Chapter XVII: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (4)

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less importance to past and future events, according as they are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless of the past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as of the other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it ‘catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn.’ The turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire _must_ dwell upon the future; it is only amidst the innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription—‘I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!’

We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume, _perhaps of none, except that there are certain persons who find more entertainment in them than in any other_. An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:—

‘In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he had retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, _save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics_.’ For our own part, we should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not however wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life.

‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quick’ning ray,
Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice
Abroad the spirits; but the cloyster’d heart
Sits squat at home, like pagod in a niche
Obscure.’

Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus becomes embodied in a general principle, and shews its harpy form in all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first order of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the world.

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been ‘hurt by the archers,’ nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!

ESSAY ON MANNERS

_The Examiner._] [_September 3, 1815._

Nothing can frequently be more striking than the difference of style or manner, where the _matter_ remains the same, as in paraphrases and translations. The most remarkable example which occurs to us is in the beginning of the _Flower and Leaf_ by Chaucer, and in the modernisation of the same passage by Dryden. We shall give an extract from both, that the reader may judge for himself. The original runs thus:—

‘And I that all this pleasaunt sight see,
Thought sodainly I felte so sweet an aire
Of the elgentere, that certainely
There is no herte I deme, in such dispaire,
Ne with thoughts froward and contraire
So overlaid, but it should soone have bote,
If it had ones felt this savour sote.

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,
I was of ware the fairest medler tree,
That ever yet in all my life I see,
As full of blossomes as it might be,
Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile
Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet,
Here and there of buds and floures sweet.

And to the herber side was joyning
This faire tree of which I have you told;
And at the last the bird began to sing,
When he had eaten what he eat wold,
So passing sweetly, that by manifold
It was more pleasaunt than I could devise;
And when his song was ended in this wise,

The nightingale with so mery a note
Answered him, that all the wood rang
So sodainly, that as it were a sote,
I stood astonied, so was I with the sang
Thorow ravished, that till late and lang,
I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,
And aye me thought she sang even by mine ear.

Wherefore I waited about busily
On every side, if I her might see,
And at the last I gan full well espie
Where she sat in a fresh green laurer tree,
On the further side even right by me,
That gave so passing a delicious smell,
According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure;
That as me thought I surely ravished was
Into Paradise, where my desire
Was for to be and no further to passe,
As for that day, and on the sote grasse
I sat me downe, for as for mine intent,
The birdes song was more convenient,

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold,
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing,
Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,
The wholesome savours eke so comforting,
That as I deemed, sith the beginning
Of the world was never seene or then
So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.

And as I sat, the birdes harkening thus,
Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,
The most sweetest and most delicious
That ever any wight I trow truly
Heard in their life; for the harmony
And sweet accord was in so good musike,
That the voices to angels most was like.’

In this passage the poet has let loose the very soul of pleasure. There is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which there seems no end. It is the intense delight which accompanies the description of every object, the fund of natural sensibility it displays, which constitutes its whole essence and beauty. Now this is shewn chiefly in the manner in which the different objects are anticipated, and the eager welcome which is given to them; in his repeating and varying the circumstances with a restless delight; in his quitting the subject for a moment, and then returning to it again, as if he could never have his fill of enjoyment. There is little of this in Dryden’s paraphrase. The same ideas are introduced, but not in the same manner, nor with the same spirit. The imagination of the poet is not borne along with the tide of pleasure—the verse is not poured out, like the natural strains it describes, from pure delight, but according to rule and measure. Instead of being absorbed in his subject, he is dissatisfied with it, tries to give an air of dignity to it by factitious ornaments, to amuse the reader by ingenious allusions, and divert his attention from the progress of the story by the artifices of the style.

