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UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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ESSAYS 
 
 CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE 
 
.A-9- 
 
 ESSAYS /Bl ^ 
 
 y. / 
 
 CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE 
 
 BY 
 
 PKOFESSOR WILSON 
 
 t 
 
 YOL. I. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXV 
 
PKEEACE. 
 
 In the year 1842, Professor Wilson published in three 
 volume^ under the title of " The Eecreations of Christopher 
 North/' a collection of his miscellaneous writings selected 
 from Blackwood's Magazine. These volumes (which will 
 be reprinted in this edition of his works), were, however, 
 very far from exhausting the materials which his prolific 
 pen had contributed to that popular periodical. A quantity 
 of writing much greater than that which was re-issued under 
 his own auspices, still survives for republication ; and it is 
 now the business and duty of his Editor to place in the 
 hands of the reader such a portion of these multifarious 
 compositions as appears likely to amuse or interest him. 
 
 None of the Essays contained in the following volumes 
 were prepared for republication by Professor Wilson him- 
 self. The advantage of his own deliberate selection and 
 careful revision cannot be claimed for them : in this respect 
 they labour under the same disadvantages which attach to 
 the Nodes Ambrosiance. Nevertheless it is certain that 
 Professor Wilson intended, at one time or other, to repub- 
 lish these articles, or at least a large proportion of them. 
 Separate copies of all his contributions to Blackwood had 
 been made up for his use, and were in his hands for some 
 years before his death. On the covers of these copies he 
 has, in most cases, jotted down a memorandum expressing 
 very briefly his opinion of the article in question, and signi- 
 fying, either directly or inferentially, what pieces were, in his 
 judgment, worthy, and what were not worthy, of republica- 
 
u preface. 
 
 tion. It is by these memoranda principally that I have 
 been guided in bringing together this compilation. I have, 
 in so far as the greater portion — indeed I might say the whole 
 — of its contents are concerned, the Professor's own authority 
 for sending it forth. 
 
 At the same time I have to regret, as I had in the case of 
 the Nodes Ambrosiance, that the Collection has not received 
 the benefit of his final emendations. It has the seal of his 
 imprimatur, but not the stamp of his corrections. To some 
 extent, however, this disadvantage may be balanced by the 
 compensating fact that, if these Essays have lost something 
 in not having obtained the benefit of their Author's maturer 
 judgment, they may also have gained something in having 
 preserved, entire and undisturbed, the buoyancy and fresh- 
 ness of their original projection. The train of thought and 
 feeling and humour which arose in Professor Wilson's mind 
 under the fervent impulse of the moment, was generally such 
 as no subsequent reflection could have inspired, and no sub- 
 sequent criticism improved. 
 
 Short explanatory notices have been prefixed to such of 
 the Essays as appeared to require them. In this place, 
 therefore, I need only say that the chronological order in 
 which the articles were originally published, has been ad- 
 hered to as the rule. "Where exceptions occur, the reason 
 will either be assigned at its proper place, or will be suffi- 
 ciently obvious to the reader. This may be added, that 
 although Professor Wilson was a contributor (and a very 
 efficient one) to Blackwood's Magazine from its commence- 
 ment in 1817, the Essays contained in this collection are 
 (with a few exceptions) of not older date than the year 
 1826 : for this was the period about which he began to 
 put forth his full strength, and to rejoice in the untrammelled 
 exercise of his varied and peculiar powers. 
 
 J. F. F. 
 
 London, 14th July 1856. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. 1. 
 
 STREAMS, . 
 
 MEG DODS's COOKERY, 
 
 THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT, 
 
 GYMNASTICS, 
 
 CRUIKSHANK ON TIME, . 
 
 HEALTH AND LONGEVITY, 
 
 ON EARLY RISING, 
 
 OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH ; OR, CHRISTOPHER IN 
 
 EDINBURGH, AND CHRISTOPHER IN LONDON, 
 THE MAN OF TON — A SATIRE, 
 THE LOVES OF THE POETS, 
 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE, 
 THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK, 
 DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL, 
 WORDSWORTH, 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 75 
 
 94 
 ]23 
 158 
 
 1S7 
 
 195 
 230 
 269 
 293 
 326 
 347 
 387 
 
ESSAYS 
 CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 STREAMS. 
 
 [APRIL 1826.] 
 
 How delightful, even to elders like us, to feel Spring breathing 
 once more over air and earth ! We have been quite happy 
 and contented with Winter, however severe; nor have we ever 
 felt the slightest inclination to be satirical on that hoary per- 
 sonage. On the contrary, there is not a Season of them all 
 whom we love better than hale, honest, old Winter. But when 
 he has migrated from the lengthening days, we think cheer- 
 fully on the last time we shook hands with him ; and knowing 
 that he is as regular as clockwork, have no doubts of his 
 return as soon as he hears that we have again laid in our 
 November stock of coals and corned beef. Indeed, his son, 
 Spring, has so strong a family resemblance to Ins father, that 
 were it not for the difference of their complexion, and a totally 
 dissimilar style of dress, we should frequently mistake the one 
 for the other. The likeness, however, wears off as we become 
 better acquainted with the young heir-apparent, and find that, 
 with most of his father's virtues, he possesses many peculiar 
 to himself ; while in every point of manners or lesser morals, 
 he bears away both the bell and the palm from his sire. Like 
 the old gentleman, he is occasionally cold to strangers — biting 
 vol. v. A 
 
2 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IM AGINATIVE. 
 
 in his remarks — or wrapt up within himself ; but his iciness 
 soon thaws — his face becomes animated in the extreme — his 
 language is even flowery — and putting his arm kindly within 
 yours, there is nothing he likes so well as to propose a walk 
 among the pleasant banks and braes, now alive with the new- 
 born lambs, through whose bleating you can but faintly hear 
 the lark returning from heaven. 
 
 We seldom are exposed to any very strong temptation to 
 leave town till about the second week in April. Up to that 
 time the dinners have complete power over us, and we could 
 not tear ourselves away without acute anguish. Lamb (see 
 last paragraph) has been exquisite for weeks ; and when en- 
 joyed at the table of a friend, not expensive. Garden stuffs, 
 too, have purified our blood, and, if that be possible, increased 
 our appetite. Spring has agreeably affected our animal being, 
 without having as yet made any very forcible appeal to our 
 intellectual or moral system. To leave town during such a 
 crisis of private affairs, would obviously be inconsistent with 
 our judicious character. Take them on the whole, and the best 
 dinners of a cycle of seven years will be found to fall in the 
 months of March and April. We have verified this fact by 
 tables of observation kept for eight- and- twenty years, now in 
 the temporary possession of Dr Kitchener, who has been 
 anxiously collating them with his own private Gastronomical 
 Journal. 
 
 Yet in spite of such tender ties, by which we are bound to 
 the urbane board well on into April, our poetical imagination 
 is frequently tempting us away into the country. All such 
 temptations we manfully resist ; and to strengthen us in the 
 struggle, we never refuse a dinner invitation, except when we 
 have reason to know that we shall be asked to eat pates. Mr 
 Coleridge, meaning to be very severe on Mr Jeffrey for having 
 laughed at some verses of Mr Wordsworth's, about " the child 
 being father of the man," declares somewhere or other, that 
 not willingly would he gaze on a setting sun with a man 
 capable of the enormity of such a criticism. On the same 
 principles precisely, not willingly would we gaze on the set- 
 ting sun with any man who, in his own house, had ever asked 
 us to begin dinner with a pate. Such a request shows a little- 
 ness of soul and stomach, that could comprehend the glory 
 
STREAMS. S 
 
 neither of a setting sun nor a round of beef — two of the very 
 best things in their own way, in heaven or on earth. 
 
 But about the " very middle and waist" of April, we order 
 a search through our wardrobe for trousers, striped and spotted 
 waistcoats, jackets, foraging-caps, and thick-soled shoes, called 
 by our housekeeper, Clampers. Then we venture to open our 
 eyes and look a little abroad over the suburban gardens and 
 nurseries. We had doggedly determined, indeed, not to take 
 any notice of Spring symptoms before that time, for fear of 
 pining away for the green fields. Accordingly, we wore our 
 great-coat as faithfully as if it were part of ourselves, even 
 during the soft days that now and then came balmy over the 
 city gardens during the somewhat surly month of March. We 
 rather kept our eyes on the ground in passing by rows of 
 poplars, which we knew from the sweet scent were more 
 than budding in the sunshine. When a bee hummed past us 
 about the suburbs, we pretended not to hear her ; and as to 
 the sparrows, why, they twitter all the year through, almost 
 as heartily as if they were inditing valentines, and their chatter 
 never disturbs us. In short, we wish to enjoy the first gentle 
 embrace of Spring in some solitary spot, where nothing will 
 impede the mutal flow of our spirits, but where, " the world 
 forgetting, by the world forgot," we may wander away together 
 into the ideal lands of the Imagination, nor care if we ever 
 more return to this weary and distracted life. 
 
 Perhaps you may be a little surprised at first, when we tell 
 you that we do not like, on.our first vernal visit to the country, 
 to go to Buchanan Lodge. We hate having anything to do 
 with a Flitting. These lazy, lubberly porters, pretending that 
 their backs bend under half a load for an ordinary Girzie, try 
 all patience ; and there is no standing a whole forenoon's sight 
 of a great blue-railed waggon, with a horse seventeen hands 
 high in the shafts, sound asleep. A Flitting " is a thing to 
 dream of, not to see." The servants engaged in one have a 
 strange, wild, hurried, flustered, raised look, very alarming to 
 a Sexagenarian : more especially the cook, armed with spit 
 and gridiron, as with spear and shield, like Britomart. The 
 natural impetuosity of the culinary character is exasperated 
 into effervescence ; and if she meet us hobbling down or up 
 the front steps, she thinks no more than " Jenny dang the 
 
4 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 weaver" of upsetting, or at least sorely jostling, her unoffend- 
 ing master. The chambermaids have on Flitting-day an 
 incomprehensible giggle, through which they seem to be com- 
 municating to one another thick-coming secrets — heaven only 
 knows about what — and " my butler" assumes a more portly 
 and pompous air, in the consciousness of being about to act 
 round about the Lodge as a summer land-agent. Then all 
 within, what a dusty desolation ! Only one chair, and that in 
 the lobby, for so many wearied bottoms — " Cupboards vast, 
 and presses idle ! " To-morrow will be a fast-day to the mice 
 — and before the week-end, dozens will have paid the forfeit 
 of their lives to the offended laws of their country ; for, next 
 door, there is a maiden lady curious in traps, and inexorably 
 cruel in the executive. You ring the bell by way of a dreary 
 experiment, and a ghostlike echo answers from cellar and 
 garret. For six months, and that is a long time for such an 
 organ, that tongue will be mute. One dead plant is left behind 
 in the lobby- window, close to the front door, for all the other 
 windows in the house are closed up with shutters. No fear of 
 the poor unhappy embers on the kitchen hearth setting fire to 
 the tenement. Bang goes the street-door, like one of those 
 melancholy peals of thunder followed by no other on some un- 
 settled day that wants spirit for a storm — clunk plays the bolt 
 to the strong-wrenched key in the hand of the porter — there is 
 motion visible in the waggon, and the perceptive faculty finally 
 admits that there is a Flitting. 
 
 All the miseries above has it frequently been our lot to wit- 
 ness and partake ; but of late years it has been too much for 
 us, and we have left the Flitting in the hands of Providence. 
 Besides, how pleasant, on a stated day and hour, to walk into 
 Buchanan Lodge, an expected Head of a House ! All the 
 domestics delighted to behold their beloved master hobbling 
 towards the porch. Every window so clear, that you know 
 not there is glass — the oil-skin on the lobby-floor glancing 
 undimmed — nestlings in a twitter over all the clustering 
 verandas ; but all this is subject for a future leading article, 
 whereas the title of the present is — Streams. 
 
 And first a few words in praise of running streams, and let 
 us panegyrise them in Spates. Then the rill — pretty pigmy 
 no longer — springs up in an hour to stream's estate. Like a 
 stripling who has been unexpectedly left a fortune by an old 
 
STREAMS. 5 
 
 nncle, he gives his home, in a hollow of the broomy braes, the 
 slip, and away off, in fall cry and gallop, to " poos his fortune" 
 in the world, down in the " laigh kintra." Many a tumble he 
 gets over waterfalls, and often do you hear him shouting before 
 he gets out of the wood. He sings although it be Sunday, 
 and hurries past the kirk during the time of divine service, 
 yet not without joining for a moment in the psalm. As the 
 young lassies are returning from kirk to cottage, he behaves 
 rudely to them, while, high-kilted, they are crossing the fords; 
 and ere their giggle-blended shrieks subside, continues his 
 career, as Dr Jamieson says, in his spirited ballad on the 
 Water-kelpie, " loud nechering in a lauch." And now he is 
 all a-foam in his fury, like a chestnut horse. The sheep and 
 lambs stare at him in astonishment; and Mr Wordsworth's 
 Old Earn, who is so poetically described in the Excursion 
 as admiring his horns and beard, face and figure, in one of the 
 clear pools of the Brathay, the Pride of Windermere, were he 
 now on a visit to Scotland, would die of disappointed self-love, 
 a heart-broken Narcissus. On he goes — the rill- rivulet — 
 "neither to haudnor to bin ,,, — a most uproarious hobbletehoy. 
 He is just at that time of life — say about seventeen — when the 
 passions are at their worst or their best — 'tis hard to say which 
 — at their newest, certainly, and perhaps at their strongest, and 
 when they listen to no voice but their own, which then seems 
 to fill heaven and earth with music. But what noise is this ? 
 Thunder? No — a Corra-Linn, or a Stonebyres of a waterfall. 
 Lo ! yonder a great river sweeping along the strath. The rill- 
 rivulet, with one shiver and shudder — for now 'tis too late to 
 turn back, and onwards he is driven by his own weight, which 
 is only another name for his own destiny — leaps with a sudden 
 plunge into the red-roaring Spate, and in an instant loses his 
 name and nature, and disappears for ever. Just so is it with 
 the young human prodigal, lost in the Swollen Eiver of Life 
 thundering over the world's precipices. 
 
 Turn for a moment to the Grampians. You are all alone — 
 quite by yourself — no object seems alive in existence — for the 
 eagle is mute — the antlers of the red-deer, though near, invi- 
 sible — not one small moorland bird is astir among the brackens 
 — no ground bee is at work on the sullen heather — and the 
 aspect of the earth is grim as that of heaven. Hark ! From 
 what airt moans the thunder? — 'Tis like an earthquake. Now, 
 
6 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 it growls. Yonder cloud, a minute ago, deep-blue, is now black 
 as pitch. All the mountains seem to have gathered themselves 
 together under it — and see — see how it flashes with fire ! Ay, 
 that is thunder — one peal split into a hundred — a cannonade 
 worthy the battle of the gods and giants, when the Sons of 
 Terra strove to storm the gates of Uranus. Would that Dan 
 Virgil were here — or Lord Byron ! Dr Blair ! Dr Blair ! 
 why didst thou object to the close of that glorious description 
 — " densissimus imber?" Jupiter Pluvius has smitten the 
 Grampians with a rod of lightning, and in a moment they are 
 all tumbling with cataracts. Now every great glen has its 
 own glorious river — some red as blood, some white as snow, 
 and some yet blue in their portentous beauty as that one thin 
 slip of sky, that, as we are looking, is sucked into the clouds. 
 Each rill, each torrent, each river, has its own peculiar voice; 
 and methinks we distinguish one music from another, as we 
 dream ourselves away into the heart of that choral anthem. 
 Woe to the " wee bouracks o' houses," bigged on the holm- 
 lands ! Bridges! that have felt the ice-flaws of a thousand 
 winters rebounding from your abutments, as from cliff to cliff 
 you spanned the racing thunder, this night will be your last! 
 Your key-stones shall be loosened, and your arches, as at the 
 springing of a mine, heaved up into the air by the resistless 
 waters. There is no shrieking of kelpies. That was but a 
 passionless superstition. But there is shrieking — of widows and 
 of orphans — and of love strong as death, stifled and strangled 
 in the flood that all night long is sweeping corpses and carcasses 
 to the sea. 
 
 Well, then, Streams ! The unpardonable thing about Edin- 
 burgh is, that she wants a river. Two great straddling bridges 
 without one drop of water ! The stranger looks over the bat- 
 tlements of the one, and in the abyss sees our metropolitan 
 markets — through the iron railing of the other, and lo ! carts 
 laden with old furniture, and a blind fiddler and his wife roar- 
 ing ballads to a group of tatterdemalions. What a glory 
 would it be were a great red river to come suddenly down in 
 flood, and sweep away Mound and Bridge to the sea ! Alas ! 
 for old Holyrood ! What new life would be poured into the 
 Gude auld Town, thus freshened at its foundations ! And how 
 beautiful to see the dwindled ship gliding under cloud of sail 
 by the base of our castled cliff ! Oh ! for the sweet sea- 
 
STREAMS. 7 
 
 murmur, when torrent retreats before tide, and the birds of 
 ocean come floating into the inland woods ! Oh ! that, " like 
 Horeb's rock beneath the Prophet's hand," yonder steep would 
 let escape into light the living waters ! But this wish is a 
 mere whim of the moment ; and therefore it is our delight to 
 escape for a week to the brooks of Peebles, or Innerleithen, or 
 Clovenford, or Kelso. 
 
 Wherever we go to escape the Flitting, a stream or river 
 there must be — our ears are useless without its murmurs — 
 eyes we might as well have none, without its wimpling glitter. 
 Early in life we fell in love with a Naiad, whom we beheld in 
 a dream, sitting, with her long dishevelled hair veiling her 
 pearly person, by a waterfall ; and her every Spring have we 
 in vain been seeking, and still hope to find, although she hide 
 from our embrace in a pool far away among the hills that 
 overshadow the lonely source of the Ettrick, or, embowered in 
 the beautiful Beauly, delight in the solitude of the Dreme. 
 
 Once, and once only, have we been a few miles above 
 Ettrick Manse, and memory plays us false whenever we strive 
 to retrace the solitude. It was a misty day, and we heard 
 without seeing the bleating lambs. Each new reach of the 
 Ettrick, there little more than a burn, murmured in the vapours, 
 almost like a new stream to our eyes, whenever we chanced to 
 lose sight of it, by having gone round knoll or brae. Just as 
 we came down upon the Kirk and Manse, the rain was over 
 and gone, and while mist-wreaths rolled up, seemingly with- 
 out any wind, to the hill- top, a strong sun brightened the vale, 
 and bathed a grove of tall trees in a rich steady lustre. Happy 
 residence ! thought our heart, as the modest Manse partook of 
 the sudden sunshine, and smiled upon another pleasant dwell- 
 ing across the vale, yet a little gloomy in the shadow. And 
 a happy residence it had been for upwards of half a century 
 to the pastor, who, about a year before, had dropped the body, 
 and gone to his reward. ISTo record — no annals of his peace- 
 ful, inoffensive, and useful life ! Death had never once visited 
 the manse during all those quiet years, — neither sin nor sor- 
 row had sat by the fireside — and there had been no whisper- 
 ings of conscience to disturb the midnight sleep. The widow 
 had to leave the long-hallowed hearth at her husband's death ; 
 but there is to right-thinking minds little hardship in such 
 necessity, long calmly contemplated in foresight as a thing 
 
8 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 that might one day be, and now submitted to with an alacrity 
 to leave the vale for ever, that showed how dear it had been, 
 and still was, to the old woman's heart ! A new minister came 
 to the parish, and he and his young wife were in a few months 
 respected and beloved. Here they had let go the anchor of 
 their earthly hopes, never to be weighed again in that calm 
 haven. Their friends prophesied that they would live for 
 ever — but long within the year the young minister died — and 
 was lying a corpse at the very hour of that glorious sunshine ! 
 Many eyes wept for him, who, over his grey-headed prede- 
 cessor, would have thought it foolish to shed any tears ; for 
 the grave is the fitting bed for old age, and why mourn when 
 the curtains are drawn for ever? But when youth on the 
 sudden dies — the voice seems stifled in the mould — and hope 
 and affection are with difficulty reconciled to the decree. The 
 old widow had left the manse, with quiet steps and composed 
 eyes, and all her friends felt and knew that she would be 
 cheerful and happy in the small town where she was going to 
 live, near some of her own blood relations. But she who had 
 but one year ago become a wife, and had now a fatherless 
 baby at her bosom, left the manse during the dark hours, and 
 was heard more than sobbing as she took an everlasting fare- 
 well of her husband's grave. 
 
 But we are in chase of the Naiad, the Musidora, whom we 
 beheld bathing in the lucid pool, and who, more beautiful far 
 than she of the Seasons, had no need to disrobe, veiled in the 
 lights and shadows of her own pearl-enwoven tresses, that 
 gave glimpses of loveliness from forehead to feet. Lo ! she 
 rises up from the green velvet couch beneath the atmosphere 
 of St Mary's Loch, and leaning on the water as if it were a 
 car, is wafted along the edge of the water-lilies of the Naiads' 
 own gorgeous garden, — that Crescent Bay ! What a thing it 
 is to have a soul-deluded eye in one's head ! Why, it is 
 merely a wild swan, perhaps the identical one that Mr Words* 
 worth saw, when he said, in his own delightful way, let 
 
 " The swan on still St Mary's Lake 
 Float double, swan and shadow ! " 
 
 Heaven preserve us from ridicule, it is a wild-goose ! Lame of 
 a leg too, evidently, as, with a discordant gabble, it stretches 
 out its neck, and with much exertion contrives to lift up its 
 
STREAMS. 9 
 
 heavy hinder-end into flight. There's a Naiad for you — off, 
 " slick away," to Norway at the nearest. Should the Loch 
 Skene eagle get sight, or scent, or sonnd of the quack, her 
 feathers are not worth an hour's purchase. There he comes 
 in full sail before the wind I for although it is breathless down 
 below here, there is a strong current flowing three thousand 
 feet high, and the eagle has set every inch of canvass. He 
 nears upon the chase ; but suddenly, as if scorning the gab- 
 bler, puts down the helm of his tail, and bearing up in the 
 wind's eye, beats back, in a style that would astonish a Ber- 
 muda schooner, to his eyrie. 
 
 Let us leave the loch, then (for Lochs will be well treated 
 in another leading article), and go Naiad- angling down the 
 Yarrow. Do you think she would be tempted to rise to this 
 bright and beautiful butterfly, the azure fields of whose wing- 
 lets are all bedropt with golden stars? What cruelty to 
 immerge into another element the child of air ! Perhaps it is 
 Psyche herself, so let the captive free. Ha! did she not 
 waver away into the sunshine, like a very spirit ? 
 
 Here is a pool worthy of any Naiad, had she even come to 
 visit Scotland all the way from some Grecian fountain. Look 
 into it, and, the water disappearing, you see but the skies ! A 
 faint loch-born breeze comes rustling through the one birch 
 tree that hangs leaning over from the sloping bank, and for a 
 moment the vision hath evanished ! Oh ! what a slight breath 
 of earth can dispel a dream of heaven ! The breeze has gone 
 by, and there is the same still, steadfast glory as before, the 
 boundless ether pictured in a pool ten fathom round ! The 
 Naiad, the Naiad ! Bless thy sweet face, smiling up from the 
 pool, as if in one of those mirrors of deception sometimes ex- 
 hibited by scientific and sleight-of-hand men travelling with a 
 dwarf. What is this ? Let us look a little more narrowly 
 into this business. There our nose is within six inches of the 
 surface of the water; and, reader, will you believe it, the 
 Naiad, by some potent necromancy held over her even in her 
 own watery world, slowly changeth into — Christopher North, 
 editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and other celebrated works ! 
 Fain would we now, fancy-led, float down with the foam- 
 bells, till 
 
 " We passed where Newark's stately towers 
 Look out from Yarrow's birchen bowers." 
 
10 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 But lo ! Altrive, the abode of our own Shepherd, whom we have 
 not seen since the last Noctes Ambrosianse. Yarrow ! the Be- 
 loved of Bards of Old, well niayest thou be proud of the author 
 of the Queen's Wake ! and many a little pathetic lilt beside — 
 hymn, elegy, and song, hast thou heard breathed by him, along 
 with thy own murmurs, during the pensive gloaming. Nor will 
 thy pastoral sister, the Ettrick, be jealous of your loves. For 
 in spirit all the streams are one that flow through the Forest. 
 And you too, Ettrick and Yarrow, gathering them all together, 
 come rushing into each other's arms, aboon the haughs o' 
 Selkirk, and then flow, Tweed-blent, to the sea. Our Shep- 
 herd is dear to all the rills that issue, in thousands, from their 
 own recesses among the braes ; for when a poet walks through 
 regions his genius has sung, all nature does him homage, from 
 cloud to clod — from blue sky to green earth — all living crea- 
 tures therein included, from the eagle to the mole. James 
 knows this, and is happy among the hills. But the hospitality 
 of Altrive shall not be dismissed thus in a passing paragraph, 
 but shall have a leading article to itself, as surely as we know 
 how to honour worth and genius. 
 
 We called thee, Yarrow, The Beloved of Bards of Old ! 
 Ay ! flowing in the brightness of thy own peace along the 
 vale, yet wert thou often invoked by minstrels with a voice of 
 weeping. Blood tinged thy banks, nor could the stain be 
 washed away even by the tears of the Sons of Song. Thine 
 became a traditionary character, if not of sorrow, yet of sad- 
 ness, and all that is pensive or pastoral has ever seemed to 
 breathe over thy braes. The wanderer carries thither with 
 him a spirit of imaginative grief — an ear open to the mourn- 
 ful echoes of the ancient elegies of war and death. Thus, let 
 the holms of Yarrow glitter to the sunshine as they will, yet, 
 in the words of the old strain, they are " dowie " holms still ; 
 just as we always see something sad even in the smiles of a 
 friend, whom we know to have been a man of sorrows, although 
 to happiness he has been long restored. Cheerful chants 
 there are about thy braw lads and bonny lasses ; but sit 
 down beside any shepherd on the hillside, anywhere in the 
 whole Forest, and wherever 
 
 " Yarrow, as he flows along, 
 Bears burden to the minstrel's song," 
 depend you upon it, the tale shall be one of tenderness and 
 
STREAMS. 11 
 
 tears ! Such was the determination of the poets of the days 
 that are gone, and such too is the spirit, Wordsworth, of that 
 divine strain thou didst breathe, in thy inspiration, when first 
 thy thoughtful eyes beheld the stream that had so long mur- 
 mured in the light of song. 
 
 " Delicious is the lay that sing3 
 The haunts of happy lovers, 
 The path that leads them to the grove, 
 The leafy grove that covers : 
 And Pity sanctifies the verse 
 That paints, by strength of sorrow, 
 The unconquerable strength of love ; 
 Bear witness, rueful Yarrow ! 
 
 But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 
 To fond imagination, 
 
 Dost rival in the light of day 
 
 Her delicate creation : 
 
 Meek loveliness is round thee spread, 
 
 A softness still and holy ; 
 
 The grace of foreign charms decay' d, 
 
 And pastoral melancholy." 
 
 And- why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glen- 
 orchy, that cheerest the long-withdrawing vale from Inver- 
 ouren to Dalmally, and from Dalmally church-tower to the 
 old castle of Kilchurn, round whose mouldering towers thou 
 sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name and ex- 
 istence is lost in that noble loch — Why hast thou never had 
 thy bard? " A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," 
 is thy reply ; " but the Sassenach understands not the tradi- 
 tionary strains, and the music of the Gaelic poetry is wasted 
 on his ear." Songs of war and of love are yet awakened by 
 the shepherds among these lonely braes ; and often when the 
 moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars 
 in soft reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland 
 sea, she hears the echoes of harps chiming through the silence 
 of departed years. Tradition tells, that on no other banks did 
 the fairies so love to thread the mazes of their mystic dance, 
 as on the heathy, and bracken, and oaken banks of the Orchy, 
 during the long summer nights when the thick-falling dews 
 almost perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier tinkle 
 to everv waterfall. 
 
12 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 There it was, on a little river-island, that once, whether 
 sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's 
 Funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger 
 than hollow rushes that whisper to the night-winds ; and 
 more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument 
 was the scarce audible dirge ! It seemed to float over the 
 stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy 
 anthem came floating over my couch, and then alighted with- 
 out ceasing among the heather. The pattering of little feet 
 was heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in 
 order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. 
 The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, and 
 sung, without words, of sorrow and death. I opened my eyes, 
 or rather sight came to them, when closed, and dream was 
 vision ! Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the 
 lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a 
 circle on a green plat among the rocks ; and in the midst was 
 a bier, framed, as it seemed, of flowers unknown to the High- 
 land hills ; and on the bier a Fairy, lying with uncovered face, 
 pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew 
 fainter and fainter, and then died quite away ; when two of 
 the creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one 
 at the head and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang 
 alternate measures, not louder than the twittering of the 
 awakened wood-lark before it goes up the dewy air, but 
 dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier 
 stirred ; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and 
 in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever — the 
 very dews glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed 
 over the moon, and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop 
 sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight 
 solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy began to 
 rejoice as before, through all her streams and falls ; and at 
 the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, 
 I awoke. 
 
 Away, then, from the Isle of the Fairy's grave — away on 
 winged thought, at the rate of a hundred miles in the minute, 
 and lo ! the Falls of the Beauly ! A pleasure party of ladies 
 and gentlemen from Inverness, as I am an Editor — and the 
 band of a militia regiment ! Well, the " Duke of York's March " 
 is intelligible music, and it is pleasant to count the bars, after 
 
STREAMS. 13 
 
 that unscientific and bewildering dirge of the green-robed 
 people. " God save the King," and " Eule Britannia/' are two 
 tunes of which I should never tire, were they to be dinned 
 till doomsday. These alone can we hum truly, and without 
 putting our foot through the air. Nothing so grand as a 
 cataract-accompaniment to martial music ! Say what you will 
 about solitude, what looks so beautiful by moonlight among 
 trees, as scattered groups of beaux and belles, appearing by fits 
 and starts, like native sylvans in holiday array ? Hark ! they 
 are answering each other with shrill shouts, and peals of laugh- 
 ter, and many a harmless kiss is ravished in the dim glades. 
 What pretty terror and astonishment strike a whole group 
 motionless on the cliff, as our venerable Figure emerges, like 
 the hoary genius of the Beauly, from a chasm, and ascends a 
 natural flight of steps towards the virgins, each one leaning, 
 in her alarm, on the breast of a protecting swain ! Had we 
 suffered our beard, descending to sweep our aged breast, what 
 an incomparable Hermit ! It is plain, from the looks of all, 
 that we are taken for the Man of the Moon. But even here 
 a contributor solves the riddle, and "Christopher North," 
 " Christopher North," repeated by a chorus of nymphs, echoes 
 among the rocks. And now, all gathering together on a plat- 
 form above the Falls, we foot it deftly to the love-awakening 
 waltz, in revolutions like the heavenly bodies, till the stars 
 themselves seem to have caught the contagion, and, with rays 
 round each other's glowing zones, wheel and whirl on the 
 floor of heaven. A glorious cold collation ! — Table surrounded 
 by the Band, who ever and anon reduce the flirtation into 
 hand pressure, by sudden bursts of martial or venereal music ! 
 — That Black, with the clashing symbols twinkling aloft 
 over his six-feet-high curly head in the moon-glint, must be of 
 the blood-royal of the " Souls made of Fire, and Children of 
 the Sun ! " How disdainfully would he annihilate the petty 
 abolitionist by one w T hite scowl of those fiery eyes ! What 
 cables of muscle lift up his huge flourishing hands ! and how 
 his yard-broad chest distends with power, as his wide diverg- 
 ing arms make the pectoral start like that of a Titan ! — Christo- 
 pher North is called upon unanimously for a song, and what 
 more appropriate to the scene than the following Irish 
 melody ! 
 
n 
 
 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 =^3=^v^=S3^i=g=f 
 
 ^^33 
 
 Oh! Saint Patrick was a 
 
 !fc*=fc' K 
 
 iffcirt: 
 
 -«— d — d — ari * 
 
 gentleman, And came from decent 
 
 I f I - I Sr 
 
 people ; He built a church in Dub - lin town, And on it put a 
 
 stee - pie. His 
 
 fa - ther was a 
 
 Gal - la - gher, His 
 
 mo - ther was a 
 
 ~Q% "» • ff "." ,•:"'" 
 
 r f ? ■#» ■ 
 
 ' F \ 
 
 
 A I f H /* 
 
 i *f 
 
 i P 1 
 
 iii 
 
 
 / ■ V 
 
 
 J 1 1 j 
 
 
 
 - 1 — ^ j. mi 
 
 
 «J 
 
 
 
 ft* ■ 4 4 
 
 Bra - dy ; His aunt was an O' - Shaughnes - sy, First cousin to O' - 
 
 SSEfr* 
 
 
 -| @ 0- 
 
 
 Gra - dy. Oh ! sue - cess attend Saint Patrick's fist, For he's the handsome 
 
 
 saint, 0. Oh! he gave the snakes and toads a twist, He's a beauty without paint, O. 
 
 The Wicklow Hills are very high, 
 
 And so's the Hill of Howth, sir ; 
 But there's a hill much higher still, 
 
 Much higher nor them both, sir. 
 'Twas on the top of this big hill 
 
 Saint Patrick preach' d his sarmint, 
 That drove the frogs into the bogs, 
 
 And bother' d all the 'varmint. 
 Oh ! success, &c. 
 
 3. 
 
 There's not a mile in Ireland's isle 
 
 Where dirty vermin musters, 
 But there he put his dear fore-foot, 
 
 And murder'd them in clusters. 
 The toads went pop, the frogs went plop, 
 
 Slap-dash into the water, 
 And the snakes committed suicide, 
 
 To save themselves from slaughter. 
 Oh ! success, &c. 
 
STREAMS. 15 
 
 4. 
 No wonder that those Irish lads 
 
 Should be so free and frisky, 
 Tor sure Saint Pat, he taught them that, 
 
 As well as drinking whisky. 
 No wonder that the Saint himself 
 
 To drink it should be willing, 
 Since his mother kept a sheebeen shop 
 
 In the town of Enniskillen. 
 Oh ! success, &c. 
 
 5. 
 
 Oh ! was I but so fortunate, 
 
 But to be back in Munster, 
 'Tis I'd be bound, that from that ground 
 
 I never more would once stir. 
 'Twas there Saint Patrick planted turf, 
 
 And plenty of the praties; 
 With pigs gallore, ma gra m'ttstore, 
 
 And cabbages— and ladies ! 
 
 Oh! success, &c. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Somewhat too much of mirth and merriment— so up, up to 
 yon floating fleecy cloud, and away to the Fall of Foyers. 
 Here is solitude with a vengeance — stern, grim, dungeon soli- 
 tude ! How ghostlike those white skeleton pines, stripped of 
 their rind by tempest and lightning, and dead to the din of 
 the raging cauldron ! That cataract, if descending on a 
 cathedral, would shatter down the pile into a million of frag- 
 ments. But it meets the black foundations of the cliff, and 
 flies up to the starless heaven in a storm of spray. We are 
 drenched, as if leaning in a hurricane over the gunwale of a 
 ship, rolling under bare poles through a heavy sea. The very 
 solid globe of earth quakes through her entrails. The eye, 
 reconciled to the darkness, now sees a glimmering and gloomy 
 light — and lo, a bridge of a single arch hung across the chasm, 
 just high enough to let through the triumphant torrent. Has 
 some hill-loch burst its barriers ? For what a world of waters 
 come now tumbling into the abyss ! Niagara I hast thou a fiercer 
 roar? Listen— and you think there are momentary pauses of the 
 thunder, filled up with goblin groans ! All the military music- 
 bands of the army of Britain would here be dumb as mutes 
 
16 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 — Trumpet, Cymbal, and the Great Drum ! There is a despe- 
 rate temptation in the hubbub to leap into destruction. Water- 
 horses and kelpies, keep stabled in your rock-stalls — for if you 
 issue forth the river will sweep you down, before you have 
 finished one neigh, to Castle Urquhart, and dash you, in a 
 sheet of foam, to the top of her rocking battlements. A pretty 
 place indeed for a lunar rainbow ! But the moon has been 
 swept from heaven, and no brightness may tinge the black fir- 
 mament that midnight builds over the liquid thunder. What 
 a glorious grave for the Last Man ! A grave without a resur- 
 rection ! Oh, Nature ! Nature ! art thou all in all ? — And is 
 there no God ! The astounded spirit shrinks from supersti- 
 tion into atheism — and all creeds are dashed into oblivion by 
 the appalling roar. But a still small voice is heard within my 
 heart — the voice of conscience — and its whispers shall be heard 
 when all the waters of the earth are frozen into nothing, and 
 earth itself shrivelled up like a scroll ! 
 
 Our Planet has been all the while spinning along round the 
 sun, and on its own axis, to the music of the spheres ; and lo ! 
 the law of light has been obeyed by the rising morn. Night 
 has carried off the thunder, and the freed spirit wonders, " can 
 that be the Fall of Foyers?" We emerge, like a gay creature 
 of the element, from the chasm, and wing our way up the glen 
 towards the source of the cataract. In a few miles all is silent. 
 A more peaceful place is not among all the mountains. The 
 water-spout that had fallen during night has found its way 
 into Lochness, and the torrent has subsided into a burn. What 
 the trouts did with themselves in the " red jawing speat," we 
 are not naturalist enough to affirm, but we must suppose they 
 have galleries running far into the banks, and corridors cut in 
 the rocks, where they swim about in water without a gurgle, 
 safe as golden and silver fishes in a glass-globe, on the table 
 of my lady's boudoir. Not a fin on their backs has been in- 
 jured — not a scale struck from their starry sides. There they 
 leap in the sunshine among the burnished clouds of insects, 
 that come floating along on the morning air from bush and 
 bracken, the licheny cliff-stones, and the hollow-rinded woods. 
 How glad the union of hum and murmur 1 Brattle not away 
 so, ye foolish lambs, for although unkilted, unplaided, and un- 
 plumed in any tartan array, we are nathless human beings. 
 You never beheld any other Two-legs but Celts. Yet think 
 
STREAMS. 17 
 
 not that Highlanders people the whole earth, any more than 
 they fight and win all its battles. Croak — croak — croak ! — 
 Ay, that is the cry of blood — and yonder he sits — old Methu- 
 saleh the Kaven — more crnel every century — the steel-spring 
 sinews of his wings strengthened by the storms of years — and 
 Time triumphing in the clutch of his iron talons. Could he 
 fight the Eagle ? Perhaps — but their ancestors made a treaty 
 of peace, before the Christian era, and all the descendants of 
 the high contracting powers have kept it on the mountain's 
 brow, and the brow of heaven. 
 
 A Shieling ! There is but this one beautiful brake in the 
 solitude, and there the shepherd has built his summer nest. 
 That is no shepherd looking up to the eastern skies, for scarcely 
 yet has the rosy dawn sobered into day — but Shepherdess, as 
 lovely as ever trod Arcadian vale in the age of gold. The 
 beauty may not be her own, for the very spirit of beauty over- 
 flows the solitary place, and may have settled, but for a morning 
 hour, on the Highland maiden, apparelled after the fashion of 
 her native hills. Yet, methinks that glowing head borrows 
 not its lustre from the chance charity of the sky, but would 
 shine thus starlike, were the mountain gloom to descend sud- 
 denly as night upon the Shieling. Now she bounds up among 
 the rocks ! and lo ! standing on a cliff, with her arm round 
 the stem of a little birch-tree, counts her flock feeding among 
 dews and sunshine. The blackbird pipes his jocund hymn — 
 for having wandered hither with his bride on a warm St Valen- 
 tine's day from the woods of Foyers, the seclusion pleased 
 them well, and they settled for a season in the brake, now 
 endeared to them for sake of the procreant cradle in the hollow 
 stump of the fallen ivied oak. The Shepherdess waits for a 
 pause in his roundelay, and then trills an old gleesome Gaelic 
 air, that may well silence the bird, as the clear, wild, harp-like 
 notes tinkle through the calm, faintly answered by the echoes 
 that seem just to be awakening from sleep. 
 
 And doth the Child not fear to live all alone by herself, 
 night and day, in the Shieling ? Hath she not even her little 
 sister with her, now and then, to speak, and constantly to smile 
 in the solitude? Can her father and mother send her fair 
 innocence unshielded so far away from their own Hut ? There 
 is nothing to fear, and she feareth not. The Fairies, whom from 
 childhood she has heard of in sweet snatches of traditionary 
 
 vol. v. b 
 
18 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 song, and whose green dresses she has herself uncertainly seen 
 glinting through the hazels — the Silent People are harmless 
 as the shadows, and come and go by moonlight in reverence 
 round the Christian's heather-bed. If grim shapes are in the 
 mists and caverns, they cannot touch a hair of the head that 
 has bowed down in morning or evening prayer, at the sacrifice 
 of a humble heart. Even with her religion there blends a 
 superstitious shade, coming from the same mysterious feelings, 
 and she lays a twig of the birken spray within the leaves of 
 her Bible. From human beings she has nought to dread, for 
 sacred to every Highlander is the Shieling where his daughter 
 or his sister may be singing through the summer months her 
 solitary song. On the Sabbath-day, too, she sits among her 
 friends in the kirk, except when the mountain-torrents are 
 swollen ; and her friends, " by ones and twos," visit her for 
 half a day, and take a cheerful farewell. One there is who 
 dwells many a long league beyond the mountains, on the 
 shore of a sea-loch, who, when the nights are hardly distin- 
 guished from the days, travels thither, and returns unknown 
 but to their happy selves, for their love is a sinless secret 
 buried in bliss. He takes her to his bosom during the mid- 
 night hush of the hills, as a brother would a sister, returning 
 from the wars, and finding her an orphan. In those arms she 
 careth not whether she wakes or sleeps, and sometimes on 
 opening her eyes out of a suddenly-dissolved dream, she sees 
 that he has slipt away, and starting to the door, watches his 
 figure disappear over the summit of the well-known ridge- 
 on no very distant trysting-day to return. 
 
 Here have we been for an hour at least hobbling up and 
 down Princes Street, with our eyes in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 in a gross mistake about the Dumfries Mail. The loungers 
 have been gazing on us in wonder and fear, knowing our 
 irascibility in our imaginative moods, and keeping, therefore, 
 out of the wind of our crutch. While our old crazy body has 
 indeed been moving to and fro, like an automaton, between 
 the Mound and the Magazine, our soul, as you have seen, has 
 been taking her flight over flood and fell, and speaking Gaelic 
 with the Sons of the Mist. Doubtless, the gouty old Don has 
 been soundly belaboured by the laughter of the ice-cream- 
 eating dandies that on the steps of Montgomery's shop most 
 do congregate; but what was their windy suspiration of forced 
 
STREAMS. 19 
 
 breath, the only satire within the range of their impotence, to 
 one who was with the red deer on the bare mountain, or with 
 the roe in the sylvan glen ? But hark, the horn ! — Ay, the 
 driver recognises our person, and pulls up before the pillars of 
 the Grecian temple on that truly attic and artificial natural 
 eminence, the Mound. A passing Lord of Session assists us 
 to mount the box (our great-coat having kept that chosen seat 
 for its master) — all right, and off she goes at a spanking long 
 trot, that, in little better than an hour, will carry us out of the 
 county. 
 
 It may seem a very unromantic way of travelling into the 
 ideal lands of the Imagination, on the top of a mail-coach ; yet 
 could not even a poet choose a more convenient and charac- 
 teristic conveyance. Few sorts of wings could waft you with 
 equal swiftness, certainty, and safety, away from those hideous 
 lines of human dwellings called streets. How you exult in 
 the greeting air of the hills, and eye disdainfully with retro- 
 verted glance the whole army of smoky chimneys, defiling afar 
 off into one solid square ! Behind, a dim, dull, dusky, dirty 
 haze ! Before, the time, unpolluted, celestial azure, beautiful 
 as lover's dream of his own virgin's eyes on the morning of 
 her bridal day ! The very guard's bugle now speaks music to 
 the echoes; and you bless the name of Adam in that of his son 
 Mac, as his Majesty's most gracious Machine seems to spin 
 self-impelled along the royal road both to Philosophy and 
 Poetry. 
 
 We know not, at this moment, any other class of lieges so 
 thoroughly amiable as mail-coach guards. What bold, yet 
 civil eyes ! How expressive the puffed-up cheek, when blow- 
 ing a long line of carters into deflection ! How elegant the 
 attitude, when, strap-supported, he leans from behind over the 
 polished roof, and joins in your conversation in front, with a 
 brace of Bagmen ! With what activity he descends to fix the 
 drag! and how like a winged Mercury he reascends, when 
 the tits are at full gallop along the flat ! See with what an 
 air he flings kisses to every maiden that comes smiling to the 
 cottage- door, at the due transit of the locomotive horologe ! 
 You would think he had wooed and won them all beneath the 
 dewy milk-white thorn ; yet these fleeting moments of bliss 
 are all he has ever enjoyed, all he ever can enjoy — for, by the 
 late regulations, you know mails go at the rate of nine knots 
 
20 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 an hour, stoppages included, so all such little love-affairs are 
 innocent as in the days of gold, and before the invention of 
 paper-money. The most bashful maiden, knowing that she is 
 perfectly safe, flings towards the dickey her lavish return- 
 kisses, and is seen squandering them, as if she had forgot that 
 some should be kept for real use and sudden demand, on one, 
 who, at the next turn of the road, is found faithless to the " love 
 he has left behind him," and like another Joannes Secundus, 
 bestowing his " Basia" on a new mistress — a work that thus 
 steadily runs through a greater number of real editions, than 
 any of the late " most important" ones of our worthy friend 
 Mr Colburn. 
 
 If the day be a fine one — and the Bagmen facetious — it 
 matters not much to us through what kind of a country we are 
 trundled along — pastoral or agricultural — dank or drained — 
 naked, woody, or with only here and there a single tree. It 
 is the country — that is enough — the bosom of old mother earth, 
 from which we grasshoppers sprung. What although mile upon 
 mile of moor and moss lie before and around us, like a silent 
 and sullen sea ? Yet to our ears it is neither silent nor sullen. 
 Like Fine-ear himself, in the tale, we hear the very grass 
 growing — the very ground-bees buzzing among their first- 
 formed combs in their cosy nests — the ants repairing the 
 interior of their temple — the mole mining his way to the sur- 
 face of the greensward, preceded by the alarmed worms — the 
 tadpoles jerking in the ditch-waters, here as clear as any 
 springs — the footsteps of the unseen lapwing on the lea — the 
 rustle of the little leverets, close by their mother's side, hidden 
 among the brackens! But we might go on thus for a whole 
 sheet — so, suffice it to say, that during the occasional silence 
 of the politico-economical Bagmen ceasing to dissert on free 
 trade, the whole resources of natural history are at our disposal, 
 and we commune almost unconsciously with the reviving spirit 
 of animated and inanimated nature. 
 
 Gentle reader ! are you fond of roaming about the country 
 by yourself, at some considerable distance from your domicile ? 
 We say at some considerable distance from your domicile ; for 
 to be familiarly known by all the men, women, and children 
 you forgather with, is tiresome in the extreme, both to your- 
 self and them, and almost disgusting. In such excursions, 
 however made, on foot, filly, or fly, how pleasantly every object 
 
STREAMS. 21 
 
 affects you, as yon creep or canter by, without the smallest 
 necessity for that painful process — ratiocination ! The senses 
 are indeed most admirable contrivances ; and we cannot be 
 sufficiently thankful for " the harvests of a quiet eye" or ear, 
 reaped at her leisure by the Imagination ! There is a cottage 
 — you cannot help seeing its wreathing smoke, neither can you 
 help descending the chimney, and plumping down into the 
 midst of four laughing country girls, devouring soup or sowens. 
 Only look at the gudewife — twelve feet in circumference, more 
 or less, and a face that baffles all competition. After romping 
 a moment — for it is all you can spare — with one of the four 
 who has taken your fancy you know not how — perhaps by the 
 steadfast gaze of her large hazel eyes swimming in delicious 
 lustre — instead of taking your departure up the chimney, you 
 evanish, generally, after the fashion of a Brownie — and find 
 yourself once more sitting cheek- by -jowl, in medio tutissimus, of 
 your two Bagmen. 
 
 There again, that wreath of smoke attracts your eye, waver- 
 ing over a small coppice-wood, and betraying an unseen dwell- 
 ing. Dove-like you wing your way thitherwards, and behold 
 an aged couple sitting opposite to each other by the ingle, 
 each in a high-backed arm-chair, while a small maiden is sew- 
 ing in silence on her stool, exactly midway between, and never 
 lifting her eyes from her pleasant task-work. Is she servant 
 or grandchild, or both together ? An indescribable likeness 
 on her pretty small-featured infantine face, tells you that she 
 is of the same humble line as the old people. But why so 
 silent ? She is listening to the story of Joseph sold by his 
 brethren into captivity. The Bible is on the old man's knees, 
 and his spectacled eyes are fixed on the page, almost need- 
 lessly, for verse after verse rises of itself before his memory. 
 The chapter is finished, and the child, wiping away a tear, lays 
 by the kerchief she had been hemming, and trips away to the 
 garden for dinner herbs, and with a pitcher to the well. The 
 open daylight awakens a song in her gladdened heart, at the 
 very moment the lark is leaving earth for sky ; and flioging 
 back her auburn ringlets, the joyful orphan watches the lessen- 
 ing bird, and all the while unconsciously accompanies with her 
 own sweet pipe the ascending song. — But back to your own 
 two Bagmen. 
 
 You cannot choose but see a nest-like Hut, embowered in 
 
22 jSSSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 birches, on the brae-side, and stooping your head you cross the 
 threshold. Not a mouse stirring! You look into a little 
 back-room, with a window that shows but the blue sky, and 
 there, sound asleep, beside her silent wheel, with her innocent 
 face leaning on her shoulder, hands clasped on her lap, and 
 her white unstockinged ankles dazzling the mud-floor — there 
 sits the Gentle Shepherdess, unconscious of a hundred kisses 
 on forehead, lips, and bosom. Oh ! that you could read the 
 creature's dream, written as it is in characters of light on that 
 cloudless forehead! See, an old ballad has fallen from her 
 hand — doubtless a tale of love. Ay, and although breathed a 
 hundred years ago, from the heart of a homely swain, who per- 
 haps married a plain coarse lass, and became father of ever so 
 many yelping imps of hungry children — a very clodhopper, 
 who could not write his own name, and as for conversation, 
 was never known to finish a sentence — a vulgar wretch, who 
 shaved once a- week, and ate a firlot of meal every fortnight — 
 and who played the fiddle occasionally, when the regular 
 Apollo was drunk or dead, at fairs and kirns — ay, although 
 framed by such a poet, yet tender and true to nature, and 
 overflowing with the sad delight of his inspired soul. Contri- 
 butor to all the Magazines but one ! Author of various pieces 
 in prose and verse ! Inditer of Petrarchan sonnets and Sapphic 
 songs ! that terrce filius, who has gone back to the dust with- 
 out his fame, was dearer than ever thou wilt be to all the 
 heavenly Nine. They purified the clown's soul from all gross 
 and earthly passions, and with their own breath fanned the 
 spark of genius, that slumbered there, into a flame. Then 
 flowed the sweet murmuring words — then came the pensive 
 pauses — and then the bursts from the beating and burning 
 heart. Nature knew it was Poetry — and she gave it to Time 
 and Tradition to scatter over a thousand glens. How, pray 
 ye, do you account for the caprice of genius, thus glorifying 
 the low-born, low-bred peasant — and why should low birth, 
 and low-breeding, in cottage, hut, or shieling, be thus made 
 beautiful by the light of undying song ? But the solitary 
 maiden awakes and takes you for a robber — so up again, my 
 dear sir, up again to your Bagmen. 
 
 In short, you keep repeating the same process, with varia- 
 tions, all the stage ; and by the time you arrive at the inn, you 
 have made yourself thoroughly acquainted with all the real or 
 
STREAMS. 23 
 
 imaginary domestic economy and private histories of all the 
 families in three successive parishes, from the sexton to Sir 
 John Haveril — himself of that Ilk. 
 
 In like manner you become enlightened, whether you will or 
 no, by merely keeping your eyes open in your head, on the 
 state of agriculture. Stone walls, where no stone walls should 
 be, or tumbling clown in rickles and gaps ; open gates, with 
 broken bars that would not turn a tinkler's cuddy ; wide weedy 
 ditches, full of frogs and foliage ; burweeds thick- set in every 
 pasture -field, as a congregation at a tent-preaching ; thistles 
 six feet to the grenadiers, and five feet eight inches to the 
 light-infantry, and Matthew Brambles, through whom many a 
 sheep has become a prey to the ravens, are seen by your eyes 
 in spite of your teeth, and your mind passes judgment for you 
 on the stupidity or laziness of the tenant, who, you see, is be- 
 hind with his rent, and has orders to quit at Mayday. Or, 
 hedgerows here and there, with a princely elm or oak, all clean 
 as those round a garden, and easily -shifted hurdles dividing 
 the smiling fields into temporary enclosures — and padlocked 
 gates defying the cunning of stray horses, or the carelessness 
 of wandering lovers — and compost heaps, on which may the 
 hind's spring-spade not disturb the nest of the water-wagtail 
 — and old lea-riggs, whose bright verdure is embroidered with 
 the glowing gowans ; and downy brairds, that in three weeks 
 will be bearded barley ; and a general character of permanent 
 and principled well-doing over all the beautiful farm. Every 
 field holds forth for itself, in a style of rich or simple eloquence. 
 The great principle of rotation evolves itself to the very senses 
 visibly among the crops. The potato-field speaks for itself, 
 with the true Irish accent ; and wheat reminds you of the 
 blades of Cockaigne. You turn round upon the Bagmen, and 
 are so copious on agricultural produce, that the one takes you 
 for Sir John Sinclair, and the other for Mr Coke of Holkham. 
 
 Or, if you are like us, not only a politician and a philosopher, 
 but also a painter and a poet, why, what hinders you all the 
 while the mail is at nine knots, to leap down into yonder glen, 
 on whose brink three hundred feet high of chasmed cliffs 
 frowns, or rather say smiles, so green is the ivy on one rounded 
 corner, and so red the wall-flower on the sharp edges of the 
 other, and so bright the sunshine over all the revivified walls 
 — a Castle so old that tradition has forsaken its donjon-keep, 
 
24, ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 nor could Jonathan Oldbuck himself tell the tale of the spurs 
 and dagger dug up along with the great yellow bones ! — sketch 
 the old Castle — and bring away, if not in your paper-book, in 
 your astounded spirit, that grim, black, groaning abyss, into 
 which sullenly descends the waterfall ! Tumble in there, my 
 boy, head-over-heels, and thenceforth you will be invisible as 
 the merit of the last damned tragedy. But you shan't be 
 hissed — unless in your descent, reverberating the slimy rock 
 walls, you enrage a nest of owls — or irritate a surly old bat, 
 taking a cool nap beneath the portico of his cavern. It is a 
 gross mistake to dream that the river in flood will drive your 
 mangled corse down to the low-lying lands, where being picked 
 up, it may be conveyed to the Modern Athens for Christian 
 burial. We tell you, for the second time, your corse will never 
 be seen on this side of eternity — for at the bottom of that huge 
 rock, that rises like a steeple from the channel to the Castle's 
 foundation, time and the torrent have scooped out a catacomb, 
 from which there is no egress, for a fierce gurgle of foam shuts 
 up its mouth like a stone, and secures all the skeletons ! So 
 up, if you be wise, between the Bagmen. 
 
 You observe we have a pannier on our shoulder, and a fish- 
 ing-rod in its numerous pieces, not unlike the Eoman fasces. 
 You must know that we are on the way to the Crook Inn in 
 Tweedsmuir. Ostensibly, we are going to angle; but the 
 truth is, that that is almost a pretence. An elderly gentleman, 
 ever since Dr Johnson's verses, looks absurd in his hat and 
 wig by the side of a murmuring stream ; so we have mounted 
 a foraging- cap, and let our few silver hairs take their chance 
 in this genial weather. With our angle in our hand, we shall 
 be able to dauner down the streams, without awakening sus- 
 picions of sanity or suicide in the minds of the shepherds ; 
 and not improbably we may kill, without intending it, a glow- 
 ing, golden, starry- sided Prince of the Pool, who has reigned 
 a lustrum over a populous empire of trouts and minnows. 
 
 We have lost somewhat of our enthusiasm even in the 
 a angler's silent trade," and never hope to fill our pannier to 
 the very lid again in this world. Ours, indeed, is now " the 
 sober certainty of waking bliss," in all the pursuits of this 
 life. But we envy not in others those eager transports 
 which we never more can share. We remember the days 
 of our youth, and are grateful. No rushing down now, with 
 
STREAMS. 25 
 
 breathless anxiety, to the water-side, to see with our own eyes 
 if it be indeed in trim for the delicate gossamer midge-fly 
 tackle. No desire to murder any previous angler in the very 
 act of landing a giant on the shelving sand of our favourite 
 and unfailing pool. No strict compact to fish stream and 
 stream about ; no proposal made in bitterness of rivalry, to 
 toss up for precedence, down the bright, beautiful, breezy, 
 Tweed, murmuring along through the lights and shadows. 
 No wading to the arm-pits, or swimming to the opposite bank 
 from which alone we could command the certain eddy at the 
 head of the Saugh Linn. No — no — no ! Then we were 
 young Charles Cotton — but now we are old Isaac Walton. 
 We now put our rod together by the water-edge, as com- 
 posedly as if exhibiting its taper longitude to admiring chil- 
 dren in our parlour. We draw the reel-line through the rings, 
 one after one, as solemnly as if moralising on the thread of 
 life, so apt, with all possible preservation, to get rotten, or to 
 snap in its strength. And after we have got all ready, and 
 the deadly red spinner, or March brown, or Firm's delight — 
 is circling the air about to descend on the curl, would you be- 
 lieve it, we have grown so fastidious, that not one pool in a 
 dozen will we condescend to try, and only drop in our tail-fly, 
 as light as a snow-flake, above the dimple made by the pig- 
 like snout of a four-pounder that we have doomed to death. 
 And when we lay him gasping on the gravel — no keen exul- 
 tation, no fervent triumph ! We regard him with serious eyes, 
 and almost wonder, with a slight self-upbraiding, why we 
 could not have left him for another year to enjoy the murmurs 
 of his native linn, and salmon-like, fling himself in sport 
 among the spray-rainbows of the waterfall. 
 
 " The Tweed, the Tweed, be blessings on the Tweed ! " 
 Bagmen, behold the Tweed I It issues from the blue mist of 
 yonder mountain, Scottice Erickstane. The very wheels of 
 the mail — the axle himself, is loth to disturb the liquid mur- 
 mur. That sound — call it a noise — for it is brawling jocundly 
 — is from some scores of tiny waterfalls, up among the brae.s« 
 all joining, like children's voices the leader of an anthem, the 
 clear strong tenor of the Tweed. A blind man, with a musi- 
 cal ear, might almost be said to see the river. Yonder it is — 
 one bright gleam, like that of a little tarn ; but a cloud has 
 been passing, and the gleam disappearing, there you behold 
 
26 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 at once a quarter of a mile of stream, pool and shallow — cattle 
 grazing on the holms — sheep clotting the hills, — over yonder 
 grove, too distant to be heard, the circling flight of rooks, 
 and tending thitherward a pair of herons, seemingly unmind- 
 ful of this lower world, yet both crammed as full as they can 
 fly with fishes from the moor-lochs — more easily caught, per- 
 haps, by the silent watchers than the stream trouts ; or rather 
 do not herons prefer such angling, because Guemshope is a 
 lonesome loch, and they have it all to themselves — their own 
 silent preserve ? 
 
 But lo ! the Crook Inn, and we must say, " farewell," to 
 guard and bagmen. The former assists us, even as if he were 
 a son of our own, down with our gouty foot on the rim of the 
 wheel, and then, tenderly carried beneath his arm, deposits us 
 safely on terra firma. Why, our crutch is now altogether un- 
 necessary. Our toe is painless as if made of timber, yet as 
 steel elastic. Gout, who certainly mounted the mail with us 
 in Princes Street, has fallen off the roof. Well, this perfect 
 freedom from the shadow of a twinge, is to us as " refreshing " 
 as a pretty new poem to Mr Jeffrey. No more of that revolu- 
 tionary, constitution- shaking, radical, French eau-medicinal. 
 A few gulps of Tweedsmuir air have made us quite a young 
 elderly gentleman. There, landlord, give our crutch to Baulcly 
 Brydon, the lameter ; and, hang it, if we don't challenge the 
 flying tailor himself to a hop-step-and-jump match in the 
 meadows. There, " right — left — right — left " — that's the way 
 we used to march thirty years ago, when we raised a regiment 
 of our own in defence of Liberty and Law, and even now we 
 take it not amiss, civilian as we are, to be called — Colonel. 
 
 We were beginning to like both Bagmen. For a few miles 
 out of Edinburgh, they were nothing short of offensive — so 
 rich their unaspirated southern slang, that bespoke them true 
 subjects to their liege lord, the King of Cockney-land. Their 
 long loud laugh, how coarse and sensual! How full of 
 pus the pruriency of their imaginations ! Their sensations 
 how gorged — in what state of starvation their ideas ! The 
 one was the Wit, the other the Man of Information. Then 
 they had been at Bolton, and attempted trotting, but they 
 soon ran dry ; and after an hour and twenty minutes' exhi- 
 bition and exhaustion, both together were not a match for 
 the twelfth milestone. Nevertheless, we saw them wheeling 
 away for ever from our range of vision, with feelings of the 
 
STREAMS. 27 
 
 slightest, but most unaffected sadness. Nor were they un- 
 moved. About Penicuik they had discovered, that, notwith- 
 standing the comeliness of our green old age, we were some- 
 what of an ugly customer to all Cockneys ; and they drew in 
 their horns as quickly as the guard does his after a turnpike- 
 opening Tantarara. About Nine-mile-end, one of them hesi- 
 tatingly proffered a pinch, apologising for the device on the 
 lid of a papier-mache snuff-box, conceived in the true Gallic 
 grossness ; and at Whitburn the other (who said he knew 
 Tims) handed us up a glass of negus, with a kindly expression 
 of countenance that disarmed all criticism on the pug nose it 
 illuminated. Therefore we felt our hearts warm towards both 
 Bagmen ; and should this meet their eyes, let it be taken as 
 an acknowledgment of the pleasure we received from their 
 sprightly conversation, and especially from their duet, so ex- 
 temporaneously chanted on our first catching a view of the 
 Tweed— 
 
 " Gee ho, Dobbin, Hey ho, Dobbin," 
 till the solitary Tower of Polmood sent his echo from the hill, 
 and the Genius of the river hoped the restoration of the days 
 of chivalry. 
 
 The kind greeting between an annual customer and a pair 
 of wayside innkeepers, male and female, is with us one of the 
 very best of the small cordialities. Suppose that over, and 
 Mr Christopher North shown to his parlour, with many assur- 
 ances that he looks younger and younger every year. Why 
 may not that be the truth after all ? After the voyager of life 
 has sailed through the grand climacteric, and gets into the 
 fine open Pacific sea — he downs with his storm-jib, and hoists 
 all his fair-weather canvass. He also shows his colours, and 
 now and then fires a gun to bring to any brigantine about 
 his own tonnage and weight of metal. Accordingly we believe 
 that we look much more dangerous — and indeed not only look, 
 but are so — than your full-cheeked, thick-calved, bolt-upright, 
 broad-shouldered bachelors of about forty. Were we young 
 girls, we should become loath-sick of such Lotharios, who 
 have lost the loveliness of youth, without having gained the 
 venerability of age. Thirty miles on the outside of the mail 
 is a whetter; and dinner, we confess, is to us the Meal of 
 Meals. The bare mutton shoulder-blade has been thrown to 
 the colleys — the cheese has been sent for by a traveller from 
 Moffat, with his compliments to Mr North courteously returned 
 
28 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 — and one single bottle of as fine old port as you could elicit 
 even from the cellars of Brougham and Anderson, having been 
 discussed by us, all except three glasses for our bolster-cup — 
 pray how are we to pass the evening ? Thank Heaven for all 
 its blessings — and for none more, than that, when free from 
 the pressure of life's heavier calamities, never once, during the 
 memory of threescore years, has one evening hung upon us 
 ponderous or protracted ! Enough to amuse our vacant, and 
 to sober our thoughtful mind, to hear the house-clock ticking 
 when all but ourselves were asleep ; and often have we, before 
 going unchambermaided to bed, stood holding up the candle, 
 burned down nearly to the socket, to the mysterious face of 
 the Time-teller, with his long sweeping hand, and his short 
 one so sure and steady, awe-struck in our travelling Kilmar- 
 nock nightcap, at the tick — tick — tick reminding us momently 
 that we were one — two — three steps farther advanced on the 
 road to eternity. 
 
 A single blockhead, or even a batch of blockheads, would 
 be miserable at the Crook Inn. There is no stir on the road 
 to stare at — two or three chaises, perhaps, at the utmost, 
 during a whole day at this season; and now and then a 
 farmer, jogging by with — it may be — his wife behind him on 
 a pillion. Nothing to look at but green hills — a few flat 
 potato-fields, covered with pyramids of dung, and a river — 
 name by blockhead unknown and unasked — with a din more 
 wearisome and monotonous than a hurdy-gurdy. But, reader, 
 neither you nor we are a blockhead ; so, happy could we be 
 together, or apart, with the " Crook in our lot," all a summer's 
 day ; for who, with a heart and a soul tolerably at ease within 
 him, could fail to be happy, hearing, as we do now, the voice 
 of the Tweed, singing his pensive twilight song to the few 
 faint stars that have become visible in heaven? 
 
 Let us dauner away, then, along to the banks of the Tweed 
 — and if the dews be not too heavy, lie down, like one of the 
 other resting and ruminating creatures, on the close-nibbled 
 braes. A contemplative man looks well, with arms folded, 
 eyes now searching for stones, and now for stars, footsteps 
 slow as if the drag had been put on, — and ever and anon a 
 pensive philosophic sigh ; — but as there are now no immediate 
 spectators but about a dozen cows, and one old ram, who seems 
 meditating a charge of horning, we shall not cross the runlet 
 
STREAMS. 29 
 
 tliat separates us from Mr Wooler, — in this case no black or 
 yellow Dwarf, we assure you, — but shall take the chair, an 
 accidental armed one, framed in a freak by that most fantastic 
 of cabinet-makers, Chance ; and as the evening is now warm, 
 and we " have taen our auld cloak about us," it matters little 
 if we should even fall asleep. Ay, there now are a hundred 
 suddenly-lighted candles — but there is no fear of their setting 
 fire to the curtains — the beautiful blue-hanging curtains, lately 
 edged with gold, but now with cloud-fringes, pure as the 
 silver or the snow. 
 
 Nothing is farther from our thoughts than the wish to be 
 poetical ; yet who can escape being so Scott-free, when walk- 
 ing alone by Tweedside, under one of the most beautiful of 
 April night-skies ? There is no silence, except where there is 
 sound. Silence is an active power, when overcoming sound, 
 as it does when the continual calm contest is carrying on in 
 the solitude of the hills. The louder the voice of the stream, 
 the deeper the sleep of the air ! nothing can awaken it till 
 morning melt the dream. Should a distant dog bark, hunting* 
 by himself on the hill, or disturbed, perhaps, by the foot of 
 some strange shepherd, visiting his Peggy when the house- 
 hold are asleep, how the faint far-off echoes give power to the 
 brooding calm ! Wearied labour is everywhere thankfully at 
 rest; and love, and joy, and youth, alone are wakeful. No 
 wonder that poets glorified the glimpses of the moon, and, 
 long before science was born, named, and arranged, and local- 
 ised the stars. So sayeth Kit North, beadsman of Tweedside. 
 
 Does that man exist who is not, in some degree, the slave 
 of the senses? Breathes there the man, with soul so alive, 
 that he can bring night upon himself during day, day during 
 night, to the utter extinction of sun, moon, and stars ? No. 
 Something external must touch the spirit, to vivify her visions. 
 The Swiss must hear the cow-song before he pines himself 
 away in the malady of his mountains. The sailor who, when 
 circumnavigating the globe, wept at the sight of a pewter 
 spoon with the mark " London " upon it, had not wept at the 
 often-repeated name, however dear the distant shore. And, to 
 come nearer home, who can, sitting by his fireside in town, so 
 envelop himself in imagination, as to walk in moonlight, 
 tender as the true, by the glittering sound of streams, mur- 
 muring absolutely out of and along the green pory earth? 
 
30 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE, 
 
 Place a human being in a scene he has loved, and a million 
 congregating feelings and fancies will convince him how weak 
 is the creative power of the unassisted soul over its own spiri- 
 tualities ; — a remembered stream is unsubstantial as the air — 
 the remembered air, a void. But the streams the eye sees, 
 and the ear hears, murmur, and glide, and glitter with recol- 
 lections. The past is as the present, and the gazer and list- 
 ener is born again, and extends the wings of his youth, as if 
 in an atmosphere that knew not the deadening attraction of 
 the earth. At such times, and in such places, all men are 
 poets, and feel that the real world is as nothing, or rather, but 
 the framework of the world of imagination. 
 
 It would puzzle us to tell why the Tweed is to us the 
 dearest of all the streams of Scotland. Our father's house 
 stood not on its banks, nor on them played our infancy nor 
 our boyhood. Perhaps we are thus able to love it with that 
 unregretful and impassionate affection, without which the 
 human spirit cannot find happiness in nature. Oh ! there are 
 places on this earth that we shudder to revisit even in a 
 waking dream, beneath the meridian sunshine. They are 
 haunted by images too beautiful to be endured, and the pangs 
 are dismal that clutch the heart, when approaching their 
 bewildering boundaries ! for there it was that we roamed in 
 the glorious novelty of nature, when we were innocent and 
 uncorrupted. There it was that we lived in a world without 
 shadows, almost without tears ; and after grief and guilt have 
 made visitations to the soul, she looks back in agony to those 
 blissful regions of time and space, when she lived in Paradise. 
 Nor are any flaming swords, in the hands of cherubim, needed 
 to guard the gates, through which she dares not, if flung wide 
 open, now to enter, in the abasement of her despair. There- 
 fore she takes refuge in the dim and obscure light of common 
 day, and seeks scenery not so mournfully haunted by the 
 ghosts of thoughts that glorified the dawn of her prime. 
 
 Who has not felt something of this, although the forms 
 round which the memory of his boyhood clings, may, in his 
 particular case, be different? But, reader, if thy early footr 
 steps were free and unconfined over the beautiful bosom of the 
 rejoicing earth, thou wilt understand the passion that the 
 dream of some one solitary spot may inspire, rising suddenly 
 up from oblivion in all its primeval loveliness, and making a 
 
STREAMS. 31 
 
 silent appeal to thy troubled heart, in behalf of innocence 
 evanished long ago, and for ever ! From the image of snch 
 spots you start away, half in love half in fear, as from the 
 visionary spectre of some dear friend dead and buried, far 
 beyond seas in a foreign country. Snch power as this may 
 there be in the little moorland rill, oozing from the birchen 
 brae — in some one of its fairy pools, that, in your lonely 
 angling-days, seemed to you more especially delightful, as it 
 swept sparkling and singing through the verdant wilderness 
 — in some one deep streamless dell among a hundred, too 
 insignificant to have received any name from the shepherds, 
 but first discovered and enjoyed by you, when the soul within 
 you was bright with the stirred fire of young existence — in 
 some sheltered retired nook, whither all the vernal hill- 
 flowers had seemed to flock, both for shadow and sunshine — 
 in some greenest glade, far within the wood's heart, on which 
 you had lain listening to the cushat crooning in his yew-grove 
 — ay, in one and all of such places, and a thousand more, you 
 feel that a power for ever dwells omnipotent over your spirit, 
 adorned, expanded, strengthened, although it may now be, 
 with knowledge and science, — a power extinguishing all 
 present objects, and all their accompanying thoughts and 
 emotions, in the inexpressibly pensive light of those blissful 
 days, when time and space were both bounded to a point by 
 the perfect joy of the soul that existed in that now, happier 
 than any angel in heaven. 
 
 We know that there is one very short and simple way of 
 breaking all such delusions ; and that is, to go in person to 
 the scenes that inspire them, and all our imaginative griefs 
 and regrets will, it is said and sung, be changed at once into 
 contemptuous laughter. We have in one or two instances 
 made the experiment, but the effect was not answerable to our 
 expectation. True, that all things were less, both in bulk and 
 beauty, than we had believed ; but that very discovery aggra- 
 vated our sorrow for the days that were gone. The lady-fern 
 was still pretty ; but, in those days, a lady-fern grove was a 
 fairy forest, and the insects that hung or sported there, in 
 their gorgeous hues, hardly seemed to belong to our world. 
 Wild flowers there still were in abundance ; but in those days 
 they so enamelled the sward, that we feared to tread among 
 the profusion, and spared the sacred wilderness of sweets, 
 
32 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 overcome by trie sudden sense of their rare and wonderful 
 beauty. We recognised the burn-braes to be the same we had 
 loved of yore ; but the few bunches of wall-flowers, growing 
 here and there among the gravelly soil, looked stunted and 
 disconsolate, all unlike to that glorious glow that dazzled our 
 eyes when angling along the rapids, and that brought before 
 our imagination the old ruined Castle from which the seeds 
 had been blown. The windings of the Yearn were romantic 
 still, but the liquid labyrinths had lost their pleasant per- 
 plexities, and the small tufted islets amidst the broader 
 streams or pools, once to our eyes so romantic, were only 
 heaps of sand and weeds, whirled by eddies into a temporary 
 obstruction to the waterflow. But enough was still there to 
 justify our boyish spirit in all its blissful dreams. To justify it, 
 did we say ? Ay, to prove its heavenly power of transmuta- 
 tion and adornment, now that heavenly power was lost for 
 ever, nor perhaps its place worthily supplied. We looked on 
 a little angler, leaping from stone to stone, as we used to do 
 of old ; and sighed to know that the simple boy lived in such 
 visions as we at his age had lived in too, but which now all 
 melted away before the eyes of the understanding, and could 
 no more be viewed by us now than the filmy ghosts of the 
 dead. 
 
 But, oh ! feeling and imaginative reader, — for such thou 
 art, else had thine eyes already drowsed over these pages, — 
 a sadder sorrow still it is, to summon up courage to revisit 
 some darling den of our youthhead, and find it utterly de- 
 molished, and for ever swept away from the very face of the 
 earth I Why all this murderous and exterminating spirit of 
 change ? The ancient moss, with its heather head-high, and 
 wide steep hags, that the poled hunter could not overleap, is 
 now drained, and limed, and ploughed, and clothed with the 
 ragged nakedness of blighted barley. In a few years it will 
 fall back into a desert, but never into the shaggy wilderness 
 it once was, where the red and black cattle browsed the spots 
 of herbage, and sheltered among the bent from the deluge of 
 the thunderstorm. You look in vain for the beautiful moor 
 on which you chased the whirring dragon-fly, or lay couched 
 for hours to get a shot at the curlew, when, — lo ! and behold, 
 a pack of grouse alighted within ten yards of your muzzle, and 
 you let fly among them, without injuring one feather of alJ 
 
STREAMS. 33 
 
 the plumage. Or you will revisit the Eookan, loneliest of 
 linns that ever sounded in the solitary silence of nature ! In 
 days of yore, the loneliness was almost too profound for your 
 beating heart ; no living thing to be seen, but the water-ouzel 
 flitting along the rocks, or, as he rested a moment on a stone, 
 turning towards you his white breast, and then dropping into 
 the water. Sometimes, indeed, when the spring evening was 
 warm, a little before sunset, the grey-lintie came, as if to 
 freshen his plumage in the spray melting over the woods that 
 covered the waterfall, and sang for his own delight a hasty 
 carol, impatient of his nest in the neighbouring broom-brae. 
 Behold now a paper-mill — no, not a paper-mill — for that an 
 editor might force himself to forgive for the dear sake of thirty 
 guineas for every sheet from his own quill ; but — a bobbin- 
 mill ! yes, a bobbin-mill. Perhaps you know not what a 
 bobbin-mill is ; then remain ignorant for ever. Suffice it to 
 say, one has destroyed the Eookan ! 
 
 But let the Eookan be destroyed ; so that one Glen, not 
 many miles from it, but whose name shall by our lips be 
 breathed never, remain unviolated, nor the dryads ever be 
 scared from the deepening umbrage of its hallowed woods. 
 What is mere boy-love, but a moonlight dream ? Who would 
 weep — who would not laugh, over the catastrophe of such a 
 bloodless tragedy ? No one so heartily as sweet Sixteen her- 
 self, when told by her mamma that she must say, No, to the 
 amorous young gentleman with a ribbon round his shirt- collar, 
 or haply with an open frill. In another year she marries a man 
 of thirty, who has to shave twice a-day ; and Adonis, who is now 
 at Oxford, and a Christ- Church man, reads the marriage -adver- 
 tisement in the obituary of Blackwood's Magazine, and know- 
 ingly chuckles at the reminiscences of all the sentimentalities 
 that passed between Miss Louisa and self, " when she came 
 to the bower he had shaded for her," and therein breathed 
 vows of eternal devotion — vows pure, fragrant, and fleeting as 
 the evening dew, that bathed her raven tresses as they floated 
 over the snow-drifts of her bosom. All that is a farce, whether 
 in one or three acts. But love-affairs, when the lovers are 
 full-grown men and women, although perhaps twenty years 
 have not passed over either of their heads, are at least tragi- 
 comedies, and sometimes tragedies ; closing, if not in blood 
 
 vol. v. c 
 
34 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 — although, that too, when the fates are angry — yet in clouds 
 that darken all future life, — and that now and then lose their 
 sullen blackness only when dissolving, through the transient 
 sunshine, in a shower of tears ! 
 
 Therefore, hail to the gloomy but ever glorious Glen, in 
 which, many many long and short years ago, we met the 
 Lady of our love ! Eeader, we told you in our " Birds," * 
 of our first boy-passion for the Maid of the MiLl ; and we 
 asked the winds of heaven to waft the tears from our old 
 eyes, to bedew the primroses smiling on her unforgotten 
 grave. But we speak now of the passion that came suddenly 
 against the heart of manhood, and having stormed the citadel, 
 put the whole garrison to the sword. Ay, there was havoc 
 there — and carnage ! Let prim people pertly prate about a 
 ruling passion, and versify it into sickly sonnets and queasy 
 quatrains. While our ruling passion reigned ; while of it, it 
 might have been said, " bacchatur in aulis," all others fled or 
 perished. Every sunrise and every sunset, for two months 
 of the celestial summer of 17 — 7, we beheld her by appoint- 
 ment, and it was kept by her as duly as the angels keep theirs 
 who move the spheres of heaven, floating down the glen 
 towards the arbour that nature embowered for love. Light, 
 music, and fragrance, she came softly into our trembling arms ; 
 and at the touch of her cheek on ours, fled the whole visible 
 and audible world. There were no vows of eternal love, for 
 such vows betray a lurking fear that there may be — an end of 
 the insupportable bliss I Our love we felt to be immortal, as 
 we gazed on the rising or setting sunlight, and to be pro- 
 longed, in every embrace, into the regions of a future life. 
 My wife was an orphan. Wife, said I — Oh! blot out the 
 word with rueful, with bloody tears ! For two years of ab- 
 sence and of distance brought a strange, dim, misty haze over 
 the fires — supposed unquenchable — of our hearts ; then came 
 suspicion, distrust, wrathful jealousy, and stone-eyed despair ! 
 Some fiend of the air had, with leer malign, seen us in the 
 Bower of Paradise, and soon as we were, for a short season, as 
 we thought, apart — he breathed poison into both our hearts, 
 and changed, at last, our love into hatred! Oh ! that " hatred" 
 is a hideous and an ugsome word, and never, never surely could 
 with truth be inflicted on us who had lain so often in one 
 another's arms — bosorn to bosom in the bower of sighs ! Yet, 
 * See Recreations — " Christopher in his Aviarv." 
 
STREAMS. 35 
 
 " what is writ is writ," and if the senseless letters must re- 
 main, let tears of mutual penitence, contrition, and remorse, 
 blot out all disastrous frailty from our long-pacified and for- 
 giving hearts ! Wife of mine was she never — but one hour, 
 when, all unknown to her, I was within a hundred yards of 
 the church (the marriage was in England), she became a 
 bride. One of those accursed rings, that are cast in millions 
 by imps swarming round an infernal furnace, and purchased 
 in the gross by that great merchant, both in the home and 
 foreign market, Mammon, and then retailed by small devils of 
 dealers all over Christendom, as avowed agents of the Pseudo- 
 Hymen, was forced upon that delicate finger, whose shape I 
 knew so well, and whose warm snow melted not beneath my 
 kisses, although they were kisses of the burning flame. Out 
 she issued from the church-porch, blushing, yet pale as death 
 whenever the blush passed away (and often did it come and 
 go between porch and gate), and drowned, quite drowned, 
 in tears ! The beast her husband allowed her powerless arm 
 to lie within his, with no more apparent emotion in his face, 
 except something like a poor paltry pride, than if that arm, 
 through whose blue veinery flowed and reflowed blood as pure 
 as the celestial ichor in an angel's wings, had belonged to a 
 lay-figure, propped up against the wall as a model for a por- 
 trait-painter to work by, when forging a lie for a fast-aging 
 maiden who had missed the money and the marriage market 
 in her native land, and was about to send her Eidolon, as her 
 forerunner, to India. Her lips were not wont to be so cold 
 and white when kissed in that glen-bower ; not so moveless 
 and bustlike her bosom. Tears were shed then, too, but they 
 glittered brighter than any jewels the poor sick bride will 
 ever wear, and she smiled as she shook them from her soul- 
 searching eyes over my neck and breast. Were all those 
 our passionate endearments and dying embraces forgotten? 
 Or came they now like a blight over her beauty — bliss I will 
 not say, for bliss there was none — and withered the rose 
 on the very day it was to be gathered by a man without a 
 soul ? Yet, perhaps the holy service had quelled all memory 
 of our past, and I was nearly forgotten. Better, better far if 
 it were so — for although we had loved, dangerously and des- 
 perately loved, yet carried she to the bridal bed a frame as 
 pure as the sweet- smelling violet, a spirit as innocent as the 
 new-born dawn. 
 
36 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 A few sentences back I called the bridegroom a beast'. 
 Now the truth is, and the truth I will speak, and shame the 
 devil, that he was a remarkably good-looking — nay, tall, 
 handsome man, and had been an officer of dragoons. He was, 
 as far as I could judge, just about as proper a man as myself, 
 and would have fought about thirteen stone. So far from 
 being indifferent to his bride, he passionately loved, and 
 piously adored her ; but he had a stiff, cold, proud air of his 
 own — being of an old, rich, and almost noble Yorkshire family 
 — and still smacking of the Life-Guardsman. Had I been an 
 Italian, that night had a bravo stood with his stiletto between 
 him and her virgin body, and pierced heart, spine, or jugular. 
 As a Scotsman, and with some of the best blood of Scotland 
 in my veins, oh! that I could have stood with my hair- 
 trigger before him, at twelve tidy paces, and a ball through 
 ■his boiling heart would have made him bounce, like a buck, 
 ten feet right on end up into the sunny air of his wedding- 
 day ! Or, how pretty had it been to dally for a few passes, 
 and then, unparriable as the Chevalier St George, to pierce 
 through heart and back, with twenty light, airy, invisible and 
 deadly touches, letting out life without spilling an ounce of his 
 amorous blood ! How sweet to my satisfied soul would have 
 been that inward bleeding, speedy singultus, and then with 
 one inelegant convulsive sprawl over upon his back, sudden 
 stone-death ! Curse him — yes, let my curses go back, like a 
 jaunting car, when the harness has been broken, rumbling 
 down hill, edged on both sides with precipices — Vain 
 and needless mockery of execration — I had another and a 
 better revenge. 
 
 Well, out of the church-gate they went, into a carriage, no 
 doubt finely panelled and beplastered with West -Biding 
 heraldry, and, as I shall be sworn, drawn by four bright chest- 
 nuts, and driven by an absurd, fat, broad and red -faced here- 
 ditary coachee, bred in that most ancient house, with a woollen 
 wig, gloriously frizzled, and a cocked-hat that shone with the 
 beaten gold. God knows why I should have been so much 
 engrossed as I certainly must have been, by Jehu the son of 
 Nimshi. But I remember perfectly his tout ensemble, and the 
 prodigious white rose fastened to his single-breasted, many- 
 buttoned coat. Off the marriage-party drove ; and going to a 
 mirror, I looked in upon a gentleman, rather taken by sur- 
 
STREAMS. 37 
 
 prise, with Iris cheeks of the colour and clamminess- of "grave- 
 stones, eyes fixed as those of a somnambulist, and groaning 
 through the glass till I shuddered to feel as if the long, low, 
 quivering agony were venting itself in nightmare shrieks 
 within my own heart! Whenever I lifted up a razor, and 
 whetted the edge on the palm of my hand, the ghost in the 
 glass did the same — whenever I laughed, he laughed — and 
 perhaps the blood had spouted from both our throats, as if 
 they had had but one jugular between them — when a soft 
 sweet voice said, " Sir, my mammy bid me tell you there are 
 prayers in the church to-day ;" and looking round, I saw my 
 poor widow landlady's only daughter, " a child of beauty 
 rare," and her timid smile so sunk into and restored my heart, 
 that I took her by the hand, and walked away with her and 
 her mother to the afternoon service. I looked at the altar, 
 where two hours before had been performed that impious 
 mockery of marriage, and knew that for me, the sun of life 
 was eclipsed for ever. 
 
 Oh, dear me ! as the children say, this is an old story, nor 
 would I have told it now, had I thought it would have proved 
 so long a one ; yet it must be told out, for without a catas- 
 trophe, a story, especially a true one, is like a knotless thread. 
 Well, the Baronet — for he had a title — and a small one is 
 better than none, and ought to be acted on throughout all the 
 minutias of its rights and privileges — made for several years a 
 most excellent and exemplary husband — and that year he was 
 High Sheriff, his lady, although very thin and very pale, was 
 the most beautiful by far of all the beauties in the Assize Ball- 
 room. But what will you think when you are told that about 
 a month before the Baronet had headed his javelin men, he had 
 found a huge bundle of love-letters in the secret drawers of 
 his wife's cabinet? There's a Diana for you! — the mother, 
 too, of three dead children — for all her children died — and 
 pretty creatures must they have been, especially her first-born, 
 who faded away in her fifth summer — the others were never 
 more than mere crying babes. He was so unpolite — so mean, 
 if you choose to call it so — as to read them all, one after the 
 other, over and over, twenty and forty times, from the " my 
 beloved and beautiful Glendoveer " (a creature of the element 
 in oriental climes, and here put poetice for my dearest Jane), 
 down to " yours till death and burial." C. N. inclusive ! Yes, 
 
38 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 G. 3SL, the very signature that you saw t'other month appended 
 to that unpardonable Preface.* She had not had heart to burn 
 the letters that I used to put with my own hand into her 
 bosom, silently breathing thoughts that I dared not utter. 
 Words were there that by no husband could be borne, although, 
 when they were written, his base existence and illustrious 
 name were to us both unknown. Not unaccompanied with 
 kisses had been words such as these — nor would the hand 
 have dared to indite them, that had not embraced the bosom 
 to which they were poured forth in the exulting yet reveren- 
 tial language of liege and loyal love. Our attachment had 
 been no secret to him ; but till that fatal moment, when he 
 pulled out a little tiny drawer in an ivory-studded bijoux, 
 which seemed contrived only for holding thimbles and netting- 
 rods, but was full of the smouldering fires of ungovernable 
 passion — he knew not that such feelings had ever been below 
 the sun. But now he knew that they had been inspired by, 
 and breathed back in return into that bosom, which, however 
 it may have heaved of yore in tumultuous passion, had ever 
 been to him cold almost and insensate as the beautiful marble 
 bosom of an image lying on a tomb. 
 
 The Baronet had been High- Sheriff, and as ambition will 
 be mounting, he must needs be Member of Parliament — not 
 exactly one of the county members — for others were Yorkshire 
 too — but for a borough. But the Whig interest was over- 
 bought by the bills of a Jew broker, and the Baronet was a 
 ruined man. Many a better and many a worse man have shot 
 themselves, as he did, before and since ; yet the event was one 
 of the most unexpected of the kind that had occurred in that 
 part of the county for a good many years, and did not fail to 
 be spoken of with some regret for several weeks. I cannot 
 with truth say, that, on the first hearing, it made much im- 
 pression upon me ; but in about an hour or so, my whole soul 
 underwent the nature of a revolution. 
 
 She is free from fetters now, I exclaimed to myself, and I 
 will cherish her yet in my heart of hearts. For her sake, and 
 she knows it well, have I been a wanderer over the face of the 
 earth. For her sake have I been alone in the world, a moody 
 man, with blasted hopes, and shunned even by my blood rela- 
 tions (poor devils!) as a misanthrope. One hour in each other's 
 arms — not with the same transports as in the glen-bower, but 
 * Preface to Magazine, voL six. 
 
STREAMS. 39 
 
 in sober, pensive, pathetic, and melancholy bliss, and all 
 ungentle thoughts will dissolve away in our tears — and the 
 love, the sorely faded, but still the same love of other years, 
 return. Give me but that silken head once more meekly rested 
 on my breast, and all my errors — all my frailties — all my 
 follies — all my sins — will be forgiven by one dewy glance of 
 those uplifted eyes, and the earth will be again a garden of 
 Eden, although somewhat tarnished the hues and deadened 
 the odours of the flowers of happiness ! 
 
 Oh ! little, little during that insane hour, did I know either 
 of mine own or that lady's heart ! The vain dream dissolved, 
 and I felt that I loved her no more. She had loved another ! 
 no — that never could have been — that never was — for I have 
 her own word for it, and she was ever the soul of truth, then 
 surely when lying on the bed of death. But she had lain in 
 his bosom — had borne him children — and loved them living 
 and dead, partly for his sake ! Not, at least, for mine — no — 
 hell and furies — not for mine ! — for the traitress had broken our 
 vows, and in punishment that was sent from a just Heaven, had 
 seen child after child in its death-clothes. 'Twas well that the 
 imps — all of them probably, boys and girls alike, with the 
 father's peculiar expression — never a pleasant one, even when 
 he was pleased — had all been put out of sight; and what 
 matters it that an old Yorkshire family, in the West Eiding, 
 should be no more? For distinguished, there is something 
 laughable in the substitution of the word extinguished — 
 " alike, but oh ! how different ! " 
 
 In about half a year after her husband's suicide, I had a 
 letter from her, saying that she was dying, and wished to see 
 me. I went, and she died in my arms. Her last embrace 
 was of the kind fittest for us both — and if heaven's gates 
 were shut against her, all the generations of man are, and 
 will for ever be, buried in unrising dust ! 
 
 Thirty years, or nearly so, have fled since that farewell. 
 But never once — although several times I have ventured 
 within a mile of it — have I visited the Glen. I could as 
 easily visit her grave. Perhaps I may yet do both. She 
 was buried in a vault, which ought not to have been, for her 
 grave should have been free to the flowers and the sunbeams. 
 But, methinks, the huge massy gate will fall back on its rusty 
 hinges, if I but hold out my hand — and as for the Glen-Bower, 
 may it be in latest autumn that I revisit it — one long, silent. 
 
40 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 divine gaze, and then, like the sere and yellow leaf, may my 
 life be whirled away into the unknown world ! 
 
 Now, dear reader, but somewhat perhaps too credulous, what 
 assurance can you possibly have that all this fine pathetic 
 tale is not one of the most unprovoked lies that was ever 
 uttered by the editor of a periodical publication ? Nothing 
 at once so easy and so delightful, in this poetical and imagi- 
 native age, as to tell lies by the hour — nothing at once so dif- 
 ficult and distressful, as to speak truth by the minute. We 
 cannot think, that under such circumstances, the truth ought 
 always to be told. In our opinion, the truth ought seldom or 
 never to be told, for then it becomes as dull and tedious as a 
 thrice-repeated tale. Utter a small gold coin of truth now 
 and then, and you will be amazed how slowly it circulates. 
 Try a paper-falsehood, and it passes current in countries where 
 they will not look at that of a bank, with one dead and one 
 sleeping partner. Now, if every syllable of the above pathos 
 be a fiction, what worse are we than Shakespeare, or Byron, 
 or Scott ? We cannot help thinking that there is some truth 
 in it ; but we confess that one thing we concealed. But now 
 we shall out with it — it was current at the time that our mar- 
 riage WAS OFF, BECAUSE WE SPLIT UPON SETTLEMENTS ! 
 
 Many a sincere and passionate attachment in real life has 
 had such undignified ending, and is it not real life that the 
 rational critics are now constantly demanding, with all its 
 outlines defined against the self-same firmament that rains, 
 and blows, and thunders, and lightens, and under the name of 
 atmosphere has various qualities of its character indicated by 
 thermometers and barometers ? We have given you real life, 
 and how do you like it? Does it come too near home? 
 Would trustees not allow you to lay your great, wide, filthy 
 paw on the whole of the simple young creature's patrimony, 
 settling it all (not a life-rent merely) upon yourself, in case of 
 her dying childless ? Yes — dying childless! And these shock- 
 ing words you see inserted with your own eyes, on the morn- 
 ing of your marriage-day ! Eeally, real life is a very mean 
 and odious thing — we fear, that however high it may be, it is 
 low — and that that writer would imitate humanity most abo- 
 minably, who exhibited it bare-faced, bare-bosomed, and with 
 the window in the breast wide open, uncanvassed, and un- 
 curtained, for the inspection of every street-passenger. Truth 
 
STREAMS. 41 
 
 should be like gin-twist, half-and-half. Too much diluted 
 with the waters of fiction, it is weak and wersh, and apt to 
 turn the stomach. The pure spirit knocks you down like a 
 hammer. But " half-and-half" kindles a mutual affection be- 
 tween you and the whole world. 
 
 Why, things have come to a pretty pass, methinks we hear 
 some whining Whig decry, when the world is asked to listen 
 to the classical confessions of the gouty Editor of the most 
 libellous periodical of any age or country — for such, according 
 to the fama clamosa of that pitiful part of the press, is the 
 character of rosy-fingered, silver-tongued Maga, still smiling 
 graciously like the dawning of morn. But grant that we are 
 as libellous as gouty, — what then were, or are, Voltaire, Bous- 
 seau, Byron, Jeffrey, Gilford, Brougham, Playfair, and a hun- 
 dred others ? Libellers all. And pray, what the worse men 
 were they, or are they, for all the libels that ought to have set 
 several of them in the pillory? Did not Byron's heart and 
 soul overflow with all manly and humane affections, in spite 
 of spite, and during the very disease of rancour ? Is not one 
 love-poem of his, breathed one hour, and forgotten by him the 
 next, worth all the drivelling of you and all the other amiable 
 characters in the kingdom, were you to drivel amatory effusions 
 till the rheum ceased to flow from your over-aged eyes ? What 
 although he libelled his way through society, from the King 
 upon the throne to the very meanest of his subjects ? All the 
 world loves his memory. Where could you find a bitterer, 
 more venomous body, than old Gilford ? Yet is he universally 
 respected, for his bitterness changed many a scribbling block- 
 head into an inoffensive' man, and he spat his venom chiefly 
 on corroded Cockneys, whom it was pleasant to see writhing 
 in the dead-thraws. His friends know him to be one of the 
 best of enlightened and religious men ; and as his Quarterly 
 accounts have long been found correct, so will his accounts of 
 all sorts pass at the last general audit. We offer to fill the 
 largest church in Edinburgh with authors, their wives, and 
 parents, and sons, and daughters, and cousins, who shall carry 
 Mr Jeffrey by acclamation to be the greatest libeller of all the 
 Spirits of the Age, that spiritual essence, Hazlitt himself, not 
 excluded — yet who more amiable than Mr Jeffrey, or less like 
 a person who, it has been voted, would not scruple, if he had 
 courage, to assassinate the most virtuous grinder in all Grub 
 
42 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Street ? We stop here, for we have said enough to show that 
 we alleged libellers are the wisest and best of men, and that 
 were we to unlock the treasures of our inner spirits, and fling 
 them before the world, there would be thenceforth no need for 
 assessments for support of intellectual and moral pauperism ; 
 for the whole population would be so enriched, that each re- 
 jected contributor would be a Croesus, and strike his name off 
 all the poor-lists of parish and of press. 
 
 Heaven preserve us ! what is it o'clock ? Our watch is run 
 down, and fast asleep, pointing in its dream to half-past one. 
 What will mine host and hostess at the Crook be thinking of 
 the old gentleman ? They will be suspicious of an assigna- 
 tion and intrigue with some yellow-haired lassie of the Braes. 
 Our character is at stake ; but our innocence is known to 
 Heaven, and " conscia sidera testor." One tumbler of hot 
 toddy — and then to bed to make harmless love to the four 
 shepherdesses sitting on the curtains on four dimity knolls — 
 look which way we will by the rushlight, ogling us with bash- 
 ful solicitations when sinking away into stoical repose. 
 
 Mortifying thought to human vanity ! we have never been 
 missed ; and on entering into the kitchen, we stand for several 
 minutes unnoticed in the roar of laughter that shakes the 
 mutton-hams dangling from the porch-like chimney. The 
 gudewife jaloused that we had gone to roost, and she had shut 
 up the transe-doors, that we might not be disturbed by the 
 merrymaking. Eustic wit, ignorant in its originality of Joe 
 Miller, has, during all the hours of our river-side reverie, been 
 diiiing the rafters, and rough and ready at repartee, has never 
 once waited for an encore. Strapping queans too are there, 
 rising from the knees of lovers, and disengaging fond hands 
 from soft bosoms, at our sudden apparition. Lassies, spare 
 your blushes before the mild old man ; for " honi soit qui mal 
 y pense," which, being interpreted, is " evil to him who evil 
 thinks." Eax down the fiddle from the peg, for we can handle 
 her ; and here goes a strathspey. There is no spring in the 
 earthen floor, but there is one in every instep ; and every reel 
 has a kiss by way of introduction and postliminious preface. 
 Better to overlook the fun, we mount a stool (not the cutty, 
 for that is an old story, and even then our sex protected us), 
 and our Neil-Gow-like bow-hand brings down our well-calcu- 
 lated elbow, at every stroke, within an inch of the red tappe- 
 
STREAMS. 43 
 
 toury on aulcl Saunders' broad blue bonnet. "What daffin and 
 sldrling ! Oh, that all England conld see ns in our glory ! 
 Are we indeed the dreaded Christopher North — he of a hun- 
 dred plumes ? But while the dancers are all wiping their 
 brows, or dandling their partners on their knees, even as the 
 lion dandles the kid, we check our hand, and change our mea- 
 sure, till the plaintive " Cowdenknowes " or " The Bush aboon 
 Traquair " hushes the room, so that you might hear the cat 
 purring on the lightsome hearth, and the face of the most 
 ordinary hizzie becomes absolutely beautiful in the emotion 
 of nature true to the simple strain. 
 
 The moon, no doubt, knows whether the morrow is to be dry 
 or rainy, but the wisest man is not always able to fish it out of 
 her hypocritical physiognomy. You trust to her hazy halo, 
 and put your tackle in order for sunrise. There has not been 
 so much as a drop of dew — not a breath of air stirs — those 
 marbled wreaths cannot be called clouds — and the sun has 
 already stared all the trouts in Peeblesshire into their stone 
 cellars. You may as well angle in the dust of the high-road 
 from the inn-door to the manse, as in the Tweed. On the other 
 hand, you bite your nails to see Luna, about two o'clock in the 
 morning, unveiled, and vivid at a route given by her to the 
 stars ; and rain, you think, may possibly fall before breakfast 
 in the deserts of Arabia, but certainly not in Scotland. What, 
 then, makes you bounce from bed, as if your bolster were of 
 whins, at the first cock-crow ? The pat-pat-pattering of rain 
 on your window facing the south ! Beautiful misty clouds, all 
 in a state of pregnancy ! Earth glitters to the new-risen rays, 
 and after meridian there will not be an hour till sunset without 
 its rainbow. Breakfast ! You would no more wait for break- 
 fast than for a post-letter informing you of the issue of a 
 Chancery- suit. You carelessly drop a quartern loaf into your 
 pouch, along with the cheese-whang and the leathern Bottle, 
 and off like a hart to the running brooks ! 
 
 Oh ! we feel that we were deceiving ourselves when we said 
 that our old age was not subject to the Anglimania. We 
 would not give up the prospect of this day's sport to be the 
 Eight Honourable Frederick Kobinson, Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. Nothing drumly about the sweet Tweed this morning 
 — no pool the colour of porter with barmy foam — but the deeps 
 a black blue, and the shallows a dark green, covered with 
 
44 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 foam-bells that break beneath, the breezes warrn-breathing from 
 the South-South- West, the angler's darling airt. Yes — 
 
 " 0' a' the airts the wind can blaw, 
 He dearly loes the West ! " 
 
 Yet what philosophy even in our passion ! Who would so run 
 counter to that system which places Virtue in Propriety as to 
 fish up a Stream ? So let us take our unangling way up the 
 Tweed to its very source below the Erickstane, speculating on 
 each pool and eddy, and prophesying the multitudinous murder 
 of our downward course. Pray, acutest of metaphysicians, did 
 you ever trace up any one single thing in your own mind to its 
 origin ? When the emotion flows broadly along, you know its 
 nature and its name, its depths and shallows, nor doubt to 
 recognise it when it glides' away behind a knoll, or into a wood^ 
 But follow it into the misty uplands of the spirit, and you are 
 bewildered among a hundred rivulets. You decide upon one 
 that seems somewhat stronger than the rest, and it disappears 
 in the dry desert. You try another glittering thread, and it 
 leads you into a melancholy marsh — a third leaves you on the 
 pleasant herbage, but you have no divining-rod to quiver when 
 it lies above the hidden spring. So you must be satisfied with 
 the Emotion in its wide open flow, nor hope ever to reach the 
 Nile-head. Or suppose you trace three separate rills, each to 
 its fountain-well. Which yields the prevailing water, and 
 through all its future course gives the peculiar tinge of Feeling 
 or Thought? Alas, mighty metaphysician! little better art 
 thou than the blind leading the blind. 
 
 But here we are at the source of the Tweed — nor far from 
 those of the Annan and the Clyde. What three beautiful flights 
 might our Fancy take, following the Three Eivers to their 
 friths and seas ! What would hinder her from breakfasting 
 with the benevolent Owen, and studying the new philosophy 
 in his cotton-mills ? Why might she not write a criticism on 
 the pictures in Hamilton Palace, and embody in it a history of 
 the art from Apelles to Haydon. " Oh ! Bothwell Bank, thou 
 bloomest fair ! and Mary Queen ! what woes were thine from 
 the day thy virgin zone was untied by the youthful Francis, 
 till thy lovely neck was bared to the headsman's axe ! Then, 
 what punchbowls in Glasgow — what " herrings at the Broomie- 
 law ! " And hath to Dumbarton Castle the sword of Wallace 
 
STREAMS. 45 
 
 been restored ? — Whirr flies , the gorcock from the heather at 
 our ear, and we see again the gambols of the infant Tweed. 
 
 A rained castle is a grand and a melancholy sight — but that 
 last epithet applies as well to a rained cottage. That is one — 
 that mere heap of stones that yon might mistake for a cairn. 
 Less than twenty years ago it was a langhing summer abode. 
 For several winters it was untenanted, and only the roof fell 
 in beneath the weight of snow — the walls stood fast, and there 
 the hill-cattle sheltered. Then part of the one gable was pulled 
 down to build a fold. Lightning struck the other into a heap, 
 and the front and back walls soon followed in natural decay. 
 Wild-flowers were soon sown by the winds in the dust of the 
 mouldering stones — mosses crept up from the earth and bound 
 together the rubbish — grass-seeds had been on the floors of the 
 inhabited house, clean swept as they used to be, and they soon 
 sprouted through the chinks — and how they came there it is 
 not so easy to tell, but sure enough there they are, two or three 
 pretty little limber birch-trees rustling on the ruin. Last time 
 we were here, there was a porch not unadorned with roses — they 
 are dead — a thatch-roof, trim as trim might be, on which the 
 doves and pigeons were making love — and the cheerful smell 
 of the peat-reek wreathing along the side of the sheltering brae. 
 
 Now you are expecting " a tale of tears, a moving story." 
 But no such stoiy have we to tell now, for none such appertains 
 to what once was a human dwelling. The honest shepherd 
 who lived here, had a dear farm of it, and found it no easy 
 matter to make both ends of the year meet, without an ugly 
 gap of poverty. He was the cleverest fellow in all the county, 
 and had " Hogg on Sheep" at his finger-ends. His wife, too, 
 was as active a woman as ever twirled a churnstaff. At quoits, 
 " putting the stane," wrestling, and hop-step-and-jump, with 
 or without the staff, you must have gone to Cumberland for 
 Tom Nicholson or Will Litt to match the worst of his two sons 
 — and his only daughter, in her Sabbath array, was fair as the 
 stately Harebell. Well then — an extensive farmer near Kelso 
 made Kob Eiddell his head hind, while his wife, who, for a 
 considerable number of seasons, had prudently given up child- 
 bearing, undertook the dairy. And will you believe what I 
 tell you on their own authority, they left Erickstane-brae 
 without a sigh ! On the day of the Flitting, instead of weeping 
 farewell to the stocks, and stones, and trees, and the somewhat 
 
46 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 coarse-fleeced sheep, Rob the Ranter got so drunk with whisky 
 — or if you would rather word it so, so moistened with moun- 
 tain dew, that it took six men to hoist him into the cart, and 
 half of that number, assisted by his faithful and affectionate 
 Leezie, to keep him down when he was in, so obstreperously 
 did he enact his vagaries among the straw. Unlike the poor 
 girl in Goldsmith's " Deserted Village," the Harebell did not 
 " leave a lover's for a father's arms," a cold exchange, and 
 palpable injustice. But she took her lover along with her — 
 Allan Armstrong — ploughman to Mr Weir of Annandale-head, 
 against whose character (forgetting that scrape Tibbie o' the 
 Cross-lees brought him into when he was a mere callant) no 
 man had ever breathed a whisper: and, if he had, Allan would 
 not have been slow of making him find his own level. The 
 two sons — Jock and Jamie — for they had been christened with 
 those very popular names — saw the Flitting as far as Noble- 
 house, where, after taking an affectionate farewell of the 
 authors of their existence, and a sister, whom, in spite of per- 
 petual bickerings, they loved most tenderly, they remained 
 two whole days and nights without seeming to remember that 
 sleep was one of the great laws of our nature; and on recover- 
 ing from about twenty half-mutchkins each, finished the forty- 
 eight hours' relaxation from all pastoral and agricultural 
 labours, by two successive single combats, in a ree state, Jock 
 with a gypsy, and Jamie with a horse-couper, both of whom, 
 in spite of science and shifting, fell beneath the Tweeddale 
 Twins ; one with three fractured ribs and a broken leg, and 
 the other with one bashed nose and two puffed ears, that made 
 him one of the most grotesque of mortals. 
 
 We do not wish to bother you with the memoirs of this 
 family of the Riddells. Suffice it to say, that not only are the 
 whole five at this hour alive and solvent, but they have mul- 
 tiplied themselves by six. The Harebell, now Mrs Carse 
 (her husband is brother to Him of the Trows, surnamed the 
 Salmon- slayer), became conspicuous for her proliflcness, even 
 in the neighbourhood of Kelso — and having buried several 
 babies, and a boy and girl well grown up, has still twelve in 
 life. Jock and Jamie married away over yonder about Dum- 
 fries — and James Hogg, who knows them both well, informed 
 us the last time we saw him in the shop, " That the world went 
 well with the Riddells, the one being an elder, and the other 
 
STREAMS. 47 
 
 an exciseman. The exciseman, however," James added, in his 
 gash way, " had rather taken a serious turn, and it was feared 
 that he might take some sort of orders, and go into the church." 
 Now, homely as this tale is — and if you are a disciple, 
 either of Will Wordsworth or Kit North, you will know, gentle 
 reader, " that you may find a tale in everything," you may 
 take a lesson from it, in case yon should ever think of coming 
 before the public with a volume. When you chance to see an 
 old house that has been brought down about the ears of the 
 spiders, do not forthwith sillily take it for granted that the 
 house fell down dead, because the whole family, each after his 
 own fashion, had done the same. Vamp not up, we beseech 
 you, a pathetic Flitting — nor send the man and his wife, and 
 all their legitimate children, to their graves, under hooping- 
 cough (it sometimes strangles old people), small-pox, measles, 
 putrid sore-throat, typhus fever, cholic, and galloping con- 
 sumption. Be merciful as you are strong — and have pity on 
 the obituary. Let it not be said of you, which it will be, if 
 you publish in three vols, crown octavo, One guinea and a 
 half in boards — 
 
 " You taught us how to live, and oh ! too high 
 The price of such a lesson — how to die ! " 
 
 So much for blarney — now for breakfast. Ho ! ho ! — the 
 table is covered with a most beautiful specimen of Scotch 
 damask, from the loom of Lichen, Moss, and Sons — an old 
 copartnery that have stood many a storm, and that will not 
 fail, even although there should be a glut of their manufac- 
 tures in the market. Thank you kindly, my pretty little dear 
 of a mountain fairy — you have placed my chair quite to my 
 usual habits. There, Lady Green-scarf, take the leathern 
 guard of my pocket-pistol, and get it filled by your playmate 
 the Naiad, who lives in the fountain beneath yonder knoll — 
 and see that she gives you the liquid radiance fresh from the 
 farthest-ben binn in her cellar. This cheese, as Kempfer- 
 hausen would say, is most illustrious. Instead of cutting the 
 loaf crossways, right down the middle goes the gully, and 
 brown- side and white -side fall asunder, like a Frenchman's 
 chops at Waterloo under the sword of Sergeant Shaw. 
 Pretty legerdemain that — three hard-boiled eggs, all kept 
 gracefully up in the air together, by our chalk-stoned fingers, 
 
43 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 an ascending and descending shell-shower, a playful prelude 
 to their ingurgitation in that whirlpool — that Corryvreckan — 
 bur stomach. Butter at open-air breakfasts should always be 
 spread with the thumb — skin-lines look rural and picturesque, 
 and you may read your fortune at every swallow. Pity that 
 we forgot the cold beef. No — here it is in our breeches pocket. 
 Hold your tongues, all of you, till we have allayed the 
 " fames edendi," for we are apt to be crusty when victualling. 
 Now, any man who might be observed through his window, 
 any morning at breakfast, in a town, in the attitude we now 
 occupy, turning up his little finger — so — would be proclaimed 
 instanter a drunkard. What then is the philosophy of dram- 
 drinking ? This blessed moment have we emptied the lesser 
 leather of Glenlivet, and yet that severe moralist, our own 
 conscience, approves the deed. How milky ! yes, as if the 
 dew had dropped from the milky- way ! What a pretty, deli- 
 cious, sweetly- working, sabbath-breaking small still, must have 
 elaborated that spiritual essence ! What a worm ! 
 
 Who the devil are you two ? — And from what scarecrows, 
 may I ask, have you raised the loan of that wild and withered 
 attire ? — Are you a witch and a warlock ? — And if so, pray, 
 are you married ? — And if so, have you progeny ? And are 
 the imps flunkeys down below in a place that shall be name- 
 less ? — I beg your pardon, honest people — sit down there — lie 
 down there — and let us break bread and taste salt together, 
 with a previous grace ; and then old Christopher North is safe, 
 were you Sin and Satan. 
 
 Only two poor beggar bodies, in duds and with wallets, 
 trudging their ways homewards to some hovel or another, on 
 a bit neuk by the road-side ! Man and wife they indeed are 
 — that is easy enough to see — and it is no less so to see 
 that they are both of them hungry and thirsty exceedingly, 
 and faint therewithal, especially the woman, who has a couple 
 of brats tucked up, with their dirty sleeping faces — dirty, but 
 not disgusting — hanging out cheek-by-jowl, in a bag-like fold 
 of her gown, between her shoulders. The wearied creatures 
 sit down thankfully on the turf beside me, and say little or 
 nothing — fatigue not being loquacious. They take the bread 
 and cheese, with a word and a look to me, and more than a 
 word and a look to heaven ; and forthwith, after two or three 
 moderate mouthfuls, begin eating away like fighting-cocks 
 
STREAMS. 49 
 
 rather than Christians. Never saw I ancient couple chew- 
 cheese with more effective jaws. The half of the quartern 
 (ourselves will account for the other), like an old song, is 
 handed down by oral tradition. Catch any miserable diseased 
 beggar, male or female, refusing a caulker. We shall not, 
 however, make them both drunk, although a little thing would 
 do it after their twenty-mile tramp since they rose from the 
 straw. Just enough, and no more, to cheer their hearts and 
 comfort their bones. But one of the brats has awoke, and 
 by pulling the nose of the other, has brought it into a similar 
 predicament ; so, sorry as we are to break up the party, we 
 must make ourselves scarce, and set ourselves out for serious 
 fishing. In spite of the laws against vagrant mendicity, the 
 benefaction of a few halfpence unwarranted won't do much 
 harm to the state. But let me remember — they asked for 
 nothing— therefore, open your fist, Watty Wallets, for a crown- 
 piece ; but promise not to buy a gill till you get to your own 
 clachan. 
 
 Now, let us fill the maw of the craving pannier. The large 
 golden trouts love the unsullied streams near the parent spring. 
 A gross mistake to think they inhabit only the Palace of the 
 Waterfall. There, we have hooked the Hermit of Erickstane ! 
 No sharp-edged rock to cut the gossamere — no twisted roots 
 to entangle — no fallen log-tree under which the Solitary may 
 plunge in despair — no wool-gathering briars on the brink to im- 
 pede the landing — no ledge for him to rush madly over, like a 
 harpooned whale, carrying away the end-line, and leaving the 
 cheated rod in our helpless hand ! But low green banks with- 
 out a shrub, or a rush, or a bracken, edged with the fine 
 pounce-like silver sand! Who would have thought that a 
 fish who had passed a long life of meditation in a pastoral 
 district, would have thus unwieldily struggled against des- 
 tiny ! The inextricable midge-fly is in his tongue — and the 
 invisible filament of fate draws him from his native element 
 to a dry death. It was so set down in the Doomsday-book of 
 the Naiad long before he was spawned. He belonged to 
 Christopher North in the roe of his first ancestor, and the 
 predestined hour is come. Voluntarily at last has he sailed 
 towards the land, his back-fins above the shallowing water, 
 indicative of his magnitude, and lies not dead, for he gasps 
 widely — but motionless, except in the mouth and gills, while 
 
 VOL. Vv D 
 
50 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 another half-pounder dangles unheeded at the tail-fly, dwindled 
 into a minnow beside the Triton. 
 
