Guesses at truth

■■n

LIBRARY

OF JPHE

University of California.

GIF^T OF

Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH.

Received October, i8g4.
^Accessions No..§*f3S..f>..- Cta No.

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[WI7BRSITT]

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University Press, Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

/8C*t

WOEDSWOETH.

My honoured Friend,

The favour I have always experienced from you
emboldens me to address you publicly by this name.
For more than twenty years I have cherisht the wish
of offering some testimony of£my\ gratitude to him by
whom my eyes were opened to see and enjoy the world
of poetry in nature and in books. In this feeling, he,
who shared all my feelings, fully partook. You knew
my brother ; and though he was less fortunate than I
have been, in having fewer opportunities of learning
from your living discourse, you could not deny him that
esteem and affection, with which all delighted to regard
him. Your writings were among those he prized the
most : and unless this little work had appeared anony-
mously when it first came out, he would have united
witl; me in dedicating it to you.

Then too would another name have been associated
with yours, — the name of one to whom we felt an
equal and like obligation, a name which, I trust, will
ever be coupled with yours in the admiration and love
of Englishmen, — the name of Coleridge. You and he

jv TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

came forward together in a shallow, hard, worldly age,
—>• an age alien and almost averse from the higher and
more strenuous exercises of imagination and thought,
— as the purifiers and regenerators of poetry and phi-
losophy. It was a great aim; and greatly have you
both wrought for its accomplishment. Many, among
those who are now England's best hope and stay, will
respond to my thankful acknowledgement of the bene-
fits my heart and mind have received from you both.
Many will echo my wish, for the benefit of my country,
that your influence and his may be more and more
widely diffused. Many will join in my prayer, that
health and strength of body and mind may be granted
to you, to complete the noble works which you have
still in store, so that men may learn more worthily to
understand and appreciate what a glorious gift God
bestows on a nation when He gives them a poet.

Had this work been dedicated to you then, it might
have pleased you more to see your great friend's name
beside your own. The proof of my brother's regard too
would have endeared the offering. Then, — if you will
allow me to quote a poem, which, from its faithful
expression of fraternal love, has always sounded to me
like the voice of my own heart, — "There were4 two
springs which bubbled side by side, As if they had been
made that they might be Companions for each other."
But now for a while that blessed companionship has
been interrupted : " One has disappeared : The other,
left behind, is flowing still.' ' Yet, small as the tribute

TO WILLIAM WORDSWOKTH. v

is, and although it must come before you without these
recommendations, may you still accept it in considera-
tion of the reverence which brings it; and may you
continue to think with your wonted kindness

Of your affectionate Servant,

Julius Charles Hare.

Herstmonceux, January, 1838.

'UHIVEKSITT'

TO THE READEE.

I here present you with a few suggestions, the fruits,
alas ! of much idleness. Such of them as are distin-
guisht by some capital letter, I have borrowed from my
acuter friends. My own are little more than glimmer-
ings, I had almost said dreams, of thought : not a word
in them is to be taken on trust.

If then I am addressing one of that numerous class,
who read to be told what to think, let me advise you to
meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a
house ready furnisht : do not come to look for it in a
stonequarry. But if you are building up your opinions
for yourself, and only want to be provided with materi-
als, you may meet with many things in these pages to
suit you. Do not despise them for their want of name
and show. Remember what the old author says, that
" even to such a one as I am, an idiota or common per-
son, no great things, melancholizing in woods and quiet
places by rivers, the Goddesse herself Truth has often-
times appeared."

Reader, if you weigh me at all, weigh me patiently ;
judge me candidly ; and may you find half the satisfac-
tion in examining my Guesses, that I have myself had
in making them.

viii TO THE HEADER.

Authors usually do not think about writing a preface,
until they have reacht the conclusion ; and with reason.
For few have such steadfastness of purpose, and such
definiteness and clear foresight of understanding, as to
know, when they take up their pen, how soon they shall
lay it down again. The foregoing paragraphs were
written some months ago : since that time this little
book has increast to more than four times the bulk then
contemplated, and withal has acquired two fathers
instead of one. The temptations held out by the free-
dom and pliant aptness of the plan, — the thoughtful
excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of
other like occupations, in which the mind has leisure to
muse during the healthful activity of the body, with the
fresh, wakeful breezes blowing round it, — above all,
intercourse and converse with those, every hour in
whose society is rich in the blossoms of present enjoy-
ment, and in the seeds of future meditation, in whom
too the Imagination delightedly recognises living real-
ities goodlier and fairer than the fairest and goodliest
visions, so that pleasure kindles a desire in her of por-
traying what she cannot hope to surpass, — these causes,
happening to meet together, have occasioned my becom-
ing a principal in a work, wherein I had only lookt for-
ward to being a subordinate auxiliary. The letter u,
with which my earlier contributions were markt, has for
distinction's sake continued to be affixt to them. As
our minds have grown up together, have been nourisht
in great measure by the same food, have sympathized in
their affections and their aversions, and been shaped
reciprocally by the assimilating influences of brotherly
communion, a family likeness will, I trust, be perceiv-
able throughout these volumes, although perhaps with
such differences as it is not displeasing to behold in the

TO THE READER. jx

children of the same parents. And thus I commit this
book to the world, with a prayer that He, to whom so
much of it, if I may not say the whole, is devoted, will,
if He think it worthy to be employed in His service,
render it an instrument of good to some of His chil-
dren. May it awaken some one to the knowledge of
himself ! May it induce some one to think more kindly
of his neighbour ! May it enlighten some one to behold
the footsteps of God in the Creation ! u.

May 17th, 1827.

In this new edition the few remarks found among my
brother's papers, suitable to the work, have been, or
will be incorporated. Unfortunately for the work they
are but few. Soon after the publication of the first
edition, he gave up guessing at Truth, for the higher
office of preaching Truth. How faithfully he discharged
that office, may be seen in the two volumes of his Ser-
mons. And now he has been raised from the earth to
the full fruition of that Truth, of which he had first
been the earnest seeker, and then the dutiful servant
and herald.

My own portion of the work has been a good deal
enlarged. On looking it over for the press, I found
much that was inaccurate, more that was unsatisfactory.
Many thoughts seemed to need being more fully de-
velopt. Ten years cannot pass over one's head, least of
all in these eventful times, without modifying sundry
opinions. A change of position too brings a new hori-
zon, and new points of view. And when old thoughts
are awakened, it is with old recollections : a long train
of associations start up ; nor is it easy to withstand the
pleasure of following them out. Various however as
1*

x TO THE READER.

are the matters discust or toucht on in the following
pages, I would fain hope that one spirit will be felt to
breathe through them. It would be a delightful reward,
if they may help the young, in this age of the Confusion
of Thoughts, to discern some of those principles which
infuse strength and order into men's hearts and minds.
Above all would I desire to suggest to my readers, how
in all things, small as well as great, profane as well as
sacred, it behoves us to keep our eyes fixt on the Star
which led the Wise Men of old, and by which alone can
any wisdom be guided; from whatsoever part of the
intellectual globe, to a place where it will rejoice with
exceeding great joy.

J. C. H.

January 6th, 1838.

FIRST SERIES.

Xpvaov oi Si£i7/zei>oi, (prjaiv 'HpajcAeiros, yrju 7to\\t]P opvcTaovai, Kal
evpio-Kovcriv 6\iyov. — Clem. Alex. Strom. IV. 2, p. 565u

As young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a
further stature; so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is
in growth ; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may per-
chance be further polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and
practice ; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substanee. — Bacon, Advance-
ment of Learning \ B. I.

&**, •.. jj». L*7

ADYEETISEMENT TO THE THIED EDITION.

This third edition is little else than a reprint of the second, with
the addition of a quotation here and there in support of opinions pre-
viously exprest, and with the insertion of some half a dozen passages,
partly to vindicate or to correct those opinions, partly to enforce
them by reference to later events, partly to prevent their being
misconstrued in behalf * of certain errours which have recently be-
come current.

October QtL 1847.

[UIIVBRSIT7]

oar

^LjipI

GUESSES AT TRUTH.

The virtue of Paganism was strength : the virtue of Chris-
tianity is obedience.

Man without religion is the creature of circumstances : Re-
ligion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above
them.

Moral prejudices are the stopgaps of virtue : and, as is the
case with other stopgaps, it is often more difficult to get either
out or in through them, than through any other part of the
fence.

A mother should desire to give her children a superabundance
of enthusiasm, to the end that, after they have lost all they are
sure to lose in mixing with the world, enough may still remain
to prompt and support them through great actions. A cloak
should be of three-pile, to keep its gloss in wear.

The heart has often been compared to the needle for its con-
stancy : has it ever been so for its variations ? Yet were any
man to keep minutes of his feelings from youth to age, what a
table of variations would they present ! how numerous ! how

14 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

diverse ! and how strange ! This is just what we find in the
writings of Horace. If we consider his occasional effusions, —
and such they almost all are, — as merely expressing the piety,
or the passion, the seriousness, or the levity of the moment, we
shall have no difficulty in accounting for those discrepancies in
their features, which have so much puzzled professional com-
mentators. Their very contradictions prove their truth. Or
could the face even of Ninon de l'Enclos at seventy be just
what it was at seventeen ? Nay, was Cleopatra before Augus-
tus the same as Cleopatra with Antony? or Cleopatra with
Antony the same as with the great Julius ?

The teachers of youth in a free country should select those
books for their chief study, — so far, I mean, as this world is
concerned, — which are best adapted to foster a spirit of manly
freedom. The duty of preserving the liberty, which our ances-
tors, through God's blessing, won, establisht, and handed down
to us, is no less imperative than any commandment in the sec-
ond table ; if it be not the concentration of the whole. And is
this duty to be learnt from the investigations of science ? Is it
to be pickt up in the crucible ? or extracted from the proper-
ties of lines and numbers ? I fear there is a moment of broken
lights in the intellectual day of civilized countries, when, among
the manifold refractions of Knowledge, Wisdom is almost lost
sight of. Society in time breeds a number of mouths which
will not consent to be entertained without a corresponding vari-
ety of dishes, so that unity is left alone as an inhospitable singu-
larity ; and many things are got at any way, rather than a few
in the right way. But " howsoever these things are thus in
men's depraved judgements and affections," would we imbibe the
feelings, the sentiments, and the principles which become the
inheritors of England's name and glory, we must abide by the
springs of which our ancestors drank. Like them, we must
nourish our minds by contemplating the unbending strength of
purpose and uncalculating self-devotion which nerved and ani-
mated the philosophic and heroic patriots of the Heathen world :
and we shall then blush, should Christianity, with all her addi-

GUESSES AT TRUTH 15

tional incentives, have shone on our hearts without kindling a
zeal as steady and as pure.

Is not our mistress, fair Religion,

As worthy of all our heart's devotion,

As Virtue was to that first blinded age V

As we do them in means, shall they surpass

Us in the end ? Donne, Satires, iii. 5.

The threatenings of Christianity are material and tangible.
They speak of and to the senses ; because they speak of and to
the sensual and earthly, in character, intellect, and pursuits.
The promises of Christianity, on the other hand, are addresst
to a different class of persons, — to those who love, which comes
after fear, — to those who have begun to advance in goodness, —
to those who are already in some measure delivered from the
thraldom of the body. But, being spoken of heaven to the
heavenly-minded, how could they be other than heavenly ?

The fact then, that there is nothing definite, and little invit-
ing or attractive, except to the eye of Faith, in the Christian
representation of future bliss, instead of being a reasonable
objection to its truth, is rather a confirmation of it. And so
perhaps thought Selden, who remarks in his Table-Talk :
" The Turks tell their people of a heaven where there is a
sensible pleasure, but of a hell where they shall suffer they
don't know what. The Christians quite invert this order : they
tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible pain, but of a
heaven where we shall enjoy we can't tell what." l.

Why should not distant parishes interchange their appren-
tices ? so that the lads on their return home might bring
back such improvements in agriculture and the mechanical
arts, as they may have observed or been taught during their
absence. e.

A practice of the sort was usual two centuries ago, and still
exists in Germany, and other parts of the Continent.

The first thing we learn is Meum, the last is Tuum. None
can have lived among children without noticing the former

16 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

fact ; few have associated with men and not remarkt the
latter.

To address the prejudices of our hearers is to argue with
them in short-hand. But it is also more : it is to invest our
opinion with the probability of prescription, and by occupying
the understanding to attack the heart.

The ancients dreaded death : the Christian can only fear
dying.

A person should go out upon the water on a fine day to a
short distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature
really smile. Never does she look so joyous, as when the sun
is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are rippling
gently, and the scene receives life and animation here and there
from the glancing transit of a row-boat, and the quieter motion
of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight ;
not only for its own sake, but because the vastness and awful-
ness of a mere sea-view would ill sort with the other parts of
the gay and glittering prospect.

The second Punic war was a struggle between Hannibal and
the Roman people. Its event proved that the good sense and
spirit of a nation, when embodied in institutions, and exerted
with perseverance, must ultimately exhaust and overpower
the resources of a single mind, however excellent in genius
and prowess.

The war of Sertorius, the Roman Hannibal, is of the same
kind, and teaches the same lesson.

Nothing short of extreme necessity will induce a sensible
man to change all his servants at once. A new set coming to-
gether fortuitously are sure to cross and jostle . . like the
Epicurean atoms, I was going to say ; but no, unlike the silent
atoms, they have the faculty of claiming and complaining ; and
they exert it, until the family is distracted with disputes about
the limits of their several offices.

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 17

But after a household has been set in order, there is little or
no evil to apprehend from minor changes. A new servant on
arriving finds himself in the middle of a system : his place is
markt out and assigned ; the course of his business is set
before him; and he falls into it as readily as a new wheel-
horse to a mail, when his collar is to the pole, and the coach is
starting.

It is the same with those great families, which we call
nations. To remould a government and frame a constitution
anew, are works of the greatest difficulty and hazard. The
attempt is likely to fail altogether, and cannot succeed thor-
oughly under very many years. It is the last desperate
resource of a ruined people, a staking double or quits with
evil, and almost giving it the first game. But still it is a
resource. We make use of cataplasms to restore suspended
animation ; and Burke himself might have tried Medea's kettle
on a carcass.

Be that, however, as it may, from judicious subordinate
reforms good, and good only, is to be lookt for. Nor are
their benefits limited to the removal of the abuse, which their
author designed to correct. No perpetual motion, God be
praised ! has yet been discovered for free governments. For
the impulse which keeps them going, they are indebted mainly
to subordinate reforms ; now, by the exposure of a particular
delinquency, spreading salutary vigilance through a whole
administration ; now, by the origination of some popular im-
provement from without, leading, — if there be any certainty
in party motives, any such things in ambitious men as policy
and emulation, — to the counter-adoption of numerous meliora-
tions from within, which would else have been only dreamt
of as impossible.

As a little girl was playing round me one day with her
white frock over her head, I laughingly called her Pishashee,
the name which the Indians give to their white devil. The
child was delighted with so fine a name, and ran about the
house crying to every one she met, / am the Pishashee, I am

?0*"*6? THE

18 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the Pishashee. Would she have done so, had she been wrapt
in black, and called witch or devil instead? No; for, as
usual, the reality was nothing, the sound and colour every-
thing.

But how many grown-up persons are running about the
world, quite as anxious as the little girl was to get the name
of Pishashee ! Only she did not understand it.

True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits,
but in a due estimate of them. Modesty then is only another
name for self-knowledge ; that is, for the absence of ignorance
on the one subject which we ought to understand the best, as
well from its vast importance to us, as from our continual
opportunities of studying it. And yet it is a virtue.

But what, on second thoughts, are these merits? Jeremy
Taylor tells us, in his Life of Christ : " Nothing but the innu-
merable sins which we have added to what we have received.
For we can call nothing ours, but such things as we are
ashamed to own, and such things as are apt to ruin us. Ev-
erything besides is the gift of God; and for a man to exalt
himself thereon is just as if a wall on which the sun reflects,
should boast itself against another that stands in the shadow."
Considerations upon Christ's Sermon on Humility.

After casting a glance at our own weaknesses, how eagerly
does our vanity console itself with deploring the infirmities of
our friends ! t.

It is as hard to know when one is in Paris, as when one is
out of London. r.

The first is the city of a great king; the latter, of a great
people. m.

When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in
sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she
does not expose her beauty at once barefacedly to the eye of
man, but veils herself for a time in a transparent cloud, till by

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 19

degrees she gains courage to endure the gaze and admiration
of beholders.

To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.

Some people carry their hearts in their heads ; very many
carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep
them apart, and yet both actively working together. a.

Life may be defined to be the power of self-augmentation, or
of assimilation, not of self-nurture ; for then a steam-engine
over a coalpit might be made to live.

Philosophy, like everything else, in a Christian nation should
be Christian. We throw away the better half of our means,
when we neglect to avail ourselves of the advantages which
starting in the right road gives us. It is idle to urge that,
unless we do this, antichristians will deride us. Curs bark at
gentlemen on horseback; but who, except a hypochondriac,
ever gave up riding on that account?

In man's original state, before his soul had been stupefied by
the Fall, his moral sensitiveness was probably as acute as his
physical sensitiveness is now; so that an evil action, from its
irreconcilableness with his nature, would have inflicted as much
pain on the mind, as a blow causes to the body. By the Fall
this fineness of moral tact was lost ; — Conscience, the voice of
God within us, is at once its relic and its evidence ; — and we
were left to ourselves to discover what is good ; though we still
retain a desire of good, when we have made out what it con-
sists in.

They who disbelieve in virtue, because man has never been
found perfect, might as reasonably deny the sun, because it is
not always noon.

Two persons can hardly set up their booths in the same

20 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

quarter of Vanity Fair, without interfering with, and therefore
disliking each other. b.

Fickleness in women of the world is the fault most likely to
result from their condition in society. The knowing both what
weaknesses are the most severely condemned, and what good
qualities the most highly prized, in the female character, by
our sex as well as their own, must needs render them desirous
of pleasing generally, to the exclusion, so far as Nature will
permit, of strong and lasting affection for individuals. Well !
we deserve no better of them. After all, too, the flame is only
smothered by society, not extinguisht. Give it free air, and
it will blaze.

The following sentence is translated from D'Alembert by
Dugald Stewart : " The truth is, that no relation whatever can
be discovered between a sensation in the mind, and the object
by which it is occasioned, or at least to which Ave refer it : it
does not appear possible to trace, by dint of reasoning, any
practicable passage from the one to the other" If this be so, if
there be no necessary connection between the reception of an
object into the senses, and its impression on the mind, what
ground have we for supposing the organs of sense to be more
than machinery for the uses of the body? The body may
indeed be said to see through the eye : but how, — if we can
trace no nearer connection between the mind and an object
painted on the retina, than between the mind and the object
itself, — how can it be asserted, that the mind needs the eye to
see with ?

Most idle, then, are all disquisitions on the intermediate
state, founded on the assumption that the. soul, when apart from
the body, has no perceptions. Waller's couplet,

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new lights through chinks that time has made,

may be, perhaps is, no less true in fact, than pretty in fancy.
Spirits may acquire new modes of communication on losing

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 21

their mouths and ears, just as a bird gets its feathers on burst-
ing from the shell. Our own experience furnishes a similar
analogy. As the unborn infant possesses dormant senses,
which it puts forth on coming into this world, in like manner
our still embryo soul may perhaps have latent senses, — living
inlets shall I call them, or capacities of spiritual vision and
communion? — to be exercised hereafter for its improvement
and delight, when it issues from its present womb, the body.

But here a dreadful supposition crosses me. What if sin,
which so enfeebles the understanding, and dulls the conscience,
should also clog and ultimately stifle these undevelopt powers
and faculties, so as to render spiritual communion after death
impossible to the wicked ? What if the imbruted soul make
its own prison, shut itself up from God, and exclude everything
but the memory of its crimes, evil desires " baying body," and
the dread of intolerable, unavoidable, momentarily approaching
punishment ? At least it is debarred from repentance : this
one thought is terrible enough.

In Bacon's noble estimate of the dignity of knowledge, in
the first book of the Advancement of Learning, he observes
that, " in the election of those instruments, which it pleased
God to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that
at the first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, other-
wise than by inspiration, more evidently to declare His imme-
diate working, and to abase all human wisdom or knowledge,
yet nevertheless that counsel of His was no sooner performed,
but in the next vicissitude and succession He did send His
divine truth into the world waited on with other learnings, as
with servants or handmaids : for so we see St. Paul, who was
the only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen most used
in the Scriptures of the New Testament."

From this remark let me draw a couple of corollaries : first,
that such a man, as well from his station, as from his acuteness,
and the natural pride of a powerful and cultivated intellect,
was the last person to become the dupe of credulous enthusi-
asts ; especially when they were lowborn and illiterate. And

22 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

secondly, that from this appointment we may draw an inference
in favour of a learned ministry. If some of the Apostles had
no other human instructor than the best Master that ever lived,
Jesus Christ; the one most immediately and supernaturally
called by Him to preach the Gospel was full of sacred and
profane learning.

It was a practice worthy of our worthy ancestors, to fill their
houses at Christmas with their relations and friends ; that, when
Nature was frozen and dreary out of doors, something might
be found within doors " to keep the pulses of their hearts in
proper motion." The custom however is only appropriate
among people who happen to have hearts. It is bad taste to
retain it in these days, when everybody worth hanging

oublie sa mere,
Et par bon ton se deTend d'etre pere.

Most people, it is evident, have life granted to them for their
own sake : but not a few seem sent into the world chiefly for
the sake of others. How many infants every year come and
go like apparitions ! This remark too, if true in any degree,
holds good much further.

A critic should be a pair of snuffers. He is oftener an
extinguisher; and not seldom a thief. u.

The intellect of the wise is like glass : it admits the light of
heaven, and reflects it.

They who have to educate children, should keep in mind
that boys are to become men, and that girls are to become
women. The neglect of this momentous consideration gives
us a race of moral hermaphrodites. a.

Poetry is to philosophy what the sabbath is to the rest of
the week.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 23

The ideal incentives to virtuous energy are a sort of moon
to the moral world. Their borrowed light is but a dimmer sub-
stitute for the lifegiving rays of religion ; replacing those rays,
when hidden or obscured, and evidencing their existence, when
they are unseen in the heavens.

To exclaim then, during the blaze of devotional enthusiasm,
against the beauty and usefulness of such auxiliary motives, is
fond. To shut the eye against their luminous aid, when re-
ligion does not enlighten our path, is lunatic. To understand
their comparative worthlessness, feel their positive value, and
turn them, as occasion arises, to account, is the part of the
truly wise.

I have called these incentives a sort of moon. Had the
image occurred to one of those old writers, who took such
pleasure in tracing out recondite analogies, he would scarcely
have omitted to remark, that, in the conjunctions of these two
imaginary bodies, the moral moon is never eclipst, except at
the full, nor ever eclipses, but when it is in the wane. " Love,"
says our greatest living prose-writer,* in one of his wisest and
happiest moods, " is a secondary passion in those who love
most, a primary in those who love least. He who is inspired
by it in a great degree, is inspired by honour in a greater."
So it is with Honour and Religion.

Before me were the two Monte Cavallo statues, towering
gigantically above the pygmies of the present day, and looking
like Titans in the act of threatening heaven. Over my head
the stars were just beginning to look out, and might have been
taken for guardian angels keeping watch over the temples be-
low. Behind, and on my left, were palaces ; on my right,
gardens, and hills beyond, with the orange tints of sunset over
them still glowing in the distance. Within a stone's throw of

* Landor, in his beautiful Conversation between Roger Ascham and Lady-
Jane Gray. The passage is all the better for its accidental coincidence with
those noble lines by Lovelace :

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more.

24 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

me, in the midst of objects thus glorious in themselves, and thus
in harmony with each other, was stuck an unplaned post, on
which glimmered a paper lantern. Such is Rome.

Many men, however ambitious to be great in great things,
have been well content to be little in little things. a.

Jupiter-Scapin was a happy name, witty and appropriate :
he however for whom it was invented was one of a large
family. By the vulgar he is admired, and has been almost
worshipt, as the hero of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, and
of how many other fields of carnage : but go and read his will
in Doctors' Commons ; and you will find that this man-slayer
on a huge and grand scale could also relish murder on the
meanest scale, and that in his solitude in St. Helena such ma-
lignity festered in his heart, as made him leave a legacy of ten
thousand franks to a man for having attempted to assassinate
the true hero, who conquered him at Waterloo. u.

So great enormities have been committed by privateers,
within the memory of living men, — as may be seen in the
Journal of Alexander Davidson, in the Edinburgh Annual Reg-
ister, vol. iii. p. 2, — that it seems advisable that, on board
every such ship, except perhaps in the four seas, there should
be a superintending national officer, to keep a public journal,
and to prevent crimes. If the officer die on the cruise, the
privateer should be bound to make the nearest friendly port,
unless she meet with a national ship-of-war that can spare
her a superintendent out of its crew. A privateer not con-
forming to the regulations on these points should be deemed
a pirate.

Unless some such provisions are adopted, the States now
springing up in America will one day send forth a swarm of
piratical privateers, cruel as the Buccaneers, and more unprin-
cipled.

A statesman may do much for commerce, most by leaving it
alone. A river never flows so smoothly, as when it follows

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 25

its own course, without either aid or check. Let it make its
own bed : it will do so better than you can. A.

Anguish is so alien to man's spirit, that nothing is more
difficult to will than contrition. Therefore God is good enough
to afflict us, that our hearts, being brought low enough to feed
on sorrow, may the more easily sorrow for sin unto repentance.

In most ruins we see what Time has spared. Ancient Rome
appears to have defied him ; and its remains are the limbs
which he has rent and scattered in the struggle. t.

How melancholy are all memorials ! t.

Were we merely the creatures of outward impulses, what
would faces of joy be but so many glaciers, on which the seem--
ing smile of happiness at sunrise is only a flinging back of the
rays they appear to be greeting, from frozen and impassive
heads ?

It is with flowers, as with moral qualities : the bright are
sometimes poisonous ; but, I believe, never the sweet.

Picturesqueness is that quality in objects which fits them for
making a good picture ; and it refers to the appearances of
things in form and color, more than to their accidental associa-
tions. Rembrandt would have been right in painting turbans
and Spanish cloaks, though the Cid had been a scrivener,
Cortez had sold sugar, and Mahomet had been notorious for
setting up a drug-shop instead of a religion.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower
and harder than loss, in all things good : but, in all things bad,
getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

Would you cure or kill an evil prejudice ? Manage it as
you would a pulling horse, tickle it as you would a trout,
2

26 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

treat it as you would the most headstrong thing in the world,
and the readiest to take alarm, the likeliest to slip through
your fingers at the moment you think you have got it safe, and
are just about to make an end of it.

Three reasons occur to me for thinking bodily sins more
curable than mental ones.

In the first place, they are more easily ascertained to be
sins ; since they clothe themselves in outward acts, which admit
neither of denial, nor, except in way of excuse, of self-decep-
tion. Nobody, the morning after he has been drunk, can be
ignorant that he went to bed not sober : his nerves and stom-
ach assure him of the fact. But the same man might be long
in finding out that he thinks more highly of himself than he
ought to think, from having no palpable standard to convince
him of it

Secondly, bodily sins do not so immediately affect the reason,
but that we still possess an uncorrupted judge within us, to
discover and proclaim their criminality. "Whereas mental sins
corrupt the faculty appointed to determine on their guilt, and
darken the light which should show their darkness.

Moreover, bodily sins must be connected with certain times
and places. Consequently, by a new arrangement of hours,
and by abstaining, so far as may be, from the places which
have ministered opportunities to a bodily vice, a man may in
some degree disable himself for committing it. This in most
vices of the kind is easy, in sloth not ; which is therefore
the most dangerous of them, or at least the hardest to be
cured. The mind, on the other hand, is its own place, and
does not depend on contingencies of season and situation for
the power of indulging its follies or its passions.

Still it must be remembered that bodily sins breed mental
ones, thus, after they are stifled or extinct, leaving an evil and
vivacious brood behind them. " Nothing grows weak with age
(says South, vol. ii. p. 47), but that which will at length die
with age ; which sin never does. The longer the blot continues,
the deeper it sinks. Vice, in retreating from the practice of

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 27

men, retires into their fancy," . . . and from that stronghold
what shall drive it ?

'Twas a night clear and cloudless, and the sight,
Swifter than heaven-commissioned cherubim,
Soaring above the moon, glancing beyond
The stars, was lost in heaven's abysmal blue.

There are things the knowledge of which proves their reve-
lation. The mind can no more penetrate into the secrets of
heaven, than the eye can force a way through the clouds. It is
only when they are withdrawn by a mightier hand, that the
sight can rise beyond the moon, and, ascending to the stars,
repose on the unfathomable ether, — that emblem of omnipres-
ent Deity, which, everywhere enfolding and supporting man,
yet baffles his senses, and is unperceived, except when he looks
upward and contemplates it above him.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could
we understand half what most mothers say and do to their
infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own impor-
tance, which would render us insupportable through life.
Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to
him, before he is old enough to know the sense of it !

A man who strives earnestly and perseveringly to convince
others, at least convinces us that he is convinced himself, r.

It has been objected to the Reformers, that they dwelt too
much on the corruption of our nature. But surely, if our
strength is to be perfected, it can only be " in weakness."
He who feels his fall from Paradise the most sorely, will be
the most grateful for the offer of returning thither on the
wings of the Redeemer's love.

Written on Whitsunday.

Who has not seen the sun on a fine spring morning pouring
his rays through a transparent white cloud, filling all places

28 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

with the purity of his presence, and kindling the birds into joy
and song ? Such, I conceive, would be the constant effects of
the Holy Spirit on the soul, were there no evil in the world.
As it is, the moral sun, like the natural, though "it always
makes a day," is often clouded over. It is only under a
combination of peculiarly happy circumstances, that the heart
suffers this sweet violence perceptibly, and feels and enjoys
the ecstasy of being borne along by overpowering, unresisted
influxes of good. To most, I fear, this happens only during
the spring of life : but some hearts keep young, even at eighty.

After listening to very fine music, it appears one of the
hardest problems, how the delights of heaven can be so attem-
pered to our perceptions, as to become endurable for their pain.

A speech, being a matter of adaptation, and having to win
opinions, should contain a little for the few, and a great deal
for the many. Burke hurt his oratory by neglecting the latter
half of this rule, as Sheridan must have spoilt his by his care-
lessness about the former. But the many always carry it for
the moment against the few ; and though Burke was allowed to
be the greater man, Sheridan drew most hearers.

" I am convinced that jokes are often accidental. A man, in
the course of conversation, throws out a remark at random, and
is as much surprised as any of the company, on hearing it, to
find it witty."

For the substance of this observation I am indebted to one
of the pleasantest men I ever knew, who was doubtless giving
the results of his own experience. He might have carried his
remark some steps further, with ease and profit. It would
have done our pride no harm to be reminded, how few of our
best and wisest, and even of our newest thoughts, do really and
wholly originate in ourselves, how few of them are voluntary,
or at least intentional. Take away all that has been suggested
or improved by the hints and remarks of others, all that has
fallen from us accidentally, all that has been struck out by col-

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 29

lision, all that has been prompted by a sudden impulse, or has
occurred to us when least looking for it ; and the remainder,
which alone can be claimed as the fruit of our thought and
study, will in every man form a small portion of his store, and
in most men will be little worth preserving. We can no more
make thoughts than seeds. How absurd then for a man to call
himself a poet, or maker! The ablest writer is a gardener
first, and then a cook. His tasks are, carefully to select and
cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts, and when
they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and so that they
may have a relish.

To recur to my friend's remark : let me strengthen it with
the authority of one of the wittiest men that ever lived ; who,
if any man, might assuredly have boasted that his wit was not
a foundling, "As the repute of wisdom, (says South, Sermon
viii.), so that of wit also is very casual. Sometimes a lucky
saying or a pertinent reply has procured an esteem of wit to
persons otherwise very shallow ; so that, if such a one should
have the ill hap to strike a man dead with a smart saying, it
ought in all reason and conscience to be judged but a chance-
medley. Nay, even when there is a real stock of wit, yet the
wittiest sayings and sentences will be found in a great measure
the issues of chance, and nothing else but so many lucky hits
of a roving fancy. For consult the acutest poets and speak-
ers ; and they will confess that their quickest and most admired
conceptions were such as darted into their minds like sudden
flashes of lightning, they knew not how nor whence ; and not
by any certain consequence or dependence of one thought upon
another."

Were further confirmation needed, the poet of our age has
been heard to declare, that once in his life he fancied he had
hit upon an original thought, but that after a while he met with
it in so common an author as Boyle.