‘The painted birds, companions of the spring,
Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing;
Both eyes and ears received a like delight,
Enchanting music, and a charming sight:
On Philomel I fixed my whole desire,
And listen’d for the queen of all the quire:
Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing,
And wanted yet an omen to the spring.
Thus as I mus’d, I cast aside my eye
And saw a medlar tree was planted nigh:
The spreading branches made a goodly show,
And full of opening blooms was every bough:
A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride
Of painted plumes, that hopp’d from side to side,
Still pecking as she pass’d; and still she drew
The sweets from every flow’r, and suck’d the dew;
Suffic’d at length, she warbled in her throat,
And tun’d her voice to many a merry note,
But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear,
Yet such as sooth’d my soul, and pleas’d my ear.
Her short performance was no sooner tried,
When she I sought, the nightingale, replied:
So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,
That the grove echo’d, and the vallies rung:
And I so ravish’d with her heavenly note,
I stood entranc’d, and had no room for thought;
But all o’erpower’d with ecstasy of bliss,
Was in a pleasing dream of paradise:
At length I wak’d; and looking round the bower,
Search’d every tree, and pry’d on every flower,
If any where by chance I might espy
The rural poet of the melody:
For still methought she sung not far away;
At last I found her on a laurel spray.
Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight,
Full in a line, against her opposite;
Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin’d;
And both their native sweets were well conjoin’d.
On the green bank I sat, and listen’d long;
(Sitting was more convenient for the song)
Nor till her lay was ended could I move,
But wish’d to dwell for ever in the grove.
Only methought the time too swiftly pass’d,
And every note I fear’d would be the last.
My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ’d,
And all three senses in full gust enjoy’d.
And what alone did all the rest surpass
The sweet possession of the fairy place;
Single, and conscious to myself alone
Of pleasures to th’ excluded world unknown:
Pleasures which no where else were to be found,
And all Elysium in a spot of ground.
Thus while I sat intent to see and hear,
And drew perfumes of more than vital air,
All suddenly I heard the approaching sound
Of vocal music, on th’ enchanted ground:
An host of saints it seem’d, so full the quire,
As if the blest above did all conspire
To join their voices, and neglect the lyre.’

Compared with Chaucer, Dryden and the rest of that school were merely _verbal poets_. They had a great deal of wit, sense and fancy; they only wanted truth and depth of feeling. But we shall have to say more on this subject, when we come to consider the old question which we have got marked down in our list, whether Pope was a poet?

To return to the subject of our last Number, Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good illustration of his general theory. He says:—‘Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and I knew him extremely well) the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate: wrote bad English, and spelt it worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent good plain understanding with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James II.’s Queen. There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was Ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of five hundred pounds a year, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled during all his wars to connect the various and jarring powers of the grand alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrong headedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures.’[31]

Grace in woman has often more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, ‘in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face,’ which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation like the breath of spring. Petrarch’s description of Laura answers exactly to this character, which is indeed the Italian character. Titian’s pictures are full of it: they seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons whom he painted sat to music. There is one in the Louvre (or there was) which had the most of this expression, we ever remember. It did not look downward; ‘it looked forward, beyond this world.’ It was a look that never passed away, but remained unalterable as the deep sentiment which gave birth to it. It is the same constitutional character (together with infinite activity of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as little discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess.

After all, we would not be understood to say that manner is every thing.[32] Nor would we put Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton on a level with the first _petit-maître_ we might happen to meet. We consider _Æsop’s Fables_ to have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine’s translation of them; though we are not sure that we should not prefer Fontaine for his style only, to Gay, who has shewn a great deal of original invention. The elegant manners of people of fashion have been objected to us to shew the frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility with which they are acquired. As to the last point, we demur. There are no class of people who lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate their minds as well as persons, than people of fashion. A young lady of quality who has to devote so many hours a day to music, so many to dancing, so many to drawing, so many to French, Italian, &c., certainly does not pass her time in idleness; and these accomplishments are afterwards called into action by every kind of external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity and interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes through more drudgery than half a dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read half the same number of publications as a modern fine lady is obliged to labour through. We confess, however, we are not competent judges of the degree of elegance or refinement implied in the general tone of fashionable manners. The successful experiment made by _Peregrine Pickle_, in introducing his strolling mistress into genteel company, does not redound greatly to their credit. In point of elegance of external appearance, we see no difference between women of fashion and women of a different character, who dress in the same style.

