Chapter XX: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (7)

A devoted and incorrigible attachment to individuals, as well as to doctrines, is weakened by the progress of knowledge and civilization. A spirit of scepticism, of inquiry, of comparison, is introduced there too, by the course of reading, observation, and reflection, which strikes at the root of our disproportionate idolatry. Margaret Lambrun did not think there was such another woman in the world as her mistress, Queen Mary; nor could she, after her death, see any thing in it worth living for. Had she had access to a modern circulating library, she would have read of a hundred such heroines, all peerless alike; and would have consoled herself for the death of them all, one after another, pretty much in the same manner. Margaret was not one of those who argue, according to Mr. Burke’s improved political catechism, that ‘a king is but a king; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and that not an animal of the highest order.’ She had more respect of persons than this. The truth is, she had never seen such another woman as her mistress, and she had no means, by books or otherwise, of forming an idea of any thing but what she saw. In that isolated state of society, people grew together like trees, and clung round the strongest for support, ‘as the vine curls its tendrils.’ They became devoted to others with the same violence of attachment as they were to themselves. Novels, plays, magazines, treatises of philosophy, Monthly Museums, and _Belles Assemblées_, did not fly in numbers about the country and ‘through the airy region stream so bright,’ as to blot out the impression of all real forms. The effects of habit, of sense, of service, of affection, did not find an ideal level in general literature and artificial models. The heart made its election once, and was fixed till death: the eyes doated on fancied perfection, and were divorced from every other object afterwards. There was not the same communication of ideas; there was not the same change of place or acquaintance. The prejudices of rank, of custom, strengthened the bias of individual admiration; and it is no wonder, where all these circumstances were combined, that the presence of a person, whom we had loved and served, became a feeling, an appetite, and a passion in the mind, almost necessary to existence. The taking our idol away (and by cruel and treacherous means) would be taking away the prop that sustained life, and on which all the pride of the affections leant. Its loss would be the loss of another self; and a double loss of this kind (as in the instance alluded to) could seek for no solace but in the death of her who had caused it. Where the mind had become rivetted to a certain object, where it had embarked its all in the sacred cause of friendship and inviolable fidelity, it would be in vain to offer the consolations of philosophy when the heart owned none. Other scenes, new friends, fresh engagements, might be proper for others; but Margaret Lambrun’s wounded spirit could find no relief but in looking forward to a full revenge for a murdered mistress and husband. You might as well think of wedding the soul to another body, as of inspiring her with other hopes and thoughts than those which she had lost for ever:—she could not live without those whom she had loved so well and long, and she was ready to die for them. Life becomes indifferent to a mind haunted by a passion of this sort. Death is not then a choice, but rather a necessity. We cannot live, and have the desire nearest to our souls. To play the hero, it is only necessary to be wound up to such an unavoidable interest in any thing, as reflection, prudence, natural instinct, have no power over. To be a hero, is, in other words, to lose the sense of our personal identity in some object dearer to us than ourselves. He may purchase any thing he pleases, who is ready to part with his life for it. Wherever there is a passion or belief strong enough to blind us to consequences, there the mind is capable of any sacrifice and of any undertaking.

The heroical is the fanaticism of common life: it is the contempt of danger, of pain, of death, in the pursuit of a favourite idea. The rule of honour, as of conscience, is to contemplate things in the abstract, and never as affecting or reacting upon yourself; the hero is an instrument in the hands of fate, as is himself impassive to its blows. A man in a passion, or who is worked up to a certain pitch of enthusiasm, minds nothing else. The fear of death, the love of self, is but an idea or motive with a certain habitual strength. Raise any other idea or feeling to a greater habitual or momentary height, and it will supplant or overrule the first. Courage is sometimes the effect of despair. Women, in a fit of romance, or on some sudden emergency, have been known to perform feats of heroic daring, from which men of the stoutest nerves might shrink with dismay. Maternal tenderness is heroic. Affection of any kind, that doats upon a particular object, and absorbs every other consideration in that, is in its nature heroic.[36] Passion is the great ingredient in heroism. He who stops to reflect, to balance one thing against another, is a coward. The better part of valour is indiscretion. All passion is a short-lived madness, or state of intoxication, in which some present impulse or prevailing idea gets uncontrouled possession of the mind, and lords it there at will. A man may be (almost literally) drunk with choler, with love, with jealousy, with revenge, as he may with wine or strong drink. Any of these will overpower his reason and senses, and put him beyond himself. The master-feeling will prevail, whatever it is, and when it once gets the upper hand, will rage the more violently in proportion to the obstacles it has to encounter. Women who associate with robbers are cruel, as soon as they get over their first repugnance: some of the bravest officers have been the greatest Martinets. A man who is afraid of a blow, or tender of his person, will yet, on being struck, feel nothing but the mortification of the affront, and the fear of discomfiture. The pain that is inflicted, after his blood is once up, will only aggravate his resentment, and be diverted from the channels of fear into those of rage and shame. He whose will is roused and holds out in this way, whose tenaciousness of purpose and inflammability of spirit are proof against the extremity of pain, of fatigue, and disaster, is said to have _pluck_. So a man may not be able to reason himself into coolness at the commencement of a battle; but a ball whizzing near him does it, by abstracting his imagination from a thousand idle fears, and fixing it on his immediate situation and duty. The novice in an engagement, that before was motionless with apprehension or trembling like a leaf, after being hit, loses the sense of possible contingencies in the grief of his wound, and fights like a devil incarnate. He is thenceforward too busy to think of himself. He rushes fearlessly on danger and on death. A man in a battle is indeed emphatically _beside himself_. He ‘bears a charmed life,’ that in fancy disarms cannon-balls and bullets of their power to hurt. They are mere names and apparitions from which astonishment and necessity have taken out the sting: the sense of feeling is seared and dead for the time to ‘all mortal consequences.’ The mind is sublimated to a disregard of whatever can happen, and tempted to rush without provocation on its fate, purely out of bravado, and as the triumph of its paramount feeling, an exasperation of its temporary insanity. Courage is in many such cases only a violent effort to shake off fear, a determination of the imagination to seize on any object that may divert its present dread. A soldier is a perfect hero but that he is a mere machine. He is drilled into disinterestedness, and beaten into courage. He is a very patriotic and romantic automaton. He has lost all regard for himself and concern for others. His life, his limbs, his soul and body, are obedient only to the word of command. ‘Set duty in one eye and death in the other, and he can look on death indifferently.’

