Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

whole, without any apprehension that they will complain of the length to which it will extend this article.

"Shakspeare, Milton, Locke, and Newton, are four names beyond competition superior to any that the continent can put against them.-It was a proof of singular and very graceful modesty in Gray, that, after bestowing upon Shakspeare a high eulogium in the Progress of Poetry, he did not, when proceeding to the character of Milton, rashly decide upon their relative merit. Every half-read critic affirms at once, according to his peculiar taste or the caprice of the moment, that one or the other is the superior poet; but when Gray comes to Milton, he only says,

[ocr errors]

"" Nor second he that rode sublime

Upon the seraph wings of ecstacy."

Dryden he assigns to an inferior class :

“Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of inferior race," &c.'

< The writer observed, that the German critics call Dryden a man walking upon stilts in a marsh.-Sir James:-" Depend upon it, they do not understand the language.-Shakspeare's great superiority over other writers consists in his deep knowledge of human nature. Châteaubriand says of him, Il a souvent des mots terribles. It has been thought by some, that those observations upon human nature which appear so profound and remarkable, may, after all, lie nearest to the surface, and be taken up most naturally by the early writers in every language; but we do not find them in Homer. Homer is the finest ballad-writer in any language. The flow and fullness of his style is beautiful; but he has nothing of the deep, piercing observation of Shakspeare."

The writer mentioned that he had been at St. Paul's, and spoke of the statues of Johnson, Sir William Jones, and others that he had seen there. Sir James:-" It is a noble edifice, to be sure, and we have some great men there; but it would be too much to expect that the glory of the second temple should equal that of the first. One country is not sufficient for two such repositories as Westminster Abbey.Boswell's Life of Johnson has given a wrong impression of him in some respects. When we see four large volumes written upon a man's conversation, through a period of forty years, and his remarks alone set down, of all those made at the time, we naturally take the idea that Johnson was the central point of society for all that period. The truth is, he never was in good society; at least, in those circles where men of letters mix with the fashionable world. His brutal, intolerant manners excluded him from it, of course. He met good society, to be sure, at the Literary Club and at Sir Joshua Reynolds's.— Gibbon was asked why he did not talk more in the presence of Dr. Johnson. Sir,' replied the historian, taking a pinch of snuff, I have no pretensions to the ability of contending with Dr. Johnson in brutality and insolence.""

"Sir William Jones was not a man of first-rate talent;-he had great

facility of acquisition, but not a mind of the highest order. Reason and imagination are the two great intellectual faculties, and he was certainly not pre-eminent in either. His poetry is indifferent, and his other writings are agreeable, but not profound. He was, however,

a most amiable and excellent man."

6

Speaking of the poets of the day, Sir James observed:- "I very much doubt whether Scott will survive long. Hitherto, nothing has stood the test of time, but laboured and finished verse; and of this, Scott has none. If I were to say which of the poets of the day is most likely to be read hereafter, I should give my opinion in favour of some of Campbell's poems. Scott, however, has a wonderful fertility and vivacity." It may be proper to add, that the allusion is here exclusively to the poetry of Scott. The Waverley novels were not generally attributed to him at the time when the remark was made.

"Rogers's Pleasures of Memory has one good line,—

The only pleasures we can call our own.'

It is remarkable that this poem is very popular. A new edition of it is printed every year. It brings the author in about 2007. per annum, and yet its principal merit is its finished, perfect versification, which one would think the people could hardly enjoy. The subject, however, recommends itself very much to all classes of readers.'

[ocr errors]

The writer commended highly the language of Sir William Scott's opinions. Sir James :-" There is a little too much elegance for judicial dicta, and a little unfairness in always attempting to found the judgement upon the circumstances of the case, perhaps slight ones, rather than general principles. Sir William is one of the most entertaining men to be met with in society. His style is by no means so pure and classical as that of Blackstone, which is one of the finest models in the English language. Middleton and he are the two best, in their way, of the writers of their period. Middleton's Free Inquiry is an instance of great prudence and moderation in drawing conclusions respecting particular facts from general principles. His premises would have carried him much further than he has gone. many fine passages in his Life of Cicero."

