The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
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Title: The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey--Vol. 1 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
Author: Thomas de Quincey
Editor: James Hogg
Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18862]
Language: English
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THE UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS
OF
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
WITH A PREFACE AND ANNOTATIONS
BY
JAMES HOGG.
IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1890.
RICHARDCLAY& SONS, LIMITED, LONDON& BUNGAY.
PREFACE.
'The last fruit off an old tree!' This, in the words of WALTERSAVAGELANDOR, is what I have now the honour to set before the public in these hitherto 'UNCOLLECTEDWRITINGS OFTHOMASDEQUINCEY.' It was my privilege to be associated intimately with the Author some thirty to forty years ago—from the beginning of 1850 until his death in 1859.[1]Throughout the whole period during which he was engaged in preparing for the Press hisSelections Grave and Gay, I assisted in the task. Of the singularly pleasant literary intercourse of that memorable time I have given some reminiscences in Harper's Magazinefor this month. I may yet combine in a Volume with these some amusing, scholarly letters in my possession, and a Selection of Papers from the original sources, which I feel warranted, by the Author's own estimate, in callingDe Quincey's Choice Works. Meantime, in dealing with the various Essays and Stories here gathered together, I limit myself to such notes as are necessary to point out the special circumstances under which some of the papers were written; in others the nature of the evidence I have found as to the indisputable authorship. My special opportunities, derived from constant companionship and the continuous discussion with DE QUINCEYof matters concerning his writings, gave me the key to some of the admirable papers here reprinted. It also entitles me to say, that he would have included a number of them in his Collected Works alongside the Suspiria de Profundis(Sighs from the Depths), had he lived to continue his labours. When we find that most part of theSuspiria—perhaps the highest reach of his intellect in impassioned power —did not appear in theSelectionswill at once understand that, in the Author's own opinion,at all, the reader the Essays and Stories now first collected, were neither less dignified in purpose nor less finished in style than those which had passed under his hand in the fourteen volumes he nearly completed. Rather like the Suspiria, some of these papers were reserved as material upon the revision of which his energy might be fitly bestowed when health would permit.
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The interesting papers which appeared inTait's Magazineare all duly vouched for in that periodical. I have not touched any of the autobiographical matter which appeared inTait,—the Author having recast that as well as theSketches from Childhood, published inThe Instructorin the 'Autobiographic Sketches' with which he opened theSelections.The Casuistry of Duelling, indeed, appeared inTaitas part of the Autobiographic Series, but, practically, it stood as an independent paper. The touching personal passage in this article reveals the misery caused by the unbridled scurrility of certain notorious publications of the last generation. The paper onThe German Language in appearedTait in June 1836, and theBrief Appraisal of Greek Literaturein December 1838 and June 1839.
Two long and valuable papers onEducation; Plans for the Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers, which appeared inThe London Magazine for April and May, 1824, were duly authenticated by the following characteristic letter from DEQUINCEYto CHRISTOPHERNORTH. It appears inProfessor Wilson's Life, written by his daughter, MRS. GORDON:— 'London, Thursday, February 24th, 1825. 'MY DEARWILSON, 'I write to you on the following occasion:—Some time ago, perhaps nearly two years ago, Mr. Hill, a lawyer, published a book on Education, detailing a plan on which his brothers had established a school at Hazlewood, in Warwickshire. This book I reviewed in theLondon Magazine, and in consequence received a letter of thanks from the Author, who, on my coming to London about midsummer last year, called on me. I have since become intimate with him, and, excepting that he is a sad Jacobin (as I am obliged to tell him once or twice a month), I have no one fault to find with him, for he is a very clever, amiable, good creature as ever existed; and in particular directions his abilities strike me as really very great indeed. Well, his book has just been reviewed in the lastEdinburgh Reviewhave been in town about a week).(of which some copies This service has been done him, I suppose,throughsome of his political friends—(for he is connected with Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, old Bentham, etc.),—but I understandbyMr. Jeffrey. Mr. Hill, in common with multitudes in this Babylon—who will not put their trust in Blackwood as in God (which, you know, he ought to do)—yet privately adores him as the Devil; and indeed publicly too, is a greatprôneurof Blackwood. For, in spite of his Jacobinism, he is liberal and inevitably just to real wit. His fear is—that Blackwood may come as Nemesis, and compel him to regorge any puffing and cramming which Tiff has put into his pocket, and is earnest to have a letter addressed in an influential quarter to prevent this. I alleged to him that I am not quite sure but it is an affront to a Professor to presume that he has any connection as contributor, or anything else, to any work which he does not publicly avow as his organ for communicating with the world of letters. He answers that it would be so in him,—but that an old friend may writesub rosa. I rejoin that I know not but you may have cut Blackwood—even as a subscriber—a whole lustrum ago. He rebuts, by urging a just compliment paid to you, as a supposed contributor, in theNews of Literature and Fashion, but a moon or two ago. Seriously, I have told him that I know not what was the extent of your connection with Blackwood atany time; and that I conceive the labours of your Chair in the University must now leave you little leisure for any but occasional contributions, and therefore for no regular cognizance of the work as director, etc. However, as all that he wishes—is simply an interference to save him from any very severe article, and not an article in his favour, I have ventured to ask of you if you hear of any such thing, to use such influence as must naturally belong to you in your general character (whether maintaining any connection with Blackwood or not) to get it softened. On the whole, I suppose no such article is likely to appear. But to oblige Hill I make the application. He has nodirectinterest in the prosperity of Hazlewood; he is himself a barrister in considerable practice, and of some standing, I believe; but he takes a strong paternal interest in it, all his brothers (who are accomplished young men, I believe) being engaged in it. They have already had one shock to stand: a certain Mr. Place, a Jacobin friend of the School till just now, having taken the pet with it—and removed his sons. Now this Mr. Place, who was formerly a tailor—leather-breeches maker and habit-maker,—having made a fortune and finished his studies,—is become an immense authority as a political and reforming head with Bentham, etc., as also with theWestminster Review, in which quarter he is supposed to have the weight of nine times nine men; whence, by the way, in the "circles" of the booksellers, the Review has got the name of theBreeches Review.' ... [The writer then passes on to details of his own plans and prospects, and thus concludes.] 'I beg my kind regards to Mrs. Wilson and my young friends, whom I remember with so much interest as I last saw them at Elleray.—I am, my dear Wilson, 'Very affectionately yours, 'THOMASDEQUINCEY.'
