Is he not afraid
to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
former extravagances staring him in the face?
to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
former extravagances staring him in the face?
Hazlitt - The Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits
He is never violent or in extremes, except when the people or
the parliament happen to be out of their senses; and then he seems to
regret the necessity of plainly telling them he thinks so, instead of
pluming himself upon it or exulting over impending calamities. There
is only one error he seems to labour under (which, we believe, he also
borrowed from Mr. Horne Tooke or Major Cartwright), the wanting to go
back to the early times of our Constitution and history in search of the
principles of law and liberty. He might as well
"Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. "
Liberty, in our opinion, is but a modern invention (the growth of books
and printing)--and whether new or old, is not the less desirable. A man
may be a patriot, without being an antiquary. This is the only point
on which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture of pedantry. In
general, his love of liberty is pure, as it is warm and steady: his
humanity is unconstrained and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
head to feel; nor does prudence always keep a guard upon his tongue or
his pen. No man writes a better letter to his Constituents than the
member for Westminster; and his compositions of that kind ought to be
good, for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the idol of the
people of Westminster: few persons have a greater number of friends
and well-wishers; and he has still greater reason to be proud of his
enemies, for his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir
Francis Burdett has often been left in a Minority in the House of
Commons, with only one or two on his side. We suspect, unfortunately for
his country, that History will be found to enter its protest on the same
side of the question!
[Footnote A: Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by
adoption. ]
* * * * *
LORD ELDON AND MR. WILBERFORCE.
Lord Eldon is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent
him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or
interest. The character of _good-nature_, as it is called, has been a
good deal mistaken; and the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration
of the grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see an
individual whose countenance is "all tranquillity and smiles;" who
is full of good-humour and pleasantry; whose manners are gentle and
conciliating; who is uniformly temperate in his expressions, and
punctual and just in his every-day dealings; we are apt to conclude from
so fair an outside, that
"All is conscience and tender heart"
within also, and that such a one would not hurt a fly. And neither would
he without a motive. But mere good-nature (or what passes in the world
for such) is often no better than indolent selfishness. A person
distinguished and praised for this quality will not needlessly offend
others, because they may retaliate; and besides, it ruffles his own
temper. He likes to enjoy a perfect calm, and to live in an interchange
of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or annoy him. He has
a fine oiliness in his disposition, which smooths the waves of passion
as they rise. He does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others;
bears their calamities with patience; he listens to the din and clang of
war, the earthquake and the hurricane of the political and moral world
with the temper and spirit of a philosopher; no act of injustice puts
him beside himself, the follies and absurdities of mankind never give
him a moment's uneasiness, he has none of the ordinary causes of
fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest they
take in the conduct of their neighbours or in the public good. None of
these idle or frivolous sources of discontent, that make such havoc
with the peace of human life, ever discompose his features or alter the
serenity of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
"If wretches hang that Ministers may dine,"--
the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial squeeze of the
hand is still the same. But tread on the toe of one of these amiable and
imperturbable mortals, or let a lump of soot fall down the chimney and
spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience
is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour
is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but
their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at
home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to
their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch
the sore place, they betray more resentment, and break out (like spoiled
children) into greater fractiousness than others, partly from a greater
degree of selfishness, and partly because they are taken by surprise,
and mad to think they have not guarded every point against annoyance or
attack, by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence.
An instance of what we mean occurred but the other day. An allusion was
made in the House of Commons to something in the proceedings in the
Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the
Court, with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes, and a direct
charge of falsehood in his mouth, without knowing any thing certain
of the matter, without making any inquiry into it, without using any
precaution or putting the least restraint upon himself, and all on no
better authority than a common newspaper report. The thing was (not that
we are imputing any strong blame in this case, we merely bring it as an
illustration) it touched himself, his office, the inviolability of his
jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings, and the wet
blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took fire like tinder! All
the fine balancing was at an end; all the doubts, all the delicacy, all
the candour real or affected, all the chances that there might be a
mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed towards a Member
of the House, are overlooked by the blindness of passion, and the wary
Judge pounces upon the paragraph without mercy, without a moment's
delay, or the smallest attention to forms! This was indeed serious
business, there was to be no trifling here; every instant was an age
till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on the head
of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had it been another
person's case, another person's dignity that had been compromised,
another person's conduct that had been called in question, who doubts
but that the matter might have stood over till the next term, that the
Noble Lord would have taken the Newspaper home in his pocket, that he
would have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to the Honourable
Member to inquire into the truth of the statement, that he would have
watched a convenient opportunity good-humouredly to ask other Honourable
Members what all this was about, that the greatest caution and fairness
would have been observed, and that to this hour the lawyers' clerks and
the junior counsel would have been in the greatest admiration of the
Chancellor's nicety of discrimination, and the utter inefficacy of the
heats, importunities, haste, and passions of others to influence his
judgment? This would have been true; yet his readiness to decide and to
condemn where he himself is concerned, shews that passion is not dead in
him, nor subject to the controul of reason; but that self-love is the
main-spring that moves it, though on all beyond that limit he looks with
the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
"Resistless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loaths. "
All people are passionate in what concerns themselves, or in what they
take an interest in. The range of this last is different in different
persons; but the want of passion is but another name for the want of
sympathy and imagination.
The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and conscientious exactness is
proverbial; and is, we believe, as inflexible as it is delicate in
all cases that occur in the stated routine of legal practice. The
impatience, the irritation, the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of
the applicants move him not a jot from his intended course, he looks at
their claims with the "lack lustre eye" of prefessional indifference.
Power and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge in
the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse himself with
the dry details and intricate windings of the law of equity. He delights
to balance a straw, to see a feather turn the scale, or make it even
again; and divides and subdivides a scruple to the smallest fraction. He
unravels the web of argument and pieces it together again; folds it up
and lays it aside, that he may examine it more at his leisure. He hugs
indecision to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt or a nice point
to solace himself with it in protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay
seems, in his mind, to be of the very essence of justice. He no more
hurries through a question than if no one was waiting for the result,
and he was merely a _dilettanti_, fanciful judge, who played at my Lord
Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and punctilios as an idle
hobby and harmless illusion. The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition
gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour: we are sick
of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and
justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice (as they were in
Rabelais) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But
there is a limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness
of the Chancellor. The understanding acts only in the absence of the
passions. At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembles, and
points to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful tendency
to brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breath of a court
speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scatters the cobwebs of his
brain. The secret wish of power is a thumping _make-weight,_ where all
is so nicely-balanced beforehand. In the case of a celebrated beauty and
heiress, and the brother of a Noble Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long,
and went through the forms, as usual: but who ever doubted, where all
this indecision would end? No man in his senses, for a single instant!
We shall not press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some
persons thought that from entertaining a fellow-feeling on the subject,
the Chancellor would have been ready to favour the Poet-Laureat's
application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against Wat
Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments on such points are not so variable, he
has too much at stake. He recollected the year 1794, though Mr. Southey
had forgotten it! --
The personal always prevails over the intellectual, where the latter is
not backed by strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative
objects do not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and
immediate ones are sure to carry the day, even in ingenuous and
well-disposed minds. The will yields necessarily to some motive or
other; and where the public good or distant consequences excite no
sympathy in the breast, either from short-sightedness or an easiness of
temperament that shrinks from any violent effort or painful emotion,
self-interest, indolence, the opinion of others, a desire to please, the
sense of personal obligation, come in and fill up the void of public
spirit, patriotism, and humanity. The best men in the world in their own
natural dispositions or in private life (for this reason) often become
the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy to the unruly
passions of others, and from their having no set-off in strong moral
_stamina_ to the temptations that are held out to them, if, as is
frequently the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient
industry. --Lord Eldon has one of the best-natured faces in the world;
it is pleasant to meet him in the street, plodding along with an
umbrella under his arm, without one trace of pride, of spleen, or
discontent in his whole demeanour, void of offence, with almost rustic
simplicity and honesty of appearance--a man that makes friends at first
sight, and could hardly make enemies, if he would; and whose only fault
is that he cannot say _Nay_ to power, or subject himself to an unkind
word or look from a King or a Minister. He is a thorough-bred Tory.