[ocr errors]

There are

Sir James said, that he had received from Mr. Wortman a collection of specimens of American eloquence, and that Mr. Wortman had given it as his opinion, that the faculty of eloquence was more general in America than in England, though some individual Englishmen might perhaps possess it in a higher degree. The writer remarked, that he thought our best orators but little inferior to the best orators of the present day in England; and mentioned Mr. Otis, Mr. Randolph, and Mr. Pinkney. Sir James::-" I have not seen any of Mr. Otis's speeches. I have read some of Randolph's, but the effect must depend very much on the manner. There is a good deal of vulgar finery. Malice there is, too, but that would be excusable, provided it were in good taste.—

"Mr. Adams's Defence of the Constitution is not a first-rate work. He lays too much stress upon the examples of small and insignificant States, and looks too much at the external form of governments, which is, in general, a very indifferent criterion of their character.

His fundamental principle of securing government, by a balance of power between two houses and an executive, does not strike me as very just or important. It is a mere puerility to suppose that three branches, and no more nor less, are essential to political salvation. In this country, where there are nominally three branches, the real sovereignty resides in the House of Commons. Two branches are no doubt expedient, as far as they induce deliberation and mature judgement on the measures proposed."

The writer mentioned Mr. Adams's opinion, (as expressed in a letter to Dr. Price,) that the French Revolution failed because the legislative body consisted of one branch, and not two. Sir James :-" That circumstance may have precipitated matters a little, but the degraded situation of the Tiers Elat was the principal cause of the failure. The entire separation in society between the noblesse and the professions, destroyed the respectability of the latter, and deprived them in a great degree of popular confidence. In England, eminent and successful professional men rise to an equality in importance and rank with the first nobles, take by much the larger share in the government, and bring with them to it the confidence of the people. This will for ever prevent any popular revolution in the country.-The Federalist is a well written work.

“The remarkable private morality of the New England States, is worth attention, especially when taken in connexion with the very moral character of the poorer people in Scotland, Holland, and Switzerland. It is rather singular, that all these countries, which are more moral than any others, are precisely those in which Calvinism is predominant," The writer mentioned, that Boston and Cambridge had in a great measure abandoned Calvinism. Sir James:-"I am rather surprised at that; but the same thing has happened in other places similarly situated. Boston, Geneva, and Edinburgh might once have been considered as the three high places of Calvinism, and the enemy is now, it seems, in full possession of them all. The fact appears to be a consequence of the principle of reaction, which operates as universally in the moral as in the physical world.-Jonathan Edwards was a man of great merit. His Treatise on the Will is a most profound and acute disquisition. The English Calvinists have produced nothing to be put in competition with it. He was one of the greatest men who have owned the authority of Calvin, and there have been a great many. Calvin himself had a very strong and acute mind.-Sir Henry Vane was one of the most profound minds that ever existed; not inferior, perhaps, to Bacon. Milton has a fine sonnet addressed to him,

66

Vane, young

in years, in sage experience old.” His works, which are theological, are extremely rare, and display astonishing powers. They are remarkable as containing the first direct assertion of the liberty of conscience. He was put to death in a most perfidious manner. I am proud, as a friend of liberty, and as an Englishman, of the men that resisted the tyranny of Charles I. Even when they went to excess, and put to death the king, they did it in a much more decorous manner than their imitators in France. Thomson says of them, with great justice, in his florid way,

"First at thy call, her age of men effulged," &c.