 Look on the blush-rose, as in full-blown pride she salutes 
 the morning — but know, while you are gazing, that before the 
 meridian sunshine, her glory will be somewhat dim — at even- 
 ing, a faded and unrejoicing thing — a ball without balm and 
 without beauty, that you would not care to scatter into 
 tarnished leaves beneath your feet. Look at the rainbow 
 affronting Phoebus, having borrowed from the god that many- 
 coloured rim, which even cold-hearted science, while it scru- 
 tinises, adores — turn away your eyes but for a moment, and 
 it has left the sky. So in half-an-hour would it be with that 
 glorious fish, now bespangled with stars. What hero ever 
 wore such grand crosses as these ? — What ribboned orders so 
 effulgent ? But let him lie on the sand there, and in the sun- 
 shine, just while we fish half-a-dozen pools, and he will barken 
 into bedimmed and shrivelled scaliness, worthy but the admira- 
 tion of the cook-maid, when about to gut him on the kitchen 
 dresser ! So without compunction, in with him (if he will go) 
 into the pannier, head and tail relentlessly curved together, — 
 for such and so unlovely is Death. 
 
 Man is by nature a beast of prey. So said old Hobbes — 
 and what angler can deny it ? Isaac Walton himself was a 
 murderer. If the ghosts of all the pikes he had ever trolled 
 had taken upon them to send constant deputations " to draw 
 his curtains at the dead of night," not one of them all had 
 ever been called upon a second time upon that service. By 
 the way, a pike would make a horrid ghost. What cadave- 
 rous jaw and jowl ! What a bony spectre, where not one 
 single bone of all those thinner than a hair, up to the horse- 
 like spine, was deficient in the threatening skeleton ! To 
 frighten you more deadly, perhaps an artificial mouse in his 
 mouth, with agglomerated hooks, and the twisted brass-chain 
 that in his tortured hour he strove in vain to snap asunder. 
 What think you of a yard-long eel, not only haunting your 
 bed, but evolving his lean length from below your bolster, and 
 worm-like crawling down your back, cold as ice, and hard as 
 iron, jagged too as the wheel of a watch, and emitting a faint 
 hiss like that of a serpent. The very spinning minnows 
 would thus have their revenge, for they would come in shoals 
 among your sheets, and bury you alive under bushels of small 
 
STREAMS. 51 
 
 anatomies. And then, oh ! the Bait you so pnrged in moss- 
 bags, and impaled through all their writhing knots from head 
 to tail (never, never were we guilty of such enormity), with 
 all the careless cruelty of a practised executioner I But 
 they have no need to become ghosts before they can enjoy 
 their retaliation ; for whatever geologists aver to the contrary, 
 down they glide with ease through the pory earth, or mine 
 their way without much difficulty, "labor ipse voluptas," 
 through the stiff clay, till they reach your coffin at last — and 
 free from all sumptuary laws is then their coiling revelry in 
 the very core of your heart. 
 
 A pleasant superstition this for an Elderly Gentleman 
 angling his way down the Tweed. However, to prolong the 
 lives of a few thousand of those dancing ephemera to the close 
 of a vernal day, let us put to death a brace of fly-flappers in 
 this pool. There was a rise by an elephant. Poo-poo — 
 merely a par ! Had we not hooked the imp, we should have 
 told a story, for years to come, of the lost prodigy. 'Tis 
 just the same in coursing. Every leveret that escapes^ the 
 greyhounds by darting into a drain, or squatting in a ditch, 
 is declared to have been as big as the "Witch of Endor. ^ It 
 was so too with the American sea-serpent, that lay floating 
 many a rood, each coil of his body being like a cask, till a 
 schooner ran him down, and the poor devil was not ten feet 
 long from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. So with 
 a tiger that devours villages. When you come to stuff his 
 skin, he is among the least in a museum. So with the eagle 
 twelve feet from wing-tip to wing-tip. Come upon him 
 when gorged, and before he can flap himself into the ether, 
 dash out his brains with a club, and the distance is but seven 
 feet four. So with a fire in a remote part of the city, burning 
 a whole street or square. Follow a fireman, and you see a 
 beggarly blaze in a tailor's garret. So with earthquake top- 
 pling down, in a newspaper, a distant metropolis with all its 
 towers and tenrples. Had you been present, with a late 
 number of the Edinburgh Review in your hand, the shock had 
 never waked you from your dose of Political Economy. 
 
 " Waly, waly down the bank — and waly down the brae," and 
 what, by chucking out the small fry, two at a time, and humour- 
 ing the large ones into land-lubbers, our pannier is about two- 
 thirds full, and has for some hour or so past felt heavy, and not 
 
52 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 without friction, on the shoulder. Are we indeed upwards of three- 
 score ? Why should not we yet marry ? Not " a wee thing just 
 come frae her mammy," but a buxom nymph of a certain age 
 well read in Mrs Eunclell, and who could even cut out and put to- 
 gether, at her leisure hours, breeches for our future Tommys. 
 More unfeasible schemes have been put into execution ; and 
 all that Buchanan Lodge desiderates is the soft fall of a kid 
 shoe, and the rustle of a silk petticoat. Fair reader! thou 
 art the very woman — hide thy blushes behind the Magazine, 
 and sleep with it to-night beneath thy pillow, for the sake of 
 thy devoted Christopher. 
 
 Gay, gamesome streamlet, that comes dancing into the 
 Tweed from Talla Linns, let me follow up thy murmurs for a 
 mile or so, and, by way of a finale, take a bathe in the Silver 
 Pool, so named by shepherds for its perpetual pellucidity. 
 We must not, however, like Alexander in the Cydnus, plunge 
 in without waiting for a cooler. Alexander, however, did 
 not wear flannel next his skin, as we have done from the year 
 Eighty, or he had escaped his fever. That long narrow gul- 
 ley is an admirable air-bath. Indeed, every green chasm 
 among the braes has a breeze as well as a rill of its own, and 
 as you pass along up the main valley, itself but narrow, every 
 hundred yards or two, some unseen air-nymph, waggishly dis- 
 posed, gives you a refreshing flirt of her fan. Bless us, what 
 sounds are these mixing with the murmurs of the Silver 
 Pool? Voices and laughter, and the splashing of water! 
 Diana and her nymphs bathing, by all that is beautiful ! It is 
 fortunate for us that no pack of hounds is kept in this neigh- 
 bourhood, otherwise we might fear the fate of Actseon. Here 
 let us take up a position behind this large stone — the Screen- 
 scene in a new " School for Scandal." Sweet creatures — not one 
 of them more than eighteen! The Scotch are a fair-skinned 
 people — that is obvious — and it is quite a mistake to imagine 
 that rural labour necessarily spoils the female form. It is 
 devoutly to be hoped that these merry mermaids will not 
 drown themselves, pulling and hauling each other about so 
 deliriously; and now and then all invisible together below 
 the water, except by the yellow gleam that changes the 
 Silver Pool into the Pool of Gold. " Ye five cruel wretches, 
 are you absolutely going to hold that dark-tressed shrieker 
 under the too high and too heavy shower-bath of the water- 
 
STREAMS. 53 
 
 fall ? Let go your hold, or I will dart down upon you, and 
 rescue the fair child from jeopardy." 
 
 The yell is in our ears yet that replied to our extorted 
 ejaculation. You may have seen the effect produced upon 
 half-a-dozen wild-ducks sportively dallying on their own small 
 moorland tarn, by a sudden discharge of slugs or swan-shot. 
 One of them plumps out of sight in a moment, and makes no 
 sign. Another gives an awkward dive, preceded by a nourish 
 of her tail, but cannot keep her poor wounded self from com- 
 ing up to the surface. Here one lies floating quite dead 
 among the water-lilies — and there another goes whizzing and 
 whirring and whirling in the strangest antics, while the 
 feathers are floating about in all directions. The other couple 
 fly off quacking with outstretched necks and drooping sterns, 
 and effect their escape to a distant fen. 
 
 Even so was it now in the Silver Pool. The image occurred 
 to us at the time ; but it has since brightened into a more 
 perfect similitude. Unluckily for us, the two who made their 
 instantaneous escape from the Pool, not knowing in their alarm 
 whence had come the voice, came in their scrambling flight up 
 the rocks, due North. We involuntarily cried out — " Ye ho ! 
 Ye ho ! " wishing, half in love, half in fear, to arrest the fair 
 pilgrims' progress, when, flinging somersets backwards, they 
 went with a plump and a plunge into the water, and on re- 
 rising to the surface, lay by a beautiful instinct, with just the 
 tips of their noses out, from which we could not but observe 
 the little air-bells bubbling all over the subsiding pool. The 
 whole basin was still as death. We began seriously to 
 apprehend that six young women were about to lose their 
 lives ; yet there was great difficulty, delicacy, and danger in 
 any scheme for their deliverence. By-and-by a sweet Doric 
 tongue was heard breathing from the waters — " What for are 
 ye sittin glowerin there, ye auld chiel ? Siccan behaviour's a 
 great shame for ane o' your years ; and I wadna has expeckit 
 it o' you, when you was playing thae bonny tunes last nicht 
 wi' tears in your een. For gudesake, sir, tak aff your specks 
 — gang awa wi' you — and let a set o' puir naked lassies get 
 to their claes ! " The appeal to our humanity was irresistible, 
 as indeed at all times it is from a female in distress. " Pardon 
 us, our dearest Girzie," we tenderly exclaimed; and then, for the 
 first time, looking modestly to the ground, we saw ourselves en- 
 
54 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 circled with all the possible varieties of female apparel, which 
 to name profanely would incense against us the Eumenides. 
 Truth and simplicity spoke in every tone of our voice; and Girzie, 
 raising her weel-faured face from the foam, with a neck shown 
 just down to the snow that covered her beating heart, conscious, 
 as we thought, of her charms, nor even, in her bashful dis- 
 quietude, unproud of their manifest effect on a man well stricken 
 in years, said, in still sweeter accents, and with imploring eyes 
 — " That's a bonny man — gang your wa's — and dinna tell 
 ony stories, na, about our ploutering, to the lads." — "Will 
 you promise to give me a few kisses, then, Girzie, ony time 
 we chance to forgather, and I'll gang my wa's ? " — " Ou ay, 
 Mr North — Ou ay, sir — but oh ! gang your wa's, for Tibbie's 
 just chockin ower-by yonner aneath the water-pyet's nest — 
 and Kirsty's drank a gallon at the least, and maun be sair 
 swalled. Oh ! gang your wa's, my bonny Mr North — gang 
 your wa's." We felt it was indeed time to "gang our wa's; " 
 for Girzie, as she was growing more and more impassioned in 
 her beseeching, rose higher and higher from the water, and 
 stood nearly to the waist unveiled, the long-sought Naiad of 
 the Silver Pool of Talla. 
 
 Gentle reader ! be not displeased with this picture ; for, 
 remember, that to the pure, all things are pure ; and thou, we 
 know well, art the very soul of purity. Often, mayhap, hast 
 thou, leaning on friend's, or lover's, or husband's arm, moved 
 slowly along the picture- gallery of some Peer's palace, and for 
 a moment hast let thine eyes dwell on some nymph scene, in 
 some place of waters, trees, and precipices, with its gleam of 
 azure sky. No painful emotion blushed around those eyes, 
 when the huntress Queen, wearied with the chase, stood dis- 
 robed among her train ; and from some glade in the forest, the 
 peeping Sylvans stole partial glances of the virgin goddess. 
 Then why, since " utpicturapoesis" be offended by the descrip- 
 tion of North more than of Poussin ? Homelier, indeed, are 
 the names and the natures of his bathing beauties ; yet chas- 
 tity is the virtue by which Scotia's shepherdesses are guarded 
 and adorned ; and the waters of the Talla, are they not as 
 pure as those of the Ilissus ? 
 
 Let us then re-angle our way down the pastoral rivulet, and 
 leave the laughing lassies in the linn. Soon will they collect 
 their scattered garments, and with playful titterings reapparel 
 
STREAMS. 55 
 
 their innocence. Already is the pearly moisture wrung from 
 their hair, and adjusted every silken snood. Fresh-breathing 
 balm from every warmed bosom again blends with the fra- 
 grance of the hill-flowers — a brighter crimson is on every cheek 
 — a brighter radiance dances in all their eyes — and down the 
 braes like birds they fly, and not without a choral song. With 
 many a gleesome smile over their strange adventure, they 
 part in a little broomy hollow, and each wings her way 
 towards her own nest. Each carries her blooming beauty 
 into a home gladdened by her presence — all household affairs 
 are cheerily attended to by them whose limbs health has braced ; 
 and what difficulty is there in imagining any one of them 
 to be the wooed maiden of the " Cottar's Saturday Night?" 
 for this is indeed the last day of the week, and Kobert Burns 
 — hallowed be his memory ! — sung then a strain true to the 
 manners and morals of Scotland over all her hills and plains. 
 
 Accompany us, in imagination, next day to Tweedsmuir 
 Kirk, and the same voices will be sweetly singing the psalm 
 of worship — one maiden sitting between her parents — one 
 near her lover — one with her little brother on her knee : all 
 thoughts of labour or of amusement will then be hushed, and 
 the small house of God overflowing with thankfulness and 
 praise. The low galleries, the pews beneath them, the seats 
 in the main body of the kirk, forms set in the middle lobby, 
 and even the very stairs up to the pulpit, all covered with 
 well-dressed people, sedate in rational piety. At the close of 
 the service, family parties form in the kirkyard, and move 
 away through opposite gates, each towards its own hill-home. 
 And what if old Christopher North go with the Minister to 
 the Manse — partake of a dinner yesterday prepared — all but 
 one dish which is warm, a few Tweed trouts of his own catch- 
 ing — and having laid aside his Saturday's merriment, with his 
 green velvet jacket and jean trousers, and with his black suit 
 put on a spirit befitting the day — enjoy a few such serious 
 hours as no man having heart and soul can ever forget, who. 
 has passed a Sabbath evening in the Manse of a Scottish 
 Minister. 
 
MEG JDODS'S COOKEKY. 1 
 
 [JUNE 1826.J 
 
 Most reviews of Cookery books that have fallen under oui 
 observation, have been so extremely witty, that it was not 
 possible for us, who love facetia3, to attend to the instruction 
 conveyed along with the amusement ; and consequently we 
 are at this hour ignorant of the leading principles of several 
 Systems, which it is the duty of every head of a house to 
 understand. Now, in our opinion, cookery is by much too 
 serious a subject for joking ; and therefore, in this our short 
 critique, we shall cautiously refrain from all sallies of imagina- 
 tion, and solemnly dedicate ourselves to the cause of science 
 and truth. 
 
 Be it known, then, to all men by these presents, that this is 
 a work worthy to be placed on the same shelf with Hunter, 
 Glasse, Rundell, and Kitchener. We are confident that the 
 Doctor will be delighted with it; and if any purchaser is known 
 to give a bad dinner, after it has been a fortnight in his pos- 
 session, the case may be given up as hopeless. The individual 
 who has ingeniously personated Meg Dods, is evidently no 
 ordinary writer, and the book is really most excellent miscel- 
 laneous reading. There has been a good deal of affectation of 
 humour in some culinary authors — too much seasoning and 
 spicery — unnecessarily ornate garnishing of dishes that in 
 their own native loveliness are, " when unadorned, adorned 
 the most." But here we have twenty or thirty grave, sober, 
 
 1 The Cook and Housewife's Manual ; containing the most approved Modern 
 Receipts for making Soups, Gravies, Sauces, Ragouts, and Made-Dishes ; and 
 for Pies, Puddings, Pastry, Pickles, and Preserves ; also for Baking, Brewing, 
 making Home-made Wines, Cordials, &c. ; the whole illustrated by numerous 
 Notes, and Practical Observations on all the various branches of Domestic 
 Economy. By Mrs Margaret Dods, of the Cleikum Inn, St Ronan's. 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKEPwT. 57 
 
 instructive, business-like pages, right on end, without one 
 particle of wit whatever ; then come as many more, sprinkled 
 with facetiae — and then half-a-dozen of broad mirth and merri- 
 ment. This alternation of grave and gay is exceedingly 
 agreeable — something in the style of Blackwood's Magazine. 
 But at the same time we are bound to say, in justice to Mrs 
 Dods, that the Housewife's Manual is entirely free from that 
 personality which too frequently disgraces that celebrated 
 work. x 
 
 Mrs Dods prefaces her work by directions for carving, most 
 of which are, we think, judicious, although, perhaps, they 
 smack somewhat too much of the old school. A hint is thrown 
 out, that the rudiments of the art should be taught practically 
 in childhood, " on plain joints and cold things," that in after- 
 life " provisions may not be haggled." Mrs Dods believes 
 that although there are awkward grown-up persons, having, 
 as the French say, two left hands, whom no labour will ever 
 make dexterous carvers, yet that there is no difficulty in the 
 art, which most young learners, if early initiated under the 
 eyes of their friends, might not easily surmount. We believe 
 this view of human nature to be just. Young persons of both 
 sexes, of the most humble talents, provided they have ten 
 fingers (five on each hand), may certainly be made fair carvers, 
 — and we have ourselves known not a few instances of boys, 
 who were absolute dolts at the art, becoming men distinguished 
 at the foot of the table. 
 
 The " carver's maxim" (which our readers may drink this 
 afternoon in a bumper) is, according to Mrs Dods, " to deal 
 small and serve all." No doubt at large parties it is so ; and 
 that is the fatal objection to large parties. Ten hungry men 
 eye a small jigot " o' the black faced" with mixed pleasure and 
 pain, when they all know that they must be helped according 
 to the " carver's maxim." The best friends, so relatively 
 placed, begin to dislike each other, and the angry wonder with 
 them all is, why so many people of different characters and 
 professions, perhaps countries, should agree in eating mut- 
 ton? Therefore we love a partie quarre. No dish — unless 
 absurdly small indeed— of which each of Us Four may not 
 have a satisfactory portion. The " carver's maxim" is for- 
 gotten, or remembered only with a smile, and at such a board 
 i Indeed?— C. N. 
 
58 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 alone can liberty and equality at each side of the square 
 preside. 
 
 At a large party, we hold that it is a physical impossibility 
 to get anything to eat. Eating does not consist in putting 
 cold, greasy, animal food into your mouth. That, we repeat, 
 is not eating. Eating consists in putting into your mouth 
 (chewing, swallowing, &c. of course), warm, juicy, thinnish or 
 thickish, fat or lean, morsels of animal food, precisely at the 
 nick of time. A minute too soon or five minutes too late, and 
 you may cram, but to eat is impossible. What can one waiter 
 do among so many? And if you have six waiters, what then? 
 Confusion worse confounded. You see a great hulking fellow, 
 perhaps with the ties of his neckcloth a yard long, powdered 
 highly, and in a pawnbroker's coat, carrying off your plate to 
 a greedy Whig on the opposite side of the table, who devours 
 the Pope's Eye before your face, in all the bitterness of party- 
 spirit. A sturdy, squat, broad-shouldered, red-headed scoundrel 
 serves you the same trick, with an insolent leer, in favour of a 
 Tory, a man of the same political principles with yourself, a 
 member of the Pitt Club, and an occasional minor writer in 
 Blackwood, who makes a show of sending the rich-freighted 
 trencher round to you, its lawful owner, but, at the same 
 moment, lets drop into the dark-hued gravy a plash of yellow 
 beaten turnips, destined to his own maw. A grave-looking 
 man, like a minister, comes solemnly behind your chair, and 
 stretching forward a plate, which you doubt not is to make you 
 happy at last, asks, in solemn accents, for a well-browned 
 potato, and then lodges the deposit in the hands of mine host's 
 accommodating banker. A spruce, dapper, little tarrier, who, 
 during forenoons, officiates as a barber, absolutely lifts up, with 
 irresistible dexterity, your plate the moment after he has put 
 it down before you, and making apology for the mistake, 
 carries it off to a red-faced woman of a certain age, who calls 
 for bread with the lungs of a Stentor. Then will an aged man, 
 with a bald head, blind and deaf as a dog in his teens, but still 
 employed at good men's feasts on account of character, which 
 saving almost constant drunkenness is unexceptionable, totter 
 past with your plate, supported against his breast with feeble 
 fingers ; and unawakenable by the roar of a cannon, in spite of 
 all your vociferation, he delivers up the largest prize in the 
 lottery to a lout whom you hope, on no distant day, to see 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKERY. 59 
 
 hanged. By this time anger has quelled appetite — and when, 
 by some miraculous interposition of Providence in your favour, 
 you find yourself in possession of the fee-simple of a slice of 
 mutton at last, it is a short, round, thick squab of a piece, at 
 once fat and bloody, inspiring deep and permanent disgust, 
 and sickening you into aversion to the whole dinner. 
 
 When the party is large, therefore, adopt the following advice, 
 and you may be far from unhappy, although one of twenty- 
 four. Look out for a dish neither illustrious nor obscure — a dish 
 of unpretending modest merit, which may be overlooked by the 
 greedy multitude, and which the man of judgment can alone 
 descry — a dish of decent dimensions, and finding, although not 
 seeking, concealment under the dazzle of the epergne — a dish 
 rather broad than high — a dish which thus but one of many, 
 and in its unambitious humbleness almost lost in the crowd, 
 might nevertheless be in its single self a dinner to a man and 
 his wife at the guestless board ; — select, we say, such a dish — 
 if such a dish there be — and draw in your chair quietly opposite 
 to it, however ugly may be the women on either side of you, 
 yea even if the lady of the house insist on your sitting higher 
 up the table. Be absolute and determined — your legs are 
 under the mahogany — rise not — pay a compliment to the fear- 
 some dear on your right hand, and to the no less alarming 
 spinster on the left — and, without any thoughts of soup or fish, 
 help yourself plentifully, but carelessly, to your own chosen 
 dish, and Da Capo. Don't betray yourself by any overheard 
 demonstrations of delight, but, if possible, eat with an air of 
 indifference and nonchalance. Lay down your knife and fork 
 now and then, if you can bring your mind to submit to a 
 moment's delay, and look about you with a smile, as if dedicated 
 to agreeable conversation, badinage, and repartee. Should any 
 one suspect your doings, and ask what is that dish before you, 
 shake your head, and make a face, putting your hand at the 
 same time to your stomach, and then, with a mischievous eye, 
 offering to send some of the nameless stew. All this time there 
 are people at the table who have not had a morsel, and whom 
 you see crumbling down their bread to appease the cravings 
 of hunger. You have laid a famous foundation for any super- 
 structure you may be pleased at your leisure to erect — have 
 drank wine with both fair supporters — and Peebles ale with 
 the Bailie — are in a mood to say witty things, and say them 
 
60 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 accordingly — and in the gladness of your heart, offer to carve 
 a sinewy old fowl, safely situated two covers off, and who, 
 when taken in hand by the gentleman to whom he of right 
 belongs, will be found to be a tougher job than the dismem- 
 berment of Poland. 
 
 Contrive it so that you are done, on solemn entrance of the 
 goose. Catch mine host's eye at that critical moment, and 
 you secure the first hot slice, while the apple-sauce seems 
 absolutely to simmer. Do not scruple to say, that you have 
 been waiting for the goose, for by that egregious lie you will 
 get double commons. Public attention, too, being thus 
 directed to the waiter who holds your plate, he must deliver 
 it safe up into your hands, and all attempts to interrupt it in 
 its progress prove abortive. Having thus the start in goose, 
 you come in early for macaroni — tarts and puddings — and as 
 we suppose you to have a steady, not a voracious appetite, 
 why, after cheese, which like hope comes to all, we really see 
 no reason to doubt your having made a very tolerable dinner. 
 
 But perhaps you have got yourself so entangled in the 
 drawing-room with a woman with a long train and a bunch of 
 blue feathers, that you cannot choose your position, and are 
 forced to sit down before a ham. An argument arises whether 
 it be Westmoreland, Dumfriesshire, or Westphalia, and every 
 person present expresses a determination to bring the point 
 to the decision of the palate. Instantly avow, with a face of 
 blushing confusion, that you would not attempt to haggle such 
 a ham for worlds — that in early life you were little accustomed 
 to carving, having lived with a minister of small stipend and 
 low board, who on meat days always cut up the hough him- 
 self, so that he had never sent out an even tolerable carver 
 from the manse. If that sort of excuse won't do, down with 
 the middle finger of your right hand, and holding it out pite- 
 ously, exhibit the effect of temporary cramp or permanent 
 rheumatism. Should neither expedient occur or be plausible, 
 then on with a determined countenance, a bold eye, and a 
 gruff voice, and declare that you took an oath, many years 
 ago, " never to help a ham," which you have religiously kept 
 through good report and bad report, and which it would be, 
 indeed, most culpable weakness in you to break, now that your 
 raven locks are beginning to be silvered with the insidious 
 grey. Then tell the waiter who is like a minister, to take the 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKERY. 61 
 
 ham to Mr Drysdale, or Mr Dempster, two of the best carvers 
 in existence, for that it does a man's heart good to see the 
 dexterity with which they distribute at the festive board. 
 You thus avoid an evil under which many a better man has 
 sunk, and can turn unshackled to serious eating. 
 
 In good truth, much as we admire the noble art of carving, 
 it is the very last we should wish to possess in our own person. 
 To be called on for a song is nothing — you can have your 
 revenge on him who asks it by inflicting the torment in 
 return, and on the whole company by bellowing like a bull in 
 a mountainous region. But the celebrated carver is at the 
 mercy of every stomach. Orders come showering in upon 
 him faster than he can supply them; the company behave 
 towards him like boys following each other on a slide, at what 
 they call " keeping the pie warm." No sooner are his weapons 
 down, than they are up again; particular cuts are politely, 
 and even flatteringly insinuated. Ladies eat ham who never 
 ate ham before, only that they may admire the delicate trans- 
 parency ; — well-known eating characters change plates upon 
 him, that they may not appear to have been helped before ; — 
 and the lady of the house simpers with a sweet voice, " Now, 
 Mr Dempster, that you have helped everybody so expediti- 
 ously, and with such graceful skill, may I solicit a specimen, 
 the slightest possible specimen, of your handiwork ? " Like 
 the last rose of summer, the penultimate fat forsakes the shank 
 to melt in the mouth of Mrs Haliburton ; and on the great 
 question of " whether Westmoreland, Dumfriesshire, or West- 
 phalia," Mr Dempster gives no vote, for he has tasted only 
 half a small mouthful of the brown, as sweet as sugar, and 
 more like vegetable than animal matter. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, on entering into private life, a young 
 man had better let it be generally diffused that he is no carver. 
 In that case he must take his chance of the cut-and-come- 
 again, and will have the good sense to carve cautiously, awk- 
 wardly, and clumsily, that he may not acquire a good character. 
 Ere long it will be said of him by some friend, to whom thence- 
 forth he owes a family dinner once a-month, that Tom Hastie 
 is a wretched carver. To the truth of this apothegm, Tom 
 bows acquiescence ; and difficult dishes are actually removed 
 from before him, lest he should mar their fair proportions, and 
 leave them in shapeless ruin. In a few years, go where he 
 
62 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 will, lie is never asked to carve anything beyond a haggis ; 
 and thus the whole precious dinner-time is left open for unin- 
 terrupted stuffing. Once or twice, in a period of ten years, 
 he insists on being suffered to undertake the goose, when he 
 makes a leg spin among the array on the sideboard, and 
 drenches many ladies in a shower of gravy. On the credit of 
 which exploit he escapes carving for an indefinite number of 
 years ; for it is amazing how a catastrophe of that kind is 
 handed down and around by oral tradition, till it finally 
 becomes part of national history. The stain is thought even 
 to affect the blood ; and it is believed that there never was, 
 and never will be, a carver among the Hasties. 
 
 But should the principles now laid down not be fortunate 
 enough to meet the approbation of the reader, and should he, 
 in the face of those principles, determine to become himself, 
 and to make his son — a carver, — then we trust he will listen 
 to us, and, as he values his reputation, learn to carve quickly. 
 Of all the pests, curses of civilised society, your slow carver 
 is at the head. He eyes the leg of mutton, or round of beef, 
 or goose, or turkey, as if he had not made up his mind as to 
 the name and nature of the animal. Then he suspects the 
 knife, and shakes his head at the edge, although sharp as a 
 razor. He next goes through the positions, as if he were cun- 
 ning of fence ; when observing that he has forgotten to elevate 
 the guard, he lays down the knife, and sets the fork to rights 
 with an air of majesty only possible under a monarchical gov- 
 ernment. But where shall he begin ? That is a momentous 
 affair, not so readily settled as you may think ; for a carver of 
 such exquisite skill and discretion may commence operations 
 in any one of fifty different ways, and he remains bewildered 
 among thick-coming fancies. However, let him be begun by 
 hypothesis. He draws the knife along as leisurely as if he 
 were dissecting the live body of his mistress, to cure some 
 complaint of a dainty limb. It takes a minute of precious 
 time to bring the slice (but a small one) from jigot to plate, 
 and then he keeps fiddling among the gravy for at least a 
 minute more, till the patience of Job, had he witnessed such 
 dilatory cutting up, would have been totally exhausted. 
 Neither will he let the plate go till the waiter has assured 
 him that he understands for whom it is intended, the fortunate 
 man's name, age, and profession, and probably the colour of 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKERY. 63 
 
 his own hair or a wig. He then draws his breath, and asks 
 for small beer. Heaven and earth, only one man has yet been 
 muttoned ! Had we held the knife, even we, who blush not 
 to own that we are in some respects the worst carver in Europe 
 (credat Judceus Apella), half-a-dozen pair of jaws would ere now 
 have been put into full employment. Yet all the while our 
 tardy friend chuckles over his skill in carving, and were you 
 to hint, during the first course, that he was neither an Eclipse 
 nor a Childers, he would regard you with a sardonic smile of 
 ineffable contempt. True it is, however, that although in the 
 upper circles people are careful not to express their sentiments 
 too plainly, he is the object of curses not loud but deep ; and 
 that, however he may be respected as a man, as a carver he is 
 damned. 
 
 Akin to the subject we have now been treating, or rather 
 throwing out hints to be expanded by future writers of a more 
 voluminous character, is the habit which some people avowing 
 the Christian faith exhibit — of asking for particular bits, which 
 happen to be favourites with their palate and stomach. This 
 is not merely bad manners, but most iniquitous morals. How 
 the devil do they know that the self-same bits are not the 
 soul's delight of many other of their Christian brethren, then 
 and there assembled together ? How dare men who have been 
 baptised, and go to church even when it is known that their 
 own clergyman is to preach, expose thus the gross greed and 
 gluttony of their unregenerated bowels ? The man does not at 
 this hour live, privileged to advance such a claim. We should 
 not have granted it to him who invented the spade or the 
 plough — the art of printing — gunpowder — or the steam- 
 engine. Yet you will hear it acted upon by prigs and cox- 
 combs, who at home dine three days a- week on tripe, and the 
 other three on lights and liver (men of pluck), while their 
 Sunday rejoices in cheese and bread, and an onion. 
 
 Mrs Meg, whom we have all along forgotten, advances, in 
 her chapter on carving, no directions repugnant to those we 
 have now freely advocated — at least, no directions with which 
 ours might not easily be reconciled. We agree with her, that 
 it is the duty of every man to know which are the best bits, 
 that he may distribute them in the proper quarters. There is 
 much that is amiable in the following succulent passage : — 
 
 " Venison Fat — the Pope's-eye in a leg of mutton — veal and 
 
64 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 lamb kidney — the firm gelatinous parts of a cod's head, — the 
 thin part of salmon, — the thick of turbot, and other flat fish, 
 are reckoned the prime bits ; — the ribs and neck of a pig, — 
 the breast and wings of fowls, — the legs of hare and rabbit, — 
 the breast and thighs of turkey and goose, cutting off the drum- 
 sticks — the wings and breast of pheasants, partridges, and 
 moor game — and the legs and breast of duck are also reckoned 
 delicacies. There are, besides, favourite bits, highly prized 
 by some gourmands, though it is sometimes not easy to dis- 
 cover in what their superior excellence consists ; as a shank 
 of mutton, — turbot fins, — cod's tongue, — the bitter back of 
 moor game, — the back of hare, — the head of carp, &c. A 
 knowledge of these things will be of use to the carver as a 
 guide in that equitable distribution of good things which is 
 the most pleasing part of his duty." 
 
 Mrs Dods then observes, " that it is well known that a per- 
 son of any refinement will eat much more when his food is 
 carved in handsome slices, and not too much at once, than 
 w T hen a piece clumsily cut is put upon his plate. To cut 
 warm joints fairly and smoothly, neither in slices too thick, nor 
 in such as are finically thin, is all that is required of the car- 
 ver of meat, whether boiled or roasted." 
 
 There is not in the whole range of English literature a 
 sounder sentence. We always suspect a sinister motive, 
 when we see our plate filled up with a huge, coarse, fat, 
 outside, stringy, slobbery, gristly lump of animal matter, 
 whilom belonging perhaps to the buttocks of a bull. It 
 seems sent to sicken. When potatoes and greens are added, 
 good God ! your plate may be sent to the Canongate jail, by 
 way of a Christmas dinner to the sine cessione honorum debtors. 
 On the other hand, confound us if we " do not hate as a pig 
 in a gate," the opposite extreme. The opposite extreme, is 
 one single solitary mouthful lying by itself disconsolately in 
 the centre of the plate, obviously about as thick as a wafer, 
 and not worth salt. It is generally mutton. It would seem, 
 from all we have observed in the course of our experience, 
 that it is difficult to help so minutely in beef. But out of a 
 jigot of mutton you may take a slice that would starve a pech 
 among the pigmies. Never condescend to begin upon such a 
 famine. Pretend not to know that you have been helped, or 
 treat the slice as a bit of skin that you have left from a pre- 
 
MEG DODSS COOKERY. 65 
 
 vious plentiful supply, and return your plate to old Stingy, 
 who, while he hates, will respect your character, and compli- 
 ment your appetite indirectly, by praising your health and 
 beauty. Be as determined as any one of the family ; and 
 continue sending back your plate till you are satisfied, should 
 it require twenty trips. The man who leaves table hungry 
 through bashfulness, will never make a figure in a world con- 
 stituted as this is ; he will infallibly become the prey of de- 
 signing villains ; if a literary man, he will never rise above 
 two guineas a -sheet ; at the bar, he will be browbeat even by 
 the Man without the forehead ; and were it possible to imagine 
 him a clergyman, what a figure would he cut at dinner on the 
 Monday of the Preachings ! 
 
 For the purposes above mentioned, Mrs Dods goes on to 
 say, " that the carver must be provided with a knife having a 
 good edge ; and it will greatly facilitate Iris operations if the 
 cook has previously taken care that the bones in all carcass- 
 joints are properly jointed." The sending up of a carcass- 
 joint not properly jointed, should, in our humble and humane 
 opinion, be made felony, without benefit of clergy. Curse the 
 cook, say we, who breaketh this law — simple hanging is too 
 good for her, and she should be hung in jack-chains. Why 
 have a cleaver in the kitchen at all ? yet, perhaps, the best 
 plan is to trust to the butcher — only the cook too must be 
 answerable, and then you have a double security against the* 
 commission of the greatest crime that can stain the culinary 
 annals of a Christian country. 
 
 We cannot leave the subject of carving without the follow- 
 ing judicious quotation : — 
 
 " Eoasted Pig. — We could wish that the practice of having 
 this dish carved by the cook were universal ; for, in this fas- 
 tidious age, the sanguinary spectacle of an entire four-footed 
 animal at table is anything but acceptable. Like the larger 
 poultry, pig is also very troublesome to the carver, who must 
 have a sharp knife, with which the head is to be taken off ir, 
 the first place : then cut down the back from neck to rump ; 
 afterwards remove the shoulder and leg on each side. The 
 ribs are then to be divided into four portions, and the legs and 
 shoulders cut in two. The ribs are, or rather were, esteemed 
 the most delicate part of this dish ; now the neck of a well- 
 roasted pig is the favourite morsel. The carver must use his 
 
 VOL. V. E 
 
66 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 discretion in distributing ear and jaw, as far as these will go, 
 and help stuffing and sauce more liberally." 
 
 To this we have only to add, that the man or woman (surgeons 
 excepted) who could cut up a pretty little roasted pig, would 
 most assuredly not scruple to murder an illegitimate child. 
 
 A Scotchman in London is perpetually pestered with the 
 question, " What is a Haggis ? " Now, no man can be rea- 
 sonably expected to have the definition of a haggis at his 
 finger-ends. Henceforth we expect that we shall be spared 
 such interrogatory. 
 
 " The Scotch Haggis. — Parboil a sheep's pluck and a piece 
 of good lean beef. Grate the half of the liver, and mince the 
 beef, the lights, and the remaining half of the liver. Take 
 of good beef-suet half the weight of this mixture, and mince 
 it with a dozen small firm onions. Toast some oatmeal be- 
 fore the fire for hours, till it is of a light-brown colour, 
 and perfectly dry. Less than two tea-cupfuls of meal will do 
 for this meat. Spread the mince on a board, and strew the 
 meal lightly over it, with a high seasoning of pepper, salt, 
 and a little Cayenne, well mixed. Have a haggis-bag per- 
 fectly clean, and see that there be no thin part in it, else your 
 whole labour will be lost by its bursting. Put in the meat 
 with as much good beef-gravy, or strong broth, as will make 
 it a thick stew. Be careful not to fill the bag too full, but 
 allow the meat room to swell ; add the juice of a lemon, or a 
 little good vinegar ; press out the air, and sow up the bag ; 
 prick it with a large needle, when it first swells in the pot, 
 to prevent bursting ; let it boil, but not violently, for three 
 hours. 
 
 " Obs. — This is a genuine Scotch haggis : there are, how- 
 ever, sundry modern refinements on the above receipt, — such 
 as eggs, milk, pounded biscuit, &c. &c. ; but these, by good 
 judges, are not deemed improvements." 
 
 A blind man cannot by any effort of the imagination con- 
 ceive colour — nor can any man alive, no, not the greatest poet 
 on earth, not Barry Cornwall himself, conceive a haggis with- 
 out having had it submitted to the senses. It takes possession 
 of the palate with a despotism that might be expected from 
 the " great chieftain of the pudding race." You forget for the 
 time-being all other tastes. The real dishes before you seem 
 fictions. You see them, but heed them not any more than 
 
MEG DODSS COOKERY. C7 
 
 ocular spectra. Your tongue feels enlarged in your mouth, 
 not in size only, but in sensibility. It is more fibrous, also 
 more porous. You could think it composed of the very haggis 
 it enjoys. There is a harmonious call among tongue, palate, 
 and insides of the cheeks. — That is the true total of the whole. 
 Your very eyes have a gust ; and your ears are somewhat dull 
 of hearing, trying to taste. The stomach receives without 
 effort, in Epicurean repose, and is satisfied in such gradual 
 delight, that you scarcely know when, how, or why you have 
 ceased to eat. You continue to eye the collapsed bag with 
 grateful affection, — command the waiter to behave kindly to 
 it when removed, — and follow it out of the room with a silent 
 benediction. 
 
 There is but one other Scotch dish at all comparable to a 
 haggis — "alike, but oh, how different!" — and that, gentle 
 reader, is Hotch-Potch. 
 
 " Hotch-Potch. — Make the stock of sweet fresh mutton. 
 Cut down four pounds of ribs of lamb into small steaks, and 
 put them to the strained stock. Grate two or three large car- 
 rots. Slice down as many more. Slice down also young turnips, 
 young onions, lettuce, and parsley. Have a full quart of these 
 things when shred, and another of young green pease. Put in 
 the vegetables, withholding half the pease till near the end of 
 the process. Boil well, and skim carefully; add the remaining 
 pease, white pepper, and salt ; and, when enough done, serve 
 the steaks in the tureen with the hotch-potch. 
 
 " Obs. — The excellence of this favourite dish, depends mainly 
 on the meat being perfectly fresh, and the vegetables being all 
 young, and full of sweet juices. The sweet white turnip is 
 best for hotch-potch, or the small, round, smooth-grained yellow 
 kind peculiar to Scotland. Mutton makes excellent hotch- 
 potch without any lamb- steaks. Parsley shred,white cabbage, 
 or lettuce, may be added to the other vegetables, or not, at 
 pleasure." 
 
 Hotch-potch, we cheerfully admit, is often met with in 
 England — but it is of Scottish extraction. The truly de- 
 lightful thing about hotch-potch is, that it comes in with 
 the season of green pease. At hotch-potch we always think 
 of the beautiful line of Burns — 
 
 " My heart rejoiced in Nature's jcy." 
 
68 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 It is redolent of summer-gardens, when gardens are in their 
 glory. It is a dish that must have been known in Paradise — 
 nor do we doubt that Meg Dods's receipt is the same as Eve's. 
 In describing a feast in Eden, Milton says, that while Adam 
 and Eve were listening to Kaphael, the affable archangel, "no 
 fear lest dinner cool." It was a cold dinner, it would appear, 
 and therefore neither our first parents, nor their celestial guest, 
 needed to be under any apprehensions of its getting any colder. 
 The same freedom from anxiety accompanies hotch-potch. 
 " No fear lest dinner cool;" for hotch-potch is the hottest 
 thing in nature. Yet it is not too hot — The elements of fire 
 and water are so mixed in him, that the lady of the house is 
 entitled to stand up and say, " That is a dish." It would 
 appear to be scalding, yet it scalds not. Yon tremble to put a 
 spoonful into your mouth, and blow cold ; but it is needless 
 all, — for carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, parsley, pease, and 
 lamb-steaks, delicate and small, interspersed with the stock of 
 sweet fresh mutton, are all at a temperature which some mys- 
 terious thermometer has regulated within the balmy and bal- 
 samic tureen that continues to fling up to heaven its rowling 
 incense. 
 
 We must forget, which God forbid, the happiest days of our 
 youth, before we become insensible to the charms of Sheep's- 
 head broth. This, we boldly say, is a dish peculiar to Scot- 
 land. What although it has been seen at the British Coffee- 
 house, London ? There it wants the true accent, and smacks 
 not of the green pastoral braes. It is incapable of being made 
 on the ultramontane side of the Tweed. As in Scotland alone 
 it boils, so to enjoy it you must be born a Scotsman. Hear it 
 simmer ! 
 
 " Sheep's-Head Broth. — Choose a large fat head. When 
 carefully singed by the blacksmith, soak it and the singed 
 trotters for a considerable time in lukewarm water. Take out 
 the glassy part of the eyes, and scrape the head and trotters 
 till perfectly clean and white ; then split the head with a 
 cleaver, and take out the brains, &c. ; split also the trotters, 
 and take out the tendons. Wash the head and feet once more, 
 and let them blanch till wanted for the pot. 
 
 " Take a small cupful of barley, and twice that quantity of 
 white, or old green pease, with a gallon or rather more of 
 water. Put to this the head and from two to three pounds of 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKERY. 69 
 
 scrag or trimmings of mutton perfectly sweet ; and some salt. 
 Take off the scum very carefully as it rises ; and the broth 
 will be as limpid and white as any broth made of beef or mut- 
 ton. When the head has boiled rather more than an hour, add 
 sliced carrot and turnip, and afterwards some onions and 
 parsley shred. A head or two of celery sliced is admired by 
 some modern gourmands, though we would rather approve of 
 the native flavour of this really excellent soup. The more 
 slowly the head is boiled, the better both the meat and soup 
 be. From two to three hours' boiling, according to the size of 
 the head and the age of the animal, and an hour's simmering 
 by the side of the fire, will finish the soup. Many prefer the 
 head of a ram to that of a wether, but it requires much longer 
 boiling. In either case the trotters require less boiling than 
 the head. Serve with the trotters, and sliced carrot round the 
 head." 
 
 One only fault have we to find with this receipt. Instead 
 of " one large fat Head," let there be Two. Instead of Four 
 Trotters, let there be Eight. The effeminate Southern objects 
 to the general blackness of the dish. That comes of looking 
 at great lumbering white-faced Leicesters. Why ! the living- 
 face of a true Scotch sheep is as black as that of a boiled one ! 
 So are the trotters. To suppose them white, would be hideous 
 to the most hungry. The teeth are white — the jaw-bones are 
 white — the cleaver- split skull is white — but would you have 
 the seducing lips white — the inviting nostrils white — the 
 fascinating chafts white ? Ah no ! Black as the comely coun- 
 tenance of that one of Afric's daughters, that won the heart of 
 Lieutenant Clapperton beside the fountain of the desert ! 
 
 Shall we ever live to forget those truly Doric dinners, that 
 duly every winter- Sabbath we devoured, we and two others 
 now no more, alternately in each other's "pensive citadel," 
 hung in the purer atmosphere of fourteen storeys ; and at night 
 shining like a star to mariners stemming the German ocean on 
 a happy homeward-bound ! No other dish but potatoes — and 
 the dinner cooked by a bit lassie, who had also to take care, all 
 the while, of the youngest bairn, while the honest couple were 
 at the Kirk. We were collegians— nor haply altogether unini- 
 tiated into the mysteries of divine philosophy — for Monro, and 
 Black, and Cullen, and Stewart, were yet in their prime. 
 
 At head and trotters we eat away in silence ; but over our 
 
70 essays: critical and imaginative. 
 
 •hot toddy (one moderate jug to each), ye gods I how we did 
 guffaw ! There was nobody to disturb, for the family were 
 taking their decent afternoon walk on the Calton Hill — sound 
 you know ascends, and the clouds are uninhabited. The little 
 round table was drawn to the window of the watch-tower, and 
 over the beautiful groves, where now the New Town stands, 
 our eyes wandered delighted down to the sea, and away to the 
 westward, where the Highland mountains seemed impatient 
 for the glory of the setting sun. Then what Tusculan dispu- 
 tations ! Powerful were we in argument in those days — at 
 least so we thought — media probandi were never wanting — 
 and we had winged words at will. When the blow of a thought 
 failed to level our opponent, we dazzled his eyesight with the 
 lightning of an image, and then running in, threw him a heavy 
 fall. No subject came amiss. Dim as it might seem at first 
 conception, and all unformed, how soon assumed it shape and 
 splendour ! Passed to and fro before our fancy, in numbers 
 numberless, apparitions that now come not at our call, but 
 seem to be all sunk for ever in the grave-cells of the sea. No 
 scepticism had we, but we believed devoutly in all great and 
 glorious things — in all things fair and lovely and of good 
 report — in men unswerving in friendship, and in women faith- 
 ful in love — in honour stainless as the burnished snow on the 
 mountain accessible but to the flying footsteps of the beams 
 of heaven — in the spirit of beauty that bathed the clouds, and 
 built them up into edifices, through whose arched portals 
 imagination walked as on wings into the great silent desert of 
 the sky — in the music that saddened old hoary forests as they 
 fluctuated in the night- wind — in voices heard in dreams, oh ! 
 how tremulously tender and how disturbingly divine ! in 
 thoughts whispering almost like voices from the penetralia of 
 our yet unpolluted hearts, and inspiring a glorious confidence 
 in our own virtue, and glorious visions of victories — alas! 
 never, never, to be won ; — for what was it all but that dear 
 and dread delusion, in which nature for a while nurses up the 
 human soul, in which Time seems the same as Eternity, and 
 the regions on this side of the grave so blessedly beautiful, that 
 the light of Heaven itself is but as the shadow of life's transi- 
 tory dream ! 
 
 We have in vain looked over Meg Dods again and again to 
 find a quotation worthy of following this flight — So to conclude 
 
MEG DODSS COOKERY. 71 
 
 — it is not uncommon to meet persons in private life who 
 declare that they are wholly indifferent about what they eat 
 or drink — that they eat and drink because they are hungry 
 and thirsty, and in order to recruit and keep up the system. 
 We also eat and drink because we are hungry and thirsty, and 
 in order to recruit and keep up the system ; but so far from 
 being indifferent about the matter, we hold the whole physical 
 arrangement to be most exquisite and delicious. In corrobo- 
 ration of this our belief, we need only refer the reader to this 
 and various other articles in the Magazine. Now we cheer- 
 fully admit, that there may be patients with callous appetites 
 and hebetated tongues, who have lost the delighted sense of 
 swallow, and are consequently such complete citizens of the 
 world, that they know no distinction between French ragout 
 and Welsh rabbit, Italian macaroni or Scotch rumbledethumps ; 
 but if palate and tongue be sound, then the man who says he 
 cares nought about eating and drinking, is obviously such a 
 monstrous and prodigious liar, that we only consider why the 
 earth does not open its jaws and swallow him on the spot. 
 Only look at him lunching when he fondly supposes himself in 
 privacy — and what a gormandiser I He is a great linguist, and 
 understands the Laplandish, as many a rein-deer would con- 
 fess, of whose tongue he had made himself master. He abso- 
 lutely bolts bacon like one of the North-Riding school. Now 
 he has swallowed the Oxford sausage ; and, finally, he revels 
 in the rookery of a supposed pigeon-house. Meanwhile he has 
 been sluicing his ivories with horn after horn of old Bell's 
 beer — trying whether it or his last importation of London 
 porter be preferable for forenoon imbibation. Look, and you 
 will see the large dew-drops on his forehead — listen, and you 
 will hear his jaw or cheek-bones clanking; and that is the 
 black-broth Spartan who is indifferent about what he eats or 
 drinks ! An ugly customer at an ordinary ! a dangerous 
 citizen in a beleagured town ! If bred to a seafaring life, the 
 first man to propose, when put on short allowance, to begin 
 eating the black cook and the cabin-boy ! 
 
 There is another class of men, not quite such hypocrites as 
 the above, mistaken men, who bestow upon themselves the 
 philosophical and eulogistical appellative of Plain-Eaters. 
 Now, strip a Plain-Eater of his name, and pray what is he ? 
 or in what does he essentially differ from his brethren of man* 
 
72 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 kind ? He likes roast, and boil, and stew. So do they. He 
 likes beef and veal, and venison and mutton, and lamb and 
 kid, and pig and pork, and ham and tongue. So do they. He 
 likes (does he not?) goose and turkey, and duck and how- 
 towdy, and grouse and partridge, and snipe and woodcock. 
 So do they. He likes salmon and cod, and sea-trout and tur- 
 bot, and every other species of salt-water fish. So do they. 
 He likes, or would like, if he tried it, a haggis. So do or 
 would they. He likes pancakes, and plum-pudding, and 
 brandy-nans. So do they. He likes Suffolk and Cheshire 
 cheese, Stilton and weeping Parmesan. So do they. He likes 
 grapes and grozets, pine-apples and jargonels. So do they. 
 He likes anchovies, and devilled legs of turkeys. So do they. 
 He likes green and black teas of the finest quality, rather 
 sweet than otherwise, and sugar- candied coffee, whose known 
 transparency is enriched with a copious infusion of the cream 
 of many Ayrshire cows, feeding upon old lea. So do they. 
 He likes at supper the "reliquias Danaum" — that is, the relics 
 of the dinners, presented in metamorphosis. So do they. He 
 thinks that nuts are nuts. So do they. If the crackers are 
 engaged, he rashly uses his teeth. So do they. He has been 
 known to pocket the leg of a fowl. So have they. Once he 
 has had a surfeit. So had they. Then was he very very 
 sick. So were they. He swallowed physic. So did they. 
 Or he threw it to the dogs. So did they. In all things the 
 similitude, nay the identity, is complete — either he descends 
 from his altitude — or all the world goes up- stairs to him — 
 mankind at large devour but one dish, or he is a Plain-Eater 
 no more. 
 
 The truth is, that it is as impossible to define a simple taste 
 in eating, as in writing, architecture, or sculpture. A seem- 
 ingly Doric dish, when analysed, is found to be composite. 
 We have seen a black -pudding with a Corinthian capital, 
 eaten in truly attic style. Perhaps there exists not, except in 
 abstraction, such a thing as a perfectly plain dish. A boiled 
 potato seems by no means complicated. But how rarely 
 indeed is it eaten without salt, and butter, and pepper, if not 
 fish, flesh, and fowl ! Keader I lay your hand on your heart 
 and say, have you ever more than thrice, during the course of 
 a long and well-spent life, eaten, bona fide per se, without 
 admixture of baser or nobler matter, a boiled mealy or waxy ? 
 
MEG DODS'S COOKERY. 73 
 
 We hear you answer in the negative. Look on any edible 
 animal in a live state, from an ox to a frog, and you will admit, 
 without farther argument, that he must undergo changes deep 
 and manifold, before you can think of eating him. Madame 
 Genlis tells us, in her amusing Memoirs, that once at a fishing 
 party, when a young married woman, to avoid the imputation 
 of being called a Cockney, she swallowed a live minnow. 
 That was plain eating. Madame Genlis was excelled by the 
 French prisoner at Plymouth who ate live cats, beginning at 
 the whisker and ending at the tip of the tail ; but we believe 
 that at particular parts he asked for a tallow candle. With- 
 out, however, reasoning the question too high, many is the 
 honest man who, w T hile he has been supposing himself enact- 
 ing the character of the Plain-Eater, has been masticating a 
 mixture composed of elements brought from the four quarters 
 of the habitable globe. That he might eat that plain rice- 
 pudding, a ship has gone down with all her crew. The black 
 population of the interior of Africa have been captived, fettered, 
 driven like hogs to the field, and hanged by scores, that he, 
 before going to bed with a cold in his nose, and a nasty 
 shivering, might take his — gruel. 
 
 We do not recollect ever to have witnessed anything 
 approaching to plain taste in eating, except in a military man 
 or two, who had seen severe service. One was a Major Some- 
 body, and the other a mere Captain — but they ate up whatever 
 might be put on their plates, without any varying expression 
 suited to the varying viands. In fact, they relished all edible 
 things, yet not passionately ; and were never heard to discuss 
 the character of a dish. Generally speaking, the army are 
 neither epicures nor gluttons, when on a peace-establishment. 
 What they may be in the field after a successful forage, we 
 know not, nor yet after storm or sack. The clergy are for- 
 midable diners, as you may see with half an eye, from the 
 most cursory survey of face and person. We defy you to find 
 an exception from curate to bishop throughout our whole Epis- 
 copalian church. No doubt, there are too many small livings 
 — yet produce the present incumbent (the late one is out of 
 reach), and you will find him a weighty argument against all 
 innovation in ecclesiastical affairs. Much comfortable eating 
 has arisen out of Queen Anne's bounty. Our Presbyterian 
 ministers are not a whit inferior to their English brethren in 
 
74 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 any one essential quality of the clerical character. It is now 
 the time of the General Assembly. What shoulders, and what 
 calves of legs ! Go to the Commissioner's dinner and admire 
 the transitory being of the products of this earth. Much good 
 eating goes on in manses, and in the houses of the heritors. 
 Most ministers are men of florid complexion, or a dark healthy 
 brown, and there is only one complaint of the stomach to 
 which they are ever subject. No member of their body ever 
 died of an atrophy. They can digest anything digestible — 
 and you may observe that, with a solitary exception here and 
 there, they all uniformly die of old age. A preacher, that is, 
 " a birkie without a manse," plays a capital knife and fork, 
 and a first-rate spoon. He seems always to be rather hungry 
 than otherwise — gaunt, and in strong condition. Not that he 
 or any of his cloth is a glutton. But being a good deal in the 
 open air, and riding or walking from manse to manse, with a 
 sermon in his pocket, the gastric juice is always in working 
 power, and he is ready for any meal at the shortest notice. 
 In every manse there should be a copy of Meg Dods lying 
 beside Sir John Sinclair. Let it be lent to a neighbour, who 
 will speedily purchase one of her own — she, too, will accom- 
 modate a friend — and thus, in a few months, there will be a 
 copy in every respectable house in the parish. Before the 
 arrival of Edward Irving's Millennium, in 1847, good eating in 
 Scotland will have reached its acme — and that event will be 
 celebrated by a Great National Festival, of which the Cookery 
 will be transcendental. Mr Irving will preside, and we our- 
 selves, if alive, will cheerfully accept the office of croupier. 
 ODoherty, then a grey-headed general, will sing an ode, 
 accompanied on the violin by Mr Tweedie of Linnhouse. 
 Maga, for February 1847, will indeed be a splendid Number. 
 Yes — the Millennium Number will be as famous as that of the 
 Chaldee or the Kirk of Shotts. But we are dreaming — and 
 must be off to walk with the Commissioner. 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 1 
 
 II. KINGS — CHAP. IV. VERSE 40. 
 [FEBRUARY 18:0.] 
 
 IQ! the work reviewed in this Essay, the Quarterly Review (No 192 March 
 1855} savs ■ " The world at large has almost forgotten Accum s celebrated 
 work Death in the Pot. A new generation has sprung up since it was 
 written, and fraudulent tradesmen and manufacturers have gone on in silence 
 and up to this time in security, falsifying the food and picking the pockets of 
 the people. Startling indeed as were the revelations in that remarkable book, 
 vet it had little effect in reforming the abuses it exposed -P. 460. lnese 
 remarks, and the interest which « the adulteration of food has recently ex- 
 cited, and still excites, may serve as an excuse (if any be needed) for the 
 republication of this article. It is a slight thing in itself ; but the Professor s 
 comments are not unamusing, and the extracts from Accum are curious and 
 interesting -the more so as they are taken from a book which is now for- 
 gotten, but which made some noise in its day. The article seems to form 
 a suitable sequel to Meg Dods. For further and more recent information on the 
 subject of which it treats, the scientific reader is referred to the article in 
 the Quarterly already alluded to ; to - Food and its Adulterations-com- 
 posing the reports of the Analytic Sanatory Commission ^of 1 the Lancet, m the 
 years 1851 to 1854 inclusive," by Arthur Hill Hassall, M.D., London, 1855 ; 
 to « Des Falsifications des Substances Alimentaires et des moyens chemiques 
 de les reconnaitre, par Jules Gamier, et Ch. Harel, Pari,;" and to Diction- 
 airedes Alterations et Falsifications des Substances Alimentaires, Med ca- 
 menteuses, et Commerciales avec Vindication des moyens de les reconnaitre, 
 par M. A. Chevallier : Paris."] 
 We bless our stars that a knowledge of the art of cookery 
 does not constitute any part of our acquirements. We are 
 so thoroughly convinced a priori of the disgusting character 
 of its secrets, and the impurity of its details, that we are quite 
 sure a more intimate acquaintance with them would have 
 i A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, exhibiting the 
 Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine Spirituous Liquors ^ Tea, 
 Coffee, Cream, Confectionary, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, live Oil 
 Pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy. And methods oi 
 detecting them. By Frederick ACCUM, Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Prac . 
 tical Chemistry, Mineralogy, &c. &c. &c. 
 
7G ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 embittered our existence, and have destroyed for ever the 
 usual healthy tone of our stomach. We make it a point, 
 therefore, uniformly, to lull our suspicions, and to discuss any 
 savoury dish that may be placed before us, without asking 
 any questions about its ingredients. It is really much more 
 agreeable to be allowed quietly to mistake a stewed cat for a 
 rabbit, than to be made post factum accessaries to the decep- 
 tion. When we have finished our salad, we are by no means 
 anxious to receive any proof, however clear, that it was sea- 
 soned with a preparation of Whale's blubber instead of Flo- 
 rence oil. And we should consider ourselves under a very 
 trifling obligation to any " damned good-natured friend," who 
 should take the trouble of demonstrating that the Kein-deer 
 tongue, which gives so pleasant a relish to our breakfast, had 
 been recently abstracted from the jaws of some distempered 
 poodle. Misfortunes of this kind it is impossible for human 
 sagacity to prevent, while they are perhaps too grievous for 
 human patience to bear. Our best refuge, therefore, is our 
 ignorance, and where that alone constitutes our happiness, 
 surely we must agree with the poet, that it is indeed folly to 
 be wise. 
 
 Mr Accum, it appears, is one of those very good-natured 
 friends above alluded to, who is quite resolved not to allow us 
 to be cheated and poisoned as our fathers were before us, and 
 our children will be after us, without cackling to us of our 
 danger, and opening our eyes to abysses of fraud and imposi- 
 tion, of the very existence of which we had until now the good 
 fortune to be entirely ignorant. His book is a perfect death's 
 head, a memento mori, the perusal of any single chapter of 
 which is enough to throw any man into the blue devils for a 
 fortnight. Mr Accum puts us something in mind of an offi- 
 cious blockhead, who, instead of comforting his dying friend, 
 is continually jogging him on the elbow, with such cheering 
 assurances as the following : " T am sorry there is no hope ; 
 my dear fellow, you must kick the bucket soon. Your liver 
 is diseased, your lungs gone, your bowels as impenetrable as 
 marble, your legs swelled like door-posts, your face as yellow 
 as a guinea ; and the doctor just now assured me you could not 
 live a week." It is quite in vain for Mr Accum to allege, that 
 " our bane and antidote are both before us ; " that he has not 
 only made us acquainted with the deadly frauds which are 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 77 
 
 daily practised on our stomachs, but afforded us unerring 
 chemical tests by which these frauds may be detected. Is it 
 for a moment to be supposed, that we are not to eat a muffin 
 or a slice of toast without first subjecting it to an experiment 
 with muriate of barytes ? Does Mr Accum expect us to resort 
 to the cider cellar, or the Burton ale-house, loaded with 
 retorts and crucibles, and with our pockets crammed with 
 tincture of galls, ammonia, and prussiate of potash ? Are we 
 to refuse to partake of a bottle of old Madeira, whenever we 
 may chance to have forgotten to provide ourselves with the 
 solution of sub-acetate of lead ? For our own part, we must 
 say, that rather than submit to such intolerable restrictions as 
 these, we should prefer (dreadful alternative !) to double the 
 dose of poison, and put a speedy end to our existence, by 
 devouring a second roll to breakfast, and swallowing twice as 
 much wine and porter after dinner as we have hitherto been 
 accustomed to. 
 
 But in the dense and extended atmosphere of fraud, in which, 
 it appears, we are condemned to live, move, and have our being, 
 what reason have we to expect, that the very chemical sub- 
 stances which are necessary to expose our danger have not 
 themselves partaken of the general adulteration? Mr Accum 
 himself tells us, that " nine-tenths of the most potent drugs 
 and chemical preparations used in pharmacy are vended in a 
 sophisticated state by dealers, who would be the last to be 
 suspected." Let us, therefore, since it must be so, reconcile 
 ourselves to be poisoned with a good grace ; and since we can 
 have no hopes of a reprieve, imitate the Jemmy Jessamy 
 thief, who behaves prettily on the scaffold, skips up the ladder 
 with the air of a dancing-master, ogles the girls while the 
 halter is adjusting, and drops the handkerchief with all the 
 graces of a Turkish petit-maitre in his Harem. 
 
 Mr Accum's work is evidently written in the same spirit of 
 dark and melancholy anticipation, which pervades Dr Kobi- 
 son's celebrated " Proofs of a Conspiracy, &c. against all the 
 crowned heads of Europe." The conspiracy disclosed by Mr 
 Accum is certainly of a still more dreadful nature, and is even 
 more widely ramified than that which excited so much horror 
 in the worthy professor. It is a conspiracy of brewers, bakers, 
 grocers, wine-merchants, confectioners, apothecaries, and 
 cooks, against the lives of all and every one of his majesty's 
 
78 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 liege subjects. It is easy to see that Mr Accuin's nerves are 
 considerably agitated, that — 
 
 " Sad forebodings shake him as he writes." 
 
 Not only at the festive board is he haunted by chimeras dire 
 of danger — not only does he tremble over the tureen — and 
 faint over the flesh-pot ; but even in his chintz night-gown, 
 and red morocco slippers, he is not secure. An imaginary 
 sexton is continually jogging his elbow as he writes, a death's 
 head and cross bones rise on his library table ; and at the end 
 of his sofa he beholds a visionary tombstone of the best 
 
 ON WHICH ARE INSCRIBED THE DREADFUL WORDS- 
 
 Hic Jacet 
 FREDERICK ACCUM, 
 
 Operative Chemist, 
 
 OLD COMPTON STREET, 
 
 SOHO. 
 
 Judging from ourselves, Mr Accum has been tolerably suc- 
 cessful in communicating his own terror to his readers. Since 
 we read his book, our appetite has visibly decreased. At the 
 Celtic Club, yesterday, we dined almost entirely on roast beef ; 
 Mr Oman's London-particular Madeira lost all its relish, and 
 we turned pale in the act of eating a custard, when we recol- 
 lected the dreadful punishment inflicted on custard-eaters in 
 page 326 of the present work. We beg to assure our friends, 
 therefore, that at this moment they may invite us to dinner 
 with the greatest impunity. Our diet is at present quite 
 similar to that of Parnell's Hermit, — 
 
 " Our food the fruits, our drink the crystal well ; " 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 79 
 
 though we trust a few days will recover us from our panic, 
 and enable us to resume our former habits of life. Those of 
 our friends, therefore, who have any intention of pasturing us, 
 had better not lose the present opportunity of doing so. So 
 favourable a combination of circumstances must have been 
 quite unhoped for on their part, and most probably will never 
 occur again. 1 V. S. 
 
 Since, by the publication of Mr Accum's book, an end has 
 been for ever put to our former blessed state of ignorance, let 
 us arm ourselves with philosophy, and boldly venture to look 
 our danger in the face ; or, as the poet beautifully expresses 
 it, in language singularly applicable : — 
 
 "Come, Christopher, and leave all meaner things 
 To low ambition and the pride of kings ; 
 Let us, since life can little else supply 
 Than just to swallow poison and to die, 
 Expatiate free o'er all this dreadful field, 
 Try what the brewer, what the baker yield ; 
 Explore the druggists' shop, the butchers' stall ; 
 Expose their roguery, and — damn them all ! " 
 
 Pope. 
 
 The following extract from the prefatory observations of 
 Mr Accum, will give the reader a sort of a priori taste of what 
 is to follow. Like the preliminary oysters of a Frenchman's 
 dinner, they will serve to whet the appetite for the more sub- 
 stantial banquet which is to succeed. 
 
 Of all the frauds practised by mercenary dealers, there is none more 
 reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication 
 of the various articles of food. 
 
 This unprincipled and nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has 
 been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity 
 which can be classed among either the necessaries or the luxuries of life, 
 and is carried on to a most alarming extent in every part of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 It has been pursued by men who, from the magnitude and apparent 
 respectability of their concerns, would be the least obnoxious to public 
 suspicion ; and their successful example has called forth, from among the 
 retail dealers, a multitude of competitors in the same iniquitous course. 
 
 1 To save some trouble, we may announce that we are already engaged to 
 dinner on the 23d, 27th, and 28th of this month, and to evening parties od 
 the 22d, 23d, 26th, 28th, and 29th, and 3d of March- 
 
80 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 To such, perfection of ingenuity has this system of adulterating food 
 arrived, that spurious articles of various kinds are everywhere to be found, 
 made up so skilfully as to baffle the discrimination of the most experienced 
 judges. 
 
 Among the number of substances used in domestic economy, which 
 are now very generally found sophisticated, may be distinguished — tea, 
 coffee, bread, beer, wine, spirituous liquors, salad-oil, pepper, vinegar, mus- 
 tard, cream, and other articles of subsistence. 
 
 Indeed it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is 
 not to be met with in an adulterated state ; and there are some substances 
 which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine. 
 
 There are particular chemists, who make it a regular trade to supply 
 drugs or nefarious preparations to the unprincipled brewer of porter or ale ; 
 others perform the same office to the wine and spirit merchant ; and others 
 again to the grocer and the oilman. The operators carry on their processes 
 chiefly in secresy, and under some delusive firm, with the ostensible denote- 
 ments of a fair and lawful establishment. 
 
 These illicit pursuits have assumed all the order and method of a regular 
 trade ; they may severally claim to be distinguished as an art and mystery ; 
 for the workmen employed in them are often wholly ignorant of the nature 
 of the substances which pass through their hands, and of the purposes to 
 which they are ultimately applied. 
 
 To elude the vigilance of the inquisitive, to defeat the scrutiny of the 
 revenue officer, and to insure the secresy of these mysteries, the processes 
 are very ingeniously divided and subdivided among individual operators, and 
 the manufacture is purposely carried on in separate establishments. The 
 task of proportioning the ingredients for use is assigned to one individual, 
 while the composition and preparation of them may be said to form a dis- 
 tinct part of the business, and is intrusted to another workman. Most of 
 the articles are transmitted to the consumer in a disguised state, or in such 
 a form that their real nature cannot possibly be detected by the unwary. 
 Thus the extract of Cocculus indicus, employed by fraudulent manufacturers 
 of malt liquors to impaii, an intoxicating quality to porter or ales, is known 
 in the market by the name of black extract, ostensibly destined for the use 
 of tanners and dyers. It is obtained by boiling the berries of the Cocculus 
 indicus in water, and converting, by a subsequent evaporation, this decoction 
 into a stiff black tenacious mass, possessing, in a high degree, the narcotic 
 and intoxicating quality of the poisonous berry from which it is prepared. 
 Another substance, composed of extract of quassia and liquorice juice, used 
 by fraudulent brewers to economise both malt and hops, is technically 
 called multum. 
 
 The quantities of Cocculus indicus berries, as well as of black extract, 
 imported into this country for adulterating malt liquors, are enormous. It 
 forms a considerable branch of commerce in the hands of a few brokers ; 
 yet, singular as it may seem, no inquiiy appears to have been hitherto made 
 by the officers of the revenue respecting its application. Many other sub- 
 stances employed in the adulteration of beer, ale, and spirituous liquors, are 
 
' THEEE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 81 
 
 in a similar manner intentionally disguised ; and of the persons by whom 
 they are purchased, a great number are totally unacquainted with their 
 nature or composition. 
 
 An extract, said to be innocent, sold in casks, containing from half a hun- 
 dredweight to five hundredweight by the brewers' druggists, under the 
 name of bittern, is composed of calcined sulphate of iron (copperas), extract 
 of Cocculus indicus berries, extract of quassia, and Spanish liquorice. 
 
 It would be veiy easy to adduce, in support of these remarks, the testi- 
 mony of numerous individuals, by whom I have been professionally en- 
 gaged to examine certain mixtures, said to be perfectly innocent, which are 
 used in very extensive manufactories of the above description. Indeed, 
 during the long period devoted to the practice of my profession, I have had 
 abundant reason to be convinced that a vast number of dealers, of the high- 
 est respectability, have vended to their customers articles absolutely poison- 
 ous, which they themselves considered as harmless, and which they would 
 not have offered for sale, had they been apprised of the spurious and per- 
 nicious nature of the compounds, and of the purposes to which they were 
 destined. 
 
 For instance, I have known cases in which brandy-merchants were not 
 aware that the substance which they frequently purchase, under the delu- 
 sive name of flash, for strengthening and clarifying spirituous liquors, and 
 which is held out as consisting of burnt sugar and isinglass only, in the 
 form of an extract, is in reality a compound of sugar with extract of capsi- 
 cum ; and that to the acrid and pungent qualities of the capsicum is to be 
 ascribed the heightened flavour of brandy and rum, when coloured with the 
 above-mentioned matter. 
 
 In other cases, the ale-brewer has been supplied with ready-ground cori- 
 ander seeds, previously mixed with a portion of Nux vomica and quassia, to 
 give a bitter taste and narcotic property to the beverage. 
 
 The baker asserts that he does not put alum into bread ; but he is well 
 aware that, in purchasing a certain quantity of flour, he must take a sack 
 of sharp whites (a term given to flour contaminated with a quantity of 
 alum), without which it would be impossible for him to produce light, 
 white, and porous bread, from a half -spoiled material. 
 
 The wholesale mealman frequently purchases this spuriotis commodity, 
 (which forms a separate branch of business in the hands of certain indi- 
 viduals), in order to enable himself to sell his decayed and half -spoiled 
 flour. 
 
 Other individuals furnish the baker with alum mixed up with salt, under 
 the obscure denomination of stuff. There are wholesale manufacturing 
 chemists, whose sole business is to crystallise alum in such a form as will 
 adapt this salt to the purpose of being mixed in a crystalline state with the 
 crystals of common salt, to disguise the character of the compound. The 
 mixture called stuff is composed of one part of alum, in minute crystals, 
 and three of common salt. In many other trades a similar mode of 
 proceeding prevails. Potatoes are soaked in water to augment their 
 weight. 
 
 VOL. V. F 
 
82 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 When these detestable artifices have succeeded in produc- 
 ing on our health the effects that might be anticipated from 
 them, we naturally send to our friend the apothecary's for a 
 dose of glauber, or proceed to fortify our viscera by a course 
 of tonics. Mark the sequel. 
 
 Nine-tenths of the most potent drugs and chemical preparations used in 
 pharmacy are vended in a sophisticated state by dealers who would be the 
 last to be suspected. It is well known that, of the article Peruvian bark, 
 there is a variety of species inferior to the genuine ; that too little discrimi- 
 nation is exercised by the collectors of this precious medicament ; that it is 
 carelessly assorted, and is frequently packed in green hides ; that much of 
 it arrives in Spain in a half-decayed state, mixed with fragments of other 
 vegetables and various extraneous substances ; and in this state is distri- 
 buted throughout Europe. 
 
 But, as if this were not a sufficient deterioration, the public are often 
 served with a spurious compound of mahogany sawdust and oak-wood, 
 ground into powder, mixed with a proportion of good quinquina, and sold 
 as genuine bark powder. 
 
 Every chemist knows that there are mills constantly at work in this 
 metropolis, which furnish bark powder at a much cheaper rate than the 
 substance can be procured for in its natural state. The price of the best 
 genuine bark, upon an average, is not lower than twelve shillings the pound; 
 but immense quantities of powder bark are supplied to the apothecaries at 
 three or four shillings a pound. 
 
 It is also notorious that there are manufacturers of spurious rhubarb 
 powder, ipecacuanha powder, James's powder, and other simple and com- 
 pound medicines of gx-eat potency, who carry on their diabolical trade on 
 an amazingly large scale. Indeed, the quantity of medical preparations 
 thus sophisticated exceeds belief. Cheapness, and not genuineness and 
 excellence, is the grand desideratum with the unprincipled dealers in drugs 
 and medicines. 
 
 Those who are familiar with chemistry may easily convince themselves 
 of the existence of the fraud, by subjecting to a chemical examination 
 either spirits of hartshorn, magnesia, calcined magnesia, calomel, or any 
 other chemical preparation in general demand 
 
 The eager and insatiable thirst for gain, which seems to be a leading 
 characteristic of the times, calls into action every human faculty, and gives 
 an irresistible impulse to the power of invention ; and where lucre becomes 
 the reigning principle, the possible sacrifice of even a fellow creature's life 
 is a secondary consideration. In reference to the deterioration of almost all 
 the necessaries and comforts of existence, it may be justly observed, in a 
 civil as well as a religious sense, that " in the midst of life we are in death. " 
 
 Melancholy as these details are, there is something almost 
 ludicrous, we think, in the very extent to which the decep- 
 tions are carried. So inextricably are we all immersed in 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE FOT. 83 
 
 this mighty labyrinth of fraud, that even the venders of poison 
 themselves are forced, by a sort of retributive justice, to swal- 
 low it in their turn. Thus the apothecary, who sells the poi- 
 sonous ingredients to the brewer, chuckles over his roguery, 
 and swallows his own drugs in his daily copious exhibitions 
 of Brown stout. The brewer, in his turn, is poisoned by the 
 baker, the wine-merchant, and the grocer. And whenever 
 the baker's stomach fails him, he meets his coup de grace in 
 the adulterated drugs of his friend the apothecary, whose health 
 he has been gradually contributing to undermine, by feeding 
 him every morning on chalk and alum, in the shape of hot rolls. 
 Our readers wiU now, we think, be able to form a general 
 idea of the perils to which they are exposed by every meal. 
 Even w T ater-drinkers are not safe, as the following extract will 
 pretty satisfactorily demonstrate. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the mode of preserving water intended for 
 food or drink in leaden reservoirs, is exceedingly improper ; and although 
 pure water exercises no sensible action upon metallic lead, provided air be 
 excluded, the metal is certainly acted on by the water when air is admitted : 
 this effect is so obvious, that it cannot escape the notice of the least atten- 
 tive observer. 
 
 The white line, which may be seen at the surface of the water preserved 
 in leaden cisterns, where the metal touches the water and where the air is 
 admitted, is a carbonate of lead, formed at the expense of the metal. This 
 cubstance, when taken into the stomach, is highly deleterious to health. 
 This was the reason which induced the ancients to condemn leaden pipes 
 for the conveyance of water ; it having been remarked, that persons who 
 swallowed the sediment of such water became affected with disorders of the 
 bowels 
 
 The following instance is related by Sir George Baker : — 
 
 " A gentleman was the father of a numerous offspring, having had one- 
 and-twenty children, of whom eight died young, and thirteen survived their 
 parents. During their infancy, and indeed until they had quitted the place of 
 their usual residence, they were all remarkably unhealthy ; being particularly 
 subject to disorders of the stomach and bowels. The father, during many 
 years, was paralytic ; the mother, for a long time, was subject to colics and 
 bilious obstructions. 
 
 " After the death of the parents, the family sold the house which they 
 had so long inhabited. The purchaser found it necessary to repair the 
 pump. This was made of lead ; which, upon examination, was found to be 
 so corroded that several perforations were observed in the cylinder in 
 which the bucket plays, and the cistern in the upper part was reduced to 
 the thinness of common brown paper, and was full of holes like a sieve." 
 
 I have myself seen numerous instances where leaden cisterns have com- 
 pletely corroded by the action of water with which they were in contact ; 
 
84 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 and there is, perhaps, not a plumber who cannot give testimony of having 
 experienced numerous similar instances in the practice of his trade. 
 
 I have been frequently called upon to examine leaden cisterns, which had 
 become leaky on account of the action of the water which they contained ; 
 and I could adduce an instance of a legal controversy having taken place to 
 settle the disputes between the proprietors of an estate and a plumber, ori- 
 ginating from a similar cause,— the plumber being accused of having 
 furnished a faulty reservoir, whereas the case was proved to be owing to 
 the chemical action of the water on the lead. Water containing a large 
 quantity of common air and carbonic acid gas, always acts very sensibly on 
 metallic lead. 
 
 Water which has no sensible action, in its natural state, upon lead, may 
 acquire the capability of acting on it by heterogeneous matter, which it 
 may accidentally receive. Numerous instances have shown that vegetable 
 matter, such as leaves, falling into leaden cisterns filled with water, im- 
 parted to the water a considerable solvent power of action on the lead, 
 which, in its natural state, it did not possess. Hence the necessity of 
 keeping leaden cisterns clean ; and this is the more necessary, as their 
 situations expose them to accidental impurities." 
 
 From water — a liquor not the most consonant to our taste — 
 we gladly turn to wine, the inspirer of love and of valour, the 
 friend of generous sentiments and heroic deeds. We sincerely 
 trust that our own wine-merchant, at least, can conscientiously 
 plead not guilty to the following indictment : — 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious that few of those commodities which are the 
 objects of commerce, are adulterated to a greater extent than wine. All 
 persons moderately conversant with the subject are aware, that a portion 
 of alum is added to young and meagre red wines, for the purpose of bright- 
 ening their colour ; that Brazil wood, or the husks of elderberries and bil- 
 berries, are employed to impart a deep rich purple tint to red Port of a 
 pale, faint colour ; that gypsum is used to render cloudy white wines trans- 
 parent ; that an additional astringency is imparted to immature red wines 
 by means of oak-wood sawdust and the husks of filberts ; and that a mixture 
 of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched 
 compound frequently sold in this town by the name of genuine old Port. 
 
 Various expedients are resorted to for the purpose of communicating 
 particular flavours to insipid wines. Thus a nutty flavour is produced by 
 bitter almonds ; factitious Port wine is flavoured with a tincture drawn 
 from the seeds of raisins; and the ingredients employed to form the 
 bouquet of high-flavoured wines, are sweet-brier, oris-root, clary, cherry- 
 laurel water, and elder-flowers. 
 
 The flavouring ingredients used by manufacturers, may all be purchased 
 by those dealers in wine who are initiated in the mysteries of the trade ; 
 and even a manuscript receipt-book for preparing them, and the whole 
 mystery of managing all sorts of wines, may be obtained on payment of a 
 considerable fee. 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 85 
 
 The sophistication of wine with substances not absolutely noxious to 
 health, is carried to an enormous extent in this metropolis. Many thou- 
 sand pipes of spoiled cider are annually brought hither from the country, 
 for the purpose of being converted into factitious Port wine. The art of 
 manufacturing spurious wine is a regular trade of great extent in this 
 metropolis. 
 
 There is, in this city, a certain fraternity of chemical operators, who 
 work under ground in holes, caverns, and dark retirements, to conceal their 
 mysteries from the eyes and observation of mankind. These subterraneous 
 philosophers are daily employed in the transmutation of liquors, and, by the 
 power of magical drugs and incantations, raising under the streets of Lon- 
 don the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France. They can 
 squeeze Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw Champagne from an apple. 
 Virgil, in that remarkable prophecy,— 
 
 Incultisque rubena pendebit sentibus uva.— Virg. Ed. iv. 29. 
 " The ripening grape shall hang on every thorn,"— 
 seems to have hinted at this art, which can turn a plantation of northern 
 hedges into a vineyard. These adepts are known among one another by 
 the name of Wine-brewers ; and, I am afraid, do great injury, not only to 
 her Majesty's customs, but to the bodies of many of her good subjects. 
 
 The particular and separate department in this factitious wine trade, 
 called crusting, consists in lining the interior surface of empty wine-bottles, 
 in part, with a red crust of super-tartrate of potash, by suffering a saturated 
 hot solution of this salt, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil-wood, to 
 crystallise in them ; and after this simulation of maturity is perfected, 
 they are filled with the compound called Port wine. 
 
 Other artisans are regularly employed in staining the lower extremities 
 of bottle-corks with a fine red colour, to appear, on being drawn, as if they 
 had been long in contact with the wine. 
 
 The preparation of an astringent extract, to produce, from spoiled 
 home-made and foreign wine, a " genuine old Port," by mere admixture ; or 
 to impart to a weak wine a rough austere taste, a fine colour, and a peculiar 
 flavour,— forms one branch of the business of particular wine-coopers; 
 while the mellowing and restoring of spoiled white wines is the sole occu- 
 pation of men who are called refiners of wine. 
 
 We have stated that a crystalline crust is formed on the interior sur- 
 face of bottles, for the purpose of misleading the unwary into a belief that 
 the wine contained in them is of a certain age. A correspondent operation 
 is performed on the wooden cask ; the whole interior of which is stained 
 artificially with a crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, artfully 
 affixed in a manner precisely similar to that before stated. Thus the wine- 
 merchant, after bottling off a pipe of wine, is enabled to impose on the 
 iinderstanding of his customers, by taking to pieces the cask, and exhibiting 
 the beautiful dark-coloured and fine crystalline crust, as an indubitable 
 proof of the age of the wine ; a practice by no means uncommon, to flatter 
 the vanity of those who pride themselves in their acute discrimination of 
 wines. 
 
88 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 These and many other sophistications, which have long been practised 
 with impunity, are considered as legitimate by those who pride themselves 
 for their skill in the art of managing, or, according to the familiar phrase, 
 doctoring wines. The plea alleged in exculpation of them is, that, though 
 deceptive, they are harmless ; but even admitting this as a palliation, yet 
 they form only one department of an art which includes other processes of 
 a tendency absolutely criminal. 
 
 Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me, that the adultera- 
 tion of wine with substances deleterious to health, is certainly practised 
 oftener than is perhaps suspected; and it would be easy to give some 
 instances of very serious effects having arisen from wines contaminated 
 with deleterious substances, were this a subject on which I meant to speak. 
 The following statement is copied from the Monthly Magazine for March 
 1811, p. 188:— 
 
 "On the 17th of January the passengers by the Highflyer coach, from 
 the north, dined as usual at Newark. A bottle of Port wine was ordered, 
 on tasting which, one of the passengers observed that it had an unpleasant 
 flavour, and begged that it might be changed. The waiter took away the 
 bottle, poured into a fresh decanter half the wine which had been objected 
 to, and filled it up from another bottle. This he took into the room, and 
 the greater part was drank by the passengers, who, after the coach had set 
 out towards Grantham, were seized with extreme sickness ; one gentleman 
 in particular, who had taken more of the wine than the others, it was 
 thought would have died, but has since recovered. The half of the bottle 
 of wine sent out of the passengers' room was put aside for the purpose of 
 mixing negus. In the evening, Mr Bland, of Newark, went into the 
 hotel, and drank a glass or two of wine and water. He returned home at 
 his usual hour, and went to bed ; in the middle of the night he was taken 
 so ill as to induce Mrs Bland to send for his brother, an apothecary in the 
 town ; but before that gentleman arrived he was dead. An inquest was 
 held, and the jury, after the fullest inquiry, and the examination of the 
 surgeons by whom the body was opened, returned a verdict of — Died by 
 poison." 
 
 Mr Accum's details on the adulteration of wine are extremely- 
 ample, — and so interesting, that we regret our limits prevent 
 our making more copious extracts, and oblige us to refer our 
 readers for farther information to the work itself. 
 
 Having thus laid open to our view the arcana of the cellar, 
 Mr Accum next treats us with an expose of the secrets of the 
 brewhouse. Verily, the wine-merchant and brewer are par 
 nobile fratrum; and after the following disclosures, it will hence- 
 forth be a matter of the greatest indifference to us, whether 
 we drink Perry or Champagne, Hermitage or Brown stout. 
 Latet anguis in poculo, there is disease and death in them all, 
 
THERE IS DEATH IX THE POT. 87 
 
 and one is only preferable to the other, because it will poison 
 us at about one-tenth of the expense. 
 
 Malt liquors, and particularly porter, the favourite beverage of the inha- 
 bitants of London and of other large towns, is amongst those articles in 
 the manufactxire of which the greatest frauds are frequently committed. 
 
 The statute prohibits the brewer from using any ingredients in his 
 brewings, except malt and hops ; but it too often happens that those who 
 suppose they are drinking a nutritious beverage, made of these ingredients 
 only, are entirely deceived. The beverage may, in fact, be neither more 
 nor less than a compound of the most deleterious substances ; and it is also 
 clear, that all ranks of society are alike exposed to the nefarious fraud. 
 
 The proofs of this statement will be shown hereafter 
 
 The fraud of imparting to porter and ale an intoxicating quality by nar- 
 cotic substances, appears to have flourished during the period of the late 
 French war ; for, if we examine the importation lists of drugs, it will be 
 noticed that the quantities of Cocculus indicus imported in a given time 
 prior to that period will bear no comparison with the quantity imported 
 in the same space of time during the war, although an additional duty was 
 laid upon this commodity. Such has been the amount brought into this 
 country in five years, that it far exceeds the quantity imported during 
 twelve years anterior to the above epoch. The price of this drug has risen 
 within these ten years from two shillings to seven shillings the pound. 
 
 It was at the period to which we have alluded, that the preparation of an 
 extract of Cocculus indicus first appeared, as a new saleable commodity, in 
 the price-currents of brewers' -druggists. It was at the same time, also, that 
 a Mr Jackson, of notorious memory, fell upon the idea of brewing beer 
 from various drugs, without any malt and hops. This chemist did not turn 
 brewer himself ; but he struck out the more profitable trade of teaching his 
 mj-stery to the brewers for a handsome fee. From that time forwards, 
 written directions and receipt-books for using the chemical preparations to 
 be substituted for malt and hops, were respectively sold ; and many adepts 
 soon afterwards appeared everywhere, to instruct brewers in the nefarious 
 practice first pointed out by Mr Jackson. From that time, also, the 
 fraternity of brewers'-chemists took its rise. They made it their chief 
 business to send travellers all over the country, with lists and samples 
 exhibiting the price and quality of the articles manufactured by them for 
 the use of brewers only. Their trade spread far and wide, but it was 
 amongst the country brewers chiefly that they found the most customers ; 
 and it is amongst them, up to the present day, as I am assured by some of 
 these operators, on whose veracity I can rely, that the greatest quantities 
 of unlawful ingredients are sold. 
 
 The following extract relates to the same subject, and we 
 are glad to find by it that none of the eleven great porter 
 brewers have ever been detected in any illegal sophistication 
 of their beer. Mr Accum very properly gives us a list of those 
 
88 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 miscreants who have been convicted of adulterating their 
 porter with poisonous ingredients, and want of room alone 
 prevents us from damning them to everlasting fame, by 
 inserting their names in the imperishable pages of this mis- 
 cellany. 
 
 That a minute portion of an unwholesome ingredient, daily taken in beer, 
 cannot fail to be productive of mischief, admits of no doubt ; and there is 
 reason to believe that a small quantity of a narcotic substance (and Cocculus 
 indicus is a powerful narcotic) daily taken into the stomach, together with 
 an intoxicating liquor, is highly more efficacious than it would be without 
 the liquor. The effect may be gradual ; and a strong constitution, espe- 
 cially if it be assisted with constant and hard labour, may counteract the 
 destructive consequences perhaps for many years ; but it never fails to show 
 its baneful effects at last. Independent of this, it is a well-established fact, 
 that porter-drinkers are very liable to apoplexy and palsy, without taking 
 this narcotic poison. 
 
 If we judge from the preceding lists of prosecutions and convictions 
 furnished by the Solicitor of the Excise, it will be evident that many whole- 
 sale brewers, as well as retail dealers, stand very conspicuous among those 
 offenders. But the reader will likewise notice, that there are no convic- 
 tions, in any instance, against any of the eleven great London porter 
 brewers for any illegal practice. The great London brewers, it appears, 
 believe that the publicans alone adulterate the beer. That many of the 
 latter have been convicted of this fraud, the Report of the Board of Excise 
 amply shows. — See p. 176. 
 
 The following statement relating to this subject, we transcribe from a 
 Parliamentary document. 
 
 Mr Perkins, being asked whether he believed that any of the inferior 
 brewers adulterated beer, answered, " I am satisfied there are some instances 
 of that." 
 
 Question. — " Do you believe publicans do ?" Answer. — " I believe they 
 do." Q.— « To a great extent ? " A .—" Yes." Q.— " Do you believe they 
 adulterate the beer you sell them ?" A. — "I am satisfied there are some 
 instances of that." 
 
 Mr J. Martineau being asked the following : Question. — "In your judg- 
 ment is any of the beer of the metropolis, as retailed to the publican, mixed 
 with any deleterious ingredients ? " 
 
 A. — "In retailing beer, in some instances, it has been." 
 
 Q- — " By whom, in your opinion, has that been done ? " 
 
 A . — " In that case by the publicans who vend it." 
 
 On this point, it is but fair to the minor brewers to record also the 
 answers of some officers of the revenue, when they were asked whether 
 they considered it more difficult to detect nefarious practices in large 
 breweries than in small ones ? 
 
 Mr J. Rogers being thus questioned in the committee of the House of 
 Commons, — " Supposing the large brewers to use deleterious or any illegal 
 ingredients to such an amount as could be of any importance to their con- 
 
THERE IS DEATH IX THE POT. 89 
 
 cerns, do you think it would, or would not, be more easy to detect it in 
 those large breweries than in small ones ? " his answer was, " More difficult 
 to detect it in the large ones :" and witness being asked to state the reason 
 why, answered, " Their premises are so much larger, and there is so much 
 more strength, that a cart-load or two is got rid of in a minute or two." 
 Witness " had known, in five minutes, twenty barrels of molasses got rid of 
 as soon as the door was shut." 
 
 Another witness, W. Wells, an excise officer, in describing the contriv- 
 ances used to prevent detection, stated, that at a brewer's at Westham, the 
 adulterating substance " was not kept on the premises, but in the brewer's 
 house ; not the principal, but the working brewer's, it not being considered, 
 when there, as liable to seizure ; the brewer had a very large jacket made 
 expressly for that purpose, with very large pockets ; and on brewing morn- 
 ings, he would take his pockets full of the different ingredients. Witness 
 supposed that such a man's jacket, similar to what he had described, would 
 convey quite sufficient for any brewery in England, as to Cucculus indicus." 
 
 That it may be more difficult for the officers of the Excise to detect 
 fraudulent practices in large breweries than in small ones, may be true to a 
 certain extent ; but what eminent London porter brewer would stake his 
 reputation on the chance of so paltry a gain, in which he would inevitably 
 be at the mercy of his own man ? The eleven great porter brewers of this 
 metropolis are persons of so high respectability, that there is no ground for 
 the slightest suspicion that they would attempt any illegal practices, which 
 they were aware could not possibly escape detection in their extensive esta- 
 blishments. And let it be remembered, that none of them have been 
 detected for any unlawful practices, with regard to the processes of their 
 manufacture, or the adulteration of their beer. 
 
 The following observations on the adulteration of rum and 
 brandy are by no means applicable to " John Hamilton's 
 best," which inspires the flash coves of the Trongate with too 
 much wit not to be genuine. We are convinced, nevertheless, 
 that it contains something singular in its composition, and 
 possesses an inherent stimulus to trotting. When drinking it 
 t'other day at a friend's house, who lately imported a few 
 dozens of it from Glasgow, we detected ourself more than once 
 instinctively trotting two military gentlemen, who sat on our 
 right and left, on the subject of their campaigns. This, how- 
 ever, must be the subject of a separate dissertation. 
 
 Brandy and rum are also frequently sophisticated with British molasses, 
 or sugar-spirit, coloured with burnt sugar 
 
 Oak-sawdust, and a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones, are likewise used 
 to impart to new brandy and rum a ripe taste, resembling brandy or rum 
 long kept in oaken casks, and a somewhat oily consistence, so as to form a 
 durable froth at its surface, when strongly agitated in a vial. The colouring 
 substances are burnt sugar, or molasses ; the latter gives to imitative brandy 
 
90 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 a luscious taste, and fulness in the mouth. These properties are said to 
 render it particularly fit for the retail London customers. 
 
 The following is the method of compounding or making up, as it is tech- 
 nically called, brandy for retail : — 
 
 
 Gallons. 
 
 To ten puncheons of brandy, 
 
 1081 
 
 Add flavoured raisin-spirit, 
 
 118 
 
 Tincture of grains of paradise, 
 
 4 
 
 Cherry-laurel water, 
 
 2 
 
 Spirit of almond-cakes, 
 
 2 
 
 1207 
 Add also ten handfuls of oak-sawdust, and give it complexion with burnt 
 sugar. 
 
 Mr Accum gives us a long dissertation on counterfeit tea, 
 and another on spurious coffee ; but as these are impositions 
 by which we are little affected, we shall not allow them to 
 detain us. The leaves of the sloe-thorn are substituted for 
 the former, and roasted horse-beans for the latter. These 
 frauds, it appears, are carried to a very great extent. 
 
 We believe we have not yet noticed the frauds of the 
 cheese-monger : we now beg, therefore, to introduce that 
 gentleman to the notice of our readers. 
 
 " As a striking example of the extent to which adulterated articles of 
 food may be unconsciously diffused, and of the consequent difficulty of 
 detecting the real fabricators of them, it may not be uninteresting to relate 
 to your readers the various steps by which the fraud of a poisonous adul- 
 teration of cheese was traced to its source. 
 
 " Your readers ought here to be told, that several instances are on record, 
 that Gloucester and other cheeses have been found contaminated with red 
 lead, and that this contamination has produced serious consequences. In 
 the instance now alluded to, and probably in all other cases, the deleterious 
 mixture had been caused ignorantly by the adulteration of the anotta em- 
 ployed for colouring the cheese. This substance, in the instance I shall 
 relate, was found to contain a portion of red lead ; a species of adulteration 
 which subsequent experiments have shown to be by no means uncommon. 
 Before I proceed further to trace this fraud to its source, I shall briefly 
 relate the circumstance which gave rise to its detection. 
 
 " A gentleman, who had occasion to reside for some time in a city in the 
 west of England, was one night seized with a distressing but indescribable 
 pain in the region of the abdomen and of the stomach, accompanied with a 
 feeling of tension, which occasioned much restlessness, anxiety, and repug- 
 nance to food. He began to apprehend the access of an inflammatory dis- 
 order; but in twenty-four hours the symptoms entirely subsided. In four 
 days afterwards he experienced an attack precisely similar ; and he then 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 91 
 
 recollected, that having, on both occasions, arrived from the country late in 
 the evening, he had ordered a plate of toasted Gloucester cheese, of which 
 he had partaken heartily , a dish which, when at home, regularly served 
 him for supper. He attributed his illness to the cheese. The circumstance 
 was mentioned to the mistress of the inn, who expressed great surprise, as 
 the cheese in question was not purchased from a country dealer, but from 
 a highly respectable shop in London. He therefore ascribed the before- 
 mentioned effects to some peculiarity in his constitution. A few days after- 
 wards he partook of the same cheese ; and he had scarcely retired to rest, 
 when a most violent colic seized him, which lasted the whole night and part 
 of the ensuing day. The cook was now directed henceforth not to serve up 
 any toasted cheese, and he never again experienced these distressing symp- 
 toms. Whilst this matter was a subject of conversation in the house, a 
 servant-maid mentioned that a kitten had been violently sick after having 
 eaten the rind cut off from the cheese prepared for the gentleman's supper. 
 The landlady, in consequence of this statement, ordered the cheese to be 
 examined by a chemist in the vicinity, who returned for answer, that the 
 cheese was contaminated with lead ! So unexpected an answer arrested 
 general attention, and more particularly as the suspected cheese had been 
 served up for several other customers. 
 
 " Application was therefore made by the London dealer to the farmer who 
 manufactured the cheese : he declared that he had bought the anotta of a 
 mercantile traveller, who had supplied him and his neighbours for years 
 with that commodity, without giving occasion to a single complaint. On 
 subsequent inquiries, through a circuitous channel, unnecessary to be de- 
 tailed here at length, on the part of the manufacturer of the cheese, it was 
 found, that as the supplies of anotta had been defective and of inferior 
 quality, recourse had been had to the expedient of colouring the commodity 
 with vermilion. Even this admixture could not be considered deleterious- 
 But on further application being made to the druggist who sold the article, 
 the answer was, that the vermilion had been mixed with a portion of red 
 lead ; and the deception was held to be perfectly innocent, as frequently 
 practised on the supposition that the vermilion would be used only as a 
 pigment for house-painting. Thus the druggist sold his vermilion in the 
 regular way of trade, adulterated with red lead to increase his profit, with- 
 out any suspicion of the use to which it would be applied ; and the pur- 
 chaser who adulterated the anotta, presuming that the vermilion was 
 genuine, had no hesitation in heightening the colour of his spurious anotta 
 with so harmless an adjunct. Thus, through the circuitous and diversified 
 operations of commerce, a portion of deadly poison may find admission into 
 the necessaries of life, in a way which can attach no criminality to the 
 parties through whose hands it has successively passed." 
 
 We must now draw our extracts to a close ; but we can 
 assure our readers, that we have not yet introduced them to 
 one tithe of the poisonous articles in common use detected 
 by Mr Accuin. We shall give the titles of a few to satisfy 
 
92 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 the curious : — Poisonous confectionary, poisonous pickles, 
 poisonous cayenne pepper, poisonous custards, poisonous an- 
 chovy sauce, poisonous lozenges, poisonous lemon acid, poi- 
 sonous mushrooms, poisonous ketchup, and poisonous soda- 
 water I Eead this, and wonder how you live ! 
 
 While we thus suffer under accumulated miseries brought 
 upon us by the unprincipled avarice and cupidity of others, it 
 is surely incumbent on us not wantonly to increase the cata- 
 logue by any negligence or follies of our own. Will it be be- 
 lieved that, in the cookery-book which forms the prevailing 
 oracle of the kitchens in this part of the island, there is an 
 express injunction to " boil greens with halfpence in order to 
 improve their colour?" — that our puddings are frequently 
 seasoned with laurel leaves, and our sweetmeats almost uni- 
 formly prepared in copper vessels ? Why are we thus com- 
 pelled to swallow a supererogatory quantity of poison which 
 may so easily be avoided ? Why are we eternally insulted at 
 our entertainments with the presence of that villanous decoc- 
 tion of offal, falsely called calfs-foot 1 jelly ? And why are we 
 constantly made to run the risk of our lives by participating 
 in custards, trifles, and blancmanges, seasoned by a most 
 deadly poison extracted from the Prunus lauro-cerasus ? Verily, 
 while our present detestable system of cookery remains, we 
 may exclaim with the sacred historian, that there is indeed 
 "Death in the Pot." 
 
 Yet, after all, when we have drained the bitter draught 
 presented to us by Mr Accum to the bottom, there will still 
 be found a drop of comfort in the goblet. It is certain that 
 the alimentary sophistications detected in his work have by 
 no means become so prevalent in this quarter of the island 
 as it appears they have done among our neighbours. Scot- 
 land is not a soil in which fraud of any kind has ever flourished, 
 and, least of all, fraud of so aggravated a nature as to imply 
 not only the total destitution of moral principle, but the utter 
 
 1 We have the authority of Auld Reekie's first Patissier, for stating that, 
 according to a most philosophical and accurate calculation made by him, the 
 quantity of calfs-foot jelly consumed in Edinburgh alone, is five times greater 
 than could be afforded by all the calves killed in Scotland put together ! The 
 truth is, it is generally made from bullocks' entrails, which are carefully pre- 
 served from the dogs, and transmitted to the mansions of those ladies whom 
 their cards inform us we are to have the pleasure of finding "AT HOME " a few 
 evenings afterwards. 
 
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. 93 
 
 absence of all human feeling in the perpetrator of it. But if 
 we find some security from imposition in the general character 
 of our population, we may rely with still greater confidence 
 on the well-earned fame of individuals. The potency of Pro- 
 vost Manderson's pills will not readily be doubted by those 
 who admire him as an upright and distinguished magistrate, 
 and still less by those who, like ourselves, can bear testimony, 
 by experience (alas ! too frequent), to their efficacy. When 
 revelling amid the luxuries of Bailie Henderson's shop, the 
 very smell of which might create an appetite under the ribs 
 of death, no dismal apprehension need spoil the flavour of our 
 Bologna, or prevent us from washing it down with a bumper 
 of his transcendent Maraschino. What delicacy is there of 
 which we may not freely partake in Mrs Weddell's, Mrs Mont- 
 gomery's, or Mr Davidson's ? — There lurks no poison in the 
 warm, soothing, and delicious jellies of the first, the inimitable 
 mulligatawny of the second, or the exquisite pates and unri- 
 valled ices of the third. Uncontaminated by drugs, the porter 
 of the Prestonpans brewery will still maintain the high repu- 
 tation it has acquired ; and share, with Bell's ale, an honour- 
 able, an extended, and a lucrative popularity. Our Scottish 
 wine-merchants, we believe, have yet to be instructed in the 
 art of staining corks, and fabricating artificial crusts. With 
 what delicious safety, therefore, may we quaff the aged Port 
 and perfumed Longbouchon of Messrs Somervell and Camp- 
 bell, the famous Madeira and Chambertin of the Frisby of 
 Leith, the delightful Hock and superb Closvogeot of Mr 
 Thomas Hamilton of Glasgow ! We must conclude. The 
 very mention of these things has thrown our whole frame 
 into disorder. Even if it could be established that death was 
 in the bottle as well as in the pot, we should pitch Mr Accum 
 to the devil, and swallow the delicious poison at the rate of 
 three bottles per diem, till the exhaustion of our cellar or 
 our constitution should unwillingly force us to desist. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 1 
 
 [AUGUST 1626.] 
 
 People in general have no notion what awkward cubs they 
 are, and how exceedingly unlike Christians. Out of every 
 score you meet, is there one whose external demeanour has 
 not something absurd or offensive ? Yet they are all mani- 
 festly trying to do the decent and the decorous ; and as they 
 hurry by in every imaginable form of awkwardness, believe 
 themselves admired from every window, and doing execution 
 from thrice-sunk story to devil-dozenth flat. Of their mental 
 powers, men in society are made to form, in general, a pretty 
 fair estimate, but they are often sadly out respecting corporeals. 
 An individual, at the Scotch bar, we shall say — videlicet an 
 advocate — masters, as he thinks, a case, and his copious speech 
 overflows the bench, and reaches up to the knees of the Presi- 
 dent. But the opposite counsel does not leave him a leg to 
 stand upon. Judge after Judge demolishes his argumenta- 
 tion, and the case is given against him unanimously, with 
 costs. This occurring constantly, our friend gets suspicious 
 of himself, and, in a few years, joins the gentlemanly men, 
 who are not anxious for business. But he is not to be so 
 driven from his faith in natural and acquired bodily abilities. 
 They are never brought into any very formidable competition ; 
 he can stand, walk, dance, ride, swim, and skate, always 
 better than some one or other of his fellow-citizens similarly 
 engaged ; and thus he may continue to the close of a long and 
 
 1 An Elementary Course of Gymnastic Exercises; intended to develop and 
 improve the Physical Powers of Man ; with the Report made to the Medical 
 Faculty of Paris on the Subject ; and a new and complete Treatise on the Art 
 of Swimming. By Captain P. H. Clias. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 95 
 
 respectable life in the belief that he has all along been a 
 Cupid, a Castor, a Meleager, an Antinous, or an Apollo. 
 
 Now, the truth is, that not one man in a thousand knows 
 even how to sit still. Watch the first friend you see sitting, 
 and you will not fail to be shocked with his position — so 
 repugnant to the laws of nature. The chance is that he does 
 not even know on what part of his body nature intended him 
 to sit ! See ! he is vainly attempting to sit on his hip-joints ! 
 and that, too, on a cane-chair. The most obtuse soon dis- 
 covers his mistake, and seeks to rectify the error by suddenly 
 bouncing from the left hip-bone to the right. The interme- 
 diate quarter never occurs to him, obvious as it is. And then, 
 look at his feet, sprawling out into the middle of the floor, as 
 if with his toe he sought to stop the currency of a half-crown, 
 leaping into unintended circulation ! With one hand in his 
 breeches pocket, the other arm and elbow seemingly bound 
 with cords to the back of his chair, and his head dangling 
 over like that of a sick harlequin, why, he seriously calls that 
 — Sitting! 
 
 Now, as it is universally admitted that we must creep before 
 we walk, so is it equally palpable that we must sit before we 
 stand. Captain Clias, therefore, should have begun with 
 Sitting as the first branch of Gymnastic Exercises ; and his 
 instructions here too should have been illustrated by plates. 
 The difficulty is not so much in the theory as in the practice. 
 The golden rule has been already hinted at — in taking your 
 seat, consult and obey nature — don't imitate with your back 
 the poker, nor with your legs the tongs, nor with your feet 
 the shovel. Sit at your ease — but not at your impudence — 
 no sort of scratching allowed ; and never cease to remember 
 that you are not at present exercising with the dumb-bells. 
 The characteristic of gentlemanly sitting is — animated com- 
 posure. 
 
 By the by, we are wrong in stating Sitting to be the first 
 branch of gymnastics, for manifestly the first branch is — 
 Lying. Unless a man lie well, he must never hope to be a 
 good sitter. Observe that person lying on a sofa. One leg 
 drawn up with crooked knee — an arm awkwardly twisted 
 round the neck — and to crown the horror, the monster is 
 snoring on the flat of his back ! When he starts from his 
 doze, what sort of sitting, pray, can you expect from such a 
 
96 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Her? A soft bed has been the ruin of many men. The 
 human frame sinks into grotesque attitudes in the yielding 
 down, and the luxurious rest enervates and dissolves. Nothing 
 like a hair mattress above the feathers ! and oh ! from the 
 bright, balmy, blooming heather-bed, elastic in its mossy 
 sweetness, how like a giant refreshed with mountain-dew 
 springs up the pedestrian at first touch of the morning light 
 — from the shieling-door shakes hands with the new-risen sun, 
 nor in the bounding fever of his prime envies the rushing of 
 the eagle's wing ! 
 
 In Gymnastic Exercises, after Lying and Sitting, comes, as 
 we said, Standing. Some unfortunate persons there are, who 
 can neither lie, sit, nor stand ; but the generality of mankind 
 can be brought to do all three sufficiently well for the com- 
 mon purposes of life. Dancing-masters teach showy, but not 
 sound, Standing. That of the professor of fencing is elegant 
 and effective in his own academy, but formal in the drawing- 
 room. The drill-sergeant's is better for ordinary use, yet 
 smacks, in its stiffness, too much of parade. The system of 
 the gymnasiarch alone is suited for society; and, of all modern 
 gymnasiarchs, Captain Clias is facile princeps. 
 
 If you wish to stand well in the eyes of the world, do as 
 follows : — 
 
 At the word of command — " Fall in," — all the boys advance upon the 
 same line, preserving between each other the distance of the arm's length. 
 At the word — " Dress," — each boy places his right hand on the left 
 shoulder of the next, extending his arm at full length, and turning his 
 head to the right. At the word — " Attention," — the arms fall down by 
 the side, and the head returns to the first position. The master places the 
 boy in the following manner : the head up, the shoulders back, the body 
 erect, the stomach kept in, the knees straight, the heels on the same line, 
 and the toes turned a little outwards. All things being thus arranged, the 
 master, standing in front, announces the exercise they are going to perform, 
 taking care above all to explain clearly the movements which each boy 
 ought to make. For example : Ordinary step, in place, explanation. At 
 the word — " Hips," — each boy places his hand on his sides, extending his 
 fingers round the waist, and remains so. 
 
 Look around among and over your family, and friends, and 
 acquaintances, and perhaps among them all you will not find 
 a first-rate Stander. This gentleman turns in his toes — and 
 that gentleman stands in the opposite extreme, and the third 
 gentleman seems to be very much in-knee'd, while the fourth 
 
GYMNASTICS. 97 
 
 gentleman is most unconscionably bandy. What the deuce 
 does our friend in the long cloth gaiters (genteelest of wear) 
 mean by dancing about in that guise, like a hen on a hot grid- 
 iron ? He is ignorant of the very first principles of Standing. 
 Then, why will you, my eloquent and brawny Man of the 
 Manse, keep drawing figures in the dust with your iron-armed 
 heel, all the time you are expatiating on your augmentation 
 of stipend? In short, the power of sitting still is a rare 
 accomplishment ; but we really begin to suspect that to stand 
 still is absolutely impossible. We cannot charge our memory, 
 at this moment, with one person, male or female, who can do 
 it ; yes — one we recollect, but he shall be anonymous, whom 
 we saw some seven years ago " Standing for the County," and 
 he, without moving a muscle, did for a week's broiling weather 
 stand perfectly stock-still, at the bottom of the poll. 
 
 Supposing then, for a moment, that you can lie, sit, and 
 stand, you come naturally enough to think of Walking. But 
 a very little reflection will suffice to show, that walking is by 
 no manner of means so easy an affair as is generally imagined, 
 and that to do it well is, at the very least, as difficult as to 
 play on the violin. Should any of our readers doubt this, let 
 him read Captain Clias, and he will be satisfied of the truth 
 of the apothegm. So numerous and intricate are his rules on 
 this department of gymnastics, that we see at once that it 
 requires not only good feet to walk well, but a good head 
 also ; and let no man who does not, in every sense of the 
 word, possess a sound understanding, ever hope to be a 
 Pedestrian. 
 
 But before treating the subject according to the laws of 
 physical science, Captain Clias considers it, as we may say, in 
 a moral and picturesque light. First of all, he well observes, 
 that in " speaking of the walk, we mean that graceful and 
 noble movement, by means of which the body, in transporting 
 itself from one place to another, might increase or diminish 
 the rapidity of its movements, without deranging its equili- 
 brium, or the union of the parts in action. To walk is to 
 make progressive movement. The body rests a moment on 
 one foot whilst the other is advanced ; then the centre of 
 gravity of the body is made to fall from one foot upon the 
 other, &c. It might be objected, that, generally, everybody 
 knows how to walk, when not hindered by defects of con- 
 
 VOL. V. G 
 
98 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 formation or accidental misfortunes ; but our own experience 
 has convinced us of the contrary ; and if we give attention, 
 we shall often have occasion to remark, that we see very few 
 persons, however well formed, who in walking preserve a really 
 erect position, and an air of becoming confidence and dignity. 
 This movement, well executed, evinces not only the force of the 
 body, but, more than is commonly thought, perhaps, the moral 
 character of the individual. Walking may be considered in 
 three different respects : first, with regard to beauty ; secondly, 
 to resistance ; and thirdly, to promptitude." 
 
 No one, surely, after this, will deny that to walk well is at 
 once useful and ornamental. It is obvious, however, that the 
 bodily dispositions and daily habits have the greatest influence 
 on the Walk, and therefore it is advantageous to accustom 
 young persons early to a great variety of elementary exercises, 
 in order to destroy in their origin the bad habits which they 
 are inclined to contract, and to prevent, at the same time, 
 many corporeal defects. Nothing is more common than to 
 hear mothers affirm that their children (little prodigies) walk 
 at fourteen months ; yet look at the father of them, and you 
 see he cannot walk at forty years. The honest man merely 
 hobbles. The truth is, and we may as well say it boldly at 
 once, not one man in as many thousands can walk. Lay 
 down Maga, and look out of the window. Why, surely, 
 you cannot so contravene your conscience as to say, that 
 yonder gentleman coming round the corner of the street is 
 walking — he is just as much flying. Indeed, it is but too 
 certain that he is attempting to fly. See how his arms are 
 flapping like wings — his neck stretched out like that of a wild- 
 goose — his tail laboriously lifted with its long flaps from the 
 pavement, and his body rolling about after the fashion of a 
 tar-barrel. That, he and most of his friends imagine to be 
 walking, but we and Captain Clias know better. Whatever 
 it is, most assuredly it is not walking — nor will it ever be 
 walking on this side of the grave. To get on at the rate of 
 four miles an hour — so — would require the strength of a dray- 
 horse. What a sudden relief given to all the rest of his days, 
 were that man, all at once, as by a miracle, to walk ! He 
 would feel as if he had laid down a burden that had been borne 
 since his birthday. To him, up and down hill would be all on 
 the same level. — But, oh dear ! only see him now walloping 
 
GYMNASTICS. 99 
 
 Tip -stairs like a porpoise climbing a ladder ! However, 
 we have Lis address, and shall send him a copy of Captain 
 Clias. 
 
