Chapter II: Part 2

Franklin, when ambassador to France during the American war, frequently expressed his regret that the _corps de friseurs_ was not placed at his disposition, to fight the English; and that the money expended on hair-powder was not devoted to powder of more inflammable and explosive properties. The use of hair-powder, however, encouraged the landed interest,—a saving virtue; and if it raised the price of bread, there was, as the French king has it, the charity of the nation to supply the deficiencies of the poor—a right royal specimen of political economy.

Hair-dressing, moreover, had its indirect advantages, by encouraging literary propensities; many worthy persons took the opportunity of lining the inside of their heads, while the barber decorated its outward parts, who would never otherwise have found leisure for “improving the mind.” In those days, a play-book or a pamphlet was sure to be whitened, in every third page, by the contents of the powder-puff. Hairdressers were also serviceable to their species, by maintaining and diffusing a taste for anecdote. Even ministers of state were occasionally indebted to the _coiffeur_ for their principal knowledge of human nature, and for the better part of their wit.

The ministerial influence of barbers has ever been considerable. The grand sultan’s barber is, to this day, the pivot of affairs, the focus of revolutions, the ladder of rising fortunes, and the Tarpeian rock of functionaries on the wane. Under Louis the Fourteenth, the _coiffeurs_, male and female, were important personages; and they figure largely in the memoirs of that day. Martin la Vienne, and Mademoiselle la Borde, have become historical characters, as much as the heroes and beauties they dressed; and the “_coiffure à la paysanne_,” and “_les boucles de Montgobert_,” form epochs in the history of nations. Under the regency, an “_Encyclopédie Perruquière_” appeared, illustrating the mysteries of the craft by one hundred and twenty engravings of different orders of _perruques_, which gave the idea, some years afterwards, of a work on the same plan, by _Le Sieur le Gros_, _coiffeur_ to the court of Louis the Fifteenth. The solemn importance attached to this volume by its author, who announced it to the great Catherine of Russia, is an admirable satire on the frivolity of the day; the title was “_Livre d’Estampes de l’Art de la Coiffure des Dames Françaises, gravés sur les dessins originaux d’après mes accommodates, avec le Traité en abrégé d’entretenir et de conserver les Cheveux naturels_.”[7]—And yet Madame de Genlis says, “_Il y a quarante-cinq ans que les femmes auroient trouver de l’indécence à se faire coiffer par des hommes._”[8] M. Le Gros gave a still further dignity to the art, by opening an academy, which he divided into the same number of classes as the academy of sciences at Paris; and actually furnished it with thirty models, that were not exactly “_d’après l’antique_.”

Under Louis the Sixteenth, the hair-dressers are said to have been accompanied by _les physiognomistes_, who pronounced on the style to be adopted on each head, according to the nature of the countenance. One of these Lavaters of the toilet entering, with his employer, into the dressing-room of a new patient, fresh arrived from England, threw him into no small consternation by the earnestness of his scrutinizing regard. Full of John Bullish notions, of French tyranny, _lettres de cachet_, and, of course, of his own importance in the eyes of the government, the Englishman saw nothing in the penetrating looks of the artist, but _espionnage_ and “_à cul de basse fosse_:”—he was actually preparing for a knock-down blow, and a run, when the solemn figure relieved him from his fright, and left the room, exclaiming, “_Figure de marron, marronnez Monsieur._”

The revolution came, and kings and _coiffeurs_ fell together.—Nature vindicated her rights—hair-dressers lost theirs—and beauty and purity resumed their privileges under the name of Greek costume.

The enameller was also, in former times, a profession of much profit and occupation: not such enamellers as the Bones and Bates of the present day, nor as the Petitots of the past; but good tradesman-like artists, who kept shops well stored with enamelled snuff, patch, and rouge boxes, and every article of domestic usage, to which they could apply their art. Who, that ever rummaged her mother’s drawers, and found the watch-chains of her grandmother, ponderous as jack-chains, and fastened with hooks massy as flesh-forks, does not remember the enamelled trinkets suspended from it—eggs, anchors, bird-cages, and watch-boxes, with bottles for bergamotte, and beetles filled with thieves’ vinegar, (the _eau de cypre_, and the _mille-fleurs_ of the _belles_ of the last century, who always smelled like a pot of pomatum, or a pickled cucumber)?—the least prized of the senses has its march of intellect, _tout comme un autre_, and the strength of perfumes is no bad indication of the state of society.

But, alas, for the sciences! that they too should “bear but the perfume and suppliance of a moment;” and be brought in and out of fashion, like a _beret_ of Herbault, or a _robe_ of Victorine. Yet so it is, and was, and ever will be, as the wants and exigencies of society have occasion for the aid of different pursuits.

Towards the end of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, and the beginning of that of Louis the Fifteenth, (including the regency,) astronomy, taking the place of polemics, raged like an epidemic. Men, women, and children, leaving this world to take care of itself, got into “other and better worlds;” and wits, lost on earth, were all to be found, like Orlando’s, in the moon. Women’s eyes were no longer the only lights that helped poets to similes. Celestial bodies succeeded to terrestrial; Love, no longer blind, never appeared without a telescope; rendezvous were given in _bosquets_ and on terraces, to gaze on the “chaste cold moon;” hearts and planets disappeared together; and ladies were so intently engaged in studying the principles of Newton, that they forgot their own; and gave practical demonstration that, in going astray, women’s “stars are more in fault than they.”

