Chapter CV: p. 318

A WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO CÆSAR. SOME CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOR'S SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR.

_Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos,
Y va se derecho hasta el corazon;
Alli en ser llegado se torna aficion,
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos:
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos;
Haze llorar, y haze reir,
Haze cantar, y haze plañir;
Da pensamientos dos mil a manojos._

QUESTION DE AMOR.

INTERCHAPTER XII.—p. 329.

THE AUTHOR REGRETS THAT HE CANNOT MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN TO CERTAIN READERS; STATES THE POSSIBLE REASONS FOR HIS SECRESY; MAKES NO USE IN SO DOING OF THE LICENSE WHICH HE SEEMS TO TAKE OUT IN HIS MOTTO; AND STATING THE PRETENCES WHICH HE ADVANCES FOR HIS WORK, DISCLAIMING THE WHILE ALL MERIT FOR HIMSELF, MODESTLY PRESENTS THEM UNDER A GRECIAN VEIL.

Ἔνϑα γαρ τι δεῖ ψεῦδος λεγεσϑαι λεγἐσϑω.

HERODOTUS.

INTERCHAPTER XIII.—p. 339.

A PEEP FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

Ha, ha, ha, now ye will make me to smile,
To see if I can all men beguile.
Ha, my name, my name would ye so fain know?
Yea, I wis, shall ye, and that with all speed.
I have forgot it, therefore I cannot show.
A, a, now I have it! I have it indeed!
My name is Ambidexter, I signify one
That with both hands finely can play.

KING CAMBYSES.

THE DOCTOR, &c.

INTERCHAPTER VII.

OBSOLETE ANTICIPATIONS; BEING A LEAF OUT OF AN OLD ALMANACK, WHICH LIKE OTHER OLD ALMANACKS THOUGH OUT OF DATE IS NOT OUT OF USE.

If
You play before me, I shall often look on you,
I give you that warning before hand.
Take it not ill, my masters, I shall laugh at you,
And truly when I am least offended with you;
It is my humour.

MIDDLETON.

When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a man might best become learned, he answered, “by reading one book;” “meaning,” says Bishop Taylor, “that an understanding entertained with several objects is intent upon neither, and profits not.” Lord Holland's poet, the prolific Lope de Vega tells us to the same purport;

_Que es estudiante notable
El que lo es de un libro solo.
Que quando no estavan llenos
De tantos libros agenos,
Como van dexando atras,
Sabian los hombres mas
Porque estudiavan en menos._

The _homo unius libri_ is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes. Like your sharp shooter, he knows his piece perfectly, and is sure of his shot. I would therefore modestly insinuate to the reader what infinite advantages would be possessed by that fortunate person who shall be the _homo hujus libri_.

According to the Lawyers the King's eldest son is for certain purposes of full age as soon as he is born,—great being the mysteries of Law! I will not assume that in like manner _hic liber_ is at once to acquire maturity of fame; for fame, like the oak, is not the product of a single generation; and a new book in its reputation is but as an acorn, the full growth of which can be known only by posterity. The Doctor will not make so great a sensation upon its first appearance as Mr. Southey's Wat Tyler, or the first two Cantos of Don Juan; still less will it be talked of so universally as the murder of Mr. Weire. Talked of however it will be, widely, largely, loudly and _lengthily_ talked of: lauded and vituperated, vilified and extolled, heartily abused, and no less heartily admired.

Thus much is quite certain; that before it has been published a week, eight persons will be named as having written it: and these eight positive lies will be affirmed each as positive truths on positive knowledge.

Within the month Mr. Woodbee will write to one Marquis, one Earl, two Bishops, and two Reviewers-Major assuring them that he is _not_ the Author. Mr. Sligo will cautiously avoid making any such declaration, and will take occasion significantly to remark upon the exceeding impropriety of saying to any person that a work which has been published anonymously is supposed to be his. He will observe also that it is altogether unwarrantable to ask any one under such circumstances whether the report be true. Mr. Blueman's opinion of the book will be asked by four and twenty female correspondents, all of the order of the stocking.

Professor Wilson will give it his hearty praise. Sir Walter Scott will deny that he has any hand in it. Mr. Coleridge will smile if he is asked the question. If it be proposed to Sir Humphrey Davy he will smile too, and perhaps blush also. The Laureate will observe a careless silence; Mr. Wordsworth a dignified one. And Professor Porson, if he were not gone where his Greek is of no use to him, would accept credit for it, though he would not claim it.