In approaching the consideration of other papers said, in various quarters (with some show of authority) to have been written by DEQUINCEYact with extreme care. One was a painstaking list on the, it was necessary to whole, but very inaccurate as regards certain contributions attributed to DEQUINCEY inBlackwood. I have had the kind aid of MESSRS. BLACKWOODin examining the archives ofMagato settle the points in question.
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I was puzzled by some papers inThe London Magazine D down as setE QUINCEY'S in a contributions memorandum said to have been furnished by MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY, its Publishers. TheBlackwood blunders made me very sceptical. There was one story in particular—the long droll one ofMr. Schnackenberger; or, Two Masters to one Dog, about which I remained in doubt. I had a faint recollection that one day DEQUINCEYdwelt on the merits of 'JUNO,' and owned the story when he was discussing 'bull-dogs.' By the way, he was rather fond of 'bull-dogs,' and had some good anecdotes about them. It was a kind of pet-admiration-horror which he shared with SOUTHEY, on account of the difficulty in making a well-bred bull-dog relax his grip. Some member of the canine 'fancy' down at the Lakes had given them a so-called infallible 'tip' for making a bull-dog let go. I am sorry to say I have quite forgotten this admirable receipt. To be sure, one ought never to forget such valuable pieces of information. So I thought one day lately before the muzzling order came into force, when a bloodthirsty monster,—a big, white bull-dog, sprang suddenly at me in Cleveland Gardens. Instantly there flashed the thought—what was it that DEQUINCEYrecommended? A lucky lunge which drove the ferule of my umbrella down the brute's throat fortunately created a diversion, and allowed a little more time for the study of the problem. Perhaps I will be pardoned this digression, as it affords an opportunity of recording the fact that DEQUINCEYand SOUTHEYto the bull-dog as an animal ofboth looked up very decided 'character.' I was loth to abandonMr. Schnackenberger, but unwilling to lean too much on my somewhat hazy remembrance. It seemed almost hopeless to obtain the necessary evidence. MESSRS. TAYLORand HESSEYwere long dead, and after groping about like a detective, no one could tell me what had become of the records of The London Magazine. Suddenly there came light in October last. I ascertained that a son of one of the Publishers is the ANOEDCACHRof MSEXDDELI, the Venerable J. A. HESSEY, D.C.L. I stated the case, and the worthy ARCCHODNEAcame most kindly and promptly to my assistance. As a boy he remembered DEQUINCEY at his father's house, and recollected very well readingMr. Schnackenberger. He informed me, 'I was greatly interested in the [London] Magazine generally, so much so, that, at my father's request, I copied from his private list, and attached to the head of each paper the name of the Author.... This interesting set came to me at my father's death.' DR. HESSEY M subsequently presented the series to his old pupil, hadR. WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT (by whose courtesy I have been able to examine it)—'the grandson of WILLIAMHAZLITT, who was a frequent writer in the Magazine, and an old friend of my father. I thought he would like to possess it, and that it would thus be in fitting hands. I should not have parted with it in favour of any but a man like MR. HAZLITT, who was sure to value it.' As these valuable annotations of the AEAHDRCNOCin various directions—touching as they do the ramify contributions of many brilliant men of that period—it may not be amiss (as a possible help to others in the future) to add a few more decisive words by DR. HESSEY:— 'If any papers are not marked (he refers only to those volumes actually published by MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY) it was because they were anonymous, or because, from some inadvertency, they were not assigned in my father's list.So far as the record goes, it may be depended upon.' By its help I was able to fix the authorship by DEQUINCEYof (1)The Dog Story—translated from the German, (2)Moral Effects of Revolutions, (3)Prefigurations of Remote Events, (4)Abstract of Swedenborgianism by Immanuel Kant.
Another perplexing element was the letter written by DEQUINCEYto his uncle, COLONELPENSON, in 1819 (PAGE'S Life, vol. i. p. 207), wherein reference is made to certain contributions toBlackwood's Magazine andThe Quarterly Review. The archives ofMagaI find go back only as far as 1825. As toThe Quarterly Review, I have MR. MURRAY'S authority for stating that DE QUINCEY wrote a line in it. Whether any contributions were ever never commissioned, paid for, and afterwards suppressed, I have been unable to ascertain. As a matter of fact, the SchillerSeries referred to in the letter to COLONELPENSONwas never reviewed inThe Quarterlyat all. DEQUINCEY a Newspaper Editor forms the subject of a Chapter in P asAGE'S Life. Some extracts are there given from cuttings out ofThe Westmorland Gazette found amongst the Author's Papers. This editorship (1818-19) was of short duration, and pursued under hostile circumstances, such as distance from the Press, &c., which soon led to DEQUINCEY'Sresignation. I had hoped to add some further specimens of the newspaper work, but have not, as yet, obtained access to a file of the period. In any future edition I may be able to add this in an Appendix.