But when Newton had ceased to act upon the imagination, by fresh discoveries of striking and impressive import, the astronomers became _mauvais ton_; and the Parisian women of fashion took to pet geometers, as the _pendants_ for their pet monkeys. D’Alembert became the Coryphæus of the French boudoirs; and the Tencins, and the Du Deffands fought for the possession of the least gallant man and the first geometrician of his age; who, in his turn, made way for chemistry and Lavoisier.

The English, who have been called a nation of shopkeepers, and who mingle trade even with their love of science, took to chemistry with an enthusiasm proportioned to its utility in the arts; much in the same way as the kings and nobles of a former age had brought alchemy into vogue, as an instrument of their avarice. Although natural history entered the lists with its experimental rival, and canvassed for vogue in the library of Sir Joseph Bankes, oxygen and hydrogen carried the field; and Sir Humphry Davy, with his class of aristocratic beauties in the west, was as much revered as the “_premier baron de la Judée_” is in the east.

Chemistry, however, has had its day; and the Ricardos and Malthuses have succeeded, to turn the heads of those, whom nature intended only to turn the heads of others—to be succeeded in the next generation by—God knows what. In France, the once popular electricity of Franklin, and the cognate study of the magnet, have given birth to the reigning folly of Mesmerism; and in England, the popular labours of the Hunters have terminated in the current vogue of craniology. Who can answer for it, that the necessities of no-popery may not revive the witchcraft of King James, and call to its aid the penal _dicta_ of some new Matthew Hale, for the better putting down of dangerous papists?

Even the divine arts, which are of all ages, have experienced the full versatility of human affairs. Protestantism made war upon the successors of the Raphaels; and great pictures went out, with great cathedrals and great palaces. Pitt dealt a severe back-handed blow to engraving; while wealth, snugness, and personal vanity, combined to give currency to portraits of gentlemen and ladies. Now, we have lithography opening a new career to genius and industry; and every day teems with fresh discoveries, all, more or less, influencing the destiny of the imitative arts.

Neither are the learned professions built upon a more solid foundation. Theology, notwithstanding the fashionable sanctity, is obsolete; law is at a considerable discount, and physicians are set on one side, to give place for the triumphal car of surgery. The fact is, that society, like nature, bent on its own great purposes, steadily pursues the course of its interests; and it sustains, for the moment, those pursuits, and those only, for which it has an immediate and pressing occasion. It is in vain that we look for the architectural skill which raised the ponderous temples of Egypt, or the more graceful, but less substantial, edifices of Greece. Mortar and Roman cement have substituted the Nashes and the Wyatvilles, for the _protégés_ of the Ptolemys and Pericles; and the reign of George the Fourth cannot, in physical possibility, become the age of Augustus. The house of brick, will never become the house of marble.

MR. OWEN’S TUNIC.

Talking the other day of small rooms and glaring lights, where all is in evidence, I made them my excuse for indulging in a tendency to make up my coterie of pleasant men and pretty women, and to keep out the twaddles of both sexes, for which I am much abused. It is not long since a philosophical friend of mine, one always deeply occupied in promoting the highest and best interests of society, by perfecting science in its most sublime and useful directions, called on me, and found me most frivolously, but earnestly, employed in filling up cards for a very small party. “I am come,” he said, “to ask a favour.” I started: for, delighted as at all times I am to improve my society by enlisting him amongst its members, I was yet terribly afraid he was going to ask leave to bring with him some of those young disciples, who flock to his class from all parts of Europe, but who (unless one could _ticket_ them) do not answer quite so well for a fashionable party, as for a laboratory or a dissecting room. I was really, therefore, never more relieved, than when I found it was not a card for my _soirée_ he wanted, but only my head, literally and truly my head;—that is, be it understood, when the commodity should no longer be of use to its owner. I readily gave him a _post-obit_ on the only productive estate I ever possessed, delighted to save my “at home” even at so capital an expense.

It would, however, be a mistake, to accuse me of aristocratical leanings with respect to society. Something I must have—worth, wit, rank, fashion, beauty, notoriety, or an old friend. I will take even a diamond necklace, or an hussar suit of regimentals, value one hundred pounds, with, or without the wearer: but I do not want what musical cognoscenti call “_perruque_;” because I have no spare space to fill up, no corners to cram, like people who have large houses.

_À propos_ to an untenanted uniform and an unappropriated necklace—by way of lion, I once hung up on the divisions of my bookcase a little tunic; and it made the _frais_ of my party, by giving rise to an infinity of fun, and some philosophical, though humorous, conversation. On the previous morning, the most benevolent, amiable, and sanguine of all philanthropists called on me, with a countenance full of some new scheme of beneficence and utility. It was Mr. Owen, of New Lanark, whose visits are always welcome in Kildare-street, though so “few and far between.”

As soon as we had sunk into our arm-chairs, and put our feet on the fender, and before we had got on the usual topics of parallelograms and perfectibility, New Lanark and a new social system, he began,

“My dear Lady Morgan, you are to have a party to-night.”

“To be sure, my dear Mr. Owen, and one made expressly for yourself. You are my lion: I hope you don’t mean to jilt me.”

“By no means; but I have brought you a better lion than I could prove.”

“I doubt that; but who is he? where is he?”

“In my pocket.”

“You don’t say so: is it alive?”

“Here it is,” said Mr. Owen, smiling; and drawing forth a little parcel, he unfolded and held up a canvas tunic, or chemise, trimmed with red tape.

“I want you,” he added, “to assist me in bringing into fashion this true costume of nature’s dictation, the only one that man should wear.”

“But woman, my dear Mr. Owen?”

“Or woman either, my dear Lady.”

“Consider, Mr. Owen, the climate!”