Others boggle or are at fault in their career, or give back at a pinch,
they split into different factions, have various objects to distract
them, their private friendships or antipathies stand in their way; but
he has never flinched, never gone back, never missed his way, he is an
_out-and-outer_ in this respect, his allegiance has been without flaw,
like "one entire and perfect chrysolite," his implicit understanding is
a kind of taffeta-lining to the Crown, his servility has assumed an air
of the most determined independence, and he has
"Read his history in a Prince's eyes! "--
There has been no stretch of power attempted in his time that he has not
seconded: no existing abuse, so odious or so absurd, that he has not
sanctioned it. He has gone the whole length of the most unpopular
designs of Ministers. When the heavy artillery of interest, power, and
prejudice is brought into the field, the paper pellets of the brain go
for nothing: his labyrinth of nice, lady-like doubts explodes like a
mine of gun-powder. The Chancellor may weigh and palter--the courtier
is decided, the politician is firm, and rivetted to his place in the
Cabinet! On all the great questions that have divided party opinion or
agitated the public mind, the Chancellor has been found uniformly and
without a single exception on the side of prerogative and power,
and against every proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a
strenuous supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
liberty abroad; he has been equally zealous in urging or defending every
act and infringement of the Constitution, for abridging it at home: he
at the same time opposes every amelioration of the penal laws, on the
alleged ground of his abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation: he
has studiously set his face against Catholic emancipation; he laboured
hard in his vocation to prevent the abolition of the Slave Trade; he was
Attorney General in the trials for High Treason in 1794; and the other
day in giving his opinion on the Queen's Trial, shed tears and protested
his innocence before God! This was natural and to be expected; but
on all occasions he is to be found at his post, true to the call of
prejudice, of power, to the will of others and to his own interest.
In the whole of his public career, and with all the goodness of his
disposition, he has not shewn "so small a drop of pity as a wren's eye. "
He seems to be on his guard against every thing liberal and humane as
his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness either from satiety
or disgust, or a hankering after popularity, or a wish to be thought
above narrow prejudices. The Chancellor alone is fixed and immoveable.
Is it want of understanding or of principle? No--it is want of
imagination, a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance and
good-nature . . . Common humanity and justice are little better than vague
terms to him: he acts upon his immediate feelings and least irksome
impulses. The King's hand is velvet to the touch--the Woolsack is a
seat of honour and profit! That is all he knows about the matter. As to
abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the
corner of the street troubles his head as much about them as he does:
yet this last is a very good sort of animal with no harm or malice in
him, unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it is necessary to
keep out of his way, or warn others against him!
Mr. Wilberforce is a less perfect character in his way. He acts from
mixed motives. He would willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He
is a person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar,
silver-tongued, is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal,
humane, tractable to power, accessible to popularity, honouring the
king, and no less charmed with the homage of his fellow-citizens. "What
lacks he then? " Nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming at
too much, he has spoiled all, and neutralised what might have been an
estimable character, distinguished by signal services to mankind. A
man must take his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between
different virtues. Otherwise, he will not gain his own approbation, or
secure the respect of others. The graces and accomplishments of private
life mar the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity, a
sternness, a self-denial, and a painful sense of duty required in
the one, which ill befits the softness and sweetness which should
characterise the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship, humanity, are
all virtues; but may they not sometimes clash? By being unwilling to
forego the praise due to any, we may forfeit the reputation of all; and
instead of uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favour, we
may end in becoming a sort of bye-word for affectation, cant, hollow
professions, trimming, fickleness, and effeminate imbecility. It is best
to choose and act up to some one leading character, as it is best to
have some settled profession or regular pursuit in life.
We can readily believe that Mr. Wilberforce's first object and principle
of action is to do what he thinks right: his next (and that we fear is
of almost equal weight with the first) is to do what will be thought so
by other people. He is always at a game of _hawk and buzzard_ between
these two: his "conscience will not budge," unless the world goes with
it. He does not seem greatly to dread the denunciation in Scripture,
but rather to court it--"Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of
you! " We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind, because West-India
planters and Guinea traders do not join in his praise. His ears are not
strongly enough tuned to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that one half of the
human species (the images of God carved in ebony, as old Fuller calls
them) shout his name as a champion and a saviour through vast burning
zones, and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude for
deliverance from chains--he must have a Prime-Minister drink his health
at a Cabinet-dinner for aiding to rivet on those of his country and
of Europe! He goes hand and heart along with Government in all their
notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope that
they will leave him a sort of _no-man's ground_ of humanity in the Great
Desert, where his reputation for benevolence and public spirit may
spring up and flourish, till its head touches the clouds, and it
stretches out its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He has
no mercy on those who claim a property in negro-slaves as so much
live-stock on their estates; the country rings with the applause of
his wit, his eloquence, and his indignant appeals to common sense and
humanity on this subject--but not a word has he to say, not a whisper
does he breathe against the claim set up by the Despots of the Earth
over their Continental subjects, but does every thing in his power to
confirm and sanction it! He must give no offence. Mr. Wilberforce's
humanity will go all lengths that it can with safety and discretion: but
it is not to be supposed that it should lose him his seat for Yorkshire,
the smile of Majesty, or the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is
anxious to do all the good he can without hurting himself or his fair
fame. His conscience and his character compound matters very amicably.
He rather patronises honesty than is a martyr to it. His patriotism, his
philanthropy are not so ill-bred, as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity to
untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
He thus shews his respect for religion without offending the clergy, or
circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is in all this an
appearance of a good deal of cant and tricking. His patriotism may
be accused of being servile; his humanity ostentatious; his loyalty
conditional; his religion a mixture of fashion and fanaticism. "Out upon
such half-faced fellowship! " Mr. Wilberforce has the pride of being
familiar with the great; the vanity of being popular; the conceit of an
approving conscience. He is coy in his approaches to power; his public
spirit is, in a manner, _under the rose_. He thus reaps the credit
of independence, without the obloquy; and secures the advantages of
servility, without incurring any obligations. He has two strings to his
bow:--he by no means neglects his worldly interests, while he expects
a bright reversion in the skies. Mr. Wilberforce is far from being
a hypocrite; but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of _moral
equivocation_ as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is one who is the
very reverse of, or who despises the character he pretends to be: Mr.
Wilberforce would be all that he pretends to be, and he is it in fact,
as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations, and easy
services go, but not in heart and soul, or so as to give up the
appearance of any one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any
other. He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of
loyalty, religion, and humanity, and it is such as is always safe and
advantageous to himself! This is perhaps hardly fair, and it is of
dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Eldon, for instance, is known to be
a thorough-paced ministerialist: his opinion is only that of his party.