The Love-Charm.—In spite of the marvellous tenacity of DEQUINCEY'Smemory, even as to the very words of a passage in an Author which he had, perhaps, onlyonceread, there wereblankswhich confounded himself. One of these bore on his contributions to KNIGHT'S Quarterly Magazine. MR. FIELDS been so generally had
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careful in obtaining sufficient authority for what he published, in the original American edition, that DEQUINCEY good-humouredly gave the verdict against himself, and 'supposed hemustbe wrong' in thinking that some of these special papers were not from his pen. Still,—he demurred, and before including them inThe Selections Grave and Gayinquiry. Accordingly, about 1852, I was deputed to, it was resolved to institute an interview MR. CHARLESKNIGHT, and request his aid. My mission was to obtain, if possible, a correct list of the various contributions to theQuarterly Magazine, including thisLove-Charm. MR. KNIGHT, MR. RAMSAY(his first lieutenant, as he called him), and myself all met at Fleet Street, where we had the archives of the oldQuarterly Magazineturned up, and a list checked. I lately found this particular story also referred to circumstantially in the annexed paragraph contained in CHARLES KNIGHT'S Passages of a Working Life(THORNE'Sre-issue, vol. I. chap. x. p. 339). 'DEQUINCEYDecember 1824, in the belief that, as he expressed it, "many of your friendshad written to me in will rally about you, and urge you to some new undertaking of the same kind. If that should happen, I beg to say, that you may count upon me, as one of your men, for any extent of labour, to the best of my power, which you may choose to command." He wrote a translation ofThe Love-Charmof TIECK, with a notice of the Author. This is not reprinted in his Collected Works, though perhaps it is the most interesting of his translations from the German. In this spring and summer DEQUINCEYand I were in intimate companionship. It was a pleasant time of intellectual intercourse for me.' There is no doubtThe Love-Charmwould have been reprinted had the Author lived to carry theSelections farther.
The curious little EssayOn NovelsLady's Album, had passed out of M,—written in a R. DAVEY'Shands before I became aware of its existence. Thefacsimile, however, taken forThe Archivist, by an expert like MR. NRHETLECFITunquestionably, in the handwriting of D, shows that it is, EQUINCEYI have been unable to trace the. 'FAIRINCOGNITA' to whom it was addressed.
The compositions which were written for me when I editedTitanI now place before the public in, and which volume form, after the lapse of a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'), demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to theSelections Grave and Gay. Titanwas a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an enlarged form ofThe Instructor. I had become the acting Editor of its predecessor,the NewSeriesofThe Instructor, working in concert with my Father, the proprietor. In thisNewSeriesthere appeared from DEQUINCEY'SpenThe Sphinx's Riddle,Judas Iscariot, the Series ofSketches from Childhood, and other notable papers. At that time I was but a young editor—young and, perhaps, a little 'curly,' as LORD BAEOCSNIFLED D it. putE QUINCEYgood advice and valuable help, both in the selection of, with a truly paternal solicitude, gave me much subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of handling them. The notes onThe Lake Dialect,Shakspere's Text and Suetonius Unravelledme in the form of Letters, and published in, were written to Titan. Storms in English History a consideration of part of M wasR. FROUDE'S well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir in the literary world, and profoundly impressed DEQUINCEY. How to write English was the first of a series projected forThe Instructor. It never got beyond this 'Introduction,' but the fragment contains some matter well worthy of preservation . The circumstances attending the composition of the four papers onThe English in IndiaandThe English in ChinaI have explained at some length in the introductory notices attached to them., And now for a confession! The 'gentle reader' may, perhaps, feel a momentary inclination to blame me when I reveal, that I rather stood in the way of some brilliant articles which were very seriously considered at this period. DEQUINCEYwrite them, and I should have been glad indeed to have had them forwas eager to Titan, but for a fear of allowing the Author to wander too far from the ever-present and irksomeWorks. Any possible escape —even through other downright hard work, from this perplexing labour was joyfully hailed by him as a hopeful chance of obtaining a prosperous holiday. For a little I wavered under the temptation (Reader,—was it not great?)—the idea of having a little relaxation which would permit some, at least, of these well-planned papers to be written. But I was keenly alive to the danger which overtook us at last. We are daily reminded that 'art is long and life is short.' I had already saved theWorksfrom being strangled at their birth in a legal tussle with MR. JOHNTAYLOR.[2]My Father was at my elbow anxiously inquiring about the progress of the 'copy' for each succeeding volume. There were eager friends also, on both sides of the Atlantic, pressing resolutely for it. So—prudence prevailed, and we held as straightly on our way as the Author's uncertain health would permit. Thus it came to pass, dear Public, that you lost some charming essays, while you gained the fourteen
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volumes of theSelectionswhich the Author all but completed. Wherefore, seeing that you may possibly expect it of me to make some use of my rare opportunities by doing whatever I can in these matters, 'before the night cometh,'—I have prepared this book—ohne hast, ohne rast. I cannot close these few pages better than by quoting some strong, just, sympathetic words which appeared in two great reviews—one American, the other British. The North American Reviewsaid:— 'In DEQUINCEYwe are struck at once by the exquisite refinement of mind, the subtleness of association, and the extreme tenuity of the threads of thought, the gossamer filaments yet finally weaving themselves together, and thickening imperceptibly into a strong and expanded web. Mingled with this, and perhaps springing from a similar mental habit, is an occasional dreaminess both in speculation and in narrative, when the mind seems to move vaguely round in vast returning circles. The thoughts catch hold of nothing, but are heaved and tossed like masses of cloud by the wind. An incident of trivial import is turned and turned to catch the light of every possible consequence, and so magnified as to become portentous and terrible.'
