Chapter V (6)

The general conclusion of Smith, with regard to insects and animals, is the common one, that their instincts and faculties all relate to this world, and that they have, properly speaking, no souls to be saved. But this position he states, illustrates and defends with more than ordinary metaphysical acuteness. If the discussion were not so sparklingly conducted, it would strike the reader as very able analysis and reasoning; but the mirthful fancy with which the whole is adorned, satisfies of itself, and seems to claim no additional praise for the argument it illustrates. The delicious sympathy of the humorist for all grades of being peeps out on every page, and no insect or animal is referred to without being lifted into the comic ideal. Thus he remarks that nature seems on some animals to have bestowed vast attention, “_and to have sketched out others in a moment, and turned them adrift_. The house-fly skims about, perches upon a window or a nose, breakfasts and sups with you, lays his eggs upon your white cotton stockings, runs into the first hole in the wall when it is cold, and perishes with as much unconcern as he lives.” Again, in speaking of that superiority of man over animals which comes from his longevity, he remarks: “I think it is Helvetius who says he is quite certain we only owe our superiority over the ourang-outangs to the greater length of life conceded to us; and that, if our life had been as short as theirs, they would have totally defeated us in the competition for nuts and ripe blackberries. I can hardly agree to this extravagant statement; but I think in a life of twenty years the efforts of the human mind would have been so considerably lowered, that we might probably have thought Helvetius a good philosopher, and admired his skeptical absurdities as some of the greatest efforts of the human understanding. Sir Richard Blackmore would have been our greatest poet, our wit would have been Dutch, our faith French, the Hottentots would have given us the model for manners, and the Turks for government.” He then adds that man’s gregarious nature is another cause of his superiority over all other animals. “A lion lies under a hole in the rock, and if any other lion happen to pass by they fight. Now, whoever gets a habit of lying under a hole in a rock, and fighting with every gentleman who passes near him, cannot possibly make any progress.”

The lecture on “Wit and Humor” is, perhaps, the most brilliant of all; but, though the definitions are keenly stated and the distinctions nicely drawn, we suppose that even Sidney Smith, fine wit and humorist as he is, has not settled the matter. It appears to us that the difficulty consists in considering wit and humor as distinct powers, instead of viewing them as modifications of other powers. The mental peculiarities which distinguish wit and humor are qualities equally of fancy and imagination. The difference is emotional, not intellectual; in sentiment, not in faculty. A man whose sentiment and feeling of the ludicrous is predominant, will naturally make his intellectual powers serve his mirthful tendencies. If he has a lively fancy he will be a wit; if he has a creative imagination he will be a humorist. We should say, generally, that wit was fancy and understanding, directed by the sentiment of mirth; and that humor was imagination and understanding, directed by the same sentiment. It will be found, we think, in all ingenious and creative minds, that their peculiar direction depends altogether on sentiment. Sometimes imagination is exercised in a department of thought or action so far removed from the fine arts, that we can hardly recognize the power in its direction. In metaphysics, in mathematics, in government, war and commerce, we often come in contact with thinkers of vast imaginations, who still may despise poets and artists, and be heartily despised by them. If a change in the form and purpose of imagination thus appears, to many minds, to change its qualities, and to demand new definitions, we need not wonder at the popular reluctance to admit wits and humorists into the band of poets, though fancy and imagination be equally their characteristics.

Although our notice of this delightful volume has extended beyond the space we can properly allow it, we take leave of its wise and witty pages with regret, heartily commending it to the leisure hours of every man who can relish vivid argument and brilliant good sense.

