, and not the external relations to the
terraqueous globe which were beginning to expand with




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    279
sudden accelerations of velocity. The central power
could not be forgotten by any who were near enough
to have tasted its wrath; but now there was arising a
necessity for expressing, by some great unity of denomination, so as no longer to lose the totality in the
separate partitions - the enormity of the circumference.
A necessity for this had repeatedly been found in negotiations, and in contests of ceremonial rank with oriental
powers, as between ourselves and China. With Persia,
the greatest of these powers, an instinct of inevitable
collision 10 had, for some time, been ripening. It became requisite that there should be a representative
officer for the whole Roman grandeur, and one capable
of standing on the same level as the Persian king of
kings; and this necessity arose at the very same
moment that a new organization was required of Roman power for domestic purposes. There is no doubt
that both purposes were consulted in the choice of the
title of Imperator. The chief alternative title was that
of Dictator. But to this, as regarded Romans, there
were two objections - first, that it was a mere provisional title, always commemorating a transitional emer.
gency, and pointing to some happier condition, which
the extraordinary powers of the officer ought soon to
establish. It was in the nature of a propblem, and continually asked for its own solution. The Dictator dic.
tated. He was the greatest ipse dixit that ever was
heard of. It reminded the people verbally of despotic
powers and autocracy. Then again, as regarded foreign
nations, unacquainted with the Roman constitution, and
throughout the servile East incapable of understanding
it, the title of Dictator had no meaning at all. The




280    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
Speaker is a magnificent title in England, and makes
brave men sometimes shake in their shoes. But, yet,
if from rustic ignorance it is not understood, even that
title means nothing.
Of the proudest Speaker that England ever saw,
viz., Sir Edward Seymour, it is recorded that his
grandeur failed him, sank under him, like the Newgate drop, at the very moment when his boiling anger
most relied upon and required it. He was riding
near Barnet, when a rustic wagoner ahead of him,
by keeping obstinately the middle of the road, prevented him from passing. Sir Edward motioned to
him magnificently, that he must turn his horses to
the left. The carter, on some fit of the sulks (perhaps
from the Jacobinism innate in man), despised this
pantomime, and sturdily persisted in his mutinous
disrespect. On which Sir Edward shouted —'Fellow,
do you know who I am?''Noo-ah,' replied our
rebellious friend, meaning, when faithfully translated,
no.'Are you aware, Sirrab,' said Sir Edward, now
thoroughly incensed,' that I am the right honorable
the Speaker? At your peril, Sir, in the name of
the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled,
quarter instantly to the left.' This was said in that
dreadful voice which sometimes reprimanded penitent
offenders, kneeling at the bar of the House. The
carter, more struck by the terrific tones than the
words, spoke an aside to'Dobbin,' (his' thill' horse,)
which procured an opening to the blazing Speaker,
and then replied thus —' Speaker! Why, if so be as
thou can'st speak, whoy-y-y-y-y,' (in the tremulous undulation with which he was used to utter his sovereign




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    281
whoah-h-h-h to his horses,)' Whoy-y-y-y didn't-a speak
afore?' The wagoner, it seemed, had presumed Sir
Edward, from his mute pantomime, to be a dumb
man; and all which the proud Speaker gained, by the
proclamation of his style and title, was, to be exonerated from that suspicion, but to the heavy discredit of
his sanity. A Roman Dictator stood quite as poor a
chance with foreigners, as our Speaker with a rustic.'Dictator! let him dictate to his wife; but he sha'n't
dictate to us.'  Any title, to prosper with distant
nations, must rest upon the basis of arms. And this
fell in admirably with the political exigency for Rome
herself.  The title of Imperator was liable to no
jealousy. Being entirely a military title, it clashed
with no civil pretensions whatever. Being a military
title, that recorded a triumph over external enemies in
the field, it was dear to the patriotic heart; whilst it
directed the eye to a quarter where all increase of
power was concurrent with increase of benefit to the
State. And again, as the honor had been hitherto
purely titular, accompanied by some auctoritas, in the
Roman sense, [not always honor, for Cicero was an
Imperator for Cilician exploits, which he reports with
laughter,] but no separate authority in our modern
sense. Even in military circles it was open to little
jealousy; nor apparently could ripen into a shape that
ever would be so, since, according to all precedent, it
would be continually balanced by the extension of the
same title, under popular military suffrage, to other
fortunate leaders. Who could foresee, at the inauguration of this reform, that this precedent would be
abolished? who could guess that henceforwards no