But Mr. Wilberforce is not a party-man. He is the more looked up to
on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By tampering with
different temptations and personal projects, he has all the air of the
most perfect independence, and gains a character for impartiality and
candour, when he is only striking a balance in his mind between the
_éclat_ of differing from a Minister on some 'vantage ground, and the
risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all the weight of his
artificial popularity over to the Government on vital points and
hard-run questions; while they, in return, lend him a little of the
gilding of court-favour to set off his disinterested philanthropy and
tramontane enthusiasm. As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd jumble
of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has brought the Saints
over to the side of the abolition of Negro slavery. This his adversaries
think hard and stealing a march upon them. What have the SAINTS to do
with freedom or reform of any kind? --Mr. Wilberforce's style of
speaking is not quite _parliamentary_, it is halfway between that and
_evangelical_. He is altogether a _double-entendre:_ the very tone of
his voice is a _double-entendre. _ It winds, and undulates, and glides
up and down on texts of Scripture, and scraps from Paley, and trite
sophistry, and pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering,
inprogressive, sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing, that are
borne from their strait-forward course
"By every little breath that under heaven is blown. "
Something of this fluctuating, time-serving principle was visible even
in the great question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He was, at
one time, half inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt's dilatory hands,
and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy
colouring of popularity sunk into the _sable_ ground from which it rose!
It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion.
Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with
whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of
the world--the mask, the varnishing, and painting--the man that effected
it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind
was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and
who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than
one of the Apostles in the _Cartoons_ of Raphael. He deserves to be
added to the Twelve! [A]
[Footnote A: After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the
character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up
in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who
he was, made answer--"I am Mr. Wilberforce! " The guardians of the night
conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature. ]
* * * * *
MR. SOUTHEY.
Mr. Southey, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic
flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look
at once aspiring and dejected--it was the look that had been impressed
upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was
the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile betwixt hope
and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip. Mr. Southey's mind
is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness. It is prophetic of
good; it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look after
it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear to give up the thought
of happiness, his confidence in his fellow-man, when all else despair.
It is the very element, "where he must live or have no life at all. "
While he supposed it possible that a better form of society could be
introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while the light of the
French Revolution beamed into his soul (and long after, it was seen
reflected on his brow, like the light of setting suns on the peak of
some high mountain, or lonely range of clouds, floating in purer ether! )
while he had this hope, this faith in man left, he cherished it with
child-like simplicity, he clung to it with the fondness of a lover, he
was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveller; he stuck at nothing that
he thought would banish all pain and misery from the world--in his
impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed
himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the
right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and
painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras
and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned
suddenly round, and maintained that "whatever _is_, is right. " Mr.
Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil
is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects
the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that
is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all
unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He
missed his way in _Utopia_, he has found it at Old Sarum--
"His generous _ardour_ no cold medium knows:"
his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and
ever in the wrong!
The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle
of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the
multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique,
resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his
preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty: his conclusions raw
and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and
a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous
when new; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want
of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He
wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress
than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very
reputable lady, called Legitimacy. _A wilful man_, according to the
Scotch proverb, _must have his way_. If it were the cause to which he
was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and
evil report; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have
others do so; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to
apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has
no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the
indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the
convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's
mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse,
than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the
false with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to "the words
of truth and soberness. " His impressions are accidental, immediate,
personal, instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals he is
surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely
turned the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason?
Is he not tenacious of his opinions, in proportion as they are brittle
and hastily formed? Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief,
because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is conscious he
has shifted them? Does he not confine others to the strict line of
orthodoxy, because he has himself taken every liberty?
Is he not afraid
to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
former extravagances staring him in the face? Does he not refuse to
tolerate the smallest shade of difference in others, because he feels
that he wants the utmost latitude of construction for differing so
widely from himself? Is he not captious, dogmatical, petulant in
delivering his sentiments, according as he has been inconsistent,
rash, and fanciful in adopting them? He maintains that there can be no
possible ground for differing from him, because he looks only at his
own side of the question! He sets up his own favourite notions as the
standard of reason and honesty, because he has changed from one extreme
to another! He treats his opponents with contempt, because he is himself
afraid of meeting with disrespect! He says that "a Reformer is a worse
character than a house-breaker," in order to stifle the recollection
that he himself once was one!
We must say that "we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer" than in
his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of
poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a garland of wild
flowers suits him better than the laureat-wreath: that his pastoral odes
and popular inscriptions were far more adapted to his genius than
his presentation-poems. He is nothing akin to birth-day suits and
drawing-room fopperies. "He is nothing, if not fantastical. " In his
figure, in his movements, in his sentiments, he is sharp and angular,
quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every
thing of him and about him is from the people. He is not classical, he
is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's
opinions: he is not shaped on any model: he bows to no authority: he
yields only to his own wayward peculiarities. He is wild, irregular,
singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he! All is crude and chaotic,
self-opinionated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard
rules. He is not _teres et rotundus_. Mr. Southey walks with his chin
erect through the streets of London, and with an umbrella sticking out
under his arm, in the finest weather. He has not sacrificed to the
Graces, nor studied decorum. With him every thing is projecting,
starting from its place, an episode, a digression, a poetic license. He
does not move in any given orbit, but like a falling star, shoots from
his sphere. He is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments,
beginning every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for
himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly _revolutionary_. He may
have given up the reform of the State: but depend upon it, he has some
other _hobby_ of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present
Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called _The
Vision of Judgment_, as a specimen of what might be done in English
hexameters? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved
model. He might as well have presented himself at the levee in a fancy
or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey was not _to try conclusions_ with
Majesty--still less on such an occasion. The extreme freedoms with
departed greatness, the party-petulance carried to the Throne of
Grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humour, the assumption of
infallibility and even of the voice of Heaven in this poem, are pointed
instances of what we have said. They shew the singular state of
over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of
independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even
in addressing his Sovereign! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his
_Kehama_, his _Thalaba_, his _Madoc_, his _Roderic_. Who will deny the
spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling
interest that pervades them? Who will say that they are not sustained on
fictions wilder than his own Glendoveer, that they are not the daring
creations of a mind curbed by no law, tamed by no fear, that they are
not rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius, that
they are not the very paradoxes of poetry? All this is very well, very
intelligible, and very harmless, if we regard the rank excrescences of
Mr. Southey's poetry, like the red and blue flowers in corn, as the
unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy; or if we allow
the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment and boil over--the
variety, the boldness, the lively stimulus given to the mind may then
atone for the violation of rules and the offences to bed-rid authority;
but not if our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an
apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our
motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting
others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory
for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on
classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly
bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music,
were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull,
incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even
regretted. But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-off. It is
indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
the author of _Joan of Arc_--that work in which the love of Liberty is
exhaled like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven-born, that is
full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth
and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart--should ever after
turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause. After giving up
his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever
to have set his foot within the threshold of a court. He might be sure
that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single
cordial smile from greatness. All that Mr. Southey is or that he does
best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws--when
he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius,
and offers a violence to his nature. His characteristic faults are the
excess of a lively, unguarded temperament:--oh! let them not degenerate
into cold-blooded, heartless vices! If we speak or have ever spoken of
Mr. Southey with severity, it is with "the malice of old friends," for
we count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers. But
while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to
age (the _Wat Tyler_ and the _Vision of Judgment_ are the Alpha
and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of
ebullitions of spleen, making _jets-d'eaux,_ cascades, fountains, and
water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in
leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them under ground--
"Far from the sun and summer gale! "
He would suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the
example, and claim a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce an
uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres and
settled opinions, and enforce it with a high hand. This has been judged
hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps
disproportioned to the injury done. "Because he is virtuous," (it has
been asked,) "are there to be no more cakes and ale? " Because he is
loyal, are we to take all our notions from the _Quarterly Review_?
Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the _Book of the
Church_? We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only
more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a
more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry.
We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in
the _Quarterly Review,_ notwithstanding their virulence and the talent
they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects.
They have redeeming traits in them. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole
lump:" and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite
expelled from the _Quarterly Review_. At the corner of his pen, "there
hangs a vapourous drop profound" of independence and liberality, which
falls upon its pages, and oozes out through the pores of the public
mind. There is a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are
naturally callous to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically
sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man
like Mr. Southey. _Once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist_.
No man can entirely baulk his nature: it breaks out in spite of him.
In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not
interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the
extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch,
our "laureate" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a
reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he
does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does
not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where
humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a
by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his
spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands
convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not
regularly articled as a Government-tool! --Perhaps the most pleasing and
striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled
against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but
those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own
infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and
time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but
affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as
he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he
himself become
"Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree! "
Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain,
clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with
a grave and sparkling admixture of _archaisms_ in its ornaments and
occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of
any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron,
Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps
superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is
rather a want of originality and even of _impetus_: but there is no want
of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of
learning and of information. He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as
well as ancient) "instances. " Mr. Southey may not always convince his
opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a
word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or
thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of
old authors thrown into it! --He also excels as an historian and
prose-translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit
proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon
process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the extreme
levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His
translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed _con
amore_, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That
of the _Cid_, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be
altered for the better, in the old scriptural style which it adopts in
conformity to the original. It is no less interesting in itself, or as a
record of high and chivalrous feelings and manners, than it is worthy of
perusal as a literary curiosity.
Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place
book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not
remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick,
unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading,
and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who
give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey
in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr.
Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor
the same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of
knowledge, and by a scrupulous correctness of statement for what he
wants in originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of
Mr. Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre,
shrill, and dry. Mr. Coleridge's _forte_ is conversation, and he is
conscious of this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his
strong-hold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an
explanation, refers to something he has written on the subject, or
brings out his port-folio, doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of
some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas. He sets more
value on what he writes than on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of
his library than of his own productions--themselves a library! He is
more simple in his manners than his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the
same time less cordial or conciliating. He is less vain, or has less
hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself less out to please. There
is an air of condescension in his civility. With a tall, loose figure, a
peaked austerity of countenance, and no inclination to _embonpoint_,
you would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his
appearance. He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison, "a parson
in a tye-wig. " He is not a boon companion, nor does he indulge in the
pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr.
Southey is chargeable with any human frailty but--_want of charity_!
Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less lenient to those of
others. He was born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago,
he would have been a happy as well as blameless character. But the
distraction of the time has unsettled him, and the multiplicity of his
pretensions have jostled with each other. No man in our day (at least no
man of genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar
from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning with
the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity and constancy of a
religious vow--and well would it have been for him if he had confined
himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the
State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant,
unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his
duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations
and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just.
We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has
many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends. --The
variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the
mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads
till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time--
"And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave--"
on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for
business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from
history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a
fair hand, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when
he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another,
as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient
and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly
grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His
passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his
pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his
heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a
man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political
inconsistency alone excepted!
* * * * *
MR. T. MOORE. --MR. LEIGH HUNT.
"Or winglet of the fairy humming-bird,
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round. "
CAMPBELL.
The lines placed at the head of this sketch, from a contemporary writer,
appear to us very descriptive of Mr. Moore's poetry. His verse is like
a shower of beauty; a dance of images; a stream of music; or like the
spray of the water-fall, tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light.
The characteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous
and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions. He
ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper. His subject is set
off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers
gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in
liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes
the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven's
smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an
Angel's wing glances over the glossy scene.
"No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
No arboret with painted blossoms drest,
And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
To bud out fair, and its sweet smells throw all around.
No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring;
No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;
No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;
No song, but did contain a lovely dit:
Trees, branches, birds, and songs were framed fit
For to allure frail minds to careless ease. ". . . .
Mr. Campbell's imagination is fastidious and select; and hence, though
we meet with more exquisite beauties in his writings, we meet with
them more rarely: there is comparatively a dearth of ornament. But Mr.
Moore's strictest economy is "wasteful and superfluous excess:" he is
always liberal, and never at a loss; for sooner than not stimulate and
delight the reader, he is willing to be tawdry, or superficial, or
common-place. His Muse must be fine at any rate, though she should
paint, and wear cast-off decorations. Rather than have any lack of
excitement, he repeats himself; and "Eden, and Eblis, and cherub-smiles"
fill up the pauses of the sentiment with a sickly monotony. --It has been
too much our author's object to pander to the artificial taste of the
age; and his productions, however brilliant and agreeable, are in
consequence somewhat meretricious and effeminate. It was thought
formerly enough to have an occasionally fine passage in the progress of
a story or a poem, and an occasionally striking image or expression in
a fine passage or description. But this style, it seems, was to be
exploded as rude, Gothic, meagre, and dry. Now all must be raised to
the same tantalising and preposterous level. There must be no pause, no
interval, no repose, no gradation. Simplicity and truth yield up the
palm to affectation and grimace. The craving of the public mind after
novelty and effect is a false and uneasy appetite that must be pampered
with fine words at every step--we must be tickled with sound, startled
with shew, and relieved by the importunate, uninterrupted display of
fancy and verbal tinsel as much as possible from the fatigue of thought
or shock of feeling. A poem is to resemble an exhibition of fireworks,
with a continual explosion of quaint figures and devices, flash after
flash, that surprise for the moment, and leave no trace of light or
warmth behind them. Or modern poetry in its retrograde progress comes at
last to be constructed on the principles of the modern OPERA, where an
attempt is made to gratify every sense at every instant, and where the
understanding alone is insulted and the heart mocked. It is in this
view only that we can discover that Mr. Moore's poetry is vitiated or
immoral,--it seduces the taste and enervates the imagination. It creates
a false standard of reference, and inverts or decompounds the natural
order of association, in which objects strike the thoughts and feelings.
His is the poetry of the bath, of the toilette, of the saloon, of the
fashionable world; not the poetry of nature, of the heart, or of human
life. He stunts and enfeebles equally the growth of the imagination and
the affections, by not taking the seed of poetry and sowing it in the
ground of truth, and letting it expand in the dew and rain, and shoot up
to heaven,
"And spread its sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate its beauty to the sun,"--
instead of which he anticipates and defeats his own object, by plucking
flowers and blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of
idleness and folly--or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon
wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken! " This is but a sort
of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many
prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or
because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to
other passages--there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's
writings. His volumes present us with "a perpetual feast of nectar'd
sweets"--but we cannot add,--"where no crude surfeit reigns. " He indeed
cloys with sweetness; he obscures with splendour; he fatigues with
gaiety. We are stifled on beds of roses--we literally lie "on the rack
of restless ecstacy. " His flowery fancy "looks so fair and smells so
sweet, that the sense aches at it. " His verse droops and languishes
under a load of beauty, like a bough laden with fruit. His gorgeous
style is like "another morn risen on mid-noon. " There is no passage
that is not made up of blushing lines, no line that is not enriched with
a sparkling metaphor, no image that is left unadorned with a double
epithet--all his verbs, nouns, adjectives, are equally glossy, smooth,
and beautiful. Every stanza is transparent with light, perfumed with
odours, floating in liquid harmony, melting in luxurious, evanescent
delights. His Muse is never contented with an offering from one sense
alone, but brings another rifled charm to match it, and revels in
a fairy round of pleasure.