'A barren and trivial fact, under the power of that life-giving hand, shoots out on all sides into waving branches and green leaves, and odoriferous flowers. It is not the fact that interests us, but the mind working upon it, investing it with mock-heroic dignity, or rendering it illustrative of really serious principles; or, with the true insight of genius, discovering, in that which a vulgar eye would despise, the germs of grandeur and beauty; the passions of war in the contests of the rival factions of schoolboys, the tragedy in every peasant's death-bed. '
'DEQUINCEYconstantly amazes us by the amount and diversity of his learning. Two or three of the minor papers in the collected volumes are absolutely loaded with the life spoils of their author's scholarship, yet carry their burden as lightly as our bodies sustain the weight of the circumambient atmosphere. So perfect is his tact in finding, or rather making a place for everything, that, while inviting, he eludes the charge of pedantry.'
'It is scarcely to be expected that one who tries his hand at so many kinds of pencraft should always excel; yet such is the force of DEQUINCEY'Sand the charm of his style, that heintellect, the brilliancy of his imagination, throws a new and peculiar interest over every subject which he discusses, while his fictitious narratives in general rivet the attention of the reader with a power not easily resisted.' The Quarterly Reviewsaid:— 'DEQUINCEY'Sstyle is superb, his powers of reasoning unsurpassed, his imagination is warm and brilliant, and his humour both masculine and delicate.' The writer continues:— 'A great master of English composition, a critic of uncommon delicacy, an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions, a philosophic inquirer—DE QUINCEY has departed from us full of years, and left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic vigour of his logic, form a combination which centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study as one of the marvels of English Literature. ' JAMESHOGG.
London, February, 1890.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST-PRETENSIONS THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS
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23 91 130 132
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MEASURE OF VALUE LETTER IN REPLY TO HAZLITT CONCERNING THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF POPULATION THE SERVICES OF MR. RICARDO TO THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY EDUCATION, AND CASE OF APPEAL ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON THE LAKE DIALECT
STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY THE ENGLISH IN INDIA
ON NOVELS (WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM) DE QUINCEY'S PORTRAIT
A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST PRETENSIONS:
By way of Counsel to Adults who are hesitating as to the Propriety of Studying the Greek Language with a view to the Literature; and by way of consolation to those whom circumstances have obliged to lay aside that plan.
No. I.
134 141 154 160 215 225 265 275 298 354 357
No question has been coming up at intervals for reconsideration more frequently than that which respects the comparative pretensions of Pagan (viz. Greek and Roman) Literature on the one side, and Modern (that is, the Literature of Christendom) on the other. Being brought uniformly before unjust tribunals—that is, tribunals corrupted and bribed by their own vanity—it is not wonderful that this great question should have been stifled and overlaid with peremptory decrees, dogmatically cutting the knot rather than skilfully untying it, as often as it has been moved afresh, and put upon the roll for a re-hearing. It is no mystery to those who are in the secret, and who can lay A and B together, why it should have happened that the most interesting of all literary questions, and the most comprehensive (for it includes most others, and some special to itself), has, in the first place, never been pleaded in a style of dignity, of philosophic precision, of feeling, or of research, proportioned to its own merits, and to the numerous 'issues' (forensically speaking) depending upon it; nor, in the second place, has ever received such an adjudication as was satisfactoryeven at the moment. For, be it remembered, after all, that any provisional adjudication—one growing out of the fashion or taste of a single era—could not, at any rate, be binding for a different era. A judgment which met the approbation of Spenser could hardly have satisfied Dryden; nor another which satisfied Pope, have been recognised as authentic by us of the year 1838. It is the normal or exemplary condition of the human mind, its ideal condition, not its abnormal condition, as seen in the transitory modes and fashions of its taste or its opinions, which only
'Can lay great bases for eternity,'
or give even a colourable permanence to any decision in a matter so large, so perplexed, so profound, as this great pending suit between antiquity and ourselves—between the junior men of this earth and ourselves, the seniors, as Lord Bacon reasonably calls us. Appeals will be broughtad infinitum—we ourselves shall bring appeals, to set aside any judgment that may be given, until something more is consulted than individual taste; better evidence brought forward than the result of individual reading; something higher laid down as the groundsof the jurisprudence which controls the court, than those vagueof judgment, as the very principles responsa prudentumof Aristotle, but still too often mere, countersigned by the great name, perhaps, products of local convenience, of inexperience, of experience too limited and exclusively Grecian, or of absolute caprice—rules, in short, which are themselves not less trulysub judiceand liable to appeal than that very appeal cause to which they are applied as decisive. We have remarked, that it is no mystery why the decision should have gone pretty uniformly in favour of the ancients; for here is the dilemma:—A man, attempting this problem,is oris nota classical scholar. If heis, then he has already received a bias in his judgment; he is a bribed man, bribed by his vanity; and is liable to be challenged as one of the judges. If he isnot, then he is but imperfectly qualified—imperfectly as respects his knowledge and powers; whilst, even as respects his will and affections, it may be alleged that he also is under a bias and a corrupt influence; his interest being no less obvious to undervalue a literature, which, as to himand under lock and key, than his opponent's is to put a preposterous value upon that, is tabooed
