MISCELLANIES; OR, LITERARY RECREATIONS.
By I. D'ISRAELI.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES. 1796.
Entered at Stationers' Hall.
TO HUGH DOWNMAN, M.D. of EXETER, THIS VOLUME of MISCELLANIES IS INSCRIBED AS A MEMORIAL OF THE AUTHOR'S ESTEEM FOR HIS VIRTUES AND HIS TALENTS.
EXETER,
22
d February,
1796.
PREFACE.
OF literary performances, a work like the present, might be permitted to appear, without the accustomed ornament of a Preface; for what are MISCELLANIES, but a kind of Prefaces? They are rather introductions to subjects, than subjects themselves; and like Prefaces, are frequently more pleasing, than the completer works.
In these pages I have arranged some of the materials of my observation, and have blown into a little flame, some sparks of learning. To adorn criticism with imagery, and to establish observation by anecdote, has, if I err not, a claim on the public indulgence; for it cannot be said that we have many books of this race. Of all Europe, we have excelled in the miscellaneous mode of writing; but our's has been generally addressed to the imagination, and not much to literary curiosity. A manner of composition very superior to that which this volume exhibits; since the knowledge which regulates the passions of the heart, is more valuable than that which furnishes the ideas of the head; for virtue is permanent, but opinion is unstable. Writings which awaken our sensibility by fiction, must please more generally than books which only instruct our judgment by truths; for I have observed, that most are more wearied by idleness, than disturbed by ignorance.
In this book are sentiments which, ancient or new, judicious or erroneous, may probably encounter controverters. The apparent errors of an author, sometimes proceed from the ambiguity, or imperfect expression of his conceptions; but sometimes from the prejudices and inabilities of his critics. Of literary opinions I shall not be unreasonably tenacious; for whatever some authors may imagine, the concerns of mere literature, are not very material in the system of human life. They are objects, however, more innocent to discuss, than topics more prevalent. The opposite opinions of periodical critics have afforded me some amusement, some instruction, and some indignation, and in want of a subject for this Preface, that of their character may not be uninteresting to the lover of literature.
When we abound with periodical critics, we must necessarily abound with erroneous criticism. Some have their old prejudices, some their new follies, and some their incurable imbecillity; for impotence is radical. Rarely we find a critic whose extensive powers are familiar with what has been done, and what is doing; whose sagacity not only discovers the real abilities of an author, but, with a prescient discernment, can judge to what his future powers may be competent; and by his vigour of conception, and delicacy of taste, exhibit beauties kindred to the fine original he reviews.
Literary journals conducted by an intelligent editor, abound with the pleasures and the utilities of letters; but certainly with such an editor every Review is not provided. The personal irritation of men of genius has depreciated these records of literature; and such errors have been strangely propagated, with the additional extravagancies of persons, not conversant with literary affairs. Some yet believe a Review to be composed by a junto, who, in black coats, and with grave faces, assemble around
"a board of green cloth."
The interior of a Review has nothing of it's apparent complexity; the entire machine is revolved by a solitary hand, sometimes with experienced dexterity, and sometimes with casual imbecillity.
It is certain, that the pleasure of running over fifty books in an hour, is a voluptuous indulgence for every literary idler; and authors feel a great curiosity in taking in at a glance, what is performing by their contemporaries. To students remote from the metropolis, it is only by the intermediate aid of these periodical pages, that they can form an acquaintance with the public taste. A review is a literary arena, where young writers learn to wrestle with their rivals.
When such is the interest and the sagacity of a conductor, that some of the literary characters of the age are invited to take a share in these works, they receive an additional importance, and form a valuable accession to the treasuries of literature. At a future day they are consulted to detect the vulnerable parts of our literary heroes; to obtain accounts of obscure publications often necessary in the history of letters; and to reflect on the manner in which the literary world received certain works, distinguished at their first appearance, by the novelties of their system.
It is observable, that men, whose decisions are regarded on the works of the first writers, are themselves unknown, and voluntarily preclude all reputation by their studied secresy. By some no additional reputation is wanted. Two interests stimulate the writers of reviews; the pleasure of examining new publicacations; or the petty stipend of literary pay, too often necessary for some men of genius. I am of opinion, that this obscurity is favourable to their powers. To whatever is known more by it's effects, than by it's cause, the imagination is friendly. If great names appeared to the articles of a Review, the public and the author would abrogate their decisions; we should sometimes protect the meanest, that we might have the pleasure of humbling the greatest. It is not, therefore, with the deities of literature, as with those of religion; to attract and fix the vulgar, it was necessary to inflame them with visible Gods; but here their invisibility is their omnipotence.
On the necessity of anonymous criticism, a more serious observation occurs. If this secresy were unregarded, it would be often fatal to the critic. Motley, indeed, is that vast collection of men, who enlist under the banners of literature, and our Republic of Letters is disgraced with numerous Sans-culottes. While the decisions of criticism are received with resignation, by the modest, the desperate would accompany them with an "Appendix" on the weak frame of a Reviewer. I knew a wild Highlander, just escaped from the Orkneys, who threatened extermination to his Reviewers, and watched through the cold moonshine of December, at the door of his critic, who was then fortunately retained in his apartment by the gout; while another, with less inhumanity, commenced a suit at law, for having been taxed with plagiarisms and scotticisms.
To young writers, and to general readers, who are always young in literature, a Reviewer may offer an important instruction, when at the appearance of a work of magnitude, he commences his article with condensing the chief rules of composition, relating to the work he examines, and with characters of the preceding writers. Of this happy mode of Reviewing, many beautiful specimens are exhibited in the Monthly Review. As models, I recollect two recent instances; the Reviews of Murphy's Tacitus, and Beresford's Virgil.
The defects of periodical criticism are more numerous, than can be reasonably allowed, to men of learning and candour; it is evident, indeed, that our critics have sometimes neither learning nor candour. A friend, an adversary, or the author himself, are all bad critics. It is a cruel process of critical alchemy, when a Reviewer plays his game on the principles of what is technically termed at whist, a see-saw. Two suits are made to answer each other; and praise and censure are so skilfully contrasted, that one would defeat the other, did not the censure of an author ever cause a stronger sensation than all his praise. Thus to scatter eulogiums, is like the ancient priest, who wreathed with flowers and gilded, the horns of the victim he conducted to bleed on the altar. Sometimes we are informed that an author is lively and ingenious, but not profound and learned. Such insidious detractions are certain of injuring his literary character. It is necessary to tell the public, what an author
is;
endless were it to enumerate what he
is not;
it is describing a non-entity. Such literary contrasts are unjust; because they imply deficiencies, which are not deficiencies; they are only qualities incompatible with the dispositions of the author. Sometimes a Reviewer, perceiving his inability to decide on a work, forms an article in the manner of an enigma, with a dark and intricate ingenuity; he decides on nothing, but appears very decisive; nor is that criticism more useful, which presents to a reader an idea of a work, in the express terms employed by an author in his Preface; it is well known, than an author ever indulges his passion for the
"beau ideal,"
in his explanation of his work. Every thing there is perfect in theory; and the critic who will accept the professions of authors, will find innumerable perfect works. Lavishly to censure the peculiarities of a writer, is a defect in criticism; to delineate his manner, is a duty. Point and antithesis, sparkling imagery, and varieties of diction, are not adapted to every taste; but to a critic who should reprobate them, I would say, does any man of taste censure Voltaire and Johnson? Would you despoil an author of his manner? You would then make Voltaire, not Voltaire, and Johnson, not Johnson. Egregious critic! to make him please the world, you would have him resemble
yourself!
—The world and you have not agreed on the same model. Some critics incapable of forming opinions of their own, seise any prevalent one; their heads are continually changing principles, like those towns in Flanders, which are as often under the government of the Republicans, as the Imperialists. In echoing the public voice there is no individual merit. Does such a criticism deserve publication? No! it is a criticism
already published.
An intelligent Reviewer anticipates the public opinion.
To form a Review into an instrument of torture, sportively to lacerate the sensibilities of men of genius, was the artifice of the Frerons, and the Des Fontaines; when their Journals lay on the shelf, they augmented their malignancy in the ensuing month, and when the writers were fairly lodged in the Bastile, the sale was considerable. Kenrick wrote with a poisoned and remorseless pen. This violation of the morality of criticism, extinguishes the genius of the modest student. Such critics resemble the Remora, that petty fish, which the ancients imagined could impede a ship under full sail.
A Review, conducted with skill, should present the literary physiognomy of the century. In an age of refinement, the public taste is in a state of vacillation; and no mean art, or limited knowledge, can catch, with faithful resemblance,
"the Cynthia of the minute."
We abound with literary fashions, and have no other mode of recording and perpetuating our prevalent tastes, but in these useful archives of literature. It is necessary that the state of English literature, of former, as well as of the present times, be familiar to a Reviewer, for incidental observations, and appropriate anecdotes, variegate with flowers the thorns of criticism, and, not merely delightful, exhibit an intelligent and connective series. Above all, a periodical critic should divest himself of the rancour of faction; and that Reviewer, is as devoid of taste, as of the morals of a critic, who, in the retired groves of Academus, would place a pillory, or erect a gallows.
I proposed, at the close of this Preface, having been lately honoured by certain calumnies, to repel such insolent accusations; but I have considered, that this might give them, and myself, an importance to which neither is entitled. It is one of the inconveniencies attached to literature, that, in contending times like the present, every ingenuous writer must inevitably offend the two vast divisions, in which we may now class the European public. As every thing in this world revolves in a circle, and our follies, and our errors, are dull repetitions of former follies, and former errors; this, also, was a complaint of that amiable literary character, Erasmus, who, in his stormy age of revolutions, tells us, that works of mere literature, were always confounded by the one party, as aids to Luther, or by the other, as servilities to the Court of Rome. A writer on literary topics, is now placed on a sharp precipice between politics and religion; and the public reward of all his anxieties, and all his toils, consists in the mutual denounciations of two dishonest factions. Literary investigation is allied neither to politics nor religion; it is a science consecrated to the few; abstracted from all the factions on earth; and independent of popular discontents, and popular delusions. Men of letters, of all professions, are alone privileged to repeat the verses of a philosophic poet,
—Nous y sommes
CONTEMPORAINS de tous les hommes,
Et CITOYENS de tous les lieux.
Yet let it not be considered, that I can regard, with apathy, the vast interests, agitated with such levity, among the people, who are only formed to
obey
the laws, but not to
make
them. On this subject I shall shew in what manner one of the wisest ancients thought. When Plato was consulted, respecting the form of government to be chosen for the Syracusans (whether to revive the tyranny, or establish a popular government) his reply was more admirably sagacious, and more enlightened by truth, than those idle, yet pernicious and deluding theories, which some of our modern quartos exhibit. He at least committed no systematical plagiarisms, on Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Helvetius. We cannot too often meditate on this Extract from his Letter.
"A State will never be happy, either under a confirmed tyranny, or an excessive liberty. We must yield obedience to KINGS, who are themselves subjects to the laws; extreme liberty, and extreme servitude, are equally perilous, and nearly produce the same effects. The people must obey God; the LAW is the god of the wise, and LICENTIOUSNESS the god of fools."
And we must now add, the sanguinary god of assassinators and proscribers.
De la Motte.
CONTENTS.
OF MISCELLANIES
PAGE
1
ON PROFESSORS OF ART 24
ON STYLE 37
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS ARE FALSE REPRESENTATIONS OF NATURE 59
ON PREFACES 77
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON DIARIES, SELF-BIOGRAPHY, AND SELF-CHARACTERS 95
ON THE CHARACTER OF DENNIS THE CRITIC 111
ON ERUDITION AND PHILOSOPHY 129
ON POETICAL OPUSCULA 148
ON "THE ENLIGHTENED PUBLIC," AND "THE AGE OF REASON" 159
OF LICENSERS OF THE PRESS 174
ON READING 189
ON POETICAL EXPRESSION 208
ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT
PAGE
238
ON LITERARY GENIUS 248
ON LITERARY INDUSTRY 276
ON THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON THE HUMAN MIND 288
ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE 310
THE INFLUENCE OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER IN POLITICS AND RELIGION 339
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN LOVE AND RELIGION 363
ON FRENCH AND ENGLISH POETRY, AND ON SOME FRENCH WORDS 386
ADDENDA 413
MISCELLANIES.
OF MISCELLANIES.
HAD I the genius, I would delineate the character of a Miscellanist; of whom I have formed an idea, perfect, though by some it may be deemed erroneous. When Cicero described the character of an accomplished orator, he formed it from a perfect imagination of oratory, which, like the fine ideal of Raphael, existed no where but in his own admirable conceptions. Every writer of genius, when he has pourtrayed the requisites for an artist, in his favourite art, in the same manner raises and adorns them, by excellencies, of which the necessity can be felt by few, and the powers attained by none. Critics, of ordinary sagacity, have therefore often disturbed the vision, by censuring it's exquisiteness and decreeing it's impossibility. To such, we may observe, that though we can rarely traverse an expansive horizon, who, endowed with a vigorous vision, delights not to expatiate along it's extremities? and while a sensation of delight aggrandises the soul of such a spectator, he will turn contemptuously from the pitiful observation of him, who with meaner optics, gravely admonishes, of impassable forests, and unnavigable rivers. Perfection though unattainable, must still be the frequent object of our contemplation; because every kind of excellence is a portion of perfection, and no portion can be accurately appreciated, if we are incapable of forming some idea of the whole.
I give some observations on Miscellanies, which, like their subject, may perhaps require an apology for their unconnected state. The Miscellanists satirise the Pedants; and the Pedants abuse the Miscellanists; but little has hitherto been gained by this inglorious contest; since Pedants will always be read by Pedants, and the Miscellanists by the tasteful, the volatile, and the amiable.
Literary essays are classed under philological studies; but philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians, and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has been lately introduced into literature, and which by it's graces and investigation, can augment the beauties of original genius, by beauties of it's own.
It has been observed that philological pursuits inflate the mind with a great swell of vanity, and have carried some men of learning to a curious and ridiculous extravagance. Perhaps this literary orgasm may arise from two causes. Philologists are apt to form too exalted an opinion of the nature of their studies, while they often make their peculiar taste, a standard by which they judge of the sentiments of others. It is not thus with the scientific and the moral writer; Science is modest and cautious, Morality is humble and resigned, while Philology alone is arrogant and positive. A
fact
in science is found with infinite labour, and may be overturned by a new discovery; and an
action
in morality may be so mingled with human passions, that we hesitate to pronounce it perfect, and analyse it with tranquillity. But it is not difficult with some to persuade themselves that Virgil is an immaculate author, and that they are men of exquisite taste. The Pedants of the last age exercised a vanity and ferocity revived by those critics, who have been called Warburtonians. They employed similar language in their decisions to that of Du Moulin, a great lawyer of those days who always prefixed to his consultations, this defiance,
"I who yield to no person, and whom no person can teach any thing."
By one of these was Montaigne, the venerable father of modern Miscellanies, called
"a bold ignorant fellow."
To thinking readers, this critical summary will appear mysterious; for Montaigne had imbibed the spirit of all the moral writers of antiquity; and although he has made a capricious complaint of a defective memory, we cannot but wish the complaint had been more real; for we discover in his works nearly as much compilement, as reflection, and he is one of those authors who should quote rarely, but who deserves to be often quoted. Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, as Addison was censured by Warburton; because both, like Socrates, perceived and reprobated that mere erudition, which consists of knowing the thoughts of others, and having no thoughts of our own. To weigh syllables, and to arrange dates, to adjust texts, and to heap annotations, has generally proved the absence of the higher faculties. But when a more adventurous spirit, of this herd, attempted some novel discovery, often men of taste beheld, with indignation, the perversions of their understanding; and a Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on a Virgil, had either a singular imbecillity concealed under the arrogance of the Scholar, or they did not believe what they told the Public; the one in his extraordinary invention of an interpolating editor, and the other in his more extraordinary explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. But what was still worse, the froth of the head became venom, when it reached the heart.
Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent vanity, in making himself the idol of his lucubrations. If he had not done this, he had not performed the promise he makes at the commencement of his preface. An engaging tenderness prevails in these
naive
expressions, which shall not be injured by a version.
"Je l'ay voué à la commodité particuliere de mes Parens et Amis; à ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils ont à faire bientost) ils y puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifue la conoissance qu'ils ont eu de moi.'
From the preface to his Essays which did not appear in the earliest Editions, and is omitted in Cotton's version. It is dated 1580.
Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the heart, will write to the heart; every one is enabled to decide on his merits, and they will not be referred to more learned heads, or a more distant period. We are I think little interested if an author displays sublimity, but we should be much concerned to know whether he has sincerity.
Are the periods grand and asiatic? compressed and laconic? neat and attic? I approve an author's industry, or I like his taste; but the artifices of style, in an age of refinement may be considered only as the varnish which beautifies, but must not be mistaken, as it sometimes is, for the object beautified. But are his sentiments fervid? his diction varied? his fancy easy? his judgment penetrative? does he sometimes touch his subject with airiness, and sometimes sooth by a graceful amenity? Should not this author ever assume a fantastic air of novelty, I will trust to every sentiment, I will assimilate his sensations with my own, and I will look into his works, as into my own heart. Why, says Boileau, are my verses read by all? it is only because they speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write. This is his meaning, finely amplified in these lines.
Sais tu pourquoi mes vers sont lus dans les provinces
Sont recherchés du peuple, et reçus ches les princes?
Cé n'est pas que leur sons agreables, nombreux,
Soient toujours á l'oreille également heureux;
Qu'en plus d'un lieu le sens n'y gene la mesure,
Et qu'en mot quelquefois n'y brave la cesure.
Mais c'est qu'en eux le Vrai, du mensonge vainqueur,
Par tout se montre aux yeux, et va saisir le Coeur;
Que le bien et le mal, y sont prisés au juste,
Que jamais un Faquin n'y tient un rang auguste,
Et que mon Coeur, toujours conduisant mon esprit,
Ne dit rien aux Lecteurs qu'a soi-meme il n'ait dit.
IMITATED.
Say why my verse the village reader moves
The Town applauds it, and the Court approves?
Not that it's tones, to harmony so dear,
Can always happy charm the attic ear;
That the free thought not mars the measured chain;
The pause oft broken in the fervid strain.
But 'tis that Truth, uplifts the mask of art,
Lives thro' the page, and instant, strikes the heart.
That moral good, is valued in the Rhime
That wastes on idiot Peers, no note sublime;
And still my heart, the honest mind that led
Says nought, but to itself what first it said.
Why it may be enquired have some of our fine writers interested more than others, who have not displayed inferior talents? because they have raised no artificial emotions, but poured forth the vigorous expressions of a heart, which seemed relieved from an oppression of sensibility, as it's ardent sentiments animated every period. Montaigne therefore preferred those of the ancients, who appear to write under a conviction of what they said; the eloquent Cicero declaims but coldly on liberty, while in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a man, who is resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of Plutarch; yet there is a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works, which expresses a philosophical character, that is not alone capable of admiring, but of imitating the virtues he records. Why is Addison still the first of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philosophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a pathetic charm in the character he has assumed, in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss with awe; we come from their writings as from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private conversations.
Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence; he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensible of the power with which these minute strokes of description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagination clings. He says
"If I give speeches and conversations I ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat
what
they say, and their
manner
of saying."
I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his orange trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France; with his having had the honour to naturalize in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them because
"he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better."
In a word with his passionate attachment to his garden, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having past five years without going to town, where, by the way,
"he had a large house always ready to receive him."
Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think, that his character and dispositions, may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this man of genius.
But we must now reject this pleasing egotism, that often relates to us all; this vanity, that has often so much simplicity; this self-flattery that has often so much modesty. As refinement prevails we seek to conceal ourselves from too familiar an inspection; simplicity of manners passes away with simplicity of style. When we write with sparkling antithesis, and solemn cadences, with elaborate elegancies and studied graces, an author is little desirous of painting himself in domestic negligence. Our writings resemble our fashions, various in their manner, but never simple, and our authors, like their fellow-citizens, are vying with each other in pomp and dignity. Hence, the personal acquaintance of a modern author, is always to his disadvantage; he has published himself a superior being; we approach and discover the imposture. The readers of Montaigne, had they met with him, would have felt differently; they would have found a friend complaining like themselves of his infirmities, and smiling with them, at the folly of his complaints.
From this agreeable mode of composition, a species of Miscellanies may be discriminated, which, above all others, becomes precious in the collections of a reader of taste. To the composition of these little works, which are often discovered in a fugitive state, their authors are prompted by the fine impulses of genius, derived from the peculiarity of their situation, or the enthusiasm of their prevailing passion. Dictated by the heart, or polished with the fondness of delight, these productions are impressed by the seductive eloquence of genius, or attach us by the sensibility of taste. The object thus selected, is no task, imposed on the mind of the writer, for the mere ambition of literature; but is generally a voluntary effusion, warm with all the sensations of a pathetic writer. In a word they are the compositions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply interested; which it revolves on all it's sides, which it paints in all it's tints, and which it finishes with the same ardour it began. Among such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon Exile," The retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude." The imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy." The oppressed Pierius Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities." The deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity." The projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects." And the liberal Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."
Such writers not only investigate their subject with unwearied vigilance, but describing their own sensations without any semblance of egotism, impart observations which either escape others, or are given with inferior force, by those who compose not under the same energetic impulse.
We may respect the profound genius of voluminous writers; they are a kind of painters who occupy great room, and fill up, as a satirist expresses it,
"an acre of canvass."
But we must prefer those delicate pieces which the Graces lay on the altar of taste. A groupe of Cupids, a Venus emerging from the waves, a Psyche or an Aglaia, embellish the cabinet of the man of taste, who connects these little pieces by wreaths of roses. A Miscellanist should imitate two painters; the modern Albano, celebrated for painting the smallest and the most beautiful figures; and the ancient Parrhasius, who was ever in such good humour with himself as to sing at his labours, which happy circumstance, it is supposed, imparted so much gaiety to his compositions.
But however exquisitely these little pieces may be formed, there is a race of students who fail not to contemn elegance as frivolity, and instructive knowledge as superficial erudition. The ponderous scholars have facetiously expressed their contempt by calling the agreeable writers
"empty bottles."
Usbek, the Persian of Montesquieu, is one of the profoundest philosophers; his letters are however but concise pages. Rochefoucault and La Bruyere are not superficial observers of human nature, although they have only written sentences. Of Tacitus it has been finely remarked by Montesquieu, that
"he abridged every thing because he saw every thing,"
and I have ever admired the character of Timanthes, the painter, of whom it is recorded that he expressed more than he painted by an instructive and comprehensive reservedness.
It should indeed be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, to be multifarious and concise. Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where knowledge is acquired without a tedious study. It is, says he, no great attempt to take one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or connection. There are writers, as well as readers, who only consult books for their amusement; and they alike are sensible, that four things are written and read with greater pleasure, than one, though that one should be shorter than the four. If Literature is only with some a mere amusement, I think it will not diminish it's importance in the affairs of human life; and Dryden confesses, though he is pleased to add to his shame, that he never read any thing but for his pleasure; he might have added, however, that the pleasures of Literature are the most instructive pleasures.
Montaigne's works have been called by a Cardinal
"the Breviary of Idlers."
It is therefore the book of Man; for all Men are Idlers; we have hours which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At those moments Miscellanists are conformable to all our humours, and often are so congruous to our mental tone, that they illuminate in many a critical moment. We dart along their airy and concise page, and their lively anecdote, or their profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours.
We find, in these literary miniatures qualities incompatible with more voluminous performances. Sometimes a bolder, and sometimes a firmer touch; for they are allowed but a few strokes; and should not always trace an elegant phrase, but grave a forcible sentiment. They are permitted every kind of ornament, for how can the diminutive please unless it charms by it's finished decorations, it's elaborate niceties, and it's exquisite polish? A concise work preserves a common subject from insipidity, and an uncommon one from error. An essayist expresses himself with a more real enthusiasm, than the writer of a volume; for I have observed that the most fervid genius is apt to cool in a quarto. Race horses appear only to display their agile rapidity in the course, while on the road, they soon become spiritless and tame.
The ancients were great admirers of Miscellanies; and this with some profound students who affect to contemn these light and beautiful compositions, might be a solid argument to evince their bad taste. Aulus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so numerous and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced in their composition. Among the titles are a basket of flowers; an embroidered mantle; and a variegated meadow.
The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs practised what is yet called in the southern parts of France,
Le guay Saber,
or the gay science. I consider these as the Miscellanists of their day; they had their grave moralities, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; their verse and their prose. The village was in motion at their approach; the castle was opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac listened to their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would call miscellaneous composition LE GUAY SABER, and I would have every miscellaneous writer as solemn and as gay, as various and as pleasing as these lively artists of versatility.
Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold a volume of Miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of it's contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those vallies, those rocks, encircled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look, and behold at once the united seasons.
"All climates in one place, all seasons in one instant."
I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated to the service of the Goddess VARIETY.
OF PROFESSORS OF ART.
IT has been often said that a Poet alone should decide on a Poem, and a Painter on a Picture; but this must not be accepted as an incontrovertible maxim. It may be observed with great truth, that the Professors of an Art, are frequently the most incompetent judges of a new performance; and that the truth of criticism exists no where, but among those Men of Taste, who without aspiring to the dangerous glory of being Artists, have devoted themselves to a liberal and comprehensive affection for Art.
Many are the prejudices which vitiate the decision of an Artist. The fever of envy will disorder the finest vision, and the chillness of personal dislike will freeze the faculties into a fatal torpor. There are local, and there are national prejudices; but alluding to none of these obvious causes, we will consider an excelling Artist, as an honest man, and that he comes to the examination of a new production, with that candour which pardons human imperfections, and with that disposition to be pleased, without which no man can receive pleasure; and with these favourable propensities his decision may be unjust.
This defect in the criticisms of Artists, has not escaped the animadversion of reflecting minds; but is still susceptible of investigation, and forms an important detection in the critical Art. We encounter in the history of literature and taste, perplexities which embarrass, but which examined will disappear. Artists are often arraigned for envy or vanity, when innocent of the passions; and Men of Taste often vacillate in their own just notions, among the opposing sentiments of great Artists.
Every superior Artist addicts himself to some peculiar Manner;
Some parts of this paragraph have been inserted in an Essay on the Literary Character, p. 116.
long loved, long pursued, and at length obtained, this enamoured object of his passion, excludes by it's constancy every deviation from the established excellence; to dissimilar beauty, he often becomes insensible, and he forms his comparative merit, on any performance, from it's alliance, or it's foreignness, to his favourite manner. Without recurring to the degrading passions, we may thus account for the very opposite and erroneous opinions of great Artists, on their different labours. It is not probable that Milton envied the genius of Dryden, when he contemptuously called him a Rhimer; but it is more evident that Milton's ideas of poetry were not congenial to the manner of Dryden. I shall place here some instances which I have remarked. The witty Cowley despised the natural Chaucer; the classical Boileau the rough sublimity of Crebillon; the forcible Corneille the tender Racine; the refined Marivaux the familiar Moliere; the artificial Gray the simple Shenstone; and the plain and unadorned Montaigne the rich and eloquent Cicero. Each enslaved to his peculiar manner, was incapable of viewing the diversifications of beauty, but attached himself to a partial and endeared portion.
Whenever an uncommon species of composition appears, which displays a new mode of excellence, and places a new model in the school of taste, the slowest and the last, to chaunt their peans to that Artist, will be Artists themselves. To envy this cannot always be attributed, but will be generally derived from a want of the proper taste for that manner, which taste can only be gradually formed. One reason, perhaps, why Artists sometimes are inimical to a foreign excellence may be attributed to what the French denominate la jalousie de metier, the jealousy of trade; because every novel manner is a kind of hostility against those already established. But some Artists are not always influenced by this prejudice, and yet are equally inimical to the new production.
Of our own times, we may refer to two poets, who it cannot be denied, have created an original manner, and at their first appearance in public, appear to have met a similar fate among Artists. When Gray's Odes were published, they delighted two men of poetical taste,
Warburton and Garrick.
while they were ridiculed by two men of poetical genius.
Colman and Lloyd.
At a still later period, Churchill animadverted with severity on the poetry of Gray; and Goldsmith and Johnson were as inimical to that manner as Churchill himself, though by no means admirers of the genius of Churchill. That manner has now become fixed, and is justly appreciated by men of taste. Far from applauding the subjects of Peter Pindar, we must admire a copiousness of imagery, and a facility of wit, which variegate his early productions with a constant variety. At their first appearance the critics received them with a stoical apathy. The personality of satire alone enabled them to escape the menaced oblivion. The manner once established, the taste became formed; and critics now give copious panegyrics of performances, which formerly were placed in the obscurest parts of the records of literature. In neither of these instances can the critics be justly censured; but it may confirm the judicious observation of Johnson, that after all the refinements of criticism, the sinal decision must be left to common readers unperverted by literary prejudices.
The same error frequently induces an Artist, when he contrasts his labours with another, to consider himself as the superior, and of course to be stigmatized with the most unreasonable vanity. I shall exemplify the observation by the character of Goldsmith; and it may then appear that that pleasing writer might have contrasted his powers with those of Johnson, and without any perversion of intellect, or inflation of vanity, might according to his own ideas have considered himself, as not inferior to his more celebrated and learned rival.
Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own genius, which like a native stream flowed from a natural source to the elaborate powers of Johnson, which in some respect may be compared to those artificial waters which throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble basons. He might have considered that he had embellished philosophy with poetical elegance, and have preferred the paintings of his descriptions, to the terse versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He might have been more pleased with the faithful representations of English manners in his Vicar of Wakefield, than with the borrowed grandeur, and the exotic fancy of the oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what many excellent critics have believed, that in this age comedy requires more genius than tragedy, and with his audience he might have infinitely more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's turgid declamation. He might have thought that with inferior literature he displayed superior genius, and with less profundity, more
gaiety. He might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing compositions were preferable to that Art, that habitual pomp, and that ostentatious eloquence which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson. No one might be more sensible than himself, that he, according to the happy expression of Johnson (when his rival was in the grave)
"tetigit et ornavit"
Goldsmith therefore without any singular vanity, might have concluded from his own reasonings, that he was not an inferior writer to Johnson; all this not having been considered, he has come down to posterity as the vainest and the most jealous of writers; he whose dispositions were the most inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most extensive, and whose amiableness of heart, has been concealed by it's artlessness, and passed over in the sarcasms and sneers of a more eloquent rival, and his submissive partizans. This character of Goldsmith may however explain that species of critical comparison which one great writer makes of his manner, with that of a rival.
We can hardly censure Artists for this attachment to their favourite excellence. Who, but an Artist, can value the ceaseless inquietudes of arduous perfection; can trace the remote possibilities combined in a close union; the happy arrangement and the novel variation? he not only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but is influenced by a peculiar sensation, for while he contemplates the apparent beauties, he often traces in his own mind those invisible corrections, by which the final beauty was accomplished; it is the practical hand alone that is versed in, and the eye of genius alone that can discriminate many daring felicities, many concealments of art, and many difficulties overcome. Hence, it is observed, that Artists do not always prefer those effects which influence an unprejudiced, and uncorrupted taste; but rather those refinements which form the secret exultation of Art; and the minuter excellencies which consist in the mechanical (as a critic of taste terms it) are often preferred to those more elevated ones which arise from the ideal. It is this indulgence for the refinements, which at length terminate in corrupting Art.
But a partiality for selecting one branch of Art in preference to another, is perhaps the only ascent to it's summit. We must not therefore calumniate Artists, if they neglect the various schools of beauty. It is not difficult for a man of taste whose hand reposes, while his head ever thinks; whose creative powers are quiescent, but whose perceptive faculties are habitually invigorated; and who in the tranquillity of his cabinet, has only to gaze at pictures, but not to blend colours, and to meditate on poems, but not to compose verses; it is not difficult for this elegant idler to form the most various views of beauty in Art; to trace with the same lively gratification it's diversities, and to feel no displeasure from the most incongruous manners. Such an one, may be supposed to hover with extasy round the ideal of a Raphael, and a Pope, or to mix with the grotesque caricatures of a Hogarth or a Butler. This versatility of taste is generally denied to the man of genius; and while men of taste, are often unanimous in their opinions, we shall frequently observe, that the greatest Artists give the most discordant decisions. Johnson said that his notions on MSS. proved generally erroneous; and this circumstance has happened to many eminent writers.
It would therefore seem that the most unfit person to decide on a performance is an Artist himself; and that the genuine merits of a work are candidly adjusted and correctly appreciated by men of taste, and rarely by men of genius.
ON STYLE.
THE History of English Style since it's first elegance may, perhaps, be traced in the following concise manner.
When the national literature has attained to a certain point, there arises a simple elegance of Style, which in it's progress displays richer ornaments, and often becomes refined to a vicious excess. It may be traced through four schools.
The first writers who attempt elegance, and polish the asperities of a language, excel in a natural sweetness and amiable simplicity. But the Style is not yet castigated, for it still retains many colloquial terms and many negligent expressions, which either were not such in their day, or their ear, not being yet accustomed to a continued elegance, received no pain from familiar and unstudied expressions. In time these defects become sensible; yet as these writers are placed among the first classics of their nation, they are regarded with veneration, and often pointed out as the model for young writers. Among such authors we may place Tillotson, Swift, and Addison.
The second school introduces a more diffuse and verbose manner; these writers solicit the ear by a numerous prose, and expand their ideas on a glittering surface. As elegance can only be obtained by diffusion, it's concomitant is feebleness, and an elegant writer enervates his sentiments. Beauty is inconsistent with Force. Elevated emotions these writers rarely awaken, but a graceful manner in composition is their peculiar charm. Genius may be supposed at this period, to be somewhat impaired by the excursions of their predecessors, and they attempt to supply by the charms of amenity, and a copious diffusion of beautiful expression, the demand for novelty, as well as that taste for elegance of diction which the public now possess. Among these pleasing writers may be ranked Sir William Temple, though prior to Addison, Usher, Melmoth, &c.
Satiated with the nerveless beauty and the protracted period, a third school appears, the votaries of artificial embellishment and elaborated diction. At once, magisterially pompous, and familiarly pointed; concise and swelling; sparkling and solid; massy and light. Sometimes they condense ideas, by throwing into one vast thought, several intermediate ones; sometimes their rotundity of period is so arranged that the mind, with the ear, seems to rise on a regular ascent. The glare of art betrays itself; while sometimes the thoughts are more subtile than substantial, more airy than penetrating; the expressions new, and the ideas old. This school abounds with mannerists; such are Johnson, Hawkesworth, Robertson, and Gibbon.
When this taste for ornamented prose prevails, a fourth school arises, composed of inferior writers. As it is less difficult to collect words, than to create ideas, this race becomes versed in all the mysteries of diction; trivial thoughts are ridiculously invested by magnificent expressions, and they consider that blending the most glaring colours, without harmony or design, is an evidence of higher art. They colour like the distracted painter in Bedlam, who delighted in landscapes of golden earths, and vermilion skies. They tell us that their colours are vivid, and we reply that their figures are chimeras. These fantastic novelties flourish in the warmth of a fashionable circle, but once placed in the open air, they are killed by the popular gale. Writers of this class are not to be mentioned, as they are all dead authors who are yet living.