‘Set but a Scotsman on a hill,
Say such is royal George’s will,
And there’s the foe:
His only thought is how to kill
Twa’ at a blow.’—_Burns._

They then go at it with bayonets fixed, eyes inflamed, and tongues lolling out with heat and rage, like wild beasts or mad dogs panting for blood, and from the madman to Mr. Wordsworth’s ‘happy warrior’ there is but one step.—The true hero devotes himself in the same way, but he does it of his own accord, and from an inward sentiment. The service on which he is bound is perfect freedom. He is not a machine, but a free agent. He knows his cue without a prompter. Not servile duty—

‘Within his bosom reigns another lord,
Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself.’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED

_The Examiner_] [_November 25, 1821._

Thus a knight-errant going on adventures, and following out the fine idea of love and gallantry in his own mind, without once thinking of himself but as a vessel dedicated to virtue and honour, is one of the most enviable fictions in the whole world. Don Quixote, in the midst of its comic irony, is the finest serious developement to be found of this character. The account of the Cid, the famous Spanish hero, of which Mr. Southey has given an admirable prose-translation where scarcely a word could be changed or transposed without injuring the force and clear simplicity of the antique style he has adopted, abounds with instances to the same purpose. His taking back the lion to its den, his bringing his father ‘the herb that would cure him,’ his enemy’s head, and his manner of reclaiming a recreant knight from his cowardice by heaping the rewards and distinctions of courage upon him, are some of those that I remember as the most striking. Perhaps the reader may not have the book by him; yet they are worth turning to, both for the sentiment and the expression. The first then in order is the following:—

‘At this time it came to pass that there was strife between Count Don Gomez the Lord of Gormaz, and Diego Laynez the father of Rodrigo (the Cid); and the Count insulted Diego and gave him a blow. Now Diego was a man in years, and his strength had passed from him, so that he could not take vengeance, and he retired to his home to dwell there in solitude and lament over his dishonour. And he took no pleasure in his food, neither could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortez, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful, that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Howbeit, all these things appeared as nothing to Rodrigo, when he thought of the wrong done to his father, the first which had ever been offered to the blood of Layn Calvo. He asked nothing but justice of Heaven, and of man he asked only a fair field; and his father seeing of how good heart he was, gave him his sword and his blessing. The sword had been the Sword of Mudarra in former times, and when Rodrigo held its cross in its hand, he thought within himself that his arm was not weaker than Mudarra’s. And he went out and defied the Count and slew him, and smote off his head, and carried it home to his father. The old man was sitting at table, the food lying before him untasted, when Rodrigo returned, and pointing to the head which hung from the horse’s collar, dropping blood, he bade him look up, for there was the herb which would restore to him his appetite; the tongue, quoth he, which insulted[37] you, is no longer a tongue, and the hand which wronged you is no longer a hand. And the old man arose and embraced his son and placed him above him at the table; saying that he who brought home that head should be the head of the house of Layn Calvo.’—_Chronicle of the Cid_, _p. 4_.

