Chapter XV: Part 15

One great source of the universal admiration which this family of Novels has attracted, is their peculiar plan, and the distinguished excellence with which it has been executed. The objections that have frequently been stated against what are called Historical Romances, have been suggested, we think, rather from observing the universal failure of that species of composition, than from any inherent and constitutional defect in the species of composition itself. If the manners of different ages are injudiciously blended together,--if unpowdered crops and slim and fairy shapes are commingled in the dance with volumed wigs and far-extending hoops,--if in the portraiture of real character the truth of history be violated, the eyes of the spectator are necessarily averted from a picture which excites in every well regulated and intelligent mind the hatred of incredulity. We have neither time nor inclination to enforce our remark by giving illustrations of it. But if those unpardonable sins against good taste can be avoided, and the features of an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking, the very opposite is the legitimate conclusion: the composition itself is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a careless observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of the historians of his time and country. In this proud assembly, and in no mean place of it, we are disposed to rank the author of these works; for we again express our conviction--and we desire to be understood to use the term as distinguished from _knowledge_--that they are all the offspring of the same parent. At once a master of the great events and minuter incidents of history, and of the manners of the times he celebrates, as distinguished from those which now prevail,--the intimate thus of the living and of the dead, his judgment enables him to separate those traits which are characteristic from those that are generic; and his imagination, not less accurate and discriminating than vigorous and vivid, presents to the mind of the reader the manners of the times, and introduces to his familiar acquaintance the individuals of his drama as they thought and spoke and acted. We are not quite sure that any thing is to be found in the manner and character of the Black Dwarf which would enable us, without the aid of the author's information, and the facts he relates, to give it to the beginning of the last century; and, as we have already remarked, his free-booting robber lives, perhaps, too late in time. But his delineation is perfect. With palpable and inexcusable defects in the _dénouement_, there are scenes of deep and overwhelming interest; and every one, we think, must be delighted with the portrait of the Grandmother of Hobbie Elliott, a representation soothing and consoling in itself, and heightened in its effect by the contrast produced from the lighter manners of the younger members of the family, and the honest but somewhat blunt and boisterous bearing of the shepherd himself.

The second tale, however, as we have remarked, is more adapted to the talents of the author, and his success has been proportionably triumphant. We have trespassed too unmercifully on the time of our gentle readers to indulge our inclination in endeavouring to form an estimate of that melancholy but, nevertheless, most attractive period in our history, when by the united efforts of a corrupt and unprincipled government, of extravagant fanaticism, want of education, perversion of religion, and the influence of ill-instructed teachers, whose hearts and understandings were estranged and debased by the illapses of the wildest enthusiasm, the liberty of the people was all but extinguished, and the bonds of society nearly dissolved. Revolting as all this is to the Patriot, it affords fertile materials to the Poet. As to the _beauty_ of the delineation presented to the reader in this tale, there is, we believe, but one opinion: and we are persuaded that the more carefully and dispassionately it is contemplated, the more perfect will it appear in the still more valuable qualities of fidelity and truth. We have given part of the evidence on which we say this, and we will again recur to the subject. The opinions and language of the _honest party_ are detailed with the accuracy of a witness; and he who could open to our view the state of the Scottish peasantry, perishing in the field or on the scaffold, and driven to utter and just desperation, in attempting to defend their first and most sacred rights; who could place before our eyes the leaders of these enormities, from the notorious Duke of Lauderdale downwards to the fellow mind that executed his behest, precisely as they lived and looked,--such a chronicler cannot justly be charged with attempting to extenuate or throw into the shade the corruptions of a government that soon afterwards fell a victim to its own follies and crimes.

Independently of the delineation of the manners and characters of the times to which the story refers, it is impossible to avoid noticing, as a separate excellence, the faithful representation of general nature. Looking not merely to the litter of novels that peep out for a single day from the mud where they were spawned, but to many of more ambitious pretensions--it is quite evident that in framing them, the authors have first addressed themselves to the involutions and developement of the story, as the principal object of their attention; and that in entangling and unravelling the plot, in combining the incidents which compose it, and even in depicting the characters, they sought for assistance chiefly in the writings of their predecessors. Baldness, and uniformity, and inanity are the inevitable results of this slovenly and unintellectual proceeding. The volume which this author has studied is the great book of Nature. He has gone abroad into the world in quest of what the world will certainly and abundantly supply, but what a man of great discrimination alone will find, and a man of the very highest genius will alone depict after he has discovered it. The characters of Shakespeare are not more exclusively human, not more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those of this mysterious author. It is from this circumstance that, as we have already observed, many of his personages are supposed to be sketched from real life. He must have mixed much and variously in the society of his native country; his studies must have familiarized him to systems of manners now forgotten; and thus the persons of his drama, though in truth the creatures of his own imagination, convey the impression of individuals who we are persuaded must exist, or are evoked from their graves in all their original freshness, entire in their lineaments, and perfect in all the minute peculiarities of dress and demeanour.

* * * * *

Admitting, however, that these portraits are sketched with spirit and effect, two questions arise of much more importance than any thing affecting the merits of the novels--namely, whether it is safe or prudent to imitate, in a fictitious narrative, and often with a view to a ludicrous effect, the scriptural style of the zealots of the seventeenth century; and secondly, whether the recusant presbyterians, collectively considered, do not carry too reverential and sacred a character to be treated by an unknown author with such insolent familiarity.