We may here observe that every period of literature has it's peculiar Style, derived from some author of reputation; and the history of a language as an object of taste, might be traced through a collection of ample quotations, from the most celebrated authors of each period. We should as rarely find an original Style, as an original Genius; and we should be enabled to perceive the almost insensible variations which at length produce an original Style.
We must advert to the opinions of the public, during this progress of Style. Those who have long been attached to the first school of natural elegance, with all it's imperfections, revolt from the ostentatious opulence of the third; and are more inclined to favour the second. The third school is however the most popular, for the public has greater refinement, than in the preceding periods.
Some distinguish between taste and refinement; this distinction is not very obvious. Refinement is only a superior taste, according to those, who are fond of an embellished diction; but it is considered as a vicious taste, by the advocates for simplicity of language. They differ in their acceptation of the term, and the former therefore smile, when the latter censure refinement of diction.
Refinement in Style, is of no remote date. The prose of Pope is nearly as refined as his verse; and this taste he appears to have borrowed from some of the French writers, particularly from Fontenelle, whose reputation was then very high, and who has carried the
bel esprit,
to it's finest excess. By the
bel esprit,
I mean, a manner of writing which displays unexpected turns of thought; the art of half concealing a sentiment that the reader may have the pleasure of guessing it; brilliant allusions, epigrammatic points, and delicate strokes. A mode of writing as dangerous, as it is pleasing; yet adapted to concise compositions. No prosaic writer, in Pope's day, approached his refinement; the best writers then, and for some time after, composed with colloquial barbarisms and feeble expressions. Steele, Tillotson, and others, have written, with carelessness and laxity; Addison and Dryden delight by an agreeableness of manner, which no where accompanied the works of their cotemporaries; their superior genius seems to have given colour and form to their yet unformed and uncoloured language. When Addison describes the powers of beauty, the suavity, the grace and the mellifluence give a new idea of our language, and Dryden has a mellow richness, an enchanting negligence, and a facility of ideas. They alike threw into their Style a gaiety of fancy, which is equivalent to all the charms of refined expressions. They alone of all the writers of their age, have secured the admiration of posterity; and will not be injured by any novel mode of language; for to real genius they united those subordinate graces which are imperishable. To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our present refinement; and it is with truth he observes of his Rambler,
"that he had laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and that he has added to the elegance of it's construction and to the harmony of it's cadence."
Great inelegance of diction disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, when the enquiry into the Life of Homer was published. That author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his volume by it's singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affectation. This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing. Yet he abounds in expressions which now would be considered as criminal in literary composition. Such vulgarisms are common—the Greeks
fell to their old trade
of one tribe's expelling another—the scene is always at Athens, and all the
pother
is some little jilting story—the haughty Roman snuffed at the suppleness. If such diction had not been usual with good writers at that period, I should not have quoted Blackwall.
This refinement in Style, Johnson appears partly to have borrowed from the most elegant French writers, whose beauties he has sometimes transposed and frequently imitated, as Gibbon has more apparently done. All the refinements of Style exist among that refining people, and the Lectures of Blair are often judicious repetitions of what may be found in their critics, or happy examples which are drawn from their writers.
Refinement in Style, with many, includes in the very expression, a censureable quality in composition. But this criticism is unjust; refinement may indeed be vicious, as simplicity may itself be; refinement is not less offensive to a reader of taste, when it rises into affectation, than simplicity sinking into insipidity. But we must not confound refinement of Style, with it's puerile excess; nor is it just to censure refinement because it differs from simplicity. Some perhaps will agree, that a writer cannot refine too much, provided he flies not too remotely in search of it's ornaments; for that which
artistly
employed, throws a new light, and gives a more agreeable position to an object, cannot be censured but by those whose organs are indifferent.
Amidst these complications of taste some argue in favour of a natural Style, and reiterate the opinion of many great critics, that proper ideas will be accompanied by proper words. But this observation, though supported by the first authorities, is not perhaps sufficiently clear. Writers may think justly, and write offensively; and a pleasing Style may convey a vacuity of thought. Does not this evident fact prove that Style and Thinking have not that inseparable connection which many great writers have pronounced? Writing is justly called an Art; and Rousseau, says, it is not an art easily acquired. Thinking may be the foundation of Style; but it is not the superstructure; it is not the ornaments. The art of presenting our thoughts to another, is often a process of considerable time and labour; and the delicate task of correction, reserved only for writers of fine taste, proves, that there are several modes of presenting an idea; vulgar readers are only susceptible of the rough and palpable stroke; but there are many shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to paint, is the pride and the labour of a fine writer.
In the third school we observe, a race of writers who are called MANNERISTS in Style. It must be confessed that such writers however great their powers, rather excite the admiration, than the affection of a man of taste; because their habitual art, dissipates that illusion of sincerity, which we love to believe is the impulse, which places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent literary Mannerists are Cicero and Johnson. We know these great men considered their eloquence as a deceptive art;
The sophistry of Johnson in conversation appears to have been his favourite amusement; but Cicero is more censureable, since in the most solemn acts of life, and before the tribunal of justice, he confesses to have protected and saved the life of many a criminal, by the power of his eloquence. This indeed will be considered as no crime at Westminster-Hall, where, without his eloquence, they share his guilt. Plutarch gives one anecdote relative to the orator's exultation. He said to Munatius—
"Dost thou think thou wast acquitted for thy own sake, and not because I threw a veil over thy manifest crimes, so that the court could not perceive thy guilt?"
of any subject it had been indifferent to them which side to adopt; and in reading their elaborate works, our ear is more frequently gratified by the ambitious magnificence of their diction, than our heart penetrated by the pathetic enthusiasm of their sentiments. Writers who are not Mannerists, but who seize the appropriate tone of their subject, appear to feel a conviction of what they attempt to persuade their reader. It is observable, that it is impossible to imitate with uniform felicity the noble simplicity of a pathetic writer; while the peculiarities of a Mannerist, are so far from being difficult, that they are displayed with nice exactness by midling writers, who although their own natural manner had nothing interesting, have attracted notice by such imitations. We may apply to some monotonous Mannerists these verses of Boileau.
Voulés vous du public meriter les amours?
Sans cesse en ecrivant varier vos discours.
On lit peu ces auteurs nés pour nous ennuier,
Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier.
Would you the public's envied favours gain?
Ceaseless in writing, variegate the strain;
The heavy author who the fancy calms
Seems in one tone, to chaunt his nasal psalms.
It may, perhaps, surprise some, that among the literary refinements of the present age, may be counted above forty different Styles, as appear by a Rhetorical Dictionary. The facility of acquiring a Style produces our numerous authors; and hence we abound with writers, but have few thinkers. A Style deficient in thinking cannot form a perfect composition; for we may compare STYLE to the MECHANIC or executive part of painting; while THINKING is the FINE IDEAL or inventive. And this distinction, if just, will settle a question long agitated, whether there is any distinction between Style and Thinking. Raphael, who excelled in the ideal, was not so perfect in some part of the mechanic, as Titian; and, we might venture to say, that Johnson, who excelled in the mechanic, did not equal the ideal of Addison.
Mr. Webb, an advocate for simplicity, has two lines on the Style of Hooker, the last of which has great felicity of conception.
"Thy language is chaste, without aims or pretence;
"'Tis a sweetness of breath, from a soundness of sense."
He accompanies them by a note, in which he censures refinement, as a studied advantage in the manner, independent on an adequate motive in the thought. Mr. Allison would consider every composition as faulty and defective in which the expression of the art is more striking than the expression of the subject, or in which the beauty of design prevails over the beauty of character or expression. I shall add the observation of a friend, who has often delighted the public, that he would not have the Style withdraw the attention from the Thought.
I mean not to oppose the opinions of the warm admirers of simplicity. A beautiful simplicity itself is a species of refinement; and no writer more solicitously corrected his works than Hume, who excels in this mode of composition. But is it not an evident error in men of taste to form a predilection for any peculiar Style; since all the intermediate species of diction between simplicity and refinement are equally beautiful, when they form, the appropriate tone of the subject? We often enquire if an author's Style is beautiful or sublime; we should rather desire to know whether it was proper. These varieties of diction, which the advocates for simplicity consider as so many aberrations from rectitude of thinking, form on the contrary the very existence of just thought. Simplicity, however pure, can never cause the strong emotions of an ornamented diction; an ornamented diction can never give the rapid and lively graces of gaiety; nor can a rapid Style embellish flowery and brilliant conceptions. Every Style is excellent, if it be proper, and that Style is most proper which can best convey the intentions of the author to his reader.
There appears in every Style, a certain point, beyond which, or which not attained, it is defective. The simplicity of the first school degenerates into frigidity and vapidness; the beauty of the second protracts into languor and tediousness; and the grandeur of the third swells into turgidity and vacuity. But though this point may be difficult to describe, a fine
tact
long practised, instantaneously discovers it. We soon decide on the Style of an author, but not on his thoughts; and we often find, that the one may be excellent, while the other has nothing uncommon.
Hume, who has all the refinement of simplicity, highly approves of Addison's definition of fine writing, who says, that it consists of sentiments which are natural, without being obvious. This is surely no definition of fine writing, but of fine thinking. The elegant author has omitted the magical graces of diction; the modulation of harmonious cadences, the art of expressing, with delicacy, delicate ideas, and painting sublime conceptions in the magnificence of language. In my opinion Shenstone has ascertained the truth; for fine writing he defines to be generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured Style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that
"there is as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language, and that of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of the sun."
This is not less true, than finely expressed; and what shews Style to be independent of thinking, is, that even common thoughts are found to give pleasure when adorned by expression.
I must therefore dissent from the admired definition of Addison, because it does not define it's object. In this age of taste, or refinement, if you please, a composition which should alone consist of natural, yet not obvious, sentiments, would fail to attract, unadorned by the felicities of diction. But I shall be told by some, that our present taste, which I am here placing as the criterion of composition, is what they precisely arraign. I must reply, that it is what I applaud. Simplicity may be too obvious, and refinement too obtrusive; whatever is obvious disgusts; whatever is obtrusive offends. We may apply to Style in general, the beautiful description which Milton gives of Eve presenting herself to Adam,
"Not OBVIOUS, not OBTRUSIVE she."
It appears that the advocates for simplicity of Style are not sufficiently sensible to the varieties of diction. What, would they think, if we should venture to say, that Style may have a marvellous influence over the human mind? Longinus makes a musical arrangement of words a part of the sublime, and he adds, that many have acquired the reputation of fine writers, whose chief merit consisted in the charm of their periods. This observation every man of taste knows to be just. We have writers, who, without exhibiting much vigour of conception, or energy of genius, delight by a magical delicacy. An eloquent Style has a pathetic influence on the mind. Men of taste, who are unbiassed by any particular Style, can alone be sensible to it's finest strokes, and are often in raptures, when others are insensible. The practised eye in painting sees pictures the uninitiated can never behold. An ancient artist, contemplating the famous Helen of Zeuxis, felt all the enthusiasm of extreme sensibility; when another wondered at his raptures, he said
"could you take my eyes, you would be as much delighted."
After all, it is Style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his Style; facts, scientific discoveries, and every kind of information may be seized by all, but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence very learned writers have been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to the world, by having been given by finer writers. It is, therefore, the duty of an author, to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and this art can alone be obtained by familiarising himself to those felicitous expressions which paint and embellish his sensations; which give a tone congruous to the subject; and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty and motion, of lively perception or pathetic eloquence.
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS ARE FALSE REPRESENTATIONS
of
NATURE.
WE accustom ourselves to pay too liberal an admiration to the great Characters recorded in modern, to say nothing of ancient, History. It seems often necessary to be reminded that the most interesting history, is generally the most elegantly written, and that whatever is adorned by elegance, is the composition of art. Charmed and seduced by the variegated tints of imagination, the scene is heightened, and the objects move into life; but while we yield ourselves to the captivating talent of the artist, we forget that the whole representation is but a picture, and that painters like poets, are indulged with a certain agreeable licentiousness. Hence we form false estimates of the human character, and while we exhaust our sensations in artificial sympathies, amidst characters and circumstances almost fictitious, for the natural events and the natural calamities of life, we suppress those warmer emotions we otherwise should indulge. The human character appears diminutive when compared with those we meet with in history; yet, am I persuaded, that domestic sorrows are not less poignant, and many of our associates are characters not inferior to the elaborate delineations which so much interest in the deceptive page of history. The historian is a sculptor, who though he displays a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous of displaying the miracles of his art, and therefore enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension.
The ancient historians compiled prodigies, to gratify the credulous curiosity of their readers; but since prodigies have ceased, while the same avidity for the marvellous exists, modern historians have transferred the miraculous to their personages. Children read fables as histories, but the philosopher reads histories as fables. Fabulous narratives may however convey much instruction.
It is the pleasing labour of genius to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects which occupy his meditations, with a secret artifice of disposition. I think Voltaire in one of his Letters has let us into the mystery of the historical art; for he there tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe. An observation which has great truth, but which shews that there can be but little truth in such agreeable narratives. Every historian communicates his character to his history; if he is profound and politic, his statesmen resemble political deities, whose least motion is a stratagem, and whose plot contains the seeds of many plots. If he is a writer, more elegant than profound, he delights in descriptive grandeur; in the touching narratives of suffering beauty, and persecuted virtue. If he possesses a romantic turn, his heroes are so many Arthurs, and the actions he records, put a modest adventurer into despair. No writers more than the historian, and the professed Romancer, so sedulously practice the artifice of awakening curiosity, and feasting that appetency of the mind, which turns from wholesome truth, to spirited fiction. We love not what we are, because it wants the grace of novelty; we are pleased with the wanderings of fancy, because they shoot far above the sober limit of nature; we scarce glance at the glittering of a star, but we gaze with delight on the corruscations of a meteor. We therefore suffer ourselves to become interested with those objects which should interest us least.
The historian seising this inclination of the mind, delights it with that imaginary force, and fantastic grandeur, of which, while pleased with the emotions, we perceive not the extravagance. Popular prejudice assists the illusion, and because we are accustomed to behold public characters occupy a situation in life, that few can experience, we are induced to believe that their capacities are more enlarged, their passions more refined, and in a word, that nature has bestowed on them faculties, denied to obscurer men. But who, acquainted with human nature, hesitates to acknowledge, that most of the characters in history were persons whom accident had seated upon a throne, or placed with less favour around it? Had Alfred been a private person, like the Man of Ross, his various virtues might only accidentally have reached us; and had Richard III. been a citizen of London, he had been led unnoticed to the gibbet.
This pernicious prejudice, which peoples the mind with artificial beings, and enfeebles the sympathies of domestic life, will disappear when we come to those few facts in history, which the art of the historian can no longer disguise; and which, refusing the decorations of his fancy, present the sublime personages of history, in the nudity of truth. Let the monarch lose his crown, and the minister his place; let the casque fall from the hero, and the cap from the cardinal; it is then, these important personages speak in the voice of distress, are actuated by passions like our own, and come to us with no other claim on our feelings, than that common sensibility, which we owe to humanity. Here, indeed, the lessons of history, become instructive, because they teach that every other portion of history has received the romantic gilding of the pencil; that the sagacity of the statesman is not so adroit, as not to be entangled in it's own nets; that the ardour of the hero is often temerity which escaped, and sometimes temerity chastised; and that in general great characters, owe much more to Fortune, than to Nature; that singular coincidencies have formed singular events; but, that whenever the delusion of the historian ceases, these illustrious persons appear to have been actuated by passions similar to our own, and that their talents are not superior to those whose obscure actions languish in a confined sphere. It is observed, by Montesquieu, that
"most legislators have been men of limited capacities, whom chance placed at the head of others, and who have generally consulted merely their prejudices and their fancies."
It is, indeed, useful to pause over those passages which give the very feelings of the illustrious persons to whom they relate, and if to some, these may seem to humble the great, they will also elevate us; or, rather, they will reinstate human nature in that just equality in which we are all placed. The phantom of history will vanish, but the human form will remain palpable and true.
Few circumstances are more curious in history than the unadorned recitals of some memoirs. I am pleased with what Thomas Heywood in his "England's Elizabeth" has noticed relative to the confinement of this Princess. It is an instance that one of the most celebrated characters felt the same agitation, and expressed the same language, which an inferior prisoner would have experienced. This writer gives her meditations in the garden during her imprisonment, in which the natural passions are not entirely lost in the distortion of the language. During her confinement at Woodstock, hourly dreading assassination, she used to sit at the grate of her prison window morning and evening, listening and shedding tears at the light carolling of the passing milkmaids. Among other insults she received in travelling, the high winds having discomposed her dress, she desired to retire to some house to adjust herself; but this she was refused, and was compelled to make her toilette under a hedge! A kindred anecdote is mentioned by Sir Walter Rawlegh, of Charles V. who just after his resignation, having a private interview with some ambassador, and having prolonged it to a late hour after midnight, called for a servant to light the ambassador on the stairs; but they had all retired to rest; and the emperor, yet the terror of Europe, was obliged to snatch a candle and conduct the ambassador to the door. It is thus that majesty, unrobed of factitious powers, convinces even the slow apprehension of the vulgar, that the breast of grandeur only conceals passions like their own; and that Elizabeth dressing under a hedge, and Charles lighting the ambassador on the stairs, felt the same bitter indignity, which they are doomed to feel much oftener.
If it were possible to read the histories of those who are doomed to have no historian, and to glance into domestic journals, as well as into national archives, we should then perceive the unjust prodigality of our sympathy to those few names, which eloquence has adorned with all the seduction of her graces. We should then acknowledge, that superior talents are not sufficient to obtain superiority, and that the full tide of opportunity, which often carries away the unworthy in triumph, leaves the worthy among the shoals. It is a curious speculation for observing men, to trace great characters in little situations, and to detect real genius passing through life incognito. How many mothers of great characters, may address their sons in the words of the Mother of Brasidas; he was indeed a great and virtuous commander, but she observed
that Sparta had many greater Brasidas.
Some obscure men, whom the world will never notice, had they occupied the situation of great personages, would have been even more illustrious. There are never wanting among a polished people, men of superior talents or superior virtues; every great revolution evinces this truth; indeed, at that perilous moment, they shew themselves in too great numbers, and become fatal to each other, by their rival abilities.
Robertson, who is so pleasing an historian, and therefore, whose veracity becomes very suspicious, confesses, however, that
"in judging of the conduct of princes, we are apt to ascribe too much to political motives, and too little to the passions which they feel in common with the rest of mankind. In order to account for Elizabeth's present, as well as her subsequent conduct towards Mary, we must not always consider her as a queen, we must sometimes regard her merely as a woman."
This is precisely what the refining ingenuity of this writer does as rarely as any historian; and Robertson appears to have been more adapted for a minister of state, than the principal of a Scotch college. He explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. We often admire the fertile conceptions of the queen regent; of Elizabeth; and of Bothwell; when in truth, we are defrauding Robertson of whatever praise may be due to political invention.
But we, who, however charmed with historic beauty, revere truth and humanity, must learn to reduce the aggravated magnitude of the illustrious dead, that we may perform an act of justice to the obscure living. The sympathy we give to a princess, ravished from her throne and dragged by traitors, to wet with tears, the iron grates of her dungeon, we may with no less propriety bestow on that unfortunate female, whom unfeeling creditors have snatched from maternal duties, or social labours, to perish by the hour, in some loathsome prison. If we feel for the decapitation of a virtuous and long persecuted statesman, we are not to feel less for that more common object, a man of genius, condemned to languish in obscurity, and perish in despair. A great general dies in the embrace of victory, and his character reaches posterity in immortal language; but he probably conducted hundreds whom nature intended for generals, but whom fortune made foot soldiers: what heroes may be found in hospitals! Katharine, the queen of Henry VIII. is an object of our tenderest sympathy, but why should our sensibility be diminished, when we look on those numerous females, not less gentle, nor less cruelly misused, who, without the consolations of sovereignty, are united to despots, not less arbitrary and brutal than Henry? The sorrows of the Scottish Mary, the refined insults of a rival sister, the grin of scorn, and the implication of infamy, may penetrate our hearts; but we forget that there are families, where scenes not less terrible, and sisters not less unrelenting, are hourly discovered; and that there are beauties, who without being confined to the melancholy magnificence of a castle, or led to the dismal honour of an axe, equally fall victims, or to fatal indiscretion, or to fatal persecution. But he who has filled his mind with the grand strokes of historical characters, and who conceives their feelings of a more subtile texture, may urge, that such was the sensibility of grief in Mary, that her beautiful tresses had turned grey. Alas! how many are agonised by as sharp corrosives, yet who know not, as their sighs pass away unheard, that it is the settled melancholy of their soul, which has changed their hairs grey! If some consider that a queen is more wretched, by contrast of situation, than an inferior female, it may be replied, that between two broken hearts, the grief must be much alike.
The fascination which thus takes possession of us in historical narratives, is therefore the artifice of the historian, assisted by those early prejudices of that superiority which we attach to great characters. He who possesses the talent of fine writing, is indeed in possession of a deceptive art; and I have often been tempted to think, that men of genius, who have ever appeared, by the energy of their complaints, to be endowed with a peculiar sensibility of sorrow, and who excel in the description of the passions, do not always feel more poignantly than others, who without the power of expressing their sensations, expanding their sentiments, and perpetuating their anguish, are doomed to silent sorrow; to be crazed in love without venting effusions in verse, and to perish in despair without leaving one memorial of their exquisite torture.
But I will not close this essay without observing, that it is not to every illustrious character, recorded in history, that we can pay too prodigal a tribute of admiration. There are men, who throw a new lustre on humanity, and hold a torch of instruction which brightens through the clouds of Time. It has been boldly said, by old Montaigne, that man differs more from man, than man from beast. But speculations on human nature must not be formed on such rare instances. Besides, even of characters like these, their equals may be found among obscure individuals, and some of the noblest actions have been performed by unknown persons; as that Miner, who in some Italian war, animated by patriotic fervour, to direct the explosion, rushed into the mine he had formed. This action is the summit of heroism; his name in the page of history had been that of a hero; but the individual was so obscure, that nothing but the fact is recorded.
Familiar objects of distress, and familiar characters of merit, want only to form a spectacle as interesting, as the pompous inflation of history can display, those powers of seducing eloquence, which disguise the simplicity of truth, with the romantic grandeur of fiction. Nations have abounded with heroes and sages; but because they wanted historians, they are scarce known to us by name; and individuals have been heroes and sages in domestic life, whose talents and whose virtues are embellished in no historical record, but traced, in transient characters, on the feeble gratitude of the human heart.
ON PREFACES.
WHATEVER be the consequence of this my solemn protestation, I declare myself infinitely delighted by a Preface. Is it exquisitely written? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately dull? it is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful. It argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate Preface unread; for it is the odour of the authors roses; every drop distilled at an immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly of the foolish. I agree with the Italians, who call these little pieces
La salfa del Libro;
the sauce of the book.
I do not wish, however, to conceal, that several writers, as well as readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of this species of literature. That fine writer, Montesquieu, in closing the Preface to his Persian Letters, says,
"I do not praise my Persians; because it would be a very tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself; I mean a Preface."
Spence, in the Preface to his Polymetis, informs us, that
"there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to, with so much unwillingness, as that of Prefaces; and as he believes most people are not much fonder of reading them, than he is of writing them, he shall get over this as fast as he can; both for the readers sake and his own."
An ingenious French writer likewise inveighs bitterly against the inventor of Prefaces, and condemns them as so much waste paper. Pelisson warmly protested against prefatory composition; but when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough to compose a very pleasing one. He indeed endeavoured to justify himself for acting against his own opinions, by this ingenious excuse, that like funeral honours, it is proper to shew the utmost regard for them when given to others, but to be inattentive to them for ourselves.
Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good reasons for admiring Prefaces; and barren as the investigation may appear, some literary amusement can be gathered.
In the first place I observe, that a Prefacer is generally a most accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced to the public? the Preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as long as one, as that of Pliny's on the Emperor Trajan. Such a Preface is ringing the alarum bell for an author. If we look closer into the characters of these masters of ceremony, who thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause of taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has occasioned this vehement affection for the author, and which, like that of another kind of love, makes one commit so many extravagancies.
Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly observed by Shenstone in his prefatory Essay to the Elegies, that
"discourses prefixed to poetry inculcate such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the greatest advantage. The fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we are to judge of it, are afterwards adjusted."
This observation might be exemplified by more instances than some readers might chuse to read. It will be sufficient to observe, with what art, both Pope and Fontenelle, have drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals. Has accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a subordinate branch of literature, or to some science which is not highly esteemed, look in the Preface for it's sublime panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and butterflies, have astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise their particular studies into the first ranks of philosophy.
It would appear that there is no lie, to which a Prefacer is not tempted. I pass over the commodious Prefaces of Dryden, which were ever adapted to the poem, and not to poetry, to the author, and not to literature. The boldest Preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who having printed an edition of Aristophanes, first published in the Preface, that Saint Chrysostom was accustomed to place this comic poet under his pillow, that he might always have his works at hand. As in that age, a saint was supposed to possess every human talent, good taste not excepted, Aristophanes thus recommended became a general favourite. The anecdote lasted for near two centuries; and what was of greater consequence to Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes. It was at length detected by Menage; and Monnoye, the commentator of Baillet, observes, that it is proper to undeceive the world respecting this ingenious invention of the Prefacer of Aristophanes.
The insincerity of Prefaces arises whenever an author would disguise his solicitude for his work, by appearing negligent and even undesirous of it's success. A writer will rarely conclude such a Preface without betraying himself. I think, that even Dr. Johnson, forgot his sound dialectic in the admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In one part he says,
"having laboured this work with so much application, I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness."
So far he evidently speaks the natural sentiments of every author. But in his conclusion, he tells us,
"I dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise."
I deny the Doctor's
"frigidity."
This polished period exhibits an affected stoicism, which no writer ever felt for a work, which was the anxious labour of a great portion of life, and which addressed itself, not merely to a class of readers, but to the almighty eye of literary Europe.
But if Prefaces are rarely sincere, or just, they are notwithstanding literary opuscula, in which the author is materially concerned. A work with a poor Preface, like a person who comes with an indifferent recommendation, must display uncommon merit to master our prejudices, and to please us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works, ornamented by a finished Preface, such as Johnson not infrequently presented to his friends or his booksellers, inspire us with awe; we observe a veteran guard placed in the porch, and we are induced to conclude from this appearance, that some person of eminence resides in the place itself.
In Prefaces an affected haughtiness and an affected humility are alike despicable. The first is called by the French,
"
La morgue litteraire,
"
the surly pomposity of literature. This has been frequently practised by writers, who have succeeded in one or two works, while the failure of their other productions appears to have given them a literary hypochondriasm. Such a Prefacer, first, informs us, that he is above the reach of censure; and censure therefore redoubles it's vigilance. Secondly, that he has already received the approbation of the discerning; that is to say, five or six gentlemen, who he admits to his manuscript recitatives. And thirdly, that he cares very little for the mob; which is a kind expression for those who exchange sterling money for counterfeit genius. To such, we may answer, that no writer can ever be placed above censure; that after all his self-eulogies and self-consolations, his readers, and not the five or six gentlemen, can alone give him a solid reputation. I shall notice, as a model of this
"
morgue litteraire
"
Dr. Armstrong. His "Art of preserving Health" is one of the most terse, and classical compositions in the language; but most of his other verse, evinces nothing but barren labour. In his lively "Sketches," he acquaints us in the Preface, that
"he could give them much bolder strokes, as well as more delicate touches, but that he dreads the danger of writing too well, and feels the value of his own labour too sensibly, to bestow it upon the mobility."
This is pure milk, compared to the gall, in the Preface to his Poems. There he very modestly tells us, that
"he has at last taken the trouble to collect them. What he has destroyed, would, probably enough, have been better received by the great majority of readers. But he has always most heartily despised their opinion."
The truth is, he is only shewing an undue resentment for some unfortunate productions. To speak thus, is like a certain author, who, to excuse his miserable verses, said, his muse only sung for her own amusement; which really is no great crime, if she had not ventured to make herself ridiculous, by singing in the streets.
The public are treated with another kind of contempt, when an author, instead of
"destroying"
like Dr. Armstrong; professes to publish his puerilities. This Warburton did, in his pompous edition of Shakespeare. In the Preface he informed the public, that his notes
"were among his
younger amusements,
when he turned over these
sort of writers.
"
This ungracious compliment to Shakespeare and the public, merited that perfect scourging which our haughty commentator received from the sarcastic canons of criticisms. Scudery was a writer of some genius, and great variety. His Prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades. In his Epic Poem of Alaric, he says,
"I have such a facility in writing verses, and also in my invention, that a poem of double it's length would have cost me little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishments than mine."
And, to conclude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la Houssaie in the Preface to his Translation of the Prince of Machiavel, instructs us, that
"he considers his copy as superior to the original, because it is every where intelligible, and Machiavel is frequently obscure."
I have seen in the play bills of strollers, a very pompous description of the triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon; had a prudent silence not anticipated imagination, the triumphant entry might have passed without exciting ridicule; and perhaps, one might not so maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered it's want of a lid. But having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To these imprudent authors, and actors, we may apply a Spanish proverb, which has the peculiar quaintness of that people;
Aviendo pregonado vino, venden vinagre;
having cried up their wine, they sell us vinegar.
A ridiculous humility in a Preface, is not less despicable. Many idle apologies were formerly in vogue for publication, and formed a literary cant, of which, now the meanest writers perceive the futility. A literary anecdote of the Romans has been preserved, which is sufficiently curious. One Albinus, in the Preface to his Roman History, intercedes for pardon for his numerous blunders of phraseology; observing that they were the more excuseable, as he had composed his history in the Greek language, with which he was not so familiar as his maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies him on this; and justly observes, that our Albinus had merited the pardon he solicits, if a decree of the senate had compelled him thus to have composed it, and provided he could not have obtained a dispensation. Are the commission of faults to be forgiven, which were voluntarily committed? The confession of the ignorance of the language we employ, is like that excuse which some writers form for composing on topics, of which they acknowledge their inability. A reader's heart is not so easily mollified; and it is a melancholy truth for literary men, that the pleasure of abusing an author is generally superior to that of admiring him. One appears to display more critical acumen than the other, by shewing, that though we do not chuse to take the trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius than the author. These suppliant Prefacers are described by Boileau.
Un auteur a genoux dans une humble Preface
Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace;
Il ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrité,
Qui lui fait son procès de pleine autorité.
IMITATED.
Low in a humble Preface authors kneel;
In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel.
Callous, the irritated judge is seen
To use him—as he used the magazine.
The most entertaining Prefaces in our language, are those of Dryden. They exhibit numberless graces of a facility of ideas, and roll on with a fluency of style, forming so many pleasing conversations of the author with his reader. He occasionally intersperses little characteristical strokes of himself, and interests us in his momentary quarrels and vanities; and though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that they were merely formed,
"To raise the volume's price a shilling,"
yet these were the earliest commencements of English criticism, and the first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of readers, and to form a national taste. Dryden has had the candour to acquaint us with his secret of prefatory composition; for in that one to his Tales, he says,
"the nature of preface-writing is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Montaigne."
There is no great risk in establishing this observation as an axiom in literature; but, perhaps, there may be some danger in following it. However, should a Preface loiter behind the reader's fancy, it is never difficult to ged rid of lame persons, by escaping from them. The reader may make a Preface as concise as he chuses.
It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable colours, in this useful page, without incurring the contempt of egotism. After a writer has rendered himself conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers are not displeased to hear something relative to him, from himself. Mr. Hayley, in the Preface to his Poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in his personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to literature, as the only mode by which he could render himself of some utility to his country. The animation of the whole passage is a testimony of the zeal of it's writer; and who, recollecting the perseverance of his studies, the justness of his taste, and the elegance of his verse, can refuse the wreath of poetical honour? There is a modesty in the Prefaces of Pope, even when this great poet collected his immortal works; and in several other writers of the most elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their happy successors to imitate, and inferior writers to contemplate with awe.
I conclude by observing, that there is in Prefaces a due respect to be shewn to the public, and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self-dignity, will not inspire any reverence in others; and the ebriety of vanity will be sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the dreams of self-love. If we dare not attempt the rambling Prefaces of a Dryden, we may still entertain the reader; and sooth him into good humour, for our own interest. This, perhaps, will be best obtained, by making the Preface (like a symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the work itself. The mind thus attuned into a proper harmony of tone, will respond to the emotions we are preparing to excite, and feel the want of our work, as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON DIARIES, SELF-BIOGRAPHY, AND SELF-CHARACTERS.
THE study of Biography is a recent taste in Britain. The art of writing lives has been but lately known; and it was, therefore, an usual complaint with the meagre Biographers of the last century, when their subject was a man of letters, that his life could not be deemed very interesting, since he, who had only been illustrious in his closet, could not be supposed to afford any materials for the historian. The life of a prime minister, or the memoirs of a general, as they contained the detail of political intrigues and political opposition; battles or stratagems; were considered to afford happier opportunities for a writer to display the ability of his literary powers, the subtilty of his discernment, and the colouring of his descriptions.
But as the human mind became the great object of our inquiry, and to detect and separate the shades of the passions the great aim of the Biographer; reflecting men perceived, that the philosopher, like other men, had his distinct characteristics. The physical situation of a human being influences his moral and metaphysical state; he who has consumed his years in solitude, will have another class of ideas than he who has been habituated to the frivolous or busy ranks of men; he who has been always a lover, will have a character different from a satirist; he whose range of meditation has been circumscribed by mean occupations and little variety, whatever be the energy of his mind, will be a different being to that mortal who has enlarged the circle of his feelings; has stored his mind with infinite variations, and embraced and retained whatever he saw, wherever he went.
It has now become the labour of criticism, to compose the life of an author; and no writer can now successfully accomplish his Biographic attempts, unless he comes with a portion of that genius, the history of whose mind he records; he must possess a flexibility of taste, which, like the cameleon, takes the colour of that object on which it rests.
Every man, in whatever department he moves, has passions, which will vary even from those who are acting the same part as himself. Our souls, like our faces, bear the general resemblance of the species, but retain the particular form which is peculiar to the individual. He who studies his own mind, and has the industry to note down the fluctuations of his opinions, the fallacies of his passions, and the vacillations of his resolutions, will form a journal to himself peculiarly interesting, and probably, not undeserving the meditations of others. Nothing which presents a faithful relation of humanity, is inconsiderable to a human being. I have often observed, with surprise, how some pass their days in noting the revolutions of the seasons, the rain and the sunshine; the more important occupations of becoming acquainted with their own mind, has never once occurred to them, while they held the weather glass in their hand.