 We find it impossible to abridge the Captain's theory of 
 Walking. Suffice it to say, it treats clearly and concisely of 
 Changes in Place— Double Step— Triple Step— Oblique Step 
 —Cross Step— French Step— Walking on Heels— the Broken 
 Step— the Tick-Tack— Balancing on one Leg— Pace of Three 
 Times— the Cross Touch— the Touch of the Heel— Changing 
 the Guard, &c. Let no man imagine that he can walk, unless 
 he has mastered all these manoeuvres. The one leads on to 
 the other — a new set of muscles being daily strengthened into 
 so much whip-cord ; and the only difficulty, at the end of a 
 year's exercise, is to sit or to stand still, the whole frame 
 being so uncontrollably saturated with locomotion. 
 
 One species of walking (exercise IX.) is somewhat start- 
 lingly called — Kicking, and is thus described. 
 
 KICKING. 
 This exercise consists in throwing . the feet alternately straight forward, 
 as if forcibly striking at some object in front, and it may be made either 
 advancing or retreating. When well performed, it acts powerfully on the 
 muscles of the back and other parts of the body. It is also very useful as 
 a means of defence against the attack of an animal, and in many other cases. 
 The inhabitants of the mountains, in many European countries, fight hi 
 this manner, without making use of their hands, which they place in their 
 bosoms or on their backs. 
 
 No doubt, Kicking may, as the Captain says, "be very 
 useful as a means of defence," but to us it has always seemed 
 preferable in the way of offence. It is seldom used in civilised 
 society against the human species, except when the object of 
 attack is on the retreat, and it is always confined to the same 
 quarter. We are somewhat sceptical of its efficacy against 
 any other animal — except, perhaps, a pug-dog, muzzled^ in 
 apprehension of hydrophobia. We should be tardy in kicking 
 a mastiff or a bull-dog — still more so in kicking a bear, a bull, 
 or a bonassus. Captain Clias assures us in a note, that the 
 Highlanders in Scotland fight after the fashion stated in the 
 text ; that is to say, they fight with their hands^ in their 
 bosoms, or on their backs ! They are no great pugilists cer- 
 tainly ; but, our dear Captain, they do use their hands, once 
 
100 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 perhaps every five minutes, during a battle. Your Celt is 
 slow, and his favourite figure is the circle. Could he be 
 taught to hit out straight, he would often be an ugly cus- 
 tomer. The boxers in the interior of Africa hit, Clapperton 
 tells us, with the heel on the jugular ; and in that amusing- 
 farrago of fact and fiction, the " Customs of Portugal," the 
 compiler tells us of a Black killing, in like manner, two 
 hackney-coachmen, who had insulted him, right and left 
 beneath the ear, and on the pit of the stomach. Kicking, 
 however, is a branch of walking that cannot be too rarely 
 practised, and may be left to the subjects of Sultan Bello and 
 Ching-hong. Should any drunken carter or other cannibal 
 lift his ugly foot with any such intent — do as we did last 
 Thursday at Newington — catch hold of the proffered boon, 
 and fling the proprietor head-over-heels into the kennel. 
 
 Having thus touched very slightly on Lying, Sitting, Stand- 
 ing, and Walking, Kicking included, we come in due course 
 to Kunning. But hear the Captain. 
 
 RUNNING IN GENERAL. 
 
 Running only differs from walking by the rapidity of the movements. It 
 may be seen by that how useful and natural it is to man. The advantages 
 which this exercise produces are incalculable : its salutary effects operate 
 in a very visible manner on the individual who practises it, and are repro- 
 duced in a great many circumstances of life. Running favours the develop- 
 ment of the chest, dilates the lungs, and, when it is moderate, preserves 
 this precious organ from the most dangerous and inveterate diseases. 
 
 This exercise, in contributing much to render us healthy and vigorous, 
 may also enable us to avoid innumerable dangers. In effect, how many 
 persons have been victims to their incapacity in this exercise ! How many 
 unhappy soldiers would have escaped a hard captivity, and even a cruel 
 death, if they had been accustomed in their youth to run fast and long. 
 Often do \mforeseen circumstances oblige us to hold our breath a long time, 
 and to run with the greatest possible rapidity, when our dearest interests 
 force us to the rescue of those whom we most dearly cherish ; and our own 
 preservation many frequently depend . on the celerity with which we pass 
 over any given distance. What are the consequences of an exercise so 
 violent, when we have not been previously prepared for it ? Sometimes 
 the most serious diseases, the vexation to see an enterprise fail on which 
 our welfare depended ; or, what is still more cruel, to see persons the most 
 dear to us perish before our eyes, whom we might have saved had we 
 arrived a few seconds sooner. 
 
 We also cordially agree with Captain Clias in all the fol- 
 lowing sentiments : — 
 
GYMNASTICS. 101 
 
 Without the fear of hazarding too much, we may assert, that it is the 
 same with running as it is with walking. If we see but very few persons 
 run with grace and agility, we see still fewer run fast, and continue it for 
 a long time. There are many who can scarcely run a few hundred paces 
 without being out of breath and unable to go farther, because they perform 
 that movement under a real disadvantage. Some, by swinging their arms 
 with too much violence, agitate the muscles of the breast, and thereby 
 compress the movement of respiration ; others, by bending their knees, 
 and throwing them forward, and by making long paces, fatigue themselves 
 very soon, and also lose a great deal of time. Those who raise their legs 
 too high behind, advance but very little, though they labour very much. 
 It is also very disadvantageous whilst running, to throw the upper part of 
 the body backward, to take too large strides, to press too hard upon the 
 ground, and to respire too rapidly. To run fast and gracefully, one should, 
 as it were, graze the ground with the feet, by keeping the legs as straight 
 as possible whilst moving them forward, raise one's self from one foot upon 
 the other with great velocity, and make the movements of the feet rapidly 
 succeed each other. During the course, the upper part of the body is 
 inclined a little forward, the arms are, as it were, glued to the sides, and 
 turned in at the heights of the hips, the hands shut, and the nails turned 
 inwards. 
 
 Although, never in the army, we have frequently saved our 
 lives by running — once, more particularly, in presence of the 
 enemy, an enormous red bull, with dagger horns, a tufted tail 
 shockingly perpendicular, and a growling roar like that of a 
 royal Bengal tiger. We had not then read Captain Clias — but 
 if we had, we should have made a more scientific escape. The 
 Lord of Herds was reposing with shut eyes behind a rock, on 
 the breast of a Highland mountain, when we, who were laden 
 with a three-stone knapsack, fishing- creel, and salmon-rod, 
 stumbled upon his majesty. For an animal sixty stone weight, 
 fourteen pound to the stone, he possessed great agility. Yes — 
 although neither had he, any more than ourselves, read Captain 
 Clias, he was a proficient in " running in general." Not twenty 
 yards' law did he allow the Editor of this Magazine, then an 
 active stripling— for Christopher North was once young — and, 
 at first starting, he took a most unfair, a most ungentlemanly, 
 and un- John-Bull- like advantage, by meeting us right in the 
 face beyond the earliest knowe in our career. As one good 
 turn deserved another, we hit him a bang across the eyes with 
 our rod, till he winked again ; and then diverging unexpectedly 
 straight south, led him after us about five hundred yards right 
 on end, without either party gaining an inch, like a will-o'- 
 
102 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 wisp, smack into a quagmire. Before lie could extricate him- 
 self from the water- cresses, we were fifty rood of heather in 
 advance, and within a mile of a wood. We heard the growl 
 somewhat deepening behind us, and every time we ventured 
 to cast a look over our shoulder, his swarthy eye was more and 
 more visible. But bad as that was, his tail was worse, and 
 seemed the Bloody Flag of the Pirate. The monster had four 
 legs — we but two ; but our knees were well knit, our ham- 
 strings strong, our ankles nimble as fencer's wrist, and our 
 instep an elastic arch, that needed not the spring-board of the 
 circus — nothing but the bent of the broad mountain's brow. 
 If he was a red bull — and who could deny it ? — were not we 
 one of the red deer of the forest, that accompanies on earth the 
 eagle's flight in heaven ? Long before gaining the edge of the 
 wood, we had beaten the brute to a stand-still. There he stood, 
 the unwieldy laggard, pawing the stony moor, and hardly able 
 to roar. Poor devil, he could not raise an echo ! He absolutely 
 lay down — and then, contempt being an uneasy and unchristian 
 feeling, we left him lying there, like a specimen of mineralogy, 
 and wandered away in a poetical reverie, into the sun and 
 shadow of the great Pine-forest. 
 
 Captain Clias's running exercises are called Kunning in 
 Pace — to Eise and Fall with Exactness — Kunning in a Square 
 — Spiral Punning — Sinuous Punning — Doubling the Line — 
 Punning with a Stick — Prompt Running — Precipitate Pun- 
 ning. All these several modes of running are clearly explained, 
 and must all be useful on the arena of real life. Few people 
 have practised sudden stopping, and turning aside at a right 
 angle. But what so preservative of life, when suddenly 
 threatened by a blood-horse, for example, coming distracted 
 along the street, with the ruins of a Dennet or Stanhope at his 
 tail? Nay, even for a running fight with watchmen, those 
 paid disturbers of the peace, such accomplishments are of great 
 avail ; nor can we ever cease to remember, with pensive and 
 regretful melancholy, the delightful running fights on Port- 
 Meadow or Bullington green, Oxon, when Reginald Dalton, 
 Day of Merton, Agar of Christ Church, Gray of St Mary Hall, 
 and a few more of us, used to show fight to the Oxford raffs, 
 and pummel them into a jelly on a retreat, that, were all the 
 particulars as well known and as eloquently recorded, would 
 throw into the shade even that famous one of the Ten Thousand. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 103 
 
 We cannot bring ourselves to think with Captain Clias that 
 the same rules, the same system of running, ought to be applied 
 indiscriminately to all men alike, for each individual has his 
 own peculiar conformation of body, and must also have his own 
 peculiar mode of regulating its motion. A Highlander, for 
 example, five feet four, with lengthy spine, and short heather 
 legs, ought not to attempt taking immense strides ; and indeed, 
 whether he will or no, must adopt the short step recommended 
 by our author. But why should a six-foot man, with a long 
 fork, abstain from striding like a shadow when the sun is low? 
 So, too, some men are by nature straight as an arrow, others 
 lounge and stoop by nature. Let both parties, respectively, 
 run in attitude congenial with their conformation; nor will a 
 philosophical anatomist pretend to say pointedly which con- 
 formation is best adapted for fleetness. Dogs, horses, and men 
 of all shapes have excelled. The most beautifully proportioned 
 is often worthless on trial, and Eclipse was cross-made who 
 could give most racers a distance. Eunners generally find out 
 their own balance ; and there would be as little sense in criti- 
 cising the apparent awkwardness of a winning man, as in 
 eulogising the elegance of a laggard. 
 
 Before leaving this part of the Captain's treatise, however, 
 we beg leave respectfully and kindly to hint, that he does not 
 seem to be at all acquainted with the history of British Pedes- 
 trianism. Now, without such knowledge no man can be said 
 thoroughly to understand the science of Gymnastics. A first- 
 rate walker, and none but a first-rate, will do — toe and heel — 
 six miles an hour, for one hour, on a good road. If out of 
 practice and training, the odds on such a match would, we 
 think, be against any unknown pedestrian, 6 to 4 on time. A 
 first-rate walker, in fine training, will do twelve miles in two 
 hours. We should have no objection to bet 6 to 4 (in hundreds) 
 against any man in England walking, fair toe and heel, eighteen 
 miles in three hours, yet of such exploits one reads in sporting 
 papers. A Captain Parker, somewhere in Lancashire, is said to 
 have walked seven miles in one hour ; and if he did so, he may 
 safely challenge all England. Eeduce the rate to five miles 
 an hour, and pedestrians of the first class will do forty miles 
 in eight hours — nay, keep it up, probably, for fifty in ten. 
 Reduce the rate to four miles, and then a man may walk on 
 for twelve hours a-day — we were going to say all his lifetime 
 
104 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 — but certainly for a month. ; and if for a month, one sees no 
 reason (sickness excepted) why not for a year ; and if for a 
 year, why not ten, and so on to twenty and fifty ? There can 
 be no doubt, that out of the British army, on a war establish- 
 ment, ten thousand men might be chosen, by trial, who would 
 compose a corps capable of marching fifty miles a -day, on 
 actual service, for a whole week. The power of such a corps 
 is not to be calculated — and it would far outgo cavalry. 1 
 
 Of feats of running, Captain Clias seems to be equally 
 ignorant. Of short distances we do not now speak, for we 
 forget the precise time of hundred-yard or two-hundred-yard 
 men. But a quarter of a mile in a minute is sharp going — 
 and it requires one of the best in all England to do a mile in 
 four minutes at four starts. The Captain, when speaking of 
 " Prompt Kunning," speaks very simply of " a mile in four 
 minutes, and afterwards in less," being done by his scholars. 
 Were the Captain to risk his money on the swiftest boy among 
 them, he would find out his gross and grievous mistake. The 
 mile was never run in four minutes in England. Metcalfe, 
 now the swiftest living for a mile, does it, touch and go, in 
 four minutes and a half. The Captain afterwards says, " Many 
 of our scholars run a thousand yards in two minutes — without 
 being much heated'" and " at the last examination of the Boyal 
 Military Asylum, Chelsea, several boys ran 580 yards in one 
 minute and eight seconds." These two last feats are perhaps 
 possible — but the first is impossible-; and the statement of the 
 one throws discredit over the other. Let Captain Clias go to 
 Tattersall's, and offer to produce a lad to run a mile in less 
 than four minutes, and he will get as much money laid against 
 him, at twenty to one, as lately depended on that useless 
 favourite, the General. A mile in five minutes is fair work, 
 and requires a good runner — two miles in ten minutes is a 
 match oftener lost than won — and four miles in twenty, puzzles, 
 we believe, even an Ashton or a Halton. Ten miles an hour 
 
 1 Captain Clias tells us that Captain Barclay walked 180 miles without rest. 
 ing. He never did any such thing — nor attempted to do it — nor is it within 
 human power. Perhaps he means without going to bed. Even that must be a 
 mistake ; for Captain Barclay would take his rest in the most judicious way 
 during a match, and there is nothing like a bed. We question if any man ever 
 walked 100 miles without some sort of rest. If any could, Captain Barclay was 
 that man ; for although there were many fleeter men than he, he never had his 
 equal for united strength, activity, and bottom, as a pedestrian. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 105 
 
 need twenty years ago to be reckoned prodigious, and was 
 rarely Ittenpted. Now it is done by all the first-raters But 
 fifteen miles in an hour and a half has never, to our knowledge, 
 fitu done although we think it practicable Forty uules m 
 foru hour and three quarters or less, we think, was done at 
 Newmarket by that most beautifnl of all runners, Lancashire 
 S who wis allowed five hours ; and exploits no much in- 
 ferior allowing for bad roads, have been done m Scotland. Ul 
 grTa' oistance°s, we believe the ambition ?*™ l^ 
 accomplish 100 miles in eighteen kours-but he failed (ui two 
 attempts), and after him what man alive can hope tesucceed? 
 
 Captain Clias now comes to " Jumping in general, and re- 
 marks that, of all the corporeal exercises, Jumping is, without 
 contradiction, the finest and most useful. But we must quote 
 the tpsissima verba of the amiable enthusiast :— 
 
 Of all the corporeal exercise*, jumping is, without contradiction the 
 finest and the most useful. As it cannot be executed with facil ty bu tm 
 proportion to the strength, the elasticity, and the suppleness of the articu 
 KTId muscles of the lower extremities, much exercise is necessary in 
 
 Irier to artl to that degree of V^^^^^Zl^nL 
 or furnishes us with the means of overcoming them without danger in a 
 Z " iTndation, it is often by means of a determined jump hat - 
 esclpe the most imminent danger pursers or rento J^*Fj-££ 
 to our fellow-creatures. In a carriage often at the mercy <n a 
 asleep or intoxicated, riding an unruly horse and in a *° usan ^ er ^ 
 cumstances, a jump, made with promptitude and **« might ^e 
 our lives or preserve us from fracturing our limbs. Lightness ana per 
 ^nmcu arit/constitute all the merit of jumping; the *-"*«£*£ 
 done to acquire these two qualities, for, without them, jumping has neither 
 
 g T,r,"-ToT;mp with gmce and assurance, one should always fall 
 on the toes takL care, especially, to bend the knees on the hips; the 
 upper nart of rtTbody should be inclined forwards, and the arms extended 
 toS tie ground. V hands should serve to break the all when jnmp- 
 g 1 a gfe't height. By failing on the heels, the shock wbrch^n ^ 
 JL, is communicated from the extremity of the vertebral colum l to the 
 crown of the head, will occasion pain in these two parts, and may be 
 
 i We intend writing an article about our most celebrated pedestrians. The 
 inaccuiS to be found even in Pierce Egan's Life in London, *°*™>*f 
 ZoMnl and Bell's sporting paper, are gross, glaring, and innumerable. Not 
 onTmath m fifty is rightly^ported in any of the common newspapers^ and 
 in ordinary conversation, all is confusiop and ficnon together Except on the 
 Turf, it is the same with all matches between horses-of all sorts, at trot or 
 gallop, out or in harness. 
 
106 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 attended with very bad consequences. It is also useful to hold the breath 
 whilst jumping, for, in all the efforts that we make, the retention of the 
 breath, by preventing the blood from circulating with rapidity in the lungs, 
 makes it flow into the members which are in movement, which greatly 
 increases the strength of those parts. 
 
 There seems to us to be some little confusion in this ex- 
 tract. Pray, what kind of jumping is of most use to a man in 
 a house on fire ? Jumping out of the window. But it requires 
 small activity to jump out of a window of the fourteenth story, 
 and it might be done even by a bed-ridden old gentleman of 
 ninety. In cases of inundation, jumping may be useful, no 
 doubt, but swimming, we should conjecture, much more so ; 
 and as for jumping out of carriages, driven by sleeping or in- 
 toxicated coachmen, more limbs are fractured and lives lost 
 by doing so, even with promptitude and assurance, than any 
 other mode that could be named. Then, as to " perpendicu- 
 larity " constituting the chief merit of jumping, we flatly deny 
 it. Nothing is half so elegant as a horizontal swing, and it is 
 plain that the man who raises his head five or six feet above 
 the height he overleaps, cannot, agreeably to the laws of 
 nature, animate and inanimate, clear such an altitude, as 
 he whose head is little higher than his feet, and whose whole 
 figure is almost parallel with the ground. Neither in the 
 above extract does Captain Clias inform us whether he is 
 speaking of high or far leaping — perhaps of both — as indeed 
 he who leaps over a great height must also leap over a con- 
 siderable distance, and vice versa. As to always alighting on 
 the toes, that is manifestly impossible, when you have to 
 overleap a great extent of country. A leaper who dexterously 
 throws out his feet before him will leap at least six feet farther 
 than one who alights perpendicularly ; but how is it possible 
 to fling out your feet yards in advance, and to alight on your 
 toes ? In all far leaping, whether over a height or not, all 
 men must alight on their heels — in high leaping, when dis- 
 tance is no object, you may and ought to alight on the fore- 
 part of the foot — and on leaping down from the top of a 
 house on fire, why, you must take your chance of heel or toe, 
 and think yourself very well off if you do not break your neck, 
 and fracture your skull into the bargain. 
 
 Since jumping is so necessary to the preservation of life, we 
 cannot help being a little surprised at the Captain's want of 
 
GYMNASTICS. 107 
 
 gallantry in not recommending it as an indispensable accom- 
 plishment of the fair sex. Surely in cases of fire and inunda- 
 tion, the ladies have at least as good a right to escape as the 
 gentlemen. But the truth is, that we male creatures are a 
 selfish set, and so that we can but jump ourselves, we are 
 willing to let the softer sex perish in flame or flood. In 
 carriages they are as much exposed as we are ; but how, 
 under their present imperfect system of education, can they 
 be expected to jump out, in cases of drunk or sleepy coachmen, 
 " with promptitude and assurance ? " They must, therefore, 
 be taught jumping. Every boarding-school must have its 
 jumping-master and jumping-green, and what more delightful 
 spectacle could be imagined than a bevy of maidens perform- 
 ing the preparatory movements ? 
 
 Captain Clias lays down various exercises, which he calls 
 preparatory movements — running and touching behind in 
 place — trampling on the ground in place — walking pace in 
 place — trotting pace in place — galloping pace in place, &c. 
 A bright-eyed, round-limbed virgin of sweet sixteen " gallop- 
 ing in place," would indeed warm the blood of an anchorite, 
 and drive Maltlms to despair. " Touching behind in place " 
 would also be bewitching, and the preparatory movements 
 would form an easy introduction to a running hop-step-and- 
 jump to Gretna Green. 
 
 All these exercises may be very well — but what says the 
 Captain when he comes to the Jumping itself? But little, 
 and that little most unsatisfactory. He talks of the single jump, 
 the redoubled jump, and the continued jump ; but of the single 
 jump, with a run, and of hop- step- and-jump, with a run, he 
 says nothing, although they are the most beautiful feats in 
 the whole range of gymnastics. 
 
 A good high jumper will clear five feet, a first-rate one five 
 and a half, and an out-and-outer among the first-rates six feet. 
 The late Mr Ingleby, of Lancaster, we have seen clear a stick 
 held six feet two inches high, springing off the turnpike road, 
 and with a run of about five yards. What Ireland could do 
 without the spring-board we know not — probably not two 
 inches more than Mr Ingleby. Mr Ingleby despised perpendi- 
 cularity, and swayed himself over almost horizontally with 
 singular grace, elegance, and facility. 
 
 Twelve feet is a good standing single jump on leTel ground • 
 
108 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 fourteen is a job for two or three in a county ; twenty feet on 
 level ground is a first-rate running single jump, but has been 
 done often ; twenty-one is something very extraordinary, but 
 noways apocryphal ; and twenty-two is, we believe, accom- 
 plished about once every twenty years, and that almost 
 always by an Irishman. A hundred sovereigns to five 
 against any man in England doing twenty-three feet on a 
 dead level. With a run and a leap, on a slightly inclined 
 plane, perhaps an inch to a yard, we have seen twenty-three 
 feet done in great style — and measured to a nicety ; but the 
 man who did it (aged twenty-one, height, five feet eleven 
 inches, weight, eleven stone) was admitted to be (Ireland ex- 
 cepted) the best far-leaper of his day in England. 1 
 
 At standing hop-step-and-jump, level ground, ten yards is 
 good — eleven excellent — and twelve the extent of any man's 
 tether. We have heard of thirteen, but believe it to be a lie. 
 With a run, thirteen yards is good, fourteen great, and fifteen 
 prodigious. Perhaps there are not six authenticated cases on 
 record of fifteen being done on level ground, and by actual 
 admeasurement. All guess-work exploits shrivel up a good 
 yard, or sometimes two, when brought to the measure, and 
 the champion of the county dwindles into a clumsy clod- 
 hopper. Ireland, it is said, did sixteen yards on Knavesmire, 
 before he was known to the world ; and indeed was noticed 
 by some Londoners on that occasion, and brought forward at 
 the Amphitheatre. He was the best leaper, both high and 
 far, that ever jumped in England ; and take him for all in all, 
 it is most certain that we shall never look upon his like again. 
 Now, we confess that instead of all that preparatory fiddling 
 and piddling taught by Captain Clias, we should like to see 
 his scholars stripped at a regular match of straightforward 
 leaping — of either of the kinds aforesaid — and seeing that the 
 Captain avers he has boys who can run a mile under the four 
 minutes, what is to hinder him to produce a hero to leap 
 twenty-three feet, back and forwards (the great desideratum)? 
 Or fifteen yards and a half at running hop-step-and-jump ? 
 Or six feet over a string? Let this be done "without being 
 much heated," and pray let it be at the next examination at 
 the Koyal Military Asylum, Chelsea. 
 
 1 This "best far-leaper (after Ireland) of his day in England," was Professor 
 
 Wilson himself. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 100 
 
 Of our Three United Nations, the Irish are, we think, the 
 best leapers, perhaps the best in all departments of Pedes- 
 trianism. With fists they are formidable — with shillelas 
 tremendous — with legs beautiful. They are all fair stand-up 
 leapers. It is an ignominious thing, at the end of a jump, to 
 come down whack, or squelch upon your bottom. You ought 
 to clear your ground. For suppose the ground were water, 
 and you plumped into it with your posteriors, would you say 
 you had jumped over the canal ? In Scotland that system is 
 too prevalent, and in all such cases the measurement should 
 be to the mark of the corduroys. In a running leap, or running 
 hop-step-and-leap, the run is a great matter. Now, the Irishman 
 flies like a whirlwind, and takes the spring in an impetuous 
 mood, that flings him over a rood of land. It is not safe to be 
 near Pat when recovering from his last bound, for he goes 
 whirling round and round among the bystanders, laying all 
 flat within the wind of his careering circle. There is not 
 much to choose, in leaping, between the Scotch and English 
 Borderers, who are certainly the best in Britain. Tall, bony, 
 wiry chaps, who bound, unshaken, from ground as hard as flags, 
 and when tired, make strength do the work of agility. In 
 Scotland, for our money, the leapers of Liddesdale. In Eng- 
 land, the Westmoreland lads for leaping, the Lancashire for 
 running, and for wrestling, canny Cumberland. 
 
 Much has been said and sung about the proper proportions 
 of a leaper. We have already hinted, that in this, as in other 
 things, Nature indulges in what we blindly call vagaries and 
 anomalies. But we never knew a first-rater under five feet 
 ten. First-raters range from that up to six feet two, but 
 rarely exceed that height. Laird Shaw, in the parish of Kil- 
 bride, Kenfrewshire, stood six feet three and a half, and he 
 was the champion of the county at the close of the eighteenth 
 century. The Border leapers of renown are rarely under six 
 feet. Pretty leapers are frequent from five feet five to five 
 feet eight, and will do their nineteen or even twenty feet at a 
 single jump, and their fourteen yards athop-step-and-jump; but 
 when brought against men as good as themselves, half a foot 
 taller, they must be beaten hollow. Between eighteen and 
 twenty-six is the time of life during which leapers are in their 
 prime. Before eighteen they rarely have mature power, and 
 after twenty- six as rarely unimpaired elasticity. 
 
110 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 When youths are leaping for amusement, all dangerous 
 leaps ought to be avoided. What is the use of breaking a 
 leg, and becoming a lameter for life? Never leap across 
 rocky chasms, nor over sharp-pointed stakes, either of wood or 
 iron. You may take a canal occasionally, for if you leap short 
 you have a soft fall ; and there is little or no danger in a five- 
 foot gate of neat workmanship on a gravel walk. But be 
 chary of your bones, and give your sinews fair play. Do 
 not continue leaping too long at a time ; and as soon as you 
 feel tired, or winded, or falling behind your usual mark, on 
 with your apparel, and walk home to dine or study. 
 
 Never believe one single word you hear in general society 
 about any one single feat of Gymnastics — especially Leaping. 
 People talk of seventeen yards at hop-step-and-jump. If 
 they say they saw it done, and measured it themselves, they 
 are either no honest men, or no geometricians. Never believe 
 in any feat at leaping said to have been achieved by a Scotch 
 Highlander. We have leaped, in our youth, the whole High- 
 lands ; and never met a man, even the champions of the dis- 
 tricts, who could do nineteen feet on a level. The south- 
 country shepherds who go to Highland farms (witness George 
 Laidlaw in Strathglass and others), beat the Gael all to sticks 
 in Gymnastics in general. They are a harmless, contented, 
 patient, enduring, patriotic, pious, and brave people, full of 
 hospitality and every social virtue, but very so-so jumpers 
 indeed, and at wrestling not worth the toss-up of the smallest 
 denomination of coin known, now or formerly, in these realms. 
 At the beginning of the previous paragraph we have warned 
 our readers against ever believing one word they hear in 
 general society about Gymnastics. Pray, may we extend our 
 advice to all other subjects of public and private interest? 
 Correct opinions and sentiments we have occasionally heard 
 in mixed parties, but correct statements of facts, never. Only 
 listen to a palaver about the battle of Waterloo— or Napoleon 
 at St Helena— or the height of the Irish Giant— or the reduc- 
 tion of taxes — or the exaction of tithes — or Lord Kennedy and 
 Mr Oldbaldiston and Captain Eoss shooting pigeons— or the 
 Silk Trade — or the Shipping Interest — or the Emigration of 
 Swallows — or a great Bankruptcy or famous Forgery — or Sal- 
 mon-fishing in the Tweed— or the population of Ireland— or the 
 greatest number of annual swarms of Bees from one Hive — or 
 
GYMNASTICS. HI 
 
 the colour of this Miss's hair (in our opinion clearly a fiery 
 red), or that Miss's eye (certainly a grey squint),— and what 
 contradictions, inaccuracies, blunders, misrepresentations, and 
 distortions of poor unhappy miserable Facts ! 
 
 Often, indeed, have we wondered how this world goes on ! 
 Nobodv seems to know anything. The events of last week 
 are either forgotten, or by treacherous memory so transmo- 
 grified, that we know not the ghastly faces of our sorely 
 altered friends. Can this dim, faint, glimmering, attenuated, 
 shivering, and spectral Fact be indeed the woe-begone appari- 
 tion of the jolly reality of yester-morn was a week ! You see 
 men hurrying by you, on the wings of passion, as if their ex- 
 istence hung upon a moment, blind and deaf to the external 
 world, and acting to admiration the part of spiritual essences. 
 On the Monday following, by no train of circumstances can you 
 recall to them from obliviscence the subject-matter of their 
 headlong impetuosity. They say you must be dreaming, and 
 with faces of blank vacuity turn into Montgomery's for an ice- 
 cream. There is no such thing as a faculty of Memory, and 
 we very much doubt the existence of Judgment. But how, in 
 the midst of all this confusion and bewilderment, the said 
 world goes on— there is the mystery which no Magazine has 
 yet resolved. Every man you meet is more ignorant and 
 stupider than another; no living being can extract from 
 another the slightest useful knowledge of any kind ; collect 
 facts, and they all turn out falsehoods ; from the invention of 
 Printing to this blessed hour, never yet was there an accurate 
 quotation ; and oh ! Heavens and earth ! in Tables of Figures, 
 to what countless millions amount the Sums Total of the 
 Whole ! . 
 
 But we must return to Captain Clias. Captain Clias is such 
 an enthusiast in his profession, that each branch of the science 
 of Gymnastics appears to him to be, while he is teaching it, 
 the most important. Thus he pronounces, as we have seen, 
 a splendid panegyric on Walking ; and, under the influence of 
 his eloquence, we are led to believe it the noblest of all human 
 exploits, far beyond either Lying, Standing, or Sitting, each 
 of which,- however, had received in its turn a glowing eulogy. 
 But when he warms upon Eunning, we feel for Walking 
 almost a sort of contempt. Eunning seems to be all-in-all— 
 without it, human life seems still, sedentary, and stagnant 
 
112 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Ere long, the Captain comes forward succinct for Jumping, 
 and then all the business of this world appears transacted by 
 leaps and springs. But no sooner have we joined the sect of 
 jumpers, than the Captain lifts up his voice, and calls aloud 
 in praise of Wrestling. We begin to wonder how we could 
 have been so dazzled with the glories of Lying, Standing, 
 Sitting, Walking, Eunning, and Jumping in general, and wish 
 that Jacob were alive, that we might try the patriarch a fall. 
 What can be more beautifully philosophical than the follow^ 
 ing eloge? 
 
 The salutary effects which result from the different manners of wrestling 
 extend themselves over the whole body. The members are developed, the 
 muscles are fortified, the vital spirits are circulated more freely, and in- 
 creased in a very visible manner. This exercise presents also the advan- 
 tage of arming young persons with patience, courage, and constancy. A 
 long experience, supported by daily practice, has clearly proved to us, that, 
 of all the exercises of the body, wrestling, well directed, is that which 
 increases courage the most, inures to pain, and accustoms young men to 
 perseverance. This only gives them that moral force which is commonly 
 called resistance. 
 
 If we consider wrestling with regard to its general utility, we shall see 
 that there is no other exercise which presents, more than this does, the 
 certain, and not expensive, means of rendering the body supple, vigorous, 
 and well-formed, and of preserving the health, and increasing its means of 
 defence. 
 
 It is possible that some men, under the influence of prejudice, or the 
 pretended brave, may think that wrestling is useless, since fighting with 
 the fists is no longer practised amongst gentlemen ; but let us suppose for a 
 moment that one of these gentlemen unintentionally insults, or rather 
 finds himself insulted, by one of those vigorous companions, who, to decide 
 their quarrel, employ only the arms which nature has given them ; in a 
 similar case, what will the man do who has hardly strength enough to 
 handle the sword which he carries ? 
 
 The Captain then chooses his ground judiciously in the fol- 
 lowing passage : — 
 
 Both with regard to security and agreeableness, a close soil, covered 
 with a good green turf, is, without contradiction, the most proper ground 
 for wrestling on, when care has been taken to remove all the hard bodies 
 which might injure the wrestlers in case of falls, or during the struggles 
 which take place on the ground. Too hard a soil presents but little re- 
 sistance to the feet, and it weakens the confidence of the wrestlers, because 
 they are afraid of slipping and of hurting themselves in falling. Ground 
 covered with a deep sand is very disagreeable, because in wrestling upon 
 it the body is almost always covered with, and the eyes full of sand. 
 Neither boots with high heels, nor shoes with iron about them, should 
 
GYMNASTICS. 113 
 
 ever be -worn whilst wrestling. The pockets should always be emptied of 
 all things that might be injurious to the movements, or that might do 
 harm at the time of falling. The sleeves of the shirt ought to be turned 
 up above the elbows, the waistband of the trousers should not be very 
 tight, and the shirt-collar should be open. It is expressly forbidden in 
 wrestling for one to take his antagonist by the throat, or by any other 
 improper part ; to employ either the nails or the teeth, or to strike him 
 under the chin." 
 
 Here we confess that we lose sight of the system of Wrest- 
 ling taught by Captain Clias. But as we are above all pre- 
 judice on this or any other subject, we do not doubt that it 
 may be a very good and useful system. We have been too 
 long accustomed, however, to the simple, straightforward, 
 manly, close-hugging, back-hold "worstle" of the North of 
 England, to enter into the Captain's cantrips, and we devoutly 
 wish that we could see himself, or his best scholar, try a fall 
 with any one of fifty of the Cumberland and Westmoreland 
 society of gentlemen in London. In order to prepare his 
 scholars for wrestling, the most complicated of gymnastics, 
 both with respect to the diversity of its movements, and the 
 different situations in which wrestlers are often placed, Cap- 
 tain Clias explains a course of preparatory exercises, which 
 serves as an introduction. They have a somewhat quackish 
 character, and a few of them seem to us better fitted to make 
 a mountebank than a wrestler. Thus, he teaches his scholars 
 to kiss the ground in equilibrium, on the arms and points of 
 the feet — to support the body on the hands and heels, as far 
 from the ground as possible — to do the goat's jump, a foolish 
 game at all-fours — and to rise from the ground by the action 
 of the arms, keeping the legs still and extended — and a great 
 variety of other manoeuvres. 
 
 The essential difference between Captain Clias's system of 
 wrestling and that of the North of England, is this, that in 
 his the wrestlers catch hold in any way they choose ; whereas 
 in the north, each party has an equal and similar hold before 
 the struggle begins. Who can doubt which is the better 
 system? The Captain's is radically savage and barbarous, 
 and more congenial with the habits and temper of African 
 negroes than European whites. The other is fair, just, and 
 civilised. To us the sight of one man catching hold of 
 another round the waist, and consequently throwing him at 
 his pleasure, without the possibility of his antagonist making 
 vol.' v. H 
 
] 14 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 any effectual resistance, would be sickening indeed. Thus, 
 what true Cock of the North can read without disgust Exer- 
 cise XII., entitled " Of the First Fall" ? 
 
 " Sufficiently prepared by all the elements of wrestling, we may now, 
 without fearing any accident, familiarise ourselves with one of the most 
 complicated exercises, both by the variety of the movement, and the diffe- 
 rent situations in which we are placed during the action which is about to 
 be described. Placed opposite to each other, as has been indicated in the 
 preceding exercises, the wrestlers endeavour, by all sorts of movements, to 
 take the advantage ; but as here the principal object is for one to throw 
 down the other, it is permitted in the attack, in endeavouring to take him 
 round the body, to throw him in any manner whatever; and when one of 
 the wrestlers is much quicker and more dexterous than the other, it might 
 happen that the victory may be decided before either has taken his hold of 
 the other, for he who has twice thrown his adversary on his back ought to 
 be acknowledged conqueror. As soon as one has taken the other round 
 the body, he who has obtained the advantage ought to keep his head as 
 close as possible on the highest of his shoulders, in order to hinder his 
 champion from taking it under his arm ; then, in raising him from the 
 ground, to push him from one side, and throw him to the other ; or to 
 take advantage of the moment when he advances one of his feet, and throw 
 him down artfully, by giving him a trip up. He who loses the advantage 
 ought quickly to move his feet backwards, — to lean the upper part of his 
 body forwards, — to seize, if possible, the head of his champion under one 
 of his arms, — to fix his other hand on the hip, or on the loins, and to make 
 his adversary bear all the weight of his body." 
 
 William Litt and Tom Nicolson, what think ye of that ? At 
 such an exhibition, what hooting in the ring at Ambleside, 
 Coniston, Keswick, Penrith, or Carlisle ! We offer to bet 
 Captain Clias a dinner for six (a pretty number) of Fell mut- 
 ton and Windermere char, with all other appurtenances, that 
 the very first time he witnesses a belt wrestled for in either of 
 the above rings, he will abjure his own system, as fit only for 
 savages, and embrace that of Cumberland, as the "wrestling" 
 of gentlemen and Christians. It certainly is the duty of 
 Captain Clias, as a gymnasiarch of high character and high 
 situation, to whom part of the education of our British youth 
 is intrusted, to make himself, if not master, for that may not 
 be so easy, acquainted with the elements, at least the spirit, 
 of the character of British Gymnastics. If he knows nothing 
 at all about them, which we suspect is the case, then why 
 should our unfeigned respect for his character, and admiration 
 of his bodily accomplishments, prevent us from saying that he 
 
GYMXASTICS. 115 
 
 is not thoroughly qualified for the responsible, and, we pre- 
 sume, lucrative situation which he now holds ? 
 
 Of all athletic amusements of the people, wrestling is, 
 beyond doubt, the best. It is indeed entirely unexceptionable. 
 Good humour, mirth, merriment, and manliness, prevail in such 
 a ring, and therein quarrels are like summer-showers, rare, 
 short, sudden, and refreshing. Wrestling, at least such wrestl- 
 ing as we speak of, awakens so much enthusiasm over the 
 whole country where it prevails, that there is little or no 
 fighting except at an election. Wrestling, therefore, produces 
 precisely the same effect on the manners of the people as pugi- 
 lism — they both make people peaceable. The pugilistic prize- 
 ring has now become infamous, from the villany of many of 
 the men and their supporters. Ward, the most finished pugi- 
 list since the days of Jem Belcher, is, in the ring, a convicted 
 robber. May the integrity of the wrestling-ring remain for 
 ever unimpeached and sacred ! Sometimes, we fear, a few of 
 the last standers compromise ; not so much for the gain, which 
 is no great object, as for glory. But the system is universally 
 scouted, and soon proves fatal to character. William Litt 
 was the Bayard of the ring, the preux chevalier, sans peur et 
 sans reproche. Miles Dixon of Grasmere had always a soul 
 superior to every meanness ; so had William Wilson of Amble- 
 side. Wightman is, we believe, incorruptible — the reputation 
 of Cass is without a stain — Abbot is game to the back-bone, 
 and deserves to win at Carlisle — and Sandys, although some- 
 what fractious at the hold, and inclined to chip, would not sell 
 his honour for a collar and a crown of gold. The Nicolsons, 
 the Eichardsons, the Harrisons, and the Armstrongs, are not 
 their names alone equivalent to the life of Sir Philip Sydney ? 
 And would the worst man among them have sold the cham- 
 pionship for the national debt, amounting, as we have been 
 credibly informed, to many hundred millions of money ? 
 
 What a most absurd and nondescript affair of a world would 
 ours be, were all the inhabitants of the globe — Quakers ! Great, 
 big, fat, placid, greasy faces — and no more jumping, boxing, 
 or wrestling, among a fast-doubling population of broad-brims ! 
 But to be sure the established religion would soon break down 
 into sects, clothed, in the spirit of enlightened reform, in red, 
 blue, yellow, and purple apparel; after the lapse of a few 
 centuries, belts would be again wrestled for at Carlisle, and 
 
116 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 the ropes of the P. C. extended in the Moulseyhurst Aceldama, 
 or Field of Blood ! 
 
 We come in due course to a part of the Captain's book, 
 which, now that the thermometer is standing at eighty-four in 
 the shade, it is cooling to peruse — his chapter on Skating. 
 thou most ambitious and aspiring of thermometers, hast thou 
 indeed ever been down so low in the world as the freezing- 
 point ? Ice ! What a charming cold little word ! Oh ! it 
 comes over us like the chill north over a bank of cranreuch, 
 giving and stealing rigours ! Will that bright, shadowy, and 
 sleeping lake ever again tinkle to the circlings of the hissing, 
 skate ? Will booths ever again be erected, and Glenlivet 
 quaffed from quechs where now hangs the image of that sultry, 
 castellated, and thunder-bearing cloud ? But let us hear the 
 Captain. 
 
 SKATING. 
 
 This exercise, carried to a certain degree of perfection, surpasses all 
 those of which we have hitherto spoken, as well with respect to the beauty 
 of the movements, as to the infinite variety and rapidity of graceful 
 attitudes, which the skilful skater knows how to assume and change instan- 
 taneously, without appearing to take the smallest trouble. Sometimes, his 
 movement resembles that of a bird hovering about the same place ; some- 
 times, with his body easily balanced, he waves from side to side, like the 
 bark driven by the wind ; then instantly uniting all his powers, the active 
 skater dexterously and courageously darts forward with astonishing rapidity, 
 and the velocity of his course equals the rapid flight of a bird which appears 
 to cleave the air. Sometimes, appearing to yield himself to a simple move- 
 ment of impulse, he slides upon this compact surface without the spectator 
 being able to perceive the smallest muscular action, and passes as a flying 
 shadow before the surrounding objects. This magical action, which seems 
 (so to speak) to set us free from the laws of gravitation, possesses, indeed, 
 something of enchantment ; and, without doubt, it was the delightful plea- 
 sure which this recreation affords, that suggested to the immortal Klopstock 
 the idea of celebrating, in his songs, the delights which the people of the 
 north find during winter, on the smooth and solid ice of their numerous 
 canals and lakes. 1 
 
 Yes ! of all pastimes skating is indeed that which makes us 
 feel allied to the gods, and believe in mythology. There goes 
 an Edinburgh advocate in the character of Cupid — an account- 
 
 1 During the winter, Holland presents a spectacle which may be enjoyed at a 
 small expense. When the canals and lakes are frozen, thej'- travel on the ice 
 with skates. In all the provinces, but especially in Friesland, this art is carried 
 to so great a degree of perfection, as to become the wonder of all foreigners ; 
 
GYMNASTICS. 117 
 
 ant that would shame Apollo — and a W.S. more gracefully 
 fleet than Mercury gathering the shore ! 
 
 What season in all the year can bear comparison with 
 winter ? Can the imagination dream of a day superior to one 
 of cold bleak frost ? What bright and beautiful incrustations 
 on house-eave, bank, and tree ! What a glorious glitter on 
 the mountain-top ! Who would long for summer skies be- 
 neath that magnificent arch of heaven, " so deeply, darkly, 
 beautifully blue !" The air you breathe belongs to a clime in 
 which all living things must reach longevity without the 
 labour of reading Sir John Sinclair. With eveiy sweet single 
 soul of that blooming bevy of fur-clad virgins are we in love ; 
 in such a bracing atmosphere we behold charms in every 
 matron, and something pleasant in old women themselves ! 
 Then, and then only, do we lament our bachelorship, and vow 
 " to show her the ring, and implore her to marry." But our 
 courage melts with the first thaw, and Ccelebs ceases to go in 
 Search of a Wife. 
 
 What varieties of scenery does the skater enjoy! The 
 broad meadow, where the tree- stems are bound in the crisp 
 water-flow, and the bells are heard jangling sweetly from the 
 old monastic tower, — the pond in pleasure-ground, in whose 
 oozy depths the carp repose, and whose margin is shaded 
 from sun and storm by a brotherhood of sycamores, or horse- 
 chestnuts perpetually in bud, — the long river-shallows, with 
 ivied precipices closing up the vista, and overhead blue sky 
 and white cloud, with perhaps a few cawing rooks, — the canal 
 winding on its scientific level round knoll and hill, with stray 
 house and scattered village on its banks, and passage -boat, 
 ferry-punt, and coal-barge imprisoned in the frost's embrace, — 
 tarn up among the mountains, where no sound is heard but the 
 cracking cliffs — or living lake, living, but asleep in its pel- 
 
 and it is surprising to see with what agility and boldness they will pass over 
 twelve miles in one hour of time. All the countrywomen know how to skate. 
 Sometimes thirty persons may be seen together — that is, fifteen young men with 
 their mistresses, who, all holding each other by the hand, appear, as they move 
 along, like a vessel driven before the wind. Others are seated on a sledge fixed 
 on two bars of wood, faced with iron, and pushed on by one of the skaters. 
 There are, also, boats ten or fifteen feet long, placed on large skates, and fitted 
 up with masts and sails. The celerity with which these boats are driven for- 
 ward, exceeds imagination ; and, it may be said, they equal the rapid flight of 
 a bird. They go three miles in less than a quarter of an hour. 
 
118 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 lucid glassiness, with an old castle reflected in it, and a grove 
 contemporary with the foundation-stone ! 
 
 Then with what an appetite does the skater return to his 
 Dulce Domum ! In no other exercise is there so little fatigue. 
 Fox-hunting is glorious, but severe — cricketing is noble, but 
 straining to the sinewy system — and we have felt somewhat 
 too wearied from Tennis and Fives — but skating is always 
 like the undebilitating and restorative exercise of a new 
 faculty. Hunger and thirst seem mere names, as we glide 
 and skim along, yet, soon as we untie our skates, they are 
 felt to be realities. No sleeping after dinner among a bright- 
 eyed company of skaters ! Quips and cranks, and wreathed 
 smiles, — joke, jest, pun, and repartee, — sallies of pointed 
 merriment, grotesque remarks, acute observations, original 
 whimsies, nay, even profound reflections bordering upon the 
 philosophical, intermingle with song, catch, and glee, till, 
 through the illimitable range of laughter, from faint susurrus 
 to indomitable guffaw, the long glass-jingling table, with its 
 central punchbowl, is on a murmur or a roar ! 
 
 But lo ! Winter is over and gone, and warm-bosomed May- 
 day dips her lily-feet once more in the tepid murmurs of 
 stream and lake, or in the foam-bells breaking over the heav- 
 ing beauty of the grass-green sea — and the season of Swim- 
 ming shines over the watery world. Captain Clias strips, 
 and, like a merman, flings his muscular anatomy into the 
 flowing tide, or over a waterfall. Perhaps the best part of the 
 Captain's work is the chapter on Swimming. In Swimming, 
 as in Poetry, no mediocrity must be allowed, and that for 
 excellent reasons. 
 
 It is not sufficient, as many may suppose, to know so much of this art 
 as merely to extricate ourselves, but it is necessary to possess sufficient 
 ability to succour another in the moment of distress. A swimmer who has 
 only attained mediocrity, is incapable of this latter gratification, for his 
 swimming cannot be considered as an action that he executes with facility; 
 on the contrary, it appears as a continued struggle with the element, in 
 which he must perish, should the least accident occur to confuse him, or 
 impede his efforts. It is, then, essential for those who would possess the 
 real benefits of this art, to convince themselves of its great utility, and not 
 to commence, until they have resolved to pass the bounds of mediocrity. 
 
 In the arts of fencing, dancing, music, horsemanship, &c. a tolerable pro- 
 gress produces no unhappy consequences — it is even productive of pleasure : 
 it is not thus in regard to swimming ; we can have but little pleasure, and 
 no safety in the water as indifferent swimmers. Experience proves to us 
 
GYMNASTICS. 119 
 
 that more fatal accidents happen to those who swim imperfectly, than those 
 who cannot swim at all, the latter having no temptation to expose them- 
 selves to danger. 
 
 This is sound doctrine, and we are willing to subscribe to 
 it on the sole authority of Captain Clias — but he clenches it 
 with Kousseau. — " Without having finished his studies," says 
 Kousseau, " a traveller mounts on horseback, keeps his seat, 
 and this he can clo sufficiently well for his purpose ; but in the 
 water, if he does not know how to swim, he will probably be 
 drowned." Rousseau was indeed a strange paradoxical crea- 
 ture. — It is an error to suppose that grown-up men cannot 
 learn to swim, — experience teaches the contrary, — and the 
 great number of soldiers and private individuals who are 
 taught swimming in the different European establishments, 
 proves clearly that men may become most expert in the art at 
 any period of life. Still there have been few first-rate swim- 
 mers who did not practise the art from childhood. 
 
 Surely it may be called a duty of parents to attend to this part of the 
 physical education of their children. Is it not truly pitiable, to see the 
 smallest animal find its safety in crossing rivers, and in sustaining itself on 
 the water for hours ; whilst man, the king of animals, so proud of his know- 
 ledge, may be drowned in a brook, if he has not learnt to swim ? In the 
 moment of danger, of what service to a person are all the valuable pleasures 
 of literature, and the stores of the mind ? Of what avail to know the whole 
 circle of the mathematics, the properties of different bodies, their mechan- 
 ism and specific weight, if he should fall into the water, and not be able to 
 remedy that property in his own body, which causes it to sink in that fluid? 
 Nay, we beseech him to learn to swim, that he may preserve more effectu- 
 ally from accident those gifts and attainments which would cause his loss 
 to be severely felt. 
 
 The motions we must make in the water, in order to preserve our equili- 
 brium, or to direct the body according to our will, are not natural to man ; 
 it is therefore necessary to learn them, if we wish to preserve ourselves from 
 danger. Even if the body of a man, placed horizontally on the water, had 
 the property of buoyancy, it would be of no advantage without the art of 
 urging it forward, or directing its movements. It would either remain 
 stationary, or in a rapid stream be drawn into gulfs, bruised against rocks, 
 or perhaps crushed by the wheel of a mill. 
 
 Let the English youth feel this truth, and learn to govern their own per- 
 sons, in its healthy kingdom, with as much skill as they do their ships of 
 war and commerce, which have raised their country to the highest pitch of 
 maritime glory and prosperity. 
 
 It is certainly most absurd to live all the days of one's life 
 
120 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 at the mercy of any one of the elements whatever, more espe- 
 cially water ; and, in most instances, people who are drowned 
 deserve death. In much of the interior of Africa, and in the 
 central deserts of Arabia, swimming is of no use, owing to the 
 general aridity of the soil, and want of atmospheric moisture. 
 But islanders like us, who are rarely out of sight or sound of 
 stream, lake, and sea, ought to be amphibious. In angling, 
 no man can be called a master who is not a swimmer. There 
 is not a bridge at every turn across the Tweed, Tay, and 
 Clyde, — ferry-boats are rare, — and fords are deep. Over with 
 you, therefore, like a sagacious Newfoundland dog, back and 
 forward from shady and sunny bank, according to the flow of 
 flood, and giving yourself a shake, drop the fly lightly above 
 snout of trout, grilse, or salmon. In lake-fishing, wherever 
 you see a strong and shelving shallow stretching along the 
 deeps, have instant recourse to natation, and you will fill your 
 pannier with pounders, while land-lubbers are in vain flogging 
 from the shore. Don't talk to us about danger. The wave 
 is tepid as milk, so no chance of catching cold ; cramp is a 
 mere bugbear ; and as every man knows his own strength, 
 he is just as safe while he keeps within moderate limits in the 
 water as on the land. 
 
 We have, indeed, heard it seriously mentioned in conversa- 
 tion, that people who can swim run a greater risk of being 
 drowned than those who cannot ; and, no doubt, people who 
 cannot swim do not often plunge into pools twenty feet deep, 
 just as people who cannot ride are rarely seen on horseback, 
 and never killed acting as jockeys at Newmarket. In all 
 accidents with boats, the good swimmers, it is said, are uni- 
 formly drowned. That, in the first place, is a lie ; but when 
 it does so happen, pray who drown them but the knaves who 
 cannot swim a stroke, and clutch hold of the legs of better 
 men, and drag them to the bottom ? A prime seaman is not 
 worthy the name who cannot swim, nor can he discharge all 
 his duties. In shipwreck during a storm, and on a lea-shore 
 of precipices, swimming cannot greatly avail, and the sea will 
 dash to death a thousand men among the floating fragments 
 of the Dreadnought ; or fire will consume the ship from the 
 face of the sea; "and the strong swimmer in his agony" 
 knows that he shall never behold the setting sun. But, to say 
 that men in shipwreck have not a better chance of their lives, 
 
GYMNASTICS. l21 
 
 if able to swim, is about as rational as to say that men in 
 baiton-wrecks/would not have a better chance of then: Me rf 
 
 &b M^ parents love their children (the organ of philoprogeni- 
 JSST. l- g e bump on all heads, ««"-££•*» 
 D hrenologvh and cannot bear the thought of their being 
 drowned o they are apt to look upon bathmg as a dan- 
 njJw Although we have no children of our own, 
 ^°a"-i. P l t hkve any not being married, yet we can pardon 
 Z amkble weakness which betrays a rational mistrus m the 
 efficacy of resuscitating machines. But swimming may be 
 lean d m water not deeper than your knee-nay, many of 
 om readers with large families will be happy and smpnsed to 
 "n the a«thorify of Captain Clias ^£££% 
 
 .ay be taught the ^fi^^^SS^!S 
 
 having recourse to water, ana may 
 
 the art : — 
 
 ner that its upper edge touches the ^f^tngJ in breadth, and 
 
 out, and the heels are kept together, but the toes axe ^ 
 
 and contracted; this is called ranging In this P 0Slt ^ ^ ^ ft 
 remain for some time, till he feels it becomes easy to him. W hen 
 well Inovrn, the pupil proceeds to the movements. 
 
 We have not room to enter into any detail of the various 
 exercises by which the pupil is finally and m a ™JJJj 
 short time, enabled to despise rope and pole, and launch out 
 into river or sea. 
 
122 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 This system, which Captain Clias put in practice in 1809, 
 for the first time, with the two grandsons of Marshal Blucher, 
 and in 1811, in his own country (Switzerland), has been 
 introduced for some years, by Colonel Pfull, in the Prussian 
 army, with great success, and lately in many other parts of 
 the Continent. Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, 
 Moscow, St Petersburg, Amsterdam, Berne in Switzerland, 
 and a great many other places, have now regular Swimming 
 Schools established and maintained by the Government, or 
 private societies. 
 
 In the year 1818 there were formed, in the central school of 
 Denmark, one hundred and five masters, destined to teach in 
 the different cities of that kingdom. All of them having been 
 instructed after the same method, learnt, in less than four 
 months, to swim a distance of nine miles, to dive twenty feet 
 deep, and even to swim a considerable distance in full dress and 
 arms, carrying a man on their back. In the different Swimming 
 Schools of that country, 2707 individuals have learnt to swim 
 perfectly in the same year, and almost every one of those 
 institutions on the Continent offers the same satisfactory result. 
 
 We recommend Captain Clias's book to all swimmers. They 
 will find excellent instructions respecting Treading water — 
 Swimming on the side, without employing the feet — Floating 
 — Leaping, or Plunging — the Kunning Plunge — the Flat 
 Plunge — the Fling — the Mill — the Wheel backwards and 
 forwards — the Thrust — the Double Thrust — Diving — and 
 Saving from danger. 
 
 As a specimen of his style of treating the subject, hear him 
 on diving : — 
 
 The exercise of diving must begin by remaining under water without 
 motion. The most pleasant manner for the diver is to let himself sink gently 
 into the water, by means of a pole or rope. The breath must be drawn in 
 slowly, and expelled by degrees, when the heart begins to beat very strongly. 
 If the pupil has practised himself in this for some time, he may then begin 
 to swim under water, and to dive to the bottom. In swimming under water, 
 he may either move in the usual way, or keep his hands stretched before 
 him, which will enable him to cut the water more easily, and greatly relieve 
 the breast. If he observes that he approaches too near the surface of the 
 water, he must press the palms of his hands upwards. If he wishes to dive 
 to the bottom, he must turn the palms of the hands upwards, striking with 
 them repeatedly and rapidly, whilst the feet are reposing ; and when he has 
 attained a perpendicular position, he should stretch out his hands like 
 
GYMNASTICS. 123 
 
 feelers, and make the usual movement with his feet ; then he will descend 
 with great rapidity to the bottom. It is well to accustom the eyes to open 
 themselves under the water, at least in those beds of water which admit 
 the light, as it will enable us to ascertain the depth of the water we are in. 
 
 Except wlien it is sought to bring up drowning or drowned 
 people from the bottom, we dissuade our readers from diving. 
 It cannot be good for the health. Never, as you love us, dive 
 under logs of wood, or barges, or frigates, or line-of-battle 
 ships. We have seen such things done — we have ourselves 
 done such things. On one occasion, with our head touching 
 the keel of an eighteen gun-brig, we began to feel want of 
 breath, and would have given a rump and dozen for a single 
 gallon of air. The brig was rather big-bellied, and we could 
 not get clear of her great fat sides. We began to fear that we 
 should not find our level, and the journey upwards was indeed 
 most intolerably tedious. Unluckily, on reaching the surface, 
 we came up under a boat of live lumber, from the shore, and 
 had to put on our spectacles to see our way from under her 
 ugly flat bottom. Then a pretty high sea was running, and 
 when we had bobbed our head above water, wave after wave 
 smote us, till we were heard from on board blowing like a 
 porpus. We would not take such another dive again, no, not 
 for a bushel of pearls ; and we believe that, for nearly a quarter 
 of an hour (so the time seemed to us), we had been given up by 
 the whole ship's company — we had almost said the squadron. 
 
 In diving, beware of muddy bottoms. It is a shocking sen- 
 sation to feel yourself settling down to the middle, head fore- 
 most, in sludge, among eels. Beware of weeds and water- 
 lilies, for there the Naiads are ladies of indifferent reputation, 
 and their embrace is death. Never leap from the battlements 
 of a bridge — let a soft, green, sunny bank, of a few feet, suffice. 
 As you are a gentleman, scorn canals — and neither bathe nor 
 fish in troubled waters. Gentle river ! gentle river ! let me 
 float adown the elysium of thy flowing murmurs ; and then, in 
 kind contention, lovingly buffet back my way to the pool, on 
 whose tree-shaded brink lie my nankeen trousers and shirt of 
 fine linen, like a snow-patch amid the verdure. Ah I above 
 all things else, as you are a man, let no foot-path, however 
 unfrequented, touch the water-edge near the pool where you, 
 like a wild goose, are at play; but steer your state like a swan, 
 that, bold yet shy, disports in the solitude, and ever and anon 
 
124 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 rising on the surface, awakens the lonely echoes with the 
 flapping of his victorious wings ! 
 
 Often have we longed to save the life of a fellow- creature ; 
 and we have rescued from drowning one very young child, and 
 one very old woman. But oh ! that it had fallen to our lot to 
 save some lovely virgin, unengaged to be married, and who 
 had not yet lost her heart ! That is a happiness that falls to 
 the lot of one man in a million. Yet one precious life we have 
 saved — when the waters rose and beat over her, nor has she 
 been ungrateful — the life of the dearest, best creature alive — 
 — Maga the incomparable ! — even at the very hour when her 
 days were as those of a virgin when the days of her virginity 
 have expired. 1 
 
 In all ordinary cases follow the advice of Captain Clias : — 
 
 It is necessary for a swimmer to know how to act in rescuing a drowning 
 person, without himself becoming the victim, as so often happens ; we there- 
 fore lay down the following rules : — The swimmer must avoid approaching 
 the drowning person in front, in order that he ma^ \ ot be grasped by him ; 
 for wherever a drowning person seizes, he holds witn convulsive force, and 
 it is no easy matter to get disentangled from his grasp ; therefore he ought 
 to seize him from behind, and let him loose immediately the other turns 
 towards him ; his best way is either to impel him before to the shore, or to 
 draw him behind; if the space to be passed be too great, he should seize 
 him by the foot, and drag him, turning him on his back. If the drowning 
 person has seized him, there is no other resource for the swimmer than to 
 drop at once to the bottom of the water, and there to wrestle with his 
 antagonist; the drowning man endeavours, by a kind of instinct, to regain 
 the surface, and when drawn down to the bottom, he usually quits his prey, 
 particularly if the diver attacks him there with all his power. 
 
 For two swimmers the labour is easier, because they can mutually relieve 
 each other. If the drowning person has still some presence of mind re- 
 maining, they will then seize him one under one arm, and the other under 
 the other, and, without any great effort in treading water, bring him along 
 with his head above the water, while they enjoin him to keep himself as 
 much stretched out, and as much without motion, as possible. 
 
 In the last Quarterly Review (an admirable Number, Mi- 
 Editor) there is an article on swimming, at once sensible and 
 ingenious, entertaining and instructive. We have our doubts, 
 however, about the superiority of upright natation. No doubt 
 that method more closely resembles walking than the usual 
 one, which, indeed, has no resemblance to walking at all; but 
 why should swimming resemble walking? — Walking, Swim- 
 » See Chaldee MS. 
 
GYMNASTICS. 125 
 
 ming, and Flying, seem to ns three distinct kinds of locomotion, 
 in three distinct kinds of elements — earth, water, and air. Such 
 savao-e swimmers as we have seen — we speak of the natives of 
 Otaheite and the Sandwich Isles, also of Malays and of the 
 negroes on the coast of Guinea — do not swim upright, although 
 certainly they do swim deep in the water, which is perhaps all 
 that the reviewer means to recommend. Men w^ould take no 
 heed of time but by its loss, were they to swim great distances 
 upright; and on the whole we must remain partial to the 
 method of the frog, the most elegant and powerful of swimmers, 
 and an animal to whom, in many essential points, we have 
 always thought the human species bears a very striking 
 resemblance. 
 
 Some swimmers, at every stroke, raise not only their neck 
 and shoulders, but absolutely breast and body, out of the water^ 
 and the style is imposing. But it must exhaust, and part of 
 the power exerted is nearly useless. It is sufficient to keep 
 your mouth above water; yet even that is not absolutely 
 necessary, for you may breathe through your nostrils. Longish 
 strokes are the best ; but you may vary them at your pleasure. 
 As far as our observation or experience goes, power in the 
 arms is of more avail to the swimmer than power in the legs ; 
 and we would always bet on the pugilistic, in preference to 
 the pedestrian figure. 
 
 Captain Clias will have ladies to learn to swim as well as 
 jump ; and of the two, natation and saltation, the former is, 
 we think, according to our notions of feminine delicacy, the 
 accomplishment which we should prefer in a wife or mistress. 
 It is difficult for the female form to jump gracefully. Camilla 
 herself, we suspect, would have looked awkward at hop-step- 
 and-leap. Venus was no jumping Joan — but she walked well. 
 And Urania, there can be no doubt from her name, was a 
 charming swimmer. Petticoats, however, are not such good 
 things to swim in as breeches; but that difficulty married 
 ladies will be able to get over, while in the water all virgins 
 must be Musidoras. 
 
 Life is sweet — so, swim in no sea where by any possibility a 
 shark can be within a hundred leagues of your leg. Kemember 
 the print of the young man saved with loss of limb from that 
 marine attorney. Should a dolphin disturb you, up with you 
 on his back, and, calling for your fiddle, sport Arion. Bottle- 
 
12G ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 noses are harmless. We never knew a life lost by Craken ; 
 and there is only one on record swallowed by a Whale. 
 
 In the Quarterly are some pleasant natatory anecdotes, to 
 which we add a brace given by Captain Clias. 
 
 In 1699, a small vessel belonging to the monks of La Charite 
 was overset by a gust of wind, between St Lucie and Marti- 
 nique, and all who were in it perished, with the exception of a 
 Carabee, who, without being aided by a plank, or other morsel 
 of wood that might have assisted him, kept himself buoyant 
 upon the water for the space of sixty hours, supporting hunger, 
 thirst, and the violence of the tempest which caused the loss 
 of the vessel, and at last landed at a small creek, and commu- 
 nicated the news of the wreck which had happened. 
 
 In the famous defence of Genoa, by General Massena, that 
 officer felt the necessity of making known his perilous situation 
 to the First Consul — the fate of the place, and that of the 
 French army, depended upon the event of the siege ; the 
 blockade cut off all communication by land, and that by sea 
 was attended with great danger. Francesche, a young officer, 
 was the first to present himself for this great act of devotion ; 
 he received despatches from the general, and jumped into a 
 fishing-boat, with three intrepid rowers. By favour of the 
 night he passed through three lines of the English fleet, but 
 at day-break they were perceived, and chase was given them, 
 Francesche escaped for a long time the pursuit of the English, 
 until they were but a few leagues from Antibes, but the enemy 
 then gained upon them, and the fear of falling into their hands 
 was severely felt. Francesche stripped off his clothes, bound 
 the despatches to his body, and having recommended the 
 sailors to manoeuvre as long as possible, to draw the enemy's 
 attention from himself, gently dropped into the sea. He swam 
 several hours, landed among his countrymen, and had the 
 satisfaction to present the despatches safe to the First Consul, 
 who could not withhold his admiration of this proof of courage 
 and success. The former begged to finish his enterprise, 
 received the answer, and carried it back to General Massena 
 at Genoa. 
 
 Captain Clias, we wish you good morning. Gentle readers ! 
 remember that all the gymnastic exercises in the world are 
 not worth a bam, without regular, sober, active habits of life. 
 All kinds of debauchery and dissipation incapacitate equally for 
 
GYMNASTICS. 
 
 127 
 
 lyina;, standing, walking, running, leaping, wrestling, skating, 
 swimming, and a thousand things else beside. what a charm 
 in moderation ! How strong the heart beats and the lungs play ! 
 The eye how it sparkles ! and the mantling blood on the clear 
 cheek, how beautiful ! But your fat, pursy, purfled son of a 
 witch, who, from morn to night, guzzles and gurgles like a 
 town-drake in a gutter, and from night to morn snorts and 
 snores to the disturbance of other two tenements, no system 
 of gymnastics will keep that man alive till Christmas ; and 
 then he will be seen practising lon&fide that species of walk- 
 ino- which Captain Clias calls the Spectre's March. 
 
 And now, gentle readers, we must part. We have indeed 
 bestowed our tediousness upon you, but believe us when we 
 declare 'pon our honour that our error was unpremeditated. 
 Half a sheet was all we had allowed ourselves at starting, and 
 we are really afraid to count the number of pages. We must 
 not hope that you may never be drowned, in case you should 
 come to a worse death ; but may you live all the days of your 
 life, and long may the stone sleep unshaped in the quarry that 
 is destined to bear the epitaph commemorative of your vn-tues. 
 
CETJIKSHANK OX TIME. 1 
 
 [JUNE 1827. ] 
 
 Time is generally represented either in the character of a 
 Stream, or of an Old Gentleman. Of Time, as a Stream, the 
 less that is said in a Magazine with any pretensions to origi- 
 nality, the better. Of Time as an Old Gentleman, suffice it 
 to remark, that he is alternately active and passive. When 
 active, he is armed with a scythe, and an excellent mower he 
 is, laying a double swathe with inimitable neatness and pre- 
 cision ; when passive, a crowd of idle people are engaged in 
 killing Time, and he appears lying in a stupor ; but no sooner 
 have the delinquents fled, than he jumps to his feet with all 
 the alacrity of a man in his seventh thousand year, declines 
 the offer of medical assistance, and disappears. Formerly, he 
 used to wear a long beard, and pride himself on a " slape 
 sconce;" but nowadays he often sports a chin that "shows 
 like a stubble-field at harvest-home," and mounts a wig that 
 gives him quite the air of an Apollo. In good truth, old 
 Father Time, as he used to be called, is now a confirmed 
 bachelor at whom maidenly ladies of a certain age keep sett- 
 ing their caps in vain. You see him frequently sitting in a 
 bang-up greatcoat, on the box beside Coachee, or even with 
 the ribands in his hand, driving like the very devil ; and we 
 know of nobody else to whom he bears so strong a general 
 resemblance as Washington Irving' s Stout Gentleman. 
 
 George Cruikshank and we have long been cronies, and 
 George has treated us with some admirable Illustrations of his 
 Friend Time's character and pursuits. The frontispiece is 
 excellent. There Time is seen resuming his antique appear- 
 ance and propensities ; winged, bearded, with his notorious 
 fore-lock, and hungry as hell. The solitary glutton has a 
 i Illustrations of Time. By George Cruikshanx. 
 
CPOJIKSHANK ON TIME. 129 
 
 board spread, for his exclusive delight, with all the delicacies 
 of all the seasons. At head and foot of the table stands a 
 castle — one quite fresh, only a few years old, the other dila- 
 pidated and ivy- wreathed, that the epicure may glut his maw 
 with variety as he crunches battlement and foundation-stone. 
 The two corner-dishes near the head of the table are a stately 
 sycamore grove, and a three-decker ; near the foot a date tree 
 and a dromedary, a farmhouse and a wheat- stalk. The three 
 side-dishes on the farther side of the table, are a shepherd 
 piping to his flock ; a 68-pounder carronade and grape-shot ; 
 a bull and a heifer. Of the three side-dishes close to the 
 devourer, one is untouched, or nearly so, — a splendid coach, 
 full of nobility, with only the leaders as yet eaten up ; in a 
 spoon in his right hand, a church ; on a fork in his left, an 
 elephant, endorsed with a tower bristling with spears ; while 
 in the centre of the table, is an ample miscellany of all ages, 
 and sexes, and professions ; with plumes, and helms, and 
 crowns, and all the meanest and most majestic paraphernalia 
 of mortality. There Tempus Edax sits, like Christopher 
 North at Ambrose's, ere Tickler, and ODoherty, and the Shep- 
 herd have appeared, impatient to have all the good things of 
 this world to himself; although, in gobbling up all the real 
 and movable property in the universe, he leave himself to die 
 of famine on the Last Day. 
 
 George Cruikshank knows better than some people we 
 could name, the grand secret of descending with skill and 
 dexterity from stilts, and walking like an ordinary biped. 
 The Frontispiece, therefore, is the only very sublime thing in 
 all the Illustrations — and turning it over, dromedaries, ele- 
 phants, towers, and temples and all, lo ! " Time Called and 
 Time Come." The scene is on Moulseyhurst — within a roped 
 ring of twenty feet — worth all the Boxiana of this Magazine, 
 of Pierce Egan, and of John Bee. Conspicuous in the middle 
 of the picture stands the Time-Keeper, with his tatler in his 
 hand, — bawling the monosyllable. To the left, within the 
 ropes, lies on his back, with his face up to heaven, the Man 
 of the flash-side — say Jem Ward — in a state of innocence. 
 His daylights are darkened, and something more than slumber 
 has sealed up his eyes, which have been lanced in vain. In 
 vain, too, does his strong-lunged Second roar into his ear. To 
 
 VOL. V. I 
 
130 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 liim, it is like a faint and far-off echo — or perhaps he hears it 
 not at all, but is deaf as a house. His Bottle-holder on one 
 knee> and with one fist half-angrily clenched, seems to upbraid 
 him for being past the restoration of the water of life. A Jew 
 kneels over him in despair, muttering and moaning about his 
 " monish," — while a sporting surgeon feels the feeble pulse in 
 a wrist that is overshadowed by the blue swollen hand, all of 
 whose knuckles seem dislocated with paying away at Crawley's 
 osfrontis ; and a great big hulking disconsolate Cockney, such 
 a one as always appertains to the flash-side, half swell and 
 half gull, can with difficulty believe his heyes when the odds 
 are finally floored, and his betting-book is a bankrupt. And 
 there, close to the ninny's elbow, is that familiar, Bill Bich- 
 mond, the Lily-white, with his box of ivories unlidded, his 
 ogles leering with a knavish I've-neither-lost-nor-win hedg- 
 ingish expression, in which, to the cheated Cockney, no con- 
 solation is to be found, and his topper so askew and askance 
 on his knowledge-box, that, but for an enormous organ of 
 destructiveness, it would slide to the sod. Five more finished 
 reprobates you will rarely see in a pyraniidical group, and 
 should the man die they will be all lagged together ; — but the 
 gallows is not to be robbed of its dues — for a vein is about to 
 be opened — and Jem, though vanquished to-day, will yet live 
 to be elevated to that conspicuous situation which he was 
 born and bred to adorn. But look at his opponent ! Second 
 and bottle-holder lift him like a log from the sod. Those 
 masses of muscle have lost their strength; he is sick and 
 exhausted as a dog that, after a forty-mile run, lies down 
 cheek-by-jowl with reynard on the road-mire — his face is 
 indistinguishable in mouth, nose, or eyes — but he staggers up 
 to the scratch like a drunkard, and then, as deaf to time as his 
 antagonist, falls down with a squelch — thirteen stone — bating 
 a few pounds of sweat and blood. 
 
 While we live, Jem Ward shall never be Champion. Is it 
 the part of a man who aspires to the championship, to travel 
 about the country, shamming Yokel, and cheating haw-bucks 
 and provincial boxers out of the purses for which they wish 
 honestly to contend ? No — it is but one form of that swind- 
 ling at which Jem, under various auspices, has long been so 
 expert — and we cannot but wonder at John Bee, as honest a 
 man as lives, and in all other instances the sworn foe of 
 
CRUIKSHAXK ON TIME. 131 
 
 knavery, giving countenance to such base and unmanly tricks 
 as were never practised before by any of the first-rate men. 
 Then, in the London ring itself, has not the knave and fool 
 been guilty of the most barefaced cross with Abbot ? And of 
 something very like a cross with Josh Hudson ? If Hudson 
 really licked him, what title has he to be a candidate for the 
 championship at all? If Josh did not lick him, then Jem 
 should, for that his second offence, have been kicked for ever 
 out of the ring. His battle with Crawley was a fair one — and 
 was he not fairly beaten ? After all this, it is sickening to 
 hear him talked of, even yet, by the flash-side, as Champion. 
 If ever he fight Brown of Bridgenorth, he will bite the dust. 
 Jem is a fine fighter, that is certain — active, skilful, a hard 
 hitter, nor is his bottom bad. But he has not power to stand 
 up against Brown, six of whose blows will settle his hash. It 
 is all very well to talk about " poor old Shelton" whom Brown 
 beat. " Poor old Shelton" is only a very few years, some 
 three or four, older than Brown; and although he had seen 
 rather too much service, was he not, previous to that battle, 
 considered the very best two-handed fighter on the list ? But 
 be all this as it may, no cross-cove, whether knave or fool, 
 should ever in our day be the Champion of England. 
 
 Forbid it, ye living worthies, Cribb and Spring — forbid it, ye 
 dead immortals, Jem Belcher and the Game Chicken ! Forbid 
 it, ye shades of heroes all, from Broughton to Power ! Forbid 
 it, ye — whose mauleys are armed more formidably than of old 
 with the cestus — with the unpurchased pen, pencil, and press 
 — Bee, Egan, Cruikshank, and North — for the eyes of your 
 country are upon you,' and " England expects every man to do 
 his duty." 
 
 But enough — too much perhaps — of blows and blood — so 
 cast your eye, fair reader, down to the left-hand corner of 
 Plate I. — and tell us what thou readest — " a short time — 
 going of an errand." There stands, winged gorgeously as 
 that superb moth, the great owl-moth of Brazil, him whom the 
 enthusiastic Kirby calls the glory of the Noctuidae, him whose 
 portraiture James Wilson, brother of the Professor, hath in his 
 late Illustrations of Zoology with pen and pencil so finely 
 visioned — there, we say, stands Oberon the fairy king — and 
 Puck, is it ? — yes, Puck let it be — like lightning obeying his 
 lord's command. 
 
132 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Ob&ron. 
 
 " Fetch me this herb — and be thou here again, 
 Ere the Leviathan can swim a league." 
 
 Puck. 
 " I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes." 
 
 How infinitely more poetical are wings like these, than seven- 
 league boots ! We declare, on our conscience, that we would 
 not accept the present of a pair of seven-league boots to- 
 morrow, — or, if we did, it would be out of mere politeness to 
 the genie who might press them on us, and the wisest thing 
 we could do would be to lock them up in a drawer out of the 
 reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk from 
 Clovenford to Innerleithen — why, with seven-league boots on 
 — one single step would take us up to Posso, seven miles 
 above Peebles ! That would never do. By mincing our 
 steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at Innerleithen ; 
 but suppose a gadfly were to sting one's hip at the Pirn — one 
 unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier, 
 and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan Water ! 
 Therefore, there is nothing like wings. On wings you can 
 flutter, and glide, and float and soar — now like a humming- 
 bird among the flowers — now like a swan, half rowing, half 
 sailing, and half flying adown a river — now like an eagle 
 afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards, in- 
 visible in excess of light, and bidding farewell to earth and 
 its humble shadows. " that I had the wings of a dove, 
 that I might flee away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in 
 some heavy hour or other, from the depth of his very soul, de- 
 voutly — passionately — hopelessly — breathed that wish to 
 escape beyond the limits of woe and sin — not into the world 
 of dreamless death — for, weary though the immortal pilgrim 
 may have been, never desired he the doom of annihilation — 
 untroubled although it be, shorn of all the attributes of being — 
 but he hath prayed for the wings of the dove, because that 
 fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from the sight of 
 human dwellings, hath seemed to disappear to his imagination 
 among old glimmering forests wherein she foldeth her wing 
 and falleth gladly asleep — and therefore, in those agitated 
 times, when the spirits of men acknowledge kindred with the 
 inferior creatures, and would fain interchange with them 
 powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay down their 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 133 
 
 intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself, so that they 
 conld but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all the 
 agonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone 
 can know, and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee 
 away and be at rest ! , 
 
 Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth m 
 forty minutes. At what rate is that per hour, taking the cir- 
 cumference of the earth at 27,000 miles, more or less ? There 
 is a question for the mechanics, somewhat about as difficult of 
 solution as Mr Brougham's celebrated one of the smuggler 
 and the Eevenue Cutter,— for the solution of which he recom- 
 mended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would 
 imagine — not seven hundred miles a minute. We forget the 
 usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is in 
 training,— and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we 
 are sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would 
 take a good stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to ac- 
 complish a journey to our planet from one of the fixed stars. 
 The great difficulty, we confess, would be to get him safely 
 conveyed thither. If that could be done, we should have no 
 fear of his finding his way back, if not in our time, in that of 
 our posterity. However red-hot he might have been on start- 
 ing, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the 
 goal,— yet we should have no objection to back him against 
 Time for a trifle, — Time, we observe, in almost all matches, 
 being beat, often indeed by the most miserable hacks, that can 
 with difficulty raise a gallop. Time, however, possibly runs 
 booty ; for when he does make play, it must be confessed that 
 he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen with such a 
 stride since Eclipse. 
 
 We never understood Shakespeare's fairies— nor his witches 
 either — nor his ghosts. Perhaps he did not intend that we 
 should understand them,— perhaps he did not understand 
 them himself, — perhaps no fairies, no witches, no ghosts, 
 either Shakespeare's or anybody's else, are altogether intelli- 
 gible, or at least very consistent characters. Yet we do like 
 people to be what they say they are— -one thing or other — 
 dead or alive — mermaid or salamander — goat or griffin — 
 Christian or cockney — miser or arimaspian. Then, whatever 
 you are, fish, flesh, or fowl, you are, in our humble critical 
 opinion, bound to stick to it. If fish, sport whatever scales 
 you choose ; but unless you shelter yourself behind the plea 
 
134 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 of being a seal or a sea-lion, what right have you to a hide of 
 hair ? Be satisfied, too, pray, with fins, unless to your mis- 
 fortune you are a flying-fish, — and do not insist, also, on legs 
 and arms, for these belong of right to bipeds and quadrupeds, 
 which you are not ; remember your Horace, and beware, — 
 
 " Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne." 
 
 If flesh — and not amphibious — which is an exceptio probat 
 regulam — keep you to dry land, my boy — and follow Nature 
 just as she has made you, graminivorous, carnivorous, or 
 omnivorous. It is vastly pleasant, certainly, to be omnivor- 
 ous — but that, far beyond his boasted reason, is the privi- 
 lege but of us — Man. If fowl, — act according to the shape 
 of your beak and talons, and all will go well ; otherwise, be 
 what bird you may, even the bird of Jove himself, in a 
 twelvemonth, or less, you will be taken for a Goose, or the 
 Glasgow Gander. 
 
 We have been anxious, for some sentences past, to get at 
 the philosophy of Shakespeare's fairies, witches, and ghosts, 
 but do not seem to have made any great progress. His 
 fairies are small — almost invisibly small, — and often lodge in 
 flower-cups, — a harebell being a palace, a primrose a hall, an 
 anemone a hut, and a daisy a shieling. Yet they fall in love 
 with us who run — males — from 5J to 6j feet high, — females, 
 some six inches lower. That is preposterous and impossible. 
 Titania, too, when she falls in love with Bottom, lays his ass's 
 head on her lap, and seems, at a rough guess, to be somewhat 
 about the middle size, between Mrs Cook and the Swiss 
 giantess. On what principle she originally married Oberon, 
 one is at a loss to guess — not love surely — perhaps ambition. 
 In short, there is sad confusion in Shakespeare's ideas of all 
 these creatures of the element — a complete higgledy-piggledy 
 — there is no making either head or tail of them — and the 
 traditionary elvish superstitions of all climates — especially 
 east and north — are blended together, not without rhymes 
 indeed — for many of the fairy lays are pretty enough, — but 
 certainly without reason, and, may we be permitted to say, if 
 without any reason, then without much imagination, these 
 two faculties, as they are called, being, as we opine, merely 
 modifications of the one thinking, feeling, willing, creating, 
 and acting principle, called Soul. 
 
CRUIKSHAXK ON TIME. 135 
 
 Now, as Shakespeare is said, by his devotional and idola- 
 trous admirers, to have surpassed all other mortal men in 
 poetical powers, why, we ask, did he not frame more fairy-like 
 fairies, — more spiritual spirits — than those in the " Tempest " 
 or " Midsummer- night's Dream " ? If all that such poetry re- 
 quires is fanciful and fine imagery, dancing measures, and a 
 sort of mimetic sympathy of preternatural with natural beings, 
 why, anybody with a little tact, taste, feeling, seeing, and 
 hearing, reading, fancy, and some practice in tagging verses, 
 may compose it very prettily and effectively, and hold up 
 their heads, in that line, as so many smartish Shakespeares. 
 But if such poetry, conceived of in the perfection of its own 
 nature and essence, not only demand genius to invent richly, 
 but to combine consistently, and according to immutable and 
 inviolable laws, so that the creatures of the element shall be 
 creatures of the element indeed, and neither more nor less ; — 
 so that Oberon, and Titania, and Puck, and the rest, shall be 
 a peculiar people, inhabiting a peculiar world, mingling, it 
 may be, with us, and with this world of ours, but in every 
 expansion or contraction of their bodies, in every enlarge- 
 ment or diminution of their wings, still true through all 
 transformations, and transfigurations, and transforations, 
 to their original and necessary fairy forms, figures and colours, 
 — then, say we, contradict us who may, that Shakespeare was, 
 in these his attempts, no Poet, — nay, the " lift" is not going 
 to fall, so, gentle reader, read on, — no Poet, we say, or but a 
 poet of the second degree, — not the Poet-Laureate of the 
 Court of Faery, nor worthy of the butt of dew that, in the 
 shape of a deaf hazel-nut, filled with the tears of Morning 
 and of Evening, shall be presented — so legends tell — to that 
 inspired Bard of our earth, who by the music of his lyre shall 
 lay all the pipes of the Silent People mute, and charm Oberon 
 asleep on his Titania's bosom, beneath the unwaning honey- 
 moon, that hangs like a cresset in the heaven of Fairy-land. 
 
 Away, then, to the blasted heath, and see what kind of 
 witches Shakespeare conjures up before us and Macbeth. 
 " The air hath bubbles as the water hath — and these are of 
 them." That is good — but the witches, wild and withered 
 as they are in their attire, are but so-so creations to frighten 
 and to prophesy to a doomed king. They have no kindred 
 with the wide black moors of the Highlands of Scotland. 
 
136 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Their gibbering is not in the idiom of the ancient Erse — not 
 phantoms they worthy to be stared at, till reason reels, by 
 the Children of the Mist. Gray Malkin and Paddock are 
 sorry names for the witches of a mountainous region ; and Mr 
 Upton, imagining himself to be eulogising the passage on 
 which he annotates, observes, that to understand it, we should 
 suppose one Familiar calling with the voice of a Cat, and 
 another with the croaking of a Toad. Must we indeed? 
 And what have cats and toads to do with " thunder, lightning, 
 and the rain ; when the hurly - burly' s done, when the 
 battle's lost and won " ? Here, as in the case of the fairies, 
 Shakespeare writes as if he had been fuddled. He cannot 
 get rid of his poor, flat, hearthstone, broomstick, English, 
 Stratford-upon-Avon superstitions ; and out with the truth 
 at once, horrible as it is, Shakespeare in Scotland was — a 
 Cockney ! Just before Macbeth and Banquo forgather with 
 the witches, in thunder on the moor, we have this colloquy — 
 
 " 1st Witch. Where hast thou been, sister ? 
 2d Witch. Killing swine. 
 Zd Witch. Sister, where thou ? 
 1st Witch. A sailor's wife," &c. &c. 
 
 What is there good in this, or in all that follows ? little or 
 nothing. Killing swine ! Shakespeare wrote these two words 
 — therefore, and for no other reason, are they witch-like and 
 terrible. From killing swine, the transition is natural (is it 
 not ?) to prophesying about kings, crowns, and thrones. Let 
 the Weird Sisters either be the Northern Fates or Destinies 
 — or let them be the Witches of Warwickshire — but no man 
 has a right to confuse the two characters, least of all to bring 
 down our " Posters of the sea and land " to the level of 
 Anglo-Saxon crones riding on besoms. 
 
 Now, is it any answer to such objections as these, to say, 
 that these beings are anomalous, and that, therefore, their 
 creator is at freedom to characterise them as he wills ? None 
 whatever. If it be, then Shakespeare could not go wrong, as 
 long as he gave them a gibberish utterance — breathed 
 through their skinny lips a hellish spirit, made fiercer by the 
 compression of their choppy fingers — enveloped the beldames 
 in a ghastly atmosphere, and when their prophecy, half- 
 benison half-malison, ceased to quake, bade them vanish into 
 
CRUIKSHANK OX TIME. 137 
 
 the air, and what seemed corporeal melt as a breath into the 
 wind That being summoned hither to betray and destroy, 
 they 'should do their duty, and do it witheringiy and well, is 
 the least that could have been expected from a far inferior 
 magician to Shakespeare ; but from Shakespeare we expect 
 far more than that-not merely some witch-like words, and 
 motions, and gestures, and gesticulations, but the full display 
 of powers meet for such a mission, such as should not only 
 have left Macbeth and Bancmo overcome with horrid fore- 
 bodings, against which it was in vain for the one to struggle 
 in his visions of ghastly hope, and the other in his visions of 
 still ghastlier fear ; but all who read the drama— all who saw 
 it act ed_should have been sunk— overwhelm ed-lost— and 
 helpless, among the shadows of passing events all dripping 
 with murder, and lowering alike with the gloom of guilt and 
 retribution. . , ' 
 
 Was Macbeth a superstitious person ? We cannot tell— 
 Shakespeare does not let us into this secret of his idiosyncrasy. 
 Had he who had lived in Scotland all his days, and been a tra- 
 veller by night, never seen a witch till then ? If the witches 
 were but creations of Shakespeare, Macbeth, of course, never 
 could have seen them before ; but if they were « ma manner 
 born" in Scotland, how could he, a man of forty-five at the 
 youngest, have missed seeing them over and over again a 
 hundred times? Judging from what passes between Mac- 
 beth and Banquo, neither of them had ever seen a witch in 
 their lives till that terrible and fateful night; a degree oi 
 blindness inconceivable in an age when all eyes, from castle 
 to cot, beheld preternatural agents once at least every moon, 
 and belonged to an ancestry, mean or mighty, that had ever 
 been familiar with the voices that syllable men s names m 
 antres vast and deserts idle." _ 
 
 Finally, if the Weird Sisters are impersonations ot ideas 
 prevalent in national superstition— try them by that test ; i± 
 they are anomalous fictions of Shakespeare's fancy, try them 
 by that-and in both cases alike will they be found wanting : 
 in the first they are degraded by an intermixture of another, 
 and lower, and more vulgar creed; in the second they are 
 of a contradictory and inconsistent character, fluctuating 
 between the old women who frighten English chaw-bacons 
 or yokels, with beards and whiskers, cat-attended, and obnox- 
 
138 ESSAYS : CMTICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 ious to ducking in a pond, and those more truly terrible 
 and spiritual agencies that have power given to them by the 
 Prince of the Air to elevate men's sons to high places, or 
 dash them down to the dust in blood of their own shedding, 
 and by the instrumentality of their own throne-shaking crimes 
 that spare not the heads of Heaven's anointing. On which 
 horn of the dilemma must Shakespeare be stuck ? 
 
 Now for his ghosts. We need go no farther for reference 
 than to the ghost in Hamlet. His first appearance is more 
 than respectable — it is solemn and impressive. The solitary 
 reader's hair at midnight begins to bristle — his flesh to creep 
 — his heart to quake — and he has hopes of a ghost that will 
 curdle his blood, and make him ring the bell for the sight of 
 a human face, should it even be that of the alarmed cook with 
 her papered hair in a mutch. But when the old mole begins 
 mining in the cellar, the gravity essential to the working of 
 spiritual influences begins to relax — the reader waxes merry 
 as the worthy pioneer — the well-done-old-boy himself — and 
 helps himself, in pure love of the Glenlivet, to a fresh jug of 
 toddy. Far be it from us to tie a ghost down to a specific 
 number of lines of blank verse, or to insist on his observing 
 all the pauses with scientific precision. We have no doubt 
 that had Mr Wordsworth seen it expedient to introduce a 
 ghost into the Excursion, he would have occupied the whole 
 book with a single speech, and set Poet, Solitary, and Pedlar, 
 all three at defiance and asleep ; but one expects more sane 
 conduct from Shakespeare, who sadly forgot himself in making 
 an interlocutor in his drama long-winded, after the breath 
 had left his body, just as he had previously forgot himself in 
 making the ghost say, that he had come from a bourne from 
 which no traveller returns. Any person can count the lines 
 as correctly as we can — and he will find that the buried 
 Majesty of Denmark spouts, right on end, with little or no 
 interruption, seventy-eight lines — and no fewer than thirty- 
 five after he has exclaimed, with visible apprehension of 
 being bedawned — 
 
 " But, soft, methinks I smell the morning air." 
 
 The extreme and painful minuteness of his communication is 
 only to be equalled by its intolerable prolixity ; and we have 
 often felt, in reading it — for, prosy as it is, it has its felicitous 
 expressions, (leperous distilment, and so forth) — that it is the 
 
CRCJIKSHANR ON TIME. 139 
 
 model on which. Cyril Jackson, the celebrated Dean of Christ- 
 church, constructed his conversational discourse. Cyril Jack- 
 son, D.D., was an eminent man in his day, and Iris talents 
 were more than respectable ; but there was nothing superna- 
 tural or preternatural in his conversation ; and had any ghost 
 imitated his oral style in the loneliest churchyard in England, 
 we should have smoked him in an instant, and laughed in his 
 face ; yet we should have been to blame, if Shakespeare be to 
 praise ; for James Smith himself could not imitate old Hamlet 
 more to the death than did Cyril Jackson, and, consequently, 
 any ghost that should have imitated the Dean, would have 
 been in character, giving his accents something more of the 
 tomblike and sepulchral. 
 
 All this will, we fear, seem very heterodox to the million, — 
 nay, to those who have been pleased to set up Shakespeare as 
 the god of their idolatry, even impious, and with a slight tinge 
 of blasphemy. It was even so with us, when we described 
 the Eed-Tarn Eaven Club supping upon a Quaker beneath the 
 dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn. 1 Some subscribers threat- 
 ened to give up the Magazine, because we described, some- 
 what after the dashing manner of the savage Eosa, a Fact in 
 Nature. Others were shocked that we should have written 
 so of the " Meek Pilgrim of Nature," whom Sir Walter had so 
 beautifully bemoaned as bleaching to the snow-storm beneath 
 that sonorous mountain, Catchedicam. But we demand as a 
 right that our picture, both sides of it — for back as well as 
 front of the canvass is painted — be compared with that of the 
 Great Known, and we shall abide the verdict. If ravens will 
 eat Quakers who have lost themselves in the snow, and that 
 after a fashion at which humanity revolts while it gazes, and 
 shudders while it narrates, we are not the man to be afraid of 
 taking up the pen or the pallet ; and if Shakespeare will make 
 the ghost of a king, who in life was a personage of few words, 
 prose away like the Head of a College, neither are we the man 
 to abstain, in fear of a shallow world, from exposing the spec- 
 tre's prolixity, and recommending him as an honorary member 
 of the right worshipful company of Maunderers, with the pre- 
 sent representative of the county of at their head. But 
 
 we particularly request that no correspondent send for inser- 
 tion in this Magazine any defence of Shakespeare — Into the 
 Balaam-box it shall inevitably go — from whose jaws this very 
 1 Recreations — "Christopher in his Aviary." 
 
140 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Leading Article lias itself made an almost miraculous escape. 
 Let our ingenious friend Mr James Ballantyne take up the 
 cudgels for the Swan of Avon — if he pleases — for we are free 
 to confess, that the very worst and the very best criticisms on 
 Shakespeare we ever read, have appeared from his pen, at 
 divers times, and in sundry manners, in the Weekly Journal; 
 and we do not know that, with equal truth, we could say the 
 same thing of ourselves. 
 
 But lo ! in the same Plate, " A Long-Time Waiting," a 
 gentleman, pondering by a pond, fishing ! Judging from the 
 external character of that piece of water, it contains nothing 
 of the fish-kind beyond a frog, a snail, or a leech. It is truly 
 a most uncomfortable little wet sheet of water — most dismal 
 indeed — quite such an Elstree-looking sink as received out of 
 the sack the Thurtelised body of Weare. 1 It acquired, we 
 understand, a fishy character, from the circumstance of a 
 small dead perch having been seen floating on it some years 
 ago, which had probably been flung into it in spite by some 
 schoolboy, on his way home from an unsuccessful holiday at 
 a marl-pit miles off. There he sits, and has long been sitting 
 — the Piscatorial Solitary of the Excursion ! He is obviously 
 catching his death of cold. His sore throat has begun — buck- 
 led up as the cuff of his jacket is to the brim of his hat, it is 
 all in vain ; for, at this blessed moment, both tooth-ache and 
 ear-ache are his — cold, cold is his seat of honour, as that of a 
 marble monument. What he expects to find in such a place, 
 heaven only knows ; but truly that is a searching rain, — if 
 rain it may be called, which rain is not, but commingled hail 
 and sleet murdering a day of spring. 
 
 Behind Piscator, who, were he to stretch himself up into 
 his altitude, could scarcely fail of being six feet six, and propor- 
 tionally thin, stands a fat friend from the inn two miles off, 
 who, prompted by an aimless curiosity, has come to inquire 
 about the day's sport. " No fish yet ?! ! Why, I say, Popjoy, 
 haven't you had a bite all day ? " To this seemingly inoffen- 
 sive interrogatory does Popjoy reply with all the monosyllabic 
 laconicism of our First Lord of the Treasury, — " No ! " the 
 long lank reeds, sedges, and bulrushes rustling " hear, hear, 
 hear! " — There is a mystery in this same matter of angling 
 which has never yet been elucidated. We remember that, 
 1 Nodes, vol. i. p. 81, note. 
 
CRUIKSHAUK ON TIME. 141 
 
 when a child, we used to angle from morning to night in a 
 piece of water, where we knew there was no fish. But it was 
 the only piece of water within our reach ; and as water is the 
 element in which fishes exist, that was enough for us, and 
 there we sat eying our float, which our reason (even then 
 strong) assured us never was to descend. Do not tell us that, 
 ever and anon, our mind fell into a transient delusion, and that 
 we had — hope. If it had been so, would we not have cut and 
 run the instant reason came to our aid, and told us to fling 
 aside the Pleasures of Hope ? Nay, how could Hope rouse us 
 from our bed at dawn, and carry us to angle in a pond where 
 we knew fish was none ! It was some far deeper principle 
 in human nature than Hope that led us to that lonely moor — 
 it was an instinctive and inextinguishable feeling, amounting 
 to passion, of the adaptation of the being of fishes to the liquid 
 element of water, and which overcame the conviction accom- 
 panying a particular case, by the sense of universal Fitness. 
 We cannot get nearer than this to the truth, but to the fact 
 itself we pledge our honour. 
 
 Poor Popjoy ! we daresay thou art far from being a bad 
 fellow — and if we had thee in Scotland, we do not doubt we 
 could make a man of thee in a single spring and autumn. 
 What a contrast between thee, by the side of that piteous 
 little pond, and Christopher North angling his way down the 
 Tweed ! Kiver of rivers ! each stream, each shallow, each pool 
 of thine has its own peculiar murmur, as familiarly known to 
 our ear, even in imagination, — for in dreaming of thee memory 
 is herself imaginative, — as the voice of each distinct friend 
 that we have known from youth to age. Along the holms of 
 Cardrona, how flowest thou along with an almost inaudible 
 whisper — with but here and there a single tree shaking its 
 tresses in a mirror set nearly motionless in a framework of 
 green and gold, where the fast-nibbling sheep seem forgetful 
 of their lambs, but in a moment bleat them to their sides, as the 
 harmless angler goes by ; and where the linnet sits songless 
 now near her nest, full of gaping mouths, in the yellow broom. 
 
 " That lends the windward air an exquisite perfume." 
 
 Along Elibank Wood, thou rushest on in a delighted hurry, 
 as if eager to hide thyself from the sun, beneath something 
 cooler than cloud- shadows, the old forest-gloom. Till, lo! 
 
142 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 again baring thy bosom to the heavens, away thou huddlest 
 over low linn, and into " shelving plumm," by the braes of 
 Ashiesteel, where erst the mighty Minstrel abode — and on — 
 on — on — through brake, and shaw, and grove, on to the Holy 
 Melrose — but there, alas ! Poor Popjoy, art thou still sitting 
 beside thy puddle — and four hundred miles are between thee 
 and us, now, after a glorious day's sport, reclining on the 
 window-seat of the Fisherman's Parlour, at sweet Cloven- 
 ford. 
 
 Supper, as we are a Christian ! Well, our dear George, we 
 must lay thine Illustrations aside for an hour of trout and toddy; 
 and would that thou wert thyself here, to take thy seat at the 
 foot of our little table. Red as the dawn-blush, and firm as the 
 rosebud — a trout of ten thousand ! How deliciously peels off 
 the brown-blistered buttery skin from his well-basted sides ! 
 His tail slightly curled — say, rather, crunkled up in the direc- 
 tion of his head ; and, mercy on us ! he surely cannot be yet 
 alive ! He certainly seemed to stir — yet the frying-pan must 
 have done his business, to say nothing of the crash we gave 
 his skull against the butt of our rod, that he might not play 
 spang out of our fist, and re-plunge into his native pool like a 
 very fish. The ketchup, if you please, my dear — thank you 
 — you are the prettiest girl in Tweeddale — nay, don't blush 
 and hang down your head — you might give us a kiss, for we 
 are old enough to be your great-grandfather. Dickson's mus- 
 tard, I'm sure — no other mustard on earth could make Kit 
 North sneeze like a young one. Now, my love, you may be 
 bringing ben the cutlets — but see there's a lid to the ashet. 
 Very amiable whisky indeed — Here's to the memory of poor 
 Sandy G-ovan, — last time we dined in this parlour — it had not 
 a bow- window then — Sandy sat on that very chair ! With 
 what a face he stopped short in the middle of that queer tune 
 on the fiddle, when the bit lassie came in with the fry ! 
 
 " But away with melancholy, 
 Nor doleful changes sing, 
 On life and human folly, 
 But merrily, merrily sing, fa, la." 
 
 Another caulker ! Not one single thing in this whole world 
 is now wanting to our perfect felicity — except the cutlets, and 
 there they are. 
 
C11U1KSHAXK ON TIME. 143 
 
 " O, why have bards in many a lovely lay, 
 Forgetting all their own delightful years, 
 Sung that this life is but one little day, 
 And this most happy world a vale of tears V 
 Would that we could live for ever !— 0, no— no— no— for then 
 the angler could no more moralise on the stream— the soul 
 would be plucked out of all his peaceful enterprises— there 
 would be no profound joy of grief in remembering the old 
 familiar faces— and we should never meet Isaac Walton m 
 
 Turn 'over to Plate II. The central piece is entitled .« Be- 
 hind Time," and no man who has ever been " too late for the 
 coach," may look at it without acutest sympathy with the 
 sufferers. The sufferer in the foreground is a Welshman— for, 
 horn an inscription on a sign above his head, he has been 
 intending to go by the Times coach, on Tuesday, at twelve 
 o'clock, to Llanbigwigdigingden, which must be in the Prin- 
 cipality. We absolutely hear him groan when Mr Tapstave, 
 the Boniface, says to his glaring question—" Coach, sir! lne 
 coach has been gone about three-quarters of an hour, sir— ■ 
 they start, sir, to their time, sir, to a minute, sir! What a 
 face ! Far whiter, and more woe-begone than that which drew 
 Priam's curtains at dead of night. The coach runs but once 
 a- week, and Taffy and his spouse must wait till next Tuesday, 
 That travelling -cap, which is really handsome, will not be 
 needed till no fewer than one hundred and sixty- eight hours 
 have expired. No wonder he is breathless and aghast, for he 
 is laden with portmanteau, and travelling-bag, and bundle, 
 and umbrella, and greatcoat, and shawls, and pelisses, and 
 has been hurrying from his lodgings at the other end of the 
 village, at the rate of five miles per koram— while to the limes 
 — « tempora, mores ! "—the turnpike gate is flying wide 
 open eight miles nearer Wales ! With band-box and child, 
 his better half is seen flying under a load of fat through the 
 market-place in the rear, nor slackens her pace, although she 
 sees from the confabulation afar, that Times and Tides wait 
 for no man. How calmly, all this while, does the dial-plate 
 on the old church-tower show the whole world that it wants 
 but a quarter to one ! Hapless pair ! What could you have 
 been about since six o'clock this morning, when you rose . 
 Had you risen at four, and the Times not left Mr Tapstave s 
 
144 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 till two, answer us candidly, would it not have been the same 
 thing precisely, and would you not, hapless pair, have been 
 panting, sweating, staring, gaping, groaning, and almost curs- 
 ing the hour in which you were born, at about a quarter or 
 sixteen minutes from three, while then, as now, the inexorable 
 Times would have been rolling perhaps in another county? 
 Yes, we see, Mr Owen, that you were born — but to be too late. 
 Nay, do not think of laying the whole blame on Mrs Owen — 
 although you have, indeed, most ungallantly gotten the start 
 of her by at least thirty yards. It was all your fault, Mr Owen 
 — that trailing garter betrays you — and our firm belief is, that 
 you have forgotten to put on your drawers. 
 
 " Oh ! for a blast of that dread horn 
 On Fontarabian echoes borne, 
 That to King Charles did come 
 When Eoland brave, and Olivier, 
 And every Paladin and Peer, 
 On Eoncesvalles died ! 
 Such blast had warn'd you not in vain," &c. 
 
 We have had our share of most sort of suffering in this life, 
 yet we do not scruple or hesitate to say, that the hour of our 
 greatest agony was on just such another occasion as this! 
 We do not mean you to understand, gentle reader, that we 
 were ever too late for the coach, so beladen with luggage as 
 Mr Owen, or so wife-pursued by a spouse dragging progeny 
 so desperately along the stones — but we do mean you to 
 understand, gentle reader, that were we to live a thousand 
 years, never could we again suffer, either on a similar or dis- 
 similar occasion, the anguish that, some forty years ago, we 
 endured on being too late — by about ten minutes — for the Fly. 
 She was in it — she was in it — whom we had not seen for an 
 age — and whom we were not to see again for an age more, and 
 yet — heavens and earth! — we overslept ourselves, and she was 
 off — off — off — off — with, as we were told on the spot, a dragoon 
 officer inside, none but their two selves — he the most blessed, 
 and we the most accursed of mortal men ! Why did we not 
 follow in a chaise and eight — at the rate of thirty miles an 
 hour? We did follow in a chaise and four, but the leaders had 
 to drag on the reptiles in the shafts — and then crash went the 
 axle-tree, and the whole concern, into a ditch. We mounted 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 145 
 
 one of the leaders, but he was wholly unaccustomed to gallop 
 out of harness, and, deprived of his customary equipoise, came 
 down, at full speed, into the attitude of prayer, and projected 
 us over a green paling, into what, in Scotland, we call a policy. 
 She and the dragoon were by this time at the extremity of 
 Cornwall, and our evil genius told us that farther pursuit was 
 hopeless. It is forty — ay, nearer fifty years since that day, yet 
 so vividly does imagination realise the horrors " of jealousy, 
 the injured lover's hell," that like Mr Owen there, whose pic- 
 ture is before us, we could even now curse the hour in which 
 we were born ; — but let us both call reason — religion to our 
 aid — and remember that while The Times have cruelly caused 
 all his sorrows, so will they gratuitously heal them; while, for 
 ourselves, have we not had a long, a glorious, a lofty, and a 
 useful career, since, in the bitter blindness of youthful passion, 
 we thought our sun had set with the disappearance of the 
 Beading Fly — 
 
 " And wept the more, because we wept in vain" ? 
 
 We have inadvertently turned over three pages, and got to 
 Plate VI., of which the central scene breathes the very spirit 
 of philanthropy and domestic happiness. It is ycleped " Pud- 
 ding-Time." Just as the female domestic has uncovered the 
 plum-y wonder, a friend of the family ushers himself in — some- 
 what too late for soup, fish, beef, and fowl ; — but no occasion for 
 apologies on either side, for the hospitable John Bull welcomes 
 him to his seat, pointing to the magnum bonum in triumph, 
 while Mrs Bull vainly tries to allay the ecstasies of their five 
 children, heedless of the stranger's approach. Writers on 
 education are all very severe on greediness and gluttony in 
 children, and go the length of picturing the love of good things 
 as a carnal sin. But think for a moment on the fresh, keen, 
 sensitive, healthy palates of children that have been all day 
 breaking the brittler furniture in-doors, or furiously gardening 
 it without, or driving it four-in-hand among the flower-beds. 
 Would you have the little rosy rascals of either sex to sit prim, 
 and act the pretty, in presence of such a pudding as that — 
 and, when duly helped according to their respective sizes, to 
 mince away like mice at the slices of savoury suet, as if they 
 would prefer eating some lime from a hole in the wall? No — 
 no — blessings on these little glorious gormandising gluttons, 
 
 vol. v. K. 
 
146 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 wlioin Cruikshank's benevolent genius lias embodied! and 
 may that nurse-like cook, who has just unlidded the Delight, 
 have a lesser pudding in reserve, to soothe their stomachs 
 into perfect repose. Confound, cuff, and kick the ugly little 
 scoundrel, male or female, who carries tid-bits or bon-bons 
 into a corner, and enjoys them in secret, apart from his or her 
 contemporaries. Solitary sensuality is shocking, and cannot 
 come to good ; but when the good things of this life have 
 been, in equal division, allotted to such five imps as these, 
 where no one has advantage of another, but all are laughing 
 individually and in the gross, why tame their transports by 
 subjecting the merry mess to the laws of imaginary good- 
 breeding, far less to the restraints of that ascetic morality that 
 allows unlimited venison and turtle to the parents, but would 
 stint their progeny of pudding, even in that its most gracious 
 form ? Grown-up people, too, are exceedingly and absurdly 
 apt to draw a line of distinction between themselves and people 
 who are not grown-up. They consider themselves, merely 
 because they are growm-up, privileged to devour, on the spot, 
 whatever delicious dish is so unfortunate as to come in their 
 way — till men and women are absolutely sick, or nearly so ; 
 but should any of the people who are not grown-up, take a 
 spoon, and without being ordered, help itself to a fritter, forth- 
 with one of the grown-up gluttons at the head and the foot of 
 the table reads the growing gormandiser a lecture on its enor- 
 mity, that would pass current in a country church. While the 
 very green fat is melting in the father's mouth, he threatens to 
 chastise Parvus lulus for paying his stealthy addresses to a 
 custard ; and the mother, through cheeks swollen with an oily 
 shred of the apron of a roasted turkey, splutters reproaches at 
 Julia, an interesting child of ten years, whose mouth may very 
 possibly be rather too full of blancmange, protesting that at 
 her age she had not proceeded beyond hasty pudding. Is it 
 not wonderful that grown-up people, especially those who are 
 parents, are never struck with an instant sense of their own 
 atrocious greediness and selfish injustice ? Nothing more 
 common than to hear a great greasy civic orator insisting, at 
 the head of his own table, on the Catholics being emancipated, 
 and admitted to a full and free participation in all the blessings 
 of the British Constitution, while he excludes his own little 
 Protestants, who are biting their nails and cooling their heels 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 147 
 
 up-stairs, from the numerous rich things in the gift of the 
 gentleman or lady at the head of the home department. 
 
 But here is, in central scene of Plate VI. the exemplifica- 
 tion of a very different system of government. That two- 
 year-old, mounted on a safety-stool, with one whole side of 
 the table to himself, is heard crowing cock-a-doodle-doo in 
 triumph, with legs and arms extended as wide as they can 
 sprawl ; nor is there any danger of a surfeit, for the urchin's 
 digestive power is as his power of swallow, and he gains a 
 pound a-week. Missy, who threatens to be pretty, holds up 
 her hands in more moderated admiration, having been taught 
 by her maid that it is vulgar to have a large appetite : yet 
 still the healthful creature is fond of plums, and has no sym- 
 pathy for the sylphs she reads of in picture-books all living on 
 the empty air. The two rogues next her are obstreperous in 
 their joy, and seem cheering the rich rotundity with absolute 
 huzzas ; but of all the fat, bunchy, thick-lipped, small sen- 
 sualists that we ever saw guzzle, never clapped we our eyes 
 on the equal of him seated on his papa's left hand ! While 
 the others hold up their expanded hands in different moods of 
 imaginative admiration, his feelings are all concentrated in 
 his palate ! With both dumpy paws he grasps the edge of 
 his plate, and is shoving it in that he may be first helped, 
 while his mamma, justly offended, is rating him soundly for 
 his impatience. If the " boy is father of the man," he is 
 doomed to die of apoplexy at a city feast. No fear of his 
 being drowned, for he never will be a skater — nor yet a swim- 
 mer he, — for field-sports, that is no natural genius ; — he never 
 will drive a tandem that boy — no, never ; but all his habits 
 will be safe and sedentary, and his belly will be the only god 
 the fubsy young Idolater will worship. Let Phrenology 
 flourish ; for as we live, there is the organ of Gustativeness 
 enormously developed ! So too is that of Veneration, while 
 Conscientiousness is very small, and no room has been left for 
 Ideality in the narrow region above his temples. Never did 
 character and development so tally and coincide — no frontal 
 sinuses there — to cover sixteen organs ; and a cast of his skull 
 must be handed round at the next charitable Demonstrations 
 of the Evidence for and against the Science. 
 
 By the by, what is to be thought of the Friend who is thus 
 seen dropping in at pudding-time? If friends will go to 
 
148 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 other people's houses to dine without especial invitation, they 
 ought at least to go at the proper hour. Here we see a 
 hungry hound about to deprive five children, who, we are 
 entitled to believe, never injured him, of their equitable 
 shares of one of the greatest enjoyments that ever befell the 
 young Idea. He has no right, the monster, to apologise him- 
 self at such an interesting predicament into the dining-room 
 even of his own brother. Whence has he come ? From the 
 country? Well, then, he ought to have dined in the New 
 Hummums, if such a house still exists — if not, anywhere else 
 than on the central piece of Plate VI. of George Cruikshank's 
 Illustrations of Time, and on any other substance than that 
 pudding. Does he live regularly in town ? Then he should 
 be sent to the tread-mill. Bad enough had he intruded him- 
 self before the bell ; but in the middle, nay, near the end of 
 dinner — words are wanting to express adequately our idea of 
 the enormity of his conduct. What good can a slice of that 
 pudding possibly do to that interloping and uncalculated-upon 
 glutton, eaten as it must be amidst the most religious curses 
 of these five innocent and voracious children ? As yet they 
 have not seen him — buried in their joy. What a yell of angry 
 dismay will penetrate his drums, as soon as they are awakened 
 to a sense of their condition, and catch a full front-view of his 
 face, that to their frightened imaginations will seem all one 
 illimitable Maw ! — He is the man Tommy dreamt of — But we 
 must not pursue the picture — suffice it to say, that his entrance 
 has clouded an hour in Paradise, and that his image will 
 henceforth continue to infest Pudding-Time, till Pudding- 
 Time shall be no more. 
 