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_Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Suspiria de
Profundis. By Thomas De Quincy, Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1
vol. 12mo._

Thomas de Quincy has been well known during the last twenty years, not only as the author of “Confessions of an English Opium Eater”, but as a prominent contributor of able, thoughtful, and eloquent articles to Blackwood’s Magazine, and other British periodicals. The publishers of the present volume intend to follow it up with others, containing the best of his many remarkable historical, biographical, and critical papers. When completed, the series will constitute a body of thought which no student’s library can well be without, for the author’s learning extends over widely separated departments of literature and science, and in each he has proved himself capable of throwing out those suggestive thoughts which take root in the reader’s mind, and bear fruit. A resolute, inquisitive, and reflective student, richly dowered with understanding and imagination, and exercising great dominion over the harmonies and subtilties of expression, De Quincy has been prevented from producing little more than colossal fragments of thought, by the mastery obtained over his will by opium, and the contemptuousness of disposition which that habit provokes for calm, orderly, systematic works. He is dogmatic, negatively as well as positively. It is natural that a man who obtains glimpses of grand truths and magnificent systems, through artificial stimulants, should disdain the sober realizations of consecutive and industrious thought, wanting all that misty magnificence which clothes things viewed in the waking dreams of the opium eater. But egotist and dogmatist as he is, he is still a resolute thinker, whose mind, busy with all the problems of society and philosophy, is continually startling us with novel thoughts and splendid rhetoric.

In the first part of the “Confessions” there is one passage, describing a dream inspired by opium, which we cannot resist the temptation to extract, as it is one of the sublimest in English prose. “The dream,” he says, “commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams—a music of preparation and awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting—was evolved, like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams, (where we make ourselves central to every movement,) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad, darkness and light, tempest and human faces, and at last with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!”

“Suspiria de Profundis,” the conclusion of the Confessions, occupies about as much space as the original work, and has now, for the first time, been connected with it in the same volume. The style of the conclusion is even more majestic, visionary and resounding than the first portion, and is full of thrilling pictures and Macbeth “sights.” We hope that this volume will meet with a success so marked, as to induce the publishers to issue the remaining volumes of De Quincey’s miscellanies in rapid succession.

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_Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, Edited by William Beattie;
M. D., one of his Executors, New York: Harper & Brothers, 2
vols. 12mo._

Dr. Beattie’s work cannot take a high place in biographical literature, as far as it is to be judged by his own power of thinking and writing. He has, properly speaking, no conception of Campbell’s character; and the passage from one of his statements to the letter or anecdote which he adduces in its support, will indicate this to the least reflecting reader. Were it not for the richness of his materials his work would not be worth reprinting; but it has great value and interest from the number and variety of the private letters it contains. Campbell’s correspondence, though it evinces much nervous weakness of mind and a sensitiveness of vanity easily elated or depressed, has a peculiar raciness which wins and rewards attention; and, in addition to its own excellent qualities of wit and fancy, which delight of themselves, it furnishes much information relating to the literary men of the last fifty years.

Mr. Irving has written a very pleasing introduction to these volumes, characteristic equally of his delicacy, his good nature and his discrimination, and embodying several new anecdotes of Campbell. He says that Beattie’s life “lays open the springs of all his actions and the causes of all his contrariety of conduct. We now see the real difficulties he had to contend with in the earlier part of his literary career; the worldly cares which pulled his spirit to the earth whenever it would wing its way to the skies; the domestic affections, tugging at his heart-strings even in his hours of genial intercourse, and _converting his very smiles into spasms_; the anxious days and sleepless nights preying upon his delicate organization, producing that morbid sensibility and nervous irritability which at times overlaid the real sweetness and amenity of his nature, and obscured the unbounded generosity of his heart.” This praise, of course, must be considered due to the “Letters” rather than the “Life” of Campbell.

Lord Jeffrey, in a letter to Campbell, on the subject of “Gertrude of Wyoming,” very felicitously indicates the prominent faults of that exquisite poem, and of Campbell’s general artistic method. “The most dangerous faults,” he says, “are your faults of diction. There is a good deal of obscurity in many passages—in others a strained and unnatural expression—an appearance of labor and hardness; you have hammered the metal in some places till it had lost all its ductility. These are not great faults, but they are blemishes; and as dunces will find them out—noodles will see them when they are pointed to. I wish you had courage to correct, or rather to avoid them, for with you they are faults of over-finishing, and not of negligence. I have another fault to charge you with in private—for which I am more angry with you than for all the rest. Your timidity, or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves, but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiseled away from them.”