the parliament happen to be out of their senses; and then he seems to
regret the necessity of plainly telling them he thinks so, instead of
pluming himself upon it or exulting over impending calamities. There
is only one error he seems to labour under (which, we believe, he also
borrowed from Mr. Horne Tooke or Major Cartwright), the wanting to go
back to the early times of our Constitution and history in search of the
principles of law and liberty. He might as well
"Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. "
Liberty, in our opinion, is but a modern invention (the growth of books
and printing)--and whether new or old, is not the less desirable. A man
may be a patriot, without being an antiquary. This is the only point
on which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture of pedantry. In
general, his love of liberty is pure, as it is warm and steady: his
humanity is unconstrained and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
head to feel; nor does prudence always keep a guard upon his tongue or
his pen. No man writes a better letter to his Constituents than the
member for Westminster; and his compositions of that kind ought to be
good, for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the idol of the
people of Westminster: few persons have a greater number of friends
and well-wishers; and he has still greater reason to be proud of his
enemies, for his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir
Francis Burdett has often been left in a Minority in the House of
Commons, with only one or two on his side. We suspect, unfortunately for
his country, that History will be found to enter its protest on the same
side of the question!
[Footnote A: Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by
adoption. ]
* * * * *
LORD ELDON AND MR. WILBERFORCE.
Lord Eldon is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent
him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or
interest. The character of _good-nature_, as it is called, has been a
good deal mistaken; and the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration
of the grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see an
individual whose countenance is "all tranquillity and smiles;" who
is full of good-humour and pleasantry; whose manners are gentle and
conciliating; who is uniformly temperate in his expressions, and
punctual and just in his every-day dealings; we are apt to conclude from
so fair an outside, that
"All is conscience and tender heart"
within also, and that such a one would not hurt a fly. And neither would
he without a motive. But mere good-nature (or what passes in the world
for such) is often no better than indolent selfishness. A person
distinguished and praised for this quality will not needlessly offend
others, because they may retaliate; and besides, it ruffles his own
temper. He likes to enjoy a perfect calm, and to live in an interchange
of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or annoy him. He has
a fine oiliness in his disposition, which smooths the waves of passion
as they rise. He does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others;
bears their calamities with patience; he listens to the din and clang of
war, the earthquake and the hurricane of the political and moral world
with the temper and spirit of a philosopher; no act of injustice puts
him beside himself, the follies and absurdities of mankind never give
him a moment's uneasiness, he has none of the ordinary causes of
fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest they
take in the conduct of their neighbours or in the public good. None of
these idle or frivolous sources of discontent, that make such havoc
with the peace of human life, ever discompose his features or alter the
serenity of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
"If wretches hang that Ministers may dine,"--
the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial squeeze of the
hand is still the same. But tread on the toe of one of these amiable and
imperturbable mortals, or let a lump of soot fall down the chimney and
spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience
is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour
is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but
their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at
home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to
their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch
the sore place, they betray more resentment, and break out (like spoiled
children) into greater fractiousness than others, partly from a greater
degree of selfishness, and partly because they are taken by surprise,
and mad to think they have not guarded every point against annoyance or
attack, by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence.
An instance of what we mean occurred but the other day. An allusion was
made in the House of Commons to something in the proceedings in the
Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the
Court, with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes, and a direct
charge of falsehood in his mouth, without knowing any thing certain
of the matter, without making any inquiry into it, without using any
precaution or putting the least restraint upon himself, and all on no
better authority than a common newspaper report. The thing was (not that
we are imputing any strong blame in this case, we merely bring it as an
illustration) it touched himself, his office, the inviolability of his
jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings, and the wet
blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took fire like tinder! All
the fine balancing was at an end; all the doubts, all the delicacy, all
the candour real or affected, all the chances that there might be a
mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed towards a Member
of the House, are overlooked by the blindness of passion, and the wary
Judge pounces upon the paragraph without mercy, without a moment's
delay, or the smallest attention to forms! This was indeed serious
business, there was to be no trifling here; every instant was an age
till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on the head
of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had it been another
person's case, another person's dignity that had been compromised,
another person's conduct that had been called in question, who doubts
but that the matter might have stood over till the next term, that the
Noble Lord would have taken the Newspaper home in his pocket, that he
would have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to the Honourable
Member to inquire into the truth of the statement, that he would have
watched a convenient opportunity good-humouredly to ask other Honourable
Members what all this was about, that the greatest caution and fairness
would have been observed, and that to this hour the lawyers' clerks and
the junior counsel would have been in the greatest admiration of the
Chancellor's nicety of discrimination, and the utter inefficacy of the
heats, importunities, haste, and passions of others to influence his
judgment? This would have been true; yet his readiness to decide and to
condemn where he himself is concerned, shews that passion is not dead in
him, nor subject to the controul of reason; but that self-love is the
main-spring that moves it, though on all beyond that limit he looks with
the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
"Resistless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loaths. "
All people are passionate in what concerns themselves, or in what they
take an interest in. The range of this last is different in different
persons; but the want of passion is but another name for the want of
sympathy and imagination.
The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and conscientious exactness is
proverbial; and is, we believe, as inflexible as it is delicate in
all cases that occur in the stated routine of legal practice. The
impatience, the irritation, the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of
the applicants move him not a jot from his intended course, he looks at
their claims with the "lack lustre eye" of prefessional indifference.
Power and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge in
the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse himself with
the dry details and intricate windings of the law of equity. He delights
to balance a straw, to see a feather turn the scale, or make it even
again; and divides and subdivides a scruple to the smallest fraction. He
unravels the web of argument and pieces it together again; folds it up
and lays it aside, that he may examine it more at his leisure. He hugs
indecision to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt or a nice point
to solace himself with it in protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay
seems, in his mind, to be of the very essence of justice. He no more
hurries through a question than if no one was waiting for the result,
and he was merely a _dilettanti_, fanciful judge, who played at my Lord
Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and punctilios as an idle
hobby and harmless illusion. The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition
gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour: we are sick
of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and
justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice (as they were in
Rabelais) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But
there is a limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness
of the Chancellor. The understanding acts only in the absence of the
passions. At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembles, and
points to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful tendency
to brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breath of a court
speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scatters the cobwebs of his
brain. The secret wish of power is a thumping _make-weight,_ where all
is so nicely-balanced beforehand. In the case of a celebrated beauty and
heiress, and the brother of a Noble Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long,
and went through the forms, as usual: but who ever doubted, where all
this indecision would end? No man in his senses, for a single instant!
We shall not press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some
persons thought that from entertaining a fellow-feeling on the subject,
the Chancellor would have been ready to favour the Poet-Laureat's
application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against Wat
Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments on such points are not so variable, he
has too much at stake. He recollected the year 1794, though Mr. Southey
had forgotten it! --
The personal always prevails over the intellectual, where the latter is
not backed by strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative
objects do not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and
immediate ones are sure to carry the day, even in ingenuous and
well-disposed minds. The will yields necessarily to some motive or
other; and where the public good or distant consequences excite no
sympathy in the breast, either from short-sightedness or an easiness of
temperament that shrinks from any violent effort or painful emotion,
self-interest, indolence, the opinion of others, a desire to please, the
sense of personal obligation, come in and fill up the void of public
spirit, patriotism, and humanity. The best men in the world in their own
natural dispositions or in private life (for this reason) often become
the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy to the unruly
passions of others, and from their having no set-off in strong moral
_stamina_ to the temptations that are held out to them, if, as is
frequently the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient
industry. --Lord Eldon has one of the best-natured faces in the world;
it is pleasant to meet him in the street, plodding along with an
umbrella under his arm, without one trace of pride, of spleen, or
discontent in his whole demeanour, void of offence, with almost rustic
simplicity and honesty of appearance--a man that makes friends at first
sight, and could hardly make enemies, if he would; and whose only fault
is that he cannot say _Nay_ to power, or subject himself to an unkind
word or look from a King or a Minister. He is a thorough-bred Tory.