There once prevailed, and perhaps, it may not be yet quite abolished, the custom of a man's journalising his own life. Many of these journals yet remain in their MS. state, and some, unfortunately for journal-writing, have been published. We are not, however, to decide on the nature of a work by the ineptitude of it's performance The writers of these Diaries were not philosophers, for the age was not philosophic. Too often they were alchemists, and sometimes considered themselves as magicians. Some only registered the minutest events of domestic life. Dates of birth, and settlements of marriage, may be pardoned to the individual; but to give the importance of history to the progress of a purge, and to return divine thanks for the cutting of a corn, (and the edited journal of Elias Ashmole contains few other facts,) is giving importance to objects which should only be observable in the history of any other animal, but man. I am acquainted with a worthy gentleman, who, for this half century, is performing the same labours. He can tell where he dined fifty years past, and accompany the information with no concise critique. When he takes one of these little volumes down, he applies to himself the observation of Martial, and says, he has learnt the art of living life twice over. The pleasures of memory are delicious; it's objects must, however, be proportionate to the powers of vision, and a poor, bad, or excellent dinner, is an object sufficiently delightful, or terrible, to give play to the recordatory organs of this Diarist. I have remarked, however, one thing from his contemptible narrative. He resolved to distinguish the happy circumstances of his life in red ink. In looking over his Diaries, notwithstanding the obscurity of his situation, and the humility of his desires, I cannot find that his pen was often dipt in the crimson ink of felicity.
An observation may be made on the diurnal page. He who can, without reserve or hesitation, form such a journal, may be safely pronounced an honest man. Few great men, and no villain, can pursue, with any regularity, a series of their actions; not for want of patience, but of courage; could a Clive, or a Cromwell, have composed a Diary? Neither of these men could suffer solitude and darkness; at the scattered thoughts of casual reflection they started; what would they have done, had memory marshaled their crimes, and arranged them in the terrors of chronology? These Diaries form that other Self, which Shaftesbury has described every thinking being to possess; and which, to converse with, he justly accounts the highest wisdom. When Cato wishes that every man had a glass window in his breast, it is only a metaphorical expression for such a Diary.
There are two species of minor Biography which may be discriminated; detailing our own life, and pourtraying our own character. The writing our own life has been practised with various success; it is a delicate operation; a stroke too much may destroy the effect of the whole. If once we detect an author deceiving or deceived, it is a livid spot which infects the entire body. To publish one's own life has sometimes been a poor artifice to bring obscurity into notice; it is the extravagance of vanity, and the delirium of egotism. When a great man leaves some memorial of his days, his deathbed sanctions the truth, and the grave consecrates the motive. There are certain things which relate to ourselves, which no one can know so well; a great genius obliges posterity when he records them. But they must be composed with calmness, with simplicity, and with sincerity; the Biographic Sketch of Hume, written by himself, is a model of attic simplicity. This is the only production of a man of genius, which requires no graces of style or imagination. His pencil should give dignity to the common accidents of life, by it's clear and firm strokes; but he should be careful not to overshade and adorn his sketch, by a penciling too elaborate. If he is solicitous of charming and dazzling, he is not writing his life, but pourtraying the ideal adventurer of a romance. If he attempts to draw a resemblance between himself and a superior genius, let him be fearful of incurring the ridicule of those modern artists, who have painted themselves in the dress of Raphael and Rubens; this self-admiration forms a fatal contrast. Simplicity of language and thought, are sweet and natural graces, which every Self-biographer should study.
If, however, another Rousseau appears, one in whom imagination is a habit, he will, no doubt, express feelings tremblingly alive, with a correspondent delicacy in language; he will effuse his inflammable soul in burning periods. But his Biography is eloquence; it may, indeed, as it was with Rousseau, be only a natural harmony from the voice of truth; but it may also be the artificial tones of deceit. What in Rousseau was nature, may in others be artifice. Self-biographers, like Hume, who state facts with an attic simplicity, appear to speak unreservedly to the reader, and as if they proposed only to supply facts, for others to explain and embellish.
There is another species of minor Biography, which, I am willing to believe, could only have been invented by the most refined and the vainest nation. A literary fashion formerly prevailed with authors, to present the public with their own Character. I do not recollect such a custom among our more modest writers. The French long cherished this darling egotism; and there is a collection of these literary portraits in two bulky volumes. The brilliant Flechier, and the refined St. Evremond, have framed and glazed their portraits. Every writer then considered his Character as necessary as his Preface. I confess myself much delighted with these self-descriptions of persons whom no one knows. I have formed a considerable collection of these portraits, and have placed them in my cabinet of curiosities, under the title of strong likenesses of unknown persons. Their vanity is too prominent to doubt their accuracy.
I shall not excite the reader's curiosity, without attempting it's gratification; and if he chuses to see what now passes in the minds of many obscure writers, whom he never will know, let him attend to the following character, which may not be so singular as it appears.
There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a certain verse-maker, of the name of Cantenac, who, in 1662, published in the city of Paris, the above-mentioned volume, containing some thousands of verses, which were, as his countrymen express it,
de sa facon,
after his own way. He fell so suddenly into the darkest and deepest pit of oblivion, that not a trace of his memory would have remained, had he not condescended to give ample information of every particular relative to himself. He has acquainted us with his size, and tells us
"that it is rare to see a man smaller than himself. I have that in common with all dwarfs, that if my head only, were seen, I should be thought a large man."
This atom in creation then describes his oval and full face; his fiery and eloquent eyes; his vermil lips; his robust constitution, and his effervescent passions. He appears to have been a most petulant, honest, and diminutive being.
The description of his intellect, is the object of our curiosity, and I select the most striking traits in his own words.
"I am as ambitious as any person can be; but I would not sacrifice my honour to my ambition. I am so sensible to contempt, that I bear a mortal and implacable hatred against those who contemn me, and I know I could never reconcile myself with them, but I spare no attentions for those I love; I would give them my fortune and my life. I sometimes lie; but generally in affairs of gallantry, where I voluntarily confirm falsehoods by oaths, without reflection, for swearing with me is a habit. I am told that my mind is brilliant, and that I have a certain manner in turning a thought, which is quite my own. I am agreeable in conversation; though I confess I am often troublesome; for I maintain paradoxes to display my genius, which savour too much of scholastic subterfuges. I speak too often and too long; and as I have some reading, and a copious memory, I am fond of shewing whatever I know. My judgement is not so solid, as my wit is lively. I am often melancholy and unhappy; and this sombrous disposition proceeds from my numerous disappointments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose; and it has been of some use to me, in pleasing the fair sex; poetry is most adapted to persuade women; but otherwise it has been of no service to me, and has, I fear, rendered me unfit for many advantageous occupations, in which I might have drudged. The esteem of the fair, has, however, charmed away my complaints. This good fortune has been obtained by me, at the cost of many cares, and an unsubdued patience; for I am one of those, who, in affairs of love, will suffer an entire year, to taste the pleasures of one day."
This Character of Cantenac has some local features; for an English poet would hardly console himself with so much gaiety. The Frenchman's attachment to the ladies, seems to be equivalent to the advantageous occupations he had lost. But as the miseries of a literary man, without conspicuous talents, are always the same at Paris, as in London, there are some parts of this Character of Cantenac, which appear to describe them with truth. Cantenac was a man of honour; as warm in his resentment as his gratitude; but deluded by literary vanity, he became a writer in prose and verse, and while he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy example for certain volatile, and fervent spirits, who, by becoming authors, either submit their felicity to the caprices of others, or annihilate the obscure comforts of life, and like him, having
"been told that their mind is brilliant, and that they have a certain manner in turning a thought,"
become poets, and complain that they are
"often melancholy, owing to their numerous disappointments."
Happy, however, if the obscure, yet too sensible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoyment of a single day. But for this, a man must have been born in France.
ON THE CHARACTER OF DENNIS THE CRITIC.
Since this essay was composed, I have observed a very copious article in the Biographia Brittanica, relative to this critic. No alterations have been made in the present character; for nothing contained in this essay, will be found in the Biographia, where Dennis has received too much honour.
IT is an observation frequently made, by men of letters in conversation, whenever some renowned critic is mentioned, that
"he was a very ill-natured man."
An observation which is fully verified by facts; so that sometimes we are nearly tempted to suppose, that ill-nature is the spirit of criticism, The verbal or minor critics, are persons of the slenderest faculties, and the most irascible dispositions. What can we hope from men who have consumed thirty pages in quarto, on the signification of one little word, and after this insane discussion, have left the unhappy syllable to the mercy of future literary frenzy?
But there is a species of critics, who rather attach themselves to modern, than to ancient writers; and who pursue and settle on a great genius; as summer flies attack the tails of the best fed horses. The more fervid the season, and the plumper the horse, the livelier is the attack. They are born for the torment of the ingenious, and the gratification of the malicious of their age. It has too often happened, that a superior writer has been mortified during his whole life, by such a painful shadow; and the wreath, which the public would not otherwise have refused, has been frequently with-held, till it only covered the monumental bust. The ancestors of these critics appear to have flourished in the days of Terence, and this poet has distinguished them by the honourable title of the
Malevoli.
Zoilus, who has left them his name, the patriarch of
"true criticism,"
as Swift calls their talent, fell a martyr to their cause; for this great man was either burnt, or crucified, or stoned.
In the person of Dennis, we may contemplate the character of these disturbers of literary repose. Of Dennis little appears to be known; this essay may, perhaps, add something to that little; for accident led me to an examination of his writings; writings, which, though now rarely known, once made a considerable figure in English literature, and which lately have been recommended by Johnson, with more good-nature than good-taste.
The mind of Dennis was endowed, not with refinement, but with subtlety; not with correctness, but with minuteness; not with critical judgment, but with critical erudition. A prominent feature in his character, was that intellectual quality, called common sense, which would have rendered him an useful citizen. A virtue in a sadler, but a vice in a critic. In literature, common sense is a penurious faculty, of which all the acquisitions are mean, and of little value. If we allow him these qualities, we must utterly deny him that sensibility of taste which feels the charms of an author, by a congeniality of spirit; that quick apprehension which may occasionally point out the wanderings of genius, but which oftener confirms the pleasures we feel, by proving their propriety; nor had he that flexibility of intellect which yields to the touch of the object before him; before he ventured to be pleased, he was compelled to consult Aristotle.
His learning was the bigotry of literature. It was ever Aristotle explained by Dennis. But in the explanation of the obscure text of his master, he was led into such frivolous distinctions, and tasteless propositions, that his works deserve inspection, as examples of the manners of a true mechanical critic. While his admiration exhales itself in frigid raptures, amidst his extravagant panegyric, he appears frequently to be ignorant of the real value of the object he appreciates. Often, indeed, his pursuits conducted him to beautiful forms; but it would seem that they took a new and monstrous figure beneath his disordered vision; to every thing he examines, he adds something of his own; and the genius of Homer would sink, blended with the dullness of Dennis.
That our critic was much noticed by the public, would be a national accusation, which I am far from alledging. Several singular coincidencies alone gave the ephemeron critic his temporary existence. Criticism was a novelty at that period of our literature. He flattered some great men, and he abused three of the greatest; this was one mode of securing popularity; because, by this contrivance, he divided the town into two parties; and the irascibility and satire of Pope and Swift, were not less serviceable to him, than the partial panegyrics of Dryden and Congreve. If insulted genius had not noticed Dennis, Dennis in vain would have insulted genius. Sometimes his strictures, though virulent, were just; even Zoilus, doubtless, detected many defects in Homer. But such criticisms are only a kind of platepowder, very useful to repolish the works of genius. The performances of our critic appear never to have been popular; and this fact is recorded by himself. Of the favourable opinion he entertained of his own powers, and the public neglect they received, when not supported by the malignant aid of satire, the following passages will sufficiently prove. In his dedication of his Miscellaneous Tracts to the Earl of Scarborough, he observes,
"if I had writ only the first treatise, I believe, that upon reading it, you will be of opinion, and far be presumption from that belief, that I had deserved better of the commonwealth of learning, than the authors of so many sonorous trifles, who have been
too much encouraged,
while
I have been too much neglected.
The position, which is the subject of it, viz. That religion is that which gives principally to great poetry it's spirit, it's sublimity, it's vehemence, and it's strongest enthusiasm, is
very clearly proved.
"
One more specimen may be necessary. He adds,
"that though criticism has flourished for 2000 years, descending from antient Greece and Rome, to modern France and Italy, yet that neither Greece, nor Rome, nor France, nor modern Italy, has treated of this important point; but that it was
left for a person who has the honour of being your lordship's countryman,
to assert it, and demonstrate it. If what I have said may seem to some persons, into whose hands these sheets may happen to fall, to have too great a tincture of vanity in it, your lordship knows very well, that
persons so much and so long oppressed as I have been,
have been always allowed to say things concerning themselves, which in
others
might be
offensive.
"
There is a degree of vanity and vexation in these extracts, of which the former is only excuseable for the latter. Excuseable, because the consideration is melancholy, that those who devote themselves to literary pursuits, and who may never know their deficiencies, should become, in the imbecillity of age, the miserable victims of their unfortunate ignorance. His vanity we know was excessive, and this oppression, of which he complains, might not be less imaginary than his alarm of being delivered over to the French, for the composition of a tragedy that could never be read. Dennis undoubtedly had laboured with zeal, which could never meet a reward; and perhaps, amidst his critical labours, he turned often, with an aching heart, from their barren contemplation, to that of the social comforts he might have derived from his paternal saddles.
His occasional strictures on popular works had certainly a transient season. Such criticisms were assisted by the activity of envy, and by the supineness of indolence. These also were his best productions, but I must still affirm that they were the best productions of a dull writer. A beautiful tragedy may be composed, which may serve the purposes of the Dennises; and it's errors may fill their voluminous pamphlet; but also, it is very possible to construct a tragedy which would famish the Dennises, and at the same time be destitute of whatever can impart delight to the lover of poetry. Connoisseurs are to be gratified; but there is a frivolity in connoisseurship, which could enchain the wing of an eagle with a slight texture of silk.
Dennis aspired also to original composition; but after a very fair and patient attempt to peruse his works, I desisted. His verse is the verse of one who has learnt poetry, as the blind we know may practice the art; a mechanical operation performed by substantives and adjectives. His sentiments are wild, and his lines irregular; turgid expressions in rumbling verse; the painful throes of a muse, who is made to produce monsters against the designs of nature. Such versifiers are well described by Denham in this line; their works are
"Not the effect of poetry, but pains."
One of his curious epithets of a pair of turtles, is
"venereal turtles,"
for I suppose, the turtles of Venus. Yet Dryden, with the usual partiality of friendship, deludes Dennis by eulogies on his poetry, and, in one of his Letters, published by our author, advises him to apply himself to the pindaric. After this, I believe, Dennis produced his long rambling Ode in praise of Dryden, which, perhaps, equals the worst of Cowley's.
His prose has little animation, except when he warms into abuse. His conceptions, indeed, were never delicate; but sometimes their grossness is striking; as what he says of Puns, in one of his Letters,
"there is as much difference between the silly satisfaction which we have from a quibble, and the ravishing pleasure which we receive from a beautiful thought, as there is betwixt a faint salute, and fruition."
His criticisms are often so many castles in the air, for almost in every work he is proposing and explaining some fantastical system. In his long treatise on modern poetry, he labours to shew, that the strong interest which the ancients felt in their poetry, was derived from that use of religion which their poets employed; and therefore, he concludes, that if religion is introduced into our poems, modern poetry will rival the ancient. But how false this system is, criticism and experience have now positively decided. Religion is too aweful an object for the religious to permit human inventions to sport with; and the philosopher will acknowledge, that excellence and omnipotence not conceivable by finite faculties, are degraded and enfeebled by human ideas and human language. Polytheism was a religion well adapted to poetical fancies; since nothing can be more poetical than an endless train of beings, diversified in their characters, and distinguished by their emblems. The brilliancy of imagination, the gaieties of description, and the conflict of the passions, alike formed a human interest in the deities of the ancients. But the unity of our religion teaches only the lesson of obedience, and throwing a veil over the mysterious deity, would consider description as impiety, and silence, as the only expression of the human passions.
Having concluded what I had to observe, on the literary character of Dennis, I shall now consider his moral one. The lesson may not prove uninstructive, for we shall have an opportunity of contemplating how an ill-natured critic, is an ill-natured man, and that the perversions of the head, are so many particles of venom which fly from the heart.
The magisterial decisions of criticism, may, I suspect, communicate a personal importance to it's author. Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first writers of the age, it appears, that Dennis could not sit at a table, or walk down a street, without exerting the despotic rudeness of a literary dictator. The brutal violence of his mind, was discoverable in his manners; an odd mixture of frantic enthusiasm, and gross dullness. Pride now elevated, and vaunting, now depressed and sore. How could the mind that devoted itself to the contemplation of master pieces, only to reward it's industry, by detailing to the public, their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous expression of sensibility? Pope's celebrated description of the personal manners of our critic, is an exact representation.
Lo! Appius reddens at each word you speak;
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry:
Dennis had so accustomed himself to asperity, and felt with such facility and force, the irritation he gave and he received, that without having left, on record but the suspicion of one immoral action, (for it is said he stabbed a man at college) we suspect the improbity of his heart, when we recollect the licentiousness of his pen. But this has ever been the characteristic of this race of critics. They attach to the writer they attack, an inveteracy, which is not permitted by common humanity. From their darkened closet, they suppose, that the affairs of civil life are suspended, in an aweful pause, for their decisions; and they think, that when they have discovered the want of unity in a tragedy, that, in consequence, the same want is immediately to take place among the public.
A critic resembling Dennis, was Gaçon, in France. This Zoilus reproached La Motte with his blindness, and Dennis cruelly censured the feeble frame of Pope. Young, in his second Epistle to Pope, sarcastically alluded to Dennis, in these words,
"My narrow-minded satire can't extend
To Codrus' form, I'm not so much his friend;
Himself should publish that (the world agree)
Before his works, or in the pillory."
Gaçon wrote
"satyrical discourses on all kinds of subjects,"
and compiled a volume of calumnies against the poet Rousseau, which he entitled an Anti-Rousseau;
Anti
was long a favourite title to the works of such critics. Whenever there appeared a great genius, he immediately found an antipode.
An anecdote, little known relative to Dennis, will close his character. It appears, that the Provoked Husband was acted for his benefit, which procured him about a hundred pounds. Thomson and Pope generously supported the old critic, and Savage, who had nothing but a verse to give, returned them poetical thanks, in the name of Dennis. When Dennis heard these lines repeated (for he was then blind) his critical severity, and his natural brutality, overcame that grateful sense he should have expressed, of their kindness and their elegance. He swore
"by G— they could be no one's but that
fool
Savage's."
This, perhaps, was the last peevish snuff from the dismal torch of criticism, for two days after was the redoubted Dennis numbered with
"the mighty dead."
Criticism has thus been often only the natural effect of bad dispositions; when severe, if founded on truth, it is not blamed; but this truth includes the idea of a critic convincing his reader, that he has a just taste for the beauties of a composition; for that censure which only takes a partial review of a work, must be defective. There is a duty we owe to the public, when we defend the cause of taste, but at the same time, there is a duty we owe to the author. A skilful censor will perform his task by a happy combination of humanity and criticism; and it is elegantly said of Boileau, by Voltaire, that the honey which this bee extracted from the flowers, softened the sharpness of the wound he inflicted.
A critic is only the footman of a man of genius, and should so far respect his master, as not to suffer the torch of criticism, which he carries before him, to scorch, but only to enlighten.
ON ERUDITION AND PHILOSOPHY.
IT is necessary to discriminate between Men of Erudition, and Men of Philosophy. We must employ the French word
Erudit,
for want of a synonimous appellative.
A numerous class of students devote their days to researches in almost every species of knowledge; and without any profundity of observation, or impulse of genius, collect bodies of facts, which may serve as materials for literary speculation. But of these, few have invigorated their reason, improved the finer sensations of the mind, or seised on those graces which delight in elegant composition. We are at once astonished and disgusted at their vast reading; they seem to know every thing that requires not to be known.
With them, persevering study stands in lieu of extensive genius, and a long memory in place of a bright fancy. It is not who has greater talents, but who has read most. Philosophy consists of reflection; Erudition of reading. As one man cannot read much more than another, in the same given time, the Erudits, at a certain period of life, are, therefore, all nearly equal, in point of ability. It is not so in Philosophy; there one man in a year may reach farther, than another in all his life; Time, therefore, may make an Erudit, but it is Genius only which can form a Philosopher.
When the elaborate labours of an Erudit, are at length published, it is discovered, that he has no skill in the art of composition. Such writers never become public favourites; their eye never dwells on an image which might enliven, or their ear on a cadence which might harmonise, a period This numerous race of literati, have no conception of that delight in composition, without which, the writer is in vain learned. Some consider the pleasures of literature as not only superfluous, but criminal; and that a reflection, they might happen to make, would only insult their reader's understanding. An annalist is therefore preferred to an historian; Hume is censured, for intermingling with his lucid narrative, his acute reflections; and they affirm that they are capable of reflecting for themselves. But this is neither modesty nor truth.
Among reasoning men, such students have occasioned a great odium to literature; and if, as it cannot be denied, the pursuits of letters have been often satirised, it has been owing to their laborious trifling, and impertinent information. Montaigne has declaimed against them, in various parts of his works;
See particularly his Chapter on Pedantry.
and, I lament, has in this invective, involved the more amiable studies. A writer of imagination can do whatever he chooses, but a reader of judgment will not approve of all that he finds in such a writer, no more probably, than the writer did himself. It is not, indeed, sufficient to write about, but to reason on antiquity; and a student hardly merits the honours of learning, whose science consists in an arid knowledge of words, or customs, and who renders some of the most pleasing investigations repulsive to men of taste. Erudition is a rod in the hand of a Prideaux, and a sceptre in the hand of a Gibbon.
Do we not abuse too often the word learning? He is honoured with the title, who has only retained by rote, obsolete customs, extinct characters, and whatever relates to past ages. But he who is more solicitous of familiarising himself to his own times, and is conversant with whatever relates to his own century, who has little by rote, and a great deal by thinking, him we degrade to a lower department, and we call him a man of reading. He who hazards not a word in his latinity, but which is authorised by the use of Cicero, is saluted as a scholar; yet should another not be quite so lexicographic in his composition, but as eloquent as Cicero, we should consider him as of inferior learning to his pedantic rival. If a classical scholar, versifies in Greek, an English poem, which, in the most favourable view, is only acting well the school-boy in the maturity of life, we dignify him with eulogies, which the true poet, he versifies, could not more have merited. For my part, I only consider as learning that which a man knows by reflection; for that only is of any utility to the individual and the public. It is of no consequence to
remember,
that such a word is to be found in Cicero; that the name of one barbarian, succeeded the name of another barbarian, on barbarous thrones; that such fashions prevailed in the reign of such a monarch; and all that multifarious minute trifling which constitutes what most term
learning.
To
reason
on such particulars is at least an attempt to enlighten, but to
remember
them is nothing. There is more ingenuity in unriddling enigmas, and in writing acrostics, than some, who are considered as eminent scholars, exert in their literary labours. It is as rare to find among men of genius, an Erudit, as among Erudits to discover a man of genius.
Such are they who study fourteen hours a day, and indefatigably push on their heavy systems throughout life. Schioppius detected 500 blunders in 120 pages of Scaliger; and Holstenius discovered 8000 in Baronius! Madame Dacier affirmed she had read Aristophanes 200 times; and one Berlugerius was so insane a reader of Homer, that he was excommunicated for reading him at church. He at last, with restless impatience, undertook an excursion to the fields of Troy, but is supposed to have lost his way. One cannot but smile at the manner with which one of this venerable fraternity closes his History of the World;
"in my second book"
(says he)
"the world may judge by my reflections and remarks, whether I have discernment and genius."
The school of low commentators is admirably depicted, by the terse and lively taste of Armstrong.
"The strong-built pedant, who both night and day
Feeds on the coarsest fare the schools bestow,
And crudely fattens at gross Burman's stall."
Many are familiar with the Latin and the Grecian compositions, whom the Latins and the Greeks, full of taste and sensibility, would never have admitted into their society.
Men of an elevated fancy, have ever treated these industrious students with great contempt. Hobbes said, that had he read as much as some learned men, he had been as ignorant as them. The singular opinion of Descartes, and his pupil Malebranche, respecting Erudition, is one of their fanciful wanderings. These celebrated metaphysicians assert, that the proper study of man is truth, considered as it relates to himself; that this can only be found in Philosophy, and that history only presents us with trivial or imperfect copies. They conceived more truth to be contained in a moral precept, than in an historical fact; and they, therefore, preferred the cultivation of the understanding, to that of the memory.
This erroneous system has, indeed, been opposed; and Bolingbroke observes from an ancient, that
"History is Philosophy teaching by Example."
The censure of Malebranche will, however, be justly pointed at all histories composed by the mere Erudits. A mass of minute facts may prove the author to be a profound antiquary, but a shallow philosopher; and it may be observed of historical composition, that the philosopher generally begins at those periods where the antiquary concludes.
These Erudits are characterised by an enormous passion for collecting books. They were once called
Helluones Librorum.
But this book-gluttony is without digestion or taste.
The following notices of these collectors are curious; the first I find in the Pithaeana, in an explanatory note by Maiseaux.
"BIBLIOTAPHE. on appelle Bibliotaphe, ou
Tombeau des Livres,
celui qui ayant quelque Livre rare et curieux ne le communique á personne; mais le garde sous la clef, et l'enterre, pour ainsi dire, dans son Cabinet."
Dr. Wendeborn very judiciously observes, that
"the price given in public sales, for what are called
Editiones principes,
have often astonished him, and are not consistent with reason, which, however, with those who are called Dilettanti, may be out of the question."
Such literary imbecillities are transmitted from possessor to possessor, and are often exhibited at the public sales of the ingenious Mr. Leigh, whose hammer, has more than once, fallen from his hand, in astonishment at the prices he received. Koecherus has written a Treatise on Literary Idolatry. To conclude this note by a characteristical anecdote, I shall give one of Tom Hearne, which the late Mr. Warton has inserted in his Essay on Spenser. When this laborious antiquary published the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, he entered into a warm defence of the
old black letter,
and says, it is a reproach to us, that the B. L. which was so much in use in our grandfather's days, should be now, as it were, disused; and (he adds)
"though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing the English Bible of the year 1541, yet 'tis nothing equal to that I should take in turning over that of the year 1539!"
Indeed, such is the propensity of these students, that some great commentators on Shakespeare, it is said, are not allowed to visit the library at Cambridge, without a guard, as it has been discovered, that these amateurs are not the most honest men, amidst a
black letter
collection. A number of anecdotes prove this to have been an old habit.
An indulgence for the bibliomania, the taste for classing books, and the judgment shewn in their various editions, are doubtless innocent objects, till they render a man ridiculous. The owner becomes so deeply read in titles and indexes, that often he who had sufficient talent to form a catalogue, has conceived himself capable of adding a volume of his own. To these dull possessors of rich libraries, we cannot but observe, that the acquisition of the finest musical instruments, imparts not the art of the musician.
Such an one will, probably, be a man of mean talents, and slender judgment. He will collect every thing, till he embarrasses his feeble faculties; and amidst all the information possible, will stand irresolute and ignorant. Discordant opinions he perceives; but to elicit truth from their concussion, demands that skill and energy which few Erudits have possessed. When one is exercised in collecting facts, but a slight attention is required, and while the higher faculties are quiescent, the infatuated compiler considers them as active; but, in truth, it is only the hand that transcribes, not the head that thinks. The commonplace book is crouded with facts, while the mind makes not the acquisition of one solitary idea. This Erudition is a gross lust of the mind; it seises on every thing indiscriminately, yet produces nothing; it is passion without fruition.
A philosopher having the same topics, will select the leading circumstances only as his chief authorities. The art of rejecting, is not less important than the art of accumulating; half, says Hesiod, is more than the whole. He who wearies all, without wearying himself, smothers the sparks of his fire, by the heaps of his fuel; but a philosopher lights a little wood with the clear and durable flame of genius. It is, perhaps, not too bold, to affirm that the discoveries of meditation, are more numerous than those of reading; for meditation can penetrate into those ages where facts are unrecorded. It has been sometimes found, that a philosopher, without any other data than his own meditations, has accounted for circumstances, which have been confirmed by facts, long afterwards discovered by the tardy dullness of the torpid antiquary. Meditation anticipates evidence, or educes from evidence novel truths.
Let us contemplate these Erudits, as the critics of a classical author. Such critics are more delighted by an obscure expression in a fine sentence, than with the sentence itself; as oculists are not displeased when their friends have infirm eyes. But even the humble province of annotation, by a philosophic genius, becomes no contemptible labour; and Johnson's notes, which are not the most esteemed by his unworthy fraternity, frequently appear like an accidental wave rolling with vehemence down a stagnant stream.
Those violent panegyrics with which they idolise an author, are as insincere, as they are disgustful. When a pedant throws an offering of flowers, on the altar of the Graces, he acts not with the ardour, but the hypocrisy of devotion. We have seen these Erudits bring forward some forgotten writer, and who deserved to be so, with a pomp of eulogium that the greatest cannot merit; and even the legitimate applause due to celebrated authors, they render ridiculous. These ponderous minds have been well described by Voltaire, when he observes of Dacier,
Qu'il connoissoit tout des anciens hors la grace et la finesse.
Sensibility of taste rarely directs their choice of an author; but merely the accidental collection of a number of notes, and often a more trivial circumstance. We have had new editions of obsolete writers, because their commentator was born in the same town, or in the same kingdom. Authors have been more frequently given for the notes, than what should be, the notes for the author. Thus Duchat published editions of several obscure writers, because, having directed his researches to the middle ages, he was desirous to discharge his adversaria on the public. Scaliger prefered Virgil to Homer, because Virgil was his fellow-countryman, and Dacier prefered Homer to all past and future poets, because he was the most ancient.
He who has grown hoary in Erudition, becomes untractable by his vanity. He regards his hourly discoveries with a spirit of self-exultation, which places him far above the attainments of the philosopher. He who is directed by reason, and relies more on his thinking, than his Erudition, makes few, and often late, discoveries; he who cultivates taste, often turns, with displeasure, from unimportant topics; but he who collects and arranges facts, felicitates himself with new and facile acquirements, and as he explores the interminable desert of Erudition, amasses a vast and mingled treasure, and exults in an apparent splendour. Milton describes the Erudit, who, he says,
"Uncertain and unsettled still remains;
Deep verst in books, and shallow in himself;
Crude, or intoxicate, collecting toys,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Paradise Regained.
"
Whenever learning is made to consist in words or facts, it is amusing to observe it's effects operating on it's votarists. The insolence of an antiquary has no parallel, whenever a subject congenial to his studies is agitated; because, having, with much commendable pains, and many patient years, traced the object through all it's possible connections, he knows whatever can be urged, and is conscious that the speaker cannot have acquired more than himself.
Of Anthony Wood, Bishop Nicholson observes, in his English Historical Library, that
"he had his share of that
peevishness
and
austerity
(both in his style and manner) which is commonly incident to
antiquaries.
This gives birth to many extravagancies of lettered vanity; and I have observed two recondite antiquaries, kindling in dispute, while one had, perhaps, only a month's, or a day's more reading than his adversary. It is thus also with linguists. No class of students have more exalted notions of their talents, than good linguists; for having perfected themselves in the verbal science, they consider that words are science itself, and do not recollect that they are but the keys of the gates. I knew a linguist who affected to speak lightly of Voltaire, because he could not pronounce English, as well as our master of languages; and another, who having compiled a grammar, dedicated it to the nation, who honour original genius, and boast of a Newton.
Such is the character of those who would place a convenient limit to the human faculties, and satisfied with digging out from the graves of time, some dead fact, consider knowledge to be obtainable by the pertinacity of mechanical labour. But as a linguist may combine and know every word in a language, and yet never attain to any skill in composition, so the Erudit may heap fact upon fact, and, notwithstanding, never enlighten. Philosophy alone can throw the creative beam of light over the dark chaos of Erudition, and awaken into order and beauty the surrounding mass.
But even Philosophy will not be sufficient to render learning attractive; we must also employ the elegancies of composition, and cover the aridity of research with the freshest roses of taste. Most of the French academicians, in their learned memoirs, have claims on our applause and imitation; they instruct us to give the bloom of youth to the wrinkles of learning, and while we form an accurate and lucid recital of facts, to interweave reflections which interest, and to embellish with a style which enchants. We must have learning to collect facts; judgment to seise on those which converge to one point, and a brilliant taste to animate and adorn.
ON POETICAL OPUSCULA.
PLINY, in an Epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer studies, the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical composition, which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny, in the language of his celebrated translator. He says,
"these pieces commonly go under the title of Poetical Amusements; but these amusements have sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors, as works of a more serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and every thing, in short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."
This species of poetry can only exist in an age when refinement is introduced into literature, as well as into every thing else. We must, therefore, look for it, in the present day, among a people the most refined among it's neighbours; and we observe, that it has been carried to it's utmost perfection, by the French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry, under the apt title of "
La Poesie legere,
" and sometimes it has been significantly called "
Vers de Societé.
" The French writers have formed a body of this fugitive poetry, which no european nation can rival; and to which both the language and genius, of that once gay and polished people, appear to be greatly favourable.
The "
Poesies legeres
" are not, as their title would appear to import, merely compositions of a light and gay turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement and delight of society. Their subjects are illimitable; but it is required, that since the author is indulged to sport in small extent, and on a variety of topics, that the undescribable power of originality, gives a value to every little production. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of their approbation.
The versification cannot be too refined; melodious and glowing, it should display all the graces of poetry. Every delicacy of sentiment, must find it's delicacy of style, and every tenderness of thought, must be softened by the tenderest tones. Sometimes they should enchant by discovering the most voluptuous air, sometimes they should attract by displaying the splendid ornaments of diction, and sometimes they may please by the natural simplicity of ingenuousness. Nothing trite or trivial, either in the expression or the thought, must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must the ear be denied it's gratification, by a rough or careless verse. In these works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the charm.
The passions of the poet, may form the subjects of his verse. It is in these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems, the poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he speaks, here he acts. He makes a confident of the reader, interests him in his hopes, and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming the man. In these effusions the lover may not unsuccessfully urge his complaints; his mistress, at least, will have the consolation of not being wearied by voluminous grief. They may form a compliment for a patron, or a congratulation for an artist; a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.
These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of Manners; domestic descriptions are ever pleasing; and it is here that the poet colours the objects with all the hues of life, and the variations of nature. Reflections must, however, be artfully interwoven, in a compressed and rapid manner. Moral instruction must not be amplified; these are pieces devoted to the fancy; and while reflection is indulged, the imagination feels itself defrauded; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment must be conveyed in a verse. In the Grongar Hill of Dyer, we discover some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet contemplating the distant landscape, observes,
"A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little, distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face,
Ey'd thro' Hope's deluding glass."