The next is of Martin Pelaez, whom the Cid made of a notable coward a redoubtable hero:—

‘Here the history relates, that at this time Martin Pelaez the Asturian came with a convoy of laden beasts, carrying provision to the hosts of the Cid; and as he passed near the town, the Moors sallied out in great numbers against him; but he, though he had few with him, defended the convoy right well, and did great hurt to the Moors, slaying many of them, and drove them into the town. This Martin Pelaez, who is here spoken of, did the Cid make a right good knight of a coward, as ye shall hear. When the Cid first began to lay siege to the City of Valencia, this Martin Pelaez came unto him: he was a knight, a native of Santillance in Asturias, a hidalgo, great of body and strong of limb, a well-made man and of goodly semblance, but withal a right coward at heart, which he had shown in many places where he was among feats of arms. And the Cid was sorry when he came unto him, though he would not let him perceive this; for he knew he was not fit to be of his company. Howbeit, he thought that since he was come, he would make him brave whether he would or not. And when the Cid began to war upon the town, and sent parties against it twice and thrice a day, as ye have heard, for the Cid was always upon the alert, there was fighting and tourneying every day. One day it fell out that the Cid and his kinsmen and friends and vassals were engaged in a great encounter, and this Martin Pelaez was well armed; and when he saw that the Moors and Christians were at it, he fled and betook himself to his lodging, and there hid himself till the Cid returned to dinner. And the Cid saw what Martin Pelaez did, and when he had conquered the Moors, he returned to his lodging to dinner. Now it was the custom of the Cid to eat at a high table, seated on his bench at the head. And Don Alvar Fannez and Pero Bermudez and other precious knights ate in another part, at high tables full honourably, and none other knights whatsoever dared to take their seats with them, unless they were such as deserved to be there; and the others who were not so approved in arms ate upon _estradas_, at tables with cushions. This was the order in the house of the Cid, and every one knew the place where he was to sit at meat, and every one strove all he could to gain the honour of sitting to eat at the table of Don Alvar Fannez and his companions, by strenuously behaving himself in all feats of arms; and thus the honour of the Cid was advanced. This Martin Pelaez, thinking that none had seen his badness, washed his hands in turn with the other knights, and would have taken his place among them. And the Cid went unto him and took him by the hand and said, You are not such a one as deserves to sit with these, for they are worth more than you or than me, but I will have you with me; and he seated him with himself at table. And he, for lack of understanding, thought that the Cid did this to honour him above all the others. On the morrow the Cid and his company rode towards Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney; and Martin Pelaez went out well armed, and was among the foremost who charged the Moors, and when he was in among them he turned the reins, and went back to his lodging; and the Cid took heed to all that he did, and saw that though he had done badly, he had done better than the first day. And when the Cid had driven the Moors into the town, he returned to his lodging, and as he sate down to meat, he took this Martin Pelaez by the hand, and seated him with himself, and bade him eat with him in the same dish, for he had deserved more that day than he had the first. And the knight gave heed to that saying, and was abashed; howbeit, he did as the Cid commanded him: and after he had dined, he went to his lodging and began to think upon what the Cid had said unto him, and perceived that he had seen all the baseness which he had done; and then he understood that for this cause he would not let him sit at board with the other knights who were precious in arms, but had seated him with himself, more to affront him than to do him honour, for there were other knights there better than he, and he did not show them that honour. Then resolved he in his heart to do better than he had done hitherto. Another day the Cid and his company and Martin Pelaez rode towards Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney full resolutely, and Martin Pelaez was among the first, and charged them right boldly; and he smote down and slew presently a good knight, and he lost there all the bad fear which he had had, and was that day one of the best knights there: and as long as the tourney lasted, there he remained fighting and slaying and overthrowing the Moors, till they were driven within the gates, in such manner that the Moors marvelled at him, and asked where that Devil came from, for they had never seen him before. And the Cid was in a place where he could see all that was going on, and he gave good heed to him, and had great pleasure in beholding him, to see how well he had forgotten the great fear which he was wont to have. And when the Moors were shut up within the town, the Cid and all his people returned to their lodging, and Martin Pelaez full leisurely and quietly went to his lodging also, like a good knight. And when it was the hour of eating, the Cid waited for Martin Pelaez, and when he came and they had washed, the Cid took him by the hand, and said, My friend, you are not such a one as deserves to sit with me henceforth, but sit you here with Don Alvar Fannez, and with these other good knights, for the good feats which you have done this day have made you a companion for them; and from the day forward he was placed in the company of the good.’—p. 199.