“Your face does not suffer from it.”

“But then again, the decencies?”

“The _decencies_, as you call them, Lady M——, are conventional—they were not thought of some years ago, when you were all dressed in the adhesive draperies of antiquity, like that beautiful group on your chimney-piece. You see there the children of Niobe wore no more voluminous garments than my tunic;—that lovely child, for instance, which Niobe is endeavouring to save from the shafts of Apollo. And yet none of your fine gentlemen or ladies are shocked by the definition of forms, which have ever been the inspiration of art. I assure you I have already got several ladies to try this tunic on—”

“Oh! Mr. Owen!!!”

“On their little _boys_, Lady Morgan; and if I could only induce you to try it—”

“Me, my dear Mr. Owen! You surely cannot suppose—”

“I don’t ask you to _wear_ it, Lady M——: all I beg for the present, is, that you will give it a trial, by showing it off at your party to-night—recommend it, puff it off!”

_Quitte pour la peur_, I promised to do so, to the utmost of my appraising abilities; and so we suspended the little chemise from the centre of my bookcase, under a bust of the Apollo.

“There!” said Mr. Owen, looking rapturously at the little model dress of future perfectibility, “there it is worthily placed! Such were the free vestments, that, leaving the limbs of the Greek athlete unrestrained, produced those noble forms, which supplied models for the Apollo of Belvedere.”

“It is certainly placed to great advantage, Mr. Owen,” I replied with a sigh, “but it gives my pretty library very much the look of Rag-fair, or a back parlour in Monmouth-street.”

“My dear Madam,” he replied, emphatically, “where the human race is to be benefitted, no sacrifice is too great.” And this sentiment, which is the governing principle of Mr. Owen’s life, may serve for his epigraph.

The little tunic, however, had a great success, and merited the well-known eulogium of Tam O’Shanter to a similar garment—

“Weil loup’d, cutty sark.”

ODD CONJUNCTIONS.

The accidents and incidents of travelling sometimes produce very odd conjunctions. When I arrived in Rome, I was in all the first bloom of proscription, brought upon me by my work on France, “_Femme à pendre, livre à brûler_;” and my introduction to the Buonaparte family, set the seal on my transgression in the eyes of their deputed persecutor, the Comte de Blacas, ambassador of France. Even the secretary’s secretary of the representative of his most Christian Majesty, was afraid to turn his diplomatic eyes to the side of the room where I stood, lest he should happen to _se compromettre_ in a furtive glance. On the occasion of one of the many splendid parties given by the Countess of C——, by which the hospitality of Ireland was maintained in the ancient capital of the Cæsars, his Excellency the Count de Blacas and myself got so wedged together in the crush at the drawing-room door, that the Italian groom of the chambers, in the breathless haste of his rapid annunciation, cried out _de haute voix_, “_Son Excellence l’Ambassadeur de France, et Lady Morgan._” “Holy St. Francis! what a _tête-à-tête_ was there!” The whole room was in a titter.

PRINCESS BORGHESE.

I was seated at breakfast one bright Roman-winter morning with the Princess Borghese, at her villa Paolina, near the Porta Pia, and within view of the ruins of the Prætorian barracks, when letters from the post were brought in. The Princess turned to the Chevalier ——, her agent and chamberlain, and requested him to read and answer one of them immediately; adding, “You know precisely what I ought to say, and will say it better than I can.”—“The Chevalier,” I said, as he retreated to an adjoining room, “appears to be an excellent person. It must be a great advantage, in your Highness’s present position, to have so tried an adherent of your family, to assist you with his experience and advice.”

“_Oui_,” she replied, “_c’est l’homme du monde le plus respectable. C’étoit le Chancelier pour mon Duché, car mon frère ne m’a pas donné de Royaume._”[9]

What a trait! How super-exquisite; but oh! for the careless _nonchalante_ air with which in the intervals of two sips of chocolate, “my brother did not give me a kingdom,” was uttered!

“Do this, and this,
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchize that.”

I give this dialogue, exactly as it was uttered. A veracious recital of the most ordinary conversation, goes beyond the effort of fiction; and there is nothing in the doctrine of possibilities, however extravagant, which is not equalled or surpassed by fact.

THE COUNSELLOR.

I was talking yesterday to a gentleman of the birth, parentage, and education, of Mr. Canning; all of which have been for ever misrepresented by the political enemies of that eminent man. “He was the grandson,” said my informant, “of the well known Counsellor Canning of Garva, who, as an Irishman, of ancient birth, large possessions, and as a member of the Irish legislature, was a person of the very highest consideration.”

“Then why do you call him counsellor, as a title of distinction.”

“Because in Counsellor Canning’s day, it was a distinction. A papist might have a noble descent, a large property, and an historical name, but he could not be a counsellor.”

Whatever marked the distinctive privileges of the Protestant ascendancy, was a grade in itself, a dignity guarded by the laws of the land, and an assurance of personal gentility. Up to the middle of the last century, all the liberal professions were closed against the Catholic gentry of Ireland; but it was a dignity to belong to the bar, even among protestants; for the candidate for its honours was obliged to study in London, which at that time was an affair of no inconsiderable enterprize and effort. The uncertain sea voyage, and long land journey, were attended with a heavy expense, some risk, and considerable labour. Wales being then inaccessible to carriages, that part of the journey was made on hired horses; and not less than three weeks were occasionally passed in the transit from Dublin to London. To be a counsellor, therefore, was in itself the mark of a certain considerable wealth and respectability.