Others boggle or are at fault in their career, or give back at a pinch,
they split into different factions, have various objects to distract
them, their private friendships or antipathies stand in their way; but
he has never flinched, never gone back, never missed his way, he is an
_out-and-outer_ in this respect, his allegiance has been without flaw,
like "one entire and perfect chrysolite," his implicit understanding is
a kind of taffeta-lining to the Crown, his servility has assumed an air
of the most determined independence, and he has
"Read his history in a Prince's eyes! "--
There has been no stretch of power attempted in his time that he has not
seconded: no existing abuse, so odious or so absurd, that he has not
sanctioned it. He has gone the whole length of the most unpopular
designs of Ministers. When the heavy artillery of interest, power, and
prejudice is brought into the field, the paper pellets of the brain go
for nothing: his labyrinth of nice, lady-like doubts explodes like a
mine of gun-powder. The Chancellor may weigh and palter--the courtier
is decided, the politician is firm, and rivetted to his place in the
Cabinet! On all the great questions that have divided party opinion or
agitated the public mind, the Chancellor has been found uniformly and
without a single exception on the side of prerogative and power,
and against every proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a
strenuous supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
liberty abroad; he has been equally zealous in urging or defending every
act and infringement of the Constitution, for abridging it at home: he
at the same time opposes every amelioration of the penal laws, on the
alleged ground of his abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation: he
has studiously set his face against Catholic emancipation; he laboured
hard in his vocation to prevent the abolition of the Slave Trade; he was
Attorney General in the trials for High Treason in 1794; and the other
day in giving his opinion on the Queen's Trial, shed tears and protested
his innocence before God! This was natural and to be expected; but
on all occasions he is to be found at his post, true to the call of
prejudice, of power, to the will of others and to his own interest.
In the whole of his public career, and with all the goodness of his
disposition, he has not shewn "so small a drop of pity as a wren's eye. "
He seems to be on his guard against every thing liberal and humane as
his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness either from satiety
or disgust, or a hankering after popularity, or a wish to be thought
above narrow prejudices. The Chancellor alone is fixed and immoveable.
Is it want of understanding or of principle? No--it is want of
imagination, a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance and
good-nature . . . Common humanity and justice are little better than vague
terms to him: he acts upon his immediate feelings and least irksome
impulses. The King's hand is velvet to the touch--the Woolsack is a
seat of honour and profit! That is all he knows about the matter. As to
abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the
corner of the street troubles his head as much about them as he does:
yet this last is a very good sort of animal with no harm or malice in
him, unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it is necessary to
keep out of his way, or warn others against him!
Mr. Wilberforce is a less perfect character in his way. He acts from
mixed motives. He would willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He
is a person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar,
silver-tongued, is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal,
humane, tractable to power, accessible to popularity, honouring the
king, and no less charmed with the homage of his fellow-citizens. "What
lacks he then? " Nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming at
too much, he has spoiled all, and neutralised what might have been an
estimable character, distinguished by signal services to mankind. A
man must take his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between
different virtues. Otherwise, he will not gain his own approbation, or
secure the respect of others. The graces and accomplishments of private
life mar the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity, a
sternness, a self-denial, and a painful sense of duty required in
the one, which ill befits the softness and sweetness which should
characterise the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship, humanity, are
all virtues; but may they not sometimes clash? By being unwilling to
forego the praise due to any, we may forfeit the reputation of all; and
instead of uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favour, we
may end in becoming a sort of bye-word for affectation, cant, hollow
professions, trimming, fickleness, and effeminate imbecility. It is best
to choose and act up to some one leading character, as it is best to
have some settled profession or regular pursuit in life.
We can readily believe that Mr. Wilberforce's first object and principle
of action is to do what he thinks right: his next (and that we fear is
of almost equal weight with the first) is to do what will be thought so
by other people. He is always at a game of _hawk and buzzard_ between
these two: his "conscience will not budge," unless the world goes with
it. He does not seem greatly to dread the denunciation in Scripture,
but rather to court it--"Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of
you! " We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind, because West-India
planters and Guinea traders do not join in his praise. His ears are not
strongly enough tuned to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that one half of the
human species (the images of God carved in ebony, as old Fuller calls
them) shout his name as a champion and a saviour through vast burning
zones, and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude for
deliverance from chains--he must have a Prime-Minister drink his health
at a Cabinet-dinner for aiding to rivet on those of his country and
of Europe! He goes hand and heart along with Government in all their
notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope that
they will leave him a sort of _no-man's ground_ of humanity in the Great
Desert, where his reputation for benevolence and public spirit may
spring up and flourish, till its head touches the clouds, and it
stretches out its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He has
no mercy on those who claim a property in negro-slaves as so much
live-stock on their estates; the country rings with the applause of
his wit, his eloquence, and his indignant appeals to common sense and
humanity on this subject--but not a word has he to say, not a whisper
does he breathe against the claim set up by the Despots of the Earth
over their Continental subjects, but does every thing in his power to
confirm and sanction it! He must give no offence. Mr. Wilberforce's
humanity will go all lengths that it can with safety and discretion: but
it is not to be supposed that it should lose him his seat for Yorkshire,
the smile of Majesty, or the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is
anxious to do all the good he can without hurting himself or his fair
fame. His conscience and his character compound matters very amicably.
He rather patronises honesty than is a martyr to it. His patriotism, his
philanthropy are not so ill-bred, as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity to
untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
He thus shews his respect for religion without offending the clergy, or
circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is in all this an
appearance of a good deal of cant and tricking. His patriotism may
be accused of being servile; his humanity ostentatious; his loyalty
conditional; his religion a mixture of fashion and fanaticism. "Out upon
such half-faced fellowship! " Mr. Wilberforce has the pride of being
familiar with the great; the vanity of being popular; the conceit of an
approving conscience. He is coy in his approaches to power; his public
spirit is, in a manner, _under the rose_. He thus reaps the credit
of independence, without the obloquy; and secures the advantages of
servility, without incurring any obligations. He has two strings to his
bow:--he by no means neglects his worldly interests, while he expects
a bright reversion in the skies. Mr. Wilberforce is far from being
a hypocrite; but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of _moral
equivocation_ as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is one who is the
very reverse of, or who despises the character he pretends to be: Mr.
Wilberforce would be all that he pretends to be, and he is it in fact,
as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations, and easy
services go, but not in heart and soul, or so as to give up the
appearance of any one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any
other. He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of
loyalty, religion, and humanity, and it is such as is always safe and
advantageous to himself! This is perhaps hardly fair, and it is of
dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Eldon, for instance, is known to be
a thorough-paced ministerialist: his opinion is only that of his party.