KEAN’S BAJAZET AND ‘THE COUNTRY GIRL’

_The Examiner._] [_November 12, 1815._

The lovers of the drama have had a very rich theatrical treat this week, Mr. Kean’s first appearance in _Bajazet_, two new _Miss Peggys_ in the _Country Girl_, and last, though not least, Miss Stephens’s reappearance in _Polly_. Of Mr. Kean’s _Bajazet_ we have not much to say, without repeating what we have said before. The character itself is merely calculated for the display of physical passion and external energy. It is violent, fierce, turbulent, noisy, and blasphemous, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Mr. Kean did justice to his author, or went the whole length of the text. A viper does not dart with more fierceness and rapidity on the person who has just trod upon it than he turns upon _Tamerlane_ in the height of his fury. An unslaked thirst of vengeance and blood has taken possession of every faculty, like the savage rage of a hyaena, assailed by the hunters. His eyeballs glare, his teeth gnash together, his hands are clenched. In describing his defeat, his voice is choked with passion; he curses, and the blood curdles in his veins. Never was the fiery soul of barbarous revenge, stung to madness by repeated shame and disappointment, so completely displayed. This truth of nature and passion in Mr. Kean’s acting carries every thing before it. He was the only person on the stage who seemed alive. The mighty _Tamerlane_ appeared no better than a stuffed figure dressed in ermine, _Arpasia_ moaned in vain, and _Moneses_ roared out his wrongs unregarded, like the hoarse sounds of distant thunder. Nothing can withstand the real tide of passion once let loose; and yet it is pretended, that the great art of the tragic actor is in damming it up, or cutting out smooth canals and circular basons for it to flow into, so that it may do no harm in its course. It is the giving way to natural and strong impulses of the imagination that floats Mr. Kean down the stream of public favour with all his faults—‘a load to sink a navy.’ The only wonder was to see this furious character suffered to go about and take the whole range of the palace of _Tamerlane_, without the least let or impediment. It shewed a degree of magnanimity in Mr. Pope, which is without any parallel, even in modern times. It is understood that the play was originally written by the whig poet Rowe, and regularly acted on the anniversary of our whig revolution, as a compliment to King William, and a satire on Louis XIV. For any thing we know, the resemblance of _Tamerlane_ to King William may be sufficiently strong, there the historian and the poet may agree tolerably well; but what traits the Tartar Chieftain and the French Monarch had in common, it would be difficult to find out. If any more recent allusion was intended in its revival, it fell still wider of the mark. The play of _Tamerlane_ may be divided into two heads—cant and rant. _Tamerlane_ takes the first part, and _Bajazet_ the second. This last hurls defiance at both gods and men. He is utterly regardless of consequences, and rushes upon his destruction like a wild beast into the toils. He utters but one striking sentiment, when he defends ambition as the hunger of noble minds. _Bajazet’s_ character is energy without greatness. He is blind to every thing but the present moment, and insensible to every thing but the present impulse. True greatness is the reverse of this. It shews all the energy of courage, but none of the impatience of despair. It struggles with difficulty, but yields to necessity. It does every thing, and suffers nothing. It sees events with the eye of history, and makes Time the Judge of Fortune. Courage with calmness constitutes the perfection of the heroic character, as the effeminate and sentimental unite the extremes of activity and irritability. We never saw Mr. Kean look better. His costume and his colour had a very picturesque effect. The yellow brown tinge of the Tartar becomes him much better than the tawny brick-dust complexion of the Moor in _Othello_.