The Opium-Eater while he peruses it, will doubt whether there is a book in his hand, or whether he be not in a dream of intellectual delight.

“My little more than nothing” Jeffrey the second,—(for of the small Jeffreys Jeffrey Hudson must always be the first)—will look less when he pops upon his own name in its pages. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan is Jeffrey the third: he must have been placed second in right of seniority, had it not been for the profound respect with which I regard the University of Glasgow. The Rector of Glasgow takes precedence of the Mayor of Garratt.

And what will the Reviewers do? I speak not of those who come to their office, (for such there are, though few,) like Judges to the bench, stored with all competent knowledge and in an equitable mind; prejudging nothing, however much they may foreknow; and who give their sentence without regard to persons, upon the merits of the case;—but the aspirants and wranglers at the bar, the dribblers and the spit-fires, (there are of both sorts;)—the puppies who bite for the pleasure which they feel in exercising their teeth, and the dogs whose gratification consists in their knowledge of the pain and injury that they inflict;—the creepers of literature, who suck their food like the ivy from what they strangulate and kill; they who have a party to serve, or an opponent to run down; what opinion will they pronounce in their utter ignorance of the author? They cannot play without a bias in their bowls!—Aye, there's the rub!

Ha ha, ha ha! this World doth pass
Most merrily, I'll be sworn,
For many an honest Indian Ass
Goes for a Unicorn.
Farra diddle dyno,
This is idle fyno!
Tygh hygh, tygh hygh! O sweet delight!
He tickles this age that can
Call Tullia's ape a marmasite,
And Leda's goose a swan.[1]

[Footnote 1: BRITISH BIBLIOGRAPHER.]

Then the discussion that this book will excite among blue stockings, and blue beards! The stir! the buzz! the bustle! The talk at tea tables in the country and _conversazione_ in town,—in Mr. Murray's room, at Mr. Longman's dinners, in Mr. Hatchard's shop,—at the Royal Institution,—at the Alfred, at the Admiralty, at Holland House!—Have you seen it?—Do you understand it? Are you not disgusted with it?—Are you not provoked at it?—Are you not delighted with it? Whose is it? Whose can it be?

Is it Walter Scott's?—There is no Scotch in the book,—and that hand is never to be mistaken in its masterly strokes.—Is it Lord Byron's?—Lord Byron's! Why the Author fears God, honours the King, and loves his country and his kind. Is it by Little Moore?—If it were we should have sentimental lewdness, Irish patriotism which is something very like British treason, and a plentiful spicing of personal insults to the Prince Regent. Is it the Laureate?—He lies buried under his own historical quartos! There is neither his mannerism, nor his moralism, nor his methodism. Is it Wordsworth?—What,—an Elephant cutting capers on the slack wire!—Is it Coleridge?—The method indeed of the book might lead to such a suspicion,—but then it is intelligible throughout. Mr. A——?—there is Latin in it. Mr. B——?—there is Greek in it. Mr. C——?—it is written in good English. Mr. Hazlitt? It contains no panegyric upon Bonaparte; no imitations of Charles Lamb; no plagiarisms from Mr. Coleridge's conversation; no abuse of that gentleman, Mr. Southey and Mr. Wordsworth,—and no repetitions of himself. Certainly therefore it is _not_ Mr. Hazlitt's.

Is it Charles Lamb?

Baa! Baa! good Sheep, have you any wool?
Yes marry, that I have, three bags full.

_Good_ Sheep I write here, in emendation of the nursery song; because nobody ought to call this Lamb a _black_ one.

Comes it from the Admiralty? There indeed wit enough might be found and acuteness enough, and enough of sagacity, and enough of knowledge both of books and men; but when

The Raven croaked as she sate at her meal
And the Old Woman knew what he said,—[2]

the Old Woman knew also by the tone who said it.

[Footnote 2: SOUTHEY.]

Does it contain the knowledge, learning, wit, sprightliness, and good sense, which that distinguished patron of letters my Lord Puttiface Papinhead has so successfully concealed from the public and from all his most intimate acquaintance during his whole life?

Is it Theodore Hook with the learned assistance of his brother the Archdeacon?—A good guess that of the Hook: have an eye to it!

“I guess it is our Washington Irving,” says the New Englander. The Virginian replies “I reckon it may be;” and they agree that none of the Old Country Authors are worthy to be compared with him.