“Counsellor,” is still prefixed as a title of distinction by the common people, and by all the second-rate Catholics, to the names of barristers; and even the feudal cognomen of “_the_ O’Connell” loses nothing by the professional dignity of counsellor, which the Kerry clients of that gentleman, the ex-subjects of his dynasty, never fail to give him.

A short time before the death of Grattan, “our husband and ourself” drove from the house of our old friend General C——, to pay a visit at Tenahinch. We had taken a wrong road, within a mile or two of that beautiful spot; and we stopped to inquire our way of an old woman, who sat spinning at a cabin door. “Pray, which is the road to Mr. Grattan’s?”

“Misther Grattan! Och, sorrow know myself knows, no, in troth, Mar’m.”

“What! not know where Tenahinch is?”

“Tinnyhinch, agrah! Och, it’s the counsellor’s yez are looking for; well, turn here, just to the right, and any body will tell yez where the counsellor’s is; just a stone’s throw from the Dargle. Sorrow one in the country but knows the counsellor’s.”

The counsellor, then, was the distinctive epithet by which the poor neighbours of Tenahinch best knew “the father of his country.” It was the title of his ascendancy; and power is always uppermost in the Irish mind.

How deeply has the iron of oppression entered into the soul of the Irish nation, and how much has a long misrule deteriorated the national intellect; substituting the conventional for the true, and rendering moral dignity and honesty of conduct almost physically impossible. Aristides himself, to say nothing of St. Anthony, could scarcely resist the temptations to corruption which arise from a divided population, and which are unknown in the worst governments of the continent. The protestant ascendancy, from the peer to the coal porter, form the true aristocracy of the land, and all else are serfs. The protestants are in Ireland, what the Normans were in England; only they have not seen the policy of a social fusion, which the more genial temperament of the French conquerors submitted to, in their intercourse with the Saxons. Oh! with how many warm Irish hearts and ardent Irish spirits I began life, who have since yielded to the baneful influence of this state of things, and cooled down to a more prudent consideration of their country’s wrongs, in relation to their own private interests. Yielding to a paltry and ephemeral ambition, they have looked down from the height of their official dignities upon the romance of patriotism, and condemned the expression of feelings, which it was once their pride to avow. How many who once shared such illusions, have afterwards shunned my sight, lest they should involve their interests in the proscription of one who loved their country, “not wisely but too well.” This is one of the severest penalties of life: death itself inflicts none so bitter. The penalties of nature bring their solace in their necessity: but what consoles for the terrible conviction of the frailty, and falling off from principle, of genius and sensibility; for perceiving, ere half our course is run, or, while we are maintaining ourselves a direct course, “steering right onward,”

“Each wave that we danced on at morning, glide from us,
And leave us at eve on the bleak shore alone.”

RIDICULE.

“Yes, I am proud—I must be proud to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me.”

I envy Pope the burst of honest triumph that produced these lines!

How long was he lashed, tortured, reviled, calumniated, and misrepresented in character, feeling, religion, person, and in all his ties and all his affections, before the author of Windsor Forest and the Universal Prayer produced his Satires and his Dunciad! Ridicule is an arm furnished by nature to wit, to defend it against the envy, hatred, and malice of vain, pretending, mediocrity; and the severity of its blows, has no doubt mainly contributed to the outcry against its legitimacy in the warfare of opinion. Dulness commenced its denunciation, and self-interest set the seal of reprobation upon it, by rendering it penal.

The validity of the legal objection against ridicule, seems to me wholly untenable; being founded on one of those “subterfuges,” in which Lord Kames tells us, that “lawyers delight.” The assumption that ridicule is no test of truth, has been received without examination, principally on account of its application to the detection of political and religious error. Notwithstanding the universal dislike to be shewn up, no one has dared directly to question the morality of satire as a corrective of manners, or to object to the poet’s magnificent boast of

“Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne.
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.”

In criticism also, ridicule is allowed, notwithstanding the supposed proximity of the sublime to the ridiculous. Even the murderous parody of “Oh! Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, oh!” has escaped the imputation of injustice, and of leading to false conclusions, on the merit of the original. But above all, a great deal of the logic of Euclid consists in the _reductio ad absurdum_, which differs from the ridiculous, only because there is nothing very humorous in the disparity discoverable in a man’s notions concerning angles and lines.

In strictness of speech, there is no test of truth, save the evidence of the senses; but whatever tends to bring our conceptions in comparison with realities, may be so called; and that ridicule may be so applied to this purpose is indisputable. It is indeed the especial merit of ridicule, that it addresses itself to the senses, or at least to those ideas which are the most closely connected with sensitive impressions. The ridicule of persons is purely demonstrative. It is an enumeration of accidents and qualities, more or less exaggerated for the sake of humorous effect, but, for the rest, substantially true, or believed to be so: otherwise the ridicule fails. To tax a man with absurdities of which he is not guilty, is not ridicule, but calumny. Ridicule of opinions can only consist in such a juxta-position of ideas, as makes their disparity ludicrously self-evident. That which is consistent and true, cannot be ridiculed.

Ridicule derives its efficacy from the responsive sympathies of the audience addressed. The ridicule of unknown persons excites no emotion. The ridicule of a known person, for qualities which he notoriously does not possess, is equally impotent. When Hone represented the British constitution by an inverted pyramid, resting on the crown at its apex, and supported by bayonets, the sensible image of instability he presented, found a prompt reflection in the public mind. He advanced, however, no novel statement. If a conviction had not pre-existed in public opinion of “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” his humour would not have told. Had he supported the tottering edifice with a printing press, instead of a bayonet, the misrepresentation would have been rejected with scorn.