Now for our two Country Girls. We have seen both without any great effort of our patience: to confess a truth, we had rather see the _Country Girl_ two nights running than _Tamerlane_; as we would rather have been Wycherley than Rowe. The comedy of the _Country Girl_ is taken from Moliere’s _School for Wives_. It is however a perfectly free imitation, or rather an original work, founded on the same general plot, with additional characters, and in a style wholly different. Scarcely a line is the same. The long, speechifying dialogues in the French comedy are cut down into a succession of smart conversations and lively scenes: there is indeed a certain pastoral sweetness or sentimental naivete in the character of _Agnes_, which is lost in _Miss Peggy_, who is however the more natural and mischievous little rustic of the two. The incident of her running up against her guardian as she is running off with her gallant in the park, and the contrivance of the second letter which she imposes on her jealous fool as _Alithea’s_, are Wycherley’s. The characters of _Alithea_, _Harcourt_, and of the fop _Sparkish_, who appears to us so exquisite, and to others so insipid, are additional portraits from the reign and court of Charles II. Those who object to the scenes between this gentleman and his mistress as unnatural, can never have read the _Memoirs of the Count de Grammont_,—an authentic piece of English history, in which we trace the origin of so many noble families. What an age of wit and folly, of coxcombs and coquets, when the world of fashion led purely ornamental lives, and their only object was to make themselves or others ridiculous. Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a sword knot, or the adjustment of a side curl; when the soul spoke out in all the persuasive eloquence of dress; when beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! The perfection of this gala out-of-door comedy is in Etherege, the gay Sir George! Then comes Wycherley, and then Congreve, who hands them into the drawing-room. Congreve is supposed to have been the inventor of the epigrammatic, clenched style of comic dialogue; but there is a great deal of this both in Wycherley and Etherege, with more of a _janty_ tone of flippant gaiety in the latter, and more incident, character, and situation in the former. The _Country Girl_ holds unimpaired possession of the stage to this day, by its wit, vivacity, nature, and ingenuity. Nothing can be worse acted, and yet it goes down, for it supplies the imagination with all that the actors want. Mr. Bartley had some merit as _Moody_, Mr. Fawcet none. Barrymore, at Covent Garden played _Harcourt_ well. We have seen him in better company, and he reminded us of it. He was much of the gentleman, and as much at home on the stage (from long practice) as if he had been in his own apartments. As to the two _Miss Peggys_, we hardly know how to settle their pretensions. If Mrs. Mardyn overacts her part to that degree that she seems only to want a skipping-rope to make it complete, Mrs. Alsop is so stiff and queer that she seems to have only just escaped from a back-board and steel monitor. If Mrs. Alsop has the clearest voice, Mrs. Mardyn has the brightest eyes. Mrs. Alsop has most art, Mrs. Mardyn has most nature. If Mrs. Mardyn is too profuse of natural graces, too young and buoyant and exuberant in all her movements, the same fault cannot be found with Mrs. Alsop, whose smiles give no pleasure, and whose frowns give unmingled pain. Mrs. Alsop’s _Peggy_ is a clever recitation of the character, without being the thing; and Mrs. Mardyn’s is a very full development of her own person, which is the thing itself. Mrs. Alsop is the best actress, though not worth a pin, and Mrs. Mardyn is the most desirable woman, which is always worth something. We may apply to these two ladies what Suckling said of one of his mistresses—

‘I take her body, you her mind,—
Which has the better bargain.’

DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY

_The Examiner._] [_December 10, 1815_

——‘For I had learnt a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’

Perhaps, the doctrine of what has been called philosophical necessity was never more finely expressed than in these lines of a poet, who, if he had written only half of what he has done, would have deserved to be immortal. There can be no doubt that all that exists, exists by necessity; that the vast fabric of the universe is held together in one mighty chain, reaching to the ‘threshold of Jove’s throne’; that whatever has a beginning, must have a cause; that there is no object, no feeling, no action, which, other things being the same, could have been otherwise; that thought follows thought, like wave following wave; that chance or accident has no share in any thing that comes to pass in the moral or the physical world; that whatever is, must be; that whatever has been, must have been; that whatever is to be will be necessarily.

I never could doubt for a moment of the truth of this general principle, and I never could comprehend the inferences which have commonly been drawn from it, both by friends and foes. All the moral consequences which have been attributed to it appear to me mere idle prejudices against it on one side, and equally gratuitous concessions on the other. The doctrine of necessity leaves morality just where it found it. It does not destroy goodness of disposition or energy of character, any more than it destroys beauty or strength of person. It does not take away the powers of the mind any more than the use of the limbs. That every thing is by necessity, no more proves that there is no such thing as good and evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong, in the moral world, than it proves that there is no such thing as day or night, heat or cold, sweet or sour, food or poison, in the physical. Merit and demerit, that is to say, praise and blame, reward and punishment, have no place in the physical world, but that is because they have no effect there; and for the same reason they have a place in the moral, because they have an effect there. All the practical conclusions which have been ascribed to the difference between liberty and necessity, may be equally accounted for (as they really had their rise) from the difference between moral and physical necessity.