Whoever wishes to see an emblem of political unions and
enmities, should walk, when the sun shines, in a shrubbery.
So long as the air is quite still, the shadows combine to form

30 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

a pretty trellice-work, which looks as if it would be lasting.
But the wind is perverse enough to blow ; and then to pieces
goes the trellice-work in an instant ; and the shadows, which
before were so quiet and distinct, cross and intermingle con-
fusedly. It seems impossible they should ever re-unite: yet,
the moment the wind subsides, they dovetail into each other
as closely as before.

Before I traveled, I had no notion that mountain scenery
was so unreal. Beside the strangeness of finding common
objects on new levels, and hence in new points of view, you
have only to get into a retired nook, and you hear water, and
catch a glimpse of the tops of trees, but see nothing distinctly
except the corner of rock where you are standing. You are
surrounded by a number of well-known effects, so completely
severed to the eye and imagination from their equally well-
known and usually accompanying causes, that you cannot tell
what to make of them.

All things here are strange !
Rocks scarred like rough-hewn wood ! Ice brown as sand
Wet by the tide, and cleft, with depths between,
And streams outgushing from its frozen feet !
Snow-bridges arching over headlong torrents !
And then the sightless sounds, and noiseless motions,
Which hover round us ! I should dream I dreamt,
But for those looks of kindness still unchanged.

0 these mob torrents ! here, with show of fury,
Rushing submissive to an arch of snow,
That frailest fancy-work of Nature's idlesse ;
There threatening rocks, and rending ancient firs,
The sovereins of the wood, yet overwhelmed,
And dasht to the earth with hooting violence.

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources, one pure,
the other impure.

It is with great men as with high mountains. They oppress
us with awe when we stand under them : they disappoint our

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 31

insatiable imaginations when we are nigh, but not quite close
to them : and then, the further we recede from them, the more
astonishing they appear ; until their bases being concealed by
intervening objects, they at one moment seem miraculously
lifted above the earth, and the next strike our fancies as let
down from heaven.

The apparent and the real progress of human affairs are
both well illustrated in a waterfall ; where the same noisy, bub-
bling eddies continue for months and years, though the water
which froths in them changes every moment. But as every
drop in its passage tends to loosen and detach some particle of
the channel, the stream is working a change all the time in the
appearance of the fall, by altering its bed, and so subjecting the
river during its descent to a new set of percussions and rever-
berations.

And what, when at last effected, is the consequence of this
change? The foam breaks into shapes somewhat different;
but the noise, the bubbling, and the. eddies are just as violent
as before.

A little management may often evade resistance, which a
vast force might vainly strive to overcome. a.

Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and
changeable : they even dance : yet God has made them part of
the oak. In so doing He has given us a lesson not to deny the
stout-heartedness within, because we see the lightsomeness
without.

How disproportionate are men's projects and means! To
raise a single church to a single Apostle, the monuments of
antiquity were ransackt, and forgiveness of sins was doled out
at a price. Yet its principal gate has been left unfinisht ; and
its holy of holies is encrusted with stucco.

On entering St. Peter's, my first impulse was to throw my-

32 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

self on my knees ; and, but for the fear of being observed by
my companions, I must have bowed my face to the ground, and
kist the pavement. I moved slowly up the nave, opprest by
my own littleness ; and when at last I reacht the brazen
canopy, and my spirit sank within me beneath the sublimity of
the dome, I felt that, as the ancient Romans could not condemn
Manlius within sight of the Capitol, so it would be impossible
for an Italian of the present day to renounce Popery under the
dome of St. Peter's.

The impressions produced by an object which addresses itself
to the understanding and the heart by a number of conflicting
associations, will probably vary much, even in the same mind,
under different aspects of moral light and shade : nor do I
believe that there is any real discrepancy between my own
feelings and my brother's, when I say that the hollowness and
fraud of Popery were never brought before my mind more
forcibly, nay, glaringly, than beneath the dome of St. Peter's.
One of my first visits to that gorgeous cathedral was on Christ-
masday 1832. I expected to see a sight agreeing, at least in
outward appearance, with the title of Catholic, which the
Church of Rome claims as exclusively her own, — to find a
multitude of persons thronging in from the city and from the
neighboring country to attend the celebration of high mass on
that blessed festival by him whom they were taught to revere
as Christ's vicegerent upon earth. But instead of this a row of
soldiers was drawn up along each side of the nave, and kept
everybody at a distance during the whole service, except the
few who were privileged by station or favour to enter within
the lines. Beside the altar, under the dome, seats had been
erected for persons of rank or wealth, who were mainly forein-
ers, and consequently in great part English or German Prot-
estants. Thus the whole proceeding acquired the character,
not of a religious ceremony, in which the congregation was to
join, but of a theatrical exhibition before strangers, regarded,
for the most part, as heretics, and many of whom came merely
out of curiosity to see the show. After a while the Pope was

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 33

brought in, borne on a raised seat or palanquin, with splendid
robes and plumes and fans and other paraphernalia. He cele-
brated mass, the persons who ought to have formed the congre-
gation, a very scanty one at the utmost, being prevented from
approaching by the barrier of troops : and when the rite was
over, the chief performer, or chief victim, in this miserable
pageant was carried out again with the same pomp. The
thought of the moral debasement thus inflicted on a man, who
personally might be honest and pious, and of his utter inability
to struggle against such a crushing system, so opprest me as I
walkt away, that when, in mounting the steps before the
Trinita, my eyes fell on a poor beggar who used to sit there,
and who had neither hands nor feet, picking up the alms
thrown to him with his mouth, I could not refrain from ex-
claiming, How infinitely rather would I be that poor cripple;,
than Pope !

Can the effect of the ceremonies in St. Peter's on intelligent
Italians in these days be very different ? I doubt it ; whatever
might be their feelings when they merely saw the empty shell
of the building. I have known men indeed, whom I esteem
and honour, and who have regarded Rome as a solemn and
majestic witness of what they have deemed the Truth. But to
me, though, from the indescribable beauty and grandeur of
many of the views, the intense interest of its Heathen and
Christian recollections, and its inexhaustible stores of ancient
and modern arty the three months I spent there were daily
teeming with fresh sources of delight, and have left a love such
as I never felt for any other city, yet when I thought of Rome
in connexion with the religion, of which it is the metropolis, it
seemed to me of all places the last where a man with his eyes
open could be converted to Romanism. In the Tyrol, I could
have understood how a person living amongst its noble and
devout inhabitants might have been led to embrace their faith,
but not at Rome. The vision of the Romish Church, and of its
action upon the people, which was there graven on my mind,
accords with that implied in the answer of an ingenious English
painter, whom I askt, how he could bring himself to leave
2* c

34: GUESSES AT TKUTH.

Rome, after living so many years there. It was indeed very
painful, he replied, to tear myself away from so much exquisite
beauty : but, as my children grew up, it became absolutely neces-
sary ; for I found it utterly impossible to give them a notion of
truth at Rome. The terrible curse, which is represented in the
words of the ancient satirist, — Quid Romae faciam I mentiri
nescio, — seems still to cleave to the fateful city. u.

The germ of idolatry is contained in the proneness of man's
feelings and imagination to take their impressions from out-
ward objects, rather than from the dictates of reason ; under the
controll of which they can scarcely be brought without a great
impairing of their energies.

It may possibly have been in part from a merciful indulgence
to this tendency of our nature, that God vouchsafed to shew
Himself in the flesh. At least one may discern traces which
seem to favor such a belief, both in the Jewish scheme and in
the Christian. In both God revealed Himself palpably to the
outward senses of His people : in both He addrest Himself
personally by acts of loving-kindness to their affections. It is
not merely for being redeemed, that we are called on to feel
thankful ; but for being redeemed by the blood of the God-man
Jesus Christ, which He poured out for us upon the Cross. So
it was not simply as God, that Jehovah was to be worshipt by
the Jews ; but as the God of their fathers, who had brought
them out of the house of bondage, whose voice they had heard
and lived, who had chosen them to be His people, and had
given them His laws, and a land flowing with milk and honey.

The last sentence has suggested a query of some importance.
Out of the house of bondage. What says the advocate of co-
lonial slavery to this ? That the bondage was no evil ? that the
deliverance of a people from personal slavery was not a work
befitting God's right hand ? Or will he tell us that the cases
differ ? that the animal wants of the Israelites were ill attended
to ? that they were ill fed ? This at least will not serve his
purpose : for the fleshpots of Egypt are proverbial. What will
serve it, I leave him to discover ; only recommending him to

GUESSES AT TSUTH. 35

beware of relying much on the order to expose the Hebrew-
children. If he does, it will give way under him. Meanwhile
to those religious men who are labouring for the emancipation
of the Negroes, amid the various doubts and difficulties with
which every great political measure is beset, it must needs be
an inspiring thought, that to rescue a race of men from personal
slavery, and raise them to the rank and self-respect of inde-
pendent beings, is, in the strictest sense of the word, a god-like
task ; inasmuch as it is a task which, God's Book tells us, God
Himself has accomplisht. But these things, as Paul says, ex-
pressly speaking of the Pentateuch, happened for examples, and
were written for our admonition.

Often would the lad
Watch with sad fixedness the summer sun
In bloodred blaze sink hero-like to rest.
Then, 0 to set like thee ! but 7, alas !
Am weak, a poor, unheeded shepherd boy.*
'Twas that alas undid him. His ambition,
Once the vague instinct of his nobleness,
Thus tempered in the glowing furnace-heat
Of lone repinings and aye-present aims,
Brightened to hope and hardened to resolve.
To hope ! What hope is that whose clearest ray-
Is drencht with mother's tears? what that resolve,
Whose strength is crime, whose instrument is death ?

There is something melancholy and painful in the entire
abandonment of any institution designed for good. It is too
plain a confession of intellectual weakness, too manifest a re-
ceding before the brute power of outward things. Any one
can amputate : the difficulty and the object is to restore. To
reanimate lifeless forms, — to catch their departed spirit, and
embody it in another shape, — in the room of institutions
grown obsolete, to substitute such new ones as will mould,
sway, and propell the existing mass of thought and character,

* Since these lines were written, a fine passage, expressing the feelings
with which an ambitious lad sits watching the setting sun, has been pointed
out to me in Schiller's Bobbers.

36 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and thus do for the present age, what the old in their vigour
did for the past, — these are things worth living a politician's
life for, with all its labours and disgusts. Did that alone suffice
who would live any other ? But to accomplish these things,
the most dextrous mastery of the art is requisite, guided by
the brightest illuminations of the science : and where is the
man with both these, when so few have either ?

Quicquid credam valde credo, must be the motto of every
true poet. His belief is of the heart, not of the head, and
springs from himself much more than from the object.

It is curious that we express personality and unity by the
same symbol.

Is there any country in which polygamy is more frequent
than in England?

In some cases the mistress has been so much a wife, it only
remains for the wife to be a mistress.

Yet, strictly speaking, it is just as impossible for any but a
wife to be a wife, as for any but a wife to be a mother. And
wisdom cries, through the lips of a great French philosopher,
'• N'en croyez pas les romans : il faut etre epouse pour etre
mere." Bonald, Pensees, p. 97.

Xerxes promist a great reward to the inventer of a new
pleasure. What would he not promise in our days to the in-
venter of a new incident ? Fancy and Chance have long since
come to an end, the one of its combinations, the other of its
legerdemain.

Now the huge book of faery-land lies closed ;
And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.

But since the fictitious sources of poetry are thus as it were
drunk up, is poetry to fail with them ? If not, from whence is
it to be supplied ? From the inexhaustible springs of truth

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 37

and feeling, which are ever gurgling and boiling up in the
caverns of the human heart.

It is an uncharitable errour to ascribe the delight, with which
unpoetical persons often speak of a mountain-tour, to affecta-
tion. The delight is as real as mutton and beef, with which
it has a closer connexion than the travelers themselves sus-
pect, — arising in great measure from the good effects of moun-
tain air, regular exercise, and wholesome diet, upon the spirits.
Tris is sensual indeed, though not improperly so : but it is no
con ession to the materialist. I do not deny that my neighbour
has a soul, by referring a particular pleasure in him to the body.

Poetry should be an alterative : modern playwrights have
converted it into a sedative ; which they administer in such
unseasonable quantities, that, like an overdose of opium, it
makes one sick.

Time is no agent, as some people appear to think, that it
should accomplish anything of itself. Looking at a heap of
stones for a thousand years will do no more toward buildino- a
house of them, than looking at them for a moment. For Time,
when applied to works of any kind, being only a succession of
relevant acts, each furthering the work, it is clear that even an
infinite succession of irrelevant and therefore inefficient acts
would no more achieve or forward the completion, than an
infinite number of jumps on the same spot would advance a
man toward his journey's end. There is a motion without
progress in time as well as in space ; where a thing often re-
mains stationary, which appears to us to recede, while we are
leaving it behind.

A sort of ostracism is continually going on against the best,
both of men and measures. Hence the good are fain to pur-
chase the acquiescence of the bad, by contenting themselves
with the second, third, or even fourth best, according as they
can make their bargain.

38 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Courage, when it is not heroic self-sacrifice, is sometimes a
modification, and sometimes a result of faith. How vast a
field then is opened to man, by establishing faith and its modi-
fications upon the power and truth of God ! Had this great
Gospel virtue (which, as the New Testament philosophically
affirms, has power to remove mountains) been really and ex-
tensively operative, what highth or perfection might we not have
reacht ? As the apparent impossibilities, which check man's
exertions, vanisht, his views would have enlarged in propor-
tion : so that, considering how the removal of a single obstacle
will often disclose unimagined paths, and open the way to un-
dreamt of advances, our wishes might perhaps afford a surer
measure even than our hopes, for calculating the progress of
man under the impulse of this master principle. Who, twenty
years ago, notwithstanding the Vicar of Wakefield, thought
that practicable, which Mrs. Fry has shewn to be almost
easy?

From a narrow notion of human duty, men imagine that the
devout and social affections are the only qualities stunted by
want of faith. Were it so, we should not have to deplore that
narrow sphere of knowledge, that dearth of heroic enterprise,
that scarcity of landmarks and pinnacles in virtue, for which
cowardly man has to thank his distrust of what he can accom-
plish, God assisting. We could in no wise have had more
than one discoverer of America ; but we should then have been
blest with many Columbuses. So Bacon teaches in his Essay
on Atheism : " Take an example of a dog, and mark what a
generosity and courage he will put on, when he finds himself
maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a god, or melior
natura ; which courage is manifestly such, as that creature,
without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could
never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself
upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith,
which human nature in itself could not obtain. Therefore, as
atheism is in all respects hateful, so it is especially in this, that
it destroys magnanimity, and depriveth human nature of the
means to exalt itself above human frailty. "

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 39

But I may be told perhaps that, although this is spoken most
truly against atheism, no such thing as atheism is to be found
now ; and I may be askt, Who are atheists ? I answer, with
sorrow and awe, Practically every mjxn is an atheist, who lives
without God in the world.

Friendship is Love, without either flowers or veil.

Juliet's flow of feeling is a proof of her purity.

As oftentimes, when walking in a wood near sunset, though
the sun himself be hid by the highth and bushiness of the trees
around, yet we know that he is still above the horizon, from
seeing his beams in the open glades before us, illumining a
thousand leaves, the several brightnesses of which are so many
evidences of his presence ; thus it is with the Holy Spirit. He
works in secret ; but his work is manifest in the lives of all
true Christians. Lamps so heavenly must have been lit from
on high.

As the Epicureans had a Deism without a God, so the Uni-
tarians have a Christianity without a Christ, and a Jesus but
no Saviour.

Christian prudence passes for a want of worldly courage; just
as Christian courage is taken for a want of worldly prudence.
But the two qualities are easily reconciled. When we have
outward circumstances to contend with, what need we fear, God
being with us ? When we have sin and temptation to contend
with°what should we not fear? God leaving our defense to
our own hearts, which at the first attack surrender to the en-
emy, and go over at the first solicitation.

Of Christian courage I have just spoken. On Christian pru-
dence it is well said, that he who loves danger shall perish by it.
" He who will fight the devil at his own weapon, must not won-
der if he finds him an overmatch." South, Sermon lxv.

40 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Mark how the moon athwart yon snowy waste

An instant glares on us, then hides her head,

Curtained in thickest clouds, while half her orb

Hangs on the horizon like an urn of fire.

That too diminishes, drawn up toward heaven

By some invisible hand: and now 'tis gone:

And nought remains to man, but anxious thoughts,

Why one so beautiful should frown on him,

With painful longings for a gift resumed,

And the aching sense that something has been lost.

Li?;ht will blind a man, sooner than darkness. Are we then
to pray that we may be left in darkness? O no ! but beware, ye
who walk in light, lest ye turn your light into a curse. a.

Plan for the Alleviation of the Poor-rates, written in 1826.

I entreat every one who does not see the grievous evil of the
Poorlaws, as now administered, or who doubts the necessity of
applying some strong remedy, to read the article on those laws
in the 66th number of the Quarterly Review. It is written
professedly in their defense: yet, unless with Malachi Mala-
growther I called them a cancer, I could say nothing severer
than is there said against their present administration, and its
effects and tendencies ; which the writer refers to the act passed
in 1795, " enabling overseers to relieve poor persons at their
own homes" For nearly a century before, the Poor-rates had
fluctuated little. In the thirty-one years since, they have risen
from two to six millions ; and if no measures are taken to stop the
evil, they must still go on increasing. " Yet (as the Reviewer
says) the direct savings which would accrue from a better sys-
tem of supporting the poor, are not worth consideration, when
contrasted with the indirect advantages, from the melioration of
the character and habits of the agricultural labourer."

Almost every man in England is affected by this evil system ;
almost every man, except the farmers, who are the loudest in
their complaints, is directly injured by it ; the poor most. Let
them then, to use their own phrase, know the rights of the
matter. Shew them how great, how important a part of the
system, as it now exists, is quite new. Appeal to their own ex-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 41

perience, whether it is not most pernicious. Half the difficulty
which impedes an alteration of the Poorlaws, will be at an
end.

The repeal of the Act of 1795 may do a good deal, especially
for the payers of Poor-rates. But I am disposed to go much
further ; not from hard-heartedness, or a disregard for the hap-
piness and welfare of the honest and industrious poor of this
land ; but from a belief that, after a few years, when the evil
effects of the present system are worn out of the character and
habits of the English labourer, his condition would be improved
by a complete change in our system of legal charity.

Old age is the only period of a poor man's life, when, if hon-
est and industrious, he would not be sorry to owe his regular
support to any hands except his own. Now in old age his
comforts would be augmented, and, what is of still more conse-
quence to him, his respectability would be increast, — he would
be a richer man, a more independent man, a man of greater
weight in the village, — from the adoption of some regulations
of this sort.

Let a fund be establisht for the benefit of the poor, to be called
the National Poor-fund. Out of this fund, every labourer (pay-
ing the sum of weekly, from the time he is sixteen till

he is ) shall at the age of sixty-five be entitled to re-
ceive the third of a hale labourer's average wages. That third
at the end of four years is to be doubled ; and at the end of
eight years tripled. Thus at seventy-three the labourer, if he
live so long, will be entitled of right to receive the full amount
of a healthy labourer's wages.

The poor of large towns and manufacturers, I conceive, are
shorter-lived than peasants. If so, they should be entitled to
the benefits of the National Poor-fund earlier. The trifle to
be paid weekly both by them and by the agricultural labourers
should be less, perhaps considerably less, than what would be
demanded by an Insurance-office guaranteeing the same pro-
spective advantages.

Occasional distress may safely be left to private charity.
Consequently there need not be any temporary relief; nor

42 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

should there, as that would reopen a door to all the present
evils. There should also be few poor-houses. Orphans, and
occasionally the aged, in country parishes might be boarded out,
(as is, or was, the custom at Lyons with the foundlings, who,
instead of being reared in the hospital, were put out to nurse,)
due care being taken to place the orphans with cottagers of
good repute. But a subscriber to the fund, if disabled by an
accident, might at any age claim relief from it apportioned to
his maimedness.

Persons who had not contributed to the fund in their youth,
would receive no relief from it in old age. Contributions for
less than years should be forfeited ; but every man, pay-
ing his dues for that number of years, and then discontinuing
his contribution, should be entitled to relief proportionate.
Whether he should begin to receive at sixty-five, only receiving
less weekly, or should begin to receive aid later, is a question I
am not prepared to answer. Perhaps the latter would be the
better plan in most cases.

Of women I say nothing : but it would be easy to form a
liberal scale, — and liberal it should be, — for them. Only I
would allow contributors, who die without benefiting by the
fund, to bequeathe to women who are, or to female infants
provided they become, contributors, the amount of one year's

contribution for every during which the testator may have

contributed ; such amount being carried to the account of the
legatee, exactly as if she had paid it herself.

To increase this Poor-fund, either a parliamentary grant
should be voted yearly, or, — what would be far better, and
should therefore be tried in the first instance, — the rich should
come forward as honorary subscribers. Nay, every one without
exception should belong to it, either as subscriber or contribu-
tor. It is the littles of the little that make the mickle.

Of the contributors I have spoken already. For subscribers
the following yearly proportion, or something like it, would
suffice : one pound for all who in any way have sixty pounds a
year ; two for all who have a hundred ; and so on. Only there
should be a maximum, and that not a large one ; so that in rich

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 43

families the wife might subscribe as well as the husband. All
persons now liable to be rated should put in a trifle for every
child above six or seven years old : this in the case of the
wealthy should be as much, or nearly so, as they put in for
themselves. Moreover all masters should take care that their
servants are subscribers, making them an allowance on purpose.
In return for this they should be admitted to relief in old age,
as they would now be, on making out a case of necessity. But
only bond fide working persons should be entitled to receive of
right, as contributors to the fund ; who are carefully to be dis-
tinguish^ from the subscribers in aid of it.

The Jacobins, in realizing their systems of fraternization,
always contrived to be the elder brothers. l.

I rise

From a perturbed sleep, broken by dreams

Of long and desperate conflict hand to hand,

Of wounds, and rage, and hard-earned victory,

And charging over falling enemies

With shouts of joy . . . How quiet is the night !

The trees are motionless; the cloudless blue

Sleeps in the firmament; the thoughtful moon,

With her attendant train of circling stars,

Seems to forget her journey through the heavens,

To gaze upon the beauties of the scene.

That scene how still ! no truant breeze abroad

To mar its quietness. The very brook,

So wont to prattle like a merry child,

Now creeps with caution o'er its pebbled way,

As if afraid to violate the silence.

Handsomeness is the more animal excellence, beauty the
more imaginative. A handsome Madonna I cannot conceive,
and never saw a handsome Venus : but I have seen many a
handsome country girl, and a few very handsome ladies.

There would not be half the difficulty in doing right, but for
the frequent occurrence of cases where the lesser virtues are
on the side of wrong.

44 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

Curiosity is little more than another name for Hope.

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more
than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we
are apt to think them.

There is an honest unwillingness to pass off another's obser-
vations for our own, which makes a man appear pedantic.

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint ! . . . Immo vivant !
provided they are worthy to live. So may we have the satis-
faction of knowing, — what literary incentive can be greater ?
— that we too have been permitted to utter sacred words, and
to think the thoughts of great minds.

The commentator guides and lights us to the altar erected
by the author ; but he himself must already have kindled his
torch at the flame which burns upon it. And what are Art
and Science, if not a running commentary on Nature ? what
are poets and philosophers, but torchbearers leading us through
the mazes and recesses of God's two majestic temples, the sen-
sible and the spiritual world? Books, as Dryden has aptly
termed them, are spectacles to read Nature. Eschylus and
Aristotle, Shakspeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and
expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach
us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable
the hieroglyphics of the senses. Do you not, since you have
read Wordsworth, feel a fresh and more thoughtful delight,
whenever you hear a cuckoo, whenever you see a daisy, when-
ever you play with a child ? Have not Thucydides and Machi-
avel aided you in discovering the tides of feeling and the
currents of passion by which events are borne along the ocean
of Time ? Can you not discern something more in man, now
that you look at him with eyes purged and unsealed by gazing
upon Shakspeare and Dante? From these terrestrial and
celestial globes we learn the configuration of the earth and the
heavens.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 45

But wheresoever good is done, good is received in return.
The law of reciprocation is not confined to the physical system
of things : in the career of benevolence and beneficence also
every action is followed by a corresponding reaction. Intel-
lectual light is not poured from a lantern, leaving the bearer in
the shade : it supplies us with the power of beholding and con-
templating the luminary it flows from. The more familiar we
become with Nature, with the greater veneration and love do
we return to the masters by whom we were initiated ; and as
they have taught us to understand Nature, Nature in turn
teaches us to understand them.

" When I have been traveling in Italy (says a lively mod-
ern writer), how often have I exclaimed, How like a picture !
I remember once, while watching a glorious sunset from the
banks of the Arno, I caught myself saying, This is truly one
of Claude's sunsets. Now when I again see one of my favor-
ite Grosvenor Claudes, I shall probably exclaim, How natural!
how like what I have seen so often on the Arno, or from the
Monte Pincio ! " Journal of an Ennuyee, p. 335.

The same thing must have happened to most lovers of land-
scape-painting. How often in the Netherlands does one see
Cuyp's solid, oppressive sunshine ! and Rubenses boundless,
objectless plains, which no other painter would have deemed
either worldly or susceptible of being transferred from Na-
ture's Gallery to Art's ! More than once, in mounting the hill
of Fiesole to Landor's beautiful villa, have I stopt with my
companion to gaze on that pure, living ether, in which Peru-
gino is wont to enshrine his Virgins and Saints, and which till
then I had imagined to be a heavenly vision specially vouch-
safed to him, such as this world of cloud and mist could not
parallel. Many a time too among the Sussex downs have I
felt grateful to Copley Fielding for opening my eyes to see
beauties and harmonies, which else might have been unheeded,
and for breathing ideas into the prospect, whereby " the repose
Of earth, sky, sea, and air was vivifjed."

Hence we may perceive, why what is called a taste for the
picturesque never arises in a country, until it has reacht an

46 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

advanced stage of intellectual culture : because an eye for the
picturesque can only be formed by looking at pictures ; that is,
primarily. In this, as in other cases, by Art are we first led to
fix our attention and reflexion more observantly on the beauties
of Nature : although, when such attention and reflexion have
once become general, they may be excited in such as have
never seen a picture. When we are told therefore that the
earliest passages to be found in any ancient author, which sa-
vour of what we should now call poetical description, are in the
Epistles of Pliny, we must not infer from this that Pliny had
a livelier and intenser love of Nature than any of the ancient
poets. Supposing the remark to be correct, — and I will not
stop to enquire how far it is so, — all it would prove is, that
Pliny was, as we know him to have been, what we used to call
a virtuoso, a picture-fancier, and that people in his day were
beginning to look at Nature in the mirror of Art. It is a
mistake however to conclude that men are insensible to those
beauties, which they are not continually talking about and an-
alysing,— that the love of Nature is a new feeling, because
the taste for the Picturesque is a modern taste. When the
mountaineer descends into the plain, he soon begins to pine
with love for his native hills ; and many have been known to
fall sick, nay, even to die, of that love. Yet, had he never left
them, you would never have heard him prate about them.
When I was on the Lake of Zug, which lies bosomed among
such grand mountains, the boatman, after telling some stories
about Suwarrow's march through the neighbourhood, askt me,
Is it true, that he came from a country where there is not a
mountain to he seen ? — Yes, I replied : you may go hundreds
of miles without coming to one. — That must be beautiful! he
exclaimed: das muss schon seynf His exclamation was prompt-
ed no doubt by the thought of the difficulties which the moun-
tains about him opposed to traffic and agriculture ; though even
on his own score he erred, as Mammom is ever wont to do
grossly. For those mountains gave him the lake, and attract-
ed the strangers, whereby he earned his livelihood. But it
is a perverse habit of the Imagination, when there is no call

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 47

for action, to dwell on " the ills we have," without thinking of
" the others which we know not of." This very man however,
had he been transported to the plains he sighed for, — even
though they had been as flat as Burnet's Paradise, or the tab-
ula rasa which Locke supposed to be the paradisiacal state of
the human mind, — would probably have been seized with the
homesickness which is so common among his countrymen, as it
is also among the Swedes and Norwegians, but which, I believe,
is hardly found, except in the natives of a mountain > ftod
beautiful country.

The noisest streams are the shallowest. It is an old saying,
but never out of season ; least of all in an age, the fit symbol of
which would not be, like the Ephesiari personification of Na-
ture, midtimamma, — for it neither brings forth nor nourishes,
— but multilingua. Your amateur will talk by the ell, or, if
you wish it, by the mile, about the inexpressible charms of Na-
ture: but I never heard that his love had caused him the
slightest uneasiness.

It is only by the perception of some contrast, that we become
conscious of our feelings. The feelings however may exist for
centuries, without the consciousness ; and still, when they are
mighty, they will overpower Consciousness ; when they are
deep, it will be unable to fathom them. Love has indeed been
called " loquacious as a vernal bird ; " and with truth ; but his
loquacity comes on him mostly in the absence of his beloved.
Here too the same illustration holds : the deep stream is not
heard, until some obstacle opposes it. But can anybody, when
floating down the Ehine, believe that the builders and dwellers
in those castles, with which every rock is crested, were blind to
all the beauties around them ? Is it quite impossible that they
should have felt almost as much as the sentimental tourist, who
returns to his parlour in some metropolis, and puffs out the
fumes of his admiration through his quill ? Has the moon no
existence independent of the halo about her ? Or does the halo
even flow from her ? Is it not produced by the dimness and
density of the atmosphere through which she has to shine ?
Give me the love of the bird that broods over her own nest,

48 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

rather than of one that lays her eggs in the nest of another,
albeit she warble about parental affection as loudly as Rousseau
or Lord Byron.

Convents too . . how many of them are situate amid the
sublimest and most beautiful scenery! I will only mention
two, the great Chartreuse, and the monastery of the Camal-
dulans near Naples. The hacknied remark at such places is,
0 yes ! the monks always knew how to pick out the eyes of the
land, and to pounce upon its fatness. It is forgotten that, when
the convents were built, the country round was mostly either a
barren wilderness, or a vast, impenetrable forest, and that, if
things are otherwise now, the change is owing to the patient
industry of the monks and their dependents, not liable to alter-
nations and interruptions, as is the case with other proprietors,
but continued without intermission through centuries. Though
one is bound however to protest against this stale and vulgar
scoff, I know not how we can imagine that the men, who, when
half " the world lay before them, were to choose their place of
rest," pitcht their homes in spots surrounded by such surpass-
ing grandeur and beauty, can have been without all sense for
what they saw. Rather, in retiring from the world to worship
God in solitude, did they seek out the most glorious and awful
chambers in that earthly temple, which also is " not made with
hands."

Add to this, that in every country, where there are national
legends, they are always deeply and vividly imprest with a
feeling of the magnificence or the loveliness in the midst of
which they have arisen. Indeed, they are often little else than
the expression and outpouring of those feelings: and such
primitive poetical legends will hardly be found, except in the
bosom of a beautiful country, growing up in it, and pendent
from it, almost like fruit from a tree. The powerful influence
exercised by natural objects in giving shape and life to those
forms in which the Imagination embodies the ideas of super-
human power, is finely illustrated by Wordsworth in one of the
noblest passages of the Excursion: where he casts a glance
over the workings of this principle in the mythologies of the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 49

Persians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, and the Greeks;
shewing with what plastic power the imaginative love of Na-
ture wedded and harmonized the dim conceptions of the mys-
teries which lie behind the curtain of the senses, with the
objects by which it happened to be surrounded, incarnating the
invisible in the visible, and impregnating the visible with the
invisible. The same principle is of universal application. You
may perceive how it has operated in the traditions of the High-
lands, of the Rhine, of Bohemia, of Sweden and Norway, in
short of every country v, . re poetry has been indigenous. As
the poetry of the Asiatic tions may be termed the poetry of
the sun, so the Edda is tht poetry of ice. u.

I have been trying to shew, that, though a taste for the
picturesque, as the very form of the word picturesque, which
betrays its recent origin, implies, is a late growth, a kind of
aftermath, in the mind of a people, which cannot arise until a
nation has gone through a long process of intellectual culture,
nor indeed until after the first crop has been gathered in, still a
feeling and love for the beauties of Nature may exist alto-
gether independently of that self-conscious, self-analysing taste,
and that such a feeling is sure to spring up, wherever there is
nourishment for it, in a nation's vernal prime : although there
may be a period, between the first crop and the aftermath, when
the field looks parent and yellow and bristly, and as if the dew
of heaven could not moisten it. When the mind of a people
first awakes, it is full of its morning dreams, and holds those
dreams to be, as the proverb accounts them, true. A long time
passes, — it must encounter and struggle with opposition, —
before it acquires anything like a clear, definite self-conscious-
ness. For a long time it scarcely regards itself as separate
from Nature. It lies in her arms, and feeds at her breast, and
looks up into her face, and smiles at her smiles. When it
speaks, you rather hear the voice of Nature speaking through
it, than any distinct voice of its own. It is like a child, in all
whose words and thoughts you may perceive the promptings of
its mother. Very probably indeed it may not talk much about
3 d

50 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

its love for its mother ; but it will give the strongest proofs of
that love, by thinking in all things as its mother thinks, and
speaking as its mother speaks, and doing as its mother does.