 But joking apart — what man living has a right to enter 
 your dining-room, unbidden verbally, or in writing, as you are 
 sitting, or have sat down, to allay the fames edendit Do not 
 misunderstand us. It is not because there is not enough for 
 him, as well as for us, to eat — however large may be our 
 family — and how large it is, we need not now say, for its 
 magnitude does in no way bear upon the present argument, — ■ 
 it is not, we repeat, because there is not enough for him to 
 eat, and half-a-dozen more monsters as ugly as himself — if to 
 offer such a supposition be not an unpardonable outrage on 
 humanity — it is not, we repeat again, because there is not 
 enough for the ignorant and ungentlemanly beast to eat, for 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 140 
 
 ivS not that a thirty-pound round of beef, and are not these 
 Fife how-towdies ? — It is not, we repeat it, for the fourth and 
 last time, that there is not enough, and more than enough, for 
 the long, lean, lank Stomach to eat, till he swell into a haggis- 
 bag, for were he to clear the board, is there not the cold 
 remains of many four-footed animals in the larder (a whole 
 fox, caught yesterday in a trap, included), and somewhere 
 about the premises several dozens of cheeses, Cheshire, Kib- 
 bock, and Cream? But it is the sudden breaking-up and 
 disruption, the instantaneous, unexpected, unprovoked, un- 
 deserved, unpardonable, and yet unpunishable destruction of 
 a whole afternoon, evening, and night's cosy comforts, of 
 which perhaps the chief and the choicest of all is the gradual 
 Nap in the soft embrace of that loving arm-chair, that is felt 
 to fold its arms round its lord and master, even like a wife 
 repenting her of a scolding-fit, and soothing you into forget- 
 fulness of the vanished termagant, by the sweet, insidious 
 endearments of chaste connubial contrition ! 
 
 There is but one word only, and it is in the Scottish tongue, 
 that to our ear doth fitly and fully express the aerial sinking 
 away of an after-dinner Nap, from this noisy world, into a 
 region far away, still, shadowy, and sublime — that only word 
 is the word the Shepherd is so fond of in the Noctes, the word 
 dwawm ! It would be wrong to say that in a dwawm, at least 
 in the kind of delicious and delightful dwawm of which we 
 speak, that this wide and wicked world, in which we were 
 born, live, die, and are buried, is entirely, utterly forgotten, 
 and ceases to be ! No — there is still a " laigh sugh " of this 
 earth, which is felt still to be one of the seven planets of our 
 solar system — still do we feel that we are mortal and un- 
 married — a mysterious feeling of our Editorship, even, is with 
 us in our dwawm — and each successive scene that hovers 
 away before our ken is as a glorious and still more glorious 
 Opening Article. Now, is it endurable that such, a visionary 
 beatitude shall be at the mercy of every commonplace 
 acquaintance that chooses, out of pure idleness or gluttony, 
 to drop in, as he calls it, for pot-luck ? There are times when 
 the interior of a man's house, especially if he has passed his 
 grand climacteric, ought to be sacred, when no unprivileged 
 and unhallowed foot must cross the threshold. No man who 
 knows in what the value of threescore and ten years consists, 
 
150 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 would think of breaking in upon such consecrated privacy — 
 and should such practices be established in society, there is 
 an end to domestic delights. The dearest friend we have — 
 and we have many dear — is not entitled to defraud us of a 
 single snore. We except not even him who on one occasion 
 saved our life. For saving our life, we owe him eternal grati- 
 tude ; but not if, by claiming privilege of an entree, he should 
 render that life a curse. At the moment he leapt overboard 
 to " pluck up drowned honour by the locks," which he most 
 heroically did, when our yacht was going ten knots, he surely 
 was not actuated by the base thought, that for all future years 
 there would be a knife and fork for him at our table. If so, 
 we had much rather have been saved by a Newfoundland dog T 
 out of that pure philanthropy characteristic of his kind, than 
 by a fellow- Christian, capable of such interested and selfish 
 humanity. 
 
 A knife and fork constantly kept for any one man at any 
 other man's table ! Is not the thought shocking ? Better, 
 far better, to have him domesticated at once — boarded, lodged, 
 bedded, washed, and scoured, at so much per annum. 
 
 Think not, gentle reader, that we are inhospitable. No, 
 no — our failing is rather the other way — and not a man in all 
 Scotland keeps a better table, or one more frequently sur- 
 rounded with troops of friends. But we like to choose our 
 company. No verbal message by a servant, with Mr North's 
 compliments — no oral invitation even — except on rare occa- 
 sions, when we chance to meet on the street with an old 
 friend from Tripoli or Timbuctoo ; — nothing like a card, day 
 and hour fixed to a minute by the Post-office clock. An 
 answer, too, is imperiously expected — so that we know to 
 a dead certainty whom we are to have ; nor breathes the 
 man, clerical or lay, entitled to bring with him — my friend 
 Mr So or So. What ! shall he disorder the symmetry of 
 our genial board ? Disarrange our chairs ? Huddle upon 
 our shoulder ? Push the obesity of one of our best friends 
 upon a pointed corner ? Expel another to a side-table ? 
 Insult that well-known superstition or freit of ours, that it 
 is unlucky to say grace before meat in presence of an odd 
 number ? 
 
 There are too many worthy enough people in their way in 
 this world, utterly destitute of common sense. They do not 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 151 
 
 know when to call upon you — what to talk about while they 
 stay — nor when to make themselves scarce. Having made 
 good his admittance, through some mistake of the servant, 
 who did not suspect him to be one of the interdicted, such a 
 bore takes up his position in an arm-chair (which no man is 
 entitled to do out of his own house), then drags himself 
 along in it, if winter, towards the fire, that he may place his 
 huge hulky heels on your fender, for which he deserves to 
 have his shins broken by the poker — and blows his nose — 
 another enormity — like a trumpet. He asks if you have seen 
 the newspaper of the day, and like Mr Canning, you answer, 
 " Yes ;" on which he begins to repeat to you, in short-tongue, 
 all the Whig speeches that had already inspired you with 
 pity and disgust, commenting upon them like a cuckoo, and 
 assuring you that the administration will stand. Then he 
 asks for soup — and if you are so silly as let him have a 
 bowl, he slobbers your blue cloth all over, and without apo- 
 logy splatches your Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 or your Wealth of Nations, which, unless a ninny, you will 
 send to him before dinner to get handsomely rebound. It 
 rains, and he begs the loan of your greatcoat and umbrella, 
 which he promises to send home by a porter. Afraid that he 
 may stay dinner, you order up the umbrella, but the house- 
 keeper has left it at a friend's house at Claremont Crescent, 
 two miles off — and the greatcoat is asserted to be at Scaife's. 
 On such occasions it never rains but it pours, and you have 
 nothing for it but to retire for a few minutes to a closet, and 
 pray for strength sufficient to carry you through the evening. 
 " The day will be a hard one, but it will have an end," said 
 Damiens or Kavaillac, on the morning of his execution ; and 
 you or we have to comfort ourselves with the same philoso- 
 phical and pious reflection. Sometimes, during the course of 
 the evening, you begin to doubt, to entertain the most serious 
 apprehensions that it never will end — time seems to stand 
 still — then to become sedentary — then to lie down, and fall 
 into a troubled sleep — but still to keep stretching away into 
 the crack of doom ; — nay, you become sceptical in your reli- 
 gious principles, and suspect that the Last Day will never 
 come ; — the tenses of verbs seem the fictions of gramma- 
 rians, all except Is — Is — Is ; and whether Is be an interjec- 
 tion, an adverb, a preposition, or a conjunction, you know not, 
 
152 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 but the only other word in the vocabulary is Now — Now — 
 Now ! 
 
 Think not that we exaggerate ; so far from it, this is but a 
 feeble sketch of what we have frequently suffered. Will you 
 blame us, then, if we put on the chain that enables the lassie 
 or the lad to study the physiognomy of every applicant to our 
 knocker — and, according to our hue-and-cry description of all 
 murderers of our peace, to shut the door slowly and steadily 
 in the faces of the culpable homicides ? 
 
 We have had offers made to us of a knife and fork at the 
 tables of various friends of ours — all married men, with the 
 usual complement of children. We can now charge our 
 memory with four — and of these, three were instances of the 
 basest and boldest hypocrisy. They no more dared to keep a 
 knife and fork for Us than for the Koyal Bengal Tiger that 
 devoured the son of Sir Hector Munro. Their wives, we have 
 good reason to know, hated us. Why, we never could under- 
 stand — indeed it is a mystery past finding out how we can 
 be hated by any living thing, for we may say of ourselves 
 what Wordsworth says of his Pedlar — 
 
 " Birds and beasts, 
 And the mute fish that glances in the stream, 
 And harmless reptile coiling in the sun, 
 And gorgeous insect hovering in the air, 
 The fowl domestic, and the household dog, 
 In his capacious mind he loved them all." 
 
 However, true it is, that the three Mawseys (see Dr Jamieson) 
 hated us — and this their several and respective husbands 
 well knew at the very time they made proposals to us about 
 the knife and fork. We tried the experiment on each of 
 them, on three days, successively and successlessly — and 
 such a blow-up ! Mrs L. left the table with a cramp in her 
 stomach — Mrs M. had to be supported out of the room, with 
 a ringing in her ears, and a swimming in her head of a very 
 alarming kind indeed — and Mrs N., who we confess did really 
 look very red about the eyes and nose, had to go up to the 
 nursery to attend a measled brat, who had just taken physic, 
 and who unquestionably did most providentially squall, in a 
 style that must have dislodged some slates, just as the hotch- 
 potch was brought in, in an earless tureen, by a red-armed 
 Girzy ; — so that from these three several and respective domi- 
 
CRUIKSHAXK ON TIME. 153 
 
 ciies of domestic love and hospitable amity drd we succes- 
 sively hobble home, just in time for our sole and our cutlet. 
 But the cruelest case of all was the fourth : — Not only had 
 we given away the bride with these our own blessed and 
 chalky hands, but their first boy was, absolutely and bond 
 fide in our own hearing, christened — Christopher. Little Kit 
 and we became great friends, and we have left him some- 
 thing handsome in our will. Well, would you believe it ? — 
 the knife- an d-fork arrangement there, too, .was all a hum. 
 We put it to the proof — not from any suspicion — for to all 
 sorts of suspicion our open and generous nature is known to 
 be averse — but in pure simplicity and bonhomie. The cold 
 of a Lapland whiter was nothing to the reception we met 
 with from Mrs 0. There was a drop at her nose that was 
 frozen — her cheeks were pinched and blue like a radish that 
 has grown out of the sun — she was absent and monosyllabic, 
 and severe indeed were her unavailing struggles at a smile. 
 It was in vain to attempt being pleasant. Seldom, God 
 knows, are we stupid, but that day all our great and various 
 abilities shrivelled themselves up like so many bits of 
 caoutchouc — all our ideas, first one after the other, and then 
 all in a body, flew off like pigeons from a dovecot, leaving 
 our cerebrum and cerebellum utterly tenantless — all our heaps 
 of information lay, like so much bonded corn, musty and 
 unmarketable — and there we — even we, Christopher the In- 
 comparable — sat with our finger in our mouth, the image of 
 a perfect and prodigious ninny. 
 
 After this rehearsal, it is needless to say that we insisted 
 no knife and fork should be kept for us at our friends the O.'s. 
 But 0. himself was a fine round little fellow, as full of kind- 
 ness as an egg is full of meat — nor was his rib by any means 
 an unamiable or unaffectionate woman. We therefore put it 
 to him, plump, what such a reception meant in such a lati- 
 tude — and he confessed that Mrs 0. could not endure smoking, 
 and feared that were we to become a knife-and-fork guest, 
 cigars would be established — with cigars twist — with twist 
 oysters — with oysters toasted cheese — with toasted cheese 
 indigestion — with indigestion death — with death burial — and 
 with burial a widow and a small family of orphan children. 
 This sorites relieved our minds from many unpleasant feelings 
 — for we saw in a moment that our gelid reception was owing 
 
154 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 not to dislike of our society, but of her husband's dissolution 
 — and we offered to leave at home our cigar-spleuchan. But 
 how shall you eradicate fears, sown by love, in a woman's 
 imagination? " Nobody she liked so well to see in her house, 
 in a mixed company, as Mr North — for he is the life and soul 
 of every society which he condescends to dignify and adorn ; 
 — but, my dear 0. — he is a dangerous companion for a con- 
 vivial man like you, at what you call a twa-handed crack ; 
 and confess now— my chuck — did you ever leave Mm on such 
 occasions perfectly sober?" It is thus that calumnies arise 
 against the habits of us distinguished characters. That Mr 0. 
 may have occasionally been seen, on his way up to town from 
 Buchanan Lodge, of a long summer evening, apparently more 
 anxious to ascertain the breadth of that noble line of road than 
 was at all necessary, seeing that the breadth is known to an 
 inch, we shall not venture either to affirm or to deny ; but 
 allowing that it was so, whose fault, pray, was that ? And of 
 whose character can it be philosophically said to have been a 
 fundamental feature ? Not surely of ours. We were, all the 
 while, sitting with a cigar in our mouths, below our own 
 flowery jDorch — nor doth Araby the Blest produce any per- 
 fume more delightful than the blessed balminess of Trinity 
 honeysuckles and Havannah cigars — perusing, haply, a page 
 of Plato or Epictetus, of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or Publius 
 Virgilius Maro, him the Mantuan Swan. We were not seen 
 stoitering gyrally away up-hill towards the metropolis, into 
 the presence of a wondering wife, too sulky to scold. W^e 
 were not seen stumbling even upon a macadamised road, 
 losing our hat, and clutching at it as if it had been afloat on 
 the treacherous sea. We were not seen speaking gruffly to 
 an old woman in a red cloak, supposing her to be a watch- 
 man, and anxious for a quarrel with the imaginary guardian 
 of the night, that might lead to the police-office, and a fine of 
 five shillings to the Infirmary. We were not seen taking the 
 altitude of a lamp through our telescopic fingers, poetically 
 dreaming it to be Hesperus himself, and soliloquising a lecture 
 on astronomy to an attentive audience of young larches in a 
 nursery garden. It was Mr 0. — not Christopher North — that 
 was guilty of all these follies ; and yet, such is the penalty that 
 we pay for our greatness, this story we ourselves heard told 
 against us in the Carlisle Mail, as we were going to Cloven- 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 155 
 
 ford for a week's angling ; and the other three insides, — one 
 a minister, and the other a mawsey, — the Teller, from the 
 evident state of his liver, had been some forty years in India, 
 in an uncivil department, — declared, without one dissentient 
 voice, that we were a most dangerous man indeed, and that 
 Blackwood's Magazine, for no other reason we could discover, 
 but because Mr 0. has not the strongest head in the world, 
 should be written down ! 
 
 Ay, there's the rub — Blackwood's Magazine written down ! 
 That was long the prophetic cry of the Whig and Radical 
 Seers. But all the quills that shall be plucked from all the 
 tame geese in the Mainland of Lincolnshire, and the Isle of 
 Ely, flinging in all the other fens in England to boot — all the 
 quills that might be plucked from all the wild geese of the 
 north of Europe, were we to suppose them, when congregated 
 by instinct into countless millions, clanging along hundreds 
 of leagues of the brumal sky, struck to the earth by plague, 
 pestilence, and famine, and plucked upon the spot, — not would 
 they all suffice, although wielded by the whole literary popu- 
 lation of the globe — all the inhabitants of China having been 
 previously taught to compose in English under the Hamilton- 
 ian system — to write down one degree beneath its present 
 sunbright level in the heaven of glory that Periodical whom 
 the four seasons, the twelve months, the three hundred and 
 sixty-five days, and the twenty-four hours obey, ministering 
 to her like angels, and from her golden urn drawing light that 
 overflows the universe ! 
 
 We have been told that there are men now alive who never 
 read Periodicals ; men of education — scholars — who always 
 go, for every one single individual draught of knowledge, to 
 the Fountain-Head. They fear the water will be muddy else ; 
 fetid, and full of small worms, fever, and atrophy. Such are 
 sad stupid folks, with all their learning, they may depend 
 upon it ; and lose half their lives on the road, often miry or 
 adust, going and coming to and from the Fountain-Head. 
 How much better to have the element brought to them, where 
 they sit or sleep, filtered of all impurity, and sparkling " with 
 touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod," in free-flowing pipes and 
 conduits that never run dry. What better Fountain-Head 
 could they desire than this Magazine ? Thence issues a clear 
 and copious stream, carried into every house at the small 
 
156 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 expense of half-a-crown a month. Turn the cock, and you 
 see your face — your smiling face — in the liquid mirror ; true 
 to nature, yet of the most delicate flattery, and ever pleasant 
 reflections. Nay, there are many cocks. Turn one — out 
 gushes soft water for washing; another — hard, for tea and 
 toddy ; a third— cream for tart and pudding ; a fourth — hip- 
 pocrene ; a fifth — Glenlivet. The fact of the matter is, that 
 yon are the inhabitant of a Fairy palace, and are served by 
 the hands of Invisibles. Sweet voices whisper to you of all 
 that is going on in the everyday world, and all the Elements 
 are Contributors. 
 
 Change the image ; and, instead of a Fountain-Head, sup- 
 pose people addicted to a Brown Study. Who out of Grub 
 Street would be a Book- worm ? Think not that happiness is 
 to be found in calfskin, or Eussia binding. Lord preserve 
 us ! what a multitude of blockheads are confined in a large 
 book-case, — as Mr Wordsworth says of the tea-drinkers about 
 the Lakes — all silent, and all damned ! You view the matter 
 in a different light ? Well then, what is the use of a seraglio 
 of ten thousand volumes ? The octavos ogle at you all in 
 vain — the clumsy quartos get absolutely disgusting — folios 
 fat, fair, and forty — look all comely flabby — and you devoutly 
 wish the little teasing twelvemos at the devil. You would be 
 happy were they all bound in Eussia together ; and exclaim, 
 with Solomon, in a similar situation, all is vanity. But Maga 
 — divine Maga — she blooms in immortal youth. Custom can- 
 not stale her infinite variety — increase of appetite grows on 
 what it feeds on, — and you hug her in uncloyed transports 
 to your heart, a faithful Subscriber, Contributor, and Mono- 
 gamist ! 
 
 We had intended this for a twenty-four page Article like 
 that celebrated one, by the same or another hand, on Selby's 
 Ornithology. But a devil is at the door ; and as this is posi- 
 tively the eighth article — short and long — that we have under- 
 taken to write for this month's Maga, without once being- 
 ready with copy according to appointment — there is nothing 
 else for it, but to cut it off with a shilling. Buy the Work, 
 facetious reader ; for you have six plates, each containing five 
 Illustrations (thirty capital things), for eight shillings plain, 
 and twelve shillings coloured. If you are the man we take 
 you for, you will have all Cruikshank's Works, for they are 
 
CRUIKSHANK ON TIME. 1&7 
 
 almost all ckefs-cfceuvre— and the worst of tliem is more than 
 worth double its price. But these Illustrations of Time are 
 about the very best things George has ever done ; and il, on 
 purchasing them, yon are disappointed, why, have your revenge 
 bv giving up Blackwood and taking Colburn, and thus prove 
 yourself to be a man of the most correct taste, but no genius 
 The truth, however, is, that the dullest of dogs _ are amused 
 with Mr Cruikshank's sketches. There is a vein of nature 
 about them that is visible to all human eyes ; and it was no 
 farther back than yesterday that we thought a worthy irienrl 
 of ours, almost as complete a dunce as breathes, would abso- 
 lutely have burst a blood-vessel on beholding " Time thrown 
 aw\y " in which half-a-dozen washerwomen are endeavouring 
 with nnVht and main to whiten an Ethiopian, who, as he sits 
 in the tub, strongly reminds us of the late Lord Molmeux — 
 Do, George, visit Edinburgh, and become one of the Hoctes 
 AmbrosianK, which, being interpreted, signify Ambrosial 
 Knights. Sally I bring our nightcap. 
 
 NoiE.-The attack on Shakespeare's fairies and witches m tins Essay - ib not .to 
 beaccepted as Professor Wilson's serious and deliberate judgmen " appears 
 from a MS. memorandum that it was his intention to « write an eq^ydo^n 
 answer to all abont the fairies, &o. in this paper. ' This intent^ ^was never 
 fulfilled ; but its execution had been to some extent anticipated in an earl} 
 number 'of Blackwood's Magazine (vol. iii. 608), wnere hej z**^ It««ort 
 true that everything about the Witches, as they are painted in this drama, 
 terrible as poetry can render superstition." 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 1 
 
 [JANUARY 1838. J 
 
 Let no man abuse the Doctors, either of Eeligion or Medicine. 
 We love the healing tribe, because we love our own souls 
 and our own bodies. The soul being considered, on the 
 whole, a superior article to the body, it might be said that we 
 ought to prefer a parson to a physician. But no such infer- 
 ence can be logically drawn from such premises. For, in the 
 first place, we do not positively know that the soul is a supe- 
 rior article to the body. That is a mere conjecture. Secondly, 
 we do not positively know that the soul is a different article 
 from the body. Here we are — soul and body it may be — or 
 merely a Something which should in our humility be nameless 
 — a something which thinks, feels, fears, loves, hates, goes 
 mad, and — dies ; and that is all we know about it, whether 
 we choose to call ourselves Materialists or Irnmaterialists. 
 As long as we believe that we are the children of God, and 
 strive to act accordingly, in that creed we are safe. But 
 thirdly, making use of the common distinction of soul and 
 body, and giving the usual superiority to the former, still we 
 need not prefer the parson to the physician. And that for 
 many reasons. First, we know — men in general we mean — 
 — more of our own souls than we do of our own bodies — and 
 therefore cannot surrender our judgment so entirely to the one 
 professional man in black as to the other. Secondly, the soul 
 is often sick and sore — sadly out of sorts — without our being 
 aware of it — whereas no ailment assails the body without our 
 shrewdly suspecting that something is amiss. For once, 
 therefore, that we call in a parson, professionally, we send 
 twenty times for a physician. Who ever heard, except in 
 
 1 Sure Methods of Improving Health and Prolonging Life, &c. By a 
 Physician. 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 159 
 
 extreme cases, of knocking up a parson, out of his warm bed 
 at midnight, to visit a sick patient ? Thirdly, the spiritual 
 Pharmacopoeia is very meagre. The ablest practitioner — can 
 he minister to a mind diseased ? He may feel our pulse — look 
 wise — order conscience a purge — and depart. But we, the 
 poor miserable sinner, toss on our bed, give no sign, and die. 
 Not a word more on that point. Fourthly, bad as the dis- 
 eases of the soul are — very bad indeed — quite shocking — 
 they seldom prove fatal ; when they do, the patient lingers 
 for a long time with a rueful countenance — and seems neither 
 the better nor the worse of all ghostly prescriptions. Nay, 
 wdiat more common than a hoary-headed hale sinner of four- 
 score ? But the diseases of the body, though sometimes mild 
 and tedious, have a manifest tendency towards death, and 
 therefore we take the alarm speedily, and long for the face of 
 the physician. Fifthly, the diseases of the soul yield in- 
 tensest pleasure — deny it not — and the active sinner laughs 
 the praying and preaching parson to scorn. But the diseases 
 of the body twitch and twinge, and pinch, and tear, and 
 squeeze, and stifle, and suffocate, and we cry out with a loud 
 voice to be released from the stake in jire or flood. 
 
 For these, and a thousand other reasons, we are inclined, 
 contrary to what might have been expected of us, to prefer 
 the physician to the parson. Still the parson is dear to us — 
 exceedingly dear. We have a most particular esteem for him 
 in pulpit and in parlour — in the pit of the General Assembly, 
 or of the theatre — in peace or polemics — exhausting topics or 
 teinds — battling for the Bible — or against the Apocrypha. As 
 a bottle- companion — a friend — nay, a brother, we love him ; 
 but when anything goes very wrong with our soul — when the 
 prima vice are obstructed — when we shiver in an ague — or in 
 the delirium of fever "see more devils than vast hell can 
 hold," — would you believe it? — we give the servant orders to 
 tell the minister that we are not at home, hide our heads 
 below the bed-clothes, and remember indistinctly what Shake- 
 speare says — 
 
 " Therein the patient must minister to himself." 
 
 VVe have scarcely been able to bring ourselves to believe 
 that human beings are in general indifferent about the state 
 either of their bodies or of their souls. It is the high-flown 
 
160 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 fashionable doctrine, however, at present, both in the Keli- 
 gious and Medical World. The soul may be sorrowfully and 
 penitentially sensible of its sins, without wishing to obtrude 
 its sufferings on the notice of all eyes, — and a careless exte- 
 rior may conceal a serious habit of inward self-meditation. 
 That portion of the life of almost every individual that is 
 visible and audible to the public eye and ear, is necessarily 
 the least spiritual ; and we can learn little or nothing of any 
 man till we have been with him in his familiar privacy, and 
 seen something of the chosen channels in which his thoughts 
 and feelings love to travel, when his hearth is lighted and his 
 house hushed. What false judgments does even the religious 
 world pass, — and how slowly does it rescind or revoke them, 
 even on new and full evidence, clear as the light of day! 
 Charity is indeed then an angel, when she searches for, and 
 sees, and believes, in the religion that lies hidden in almost 
 all human hearts — unrepelled and unprovoked by differences 
 in faith, creed, profession, pursuits, manners, or appearances, 
 and still inspired in all her judgments of other human beings, 
 by that meek yet lofty spirit of which the word " Christian " 
 expresses the sacred signification. 
 
 We would almost venture to say, that many people are too 
 anxious about the state of their souls, their anxiety making 
 them selfish in all their religion. They deliver their con- 
 sciences up into some saintly keeping, that it may be safe, 
 and a look or a whisper from the mortal creature in whom 
 they have put their trust, disturbs their serenity, and throws 
 them before him almost upon their very knees. There is 
 much Popery in our Protestant land ; and the days are not 
 yet gone by of auricular confession. Perhaps the people who 
 speak least of their faith, have it deepest and most steadfast, 
 — preserving its sanctity unprofaned by unseasonable collo- 
 quies, — avowing it on the Sabbath before man as well as God 
 in public worship, — and to God alone every morning and 
 every evening in the private chamber of their own thoughts. 
 Yet may they be pronounced, by the rash judgments of the 
 righteous overmuch, indifferent about the state of their souls ! 
 
 Just so with that which we call our bodies. It is not pos- 
 sible that rational beings can be utterly careless about the 
 health of their bodies any more than of their souls. We all 
 fear to die, — and at the slightest tap from the finger of Death 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 161 
 
 at the door of our earthly tabernacle, how we hurry to barri- 
 cado it, and to fasten all the bolts and bars ! True, that when 
 that disturber of all our peace is thought to be at a distance, 
 we forget how suddenly he can be with us, and through what 
 a small cranny he can creep in ! But in this case, too, we 
 may be too anxious about this body of ours, and look now in 
 the same sort of selfish superstition* towards the physician, as 
 we did then towards the priest, — beseeching and imploring 
 him to keep our body from disease, — terrified at the thought 
 of its ceasing to breathe, and dropping and decaying into dust. 
 
 It is our belief, then, that people are, for the most part, far 
 from being indifferent about the state either of their souls or 
 bodies, although they are too often betrayed into fits of strange 
 forgetfulness of the true interests of both, and into the adop- 
 tion of the worst possible means for preserving their well- 
 being ; and this, we hope, will not be considered too serious 
 matter for an introduction to an article which is intended to 
 be, on the whole, of a facetious character — for mirth may be 
 moral, and laughter as salutary as tears. 
 
 We have been very fortunate in our physicians — that is to 
 say, we have had them of all the Three Kinds — and yet are 
 alive, and supped at Ambrose's on Thursday. First, we have 
 had, and have now, your man of education — your scholar and 
 your gentleman — who is as open, honest, and sincere at your 
 bedside, as at your dinner-table, and who would be disinter- 
 estedly sorry were you, in spite of his efforts to detain you 
 here, to go to another and a better world. Experience has 
 strengthened and refined his sagacity into an instinct; and 
 what skill and knowledge can do, he will do for us, should we, 
 which may be highly probable, die to-morrow. He is no 
 monger of mysterious monosyllables — no silent head-shaker 
 — no appalling mute, with one fearful forefinger on your 
 pulse, and two horrid eyes fixed on your face, till you are 
 faint with the ticking of that accursed chronometer in your 
 swimming brain — while you think you see visions of under- 
 takers, saulies, a hearse, and many mourning-coaches — a 
 deep-dug wet hole, much shovelling, the sudden off-taking 
 of hats, and the breaking up of anything but a convivial 
 party, all discussing your character, and wondering if you 
 have died rich or poor. Every smile on his face is worth a 
 fee, and you set death and the devil at defiance, when he asks 
 
 vol. v. l 
 
162 ESSAYS: CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 you " if you do not think the last an admirable Noctes, and 
 Murray inimitable in Pong Wong?" 
 
 The Second Kind is your Old Woman. A pleasing imbe- 
 cility reigns over face and figure — his speech is a trefoil of 
 terror, stutter, and lisp ; and he smiles so sweetly, that you 
 pluck up courage to believe that you cannot possibly be near 
 the last agonies. His sole anxiety is about your bowels — he 
 beseeches you to keep quiet — administers his pill — tells you 
 not to allow yourself to be flurried — and as he trips bustling 
 away, and keeps talking to himself, and your housekeeper, all 
 the way down-stairs, and out of the street door, you begin 
 cautiously to put first one leg out of the bed, and then another, 
 and having found your breeches secreted in your drawers, you 
 apparel yourself in warm winter-raiment, order dinner, and in 
 a few hours are sitting with a friend, with your feet on the 
 fender, and on your right hand a jug of hot toddy, a cheerful 
 and chatty convalescent. 
 
 The Third Sort is your Quack — and from him Heaven pre- 
 serve all the subscribers to this Magazine! Hard-hearted, 
 coarse, vulgar, greedy, profligate, and unprincipled, in his un- 
 fearing ignorance, you see at once that he is the active partner 
 in the firm of Mors, Morbus, & Co. He treats you as if you 
 were a horse, and drenches you with drugs to death. Hence 
 so many widows left with eight children — so many men six 
 feet high on Monday, and only six feet long on the Saturday 
 following — letters announcing the death of contributors on the 
 eves of articles — in place of marriage-sheets, funeral- shrouds 
 — instead of trips to the Trosachs in jaunting-cars, rattling 
 along eight miles an hour, journeys to the place of interment 
 in the Greyfriars and the West Kirk churchyard, in a vehicle 
 that, although drawn by six horses, goes nodding on at a 
 snail's pace, and lands you in the dirt at last. The quack 
 attends impatiently the patient corpse, in his own chariot, and 
 then drives off to give the coup-de-grace to another incumbent. 
 
 The house visited by the true physician is known from the 
 aspect of its inmates — especially the children. There is an 
 airy freedom in the figures of the family; a clear-skinned 
 complexion of face, inclining to pinkiness ; a laughing lustre 
 of lip and eye, set off by the glitter of well-brushed hair ; a 
 taking tidiness about the dress of the creatures, as if health 
 and happiness had stood behind them at the mirror. This you 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 163 
 
 seldom or never meet with in a house annoyed by the Old 
 Woman, or cursed by the Quack. Not that the Old Woman 
 often does much serious mischief to the bairns ; that is to say, 
 she seldom either kills them outright (though such things 
 occasionally happen), or for life ruins their constitution. But 
 then she teaches them to have recourse, on the most insigni- 
 ficant occasions, to small bottles and boxes, so that not the 
 slightest touch of a sore throat, a headache, or a colic, is suf- 
 fered to go off of its own accord, but must be ejected by drop 
 or pill; while the amiable patient appears with a yard of 
 flannel round her pretty throat, or a cap on her curly head, 
 and is treated perhaps for a whole week as a valetudinarian. 
 The Old Woman frequently infects both parents with her own 
 fiddle-faddle, and when there is unfortunately no illness of any 
 kind in their own families, they are like people appointed to a 
 Dispensary, and prescribe for all the paupers about the place. 
 We know not how it is, but were we a young man, we should 
 not — we could not — we would not — marry out of a family 
 attended by an Old Woman. Certain habits are disgusting ; 
 and from young women, whose health has been under the care 
 of old women, that sensitive and instinctive delicacy is not to 
 be expected, which guards wedded life from all offence of 
 coarseness, and preserves to the husband's eyes the matron- 
 wife pure and beautiful as the virgin-mistress. 
 
 As for the Quack, when he has fairly established himself in 
 a house — farewell domestic peace ! He is a paid and privi- 
 leged murderer. All your family, even when at their highest 
 health, are more or less sick ; when allowed to be ill, they are 
 at death's door ; and when they die, it is in some startling 
 and shocking manner, enough to break your heart and turn 
 your brain. Although two children are perhaps born to you 
 in three years, your family never increases ; and by the time 
 that you and your wife are fifty, looking dismally about the 
 house, you see yourselves to be childless, and feel yourselves 
 to be old people. 
 
 There is, it must be confessed, something exceedingly per- 
 plexing in the medical profession. We are subject to a vast 
 variety of diseases; and physicians, in order to cure them, 
 study the art or science of medicine. By dint of extraordinary 
 natural sagacity, great practice and experience, a physician 
 becomes so wise in the knowledge of all diseases, and anti- 
 
164 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 dotes to death, that he acquires the character of a life-pre- 
 server. You see him driving about with supplies of health in 
 his carriage, just like that neat cart- waggon with its Peebles 
 ale, dropping comfort at every door. He dies ; and in some 
 half-dozen years or so, a physician whom he had long kept 
 down, lifts up his now undepressed head, and gets into prodi- 
 gious practice. He adops a system diametrically opposite to 
 that of his predecessor. That which the one said would kill, 
 the other says will cure. Now, the question to be answered 
 is, which of these two men is the murderer ? If it indeed be 
 within the power of medical treatment to put a patient to 
 death, a hot close room, with a huge fire and nailed windows, 
 and a cool airy room, with no fire at all, and windows fre- 
 quently open, cannot be equally good for a small child, with 
 its face one blotch of small-pox. So on with all other com- 
 plaints under the sun, moon, and stars. Fathers and mothers 
 fall down on their knees before physicians, blessing them for 
 having, under God, rescued a beloved child from the tomb ; 
 while, had they known the truth, as it is expounded by a 
 future Hippocrates, they would have screamed him off the 
 premises as an assassin. Yet the bills of mortality preserve 
 a wonderfully nice equilibrium; and it would almost seem 
 that both Life and Death laugh at the doctors. A patient 
 labouring under a hereditary disease, say a cancer in the 
 stomach, like Napoleon — or gout in the toe, like Christopher 
 North — is puzzled, when told that at the very fewest, his 
 father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have been mur- 
 dered, and that he must submit to a new regimen, the result 
 of which said new regimen is, some hundred years afterwards, 
 quoted to a generation yet unborn, as one of the most melan- 
 choly cases on record, of an invaluable life having been sacri- 
 ficed to a mistaken policy of insurance. This is to us a 
 riddle, which we wish the clever Sphynx would solve, since 
 (Edipus is dead. 
 
 It is pleasing to think how very difficult it is to kill people 
 by improper medical treatment. The doctors have, doubtless, 
 doomed many millions to death — in their day — but many mil- 
 lions more have escaped scot-free from their most pernicious 
 prescriptions, after having swallowed them with the most obe- 
 dient and graceful simplicity, gulped them down with such 
 monstrous ugly faces, that death most likely took fright and 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 165 
 
 scampered off to do the job of less forbidding and formidable 
 patients. Some people, indeed, there are, whom we defy you 
 to kill by hook or crook — and who, like old castles that have 
 stood sieges without end, will crumble at last into ruins. You 
 do not so much wonder at their tenacity, or rather pertinacity 
 of life, for they are lean, lank, bony, gaunt, grim, and ugly 
 customers, of whom death cannot get a fair hold, when the 
 two stand up to wrestle, and it is pronounced a dog-fall — or a 
 draw. But the persons worthy our unqualified admiration are 
 your poor, puny, slight, slim, slender billies, weighing barely 
 seven stone, and whom Favonius might flit away with under 
 his wing like a leaf — who, the moment they receive the 
 smallest insult from any disease whatever — be he who he 
 may — show fight, without minding the difference of weight, 
 and often, by a dexterous dig on the wind, floor the lubber, 
 amid the uproarious applause of the ring. They then put on 
 their clothes with the utmost sang-froid, and leave the ground 
 without a scratch. We know several such prime bits of stuff 
 — more especially one — a Highlander who was out in the 
 Fifteen, then a mere boy, — and afterwards, of course, in the 
 Forty-five, a growing lad of two- score — and who, never mea- 
 suring above five feet three, nor weighing above seven stone 
 seven — was yesterday — when he came for his caulker — as fine 
 a fellow of a hundred and twenty and upwards, as ever 
 turned up his little finger, although, independently of being 
 riddled by balls and bayonets, he ran the gauntlet in many 
 fevers, scarlet, brain, rheumatic, and typhus, through Queens- 
 berry House and the Infirmary. Others again there are — 
 fine, straight, stout, jolly, ruddy-faced fellows, such as you see 
 in the Six-feet Club, who occasionally go off like the snuff of 
 a candle, after the long wick has been hanging for an hour or 
 two alongside of the melting tallow — or who first keep walk- 
 ing about weakly and weekly in greatcoats — are next seen 
 shivering on horseback with long hair to its heels — then 
 observed with whitey-blue faces at the wundow of a glass- 
 coach — and finally — all within the month — are hearsed invi- 
 sible to all eyes, and deposited beneath the galleries of the 
 subterranean mowdiewarp. 
 
 But to return — Is the author of this medical work a Phy- 
 sician, an Old Woman, or a Quack ? Or is he of the Compo- 
 site Order ? He is an Old Woman. The rustle of the petti- 
 
166 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 coats is heard in the very preface. On his way up-stairs, you 
 hear that he and the old lady that used to edit my Grand- 
 mother's Keview, are twins. His object is, to " impress people 
 with the fact, that there are certain means of insuring a free- 
 dom from disease, and a long life." He is such an extremely 
 old woman himself — such a dowager Lady Eaven — his origin 
 stretches back into such a remote antiquity, that he has little 
 allowance to make for those foolish persons who persist in 
 dying at fourscore. Galen, he tells us, reached, by means of 
 regimen, the great age of one hundred and forty, although his 
 constitution had been much shattered before he had arrived at 
 the twenty-eighth mile-stone on the road of life, not then mac- 
 adamised. The noble Venetian, Cornaro, half dead at forty, so 
 restored himself to decent health, as to outlive the century 
 that was born along with him, and see it gathered unto its 
 fathers ; and there is an Admiral Henry, he tells us, of Kovel- 
 den, in Kent, who, till his sixtieth year, was a martyr to 
 various chronic diseases, but who some years ago reached the 
 age of ninety-one, and walked daily three miles, back and for- 
 ward, to the neighbouring town of Tenterden, without stopping 
 or wetting his whistle. " The Admiral," quoth he, " is, I 
 believe, now living." No doubt he is ; and the very expres- 
 sion, " I believe," seems to imply a doubt that proves our 
 friend the Doctor to be, after all, of a very incredulous and 
 sceptical mind — for if such puny fellows as Galen and Cornaro 
 so bearded Time, why may not gallant old Henry — true 
 English heart of oak — live six hundred years or more, and be 
 entitled to add CCCCC to Eear- Admiral ? The only difficulty 
 with most people is to get safely and stoutly on the weather- 
 beam of a hundred. After that it is all plain sailing — and, 
 were we not restrained by our veneration for old age, we 
 should say that the man who dies at all after a hundred and 
 forty, must be a sad old blockhead — entirely superannuated, 
 and in the last stage of dotage. 
 
 Before we go farther, we wish, with all due respect, to ask 
 this worthy Old Woman one single question. Why all this 
 anxiety for a long life ? Does she not know that since the 
 Flood the term of human life has been fixed at about three? 
 score and ten years ? It is quite long enough. If a man 
 will but be busy, and not idle away his time, he may do 
 wonders within that period. Only think of Alexander the 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 167 
 
 Great, who had conquered the world at thirty, and having 
 nothing more to do, got dead drunk in Babylon. Think of 
 Master Beattie, who was the Young Koscius at twelve. Be- 
 member the name — which we have forgotten — of that univer- 
 sal linguist, who hopped the twig before he had cut all his 
 single teeth — or fairly given up sucking. Lord preserve us 
 in this literary age — if people were to keep scribbling on for 
 centuries ! When, pray, would a man or woman be in the 
 prime of life ? We presume a maiden lady of sixty would be 
 quite a tid-bit — and that it would be nuts to cany off the 
 great-grandmother of a gentleman in extensive practice at 
 the English bar, or haply Lord- Chancellor, to Gretna Green. 
 No — no — no — life is long enough as it is — there is no occa- 
 sion to stretch it to the crack of doom. Let us die at a 
 moderate age and be thankful. Why this vain longing for 
 longevity ? Why seek to rob human life of its melancholy 
 moral — namely, its shortness — and deprive flowers, grass, 
 dew, smoke, vapours, clouds, and bubbles, of the poetry and 
 passion now inherent in their names and natures, as natural 
 emblems of the destiny of man ? 
 
 Have you ever ruminated, our good Old Lady, on the con- 
 sequences of the prolongation of human life — free, too, from 
 all those diseases which at present flesh is heir to ? What 
 would become of the University of Edinburgh ? The medi- 
 cal school would be knocked on the head — and instead of a 
 hundred and thirty doctors per annum issuing out of its 
 gates, you might as vainly look for a physician as for a 
 phoenix — an arimaspian as an apothecary — a griffin as a 
 graduate. If there were no sufferings of the body, there 
 would be no paupers, and no charity. Eeligion would be a 
 luxury rather than a necessary of life — people in general 
 would walk about counting their fingers — ennui would cease 
 to be fashionable, because epidemical — the most pathetic 
 elegies would be poured over the interminable length and 
 slowness of human life — and ten to one there would be a 
 violent reaction terminating in universal suicide. 
 
 Let us see, however, by what means our author proposes 
 to add a century or so to the life of each purchaser of his 
 volume. " I shall," says she, " proceed at once to point out 
 the qualities of the chief articles used as food by man, both 
 animal and vegetable, with the proper times for eating and 
 
168 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 drinking, and the quantity best adapted to the purposes of 
 health and longevity ; in order that those who are earnestly 
 desirous of becoming acquainted with the art of living long 
 and comfortably, and of adhering thereto, may not be at a loss 
 on any point of consequence relating to so material a branch 
 of that art as diet." The " march of mind " now moves at 
 double-quick time, awkward squad and all — and we look over 
 our left shoulder, as we advance, with contemptuous pity on 
 our ancestors. They knew nothing, they could do nothing, 
 and it is odd how they contrived to keep themselves out of 
 the fire. Before their eyes, the road to their own mouths lay 
 dim and uncertain, and they sorely lacked a finger-post. 
 Even now, it would appear from this book, that mankind, 
 although, or rather because, an omnivorous animal, left to 
 their uninstructed reason and instinct, are incapable of arriving 
 at the discovery of the proper hour of the day at which they 
 should all, as at the toll of one bell, or beat of one gong, sit 
 down to dinner. It is now somewhere about six thousand 
 years since man became an animal, or living creature, and it 
 is singular he should all along have been such an ags as 
 never to have discovered — not only not the longitude — but 
 longevity. Millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions of human 
 beings have been all that time eating and drinking, indeed 
 doing very little else worth mentioning ; and yet they now 
 know no more about the matter, if indeed as much, as Adam or 
 Eve. Either the " art of living long and comfortably," to 
 use our friend's words, is one of very difficult acquisition, or 
 all the nations of the earth are noodles, and incapable or 
 unworthy of reading to any effect this Magazine. He speaks, 
 in the passage quoted above, " of those who are earnestly 
 desirous of becoming acquainted with the art of living long 
 and comfortably ; " but, heretofore, how small must have been 
 their number! What clouds of ephemeral children are for 
 ever warping away on the wind of death — whence coming 
 and whither going, why, how, or wherefore, who can tell ? 
 Poor motley phantoms, they had not sufficient sense given 
 to them to " be earnestly desirous of becoming acquainted 
 with the art of living long and comfortably, and of adhering 
 thereto ; " but why did not their parents know this for them? 
 Why suffered they fate to blow them away out of sight for ever, 
 like midges, and thousands of other sorts of small insects, all 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 169 
 
 most beautiful when you look at them through a microscope, 
 nay, even magnificent miniatures — pardon the Irishism, if it be 
 one — i n their flexile armour, their brightly burnished coats 
 of mail beaten by the noiseless hammer of Nature out of silver 
 and gold ! 
 
 Yet true it is, this is a silly world — and therefore let us 
 see how an Old Woman is to set us all to rights. He begins 
 with diet, and tells us that food is of two kinds — Solid and 
 Liquid — which, for the sake of convenience, he considers in 
 separate sections. We have a confused recollection of having 
 heard this distinction — this distribution of the subject — in 
 early youth. It is not, we are confident, a new discovery, as 
 our author, seems to think. Indeed, the world we inhabit 
 may be also said to be of two kinds — solid and liquid — the 
 land and sea. But passing from that, all solid food is either 
 of animal or vegetable origin. Thus, a cow or ox, a cod or 
 how-towdy, is of animal origin. Wheat and oats, a potato, 
 nay, even a parsnip, is of vegetable origin. The native of 
 a cold climate ought to eat much animal food — of a tempe- 
 rate climate much vegetable. In favour of vegetables gene- 
 rally, it may be said that man could hardly live entirely on 
 animal food, but we know he may on vegetables. " A 
 nran was prevailed on to live upon partridges without vege- 
 tables, but was obliged to desist at the end of eight days, 
 from the appearance of strong symptoms of putrefaction." 
 The same man might have lived for eight years on potatoes, 
 without appearing to putrefy. Vegetable food has also, we 
 are told, a beneficial influence on the powers of the mind, 
 " and tends to preserve a delicacy of feeling, a liveliness of 
 imagination, and acuteness of judgment, seldom enjoyed by 
 those who live principally on meat." Now every lady and 
 gentleman in Great Britain lives principally on animal food, 
 or, as our author has it, " on meat." But then, Dr Franklin, 
 we are told, "took entirely to a vegetable diet," and a deli- 
 cate person he was truly. Why, he was as clever, acute, 
 and thoroughly coarse and unimaginative a gentleman of the 
 press as ever defended Deism — the beau-ideal of a philosopher, 
 to be set up as an idol in a Mechanics' Institution. 
 
 Notwithstanding the story of the partridges, and of Dr 
 Franklin, — " from the preceding facts," quoth our friend, 
 " we rightly infer that the combination of an animal and 
 
170 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 vegetable diet is, in general, best suited to preserve a perfect 
 state of health and strength, and, as society is now consti- 
 tuted, to conduce to longevity." 
 
 The excellent Old Woman then tells us that the proportion 
 of this mixture is of importance — that the valetudinarian will 
 often find that a small portion of animal food is the best for 
 him, especially if he be very ill indeed — and that where little 
 bodily exertion is employed, much animal food is improper ; 
 but where the bodily exercise or labour is constant and great, 
 the use of animal food ought to be liberal. 
 
 Now really there needed no old woman to come from her 
 bed to tell us all this. Who ever ate, or saw eaten, a beef- 
 steak without bread, or potatoes, or shalot, or mustard, — all 
 vegetables, every mother's son of them ? What round of 
 beef in this world was ever devoured without greys or greens? 
 Even cannibals eat you with vegetables. 
 
 So, on the other hand, observe a man narrowly on a veget- 
 able diet, and you will be delighted to see the immense quan- 
 tities of animal matter which he devours. True, that enormous 
 shave of bread in his paw is vegetable ; but then the surface is 
 the eighth part of an inch deep of butter, which is animal, we 
 believe, as several full-grown flies well knew a few minutes 
 ago, now imbedded in a state of insensibility in the yellow 
 milkness. True, that boundless bowl of broth seems filled to 
 the rim with barley, beans, pease, turnips, carrots, and many 
 other vegetables which we have not now time to enumerate ; 
 but two pounds of mutton have been stewed down into it, and 
 so amalgamated with the mess, that the whole seems the pro- 
 duce of the garden, and the gormandiser before you a member 
 of the Horticultural Society. In short, it requires no nice 
 analysis to detect all vegetable diet to be three-parts animal ; 
 and even in Ireland, the potato, which, we cheerfully grant, 
 is, when eaten by itself, very much of a vegetable, often, thank 
 Heaven ! falls into the trap along with a bit of pig's face or 
 trotter, than which there is no matter more animal in all the 
 world. The mixture, then, of animal and vegetable diet will 
 be found to prevail so generally, both in savage and civilised 
 life, as to set — now that we have mentioned it — this Old Lady's 
 mind completely at rest. 
 
 There is but one step from the Truism to the Paradox. The 
 Old Lady forthwith tells us, that, " in the summer, our diet 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 171 
 
 should be wholly vegetable." The devil it should ! What ! 
 with all those beautiful fat lambs bleating on the lulls ? That 
 lien and chickens searching for pearls on that dunghill before 
 our very eyes ? Those turkey-pouts, glancing their snake-like 
 necks and heads in every direction — slim, yet satisfactory — 
 and, as part of a dinner for a single gentleman, when nicely 
 roasted, oh what a remove ! Leave the Old Lady herself 
 alone with such a temptation, about four o'clock of the after- 
 noon, for she keeps good hours, and she will not pout at the 
 turkey — not she indeed — nor yet turn her back upon the ham. 
 If quite alone, she will draw, with both hands, first the one leg 
 and then the other, through and through her teeth, tearing off 
 all the sinews, and sucking out the pith, and even crunching 
 the bones, till her plate is as clean as if Bronte had licked it ; 
 and yet, after all, the Old Lady does not scruple to say, " in 
 the summer our diet should be almost wholly vegetable I" 
 What a world this is for hypocrisy and double-dealing ! 
 
 Summer ! a pretty reason for a vegetable diet indeed in this 
 country I Why, do you remember the summer that came upon 
 us some four years ago ? Thermometer seldom above fifty — 
 the day a dismal drizzle, or an even-down pour — some light 
 but no sun — and the night a hollow howl, through which you 
 could not hear the owls. A vegetable diet, forsooth ! Pretty 
 vegetables they were — not two peas on an average to the pod ! 
 Animal food, in all its possible modes, was the sole resource of 
 the wretched inhabitants. Then, the summer did not stop at 
 the usual time, but kept soaking away through the autumn on 
 into the very heart of winter — so that instead of a fine bold 
 black frost at Christmas, we had a close clammy time of it, 
 which, had people been weak from a vegetable diet, would 
 have swept us off in thousands ; but we found safety in the 
 shambles, and the City, strong in animal food, was saved from 
 the Plague. 
 
 The first section of the chapter on Solid Food terminates 
 with this original advice : "It is worthy of observation also, 
 that vegetable food is much the best for children, after they 
 have done with the nurse's milk." Who ever doubted it? 
 Suppose a child weaned within the year, who ever thought of 
 cramming it with fat bacon without any beans, with sausages, 
 or haggis ? The imp would become a Vampire if thus fed on 
 blood — would fasten upon its mother or dry-nurse ; and when 
 
172 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Bent to school, instead of purchasing barley-sugar with its 
 Saturday penny, would regale on Pluck. 
 
 The good Old Lady now conies to particulars, and treats of 
 Animal, as one great branch of Solid Food. Bull-beef, she 
 informs us, is tougher than that of cow, and ox-beef best of all. 
 Old ewe mutton is coarse — five-year-old well-fed wether mutton 
 fine — there is less nutriment in veal than in the flesh of the 
 full-grown beast — lamb is less dense than mutton — venison 
 very digestible, wholesome, and nutritious — good pork is a 
 very savoury food, and suited to persons who lead an active 
 and laborious life — some writers praise it pickled — but with 
 some delicate people it immediately affects the bowels in rather 
 a violent manner — the flesh of the sucking-pig is a great 
 delicacy — bacon is a coarse and heavy food — hare and rabbit 
 are sufficiently nutritious — turtle a most nourishing and palat- 
 able food — and the esculent frog tastes much like chicken. 
 Birds, in point of digestibility, rank nearly as follows : — Com- 
 mon fowl — partridge, pheasant, turkey, guinea-hen, and quail, 
 pigeon, lark, thrush, and fieldfare, woodcock, snipe, and grouse, 
 are easy of digestion. The goose is fit only for strong 
 stomachs, and those who labour hard. The duck is preferable 
 to the goose — and wild water-fowl cannot be much recom- 
 mended, being generally heavy and indigestible. 
 
 Now, our own opinion is, that all the above birds are most 
 easily digested; and that, to a hungry man, it is of little 
 moment which of them you lay upon his plate. It is an idiotic 
 calumny against the character of wild-fowl, to say that they 
 cannot be much recommended. They are always in bang-up 
 condition — melt in your mouth beyond all praise — and we defy 
 you not to digest them, if you ever digest anything. A teal ! 
 
 The Old Lady is no admirer of fish, and denies that they are 
 nutritious. Salmon, she says, is unwholesome ! — Pray, may 
 we ask, to whom ? Not to men or otters, although a very small 
 slice of salmon will indeed sicken a Cockney, who does not 
 understand the curd, and likes it all in a slobber. Stewed 
 oysters, we are told, are extremely pernicious to lying-in 
 women — not so raw, which are highly nutritious, of easy 
 digestion, and may be taken with great advantage by the 
 robust, as well as the weak and consumptive. Notwithstand- 
 ing this, in our opinion, a single barrel of oysters is as much 
 as is good for man or woman at a single sitting ; and even that 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 173 
 
 quantity may be pernicious without a jug or two of Glen- 
 livet. 
 
 " The best time for the consumption offish," sayeth the Old 
 Lady, " is in the summer" — that is, when the best among them 
 are all either out of season, or not to be got for love or money. 
 
 By reducing to practice the above information concerning 
 Solid Animal Food, any person of a tolerable constitution will 
 infallibly, barring accidents, reach a good old age, say a hundred 
 and forty — the age of Galen. 
 
 We come now to the second great branch of Solid Food — 
 Vegetable. And first of farina. Of the two sorts of bread, 
 fine white, and coarse brown, the latter, we are assured, is the 
 most easy of digestion, and the most nutritive. Perhaps it 
 may be ; but it is cursed bad, and infernally vulgar. It has 
 a sweetish damp taste, that adheres pertinaciously to the 
 tongue and palate, and is generally gritty, and full of sand and 
 small stones. Eespectable servants object to it, and you are 
 reckoned anything but a good Christian by the beggar who 
 opens for its sake the mouth of his reluctant wallet. " A dog," 
 it is asserted by our author, " fed on fine white wheaten bread, 
 with water, both at discretion, does not live beyond the fiftieth 
 day ; but if fed on coarse bread, with water, precisely in the 
 same manner, he preserves his health." Oatmeal porridge is 
 not a bad thing, as the Scotch can vouch ; and on rice the 
 Hindoos thrive. But never do you drink ale after rice and 
 milk, as it is almost certain of producing cholic. 
 
 The Old Lady herself, however, now and then makes some 
 not unsensible observations. Thus, she says that we may 
 consider it an unerring rule, that any kind of aliment for which 
 we feel a natural and permanent appetite, is salutary and con- 
 formable to our nature. We are delighted with the following 
 panegyric on the much -abused, blameless, and most meritori- 
 ous Potato. 
 
 Of this kind is that invaluable root the potato, -which, in the most simple 
 preparation, and without any addition but salt, affords an agreeable and 
 "wholesome food to almost every person. It is the best substitute we pos- 
 sess for bread, being a light, alimentaiy substance, neither viscid nor flatu- 
 lent, and having little tendency to acidity. It is consequently very nutri- 
 tious, and for the most part easy of digestion. A few dyspeptic and bilious 
 people, indeed, find it to disagree, more especially if not well cooked, or if 
 not of a good sort ; but this is a rare occurrence. A convincing proof of 
 its highly nutritive qualities is, that the greater part of the arrow-root sold 
 
174 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 in England is extracted from it. The dry, mealy sort of potato is the most 
 easy of digestion, and by far the most nourishing ; and the simplest mode 
 of preparing them for the table is the best : mashed potatoes are more 
 difficult of digestion. The valetudinarian should, in general, avoid the 
 young potato, till after the first of August, on account of its indigestible 
 nature when very young. 
 
 The history of the potato conveys to us a most instructive lesson, forcibly 
 reminding us of the extraordinary lengths to which prejudice will carry 
 mankind, and showing us by what apparently trivial circumstances this 
 prejudice is often removed, when the most powerful and influential argu- 
 ments have failed to weaken it. The introduction of this valuable root to 
 the gardens and tables of the people received, for more than two centuries, 
 an unexampled opposition from vulgar prejudice, which all the philosophy 
 of the age was unable to dissipate, until Louis XV. of France wore a bunch 
 of the flowers of the potato in the midst of his court, on a day of festivity ; 
 the people then, for the first time, obsequiously acknowledged its usefulness, 
 and its cultivation, as an article of food, soon became universal. Now, its 
 stalk, considered as a textile plant, produces in Austria a cottony flax. In 
 Sweden, sugar is extracted from its roots. By combustion, its different 
 parts yield a very considerable quantity of potass. Its apples, when ripe, 
 ferment, and yield vinegar by exposure, or spirit by distillation. Its tuber- 
 cles made into a pulp are a substitute for soap in bleaching. Cooked by 
 steam, the potato is one of the most wholesome and nutritious, and, at the 
 same time, the most economical of all vegetable aliments. By different 
 manipulations, it furnishes two kinds of flour, a gruel, and a parenchyma, 
 which in times of scarcity may be made into bread, or applied to increase 
 the bulk of bread made from grain ; and its starch is little, if at all, inferior 
 to the Indian arrow-root. Such are the numerous resources which this 
 invaluable plant is calculated to furnish. 
 
 Our author does not seem to know that it has been dis- 
 covered that the Potato is too productive and too nutritious ; 
 and that the people of Ireland have so much to eat, that they 
 are all in a state of starvation. The great end of political 
 economy is to get people fed. This the potato does to a 
 miracle. Its beautiful eyes, God bless them, cheer the hearts 
 of seven millions of Pats and Patesses, and, therefore, they 
 must all be extinguished as they open to the light of day, on 
 their prolific lazy beds ! They are, it seems, a precarious 
 crop ! They are not. Name a vegetable in which such im- 
 plicit confidence may safely be placed during any cycle of 
 years. Wheat? Oh the smutty sinner! why, once every 
 three years he has not an ear to his head. Oats ? He is 
 often so short-legged that you cannot catch him to bring him 
 under the sickle. Barley? Often all chaff. Pease and beans? 
 Poor pods, indeed — empty shawps, and a mere rustle of straw ! 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 175 
 
 But the Pot oooooooo's — there they are, always sound at the 
 core, whether waxy or mealy ; and the shaws, are they not of a 
 beautiful green, the apples that adorn them of a lovely yellow, 
 and the root itself, whether roasted or boiled, pregnant with 
 strong sustenance, and the parent of a thick- calved, broad- 
 shouldered, strong-backed population, able and willing to fight 
 the whole world in arms ? 
 
 We now approach Section II., Liquid Food, and we find 
 these are chiefly water, milk, toast- and- water, gruel, tea, coffee, 
 chocolate, broths, soups, wine, malt liquors, and ardent spirits. 
 
 Of these, the first seven are obviously of little worth ; the 
 next two are better ; the three last are excellent. 
 
 Our physician, on the other hand, holds, " that water is by 
 far the safest and most salutary beverage in which a man can 
 possibly indulge." We never remember seeing any man in- 
 dulge in water. The best authenticated stories of water- 
 drinkers are very apocryphal. It appears that there are seve- 
 ral kinds of water, but rain-water, snow-water, and spring- 
 water, are the best. But the truth will out ; and the passage 
 that follows, proves that hard -water, that is well-water, is a very 
 dangerous beverage, unless boiled, and, of course, made into 
 toddy. Our author pretends to prefer toast- and- water, and 
 has the hardihood to call it nutritious ; but nobody will believe 
 that — toast-and- water being well known to be the most insipid 
 of all waters ; tocldy, again, tasty in the extreme, while the 
 Glenlivet renders unnecessary alkaline carbonate, or carbonate 
 of soda. 
 
 We had marked for quotation a panegyric on water — but 
 are afraid of corrupting the taste and feelings of our readers — 
 therefore we omit it. It is open to a thousand objections — but 
 might stagger the young and inexperienced, and have a bale- 
 ful influence on their habits. We earnestly beg our sub- 
 scribers to remember that more people get their death by 
 drinking cold water than any other fluid. Not that they in- 
 dulge in it to excess — not that they are water- sots. But the 
 poor hard-working labourer can no longer endure the thirst of 
 mid-day toil, and, laying down scythe or sickle, he goes to a 
 spring, and drinks sudden death. It is a most beautiful Ele- 
 ment — witness Windermere in England, Lochlomond in Scot- 
 land, Killarney in Ireland, and all the rivers of the three dear 
 United Kingdoms- — bless them, one and all, as they float or 
 
176 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 flow ! We know the use they are of in the economy of nature. 
 But drink not, we beseech you, the simple but insidious Ele- 
 ment. Yet it is the groundwork — the basis — of every other 
 liquid. To it Gi-lenlivet owes its being — but for it, we should 
 seek in vain for the mountain-dew. But for it, fermented 
 liquor had never been — cold as it is, it is the parent of all 
 ardent spirits. 
 
 From water the transition is easy and natural to milk. 
 "Milk holds a very conspicuous place among the various 
 articles of liquid food. It is one of the most valuable presents 
 that nature has bestowed upon the human race." Milk cer- 
 tainly is most nutritive to the young of many animals, espe- 
 cially little sucking-pigs and children ; but to grown-up men 
 and women it is by no means so, and consequently has fallen 
 into desuetude. Ladies and gentlemen seldom drink milk — 
 and even coffee, when fine, is much better without it. It does 
 not kindly coalesce with the viands of civilised life. It sours 
 and curdles on the stomach, and makes most people sick. It 
 agrees well but with the most commonplace characters — and 
 we scarcely know a more opprobrious term in our vernacular 
 than milksop. 
 
 It is a pretty sight to see a milkmaid milking a cow. 
 Everything smells so sweet — the wild-brier hedge — the clover 
 — the pail — the heifer's breath — and, above all, the breath of 
 the milkmaid herself, who, every now and then, turns towards 
 you her mouth so like a rose, that you do not try to refrain 
 from kissing it, and are over head and ears in love with a rural 
 life. But attempt to drink a bowl of milk warm from the 
 cow for ten mornings, and long ere that you will be as sick as 
 a dog. Milk is only long eatable in butter and in cheese. 
 Cream cloys the soonest of anything — but honey. As for 
 buttermilk, which our Old Lady panegyrises, never does man 
 or woman look so vulgar, as when we see him or her walking 
 along after a draught of it from a tin can. Who would waltz 
 with a long lady who drinks buttermilk ? 
 
 We now come to gruel — which is said to be " a wholesome 
 and nutritious article, well calculated for the supper of all 
 persons." Imagine a man going out to supper on gruel ! Or 
 even supping at home over a bowl of gruel ! 
 
 Our author again quotes Dr Franklin for an old lady who 
 lived in Philadelphia, on an annuity of twelve pounds, to a 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 177 
 
 very old age, on gruel. Had she had twenty-four pounds per 
 annum, the worthy soul would have given up gruel long be- 
 fore the ghost. Art, Fancy, Imagination, all love to play with 
 Poverty. Thus, gruel being the most attenuated of all pos- 
 sible thin potations, they borrow its name to denote its oppo- 
 sites ; and a contributor taking a trigonometrical survey of York 
 Place on his way from Picardy, under the power of Glenlivet, 
 is facetiously said to have got — his gruel ! 
 
 Being now master of the chief kinds of Solid and Liquid 
 Food, the next question is, When and how much are we to eat 
 and drink, in order to die at a hundred and fifty years of 
 age? 
 
 For persons in the high ranks of life, the best periods, we 
 are told, are eight, twelve, four, and eight o'clock — that is, 
 breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and tea. No dinner should be 
 taken later than four o'clock ; and in "fixing this hour," quoth 
 the worthy Old Woman, " I go to the utmost limit allowed by 
 the principles of health and longevity. Three o'clock is a 
 much better hour for fashionable society." 
 
 What a radical reformer ! But don't you know, dear granny, 
 that three o'clock itself was once reckoned the most portentous 
 innovation that ever struck at the backbone of the good 
 Olden Time ? Your ancestors used to dine at eleven, and 
 none but the Blood-Koyal delayed sitting down till one. 
 Without knowing it, you are far gone in the luxurious spirit 
 of the age — and at the very moment that you make that imp 
 of a granddaughter of yours stare, you make the ghost of your 
 grandmother shudder. 
 
 But you are for having recourse, we see, to the solar system 
 — Up with the sun and down with the sun. In the dead of 
 winter then yon go to bed, you and your husband, and all 
 your sixteen sons and daughters, and all your ten male and 
 female servants, between four and five o'clock of the afternoon ! 
 Let the solar system, say we, mind its own business, and let 
 us mind ours. There is room enough in the Universe for us 
 all. Because an immense globe of fire, or luminous matter, of 
 one kind or another, ever so many millions of miles off, chances 
 to set at a given hour, is that any reason why you must set 
 too, who are close at hand, and not of luminous matter? We 
 hold that it is as reasonable to sit up with the stars, as to lie 
 down with the sun. The man in the moon is as much of a 
 VOL. v. m 
 
178 
 
 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 man as tlie man in the sun is — every inch of him — and though 
 he occasionally rises, no doubt, and goes to bed very early, 
 yet, unless we are much mistaken indeed, we have seen him 
 with a glass and a lass too — after the watchman had ceased 
 to crow the hour, and morning showed, by a restless glimmer, 
 that she was about to awake, and again to " stand tiptoe on 
 yon eastern mountain-top." But nothing like a general sys- 
 tem of rules for the guidance of human life can be deduced 
 from the motions of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 But let us see how literary men ought to fare, especially 
 when composing. Only look at the following table, which the 
 Old Lady thinks rather leans to the side of luxury : — 
 
 Ounces. 
 Stale bread, dry toast, or plain biscuit ) mr 
 
 (no butter), ) 
 
 Tea (black), with milk and a little sugar, Six. 
 An egg, lightly boiled, with a thin slice "> m, 
 
 of bread and butter, . ) 
 
 Toast-and-water, .... Three. 
 
 ' Of Venison, Mutton, Lamb, Chicken, or \ m. 
 
 Game (Roast or Broiled), . . ) 
 
 Bread (no vegetables), .... One. 
 Toast-and- Water, or Soda- Water, . Four. 
 
 Breakfast at seven. 
 
 Luncheon at 
 Twelve. 
 
 Dinner, at 
 Half -past Two. 
 
 Tea, at 
 Seven or Eight. 
 
 ; White Wine, or Genuine Claret (one 
 I small glassful), .... 
 
 Stale bread, biscuit, or dry toast, with ) 
 very little butter, . . . . i 
 
 Tea (black), with milk and a little sugar, 
 
 One. 
 
 Two. 
 
 Six. 
 
 No man need write for Maga, with the most distant chance 
 of admission, on any other scale than the following : — 
 
 ( Two hot penny rolls — two toasted rounds of a quartern 
 I loaf — one ditto of butter toast — two hen's eggs, — not 
 Breakfast at 9. \ earocks — a small ashet of fried mutton-ham — jelly and 
 j marmalade, quantum stiff. — two bachelor's bowls of 
 I Congo — a caulker. 
 
 {Caviare — anchovies — pickled salmon — cold how-towdy 
 and ham— a pint of porter — the loaf — two glasses of 
 Madeira. 
 r Round of beef — hodge-podge — cod-head and shoulder 
 | — roasted turkey — plum-pudding — jellies — a few tarts — 
 | two pots of porter — four glasses of hock — ditto, ditto, of 
 [ champagne — two ditto of port — a bottle of claret. 
 <? t 1 1 J Oysters — crabs — rizzers — Welsh rabbit — pint of porter 
 
 ™ ' \ — three jugs of toddy. 
 
 Dinner at 7. 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 179 
 
 By one o'clock the article is finished, perhaps a leading one, 
 and given to the devil ; and by breakfasting, dining, and sup- 
 ping in this style, for the last ten years, have we not enthroned 
 Maga at the head of the Periodical Literature of the World ? 
 
 Yet of all men that ever lived, we are the most abstemious. 
 We care not — not we — what we sit down to — or how it is 
 cooked. Bread and cheese has to us a gusto that penetrates 
 the palate, up through the roof of the mouth, to the centre of 
 that noble organ, the Brain. Even cold potato and point we 
 neither despise nor deprecate. Our servant sometimes sees us 
 at so wens. Breadberry — would you believe it? — is a favourite 
 food of ours ; and how would they wonder, who always think 
 of Christopher North, when they hear these words — 
 
 " Fee fau fum, 
 I smell the blood of a Christian man" — 
 
 were they to see him some night sitting in his nightgown and 
 slippers, with a red Kilmarnock on his head, with a horn spoon 
 feeding himself on — Pap ? 
 
 But we love to sweep the whole range of culinary science — 
 from its simplest elements to its ultimate results. Our taste 
 is as plain and simple as our appetite is sound and strong. 
 But lovers as we are of divine simplicity — we can enjoy in- 
 tensely the Oriental, the Asiatic style of most ornate cookery 
 — passing with pleasure to and fro, backwards and forwards, 
 from Meg Dods to Monsieur Oude. We are not, like too many 
 men of taste, fastidious and exclusive — and declare on our 
 conscience, and as we hope to be saved, that we have had — 
 and hope often again to have — as exquisite pangs of pleasure 
 from the blue lean of a sheep's trotter, as from the green fat 
 of a turtle's fin — and would as lief dine on a how-towdy as on 
 a bird of paradise. 
 
 It is just the same with what we drink. With all our per- 
 petual talk — often wearisome, no doubt — of claret wines and 
 Glenlivet, a more sober old man than North is not in his 
 Majesty's dominions. Much of our swilling is imagination. 
 Then could we drink up Eisil were it claret all — the Baltic 
 were it black with Burgundy — the Mediterranean dark 
 
 " As vernal hyacinths, in sullen hue," 
 
 with its tideless Port. Drunk are we in our dreams as Bacchus, 
 
180 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 but when awake, ever sober as a Judge with a triple gown. 
 Our debauches are like Sir Walter's Novels, great Works of 
 Fiction — yet true to nature, and overflowing with truth. 
 
 " Is that a tumbler that I see before me ? 
 Its handle towards me ? " 
 
 So it seems to be— smoking too with the real Glenlivet — 
 but it is but an air-woven crystal filled with light, and like 
 that image on our study wall, obeying the flickering flame — 
 now grows faint and unsteady — and finally disappears. Even 
 so evanish many of the things of this life supposed to be 
 Kealities ! 
 
 Sweet ! oh sweet is the transition from a Noctes Ambrosianae 
 — all ringing with mirth and madness — to that " nest within a 
 nest/' that Sanctum within a Shrine — that peacefulest place 
 within the Penetralia — this our dearly-beloved Study within 
 the very heart of the heart of low-founded, low-roofed, still, 
 secluded, grove-embosomed, beautiful Buchanan Lodge ! It 
 is midnight — but we must not say not a mouse is stirring — 
 for there he comes gliding from his hole, and, familiar as the 
 robin red-breast now asleep in the eaves, runs up the leg of the 
 table, and sitting up among all those wicked papers, squirrel- 
 wise, with his fore paws at his mouth, minces and munches his 
 bit of biscuit, without even having said grace, yet grateful to me 
 the giver — for he knows no other — and then dips his whiskers 
 in a little wine and water, sweetened to suit his taste to a very 
 nicety — till, only see ! he frisks round about the ink-stand as 
 if he were tipsy — flings a somerset over the edge of the table — 
 and scampers up and down the room at his wit's end with joy! 
 " What if that great red tom-cat were to leap upon you, now, 
 Mr Mousey?"— "Nay, what if that tall, thin, fleshless skeleton, 
 that men call Death, were to leap out upon you, master?" the 
 small moralist replies— or seems to reply— and with that me- 
 mento mori disappears in the wall. The wicks of our candles 
 are long — and their light is lost in that of the spacious window, 
 from the moon and stars. There thou standest, pale, glim- 
 mering, and ghostlike — image of Byron. Methinks the bust 
 breathes ! Surely it gave a sigh — a groan — such as often rent 
 and rived that bosom of flesh and blood ! But thou art but a 
 mockery of the mighty — moulded of the potter's clay ! Lo ! 
 the stars, which a voice, now for ever mute, once called " Tho 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 181 
 
 poetry of heaven ! " Onwards they come— clouds upon clouds 
 —thickening and blackening from the sea— heaven's glories 
 are all extinguished — and the memory of Byron forsakes me — 
 like a momentary brightness, self-bom, and signifying some- 
 thing imperishable — in the mysterious moral of a dream ! 
 
 This article seems to be a Bambler. So let us try to bring 
 it to a point, by sharpening the nib of our pen. We have 
 mislaid the Old Woman's work, and cannot remember where- 
 abouts we were — where we broke loose about Byron. ^ Oh ! 
 y es — we were saying something about eating and drinking — 
 — and praising our own temperance. We were comparing 
 ourselves, we believe, to a hermit in a cave, living upon roots 
 and river-water. Yet the world will not give us credit for the 
 virtues of a hermit — merely because our habits are irregular. 
 Let us say a few words then to the world on this very subject- 
 matter — regularity. 
 
 There are people who prefer to all other virtues — what they 
 call regularity. Let a man go to bed — rise— take his meals 
 —always at a stated hour— and he is then considered by 
 many fathers and mothers as a very eligible match for any 
 one of their numerous daughters. Nevertheless, 'tis ten to 
 one that he is a numbskull— five to one that he is a profligate. 
 Your stupid, sotting, soaking sensualists are all regular at 
 board, bed, and bowels. They divide the day into its different 
 departments, set aside for avarice — greed — gluttony — and 
 grovelling gratifications. They break no engagement— for 
 they make none that is not selfish. You see the wretches 
 going out and coming in, to a minute — smug, smooth, and as 
 if butter would not melt in their mouth — although their appe- 
 tencies are oily to the most animal degree— and their diary, 
 if they keep one, full of luscious chapters— and overflowing 
 with rancid matter. They are generally well to do in the 
 world— hold stock both of the Eoyal Bank and the Bank of 
 Scotland— buy no books — get Maga from a circulating library, 
 when she is a month old — and were never known, in all their 
 lives, to make a party to Newhaven or Leith for a fish 
 dinner. 
 
 In all these respects, we and ours are the antipodes to the 
 Eegulars. We go to bed at any time, from ten at night to 
 ten in the morning — scorn to tie ourselves down to any hour 
 for any meal, and obey only the finer impulses and move- 
 
182 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 ments of our own spirits. When we feel our Fancy free, we 
 fly away over flowery fields, and disappear from before the 
 ken of our contributors in a shower of sunshine ; — when we 
 know that our Intellect is strong, we tackle to philosophical 
 criticism and politics. When we suspect that we are in a 
 state of Civilation, we lie back in our easy-chair- — laugh, or 
 go to sleep. Of our soul, in short, it may be said, as Words- 
 worth said of the Thames at Westminster, before London was 
 awake, " The river glideth at its own sweet will." 
 
 Do not accuse us of being capricious. We are the most 
 consistent of characters. We give all the parts of our nature 
 fair play. At times, you never saw such a pedant — and our 
 talk is of longs and shorts — quantity is everything with us — 
 quality nothing ; Priscian, and Parson, and Parr — or the three 
 P's, as we then call them — the prime men of the earth. Then 
 we love to babble of green fields, and get so pastoral and so 
 pathetic, that we begin to weep. In the twinkling of an eye, 
 our tongue deals in " drums, guns, blunderbuss, and thunder;' 1 
 we fight all Napoleon's battles o'er again, and thrice we slay 
 all Wellington's slain, showing Borodino to have been but a 
 skirmish, and Waterloo an affair of posts. Forthwith we are 
 " on our legs," and bully Brougham about the Holy Alliance, 
 till he has not a word to throw to a dog. Then or! upon fox- 
 hunting, like Nimrod of the Sporting Magazine ; and with the 
 brush round our caps (an old fashion), into a Cathedral we go, 
 and preach away like the best bishop or archdeacon of them 
 all — Bloomfield or Wrangham- — with the left hand smiting 
 the Dissenters, and with the right lending the Catholics such 
 a facer, that they are unable to come to time, and give up 
 the Veto. 
 
 We love to do our work by fits and starts. We hate to 
 keep fiddling away, an hour or two at a time, at one article 
 for weeks. So, off with our coat, and at it like a blacksmith. 
 When we once get the way of it, hand over hip, we laugh at 
 Vulcan and all his Cyclops. From nine of the morning till 
 nine at night, we keep hammering away at the metal, iron 
 or gold, till we produce a most beautiful article. A biscuit 
 and a glass of Madeira, twice or thrice at the most, — and then 
 to a well-won dinner. In three days, gentle reader, have We, 
 Christopher North, often produced a whole Magazine — a most 
 splendid Number. For the next three weeks, we were as idle 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 183 
 
 as a desert, and as vast as an antre — and thus on we go, 
 alternately labouring like an ant, and relaxing, in the sunny 
 air, like a dragon-fly, enamoured of extremes — impatient only 
 of mediocrity, leading the life of a comet one day, of a planet 
 the next, and of a fixed star, perhaps, the third, never wearied 
 of shining, yet avoiding all sameness even in our lustre — our 
 motions often eccentric, no doubt, and irregular ; but any- 
 thing, as you know, better than standing still, — the only fault 
 we ever had to find with the Sun, but which we are happy 
 now to understand cannot fairly be laid to his charge, as our 
 whole solar system — nay, fixed stars and all, do, we are credi- 
 bly informed, keep " moving altogether, if they move at all ;" 
 and, although they journey fast, and have been journeying 
 long, have a far way before them yet stretching untravelled 
 through the Universe. 
 
 The Old Lady is clear for a great deal of exercise, and, of 
 course, fresh air. Fresh air has been exhausted by so many 
 writers, that we shall confine our few concluding remarks to 
 exercise alone. " Leaping," she informs us, " among the 
 ancients, was confined to distance — but in modern times ex- 
 tended also to height." — Strange that the ancients did not 
 discover high leaping ! — " One Ireland, a native of Yorkshire, 
 in the eighteenth year of his age, by a fair spring, without 
 any assistance, trick, or deception, leaped over nine horses, 
 standing side by side — and a man seated on the middle horse." 
 He also, according to this old woman, "jumped over a garter 
 held fourteen feet high ! ! !" Now, neither Ireland, nor any 
 other man on record, ever leapt seven feet in height without a 
 spring-board, and none but a fool would talk of fourteen. The 
 nine horses were thin narrow animals — not fairly placed — and 
 Ireland leapt from a spring-board — two feet above the level 
 on which they stood. It was a great leap — for Ireland was 
 the prince of leapers, — but not more than twenty-three feet 
 on level ground — which we ourselves have done — on level 
 ground or nearly so — in presence of a thousand spectators. 
 That by the way ; but far leaping is to people in general an 
 unsafe exertion — as all intense exertions must be — and ought 
 to be taken in moderation. Nor should any man leap at all 
 after five-and-twenty. It is only for light elastic lads to leap 
 more than twice their own length. Elderly gentlemen, from 
 twenty-five to thirty, should become archers — and old men of 
 
184 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 forty and upwards, golfers. Indeed, various Golf-clubs — here 
 and at St Andrews — are most amiable associations of old men. 
 Such spindleshanks you may nowhere else see as on those 
 links — and even Galen and Cornaro themselves, and old Ad- 
 miral Henry, would look juvenile among the shadows slowly 
 moving from Tee to Tee. 
 
 The Old Lady likewise approves of walking, which she tells 
 us is of two kinds, " either on plain ground, or where there 
 are ascents." But " walking against a high wind is very 
 severe exercise, and not to be recommended." Persons who 
 are kept much within doors, " ought as much as possible to 
 accustom themselves to be walking about, even in their own 
 houses." No doubt they have a right to do so if they choose, 
 and do not occupy an upper flat. But stair-walkers with 
 creaking shoes must be disagreeable husbands and fathers. 
 She advises also to change the place where we walk, " for the 
 same place constantly gone over, may excite as many dis- 
 agreeable and painful sensations as the closet or the study." 
 An agreeable companion, too, she has discovered, contributes 
 much to serenity of mind ; " but unless the mode of walk is 
 similar, as well as the taste and character congenial, it is 
 better to walk alone — as either the one or the other of the two 
 companions might be subjected to some constraint;" and, 
 finally, she says, that " to read during a walk is an improper 
 action, highly detrimental to the eyes, and destroys almost all 
 the good effects that can be derived from the exercise." 
 
 Eiding, or, as the old lady has it, riding on horseback, is 
 next strenuously recommended to those who earnestly desire 
 to " live long and comfortably ; " but there is not a word dropt 
 about Fox-hunting, almost the only kind of riding, besides 
 Eacing, that in our opinion deserves the name. Lord pre- 
 serve us ! of all amusements, riding on horseback along the 
 highroad by oneself, especially in miry weather, is the most 
 deplorable ! We seriously pity every man who keeps a horse 
 — standing at livery. The animal must be ridden — regularly 
 too — if you do not wish him to break your neck. You come 
 at last to be afraid to look out of the window, in case he 
 should be there — pacing up and down the street — with the 
 saddle all wet probably — and the long dangling stirrups, with 
 their vacant irons, summoning you to come down, and take a 
 gallop through the glaur- The brute often falls unaccount- 
 
HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. 185 
 
 ably lame — first in one foot, and then in another — giving you 
 the air of a cadger — caves with his head, though the frost has 
 killed all the flies long ago — keeps starting, boggling, and 
 stumbling, every ten yards — and, once a-month at the least, 
 comes down on his nose, without ever so much as once touch- 
 ing the ground with his knees, which nevertheless have been 
 broken long ago, while the hair, having grown on white, gives 
 them the appearance of being padded. We could not have 
 heart to wish our worst enemy to keep a horse through the 
 winter in a town. Then, what riders are our Edinburgh 
 youth ! It is the fashion now to take lessons — and every prig 
 of an apprentice you see on horseback seems to have two cork 
 legs. Out they jut in one immovable position — -just as if the 
 ostler had hoisted the young adventurer on, and then screwed 
 his cork legs to the sticking-place — with a positive injunction 
 not to attempt shifting them till they come home and have 
 themselves dismounted. They seem to have no joints — either 
 at hip, knee, or ankle — and then look at the way they hold 
 the bridle ! That is riding d la militaire I The quill-driver 
 thinks himself a cavalry officer — and has the audacity to ride 
 past Jock's Lodge. This Pain is expensive — and purchased 
 Pain is by idiots for a while thought Pleasure. But we have 
 an article on " Hiding " lying by us — which shall be forthcom- 
 ing in an early Number — by a gentleman lineally descended 
 from John Gilpin. 
 
 Grannum next addresses herself, on the subject of Exercise, 
 exclusively to men of letters — and we cannot help thinking 
 has ourselves more particularly in her eye, which she cocks 
 leeringly at Old Christopher. She recommends us to have 
 " dumb-bells and a couple of flesh-brushes always at hand, 
 that we may steal a few moments from our studies to exercise 
 the superior extremities with the former, and the inferior 
 limbs and the head and neck with the latter." Dumb-bells 
 we have never used since Jack Thurtell attempted to murder 
 his friend Wood with a pair — and as for flesh-brushes, why, 
 our skin is as clear as amber, and our flesh as firm as marble. 
 She tells us, further, "to use the flesh-brush for fifteen or 
 twenty minutes regularly every morning on first getting out 
 of bed — and to pursue the same practice also at night." At 
 this rate, the flesh-brush would never be out of our hands — 
 and we should be afraid of " establishing a Kaw." Let mangy 
 
186 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 and scurvy people scrub their superior and inferior extremities 
 with the flesh-brush, to their own and the Old Lady's heart's 
 content. But commend us to a good stiff, hard, rough, yarn 
 towel — that makes our body blush like a Peony, and glow 
 like a Furnace. 
 
 Literary men are also told " for a change to run briskly up 
 and down stairs several times, or to use the shuttlecock," — 
 " or fight with their own shadow," — an exercise described, it 
 seems, by Addison in one of his Spectators. When the worst 
 has come to the worst, we shall fight with our own shadow ; 
 — but that will not be till not a blockhead is left on the face 
 of the whole earth for us to bastinado — not till we observe 
 that we are positively the Last Man, shall we have recourse 
 to that recreation. 
 
 We are finally told to read aloud and loudly, " out of any 
 work before us" — "to promote pulmonary circulation, and 
 strengthen the digestive organs." We know a much better 
 exercise of the lungs than that, and one we frequently prac- 
 tise. It is to thrust our head and shoulders out of the window, 
 and imagining that we see a scoundrel stealing apples in the 
 orchard, or carrying off a how-towdy, to roar out upon him as 
 if it were Stentor blowing a great brazen trumpet, " Who are 
 you — you rascal — stand still or I will blow you to atoms with 
 this blunderbuss I" The thief takes to his heels, and having 
 got a hundred yards farther off, you must intensify your roar 
 into a Briar eus — even unto the third remove — and then the 
 chance is, that some decent citizen heaves in sight, who, terri- 
 fied out of his seven senses, falls head-over-heels into the 
 kennel — when you, still anxious " to promote pulmonary cir- 
 culation and strengthen your digestive organs," burst out 
 into a guffaw that startles the Castle rock — and then, letting 
 down the lattice, return to your article, which, like the haggis 
 of the Director-General, is indeed a Eoarer. 
 
 Cetera desunt. 
 
ON EAELY RISING. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO MR NORTH. 
 
 f DECEMBER 1821 J 
 
 MR N r H T o H ; E that you are not an early riser H yon are 
 
 ^ntonliaoTi^ ^ most i ^ erti r t n T/ n 
 heVorid whereas it i. universally known that I anr pohte- 
 uess and urbanity themselves. Well then, pray what is this 
 
 rii ,"t, to the moi of Jtab, .k«t f « °'f»*- » » 
 
 r s a«M,i,-to ..... E'»»^ h -^™rs™«i 
 
 mutilated chin. I will leave your ™ a P™f>£*°2£ ™ h 
 what sort of neokcloth will adorn your g»^ tmd ^er^uc 
 circumstances. However, grant the possrb h ty of your be 
 dressed-and down you come, not to ^^ZlTJy 
 -for you would not be so barbarous— but to enjoy me j 
 
 of the moming,-as Mr Leigh Hunt would say, °* <g> ^ 
 The moment you pop your phrz one mob beyond the 
 
183 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 wall, a scythe seems to cut you right across the eyes, or a 
 great blash of sleet clogs up your mouth, or a hail-shower 
 rattles away at you, till you take up a position behind the door. 
 Why, in the name of God, did I leave my bed ? is the first cry 
 of nature — a question to which no answer can be given, but a 
 long chitter grueing through the frame. You get obstinate, 
 and out you go. I give you every possible advantage. You 
 are in the country, and walking with your eyes, I will not say 
 open, but partly so, out of the house of a country gentleman worth 
 five thousand a-year. It is now a quarter past five, and a fine 
 sharp blustering morning, just like the season. In going down 
 stairs, the ice not having been altogether melted by the night's 
 rain, whack you come upon your posteriors, with your toes 
 pointing up to heaven, your hands pressed against the globe, 
 and your whole body bob-bob-bobbing, one step after another, 
 till you come to a full stop or period, in a circle of gravel. On 
 getting up and shaking yourself, you involuntarily look up to 
 the windows to see if any eye is upon you — and perhaps you 
 dimly discern, through the blind mist of an intolerable head- 
 ache, the old housekeeper in a flannel nightcap, and her hands 
 clasped in the attitude of prayer, turning up the whites of her 
 eyes at this inexplicable sally of the strange gentleman. 
 Well, my good sir, what is it that you propose to do ? will you 
 take a walk in the garden, and eat a little fruit — that is to 
 say, a cabbage leaf, or a Jerusalem artichoke ? But the gar- 
 dener is not quite so great a goose as yourself, and is in bed 
 with his wife and six children. So after knocking with your 
 shoulder against the garden gate — you turn about, and espy- 
 ing perhaps a small temple in the shrubbery, thither you 
 repair, and therein I shall leave you till breakfast, to amuse 
 yourself with the caricatures, and the affecting pictures of 
 Eloisa and Abelard. In the intervals of reflection on the virtue 
 of early rising in spring, I allow you to study the history of 
 Europe, in the fragments of old newspapers. 
 
 March, April, and May are gone, and it is Summer — so if 
 you are an early riser, up, you lazy dog, for it is between three 
 and four o'clock. How beautiful is the sunrise ! What a truly 
 intellectual employment it is to stand for an hour with your 
 mouth wide open, like a stuck pig, gazing on the great orb of 
 day ! Then the choristers of the grove have their mouths 
 open likewise ; cattle are also lowing — and if there be a dog- 
 
EARLY RISING. 189 
 
 kennel at hand, I warrant the pack are enjoying the benefits 
 of early rising as well as the best of you, and yelping away 
 like furies before breakfast. The dew too is on the ground, 
 excessively beautiful no doubt — and all the turkeys, how- 
 towdies, ducks, and guinea-fowls, are moping, waddling, and 
 strutting about, in a manner equally affecting and picturesque, 
 while the cawing of an adjacent rookery invites you to take a 
 stroll in the grove, from which you return with an epaulette 
 on each shoulder. You look at your watch, and find it is at 
 least five hours till breakfast — so you sit down and write a 
 sonnet to June, or a scene of a tragedy ; — you find that the 
 sonnet has seventeen lines — and that the dramatis personal 
 having once been brought upon the stage, will not budge. 
 While reducing the sonnet to the baker's dozen, or giving the 
 last kick to your heroine, as she walks off with her arm 
 extended heavenwards, you hear the good old family bell 
 warning the other inmates to doff their nightcaps — and hud- 
 dling up your papers, you rush into the breakfast parlour. 
 The urn is diffusing its grateful steam in clouds far moro 
 beautiful than any that adorned the sky. The squire and his 
 good lady make their entree with hearty faces, followed by a 
 dozen hoydens and hobbletehoys — and after the first course of 
 rolls, muffins, dry and butter toast, has gone to that bourne 
 from which the fewer travellers that return the better — in 
 come the new-married couple, the young baronet and his 
 blushing bride, who, with that infatuation common to a think- 
 ing people, have not seen the sun rise for a month past, and 
 look perfectly incorrigible on the subject of early rising. 
 
 It is now that incomprehensible season of the year, Autumn. 
 Nature is now brown, red, yellow, and everything but green. 
 These, I understand, are the autumnal tints so much admired. 
 Up then, and enjoy them. Whichever way a man turns his 
 face early in the morning, from the end of August till that of 
 October — the wind seems to be blowing direct from that 
 quarter. Feeling the rain beating against your back, you 
 wonder what the devil it can have to do, to beat also against 
 your face. Then, what is the rain of autumn in this country — 
 Scotland? Is it rain, or mist, or sleet, or hail, or snow, or 
 what, in the name of all that is most abhorrent to a lunged 
 animal, is it ? You trust to a greatcoat — Scotch plaid — 
 umbrella — clogs, &c. &c. &c. ; but what use would they be to 
 
190 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 you, if you were plopped into the boiler of a steam-engine? 
 Just so in a morning of Autumn. You go out to look at the 
 reapers. Why, the whole corn for twenty miles round is laid 
 flat-— ten million runlets are intersecting the country much 
 farther than fifty eyes can reach — the roads are rivers — the 
 meadows lakes — the moors seas — nature is drenched, and on 
 your return home, if indeed you ever return (for the chance is 
 that you will be drowned at least a dozen times before that), 
 you are traced up to your bedroom by a stream of mud and 
 gravel, which takes the housemaid an hour to mop up ; and 
 when, fold after fold of cold, clammy, sweaty, fetid plaids, 
 benjamins, coats, waistcoats, flannels, shirts, breeches, drawers, 
 worsteds, gaiters, clogs, shoes, &c, have been peeled off your 
 saturated body and limbs, and are laid in one misty steaming 
 heap upon an unfortunate chair, there, sir, you are standing 
 in the middle of the floor, in puris naturalibus, or, as Dr Scott 
 would say, in statu quo, a memorable and illustrious example 
 of the glory and gain of early rising. 
 
 Tt is Winter — six o'clock. You are up. You say so; and as 
 I have never had any reason to doubt your veracity, I believe 
 you. By what instinct, or by what power resembling instinct, 
 acquired by long, painful, and almost despairing practice, you 
 have come at last to be able to find the basin to wash your 
 hands, must for ever remain a mystery. Then how the hand 
 must circle round and round the inner region of the wash- 
 hand stand, before, in a blessed moment, it comes in contact 
 with a lump of brown soap ! But there are other vessels of 
 china, or porcelain, more difficult to find than the basin ; for 
 as the field is larger, so is the search more tedious. Inhuman 
 man ! many a bump do the bed-posts endure from thy merci- 
 less and unrelenting head ! Loud is the crash of clothes- 
 screen, dressing-table, mirror, chairs, stools, and articles of 
 bedroom furniture, seemingly placed for no other purpose than 
 to be overturned. If there is a cat in the room, that cat is 
 the climax of comfort. Hissing and snuffing, it claws your 
 naked legs, and while stooping down to feel if she has fetched 
 blood, smack goes your head through the window, which you 
 have been believing quite on the other side of the room ; for 
 geography is gone — the points of the compass are as hidden 
 as at the North Pole — and on madly rushing at a venture, out 
 of a glimmer supposed to be the door, you go like a battering- 
 
EARLY RISING. 191 
 
 ram against a great vulgar white -painted clothes-chest, and 
 fall down exhausted on the uncarpeted and slidclerv floor. 
 Now, thou Matutine Kose of Christmas, tell rne if there be any 
 exaggeration here? But you find the door — so much the 
 worse, for there is a passage leading to a stair, and head-over- 
 heels you go, till you collect your senses and your limbs on 
 the bear-skin in the lobby. You are a philosopher, I presume, 
 so you enter your study — and a brown study it is, with a 
 vengeance. But you are rather weak than wicked, so you 
 have not ordered poor Grizzy to quit her chaff, and kindle 
 your fire. She is snoring undisturbed below. Where is the 
 tinder-box ? You think yon recollect the precise spot where 
 you placed it at ten o'clock the night before, for being an early 
 riser up, you are also an early lier down. You clap your 
 blundering fist upon the inkstand, and you hear it spurting 
 over all your beautiful and invaluable manuscripts — and per- 
 haps over the title-page of some superb book of prints, which 
 Mr Blackwood, or Mr Miller, or Mr Constable has lent you 
 to look at, and to return unscathed. The tinder-box is found, 
 and the fire is kindled — that is to say, it deludes you with a 
 faithless smile ; and after puffing and blowing till the breath 
 is nearly out of your body, you heave a pensive sigh for the 
 bellows. You find them on a nail ; but the leather is burst, 
 and the spout broken, and nothing is emitted but a short 
 asthmatic pluff, beneath which the last faint spark lingeringly 
 expires — and like Moses when the candle went out, you find 
 yourself once more in the dark. After an hour's execration, 
 you have made good your point, and with hands all covered 
 with tallow (for depend upon it, you have broken and smashed 
 the candle, and had sore to do to prop it up with paper in a 
 socket too full of ancient grease), sit down to peruse or to 
 indite some immortal work — an oration of Cicero or Demos- 
 thenes, or an article for Ebony. Where are the snuffers ? up- 
 stairs in your bedroom. You snuff the long wick with your 
 fingers, and a dreary streak of black immediately is drawn 
 from top to bottom of the page of the beautiful Oxford edition 
 of Cicero. You see the words, and stride along the cold dim 
 room in the sulks. Your object has been to improve your 
 mind — your moral and intellectual nature — and along with 
 the rest, no doubt, your temper. You therefore bite your lip, 
 and shake your foot, and knit your brows, and feel yourself to 
 
192 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 be a most amiable, rational, and intelligent young gentleman. 
 In the midst of these morning studies, from which the present 
 and all future ages will derive so much benefit, the male and 
 female servants begin to bestir themselves, and a vigorous 
 knocking is heard in the kitchen of a poker brandished by a 
 virago against the great, dull, keeping-coal in the grate. 
 Doors begin to bang, and there is heard a clattering of pewter. 
 Then comes the gritty sound of sand, as the stairs and lobby 
 are getting made decent ; and, not to be tedious, all the unde- 
 finable stir, bustle, uproar, and stramash of a general clearance. 
 Your door is opened every half-minute, and formidable faces 
 thrust in, half in curiosity, half in sheer impertinence, by 
 valets, butlers, grooms, stable-boys, cooks, and scullions, each 
 shutting the door with his or her own peculiar bang ; while 
 whisperings and titterings, and horse laughter, and loud 
 guffaws, are testifying the opinion formed by these amiable 
 domestics of the conformation of the upper story of the early 
 riser. On rushing into the breakfast parlour, the but-end of 
 a mop or broom is thrust into your mouth, as, heedless of 
 mortal man, the mutched mawsey is what she calls dusting 
 the room ; and stagger where you will, you come upon some- 
 thing surly ; for a man who leaves his bed at six of a winter 
 morning is justly reckoned a suspicious character, and thought 
 to be no better than he should be. But, as Mr Hogg says, I 
 will pursue the parallel no farther. 
 
 I have so dilated and descanted on the first head of my 
 discourse, that I must be brief on the other two, namely, the 
 connection between early rising and the various professions, 
 and between the same judicious habit, and the peculiar cha- 
 racter of individuals. 
 
 Eeader, are you a Scotch advocate? You say you are. 
 Well, are you such a confounded ninny as to leave a good 
 warm bed at four in the morning, to study a case on which 
 you will make a much better speech if you never study it at 
 all, and for which you have already received £2, 2s ? Do you 
 think Jeffrey hops out of bed at that hour ? No, no — catch 
 him doing that. Unless, therefore, you have more than a 
 fourth part of his business, (for, without knowing you, I pre- 
 dict that you have no more than a fourth part of his talents), 
 lie in bed till half-past eight. If you are not in the Parliament 
 House till ten, nobody will miss you. Eeader, are you a 
 
EARLY RISING. 193 
 
 clergyman ? A man who has only to preach an old sermon 
 of his old father, need not, surely, feel himself called upon by 
 the stern voice of duty to put on his small-clothes before 
 eight in summer, and nine in winter. Keader, are you a half- 
 pay officer ? Then sleep till eleven ; for well thumbed is your 
 copy of the Army List, and you need not be always studying. 
 Keader, are you an Editor ? Then doze till dinner ; for the 
 devils will be let loose upon thee in the evening, and thou 
 must then correct all thy slips. 
 
 But I am getting stupid — somewhat sleepy ; for, notwith- 
 standing this philippic against early rising, I was up this 
 morning before ten o'clock ; so I must conclude. One argu- 
 ment in favour of early rising I must however notice. We 
 are told that we ought to lie down with the sun, and rise with 
 that luminary. Why, is it not an extremely hard case to be 
 obliged to go to bed whenever the sun chooses to do so ? 
 What have I to do with the sun — when he goes down, or when 
 he rises up ? When the sun sets at a reasonable hour, as he 
 does during a short period in the middle of summer, I have no 
 objection to set likewise, soon after ; and in like manner, when 
 he takes a rational nap, as in the middle of winter, I don't care 
 if now and then I rise along with him. But I will not admit 
 the general principle ; we move in different spheres. But if 
 the sun never fairly sets at all for six months, which they say 
 he does not very far north, are honest people on that account 
 to sit up all that time for him ? That will never do. 
 
 Finally, it is taken for granted by early risers, that early 
 rising is a virtuous habit, and that they are all a most meri- 
 torious and prosperous set of people. I object to both clauses 
 of the bill. None but a knave or an idiot — I will not mince 
 the matter — rises early, if he can help it. Early risers are gene- 
 rally milksop- spoonies, ninnies with broad unmeaning faces and 
 grozet eyes, cheeks odiously ruddy, and with great calves to 
 their legs. They slap you on the back, and blow their noses 
 like a mail-coach horn. They seldom give dinners. " Sir, tea 
 is ready." " Shall we join the ladies ? " A rubber at whist, 
 and by eleven o'clock the whole house is in a snore. Inquire 
 into his motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an 
 appetite for breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied 
 with three penny rolls and a pound of ham to breakfast, but 
 he must walk down to the Pier-head at Leith to increase his 
 
 vol. v. n 
 
194 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 voracity ? Where is the virtue of gobbling up three turkey's 
 eggs, and demolishing a quartern loaf, before his Majesty's 
 lieges are awake ? But I am now speaking of your red, rosy, 
 greedy idiot. Mark next your pale, sallow early riser. He 
 is your prudent, calculating, selfish money- scrivener. It is 
 not for nothing he rises. It is shocking to think of the hypo- 
 crite saying his prayers so early in the morning, before those 
 are awake whom he intends to cheat and swindle before he 
 goes to bed. 
 
 I hope that I have sufficiently exposed the folly or wicked- 
 ness of early rising. Henceforth, then, let no knavish prig 
 purse up his mouth and erect his head with a conscious air of 
 superiority, when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed 
 and rises at a gentlemanly hour. If the hypocrite rose early 
 in the morning, he is to be despised and hated. But people 
 of sense and feeling are not in a hurry to leave their beds. 
 They have something better to do. 
 
 I perceive that all the letters that appear in your Magazine 
 are numbered as if they belonged to a series, — I., II., III., 
 and so forth. If you choose, you may number mine, " On 
 Early Eising. No. I." If I continue the series, my future 
 communications shall all be written in bed in the forenoon, 
 and will not fail of being excellent. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Seso sed Sesio. 
 
OLD NOETH AND YOUNG NORTH ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 CHRISTOPHER IN EDINBURGH, AND CHRISTOPHER IN LONDON. 
 A midsummer-day's dream. 
 
 [JUNE 1828.] 
 
 We have no idea what is thought of us in the fashionable 
 world. Most probably we are looked on as a pretty consider- 
 able Quiz. Our external or personal appearance is, we cheer- 
 fully confess, somewhat odd, both face and figure. It is not 
 easy for you to pass us by on the streets without a stare at our 
 singularity, or to help turning round, as soon as you think you 
 are out of reach of our crutch, — which, by the by, we sometimes 
 use as a missile, and can throw almost as far as that celebrated 
 Gymnast of the Six Foot Club can swing the thirteen pound 
 sledge-hammer; while, with a placid smile of well-pleased 
 surprise, you wonder if that can indeed be the veritable and 
 venerable Christopher North. 
 
 Such is our natural and acquired modesty, that so far from 
 being flattered by these proofs of public esteem and popular 
 favour, they fret and annoy us more than we care to express. 
 The truth is, we can seldom, on such occasions, help feeling 
 as if there were a hole in our black silk stocking, the white 
 peeping through like a patch of snow — a shoe minus a silver- 
 buckle — a button off some part of our dress — the back part of 
 our hat in front — the half-expanded white rosebud-tie of our 
 neckcloth, of which we are alike proud and particular, dis- 
 solved into two long slips, which, more than anything else 
 appertaining to a man's habiliments, give your person the im- 
 press of a weaver expert at the treddle and fly- shuttle — or, to 
 us who keep a regular barber on the chin establishment, with 
 a salary of £80, worst suspicion of all, and if verified to the 
 
196 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 touch, death to that day, a Beard ! A Beard ! fair reader, as 
 rough as the brush — naughty little mermaid — with which you 
 keep combing your glossy locks in that mirror — no, you do 
 not think it natters — both before you " lie down in your love- 
 liness," and after you rise up in it, — alarmed by the unex- 
 pected and apparently endless ringing of the breakfast bell. 
 
 Yet, we are not so very much of a Quiz after all ; and con- 
 sidering how the storms of so many seasons have beat against 
 us, it is astonishing how well we wear, both in root, branch, 
 and stem. We cannot help— in our pride — Heaven forgive 
 and pity us ! — sometimes likening ourselves to an old Ash 
 beside a Church. There stands the tree, with bark thick as 
 cork, and hard as iron — hoary arms overshadowing with a 
 pleasant glimmer — for his leaves are beautiful as those of some 
 little plant, come late and go early, and are never so umbra- 
 geous as to exclude the blue sky — overshadowing with a 
 pleasant glimmer a whole family of tombstones, — stem with 
 difficulty circled by the united arm-lengths of some half-dozen 
 schoolboys, never for a day satisfied, without, during a pause 
 of their play, once more measuring the giant, — roots, many of 
 them visible like cables along the gravel-walk leading from 
 the kirkyard-gate, where on Sabbath stands the elder beside 
 the plate, and each Christian passing by droppeth in the 
 tinkling charity, from rich man's gold to widow's mite — and 
 many of them hidden, and then reappearing far off from 
 among the graves — while the tap-root, that feeds and upholds 
 all the visible glory, hath for ages struck through the very 
 rock-foundation of the humble house of the Most High ! 
 Solemn image ! and never to be by us remembered but 
 through a haze of tears ! How kindred the nature of mirth 
 and melancholy ! What resemblance seemeth that tree now 
 to have to a poor, world- wearied, and almost life-sick old 
 man ! For in a few short years more we shall have passed 
 away like a shadow, and shall no more be anywhere found ; 
 but Thou, many and many a midsummer, while centuries run 
 their course, wilt hang thy pensive, " thy dim religious light" 
 — over other and other generations, while at that mystic and 
 awful table, whiter than the unstained mountain-snow, sit 
 almost in the open air, for the heavens are seen in their beauty 
 through the open roof of that living temple, the children of 
 the hamlet and the hall, partaking of the sacrament, — or, «re 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 197 
 
 that holiest rite be solemnised in simplicity, all listening to the 
 eloquence of some grey-haired man inspired by his great 
 goodness, and with the Bible open before him, making, feeble 
 as he seemed an hour ago before he walked up into the Tent, 
 the hearts of the whole congregation to burn within them, and 
 the very circle of the green hills to ring with joy ! 
 
 What a blessed order of Nature it is that the footsteps of 
 Time are " inaudible and noiseless," and that the seasons of 
 life are like those of the year, so indistinguishably brought 
 on, in gentle progress, and imperceptibly blended the one 
 with the other, that the human being scarcely knows, except 
 from a faint and not unpleasant feeling, that he is growing 
 old ! The boy looks on the youth, the youth on the man, the 
 man in his prime on the grey-headed sire, each on the other, 
 as on a separate existence in a separate world. It seems 
 sometimes as if they had no sympathies, no thoughts in com- 
 mon, — that each smiled and wept on account of things for 
 which the other cared not, and that such smiles and tears 
 were all foolish, idle, and most vain ; but as the hours, days, 
 weeks, months, and years go by, how changes the one into the 
 other, till, without any violence, lo ! as if close together at 
 last, the cradle and the grave ! In this how Nature and Man 
 agree, pacing on and on to the completion of a year — of a life ! 
 The Spring how soft and tender indeed, with its buds and 
 blossoms, and the blessedness of the light of heaven so fresh, 
 young, and new — a blessedness to feel, to hear, to see, and to 
 breathe ! Yet the Spring is often touched by frost — as if it 
 had its own Winter, and is felt to urge and be urged on upon 
 that Summer, of which the green earth, as it murmurs, seems 
 to have some secret forethought. The Summer, as it lies on 
 the broad blooming bosom of the earth, is yet faintly conscious 
 of the coming-on of Autumn with " sere and yellow leaf," — 
 the sunshine owns the presence of the shade — and there is at 
 times a pause as of melancholy amid the transitory mirth ! 
 Autumn comes with its full or decaying ripeness, and its 
 colours grave or gorgeous — the noise of song and sickle — of 
 the wheels of wains — and all the busy toils of prophetic man 
 gathering up, against the bare cold Winter, provision for the 
 body and for the soul ! Winter ! and cold and bare as fancy 
 pictured — yet not without beauty and joy of its own, while 
 something belonging to the other seasons that are fled, some 
 
198 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 gleamings as of spring-light, and flowers fair as of Spring 
 among the snow — meridians bright as Summer morns, and 
 woods bearing the magnificent hues of Autumn on into the 
 Christmas frost — clothe the Old Year with beauty and with 
 glory, not his own — and just so with Old Age, the Winter, the 
 last season of man's ever-varying yet never wholly changed 
 Life! 
 
 Then blessings on the Sages and the Bards who, in the 
 strength of the trust that was within them, have feared not to 
 crown Old Age with a diadem of flowers and light ! Shame 
 on the satirists, who, in their vain regret and worse ingratitude, 
 have sought to strip it of all "impulses of soul and sense," 
 and leave it a sorry and shivering sight, almost too degraded 
 for pity's tears ! True, that to outward things the eye may 
 be dim, the ear deaf, and the touch dull ; but there are lights 
 that die not away with the dying sunbeams — there are sounds 
 that cease not when the singing of birds is silent — there are 
 motions that still stir the soul, delightful as the thrill of a 
 daughter's hand pressing her father's knee in prayer ; and 
 therefore, how calm, how happy, how reverend, beneath un- 
 offended Heaven, is the head of Old Age ! Walk on the 
 mountain, wander down the valley, enter the humble hut, — 
 the scarcely less humble kirk, — and you will know how sacred 
 a thing is the hoary hair that lies on the temples of him who, 
 during his long journey, forgot not his Maker, and feels that 
 his Old Age shall be renewed into immortal youth ! 
 
 u That strain I heard was of a higher mood ! " 
 
 But now we must wake a lowlier measure ; and, gentle 
 reader ! thou wilt not refuse to go with us, who, in com- 
 parison with thee, are old, for thou art in thy prime — and be 
 not, we implore thee, a prodigal of its blessings — into the 
 little humming -room, whose open window looks over the 
 lilacs and laburnums now in all their glory almost painful to 
 look on, so dazzling are they in their blue and yellow bur- 
 nished array — and while away an hour with — start not at the 
 name — the very living flesh-and-blood Christopher North, 
 whose voice has often been with thee, as the voice of a solemn 
 or sportive spirit, when rivers and seas rolled and flowed 
 between, he lying under the Birch-tree's, and thou, perhaps, 
 under the Banana's shade ! Let us both be silent. Look at 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 199 
 
 those faces on the wall — how mild ! how meek ! how magni- 
 ficent ! You know them, by an instinct for beauty and gran- 
 deur, to be the Shadows of the Spirits whose works have 
 sanctified your sleeping and your waking dreams. The great 
 poets ! — Ay, you may gaze till twilight on that bust ! Blind 
 Melesigenes ! — But hark ! the front-door bell is ringing — then 
 tap, tap, tap, tap — and lo ! a bevy of beauty, matrons, and 
 maids, who have all been a-Maying, and come to lay their 
 wreaths and garlands at the old man's feet ! Ts our Age deserted 
 and forsaken — childless, wifeless though it be — for the whole 
 world knows that we are a bachelor — when subjected, in the 
 benignity of Providence, to such visionary visitations as these? 
 Visionary call them not — though lovelier than poet's dreams 
 beside the Castalian fountain — for these are living locks of 
 auburn braided over a living brow of snow — these tresses, 
 black in their glossy richness as the raven's wing, are no 
 work of glamoury — no shadow She with the light-blue laugh- 
 ing eyes — She, whose dark orbs are filled with the divine 
 melancholy of genius, 
 
 " Like Lady of the Mere, 
 Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance," 
 
 bears, in her soul-fraught beauty, a soft, sweet, familiar 
 Christian name — but, lo ! like fair sea-birds, they all gather 
 together, floating round the Lord of the Mansion ; — and is not 
 Buchanan Lodge the happiest, the pleasantest of dwellings, 
 and old Christopher North the happiest and the pleasantest 
 of men ? 
 
 Perhaps, to see and hear us in another character of our 
 perfection, you shordd mistake the gateway of the Lodge for 
 that of some other sylvan abode, and come upon us as we are 
 sitting under the blossom-fall of a laburnum ; or lying care- 
 lessly diffused in a small circle of flower-fringed greensward, 
 like Love among the roses. Our face, then, has no expression 
 but that of mildness — you see a man who would not hurt 
 even a wasp — our intellectual is merged, not lost, in our 
 moral being — and if you have read Tacitus, you feel the full 
 meaning of his beautiful sentence about Agricola, — " Bonum 
 virurn facile crederes, magnum libenter." 
 
 Awaking sufficiently to see that some one is present before 
 us, we motion the light or shadow to lie down, and begin 
 
200 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 conversing so benignly and so wisely, that the stranger feels 
 at home as if in his birthplace, even as a son returned from 
 afar to his father. The cheerful stillness of the retirement, 
 for there is no stir but of birds and bees, — the sea-murmur is 
 not^ heard to-day, and the city bells are silent, — is felt to be 
 accordant with the spirit of our green old age, and as the 
 various philosophy of human life overflows the garden, our 
 visitor regards us now as the indolent and indulgent Epicurus 
 — now as the severe and searching Stagyrite — now as the 
 Poet- Sage, on whose lips in infancy fell that shower of bees, 
 the Divine Plato — now Pythagoras, the silent and the. silenc- 
 ing — now " that old man eloquent," Socrates, the loving and 
 beloved ; and unconsciously at the close of some strain of our 
 discourse he recites to himself that fine line of Byron, 
 
 " Well hast thou said, Athena's wisest son ! " 
 
 Or, were you to fall in with us as we were angling our way 
 down the Tweed, on some half-spring half-summer day, some 
 day so made up of cloud and sunshine that you know not 
 whether it be light or dark, — 
 
 " That beautiful uncertain weather, 
 When gloom and glory meet together," — 
 
 some day, when at this hour the air is alive with dancing 
 insects, and at that every gauzy and gaudy winglet hushed 
 — some day on which you could wander wild as a red deer 
 over the high mountains and by the shores of the long-wind- 
 ing loch, or sit fixed as the cushat in the grove, and eye the, 
 ruins of an old castle ; — were you to fall in with us on such a 
 forenoon, by the pool below Nidpath, or the meadow-mound 
 of sweet Cardrona-mains, or the ford of Traquair, near the 
 lively Inverleithen, or the sylvan dens of Dryburgh, or the 
 rocky rushings of the Trows, or — But sit down beneath the 
 umbrage of that sycamore — Heavens ! what a tree ! — and be 
 thou Charles Cotton and we Isaac Walton, and let both of us 
 experience that high and humane delight which youth and 
 age do mutually communicate, when kindness is repaid with 
 gratitude, and love with reverence. 
 