Man acts from a cause; and so far he resembles a stone; but he does not act from the same cause, and herein he differs from it. There is a print which I have seen from a picture by Ludovico Caracci, in which a female figure, with a lion by her side, is represented striking a flame of fire at her feet with a drawn sword. I do not very well understand the allegory, but it appears to me to furnish a very tolerable illustration of the difference between moral and physical necessity: for whether this figure strikes the flame with the flat or the sharp side of the sword, it divides and rises again equally; it is incapable of punishment for it has no sense of pain, nor does it apprehend a repetition of the blow. Is it the same with the human mind? No; for it has both the sense of pain and the sense of consequences, which render it liable to punishment, by making that punishment one effectual and necessary means of influencing its conduct. A man differs from a stone in that he has feeling and understanding; and it is this difference that makes him a moral and responsible agent in the true meaning of the terms, by connecting his present impulses with their future consequences. It may be said that animals have feeling, and a certain degree of understanding: and so far they are liable to correction and punishment. A dog or a horse is terrified at the whip or the spur as well as encouraged by kindness. We very properly, therefore, threaten them with the one and allure them with the other, though we neither preach to them of heaven nor hell, because they have no notion about either. As far as they have understanding, they have free-will, for these two words mean one and the same thing. Man is the only religious animal, because he alone (from a greater power of imagination) extends his views of consequences into another state of being.—The application of praise or blame, as well as of reward and punishment, is proper, wherever it is likely to have an effect. We do not talk to the deaf: we do not shew pictures to the blind; we do not reason with a wild beast; we do not quarrel with a stone. Because it would be useless. But we _do_ talk to those who can hear; we shew pictures to those who can see; we reason with prejudice; we quarrel with ill-nature. The human mind differs from an inanimate substance or an automaton, inasmuch as it is actuated by sympathy as well as by necessity. We indeed praise a flower, a statue, or a beautiful face, because they give us pleasure: we praise a virtuous action, as an additional incentive to virtue. ‘Praise and blame, reward and punishment’ (says Mr. Hobbes) ‘are just and proper, because they fashion the will to justice.’