On the first subject, we frankly own we have great hesitation. It is scarcely possible to ascribe scriptural expressions to hypocritical or extravagant characters without some risk of mischief, because it will be apt to create an habitual association between the expression and the ludicrous manner in which it is used, unfavourable to the reverence due to the sacred text. And it is no defence to state that this is an error inherent in the plan of the novel. Bourdaloue, a great authority, extends this restriction still farther, and denounces all attempts to unmask hypocrisy by raillery, because in doing so the satirist is necessarily compelled to expose to ridicule the religious vizard of which he has divested him. Yet even against such authority it may be stated, that ridicule is the friend both of religion and virtue, when directed against those who assume their garb, whether from hypocrisy or fanaticism. The satire of Butler, not always decorous in these particulars, was yet eminently useful in stripping off their borrowed gravity and exposing to public ridicule the affected fanaticism of the times in which he lived. It may also be remembered, that in the days of Queen Anne a number of the Camisars or Huguenots of Dauphiné arrived as refugees in England, and became distinguished by the name of the French prophets. The fate of these enthusiasts in their own country had been somewhat similar to that of the Covenanters. Like them, they used to assemble in the mountains and desolate places, to the amount of many hundreds, in arms, and like them they were hunted and persecuted by the military. Like them, they were enthusiasts, though their enthusiasm assumed a character more decidedly absurd. The fugitive Camisars who came to London had convulsion-fits, prophesied, made converts, and attracted the public attention by an offer to raise the dead. The English minister, instead of fine and imprisonment and other inflictions which might have placed them in the rank and estimation of martyrs, and confirmed in their faith their numerous disciples, encouraged a dramatic author to bring out a farce on the subject which, though neither very witty nor very delicate, had the good effect of laughing the French prophets out of their audience and putting a stop to an inundation of nonsense which could not have failed to disgrace the age in which it appeared. The Camisars subsided into their ordinary vocation of psalmodic whiners, and no more was heard of their sect or their miracles. It would be well if all folly of the kind could be so easily quelled: for enthusiastic nonsense, whether of this day or of those which have passed away, has no more title to shelter itself under the veil of religion than a common pirate to be protected by the reverence due to an honoured and friendly flag.

Still, however, we must allow that there is great delicacy and hesitation to be used in employing the weapon of ridicule on any point connected with religion. Some passages occur in the work before us for which the writer's sole apology must be the uncontroulable disposition to indulge the peculiarity of his vein of humour--a temptation which even the saturnine John Knox was unable to resist either in narrating the martyrdom of his friend Wisheart or the assassination of his enemy Beatson, and in the impossibility of resisting which his learned and accurate biographer has rested his apology for this mixture of jest and earnest.

"There are writers," he says (rebutting the charge of Hume against
Knox), "who can treat the most sacred subjects with a levity bordering
on profanity. Must we at once pronounce them profane, and is nothing
to be set down to the score of natural temper inclining them to wit
and humour? The pleasantry which Knox has mingled with his narrative
of his (Cardinal Beatson's) death and burial is unseasonable and
unbecoming. But it is to be imputed not to any pleasure which he took
in describing a bloody scene, but to the strong propensity which he
had to indulge his vein of humour. Those who have read his history
with attention must have perceived that he is not able to check this
even on the very serious occasions."--_Macrie's Life of Knox_, p. 147.

Indeed Dr. Macrie himself has given us a striking instance of the indulgence which the Presbyterian clergy, even of the strictest persuasion, permit to the _vis comica_. After describing a polemical work as "ingeniously constructed and occasionally enlivened with strokes of humour," he transfers, to embellish his own pages, (for we can discover no purpose of edification which the tale serves), a ludicrous parody made by an ignorant parish-priest on certain words of a Psalm, too sacred to be here quoted. Our own innocent pleasantry cannot, in this instance, be quite reconciled with that of the learned biographer of John Knox, but we can easily conceive that his authority may be regarded in Scotland as decisive of the extent to which a humourist may venture in exercising his wit upon scriptural expressions without incurring censure even from her most rigid divines.

It may however be a very different point how far the author is entitled to be acquitted upon the second point of indictment. To use too much freedom with things sacred is a course much more easily glossed over than that of exposing to ridicule the persons of any particular sect. Every one knows the reply of the great Prince of Condé to Louis XIV when this monarch expressed his surprize at the clamour excited by Molière's Tartuffe, while a blasphemous farce called _Scaramouche Hermite_ was performed without giving any scandal: "C'est parceque Scaramouche ne jouoit que le ciel et la religion, dont les dévots se soucioient beaucoup moins que d'eux-mêmes." We believe, therefore, the best service we can do our author in the present case is to shew that the odious part of his satire applies only to that fierce and unreasonable set of extra-presbyterians, whose zeal, equally absurd and cruel, afforded pretexts for the severities inflicted on non-conformists without exception, and gave the greatest scandal and offence to the wise, sober, enlightened, and truly pious among the Presbyterians.

The principal difference betwixt the Cameronians and the rational presbyterians has been already touched upon. It may be summed in a very few words.