 Yet even as we hobble along the City street — the street of 
 Princes — with one or two filial youngsters at our side — for 
 old men are our aversion, so nut-deaf are they, so sand-blind, 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 201 
 
 so perverse, and so cell-bound are their souls — our company 
 and our converse is not undelightful, pitched as the latter 
 then is on a low but lively key, like the twitter of a bird, 
 even of a sparrow, who, let the world say what it will, chirps 
 a pleasant song as he frisks along the eaves, and both in love 
 and war — though there, alas ! the parallel between us falls to 
 the ground — yields to no brother of his size in the whole 
 aviary of nature. Or if sparrow please you not, why then we 
 are even as the swallow, lover too of the abodes of men — a 
 true household bird — and seeming, as he wheels in the sun- 
 shine, to be ever at his pastime, yet all the while gathering 
 sustenance for the nest he loves, and never so happy as when 
 sitting in his " auld clay bigging," breast to breast — but 
 there again, woe is us ! fails the similitude — breast to breast, 
 with his white-throated mate, whom, in another month, he 
 will accompany, along with their full-fledged family, over the 
 wide wide seas, and, their voyage ended, renew their loves 
 beneath the eaves of other human dwellings, afar of and in 
 foreign lands, for all their life is love, and still they make 
 
 " Their annual visit round the globe, 
 Companions of the spring." 
 
 Nay, you would be pleased to sit beside, or before, or be- 
 hind us, in pit or box of our theatre, and list our genial 
 eulogiums on Murray, and Mackay, and Mason, and Stanley, 
 and Pritchard ; or Him from London Town, the Inimitable, 
 for the name of the actor is lost in that of Long Tom. No 
 critics, it is well known, are we ; but, when a true son or 
 daughter of nature, " some well-graced actor decks the stage," 
 the best of our remarks might grace the Journal. Yea, the 
 very beauty of the Sicldons herself becomes more starlike — 
 for, mind ye, a star is ever gentle in its brightest glow, — as 
 if kindling before your eyes in the fine enthusiasm of our 
 praise. Or if Pasta, or Paton — Eliza the modest and the 
 musical — hush the room, it is pleasant to see old Christopher 
 North sitting almost ghostlike amid the pathos ! In his 
 younger days, the harp was the instrument on which he loved 
 to play, but now he seldom touches a string ; yet when 
 beauty with a smile hints the wish to hear some ancient 
 melody, the old man is not unwilling, in a rare hour, to try 
 his trembling hand, repaid at the close of " The Broom o' 
 
202 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Cowdenknowes," or " The Flowers o' the Forest " — nor has his 
 voice been silent — repaid, oh, soft-eyed daughter of the son 
 of the dead brother of our youth, a thousand times repaid by 
 one single tear ! 
 
 Or seek you the saloon, " Grandeur's most magnificent 
 saloon," and mingle, mingle, mingle, with the restless and 
 glittering flow of fashionable life, a sea of tossing plumes ! 
 Why even there, you may perchance see Christopher sitting 
 all by himself in a nook — silent but not sad — grave but not 
 gloomy — critical but not censorious — in love with the few, in 
 liking with the many — in good- will with all. His gracious 
 eye is not averted even from the flying waltz ; for, " Honi soit 
 qui mal y pense," and if yours be the heart of a man, what 
 evil thought can be inspired into it by the breath of innocence ! 
 Youth is the season of love and joy, and inhale therefore into 
 thy inmost soul the bliss of that balmy breath, and hug to thy 
 inmost soul the ideal embrace, so faint — so very faint — of that 
 young virgin, whose waist now thine arm is privileged blame- 
 lessly to encircle ; for where virtue glides in all her blushing 
 beauty, the touch even of passion's self shall be reverential, 
 and that bright girl and bright boy shall part as they met, as 
 pure in thought as two doves that happen to intersect each 
 other's flight, and after a few airy evolutions in the sunshine, 
 flee away, each to its own place of pleasure or rest. 
 
 Or, need we allude to ourselves sitting by the ingle-cheek, 
 so crouse and canty, at the sober — yea, the sober orgies of our 
 Noctes Ambrosianae ? We are no cameleons — we neither feed 
 on air, nor change our colour. Of much of the Glenlivet we 
 gulp the parent barley is yet unborn — the only Ether we 
 imbibe is the ether of the imagination — Opium, in drop or pill, 
 touches not our lips, but in the feast of fancy ; though one 
 Choice Spirit doth occasionally sit and shine among us, to 
 whom that drug is dear — and the oyster-beds along the sound- 
 ing shores of the mighty sea have reason to bless their stars 
 that the accounts they have from the fishermen, of the innu- 
 merous barrels so unmercifully emptied in Picardy, are 
 apocryphal. See, there is our outstretched arm, and on the 
 point of that little finger — not unfrequently turned up so — lies 
 untrembling the drop of the mountain- dew ! So steady is every 
 sinew of Sobriety — who often rises with the Sun, and often 
 sits up for him too — the Sun, who, washed and dressed almost 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 203 
 
 in a moment, takes a stage by steam before breakfast, and 
 whom you see dining on a dessert of fruits of all glorious sorts 
 and sizes about mid-day, right over your head, sitting beneath 
 the Deas, in the Blue Chamber, ceiling'd and fretted by the 
 sky ! Not brighter is that Blue Chamber of the Sun, than the 
 Parlour where we hold our Parliament — North in the chair, 
 and unlike that solemn Silence in St Stephen's, a Speaker 
 indeed ! No rat or radical from rotten borough here — each of 
 us member for a county, Lowland or Highland — the Kepre- 
 sentatives of Scotland — ay, of England too — for lo ! " England 
 sends her men, of men the chief" — Seward of Christchurch, 
 and Buller of Brazennose ; — and as for Ireland, the green and 
 glorious, — lo ! the bold, the dauntless ODoherty, — the Adju- 
 tant good-at-need, — the Ensign, with whom no Hope is forlorn, 
 — the Standard-bearer, who plants the staff of Joy in the 
 centre of our table, in a hole bored by the gleg gimlet of his 
 nation's wit, so that the genial board is overshadowed by its 
 bright emblazonry, and at every rustle of its folds, Tickler 
 seems to rise in stature, Macrabiii to become more and more 
 the grave Covenanter, Mullion's mirth to grow broader as the 
 crump farle on the gridiron, and our Shepherd to shine like a 
 rowan-tree in Autumn, brightening the greensward where lie 
 his sheep-like lambs. Invincibles all ! It is indeed a bright, 
 a benign, a beautiful little circular world, inhabited but by a 
 few choicest spirits — some of them — oh ! may we dare to hope 
 it — even on earth immortal ! The winged words — some like 
 bees and some like birds — keep working and lurking, stinging 
 and singing, wherever they alight — yet no pernicious pain in 
 the wound, no cruel enchantment in the strain. The winged 
 words — bee or bird-like — are still murmuring among flowers, — 
 
 " Flowers, worthy of Paradise, which not nice art, 
 In beds and curious knots, but nature boon 
 Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, 
 Both where the morning sun first warmly smote 
 The open field, and where the unpierced shade 
 Imbrown'd the noontide bowers ! " 
 
 Some faint echo of the sounds that then circle round the inner 
 shrine, not unheard by the outward world, makes its heart to 
 beat or burn within it, its nerves to tingle, or harply even brings 
 the dim haze across its eye. The mean and malignant are 
 cowed like poultry by the crowing of a far-off game-cock, on 
 
204 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 his airy walk on a pleasant hill-farm. The son of Genius 
 pining in the shade — Oh! why should genius ever pine beneath 
 the sun, moon, and stars ? — feels encouragement breathed into 
 his spirit, and knows that one day or other he shall emerge 
 from the gloom in glory, cheered by the cordial strain of us 
 kindred spirits, who one and all will take him by the hand, 
 the mirthful as well as the melancholy, for their likings and 
 loves are the same, and place him among the 'O/Aor/^o/, the 
 Equal-honoured, the Sacred Band, Brothers all, who, to the 
 sound of flutes and soft recorders, in firmest phalanx move on 
 in music to everlasting Fame. 
 
 We were some half-hour ago speaking of the Fashionable 
 World — were we not — of Edinburgh ? Why, in Edinburgh, 
 there is par- excellence no fashionable world. We are — as the 
 King — God bless him — once very well observed, when all we 
 Sawnies happened to be dressed in our Sunday's best — a Nation 
 of Gentlemen ; — and in a Nation of Gentlemen, you have no 
 notion how difficult, or rather how impossible, it is to make a 
 Fashionable World. We are all so vastly pleasant and polite 
 — low-breeding among us is so like high-breeding in any other 
 less distinguished district of the globe, — that persons who 
 desire to be conspicuous for the especial elegance of their 
 manners, or the especial splendour of their blow-outs, know 
 not how to set about it, — and let the highest among them be 
 as fashionable as they will, they will hear an army of chair- 
 men " gurgling Gaelic half-way down their throats," as they 
 keep depositing dowager after dowager, matron after matron, 
 mawsey after mawsey, virgin after virgin, all with feathers 
 " s waling in their bonnets," and every father's daughter 
 among them more fashionable than another, in the gas-lighted 
 hall of a palace in Moray Place inhabited by a most fashion- 
 able Doubleyou Ess — about a dozen of whose offspring, of 
 various sizes and sexes, at each new arrival, keep glowering 
 and guffawing through the bannisters on the nursery story, 
 the most fashionable little dirty red-headed dears that ever 
 squalled in a scrubbing-tub on the Plotter's Saturday Night ; 
 while ever and anon fashionable servant-maids, some in female 
 curiosity — proof of an enlightened mind — and others, of whom 
 it appears " the house-affairs do call them hence," keep trip- 
 ping to and fro, one with a child's night-cap in her hand, and 
 another with something else equally essential to its comfort 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG KORTH. 205 
 
 before getting into bed — while it inspires you with a fine dash 
 of melancholy to behold, on such a night of fashionable festivi- 
 ties, here and there among the many men apparently butlers, 
 footmen, valets, waiters, and so forth — many of them fashion- 
 ably powdered with oat and barley meal of the finest quality — 
 some in and some out of livery, blue breeches and red, black 
 breeches and grey — you are inspired, we say, with a fine spirit 
 of melancholy to discern, among " these liveried angels 
 lackeying you," the faces of Saulies, well known at fashion- 
 able funerals, and who smile upon you as you move from room 
 to room, as if to recall to your remembrance the last time you 
 had the satisfaction of being preceded by them into that place 
 of Fashionable Kesort — the Greyfriars' Churchyard — 
 
 tt Those funeral-baked mates 
 Do coldly furnish up the supper-tables." 
 
 Another consequence of our being a Nation of Gentlemen is, 
 that in all broad Scotland there is no such thing as — a Man of 
 Ton. An occasional puppy — a not unfrequent prig — is to be 
 met with, in persons ambitious of being distinguished among 
 a nation of gentlemen, each by the possession of his own 
 peculiarity, in itself perhaps more becoming a cur than a 
 Christian, a barber's block than a head with tongue and brains. 
 But a Man of Ton, we repeat, is, in such a nation, an impos- 
 sible production ; and we appeal to our readers if they ever 
 beheld that phenomenon in Edinburgh, — or even in Glasgow, 
 where, on the given principle, a few might reasonably enough 
 be expected to be found in winter- quarters about the Gorbals, 
 or summer ones down at the Auld-kirk — (so, in the west, do 
 they pronounce Innerkip) — or the Largs. 
 
 There is another general consequence of our being a Nation 
 of Gentlemen, which deserves notice in this patriotic Periodical. 
 Here no man is permitted to pride himself on his superior skill 
 and excellence in the broad, open-day violation of all the bonds 
 and duties of life. This of itself prevents the appearance in a 
 century of a single Man of Ton. We do not mean to say, that 
 there is no wickedness among us in this pleasant place, — no 
 vice, — no licentiousness, — no dishonour. But they hide their 
 heads in the dark. — Here the adulteress does not show her 
 face — brazen, or blushing with paint. Were she to do so, 
 there are no Men of Ton to caper by her side, on horseback, 
 
206 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 along street, or round square, or lead her, at concert, assembly, 
 or play, up the fair lane of stainless matrons, and virgins pure, 
 whose ears abhor the meretricious rustle of the wanton's 
 flaunting habiliments. This is not fashionable among the 
 Nation of Gentlemen, fashionable as we are. The lady who 
 should act thus, would soon find herself in a nunnery, and the 
 gentleman would pay a visit to the Great Seat of the ribbon 
 trade. 
 
 The Queen of the North is of an excellent size ; and we hope 
 that, during our day, she will not greatly expand her dimen- 
 sions. There ought always to be a bright embroidered belt 
 of villas, a mile broad at least, between her and the sea ; and 
 surely She will not tread upon the feet of the old Pentlands. 
 We could heave the pensive sigh — almost drop the pensive 
 tear — to remember the hundreds of sweet, snug, sheltered, 
 cosy cottages — not thatched, but slated — with lattice-win- 
 dows, and haply Venetian blinds — front- trellised — and with 
 gable-end rich in its jargonelle, " all wede away " by the 
 irresistible " march of stone and lime," charging in close 
 street, and then taking up position in hollow square, on every 
 knoll and brae in the neighbourhood. How many pretty 
 little blossoming gardens does the Spring now in vain de- 
 siderate ! Are there any such things nowadays, we wonder, 
 as retired citizens ? Old, decent, venerable husband and 
 wife, living about a mile, or two miles even, out of town, 
 always to be found at home when you stroll out to see how 
 the worthy pair are getting on, either sitting each on an oppo- 
 site arm-chair, with a bit sma' lassie, grandchild perhaps, or 
 perhaps only an orphan servant-girl, treated as if she were a 
 grandchild, between them on a stool, and who was evidently 
 reading the Bible as you entered ; or the two, not far from 
 one another in the garden — he pruning, it may be, the fruit 
 trees, for he is a great gardener, and rejoices in the Golden 
 Pippin — she busy with the flowers, among which we offer 
 you a pound for every weed, so exquisitely fine the care that 
 tends those gorgeous beds of anemones and polyanthuses, or 
 pinks and carnations, on which every dewy morning Flora 
 descends from heaven to brighten the glory with her smiles ! 
 But we are relapsing into the pathetic, so let us remark that 
 a Capital should always be proportioned to a Country — and, 
 verily, Scotland carries hers, like a head with a fine phreno- 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 297 
 
 logical development, on a broad back and shoulders, and looks 
 stately among the nations. And never — never — this is our 
 morning and evening prayer — never may she need to hang 
 down that head in shame, but may she lift it up crested with 
 glory, till the blue skies themselves shall be no more — till 
 cease the ebbing and the flowing of that sun-bright sea I 
 
 But never in all her annals were found together Shame and 
 Scotland. Sir William Wallace has not left Shame one single 
 dark cavern wherein to hide her head. Be thou Bold, Free, 
 Patriotic, as of old, gathered up in thyself within thy native 
 mountains, yet hospitable to the high-souled Southron, as 
 thou wert ever wont to be even in the days of Bannockburn 
 and Flodden ! — To thine eye, as of old, be dear each slip of 
 blue sky, glimpsing through the storm — each cloud- cleaving 
 hill-top, Ben Nevis, Cairngorm, Cruachan — Eannoch's black, 
 bright, purple heather-sea — Gowrie's Carse, beloved of Ceres 
 — and Clydesdale, to Pomona dear — Spire-pointing to heaven 
 through the dense city-cloud, or from the solitary brae, Bar- 
 onial hall or castle sternly dilapidating in slow decay — humble 
 hut, that sinks an unregarded ruin, like some traditionless 
 cairn — or shieling, that, like the nest of the small brown moor- 
 land bird, is renewed every spring, lasting but one summer in 
 its remotest glen ! To thine ears, as of old, be 
 
 " Dear the wild music of the mountain wave, 
 Breaking along the shores of liberty ! " 
 
 Dear the thunder of the cataract heard, when the sky is with- 
 out a cloud, and the rain is over and gone — heard by the 
 deer-stalker, standing like a shadow, leagues off, or moving 
 for hours slow as a shadow, guided by the antlers. Dear be 
 the yell of the unseen eagle in the sky, and dear, where " no 
 falcon is abroad for prey," the happy moaning of the cushat 
 in the grove — the lilting of the lint white among broom and 
 "brier — the rustle of the wing of the lonesome Kobin-redbreast 
 in the summer woods — his sweet pipe on the barn or byre- 
 riggin' in autumn, through all winter long his peck at the 
 casement, and his dark-eyed hopping round the hearth ! Be 
 thine ever a native, not an alien spirit, and ever on thy lips, 
 sweet Scotia ! may there hang the music of thy own Doric 
 tongue. 
 
 Nor vain the hope, for it is in heaven I A high philosophy 
 
208 ESSAYS : CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 has gone out from the sages of thy cities into the loneliest 
 recesses of the hills. The student sits by the ingle of his 
 father's straw-roofed shed, or lies in leisure, released from 
 labour, among the broomy banks and braes of the wimpling 
 burn, and pores and meditates over the pages of Eeid and 
 Fergusson, and Stewart, and Brown, — wise benefactors of the 
 race. Each vale " sings aloud old songs, the music of the 
 heart," — the poetry of Burns the deathless shall brighten for 
 ever the cottar's hearth — Campbell is by all beloved — and 
 the high harp of Scott shall sound for ever in all thy halls. 
 And more solemn, more sacred, all over the land are heard — 
 
 " Those strains that once did sweet in Sion glide," 
 
 the songs, mournful in their majesty, of the woe-denouncing, 
 sin- dooming Prophets of old, of which the meanings are still 
 profound to the ear of nations that listen to them aright — for 
 there is a taint at the core of all their hearts, and not one 
 single land on the face of the whole earth, strong as it may 
 be in its simplicity, that hath not reason to dread that one 
 day or other may be its own — the doom of the mighty 
 Babylon ! 
 
 But lo ! a soft sweet smile of showery sunshine — and our 
 hearts are touched by a sudden mirth. 
 
 " Then said I, Master, pleasant is this place." 
 
 A pleasanter city is nowhere to be seen — neither sea-shore 
 nor inland, but between the two, and uniting the restlessness 
 of the one situation with the quietness of the other, — there 
 green waves leaping like Furies, here green hills fixed like 
 Fate, — there white sails gliding, here white tents pitched, — 
 there, you can hardly see it with a telescopic eye — the far-off 
 Bass, from whose cliffs, perhaps at this very moment, the 
 flashing fowling-piece has scared a yelling cloud of sea-birds, 
 there the near Castle-rock thundering a royal salute, for it is 
 the anniversary of the birthday of our most gracious and 
 glorious King, — there masts unnumbered, here roofs multi- 
 tudinous, — there Neptune, here Apollo, — together, sea, sun, 
 earth, and heaven, all in one — a perfect Poem ! 
 
 Verily it is a pleasant place, and pleasant are the people 
 who inhabit it, through all their grades. The students at the 
 University are pleasant — so are the professors. The shop- 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 
 
 203 
 
 keepers are pleasant— so are the citizens in general, especially 
 such of them as are Tories— though for thy sake, dear friend 
 —now at far-off Cacra Bank— we could almost become a little 
 Whitish,— pleasant are the advocates— pleasant every W.b., 
 —are not the ministers of the city pleasant as they are pious 
 —and were not those pleasant polemicals all, about the 
 Apocrypha? Pleasant are the country gentlemen who come 
 here to educate their sons and daughters, forgetful of corn- 
 bills— and pleasant, Edina ! are the strangers within thy 
 gates. Up and down, down and up the various steps of thy 
 society do we delight to crutch it; nor can we complain of a 
 cold reception from the palace in Moray Place to the box at 
 Newington. Yea, verily, Edinburgh is a pleasant place, and 
 pleasant are its inhabitants. 
 
 We are too much a Nation of Gentlemen to talk long about 
 ourselves, and this city of ours, with its Castle-rock, its 
 Arthur's Seat, its Calton Hill, and its Parthenon of Seven 
 PiUars, standing unemployed like the seven young men ot 
 yore, in the now poor, dear, dead Scots Magazine, but unlike 
 them— unfinished ! There will the poor Pillars be— in sum- 
 mer's heat and winter's cold— without a roof to cover them 
 nor, after the scaffolding shall have been removed, so much 
 as a timber skeleton to stand between them and the easterly 
 haur, seeming to say to every stranger as he ascends the 
 hill,—" Oh, master, we are Seven ! " 
 
 So let us off to London for an hour or two, not by that un- 
 happy mail-coach, which is not once suffered to cool its axle- 
 tree all the way from this to York Minster— (that is an edifice 
 we must ere long be describing)— and in which we have com- 
 mitted no crime of sufficient atrocity to deserve imprisonment. 
 Neither have we any desire to die of indigestion, and consti- 
 pation and inflammation of the bowels, mortification, and 
 gangrene. That is the death of a bagman. No— ours be the 
 stiff, breeze-loving Smack, with her bowsprit right in the 
 wind's eye, and eating out of it, as the helmsman luffs up to 
 catch every capful, all such craft as custom-house cutters, and 
 be hanged to them— even the King's ones— gun-brigs cruising 
 on the station— Southampton schooners of the Yacht Club— 
 or crack collier from Newcastle, trying it on in ballast, whose 
 captain served last with old Collingwood, and, in youth, with 
 " Gallant Admiral Howe, sung out, Yo ! heave O !"— 
 VOL. v. ° 
 
210 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Or gallant Steamer that, never gunwale in, but ever upright 
 as the stately swan, cleaves blast and breaker as they both 
 come right ahead — the one blackening, and the other whiten- 
 ing—while Bain's trumpet is heard in the mingled roar, and 
 under his intrepid skill all the hundreds on board feel as safe 
 as in their own beds, though it is near nightfall, and we are 
 now among the shores and shallows of the Swin, where ships 
 untold have gone to pieces. — See there, a wreck ! 
 
 As for London, it is long since we have sported our figure 
 in Bond Street or the Park. We have had no box at the opera 
 for a good many years. We have never condescended to put 
 our nose into St Stephen's Chapel since we accepted the Chil- 
 terns — the House of Lords has long been the object of our most 
 distant respect — and, generally speaking, at the West End, 
 we verily believe we are about as well known as Captain Parry, 
 or any other British officer, will ever be at the North Pole. 
 
 Yet once we knew London well — both by day when it was 
 broad awake, and by night " when all that mighty heart was 
 lying still." We remember, now, as yesterday, the eve on 
 which we first — all alone and on foot, reached Hyde -Park 
 Corner. All alone ! Yes — thousands and hundreds of thou- 
 sands were on foot then, as well as ourselves, and on horses 
 and in chariots. But still we were alone. Not in misanthropy 
 — no — no — no — for then, as now, and with more intense, more 
 burning passion, with stronger -winged and farther -flighted 
 imagination did we love our kind, for our thoughts were merry 
 as nightingales, untamed as eagles, and tender as doves. But 
 we were young — and we were in a manner foreigners — and 
 few friends had we but the sunbeams and the shadows of our 
 own restless soul. From the solemn and sacred enclosure of 
 thy bell-chiming and cloistered haunts — Ehedicyna ! did we 
 come — the tomes of the old world's treasures closed for a 
 season — Homer, and Pindar, and iEschylus, and Plato, and the 
 Stagyrite, and Demosthenes, and Thucydides, left for a while 
 asleep on the shelves of the Gothic-windowed Library, where 
 so many musing days had cloud-like floated by, nor failed to 
 leave behind them an immortal inspiration, pure and high as 
 that breathed from the beauty and the grandeur of the regions 
 of setting suns — and all at once, from the companionship of 
 the dead did we plunge into that of the living ! 
 
 From the companionship of the dead ! For having bade 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 211 
 
 farewell to our sweet native Scotland, and kissed, ere we 
 parted, the grass and the flowers with a shower of filial tears 
 — having bade farewell to all her glens, now a-glimmer in the 
 blended light of imagination and memory — with their cairns 
 and kirks, their low- chimneyed huts and their high-turreted 
 halls — their free-flowing rivers, and lochs dashing like seas — 
 we were all at once buried, not in the Cimmerian gloom, but 
 the Cerulean glitter, of Oxford's ancient academic Groves. 
 The Genius of the place fell upon us — yes ! we hear now, in 
 the renewed delight of the awe of our youthful spirit, the 
 pealing organ in that Chapel called the Beautiful — we see the 
 Saints on the stained windows — at the Altar the picture of 
 one up Calvary meekly bearing the cross ! It seemed, then, 
 that our hearts had no need even of the kindness of kindred — 
 of the country where we were born, and that had received the 
 continued blessings of our enlarging love I Yet away went, 
 even then, sometimes our thoughts to Scotland, like carrier- 
 pigeons wafting love-messages beneath their unwearied wings ! 
 They went and they returned, and still their going and coming 
 was blessed. But ambition touched us, as with the wand of a 
 magician from a vanished world and a vanished time. The 
 Greek tongue — multitudinous as the sea — kept like the sea 
 sounding in our ears, through the stillness of that world of 
 towers and temples. Lo ! Zeno, with his arguments hard and 
 high, beneath the Porch ! Plato divinely discoursing in Grove 
 and Garden ! The Stagyrite searching for truth in the pro- 
 founder gloom I The sweet voice of the smiling Socrates, 
 cheering the cloister's shade and the court's sunshine ! And 
 when the thunders of Demosthenes ceased, we heard the harp- 
 ing of the old blind glorious Mendicant, whom, for the loss of 
 eyes, Apollo rewarded with the gift of immortal song ! And 
 that was our companionship of the dead I 
 
 But the voice — the loud and near voice of the living world 
 came upon us — and starting up, like a man wakened from the 
 world of sleep and dreams, we flew to meet it on the wind — 
 onwards and onwards to its source humming louder and louder 
 as we approached, a magnificent hum as from a city with a 
 thousand gates of everlasting ingress and egress to all the 
 nations of the earth ! 
 
 Not till then had we known anything of our own being. 
 Before, all had been dream and vision, through which we had 
 
212 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 sunk, and kept sink -'sinking, like flowers surcharged with 
 liquid radiance, down to the palaces of naiads, and mermaids, 
 and fairy folk, inhabiting the emerald caves, and walking 
 through the pearl-leaved forests and asphodel meadows of an 
 unreal and unsubstantial world! For a cloudy curtain had 
 still seemed to hang between us and the old world — darkening 
 even the fields of Marathon and Plataea, whose heroes were 
 but as shadows. Now we were in the eddies — the vortices — 
 the whirlpools of the great roaring sea of life ! and away we 
 were carried, not afraid, yet somewhat trembling in the awe of 
 our new delight, into the heart of the habitations of all this 
 world's most imperial, most servile — most tyrannous and most 
 slavish passions ! All that was most elevating and most de- 
 grading — most startling and most subduing too — most trying 
 by temptation of pleasure, and by repulsion of pain — into the 
 heart of all joy and all grief — all calm and all storm — all 
 dangerous trouble, and more dangerous rest — all rapture and 
 all agony — crime, guilt, misery, madness and despair. A 
 thousand voices, each with a different tone, cried us on — yet 
 over them all one voice, with which the rest were still in 
 unison — the voice of the hidden wickedness that is in the soul 
 of every man who is born of a woman, and that sometimes as 
 if it were of guardian angel and sometimes of familiar demon, 
 now lured, persuaded, urged, drove us on — on, on, in amongst 
 shoals and shallows of that dim heaving sea, where many 
 wrecks were visible, sheer hulks heaved up on the dark dry — 
 or mast-heads but a foot out of the foam — here what seemed a 
 beacon, and there a lighthouse, but on we bore, all sail set, to 
 the very sky-scrapers, with flags flying, and all the Ship of 
 Life manned by a crew of rebellious passions — and Prudence, 
 that old Palinurus, at the helm fast asleep, and then, as if in 
 his own doom prophetic of ours, overboard amongst breakers ! 
 For a moment, we thought of the great cataracts of Scot- 
 land — Corra Linn — Foyers — thousands of nameless torrents 
 tumbling over mountains to the sea — her murmuring forests 
 and caves a-moaning for ever to the winds and waves round 
 the cliff-bound coast of Cape Wrath ! But that was the voice 
 of Nature — dead in her thunders, even as in the silence of the 
 grave. This was the voice of Life — sublimer far — and smiting 
 the soul with a sublimer sympathy. Now, our whole being 
 was indeed broad awake — hitherto, in its deepest stirrings, it 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 213 
 
 Lad been as asleep. All those beautiful and delightful reveries 
 vanished away, as something too airy and indolent for the 
 spirit — passive no more — but rejoicing in its strength, like a 
 full-fledged young eagle, leaping from the edge of its eyrie, 
 fearlessly and at once, over the cliff, and away off into the 
 bosom of the storm ! 
 
 Whither shall we look ? Whither shall we fly ? Denizens 
 of a new world — a new universe — chartered libertines, as yet 
 unblamed by Conscience, who took part with the passions, 
 knowing not that even her own sacred light might be obscured 
 by the flapping of their demon- wings ! And why should Con- 
 science, even in that danger, have been afraid ? It is not one 
 of her duties to start at shadows. God-given to the human breast, 
 she suffers not her state to be troubled by crowds of vain 
 apprehensions, or she would fall in her fear. Even then, 
 Virtue had her sacred allies in our heart. The love of that 
 nature on whose bosom we had been bred — a sleeping spark 
 of something like poetry in our souls unextinguishable, and 
 preservative of the innocence it enlightened — reverence of the 
 primitive simplicity of beloved Scotland's Faith — the memory 
 of her old, holy, and heroic songs — the unforgotten blessing of 
 a mother's living lips, of a father's dying eyes — the ambition, 
 neither low nor ignoble, of youth's aspiring hopes, for, not 
 altogether uncrowned had been our temples, even with the 
 Muses' wreath — a whisper of Hope faint, far off, and uncertain, 
 and haply even now unrealised its promise — and far down 
 buried, but instinct with spirit, beneath them all, a life-deep 
 love for Her, that Orphan-maid — so human, yet so visionary 
 — afar off in the beauty of her heaven-protected innocence, 
 beneath the shadow of that old castle, where by day the star- 
 lings looked down on her loveliness, sole-sitting among the 
 ruins, and for her the wood-lark, Scotia's nightingale, did sing 
 all night long — a life-deep love, call it passion, pity, friend- 
 ship, brotherly affection, all united together by smiles, sighs, 
 and tears — songs sung as by an angel in the moonlight glen — 
 prayers in that oratory among the cliffs — the bliss of meetings 
 and of partings among the glimmering woods, sanctified by 
 her presence—of that long, last eternal farewell ! 
 
 Therefore, our spirit bore a charmed life into that world of 
 danger and death. That face to us was holy, though then all 
 alive in its loveliness — and, oh ! that it should ever have been 
 
214 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 dead — holy as the face of some figure — some marble figure of 
 a saint lying on a tomb. Its smile was with us even when 
 our eyes knew it not — its voice as the dying close of music, 
 when our ear was given to other sounds less pensive and divine. 
 With all its senses in a transport, our soul was now in the 
 mighty London ! Every single street-musician seemed to us 
 as an Orpheus. Each band of female singers, some harping 
 as they sung, and others, with light guitar ribbon-bound to 
 their graceful shoulders, to us were as the Muses — each airy 
 group very Goddesses, 
 
 " Knit with the Graces and the Loves in dance," 
 
 and leading on the Hours along the illuminated atmosphere, 
 where each lamp was as a star ! The whole World seemed 
 houses, palaces, domes, theatres, and temples — and London 
 the universal name ! Yet there was often a shudder as the 
 stream of terrible enjoyment went roaring by — and the faces 
 of all those lost creatures — those daughters of sin and sorrow 
 — with fair but wan faces, hollow bright eyes — and shrieks of 
 laughter, appalled the heart that wondered at their beauty, 
 and then started to hear afar off, and as in a whisper, the word 
 " Innocence," as if it were the name of something sacred in 
 another life and another world ; for here guilt was in its glory 
 and its grief, women angels of light no more, but fiends of 
 darkness, hunting and hunted to despair and death ! 
 
 Fear cannot live in youth's bosom ; and gay and glad we 
 penetrated, like a young bird that loves the sunshine of the 
 open sky, yet dreads not to drop down, or dart into the black 
 forest gloom — into haunts where the old grey grim Iniquity 
 had, from time immemorial, established his strongholds. The 
 ruffian's scowl fell off our face, like darkness from a new-trim- 
 med lamp, of which the oil failed not — our eye, which neither 
 grief nor guilt had clouded, made that of the robber, the burglar, 
 and the murderer to quail — convicts even then to conscience, 
 and doomed to die on the scaffold — curses and execrations 
 passed by our heads, like blasts by the top of the strong young 
 trees. And will Law, bloody penal Law, quell crimes in such 
 hearts as these, or strike their hands with palsy ? Shall the 
 hangman terrify when conscience is a bugbear? Other minis- 
 ters must disarm the murderers. Another light than the torch 
 in the iron grasp of criminal justice, discovering and dragging 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 215 
 
 tlie felon from his haunt, must penetrate and dispel the dark- 
 ness, till it is broad as day, and therein wickedness can hatch 
 and hide no more — the light of mercy, and the jurisprudence 
 of the New Testament. But on reascending from the dolorous 
 region into the blessed day, there was the dome of St Paul's 
 in heaven, or there the holy Abbey, where sleep England's 
 holiest dead, and the Thames, with all his floating glories, 
 moored, or adrifting with the tide down to the sea, like giants 
 rejoicing to run a race to the uttermost parts of the earth ! 
 
 How dreamlike the Sowings of the Isis by Godstow's ivied 
 Ruin, where blossomed, bloomed, and perished in an hour, 
 Rosamunda — flower of the world ! How cheerful, as if waked 
 from a dream, glides on the famous stream by Christchurch 
 Cathedral grove ! How sweet by Iffley's Saxon tower ! By 
 Nuneham's lime-tree shade how serene as peace ! But here 
 thou hast changed thy name and thy nature into the sea- 
 seeking Thames, alive and loud with the tide that murmurs 
 of the ocean-foam, and bridged magnificently as becomes the 
 river that makes glad the City of the Kings who are the um- 
 pires of the whole world's wars! Down sailed our spirit, 
 along with the floating standard of England, to the Nore. 
 There her Fleet lay moored, like a thunder-cloud whose light- 
 ning rules the sea — 
 
 " Her march is o'er the mountain-wave, 
 Her home is on the deep ! " 
 "Woe to all the Isle, when the sons of ocean walk their decks 
 in mutiny ! Woe to France and Spain, and all the banded 
 naval powers of the world, when, calm as clouds, the Fleet 
 bears down in white-winged line of battle, and the foeman's 
 crescent breaks into fragments, and melts away, with all its 
 struck flags, into fatal overthrow! And what, London! 
 were Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants were princes — -what 
 were Tyre and Sidon to thee ! Even now the sun is rising, 
 and the sun is setting, on thy countless sails. We almost 
 cease now to feel 
 
 " Of the old sea, some reverential fear ! " 
 
 The ocean obeys the "meteor-flag of England," even as its 
 ebbing and flowing obeys the Planet. 
 
 But it is night, and lo ! the crowded Theatre is ablaze with 
 Beauty ; and as Tragedy, " with solemn stole, comes sweeping 
 
216 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 by," the piled-up multitude is all as hush as death. Then 
 first the " buried Majesty of Denmark " — though mimic all the 
 scene — was awful and full of dread to our young imagination, 
 as if indeed " revisiting the glimpses of the moon," on the old 
 battlements of Elsineur — the fine, pensive, high philosophy of 
 the melancholy, world-distracted Hamlet, flowed as if from his 
 own very princely lips — the fair Ophelia, as she went singing 
 and scattering her flowers, was to us a new Image of a purer 
 innocence, a more woeful sorrow, than we knew before to have 
 ever had its birth or burial-place on this earth. There we saw 
 the Shadow of the mightiest Julius standing — imperial still — 
 before his beloved Brutus in the Tent ; and as he waved a 
 majestic upbraiding, threatening, and warning, from the hand 
 that had subdued the world, we heard the Caesar say, " We 
 will meet again at Philippi." There we, too, as well as the 
 Thane, heard a voice cry to all the house, " Sleep no more — 
 Glammis hath murdered sleep — and therefore Cawdor shall 
 sleep no more I " — and in glided, with stone eyes and blood- 
 less face, sleep-walking Eemorse, in the form of a stately Lady 
 wringing her hands, and groaning, "Out, damned spot," while 
 the Haunted felt in her dream, that " not all the perfumes of 
 Arabia could sweeten that little hand ! " 
 
 Then there was eloquence in the world, that is, in London, 
 in those days ; or did the soul then half-create the thunders she 
 heard pealing from the lips of Burke, and Pitt, and Fox, the 
 great orators of England, and startle at the flash of her own 
 lightning ? But the old pillars of the social edifice then seemed 
 to rock as to an earthquake — and the lips of common men, in 
 the general inspiration, were often touched with fire. Even 
 now we see their flashing eyes, their knit brows, their clenched 
 hands, their outstretched arms — their " face inflamed " — even 
 now we hear their voices, flowing like majestic streams, or 
 loud as the headlong cataract — of those whom the world 
 consents to call great. We thought, as we looked and list- 
 ened, of Him who 
 
 " Wielded at will that fierce democracy, 
 Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece — 
 From Macedon to Artaxerxes' throne ;" 
 
 nor felt that the son of Chatham was less than " the Thun* 
 clerer," as he stood proudly denouncing vengeance against the 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 217 
 
 legions of the Tricolor, and prophesying the triumph of the 
 glorious Isle, " whose shores beat back the ocean's foamy 
 feet," and whose sons have ever been the true children of 
 Liberty. 
 
 The spirit of the world was then awakened by dreadful out- 
 cries from too long a sleep — and the alarum-bell that then 
 kept tolling far and wide over the sky, though now its iron 
 tongue is at rest, or but trembling in that " hollow," so soon 
 and so easy made to give forth its sullen music, hangs still 
 over the nations, who, under even the silence of its shadow, 
 shall sink no more into disgraceful slumbers. The ears of 
 kings, and princes, and nobles, were astounded; and all Europe 
 groaned or gloried when the Bourbon's in-vain-anointed 
 head, was with the few fatal words held up dissevered, 
 "Behold the head of a tyrant!" and the axe, that made no 
 respect of persons, bit the fair neck of Marie Antoinette, nath- 
 less all those glorious tresses whose beauty had dazzled the 
 world. Life was then struck, over all its surface and all its 
 depths, with a stormy sunshine — dread alternations of bright- 
 ness and blackness, that made the soul to quake alike in its 
 hopes and in its fears. Who wished, then, to escape the con- 
 tagion? — Not even the gentlest, the most fervent, the most 
 devoted lovers of domestic peace. They, too, joined the hymn 
 of thanksgiving — and one Psean seemed to stun the sky. But 
 the very clouds ere long began to drop blood, and then good 
 men paused even to obey the stern voice of Justice, in fear 
 that the dewy voice of Mercy should never more be heard on 
 earth. Call it not a reaction — for that is a paltry word — but 
 thankful to the Great God did men become, when at last, 
 standing silent on the desolate shore, they saw the first ebb 
 of that fiercely-flowing tide, and knew that the sea was to 
 return to its former limits, and sweep away no more the pea- 
 sant's hut and the prince's palace. 
 
 That was a time indeed for men to speak, to whom Heaven 
 had granted the gift of eloquence. And London then held 
 many eloquent, who, when the storm was hushed, relapsed 
 into men of common speech. 
 
 But poor, vain, and empty all, is the glory of great orators, 
 compared with that of poets and sages, or conquerors. The 
 poet and sage walk hand-in-hand together through the moral 
 and intellectual empire of mind — nor, in the world's admira- 
 
218 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 tion, is the triumphal car of victory unworthy of being placed 
 near the Muses' bower. What mighty ones have breathed 
 the air of that Great City — have walked in inspiration along 
 the banks of England's metropolitan river — have been inhumed 
 in her burial-places, humble or high, frequented by common 
 and careless feet, or by footsteps treading reverentially, while 
 the visitor's eyes are fixed on marble image or monument, 
 sacred to virtue, to valour, or to genius, the memory of the 
 prime men of the earth ! These, London, are thy guardian 
 spirits — these thy tutelary gods. When the horrid howl of 
 night — the howl of all those distracted passions is hushed — 
 and the soul, relieved from the sorrow in which it thinks of 
 sin, when an eye or ear witness to its unhallowed orgies, lifts 
 up its eyes to the stars so bright and beautiful, so silent and 
 so serene — then remembereth she the names, the endowments, 
 the achievements, of the immortal dead. There — largest and 
 most lustrous — that star that " dwells apart " — is the image 
 of Milton ! That other, soft-burning, dewy, and almost twink- 
 ling star — now seeming to shine out into intenser beauty, and 
 now almost dim, from no obscuring cloud or mist, but as if 
 some internal spirit shaded the light for a moment, even as an 
 angel may veil his countenance with his wings — that is the 
 star of Spenser ! And of all the bright people of the skies, to 
 fancy's gaze, thou, most lovely Planet, art the very Fairy- 
 queen ! 
 
 Therefore, to us, enthusiasts then in poetry — and may that 
 enthusiasm survive even the season u of brightness in the 
 grass and glory in the flower," which has almost now passed 
 away — to us, who thought of Poets as beings set apart from 
 the world which their lays illumined — how solemn, how 
 sacred, how sublime a delight — deaf and blind to all the 
 sights and sounds of the common day — to look on the very 
 house in which some great Poet had been born, lived, or 
 died! Were the house itself gone, and some ordinary pile 
 erected in its stead, still we saw down into the old consecrated 
 foundation ! Had the very street been swept away — its name 
 and its dust — still the air was holy — and more beautiful over- 
 head the blue gleam of the sky ! 
 
 And in the midst of all that noisy world of the present, that 
 noisy and miserable world — in the midst of it and pervading 
 it — might not even our youthful eye see the spirit of religion ? 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 219 
 
 And feel, even when most astonnded with sights and sounds 
 rf wickedness, that in life there was still a mens dtvmwr- 
 
 '< Mens agitat moleni et magno se corpore miscet. 
 Christianity spoke in Sahhath-bells, not « swinging •slow with 
 BuCS' Uke the cnrfew of old, extinguishing the honse- 
 Sd fires on all hearths; hut, high up in the clearer air the 
 belfry of tower and spire sent a sweet summons, each over its 
 own region, to families to repair again to the house of God 
 where fhe fires of faith, hope, and charity, might ^ 'etanfled 
 TZ altar of the religion of peace. The sweet solemn faces 
 of old men-of husbands and fathers, and sons and hrotheis 
 L to faces of matrons and virgins-the gladsome faces of 
 
 children — , . „ , . ■. « 
 
 " For piety is sweet to infant minds 
 
 were seen passing along the sobered streets whose « but 
 a few hours ago, clanked to the mad rushing to and fro of 
 Shallowed feeVwhile the air, now so stffl or n— ng but 
 with happy voices, attuned to the spirit of the day, was lately 
 all astir with rage, riot, and blasphemy ! 
 
 " Such ebb and flow must ever be> ^ 
 Then wherefore should we mourn !' 
 Sweet is the triumph of religion on the Sabbath-day in 
 some solitary glen, to which come troopxng from a hundred 
 braes all the rural dwellers, disappearing, one small tamuy 
 "party Ir another, into the hushed ^ow^- 
 gregation has collected, exhaling to heaven, as a ^wer-bank 
 exhales its fragrance, the voice of Psalms ! But there Tiety 
 has only deepened Peace ! Here-though yet the voice ot the 
 Sat f will not be *-J*--dft- -^S-SS 
 
 skv uuon men's hearts, stilling them against their wills into a 
 aLti P t™lien to their usual life is felt to have even amo^ 
 sublime consecration! "The still smaU voice J^T 
 the midst of all that unrepressed star, the more [*f™* 
 because so unhke to the other sounds, with ^**"*£ 
 uot-that there is another life, "not of this noisy Wd but 
 silent and divine," is felt from the very disturbances that wi 1 
 no he at rest; and though hundreds ^^Tf^^% 
 the tolling of that great bell from the Cathedral strike* of 
 
 1 
 
220 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 death and judgment. Yes, England ! with all thy sins, thou 
 holdest, with fast devotion, to the Faith, for which so many of 
 thy sainted sons did perish in the fires of persecution. The 
 smoke of those fierce fagots is dead; but, as that inspired 
 man prophesied, while he held up his withered hand in the 
 scorching flame — such a fire has been kindled as lights all the 
 land, centuries after his martyred ashes were given to the 
 heedless winds, — and the names of Cranmer and Kidley are 
 reverenced for evermore ! 
 
 High ministrations — solemn services of religion ! — in which 
 the Church of England, in its reverential awe, delights — from 
 the first hour in which we participated in the holy rites, they 
 breathed into our being the full, deep, divine spirit of devo- 
 tion, sanctifying, at burst or close of the organ-peal, the 
 chapel's pillared shade ! — How sweetly rose our souls to 
 heaven on the hymn of the young white-robed choristers ! — 
 How sunk they and swelled, rejoiced and saddened, and when 
 the thought of some of our own peculiar sorrows also touched 
 us, how they even wept over the worship of that beautiful 
 liturgy, composed so scripturally by pious men, to whom the 
 language of the Bible had been familiar almost as their mother 
 tongue ! Of the great old English divines, so laden with 
 heavenly erudition, and who had brought all human wisdom 
 and human science to establish and to illustrate the religion 
 of the lowly Jesus, remembrance often crossed us like a shadow, 
 at each wide-murmured response. Apostles of a later time, 
 inspired by their own faith ! Yet true still were our hearts to 
 the memory of that simpler service, nor less divine — for 
 blessed ever are all modes of worship in which the human 
 being seeks in sincerity to draw near to God — that simpler 
 service, so well suited to a simpler land, in which we had from 
 infancy been instructed, and which, to preserve in its purity, 
 had our own forefathers bled. In the high cathedral, 
 
 " Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, 
 The pealing anthem swells the note of praise," 
 
 we called to mind the low kirk and its Psalms. The kirk 
 near the modest manse, in which our boyhood flew away — 
 with its decent pews, little loft, and unambitious pulpit — the 
 friendly faces of the rural congregation — the grave elders 
 sitting in their place of honour — the pious preacher, who to 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 221 
 
 us had been as a father !-Oh I ^^^jj£5Z 
 
 STto XSiany, each with itsown peculiar 
 
 Our presence brought a brighter expression mto their partial 
 
 P I „ Zh-tlx never seemed otherwise than well-timed to 
 
 £,' « " td our mlnchcly-nor failed either to awaken 
 
 SK^S^S^d tale of glee-ami th e tears have 
 fallen, when in the « parlour twilight we sang 
 
 " One of those Scottish tunes so sad and slow," 
 or told seme one of *ose old, pathetic, tra&iona^ stories, 
 
 Z a -iT^e some serene-eyed and steadfast dmmly, *e 
 
 &S SSESS SSI r|i,C=\ x 
 
222 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 that was poor or bad in that prejudice, soon melted away 
 before the light of bold English eyes, before the music of bold 
 English speech. Sons and daughters of the Free! As brothers 
 and as sisters we loved you soon — without suspicion, without 
 reserve, without jealousy, without envy of your many superior 
 and surpassing endowments of nature, and accomplishments of 
 art ! For, with all deduction on the score of inevitable human 
 fault and frailty, how high the morals of England, her manners 
 how becoming the Children of such a Birth ! 
 
 The Friends, too, whom in those sacred hours we had 
 taken to our hearts, linked, along with other more human 
 ties, by the love of literature and poetry — and with whom we 
 had striven to enter 
 
 " The cave obscure of old Philosophy," 
 
 and when starry midnight shone serenely over Oxford's towers 
 and temples, sighed — vainly sighed — with unsatisfied long- 
 ings and aspirations, that would not let us rest, to " unsphere 
 the spirit of Plato " — they too were often with us in the wide 
 metropolis, where, wide as it is, dear friends cannot almost be 
 for a single day but by some happy fortune they meet ! How 
 grasped — clasped were then our hands and our hearts ! How 
 all college recollections — cheerful and full of glee — or high 
 and of a solemn shade — came over us from the silence of those 
 Still retreats, in the noise of the restless London ! Magdalen, 
 Mertoun, Oriel, Christchurch, Trinity — how pleasant were 
 your names ! 
 
 Hundreds of morning, meridian, evening, midnight meet- 
 ings I Each with its own — nor let us fear to declare it be- 
 neath those sunny skies — with its blameless, at least not sinful, 
 charm. Now carried on a stream of endless, various, fluctuat- 
 ing converse, with a friend, more earnest, more enthusiastic, 
 more impassioned than ourselves — and nature filled not our 
 veins with frozen blood — along streets and squares, all dimly 
 seen or unseen, and the faces and figures of the crowds that 
 went thronging b}^, like the faces and figures in some regard- 
 less dream ! Now walking in, on a sudden, and as if by some 
 divine impulse, into that Cathedral — or that Abbey — ask not 
 their names — and there, apart and silent, standing with fixed 
 eyes before statue or tomb I Now glide-gliding in light canoe 
 with wind and tide adown the Great Eiver, in indolent yet 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 223 
 
 imaginative reverie, while masts and sails, and trees and 
 towers, as they all went floating through the air, seemed 
 scarcely to belong to any world — or proud of the sculler's 
 skill, and emulous of the strength of the broad-breasted water- 
 men whom Father Thames sustains, striving, stripped, against 
 the waves a-ripple and a-foam with the rapid ebb, impatient 
 to return to the sea ! Now afoot along pleasant pathways, 
 for a time leading through retired and sylvan places, and 
 then suddenly past a cluster of cottages, or into a pretty vil- 
 lage, almost a town, and purposely withholding our eyes from 
 the prospect, till we had reached one well-remembered emin- 
 ence — and then the glorious vision seen from Kichmond Hill ! 
 Where, where, on the face of all the earth, can the roaming 
 eye rest in more delighted repose than on the " pleasant vil- 
 lages and farms " that far and wide compose that suburban 
 world, so rich in trees alone, that were there no other beauty, 
 the poet could even find a paradise both for weekday and 
 Sabbath hours in the bright neighbourhood of London! 
 Endless profusion and prodigality of art, coping almost suc- 
 cessfully with nature ! Wealth is a glorious thing in such 
 creations. Eiches are the wands of Magicians. Poverty 
 bleakens the earth — in her region grandeur is bare — and we 
 sigh for something that is not among the naked rocks. But 
 here from the buried gold, groves rise with such loads of 
 verdure, that but for their giant boughs and branches, their 
 heads would be bowed down to the lawns and gardens, gor- 
 geous all with their flushing flowers, naturalised in the all- 
 bearing soil of England, from all climes, from the Occident to 
 the orient ! 
 
 But where cease the suburban charms of the Queen of 
 Cities? Mansion after mansion — each more beautifully em- 
 bowered than another — or more beautifully seated on some 
 gently undulating height, above the far-sweeping windings of 
 the silver Thames, is still seen by the roamer's eye, not 
 without some touch of vain envy at his heart of those fortu- 
 nate ones for whom life thus lavishes all its elegance and all 
 its ease — Oh, vain envy indeed ! for who knows not that all 
 happiness is seated alone in the heart ! — till, ere he remembers 
 that far-off London has vanished quite away, he looks up, and 
 lo! the Towers of Windsor — the Palace of Old England's 
 Kings ! 
 
224 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Nor are those " sylvan scenes " unworthily inhabited. 
 Travel city-crowded continents, sail in some circumnavigat- 
 ing ship to far and fair isles, that seem dropt from heaven into 
 the sea, yet shall your eyes behold no lovelier living visions 
 than the daughters of England. Lovelier never visited poet's 
 slumbers nightly — not even when before him in youth 
 
 " Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair ! " 
 
 And of England's " interrita pubes," let speak the shore of 
 every sea — 
 
 " A race in faith unstain'd, invincible in arms." 
 Wafted away, we knew not, cared not whither, on the wings 
 of wonder and admiration, — when, during the long Summer 
 silence, the towers of Oxford kept chiming to deserted courts 
 and cloisters, — all England, its downs, its wolds, its meadows, 
 its plains, its vales, its hills, its mountains, minsters, abbeys, 
 cathedrals, castles, palaces, villages, towns, and cities, all be- 
 came tributary to our imagination, gazing upon her glories 
 with a thousand eyes. Now we breathed the fragrance of 
 Pevonia's myrtle bowers — now from St Michael's Mount 
 "looked to Bayona and the Giant's Hold," now wept and 
 worshipped at the grave of Shakespeare, or down the yellow 
 Avon thought we saw sailing her own sweet stately swan ! 
 Now gazed in dread astonishment on Portsmouth's naval 
 arsenal, and all that machinery — sublime, because of the 
 power that sets it agoing, and far more because of the 
 power that it sends abroad, winged and surcharged with 
 thunder, all over the main — ships without masts, sheer hulks, 
 majestic and magnificent even in that bare black magnitude, 
 looming through the morning or evening gloaming — and lo ! 
 a First-rater, deck above deck, tier above tier of guns, sending 
 up, as she sails in sunshine, her clouds into the sky ; and as 
 the Ocean-Queen bears up in the blast, how grand her stern 
 — and what a height above the waves tumbling afoam in her 
 wake ! Now seated on the highest knoll of all the bright 
 Malvern Hills in breathless delight, slowly turning round our 
 head in obedience to the beauty and grandeur of that pano- 
 rama — matchless on earth — we surveyed at one moment 
 county upon county, of rich, merry, sylvan England, man- 
 sioned, abbeyed, towered, spired, castled; and at another, 
 different, and yet not discordant, say, rather, most harmonious 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 225 
 
 with that other level scene, the innumerous mountains of 
 Wales, cloud-crested, or clearly cutting with outlines free, 
 flowing or fantastic,— here the deep blue, there the dark purple, 
 and yonder the bright crimson sky ! Wales, glorious, even 
 were she without other glory, with Plinlimmon, Cader-Idns, 
 Snowdon, 
 
 " Yocal no more since Cambria's fatal day, 
 To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay." 
 Now borne as on an angel's wing, and in the " very waist 
 and middle of the night," we sat down a Solitary on Derwent- 
 water's shore, 
 
 " While the cataract of Lodore 
 Peal'd to our orisons ! " 
 Now while Luna and her nymphs delighted to behold their 
 own beauty on its breathless bosom, we hung in a little skiff, 
 like a water-lily moored in moonshine, in the fairest of all fair 
 scenes in nature, and the brightest of all the bright—how 
 sweet the music of her name, as it falls from our lips with a 
 blessing — Windermere — Windermere! 
 
 And thus we robbed all England of her beauty and her 
 sublimity, her grandeur and her magnificence, and bore it all 
 off and away treasured in our heart of hearts. Thus, the 
 1 towers and temples of Oxford were haunted with new visions 
 —thus in London we were assailed by sounds and sights from 
 the far-off solitude of rocks, and cliffs, and woods, and moun- 
 i tains, on whose summits hung setting suns, or rose up in 
 j spiritual beauty the young crescent moon, or crowded unnum- 
 bered planets, or shone alone in its lustre, 
 
 " The star of Jove, so beautiful and large,", 
 as if the other eyes of heaven were afraid to sustain the seren- 
 ity of that one orb divine ! 
 
 But still as the few soul-brightening, soul-strengthening 
 ■ suns of youth rolled on,— those untamed years, of which every 
 I day, it might seem indeed every hour, brought the conscious- 
 ness of some new knowledge, some new feeling, that made 
 the present greater than the past, and was giving perpetual 
 | promise of a still greater future, — promise that was the divine 
 manna of hope — while the world of nature continued to our 
 eyes, our hearts, and our imaginations, dearer and more dear, 
 saddened or sublimed by associations clothing with green 
 
 VOL. V, P 
 
226 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 gladness the growth of the young, with hoary sadness the 
 decay of the old trees, 
 
 "Moulding to beauty many a mouldering tower ;" 
 
 and in storm or sunshine investing with a more awful or a 
 more peaceful character the aspect of the many- shipped sea, 
 — even then, when the world of the senses was in its prime, 
 and light and music did most prodigally abound in the air 
 and the waters, in the heavens and on the earth, we rejoiced 
 with yet a far exceeding joy, we longed with yet a far exceed- 
 ing desire, we burned with yet a far exceeding passion, for all 
 that was growing momently brighter and more bright, darker 
 and more dark, vaster and more vast, within the self- dis- 
 covered region of mind and spirit ! There swept along each 
 passion, like a great wind — there the sudden thought 
 
 " Shot from the zenith like a falling star ! " 
 
 We wished not to " have lightened the burden of the mystery 
 of all that unintelligible world ! " It was the mystery which, 
 trembling, we loved — awaking suddenly to the quaking of our 
 own hearts, at solitary midnight, from the divine communion 
 of dreams, that like spirits for ever haunted our sleep. 
 
 " "lis mind alone — bear witness, heaven and earth ! — 
 'Tis mind alone that in itself contains 
 The beauteous or sublime ! " 
 
 Where are the blasts born that bring the clouds across the 
 stars ? Where are the thoughts born that bring clouds across 
 our souls ? The study of physics is sublime, for the student 
 feels as if mounting the lower steps of the ladder leading up 
 to God in the skies. But the metaphysics of our own moral, 
 our own intellectual being, sublimer far ! when reason is her 
 own object, and conscience, by her own light, sees into her 
 own essence ! 
 
 And where shall such studies be best pursued ? Not alone 
 in the sacred silence of the Academic Grove — although there 
 should be their glimmering beginnings, and there their glorified 
 but still obscurest end. But through the dim, doubting, and 
 often sorely disturbed intermediate time, when man is com- 
 manded by the being within him to mingle with man, when 
 smiles, and sighs, and tears, are most irresistible, and when 
 the look of an eye can startle the soul into a passion of love 
 
OLD NOKTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 227 
 
 or hate, then it is that human nature must be studied — or it 
 will remain unknown and hidden for ever — must be studied 
 by every human being for himself, in the poetry and philoso- 
 phy of Life ! As that life lies spread before us like a sea ! 
 At first, like delighted, wondering, and fearful children, who 
 keep gazing on the waves that are racing like living creatures 
 from some far-off region to these their own lovely and be- 
 loved shores, — or still with unabated admiration, at morning, 
 see the level sands yellowing far away, with bands of beauti- 
 ful birds walking in the sun, or, having trimmed their snowy 
 plumage, wheeling in their pastime, with many wild-mingled 
 cries, in the glittering air — with here — there — yonder some 
 vessel seemingly stranded, and fallen helpless on her side, 
 but waiting only for the tide to waken her from her rest, and 
 again to waft her, on her re-expanded wings, away into the 
 main ! Then, as the growing boy becomes more familiar with the 
 ebb and the flow — with all the smiles and frowns on the aspect 
 — all the low and sweet, all the loud and sullen, tones of the 
 voice of the sea — in his doubled delight he loses half his dread, 
 launches his own skiff, paddles with his own oar, hoists his 
 own little sail — and, ere long, impatient of the passion that 
 devours him, the passion for the wonders and dangers that 
 dwell on the great deep, on some day disappears from his 
 birthplace and his parents' eyes, and, years afterwards, returns 
 a thoughtful man from his voyaging round the globe ! 
 
 Therefore, to know ourselves, we sought to penetrate into 
 the souls of other men — to be with them, in the very interior 
 of their conscience, when they thought no eye was upon them 
 but the eye of God. 'Twas no seclusion of the spirit within 
 itself to take cognisance of its own acts and movements ; but 
 we were led over the fortunes and works of human beings 
 wherever their minds have acted or their steps have trod. 
 All sorrow and all joy, the calamities which have shaken 
 empires, the crimes which have hurried single souls into per- 
 dition, the grounds of stability, just order, and power, in the 
 great societies of men — the peace and happiness that have 
 blossomed in the bosom of innocent life, the loves that have 
 interwoven joy with grief, the hopes that no misery can over- 
 whelm, the fears that no pleasure can assuage, the gnawing 
 of the worm that never dies, the bliss of conscience, the bale 
 of remorse, the virtue of the moral, and the piety of the reli- 
 
228 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 gious spirit, — all these, and everything that human life, in its 
 inexhaustible variety, could disclose, became the subjects of 
 inquiry, emotion, thought, to our intellect seeking knowledge 
 of human nature, to us a student desirous, in restless and 
 aspiring youth, to understand something of his own soul — of 
 that common being in which he lives and breathes, and of 
 which, from no other source, and no other aid, can he ever 
 have any uninspired revelation. 
 
 Is it wonderful then that we, like other youths with a soul 
 within them, mingled ourselves and our very being with the 
 dark, bright, roaring, hushed, vast, beautiful, magnificent, 
 guilty, and glorious London ! 
 
 Coleridge, that rich-freighted Argosie tilting in sunshine 
 over Imagination's Seas, feared not — why should he have 
 feared ? — in a poem of his youth — to declare to all men, 
 
 " To me hath Heaven, with bounteous hand, assigned 
 Energic reason and a shaping mind." 
 
 That boast may not pass our lips ! Yet what forbids us even 
 now exultingly to say, that nature had not withheld from us 
 the power of genial delight in all the creations of genius ; and 
 that she shrouded, as with a gorgeous canopy, our youth, with 
 the beauty and magnificence of a million dreams ? Lovely to 
 our eyes was all the loveliness that emanated from more gifted 
 spirits, and in the love with which we embraced it, it became 
 our very own ! We caught the shadows of high thoughts as 
 they passed along the wall, reflected from the great minds 
 meditating in the hallowed shade ! And thenceforth they 
 peopled our being ! Nor haply did our own minds not originate 
 some intellectual forms and combinations, in their newness 
 fair, or august — recognised as the product of our own more 
 elevated moods, although unarrayed, it might be, in words, or 
 passing away with their symbols into oblivion, nor leaving a 
 trace behind — only a sense of their transitory presence, con- 
 solatory and sublime ! Even then, in thy loud streets, Lon- 
 don ! as the remembrance of Scotland's silent valleys came 
 suddenly and softly upon our hearts, a wish, a hope, a belief 
 arose that the day might come, when even our voice might 
 not be altogether unlistened to by the happy dwellers there, — 
 haply faint, low, and irregular, like the song of some bird — 
 one of the many linnets — in its happiness half-afraid to tune 
 
OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH. 229 
 
 its melodies, amidst tlie minstrelsy of Merle and Mavis with 
 which the whole forest rings ! 
 
 Often do we vainly dream that Time works changes only by 
 ages — by centuries ! But who can tell what even an hour 
 may bring forth ? Decay and destruction have " ample room 
 and verge enough," in such a City ; and in one year they can 
 do the work of many generations. This century is but young 
 — scarcely hath it reached its prime. But since its first year 
 rolled round the sun, how many towers and temples have in 
 ever- changeful London " gone to the earth ! " How many risen 
 up whose " statures reach the sky !" Dead is the old King in 
 his darkness, whom all England loved and reverenced. Princes 
 have died, and some of them left not a name — mighty men of 
 war have sunk, with all their victories and all their trophies, 
 vainly deemed immortal, into oblivion ! — Mute is the eloquence 
 of Pitt's and of Canning's voice ! — In that Abbey, the thought 
 of whose sacred silence did often touch his high heart, when 
 all his fleet was moored in peace, or bearing down in line of 
 battle, now Nelson sleeps ! — And thousands, unknown and 
 unhonoured, as wise, or brave, in themselves as good and as 
 great as those whose temples fame hath crowned with ever- 
 lasting halo, have dropt the body, and gone to God. How 
 many thousand fairest faces, brightest eyes, have been extin- 
 guished and faded quite away ! Fairer and brighter far to 
 him whose youth they charmed and illumined, than any eyes 
 that shall ever more gaze on the flowers of earth, or the stars 
 of heaven ! 
 
 Methinks the westering sun shines cooler in the garden — 
 that the shades are somewhat deepened — that the birds are 
 not hopping round our head, as they did some hour ago — that 
 in their afternoon siesta they are mute. Another set of insects 
 are in the air. The flowers, that erewhile were broad and 
 bright awake, with slumbering eyne are now hanging down 
 their heads ; and those that erewhile seemed to slumber, have 
 awoke from their day-dreams, and look almost as if they were 
 going to speak. Have you a language of your own — dear 
 creatures — for we know that ye have loves ? But, hark, the 
 Gong — the Gong! in the hand of John, smiting it like the 
 slave of some Malay-chief. In our Paradise there is "fear 
 that dinner cool," mortal man must eat — and thus endeth 
 " Our Midsummer-Day's Dream." 
 
THE MAN OF TON. A SATIRE. 
 
 [JUNE 1828, J 
 
 What a noble poem would that be which did justice to its 
 name of London, a Satire ! The highest kind of satire belongs 
 to the highest kind of poetry. Isaiah and Jeremiah were 
 satirists — and is London not another Babylon? But those 
 bards were prophets — the generations now are the uninspired 
 sons of little men. Yet let no poet but of the highest order 
 stir up with a long pole the wild beasts in that den of many 
 cages, whether he desires to show up and off lions, bears, tigers, 
 panthers, ounces, jaguars, hyenas, wolves, asleep or feeding — 
 or desires, by some gentler touch, to exhibit in their natural 
 attitudes and postures zebras, quaggas, nylghaus, antelopes, 
 kangaroos, opossums, apes, and monkeys — standing boldly or 
 gracefully as if in their own African or Asiatic deserts, or sitting 
 anomalously on their hurdies, as if in New Holland or Van 
 Diemen's Land, or swinging all agrin and a-chatter over bar 
 and to wire, as if gathering a " pretty considerable snatch of 
 nuts, I guess," in the woods of the New World, " and then 
 right slick away," in terror of Jonathan's rifle, paid for at five 
 dollars a- day by a naturalist in Philadelphia. 
 
 Dr Johnson's London, a Satire, is a noble poem. But his 
 great moral genius was constrained in composition by the 
 perpetual parody on his powerful prototype, Juvenal. To have 
 shown so much genius and so much ingenuity at one and the 
 same time, to have been so original even in imitation, places 
 him in the highest order of minds. But his range was here 
 circumscribed ; for he had to move parallel with the Eoman — 
 finding out in every passage corresponding and kindred sins, 
 — and in order to preserve — which he did wondrously — the 
 similitude — 
 
 " To bridle in his struggling muse with pain, 
 Which long'd to launch into a nobler strain." 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 231 
 
 He had noble faculties and noble feelings — a hate high as 
 heaven of wickedness, a scorn as high of all that was base or 
 mean — wide knowledge of the World, of London, of Life — 
 severe judgment — imagination not very various, perhaps, but 
 very vivid, and, when conjoined with such an intellect, even 
 wonder-working in realms that seemed scarcely of right to 
 belong to the solemn sage — witness the Happy Valley of Eas- 
 selas, and indeed all that as yet unsurpassed Story, where, 
 on the wings of fancy and feeling, you are wafted along over 
 the earth, yet never lose sight of its flesh-and-blood inhabitants 
 working and weeping, yet not unhappy still in their toils and 
 their tears, and dying but to live again in no cold, glittering, 
 poetic heaven, but in the abodes of bliss, seen by the eyes of 
 nature through the light of religion, builded in the skies. 
 
 Dryden was a fine, bold, stout, strong, and sweeping satirist; 
 but, vacillating in his own principles and practice, in many of 
 the highest affairs which a man has to discuss and settle with 
 his own soul, " Glorious John," with the native strength of a 
 giant, sometimes felt his own knees smiting against one 
 another, his legs tottering, his footing unsure ; and therefore 
 he not unfrequently failed to pour out the whole force of his 
 fury, often most wordy when weakest far — for surely, had it 
 been otherwise, he needed not to have feared — or at least not 
 to have fancied — such a sumph as Shadwell. Dryden seems 
 to have been a man of wavering principles, but warm and 
 generous feelings ; so he had one of the best, and one of the 
 worst qualities which a satirist can possess. But then, what 
 an ear for music ! 
 
 " The long resounding march, the energy divine ! " 
 
 What clearness too of diction, through all his easy-flowing 
 versification of various murmur ! So that you are never wearied 
 with the delight of listening to the voice of the stream on 
 which you float down between majestic banks. Even when 
 the satire languishes, -the poetry is magnificent ; and you are 
 brought back, with a refreshed appetite, to devour the castiga- 
 tion of the knave or fool whom you and the poet had for a 
 while forgotten. 
 
 Pope was an exquisite satirist ; but it is not an exquisite 
 satirist that is to show up such a city as London to scorn. 
 His pigmy and puny body did somewhat affect the character 
 
232 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 of his mind. We fear that poor Pope was often ailing — that 
 perhaps he never in all his life enjoyed one day of perfect 
 health. This gave something, at times, touching to his cha- 
 racter — and to his situation much that was even pathetic. In 
 his serious poetry, sorrow is seen, we think, through many 
 passages ; and his mirth, which is rare, is still seldom without 
 a tinge — a dash of melancholy. It was only when he gave 
 vent to love or indignation that he was a great writer. Witness 
 his " Eloisa to Abelard" — and his " Elegy to the Memory of an 
 Unfortunate Lady" — and the glorious " Dunciad." In the first 
 of these poems, the " Eloisa," Pope treated the bitterness of the 
 passion of love, under circumstances so peculiar and strange, 
 that none but such a man could ever have dreamt of meddling 
 with them; — poor unfortunate little fellow ! And in the " Dun- 
 ciad," when his ire was kindled, on a subject where he felt 
 himself strong as on the other he was weak — his literary, not 
 his amatory powers — how in mud he drowned the dunces ! — His 
 love for " the Blount" was tender, passionate, undeserved, and 
 ill-requited, by an ordinary woman, who could never help 
 despising the very being of whom she was nevertheless proud 
 — for the contempt was the more natural emotion of the two 
 to such a creature — the pride was secondary and acquired. 
 How bitterly he calumniated Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 
 for reasons plain enough — till her fair face grew as red as her 
 petticoat, and as blue as her stockings. Then he became a 
 courtier, in the feebleness of his person. He panegyrised such 
 lords as Marchmont and Cobham, till they both must have 
 blushed black; — but posterity heeds not their blushes, for 
 posterity has forgotten them both, embalmed though they be 
 in Epistles which, whether they be indeed poetry or not, you 
 must consult the late Lord Byron and the present Mr Bowles, 
 the late Mr Gilchrist and the present Mr Eoscoe, 1 Mr Camp- 
 bell, whose opinion, even when wrong, is worth its weight in 
 gold, and that immeasurable donkey, MacDermot " On Taste 
 and Tragedy," whose ears, " casting their shadows before," 
 have been known to frighten out of their wits children at play 
 in the churchyard, where he had chanced to be on the look-out 
 
 1 In connection with the controversy carried on at this time by these writers, 
 as to, whether nature or art supplied the more suitable materials for poetry, 
 the question had arisen — Was Pope a poet ? — See Nodes Ambrosiance, vol. L. 
 p. 12. 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 233 
 
 for thistles, and who were thus saved — poor dear innocents — 
 by insensibility, from the prolonged horrors of his super- 
 asinine bray. 
 
 Talking of churchyards, old big-wigged Dr Young, author 
 of the Night Thoughts, a poem which will always be read by 
 thoughtful people who have but few books, are poor, and live 
 in the countiy, was no small shakes in satire. He was himself 
 the prey of his own epigrammatic genius, that would never let 
 him rest in ordinary speech, but kept pointing every line as it 
 came up, often at the wrong end, so that the careless reader is 
 sometimes unexpectedly stung, and loses his temper, like an 
 old woman taking up without due caution a needle by the sharp 
 nose, instead of the blunt eye — or a pin out of her mouth in 
 like predicament. Yet the doctor had a clear far-seeing eye 
 for vice and folly. He did not, however, " shoot folly as it 
 flies," for he was afraid of missing, but let bang at her in the 
 seat; and it is funny to see her, like a hare shot in form, 
 jumping up some six feet or so, and then down again to the 
 ground with a thud, a quadrupedal sprawl, and then over on 
 her back or side, stone-dead. The doctor sometimes makes 
 " much ado about nothing," and mouths as if in the pulpit. 
 You always know that you are reading a satire written by a 
 man in black, and with bands. He sometimes seems to be 
 angry with sins solely because they insult him in his character 
 of a clergyman, and have no respect for the cloth. He writes, 
 at other times, like a disappointed man who had no hopes of 
 ever becoming a bishop ; and perhaps in lawn sleeves he had 
 been less truculent about trifles, for spiritual peers are in 
 general more pompous than savage. To cut up poor curates 
 and such small deer would be monstrous in a Mitre. Men of 
 the world used, we believe, to laugh at the doctor's satire, but 
 we suspect on the left side of their mouths ; for instead of 
 tickling, he stabbed them in the midriff, and the Lorenzo of 
 his Night Thoughts, who is there always a gentleman, was 
 transmogrified in his regular satires into a mere vile and vulgar 
 sceptic. All his writings, however, want keeping — are dis- 
 tinguished by t^aggeration and disproportion. He hammers 
 vice well when laid on the anvil, but he is not expert at hitting 
 the right nail on the head ; and often, when wielding his mace 
 against a fly sticking to the wall, merely shatters the wainscot. 
 But Young was a poet, nevertheless, of a high order. He had 
 
234 ESSAYS: CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 a fine imagination, and deep sensibilities ; and has produced 
 single lines, and passages, seldom if ever excelled, and in their 
 meaning perhaps more profound than the poet himself knew, 
 for he was subject to fits of inspiration. 
 
 Churchill was a poor, low, unprincipled, vicious, coarse 
 creature, with smartness that sometimes was almost strength ; 
 and what to us must in such a person alway be a mystery, he 
 had a command over the English language, as far as his mind 
 enabled him to go in it, which made everything he said tell, 
 far beyond its native worth or power, and has secured him no 
 contemptible place among English satirists. His style cer- 
 tainly is pure and idiomatic. He was the terror of pimps and 
 players — and his ghost probably haunted Garrick, although it 
 was hardly worth its while to come up for such a purpose. 
 Let a thing be but well executed, — poor, paltry, and pitiful, 
 as in its own nature it may be, — and it lasts. It is so with 
 the Rosciad. The splendour of that farthing candle burned 
 bright during Garrick's life, — not only illuminating the green- 
 room, but all London, all England : long after his decease, it 
 continued to glimmer away very respectably ; and we have 
 heard elderly gentlemen within these twenty years (one of 
 them lived in Ludlow), belonging to the school whose day 
 was just wearing out, quote the Rosciad by screeds ; lines in 
 it are still recognised when they meet the ear or the eye ; and 
 possibly the entire affair may never be, from beginning to 
 end, utterly forgotten as long as there are theatres. 
 
 " That Davies has a very pretty wife," 
 
 was reckoned one of the severest and happiest lines ever 
 written, and " ex uno disce omnes." Oh dear ! but a little 
 wit goes a long way in this stupid world. Then Churchill 
 had much rancour and a large spleen, which is always in an 
 inverse ratio to the size of the heart. This gave him spirit 
 for a spurt. But he had no bottom. He was also a coward ; 
 and, like a coward, liked to frighten the feeble into fits of fear. 
 Had Hogarth, instead of caricaturing him badly, floored him 
 by a right-handed facer, or a lunge in the kidneys, — John 
 Bee is our authority for saying that Hogarth could spar a bit, 
 — Churchill had been cowed, and bit his nail and pen in inso- 
 lent malice. Why Dr Johnson, whom he libelled as Pomposo, 
 did not break his bones, we cannot conjecture ; perhaps be- 
 cause the scamp was a parson j and Samuel had such a respect 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 235 
 
 for the Church, that he would not even inflict personal chas- 
 tisement on a blackguard who had once preached from an 
 Episcopalian pulpit. Yet we believe he once threatened to 
 drub Churchill ; and probably forbore carrying the threat into 
 execution, because he had attacked Scotland. Some of the 
 lines in his "Prophecy of Famine," about the poverty of Scot- 
 land, are well turned ; but the satire is commonplace ; and 
 after the first pleasure of surprise arising from the image — 
 images from natural histoiy always please — 
 
 " Where half-starved spiders feed on half-starved flies," 
 
 it is felt that such grotesque exaggerations are easy — for once 
 pitch the key, and all the rest of the monotonous strain, called 
 satire, follows of course. Severe as was the state of starva- 
 tion in which Scotland then pined, the poorest cottar that dug 
 in ditch was better, because more honestly fed, on meal and 
 water, with no milk, and little salt, than this hungry knave 
 bilking his bill in taverns — to-day feasting on ortolans, yester- 
 day tearing tripe, and to-morrow eyeing an empty trencher ; 
 but still, on Saturday and Sunday alike, no better than a thief. 
 Scotland must have been very stupid in those days, not to 
 have settled the hash of such a scribbler — for, after all, he 
 was not much better ; and had he lived now, we would have 
 gagged him in a single Number, and made him for life a 
 dummy. If any one of his admirers scoff at us for thinking 
 and saying so, why let him play a similar part — put him- 
 self into Churchill's shoes — publish a satire on Scotland — and 
 await a month or six weeks for the result. We will so scourge 
 his posteriors with the original of the pretty picture of the 
 Scotch Thistle on the cover of the Magazine, that he shall not 
 be able to take his seat among the satirists, though with a 
 sevenfold shield of diaculum-plaster. Tarring and feathering 
 would be a joke to onr pastime — to have no resting-place for 
 the sole of your foot must be very wearisome indeed ; but oh ! 
 worse, many million times, to have chairs, and sofas, and 
 ottomans, pressed upon you in all parties, in parlour and 
 dining-room, and yet not to dare to sit down for one moment, 
 in fear of perishing of prickles ! The very corpse of such a 
 culprit would need to be laid out on its face. Such, as a 
 satirist — and he was nothing else — was Churchill. 
 
 Savage was a man of a superior class — but he was a villain. 
 He was made so either by nature or his stars. Yet he must 
 
236 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 have had a strong semblance of some virtue, since Samuel 
 Johnson loved him — for Samuel would not have loved a man 
 merely on account of his talents. There was, however, a 
 sympathy of situation and condition ; for they were both poor, 
 and necessity, as often and as much as choice, made them 
 stroll together — moralising and philosophising — yet, we fear, 
 not always so — up and down the midnight streets, and lanes, 
 and alleys of London. It was just as well that the Lexico- 
 grapher was not with Savage in that house of ill-fame, when, 
 in a doubtful brawl, he became a stabber ; afterwards con- 
 demned to die on the scaffold. Savage showed the blackness 
 of his heart in his conduct to the Countess of Macclesfield, 
 whom, if he indeed believed her to be his mother, he treated 
 as unnaturally as he accused her of treating himself; and in 
 that case, like mother like son. But though Savage was no 
 doubt somebody's bastard, he was not the bastard of that lady, 
 as Boswell has proved ; ' and we hope, for his own sake, that 
 he never thought he was ; in which case, he was not an 
 unnatural monster, but merely an audacious swindler. A 
 swindler he certainly was ; and his insolent ingratitude to 
 Pope, who either relieved him in prison, or kept him out of it 
 — we forget which — the detail, we think, is in one of our 
 friend D' Israeli's admirable books — was of itself quite enough 
 to show his character in its real and odious light. Such a 
 man could never have been a great satirist. His own con- 
 science could never have been sufficiently at ease to allow 
 him to chastise the crimes or vices of others ; for it may be 
 laid down as a general rule, admitting no exceptions, that a 
 great satirist must be a good man. Yet there are admirable 
 lines in Savage, as 
 
 " Conceived in rapture, and with fire begot," 
 And, 
 
 " No tenth transmitter of a foolish face." 
 
 1 Boswell calls in question the parentage of Savage, on the ground that he 
 failed to secure a legacy, of which he could not have been defrauded had he 
 been really the son of the Countess of Macclesfield. Mr Croker thinks this 
 argument decisive. " I confess I do not," says Mr Peter Cunningham. I agree 
 with Mr Cunningham ; and I am farther of opinion that, in so far his mother 
 Lady Macclesfield was concerned, Savage was more "sinned against than sin- 
 ning." He was, however, a man of very irregular habits, of dissolute character, 
 and perverted moral sentiments. See Johnson's Lives of Poets, by P. Cunning- 
 ham, vol. ii. p. 346. 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 237 
 
 You think you see the young Esquire — and his long line of 
 ancestors — and his posterity too, for the Face will continue to 
 be handed down, depend upon it, till death destroys a direct 
 descendant before he has had time to propagate ; and a nephew 
 or cousin steps in to vary a little the physiognomy at the 
 Hall, though the same dull, dead, large, grey goggle eye, 
 remains ungouged ; and in a few descents the Face will to 
 a moral certainty reappear in its pristine foolishness. Sa- 
 vage, besides, was probably something of a scholar, though 
 Johnson's fine philosophical biography of him must be read 
 with many salvoes ; for nothing is more common than for men 
 of great acquirements to transfer, in a fit of enthusiasm for 
 some unworthy associate, the glory that is in themselves alone, 
 to one whose endowments may be considerable, but who, on 
 the whole, is but a very inferior character. Yet Savage is a 
 sort of name in English literature ; and The Wanderer is a 
 vigorous, and, had he been an honest man, would have been 
 a pathetic composition. 
 
 Different from Savage as light from darkness was Cowper 
 as a moral creature, and as an intellectual one so infinitely his 
 superior, that by the side of the immortal author of The Task, 
 the transitory writer of The Wanderer sinks down dwarfed into 
 the obscurest name. Cowper was a man, not only of the 
 finest and profoundest sensibilities, but of very strong pas- 
 sions, which, cruelly thwarted and disappointed, and defrauded 
 of their just joy in very early youth, shook the whole consti- 
 tution of his being, and tainted it with melancholy and with 
 madness, or aggravated and brought out the hereditary disease. 
 His later life — indeed almost all his life, after he had reached 
 the prime of manhood — was so calm and quiet in its ongoings 
 to the outward eye, and for the most part was really so indeed ; 
 — The hearth, at which he and Mrs Unwin sat — the Mary, 
 whose tender affection and its uncommon ties his genius has 
 consecrated and immortalised — burned with such a seemingly 
 cheerful and tender uniformity, except when disturbed by 
 thoughts for which at times there was no relief, not even the 
 voice from heaven ; — The Poet was so devoted to his flowers, 
 and his hothouse plants, and his pigeons and his rabbits, — 
 that is, to everything fair or harmless in animate or inanimate 
 nature ; — His intercourse with the world was so small, it 
 being like that of some benevolent hermit who had sought 
 
238 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 refuge in retirement from the troubles that beset him in 
 society, without being in the least an ascetic, or his sym- 
 pathies being either deadened or narrowed with the human 
 beings living in another sphere ; — All his more serious studies 
 (we make no allusion to his religion, which was more than 
 serious, always solemn, and too often dreadful) were of a kind 
 so remote from the everyday interests of the passing time, 
 and even from the intellectual pursuits most popular and most 
 powerful, for good or for evil, in the world which he had so 
 nearly forsaken; — His ambition and love of fame, which, 
 though deep, and strong, and pure, and high, because they 
 were born and sustained by the consciousness of genius, that, 
 beyond all things else, rejoiced in interpreting the word of 
 God, as it is written in the fair volume of nature, and in the 
 book which reveals what in nature is hidden, and beyond all 
 finding out, were so linked with holy undertakings and 
 achievements in which God alone should be glorified, that 
 they seem to be hardly compatible with any permanent design 
 of busying himself with drawing pictures of passions rife in 
 common existence, so as to embody moral instruction in a 
 satirical form ; — Altogether there seems something so soft, so 
 sweet, so delicate, so tender, almost so fragile in the peculiar 
 structure of his bodily frame, — a spirit of cohesion among all 
 his faculties both of thought and feeling so very unworldly — 
 and such a refinement of manners about him as may not be 
 called fastidiousness, but rather a shrinking timidity, so that, 
 like the sensitive plant, he was, as it were, paralysed by the 
 least touch of rudeness, and, perhaps unknown to his own heart, 
 courted retirement the more to escape the chance of such 
 shocks as carelessness or coarseness often unintentionally 
 inflict ; — That we are not prepared to think of such a being, 
 if such Cowper were, standing forth a satirist of the follies and 
 absurdities of his kind, no less than of their worst and most 
 flagrant delinquencies, and to see him with a bold grasp shaking 
 the blossom of the full-blown sins of the People. Yet this Cowper 
 did ; and his satire is sublime. There is not anywhere that we 
 know of in the language such satires as his "Table Talk," "Pro- 
 gress of Error," "Truth," "Expostulation," "Hope," "Charity," 
 " Conversation," " Eetirement." Perhaps we ought to call those 
 compositions by some other name, for they are full of almost 
 all kinds of the noblest poetry. Never were the principles of 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 239 
 
 the real wealth of nations more grandly expounded, illustrated, 
 and enforced — national honour, faith, freedom, patriotism, 
 independence, religion, all sung in magnificent strains, kindled 
 alternately by the pride and indignation of a Briton exulting 
 in, or ashamed of, the land of saints and heroes. No want of 
 individual portraits of fools, knaves, and even ruffians. The 
 same man, who was well satisfied to sit day after day beside 
 an elderly lady, sewing caps and tippets, except when he was 
 obliged to go and water the flowers, or feed the rabbits, rose 
 up, when Poetry came upon him, sinewy and muscular as a 
 mailed man dallying for a while with a two-edged sword, as if 
 to try its weight and temper, when about to sheer down the 
 Philistines. Cowper goes forth in his holy ire like a man 
 inspired and commissioned. You see his soul glowing and 
 burning with fires kindled on the altar of religion. He comes 
 strong from the study of the old prophets. And in some of 
 his most magnificent marches, you think that you hear the 
 Bible transformed into another shape of poetry, the essence 
 being the same, nor are the sacred strains profaned by being 
 sounded to a lyre smote by such a hand — a hand uplifted duly, 
 many times and oft, besides night and morn, in prayer, and 
 ever " open as day to melting charity." How he sheds 
 sudden day into the midnight darkness of London, lying bare 
 with all her sins and iniquities ! The dark City quakes as 
 she is suddenly brightened, and stands confessed in all her 
 guilt, in which she dares not to glory, now that the hand of 
 heaven seems stretched forth to avenge and destroy. There 
 is nothing in Byron of such sustained majesty as Cowper' s 
 Expostulation with this Queen of the Cities of the earth — nor 
 even in Wordsworth. In a comparison or parallel between 
 these two great bards, Cowper and Wordsworth, which we 
 intend ere long to attempt, we shall venture on some quota- 
 tions even from the poetry of the author of The Task, for we 
 believe that by The Task he is chiefly known ; nor is it wrong, 
 or wonderful, that he should be — but assuredly in his earlier 
 poems, there is more of the vivida vis anhni, even of the Mens 
 Divinior, although for reasons that will be afterwards given to 
 those who wish or want them, they never can be so incorpo- 
 rated with the read poetry of England. Even as a personal 
 satirist — that is the satirist of particular vices, as they are 
 exhibited in individual characters whose portraits are unspar- 
 
240 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 ingly drawn, we know of nobody with whom Cowper may not 
 take rank ; while, as a general satirist of that mysterious com- 
 pound of good and evil, Man, we know nobody who may take 
 rank with him, — for spleen, rancour, bile, in his loftiest moods, 
 he has none, — there is a profound melancholy often mingling 
 with his ire, for he knows that he too is of the same blind 
 race, whom he upbraids with their folly and their wickedness ; 
 he hates sin, but he loves and pities the sinner ; — his is not 
 the railing of sanctimonious pride, but, as a Christian, he feels 
 that he "does well to be angry;" — his Morality is always 
 pure and high, but his Eeligion is a power purer and higher 
 far — its denunciations are altogether of a different nature, 
 appealing to other fears, and other hopes, and other sanctions; 
 and in the spirit of religion alone will any satire ever be 
 poured from the lips of man, which, because of its influence on 
 human happiness and virtue, may be named sacred, holy, 
 divine, and enrolled among the other records of Immortal 
 Song. 
 
 To Cowper, Byron, as a satirist, was far inferior in divine 
 energy. Indeed, his energy in that department, so far from 
 being divine, was intensely human, and in that intensity lay 
 its power, often great and triumphant, but irregular and mis- 
 directed, and just as often defeating itself, — the chief emotions 
 produced in our mind being pain to see such noble gifts 
 abused, — indignation at the recklessness of his injustice, — 
 and, in some striking instances, a high sympathy with the 
 scorn of the men vainly imagined by him to be his victims, — 
 but, in truth, unscathed in their genius and virtue, by the 
 charges that, though launched in lightning, either fall harm- 
 less at their feet, and expire in smoke, or recoil dangerously 
 on him from whose unhallowed hand they had been let loose, 
 and bring the hurt and ignominy which were designed for 
 theirs on his own head — to the entire satisfaction of the world 
 looking on the unprovoked assault, and for a while fearful of 
 the issue. It is a humbling — a shocking — a revolting sight 
 — to see a man of transcendent endowments, like Byron, vul- 
 garly abusing the genius from which, in the highest inspira- 
 tion of his poetry, he delights to borrow; to hear him expressing 
 hatred and scorn of those men who had taught him so much 
 of what was wise, and good, and great, in his own thoughts 
 and feelings ; and but for whom his own works, glorious as they 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 241 
 
 are, had been less glorious ; the wanderings of the " Noble 
 Childe" himself, "musing by flood and fell," had been less 
 sublime ; and Nature herself, to his eyes, as a poet, in a great 
 measure a sealed book. But the soul within him was easily 
 disturbed and distracted, and his ear had been poisoned. Left 
 to his own natural thoughts and feelings, which, in his solemn 
 hours, were always great, or akin to greatness, Byron would 
 have worshipped the genius of the living with much of the 
 religion with which he worshipped the genius of the dead. 
 But his moral being was assailed from many quarters — and 
 nature's best affections and passions, by his own fault, by the 
 fault of another, by the fault of the world, and by evil fortune, 
 seemed at last to be turned against him, — so that Byron in 
 the blaze of fame, and all the glory of genius, did feel, — he has 
 himself confessed it, — as if excommunicated! No wonder 
 then, perhaps, that his satire was reckless and bitter — his 
 merriment often outrageous — because that of an unhappy 
 man. But his genius seldom, though sometimes, deserted 
 him, to whatever unworthy tasks it might be reduced. It 
 remained faithful with him to the last ; nor was its power or 
 inspiration abated, but with the dying struggles of the poor 
 expatriated poet, closing his eyes afar off from friendship and 
 love — from all kindred, and from the face of the young vision — 
 
 " Ada, sole daughter of his house and heart ! " 
 
 Grifford, we suppose, was not a bad satirist ; but of his 
 powers it is hard to judge, for we know not how to distinguish 
 between his own gall, his own bile, his own spleen, and those 
 same charming commodities furnished to him by others — by 
 choice contributors to the Quarterly. Few satirical articles 
 in the Quarterly have been of much merit — bitter bigotry is 
 not keen wit — and it requires original genius to render tole- 
 rable intolerance. Of fine, free, flowing, fearless, joyous, 
 extravagant, horse-playing, horse-laughing, horse -funking, 
 insane and senseless mad humour, not one single drop, not 
 one single gleam, not one single " nicher," ever moistened, or 
 irradiated, or shook the pages of that staid, sober, solemn, 
 stately, King — Church — and Constitution Periodical. The 
 ghastly editor grinned as he cut up the grubs, like a grim 
 insect-butcher, instead of smiling like a suave entomologist. 
 Your true naturalist, having first smoked his beetle to death, 
 
 VOL. V. Q 
 
242 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 pins him down in the glass-case with a pleasant countenance, 
 a preparation undisfigured, though pierced through the spine 
 by a small thin, sharp, bright polished spear, labelled with 
 the creature's scientific name. bright blue sunny spring 
 and summer skies, why hunt butterflies with the same trucu- 
 lent physiognomy, the same sly stealth, and the same bold 
 leap, with which, in the deserts of Africa, you would attack a 
 tiger roaring against you with a tufted tail, some ten or twenty 
 feet high ? Why treat an ass as if he were a lion ? A dragon- 
 fly is not a dragon. Mr Merry was not an Avatar, descending 
 in his Tenth Incarnation to destroy the world — Mrs Mary 
 Kobinson, though certainly not the thing, was yet not the 
 Lady of Babylon, with her hell-red petticoat and cup of 
 abomination, in her sinful and city-sinking hand. Yet the 
 crabbed, elderly, retired little studious gentleman was as 
 proud of his Bceviad and Mseviad, as if, like another Hercules, 
 he had scoured of robbers the inside and the outside of the 
 whole world. Then it is one thing, we shrewdly suspect, to 
 be the translator of Juvenal and Persius, and another thing 
 to be those gentlemen themselves, — just, too, as it is one 
 thing for a true poet of the olden time to have composed, in 
 a fit of inspiration of passion, that elegiac song of almost 
 unendurable pathos, 
 
 " I wish I were where Helen lies, 
 Day and night on me she cries," 
 
 and another thing for a false poetaster of the new time to have 
 scribbled in a sort of waspish grief, very like anger, an imita- 
 tion thereof, as inferior in beauty to the original, as William 
 Gifford's housekeeper, no doubt a worthy woman in her way, 
 inclined to corpulency, and with hair too, too red, was inferior 
 to Adam Fleming's Lady-Love, the Flower of Kirk-Connel, 
 tall and graceful as the lily or the harebell, the blue-bell of 
 Scotland, that on its airy stalk is beloved of the sun, who 
 fears with his kisses to melt the dewdrops on its heavenly 
 blossoms. Mr Lockhart is another guess kind of man. We 
 say to all blockheads, in the words of one of his own Spanish 
 Ballads, 
 
 " Hurra, hurra ! avoid the way of the Avenging Childe ! " 
 
 while the grief and the joy of his poetry, as it is the grief 
 and the joy that has passed through his own generous heart, 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 243 
 
 tmborrowing and unborrowed, speaks the original language of 
 the passions, a language always true to nature, and trium- 
 phant in her power. How from the fanners of his genius 
 would the cockchafers of Cockneys fly like very chaff in- 
 deed ! 
 
 The satire of the Anti-Jacobin was often fine and good. 
 What else could it be when Ellis and Frere, and Smith, and 
 Canning, were triumphing in the "noble rage" of their 
 youthful genius ! It stung the Whigs into the impotence of 
 palsy — to drivelling death. But " 'tis pitiful, 'tis wondrous 
 pitiful," to think how politics do so soon all pass away ! How 
 is it possible to remember satires on forgotten fools — knaves 
 buried in oblivion ? 
 
 " Thelwall ! and ye that lecture as ye go, 
 And for your pains get pelted — praise Lepaux ! " 
 
 Who was Thelwall — who Lepaux ? " The one was a tailor, 
 the other a butcher," some reader, with a historical memory 
 for small facts, replies, and 
 
 " Sic transit gloria Mundi." 
 " So fades, so flourishes, grows dim, and dies, 
 All that that world was proud of." 
 
 And the two-guinea quarto edition of the poetry of those trae 
 w it s — and true wits they were — sells on the stalls at the 
 reduced price of six-and-eightpence — a pettifogger's fee ! 
 
 Of the once famous Rolliad — the celebrated Probationary 
 Odes — what man under fifty can recite a line ? Yet they were 
 chiefly the work of a man of great talents, learning, almost 
 genius — Lawrence — assisted by the ingenious, the graceful, 
 the classical, and the romantic George Ellis, from whose pen, 
 and from whose tongue, and from whose eyes, everything fell 
 in power and beauty, for he was one of England's rarest 
 spirits — witness the immortal Specimens, immortal because 
 true Poetry is so, and kind and congenial and erudite criticism, 
 devoted to the elucidation of her darkness, shares in her im- 
 mortality. 
 
 Old Mathias is not yet dead — and may he breathe the air 
 of Italy till he is a century old, for he is a scholar, and 
 therefore we shall say no severe things of the Pursuits of 
 Literature. But, our dear ancient sir, is it not a little feeble 
 or so — dealing too much with the illustrious obscure ? Yet, 
 
244 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 in as far as literature, and poetry, and philosophy are by 
 their nature higher than politics, and more enduring, even in 
 their least divine spirit, and most perishable form, so have the 
 Pursuits a glimmering existence, while those others have 
 nearly or wholly ceased to be. The text is still occasionally 
 quotable—there are things in the notes not yet extinguished 
 in the dark. The eulogy on 
 
 " The self-supported melancholy Gray," 
 we for one have by heart, 1 and we can say what few can, that 
 by working in the gloom and the glimmer, 
 
 " Hunting half a day for a forgotten dream," 
 
 we could piece together his affectionate tribute of admiration 
 to the learning, the wisdom, and the genius of Glynn (who, 
 asks our gentle reader, was he?) the "loved lapis 2 " of 
 the Cam, Poet and Physician, and in both capacities not un- 
 beloved by Apollo. 
 
 Mercy on us ! we have forgotten Junius — good, stupid, old, 
 grey-headed Taylor and Hessey's darling pet, Sir Philip 
 Francis ! Ay, he was indeed a satirist — spirited and splendid 
 ever — and it is only wonderful how he should have been so 
 written about by blockheads. But his winged words were not 
 in verse, for the " Vices," we hope, he never even saw — and 
 therefore for the present we leave him to the fondling of his last 
 discoverer and dry-nurse, and the rest of the old women. 
 
 1 " Say, would your thought to Homer's pomp aspire, 
 Or wake to loftiest rapture Pindar's lyre ? 
 Go then and view, since closed his cloister' d day, 
 The self-supporting melancholy Gray : 
 Dark was his morn of life, and bleak the spring, 
 Without one fostering ray from Britain's king ; 
 Granta's dull abbots cast a sidelong glance, 
 And Levite gownsmen hugged their ignorance. 
 With his high spirit strove the master-bard, 
 And was his own exceeding great reward ; 
 Years without hope in tardy progress pass, 
 Till some few grains yet lingering in the glass, 
 He rose, late-heeded by patrician care, 
 Though private friendship helped him to the chair." 
 Gray was appointed Professor of Modern History in the University of 
 Cambridge, late in life, by the Duke of Grafton, the chancellor, at the parti- 
 cular recommendation (as it was strongly believed) of Mr Stonehaven. — 
 Pursuits of Literature, p. 15. 
 2 A favourite of Apollo, commemorated by Virgil, jEneid, xii. 391-394. 
 
THE MAN OF TON - . 245 
 
 What shall we say of the Edinburgh Review f — Least said 
 is soonest mended. Jeffrey is at once a deep and delicate 
 cutter-up ; and nature made him, in his amiability, almost — 
 perhaps entirely — a first-rate satirist. He often touches you, 
 by a seemingly careless pass, with equal dexterity, when you 
 are off and on your guard ; but prefers disabling your sword- 
 arm to pinking you through the body. When he does deal a 
 mortal blow, it is always on the right side, never on the left ; 
 he seems to think it cruel to pierce your heart, and therefore 
 contents himself with spitting your liver. The old Fencers 
 were fond of the eye, as you may see from the pictures in that 
 curious and scientific old folio on the Art, in the possession of 
 our sound-hearted, nimble- wristed Signior Francalanza, whom, 
 without any disparagement to the illustrious Koland, we de- 
 light to honour as a master, and as a man. Jeffrey is up to 
 this trick, and pokes his point — better for the blockhead if it 
 be of foil than of rapier — into the great staring goggle eye of 
 his antagonist, till, blind as a bat, the bully cuts and runs, in 
 plight of Polyphemus or Cacus of old, and is hissed off the 
 stage. His light play is beautiful — and his own guard close, 
 compact, and firm ; so that it requires an Admirable Crichton 
 to touch him on a vital part. But he is rather out of practice 
 — rests on his former fame — and is careless about accepting 
 the challenge of a clever Tyro. About the year 1804, or 
 1805, or 1806, he won the prize-sword, at a public exhibition, 
 from a crowd of no contemptible competitors — and whoever 
 taught him fence, has endless honour in his scholar — for, as 
 our worthy and ingenious friend Pierce Egan would say, 
 " Jack's as good as his master." 
 
 Brougham is but an indifferent and awkward hand at the 
 small-sword — the deadliest by far of all weapons — and prides 
 himself in his use of the sabre, the broadsword, or claymore. 
 He is an ugly customer. Nor should we at all relish having 
 our head broken by such a player at single-stick. But he has 
 a loose hanging guard ; nor is it difficult, as we opine, for a 
 clever and active antagonist, in no long encounter, to make 
 the blood trickle an inch down his formidable forehead. He 
 blusters and bullies too much during the set-to — is not parti- 
 cularly conscientious about a foul blow — and it is acknow- 
 ledged on all hands, that he is too much given to ruffianing it. 
 It will be in the recollection of all our sporting readers, that 
 
246 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 he once suddenly attacked George Canning, that most skilful 
 small-swordsman, — unawares, and out of the ring — and for 
 his pains, got punished by a thrust in the mouth, that almost 
 cut his tongue in two, the point coming out at the cheek, a 
 rueful and ghastly wound that left a scar. He flies at high 
 game. Once on a day, when the " Great Lord " was in Spain, 
 he challenged Wellington himself — but now he wears his 
 arm in a sling, and seems in no mood for fighting. The King 
 of Prussia, and the Emperors of Austria and Eussia, has he 
 also roared on to enter the lists — and indeed all the members 
 — either one after another, or all at once — of that invisible, 
 and hitherto apparently pacific body — the Holy Alliance. 
 But fretting, and fuming, and foaming, is not fighting ; and 
 though we grant that the odds would be on his head at Tat- 
 tersall's and Brookes', if matched against old Fred — or the 
 Austrian — we back Nicholas against him at six to four — who, 
 we understand, has threatened to take the shine out of him, 
 were it only to revenge the insult offered of old to his late 
 brother Sandy, who was not a man, had he come to the 
 scratch, to have let Brougham off without a bellyful. 
 
 As for Sydney Smith, to him fighting is fun, and he cuts as 
 many capers in the ring as young Spring, the Conqueror. 
 But he is formidable in his frolic — though rather too showy, 
 yet a clean, straight, and even heavy hitter ; and most of his 
 antagonists, though heavier men than himself, and deficient 
 in neither science nor bottom, have, after a few rounds, in 
 which their gravity was most amusingly, and to the infinite 
 mirth of all beholders, contrasted with the antics of the Par- 
 son who kept hopping about like a mountebank, yet all the 
 while dealing out right and left handers like lightning, been 
 carried out of the ring deaf as a house, and blind as the pier 
 of Leith, or the mole of Tyre. He has fought one or two 
 drawn battles, especially one with the best man then in the 
 ring, under the nomme de guerre of Peter Plymley, which was 
 brought to a wrangle, and ended in a draw — but he has never 
 yet been fairly defeated ; and to accomplish that will require 
 an out-and-outer. 
 
 And now we feel ourselves in a peculiarly delicate situation 
 — and therefore, though far from being " rude in speech," we 
 fear that 
 
 "Little shall we grace our cause by speaking of Oukself !" 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 247 
 
 Satire is a gift. It seems to be hereditary in families. 
 Our great-grandfather, — we have reason to remember him 
 well — Gamaliel North — he was a wise man as well as a witty, 
 and we were brought up at his knees, which accounts for 
 some of the most striking peculiarities in our character, — 
 handled the Knout, an instrument just then invented, with 
 astonishing vigour and dexterity. Indeed, we question if any 
 one comparable to Gamaliel — not even the present company 
 excepted — exists in this age. Stepping back a few yards, and 
 balancing himself on the bole of the left foot, his outstretched 
 right just touching the ground with the toe, he brandished, 
 nourished, — but these are poor words, altogether inadequate, 
 — he whirled — that is better — the Knout with such velocity 
 round his grey head, — for Gamaliel, at the time we speak of, 
 was waxing old, and well stricken in years, — that it became 
 invisible as the twisted sunbeams. It smote the culprit like 
 light; and at every glance the hide fell peeled off in long 
 regular slips, true to each other's breadth to a hair, from nape 
 to hip-bone of the soul. Some of the sufferers themselves, on 
 whom we have operated, have been since so polite as to com- 
 pliment us on our performances in language which it would 
 now be gross self-flattery to repeat; yet we fear we are 
 nothing to Gamaliel. Others, again, on whom we have not 
 yet operated, pretend to think our character as executioners 
 greatly overrated ; but we cannot help hinting, that it would 
 be prudent for such novices to defer pronouncing judgment 
 for a few months, till our old Knout returns from St Peters- 
 burg, where it is now under repair. Leigh Hunt, the last 
 culprit who tasted it, and who is well qualified to speak on the 
 point, having more than once experienced it before, complained 
 to Mr Colburn that it did not cut so sweetly — these were his 
 words — as about the Spring of Eighteen — that it was more 
 apt to mangle, tearing off large pieces of flesh to the very 
 spine. He fears injury in the vital parts, which, except per- 
 haps in the case of a crime like his, it is not the aim and 
 object, the scope and tendency of the Knout to inflict. Wait, 
 then, without impatience till it return from Kussia, where it 
 has excited the admiration of the Czar, and we think we can 
 promise such a treat with a few delinquents as will vindicate 
 its most sanguinary character from all such weak and wicked 
 aspersions, and convince the whole world that it is still the 
 
248 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 same formidable instrument as of yore ; — ten stripes, sickness 
 — fifteen, swooning — twenty, death! 
 
 Next view us in the light of dissectors. First, we get a 
 good subject. If the subject be a man — an individual, as he 
 is called — a private character, who is also so far a public 
 one, that he has, though no particular enemy of ours more 
 than of everybody else, notwithstanding written a base bad 
 book — we lay him on the table. As our Knout is at St Peters- 
 burg, we are illustrating, remember, our meaning by the dis- 
 secting-knife. The object, you perceive, is to torture the 
 subject. Of course, we have humanely bound him, hand and 
 foot, bringing the cords some five or six times round about 
 over his body — not yet a corpse, and below the table. He is 
 also gagged. 'Tis as well, too, to draw his nightcap over his 
 face, for as our nerves are fine, the sight of the contortions of 
 his physiognomy might affect the touch of our hand, and 
 make it tremble, which it is absolutely necessary should not 
 happen, in some of the more exquisitely delicate points of the 
 operation. Look at your watch, and then we go to work. It 
 may be advisable to flay some part of him — and as he is lying 
 on his back, we may just as well begin at the breast. The 
 barber belonging to the establishment shaves it, which lubri- 
 cates the skin and loosens it a little, rendering the operation 
 easier to both parties. Don't heed the beating of the heart. 
 There, lay the flap over the stomach, and did you ever see 
 such black veins, as if filled, not with blood, but with ink ? 
 You almost see into the libeller's heart, and can count the very 
 lies. There is the seat of the distemper that has brought him 
 upon that table, and under that knife. Now you were expect- 
 ing that we were but going to cut him up from head to foot, 
 into an anatomy. In this lies your very common mistake. 
 He might die. Now he lives, and will long live ; but in per- 
 petual pain. That flap will never unite again with the flesh. 
 For months and years it will strive to do so, in fiercest fester; 
 but it must finally be clipped off by the shears, and then a new 
 skin will have to begin to grow, like ice, in almost invisible thin- 
 ness, creeping over the surface of a muddy pool. But after that 
 comes a' thaw, a bloody thaw, and the wretch in agony prays 
 for frost. Unbind, unfasten, ungag body, feet, hands, mouth, 
 and let the Cockney rise and shake himself — shivering like a 
 poplar, and white in the face as his own ghost. Give him a 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 249 
 
 cup of cold water, and force him to put on his clothes. Then, 
 as the cloth touches the raw sore, he shrieks like a torn-up 
 mandrake. Seal his lips in silence, on pain of tearing the 
 covering off his liver, as we have off his heart. Order him off, 
 out of our presence — to Hampstead, if he will — or Lisson 
 Grove — or any other suburban retreat — and as he treads along 
 in misery, and meets an occasional friend, who asks him the 
 meaning of that face of his — of the hand still kept in horror 
 within the covering of the left breast — his white lips utter, 
 they can no more — " From Bartholomew's Hospital — they 
 have flayed my breast alive — Abernethy has done it — no, 
 North — Christopher North — surgeon to Satan — Oh ! look, 
 look here !" An indefinite dread of danger sets each succes- 
 sive Cockney to his heels, and in a few days it is known that 
 there is a man in the neighbourhood who has been flayed 
 alive — rumour riots in fresh horror every morning, and finally, 
 it is said, that you can see his heart within his ribs as plain 
 as the combs within a glass-hive — and that maggots, as thick 
 as bees, are running out and in the rotten cells of corruption. 
 
 Vary the image, into something between Knife and Knout. 
 
 The worst of the Cockneys is, that they are the poorest, 
 most despicable devils ! Were the Furies now alive — Tisi- 
 phone herself, who seems to us to have had the most intense 
 passion for whipping and scourging of any of that family, 
 though the other two sisters, Megara and Alecto, were far 
 from being amiss in their way, and excited great alarm, when- 
 ever the cry about either was, " The schoolmistress is abroad" 
 — Tisiphone herself, we say, would have scorned to degrade 
 her Taws — thrice dipt in Tartarus — to the breech — for the 
 conscience of many of them lies there — of such contemptible 
 transgressors. And shall we condescend to cut into flesh 
 which the Furies would have disdained to score ? We who 
 are "fierce as ten furies," and well entitled to be so, but, at 
 the same time, even more judicious than the Thonged Sisters 
 in the selection of our victims, and in the style of our sacri- 
 fice? We fly not by night — we haunt not the chamber of 
 sleep. In the sun we stand — and smite the sinner when he 
 is broad awake. But we must fancy before we flay him — front 
 to front must we stand — and with the exception of Hunt and 
 Hazlitt, and a few other Cockneys, who not only retreat, as it 
 is most natural to do, but also advance with their " hinder- 
 
250 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 ends" towards you, which, it is most unnatural to do, — we 
 cannot charge our memory with an instance of our nine- 
 stinged rattlesnake having been applied to the posteriors of a 
 single living creature during the nineteenth century. 
 
 There is no need, at all times, of such strong and figurative 
 language as we have been now using — so let us now give a 
 specimen, in treating of the principles of satire, of the " Mitis 
 sapientia Leeli." How pleasant to sport and play in badinage, 
 with some silly fellow of a blockhead, who had taken it into 
 his timber to be severe upon you, when you were last on the 
 Continent, and had been showing off before the world, — to help 
 him by means of certain humane hints, and sly suggestions, 
 to make himself at last utterly ridiculous ; while in the guffaws 
 that peal and roar around, he hears the very consummation of 
 his triumph ! You have seen, perhaps, a poor happy natural, 
 or idiot, a Bauldy — a creature with a face at once grave and 
 whimsical, long nose, rather to the side, enormous chin, lank 
 plooky jaws, and no forehead, dressed up in regimentals by 
 the officers of some corps, in harmless allowance of the inno- 
 cent's delusion, who thinks himself the Colonel ; an enormous 
 cocked-hat and feather, jack-boots, long-tailed coat sweeping 
 the street, and a sword too — at least a hilt and a scabbard, of 
 which the point goes trailing along on wheels. One might 
 look on the martial sight till he got sad — sad for the sake of 
 the blind being in his pride — sad for the sake of the famous 
 kings and conquerors who, often senseless as that poor idiot, 
 and, unlike him, most wicked too, have strutted over the dead 
 and dying, and played the fool on what are called the fields of 
 fame ! But this would be to moralise — and nothing is farther 
 from our present intention than to set either our readers or 
 ourselves to sleep. Well, then, the Bauldy who had been 
 cutting us up, it seems, in our absence, we persuade to array 
 himself in such intellectual regimentals. He imagines him- 
 self mightier than any "captain, or colonel, or knight-at- 
 arms," adjusts his sash in the mirror — nay, draws his sword 
 to show its glittering sharpness — it being all the while of 
 painted wood — makes playful passes, as if he would run you 
 through the body, with a weapon which you well know had 
 once failed in sticking a haggis — and then, untying his 
 sword-belt, and laying it down " with an air," of which Hunt 
 himself might be proud, he obeys the bidding of the lady of 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 251 
 
 the house, who is in the secret, and, seated at her right hand, 
 is intrusted, as a mark of the highest honour, with the toil of 
 distributing the roast-goose, of which one of the legs — that on 
 which the bird generally stands when lost in a day-dream or 
 reverie — refusing to act as a separate detachment at a dis- 
 tance from the main body, and to follow the wings, occupies 
 his continued time, attention, and talents, during the remainder 
 of the first Course ; and as that Course is an alpha and an 
 omega, the wit loses his dinner for his jest, and has at last the 
 satisfaction of discovering that he is the object of a general 
 smile, and that, too, on an empty stomach — a titter that, 
 gathering something more cachinnatory and cachinnatory 
 from each circumvolution of the round table, ere long breaks 
 into a laugh, and finishes in a guffaw. 
 
 But of ourselves, no more — and now to the Man of Ton — a 
 Satire. Perhaps it is a Satire on ourselves — and is it possible 
 that we can be — the Man of Ton ? We are afraid to open the 
 pamphlet. But no — we never were Men of Ton. For the last 
 fifty years we have despised the whole system utterly, and 
 almost all that belong to it. They are a shallow set. Their 
 passions are poor and paltry, because their objects are so ; and 
 we cannot keep our temper when we hear of any of them 
 having had the impertinence, the presumption, the insolence, 
 to commit suicide. What right has a fellow to cut his throat, 
 or blow off the top of his skull to the ceiling of a well-fre- 
 quented hotel, because duns have debts against him, and 
 bumbailiffs writs ? Poor miserable devil ! had he the spirit of 
 a louse — an insect which nevertheless he has the audacity to 
 pretend to despise — he would know, that to be driven to death 
 by any number of small debts, drafts, and duns, is more 
 cowardly far than it would be to leap into a coal-pit to escape 
 the midges. Then, who are Ins creditors? Chiefly tailors. 
 Because he is not able to pay for his breeches, he puts himself to 
 the additional expense of a shroud ! That is logical. Because 
 his razors or his pistols are unpaid for, with the one he cuts 
 his weasand, or with the other he blows a small neat hole in 
 his head ! Equally logical. Now, were he to rob on the high- 
 way, like the late Mr Abershaw, or murder solitary old women 
 in Montague Place, or elsewhere, like the present Mr Jones, 
 there might be some excuse for him ; for we begin to suspect, 
 that to be a murderer of any kind — we mean a bond fide manual 
 
252 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 flesh- arid-blood murderer, and make no allusion to the more 
 protracted and clumsy and bungling breaking of parents' 
 hearts — requires more physical, we had almost said moral 
 courage, than often adorns and dignifies the character of a 
 Man of Ton. It must demand great presence of mind to start 
 up from your seat suddenly, when chatting across a small 
 round working-table with Mrs Jeffs — to out with your razor 
 from its black paper-case — and amused, rather than otherwise, 
 with the ancient woman's eyes, all in a moment so prominent 
 with horror, that they seem to start out of the sockets, with- 
 out the application of your eight fingers and two thumbs to 
 her scraggy weasand — to proceed instanter to business, and 
 bending back the old grey head, so tidily and decently done 
 up with a nice widow's cap of black crape and ribbons, cut 
 clear through thorax and gullet to the spine. Oh ! England ! 
 thou aboundest in ruffians athirst for blood! This Spring, 
 what a calendar ! Your Man of Ton has not the heart, the 
 soul for this — he can take in tailors, and bilk tavern-keepers 
 and hackney- coachmen, and swindle Johnny Raws and Greens 
 at billiard and boxing matches, and play booty with black- 
 legs at horse and man races, and at dog and cock-fights bully 
 those who, in their own persons, unite the qualities of black- 
 guard and blockhead, and achieve other exploits worthy of his 
 character and calling ; but he dares not steal at midnight all 
 by himself into a lonely tenement and murder Mrs Jeffs. For 
 what Men of Ton do, therefore, and for what they don't do, 
 we despise them from the bottom of our souls, lose our temper, 
 as we said, when they commit suicide, and grudge them the 
 credit of the verdict of the Coroner's Inquest — Felo de se 1 
 
 But those persons, it will be said, whom we have been thus 
 slightly sketching, are not Men of Ton. They are Men of 
 Ton. When you see them in full fig and wig and trig in 
 Bond Street or Brookes's, they are apparitions of beauty and 
 splendour — but look on them in the Fleet or the Bench, and 
 meaner, shabbier, dirtier-looking blackguards your eyes never 
 beheld — till indeed you see them again, prowling about lanes 
 and alleys, after a discharge of insolvent debtors, and then you 
 admit that you knew not before the beau-ideal of the hang- 
 dog-looking lounger, lying in wait, ready for the perpetration 
 of any of the more cowardly capital crimes. 
 