Merit, in the scholastic sense, means something self-caused, and independent of motives. This sense of the term is flat nonsense, for there is nothing without a cause—nothing which is not owing to some other thing. The whole theory of merit may be said to turn upon the capacity of any person or thing to mould itself according to the opinion entertained of it. A stone has not this capacity; and therefore there is no merit in a stone. If you tell a country girl that she is handsome or well made, her answer generally will be, that ‘She is as God made her.’ This however does not prove that she is not well made. It is only meant to shew, that as she has had no hand in her own shape, and can do nothing to mend it, the merit is so far none of hers. But if you praise the neatness of her dress, she has not the same evasion left, but thinks the flattery well bestowed, for she is conscious that this depends upon herself; that she can stay a longer or a shorter time at her glass as she pleases; and that the pains she has taken have been with a view to the good opinion you express of her. The difference between natural and acquired graces is an obvious dictate of common sense; unless we adopt the opinion of the Clown, that ‘a good favour is the effect of study, but reading and writing come by nature.’ It is a piece of brutality and ill-nature to point at a hump-backed man, and call him My Lord: but there is no great harm in laughing at a person with an aukward slovenly gait, for the ridicule may remedy the defect. A person has it in his power to turn his toes out instead of in, whenever he chuses: he cannot get rid of a natural deformity by any effort of will. Beauty and power of every kind excite our love and admiration, whether in nature, in morals, or in art; but still with a difference. St. Paul’s is a much nobler as well as larger building than St. Dunstan’s. We accordingly admire the one much more than the other; but we allow no more merit to the one than the other. All the difference of merit we ascribe to the architect, and not to the building. Why so? Because all the vanity belongs to the architect, and not to the building.—St. Paul’s stands where it does; it lifts its majestic dome to the skies, whether it is seen or not, whether it is admired or not. It has (familiarly speaking) done nothing to deserve our good opinion, for it has done nothing with a view to it. Now for the same reason that the building has not, the builder _has_ merited our good opinion, for he did what he has done with that very view; was sensible to that good opinion, and stimulated to exertion by it. It is evident that the admiration we bestow on any work of art, as an actual object, is involuntary; it makes no difference in the object whether we bestow it or not; we therefore do not make a point of bestowing it: the praise we give to the artist is voluntary, and merited in this farther sense, that we are bound to bestow it as a means to an end: we indulge it not merely as a sentiment naturally excited by the contemplation of excellence, but the expression of which is a reward due to the pains taken by the artist, and to the encouragement of genius. Disapprobation and punishment on the other hand necessarily give pain to the person who is the object of them, but it is to produce a remote good. However, it equally follows in either case, that our love and hatred of what is amiable or odious in conscious agents must be different from our feeling towards unconscious ones, from the sense of the difference of the consequences. The lever, the screw, and the wedge, are the great instruments of the mechanical world: opinion, sympathy, praise and blame, reward and punishment, are the lever, the screw, and the wedge, of the moral world. A house is built of stones; human character depends on motives. Is there therefore no difference between one character and another? As well might it be said that there is no difference between one building and another. If merit means something in character, independent of motives and of all other things, then there can be no such thing as merit: but if by merit we mean something which excites our approbation of one character more than another, and which something is still farther entitled to our approbation, because it depends upon it for its motive and encouragement, then undoubtedly this word has a rational meaning in it. To deny praise or blame, reward or punishment, to actions, because they are produced by motives, is to take away the prop from a house, because it supports it.—Necessity only supersedes merit by superseding the operation of motives. It is pretended, that if any action is not perfectly gratuitous, if it can be traced to any other cause, the merit must be transferred to that other cause, and so on without end. This infinite series may be cut short by observing, that any action is entitled to our good opinion which is affected by it. If our opinion had no influence on the actions of others, there would so far be no merit. If any one going up Holborn-hill is pushed by a stronger man against a window and breaks it, who is the responsible person? The one who pushed the other, and not the one who broke the glass. Because punishment or correcting the moral sense will not prevent a weak man from being pushed against a window by a strong one, but it will prevent the strong man from pushing him against it. It makes no difference that this person did not act at first without a motive; the point is, that here is another motive which will counteract the former one. The true cause of any thing in the practical and moral sense, is that, by removing which the effect ceases. A man is a moral agent only in so far as he can do what he will: for motives can only operate on the will. A man in chains or held by force is not accountable for what he does, for blame or praise him ever so much, and he will do, not what you wish him, but what others force him to do. You may reasonably exhort a man not to throw himself over Westminster Bridge, but it is in vain, after he has thrown himself over, to call out to him to stop. Morality means that we have the power to do certain things, _if we will_, or help them, _if we please_.

Merit is moral energy. It is the sense of merit which is the great stimulus of exertion. One thing is more difficult, requires a greater effort than another. The sense of merit is in proportion to the sense of difficulty. The highest praise is given to the highest exertions, the greatest rewards are due where the greatest sacrifices have been made. The degree of merit depends then on the degree of voluntary power exerted: for exertion deserves every kind of encouragement and assistance as it becomes difficult. We give a boy sixpence for going a mile; a shilling for going two. We need not offer rewards and largesses to vice and indolence; for all the sanctions of religion and morality are not sufficient to correct them. The admiration with which the story of Marvell and his leg of mutton is read has not prevented the facility of some modern patriots in commencing courtiers; but if it should only save us from a single birthday ode, it will be something. The phlegmatic Dutchman, in playing at skittles, follows his bowl with his eye, writhes his body to make it turn right, and cheers it with his voice. If the bowl had sympathy so as to bend with his body, and to be encouraged to go a little farther by his praising it, there would be some sense in his doing so. Amphion is said to have raised the walls of Thebes with the sound of his lyre: in one sense the fable might be true, for he might have drawn together and civilized his followers by the power of song. The words which Madame de Staël some time ago addressed to the Germans, _Allemagne, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs_, were not without their effect. Neither perhaps would the same words be so now, addressed to her own country—_France, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs!_

We have been led to these remarks by receiving an epistle from an elderly maiden lady, who complains that she has spent her whole life in censuring and back-biting her neighbours, and that by what we let fall some time ago, about there being no such thing as merit and demerit, we had debarred her of the only use of her tongue and pleasure of her life. We are sorry to have interrupted her, and hope she will now proceed. We have a good deal left to say on the subject:—

‘But there is matter for a second rhyme,
And we to this must add another tale.’