After the restoration of Charles II episcopacy was restored in Scotland, upon the unanimous petition of the Scottish parliament. Had this been accompanied with a free toleration of the presbyterians, whose consciences preferred a different mode of church-government, we do not conceive there would have been any wrong done to that ancient kingdom. But instead of this, the most violent means of enforcing conformity were resorted to without scruple, and the ejected presbyterian clergy were persecuted by penal statutes and prohibited from the exercise of their ministry. These rigours only made the people more anxiously seek out and adhere to the silenced preachers. Driven from the churches, they held conventicles in houses. Expelled from cities and the mansions of men, they met on the hills and deserts like the French Huguenots. Assailed with arms, they repelled force by force. The severity of the rulers, instigated by the episcopal clergy, increased with the obstinacy of the recusants, until the latter, in 1666, assumed arms for the purpose of asserting their right to worship God in their own way. They were defeated at Pentland; and in 1669 a gleam of common sense and justice seems to have beamed upon the Scottish councils of Charles. They granted what was called an _indulgence_ (afterwards repeatedly renewed) to the presbyterian clergy, assigned them small stipends, and permitted them to preach in such deserted churches as should be assigned to them by the Scottish Privy Council. This "indulgence," though clogged with harsh conditions and frequently renewed or capriciously recalled, was still an acceptable boon to the wiser and better part of the presbyterian clergy, who considered it as an opening to the exercise of their ministry under the lawful authority, which they continued to acknowledge. But fiercer and more intractable principles were evinced by the younger ministers of that persuasion. They considered the submitting to exercise their ministry under the controul of any visible authority as absolute erastianism, a desertion of the great invisible and divine Head of the church, and a line of conduct which could only be defended, says one of their tracts, by nullifidians, time-servers, infidels, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. They held up to ridicule and abhorrence such of their brethren as considered mere toleration as a boon worth accepting. Every thing, according to these fervent divines, which fell short of re-establishing presbytery as the sole and predominating religion, all that did not imply a full restoration of the Solemn League and Covenant, was an imperfect and unsound composition between God and mammon, episcopacy and prelacy. The following extracts from a printed sermon by one of them, on the subject of "soul-confirmation," will at once exemplify the contempt and scorn with which these high-flyers regarded their more sober-minded brethren, and serve as a specimen of the homely eloquence with which they excited their followers. The reader will probably be of opinion that it is worthy of Kettledrummle himself, and will serve to clear Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham of the charge of exaggeration.

There is many folk that has a face to the religion that is in fashion,
and there is many folk, they have ay a face to the old company, they
have a face for godly folk, and they have a face for persecutors of
godly folk, and they will be daddies bairns and minnies bairns both;
they will be _prelates_ bairns and they will be _malignants_ bairns
and they will be the people of God's bairns. And what think ye of that
bastard temper? Poor Peter had a trial of this soupleness, but God
made Paul an instrument to take him by the neck and shake it from him:
And O that God would take us by the neck and shake our soupleness from
us.

Therefore you that keeps only your old job-trot, and does not mend
your pace, you will not wone at _soul-confirmation,_ there is a whine
(i.e., _a few_) old job-trot, and does not mend your pace, you will
not wone at _soul-confirmation,_ there is a whine old job-trot
ministers among us, a whine old job-trot professors, they have their
own pace, and faster they will not go; O therefore they could never
wine to _soul-confirmation_ in the mettere of God. And our old
job-trot ministers is turned _curates_, and our old job-trot
professors is joined with them, and now this way God has turned them
inside out, and has made it manifest and when their heart is hanging
upon this braw, I will not give a gray groat for them and their
profession both.

The devil has the ministers and professors of Scotland, now in a sive,
and O as he sifts, and O as he riddles, and O as he rattles, and O the
chaff he gets; And I fear there be more chaff nor there be good corn,
and that will be found among us or all be done: but the
_soul-confirmed_ man leaves ever the devil at two more, and he has ay
the matter gadged, and leaves ay the devil in the lee side,--Sirs O
work in the day of the cross.

The more moderate presbyterian ministers saw with pain and resentment the lower part of their congregation, who had least to lose by taking desperate courses, withdrawn from their flocks, by their more zealous pretenders to purity of doctrine, while they themselves were held up to ridicule, old jog trot professors and chaff-winnowed out and flung away by Satan. They charged the Cameronian preachers with leading the deluded multitude to slaughter at Bothwell, by prophesying a certainty of victory, and dissuading them from accepting the amnesty offered by Monmouth. "All could not avail," says Mr. Law, himself a presbyterian minister, "with McCargill, Kidd, Douglas, and other witless men amongst them, to hearken to any proposals of peace. Among others that Douglas, sitting on his horse, and preaching to the confused multitude, told them that they would come to terms with them, and like a drone was always droning on these terms with them: 'they would give us a half Christ, but we will have a whole Christ,' and such like impertinent speeches as these, good enough to feed those that are served with wind and not with the sincere milk of the word of God." Law also censures these irritated and extravagant enthusiasts, not only for intending to overthrow the government, but as binding themselves to kill all that would not accede to their opinion, and he gives several instances of such cruelty being exercised by them, not only upon straggling soldiers whom they shot by the way or surprized in their quarters, but upon those who, having once joined them, had fallen away from their principles. Being asked why they committed these cruelties in cold blood, they answered, 'they were obliged to do it by their sacred bond.' Upon these occasions they practised great cruelties, mangling the bodies of their victims that each man might have his share of the guilt. In these cases the Cameronians imagined themselves the direct and inspired executioners of the vengeance of heaven. Nor did they lack the usual incentives of enthusiasm. Peden and others among them set up a claim to the gift of prophecy, though they seldom foretold any thing to the purpose. They detected witches, had bodily encounters with the enemy of mankind in his own shape, or could discover him as, lurking in the disguise of a raven, he inspired the rhetoric of a Quaker's meeting. In some cases, celestial guardians kept guard over their field-meetings. At a conventicle held on the Lomond-hills, the Rev. Mr. Blacader was credibly assured, under the hands of four honest men, that at the time the meeting was disturbed by the soldiers, some women who had remained at home, "clearly perceived as the form of a tall man, majestic-like, stand in the air in stately posture with the one leg, as it were, advanced before the other, standing above the people all the time of the soldiers shooting." Unluckily this great vision of the Guarded Mount did not conclude as might have been expected. The divine sentinel left his post too soon, and the troopers fell upon the rear of the audience, plundered and stripped many, and made eighteen prisoners.