 Yet it is pleasant to think that they do not alwavs escape 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 253 
 
 unhanged from Newgate. Of the last speech and dying 
 words, it may not unfrequently be said, apostrophising the 
 strangled shade of some broken-down, and what is still worse, 
 cut- down roue, 
 
 "Mutato nomine, de te 
 
 Fabula narratur." 
 
 The inimitable George Cruikshank has hit off, we think, some 
 such Man of Ton holding out his wrists to the cords in the 
 preparing-room of Newgate, while some sympathetic sheriff 
 whispers in his ear a last interrogatory respecting the state of 
 his present feelings and his future prospects. 
 
 Shut your loathing eyes on such miscreants, whose coward 
 cruelty makes the cut-throat stand out in a sort of relief, and 
 open them on one who was born and bred a Gentleman, a cha- 
 racter which so sticks to his very skin, stained as it is with 
 vice and sin, that to strip him of it, you must flay him alive. 
 He is none of your base pretenders — but he gives the world 
 assurance of a Man of Ton. But — tall, straight, strong, 
 elegant, graceful, brave in his martial beauty, for he is of the 
 Guards — bright with all the age's accomplishments — formed 
 to daunt man's and to charm woman's eye — with an intellect 
 clear and unclouded enough for a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 — and had you heard him address the mob of many thousands 
 from the hustings, where he stood gloriously with an empty 
 purse at the bottom of the poll, on the crimes and corruption 
 of the government, and the many mortal diseases under which 
 the British Constitution groans, you would have wished to see 
 Brougham shoved into the dusty law-courts for ever, and this 
 fierce declaimer appointed to the leadership of Opposition — an 
 office, alas ! now no more, — still there is not in all his Majesty's 
 dominions — high-born though he be — and allied by marriage 
 to a noble house — a slave-born slave that tills the soil, such a 
 
 Villain. Both father and mother, before he had reached 
 
 the age of manhood — that Man of Ton murdered. Had their 
 bodies been opened, both their hearts would have been found 
 cleft asunder. The seduction of that fair orphan maid — 
 another Ophelia — the dreadful dragging of that beautiful lake 
 in the midst of their old ancestral woods, and the first appear- 
 ance of the long black hair above the surface — the bloody 
 forehead of that dark-haired boy her brother, shot stone-dead 
 at the first fire — but that was before the poor maniac's sin — 
 
254 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 that fatal flight to France with a matron once the paragon of 
 domestic life, and the mother of four cherubs, whose soft, sweet, 
 little hands, eyes, lips, prayers, sleep, once so tenderly, so 
 passionately beloved, had lost the holy power over her infatu- 
 ated bosom — the husband against whose life he dared not 
 touch that unerring hair-trigger, and who was too much 
 humbled by his misery to seek his, for the pride of the proudest 
 has been known to yield to the spirit's anguish, agonised like 
 the body on the rack, " with answerable pains, but more 
 intense," driven to die a moping idiot in a mad-house ! No 
 wonder his parents' hearts were broken, no wonder his father 
 cursed him on his death-bed — once — once only, suddenly 
 springing up, as if scorched with fire — and then, after gazing 
 wildly on the recognised faces around, among which was the 
 one so fair, so pale, on the marriage morn, long, long ago — 
 and fair still, but whiter than living face should be — he laid 
 his head down to be lifted up no more ; and in a long, low, 
 sobbing prayer, implored forgiveness and mercy from heaven 
 to his beloved son ! 
 
 Now, there is some meaning — some merit in such a Man of 
 Ton as this, considered as a subject of satire. He has some 
 strength of character — the passions have shook him, although 
 not yet scathed or scarred ; and when God lets loose upon him 
 Kemorse, more dreadful than all the Furies, then Heaven will 
 frown on him, and his whole soul, to its centre, will quake in 
 the fear that it is lost for ever. The devil does not despise 
 him, as he carries him off — and the dim and dismal legion 
 moans a fiend-felt welcome at his approach. Juvenal — or 
 Johnson — or Byron, might, without any loss of dignity, each 
 in his own style, to use the strong language of the middle 
 Term, 
 
 " Bid him go to hell— to hell he goes ! " 
 
 We hold, therefore, that the follies and vices of Men of Ton, 
 as they are called, are, in the gross and the main, beneath 
 satire. But there are follies, and vices, and crimes, and sins, 
 in London, it is to be hoped, worthy of the highest satire. If 
 not, England is in a bad way indeed, and must be miserably 
 degenerated from the grandeur of her former wickedness. Is 
 there no agony of grief or guilt there, but what is caused by 
 debts for wearing-apparel, intrigues at Almack's, Eouge et 
 Noir, Dice, and Blind Hookey, and settling days at Tattersall's? 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 255 
 
 If so, you must fly with us from the pitiful world of the West 
 End to any rural village in Scotland, with a population under 
 a thousand souls ; and there, beneath straw roofs that seem to 
 rest so calmly under Sun and Moon, that you might believe no 
 passion ever stirred within their lowly walls, we undertake to 
 teach you, in six lessons, more of human nature in its exalta- 
 tion and debasement, its bliss and its bale, its holiness and its 
 wickedness, (for, is not the heart at all times most despe- 
 rately wicked ?) than could be made visible by a thousand 
 satires on Men of Ton, forsooth, feebly illuminating a few 
 paltry fools or knaves, scamps or simpletons. Burns had better 
 subjects for satire — a thousand times over, among milk-maids 
 and turnip-hoers, "the free maids who weave their threads 
 with bone," Sour-milks, " Dorothy Draggletail," " Cicely with 
 her Pail," and " Humphrey with his Flail." 
 
 In all great cities, not only is there too much hollowness in 
 the heart of real inner passion, but too much importance 
 attached to the mere exterior forms of life. These forms come 
 to be considered as all in all ; and the observance or violation 
 of them is set down, not to the score of propriety or impro- 
 priety, but of virtue or vice. Manners take the place of 
 Morals. Sometimes there is a grace and a beauty in this 
 which hide from us, or make even, in our lower moods, some 
 amends for the want of what, in our higher moods, we always 
 painfully desiderate ; but then the grace and the beauty must 
 be exquisite to be able to produce this effect; when they are 
 imperfect and but half polished, they disappoint us, and then 
 we withhold all sympathy from their possessors, unless we 
 discern real and substantial worth in their characters. What 
 can be more disgusting, even to our perceptions of the amusing, 
 the entertaining, and the witty, than the shallow insolence of 
 such a blockhead, for example, as that not only long tolerated, 
 but admired bore, Beau Brummel? Had such a great big 
 good-lookiDg jack-ass browsed and brayed about cottages, 
 farm-steads, and villages, he would have been looked at in his 
 true light, that of a hare-brained natural, a half-fool — half- 
 knave, too lazy to work, except, perhaps, to milk the cows, — 
 and right-thinking boors, with all their wives, sweethearts, 
 boys and girls, would have laughed at his jokes, as at the wit 
 of a manifest Bauldy. No doubt, they would have thought 
 him very comical ; but now and then they would have incon- 
 
256 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 siderately kicked him, whereas the King merely forbade him 
 the Presence. 
 
 So it is, we fear, with West End wit in general. It is so 
 limited in its absurdity, to the worst and weakest spirit oi a 
 Set, that it is absolutely nauseous even to those who without 
 — God be thanked — belonging to the Set, have yet no very 
 great contempt, and not the least animosity to its members — 
 such as Our Gracious Selves, who are not unwilling that 
 fashionable people should have some wit of their own, or 
 something sufficiently like wit, to satisfy their peculiar taste 
 and genius, but who scunner at " its trivial fond records," and 
 hastily leave the room gulping. 
 
 Fashionable people themselves must be of our opinion. 
 When they go to summer-quarters, to live through the week 
 on cheese -parings, and on Sundays on eggs and bacon — which 
 so many thousands of them do, and we have seen doing — is 
 not all that vile would-be wit as stale to their imaginations as 
 the crusts of the day-before-yesterday's bread to their mouths ? 
 It is not the sort of wit at all that satisfies the fancy of families 
 employed, during the summer-solstice, " in making the ends 
 meet." The scantier and thinner the body's fare, the more 
 plentiful and substantial should be that of the mind. The 
 conduct of our friends in town during the season has been 
 most blamable, and much too expensive for purses of their 
 jingle. But still there are people of some sense and talent 
 among them ; some perception and feeling of what is what ; 
 and to them the remorse must be, if not more painful, certainly 
 more degrading, which they feel from having " laughed most 
 consumedly" at the drivelling inanities of privileged ninnies, 
 than from having got over head and ears in debt, — dipped 
 small, snug, neat hereditary estates of some five hundred acres 
 or so, with a fifteen hundred pound rental, a happy medium 
 among the squirearchy, — and been obliged to sell out stock in 
 the very face of Mr Kothschild and his brother the Baron. But, 
 at this rate, we shall never have done — nor indeed begun with 
 this article — so now for the Man of Ton. 
 
 Had the poem been about one-half the length, it had been 
 as good again. The author loves to spin a long yarn, and 
 what is very long is generally very weak ; yet he is a man of 
 talent, and we are far from not admiring his poem. It is a 
 serious business, however, to trace the hero of a tale from his 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 257 
 
 cradle to his grave. A satire of sixteen cantos (they are short 
 to be sure) might have cut up the whole human race into dog- 
 and-cat's-meat. Yet the infancy of the hero is soon disposed 
 of, in a line not peculiarly characteristic of the childhood of 
 a Man of Ton — 
 
 " His years of infancy roll'd quickly on" — 
 
 and his boyhood at Eton occupies about fifty lines, not one of 
 which is above mediocrity, and some score or two below it. 
 The departure of the hero, whose " ancestorial name is John," 
 from his father's hall to Cambridge, is spirited, and shows that 
 our author can write a bit. 
 
 " Behold the ( march of intellect,' whose power 
 Impels its owner fourteen miles an hour ! 
 Mamma looks out with ecstasy upon it, 
 "Waves her white hand, and nods her new French bonnet. 
 Thus, when the builder has achieved the ship, 
 And her firm keel yet lingers on the slip, 
 Some beauty hurls a bottle at her nose, 
 And gives the bark a name, as off she goes. 
 She, like this youth, the stormy seas must brave, 
 And meet the untried hazard of the wave. 
 Joy hails the launch with folly on the deck, 
 Nor once anticipates the future wreck." 
 
 Eton was very bad — Cambridge is something better — and 
 we opine that the author is a cantab. 
 
 " Stale jokes, hall dinner, and infernal port," 
 
 we understand — have heard — ate and drunk. This is the best 
 we can say of the first two cantos. 
 
 At Cambridge, John has got into debt, of course — and the 
 old gentleman has been obliged to come down handsomely, 
 and so have 
 
 " His ancient groves, 
 "Woods that his grandsire raised, the shades he loves, 
 Where yet unwounded spreads the gnarled oak, 
 Nor the scared dryads fear'd the woodman's stroke." 
 
 The young prodigal is, notwithstanding, well received on 
 his return to the hall — having a friend, as usual, in his foolish 
 mother, and after much rural festivity, 
 
 " Fun at the feast, and frolic at the ball," 
 VOL. v. R 
 
258 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 with a replenished purse he sets out in a post-chaise on a 
 voyage of discovery to London. The closing lines of Canto 
 Third describe his entrance into the Wen by a novel and 
 amusing simile. 
 
 " So in my walk oft musing I have seen, 
 
 In thy famed park, St James, miscall'd the Green, 
 A patient cow her spotted heir produce, 
 (She beats a dandy, for her calf's of use), 
 Blest above all th' inheritors of horn, 
 To instant knowledge of the world he's born. 
 At once from deep Cimmerian gloom he comes, 
 On Piccadilly's crowd, its carts and drums, 
 With belles and beaux acquainted in a minute, 
 With fashion's world, and half the folly in it." 
 
 Canto Fourth is entitled Preparation — and here begins our 
 disgust. John gets into the hands of Stultz, Andrews, Adams, 
 Hoby, Milton, and Lewis — tailors, to wit, coachmakers, horse- 
 dealers, opera-box sellers, gunsmiths, and tradesmen in general. 
 Then ensues initiation into pigeon - shooting — some of the 
 mysteries of Crockford's — that eternal theme — and the Canto 
 ends with a simile of a trout swallowing a fly, which, we are 
 sorry to see, shows that this author is no angler. 
 
 Three hundred lines have now been written, read, and criti- 
 cised, and pray what is the amount of their meaning ? And 
 this is satire I 
 
 Canto Fifth is called the Betting-Book — utterly inane. The 
 Sixth is better, namely, the Opera-Dancer. We have looked 
 in vain for an opera-dancer in it — but there is a very spirited 
 sketch of a character not uncommon in the world, who after- 
 wards plays a leading part in the poem. 
 
 " He was, in truth, a man, — much mixed of hue, 
 Fixed to no creed, to no allegiance true ; 
 Grasping he was,— all enterprise for pelf, 
 And sworn at any rate to serve himself, 
 Yet rash and wanting caution in the chase, 
 With more of speed than bottom in the race. 
 Half of his wisdom makes a better man, 
 And half his caution lays a safer plan. 
 In early youth a coxcomb and a dupe, 
 Mature, he finds, to conquer he must stoop ; 
 And with a crafty disappointed mind, 
 Has vowed eternal warfare with mankind. 
 
THE MAX OF TON. 259 
 
 Strange, bootless passion ! can sucli monsters be, 
 
 To trample on the youthful destiny ! 
 
 To lure, like Comus, to th' enchanted cave, 
 
 The trusting victim that he seems to save ! 
 
 To beasts of form ,uncouth, and passing strange 
 
 The stranded mariners did Circe change ; 
 
 And man, God's glorious image there was found, 
 
 Bow'd like a brute, and creeping on the ground ; 
 
 So, by base arts, the modern sorcerer rules 
 
 The plastic nature of unfashion'd fools : 
 
 What once was good, to meanness he transmutes, 
 
 And in the process moulds them into brutes." 
 
 Surely, hoped we, Canto Seventh, will improve a bit. Epsom 
 is a taking title — but no, it is as flat as the Course. The 
 Betting ring is but indifferent — but it is the best passage. 
 
 " High on the downs the awful ring is made, 
 The gath'ring clan of all the black- leg trade : 
 A thousand shouts increase the deaf ning cry, 
 And quite confound all question and reply ; 
 Yet order still o'er madness holds her rule, 
 And Cocker's self might learn in Gully's school. 
 The storm increases, swells the pencill'd score, 
 And lords and senators and bullies roar. 
 The statelier crew, their speculation made, 
 Forsake the rabble and invest the glade, 
 "Where, just let out, the paragons are seen 
 To press, not wound, with glitt'ring hoof the green." 
 
 The false start — the real start — the race — and the result — 
 though Mameluke and Glenartney ran — excite no more anima- 
 tion or interest, than if it were a donkey-race at a country fair. 
 
 Settling day passes over in Canto Eighth ; but it is destitute 
 of any of the agitations of passion ; and we cannot for a moment 
 believe that the writer ever was himself on the turf. Our 
 iEneas, in the hands of his Achates, is getting himself ruined, 
 of course, with all possible expedition. That worthy lends 
 him ten thousand pounds, on a post-obit for fifty, ditto, ditto, 
 on the death of his father, who hearing many dreadful rumours 
 of his son's profligacy and extravagance, 
 
 " The old man cursed his son, fell sick, and died." 
 
 A very good line indeed ! 
 
 John, after giving his father a suitable funeral, sets off, in 
 
260 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Canto Ninth, in a black hunting- coat, and with a mistress, to 
 Melton Mowbray, where he gets quizzed by the knowing ones, 
 and on no occasion whatever is in at the death. This is carry- 
 ing the joke too far. Poor John might have been represented, 
 we think, as a devil at a double fence, and no brook-shyer. 
 But he has not the sense even to provide himself with a stud 
 of full-breds — and rides to cover on a roadster. Why, we 
 ourselves would have known better than that ; though we have 
 taken as many brushes with Old Meynel's slow-hounds — 
 properly so called — on a nag that used to go in the harrows 
 between field-days, as any younker that ever hunted on a racer. 
 As for our author, we take him to be a man of sedentary habits, 
 fonder of lolling on sofas, and playing " with the tangles of 
 Nesera's hair;" and we are far from disputing his taste on that 
 score ; and of lying back half-asleep in a barouche skimming 
 along the macadam, than risking his neck either in sweep- 
 stakes — gentlemen riders of course — or runs in the Melton 
 Mowbray country. We question if he ever saw a fox in all 
 his born days but in a kennel, " dragging at each remove a 
 lengthened chain." If it be otherwise, still he is no Nimrod. 
 Nor does he write with that signature in the Sporting Magazine, 
 we swear, nor with any signature at all in the Annals. We 
 are much mistaken if there are not other amusements of which 
 he is fonder than of fox-hunting, and in which, without paying 
 him any extravagant compliment, we doubt not he cuts a far 
 better figure, and plays a more spirited part. The following 
 animated, and indeed poetical lines, in Canto Tenth, are proof 
 of our assertion. 
 
 " Meantime the lovely Friska'inelli knew 
 The dandies come at seven, a chosen few. 
 Oft in the glass her sparkling eyes she view'd, 
 The brows repair'd, the faded rose renew' d. 
 En boucle now, and now with nicer care, 
 In graceful ringlets, curl'd her jetty hair. 
 On her fair neck an em'rald cross she wore, 
 Which Jews would lend upon who lent before. 
 Her full firm limbs, a robe of velvet brown 
 ShoVd, yet conceal'd, and hung all graceful down ; 
 And shoes of emerald green peep'd out, to see 
 If well they match' d with so much symmetry. 
 A belt of em'ralds form'd her tighten'd zone, 
 Her heart's cold image was each precious stone. 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 261 
 
 Yet lovely look'd she, like another Thais, 
 
 Not lovelier the rose in June or May is. 
 
 With radiant smiles she met the doting boy, 
 
 His all her beauty,— he her sum of joy !" 
 An acquaintance of Jack's— we have too long called him by 
 the " ancestorial name of John "—takes a liking to the lady- 
 contrives that his horse shall lose a shoe one day, and stake 
 himself another— leaves Jack in the lurch at the tail of the 
 chase, and makes the best of his way back to Melton Mow- 
 bray. You may conjecture the result. 
 
 " Again he came, again was doubly pleased, 
 The lady's hand he press' d, and Jack's she squeezed. 
 Next day his friend again went home,— 'twas worse, 
 They said,— in leaping he had staked his horse. 
 Jack led the field, had such a rim that day ! 
 So had his friend ; for he had run away 
 With Friska'melli, and her emeralds green,— 
 Was off for London, and was no more seen. 
 Jack show'd philosophy, and was not cross, 
 Join'd in the laugh, and found he gain'd by loss. 
 Some jokes were made, nor did the witlings spare 
 To say that stratagems in love are fair ; 
 And some declared they knew the lady's name, 
 Not from fair Naples, but from Drury came ; 
 And ere she smelt the lamps I fairly tell ye, 
 They changed to foreign sound poor Frisky Nelly." 
 
 Jack turns this awkward little nasty affair off with a laugh 
 in Canto Eleventh, and returning to town, figures at Almack s, 
 the source of so much late stupidity in prose and verse. This 
 Canto is of course the worst of the whole— nor do we remem- 
 ber anything tamer in our literature. 
 
 In Canto Twelfth, the author, who had seemed to be on his 
 last legs, recovers surprisingly— gets second wind— and comes 
 up to the scratch quite a new and a fresh man. The cause is 
 obvious. His antagonist is a female. The match is one of 
 flirtation; and, as we expected, he exhibits great skill, acti- 
 vity, strength, and bottom. It is really an excellent canto. 
 Jack is a fine handsome fellow, with a bold front and open 
 countenance ; and Selina, a sweet, young, lovely creature, and 
 as yet innocent, who is wedded to a brute of a husband, takes 
 an interest in him. She had 
 
262 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 " Heard of his losses — honour in his play, 
 And liked the thoughtless Timon of the day." 
 
 Timon ! Lord, what a Timon ! Take care, if ever you 
 visit Stratford-upon-Avon, our good sir, not to walk out after 
 dark into any of the lonely lanes ; for if you do, Shakespeare's 
 ghost will break every bone in your body. Jack meets Selina 
 at a fete champetre by the river's side — that splendid one 
 given lately by the De Koos at Boyle Farm, so admirably 
 sung by Lord Leveson Gower — and the origin of a fatal pas- 
 sion is thus skilfully described. The author writes like a 
 gentleman. 
 
 " That night Selina's husband chose to pay 
 Attentions mark'd, — intended for display, — 
 And, with unfeeling gallantry, to place 
 A faded rival 'fore Selina's face. 
 She never loved him, and awaken' d pride 
 Placed all the woman on the wounded side ; 
 Thence sprang the weed that poison'd all her life, 
 And thus a foolish husband spoil' d a wife. 
 With fevered cheek, and with a fiery eye, 
 Her soul alive to this indignity, 
 Her ear delighted heard our hero call 
 Her lovely presence to the banquet-hall ; 
 Where, all admired, the peerless beauty shone, 
 And took as due the homage that she won. 
 Then was she woman all, and new-born fires 
 Inflame her soul — new passions, new desires ; 
 Wine warm'd her new-waked passions, and they teem 
 With all the madness of a feverish dream. 
 Sweet on her ear our hero's flattery fell, 
 And new-born love achieved his mighty spell. 
 Bold, and more bold, the suitor's claim was press' d, 
 And she a weakness felt, — and half confess'd ! — 
 Enthusiasts each ! — He wonders if he loves, 
 And she believes 'tis injured honour moves, 
 And claims protection from a kindred mind, 
 Warm in her cause and innocently kind ! 
 Enthusiasts both ! they sought not to ensnare, 
 But trode all cautionless where dangers were ; 
 And, ere they knew that each one had a heart, 
 Had both exchanged and lost the better part." 
 
 This story of their passion would of itself be no bad poem — 
 and proves that our author is capable of far better things than 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 2G3 
 
 The Man of Ton — a Satire. Intense Flirtation is the title 
 of Canto Thirteenth — and many of the strong lines shame 
 the silly and shallow word, which has, however, been lately 
 made impressive by the admirable novel of Lady Charlotte 
 Bury, a work that throws lustre on her beauty, her genius, and 
 her birth. 
 
 " Ere yet Selina left the festive scene, 
 Presiding goddess, — she, the reigning queen, 
 One moment gave to weakness, and she threw 
 One look, before her tongue pronounced adieu. 
 The blue veins swelPd that cross'd her ivory skin, 
 And her lip trembled at the thought within. 
 His hand she press' d— but with a touch so fine, — 
 E'en like that gentle touch, of power divine, 
 With which the angel did the toad display, 
 As crouch' d behind the sleeping Eve he lay : 
 Ethereal was that touch ! — he could not 'scape, 
 And all the fiend burst instant into shape ! 
 So with that touch his all-enchanted soul 
 Burst from its cerements, bounded from control, 
 And seem'd as if celestial wings were given 
 To waft its flight with hers— how far from heaven !" 
 
 But good as these lines are — those that follow are better. 
 They are excellent, especially those about the marriage-ring, 
 which are vigorous and original. 
 
 " Her hand — 'twas such Pygmalion loved in stone. 
 Prayed heaven to breathe upon, and make his own ; — 
 So white her hand, but for a warmer stain, 
 That on each finger sometimes might remain, 
 It might have seem'd a work of stone, to vie 
 In smoothness with the polish' d ivory. 
 No ruby bright, or sparkling diamond rare, 
 But one sad sign of slavery was there ; 
 One mystic badge her tap'ring finger bound, 
 That held her captive self within its round. 
 Oh ! lovelier sure had look'd the hand if free, 
 Than gold-bound thus, and reft of liberty. 
 That magic ring, whose mvstic powers can bind 
 "What guards cannot control — the female mind. 
 The Satrap's vigilance, the Turkish chain, 
 Duennas, veils, and lattices, are vain ; 
 The wall'd seraglio, or the threaten'd rack, 
 The Moorish vengeance, — scimitar, and sack. — 
 
2G4 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Are ineffectual all ; — this round of gold 
 
 Safe, though unwatch'd, can wildest beauty hold ; 
 
 And proves that virtue by one pledge controls 
 
 Our island goddesses, and free-born souls." 
 The Man of Ton is now, in Canto Fourteenth, assailed by 
 Duns and Post-obits, and finds himself a beggar. He is de- 
 serted by all the world, — or the West End. Achates throws 
 off the mask, and stands confessed the villain. Selina insulted, 
 beyond woman's bearing, by her husband, her character gone, 
 and her heart more than touched, meets John in Canto Fif- 
 teenth, entitled the Elopement, in his misery — and a scene 
 ensues, such as has been often — too often painted — yet there 
 is nothing objectionable in this picture, and it is strongly 
 drawn. 
 
 " They met ! they met ! Nor hath more fatal been 
 
 The spark that bursts upon the magazine : 
 
 The world's ill usage stung his angry breast, 
 
 And a rash husband had o'erthrown her rest : 
 
 Each sought for sympathy, each found a friend, 
 
 And both their natures in one essence blend. 
 
 Words had been cold, and language all too poor ; 
 
 But the big tear — the sigh — the look said more. 
 
 All things to come seem'd dress'd in gayest light, 
 
 And all behind impenetrable night. — 
 
 And then a first and agonising kiss 
 
 Confirm' d and ratified their hopes of bliss. 
 
 Oh, hear her not, fond youth ! — I warn too late ! 
 
 Seal'd is your doom, and fixed the course of fate. 
 
 She calls it not a sacrifice — with thee 
 
 Too blest, Selina shares thy beggary ! 
 
 Ye that have felt love tyrant in the breast, 
 
 Jump to conclusions, and can guess the rest ; 
 
 Nor bid the Muse in strains too melting tell 
 
 How virtue falter' d, and how beauty fell. 
 
 She went not home — their destinies were one, 
 
 And he was crown d by love, and both undone ! " 
 The fond, guilty, lost, impoverished, and expatriated pair, 
 fly to Switzerland — and there is much feeling in the last 
 Canto, entitled the Catastrophe. The Swiss scenery is poeti- 
 cally painted ; and there is pathos and beauty in the follow- 
 ing passage : — ■ 
 
 " 'Twas there Selina led her lover — there, 
 Midst harmless rustics, paused the guilty pair ; 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 265 
 
 A little onward, through the leafy green, 
 A peaceful hamlet peeps, call'd Unterseen : 
 And there, close shelter'd by a chestnut wood, 
 All tenantless and wild a dwelling stood — 
 The white rose here, and there the clust'ring vine, 
 And flowering clematis, and jessamine, 
 Around a low veranda seem'd to creep, 
 And welcome silence in the realms of sleep. 
 ' Here sure is peace,' the sad Selina said, 
 1 And here the weary one may rest her head ; 
 Here find a haven — not from hence to move ; 
 Forget the world, and give up all to love.' 
 This look'd like peace — all wore her happy dress, 
 And all things here kind Nature seem'd to bless ; 
 And here they wander'd oft at even-tide, 
 And watch'd the mist enrobe the mountain's side. 
 An avalanche ! and now this nether world, 
 Mont Blanc itself, seems in convulsion hurl'd : 
 Upwards, a cloud of shiver'd fragments fly, 
 And fields, and flocks, and chalets buried lie. 
 Now turn they back, all thankful for their lot, 
 Their chestnut grove is safe, — their shelter'd cot. 
 With chamois hunters now more bold they creep, 
 And thread with cautious step the craggy steep ; 
 Or ambush'd lie, and waste a summer's day, 
 To watch, without success, their wary prey : 
 With them no flickering lamps dispel the night, 
 For lovers' eyes can shed enough of light. 
 But when the Sabbath comes, and all looks gay, 
 All happy— all contented — all but they — 
 The cheerful groups, their early matins o'er, 
 With votive chants salute them at their door ; 
 The wife hangs fondly on her husband's arm. 
 And wedded love appears with threefold charm. 
 1 The wife!' Selina thought,—' and what am 1 1 
 Would these poor rustics pardon infamy ? 
 Would they salute me, if they knew my shame, 
 My blasted honour, and my blighted fame ? 
 Blush, blush, my soul ! ye wilds, your cov'ring shed. 
 And hide from innocence this guilty head ! ' 
 Yet when she met her lover, not a sigh 
 Escaped her breast — nor ever in her eye 
 A tear was seen, — she wept but when alone ; 
 His were her smiles —her sorrows all her own ! " 
 
206 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 The injured husband, with the false friend for Iris second, 
 having discovered their retreat, comes to demand satisfaction. 
 The Man of Ton having provided himself with a second in the 
 person of a French officer, challenges Achates on the ground. 
 
 " They fired together, and Achates fell, 
 And brighter burned the fires in inmost hell." 
 
 Sharp work and poetical justice. The husband, struck with 
 the event, declines carrying the affair further. Our hero flies 
 to show himself alive to Selina, who knew, in the lonely 
 chamber of her guilt, that her lover was about to expose his 
 life to her husband's vengeance ; and the catastrophe is rightly 
 conceived, and ably executed. 
 
 " Before the door he paused, but all was still, 
 And through the grove he heard the babbling rill ; 
 So still, he heard the ticking of the clock, 
 And plash of waters dripping from the rock. 
 ' Selina still may sleep,' and on he creeps, — 
 He gently lifts the latch — ' Indeed, she sleeps. 
 How beautiful she looks ! ' — her silver skin 
 Show'd every circlet of the blood within. 
 Loose and disturbed her unbound hair appears, 
 And on her cheek the trace of recent tears. 
 Soft o'er her form the ling' ring zephyr plays ; 
 ' Sleep on, sweet love !' — he sat him down to gaze 
 Upon her closed lids, whose light divine 
 Shall bless him when she wakes and brighter shine. 
 He moved not once, lest, startled, she should hear 
 That he and happiness were both so near ; 
 And now more near her cheek he drew, to sip — 
 Heaven's choicest boon — the honey on her lip ; 
 But still he tasted not her balmy breath, — 
 A rival had been there— that rival — Death ! 
 He starts convulsive from her cold embrace, 
 And his eye glares upon her ashy face. 
 'Awake, Selina ! — wake, my love ! my life ! 
 'Tis Percy calls upon his love — his wife ! ' 
 And now his cries, his wailings, rend the air, 
 And his soul speaks the language of despair. 
 A moment hopes he — willing to deceive 
 His sickening soul — still struggles to believe 
 She sleeps. — ' Oh ! no, no, no ! — she is not dead ; 
 Comes death to deck her on her bridal bed ? 
 
THE MAN OF TON. 267 
 
 Hear me, Selina, hear !— I have no wife — 
 
 No love — no friend — no hope — why have I life 1 ' 
 
 The conflict's o'er, his veins to bursting swell, 
 
 And on the dead a lifeless load he fell. 
 
 Now thronging to his aid the rustics fly ; 
 
 The gentle priest and skilful leech apply 
 
 Their tend'rest care, and long entranced he lay, 
 
 Till first a groan, and then a tear found way ; 
 
 And when at length they raised him from that bed, 
 
 The light of reason had for ever fled. 
 
 A moment now he smiles — a moment weeps, 
 
 And now, — ' Be still,' he says, ' be still, — she sleeps ! ' 
 
 And then he listening stands, and seems to wait 
 
 "With patient hope the signal of his fate. 
 
 But never comes a change, for his the doom 
 
 Of dark oblivion's everlasting gloom. 
 
 Alike to him the beams of orient day, 
 
 Or when at eve its glories fade away. 
 
 The summer's heat he feels not, nor the cold, 
 
 And in unconscious misery grows old. 
 
 Fix'd is the sum, the measure of the woe, 
 
 That suffering nature e'er can undergo. 
 
 When horror deepens, and the shucld'ring soul 
 
 Would snatch the poniard, drain the poison' d bowl, 
 
 Indulgent heaven— for pains we must endure, 
 
 Fruits of our follies, wounds beyond a cure, — 
 
 In mercy draws the darkest veil between 
 
 Our sense of feeling and the cureless scene ! 
 
 Ears hear no plaints, and eyes with tears grow blind, 
 
 And madness casts his pall upon the mind." 
 
 We shall never, while we breathe, cut up a sheer block- 
 head. Stop, gentlemen. There is no rule without an excep- 
 tion, so don't begin sharpening the nebs of your pens — laying 
 out your foolscap — and gurgling out your ink from the big 
 bottle into the small. It is a nerve- shaking business even 
 for a thousand blockheads to draw lots out of a hat, when one 
 slip of paper is marked, " Hanging." No respite — no re- 
 prieve to the unhappy devil who fingers his fate. He most 
 certainly shall swing. But our general rule shall henceforth 
 be, to cut up only the clever. We began, last Number, with 
 Mr Eobert Montgomery, who will ever, after the punishment 
 we inflicted on him, which was not vindictive, but restorative, 
 and such as brought no dishonour, be considered all over the 
 
268 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 island a writer of unquestionable talents. Even so with our 
 present author, who writes like a scholar and a gentleman, 
 and, when the subject admits of it, also absolutely like a poet. 
 We have heard different names mentioned, but we are always 
 reluctant to mention people's names in this Magazine, and 
 therefore shall now say, in the words of Moore, " breathe 
 not his name I" " Oh no, we never mention him I " in case we 
 should commit some mistake, and " rob Peter to pay Paul." 
 
THE LOYES OF THE POETS. 1 
 
 [SEPTEMBER 1829.] 
 
 Among the multitude of sins set down to our score by 
 Whigs and Whiglings, Kadicals, and all sorts of other rascals, 
 it has sometimes surprised us that there never has been in- 
 cluded brutality to women. We insult men before their faces, 
 and then off and away up to the top of a sixteenth story, where, 
 without many ladders, it is in vain to hope to reach us the 
 trembling coward. We stab men behind their backs, and on 
 turning round, before they breathe their last, to kill their as- 
 sassin, they have merely time left to see a monster in a mask 
 (us), jinking round a corner. The police are on the unalert ; 
 and the murderer makes his escape to that accursed sanctuary 
 — Ambrose's Hotel. It must, we think, be matter of wonder 
 to the wise and candid part of the population of these realms, 
 — if there be any truth in the above charges, — that We 
 have hitherto escaped — Hanging. Burke and Hare, Hazlitt 
 says in the Examiner, were, in comparison with us, as pure as 
 snow, or his own reputation ; and that Mr and Mrs Stewart 
 should dangle and die for simply poisoning some single half- 
 score of elderly people addicted to inebriety, while We leap 
 and live like a two-year-old, is to the pious Mr Leigh Hunt 
 a juggle in Providence. 
 
 This is one side of the question — the side considered by the 
 Cockneys. Now look at the other, the side contemplated by 
 Christians. Never once, in the memory of the oldest inhabit- 
 ant, did we insult any human creature before his face, and then 
 up to a skylight among a Thread of Tailors. In insulting a 
 human creature we walk up to him behind, and lend him a kick 
 sufficient in America to shove a wooden house across the street. 
 J The Loves of the Poets, by Mrs Jameson. 2 Vols. Colburn. 
 
270 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AXD IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Head-over-heels goes the numbskull ; and how can the most 
 credulous believe for a moment that we do, or the most inge- 
 nious contrive to themselves for a moment a reason why we 
 should, run away from the sprawling Jackass ? So far from 
 running away, why, we uniformly stop — often to our very great 
 inconvenience — to pick him up, and reinstate him on his former 
 level. We do not indeed absolutely help with our own hands 
 — that would be too much to expect — to rub him down, but we 
 compassionate him, and advise him, as his best friends, 
 to leave off in future all such evil habits. To aver that we 
 laugh at the plight to which he has, by a long course of ob- 
 stinate folly, finally brought himself, to the grief and despair, 
 perhaps, of no very disreputable family, is a vile calumny ; 
 for though we seldom, indeed never, shed tears at such acci- 
 dents, we always experience that inward sorrow which the 
 good feel at the miseries even of the most weak and wicked ; 
 and sweeter far it is to us to see the Kickee reformed, and 
 thenceforth leading a humble and honest life, than to have to 
 repeat the application, seldom wholly bootless, to his impeni- 
 tent posteriors. 
 
 With regard, again, to stabbing human creatures behind 
 their backs, and then like monsters in masks jinking round 
 
 corners — all we have to say is this, that it is a d d lie. 
 
 Do you call killing a Cockney before his face (a most absurd 
 one, you may well believe, and not even " rescued by thought 
 from insignificance") stabbing a human creature behind his 
 back ? If you do, then pardon us for surmising that you be- 
 lieve the sun sets in the east, and rises from the west in a 
 blaze of glory. After killing a Cockney, why run away, and 
 more especially in a mask ? Let the fair deed be perpetrated 
 at noonday, and on a crowded street, not a human creature 
 will seek to detain you ; and we need not dwell on the shock- 
 ing want of feeling, and indeed of common courtesy, that 
 would be exhibited by the Christian who, on extinguishing a 
 Cockney, were to conceal his features from the laudatory eyes 
 of the delighted spectators. 
 
 Should the above reasoning be in the slightest degree un- 
 satisfactory to any of our numerous readers from Kirkwall to 
 Cockaigne, let him have the goodness to circulate a lithographic 
 list of the names of the human creatures whom, behind and be- 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 271 
 
 fore backs, we have slain or insulted, and then sought refuge from 
 the vengeance of the heroic living, or the still more heroic dead, 
 in an ignominious flight. In what churchyard were they buried ? 
 In what garret do they yet eat their leek ? 
 
 As to running away, Heaven pity us all, what speed could 
 be expected from a martyr to the gout ? Half-a-mile an hour 
 at the most, with the King of the Cockneys, like the swift- 
 footed Achilles, with all his Miss-Molly-Myrmidons at our 
 heels ! A mask ! Poo ! it is all a radical superstition, arising 
 out of the circumstance of our being obliged, in the Tent, to 
 wear a gauze veil, framed by the fair fingers of Mrs Gentle, to 
 ward off the midges. Our names ! How could we conceal 
 our names — long known to the uttermost parts of the Earth ? 
 Even in Terra Incognita we are not anonymous. 
 
 The plain matter of fact is, that we insult and slay — nobody. 
 Sometimes, when we meet an ass, who, in the March of Intel- 
 lect, is faithless to his natural love of Thistles by the roadside, 
 and is not contented till he is cutting capers in a flower-garden, 
 like Love among the Koses, or treading down cornfields or 
 vineyards, whereby much bread and wine is prevented from 
 cheering the hearts of men, we take him by the tail, or ears, 
 and do drag or kick him — we shall not, ought not, cannot deny 
 it — out of the enclosure, and in conclusion, off the premises. 
 Call you that insulting a human creature before his face, and 
 then running away to Ambrose's ? Observe, too, that we drag 
 or kick him, tail or ear-ways, " as gently as if we loved him. " 
 The truth is, we do love him, although he be such an ass 
 as not to know it ; for were the poor braying animal to be 
 suffered to eat his fill, and afterwards to get at water, why, 
 he would burst, and then his death would be laid at our 
 door, and all Cockaigne would cry out that we had killed 
 King Cuddy. 
 
 But where is the Man whom we ever slew or insulted? 
 Nowhere. Many men we have occasionally smiled — laughed 
 — guffaw'd at — such as Bowles, Moore, Wordsworth, and a 
 few others who have " given the world assurance they are 
 men." But they know well it was all for the good of their 
 immortal souls and poems ; and done partly from an inferior 
 motive, to shove them through a ridescent world into a Tenth 
 Edition. 
 
272 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 So much for our general treatment of those human creatures 
 called Men ; and how have we behaved to those human 
 creatures — if they will allow us to call them so — who rejoice 
 in the name of women ? As follows : Old women of that sex we 
 venerate for their years and wisdom ; all middle-aged women 
 we announce to be Fat, Fair, and Forty, sensible, and saga- 
 cious ; all young women to be — what more would you, loveliest 
 and most adorable of God's creatures, have us to say ? — angels. 
 If she sit at home, like Xarifa, in Mr Lockhart's beautiful 
 Spanish Ballad, so beautifully set to music by Mrs Arkwright, 
 and so beautifully sung by Mr Akebowme, weaving golden 
 flowers on white silk cushions, we tell the whole world, both 
 in prose and verse, that she is lovelier than any Zegri Ladye 
 that ever darkly bloomed in the gardens of Granada. If she 
 sit at home, sewing 'shirts or darning stockings, we exclaim, 
 there is the " Light and Shadow of Scottish Life " for our 
 love and money, and long to be chanting with her the duet of 
 our own erjithalamium. If she sit at home, twisting tartlets 
 and trifle into such fair fantastic shapes as the soul of Genius 
 alone could conceive, and the hand of Taste alone could 
 execute, we think of Eve, yet virgin in Paradise, preparing 
 for Adam a light dejeune on his nuptial morn ; and if — here 
 comes the rub — she sit at home reading — nay, writing, and 
 send her inspiration to Blackwood, or Murray, or Colburn — 
 oh ! then, by the cerulean skies, we swear that her stockings 
 are " more deeply, darkly, beautifully blue," than the heaven 
 we call to witness the sincerity — the sanctity, of our 
 admiration, yet declare, in the delightful lines of Wordsworth, 
 that she 
 
 " Is a creature not too bright and good 
 For human nature's daily food ; 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
 
 Of small moment, perhaps, may it be what we think, feel, 
 say, or do, now, of, or to the fair sex, young or old, virgin or 
 nupt, 
 
 " Old as we are, for Lady's love unfit." 
 
 Yet we cannot imagine any sight more worthy of affectionate 
 admiration, than that of a gouty, old, arm-chair-ridden man, 
 
' THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 273 
 
 looking delighted on the fair, rising, risen, and falling genera- 
 tion, without one useless regret, one vain repining, and next 
 to the health of the King, turning up his chalky little finger, 
 in a glass of Glenlivet, to the tune of, " May the single be 
 married, and the married happy ; " with no more perplexing 
 thought to disturb his dream, than gentle wonder why, since 
 Lady Morgan, evidently a man, wears petticoats, the fair Sir 
 Charles should persist in preferring breeches. God bless 
 you — sweet creatures ! — we feel as if we were, not the mere 
 elder brother of you all, but absolutely your — Father. 
 
 Yet — avaunt this lighter vein, and let us — though in 
 general the humblest of the humble — for once in our lives, 
 most unexpectedly to all our readers, who know how we 
 abhor all egotism and egoisme, indulge a momentary mood of 
 pride. When Joanna Baillie, the greatest poetess that ever 
 lived, heard, between the pauses of her tragic harp, the growl 
 of him whom Whip-poor- Will calls the " Prince of Critics and 
 King of Men," growling, or rather snarling, at the immortal 
 strain, We forced the ears of the very groundlings themselves to 
 listen to that sphere-like music, and guarded loftier listeners 
 from all disturbance to their impassioned dream from critic, in 
 cark and care, assailing the Muse whose seat is by the right 
 hand of Apollo. The lovely Tighe we forgot not in the dust, 
 — her whose own spirit was as bright and pure as the Psyche 
 of her delightful song. We remembered, when she herself was 
 no more, the wit and wisdom of Mary Brunton. The genius 
 of Felicia Hemans, beautiful and lofty as Christian fame, we 
 have ever loved, and admired and honoured. On manners- 
 painting Mitford our praises have ever been genially bestowed, 
 whether walking cheerfully through her native village, and 
 watching the dance on rustic holiday ; or when, soaring into 
 a higher flight, she sang the high emprise and calamitous fate 
 of heroes. From L. E. L., the lovely, the loving, and the 
 beloved, we have not withheld an old man's harmless homage, 
 awakened to second youth by lays as warm and yet as pure as 
 her own heart. In short, from Mrs Grant, the most venerable 
 name in our female literature, w T hose genius, under the holy 
 influence of religion and resignation, no earthly sorrows and 
 sufferings can weaken or bedim, to Miss Jewsbury, of whom 
 we have often thought, and ere long hope to speak, in that 
 vol. v. s 
 
274 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 warm strain of eulogy in which she richly deserves to be 
 spoken of, mention the name of one lady to whom the Muses 
 have been kind, to whom we have not been kind also, or been 
 slow to lay the tribute of our praise at their feet. 
 
 In these degenerate days, — for deny it who dare, " the age 
 of chivalry is gone," — may not an Octogenarian blamelessly 
 hug himself in such reminiscences ? " Vain ! self-conceited 
 
 old dotard ! " methinks we hear some d d blockhead say. 
 
 No — dunce ! not vain — not self-conceited ; but in the most 
 profound humility, even 
 
 " In the lowest deep a lower still," 
 
 we exult, and thus hymn our exultation in the ears of the 
 universe, that of us alone, of all the master or servant spirits 
 of the age, will posterity sound this praise — with one voice 
 exclaiming, " To give the devil his due, Old Kit was still the 
 Friend, Lover, Slave, and Lord of the Ladies !" 
 
 And here it behoves us to set ourselves right with our 
 readers in one particular. Is there, or is there not, such a 
 thing in nature as an ugly woman — not comparatively, but 
 positively? We do not scruple to answer — yes. We saw her — 
 this very day. Eed hair — a mouth that — But, to the surprise 
 of Dr Knox, let us run away from the subject. We liave 
 stated our belief, on ocular evidence, in the existence of the 
 phenomenon — and as we admit it to be the rarest in nature, 
 who knows but that to-morrow in the poultry-market we may 
 purchase a Phoenix ? 
 
 That the authoress of The Loves of the Poets is a beautiful 
 woman, using that epithet in any one of its million meanings 
 you choose, we lay no claim to a particularly fine tact in 
 having discovered from the perusal of her volumes. From 
 the fine, soft, silken, satiny, and velvet feel of the fair pages 
 now lying open before us, a blind man would know in a 
 moment that her beauty was truly — feminine. Next best to 
 a book about love by a Virgin — nay, perhaps better still — is 
 a book about love by a " Matron pure." A Virgin, in a 
 poetical love-dream, sometimes says, in her simplicity, things 
 that, did she know their meaning, she would die, for having 
 given utterance to, in a blush. Then the little she does 
 know is to her altogether, or nearly so, a mystery, and most 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 275 
 
 mysteriously does the poor, dear " young tiling, just come frae 
 her mammy," sing about it and about it to her harp. But 
 " Matron pure " sings or says, when " Love is a' the theme," 
 what her own heart tells her may be sung or said without 
 profaning the sanctity of her own innocent nature. In 
 
 " The sober certainty of waking bliss," 
 
 she regards the more impassioned or tumultuous expression 
 of the passion ; and while she sympathises with its purity 
 and with its fervour, feels a calm and wise aversion from all 
 its baneful or insane excesses. The light of Genius even, 
 although she be a devout adorer of that divine gift, of which 
 a portion may have been granted to herself, cannot in her 
 eyes consecrate an unlawful or a sinful passion. It may, 
 however, show to her that which is unlawful submitting^ to 
 law, and that which is sinful saved, by the inspiration which 
 Beauty breathes, from the taint of actual guilt and pollu- 
 tion. " A sweet austere composure " of heart will always be 
 hers — the right, the privilege, the duty, and the blessing of 
 marriage. All light and loose lays, however lovely— -and 
 there have been many such framed by true poets, who lived 
 ruefully to lament and repent them — will to her fine ear be 
 felt to be false and hollow, and that avenue to her soul will 
 be shut against all such insidious murmurs. The respect 
 which a chaste and virtuous married woman feels for herself, 
 is perhaps the highest and holiest feeling towards itself of all 
 human nature. At once gentle, yet fearless — cautious, yet 
 unsuspecting — reserved, yet open — glad as the sunny day, 
 yet serene as the starry night — such is, and such seems the 
 young English matron, on whom, while we look, we feel 
 
 " How divine a thing 
 A woman may be made ! " 
 
 The fair enditer of The Loves of the Poets is of this class 
 and character. Her native delicacy enables her, at all times, 
 to speak of " Loves " as Una or Sabrina, those " flowers of 
 maidenhood," might have spoken— as Cymbeline or Desde- 
 mona ; and her native genius enables her to speak with a fine 
 and kindred enthusiasm that gives a glow to all her language, 
 of The Loves of the Poets. Nor does her devout admiration of 
 
276 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 tliose who enjoyed " the Vision and the Faculty divine," 
 blind the eye of her moral sense to their delinquencies or 
 aberrations ; though, as is right and just, she weighs the 
 strength of their temptations, and of their virtues. If her 
 judgments sometimes appear not to be sufficiently stern, they 
 are always high ; for weakness, she possibly may seem to 
 make too much allowance, and even now and then to regard it 
 with too much sympathy ; but from the far shadow of coarse- 
 ness or grossness she turns away her unpolluted eyes ; and 
 her spirit expands and exults, and lightens on the contempla- 
 tion of a pure devotion even to an earthly idol. 
 
 But let Mrs Jameson speak for herself in more eloquent 
 words than ours. 
 
 The theory, then, which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited powers 
 permit, is this : that where a woman has been exalted above the rest of her 
 sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring fame and per- 
 petuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited ; that no deep or 
 lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in fiction ; that truth, in short, 
 is the basis of all excellence in amatory poetiy, as in everything else ; for 
 where truth is, there is good of some sort, and where there is truth and 
 good, there must be beauty, there must be durability of fame. Truth is 
 the golden chain which links the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets 
 the seal of Heaven on the things of this earth, and stamps them to immor- 
 tality. Poets have risen up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have 
 set up idols which have been the idols of a day : if the worship be out of 
 date and the idols cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of 
 purpose and feeling ; their raptures were feigned ; their incense was bought 
 or adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse another 
 — one coquette may drive out another, and, tricked off in airy verse, they 
 float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam of genius has 
 tinged with a transient brightness : but let the heart once be touched, and 
 it is not only wakened but inspired ; the lover kindled into the poet, pre- 
 sents to her he loves his cup of ambrosial praise ; she tastes — and the 
 woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the Grecian sculptor carved 
 out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous and godlike shapes, imper- 
 sonations of ideal grace unapproachable by modern skill, was it through 
 mere mechanical superiority ? No ; — it was the spirit of faith within which 
 shadowed to his imagination what he would represent. In the same man- 
 ner, no woman has ever been truly, lastingly deified in poetry, but in the 
 spirit of truth and of love ! 
 
 Nothing is a surer proof of genius than the choice of a 
 Subject, at once new and natural, and The Loves of the Poets is 
 of that character. There is no such thing as chance in the 
 spiritual world. A Bagman may find on the road a pocket- 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 277 
 
 book full of bank-notes, which had nearly upset his gig, or a 
 ditcher dig up a hoard of gold guineas ; but no blockhead 
 ever yet stumbled upon a fine thought, either on the royal 
 roads or by-ways of Imagination ; — if you find one in his pos- 
 session, you may be assured that he has purloined it from the 
 brain-treasury of a rich man, or received it in charity. He 
 does not know its value ; and he offers it in exchange for the 
 most worthless articles, such as beads or small beer. You 
 see blockheads labouring all life long to say something good, 
 or fine, or rich, or rare ; and sometimes you are surprised to 
 notice productions of theirs not by any means so very much 
 amiss in a small way ; but it won't do ; — a certain air of 
 stupidity, however slight, breathes over every paragraph; 
 their gaudiest compositions are but a bed of indifferent 
 poppies ; one anemone, or auricula, or ranunculus, or pink, 
 or carnation, or violet, to say nothing of the lily or the rose, is 
 worth the whole flaunting show, — nay, you sigh even for the 
 dandelion. Genius, however mild and moderate, if true, pro- 
 duces ever and anon some sweet tame or wild flower or 
 another, and presents you with a small bouquet, which you 
 place in your button-hole, or in a jar on the chimney-piece. 
 What or who Genius is, no man has ever yet been able to say 
 — we shall not attempt it. But the instant you see him, her, 
 or it (how kenspeckle! *), you exclaim, "Ha! Genius, how 
 are you ? I am delighted to see you. Come, let us take a 
 stroll into the fields ; or would you rather, my dear sir, my 
 sweet madam, my pretty thing, partake with us of a caulker 
 of Glenlivet, or a cup of hyson ? " To the Impostor, even 
 though he come with strong letters of introduction, you are 
 either not at home, having spied through the window his 
 sinister or silly phiz, or you say through the servant that you 
 are sick ; or, if admitted, you hand him over to the rest of the 
 family, and retire to your sanctum. 
 
 The Loves of the Poets is also a very ladylike theme ; — for 
 all truly great or good poets, from Homer to Hogg, have, in 
 the only true sense of the word, been gentlemen. Indeed, it 
 would not be too much to say, that there never was, nor can 
 be, a finished gentleman not a poet. Stars are the poetry of 
 heaven. All virtues, therefore, and all endowments, and all 
 accomplishments, are the poetry of earth — or say, rather, that 
 i Having so singular an appearance as to be easily recognised. 
 
278 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 poetry is the quintessence of them all — the flowery ground, 
 and the starry firmament of the soul. If so, the Poet is the 
 only man, the only gentleman. 
 
 The manners of all Poets are delightful — in the long run. 
 You may indeed happen to come upon them in a paroxysm, 
 and are wellnigh frightened out of your wits. What savages ! 
 We have seen the author of the Lyrical Ballads look so like a 
 cannibal, that it would have needed some nerve to accompany 
 him on an Excursion. But, in the long run, the man is like 
 an angel. Set out with him from Eyclal Mount, and you are 
 walking side by side with a stamp-master. In Grasmere, he 
 brightens up into a schoolmaster. On Dunmailraise, he as- 
 sumes the appearance of a well-benefioed clergyman. By 
 the banks of Leathes Water, he waxes so eloquent, that you 
 wonder he is not, and wish he were, in Parliament. In the 
 Vale of St John, you hear the poet 
 
 " Murmuring by the living brooks 
 A music sweeter than their own." 
 
 And on the hill-top that overlooks the Yale of Keswick, you 
 know not whether it be the angel Gabriel, Michael, or Kaphael, 
 who is conversing with you in Paradise. 
 
 The morals of all poets are good — in the long run. None 
 of your trash about Burns and Byron. All the great Greek 
 tragedians were excellent private characters. There never 
 was a more harmless creature than Homer. Pindar was a 
 paragon of decency and propriety — as a son, husband, and 
 father. Horace was a good fellow, and Virgil would not have 
 hurt a fly. Shakespeare, though rather a little too much 
 addicted to ale, on his retirement at Stratford-on- Avon, " har- 
 ried no man's cattle." The worst you can say of Milton is 
 that he was a regicide ; yet was he, like his own Adam, the 
 first of men. In private life, there never was a more amiable 
 and useful man than Bowles. The man who could breathe a 
 syllable against the character of Campbell, must be a liar of 
 the first magnitude. Sir Walter is like Virtue herself, 
 
 " To be admired he needs but to be seen ; " 
 
 and that greatness, goodness, and happiness may be found 
 all united in this life, will not be doubted by any one who has 
 seen Southey. 
 
 Such being the endowments, the manners, and the morals 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 
 
 279 
 
 of Poets, only think of them— in love! You must on no 
 account whatever think of Shenstone, as silly as his sheep; 
 though even Shenstone makes love in rather a winning, lack- 
 adaisical way of his own ; and had there been any such Delia 
 as he describes, he must have found surety to the parish for 
 the maintenance of herself and child. Neither must you, on 
 any account whatever, think of Hamilton of Bangour, the 
 shabby-genteel poetaster ; though, as a flirt,— and that is 
 something,— he was more famous in his day than probably 
 you are in yours ; but we mean nothing personal. You must 
 think of Petrarch, and Dante, and Ariosto, and Tasso, and poet- 
 lovers of that calibre, 
 
 " Souls made of fire, and children of the sun ;" 
 and then, at your leisure, of Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Apollo,- - 
 Semele, Venus, Proserpine, and Daphne,— of love in the air, 
 and on the earth, and in the waters, and on the fire, and in the 
 all-embracing Universe. 
 
 Observe, we do not mean to assert that Poets must neces- 
 sarily be unexceptionable husbands. Heaven, and earth, and 
 Hell—think of Dante with a Dowdy ! Milton with a Mawsey ! 
 Shakespeare with a Slut ! It might have so happened— and, 
 if so, then, in all probability, the three would have been 
 hanged, or otherwise executed for wife-murder. Their ribs, 
 too, though each "to a radiant angel linked," had "sated 
 themselves in celestial bed, and preyed on garbage." But let 
 angel be linked to angel, and the bed will be blest, as if strewn 
 
 with the flowers of Paradise. H says that all the poets 
 
 of the present day have ugly wives. There again he lies. 
 The wretch instances one poet by the initial of his name, and 
 says that his wife has the " head of a Gorgon." The able 
 editor of the Atlas should be more ashamed of having given 
 currency to that hideous outrage on truth and decency, than 
 of his easily-excused libel on Lord Lyndhurst ! The lady 
 whom the Satyr grins at has indeed a Gorgon head when it is 
 turned upon Vice and Impudence ; to all others, 
 
 " It is bright 
 "With something of an angel light." 
 
 But we must come to the book in hand. About the loves of 
 some of the True Poets, the fair writer knows more than we 
 do— about some, less— and about others, pretty much the 
 
280 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 same ; but we shall be happy to be led by so sweet a con- 
 ductress through scenes of such enchantment. She shall wave 
 us on with her own white arms— she shall, in her own silver 
 voice, " tell the story of their loves." 
 
 Let us look, first of all, on the immortal loves of Petrarch 
 and his Laura — his in the pure, clear, bright, balmy, fountain- 
 haunted Fairyland of Passion, and Fancy, and Imagination, 
 the three powerful spirits that do the work of Genius, or rather 
 bring from all the regions of the soul the rich and rare. mate- 
 rials with which Genius builds his high and holy temples. 
 Some have said, that Petrarch could not have been in love, be- 
 cause he expressed himself in numbers. No real passion, it 
 seems, ever breathes in poetry. Assuredly there are worthy 
 people in this world, who in youth confined themselves to 
 prose Valentines, and made Cupid himself as ignorant of rhyme 
 as of reason. On the other hand, Montrose and others have 
 expressed the state of their minds in verses, written the night 
 before their execution ; and we should think that the passion 
 a man endures when about to be beheaded or hanged, must be 
 as sincere as that which he enjoys when about to be married. 
 Others have said, that Laura never existed, but was a mere 
 idea. Why, a mere idea, constantly warmed by the burning 
 breath of such a poet as Petrarch, must have been kindled and 
 moulded into living being. Whichever way you take it, then, 
 Laura did exist as certainly as all the "black-letter dogs," 
 who denied that ever the spirit that shines through the son- 
 nets was 
 
 " In Paradise of that sweet flesh ! " 
 
 We know not why it is so, but in reading the following beauti- 
 ful sentence, we think somehow or other of the tender and 
 elegant Barry Cornwall. If our conjecture be just, let us, 
 too, join in the aspiration. 
 
 The most real and most fervent passion that ever fell under my own 
 knowledge, was revealed in verse, and very exquisite verse too, and has 
 inspired many an effusion, full of beauty, fancy, and poetry ; but it has not, 
 therefore, been counted less sincere ; and Heaven forbid it should prove 
 less lasting than if it had been told in the homeliest prose, and had never 
 inspired one beautiful idea or one rapturous verse ! 
 
 That Petrarch's passion was for a purely ideal object, Mrs 
 Jameson thinks rather unlikely. 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 281 
 
 To study Petrarch in his own works and in his own delightful language ; 
 to follow him line by line, through all the vicissitudes and contradictions 
 of passion ; to listen to his self-reproaches, his terrors, his regrets, his con- 
 flicts ; to dwell on his exquisite delineations of individual character and 
 peculiar beauty, his simple touches of profound pathos and melancholy 
 tenderness ; — and then believe all to be mere invention, — the coinage of the 
 brain, — a tissue of visionary fancies, in which the heart had no share ; to 
 confound him with the cold metaphysical rhymsters of a later age, — seems 
 to argue not only a strange want of judgment, but an extraordinary obtuse- 
 ness of feeling. 
 
 Let such of our readers as know not who Laura was — and 
 what was the character of her beauty — if they wish to have 
 such knowledge, although they never read Petrarch — read 
 chapters sixth and seventh of The Loves of the Poets. Let 
 us meanwhile tell them that she was a married woman — nay, 
 start and stare not — for Petrarch's passion was purified by 
 poetry almost into sinlessness ; and as for Laura herself, she 
 was such a wife as thou wouldst do well to imitate, if ever 
 bard wooes thee, though wedded for some twenty or thirty 
 years. She was, on all occasions of public state or ceremony, 
 habited either in a magnificent dress of green embroidered 
 with violets, or in one of crimson trimmed with feathers. 
 Eound her hair she wore a coronal of silver, and necklaces and 
 ornaments of pearl lay starlike on the heaven of her bosom. 
 In person she was a fair Mado ana-like beauty, with soft dark 
 eyes, and a profusion of pale golden hair, parted on her brow, 
 and falling in rich curls on her neck. Celestial grace was in 
 all her figure and ornaments. So Petrarch thought, felt, and 
 sung, — and it was all God's truth. The beauty of her hand 
 thrilled his heart — and she had an angel's mouth — 
 
 'O v 
 
 " La bella bocca angelica." 
 
 Finally, Laura united the highest intellect with the purest 
 heart, 
 
 " In alto intelletto un puro core," 
 
 a line which her fair eulogist well says gives us the very beau- 
 ideal of a female character. 
 
 There is, it is believed, no version into English of the 48th 
 Canzone. Lady Dacre, who has so finely translated the 
 " Chiare, fresche e dolce acque," and the " Italia mia," has 
 not attempted it. Here it is, in a prose sketch, which Mrs 
 Jameson modestly says — but we cannot agree with her in 
 
282 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 thinking so poorly of it — " will give as just an idea of the 
 original as a hasty-pencilled outline of Titian's or Domeni- 
 chino's masterpieces could give us of all the magic colouring 
 and effect of their glorious and half-breathing creations." 
 
 In this Canzone, Petrarch, in a high strain of poetic imagery, which takes 
 nothing from the truth or pathos of the sentiment, allegorises his own 
 situation and feelings : he represents himself as citing the Lord of Love, 
 " Suo empio e dolce Signore," before the throne of Reason, and accusing 
 him as the cause of all his sufferings, sorrows, errors, and misspent time. 
 " Through him (Love) I have endured, even from the moment I was first 
 beguiled into his power, such various and such exquisite pain, that my 
 patience has at length been exhausted, and I have abhorred my existence. 
 I have not only forsaken the path of ambition and useful exertion, but even 
 of pleasure and of happiness : I, who was born, if I do not deceive myself, 
 for far higher purposes than to be a mere amorous slave ! Through him I 
 have been careless of my duty to Heaven, — negligent of myself :— for the 
 sake of one woman I forgot all else ! — me miserable ! What have availed 
 me all the high and precious gifts of Heaven, the talents, the genius which 
 raised me above other men ? My hairs are changed to grey, but still my 
 heart changeth not. Hath he not sent me wandering over the earth in 
 search of repose ? hath he not driven me from city to city, and through 
 forests, and woods, and wild solitudes ? hath he not deprived me of peace, 
 and of that sleep which no herbs nor chanted spells have power to restore? 
 Through him, I have become a by-word in the world, which I have filled 
 with my lamentations, till, by their repetition, I have wearied myself, and 
 perhaps all others." 
 
 To this long tirade, Love with indignation replies : " Hearest thou the 
 falsehood of this ungrateful man ? This is he who in his youth devoted 
 himself to the despicable traffic of words and lies, and now he blushes not 
 to reproach me with having raised him from obscurity, to know the delights 
 of an honourable and virtuous life, I gave him power to attain a height of 
 fame and virtue to which of himself he had never dared to aspire. If he 
 has obtained a name among men, to me he owes it. Let him remember 
 the great heroes and poets of antiquity, whose evil stars condemned them 
 to lavish their love upon unworthy objects, whose mistresses were courtesans 
 and slaves ; while for him, I chose from the whole world one lovely woman, 
 so gifted by Heaven with all female excellence, that her likeness is not to 
 be found beneath the moon,- — one whose melodious voice and gentle accents 
 had power to banish from his heart every vain, and dark, and vicious thought. 
 These were the wrongs of which he complains : such is my reward for all I 
 have done for him, — ungrateful man ! Upon my wings hath he soared 
 upwards, till his name is placed among the greatest of the sons of song, and fair 
 ladies and gentle knights listen with delight to his strains : — had it not been 
 for me, what had he become before now ? Perhaps a vain flatterer, seeking 
 preferment in a Court, confounded among the herd of vulgar men ! I have 
 so chastened, so purified his heart through the heavenly image impressed 
 upon it, that even in his youth, and in the age of the passions, I preserved 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 283 
 
 him pure in thought and in action ; whatever of good or great ever stirred 
 within his breast, he derives from her and from me. From the contempla- 
 tion of virtue, sweetness, and beauty, in the gracious countenance of her he 
 loved, I led him upwards to the adoration of the first Great Cause, the 
 fountain of all that is beautiful and excellent ; — hath he not himself con- 
 fessed it ? And this fair creature, whom I gave him to be the honour, and 
 delight, and prop of his frail life " — 
 
 Here the sense is suddenly broken off in the middle of a line. Petrarch 
 utters a cry of horror, and exclaims — " Yes, you gave her to me, but you 
 have also taken her from me ! " 
 
 Love replies with sweet austerity — " Not I — but He — the eternal One — 
 who hath willed it so ! " 
 
 Laura was virtuous. But how that could be, it surpassed 
 the impure imaginations of the many French reps and demi- 
 reps, whom, in various ages, it has been the taste of the 
 unprincipled philosophers, and so forth, in France, to esteem 
 wits, and whom not a few priggish and pedantic coxcombs 
 even in Britain, desirous of being thought men of fashion and 
 of the world forsooth, smelling all the while of crucibles or 
 parchments, have chattered of in uncouthest criticism, flirting 
 with the very bones of the beldams, — such as that heartless 
 profligate, Madame du Deffand, and others too odious to name. 
 An Englishwoman knows and feels better ; and sees nothing 
 so very laughable or absurd in the belief that the beloved of 
 Petrarch preserved her virtue in spite of all the strains of 
 impassioned genius " perilous to hear." Truth and honour 
 dwelt of old in Italy, in the citadel of the female heart, as they 
 do now in the same holy fortress, in England ; and Laura has 
 found a champion of her own sex, whose vindication might 
 soothe her shade, and chase away all shame from her down- 
 looking eyes, inspired by the insults of the painted prostitutes 
 that rolled the wanton eye, and trolled the wanton tongue, in 
 the contemptible Court of the Kegent, — the Court not of Love, 
 but of Lust, and of which the ladies, imperfect Poissardes, had 
 all the chastity, and but half the politeness, of the Parisian 
 fishmarket. 
 
 Much depraved ingenuity has been exerted to twist certain lines and 
 passages in the Canzoniere into a sense which shall blot with frailty the 
 memory of this beautiful and far-famed being. Once believe these inter- 
 pretations, and all the peculiar and graceful charm which now hangs round 
 her intercourse with Petrarch vanishes, — the reverential delicacy of the 
 poet's homage becomes a mockery, and all his exalted praises of her 
 unequalled virtue, and her invincible chastity, are turned to satire, and 
 insult our inoral feeling. 
 
284 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 That Laura's virtue was preserved by her immaculate 
 " from the captivating assiduities and intoxicating homage of 
 her lover, is proved by evidence external and internal, prose 
 and poetry, critical and traditional ; " but Petrarch, " true to 
 his sex, a very man, used at first every art, every advantage, 
 which his diversified accomplishments of mind and person lent 
 him, to destroy the virtue he adored." In one of the dialogues 
 with St Augustin, imaginary dialogues, which are a series of 
 confessions, not intended by Petrarch for publicatior, he says 
 that 
 
 " Untouched by my prayers, unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved 
 by my flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honour ; she resisted her 
 own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand, thousand things, 
 which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A 
 woman taught me the duty of a man ! To persuade me to keep the path of 
 virtue, her conduct was at once an example and a reproach ; and when she 
 beheld me break through all bounds, and rush blindly to the precipice, she 
 had the courage to abandon me, rather than follow me." 
 
 A passage occurs in the " Trionfo di Morte," beginning " La 
 Notte che sequi l'orribil caso," in which Petrarch has himself 
 left us a most minute and interesting description of the whole 
 course of Laura's conduct towards him, which by a beautiful 
 figure of poetry he has placed in her own mouth. 
 
 The apparition of Laura descending on the morning dew, bright as the 
 opening dawn, and crowned with Oriental gems, 
 
 " Di gemme orientali incoronata," 
 appears before her lover, and addresses him with compassionate tenderness. 
 After a short dialogue, full of poetic beauty and noble thoughts, Petrarch 
 conjures her, in the name of heaven and of truth, to tell him whether the 
 pity she sometimes expressed for him was allied to love ? for that the 
 sweetness she mingled with her disdain and reserve — the soft looks with 
 which she tempered her anger, had left him for long years in doubt of hei 
 real sentiments, still doating, still suspecting, still hoping without end : 
 " Creovvi amor pensier mai nella testa, 
 D' aver pieta del mio lungo martire 
 Non lasciando vostr* alta impresa onesta ? 
 Che vostri dolci sdegni e le dole' ire — 
 Le dolci paci ne' begli occhi scritte — 
 Tenner molt' anni in dubbio il mio desire." 
 She replies evasively, with a smile and a sigh, that her heart was ever 
 with him, but that to pi-eserve her own fair fame, and the virtue of both, 
 it was necessary to assume the guise of severity and disdain. She describes 
 the arts with which she kept alive his passion, now checking his presump- 
 tion with the most frigid reserve, and when she saw him drooping, as a 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 285 
 
 m an ready to die, « all fancy-sick and pale of cheer," gently restoring him 
 
 with soft looks and kind words : 
 
 "Salvando la tua vita e'l nostro onore." 
 
 m 1P confesses the delight she felt in being beloved, and the pride she took 
 She contesses tne aei g reminds him of one particular occa- 
 
 land must needYbe fair in which she first won his affection. 
 « Duolmi ancor veramente, ch'io non nacqui 
 Almen piu presso al tuo fiorito nido !— 
 Ma assai fu bel paese ov 3 io ti piacqui. 
 
 w aforth ^ to world ; thus constraining me, by all a woman's fear and 
 S A 1 Tt be silent "-" But not less is the pain beeause we conceal it in 
 tot^of theTart, no! the greater because we lament aloud : iicUon 
 and poetry can add nothing to truth, nor yet take from it. 
 " Tu eri di merce chiamar gia roco 
 
 Quand' io tacea ; perche vergogna e tenia 
 
 Facean molto desir, parer si poco ; 
 
 Non e minor il duol perch' altri '1 prema, 
 
 Ne maggior per andarsi lamentando : ^ 
 
 Per fizion non cresce il ver, ne scema.' 
 
 vious to his own. 
 
 Laura died of the plague ; and Petrarch, on hearing of her 
 iX wrote a memorandum of it now admitted to he genuine 
 in his copy of Virgil. This is so familiar to every one, that it 
 is unnecessary to quote it. 
 
286 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 All the breath of all the calumny, and all the breath of all the 
 stupidity, that ever steamed up from earth to heaven, did never 
 yet permanently obscure the lustre of one single star. They 
 puff away like a couple of Dutch boors, the one wicked and 
 the other weak, hobnobbing over muddy mugs, in a cloud of to- 
 bacco. The stars are saved the sin and shame of seeing them 
 — to use a scriptural word— spew. Just so with the maligners 
 of Petrarch and his Laura. They are beloved by all the poets 
 who have read their tale, over the whole face of the earth ; 
 and high on the arch of heaven, among his kindred luminaries, 
 shines the beautiful Sonnetteer, with a pale pensive star— no 
 need to tell her name — just seen through the halo that softens 
 his orb so lustrous. In loving his Laura — his own though an- 
 other's — so long and so delightfully — " so tender and so true" 
 — he conquered Fate and Destiny. On to the last issues of 
 life, his love was fresh and strong in immortal youth. From 
 the chill of old age its warm and pure breath saved his spirit. 
 The image on which he everlastingly gazed never changed its 
 lovely lineaments — its divine form never faded " into the light 
 of common day." Its spiritual beauty " preserved the stars 
 from wrong" and the flowers from withering. While she lived, 
 and loved, and was lovely, so did and so was the world she in- 
 habited. When she died, this sublunary scene lost nothing 
 which she had given it ; and having received over all its ele- 
 ments the impress of her being, her removal altered nothing, 
 because she herself was immortal. She still spoke, looked, 
 breathed, moved through all things ; and we doubt not, " that 
 when he was found lifeless one morning in his study, his hand 
 resting on a book," she had been with him as his last hour 
 closed in midnight solitude. 
 
 Many a man has, in his degree, been thus a Petrarch. All 
 men with souls have been so, who in the world of love have 
 44 felt the influence of malignant star" forbidding their union 
 with that presence which to them was the light of life. They 
 too have had their Lauras — and many a silent sonnet has 
 stolen from their souls, which 
 
 " Wanting the accomplishment of verse/' 
 
 floated momentarily into and out of existence. But they were 
 — and are — and will be, while " faithful loves unmemoried" 
 continue to breathe unheard and invisible round "this visible 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 287 
 
 diurnal sphere." The Book of Poetry, composed of many vol- 
 umes, is indeed a divine, but it is an imperfect revelation. More, 
 far more, a million times more, has been enjoyed and suffered, 
 than has ever been recorded by inspired poets writing with dia- 
 mond pens, steeped in light and tears, or in darkness and blood. 
 Oh ! if all the ecstasies and all the agonies that ever thrilled 
 or shuddered through human souls had found full and perma- 
 nent expression, what a literature, what a philosophy, what a 
 poetry, had now hung over our mortal race ! 
 
 Good people are not nearly so dull — their souls are not nearly 
 so uncreative and unpreservative, as, in obedience, real or fan- 
 cied, to the laws of this world, they are too often apt to imagine. 
 Thousands of these, without being false to living realities, are 
 true to dead ideals, or they blend the two into one ; and bring 
 the beauty that has long gone to the dust to angelify a living 
 countenance. A man believes that he is in love with his bride, 
 that he loves his wife. He is most grossly and happily mis- 
 taken. He is in truth a polygamist. The charms of twenty 
 virgins are all enjoyed, and innocently too, in that one with 
 the coronal of pearls wreathed round her auburn hair. All the 
 fair and chaste matrons whom he has ever seen or read of, in 
 the heathen and Christian world, meet together in the one who 
 showeth him his first-born — 
 
 u While like a star upon her bosom lies 
 His beautiful and shining golden head." x 
 
 Suppose that we speak to him who never had a wife. Nay, 
 to him whose first and only love is the wife of another. Sup- 
 pose him in the state, and with something of the soul, of 
 Petrarch. Her heart — her fancy — her imagination — her feel- 
 ings — almost her passions — are his — he knows it — he has 
 heard it from her own lips, which once have dared to murmur 
 upon his their " fragrant frenzy," and then for ever after were 
 to him a fruit forbidden on a tree of Paradise, a fruit full of 
 temptation still, though empearled with ice-drops. Will he — 
 does he — can he shut eyes, ears, all his senses and all his 
 soul against her? If he doth, then is he a wiser man than 
 Solomon — a more patient man than Job — a more chaste man, 
 by many thousand degrees, than Scipio — and yet after all as 
 big a blockhead as you may meet in this latitude on the 22d 
 1 Would you believe it— Old Holies ! See his Translation of the Iliad. 
 
--o essays: critical and imaginative. 
 
 of July. But lie is a Petrarch by hypothesis. Therefore she 
 will be to him his intellectual, his moral, his physical, and his 
 spiritual all-in-all — and he will enjoy her, in the joy of grief, 
 which is multitudinous as the melancholy and glorious sea, 
 without doing, or at least thinking of doing, one single act 
 that might bring her and him into Doctor's Commons, Q.E.D. 
 
 And pray what essential difference is there in the case, 
 should his first love, like Petrarch's, be, at her first dawn on 
 his ideal world, married ? None whatever. True, that in this 
 island and this age, such a love ought, for many substantial 
 reasons, to be avoided, even more than in that olden and golden 
 era of Italy. A Petrarch and Laura now-a-days, we fear, 
 however bright the genius of the one and the beauty of the 
 other, would receive no such honour as the Petrarch and the 
 Laura then-a-days received from Charles of Luxemburg, 
 afterwards Emperor. When that Prince was at Avignon, 
 a grand fete was given in his honour, at which all the noblesse 
 were present. He desired that Petrarch's Laura should be 
 pointed out to him ; and when she was introduced, he made a 
 sign with his hand, that the other ladies present should fall 
 back ; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplat- 
 ing her with interest, he kissed her respectfully on the fore- 
 head and on the eyes ! 
 
 Times are changed — in some things for the better, — in some 
 — many — for the worse. But prudent or imprudent — right or 
 wrong — virtuous or vicious — pure or sinful, you are in love 
 over head and ears, heart and mind, soul and body, with a mar- 
 ried woman. God forbid it should be our case — for, old as we 
 are, we should be very miserable, and altogether unfit to man- 
 age this Magazine. But suppose it your own case, and that you 
 are in your prime of manhood — and a Poet — and that your case 
 is hopeless. Suicide, with a man of your metal and piety, is 
 not to be supposed — from insanity you are saved by a sound 
 constitution and cooling medicines. Are you, then, to go mop- 
 ing up and down the streets or fields all day and night long, 
 with your finger in your mouth, or to sit moping in coffee- 
 rooms over the same eternal newspaper, as if committing to 
 memory, by way of cure, all the advertisements ? Or are you, 
 rather, to bestir yourself like a man and a poet, as by a some- 
 what violent hypothesis, perhaps, you are taken to be, and 
 kindling your genius at the Altar of Despair, to consecrate to 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 289 
 
 all future ages the memory of your happy-unhappy — your un- 
 happy-happy love ? The latter is the only alternative left to a 
 man of your genius. We have the satisfaction of knowing, by 
 long experience, that the readers of Maga are not startled by 
 trifles — otherwise we should be alarmed that we may have 
 given offence in these last few paragraphs. But though there 
 may perhaps be, as Wordsworth says — though we doubt it — 
 
 " Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," 
 
 of this we have no doubt, that there are no thoughts that do 
 ever lie too deep for laughter ; and that it would be easy to 
 bring forward the most whimsical and convincing proofs even 
 of the very Immortality of the Soul ! 
 
 From Petrarch and his Laura let us turn to Dante and his 
 Beatrice. 
 
 Petrarch was in his youth an amiable and accomplished courtier, whose 
 ambition was to cultivate the arts, and please the fair. Dante early plunged 
 into the factions which distracted his native city, was of a stern command- 
 ing temper, mingling study with action. Petrarch loved with all the viva- 
 city of his temper ; he took a pleasure in publishing, in exaggerating, in 
 embellishing his passion in the eyes of the world. Dante, capable of strong 
 and enthusiastic tenderness, and early concentrating all the affections of his 
 heart on one object, sought no sympathy ; and solemnly tells us of himself, — 
 in contradistinction to those poets of his time who wrote of love from fashion 
 or fancy, not from f eeling, — that he wrote as love inspired, and as his heart 
 dictated. 
 
 Petrarch had a gay and captivating exterior ; his complexion was fair, 
 with sparkling blue eyes and a ready smile. He is very amusing on the 
 subject of his own coxcombry, and tells us how cautiously he used to turn 
 the corner of a street, lest the wind should disorder the elaborate curls of 
 his fine hair ! Dante, too, was in his youth eminently handsome, but in a 
 style of beauty which was characteristic of his mind ; his eyes were large 
 and intensely black, his nose aquiline, his complexion of a dark olive, his 
 hair and beard very much curled, his step slow and measured, and the habi- 
 tual expression of his countenance grave, with a tinge of melancholy ab- 
 straction. When Petrarch walked along the streets of Avignon, the women 
 smiled, and said, " There goes the lover of Laura ! " The impression which 
 Dante left on those who beheld him, was far different. In allusion to his 
 own personal appearance, he used to relate an incident that once occurred 
 to him. When years of persecution and exile had added to the natural 
 sternness of his countenance, the deep lines left by grief, and the brooding 
 spirit of vengeance, he happened to be at Verona, where, since the publica- 
 tion of the Inferno, he was well known. Passing one day by a portico, where 
 several women were seated, one of them whispered, with a look of awe, — 
 " Do you see that man ? — that is he who goes down to hell whenever he 
 pleases, and brings us back tidings of the sinners below ! " — " Ay, indeed ! " 
 
 VOL. V. T 
 
290 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 replied her companion, — " very likely ; see how his face is scarred with fire 
 and brimstone, and blackened with smoke, and how his hair and beard have 
 been singed and curled in the flames ! " 
 
 But when Dante won the heart of Beatrice Portinari, 'twas 
 at a banquet given by her father, Folco di Portinari, when 
 he was a boy, and she a girl — nine and eight years old. Won 
 the heart ? Yes — won the heart — 
 
 a Into his heart received her heart, 
 And gave her back his own." 
 
 His face was not scarred with fire and brimstone then ! His 
 beard, in place of being singed and curled in the flames, was 
 but an imperceptible down — and his hair as bright and curled 
 as that of his bright little Beatrice. He was then almost fresh 
 from heaven — 
 
 " And trailing clouds of glory did he come, 
 With tresses like an angel ! " 
 No fit messenger was he then to go down to hell and bring 
 back tidings of the sinners below ! But the time came, when 
 he was the only mortal man, of all the millions, accomplished 
 for such a mission. In scattered lines, selected by our fair 
 friend, a sketch may be drawn of the person and character of 
 Beatrice grown up to womanhood. She was not in form like 
 the slender, fragile-looking Laura, but on a larger scale of 
 loveliness, tall, and of a commanding figure, graceful in her 
 gait as the peacock, upright as the crane. Her hair was fair 
 and curling, but not golden ; she had an ample forehead, 
 " spaciosa fronte ; " a mouth that, when it smiled, surpassed 
 all things in sweetness ; her neck was white and slender, 
 springing gracefully from the bust ; her chin small, round, and 
 dimpled ; her arms beautiful and round ; her hand soft, white, 
 and polished ; her fingers slender, and decorated with jewelled 
 rings, as became her birth : fair she was as a pearl, all lovely 
 to look upon, but where it was becoming — disdainful, 
 
 " Graziosa a vederla 
 E disdegnosa dove si conviene." 
 
 On the death of Beatrice, Boccaccio, who knew Dante per- 
 sonally, tells us that he was so changed oy affliction that his 
 best friends could scarcely recognise him. He scarcely ate or 
 slept — he would not speak ; he neglected his person, until he 
 became "una cosa selvatica a vedere," a savage tiring to the 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 201 
 
 eye ; to borrow his own expression, lie was " grief-stung to 
 madness." 
 
 One stanza of the Canzone "Gli occhi dolenti," written after 
 the death of Beatrice, is unequalled, Mrs Jameson rightly says, 
 for a simplicity at once tender and sublime. The Canzone is 
 addressed, like the others, to her female companions, whom 
 alone he thought worthy to listen to her praises, and whose 
 gentle hearts could alone sympathise in his grief. In a note 
 prefixed to it, he tells us that, after he had long wept in silence 
 the loss of her he loved, he thought to give utterance to his 
 sorrow in words, and to compose a Canzone in which he should 
 write (weeping as he wrote) of the virtues of her who, through 
 much anguish, had bowed his soul to the earth. 
 
 " Ascended is our Beatrice to the highest heaven, to those realms where 
 angels dwell in peace ; and you, her fair companions, and Love and me, she 
 has left, alas ! behind. It was not the frost of winter that chilled her, nor 
 was it the heat of summer that withered her ; it was the power of her virtue, 
 her humility, and her truth, that ascending into heaven moved the Eternal 
 Father to call her to himself, seeing that this miserable life was not worthy 
 of anything so fair, so excellent ! " 
 
 On the anniversary of the death of Beatrice, Dante tells us 
 that he was sitting alone, thinking upon her, and tracing, as 
 he meditated, the figure of an angel on his tablets. This gave 
 rise to the 18th Sonnet of the Vita Nuova, which he calls 
 u II doloroso annovale." Two other sonnets, immediately fol- 
 lowing, are addressed to some kind and gentle creature, who 
 from a window beheld Dante abandon himself, with fearful vehe- 
 mence, to the agony of his feelings, when he believed no human 
 eye was on him. How overwhelming the pathos ! " She 
 turned pale with compassion ; her eyes filled with tears, as if 
 she had loved me. Then did I remember my noble-hearted 
 Beatrice, for even thus she often looked upon me," &c. And 
 he confesses that the grateful, yet mournful pleasure, with 
 which he met the pitying looks of this fair being, excited 
 remorse in his heart that he should be able to derive plea- 
 sure from anything ! 
 
 Dante concludes the collection of his Eime (his miscella- 
 neous poems on the subject of his early love) with this remark- 
 able note : — 
 
 " I beheld a marvellous vision, which has caused me to cease from writ- 
 ing in praise of my blessed Beatrice, until I can celebrate her more worthily ; 
 
292 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 •which that I may do, I devote my whole soul to study, as she knoweth well j 
 insomuch, that if it please the Great Disposer of all things to prolong my 
 life for a few years upon this earth, I hope hereafter to sing of my Beatrice 
 what never yet was said or sung of woman." 
 
 Through the two first parts of the "Divina Commedia" (Hell 
 and Purgatory), Beatrice is merely announced to the reader. 
 She does not appear in person ; for, asks this fine and feeling 
 writer, "what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of Beatrice 
 do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment?" 
 Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prefaced 
 and shadowed forth in many beautiful allusions. For instance, 
 it is she who, descending from the empyreal height, sends Vir- 
 gil to be the deliverer of Dante in the mysterious Forest, and 
 his guide through the abysses of torment ; and she is indi- 
 cated, as it were, several times in the course of the poem, in a 
 manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is 
 at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, 
 all the dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the 
 melancholy charm of a beloved and lamented reality. 
 
 "When Dante has left the confines of Purgatory, a wondrous chariot 
 approaches from afar, surrounded by a flight of angelic beings, and veiled 
 in a cloud of flowers — " un nuvola di fiori," is the beautiful expression. A 
 female form is at length apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated 
 in the car, and " robed in hues of living flame : " she is veiled : he cannot 
 discern her features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her, 
 
 " At whose touch 
 The power of ancient love was strong within him." 
 
 He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote 
 him — 
 
 " Che gia m' avea trafitto 
 Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse ; " 
 
 and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence of 
 his Beatrice — 
 
 ** Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma ! " 
 
 The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly 
 conceived. 
 
 Beatrice — no longer the soft, frail, and feminine being he had known 
 and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit — rises up in her chariot, 
 
 " And with a mien 
 Of that stern majesty which doth surround 
 A mother's presence to her awe-struck child, 
 She looked — a flavour of such bitterness 
 Was mingled with her pity ! " 
 
 Cakey's Trails. 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 293 
 
 Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusations 
 against himself : while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and 
 anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected time, 
 his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no longer upon 
 earth to lead him with the light of " her youthful eyes," — gli occhi gio- 
 vinetti. 
 
 " Soon as I had changed 
 
 My mortal for immortal, then he left me, 
 
 And gave himself to others ; when from flesh 
 
 To spirit I had risen, and increase 
 
 Of beauty and of virtue circled me, 
 
 I was less dear to him and valued less ! " 
 
 Purgatory, c. 30.— Caret's Trans. 
 
 This praise of herself, and stern upbraiding of her lover, would sound 
 harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as 
 uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters 
 out a faint excuse — 
 
 " Thy fair looks withdrawn, 
 Things present with deceitful pleasures turn'd 
 My steps aside," — 
 
 she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory : - 
 
 " Never didst thou spy 
 In art or nature aught so passing sweet 
 As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame 
 Enclosed me, and are scatter'd now in dust. 
 If sweetest thing thus fail'd thee with my death, 
 What afterward of mortal should thy wish 
 Have tempted ? " 
 
 Purgatory, c. 31. 
 
 And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love 
 to be the thrall of a slight girl. This last expression is supposed to allude 
 either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati, or to the attach- 
 ment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese named Gentucca, 
 the subject of several of his poems. But, notwithstanding all this severity 
 of censure, Dante, gazing on his divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveli- 
 ness, his eyes so eager to recompense themselves for " their ten years' thirst,*' 
 — Beatrice had been dead ten years — that not being yet freed from the stain 
 of his earthly nature, he is warned not to gaze " too fixedly" on her charms. 
 After a further probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres 
 which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly 
 assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true distinction 
 seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom under the name 
 and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice, he has clothed her 
 in the attributes of Divine Wisdom. 
 
 She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the 
 source of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound ; 
 and when Dante looks round for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and 
 has taken her place throned among the supremely blessed, " as far above 
 
294 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea : " he gazes up 
 at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe invokes 
 her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down upon him 
 from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial sweetness, and then 
 fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is absorbed in ecstasy. Here 
 we leave her; the poet had touched the limits of permitted thought; the 
 seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by the inspiration of deep love, 
 could no higher soar — the audacity of genius could dare no farther ! 
 
 This, we say, is very beautifully thought, felt, and written 
 — one of the many gems set in these brilliant volumes. In 
 remembrance of his early love, Dante named his only daughter 
 Beatrice, and she became a nun at Eavenna. The bard was 
 buried — sumptuously interred, at the cost of Guido da Polenta, 
 the father of that unfortunate Francesca Kimini, whose story 
 he has so exquisitely told in the Fifth Canto of the Inferno. 
 
 The love, the sorrow, the despair, the prostration, and the 
 resuscitation of Dante's spirit, are all most beautiful and most 
 sublime. With all the states of Petrarch's spirit we can sym- 
 pathise easily, and readily, and happily — not that his grief is 
 not profound, for it is profound ; but we see it ranging and 
 shifting for ever and ever before our eyes, and we become 
 familiar with, never indifferent to, the various beauty of the 
 pathos. We delight in our tears, as he himself often did; and 
 are never afraid to gaze on the lovely picture of Laura. But 
 Dante, while Beatrice was the sun of his life, was sometimes 
 happy in the light she shed over the world, without referring 
 always in his happiness — nor need was — that light to the 
 benign and gracious orb which was its ever- streaming fountain. 
 When she was eclipsed — " total eclipse" it indeed was to him, 
 and the skies were as the blind walls of a dungeon — we hear 
 his troubled spirit crying — moaning — shrieking — almost yell- 
 ing in the utter darkness. A more terrible rending of the soul 
 then took place within him than ever could have torn the softer 
 nature of Petrarch. He was then mad — perhaps he was mad 
 long before and long after; but then was a crisis — a paroxysm, 
 in which life could not long have remained to mortal man. 
 His after grief was gloomier than other men's despair — his 
 subsequent sorrow sterner than other men's grief. Yet all 
 the while how divine his tenderness, as the tenderness of a 
 mourning and bereaved angel ! His thoughts of his Beatrice 
 do not lie too deep for tears ! Dante weeps — often — long — 
 we might almost say incessantly. But his are not showers of 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 295 
 
 tears, which, by a law of nature, must relieve the heart, just 
 as rain relieves the sky. Big drops plash down upon his page, 
 like the first of a thunder- shower — but let them continue to 
 drop, at sullen intervals, for hours and hours, they seem still 
 to be the first — the huge black mass of woe and despair is 
 undiminished and unenlightened — 
 
 " Hung be the heavens with black," 
 
 is still the cry of his agony, and at times he forgets that any 
 other human beings ever had existence and lost it, save his own 
 Beatrice Portinari. If another countenance starts into being 
 before him, it is because it weeps for him the ghastly sufferer; 
 by its pity it is beautified into some dim shadowy likeness to 
 that of Beatrice — and then he upbraids himself for having been 
 but for a moment beguiled of grief even by another who felt 
 compassion for him who had lost — Beatrice. To be, but during 
 one single moment's relief from utter wretchedness, forgetful 
 of Beatrice — no, not for one single moment forgetful — -but with 
 all his being not brimful of remembrance and of misery — 
 smites him, a sinner — a sinner against Beatrice — with remorse ! 
 Then he bows down before her spirit in repentance. She is 
 dead — and he living ! and with eyes and ears for any other 
 sight — any other sound — though but an instant's glance, an 
 instant's voice of pity — and the thought is itself at once sin, 
 shame, and punishment ! A great poet of our own day, speak- 
 ing of the passion of love, of love for some " slight girl," in 
 the bosom of a man of great energy, tells us how piteously 
 and passionately he uttered his complaints over her death to 
 all the objects of nature with which her memory was associated, 
 and then adds, that the man " who made such passionate 
 complaint was one of giant stature, one who could have danced 
 equipped from head to feet in iron mail." How inadequate an 
 image ! Of what importance is the bulk of a man's thews and 
 sinews when the single combat is with Despair — with any one 
 agony in the heart or the brain ? Had Dante been a giant, to 
 whom he of Gath had been a pigmy, there had been nothing, 
 to our conception, sublime, because of his bulk, in his prostra- 
 tion on the grave of Beatrice. He needed not to have flung 
 himself down there — or erect his body as a tree ; still his soul 
 would have looked ghastly — and to the soul in its own suffer- 
 ings alone do we look through the body, savage symbol it may 
 
296 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 be, as Dante's was, of invisible agonies. Dante was not a " man 
 of giant stature," nor could he have " danced equipped from 
 head to feet in iron mail." In good truth, we suspect he was no 
 dancer at all — unless, perhaps, on the evening of that fete when 
 he, a glorious, and a glorying, and a glorifying boy, nine years 
 old, led forth into the centre, perhaps, of the spacious floor, 
 the stately girl with the ample forehead, one spring and one 
 summer only younger than himself — for them the year had 
 no autumn, no winter — and the noble children knew, in the 
 divine instinct of a dawning love, destined never to set but in 
 the grave, that they were indeed twin-stars, nor could the one 
 be bright or blest without the other in heaven ! But Dante's 
 soul was gigantic ; and there was the struggle in which he 
 was overthrown — but overthrown but to rise again, as if he 
 had drawn almost unnatural strength from the ideal dust of his 
 Beatrice, to sing of that Hell and that Purgatory, all whose 
 pains, except that of guilt — the greatest, it is true, of them all 
 — he had gone through when she died, and to sing of that 
 heaven which she even on earth had made him understand, and 
 through whose regions her sainted spirit was afterwards the 
 holy conductress. 
 
 Petrarch ! all life long Thou pursuedst not, — for She needed 
 not to fly from Thee — but didst adore a shade, or say rather 
 a gentle gleam of " stationary sunshine ! " Thine eyes were 
 often blest in her smiling countenance, thine ears often drank 
 in her voice's melody — everlasting delightful both — to thy 
 most melancholy, most restless spirit. Perhaps happiness had 
 been misery — and fruition dispelled the dream. Womankind ex- 
 isting to Thee but in her, and She, though beautiful flesh and 
 blood, in her inevitable separation but a shade, more visionary 
 and divine was The Sex to thy soul than it ever could have 
 seemed to be, had thine own affianced virgin dropt before her 
 bridal day into the tomb. The ideal world in which Thou so 
 long didst dwell was not disenchanted by thy Laura's death- 
 it only lay in more pensive shade, more melancholy lustre. 
 She who on earth had dwelt apart from thee in body, seemed 
 not to be more remotely removed when she went to Heaven. 
 Her spirit perhaps visited Thee more frequently than ever be- 
 fore did either her bodily presence, or the idea of her living. 
 Lost at last, utterly and for ever in the grave that Madonna- 
 like countenance, which for so many long years shone on Thee 
 
THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 207 
 
 but by glimpses, hurried and stealthy, and not without trouble 
 and tears. But memory, strong as the eye in undying passion, 
 
 " Could give Thee back the dead, 
 Even in the loveliest looks she wore ! " 
 
 That unenjoyed Delight saved Thee from many sins, and thus 
 
 " Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ! " 
 and immortal Fame came flying to Thee on the wings of 
 Love! 
 
 Dante, thy boyhood was blest beyond all bliss ; and till the 
 prime of manhood thou wert with thy Beatrice even on earth, 
 in the heaven of heavens, cheaply purchased by despair 
 and madness ! Thy spirit sounded the depths of woe, but no 
 plummet-line, even of all thy passions upon passions, could 
 reach the bottom of that sea. When the blackness of night 
 lay densest upon thee, arose before thine eyes thy own celes- 
 tial Beatrice, and far and wide diffused a sacred and indestruc- 
 tible light over all thy stormy world. She disappeared, and 
 thou didst follow her, even in the flesh, beyond the " flaming 
 bounds of space and time," and beheld her among the highest 
 angels. Therefore, man of many woes, and troubles, and dis- 
 quietudes, and hates, and revenges ! thy fierce spirit often 
 slept in a profounder calm than ever steeps the stillest dreams 
 of those who, by nature and fortune, love and enjoy on earth 
 perpetual peace. The sleep of the eagle on the cliff edge 
 above the roar of cataracts, and in the heart of the thunder- 
 cloud, is hushed and deep as that of the halcyon on the smooth 
 and sunny main ! 
 
 But lo ! the printer's devil ! Please, sir, for a few minutes 
 be seated. 
 
 For the present, we must lay aside these very delightful 
 volumes — perhaps to return to them, in a month or two — 
 or some time during the winter. We have got over, in this 
 article, only about the third of the first volume — and the Loves 
 of Two Poets — but then such Two ! Should the book reach a 
 third edition before Christmas, we shall not adorn our bare, 
 or enliven our dull pages with any more of its gorgeous or 
 animated passages ; but if that part of the reading public, 
 which does not confine its midnight studies to Maga, do not 
 call for new editions, then we shall set their teeth on edge by 
 a taste of some more fair and fresh fruit from the same Tree. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 [JANUARY 1630. J 
 
 The violent political partisans of education might be offended 
 even with the word objection ; as if to offer an objection were 
 to set yourself against education, and to show yourself to be 
 an enemy of knowledge. If they were philosophers, they would 
 see that such sensitiveness shows a misunderstanding of the 
 magnitude of the subject, and of the constitution of the world. 
 For education is a great, a boundless power ; and no such power 
 can be set in motion among men, whose faculties are disordered, 
 and whose will is mixed, without producing, greatly and con- 
 spicuously, both good and evil. 
 
 The objections to education, urged by many enlightened 
 men, are, that it tends to produce danger to religion, and dan- 
 ger to the state. Observe, that the education spoken of by 
 them is essentially and pre-eminently — intellectual. True, 
 that the education of Scotland has been something more — re- 
 ligious — not a gift of the state, however that might assist, but 
 emanating from, and dependent on, its Church, laid on it by deep 
 persecutions. But without peculiar circumstances which may 
 give it this character, or considering it without this character, 
 which is the proper way of learning its own nature, Education 
 is intellectual. It is a cultivation of man's intellectual facul- 
 ties, of his understanding, and his powers of reasoning. It has, 
 therefore, a tendency to raise in him a very high opinion of 
 those faculties, and to induce him to form an undue estimate 
 of their power and province. 
 
 What is the effect of this ? Generally — self-confidence, a 
 feeling either good or evil, — purified, it is good, and a neces- 
 sary part of good — unpurified, it is immoral. But secondly 
 and specifically, the effect is confidence in those particular 
 powers — an effect not necessarily ill either, — but more easily 
 ill, and more difficult to guard. For moral self-confidence is 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 299 
 
 purified by morality, which is in the power of every one, but 
 intellectual self-confidence is purified only by the very highest 
 instruction, which is necessarily reserved for very few. 
 
 Intellectual self-confidence thus produced by intellectual cul- 
 tivation, is, in the first place, confidence in the powers of the 
 human mind generally ; then, in those of the human being 
 himself. It has been seen in the last age of the history of the 
 human mind, what confidence in the sufficiency of the human 
 faculties generally may be in result. We have seen that the 
 evil caused thereby has been tremendous. To extend the 
 same confidence to orders hitherto uninstructed, is, unless 
 guarded against, to extend to them the possibility, perhaps the 
 probability, of the same result,— to make them partakers in the 
 proud error of self-misled philosophy,— to cany down into their 
 privacy of life, their humble security and their obscure peace, 
 the dazzling illusions and ambitious falsehoods which human 
 wit, at its height of power, armed against itself with its brightest 
 weapons, taught in mysteries, and amplest in resources, has 
 been able to muster to its own destruction. 
 
 The intellectual self-confidence of the individual mind tends 
 to similar effects. Necessarily so— because the human mind 
 at large is only the assemblage, or collection of single minds ; 
 and speaking of it, we mean only to speak comprehensively of 
 some common manifestation of the majority of minds, which 
 manifestation, when the mind we speak of is that of an age, 
 is always the more determined and vehement through the 
 power of sympathy. Therefore, a disposition due to the cir- 
 cumstances of the times,— a disorder, if it be such,— breaks 
 out with more force than is due to the action of these circum- 
 stances on the single mind,— like one in the physical world, 
 which, while "it is hung in the sick air," is also infectious 
 from touch to touch, and from breath to breath. 
 
 Whatever, therefore, is manifested conspicuously, compre- 
 hensively, and with great power, in the mind of an age, as the 
 effect of any cause acting on the mind of the age— say confi- 
 dence in the powers of the human mind— that will, in degree, 
 be manifested as the effect of the same cause, acting on the 
 single mind, within the single mind. If that effect be to the 
 one irreligion, immorality, and political license, to the other it 
 will be irreligion, immorality, and political license. 
 
 Now, the effect of individual intellectual self-confidence 
 
300 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 appears to be morally good or ill, just as it is determined. 
 Thus, it is easy to conceive such confidence, even when undue, 
 and undirected, remaining within moral limits. That a man, 
 through it, should be harsh and arrogant, rash, overbearing, 
 untractable, refractory to direction and control, and most wil- 
 ful in all his habits, is, in truth, what must be called an im- 
 moral effect, since it is a state of mind contrary to that which 
 a perfect moral discipline tends to produce. Nevertheless, it 
 is conceivable that it should still remain, so to speak, within 
 the limits of morality. Because such a man may still bow 
 down before the Moral Law, revering its sanctions, conforming 
 to its greater obligations, only not perceiving that there are in- 
 numerable lesser obligations with which he does not comply. 
 But let there, for such a man's calamity, prevail in the society 
 any kind of immoral opinion, sprung, as has been averred, from 
 the confidence of the human mind in itself, and then such a 
 man will be found more than all others, unless some very strong 
 individual peculiarity, or bias, hold him back from it, predis- 
 posed to embrace that pernicious opinion. We are looking 
 here to the lower orders. In the highest instruction, indi- 
 vidual intellectual self-confidence is frequently the parent or 
 finder-out of dangerous opinions. In its lower degrees, it usu- 
 ally waits, but is not unwilling to be misled. 
 
 But why should the opinion produced by the self-confidence 
 of the human intellect be irreligious, immoral, adverse to poli- 
 tical establishment? For two reasons, which are such as to 
 make the consequences nearly universal. First, many of the 
 reasons and doctrines of religion, many of the reasons of moral- 
 ity, many of the reasons of political obedience, are unfathom- 
 able to the human intellect, at least such as it is at present 
 with the great majority of the cultivated orders of the most 
 enlightened nations. There are difficulties in the philosophy 
 of the world, to the height of which it has not yet attained. 
 Now, the human mind, confident in its own sufficiency, will 
 not, cannot, believe what it cannot understand. It receives 
 not, because it cannot pierce, penetrate, explore, and expound 
 the dogmatic mysteries of religion ; it has no faith in any 
 secrets behind the veil which it cannot lift. It denies moral- 
 ity, because its law, too, is laid in depths of its own mysterious 
 nature, which its own research has not yet laid bare, and pos- 
 sibly never will. It is unwilling even to hearken often to the 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 301 
 
 still small voice of conscience, for it is like the voice of the un- 
 known God. It refuses political obedience, because it has 
 conceived but one reason for obedience, namely, the interest of 
 the individual in the welfare of the whole ; and yet it finds 
 institutions challenging obedience, some of which have sprang 
 up in imagination, some in passion, some out of the subsiding 
 conflict of the blindest forces ; but it does not discern what 
 hand led out of the tumult and wrath of fighting interests, and 
 disposed out of many contending elements, institutions, laws, 
 and a political order which secure the very condition it requires, 
 namely, individual good in the common welfare. This good is 
 under abatement, through the moral evil and corruption rest- 
 ing upon mankind; the unconquerable necessity of which 
 abatement, except by the diminution of the moral evil and 
 corruption in which it lies, it least of all distinguishes 
 and admits. 
 
 Secondly, religion, morality, polity, are all bonds upon 
 human will — at least, since that will is corrupt they are so — 
 to fallen man they are so — a stern, awful, often rigid subju- 
 gation. Can he like this ? He hates it. There boils up in 
 him, therefore, a will against these authorities, exciting and 
 impelling his understanding to find invalidating flaws in their 
 constitution. That the understanding should thus obey the 
 impulse of the will, — that it should seem to lead, where it is 
 only propelled, — that belief should be moulded by inclina- 
 tion, is nothing new. It happens to all every day — it has 
 happened from the beginning of the aberration of our spirit. 
 The highly cultivated, they whose wit is more subtle in self- 
 deception, may not propose to themselves to find out reasons, 
 but there is no doubt that any inclination pressing upon the 
 thoughts continually will influence them, unknown to the 
 consciousness of the mind through which they pass ; whereas 
 grosser minds, grosser in feeling, grosser in thought, although 
 intellectually cultivated, will say openly and with their lips — 
 P let us break asunder their bands, and cast their cords from 
 us." 
 
 We think the consequences now shortly desciibed of culti- 
 vation of the intellectual faculties are real, and may go to any 
 extent. Its consequences were, and are, in France. They 
 are now here, in certain divisions of the educated, and the 
 present partial literary corruption of the half-educated. This, 
 
302 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 then, is an argument against education; and if there were' 
 nothing to set against it, a decisive argument. But that it is 
 not decisive would appear probable from this, that the same 
 argument is one against the cultivation of all orders, of those 
 who have leisure for study and give themselves up to it. For 
 it is among them, in the first place, that this hardened and 
 defying philosophical pride shows itself, and that it begins to 
 make its discoveries. But we instinctively resist the conclu- 
 sion, that we are not to cultivate our faculties. We seem 
 forfeiting our birthright, our nature, if we give it up. Thus, 
 then, we are led, if there be that tendency in cultivation which 
 has been said, to inquire what may counteract it. "We are 
 led to this by a hopeful feeling that there is such a counter- 
 action, and that it will and does predominate. Now the 
 basis of this hope seems to be of two kinds — in the nature of 
 the human mind, and in the nature of the world. Of the 
 mind, which is not mere intellect, but a mixed being, in which 
 sensibility of affection, imagination, and conscience, have 
 place with intellect. This mind is so constituted, then, that 
 it rests not in intellect ; if any power is given to the growth 
 and development of its other powers, these may and will 
 counteract any injurious tendency lodged in the intellect. 
 For instance, a great part of a man's happiness is in his 
 domestic affections ; but it is easily and quickly evident to 
 him that the first condition of the employment, wellnigh of 
 the existence of these affections, is morality. Conjugal love 
 is gone without the law of its own virtue. What is the hap- 
 piness of a father in a profligate son ? Let him be what he 
 will in judging of himself, he becomes moral in judging of his 
 child. Where is domestic peace without domestic moral 
 order ? Here, then, is compulsion from the affections to rever- 
 ence the moral law. Again, grant that there is in our minds 
 some principle not easily treated of, that draws us to religion. 
 Is it not counteracted by others not strictly religious ? Does 
 not conscience, the moral sense, if this be really deep and 
 tender, call us towards Him, incline us to seek and believe in 
 Him, who, if he be, is, in the unfathomable necessity of his 
 being, the eternal infinite law of Holy Eight? Will not a 
 moral spirit, oppressed with the immoralities of the only in- 
 telligent being it knows, — itself, — rejoice to think that there 
 is one Being in whom this miserable depravation of good does 
 not mingle with the capacity of good, which is pure and 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 303 
 
 unsullied? It might easily be shown that the imagination 
 and the natural affections all lead us to religion. 
 
 Thus, then, if that were true wholly, which is only true in 
 part, that Intellect leads men to Immorality and to Irreli- 
 gion, there are other parts of our nature leading opposite 
 ways ; or rather let us say, if there be one inclination of Intel- 
 lect to dissolve morality and religion, there are principles of 
 our nature which will reign over Intellect to incline it to them. 
 If religion prevail with us, so too will it incline to Political 
 Obedience, considering governments as appointed, and rever- 
 encing the moral order which they actually maintain. Thus 
 there is ground of expectation, of belief, that in the absolute, 
 or general cultivation of our nature, including Intellect, the 
 result will be good. 
 
 But, secondly, the nature of the world tends to the same 
 result. For what is the subject of the Exercises of Intellect ? 
 The World, Natural, Moral, Visible, Invisible. Let Intellect, 
 then, survey the Natural World. It is possible, certainly, to 
 read causes and effects wondrously connected, and yet to see 
 them, and nothing more. But it is also possible to see more. 
 It is possible for our understanding, pursuing, and examining 
 stupendous order in worlds on worlds — stupendous care in the 
 formation of an elephant or an insect — to believe in the design, 
 a designer. The study of the works of wisdom, power, good- 
 ness, does not seem unfitted, surely, to draw our mind to the 
 contemplation, the acknowledgment of wisdom, power, good- 
 ness ! Such men as Newton and Linnaeus are incidental, but 
 august, teachers of religion. Lord Bacon says, as everybody 
 knows, that a little philosophy makes men atheists, leading 
 them to rest in second causes, but much philosophy brings 
 them back to religion. It seems the first untaught mind steps 
 direct from the effect to God ; to the half-taught mind, philo- 
 sophy has raised up an interposition of second causes, which 
 it cannot get over ; the taught mind — taught by divine philo- 
 sophy — steps in its might through and o^er the second causes, 
 to the same end or origin. Thus, if there be a tendency 
 in the affection which accompanies Intellect, of pride and self- 
 elation, to close up the mind to the most important truths, there 
 is a tendency in the subject on which it is employed to open 
 it up to those very truths. Again, from the material turn 
 to the moral world. In its structure are many things that 
 perplex us. But, search it as wo will, the more we search it, 
 
304 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 the more we find this clear and great law established in it, — 
 that good follows to the doer of good, evil to the doer of evil — 
 an observation giving infinite weight and awe to the moral 
 law in onr own- minds, and leading our thoughts to a Moral 
 Euler. The logical inference from the world is morality. 
 
 There is, then, an argument on each side. — Are they bal- 
 anced ? It appears to us difficult, on the arguments them- 
 selves, to say that the one or the other preponderates. Both 
 are in themselves tendencies unlimited. But which seems, 
 in the history of the world, to have prevailed? In ancient 
 times, among the Greeks, the prevalence of their philosophy 
 was to virtue. In modern times, the tendency of civilisation 
 has been to virtue. What may be said, generally, of the his- 
 torical argument, is this, that if the nation has been moral — 
 and as it has been moral — Intellect has been moral also. It 
 has obeyed, has taken the colour of morality. In Greece it 
 seems to have been moral far beyond the practical morality, 
 and to have taken a moral lead. Let us see, then, if there be 
 anything else to guide us in deciding on which side the conclu- 
 sion lies. Look, then, what the progress of nations has been, 
 in any time. It has been a progress in intellectual attainment 
 and development. One great cause of this has been man's 
 contest with his condition. He has laboured to conquer phy- 
 sical nature — to make himself as much as he might master of 
 his lot — to overcome disorder and mischief, and attain repose 
 in his social condition — to subdue the greatest obstacle to his 
 welfare, evil in his own heart. Now, by these efforts, have 
 arts and sciences been evolved, knowledge of the existences 
 and laws of nature, and hence command of her powers. 
 Another cause, or the cause of another mode of man's cultiva- 
 tion, — in some countries more than in others, in all in some 
 degree, — has been the native impulse of his feelings produc- 
 ing the arts which adorn and exalt life externally, by so 
 shaping its materials, circumstances, and forms, that Imagina- 
 tion may rest upon it, may dwell in customary life — namely, 
 in stateliness and magnificence of its decorations, such as 
 sumptuous architecture ; exalting it internally, by those arts 
 which embody and bring into agnition to the senses its highest 
 emotions. Necessity has not prompted, nor required such arts, 
 but the native vigour of the soul has given them birth. 
 
 Such are two of the great origins of intellectual cultivation, 
 — : first, the ameliorating of man's condition, where he comes 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE". 305 
 
 to be almost under the necessity of ameliorating it, by de- 
 liverance from physical and from moral evil ; secondly, the 
 yearning of the soul after its own exaltation, in the midst of 
 its terrestrial existence. 
 
 Which of these two causes would we, which are we able to 
 put away ? Neither. 
 