Moral reflections, which are usually obvious and tedious, if thus naturally educed, and rapidly struck off, contrast with great beauty the lighter and more airy parts.
It must not be supposed, that because these productions are concise, they have, therefore, the more facility; we must not consider the genius of a poet diminutive, because his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing. These compositions may, by the skill of the poet, be made to contain beauties of every kind; but what is even superior to beauty, and in what some of our finest poets have failed, is that grace, that colouring of fancy, that harmony of ideas, that deliciousness of sentiment, which, pervading every particle of the composition, is perceived by the sensibility of taste, while it eludes the analysing touch of criticism. These little pieces are susceptible of all the variety of poetical expression; from the silver notes of the pastoral flute, to the sonorous swell of the epic trumpet. They may be all delicacy, or all grandeur.
The poet, to succeed in these hazardous pieces, must be an amiable voluptuary; alike polished by an intercourse with the world, as with the studies of taste; to whom labour is negligence; refinement a science, and art a nature. Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity which seems peculiar to those, who, among other advantages, are accustomed to the elegance of the higher classes of society; I mean, however, among the few enlightened individuals of this description. Many of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have, therefore, often excelled in these poetical amusements, the attempts of some professed poets. France once delighted, and placed in the first rank of poetical taste, the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers, and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset. But these productions are more the effusions of taste, than genius; and it is not sufficient that the poet is inspired by the muse, but he must also suffer his concise page to be polished by the hand of the Graces. He must not hope to be crowned with laurels, but he may receive a wreath of flowers.
All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not been kindred to it's genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more airy taste was communicated to our poetry; but it was desultory, incorrect, and wild. It was the awkward essays towards refinement, which a rustic may be supposed to make. Among the minor poets of that period, we occasionally trace the versatile spirit of these poems. Waller, both by his habits, and his genius, was well adapted to excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is sometimes heavy and embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces; and he had drank of this burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are eminently airy and pleasing. We have few wriof this class, who can be proposed as models. A popular poet of this age has often delighted us with the delicate graces of his muse; and while we admire the felicity of his closes, he teaches us the value of a happy thought. But those minor poems, relating to domestic passions, and domestic manners, which might merit to be distinguished by the title of "VERS DE SOCIETE," appear still to be wanted; and a poet who should compose these fugitive pieces with felicity, might, even in the present day, be regarded as a new ornament to English poetry.
ON "THE ENLIGHTENED PUBLIC," AND "THE AGE OF REASON."
RICHARDSON makes a pleasing comparison of national virtues, which, says he, are first like the seed, which produces the blade, then the green ear, and lastly the ripe corn. A progressive state is observable in the moral, like that in the natural world, and may also be traced in the character of an individual, as well as in that of a people.
But it is not with the human head, as with the human heart. The perfection of any virtue is obtainable, but perhaps never that of knowledge; the actions of a hero are perfect, but the works of a scholar may in time be found erroneous; Alexander is still our hero, but Aristotle has ceased to be our preceptor. Learning is variable and uncertain, virtue is similar and permanent; an action of benevolence, or heroism, can never change in it's nature, but a system of philosophy, or a school of taste, must be annihilated by new philosophies and new tastes.
Some speculative moderns have formed extravagant notions of that almost unimaginable perfection, to which human knowledge is rapidly conducting us. Hartley, in one of his sublime and incomprehensible imaginations, leaves it to the knowledge of the next age to trace and comprehend. Some living philosophers, who are only adding the English density of thinking to the French subtilty of fancy, conjecture that we may so improve our organisation, as to extend our duration; that the mind may attain an infinite perfectibility; and that the intellectual faculties are transmissible from the parent to the son, as sometimes are the features and the habits. Philosophical conjecture rolling with this oscillatory motion, is merely an inebriation of poetry.
We are, however, incessantly reminded of the
enlightened
state of the public; but the testimony of authors becomes suspicious, for in persuading us that we are thus illuminated, they infer by implication that they are singularly so, since they give us very useful instruction. The expression was, I think, first the happy coinage of Voltaire, made current by his numerous disciples; Voltaire adored the public and himself; and this artful expression is at once imprinted with adulation and egotism.
It is certain that in former periods the human mind shot from a radical vigour, and flourished in the richest luxuriance. Among the ancients, notwithstanding they were heathens, the fine and mechanical arts have been considered to have exceeded our happiest efforts; and as for the intellectual powers and the moral duties, though most of the compositions of these ancients have been lost, yet enough have remained to serve as models for our greatest poets; to instruct our orators in the arts of eloquence; our historians in the composition of history, and to leave nothing for our moralists, but an expansion of the observations of Seneca and Epictetus.
Had one of our modern philosophers lived in those ages, would he not, in the enthusiasm of his meditations, have expressed the flattering sentiment now so prevalent; and throwing his glance into remote futurity, have prognosticated a saturnian age, when every citizen should be a philosopher, and the universe one entire Rome? But it is the error of men, who, presuming to describe at so vast an interval, imagine circumstances and connexions which have no existence; as it is often found that lands, which appeared united when observed remotely, are in reality eternally separated by the ocean.
Among the most sanguine, and the most singular of modern philosophers, is the worthy Abbè de Saint Pierre. The honesty of his heart exceeded the rectitude of his understanding. His project of
"An Universal Peace,"
by the infelicity of his style, could find no readers; a philanthropist as singular, but more eloquent, the celebrated Rousseau, embellished the neglected labour, enabled us to read the performance, and perceive it's humane imbecillity. It was no dull conception of a Dutch trader, who having inscribed on his sign the words
"Perpetual Peace,"
had painted under it, a church-yard. Our good Abbè had a notion that an age was not distant, when such would be the progress of that mass of light, which was daily gathering, that it would influence every species of knowledge, and penetrate to the lowest orders of society. This future generation is to be remarkable for the force of it's reason, and the severity of it's truth. It is therefore only to permit works of utility; to contemn the ornaments of eloquence, and the charms of poetry; but it may be necessary to observe, that our prophet was neither an orator, nor a poet. A literary anecdote is recorded, which at least proves his firm persuasion of this future age; and perhaps he was one of the very few prophets who believed in their own predictions. He was once present at the recitation of one of those works which are only valued for the graces of their composition, and the felicity of their manner. A performance of such taste would not therefore be read by the more reasonable beings of his metaphysical age. He appeared frigid and unmoved, while the audience was enraptured. His opinion was asked; he smiled, and said—
"It is a thing which is YET thought to be fine!"
Another of these chimerical, yet grand speculators, appears to me to have been the celebrated Leibnitz, who conceived the extravagant notion of forming one nation of all Europe; for he proposed to reduce Europe under one temporal power, in the Emperor, and under one spiritual, in the Pope; and to construct an universal philosophical language. This great scholar is an example of the fatal attachment which a superior mind may experience for a system of which it is blindly enamoured, and to which it sacrifices it's own sensations, and it's own convictions. Leibnitz was a genuine philosopher, and a friend to humanity; his project of an universal language evinces this; but having once fixed on a system, he yielded up that dearest interest to a philosopher, the prosperity of the human mind; for what tyrant could have forged more permanent chains for intellectual freedom, than placing man under two such powers? If this project had been possible to effect, the other of the philosophical language had been useless; philosophy then would not have been allowed a language.
He who thinks, will perceive in every enlightened nation, three kinds of people; an inconsiderable number instructed by reason, and glowing with humanity; a countless multitude, barbarous and ignorant, intolerant and inhospitable; and a vacillating people with some reason and humanity, but with great prejudices, at once the half-echoes of philosophy, and the adherents of popular opinion. Can the
public
be denominated
enlightened?
Take an extensive view among the various orders of society, and observe how folly still wantons in the vigour of youth, and prejudice still stalks in the stubbornness of age.
To trace the human mind as it exists in a people, would be the only method to detect this fallacious expression. The unenlightened numbers, who are totally uninfluenced by the few, live in a foul world of their own creation. The moral arithmetician, as he looks for the sum total of the unenlightened public, must resemble the algebraist, who riots in incalculable quantities, and who smiles at the simple savage, whose arithmetic extends not further than the number of three.
In a metropolis, we contemplate the human mind in all it's inflections. If we were to judge of men by the condition of their
minds,
(which perhaps is the most impartial manner of judging) we should not consult the year of their birth, to date their ages; and an intellectual register might be drawn up, on a totally different plan from our parochial ones. A person may, according to the vulgar era, be in the maturity of life, when by our philosophical epocha he is born in the tenth century. That degree of mind which regulated the bigotry of a monk in the middle ages, may be discovered in a modern rector. An adventurous spirit in a red coat, who is almost as desirous (to use the wit of South) to receive a kiss from the mouth of a cannon, as from that of his mistress, belongs to the age of chivalry, and if he should compose verses, and be magnificently prodigal, he is a gay and noble troubadour. A sarcastic philosopher, who instructs his fellow citizens, and retires from their society, is a contemporary with Diogenes; and he who reforming the world, graces instruction with amenity, may be placed in the days of Plato. Our vulgar politicians must be arranged among the Roundheads and Olivers, and Tom Paine himself is so very ancient as to be a contemporary of Shimei. The result of our calculations would be, that the enlightened public form an inconsiderable number.
It must however be confessed, that what knowledge has been accumulated by modern philosophy, cannot easily perish; the art of printing has imparted stability to our intellectual structures, in what depends on the mechanical preservation. Human science can no more be annihilated by an Omar. A singular spectacle has, therefore, been exhibited; and it is sometimes urged by those who contemplate, with pleasing astonishment, the actual progress of the human mind, as a proof of the immutability of truth, that in the present day, every enlightened individual, whether he resides at Paris, at Madrid, or at London, now thinks alike; no variation of climate, no remoteness of place, not even national prejudices, more variable and more remote than either, destroy that unanimity of opinion, which they feel on certain topics essential to human welfare.
This appears to be a specious argument in favour of the enlightened public. But we should recollect, that this unanimity of opinion, which so frequently excites surprise, is owing to their deriving their ideas from the same sources; at Paris, at Madrid, and at London, the same authors are read, and, therefore, the same opinions are formed.
Thus we account for this unanimity of opinion; and we may now reasonably enquire if
unanimity of opinion
always indicates
permanent truth?
It is certain that very extravagant opinions were once universally received; it becomes not an individual to affirm that some of our modern opinions are marvellously extravagant; we must leave them for the decision of posterity. We may, however, say to the greatest genius, look at what your equals have done, and observe how frequently they have erred. Reflect, that whenever an Aristotle, a Descartes, and a Newton appeared, they formed a new epocha in the annals of human knowledge; it is not unreasonable to add one, among your thousand conjectures, and say, that their future rivals may trace new connections, and collect new facts, which may tend to annihilate the systems of their predecessors. Is not opinion often local, and ever disguised by custom? is not what we call truth often error? and are not the passions and ideas of men of so very temporary a nature, that they scarce endure with their century? This enlightened public may discover that their notions become obsolete, and that with new systems of knowledge, and new modes of existence, their books may be closed for their successors, and only consulted by the curious of a future generation, as we now examine Aristotle and Descartes, Aristophanes and Chaucer. Our learning may no more be their learning, than our fashions will be their fashions. Every thing in this world is fashion.
It may also be conjectured, that amidst the multitude of future discoveries, the original authors of our own age, the Newtons and the Lockes, may have their conceptions become so long familiarised, as to be incorporated with the novel discoveries, as truths so incontestible, that very few shall even be acquainted with their first discoverers. It would therefore appear, that the justness, as well as the extravagance of our authors, are alike inimical to their future celebrity.
But this instability never attends the noble exertions of virtue. Whoever chuses to immortalise his name, by an action of patriotism, or of philanthropy, will meet the certain admiration of posterity. To render a service to another is in the power of the meanest individual; but to aggrandise the gentle affections into sublime passions, to rise from the social circle to the public weal, to extend our ordinary life through years of glory, is performing that which once raised men into demi-gods; but which, in the present age, would not only find little imitation, but much ridicule. Do I not use a very ridiculous expression, when I desire, that
"the Enlightened Public"
may be worthy of the title of
"the Virtuous Public?"
OF LICENSERS OF THE PRESS.
IN the history of human oppression, a prominent event will be that of the employing of a vigilant centinel on the thoughts, as well as on the bodies of authors. The institution of Licensers of the Press, or Censors of Books, was the last hope of despairing bigotry; and not only, for a considerable time, retarded the acceleration of philosophy, but may be said to have effected a temporary annihilation; for what author has so little vanity as to write what must be refused the honours of publication?
Had not several accidental circumstances established the freedom of the press, it might be difficult, by a retrograde calculation, to fix on that low degree, at which, to the present moment, popular opinion, with a somniferous stability, had rested. Europe had now been more barbarous than in her cloudiest ages; for the press had become an instrument, not to restrain, but to extend; not to undermine, but to prop; not to wrestle with, but to cherish those inhuman prejudices which were once dignified by the holy titles of Religion and Politics. A Locke and a Montesquieu had never existed for the world, and at this day we should have admired, like our predecessors, the subtilties of an Aquinas, and the doctrines of a Filmer. Our ideas had been fabricated in an inquisitorial forge, and though they would not have consisted of a variety of forms, they would not have wanted that heat which might have given durability.
The Inquisitors having long examined and deprecated a vast multitude of publications, which the freedom of foreign presses allowed, and their critical occupations after the revolution of Luther, becoming greater and more important at every hour, they were desirous of assisting those of their numerous adherents, who were fearful of employing their own eyes, and trusting to their own sensations, by preserving them in their antiquated cecity. It was now they invented the scheme of printing catalogues of prohibited books, which they called EXPURGATORY INDEXES. Almost every new work augmented these voluminous catalogues; and, perhaps, in some respect, they invited readers to publications which might not otherwise have attracted notice. It is curious to reflect on the use which the two parties made of them; for while the pious catholic crossed himself at every title, and frequently breathed an orison for the eternal damnation of the authors, the Heretics on the contrary would purchase no book which had not been inserted in these indexes. The Heretic had certainly a finer taste, and a more lively entertainment in reading, than the pious catholic; for the most animated and the most valuable authors, have found their way into these indexes. Nothing then, but orthodoxical dullness, was exempt from censure. Among the cruel absurdities of that day, is an edict from the French King, to forbid the unfortunate professor Ramus the reading of his own works, and which, so very frequently, is the only real pleasure some writers receive from their labours.
The venerable authors of these indexes, long, indeed, had reason to suppose, that a submissive credulity was attached to the human character; and, therefore, they considered that the publications of their adversaries required no other answer, than an insertion in their indexes. Literary controversy was threatened to be eternally annihilated, by this concise and commodious mode. They multiplied editions throughout Europe; but the Heretics as industriously reprinted them with ample prefaces, and useful annotations. In our country, Dr. James, of Oxford, republished an index, with proper animadversions. One of their portions included, a list of those Heretics whose heads were condemned as well as their works. It is curious to observe, that as these indexes were formed in different countries, the opinions were diametrically opposite to each other; the examiners in Italy, under the title of the Council of Trent, prohibited what those in the Netherlands admitted; and some inquisitors, who complained of the partial conduct of these catalogues, were, in their turn, placed by the confraternity in their indexes; retaliation succeeded retaliation. To the present moment such indexes are formed in Spain, and at Rome, where, in these archives of the dotage of bigotry, may be read, the names of every modern philosopher who has written to the present hour.
When these insertions were found of no other use, than to disperse the criminal volumes, the ecclesiastical arm was employed in burning them in public places; and among several anecdotes of sending authors to the flames before their time, Monnoie discovered in one of these sepulchral fires, that an edition of Josephus had been burnt, not, says he, because the ancient author was a jew, but that the translator was a jansenist. These literary conflagrations served the purposes of booksellers; and the publisher of Erasmus's Colloquies intrigued for the burning of the work, on purpose to raise the sale; and he sold 24,000. The curiosity of man is raised by difficulties, and it is with the freedom of the mind, as with that herb, which the more it is trodden on, grows the more vigorously.
The fancy of the poet, and the veracity of the historian, were alike amputated, by censors of books; a simile, or even an epithet, might send the immortal bard to the galleys, and as for the discernment and freedom to be expected in an historian, whose genius was first to be closeted with such an examiner, we may form an idea, by quoting the usual expression in the privileges. In Nani's History of Venice, it is allowed to be printed, because it contained
nothing against princes.
This mode of approbation shews either that princes were immaculate, or historians were ignorant or false. A book in Spain passes through six courts before it can be published; and in Portugal, it is said, through seven. A book in those countries is supposed to recommend itself to the reader, by the information that it is published with
all
the necessary privileges. The works of Locke and Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, &c. are at the present moment prohibited throughout Italy, and, I believe, in every catholic country; the favourite authors of Europe, must be obtained by secrecy, and read in concealment.
Our literary history has been so little perpetuated, either by tradition, or by record, that there are few individual topics which can be pursued through a concatenation of events. We glean facts in the scattered notices of foreign literature; but when we come to our own country, we find that a taste for this pleasing species of erudition, has never been much cultivated, though there have been periods which must have afforded ample materials. Johnson, who loved as much as the great Leibnitz, the events of literature, has commenced his lives of the poets, with a complaint of
"the penury of English biography."
Our authors have groaned under the leaden arm of Licensers of the Press, and no doubt many interesting facts have perished, which would have instructed the present generation. I shall ever preserve, with a religious care, one durable mark of that tyranny which once fixed it's talons on the English press. The Poems of Lord Brooke, if they cannot delight, accidentally instruct posterity in the value of freedom of thinking. In this book one is surprised at finding twenty of it's first pages deficient. Mr. Malone, by an entry in the MSS. of the Master of the Revels, has discovered that these pages contained a poem on religion, which was cancelled by the order of Archbishop Laud, who probably considered that religion ligion could not be secure in the hands of any one but an Archbishop.
The ignorance and stupidity of these censors, became as remarkable as their exterminating spirit. The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising-sun, in the first book of the Paradise Lost, we happen to know, had almost occasioned the suppression of that immortal epic. It was supposed to contain treason. The French have retained many curious facts of the singular ineptitude of these censors. Mallebranche said, that he could never obtain an approbation for his Research after Truth, because it was unintelligible to his censors; and at length Mezeray, the historian, approved of it as a book of geometry. Latterly in France, it is said, that the greatest geniuses were obliged to submit their works to the critical understanding of persons who had formerly been low dependants on some man of quality, and who appear to have brought the same servility of mind to the examination of works of genius. There is something, which, on the principles of incongruity and contrast, becomes exquisitely ludicrous, in observing the works of such writers as Voltaire, d'Alembert, Marmontel, and Raynal, allowed to be printed, and even commended, by certain persons, who had never printed any thing themselves but their names. One of these gentlemen suppressed a work because it contained principles of government, which appeared to him not conformable to the laws of Moses. Another said to a geometrician,
"I cannot permit the publication of your book; you dare to say, that between two given points, the shortest line is the straight line. Do you think me such an idiot as not to perceive your allusion? If your work appeared, I should make enemies of all those who find, by crooked ways, an easier admittance into court, than by a straight line. Consider their number!"
—I cannot vouch for the above anecdote; but I have heard, that one of these censors erased from a comedy of Beaumarchais, the asseveration
ma foi,
and instituted in it's place,
morbleu;
because, observed the profound critic, religion is less offended by this word than by the other. These appear trifling minutiae; and yet, like a hair in a watch, that utterly destroys it's progress, these little ineptiae obliged writers to have recourse to foreign presses; compelled a Montesquieu to write with a concealed ambiguity of phrase, and Helvetius to sign a retractation of his principles, which, adjoined to his celebrated work, L'Esprit, is at once an evidence which marks not less dishonour on timid philosophy, than on arrogant bigotry.
With the revolution, ceased, in England, the licences for the press; but it's liberty did not commence till 1694, when every restraint was taken off, by the firm and decisive tone of the Commons. It was granted, says our philosophic Hume,
"to the great displeasure of the King and his Ministers, who, seeing no where, in any government during present or past ages, any example of such unlimited freedom, doubted much of it's salutary effects, and probably thought, that no books or writings would ever so much improve the general understanding of men, as to render it safe to entrust them with an indulgence so easily abused."
And the present moment verifies the prescient conjecture of the philosopher. Such, indeed, is the existing licentiousness of our press, that some, not perhaps the most hostile to the cause of freedom, would not be averse to manacle authors once more with an IMPRIMATUR. It may be honestly urged, that the worst abuse of the press, is more tolerable than would be such a violation of national liberty; but this is certain, that it is not any more in the power of a despotic Minister to annihilate this freedom; because if the great instructors of mankind could find no other redress against the capricious tyranny of an Imprimatur, they would fly to foreign presses, and it would then happen, that England, which first diffused a spirit of true freedom in Europe, would be necessitated to receive it from those very nations on whom she had bestowed it. The profound Hume has declared, that
"THE LIBERTY OF BRITAIN IS GONE FOR EVER when such attempts shall succeed."
But I venture to assert, that this Liberty may become a beloved exile, but never an abdicated monarch; banish her from Britain, but while there exists an open press in America, and even among our cruel rivals the French, she will be reverenced at a distance, and will, at some future day, be received again on her natal shores, as our natural sovereign.
A virtuous monarch, like a virtuous author, will consider the freedom of the press as the organ of his people's felicity; for by that organ alone can the voice of truth resound to his throne. He will respect the language of the philosopher; and he will leave calumniators to the fate of all calumny; a fate similar to those, who having overcharged their arms, with the fellest intentions, find, that the death they intended for others, only in bursting, annihilates themselves.
ON READING.
SINCE writing is justly denominated an art, I think that reading claims the same distinction. To adorn ideas with elegance, is an act of the mind, superior to that of receiving them, and is the province of genius; but to receive them with a happy discrimination, is a task not less useful, and can only be the effect of a just taste.
Yet it will be found that a just taste is not sufficient to obtain the proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste rise from the perusal of the same book with very different notions; the one will not only have the ideas of the author at command, and strongly imbibe his manner, but will have enriched his own mind by a new accession of matter, and find a new train of sentiment awakened and in action. The other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of the pleasures of reading, nothing remains but a tumultuous sensation. He has only delighted himself with the brilliant colouring, and the mingled shadows of a variety of objects, while the other receives the impression not only of the colours and the shades, but the distinct grace, and the accurate forms of the objects.
To account for these different effects, we must have recourse to a logical distinction, which appears to reveal one of the great mysteries in the art of reading. Logicians distinguish between perceptions and ideas. Perception is that faculty of the mind which notices the simple impression of objects; but when these objects exist in the mind, and are there treasured and arranged as materials for reflection, then they are called ideas. A perception is like a transient sun-beam, which just shews the object, but leaves neither light nor warmth; while an idea is like the fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and powerful light.
Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is defective, and their studies unfruitful. This defect, however, arises from their indulging the facile pleasures of perceptions, to the laborious habit of forming them into ideas. We must not deceive ourselves. Perceptions require only the sensibility of taste, and their pleasures are continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas not only require the same power of taste, but an art of combination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers, which form no mean operation of the mind. Ideas are therefore labours; and for those who will not undergo the fatigue of labour, it is unjust to complain, if they come from the harvest with scarce a sheaf in their hands.
The numerous class of readers of taste, who only prefer a book to the odd trick at whist, have, therefore, no reason to murmur, if that which is only taken up as an amusement, should terminate like all amusements, in temporary pleasure. To be wiser and better, is rarely the intention of the gay and the frivolous; the complaints of the gay and the frivolous, are nothing but a new manner of displaying gaiety and frivolity; they are lamentations full of mirth.
There are secrets in the art of reading, which tend to facilitate its purposes, by assisting the memory, and augmenting intellectual opulence. Some, our own ingenuity must form, and perhaps every student, has an artificial manner of recollection, and a peculiar arrangement; as, in short hand, almost every writer has a system of his own. There are, however, some regulations which appear of general utility, and the few, my own observations have produced, I shall venture to communicate.
It is an observation of the elder Pliny, (who, having been a voluminous compiler, must have had great experience in the art of reading) that there was no book so bad, but which contained something good. It is necessary, however, to observe, that just and obvious as this reading axiom may appear, it requires a commentary to be understood. To read every book would be fatal to the interest of most readers; they who only seek in study for mere pleasure, would be continually disappointed; for the observation is only adapted to that phlegmatic perseverance which seems to find pleasure in mere study. He who only seeks for information, must be contented to pick it up in obscure paths, to mount rugged rocks for a few flowers, and to pass many days bewildered in dark forests, and wild deserts. The reader of erudition may therefore read every book. But he who only desires to gratify a more delicate sensation, who would only fill his heart with delicious sentiment, and his fancy with bright imagery, in a word, the reader of taste must be contented to range in more contracted limits, and to restrict himself to the paths of cultured pleasure grounds. Without this distinction in reading, study becomes a labour painful and interminable; and hence readers of taste complain that there is no term to reading, and readers of erudition that books contain nothing but phrases. When the former confine themselves to works of taste, their complaints cease, and when the latter keep to books of facts, they fix on the proper aliment for their insatiable curiosity.
Nor is it always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every book entire. Perhaps this task has now become an impossibility, notwithstanding those ostentatious erudits, who, by their infinite and exact quotations, appear to have read and digested every thing; readers, artless and honest, have conceived from such writers, an illusive idea of the power and extensiveness of the human faculties. Of many books it is sufficient to seise the plan, and to examine some of it's portions. The quackery of the learned, has been often exposed; and the art of quoting fifty books in a morning, is a task neither difficult nor tedious. There is a little supplement placed at the close of every volume, of which few readers conceive the utility; but some of the most eminent writers in Europe, have been great adepts in the art of index-reading. An index-reader is, indeed, more let into the secrets of an author, than the other who attends him with all the tedious forms of ceremony; as those Courtiers who pay their public devoirs at court, are less familiar with the Minister, than the few who merely enter the chamber of audience, and who generally steal up the back stairs, and hold their secret consultations with the Minister himself. I, for my part, venerate the inventor of indexes; and I know not to whom to yield the preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid open the nerves and arteries of a book.
It may be unnecessary also, to read all the works of an author, but only to attach ourselves to those which have received the approbation of posterity. By this scheme we become acquainted with the finest compositions in half the time those employ, who, attempting to read every thing, are often little acquainted with, and even ignorant of the most interesting performances. Thus of Machiavel, it may be sufficient to read his Prince and his History of Florence; of Milton nearly all his Poetry, little of his Prose, and nothing of his History; of Fielding's twelve volumes, six may be sufficient; and of Voltaire's ninety, perhaps thirty may satisfy. Of Lord Chesterfield's Letters, the third volume is the essential one, and concentrates the whole system. A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal car of an author of great celebrity, and when he ventures not to judge for himself, conceives, while he is reading the indifferent works of great authors, that the languor which he experiences, arises from his own defective taste. But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of mediocrity; for whenever an author attains to a facility in composition, the success of his preceding labours, not only stimulate him to new performances, but prejudice the public in their favour; and it is often no short period before the public, or the author, are sensible of the mediocrity of the performances.
On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of composition depend on the author; for there is something which a reader himself must bring to the book, that the book may please. There is a literary appetite which the author can no more impart, than the most skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet replied, that it was not his fault. It would indeed be very unreasonable, when a painter exhibits his pictures in public, to expect that he should provide spectacles for the use of the short-sighted. Every man must come prepared as well as he can. Simonides confessed himself incapable of deceiving stupid persons; and Balzac remarked of the girls of his village, that they were too silly to be deceived by a man of wit. Dullness is impenetrable; and there are hours when the liveliest taste loses it's sensibility. The temporary tone of the mind may be unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this circumstance. The mind communicates it's infirm dispositions to the book, and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those of his reader. There is something in composition, like the game of shuttlecock, where, if the reader does not quickly rebound the feathered cork, to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work falls extinct.
A frequent impediment in reading, is a disinclination in the mind, to settle on the subject; agitated by incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with pain that we admit those of the author. But it is certain, that if we once apply ourselves, with a gentle violence, to the perusal of an interesting work, the mind soon assimilates the subject; the disinclination is no more, and like Homer's chariot wheels, we kindle as we roll. The ancient Rabbins, who passed their days in their madrasses or schools, and who certainly were great readers of their most voluminous Talmud, advised their young students to apply themselves to their readings, whether they felt an inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they would find their disposition restored, and their curiosity awakened. Philosophy can easily account for this fact; it is so certain, and acts with such power, that even indifferent works are frequently finished, merely to gratify that curiosity which it's early pages have communicated. The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading, is expressed in a strong metaphor, by Mrs. Knowles, who said,
"he knows how to read better than any one; he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it."
We should hesitate to pronounce on a work of some merit, on the first perusal, for that is rarely attended by a proper relish. It is with reading as with wine; for connoisseurs have observed, that the first glass is insufficient to decide on it's quality; it is necessary to imbue the palate, to give it that raciness of relish, which communicates every latent quality, and enables us to judge as keenly as the two uncles of Sancho.
There are some mechanical aids in reading, which may prove of great utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescene of our early studies. Montaigne placed at the end of those books which he intended not to reperuse, the time he had read it, with a concise decision on it's merits; that, says he, it may thus represent to me, the air and general idea I had conceived of the author, in reading the work. He has obliged his admirers with giving several of these annotations. Of Young the poet, it is noticed, that whenever he came to a striking passage, he folded the leaf; and that at his death, books have been found in his library, which had long resisted the power of closing. A mode more easy than useful; for after a length of time, they must be again read to know why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by those, who note in a blank leaf, the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds; by these petty exertions at the most distant periods, may learning obtain it's authorities, and fancy combine it's ideas. Seneca, in sending some volumes to his friend Lucillius, accompanies them with notes of particular passages that, he observes, you who only aim at the useful, may be spared the trouble of examining them entire. I have seen books noted by Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page itself, which was his usual practice; and these volumes are precious to every man of taste. Somebody complained that the books he lent Voltaire were returned always disfigured by his remarks; but he was a true German writer of the old class.
A professional student should divide his readings into an
uniform
reading which is useful, and into a
diversified
reading which is pleasant. Guy Patin, an eminent physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this manner; and I shall quote his words. He says,
"I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other illustrious masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings. I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and these are my recreations."
We must observe these distinctions, for it frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and love of study, by giving too much into his diversified readings, may utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies.
An author is often cruelly mortified to find his work reposing on a harpsichord or a table, with it's virgin pages. Among the mortifications of the elegant Mickle, was this, that the lord to whom he had dedicated his version of the Lusiad, had long the epic in his possession, in the state he had received it. How often also are authors mortified to perceive, that generally the first volume of their work is ever fouler than it's brother! It is, therefore, an advantage to compose in single volumes; for then they flatter themselves, a second would be acceptable; but most books are more read for curiosity, than for pleasure; and are often looked into, but rarely resumed. Authors are vain, but readers are capricious.
Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divisions; but an author is a solitary being, who, for the same reason he pleases one, must consequently displease another. To have too exalted a genius, is more prejudicial for his celebrity, than to have a moderate one; for we shall find that the most popular works, are not of the highest value, but of the greatest usefulness. I could mention some esteemed writers, whose works have attained to a great number of editions, but whose minds were never yet inflamed by an accidental fervour of original genius. They instruct those who require instruction, and they please those, who are yet sufficiently ignorant to discover a novelty in their strictures; in a word they form taste, rather than impart genius. A Carlo Marat, is a Raphael to those who have not studied a Raphael. They may apply to themselves the same observation Lucilius, the satirist, has made, that he did not write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for their science, but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the Sicilians. Montaigne has complained that he found his readers too learned, or too ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, who have just learning enough to comprehend him. Congreve says,
"there is in true beauty, something which vulgar souls cannot admire."
And, we may add, there is something in exquisite composition, which ordinary readers can never understand.
Some will only read old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications, while others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than the author; others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by which the most ingenious author may be injured by the most impertinent reader.
ON POETICAL EXPRESSION.
ONE of the grand distinctions of poetry consists in a peculiarity of phrase, and novelty of expression; for no mechanical arrangements, not even sentiment or imagery, (for prose can retain all these qualities) can form the essential distinction between verse and and prose. The genuine diction of poetry is totally distinct from prosaic composition, and the charm arises from it's being removed from familiar language. From this established and acknowledged principle may be deduced the following facts.
Hence may be accounted the extreme delight found in the ancient classics, which, with some, has arisen to such an extravagance. A judicious critic will allow, that a passage in Pope, may rival one in Virgil; and it might happen, that the modern excelled the ancient parallel. But the pleasure may not be equal in the modern as in the ancient; nor is this the mere effect of an artificial sensation acquired at the university, but on the contrary it is a natural emotion. The ancient enjoys the peculiar felicity of employing a diction, which to us must be immaculate; a magnificence of sound, and a novelty of combination, raise it to their language of the gods; we are offended by no feebleness of terms, and no familiarity of expression. And if the fancy of the Latin should fall, a turn of diction, which might have been but common, and in the possession of the most ordinary versifier in the days of Virgil, will support it; and it is thus that ideas which would excite no attention in a modern, may charm in an ancient. Hence too, modern poets, who write English verse, without genius or taste, have often composed in Latin with some powers. We no doubt discover a hundred beauties in Horace and Virgil, which could not have been such to their contemporaries, because the language was not sufficiently remote from them. I shall give two very poetical expressions in Virgil, which I now recollect, and he has many similar ones. These felicitous expressions, full of the true spirit of poetry, were probably no novelties when he wrote them. The poet says,
"
Dum trepidant
ALAE"
and
"SONIPES,"
where, in the first,
wings
are understood for
birds,
and in the second,
sounding-feet
for
horses.
The effect for the cause. An English poet, to describe birds, has no novelty of term; three or four expressions offend by their frequent recurrence; and the mean sound of the noun itself diminishes the beauty of many a fine poetical passage, by making it wear a prosaic appearance. Our modern poets have not invented a poetical term for one of their most favourite objects. Dryden in versifying the celebrated simile of Virgirl's Nightingale, has happily called the young,
"the unfeathered innocence."
Virgil has also, in his Georgics, an expression so truely inimitable, that our language appears not to afford a correspondent delicacy, and exact tint of phrase. When the poet describes Eurydice, at the moment before she is wounded by the snake concealed in the grass, as if animated by a prescient fervour, he exclaims—
"
moritura puella
"
The reader of taste feels an emotion of surprise and curiosity. Translate this happy word literally into prose, and the grace must be as fugitive as Eurydice herself,
"the maid about to die."
The charm arises, if I may so express myself, from the concise amplitude of idea, the single word conveys. All our translators have failed in catching the evanescent beauty.
"The dying bride."
Dryden.
"She doomed to death."
Trapp.
"The fated maid."
Warton.
In none of these is a similar emotion raised in the mind of the reader, which he receives from the "Moritura." Dryden's, indeed, is singularly exceptionable, and Warton's the happiest; yet
"fated"
is a general idea, and loses that delicate shade of appropriation, of the
"about to die."