* * * * *

‘There was a lion in the house of the Cid, who had grown a large one, and strong, and was full nimble; three men had the keeping of this lion, and they kept him in a den which was in a courtyard, high up in the palace; and when they cleansed the court, they were wont to shut him up in his den, and afterwards to open the door that he might come out and eat: the Cid kept him for his pastime, that he might take pleasure with him when he was minded so to do. Now it was the custom of the Cid to dine every day with his company, and after he had dined, he was wont to sleep awhile upon his seat. And one day when he had dined, there came a man and told him that a great fleet was arrived in the port of Valencia, wherein there was a great power of the Moors, whom King Bucar had brought over, the sons of the Miramamolin of Morocco. And when the Cid heard this, his heart rejoiced and he was glad, for it was nigh three years since he had had a battle with the Moors. Incontinently he ordered a signal to be made, that all the honourable men who were in the city should assemble together. And when they were all assembled in the Alcazar, and his sons-in-law with them, the Cid told them the news, and took counsel with them in what manner they should go out against this great power of the Moors. And when they had taken counsel, the Cid went to sleep upon his seat, and the Infantes and the others sate playing at tables and chess. Now at this time the men who were keepers of the lion were cleaning out the court, and when they heard the cry that the Moors were coming, they opened the den, and came down into the palace where the Cid was, and left the door of the court open. And when the lion had ate his meat, and saw that the door was open, he went out of the court and came down into the palace even into the hall where they all were: and when they who were there saw him, there was a great stir among them: but the Infantes of Carrion showed greater cowardice than all the rest. Ferrando Gonzalez having no shame, neither for the Cid nor for the others who were present, crept under the seat whereon the Cid was sleeping, and in his haste he burst his mantle and his doublet also at the shoulders. And Diego Gonzalez, the other, ran to a postern door, crying, I shall never see Carrion again! This door opened upon a courtyard, where there was a wine-press, and he jumped out, and by reason of the great height could not keep his feet, but fell among the lees and defiled himself therewith. And all the others who were in the hall wrapt their cloaks around their arms, and stood round about the seat whereon the Cid was sleeping, that they might defend him. The noise which they made awakened the Cid, and he saw the lion coming towards him, and he lifted up his hand and said, What is this!... and the lion hearing his voice stood still: and he rose up and took him by the mane, as if he had been a gentle mastiff, and led him back to the court where he was before, and ordered his keepers to look better to him for the time to come. And when he had done this, he returned to the hall and took his seat again; and all they who beheld it were greatly astonished.’—p. 251.

The presence of mind, the manly confidence, the faith in virtue, the lofty bearing and picturesque circumstances in all these stories, are as fine as any thing can well be imagined.—The last of them puts me in mind, that that heroic little gentleman, Mr. Kean, who is a Cid too in his way, keeps a lion ‘for his pastime, that he may take pleasure with him when he is minded so to do.’ It is, to be sure, an American lion, a puma, a sort of a great dog. But still it shews the nature of the man, and the spirited turn of his genius. Courage is the great secret of his success. His acting is, if not classical, heroical. To dare and to do are with him the same thing. ‘Masterless passion sways him to the mood of what it likes or loaths.’ He may be sometimes wrong, but he is decidedly wrong, and does not betray himself by paltry doubts and fears. He takes the lion by the mane. He gains all by hazarding all. He throws himself into the breach, and fights his way through as well as he can. He leaves all to his feelings, and goes where they lead him; and he finds his account in this method, and brings rich ventures home.

In reading the foregoing accounts of the Spanish author, it seems that in those times killing was no murder. Slaughter was the order of the day. The blood of Moors and Christians flows through the page as so much water. The proverb uppermost in their minds was, that a man could die but once, and the inference seemed to be, the sooner the better. In these more secure and civilized times (individually and as far as it depends upon ourselves) we are more chary of our lives. We are (ordinarily) placed out of the reach of ‘the shot of accident and dart of chance’; and grow indolent, tender, and effeminate in our notions and habits. Books do not make men valiant,—not even the reading the chronicle of the Cid. The police look after all breaches of the peace and resorts of suspicious characters, so that we need not buckle on our armour to go to the succour of distressed damsels, or to give battle to giants and enchanters. Instead of killing some fourteen before breakfast, like _Hotspur_, we are contented to read of these things in the newspapers, or to see them performed on the stage. We enjoy all the dramatic interest of such scenes, without the tragic results. Regnault de St. Jean Angely rode like a madman through the streets of Paris, when from the barricades he saw the Prussians advancing. We love, fight, and are slain by proxy—live over the adventures of a hundred heroes and die their deaths—and the next day are as well as ever, and ready to begin again. This is a gaining concern, and an improvement on the old-fashioned way of risking life and limb in good earnest, as a cure for _ennui_. It is a bad speculation to come to an untimely end by way of killing time. Now, like the heroic personages in _Tom Thumb_, we spread a white pocket-handkerchief to prepare our final catastrophe, and act the _sentiment_ of death with all the impunity to be desired. Men, the more they cultivate their intellect, become more careful of their persons. They would like to think, to read, to dream on for ever, without being liable to any worldly annoyance. ‘Be mine to read eternal new romances, of Marivaux and Crebillon,’ cries the insatiable adept in this school. Art is long, and they think it hard that life should be so short. Their existence has been chiefly theatrical, ideal, a tragedy rehearsed in print—why should it receive its _denouement_ in their proper persons, in _corpore vili_?—In another point of view, sedentary, studious people live in a world of thought—in a world out of themselves—and are not very well prepared to scuffle in this. They lose the sense of personal honour on questions of more general interest, and are not inclined to individual sacrifices that can be of no service to the cause of letters. They do not see how any speculative truth can be proved by their being run through the body; nor does your giving them the lie alter the state of any one of the great leading questions in policy, morals, or criticism. Philosophers might claim the privileges of divines for many good reasons; among these, according to Spenser, exemption from worldly care and peril was not the least in monkish lore:

‘From worldly care himself he did esloine,
And greatly shunned manly exercise:
For every work he challenged essoine,
For contemplation-sake.’