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knowledge which very probably is the one sole advantageous distinction between him and his neighbours. We might cite an illustration from the French literary history on this very point. Every nation in turn has had its rows in this great quarrel, which is, in fact, co-extensive with the controversies upon human nature itself. The French, of course, have hadtheirs—solemn tournaments, single duels, casual 'turn-ups,' and regular 'stand-up' fights. The most celebrated of these was in the beginning of the last century, when, amongst others who acted as bottle-holders, umpires, &c., two champions in particular 'peeled' and fought a considerable number of rounds, mutually administering severe punishment, and both coming out of the ring disfigured: these were M. la Motte and Madame Dacier. But Motte was the favourite at first, and once he got Dacier 'into chancery,' and 'fibbed' her twice round the ropes, so that she became a truly pitiable and delightful spectacle to the connoisseurs in fibbing and bloodshed. But here lay the difference: Motte was a hard hitter; he was a clever man, and (which all clever men are not) a man of sense; but, like Shakspeare, he had no Greek. On the other hand, Dacier had nothingbutGreek. A certain abbé, at that time, amused all Paris with his caricatures of this Madame Dacier, 'who,' said he, 'ought to be cooking her husband's dinner, and darning his stockings, instead of skirmishing and tilting with Grecian spears; for, be it known that, after all hernot cookingand her not darning, she is as poor a scholar as her injured husband is a good one.' Andtherethe abbé was right; witness the husband'sHorace, in 9 vols., against the wife'sHomer. However, this was not generally understood. The lady, it was believed, waded petticoat-deep in Greek clover; and in any Grecian field of dispute, naturally she must be in the right, as against one who barely knew his own language and a little Latin. Motte was, therefore, thought by most people to have come off second best. For, as soon as ever he opened thus—'Madame, it seems to me that, agreeably to all common sense or common decorum, the Greek poet should here'——instantly, without listening to his argument, the intrepid Amazon replieὑdπ(οδρα ιδουσα), 'You foolish man! you remarkably silly man!—thatis because you know no better; and the reason you know no better, is because you do not understandton d'apameibomenosas I do.'Ton d'apameibomenosfell like a hand-grenade amongst Motte's papers, and blew him up effectually in the opinion of the multitude. No matter what he might say in reply—no matter how reasonable, how unanswerable—that one spell of 'No Greek! no Greek!' availed as a talisman to the lady both for offence and defence; and refuted all syllogisms and all eloquence as effectually as the cry ofÀ la lanterne!in the same country some fourscore years after. So it will always be. Those who (like Madame Dacier) possess no accomplishmentbut Greek, will, of necessity, set a superhuman value upon that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill becomes an available key. Besides that, over and above this coarse and conscious motive for overrating that which reacts with an equal and answerable overrating upon their own little philological attainments, there is another agency at work, and quite unconsciously to the subjects of that agency, in disturbing the sanity of any estimate they may make of a foreign literature. It is the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to anything created by our own skill, or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively and objectively[3]in the reflecting thing itself, that pleasurable power which in very truth belongs subjectively to the mind of him who surveys it, from conscious success in the exercise of his own energies. Hence it is that we see daily without surprise, young ladies hanging enamoured over the pages of an Italian author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed in plain mother English, would have been more repulsive to them than the distinctions of a theologian, or the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake for a pleasure yielded by the author, what is in fact the pleasure attending their own success in mastering what was lately an insuperable difficulty. It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling, who happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his own ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately scorn and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes' latchets of many amongst their own compatriots; making painful and remote voyages after the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet. Too often he is reminded of a case, which is still sometimes to be witnessed in London. Now and then it will happen that a lover of art, modern or antique alike, according to its excellence, will find himself honoured by an invitation from some millionnaire, or some towering grandee, to 'assist,' as the phrase is, at the opening of a case newly landed from the Tiber or the Arno, and fraught (as he is assured) with the very gems of Italian art, inter-mingled besides with many genuine antiques. He goes: the cases are solemnly disgorged; adulatory hangers on, calling themselves artists, and, at all events, so much so as to appreciate the solemn farce enacted, stand by uttering hollow applauses of my Lord's taste, and endeavouring to play upon the tinkling cymbals of spurious enthusiasm: whilst every man of real discernment perceives at a glance the mere refuse and sweeping of a third-ratestudio, such as many a native artist would disdain to turn out of his hands; and antiques such as could be produced, with a month's notice, by cart-loads, in many an obscure corner of London. Yet for this rubbish has the great man taken a painful tour; compassed land and sea; paid away in exchange a king's ransom; and claims now on their behalf, the very humblest homage of artists who are taxed with the basest envy if they refuse it, and who, meantime, cannot in sincerity look upon the trumpery with other feelings than such as the potter's wheel, if (like Ezekiel's wheels) it were instinct with spirit, would entertain for the vilest of its own creations;—culinary or 'post-culinary' mugs and jugs. We, the writers of this paper, are not artists, are not connected with artists. And yet, upon the general principle of sympathy with native merit, and of disgust towards all affectation, we cannot but recall such anecdotes with scorn; and often we recollect the stories recorded by poor Benvenuto Cellini, that dissolute but brilliant vagabond, who (like our own British artists) was sometimes upbraided with the degeneracy of modern art, and, upon his humbly requesting some evidence, received, by way of practical answer, a sculptured gem or vase, perhaps with a scornful demand of—when would he be able to produce anything like that—'eh, Master Ben? Fancy we must wait a few centuries or so, before you'll be ready with the fellow of this.' And, lo! on looking into some hidden angle of the beautiful production, poor Cellini discovered his own private mark, the supposed antique having been a pure forgery of his own. Such cases remind one too forcibly of the pretty