This is the character of poetry in early times. It may be
objected that you find no picturesque descriptions in it. That
is to say, the poets have not learnt to look at Nature with the
eye of a painter, nor to seek for secondary, reflex beauties in
natural objects, arising whether from symbolical, or from acci-
dental associations. Nor do you see their love of Nature from
their talking about nature : for they are not conversant with
abstractions; they deal only with persons and things. You
may discern that love however by the way in which it is mixt
up with the whole substance of their minds, as the glow of
health mixes itself up with the whole substance of our bodies,
unthought of, it may be, until we are reminded of it by its
opposite, but still felt and enjoyed.

Of Asiatic poetry it is needless to speak : for that even now
has hardly emerged from its nonage, or risen beyond a child's
fondness for flowers. But even in Homer, — although in
Greek poetry afterward the human element, that which treats
of man as being and doing and suffering, predominated more
than in the poetry of any other country over the natural, which
dwells on the contemplation of the outward world, its forms, its
changes, and its influences, — and though the germs of this are
to be found in the living energy and definiteness and bodiliness
of all Homer's characters, — still what a love of Nature is there
in him! What a fresh morning air breathes through those
twin firstbirths of Poetry ! what a clear bright sky hangs above
those two lofty peaks of Parnassus ! In his own words we
may say, that over them vireppdyrj ao-neros al6t]p. Indeed this
ao-n-eroy aldfjp may be regarded as the peculiar atmosphere of
Greek literature and art, an atmosphere which then first opened
and broke upon it. Of all poems the Homeric have the most
thoroughly out-of-door character. We stand on the Ionian
coast, looking out upon the sea, and beholding it under every
variety of hue and form and aspect. And there he too was
wont to stand ; there, as Coleridge so melodiously expresses
it, he

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 51

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Every epithet he gives to a natural object, every image taken
from one, has the liveliest truth: and truth is ever the best
proof that any one can give of love. Of the poetical descrip-
tions of morning composed since the days of Homer, the chief
part are little else than expansions and amplifications of his
three sweet epithets, qptyipeia, K/joK6Ve7rAos, and pododdicrvKos.
Nor can anything be more aptly chosen than his adjuncts and
accompaniments: which shews that he was not destitute of
what we call the sentimental love of Nature, that love of
Nature which discerns a correspondence, and as it were a
sympathy, between its appearances and changes, and the vi-
cissitudes of human feeling and passion. Chryses, after his
entreaties have been denied, walks d^ewi/ iraph diva nokvcpXoLo-ftoio
6a\do-(rr)s, where the murmur of its waves responds to his feel-
ings, and stirs him to pour them forth in a prayer to Apollo.
In like manner Achilles, when Briseis is taken from him, sits
apart by himself, ffiv efji akbs TroKirjs opowv iiii oivoira 7t6vtov.
The epithet o'ivona, denoting the dark gloom, perhaps the purple
grape-color of the distant sea, while it was dashing and foaming
at his feet, brings it into harmony and sympathy with Achilles.
A bright, blue sea would have been out of keeping. Or take a
couple of similies. When Apollo comes down from Olympus
to avenge his insulted priest, he comes wktI eWws. When
Thetis rises from the sea to listen to her son's complaint, she
rises fjvr ofxix^v- Parallels to these two similies may be found
in two of our own greatest poets. Milton says that Pandemo-
nium "Rose like an exhalation from the earth." Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner tells us that he passes " like Night from land
to land." Milton's image is a fine one. Coleridge's appears
to me, to adopt an expression which he uses in speaking of
Wordsworth's faults, "too great for the subject," a piece of
"mental bombast." Be this however as it may, how inferior
are they both, in grandeur, in simplicity, in beauty, in grace, to
the Homeric! which moreover have better caught the spirit
and sentiment of the natural appearances. For Apollo does

52 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

come with the power and majesty, and with the terrours of
Night ; and the soft waviness of an exhalation is a much fitter
image for the rising of the goddess, than for the massiness and
hard, stiff outline of a building. In Homer's landscapes, it is
true, there is a want, or rather an absence, of those ornamental,
picturesque epithets, with which Pope has bedizened his trans-
lation. This however only shews that the objects he speaks
of " had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or
any interest Unborrowed from the eye." Such as they are, he
loves them for their own sake. In his vivid, transparent verse,
e£e(fiavev iracrai vitomaL Kal jrpcooves aKpoi, Kal vcnrai, — Havra. he t
ci'Serai acrrpa. We feel too that he, as he says of his shepherd,
yiyr)6e (ppeua at the sight; though no "conscious swain," as
Pope styles him, nor thinking of " blessing the useful light," as
by a kind of second sight of utilitarianism the bard of Twick-
enham is pleased to make him.

This distinctness of the Homeric descriptions leads Cicero,
in a fine passage of the Tusculan Questions, to contend that he
who, though blind, could so represent every object as to enable
us to see what he himself could not see, must have derived
great pleasure and enjoyment from his inward sight. There is
more reason, however, in the witticism of Velleius, that, if any
one supposes Homer to have been born blind, he must himself
be destitute of every sense. For never was a fable more
repugnant to truth, than that of Homer's blindness. It origi-
nated, probably, in the identification of the author of the Iliad
with the author of the Hymn to Apollo, and was then fostered
by the notion that Homer designed to represent himself under
the character of Demodocus in the Odyssee. Milton has
indeed made a fine use of Homer's blindness : but, looking at
it as a fact, one might as reasonably believe that the sun is
blind, as that Homer was. x\_^-^

In the Greek poets of the great age, I have already ad-
mitted, there is little love of Nature. Man was then become
very nearly all-in-all, to whose level the gods themselves were
brought down, — not the skeleton man of philosophy, nor the
puppet of empirical observation, — but the ideal man of imagi-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 53

native thought, an idea as perfect as it can be, when drawn
from no higher source than what lies in man himself. The
manifold, dazzling glories of Athens and of Greece filled their
minds with the notion of the greatness of human nature : and
that greatness they tried to exhibit in its struggles with fate
and with the gods. Their characters are mostly statuesque
even in this respect, that they have no background. In the
Prometheus itself, the wilderness and the other natural horrours
are mainly employed, like the chains and wedge, as instruments
by which Jupiter tries to intimidate the benefactor of mankind.
This, however, is not so much the case with Sophocles; in
whose Edipus at Colonics, Ajax, and Philoctetes, the scenery
forms an important element, not merely in the imaginative, but
even in the dramatic beauty. In after times, when the glory
of Greece had faded and sunk, when its political grandeur had
decayed, and man was no longer the one engrossing object of
admiration, we find a revival of the love of Nature in the pas-
toral poetry of the Sicilians.

With regard to modern poetry, when we are looking at any
question connected with its history, we ought to bear in mind
that we did not begin from the beginning, and that, with very
few exceptions, we had not to hew our materials out of the
quarry, or to devise the groundplan of our edifices, but made
use, at least in great measure, of the ruins and substructions of
antiquity. Hence, Greece alone affords a type of the natural
development of the human mind through its various ages and
stages. Owing to this, and perhaps still more to the influence,
direct and indirect, of Christianity, we from the first find a far
greater body of reflective thought in modern poetry than in
ancient. Dante is not, what Homer was, the father of poetry
springing in the freshness and simplicity of childhood out of
the arms of mother earth : he is rather, like Noah, the father
of a second poetical world, to whom he pours out his prophetic
song, fraught with the wisdom and the experience of the(old
world. Indeed he himself expresses this by representing him-
self as wandering on his awful pilgrimage under the guidance
of Yirgil.

54 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

It would require a long dissertation, illsuited to these pages,
to pursue this train of thought through the literature of modern
Europe. Let me hasten home, and take a glance at our own
poets. The early ones, especially the greatest among them,
were intense and devoted lovers of Nature. Chaucer sparkles
with the dew of morning. Spenser lies bathed in the sylvan
shade. Milton glows with orient light. One might almost
fancy that he had gazed himself blind, and had then been
raised to the sky, and there stood and waited, like " blind Orion
hungering for the morn." So abundantly had he stored his
mind with visions of natural beauty, that, when all without
became dark, he was still most rich in his inward treasure, and
" Ceast not to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring,
or shady grove, or sunny hill." Shakspeare "glances from
heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." All nature minis-
ters to him, as gladly as a mother to her child. Whether he
wishes her to tune her myriad-voiced organ to Romeo's love, or
to Miranda's innocence, or to Perdita's simplicity, or to Rosa-
lind's playfulness, or to the sports of the Fairies, or to Timon's
misanthropy, or to Macbeth's desolating ambition, or to Lear's
heart-broken frenzy, — he has only to ask, and she puts on
every feeling and every passion with which he desires to invest
her.

But, when Milton lost his eyes, Poetry lost hers. A time
followed, when our poets ceast to commune with Nature, and
ceast to love her, and, as there can be no true knowledge with-
out love, ceast therefore to know anything about her. Man
again became all-in-all, — but not the ideal human nature of
Greek poetry, in its altitudes of action and passion. The
human nature of our poets in those days was the human nature
of what was called the town, with all its pettinesses and hollow-
nesses and crookednesses and rottennesses. The great business
and struggle of men seemed to be, to outlie, outcheat, outwhore,
and outhector each other. Our poets then dwelt in Grub-
street, and, to judge from their works, seldom left their garrets,
save for the coffeehouse, the playhouse, or the stews. Dry-
den wrote a bombastical description of night, from which one

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 55

might suppose that he had never seen night, except by candle-
light. He talkt of "Nature's self seeming to lie dead," — of
" the mountains seeming to nod their drowsy head," — much as
Charles the Second used to do at a sermon, — and of » sleeping
flowers sweating beneath the nightdews," — which I can only
parallel by a translation I once saw of Virgil's Scilicet is
superis labor est, "Ay sure, for this the gods laborious sweat."
Yet this was extolled by Rymer, a countryman of Shak-
speare's, as the finest description of night ever composed : an
opinion which Johnson quotes, without expressing any dissent;
tellino- us, moreover, that these lines were repeated oftener in
his days than almost any others of Dryden s.

It is true that, as I have been reminded, Shakspeare also
has said of night, " Now o'er the one half world Nature seems
dead ; " and doubtless it was from hence that Dryden took
what he thought a very grand idea. But as thieves never know
or dare to make the right use of their stolen goods, so is it
mostly with plagiaries. The verbal likeness only exposes the
empty turgidity of Dryden : nor can there be a more striking
illustration of Quintilian's saying, Multa jiunt eadem, sed aliter.
For observe where Shakspeare uses this expression, and how
it exemplifies that unrivaled power of imagination, wherewith,
under the impulses of a mighty passion, he fuses every object
by its intense radiation, and brings them into harmony with
that passion by bathing them in a flood of bright, or sombre, or
mellow, or bloodred light. Macbeth, just as he is going to
commit the murder, standing on the very brink of hell, and
about to plunge into it, sees the reflexion of his own chaotic
feelings in all things. Order is turned into disorder; law is
suspended ; every natural, every social tie is cracking : he is
hurling an innocent man, his guest, his king, into the jaws of
death : death is in all his thoughts. To him therefore, wTith
the deepest truth, "o'er the one half world Nature seems
dead ; " even as he had just seen the instrument with which
the crime was to be perpetrated, "in palpable form" before
him, though only " a dagger of the mind, a false creation, Pro-
ceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." All the other visions
too which haunt him are of the same kind.

56 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings ; and withered Murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl 's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horrour from the time,
Which now suits with it.

With what wonderful fitness do all the images, all the thoughts,
all the words here " suit " with each other, and with Macbeth's
terrific purpose! whereas in Dryden's description there is no
congruity, but only a string of poor and incongruous conceits,
cold and extravagant ; and the occasion is merely that Cortez,
who with like incongruity has fallen in love at sight with the
daughter of Montezuma, cannot sleep, because " Love denies
Rest to his soul, and slumber to his eyes." What then must
have been the knowledge of Nature, and what the feeling for
it, in an age when the poetical imagery, which the readers and
repeaters of poetry were accustomed to associate with night,
was Nature's lying dead, mountains nodding their drowsy heads,
little birds repeating their songs in sleep, and sleeping flowers
sweating beneath the nightdews ? People even learnt to fancy,
and to tell one another, that all this was indeed so. As it is the
wont of hollow things to echo, whenever a poet hit on a striking
image, or a startling expression, it was bandied from mouth to
mouth. Thus nodding mountains became a stock phrase. Pope
makes Eloisa talk of " lowbrowed rocks that hang nodding o'er
the deep : " where however we may suppose the poet to trans-
fer the motion of the image in the water to the rocks them-
selves. In his Iliad, " Pelion nods his shaggy brows," and
"nodding Ilion waits the impending fall:" in his Odyssee,
" On Ossa Pelion nods with all his woods." The same piece
of falsetto is doubtless to be found scores of times in the verse-
writers of the same school.

Yet description, and moral satire or declamation, were the
richest veins, poor and shallow as they are at best, which were

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 57

opened in our serious verse between the death of Milton and
the regeneration of English poetry at the close of the last
century. Nor was our description of the highest kind, being
deficient both in imaginativeness and in reality. It seldom
betokened anything like that intimate, personal, thoughtful, du-
tiful, and loving communion with Nature, which we perceive
in every page of Wordsworth : and owing to this very want of
familiarity with the realities, our poets could not deal with them
as he does, shaping and moulding and combining and animating
them, according to the impulses of his imagination, and calling
forth new melodies and harmonies, to fill earth, sea, and sky.
They did look at Nature through the spectacles of books. It
was as though a number of eyes had been set in a row, like
boys playing at leap-frog, each hinder one having to look
through all that stood before it, and hence seeing Nature, not
as it is in itself but refracted and distorted by a number of
more or less turbid media. Ever and anon too some one would
be seized with the ambition of surpassing his predecessors, and
would try by a feat at leap eye to get before them : in so doing
however, from ignorance of the ground, he mostly stumbled
and fell. Making an impotent effort after originality, he would
attempt to vary the combinations of words in which former
writers had spoken of the same objects: but, as one is ever
liable to trip, and to violate idiom at least, if not grammar,
when speaking a forein language, so by these aliens to Nature,
and sojourners in the land of Poetry, images and expressions,
which belonged to particular circumstances, or to particular
phases of feeling, were often misapplied to circumstances and
feelings with which they were wholly incongruous. When the
jay spread out his peacock's tail, many of the quills were stick-
ing up in the air.

But though our descriptive poetry was mostly wanting both
in imaginativeness and in reality, this did not disqualify it for
being what is called picturesque. For picturesqueness, as it is
commonly understood, consists not in looking at things as they
really are, and as the sun or Homer look at them, nor in seeing
them, as Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth see them, transfig-
3*

58 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ured by the plastic power of the Imagination, but rather in
seeing them arrayed in the associations of various kinds with
which the course of ages has surrounded them. Painting,
even historicar'painting, being mute, and poorly supplied with
means for expressing new or remote combinations of thought,
has ever succeeded best in representing that which is familiar
and easy to be understood. It has so scanty a vocabulary to
tell its story with, that its story must needs be a short one, and
ought to be such that its outline and main features should be
discernible at a glance. For it has to speak to the eye, which
does not proceed cumulatively and step by step, and the impres-
sions of which are rather coinstantaneous than successive. Its
business is to give the utmost accuracy, completeness, and del-
icacy, to the details it makes use of in expressing such ideas as
have already got possession of the popular mind, and form a
portion of the popular belief. If it can do this, it can well
refrain from seeking to utter new ideas, or going on a voyage
of discovery into unknown regions of thought. Its stock in
trade may be said to consist chiefly in commonplaces : and it
no more tires of or by repeating them, than a rosebush tires
of or by pouring forth roses, or than the sun tires of or by
shining daily upon the same landscape. In poetry on the
other hand commonplaces are worthless. Only so far as a
work is original, only so far as a thought is original, either in
its form and conception, or at least in its position and combina-
tion, can it be said to be truly poetical. Poetry and Painting
are indeed sister arts, as they have often been termed. But
the sphere of each is totally distinct from that of the other :
though they can be made to touch at any point, they cannot be
made to coincide ; nor can they be brought to touch in more
points than one at the same moment, without some bruise and
injury to one or the other. Painting by the outward is to
express the inward ; Poetry by the inward is to express the
outward : but the main and immediate business of Painting is
with the outward, that of Poetry with the inward. That which
Painting represents, Poetry describes : that which Poetry rep-
resents, Painting can only symbolize. Whenever this is for-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 59

gotten, it is hurtful to both. Fuseli, for instance, was always
forgetting the painter, in striving to be a poet. Perhaps the
same was sometimes too much the case with Hogarth. As-
suredly it is so with Martin, and frequently with Turner, who
would have been a still greater painter, had he not been per-
petually striving to be more than a painter can be. On the
other hand, when Poetry becomes picturesque, it is like Pros-
pero casting away his wand, to take up a common sceptre:
and it will mostly have to learn that ordinary men are more
unmanageable, not only than Ariels, but even than Calibans.

In truth this has been one of the misfortunes of our poetry
for the last hundred and fifty years, that it has been much
more picturesque than poetical. To many of the excellences of
painting indeed it has made little pretension. It has no fore-
ground ; it has no background : it wants light ; it wants shade :
it wants an atmosphere : it wants the unity resulting from hav-
ing all the parts placed at once before the eye. AH these
things are missing in descriptive poetry; though in epic and
dramatic there are qualities that correspond to them. This is
enough to shew how idle it is for Poetry to abandon its own
domain, and try to set up its throne in the territory of its neigh-
bour. Everything that our poets had to mention, was described
and reflected upon. First one thing was described and reflected
upon ; and then something else was described and reflected
upon ; and then . . . some third thing was treated in the same
way. The power of infusing life and exhibiting action is
wanting. No word was supposed to be capable of standing
alone ; all must have a crutch to lean on : every object must
be attended by an epithet or two, or by a phrase, pickt out
much as schoolboys pick theirs out of the Gradus, with little
regard to any point except its fitting the verse, and not disturb-
ing its monotonous smoothness. If it had ever been applied to
the object by any poet, if it ever could be applied to it under
any circumstances, this was enough: no matter whether it
suited the particular occasion or no. The grand repository for
all such phraseology was that translation of Homer, which has
perhaps done more harm than any other work ever did to the

60 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

literature of its country ; thus exactly reversing the fate of its
original. For assuredly no human work ever exercised so
powerful and beneficial an influence on the literature and arts
of the people out of whom it sprang, as the Homeric poems.
Nor can I think that there was much ground in point of fact for
Plato's charge, of their having been injurious to religion and
morality. The mischief had other sources, inherent in Poly-
theism, and such as Natural Religion cannot quench. But as
for Pope's translation, it has been a sort of poetic stage-ward-
robe, to which anybody might resort for as much tinsel and
tawdry lace, and as many Bristol diamonds, as he wanted, and
where everybody might learn the welcome lesson, that the last
thing to be thought of in writing verses is the meaning.

Ever since the dawn of a better day on our poetry, descrip-
tion and reflexion have still absorbed too large a portion of its
energy. Few writers have kept it before their eyes so dis-
tinctly as the authors of Count Julian and of Philip Van Arte-
velde, that the great business and office of poetry is not to de-
scribe, but to create, not to pour forth an everlasting singsong
about mountains and fountains, and hills and rills, and flowers
and bowers, and woods and floods, and roses and posies, and
vallies and allies, but to represent human character and feeling,
action and passion, the ceaseless warfare, and the alternate
victories of Life and of Death. u.

The line of Milton quoted above, in which Pandemonium is
described as rising out of the earth, " like an exhalation," is
supposed by Mr. Peck to be " a hint taken from some of the
moving scenes and machines invented for the stage by Inigo
Jones." This conjecture is termed very probable by Bishop
Newton, in a note repeated by Dr. Hawkins, and by Mr. Todd ;
and the latter tries to confirm it by an extract from an account
of a Mask acted at Whitehall in 1637. Alas for poets, when
the critics set about unraveling their thoughts ! when they
even pretend to make out by what old bones their minds have
been manured \ On seeing a poet overlaid by a copious vari-
orum commentary, one is often reminded of Gulliver lying help-

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 61

less and stirless under the net that the Lilliputians had spun
around him. Thus Malone suggests that, when Shakspeare
made Lady Macbeth, in the trance of her bloody ambition,
pray that heaven might not " peep through the blanket of the
dark," he was probably thinking of " the coarse woolen curtain
of his own theatre, through which probably, while the house
was yet but half lighted, he had himself often peept."

But to be serious : even if the Mask referred to had been
acted in 1657, instead of 1637, and if Milton in that year had
had eyes to see it with, I should still have been slow to believe
that a thought so trivial could have crost his mind, when he
was hovering on the outspread wings of his imagination over
the abyss of hell. An eagle does not stoop after a grub.
Sheridan indeed, who never scrupled to borrow, whether money
or thoughts, and to pass them off for his own, might have
caught such a hint from the stage. For, having no light in
himself, he tried to patch up a mimic sun, by sticking together
as many candles as he could lay hands on, — wax, mould, or
rushlights, no matter which. Hence, brilliant as his comedies
are, they want unity and life : they rather sparkle, than shine ;
and are like aJbox of trinkets, not a beautiful head radiant with
jewelry. Of Milton's mind, on the other hand, the leading
characteristic is its unity. He has the thoughts of all ages at
his command ; but he has made them his own. He sits " high
on a throne of royal state, adorned With all the wealth of Or-
mus and of Ind, And where the gorgeous East with richest
hand Has showered barbaric pearl and gold." There are no
false gems in him, no tinsel. It seems as if nothing could dwell
in his mind, but what was grand and sterling.

Besides, if we look at the passage, the " fabric huge " does
not rise at once, as the commentators appear to have supposed,
ready-made by a charm out of the earth, like a scene from the
floor of a theatre ; which is thus strangely brought in to serve
for a go-between in this simily; as though Milton, without such
a hint, could not have thought of comparing the erection of
Pandemonium to the rising of a mist. Such was the dignified
severity of Milton's mind, that he has carefully abstained

62 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

throughout Paradise Lost from everything like common magic.
His spirits are superhuman ; and their actions are supernatural,
but not unnatural or contranatural. That is, the processes by
which they accomplish their purposes are analogous to those by
which men do so : they are subject to the same universal laws ;
only their strength and speed are immeasurably greater. But
he has nothing arbitrary, no capricious, fantastical transforma-
tions. When anything appears to be such, there is always a
moral purpose to justify it ; as in the sublime passage where
the applause which Satan expects, is turned into "a dismal
universal hiss," exemplifying how the most triumphant success
in evil is in fact a sinking deeper and deeper in misery and
shame. To a higher moral law the laws of Nature may bend,
but not to a mere act of wilfulness. That Pandemonium was
built aboveground, and not drawn up from underground, is clear
from the previous account of the materials prepared for it.
Milton wanted a council-chamber for his infernal conclave. Of
course it was to surpass everything on earth in magnificence ;
and it was to be completed almost instantaneously. Hence,
instead of exhibiting the gradual process of a laborious accumu-
lation, it seemed to spring up suddenly, to rise " like an ex-
halation."

This comparison may possibly have been suggested by the
Homeric tjvt JptgX?. At least a recollection of Homer's image
may have been floating in Milton's mind ; as it is clear that just
after, when he says, the fabric rose " with the sound Of dulcet
symphonies, and voices sweet," he must have been thinking of
the legend of Amphion building the walls of Thebes. For his
mind was such a treasury of learning, — he had so fed on the
thoughts of former ages, transubstantiating them, to use his own
expression, by " concoctive heat," — and the knowledge of his
earlier years seems to have become so much more vivid and
ebullient, when fresh influxes were stopt, — that one may
allowably attribute all manner of learned allusions to him, pro-
vided they are in harmony with his subject, and lie within the
range of his reading. Many of these have been detected by his
commentators : but the investigation is by no means exhausted.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 63

Not a few of his allusions they have mist : others they have
mistaken.

For instance, in the note on the passage where Milton com-
pares one of the regions of hell to " that great Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole
have sunk," the modern editors, in a note taken from Patrick
Hume, refer only to Herodotus and Lucan ; neither of whom
says a word about armies being lost in the bog. I conclude
therefore that no commentator has traced this passage to its
real source in Diodorus Siculus (i. 30) ; where we are told,
that " persons ignorant of the country, who approach the lake
Serbonis, have to encounter unlookt-for perils. For the firth
being narrow and like a fillet, and vast sandbanks lying round
it on all sides, when the south wind blows for a continuance, a
quantity of sand is driven over it. This covers the water, and
renders the surface of the lake so like that of the land, as to be
quite undistinguishable. Hence many who did not know the
nature of the spot, missing the road, have been swallowed up,
along with whole armies" In a subsequent part of his History
(xvi. 46), he says that Artaxerxes, in his expedition into
Egypt, lost a part of his army there. The substance of the
preceding passage is indeed given by George Sandys in his
Travels, and thence extracted by Purchas, p. 913 ; but Milton's
source was probably the Greek. For his historical allusions
are often taken from Diodorus, with whom he seems to have
been better acquainted than with the earlier historians, — the
immense superiority of the latter not being generally recognised
in those days ; — and who, as Wakefield has shewn, was his
authority for the beautiful passage about the mariners off at
sea, senting " Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby
the blest."

Other blind men, it is true, seldom quote books : but it is not
so with Milton. The prodigious power, readiness, and accuracy
of his memory, as well as the confidence he felt in it, are
proved by his setting himself, several years after he had be-
come totally blind, to compose his Treatise on Christian Doc-
trine ; which, made up as it is of Scriptural texts, would seem

64 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

to require perpetual reference to the Sacred Volume. A still
more extraordinary enterprise was that of the Latin Dictionary,
— a work which, one would imagine, might easily wear out a
sound pair of eyes, but in which hardly any man could stir a
couple of steps without eyes. Well might he, who, after five
years of blindness, had the courage to undertake these two vast
works, along with Paradise Lost, declare that he did " not bate
a jot Of heart or hope, but still bore up and steered Uphill-
ward" For this is the word which Milton at first used in his
noble sonnet ; though for the sake of correctness, steering up-
hiUward being a kind of pilotage which he alone practist, or
which at all events is only practicable where the clogs of this
material world are not dragging us down, he altered it into
right onward.

To return to the passage which led to this discussion : not
only is Mr. Peck's conjecture at variance with Milton's concep-
tion of the manner in which Pandemonium is constructed, and
with the processes by which thoughts arise in the mind of a true
poet, as incongruous as it would be for the sun to shoot his rays
through a popgun : there is also a third objection, to which some
may perhaps attach more weight; namely, the long interval
which must have elapst since Milton saw the machinery referred
to, if indeed he had ever seen it at all. Sheridan, as I have said,
had he been at the play overnight, and been writing verses
about Pandemonium the next morning, might have bethought
himself that it would be a happy hit to make Pandemonium
rise up like a palace in a pantomime. But even Sheridan
would hardly have done this, unless the impression had been
so recent and vivid, as to force itself upon the mind in despite
of the more orderly laws of association. Now Milton can
have seen nothing of the sort since the closing of the theatres
in 1642. Nor is it likely that he was ever present at a Court-
mask. But Inigo Joneses improvements in machinery were
probably confined to the Court. For new inventions did not
travel so fast in those days as now ; and the change of scene
in Comus from the wood to the palace seems to have been
effected in a different manner. At all events one should have

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 65

to suppose that this spectacle, which Milton, if he ever saw it,
would have forgotten forthwith, lay dormant in his mind for
above fifteen years, until on a sudden, it started up unbidden,
when he was describing the building of Pandemonium.

That an antiquarian critic, like Mr. Peck, should have
brought forward such a conjecture, may not be very wonder-
ful. For it requires no little self-denial to resist the temptation
of believing that we have hit on an ingenious thought: the
more strange and out of the way the thought, the likelier is it
to delude us. But that he should have found companions in
his visionary ramble, — that a person like Bishop NewtonJ who
was not without poetical taste, and who had not the same temp-
tation to mislead him, should deem his conjecture very proba-
ble, — that critic after critic should approve of it, — is indeed
surprising. With regard to Mr. Todd however, we see from
other places that he too has an itching for explaining poetry by
the help of personal anecdotes. Thus he suggests that the two
lines in the description of the castle in the Allegro, — " Where
perhaps some beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes,"
— were designed as a compliment to the Countess of Derby,
who had a house near Milton's father's at Horton. Yet in the
same breath he tells us that she was already a grandmother ;
and so, whatever she might have been in earlier days, she
could hardly be any longer the Cynosure of neighbouring eyes,
or even fancy that she was so. Therefore, unless Milton had
expressly told her that she was his Cynosure, the compliment
must have been wholly lost. And what need is there for sup-
posing a particular reference to any one? The imaginative
process by which Milton animates his castle, is so simple and
natural, that I believe there are few young men, who have ever
read a tale of romance, in whose minds, when they have been
passing by castles, especially if " bosomed high in tufted trees,"
the fancy has not sprung up, how lovely a sight it would be,
were a beautiful damsel looking out from the turret-window.
The very first novel I have happened to take up since writing
the above, Arnim's Dolores, opens with a description of an old
castle, with its little bright gardens in the turrets, where, he

E

66 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

says, " perchance beautiful princesses may be watching the
passing knight among wreaths of flowers of their own train-
ing." This is nothing but the ordinary working of the Imagi-
nation, " Which, if it would but apprehend some joy, Straight
comprehends some bringer of that joy."

These remarks would hardly have been worth making, un-
less anecdotical explanations of poetry were so much in vogue.
People of sluggish imaginations, whose thoughts seldom wander
beyond the sphere of their eyes and ears, are glad to detect
any mark in a great poet, which brings him down to their
level, and proves that he could think of such matters as they
themselves talk about with their neighbours. Moreover, as
there is an irrepressible instinct of the understanding, which
leads us to seek out the causes of things, they who have no
eyes to discern the cause in the thing itself, look for it in some-
thing round about. They fancy that every thought must needs
have an immediate outward suggestment: and if they catch
sight of a dry stick lying near a tree, they cry out, evprjKa !
Here is one of the roots.

The vanity of these anecdotical explanations is well re-
proved by Buttmann in his masterly Essay on the supposed
personal allusions in Horace. But unfortunately even his own
countrymen have not all taken warning from his admonitions.
An overfondness for these exercises of ingenuity is the chief
fault in Dissen's otherwise valuable edition of Pindar : where,
among a number of similar fantasies, we are told that the
famous words, by which critics have been so much puzzled,
apio-Tov pep vdcop, — which, as the context plainly shews, declare
the superiority of water to the other elements, like that of the
Olympic to the other games, — were merely meant by the poet
to remind Hiero's guests that they ought to mix water with
their wine : a conjecture which for impertinence is scarcely
surpast by the notorious one, that Shakspeare served as a
butcher's boy, because he has a simily about a calf driven to
the shambles, and makes Hamlet say, " There 's a divinity that
shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." On equally
valid grounds might we establish that he practist every trade,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 67

and was a native of every country under heaven : nay, that he,
instead of Pythagoras, must have been the real Euphorbus,
and that the souls of half mankind must have transmigrated
into his.

What then ! Is it essential to poetry, that there should be
nothing personal and individual in it? nothing indicative of
the poet's own feelings ? nothing drawn from his own experi-
ence ? nothing to shew when, and where, and how, and with
whom he has lived ? Is he to dwell aloof from the earth, as it
were in a ring like Saturn's, looking down on it in cold abstrac-
tion, without allowing any of its influences to come near him,
and ruffle the blank mirror of his soul ? So far from it, that
the poet, of all men, has the liveliest sympathy with the world
around him, which to his eyes " looks with such a look," and to
his ears " speaks with such a tone, That he almost receives its
heart into his own." Nor has a critic any higher office, than
that of tracing out the correspondence between the spirit of a
great author, and that of his age and country. Illustrations of
manners and customs too may be valuable, as filling up and
giving reality to our conception of the world the poet saw
around him. Only in such enquiries we must be on our guard
against our constitutional tendency to mistake instruments for
causes, and must keep in mind that the poet's own genius is the
corner-stone and the keystone of his works.