Mental courage is the only courage I pretend to. I dare venture an opinion where few else would, particularly if I think it right. I have retracted few of my positions. Whether this arises from obstinacy or strength, or indifference to the opinions of others, I know not. In little else I have the spirit of martyrdom: but I would give up any thing sooner than an abstract proposition.

CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING

_The Examiner._] [_July 11, 1824._

Mr. Canning was the cleverest boy at Eton: he is, perhaps, the cleverest man in the House of Commons. It is, however, in the sense in which, according to Mr. Wordsworth, ‘the child is father to the man.’ He has grown up entirely out of what he then was. He has merely ingrafted a set of Parliamentary phrases and the technicalities of debate on the themes and school-exercises he was set to compose when a boy. Nor has he ever escaped from the trammels imposed on youthful genius: he has never assumed a manly independence of mind. He has been all his life in the habit of getting up a speech at the nod of a Minister, as he used to get up a thesis under the direction of his school-master. The _matter_ is nothing; the only question is, how he shall express himself. The consequence has been as might be expected. Not being at liberty to chuse his own side of the question, nor to look abroad into the world for original (but perhaps unwelcome) observations, nor to follow up a strict chain of reasoning into its unavoidable consequences, the whole force of his mind has been exhausted in an attention to the ornaments of style and to an agreeable and imposing selection of topics. It is his business and his inclination to embellish what is trite, to gloss over what is true, to vamp up some feeble sophism, to spread the colours of a meretricious fancy over the unexpected exposure of some dark intrigue, some glaring iniquity—

‘Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array
Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight
With painted plumes in goodly order dight:

· · · · ·

As those same plumes, so seemed he vain and light,
That by his gait might easily appear;
For still he fared as dancing in delight,
And in his hands a windy fan did bear,
That in the idle air he moved still here and there.’
SPENSER.

His reasoning is a tissue of glittering sophistry; his language is a _cento_ of florid common-places. The smooth monotony of his style is indeed as much borrowed, is as little his own, as the courtly and often fulsome strain of his sentiments. He has no steady principles, no strong passions, nothing original, masculine, or striking in thought or expression. There is a feeble, diffuse, showy, Asiatic redundancy in all his speeches—something vapid, something second-hand in the whole cast of his mind. The light that proceeds from it gleams from the mouldering materials of corruption: the flowers that are seen there, gay and flaunting, bloom over the grave of humanity!—Mr. Canning never, by any chance, reminds one of the poet or the philosopher, of the admirer of nature, or even the man of the world—he is a mere House-of-Commons man, or, since he was transferred there from College, appears never to have seen or thought of any other place. He may be said to have passed his life in making and learning to make speeches. All other objects and pursuits seem to have been quite lost upon him. He has overlooked the ordinary objects of nature, the familiar interests of human life, as beneath his notice.[38] There is no allusion in any of his speeches to anything passing out of the House, or not to be found in the classics. Their tone is quite Parliamentary—his is the Delphin edition of Nature. Not an image has struck his eye, not an incident has touched his heart, any farther than it could be got up for rhetorical and stage effect. This has an ill effect upon his speeches:—it gives them that shining and bloated appearance which is the result of the confined and heated atmosphere of the House. They have the look of exotics, of artificial, hot-house plants. Their glossiness, their luxuriance, and gorgeousness of colour are greater than their strength or _stamina_: they are forced, not lasting, nor will they bear transplanting from the rank and noxious soil in which they grow. Or rather, perhaps, they bear the same relation to eloquence that artificial flowers do to real ones—alike, yet not the same, without vital heat or the power of reproduction, printed, passionless, specious mockeries. They are, in fact, not the growth of truth, of nature, and feeling, but of state policy, of art, and practice. To deny that Mr. Canning has arrived to a great perfection (perhaps the greatest) in the manufacture of these sort of _common-places_, elegant, but somewhat tarnished, imposing, but not solid, would, we think, show a want of candour: to affirm that he has ever done anything more (in his serious attempts) would, we think, show an equal want of taste and understanding.[39]

The way in which Mr. Canning gets up the staple-commodity of his speeches appears to be this. He hears an observation on the excellence of the English Constitution, or on the dangers of Reform and the fickleness and headstrong humours of the people, dropped by some Member of the House, or he meets with it in an old Debate in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, or in Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, which our accomplished scholar read, of course, as the established text-book at the University. He turns it in his mind: by dint of memory and ingenuity he illustrates it by the application of some well-known and well-authenticated simile at hand, such as ‘the vessel of the state,’ ‘the torrent of popular fury,’ ‘the precipice of reform,’ ‘the thunderbolt of war,’ ‘the smile of peace,’ &c. He improves the hint by the help of a little play upon words and upon an idle fancy into an allegory, he hooks this on to a verbal inference, which takes you by surprise, equally from the novelty of the premises and the flatness of the conclusion, refers to a passage in Cicero in support of his argument, quotes his authority, relieves exhausted attention by a sounding passage from Virgil, ‘like the morn risen on mid-noon,’ and launches the whole freight of wisdom, wit, learning, and fancy, on the floor of St. Stephen’s Chapel, where it floats and glitters amidst the mingled curiosity and admiration of both sides of the House—

‘Scylla heard,
And fell Charybdis murmur’d soft applause.’