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Horatian tale, where, in a contest between two men who undertake to mimic a pig's grunting, he who happens to be the favourite of the audience is applauded to the echo for his felicitous execution, and repeatedly encored, whilst the other man is hissed off the stage, and well kicked by a band of amateurs and cognoscenti, as a poor miserable copyist and impostor; but, unfortunately for the credit of his exploders, he has just time, before they have quite kicked him off, for exposing to view the real pig concealed under his cloak, which pig it was, and not himself, that had been the artist—forced by pinches into 'mimicry' of his own porcine music. Of all baffled connoisseurs, surely, these Roman pig-fanciers must have looked the most confounded. Yet there is no knowing: and we ourselves have a clever friend, but rather too given to subtilising, who contends, upon some argument not perfectly intelligible to us, that Horace was not so conclusive in his logic as he fancied; that the real pig might not have an 'ideal' or normal squeak, but a peculiar and non-representative squeak; and that, after all, the man might deserve the 'threshing' he got. Well, it may be so; but, however, the Roman audience, wrong or not, for once fancied themselves in the wrong; and we cannot but regret that our own ungenerous disparagers of native merit, andexclusiveeulogisers of the dead or the alien —of those only 'quos Libitina sacravitus—are not now and then open to the,' or whom oceans divide from samepalpableare certainly guilty of the same mean error, in prejudging the whole as they refutation, question, and refusing to listen even to the plain evidence of their own feelings, or, in some cases, to the voice of their own senses. From this preface it is already abundantly clear what sidewetake in this dispute about modern literature and the antique.[4]And we now propose to justify our leaning by a general review of the Pagan authors, in their elder section—that is, the Grecians. These will be enough in all conscience, for one essay; and even for them we meditate a very cursory inquest; not such as would suffice in a grand ceremonial day of battle—ajustum prœlium, as a Roman would call it—but in a mere perfunctory skirmish, or (if the reader objects to that word as pedantic, though, really, it is a highly-favoured word amongst ancient divines, and with many a
'philosopher, Who has read Alexander Ross over,')
why, in that case, let us indulge his fastidious taste by calling it an autoschediastic combat, to which, surely, there can be no such objection. And as the manner of the combat is autoschediastic or extemporaneous, and to meet a hurried occasion, so is the reader to understand that the object of our disputation is not the learned, but the unlearned student; and our purpose, not so much to discontent the one with his painful acquisitions, as to console the other under what, upon the old principle ofomne ignotum pro magnifico, he is too apt to imagine his irreparable disadvantages. We set before us, as our especial auditor, the reasonable man of plain sense but strong feeling, who wishes to know how much he has lost, and what injury the gods did him, when, though making him, perhaps, poetical, they cut short his allowance of Latin, and, as to Greek, gave him not a jot more than a cow has in her side pocket. Let us begin at the beginning—and that, as everybody knows, is Homer. He is, indeed, so much at the beginning that, for that very reason (if even there were no other), he is, and will be ever more, supremely interesting. Is the unlearned reader aware of his age? Upon that point there are more hypotheses than one or even two. Some there are among the chronologers who make him eleven hundred years anterior to Christ. But those who allow him least, place him more than nine—that is, about two centuries before the establishment of the Grecian Olympiads, and (which is pretty nearly the same thing as regards time) before Romulus and Remus. Such an antiquity as this, even on its own account, is a reasonable object of interest. A poet to whom the great-grandfather of old Ancus Martius (his grandfather, did we say—that is, avus?—nay, hisabavus, hisatavus, histritavus) looked back as to one in a line with his remote ancestor—a poet who, if he travelled about as extensively as some have supposed him to do, or even as his own countryman Herodotus most certainly did five or six hundred years afterwards, might have conversed with the very workmen who laid the foundations of the first temple at Jerusalem—might have bent the knee before Solomon in all his glory:—Such a poet, were he no better than the worst of our own old metrical romancers, would—merely for his antiquity, merely for the sublime fact of having been coeval with the eldest of those whom the eldest of histories presents to our knowledge; coeval with the earliest kings of Judah, older than the greatest of the Judean prophets, older than the separation of the two Jewish crowns and the revolt of Israel, and, even with regard to Moses and to Joshua, not in any larger sense junior than as we ourselves are junior to Chaucer—purely and exclusively with regard to these pretensions, backed and supported by an antique form of an antique language—the most comprehensive and the most melodious in the world, would—could —should—ought to merit a filial attention; and, perhaps with those who had waggon-loads of time to spare, might plead the benefit, beyond most of those in whose favour it was enacted, of that Horatian rule—
'vos exemplaria Græca, Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurna.'