Ridicule stands precisely on the same ground as graver arguments, being either the statement of a fact, or an inference drawn from one; and it is liable to the same abuses, and no more. Nothing is more common than for ridicule to address itself to vulgar prejudices; but what is there singular in this? Aristophanes (it is said) assisted in forwarding the judicial murder of Socrates, by personifying in his drama the false notions which were current in Athens respecting that philosopher. But Melytus and Anitus did precisely the same thing, and were equally successful through the employment of grave discussion; yet no one dreams of proscribing rhetoric and logic, because they were thus employed to make the worse appear the better cause. The common villainy in both cases was the falsehood of the matter objected. Had Socrates really spent his time in the pursuit of childish subtleties, the flea’s leap would have been no more than a fair exaggeration, as illustrative as it was pleasant. Just so, had he really corrupted the youth of the city, the sober, serious invective of his public accusers would have been equitable: the fault, in both instances, was not in the form, but in the _fond_.

There is, however, this essential difference in favour of ridicule, that the graver lie might be the entire fabrication of the accuser, and yet produce its effect; whereas the efficacy of the satire depends altogether on the pre-existing prejudices of the public, which it only illustrates. Ridicule, it is true, may lead to error, by the misapplication of acknowledged truths; as when trifling absurdities are employed to render virtue contemptible. A bishop’s wig is no ornament to the “human face divine,” but it would be eminently unfair to conjure up the ridiculous image, in mockery of the pious individual who may be compelled to adopt the costume; still more unjust would it be, if an inference were drawn against the religious system which flourishes beneath the shadow of that hairy portent. Such false inductions are not, however, less familiar to the most serious argumentations; and they are then, by so much the more dangerous, as the bad reasoning is less obvious to detection.

The general rejection of ridicule in dispute, rests upon the most flimsy of sophisms—the argument from abuse to use. But there are many persons who direct their objections against it in its application to religious subjects, on account of the weight and dignity of the theme.[10] This is a frank begging of the question. Dugald Stewart, in speaking of the Provincial Letters of Pascal, observes, that there are some truths in which ridicule is more powerful and convincing than reason. “The mischievous absurdities,” he says, “which it was Pascal’s aim to correct, scarcely admitted the gravity of logical discussion, requiring only the extirpation or the prevention of those early prejudices which choke the growth of common sense and conscience.”[11] Having, in his quality of a good protestant, a previous conviction or prejudice that the system of the Jesuits was false, Stewart readily admitted that the use of ridicule against it is fair. He would likewise have allowed, in all probability, a joke against Mahomet’s pigeon, or the miracle of his suspended coffin; but he would not, I suspect, have approved of the ludicrous exaggeration of Voltaire’s drama on David, or have suffered it to pass muster as a proof of the disparity between the facts of that king’s life and his pretensions to the character of the man after God’s own heart. Certain I am, my Lord Chief Justice would not let such a work go unpunished. The ideas illustrated in this sarcastic attack, are of the commonest order of moral conceptions; and Voltaire might have thought himself as much justified as Pascal, in “extirpating a prejudice which scarcely required the gravity of logical discussion,” by a ridiculous travestie: the offence then, if offence there be, lies in the mind of the judge, and in his conviction as to what is, or is not, sacred.

But the law in permitting grave discussion, permits the right of judgment on this presumed sacredness. The accused, therefore, cannot in equity be bound to the judge’s prejudice in the matter. If we are permitted to entertain a doubt of the truth of any proposition, we should in reason be allowed to put forth those arguments which we deem most convincing against it; and if we think a proposition beneath the gravity of logical discussion, there is no reason why we should be forced to confine ourselves to that mode of argument. The judge, however, takes the whole point at issue into his own hands. The ideas to be overturned, he asserts are not early prejudices, not contrary to common sense, and therefore they are too respectable to be confuted in any other way, than in Barbara or in Baralipton. In other words, he declares, that ridicule is a good instrument to extirpate all errors, except those which he cherishes himself; and that it is available against all the world, but the dogmas which are “pack and parcel” of his law, and are incontrovertibly established on its authority.

On this point, the Catholics and Protestants would be much at issue. Many a grave Protestant divine has chuckled over Erasmus’s jest concerning the “real presence” of the horse, he forgot to return to its owner.[12]

To a Catholic, convinced of the truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation, it would appear an indecent levity, and misapplied ridicule: “flat blasphemy.” Why then should this argument be lawful as levelled against transubstantiation, and yet be unfair as applied against the miraculous conception? Simply because he who is the strongest happens to be a Protestant, without being also an Unitarian.

Ridicule is, in reality, a species of argument very peculiarly applicable to test religious dogmas. The propositions which constitute the elements of a religious faith relate to “things not seen.” There are no sensible types with which to compare them; and it is only by comparing the ideas with each other, and detecting their incongruities, that error can be demonstrated. This is the especial province of ridicule. When Alexander set up for a god, the ludicrous decree of the Lacedemonian senate betrayed the absurdity of his pretensions better than the most studied argument. The ridicule of the pagan theology scattered through the works of Lucian is a perpetual demonstration of the incongruity of abstract propositions, by means of sensible images. Yet persecuting, narrow sectarians have not thought it beneath their dignity to claim this writer as a believer, and to use his arguments against their opponents, though they bitterly execrate Swift and Voltaire for treading in his steps.