Beneath the broad and gilded chandelier that throws its light upon ‘the nation’s Great Divan,’ Mr. Canning piles the lofty harangue, high over-arched with metaphor, dazzling with epithets, sparkling with jests—take it out of doors, or examine it by the light of common sense, and it is no more than a paltry string of sophisms, of trite truisms, and sorry buffooneries. There is also a House-of-Commons jargon as well as a scholastic pedantry in this gentleman’s style of oratory, which is very displeasing to all but professional ears. ‘The Honourable and Learned Gentleman,’ and ‘his Honourable and Gallant Friend,’ are trolled over the tongue of the Honourable Speaker, ‘loud as a trumpet with a silver sound,’ and fill up the pauses of the sense or the gaps in the logic with a degree of burlesque self-complacency and pompous inanity. Mr. Canning speaks by rote; and if the words he utters become the mouth and round a period well, he cares little how cheaply he comes by them, or how dear they cost the country! Such mechanic helps to style and technical flourishes and trappings of upstart self-importance are, however, unworthy of the meanest underling of office.

There is, notwithstanding, a facility, a brilliancy, and an elegance in Mr. Canning’s general style, always graceful, never abrupt, never meagre, never dry, copious without confusion, dignified without stiffness, perspicuous yet remote from common life, that must excite surprise in an _extempore_ speaker. Mr. Canning, we apprehend, is _not_ an _extempore_ speaker. He only makes set speeches on set occasions. He indeed hooks them in as answers to some one that has gone before him in the debate, by taking up and commenting on a single sentence or so, but he immediately recurs to some old and favourite topic, launches into the middle of the stream, or mounts upon the _high horse_, and rides it to the end of the chapter. He never (that we are aware of) grappled with a powerful antagonist, overthrew him on the spot, or contested the point with him foot to foot. Mr. Canning’s replies are _evasions_. He indeed made a capital and very deservedly admired reply to Sir John Coxe Hippesley; but Sir John had given notice of all his motions a month beforehand, and Mr. Canning had only to lie in ambush for him with a whole magazine of facts, arguments, alliterations, quotations, jests, and squibs, prepared ready to explode and blow him up into the air in an instant. In this manner he contrives to slip into the debate and speak to the question, as if he had lately entered the House and heard the arguments on the other side stated for the first time in his life. He has conned his speeches over for a week or a month previously, but he gives these premeditated effusions the effect of witty impromptus—the spontaneous ebullitions of the laughter or indignation or lofty enthusiasm of the moment. His manner tells this. It is that of a person trying to recollect a speech, and reciting it from beginning to end with studied gesture, and in an emphatic but monotonous and somewhat affected tone of voice, rather than of a person uttering words and thoughts that have occurred to him for the first time, and hurried away by an involuntary impulse, speaking with more or less hesitation, faster or slower, and with more or less passion, according as the occasion requires.