An interesting feature in this biography is the number of poems it contains not included in any edition of Campbell’s works, and the original drafts it gives of many of Campbell’s well-known productions. The “Battle of the Baltic” originally contained twenty-seven stanzas, and in that shape was enclosed in a letter to Scott. We extract a specimen of the omitted verses:

Not such a mind possessed
England’s tar;
’Twas the love of nobler game
Set his oaken heart on flame,
For to him ’twas all the same,
Sport or war.

All hands and eyes on watch
As they keep;
By their motion light as wings,
By each step that haughty springs,
You might know them for the kings
Of the deep!

’Twas the Edgar first that smote
Denmark’s line;
As her flag the foremost soared,
Murray stamped his foot on board,
And a hundred cannons roared
At the sign!

This Life of Campbell, and the Life of Southey, now in course of publication by the same house, are the best literary biographies we have had since The Life of Mackintosh, edited by his Son. We wish the Harpers would reprint the latter, as there has been no complete American edition of it ever published. It contains more matter than any similar work since Moore’s Life of Byron.

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_The National Cook Book. By a Lady of Philadelphia, a Practical
Housewife. Philada.: Robert E. Peterson. 1 vol. 12 mo._

This is, on all sides, admitted to be the very best of the many cook books that have been issued by the press of late years. The editor, be she whom she may, understands the art of preparing a delicious meal, of any material, it seems, and our taste has passed favorable judgment upon a fruit cake of most inviting look, and of quality the best. A lady, in whose judgment we have the most unbounded confidence, pronounces this “the only cook book worthy of a housekeeper’s perusal.”

Next to the intellectual feast, which is spread before the reader of Graham each month, we suppose, will come a snug breakfast, a glorious good dinner, or a cozy, palate-inviting supper of birds, with mushrooms. Now, without Peterson’s Cook Book, the meal cannot be perfection. Of this we feel convinced.

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_The Gallery of Illustrious American Daguerreotypes by Brady.
Engraved by D’Avignon. Edited by C. Edwards Lester, assisted by
an Association of Literary men. 205 Broadway, New York._

We have received the sixth number of this truly national work—the first and second we have before this noticed. The third, fourth and fifth numbers the publishers have omitted to send us. As we have before stated, this is a publication of great merit, and cannot fail to attract a liberal encouragement both in this country and abroad. The portraits are executed with wonderful fidelity, and are the best specimens of the lithographic art we have ever seen. Mr. Brady deserves much praise for his exact and skillful daguerreotypes, from which D’Avignon has produced these masterly “counterfeit presentments” of our great national characters. The selection from our living worthies have been well made. The publishers have not confined themselves to the faces of our elder public men long familiar in the print shops, but they have well chosen alike from the old and the young—those who have been long famous by past services, and those whose genius and precocious merit have excited a keen interest and a just pride in the heart of every American. This number is adorned by a life-like portrait of Col. Fremont; and the editor, Mr. Lester, has in this, as he has in those numbers which have preceded it, and which have been sent to us, given a brief and pointed sketch of the marvelous youth whose adventures in the camp of science outstrips the wildest tales of romantic daring. A work like this must prosper.

* * * * *

_The History of the Confessional. By John Henry Hopkins, D. D.,
Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1
vol. 12mo._

Dr. Hopkins is already well known as an Episcopalian writer of much merit and erudition, and the present work will add considerably to his reputation. It is acute, learned, and clear, going patiently over the whole historical ground of the dispute between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, and singularly candid and dispassionate in its tone and in its substance. We rarely see, in a controversialist, such decided opinions, in connection with so much intellectual conscientiousness.

* * * * *

_Doctor Johnson; His Religious Life and his Death. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This volume is evidently the production of some individual whose ambition to write a book was far greater than his ability to write a good one; the result is a compilation from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, made up from its most valueless and uninteresting portions, without the addition of any thing of importance by the compiler. Dr. Johnson, in his own time, had no power of communicating any of his own intellectual or moral life to his mental sycophants; and, judging from the present volume, we should suppose that this power was still wanting in his writings.