Is it Smith?

Which of the Smiths? for they are a numerous people. To say nothing of Black Smiths, White Smiths, Gold Smiths, and Silver Smiths, there is Sidney, who is Joke-Smith to the Edinburgh Review; and William, who is Motion Smith to the Dissenters Orthodox and Heterodox, in Parliament, having been elected to represent them,—to wit the aforesaid Dissenters—by the citizens of Norwich. And there is _Cher Bobus_ who works for nobody; and there is Horace and his brother James, who work in Colburn's forge at the sign of the Camel. You probably meant these brothers; they are clever fellows, with wit and humour as fluent as their ink; and to their praise be it spoken with no gall in it. But their wares are of a very different quality.

Is it the Author of Thinks I to myself?—“Think you so,” says I to myself I. Or the Author of the Miseries of Human Life? George Coleman? Wrangham,—unfrocked and in his lighter moods? Yorick of Dublin? Dr. Clarke? Dr. Busby? The Author of My Pocket Book? D'Israeli? Or that phenomenon of eloquence, the celebrated Irish Barrister, Counsellor Phillips? Or may it not be the joint composition of Sir Charles and Lady Morgan? he compounding the speculative, scientific and erudite ingredients; she intermingling the lighter parts, and infusing her own grace, airiness, vivacity and spirit through the whole. A well-aimed guess: for they would throw out opinions differing from their own, as ships in time of war hoist false colours; and thus they would enjoy the baffled curiosity of those wide circles of literature and fashion in which they move with such enviable distinction both at home and abroad.

Is it Mr. Mathurin? Is it Hans Busk?—

Busk ye, busk ye my bonny bonny bride,
Busk ye, my winsome marrow!

Is it he who wrote of a World without Souls, and made the Velvet Cushion relate its adventures?

Is it Rogers?—The wit and the feeling of the book may fairly lead to such an ascription, if there be sarcasm enough to support it. So may the Pleasures of Memory which the Author has evidently enjoyed during the composition.

Is it Mr. Utinam? He would have written it,—if he could.—Is it Hookham Frere? He could have written it,—if he would.—Has Matthias taken up a new Pursuit in Literature? Or has William Bankes been trying the experiment whether he can impart as much amusement and instruction by writing, as in conversation?

Or is it some new genius ‘breaking out at once like the Irish Rebellion a hundred thousand strong?’ Not one of the Planets, nor fixed stars of our Literary System, but a Comet as brilliant as it is eccentric in its course.

Away the dogs go, whining here, snuffing there, nosing in this place, pricking their ears in that, and now full-mouthed upon a false scent,—and now again all at fault.

Oh the delight of walking invisible among mankind!

“Whoever he be,” says Father O'Faggot, “he is an audacious heretic.” “A schoolmaster, by his learning,” says Dr. Fullbottom Wigsby. The Bishop would take him for a Divine, if there were not sometimes a degree of levity in the book, which though always innocent, is not altogether consistent with the gown. Sir Fingerfee Dolittle discovers evident marks of the medical profession. “He has manifestly been a traveller” says the General, “and lived in the World.” The man of letters says it would not surprize him if it were the work of a learned Jew. Mr. Dullman sees nothing in the book to excite the smallest curiosity; he really does not understand it, and doubts whether the Author himself knew what he would be at. Mr. M^cDry declares, with a harsh Scotch accent, “Its just parfit nonsense.”

INTERCHAPTER VIII.

A LEAF OUT OF THE NEW ALMANACK. THE AUTHOR THINKS CONSIDERATELY OF HIS COMMENTATORS; RUMINATES; RELATES AN ANECDOTE OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE; QUOTES SOME PYRAMIDAL STANZAS, WHICH ARE NOT THE WORSE FOR THEIR ARCHITECTURE, AND DELIVERS AN OPINION CONCERNING BURNS.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the Soul. “_Earth thou art, to earth thou shalt return._”

FULLER.

The Commentators in the next millennium, and even in the next century, will I foresee, have no little difficulty, in settling the chronology of this opus. I do not mean the time of its conception, the very day and hour of that happy event having been recorded in the seventh chapter, A. I.: nor the time of its birth, that, as has been registered in the weekly Literary Journals, having been in the second week of January, 1834. But at what intervening times certain of its Chapters and Inter Chapters were composed.