Mr. Canning is a _conventional_ speaker; he is an _optional_ politician. He has a ready and splendid assortment of arguments upon all ordinary questions: he takes that side or view of a question that is dictated by his vanity, his interest, or his habits, and endeavours to make the best he can of it. Truth, liberty, justice, humanity, war or peace, civilization or barbarism, are things of little consequence, except for him to make speeches upon them. He thinks ‘the worse the better reason,’ if he can only make it appear so to others; and in the attempt to confound and mislead, he is greatly assisted by really perceiving no difference himself. It is not what a thing is, but what he can say about it, that is ever uppermost in his mind; and why should he be squeamish or have any particular choice, since his words are all equally fine, and delivered with equal volubility of tongue! His balanced periods are the scale ‘that makes these odds all even.’ Our Orator does not confine himself to any one view of a subject. He does not blind himself by any dull prejudice: he does not tie himself down to any pedantic rules or abstract principle. He does not listen implicitly to common sense, nor does he follow the independent dictates of his own judgment. No, he picks and chuses among all these, as best suits his purpose. He plucks out the grey hairs of a question, and then again the black. He shifts his position; it is a _ride-and-tie_ system with him. He mounts sometimes behind prejudice, and sometimes behind reason. He is now with the wise, and then again with the vulgar. He drivels, or he raves. He is now wedded to antiquity, anon there is no innovation too startling for him. At one time he is literal, at another visionary and romantic. At one time the honour of the country sways him, at another its interest. One moment he is all for liberty, and the next for slavery. First we are to hold the balance of Europe, and to dictate and domineer over the whole world; and then we are to creep into our shells and draw in our horns; one moment resembling Don Quixote, and the next playing the part of Sancho Panza! And why not? All these are topics, are _cues_ used in the game of politics, are colours in the changeable coat of party, are dilemmas in casuistry, are pretexts in diplomacy; and Mr. Canning has them all at his fingers’ ends. What is there then to prevent his using any of them as he pleases? Nothing in the world but feeling or principle; and as Mr. Canning is not withheld by these from running his heedless career, the application of his ingenuity and eloquence in all such cases is perfectly arbitrary, ‘quite _optional_,’ as Mr. Liston expresses it. A wise man would have some settled opinion, a good man would wish well to some cause, a modest man would be afraid to act without feeling sure of his ground, or to show an utter disregard of right or wrong. Mr. Canning has the luckless ambition to play off the tricks of a political rope-dancer, and he chuses to do it on the nerves of humanity! He has called out for war during thirty years without ceasing, ‘like importunate Guinea fowls, one note day and night;’ he has made the House and the country ring with his vain clamour, and now for the first time he is silent, ‘quite chopfallen.’ Like _Bottom_ in the play, ‘he aggravates his voice like a sucking-dove;’ ‘he roars you an ’twere any nightingale!’ After the failure of Buonaparte’s Russian expedition, Mr. Canning exclaimed exultingly, and with a daring enthusiasm that seemed to come from the heart, that ‘he rejoiced that barbarism had been the first to resist invasion, since it showed that the love of national independence was an instinctive principle in every country, superior even to the love of liberty.’ This plea served its turn at the time, and we heard no more of it last year when the French invaded Spain. In the war to restore Ferdinand, Mr. Canning echoed with lungs of brass the roar of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ and the words Liberty and Humanity hung like music on his tongue; but when the feeble Monarch was restored, and trod upon the necks of those who had restored him, and threw down the mock-scaffold of the Constitution that had raised him once more to the throne, we heard no more of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ of Liberty and Humanity. When the speeches of Mr. Canning and the Manifestos of his friends had raised the power of France to a gigantic height that hung like a precipice over our heads, we were to go on, and fight out the battle of liberty and independence, though ‘we buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world.’ When a monstrous claim that threatens the liberty and existence of the civilized world is openly set up and acted upon, and a word from Mr. Canning would arrest its progress in the direction in which it is moving with obscene, ghastly, bloodstained strides, he courteously and with great condescension reminds his hearers of ‘the inimitable satire of Cervantes,’ that there is a proverbial expression borrowed from it, and that the epithet _Quixotic_ would be eminently applicable to the conduct of Great Britain if she interfered in the affairs of the continent at the present juncture. And yet there are persons who persist in believing that Mr. Canning is any thing more than a pivot on whose oily hinges state policy turns easily at this moment, unheard, unseen, and that he has views and feelings of his own that are a pledge for his integrity. If all this were fickleness, caprice, forgetfulness, accident, folly, it would be well or would not much signify; we should stand a chance of sometimes being right, sometimes wrong; or if the ostensible motives were the real ones, they would balance one another. At one time we should be giving a _lift_ to liberty, at another we should be advancing our own interests: now we should be generous to others, then we should be just to ourselves, but always we should be doing something or other fit to be done and to be named, and acting up to one or other of Mr. Canning’s fine pleas of religion, morality, or social order. Is that the case? Nothing was said for twenty years about the restoration of the Bourbons as the object of the war. Who doubts it now? This cause skulked behind the throne, and was not let out in any of Mr. Canning’s speeches. The cloven foot was concealed by so much flaunting oratory, by so many different facings and piebald patch-work liveries of ruinous policy or perfidious principle, as not to be suspected. This is what makes such persons as Mr. Canning dangerous. Clever men are the tools with which bad men work. The march of sophistry is devious: the march of power is one. Its means, its tools, its pretexts are various, and borrowed like the hues of the camelion from any object that happens to be at hand: its object is ever the same, and deadly as the serpent’s fang. It moves on to its end with crested majesty, erect, silent, with eyes sunk and fixed, undiverted by fear, unabashed by shame, and puny orators and patriot mountebanks play tricks before it to amuse the crowd, till it crushes the world in its monstrous folds. There is one word about which nothing has been said all this while in accounting for Mr. Canning’s versatility of mind and vast resources in reasoning—it is the word, _Legitimacy_. It is the key with which you ‘pluck out the heart of his mystery.’ It is the touchstone by which all his other eloquence is to be tried, and made good or found wanting. It is the casting-weight in the scale of sound policy, or that makes humanity and liberty kick the beam. It is the secret of the Ayes and Noes: it accounts for the Majorities and Minorities. It weighs down all other considerations, hides all flaws, makes up for all deficiencies, removes all obstacles, is the crown of success, and makes defeat glorious. It has all the power of the Crown on its side, and all the madness of the people. All Mr. Canning’s speeches are but so many different _periphrases_ for this one word—_Legitimacy_. It is the foundation of his magnanimity and the source of his pusillanimity. It is the watch-word equally of his oratory or his silence. It is the principle of his interference and of his forbearance. It makes him move forward, or retreat, or stand still. With this word rounded closely in his ear, and with fifty evasions for it in his mouth, he advances boldly to ‘the deliverance of mankind’—into the hands of legitimate kings, but can do nothing to deliver them out of their power. When the liberty and independence of mankind can be construed to mean the cause of kings and the doctrine of divine right, Mr. Canning is a virago on the side of humanity—when they mean the cause of the people and the reducing of arbitrary power within the limits of constitutional law, his patriotism and humanity flag, and he is

‘Of his port as meek as is a maid!’