But we have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution. It is enough for our present purpose to observe that the present Church of Scotland, which comprizes so much sound doctrine and learning, and has produced so many distinguished characters, is the legitimate representative of the indulged clergy of the days of Charles II, settled however upon a comprehensive basis. That after the revolution, it should have succeeded episcopacy as the national religion, was natural and regular, because it possessed all the sense, learning, and moderation fit for such a change, and because among its followers were to be found the only men of property and influence who acknowledged presbytery. But the Cameronians continued long as a separate sect, though their preachers were bigoted and ignorant, and their hearers were gleaned out of the lower ranks of the peasantry. Their principle, so far as it was intelligible, asserted that paramount species of presbyterian church-government which was established in the year 1648, and they continued to regard the established church as erastian and time-serving, because they prudently remained silent upon certain abstract and delicate topics, where there might be some collision between the absolute liberty asserted by the church and the civil government of the state. The Cameronians, on the contrary, disowned all kings and government whatsoever, which should not take the Solemn League and Covenant; and long retained hopes of re-establishing that great national engagement, a bait which was held out to them by all those who wished to disturb the government during the reign of William and Anne, as is evident from the Memoirs of Ker of Kersland, and the Negotiations of Colonel Hooke with the Jacobites and disaffected of the year.

A party so wild in their principles, so vague and inconsistent in their views, could not subsist long under a free and unlimited toleration. They continued to hold their preachings on the hills, but they lost much of their zeal when they were no longer liable to be disturbed by dragoons, sheriffs, and lieutenants of Militia.--The old fable of the Traveller's Cloak was in time verified, and the fierce sanguinary zealots of the days of Claverhouse sunk into such quiet and peaceable enthusiasts as Howie of Lochgoin, or Old Mortality himself. It is, therefore, upon a race of sectaries who have long ceased to exist, that Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham has charged all that is odious, and almost all that is ridiculous, in his fictitious narrative; and we can no more suppose any moderate presbyterian involved in the satire, than we should imagine that the character of Hampden stood committed by a little raillery on the person of Ludovic Claxton, the Muggletonian. If, however, there remain any of those sectaries who, confining the beams of the Gospel to the Goshen of their own obscure synagogue, and with James Mitchell, the intended assassin, giving their sweeping testimony against prelacy and popery, The Whole Duty of Man and bordles, promiscuous dancing and the Common Prayer-book, and all the other enormities and backslidings of the time, may perhaps be offended at this idle tale, we are afraid they will receive their answer in the tone of the revellers to Malvolio, who, it will be remembered, was something a kind of Puritan: "Doest thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?--Aye, by Saint Anne, and ginger will be hot in the mouth too."

ON LEIGH HUNT

[From _The Quarterly Review_, January, 1816]

_The Story of Rimini, a Poem_. By LEIGH HUNT. fc. 8vo. pp. 111. London, 1816.

A considerable part of this poem was written in Newgate, where the author was some time confined, we believe for a libel which appeared in a newspaper, of which he is said to be the conductor. Such an introduction is not calculated to make a very favourable impression. Fortunately, however, we are as little prejudiced as possible on this subject: we have never seen Mr. Hunt's newspaper; we have never heard any particulars of his offence; nor should we have known that he had been imprisoned but for his own confession. We have not, indeed, ever read one line that he has written, and are alike remote from the knowledge of his errors or the influence of his private character. We are to judge him solely from the work now before us; and our criticism would be worse than uncandid if it were swayed by any other consideration.

The poem is not destitute of merit; but--and this, we confess, was our main inducement to notice it--it is written on certain pretended _principles_, and put forth as a pattern for imitation, with a degree of arrogance which imposes on us the duty of making some observations on this new theory, which Mr. Leigh Hunt, with the weight and authority of his venerable name, has issued, ex cathedra, as the canons of poetry and criticism.

These canons Mr. Hunt endeavours to explain and establish in a long preface, written in a style which, though Mr. Hunt implies that it is meant to be perfectly natural and unaffected, appears to us the most strange, laboured, uncouth, and unintelligible species of prose that we ever read, only indeed to be exceeded in these qualities by some of the subsequent verses; and both the prose and the verse are the first eruptions of this disease with which Mr. Leigh Hunt insists upon inoculating mankind.

Mr. Hunt's _first_ canon is that there should be a _great freedom_ _of versification_--this is a proposition to which we should have readily assented; but when Mr. Hunt goes on to say that by _freedom of versification_ he means something which neither Pope nor Johnson possessed, and of which even "they knew less than any poets perhaps who ever wrote," we check our confidence; and, after a little consideration, find that by freedom Mr. Hunt means only an inaccurate, negligent, and harsh style of versification, which our early poets fell into from want of polish, and such poets as Mr. Hunt still practise from want of ease, of expression, and of taste.

"_License_ he means, when he cries _liberty_."

Mr. Hunt tells us that Dryden, Spenser and Ariosto, Shakespeare and Chaucer (so he arranges them), are the greatest masters of _modern_ versification; but he, in the next few sentences, leads us to suspect that he really does not think much more reverently of these great names than of Pope and of Johnson; and that, if the whole truth were told, he is decidedly of opinion that the only good master of versification, in modern times, is--Mr. Leigh Hunt.