In fact, when we recollect that, in round numbers, we ourselves may be considered as two thousand years in advance of Christ, and that (by assuming less even than a mean between the different dates assigned to Homer) he stands a thousand years before Christ, we find between Homer and ourselves a gulf of three thousand years, or about one clear half of the total extent which we grant to the present duration of our planet. This in itself is so sublime a circumstance in the relations of Homer to our era, and the sense of power is so delightfully titillated to that man's feeling, who, by means of Greek, and a very moderate skill in this fine language, is able to grasp the awful span, the vast arch of which one foot rest upon 1838, and the other almost upon the war of Troy—the mighty rainbow which, like the archangel in the Revelation, plants its western limb amongst the carnage and the magnificence of Waterloo, and the other amidst the vanishing
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gleams and the dusty clouds of Agamemnon's rearguard—that we may pardon a little exultation to the man who can actually mutter to himself, as he rides home of a summer evening, the very words and vocal music of the old blind man at whose command
'—————the Iliad and the Odyssey Rose to the murmurs of the voiceful sea.'
But pleasures in this world fortunately are without end. And every man, after all, has many pleasures peculiar to himself—pleasures which no man shares with him, even as he is shut out from many of other men. To renounce one in particular, is no subject for sorrow, so long as many remain in that very class equal or superior. Elwood the Quaker had a luxury which none of us will ever have, in hearing the very voice and utterance of a poet quite as blind as Homer, and by many a thousand times more sublime. And yet Elwood was not perhaps much happier forthat. For now, to proceed, reader—abstract from hissublime antiquity, and his being the very earliest of authors, allowance made for one or two Hebrew writers (who, being inspired, are scarcely to be viewed as human competitors), how much is there in Homer,intrinsically in Homer, stripped of his fine draperies of time and circumstance, in the naked Homer, disapparelled of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious antiquity, to remunerate a man for his labour in acquiring Greek? Men think very differently about whatwill remunerate any given labour. A fool (professionalfool) in Shakspeare ascertains, by a natural process of logic, that a 'remuneration' means atestern, which is just sixpence; and two remunerations, therefore, a testoon, or one shilling. But many men will consider the same service ill paid by a thousand pounds. So, of the reimbursement for learning a language. Lord Camden is said to have learned Spanish, merely to enjoy Don Quixote more racily. Cato, the elder Cato, after abusing Greek throughout his life, sat down in extreme old age to study it: and wherefore? Mr. Coleridge mentions an author, in whom, upon opening his pages with other expectations, he stumbled upon the following fragrant passage—'But from this frivolous digression upon philosophy and the fine arts, let us return to a subject too little understood or appreciated in these sceptical days—the subject ofdung.' Now,that precisely the was course of thought with this old censorious Cato: So long as Greek offered, or seemed to offer, nothing but philosophy or poetry, he was clamorous against Greek; but he began to thaw and melt a little upon the charms of Greek—he 'owned the soft impeachment,' when he heard of some Grecian treatises uponbeans andturnipsits voluptuous seductions, when he heard of others upon DUNG. There; and, finally, he sank under are, therefore, as different notions about a 'remuneration' in this case, as the poor fool had met with it inhis case. We, however, unappalled by the bad names of 'Goth,' 'Vandal,' and so forth, shall honestly lay before the readerournotions. When Dryden wrote his famous, indeed matchless, epigram upon the three great masters (or reputed masters) of the Epopee, he found himself at no loss to characterize the last of the triad—no matter what qualities he imputed to the first and the second, he knew himself safe in imputing them all to the third. The mighty modern had everything that his predecessors were everthought have, as well as something to beside.[5]of Milton, by saying that in him nature had embodied, bySo he expressed the surpassing grandeur concentration as in one focus, whatever excellencies she had scattered separately amongst her earlier favourites. But, in strict regard to the facts, this is far from being a faithful statement of the relations between Milton and his elder brothers of theEpos: in sublimity, if that is what Dryden meant by 'loftiness of thought,' it is not so fair to class Milton with the greatest of poets, as to class him apart, retired from all others, sequestered, 'sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.' In other poets, in Dante for example, there may be rays, gleams, sudden coruscations, casual scintillations, of the sublime; but for any continuous and sustained blaze of the sublime, it is in vain to look for it,exceptin Milton, making allowances (as before) for the inspired sublimities of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and of the great Evangelist's Revelations. As to Homer, no critic who writes from personal anddirectknowledge on the one hand, or who understands the value of words on the other, ever contended in any critical sense for sublimity, as a quality to which he had the slightest pretensions. What! not Longinus? If he did, it would have been of little consequence; for he had no field of comparison, as we, knowing no literature but one—whereas we have a range of seven or eight. But he did noΤt:ὸ ὑψηλον,[6] or the elevated, in the Longinian sense, expressed all, no matter of what origin, of what tendency, which gives a character of life and animation to composition—whatever raises it above the dead level of flat prosaic style. Emphasis, or what in an artist's sense givesreliefto a passage, causing it to stand forward, and in advance of what surrounds it—that is the predominating idea in the 'sublime' of Longinus. And this explains what otherwise has perplexed his modern interpreters—viz. that amongst the elements of his sublime, he ranks even the pathetic,i. e.with the depressing passion of grief is the very they) what by connecting itself (say counter-agent to the elevating affection of the sublime. True, most sapient sirs, my very worthy and approved good masters: but that very consideration should have taught you to look back, and reconsider your translation of the capital wordὑψος. It was rather too late in the day, when you had waded half-seas over in your translation, to find out either that you yourselves were ignoramuses, or that your principal was an ass. 'Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' And any man might guess how you would settle such a dilemma. It is, according to you, a little oversight of your principal: 'humanum aliquid passus est.' We, on the other hand, affirm that, if an error at all on the part of Longinus, it is too monstrous for any man to have 'overlooked.' As long as he could see a pike-staff, he must have seen that. And, therefore, we revert toourview of the case —viz. that it is yourselves who have committed the blunder, in translating by the Latin wordsublimis[7]at all, but still more after it had received new determinations under modern usage. Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little, it will affect us not much, to mention that Longinus makes frequent reference to theIliad, as the great source of the sublime—