It is this peculiar efficacy of ridicule, that has made its use so objectionable to partizans and exclusionists. The happiness of its illustration renders truths popular, which would remain the exclusive property of the learned, as long as the error to which they are opposed was involved in the intricacy of an abstract argument. The sensible image is a stepping-stone to the judgment of those, who, unused to dialectics, cannot thread the labyrinth of involuted ideas. Those who are interested in the credit of any particular doctrine are, in general, ready enough to compound for the dissent of the cultivated few: and they can bear with patience an argument, which, being beyond the calibre of the vulgar, is not likely to make many proselytes: but ridicule, being within the scope of all, brings absurdity home to the conviction of the meanest understanding. This is the secret of that hostility which the law manifests in the midst of its seeming candour, against certain attacks on the establishment. They are intelligible to all the world; and it is feared that their influence may be proportionate.

Whatever is incongruous and absurd, cannot emanate from a being pre-eminently wise and good. The internal evidence of such incongruity, is decisive against the pretensions of any religious system, in which it exists. Ridicule, therefore, goes to the fountain head of all false pretensions; and as one religion alone can be a real revelation from Heaven, it follows, that the partisans of all the others, have an immediate interest in putting down the use of a ready instrument for measuring their several errors. What is the sum of their argument? You may put forth cogent and conclusive reason as long as you please; but beware of ridicule; for that proves nothing. This excess of candour and forbearance is not entitled to the slightest credit. It may, perhaps, be objected, that ridiculous no-proofs will pass current with the lower classes for valid argument. To this I reply, first, that the lower classes are not so innocent and helpless: or if they are, let them be better taught: and secondly, that they are much more frequently the dupes of grave and plausible no-proofs, than of humorous misrepresentation; and that the argument, if good for any thing, goes against all discussion whatever.

The defenders of absurdity and error are not always in the same story: for they always cry out against the argument which happens to press them the most closely. The counsel of Geneva censured Rousseau’s gravity in attacking their religious notions; and asserted, in the teeth of the English law-maxim, that, “books, only written to turn into ridicule, are not, _by a great deal_, so reprehensible, as those which, without stepping on one side, go at once to the attack by dry reasoning.”[13] So much for the honesty of state dogmatists!

In advocating the lawfulness of ridicule, it is not necessary to advocate every instance in which it is employed. It is bad taste and buffoonery to put forward ludicrous ideas, out of season; and it is both bad feeling and bad policy, to insult the believer by a profane jest. A man is not, however, to be committed to Newgate on a point of taste, or treated like a felon for not having read the institutes of Quintilian. Those who would thus proscribe ridicule in their opponents, are by no means slow in using it against them. Not only ridicule, but scurrility and invective, are daily lavished against those who are objects of religious rancour. What was reprehensible in Voltaire becomes laudable in Piron; what was wrong in Swift was right in Rennell. A protestant bishop may crack a joke upon two non-ascendant religions with a single antithesis; but woe betide the man who is facetious upon the thirty-nine articles.

Within this sophism the lawyers have entrenched themselves, upon being driven, by public opinion, from an open and barefaced defence of persecution. By its assistance they are still enabled to fine or imprison, any one who presumes to question the truth of law-established dogma. It has taken some centuries to storm the outwork; how many will it take to capture the citadel!

LEGISLATIVE LITERATURE.

Lord C—f—n was very amusing to-day: every thing he said was cleverly said; full of information, and abounding in curious historic anecdote. I observe, that the elders of the English aristocracy have an amazing mass of historical knowledge. History is the mirror of aristocratical _amour-propre_. How I should read history if I were a Howard, or a Stanley, or a Russel! The knowledge of history is, besides, a part of the qualifications for an hereditary legislator; and, of necessity, it engages the attention of those nobles, who are not above, or beneath, all sense of duty and propriety. The mischief of it is, that their tastes and education lead them rather to anecdote, than to philosophy; and their knowledge consists more in facts, than in deductions. The ecclesiastical education of our English universities is at war with philosophy; and the great reject all philosophy that is not genteel and within bounds, like Paley’s. Dugald Stewart is their _ne plus ultra_. Of physiological philosophy, the philosophy of fact, they are usually ignorant. A single page of De Tracy would scare the whole House of Lords. Though they may very generally read the Heloise, they do not the less reject Rousseau’s other works, as too philosophical,—Rousseau, the least philosophical of thinkers, and as vehement a hater of philosophers, as the author of the Metromanie himself! “If,” said Lord L——, to his old friend, General C——, who wanted him to purchase a duplicate set of Voltaire’s works—“if I were to let your Voltaire into my house, I should expect the roof to fall and crush me.” Another lord, to compare great things with small, actually burned my France, having first called his whole household to witness the solemnity. From the beginning of time this flaming argument has been the favourite _court moyen_ with the powers that be. In this they do but follow the natural instinct which leads us to fear whatever we do not understand. Philosophy is, in truth, but a democratical piece of business: it knows nothing of castes and privileges: its object is only the happiness of mankind at large; and it mounts not to the sublimity of vested rights, the transcendentals of politics. But anecdotes, facts, and dates, the sayings and doings of our ancestors, are so useful, so imposing, so applicable to every thing and to nothing, they are so ornamental in discourse, and they so set off a debate!! What a figure they made in the discussions on the catholic question—the arguments of the E.’s, and the eloquence of the W.’s.

VICE REGAL PROGRESSES.