A similar difficulty has been found with the Psalms, the Odes of Horace, Shakespeare's Plays, and other writings sacred or profane, of such celebrity as to make the critical enquiry an object of reasonable curiosity, or of real moment.

They however who peruse the present volume while it is yet a new book, will at once have perceived that between the composition of the preceding Chapter and their perusal thereof, an interval as long as one of Nourjahad's judicial visitations of sleep must have elapsed. For many of the great performers who figured upon the theatre of public life when the anticipations in that Chapter were expressed, have made their exits; and others who are not there mentioned, have since that time made their entrances.

The children of that day have reached their stage of adolescence; the youth are now in mid life; the middle-aged have grown old, and the old have passed away. I say nothing of the political changes that have intervened. Who can bestow a thought upon the pantomime of politics, when his mind is fixed upon the tragedy of human life?

Robert Landor, (a true poet like his great brother, if ever there was one) says finely in his Impious Banquet,

There is a pause near death when men grow bold
Toward all things else:

Before that awful pause, whenever the thought is brought home to us, we feel ourselves near enough to grow indifferent to them, and to perceive the vanity of all earthly pursuits, those only excepted which have the good of our fellow creatures for their object, and tend to our own spiritual improvement.

But this is entering upon a strain too serious for this place; though any reflection upon the lapse of time and the changes that steal on us in its silent course leads naturally to such thoughts.

_Omnia paulatim consumit longior ætas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Voxque aliud mutata sonat._[1]

[Footnote 1: PETRARCH.]

Sir Thomas Lawrence was told one day that he had made a portrait which he was then finishing, ten years too young, “Well,” he replied, “I have; and I see no reason why it should not be made so.” There was this reason: ten years if they bring with them only their ordinary portion of evil and of good, cannot pass over any one's head without leaving their moral as well as physical traces, especially if they have been years of active and intellectual life. The painter therefore who dips his brush in Medea's kettle, neither represents the countenance as it is, nor as it has been.

“And what does that signify?” Sir Thomas might ask in rejoinder.—What indeed! Little to any one at present, and nothing when the very few who are concerned in it shall have passed away,—except to the artist. The merits of his picture as a work of art are all that will then be considered; its fidelity as a likeness will be taken for granted, or be thought of as little consequence as in reality it then is.

Yet if Titian or Vandyke had painted upon such a principle, their portraits would not have been esteemed as they now are. We should not have felt the certainty which we now feel, that in looking at the pictures of the Emperor Charles V. and of Cortes; of King Charles the Martyr, and of Strafford, we see the veritable likeness and true character of those ever-memorable personages.

Think of the changes that any ten years in the course of human life produce in body and in mind, and in the face, which is in a certain degree the index of both. From thirty to forty is the decade during which the least outward and visible alteration takes place; and yet how perceptible is it even during that stage in every countenance that is composed of good flesh and blood! For I do not speak of those which look as if they had been hewn out of granite, cut out of a block, cast in bronze, or moulded either in wax, tallow, or paste.

Ten years!

Quarles in those Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man, which he presents to the Reader as an Egyptian dish drest in the English fashion; symbolizes it by the similitude of a taper divided into eight equal lengths, which are to burn for ten years each,—if the candle be not either wasted, or blown out by the wind, or snuffed out by an unskilful hand, or douted (to use a good old word) with an extinguisher, before it is burnt down to the socket. The poem which accompanies the first print of the series, begins thus, in pyramidal stanzas; such they were designed to be, but their form resembles that of an Aztecan or Mexican Cu, rather than of an Egyptian pyramid.

1.
Behold
How short a span
Was long enough of old
To measure out the life of man!
In those well-temper'd days, his time was then
Surveyed, cast up, and found but threescore years and ten.

2.
Alas
And what is that!
They come and slide and pass
Before my pen can tell thee what.
The posts of life are swift, which having run
Their seven short stages o'er, their short-liv'd task is done.

“I had an old grand-uncle,” says Burns, “with whom my mother lived awhile in her girlish years. The good man was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of the Life and Age of Man.”

It is certain that this old song was in Burns's mind when he composed to the same cadence those well-known stanzas of which the burthen is that “man was made to mourn.” But the old blind man's tears were tears of piety, not of regret; it was his greatest enjoyment thus to listen and to weep; and his heart the while was not so much in the past, as his hopes were in the future. They were patient hopes; he knew in Whom he believed, and was awaiting his deliverance in God's good time. _Sunt homines qui cum patientiâ moriuntur; sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientiâ vivunt._[2] Burns may perhaps have been conscious in his better hours (and he had many such,) that he had inherited the feeling (if not the sober piety,) which is so touchingly exemplified in this family anecdote;—that it was the main ingredient in the _athanasia_ of his own incomparable effusions; and that without it he never could have been the moral, and therefore never the truly great poet that he eminently is.