But Mr. Wilberforce is not a party-man. He is the more looked up to
on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By tampering with
different temptations and personal projects, he has all the air of the
most perfect independence, and gains a character for impartiality and
candour, when he is only striking a balance in his mind between the
_éclat_ of differing from a Minister on some 'vantage ground, and the
risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all the weight of his
artificial popularity over to the Government on vital points and
hard-run questions; while they, in return, lend him a little of the
gilding of court-favour to set off his disinterested philanthropy and
tramontane enthusiasm. As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd jumble
of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has brought the Saints
over to the side of the abolition of Negro slavery. This his adversaries
think hard and stealing a march upon them. What have the SAINTS to do
with freedom or reform of any kind? --Mr. Wilberforce's style of
speaking is not quite _parliamentary_, it is halfway between that and
_evangelical_. He is altogether a _double-entendre:_ the very tone of
his voice is a _double-entendre. _ It winds, and undulates, and glides
up and down on texts of Scripture, and scraps from Paley, and trite
sophistry, and pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering,
inprogressive, sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing, that are
borne from their strait-forward course
"By every little breath that under heaven is blown. "
Something of this fluctuating, time-serving principle was visible even
in the great question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He was, at
one time, half inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt's dilatory hands,
and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy
colouring of popularity sunk into the _sable_ ground from which it rose!
It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion.
Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with
whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of
the world--the mask, the varnishing, and painting--the man that effected
it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind
was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and
who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than
one of the Apostles in the _Cartoons_ of Raphael. He deserves to be
added to the Twelve! [A]
[Footnote A: After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the
character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up
in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who
he was, made answer--"I am Mr. Wilberforce! " The guardians of the night
conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature. ]
* * * * *
MR. SOUTHEY.
Mr. Southey, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic
flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look
at once aspiring and dejected--it was the look that had been impressed
upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was
the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile betwixt hope
and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip. Mr. Southey's mind
is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness. It is prophetic of
good; it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look after
it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear to give up the thought
of happiness, his confidence in his fellow-man, when all else despair.
It is the very element, "where he must live or have no life at all. "
While he supposed it possible that a better form of society could be
introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while the light of the
French Revolution beamed into his soul (and long after, it was seen
reflected on his brow, like the light of setting suns on the peak of
some high mountain, or lonely range of clouds, floating in purer ether! )
while he had this hope, this faith in man left, he cherished it with
child-like simplicity, he clung to it with the fondness of a lover, he
was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveller; he stuck at nothing that
he thought would banish all pain and misery from the world--in his
impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed
himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the
right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and
painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras
and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned
suddenly round, and maintained that "whatever _is_, is right. " Mr.
Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil
is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects
the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that
is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all
unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He
missed his way in _Utopia_, he has found it at Old Sarum--
"His generous _ardour_ no cold medium knows:"
his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and
ever in the wrong!
The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle
of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the
multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique,
resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his
preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty: his conclusions raw
and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and
a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous
when new; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want
of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He
wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress
than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very
reputable lady, called Legitimacy. _A wilful man_, according to the
Scotch proverb, _must have his way_. If it were the cause to which he
was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and
evil report; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have
others do so; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to
apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has
no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the
indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the
convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's
mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse,
than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the
false with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to "the words
of truth and soberness. " His impressions are accidental, immediate,
personal, instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals he is
surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely
turned the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason?
Is he not tenacious of his opinions, in proportion as they are brittle
and hastily formed? Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief,
because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is conscious he
has shifted them? Does he not confine others to the strict line of
orthodoxy, because he has himself taken every liberty?
Is he not afraid
to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
former extravagances staring him in the face? Does he not refuse to
tolerate the smallest shade of difference in others, because he feels
that he wants the utmost latitude of construction for differing so
widely from himself? Is he not captious, dogmatical, petulant in
delivering his sentiments, according as he has been inconsistent,
rash, and fanciful in adopting them? He maintains that there can be no
possible ground for differing from him, because he looks only at his
own side of the question! He sets up his own favourite notions as the
standard of reason and honesty, because he has changed from one extreme
to another! He treats his opponents with contempt, because he is himself
afraid of meeting with disrespect! He says that "a Reformer is a worse
character than a house-breaker," in order to stifle the recollection
that he himself once was one!
We must say that "we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer" than in
his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of
poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a garland of wild
flowers suits him better than the laureat-wreath: that his pastoral odes
and popular inscriptions were far more adapted to his genius than
his presentation-poems. He is nothing akin to birth-day suits and
drawing-room fopperies. "He is nothing, if not fantastical. " In his
figure, in his movements, in his sentiments, he is sharp and angular,
quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every
thing of him and about him is from the people. He is not classical, he
is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's
opinions: he is not shaped on any model: he bows to no authority: he
yields only to his own wayward peculiarities. He is wild, irregular,
singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he! All is crude and chaotic,
self-opinionated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard
rules. He is not _teres et rotundus_. Mr. Southey walks with his chin
erect through the streets of London, and with an umbrella sticking out
under his arm, in the finest weather. He has not sacrificed to the
Graces, nor studied decorum. With him every thing is projecting,
starting from its place, an episode, a digression, a poetic license. He
does not move in any given orbit, but like a falling star, shoots from
his sphere. He is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments,
beginning every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for
himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly _revolutionary_. He may
have given up the reform of the State: but depend upon it, he has some
other _hobby_ of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present
Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called _The
Vision of Judgment_, as a specimen of what might be done in English
hexameters? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved
model. He might as well have presented himself at the levee in a fancy
or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey was not _to try conclusions_ with
Majesty--still less on such an occasion. The extreme freedoms with
departed greatness, the party-petulance carried to the Throne of
Grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humour, the assumption of
infallibility and even of the voice of Heaven in this poem, are pointed
instances of what we have said. They shew the singular state of
over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of
independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even
in addressing his Sovereign! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his
_Kehama_, his _Thalaba_, his _Madoc_, his _Roderic_. Who will deny the
spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling
interest that pervades them? Who will say that they are not sustained on
fictions wilder than his own Glendoveer, that they are not the daring
creations of a mind curbed by no law, tamed by no fear, that they are
not rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius, that
they are not the very paradoxes of poetry? All this is very well, very
intelligible, and very harmless, if we regard the rank excrescences of
Mr. Southey's poetry, like the red and blue flowers in corn, as the
unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy; or if we allow
the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment and boil over--the
variety, the boldness, the lively stimulus given to the mind may then
atone for the violation of rules and the offences to bed-rid authority;
but not if our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an
apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our
motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting
others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory
for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on
classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly
bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music,
were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull,
incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even
regretted. But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-off. It is
indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
the author of _Joan of Arc_--that work in which the love of Liberty is
exhaled like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven-born, that is
full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth
and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart--should ever after
turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause. After giving up
his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever
to have set his foot within the threshold of a court. He might be sure
that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single
cordial smile from greatness. All that Mr. Southey is or that he does
best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws--when
he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius,
and offers a violence to his nature. His characteristic faults are the
excess of a lively, unguarded temperament:--oh! let them not degenerate
into cold-blooded, heartless vices! If we speak or have ever spoken of
Mr. Southey with severity, it is with "the malice of old friends," for
we count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers. But
while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to
age (the _Wat Tyler_ and the _Vision of Judgment_ are the Alpha
and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of
ebullitions of spleen, making _jets-d'eaux,_ cascades, fountains, and
water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in
leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them under ground--
"Far from the sun and summer gale! "
He would suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the
example, and claim a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce an
uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres and
settled opinions, and enforce it with a high hand. This has been judged
hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps
disproportioned to the injury done. "Because he is virtuous," (it has
been asked,) "are there to be no more cakes and ale? " Because he is
loyal, are we to take all our notions from the _Quarterly Review_?
Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the _Book of the
Church_? We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only
more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a
more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry.
We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in
the _Quarterly Review,_ notwithstanding their virulence and the talent
they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects.
They have redeeming traits in them. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole
lump:" and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite
expelled from the _Quarterly Review_. At the corner of his pen, "there
hangs a vapourous drop profound" of independence and liberality, which
falls upon its pages, and oozes out through the pores of the public
mind. There is a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are
naturally callous to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically
sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man
like Mr. Southey. _Once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist_.
No man can entirely baulk his nature: it breaks out in spite of him.
In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not
interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the
extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch,
our "laureate" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a
reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he
does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does
not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where
humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a
by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his
spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands
convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not
regularly articled as a Government-tool! --Perhaps the most pleasing and
striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled
against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but
those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own
infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and
time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but
affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as
he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he
himself become
"Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree! "
Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain,
clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with
a grave and sparkling admixture of _archaisms_ in its ornaments and
occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of
any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron,
Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps
superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is
rather a want of originality and even of _impetus_: but there is no want
of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of
learning and of information. He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as
well as ancient) "instances. " Mr. Southey may not always convince his
opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a
word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or
thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of
old authors thrown into it! --He also excels as an historian and
prose-translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit
proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon
process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the extreme
levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His
translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed _con
amore_, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That
of the _Cid_, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be
altered for the better, in the old scriptural style which it adopts in
conformity to the original. It is no less interesting in itself, or as a
record of high and chivalrous feelings and manners, than it is worthy of
perusal as a literary curiosity.
Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place
book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not
remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick,
unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading,
and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who
give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey
in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr.
Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor
the same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of
knowledge, and by a scrupulous correctness of statement for what he
wants in originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of
Mr. Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre,
shrill, and dry. Mr. Coleridge's _forte_ is conversation, and he is
conscious of this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his
strong-hold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an
explanation, refers to something he has written on the subject, or
brings out his port-folio, doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of
some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas. He sets more
value on what he writes than on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of
his library than of his own productions--themselves a library! He is
more simple in his manners than his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the
same time less cordial or conciliating. He is less vain, or has less
hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself less out to please. There
is an air of condescension in his civility. With a tall, loose figure, a
peaked austerity of countenance, and no inclination to _embonpoint_,
you would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his
appearance. He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison, "a parson
in a tye-wig. " He is not a boon companion, nor does he indulge in the
pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr.
Southey is chargeable with any human frailty but--_want of charity_!
Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less lenient to those of
others. He was born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago,
he would have been a happy as well as blameless character. But the
distraction of the time has unsettled him, and the multiplicity of his
pretensions have jostled with each other. No man in our day (at least no
man of genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar
from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning with
the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity and constancy of a
religious vow--and well would it have been for him if he had confined
himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the
State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant,
unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his
duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations
and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just.
We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has
many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends. --The
variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the
mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads
till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time--
"And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave--"
on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for
business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from
history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a
fair hand, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when
he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another,
as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient
and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly
grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His
passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his
pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his
heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a
man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political
inconsistency alone excepted!
* * * * *
MR. T. MOORE. --MR. LEIGH HUNT.
"Or winglet of the fairy humming-bird,
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round. "
CAMPBELL.
The lines placed at the head of this sketch, from a contemporary writer,
appear to us very descriptive of Mr. Moore's poetry. His verse is like
a shower of beauty; a dance of images; a stream of music; or like the
spray of the water-fall, tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light.
The characteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous
and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions. He
ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper. His subject is set
off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers
gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in
liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes
the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven's
smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an
Angel's wing glances over the glossy scene.
"No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
No arboret with painted blossoms drest,
And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
To bud out fair, and its sweet smells throw all around.
No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring;
No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;
No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;
No song, but did contain a lovely dit:
Trees, branches, birds, and songs were framed fit
For to allure frail minds to careless ease. ". . . .
Mr. Campbell's imagination is fastidious and select; and hence, though
we meet with more exquisite beauties in his writings, we meet with
them more rarely: there is comparatively a dearth of ornament. But Mr.
Moore's strictest economy is "wasteful and superfluous excess:" he is
always liberal, and never at a loss; for sooner than not stimulate and
delight the reader, he is willing to be tawdry, or superficial, or
common-place. His Muse must be fine at any rate, though she should
paint, and wear cast-off decorations. Rather than have any lack of
excitement, he repeats himself; and "Eden, and Eblis, and cherub-smiles"
fill up the pauses of the sentiment with a sickly monotony. --It has been
too much our author's object to pander to the artificial taste of the
age; and his productions, however brilliant and agreeable, are in
consequence somewhat meretricious and effeminate. It was thought
formerly enough to have an occasionally fine passage in the progress of
a story or a poem, and an occasionally striking image or expression in
a fine passage or description. But this style, it seems, was to be
exploded as rude, Gothic, meagre, and dry. Now all must be raised to
the same tantalising and preposterous level. There must be no pause, no
interval, no repose, no gradation. Simplicity and truth yield up the
palm to affectation and grimace. The craving of the public mind after
novelty and effect is a false and uneasy appetite that must be pampered
with fine words at every step--we must be tickled with sound, startled
with shew, and relieved by the importunate, uninterrupted display of
fancy and verbal tinsel as much as possible from the fatigue of thought
or shock of feeling. A poem is to resemble an exhibition of fireworks,
with a continual explosion of quaint figures and devices, flash after
flash, that surprise for the moment, and leave no trace of light or
warmth behind them. Or modern poetry in its retrograde progress comes at
last to be constructed on the principles of the modern OPERA, where an
attempt is made to gratify every sense at every instant, and where the
understanding alone is insulted and the heart mocked. It is in this
view only that we can discover that Mr. Moore's poetry is vitiated or
immoral,--it seduces the taste and enervates the imagination. It creates
a false standard of reference, and inverts or decompounds the natural
order of association, in which objects strike the thoughts and feelings.
His is the poetry of the bath, of the toilette, of the saloon, of the
fashionable world; not the poetry of nature, of the heart, or of human
life. He stunts and enfeebles equally the growth of the imagination and
the affections, by not taking the seed of poetry and sowing it in the
ground of truth, and letting it expand in the dew and rain, and shoot up
to heaven,
"And spread its sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate its beauty to the sun,"--
instead of which he anticipates and defeats his own object, by plucking
flowers and blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of
idleness and folly--or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon
wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken! " This is but a sort
of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many
prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or
because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to
other passages--there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's
writings. His volumes present us with "a perpetual feast of nectar'd
sweets"--but we cannot add,--"where no crude surfeit reigns. " He indeed
cloys with sweetness; he obscures with splendour; he fatigues with
gaiety. We are stifled on beds of roses--we literally lie "on the rack
of restless ecstacy. " His flowery fancy "looks so fair and smells so
sweet, that the sense aches at it. " His verse droops and languishes
under a load of beauty, like a bough laden with fruit. His gorgeous
style is like "another morn risen on mid-noon. " There is no passage
that is not made up of blushing lines, no line that is not enriched with
a sparkling metaphor, no image that is left unadorned with a double
epithet--all his verbs, nouns, adjectives, are equally glossy, smooth,
and beautiful. Every stanza is transparent with light, perfumed with
odours, floating in liquid harmony, melting in luxurious, evanescent
delights. His Muse is never contented with an offering from one sense
alone, but brings another rifled charm to match it, and revels in
a fairy round of pleasure.