PARALLEL PASSAGES IN VARIOUS POETS

_The Examiner._] [_December 24, 1815._

Being very busy or very indolent this week (it is no matter which), we have had recourse to our common-place book (the first or last resource of authors), and there find the following instances of parallel passages, which are at the service of the critics. The conclusion of Voltaire’s tragedy of _Zaire_ is the speech of _Orosman_, who has killed his mistress, to her brother, _Nerestan_:—

[‘Et toi, guerrier infortuné,’ &c. to
‘Dis que je l’adorais, et que l’ai vengé.’]

This will probably remind our readers, as it did us, of _Othello’s_ farewell speech:—

[‘Soft you; a word or two before you go,’ &c.]

After transcribing the above passage, we were looking about for the traces of the former one, which had ‘vanished into thin air,’ and were beginning to suspect that our parallel had totally failed, till in looking into the lucubrations of Mr. William Wade, who has tried to pick a hole in Shakespear, we learnt that the French translator of our poet had _bona fide_ translated the passage into legitimate French verse, and that Voltaire had in consequence, with singular modesty, complained that Ducis had improved upon the original and stolen the whole turn of the passage from him. To be sure, there is a wide difference in the two passages. There is nothing in the French poet of the ‘No more of that,’ that fine natural interruption to the gasconade which his distress had just extorted from him; there is nothing of ‘One that loved not wisely, but too well,’ there is nothing of Indian pearls or Arabian gums, nor is there any allusion to Aleppo, nor description of ‘a malignant and a turbaned Turk’; nor any thing like that fine return upon himself, and transition from the depth of a dejected spirit to the recollection of former acts of daring defiance, while in his despair he inflicts on himself the blow with which he formerly chastised an insolent foe. These circumstances are given ‘as over-measure’ in Shakespear, and would be considered as superfluous and extravagant by the French critics; yet they are exactly the circumstances which the Moor _Othello_ must have been best acquainted with, and which, as some of the most striking circumstances of his past life, would be forcibly recalled to his memory in parting with it. Voltaire has not invented any thing of the same sort for his dying hero; his speech (though a very good one of its kind) is, as Susannah says to Trim, ‘as flat as the palm of one’s hand;’ it has nothing objectionable in it; it is just such a speech as any crowned head might make in any of the four quarters of the globe.—May we be allowed to add (in passing), that Mr. Kean does not act this scene well? He gnashes his teeth, and strikes the dagger into his bosom, as if he had taken some particular enmity against his own flesh. But this is not so in Shakespear. The feeling of _Othello_ is a lofty absence of mind, in which he throws himself back from the present into the past; the image he recalls furnishes not only the precedent but the consolation of his present act; and the pang which he inflicts on himself is relieved, and unconsciously confounded with the recollection of former acts of grandeur, and elevation of soul. But to proceed.—

In the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, is a very beautiful description of the signal fires that were to announce the destruction of Troy, thus translated by Potter:—

[‘What speed could be the herald of this news,’ &c. to
‘Giv’n by my Lord t’announce the fall of Troy.’]

In Drayton’s _Polyolbion_ (Song 30) this idea is finely varied:—

[‘Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,’ &c. to
‘Did mightly commend old Copland for her song.’]

Again, in a poem of Mr. Wordsworth we find the following lines:—

[‘When I had gazed perhaps two minutes’ space,’ &c. to
‘That there was a loud uproar in the hills.’]

We have been urged several times to take up the subject of Mr. Wordsworth’s Poems, in order to do them justice. In doing this, we should satisfy neither his admirers nor his censurers. We have once already attempted the thankless office, and it did not succeed. Indeed we think all comment on them superseded by those lines of Withers, which are a complete anticipation of Mr. Wordsworth’s style, where, speaking of poetry, he says,—

‘In my former days of bliss
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object’s sight;—
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough’s rustling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature’s beauties can
In some other wiser man.’

MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST

_The Examiner._] [_February 25, 1816._

Mr. Locke has at this day all over Europe the character of one of the most profound and original thinkers that ever lived, and he is perhaps, without any exception, the most barefaced, deliberate, and bungling plagiarist, that ever appeared in philosophy. The reputation which he has acquired, as the founder of the new system in philosophy, or of any part of that system, is a pure imposition. Hobbes was the undoubted founder of the system; and he not only laid the foundation, but he completed the building. Every one of the principles of the modern, material philosophy of the mind, is to be found in his works, perfect and entire, as it is in the latest commentators of the French school. He not only took for his basis the principle that there is no other original faculty in the mind but sensation: he also pushed this principle into all its consequences, with a severe, masterly, and honest logic, of which there is scarcely any other example. By thus shewing the full extent of his system, ‘the very head and front of his offending,’ without any disguise, he only got himself an ill name, and his system was consigned to infamy or oblivion. Mr. Locke adopted the first principle, with a clumsy addition to it, but so as to secure himself the reputation of an original thinker; and at the same time, by not following it in a bold and decided manner into any one of its necessary consequences, he avoided giving the alarm to popular apprehension, and made a temporary compromise with the common sense and prejudices of his readers. The door being however opened to the introduction of this philosophy, by the admission of the general principle, all the rest by degrees followed as a matter of course; and it has been the business of the ablest metaphysicians ever since to clear what has been considered as the philosophy of Locke, from the inconsistences and imperfections which he had suffered to creep into it: all which improvements on Locke’s Essay are only a recurrence to the principles laid down by Hobbes, in the most explicit and unequivocal manner. To shew how little this last writer has been read, even by professed metaphysicians, Hume attributes the doctrine, that there are no abstract ideas, to Berkeley as an original discovery, though the arguments used by Berkeley are almost word for word taken from those used by Hobbes on the same subject. Yet Locke, in order we suppose to prevent inquiry into the originality of his own claims, calls Hobbes ‘a justly exploded author.’ This question is curious (philosophy apart) as a branch of literary history. It is, we know, dangerous to tamper with established reputation; nor should we perhaps have ventured to hazard the accusation we have here made, if we had not been supported by the authority of so well informed, candid, and respectable a writer as Dugald Stewart, whose testimony is of the more value, as he does not seem to be aware of the general propensity of Mr. Locke to appropriate the ideas of others to his own use, without disguise or acknowledgement. To any one who takes the trouble to peruse Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation just published, on the rise and progress of modern Metaphysics, it will be evident that every one of those original discoveries, to which the author of the Essay on Human Understanding owes his celebrity, and on which he particularly plumed himself, is taken in substance and almost in words from writers of whom he does not once make mention; for example, his proposed division of the sciences, brought forward with great parade and formality, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, which is the old division of the Greek philosophy; his definition of words which are definable or not definable, which is taken expressly from Descartes; his account of the origin of our ideas, that of association, of the social compact, etc. which are borrowed from Hobbes; his distinction of the properties of matter into primary and secondary, and his theory of consciousness or reflection as a distinct source of ideas, which belong to Descartes; his hypothesis about animal spirits, as the medium of association of ideas, adopted from Malbranche; his account of judgment and wit, which is to be found in Hobbes, &c. &c. If it be asked, whether Mr. Locke has not had the merit of combining the materials thus derived from other sources into a complete and masterly system, the answer would be, that his work is one of the most confused, undigested, and contradictory, that has been published on the subject. There is no one to whom those lines of the poet were ever more applicable.

‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.’

We should hope that Mr. Stewart will examine into and state his conviction on this question fully and clearly in the account of Mr. Locke’s Essay, which he has promised in the continuation of his work. If he would lend the sanction of his name to shew the real foundation on which Mr. Locke’s reputation rests, it would not be the least service he has rendered to philosophy. ‘To trace an error to its source is often the only way to refute it.’ The task is no doubt an invidious, but it is a necessary one. The name of Locke is in a manner dear to every lover of truth; but truth itself should be still dearer.