Tooke's mind; and with these he
baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury.
baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury.
Hazlitt - The Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits
Take a cubit from his stature, and his whole
manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he
_overcrows_ the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out
of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one
_less than himself_. It may be said, that individuals with great
personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and
Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing
can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is
listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does
not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he
shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible,
cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth,
now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a
large estate, the "saints," and the population of Yorkshire to swell his
influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more
than "hitting the house between wind and water. " Yet he is probably a
cleverer man than Mr. Irving.
There is a Mr. Fox, a Dissenting Minister, as fluent a speaker, with a
sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr.
Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting,
takes a hand at whist, and is the darling of his congregation; but he is
no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is not seen above
the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in
miniature, but the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he
attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower,
and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with
the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to
produce this equality without a single personal advantage; but we deny
that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses.
We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power,
that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired
Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking,
and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not
failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won
by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, however
paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He
has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions.
He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the _esprit de
corps_. He has brought back the doctrines of Calvinism in all their
inveteracy, and relaxed the inveteracy of his northern accents. He has
turned religion and the Caledonian Chapel topsy-turvy. He has held a
play-book in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and quoted Shakspeare
and Melancthon in the same breath. The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil is no longer, with his grafting, a dry withered stump; it shoots
its branches to the skies, and hangs out its blossoms to the gale--
"Miraturque novos fructus, et non sua poma. "
He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, and garlanded
them with the flowers of modern literature. He has done all this,
relying on the strength of a remarkably fine person and manner, and
through that he has succeeded--otherwise he would have perished
miserably.
Dr. Chalmers is not by any means so good a looking man, nor so
accomplished a speaker as Mr. Irving; yet he at one time almost equalled
his oratorical celebrity, and certainly paved the way for him. He has
therefore more merit than his admired pupil, as he has done as much
with fewer means. He has more scope of intellect and more intensity of
purpose. Both his matter and his manner, setting aside his face and
figure, are more impressive. Take the volume of "Sermons on Astronomy,"
by Dr. Chalmers, and the "Four Orations for the Oracles of God" which
Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison
as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country,
were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of
inns,[A] and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while
the "Orations" get on but slowly, on Milton's stilts, and are pompously
announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of
his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The
reason is, that the groundwork of his compositions is trashy and
hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected
phraseology; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his
periods have nothing in them; and that he himself is the only _idea_
with which he has yet enriched the public mind! He must play off
his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his
diamond-ring. The small frontispiece prefixed to the "Orations" does not
serve to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the man, nor of
the ease and freedom of his motions in the pulpit. How different is Dr.
Chalmers! He is like "a monkey-preacher" to the other. He cannot boast
of personal appearance to set him off. But then he is like the very
genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither
airs nor graces at command; he thinks nothing of himself; he has nothing
theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and
rival); but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and
difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing
them with his hands, and straining his eyeballs till they almost start
out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like
a Highland-seer with his second sight. The description of Balfour of
Burley in his cave, with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the
other, contending with the imaginary enemy of mankind, gasping for
breath, and with the cold moisture running down his face, gives a lively
idea of Dr. Chalmers's prophetic fury in the pulpit. If we could
have looked in to have seen Burley hard-beset "by the coinage of his
heat-oppressed brain," who would have asked whether he was a handsome
man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under
the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the
integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the determined way in
which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets
sceptics and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other
circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites
such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a
logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to advance, and
weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is
difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. "There's
magic in the web. " Whatever appeals to the pride of the human
understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally
pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily
enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished
in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers,
and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses. " No one was
satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one
wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a
riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical
premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible,
conclusions, "he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and
the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their
courses to testify to his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to
make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information
"now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of
Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops
of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next
tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of
the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these
"Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the
subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way
through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The
impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the
merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train
of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness,
was bold, well-sustained, and consistent with itself.
Mr. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which
distinguishes his rival--and shines by patches and in bursts. He does
not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He
is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the
highest point of genius or fanaticism, but "in the very storm and
whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may
give it smoothness. " He has the self-possession and masterly execution
of an experienced player or fencer, and does not seem to express his
natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater
ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal
appearance, which "to be admired needs but to be seen," and does not
require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use
any violent contortions to gain attention or to keep it. These two
celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each
other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of
external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without
them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If
Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a
little _anthropomorphitism_, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from
that scandal.
[Footnote A: We remember finding the volume in the orchard at
Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful
morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree.
We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving's back the same compliment of
reading it at a sitting. ]
* * * * *
THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE.
Mr. Horne Tooke was one of those who may be considered as connecting
links between a former period and the existing generation. His education
and accomplishments, nay, his political opinions, were of the last age;
his mind, and the tone of his feelings were _modern_. There was a hard,
dry materialism in the very texture of his understanding, varnished over
by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great
scope of attainment, and great versatility of pursuit; but the same
shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same _literalness_ of
perception, and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly
all he did, said, or wrote. He was without a rival (almost) in private
conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate
grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own
party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it! )--no
delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his
intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot
sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies
in public. His mind (so to speak) had no _religion_ in it, and very
little even of the moral qualities of genius; but he was a man of the
world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was
also a wit, and a formidable one: yet it may be questioned whether his
wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty: it did not
consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of
the understanding. "The law is open to every one: _so_," said Mr. Tooke,
"_is the London Tavern_! " It is the previous deduction formed in the
mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that
_beats about the bush for_, and at last finds the apt illustration; not
the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that points out an
absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Allan
Gardiner (who was a candidate for Westminster) had objected to Mr. Fox,
that "he was always against the minister, _whether right or wrong_," and
Mr. Fox, in his reply, had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke
immediately seized on it, and said, "he thought it at least an equal
objection to Sir Allan, that he was always _with_ the minister, whether
right or wrong. " This retort had all the effect, and produced the same
surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy: yet it was only
the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a
kind of legal pertinacity, or rather by a rigid and constant habit of
attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence.
Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer; but it was applied to a vast variety
of topics and general trains of speculation.
Mr. Horne Tooke was in private company, and among his friends, the
finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fascinating as
his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the
burden of the song of "_The King's Old Courtier, and an Old Courtier of
the King's_. " He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to
hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical
kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of
fashionable _nonchalance_, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and
with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition, or in
the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or
wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed
the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking
things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was
no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their
favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of
his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle
of deference for the opinion of others, nor of sympathy with their
feelings; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend--
"Lord of himself, uncumbered with a _creed_! "
He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a
juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the
losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and
in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any
clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them.