"While we confine ourselves to generalities, we may endeav-
our, and often profitably, to explain the growth and structure
of a poet's mind, so far as it has been modified by circum-
stances. But to descend to particulars, to deduce such and
such a thought, or such and such an expression, from such and
such an occasion, unless we have some historical ground to pro-
ceed on, is hazardous and idle ; just as hazardous and idle as it
would be to determine why a tree has put forth such and such
a leaf, or to divine from what river or cloud the sea has drawn
the watery particles which it casts up in such and such a wave.
Generals, being few and lasting, we may apprehend : but par-
ticulars are so numerous, indefinite, and fleeting, one might as
easily mark out and catch a mote dancing in the sunbeam.

68 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Not however that authentic information concerning the pro-
cesses of a poet's mind, and the origin of his works, when
attainable, is to be rejected. In a psychological view it may
often be instructive. Even "Walter Scott's confessions about
the composition of his novels, external and superficial as they
are, according to the character of his genius are not without
interest. Benvenuto Cellini's one can hardly read without par-
taking in his anxieties. Cowper's poems derive a fresh charm
from their connexion with the incidents of his life. Above all,
in Goethe's Memoirs, and of the other writings of his later
years, we see the elements of his more genial works, and the
nisus formativus which gave them unity and shape, exhibited
with his own exquisite clearness, like the beautiful fibrous roots
of a hyacinth in a glass of water. To take an image some-
thing like that which he himself has applied to Shakspeare,
after pointing out the hours and the minutes which mankind
has reacht in the great year of thought, he has opened the
watch and enabled us to perceive the springs and the wheels.

Here, to make my peace with anecdote-mongers, let me tell
one relating to the origin of the finest statue of the greatest
sculptor who has arisen since the genius of Greece droopt and
wasted away beneath the yoke of Rome. An illustrious friend
of mine, calling on Thorwaldsen some years ago, found him, as
he said to me, in a glow, almost in a trance of creative energy.
On his enquiring what had happened, My friend, my dear
friend, said the sculptor, I have an idea, I have a work in my
head, which will be worthy to live. A lad had been sitting to me
some time as a model yesterday, when I bade him rest a while.
In so doing he threw himself into an attitude which struck me
very much. What a beautiful statue it would make! I said to
myself. But what would it do for ? It would do . . . it would
do . . . it would do exactly for Mercury, drawing his sword,
just after he has played Argus to sleep. I immediately began
modeling. Iworkt all the evening, till at my usual hour I went
to bed. But my idea would not let me rest. I was forced to
get up again. I struck a light, and workt at my model for three
or four hours ; after which I again went to bed. But again I

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 69

could not rest : again I was forced to get up, and have been
working ever since. 0 my friend, if I can but execute my idea,
it will be a glorious statue.

And a noble statue it is ; although Thorwaldsen himself
did not think that the execution came up to the idea. For I
have heard of a remarkable speech of his made some years
after to another friend, who found him one day in low spirits.
Being askt whether anything had distrest him, he answered,
My genius is decaying. — What do you mean ? said the visiter.
— Why / here is my statue of Christ : it is the first of my works
that I have ever felt satisfied with. Till now my idea has
always been far beyond what I could execute. But it is no
longer so. I shall never have a great idea again. The same,
I believe, must have been the case with all men of true ge-
nius. While they who have nothing but talents, may often be
astonisht at the effects they produce, by putting things together
which fit more aptly than they expected ; a man of genius, who
has had an idea of a whole in his mind, will feel that no out-
ward mode of expressing that idea, whether by form, or col-
ours, or words, is adequate to represent it. Thus Luther,
when he sent Staupitz his Commentary on the Epistle to the
Galatians, said to him (Epist. clxii), " Nee jam adeo placent,
quam placuerunt primum, ut videam potuisse latius et clarius
eos exponi." Thus too Solger, writing about his dialogues to
Tieck, says (i. p. 432), " Now that I have read them through
again, I find that they are far from attaining to that which
stood before my mind when I wrote them : I feel as though
they were a mere extract or shadow thereof. My only conso-
lation is, that so it must doubtless be with every one who has
aimed at anything excellent, that the execution of his plan does
not satisfy him." Hence it comes that men of genius have so
often attacht the highest value to their less genial works. God
alone could look down on His Creation, and behold that it was
all very good. This contrast is remarkt by Bacon, and a grand
use is made of it, at the close of the Introduction to the Novum
Organum: " Tu postquam conversus es ad spectandum opera
quae fecerunt manus Tuae, vidisti quod omnia essent bona

70 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

valde, et requievisti. At homo conversus ad opera quae fece-
runt manus suae, vidit quod omnia essent vanitas et vexatio
spiritus, nee ullo modo requievit. Quare, si in operibus Tuis
sudabimus, facies nos visionis Tuae et sabbati Tui participes."

Thorwaldsen's Mercury, it appears, was suggested by a lad
whom he had seen sitting at rest. But does that detract from
the sculptor's genius ? Every other man living might have
seen the lad ; and no statue of Mercury would have sprung
out of the vision: even as millions upon millions before New-
ton had seen apples drop, without being led thereby to meditate
on universal gravitation. So that, though Genius does not
wholly create its works out of nothing, its "mighty world" is
not merely what it perceives, but what, as Wordsworth ex-
presses it in his lines on the Wye, " it half creates." u.

Another form of the same Materialism, which cannot com-
prehend or conceive anything, except as the product of some
external cause, is the spirit, so general in these times, which
attaches an inordinate importance to mechanical inventions,
and accounts them the great agents in the history of mankind.
It is a common opinion with these exoteric philosophers, that
the invention of printing was the chief cause of the Reforma-
tion, that the invention of the compass brought about the dis-
covery of America, and that the vast changes in the military
and political state of Europe since the middle ages have been
wrought by the invention of gunpowder. It would be almost
as rational to say that the cock's crowing makes thie sun rise.
Bacon indeed, I may be reminded, seems to favour this notion,
where, at the end of the First Book of the Novum Organum,
he speaks of the power and dignity and efficacy of inventions,
" quae non in aliis manifestius occurrunt, quam in illis tribus
quae antiquis incognitae — sunt, Artis nimirum Imprimendi,
Pulveris Tormentarii, et Acus Nauticae. Haec enim tria re-
rum faciem et statum in orbe terrarum mutaverunt ; primum,
in re litteraria ; secundum, in re bellica ; tertium, in naviga-
tionibus. Unde innumerae rerum mutationes secutae sunt ; ut
non imperium aliquod, non secta, non stella, majorem efficaciam

GUESSES AT TRUTH. - 71

et quasi influxum super res humanas exercuisse videatur, quam
ista mechanica exercuerunt." However, not to speak of the
curious indication of a belief in astrology, it must be remem-
bered that Bacon's express purpose in this passage is to assert
the dignity of inventions, that is, not of the natural, material
objects in themselves, but of those objects transformed and
fashioned anew by the mind of man, to serve the great inter-
ests of mankind. The difference between civilized and savage
life, he had just said, " non solum, non coelum, non corpora, sed
artes praestant." In other words, the difference lies, not in any
material objects themselves, but in the intelligence, the mind,
that employs them for its own ends. These very inventions
had existed, the greatest of them for many centuries, in
China, without producing any like result. For why? Be-
cause the utility of an invention depends on our making use
of it. There is no power, none at least for good, in any in-
strument or weapon, except so far as there is power in him
who wields it : nor does the sword guide and move the hand,
but the hand the sword. Nay, it is the hand that fashions the
sword. The means and instruments, as we see in China, may
lie dormant and ineffective for centuries. But when man's
spirit is once awake, when his heart is alert, when his mind
is astir, he will always discover the means he wants, or make
them. Here also is the saying fulfilled, that they who seek
will find.

Or we may look at the matter in another light. We may
conceive that, whenever any of the great changes ordained by
God's Providence in the destinies of mankind are about to take
place, the means requisite for the effecting of those changes are
likewise prepared by the same Providence. Niebuhr applied
this to lesser things. He repeatedly expresses his conviction
that the various vicissitudes by which learning has been pro-
moted, are under the controll of an overruling Providence ;
and he has more than once spoken of the recent discoveries, by
which so many remains of Antiquity have been brought to
light, as Providential dispensations, for the increase of our
knowledge of God's works, and of His creatures. His convic-

72 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

tion was, that, though we are to learn in the sweat of our brow,
and though nothing good can be learnt without labour, yet here
also everything is so ordered, that the means of knowing what-
ever is needful and desirable may be discovered, if man will
only be diligent in cultivating and making the most of what
has already been bestowed on him. He held, that to him who
has will be given, — that not only will he be enabled to make
increase of the talents he has received, but that he is sure to
find others in his path. This way of thinking has been re-
proved as profane, by those who yet would perhaps deem it
impious if a man, when he cut his finger, or caught a cold, did
not recognise a visitation of Providence in such accidents.
Now why is this ? In all other things we maintain that man's
labour is of no avail, unless God vouchsafes to bless it, — that,
without God's blessing, in vain will the husbandman sow, in
vain will the merchant send his ships abroad, in vain will the
physician prescribe his remedies. Why then do we outlaw
knowledge ? Why do we declare that the exercise of our
intellectual powers is altogether alien from God ? Why do
we exclude them, not only from the sanctuary, but even from
the outer court of the temple ? Why do we deny that poets
and philosophers, scholars and men of science, can serve God,
each in his calling, as well as bakers and butchers, as well as
hewers of wood and drawers of water ?

It is true, there is often an upstart pride in the Understand-
ing ; and we are still prone to fancy that Knowledge of itself
will make us as gods. Though so large a part of our knowl-
edge is derivative, from the teaching either of other men or of
things, and though so small a tittle of it can alone be justly
claimed by each man as his own, we are apt to forget this, and
to regard it as all our own, as sprung, like Minerva, full-grown
out of our own heads ; for this among other reasons, that, when
we are pouring it forth, in whatsoever manner, its original
sources are out of sight ; nor does anything remind us of the
numberless tributaries by which it has been swelled. This ten-
dency of Knowledge however to look upon itself as self-created
and independent of God is much encouraged by the practice of

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 73

the religious to treat it and speak of it as such. Were we wise,
we should discern that the intellectual, the natural, and the
moral world are three concentric spheres in God's world, and
that it is a robbery of God to cut off any one of them from Him,
and give it up to the Prince of Darkness. As we read in the
Book of Wisdom, it is God, that hath given us certain knowledge
of the things that are, to know how the world was made, and the
operation of the elements, — the beginning, ending, and midst
of the times, — the alterations of the turning of the sun, and
the change of seasons, — the circuits of years, and the posi-
tions of stars, — the natures of living creatures, and the furies
of wild beasts, — the violence of winds, and the reasonings
of men.

Thus then does it behove us to deem of inventions, as instru-
ments ordained for us, by the help of 'which we are to fulfill
God's manifold purposes with regard to the destinies of man-
kind. At the fit time the fit instrument shews itself. If it
comes before its time, it is still-born : man knows not what to
do with it ; and it wastes away. But when the mind and heart
and spirit of men begin to teem with new thoughts and feelings
and desires, they always find the outward world ready to sup-
ply them with the means requisite for realizing their aims. In
this manner, when the idea of the unity of mankind had become
more vivid and definite, — when all the speculations of History
and Science and Philosophy were bringing it out in greater ful-
ness, — when Poetry was becoming more and more conscious
of its office to combine unity with diversity and multiplicity,
and individuality with universality, — and when Religion was
applying more earnestly to her great work of gathering all
mankind into the many mansions in the one great house of the
Eternal Father, — at this time, when men's hearts were yearn-
ing more than ever before for intercourse and communion, the
means of communication and intercourse have been multiplied
marvellously. This is good, excellent ; and we may well be
thankful for it. Only let us be diligent in using our new gifts
for their highest, and not merely for meaner purposes ; and let
us beware of man's tendency to idolize the works of his own
4

r

74 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

hands. The Greek poet exclaimed with wonder at the terrible
ingenuity of man, who had yoked the horse and the bull, and
had crost the roaring sea: and still, though the immediate
occasions of his wonder would be somewhat changed, he would
cry, 7roAXa to. Setra, Kovdev dvOpwnov Seivorepov TreXct. But,
though a Heathen, he kept clear of the twofold danger of wor-
shipping either man or his work. May we do so likewise !
For there is not a whit to choose between the worship of steam,
and that of the meanest Fetish in Africa. Nor is the worship
of Man really nobler or wiser. u.

\

I spoke some pages back of Greek literature as being char-
acterized by its ao-neros aldqp, its serene, transparent brightness.
Ought I not rather to have said that this is the characteristic of
the Christian mind, of that mind on which the true Light has
indeed risen ? Not, it appears to me, so far as that mind has
been manifested in its works of poetry and art ; at least with
the exception of a starry spirit here and there, such as Fra
Angelico da Fiesole and Raphael. For the Greeks lookt
mainly, and almost entirely, at the outward, at that which could
be brought in distinct and definite forms before the eye of the
Imagination. To this they were predisposed from the first by
their exquisite animal organization, which gave them a lively
susceptibility for every enjoyment the outward world could
offer, but which at the same time was so muscular and tightly
braced as not to be overpowered and rendered effeminate there-
by : and this their natural tendency to receive delight from the
active enjoyment of the outward world found everything in the
outward world best fitted to foster and strengthen it. The
climate and country were such as to gratify every appetite for
pleasurable sensation, without enervatingor relaxing the frame,
or allowing the mind to sink into an Asiatic torpour. They
rewarded industry richly : but they also called for it, and would
not pamper sloth. By its physical structure Greece gave its
inhabitants the hardihood of the mountaineer. Yet the Greeks
were not like other mountaineers, whose minds seem mostly to
have been bounded by their own narrow horizon, so as hardly

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 75

to take count of what was going on in the world without : to
which cause may in a great measure be ascribed the intellectual
barrenness of mountainous countries, or, if this be too strong an
expression, the scantiness of the great works they have pro-
duced, when compared with the feelings which we might sup-
pose they would inspire. But the Greek was not shut in by
his mountains. Whenever he scaled a hight, the sea spread
out before him, and wooed him to come into her arms, and to
let her bear him away to some of the smiling islands she en-
circled. Herce, like the hero, who in his Homeric form is
perhaps the best representative of the Greek character, ttoXX^i/
dvdpamew 'Idev aarea, ical voov i'ypto. He had the two great
stimulants to enterprise before him. The voice of the Moun-
tains, and the voice of the Sea, " each a mighty voice," were
ever rousing and stirring and prompting him ; each moreover
checking the hurtful effects of the other. The sea enlarged the
range and scope of his thoughts, which the mountains might
have hemmed in. Thus it saved him from the " homely wits,"
which Shakspeare ascribes to "home-keeping youth." The
mountains on the other hand counteracted that homelessness,
which a mere sea-life is apt to breed, except in those in whom
there is a living consciousness that on the sea as on the shore
they are equally in the hand of God : to which homelessness,
and want of a solid ground to strike root in, it is mainly owing
that neither Tyre nor Carthage, notwithstanding their power \
and wealth, occupies any place in the intellectual history of
mankind. To the Greeks however, as to us, who have a coun-
try and a home upon the land, the sea was an inexhaustible
mine of intellectual riches. Nor is it without a prophetic sym-
bolicalness that the sea fills so important a part in both the
Homeric poems. The amphibious character -of the Greeks was
already determined: they were to be lords of land and sea.
Both these voices too, "Liberty's chosen music," as Words-
worth terms them in his glorious sonnet, called the Greeks to
freedom : and nobly did they answer to the call, when the
sound of the mighty Pan was glowing in their ears, at Mara-
thon and Thermopylae, at Salamis and Platea.

76 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Freedom moreover, and the free forms of their constitutions,
brought numerous opportunities and demands for outward ac-
tivity. The Greek poets and historians were also soldiers and
statesmen. They had to deal with men, to act with them, and
by them, and upon them, in the forum, and in the field. Their
converse was with men in the concrete, as living agents, not
with the abstraction, man, nor with the shadowy, self-reflecting
visions of the imagination. Even at the present day, though
our habits and education do so much to remove the distinctions
among the various classes of society, there is a manifest differ-
ence between those authors who have taken an active part in
public life, and those who are mere men of letters. The former,
though they may often be deficient in speculative power, and
unskilled in the forms of literature, have a knowledge of the
practical springs of action, and a temperance of judgement,
which is seldom found in a recluse, unaccustomed to meet with
resistance among his own thoughts, or apt to slip away from it
when he does, and therefore unpractist in bearing or dealing
with it. That mystic seclusion, so common in modern times, as
it has always been in Asia, was scarcely known in Greece.
Even the want of books, and the consequent necessity of going
to things themselves for the knowledge of them, sharpened the
eyes of the Greeks, and gave them livelier and clearer percep-
tions : whereas our eyes are dimmed by poring over the records
of what others have seen and thought ; and the impressions we
thus obtain are much less vivid and true.

Added to all this, their anthropomorphic Religion, which
sprang in the 'first instance out of these very tendencies of the
Greek mind, reacted powerfully upon them, as the free exercise
of every faculty is wont to do, and exerted a great influence in
keeping the Greeks within the sphere which Nature seemed to
assign to them, by preventing their thinking or desiring to
venture out of that sphere, and by teaching them to find con-
tentment and every enjoyment they could imagine within it.
For it was by abiding within it that they were as gods. The
feeling exprest in the speech of Achilles in Hades was one in
which the whole people partook :

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 77

fiovXoiprjv k indpovpos eav drjrevepcv aXXa,
t) nacriv veKveaai KaracpdipevoLcrip dvdaaeiv.

Through the combined operation of these causes, the Greeks
acquired a clearness of vision for all the workings of life, and
all the manifestations of beauty, far beyond that of any other
people. Whatever they saw, they saw thoroughly, almost
palpably, with a sharpness incomprehensible in our land of
books and mists. >

To mention a couple of instances : the anatomy of the older
Greek statues is so perfect, that Mr. Haydon, — whose scat-
tered dissertations on questions of art, rich as they often are in
genius and thought, well deserve to be collected and preserved
from a newspaper grave, — in his remarks on the Elgin mar-
bles, pledged himself that, if any one were to break off a toe
from one of those marbles, he would prove " the great conse-
quences of vitality, as it acts externally, to exist in that toe."
Yet it is very doubtful whether the Greeks ever anatomized
human bodies, — at all events they knew hardly anything of
anatomy scientifically, from an examination of the internal
structure, — before the Alexandrian age. Now, even with the
help of our scientific knowledge, it is a rarity in modern art to
find figures, of which the anatomy is not in some respect faulty ;
at least where the body is not either almost entirely concealed
by drapery, or cased, like the yolk of an egg, in the soft albu-
men of a pseudo-ideal. When it is otherwise, as in the works
of Michael Angelo and Annibal Caracci, we too often see
studies, rather than works of art, and muscular contortions and
convolutions, instead of the gentle play and flow of life. Mr.
Haydon indeed contends that the Greek sculptors must have
been good anatomists : but all historical evidence is against this
supposition. The truth is, that, as such wonderful stories are
told of the keen eyes which the wild Indians have for all man-
ner of tracks in their forests, so the Greeks had a clear and
keen-sightedness in another direction, which to us, all whose
perceptions are mixt up with such a bundle of multifarious
notions, and who see so many things in everything, beside
what we really do see, appears quite inconceivable. They

78 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

studied life, not as we do, in death, but in life ; and that not
in the stiff, crampt, inanimate life of a model, but in the fresh,
buoyant, energetic life, which was called forth in the gym-
nasia.

Another striking example of the accuracy of the Greek eye
is supplied by a remark of Spurzheim's, that the heads of all
the old Greek statues are in perfect accordance with his system,
and betoken the very intellectual and moral qualities which the
character was meant to be endowed with; although in few
modern statues or busts is any correspondence discoverable
between the character and the shape of the head. For ground-
less and erroneous as may be the psychological, or, as the
authors themselves term them, the phrenological views, which
have lately been set forth as the scientific anatomy of the
human mind, it can hardly be questioned that there is a great
deal of truth in what Coleridge {Friend iii. p. 62) calls the
indicative or gnomonic part of the scheme, or that Gall was an
acute and accurate observer of those conformations of the skull,
which are the ordinary accompaniments, if not the infallible
signs, of the various intellectual powers. But in these very
observations he had been anticipated above two thousand years
ago by the unerring eyes of the Greek sculptors.

In like manner do the Greeks seem, by a kind of intuition,
to have at once caught the true principles of proportion and
harmony and grace and beauty in all things, — in the human
figure, in architecture, in all mechanical works, in style, in the
various forms and modes of composition. These principles,
which they discerned from the first, and which other nations
have hardly known anything of, except as primarily derivative
from them, they exemplified in that wonderful series of master-
pieces, from Homer down to Plato and Aristotle and Demos-
thenes ; a series of which we only see the fragments, but the
mere fragments of which the rest of the world cannot match.
Rome may have more regal majesty ; modern Europe may be
superior in wisdom, especially in that wisdom of which the owl
may serve as the emblem : but in the contest of Beauty no one
could hesitate ; the apple must be awarded to Greece.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 79

This is what I meant by speaking of the aaiveros al$rjp of
Greek literature. The Greeks saw what they saw thoroughly.
Their eyes were piercing; and they knew how to use them,
and to trust them. In modern literature, on the other hand,
the pervading feeling is, that we see through a glass darkly.
While with the Greeks the unseen world was the world of
shadows, in the great works of modern times there is a more
or less conscious feeling that the outward world of the eye is
the world of shadows, that the tangled web of life is to be
swept away, and that the invisible world is the only abode of
true, living realities. How strongly is this illustrated by the
contrast between the two great works which stand at the head
of ancient and of Christian literature, the Homeric poems, and
the Ztiwna Commedia ! While the former teem with life, like
a morning in spring, and everything in them, as on such a
morning, has its life raised to the highest pitch, Dante's wan-
derings are all through the regions beyond the grave. He
begins with overleaping death, and leaving it behind him ; and
to his imagination the secret things of the next world, and its
inhabitants, seem to be more distinctly and vividly present than
the persons and things around him. Nor was Milton's home
on earth. And though Shakspeare's was, it was not on an
earth lying quietly beneath the clear, blue sky. How he
drives the clouds over it ! how he flashes across it ! Ever and
anon indeed he sweeps the clouds away, and shines down
brightly upon it, — but only for a few moments together.
Thus too has it been with all those in modern times whose
minds have been so far opened as to see and feel the mystery
of life. They have not shrunk from that mystery in reverent
awe like the Greeks, nor planted a beautiful, impenetrable
grove around the temple of the Furies. While the Greeks, as
I said just now, could not dream of anatomizing life, we have
anatomized everything : and whereas all their works are of the
day, a large portion of ours might fitly be designated by the
title of Night Thoughts. j As to the frivolous triflers, who take
things as they are, and skip about and sip the surface, they are
no more to be reckoned into account in estimating the charac-

80 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ter of an age, than a man would take the flies and moths into
account in drawing up an inventory of his chattels.

Perhaps however the reason why modern literature has not
had more of this serenity and brightness, is that it has so sel-
dom been animated by the true spirit of Christianity in any
high degree. A little knowledge will merely unsettle a man's
prejudices, without giving him anything better in their stead :
and Christianity, intellectually as well as morally, unless it be
indeed embraced with a longing and believing heart, serves
only to make our darkness visible. The burning and shining
lights of Christianity have rather been content to shine in the
vallies : those on the hills have mostly been lights of this world,
and therefore flaring and smoking. For individual Christians
there are, individual Christians, I believe, there have been in
all ages, whose spirits do indeed dwell in the midst of an acnreros
aWrjp. Nay, as Coleridge once said to me, " that in Italy the
sky is so clear, you seem to see beyond the moon," so are there
those who seem to look beyond and through the heavens, into
the very heaven of heavens. u.

Thirlwall, in his History, — in which the Greeks have at
length been called out of their graves by a mind combining
their own clearness and grace with the wealth and power of
modern learning and thought, and at whose call, as at that of a
kindred spirit, they have therefore readily come forth, — re-
marks, that Greece " is distinguisht among European countries
by the same character which distinguishes Europe itself from
the other continents, — the great range of its coast, compared
with the extent of its surface." The same fact, and its impor-
tance, are noticed by Frederic Schlegel in his second Lecture
on the Philosophy of History. Nothing could be more favor-
able as a condition, not only of political and commercial, but
also of intellectual greatness. Indeed this might be added to
the long list of grounds for the truth of the Pindaric saying,
apivTov pev vba>p, and would suggest itself in an ode addrest to
Hiero far more naturally and appropriately than the superiority
of wine and water to wine ; a superiority which it may be a

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 81

mark of barbarism to deny, but which few Englishmen would
acknowledge.

A similar extent of coast was also one of the great advan-
tages of Italy, and is now one of the greatest in the local con-
dition of England. Goethe, who above all men had the talent
of expressing profound and farstretching thoughts in the sim-
plest words, and whose style has more of light in it, with less
of lightning, than any other writer's since Plato, has thrown
out a suggestion in one of his reviews (vol. xlv. p. 227), that
" perhaps it is the sight of the sea from youth upward, that
gives English and Spanish poets such an advantage over those
of inland countries." He spoke on this point from his own
feelings : for he himself never saw the sea, till he went to Italy
in his 38th year: and it is ingeniously remarkt by Francis
Horn, though apparently without reference to Goethe's obser-
vation, in his History of German Poetry and Eloquence (iii. p.
225), that " whatever is indefinite, or seems so, is out of keep-
ing with Goethe's whole frame of mind : everything with him
is terra jirma or an island : there is nothing of the infinitude of
the sea. This conviction (he adds) forced itself upon me,
when for the first time, at the northernmost extremity of Ger-
many, I felt the sweet thrilling produced by the highest sublim-
ity of Nature. Here Shakspeare alone comes forward, whom
one finds everywhere, on mountains and in vallies, in forests,
by the side of rivers and of brooks. Thus far Goethe may
accompany him : but in sight of the sea, and of such rocks on
the sea, Shakspeare is by himself." Solger, too, in one of his
letters (i. p. 320), when speaking of his first sight of the sea,
says, " Here for the first time I felt the impression of the illim-
itable, as produced by an object of sense, in its full majesty."

To us, who have been familiar with the Sea all our lives, it
might almost seem as though our minds would have been " poor
shrunken things," without its air to brace and expand them, —
if for instance we had never seen the dvrjpiOfiov -yeAaoyza of the
waves, as Aphrodite rises from their bosom, — if we had never
heard the many-voiced song with which the Nereids now hymn
the bridal, now bewail the bereavement of Thetis, — if we
4 * F

82 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

knew not how changeful the Sea is, and yet how constant and
changeless amid all the changes of the seasons, — if we knew
not how powerful she is, whom Winter with all his chains can
no more bind than Xerxes could, how powerful to destroy in
her fury, how far more powerful to bless in her calmness, — if
we had never learnt the lesson of obedience and of order from
her, the lesson of ceaseless activity, and of deep, unfathomable
rest, — if we had no sublunary teacher but the mute, motionless
earth, — if we had been deprived of this ever faithful mirror
of heaven. The Sea appears to be the great separator of
nations, the impassable barrier to all intercourse : dissociabilis
the Roman poet calls it. Yet in fact it is the grand medium of
intercourse, the chief uniter of mankind, the only means by
which the opposite ends of the earth hold converse as though
they were neighbours. Thus in divers ways the 7t6utos drpvyeros
has become even more productive, than if fields of corn were
waving all over it.

That it has been an essential condition in the civilizing of
nations, all history shews. Perhaps the Germans in our days
are the first people who have reacht any high degree of cul-
ture, — who have become eminent in poetry and in thought, —
without its immediate aid. Yet Germany has been called " she
of the Danube and the Northern Sea ; " and might still more
justly be called she of the Rhine. For the Danube, not bring-
ing her into connection with the sea, has had a less powerful
influence on her destinies: whereas the Rhine has acted a
more important part in her history, than any river in that of
any other country, except the Nile.

Hence the example of Germany will not enable us to con-
ceive how such a people as Ulysses was to go in search of, —
ol ovk 'lo-aai Oakacro-av 'Avepes, oibe & aXea-ai pep.iyp.evov eldap edov-
aiu, — how those who, not knowing the sea, have no salt to
season their thoughts with, — how the Russians for instance
can ever become civilized ; notwithstanding what Peter tried
to effect, from a partial consciousness of this want, by building
his capital on the Baltic. Still less can one imagine how the
centre of Asia, or of Africa, can ever emerge out of barbarism ;

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 83

unless indeed the Steam-king be destined hereafter to effect,
what the Water-king in his natural shape cannot. Genius or
knowledge, springing up in those regions, would be like a foun-
tain in an oasis, unable to mingle with its kindred, and unite
into a continuous stream. Or if such a thing as a stream were
to be found there, it would soon be swallowed up and lost, from
having no sea within reach to shape its course to. In the
legends Neptune is represented as contending with Minerva for
the honour of giving name to Athens, and with Apollo for the
possession of Corinth. But in fact he wrought along with
them, — ■ and mighty was his aid, — in glorifying their favorite
cities.

There is also a further point of analogy between the position
of Greece and that of England. Greece, lying on the frontier
of Europe toward Asia, was the link of union between the two,
the country in which the practical European understanding
seized, and gave a living, productive energy to the primeval ideas
of Asia. Her sons carried off Europa with her letters from
Phenicia, and Medea with her magic from Colchis. When the
Asiatics, attempting reprisals, laid hands on her Queen of
Beauty, the whole nation arose, and sallied forth from their
homes, and bore her back again in triumph : for to whom could
she belong rightfully and permanently, except to a Greek ? If
Io went from them into Egypt, it was to become the ancestress
of Hercules.

Now England in like manner is the frontier of Europe to-
ward America, and the great bond of connexion between them.
Through us the mind of the Old World passes into the New.
What our intellectual office may be in this respect, will be seen
hereafter, when it becomes more apparent and determinate,
what the character of the American mind is to be. At present
England is the country, where that depth and inwardness of
thought, which seems to belong to the Germanic mind, has
assumed the distinct, outward, positive form of the Roman.

An intermixture of the same elements has also taken place
in France, but with a very different result. In the English
character, as in our language, the Teutonic or spiritual element

84 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

has fortunately been predominant ; and so the two factors have
coalesced without detriment : while in France, where the Roman
or formal element gained the upperhand, the consequence has
been, that they have almost neutralized and destroyed each
other. The ideas of the Germans waned into abstractions : the
law and order of the Romans shriveled into rules and forms,
which no idea can impregnate, but which every insurgent ab-
straction can overthrow. The externality of the classical spirit
has worn away into mere superficiality. The French character
is indeed a character, stampt upon them from without. Their
profoundest thoughts are bons mots. They are the only nation
that ever existed, in which a government can be hist off the
stage like a bad play, and which its fall excites less consterna-
tion, than the violation of a fashion in dress.

In truth the ease and composure with which the Revolution
of July 1830 was accomplisht, and by which almost everybody
was so dazzled, notwithstanding the fearful lessons of forty
years before, — when in like manner Satan appeared at first as
an angel of light, and when all mankind were deluded, and
worshipt the new-born fiend, — would have been deemed by a
wise observer one of the saddest features about it. O let us
bleed when we are wounded ! let not our wounds close up, as if
nothing had been cleft but a shadow ! It is better to bleed even
to death, than to live without blood in our veins. And in truth
blood will flow. If it does not flow in the field from principle,
it is sure to flow in tenfold torrents by the guillotine, through
that ferocity, which, when Law and Custom are overthrown,
nothing but Principle can keep in check. Hearts and souls
will bleed, or will fester and rot.

A Frenchman might indeed urge, that his patron saint is
related in the legend not to have felt the loss of his head, and
to have walkt away after it had been cut off, just as well as if
it had been standing on his shoulders. But where no miracle is
in the case, it is only the lowest orders of creatures that are quite
as brisk and lively after decapitation as before. 1836. u.

I hate to see trees pollarded . . or nations.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 85

Europe was conceived to be on the point of dissolution.
Burke heard the death-watch, and rang the alarm. A hollow
sound past from nation to nation, like that which announces the
splitting and breaking up of the ice in the regions around the
Pole. Well ! the politicians and economists, and the doctors in
statecraft, resolved to avert the stroke of vengeance, not indeed
by actions like those of the Curtii and Decii ; — such actions
are extravagant, and chivalrous, and superstitious, and patri-
otic, and heroic, and self-devoting, and unworthy and unseemly
in men of sense, who know that selfishness is the only source of
good ; — but by borrowing a device from the Arabian fabulist.
They seem to have thought they should appease, or at least
weary out the minister of wrath, if they could get him to hear
through their thousand and one Constitutions. u.