“Les ambassadeurs envoyés en France par les princes étrangers,
faisoient à Paris une entrée pompeuse et solemnelle. Cet usage
a subsisté jusque vers le milieu du dernier siècle: on ignore
pourquoi il a été aboli.”[14]

_Dict. des Etiquettes, par M. de Genlis._

I think however one may guess! The age of pompous and solemn ceremonies, like the age of chivalry, is over, and for ever; both belonged to times of ignorance and barbarism: and long before the great explosion from the revolutionary crater took place, public opinion and private comfort were undermining that mass of cumbrous forms, which weighed upon the feelings, tastes and enjoyments of the victims whose rank obliged them to submit to their galling infliction. If any now submit to the _gêne_ of gorgeous state, it must be in the irremediable dulness which produces the lowest order of pride, and which is more gratified by figuring in a procession, than in the page of history, to illustrate the records of their country.

The Irish Lord Lieutenants of the olden times were subjected to all the pageantry, privation and display which then distinguished the majesty they represented. From the very starting post of official initiation, they were called on to abandon all the personal ease and independence of private life. They left England, and returned to it, according to certain rules and forms, which it would have been _leze-majesté_ to have neglected. The interval of the commonwealth, had caused some of the forms of the vice-regal progress to be forgotten; yet in Charles the Second’s time, we find Lord Essex writing to a friend, to find out, if he is to return in the same state with which he departed, and to prepare him a black suit trimmed with black ribbons, to make his grand entry into London; even though he returned in a sort of disgrace. Sir John Perrot’s departure for the Lord Deputyship, as described by his quaint biographer, is a scene for a melodrame! He had received the queen’s orders to sail with, and command the fleet, sent to intercept the Spanish invaders directed against the Irish coasts, and “to interrupt the King of Spayne, and his Navie.”

“Then did Sir John Perrot prepare for that voiage, (to Ireland, by Waterford), with all convenient speede. He had with him fiftie men in orange tawny cloaks,” (think of that, ye _Brunswickers_; a Lord Lieutenant arriving in Ireland with fifty men in orange!!) “whereof divers were gentlemen of good birth and qualitie. Also he had a _Noyce_ of musicians with hym, being his own servants. He was served all in silver plate, with all things else suitable; and soe being royally furnished in all respects, he departed from London, about August, and going from thence, by barge, he had with him divers noblemen and gentlemen, who did accompany hym unto the shipps. As they lay in this barge, against Greenwich, where the Queene kept her court, Sir John Perrot sent one of his gentlemen on shore, with a diamond, in a token unto Mistres Blanche Parry, willing hym to tell her, that a diamond coming unlooked for, did alwais bring goode looke along with it: which the Queene hearing of, sent Sir John Perrot a fair jewell, hanged by a white cypresse; signifying withall that as longe as he wore that for her sake, she did believe, with God’s healpe, he should have no harme; which message and jewell Sir John Perrot received joyfully; and he returned answer to the Queene, that he would weare that for his soveraigne’s sake; and doubted not, with God’s favour, to returne her shipps in safetie; and either to bring the Spaniards if they came in his way, as prisoners, or else to sink them in the sea. Soe as Sir John Perrot passed bye in his barge, the Queen looking out at the window, shaked her fan, and put out her hand towards him; who making a low obeysance, put the scarfe and jewell about his necke, which the queen sent him. Being arrived at Gyllingham, where the queen’s shipps rode, Sir John feasted on shipboard such noblemen and gentlemen, as came with him thither.”

After enduring every misery and vicissitude, and “storms and contrary winds,” that the tyranny and caprice of the elements could inflict, after being obliged to put in by stress of weather, at Falmouth, Plymouth, and “soe sett sea to Ireland, and touched at Baltimore, and Waterford, and thereabouts, upon the Irish coast;” and having missed the Spanish ships, encountered pirates and chased corsairs “to the Coste of Flaunders,” and his ship striking ground on the Kentish Knocks, and being all but lost, the unhappy Lord Deputy found himself, one fine day, driven near Harwich, and so sailed back into the Thames, after a three months unprosperous voyage.

His second descent upon Ireland, though more successful, was scarcely less tedious. Contrast this vice-regal progress, when the wisdom of our ancestors was wisest, with the progress of a Lord Lieutenant in these degenerate times, when setting aside all precedents, and discarding all time-honoured authorities, the new viceroy steps into his carriage for Ireland, as if he were stepping into his chaise for a visit to Kew, skims along the macadamized roads at ten miles an hour, and mounting his steam-boat, crosses St. George’s Channel, without touching at Falmouth, Plymouth, Baltimore, or Waterford; and instead of finding himself at the end of three months in the mouth of the Thames, is in six hours comfortably seated at dinner in Dublin Castle, in an easy chair, cushioned with eider or iron, as the innovations of the day, for which our ancestors were wise in vain, may suggest.

I do not defend this levelling principle of accommodation and comfort, that spares so many risks of life, of health, and of time, incurred when men on leaving Dublin for London, made their will, and invoked the prayers of the church in crossing to Park Gate. I do not presume to doubt the superiority of the times, which Madame de Genlis so fondly regrets: I merely state the fact of the vice-regal progress in the older and wiser times, as compared with the same journey at the present epoch, when we have fallen upon evil men who make good roads, and upon evil times, which have produced steam engines, and steam boats, without reference or respect to the immutable order of things established either at, or before 1688.

BAD BOOKS.

“Je ferai quelque jour une apologie dans les formes, des plats
et mauvais livres. Ils sont sans prix pour un bon esprit.”[15]

GRIMM, p. 1. T. 3. p. 107.

“Il y a autant d’invention à s’enrichir par un sot livre, qu’il
y a de sottise à l’acheter. C’est ignorer le goût du peuple que
de ne pas hasarder quelquefois, de grandes fadaises.”[16]

LA BRUYÈRE.