He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the _onus
probandi_ on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion,
however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a
sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with
Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the
conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but
that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that
struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think
so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the
Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the
common copulative, _Is_. Once at G----'s, he defended Pitt from a charge
of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one
imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated
him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not
maintain? ) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and
recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the
preference he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the
living; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in
the same breath, that Addison's style was without modulation, and
that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was
habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and
gave law to his guests--and to the world! No man knew better how to
manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed
orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a
voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, "Speak up,
young man! "--and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of
orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of
awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite
subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good
things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of
Mr. Horne Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been
mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to
return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his
hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time,
after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to shew that it was still
full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the _Road to Ruin_) was one of the
most violent and fiery-spirited of all that motley crew of persons, who
attended the Sunday meetings at Wimbledon. One day he was so enraged by
some paradox or raillery of his host, that he indignantly rose from his
chair, and said, "Mr. Tooke, you are a scoundrel! " His opponent without
manifesting the least emotion, replied, "Mr. Holcroft, when is it that
I am to dine with you? shall it be next Thursday? "--"If you please, Mr.
Tooke! " answered the angry philosopher, and sat down again. --It was
delightful to see him sometimes turn from these waspish or ludicrous
altercations with over-weening antagonists to some old friend and
veteran politician seated at his elbow; to hear him recal the time of
Wilkes and Liberty, the conversation mellowing like the wine with the
smack of age; assenting to all the old man said, bringing out his
pleasant _traits_, and pampering him into childish self-importance, and
sending him away thirty years younger than he came!
As a public or at least as a parliamentary speaker, Mr. Tooke did not
answer the expectations that had been conceived of him, or probably
that he had conceived of himself. It is natural for men who have felt
a superiority over all those whom they happen to have encountered, to
fancy that this superiority will continue, and that it will extend from
individuals to public bodies. There is no rule in the case; or rather,
the probability lies the contrary way. That which constitutes the
excellence of conversation is of little use in addressing large
assemblies of people; while other qualities are required that are hardly
to be looked for in one and the same capacity. The way to move great
masses of men is to shew that you yourself are moved. In a private
circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and
banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off
the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the
self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph
of the speaker--it is a personal contest, and depends on personal and
momentary advantages. But in appealing to the public, no one triumphs
but in the triumph of some public cause, or by shewing a sympathy with
the general and predominant feelings of mankind. In a private room, a
satirist, a sophist may provoke admiration by expressing his contempt
for each of his adversaries in turn, and by setting their opinion at
defiance--but when men are congregated together on a great public
question and for a weighty object, they must be treated with more
respect; they are touched with what affects themselves or the general
weal, not with what flatters the vanity of the speaker; they must be
moved altogether, if they are moved at all; they are impressed with
gratitude for a luminous exposition of their claims or for zeal in their
cause; and the lightning of generous indignation at bad men and bad
measures is followed by thunders of applause--even in the House of
Commons. But a man may sneer and cavil and puzzle and fly-blow every
question that comes before him--be despised and feared by others, and
admired by no one but himself. He who thinks first of himself, either in
the world or in a popular assembly, will be sure to turn attention away
from his claims, instead of fixing it there. He must make common cause
with his hearers. To lead, he must follow the general bias. Mr. Tooke
did not therefore succeed as a speaker in parliament. He stood aloof,
he played antics, he exhibited his peculiar talent--while he was on his
legs, the question before the House stood still; the only point at issue
respected Mr. Tooke himself, his personal address and adroitness of
intellect.
Were there to be no more places and pensions, because Mr. Tooke's style
was terse and epigrammatic? Were the Opposition benches to be inflamed
to an unusual pitch of "sacred vehemence," because he gave them plainly
to understand there was not a pin to choose between Ministers and
Opposition? Would the House let him remain among them, because, if
they turned him out on account of his _black coat_, Lord Camelford had
threatened to send his _black servant_ in his place? This was a good
joke, but not a practical one. Would he gain the affections of the
people out of doors, by scouting the question of reform? Would the King
ever relish the old associate of Wilkes? What interest, then, what party
did he represent? He represented nobody but himself. He was an example
of an ingenious man, a clever talker, but he was out of his place in the
House of Commons; where people did not come (as in his own house) to
admire or break a lance with him, but to get through the business of
the day, and so adjourn! He wanted effect and _momentum_. Each of his
sentences told very well in itself, but they did not all together make
a speech. He left off where he began. His eloquence was a succession
of drops, not a stream. His arguments, though subtle and new, did not
affect the main body of the question. The coldness and pettiness of
his manner did not warm the hearts or expand the understandings of his
hearers. Instead of encouraging, he checked the ardour of his friends;
and teazed, instead of overpowering his antagonists. The only palpable
hit he ever made, while he remained there, was the comparing his own
situation in being rejected by the House, on account of the supposed
purity of his clerical character, to the story of the girl at the
Magdalen, who was told "she must turn out and qualify. "[A] This met with
laughter and loud applause. It was a _home_ thrust, and the House (to do
them justice) are obliged to any one who, by a smart blow, relieves
them of the load of grave responsibility, which sits heavy on their
shoulders. --At the hustings, or as an election-candidate, Mr. Tooke did
better. There was no great question to move or carry--it was an affair
of political _sparring_ between himself and the other candidates. He
took it in a very cool and leisurely manner--watched his competitors
with a wary, sarcastic eye; picked up the mistakes or absurdities that
fell from them, and retorted them on their heads; told a story to the
mob; and smiled and took snuff with a gentlemanly and becoming air, as
if he was already seated in the House. But a Court of Law was the place
where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be
said to be "native and endued unto that element. " He had here to stand
merely on the defensive--not to advance himself, but to block up the
way--not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he
wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified
to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in
the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were
the play-things, the darlings of Mr.
Tooke's mind; and with these he
baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The
report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a master-piece of acuteness,
dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his
examination before the Commissioners of the Income-Tax--nothing could
be got out of him in either case! Mr. Tooke, as a political leader,
belonged to the class of _trimmers_; or at most, it was his delight to
make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be _against_ himself than
_for_ any body else. He was neither a bold nor a safe leader. He enticed
others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could
say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or
injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the
motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason
with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through
the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir
Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often
venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his
friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the
last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the
case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his
friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have
gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther
might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how
far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go,
according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did
treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop
short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his
line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of
the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking
of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual
with him--"They want our blood--blood--blood! " It was somewhat
ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in a charge of High Treason (and
indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of
an intercepted letter relating to an engagement for a private
dinnerparty)--his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this
respect he was a mere pettifogger, full of chicane, and captious
objections, and unmeaning discontent; but he had none of the grand
whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow
of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in
a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court-
intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the time
of Junius and Wilkes--and even if his understanding had gone along with
more modern and unqualified principles, his cautious temper would have
prevented his risking them in practice. Horne Tooke (though not of the
same side in politics) had much of the tone of mind and more of the
spirit of moral feeling of the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury. The
narrow scale and fine-drawn distinctions of his political creed made
his conversation on such subjects infinitely amusing, particularly
when contrasted with that of persons who dealt in the sounding
_common-places_ and sweeping clauses of abstract politics. He knew all
the cabals and jealousies and heart-burnings in the beginning of the
late reign, the changes of administration and the springs of secret
influence, the characters of the leading men, Wilkes, Barrè, Dunning,
Chatham, Burke, the Marquis of Rockingham, North, Shelburne, Fox, Pitt,
and all the vacillating events of the American war:--these formed a
curious back-ground to the more prominent figures that occupied the
present time, and Mr. Tooke worked out the minute details and touched in
the evanescent _traits_ with the pencil of a master. His conversation
resembled a political _camera obscura_--as quaint as it was magical. To
some pompous pretenders he might seem to narrate _fabellas aniles_ (old
wives' fables)--but not to those who study human nature, and wish to
know the materials of which it is composed. Mr. Tooke's faculties might
appear to have ripened and acquired a finer flavour with age. In a
former period of his life he was hardly the man he was latterly; or else
he had greater abilities to contend against. He no where makes so poor a
figure as in his controversy with Junius. He has evidently the best of
the argument, yet he makes nothing out of it. He tells a long story
about himself, without wit or point in it; and whines and whimpers like
a school-boy under the rod of his master. Junius, after bringing a hasty
charge against him, has not a single fact to adduce in support of it;
but keeps his ground and fairly beats his adversary out of the field by
the mere force of style. One would think that "Parson Horne" knew who
Junius was, and was afraid of him. "Under him his genius is" quite
"rebuked. " With the best cause to defend, he comes off more shabbily
from the contest than any other person in the LETTERS, except Sir
William Draper, who is the very hero of defeat.