[Footnote 2: ST. AUGUSTIN.]

INTERCHAPTER IX.

AN ILLUSTRATION FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF THE COMMENTATORS DRAWN FROM THE HISTORY OF THE KORAN. REMARKS WHICH ARE NOT INTENDED FOR MUSSELMEN, AND WHICH THE MISSIONARIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ARE ADVISED NOT TO TRANSLATE.

You will excuse me if I do not strictly confine myself to narration, but now and then intersperse such reflections as may offer while I am writing.

JOHN NEWTON.

But the most illustrious exemplification of the difficulty which the Doctorean or Dovean commentators will experience in settling the chronology of these chapters, is to be found in the history of the Koran.

Mahommedan Doctors are agreed that the first part or parcel of their sacred book which was revealed to the Prophet, consisted of what now stands as the first five verses of the ninety-sixth chapter; and that the chapter which ought to be the last of the whole hundred and fourteen, because it was the last which Mahommed delivered, is placed as the ninth in order.

The manner in which the book was originally produced and afterwards put together explains how this happened.

Whenever the Impostor found it convenient to issue a portion, one of his disciples wrote it, from his dictation, either upon palm-leaves or parchment, and these were put promiscuously into a chest. After his death Abubeker collected them into a volume, but with so little regard to any principle of order or connection, that the only rule which he is supposed to have followed was that of placing the longest chapters first.

Upon this M. Savary remarks, _ce bouleversement dans un ouvrage qui est un recueil de préceptes donnés dans différens temps et dont les premiers sont souvent abrogés par les suivans, y a jetté la plus grand confusion. On ne doit donc y chercher ni ordre ni suite._ And yet one of the chapters opens with the assertion that “a judicious order reigns in this book,”—according to Savary's version, which here follows those commentators who prefer this among the five interpretations which the words may bear.

Abubeker no doubt was of opinion that it was impossible to put the book together in any way that could detract from its value and its use. If he were, as there is every reason to think, a true believer, he would infer that the same divine power which revealed it piece-meal would preside over the arrangement, and that the earthly copy would thus miraculously be made a faithful transcript of the eternal and uncreated original.

If, on the other hand, he had been as audacious a knave as his son-in-law, the false prophet himself, he would have come with equal certainty to the same conclusion by a different process: for he would have known that if the separate portions, when they were taken out of the chest, had been shuffled and dealt like a pack of cards, they would have been just as well assorted as it was possible to assort them.

A north-country dame in days of old economy, when the tailor worked for women as well as men, delivered one of her nether garments to a professor of the sartorial art with these directions:

“Here Talleor, tak this petcut; thoo mun bin' me't, and thoo mun tap-bin' me't; thoo mun turn it rangsid afoor, tapsid bottom, insid oot: thoo can do't, thoo mun do't, and thoo mun do't speedly.”—Neither Bonaparte nor Wellington ever gave their orders on the field of battle with more precision, or more emphatic and authoritative conciseness.

Less contrivance was required for editing the Koran, than for renovating this petticoat: The Commander of the Faithful had only to stitch it together and bin' me't.

The fable is no doubt later than Abubeker's time that the first transcript of this book from its eternal and uncreated original in the very essence of the Deity, is on the Preserved Table, fast by the throne of God; on which Table all the divine decrees of things past, passing and to come are recorded. The size of the Table may be estimated by that of the Pen wherewith these things were written on it. The Great Pen was one of the first three created things; it is in length, five hundred years' journey, and in breadth, eighty; and I suppose the rate of an Angel's travelling is intended, which considerably exceeds that of a rail-road, a race-horse, or a carrier-pigeon. A copy of the Koran, transcribed upon some celestial material from this original on the Preserved Table, bound in silk, and ornamented with gold and set with precious stones from Paradise, was shown to the Prophet by the Angel Gabriel, once a year, for his consolation, and twice during the last year of his life.

