EDINBURGH REVIEW ON OXFORD. East Malling, 3d November, 1821. To the Editor of the Remembrancer. Sir, I AM much pleased with the two articles in the review department of your number for November, which I have just received. The two last summers I have taken a pretty extensive circuit through Scotland, and I really admire the country and esteem the people in many essential respects. But their vanity is excessive, and the presumptuous activity with which it is evident that they would interfere with us in England, is very reprehensible; for I have found them in general equally ignorant and prejudiced with respect to us, and especially with respect to our Church. Dr. Chalmers is an ingenious man, and an eloquent man in his way; but he wants ballast, and in every writing of his which I have read, he displays much more imagination than sound knowledge or correct judgment. I am happy, therefore, that you have taken up and exposed some of the very rash crudities which he has huddled together in the Christian and civic economy of large Towns." The Doctor is a good man, and a sincere man; but he exhibits a fair and striking specimen of the Scottish divine, whose divinity is made up of hasty scraps and patches, unadorned by sound learning and systematic reading; unaided by experience and by the reflection which results from experience. The doctrinal system of his church he maintains, and we cannot consistently quarrel with him for adhering to that, to which by his subscriptions he is bound; but he is to blame when, without any real knowledge of the subject, (so far as appears either from reading or from observation,) he lashes out his rude censures against the constitution, the governors, and the government of a church, which was originally founded, and has hitherto, by the good providence of God, been conducted by men of a very superior cast to him in every qualification which ought to distinguish a sound Christian theologian. This presumption on his part is the more extraordinary, as I have reason to believe from all I have seen or heard of him, that he is really a modest as well as a good man; while he shewed with equal boldness and candour, in the last General Assembly of his Church, that he was quite aware of and willing to allow the high claims of professional learning, by which the Church of England is so eminently distinguished-the which, if not misreported, he attributed to our distinction of ranks, to the emu- ̈ lation excited by the hope of reward, and to the leisure furnished by the dignities which urge that hope. I was not less pleased with your article intituled, "Reviewers Reviewed;" and my chief object in addressing you at present, is to direct and entreat your attention to a much more hostile article than that on which you have there commented in the "Edinburgh Review," No. 70. Art. III. p. 302-314. with the running title, "Classi cal Education." It is quite astonishing to me that Jeffery should have allowed the recollection of the dispute with Oxford to be revived in any shape; for it is universally allowed that his Review has nothing to brag of on that score; but to allow it to be revived by such a performance as that to which I refer, argues an excess of folly which I will never attribute to Francis Jeffery; and I only lament that the shadow of his name should add even a momentary currency to so much empty and wicked impertinence. There is in the piece in question a self-complacent pomposity of pretension to which we have been long accustomed in the Edinburgh Review; but it is a caricature, with more sound than sense--with a bombast which I would term boy ish; while the whole paper, (which is execrable for the hostility and personality of its allusions,) is utterly void of that point and power which, in the former years of the Edinburgh Review, gave currency even to that which we could not approve. Look at this article, I beseech you with attention, and expose, as it merits, the prodigious malice which it displays. That the writer is some disappointed Oxonian, I caunot doubt; and that the article was written under the impulse of the most vindictive passion, is obvious. "It is in these half open institutions," says this scurrilous libeller, "that enquiry would detect the true spirit of the monkish system in full and flagrant operation. Place power in the hands of a conceited, ignorant, illiberal recluse, and it asks no gift of prophecy to foresee the inevitable consequence. With feline attachment to localities, such a being soon contracts the prudish air and treacher ous propensities of the retromingent animal from which that narrow sentiment is imitated. No antiquated virgin more resembles her own tabby in duplicity, malice, and demureness. The sleek disguise of imbecility, the abuse of his miserable rights, the instinctive preservation of his apprehensive egotism from the contact of superior brilliancy, which he knows to be as little catching as gallantry itself, become the first objects in existence with this hater of a joke. The creature must be followed, sought and sued! taste must listen to its paradoxes, and talent tremble at its frown. Let a young man only abdicate the privilege of thinking, (to some no painful sacrifice,) and devote his whole body and soul to the sordid ambition of success, and the way to win,' with such electors, is no formidable problem. Our tyro may then approach the scene of action, secure that the judges will take good care that the race shall not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong? Hardy professions of im partiality are indeed held forth, to attract unwary merit, and selfish mediocrity, finds the most exquisite of all its gratifications in the momentary chance of harassing the talent it would tremble to confront. Who can be surprised if, under a system like this, genius and knowledge should so seldom strike a lasting root: or that the maturity which succeeds to a youth so prostituted, should produce by its most vigorous efforts, nothing better than obscene verses in a newspaper, or discourses upon predestination ?”