The great thing which Mr. Horne Tooke has done, and which he has left
behind him to posterity, is his work on Grammar, oddly enough entitled
THE DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY. Many people have taken it up as a description
of a game--others supposing it to be a novel. It is, in truth, one of
the few philosophical works on Grammar that were ever written. The
essence of it (and, indeed, almost all that is really valuable in it) is
contained in his _Letter to Dunning_, published about the year 1775.
Mr. Tooke's work is truly elementary. Dr. Lowth described Mr. Harris's
_Hermes_ as "the finest specimen of analysis since the days of
Aristotle"--a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis
consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless
details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and
confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy
technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing
his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and
resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of
old associations wound round language, that is a kind of veil over its
natural features; and custom puts on the mask of ignorance. But this
veil, this mask the author of _The Diversions of Purley_ threw aside and
penetrated to the naked truth of things, by the literal, matter-of-fact,
unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not
subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to
"bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born"--with
womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was
broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of
effeminate--hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half-savage--and who
saw language stripped of the clothing of habit or sentiment, or the
disguises of doting pedantry, naked in its cradle, and in its primitive
state. Our author tells us that he found his discovery on Grammar among
a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and
forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries
of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to
communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The
whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction _That_
is the pronoun _That_, which is itself the participle of a verb, and
in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible
parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the
Verb and Noun. "I affirm _that_ gold is yellow," that is, "I affirm
_that_ fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow. " The secret of
the Conjunction on which so many fine heads had split, on which so many
learned definitions were thrown away, as if it was its peculiar province
and inborn virtue to announce oracles and formal propositions, and
nothing else, like a Doctor of Laws, is here at once accounted for,
inasmuch as it is clearly nothing but another part of speech, the
pronoun, _that_, with a third part of speech, the noun, _thing_,
understood. This is getting at a solution of words into their component
parts, not glossing over one difficulty by bringing another to parallel
it, nor like saying with Mr. Harris, when it is asked, "what a
Conjunction is? " that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions
disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any
one chooses to hunt out "with laborious foolery. " Our author hit
upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was
examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent
being entrapped by them; or rather, this circumstance might itself be
traced to the habit of satisfying his own mind as to the precise sense
in which he himself made use of words. Mr. Tooke, though he had no
objection to puzzle others, was mightily averse to being puzzled or
_mystified_ himself. All was, to his determined mind, either complete
light or complete darkness. There was no hazy, doubtful _chiaro-scuro_
in his understanding. He wanted something "palpable to feeling as to
sight. " "What," he would say to himself, "do I mean when I use the
conjunction _that? _ Is it an anomaly, a class by itself, a word sealed
against all inquisitive attempts? Is it enough to call it a _copula_,
a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its
use, but what is its origin? " Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this
question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians,
"familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun,
adjective, or participle, _that_, with the noun, _thing or proposition_,
implied, and the particular example following it. " So he thought, and
so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and
writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a
logician, charged him with having found "a mare's-nest;" but it is not
to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and
last longer than Mr. Windham's ingenious derivation of the practice of
bull-baiting from the principles of humanity!
Having thus laid the corner-stone, he proceeded to apply the same method
of reasoning to other undecyphered and impracticable terms. Thus the
word, _And_, he explained clearly enough to be the verb _add_, or a
corruption of the old Saxon, _anandad_. "Two _and_ two make four," that
is, "two _add_ two make four. " Mr. Tooke, in fact, treated words as
the chemists do substances; he separated those which are compounded of
others from those which are not decompoundable. He did not explain the
obscure by the more obscure, but the difficult by the plain, the complex
by the simple. This alone is proceeding upon the true principles of
science: the rest is pedantry and _petit-maitreship. _ Our philosophical
writer distinguished all words into _names of things_, and directions
added for joining them together, or originally into _nouns_ and _verbs_.
It is a pity that he has left this matter short, by omitting to define
the Verb. After enumerating sixteen different definitions (all of which
he dismisses with scorn and contumely) at the end of two quarto volumes,
he refers the reader for the true solution to a third volume, which
he did not live to finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit
of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse
speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a
satisfaction of their doubts; but why should he treat posterity in the
same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it?
I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended
_nostrum_, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as
a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles a hedge-hog, he did
not find it too much for him, and leave it to its fate. It is also a
pity that Mr. Tooke spun out his great work with prolix and dogmatical
dissertations on irrelevant matters; and after denying the old
metaphysical theories of language, should attempt to found a
metaphysical theory of his own on the nature and mechanism of language.
The nature of words, he contended (it was the basis of his whole system)
had no connection with the nature of things or the objects of thought;
yet he afterwards strove to limit the nature of things and of the human
mind by the technical structure of language. Thus he endeavours to shew
that there are no abstract ideas, by enumerating two thousand instances
of words, expressing abstract ideas, that are the past participles of
certain verbs. It is difficult to know what he means by this. On the
other hand, he maintains that "a complex idea is as great an absurdity
as a complex star," and that words only are complex. He also makes out a
triumphant list of metaphysical and moral non-entities, proved to be
so on the pure principle that the names of these non-entities are
participles, not nouns, or names of things. That is strange in so close
a reasoner and in one who maintained that all language was a masquerade
of words, and that the class to which they grammatically belonged had
nothing to do with the class of ideas they represented.
It is now above twenty years since the two quarto volumes of the
_Diversions of Purley_ were published, and fifty since the same theory
was promulgated in the celebrated _Letter to Dunning_. Yet it is a
curious example of the _Spirit of the Age_ that Mr. Lindley Murray's
Grammar (a work out of which Mr. C---- helps himself to English, and Mr.
M---- to style[B]) has proceeded to the thirtieth edition in complete
defiance of all the facts and arguments there laid down. He defines a
noun to be the name of a thing. Is quackery a thing, _i. e. _ a substance?