Dryden, Mr. Hunt thinks, is apt to be _artificial_ in his style; or, in other words, he has improved the harmony of our language from the rudeness of Chaucer, whom Mr. Hunt (in a sentence which is not grammar, p. xv) says that Dryden (though he spoke of and borrowed from him) neither relished nor understood. Spenser, he admits, was musical from pure taste, but Milton was only, as he elegantly expresses it, "_learnedly_ so." Being _learned in music_, is intelligible, and, of Milton, true; but what can Mr. Hunt mean by saying that Milton had "_learnedly_ a _musical ear_"? "Ariosto's fine ear and _animal spirits_ gave a _frank_ and exquisite tone to all he said"--what does this mean?-- a fine ear may, perhaps, be said to _give_, as it contributes to, an exquisite tone; but what have _animal spirits_ to do here? and what, in the matter of _tones_ and _sounds_, is the effect of _frankness_? We shrewdly suspect that Mr. Hunt, with all his affectation of Italian literature, knows very little of Ariosto; it is clear that he knows nothing of Tasso. Of Shakespeare he tells us, "that his versification escapes us because he _over-informed_ it with knowledge and sentiment," by which it appears (as well, indeed, as by his own verses), that this new Stagyrite thinks that good versification runs a risk of being spoiled by having _too much meaning_ included in its lines.

To wind up the whole of this admirable, precise, and useful criticism by a recapitulation as useful and precise, he says, "all these are about as different from Pope as the church organ is from the bell in the steeple, or, to give him a more decorous comparison, the song of the nightingale from that of the cuckoo."--p. xv.

Now we own that what there is so _indecorous_ in the first comparison, or so especially _decorous_ in the second, we cannot discover; neither can we make out whether Pope is the organ or the bell--the nightingale or the cuckoo; we suppose that Mr. Hunt knows that Pope was called by his contemporaries the _nightingale_, but we never heard Milton and Dryden called _cuckoos_; or, if the comparison is to be taken the other way, we apprehend that, though Chaucer may be to Mr. Hunt's ears a _church organ_, Pope cannot, to any ear, sound like the _church bell_.

But all this theory, absurd and ignorant as it is, is really nothing to the practice of which it effects to be the defence.

Hear the warblings of Mr. Hunt's nightingales.

A horseman is described--

The patting hand, that best persuades the check,
_And makes the quarrel up with a proud neck_,
The thigh broad pressed, the spanning palm _upon it_,
And the jerked feather _swaling_ in the _bonnet_.--p. 15.

Knights wear ladies' favours--

Some tied about their arm, some at the breast,
_Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest_.--p. 14.

Paulo pays his compliments to the destined bride of his brother--

And paid them with an air so frank and bright,
As to a friend _appreciated at sight_;
That air, in short, which sets you at your ease,
Without _implying_ your perplexities,
That _what with the surprize in every way_,
The hurry of the time, the appointed day,--
She knew _not how to object_ in her confusion.--p. 29.

The meeting of the brothers, on which the catastrophe turns, is excellent: the politeness with which the challenge is given would have delighted the heart of old Caranza.

May I request, Sir, said the prince, and frowned,
Your ear a moment in the tilting ground?
_There_, brother? answered Paulo with an _air_
Surprized and _shocked_. Yes, _brother_, cried he, _there_.
The word smote _crushingly_.--p. 92.

Before the duel, the following spirited explanation takes place:

The prince spoke low,
And said: Before _you answer what you can_,
I wish to tell you, _as a gentleman_,
That what you may confess--
Will implicate no person known to you,
More than disquiet in _its_ sleep may do.--p. 93.

Paulo falls--and the event is announced in these exquisite lines:

Her _aged_ nurse--
Who, shaking her _old_ head, and pressing close
Her withered _lips_ to _keep the tears_ that rose--p. 101.

"By the way," does Mr. Leigh Hunt suppose that the aged nurses of Rimini weep with their mouths? or does he mistake crying for drivelling?--In fact, the young lady herself seems to have adopted the same mode of weeping:

With that, a _keen_ and _quivering glance of_ tears
Scarce moves her _patient mouth_, and disappears.

But to the nurse.--She introduces the messenger of death to the princess, who communicates his story, in pursuance of her command--

Something, I'm sure, has happened--tell me what--
I can bear all, though _you may fancy not_.
Madam, replied the squire, you are, I know,
All sweetness--_pardon me for saying so_.
My Master bade _me_ say then, resumed _he_,
That _he_ spoke firmly, when he told it _me_,--
That I was also, madam, to your ear
Firmly to speak, and you firmly to hear,--
That he was forced this day, _whether or no_,
To combat with the prince;--'--p. 103.

The _second_ of Mr. Hunt's new principles he thus announces:

With the endeavour to recur to a freer spirit of versification, I have
joined one of still greater importance--that of having a _free and
idiomatic_ cast of language. There is a cant of art as well as of
nature, though the former is not so unpleasant as the latter, which
affects non-affectation.--(What does all this mean?)--But the proper
_language of poetry_ is in fact nothing different from that of real
life, and depends for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of
what it speaks. It is only adding _musical modulation_ to what a _fine
understanding_ might actually utter in the midst of its griefs or
enjoyments. The poet therefore should do as Chaucer or Shakespeare
did,--not copy what is obsolete or peculiar in either, any more than
they copied from their predecessors,--but use as much as possible an
_actual, existing language,_--omitting of course _mere vulgarisms_ and
_fugitive phrases_, which are the cant of ordinary discourse, just as
tragedy phrases, _dead idioms,_ and exaggerations of dignity, are of
the artificial style, and yeas, verilys, and exaggerations of
simplicity, are of the natural.--p. xvi.