– P. 311, 312. If this modest man or boy ever was, or ever shall become a candidate for any place of power or profit, it asks no gift of prophecy to foresee the inevitable consequence." Let his opponent's merit literally and moral, be as superior as possible, it is clear that nothing but success would satisfy such a candidate. In effect, it is this vile spirit of selfishness and egotism, by which, while he declaims against it, this writer is so completely dominated, which breeds so much mischief in public and in private life, and which renders so many candidates for fame and fortune, when they do not catch at once the object at which they aim, the eager zealots of faction, and the foul libellers of those institutions which have been the glory of our country. In reference to the exclusion of the Irish from fellowships, the libeller says, p. 311– "To the wisdom and humanity of this exception, it is clearly impossible to oppose a single argument. The brogue is such a black premeditated crime, that the misjudging infant who lisps those wilful accents, is fairly doomed to a youth of beggary; no ill-imagined training for a life of proscriptions." A viler and more impudent piece of radical jacobinism, we should scarcely expect to find among the common scraps of Hunt, Waddington and Co. The Irish, if they are excluded in Oxford, have a college of their own at home amply endowed, and a church too, of which the endowments, and the dignities, bear more than their relative proportion to those in England. But to reason with a writer who could indulge in such sarcasms, and bedaub his paper with such malignity, were worse than vain. I hope, indeed, when the passion of the moment subsides that he will feel more than in any circumstances I would willingly write; and if, after all, he should possess any portion of the talents and the character for which he takes credit, and which the matter of his paper compels me to doubt, he will blush deeply as long as he lives, when he recollects, even in secret, the odious and contemptible composition to which I have presumed to direct your attention. It is the malignity which pervades this paper which is peculiarly disgusting. This is its distinguishing feature. It even summons up our stalls, mitres, and fat benefices in contract with the lauded equality of the Scottish Church; while the author assures us, in reference to the "illustrious names which grace our (Scottish) academic annals that scholarships and fellowships, bursaries and exhibitions, if once founded in the northern universities, would be bestowed with similar good taste, and might produce an abundant harvest of emulative excellence." P. 310. Now from all which I know, or have heard, influence-private influence (frequently including that of the greatest men in the state,) has often at least; I will not say, because I do not know, always much more to do, and is oftener, unblushingly employed in Scottish appointments, than even this writer dare say or insinuate of our English universities. In reference to the Greek professorship of Glasgow, he is pleased to say, in a note, p. 308, "whoever may be elected to succeed him (Young,) we have no doubt that the choice will do honour to the judgment of the electors." Is there a comparative trial of talents and acquirements on such occasions in Stotland? I am quite ignorant on this head. However the reviewer promises fairly." We shall, look," says he, " upon the proceedings of the new professor with great interest and attention, &c." Who can doubt with such a gratuitous, cool and dispassionate superintentendant, that the Greek scholars of Glasgow will beat the mean monkish creatures of Oxford all to nothing? Itis a good joke, indeed, and he seems fond of a joke, for such an Edinburgh Reviewer, even with the aid of the whole corps, to assume such an office: I hope the University of Glasgow will be very grateful; and that the new professor will be very submissive to his self-constituted inspector; though from the specimen before me, I am inclined to doubt his talents, as much as his temper. I merely mean, Mr. Editor, to draw your attention to the article in question; which, after all, is probably unworthy of further notice. The malignity and the passion are so apparent, and withal so senseless, as to attach disgrace only to the writer, and to the journal which gives currency to his malice. It never can be injurious to the fair fame of Ox. ford, nor even to the reputation of those individuals who, though not named, are so evidently and so foully libelled. I am, Sir, A HUMBLE KENTISH CURATE. SACRED POETRY. t ON THE RESURRECTION. SONGS of triumph Israel sang, Thee they hymn'd with lute and lyre, High o'er Sinai's burning head. We for mightier wonders raise Thee, Messiah, thee we sing, ON THE SACRAMENT. By rising sense of guilt reprov'd, With heart by charity refin'd, All human passions laid at rest, O Thou, whose precious blood was spilt BENEDICITE. FROM THE 148TH PSALM. PRAISE the Lord, whose mighty wonders In the eastern skies ascending, Praise Him, glorious Orb of day: Ocean, round the globe extending, Praise Him o'er thy boundless way. Pines, that crown the lofty mountains, Beasts, through Nature's drear dominions, Praise Him where the wilds extend: Praise Him Birds, whose sounding pinions Up to heaven's gate ascend. Man below, the lord of nature, THE DISMISSAL AFTER SERMON. As Judah's Prophet, pleas'd of old So from this consecrated place, |