He defines a verb to be a word signifying _to be, to do, or to suffer_.
Are being, action, suffering verbs? He defines an adjective to be the
name of a quality. Are not _wooden, golden, substantial_ adjectives? He
maintains that there are six cases in English nouns [C], that is, six
various terminations without any change of termination at all, and that
English verbs have all the moods, tenses, and persons that the Latin
ones have. This is an extraordinary stretch of blindness and obstinacy.
He very formally translates the Latin Grammar into English (as so many
had done before him) and fancies he has written an English Grammar; and
divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and
English scholars carry on the jest, while Horne Tooke's genuine
anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our
politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum? That our clergy
do not relish Parson Horne? That the world at large are alarmed at
acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this
to do with the formation of the English language or with the first
conditions and necessary foundation of speech itself? Is there nothing
beyond the reach of prejudice and party-spirit? It seems in this, as in
so many other instances, as if there was a patent for absurdity in the
natural bias of the human mind, and that folly should be _stereotyped_!
[Footnote A: "They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen--_Go thou
and do likewise_. "--JUNIUS. ]
[Footnote B: This work is not without merit in the details and examples
of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he
confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and
literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray,
hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English. ]
[Footnote C: At least, with only one change in the genitive case,]
* * * * *
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age--the
"lord of the ascendant" for the time being. He is just half what the
human intellect is capable of being: if you take the universe, and
divide it into two parts, he knows all that it _has been_; all that
it _is to be_ is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over
antiquity--scorning "the present ignorant time. " He is "laudator
temporis acti"--a "_prophesier_ of things past. " The old world is to him
a crowded map; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well-
authenticated superstitions; he shudders at the shadow of innovation.
His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested
prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The
cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life
and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and
dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by
tradition or custom--it does not project itself beyond this into the
world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a
prejudice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like _Van
Dieman's Land_;--barren, miserable, distant, a place of exile, the
dreary abode of savages, convicts, and adventurers. Sir Walter would
make a bad hand of a description of the _Millennium_, unless he could
lay the scene in Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would
want facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style.
Our historical novelist firmly thinks that nothing _is_ but what _has
been_--that the moral world stands still, as the material one was
supposed to do of old--and that we can never get beyond the point where
we actually are without utter destruction, though every thing changes
and will change from what it was three hundred years ago to what it is
now,--from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good
old times most dreads and hates!
It is long since we read, and long since we thought of our author's
poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate
occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it from our
recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of
an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in
spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted
_character_. It was poetry "of no mark or likelihood. " It slid out of
the mind as soon as read, like a river; and would have been forgotten,
but that the public curiosity was fed with ever-new supplies from the
same teeming liquid source. It is not every man that can write six
quarto volumes in verse, that are caught up with avidity, even by
fastidious judges. But what a difference between _their_ popularity and
that of the Scotch Novels! It is true, the public read and admired the
_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion_, and so on, and each individual was
contented to read and admire because the public did so: but with
regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is quite
_another-guess_ sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to applaud
on his own ground, would be thought to go before the public opinion,
is eager to extol his favourite characters louder, to understand them
better than every body else, and has his own scale of comparative
excellence for each work, supported by nothing but his own enthusiastic
and fearless convictions. It must be amusing to the _Author of Waverley_
to hear his readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing? [A])
quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to
character, quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each
other in the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle
the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice--so various,
so equal, so transcendant are their merits! His volumes of poetry were
received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances: we are ready
to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was something
meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like those who keep
opera _figurantes_, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and
our taste confirmed by the town: but the Novels are like the betrothed
of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are
jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly
acquainted with their beauties as ourselves. For which of his poetical
heroines would the reader break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans?
What _Lady of the Lake_ can compare with the beautiful Rebecca? We
believe the late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful
and premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he had
penned the most elaborate panegyric on the _Scotch Novels_ that had as
yet appeared! --The _Epics_ are not poems, so much as metrical romances.
There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature
and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and
filmed over"--the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid
decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into
a tinkling sound, a tinsel _common-place_. It must be owned, there is a
power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to
a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent
materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own,
melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. But Sir Walter (we
contend, under correction) has not this creative impulse, this plastic
power, this capacity of reacting on his first impressions. He is a
learned, a literal, a _matter-of-fact_ expounder of truth or fable:[B]
he does not soar above and look down upon his subject, imparting his own
lofty views and feelings to his descriptions of nature--he relies
upon it, is raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing. A poet is
essentially a _maker_; that is, he must atone for what he loses in
individuality and local resemblance by the energies and resources of his
own mind. The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has
either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject by an
effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon a par with
the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light, agreeable,
effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a _Modern Antique_. The
smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily with the quaint,
uncouth, rugged materials of which it is composed; and takes away any
appearance of heaviness or harshness from the body of local traditions
and obsolete costume. We see grim knights and iron armour; but then they
are woven in silk with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness
of flowers. The poet's figures might be compared to old [C] tapestries
copied on the finest velvet:--they are not like Raphael's _Cartoons_,
but they are very like Mr. Westall's drawings, which accompany, and are
intended to illustrate them. This facility and grace of execution is the
more remarkable, as a story goes that not long before the appearance of
the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ Sir Walter (then Mr. ) Scott, having, in
the company of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat,
they proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a
given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found
they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain," said the
unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, "that you and I need never
think of getting our living by writing poetry! " In a year or so after
this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had
been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great
poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but "a metre ballad-monger. " We would
rather have written one song of Burns, or a single passage in Lord
Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, or one of Wordsworth's "fancies and
good-nights," than all his epics. What is he to Spenser, over whose
immortal, ever-amiable verse beauty hovers and trembles, and who has
shed the purple light of Fancy, from his ambrosial wings, over all
nature? What is there of the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in
the blue serene, and who takes us to sit with him there? What is there
(in his ambling rhymes) of the deep pathos of Chaucer? Or of the
o'er-informing power of Shakespear, whose eye, watching alike the
minutest traces of characters and the strongest movements of passion,
"glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and with the
lambent flame of genius, playing round each object, lights up the
universe in a robe of its own radiance? Sir Walter has no voluntary
power of combination: all his associations (as we said before) are those
of habit or of tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet,
garrulous of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing
superficiality.
Not so of his NOVELS AND ROMANCES. There we turn over a new
leaf--another and the same--the same in matter, but in form, in power
how different! The author of Waverley has got rid of the tagging of
rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of epithets, the
colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the regular march
of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes at the heart
of his subject, without dismay and without disguise. His poetry was a
lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery: his prose is a
beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in Don Quixote, when she is
surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her naked feet in the brook,
looks round her, abashed at the admiration her charms have excited! The
grand secret of the author's success in these latter productions is that
he has completely got rid of the trammels of authorship; and torn off at
one rent (as Lord Peter got rid of so many yards of lace in the _Tale of
a Tub_) all the ornaments of fine writing and worn-out sentimentality.