Far later is the legend transmitted by the Spanish Moor, Mahomet Rabadan, that Othman arranged the fragments and copied them in the Prophet's life-time; and that when this transcript was compleated Gabriel presented the Prophet with another copy of the whole, written by his own arch-angelic hand in heaven, whereby the greatest honour and most perfect satisfaction that could be given to man were imparted, and the most conclusive proof afforded of the fidelity with which Othman had executed his holy task. For when his copy was collated with the Angel's it was found to be so exact, “that not the least tittle was variated or omitted, but it seemed as if the same hand and pen had written them both,” the only difference being in the size of the letters, and consequently of the two books, and in their legibility.

Gabriel's copy was contained in sixteen leaves, the size of a Damascus coin not larger than an English shilling; and the strokes of the letters were so much finer than any human hair, or any visible thread, that they are compared to the hairs of a serpent, which are so fine that no microscope has ever yet discovered them. They were plainly legible to all who were pure and undefiled; but no unclean person could discern a single syllable, nor could any pen ever be made fine enough to imitate such writing. The ink was of a rich purple, the cover of a bright chesnut colour. Mahommed continually carried this wonderful book about him in his bosom, and when he slept he had it always under his pillow or next his heart. After his decease it disappeared, nor though Othman and Ali diligently sought for it, could it ever be found; it was believed therefore to have returned to the place from whence it came.

But this is a legend of later date; and learned Mahommedans would reject it not merely as being apocryphal, but as false.

Before I have done with the subject, let me here, on the competent authority of Major Edward Moore, inform the European reader, who may be ignorant of Arabic, that the name of the Arabian False Prophet is, in the language of his own country, written with four letters—M. H. M. D.—a character called _teshdid_ over the medial M denoting that sound to be prolonged or doubled; so that Mahammad would better than any other spelling represent the current vernacular pronunciation.

Here let me observe by the way that the work which the reader has now the privilege of perusing is as justly entitled to the name of the Koran as the so called pseudo-bible itself, because the word signifies “_that which ought to be read_;” and moreover, that, like the Musselman's Koran, it might also be called Dhikr, which is, being interpreted, “_the Admonition_,” because of the salutary instruction and advice which it is intended to convey.

Take, if ye can, ye careless and supine,
Counsel and caution from a voice like mine!
Truths that the theorist could never reach,
And observation taught me, I would teach.[1]

[Footnote 1: COWPER.]

Haying given the reader this timely intimation I shall now explain in what my commentators will find a difficulty of the same kind as that which Abubeker would have had, if, in putting together the disorderly writings entrusted to his care, he had endeavoured to arrange them according to the order in which the several portions were produced.

When Mahommed wanted to establish an ordinance for his followers, or to take out a license for himself for the breach of his own laws, as when he chose to have an extra allowance of wives, or coveted those of his neighbours, he used to promulgate a fragment of the Koran, revealed _pro re natâ_, that is to say in honest old English _for the nonce_. It has been determined with sufficient accuracy at what times certain portions were composed, because the circumstances in his public or private history which rendered them necessary, or convenient, are known. And what has been done with these parts, might have been done with the whole, if due pains had been taken, at a time when persons were still living who knew when, and why, every separate portion had been,—as they believed,—revealed. This would have required more diligence than the first Caliph had either leisure or inclination to bestow, and perhaps more sagacity than he possessed: the task would have been difficult, but it was possible.

But my commentators will never be able to ascertain anything more of the chronology of this Koran, than the dates of its conception, and of its birth-day, the interval between them having been more than twenty years.

INTERCHAPTER X.

MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT. ELUCIDATIONS FROM HENRY MORE AND DR. WATTS. AN INCIDENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE WALPOLE. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT “FLOWETH AT ITS OWN SWEET WILL.” PICTURES AND BOOKS. A SAYING OF MR. PITT'S CONCERNING WILBERFORCE. THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH A LONG BOW.

_Vorrei, disse il Signor Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco piu minutamente di questo, che non fate; che en vero vi tenete molto al generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito._

IL CORTEGIANO.

Henry More, in the Preface General to the collection of his philosophical writings, says to the reader, “if thy curiosity be forward to enquire what I have done in these new editions of my books, I am ready to inform thee that I have taken the same liberty in this Intellectual Garden of my own planting, that men usually take in their natural ones; which is, to set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where and what they please. And therefore if I have rased out some things, (which yet are but very few) and transposed others, and interserted others, I hope I shall seem injurious to no man in ordering and cultivating this Philosophical Plantation of mine according to mine own humour and liking.”