This passage, compared with the verses to which it preludes, affords a more extraordinary instance of self-delusion than even Mr. Hunt's notion of the merit of his versification; for if there be one fault more eminently conspicuous and ridiculous in Mr. Hunt's work than another, it is,--that it is full of _mere vulgarisms_ and _fugitive phrases_, and that in every page the language is--not only not _the actual, existing language_, but an ungrammatical, unauthorised, chaotic jargon, such as we believe was never before spoken, much less written.

In what vernacular tongue, for instance, does Mr. Hunt find a lady's waist called _clipsome_ (p. 10)--or the shout of a mob "enormous" (p. 9)--or a fit, _lightsome_;--or that a hero's nose is "_lightsomely_ brought down from a forehead of clear-spirited thought" (p. 46)--or that his back "drops" _lightsomely in_ (p. 20). Where has he heard of a _quoit-like drop_--of _swaling_ a jerked feather--of _unbedinned_ music (p. 11)--of the death of _leaping_ accents (p. 32)--of the _thick reckoning_ of a hoof (p. 33)--of a _pin-drop_ silence (p. 17)--a _readable_ look (p. 20)--a _half indifferent wonderment_ (p. 37)--or of

_Boy-storied_ trees and _passion-plighted_ spots,--p. 38.

of

Ships coming up with _scattery_ light,--p. 4.

or of self-knowledge being

_Cored_, after all, in our complacencies?--p. 38.

We shall now produce a few instances of what "_a fine understanding might utter_," with "the addition of _musical modulation_," and of the _dignity_ and _strength_ of Mr. Hunt's sentiments and expressions.

A crowd, which divided itself into groups, is--

--the multitude,
Who _got_ in clumps----p. 26.

The impression made on these "clumps" by the sight of the Princess, is thus "musically" described:

There's not in all that croud one _gallant_ being,
Whom, if his heart were whole, and _rank agreeing_,
It would not _fire to twice of what he is_,--p. 10.

"Dignity and strength"--

First came the trumpeters--
And as they _sit along_ their easy way,
Stately and _heaving_ to the croud below.--p. 12.

This word is deservedly a great favourite with the poet; he _heaves_ it in upon all occasions.

The deep talk _heaves_.--p. 5.
With _heav'd_ out tapestry the windows glow.--p. 6.
Then _heave_ the croud.--_id_.
And after a rude _heave_ from side to side.--p. 7.
The marble bridge comes _heaving_ forth below.--p. 28.

"Fine understanding"--

The youth smiles _up_, and with a _lowly_ grace,
_Bending_ his _lifted_ eyes--p. 22.

This is very neat:

No peevishness there was--
But a _mute_ gush of _hiding_ tears from one,
Clasped to the _core_ of him who yet shed none.--p. 83.

The heroine is suspected of wishing to have some share in the choice of her own husband, which is thus elegantly expressed:

She had stout notions on the marrying _score_.--p. 27.

This noble use of the word _score_ is afterwards carefully repeated in speaking of the Prince, her husband--

--no suspicion could have touched him more,
Than that of _wanting_ on the generous _score_.--p. 48.

But though thus punctilious on the _generous score_, his Highness had but a bad temper,

And kept no reckoning with his _sweets and sours_.--p. 47.

This, indeed, is somewhat qualified by a previous observation, that--

_The worst of Prince Giovanni_, as his bride
Too quickly found, was an ill-tempered pride.

How nobly does Mr. Hunt celebrate the combined charms of the fair sex, and the country!

_The two divinest things this world_ HAS GOT,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!--p. 58.

A rural spot, indeed, seems to inspire Mr. Hunt with peculiar elegance and sweetness: for he says, soon after, of Prince Paulo--

For welcome grace, there rode not such another,
Nor yet for strength, except his lordly brother.
Was there a court day, or a sparkling feast,
Or better still--_to my ideas, at least!_--
A summer party in the green wood shade.--p. 50.

So much for this new invented _strength_ and _dignity_: we shall add a specimen of his syntax:

But fears like these he never entertain'd,
And had they crossed him, would have been disdain'd.--p. 50.

* * * * *

After these extracts, we have but one word more to say of Mr. Hunt's poetry; which is, that amidst all his vanity, vulgarity, ignorance, and coarseness, there are here and there some well-executed descriptions, and occasionally a line of which the sense and the expression are good-- The interest of the story itself is so great that we do not think it wholly lost even in Mr. Hunt's hands. He has, at least, the merit of telling it with decency; and, bating the qualities of versification, expression, and dignity, on which he peculiarly piques himself, and in which he has utterly failed, the poem is one which, in our opinion at least, may be read with satisfaction after GALT'S Tragedies.

Mr. Hunt prefixes to his work a dedication to Lord Byron, in which he assumes a high tone, and talks big of his "_fellow-dignity_" and independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we know not; perhaps the _dignity_ of a _fellow_; but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more unlucky in his pompous pretension to versification and good language, than he is in that which he makes, in this dedication, to _proper spirit_, as he calls it, and _fellow-dignity_; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the _stout-heartedness_ of being familiar with a LORD.

OF SHAKESPEARE

[From _The Quarterly Review_, October, 1816]

_Shakespeare's Himself Again! or the Language of the Poet asserted; being a full and dispassionate Examen of the Readings and Interpretations of the several Editors. Comprised in a Series of Notes, Sixteen Hundred in Number, illustrative of the most difficult Passages in his Plays_--_to the various editions of which the present Volumes form a complete and necessary Supplement_. By ANDREW BECKET. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 730. 1816.

