แ volumes on Taste and on Genius contain many excellent views and many good illustrations. But I dare say Mr Wordsworth never heard of the Aberdonian Professor. Beattie was a delightful poet-that Mr Wordsworth well knows-and, Mr Alison' excepted, the best writer on Literature and the Fine Arts Britain ever produced-full of feeling and full of genius. Kames was gleg as ony wummle," and, considering his multifarious studies, the author of the Elements of Criticism is not to be sneezed at-he was no weed-a real rough Bur-Thistle, and that is not a weed, but a fine bold national flower. As to Dr Blair, his sermons-full of truth, and most elegantly, simply, and beautifully written—will live thousands of years after much of our present pompous preaching is dead, and buried, and forgotten; and though his Lectures on the Belles Lettres are a compilation, they are informed by a spirit of his own-pure and graceful,-and though the purity and the grace are greater than the power and the originality, he who thinks them stupid must be an ass—and let him bray against the Doctor" till he stretch his leathern coat almost to bursting." Shepherd. I never read a single word o' ane o' thae books you've been speakin about-and what the better wad I hae been, tell me, if I had written abstracts o' them a', and committed the contents to memory? North. Your education, James, has been a very good oneand well suited, I verily believe, to your native genius. But you will allow that other people may have been the better of them, and of other books on various subjects? Shepherd. Ou ay-ou ay! I'm verra liberal. I hae nae objections to let other folk read a' through the Advocates' Library-but, for my ain pairt, I read nane North. And yet, James, you are extremely well informed on most subjects. Indeed, out of pure science, I do not know one on which you are ignorant.-How is that? Shepherd. I canna say. I only ken I reads amaist naneSession, and author of Elements of Criticism: born 1696, died 1782. Hugh Blair, D.D., Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, author of Lectures on Rhetoric, Sermons: born 1718, died 1800. 1 Archibald Alison, LL.B., held for many years the first charge of St Paul's Episcopal Chapel, Edinburgh: he published An Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste: born 1757, died 1839. The author of The History of Europe is his son. no even the Magazine, except my ain articles—and noo and then a Noctes, which I'm entitled to consider my ain articles; for without the Shepherd, Gurney, wouldna ye be aff to Norwich-wouldna ye, Gurney? Mr Gurney (with stentorian lungs). YES! LIKE A SHOT. "Without the laugh from partial shepherd won, Oh what were we? a world without a sun!" Shepherd. I hate to hear leevin folk, that never wrote books, or did onything else remarkable, gossiped about, and a' their stupid clishmaclaver, by way o' wut, retailed by their puny adherents, mair childish if possible than themsels-a common nuisance in Embro' society-especially amang advocats and writers; but I love to hear about the dead-famous authors in their day-even although I ken but the soun o' their bare names-and cudna spell them, aiblins, in writin them doun on paper. Say on. North. I forgot old Sam-a jewel rough set, yet shining like a star; and though sand-blind by nature, and bigoted by education, one of the truly great men of England, and "her men are of men the chief," alike in the dominions of the understanding, the reason, the passions, and the imagination. No prig shall ever persuade me that Rasselas is not a noble performance,-in design and in execution. Never were the expenses of a mother's funeral more gloriously defrayed by son, than the funeral of Samuel Johnson's mother by the price of Rasselas, written for the pious purpose of laying her head decently and honourably in the dust. Shepherd. Ay, that was pittin literature and genius to a glorious purpose indeed; and therefore nature and religion smiled on the wark, and have stamped it with immortality. North. Samuel was seventy years old when he wrote the Lives of the Poets. Shepherd. What a fine old buck! No unlike yoursel. North. Would it were so! He had his prejudices, and his partialities, and his bigotries, and his blindnesses, but on the same fruit-tree you see shrivelled pears or apples on the same branch with jargonelles or golden pippins worthy of paradise. Which would ye show to the Horticultural Society as a fair specimen of the tree? BURKE AND REYNOLDS. 237 Shepherd. Good, Kit, good-philosophically picturesque. [Mimicking the old man's voice and manner. North. Show me the critique that beats his on Pope, and on Dryden-nay, even on Milton; and hang me if you may not read his Essay on Shakespeare even after having read Charles Lamb, or heard Coleridge, with increased admiration of the powers of all three, and of their insight, through different avenues, and as it might seem almost with different bodily and mental organs, into Shakespeare's "old exhausted," and his " new imagined worlds." He was a critic and a moralist who would have been wholly wise, had he not been partlyconstitutionally insane. For there is blood in the brain, James even in the organ - the vital principle of all our eagle-winged raptures; "—and there was a taint of the black drop of melancholy in his 66 Shepherd. Wheesht-wheesht-let us keep aff that subject. All men ever I knew are mad; and but for that law o' natur, never, never in this warld had there been a Noctes Ambrosianæ ! North. Oh, dear! oh, dear!