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'A quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis';
for, as respected Grecian poets, and as respectedhisof the word, it cannot be denied that Homersense was such. He was the great well-head of inspiration to the Pagan poets of after times, who, however (as a body), moved in the narrowest circle that has ever yet confined the natural freedom of the poetic mind. But, in conceding this, let it not be forgotten how much we concede—we concede as much as Longinus demanded; that is, that Homer furnished an ideal or model of fluent narration, picturesque description, and the first outlines of what could be called characteristic delineations of persons. Accordingly, uninventive Greece—for we maintain loudly that Greece, in her poets,wasuninventive and sterile beyond the example of other nations —received, as a traditional inheritance, the characters of the Paladins of the Troad.[8]Achilles is always the all-accomplished and supreme amongst these Paladins, the Orlando of ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the Bergen-op-Zoomof his faction, and corresponding to our modern 'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this sense—that he would take any amount of cramming (i. e. possible quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). Ulysses, again, is any uniformly, no matter whether in the solemnities of the tragic scene, or the festivities of the Ovidian romance, the same shy cock, but also sly cock, with the least thought of a white feather in his plumage; Diomed is the same unmeaning double of every other hero, just as Rinaldo is with respect to his greater cousin, Orlando; and so of Teucer, Meriones, Idomeneus, and the other less-marked characters. The Greek drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened, saddened, exalted the features—as Sophocles, for instance, does with his 'Ajax Flagellifer'—Ajax the knouter of sheep—where, by the way, the remorse and penitential grief of Ajax for his own self-degradation, and the depth of his affliction for the triumph which he had afforded to his enemies—taken in connection with the tender fears of his wife, Tecmessa, for the fate to which his gloomy despair was too manifestly driving him; her own conscious desolation, and the orphan weakness of her son, in the event which she too fearfully anticipates—the final suicide of Ajax; the brotherly affection of Teucer to the widow and the young son of the hero, together with the unlooked-for sympathy of Ulysses, who, instead of exulting in the ruin of his antagonist, mourns over it with generous tears—compose a situation, and a succession of situations, not equalled in the Greek tragedy; and, in that instance, we see an effort, rare in Grecian poetry, of conquest achieved by idealisation over a mean incident—viz. the hallucination of brain in Ajax, by which he mistakes the sheep for his Grecian enemies, ties them up for flagellation, and scourges them as periodically as if he were a critical reviewer. But really, in one extremity of this madness, where he fixes upon an old ram for Agamemnon, as the leader of the flock, thαeν αξ ανδρων Αγαμεμνων, there is an extravagance of the ludicrous against which, though not exhibited scenically, but simply narrated, no solemnity of pathos could avail; even in narration, the violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than the hyper-tragic horrors ofTitus Andronicus(a play which is usually printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not, therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic economy and scenical propriety, could thus err by an aberration so far transcending the most memorable violation of stage decorum which has ever been charged upon the English drama. From Homer, therefore, were left, as a bequest to all future poets, the romantic adventures which grow, as so many collateral dependencies,
'From the tale of Troy divine';
and from Homer was derived also the discrimination of the leading characters, which, after all, were but coarsely and rudely discriminated; at least, for the majority. In one instance only we acknowledge an exception. We have heard a great modern poet dwelling with real and not counterfeit enthusiasm upon the character (or rather upon the general picture, as made up both of character and position), which the course of theIliad gradually to Achilles. The view which he took of this impersonation of human grandeur, assigns combining all gifts of intellect and of body, matchless speed, strength, inevitable eye, courage, and the immortal beauty of a god, being also, by his birth-right, half-divine, and consecrated to the imagination by his fatal interweaving with the destinies of Troy, and to the heart by the early death which tohis own knowledge[9] impended over his magnificent career, and so abruptly shut up its vista—the view, we say, which our friend took of the presiding character throughout theIliad, who is introduced to us in the very first line, and who is only eclipsed for seventeen books, to emerge upon us with more awful lustre;—the view which he took was —that Achilles, and Achilles only, in the Grecian poetry, was a great idea—an idealised creation; and we remember that in this respect he compared the Homeric Achilles with the Angelica of Ariosto. Her only he regarded as an idealisation in theOrlando Furioso. And certainly in the luxury and excess of her all-conquering beauty, which drew after her from 'ultimate Cathay' to the camps of the baptised in France, and back again, from the palace of Charlemagne, drew half the Paladins, and 'half Spain militant,' to the portals of the rising sun; that sovereign beauty which (to say nothing of kings and princes withered by her frowns) ruined for a time the most princely of all the Paladins, the supreme Orlando, crazed him with scorn,
'And robbed him of his noble wits outright'—
in all this, we must acknowledge a glorification of power not unlike that of Achilles:—
'Irresistible Pelides, whom, unarm'd, No stren th of man or wild beast could withstand;
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