282     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
more triumphs, (but only a sparing distribution of
triumphal decorations,) henceforwards no more imperatorial titles for anybody out of the one consecrated
family? All this was hidden in the bosom of the
earliest Imperator: he seemed, to the great mass of
the people, perfectly innocent of civic ambition: he
rested upon his truncheon, i. e., upon S. P. Q. R.: like
Napoleon, he said,' I am but the first soldier of the
republic,' that is, the most dutiful of her servants; and,
like Napoleon, under cover of this martial paludamenturn, he had soon filched every ensign of authority by
which the organs of public power could speak. But,
at the beginning, this title of Imperator was the one
by far the best fitted to masque all this, to disarm
suspicion, and to win the confidence of the people.
The title, therefore, began in something like imposture; and it was not certainly at first the gorgeous
title into which it afterwards blossomed. The earth
did not yet ring with it. The rays of its diadem were
not then the first that said All hail! to the rising —
the last that said Farewell! to the setting sun. But
still it was already a splendid distinction; and, in a
Roman ear, it must have sounded far above all competition from the trivial title (in that day) of'Rex,'
unless it were the Persian Rex, viz.,'Rex Regum.'
Romans gave the title; they stooped not to accept it.l1
Even Mark Antony, in the all-magnificent description
of him by Shakspeare's Cleopatra, could give it in
showers — kings waited in his ante-room,' and from
his pocket fell crowns and sceptres.' The title of
Imperator was indeed reaped in glory that transcended
the glory of earth, but it was not, therefore, sown in
dishonor.




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    283
We are all astonished at Mr. Landor — myself and
three hundred select readers. What can he mean by
tilting against the Imperator - Semper Augustus?
Before him the sacred fire (that burned from century
to century) went pompously in advance - before him
the children of Europe and Asia- of Africa and the
islands, rode as dorypheroi; his somatophulakes were
princes; and his empire, when burning out in Byzantium, furnished from its very ruins the models for our
western honors and ceremonial. Had it even begun
in circumstances of ignominy, that would have been
cured easily by its subsequent triumph. Many are the
titles of earth that have found a glory in looking back
to the humility of their origin as its most memorable
feature. The fisherman who sits upon Mount Palatine, in some respects the grandest of all potentates,
as one wielding both earthly and heavenly thunders, is
the highest example of this. Some, like the Mamelukes' of Egypt and the early Janizaries of the Porte,
have glorified themselves in being slaves. Others,
like the Caliphs, have founded their claims to men's
homage in the fact of being successors to those who
(between ourselves) were knaves. And once it happened to Professor Wilson and myself, that we travelled in the same post-chaise with a most agreeable
madman, who, amongst a variety of other select facts
which he communicated, was kind enough to give us
the following etymological account of our muchrespected ancestors the Saxons; which furnishes a
further illustration [quite unknown to the learned] of
the fact- that honor may glory in deducing itself
from circumstances of humility. He assured us that