—I have forgot Edmund Burke -and Sir Joshua-par Nobile Fratrum. The Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful— though written when Ned was a mere boy-shows a noble mind, clutching at all times at the truth, and often grasping it for a moment, though, like celestial quicksilver, it evanishes out of hand. Of voluptuous animal beauty, the illustrious Irishman had that passionate sense-nor unprofound-with which nature has gifted the spirit of all his race. And he had a soul that could rise up from languishment on Beauty's lap, and aspire to the brows of the sublime. His juvenile Essay contains some splendid some magnificent passages; and with all its imperfections, defects, and failures, may be placed among the highest attempts made by the human mind to cross the debateable land that lies between the kingdoms of Feeling and of Thought, of Sense and Imagination. Shepherd. That's geyan misty, and wudna be easy got aff by heart. North. As for Sir Joshua, with pen and pencil he was equally a great man. Shepherd. A great man? North. Yes. What but genius as original as exquisite 238 SUPERIORITY OF OUR PRESENT CRITICS. could have flung a robe of grace over even a vulgar form, as if the hand of nature had drawn the aerial charm over the attitudes and motions thus magically elevated into ideal beauty? Still retaining, by some finest skill, the similitude of all the lineaments, what easy flowing outlines adorned the canvass, deceiving the cheated sitter or walker into the pardonable delusion that she was one of the Graces Muses, at the least-nay, Venus herself looking out for Mars on the distant horizon, or awaiting Anchises on the hill. Shepherd. Even I, sir, a shepherd North. The Shepherd, my dear James. or Shepherd. Even I, sir, The Shepherd-though mair impressible by beauty than by grace, know what grace is, ever since the first time that I saw a wild swan comin floatin wi' uplifted wings doun afore the wind through amang the rippled waterlilies that stretch frae baith shores far intil ae pairt o' St Mary's Loch, leavin but a narrow dark-blue channel for the gracefu' naïad to come glidin through, wi' her lang, smooth, white neck bendin back atween her snaw-white sails, and her full breast seemin, as it ploughed the sma' sunny waves, whiter and whiter still noo smooth, smooth and noo slightly ruffled, as the foam half dashed against and half flew awa, without touchin't, frae the beautifu' protrusion o' that depth o' down! North. Verra weel nae mair, Jamie. Then as to Sir Joshua's writings, their spirit is all in delightful keeping with his pictures. One of the few painters he-such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and so on our own Barry, Opie, Fuseli, and so on who could express by the pen the principles which guide the pencil. "Tis the only work on art which, to men not artists, is entirely intelligible Shepherd. The less painters in general write the better, I suspeck. North. But what led to our conversation about philosophical criticism? Oh! I have it. Well then, James, compare with this slight sketch of the doings of the men of former generations, from the beginning of time down to nearly the French Revolution, those of our present race of critics—in Britain— and how great our superiority! Dugald Stewart1 has just 1 Born in 1753. died in 1828. He was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh from 1785 to 1810, when he retired in favour of Dr Thomas Brown. OUR PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 239 left us, and though his poetical was not so good as his philosophical education, and though his eye had scarcely got accustomed to the present bright flush of Poetry, yet his delightful volume of Miscellaneous Essays proves that he stood-and for ever will stand-in the First Order of critics, -generous, enthusiastic, and even impassioned, far beyond the hair-splitting spirit of the mere metaphysician. And there is our own Alison, still left, and long may he be left to us, whose work on Taste and the Association of Ideas ought to be in the hands of every poet, and of every lover of poetry, so clear in its statement, so rich in its illustration of Principles. Shepherd. This seems to me to be the only age of the world, sir, in which poetry and creetishism ever gaed, like sisters, hand in hand, encircled wi' a wreath o' flowers. North. Now all our philosophical criticism—or nearly all —is periodical; and fortunate that it is so both for taste and genius. It is poured daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, into the veins of the people, mixing with their very heart-blood. Nay, it is like the very air they breathe. Shepherd. Do you mean to say, "if they have it not, they die?" North. Were it withheld from them now, their souls would die or become stultified. Formerly, when such disquisitions were confined to quarto or octavo volumes, in which there was nothing else, the author made one great effort, and died in book-birth-his offspring sharing often the doom of its unhappy parent. If it lived, it was forthwith immured in a prison called a library- an uncirculating library-and was heard no more of in this world, but by certain worms. Shepherd. A' the warld's hotchin wi' authors noo, like a pond wi' powheads.1 Out sallies Christopher North frae amang the reeds, like a pike, and crunches them in thousands. North. Our current periodical literature teems with thought and feeling, James,—with passion and imagination. There was Gifford, and there are Jeffrey, and Southey, and Campbell, and Moore, and Bowles, and Sir Walter, and Lockhart, and Lamb, and Wilson, and De Quincey, and the four Coleridges, S. T. C., John, Hartley, and Derwent, and Croly, and Maginn, and Mackintosh, and Cunningham, and Kennedy, and Stebbings, and St Ledger, and Knight, and Praed, and Lord 1 Powheads-tadpoles. |