In an inferior degree, we may extend our principle to modern languages; for, to me, it has often appeared, that a passage from Tasso, has given to an English reader, a pleasure which a native cannot experience; the pleasure arising from a language whose graces have not become familiar by ordinary recurrence.
I conceive that the effect of the same principle may be traced in our own earlier writers. One of their peculiar charms is their ancient style; and certain phrases, which are generally understood, delight, like a painting which is just embrowned and mellowed by the hand of time. If we contrast a fine passage in Shakespeare, with a rival one in a modern poet, allowing them an equal force, we should not hesitate to give the preference to the elder bard. The lively pleasure with which some men of taste read Chaucer, may be ascribed to their sensibility of a language, which displays many graces, invested with that novelty of poetical expression, which would cease to strike were they familiar.
Hence we may deduce a curious fact; that one of the most difficult branches in modern poetry, or in the poetical art, in all ages of refinement, is, the formation of a new style, or poetical diction. This demands not only a superior genius, but a suspicion may arise that our language in this respect is nearly exhausted. And this will appear, if we examine the finest compositions published within the last thirty years; where one eminent defect will often be prevalent; that the general cast of the language has little variations; expressions are interwoven, which the poet nicely picked out of the performances of his predecessors, to embroider his own; and though, sometimes, a new combination of ideas, or a felicity of subject, render a poem interesting, yet the poetical treasury of diction receives but few accessions.
That this has been an effect felt by poets, who are not apt to investigate causes, appears by the following observations and facts.
Milton, whose notions of poetry were of the most exalted nature, when he proposed composing an epic, perceived the necessity of constructing a new diction, or as himself expresses it,
"To build the lofty rime."
In his smaller productions he was satisfied to employ the language of his contemporaries, because in a short composition he might form new combinations of style, without pursuing any particular system. What, therefore, has this great poet attempted? An introduction of all the happiest idioms of every language with which his extensive learning was acquainted. Hebraisms and Grecisms, Latinisms and Italianisms, poured themselves to his copious mind; and what Johnson has termed
"the pedantry of his style,"
true taste will, perhaps, acknowledge as an attempt to seise on those felicitous expressions which more nicely reveal our sensations, bring the object closer to the eye of imagination, and which light and shade nature in her variety of hues. Dryden adorned his language also by many Latinisms; and Pope is acknowledged to have formed a diction, which in his day had all the attractions of novelty. Of all our poets, Gray had the liveliest sensibility for this beauty, which he has expressed by
"words that burn."
It has ever appeared singular, that a poet of his ability has studied so much, and produced so little. It is not improbable that he could not satisfy his own delicacy of taste, in the creation of a new poetical diction; and this, I think, appears by those few exquisite performances he has left, which, like mosaic pavements, are richly inlaid, and most vividly painted, but are not the virgin veins of native marble from the quarry. Scarce an expression in the poetry of Gray but appears to have been imitated or borrowed from his predecessors. What he has given evinces his aim; and we may conclude that it is one of the grand characteristics of modern poetry, and one of the greatest obstacles in that pleasing art.
Another observation may confirm this principle. Whenever, in the progress of refinement, the poetical language becomes thus difficult, it is observable that true genius, often weary with imitatively echoing the established diction, at once falls back into the manner of the earlier poets. Some expressions of our elder writers have a marvellous effect in modern verse, when the writer appears to give them not with verbal affectation, but spontaneous felicity. It has been thus in France, where the poet Rousseau has in many of his compositions essayed to seize on the naiveté of Marot, by copying his style, but his strained affectation produces a disagreeable effect. Churchill rejected an artificial diction, and too often versifies like Oldham; for an editor of this poet's works has contrasted passages from the modern satirist, which equal the discordance of Oldham's verse. When Churchill introduces a poetical expression from our elder poets, it has often a very pleasing effect. Mr. Cooper, and his imitators, can only be considered as having assumed the diction and the manner of our old poets; a critical feeling perceives, in their blank verse, the tones of Shakespeare. The style of a living poet in his satires, is the precise manner of some of our old poets; and in his delicate minor poems, where a poetical diction was unavoidable, we discover few novel combinations of expression; their excellence consisting in the simplicity and tenderness of the ideas.
It has been considered as a poetical beauty to aggrandise the minute by the pomp of expression. When objects, or circumstances, by their exility or meanness, would occasion no agreeable sensation, some have thought it an evidence of higher art, to dignify them by the grandeur of the style; in a word, as I heard a man of genius say of a painter,
"he knew to give dignity to a dunghill."
But this has often been carried to excess, by a fastidious refinement. Boileau has been applauded (because he first applauded himself, which is a certain way of securing the approbation of many) for having raised into poetical language, the simple idea of his wearing a wig at the age of fifty eight. The lines are thus,
"Mais adjourdhui, qu'enfin la viellesse est venue,
Sous mes faux cheveux blonds deja toute ohenue,
A jetté sur ma tête, avec ses doigts pesans,
Onze lustres complets, surchargés de trois ans."
To me there appears a puerility in these celebrated lines, notwithstanding the age of the venerable satirist; the description is exact, and the expression beautiful; but the poet debases his art, for when the reader recollects the
wig,
must he not smile at this mock sublime? A pompous inanity which Velleius Paterculus employs, relative to a petty precaution made use of by Cesar, is a remarkable instance of difficulty of expression. When this great man was taken by the pirates, he lived among them like their conqueror, rather than their prisoner. The historian then proceeds in these words.
"
Neque unquam aut nocte, aut die (cur enim quod vel maximum est, si narrari verbus speciosis non potest, omittatur?) aut excalcearetur, aut discingeretur.
"
Which may be thus translated—Nor even by night, nor by day, (for should I silently omit a circumstance because not expressible in splendid terms) he quitted—his gown and slippers—Is not the affectation of the writer sensible? But this quotation may serve to inforce the subject of this essay; for to me it appears that the sonorous Latin terms of
excalcearetur
and
discingeretur
take much from the familiarity of the expression. This tumid passage must have been more shocking to a man of taste, in the days of Paterculus, than it is now.
To prosaic composition we may also extend our principle. Purity of language is not a characteristic of style, in an age of refinement. The great writers will solicitously domiciliate the most elegant foreign idioms, and hence the latinisms of Johnson, and the gallicisms of Gibbon. The more exquisite our taste, the more desirous we are of expressing it's exquisiteness; no writer complains of paucity of expression in the first progress of taste; for it is long before we are aware of the difficulty of giving the delicacies of conception, and communicating the precise quantity of our feelings. A refined writer is willing to lose something of idiomatic language, to gain something of expressive language. Some of our finest idioms become common; and a writer then attempts to give an equivalent in sense, that may not offend by it's commonness; and this attempt, perhaps, may rise into affectation. The more polished a language becomes, certain significant expressions become obsolete; and this has been a complaint of some writers who were more solicitous of forcible, than of elegant expression. We are not to be cenfured too severely for an occasional adoption of a foreign turn of phrase; but I am sensible, how this permission may degenerate into licentiousness, with unskilful writers. Bolingbroke, and writers about his time, abound with pure French words.
From these observations on POETICAL EXPRESSION, we may deduce that we are at present very deficient in it's diction, and that we may reasonably suspect it is an unsurmountable difficulty. It is a misfortune attending the progress of art; and if it is true, that we have attained to perfection, in the poetical art, the charms of a judicious novelty in diction is almost a hopeless labour. It is our opulence that produces this poverty; for we may say with the ancient Romans, alluding to their numerous conquests,
"we perish, because of our abundance."
ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT.
TWO things in human life are at continual variance; and if we cannot escape from the one, we must be separated from the other; ennui and pleasure. Ennui is an afflicting sensation, if we may thus express it, from a want of sensation; and pleasure, is more pleasure, according to the quantity of sensation. Let us invent a scheme, by which at once we repel ennui, and acquire and augment pleasure. Sensation is received according to the capability of our organs; our organs may be almost incredibly improved by practice;
As in the instances of the blind who has a finer tact, and the jeweller who has a finer sight, than other men, who are not so much interested in refining their vision and their feeling.
intense devotion to an object, must therefore present means of deriving more numerous and keener pleasures from that object.
Hence the poet, long employed on a poem, has received a quantity of pleasure, which no reader can ever feel; and hence one reader receives a quantity of pleasure, unfelt by another. In the progress of any particular pursuit, there are a hundred delicious sensations, which are too intellectual, to be embodied into language. Every artist knows what uncommon combinations his meditations produce; and though some too imperfect, or too subtile, resist his powers of displaying to the world, yet between the thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which appears in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescencies of sensation (so to express myself) which no man felt but himself. These are pleasures, which are in number, according to the intenseness of his faculties, and the quantity of his labour.
Although the above remark alludes to works of art, I would not confine it to these pursuits only; for any particular pursuit, from the manufacturing of pins, to the construction of philosophical systems, appears susceptible of similar pleasures. We shall see, that every individual can exert that quantity of mind necessary to his wants, and adapted to his situation; and that the quality of pleasure is nothing in the present question. For I think that we are mistaken concerning the gradations of human felicity. It does at first appear, that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel a more exquisite delight, than a farmer who is conducting his team; or a poet must experience a higher gratification in modulating verses, than a trader in arranging sums. To this we may reply, that the happiness of the ploughman and the trader, may be as satisfactory as that of the astronomer and the poet. Our mind can only be conversant with those sensations which surround us, and possessing the skill of managing them, we can form an artificial felicity; it is certain, that what the soul does not feel, no more affects it, than what the eye does not see. It is thus that the mean trader, habituated to low pursuits, can never be unhappy, because he is not the general of an army; for this idea of felicity he has never received. The philosopher who gives his entire years to the elevated purfuits of mind, is never unhappy, because he is not in possession of an Indian opulence, for the idea of accumulating this exotic splendour has never entered the range of his desires. Nature, an impartial mother, renders felicity as perfect in the school-boy who scourges his top, as in the astronomer who regulates his star. The thing contained can only be equal to the container; a full glass, is as full, as a full bottle; and a human soul may be as much satisfied, in the lowest of human beings, as in the highest.
In this devotion to a particular object, what philosophers call the ASSOCIATING IDEA, exists in all it's activity and energy; and it may be rendered productive of the sensations we desire; for, when attached to one particular pursuit, this idea will generally point and conduct our thoughts to it. The associating power is a sovereign seated on his throne, while all our other ideas bend towards it, and obey it's mandates. Hence the following persons experience their completest happiness. A student in the midst of his books; an artist among his productions; a farmer amidst his lands; a merchant in his trade; a horseman in his menagerie; a captain in his ship, &c. These are all persons who respectively enjoy more real felicity at those hours, than in any other portion of their lives.
Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of one master passion, or occupation. In superior minds it is a sovereign that exiles others, and in inferior minds it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render us useful to our fellow citizens, and what is of great consequence, it imparts the most perfect independance to the individual. The more also, the sovereign passion is composed of intellectual gratifications, the more exalted and perfect is it's independence. It is justly observed, by a great mathematician, that a geometrician might not be unhappy in a desert.
We might therefore recommend the same unity in life, which gives such a value when found in a picture or a poem. This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws all the rays of our existence, and the more forcibly it draws, the more perfect is human felicity. But, if regardless of this, we yield ourselves to the distracting variety of opposite pursuits with an equal passion, our soul is placed amidst a continual shock of ideas, and happiness is lost by mistakes. How often when accident has turned the mind firmly to one object, has it been discovered that it's occupation is another name for happiness; for this occupation is a means of escaping from incongruous sensations. It secures us from the dreadful and dark vacuity of soul, as well as from the terrible whirlwind of ideas; reason itself is a passion, but a passion full of serenity.
It is observable of those, who have devoted themselves to an individual object, that it's importance is incredibly enlarged to their sensations. Intense attention magnifies like a microscope; but, it is possible to apologize for their apparent extravagance from the consideration, that they really observe excellencies not perceived by others of inferior application. I confess, this passion has been carried to a curious violence of affection; literary history affords numerous instances. I shall just observe, that in reading Dr. Burney's Musical Travels, it would seem that music was the prime object of human life; that Richardson the painter, in his Treatise on his beloved Art, closes all, by affirming that
"
Raphael
is not only
equal,
but
superior
to a
Virgil,
or a
Livy,
or a
Thucydides,
or a
Homer!
"
And he proceeds by acquainting the world, how painting can reform our manners, increase our opulence, honour and power.
Our lively enthusiast says elsewhere,
"Painting is the utmost limit of human power, in the communication of ideas. History begins, poetry raises higher, sculpture goes yet farther, but painting compleate and perfects."
Denina, in his Revolutions of Literature, tells us, that to excel in historical composition, requires more ability than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art; because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagination, taste, &c. necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philosopher, but the historian must also have some peculiar qualifications.
What would this heavy writer have said, if he had heard, one of the literary paradoxes of the present day, that no extraordinary abilities are required to form a good historian? Johnson said,
"great abilities are not requisite in an historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent."
See farther in Boswell, vol. 1. p. 390.
I think it was after this publication, he became an historian. Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts, and polite literature, has composed a Poem on Happiness; and imagines, that it consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and the arts. All this, perhaps, may shew that the more intensely we attach ourselves to an individual object, our sensations are more numerous, and more fervidly alive, than those, who break the force of their feelings, in attempting to strike on a variety of objects; and if this is true, we may conclude that it is one great source of human happiness.
ON LITERARY GENIUS.
WHEN the philosophy of an age is rude, whatever excellence is produced, is immediately ascribed to an occult power; when men, after a lapse of ages, become minuter enquirers, and calmer reasoners, it is discovered how much Art has entered into every great composition; and at length, among artists themselves, it becomes a dubious point, whether
art
is not sufficient to produce
similar effects
to
genius;
or in other words, whether certain combinations of art, form not genius itself.
We still have a few writers who exult in some mystical power in their faculties; who hint at the solicitude of nature at their birth, and to employ the language of Milton, derived from the superstitious credulity of his age, who dissert with fluency, on
"The Stellar Virtue,"
which Boileau has made the first position in the
art
of poetry. Frail females formerly denounced their stars as the cause of their incontinence; and we have idlers who apologise for their defects from no lower an influence; a resolute love of virtue would have preserved the female chaste, and a resolute love of labour would have rendered the idler active.
While some have rejected this occult influence of the stars, others enjoy equal extravagancies; genius has been regulated by the degree of longitude and latitude; it has been derived from the subtilty of the blood, and even from the refinements of cookery; others suppose that a writer of imagination is incapable of learned research, and that for every particular study a peculiar construction of the intellectual powers becomes necessary; that the solidity of judgment impedes the vigour of fancy, and that the poet cannot investigate nature with the eye of philosophic science.
Genius has been divided, and subdivided. There is a genius for oratory, consisting of the art of moving the passions, united with the art of applying our arguments; a genius for physics and geometry, when occupied in calculating the motions and action of the globes of the universe, and the whole phenomena of nature; a genius for painting and sculpture, when the pencil and chissel trace on the marble or canvass the actions or the features of a hero; and the genius for poetry is said to consist in the power which nature imparts by physical sensibility, and a happy conformation of the organs to certain persons, in conceiving boldly, and delivering easily; in painting what is strongly felt, and it is, in a word, what Horace calls
Splendida bilis,
which we are further informed is
a kind of central fire,
which elevates the mind, warms the imagination, which makes one think with force, and describe with liveliness. See on this subject the
Principes pour la Lecture des Poetes
by the Abbé Mallet.
But what is gained by all these mystical distinctions, this
splendida bilis
and
central fire?
Are we always to take words for things? Do such critics say any thing more, than that genius, is genius? I lament that even Pope extends this system to criticism; for he says of poets and critics,
"Both must alike from
heaven
derive their light;
These
born to judge,
as well as those to
write,
"
which is certainly contrary to experience;
taste,
the characteristic of criticism, is now acknowledged to be obtainable by a constant attachment to the most finished performances of art. And when he adds,
"Let such teach others who themselves excel;
And censure freely who have written well."
The maxim is not less erroneous; for the best poets are not always the surest critics, as in the case of Goldsmith and others; and most of the best critics have not been poets.
With chilling fancies like these, have the minds of the most adventurous geniuses been rendered pusillani mous; and grand designs, conceived with ardent felicity, have suddenly expired, because their affrighted parents refused to foster them with the vitality of industry. In an accomplished genius, Horace, one of the most philosophical poets, allows that art must be united with nature; but we probably attach different ideas to this power of nature, than the philosophy of the age of Horace allowed him to acquire. Since his time, and even in the present day, some regard genius as nothing short of inspiration, and employ, in the sober disquisitions of philosophy, the fanciful expressions of poetry. We are told, that to attain to a superiority in any art, we must be
born
with a certain
susceptibility,
or
aptitude;
we must be
born
a poet, or a painter; or as one painter complimented another, by saying, that he was a painter in his mother's womb. Such are the mystic reveries still indulged by the artist, who is interested in exciting the wonder of the ignorant; but such mysticism is not less injurious to art, than visionary fanaticism to religion.
Dryden traces the whole history of genius in a couplet,
"What in nature's dawn the child
admired,
The youth
endeavoured
and the man ACQUIRED."
Yet is it not always
necessary
that this admiration should be felt in childhood, or in youth, since accidental causes have frequently directed the pursuits of genius.
Some instances are collected in Curiosities of Literature. Fourth edition, vol. 1. p.
Caresses and coercion also, have
made
many a youth, a bright genius; patronage and poverty have
stimulated
men to become illustrious artists.
In the history of genius we are presented with wider prospects, by the late attentions bestowed on the studies of biography. In tracing the history of philosophers and poets, we have traced the genius of philosophy and poetry; we have observed that certain events produced certain consequences, and why men, with an equal aptitude for genius, have not always become men of genius. Illustrious characters are rare, owing to the rarity of those human coincidencies which produce illustrious characters. Man is so influenced by moral causes, that the perfection of his genius is ever proportioned to their effects. When men of letters reflected on the manner of their own attainments, and on those events of literary history which related to others, they discovered that the faculties of the mind, are not
gifts
from nature, but effects from human causes, or
acquisitions
of art,
Every man of common organisation has the power of becoming a man of genius, if to this be added a solitary devotion to art, and a vehement passion for glory. It is the capacity of long attention, which, in the present day, must make one man superior to another. Physical sensibility may vary, and defective organs cannot be supplied by any artificial mode. But in general, nature has more impartiality than some of her children will allow; and it would be very difficult to find men, who have been so cruelly neglected by our common mother, as not to be endowed with sufficient powers to excel in some particular department, when, by examining their mental stores, they have the art of discovering the kind of study for which they are best adapted, and when having made this important discovery, moral and physical causes, are not inimical to their progress. An idiot is more rare than a man of genius.
The man of genius should ever examine his physical and moral state; for to ameliorate their advantages, and supply their deficiencies, are of the greatest consequence to his success. A defect in physical sensibility, will disorder some portion of genius; and the purblind eye of Johnson, which denied him the taste for picturesque beauty, occasioned much erroneous criticism, without, however, diminishing his
acquired
faculties, on topics where this sensibility was not requisite. Defects in the moral state are innumerable; sometimes they contract, sometimes they enfeeble, and sometimes they annihilate genius. Shenstone, who devoted his days to poetry, equally with Pope, could never reach his powers. But was his life not a series of discontent and listlessness; ever incapable of energy, and often sinking into torpidity? Without the vigour of hope, and without the exhilaration of enjoyment. Pope on the contrary was fortunate in every circumstance of early friendships, of augmenting independence, and of that continued fervour of disposition, which cherished by patronage, knows no pause till the remotest excellence is grasped. In other circumstances Dryden might have proved superior to Pope, and Otway had equalled Shakespeare. It is a most judicious observation made by Helvetius, that it is not sufficient to possess genius, to obtain it's title. One discovers, another improves, a third accomplishes, and this last is saluted as the genius; although he has really not advanced the art,
in a greater proportion,
than his less fortunate predecessors.
All that the finest organisation can impart in the present day, will never form one work of genius. The mere natural produce, of the most fertile individual, will now be only a pitiable indigence; for the opulence of the mind can now only be formed by storing it with acquired knowledge; and the most valuable productions will be those in which the industry of the mind has been most vigilantly exercised. The result of what we usually term
natural abilities,
will resemble the haws and berries which our ancient Britons might have considered as excellent fruit, but a modern Briton knows that the richness of our orchards has been borrowed from all the varieties of climate. Hence, pertinacity of meditation, becomes a commerce of the mind; it assembles and combines the ideas of others, but the sensations it experiences are it's own. We
learn
to think, by being conversant with the thoughts of others; but this is denied, since it is asserted that the thoughts of others encumber our own. He, however, who is not familiarised with the finest thoughts of the finest writers, will one day be mortified to observe, that his best thoughts are their indifferent ones. Nature respects a certain progression; she expands by a gradual amplification; she makes no leaps. But he who fondly dotes on what he terms his
natural powers,
audaciously imagines, that alone he can arrive at that point of knowledge, attained by the fraternal labours of the most eminent geniuses. To think with thinking men, is to run with agile racers. But as this is not always attended to, we abound with writers who are far removed from an excellence they
could
have
acquired;
as he who, accustomed to run in a solitary course, felicitated himself as being one of the first racers, but received the public derision when he presented himself at the Olympic games.
In meditating on the characters, the modes of life, the slow formation, and the painful vigilance of some great writers, I have been of opinion, that their conspicuous labours, were the gradual acquisitions of
art.
Of these writers many have acknowledged that they could produce nothing valuable till a flame, caught by contact, had lighted up their minds; they resemble certain trees, which, though they could produce no valuable fruit of themselves, are excellent for grafting on. The minds, of such writers, are like a globe of glass, which, when rapidly revolved, and the hand applied to it's surface, will grow warm, emit light, and attract bodies. Among this class of writers, we might place Boileau and Racine; Pope and Gray; Akenside and Armstrong; Montesquieu and Johnson. When Boileau asked Chapelle, a facile natural writer, an opinion of his poetry, Chapelle made this sarcastic comparison—You are a great ox, who, labouring slowly and painfully, make a deep furrow. Boileau has himself admirably described this act of the ox, and I shall apply it to writers who resemble him.
—Un Boeuf pressé par l'aiguillon,
Traçat, d'un pas tardif, un penible sillon.
IMITATED.
Urged by the goad, an ox, laborious, paced;
A painful furrow, slowly toiling, traced.
The French appear to have formed this distinction between great writers. They call Corneille,
un homme de Genie,
and Racine,
un homme d' Esprit.
The latter kind of writers are the more agreeable; for though they never surpass the former, yet they are rarely inferior, and can more happily adapt themselves to a variety of topics. Men of genius have stronger but more confined faculties.
The natural facility which some writers appear to possess, forms no difficulty to this system. Such authors as a Fielding and a Goldsmith, a Sheridan and a Wolcot, are not supposed to have overwhelmed their minds by extraneous studies; and such writers are often even very illiterate. They address themselves to the heart, and not to the head. But still from
industry,
and pertinacity of attention, is their rapidity of combination derived; and not from what marvelling ignorance sometimes regards as inspiration or organisation. They have given a strong direction to their mind, in the great system of human life; they therefore excel in that point, though they may be, and generally are, deficient in other literary qualities; for we shall always find that no man can know what he has not learnt, or know that suddenly which requires an habitual attention.
And indeed, if we attend to the precious observations of those who have excelled in art or science, we shall hear of no romance of original powers, no inspirations from nature, no divine impulse that creates a world, at a word. The painter discovers that it is long before the pencil accomplishes those beauties which he has long meditated, and the poet that he consumes many years in verse, before a great poem is even attempted. The following facts trace the progressive powers of genius. Reynolds painted many hours every day during the long space of thirty years; Goldsmith composed his poems by slow and laborious efforts, and they are the finished productions of several years. Churchill was a versifier at fifteen, but was not known as a poet till after thirty. Sterne, who read at least as much as he thought, was not an
original
genius till at a late period of life. Addison, before he commenced his Spectators, had amassed materials with the assiduity of a student.
Young, in his poetical Epistle to Tickle, alluding to Addison's Spectators, says,
"
A chance amusement
polished half an age."
But it has been since discovered, that the reverse is the fact; for Addison had collected his materials to the amount of
three folio volumes.
The commentator of the last edition of the Spectators gives this instructive information.
The immortal work of Montesquieu was the beloved occupation of twenty years; the wit of Butler was not extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes which he incessantly accumulated. And to close our testimonies, the Emilius of Rousseau was the fruit, to employ the writer's own energetic language, of twenty years meditation, and of three years composition.
Among the advocates of our present system, we rank the first geniuses of the age. Johnson, Helvetius, and Reynolds, have ceaselessly enforced it's principles, have composed in the ardour of conviction, and have given stability to the beautiful structure they erected by the massiness of demonstration. Authorities from periods more remote, are not wanting; Quintilian and Locke consider men to have an equal aptitude to mental capacity, and Pascal says, that what is called nature, is only our first habit; but what several great men have discerned confusedly through a mist, those who composed in a happier age, have viewed in the sunshine of biography.
In the Discourses of Reynolds, this principle is laid down as the foundation of all excellence in art. The president expresses himself in this manner.
"Not to enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature and essence of
genius,
I will venture to assert, that
assiduity,
unabated by difficulty, and a
disposition
eagerly directed to the object of it's pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of
natural powers.
"
The opinion of Johnson not only appears in his conversations, but in his compositions; he has touched on this topic in the twenty-fifth and forty-third Ramblers, and in the person of Imlach, we are instructed, that when he
resolved
to
make
himself a poet, he tells us that
"he saw every thing with a new purpose."
The entire work of L'Esprit of Helvetius inculcates the same principles.
On this delicate topic I shall hazard the following rapid glance. In the rude periods of society, when a writer can have but few predecessors, he will pour forth, what Milton elegantly and sweetly terms
"Virgin Fancies."
He must then meditate on the great original nature; the impressions must be vivid, though rude, and the combinations novel, though wild. Some, whose physical sensibility, improved by imperceptible habit, may receive sensations more lively than others, will exercise a facility and celerity of conception apparently supernatural to the vulgar and the ignorant. In the latter class even the highest minds must then be ranked; and it is not improbable that the artist himself is not less persuaded than his admirers, that he is agitated by a certain impulse, and that his performances could not be produced by human means.
Est Deus in Nobis,
exclaims the self wondering Ovid, at a later period indeed, but when the philosophy of the mind had made but little progress. Hence the origin of that fanciful interposition of nature in the case of men of genius; and it is then that poets are regarded as prophets, and philosophers as magicians.
The Monkish ages blended many of the absurdities of polytheism with their peculiar ones; and it was in this period, Erasmus informs us, that that gothic adage was formed worthy of Monkish taste, and Monkish credulity;
poeta nascitur, non fit;
which an excellent judge of poetry contradicts, by affirming, that a poet may be
made,
as well as
born.
But a great revolution appears in the world of taste; the flame of investigation rises gradually in the most secret retirements of nature. She comes, in all her simplicity, and all her solitary majesty, unaccompanied by the adventitious splendour of fancy, the grotesque chimeras of astonishment, and the terrific forms of superstition. When we understand nature, what becomes of apparitions, of witchery, of prophecy, and the inspiration of genius?
Genius may now be divided into an enthusiasm caught from nature, and an enthusiasm received from art.
The enthusiasm from nature is distinguished by it's facility, celerity, and vividness; sufficient to form an ardent effusion in the early periods of society. Such are the relicks of all antient poetry. But as the sphere of poetical invention must then be very circumscribed, we observe, in such compositions, a recurrence of the same objects and the same ideas. Man
creates
by
imitation;
but he creates little in the infancy of society, because he has scarcely any thing to imitate. When we examine the effusions of the Bards, the wild poetry of the Indians, and even Ossian, who probably has received many modern embellishments, we perceive that paucity of ideas, which must be natural at this period of society.
Homer must not be quoted as an example of the enthusiasm from nature; nor can he be considered as the most original, because he is the most ancient of our classic poets. We are told, that scarce any species of learning was unknown to him; and it is probable that the Maeonian was not more original than his imitator the Mantuan, and that his immortal labours were composed with an enthusiasm from art, as well as from nature.
This enthusiasm from nature diminishes in the progress of refinement. Artists not infrequently complain that nature is nearly exhausted, and not without reason; for it would, perhaps, astonish some, if they were shown how very few
original
notions form the great treasury of human invention. Nature is regular in her grand characteristics. She is ever the same universal power; but in the progress of society, a great variation obtains in the human passions. We all think alike on certain objects in their general conception, but most think differently in their individual examination; hence criticism has observed, that the beauties of art are sometimes local, and sometimes universal. But not to wander into metaphysical discussion, we may remark, that pure nature will disgust by it's obviousness and it's facility; elegance, the characteristic of refinement, means a selection, and, at this period we disguise and raise the offensive rudeness of truth, by the attractive graces of verisimilitude. A noble sentiment occupies the soul of the artist, and he toils after an ideal perfection. The richest combinations throw their dazzling light on his imagination; emulation rivals and surpasses; in this glorious strife, individual is opposed to individual, and people to people. Our galleries are filled with pictures, and our libraries with poems.
A diversity of genius becomes more distinguishable, as taste becomes more exquisite. One kind is peculiar to this age; the genius of several can now be made to produce an original one. A student, to borrow an expression from chemistry, amalgamates the characteristics of preceding masters. The history of the orders in architecture, is the history of genius. We have the severe Tuscan, the chaste Doric, the elegant Ionic, the light Corinthian, and at length appears the Composite uniting these varieties.
Models are now proposed by critics; for Art is now suspended on a point; if by our dexterity we preserve not the equilibrium, if we pass or decline from the point, we slide into barbarism. In vain some daring spirits scorn the mandates of taste; Time is the avenger of neglected criticism.
At this period some, enamoured of the illusive idea of
original powers,
pretend to draw merely from the native fountains of nature. Uneducated artists occasionally appear, among the lower occasionally appear, among the lower occupations of life, who are immediately received as original geniuses. But it is at length perceived, that the genuine requisites of poetry, at this period of refinement, are not only beyond their reach, but often beyond their comprehension. These
inspired
geniuses have never survived the transient season of popular wonder, and derive their mediocrity from the facility of consulting the finished compositions of true genius.
Nor must we conceive that that vein of imitation, which must ever run through the works of great artists, is a mechanical process. By an intense study of preceding masters, they are taught the enchantments of art; marvellous and exquisite strokes which exist not in nature. A fine copy of nature affects their organs more than a real scene. On examination, it will be found that the most capital productions of our first artists, are really composed in this manner. A Raphael borrowed as freely from other painters, as a Milton from other poets.
It may now be enquired, that since we acknowledge there are causes which may disenable a genuine student from
acquiring genius,
what is gained by this new system? We reply an useful knowledge of truth, and a contempt for that popular prejudice, which ever echoes the pernicious notion, that an
artist
must be
born
with a
peculiar genius,
or intellectual construction.
An ardent and aspiring youth is dismayed at the first difficulties of art, because he easily imagines that a maxim which has been so long received as incontestable, is therefore incontrovertable. I believe that the success of an artist oftener depends on
good luck,
than on
organisation.
Aristotle has said, that to become eminent in any profession, three things are requisite, nature, study, and practice. How often does it become necessary to erase the word
nature,
and supply it's place by
good fortune!
We often lose much, when we inform a young artist, that he must have been
born
a poet, or a painter; since it is impossible to decide whether he is born such unless he practises the arts; and it is certain that no excellence in art can be acquired without long and unwearied industry. Artists who have evinced nothing of this
birth-right
in their early attempts, have sometimes concluded by being great artists. Industry, whether it consist in an incessant exercise of the faculties, by meditating on the labours of others, or in observations on what passes around us, is the surest path that conducts to the seats of fame; but such intervening obstacles as may oppose with fatal and deadly effects, are in the power, not of philosophy, but of fortune.
I shall enforce these observations, by transcribing a sentiment of Johnson.
"Every man who purposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry, and remember that fame is not conferred, but as the recompence of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of it's reward."
The following essay offers some reflections on LITERARY INDUSTRY, which, perhaps, may confirm the present.
ON LITERARY INDUSTRY.
WHEN youthful genius meditates on a great composition, he does not usually reflect on the mode of it's performance; his despair is equal to his admiration; and there is danger that he may resemble the young arithmetician, who resigned his art, because in the first lessons, he had observed the total amount of an immense series, which he could not suppose he was
born
to comprehend.
If a Savage wandering in his woods, accustomed to no other habitation than his dark cave, or ill-constructed hovel, should discover an edifice, considerable in it's magnitude, and regular in it's arrangement, he would immediately conclude that it was the residence of a divine being, constructed by divine power. He would consider that no human hand could raise the columns, and no human design could invent an order so beautiful. If the Savage, however, becomes instructed, he discovers that it's author was a being of his own species, that the hand which erected, was superior in skill, but not in strength, to his own; and that if he would submit to the same directions which conducted the other, he might himself be capable of producing a similar composition. This Savage is the unreflecting reader, or that simple youth, whose admiration closes with despair.
Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once in full extent, to their authors; patiently were they examined, and insensibly were they formed. We often observe this circumstance noticed in their prefaces. Writers have proposed to themselves a little piece of two acts, and the farce has become a comedy of five; an essay swells into a treatise, and a treatise into volumes.
Let us trace the progression of the mind in the formation of it's speculations. At the first glance a man of genius throws around a subject, he perceives not more than one or two striking circumstances, unobserved by another. As he revolves the subject, the whole mind is gradually agitated, and it is then, that acquiring force by exertion, he discovers talents that he knew not he possessed. At first he saw (except the few leading objects which invited his contemplation) every thing dimly; to the studious eye of genius, every thing becomes orderly and distinct; the twilight gradually disperses, and every form shines in the brilliant light of imagination. It is then he is excursive and unweary; it is then that all is beauty to his eye, all is harmony to his ear. It is like viewing a landscape at an early hour in a summer morning; the rising sun perhaps only rests on a particular object, and the scene is wrapt in mist; as the hight and warmth increase, the mists fade, and the scene assumes it's varied charms.
Such is the feebleness of human faculties, that, it is probable, if they could perceive at the first view the whole of the subject, they would remain inert in indolence, and reject with despondence it's final accomplishment. In the preceding essay we have observed that the greatest works have been insensibly formed; and to prove that the slightest conceptions may serve for the leading circumstances of even works of magnitude, I shall notice three modern compositions of great and kindred merit. That exquisite poem, Les Jardins of the Abbé de Lille, derives it's existence from the simple circumstance of a lady asking for a few verses on rural topics. His specimens pleased, and the poet, animated by a smile, heaped sketches on sketches, till he found himself enabled to weave them into a concording whole, which forms one of the finest didactic poems in the language. "The botanic garden" was at first only a few loose descriptions of flowers, which casually excited the poet's philosophical curiosity; and we have only to lament that the English bard wanted the address, or the industry of the French poet: A deficiency of interesting order is the radical defect of that composition. "The pleasures of memory" was the slow and perfect production of ten years; the poet at first proposed a simple description in a few lines, but imperceptibly conducted by his meditations, from these few verses, was at length composed a poem, important alike for it's extent, it's investigation, and it's beauty. Similar circumstances gave the origin of the Lutrin; and the Dunciad is an amplification of the Mac Flecnoe of Dryden. The Henriade of Voltaire was at first only intended for a poem on the League, and it's want of unity of design, as an epic, arose from this circumstance.