I have just risen from perusing a tolerably accurate, but dull and unphilosophical censure of our modern literature. No more Miltons, no more Shakspeares, no more Bacons, and Jeremy Taylors!! One might as well lament that there were no more knights-errant and battering rams. Every age knows its own wants, and provides for them; and Milton would not probably succeed much better, were he to reappear in this nineteenth century, with a new Paradise Lost, than the Laureate, Robert Southey, Esq. has done with his Vision of Judgment. It must, indeed, be admitted, that if La Bruyère is right, our English booksellers are very inventive personages; for they produce more bad books than the rest of Europe put together. But there is also abundance of excellence afloat—of that precise excellence which society requires; and as the overflowing fertility of literature has generated a tact, prompt and accurate as an instinct, for discovering what books are to be bought and studied, what may be read, and what cast aside, the putting forth of nonsense and villainy is much less mischievous than is supposed. In fact, a man is drawn by a sort of elective attraction to the works which harmonize with his intellectual peculiarities, assort with his feelings, and dovetail with his wit, just as animals are drawn by nature to their appropriate bodily nourishment; and the frequency of bad books proves only that fools and knaves now employ their leisure in reading, instead of the more dangerous and brutal pastimes which occupied their predecessors.

This evil of bad books is no novelty. Whoever runs his eye over the catalogue lying on his library table, will be convinced, that in any age, the number of really useful and valuable works bore no very large proportion to the entire mass of literature. Men are apt to imagine, that Ovid, and Virgil, and Horace, had the field to themselves; but the “mad, melting, reciters of August” were, no doubt, as abundant in their day, as in the silver age of latinity, which so rapidly followed. The unrolling of the manuscripts of Pompeii has proved that “trash” preceded the invention of reviews, and belongs to an elder antiquity than that of “the Row:” and it may be questioned, whether, at the burning of the library at Alexandria, there were an hundred volumes utterly lost to the world, which were not more serviceable as fuel for the baths, than as food for the mind.

The first efforts of the press were expended in disseminating the accumulated errors of a thousand years, which had previously been in the exclusive possession of the few; and since then, each successive generation has pretty equally divided its time between refuting the mistakes of its predecessors, and popularizing and accrediting others of its own. Ignorance, pedantry, and bad taste, infect the earlier writers, notwithstanding their eloquence and energy. Their alchymy, their astrology, their witchcraft, were scarcely less mischievous, than their false morality and silly politics. Of theology it is dangerous to speak; but as every one will admit that whatever has been written without the pale of his own narrow sect, is pernicious error; and as what every body says must be true, the reader may draw his own consequence. Medicine, to this very day, continues a tissue of ill-understood facts, a chaos of false inferences and incongruous systems. The science of law is a nullity; and each particular code a standing monument of the barbarity and perversity of the species: and as for philosophy, why the less that is said on the subject the better. Of all the works of imagination, with which the press teemed during the last two centuries, how very few live and are read! History has ever been a record of errors, of party misrepresentation, and of mistaken views, passed through the cullender of the historian’s fancy: while, as to essentials, it is the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted by particular desire. Each generation, again, has had its harvest of pamphlets, embodying the corrupt interests and false views of the moment, which have fretted their little hour on the stage, and then have been consigned to the trunk-makers, pastry-cooks, and bibliomaniacs.

We are told that literature having become a matter of mercantile speculation, and authorship having acquired much pecuniary value, men are in haste to realize; so that, among the multitude of competitors, an author dreads to be anticipated; and hurries his crude thoughts before the public, lest, while he is digesting them, the market should change, and all chance of reward be cut off for ever. But if authors do not now “keep their piece nine years,” something must be attributed also to the quickened movements of intellect: writing, aye, and thinking also, are more easily performed than formerly; and a work is not always the worse for being thrown off at a heat.

Another cause for the multiplication of flimsy books, is the universality of authorship; and this fashion for writing is, at least, as good a fashion as that of driving coaches and beating the watch. When all sorts and conditions of persons publish, all sorts and conditions of persons must read; and the annual quality of publications, is less an exponent of the talent in the market, than of the _minimum_ of wit, sense and utility, beyond which the public will not buy. Let there arise a demand for any species of nonsense and absurdity, and there will be found a corresponding supply.

The last generation ran very much upon literary cobblers and poetic milk-maids. The present goes principally upon lords and honourables; and low as the “collective wisdom” may rate in the estimation of some persons, M. P. in a title page, is worth at least an extra hundred pounds. Amateur writing, like amateur fiddling, need not be of the very best. Those who are placed beyond the reach of great interests, have rarely strong passions; and if they trifle agreeably, they have done all that can reasonably be expected from them. The “degenerate race to come,” will, perhaps, read nothing but the works of those who put their mark to their MS., who write by deputy, and publish by dictation: or, perhaps, Mr. Babbage, improving on his calculating machine, will apply it to the purposes of general literature; and then authors, like coach-horses, may be displaced by steam engines; and “the trade,” emigrating to Manchester or Birmingham, may send opinions into the market _per_ sample, and manufacture doctrines of every shade and pattern, “as bespoke.” For this change we are not wholly unprepared. Already the study is converted into a counting-house; the ledger has become the true _primum mobile_ of intellect; and the rapid sale of a work is the signal for multiplying it, in all possible varieties, and in all sorts of spurious imitation. To-day, satirical poems are the vogue, to-morrow, _ottava rima_; the next day, books of the church, and the day after, the lives of demireps of both sexes. The Scotch robber so lately “your only wear,” is now falling into “the sere and yellow leaf;” and Heaven knows what embryo original is about to start a new idea, for the benefit of the writing community.