From what was said just now about the French character, as
a combination the factors of which have almost neutralized each
other, it follows that the French are the very people for that
mode of life and doctrine, which has become so notorious under
the title of the juste milieu, and which aims at reconciling oppo-
sites by a mechanical, or at the utmost by a chemical, instead of
an organical union. It is only in the latter, when acting to-
gether under the sway of a constraining higher principle, that
powers, which, if left to themselves, thwart and battle against
each other, can be made to bring forth peace and its fruits.
According to the modern theory however, the best way of pro-
ducing a new being is not by the marriage of the man and
woman, but by taking half of each, and tying them one to the
other. The result, it is true, will not have much life in it : but
what does that matter ? It is manufactured in a moment : the
whole work goes on before the eyes of the world : and the new
creature is fullsized from the first. How stupid and impotent
on the other hand is Nature ! who hides the germs and first
stirrings of all life in darkness ; who is always forced to begin
with the minutest particles ; and who can produce nothing great,
except by slow and tedious processes of growth and assimila-
tion. How tardily and snail-like she crawls about her task !

86 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

She never does anything per saltum. She cannot get to the
end of her journey, as we can, in a trice, by a hop, a skip, and
a jump. It takes her a thousand years to grow a nation, and
thousands to grow a philosopher.

Amen ! so be it ! Man, when he is working consciously,
does not know how to work imperceptibly. He cannot trust to
Time, as Nature can, in the assurance that Time will work with
her. For, while Time fosters and ripens Nature's works, he
only crumbles man's. It is well imagined, that the creature
whom Frankenstein makes, should be a huge monster. Being
unable to impart a living power of growth and increase by any
effort of our will or understanding, or except when we are con-
tent to act in subordination to nature, we try, when we set
about any work, on which we mean to pride ourselves as espe-
cially our own, to render it as big as we can ; so that, size being
our chief criterion of greatness, we may have the better warrant
for falling down and worshipping it. Thus Frankenstein's man-
monster is an apt type of the numerous, newfangled, hop-skip-
and-jump Constitutions, which have been circulating about Eu-
rope for the last half century ; in which the old statesmanly
practice of enacting new ordinances and institutions, as occasion
after occasion arises, has been superseded by attempts to draw
up a complete abstract code for all sorts of states, without regard
to existing rights, usages, manners, feelings, to the necessities
of the country, or the character of the people. Indeed the fol-
lowing description of the monster, when he first begins to move,
might be regarded as a satire on the Constitution of 1791.
" His limbs were in proportion ; and I had selected his features
as beautiful. Beautiful ! His yellow skin scarcely covered the
muscles and arteries beneath. His hair was of a lustrous black,
and flowing, — his teeth of a pearly whiteness : but these only
formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, which
seemed almost of the same colour as their dun white sockets,
his shriveled complexion, and straight, black lips." So it is
with abstract constitutions. Their fabricaters try to make their
parts proportionate, and to pick out the most beautiful features
for them : but there are muscular and arterial workings ever

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 87

going on in the body of a nation, there is such an intermingling
and convolution of passions, and feelings, and consciousnesses, and
thoughts, and desires, and regrets, and sorrows, that no yellow
parchment, which man can draw over, will cover or hide them.
Though the more external and lifeless parts, the hair and
teeth, which are so often artificial, may be bright and dazzling,
— though the teeth especially may be well fitted for doing their
work of destruction, — no art can give a living eye : opixdrav dy
ev d\r]viais eppci naa Acppobira.

The man-monster's cruelty too was of the same sort as that
of the French constitution-mongers, and of their works ; and it
resulted from the same cause, the utter want of sympathy with
man and the world, such as they are. The misfortune is, that
we cannot get rid of them, as he was got rid of, by sending
them to the North Pole ; although its ice would be an element
very congenial to the minds that gave birth to them, and would
form a fitting grave for monstrosities, which, starting up in the
frozen zone of human nature, were crystallized from their
cradle. 1836. u.

The strength of a nation, humanly speaking, consists not in
its population or wealth or knowledge, or in any other such
heartless and merely scientific elements, but in the number of
its proprietors. Such too, according to the most learned and
wisest of historians, was the opinion of antiquity. "All an-
cient legislators (says Niebuhr, when speaking of Numa), and
above all Moses, rested the result of their ordinances for
virtue, civil order, and good manners, on securing landed
property, or at least the hereditary possession of land, to the
greatest possible number of citizens."

They who are not aware of the manner in which national
character and political institutions mutually act and are acted
on, till they gradually mould each other, have never reflected
on the theory of new shoes. Which leads me to remark, that
modern constitution-mongers have shewn themselves as unskil-
ful and inconsiderate in making shoes, as the old limping, sore-

88 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

footed aristocracies of the Continent have been intractable and
impatient in wearing them. The one insisted that the boot
must fit, because, after the fashion of Laputa, it had been cut
to diagram : the others would bear nothing on their feet in any
de°ree hard or common. Leather is the natural covering of the
hands : on them we will still wear it : on the legs it is ignoble
and masculine. Any other sacrifice we are content to make : but
our feet must continue as heretofore, swathed up in fleecy ho-
siery, especially when we ride or walk. It is a reward we may
justly claim for condescending to acts so toilsome. It is a priv-
ilege we have inherited, with the gout of our immortal ancestors ;
and we cannot in honour give it up. But you say, the privilege
must be abolisht, because the commodity is scarce. Let the people
then make their sacrifice, and give up stockings.

Beauty is perfection unmodified by a predominating ex-
pression.

Song is the tone of feeling. Like poetry, the language of
feeling, art should regulate, and perhaps temper and modify it.
But whenever such a modification is introduced as destroys the
predominance of the feeling, — which yet happens in ninety-nine
settings out of a hundred, and with nine hundred and ninety-nine
taught singers out of a thousand, — the essence is sacrificed to
what should be the accident ; and we get notes, but no song.

If song however be the tone of feeling, what is beautiful sing-
ing ? The balance of feeling, not the absence of it.

Close boroughs are said to be an oligarchal innovation on
the ancient Constitution of England. But are not the forty-
shilling freeholders, in their present state, a democratical
innovation ? The one may balance and neutralize the other ;
and. if so, the Constitution will remain practically unaltered
by the accession of these two new, opposite, and equal powers.
Whereas to destroy the former innovation, without taking away
the latter, must change the system of our polity in reality, as
well as in idea. 1826. l.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 89

When the pit seats itself in the boxes, the gallery will soon
drive out both, and occupy the whole of the house. a.

In like manner, when the calculating, expediential Under-
standing has superseded the Conscience and the Reason, the
Senses soon rush out from their dens, and sweep away every-
thing before them. If there be nothing brighter than the
reflected light of the moon, the wild beasts will not keep in
their lair. And when that moon, after having reacht a mo-
ment of apparent glory, by looking full at the sun, fancies it
may turn away from the sun, and still have light in itself, it
straightway begins to wane, and ere long goes out altogether,
leaving its worshipers in the darkness, which they had vainly
dreamt it would enlighten. This was seen in the Roman Em-
pire. It was seen in the last century all over Europe, above
all in France. u.

He who does not learn from events, rejects the lessons of
Experience. He who judges from the event, makes Fortune
an assessor in his judgements.

What an instance of the misclassifications and misconcep-
tions produced by a general term is the common mistake, which
looks on the Greeks and Romans as one and the same people?
because they are both called ancients !

The difference between desultory reading and a course of
study may be illustrated by comparing the former to a number
of mirrors set in a straight line, so that every one of them
reflects a different object, the latter to the same mirrors so skil-
fully arranged as to perpetuate one set of objects in an endless
series of reflexions.

If we read two books on the same subject, the second leads
us to review the statements and arguments of the first; the
errours of which are little likely to escape this kind of proving,
if I may so call it; while the truths are more strongly im-
printed on the memory, not merely by repetition, — though

90 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

that too is of use, — but by the deeper conviction thus wrought
into the mind, of their being verily and indeed truths.

Would you restrict the mind then to a single line of study ?

No more than the body to any single kind of labour. The
sure way of cramping and deforming both is to confine them
entirely to an employment which keeps a few of their powers
or muscles in strong, continuous action, leaving the rest to
shrink and stiffen from inertness. Liberal exercise is neces-
sary to both. For the mind the best perhaps is Poetry. Ab-
stract truth, which in Science is ever the main object, has no
link to attach our sympathies to man, nay, rather withers the
fibres by which our hearts would otherwise lay hold on him,
absorbing our affections, and diverting them from man, who,
viewed in the concrete, and as he exists, is the antipode of
abstract truth. High therefore and precious must be the worth
and benefit of Poetry ; which, taking men as individuals, and
shedding a strong light on the portions and degrees of truth
latent in every human feeling, reconciles us to our kind, and
shews that a devotion to truth, however it may alienate the
mind from man, only unites it more affectionately to men, in
their various relations of love (for love is truth), as children,
and fathers, and husbands, and citizens, and, one day perhaps
much more than it has hitherto done, as Christians.

Vice is the greatest of all Jacobins, the arch-leveler.

A democracy by a natural process degenerates into an ochlo-
cracy : and then the hangman has the fairest chance of becom-
ing the autocrat. A.

Many of the supposed increasers of knowledge have only
given a new name, and often a worse, to what was well known
before. u.

God did not make harps, nor pirouettes, nor crayon-drawing,
nor the names of all the great cities in Africa, nor conchology,
nor the Contes 3foraux, and a proper command of countenance.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 91

and prudery, and twenty other things of the sort. They must
all be taught then ; or how is a poor girl to know anything
about them ?

But health, strength, the heart, the soul, with their fairest
inmates, modesty, cheerfulness, truth, purity, fond affection, —
all these things He did make ; and so they may safely be left
to Nature. Nobody can suppose it to be mamma's fault, if they
don't come of themselves.

How fond man is of tinsel ! I have known a boy steal, to
give away, a.

Offenders may be divided into two classes, — the old in
crime, and the young. The old and hardened criminal, in
becoming so, must have acquired a confidence in his own fate-
fencedness, or as he would call it, his luck. The young then
are the only offenders whom the law is likely to intimidate.
Now to these imprisonment or transportation cannot but look
much less formidable, when they see it granted as a commuta-
tion, instead of being awarded as a penalty. It is no longer
transportation, but getting off with transportation : and doubtless
it is often urged in this shape on the novice, as an argument for
crime. So that in all likelihood the threat of death, in cases
where it can rarely be executed, is worse than nugatory, and
positively pernicious.

These remarks refer chiefly to such laws as are still continu-
ally violated. With those, which, having accomplisht the pur-
pose they were framed for, live only in the character of the
people, let no reformer presume to meddle, until he has studied
and refuted Col. Frankland's Speech on Sir Samuel Romilltfs
Bills for making alterations in the Criminal Law. 1826.

It is an odd device, when a fellow commits a crime, to send
him to the antipodes for it. Could one shove him thither in a
straight line, down a tunnel, he might bring back some useful
hints to certain friends of mine, who are just now busied in
asking mother Earth what she is made of. But that a rogue,

92 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

by picking a pocket, should earn the circuit of half the globe,
seems really meant as a parody on the conceptions of those who
hold that the happiness of a future life will consist mainly in
going the round of all the countries they have not visited in the
present. Unless indeed our legislators fancy that, by setting a
man topsy-turvy, they may give his better qualities, which have
hitherto been opprest by the weight of evil passions and habits,
a chance of coming to the top.

How ingeniously contrived this plan is, to render punish-
ments expensive and burthensome to the state that inflicts
them, is notorious. Let this pass however : we must not grudge
a little money, when a great political good is to be effected.
True, it would be much cheaper and more profitable to employ
our convicts in hard labour at home. Far easier too would it
be to keep them under moral and religious discipline. But
how could Botany Bay go on, if the importation of vice were
put a stop to ? For, as there is nothing too bad to manure a
new soil with, so, reasoning by analogy, no scoundrels can be
too bad to people a new land with. The argument halts a little,
and seems to be clubfooted, and is assuredly topheavy. In all
well-ordered towns the inhabitants are compelled to get rid of
their own dirt, in such a way that it shall not be a nuisance to
the neighbourhood. It is singular that the English, of all na-
tions the nicest on this point, should in their political capacity
deem it justifiable and seemly to toss the dregs and feces of the
community into the midst of their neighbour's estate.

Deportation, as the French termed it, for political offenses may
indeed at times be expedient, and beneficial, and just. For a
man's being a bad subject in one state is no proof that he may
not become a good subject under other rulers and a different
form of government. More especially in this age of insurrec-
tionary spirits, — when the old maxim, which may occasionally
have afforded a sanctuary for establisht abuses, has been con-
verted into its far more dangerous opposite, that whatever is, is
wrong, — there may easily be persons who from incompatibility
of character cannot live peaceably in their own country, yet
who may have energy and zeal to fit them for taking an active

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 93

part in a new order of things. Such was the origin of many of
the most flourishing Greek colonies. Men of stirring minds
who found no place in accord with their wishes at home, went
in search of other homes, carrying the civilization and the
glory of the mother country into all the regions around. Some-
thing of the same spirit gave rise to the settlements of the Nor-
mans in the middle ages. In this way too states may be formed,
great from the power of the moral principle which cements
them. In this way were those states formed, which, above all
the nations of the earth, have reason to glory in their origin,
"New England, and Pensylvania.

But transportation for moral offenses is in every point of
view impolitic, injurious, and unjust. " Plantations (says
Bacon, speaking of Colonies) are amongst ancient, primitive,
and heroical works. — It is a shameful and unblessed thing, to
take the scum of people, and wicked condemned men, to be the
people with whom you plant. And not only so ; but it spoileth
the plantation : for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall
to work, but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and
be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the
discredit of the plantation." Yet, in defiance of this warning
from him, whom we profess to revere as the father of true
philosophy, and the " wisest of mankind," we have gone on for
the last half century peopling the new quarter of the world with
the refuse of the gallows ; as though we conceived that in mor-
als also two negatives were likely to make an affirmative, —
that the coacervation of filth, if the mass be only huge enough,
would of itself ferment into purity, — and that every paradox
might be lookt for in the country of the ornithorynchus para-
doxus. Bacon's words however have been fulfilled, in this as
in so many other cases ; for the prophet of modern science was
gifted with a still more piercing vision into the hearts and
thoughts of men. What indeed could be expected of a people
so utterly destitute of that which is the most precious part of a
nation's inheritance, — of that which has ever been one of the
most powerful human stimulants to generous exertion, — the
glory of its ancestors ? "What could be expected of a people

94 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

who, instead of glory, have no inheritance but shame ? For it
will hardly be argued in these days, that the Romans, who
reacht the highest pitch of earthly grandeur, sprang originally
from a horde of bandits and outlaws. That fable may be
regarded as exploded : and assuredly there never was a nation,
in whom the glory of their ancestors was so lively and mighty
a principle, as among the Romans. But not content with the
ignominy of the original settlement, though we ought to know
that disease is ever much more contagious than health, we
yearly send out a number of plague-ships, as they may in truth
be called, for fear lest the sanitary condition of our Australian
colonies should improve.

If any persons are to be selected by preference for the peo-
pling of a new country, they ought rather to be the most
temperate, the most prudent, the most energetic, the most vir-
tuous, in the whole nation. For their task is the most arduous,
requiring Wisdom to put forth all her strength and all her craft
for its worthy execution. Their responsibility is the most
weighty ; seeing that upon them the character of a whole
people for ages will mainly depend. And they will find
much to dishearten them, much to draw them astray ; without
being protected against their own hearts, and upheld and forti-
fied in their better resolves, as in a regularly constituted state
all men are in some measure, by the healthy and cordial influ-
ences of Law and Custom and Opinion. O that statesmen
would consider what a glorious privilege they enjoy, when they
are allowed to become the fathers of a new people ! This how-
ever seems to be one of the things which God has reserved
wholly to himself.

Yet how enormous are the means with which the circum-
stances of England at this day supply her for colonization !
How weighty therefore is the duty which falls upon her ! With
her population overflowing in every quarter, with her imperial
fleets riding the acknowledged lords of every sea, mistress of
half the islands in the globe, and of an extent of coast such as
no other nation ever ruled over, her manifest calling is to do
that over the Atlantic and the Pacific, which Greece did so

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 95

successfully in the Mediterranean and the Euxine. As Greece
girt herself round with a constellation of Greek states, so ought
England to throw a girdle of English states round the world, —
to plant the English language, the English character, English
knowledge, English manliness, English freedom, above all to
plant the Cross, wherever she hoists her flag, wherever the
simple natives bow to her armipotent sceptre. "We have been
highly blest with a glory above that of other nations. Of the
paramounts in the various realms of thought during the last
three centuries, many of the greatest have been of our blood.
Our duty therefore is to spread our glory abroad, to let our
light shine from East to West, and from Pole to Pole, — to do
what in us lies, that Shakspeare and Milton and Bacon and
Hooker and Newton may be familiar and honoured names a
thousand years hence, among every people that hears the voice
of the sea.

Of this duty we have been utterly regardless ; because we
have so long been regardless of a still higher duty. For our
duties hang in such a chain, one from the other, and all from
heaven, that he who fulfills the highest, is likely to fulfill the
rest ; while he who neglects the highest, whereby alone the
others are upheld, will probably let the rest draggle in the mire.
We have long been unmindful, as a nation, of that which in our
colonial policy we ought to deem our highest duty, the duty
of planting the colonies of Christ. We have thought only of
planting the colonies of Mammon, not those of Christ, nor even
those of Minerva and .Apollo. Nay, till very lately we sent
out our colonists, not so much to christianize the Heathens, as
to be heathenized by them : and when a Christian is heathen-
ized, then does the saying come to pass in all its darkness and
woe, that the last state of such a man is worse than the first.

Let us cast our thoughts backward. Of all the works of all
the men who were living eighteen hundred years ago, what is
remaining now? One man was then lord of half the known
earth. In power none could vie with him, in the wisdom of
this world few. He had sagacious ministers, and able generals.
Of all his works, of all theirs, of all the works of the other

96 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

princes and rulers in those ages, what is left now ? Here and
there a name, and here and there a ruin. Of the works of
those who wielded a mightier weapon than the sword, a weapon
that the rust cannot eat away so rapidly, a weapon drawn from
the armory of thought, some still live and act, and are cherisht
and revered by the learned. The range of their influence how-
ever is narrow : it is confined to few, and even in them mostly
to a few of their meditative, not of their active hours. But at
the same time there issued from a nation, among the most
despised of the earth, twelve poor men, with no sword in their
hands, scantily supplied with the stores of human learning or
thought. They went forth East, and West, and North, and
South, into all quarters of the world. They were reviled :
they were spit upon : they were trampled under foot : every
engine of torture, every mode of death, was employed to crush
them. And where is their work now ? It is set as a diadem
on the brows of the nations. Their voice sounds at this day in
all parts of the earth. High and low hear it : kings on their
thrones bow down to it : senates acknowledge it as their law :
the poor and afflicted rejoice in it : and as it has triumpht over
all those powers which destroy the works of man, — as, in-
stead of falling before them, it has gone on age after age in-
creasing in power and in glory, — so is it the only voice which
can triumph over Death, and turn the King of terrours into an
angel of light.

Therefore, even if princes and statesmen had no higher mo-
tive than the desire of producing works which are to last, and
to bear their names over the waves of time, they should aim at
becoming the fellowlabourers, not of Tiberius and Sejanus, nor
even of Augustus and Agrippa, but of Peter and Paul. Their
object should be, not to build monuments which crumble away
and are forgotten, but to work among the builders of that which
is truly the Eternal City. For so too will it be eighteen hun-
dred years hence, if the world lasts so long. Of the works of
our generals and statesmen, eminent as several of them have
been, all traces will have vanisht. Indeed of him who was the
mightiest among them, all traces have well-nigh vanisht already.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 97

For they who deal in death are mostly given up soon to death,
they and their works. Of our poets and philosophers some
may still survive ; and many a thoughtful youth in distant re-
gions may repair for wisdom to the fountains of Burke and
Wordsworth. But the works which assuredly will live, and be
great and glorious, are the works of those poor, unregarded
men, who have gone forth in the spirit of the twelve from
Judea, whether to India, to Africa, to Greenland, or to the isles
in the Pacific. As their names are written in the Book of
Life, so are their works : and it may be that the noblest me-
morial of England in those days will be the Christian empire
of New Zealand.

This is one of the many ways in which God casts down the
mighty, and exalts the humble and meek. Through His bless-
ing there have been many men amongst us of late years, whose
works will live as long as the world, and far longer. But, as a
nation, the very Heathens will rise up in the judgement against
us, and condemn us. For they, when they sent out colonies,
deemed it their first and highest duty to hallow the newborn
state by consecrating it to their national god : and they were
studious to preserve the tie of a common religion and a com-
mon worship, as the most binding and lasting of all ties, be-
tween the mother-country and its offspring. Now so inherent
is permanence in religion, so akin is it to eternity, that the mon-
uments even of a false and corrupt religion will outlast every
other memorial of its age and people. With what power does
this thought come upon us when standing amid the temples of
Paestum ! All other traces of the people who raised them
have been swept away: the very materials of the buildings
that once surrounded them have vanisht, one knows not how or
whither : the country about is a wide waste : the earth has
become barren with age : Nature herself seems to have grown
old and died there. Yet still those mighty columns lift up their
heads toward heaven, as though they too were "fashioned to
endure the assault of Time with all his hours : " and still one
gazes through them at the deep-blue sea and sky, and at the
hills of Amalfi on the opposite coast of the bay. A day spent
5 G

98 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

among those temples is never to be forgotten, whether as a vis-
ion of unimagined sublimity and beauty, or as a lesson how the
glory of all man's works passes away, and nothing of them
abides, save that which he gives to God. When Mary anointed
our Lord's feet, the act was a transient one : it was done for
His burial: the holy feet which she anointed, ceast soon after
to walk on earth. Yet he declared that, wheresoever His gos-
pel was preacht in the whole world, that act should also be told
as a memorial of her. So has it ever been with what has been
given to God, albeit blindly and erringly. While all other
things have perisht, this has endured.

The same doctrine is set forth in the colossal hieroglyphics of
Girgenti and Selinus. At Athens too what are the buildings
which two thousand years of slavery have failed to crush?
The temple of Theseus, and the Parthenon. Man, when
working for himself, has ever felt that so perishable a creature
may well be content with a perishable shell. On the other
hand, when he is working for those whom his belief has en-
throned in the heavens, he strives to make his works worthy of
them, not only in grandeur and in beauty, but also in their im-
perishable, indestructible massiness and strength. Moreover
Time himself seems almost to shrink from an act of sacrilege ;
and Nature ever loves to beautify the ruined house of God.

It is not however by the Heathens alone that the propagation
of their religion in their colonies has been deemed a duty.
Christendom in former days was animated by a like principle.
In the joy excited by the discovery of America, one main
element was, that a new province would thereby be won for
the Kingdom of Christ. This feeling is exprest in the old
patents for our Colonies : for instance, in that for the plantation
of Virginia, James the First declares his approval of " so noble
a work, which may by the providence of Almighty God here-
after tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, in propagating
the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness
and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of
God." For nations, as well as individuals, it might often be
wisht, that the child were indeed " father of the man." u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 99

In republishing a work like this after intervals of ten and
twenty years, it must needs be that a writer will meet now and
then with thoughts, which, in their mode of expression at least,
belong more or less to the past, and which in one way or other
have become out of keeping with the present. If his watch
pointed to the right hour twenty years ago, it must be behind
time in some respects now. For in addition to the secular
precession of the equinoxes in the intellectual world, each year
advances a day ; and ever and anon conies a leap-year, with an
unlookt-for intercalation. Even in the writer's own mind, un-
less he has remained at a standstill, while all things else have
been in motion, — and in that case he can never have had
much real life in him, — subsequent reflection and experience
must have expanded and matured some opinions, and modified
or corrected others. In his relation to the outward world too
there must be changes. Truth will have gained ground in some
quarters : in others the prevalent forms of errour will be differ-
ent, perchance opposite. Opinions, which were just coming out
of the shell, or newly fledged, will have reacht their prime, and
be flying abroad from mouth to mouth, from journal to journal.
He who has sought truth with any earnestness, will at times
have the happy reward, — among the pleasures of authorship
one of the greatest, — of finding that thoughts, which in his
younger days were in the germ, or just sprouting up, or bud-
ding forth, have since ripened and seeded, — that truths, of which
he may have caught a dim perception, and for which he may
have contended with the ardour inspired by a struggle in be-
half of what is unduly neglected, are more or less generally
recognised, — and, it may even be, that wishes, which, when
first uttered, seemed visionary, have assumed a distincter shape,
and come forward above the horizon of practical reality.

Thus, in revising these Guesses of former years for a third
edition, I am continually reminded of the differences between
1847 and 1827, and these not solely lying within the compass
of my own mind. Nor is it uninteresting to have such a series
of landmarks pointing out where the waters have advanced,
and where they have receded. For instance, the observations

100 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

in pp. 40 - 43 pertain to a time when the old Poorlaw, after its
corruptions through the thoughtlessness of our domestic policy
during the French War, was exciting the reprobation, which
has since been poured out, with less reason and more clamour,
on its successor. At that time our ministers, one after another,
shrank from the dangers which were foreboded from a change ;
and this should be borne in mind, though it is mostly forgotten,
when the new Poorlaw is tried. It should be remembered
that, whatever evils may have ensued, they are immeasurably
less than were anticipated. Yet, though the wish exprest above
for the correction of the old Poorlaw has in some respects been
fulfilled, very little has been done in the view there proposed
for elevating the character of our labouring classes. That
which was to relieve the purses of the land-owners, has been
effected. As to the substitutes requisite in order to preserve
the aged and infirm from want, and to foster the feeling of self-
dependence and self-respect, they are still problems for the future.
Again, there is now a cheering hope that what is spoken of
in these latter pages as the object of a dim, though earnest wish,
will at last be accomplisht. More than two centuries have
rolled by since Bacon lifted up his oracular voice against the
evils of Penal Colonies. The experience of every generation
since has strengthened his protest. During the last twenty
years those Colonies have been the seats of simple, defecated
vice, and have teemed with new, monstrous births of crime. It
could not be otherwise, when a people was doomed to grow up
as a mere festering mass of corruption, and when the healthier
influences of Nature were continually counteracted by the im-
portation of new stores of pestilential matter, as though a hell
were continually receiving fresh cargoes of fiends to stock it.
At last however our ministers have been stirred with a desire
to abate and abolish this tremendous evil. A few years after
the utterance of the wish recorded above (in pp. 91 - 94), the
Archbishop of Dublin, in two Letters to the late Lord Grey,
exposed the mischiefs of Penal Colonies with unanswerable
cogency and clearness ; and now the son of that Lord Grey
has been awakened to a consciousness of the guilt incurred by

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 101

England in maintaining those Colonies, and of our duty to
abandon a policy which is planting a new nation out of the
refuse of mankind. May God prosper his attempt, and bring it
to a happy issue ! May our legislators neither be daunted nor
deluded by those who assert that such abominations are a
necessary safety-valve for the crimes of England !

It is sad indeed that so many of our Judges should uphold
the expediency of transportation, in defiance of such appalling
facts. But so it ever is with establisht abuses. Too many
good men are apt to put on the trammels of Custom, and to
fancy that one cannot walk without them. While the ingenious
are ever liable to be ensnared by their own ingenuity, even
those who have shewn great ability and integrity in working
out the details of a system, though they may be quick in per-
ceiving and removing partial blemishes, will be very slow to
recognise and acknowledge the whole system to be vicious.
Moreover, through that feebleness of imagination, and that
bluntness of moral sympathies, which- we all have to deplore,
when an evil is once removed from sight, it almost ceases to
disturb us ; so that, provided our criminals are prevented from
breaking the peace in England, wre think little of what they
may do, or of what may become of them, at the opposite end
of the Globe. Nevertheless they who stand on that high
ground, whence Principle and Expediency are ever seen to
coincide, — if they cling to this conviction, and are resolute in
carrying it into act, — may be sure that, after a while, all those
whose approbation is worth having, — even they who may have
kept aloof, or have laid great stress on scruples and objections
in the first instance through timidity or narrowmindedness, —
will join in swelling their song of triumph, and in condemning
the abuse which they themselves may long have regarded as
indispensable to the preservation of social order.

We have an additional ground too for thankfulness, in the
higher and wiser notions concerning the duties of Colonization
which have been gaining currency of late, and to which the
attention of our Legislature has been especially called by Mr.
Buller in some excellent speeches. Hence we may hope that

102 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ere long our Government will seriously endeavour to redeem this
vast province from the dominion of Chance, and will try to substi-
tute an organic social polity for the vague confluence of appetites
and passions by which our Colonies have mostly been peopled.
Above all have we reason for giving thanks to Him who has
at length roused our Church to a deeper consciousness of her
duties in this region also. Among the events and measures of
the last twenty years, I know none which hold out such a rich
promise of blessings, or which seem already to project their
roots so far into the heart of distant ages, as that which has
been done for the better organization and ordering of the
Church of Christ in our Colonial Empire. 1847. u.

Once on a time there was a certain country, in which, from
local reasons, the land could be divided no way so conveniently
as into foursided figures. A mathematician, having remarkt
this, ascertained the laws of all such figures, and laid them
down fully and accurately. His countrymen learnt to esteem
him a philosopher ; and his precepts were observed religiously
for years. A convulsion of nature at length changed the face
and local character of the district : whereupon a skilful sur-
veyor, being employed to lay out some fields afresh, ventured
to give one of them five sides. The innovation is talkt of uni-
versally, and is half applauded by some younger and bolder
members of the community : but a big-mouthed and weighty
doctor, to set the matter at rest for ever, quotes the authority
of the above-mentioned mathematician, that fixer of agricul-
tural positions, and grand landmark of posterity, who has
demonstrated to the weakest apprehensions that a field ought
never to have more than four sides : and then he proves, to the
satisfaction of all his hearers, that a pentagon has more.

This weighty doctor is one of a herd: everybody knows he
cannot tell how many such. Among them are the critics, " who
feel by rule, and think by precedent.', To instance only in the
melody of verse : nothing can be clearer than that a polysyl-
labic language will fall into different cadences from a language
which abounds in monosyllables. The character of languages

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 103

too in this respect often varies greatly with their age : for they
usually drop many syllables behind them in their progress
through time. Yet we continually hear the rule-and-precedent
critics condemning verses for differing from the rhythms of for-
mer days ; just as though there could only be one good tune in
metre.

For the motive of a man's actions, hear his friend ; for their
prudence and propriety, his enemy. In our every-day judge-
ments we are apt to jumble the two together; if we see an
action is unwise, accusing it of being ill-intentioned ; and, if we
know it to be well-intentioned, persuading ourselves it must be
wise ; both foolishly ; the first the most so.

Abuse I would use, were there use in abusing;
But now 't is a nuisance you '11 lose by not losing.
So reproof, were it proof, I 'd approve your reproving;
But, until it improves, you should rather love loving.

How few Christians have imbibed the spirit of their Master's
beautiful and most merciful parable of the tares, which the ser-
vants are forbidden to pluck up, lest they should root up the
wheat along with them ! Never have men been wanting, who
come, like the servants, and give notice of the tares, and ask
leave to go and gather them up. Alas, too ! even in that
Church, which professes to follow Jesus, and calls itself after
His sacred name, the ruling principle has often been to destroy
the tares, let what will come of the wheat ; nay, sometimes to
destroy the wheat, lest a tare should perchance be left standing.
Indeed I know not who can be said to have acted even up to
the letter of this command, unless it be authors toward their
own works. u.

It is not without a whimsical analogy to polemical fulmina-
tions, that great guns are loaded with iron, pistols and muskets
fire lead, rapidly, incessantly, fatiguingly, and ninety-nine times
out of a hundred, they say, without effect.

104 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Knowledge is the parent of love ; "Wisdom, love itself.

They who are sinking hi the world, find more weights than
corks ready to attach themselves to them ; and even if they can
lay hold on a bladder, it is too likely to burst before it raises
their heads above water. a..

The independence of the men who buy their seats, — a for-
einer would think I am speaking of a theatre, — is often urged
by the opposers of Parliamentary Reform as an advantage
resulting from the present system. And independent those
gentlemen certainly are, at least of the people of England,
whose interests they have in charge. But the parliamentary
balance has two ends ; and shewing that a certain body of
members are not dependent on the people, will hardly pass for
proof that they are not hangers on at all. Independent then is
not the fit term to describe these members by : the plain and
proper word is irresponsible. Now their being so may be una-
voidable, may even be desirable for the sake of some contin-
gent good. But can it be good in itself, and for itself? can it
be a thing to boast of? Observe, we are talking of representa-
tives, not of peers, or king. 1826.

In proportion as each word stands for a separate conception,
language comes nearer to the accuracy and unimpressiveness of
algebraic characters, so useful when the particular links in a
chain of reasoning have no intrinsic value, and are important
only as connecting the premisses with the conclusion. But cir-
cumlocutions magnify details ; and their march being sedate
and stately, the mind can keep pace with them, yet not run
itself out of breath. In the due mixture of these two modes,
lies the secret of an argumentative style. As a general rule,
the first should prevail more in writing, the last in speaking ;
circumlocution being to words, what repetition is to arguments.
The first too is the fitter dress for a short logical sentence, the
last for a long one, in which the feelings are any wise appealed
to; though to recommend in the same breath, that shortness

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 105

should be made still shorter, and that length should be length-
ened, may sound paradoxical.