All is fresh, as from the hand of nature: by going a century or two back
and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated district, all becomes
new and startling in the present advanced period.
manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he
_overcrows_ the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out
of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one
_less than himself_. It may be said, that individuals with great
personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and
Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing
can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is
listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does
not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he
shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible,
cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth,
now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a
large estate, the "saints," and the population of Yorkshire to swell his
influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more
than "hitting the house between wind and water. " Yet he is probably a
cleverer man than Mr. Irving.
There is a Mr. Fox, a Dissenting Minister, as fluent a speaker, with a
sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr.
Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting,
takes a hand at whist, and is the darling of his congregation; but he is
no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is not seen above
the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in
miniature, but the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he
attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower,
and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with
the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to
produce this equality without a single personal advantage; but we deny
that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses.
We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power,
that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired
Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking,
and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not
failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won
by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, however
paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He
has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions.
He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the _esprit de
corps_. He has brought back the doctrines of Calvinism in all their
inveteracy, and relaxed the inveteracy of his northern accents. He has
turned religion and the Caledonian Chapel topsy-turvy. He has held a
play-book in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and quoted Shakspeare
and Melancthon in the same breath. The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil is no longer, with his grafting, a dry withered stump; it shoots
its branches to the skies, and hangs out its blossoms to the gale--
"Miraturque novos fructus, et non sua poma. "
He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, and garlanded
them with the flowers of modern literature. He has done all this,
relying on the strength of a remarkably fine person and manner, and
through that he has succeeded--otherwise he would have perished
miserably.
Dr. Chalmers is not by any means so good a looking man, nor so
accomplished a speaker as Mr. Irving; yet he at one time almost equalled
his oratorical celebrity, and certainly paved the way for him. He has
therefore more merit than his admired pupil, as he has done as much
with fewer means. He has more scope of intellect and more intensity of
purpose. Both his matter and his manner, setting aside his face and
figure, are more impressive. Take the volume of "Sermons on Astronomy,"
by Dr. Chalmers, and the "Four Orations for the Oracles of God" which
Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison
as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country,
were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of
inns,[A] and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while
the "Orations" get on but slowly, on Milton's stilts, and are pompously
announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of
his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The
reason is, that the groundwork of his compositions is trashy and
hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected
phraseology; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his
periods have nothing in them; and that he himself is the only _idea_
with which he has yet enriched the public mind! He must play off
his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his
diamond-ring. The small frontispiece prefixed to the "Orations" does not
serve to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the man, nor of
the ease and freedom of his motions in the pulpit. How different is Dr.
Chalmers! He is like "a monkey-preacher" to the other. He cannot boast
of personal appearance to set him off. But then he is like the very
genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither
airs nor graces at command; he thinks nothing of himself; he has nothing
theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and
rival); but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and
difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing
them with his hands, and straining his eyeballs till they almost start
out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like
a Highland-seer with his second sight. The description of Balfour of
Burley in his cave, with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the
other, contending with the imaginary enemy of mankind, gasping for
breath, and with the cold moisture running down his face, gives a lively
idea of Dr. Chalmers's prophetic fury in the pulpit. If we could
have looked in to have seen Burley hard-beset "by the coinage of his
heat-oppressed brain," who would have asked whether he was a handsome
man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under
the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the
integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the determined way in
which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets
sceptics and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other
circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites
such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a
logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to advance, and
weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is
difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. "There's
magic in the web. " Whatever appeals to the pride of the human
understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally
pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily
enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished
in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers,
and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses. " No one was
satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one
wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a
riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical
premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible,
conclusions, "he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and
the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their
courses to testify to his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to
make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information
"now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of
Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops
of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next
tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of
the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these
"Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the
subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way
through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The
impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the
merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train
of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness,
was bold, well-sustained, and consistent with itself.
Mr. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which
distinguishes his rival--and shines by patches and in bursts. He does
not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He
is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the
highest point of genius or fanaticism, but "in the very storm and
whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may
give it smoothness. " He has the self-possession and masterly execution
of an experienced player or fencer, and does not seem to express his
natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater
ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal
appearance, which "to be admired needs but to be seen," and does not
require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use
any violent contortions to gain attention or to keep it. These two
celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each
other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of
external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without
them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If
Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a
little _anthropomorphitism_, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from
that scandal.
[Footnote A: We remember finding the volume in the orchard at
Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful
morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree.
We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving's back the same compliment of
reading it at a sitting. ]
* * * * *
THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE.
Mr. Horne Tooke was one of those who may be considered as connecting
links between a former period and the existing generation. His education
and accomplishments, nay, his political opinions, were of the last age;
his mind, and the tone of his feelings were _modern_. There was a hard,
dry materialism in the very texture of his understanding, varnished over
by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great
scope of attainment, and great versatility of pursuit; but the same
shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same _literalness_ of
perception, and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly
all he did, said, or wrote. He was without a rival (almost) in private
conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate
grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own
party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it! )--no
delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his
intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot
sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies
in public. His mind (so to speak) had no _religion_ in it, and very
little even of the moral qualities of genius; but he was a man of the
world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was
also a wit, and a formidable one: yet it may be questioned whether his
wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty: it did not
consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of
the understanding. "The law is open to every one: _so_," said Mr. Tooke,
"_is the London Tavern_! " It is the previous deduction formed in the
mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that
_beats about the bush for_, and at last finds the apt illustration; not
the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that points out an
absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Allan
Gardiner (who was a candidate for Westminster) had objected to Mr. Fox,
that "he was always against the minister, _whether right or wrong_," and
Mr. Fox, in his reply, had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke
immediately seized on it, and said, "he thought it at least an equal
objection to Sir Allan, that he was always _with_ the minister, whether
right or wrong. " This retort had all the effect, and produced the same
surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy: yet it was only
the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a
kind of legal pertinacity, or rather by a rigid and constant habit of
attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence.
Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer; but it was applied to a vast variety
of topics and general trains of speculation.
Mr. Horne Tooke was in private company, and among his friends, the
finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fascinating as
his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the
burden of the song of "_The King's Old Courtier, and an Old Courtier of
the King's_. " He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to
hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical
kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of
fashionable _nonchalance_, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and
with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition, or in
the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or
wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed
the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking
things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was
no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their
favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of
his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle
of deference for the opinion of others, nor of sympathy with their
feelings; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend--
"Lord of himself, uncumbered with a _creed_! "
He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a
juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the
losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and
in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any
clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them.