If the dead could be supposed to take any interest in the integrity of their literary reputation, with what complacency might we not imagine our great poet to contemplate the labours of the present writer! Two centuries have passed away since his death--the mind almost sinks under the reflection that he has been all that while exhibited to us so "transmographied" by the joint ignorance and malice of printers, critics, etc., as to be wholly unlike himself. But--_post nubila, Phoebus!_ Mr. Andrew Becket has at length risen upon the world, and Shakespeare is about to shine forth in genuine and unclouded glory!

What we have at present is a mere scantling of the great work _in procinctu_--[Greek: _pidakos ex ieraes oligaelizas_]--sixteen hundred "restorations," and no more! But if these shall be favourably received, a complete edition of the poet will speedily follow. Mr. Becket has taken him to develop; and it is truly surprizing to behold how beautiful he comes forth as the editor proceeds in unrolling those unseemly and unnatural rags in which he has hitherto been so disgracefully wrapped:

Tandem aperit vultum, et tectoria prima reponit,--
Incipit agnosci!--

Mr. Becket has favoured us, in the Preface, with a comparative estimate of the merits of his predecessors. He does not, as may easily be conjectured, rate any of them very highly; but he places Warburton at the top of the scale, and Steevens at the bottom: this, indeed, was to be expected. "Warburton," he says, "is the _best_, and Steevens the _worst_ of Shakespeare's commentators"; (p. xvii) and he ascribes it solely to his forbearance that the latter is not absolutely crushed: it not being in his nature, as he magnanimously insinuates, "to break a butterfly upon a wheel!" Dr. Johnson is shoved aside with very little ceremony; Mr. Malone fares somewhat better; and the rest are dismissed with the gentle valediction of Pandarus to the Trojans--"asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran! porridge after meat!" With respect to our author himself, it is but simple justice to declare, that he comes to the great work of "restoring Shakespeare"--not only with more negative advantages than the unfortunate tribe of critics so cavalierly dismissed, but than all who have aspired to illumine the page of a defunct writer since the days of Aristarchus. As far as we are enabled to judge, Mr. Becket never examined an old play in his life:--he does not seem to have the slightest knowledge of any writer, or any subject, or any language that ever occupied the attention of his contemporaries; and he possesses a mind as innocent of all requisite information as if he had dropped, with the last thunderstone, from the moon.

"Addison has well observed, that 'in works of criticism it is absolutely necessary to have a _clear and logical head_.'" (p.v.) In this position, Mr. Becket cheerfully agrees with him; and, indeed, it is sufficiently manifest, that without the internal conviction of enjoying that indispensable advantage, he would not have favoured the public with those matchless "restorations"; a few specimens of which we now proceed to lay before them. Where all are alike admirable, there is no call for selection; we shall therefore open the volumes at random, and trust to fortune.

"_Hamlet_. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?"

This reading, Mr. Becket says, he cannot admit; and he says well: since it appears that Shakespeare wrote--

"For who would bear the _scores_ of _weapon'd_ time?"

using _scores_ in the sense of stripes. Formerly, _i.e.,_ when Becket was _in his sallad days_, he augured, he says, that the true reading was--

--"the scores of _whip-hand_ time."

Time having always the _whip-hand,_ the advantage; but he now reverts to the other emendation; though, as he modestly hints, the epithet _whip-hand_ (which he still regards with parental fondness) will perhaps be thought to have much of the manner of Shakespeare.--Vol. i, p. 43.

"_Horatio_.--While they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb, and speak not to him!"

We had been accustomed to find no great difficulty here: the words seemed, to us, at least, to express the usual effect of inordinate terror--but we gladly acknowledge our mistake. "The passage is not to be understood." How should it, when both the pointing and the language are corrupt? Read, as Shakespeare gave it--

--"While they _bestill'd_
Almost to _gelèe_ with the act. Of fear
Stand dumb," &c.--that is, petrified (or rather icefied) p. 13.

"_Lear_. And my poor fool is hang'd!"

With these homely words, which burst from the poor old king on reverting to the fate of his loved Cordelia, whom he then holds in his arms, we have been always deeply affected, and therefore set them down as one of the thousand proofs of the poet's intimate knowledge of the human heart. But Mr. Becket has made us ashamed of our simplicity and our tears. Shakespeare had no such "lenten" language in his thoughts; he wrote, as Mr. Becket tells us,

"And my _pure soot_ is hang'd!"

Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for _pure_; while the _s_ in _soot_ (sweet) was scarcely discernible from the _f_, or the _t_ from the _l_.--p. 176.

We are happy to find that so much can be offered in favour of the old printers. And yet--were it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred--we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder as it stood.

"_Wolsey_.--that his bones
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them."

A tomb of tears is ridiculous. I read--a _coomb_ of tears--a _coomb_
is a liquid measure containing forty gallons. Thus the expression,
which was before absurd, becomes forcible and just.--vol. ii, p. 134.

It does indeed!

"_Sir Andrew_. I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had'st
it?" Read as Shakespeare wrote: "I sent thee sixpence for thy
_lemma_"--_lemma_ is properly an _argument_, or _proposition assumed_,
and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.--p. 335.

"_Viola_. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy."--Correct it thus:

"She pined in thought
And with _agrein_ and _hollow_ melancholy."--p. 339.