Yet this amounts to much the same thing with the old Stoic
illustration. Zeno, says Cicero (Orat. 32), "manu demonstrare
solebat, quid inter dialecticos et oratores interesset. Nam cum
compresserat digitos, pugnumque fecerat, dialecticam aiebat
ejusmodi esse: cum autem diduxerat, et manum dilataverat,
palmae illius similem eloquentiam esse dicebat. With an evi-
dent reference to this illustration, Fuller {Holy State, B. II. c.
5) says of Campian, that he was " excellent at the flat hand of
rhetoric, which rather gives pats than blows ; but he could not
bend his fist to dispute."

Oratory may be symbolized by a warrior's eye, flashing from
under a philosopher's brow. But why a warrior's eye, rather
than a poet's ? Because in oratory the will must predominate.

The talk without effort is after all the great charm of talking.

The proudest word in English, to judge by its way of carry-
ing itself, is I. It is the least of monosyllables, if it be indeed
a syllable : yet who in good society ever saw a little one ?

Foreiners find it hard to understand the importance which
every wellbred Englishman, as in duty bound, attaches to him-
self. They cannot conceive why, whenever they have to speak
in the first person, they must stand on tiptoe, lifting themselves
up, until they tower, like Ajax, with head and shoulders above
their comrades. Hence in their letters, as in those of the uned-
ucated among our own countrymen, we now and then stumble
on a little i, with a startling shock, as on coming to a short step
in a flight of stairs. A Frenchman is too courteous and pol-
isht to thrust himself thus at full length into his neighbour's
face : he makes a bow, and sticks out his tail. Indeed this big
one-lettered pronoun is quite peculiar to John Bull, as much so
as Magna Charta, with which perchance it may not be alto-
gether unconnected. At least it certainly is an apt symbol of
5*

106 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

our national character, both in some of its nobler and of its
harsher features. In it you may discern the Englishman's
freedom, his unbending firmness, his straightforwardness, his
individuality of character: you may also see his self-impor-
tance, his arrogance, his opiniativeness, his propensity to sepa-
rate and seclude himself from his neighbours, and to look down
on all mankind with contempt. As he has bared his represent-
ative / of its consonants and adjuncts, in like manner has he
also stript his soul of its consonants, of those social and affable
qualities, which smoothe the intercourse between man and man,
and by the help of which people unite readily one with another.
Look at four Englishmen in a stage-coach : the odds are, they
will be sitting as stiff and unsociable as four Ies. Novalis must
have had some vision of this sort in his mind, when he said
(vol. iii. p. 301) : " Every Englishman is an island."

But is / a syllable ? It has hardly a better claim to the
title, than Orson, before he left the woods, had to be called a
family. By the by, they who would derive all language from
simple sounds, by their juxtaposition and accumulation, and allx
society from savages, who are to unite under the influence of
mutual repulsion, may perceive in /and Orson, that the isolated
state is as likely to be posterior to the social, as to be anterior.
You have only to strip vowels of their consonants, man of his
kindly affections, which are sure to dry up of themselves, and
to drop off, when they have nothing to act on. Death crum-
bles its victims into dust : but dust has no power in itself to
coalesce into life. u.

Perhaps the peculiar self-importance of our / may number
among the reasons why our writers nowadays are so loth to
make use of it ; as though its mere utterance were a mark of
egotism. This over-jealous watchfulness betrays that there
must be something unsound. In simpler times, before our self-
consciousness became so sensitive and irritable, people were
not afraid of saying I, when occasion arose : and they never
dreamt that their doing so could be an offense to their neigh-
bours. But now we eschew it by all manner of shifts. We

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 107

multiply, we dispersonate ourselves : we turn ourselves outside
in. We are ready to become he, she, it, they, anything rather
than I.

A tribe of writers are fond of merging their individuality in
a multitudinous we. They think they may pass themselves off
unnoticed, like the Irishman's bad guinea, in a handful of half-
pence. This is one of the affectations with which the litera-
ture of the day is tainted, a trick caught, or at least much
fostered, by the habit of writing in Reviews. Now in a Re-
view, — which, among divers other qualities of Cerberus, has
that of many-headedness, and the writers in which speak in
some measure as the members of a junto, — the plural we is
warrantable ; provided it be not thrust forward, as it so often
is, to make up for the want of argument by the show of au-
thority. This distinction is justly drawn by Chateaubriand, in
the preface to his Memoir on the Congress of Verona : " En
parlant de moi, je me suis tour-a-tour servi des pronoms nous
et je ; nous comme representant d'une opinion, je quand il
m'arrive d'etre personnellement en scene, ou d'exprimer un
sentiment individuel. Le moi choque par son orgueil ; le nous
est un peu janseniste et royal."

Still, in ordinary books, except when the author can reason-
ably be conceived to be speaking, not merely in his own person,
but as the organ of a body, or when he can fairly assume that
his readers are going along with him, his using the plural we
impresses one with much such a feeling as a man's being afraid
to look one in the face. Yet I have known of a work, a history
of great merit, which was sent back to its author with a request
that he would weed the Ies out of it, by a person of high emi-
nence ; who however rose to eminence in the first instance as a
reviewer, and the eccentricities in whose character and conduct
may perhaps be best solved by looking upon him as a reviewer
transformed into a politician. For a reviewer's business is to
have positive opinions upon all subjects, without need of sted-
fast principles or thoroughgoing knowledge upon any : and he
belongs to the hornet class, unproductive of anything useful
or sweet, but ever ready to sally forth and sting, — to the class

103 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

of which Iago is the head, and who are " nothing, if not criti-
cal."

So far indeed is the anxiety to suppress the personal pronoun
from being a sure criterion of humility, that there is frequently
a ludicrous contrast between the conventional generality of our
language, and the egotism of the sentiments exprest in it. Un-
der this cover a man is withheld by no shame from prating
about his most trivial caprices, and will say, we think so and so,
we do so and so, ten times, where Montaigne might have hesi-
tated to say / once. Often especially in scientific treatises, —
which, from the propensity of their authors to look upon words,
and to deal with them, as bare signs, are not seldom rude and
amorphous in style, — the plural we is mere clumsiness, a kind
of refuge for the destitute, a help for those who cannot get quit
of their subjectivity, or write about objects objectively. This,
which is the great difficulty in all thought, — the forgetting
oneself, and passing out of oneself into the object of one's con-
templation, — is also one of the main difficulties in composition.
It requires much more self-oblivion to speak of things as they
are, than to talk about what we see, and what we perceive, and
what we think, and what we conceive, and what we find, and
what we know: and as self-oblivion is in all things an indispen-
sable condition of grace, which is infallibly marred by self-
consciousness, the exclusion of such references to ourselves,
except when we are speaking personally or problematically, is
an essential requisite for classical grace in style. This, to be
sure, is the very last merit which any one would look for in Dr
Chalmers. He is a great thinker, and a great and good man ;
and his writings have a number of merits, but not this. Still
even in him it produces a whimsical effect, when, in declaring
his having given up the opinion he once held on the allsuffi-
ciency and exclusiveness of the miraculous evidence 'for Chris-
tianity, although he is speaking of what is so distinctively
personal, he still cannot divest himself of the plurality he has
been accustomed to assume: see the recent edition of his
Works, vol. iii. p. 385. Droll however as it sounds, to find a
man saying, We formerly thought differently, but we have now

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 109

changed our mind, the passage is a fine proof of the candour
and ingenuousness which characterize its author : and every
lover of true philosophy must rejoice at the accession of so
illustrious a convert from the thaumatolatry by which our the-
ology has been debased for more than a century.

Moreover the plural we, though not seldom used dictatorially,
rather diminishes than increases the weight of what is said.
One is slow to believe that a man is much in earnest, when he
will not stand out and bear the brunt of the public gaze ; when
he shrinks from avowing, What I have written, I have written.
Whereas a certain respect and deference is ever felt almost
instinctively for the personality of another, when it is not im-
pertinently protruded : and it is pleasant to be reminded now
and then that we are reading the words of a man, not the
words of a book. Hence the interest we feel in the passages
where Milton speaks of himself. This was one of the things
which added to the power of Cobbett's style. His readers
knew who was talking to them. They knew it was William
Cobbett, not the Times, or the Morning Chronicle, — that the
words proceeded from the breast of a man, not merely from the
mouth of a printing-press. It is only under his own shape, we
all feel, that we can constrain Proteus to answer us, or rely on
what he says.

In a certain sense indeed the authorial we will admit of a
justification, which is beautifully exprest by Schubert, in the
Dedication of his History of the Soul. " It is an old custom
for writers to dedicate the work of their hands to some one
reader, though it is designed to serve many. — This old custom
appears to be of the same origin with that for authors, when
they are speaking of themselves, or of what they have done,
not to say I, but we. Both practices would seem originally to
have been an open avowal of that conviction, which forces
itself upon us in writing books, more strongly than in any other
employment, — namely, that the individual mind cannot pro-
duce anything worthy, except in a bond of love and of unity
of spirit with another mind, associated with it as its helpmate.
For this is one of the purposes of life and of its labours, that a

HO GUESSES AT TEUTH.

man should find out how little there is in him that he has
received in and through himself, and how much that he has
received from others, and that hereby he may learn humility
and love."

Another common disguise is that of putting on a domino.
Instead of coming forward in their own persons, many choose
rather to make their appearance as the Author, the Writer, the
Reviewer. In prefaces this is so much the fashion, that our
best and purest writers, Southey for instance, and Thirlwall,
have complied with it. Nay, even Wordsworth has sanc-
tioned this prudish coquetry by his practice in the Preface to
the Excursion, and in his other later writings in prose.. In
earlier days he shewed no reluctance to speak as himself.

This affectation is well ridiculed by Tieck, in his Drama-
turgische Blaetter, i. 275. " It has struck me for years (he
says), as strange, that our reviewers have at length allowed
themselves to be so overawed by the everlasting jests and jeers
of their numberless witty and witless assailants, as to have dropt
the plural we ; much to their disadvantage, it seems to me ;
nay, much to the disadvantage of true modesty, which they
profess to be aiming at. In a collective work, to which there
are many anonymous contributors, each, so long as he continues
anonymous, speaks in the name of his collegues, as though
they agreed with him. The editor too must examine and ap-
prove of the articles : so that there must always be two persons
of one mind; and these may fairly call themselves we. Ee-
viewers moreover have often to lift up their voices against
whatever is new, paradoxical, original, — and are compelled
on the other hand, whether by their own convictions, or by per-
sonal considerations, to praise what is middling and common-
place. Hence no soverein on earth can have a better right to
say we, than such a reviewer ; who may lie down at night with
the calmest conscience, under the conviction that he has been
speaking as the mouthpiece of thousands of his countrymen,
when he declared, We are quite unable to understand this and
that, or, We can by no means approve of such a notion. How
tame in comparison is the newfangled phrase ! The reviewer
confesses that he cannot understand this.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. HI

" Still stranger is it to see, how writers in journals, even
when they sign their names, and thus appear in their own per-
sons, have for some time almost universally shunned saying I,
just as if they were children, with an unaccountable squeam-
ishness, and have twisted and twined about in the uncouthest
windings, to escape from this short, simple sound. Even in
independent works one already meets with such expressions as
The writer of this, or, The writer of these lines, — a long-
winded, swollen Z which is carrying us back to a stiff, clumsy,
lawpaper style. In journals the phrase is, The undersigned has
to state, Tour correspondent conceives. Ere long we shall find
in philosophical treatises, The thinker of this thought takes the
liberty of remarking, or, The discoverer of this notion begs leave
to say. Nay, if this modesty be such a palpable virtue, as it
would seem to be from the general rage for it, shall we not
soon see in descriptive poetry, The poet of these lines walkt
through the wood? Even this however would be far too pre-
sumptuous, to call oneself a poet. So the next phrase will be,
The versifier of this feeble essay Walkt, if his memory deceive
him not, Across a meadow, where, audacious deed! He pluckt
a daisy from its grassy couch: or, The youth, whose wish is that
he may hereafter Be deemed a poet, sauntered toward the grove.
There is no end of such periphrases ; and perhaps the barba-
rism will spread so widely that compositors, whenever they come
to an / in a manuscript, will change it into one of these trailing
circumlocutions. When I look into Lessing and his contempo-
raries, I find none of this absurd affectation. Modesty must
dwell within, in the heart ; and a short / is the modestest, most
natural, simplest word I can use, when I have anything I want
to say to the reader."

There is another mode of getting rid of our I, which has
recently become very common, especially in ladies notes, so that
I suppose it is inculcated by the Polite Letter-writer ; though, to
be sure, / is such an inflexible, unfeminine word, one cannot
wonder they should catch at any means of evading it. Ask a
couple to dinner : Mrs Tomkins will reply, Mr Tomkins and
myself wall be very happy. This indeed is needlessly awkward :

112 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

for she might so easily betake herself to a woman's natural
place of shelter, by using we. But one person will tell you,
Lord A. and myself took a walk this morning ; another, Col. B.
and myself fought a duel ; another, Miss E. and myself have
been making love to each other. "Thus by myself myself is
self-abused." One might fancy that, it having been made a
grave charge against Wolsey, that he said, The King and I,
everybody was haunted by the fear of being indicted for a simi-
lar misdemeanour.

In like manner myself is often used, incorrectly, it seems to
me, instead of the objective pronoun me. Its legitimate usage
is either as a reciprocal pronoun, or for the sake of distinction,
or of some particular emphasis ; as when Juliet cries, " Romeo,
doff thy name, And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself; " or as when Adam says to Eve, " Best image
of myself and dearer half." In the opening of the Paradisia-
cal hymn, — " These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty ! Thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair !
Thyself how wondrous then/" — there is an evident contrast :
If thy works are so wondrous, how wondrous must Thou Thy-
self be I In like manner when Valentine, in the Two Gentle-
men of Verona, says of Proteus, "I knew him as myself; And
though myself have been an idle truant, Omitting the sweet
benefit of time, To clothe my age with angel-like perfection,
Yet hath Sir Proteus — Made use and fair advantage of his
days ; " — it amounts to the same thing as if he had said,
Though I for my part have been an idle truant. Where there
is no such emphasis, or purpose of bringing out a distinction or
contrast, the simple pronoun is the right one. Inaccuracies of
this kind also, though occasionally found in writers of former
times, have become much more frequent of late years. Even
Coleridge, when speaking about his projected poem on Cain,
says, " The title and subject were suggested by myself" In
such expressions as my father and myself my brother and my-
self we are misled by homoeophony r but the old song begin-
ning " My father, my mother, and I," may teach us what is the
idiomatic, and also the correct usage.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 113

On the other hand, me is often substituted vulgarly and
ungrammatically for I. For the -objective me, on which others
act, is very far from being so formidable a creature, either to
oneself or to others, as the subjective I, the ground of all con-
sciousness, and volition, and action, and responsibility. Gram-
matically too it seems to us as if / always required something
to follow it, something to express doing or suffering. Hence,
when one cries out, Who is there ? three people out of four
answer Me. Hence too such expressions as that in Launce's
speech, where he gets so puzzled about his personal identity,
after having once admitted the thought that he could be any-
thing but himself: "I am the dog ... no, the dog is himself;
and I am the dog . . . oh, the dog is me, and I am myself ...
ay, so, so." It may be considered a token of the want of in-
dividuality in the French character, that their je is incapable
of standing alone ; and that, in such phrases as the foregoing,
moi would be the only admissible word. u.

This shrinking from the use of the personal pronoun, this
autophoby, as it may be called, is not indeed a proof of the
modesty it is designed to indicate ; any more than the hydro-
phobia is a proof that there is no thirst in the constitution.
On the contrary, it rather betrays a morbidly sensitive self-
sciousness. It may however be regarded as a mark of the
decaj; of individuality of character amongst us, as a symptom
that, as is mostly the case in an age of high cultivation, we
are ceasing to be living persons, each animated by one per-
vading, formative principle, ready to follow it whithersoever
it may lead us, and to stake our lives for it, and that we are
shriveling up into encyclopedias of opinions. To refer to spe-
cific evidence of this is needless. Else abundance may be
found in the want of character, the want of determinate, con-
sistent, stedfast principles, so wofully manifest in those who
have taken a prominent part in the proceedings of our Legis-
lature of late years. There is still one rock indeed, stout and
bold and unshakable as can be desired : but the main part of
the people about him have been washt and ground down to

H

114 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

sand, the form of which a breath of air, a child's caprice, a
man's foot will change. Or what other inference can be drawn
from the vapid characterlessness of our recent poetry and
novels of modern life, when compared with that rich fund of
original, genial, humorous characters, which seemed to be the
peculiar dower of the English intellect, and which abode with
it, amid all the vicissitudes of our literature, from the age of
Shakspeare, nay, from that of Chaucer, down to the days of
Swift and Defoe and Fielding and Smollett and Goldsmith ?

Yet by a whimsical incongruity, at the very time when
strongly markt outlines of character are fading away in the
haze of a literary and scientific amalgama, every man, woman,
and child has suddenly started up an individual. This again is
an example how language is corrupted by a silly dread of plain
speaking. Our ancestors were men and women. The former
word too was often used generally, as it is still, like the Latin
homo, for every human being. Unluckily however we have no
form answering to the German Mensch ; and hence, in seeking
for a word which should convey no intimation of sex, we have
had recourse to a variety of substitutes : for, none being strictly
appropriate, each after a time has been deemed vulgar ; and
none has been lasting.

In Chaucer's days wight was the common word in the singu-
lar, folk in the plural. Neither of these words had any tinge of
vulgarity then attacht to them. In the Doctor's Tale, he says
of Virginia, " Fair was this maid, of excellent beautee, Aboven
every wight that man may see : " where we also find man used
indefinitely, as in German, answering to our present one, from
the French on, homo. So again soon after : " Of alle treason
soverein pestilence Is, when a wight betray eth innocence." A
hundred other examples might be cited. In like manner folk
is used perpetually, especially in the Parson's Tale : " Many be
the ways that lead folk to Christ;" "Sins be the ways that lead
folk to hell." When Shakspeare wrote, both these words had
lost somewhat of their dignity. Biron calls Armado " a most
illustrious wight;" and the contemptuous application of this
term to others is a piece of Pistol's gasconading. The use of it

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 115

is also a part of the irony with which Iago winds up his descrip-
tion of a good woman : " She was a wight ... if ever such wight
were ... To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer." Folk was
seldom used, except with the addition of a plural s, in such ex-
pressions as old folks, good folks, country folks. The word in
repute then, in the singular, was a body, of which we retain
traces in the compounds, somebody, nobody, anybody, everybody.
Rosalind, on recovering from her fainting fit, says, " A body
would think this was well counterfeited;" where we should
now say a person. Bianca, in the Taming of the Shrew, speaks
of " a hasty-witted body" That there was nothing derogatory
in the word, is clear from Angelo's calling himself " so eminent
a body:' Other words, such as a soul, a creature, a fellow, were
mostly attended with a by-shade of meaning.

A number were summed up under the general word people,
the Latin counterpart of the Saxon folk, which it superseded.
Of this use we find the germs in our Bible, in the expressions
much people, all people, all the people. " O wonder ! (cries Mi-
randa, when she first sees the shipwreckt party ;) How many
goodly creatures are there here ! How beauteous mankind is !
O brave new world, That has such people in it ! " Bassanio,
after opening the casket, compares himself to one " That thinks
he hath done well in people's eyes." So too Richard the Second
says of himself, " Thus play I in one person many people."
These passages justify the idiomatic use of the word, which, it
is to be hoped, will still keep its ground, in spite of the ignorant
affectation of unidiomatic fine writing.

Next everybody became a person; a word which is not inap-
propriate, when we bethink ourselves of its etymology, seeing
that so many persons are in truth little else than masks, and
that every breath of air will sound through them : for to the
lower orders, who do not wear masks, the term is seldom ap-
plied. Several causes combined to give this word general cir-
culation. It was a French word : it belonged to Law Latin,
and to that of the Schools : it was adopted from the Vulgate
by our translators. It was coming into common use in Shak-
speare's time. Angelo asks Isabella, what she would do, " Find-

116 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ing herself desired of such a person, Whose credit with the
judge could save her brother." Dogberry says, " Our watch have
comprehended two auspicious persons." Rosalind tells Orlando,
that " Time travels in divers paces with divers persons."

Nowadays however all these words are grown stale. Such
grand people are we, for whom the world is too narrow, our
dignity will not condescend to enter into anything short of a
quadrisyllable. No ! give us a fine, big, long word, no matter
what it means : only it must not have been degraded by being
applied to any former generation. As a woman now deems it
an insult to be called anything but a female, — as a strumpet is
become an unfortunate female, — and as every day we may
read of sundry females being taken to Bowstreet, — in like
manner everybody has been metamorphosed into an individual,
by the Circe who rules the fashionable slang of the day. You
can hardly look into a newspaper, but you find a story how five
or sfx individuals wepe lost in the snow, or were overturned, or
were thrown out of a boat, or were burnt to death. A minister
of state informs the House of Commons, that twenty individuals
were executed at the last assizes. A beggar this morning said
to me, that he was an unfortunate individual. A man of lit-
erary eminence told me the other day that an individual was
looking at a picture, and that this individual was a painter.
One even reads, how an individual met another individual in
the street, and how these two individuals quarreled, and how a
third individual came up to part the two individuals who were
fighting, and how the two individuals fell upon the third indi-
vidual, and belaboured him for his pains. This is hardly an
exaggerated parody of an extract I met with a short time back
from a speech, which was pronounced to be " magnificent," and
in which the word recurs five times in eighteen lines. Nay, a
celebrated preacher, it is said, has been so destitute of all feel-
ing for decorum in language, as to call our Saviour " this emi-
nent individual." Also too ! even Wordsworth, of all our writ-
ers the most conscientiously scrupulous in the use of words, in
a note to one of the poems in his last volume, says that it was
" never seen by the individual for whom it was intended." So

GUESSES AT TRUTH. H7

true is the remark, which Coleridge makes, when speaking of
the purity of Wordsworth's language, that "in prose it is
scarcely possible to preserve our style unalloyed by the vicious
phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to
the newspaper." For, if Landor has done so, it is because he
has spent so much of his life abroad. Hence his- knowledge
of our permanent language has been little troubled by the rub-
bish which floats on our ephemeral language, and from which
no man living in England can escape.

When and whence did this strange piece of pompous inanity
come to us? and how did it gain such sudden vogue? It
sounds very modern indeed, scarcely older than the Reform-
Bill. Have we caught it from Irish oratory? or from the
Scotch pulpit ? both of which have been so busy of late years
in corrupting our mother English. To the former one might
ascribe it, from seeing that, of all classes, our Irish speakers are
the fondest of babbling about individuals. Its empty grandilo-
quence too sounds like a voice from the Emerald Isle ; while
its philosophical pretension would bespeak the north of the
Tweed. Or is it a Gallicism ? for the French too apply their
individu to particular persons, though never, I believe, thus
promiscuously. Its having got down already into the mouth of
beggars is a curious instance of the rapidity with which words
circulate in this age of steampresses, and steamcoaches, and
steamboats, and steamthoughts, and steamconstitutions.

The attempt to check the progress of a word, which has
already acquired such currency, may perhaps be idle. Still it
is well if one can lead some of the less thoughtless to call to
mind, that words have a meaning and a history, and that, when
used according to their historical meaning, they have also life
and power. The word in question too is a good and valuable
word, and worth reclaiming for its own appropriate signification.
We want it ; we have frequent occasion for it, and have no
substitute to fill its place. It should hardly be used, except
where some distinction or contrast is either exprest or implied.
A man is an individual, as regarded in his special, particular
unity, not in his public capacity, not as a member of a body :

118 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

he is an individual, so far as he is an integral whole, different
and distinct from other men : and that which makes him what he
is, that in which he differs and is distinguisht from other men, is
his individuality, and individuates or individualizes him. Thus,
in the Dedication of the Advancement of Learning, Bacon says
to the King : " I thought it more respective to make choice of
some oblation, which might rather refer to the propriety and
excellency of your individual person, than to the business of
- your crown and state." Milton indeed uses individual for un-
divided or indivisible ; as for instance in that grand passage of
his Ode on Time, where he says that, when Time is at an end,
" Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual
kiss." And this usage is common in our early writers. Ra-
legh, in the Preface to his History (p. 17), speaks of the notion
of Proclus, " that the compounded essence of the world is con-
tinued and knit to the Divine Being by an individual and in-
separable power." To our ears however this sounds like a Lat-
inism. Indeed this is the only sense in which the Romans used

the word. -

The sense it bears with us, it acquired among the School-
men, ^rora whom we derive so large a portion of our philosoph-
ical vocabulary ; as may be seen, for instance, in the following
passage of Anselm's Monologium (c. xxvii.) : " Cum omnis
substantia tractetur, aut esse universalis, quae pluribus substan-
tiis essentialiter communis est, — ut, hominem esse, commune
est singulis hominibus ; aut est individua, quae universalem
essentiam communem habet cum aliis, — quemadmodum singuli
homines commune habent cum singulis, ut homines sint." Thus
Donne, in his 38th Sermon (vol. ii. p. 172), speaking of Christ,
says : " This is that mysterious Person, who is singularis, and
yet not individuus ; singularis., — there never was, never shall
be any such ; — but we cannot call him individual, as every
other particular man is, because Christitatis non est genus, there
is no genus or species of Christs : it is not a name which can
be communicated to any other^a^the name of man may to
every individual man." Again Bacon,, in the first Chapter of
the second Book De Augmentis ikieftiiarum, writes : f Historia

r

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 119

proprie individuorum est. — Etsi enim Historia Naturalis circa
species versari videatur, tamen hoc fit ob promiscuam rerum
naturalium similitudinem ; ut, si unam noris, omnes noris. —
Poesis etiam individuorum est. — Philosophia individua dimit-
tit, neque impressiones primas individuorum, sed notiones ab
illis abstractas complectitur."

This usage might be illustrated by a number of passages
from our metaphysical writers ; as where Locke says (iii. 3, 4),
that men " in their own species, — wherein they have often
occasion to mention particular persons, make use of proper
names ; and there distinct individuals have distinct denomina- *
tions." This example shews how easily the modern abuse J
might grow up. In the following sentence from the Wealth of
Nations (B. v. c. 1), — "In some cases the state of society
places the greater part of individuals in such situations as nat-
urally form in them almost all the abilities and virtues which ^ <fe
that state requires," — there is still an intimation of the antith- /
esis properly implied in the word. But in many passages of
Dugald Stewart, who uses it perpetually in the first volume of
his Philosophy of the Human Mind, publisht in 1792, the an-
tithesis is scarcely discernible ; as, for instance, when he says
(p. 20), " There are few individuals, whose education has been
conducted in every respect with attention and judgement."
Here a more idiomatic writer would have said, There are few
persons.

By the way, a good glossary to the Schoolmen would be an
interesting and instructive work ; a glossary collecting all the
words which they coined, pointing out the changes they made
in the signification of old Latin words, explaining the grounds
of these innovations, and the wants they were meant to supply,
and tracking these words through the various languages of
modern Europe. Valuable as Ducange's great work is for
political, legal, ecclesiastical, military, and all manner of tech-
nical words, we still want a similar, though a far less bulky and
laborious collection of such words as his plan did not embrace,
especially of philosophical, scientific, and medical words, before
we can be thoroughly acquainted with the alterations which

120 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Latin underwent, when, from being the language of Rome, it
became that of all persons of education throughout Europe.
Even from t)ucange it would be well if some industrious gram-
marian would pick out all such words as have left any offspring
amongst us. Then alone shall we be prepared for understand-
ing the history of the English language, when its various ele-
ments have been carefully separated, collected, arranged, and
classified. u.

The offense charged against Wolsey is usually conceived to
have lain in his having prefixt his name to the King's; as
though, when he wrote Ego et Rex mens, it had been tanta-
mount to saying / and the King; an expression so repugnant
to our English notions of good-breeding, that it seems to us to
imply the most overweening assumption of superiority. Hence,
when the lords are taunting him in Shakspeare, Norfolk says,
" Then that in all you writ to Rome, or else To forein princes,
Ego et Rex meus Was still inscribed, in which you brought the
King To he your servant" Thus the article of the Bill against
him is stated by Holinshed, from whom Shakspeare's words
are copied : " Item, in all writings which he wrote to Rome, or
any other forein prince, he wrote Ego et Rex meus, I and my
King, as who would say that the King were his servant." The
charge is given in similar words by Grafton, by Hall, and by
Foxe. Addison too understood it in the same sense. In his
paper on Egotism {Spectator, 562), he says, "The most violent
egotism which I have met with in the course of my reading, is
that of Cardinal Wolsey, Ego et Rex meus, I and my King"

From this one might suppose that the grievance would have
been removed, had he written Rex meus et ego, violating the
Latin idiom ; which in such expressions follows the natural
order of our thoughts, and, inasmuch as a man's own feelings
and actions must usually be foremost in his mind, makes him
place himself first, when he has to speak of himself along with
another. Hence Wolsey's last biographer, in the Cabinet Cy-
clopedia, talks of "the Ego et Rex meus charge, which only
betrays its framer's ignorance of the Latin idiom." Yet, when

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 121

one finds that the first name subscribed to the Bill against
Wolsey is that of Thomas More, a modest man will be slow
to believe that it can have been drawn up with such gross
ignorance. Nor was it. A transcript of the Bill from the
Records is given by Lord Herbert in his Life of Henry the
Eighth, and has lately been reprinted in the State- Trials : and
there the fourth article stands as follows. " Also the said Lord
Cardinal, of his presumptuous mind, in divers and many of his
letters and instructions sent out of this realm to outward par-
ties, had joined himself with your Grace, as in saying and
writing in his said letters and instructions, The King and I
would ye should do thus ; — The King and I give you our
hearty thanks; whereby it is apparent that he used himself
more like a fellow to your Highness, than like a subject." So
that the blunder is imaginary. The charge was, not that he
placed himself above and before the King, but that he spoke of
himself along and on a level with the King, in a manner ill
befitting a subject and a servant. The inaccuracy in Foxe's
report was noted long ago by Collier in his Ecclesiastical
History.

"It is always a mistake (says Niebuhr) to attribute igno-
rance on subjects of general notoriety to eminent men, in order
to account for what we may find in them running counter to
current opinions." This, and Coleridge's golden rule, — " Until
you understand an author's ignorance, presume yourself igno-
rant of his understanding," — should be borne in mind by all
writers who feel an itching in their forefinger and thumb to be
carping at their wisers and betters. u.

The substitution of plurality for unity, and the unwillingness
to use the simple personal pronoun, are not confined to that of
the first person. In the languages of modern Europe this and
divers other expedients have been adopted to supersede the
pronoun of the second person : and only among certain classes,
or in particular cases, is it thought allowable nowadays to
address any one by his rightful appellation, thou. This is com-
monly supposed to be dictated by a desire of shewing honour
6

122 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

to him whom we are addressing ; as may be seen, for instance,
in Luther's remark on the use of the plural in the first words
of the Book of Genesis : " Explodenda igitur est Judaeorum
frigida cavillatio, quod reverentiae causa plurali numero sit
usus. — Praesertim cum id non sit omnibus linguis commune,
quod nobis Germanis usitatum est, ut reverentia sit plurali
numero uti, cum de uno aliquo loquimur." But the further
question arises : why is it esteemed a mark of honour to turn
an individual into a multitude ? Surely we do not mean to in-
timate that he must multiply himself like Kehama, in order to
storm our hearts by bringing a fresh self against every en-
trance. Might not one rather expect that the mark of honour
would be to separate him from all other men, and to regard
him exclusively as himself, and by himself? as Cressida's ser-
vant tells her, that Ajax is " a very man per se, And stands
alone." The secret motive, which lies at the bottom of these
conventions, I believe to be a reluctance, in the one case to
obtrude one's own personality, in the other to intrude on the
personality of another. In both there is the feeling of con-
scious sinfulness, leading us to hide among the trees.