This word makes his tropes and figures expand and blaze out like phosphorus, or ‘freezes his spirits up like fish in a pond.’ It smites with its petrific mace, it deadens with its torpedo touch, the Minister, the Parliament, the people, and makes this vast, free, enlightened, and enterprising country a body without a soul, an inert mass, like the hulks of our men of war, which Mr. Canning saw and described so well at Plymouth. It is the same word, that announcing the profanation of ‘the golden round that binds the hollow temples of a king’ by unhallowed hands, would fill their sails, and hurl their thunders on rebel shores. It denounces war, it whispers peace. It is echoed by the groans of the nations, is sanctified by their blood, bought with their treasure. It is this that fills the time-rent towers of the Inquisition with tears and piercing cries; and owing to this, Manzotti shrieks in Italian dungeons, while Mr. Canning soothes the House of Commons with the soft accents of liberty and peace! In fine, Mr. Canning’s success as an orator, and the space he occupies in the public mind, are strong indications of the Genius of the Age, in which words have obtained a mastery over things, ‘and to call evil good and good evil,’ is thought the mark of a superior and happy spirit. An accomplished statesman in our day is one who extols the Constitution and violates it—who talks about religion and social order, and means slavery and superstition. The Whigs are always reminding the reigning family of _the principles that raised them to the throne_—the Tories labour as hard to substitute those _that will keep them there_. There is a dilemma here, which is not easily got over; and to solve the difficulty and reconcile the contradiction, was the great problem of the late King’s reign. The doubtful lubricity of Mr. Canning’s style was one of the rollers by which the transition was effected, and Legitimacy shown to be a middle term between _divine right_ and _the choice of the people_, compatible with both, and convertible into either, at the discretion of the Crown, or pleasure of the speaker. Mr. Canning does not disgrace his pretensions on other questions. He is a sophist by profession, a palliator of every powerful and profitable abuse. His shuffling, trifling speeches on Reform are well-known. He sometimes adds the petulance of the school-boy to his stock of worn-out invention; though his unfeeling taunt on the ‘revered and ruptured Ogden,’ met with a reception which will make him cautious how he tampers again with human infirmity and individual suffering, as the subject of ribald jests and profligate alliteration.

The thing in which Mr. Canning excels most is wit; and his wit is confined to parody. The _Rejected Addresses_ have been much and deservedly admired; but we do not think the parodies in them, however ingenious or ludicrous, are to be compared with those in the ‘_Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_,’ and some of the very best of these are by Mr. Canning. Among others are, we believe, the _German Play_, and the imitation of Mr. Southey’s _Sapphics_. Much as we admire, we do not wonder at Mr. Canning’s excellence in this department. Real, original wit, he has none; for that implies sense and feeling, and an insight into the real differences of things; but from a want of sympathy with anything but forms and _common-places_, he can easily let down the sense of others so as to make _nonsense_ of it. He has no enthusiasm or sensibility to make him overlook the meanness of a subject, or a little irregularity in the treatment of it, from the interest it excites: to a mind like his, the serious and affecting is a kind of natural burlesque. It is a matter of course for him to be struck with the absurdity of the romantic or singular in any way, to whom every thing out of the beaten track is absurd; and ‘to turn what is serious into farce’ by transferring the same expressions to perfectly indifferent and therefore contemptible subjects. To make any description or sentiment ludicrous, it is only necessary to take away all feeling from it: the ludicrous is ready-made to Mr. Canning’s hands. The poetry, the heart-felt interest of every thing escapes through his apprehension, like a snake out of its skin, and leaves the slough of parody behind it. Any thing more light or worthless cannot well be imagined.[40]

THE DANDY SCHOOL.

_The Examiner._] [_November 18, 1827._

Vivian Grey is dedicated to the Best and Greatest of men, as if the Illustrious Person who will take this compliment to himself approved of the sentiments contained in it. Are ushers odious to the Best and Greatest of men? Does he hate the great mass of his subjects, and scorn all those beyond Temple-bar? Is he King only of the Dandies, and Monarch of the West? We scarcely believe it. This volume with its impertinent dedication is no more expressive of the sentiments of his heart than the _Austrian Catechism_, dedicated in like manner, would be characteristic of the principles of his reign. Oh! Mr. Grey, you should have been more humble—you should have inscribed your work to the best-dressed Man in his Majesty’s dominions—or to Jack Ketch.