* * * * *

_The Pillars of Hercules; or a Narrative of Travels in Spain and
Morocco, in 1848. By David Urquhart, Esq., M. P. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo._

Of all the volumes of travels lately issued, this appears to us the most independent and intelligent. The author gives a new view of the social condition of Spain, and states some facts and opinions calculated to make us re-examine the notions commonly held of Spanish affairs. He is an acute observer of men, a scholar, a politician versed in the practical details of legislation and government, and a man who sees, feels, and thinks for himself. To those who have read Barrow and Ford the work will have great attractions.

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EDGAR A. POE.—We have on hand several articles, from leading writers of the country, upon the life and character of Edgar A. Poe, which we will find room for in the December number, in which we shall give an extra form, for the purpose of putting before the country these generous tributes to the dead poet and critic. The causticity of several of them will not be particularly relished by his immaculate defamers, who busy themselves in raking up his ashes to expose his defects to the gaze of the world.

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A DESERVED HONOR.—We see that at the late commencement of the Miami University, Ohio, the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon Professor John S. Hart, of the Philadelphia High School. It is a compliment very properly bestowed, and from an Institution which renders the honor of value.

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THE LAST CHANCE.—We desire to impress upon the attention of the subscribers to “Graham,” that if they desire our elegant Premium Plates, they should now remit either $3 for one year, or $5 for two years, or for two copies one year. In either case we furnish each subscriber _thus sent_, “_Christ Blessing Little Children_,” and “_The First Prayer_”—two beautiful engravings of large size.

_After the first of November_, the plate will be disposed of, and no premiums will thereafter be sent from this office.

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OUR PARIS FASHIONS.—Every mail brings us congratulations upon the superior finish and beauty of our Paris Fashion Plates. Our friends have opened their eyes to the fact, that “Graham” is the only magazine in America that incurs the expense of _original_ designs. All others are copies of the French plates, poorly done, and insufferably old. We should not mention the matter, but that efforts are made to deceive the magazine public by silly and unfounded boasting. The expense, which is several hundred dollars _extra_ each month, we cheerfully incur for the liberal subscribers to this magazine, whose cultivated taste would soon detect the bold impositions practiced upon others.

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LE FOLLET Paris, boul^{t}. S^{t}. Martin, 69. Chapeaux M^{lle}. Grafeton, r. de la Paix, 24—Fleurs de Chagot ainé, r. Richelieu, 73. Pardessus de la mais^{n}. S^{t}. Arnaud–Dentelles de Violard, r. Choiseul, 4. The styles of Goods here represented can be had of Mess^{rs}. L. J. Levy & C^{o}. Philadelphia and at Stewart’s, New-York. Graham’s Magazine, 134 Chestnut Street.]

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some spellings peculiar to Graham’s. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals used for preparation of the ebook.

page 202, and geologial descriptions ==> and geological descriptions page 203, amidst the minosas ==> amidst the mimosas page 204, when a bark ascending ==> when a barque ascending page 212, conquest of of Shivas ==> conquest of Shivas page 215, His bark stranding ==> His barque stranding page 216, safe and and sound ==> safe and sound page 225, there are Bachinalian ==> there are Bacchanalian page 225, genii and faries ==> genii and fairies page 226, within many degress ==> within many degrees page 228, among the lowley ==> among the lowly page 228, The hundreth psalm ==> The hundredth psalm page 229, shame to doggrel ==> shame to doggerel page 230, an argent bark ==> an argent barque page 231, what commisseration he ==> what commiseration he page 234, And now its ==> And now it’s page 236, added: [_To be continued._ page 239, laughed and teazed ==> laughed and teased page 241, its splendid to be ==> it’s splendid to be page 241, Blanch Forrester went ==> Blanche Forrester went page 241, delicious _Scottische_ ==> delicious _Schottische_ page 250, vaticanam Bodleianamgue ==> vaticanam Bodleianamque page 250, Onicus est nobis ==> Unicus est nobis page 253, As ambegris leaves ==> As ambergris leaves page 258, fowl have the the power ==> fowl have the power page 260, Pasiello, and other ==> Paisiello, and other page 260, OLD ’76 AND YOUNG ’47. ==> OLD ’76 AND YOUNG ’48. page 261, near the Piraus ==> near the Piræus page 263, delight of themselvs ==> delight of themselves