In the Greeks and Romans, as there was not the same con-
sciousness of a sinful nature, neither was there the same shrink-
ing from personality in their addresses to each other. We see
this in many features of their literature, especially of their ora-
tory ; which modern critics, judging them perversely, according
to the feelings and notions of later times, pronounce to be in
bad taste. For with us a personality means an insult, and such
as no gentleman will be guilty of. But the ancients felt differ-
ently on this matter : nor did they ever fancy there could be
anything indecorous or affronting in calling each other simply
<rii or tu. This is of a piece with their unscrupulousness about
the exhibition of the naked form. Regarding human nature as
one, they were little sensible of the propriety of concealing any
part of it. If they did so, in conformity to the custom of wear-
ing clothing, in the statues of real personages, whom they wisht
to represent as their countrymen had been wont to see them,
they proved that this did not arise from any moral delicacy,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 123

inasmuch as nakedness was deemed appropriate to the statues
of most of the gods. Whereas in modern times the feeling of
the duplicity of our nature has been so strong, and it has been
so much the custom to look upon the body as the main root and
source of evil, that our aim has been to hide every part of it,
except the face as the index, and the hand as the instrument of t
the mind. So too are we studious to conceal every action of
our animal nature, even those, such as tears and the other out-
ward signs of grief, in which the animal nature is acting under
the sway of the spiritual. To us the tears of Achilles, the
groans of Philoctetes, the yells of Hercules, seem, not merely
unheroic, but unmanly. Nay, even a woman would be with-
held by shame from making such a display of her weakness.

In like manner it strikes our minds as such insolent familiar-
ity for a man to thou his superiors, that most people, I imagine,
would suppose that under the Roman Empire at all events it
can never have been allowable to address an emperor with a
bare tu. If any one needs to be convinced of the contrary, he
has only to look into Pliny's letters to Trajan, or Fronto's to
Antoninus PiuS and Marcus Aurelius : he will find that no
more ceremony was observed in writing to the master of the
world, than if he had been a common Roman citizen. Many
striking speeches too, shewing this, are recorded. For instance,
that of Asinius Gallus to Tiberius : Interrogo, Caesar, quam
partem reipublicae mandari tibi velis ? That of Haterius :
Quousque patieris Caesar non adesse caput reipublicae ? That
of Piso, which Tacitus calls vestigium morientis libertatis : Quo
loco censebis, Caesar ? *Si primus, habebo quod sequar : si post
omnes, vereor ne imprudens dissentiam. That of Subrius Fla-
vus, when askt by Nero, why he had conspired against him :
Oderam te : odisse coepi, postquam parricida matris et uxoris
et auriga et histrio et incendiarius exstitisti. The same thing
is proved by the extraordinary, tumultuous address of the Sen-
ate to Pertinax on the death of Commodus : Parricida traha-
tur. JRogamus, Auguste : parricida trahatur. JExaudi Caesar.
Delatores ad leonem. JExaudi Caesar. Delatores ad leonem.
JExaudi Caesar. Gladiatorem in spoliario. Exaudi Caesar.

124 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

From a couple of passages in the Augustan History indeed,
one might imagine that Diocletian's love of pomp and cere-
mony had shewn itself in exacting the plural from those who
addrest him. The authors of the several Lives have not been
satisfactorily ascertained: but in that of Marcus Aurelius the
writer says : Dens usque etiam nunc habetur, ut vobis ipsis,
sacratissime imperator Diocletiane, et semper visum est et vide-
tur : qui eum inter numina vestra, non ut caeteros, sed speciali-
ter veneramini, ac saepe dicitis, vos vita et dementia tales esse
cupere, qualis fuit Marcus. At the end of the Life of Lucius
Verus, which no doubt is by the same writer, after denying the
report that Marcus Aurelius had poisoned Verus, he adds:
Post Marcum, praeter vestram clementiam, Diocletiane Auguste,
imperatorem talem nee adulatio videatur posse conjingere. How
these two passages are to be accounted for, I know not. They
are too personal to allow of our supposing that Maximian was
comprehended in them. Was it an Oriental fashion, which
Diocletian tried to introduce, along with the Persian diadem
and silk robes and tissue of gold, and which was dropt from its
repugnance to the genius of the Latin language ? In the other
addresses the ordinary style is the singular ; as may be seen in
those to Diocletian, in the lives of Elius Verus, of Heliogaba-
lus, and of Macrinus ; and in those to Constantine, in the Lives
of Geta, of Alexander Severus, of the Maximins, of the Gor-
dians, and of Claudius.

Such too, so far as my observation has extended, was the
style under the Byzantine Empire. In their rescripts indeed,
and other ordinances, the Roman emperors spoke in the plural
number, as may be seen in every other page of Justinian's
Codex. For the use of the plural nos was already common
among the Romans, at least among the aristocracy, in their best
ages ; the bent of their spirit leading them to merge their own
individual, more than any other people has ever done, in their
social character, as members whether of their family, or of
their order, or of the Roman nation. In this too they shewed
that they were a nation of kings. For a soverein's duty is to
forget his own personality, and to regard himself as the imper-

//
0

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 125

sonation of the State. He should exactly reverse Louis the [
Fourteenth's hateful and fearful speech : La France J est moi.
Instead of swallowing up his country in his voracious maw, he
should identify himself with it, and feel that his whole being is
wrapt up in his people, and that apart from them he is nothing,
no more than a head when severed from its body. As Hegel
says, in his Philosophy of Law (§ 279), when explaining the
difficulty attendant on a monarchal constitution, that the will of
the State is to be embodied in an individual : " This does not
mean that the monarch may act arbitrarily. On the contrary
he is bound to the concrete substance of the measures proposed
to him, and, if the constitution is firmly establisht, will often
have little more to do than to sign his name. But this name is
of importance : it is the apex, beyond which we cannot pass.
One might say, that an organic constitution had existed in the
noble democracy of Athens. But we see at the same time that
the Greeks were wont to draw their ultimate decisions from
things wholly external, from oracles, the entrails of victims, the
flight of birds, and that they regarded Nature as a power which
declares and pronounces what is good for man. • Self-conscious-
ness had not yet attained to the abstraction of pure subjectivity,
to the condition in which the decisive Lwill is to be uttered by
man. This I will forms the great distinction between the an-
cient and the modern world, and must therefore have its pecu-
liar expression in the great edifice of the State. — The objec-
tions which have been urged against monarchy, — that through
the soverein the condition of the State becomes subject to
chance, since he may be ill educated, or altogether unworthy of
standing at the head of it, and that it is absurd for this to be
the reasonable idea of a State, — are groundless, from being
based on the assumption that the peculiarities of individual
character are the material point. In a perfectly organized
constitution we merely need the apex of a formal decision ;
and the only thing indispensable in a soverein is a person who
can say Yes, and put the dot on the I. For the apex should be
such that the peculiarities of character shall be of no moment.
— In a well regulated monarchy the legislature determines the

126 GUESSES AT TEUTH. '

objective measures, to which the monarch has merely to affix
the subjective / will." Hence nos, nous, wir, we, is the fitting
style for princes in their public capacity ; as it is for all who
are speaking and acting, not in their own persons, but as officers
of the State. For them to say, I order so and so, might seem
almost as impertinent, as for a servant to say, / am to have a
parti/ at dinner tomorrow. In these days our household ties are
so loosened, that most servants would say, My Master is to have
a party tomorrow, or perhaps, entirely disguising the relation
between them, would call him Mr. A. In simpler times, when
there was more dutiful affection and loyalty, they would have
said we, like Caleb Balderstone. The use of nos however by
the Roman emperors did not involve that of vos in addresses to
them ; any more than our calling everybody you implies that
they call themselves we.

It would require a long and laborious examination, with the
command of a well-stockt public library, to make out when and
how and by what steps the use of the plural pronoun in speak-
ing to another became prevalent in the various languages of
modern Europe. Grammarians have hardly turned their atten-
tion to this point. The difficulty of such an enquiry is the
greater, because the language of books in this respect has by
no means fallen in with that of ordinary life. Poetry especially,
as its aim is to lift men above the artificial conventions of soci-
ety, has retained the natural, simple pronoun much more exten-
sively than common speech. Hence the use of thou in poetry
does not prove that it would have been used under the same cir-
cumstances in conversation ; though the use of the plural pro-
noun justifies our inferring that it was already current, and
probably much widelier spread. In Boccaccio's Novels, where
one might expect to find a closer reflexion of common life, the
singular pronoun appears to be used constantly. From his let-
ters, however, it would seem to have been already superseded
in most cases by the plural in the intercourse of society; though
Ranke, in his Histories of Romanesque and Germanic Nations
(p. 105), says of the Florentines at the end of the fifteenth
century, that " they all called each other thou, and only used

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 127

you or messere in speaking to a knight, a doctor, or to an uncle."
Petrarch, whose reverent love leads him to address Laura by
the plural pronoun, uses the singular in sonnets written to his
friends, and uniformly in his letters. Indeed the Roman tu
seems to have been general in Latin epistles, except those to
soverein princes, at least since the Revival of Learning : for in
earlier times it had been common to use vos. We find tu con-
stantly in Luther's letters, even in those to the Pope, in Me-
lanchthon's, in Milton's private ones. In those written for
Cromwell, soverein princes are called vos ; and so is Mazarin.
The prince of Tarentum, Mendez de Haro, and the Conde
Mirano are tu. In the Provencal of the Troubadours, Ray-
nouard observes, vos is almost always used in speaking to a
single person. In the Fabliaux we find distinctions answering
to those which have prevailed almost ever since in French : tu
is used to indicate familiarity ; vous, respect. Parents say tu
to their children, husbands to their wives: the children and
wives use the more respectful vous. The same sort of distinc-
tion seems to prevail in the Niebelungen Lay ; in which, as in
the Homeric poems, the representation of manners probably
agreed very nearly with what was actually found in the world.
In the conversation between Chriemhild and her mother, and in
that between Siegfried and his parents, the parents use du, the
son and daughter ir. The princes and knights sometimes take
one form, sometimes the other, the singular apparently where
there is more intimacy, or more passion. Husbands and wives
use both forms indiscriminately. Pfizer, in his Life of Luther
(p. 22), remarks that, when Luther's father heard of his son's
having become a monk, he wrote a severe rebuke to him,
calling him Du, having previously used the more respectful
plural Ihr, since he had taken his master's degree. Is the gen-
eral prevalence of the plural in modern Europe derived from
the Teutonic languages ? Or did it arise from the same cause
in them and the Romanesque together ?

In England the peculiarity has been the entire exclusion of
thou from the language of the great body of the people. Now
and then indeed one sees it in those loveletters which are un-

128 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

lucky enough to find their way into a court of justice : but it is
| not appropriated, as in France, Italy, and Germany, for the ex-
j \ pression of familiarity. We enter into no bond to thou one
another, as our neighbours do to tutoyer, and to dutzen. This
may be a mark of our characteristic reserve and shrinking from
every demonstration of feeling. But when was this sentence of
banishment against thou issued ? In Robert of Gloucester, and
our other old verse chroniclers, it seems to be the constant word,
being used even by Cordelia in her reply to her father. So is
it in Peirs Plouhman ; the nature of which work, however,
leads us to look for a close adherence to the language of the
Bible : and I doubt whether even Mr Belsham can have gone
so far in modernizing the words of the Scriptures,, as to substi-
tute you for thou. That no conclusion can be drawn from Peirs
Plouhman with regard to the usage, at least of the higher classes
in his time, is clear from Chaucer j in whom you7 except in pas-
sages of familiarity or elevation, is the customary pronoun.
From Gower too one may infer that thou was then deemed ap-
propriate to the language of familiarity, you to that of respect.
The Confessor regularly uses thou to the Lover ; the Lover you
or ye to the Confessor. Shakspeare's practice would seem to
imply that a distinction, like that which prevailed on the Conti-
nent, was also recognised in England. Prospero for instance,
except in two places, constantly says thou to Miranda ; while
she always replies with you. The same thing is observable in
most of Lear's speeches to his daughters, and in Volumnia's
more affectionate ones to Coriolanus. When she puts on the
reserve of offended dignity, she says you. Yet I have not no-
ticed any instance of thou in Ellises Collection of Letters ;
though some of them go back as far as the reign of Henry the
Fifth : but in few of them could one expect it. From Roper's
beautiful Life of Sir Thomas More, however, we perceive, that
fathers in his days would occasionally, though not uniformly,
thou their children. " Lo, dost thou not see, Megg, (he said to
his daughter, when looking out of his prison-window, while
Reynolds and three other monks were led to execution,) that
these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 129

as bridegrooms to their marriage ? Wherefore thereby mayest
thou see, mine own good daughter, what a great difference there
is between such as have in effect spent all their days in a strait,
hard, penitential, and painful life, religiously, and such as have
in the world, like worldly wretches, as thy poor father hath done,
consumed all their time in pleasure and ease licentiously. For
God, considering their long-continued life in most sore and
grievous penance, will no longer suffer them to remain here in
this vale of misery and iniquity, but speedily hence taketh them
to the fruition of his everlasting Deity. "Whereas thy silly father,
Megg, that, like a most wicked caitiff, hath past forth the whole
course of his miserable life most sinfully, God, thinking him not
worthy so soon to come to that eternal felicity, leaveth him here
yet still in the world further to be plagued and turmoiled with
misery." The same thing may be seen in the Earl of North-
umberland's speech to his son, in Cavendishes Life of Wblsey,
when he is warning him against displeasing the king by making
love to Anne Boleyn. Wolsey too, in whose service Lord Percy
was, talks to him in the same paternal style. From Charles the
First's last words to the Duke of Gloucester, we perceive that
this practice even then was not obsolete, at least in speaking to
young children. " Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's
head. Mark, child, what I say : they will cut off my head, and
perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say : you must
not be a king so long as your brother Charles and James do
live. For they will cut off your brothers heads, (when they
can catch them,) and cut off thy head too at last ; and therefore,
I charge you, do not be made a king by them." In Lord Ca-
pel's letter to his wife, written on the day on which he was be-
headed, in 1649, he uses thou throughout. "My eternal life is
in Christ Jesus : my worldly considerations in the highest de-
gree thou hast deserved. Let me live long here in thy dear
memory. I beseech thee, take care of thy health : sorrow not,
afflict not thyself too much. God will be to thee better than a
husband, and to my children better than a father."

There was another usage of thou, which prevailed for some
centuries, namely, in speaking to inferiors. When you came
6* I

130 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

into use among the higher classes, the lower were still addrest
with thou. Living in closer communion with Nature, with her
simple, permanent forms and ever-recurring operations, they
are in great measure exempted from the capricious sway of
Fashion, which tosses about the upper twigs and leaves of soci-
ety, but seldom shakes the trunk. Or at least they were so till
lately : for the enormous increase of traffic of every kind, and
the ceaseless inroads of the press, which is sending its emissaries
into every cottage, are rapidly changing their character. Yet
still one regards and treats them much more as children of
Nature: and a judicious man would as soon think of feeding
them with kickshaws and ragoos, as of talking to them in any
but the plainest, homeliest words. What a broad distinction
was made with regard to the personal pronoun, may be seen in
the interesting account of William Thorpe's examination on a
charge of heresy before the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1407 ;
where the archbishop and his clerks uniformly thou him, not
insultingly, but as a matter of course ; while he always uses
you in his answers. The same distinction is apparent in the
dialogues between Othello and Iago. ^ Thus it has happened
that we find thou in many of the noblest speeches on record, the
last words of great and good men to the executioner on the
scaffold : and in legal murders of the great and good, notwith-
standing the boasted excellence of our laws and courts of jus-
tice, the history of England is richer than that of any other
country. It does one good to read such words : so I will quote
a few examples. For instance, those of Sir Thomas More:
Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office ;
my neck is very short ; take heed therefore, thou strike not awry,
for saving of thine honesty. Those of Fisher, the pious Bishop
of Rochester, when the executioner knelt down to him and
besought his forgiveness: I forgive thee with all my heart;
and I trust thou shalt see me overcome this storm lustily. Those
of the Duke of Suffolk on the same occasion : God forgive thee !
and I do ; and when thou dost thine office, I pray thee do it well,
and bring me out of this world quickly ; and God have mercy
on thee ! When Raleigh was led to the scaffold, a bald-headed

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 131

old man prest through the crowd, and prayed that God would
support him. / thank thee, my good friend, said Raleigh to
him, and am sorry I am in no case to return thee anything for
thy good will. But here (observing his bald head), take this
nightcap ; thou hast more need of it now than I. Shortly after,
he bade the executioner shew him the axe : / prithee let me see
it. Dost thou think lam afraid of it ? And after he had laid
his head on the block, the blow being delayed, he lifted himself
up and said : What dost thou fear f strike, man. In Lady Jane
Grey's words indeed, as they are given by Foxe, we find you :
Pray you, dispatch me quickly. Will you take it off before I lie
down ? Perhaps it may have seemed to her gentle spirit that
thou was somewhat unfeminine : though it was the word used
by mistresses in speaking to their servants, as we may perceive
from the scenes between Olivia and Malvolio, and from those
between Julia and Lucetta in the Two Gentlemen of Verona ;
where Julia, when she is offended with her maid, passes from
the familiar thou to the more distant you.

It might be imagined that the adoption of the simple pro-
noun in these speeches was occasioned by the solemnity of the
moment, impelling the parting spirit to cast off the artificial,
conventional drapery of society. But, — not to mention that
this itself would have been idle affectation, to have taken
thought at such a moment about using a word at variance with
the language of ordinary life, — in speeches made at the same
time to persons of their own rank we find the same men saying
you : and other anecdotes in the biographies of the sixteenth
century shew that thou was in common use then in speaking to
the lower orders, and even to inferiors, who were above them.
"When Bernard Gilpin begged Bishop Tonstal to allow that he
would resign either his rectory or archdeaconry, that excellent
bishop replied, Have I not told thee beforehand, that thou wilt be
a beggar f I found them combined ; and combined Twill leave
them. And among Gilpin's numberless acts of benevolence, it
is related that, in one of his rides, seeing a man much cast
down by the loss of a horse that had just fallen dead, he told
the man he should have the one on which his servant was

132 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

mounted. Ah master, said the countryman, my pocket will not
reach such a beast as that. Gome, come I answered Gilpin ; take
him ; take him ; and when I demand my money, then thou shalt
pay me. If so many examples of this usage are from dying
words, it is because such words have been more carefully re-
corded, as precious and sacred memorials.

This use of a different pronoun in speaking to the lower
orders was in some measure analogous to that of er, which still
prevails, and was more general a few years since, in Germany ;
where it was long thought unbecoming for a gentleman to hold
any direct personal communication with a boor, or to speak to
him otherwise than as if he were a third person. We on the
other hand consider it illbred to use he or she in speaking of
any one present.

Hence, as the use of er to a gentleman in Germany is deemed
a gross offense, which is often to be expiated with blood, so
was the use of thou in England. This was one of the dis-
graceful insults to which Coke had recourse, when argument
and evidence failed him, at Raleigh's trial. All that Lord Cob-
ham did, he cried, was at thy instigation, thou viper: for I thou
thee, thou traitor. And again, when he had been completely
baffled, he exclaimed : Thou art the most vile and execrable trai-
tor that ever lived. I want words sufficient to express thy viper-
ous treasons. When Sir Toby Belch is urging Sir Andrew
Aguecheek to send a challenge to Viola, he says, If thou thoust
him some thrice it shall not be amiss ; in which words the com-
mentators have needlessly sought an allusion to Raleigh's trial.
There is not a syllable in the context to point the allusion, or to
remind the hearer either of Raleigh or of Coke. They merely
shew, as Coke's behaviour also shews, that to thou a man was a
grievous insult : and that it was so, George Fox and his follow-
ers some time after found to their great cost.

This is well known to be still the shibboleth of Quakerism,
the only one probably among the Founder's tenets which has
always been held inviolate and inviolable by every member of
the sect. For all sects cling the longest to that which is out-
ward and formal in their peculiar creed, and are often the more

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 133

tenacious of it, the more their original spirit has evaporated ;
among other reasons, because by so doing alone can they pre-
serve their sectarian existence. In George Fox himself the
determination to thou all men was not a piece of capricious
trifling. It flowed from the principle which pervaded his whole
conduct, the desire of piercing through the husk and coating of
forms in which men's hearts and souls were wrapt up, and of
dragging them out from their lurking-places into the open light
of day ; although, as extremes are ever begetting one another,
it has come to pass that no sect is so enslaved, so bound hand
and foot by forms, as they who started by crying out against
and casting away all forms. Thus Nature ever avenges herself,
and reestablishes the balance, which man had overweeningly
disturbed.

It was at the very beginning of his preaching, that he, who
set out on the glorious enterprise of converting all men into
friends, tells us in his Journal : " When the Lord sent me forth
into the world, I was required to Thee and Thou all men and
women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small.
But oh ! the rage that then was in the priests, magistrates, pro-
fessors, and people of all sorts, but especially in priests and pro-
fessors. For though thou to a single person was according to
their own learning, their accidence and grammar rules, and
according to the Bible, yet they could not bear to hear it."
This was in 1648: but his practice continued to give offense
for many years after. In 1661, he says, "the book called the
Battledoor came forth written to shew that in all languages thou
and thee is the proper and usual form of speech to a single per-
son, and you to more than one. This was set forth in examples
taken out of the Scriptures, and out of books of teaching in
about thirty languages. When the book was finisht, some of
them were presented to the King and his Council, to the
Bishops of Canterbury and London (Juxon and Sheldon), and
to the two Universities one apiece. The King said, it was the
proper language of all nations : and the Bishop of Canterbury,
being askt what he thought of it, was so at a stand that he
could not tell what to say. For it did so inform and convince

134 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

people, that few afterward were so rugged toward us for saying
thou and thee to a single person, which before they were ex-
ceeding fierce against us for. For this thou and thee was a sore
cut to proud flesh, and them that sought self-honour; who,
though they would say it to God and Christ, would not endure
to have it said to themselves. So that we were often beaten
and abused, and sometimes in danger of our lives, for using
those words to some proud men, who would say, What, you ill-
bred clown, do you thou me I as though there lay breeding in
saying you to one, which is contrary to all their grammars."

In all this there is no slight admixture of ignorance and of
presumption ; as is mostly the case with the vehement opposers
and defiers of customs not plainly and radically immoral. Of
the ignorance one should have no right to complain, were it not
for the presumption which thrusts it forward. But the whole
proceeding, as Henry More rightly urges in his letter to Penn,
— who had employed a chapter of his No Cross, No Crown, in
an ingenious and elaborate vindication of the usage of his
sect, — is inconsistent " with that generosity and freedom and
charity and kind complacency, that, one would think, did natu-
rally accompany a truly Christian spirit. The great and royal
law, which is to measure all our Christian actions, is, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul,
and thy neighbour as thyself. And one point of our love to our
neighbour is not to give him offense ; but to comply with him
in things of an indifferent nature, as all things are that are not
of their own nature evil, — unless some Divine law, or the law
of our superiors has bound us. But no law, neither Divine or
human, has bound us, but that we may say you, when the
Quakers say thou, to a single person. Nay, Custom, which is
another Nature, and another Law, and from whence words
derive their signification, has not only made you to signify as
well singularly as plurally, — but has superadded a significa-
tion of a moderate respect used in the singular sense ; as it has
added to thou, of the highest respect and reverence (for no
man will You God, but use the pronoun Thou to Him), or
else of the greatest familiarity or contempt. So that the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 135

proper use of you and thou is settled by a long and universal
custom."

By these absurdities, simple, honest George Fox sadly
maimed his own strength, and lessened the good he might
else have effected. So far indeed he was right, that in a
regenerate world the bars and bolts, which sever and estrange
man from man, would burst, like the doors of St. Paul's prison
at Philippi, and that every man's bands would be loost. Some-
thing of the kind may be seen even now in the openhearted
confidence and affection, which prevail almost at sight among
such as find themselves united to each other by the love of a
common Saviour, — a confidence and affection foreshewing the
blessed Communion of Saints. But this is likelier to be re-
tarded than promoted by efforts to change the outward form,
so long as the spirit is unchanged. The very habit of using
words which belong to a higher state of feeling than we our-
selves have attained to, deadens the sense of truth, and causes
a dismal rent in the soul. I am speaking only of such things
as are not contrary to good manners. Whatever is must be
quelled, before the inward change can be wrought. But that
which is indifferent, or solely valuable as the expression of some
inward state of feeling, should be left to spring spontaneously
from the source, without which it is worthless.

How must Charles the Second have laught in his sleeve,
when he acknowleged that thou and thee " was the proper lan-
guage of all nations ! " Perhaps it was out of hostility to
Quakerism and Puritanism, of which thou was deemed the
watchword, that it fell so entirely into disuse, as it seems to
have done among all ranks in the latter half of the seven-
teenth century. Locke indeed uses it in his Prefatory Ad-
dresses to the Reader. In sermons, when the preacher is
appealing to his hearers severally and personally, it is often
introduced with much solemnity ; as, for instance, in the fQllow-X^/
ing grand passage of Donne (Sermon 11. p. 27). "As the sun
does not set to any nation, but withdraw itself, and return again,
God, in the exercise of His mercy, does not set to thy soul, \
though he benight it with an affliction. — The blessed Virgin

136 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

was overshadowed ; but it was with the Holy Ghost that over-
shadowed her : thine understanding, thy conscience may be so
too ; and yet it may be the work of the Holy Ghost, who moves
in thy darkness, and will bring light even out of that, knowl-
edge out of thine ignorance, clearness out of thy scruples, and
consolation out of thy dejection of spirit. God is thy portion,
says David. David does not speak so narrowly, so penuriously,
as to say, God hath given thee thy portion, and thou must look
for no more : but, God is thy portion ; and, as long as He is
God, He hath more to give ; and, as long as thou art His, thou
hast more to receive. Thou canst not have so good a title to a
subsequent blessing, as a former blessing : where thou art an
ancient tenant, thou wilt look to be preferred before a stranger ;
and that is thy title to God's future mercies, if thou have been
formerly accustomed to them. — Though thou be but a taber-
nacle of earth, God shall raise thee piece by piece into a spirit-
ual building ; and after one story of creation, and another of
vocation, and another of sanctification, He shall bring thee up
to meet thyself in the bosom of thy God, where thou wast at first
in an eternal election. God is a circle Himself; and He will
make thee one: go not thou about to square either circle, to
bring that which is equal in itself to angles and corners, into
dark and sad suspicions of God, or of thyself, that God can
give, or that thou canst receive, no more mercy than thou hast
had already."

Our poets too still bring forward this pronoun now and then
for the sake of distinguishing their language from that of prose :
but they are seldom guided by any determinate principle, or
even by any clear perception of the occasions when it may be
appropriate. It is perhaps a singular phenomenon in a culti-
vated language, that scarcely a writer seems to know when he
ought to use such words as thou, you, and ye.

Even the Quakers, at least of late years, as they have been
gradually paring away the other tokens of their sect, their coats
and hats and bonnets, generally soften the full-mouthed thou
into thee ; whereby moreover they gain the advantage of a two-
fold offense against grammar. For this seems to be one of the

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 137

ways in which an Englishman delights to display his love of
freedom, — by riding over grammatical rules. A Quaker will
now say, Do thee wish for this I Will thee come to me f thus
getting rid of what in our language is felt to be such an in-
cumbrance, one of our few remaining grammatical inflexions.
Perhaps our aversion to using the second person of the verb
may not have been inoperative in expelling thou from our
speech. In truth it is by no means so apt a word for express-
ing the personality of another symbolically, as tu and du ; by
which the lips are protruded toward the person we are ad-
dressing, pointing to him, and almost shaping themselves for a
kiss ; as though they belonged to a world in which all man-
kind were brethren. You in this respect has the better of thou.
As George Foxes attempt to thou and fraternize all man-
kind was coincident with the outbreak of our Rebellion, so at
the beginning of the French Revolution it became the fashion
to fraternize and tutoyer everybody. At first this may strike us
as another of the thousand and one examples of extremes
meeting. But frequent as such meetings are, the general for-
mule which embraces, does not explain them : and though
there were great and glaring differences between the Jacobins
and the early Quakers, there were also several points of resem-
blance. They had the same eager dislike of every existing
institution, on the mere ground of its existing, — the same
unhesitating trust in their own impulses, whether regarded as
the dictates of the Spirit, or of reason : they both cherisht the
same delusive notion, that by pruning and lopping they should
regenerate mankind. The practice of thouing belonged to
them both : the refusal of respect to authority and rank be-
longed to them both : both indulged in a dream of universal
peace. The Jacobinical metonomatosis of the months, and of ]
the days of the week, might be lookt upon as a parody of the
Quakerian : only their hatred of all religion extended even to
these relics of Polytheism : and it was an act suited to the ver-
min that were then breeding and crawling about the moulder-
ing carcass of European society, to revive the notion, which has
been ascribed to Pythagoras, that number is the only god.

138 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

It is cheering to observe, how even in these things patient
endurance is far mightier than violence, feeble as the one, pow-
erful as the other ..may appear at the moment. Whatever is
good strikes root : Nature and Time delight to foster it : so
I long as its spirit lasts, they preserve it ; and often long after.
But evil they reject and disgorge. George Foxes institution
still subsists after the lapse of two centuries : that of the Jaco-
bins soon past away; though not without leaving a trace
behind. " Le tutoiement (says Bonald, Pensees, p. 29) s'est
retranche dans la famille : et apres avoir tutoye tout le monde,
on ne tutoie plus que ses pere»et mere. Cet usage met toute
la maison a l'aise : il dispense les parens d'autorite, et les
enfans de respect." This seems over-severe. When a like
change took place in Germany at the end of the last century,
and was reprehended as an instance of pert forwardness, it
was replied that, in speaking to our Heavenly Father, we
always call him Thou. It is a sign how lamentably the sense
of the true relation between a father and a son had decayed,
that it should have been deemed right to enforce the reverence
of the son by clothing him in the stiff forms of conventional
breeding. In some recent works of fiction, petulant children
are represented as saying Du to parents, while the modest and
wellbred shew their respect by using Sie. Of Solger, it is
related, in the Preface to his Eemains, that, when he was a
boy, he and his younger brother used to call each other Sie,
which, in their childish quarrels, gave a comic solemnity to
their tone. In those letters of deep, passionate love, which
have just been exposed to the eyes of all Europe in conse-
quence of an unheard of crime, the illfated Duchess of Praslin
ordinarily addresses her miserable husband with the familiar
tu, but at times, assuming the language of outraged dignity,
uses vous. Among the Germans, it is well known that to thou
a person is a sign of the most intimate friendship. When
Zelter sends Goethe an account of the death of his son, Goethe
in his answer tacitly for the first time calls him du, as it were,
saying, I will do what I can to replace thy lost son by being a
brother to thee.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 139

This substitution of the plural you for the singular thou is
only one among many devices which have been adopted for the
sake of veiling over the plainspeaking familiarity of the latter.
The Germans commonly call you they ; the Italians she and
her, which may be regarded as a type of their national effemi-
nacy. In the Malay languages, we are told by Marsden, 8*1
variety of substitutes for the first and second pronoun are in
use, by which the speaker betokens his own inferiority, or the
superiority of the person he is addressing. This seems to be
common in Oriental languages, and answers to what we often
find in the Bible ; for instance in 2 Samuel, c. xix. In Asia
man seems hardly to have found out his own personality, or
that of others. u.

After all, they are strange and mighty words, these two
little pronouns, / and Thou, the mightiest perhaps in the whole
compass of language. The name Pronoun indeed is not quite
strictly appropriate to them : for, as the great master of the
philosophy of language, William Humboldt, observes, " they
are not mere substitutes for the names of the persons for whom
they stand, but involve the personality of the speaker, and of
the person spoken to, and the relation between them." /is the
word which man has in common with God, the Eternal, Self-
existing i" AM. Thou is the word with which God and his
Conscience speak to man, the word with which man speaks and
communes with God and his neighbour. All other words,
without these two, would belong to things : / and Thou are
inseparable from personality, and bestow personality on what-
ever they are applied to. They are the two primary elements
and conditions of all speech, which implies a speaker, and a
person spoken to : and they are the indispensable complements,
each to the other ; so that neither idea could have been called
forth in man without the help of its mate. >— e

This is why it was not good for man to be alone. What in
truth would Adam have been, if Eve had never been created ?
What was he before her creation ? A solitary I, without a
thou. Can there be such a being ? Can the human mind be

140 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

awakened, except by the touch of a kindred mind ? Can the
spark of consciousness be elicited, except by collision ? Or
are we to believe that his communion with God was intimate
enough to supply the place of communion with beings of his
own kind?

The indispensableness of an object to arouse the subject is
finely set before us in Troilus and Cressida, in the Dialogue
between Ulysses and Achilles.

Ulysses. A strange fellow here

Writes me that man, — how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without, or in, —
Cannot make hoast to' have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflexion :
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.

Achilles. This is not strange, Ulysses.

The beauty that is borne here in the face
• The bearer knows not, but commends itself
M To others eyes: nor doth the eye itself,
I That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,

Not going from itself: but eye to eye opposed
> Salutes each other with each other's form.
For speculation turns not to itself,
Till it hath traveld, and is married there
Where it may see itself.