 For the first constraint upon man to know, is, we have seen, 
 independent of his pure desire of knowledge. But on the 
 knowledge thus compelled, the desire feeds and kindles. Its 
 materials are thus spread out before it; its acquisition has 
 begun ; it has tasted ; and then its own native nobility breaks 
 forth. 
 
 If this be the true history of what has happened, shall we 
 not be led to say, that the question never comes to be pro- 
 posed to our mind, whether it should cultivate its faculties or 
 not ? That this cultivation is involved with conditions of its 
 existence — is inevitable — a destiny laid upon it ? We cannot 
 conceive it proposed to the deliberation of those with whom 
 the decision remains. For it may indeed be made matter of 
 argument, not unreasonably, among philosophical inquirers, 
 whether the operation of such and such causes upon human 
 nature and society be friendly or unfriendly to human welfare. 
 But how, pray, can it be a question to mankind ? To those 
 to whom the powers belong, with whom it rests to cultivate 
 their powers or not ? ,They are under the influence of causes, 
 impelling them to proceed, which they will not attempt to 
 resist. These are they with whom the great conflict of society 
 with natural evils rests — they to whom manufactures, agri- 
 culture, commerce, navigation, war, wealth, the administra- 
 tion of the laws, the government of nations, the economy of 
 public wealth, education, religion, remain matters of para- 
 mount and indisputable public concern — the means of their 
 own several supoort and advancement. Therefore, as the 
 question might prove one difficult to argue on its proper 
 merits, what has now been said of the history of the human 
 mind, and of the manner in which its condition and consti- 
 tution, while it simply obeys them, carries it forward into 
 boundless fields, acquisitions, conquests, and triumphs of 
 intellect, must certainly be received in place of an argument 
 of the question on its merits, — as an indication from Nature 
 herself, — that is, as an indication from the wisdom in which 
 
 vol. v. u 
 
306 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 nature is framed, and therefore as a law to human reason, — 
 that the high cultivation of the intellectual faculties should 
 be persevered in, — and that if it has, as in some measure it 
 has, injurious consequences, it should be confided that tho 
 good consequences are greater far, and that the moral welfare 
 of man is to exist in the midst of his intellectual light. 
 
 The next question that arises, is, How far man should go 
 in Intellect ? Here, a very little reflection shows us imme- 
 diately that this point also is decided. If man is indeed 
 destined to such an intellectual life, — if his hope and his 
 strength be undoubtedly in these pure and high endowments 
 of his rational soul — in these works achieved — in these king- 
 doms won, — then there remains no reason to doubt that he is 
 to push these conquests to the utmost — to repel as far back 
 as he can the boundary of ignorance and of darkness. 
 
 Supposing, then, that this too is admitted. Hitherto 
 we have been reasoning concerning the highest inquiries. 
 Hitherto we have not asked, what is to be the lot, the avoca- 
 tion, the instruction of the inferior orders of a people, of those 
 who build in themselves the deep wide base of society, but of 
 those who form its stately, its embellished, and its crowning 
 heights — of those whom their birth bids aspire, not in 
 ambition of outward life only, but in ambition of thought and 
 of the soul, — of those to whom their wealth gives Leisure and 
 Power, — Leisure, the happy, if well-used privilege of appro- 
 priating, at the choice of their own discretion, according to 
 the best, highest, purest, wisest suggestion of their heart and 
 understanding, the measures of the swift span of mortal exist- 
 ence, — of stamping on hour, day, month, and year, as it fleets 
 by, acts of self-chosen virtuous endeavour, bright labours of 
 useful and yet noble thought, — meditation, clothed in Fancy's 
 hues, and yet instinct with feelings the deepest and most 
 solemn : Power, — not that only which is command over the 
 actions, the obedience, the service, the will, the happiness, 
 the welfare and virtue of others, but power also for themselves 
 inwardly, — power which is the command over all the means 
 of knowledge, of living instruction as it is best given, — access 
 to all the treasure-houses, use of the accumulated wealth of 
 learning, science, and art, which seas divide not, which shores 
 remove not from the sufficient object of its sufficient desire — 
 to which not only all volumes of all languages, but the Book 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 307 
 
 of Nature and Life is equally with them outspread,— the cities 
 and manners of men open to be seen and known, — and the 
 sages of the earth, wherever they breathe to meditate wisdom, 
 can be sought as companions and friends — of those we speak, 
 who, to whatever rank, to whatever fortune they may have 
 been born, to the highest, to the lowest, to the amplest and 
 most flowing, or to the narrowest and most constraining, are 
 yet all called, by the gifts indulged to their spirit, to intellec- 
 tual riches and rank—of those who thus estated, and taking 
 their easier or more difficult way to the possession of their 
 heritage,— become the teachers and lights of the world,— 
 become its separated, it may be said, consecrated order, and 
 priesthood of knowledge. 
 
 Now, we maintain that, in speaking of such minds, we have 
 in fact treated the only question, or we should rather say, the 
 only portion of a very extended question, on which there is 
 room for doubt. For, it may be doubted, on the whole of his 
 constitution and condition possibly, what is the proper way 
 for man to attain well-being and well-doing. But this being 
 once determined,— then, whether the proper way for one por- 
 tion of mankind to seek well-being and well-doing, is, or is 
 not, the proper way for another portion of the same species to 
 seek the same results,— on this, we apprehend, there can be no 
 room for doubt. They are the same nature, the same soul, on 
 the same earth, — under the same God, the same author, disposer, 
 ruler, guide. They are from one origin — for one end. Let it be 
 granted, then, that this solemn Being of Intellect and Will, ca- 
 pable of Happiness and Misery,— of Knowledge and Ignorance 
 —of Good and Evil,— that is, of moral good and evil ; and who, 
 capable in all parts of his constitution alike of either of these 
 alternatives, is yet called to one and not to another, is called 
 to Happiness and Moral Good, called therewith, and thereby, 
 and therefore to Knowledge also, and as little to Ignorance as 
 he is to Misery or Guilt— that these Three are in connection 
 and harmony, and reciprocal dependence, and those Three — 
 then we hold that these are words without meaning, or they 
 are truths of the whole race, of that nature which is identical 
 in one and in another throughout the habitations of the globe. 
 It is a question not partial but universal; not superficial 
 but profound ; not of a division of the surface but central ; 
 emanating in every direction alike, and radiating to the whole 
 
308 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 circumference. What proposal of a doubt, pray, would it be 
 to say— does natural love, as of the mother to her child, pro- 
 duce in some orders a moral purity and elevation of thoughts 
 and wishes, in others vitiate and depress them ? Does it 
 produce in some hearts effusion of tenderness and sympathy, 
 softening and opening them ? Does it harden others and 
 steep them in gall ? Is one soul created under one law, one 
 system of laws — another under another ? Does the beating 
 of the heart propel the blood in one living frame, and does 
 that blood convey with it heat and life ? And does the same 
 mighty pulse in another shut up the healthful circulation, or 
 send in its place a stream of ice and death ? Does this atom 
 of matter fall by gravity ? And have we to seek some other 
 law to account for the fall of this next ? — These are truly the 
 questions we ask, when we inquire whether, in one human 
 being, or class of human beings, intellect is given as a power 
 friendly to morality, a power made rightly to influence the 
 will, which must therefore receive its food, knowledge, that 
 it may perform its ministry : Whether in another it exists as 
 a power dangerous and hurtful to morality, acting injuriously 
 upon the will, from which therefore its celestial food is to be 
 withheld ? 
 
 Let it be thought what kind of contradiction any other con- 
 clusion would be in practice — what sort of prospect a nation 
 would present, that should divide itself into the struggle, that 
 should attempt in this manner to pull asunder its higher and 
 its lower portions, and thus intellectually to dismember itself; 
 of which the higher orders should seek with the utmost passion 
 and avidity, and the utmost ambition of all their powers, light 
 to themselves, and at the same time endeavour to maintain 
 the darkness of the lower? How could they attempt it? 
 How could they wall in the overflowing waters? If there 
 were initiations in science, in temples guarded with fearful 
 ceremonies and vows, there might be some hope to keep the 
 secret of knowledge. But our temples are open. Our books 
 are not written in a sacred Brahminical language, unknown to 
 the vulgar, the patrimony of the holy caste. They are not 
 written in hieroglyphic characters, of which the secret and 
 sacred key is covered beneath the mantle of the priests. 
 They are in a language which all speak, in letters which are 
 no longer a mystery. The world of knowledge is thrown 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 309 
 
 open ; and the question is not with those who have it, whether 
 they will impart, but with those who have it not, whether they 
 will receive ? 
 
 If it were possible to confine it, where should the line be 
 drawn ? Are our orders so distinguished that we can define, 
 this shall be the right of one ; this of another ; we will cany 
 down this part of knowledge thus low, and this thus low, and 
 no lower ? Far from it. It is the beauty of our social state, 
 that all its various ranks, although essentially distinct, yet all 
 seem to blend into each other, constituting, in their union, an 
 harmonious whole. We give to wealth its due tribute of 
 respect, when gained by honourable means, and employed for 
 useful ends. We do not withhold from the inheritors of a 
 noble name any of those feelings with which imagination 
 delights reverently to invest the history of an illustrious 
 house, and if he be not unworthy of his lofty lineage, each 
 successive representative of an ancient family. We have 
 reason to respect the nobility and the gentry of our native 
 land ; for they of old have been distinguished by a proud and 
 fearless patriotism. But we venerate virtue — we admire 
 genius — we respect intellect, from whatever nook " its fulgent 
 head star-bright appears" — and as it is, after all, by mind 
 alone that the high-born can maintain their right unquestioned 
 to those feelings with which we are willing to regard them 
 and their high estate ; so by mind alone can the peasant lift 
 himself up to the level of the peer, and gain to himself a name 
 that shall rank in the roll with the proudest names that grace 
 the ancestral glories of even a regal race. It is plain that 
 there is but one line we can draw, that which encompasses all. 
 Thus, then, if it might be a question, whether the walks of 
 knowledge should be abandoned altogether, and ploughed up, 
 it can be none, who shall go into them. What practical ques- 
 tion, therefore, can we ask ? Not, whether we shall withhold, 
 but whether we shall seek to impart. Not what we shall 
 keep back, but what we shall be most diligent to extend. 
 If we shall seek to impart? In the first place, Yes, — 
 because we believe that knowledge is good for the human 
 soul ; and we desire, we who may be somewhat or far higher 
 in society, we who may have some or great influence, power, 
 deliberation for others, to diffuse Good. We wish it, in charity 
 to those less favoured than we are. We wish it, in patriotism, 
 
310 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 that the solid welfare of our country may be built as wide as 
 its shores. We wish it, in self-interest, that we may not feel 
 the reaction upon ourselves of forlorn vice, the untamed and 
 fierce ignorance of those among whom our lot is cast. If we 
 shall seek to impart ? Yes. That we may bind all together 
 in one bond ; that we may be one brotherhood. To impart ? 
 Yes. That we may receive. That chill penury may no 
 longer repress or freeze — that in open day all the plants may 
 rejoice in the sun, and give back their beauty to his light — 
 that Genius may spring up where it has been sown — that our 
 Miltons may not rest mute and inglorious — that as we have 
 much to do in science, — that, as although much has been 
 done by thoughtful and erudite men, far more remains to be 
 done — that, as all sciences are imperfect, some even yet in 
 their infancy — that as the human mind, which at one moment 
 of discovery seems to have accomplished everything that lay 
 before it, and absolutely to have finished its work, at the next 
 looks back on all it has attained, and seems to have done 
 nothing — seeing in all its hitherto labours only the prepara- 
 tion and rudiments, the unformed beginnings of that last work 
 to which it is created, and which still lies before it, almost as 
 it were unattempted ; so that one sage says, " I have learnt a 
 little," and another says, " I know that I know nothing " — 
 that, in this condition of human science, and looking upon 
 knowledge as our dearest birthright, our pride and our power, 
 we may have all aid in acquiring it, and may be robbed of no 
 powerful hand that can help to conquer. 
 
 But will not this raise up a power of knowledge and thought 
 in the commonalty, in large portions of them at least, which 
 in the higher there is now nothing to counterbalance ? Let 
 it be so — for it is good. The higher must advance them- 
 selves — perhaps they need compulsion, incitement to do so. 
 Perhaps they are negligent and indolent. But then they have 
 every advantage — leisure, means, ambition, duty. The others 
 will not advance too far. They have a heavy burden to carry 
 with their knowledge. Let not men — the men of this great 
 and free country — fear the ultimate effects of knowledge. It 
 is a great power poured in, and will produce some commotion; 
 but will settle and find its way to its proper places. The 
 immediate effects are not the ultimate. At first a degree of 
 emotion is excited, which belongs not to the matter, but to 
 the times — the novelty, the suddenness, the generality, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 311 
 
 namely, the act of diffusion. But the lasting impressions are 
 those which belong to the matter. Nothing is without risk — 
 nothing great at least. But neither is it without risk to do 
 nothing — to leave everything alone. Certain it is, that the 
 Old World has greatly and suddenly changed. One thing is 
 true, that injurious and corrupt abuse will not stand before an 
 enlightened people — nor ought it. The instruction of the 
 people will give a tenfold, but not a turbulent weight to public 
 opinion. The danger is, not from knowledge or reason, but 
 from the concurrence of particular changes of opinion with 
 particular causes of political ferment, which may or may not 
 happen. The ground of security, when the people are 
 instructed, will be the same, as when we are. It has been 
 confessed, that Intellect has causes of disturbance, but that 
 they are tempered and subdued by morality. Let there be 
 sufficient causes of the morality of the people, and intellect 
 will not hurt them ; let there not be, and Intellect will not be 
 wanted to make mischief. 
 
 That more danger is to be feared from an imperfectly edu- 
 cated population than from one brutally ignorant, we have 
 never been able to bring ourselves to believe; but even if 
 there were, that would be no argument against general Edu- 
 cation. For, it can become good only by degrees ; and during 
 the period of transition from darkness to light, during the 
 gloaming, let the power that is in wisdom maintain the state. 
 
 It is, however, most material, in any question of Education, 
 to know of what kind of Education we speak — whether of the 
 very highest, or of that which is merely secular. The kind 
 of instruction which writers on the Education of the People 
 generally mean, is merely secular, that is, of the second order; 
 and yet they often reason, as if it were to produce the effects 
 proper to the very highest — unlimited effects on human hap- 
 piness and virtue. This introduces great confusion into the 
 whole argument — is most unphilosophical — and, moreover, 
 justly offensive to those who believe that such effects can be 
 produced only by religion. 
 
 We confess that this is a subject on which it is difficult to 
 speak ; but that difficulty shall not hinder us from expressing 
 our opinion before a Public, so capable of judging whether it 
 be right or wrong, whether founded on knowledge or igno- 
 rance of human nature, and its most momentous concerns. 
 
 That Education we then hold to be comparatively of little 
 
312 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 worth which is entirely an Education of Intellect, and not at 
 all of Will. What is all the evil of life but a disordered 
 will ? What other ignorance so mischievous — so fatal, as the 
 ignorance of the will disturbed and darkened? From that 
 disturbance and darkness, what dreadful passions rise up ! not 
 only to destroy all peace and all virtue in the individual whom 
 they perpetually torment, but in league and union with kindred 
 powers in many other hearts to agitate the whole frame of 
 society, and lay its fairest scenes desolate ! Knowledge may 
 and does work directly towards the restoration of the will. 
 But from that to reason generally^ about the importance of 
 knowledge is to deceive ourselves, and to expect defects from 
 an inadequate cause. The kind of knowledge that can effec- 
 tually and permanently clear and enlighten the will is soon 
 circumscribed and defined — moral and religious. You may 
 say, that the will cannot give religion, because religion is doc- 
 trine, and facts and truths, out of the acquisition of the facul- 
 ties, and which must be declared. True — God has done his 
 part, and given us revelation. These truths are couched in 
 few words, and soon conveyed. Where lies the great difficulty 
 of this knowledge but in the will, which is unrecipient — not 
 always by direct purposed opposition, but by earth and desires 
 of earth clinging to it, and in a way it cannot understand ; 
 palsying, as it were, the very spirit, when most eager to aspire 
 to heaven ? Is there any instance of a soul perfectly spiritual, 
 and withal perfectly meek, that ever found insuperable diffi- 
 culty in embracing the highest and greatest doctrines ? So it 
 is said — " they that will to do the will of my Father shall 
 know of the doctrine; " that is, by the very act of willing,, 
 steadily maintained, shall acquire the knowledge. 
 
 Undoubtedly the best effects of secular instruction are also 
 of a moral kind, but indirectly, and not in the very highest 
 degree. Many of the habits and tempers of such instruction 
 are excellently good. It induces domesticity— it is tranquil, 
 sedate, thoughtful, orderly — it mixes with a father's love to 
 his children in divers ways — partly in teaching them, as he 
 will be by his secular instruction better able to be a religious 
 or moral teacher to them. He who studies astronomy or natu- 
 ral history, may find in them just grounds of adoration and 
 gratitude. But not necessarily so — for according to the will 
 is the feeding of the soul on its knowledge ; it is poison or 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 313 
 
 immortal fruits. The will hallows the knowledge, or makes it 
 wicked. Observe, too — and we ask you to do so from no wish 
 to undervalue Science — that the adoration drawn from specula- 
 tive knowledge is much weaker than that proceeding from the 
 personal incidents of common life. A poor man, receiving his 
 daily meal, as he believes, from the hand that feeds the young 
 ravens when they cry, has a stronger and more efficient sort 
 of gratitude than he who derives it from contemplation. Yet 
 it is requisite, too, that the spirit which does put forth the 
 eagle-wings of thought, should, in Intellect and Imagination, 
 still find religion, that its great powers may be good to it, and 
 not its bane. But we are not to begin to seek God above the 
 stars. " He is not far from every one of us." 
 
 Thus, then, there is an effect of secular instruction which 
 works back into the higher order of effects — but not neces- 
 sarily — although, when it does, most momentous. For, sup- 
 posing a truly moral people, well taught for the next world, it 
 may easily be conceived that a general diffusion of knowledge, 
 making them an intellectually as well as morally instructed 
 people, would raise their whole character, as well as their 
 whole power greatly, and be really of prodigious importance. 
 The error, and it is one into which many philanthropists have 
 fallen, is to think of founding on intellect, to build thereon 
 will ; the right course being to found in will, and to build 
 thereon intellect — the right course, if there be truth in the 
 words of the Most High. 
 
 It is not possible, therefore, for any person, holding the 
 opinion which we have now expressed, to speak in perfect 
 consent with the present zeal for Education. We must sup- 
 pose it, in this mistaken, that it too often overlooks, disregards, 
 or misunderstands moral effects. Neither intellect, nor its 
 tuition, are necessarily moral. This many of the most zeal- 
 ous educationists seem not to know. They seem to think that 
 intellect is virtue and happiness. What is the truth ? If you 
 try to conceive a human being in his perfection, you, no doubt, 
 conceive him walking in the light of intellect. But there are 
 two kinds of knowledge, objective and subjective. Knowledge 
 objective is knowledge of objects in and among themselves. 
 Knowledge subjective is knowledge of objects in their relation 
 to, and as they affect the mind knowing — the mind or person 
 being called, somewhat perplexingly, perhaps, by logicians, 
 
314 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 tlie subject. Now lie who is strong in either kind commands 
 reverence, and seems to be achieving the duty of his being ; 
 but we would say, that he who knows objectively seems rather 
 to walk in power — he who knows subjectively to walk in light. 
 Galileo and Newton appear to us triumphing spirits. The 
 sovereign and sole power of intellect swallowing up their life, 
 appears to have something consecrating, in our estimation. 
 We do not ask about the will of such men — perhaps we fear 
 to do so, lest we should find a flaw, some evil lurking there 
 that might bring down the starry Galileo from his throne in 
 the skies, and show him, like ourselves, a child of dust. Here, 
 however, the intellect was purely contemplative, and the sub- 
 ject solemnises the faculties. Take, then, Lycurgus, Solon, 
 or Numa, who were practical men, and busied themselves with 
 the concerns of this world and this life. Observe, that in them 
 we always suppose great subjective as well as great objective 
 knowledge, — or rather that they have treated subjective know- 
 ledge objectively, and that they well knew themselves, and 
 regulated their own minds by noble laws. Besides, they 
 legislated for the public good, and thereby they proved their 
 virtue, and we believe them to have been virtuous. Take, 
 then, knowledge, practical, objective, and limited in its objects, 
 such as that of the illustrious Watt. We know that he was a 
 man of virtue ; but we have little or no reason for believing 
 that, from his merely having improved on the steam-engine. 
 He might have been the most scientific man of his age, and 
 yet not a man of great virtue — nor would our minds have been 
 greatly surprised or shocked, had such knowledge and such 
 talents been found disunited from great virtue. They com- 
 mand reverence, by the power, both producing and produced ; 
 but surely a moderated and inferior reverence, not one to take 
 place of a moral estimate. Finally, take knowledge, practical, 
 and detached from or opposed to will, as in many great con- 
 querors, and we then feel that knowledge is something alto- 
 gether different from virtue. Any mental power, at its height, 
 dazzles us, absorbs our contemplating faculty, but may give 
 little light on its general moral effect. The moral effect of 
 knowledge merely objective, which is that of education on 
 common men, seems to be this — that it amends and raises them 
 by drawing force of will from common passions into a spiritual 
 power. Besides, it raises, and in some degree amends, as it 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 315 
 
 guides thern in their actions relative to things external and 
 objective. The injury is, or may be, that it destroys simpli- 
 city of faith. The character of the understanding of children 
 and of the common people is, that feeling their own knowledge 
 to be extremely limited, they readily suppose, and are ever 
 prone to believe, existences and powers out of their own 
 knowledge, and that to any extent. This is a true state of 
 mind, for it is a disposition representing their real power. In- 
 structed men have this not, but the reverse, — a persuasion 
 that their present knowledge contains reality, possibility, 
 everything, which is a state in the utmost degree false. This 
 is the reason of all incredulity — a prevalent temper of the last 
 half-century, coming with knowledge, and not yet extinguished. 
 Undoubtedly, by the diffusion of instruction, as it is contem- 
 plated, we shall in some produce this temper, perhaps in great 
 numbers. The highest philosophy returns to the pristine 
 humility of ignorance — only an enlightened, instead of a dark 
 humility. It has measured finiteness in the presence of infini- 
 tude. No man, if you ask him, "Do you know everything?" 
 will answer " Yes, I do ; " but, nevertheless, that is his virtual 
 belief. For his understanding is shut against and denies 
 everything he does not know. 
 
 Now, what is the remedy for this among the people ? To 
 have it remedied first among philosophers — also by the pre- 
 dominance of moral over intellectual tuition. This false per- 
 suasion does not necessarily come with knowledge, but is 
 induced by the undue excitation of self-esteem in the progress 
 of knowledge, the annexation of the idea of self to the know- 
 ledge attained, till all knowledge lying beyond, wholly out of 
 that attained, and especially knowledge contradicting that 
 attained — and that which lies wholly out of it will often seem 
 to contradict it — comes like a contradiction of self, and " is with 
 spattering noise rejected." There is, indeed, a " Beyond " to 
 which the knowledge attained visibly leads, but that is very 
 different ; and a glimpse of it, instead of repelling, tempts the 
 mind onwards by the lure of ligjit. This disposition often 
 appears as conceit in the young, but it was a terrific vanity in 
 an age. It is the error of the mind new to knowledge, and 
 beginning attainment. The delusion of an age, suddenly 
 inflated, and inflamed with an idea of immense superiority 
 over those that have preceded. It will be the error of minds 
 
316 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 always, individual, national, secular, which, in all their acquisi- 
 tions, feel themselves more than their subjects. If it has 
 arisen throughout an age — that is, in many nations at once, 
 and has lasted a season — it does not necessarily last. It 
 produces acknowledgment, perhaps humiliation, perhaps 
 regret, perhaps remorse — a contrary revulsion of the under- 
 standing — a clearer discernment of the truth which has been 
 abandoned or violated — a consciousness of following mischiefs 
 to be blotted out, balanced, or expiated. Let us not speak, 
 then, only of the common people, but of the highest instructed — 
 the leading orders of nations — of this nation, and what is our 
 dependence for their morality ? Not precisely and singly the 
 augmentation of knowledge, but, independently of what is 
 given them not human, that which was formerly stated — the 
 constitution of the human soul full of what demands morality, 
 and the constitution of the world teaching morality — teaching 
 it in the experience of every hour. This is our moral 
 dependence — far more than institutions which have been 
 transmitted to us, more than opinions, than the antique 
 authority at least of opinions, which have been inculcated upon 
 us, and which we are zealous to inculcate, handing down 
 their authority. Institutions and opinions may dissolve ; but 
 these are two living sources of good ever springing, which 
 cannot fail. These must be our dependence for the lower 
 classes as for the higher — not ignorance, not, if that be in any 
 countries, the jealous, hereditary guardianship of Ignorance. 
 
 The character of the Will of a people is, that the Ideas to 
 which it is attached are few, but embraced with strong feel- 
 ing, either with passionate affections, or with habits of life 
 revolving round and on them. Some of those ideas are 
 presented by what is every day before them, some by national 
 recollections, some by instruction, some, most and best, by 
 religion. In earlier states of society, every day presents 
 objects to which passionate feeling cleaves with imagination 
 (as in clans, or in simple feudality, their Chief), or where 
 every man is a warrior for his country, as among the Sabines, 
 the Spartans, the Athenians of old — or nature gives great 
 objects blended with warlike patriotism, as in Switzerland. In 
 common countries where this primitive state has passed, the 
 recollection long remains ; as in the ballads and traditionary 
 poetry of a people which turn back generally to those times, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 317 
 
 and lighten up and tenderly draw the imagination, and perhaps 
 clothe the fields and hills. But a time comes when even this 
 lingering dream of the old existence is swept away, and men 
 remain with the earth, and what it can yield them, and the 
 realities that are not of this earth. For that time it is that we 
 have now to provide. What is there now for their warm 
 elevated will ? Certainly, first of all, Religion. Nothing else 
 can be imagined to them very elevating. To us these can — 
 imagination with all her works — human ambition — science. 
 But to the poor man, it is Eeligion or nothing. Attend next 
 to his domestic affections, which, without this, are strong, 
 clear, yearning instincts — with it, are hopeful, awful, and high. 
 It is the same with his just, wise sympathy with his fellow- 
 men, and proper love to his country. The great difficulty, 
 then, is to find knowledge that will take hold on the will of 
 the poor man. In the higher classes, we do not regard this. 
 Better with them, no doubt, when the instruction falls in with 
 the character of the mind, of the intellect, of the nature, and 
 that it embraces its knowledge passionately ; for such know- 
 ledge is more effective ; but it is not absolutely necessary. 
 Instructed they must be, for their knowledge gives them their 
 rank — makes them feel it, and for the most part, that is 
 reckoned enough. It gives them something to talk about ; a 
 participation in the work of society, and in its discourse ; and 
 farther, a reputable occupation of a deal of superfluous time. 
 But with the poor, or inferior man, you wish to see something 
 more solid in his knowledge — that it should bear upon and 
 touch himself, his character, and his trade. You wish to see 
 in him a stronger and more appropriating feeling of his know- 
 ledge, which converts it into aliment of his strength, and of 
 his very bodily power. 
 
 It will be asked, then, what knowledge should be com- 
 municated to the lower orders ? If the question regards the 
 subject of knowledge, we answer first and generally, — the 
 same as to the higher. If within the subject, it regards the 
 manner of teaching it, there is this essential difference, — that as 
 their opportunity is limited, there must be selected for them, in 
 each subject, what is of primary importance to them as men 
 whose lot it is to live by the sweat of their brow. Also, it is for 
 many reasons very important, that discrimination be made in 
 each, between what is most certainly established, and what is 
 
318 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 conjectural and doubtful, presenting to them as much as 
 possible the first and not the second. There is this further 
 ground of distinction, that to the lower orders, knowledge 
 is not their business, — that is, not to the great lower order, 
 those who render the daily labour of their hands to the use of 
 others. Their business is to render a prescribed and taught, 
 and for the most part a very simple, and a uniformly recurring 
 labour. Their calling, then, is in a great measure independent 
 of knowledge, except what is communicated to them in it. 
 Knowledge to them, — except of the great truths of religion 
 and morality, which are also a business and the same to all 
 men, — the moment it goes beyond the humble circle in which 
 their ,life moves, must be considered, chiefly, as in part 
 recreative and restorative, and in greater part as a moral 
 re-agent. It is otherwise with the higher orders — with whom 
 knowledge is a business in a double sense. In the first place, 
 there are those who devote themselves to speculative know- 
 ledge — to any branch or branches of it — and with whom and 
 in their hands is the extension, one might almost sometimes 
 say the conduct, of human knowledge. In the second place, 
 the sphere of their action is high and wide, and often demands, 
 is always much the better of, general knowledge. What 
 knowledge is useless to the theologian, the lawyer, or the 
 statesman, of a highly civilised country ? Besides their 
 labour, whatever their calling, is intellectual, and therefore 
 asks that intellectual discipline, that formation or preparation 
 of the powers of the mind, which is to be found only in contest 
 with various high and abstruse studies. The higher classes, too, 
 feel themselves concerned in parts of knowledge which they 
 do not particularly study, looking upon knowledge as a great 
 war which they are all carrying on together, — where every- 
 thing gained tells. To animate, cherish, point this feeling, 
 their knowledge should be more various and extended. They 
 should in some measure know, that they may know how to 
 care for subjects which they will not particularly pursue. 
 
 Generally speaking, then, but with the differences now 
 pointed out, the subjects must be the same to both ; because 
 the same worlds, the same fields, the same matter are before both 
 — the same faculties are in both — the desires instigating those 
 faculties into action, are naturally the same, though in these 
 considerable difference will be made by condition. History 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOrLE. 319 
 
 will interest both, — and poetry, — and nature. N o donbt more 
 abstract studies will to a degree also. The same feelings 
 which turn our minds with interest on the consideration of the 
 curious organ of the expression of thought and feeling — 
 Language — will interest theirs also ; and no doubt they will 
 have pleasure in justly acquiring, and in properly under- 
 standing and using, language. But here there is a difference, — 
 for the educated to higher labour, should learn the most perfect 
 and artfully-constructed languages which men have spoken, 
 were it only for the subtle cultivation of intellectual power 
 that is obtained in the mere acquisition of them. To one of 
 the people it may be quite enough to know his own. 
 
 Observe that there is a difference, in the two cases, in the 
 moral effects of knowledge. The highly educated finds in his 
 ardent and powerful pursuit of knowledge a sympathy with all 
 those who are also pursuing it. He feels that he marches in 
 the van of the conquests of human intellect. This feeling, in 
 many ways great, but especially moral, by the manner in 
 which it binds him, first to a certain division of mankind, and 
 then to all the species, is peculiar to him who has leisure to 
 sweep the whole range of his science — and it always has been a 
 very powerful agent of civilisation. To the humbler instructed 
 this feeling cannot be ; at least it is in a far inferior degree. 
 
 But the effects of knowledge on the higher and on the 
 lower orders of society, supposing them both to be well edu- 
 cated, are essentially the same. To know causes, and the 
 laws by which they act, is, if the causes are within human 
 reach, and the particular case within ours, to command the 
 operation and the effects. This takes place in the field of 
 physical nature. The science of the last and present century 
 has shown this in new and extraordinary splendour. It takes 
 place in the field of moral nature. This has been verified 
 from the beginning of the world in all those who, publicly or 
 privately, have, by their knowledge of humanity, governed 
 men, personally, or by powerfully-conceived institutions. But 
 moral has never been placed in the same clear evidence with 
 physical science. Its principles have not been certainly found 
 and stated, and doubt removed from them. If stated, they are 
 not communicated as certainly and easily as those of physical 
 truth, because the mind that receives must, notwithstanding, 
 also supply the data from itself, in a manner to which there is 
 
320 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 nothing exactly answering in physical science. Nevertheless, 
 the issue is the same, though no such striking and widely- 
 diffused result of science is to be shown — namely, that the 
 knowledge of the causes and their laws is to man the command 
 of the effects. 
 
 Secondly, the reaction of knowledge, and of the pursuit of 
 it, on the faculties which seek it, is most important to all men 
 — the invigorating of intellect, the principles of reasoning 
 acquired, the habit of its exertion, acuteness, subtlety, discri- 
 mination, comprehensiveness — these results of study remain ; 
 even if the knowledge, in attaining which they were acquired, 
 were afterwards abandoned as useless, or could be obliterated ; 
 they remain, and are transferred to every new pursuit. 
 
 Thirdly, the affections that accompany knowledge are the 
 same. For instance, the moral emotion with which the recital 
 of great and good deeds is heard or read — the wide, profound, 
 and variously enriched sympathy with which the great his- 
 tory of our species is contemplated — the most solemn feelings, 
 not unmixed indeed with those of delight, which accompany 
 the study of the Works and of the Word of God. To the 
 poorest man, if he have a heart and a soul, what a treasure 
 the religious feelings which accompany the study of nature ! 
 The moral sensibilities which are set aflow by the contempla- 
 tion of heroic virtues ! — the pathetic transports with which a 
 peasant's heart may beat in recollecting the actions of great 
 heroes of old, the high deliverers of their country, 
 
 " The Patriot Tell— the Bruce of Bannockburn ! " 
 
 Finally, there is the feeling of self-respect which is excited 
 by intellectual attainment, and the hopeful, joyful feeling 
 which runs on with the labour and progress of the acquisition ; 
 and effects rather than feelings, the health of mind which waits 
 upon vigorous, well- supported, but not excessive exertion, as 
 the body receives health from its own activity ; and, lastly, 
 the blamelessness and perfect innocence of employment. 
 
 The greater part of these effects are alike to one Order and 
 to another, except, perhaps, the first ; to wit, the power which 
 knowledge gives. However, that also — for though the sphere 
 of action should be very limited, yet the difference between 
 knowledge and no knowledge, within that sphere, may be very 
 great. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 321 
 
 The question of Education in tins country has become more 
 interesting from the great change that has long been taking 
 place, and the end of which it is not easy to foresee, in the 
 condition, and consequently in the character, of our popula- 
 tion. There has been a great extension of the power of com- 
 merce, not only in itself, including, of course, manufactures, 
 but in the commercialising of agriculture. Hence innumerable 
 old relations are broken up, local attachments extirpated ; the 
 close, daily, familiar, loving bond between the higher and lower 
 classes dissolved : therefore the power of opinion and manners 
 ,as hereditary, as of one class binding another, as of immutable 
 vicinage, is undermined and reft. Further, the commercial 
 condition, principle, or element in the social structure is this, 
 that each man traffics in himself; that is, without disparage- 
 ment, that in respect of the first great necessity — mainte- 
 nance, — out of which nature has forged one of the most felt, 
 seen, and infrangible bonds of society, he freely and absolutely 
 chooses, — one may say he is loose to choose, — his Relations. 
 Formerly, he was in these respects strongly bound, though 
 still free, by personal and local relations. He would not leave 
 his village — his service. His was a state intermediate be- 
 tween villanage and commercial independence, which are the 
 two extremes. Then, relations in which was strong, always 
 good feeling, helped greatly to determine where, and of whom, 
 he should receive maintenance. Now he estimates it in 
 money — his labour is worth so much — he has it to sell — he 
 takes it to market. This is the solution of old ties, of old 
 structure, by the infusion of the commercial element. Of old 
 the unrooting of a peasant was like the unrooting of a tree. 
 Moreover, the farming labourer lived in the farmer's house — 
 now in his own, and, in many districts in England, lodges in 
 public - houses. Here is the institution of the estimate oi 
 value for the estimate of relations ; or of value receivable in 
 money, for value received, there is no denying it, by the 
 heart, measured in feelings and in sentiments. This state of 
 things exposes the agricultural population more to the influ- 
 ence of vice and of ignorance. They need more than they did 
 knowledge and instruction, and more than ever such know- 
 ledge and instruction as is of a genial, generous, and moral 
 kind, supporting their best affections within their own nearest 
 and closest relations of sons, brothers, fathers, and keeping 
 
 vol. v. x 
 
322 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AKD IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 alive, if possible, that kindness and respect for the higher 
 orders, which of old the bold peasantry of England, their 
 country's pride, rejoiced to show after their own homely and 
 independent fashion. 
 
 How far, were this subject pursued into all its bearings, we 
 should have to regret this change, we shall not now take upon 
 us to say ; but to be regretted or rejoiced in, the change de- 
 mands attention from all who wish well to the character of the 
 people. Advancing wealth, and arts multiplying and aug- 
 menting their power, split the ancient frame of society. In 
 earlier times, men are all bound together, high and low, rich 
 and poor. They sleep under one roof; they eat at one board. 
 As they go on, two things happen : — The society comes to 
 consist of a much greater variety of orders or classes of societies 
 within the society ; and, secondly, what was done for love is 
 done for money. Both are principles of division. A patri- 
 arch might have some of his people who were artists at need ; 
 afterwards there are confraternities of artificers. Those who 
 are thus separated become more and more self-dependent. So 
 that in the early time, the contexture and strength of society 
 by personal dependencies was much greater; afterwards it 
 depends upon other principles, upon a rational estimate of the 
 right and necessity of union, upon the sense of common inte- 
 rest, upon moral views and sympathies, on an idea of the 
 obligation of patriotism, and of civic allegiance. Thus there 
 is a continual dissolving of the old bonds, and a substitute of 
 new principles of union. If it may happen that the bonds are 
 dissolved faster than the new principles spring up, — for that 
 period there will be relaxation and impairing of the union of 
 society. The end of all this is, that the spirit which accom- 
 panied the closer union is in a great measure gone, — the spirit 
 of control of opinion of the higher classes over the lower, of 
 more intimately shown and moralising example, of befriending 
 and salutary advice, and further, that cordial and endearing 
 spirit that gladdened the face of every day's life, and was sun- 
 shine upon merry England. 
 
 Then, there is a great part of England, nearly a third of it 
 all, where the country labourers are all, without any indivi- 
 dual or national distress, but as a calm, regular, and immut- 
 able procedure, paid half their wages out of the poor-rates. 
 This is so wholly uncalled for, and so flagrant an absurdity, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 323 
 
 and is so visibly of no use to the labourer, but simply a device 
 by which the landlord helps to pay the farmer's man, for 
 which in all probability he is repaid in the shape of higher 
 rent, that there can be no difficulty in its being swept away, 
 at a week's notice, by an Act of Parliament. And the system 
 itself must be so blighting upon the character of the people, 
 — though it is real repayment of labour, — by the mode of it, 
 being repayment with the aspect of alms, and other degrading 
 circumstances connected with it, that the first indispensable 
 step to raising the character of the people where it exists, 
 must be to remove it. 
 
 Then, with regard to the proper servants of commerce in 
 manufactures in great towns and districts, they generally have 
 great leisure from high wages, in prosperous, which we believe 
 are their natural times, though we have seen deep distress, 
 and they have often a command of money. Of them parti- 
 cularly it may be said, that the modern extension of commerce 
 has made an era, since it has suddenly made them a most large 
 proportion of the population ; and on account of them there is 
 occasion for interfering now, to give instruction, if for no other 
 moral utility, for the innocent employment of time. It is pro- 
 bable that, between self-respect, and the habit of better, among 
 other things of more domestic, employment of his leisure, the 
 workman who from the times, or at all times from the nature 
 of his more skilful work, got wages beyond present mainte- 
 nance, would lay the excess by ; and instead of spending even 
 a portion, sometimes a large one, of the time due to labour, in 
 presently consuming its produce, would attend steadily to his 
 duty, thus serving his employer and the community at the 
 same moment, besides making himself, by his property and his 
 respectability, a valuable member of society. Besides, what 
 cannot be overlooked, by his better manner of spending, excit- 
 ing, as a consumer of a higher order, the higher industry of 
 the country. We are at a time when the question, what the 
 character of our commercial population is, is of mighty moment, 
 and is likely to become every day of mightier still. The first 
 part of instruction we are bound to provide is Eeligion ; and 
 that is provided by our Establishments, if those who accept of 
 the offices fulfil them. It is not less than the duty of the 
 minister, when this is, from the numbers, humanly possible, to 
 know that every parishioner, every soul within his cure, is in- 
 
324 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Btructed. The Country offers nruch to the senses, if they are 
 open ; much variety of occupation ; taking hold, through ele- 
 mentary feelings blended with the senses, on the will. Hence, 
 in such occupations, a natural virtue. In towns and manufac- 
 tories, occupation has often much mischief in it. Minds are 
 separated from natural attachments, from the sky, from the 
 earth, from localities. The man is more left to what is inter- 
 nal, and is more immixed with society. Therefore in himself, 
 and in his social relations, more is to be demanded, and more 
 to be produced, that is good. Give him, therefore, knowledge ; 
 make it an occupation ; quell his inferior by his higher na- 
 ture. We do not inquire so anxiously how he will apply, how 
 he will appropriate it. The peasant hardly needs instruction 
 for an occupation ; he needs it for the influence of the ideas it 
 has imparted upon his mind, whilst that mind bears them often 
 silently unperceived in itself. In the town, we want it for the 
 occupation, the possession of the man by it, from moment to 
 moment, from hour to hour. 
 
 There is no need of entering at present into any argument on 
 the comparative character of our agricultural and manufacturing 
 population. But this is certain, and it is obvious to all eyes, that 
 with great intelligence, and many estimable qualities, there is 
 among the latter much moral evil, whichnever can be cured by a 
 merely secular education. Letus not deceive ourselves by believ- 
 ing that the people of any great commercial country will ever be 
 able to guide themselves safely by cultivated intellect. Chris- 
 tianity alone is the strength of the State. If the Bible be ne- 
 glected — we must not say despised — but if it be laid aside mere- 
 ly for Sabbath hours, and those perhaps unfrequent, interrupted, 
 and inspired by no very devout spirit, — and all other kinds of 
 knowledge elevated to a higher place in men's opinions than 
 " saving knowledge," — panegyrised by the most eloquent in 
 the land, as the foundation on which the pillars of a nation's 
 prosperity rest ; so that a man belonging to the working classes 
 comes to value himself chiefly on account of the acquisitions 
 he has made, perhaps, in some branch of physical science or art, 
 — if, by insensible degrees, religion comes to be considered by 
 the poor man as a thing of secondary importance, — and it is 
 not easy to see how that can be otherwise, if his whole mind, 
 during its leisure hours, is to be applied, with all its faculties 
 and feelings, to knowledge lying out of the sphere of religion, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 325 
 
 — then Education, so far from being a blessing, will be a bane, 
 and that which men call light will be darkness. Symptoms of 
 some approaching evil like this are visible in the aspect of the 
 times. Those who think that human nature is sufficient in itself 
 for its own earthly destiny, and would rather wish to keep re- 
 ligion, that is, Christianity, in the background, will give a 
 different interpretation of these signs. Many persons there 
 are, who, wishing well to their species, and electing themselves 
 members of the Philosophical Order, declare that the Eeligion 
 of the State ought to be respected ; but what their eyes chiefly 
 regard, is the march of intellect. Others again fear philoso- 
 phy — fear the diffusion of knowledge — would keep the bulk of 
 mankind, if not in darkness, certainly " now in glimmer and 
 now in gloom," and in almost a blind subjection to a creed. 
 To neither class would we wish to belong ; but this we will 
 say, that no man who desires to promote the interests of his 
 fellow-creatures, will scruple to declare his faith, and to uphold 
 it, from the fear, in this liberal and enlightened age, as we are 
 proud to call it, of being thought a bigot, and no philosopher. 
 It is the blessed nature of our religion, that it teaches to the 
 unintellectual that which lies beyond the faculties of the wisest 
 of the sons of men. The meek and humble cottager, who has 
 seen only that small segment of the visible creation that is 
 bounded by the hills encircling Ins native valley, and who has 
 read few books but One, knows more in his simple heart of per- 
 fect morality, than the highest mind that ever trusted entirely 
 to the illumination of its own reason. 
 
 On these grounds, therefore, have we all along been zealous for 
 the diffusion of knowledge among all orders of the people. Into 
 some of the schemes proposed for the spread of Education, we 
 propose ere long to inquire ; and also into the state of Educa- 
 tion, as it is carried on in our highest Universities, and in our 
 humblest Parish-schools. 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. 1 
 
 [FEBRUARY 1830 1 
 
 It must be a heavenly life — wedlock — with one wife and one 
 daughter. Not that people may not be happy with a series of 
 spouses, and five-and-twenty children all in a row. But we 
 prefer still to stirring life — and therefore, oh ! for one wife and 
 one daughter ! What a dear delightful girl would she not 
 have been by this time, if born in the famous vintage of 1811 
 — the year, too, of the no less famous comet ! But then — in 
 spite of all her filial affection, speaking in silvery sound, and 
 smiling in golden light, she would, in all human probability, 
 have been forsaking her old father this very month ; without 
 compunction or remorse, forgetting her mother; and even like 
 a fair cloud on the mountain's breast, cleaving unto her hus- 
 band ! Such separation would to us have been insupportable. 
 Talk not of grandchildren, for they come but to toddle over 
 your grave; — as for sons-in-law, they are sulky about settle- 
 ments, and wish you dead ; — every Man of Feeling and every 
 Man of the World, too, knows that his last day of perfect hap- 
 piness is that on which he sees his only daughter a bride. 
 
 But let us not run into the melancholies. We wish — not- 
 withstanding all this — that we had now — one wife — one single 
 wife — and one only daughter. Ourselves about fifty — My 
 Dear some six summers farther off heaven — and My Darling, 
 " beautiful exceedingly," on the brink of her expiring teens ! 
 Ay, we would have shown the world " how divine a thing a 
 woman might be made." Our child would have seemed — 
 alternately — Una — Juliet — Desdemona — Imogen ; for those 
 bright creatures were all kith and kin, and the angelical family 
 expression would, after a sleep of centuries, have broken out 
 
 1 The Young Lady's Book; or, Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, 
 and Pursuits. 
 
THE YOUNG LADY S BOOK. 327 
 
 in beauty over the countenance of their fair cousin, Theodora 
 North ! 
 
 " And pray, sir, may I ask how you would have educated 
 your sweet scion of the rising sun?" whispers a dowager now 
 at her third husband, and therefore at present somewhat sar- 
 castically inclined towards bachelors of a certain age. We 
 answer susurringly. " Think not, madam, though we have 
 hitherto been the most barren, and you the most prolific of the 
 children of men, that, therefore, were a daughter yet to be born 
 to us, we should show ourselves ignorant of the principles of 
 female education. There was Miss Hamilton — and there is 
 Miss Edge worth, who never had a child in their lives — though 
 you have had a score and upwards — yet each of them writes 
 about children as well or better than if she had had bantling 
 after bantling annually, ever since the short peace of 1802. 
 So are we — to our shame be it spoken — childless ; that is, in 
 the flesh, but not in the spirit. In the spirit we have had for 
 nearly twenty years — an only daughter — and her Christian 
 and Scriptural name is Theodora, the gift of God! " 
 
 Some day or other we intend publishing a poem with that 
 title, which has been lying by us for several years — but mean- 
 while, let us, gentle reader, as if in a " twa-haun'd crack," 
 chit-chat away together about those ideal daughters, of whom 
 almost every man has one — two — or three — as it happens — 
 and whose education he conducts, after a dreamy mode it is 
 true, yet not untrue to the genial processes of Nature, in the 
 schoolroom of Imagination. 
 
 The great thing is, to keep them out of harm's way. Now, 
 surely that is not hard to do, even in a wicked world. There 
 is a good deal of thieving and robbing going on, all round about 
 villages, towns, and cities, especially of flowers and vegetables. 
 Yet, look at those pretty smiling suburban gardens, where 
 rose-tree and pear-tree are all in full blossom or bearing, not a 
 stalk or branch broken ; nor has the enormous Newfoundlander 
 in yonder kennel been heard barking, except in sport, for a 
 twelvemonth. Just so with the living Flower beneath your 
 eye in your own Eden — 
 
 " No need for you to growlj 
 Be mute — but be at home." 
 
 Not a hair of her head shall be touched by evil; it is guarded 
 
328 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 by the halo of its own innocance ; and you will feel that every 
 evening when you press it to your heart, and dismiss the pretty 
 creature to her bed with a parental prayer. It is, then, the 
 easiest of all things to keep your rose or your lily out of harm's 
 way; for thither the dewy gales of gladness will not carry her; 
 in sunlight, and moonlight, and in utter darkness, her beauty 
 is safe — if you but knew what holy duties descended upon you 
 from Heaven the moment she was born, and that the God-given 
 must be God-restored out of your own hand at the Last Day ! 
 
 But we are getting rather too serious — so let us be merry 
 as well as wise — yet still keep chatting about Theodora. She 
 has, indeed, a fine temper. Then, we defy Fate and Fortune to 
 make her miserable for as long a time as is necessary to boil 
 an egg — neither hard nor soft — three minutes and a half; for 
 Fate and Fortune are formidable only to a female in the sulks ; 
 and the smile in a serene eye scares them away to their own 
 dominions. Temper is the atmosphere of the soul. When it 
 is mild, pure, fresh, clear, and bright, the soul breathes happi- 
 ness; when it is hot and troubled, as if there were thunder in 
 the air, the soul inhales misery, and is aweary of very life. 
 Yet there are times and places, seasons and scenes, when and 
 where the atmosphere, the Temper of every human soul, is 
 like the foul air or damp in a coal-pit. The soul at work sets 
 fire to it, by a single spark of passion ; and there is explosion 
 and death. But Keligion puts into the hand of the soul her 
 safety-lamp ; and, so guarded, she comes uninjured out of the 
 darkest and deepest pit of Erebus. 
 
 You have kept your Theodora, we hope, out of harm's way ; 
 and cherished in her a heavenly temper. The creature is most 
 religious : of all books she loves best her Bible ; of all days, 
 most blessed to her is the Sabbath. She goeth but to one 
 church. That one pew is a pleasant place, hung round by 
 holy thoughts, as with garlands of flowers, whose bloom is 
 perennial, and whose balm breathes of a purer region. The 
 morning and the evening of each week-day has still to her 
 something of a Sabbath feeling — a solemnity that sweetly 
 yields to the gladness and gaiety of life's human hours, whether 
 the sunlight be astir in every room of the busy house, or the 
 " parlour twilight illumined by the fitful hearth, that seems 
 ever and anon to be blinking lovingly on the domestic circle. 
 Humble in her happiness — fearful of offence to the Being from 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. 329 
 
 whom it is all felt to flow — affectionate to her earthly parents, 
 as if she were yet a little child — pensive often as evening, yet 
 often cheerful as dawn — what fears need you have for your 
 Theodora, or why should her smiles sometimes affect you more 
 than any tears ? 
 
 Can a creature so young and fair have any duties to perform ? 
 Or will not all good deeds rather flow from her as unconsciously 
 as the rays from her dewy eyes? No — she is not the mere 
 child of impulse . In her bosom — secret and shady as is that 
 sacred recess — feeling has grown up in the light of thought. 
 Simple, indeed, is her heart, but wise in its simplicity; inno- 
 cence sees far and clear with her dove-like eyes ; unfaltering 
 where'er they go, be it even among the haunts of sin and 
 sorrow, may well be the feet of her who duly bends her knees 
 in prayer to the Almighty Guide through this life's most 
 mortal darkness ; and " greater far than she knows herself to 
 be," is the young Christian Lady, who sees a sister in the 
 poor sinner that in her hovel has ceased even to hope ; but 
 who all at once on some gracious hour, beholds, as if it were 
 an angel from heaven, the face of one coming in her charity 
 to comfort and to reclaim the guilty, and to save both soul 
 and body from death. 
 
 Yes, Theodora has her duties ; on them she meditates both 
 day and night; seldom for more than an hour or two are they 
 entirely out of her thoughts ; and sometimes does a faint shadow 
 fall on the brightness of her countenance, even during the 
 mirth which heaven allows to innocence, the blameless mirth 
 that emanates in the voice of song from her breast — even as a 
 bird in Spring, that warbles thick and fast from the top-spray 
 of a tree in the sunshine, all at once drops down in silence to 
 its nest. A life of duty is the only cheerful life ; for all joy 
 springs from the affections ; and 'tis the great law of Nature, 
 that without good deeds, all good affection dies, and the heart 
 becomes utterly desolate. The external world, too, then loses 
 all its beauty ; poetry fades away from the earth ; for what is 
 poetry, but the reflection of all pure and sweet, all high and 
 holy thoughts ? But where duty is, 
 
 " Flowers laugh beneath her in their beds, 
 And fragrance in her footing treads ; — 
 She doth preserve the stars from wrong, 
 And the most ancient heavens, through her, are fresh and strong." 
 
330 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 And what other boohs, besides her Bible, doth Theodora 
 read ? History, to be sure, and Eomances, and Voyages, and 
 Travels, and — Poetry. Preaching and praying is not the 
 whole of Keligion. Sermons, certainly, are very spiritual, 
 especially Jeremy Taylor's ; but so is Spenser's Faery Queen, 
 if we mistake not, and Milton's Paradise Lost. What a body 
 of divinity in those two poems ! This our Theodora knows, 
 nor fears to read them, — even on the Sabbath-day. Not often 
 so, perhaps ; but as often as the pious spirit of delight may 
 prompt her to worship her Creator through the glorious genius 
 of His creatures ! 
 
 And what may be the amusements of our Theodora ? What- 
 ever her own heart — thus instructed and guarded — may desire. 
 No Nun is she — no veil hath she taken — but the veil which 
 nature weaves of mantling blushes, and modesty sometimes 
 lets drop, but for a few moments, over the reddening rose-glow 
 on the virgin's cheeks. All round and round her own home, 
 as the centre, expand before her happy eyes the many concen- 
 tric circles of social life. She regards them all with liking or 
 with love, and has showers of smiles and of tears, too, to scat- 
 ter at the touch of joys or sorrows that come not too near her 
 heart, while yet they touch its strings. Of many of the festi- 
 vities of this world — ay, even of this wicked world — she par- 
 takes with a gladsome sympathy — and, would you believe it? 
 — Theodora sometimes dances, and goes to concerts and plays, 
 and sings herself like St Cecilia, till a drawing-room in a city, 
 with a hundred living people, is as hushed as a tomb full of 
 skeletons in some far-off forest beyond the reach of the voice 
 of river or sea ! 
 
 Now, were you to meet our Theodora in company, ten to one 
 you would not know it was she; possibly you might not see any- 
 thing very beautiful about her ; for the beauty we love strikes 
 not by a sudden and single blow, — but — allow us another 
 simile — is like the vernal sunshine, still steal, steal, stealing 
 through a dim, tender, pensive s*ky, and even when it has 
 reached its brightest, tempered and subdued by a fleecy veil 
 of clouds. To some eyes such a spring-day has but little 
 loveliness, and passes away unregarded over the earth ; but to 
 others it seemeth a day indeed born in heaven, nor is it ever 
 forgotten in the calendar kept in common by the Imagination 
 and the Heart. 
 
 Would you believe it ? — our Theodora is fond of dress ! 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. 331 
 
 Kising up from her morning prayer, she goes to her mirror ; 
 and the beauty of her own face — though she is not philosopher 
 enough to know the causes of effects — makes her happy as 
 day-dawn. Ten minutes at the least — and never was time 
 better employed — has the fair creature been busy with her ten 
 delicate fingers and thumbs in tricking her hair; — ten more in 
 arranging the simple adornment of her person ; and a final ten 
 in giving, ever and anon, sometimes before the mirror, and 
 sometimes away from it, those skilful little airy touches to the 
 toute-ensemble, which a natural sense of grace and elegance can 
 alone bestow — of which never was so consummate a mistress 
 — and of which Minerva knew no more than a modern Blue. 
 Down she comes to the breakfast-table ; for a spring-shower 
 has prevented her from taking her morning walk ; — down she 
 comes to the breakfast-table, and her presence diffuses a new 
 light over the room, as if a shutter had been suddenly opened 
 to the East. 
 
 "And pray, Theodora, what book have you got in your 
 hand ? " — " The Young Lady's Book, sir." And the old gen- 
 tleman, putting on his spectacles, peruses the contents, while 
 the urn keeps simmering its matin song, and his watch lies 
 yellow on the white cloth, by which, to a nicety, he boils the 
 gallinis. " The Young-Lady's Book, love ! and a very pure, 
 pretty, and pleasant book it seems to be — apparently not un- 
 worthy a kind w T ord or two from Maga's self, who delighteth 
 in all that is pure, pretty, and pleasant, and proves that such 
 is her delight, by a monthly offering to her friends of fruits 
 and of flowers." 
 
 The Young Lady's Booh has indeed a prepossessing ex- 
 terior, — 
 
 " A countenance such as Virtue ever wears, 
 When gay good-nature dresses it in smiles." 
 
 Why, here are Forty-Five Wood-Cuts, representing as many 
 elegant Kecreations, Exercises, and Pursuits ! They are feel- 
 ingly designed, and skilfully executed — by what artists we 
 know not — for we see no names — but assuredly by artists who 
 know what is worth looking at, indoors or out — in brown 
 studies or blue parlours ; in grove or garden ; in " Fancy's 
 gay parterre," or Imagination's shadowy forest ; on trim shel- 
 tered lawn, flower-bordered, — or on rough, breezy hill-side, 
 gorse-encircled ; by flowing river-side, or still fountain- well ; 
 in secret nook, where through the old umbrage the poet scarce 
 
332 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 sees one blue glimpse of sky, or an open plain like that of 
 Salisbury, where bends overhead the whole bow of heaven, as 
 we are journeying towards Stonehenge. Bad woodcuts are 
 the unkindest cuts of all ; their blackness is terrible, haunted 
 as it is by the ghosts whom they have slain — "all murdered." 
 One looks on them with an earnest desire for retributive jus- 
 tice ; and anticipates the day when, " for the deep damnation 
 of their taking off," the assassins, who perpetrated deeds at 
 which the sun hides his face behind a cloud, will pay the for- 
 feit of their lives to the offended laws of their country, nature, 
 and perspective. But good — truly good woodcuts — such as 
 these — it does one's heart good to look upon ; Nature stands 
 so prominently forward, with her lights and shadows in such 
 bold relief, and so perfectly reconciled to her sister, Art, that 
 you would swear they were twins who had never quarrelled, 
 benefited by the self-same early education, and grown up to 
 equal beauty in mature womanhood. 
 
 " Oft in the pleasant villages of France 
 Some high-born lady crowns the rustic maid 
 With floral emblems of her modest worth." 
 
 And such is the motto to the very beautiful emblem or device 
 to the article entitled " Moral Deportment." Accomplish- 
 ments without virtues are worse than worthless — poisonous 
 weeds ; but accomplishments with virtues are like a wreath 
 of flowers round the brow or on the bosom of beauty. 
 
 The truth is, that there are some accomplishments — such 
 as dancing, and we fear music — of which vice often becomes 
 mistress ; and then, indeed, she is a syren. But we must not 
 call her accomplished, who has learnt the art of fascination by 
 two or three powerful spells — a Thais, or an Herodias. Many 
 must be the accomplishments of a Christian lady — and they 
 must all be imbued with the gentleness — the delicacy — of the 
 female character. Not mere sleight-of-hand, or sleight- of-foot, 
 or sleight- of- eye, or sleight-of-tongue tricks ; but all eloquent 
 of the spirit within, of feeling and of fancy, and at all times 
 guarded from wrong by the innocence of the virgin's or the 
 wisdom of the matron's heart. Curse Aspasia, Cleopatra, and 
 Madame du Deffand ; bless Una, and Juliet, and Mrs Tighe. 
 Home ! sweet Home ! is the song that for ever murmurs within 
 the bosom whose beauty deserves being not merely desired 
 but beloved. All bosoms else are meretricious, and unworthy, 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. 333 
 
 however fair they may be, of ever feeling the touch of other 
 lip, or pressure of other hand, than of some doting and drivel- 
 ling French philosopher who, on the brink of the grave, will 
 keep dandling the wanton Wit, who ere long laughs aloud as 
 he tumbles out of her embrace down among the slime of his 
 wiser brethren — the worms. 
 
 The editor of The Young Lady's Book is, we have no 
 doubt of it — a Lady — not a gentleman. Or let us rather be- 
 lieve a wedded pair — one spirit and one flesh — husband and 
 wife — nothing feminine about him, and nothing masculine 
 about her. No wish, however evanescent, in their breasts, 
 ever to wear each other's lower garments even at a masquerade ; 
 so that while she would rather die a thousand deaths than 
 drop her petticoats in public, — he, rather than relinquish his 
 inexpressibles for one hour of exchange, would give the world 
 assurance not only of a man, but of a martyr. 
 
 "We no sooner dipped into "Moral Deportment," than we 
 liked the volume. We despise your brilliant people — your 
 bead- stringers — your pickers-up of bits of sparkling but 
 broken or cracked glass. Commend us, say we, to those 
 who love not a flower the less for being sprinkled plentifully 
 and openly over the green braes and hedgerows, and within 
 reach of all persons who have eyes, hands, and feet, to pluck 
 and form into a sweet-scented nosegay. We suspect that the 
 heart is always in an ungenial mood, when it is intolerant of 
 commonplaces — of simple sayings and true, concerning its 
 own best enjoyments. Who wishes to be original on the subject 
 of domestic happiness, with his feet on the fender, and only him- 
 self and a single friend, or perhaps two, within the hearth? A 
 pickpocket, perhaps, with an eye to your snuff-box ; or a per- 
 son of no particular profession, who never dines out without a 
 pack of cards. 
 
 But with such exceptions, people in ordinary conversation 
 aim at no novelties about old things, but talk on topics as old 
 as the hills, and as green, too, with a sort of simple vanity that 
 shows how sincerely they love them, and that they would not 
 lose them for the world. In this spirit, and in this strain, 
 speaks the editor of The Young Lady's Book about Home and 
 Woman. "Home," says he, "has justly been called her 
 empire ; and it is certain that to her it is a hallowed circle, 
 in which she may diffuse the greatest earthly blessings, or 
 
334 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 inflict the most positive misery. It is never so narrow, but 
 from it may stream many a benignant ray, to illume a neigh- 
 bour's dwelling ; and it may be wide enough to give light to 
 thousands. The virtues of a woman of rank and fortune extend 
 far beyond the mansion where she presides, or the cottage 
 which she protects, by the example she offers, even in the 
 most unostentatious manner, and in the most trivial actions, 
 to those around her and below her. Gently, imperceptibly, 
 but most certainly, will she imbue, with her own purity and 
 beneficence, the atmosphere in which she moves, softening the 
 obdurate, correcting the depraved, and encouraging the timid. 
 Those who are not placed by Providence in so brilliant a 
 sphere, may by their conduct produce the same effects, in a 
 more limited circle and in a less degree, but with equal 
 honour and satisfaction to themselves." Observations equally 
 pertinent and unpretending occur on Integrity — Fortitude — 
 Charity — Obedience — Consideration— Curiosity — Prudence, 
 and Cheerfulness. We have nothing high-wrought or fine- 
 spun ; but both web and woof are at once of solid material 
 and elegant workmanship, fit for everyday wear, either to 
 gentle or semple, and either for morning or afternoon. As a 
 specimen, we give the very excellent passage on — Piety. 
 
 Piety includes faith, devotion, resignation, and that love and gratitude 
 to God which stimulates us to inquire His will, and perform it, so far as 
 the weakness and imperfection of our nature permit. It offers the best 
 foundation, not only for solid happiness, but for that serenity of temper 
 and disposition to innocent gaiety, which is at once the charm and the pri- 
 vilege of youth. No idea can be more fallacious than the supposition, that 
 the refined and rational pleasures of society are incompatible with those 
 acts of devotion, and that occasional abstraction of the mind from worldly 
 pursuits, practised by every pious person. The lofty aspirations, the deep 
 humility, and unshrinking confidence of a Christian, in those moments when 
 the soul may be said " to commune with her God," can have no other effect 
 on any well-regulated mind, than that of adding sweetness to the usual in- 
 tercourse, and interest to the common incidents of life. It increases the 
 endearing submission of the daughter, the fond affection of the sister, the 
 kindness of the friend, and the generous forbearance of the superior, by a 
 perpetual sense of the abiding presence of Him from whom we have received 
 the blessings, or by whom we are exercised by the trials, these dear con- 
 nections may impart, and extends our sympathy to the whole human race. I 
 lately had the pleasure of witnessing the deep interest taken by two amiable 
 sisters in two younger branches of the family, at the period of their confir- 
 mation, and shall not soon forget the peculiar tenderness, the lively atten- 
 tion with which each party regarded the other the remainder of the day — a 
 
THE YOUXG LADY'S BOOK. 335 
 
 new and holy tie seemed added to their former bonds; a sweet seriousness, by 
 no means allied to sadness, sat on the face of the younger ; whilst smiles, as of 
 welcome to new blessings and enlarged affections, illumined the countenance 
 of the elder, who were both still under nineteen — most elegant and accom- 
 plished young women, moving in the first circles of society. I am well aware 
 that all high- wrought emotions, however pure and exalted, must subside ; but 
 they leave, like the rose, a fragrance when their bloom is faded ; and I am 
 justified in believing that these sisters played their next duet together, con- 
 trived a new dress for their mother, or engaged in any of the common occu- 
 pations of life, with increased attachment and more lively interests, in con- 
 sequence of the sympathy in devotional feelings they had experienced for, 
 and with, each other. 
 
 The next article is entitled the Florist — and is adorned with 
 a great number of the most beautiful plants, exquisitely cut in 
 wood. Indeed, what plants are not "most beautiful?" All 
 young ladies should be botanists. That study takes them out 
 into the open air — and gives them all clear complexions. 
 What a shame — what a sin, to know nothing of the sweet 
 names and the sweet natures of the lovely existences scattered 
 round our feet ! No need to be looking up always to heaven 
 — let our eyes be fixed often on the earth. Is not the earth 
 all one garden ? and may not every girl be a Proserpine now- 
 adays, without danger of being carried off by Pluto ? Some 
 bright Apollo will, perhaps, become enamoured of the fair 
 Flora ; but he will woo her reverently in the shade, and ere 
 her gathered garland withers, be transformed before her eyes 
 into Hymen. All hearts love flowers ; but the understanding 
 heart loves them far more deeply, and feels the silent leaf- 
 language through all its hieroglyphics. The study of flowers 
 is, of all studies of Nature's works, the most feminine. What 
 exquisite tenderness may be shown in their care ! For are 
 not blossoms like butterflies — and regarding them, may we 
 not say with Wordsworth of Emmeline — 
 
 " She— God love her — feared to brush 
 The dust from off their wings." 
 
 It is scarcely possible for any heart that has within it a spring 
 of feeling, ever to get indifferent to flowers, provided only it 
 acts towards them in a spirit of appropriating love. " I can 
 conceive," says our amiable friend, " a possibility, that being 
 constantly surrounded by a variety of fine flowers, in the 
 garden, in the greenhouse, and in every part of the dwelling- 
 house, which no one seems to regard, which are tended and 
 
336 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 watered by servants, and of which she knows not, perhaps, 
 half-a-dozen even by name, — may render a young lady care- 
 less, and altogether indifferent about them, who, under other 
 circumstances, would have shown a taste for their beauties, 
 and an inclination for their culture. A different disposition 
 might be otherwise influenced by the same habits; and she might 
 imbibe a taste for seeing, rearing, or studying them, by her 
 long and intimate familiarity with their beauty and fragrance." 
 Too true, that " familiarity begets contempt" — a maxim we 
 never liked, often as we used to put it into round-text under 
 our writing-master. Familiarity produces that effect only 
 among contemptible people ; but who could in his or her 
 heart feel contempt for the daisy — 
 
 " Sweet flower, whose home is everywhere " ? 
 But neglect or indifference is nearly as sinful as contempt of 
 things worthy of our love ; and we are all, alas ! guilty every 
 hour we breathe of such base ingratitude. Suppose a young 
 lady turning up her nose at flowers, as if they were rotten 
 eggs ? Or crushing them as if they were egg-shells ? Would 
 she not by such an act show, that there would be no great 
 harm " in flinging her like a loathsome weed away," without 
 having taken the trouble of previously " rifling all her sweet- 
 ness?" 
 
 Should a young lady profess a total disregard of flowers, I should yet 
 be unwilling to admit that she was incapable of feeling their sweet influ- 
 ence, though circumstances might have rendered her insensible to them ; 
 and should be inclined to propose to her a few questions, by way of ascer- 
 taining the cause of so (as it would seem to me) unfeminine an insensibi- 
 lity. I would ask her, if she had ever, during her infancy or childhood, 
 been permitted to run, sit, walk, or gather wild-flowers in the green mea- 
 dows ? If she had ever waded, breast-high, in the long grass, to gather 
 buttercups and sorrel ? If she had ever filled her frock with daisies, prid- 
 ing herself in finding the reddest lipped ? If she had ever pelted her young 
 companions with balls, made on the instant with fresh-gathered cowslips, or 
 slily adorned them with cleavers, (Galium aparine, fig. 2), and laughed to 
 see their repeatedly vain endeavours to escape from their tenacious hold ? 
 If she had been permitted all these sports, and yet loved not these pretty 
 toys of her childhood, I should, indeed, fear that her distaste were a defi- 
 ciency of taste in general. I should conjecture, that she who loved not the 
 lovely dress and various ornaments in which Nature and the Seasons are 
 attired, would have little relish for the delightful scenery of Spenser ; that 
 she who failed to treasure up these early associations of innocent pleasures, 
 would but ill appreciate the human sympathies of Shakespeare. 
 
THE YOUNG LADY S BOOK. 337 
 
 It is not, however, recommended by our judicious author, 
 that a young lady should handle the spade and dig up the 
 earth like an Irishman ; or that she should purchase dung, 
 preside over compost, and be initiated into all the mysteries 
 of manure. But she may sow the seeds in the fit season ; 
 transplant, trim, and train ; overlook sun and shade ; and be 
 herself the Naiad of the garden fountain. A garden, quoth 
 our friend prettily, affords many light and graceful occupations 
 to a young lady ; as the removal of decayed leaves and flowers 
 — raising and tying up roses, or other flowers, bending beneath 
 the weight of their own beauty — training the convolvulus, 
 sweet-pea, or other light climbers to their frames or lattices ; 
 uprooting the lighter weeds ; and in some few instances 
 lightening the flowers of their superfluous blossoms ; or 
 preserving strength to the roots, by removing the flowers ere 
 their seed be ripened. But we must give a larger extract. 
 
 Oh ! those beautiful white lilies are out ! How elegant is their form ! 
 How pure their whiteness ! How delicate their texture ! How majestic 
 their height ! This is the flower of Juno ; and is perhaps the only one 
 that could have saved that jealous goddess from grudging to Venus the 
 possession 
 
 " Of the rose, full-lipp'd and warm, 
 Round about whose riper form 
 Her slender virgin train are seen, 
 In their close-fit caps of green." 
 
 Some other of the lilies show well, side by side, with this white one : that 
 fine red lily, called Jacobea (Amaryllis formosissima, fig. 3), for instance. 
 The lilies are a noble family, and splendid in their attire. We see them 
 glowing in the most dazzling colours — crimson, vermilion, and fire-colour ; 
 some dropped with gold ; all large, rich, and elegant ; yet we doom the 
 rest of these fine flowers to oblivion, in favour of the white lilies. Though 
 no flowers boast of finer, and of a greater variety of colours, we persist in 
 considering them as emblems of the very perfection of whiteness and 
 purity. It is remarkable, that with the exception of these bridal flowers, 
 the lilies are particularly warm-coloured ; they affect no pale pinks, blues, 
 or lemon-colours, — but be it red, blue, or yellow, assume each hue in all 
 its strength and power. The white lily has some colour — just enough to 
 make it appear the whiter : the six large golden anthers play in the centre 
 like flame in a lamp of alabaster. It has been observed of flowers, that 
 many of the more fragrant are the least handsome ; as birds of the home- 
 liest plumage are mostly gifted with the sweetest song ; but the white lily 
 has a perfume equal to its beauty. 
 
 Our author is equally good upon roses and many other 
 vol. v. Y 
 
338 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 flowers. His love of them is sincere and deep ; and lie be- 
 trays his familiar knowledge of all he speaks of in fond and 
 affectionate phrases, warmed and tinged by his innocent pas- 
 sion. Here is a pretty little anecdote for virgins : — 
 
 I remember somewhere to have read a story of a youth, who, hesitating 
 in his choice between two young ladies, by both of whom he was beloved, 
 was brought to a decision by means of a rose. It happened one day, as all 
 the three were wandering in a garden, that one of the girls, in haste to 
 pluck a new-blown rose, wounded her finger with a thorn : it bled freely ; 
 and, applying the petals of a white rose to the wound, she said, smilingly, 
 " I am a second Venus ; I have dyed the white rose red." At that 
 moment they heard a scream ; and fearing the other young lady, who had, 
 loitered behind, had met with some accident, hastened back to assist her. 
 The fair one's scream had been called forth by no worse an accident than 
 had befallen her companion. She had angrily thrown away the offending 
 flower, and made so pertinacious and fretful a lamentation over her 
 wounded finger, that the youth, after a little reflection, resolved on a 
 speedy union with the least handsome but more amiable of the two young 
 friends. Happy would it be for many a kind-hearted woman, did she 
 know by what seeming trifles the affection of those whom she loves may 
 be confirmed or alienated for ever ! 
 
 We are so fond of seeing ourselves — in MS. and in print — 
 that we are chary of extract. We do not wish to have our 
 lustre as reviewer eclipsed by that of the reviewed. Yet this 
 is not so bad as the same thing in conversation. In a party 
 of flesh-and-blood people sitting at a mahogany table, each 
 individual is as well entitled to let out his share of articulate 
 sounds, as to take in his share of edible substances ; and you 
 may as reasonably help yourself with your own spoon out 
 of my plate of Yorkshire pudding, or whip off my glass of 
 Ehenish, as x take the English or Scotch words out of my 
 mouth, and seal my lips in silence for the rest of the evening. 
 Were you an S. T. Coleridge, you might perhaps be suffered to 
 monopolise that trade which alone ought to be free ; but in- 
 stead of a Phoenix, you happen to be a goose — and nature 
 abhors an eternal quack as she does a vacuum. You roar 
 and you reason, till we, who have long been dumb, envy the 
 lot of the deaf, and sigh for an Asylum. But now for an 
 extract. 
 
 A very pretty flower-garden may be formed of native plants only. When 
 living in the country, I have frequently transplanted roots from the neigh- 
 bouring lanes and meadows ; some into the open garden, others into the 
 
THE YOUNG LADY S BOOK. 339 
 
 house, as a resource when weather-bound. To those who reside in London, 
 and love the country, there is a charm in our native plants that is wanting 
 to exotics, however beautiful ; they are associated with a variety of rural 
 objects; and bring before the imagination the fields, woods, hills, and 
 dales, where they were taken. A bunch of wild-flowers is a gallery of land- 
 scapes : daisies and buttercups represent fields and meadows ; germander 
 speedwell, Herb Robert, and hawthorn, are thick bushy hedges and grassy 
 banks ; blue-bells and primroses are shady woods ; the water- violet and yel- 
 low iris are standing pools ; the marsh-marigold is a running brook ; and 
 the forget-me-not a gentle river; the blue-bottle and corn-campion are 
 fields of rising corn ; and the delicate vervain is a neighbouring village. 
 Some flowers, by association, take the form of mills or haystacks ; and I 
 have known them even to portray the features of a friend. Were I con- 
 demned to an eternal residence in the metropolis, the sweetest jasmin, the 
 finest moss-rose, the noblest camellia, the rarest, handsomest, and most 
 odorous of exotics, would have less value in my eyes than a common field- 
 daisy ; and a pot of these, when in London, I generally contrive to have, 
 counting the coming buds as a miser would count his guineas. The pretty 
 heathbell (campanula, fig. 30) is also a favourite ; some young botanists are 
 puzzled by the specific name, rotundif olia, which is applied to it, — the upper 
 leaves being linear, and the lower decaying very early ; but if several be 
 drawn up by the root, some will be found to retain the lower leaves, which 
 answer to the appellation. To those who study plants botanically, the rear- 
 ing of them has an additional charm : it gives us an opportunity of observing 
 them in every stage of their growth, and seeing the changes made in wild 
 plants by cultivation. If a plant prove handsomer than we had reason to 
 anticipate, it seems to reflect a sort of credit on ourselves, which heightens 
 our sense of its beauty. 
 
 The next two hundred pages are occupied by animated 
 treatises, full of very accurate details, on Mineralogy, Con- 
 chology, Entomology, and Ornithology. Shells, minerals, in- 
 sects, and birds are described both popularly and scientifically ; 
 and the young lady who is up to these five articles (the Florist 
 included), will have no contemptible knowledge of natural 
 history, and be prepared to proceed to the study of more 
 complete and difficult works. Painting, Music, Dancing, are 
 all treated after the same fashion, in separate articles ; and so 
 is Eiding and Archery — female accomplishments all — and 
 none more healthful and graceful than the last — Hygeia being 
 sister to Maid Marian, and Apollo brother to Eobin Hood. 
 
 Besides these interesting and useful articles, there are four 
 entitled the Toilet, the Escritoire, Embroidery, and the Orna- 
 mental Artist. Let us take a glance at the Toilet : — 
 
 It will be a laudable ambition in her to curb those excesses of " each 
 revolving mode/' with which she is in some measure obliged to comply ; 
 
340 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 to aim at grace and delicacy rather than richness of dress ; to sacrifice 
 exuberance of ornament (which is never becoming to the young) wherever 
 it is possible, to an admirable neatness, equally distant from the prim and 
 the negligent ; to learn the valuable art of imparting a charm to the most 
 simple article of dress, by its proper adjustment to the person, and by its 
 harmonious blending, or agreeably contrasting with the other portions of 
 the attire. It is a truth which should ever be borne in mind, that a higher 
 order of taste is often displayed, and a better effect produced, by a paucity 
 or total absence of ornament, than by the most profuse and splendid 
 decorations. 
 
 That is sound doctrine. A discreet, but not a servile, 
 observance of fashion is then inculcated, and all young ladies 
 warned against extremes. It is rash to adopt every new 
 style immediately as it appears ; for many novelties in dress 
 prove unsuccessful, being abandoned before even the first 
 faint impression they produce is worn off ; and a lady, it is 
 well observed, can scarcely look much more absurd than in a 
 departed fashion, which, even during its brief existence, never 
 attained a moderate share of popularity. It seems to be a 
 fancy of her own She is thought to be self-willed at all 
 times ; when the wind is due east — mad. 
 
 On the other hand, they who cautiously abstain from a too 
 early adoption of novelty, often fall into the opposite fault 
 
 of becoming its proselytes at the eleventh hour. They afford, in autumn, 
 a post-obit reminiscence to their acquaintance of the fashions which were 
 popular in the preceding spring. Such persons labour under the farther 
 disadvantage of falling into each succeeding mode when time and circum- 
 stances have defamed and degraded it from " its high and palmy state ; " 
 they do not copy it in its original purity, but with all the deteriorating 
 additions which are heaped upon it subsequent to its invention. However 
 beautiful it may be, a fashion rarely exists in its pristine state of excellence 
 long after it has become popular. Its aberrations from the perfect are 
 exaggerated at each remove ; and if its form be in some measure preserved, 
 it is displayed in unsuitable colours, or translated into inferior materials, 
 until the original design becomes so vulgarised as to disgust. 
 
 The great first principle of dress is — adaptation. Fashion 
 imperiously upsets it, and reduces half her subjects to dowdies. 
 For what but a dowdy can a dumpy woman be, condemned 
 to dress in a mode especially invented for some tall, slender 
 arbitress of taste ? We differ from Lord Byron, who said, 
 
 " Now, on my soul, I hate a dumpy woman." 
 
 You may, indeed, so intensify to your imagination the mean- 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. Sil 
 
 ino- of "dumpy," that neck and legs, and everytliing but 
 See and body are lost ; and yon see, in your mind's eye only 
 a sinning waddle of female fatness. But that is not fair ; and 
 Z might as well spindle up a tall woman into a May-pole 
 Li one thinness from ankle to collar-bone. Kaoe the two 
 together-each at her very worst-and, for our single selves, 
 we prefer the dumpy woman. Dress a dumpy woman, the^ 
 as a dumpy woman ought to be dressed, according to the first 
 Jeat principle of dress - adaptation _ and you tenderly 
 sneeze the hand of a very comely body-with a bosom white 
 as a drift of snow. How, indeed, a dumpy woman ought to 
 be dressed is another-guess matter; but we may answer the 
 question so far by negatives. She must not have on her 
 head a cap two feet high; for then, beskies that men are 
 afraid of catching a tartar, instead of thereby adding two feet 
 to her stature, she takes two off, and thus measures to the 
 eye exactly two feet on her high-heeled shoes. But such cap 
 extends her laterally beyond all customary or reasonable 
 bounds-and you wonder how she got in at a drawing-room 
 door of the usual dimensions. Her neck being short by 
 hypothesis, Dumpy ought not to wear a necklace of great 
 breadth, if for no other reason than that it gives the specta- 
 tors pain to see jaw-bone and collar-bone suffering under the 
 same instrument of torture. Neither ought our fat friend to 
 heap a quantity of drapery upon her shoulders ; for she ought 
 to remember that they are already in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of her ears ; and that her earrings (which, by the 
 way, had better be left at home) will be lost in the muslin 
 Nothing more perplexing to a naturalist than the apparent 
 union of the headgear and the shoulders of something in 
 white. Six flounces on such a figure ought assuredly not to 
 be; for supposing all our negatives to be affirmatives, and a 
 dumpy woman to dress herself against us by the rule of con- 
 traries, and who could tell whether she were a dumpy, a 
 
 dowdy, or a dodo ? ■'".,, -i • -U • 
 
 Taste and judgment are apt to get bewildered m-hair 
 What nmst a young lady do who has a head of it fiery-red .? 
 Why, she must take a lesson from the sun behind a cloud 
 Let her cover it partly with some eclipsing network, that 
 subdues the colour down to that of the coat of the captain 
 who whirls her in the waltz. 
 
342 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 By such judicious treatment, and by gown of corresponding 
 and congenial hue, red hair may be tamed down into what, by 
 courtesy, may be called a bright auburn. A fair skin and a 
 sweet smile aid the delusion — if delusion it be — thus Danish 
 locks do execution — and the " Lass wi' the gowden hair " is 
 by many thought the beauty of the night. But, 
 
 whatever be the reigning mode, and however beautiful a fine head of hair 
 may be esteemed, those who are short in stature, or small in features, 
 should never indulge in a profuse display of their tresses, if they would, in 
 the one case, avoid the appearance of dwarfishness and unnatural size of the 
 head ; and, in the other, of making the face seem less than it actually is, 
 and thus causing what is thereby petite to appear insignificant. If the hair 
 be closely dressed by others, those who have round or broad faces should, 
 nevertheless, continue to wear drooping clusters of curls ; and although it 
 be customary to part the hair in the centre, the division should be made on 
 one side if it grow low on the forehead, and beautifully high on the temples ; 
 but, if the hair be too distant from the eyebrows, it should be parted only 
 in the middle, where it is generally lower than at the sides — whatever 
 temptations Fashion may offer to the contrary. As it would be in bad 
 taste for a fair young lady, who is rather short in stature, however pretty 
 she may be, if irregular as well as petite in her features, to take for a model 
 in the arrangement of her hair a cast of a Greek head ; so also would it, for 
 one whose features are large, to fritter away her hair — which ought to be 
 kept as much as possible in masses of large curls, so as to subdue, or at 
 least arrange with her features — into such thin and meagre ringlets as we 
 have seen trickling, a few and far between," down the white brow of a por- 
 trait done in the days of our First King Charles. There are but few heads 
 which possess in a sufficient degree the power to defy the imputation of 
 looking absurd, or inelegant, if the hair be dressed in a style inconsistent 
 with the character of the face, according to those canons of criticism which 
 are founded upon the principles of a sure and correct taste, and established 
 by the opinions of the most renowned painters and sculptors in every 
 highly-civilised nation for ages past. 
 
 Young ladies ought never to wear many flowers in their 
 hair, or many leaves, whatever be the fashion. If a bud, it 
 should just peep out, now and then, while the lovely wearer, 
 with a light laugh, sweetly waves her ringlets to some plea- 
 sant whisper ; if a full-blown rose, let it — as ye hope to be 
 happily married — be a white one. York for the hair, Lan- 
 caster for the bosom. 
 
 We are partial to pearls. They have a very simple, very 
 elegant, very graceful, very innocent look ; with a certain 
 pure, pale, poetical gleam about them, that sets the imagina- 
 tion dimly a-dream of mermaids and sea-nymphs gliding by 
 
THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK. 343 
 
 moonlight along the yellow sands. Be that as it may we 
 ate paftial to pearls, even though they be ^P^^> 
 vided all the rest of the fair creature's adornments be chaste 
 and cheap, and especially if you know that her parents are 
 not rich,-that she is a nurse to several small sisters, and that 
 her brothers are breeding up to the army, navy, bar, and 
 
 church. . 
 
 Nothing in art more beautiful than— Lace . 
 
 " A web of woven air ! " 
 as it has been charmingly called by one who knows jhoji r to 
 let it float charmingly over brow or bosom. How perfectly 
 simple it always seems, even in its utmost richness ! Bo doe. 
 a web of dew veiling a lily or a rose ! It imparts delicacy to 
 the delicate forehead, from whose amp e gleam ^receives a 
 more softening fineness in retnrn ; it alone Beam. P™ W 
 in its exquisite tcnnity, to float over the ™8^*°°T> whose 
 moving beauty it veils, withont hiding, from Loves nnpro- 
 
 f io S-yet but little, indeed-for head and breast The 
 wholeTgnre has yet to be arrayed ; but has old Christopher 
 North become a tirewoman, even to his own Theodora 
 What then? Corporeal-spiritnal !-Oh, heaven ! and oh 
 earth ! which is which, asketh something, as we gaze on and 
 down the clear wells of Theodora's eyes ! Matenahsm-I-- 
 materialism! What mean words like these? Joes day 
 
 think, feel, sigh, smile, weep, ^ e ™^ 1 called 
 mad and die? Be it even so,— or be the thought called 
 rmpions^-what then ? For, is not Virtue the beauty of our 
 being ; and are we not all-the children of Heaven ! 
 
 We verily believe, that of all pleasures on this earth, the 
 most innocent is that which flows from the love of. dres^A 
 weak young woman, who has neither husband nor ^cb ildren, 
 but much time on her hands, would weary her own life out in 
 solitude, and the lives of others in «**.*« *<£$£ 
 dress What would be the use of needles and pins, thimbles, 
 scissors, &c, but for dress? The weak young woman m 
 question is perpetually fingering away at some ^ article o 
 other of wearing apparel, from cap to petticoat; »**J™ 
 a refuge from idleness, the most dangerons of all conditions, 
 in which she can be left alone with even a militia officei. 
 
344 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Young ladies, with intelligent and well-cultivated minds, 
 again, draw the same delight from dress as from poetry, or 
 painting, or sculpture. It is by far the finest of the Fine Arts. 
 One young lady is distinguished for taste, another for feeling, 
 and another for genius ; and now and then, one gifted being 
 possesses them all three in union irresistible. Her happiness 
 must be perfect. Wherever she moves, her steps, noiseless 
 though they be, are yet heard through the hush of admiration. 
 She feels that she wins all hearts, and charms all eyes ; and 
 for that feeling do you think it at all probable, that Satan will 
 get her into his clutches, and off with her to the bottomless 
 pit? 
 
 Only think of a Slattern ! Nay, do not shudder : we are 
 not going to describe one, — but do just for a moment let one 
 glide greasily before your imagination, along with the thought 
 of — marriage. Would you not rather marry twenty tidy girls 
 than one single slattern? Yet, perhaps, she sits with a 
 religious tract in her hand — a whity-brown religious tract on 
 regeneration, almost as nasty as her own flannel petticoat, — 
 and is on the way to heaven, — so she has been assured, — im- 
 pervious to a shower, as if in an oil-skin wrapper. Who 
 preaches against dirt ? Nobody in Scotland. But the virgin 
 who, morning, noon, and night, is arrayed like the lily of the 
 field, to which Solomon in all his glory was indeed a most 
 absurd-looking animal, is preached at from many pulpits as 
 on the road to perdition ; whereas, after adorning the earth for 
 a few fleeting years, she goes, as certainly as that the Bible is 
 true, straight up to heaven. Where the Slattern goes it 
 would be improper to mention to ears polite ; but if a Catho- 
 lic, at the very least to purgatory. And you, who preach 
 against the vanity of female decorations — gloating all the 
 while on bib and tucker, with a peculiar expression of eye, so 
 sly and sinister, how long were you occupied, sir, this very 
 Sabbath morning, with these whiskers ? Ay, whiskers ! What 
 do you mean to insinuate by them, sir ? Why are they not 
 shaved? Are they wholly senseless, or have you an aim, 
 object, and end in cherishing that loathsome lair ? A ring, 
 too, amidst the hair of your red fingers ! and a brooch on your 
 breast, broad and brawny enough for a Leith porter ! Your 
 whole body stinks of the most odious personal vanity — vulgar 
 hound though you obviously and obtrusively be — and yet you 
 
THE YOUNG LADY S BOOK. 345 
 
 rail at Theodora's self in drapery bright and beautiful as ever Iris 
 wore, yet chaste and simple too as the cloud-robes of Diana ! 
 
 A young lady consists of body and of soul. Now the soul 
 — such is its divine origin — can take care of itself; but the 
 body — such is its earthly origin — cannot, but requires fre- 
 quent purification and perpetual adornment. Forget it — 
 slight it — despise it — cut it — and it will have its revenge. 
 The soul will soon rue the day it insulted the body ; for the 
 body will lose no opportunity, before the world and in the face 
 of day, of grievously and grossly insulting the soul — till the 
 soul prays that its sickness may end in death. To spite the 
 soul, the body grows ugly as sin. Its dirt and its diseases 
 eat into the soul ; and the seven senses enter into a horrid 
 conspiracy against her, for they are corporeal, and feel the 
 wrong done by the spirit to the flesh. 
 
 Dress, therefore, is a religious duty. But young ladies 
 may be religious overmuch. They ought to be at their 
 toilette at least one hour every day — at serious needlework 
 two — and their thoughts chiefly occupied by dress three — 
 that is to say, mentally devising various pretty fancies where- 
 withal to beautify their persons, and now and then producing 
 a pattern into practice. Plenty of time left in the twenty- 
 four hours for reading and writing, and also for thinking 
 about the next world. Whatever you do with the next world, 
 never forget this ; you were placed here to be pleasant and 
 pretty, neat and tidy, to dance and sing, paint and embroider. 
 Also, " still the house affairs will call you hence, which, ever 
 as you can, with speed perform. You '11 come again, and, with 
 a greedy ear, devour up my discourse ;" that is to say, " read 
 Blackwood's Magazine;" in which, Heaven forbid that any 
 maiden should ever let fall her eye on one single syllable 
 that may awake a painful blush ; on many, Heaven grant that 
 it may bring round the dear little cosy corners of her yet 
 untasted lips the mantling of an inexpressible smile ! 
 
 And now " sweets to the sweet," a short farewell. We fear 
 not for our article, for its spirit is ethereal, though gliding 
 along the earth, nor fearing to touch the daisies with the 
 playful tip of its wings, even like a swallow hunting insects 
 above a pool. Be not, after all, too much given up to dress, 
 any more than to any other decoration. " Gay, but not 
 gaudy," is an admirable rule both for soul and body — only to 
 
346 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 be equalled by another, "Grave, but not gloomy." Get a 
 copy of The Young Lady's Book, for it is a perennial — a 
 manual of many innocent and useful arts ; — and when you 
 have mistressed all that it gives instructions about, why, then 
 in feminine accomplishments you may almost take your place 
 side by side on the same sofa with our own Theodora. 
 
 In conclusion of this little rambling article, let us beseech 
 the Editors of those Annuals, which time and space prevented 
 us from comprehending in the Keview in our December Num- 
 ber, not for one moment to dream that we intended any slight 
 to them, or to their works. In proof of the contrary, we now 
 disclose our determination to speak of their next Christmas 
 Presents — first in order. Meanwhile, be our Public assured, 
 that The Gem is indeed a gem of the first water, — "of purest ray 
 serene;" that The Winter's Wreath is beautiful, with its ever- 
 greens and its Christmas roses, and fit to adorn the brows of 
 the Lancashire witches ; that The Bijou may grace the most 
 elegant drawing-room, the most ornamental library in Eng- 
 land ; and that The Comic Annual is out of all sight the most 
 witty in all our "Neighbour Hood," so distinguished for wit. 
 As for the four Juvenile Annuals, they run in beautiful quater- 
 nion. Mrs Watts's is all that might have been expected from 
 a poet's wife, and breathes throughout a true maternal spirit, 
 which, above all other emotions, " the high and tender muses 
 love." Mr Hall seems equally happy in a spouse whose 
 taste and feeling are often coloured by the hues of genius. 
 Mr Shoberl has, we hope, children of his own growing up 
 into boyhood and girlhood, for so amiable and enlightened a 
 man deserves a happy household, ringing with merry voices 
 from morn to dewy eve. As for Thomas Eoscoe, his little 
 book will be loved even for his father's sake, who, in his 
 honoured old age, must enjoy the purest of all delights in con- 
 templating the virtues and genius of his sons. Thomas Eos- 
 coe, we know, possesses in private life the love and esteem of 
 many friends ; and his powers as a writer have made a most 
 favourable impression on the public mind. The Landscape 
 Annual, edited by him, is indeed a most splendid work — and 
 better than splendid ; for in it the exquisite genius of Prout 
 has pencilled to the eye and to the imagination many of the 
 noblest scenes in nature and in art ; and the written illustra- 
 tions are worthy of the son of the author of Leo and Lorenzo. 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 
 
 FEBRUARY 1830. 
 
 Descriptive Poetry is either the most dull or the most de- 
 uZfeHhin- in the united kingdoms of Art and Nature To 
 Beit ^S you must see with your eyes shut-no sueh easy 
 option But to enahle you to see with your eyes shut, 
 voTmTt begin with seeing with your eyes open-an opera- 
 
 mention some scores of cities, towns, Tillages, and W 
 
 ! „ linLessed— tiny images-on each retma,-which tiny 
 
 til the mind Jjsee af in reflection within these miracu- 
 
 Kl She is apt to get .confused amidsV tha ;bewilde^ 
 
 bad habit; and as soon as she winks, or «hnts her e y e£ 
 berios prosing away from memory, till you lose all belief in 
 tht existence^ thl external world. Chaos * -™ ^~ 
 aud old John Nox introduces you to Somnus. The poem laiis 
 S: your hand-for we shall suppose a P<^£^§ 
 draft of a Descriptive Poem to have been m it-but not till 
 
 William Lisle Bowles. 
 
348 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 you have swallowed sufficient of one dose to produce another 
 doze that threatens to last till doomsday. 
 
 We really cannot take it upon ourselves to say what is the 
 best mode of composition for a gentleman or lady of poetical 
 propensities to adopt with respect to a Descriptive Poem — 
 whether to sketch it, and lay the colours on — absolutely to 
 finish it off entirely — in the open air, sitting under the shade of 
 an elm, or an umbrella ; or from a mere outline, drawn sub 
 diOj to work up the picture to perfect beauty, in a room with 
 one window, looking into a back-court inhabited by a couple 
 of cockless hens, innocent of cackle. Both modes are danger- 
 ous — full of peril. In the one, some great Gothic Cathedral 
 is apt to get into the foreground, to the exclusion of the 
 whole county; in the other, the scenery too often retires 
 away back by much too far into the distance — the groves look 
 small, and the rivers sing small — and all nature is like a 
 drowned rat. 
 
 The truth is — and it will out — that the Poet alone sees this 
 world. Nor does it make the slightest difference to him 
 whether his eyes are open or shut — in or out — bright as stars, 
 or " with dim suffusion veiled " — provided only the Iris of 
 each "particular orb" has, through tears of love and joy, 
 been permitted for some twenty years, or thereabouts, to span 
 heaven and earth, like seeing rainbows. All the imagery it 
 ever knows has been gathered up by the perceiving soul 
 during that period of time — afterwards 'tis the divining soul 
 that works — and it matters not then whether the material 
 organ be covered with day or with night. Milton saw with- 
 out eyes more of the beauty and sublimity of the heavens 
 than any man has ever done since with eyes — except perhaps 
 Wordsworth ; — and were Wordsworth to lose his eyes — which 
 heaven forbid — still would he 
 
 " Walk in glory and in joy, 
 Following his soul upon the mountain-side." 
 
 The sole cause of all this power possessed by the Poet over 
 Nature, is the spirit of delight, the sense of beauty, in which, 
 from the dawning of moral and intellectual thought, he has 
 gazed upon all her aspects. He has always felt towards her 
 " as a lover or a child " — she hath ever been his mother — his 
 sister — his bride — his wife — all in one wonderful Living 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 
 
 349 
 
 Charm breathed over the shapings of his brain and the yearn- 
 ings of his blood;— and no wonder that all her sights dwell 
 for ever and ever in the fountains of his eyes, and all her 
 sounds in the fountains of his ears— for what are these foun- 
 tains but the depths and recesses of his own happy yet ever- 
 agitated heart ? 
 
 A Poet, then, at all times, whether he will or not, com- 
 merces with the skies, and with the seas, and with the earth, 
 in a language of silent symbols ; and when he lays it aside, 
 and longs to tell correctly of what he sees and ieels to his 
 brethren of mankind not so gifted by God, though then he 
 must adopt their own language, the only one they understand, 
 yet from his lips it becomes, while still human, an angelic 
 speech Ay— even their homeliest phrases— their everyday 
 expressions— in which they speak of life's dullest goings-on 
 and most unimpassioned procedure— seem kindled as by a 
 coal from heaven, and prose brightens into poetry. True, 
 that the poet selects all his words— but he selects them ma 
 spirit of inspiration, which is a discriminating spirit— as well 
 as a moving and creating spirit. All that is unfit for his 
 high and holy purpose, of itself fades away ; and out of all 
 that is fit, genius, true to nature, chooses whatever is fittest- 
 out of the good— the best. Not with a finer, surer instinct 
 flies the bee from flower to flower— touching but for a moment, 
 like a shadow, on the bloom where no honey is— and where 
 that ambrosia lies, piercing with passion into the rose's heart. 
 Poetical language, indeed— who may tell what it is ? What 
 else can it be but poetry itself? And what is poetry— we 
 know not— though " our heart leaps up when we behold it 
 —even as at sight of a Something in the sky— faint at first as 
 a tinging dream, cloud-born— but growing gradually out ot 
 the darkness of the showery sky— child of the sun— dying 
 almost as soon as born— yet seeming to be a creature— a 
 being— a Uving thing that might endure for ever— and not a 
 mere apparition, too, too soon deserting the earth and the 
 heaven it has momentarily glorified with a— Kainbow ! ? 
 
 But is Poetry indeed thus evanescent ? Yes— in the Poet s 
 soul. For it is produced upon the shadowy and showery back- 
 ground of the imagination, by genius shining upon it sunlike ; 
 that visionary world fades away, and leaves him " shorn of his 
 beams," like a common man in this common world ; but words 
 
350 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 once uttered may live for ever — in that lies their superiority 
 over clouds ; and thus poetry — when printed by Bensley or 
 Ballantyne — becomes a stationary world of rainbows. And 
 there are ways — sacred ways which religion teaches — of pre- 
 serving in the spirit of men who read Poetry — even till their 
 dying day — that self-same ecstasy with which Noah and his 
 children first beheld the Arch of Promise. 
 
 There was a long period of our poetry, during which poets 
 paid, apparently, little or no devotion to external Nature ; 
 when she may be said to have lain dead. Perhaps we poets 
 of this age pay her — we must not say too much homage — but 
 too much tribute — as if she exacted it — whereas it ought all 
 to be a free-will offering, spontaneous as the flower-growth of 
 the hills. It is possible to be religious overmuch at her 
 shrine — to deal in long prayers, and longer sermons, forgetting 
 to draw the practical conclusions. Without knowing it, we 
 may become formalists in our worship ; nay, even hypocrites ; 
 for all moods of mind are partly hypocritical that are not 
 thoroughly sincere — and truth abhors exaggeration. True 
 passion is often sparing of words ; compressedly eloquent ; 
 not doting upon and fondling mere forms, but carrying its 
 object by storm — spirit by spirit — a conflict — a catastrophe — 
 and peace. There is rather too long a courtship — too 
 protracted a wooing of Nature now by shilly-shallying bards ; 
 they do not sufficiently insist on Her, their bride, naming the 
 nuptial day ; some of them would not for the world run away 
 with her to Gretna-Green. They get too philosophical — too 
 Platonic ; amicitia seems their watchword rather than amor ; 
 and the consequence is, that Nature is justified in jilting them, 
 and privately espousing a mate of more flesh and blood — 
 Passion, who not only pops the question, but insinuates a suit 
 of saffron, and takes the crescent honeymoon by the horns. 
 Nature does not relish too metaphysical a suitor ; she abhors 
 all that is gross, but still loves something in a tangible shape ; 
 no cloud herself, she hates being embraced by a cloud; and her 
 chaste nuptials, warm as they are chaste, must be celebrated 
 after our human fashion, not spiritually and no more, but with 
 genial embraces, beneath the moon and stars, else how, pray, 
 could she ever be — Mother Earth? Unfruitful communion 
 else, — and the fairyland of Poetry would soon be depopulated. 
 
 But observe — that if true poets are sometimes rather too 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 351 
 
 cold and frigid in their tautological addresses to Nymph 
 Nature, those wooers of hers who are no poets at all, albeit 
 they lisp to her in numbers, carry their rigmaroling beyond all 
 bounds of her patience, and assail her with sonnets as cold as 
 icicles. Never was there a time when poetasters were more 
 frigid in their lays than at present ; never was there a greater 
 show of fantastic frost-frost ; instead of a living Flora, you are 
 put off with a Hortus Siccus. And therefore it was that, in the 
 first sentence of this article, we said that Descriptive Poetry 
 might be the dullest, and we now add — the driest and 
 deadest thing in the united kingdom of Art and Nature — or 
 the most delightful — -just as the true Poet is wedded to 
 Nature, or the true proser keeps dallying with her, till he, with 
 a flea in his ear, is ordered out of her presence, and kicked by 
 Cupid and Hymen into the debatable land between Imagina- 
 tion and Eeality, where luckless wights are, like fish without 
 fins, or fowls without wings, unable either to swim or fly, and 
 yet too conceited to use their feet like either walking, creeping, 
 or crawling creatures. Never — never was there such a multi- 
 tude of pretenders elbowing themselves into notice among 
 the inspired ; and one and all of them it is our intention to 
 take — monthly during the next ten years — by the nape of the 
 neck — and after exhibiting them in writhing contortions for a 
 few minutes, to duck them — for evermore — into the Pool of 
 Oblivion. 
 
 But tremble not, gentle reader — whoever you be — at such 
 denunciation of our wrath ; for sure we are that no friends of 
 Maga can ever be brought under that ban. Perhaps we may 
 relent, and spare even the dunces ; for our wrath is like that of 
 a summer-wave, rising and falling with a beautiful burst and 
 break of foam, that frightens not the sea-mew, nor even the 
 child sporting on the shore. And thou — thou art a Poet- 
 whatever be the order to which thou mayest belong — and 
 there are many orders, believe us, among the true Sons of 
 Song. Mediocrity indeed ! Where may that line be drawn ? 
 How many ranks — degrees of glory — between William Shake- 
 speare and Allan Earn say ! — between Allan Earn say and the 
 humblest shepherd that ever tuned the rural pipe to love on 
 Scotia's pastoral hills ! Nature is not such a niggard to her 
 children — but scatters her blessed boons wide over life. Each 
 nook has its own native flower — each grove its own songster — ■ 
 
352 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 and methinks the daisy, " wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower," 
 is little less lovely than the imperial rose; to our hearing, 
 when the nightingale is mute, most sweetly doth the linnet 
 sing — 
 
 " One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin." 
 
 Surely touches of Nature are not so rare as to be thought 
 miraculous ; her harp gives forth music to many a hand ; and 
 though highest genius is the endowment butof a few, yet genius 
 — that is, geniality — dwells in unnumbered bosoms, and its 
 breathings are heard wide over all the world on a thousand 
 airs. Its voice is always recognised at last, let it whisper as 
 humbly — as lowly as it may ; and the brow that misses the 
 laurel, or merits it not, may be encircled with the holly or the 
 broom, emblems both, in their greenness, of immortality. 'Tis 
 not much of the divine spirit, after all, that is needed to give 
 a name its magic. One song — one verse of a song — has con- 
 secrated a peasant's * name, who cared not for fame the 
 j)hantom ; and unborn ages have wept over the pathos of 
 some tune which flowed almost unconsciously from the shep- 
 herd's heart, at the " Wauken of the fauld," or when waiting 
 by moonlight at the Trysting Thorn. Now, much of the 
 poetical literature of every people is of this character. Is not 
 Scotland full of it — and all Scottish hearts ? Not the work of 
 intellect, surely — but the finer breath of the spirit, passion- 
 roused and fancy-fired by the hopes, joys, and fears of this 
 mortal life. 
 
 Surely this must be the spirit in which all Poetry — high or 
 low, humble or ambitious — ought to be read ; for only in such 
 a spirit can its spirit be fully, fairly, and freely felt ; and in 
 any other mood, inspiration itself will be wasted and thrown 
 away on even the most gifted mind. True, that in states of 
 society exceedingly cultivated and refined — that is to say, 
 artificial — when the most exquisite and consummate skill of 
 execution is necessarily aimed at, and therefore expected, 
 nothing short of the most faultless perfection of style will 
 secure to any poet the highest honours of his art — and at such 
 a period did Horace deliver his celebrated anathema against 
 mediocre bards. But poetry in the modern world has rarely 
 been so trammelled ; and Genius and Feeling have been 
 allowed their triumphs, in spite of the accompanying defects, 
 
OR BANWELL HILL. 353 
 
 deficiencies, and faults in taste. It is far better so; and 
 indeed the cause of this lies deep in human nature, which 
 seems to have had depths opened up in it altogether unknown 
 in the world of old. The very perfection of the Greek drama 
 proves its inferiority to that of Shakespeare. His materials are 
 not in nature susceptible of being moulded into such shapes 
 and forms as were required on the Greek stage. And as of 
 Shakespeare, so in due degree, in the cases of all true poets, 
 down to those of even the lowest order — all of them, without 
 exception, have excelled, not so much by the power of art as 
 of nature, in whose free spirit they had their being as poets. 
 An indefinable feeling is excited by their productions — 
 imperfect mediocre in execution, nay, even in design, as many 
 of them are — a feeling which rises but beneath the breath of 
 genius, and a certain proof, therefore, of its existence. So 
 noble — so sacred an achievement is it to give delight to the 
 spirit through its finer emotions ! So that glory is his who so 
 moves us, and gratitude ; though he has done no more than 
 present to us a few new images, round which, by the mysteri- 
 ous constitution of our souls, we can gather some dearly- 
 cherished thoughts and feelings, and, when they are so 
 gathered, know that they are for ever embalmed, as it were, in 
 words which it was genius for the first time to utter, and which, 
 but for genius, could never have been for our delight or our 
 consolation. 
 
 Thus explained, Mediocrity in poetry appears at once to be 
 a height to which, though many aspire, but few attain — and 
 which can be reached only by genius. There are at present 
 in this island, hundreds, ay thousands, nay millions, of writers 
 in verse, who would disdain to accept the palm of mediocrity, 
 who turn up their noses at senior and junior Ops, and dream 
 of nothing less than being high Wranglers. Yet among the 
 61 ffo\\oi will they remain while they consume crops. It is not 
 in them to beautify — or to embalm beauty ; and therefore, as 
 Cowley says, they "like beasts or common people die;" and 
 their Christian and surnames get confused among a vast mul- 
 titude of the same sound, engraved on tombstones or printed 
 in Directories. The moment a man mounts up on the scale of 
 mediocrity, he is safe from oblivion, and may snap his fingers 
 at time. A mediocre Poet may be shortly defined — a man of 
 a million. In poetry, about a devil's dozen of celestial spirits 
 
 VOL. V. Z 
 
354 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 stand in the first order of the seraphim or cherubim. The 
 second and third orders contain about fifty lesser angels — but 
 all of them radiant creatures, with wings. All " the rest," who 
 have names on earth and in heaven, in number about a hundred, 
 are marshalled in the Mediocre phalanx — and constitute the 
 main body of the Immortals ; and a pretty fellow for impudence 
 you would be, to refuse the gold guinea put into the palm of 
 your hand by Apollo enlisting you as a young recruit into the 
 battalion. We verily believe that the numbers of the grenadier 
 company — though there be no positive law against it — will 
 never go beyond the devil's dozen — so high is the standard to 
 which the men must come up, on their stocking-soles and with 
 shaved heads. The Light-bobs — now a smart company of 
 fifty — may, perhaps, on some future day, amount to threescore 
 — and the battalion, it is probable, may yet reach the number 
 of those who died at Thermopylae. But were Apollo to consti- 
 tute us his recruiting sergeant, and allow us ten gallons of 
 Glenlivet on each poet's head, we are free to confess that the 
 mountain-dew would not lie heavy on the land, for we do not 
 know above a couple of mediocre young gentlemen to whom 
 we should offer the king's bounty — and one of them, we be- 
 lieve, would go off in a huff, and the other hesitate to enlist 
 into the service, for fear of angering his mother. 
 
 We therefore love all poets, and all poetry ; and the rank of 
 the man having once been ascertained — which is done by the 
 human race holding up its hand — we never thenceforth dream 
 of making odious comparisons — but enough for us to know 
 from his uniform — green and gold — from the stars on his breast, 
 and the sun on his standard — that such or such a hero belongs to 
 the Immortals. But when the whole regiment deploys into line, 
 on some grand review-day — hundreds of thousands of specta- 
 tors glorying in the sublime spectacle — Heavens ! what a rab- 
 ble of camp-followers ! Of gillies pretending to be real sol- 
 diers — in green corduroys — with wooden muskets — and paper- 
 caps — treading down the heels of each other's shoes — or mark- 
 ing time, like so many " hens on a het girdle," to a band of 
 instrumental music, consisting of three penny trumpets, and 
 six sonorous small- teeth combs, playing " Hey tutie tatie" in 
 a style far superior to that in which it ever could have been 
 skirled up to the 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 
 
 « Scots wha had wi' Wallace bled, ^ 
 Scots wham Bruce had aften led — 
 
 355 
 
 ^ SStS true Poets and true poetry, and 
 sul te 1 gbt, in which they are regarded by the race whom 
 
 Tb"i^ 
 
 lh no— ? Scott, Byron, Southey Cc ta g. « ; 
 worth Moore, are, he assures us, already all forgotten or 
 ZS so-fading away-mere specks on the distant horizon 
 Twin's clouded memories! Why, our dear sir, you might 
 in" well affirm that the stars are forgotten, because thou- 
 SarofWrfulB of people, coming and going to and from 
 sands ot coa^imis i i , heavens are 
 
 hill ot mem ™* l th seas — and astronomers 
 
 -and ^ ^^S^end occasionally discovering 
 rSfSerSle to the mole-eyes of men since the 
 
 ^S all the nonsense Mr Jeffrey ever spoke, or may speak 
 
 ^d the stas which are the poetry of heaven, and poetry 
 Scathe "nowerage as well - W^--*^£ 
 
 In the* memories all the hymns have an abiding place-while 
 they live, think not 
 
 « That heaven can want spectators-God want praise ! " 
 The distinction at which we have now pointed, seems to us 
 to be one which deserves to be attended to by those who might 
 
 iSee Edinlurgh Review, No. so 7. 
 
356 ESSAYS: CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 be disposed to bow to the authority of the most accomplished 
 Ex-Editor of the Edinburgh Review, and without thought to 
 adopt the shallow dictum which lately dropped from his in- 
 genious pen. Your great and good living poets are indeed 
 forgotten by thousands who are incapable of remembering what 
 they never felt nor understood, — the creations of inspired genius. 
 All such despicable idolaters drop away from their own super- 
 stitions, and soon cease to worship at shrines built only for 
 those who belong to the true religion. But the true religion 
 stands fast — such secession strengthens the established faith 
 — nor will the poets we have named — and others little less 
 illustrious — ever be forgotten, till Lethe bursts its banks and 
 overflows the globe. 
 
 Not one of our great or good living Poets is forgotten 
 at this hour by Mr Jeffrey himself— nor any of those critiques 
 of his own either, in which he did noble justice to some of 
 them, and ignoble injustice to others, according to the 
 transient or permanent moods by which his taste, feeling, and 
 judgment were swayed. Nor are his critiques themselves 
 likely to be forgotten — soon or ever ; for many of them belong, 
 we verily believe, to our philosophical literature. But they 
 hold the tenure of their existence by the existence of the 
 poetry which they sought to illustrate or obscure ; from the 
 " golden urns of those Poets " did he " draw light" — the light 
 in which he is himself conspicuous — and were it extinguished, 
 his literary life would be a blank. But if the name of Francis 
 Jeffrey will not be forgotten, till those of Scott, Crabbe, Words- 
 worth, Byron, and the Eest, are dark or dead, he may be assured 
 of immortality ; nor, without ingratitude, can he assert present 
 or predict future oblivious doom to Luminaries, who, whatever 
 be its own native lustre, have certainly showered over his 
 genius no small portion of the brilliance with which it now 
 burns. 
 
 Nothing that blockheads are so proud of as to retail the para- 
 doxes of some distinguished man. 'Tother evening we allowed 
 one to bother a company for some minutes with a preachment 
 of the above ; and having got him fairly to entangle himself 
 in the net, out of which Mr Jeffrey would have nibbled himself 
 in a moment, and made his escape with all the agility of a 
 squirrel, we wrapt it so round his body from snout to tail, that 
 he literally seemed one bunch of small-twine, and had not left 
 
DATS DEPARTED, OK BANWELL HILL. 
 