284    NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
these worthy Pagans were a league, comprehending
every single brave man of German blood; so much
so, that on sailing away they left that unhappy land in
a state of universal cowardice, which accounts for the
licking it subsequently received from Napoleon. The
Saxons were very poor, as brave men too often are.
In fact, they had no breeches, and, of course, no silk
stockings.  They had, however, sacks, which they
mounted on their backs, whence naturally their name
Sax-on. Sacks-on! was the one word of command,
and that spoken, the army was ready. In reality, it
was treason to take them off. But this indorsement
of their persons was not assumed on any Jewish principle of humiliation; on the contrary, in the most
flagrant spirit of defiance to the whole race of man.
For they proclaimed that, having no breeches nor silk
stockings of their own, they intended, wind and weather
permitting, to fill these same sacks with those of other
men. The Welshmen then occupying England were
reputed to have a good stock of both, and in quest of
this Welsh wardrobe the Sacks-on army sailed.  With
what success it is not requisite to say, since here in
one post-chaise, four hundred and thirty years after,
were three of their posterity, the Professor, the madman, and myself, indorsees (as you may say) of the
original indorsers, who were all well equipped with
the objects of this great Sacks-on exodus.
It is true that the word emperor is not in every
situation so impressive as the word king. But that
arises in part from the latter word having less of
specialty about it; it is more catholic, and to that
extent more poetic; and in part from accidents of




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    285
position which disturb the relations of many other
titles beside. The Proconsul had a grander sound, as
regarded military expeditions, than the principal from
whom he emanated. The Surena left a more awful
remembrance of his title upon the comrades of Julian
in his Persian expedition than the Surena's master.
And there are many cases extant in which the word
angel strikes a deeper key; cases where power is contemplated as well as beauty or mysterious existence,
than the word archangel, though confessedly higher in
the hierarchies of Heaven.
Let me now draw the reader's attention to Count
Julian, a great conception of Mr. Landor's.'
The fable of.Count Julian (that is, when comprehending all the parties to that web, of which he is the
centre) may be pronounced the grandest which modern history unfolds. It is, and it is not, scenical. In
some portions (as the fate so mysterious of Roderick,
and in a higher sense of Julian) it rises as much above
what the stage could illustrate, as does Thermopylve
above the petty details of narration. The man was
mad that, instead of breathing from a hurricane of
harps some mighty ode over Thermopyle, fancied the
little conceit of weaving it into a metrical novel or succession of incidents. Yet, on the other hand, though
rising higher, Count Julian sinks lower: though the
passions rise far above Troy, above Marathon, above
Thermopylve, and are such passions as could not have
existed under Paganism, in some respects they condescend and preconform to the stage. The characters
are all different, all marked, all in position; by which,
never assuming fixed attitudes as to purpose and inter



286     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
est, the passions are deliriously complex, and the situations are of corresponding grandeur. Metius Fuffetius,
Alban traitor! that wert torn limb from limb by antagonist yet confederate chariots, thy tortures, seen by
shuddering armies, were not comparable to the unseen
tortures in Count Julian's mind; who — whether his
treason prospered or not, whether his dear outraged
daughter lived or died, whether his king were trampled in the dust by the horses of infidels, or escaped
as a wreck from the fiery struggle, whether his dear
native Spain fell for ages under misbelieving hounds,
or, combining her strength, tossed off them, but then
also himsetf, with one loathing from her shores -saw,
as he looked out into the mighty darkness, and stretched
out his penitential hands vainly for pity or for pardon,
nothing but the blackness of ruin, and ruin that was
too probably to career through centuries.'To this
pass,' as Ctesar said to his soldiers at Pharsalia,' had
his enemies reduced him;' and Count Julian might
truly say, as he stretched himself a rueful suppliant
before the Cross, listening to the havoc that was driving
onwards before the dogs of the Crescent,'My enemies,
because they would not remember that I was a man,
forced me to forget that I was a Spaniard: - to forget
thee, oh native Spain, — and, alas! thee, oh faith of
Christ!'
The story is wrapt in gigantic mists, and looms upon
one like the Grecian fable of CEdipus; and there will
be great reason for disgust, if the deep Arabic researches now going on in the Escurial, or at Vienna,
should succeed in stripping it of its grandeurs. For,
as it stands at present, it is the most fearful lesson