MEDITATION may be defined the
industry of the mind.
On it's habitual exertion depend all our great efforts; for literary industry to obtain it's purpose must become habitual. It is then, whereever we go, whatever we see, from what we read, and what we hear, some acquisitions are brought to adorn our favourite topics. I am much pleased, and much instructed, by that anecdote of an ancient general, who, in the profoundest peace, practised stratagems of war, and when walking with his friends, and arriving at some remarkable spot, was accustomed to consult with them, on a mode of defence or attack. Hence he derived the rare talent of ever being accompanied by his genius, and to this general the victories of war were obtained by the labours of peace. The great poet, and the great painter, are alike intent on their respective objects; and do, no less than this general, pass their remarkable spots, without bringing home sentiments and images, forms and colours.
The greatest works have been derived from petty commencements, and always formed by slow and gradual renovations of industry. Industry, indeed, is but a mean word, and appears more appropriate to mechanical labours, than to the operations of genius. If genius is to be considered as inspiration, the philosophers of this literary age will acknowledge that we have produced no works of genius; and that even the liveliest conceptions of our poets are rarely formed by that celerity, and fury, which some are yet so credulous, and so ignorant as to suppose. The manuscripts of one of our most
original
living bards, would astonish some of his admirers by their numerous rasures; but every blot on them is like the artful patches on the face of a beauty, which improve it's charms. The industry which we are now to understand, resembles, but little, mechanical assiduity; it is a continued exercise of the noblest faculties, which expand as they are used; a resolute intellectual labour; a combination of many means to obtain one end. It is study invigorated by meditation; it is criticism, which, if we may so express ourselves, is a continuation or supplement of the spirit of the original author. This industry is that art, which seises, as if it were by the rapidity of inspiration, whatever it discovers in the works of others, which may enrich it's own stores; which knows by a quick apprehension, what to examine and what to imbibe; and which receives an atom of intelligence, from the minds of others on it's own mind, as an accidental spark falling on a heap of nitre, is sussicient to raise a powerful blaze.
If we look into literary biography, we perceive that every illustrious writer, in one mode or another, was an indefatigable student. Tillotson observes, that whenever the ancient historians describe an eminent character, they ever employ these expressions, that he was
incredibili industria, diligentia singulari.
Cicero and Pliny, to habituate themselves to the graces of the Grecian writers, even at a remote period of life, practised the labours of translation; and there was no mode or art they omitted proper for correction. They read their work to a few friends, they recited it to an audience, and even sent it to their distant friends for emendation. This unwearied zeal has rendered their works immortal, and capable of equalling whatever the ambition of the moderns can oppose. Voltaire, lively as he may appear, was an indefatigable student, and never read, even at the close of life, without a pen in his hand. The immortal and voluminous labours of the philosophic Buffon, are derived from the simple circumstance of early rising; he long strove against a natural indulgence of ease, and used severe precautions. It is not I who attribute his works to this petty circumstance, it is himself. The most original genius of this age, carries a little book for hints, for hemisticks, and any occasional observation. which may start in all it's warmth from the inspection of a present object. Perhaps no student was more laborious than Milton, and his industry was even equal to his genius. Observe the modest and remarkable expression he employs, in one of his prose works, alluding to his intention of composing an epic. After mentioning Tasso, he adds,
"It haply would be no rashness from an
equal diligence
and
inclination
to present the like."
Such was the vigilant industry of Pope, that he appears to have derived his genius from this characteristic.
These observations will hold through all ages, and still more in ages of refinement, than in the earlier periods of society; for it is a truth of some importance in literature to be known, that the farther progress we make in knowledge, renders study more necessary; that as taste is more refined, labour becomes more essential; and that however modern writers must lose something of originality, they have, even if their subject is preocoupied, more difficulties to overcome, more art to display, more labour to exercise, more novelty to court, than their ancestors, who wrote with the licentious spirit of their age; and who, though not superior in point of courage, handled their pen with a ferocity, not permitted to their more polished descendants.
ON THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON THE HUMAN MIND.
AMONG the follies of the wise, may be ranked that system which circumscribes the energies of the human mind, by the influence of climate. It has been confuted, and is still believed, for there are some whom no confutations can confute. We shall form an enquiry into it's origin, with some notices of that fanciful chain it has thrown over the intellects of the most vigorous geniuses, and we shall inculcate the independence of the intellectual powers.
This extravagant system derives it's modern rejuvenescence from a writer whose talents are the most brilliant and seductive, modern literature displays. Montesquieu, ever vigilant in striking the mind by novelties, discovered in the writings of some of the ancients, a few fanciful and casual conjectures on the influence of climate on the human mind, and which he also extended to manners. Curious absurdities, not less eccentric, remain yet for some future Montesquieu to adopt. These slight conjectures he seized with avidity, amplified with ingenuity, de corated by the graces of fancy, and divulged with the triumphant air of a modern discovery.
Baillet, who wrote at the close of the last century, without a solitary charm of Montesquieu's fancy, was well acquainted with this extravagant notion. It is probable, that to this compiler Montesquieu, with some kindred geniuses, were indebted for the seminal heat of all their variegated flowers. In his volume on National Prejudices, he adverts to this system, and quotes Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and others, who had conceived that the temperature of the air contributes something to the natural dispositions of the mind. Long anterior to Montesquieu, our own Milton expressed this prejudice;
It is curious to observe, that Spenser, that child of fancy, had on this subject, a sounder philosophy than Milton. I allude to his View of the State of Ireland; it is composed in the dialogue manner, and one of the speakers conceives that the barbarity of that country proceeds from the very
genius
of the
soil,
or
influence
of the
stars.
But he is justly reprimanded by the other, in expressions so philosophical and pleasing, that I shall transcribe them,
"Surely, I suppose this but a vain conceit of
simple men,
which
judge things
by their
effects,
and not by their
causes;
for I would rather think the cause of this evil which hangeth upon that country, to proceed rather of the unsoundness of the counsels, and plots which you say have been oftentimes laid for the reformation, or of faintness in following and effecting the same, than of any such fatal course appointed of God, as you misdeem; but
it is the manner of men, that when they are fallen into any absurdity,
or
their actions succeed not as they would, they are always ready to impute the blame thereof unto the heavens, so to excuse their own follies
and
imperfections.
"
The admirable Spenser is another instance to prove that an exquisite imagination may be combined with the soundest intellect; and it is now, perhaps, the first time that Spenser the poet, has been quoted as Spenser the philosopher.
and as Filangieri observes, Chardin, Fontenelle, Du Bos, and others, had explained and adopted the notion. But what the reasoning of Chardin, the wit of Fontenelle, and the ingenuity of Du Bos, failed to establish, was fixed by the seductive eloquence of Montesquieu. His brilliant strokes dazzled the eyes of Europe, and iced, with an additional frost, the heart of many a literary Russian and Dane. It is thus follies are hereditary among writers, and one generation perpetuates or revives the extinct follies of another.
It was the talent of exquisite composition that gave to Montesquieu the power of disguising an exploded theory. Who can resist such poignant epigrams as these, allowing that every lively epigram is a conclusive argument?—
"The empire of climate is the first of all empires."
—
"As we distinguish climates by degrees of latitude, we might distinguish them, thus to express myself, by degrees of sensibility."
—
"In those countries, instead of precepts, we must have padlocks."
—Such is the witty system of the president Montesquieu, which perhaps was first conceived with a smile, but conducted with ingenious gravity. We suffer our follies to become agreeable, when we suffer them to become familiar.
When the "Spirit of laws" was first published, every literary centinel did not silently admit the enemy of intellectual freedom, nor was every genius rendered somniferous by the corruptions of wit. The alarm was given. This paradox kindled the philosophic indignation of Gray, and inspired his exquisite muse to commence a poem of considerable magnitude, designed to combat a position so fatal to intellectual exertion. Churchill revolted from the degrading notion; a line on genius conveys his idea, that it is not circumscribed by local situation, for, says he,
"It may hereafter, e'en in Holland rise."
Armstrong found it necessary to inveigh with sarcastic acerbity against this system; but it was the philosophic Hume, who with solid arguments crushed the brilliant epigrams of Montesquieu.
Filangieri,
Filangieri's Science of Legislation has been translated, and commented on, by Mr. Kendall, with such energy of style, that it affords the pleasure of an original performance.
who had all the advantage of posterior knowledge, united to an investigating genius, has marched between these systematisers and their adversaries, by attempting to shew that Climate influences the mind as a relative, not as an absolute cause, and that the difference is not perceptible in temperate climates. But one of his political reveries is that of drying marshes, and felling woods to change the character of a people. I much fear that the Italian, (for his nation are most politic refiners,) has only mistaken the national humour of Addison, who tells us, that
"a famous university in this land, was formerly very much infested with
puns;
but whether or no this might not arise from the
fens
and
marshes
in which it was situated, and which are now
drained,
I must leave to the determination of more skilful naturalists."
As France is a very extensive country, and has great variation of climate, it offered an ample circuit for these systematisers to verify their favourite positions, by tracing the effects of climate through that diversified country. The inhabitants of Picardy being placed in a colder situation than the other provinces, were imagined to be eminent for their indefatigable labour, and their writers were supposed to be students of great erudition. But here, as almost in every instance, where facts are produced to confirm this fanciful theory, we shall find that moral are often taken for physical effects. Baillet remarks on this observation concerning Picardy, that the industry of it's writers is owing to those devastations of war, which, having injured the fortunes of the natives, induced them rather to apply to useful than to agreeable compositions, as a means of ameliorating their fortune. Normandy having great inequality of climate, was supposed to occasion a similar inequality in the literary productions of it's authors; and Auvergne having high mountains and deep vallies, was conjectured to produce both men of great genius and great dullness; for those born on the mountains were said to have more delicate organs, and a more aetherial spirit, than the gross and stupid students of the valleys. Such are the materials, which, with many others, might be employed in a history of the follies of philosophy.
So late as in 177
, a learned French writer composed a Dissertation on the Physical Influence of Climates, to prove the superiority of the French genius, in consequence of a temperate climate!
But if an Englishman is amused by these airy fancies, he will come at length to resent, with a due spirit of indignation, the national attacks which these fantastic systematisers have constantly levelled at our country. Britain has been considered by them as a Beotia. Profound disquisitions, and sarcastic exultations, have been made concerning our foggy island; but the same fogs remain, while the finest compositions now enrich our language. The classics of England exhibit models of the purest taste to literary Europe; but moral causes long impeded the progress of taste in our country; when individuals want patronage, they often want genius; our monarchs have been torpid and parsimonious, but our public at length has been rapid and magnificent. We may resound our triumphs to the manes of Du Bos,
This writer conceives, that a difference of talents in the same people, in different ages, is to be ascribed to some
variation of their climate!
of Montesquieu, and Winckelman, who have affirmed that we could have no genius for the fine arts, because they informed the world that the sensibility of taste was obstructed by an obnoxious clime. Such are the sentiments which have been echoed from one writer to another, till even some of our own have been pleased to calumniate themselves.
Among many curious criticisms of foreigners, I must not pass silently Winckelman's notion concerning Milton. He tells us, that all the descriptions in the Paradise Lost, excepting the amorous and delicate scenes of the primeval pair, are like well-painted gorgons, which resemble each other, but are always frightful; and this he attributes to the climate. But what is here attempted to be depreciated, every critic of taste will conceive to be the terrible graces of a sublime poesy; a sublimity (the grandest characteristic of a poet) unrivalled in modern or in ancient times. As the subject is peculiar, and of the most elevated nature, so it found in Milton a genius as peculiar, and faculties the most elevated. If the English Muse has surpassed her sisters in loftiness, she yields not in the more delicate and sweeter portions of her art. Of late we have excelled in picturesque description; the most pleasing paintings of nature variegate the verse of Thomson, who, as a shrewd observer remarks, was born more northerly than Milton. Goldsmith has cultivated the same powers, and they have proved so attractive to the public taste, that English verse can now exhibit some of the most exchanting and the most vivid scenery in poetry. The Muse was considered to be under
"a skiey influence;"
but whenever a national impediment is removed, and Time, in every polished nation, subverts such causes, that people will not fail of equalling the efforts of those who have been placed in happier circumstances.
Men of genius cease to be such, when like the common people, they precipitate themselves on one another with the stupid docility of a flock of sheep, who follow the one who happens to be the foremost. Writers have yielded up their sensations and their reflections to this favourite theory. Spence has accounted for the turgidity of Lucan, on the principles of this system. He says,
"The swellings in his poem may be partly accounted for, perhaps, from his being
born
in
Spain,
and in that part of it which was
farthest removed
from Greece and Rome."
But the following instance will parallel any literary extravagance. When Dyer gave the "Fleece," he acquainted the world, to apologize for the defects of the poem, that
"It was published under some
disadvantages;
for many of it's
faults
must be imputed to the
air of a fenny country,
where I have been for the most part above these five years."
Such criticisms remind me of a couplet of the ingenious De Foe, whose good sense appears also to have wandered wildly into these fancies. In one of his Political Poems, he says of his hero William,
"Batavian climates nourished him a-while,
Too great a
genius
for so
damp
a soil."
It is evident, that when Milton first proposed to himself the composition of his epic, this sublime genius felt a full conviction of this prejudice of his age, respecting the influence of climate on the human mind. He tells us in one of his prose works, that he intends to write an epic
"out of our own ancient stories; if there be nothing
adverse
in our
climate,
or the fate of this age."
At a more remote period, when he was near the conclusion of his immortal labour, he adorns these erroneous notions by the charms of his verse, and lays a peculiar stress on the word
cold.
These are the lines,
"—higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or
cold
Climate,
or years damp my intended wing."
Even Young, in "The Merchant," complains, that
"his poetic vein
runs slow
in this cold climate."
The notion of this influence of the climate was indeed so universal in those days, that Descartes feared that the warmth of the climate in France would too much exalt his imagination, and disturb that temperate state of the mind necessary for philosophical discoveries. He therefore took refuge from the sun, in Holland. All the frost of the northern climates could never render his burning imagination tepid; the visionary would have dreamt on a pillow of snow.
Such have been the imbecillities of great men; and on such foundations rested the brilliant edifice which the hand of Montesquieu did not construct, but only adorned. It is to be lamented that some superior minds prefer the little vanity of temporary novelties to the infinite glory of enduring truths. Every error of this kind long links an additional fetter on the human mind, and half the wisdom of man now consists in destroying the chains of his own fabrication. Age succeeds to age, and the human mind, as it calculates it's genuine acquisitions, wonders at the petty amount; while, if we scrutinise most of our former attempts, we perceive with a sigh, that philosophy has been more curious than knowing, more active than progressive, more specious than solid; that it has generally consisted in becoming familiar with the incongruous opinions of others, and having no opinions of our own; and that while we run after the capricious coquetry of a meretricious fancy, Truth has often past by, in sober and unadorned beauty, unsolicited, undesired, but rarely unseen.
Let us view this topic in a more instructive manner. Aristotle, in his Politics, observes, that the northern nations, and generally all Europe, are naturally courageous and robust, but are improper for mental exertion, without powers for meditation, and without industry for the arts; on the contrary, the Asiatics have great talents for works of genius, are inclined to reasoning and meditation, and skilful in the invention and perfection of arts. The reverse of all this, in the present age, is the truth. Aristotle drew this representation from the existing scene; but had that acute mind happened to reflect on the powers which the
customs
and the
government
of a people have over the human mind, he had then perceived that not the frosts and snows of the northern realms made men addict themselves to war, but that predatory genius which must prevail in a people, who were constantly distressed by poverty and famine. When a new civilization had taken place, and the severities of the climate were mitigated by the beneficial influence of art and science; when the descendants of these men employed their armaments in commerce, as well as in war; when their iron was plunged into the reluctant bosom of earth; when, in their cities, universities were erected, academies instituted, and the peaceful occupations of genius cherished; then, while the same climate existed, the national characters became changed. Heroic and polished Greece and Rome are now barbarous and pusillanimous; and the gravity and superstition of the Spaniard, the politic and assassinating spirit of the Italian, the diligence and suppleness of the Scotchman, and the suspiciousness and profundity of the Englifhman, are derived from their manners and governments. MAN is a mere imitative CREATURE, and the wise LEGISLATOR may be a powerful CREATOR.
It was once enquired why Paris and Toulouse produced so many eminent lawyers. It was long attributed to the climate; till some reasonable being discovered, that the universities of those cities offered
opportunities
and
encouragements
for that
study
which others did not. The Germans have long been an injured literary nation. A taste for science and erudition having been diffused among that industrious people, they were constantly aspersed by their lively neighbours, for inveterate dullness and sterile imaginations. The eminent success of the French in the Belles Lettres, placed the frightened genius of that nation in a voluntary seclusion; of late awakened from their stupor, they begin to rank high in polite letters; and although their productions have not yet attained that novelty of combination, which is the effect of long industry and multifarious composition, yet have they already produced some spirited and affecting works of imagination which can fear no rivals.
Men of genius, at London, or at Petersburgh, in the retirement of their cabinet, if employed on the same topic, and equal in their acquisitions, will think and write alike. The manners of a people occasion some variations in national tastes; there is an arbitrary and an ideal beautiful; or, in other words, a local and an universal sensation. The present systematisers not having sufficiently investigated the causes of arbitrary or local sensations, in perceiving them, they at once referred them to the influence of CLIMATE, and not to the influence of GOVERNMENT.
From this and the two preceding essays, we may, perhaps, conclude, that it is with a people, as with an individual, and with an individual, as with a people. The human mind is indeed influenced not by climate, but by government; not by soils, but by customs; not by heat and cold, but by servitude and freedom. A happy education, an elegant leisure, and a passion for glory, must form a great man; as an excellent government, an orderly liberty, and a popular felicity, must form a great people. But for these purposes, numerous conjunctures must succeed each other, which, in the position of human affairs, can be but rare; and to the present moment no system of education for the individual, or system of government for the people, has been discovered, which can satisfy the philosophical mind; a great people, like a great man, must therefore become a singularity; yet, as the characteristic of man is imitation, when one excels, there exists a contagion of excellence. Nourished by persevering industry, a diffusion of emulation is propagated from individual to individual, and from nation to nation. Whenever, through moral causes, this emulation cannot exist, industry must be extinct, and excellence unacquired.
INDUSTRY is the vital principle of excellence; but we must not, therefore, suppose, that the advice of a preceptor, or the mandate of a sovereign, can produce an instantaneous effect; there is a regular progression in human affairs; and no power, less than omnipotence, could have produced that singular operation of commanding light, and there was light. Miracles have departed from this philosophic age; but INDUSTRY is left to us, which may be said, to perform miracles.
ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE.
A MODERN reader, amidst the abundance of his books, resembles Xerxes, who, satiated with his pleasures, promised a reward to him who should allure by the invention of a new one. This capricious complaint only shews an abundance of objects, and a disordered taste; the fault is not in the pleasures and the books, but in Xerxes and the Reader.
"All is said,"
exclaims the lively Bruyere, but at the same moment, by his own admirable reflections, confutes the dreary system he would establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature, has been a popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise ancient, who, even in his day, laments, that
"of books there is no end,"
has been transcribed by great authors, who, however, cannot be deemed great politicians. Perhaps, in the age of Solomon, readers were perplexed by periodical publications, and the Jewish Magazines might have been manufactured with as little skill as our own.
This opinion serves for the apology of the idle, and the consolation of the disappointed; but it is to be lamented that it extinguishes the ardour of the ingenious. Had not genius felt itself superior to this malicious
dictum,
the world had wanted nearly all it's valued compositions. The popular notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Of these unreflecting censurers, many are yet to learn that their admired originals are not such as they mistake them to be, either in the parts or the design of their works. We shall shew how the plans of the most original performances have been borrowed; and of the thoughts of the most admired compositions, some readers are yet to be instructed that they are not wonderful discoveries, but only truths, of whieh themselves felt the conviction, before the ingenuity of the author had arranged the intermediate and accessory ideas, by lucidly unfolding that confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think with depth or accuracy.
Batteux employs a judicious figure, when he compares genius to the earth, which produces nothing, unless it has first received the seeds. This has no tendency to impoverish the talents of the artist, for it displays the source of exhaustless treasures, of infinite variations, and limits not less than the universe itself. There is an affinity in all the works of genius, because they are imitations of nature; similar they are, yet not the same; as all earths are terrene substances, but their qualities are various. Novelty, in it's rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious production. I am not, therefore, surprised, at a literary incident which happened to a friend. To relieve the tedium of a temporary retirement, he took with him seven epic poems; he amused his solitude by comparing them with each other; and the result was, that he found how much each had been indebted to the others. The same incidents had been transplanted, and the same characters had assumed a different name; but every poet had his peculiar colouring and disposition, and had created while he imitated.
Voltaire, as a critic of taste, is of the greatest authority. He looked on every thing as imitation. He observes that the most original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction we gather from books, is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of all. He has a curious passage, in which he traces some of the finest compositions to the fountain head; and the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to England.
To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in which they are imagined to excel. We know how frequently they accuse each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers, was not considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. It has been observed of the Eneid of Virgil, that not only little invention is displayed in the Incidents, for it unites the plan of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but even as to many of the particular lines, and certainly is very deficient in the variety of it's characters.
A learned friend has translated and compared two fine pieces of the ancients. The Shield of Achilles in Homer, and the Shield of Hercules in Hesiod. We know so little of the time in which these two very ancient poets lived, that it is difficult to fix on the plagiarist, or rather the imitator; but it is certain that one has borrowed considerably from the other; Hesiod's Shield of Hercules, is more poetical than Homer's Shield of Achilles; an argument which might have been in favour of the priority of Homer, if Homer, on the whole, had not been a far superior poet.
But on writers so well known as the classical, we shall not dwell.
Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may aspire to reach, To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse; in borrowing the fancy of the Italian poetry, he unhappily adopted it's form. Shakespeare has liberally honoured many writers by unsparing imitations; he has availed himself of their sentiments, their style, and their incidents. His Oberon was taken from a French Romance, and his Fairies are no more his own original invention, than the Sylphs are of Pope. Milton is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful Mask of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he imitated. The Paradise Lost is believed to have been conceived from a mystery, and many of it's most striking passages are taken from other poets. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulph; the sublime description of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the wilderness of Ariosto. Jonson was the servile slave of his ancient masters; and the rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue, woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads of others. To Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in their Martinus Scriblerus, could find no other mode of conveying their powers, but by imitating at once, Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle. Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very original performances. The Travels of Gulliver, to the Voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac, to the Sun and Moon; a writer, who, without the acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy. Dr. Warton has observed many of his strokes in Bishop Godwin's Man in the Moon, who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. The Tale of a Tub is an imitation of the once popular allegory of the three invisible rings which a father bequeathed his children, and which were the Jewish, Christian, and Mahommedan religions; as this tale is also of the History of Fontenelle's Mero and Enegue. (Rome and Geneve). Dr. Feriar's Essay on the Imitations of Sterne might be considerably augmented; the Englishman may be tracked in many obscure paths; in such neglected volumes, as Le Moyen de Parvenir, and the Ana; besides Burton and Martinus Scriblerus. Such are the writers, however, who imitate, but are inimitable!
We will now, quitting Britain, make a short excursion round the rest of Europe, and visit some of our neighbours, that we may not imagine they enjoy a superiority over our own fellow citizens. Montaigne, with honest naiveté, compares his writings to a thread that binds the flowers of others; and that by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the ancients, without acknowledgement, that the critics might blunder, by giving
Nazardes
to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novels, have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it wears, by it's extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir Launcelot in the old Romance of Mort Arthur, with which the late Mr. Warton observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance. Tasso has imitated the Iliad, and enriched his poem with episodes from the Eneid. It is curious to observe, that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he says he had
"long meditated."
Moliere and La Fontaine are considered to possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned Menage calls Moliere
"un grand et habile picoreur,"
and Boileau tells us, that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais, and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives, and he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic poetry, and not a little indebted to the old
Facezie
of the Italians. Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the authors, anterior to the age of Francis I. Bruyere incorporates whole passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter abundantly shews. To the Turkish spy was Montesquieu beholden for his Persian Letters, and a numerous croud are indebted to Montesquieu. Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.
Having thus traced that vein of imitation which runs through the productions of our greatest authors,
Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers, who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be often ruined, were they too hardly drawn on.
it remains to ascertain an accurate notion of literary novelty.
Denina's little book on the Revolutions of Literature, is formed on this principle; that there being a great uniformity in nature, when the perfection of those arts, which express the passions, is at length acquired, nature becomes exhausted; and that at this period, to succeed in poetry or in eloquence, it would require either to extend nature, or to create new passions, which are alike impossible. If this were true, literary novelty might be, in the present refinement of the Belles Lettres, a hopeless project. We must, therefore, controvert this hypothesis, or burn our pens.
Il Discorso sopra le vicende della Litteratura of Denina, is a curious subject for literary investigators; but I think that the book supports the author, rather than the author the book. Whatever he says concerning English literature, is very deficient in information, and exhibits some of those absurdities into which foreigners have fallen concerning our authors.
What is a new thought? The question has been resolved by Boileau. It is not, says he, what the ignorant imagine; that is, a thought which no one ever conceived, or could have possibly conceived. On the contrary, it is a thought that might have occurred to any one, but that somebody has first expressed. It is what every one
thinks,
but is said in a lively, fine, and new
manner.
Pope, no doubt, borrowed his definition of wit, or genius, from this remark. It is, as he says,
"What oft was
thought,
but ne'er so well
expressed.
"
It is, perhaps, with writing as with shooting; the art consists in the
aim
of the sportsman, but the objects are always the same. Good sense has been so in all ages, says Pope elsewhere, who, perhaps, had more good sense than any poet. If we analyse the most striking passages of our most original writers, we shall find that the naked idea had nothing uncommon. The finest thoughts derive their beauty from the glow and colouring of imagination. I have seen a MS. by a friend of great taste, where, in examining and comparing the natural sentiments of two dialogues of vulgar courtship, in the Exmoor dialect, with congenial and similar ideas in poetical language, he has discovered that the groundwork of the human mind is always the same; and that all men think alike, but express themselves very differently. This essay, probably, only intended as a literary amusement, may, however, be made to elucidate a philosophical truth.
Hence the most forcible passages of Shakespeare, are only delightful or energetic expressions of our own feelings. Great writers must, therefore, bear an affinity with each other; and will eagerly adopt the images, the sentiments, and the very expressions of a kindred genius. We may account, on this principle, for those similar passages which we meet with in different works, although we are certain that no connection existed between the writers. Hence sometimes an Englishman finds in Corneille, an expression which he exclaims is worthy of Shakespeare; and a Frenchman discovers in Shakespeare, a sentiment which he knows to be equal to the eloquence of Corneille.
It would, therefore, appear, that there is a MANNER IN EXPRESSION, which may impart novelty to literary composition; and I add also, that there is another MANNER OF CHARACTER, which every writer of genius exhibits.
The Italians describe a certain sensation by their
un non sò che;
the French by their
je ne sçai quoi;
and we frequently say
"
a certain something.
"
The foreign writers have composed a great deal concerning this quality; and perhaps they have obscured, what is not obscure in itself; for what is this occult sensation but MANNER? It accompanies every interesting object; it is the inexpressible charm which creates sympathy, or the unknown something which produces antipathy. Do we not observe the most essential truths, on the most interesting topics, enfeebled, and even rendered repulsive? And do we not sometimes admire the most trivial objects, when they are touched with all the felicity of manner? It arises from the absence or the use of this prominent quality, which bestows novelty on the most familiar, and delight on the most arid topics. The French and Italians have a species of writing almost peculiar to themselves. It is called by the former,
Rajeunissement,
and by the latter,
Refaccimento.
This is nothing but a rejuvenescence of their ancient authors, such as are the versions by Dryden and Pope, of some of Chaucer's Tales. Every one is not equally successful in this employment; and writers who possess a happiness of manner, have displayed in these works it's full force; they have given, by master-touches, all the pleasure the originals once gave. In the hands of inferior writers, the same thoughts have been as vigilantly preserved, but not as attractively. Several works of importance might be noticed, which could never be perused in the manner of their original authors; but since they have been re-written by men of genius, every one peruses them.
Manner
is the first acquirement of genius; it renders a sonnet more precious than a long poem, and has made some authors more celebrated for ten pages, than others who in vain have written ten volumes. Observe in two of the most popular French writers, a great contrast of manner; Voltaire is a wit, and takes us by surprise; Rousseau is an orator, and insinuates his soul into our own; one points his polished epigrams, and the other steals on us by his pathetic sentiments; our mind is the aim of Voltaire, but we yield our heart to Rousseau. It is this manner which enchants in Addison, pleases in Melmoth, and sooths in Hawkesworth; which sparkles in the brilliant periods of Shaftesbury, rises into majesty in the grand tones of Bolingbroke, and awes in the solemn cadencies of Johnson.
This
manner,
in every great writer, has not escaped observation. The quotations may gratify literary curiosity. The elegant author of Fitzosborne's Letters, has a little Essay on Grace, in which, after confessing the difficulty of expressing an idea, when language does not supply us with proper words, he closes by saying, that
"Sir William Temple may be considered as the first prose author who introduced a graceful
manner
into our language."
Addison, in the 160 Spectator, says,
"I believe we may observe, that very few writers make an extraordinary figure in the world, who have not
something
in their way of
thinking
or
expressing
themselves, that is peculiar to them, and
entirely their own.
"
Rousseau the poet, in his Epistle to Marot, observes of great writers,
"Chacun d'eux a SA BEAUTE PRECISE,
Qui le distingue, et forme sa devise."
It is singular, that De Foe, in his Essay on Projects, notices a
manner in writing.
Perhaps he borrowed the notion from the French critics; for it would be difficult to conceive what idea he and the writers of the last century formed of it, since no one then appears to have had a peculiar characteristic, or employed any of those artifices of composition which constitute a
manner.
Another source of literary novelty may be derived from IMITATION. A servile imitation is inimical to the progress of art, but nothing is more necessary to preserve the refinement of art, than a frequent recurrence to it's models. To literary echoes, we may apply the sensible observation of Philip of Macedon, made to one who prided himself with imitating the notes of the nightingale;
"I prefer the nightingale herself."
We must first learn to follow our predecessors, that we may reach them, and if we have the adroitness, we may then outstrip them; a vulgar mind can only copy, a superior mind in copying, always becomes original. Among literary fashions, there once prevailed the custom of imitating Cicero, it was carried to a laughable extravagance, and the correspondence of men of letters was often long interrupted, because some would require three or four months to write a letter of three or four pages.
These scholars were denominated
Ciceronians,
and as we have still remaining some of this class of pedants, I think the reader will not be displeased to have their character exhibited, it is said with nearly as much truth, as ridicule.
"It was laughable to observe those pale and melancholy visages, deprive themselves of every pleasure, fly from the society of the living, as if they were themselves already dead, bury themselves in the bier of their study, and refrain from every kind of reading, except the works of Cicero, with as religious a care as Pythagoras abstained from the use of flesh. Their libraries were only diversified by the different editions of the works of Cicero. Their histories were only those of his life; and their epics only frigid narratives of his consulship; the paintings and drawings in their galleries, were only his portraits and actions. They had his head engraven on their seals, as well as on their hearts. By day and by night Cicero was the only object of their enquiries and conversations. They preferred the honour of collecting certain words, and arranging a round and nicely-cadenced period, to the performance of the most generous action. When at length, their painful vigils had attenuated their bodies with illness, they died contented, since they had augmented the number of the martyrs of Cicero, and appeared in their last agony, to be less pleased with the hope of the aspect of God, than of the eternal presence of this demon of eloquence."
Such is the portrait Colletet has drawn of these false imitators of Cicero!
Servile imitation is censured by the very expression; that to which I now allude, is of a very different kind, and I proceed to describe it.
This imitation is peculiar to an age of taste. It is an enthusiasm caught from the incessant study of the masters in composition; a sensibility and versatility of taste, which receives the
manners
of every writer, and which reproduces their intermingled graces, in it's own compositions. A writer who possesses this magical power, combines the varieties of his predecessors, and without being one of them, is all of them. He rarely finds a reader worthy of himself, for to relish such an author, requires a delicacy and perception equal to his own, and it is less difficult to taste the mere mannerist, who has only one character, than the writer who combines several. A writer of this description is indefatigable in the arrangement of his composition. A cultured imagination heightens his natural feelings, and in every part he exhibits the lighter graces and glowing strokes of a brilliant art. He bestows a freshness and bloom on whatever has been frequently touched. No thought appears feeble or vulgar, because it is invested with an elegant dress, and an easy air. The effects of such a composition are not immediately perceived, for much of the art of refinement consists in concealing, and not in obtruding. It is a silent beauty that steals on insensibly; it is Venus gradually rising from the sea, wave falls upon wave, beauty succeeds to beauty, till the whole enchantment of the figure is revealed.
A writer of this class catches inspiration, in his solitary closet, from the labours of others. He is the student who hastens to Rome to meditate at the feet of it's statues; he is the architect who combines in the edifices with which he adorns his native city, those graces, which his eye had appropriated in foreign countries.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who has written with such attic sensibility on literary elegancies, compares the brilliant and flowery style, in which such writers often excel, to a living and limpid stream, which ever flows, and ever with the same facility; to a changeable silk, which exhibits at every glance all the delicacies of shades; and to a splendid painting, in which the colours so happily blend, and sweetly melt into each other.
The polished ear of the ancients was so accustomed to whatever was finished, and perhaps the felicity of their language, first gave them a taste for such exquisite refinements, that they would consume hours in turning, and returning, a period. Of Plato it is recorded, that he re-wrote twenty times, the simple expression of
"yesterday I descended into the Pyraeus,"
before he could satisfy his delicacy. Cicero balanced the members of his periods, like notes in music, and reserved for their closes, that harmonious pomp of words, which, by the Greeks, was styled,
"magnificence of sound."
The able vindicator of Milton against the infamous Lauder, has this admirable observation on the present subject.
"There may be such a thing as an original work without invention; and a writer may be an imitator of others without plagiarism."
Among painters it is not only permitted, but even applauded, to insert a figure, or groupe of figures, borrowed from another artist. Raphael, no more than Pope, passed over a happy hint, or hesitated to seize on whatever he found to be exquisite. I know of no reason why writers are to be less favoured than painters.
Literary novelty appears, therefore, possible to be imparted to works of taste, while there shall be preserved a
manner in expression,
a
manner in character;
and a skilful
imitation.
But two observations remain to be made; that there are
a false novelty,
and
exhausted turns of expression.