He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the _onus
probandi_ on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion,
however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a
sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with
Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the
conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but
that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that
struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think
so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the
Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the
common copulative, _Is_. Once at G----'s, he defended Pitt from a charge
of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one
imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated
him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not
maintain? ) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and
recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the
preference he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the
living; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in
the same breath, that Addison's style was without modulation, and
that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was
habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and
gave law to his guests--and to the world! No man knew better how to
manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed
orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a
voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, "Speak up,
young man! "--and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of
orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of
awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite
subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good
things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of
Mr. Horne Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been
mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to
return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his
hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time,
after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to shew that it was still
full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the _Road to Ruin_) was one of the
most violent and fiery-spirited of all that motley crew of persons, who
attended the Sunday meetings at Wimbledon. One day he was so enraged by
some paradox or raillery of his host, that he indignantly rose from his
chair, and said, "Mr. Tooke, you are a scoundrel! " His opponent without
manifesting the least emotion, replied, "Mr. Holcroft, when is it that
I am to dine with you? shall it be next Thursday? "--"If you please, Mr.
Tooke! " answered the angry philosopher, and sat down again. --It was
delightful to see him sometimes turn from these waspish or ludicrous
altercations with over-weening antagonists to some old friend and
veteran politician seated at his elbow; to hear him recal the time of
Wilkes and Liberty, the conversation mellowing like the wine with the
smack of age; assenting to all the old man said, bringing out his
pleasant _traits_, and pampering him into childish self-importance, and
sending him away thirty years younger than he came!
As a public or at least as a parliamentary speaker, Mr. Tooke did not
answer the expectations that had been conceived of him, or probably
that he had conceived of himself. It is natural for men who have felt
a superiority over all those whom they happen to have encountered, to
fancy that this superiority will continue, and that it will extend from
individuals to public bodies. There is no rule in the case; or rather,
the probability lies the contrary way. That which constitutes the
excellence of conversation is of little use in addressing large
assemblies of people; while other qualities are required that are hardly
to be looked for in one and the same capacity. The way to move great
masses of men is to shew that you yourself are moved. In a private
circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and
banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off
the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the
self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph
of the speaker--it is a personal contest, and depends on personal and
momentary advantages. But in appealing to the public, no one triumphs
but in the triumph of some public cause, or by shewing a sympathy with
the general and predominant feelings of mankind. In a private room, a
satirist, a sophist may provoke admiration by expressing his contempt
for each of his adversaries in turn, and by setting their opinion at
defiance--but when men are congregated together on a great public
question and for a weighty object, they must be treated with more
respect; they are touched with what affects themselves or the general
weal, not with what flatters the vanity of the speaker; they must be
moved altogether, if they are moved at all; they are impressed with
gratitude for a luminous exposition of their claims or for zeal in their
cause; and the lightning of generous indignation at bad men and bad
measures is followed by thunders of applause--even in the House of
Commons. But a man may sneer and cavil and puzzle and fly-blow every
question that comes before him--be despised and feared by others, and
admired by no one but himself. He who thinks first of himself, either in
the world or in a popular assembly, will be sure to turn attention away
from his claims, instead of fixing it there. He must make common cause
with his hearers. To lead, he must follow the general bias. Mr. Tooke
did not therefore succeed as a speaker in parliament. He stood aloof,
he played antics, he exhibited his peculiar talent--while he was on his
legs, the question before the House stood still; the only point at issue
respected Mr. Tooke himself, his personal address and adroitness of
intellect.
Were there to be no more places and pensions, because Mr. Tooke's style
was terse and epigrammatic? Were the Opposition benches to be inflamed
to an unusual pitch of "sacred vehemence," because he gave them plainly
to understand there was not a pin to choose between Ministers and
Opposition? Would the House let him remain among them, because, if
they turned him out on account of his _black coat_, Lord Camelford had
threatened to send his _black servant_ in his place? This was a good
joke, but not a practical one. Would he gain the affections of the
people out of doors, by scouting the question of reform? Would the King
ever relish the old associate of Wilkes? What interest, then, what party
did he represent? He represented nobody but himself. He was an example
of an ingenious man, a clever talker, but he was out of his place in the
House of Commons; where people did not come (as in his own house) to
admire or break a lance with him, but to get through the business of
the day, and so adjourn! He wanted effect and _momentum_. Each of his
sentences told very well in itself, but they did not all together make
a speech. He left off where he began. His eloquence was a succession
of drops, not a stream. His arguments, though subtle and new, did not
affect the main body of the question. The coldness and pettiness of
his manner did not warm the hearts or expand the understandings of his
hearers. Instead of encouraging, he checked the ardour of his friends;
and teazed, instead of overpowering his antagonists. The only palpable
hit he ever made, while he remained there, was the comparing his own
situation in being rejected by the House, on account of the supposed
purity of his clerical character, to the story of the girl at the
Magdalen, who was told "she must turn out and qualify. "[A] This met with
laughter and loud applause. It was a _home_ thrust, and the House (to do
them justice) are obliged to any one who, by a smart blow, relieves
them of the load of grave responsibility, which sits heavy on their
shoulders. --At the hustings, or as an election-candidate, Mr. Tooke did
better. There was no great question to move or carry--it was an affair
of political _sparring_ between himself and the other candidates. He
took it in a very cool and leisurely manner--watched his competitors
with a wary, sarcastic eye; picked up the mistakes or absurdities that
fell from them, and retorted them on their heads; told a story to the
mob; and smiled and took snuff with a gentlemanly and becoming air, as
if he was already seated in the House. But a Court of Law was the place
where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be
said to be "native and endued unto that element. " He had here to stand
merely on the defensive--not to advance himself, but to block up the
way--not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he
wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified
to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in
the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were
the play-things, the darlings of Mr.
Tooke's mind; and with these he
baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The
report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a master-piece of acuteness,
dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his
examination before the Commissioners of the Income-Tax--nothing could
be got out of him in either case! Mr. Tooke, as a political leader,
belonged to the class of _trimmers_; or at most, it was his delight to
make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be _against_ himself than
_for_ any body else. He was neither a bold nor a safe leader. He enticed
others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could
say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or
injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the
motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason
with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through
the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir
Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often
venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his
friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the
last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the
case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his
friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have
gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther
might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how
far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go,
according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did
treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop
short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his
line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of
the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking
of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual
with him--"They want our blood--blood--blood! " It was somewhat
ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in a charge of High Treason (and
indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of
an intercepted letter relating to an engagement for a private
dinnerparty)--his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this
respect he was a mere pettifogger, full of chicane, and captious
objections, and unmeaning discontent; but he had none of the grand
whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow
of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in
a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court-
intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the time
of Junius and Wilkes--and even if his understanding had gone along with
more modern and unqualified principles, his cautious temper would have
prevented his risking them in practice. Horne Tooke (though not of the
same side in politics) had much of the tone of mind and more of the
spirit of moral feeling of the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury. The
narrow scale and fine-drawn distinctions of his political creed made
his conversation on such subjects infinitely amusing, particularly
when contrasted with that of persons who dealt in the sounding
_common-places_ and sweeping clauses of abstract politics. He knew all
the cabals and jealousies and heart-burnings in the beginning of the
late reign, the changes of administration and the springs of secret
influence, the characters of the leading men, Wilkes, Barrè, Dunning,
Chatham, Burke, the Marquis of Rockingham, North, Shelburne, Fox, Pitt,
and all the vacillating events of the American war:--these formed a
curious back-ground to the more prominent figures that occupied the
present time, and Mr. Tooke worked out the minute details and touched in
the evanescent _traits_ with the pencil of a master. His conversation
resembled a political _camera obscura_--as quaint as it was magical. To
some pompous pretenders he might seem to narrate _fabellas aniles_ (old
wives' fables)--but not to those who study human nature, and wish to
know the materials of which it is composed. Mr. Tooke's faculties might
appear to have ripened and acquired a finer flavour with age. In a
former period of his life he was hardly the man he was latterly; or else
he had greater abilities to contend against. He no where makes so poor a
figure as in his controversy with Junius. He has evidently the best of
the argument, yet he makes nothing out of it. He tells a long story
about himself, without wit or point in it; and whines and whimpers like
a school-boy under the rod of his master. Junius, after bringing a hasty
charge against him, has not a single fact to adduce in support of it;
but keeps his ground and fairly beats his adversary out of the field by
the mere force of style. One would think that "Parson Horne" knew who
Junius was, and was afraid of him. "Under him his genius is" quite
"rebuked. " With the best cause to defend, he comes off more shabbily
from the contest than any other person in the LETTERS, except Sir
William Draper, who is the very hero of defeat.