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    287
extant of the great moral, that crime propagates crime,
and violence inherits violence; nay, a lesson on the
awful necessity which exists at times, that one tremendous wrong should blindly reproduce itself in endless
retaliatory wrongs. To have resisted the dread temptation, would have needed an angel's nature: to have
yielded, is but human; should it, then, plead in vain
for pardon? and yet, by some mystery of evil, to have
perfected this human vengeance, is, finally, to land all
parties alike, oppressor and oppressed, in the passions
of hell.
Mr. Landor, who always rises with his subject, and
dilates like Satan into Teneriffe or Atlas, when he sees
before him an antagonist worthy of his powers, is probably the one man in Europe that has adequately conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency and the
monumental misery of Count Julian. That sublimity
of penitential grief, which cannot accept consolation
from man, cannot hear external reproach, cannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much as see the
curiosity of by-standers; that awful carelessness of
all but the troubled deeps within his own heart, and of
God's spirit brooding upon their surface, and searching
their abysses, never was so majestically described as in
the following lines; it is the noble Spaniard, Hernando,
comprehending and loving Count Julian in the midst of
his treasons, who speaks: - Tarik, the gallant Moor,
having said that at last the Count must be happy; for
that'Delicious calm
Follows the fierce enjoyment of revenge.'
Hernando replies thus: —




288     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.'That calm was never his; no other will be,
Not victory, that o'ershadows him, sees he:
No airy and light passion stirs abroad
To ruffle or to soothe him; all are quell'd
Beneath a mightier, sterner, stress of mind.
Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmov'd,
Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men.
As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary - stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabas'd,
In the cold light above the dews of morn.'
One change suggests itself to me as possibly for the
better, viz., if the magnificent line -' Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men'were transferred to the secondary object, the eagle,
placed after what is now the last line, it would give a
fuller rhythmus to the close of the entire passage; it
would be more literally applicable to the majestic and
solitary bird, than to the majestic and solitary man;
whilst the figurative expression even more impassioned
might be found for the utter self-absorption of Count
Julian's spirit — too grandly sorrowful to be capable
of disdain.
It completes the picture of this ruined prince, that
Hernando, the sole friend (except his daughter) still
cleaving to him, dwells with yearning desire upon his
death, knowing the necessity of this consummation to
his own secret desires, knowing the forgiveness which
would settle upon his memory after that last penalty
should have been paid for his errors, comprehending
the peace that would then swallow up the storm: —




NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.    289'For his own sake I could endure his loss,
Pray for it, and thank God: yet mourn I must
Him above all, so great, so bountiful,
So blessed once!'
It is no satisfaction to Hernando that Julian should'yearn for death with speechless love,' but Julian does
so: and it is in vain now, amongst these irreparable
ruins, to wish it otherwise.''Tis not my solace that'tis 12 his desire:
Of all who pass us in life's drear descent
We'grieve the most for those who wvish'd to die.'
How much, then, is in this brief drama of Count
Julian, chiselled, as one might think, by the hands of
that sculptor who fancied the great idea of chiselling
Mount Athos into a demigod, which almost insists on
being quoted; which seems to rebuke and frown on
one for not quoting it: passages to which, for their
solemn grandeur, one raises one's hat as at night in
walking under the Coliseum; passages which, for their
luxury of loveliness, should be inscribed on the phylacteries of brides, or upon the frescoes of Ionia, illustrated by the gorgeous allegories of Rubens.'Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparibile tempus,
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.'
Yet, reader, in spite of time, one word more on the
subject we are quitting. Father Time is certainly become very importunate and clamorously shrill since he
has been fitted up with that horrid railway whistle;
and even old Mother Space is growing rather impertinent, when she speaks out of monthly journals licensed
to carry but small quantities of bulky goods; yet one
thing I must say in spite of them both.
19