The popular kind of novelty is gratified by irregular sallies of the imagination. To this incessant demand of the tasteless public, many ingenious and great writers have fallen the victims. We have too frequently, in our country, pardoned eccentricity and incorrectness, for some irregular coruscations of genius. An affectation of novelty has often been calamitous to great minds. It has been a fertile source in science, of pernicious paradoxes, and in literature, of monstrous inventions. Pere Hardouin, known for his strange opinions, was used to say, to excuse them, that he did not rise at four every morning to repeat what others had said. He might have rose much later, and still have been as ridiculous, for to follow the extravagancies of an idle imagination, has great facility. Camoens, in his Lusiad, by a mixture of the fabulous deities with the christian theology, and Davenant, in his Gondibert, by the invention of a plan, repugnant to Homer and nature, are eminent instances. The temporary taste of a vicious age, has been fatal to genius, and we have lost a fine poet in Cowley. To surprise is the great aim of art; but it is to be remembered, that surprise is alike excited by beauty and deformity. We are surprised at the softened graces of a Raphael; we are surprised at the fantastical strokes of a Chinese painter. But which, insinuate themselves into our hearts, assume at every inspection new charms, and create an enchanting and eternal delusion?
That the
turns of expression
may be exhausted, is felt most in an age of literary refinement. Some of our happiest modes of diction occur at length so frequently, that their beauty is lost in their familiarity. At this period, it is, that the manners of a nation, are luxurious and refined, and their defects are communicated to their style. To invent new thoughts, is now most rare, and to invent new expressions, is now most hazardous. Perhaps letters are verging to their decline, and can only be preserved pure in the care of those few, who retain a passion for the simplicity of their ancient authors, and at the same time, a taste for the refinements of the moderns. Such is the usual history of the progress of letters; whether this describes our present state, I would not decide, fearful lest from the investigation we might deduce a conclusion not favourable to our future efforts. When the nation becomes more virtuous, we shall have a more unblemished style.
Let it be sufficient to observe, that while we deviate not too widely from the models of art, novelty may be communicated to our productions, and an originality be impressed on the most common objects. I give an instance. Equestrian statues are commonly raised on a polished mass of marble, and surrounded by allegorical figures. When Falconet was invited to Petersburgh, to form such a statue of Peter the Great, he represented the Emperor on a fiery courser. This idea an inferior sculptor might have seised. But it remained for this artist to throw over the performance the lustre of genius. He has placed the horse in the act of leaping from a rude, unhewed rock. Here we see expressed the sublime genius of Peter and the artist. Give an ordinary sculptor the same marble. Patient industry will polish the limbs, trace with minute beauty the hairs of the mane, while Peter, encumbered by an allegorical pomp, will stand unnoticed. While genius can give a
new attitude,
it will not want for
new expression;
and it is one source of that NOVELTY, which now seduces and captivates in the productions of art. The art of writing is the art of exciting powerful sensations.
ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER IN POLITICS AND RELIGION.
AMONG the various arguments deduced in favour of an equality in the intellectual faculties of the sexes, I know not if it has been remarked, that there are certain powers, which, to be more perfect, require that station in society occupied by the fair. I shall add also, that any deficiency in other qualities, has been often compensated by the seductions of their personal charms.
We shall perceive upon investigation, that in religion and in politics, their influence has been infinitely greater, than appears in historical records; and it is one great objection to the verity of history, that the female character rarely makes any figure in scenes which, by some other means, we often discover to have been planned by females with inventive felicity, and conducted with peculiar address. We are apt to be surprised when we contemplate some of the greatest revolutions, that they derived their origin from the fair; that a government or a religion have been established by a female, and that while an invasion takes place, a monarch is assassinated, or an inquisition erected, the motive power of this vast machine, is a little unperceived spring, touched and played upon by the dexterity of a woman.
That the female character may excel the masculine ability, in what is termed a knowledge of the world, and that there is a sexual distinction in this not contemptible science, is a fact, which an observer may discover in his private circle. Bruyere is a character more extraordinary among men, than it would be among women; for I am persuaded, that there are many female Bruyeres not accustomed to write down their observations, and pourtray the characters of their acquaintance. Women, of even a mediocrity of talent, excel in the knowledge of their circle; and we may account for this curious circumstance, on the principle of their stationary situation in society, where their opportunities for observation are more frequent, and where their perception becomes more exact, by an attention, which, though frequently interrupted by it's vivacity, is never entirely suspended. I cannot affirm that they view distantly, or penetrate deeply. Their eye is a pleasing microscope, which detects the minutest stroke, if placed near, though incapable of tracing an object remotely. Many experience, and some acknowledge, what Rousseau relates of his Theresa. This woman, whom he describes otherwise as heavy and dull, afforded him excellent advice in the most trying occasions.
"Often"
(says he)
"in Switzerland, in England, and in France, amidst the catastrophes I found myself, she saw what I did not see myself; she afforded me the best counsels to follow, and extricated me from dangers in which I blindly precipitated myself."
If, therefore, the female displays a superior acuteness, derivable from the peculiarity of her situation, those authoresses who appear jealous of certain privileges attached to the wandering and active sex, cannot be deemed as the able advocates of their own; because if woman (from the natural feebleness of whose organs is derived her beauty) were capable of exerting the same corporeal vigour as man, yet by becoming his rival, she would not only lose that feminine sweetness, that amiable debility, and that retiring modesty which lend so much eloquent persuasion to her actions, but what would not be compensated by this violent and unnatural change, she would lose her actual position in the social order which imparts her present superiority, by enabling her to detect the secret foibles of man. To this, her stationary situation, I would attribute her acknowledged superiority in conversation, and in epistolary composition. To both, the female imparts a peculiar delicacy, and a charm of ease, which masters of style can neither imitate nor rival. These excellencies consist in a volubility of happy expression, and a choice of sprightly ideas; on the bosom of society the female genius is first nurtured; the human scene becomes her school; and hence she derives this facility of language, and this liveliness and selection of ideas.
A more obvious advantage in the female character, is that susceptibility of feeling, or facility of imagination, which, without doubt, is peculiar to the irritable delicacy of their fibres. The heart is the great province of the female; if we would attract their regard, we must learn to reach the heart; all their finer qualities are so many sensations of the heart; and it is the heart which imbues with it's softness, their every excellence. Their favourite amusements are works of imagination and taste, not of memory and reason; their logic consists not of arguments, but of sentiments; and I think that some ladies of extreme refinement, can put as much fancy, and exert as rich an imagination, in the ornaments of a favourite dress, as the poet employs in his most florid descriptions.
In every surrounding object they express their love of the beautiful; their most useful instruments have a character of delicacy; and in a word, women would effeminate even the roughness of steel, and the solidity of wood; man is subjugated by these adventitious elegancies, and the fair, love to see that beauty admired in inanimate objects, which they know must be much more in themselves.
I am not surprised, that in all nations, civilised or rude, whenever superstition prevailed, the female character has been regarded as an instrument of the divinity. That peculiar animation which vivifies their lively perceptions, has been considered as something supernatural, and we can easily conceive that the afflatus of prophecy must ever have displayed a more touching illusion in the agitated and picturesque countenance of a woman, than in the more hard and labouring visage of a prophet; I conceive that the Grecian Pythia, the Roman Sybil, and the Pythonissa of the Hebrews, must have communicated a more celestial inspiration with their copious tresses luxuriating on their palpitating bosom, their vivacious eyes, and their snowy arms, than even a passionate Isaiah, or a weeping Jeremiah.
But to history, and not to declamation, I appeal. If we throw a philosophical glance on it's instructive records, and have the discernment to read what often is not in history, we shall observe that the female character has ever had a singular influence on most of the great characters and great events of human life. One of the most favourite portions of the historic art, with historians, is an elaborate delineation of the characters of monarchs. We should comprehend these much better if we were acquainted with those of the Queens. Many important resolutions of state councils have been first made in the royal bed. It is an observation of the judicious Du Fresnoy, that a Queen has an influence on the King her husband, and the King her son. And would it be difficult to shew, that if the whole affairs of government depend on a Minister, he would be impregnable against the attacks of a mistress? A person must be very ignorant of secret history, whose memory cannot at this moment place, in ridiculous and humiliating attitudes, some of the most illustrious statesmen.
I shall notice two very eminent statesmen. Cardinal Richelieu, to gain the affections of the Dutchess de Chevreuse at their private interviews, visited her in the most finical dress. Rejecting his scarlet robes and sacred pantoufles, his eminence wore a fashionable coat, an enormous plume, a long rapier, and tight pumps. The Dutchess hated and ridiculed the Cardinal, the Minister, and the Coxcomb; but at that moment through him she conducted innumerable intrigues within and without the kingdom. Read Plutarch's Life of Cicero, and you may observe that his wife Terentia was not less concerned than the orator and statesman, in the most striking events of his public life. When Cicero was perplexed to know in what manner he should treat the conspirators of Catiline, Terentia incensed him against them, and invented an ingenious prodigy to fix the vacillation of his agitated mind, and cause him to act with an energy he otherwise had wanted. The origin of the enmity between Cicero and Clodius was owing to the jealousy of Terentia, who knew that his sister Clodia was desirous of marrying Cicero. She therefore instigated him to attack Clodio. By the confession of Cicero himself, it appears that Terentia was ever more ready to interfere in his public transactions, than to communicate her domestic affairs to him. It is not in a note we can adduce similar instances; but almost every Richelieu will be found to have had his Chevreuse, and every Cicero his Terentia.
The most celebrated men have been influenced by the female's powers; nor has that influence terminated in the domestic circle, but animating the most complicated intrigues it has impelled, and decided on the fate of a people.
Saint Evremond and Chesterfield, who, to the practical knowledge of life, united the wider theories of meditation, have expressed themselves very forcibly on female influence at court. A French author has discovered, that under the regency of Anne of Austria, every thing was conducted by women, and he calls this, a singular epocha. The same happened under our own Anne. But all this is so far from being singular, that I would enquire what epocha has not been governed by women? I confess that the female character has as seldom been heard on the public scene, as the prompter of a theatre; or as rarely been visible as the scene-shifters. But miserable were that philosophy which confounds invisibility with non-existence; the female character, like some other objects, derives all it's influence from concealment; in politics, woman is terrible, not in the rash imbecillity of the storm, but in the sudden explosion of the mine.
Ancient and contemporary history will ever abound with multifarious instances of this kind; and I shall just observe, that even in the severe republics of Greece and Rome, the female character had the same influence; the celebrated confession of Themistocles remarkably confirms this observation. That little boy (said he, pointing to his son) is the arbiter of Greece; for he governs his mother, his mother governs me, I govern the Athenians, and the Athenians govern the Grecians. Themistocles was a profound and honest philosopher. I have no doubt that even the modern republic of France must experience the same despotism, and that the fiercest republican must be contented to remain in his sabine farm, unless he submits to address some proud and ambitious woman; for whatever the French may imagine respecting their salique law, they have been more governed by females, than any other nation.
A learned friend observes, that these observations tend to prove, that women command men, because men
love
women; but I take leave to add, that women command men frequently, because men
fear
women. The excess of their sensibility is observable in all their great passions; and the ancients appear to instruct us, when they picture their furies, as well as their graces, in the forms of women.
It is an observation by Addison, that
"the fair sex are always the best or the worst part of the world."
From the same enthusiasm is derived their excellent, as well as their execrable qualities; their sensations admit of no cold mediocrity; they are at once, more or less, than human; they listen to the voice of adulation, till they sink into idiotism; or they are animated by a fervour of glory, till they are elevated into heroines.
Swift has caught this idea of female sensibility, and alludes to it in his Poem of Cadenus and Vanessa. The lines are the following ones.
"When Miss delights in her spinnet,
A fidler may a fortune get;
A blockhead with melodious voice,
In boarding schools can have his choice.
And oft the dancing master's art
Climbs from the toe to touch the heart.
In learning let a nymph delight,
The pedant gets a mistress by't."
When the love of glory warms the sensitive soul of a female, she is, perhaps, actuated by a stronger impulse than that which directs our less delicate feelings. A being agitated by a tumultuous and inflamed imagination, experiencing sensations, perhaps, unknown to us, half conscious of her debility, yet conducted by a daring pride; burning to reach that
beau idéal
which we so liberally bestow on her; to what height is such a being not capable of soaring? Even her deficiencies become so many tender graces, and her very failings extort our applause. Some men of the greatest genius have been remarkable for their extreme vanity, if we thus must term their love of glory; the same passion exists in all it's force in every great female character; and it is a doubt with me, whether genius receives the characteristics of female sensibility, or whether extreme female sensibility resembles genius. It is, perhaps, a nice shade to discriminate; but it is evident that this glowing sentiment is derived from an amplitude of soul. To what, but this passion for glory, can we attribute their partiality for men of genius? Their remarkable attachment to officers, has formed a severe accusation against the sex; some have considered that it proceeded from their timid dispositions, which make them regard with fondness the protecting arm of a brave man; but a sensible female has lately censured it, because she supposes that as these triflers are remarkable for their frivolous accomplishments, and a deficiency in mental ability, they are therefore more on a level with women, than any other class of men. The observation will oftener be true than false; yet we may sometimes attribute the female's passion for military men, to her violent love of glory. The observation is Bayle's; but it is given by Fielding, who at the same time adduces the sentiment of the heroine of the Odyssey, who
"assigns the glory of her husband as the only source of her affection towards him."
Women have been also frequently accused of an imprudent discovery of their concerns; but an important interest engages their silence. No great enterprise will suffer, because a sensible female unites her aid, and stimulates by her vivacity, the torpid prudence of men. We want not for examples to prove that some of the greatest conspiracies have been confided to women; fostered by their care, and accomplished by their zeal. Du Fresnoy, a very learned researcher of history, has shewn that several great conspiracies have failed, because they were not confided to females; and has adduced numerous evidences, to prove, that whenever they were employed, they conferred success on the enterprise. I am persuaded, that a female may not only have the faculty of preserving a secret, but also the dexterity of inventing what is worthy of being kept secret, at the cost of life.
Such has been the influence of the female character in politics; nor has it been less apparent in religion.
The ladies have been more closely connected with religion than perhaps they are aware of. A new religion is congenial to their dispositions, and not merely for it's novelty. There is a luxuriancy of fancy, and a progress to ideal perfection, which every new religion displays; it is honourable to their finer sensibilities, that they are ever the first to incline to what appears so theoretically beautiful. It is not quite so honourable to those, who pretending to superior sanctity, and even to inspiration, have for the promotion of the system they wifhed to establish, artfully adopted the ideas most dangerous to the imaginations of women, and taught the love of God, according to the art of Ovid.
That the earliest propagators of new dogmas have had recourse to these invisible, yet powerful wheels, in the machine of human nature, I mean women, is not to be controverted. Let the fair sex be inveigled, and the religion is established; a woman at least can bring her husband, a mistress the prime minister, a queen the sovereign.
It is a curious observation made by some, who pretend to singular penetration in the science of human nature, that the christian religion was greatly indebted to the patronage and the sensations of the sex. Voltaire, who is not so superficial as his adversaries would make us believe, says, that half of Europe owes it's christianity to women, and Gibbons, who certainly had vast erudition, in his account of the monastic life, after having mentioned the several inducements for entering into this unnatural state, with more truth than politeness, adds,
"that these religious motives acted more forcibly on the infirm minds of females."
It is certain, that from the influence of the female character, we derive nearly all the prominent events of religious history. The first dominions of the Pope, and consequently the origin of the papal power, are the gifts of a lady. Gregory VII. had so lively an interest in the heart of the Countess Mathilda, that she made a donation of all her states to the holy see. Instigated by the eloquence of St. Jerome, the illustrious Paula forsook Rome, retired to the sacred village of Bethlem, and founded several monasteries. To Torquemada, who had taken possession of the mind of Isabella of Spain (the best Spanish estate he could have seised on) the world is indebted for the cruel inquisition. And in a word, christianity in England is derived from a French princess, who having married Ethelbert, first stipulated for the free exercise of her religion, and soon had such influence on her husband, as to christianise his idolatrous Saxons. To conclude in the words of the poet,
And gospel light, first beamed from Bullen's eyes.
Pope.
It is thus that the female character has ever had an invisible influence on two of the most important branches of human events, politics and religion. A superiority of talent, in one respect, has produced this unvaried result. This talent consists in a great knowledge of man, a susceptibility of impression, and a peculiarity of situation. In the domestic circle, the female is incessantly occupied in disintangling, or combining the passions she observes or she inflames. Her sedentary life, and her quietness of mind, are little interrupted by that variety of pursuits to which the busier sex are devoted. Her circle is her empire; her commands, says Rousseau, are her caresses, and her threats are her tears. Incapable, perhaps, of patient designs, her plans are rapidly conceived, and often fail, if they require a tedious process of elaborate events. They are not deeply laid, but are adapted for temporary effect. The female attends to those minute particulars, often unperceived, and generally carelessly considered as unworthy of an elevated mind, but which often adroitly managed, give a new and sudden turn to important objects; and she appears to know much better than man, that little passions can produce great effects. For surrounding objects her perceptions are vivid; but she cannot, with the prescient eye of philosophy, distinctly trace objects at a remote period. Her intellectual arithmetic can calculate as far as days and months, but extends not to years. She excels man in obtaining a present purpose; her invention is prompt, her boldness happy, and her execution facile; manly perseverance proceeds with a cautious, firm, and gradual progression. Let us consider the sexual advantages. The female can excite by legitimate eulogiums, and can correct by severe panegyrics; she makes man exult or blush; she can allure by a smile, she can enchant by a touch, she can subdue by her endearments. She overturns, or produces in an hour, the labour of years. She has ever something reserved for the last effort; something which has often degraded wisdom into folly, and elevated folly into wisdom, and which, while it can render activity torpid, imparts action to indolence.
If this essay should by some be considered as one of the numerous adulations of the sex, this note will undeceive them. I am persuaded of the influence they have had in religion and in politics, and I attribute it to that stationary point they hold in society; but let it be observed, that they only obtain this fascination in the worst stages of society; in the ages of luxury and licentiousness. As we approach simplicity, they lose their degrading power; and this influence over men is little to their credit, because men at that moment have degenerated from the higher virtues. The very respect we pay to women is an artificial sensation; they are objects that always claim protection, but not often reverence. We tremble before a woman, and are in despair at her censure. What reason can be alledged why the feeble are to bring down, even beneath their level, the strong and nobler genius of man? We must conclude, that when the female character has so powerful an influence in human affairs, man must be greatly perverted. It was in corrupted France that she became the arbitress of fortune.
Woman, from the place she occupies in society, derives her artifice, and from her defective education, her frivolity. By the one she deceives, but by the other she is easily deceived. In the opinion of reflecting men, she is more injured by her frivolity, than by her art. The female character is a cruel sovereign who admits of no toleration in her empire. He who has discovered the art of giving importance to trifles, and rendering important things trifling, is certain of her admiration; but he may employ the grossest artifices to obtain her favours; because she is taken by the semblances of things. Why has the female character, in all ages, and through all the diversities of human manners, been most severely treated, by men of the finest discernment? Because it is a kind of revenge; men of great talents must never expect to receive their celebrity from women; for they must first become frivolous; that is, great men must submit to become women. But when we look over the catalogue of illustrious men, scarce a solitary instance exists of this solecism in nature.
I conclude by repeating that the female character derives all her importance from the depravity of man; but if, by a very different system of education, she could employ this influence, to raise, rather than to depress, the character of man, would it not be a happy reformation?—Yes, for the
state,
but not for the
sex.
The nation would acquire great men, but the women would lose their idolaters.
These reflections are to be confined to the females of the higher and corrupt orders of society; and to those, particularly, of a voluptuous nation. In our country the female character has rarely exhibited that depravity of heart, that duplicity of manners, and that laxity of moral sentiment, which have disgraced the women of France. Because the character of Englishmen has been ever more austere than that of Frenchmen; and it is in proportion to the degeneracy of men, that women degenerate. It is remarkable that the eminent examples of female talents and female virtues, always exist when the same virtues and the same talents are exerted by men. The most amiable beings are, therefore, the most flexible, and for their derelictions, man must reproach himself, but never the female character. Have not Juvenal and Boileau, Pope and Young, Chesterfield and Bruyere, and others, considered themselves rather as satirists than philosophers?
ON THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN LOVE AND RELIGION.
IT has been remarked that there is a frame of mind, so constituted, that it becomes naturally religious; as it is certain that there are some temperaments which are naturally amorous. Religion has kindled it's brightest fervours in those persons who unite these sensations, and the purity of devotion has been deplorably corrupted, by the admixture of a violent passion for the sex. He who loves religion, as religion should be loved, deprived of the adventitious politics of men, and unsoiled by those voluptuous imaginations which degrade the divinity, will not censure this attempt to expose the danger which a feeling and feminine heart too frequently incurs, and which, while it appears to aspire to celestial perfection, is only the more firmly intangled in terrestrial licentiousness.
Has religion been attacked in her sanctuary? Have the virtuous united with the criminal? Has the voice of nations sanctioned the declamations of the impious? It is because priests and religionists have destroyed the edifice they were to guard and to inhabit. Among the terrible disorders with which these have polluted
"the holy of holies,"
one of the most striking is this mixture of love with religion. This monstrous union, even in the present day, perverts psalms into philtres, and conventicles into brothels; yet, as the same cause produces different effects on various minds, what inflames the pious with a burning devotion, only warms the wit into grave raillery, while it animates the instructive execration of the philosopher.
Poets are amorous, lovers are poetical, but saints are both. Religion, love, and poetry, are streams from the same fountain; they are alike characterised by a certain tender melancholy, which ever accompanies the quiet intervals of an enthusiastic fancy; while often there is a stage in these passions, at which reason disappears, and a continued or a temporary insanity is prevalent; and among lunatics the greater part will frequently be discovered to be religious, poetical, or amorous. The incurables unite the three passions. But, without further discussion, I shall arrange those facts, relative to the present subject, which I have collected with some care and some curiosity.
The passion the deity inspires, is according to the conceptions we form of the deity. The christian religion in the persons of Jesus and the Virgin, set afloat a new train of ideas; and the amatory passions have been kindled, and the amatory language has been adopted.
In the preceding essay on the influence of the female character in religion and in politics, some observations, and some historical evidence, are introduced on the amatorial intimacy of the early propagators of religion with the ladies. The genius of those pious men, survived in their modern descendants, and women, it is scarce necessary to add, are always women. Those handsome seraphs in France, who were called directors, and who had nothing ghostly about them but their functions, retained the same extraordinary influence, and have performed miracles in the cause of religion and gallantry. The young devotees of our numerous sects are not less sensitive; and while they blend with an excess of devotion, all the intemperance of love, soften the groans of religious affliction, with the sighs of amorous pleasure.
The Catholic religion is an academy of love. The effusions of a Spaniard to the Virgin, and a repentant frail one, addressing her prototype Mary Magdalen, with an
"
ora pro nobis,
"
employ language which comports as little with piety as modesty. I have even heard a pretty Arian speak, with some conviction, of the divinity of Jesus, after having read the beautiful description of his person in Josephus; and which was interpolated by some monk, who well knew that even the son of God would come recommended to the ladies, by the charms of his person. The illustrious pious are always represented as beautiful; from the oriental obscenities of Solomon, the Jewish Ovid, to the grossness of Zinzendorff, and the indecencies of Whitfield.
The union existing between love and religion no where appears clearer, than by the confession said to be made by Mahomet; that the pleasures of the sex rendered him more fervent in prayer. In love, as well as religion, he must have been an adequate judge; for he was a Turk, and a prophet; the first supposing a great experience in sensual pleasures, and the other in spiritual delights. He promised for the reward of piety, a bevy of immortal beauties; every prophet, like every physician, has recommended that system to their patients which they found most agreeable to their own feelings. But I cannot perceive that the opinion of Mahomet at all differed from that of a Christian Saint, Catharine, who observed,
"how unhappy must be the state of the damned, since they are no longer capable of
loving.
"
To pursue our speculation with something like historical regularity, we may observe, that David and his son are not less celebrated for the number of their Psalms and Proverbs, than for their Concubines. It is fortunate for them, that we have no secret memoirs of those days; we know, however, sufficient; and indeed we could not expect great regularity of manners in men, who were at once poets, lovers, and saints. Glancing into the early ages of christianity, I pass over an anecdote of no less a person than the author of the Christian Creed, who is said to have concealed himself, for a considerable time, in the embraces of a favourite devotee; but Saint Athanasius assures us, that during the whole time, he lay hid in an empty jar. Proceeding to a later period we discover the amatorial spirit to be so congenial to religion, that public marriages were solemnised between some eminent characters, and a favourite saint. Pope Pius V. was publicly united in matrimony
to Saint Catharine; and the author of his life assures us, that this ancient lady kissed him, and presented him with a ring of her own hair. Tanchelm of Antwerp publicly espoused an image of the Virgin Mary, and with no inconsiderable portion; for having placed two boxes near her, to receive the voluntary contributions of the numerous spectators, the women were so fascinated with the idea of a nuptial ceremony, that, alike animated by love and religion, they tore their necklaces and ear-rings, to present them to the Virgin and her Tanchelm.
Descending to a later period we observe the same cause operating the same effects. The singular institutions of chivalry, illustrate the alliance between the two passions. The learned Saint Palaye has observed, that the first lessons of chivalry related to the love of God and the ladies; that is, religion and gallantry.
"The ladies,"
he says,
"taught them, at the same time, their catechism and the art of love."
It was in the genuine spirit of chivalry, that Boccaccio returned thanks to God and the ladies, for the success of his agreeable and licentious tales. Boccaccio at length became so voluptuous in his indulgence for love, poetry, and religion, that this unfortunate man of genius was seised by the terrors of the priests, and appears to have closed his days in the lunacy of catholicism.
From the twelfth century to no remote period, nothing pleased in devotion, but what was combined with love. Romances were filled with religion, as well as religion with romances. They hastened to confession to find lovers, and having found lovers, probably perceived it necessary to return to confession. The learned Lenglet du Fresnoy comes here to my assistance. Writing on the romances of this period, he observes, that
"Jesus Christ and Apollo, Cupid and the Holy Ghost, Venus and the Virgin, went hand in hand in the early productions of this kind."
Of these works one only is printed, which is the celebrated Roman de la Rose.
The primers of the pious were at one period so many votive offerings to love. In the reign of Henry III. of France, most great men had these religious manuals illuminated with subjects, from the sacred writings, in which were introduced the portraits of their favourite minions and mistresses. Charles V. had a missal painted for his mistress, of a similar description; it was ornamented by figures depicted by Albert Durer, and the subjects were not less extravagant than licentious. So possible is it to be servent at once in love and religion, that the Queen of Navarre, in one of her novels, notices a Prince, who, going to his usual assignation with the lady of a counsellor, always stopped to pray in a Church which he passed; her Majesty highly applauds his devotion, as well as his passion; and advises all true lovers not to neglect the duties of religion.
Several curious publications might be mentioned, composed by pious persons. Of these modern works, none is more singular than the life of Marie à la Coque, not inelegantly written by an Archbishop of Sens. This woman was a visionary, who, having overheated her brain, by the perusal of religious works, and the rigours of penitential fasts, betrothed herself to Jesus. From her own narrative the Archbishop composed this pious romance, in which the whole progress of her celestial amour is traced in the style of a circulating-library novel. We have a copy of amatory verses, which Jesus wrote to his new spouse, and scenes are described with great lubricity of imagination. It is certain this ingenious Archbishop could not have believed the reveries he wrote; but he well knew that such fictions, delivered as truths, would have a great offect with the devotees, and it must be confessed, that the Parisian Belle was charmed to worship a deity, so much resembling
un homme du grand monde.
Similar publications abound in French and Spanish literature, and it has been observed, by some of their casuists, that they always found the greatest sinners made the greatest saints; the reason is not difficult to discern, since such sanctity is in proportion to the criminal imaginations of the religionist.
Even the ceremonies of religion, both in ancient and in modern times, have exhibited the grossest indecencies. Priests, in all ages, have been the successful panders of the human heart, and have introduced in the solemn worship of the divinity, incitements, gratifications, and representations, which the pen of the historian must refuse to describe. Often has the sensible Catholic blushed amidst his devotions; and I have seen Chapels surrounded by pictures of lascivious attitudes, and the obsolete amours of saints revived by the pencil of some Aretine. At this moment there exists a considerable trafic of
certain
waxen figures, in some parts of Calabria, which a royal edict in vain attempted to abolish; and it is urged in it's favour, by the priests of the neighbourhood, that in no part of Italy are the young devotees so fervent in prayer, and so obsequious to the instructions of the priest.
In religious solitude, these confused notions of love and religion perplexed the wavering and debilitated heart of the pious Recluse. On the burning pillow of the Monk hovered phantoms of melancholy lust; his fancy was the scourge of the furies, and of the innumerable visions with which these men were disturbed, they were ever accompanied by the seducing form of a beautiful female, and the day was passed in contrition for the temptations of the nightly demon. Their homilies were manuals of love, and the more religious they became, the more depraved were their imaginations. In the nunnery, the love of Jesus was the most abandoned of passions, and the ideal espousal was indulged at the cost of the feeble heart of many a solitary beauty. Several manuscript diaries have been preserved of these amiable fanatics, in which the embraces and sensations of spiritual love are not diftinguishable from those of a material nature. An eternal meditation on the same object, terminated frequently in the horrors of delirium; and when the soul, by a ceaseless inquietude, had accustomed itself to be penetrated with the love of Jesus, while all other ideas faded and vanished from the mind, it sunk in the stupor of imbecillity, and could alone occupy itself by this solitary idea. Tissot has given a case of this nature; a young woman having yielded herself up to all the extravagance of love and religion, during six months that he attended her, she could only articulate at intervals,
"my beloved lamb, come to my arms."
We must now turn our observations to a considerable portion of the religious world, who, known under various denominations, may be classed under the generic title of Mystics. The ancient Platonists appear to have resembled the modern Mystics; they carried these united passions to a great perfection; yet, it is clear, that the Platonists trembled to gather the celestial palms of religion, on the precipices of love. John Norris, a celebrated English Platonist, in his "Theory and Regulation of Love," considering all vices and virtues, as the various modifications and irregularities of love, maintains this principle, that the love of God ought to be entire, and exclusive of all other loves. This singular distnction could never have entered into the imagination of any person, excepting
hat or a lover and religionist; but, without doubt, the author had found it, among his female Platonists, as a principle very necessary to inculcate.
The Mystics were enamoured of the sweet union. Of these, Antoinette Bourignon is among the most celebrated. She persuaded some, and what is more strange, is supposed to have persuaded herself, that she received the visitations of the divine spirit. Her opinions became so fashionable, that they were propagated in this country, and Lesley thought proper to publish an elaborate refutation of her errors. We are told she was endowed with an extraordinary gift of chastity, and which, she informs us, had been frequently attempted; scandalous reports were on the wing, and the anticipated them. She, like other female saints aspiring to be espoused to the Son of God, was desirous the public should know, that she was not incapable of attracting several young men. The fascinating ardours of these Mystics prevailed over the gentle mind of the virtuous Fenelon, who once rendered a man of fine genius ridiculous to all Europe by his patronage of Madame Guyon. The sage author of Telemachus wandered in his retirement, studious of her
"spiritual guide,"
her
"short way,"
and her
"torrents."
The imagination of this lady was not of the most chaste, nor of the most beautiful kind, yet it was certainly imagination, and it's wild fervours overpowered the susceptible soul of Fenelon. By the alchemy of his own fine genius, he turned obscenity into purity, and incoherence into regularity. How are we otherwise to account for this singular fascination?
The same genius characterises our female Methodists, who hasten to their Chapel, as the fashionable to the front boxes of the Theatre. An extraordinary neatness of dress distinguishes a devotee, and while she sings a tender psalm, the warmest tears, and the most voluptuous sighs, attest her sensibility. An intrigue too often commences in a pew; and I do not know why the magistrates, who are empowered to prosecute the venders of obscene publications, permit the hymns, the diaries, and other rapturous effusions of our fanatics. These are the Ovidian touches of the kitchen. Where are to be found, as among similar sects, an equal number of lovers? If one part of ascetic christianity threatened, if universally adopted, to depopulate the world, the other, of mystic christianity, appears resolute in rectifying that political error; and perhaps no society so small as that of methodism, has produced to the State, so many additional members.
This close alliance between love and religion, many writers have noticed, without accounting for it; and the greater part have only ventured to express their astonishment, and to doubt the fact. A great observer of the human character, enquires if the heart can conciliate such opposite passions, and admit such incompatibilities? But we see that the passions are not opposite or incompatible; since libertinism has been one instrument which the hand of priests has employed for the purposes of religion. It is acutely observed by Montesquieu, that a Mystic is only mad, devout, and licentious. But we may also add, that the delirium has often only consisted in the expressions which these persons adopt; and all the extatic visions they notice, are sometimes only so many metaphors, by which they conceal their libertinism of mind. The Methodists of the last century (for methodism is an old folly with a new name) employed all this devotional cant. The father of our immortal dramatist, probably far gone in love and religion, thus expresses himself in his will,
"I bequeath my soul to be entombed in the sweet and
amorous
coffin of the
side
of Jesus Christ!"
Even elegant minds, adding to the orgasm of poetry, that of religious extacy, employ the style of the most plaintive and tender lovers. Racine the son, in his Poem on Religion, has many such touches. He engraved under his crucifix, the very expressions Tibullus has addressed to his mistress. The Latin poet says,
Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora,
Te teneam moriens, deficiente manu.
Which Racine thus adopts, in addressing Jesus,
Que ta Croix dans mes mains soit à ma derniere heure,
Et que, les yeux sur toi, je t'embrasse et je meure.
In an epistle, supposed to be written by the famous Abbé Rancé, of La Trappe, the alliance between love and religion is well marked in the following verse,
Je n'avois plus d'Amante, il me fallut un Dieu.
Our sublime Milton, who, as he was a great poet, and no inconsiderable fanatic, must have been, no doubt, a warm lover, appears also to have conceived that the rewards of a future state, can only consist of amatorial pleasures. This curious passage is in the Paradise Lost, book v. verse 612. Adam is thus conversing with the angel,
"To love thou blamest me not, for
love,
thou sayst,
Leads up to heaven,
is both the
way and guide
;
Bear with me then, if lawsul what I ask;
Love not
the heavenly spirits; and how their love
Express
they, by looks only", or do they
mix
Irradiance,
virtual or immediate
touch?
I will not fatigue the reader with additional confirmations of what I have advanced. I shall only observe, that the enthusiast Rousseau, who certainly was a poet, though he wrote in prose; a lover of exquisite sensibility, though he married his laundress; and pious, though he wrote against the clergy, perceived the union which has passed under our examination. In one of his notes to his delicious romance, he observes,
"That the enthusiasm of devotion borrows the language of loves the enthusiasm of love borrows the language of devotion."
I conclude by observing, that one of the most dangerous corruptions, introduced into religion, by artful and atheistical priests, has been that of the most libidinous passions. How much, therefore, is it to the honour of our established Church, that it alone, of every branch of christianity, does not annihilate that chastity of mind, which is the female's peculiar and precious ornament.