The great thing which Mr. Horne Tooke has done, and which he has left
behind him to posterity, is his work on Grammar, oddly enough entitled
THE DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY. Many people have taken it up as a description
of a game--others supposing it to be a novel. It is, in truth, one of
the few philosophical works on Grammar that were ever written. The
essence of it (and, indeed, almost all that is really valuable in it) is
contained in his _Letter to Dunning_, published about the year 1775.
Mr. Tooke's work is truly elementary. Dr. Lowth described Mr. Harris's
_Hermes_ as "the finest specimen of analysis since the days of
Aristotle"--a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis
consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless
details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and
confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy
technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing
his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and
resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of
old associations wound round language, that is a kind of veil over its
natural features; and custom puts on the mask of ignorance. But this
veil, this mask the author of _The Diversions of Purley_ threw aside and
penetrated to the naked truth of things, by the literal, matter-of-fact,
unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not
subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to
"bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born"--with
womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was
broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of
effeminate--hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half-savage--and who
saw language stripped of the clothing of habit or sentiment, or the
disguises of doting pedantry, naked in its cradle, and in its primitive
state. Our author tells us that he found his discovery on Grammar among
a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and
forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries
of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to
communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The
whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction _That_
is the pronoun _That_, which is itself the participle of a verb, and
in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible
parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the
Verb and Noun. "I affirm _that_ gold is yellow," that is, "I affirm
_that_ fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow. " The secret of
the Conjunction on which so many fine heads had split, on which so many
learned definitions were thrown away, as if it was its peculiar province
and inborn virtue to announce oracles and formal propositions, and
nothing else, like a Doctor of Laws, is here at once accounted for,
inasmuch as it is clearly nothing but another part of speech, the
pronoun, _that_, with a third part of speech, the noun, _thing_,
understood. This is getting at a solution of words into their component
parts, not glossing over one difficulty by bringing another to parallel
it, nor like saying with Mr. Harris, when it is asked, "what a
Conjunction is? " that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions
disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any
one chooses to hunt out "with laborious foolery. " Our author hit
upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was
examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent
being entrapped by them; or rather, this circumstance might itself be
traced to the habit of satisfying his own mind as to the precise sense
in which he himself made use of words. Mr. Tooke, though he had no
objection to puzzle others, was mightily averse to being puzzled or
_mystified_ himself. All was, to his determined mind, either complete
light or complete darkness. There was no hazy, doubtful _chiaro-scuro_
in his understanding. He wanted something "palpable to feeling as to
sight. " "What," he would say to himself, "do I mean when I use the
conjunction _that? _ Is it an anomaly, a class by itself, a word sealed
against all inquisitive attempts? Is it enough to call it a _copula_,
a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its
use, but what is its origin? " Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this
question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians,
"familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun,
adjective, or participle, _that_, with the noun, _thing or proposition_,
implied, and the particular example following it. " So he thought, and
so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and
writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a
logician, charged him with having found "a mare's-nest;" but it is not
to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and
last longer than Mr. Windham's ingenious derivation of the practice of
bull-baiting from the principles of humanity!
Having thus laid the corner-stone, he proceeded to apply the same method
of reasoning to other undecyphered and impracticable terms. Thus the
word, _And_, he explained clearly enough to be the verb _add_, or a
corruption of the old Saxon, _anandad_. "Two _and_ two make four," that
is, "two _add_ two make four. " Mr. Tooke, in fact, treated words as
the chemists do substances; he separated those which are compounded of
others from those which are not decompoundable. He did not explain the
obscure by the more obscure, but the difficult by the plain, the complex
by the simple. This alone is proceeding upon the true principles of
science: the rest is pedantry and _petit-maitreship. _ Our philosophical
writer distinguished all words into _names of things_, and directions
added for joining them together, or originally into _nouns_ and _verbs_.
It is a pity that he has left this matter short, by omitting to define
the Verb. After enumerating sixteen different definitions (all of which
he dismisses with scorn and contumely) at the end of two quarto volumes,
he refers the reader for the true solution to a third volume, which
he did not live to finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit
of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse
speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a
satisfaction of their doubts; but why should he treat posterity in the
same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it?
I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended
_nostrum_, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as
a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles a hedge-hog, he did
not find it too much for him, and leave it to its fate. It is also a
pity that Mr. Tooke spun out his great work with prolix and dogmatical
dissertations on irrelevant matters; and after denying the old
metaphysical theories of language, should attempt to found a
metaphysical theory of his own on the nature and mechanism of language.
The nature of words, he contended (it was the basis of his whole system)
had no connection with the nature of things or the objects of thought;
yet he afterwards strove to limit the nature of things and of the human
mind by the technical structure of language. Thus he endeavours to shew
that there are no abstract ideas, by enumerating two thousand instances
of words, expressing abstract ideas, that are the past participles of
certain verbs. It is difficult to know what he means by this. On the
other hand, he maintains that "a complex idea is as great an absurdity
as a complex star," and that words only are complex. He also makes out a
triumphant list of metaphysical and moral non-entities, proved to be
so on the pure principle that the names of these non-entities are
participles, not nouns, or names of things. That is strange in so close
a reasoner and in one who maintained that all language was a masquerade
of words, and that the class to which they grammatically belonged had
nothing to do with the class of ideas they represented.
It is now above twenty years since the two quarto volumes of the
_Diversions of Purley_ were published, and fifty since the same theory
was promulgated in the celebrated _Letter to Dunning_. Yet it is a
curious example of the _Spirit of the Age_ that Mr. Lindley Murray's
Grammar (a work out of which Mr. C---- helps himself to English, and Mr.
M---- to style[B]) has proceeded to the thirtieth edition in complete
defiance of all the facts and arguments there laid down. He defines a
noun to be the name of a thing. Is quackery a thing, _i. e. _ a substance?
He defines a verb to be a word signifying _to be, to do, or to suffer_.