290     NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
It is, that although we have had from men of memorable genius, Shelley in particular, both direct and
indirect attempts (some of them powerful attempts)
to, realize the great idea of Prometheus, which idea
is so great, that (like the primeval majesties of Human Innocence, of Avenging Deluges that are past,
of Fiery Visitations yet to come) it has had strength
to pass through many climates, and through many
religions, without essential loss, but surviving, without
tarnish, every furnace of chance and change; so it is
that,, after all has been done which intellectual power
could do since jEschylus (and since, Milton in his
Satan), no embodiment of the Promethean situation,
none of the Promethean character, fixes the attentive
eye upon itself with the same secret feeling of fidelity
to the vast archetype, as Mr. Landor's' Count Julian.'
There is in this modern aerolith the same jewelly
lustre, which cannot be mistaken; the same'non
imitabilefulgur,' and the same character of'fracture,'
or cleavage, as mineralogists speak, for its beaming
iridescent grandeur, redoubling under the crush of
misery. The color and the coruscation are the same
when splintered by violence; the tones of the rocky 13
harp are the same when swept by sorrow. There is
the same spirit of heavenly persecution against his
enemy, persecution that would have hung upon his
rear, and'burn'd after him to the bottomless pit,'
though it had yawned for both; there is the same gulf
fixed between the possibilities of their reconciliation,
the same immortality of resistance, the same abysmal
anguish. Did Mr. Landor consciously cherish this
)Eschylean ideal in composing' Count Julian?'  I
know not: there it is.




NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 242.
Southey affirmed:' - viz. in the'Letters of Espriella,' an
imaginary Spaniard on a visit to England, about the year
1810.
NOTE 2. Page 244.'Too much wvealth:'- Mr. Landor, who should know best,
speaks of himself (once, at least) as'poor;' but that is all
nonsense. I have known several people with annual incomes
bordering on ~20,000, who spoke of themselves, and seemed
seriously to think themselves, unhappy'paupers.'  Lady
Hester Stanhope, with ~2700 a year, (of which about twelve
arose from her government pension,) and without one solitary
dependent in her train, thought herself rich enough to become
a queen (an Arabic maleky) in the Syrian mountains, but an
absolute pauper for London:'for how, you know,' (as she
would say, pathetically,)' could the humblest of spinsters live
decently upon that pittance?'
NOTE 3. Page 247.'From Hegel:'-I am not prepared with an affidavit that
no man ever read the late Mr. Hegel, that great master of
the impenetrable. But sufficient evidence of that fact, as I
conceive, may be drawn from those who have written commentaries upon him.




292      NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
NOTE 4. Page 256.
Wale (Germanice rvahl) the old ballad word for choice. But
the motive for using it in this place is in allusion to an excellent old Scottish story (not sufficiently known in the South),
of a rustic laird, who profited by the hospitality of his neighbors, duly to get drunk once (and no more) every lawful
night, returning in the happiest frame of mind under the
escort of his servant Andrew. In spite of Andrew, however,
it sometimes happened that the laird fell off his horse; and on
one of these occasions, as he himself was dismounted from his
saddle, his wig was dismounted from his cranium. Both fell
into a peat-moss, and both were fished out by Andrew. But
the laird, in his confusion, putting on the wig wrong side
before, reasonably'jaloused' that this could not be his own
wig, but some other man's, which suspicion he communicated
to Andrew, who argued contra by the memorable reply —'Hout! laird, there's nae wale o' wigs i' a peat-moss.'
NOTE 5. Page 257.
Milton, in uttering his grief (but also his hopes growing
out of this grief) upon a similar tragedy, viz., the massacre
of the Protestant women and children by'the bloody Piedmontese.'
NOTE 6. Page 261.'lModern military life:' - By modern I mean since the
opening of the thirty years' war. In this war, the sack, or
partial sack, of Magdeburg, will occur to the reader as one
of the worst amongst martial ruffianisms. But this happens
to be a hoax. It is an old experience, that, when once the
demure muse of history has allowed herself to tell a lie, she
never retracts it. Many are the falsehoods in our own history,
which our children read traditionally for truths, merely because
our uncritical grandfathers believed them to be such. Magdeburg was not sacked. What fault there was in the case
belonged to the King of Sweden, who certainly was remiss in
this instance, though with excuses more than were hearkened