ON FRENCH AND ENGLISH POETRY, AND ON SOME FRENCH WORDS.
AMONG the peculiar felicities of an Englishman, are to be accounted some of his literary enjoyments. He peruses with continued rapture, the works of Shakespeare and Milton. One must be accustomed from the most susceptible age, to accommodate oneself to their strong and versatile genius; as the Turks, habituated to their favourite opium, feast deliciously on copious quantities, which would inebriate and disgust a foreigner.
An English critic detests French poetry, as loyally, as he does French politics. The plenteous roses that grow on the borders of the Seine, passed through his alembic, yield but a few drops of odour; but I conceive this to be no defect of the roses, but of the alembic.
On the other side, a French critic cannot patiently endure ten pages of Shakespeare and Milton. The pleasure is uncertain and fugitive, while the disgust is frequent and repulsive. He views a chaos of genius, where light and darkness are in continual opposition; elaborate deformities and misplaced beauties; grandeur neighbouring to meanness.
Such are the decisions of national critics; but it is possible to censure both parties, by applauding the compositions of both.
It is evident that the genius of English and French poetry is widely different. Our theatre and our poems afford the proofs. The Cato of Addison, which by it's regularity of plot, and correctness of composition, has ever been a great favourite in France, is at home rarely acted, and is much more approved than applauded. The French say that we had no perfect tragedy till Cato appeared. Among a few kindred compositions, the Phaedra of Smith, one of the most elegant and classical of our dramatic pieces, was very ill received on the stage. The Temple of Fame, of Pope, one of his most elaborate, was his least popular poem; it never attracted notice, is rarely quoted, and the opinion of Steele at first augured it's ill success. Yet it is this poem which M. Yart in his selections of English poetry, gave as one of it's most precious compositions, and this opinion has been confirmed by the French critics. Of the French poets, Corneille is the most attacked in his country, and the most admired in our own. He bears some affinity to the irregular force of Shakespeare; he has many of his defects, and sometimes his beauties. His characters are heroic; and he sacrifices little to the sighing and amorous theatre of the French. The real emotions of love, Corneille appears never to have felt in poetry; all his females are heroines and politicians. What must we think of Emilia, in Cinna, who will not bestow her hand, unless she receives for the nuptial gift, the head of Augustus? Another heroine only unites herself to Sertorius, for the pleasure of punishing Pompey. The celebrated scenes between Chimene and Rodrigue discover little of the delicacy of the amatorial passion. But he is a hero, and Englishmen feel a congeniality of disposition. The love scenes in which Corneille has failed, would not have equally gratified us, had they possessed the continued elegance, the sweet volubility, and pervading softness of Racine. His defects, therefore, are not so sensibly felt in this country as in his own, and his beauties are much more. I found this criticism upon facts, and I think that Pope, in one line, has conveyed our national sentiment respecting these two great rivals, and masters of the French drama;
"
Exact
Racine, and Corneille's
noble fire.
"
Our national genius has ever been more vigorous than graceful, and more solid than refined. We are not less partial to the bizarre than the beautiful, and we are pleased with a Hogarth, at least as often, as with a Raphael. The French preceded us in polite literature and polite criticism, and I much fear that we have not yet approached the eloquence of their finest compositions. We exult in the strength of our oaks, and contemptuously regard the delicacy of their vines; but, perhaps, we may yet be pleased to unite them on the same soil.
One circumstance in this variance of taste, long appeared to me mysterious. Classical literature is studiously cultivated in England; no nation is so much attached to the Grecians and the Latins, as Englishmen; and it would therefore seem, that that which most approaches their manner, would be most adapted to gratify the national taste. But how is it that the reverse is the fact? We have few poets, excepting Pope, who are professed imitators of the ancients, while in France, their eminent poets have enriched themselves with their spoils.
This national singularity, of students devoting themselves to the classical Muses, while the public at large are not delighted by a poet, who forms himself on the models of antiquity, may, perhaps, be accounted for in the following manner. The character of our earliest poetry is Gothic; our poetical infancy was nourished with Italian milk, and the venerable Chaucer educated his Muse in the schools of Italian fancy. Spencer, Shakespeare, and Milton, completed the nation's poetical taste. In the reign of Charles II. a new school was commenced by Dryden, and since perfected by Pope, with which we are now familiarised; but I conceive that there remains a certain licentiousness and boldness in the national poetical taste, which is inimical to regularity and correctness.
An independent spirit characterised the poets of the Gothic school; but like all independence, their manners have a mixture of the grand and the mean, the heroic and the puerile. Their daring and uncontrouled spirit often attained to a loftiness unknown to their classical rivals, but their opulence is
"Barbaric pearl and gold."
Pope.
Their imagination wandered in a new creation; it was more abstracted, more wild, more lustrous. But it was frequently, as one of themselves expresses it,
"Dark with excessive light."
Milton.
It cannot be said that these votarists of the imagination had the modest dignity, the clear conduct, and the subdued imagination of Virgil; but rather the originality, the spirit, and the vehemence of Homer. One need only have taste to receive the tranqull pleasures of a classical poet, but the Gothic writers are unintelligible, if we cannot assimilate our minds with their peculiar dispositions.
It is not, therefore, surprising, that Ariosto and Tasso, Spenser and Milton, and Shakespeare, who felicitously united their varied characters, to his own powerful conceptions of the human character, should have excited the wit, the reasoning, and the ridicule, of the critics of the opposite school. It is like censuring the manners of a distant nation, because they differ from our own. Yet it must not be denied, that in criticism, as in human nature, there are certain universal axioms, which are independent of every local custom. Order must ever be acknowledged superior to confusion, decency to licentiousness, and simplicity to affectation; the classical school has, therefore, successfully attacked many a vulnerable side of the Gothic poets. To these children of fancy, Fairy Land opened all it's gorgeous miracles, and as the dragon of criticism was not placed at the entrance of the poetical Hesperides, they plucked, at pleasure, the golden fruitage, and sported with the freedom, and sometimes with the licentiousness of revellers, who disdained the arm of the legislator. But it was not thus in France; criticism had flourished there at an early period, and the art of poetry had long exercised the colder and disquisitive genius of their wits; Aristotle became as great a favourite as Homer. And it is an acknowledged fact in literary investigation, that whenever criticism flourishes, a severe and minute taste will be formed, and the luxuriancies of imagination must be trimmed and lopped by the polishing steel of art.
Hence is it, that so many extraordinary criticisms have appeared by some eminent writers of both nations. Boileau and Racine, two most finished poets, have been often slightly appreciated in our country; the classical purity, and the bitter causticity of Boileau, have sometimes been considered as only frigid imitation; and the equable flow, and concealed delicacy of Racine, have not been generally tasted in a country, where energy, rather than delicacy, is found most to please. Voltaire's Henriade has been little esteemed, and denied to be an epic, but I cannot approve it the less, if it were merely to deserve the degrading distinction, of being only a very fine poem.
But the English Muses have fared much worse at Paris, than their French Sisters at London. Our brilliant monsters, as the works of Milton and Shakespeare have been called by Voltaire, is a favourable distinction. The French have translated our best poets in prose and verse; and when we compare these versions with the originals, we shall be little surprised at the severity of criticism. The brightest passages in Shakespeare and Milton, are so closely attached to the force and genius of our language; so many secret charms are concealed in their numbers; so many marvellous words that are embrowned by the touch of antiquity; so many happy boldnesses of expression; and such a continuance of metaphorical diction; that I am persuaded no foreign student can ever taste them, like a native, in their original. There are certain poets, who resist the nicest skill of translation; who refuse to speak in any other language than their own, and who have so constructed their diction, by the idiom and manners of their own country, that not a sufficient number of equivalent phrases, or colours of diction, can be found by a foreigner in his own language. When by violence we tear away the sentiment or image, to place it in another language, it is like rending the embroidered flower from a veil of gauze; the flower may be seised on, but the gauze which gave it it's peculiar beauty will be wanting.
What we have observed of this kind of imagination, extends also to works of humour. There is an idiom in the manners of men, as well as in their language. We are not less distinguished by our national humour, than by our national imagination; and the finest strokes in the characters of Sir John Falstaff and Sir Roger de Coverley, I can speak from my own observation, can never be relished by a man of letters in France; and I may add, that the wit of Moliere will not be certain of securing every Englishman as his admirer. It is not, therefore, surprising, that most of the French translators, have rescinded from many of our authors, those portions of their compositions, which are most valued by a native.
But to return to our present investigation. Writers of the Gothic character we have mentioned, add to these difficulties, that of opening a vein of purer poetry, which is unknown in the school of wit and correctness. The most enlightened critic of the severer, wants many sensations for the romantic poetry.
It has therefore happened, that some of our own eminent writers, in the character of critics, have delivered decisions on our own poetry, which to many have appeared extraordinary and unjust. Shaftesbury, whose taste was formed on the best models, and who respected the modern French writers, as well as the ancients, has sarcastically observed, that
"An English author would be all genius. The
limae labor
is the great grievance with our countrymen."
He says,
"Our Muses have scarce arrived to any thing of shapeliness or person. They lisp as in their cradle; and their stammering tongues, their youth and rawness must excuse. Our dramatic Shakespeare, Fletcher, Jonson, and our epic Milton, preserve this stile."
The critical strictures of Hume, on our poets, which I would not hesitate to adopt, have been frequently censured, and it has been supposed, that because his refined taste, quickly felt, and accurately traced, the grosser blemishes of Shakespeare and Milton, he was therefore deficient in poetical sensations. But does not the admirable writer of "The Epicurean," display a fine and chastised imagination, a delicacy of sentiment, and a liveliness of imagery, which will not easily be paralleled? Chesterfield who had read and admired the French criticks, and the French writers, has also freely condemned some of the ebullitions of our first poets; and the taste of Addison and Pope was deeply imbued with the studies of French critics, and richly nourished on French authors. Such respectable critics as Warburton, Hurd, and Warton,
The earlier volumes of the Critical Review are remarkable for their continued abuse of French writers; one style, and one mode of thinking, characterise the larger articles; but who this English patriot was, I am not yet certain. It might be Smollet, or Franklin; the critiques have perhaps too much spirit and acrimony, to be attributed to the latter.
are not penurious of their contempt of French critics; but it is certain that they have considerably profited by their use. They have acted the ungenerous part of that russian traveller, who always pillaged or massacred under the hospitable roof that afforded him shelter and repose. Young, in his tasteless versification, whose fondness for conceit and floridness of wit, unite the defects of the inferior Italian poets, has been pleased to warn us, not to borrow any thing from the French, because, observes the profound wit,
"Britons are grave and solid; and a
dance
Far better may import, than
thoughts
from France."
Young's Second Epistle to Pope.
If we are really so grave and solid, why did our poet compose his satires in a chain of twisted epigrams? And why did he study, admire, and feebly imitate, the solid and judicious Boileau? But Young is a writer, whose errors we must reprimand, but whose genius we revere.
Johnson was a lover of French literature, and it's charms had for him the power of calming his national hatred, and extorting his warm applause. He admired their gay and airy manner; their decorated and sparkling periods, their versatile talents, and their copiousness of subjects. He who has formed a taste, and he who has matured his taste into a passion for literary history, and the wide circle of literary information, can no where gratify it, but in French literature; no European nation has yet equalled the varieties of their researches; the diversifications of their criticism; and the multitude of their anecdotes; for no one has yet felt an equal passion for the Belles Lettres. They have, indeed, the honour of giving their title to polite literature. We have but just escaped from the trammels of classical pedantry, and we have yet only essayed to wear the flowery chains of the Graces of literature.
The introduction of French words has been censured with due indignation; but it will be sometimes discovered, that however copious our vocabulary, our
critical language
is eminently defective, if compared with that of the French. Nor is the reason difficult to assign. In an age of literary refinement, criticism constructs a language which often happily describes the feelings of taste. I must yield up my convictions, if I were to deny that the French language abounds with lively expressions, with acute distinctions, and with peculiar terms, which paint our literary sensations; because I repeat, that nation long preceded us in critical learning, and has been more attached to the cultivation of the Belles Lettres. It would be difficult, and if I may judge by my own attempts, I should say it is impossible, to translate some of their critiques; so peculiarly brilliant, so subtilly delicate, so appropriately just, are some of their expressions.
I point out for one instance among many similar ones, the
Reflexions critiques sur le genie d'Horace, de Despreaux, et de Rousseau,
by the Duke de Nivernois. It is a precious, and in our language, an incomparable model of criticism. I am convinced that Johnson derives a considerable portion of his best manner in his biographical criticisms from the French; and we may observe by his own confession, that at first, he proposed drawing up his articles in the manner of a French publication. See his advertisement. Dr. Warton, in his advertisement to his Essay on Pope, apparently most involuntarily, confesses the force of the French language on literary topics. He says he does not consider the French quotations as any decoration to his style, and
"he only uses French words when the force and meaning of the passages so quoted, depend on the peculiar turn and idiom of the original."
—He therefore confesses that we have not parallel expressions for the many beautiful ones in the French language; and his quotations are copious and numerous.
The beautiful and light ideas of taste are ever dimly seen through the twilight of language; and even this ingenious and literary people have complained of the deficiencies of their style. If we acknowledge that the English language boasts a rich abundance, is it requisite for the critic of taste to be informed, that the language of genius is yet barren in every nation?
But as general observation is of little value, unless elucidated by example, I shall notice a few French words, which, at present, offer themselves to my recollection, and of which I confess myself incapable of discovering adequate and exact parallels in our language. The words
naiveté,
a
critique, ennui, bizarre,
and some others, have at length been made denizens; but certain critics put me often in despair, when I would introduce to their notice, some other foreigners, who I well know have considerable merit, and are by no means so insignificant as they imagine.—An
Erudit
is very different from a
pedant;
because a pedant is universally understood to be a learned fool, conversant only with the ancient classicks; but an
erudit
is a learned fool, who has crouded his intellect with the minutiae of learning, and is familiar with the historical, and not with the philosophical part of a subject. —A
litterateur
is a man of letters, and a
prosateur
a writer of prose; and I would prefer them, because they give a necessary and distinctive title, and have greater force than our feebler paraphrase.
That these niceties are not over refinements, I am pleased to confirm by an observation I have just discovered in Dr. Parr's "Tracts by Warburton, and a Warburtonian." Of Dr. Parr's splendour and energy of diction, we cannot think too highly; his compositions give a new idea of the force and beauty of the English language.
At p. 162 he employs this expression,
"To the Remarker,"
and accompanies it with the following note,
"I am not quite satisfied with this word, though Johnson, in his Dictionary, affixes to it the authority of Watts. I use it from necessity, or at least, for the sake of avoiding the tiresome periphrasis of saying "the writer of the Remarks."
The attic ear of Parr was pained by the languor of a tedious paraphrase; and I presume, that every man of taste must desire similar words to
prosateur
and
litterateur,
on the same principle as the word
remarker.
—To express the wariness or circumspection of an author, who suppresses what he thinks advantageous for his cause to suppress, the French employ the word
reteniie.
The Bishop of Worcester says ironically,
"It is plain that virtue hath not been very common amongst us, from our having no name to call it by."
In his Essay "on the Delicacy of Friendship," republished by Dr. Parr, in his Tracts by Warburton, and a Warburtonian. I say nothing of the motive of that Essay.
Un style enjoué,
literally is
a chearful style,
but that expression would sound oddly in English, and it is wanted.—The Duke of Burgundy characterised Corneille as
un homme de Genie,
and Racine as
un homme d' Esprit.
This admirable distinction exists not in our language.—How often have I sighed to erase from my manuscripts, the words
les delices; artistement,
which I venture to call
artistly;
the
tact
of criticism; which word has been lately employed by Mrs. Barbauld, in her Essay on Akenside.—The French language is the language of sentiment and delicacy; and when our great lexicographer was desirous of forcibly expressing himself, on a subject in which his sensations were fervidly alive, (the gift of his pension) he said that he was compelled to have recourse to the French word
penetré.
I will not weary the reader with this arid verbality; but conclude with one instance of the extreme delicacy and refinement of the French critical language. Their critics employ nice discriminations of expression, which it is hopeless for an Englishman to attempt; and I quote for an illustration, the DELICAT and the DELIE' in literature. These form no frivolous distinctions, but are perceptible shades to the sensations of a cultivated taste. The DELICAT consists of ideas united by an affinity not common; not immediately apparent; yet on examination, not too remote; it occasions an agreeable surprise, and skilfully awakens some secret and accessory ideas of virtue, pleasure, love, &c. The DELIE' is a more refined delicacy, where the artifice, the subtilty, and the writer's aim, seem studiously concealed. Writers of the DELICAT may be frequently DELIE' in their manner of expression; but writers of the DELIE' are rarely DELICATS. A sentimental impression is communicated by the DELICAT, but the DELIE' has what we term
"more than meets the ear,"
a kind of enigmatic elegance. One of their critics, writes thus on this distinction.
"Throw over a composition
delié
the shade of sentiment, and you will render it
delicat;
imagine that he who writes with the
delicat
has some concealed and ambiguous design, and he will instantly become a writer
delié.
"
I am sensible how difficult it is to explain such metaphysical differences; I do not even flatter myself to have explained them; but they will be perceived by a fine writer when he employs them. It is by a studious attention to such refinements, that sensibility of taste is heightened. I quote an observation of Hume, on the subject of taste, which will throw light on this subject. He says, that
"the smaller the objects are, which become sensible to the eye, the finer is that organ, and the more elaborate it's make and composition. A good palate is not tried by strong flavours, but by a mixture of small ingredients, where we are still sensible of each part, notwithstanding it's minuteness, and it's confusion with the rest. In like manner a quick and acute perception of beauty and deformity must be the perfection of our mental taste."
And Johnson observes,
"He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning. He that thinks with more subtilty, will seek for terms of more nice discrimination."
We abound with writers and critics, who consider their taste as excellent, because it is sensible of the more obvious beauties of an author, though insensible to the more delicate touches. But the taste of such critics and writers is not better than that which exists among the multitude.
And must we not be permitted to introduce such expressive distinctions? If we do not
borrow
them from the French, or
invent
parallel terms, a writer of exquisite taste will have to deplore, in his every composition, the loss and injury of many beautiful ideas. Cicero, among the Latins, was applauded for domiciliating Grecian terms in his maternal language; and though I am sensible, very heavy restrictions should be laid on such innovations, yet, like the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, there are times in which it may become necessary to transgress the genius of our language, as well as our constitution.
Mr. Nares, in his "Elements of Orthoepy," (a book with which every writer, ambitious of unviolated analogy in the English language, should become familiarised) has observed in the preface, that
"In an enlightened and improving age, much, perhaps, is not to be apprehended from the inroads of mere caprice; at such a period it will generally be perceived, that
needless irregularity
is the worst of all deformities"
—But are
some innovations
always
needless irregularities?
—He continues,
"Rules will therefore be observed, so far as they are known and acknowledged; but at the same time the desire of improvement having once been excited, will not remain inactive; and it's efforts, unless assisted by knowledge, as much as they are prompted by zeal, will not unfrequently be found pernicious; so that the very persons, whose intention it is to perfect the instrument of reason, will deprave and disorder it unknowingly."
—All this must be weighed by the judicious reader; I only thew my impartiality in quoting the opinion of a critic, whose judgment will, no doubt, be considered as of greater authority than my own.
So irregular and uncertain is our speech, and we may add our language, that it is not subjected only to the transient innovations of ignorance, caprice, and affectation, but is liable to have these recorded and ratifid by the labours of the learned. In a work like "the Elements of Orthoepy" it might have been hoped, that the purity of the language would have been promoted by a notation and exposition of it's oral corruptions; but alas! this learned critic only endeavours to perpetuate inelegance and error, by giving the sanction of his approbation to what he should have stamped with disgrace.—I am indebted for this observation to a learned critic, who has made some very useful annotations in MS. in a copy of this book.—There are not wanting instances in this work, in which the author, a professed and able advocate for grammatical purity, has violated the genius of the English language. What does this prove? That authors are not to be criminated without mercy. Mr. Nares has said,
"The whole book, if it
performs
what it's compiler intends"
—it should be
"if it
perform,
"
the conjunction
if,
observes Lowth, making the sense hypothetical or conditional, always governs the verb in the subjunctive mood. Again our author writes
"This letter has
one uniform
sound."
This barbarous tautology may be easily avoided, if we read
"
an uniform
sound."
—But I stop my pen, ashamed in a work of so strong a texture, to pick out such loose threads. I mean, however, that this note should be instructive; we see our best authors claim great indulgence. It is the artifice of some critics, of very mean talents, to direct their acumen to such venial errors; incapable of valuing the powers of a man of genius, they exult in such mechanical detections; they almost appear to consider genius as consisting in grammar; as those hypocrites vigilantly censure the virtues of an elevated soul, because not as superstitiously punctilious as themselves, in the minuter ceremonies of religion; all the grammar possible will not produce one valuable sentiment, as all the ceremonies of religion will not give birth to one sublime virtue.
ADDENDA.
PAGE 158.
I AM inclined to believe, that of those minor poems which I have described, a diligent selection among our fugitive poetry, might gather no inconsiderable volume. I think, however, that short compositions, relative to the domestic passions, are not frequent; and the
Vers de Societé
form a species of poetical composition, which might still be employed with great success.
PAGE 165.
I confess, however, that every philosopher is not so indifferent a prophet as the good Abbé de Saint Pierre. We have had several extracts from their writings, which have clearly predicted the great revolution of France. To this number I could add many; I shall give a very singular prediction of Rousseau, who, whether the Church will allow it or not, is certainly a very great prophet.
In his Emilius, book iii. p. 88, he writes.
"We approach a state of crisis, and an age of revolutions. Who can answer what will then happen to you? What men have made, men can destroy; there are no other indelible characters than those formed by nature, and nature makes no princes, no rich, no lords. What then will your debased satrap do, who has been only habituated to grandeur?"
—He accompanies the observation by this note.—
"I consider it as impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can last long; they have all shone, and every state that shines, is on the decline. I could maintain my opinion by reasons more particular than this maxim; but this is not the place to tell them."
All this might appear very wonderful, if it were not certain that the revolution in France had taken place, in the eye of the philosopher, thirty or forty years, ere it appeared in the streets of Paris. A revolution in a great kingdom has been long formed when it first appears to the common people. It would not be difficult, at the present moment, to offer some
predictions
respecting ourselves, which would not be of an agreeable nature. But I shall say with Rousseau, this is not their place; and men do not like to be informed even of inevitable disasters. It is with revolutions, as with thunder clouds; the danger has past when the noise is heard; while the people complain, there is some faint hope of quiet; when they are sullen and silent, it is then the lightning of vengeance darts it's fatal stroke. But while Britons unite, they can have no reason to fear the lunacy of republicanism.
PAGE 186.
IT will not be denied, that Erasmus was a friend to the freedom of the press; who, indeed, had employed it more than himself? Yet he was so shocked at the licentiousness of Luther's pen, that there was a time when he considered it as necessary to restrain the liberty of the press. He had indeed been miserably calumniated, and expected future libels. I am glad, however, to observe, that he afterwards, on a more impartial investigation, confessed that such a remedy was much more dangerous than the disease. To restrain the liberty of the press, can only be the interest of the individual, never that of the public.
PAGE 221.
THIS observation of the effect of
ideas
not rendered offensive, merely because the
words
are not familiar, may be further illustrated, by a passage I have just discovered in the Notes on Pope's Odyssey. Homer has been ridiculed by certain critics, for having so minutely described the dog Argus, lying on a dung hill, nearly devoured by vermin.—The annotator then observes,
"It is certain that the
vermin
which Homer mentions, would debase our poetry; but in the Greek, that very
word
is
noble
and
sonorous,
."
—Here then is a word which can give dignity to a circumstance very offensive in itself; but we cannot at present, I think, decide whether this word, which appears to us so noble and sonorous, affected an ancient Greek in the same manner. All that appears certain, is, that the
of Homer, and the
excalcearetur
and
discingeretur
of Velleius Paterculus, are noble and sonorous terms to our ear, and abate from the familiarity of expression.
Lord Kaimes, in his "Sketches of the History of Man," vol. iii. p. 242, has a curious observation, which seems to relate to this subject, though by him applied to a different purpose. He writes,
"A sea-prospect is charming, but we soon tire of an unbounded prospect. It would not give satisfaction to say, that it is too extensive; for why should not a prospect be relished, however extensive?"
But employ
a foreign term,
and say that it is
trop vaste,
we enquire no further;
a term that is not familiar, makes an impression, and captivates weak reason.
This observation accounts for a mode of writing formerly in common use, that of stuffing our language with Latin words and phrases.
I only quote Lord Kaimes, for the purpose of shewing the effect of expressions that are not familiar. His instance of the sea appears to me erroneous; for we do not tire of the prospect of interminable waters, for the
extensiveness,
but the
uniformity.
The Alps, like the ocean, present
extensive prospects,
but delight, because they have also innumerable
varieties.
The reader will please to observe, that the affectation I censure in Velleius, is not the words
excalcearetur
and
discingeretur,
but the
pompous parenthesis,
in which he apologises for mentioning these circumstances. I have misunderstood the design of Cesar, and have erroneously called that
"a petty precaution,"
which is really a very noble action. This mistake has been corrected by a learned friend. It does not affect my criticism, respecting the two words. I shall, however, give the translation of my friend, accompanied by some observations.
"Nor was he ever, either by night or day, (for why should any thing of the
greatest kind
be omitted, because it cannot be expressed in beautiful language?)
unslippered
or
ungirdled.
"
The historian has told us before, that when Cesar was threatened with death by the servile instruments of Sylla, he put on a mean habit, and escaped by night. This was a necessary measure. But among the pirates who treated him with respect, and where (as the historian expresses it) he was only guarded by the eye, he would not occasion them to suspect that he would make use of any disguise to escape. He therefore altered not the minutest article of his dress, but appeared before their eyes always the same. This circumstance was, therefore, no
"petty precaution,"
but an action which shewed Cesar's dignity of mind, and sensibility of honour, and was, as the historian terms it,
"quod vel
maximum
est."
The affectation and obscurity of Velleius, may lead minds much more vigorous than my own astray. But it is a justice we owe to Cesar, to correct even a misrepresentation as inconsiderable as the present. The reader will observe, that I have only erred in the conception of the historical fact; the criticism relative to Velleius remains uninjured.
PAGE 264.
ROUSSEAU is the adversary of this system; he adopts the popular notion that the aptitude of men, for the understanding merely depends on their respective organisation, and their virtues, on their temperaments. The French Plato, it is well known, contradicts himself throughout his works; and on no subject so much as on the present. Helvetius has collected his contradictions; the surest and the most modest mode of confuting a writer of the finest genius. He has also thrown out an observation, which discloses the source of the errors of Rousseau. He says,
"The contradictions of this celebrated writer are not to be wondered at. His
observations
are almost always
just;
and his
principles
almost always
falfe
and
trite.
From hence his errors. Little scrupulous in examining opinions generally received, the number of those he adopts, impose on him."
We see the opinion of Reynolds, on the genius for painting; we shall contrast it with that of Rousseau; and we may then enquire, if, on this subject, the opinion of a philosopher and a painter is not to be preferred to him who only was a philosopher.
Rousseau, in his Emilius, book iii. p. 100, amuses his readers with an anecdote. He tells us, he was acquainted with a servant, who having frequently observed his master paint and design, felt a furious passion to become a painter and designer. He passed three years, nailed to his chair, in painting and designing; and nothing but
attendance on his master,
could take him away from his pleasing occupations. At length favoured by his master, and assisted by the instructions of an artist, he quitted his livery, and lived by the produce of his pencil.—I shall now quote the very expressions our author employs,
"Till a certain point, perseverance suffices in lieu of genius; he has reached this point, and will never pass it. The constancy and emulation of this honest man are laudable; but he will never paint but for sign-posts."
I refer the reader to the original for other observations, while I shall make one myself on this anecdote.
It is with facts like these, that the system I have adopted is ever combated; but I could never see in one of these facts, any thing which could suffer an investigation. Here is a young man, who has already attained a certain age, who is in the daily service of his master, and who, without preparatory instructions, or various models, feels
"the eager disposition,"
and the necessary
"assiduity."
But both the disposition and the assiduity are very imperfect. An artist who is incessantly performing domestic business, must be classed among those, whose moral situation infallibly enfeebles, and almost annihilates, genius. This young man, had he known no other service, but his art, and no other master, but a Reynolds, it is not improbable, with his disposition and assiduity, might have become a great artist. All this only tends to prove, that the great difficulty of becoming a man of genius, consists, among others, in his moral situation; and that no footman has any chance of becoming a great artist.
Respecting the idea of Rousseau, that our virtues or our vices are derived from our temperament; I must just observe, that if sometimes they do, often many are acquired from moral causes. There appears nothing supernatural in the notion, that a son inherits the quality of the blood of his parents. I have observed, a person born of a choleric father, and a saturnine mother, unite these qualities, seemingly incompatible; sometimes warm and generous as the father, and sometimes frigid and cautious as the mother. Yet, even in this instance, we might show that the effects of this character, can be derived from the manners and habits with which the son has long been familiarised. Another son of the same family, having been absent from home at an early period, and residing, for the greater part of his life, in France, was a being totally different from the generous father, the cautious mother, and the brother at once choleric and saturnine.
PAGE 300.
AFTER what is mentioned of Dyer, insert this paragraph.
Warburton, in his anonymous "Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Prodigies, &c. of Historians," in a concluding note, alluding to the eminent success of the French, in translations of the ancients, imagines that our little emulation, in this department of literature, may be attributed to the
coldness
of our
climate.
I transcribe his words.
"The Frenchman, vigorous and enterprising, is ambitious of possession; while we, with a false
modesty
and
coldness,
natural from our
climate,
content ourselves with a distant admiration."
From this it would appear, that
our climate
has of late become
much warmer,
and therefore
we, less modest;
since we have enriched our language with some versions of the classics, which vie with the beauty of the originals. Mr. Melmoth and Mr. Beloe have received the gratitude of the English reader. The ample and entertaining commentary which the latter has bestowed on Aulus Gellius, gives a new value to this species of literature, and suggests this reflection on such translations. Writers so exquisite as Pliny, require no other decorations than the eloquence which is inspired by the felicities of their diction; but authors not remarkable for their discernment or their delicacy, yet abounding with information, like Aulus Gellius, exact from their translators, the adventitious art of scattering an attractive amusement in copious notes. It is thus that a translation may be rendered more valuable than the original.
Since I am on the subject of classical translations, I must observe, that a judicious selection from Athenaeus remains a desideratum; and the French have both an ancient and modern version of this curious compilement of Grecian opinions, and Grecian manners.
A translation of Plutarch's Morals has long been rumoured. The Abbé Richard in 1783—1792—gave a version, accompanying each essay with philosophical summaries and useful notes. The present edition of Professor Wittenbach, will enable the English translator to excel his predecessors in correctness and lucidity. Of the French version, the learned Professor says, that the translator has so contrived with the corrupted passages, as to have rendered the version intelligible to the reader; the obscure passages he has laboured with greater care; having diligently sought out their meaning and occasionally explained them, from his knowledge of the subjects in a plausible way, adapted to the genius of those to whom he addressed himself, which merit he freely allows him.
PAGE 335.
AFTER what is mentioned of Pere Hardouin, insert this paragraph.
Warburton, whatever his learning, and however great his ability, owed his reputation to his bold paradoxes. What Dr. Leland has, among other scholars, pronounced of him, is now confirmed, not by the opinions of individuals, but by the voice of the public. He said, that
"the Bishop's learned labours were distinguished by a bold opposition to the general opinions of mankind,"
and again more forcibly
"by an hardy opposition to the general sense of mankind."
Warburton, supported by his Warburtonians, long reigned a literary despot; but the artificial fires of party fade in the light of truth. It is even said, that he outlived his reputation, and he is now much better known by his name, than by his works; the certain fate of those ingenious and bold writers, who build their edifices on the sands of paradox.
FINIS
By the AUTHOR may be had,
A DISSERTATION on ANECDOTES.
CONTENTS.
ANECDOTES seldom read with Reflection—They form the most agreeable parts of History—Materials for the History of Manners—Various Anecdotes illustrating this Topic—History compared with Memoirs—Anecdotes which reveal the Characters of eminent Men—By them we become acquainted with human Nature—Habituate the Mind to Reflection—Observations on Literary Anecdotes—Literary Topics greatly elucidated by their skilful Arrangement—Collections of Anecdotes serve as an excellent Substitute for the Conversations of eminent Writers—Observations on the Delight of Literary History—Literary Biography cannot be accomplished without a copious Use of Anecdotes—Considered as a Source of Literary Amusement superior to Romances—The Instructions which an Artist may derive from Anecdotes—Of various Use to Writers—Anecdotes of an Author serve as Comments on his Work—Anecdotes of Historical Writers very necessary for the Readers of their Works—Addison's Observation on Anecdotes illustrated—A Writer of Talents sees Connexions in Anecdotes not perceived by others—A Model of Anecdotical Composition—Of frivolous Anecdotes—Trifling Anecdotes sometimes to be excused—Character of a Writer of Anecdotes.
AN ESSAY ON THE MANNERS AND GENIUS OF THE LITERARY CHARACTER.
CONTENTS.
OF Literary Men—Of Authors—Men of Letters—On some Characteristics of a Youth of Genius—Of Literary Solitude—On the Meditations and Conversations of Men of Genius—Men of Genius limited in their Art—Some Observations respecting the Infirmities and Defects of Men of Genius—Of Literary Friendships and Enmities—The Characters of Writers not discoverable in their Writings—Of some private Advantages which induce Men of Letters to become Authors—Of the Utility of Authors to Individuals—Of the Political Influence of Authors—On an Academy of Polite Literature, Pensions, and Prizes.
ERRATA.
Page
2
Line
6 FOR
expansive
FOR
the expansion of.
Page
69
Line
17 FOR
Brasidas
READ
Brasidas's.
Page
87
Line
11 FOR
criticisms
READ
criticism.
Page
90 Erase the two last verses at the end of the page, and read these.
Callous the irritated Judge, with awe
Inflicts the penalties, and arms the law.
Page
98
Line
11 FOR
occupations
READ
occupation.
Page
120
Line
9 FOR
could
READ
would.
Page
136
Line
7 FOR
them
READ
they.
Page
219
Line
15 FOR
adjourdhui
READ
aujourdhui.
Page
220
Line
13 FOR
verbus
READ
verbis.
Page
267
Line
9 FOR
splendour
READ
splendours.
Page
268
Line
4 of the note, FOR
scarce
READ
scarcely.
Page
271
Line
9 dele
native.
Page
398
Line
2 dele
can.
Page
409
Line
7 of the note, dele
the subject of.
Page
418
Line
11 dele inverted commas, and place them at the close of the paragraph after "
with Latin words and phrases.
"
☞ The Reader is requested to observe, that from page 224 to page 238, are deficient in this volume, but they form no interruption of the work.