Except as to the rasing out, what our great Platonist has thus said for himself, may here be said for me. “Many things,” as the happy old lutanist, Thomas Mace, says, “are good, yea, very good; but yet upon after-consideration we have met with the comparative, which is better; yea, and after that, with the superlative, (best of all), by adding to, or altering a little, the same good things.”

During the years that this Opus has been in hand, (and in head and heart also) nothing was expunged as if it had become obsolete because the persons therein alluded to had departed like shadows, or the subjects there touched on had grown out of date; but much was introduced from time to time where it fitted best. Allusions occur in relation to facts which are many years younger than the body of the chapter in which they have been grafted, thus rendering it impossible for any critic, however acute, to determine the date of any one chapter by its contents.

What Watts has said of his own Treatise upon the Improvement of the Mind may therefore with strict fidelity be applied to this book, which I trust, O gentle Reader, thou wilt regard as specially conducive to the improvement of thine. “The work was composed at different times, and by slow degrees. Now and then indeed it spread itself into branches and leaves, like a plant in April, and advanced seven or eight pages in a week; and sometimes it lay by without growth, like a vegetable in the winter, and did not increase half so much in the revolution of a year. As thoughts occurred to me in reading or meditation, or in my notices of the various appearances of things among mankind, they were thrown under appropriate heads, and were, by degrees, reduced to such a method as the subject would admit. The language and dress of these sentiments is such as the present temper of mind dictated, whether it were grave or pleasant, severe or smiling. And a book which has been twenty years in writing may be indulged in some variety of style and manner, though I hope there will not be found any great difference of sentiment.” With little transposition Watts' words have been made to suit my purpose; and when he afterwards speaks of “so many lines altered, so many things interlined, and so many paragraphs and pages here and there inserted,” the circumstances which he mentions as having deceived him in computing the extent of his work, set forth the embarrassment which the commentators will find in settling the chronology of mine.

The difficulty would not be obviated were I, like Horace Walpole, (though Heaven knows for no such motives as influenced that posthumous libeller,—) to leave a box containing the holograph manuscript of this Opus in safe custody, with an injunction that the seals should not be broken till the year of our Lord, 2000. Nothing more than what has been here stated would appear in that inestimable manuscript. Whether I shall leave it as an heir-loom in my family, or have it deposited either in the public library of my Alma Mater, or that of my own College, or bequeath it as a last mark of affection to the town of Doncaster, concerns not the present reader. Nor does it concern him to know whether the till-then-undiscoverable name of the author will be disclosed at the opening of the seals. An adequate motive for placing the manuscript in safe custody is, that a standard would thus be secured for posterity whereby the always accumulating errors of the press might be corrected. For modern printers make more and greater blunders than the copyists of old.

In any of those works which posterity will not be “willing to let perish,” how greatly would the interest be enhanced, if the whole history of its rise and progress were known, and amid what circumstances, and with what views, and in what state of mind, certain parts were composed. Sir Walter, than whom no man ever took more accurate measure of the public taste, knew this well; and posterity will always be grateful to him for having employed his declining years in communicating so much of the history of those works which obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity than any that ever preceded them, and perhaps than any that ever may follow them.

An author of the last generation, (I cannot call to mind who,) treated such an opinion with contempt, saying in his preface that “there his work was, and that as the Public were concerned with it only as it appeared before them, he should say nothing that would recal the blandishments of its childhood:” whether the book was one of which the maturity might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do not remember. But he must be little versed in bibliology who has not learnt that such reminiscences are not more agreeable to an author himself, than they are to his readers, (if he obtain any,) in after times; for every trifle that relates to the history of a favourite author, and of his works, then becomes precious.

Far be it for me to despise the relic-mongers of literature, or to condemn them, except when they bring to light things which ought to have been buried with the dead; like the Dumfries craniologists, who, when the grave of Burns was opened to receive the corpse of his wife, took that opportunity of _abstracting_ the poet's skull that they might make a cast from it! Had these men forgotten the malediction which Shakespeare utters from his monument? And had they never read what Wordsworth says to such men in his Poet's epitaph—

Art thou one all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,
O turn aside,—and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
Thy pin-point of a soul away!

O for an hour of Burns' for these men's sake! Were there a Witch of Endor in Scotland it would be an act of comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit; to stigmatize them in verses that would burn for ever would be a gratification for which he might think it worth while to be thus brought again upon earth.