NOTES.                      293
to at that time. Tilly, the Bavarian General, had no reason
for severity in this case, and showed none. According to the
regular routine of war, Magdeburg had become forfeited to
military execution; which, let the reader remember, was not,
in those days, a right of the General as against the enemy,
and by way of salutary warning to other cities, lest they also
should abuse the right of a reasonable defence, but was a right
of the soldiery as against their own leaders. A town stormed
was then a little perquisite to the ill-fed and ill-paid soldiers.
So of prisoners. If I made a prisoner of' Signor Drew' [see
Henry V.] it was my business to fix his ranson: the General
had no business to interfere with that. Magdeburg, therefore,
had incurred the common penalty (which she must have foreseen) of obstinacy; and the only difference between her case and
that of many another brave little town, that quietly submitted
to the usual martyrdom, without howling through all the
speaking-trumpets of history, was this - that the penalty was,
upon Magdeburg, but partially enforced. Harte, the tutor of
Lord Chesterfield's son, first published, in his Life of Gustavus
Adolphus, an anthentic diary of what passed at that time, kept
by a Lutheran clergyman. This diary shows sufficiently that
no real departures were made from the customary routine,
except in the direction of mercy. But it is evident that the
people of Magdeburg were a sort of German hogs, of whom,
it is notorious, that if you attempt in the kindest way to shear
them, all you get is horrible yelling, and (the proverb asserts)
very little wool. The case being a classical one in the annals
of military outrages, I have noticed its real features.
NOTE 7. Page 264.
3'lelanchthon's profound theory.' -That the reader may not
suppose me misrepresenting Mr. L., I subjoin his words, p.
224, vol. 1: —' The evil of idolatry is this -rival nations
have raised up rival deities; war hath been denounced in the
name of heaven; men have been murdered for the love of
God; and such impiety hath darkened all the regions of the
world, that the Lord of all things hath been mocked by all
simultaneously as the Lord of Hosts.' The evil or idolatry is,




294      NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
not that it disfigures the Deity, (in which, it seems, there
might be no great harm,) but that one man's disfiguration
differs from another man's; which leads to quarrelling, and
that to fighting.'
NOTE 8. Page 265.'Grecian disguise:'- The true German name of this learned
reformer was Schvwarzerd (black earth); but the homeliness
and pun-provoking quality of such a designation induced
Melanchthon to masque it in Greek. By the way, I do not
understand how Mr. Landor, the arch-purist in orthography,
reconciles his spelling of the name to Greek orthodoxy: there
is no Greek word that could be expressed by the English
syllable'cthon.' Such a word as Melancthon * would be a
hybrid monster - neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring.
NOTE 9. Page 268.
An equal mistake it is in Mr Landor to put into the mouth
of Porson any vituperation of Mathias as one that had uttered
opinions upon Wordsworth.  In the Pursuits of Literature,
down to the fifteenth edition, there is no mention of Wordsworth's name. Southey is mentioned slightingly, and chiefly
with reference to his then democratic principles; but not
Coleridge, and not Wordsworth. Mathias soon after went to
Italy, where he passed the remainder of his life —died, I
believe, and was buried - never, perhaps, having heard the
name of Wordsworth. As to Porson, it is very true that
Mathias took a few liberties with his private habits, such as
his writing paragraphs in the little cabinet fitted up for the
gens de plume at the liorning Chronicle Office, and other trifles.
But these, though impertinences, were not of a nature seriously
to offend. They rather flattered, by the interest which they
argued in his movements. And with regard to Porson's main
pretension, his exquisite skill in Greek, Mathias was not the
* The reader of this edition will notice that the American printer has
altered the spelling in the text, without reference to Mr. De Quincey's remarks
on Mr. Laundr's method.