Are being, action, suffering verbs? He defines an adjective to be the
name of a quality. Are not _wooden, golden, substantial_ adjectives? He
maintains that there are six cases in English nouns [C], that is, six
various terminations without any change of termination at all, and that
English verbs have all the moods, tenses, and persons that the Latin
ones have. This is an extraordinary stretch of blindness and obstinacy.
He very formally translates the Latin Grammar into English (as so many
had done before him) and fancies he has written an English Grammar; and
divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and
English scholars carry on the jest, while Horne Tooke's genuine
anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our
politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum? That our clergy
do not relish Parson Horne? That the world at large are alarmed at
acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this
to do with the formation of the English language or with the first
conditions and necessary foundation of speech itself? Is there nothing
beyond the reach of prejudice and party-spirit? It seems in this, as in
so many other instances, as if there was a patent for absurdity in the
natural bias of the human mind, and that folly should be _stereotyped_!
[Footnote A: "They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen--_Go thou
and do likewise_. "--JUNIUS. ]
[Footnote B: This work is not without merit in the details and examples
of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he
confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and
literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray,
hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English. ]
[Footnote C: At least, with only one change in the genitive case,]
* * * * *
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age--the
"lord of the ascendant" for the time being. He is just half what the
human intellect is capable of being: if you take the universe, and
divide it into two parts, he knows all that it _has been_; all that
it _is to be_ is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over
antiquity--scorning "the present ignorant time. " He is "laudator
temporis acti"--a "_prophesier_ of things past. " The old world is to him
a crowded map; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well-
authenticated superstitions; he shudders at the shadow of innovation.
His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested
prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The
cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life
and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and
dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by
tradition or custom--it does not project itself beyond this into the
world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a
prejudice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like _Van
Dieman's Land_;--barren, miserable, distant, a place of exile, the
dreary abode of savages, convicts, and adventurers. Sir Walter would
make a bad hand of a description of the _Millennium_, unless he could
lay the scene in Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would
want facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style.
Our historical novelist firmly thinks that nothing _is_ but what _has
been_--that the moral world stands still, as the material one was
supposed to do of old--and that we can never get beyond the point where
we actually are without utter destruction, though every thing changes
and will change from what it was three hundred years ago to what it is
now,--from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good
old times most dreads and hates!
It is long since we read, and long since we thought of our author's
poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate
occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it from our
recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of
an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in
spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted
_character_. It was poetry "of no mark or likelihood. " It slid out of
the mind as soon as read, like a river; and would have been forgotten,
but that the public curiosity was fed with ever-new supplies from the
same teeming liquid source. It is not every man that can write six
quarto volumes in verse, that are caught up with avidity, even by
fastidious judges. But what a difference between _their_ popularity and
that of the Scotch Novels! It is true, the public read and admired the
_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion_, and so on, and each individual was
contented to read and admire because the public did so: but with
regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is quite
_another-guess_ sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to applaud
on his own ground, would be thought to go before the public opinion,
is eager to extol his favourite characters louder, to understand them
better than every body else, and has his own scale of comparative
excellence for each work, supported by nothing but his own enthusiastic
and fearless convictions. It must be amusing to the _Author of Waverley_
to hear his readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing? [A])
quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to
character, quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each
other in the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle
the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice--so various,
so equal, so transcendant are their merits! His volumes of poetry were
received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances: we are ready
to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was something
meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like those who keep
opera _figurantes_, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and
our taste confirmed by the town: but the Novels are like the betrothed
of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are
jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly
acquainted with their beauties as ourselves. For which of his poetical
heroines would the reader break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans?
What _Lady of the Lake_ can compare with the beautiful Rebecca? We
believe the late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful
and premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he had
penned the most elaborate panegyric on the _Scotch Novels_ that had as
yet appeared! --The _Epics_ are not poems, so much as metrical romances.
There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature
and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and
filmed over"--the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid
decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into
a tinkling sound, a tinsel _common-place_. It must be owned, there is a
power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to
a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent
materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own,
melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. But Sir Walter (we
contend, under correction) has not this creative impulse, this plastic
power, this capacity of reacting on his first impressions. He is a
learned, a literal, a _matter-of-fact_ expounder of truth or fable:[B]
he does not soar above and look down upon his subject, imparting his own
lofty views and feelings to his descriptions of nature--he relies
upon it, is raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing. A poet is
essentially a _maker_; that is, he must atone for what he loses in
individuality and local resemblance by the energies and resources of his
own mind. The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has
either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject by an
effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon a par with
the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light, agreeable,
effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a _Modern Antique_. The
smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily with the quaint,
uncouth, rugged materials of which it is composed; and takes away any
appearance of heaviness or harshness from the body of local traditions
and obsolete costume. We see grim knights and iron armour; but then they
are woven in silk with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness
of flowers. The poet's figures might be compared to old [C] tapestries
copied on the finest velvet:--they are not like Raphael's _Cartoons_,
but they are very like Mr. Westall's drawings, which accompany, and are
intended to illustrate them. This facility and grace of execution is the
more remarkable, as a story goes that not long before the appearance of
the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ Sir Walter (then Mr. ) Scott, having, in
the company of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat,
they proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a
given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found
they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain," said the
unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, "that you and I need never
think of getting our living by writing poetry! " In a year or so after
this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had
been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great
poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but "a metre ballad-monger. " We would
rather have written one song of Burns, or a single passage in Lord
Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, or one of Wordsworth's "fancies and
good-nights," than all his epics. What is he to Spenser, over whose
immortal, ever-amiable verse beauty hovers and trembles, and who has
shed the purple light of Fancy, from his ambrosial wings, over all
nature? What is there of the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in
the blue serene, and who takes us to sit with him there? What is there
(in his ambling rhymes) of the deep pathos of Chaucer? Or of the
o'er-informing power of Shakespear, whose eye, watching alike the
minutest traces of characters and the strongest movements of passion,
"glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and with the
lambent flame of genius, playing round each object, lights up the
universe in a robe of its own radiance? Sir Walter has no voluntary
power of combination: all his associations (as we said before) are those
of habit or of tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet,
garrulous of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing
superficiality.
Not so of his NOVELS AND ROMANCES. There we turn over a new
leaf--another and the same--the same in matter, but in form, in power
how different! The author of Waverley has got rid of the tagging of
rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of epithets, the
colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the regular march
of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes at the heart
of his subject, without dismay and without disguise. His poetry was a
lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery: his prose is a
beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in Don Quixote, when she is
surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her naked feet in the brook,
looks round her, abashed at the admiration her charms have excited! The
grand secret of the author's success in these latter productions is that
he has completely got rid of the trammels of authorship; and torn off at
one rent (as Lord Peter got rid of so many yards of lace in the _Tale of
a Tub_) all the ornaments of fine writing and worn-out sentimentality.
All is fresh, as from the hand of nature: by going a century or two back
and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated district, all becomes
new and startling in the present advanced period.