6.66

Eloquence is the power of gaining your purpose by words. All the laboured definitions of it to be found in the different rhetorical works, amount in substance to this. It does not, therefore, require or admit the strained and false ornaments that are taken for it by some. I hate these artificial flowers without fragrance or fitness. Nobody ever succeeded in this way but Burke. Fox used to say: I cannot bear this thing in any body but Burke, and he cannot help it. It is his natural manner. Sir Francis Burdett is one of the best of our speakers, take him altogether, voice, figure and manner. His voice is the best that can be imagined. As to his matter, he certainly speaks above his mind. He is not a man of very superior talents, though respectable.-Plunkett, if he had come earlier into parliament, so as to have learned the trade, would probably have excelled all our orators. He and counsellor Phillips (or O'Garnish, as he is nicknamed here,) are at the opposite points of the scale. O'Garnish's style is pitiful to the last degree. He ought by common consent to be driven from the bar.-Mr. Wilberforce's voice is beautiful; his manner mild and perfectly natural. He has no artificial ornament; but an easy, natural image occasionally springs up in his mind, that pleases very much.-Cicero's orations are a good deal in the flowery, artificial manner, though the best specimens in their way. We tire in reading them. Cicero, though a much greater man than Demosthenes, take him altogether, was inferior to him as an orator. To be the second orator the world has produced, is, however, praise enough.-Pascal was a prodigy. His Pensées are wonderfully profound and acute. Though predicated on his peculiar way of thinking, they are not on that account to be condemned. I dislike the illiberality of some of my liberal friends, who will not allow any merit to any thing that does not agree with their own point of view. Making allowance for Pascal's way of looking at things, and expressing himself, his ideas are prodigiously deep and correct.-Most of the apparent absurdities in theology and metaphysics are important truths, exaggerated and disfigured by an incorrect manner of understanding or expressing them; as, for instance, the doctrines of transubstantiation and of total depravity. Jacob Bryant was a miserable writer, though, for particular purposes, it was thought expedient at one time to sustain his reputation. He was guilty of a gross absurdity in attempting such a work as his principal one without any oriental learning, which he did not even profess. Yet Sir William Jones called him the principal writer of his time. This opinion quite takes away the value of Sir William's critical judgement."

The American booksellers have announced for publication, a selection from the works of this highly gifted man; and a hope is expressed, in which every reader will cordially participate, that measures will be immediately taken in this country, for collecting the whole of his works, acknowledged or anonymous, with such ⚫ of his manuscripts as are in a state for publication, and as large an amount of his correspondence as can be produced.' We want, to use Sir James's own expression, no 'huge narrative of a life' in which there were few events, a sort of literary funeral which he justly stigmatised as a tasteless parade',-but a well edited collection of his writings and remains, with a prefatory

We know not

memoir and such notes as may be requisite. whether a work of this description is in preparation it is due alike to the public and to the memory of the Author; and the pen of Mr. Jeffrey or Mr. Macauley could surely be commanded for this tribute of private friendship and public veneration. 'Non quia intercedendum putem imaginibus, quæ marmore, aut ære finguntur: sed ut vultus hominum, ita simulacra vultus • imbecilla ac mortalia sunt, forma mentis æterna.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Art. II.-The Biblical Cabinet; or Hermeneutical, Exegetical, and Philological Library. Vol. II. containing a Collection of Philological Tracts on the New Testament. Edited by John Brown, D.D. 12mo. pp. xiv. and 309. Edinburgh, 1830.

OUR pages have often shewn that we participate not in the faith or the fears (rather, might we say, the wishes) of those would-be prophets whose opinions have of late outraged theology, and disgraced the profession of religion, and whose forebodings are those of judgement, desolation, and ruin to the nations of the earth, and especially to the Christian Church. Amidst the darkness and the mysteries of providence, our firm faith is, that God is carrying on the great plan of his gospel, a universal melioration of mankind. In the sciences and the beneficent arts, in the external relations and the internal government of states, in moral principles and in religious activity, we see, on every side, awakenings, strivings, exertions, and success, at the very idea of which, or even but a small part of them, Bacon and Milton, Usher and Wilkins, Baxter and Howe, would have leaped for joy. The publication before us, in its external form as remarkably neat as its contents are richly useful, is a striking confirmation of our cheering position. True theology can rest only upon the impartial interpretation and the genuine sense of the Scriptures. This is an assertion which, in theory at least, every Protestant is ready to maintain: but honest practice according to this principle has not been so well established in any community of Christians, as the reason of the case and the consistency of profession would lead us to expect. At the Reformation, a glorious beginning was made, and bright examples were given. The true principles of interpretation, and their application to the Holy Writings, were grasped and boldly professed by Luther's master mind; and more completely still by our countryman, the martyr Tyndal, by Zuinglius, by Bucer, and, preeminently, by CALVIN. The religious public are by no means sufficiently acquainted with the merit of that great man as a Bible Interpreter. In taking up and using the proper instruments of grammatical explication, in the finest perception of results, in

« ForrigeFortsett »