NOTES.                     295
man to admire this too little: his weakness, if in that point he
had a weakness, lay in the opposite direction. His own Greek
was not a burthen that could have foundered a camel: he was
neither accurate, nor extensive, nor profound. But yet Mr.
Landor is wrong in thinking that he drew it from an Index.
In his Italian, he had the advantage probably of Mr. Landor
himself: at least, he wrote it with more apparent fluency and
compass.
NOTE 10. Page 279.
Herod the Great, and his father Antipater, owed the favor
of Rome, and, finally, the throne of Judma, to the seasonable
election which they made between Rome and Persia; but
made not without some doubts, as between forces hardly yet
brought to a satisfactory equation.
NOTE 11. Page 282.'Stooped not to accept it.'- The notion that Julius Caesar, who
of all men must have held cheapest the title of Rex, had
seriously intrigued to obtain it, arose (as I conceive) from two
mistakes —first, From a misinterpretation of a figurative
ceremony in the pageant of the Lupercalia. The Romans
were ridiculously punctilious in this kind of jealousy. They
charged Pompey at one time with a plot for making himself
king, because he wore white bandages round his thighs; now.White, in olden days, was as much the regal color as purple.
Think, dear reader, of us — of you and me -being charged
with making ourselves kings, because we may choose to wear
white cotton drawers. Pompey was very angry, and swore
bloody oaths that it was not ambition which had cased his
thighs in white fascite.'Why, what is it then?' said a
grave citizen.' What is it, man?' replied Pompey,'it
is rheumatism.'  Dogberry must have had a hand in this
charge: —' Dost thou hear, thou varlet? Thou are charged
with irrcivism; and it shall go hard with me but I will prove
thee to thy face a false knave, and guilty of flat rheumatism.',
The other reason which has tended to confirm posterity in
the belief that Caesar really coveted the title of Rex, was the




296      NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
confusion of the truth arising with Greek writers. Basileus,
the term by which indifferently they designated the mighty
Artaxerxes and the pettiest regulus, was the original translation used for Imperator. Subsequently, and especially after
Dioclesian had approximated the aulic pomps to Eastern
models, the terms Autocrator, Kaisar, Augustus, Sebastos, &c.,
came more into use. But after Trajan's time, or even to that
of Commodus, generally the same terms which expressed
Imperator and Imperitorial [viz. Basileus and Basilikos] to a
Grecian ear expressed Rex and Regalis.
NOTE 12. Page 289.''Tis':-Scotchmen and Irishmen (for a reason which it
may be elsewhere worth while explaining) make the same mistake of supposing'tis and'twas admissible in prose: which is
shocking to an English ear, for since 1740 they have become
essentially poetic forms, and cannot, without a sense of painful affectation and sentimentality, be used in conversation or
in any mode of prose. MIr. Landor does not make that mistake,
but the reduplication of the'tis in this line, - will he permit me
to say?- is dreadful. He is wide awake to such blemishes in
other men of all nations: so am I. He blazes away all day
long against the trespasses of that class, like a man in spring
protecting corn-fields against birds. So do I at times. And
if ever I publish that work on Style, which for years has been
in preparation, I fear that, from IMr. Landor, it will be necessary to cull some striking flaws in composition, were it only
that in his works must be sought some of its most striking
brilliancies.
NOTE 13. Page 290.' Rocky harp:' - There are now known other cases, beside
the ancient one of Memnon's statue, in which the'deepgrooved' granites, or even the shifting sands of wildernesses,
utter mysterious music to ears that watch and wait.for the
proper combination of circumstances.




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