 357 
 
 in him so much as the squeak of a mouse. On being let out 
 of the toils, he took his toddy in silence during the rest of the 
 evening, and prated no more ahout the oblivion of Byron. 
 " Two living Poets, however, it seems there are, who, accord- 
 ing to Mr Jeffrey, are never to be dead ones-two who are unfor- 
 getable, and who owe their immortality-to what think ye? 
 —their elegance! That « Gracilis Fuer," Samuel Eogers, ib 
 one of the dual numher. His perfect beauties wil never he 
 brought to decay in the eyes of an enamoured world tie is 
 so polished, that time can never take the shine out of him— 
 so classically correct are his charms,that to the end of time they 
 will be among the principal Pleasures of Memory. Jacqueline, 
 in her immortal loveliness, seeming Juno, Mmerya, and Venice 
 all in one, will shed in vain " tears such as angels weep, over 
 the weeds that have in truth " no business there °n the for- 
 gotten grave of Childe Harold ! Very like a wha e Thomas 
 Campbell is the other pet-poet-" the last of all the flock 
 Ay-he, we allow, is a star that will know no setting ; but of 
 this we can assure the whole world, not excluding Mr Jeffrey, 
 that were Mr Campbell's soul deified, and a star in the sky, 
 and told by Apollo, who placed him in the blue region, that 
 Scott and Byron were both buried somewhere between the 
 Devil and the Deep Sea, he, the author of "Lochiel'sWarmng, 
 would either leap from heaven in disdain or insist on there 
 •oeing instanter one triple constellation. What to do with his 
 friend Mr Eogers, it might not be easy for Mr Campbell to 
 imagine or propose at such a critical juncture; but we think 
 it probable that he would hint to Apollo, on the appearance of 
 his Lordship and the Baronet, that the Banker, with a tew 
 other pretty poets, might he permitted to scintillate away to 
 hll eternity as their — Tail. 
 
 We have long been indulging the hope of getting at Mr 
 Bowles-and, through the golden mist of the last six para- 
 graphs, we have occasionally had a glimpse of him at the end 
 Sf a long vista-standing in sables, and with a shovel hat- 
 beckoning us onwards to Banwell Hill. Well- we have 
 neared him at last, and must accompany him to that respect- 
 able eminence, as to the top of Fesole, to » descry new lands 
 —"rivers and mountains "—not, however, in the spotted 
 globe" of the moon— but in merry England. 
 
 Mr Bowles has been a poet for good forty years— and it bis 
 
358 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 genius do not burn quite so bright as it did some lustres by- 
 gone—yet we do not say there is any abatement even of its 
 brightness — it shines with a mellower and also with a more 
 cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too pensive 
 — too melancholy — too pathetic — too woe-begone — in too 
 great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sang with a 
 thorn at his breast — from which one wondered the point had 
 not been broken off by perpetual pressure. Yet though rather 
 monotonous, his strains were most musical as well as melan- 
 choly ; feeling was often relieved by fancy ; and one dreamed, 
 in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of moonlit 
 rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands 
 of dim -imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old 
 Bomance." A fine enthusiasm, too, was his — in those youth- 
 ful years — inspired by the poetry of Greece and Eome ; and 
 in some of his happiest inspirations there was a delightful and 
 original union — to be found nowhere else that we can remem- 
 ber — of the spirit of that ancient song — the pure classical 
 spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, 
 in "music sweeter than their own" — with the spirit of our 
 own poetry, that, like a noble Naiad, dwells in the "clear 
 well of English undeflled." In almost all his strains you felt 
 the scholar ; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship — 
 intrusive most when least required — but the growth of a con- 
 summate classical education, of which the career was not in- 
 glorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a pupil of 
 the Wartons — Joe and Tom — God bless their souls — and his 
 name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs — and with 
 Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins's — academics all ; the works 
 of them all showing a delicate and exquisite colouring of clas- 
 sical art, that enriches their own English nature. Bowles's 
 muse is always loth to forget — wherever she roam or linger 
 — Winchester and Oxford — the Itchin and the Isis. None 
 educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever for- 
 get them, who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, 
 and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original. 
 Bhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who 
 pursued their poetical studies — in translations. They never 
 knew the nature of the true old Greek fire. 
 
 But we are forgetting what we are about, — that we are 
 along with Mr Bowles, — each with an oaken towel in his hand, 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 359 
 
 ascending Ban well Hill, from the summit of which we shall 
 sing a duet, called by him a " Lay of the Severn Sea." No ; 
 we are hoarse as any crow ; — therefore, now for the Hector's 
 Solo. 
 
 But, stop a little. There is no occasion to hurry ourselves ; 
 for we have just breakfasted, and 'tis six hours till dinner. 
 Let us sit down, then, on the turf, and discuss Mr Bowles's 
 Preface. In it he informs us that " Shakespeare and Milton 
 are the great masters of the verse (blank verse) I have 
 adopted." True ; but besides Shakespeare there are all the 
 old dramatists ; and besides Milton, there are Thomson, 
 Armstrong, Dyer, Wordsworth, Southey, and many others 
 who must be nameless. Now, Mr Bowles's versification seems 
 to us to bear much more resemblance to that of several of 
 those other writers, than to that of either Shakespeare or Mil- 
 ton, which, in fact, it does not resemble at all, and therefore 
 he needed not to have mentioned Shakespeare and Milton. 
 That they are the great masters of blank verse, as well as of 
 everything else belonging to poetry, all the world knows ; but 
 here they are brought in by the head and shoulders for no 
 purpose whatever, and instantly make their exeunt. For this, 
 then, we blame — we find fault with Mr Bowles. He admits 
 his error, — apologises for it, — is forgiven, and restored to one 
 of the highest places in our favour. He then facetiously and 
 justly remarks, that in his poem the reader will find no speci- 
 mens of sonorous harmony, ending with such significant words 
 as "of," "and," "if," "but," of which we have lately had 
 some splendid examples. We remember, so far back as the 
 first appearance of Manfred, showing the absurdity of such 
 lame and impotent conclusions ; yet all the blockheads have 
 since that drama imitated those crying sins of its versification, 
 and a few who are not wholly blockheads. Of blank verse of 
 the kind alluded to, Mr Bowles — by way of quizz — is tempted 
 to give the following specimen : — 
 
 " 'Twas summer, and we sailed to Greenwich in 
 A four-oar'd boat. The sun was shining, and 
 The scene delightful ; while we gazed on 
 The river winding, till we landed at 
 The Ship," &c. 
 
 Mr Bowles next defends in his Poem an intermixture of 
 " images and characters from common life," which might, he 
 
360 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 opines, be thought at first sight out of keeping with its higher 
 tone of general colouring ; but the interspersion of the comic, 
 provided the due mock-heroio stateliness be kept up in the 
 language, has often the effect of light and shade, — saith he 
 well, — as will be apparent, on looking at Cowper's exquisite 
 Task, — " though he has often offended against taste." The 
 only difficulty is, "happily to steer " from grave to gay. All 
 this is very true ; but then it is so very true, and the exceeding 
 truth of it is denied by such a scanty remnant of the race, and 
 that remnant entirely tailors, that it was not worth our excel- 
 lent bard's while to vindicate it against the fractions. We 
 must likewise be once more severe on Mr Bowles, for saying 
 that Cowper often offends against taste in the Task. He does 
 not, — but very rarely indeed, — if ever. You might cut out a 
 few expressions here and there, and, by serving them up one 
 by one on a plate to a critic, might thereby induce him to 
 exclaim, — " Shocking — bad taste, indeed !" but both you and 
 the critic would be fools for your pains, — and the expressions 
 would continue, long after you were both dead and buried, to 
 be in good taste, and in perfect accordance with the strong 
 rough raciness of Cowper's style, surpassed in such essential 
 by that of no poet in any language. Let Wordsworth and 
 Bowles let Cowper alone, and mind their own points, which 
 are frequently so loose that we wonder their breeches do not 
 fall down among their heels, — which would be awkward any- 
 where out of the profoundest solitude. Our readers will re- 
 collect the gentlemanly castigation which the author of the 
 Essay on the Theory and Writings of Wordsworth 1 gave the 
 Great Laker, for his senseless criticism on a beautiful stanza 
 in Cowper's " Alexander Selkirk." Wordsworth had said that 
 the lines were so bad as poetry that they could not be worse 
 as prose. Now, what will the world, or Mrs Grundy, say to 
 the following lines of Wordsworth's own ? Are they bald, or 
 not — as the palm of your hand, — the crown of that old gentle- 
 man's head, — the surface of this table? 
 
 " A barking 1 sound the shepherd hears — 
 A sound as of a dog" or fox, — 
 He stops and searches with his eyes 
 Among- the neighbouring rocks. 
 
 1 Written by Mr Chauncy Hare Townsend. See Blackwood! s Magazine, vol. 
 xxvi., p. 453. 
 
OR BANWELL HILL. 3C1 
 
 And now he thinks he can discern 
 A stirring in a brake of fern, 
 From which immediately leaps out 
 A dog-, and, yelling, runs about ! ! ! " 
 
 We do love rarely to have a slap at the " sole King of rocky 
 Cumberland," — for not unfrequently, — as in the above in- 
 stance, — he writes like a demi-man; though, in general, it 
 delights us to say, like a demi-god. This by the by, — and 
 turn we again to Mr Bowles. He informeth us, that " the 
 estimation of a poem of this nature must depend, first, on its 
 arrangement, plan, and disposition ; secondly, on the judg- 
 ment, propriety, and feeling with which, — in just and proper 
 succession and relief, — picture, pathos, moral and religious 
 reflections, historical notices, or affecting incidents, are inter- 
 woven." True again, — true as steel, — true as blue, — true as 
 Toryism, — true, as that the Noctes AnibrosianaB are most en- 
 tertaining and popular dialogues. But Mr Bowles's lips are 
 not formed for the enunciation of truisms ; they are too thin, and 
 have too much of the fine downward Ciceronian curve of genius 
 and eloquence about them — even, we suspect, for a sermon. 
 But perhaps he is to be pardoned for such axioms, on the ground 
 of their containing a sly insinuation that his poem, if so esti- 
 mated, will be found first-rate. Eh ? If so, we acquit him of 
 stupidity, but convict him of an organ of self-esteem almost 
 Wordsworthian. 
 
 Mr Bowles would have done well had he, in his Preface, in- 
 formed the ignorant where Banwell Hill lifts its head, instead 
 of having prosed away at such length about the plan and 
 execution of his Poem. No doubt it is highly celebrated in 
 its own neighbourhood ; and probably in its own county — cer- 
 tainly in its own parish — it would frown upon the present 
 writer in Blackwood, who nevertheless contributed some 
 matter to Malte Bran's System of Geography. Moreover, 
 Banwell Hill, fortunately for itself and Mr Bowles, stands within 
 sight of the Sea — possesses a cave of fossil remains — looks over 
 no inconsiderable extent of well- wooded, well- watered, and by 
 no means cross-grained country, abounding in villages, granges, 
 thorpes, mansions, halls, abbeys, churches, farmhouses, cot- 
 tages, and what not, — the haunts of Pan, Apollo, and Priapus, 
 of Flora, Pomona, and Ceres, and prodigal of food to poet, man, 
 and beast, throughout all seasons of the year. 
 
362 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Such a Hill deserved a poem from Mr Bowles, just as well 
 as Lewesdon Hill deserved one from Mr Crowe. Old Crowe 1 
 was a fine fellow — a noble creature. He was indeed a scholar ; 
 but, hang him, he was no poet. He knew the power of lan- 
 guage — the English language — and could also use it ; but he 
 wrote it coldly and stiffly, though correctly and classically, 
 just as if he had studied it as he had studied Latin and Greek, 
 as a dead tongue. Therefore his poem is read by nobody but 
 college-men, who knew or have heard of his fame in Oxford as 
 a public orator, as the glory of New-College, and at learned 
 banquets the tamer of Dr Parr. Not that it has not uncom- 
 mon merit. It is often exceedingly picturesque ; and through- 
 out all the reflections with which it abounds, you see the man 
 of talent and observation ; but — the Pedant. He wants ease, 
 and nature — of pathos he has not one single grain. There 
 is affectation in his simplicity ; and his manliness — for he is 
 manly — is rather that of the Fellow of a College than the 
 Citizen of the World. 
 
 If he has little smoke, it is because he has less fire. Crowe 
 loved the country, and lived much in it ; but though with his 
 cudgel in his hand he trudged about the fields, and roads, and 
 lanes, to please himself, — with his pen in his hand he thought 
 too much of pleasing the Fellows' Common-rooms in Oxford. 
 And he did please them ; there he is quoted as one of the Eng- 
 lish classics ; and let it be so, for with all his coldness, quaint- 
 ness, and conceit, he was immeasurably superior to all the 
 Cockneys that are now crowing among the rural villages and 
 farms where Parnassus hill slopes down to the plain, and 
 where the meadows are often sorely parched with long long 
 drought. His Poem will live ; but only as a book locked up 
 in a library, not as a volume lying at liberty on tables and sofas 
 and chairs, and even on the carpet, tripping up grown boys and 
 girls at play at blind-man's-buff. Mr Bowles's Banwell Hill 
 will have a far more lively life, because Mr Bowles, though 
 inferior to Mr Crowe as a scholar, and perhaps as a man of 
 general talents, as a poet is his superior far ; and, in virtue of 
 the divine gift of song, will hold a far more conspicuous place 
 among the Immortals. 
 
 Banwell Hill — we are speaking now of the two poems— is 
 
 1 The Rev. William Crowe, public orator of the University of Oxford, and 
 author of Lewesdon Mill, died in 1829, aged 83. 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 363 
 
 inferior to Leivesdon Hill — in conception. It wants the com- 
 pactness and compression — and graphic proportions of Crowe's 
 chef-d'ceuvre. It is a lumbering and sprawling and shapeless 
 poem, as ever rejoiced in the name of Descriptive. As a work 
 of art it is worthless, and offensive to taste and judgment. 
 Yet, as a work of art, we fear, it must be tried; for Mr Bowles, we 
 have seen, is proud of it as a great achievement. Who supposes 
 that in any long blank- verse poem, however inartificial, one 
 passage follows another, as entirely without reason as without 
 rhyme ? We do not say so ; but something more is necessary 
 to constitute " A Poem," than merely a connection of parts. 
 The whole must be — a building. We care not what order of 
 architecture, be it Grecian or Gothic — but it must be a shape 
 — a form, with dimensions, obeying certain laws lying in the 
 nature of things and of the mind. There must not be a little 
 wretch of a blind window close upon the cheek of the " East 
 Oriel ;" — no hole-in-the-wall only fit for the admittance of cats 
 or kittens, beside the great gate of the Cathedral ; no niches 
 like cabins to swing hammocks in, beside the altar. Yet, here 
 is a Poem, a regular Descriptive Poem, in blank verse, in Five 
 Parts or divisions, the whole of the Third being in rhyme, and 
 consisting of one tale — the "Tale of a Cornish Maid," of itself 
 a Poem, though not one of the best in the world ! 
 
 But a truce to criticism. Let us mount Banwell Hill with 
 Mr Bowles — and, delighted with the fine enthusiasm of most 
 of his poetry, we must forget or care not for the plan of his 
 Poem. Mr Bowles looks on nature with a poet's eye, and 
 listens to nature with a poet's ear, and speaks of nature with a 
 poet's tongue, and writes of nature with a poet's hand ; and 
 what more would ye have from a beneficed clergyman of the 
 Church of England, standing side by side with Christopher 
 North, on the summit of a hill, immediately after breakfast, 
 on a fine blowy forenoon that sets all the windmills agoing, to 
 the delight of all beholders having in their composition a grain 
 of Don Quixote ? 
 
 We care not one farthing whether Banwell Hill be a good 
 Descriptive Poem or not ; but Mr Bowles does care many far- 
 things, and is as proud of its plan as Milton was of Paradise Lost. 
 Therefore we are angry with Mr Bowles, not with his poem. 
 But we fear the world may be angry with his Poem too, read- 
 ing it as a — Work. Whereas it is a series of descriptions, 
 
364 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 some bad, many indifferent, more good, and not a few altogether 
 admirable ; and that is more than can be said with truth of any 
 other volume of verses published since last spring, either in 
 town or country. We very much doubt if one truly good Poem, 
 of any weight in the world, say as heavy as The Excursion, 
 has been produced this century. But good poetry, without 
 stint or measure, has been poured forth in overflowing abun- 
 dance during that period ; and by few poets with more prodi- 
 gality than Mr Bowles. Had he absolutely written a good 
 poem on the top of Banwell Hill, we should have had a very bad 
 opinion of him as a man. But, thank Heaven, he has com- 
 mitted no such enormity ; and our opinion is as high as ever, 
 both of his head and his heart. That man, clerical or lay, 
 who composes a poem, regularly constructed, and duly propor- 
 tioned in all its parts, in his brown study, and then gives it to 
 the public as a work written on a green Mil, is a liar, if not of 
 the first, certainly of the second magnitude ; but such is the 
 force of habitual veracity, that Mr Bowles, though, like other 
 poets, he does fib a bit now and then, makes it plain as a pike 
 or a flag-staff, that though he has ascended Banwell Hill a 
 hundred times (generally on a punch of a pony), he composed 
 his poetry about it in as snug a parsonage as is in all England. 
 It is easy to see at what places — paragraphs — he took a cup 
 of tea or a glass of wine ; here he was called away to break- 
 fast — there to lunch — yonder to dinner — a little farther on to 
 supper — and at more than one critical juncture — to bed. This 
 gives a variety which no Poem written on the top of a hill 
 could possess ; no poem written in imitation of a poem pro- 
 duced in such a predicament. 
 
 But we must cease our funning, — which Mr Bowles, we fear 
 not, will take in good part, — and quote a passage from the 
 Preface worthy of all consideration and acceptation. 
 
 As to the sentiments delivered in this poem, and in the notes, I must 
 explicitly declare, that when I am convinced, as a clergyman and a magi- 
 strate, there has been an increase of crimes, owing, among other causes, to 
 the system pursued by some "nominal" Christians, who will not preach 
 "these three" (faith, hope, and charity), according to the order of St Paul, 
 but keep two of these graces, and the greatest of all, out of sight, upon any 
 human plea or pretension ; when they do not preach, " add to your faith 
 virtue ; " when they will not preach " Christ died for the sins of the world, 
 and not for ours only ; " when, from any pleas of their own, or persuaded 
 by any sophistry or faction, they become, most emphatically, " dumb dogs? 
 
DATS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 365 
 
 to the sublime and affecting moral parts of that gospel which they have 
 engaged before God to deliver ; and above all, when crimes, as I am verily 
 persuaded have been, are, and must be, the consequence of such public 
 preaching ; — leaving others to " stand or fall " to their own God, I shall be 
 guided by my own understanding, and the plain Word of God, as I find it 
 earnestly, simply, beautifully, and divinely set before me, by Christ and his 
 Apostles ; and so feeling, I shall as fearlessly deliver my own opinions, 
 being assured, whether popular or unpopular, whether they offend this man 
 or that, this sect or that sect, they will not easily be shaken. 
 
 I might ask — why did St Paul add so emphatically " these three," when 
 he enumerated the Christian graces ? Doubtless, because he thought the 
 distinction very important. Why did St Peter say, "add to your faith 
 virtue " ? Because he thought it equally important and essential. Why 
 did St John say, " Christ died for the sins of the whole world, and not for 
 ours only " ? Because he thought it equally important and necessary. 
 
 Never omitting the atonement, justification by faith, the fruits of the 
 Spirit, and never separating faith from its hallowed fellowship, we shall find 
 all other parts of the gospel unite in harmonious subordination ; but if we 
 shade the moral parts down, leave them out, contradict them by insidious 
 sophistry — the Scripture, so far from being " rightly divided," will be dis- 
 cordant and clashing. The man, be he whom he may, who preaches 
 " faith" without charity ; who preaches "faith without virtue" is as perni- 
 cious and false an expounder of the divine message, as he who preaches 
 "good works" without their legitimate and only foundation, Christian 
 faith. 
 
 One would suppose, from the language of some preachers, the " civil," 
 " decent," " moral " people, from the times of Baxter to the present, want 
 amendment most ! We all know that mere morals, which have no Chris- 
 tian basis, are not the gospel of Christ ; but I might tell Richard, with 
 great respect notwithstanding, for I respect his sincerity and his heart, 
 that, at least, " decent? and " civil," and " moral " people, are not worse than 
 indecent, immoral, and uncivil people ; and when there are so many of these 
 last, I think a word or two of reproof would not much hurt them, let the 
 *« decent," " moral," and " civil " be as wicked as they may. 
 
 I hope it is not necessary for me to disclaim, in speaking of facts, the 
 most remote idea of throwing a slight on the sincerely pious of any portion 
 of the community ; but, if religion does not invigorate the higher f eelings 
 and principles of moral obligation ; — if a heartless and hollow jargon is 
 often substituted, in place of the fundamental laws of Christian obedience ; 
 — if ostentatious affectation supersedes the meek, unobtrusive character of 
 feminine devotion ; — if a petty peculiarity of system, a kind of conventional 
 code of godliness, usurps the place of the specific righteousness, visible in 
 its fruits, " of whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are lovely ; " — if, to be fluent and flippant in the jargon 
 of this petty peculiarity of code, is made the criterion of exclusive godli- 
 ness ; — when, by thousands and thousands, after the example of Hawker, 
 and others of the same school, Christianity is represented as having neither 
 " an if, or but," the conclusion being left for the innumerable disciples of 
 
366 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 such a gospel-school ; — when, because none — " no, not one" is without sin, 
 and none can stand upright in the sight of Him whose eyes are too pure to 
 behold iniquity ; they who have exercised themselves to " have a conscience . 
 void of offence towards God and man," though sensible of innumerable 
 offences, are considered, by implication, before God, as not letter than 
 Burkes or Thurtells, for the imputation of titter depravity must mean this, 
 or be mere hollow verba et voces ; — when amusements, or recreations, vicious 
 only in their excess, are proclaimed as national abominations, while real 
 abominations stalk abroad, as is the case in large manufacturing towns, 
 with " the Lord," " the Lord," on the lips of some of the most depraved ; 
 — when, from these causes, I do sincerely believe the heart has been 
 hardened, and the understanding deteriorated, the wide effects being visible 
 on the great criminal body of the nation, — I conceive I do a service to 
 evangelical religion by speaking as I feel, of that ludicrous caricature 
 which so often in society usurps its name, and apes and disgraces its divine 
 character. 
 
 The truth is, that full as this volume is of Poetry, it is still 
 fuller of Eeligion. At all times, in the hands of men of genius, 
 they go well together, as we have proved over and over again, 
 to the dumbfoundering of all the Dunces. Pity, and grief, 
 and shame, that the poetry of Eeligion should of late have been 
 brought into disrepute, in spite of some of the Muses' sons, 
 who 
 
 " Have built their Pindus upon Lebanon," 
 
 by versifiers who have manifestly never been able to say their 
 prayers for counting of their fingers. But Mr Bowles is a 
 privileged poet in that holy walk ; and there is more divinity 
 in Banwell Hill than in many a volume of very fair sermons. 
 
 But look again to the poem — and to the best passage in it 
 — a passage pregnant with important truths, most eloquently 
 enforced. With pleasure we saw a few lines from it quoted 
 by one of the ablest writers in the Quarterly Review, who 
 entertains, however, different sentiments and opinions respect- 
 ing some of its positions. A perfectly fair and full estimate 
 of the influence of the commercial and manufacturing system 
 on the character of the people of England is yet a desideratum 
 in Moral and Political Philosophy. Mr Bowles, as a poet, 
 cannot, perhaps, be expected to give it ; he here takes one 
 side, and let us hope that he may have coloured it too darkly; 
 but, however that may be, he poetises on a subject of para- 
 mount interest to the statesman who loves his country and his 
 kind. 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 367 
 
 " A village, then, 
 Was not as villages are now. The hind, 
 Who delved, or 'jocund drove his team afield,' 
 Had then an independency of look 
 And heart ; and, plodding in his lowly path, 
 Disdain' d a parish dole, content, though poor. 
 He was the village monitor : he taught 
 His children to be good — and read their book, 
 And in the gallery took his Sunday place, — 
 To-morrow, with the bee, to work : — 
 ' So pass'd 
 His days of cheerful, independent toil! 
 And when the Pastor came that way— at eve, 
 He had a ready present for the child 
 Who read his book the best ; — and that poor child 
 Remember'd it, when treading the same path 
 In which his father trod, he so grew up 
 Contented, till old Time had blanch'd his locks, 
 And he was borne — while the bell toll'd— to sleep 
 In the same churchyard where his father slept ! 
 His daughter walk'd content and innocent, 
 As lovely, in her lowly path : — She turn'd 
 The hour-glass, while the humming wheel went round, 
 Or went ' a-Maying,' o'er the fields, in spring, 
 Leading her little brother, by the hand, 
 Along the village-lane, and o'er the stile, 
 To gather cowslips ; and then, home again 
 To turn her wheel, contented, through the day. 
 Or, singing low, bend where her brother slept, 
 Rocking the cradle, to ' sweet William's grave ! ' 
 No lure could tempt her from the woodbine shed, 
 Where she grew up, and folded first her hands 
 In infant prayer ; yet oft a tear would steal 
 Down her young cheek, to think how desolate 
 That home would be when her poor mother died— 
 Still praying that she ne'er might cause a pain, 
 Undutiful, to ' bring down her grey hairs, 
 With sorrow, to the grave ! ' 
 
 Now mark this scene ! — 
 The fuming factory's polluted air 
 Has stain'd the country ! See that rural nymph, 
 An infant in her arms ! She claims the dole 
 From the cold parish, which her faithless swain 
 Denies : he stands aloof, with clownish leer, — 
 The constable behind, and mark his brow, 
 Beckons the nimble clerk, — the Justice, grave, 
 Turns from his book a moment, with a look 
 Of pity signs the warrant for her pay, 
 
3G8 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 A weekly eighteenpence, — she, unabash'd, 
 Slides from the room, and not a transient blush, 
 Far less the accusing tear, is on her cheek ! 
 
 A different scene comes next : — That village maid 
 Approaches timidly, yet beautiful ; 
 A tear is on her lids when she looks down 
 Upon her sleeping- child. Her heart was won, 
 The wedding-day was fixed, the ring was bought ! 
 'Tis the same story — Colin was untrue !— 
 He ruin'd, and then left her to her fate. 
 Pity her — she has not a friend on earth, 
 And that still tear speaks to all human hearts 
 But his, whose cruelty and treachery 
 Caused it to flow ! ! So crime still follows crime. 
 Ask we the cause ? — See, where those engines heave 9 
 That spread their giant arms o'er all the land ! 
 The wheel is silent in the vale ! Old age 
 And youth are levell'd by one parish law ! 
 Ask why that maid, all day, toils in the field, 
 Associate with the rude and ribald clown 
 Ev'n in the shrinking pudency of youth ? 
 To earn her loaf, and eat it by herself. 
 Parental love is smitten to the dust — 
 Over a little smoke the aged Sire 
 Holds his pale hands — and the deserted hearth 
 Is cheerless as his heart :— But Piety 
 Points to the Bible ! Shut the book again : 
 The Ranter is the roving Gospel now, 
 And each his own Apostle ! Shut the book, — 
 A locust-swarm of tracts darken its light, 
 And choke its utterance ; while a Babel-rout 
 Of mock-religionists — turn where we will — 
 Have drown'd " the small still voice," till Piety, 
 Sick of the din, retires to pray alone. 
 
 But though abused Religion and the dole 
 Of pauper-pay, and vomitories huge 
 Of smoke, are each a steam-engine of crime, 
 Polluting, far and wide, the wholesome air, 
 And with'ring Life's green verdure underneathj 
 Full many a poor and lowly flower of want 
 Has Education nursed, like a pure rill, 
 Winding through desert glens, and bade it live 
 To grace the cottage with its mantling sweets. 
 There was a village girl — I knew her well, 
 From five years old and upwards — all her friends 
 Were dead, and she was to the workhouse left, 
 And there a witness to sueh sounds profane 
 As might turn virtue pale \ When Sunday came, 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 3G9 
 
 Assembled with the children of the poor, 
 
 Upon the lawn of my own parsonage, 
 
 She stood among them: they were taught to read 
 
 In companies, and groups, upon the green, 
 
 Each with its little book ; her lighted eyes 
 
 Shone beautiful, where'er they turn'd ; her form 
 
 Was graceful ; but her book her sole delight ! 
 
 Instructed thus, she went a serving-maid, 
 
 Where fumed the neighb'ring town— ah ! who shall guide 
 
 A friendless maid, so beautiful and young, 
 
 From life's contagions ? But she had been taught 
 
 The duties of her humble lot — to pray 
 
 To God, and that one Heavenly Father's eye 
 
 Was over rich and poor I On Sunday night 
 
 She read her Bible, turning still away _ 
 
 From those who flock' d, inflaming and inflam'd, 
 
 To nightly meetings; but she never clos'd 
 
 Her eyes, or raised them to the light of morn, 
 
 Without a pray'r to Him who ' bade the sun 
 
 Go forth,' a giant, from his Eastern gate ! 
 
 No art, no bribe, could lure her steps astray 
 
 From the plain path, and lessons she had learnt, 
 
 A village child. She is a mother now, 
 
 And lives to prove the blessings and the fruits 
 
 Of moral duty, on the poorest child, 
 
 When duty, and when sober Piety, 
 
 Impressing the young heart, go hand in hand." 
 
 This is worthy of Cowper or Wordsworth. It is in their 
 very best spirit — yet it is all over original — and Bowles. Set 
 ever so many men of genius to work on the same subject, and 
 they will say ever so many the same things — but in what 
 various lights will they place them— as they fall in different 
 positions under the sun of truth? It is the glory of much of 
 the best poetry of this age, that, full of imagination though it 
 be, it deals nevertheless with man's homeliest interests— 
 because that our best poets " have all one human heart." 
 They do not take wings to themselves to soar away into the 
 far-off skies, forgetful of the agitated bosom of their mother 
 earth ; but high as they float above her, with eagle-eyes they 
 see all that is passing on that moving surface — and never are 
 they happier than when they fold their wings, and drop down 
 beside the cottage-door, and walk, no ways distinguished from 
 its humblest inmate, towards the cottage -hearth. There- 
 fore — 
 
 VOL. V. ^ A 
 
370 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 " Blessing's be with them, and eternal praise, 
 The poets who on earth have made us fain 
 Of Truth and pure delight by heavenly lays ! " 
 We have seen from his Preface that Mr Bowles is friendly to 
 the interspersion of the comic, provided the due mock-heroic 
 stateliness be kept up in the language, thinking justly that it 
 has often the effect of light and shade. We do not exactly 
 know whether his comic be very good or not, yet we feel it to 
 be amusing, and therefore are inclined to believe that it is 
 meritorious. Here is a specimen : — 
 
 " No villager was then a disputant 
 In Calvinistic and contentious creeds ; 
 No pale mechanic, from a neighbouring sink 
 Of steam, and rank debauchery, and smoke, 
 Crawl'd forth upon a Sunday morn — with looks 
 Sadd'ning the very sunshine — to instruct 
 The parish poor in Evangelic lore : — 
 To teach them to cast off — ' as filthy rags ' — 
 ' Good works ! ' and listen to such ministers, 
 Who all (be sure) ' are worthy of their hire/ 
 * Who only preach for good of their poor souls, 
 That they may turn " from darkness unto light," 
 And — above all — fly, as the gates of Hell, 
 Morality ! and Baal's steeple-house, 
 Where, without " heart-work," Doctor Littlegrace 
 Drones his dull requiem to the snoring clerk I ' 
 
 True : he who drawls his heartless homily 
 For one day's work, and plods, on wading stilts, 
 Through prosing paragraphs, with ' Inference,' 
 Methodically dull, as orthodox, 
 Enforcing sagely, that ' we all must die 
 When God shall call,'— Oh ! what a pulpit-drone 
 Is he !— The blue-fly might as well preach ' hum/ 
 And so ' conclude ! ' 
 
 But save me from the sight 
 Of Curate-fop, half jockey and half clerk, 
 The Tandem-driving Tommy of a town, 
 Disdaining books, omniscient of a horse, 
 Impatient till September comes again, 
 Eloquent only of ' the pretty girl 
 With whom he danced last night ! ' Oh ! such a thing 
 Is worse than the dull doctor, who performs 
 Duly his stinted task, and then to sleep, 
 Till Sunday asks another Homily 
 Against all innovations of the age — , 
 Mad Missionary zeal, and Bible Clubs, 
 And Calvinists and Evangelicals I" 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 371. 
 
 The difficulty is, as he says, to steer happily from gra^e to 
 gay — and back again ; and certainly his return from that play- 
 ful to the following serious passage is felicitous : — 
 
 " Yes ! Evangelicals ! Oh glorious word ! 
 But who deserves that awful name ? Not he 
 Who spits his puny Puritanic spite 
 On harmless recreation ; who reviles 
 All who, majestic in their distant scorn, 
 Bear on, in silence, their calm Christian course. 
 
 He only is the Evangelical, 
 Who holds in equal scorn dogmas and dreams, 
 The Shibboleth of saintly Magazines, 
 Deck'd with most grim and godly visages ; 
 The cobweb sophistry, or the dark code 
 Of Commentators, who, with loathsome track, 
 Crawl o'er a text, or on the lucid page, 
 Beaming with heavenly love and God's own light, 
 Sit, like a nightmare ! Soon a deadly mist 
 Creeps o'er our eyes and heart, till angel forms 
 Turn into hideous phantoms, mocking us, 
 E'en while we look for comfort at the spring 
 And well of life, while dismal voices cry, 
 ' Death !— Reprobation !— Woe ! eternal Woe ! ' 
 
 He only is the Evangelical, 
 Who from the human commentary turns 
 With tranquil scorn, and nearer to his heart 
 Presses the Bible, till repentant tears, 
 In silence, wet his cheek,— and new-born Faith, 
 And Hope, and Charity, with radiant smile, 
 Visit his heart, — all pointing to the Cross. 
 
 He only is the Evangelical, 
 Who, with eyes fix'd upon that spectacle, 
 * Christ and him crucified,' with ardent hope, 
 And holier feelings, lifts his thoughts from Earth, 
 And cries, ' My Father ! ' Meantime, his whole heart 
 Is on God's Word : he preaches ' Faith,' and ' Hope,' 
 And ' Charity,'—' these three,' and not ' that one ! ' 
 And ' Charity,' the greatest of ' these three ! ' 
 Give me an Evangelical like this ! " 
 
 Mr Bowles has, we understand, by his righteous boldness 
 in the cause of Christianity, enraged against him a set of 
 sanctified wasps and hornets, whose stings, though not deadly, 
 cause swellings and irritation in the face and hands, wherein 
 they have darted their venom. But the Muse herself, whom 
 Religion loves, will drop honey on such slight wounds, and 
 assuage their smart. The cant of Evangelism (what hideous 
 
372 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 profanation of a holy word!) can be written down in no way 
 more effectually than by genius such as his, kindled at the 
 altar of religion. He does well to be angry — to be scornful — 
 on such a theme — and here his satire is strong indeed — it 
 smites and withers. Yet through its darkness he " scatters 
 gleams of a redeeming tenderness !" 
 
 " But now, 
 The blackest crimes, in tract-religion's code, 
 Are moral virtues ! — Spare the prodigal- 
 He may awake when God shall ' call ; ' but Hell, 
 Roll thy avenging flames, to swallow up 
 The Son, who never left his father's home, 
 Lest he should trust to Morals when he dies ! 
 Let him not lay the unction to his soul, 
 That his upbraiding conscience tells no tale 
 At that dread hour— bid him confess his sin, 
 The greatest that, with humble hope he looks 
 Back on a well-spent life ! Bid him confess 
 That he hath broken all God's holy laws, 
 In vain hath he done justly, — loved, in vain, 
 Mercy, and hath walk'd humbly with his God ! 
 These are mere Works ! — but Faith is everything, 
 And all in all ! The Christian code contains 
 No * if,' or ' but ! ' Let tabernacles ring, 
 And churches too, with sanctimonious strains 
 Baneful as these ; and let such strains be heard 
 Through half the land ; and can we shut our eyes, 
 And, sadly wondering, ask the cause of crimes, 
 When Infidelity stands lowering here, 
 With open scorn, and such a code as this, 
 So baneful, withers half the charities 
 Of human hearts ? — Oh ! dear is Mercy's voice 
 To man, a mourner in the vale of sin 
 And death : how dear the still small voice of Fait!>. 
 That bids him raise his look beyond the clouds 
 That hang o'er this dim earth ; but he who tears 
 Faith from her heavenly sisterhood, denies 
 The Gospel, and turns traitor to the cause 
 He has engaged to plead. Come, Faith, and Hope, 
 And Charity ! how dear to the sad heart, 
 The consolations and the glorious views, 
 That animate the Christian, in his course ! 
 But save, oh ! save me from the tract-mad Miss, 
 Who trots to every Bethel-club, and broods 
 O'er some black Missionary's monstrous tale, 
 Reckless of want around her !" 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 373 
 
 " Let the galTd jade wince." Some of his notes are equally 
 cutting. How well does he observe that the effects of certain 
 creeds may be traced in the visages that adorn sundry godly 
 magazines, and which speak more than volumes of the feelings 
 which could produce such effects on the human countenance ! 
 showing the analogy between the conformation of features and 
 the creed-ruling passions of the mind. And difficult it is to 
 say whether the effect is more hideous or ludicrous in some 
 of these certainly not human, and yet not altogether diabolical 
 aspects ! Mr Bowles says, that, among a thousand others, he 
 can avouch for the following fact, illustrating the effects of an 
 abhorrence of morals characteristic of some sects. A young- 
 woman, of most respectable character, taught the children in 
 a clergyman's village-school to read. After some time, she 
 told the lady of the clergyman she should no longer superin- 
 tend the school, as she had found, too late, she had been bred 
 up herself in " a sad moral way !" She was soon put out of 
 this sad moral way, Mr Bowles adds, and brought before the 
 magistrate to affiliate the first fruits of her new anti-moral creed. 
 
 But though we do, from the very bottom of onr hearts, agree 
 with Mr Bowles in the main, in his most eloquent and power- 
 ful denunciations of the wicked and fatal creed, against which 
 he launches the lightnings of his indignation, he treads, in a 
 few instances, on dark and difficult ground, where we are un- 
 willing to follow him, and where it is probable we should part 
 company in the haunted gloom of metaphysics. There is a 
 Calvinism, we believe, which is a dreadful and a fatal faith ; 
 but there is a Calvinism which, though dark, is, we believe, 
 not dangerous ; — witness moral and religious Scotland. But 
 at present no more of this. 
 
 Mr Bowles, in exposing the folly — and worse than folly — of 
 those knaves or idiots who speak of that " wicked sinner " 
 Shakespeare, says truly, that the drama is far more effective 
 as a corrector of crimes, in many instances (in many instances 
 think you, sir?) than some places of worship where anti-moral 
 doctrines of different shades are preached. Mr Corder, the 
 murderer of Maria Marten, to whom he was betrothed, rose 
 from his knees in a chapel, and hastened to dip his hands in 
 her blood. What hideous work must some preaching make 
 among all the thoughts produced on the mind by conscience ! 
 What utter confusion and reversal of all the sanctities of 
 
374 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 nature ! Minds so disturbed have not unfrequently rushed to 
 the perpetration of the most horrid crimes. It is — to make 
 use of perhaps a vulgar expression — touch-and-go with all 
 weak and ignorant — to which add vicious and savage minds — 
 who sit under some anti-moral expounders of God's holy word. 
 So far we agree with all Mr Bowles has said, or can say, on 
 such a dreadful subject ; but he goes much too far, we cannot 
 help thinking, when he says, speaking of the dialogue between 
 Macbeth and his wife after the murder of Duncan, that if 
 Corder could have endured that heart-rending scene, let him 
 have waited till he saw that terrible picture of remorse, when 
 Lady Macbeth appears in her sleep, and " I would venture to 
 say, that this deed of blood would not have been done!" 
 That is too much to venture to say ■ for, in the first place, the 
 ignorant blockhead might not have understood it ; and, in the 
 second place, the callous monster might not have felt it; and, 
 in the third place, the infatuated wretch might have been even 
 stimulated to the crime by the very picture of its acting be- 
 fore his eyes, for God only knows all the mysteries of wicked- 
 ness ; and, fourthly, had the murderess struck him with 
 kindred passions of fear and remorse, such passions are an 
 agony to endure ; and the lisp or leer of some prostitute on 
 the street might have driven them out of his head, and let in 
 upon it again the determined dream of blood. 
 
 The evils of conventicles are great to the wicked ; but the 
 blessings of theatres are to the wicked, we suspect, but small ; 
 while to the good, they serve, even at the best, chiefly to 
 please and improve the taste and the imagination, and through 
 their agency, to elevate, no doubt, our moral feeBngs, and to 
 awaken our enthusiasm for virtue. But then it is to be re- 
 marked, that with all the inevitable corruptions — and inevit- 
 able they seem to be — of the drama, in a state of great wealth 
 and high civilisation, theatres may be to many places rife 
 with danger, — and that we allow, notwithstanding the sense- 
 less jeremiads against playhouses of the Master-Tailor of 
 The Age, a Poem. 1 The influence of literature in general — 
 the drama included — is benignant and beneficent, but it may 
 be overrated ; and the strength and stability of the moral soul 
 of a people is in the Christian religion, and in the Bible. 
 This, Mr Bowles indeed knows as well as we do ; and how 
 gloriously he expresses it! 
 
 1 The Age ■ a Poem, in Eight Books. 1829. 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 375 
 
 " Therefore, without a comment, or a note, 
 We love the Bible, and we prize the more 
 The spirit of its pure unspotted page, 
 As pure from the infectious breath, that stains, 
 Like a foul fume, its hallowed light, we hail 
 The radiant car of Heav'n, amidst the clouds 
 Of mortal darkness, and of human mist, 
 Sole, as the Sun in Heav'n ! " 
 
 We know not a more certain symptom of hypocrisy in reli- 
 gion than in minds, themselves obviously worldly in the 
 extreme, an exaggerated condemnation of all little worldli- 
 nesses in all other honest people, gravely jogging, or gaily 
 skipping along their path of life. Those people are often the 
 least worldly, on whom they who make the loudest boast of 
 their unworldliness, seek basely to affix that opprobrious 
 epithet. For they walk the world with a heart pure as it is 
 cheerful : they are, by that unpretending purity, saved from 
 infection ; and as there are as many fair and healthy faces to 
 be seen in the smoke and stir of cities, as in the rural wilds, 
 so also are there as many fair and healthy spirits. The world 
 — the wicked world — has not that power over us Christians 
 that the canters say ; and as for the mere amusements of the 
 world, — frivolous as they may too often be, — little or no power 
 have they over that which is " so majestical." Yet, to listen 
 to some folks, yon would think that all the boys and girls one 
 sees, " like gay creatures of the element," dancing under a 
 chandelier pendant from the roof, like some starry constella- 
 tion, were quadrilling away to the sound of music, into the 
 bottomless pit. Is it not, for example, most disgusting and 
 loathsome, to hear some broad-backed, thick-calved, greasy- 
 faced, well-fed, and not-baclly-drunk caitiff, of some canting 
 caste, distinguished in private and public life for the gross 
 greediness with which they gobble up everything eatable 
 within reach of their hairy fists, — preaching, and praying, and 
 exhorting young people, full of flesh and blood of the purest 
 and clearest quality, to forsake and forswear the world, — to 
 quell within them all mortal vanities, and appetites, and lusts? 
 To whom is the hound haranguing? What means he by 
 lusts, while the sweet face is before him of that innocent girl 
 of fifteen or twenty ? For what are years to her, into whose 
 eyes God and the Saviour have put that light angelical ?-*- 
 that ineffable loveliness, as pure from taint as the beauty of 
 the rose blushing on her lily breast, which she gathered in 
 
37G ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 the dewy garden a few hours ago, among the earliest songs of 
 birds, while yet the pensive expression had not time to leave 
 her countenance, still lingering there from the piety of her 
 soul-breathed prayers ? Shocking, to hear the ugly monster 
 coarsely canting to such a creature of her — corruption ! She 
 knows that she belongs to a fallen nature. Oftentimes her 
 tears have flowed to think how undeserving she was of all the 
 goodness showered on her head from Heaven. Often hath she 
 looked on the lilies of the field, and envied their innocence. 
 Meek and humble is she, even in her most joyful happiness ; 
 contrite and repentant even over the shadows of sin that may 
 have crossed her spirit, as the shadows of clouds suddenly 
 over " a stationary spot of sunshine." Even for her sake, she 
 knows that " Jesus wept." With what a reverent touch do 
 these delicate hands of hers turn over the leaves of the New 
 Testament ! Her father and her mother intensely feel them- 
 selves to be Christians, while she reads to them the story 
 of the crucifixion. She remembers not the time when she 
 knew not Him who died to save sinners. For her parents 
 were instructed by these words, — " Suffer little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven." Fine are all the threads of holy feeling, 
 by which her pure thoughts are linked and allied, as the lines 
 of gossamer floating with their dewdrops all over the flower- 
 garden, from which she culls garlands for those she loves, — 
 her young companions, and her aged friends ! The clown 
 breaks through them all, with the slang of his tongue and his 
 eye ; and frightens her as with the bellowing of some wild and 
 unclean beast in the bowers of paradise. And why will 
 parents suffer such hoofs within their gates ? Is not his rank 
 smell sufficient to sicken the family ? Are not the roses and 
 the lilies insulted by his fetid breath? And Flora put to 
 flight as by a Satyr ? 
 
 Forsake the world, indeed ! Who made it ? — who fitted us 
 for it ? — who placed us in it ? — what duties lie out of it ? 
 Not one. For love to our fellow-creatures is of God, and 
 love to God is of our fellow-creatures, and both alike draw 
 breath from " this bright and breathing world." We must 
 not forsake the world, even though it should hare been dark- 
 ened by the sins of ourselves and others ; birds of calm are 
 often seen in storm ; the primrose smiles on the brow of the 
 windiest hill, nor cares for sleet or snow ; and hath not a 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BAN WELL HILL. 377 
 
 Christian soul the same power to preserve itself from scathe, 
 which has been given to insensate and inanimate things ? 
 And then what sort of a world is to be substituted for the one 
 we are wickedly bid to abandon? A dark, narrow world, 
 indeed, — yet, narrow as it is, haunted by thoughts that can, 
 and too often do, debase and terrify into idiocy or madness. 
 For nature thwarted, must dwindle into decay or distortion, — 
 the very shape of the soul becomes deformed, — its lineaments 
 ghastly, as with premature age ; the spring is struck out of 
 life ; the gracious law of her seasons is disobeyed ; and on 
 the tree of knowledge we are to look for fruits before blossoms ! 
 Bad philosophy, and worse religion. Commend us to such 
 Christianity as Mr Bowles preaches so eloquently in this 
 poem. To use his own words, no priest is he, 
 
 " Who deems the Almighty frowns upon Ms Throne, 
 Because two pair of harmless Dowagers, 
 Whose life has lapsed without a stain, beguile 
 An evening" hour with cards ; who deems that Hell 
 Burns fiercer for a Saraband." 
 
 We dare say Mr Bowles, like ourselves, has long given up 
 dancing — and that though he may occasionally join in a 
 rubber of whist for sixpenny points, he is, like ourselves, no 
 very assiduous card-player. T'other evening we laid aside 
 our crutch, and tried, not unsuccessfully, to stand up in a 
 quadrille, rather than that fifteen young people should be dis- 
 appointed of their dos-d-dos — and we acquitted ourselves like 
 a Lancer. Same evening, we faced an old lady at whist, and 
 with the exception of a single revoke, which had like to bring 
 down an old house about our ears, we played to the delight 
 of Hoyle's ghost, who kept looking all the while over our 
 shoulder, pointing to each victorious card in our irresistible 
 hand. Surely there was no sin in that, Dr Cantwell? Mr 
 Bowles truly says, that the two great crimes of a professed 
 Puritan, most truly the " Nominal " Christian, are, and have 
 been, from the time of the Manicheans, the Drama and the 
 Dance. To these abominations, such Christians constantly add 
 Card-playing, without distinguishing whether accompanied 
 with the spirit of gaming. It is easy, he adds, to conceive 
 the reason why the old Fathers were so horror-struck at 
 dancing , considering the licentious character of the Eastern 
 dance. But what resemblance is there in a social meeting of 
 this kind, to which a father and a mother bring their sons and 
 
378 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 daughters, and of which in their youth they have taken part, 
 without one evil thought or feeling ? Pie who can view such 
 a meeting with impure feeling, certainly had better stay away; 
 but what must be the impurity in his heart to confess such 
 ideas ? The spirit of Puritanism, he concludes, is as much 
 like the spirit of Christianity, as the mermaid, which was 
 carried about for a show, consisting of an ass's head and fish's 
 tail, is like a beautiful woman. 
 
 The worthy Rector waxes uncommonly facetious on the 
 idolatrous practices laid by the Cantwells to the charge of 
 the youths of this age. 
 
 There is a certain wicked and most idolatrous machine, called a Round- 
 about ;' and though we are commanded not to make " the likeness of anything 
 above the earth, or under the earth," this machine has a number of idola- 
 trous images, in wood, representing horses ! But, far worse than this, boys 
 and girls — instead of precocious edification, in the mysteries of destiny and 
 decrees (to the horror of this age, of the " march of intellect" be it spoken) 
 — boys and girls together are found riding round, with the most impious 
 tranquillity, and apparent sedate satisfaction, one after the other, on the 
 same wooden likenesses of little horses ! 
 
 In pleasant accordance with such views of the perfect harm- 
 lessness of many of the gaieties of this life, humble or high, 
 Mr Bowles sketches a beautiful picture of a little rural festival, 
 which ended, as we know, though we were not there to see, 
 with a choral flower-dance : — 
 
 " If we would see the fruits of charity, 
 
 Look at that village group, and paint the scene. 
 Surrounded by a clear and silent stream, 
 Where the swift trout shoots from the sudden ray. 
 A rural mansion, on the level lawn, 
 Uplifts its ancient gables, whose slant shade 
 Is drawn, as with a line, from roof to porch, 
 Whilst all the rest is sunshine. O'er the trees 
 In front, the village-church, with pinnacles, 
 And light grey tower, appears ; while to the right, 
 An amphitheatre of oaks extends 
 Its sweep, till, more abrupt, a wooded knoll, 
 Where once a castle frown'd, closes the scene. 
 And see, an infant troop with flags and drum, 
 Are marching o'er that bridge, beneath the woods, 
 On — to the table spread upon the lawn, 
 Raising their little hands when grace is said ; 
 Whilst she, who taught them to lift up their hearts 
 In prayer, and to ' remember, in their youth,' 
 
DATS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 
 
 379 
 
 God, < their Creators-mistress of the scene, 
 (Whom I remember once, as young,) looks on, 
 Blessing them in the silence of her heart. 
 And we too bless them." 
 Against what sins, then, ought the ^f^^ 
 denounce the judgments of offended Heaven? Listen to our 
 Christian Poet :— 
 
 « < Cry aloud !'- speak in thunder to the soul 
 That sleeps in sin ! Harrow the inmost heart 
 Of murderous intent, till dewdrops stand 
 Upon his haggard brow ! Call Conscience up, 
 Like a stern Spectre, whose dim finger points 
 To dark misdeeds of yore ! Wither the arm 
 Of the oppressor, at whose feet the slave 
 Crouchei and pleading lifts his fetter'd hands ! 
 Thou violator of the innocent, 
 ffide thee I Hence ! hide thee in the deepest cave, 
 Kan's indignant sight ! Thou Hy^cnto 
 Trample in dust thy mark, nor cry Faith-* aitb, 
 Making it but a hollow tinkhng sound, 
 That stirs not the foul heart! Horrible wretch, 
 Look not upon the face of that sweet child, _ 
 
 With thoughts which Hell would tremble to conceive ! 
 Oh shallow, and oh senseless !-in a world 
 Where rank offences turn the good man pale- 
 Who leave the Christian's sternest code, to vent 
 Their petty ire on petty trespasses- 
 If trespasses they are-when the wide world 
 Groans with the burden of offence when crimes 
 Stalk on. with front defying, o er the and, 
 Whilst, her own cause betraying, Christian zeal 
 Thus < swallows camels, straining at a gnat . 
 That is fine vigorous writing ; hut the Poet rises into vet a 
 loftier flfght, and g he takes us along with him on his wings :- 
 
 " Oh ! whilst the car 
 Of God's own glory rolls along in light 
 We join the loud song of the Christian host 
 (All puny systems shrinking from the blaze), 
 «HoLm^ to the car of flight! RoUon! 
 Saldanna's rocks have echoed to the hymns 
 Of Faith, and Hope, and Charity 1 Roll on . 
 Till the wild wastes of inmost Atnca, 
 Where the long Niger's track is lost respond, 
 < Hosannah, to the car of light 1' Roll on !— 
 F "Sm to realm, from shore to farthest shore, 
 O'er dark Pagodas, and huge Idol-* anes, 
 That frown along the Ganges' farthest stream, 
 
380 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Till the poor widow, from the burning pile, 
 
 Starting", shall lift her hands to heaven, and weep 
 
 That she has found a Saviour, and has heard 
 
 The sounds of Christian love ! — Oh ! horrible, 
 
 The pile is smoking- ! — the bamboos lie there, 
 
 That held her down when the last struggle shook 
 
 The blazing- pile ! Hasten, oh ! car of light ! 
 
 Alas ! for suffering nature ! Jaggernaut, 
 
 Arm'd, in his giant car, goes also forth — 
 
 Goes forth, amid his red and reeling priests, 
 
 While thousands gasp and die beneath the wheels, 
 
 As they go groaning on, 'mid cries, and drums, 
 
 And flashing cymbals and delirious songs 
 
 Of tinkling dancing-girls, and all the rout 
 
 Of frantic Superstition ! Turn away ! 
 
 And is not Jaggernaut himself with us, — 
 
 Not only cold insidious sophistry, 
 
 Comes, blinking with its taper-fume to light, 
 
 If so he may, the Sun in the mid Heaven ! 
 
 Not only blind and hideous blasphemy 
 
 Scowls in his cloak, and mocks the glorious orb, 
 
 Ascending, in its silence, o'er a world 
 
 Of sin and sorrow,— but a hellish brood 
 
 Of imps, and fiends, and phantoms, ape the form 
 
 Of Godliness, till Godliness itself 
 
 Seems but a painted monster, and a .name 
 
 For darker crimes ; at which the shuddering heart 
 
 Shrinks ; while the ranting rout, as they march on, 
 
 Mock Heaven with hymns, till, see — pale Belial 
 
 Sighs o'er a filthy tract, and Moloch marks 
 
 With gouts of blood— his brandish'd Magazine ! 
 
 Start, monster, from the dismal dream ! Look up ! 
 Oh ! listen to the Apostolic voice, 
 That, like a voice from Heaven, proclaims, ' to Faith 
 Add Virtue ! ' there is no mistaking here ; 
 Whilst moral Education, by the hand, 
 Shall lead the children to the House of God — 
 Nor sever Christian Faith from Christian Love." 
 
 From this high flight the Muse stoops her wing, and win- 
 nows her way with softly-gliding plumes along " the beautiful 
 fields of England," as Southey so simply and truly calls them ; 
 in the neighbourhood of Banwell Hill, visiting the residences 
 of some of the worthy Kector's most esteemed Mends ; and 
 deservedly praising " Generous Hoare," the owner of the 
 " Elysian Temple of Stourhead " — the Eeverend Mr Skurry, 
 
 " distributor 
 
 Of bounties large, yet falling silently 
 
 As dews on the cold turf" — 
 
OR BANWELL HILL. 381 
 
 the excellent Earl of Cork and Orrery at Marston — Mrs 
 Heneage of Compton House, 
 
 " who never turned her look 
 From others' sorrows— on whose lids the tear 
 Shines yet more lovely than the light of youth " — 
 
 Mrs Methuen of Corsham House, " fair as Charity's own form," 
 and the Kev. Charles Hoyle, vicar of Overton, near Marl- 
 borough, of whom our Poet speaks with more than common 
 affection and esteem ; — a man, we believe, of genius, learning, 
 and virtue. And so endeth Part Second of Banwell Hill. 
 
 Part Third is entitled "The Spectre and Prayer-Book, a Tale 
 of a Cornish Maid," versified from an extraordinary and striking 
 fact in Mr Polwhele's History of Cornwall. It has many 
 touches true to nature, and is throughout elegantly written ; 
 but it is overlaid with ornament, and does not storm the heart 
 through the imagination. Crabbe could have told the story 
 far better in far fewer words ; by merely keeping to it — grasp- 
 ing the soul of it — and scorning all unessential adjuncts. But 
 no man — no Poet can at once be a Bowles and a Crabbe — any 
 more than a Coleridge and a Wordsworth — a Campbell and a 
 Moore — a Byron and a Scott. Let every man and poet stand 
 on his own legs — a single pair ; but let him take warning by 
 Mr Atherstone, and beware of stilts. 
 
 Mr Bowles (we charged him some pages back with an occa- 
 sional fib) would fain make us believe that it had been raining 
 all the while he was telling a Tale of a Cornish Maid. That 
 was a plumper. Yet we forgive the fib for his beautiful way 
 of telling it. Part Fourth thus opens : — 
 
 " The shower is past — the heath-hell, at our feet, 
 Looks up, as with a smile, though the cold dew 
 Hangs yet within its cup, like Pity's tear 
 Upon the eyelids of a village-child ! 
 Mark ! where a light upon those far-off waves 
 Gleams, while the passing shower above our head 
 Sheds its last silent drops, amid the hues 
 Of the fast-fading rainbow, — such is life ! — 
 Let us go forth, — the redbreast is abroad, 
 And, dripping in the sunshine, sings again." 
 
 Pity indeed that one who thus loves nature, and is by nature 
 thus beloved, and rewarded by inspiration, should occasionally 
 have so little regard to truth ! This shower, however, so ex- 
 quisitely described in its death, has not only refreshed earth 
 and sea, but Mr Bowies' genius, till it glows as " green as 
 
382 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 emerald." We cannot, at this late hour of the night, " (ae wee 
 sma' hour ayont the twal,") accompany him in all his rambles 
 along sea-shore, and through inland wood. But during all 
 those descriptions, never has the influence of that shower — 
 real or ideal — been out of his imagination, till at last it abso- 
 lutely causes another Deluge. To be serious — we know not 
 where to look in Modern Poetry — in Wordsworth, Southey, or 
 James Montgomery — for a descriptive passage, fuller of feel- 
 ing and fancy than the following " Vision of the Deluge." 
 
 " The Vision of the Deluge ! Hark — a trump ! 
 It was the trump of the Archangel ! Stern 
 He stands, while the awak'ning thunder rolls 
 Beneath his feet ! Stern, and alone, he stands 
 Upon Immaus' height ! 
 
 No voice is heard 
 Of revelry or blasphemy so high ! 
 He sounds again his trumpet ; and the clouds 
 Come deep'ning o'er the world ! — 
 
 Why art thou pale ? 
 A strange and fearful stillness is on earth, 
 As if the shadow of th' Almighty pass'd 
 O'er the abodes of man, and hush'd at once 
 The song, the shout, the cries of violence, 
 The groan of the oppress'd, and the deep curse 
 Of Blasphemy, that scowls upon the clouds, 
 And mocks the deeper thunder ! 
 
 Hark ! a voice — 
 ' Perish ! ' Again the thunder rolls — the Earth 
 Answers — from North to South, from East to West- 
 * Perish ! ' The fountains of the mighty deep 
 Are broken up — the rushing rains descend, 
 Like night — deep night, while momentary seen, 
 Through blacker clouds, on his pale phantom-horse, 
 Death, a gigantic skeleton, rides on, 
 Rejoicing, where the millions of mankind — 
 (Visible, where his lightning arrows glared) — 
 Welter beneath the shadow of his horse ! 
 Now, dismally, through all her caverns, Hell 
 Sends forth a horrid laugh, that dies away, 
 And then a loud voice answers—' Victory ! 
 Victory, to the rider and his horse ! 
 Victory, to the rider and his horse ! ' 
 Ride on :— the Ark, majestic and alone 
 On the wide waste of the careering deep, 
 Its hull scarce peering through the night of clouds, 
 Is seen. But lo ! the mighty deep has shrunk! 
 The Ark, from its terrific voyage, rests 
 
DATS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 
 
 On Ararat. The Raven is sent forth — 
 Send out the Dove, and as her wings far off 
 Shine in the light, that streaks the searing clouds, 
 Bid her speed on, and greet her with a song :— 
 Go, beautiful and gentle Dove,— 
 
 But whither wilt thou go ? 
 For though the clouds ride high above, 
 How sad and waste is all below ! 
 The wife of Shem, a moment to her breast 
 Held the poor bird, and kiss'd it. Many a night 
 When she was listening to the hollow wind, 
 She press'd it to her bosom, with a tear ; 
 Or when it murmur'd in her hand, forgot 
 The long, loud tumult of the storm without.— 
 She kisses it, and at her father's word, 
 Bids it go forth. 
 
 The dove flies on ! In lonely flight 
 
 She flies from dawn till dark ; 
 And now, amid the gloom of night, 
 
 Comes weary to the ark. 
 Oh ! let me in, she seems to say, 
 For long and lone hath been my way ; 
 Oh ! once more, gentle mistress, let me rest, 
 And dry my dripping plumage on thy breast 
 So the bird flew to her who cherished it. 
 She sent it forth again out of the ark ; 
 Again it came at eVning fall, and lo ! 
 An olive-leaf pluck'd off, and in its bill. 
 And Shem's wife took the green leaf from its bill, 
 And kiss'd its wings again, and smiliugly 
 Dropp'd on its neck one silent tear for joy. 
 She sent it forth once more ; and watch'd its flight, 
 Till it was lost amid the clouds of Heaven : 
 Then gazing on the clouds where it was lost, 
 Its mournful mistress sung this last farewell :— 
 ' Go, beautiful and gentle Dove, 
 And greet the morning ray ; 
 For lo ! the sun shines bright above, 
 
 And night and storm are pass'd away. 
 No longer drooping, here confined, 
 
 In this cold prison dwell ; 
 Go, free to sunshine and to wind, 
 Sweet bird, go forth, and fare thee well 
 « Oh ! beautiful and gentle Dove, 
 Thy welcome sad will be, 
 When thou shalt hear no voice of love. 
 
 In murmurs from the leafy tree : 
 Yet freedom, freedom shalt thou find, 
 From this cold prison cell : 
 
 383 
 
384 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 Go, then, to sunshine and the wind, 
 Sweet bird, go forth, and fare thee well/ 
 
 And never more she saw it ; for the Earth 
 
 Was dry, and now, upon the mountain's van, 
 
 Again the great Archangel stands ! the light 
 
 Of the moist rainbow glitters on his hair ; 
 
 He to the bow uplifts his hands, whose arch 
 
 Spans the whole Heaven; and whilst, far off", in light, 
 
 The ascending dove is for a moment seen, 
 
 The last rain falls— falls gently and unheard, 
 
 Amid the silent sunshine ! Oh ! look up ! 
 
 Above the clouds, borne up the depth of light, 
 
 Behold a Cross !— and round about the Cross, 
 
 Lo ! Angels and Archangels jubilant, 
 
 Till the ascending pomp in light is lost, 
 
 Lift their acclaiming voice,—' Glory to thee, 
 
 Glory, and praise, and honour be to thee, 
 
 Lord God of Hosts ; we laud and magnify 
 
 Thy glorious name, praising thee evermore, 
 
 For the great Dragon is cast down, and hell 
 
 Vanquish'd beneath thy cross, Lord Jesus Christ/ 
 
 Hark! the clock strikes!— The shadowy scene dissolves, 
 And all the visionary pomp is pass'd ! 
 I only see a few sheep on the edge 
 Of this aerial ridge, and Banwell tower, 
 Grey in the morning sunshine, at our feet." 
 " The subject is stale — old — worn-out— threadbare — soiled 
 —pawed upon"— ever and anon exclaims yon blockhead on 
 opening a poem— or passage of a poem, thereby libelling the 
 Great Globe itself, and all that it inherits. What does the 
 blockhead mean ? The age of the world is known to a nicety 
 —which is more than you can say of that of many an elderly 
 young lady, who was no chicken at the era of the French Re- 
 volution. The world is neither young nor old— but middle- 
 a-ed; nothing about her is stale; she is as fresh, without 
 being flat, as a flounder. But if she were as old as the hills, 
 what would that signify to a Poet ? He could wash six thou- 
 sand years off her grey head, and restore her to a youtnral 
 Paragon. To genius, all creation is for ever new— in immor- 
 tal youth. Towers and temples decay; but the "innocent 
 brightness of the newborn day" that shall rise to-morrow, 
 will be as lustrous to his eyes as the first morn that dawned 
 on Eden. . . . 
 
 "Seas will row and rivers -flow" till time sinks in eternity; 
 but seas and rivers will never be old— that is to say, older 
 
DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL. 385 
 
 than they ought to be — as long as there is one Poet's eye left 
 to look on them, undimined by dust. When all mankind are 
 dead and buried — the last man perhaps in the same spot with 
 the first — Peter Tomlinson, junior, with Father Adam, then 
 this world will feel herself getting too old — will groan through 
 all her skeleton, and disappear in Chaos. But while the soul 
 of man lives, she, the mighty mother, will never complain of 
 old age. Cybele will nurse her children at her thousand 
 breasts, still flowing with milk and honey. There may be 
 some truth in what Solomon said, " There is nothing new under 
 the sun ; " but there is far more truth in what we say, u There 
 is nothing old under the sun." Nature is preserved by her 
 elements in a perpetual youth, far more wonderful than that 
 of Ninon D'Enclos — and her favoured lovers are the Poets. 
 Prosers tell her to her face that she is waxing old — that her 
 charms — fie ! — are stale ; and for their pains get instantly 
 kicked out of her presence by a foot whose dexterity would do 
 credit to a youthful Newhaven fishwife. Yet to the old all 
 things seem old ; and blockheads are aged at thirty, as you 
 may perceive from the exaggerated drivel and dotage of their 
 drawling speech. But Genius is ever young, like the star of 
 Jove, "so beautiful and large;" and therefore this earth — this 
 world — shall never want her worshippers. The Deluge — 
 though not perhaps in point of fact — certainly in point of feel- 
 ing — happened last autumn * — the Creation of the world last 
 spring. At least Mr Bowles writes of the Deluge as if he 
 thought and felt so ; and therefore doth that passage of his 
 poem rise and subside like the flood he describes, — 'tis green 
 in its beauty as the reappearing hills. What heart could 
 see again that dove without blessing her, and loving the olive 
 more and more for her sake ? " Songs of the Ark ! " — where- 
 fore are the lips mute that essayed to sing the hymns re- 
 echoed from Mount Ararat ? — Our poet now bids farewell to 
 Banwell Cave, and Banwell Hill, and Banwell Church — 
 " And farewell to the shores 
 
 Where, when a child, I wander'd ; and farewell, 
 
 Harp of my youth!" 
 The close of the poem is so very beautiful — that long as our 
 quotations have been — we do not fear but that our readers will 
 thank us for such a strain. 
 
 1 The great floods of 1829 are referred to. 
 VOL. V. 2 B 
 
386 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 " Yet, whilst the light 
 Steals from the clouds, to rest upon that tower, 
 I turn a parting" look, and lift to heaven 
 A parting" prayer, that our own Sion, thus, — 
 With sober splendour, yet not gorgeous, 
 Her mitred brow, temper'd with lenity 
 And apostolic mildness — in her mien 
 No dark defeature, beautiful as mild, 
 And gentle as the smile of Charity, — 
 Thus on the rock of ages may uplift 
 Her brow majestic, pointing to the spires 
 That grace her village glens, or solemn fanes 
 In cities, calm above the stir and smoke, 
 And list'ning to deep harmonies that swell 
 From all her temples ! 
 
 So may she adorn — 
 (Her robe is graceful, as her Creed is pure) — 
 This happy land, till Time shall be no more ! 
 And whilst her grey cathedrals rise in air, 
 Solemn, august, and beautiful, and touch'd 
 By time — to show a grace, but no decay, 
 Like that fair pile, which, from hoar Mendip's broTr 
 The traveller beholds, crowning the vale 
 Of Avalon, with all its towers in light ; — 
 So, England, may thy grey cathedrals lift 
 Their front in heaven's pure light, and ever boast 
 Such Prelate Lords— bland, but yet dignified — 
 Pious, paternal, and beloved, as he 
 Who prompted, and forgives this Severn song ! 
 
 And thou, oh Lord and Saviour, on whose rock 
 That Church is founded, though the storm without 
 May howl around its battlements, preserve 
 Its spirit, and still pour into the hearts 
 Of all, who there confess Thy holy name, 
 Peace, — that through evil or through good report, 
 They may hold on their blameless way." 
 
WOEDSWOKTH. 
 
 [This Essay comprises several articles on Wordsworth, contributed by Pro- 
 fessor Wilson to the early numbers of Blackwood's Magazine. It is inter- 
 esting both as a comparatively early specimen of the Professor's critical 
 powers, and as one of the first critiques (if not the very first) in which full 
 justice is done to the commanding genius of the great Lake poet. As we 
 once heard Hartley Coleridge remark, " to admire Wordsworth in those days 
 (1810-1818) was to be kicked at," so that the Professor's eulogy has the 
 merit of boldness as well as of truth to recommend it. The original articles 
 contained a large amount of extract. This has been (for the most part) re- 
 trenched, as the poems of Wordsworth are now familiar as "household 
 words."] 
 
 The three great master-spirits of our day, in the poetical 
 world, are Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron. But there never 
 were minds more unlike to each other than theirs are, either 
 in original conformation or in the course of life. It is great 
 and enduring glory to this age, to have produced three Poets, 
 — of perfectly original genius, — unallied to each other, — 
 drinking inspiration from fountains far apart, — who have built 
 up superb structures of the imagination, of distinct orders of 
 architecture, — and who may indeed be said to rule, each by a 
 legitimate sovereignty, over separate and powerful provinces 
 in the kingdom of Mind. If we except the Elizabethan age, 
 in which the poetical genius of the country was turned pas- 
 sionately to the drama, and which produced an unequalled 
 constellation of great spirits, we believe that no other period 
 of English literature could exhibit three such Poets as these, 
 standing in conspicuous elevation among a crowd of less 
 potent, but enlightened and congenial Worthies. There is 
 unquestionably an ethereal flush of poetry over the face of 
 this land. Poets think and feel for themselves, fearlessly and 
 enthusiastically. There is something like inspiration in the 
 works of them all. They are far superior indeed to the mere 
 clever verse-writers of our Augustan age. It is easy to see 
 
388 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 in what feelings, and in what faculties, onr living Poets ex- 
 cel their duller prose brethren ; and the world is not now so 
 easily duped as to bestow the lc hallowed name" upon such 
 writers as the Sprats, and Yaldens, and Dukes, and Pomfrets, 
 et hoc genus omne, whom the courtesy and ignorance of a 
 former age admitted into the poetical brotherhood. Unless a 
 Poet be now a Poet indeed, — unless he possess something of 
 " the vision and the faculty divine," — he dies at once, and is 
 heard of no more. There is, of necessity, in so poetical an 
 age as this, a vast crowd of deluded followers of the Muse, 
 who mistake the will for the power. But the evil of this is 
 not great. The genuine Poets, and these alone, are admired 
 and beloved. Of them we have many ; but we believe that 
 we speak the general voice when we place on a triple throne, 
 Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron. 
 
 Though greatly inferior in many things to his illustrious 
 brethren, Scott is perhaps, after all, the most unequivocally 
 original. We do not know of any model after which the form 
 of his principal Poems has been moulded. They bear no 
 resemblance, and, we must allow, are far inferior to the heroic 
 Poems of Greece ; nor do they, though he has been called the 
 Ariosto of the North, seem to us to resemble, in any way 
 whatever, any of the great Poems of modern Italy. He has 
 given a most intensely real representation of the living spirit 
 of the chivalrous age of his country. He has not shrouded 
 the figures or the characters of his heroes in high political 
 lustre, so as to dazzle us by resplendent fictitious beings, 
 shining through the scenes and events of a half-imaginary 
 world. They are as much real men in his poetry, as the 
 " mighty Earls" of old are in our histories and annals. The 
 incidents, too, and events, are all wonderfully like those of 
 real life ; and when we add to this, that all the most interest- 
 ing and impressive superstitions and fancies of the times are in 
 his poetry incorporated and intertwined with the ordinary 
 tissue of mere human existence, we feel ourselves hurried 
 from this our civilised age, back into the troubled bosom of 
 semi-barbarous life, and made keen partakers in all its impas- 
 sioned and poetical' credulities. His poems are historical nar- 
 rations, true in all things to the spirit of history, but every- 
 where overspread with those bright and breathing colours 
 which only genius can bestow on reality; and when it is 
 
WORDSWORTH. 389 
 
 recollected tliat the times in which his scenes are laid and his 
 heroes act were distinguished by many of the most energetic 
 virtues that can grace or dignify the character of a free people, 
 and marked by the operation of great passions and important 
 events, every one must feel that the poetry of Walter Scott is, 
 in the noblest sense of the word, national ; that it breathes 
 upon us the bold and heroic spirit of perturbed but magnifi- 
 cent ages, and connects us, in the midst of philosophy, science, 
 and refinement, with our turbulent but high-minded ancestors, 
 of whom we have no cause to be ashamed, whether looked on 
 in the fields of war or in the halls of peace. He is a true 
 knight in all things, — free, courteous, and brave. War, as he 
 describes it, is a noble game, a kingly pastime. He is the 
 greatest of all War-Poets. His Poetry might make a very 
 coward fearless. In Marmion, the battle of Flodden agitates 
 us with all the terror of a fatal overthrow. In The Lord of 
 the Isles, we read of the field of Bannockburn with clenched 
 hands and fiery spirits, as if the English were still our 
 enemies, and we were victorious over their invading king. 
 There is not much of all this in any modern poetry but his 
 own ; and therefore it is, that, independently of all his other 
 manifold excellencies, we glory in him as the great modern 
 National Poet of Scotland, — in whom old times revive, — 
 whose Poetry prevents History from becoming that which, in 
 times of excessive refinement, it is often too apt to become — 
 a dead letter, — and keeps the animating and heroic spectacles 
 of the past moving brightly across our everyday world, and 
 flashing out from them a kindling power over the actions and 
 characters of our own age. 
 
 Byron is in all respects the very opposite of Scott. He 
 never dreams of wholly giving up his mind to the influence 
 of the actions of men, or the events of history. He lets the 
 world roll on, and eyes its wide-weltering and tumultuous 
 waves — even the calamitous shipwrecks that strew its dark- 
 ness — with a stern, and sometimes even a pitiless misanthropy. 
 He cannot sympathise with the ordinary joys or sorrows of 
 humanity, even though intense and overpowering. They 
 must live and work in intellect and by intellect, before they 
 seem worthy of the sympathy of his inpenetrable soul. His 
 idea of man, in the abstract, is boundless and magnificent ; 
 but of men, as individuals, he thinks with derision and con- 
 
390 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 tempt. Hence lie is in one stanza a sublime moralist, elevated 
 and transported by the dignity of human nature ; in the next 
 a paltry satirist, sneering at its meanness. Hence he is un- 
 willing to yield love or reverence to anything that has yet 
 life ; for life seems to sink the little that is noble into the 
 degradation of the much that is vile. The dead, and the dead 
 only, are the objects of his reverence or his love ; for death 
 separates the dead from all connection, all intimacy with the 
 living ; and the memories of the great or good alone live in 
 the past, which is a world of ashes. Byron looks back to the 
 tombs of those great men "that stand in assured rest ;" and 
 gazing, as it were, on the bones of a more gigantic race, his 
 imagination then teems with corresponding births, and he 
 holds converse with the mighty in language worthy to be 
 heard by the spirits of the mighty. It is in this contrast be- 
 tween his august conceptions of man, and his contemptuous 
 opinion of men, that much of the almost incomprehensible 
 charm, and power, and enchantment of his Poetry exists. 
 We feel ourselves alternately sunk and elevated, as if the 
 hand of an invisible being had command over us. At one 
 time we are a little lower than the angels ; in another, but 
 little higher than the worms. We feel that our elevation and 
 our disgrace are alike the lot of our nature ; and hence the 
 Poetry of Byron, as we before remarked, is read as a dark, but 
 still a divine revelation. 
 
 If Byron be altogether unlike Scott, Wordsworth is yet 
 more unlike Byron. With all the great and essential facul- 
 ties of the Poet, he possesses the calm and self-commanding 
 powers of the Philosopher. He looks over human life with a 
 steady and serene eye ; he listens with a fine ear " to the still 
 sad music of humanity." His faith is unshaken in the pre- 
 valence of virtue over vice, and of happiness over misery ; 
 and in the existence of a heavenly law operating on earth, 
 and, in spite of transitory defeats, always visibly triumphant 
 in the grand field of human warfare. Hence he looks over 
 the world of life, and man, with a sublime benignity ; and 
 hence, delighting in all the gracious dispensations of God, his 
 great mind can wholly deliver itself up to the love of a flower 
 budding in the field, or of a child asleep in its cradle ; nor, in 
 doing so, feels that Poetry can be said to stoop or to descend, 
 much less to be degraded, when she embodies, in words of 
 
WORDSWORTH. 391 
 
 music, the purest and most delightful fancies and affections 
 of the human heart. This love of the nature to which he 
 belongs, and which is in him the fruit of wisdom and ex- 
 perience, gives to all his Poetry a very peculiar, a very 
 endearing, and, at the same time, a very lofty character. His 
 Poetry is little coloured by the artificial distinctions of 
 society. In his delineations of passion or character, he is not 
 so much guided by the varieties produced by customs, insti- 
 tutions, professions, or modes of life, as by those great elemen- 
 tary laws of our nature which are unchangeable and the 
 same ; and therefore the pathos and the truth of his most 
 felicitous Poetry are more profound than of any other, not un- 
 like the most touching and beautiful passages in the Sacred 
 Page. The same spirit of love, and benignity, and ethereal 
 purity, which breathes over all his pictures of the virtues and 
 the happiness of man, pervades those too of external nature. 
 Indeed, all the Poets of the age, — and none can dispute that 
 they must likewise be the best Critics, — have given up to 
 him the palm in that Poetry which commerces with the forms, 
 and hues, and odours, and sounds, of the material world. He 
 has brightened the earth we inhabit to our eyes ; he has 
 made it more musical to our ears ; he has rendered it more 
 creative to our imaginations. 
 
 We are well aware, that what we have now written of 
 Wordsworth is not the opinion entertained of his genius in 
 Scotland, where, we believe, his Poetry is scarcely known, 
 except by the extracts from it, and criticisms upon it, in the 
 Edinburgh Review. But in England his reputation is high, 
 — indeed among many of the very best judges, the highest 
 of all our living Poets ; and it is our intention, in this and 
 some other articles, to give our readers an opportunity of 
 judging for themselves whether he is or is not a great Poet. 
 This they will best be enabled to do by fair and full critiques 
 on all his principal Poems, and by full and copious quotations 
 from them, selected in an admiring but impartial spirit. We 
 purpose to enter, after this has been done, at some length into 
 the peculiarities of his system and of his genius, which we 
 humbly conceive we have studied with more care, and, we 
 fear not to say, with more knowledge and to better purpose, 
 than any writer in the Edinburgh Preview. Indeed, the gene- 
 ral conviction of those whose opinions are good for anything 
 
392 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 on the subject of Poetry is, that, however excellent many of 
 the detached remarks on particular passages may be, scarcely 
 one syllable of truth — that is, of knowledge — has ever ap- 
 peared in the Edinburgh Review on the general principles of 
 Wordsworth's Poetry, or, as it has been somewhat vaguely, and 
 not very philosophically, called, the Lake School of Poetry. 
 We quarrel with no critic for his mere critical opinions ; and 
 in the disquisitions which, ere long, we shall enter into on 
 this subject, we shall discuss all disputed points with perfect 
 amenity, and even amity, towards those who, toto ccelo, 
 dissent from our views. There is by far too much wrangling 
 and jangling in our periodical criticism. Every critic, nowa- 
 days, raises his bristles, as if he were afraid of being thought 
 too tame and good-natured. There is a want of genial feel- 
 ing in professional judges of Poetry ; and this want is not 
 always supplied by a deep knowledge of the laws. For our 
 own parts, we intend at all times to write of great living 
 Poets in the same spirit of love and reverence with which it 
 is natural to regard the dead and the sanctified ; and this is 
 the only spirit in which a critic can write of his contempora- 
 ries without frequent dogmatism, presumption, and injustice. 1 
 Two things may be chiefly observed in Mr Wordsworth's 
 poetry ; namely, first, an attempt to awaken in the minds of 
 his countrymen, certain lumieres which they do not generally 
 possess, and certain convictions of moral laws existing silently 
 in the universe, and actually modifying events, in opposition 
 to more palpable causes, in a manner similar to what is said 
 to be taught by the philosophy of the Hindoos; and, secondly, 
 a thorough knowledge of all the beauties of the human 
 affections, and of their mutual harmonies and dependencies. 
 In both of these things he has scarcely had any precursors, 
 either among the poets or philosophers of his country. Some 
 traces of the convictions above alluded to, may be found in 
 Spenser, and some fainter traces in Milton ; whose turn of 
 genius was decisively ascertained by the circumstance of his 
 greater success in handling a subject, taken from the historical 
 parts of the Old Testament, than one from the Christian 
 Gospel. As for those who came after Milton, scarcely any- 
 thing above the level of actual existence appears in thf*ir 
 writings; and, upon the whole it would seem that the kind of 
 1 July 1818. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 393 
 
 sublimity with which, the English have always been chiefly 
 delighted, consists merely in an exhibition of the strength of 
 the human energies, which, in our most esteemed poems and 
 plays, are frequently not even elevated by self-devotion ; 
 witness Coriolanus, Richard the Third, Satan in Paradise Lost, 
 the Giaours and Corsairs, &o. of modern days. In these 
 pieces, elements of human nature, which are by no means of 
 the highest kind, are represented boiling and foaming with 
 great noise, and their turbidity is falsely taken for the highest 
 kind of nobleness and magnificence. 
 
 Mr Wordsworth, has not followed out the national spirit in 
 this, but has turned off into a totally different sphere of reflec- 
 tion, from whence no kind of strength appears great, because all 
 strength is limited, and cannot appear sublime, if contrasted 
 with strength a single degree above it. His contemplative 
 Platonism searches for some image of perfection to admire, 
 and perceives that the beauty of no limited being can consist 
 in strength, but in its conformity to the moral harmony of the 
 universe. Hence he can see no greatness in the movements 
 of the mind, if they tend to no higher object than self-aggran- 
 disement, which has ever its bounds that make it appear 
 little ; and, therefore, those objects, which appear to him en- 
 dowed with poetical beauty, are often such as appear homely 
 to the eyes of others who measure them by a different stand- 
 ard. The small admiration he entertains for the undisciplined 
 energies of human nature leads him to a somewhat contemptu- 
 ous estimation of active life, even when conduct is submitted 
 to the restraints of morality. He thinks little has been done 
 for the mind, unless those internal movements, also, which are 
 without result in action, have been tuned into beauty and 
 regularity, and a complete balance and subordination estab- 
 lished among the feelings by dint of long-continued medita- 
 tion. On this subject his ideas cannot fail to recall to remem- 
 brance those Indian doctrines, which taught that the first step 
 towards the perception of high moral truth, was the establish- 
 ment of a certain stillness and equability within the mind. 
 But Mr Wordsworth should have proposed these Braminical 
 notions elsewhere ; for they are totally at variance with the 
 stirring and tumultuous spirit of England. No philosophy or 
 religion, purely contemplative, has ever taken a strong hold of 
 the English mind ; and no set of English devotees, however 
 
394 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 much they professed to be dead to the world, have been able 
 to keep their hands out of temporal affairs. They have always 
 found something that called for their interference, and have 
 exchanged the pleasures of abstract contemplation for the 
 zeal of partisanship. Mr Wordsworth seems averse to active 
 life, chiefly because he is afraid of losing sight of impressions 
 which are only to be arrived at in the stillness of contempla- 
 tion ; and because he sees a risk, that the lower and coarser 
 feelings being stirred into activity, amidst the bustle, may 
 lose their subordination, and rise up so as to obscure the 
 bright ideal image of human nature, which he would wish to 
 retain always before him. Notions like these, however, must 
 always appear ridiculous to the majority in England, where 
 life is estimated as it produces external good or mis- 
 chief. But, although Mr Wordsworth's ideas have not met 
 with a very flattering reception, he seems no way blind to the. 
 manly integrity and substantial excellences of character that 
 adorn his country, and which have so deep a root there, that, 
 as Madame de Stael observes, they have never ceased to 
 flourish, even under the influence of speculative opinions 
 which would have withered them up elsewhere. Indeed, the 
 moral speculations of England have been very much a separate 
 pastime of the understanding, which began and ended there, 
 without ever drawing a single reflection from the depths of 
 human nature. A remarkable trait in the history of our philo- 
 sophy is, that Christianity has been as it were transposed by 
 Paley into a more familiar key, and adapted throughout to the 
 theory of utility ; so that David Hume himself might almost 
 play an accompaniment to it. And Paley has obtained a 
 great deal of credit for the performance of this good orifice to 
 his countrymen. 
 
 One of the causes which have prevented Mr Wordsworth's 
 writings from becoming popular, is, that he does not confine 
 himself, like most other poets, to the task of representing 
 poetical objects, or of moving our sympathies, but, also, pro- 
 poses and maintains a system of philosophical opinions. In 
 most of his poems, and in The Excursion especially, he scarcely 
 makes poetry for its own sake, but chiefly as a vehicle for his 
 doctrines, and the spirit of these doctrines is, unfortunately 
 for his success, at variance with the philosophy at present 
 most fashionable in this country. Although possessed of the 
 
WORDSWORTH. 395 
 
 requisite genius, he does not seem to care for composing 
 poems, adapted to the exclusive purpose of taking hold of the 
 feelings of the people ; and, among the philosophers, he is 
 rejected, because he holds a different language from them. 
 Besides, the habits of thought, in which he chiefly delights, 
 are not calculated to produce that strength and vividness of 
 diction which must ever constitute one of the chief attractions 
 of poetry. Imagination seems insufficient of itself to produce 
 diction always nervous and poetical, without the aid of human 
 passion and worldly observation. It is from these that the 
 greatest poignancy of words must spring. As for the saltness 
 of sagacity and wit, Mr Wordsworth looks down upon it as a 
 profane thing, and is well entitled to do so. If he were to 
 descend into so low a region as that of jesting, he would pro- 
 bably succeed no better than old David Deans did, when he 
 attempted a joke at his daughter's marriage dinner. But, as 
 Mr Wordsworth never jests, so his writings, perhaps, have 
 some claim to be exempted from the pleasantries of others ; 
 which, indeed, can scarcely be directed with much success or 
 effect against a person who faces ridicule so systematically, and 
 who has always counted upon it beforehand. 
 
 Mr Wordsworth has been thought to have more affinity to 
 Milton than any other poet. If this is the case, the affinity is 
 rather in manner than in substance. Milton has no idealism, 
 not even in the Paradise Regained, where there was most scope 
 for it. His poetry is, for the most part, quite literal ; and the 
 objects he describes have all a certain definiteness and indivi- 
 duality which separates them from the infinite. He has often 
 endeavoured to present images, where everything should have 
 been lost in sentiment. It is generally agreed, that among 
 the most successful parts of Paradise Lost, are those which 
 represent the character of the fallen angel; and yet these 
 sublime and tragical soliloquies are founded chiefly on personal 
 feeling ; which, although it may be made a source of consum- 
 mate pathos and dramatic beauty, is certainly not the region 
 of the human mind from whence the highest possible impres- 
 sions are to be drawn. Terrible acts of divine power, and, on 
 the other hand, force of will, and obdurate pride in the rebel 
 spirits, are the highest moral elements exhibited ; but if we 
 look to what composes some of the finest passages in Words- 
 worth, we shall be inclined (theoretically at least) to prefer 
 
396 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 tliem to the best of Milton, as conveying more exalted mean- 
 ing, whether the poetical merit of the vehicle be equal or not. 
 The sublimity drawn from terror, collision, tumult, or discord 
 of any kind, has always the disadvantage of being transient ; 
 and, therefore, cannot be considered as equal to those openings 
 into immutable brightness and harmony, which are some- 
 times to be met with in Wordsworth. One beauty cannot 
 fail to strike the reader of his poetry ; and that is, the perfect 
 homogeneousness of its spirit. A systematic correspondence 
 pervades the whole, so that the perusal of one piece frequently 
 leads the reader's own mind into a tract of thought, which is 
 afterwards found to be developed by the poet himself, in some 
 other performance. The defects of his poetry originate in the 
 same system of thought which produces its beauties. They 
 are not the result of casual whims, or imperfections of taste. 
 Certain great convictions of sentiment have so completely 
 pervaded his mind, as to produce a degree of consistency in 
 all its emanations, that we vainly look for in works founded 
 upon observation. It is remarkable that even the external 
 characteristics of his poetry are similar to what we are told an 
 analogous turn of internal thought anciently produced among 
 the Hindoos. " From the descriptive poems of the Indians," 
 says Schlegel, in his lectures on the history of literature, " we 
 must seek to gather what influence those opinions had on human 
 life and all its relations and feelings; what sort of poetry, and 
 what sort of feeling of the lovely and beautiful, were produced 
 among the Indians by the adoption of ideas to us so foreign 
 and unaccountable. The first things which strike us in the 
 Indian poetry are, that tender feeling of solitude, and the all- 
 animated world of plants, which is so engagingly represented 
 in the dramatic poetry of the Sokuntola ; and those charming 
 pictures of female truth and constancy, as well as of the beauty 
 and loveliness of infantine nature, which are still more conspi- 
 cuous in the older epic version of the same Indian legend. 
 Neither can we observe, without wonder and admiration, that 
 depth of moral feeling with which the poet styles conscience 
 ' the solitary seer in the heart, from whose eye nothing is hid,' 
 and which leads him to represent sin as something so incapable 
 of concealment, that every transgression is not only known to 
 conscience, and all the gods, but felt with a sympathetic 
 shudder by those elements themselves which we call inanimate, 
 
WORDSWORTH. 397 
 
 by the sun, the moon, the fire, the air, the heaven, the earth, 
 the flood, and the deep, as a crying outrage against nature, 
 and a derangement of the universe." 
 
 Whoever wishes to understand Mr Wordsworth's philoso- 
 phical opinions, will find them developed in their most perfect 
 form in The Excursion; but those who wish to judge merely 
 how far he possesses the powers commonly called poetical, will 
 do best to read his Lyrical Ballads, and smaller Poems, where 
 pathos, imagination, and knowledge of human nature, are often 
 presented by themselves, without any obtrusive or argumen- 
 tative reference to a system. At the same time, the reverential 
 awe, and the far-extended sympathy with which he looks upon 
 the whole system of existing things, and the silent moral 
 connections which he supposes to exist among them, are visible 
 throughout all his writings. He tunes his mind to nature 
 almost with a feeling of religious obligation ; and where others 
 behold only beautiful colours, making their appearance accord- 
 ing to optical laws, or feel pleasant physical sensations resulting 
 from a pure atmosphere, or from the odoriferous exhalations of 
 herbage, or enjoy the pleasure of measuring an extended pro- 
 spect as an amusement for the eye, this poet (whether justly 
 or not) thinks he traces something more in the spectacle than 
 the mere reflection of his own feelings, painted upon external 
 objects, by means of the association of ideas; or, at least, 
 seems to consider what we then behold as the instantaneous 
 creation of the mind. 
 
 " Oh then what soul was his, when on the tops 
 
 Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun 
 
 Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He looked— 
 
 Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
 
 And ocean's liquid mass beneath him lay 
 
 In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, 
 
 And in their silent faces did he read 
 
 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
 
 Nor any voice of joy. His spirit drank 
 
 The spectacle ; sensation, soul, and form, 
 
 All melted into him ; they swallowed up 
 
 His animal being. — 
 
 " All things there 
 
 Breathed immortality ; revolving- life 
 
 And greatness still revolving ; infinite ; 
 
 There littleness was not ; the least of things 
 
 Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 
 
 Her prospects, nor did he believe ; he saw." 
 
398 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 The relation which the consideration of moral pain or defor- 
 mity bears to this far- extended sympathy with the universe, 
 is alluded to in another passage of The Excursion. 
 
 " My friend, enough to sorrow you have given ; 
 
 The purposes of wisdom ask no more ; 
 
 Be wise and cheerful ; and no longer read 
 
 The forms of things with an unworthy eye. 
 
 She 1 sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is there. 
 
 I well remember that those very plumes, 
 
 Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, 
 
 By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er, 
 
 As once I passed, did to my heart convey 
 
 So still an image of tranquillity, 
 
 So calm and still, and looked so beautiful, 
 
 Amid the uneasy thoughts that filled my mind, 
 
 That what we feel of sorrow and despair, 
 
 From ruin and from change, and all the grief 
 
 The passing shows of being leave behind, 
 
 Appeared an idle dream, that could not live 
 
 Where meditation was." 
 Notions like those of Mr Wordsworth are evidently suited 
 only to a life purely contemplative ; but that universality of 
 spirit, which becomes true philosophy, should forbid, in persons 
 of different habits, any blind or sudden condemnation of them. 
 No individual can say what are all the internal suggestions of 
 the human faculties, unless he has varied his mode of existence 
 sufficiently to afford fit opportunities for their development. — 
 The facts of consciousness are admitted to be as much facts 
 as those of the senses ; but, at the same time, we cannot get 
 individuals to agree what they are, and, while things remain 
 in this state of uncertainty, the first duty is certainly that of 
 liberality of mind. 
 
 Wordsworth's habit of dwelling as much upon the rest of 
 the universe as upon man, has given his poetry an air of greater 
 joyfulness and sunshine than it could have possessed if human 
 life had been his more constant theme. He turns with ever 
 new delight to objects which exhibit none of the harshness 
 and discrepancy of the human world. 
 
 " The blackbird on the summer trees, 
 The lark upon the hill, 
 Let loose their carols when they please, 
 Are quiet when they will. 
 
 1 One who had died of a broken heart. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 399 
 
 With nature do they never wage 
 
 A foolish strife ; they see 
 A happy youth, and their old age 
 
 Is beautiful and free." 
 " Down to the vale this water steers, 
 
 How merrily it goes, 
 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, 
 
 And flow as now it flows." 
 
 When lie does turn his attention upon life, we find always 
 the most beautiful echoes of Christian tenderness and sorrow. 
 In an elegy, suggested by a picture representing a storm, he 
 alludes to the bitter recollection of a domestic loss which had 
 befallen him, and is pleased to see the image of pain reflected 
 in external nature. 
 
 " Oh 'tis a passionate work ! yet wise and well ; 
 
 Well chosen is the spirit that is here ; 
 That hulk that labours in the deadly swell, 
 
 This rueful sky, the pageantry of fear. 
 And this huge castle, standing here sublime, 
 
 I love to see the look with which it braves, 
 Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, 
 
 The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. 
 Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, 
 
 Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind ; 
 Such happiness, wherever it is known, 
 
 Is to be pitied : for 'tis surely blind. 
 But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, 
 
 And frequent sights of what is to be born, 
 Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. — 
 
 Not without hope we suffer and we mourn." 
 
 Surely nothing can be finer than this. It is impressed with 
 the true character of that kind of social sentiment, which is 
 drawn from a source not liable to fail. In his sonnets, we 
 see what form citizenship is made to assume, when growing 
 up in contiguity with the other habits of mind cultivated by 
 Wordsworth. How these compositions, so pregnant with 
 feeling and reflection, upon the most interesting topics, should 
 not have been more generally known, is a problem difficult to 
 be solved. The following is one of them, containing reflec- 
 tions on the moral effects of slavery. 
 
 " There is a bondage which is worse to bear 
 Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall, 
 Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall: 
 
400 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 'Tis his who walks about in the open air, 
 One of a Nation who, henceforth must wear 
 Their fetters in their Souls. For who could be, 
 Who, even the best, in such condition, free 
 From self-reproach, reproach which he must share 
 With Human Nature ? Never be it ours 
 To see the Sun how brightly it will shine, 
 And know that noble Feelings, manly Powers, 
 Instead of gathering strength must droop and pine, 
 And Earth with all her pleasant fruits and flowers 
 Fade, and participate in Man's decline." 
 
 Wordsworth is a man of high intellect and profound sen- 
 sibility, meditating in solitude on the phenomena of human 
 nature. He sometimes seems to our imagination like a man con- 
 templating from the shore the terrors of the sea, not surely with 
 apathy, but with a solemn and almost unimpassioned sense of 
 the awful mysteries of Providence. This seeming self-abstrac- 
 tion from the turmoil of life gives to his highest poetry a still 
 and religious character that is truly sublime — though, at the 
 same time, it often leads to a sort of mysticism, and carries 
 the poet out of those sympathies which are engendered in 
 human hearts by a sense of our common imperfections. Per- 
 haps it would not be wrong to say, that his creed is some- 
 times too austere, and that it deals, almost unmercifully, with 
 misguided sensibilities and perverted passions. Such, at 
 least, is a feeling that occasionally steals upon us from the 
 loftiest passages of The Excursion, in which the poet, de- 
 sirous of soaring to heaven, forgets that he is a frail child of 
 earth, and would in vain free his human nature from those 
 essential passions, which, in the pride of intellect, he seems 
 unduly to despise ! i 
 
 But the sentiment which we have now very imperfectly 
 expressed, refers almost entirely to the higher morals of The 
 Excursion, and has little or no respect to that poetry of 
 Wordsworth in which he has painted the character and life of 
 certain classes of the English People. True, that he stands 
 to a certain degree aloof from the subjects of his description, 
 but he ever looks on them all with tenderness and benignity. 
 Their cares and anxieties are indeed not his own, and there- 
 fore, in painting them, he does not, like Burns, identify him- 
 self with the creatures of his poetry. But, at the same time, 
 he graciously and humanely descends into the lowliest walks 
 
WORDSWORTH. 401 
 
 of life — and knowing that humanity is sacred, he views its 
 spirit with reverence. Though far above the beings whose 
 nature he delineates, he yet conies down in his wisdom to 
 their humble level, and strives to cherish that spirit 
 
 " Which gives to all the same intent, 
 When life is pure and innocent." 
 
 The natural disposition of his mind inclines him to dwell 
 rather on the mild, gentle, and benignant affections, than on 
 the more agitating passions. Indeed, in almost all cases, the 
 passions of his agents subside into affections — and a feeling 
 of tranquillity and repose is breathed from his saddest pictures 
 of human sorrow. It seems to be part of his creed, that 
 neither vice nor misery should be allowed, in the representa- 
 tions of the poet, to stand prominently and permanently for- 
 ward, and that poetry should give a true but a beautiful 
 reflection of life. Certain it is, that of all the poets of this 
 age, or perhaps any age, Wordsworth holds the most cheering 
 and consolatory faith — and that we at all times rise from his 
 poetry, not only with an abatement of those fears and per- 
 plexities which the dark aspect of the world often flings over 
 our hearts, but almost with a scorn of the impotence of grief, 
 and certainly with a confiding trust in the perfect goodness of 
 the Deity. We would appeal, for the truth of these remarks, 
 to all who have studied the Two Books of The Excursion 
 entitled, " The Churchyard among the Mountains." There, 
 in narrating the history of the humble dead, Wordsworth does 
 not fear to speak of their frailties, their errors, and their woes. 
 It is indeed beautifully characteristic of the benignant wisdom 
 of the man, that when he undertakes the task of laying open 
 the hearts of his fellow mortals, he prefers the dead to the 
 living, because he is willing that erring humanity should 
 enjoy the privilege of the grave, and that his own soul should 
 be filled with that charity which is breathed from the silence 
 of the house of God. It is needless to say with what profound 
 pathos the poet speaks of life thus surrounded with the images 
 of death — how more beautiful beauty rises from the grave — 
 how more quietly innocence seems there to slumber — and how 
 awful is the rest of guilt. 
 
 For our own parts, we believe that Wordsworth's genius 
 has had a greater influence on the spirit of poetry in Britain, 
 
 vol. v. 2 c 
 
402 .ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 than was ever before exercised by any individual mind. He 
 was the first man who impregnated all his descriptions of 
 external nature with sentiment or passion. In this he has 
 been followed — often successfully — by other true poets. He 
 was the first man that vindicated the native dignity of human 
 nature, by showing that all her elementary feelings were 
 capable of poetry — and in that too he has been followed by 
 other true Poets, although here he stands, and probably ever 
 will stand, unapproached. He was the first man that stripped 
 thought and passion of all vain or foolish disguises, and 
 showed them in their just proportions and unencumbered 
 power. He was the first man who in poetry knew the real 
 province of language, and suffered it not to veil the meanings 
 of the spirit. In all these things, — and in many more, — 
 Wordsworth is indisputably the most Original Poet of the 
 Age ; and it is impossible, in the very nature of things, that he 
 ever can be eclipsed. From his golden urn other orbs may 
 draw light ; but still it will be said of him — 
 " Then shone the firmament 
 
 With living" sapphires. Hesperus, who led 
 
 The Starry Host, rode brightest." 
 Aecordingly, what living poet is not indebted to Words- 
 worth ? No two minds can be imagined, for example, more 
 unlike each other, than his and Sir Walter Scott's ; and yet 
 many of the most beautiful passages of the Mighty Minstrel, 
 wherein he speaks not of knights, squires, and steeds, but of 
 himself perhaps, or of other men, living or dying in a peaceful 
 world, are manifestly coloured and inspirited by the light and 
 soul of the Genius of the Lakes. And not a few of the most 
 touching and pathetic conceptions in his glorious Novels we 
 owe to the same source. A few beautiful Wordsworthian 
 verses, quoted at the heads of chapters, show to the skilful 
 eye how the genius of one man may kindle that of another, 
 though cast by prodigal Nature in very different moulds, and 
 animated in general by a very different spirit. The two last 
 cantos of Childe Harold, although sufficiently original to place 
 Lord Byron in the first rank of genius, are in many places 
 absolutely written, it may be said, by Wordsworth. He it was 
 that taught Byron how to look on a mountain, and how to 
 listen to a cataract or the sea. Here, with slight alteration, we 
 may venture to use the language of Milton : — 
 
WORDSWORTH. 403 
 " To nobler sights 
 
 Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed, 
 Which that false fruit, that promised clearer light, 
 Had bred ; then purged with euphrasy and rue 
 The visual nerve, for he had much to see ; 
 And from the well of life three drops instill'd— 
 So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, 
 Even to the inmost seat of mental light ! " 
 
 These are the other two great Poets of the Trio ; but every 
 other living poet of any eminence, without one single excep- 
 tion, owes much of his power or inspiration to Wordsworth. 
 Coleridge — Southey — even Campbell — lately Crabbe — Bowles, 
 who by nature has much of Wordsworth's pure sentiment — nay 
 Moore, with all his false feeling and meretricious ornament — 
 Eogers, with his puny elegance — Wilson — Hunt — Milman — 
 Montgomery — &o. &c. &c. &c. &c, all are indebted to Words- 
 worth, to a prodigious extent, indeed far more than they can 
 ever repay. But such debts are honourable to them — at least 
 as long as they are gratefully acknowledged and proclaimed ; 
 and we mention them now not to their disparagement, but 
 simply as a fact regarding the poetical character of the age. 
 
 The objects which Mr Wordsworth had in view in the 
 composition of his Ecclesiastical Sketches, will best appear in 
 his own words : 
 
 During the month of December 1820, I accompanied a much-loved and 
 honoured friend in a walk through different parts of his estate, with a view 
 to fix upon the site of a new church which he intended to erect. It was 
 one of the most beautiful mornings of a mild season,— our feelings were in 
 harmony with the cherishing influences of the scene ; and, such being our 
 purpose, we were naturally led to look back upon past events with wonder 
 and gratitude, and on the future with hope. Not long afterwards, some of 
 the Sonnets which will be found towards the close of this series, were pro- 
 duced as a private memorial of that morning's occupation. 
 
 The Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that 
 time, kept my thoughts in the same course ; and it struck me that certain 
 points in the Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously 
 be presented to view in verse. Accordingly, I took up the subject, and 
 what I now offer to the reader was the result. 
 
 These fine Sketches are divided into three parts : — the first 
 embraces many interesting topics, from the introduction of 
 Christianity into Britain to the consummation of the Papal 
 dominion ; the second, from the close of the troubles in the 
 reign of Charles the First ; and the third, from the Kestoration 
 
404 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 to the present times. Mr Wordsworth, with a fine philosophic 
 eye, fixes on those incidents, events, actions, and characters, 
 which w T ere most influential for good or evil on the religious 
 state of England, down through those long and various ages. 
 And in the form of Sonnets, he gives expression to his thoughts 
 or feelings, so that there is hardly one subject of magnitude 
 in the ecclesiastical history of England on which we do not 
 find a thought that breathes or a word that burns. It is 
 obvious that no one regular connected poem could have been 
 written on so vast a subject. But although each Sonnet, 
 according to the law of that kind of composition, is in itself a 
 whole, yet frequently two or three of the Series are beautifully 
 connected and blended together, so as to read like connected 
 stanzas of one poem. And indeed when the whole series — all 
 its three parts — is perused, the effect is magnificent, and great 
 events, and deeds, and minds, seem to have been passing pro- 
 cessionally before us over the floor of an enchanted stage. 
 Mr Wordsworth's mind is familiar with all these as with 
 matters of to-day, and therefore he speaks of them all as of 
 things known and felt by every man of liberal education. He 
 flings a beam of light on some transaction dark in antiquity, 
 and it rises up for a moment before us — he raises the coffin- 
 lid in some old vault, and we behold the still face of one 
 formerly great or wise on earth — he rebuilds, as with a magic 
 wand, the holy edifice that for centuries has lain in ruins — 
 monks and nuns walk once more in the open sunlight, and all 
 the fading or faded pageantries of faith reappear and vanish 
 in melancholy and sublime mutation. 
 
 The sentiments and feelings that embalm all these fine 
 Compositions, are peculiarly important at the present day. It 
 is thus that Christianity, and great Establishments for the 
 preservation of its doctrines pure and unsullied, ought to be 
 thought of in the meditative mind of genius. In those beau- 
 tiful sketches we see the power of religion — true or false — 
 working to effect the elevation or the overthrow of the human 
 soul. We see, in short but impressive glimpses, the history 
 of our forefathers remembering or forgetting God, and how 
 their empire was great on earth, as their spirit aspired to 
 heaven. The ecclesiastical picture reveals political truth; 
 and never was the alliance between church and state so philo- 
 sophically illustrated as by this prevailing poet. Contrast 
 
WORDSWORTH. 405 
 
 those benign, solemn, and pions breathings of one of the 
 noblest spirits of the age, with the heartless, arrogant, and 
 blasphemous ravings of those disturbers of the clear waters of 
 the well of life, whose cause, when they were suffering under 
 the just infliction of the law misnamed persecution, too many 
 who might have known better have been found to espouse ; 
 and with what a divine lustre shines forth the countenance 
 and the figure of Faith ! Here we see the highest intellect 
 bowing down in reverence and adoration before the spirit of 
 Christianity — the most splendid imagination overpowered by 
 its sanctities, whether sleeping silently in the dark depths of 
 bosoms agitated by mortal hope and fear, or embodied, to 
 outward eyes, in beautiful or magnificent rites. Here we see 
 that genius can conceive no image so august, no emotion so 
 affecting, as those that rise up at the feet of the altar. And 
 even the enthusiast of nature, who has followed Wordsworth 
 through his woods and valleys — across his lakes and meres, 
 and over his own cliffs and mountains, " haunted as by a pas- 
 sion," by images of beauty, must have felt, as he finished the 
 perusal of these Ecclesiastical Sketches, that a profounder 
 pathos and sublimer interest lie among the ruined walls of old 
 religious houses, and round the yet undecaying temples of the 
 living God, than can be ever found in the solitude of the great 
 hills ; for the shadows that fall there and the echoes that are 
 heard, are all spiritual ; the creature is brought nearer to the 
 Creator, and the communion is felt to be more divine. 
 
 But, beautiful and majestic as these Ecclesiastical Sketches 
 must be felt to be by all capable of feeling poetry, their full 
 power can be known only by those wdio are familiar with Mr 
 Wordsworth's Sonnets dedicated to liberty. In these he 
 unfolds the true principles of national greatness in the king- 
 doms of Christendom. He shows how thrones are supported, 
 and by what fatalities they are laid prostrate. His mind is 
 not darkened by the veil of the present; but it penetrates, 
 through gloom or glitter, into the vital spirit of human power ; 
 and if there be a speck of decay or disease there, his eye 
 discerns it, and he gives warning of dissolution. He shows 
 how virtue, religion, independence, and freedom, are the 
 ministers of morality, and that the science of politics is simple 
 to the wise and good. He sees final abasement in the tem- 
 porary triumphs of the wicked, and when all is wrapt in mist 
 
4CG ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 and sleet, and howling darkness, he beholds the reappearing 
 of the mountain-tops. Nor does he deal, in that splendid 
 series of sonnets, with mere stately generalities — but he 
 grasps the truth as it has been shown on the stage of real life, 
 either in joyful events, or terrible catastrophes, in the sun- 
 shine of smiles or in showers of blood. The poet of the peace- 
 ful vale has not feared to walk among moral earthquakes ; 
 revolution and anarchy have been food for his meditations, 
 and in his boldest language he has called " Carnage the 
 Daughter of the Lord." We never read these compositions 
 without thinking of these fine verses of Cowper, — 
 
 " A terrible sagacity informs 
 The poet's heart ; he looks to distant storms, 
 He hears the thunder ere the tempest roar, 
 The billow ere it breaks upon the shore." 
 
 These Sonnets of Wordsworth have been compared with 
 those of Milton ; and Mr Jeffrey has said, that Milton's are 
 as far superior to them as they themselves are superior to 
 all other English Sonnets. The critic could have said this 
 only with the vain hope of mortifying the poet — for he can- 
 not think so. But it is easy to overshadow living merit by 
 some mighty name from the dead. — Milton's sonnets furnished 
 a model to Wordsworth ; but he has far surpassed his model 
 both in thought and expression. A few of Milton's sonnets 
 are exceedingly fine ; but even these owe much of their power 
 over our minds to ideas and feelings associated with his per- 
 sonal character and high and unhappy destiny. In future 
 times, Wordsworth's will be read with somewhat similar 
 emotions ; for although his own existence has been tranquil, 
 aloof from all agitating public affairs, and unconnected with 
 the goings-on of governments, yet his spirit has been often 
 among them as vividly and energetically as Milton's own ; 
 and the whole heart and soul of his poetry has been poured 
 over human life, to ameliorate and dignify it, to expose error 
 and delusion stript of all their pretences, and to show the 
 foundations of all true national greatness. Independently of 
 all such personal associations, Wordsworth's sonnets, we re- 
 peat it, are infinitely superior to Milton's. They embrace a 
 wide and various range — and of themselves constitute a great 
 Work. Considered as to composition merely, they are per- 
 
WORDSWORTH. 407 
 
 feet ; — the music flows on like a stream, or rolls like a river, 
 or expands like the sea, according as the thought is beautiful, 
 or majestic, or sublime ; and often as the soul listens to the 
 harmony, swelling and deepening to a close, it is as if 
 
 " Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, 
 The pealing anthem swell'd the note of praise." 
 
 The Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820, is 
 perhaps, on the whole, a still more delightful volume than 
 The Ecclesiastical Sketches. It is certainly more likely to 
 be popular, for it deals in more familiar matter of human 
 interest. 
 
 " In pure religion, breathing household laws." 
 
 In a foreign land even the dullest soul is inspired ; the in- 
 ternal senses are enlightened ; and ordinary intellects under- 
 stand more important truths. The inner man is aroused from 
 his torpor, and exults in new-born energy. Proofs of this are 
 visible in the journals of the least gifted travellers ; and there 
 are few books of the kind in which gleams of tenderness or 
 fancy do not occasionally play over the surface of the leaden 
 or brazen page. But when a true and great poet leaves his 
 fatherland, and carries his spirit into other realms, he alights 
 there, as it were like an untired eagle, and with a keen bright 
 eye sees far and wide through the atmosphere. One of our 
 greatest poets has been one of our greatest travellers, perhaps 
 too much so, for Byron has often forgotten, and often mis* 
 remembered, his native country. But Wordsworth takes with 
 him his household gods, his Lares and Penates, into other 
 climes ; and he never long loses from his vision the mountains, 
 and the temples, and the cottages of his own beloved England. 
 He is no discontented politician, scanning the institutions 
 of his own great and free country with a distorted and jaun- 
 diced eye, and seeking to delude himself and others into the 
 belief that "we who are sprung of the earth's first blood," 
 and have " titles manifold," need beg, borrow, or steal any- 
 thing from the nations of the Continent. The soil of his 
 mind is English — and every tree of the forest, and every 
 flower of the field, can grow there, beautiful in bloom, or mag- 
 nificent in umbrage. Wordsworth never compromises the 
 dignity of his own character, or of that of his country, in the 
 delight breathed upon him by the scenic or social charms of a 
 
408 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. 
 
 foreign land. He holds fast Lis integrity, as Milton did of 
 yore on Lis travels — and returns to Lis own Louse, and garden, 
 and lake, tLe same high- minded and uncorrupted Englishman, 
 " with- his stainless banner white," as he left his native shores ; 
 having derived more new wisdom from the recollections of the 
 past, of the greatness, and goodness, and glory of his own 
 dead or living compatriots, than he did from the insight which, 
 when abroad, he had given to him into the character and con- 
 stitution of modern empires, and all their fluctuating popula- 
 tion. " Why weeps the muse for England," is a thought that 
 seems to arise in his mind whenever he indulges in a melan- 
 choly or foreboding dream, of the possibility of her decline or 
 fall. His fears are but the passing shadows — his hopes are 
 the steady light ; and when the thick mist of a poet's appre- 
 hensions dissolves, the creations of his soul appear more 
 pure, fair, and kindling, like a long wide vale from which the 
 sun and breeze have cleared off the shrouding showers in a 
 moment, or like a great metropolitan city, from whose struc- 
 tures the smoke has been driven by a strong healthful blast 
 from the sea. 
 
 END OF VOL. V. 
 
 PKI.VTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SON'S, EDINBURGH. 
 

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