But to the harmless relic-mongers we owe much; much to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the Isaac Reids and the Malones, the Haslewoods and Sir Egertons. Individually, I owe them much, and willingly take this opportunity of acknowledging the obligation. And let no one suppose that Sir Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed among the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement for any man of letters, however great his endowments, and however extensive his erudition, to take part in those patient and humble labours by which honour is rendered to his predecessors, and information preserved for those who come after him.

But in every original work which lives and deserves to live there must have been some charms which no editorial diligence can preserve, no critical sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters, suffer much when removed from the places for which, (and in which, many of them,) they were painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-Master-General in Napoleon's armies, and have past from thence,—honestly as regards the purchaser,—to the hands of an English owner, may be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a different character; the air and odour of the place are different. There is not here the locality that consecrated it,—no longer the _religio loci_. Wealth cannot purchase these; power may violate and destroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, by those who have any true feeling for such things.

Literary works of imagination, fancy or feeling, are liable to no injury of this kind; but in common with pictures they suffer a partial deterioration in even a short lapse of time. In such works as in pictures, there are often passages which once possessed a peculiar interest, personal and local, subordinate to the general interest. The painter introduced into an historical piece the portrait of his mistress, his wife, his child, his dog, his friend, or his faithful servant. The picture is not as a work of art the worse where these persons were not known, or when they are forgotten: but there was once a time when it excited on this account in very many beholders a peculiar delight which it can never more impart.

So it is with certain books; and though there is perhaps little to regret in any thing that becomes obsolete, an author may be allowed to sigh over what he feels and knows to be evanescent.

Mr. Pitt used to say of Wilberforce that he was not so single minded in his speeches as might have been expected from the sincerity of his character, and as he would have been if he had been less dependent upon popular support. Those who knew him, and how he was connected, he said, could perceive that some things in his best speeches were intended to _tell_ in such and such quarters,—upon Benjamin Sleek in one place, Isaac Drab in another, and Nehemiah Wilyman in a third.—Well would it be if no man ever looked askant with worse motives!

Observe, Reader, that I call him simply Wilberforce, because any common prefix would seem to disparage that name, especially if used by one who regarded him with admiration; and with respect, which is better than admiration, because it can be felt for those only whose virtues entitle them to it; and with kindliness, which is better than both, because it is called forth by those kindly qualities that are worth more than any talents, and without which a man, though he may be both great and good, never can be amiable. No one was ever blest with a larger portion of those gifts and graces which make up the measure of an amiable and happy man.

It will not be thought then that I have repeated with any disrespectful intention what was said of Wilberforce by Mr. Pitt. The observation was brought to mind while I was thinking how many passages in these volumes were composed with a double intention, one for the public and for posterity, the other private and personal, written with special pleasure on my part, _speciali gratiâ_, for the sake of certain individuals. Some of these which are calculated for the meridian of Doncaster the commentators may possibly, if they make due research, discover; but there are others which no ingenuity can detect. Their quintessence exhales when the private, which was in these cases the primary intention has been fulfilled. Yet the consciousness of the emotions which those passages will excite, the recollections they will awaken, the surprize and the smile with which they will be received,—yea and the melancholy gratification,—even to tears,—which they will impart, has been one and not the least of the many pleasures which I have experienced while employed upon this work.

Πολλά μοι ὑπ᾽ ἀγκῶ–
–νος ὠκέα βέλη
Ἒνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας
Φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν.[1]

[Footnote 1: PINDAR.]

But while thus declaring that these volumes contain much covert intention of this kind, I utterly disclaim all covert malevolence. My roving shafts are more harmless even than bird bolts, and can hurt none on whom they fall. The arrows with which I take aim carry tokens of remembrance and love, and may be likened to those by which intelligence has been conveyed into besieged places. Of such it is that I have been speaking. Others indeed I have in the quiver which are pointed and barbed.

ἐμοὶ μὲν ὧν Μοῖσα καρτερώ-
-τατον βέλος ἀλκᾷ τρἐφει.[2]

When one of these is let fly, (with sure aim and never without just cause,) it has its address written on the shaft at full length, like that which Aster directed from the walls of Methone to Philip's right eye.

[Footnote 2: PINDAR.]

_Or' c'est assez s' estre esgare de son grand chemin: j'y retourne et le bats, et le trace comme devant._[3]

[Footnote 3: BRANTOME.]