"_Iago_. I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense,
And he grows angry"--

that is, or rather _was_, according to our homely apprehension, I have rubb'd this pimple (Roderigo) almost to bleeding:--but, no; Mr. Becket has furnished us not only with the genuine words, but the meaning of Shakespeare--

I have _fubb'd_ this young _quat_--_Quat_, or cat, appears to be a
contraction of cater-cousin--and this reading will be greatly
strengthened when it is remembered that Roderigo was really the
intimate of Iago.--p. 204.

In a subsequent passage, "I am as melancholy as a gibb'd cat"--we are told that _cat_ is not the domestic animal of that name, but a contraction of _catin_, a woman of the town. But, indeed, Mr. Becket possesses a most wonderful faculty for detecting these latent contractions and filling them up. Thus,

"_Parolles_. Sir, he will steal an egg out of a cloister." Read (as
Shakespeare wrote), "Sir, he will steal an _Ag_ (i.e., an _Agnes_) out
of a cloister." _Agnes_ is the name of a woman, and may easily stand
for chastity.--p. 325.

No doubt.

"_Carter_. Prithee, Tom, put a few flocks in Cut's saddle; the poor
beast is wrung in the withers out of all cess."

Out of all cess, we used to think meant, in vulgar phraseology, out of all measure, very much, &c.--but see how foolishly!

_Cess_ is a mere contraction of _cessibility_, which signifies the
_quality of receding_, and may very well stand for _yielding_, as
spoken of a tumour.--p. 5.

"_Hamlet_. A cry of players."

This we once thought merely a sportive expression for a _company of_ players, but Mr. Becket has undeceived us--"_Cry_ (he tells us) is contracted from _cryptic_, and cryptic is precisely of the same import as mystery."--p. 53. How delightful it is when learning and judgment walk thus hand in hand! But enough--

--"the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in its own deliciousness"--

and we would not willingly cloy our readers. Sufficient has been produced to encourage them--not perhaps to contend for the possession of the present volumes, though Mr. Becket conscientiously affirms, in his title-page, that "they form a complete and _necessary_ supplement to every former edition"--but, with us, to look anxiously forward to the great work in preparation.

Meanwhile we have gathered some little consolation from what is already in our hands. Very often, on comparing the dramas of the present day (not even excepting Mr. Tobin's) with those of Elizabeth's age, we have been tempted to think that we were born too late, and to exclaim with the poet--

"Infelix ego, non illo qui tempore natus,
Quo facilis natura fuit; sors O mea laeva
Nascendi, miserumque genus!" &c.

but we now see that unless Mr. Andrew Becket had also been produced at that early period, we should have derived no extraordinary degree of satisfaction from witnessing the first appearance of Shakespeare's plays, since it is quite clear that we could not have understood them.

One difficulty yet remains. We scarcely think that the managers will have the confidence, in future, to play Shakespeare as they have been accustomed to do; and yet, to present him, as now so happily "restored," would, for some time at least, render him _caviare to the general_. We know that Livius Andronicus, when grown hoarse with repeated declamation, was allowed a second rate actor, who stood at his back and spoke while he gesticulated, or gesticulated while he spoke. A hint may be borrowed from this fact. We therefore propose that Mr. Andrew Becket be forthwith taken into the pay of the two theatres, and divided between them. He may then be instructed to follow the _dramatis personae_ of our great poet's plays on the stage, and after each of them has made his speech in the present corrupt reading, to pronounce aloud the words as "restored" by himself. This may have an awkward effect at first; but a season or two will reconcile the town to it; Shakespeare may then be presented in his genuine language, or, as our author better expresses it, be HIMSELF AGAIN.

ON MOXON'S SONNETS

[From _The Quarterly Review_, July, 1837]

_Sonnets by_ EDWARD MOXON. Second Edition. London, 1837.

This is quite a _dandy_ of a book. Some seventy pages of drawing-paper-- fifty-five of which are impressed each with a single sonnet in all the luxury of type, while the rest are decked out with vignettes of nymphs in clouds and bowers, and Cupids in rose-bushes and cockle-shells. And all these coxcombries are the appendages of, as it seems to us, as little intellect as the rings and brooches of the Exquisite in a modern novel. We shall see presently, by what good fortune so moderate a poet has found so liberal a publisher.

We are no great admirers of the sonnet at its best--concurring in Dr. Johnson's opinion that it does not suit the genius of our language, and that the great examples of Shakespeare and Milton have failed to domesticate it with us. It seems to be, even in master hands, that species of composition which is at once the most artificial and the least effective, which bears the appearance of the greatest labour and produces the least pleasure. Its peculiar and unvaried construction must inevitably inflict upon it something of pedantry and monotony, and although some powerful minds have used it as a form for condensing and elaborating a particular train of thought--_an Iliad in a nutshell_--yet the vast majority of sonneteers employ it as an economical expedient, by which one idea can be expanded into fourteen lines--fourteen lines into one page--and, as we see, fifty-four pages into a costly volume.

The complex construction, which at first sight seems a difficulty, is, in fact, like all mechanism, a great saving of labour to the operator. A sonnet almost makes itself, as a musical snuff-box plays a tune, or rather as a cotton _Jenny_ spins twist. When a would-be poet has collected in his memory a few of what may have struck him as poetical ideas, he puts them into his machine, and after fourteen turns, out comes a sonnet, or--if it be his pleasure to spin out his reminiscences very fine--a dozen sonnets.

Mr. Moxon inscribes as a motto on his title-page four lines of Mr. Wordsworth's vindication of his own use of the sonnet-form--

In truth, the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to _me_,
In sundry moods 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the _sonnet's_ scanty plot of ground.