Hence it is only by the reciprocal action of these two ideas,
the continual play and weaving of them one into the other, that
a true system of philosophy can be constructed. In a logical
vacuum indeed /may dream that it can stand alone : and then
it will compass itself about with a huge zero, an all-absorbing
negation, summing up everything out of itself, as Fichte did, in
the most audacious word ever coined by man, Nicht-ich, or
Not-L His system, a work of prodigious energy and logical
power, was the philosophical counterpart to the political edifice
which was set up at the same time in France: and its main
fallacy was the very same, the confounding of the particular
subjective mind with the eternal, universal mind of the All wise,
— the fancy that, as God pours all truth out of Himself, man
may in like manner draw all truth out of himself, — and the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 141

forgetting that, beside /and Not-I, there is also a Thou in the
world, our relations to whom, in their manifold varieties, are
the source of all our affections, and of all our duties.

By the way, some persons may think that we have cause to
congratulate ourselves on the bareness of our I, which is such
that nothing can adhere to it ; inasmuch as it thereby forms a
kind of palisade around us, preserving us from the inroads of
German philosophy. Nobody acquainted with the various sys-
tems, which have sprung up since Kant sowed the teeth of the
serpent he had slain, and which have been warring against
each other from that time forward, can fail to perceive that in
England they must all have been still-born, were it solely from
the impossibility of forming any derivatives or compounds from
our I. One cannot stir far in those systems without such words
as Ichheit, ichheitlich, tchltch, Nicht-ich. But the genius of our
language would never have allowed people to talk about Ikood,
Ihoodly, lly, JVot-I. Like the sceptre of Achilles, our / oiWre
cpvWa Ka\ o£ovs 3>ucr«, eVeidj) npcoTa TOfxfjv iv opeacrt \e\onrcv.

And this, which is true of our pronoun, is also true of that
for which it stands. No old stick, no iron bar, no bare I, can
be more unproductive and barren than Self, when cut off and
isolated from the tree on which it was set to grow. u.

Everybody has heard of one speech in Seneca's Medea, small
as may be the number of those whose acquaintance with that
poet has gone much further. In truth the very conception of a
tragedy written by a Stoic is anything but inviting, and may be
deemed scarcely less incongruous than a garden of granite.
Nor would this furnish an unsuitable emblem of those trage-
dies : the thoughts are about as hard and stiff; and the charac-
ters have almost as much life in them.

Still there is one speech in them, which is sufficiently noto-
rious. When Medea's nurse exhorts her to be patient, by urg-
ing the forlornness of her situation, reminding her how

Abiere Colchi ; conjugis nulla est fides ;
Nihilque superest opibus e tantis tibi ;

she answers, Medea superest : and thus far her answer is a fine

142 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

one. But the rhetorician never knew when to have done, in

the accumulation either of gold or of words. For, while truth

and genius are simple and brief, affectation and hypocrisy,

whether moral or intellectual, are conscious that their words

are mere bubbles, and blow them till they burst. What follows

is wild nonsense :

Medea superest : hie mare et terras vides,
Ferrumque, et ignes, et deos, et fulmina.

Now how should one translate these two words, Medea super-
est ? They are easy enough to construe : but an English poet
would hardly make her say, Medea is left, or Medea remains.
The question occurred to me the other day, when listening to a
modern opera of little worth, except for the opportunity it has
afforded Madame Pasta for putting forth her extraordinary
tragic powers ; powers to which, as there exhibited, I know not
what has been seen comparable in any actress, since she who
shed such splendour over the stage in our younger days, welcomed
her son back to Rome. Yolumnia, I believe, was the last part
Mrs. Siddons ever played: at least it was the last I saw her in:
and well did it become her in the days of her matronly dignity.
Even now, after near twenty years, I still seem to hear the tone
of exulting joy and motherly pride, bursting through her efforts
to repress it, when, raising her kneeling son, she cried,

Nay, my good soldier, up !
My gentle Marcius, worthy Caius, and
By deed atchieving honour newly-named . . .
What is it ? Coriolanus must I call thee ?

Nor will any one easily forget the exclamation with which Me-
dea repells Jason's question, Che mi resta ? the simple pronoun
Io. The situations are somewhat unlike: but the passage is
evidently an imitation of that in Seneca's tragedy, or at least
has come from it at second or third hand. For Corneille's cele-
brated Moi, which the French have extolled as though it had
been the grandest word in all poetry, must no doubt have been
the medium it past through, being itself merely a prior copy of
the same original. In the French tragedy too a like change
has been made from the name to the pronoun : and one feels

gup:sses at truth. 143

that this change is imperatively required by the spirit of modern
times. An ancient poet could not have used the pronoun : a
modern poet in such a situation could hardly use the proper
name.

But is not this at variance with what was said before about
the readiness of the ancients, and the comparative reluctance in
modern times, to make use of the simple personal pronouns ?

No : for this very contrast arises from the objective character
of their minds, and the subjective character of ours. They had
less deep and wakeful feelings connected with the personal pro-
noun, and therefore used it more freely. But, from attaching
less importance to it, when they wanted to speak emphatically,
they had recourse to the proper name. Above all was this the
case among the Romans, with whom names had a greater power
than with any other people ; owing mainly to the political insti-
tutions, which gave the Roman houses a vitality unexampled
elsewhere ; so that the same names shine in the Fasti for cen-
tury after century, encircled with the honours of nearly twenty
generations. Hence a Roman prized and loved his name, almost
as something independent and out of himself, as a kind of house-
hold god : and he could speak proudly of it, without being with-
held by the bashfulness of vanity. Even the immortality which
a Greek or Roman lookt chiefly to, was that of his name.

We on the other hand have been taught that there is some-
thing within us far more precious and far more lasting than
anything that is merely outward. Hence the word / has a
charm and a power, which it never had before, a power too
which has gone on growing, till of late years it has almost swal-
lowed up every other. Two examples of this were just now
alluded to, Fichte's egoical philosophy, and the French Consti-
tution, in which everything was deduced from the rights of man,
without regard to the rights of men, or to the necessities of
things. The same usurpation shews itself under a number of
other phases, even in religion. Catholic religion has well-nigh
been split up into personal, so that the very idea of the former
is almost lost ; and it is the avowed principle of what is called
the Religious World, that everybody's paramount, engrossing

144 GUESSES AT TRUTH:

duty is to take care of his own soul. Of which principle the
philosophical caricature is, that Selfishness is the source of all
morality, the ground of benevolence, and the only safe founda-
tion for a State to build on. Thus the awakening of our self-
consciousness, which was aroused, in order that, perceiving the
hollowness and rottenness of that self, we might endeavour to
stifle and get quit of it, has in many respects rather tended to
make us more its slaves than ever. In truth it may be said of
many a man, that he is impaled upon his I. This is as it were
the stake, which is driven through the soul of the spiritual
suicide.

Still there are seasons, when, asserting its independence of
all outward things, an / may have great Stoical dignity and
grandeur ; especially if it rises from the midst of calamities,
like a mast still erect and unbending from a wreck. " Frappe
deux fois de la foudre, — says De Maistre (Soirees de Saint
Petersbourg, i. 11) alluding to the losses and sufferings he had
to endure in the Revolution, — je n'ai plus de droit a ce qu'on
appelle vulgairement bonheur. J'avoue meme qu'avant de
m'etre raffermi par de salutaires reflexions, il m'est arrive trop
souvent de me demander a moi-meme, Que me reste-t-il! Mais
la conscience, a force de me repondre Moi, m'a fait rougir de
ma foiblesse.,,

In a certain sense moreover, and that a most awful one, the
question Quid superest f concerns us all. For to all a time will
come, when we shall be stript as bare of every outward thing,
in which we have been wont to trust, as Medea could ever be.
And one answer which we shall all have to make to that ques-
tion, will be the same as hers. When everything else has past
away from me, / shall still remain. But alas for those who
will have no other answer than this ! u*

No people, I remarkt just now, ever had so lively a feeling of
the power of names as the Romans. This is a feature of that
political instinct, which characterizes them above every other
nation, and which seems to have taught them from the very
origin of their state, that their calling and destiny was regere

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 145

imperio populos ; whereby moreover they were endowed with
an almost unerring sagacity for picking out and appropriating
all such institutions as were fitted to forward their two great
works, of conquering and of governing the world.

In the East we seldom hear of any names, except those of
the sovereins and their favorites : and those of both classes
often become extinct before the natural close of their lives. In
Greece the individual comes forward on the ground of his own
character, without leaning on his ancestors for support. The
descendants of Aristides, of Pericles, of Brasidas,, were scarcely
distinguisht from their fellowcitizens. But in Rome the name
of the house and family predominated over that of the individ-
ual. It is at Rome that we first find family names or surnames,
names which do not expire with their owners, but are transmit-
ted from generation to generation, carrying down the honours
they have already earned, and continually receiving fresh in-
fluxes of fame. Traces of a like institution are indeed per-
ceivable in others of the old Italian nations, and even among
the Greeks : but it is among the Romans that we first become
familiar with it, and behold its political power. By means of
their names, political principles, political duties, political affec-
tions were imprest on the minds of the Romans from their birth.
Every member of a great house had a determinate course markt
out for him, the path in which his forefathers had trod: his
name admonisht him of what he owed to his country. The
Valerii, the Fabii, the Claudii, the Cornelii had special and
mighty motives to prompt them to patriotism : and a twofold
disgrace awaited them, if they shrank from their post. This
has been observed by Desbrosses, in his Traite du Mecanisme
des Langues. " L'usage des noms hereditaires (he says) a pro-
digieusement influe sur la facon de penser et sur les moeurs.
On sait quel admirable effet il a produit chez les Romains.
Rien n'a contribue davantage a la grandeur de la republique
que cette methode de succession nominale, qui, incorporant,
pour ainsi dire, a la gloire de l'etat, la gloire des noms heredi-
taires, joignit le patriotisme de race-au patriotisme national."
Niebuhr (vol. ii. p. 376) has pointed out how the measures of
7 j

146 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

eminent Roman statesmen were often considered as heirlooms,
so as to be perfected or revived by namesakes of their first
proposers, even after the lapse of centuries. And who can
doubt that the younger Cato's mind was stirred by the renown
of the elder ? or that the example of the first Brutus haunted
the second, and whispered to him, that it behoved him also, at
whatsoever cost of personal affection, to deliver his country
from the tyrant?

The same feeling, the same influence of names, manifests
itself in the history of the Italian Republics. Nor have the
other nations of modern Europe been without it. Only unfor-
tunately the frivolous love of titles, and the petty ambition of
mounting from one step in the peerage to another, have stunted
its power. How much greater and brighter would the great
names in our history have been, — the names of Howard, and
Percy, and Nevile, and Stanley, and "Wentworth, and Russell,
— if so much of their glory had not been drawn off upon other
titles, which, though persons verst in pedigrees know them to
belong to the same blood, are not associated with them in the
minds of the people ? This may be one of the reasons why our
nobility has produced so few great men, that is, considering the
means and opportunities afforded by our Constitution. Great
men rise up into it ; and a title is put as an extinguisher upon
them. What is the most gorgeous, highflown title which a
soverein of France could devise, even were it that of arch-
grand-duke, compared with the name of Montmorency ? The
Spanish grandees shew a truer aristocratical feeling, in wear-
ing their oldest titles, instead of what are vulgarly deemed their
highest.

For the true spirit of an aristocracy is not personal, but cor-
porate. He who is animated by that spirit, would rather be a
branch of a great tree, than a sucker from it. The dema-
gogue's aim and triumph is to be lifted up on the shoulders of
the mob : when thus borne aloft, he exults, however unsteady
his seat, however rapidly he may be sure to fall. But the aris-
tocrat is content to abide within the body of his order, and to
derive his honour and influence from his order, more than from

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 147

himself. The glory of his ancestors is his. Another symptom
of the all-engulfing whirl with which the feeling of personality
has been swallowing up everything else for the last century, is
the stale, flat ridicule lavisht by every witling and dullard on
those who take pride in an illustrious ancestry. We had be-
come unable to understand any honour but that which was per-
sonal, any merit or claim but personal. We had dwindled and
shrunk into a host of bare Ies.

Even the way in which a Roman begins his letter, heading
it with his name at full length, was significant. Whereas we
skulk with ours into a corner, and often pare it down to in-
itials, u.

A rumpled rose-leaf lay in my path. There was one little
stain on it : but it was still very sweet. Why was it to be
trampled under foot, or lookt on as food for swine ?

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine
verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a per-
fumer's shop.

When you see an action in itself noble, to suspect the sound-
ness of its motive is like supposing everything high, mountains
among the rest, to be hollow. Yet how many unbelieving
believers pride themselves on this uncharitable folly ! These
are your silly vulgar-wise, your shallow men of penetration,
who measure all things by their own littleness, and who, by
professing to know nothing else, seem to fancy they earn an
exclusive right to know human nature. Let none such be
trusted in their judgements upon any one, not even on them-
selves always.

Certain writers of works of fiction seem to delight in playing
at cup and ball with vice and virtue. Is it right, you thought
you saw ? you find it to be wrong : wrong ? presto ! it has
become right. Their hero is a moral prodigy, mostly profligate,
often murderous, not seldom both ; but, whether both or either,

148 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

always virtuous. Possessing, as they inform us, a fine under-
standing, resolved, as he is ever assuring us, to do right in
despite of all mankind, he is perpetually falling into actions,
atrocious and detestable, — not from the sinfulness of human
nature, — not from carelessness, or presumption, or rashly
dallying with temptation, — but because the world is a moral
labyrinth, every winding in which leads to monstrous evil.
Such an entanglement of circumstances is devised, as God never
permits to occur, except perhaps in extraordinary times to
extraordinary men. Into these the hero is thrown headlong ;
and every foul and bloody step he takes, is ascribed to some
amiable weakness, or some noble impulse, deserving our sym-
pathy and admiration.

And what fruits do these eccentric geniuses bring us from
their wilderness of horrours ? They seduce us into a perni-
cious belief that feeling and duty are irreconcilable ; and thus
they hypothetically suspend Providence, to necessitate and
sanction crime.

Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose ; our prose
in the seventeenth, poetry.

Taste appreciates pictures : connoisseurship appraises
them. t.

We are always saying with anger or wonder, that such and
such a work of genius is unpopular. Yet how can it be other-
wise ? Surely it would be a contradiction, were the most ex-
traordinary books in a language the commonest; at least till
they have been made so by fashion, which, to say nothing of its
capriciousness, is oligarchal.

Are you surprised that our friend Matthew has married such
a woman ? and surprised too, because he is a man of genius ?
That is the very reason of his doing it. To be sure she came
to him without a shift to her back: but his genius is rich
enough to deck her out in purple and fine linen. So long as

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 149

these last, all will go on comfortably. But when they are
worn out and the stock exhausted, alas poor wife ! shall I say ?
or alas poor Matthew !

Jealousy is said to be the offspring of Love. Yet, unless
the parent makes haste to strangle the child, the child will not
rest till it has poisoned the parent* a.

Man has,

First, animal appetites ; and hence animal impulses.

Secondly, moral cravings; either unregulated by reason,
which are passions ; or regulated and controlled by it, which
are feelings : hence moral impulses.

Thirdly, the power of weighing probabilities ; and hence
prudence.

Fourthly, the vis logica, evolving consequences from axioms,
necessary deductions from certain principles, whether they be
mathematical, as in the theorems of geometry, or moral, as of
Duty from the idea of God : hence Conscience, at once the
voice of Duty speaking to the soul, and the ear with which the
soul hears the commands of Duty.

This idea, the idea of God, is, beyond all question or com-
parison, the one great seminal principle ; inasmuch as it com-
bines and comprehends all the faculties of our nature, converg-
ing in it as their common centre, — brings the reason to sanction
the aspirations of the imagination, — impregnates law with the
vitality and attractiveness of the affections, — and establishes
the natural, legitimate subordination of the body to the will,
and of both to the vis logica or reason, by involving the neces-
sary and entire dependence of the created on the Creator. But,
although this idea is the end and the beginning, the ocean and
the fountain-head of all duty, yet are there many contributory
streams of principle, to which men in all ages have been con-
tent to trust themselves. Such are the disposition to do good
for its own sake, patriotism, that earthly religion of the ancients,
obedience to law, reverence for parents.

A few corroborative observations may be added.

150 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

First : passion is refined into feeling by being brought under
the controll of reason ; in other words, by being in some degree
tempered with the idea of duty.

Secondly : a deliberate impulse appears to be a contradiction
in terms : yet its existence must be admitted, if we deny the
existence of principles. For there are actions on record, which,
although the results of predetermination, possest all the self-sac-
rifice of a momentary impulse. The conduct of Manlius when
challenged by the Gaul, contrasted with that of his son on a
like occasion, strikingly illustrates the difference between prin-
ciple and impulse : of which difference moreover, to the unques-
tionable exclusion of prudence, the premeditated self-devotion
of Decius furnishes another instance.

Thirdly : the mind, when allowed its full and free play,
prefers moral good, however faintly, to moral evil. Hence the
old confession, Video meliora, proboque : and hence are we so
much better judges in another's case than our own. In like
manner the philosophic Apostle demonstrates the existence of
the law written in our hearts, from the testimony borne by the
conscience to our own deeds, and the sentence of acquittal or
condemnation which we pass on each other. And although
this preference for good may in most cases be so weak, as to
require the subsidiary support of promises and threats, yet the
auxiliary enactment is not to be confounded with the primary
principle. For, in the Divine Law certainly, and, I believe, in
Human Law also, where it is not the arbitrary decree of igno-
rance or injustice, the necessity and consequent obligation to
obedience must have existed, at least potentially, from all eter-
nity ; Law being an exposition, and not an origination of Duty :
while punishment, a thing in its very nature variable, is a sub-
sequent appendage, "because of transgressions." Even the
approval of conscience, although coincident with the performance
of the act approved, must be as distinct from it as effect from
cause ; not to insist on that approval's not being confined to
duty in its highest sense, but being extended on fitting occasions
both to moral impulses and to prudence.

Fourthly : there are classes of words, such as generous and

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 151

base, good and bad, right and wrong, which belong to the moral
feelings and principles contended for, and which have no mean-
ing without them : and their existence, not merely in the writ-
ings of philosophers, but in the mouths of the commonalty,
should perhaps be deemed enough to establish the facts, of
which they profess to be the expressions and exponents. Sure-
ly the trite principle, Ex nihilo nihil Jit, is applicable here also,
and may for once be enlisted in the service of the good cause.
But besides, the existence of Duty, as in itself an ultimate and
satisfactory end, is notoriously a favorite topic with great ora-
tors ; who can only be great, because their more vivid sensibility
gives them a deeper practical insight into the springs and work-
ings of the human heart ; and who, it is equally certain, would
not even be considered great, were their views of humanity
altogether and fundamentally untrue. Without going back to
Demosthenes, the most eloquent writers of our days have dis-
tinguish themselves by attacks on the selfish system. •

To the same purpose is the epitaph on Leonidas and his
Spartans: They fell in obedience to the laws. Were not obedi-
ence a duty in itself, without any reference to a penalty, this
famous epitaph would dwindle into an unintelligible synonym for
They died to escape whipping. On the other hand, were not
such obedience possible, the epitaph would be rank nonsense.

The fact is, if the doctrines of the selfish philosophers, — as
I must call them, in compliance with usage, and for lack of a
more appropriate name, though they themselves, were they con-
sistent, would shrink from the imputation of anything so fan-
tastical and irrational as the love of wisdom, and would rather
be styled systematic self-seekers, — if, I say, their doctrines are
true, every book that was ever written, in whatsoever language,
on whatsoever subject, and of whatsoever kind, unless it be a
mere table of logarithms, ought forthwith to be written afresh.
For in their present state they are all the spawn of falsehood
cast upon the waters of nonsense. Great need verily is there
that this school of exenterated rulemongers and eviscerated
logicians should set about rewriting every book, ay, even their

152 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

own. For, whatever they may have thought, they have been
fain to speak like the rest of the world, with the single excep-
tion of Mr Bentham ; who, discerning the impossibility of
giving vent to his doctrines in any language hitherto spoken by
man, has with his peculiar judgement coined a new gibberish
of his own for his private circulation. Yet one might wager
one should not read many pages, before even he would be
caught tripping.

Clumsy as this procedure may be, it is at all events honester
and more straightforward than the course adopted by Hobbes ;
who, instead of issuing new tokens, such as everybody might
recognize to be his, chose to retain the terms in common use,
stamping their impress however on the base metal of his own
brain, and trying to palm this off as the king's English. If any
one wishes to see the absolute incompatibility of the selfish
doctrines with the universal feelings of mankind, let him read
the eighth and ninth chapters of Hobbeses Human Nature,
and remark how audaciously he perverts and distorts the words
he pretends to explain, as the only means of keeping them from
giving the lie to his system. It is curious, to what shifts a man,
who is often a clear thinker, and mostly writes with precision,
is compelled to resort, when, having mounted the great horse of
philosophy with his face tailward, he sets off on this a posteriori
course, shouting, Look! how fast I am getting on! It is true,
instead of coming to meet me, everything seems to be running
away : but this is only because I have emancipated myself from
the bondage of gravitation, and can distinguish the motion of the
earth as it rolls under me ; while all other men are swept blindly
along with it.

When one looks merely at the style of Hobbes, and at that
of Mr Bentham's later works, it is not easy to conceive two
writers more different. Yet they have much in common. Both
have the same shrewdness of practical observation, the same
clearness of view, so far as the spectacles they have chosen to
put on allow them to see, — the same fondness for stringing
everything on a single principle. Both have the same arrogant,
overweening, contemptuous self-conceit. Both look with the

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 153

same vulgar scorn on all the wisdom of former times, and of
their own. Both deem they have a monopoly of all truth, and
that whatever is not of their own manufacture is contraband.
Both too seem to have been men of regular moral habits,
having naturally cold and calm temperaments, undisturbed by
lively affections, unruffled by emotions, with no strong feelings
except such as were kindled or fanned by self-love. Thus they
both reacht a great age, exemplifying their systems, so far as
this is possible, in their own lives ; and they only drew from
themselves, while they fancied they were representing human
nature.

In knowledge indeed, especially in the variety of his infor-
mation, Mr Bentham was far superior to the sophist of Malms-
bury ; although what made him so confident in his knowledge,
was that it was only half-knowledge. He wanted the higher
Socratic half, the knowledge of his own ignorance. Hobbes, it
is said, was wont to make it a boast, that he had read so little ;
for that, if he had read as much as other men, he should have
been as ignorant. What his ignorance in that case might have
been, we cannot judge ; but it could not well have been grosser
than what he is perpetually displaying. To appreciate the
arrogance of his boast, we must remember that he was the
friend of Selden ; who, while his learning embraced the whole
field of knowledge, was no way inferior to Hobbes in the
vigour of his practical understanding, and in sound, sterling,
desophisticating sense* was far superior to him.

As to the difference in style between the two chiefs of the
selfish school, it answers to that in their political opinions. For
a creed, which acknowledges no principles beyond the figments
of the understanding, may accommodate itself to any form of
government ; not merely submitting to it, as Christianity does,
for conscience sake, but setting it up as excellent in itself, and
worshiping it. Accordingly we find them diverging into op-
posite extremes. While Hobbes bowed to the ground before
the idol of absolute monarchy, his successor's leanings were all
in favour of democracy. The former, caring only about quiet,
and the being able to pursue his studies undisturbed, wisht to
7*

154 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

leave everything as it was ; and thus in style too conformed, so
far as his doctrines allowed, to common usage. Mr Bentham on
the other hand, as he ever rejoiced to see society resolving into
its elements, seemed desirous to throw back language also into a
chaotic state. Unable to understand organic unity and growth,
he lookt upon a hyphen as the one bond of union. u.

By a happy contradiction, no system of philosophy gives
such a base view of human nature, as that which is founded
on self-love. So sure is self-love to degrade whatever it
touches. it.

There have indeed been minds overlaid by much reading,
men who have piled such a load of books on their heads, their
brains have seemed to be squasht by them. This however was
not the character of the learned men in the age of Hobbes.
Though they did not all rise to a commanding highth above the
whole expanse of knowledge, like Scaliger, or like Niebuhr in
our times, so as to survey it at once with a mighty, darting
glance, discerning the proportions and bearings of all its parts ;
yet the scholars of those days had no slight advantages, on the
one hand in the comparative narrowness and unity of the field
of knowledge, and on the other hand in the labour then re-
quired to traverse it ; above all, in the discipline of a positive
education, and in having determinate principles, according to
which every fresh accession of information was to be judged
and disposed of. Their principles may have been mixt up
with a good deal of errour ; but at all events they were not at
the mercy of the winds, to veer round and round with every
blast. Their knowledge too was to be drawn, not at second or
third or tenth hand, from abstracts and abridgements, and com-
pilations and compendiums, and tables of contents and indexes,
but straight from the original sources. Hence they had a
firmer footing. They often knew not how to make a right use
of their knowledge, and lackt critical discrimination : but few
of them felt their learning an incumbrance, or were disabled by
it for walking steadily. Thus even in their scantiness of means

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 155

there were advantages ; just as, according to the great law of
compensation, riches of every kind have their disadvantages.
That which we acquire laboriously, by straining all our faculties
to win it, is more our own, and braces our minds more. Even in
Melanchthon's time this was felt, and that the greater facilities
in obtaining books were not purely beneficial. The exercise of
transcribing the ancient writers, he tells his pupils ( Oper. in.
378), had its good. " Demosthenes fertur octies descripsisse
Thucydidem. Ego ipse Pauli Epistolam ad Eomanos Grae-
cam ter descripsi. Ac memini me ex Capnione audire, quon-
dam eo solidius fuisse doctos homines, quia certos auctores, et
in qualibet arte praecipuos, cum manu sua singuli describerent,
penitus ediscebant. Nunc distrain studia, nee immorari ingenia
certis auctoribus, vel scribendo, vel legendo." It is true, there
is an aptness to exaggerate the evils of improvements, as well
as the benefits ; and a man may be great in spite of his riches,
even as he may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven in spite of
them. But great men are such by an inward power, not
through outward means, and may be all the greater for the
want of those means.

Yet on the other hand in Bacon himself one may perceive
that many of the flaws, which here and there disfigure his
writings, would have vanisht if he had entertained less dispar-
aging notions of his predecessors, and not allowed himself to
be dazzled by the ambition of being in all things the reformer
of philosophy. Even if learning were mere ballast, a large and
stout ship will bear a heavy load of it, and sail all the better.
But a wise man will make use of his predecessors as rowers,
who will waft him along far more rapidly and safely, and over
a far wider range of waters, than he could cross in any skiff of
his own. Adopting Bacon's image, that we see beyond anti-
quity, from standing upon it, at all events we must take up our
stand there, and not kick it from under us : else we ourselves
fall along with it. True wisdom is always catholic, even when
protesting the most loudly and#strongly. It knows that the real
stars are those which move on calmly and peacefully in the
midst of their heavenly brotherhood. Those which rush out

156 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

from thence, and disdain communion with them, are no stars,
but fleeting, perishable meteors.

Even in poetry, he would be a bold man who would assert
that Milton's learning impaired his genius. At times it may be
obtrusive ; but it more than makes amends for this at other
times. Or would Virgil, would Horace, would Gray, have
been greater poets, had they been less familiar with those who
went before them ? For this is the real question. They must
be compared with themselves, not with other poets more richly
gifted by Nature.

Desultory reading is indeed very mischievous, by fostering
habits of loose, discontinuous thought, by turning the memory
into a common sewer for rubbish of all sorts to float through,
and by relaxing the power of attention, which of all our fac-
ulties most needs care, and is most improved by it. But a
well-regulated course of study will no more weaken the mind,
than hard exercise will weaken the body: nor will a strong
understanding be weighed down by its knowledge, any more
than an oak is by its leaves, or than Samson was by his locks.
He whose sinews are drained by his hair, must already be a
weakling. u.

"We may keep the devil without the swine, but not the swine
without the devil.

The Christian religion may be lookt upon under a twofold
aspect, — as revealing and declaring a few mysterious doctrines,
beyond the grasp and reach of our reason, — and as confirming
and establishing a number of moral truths, which, from their
near and evident connexion with our social wants, might enter
into a scheme of religion, such as a human legislator would
devise.

The Divine origin of any system confining itself to truths of
the latter kind would be liable to strong suspicions. For what
a mere man is capable of deducing, will not rise high enough
to have flowed down from heaven. On the other hand a sys-
tem composed wholly of abstruse doctrines, however it might

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 157

feed the wonder of the vulgar, could never have been the gift
of God. A Being who knows the extent of our wants, and the
violence of our passions, — all whose ordinary dispensations
moreover are fraught with usefulness, and stampt with love, —
such a Being, our Maker, could never have sent us an unfruit-
ful revelation of strange truths, which left men in the condition
it found them in,, as selfish, as hardhearted, as voluptuous. Ac-
cordingly, as Dr. Whately has shewn in his Essays on some
Peculiarities of the Christian Religion, the practical character
of a Revelation, and its abstaining from questions of mere curi-
osity, is an essential condition, or at least a very probable mark
of its truth.

Christianity answers the anticipations of Philosophy in both
these important respects. Its precepts are holy and impera-
tive ; its mysteries vast, undiscoverable, unimaginable ; and,
what is still worthier of consideration, these two limbs of our
Religion are not severed, or even laxly joined, but, after the
workmanship of the God of Nature, so " lock in with and over-
wrap one another," that they cannot be torn asunder without
rude force. Every mystery is the germ of a duty : every duty
has its motive in a mystery. So that, if I may speak of these
things in the symbolical language of ancient wisdom, — every-
thing divine being circular, every right thing human straight, —
the life of the Christian may be compared to a chord, each end
of which is supported by the arc it proceeds from and termi-
nates in.

Were not the mysteries of antiquity, in their practical effect,
a sort of religious peerage, to embrace and absorb those persons
whose enquiries might endanger the establisht belief? If so, it
is a strong presumption in favour of Christianity, that it con-
tains none ; especially as' it borrows no aid from castes.

A use must have preceded an abuse, properly so called.

Nobody has ever been able to change today into tomorrow,
— or into yesterday ; and yet everybody, who has much energy
of character, is trying to do one or the other. u.

158 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

I could hardly feel much confidence in a man who had never
been imposed upon. u.

There are instances, a physician has told me, of persons, who,
having been* crowded with others in prisons so ill ventilated as
to breed an infectious fever, have yet escaped it, from the grad-
ual adaptation of their constitutions to the noxious atmosphere
they had generated. This avoids the inference so often drawn,
as to the harmlessness of mischievous doctrines, from the inno-
cent lives of the men with whom they originated. To form a
correct judgement concerning the tendency of any doctrine, we
should rather look at the fruit it bears in the disciples, than in
the teacher. For he only made it ; they are made by it.

La pobreza no es vileza, Poverty is no disgrace, says the Bis-
cayan proverb. Paupertas ridiculos homines facit, says the
Roman satirist. Is there an Englishman, who, being askt
which is the wiser and better saying, would not instantly an-
swer, The first? Yet how many are there, who half an hour
after would not quiz a poor gentleman's coat or dinner, if the
thought of it came across them? Be consistent, for shame,
even in evil. But no ! still be inconsistent ; that your practice,
thus glaringly at variance with your principle, may sooner fall
to the ground.

Who wants to see a masquerade t might be written under a
looking-glass. u.

Languages are the barometers of national thought and char-
acter. Home Tooke, in attempting to fix the quicksilver for
his own metaphysical ends, acted mu«h like a little playfellow
of mine, at the first school I was at, who screwed the master's
weatherglass up to fair, to make sure of a fine day for a holiday.

Every age has a language of its own ; and the difference in
the words is often far greater than in the thoughts. The main
employment of authors, in their collective capacity, is to trans-

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 159

late the thoughts of other ages into the language of their own.
Nor is this a useless or unimportant task : for it is the only way
of making knowledge either fruitful or powerful.

Reviewers are forever telling authors, they can't understand
them. The author might often reply : Is that my fault t u.

The climate might perhaps have absorbed the intellect of
Greece, instead of tempering it to a love of beauty, but for the
awakening and stirring excitements of a national poem, bar-
baric wars, a confined territory, republican institutions and the
activity they generate, the absence of any recluse profession,
and a form of worship in which art predominated. The poets
of such a people would naturally be lyrical. But at Athens
Homer, the Dionysiacs, and Pericles, by their united influence,
fostered them into dramatists. The glories of their country in-
spired them with enthusiastic patriotism ; and an aristocratical
religion (which, until if was supplanted by a vulgar philosophy,
was revered, in spite of all its errours,) gave them depth, and
made them solemn at least, if not sublime. Energy they owed
to their contests, and correctness to the practist ears of their
audience.

On the other hand, the centurion's rod, the forum, the con-
sulate, Hannibal, and in later times the Civil Wars, — pride,
and the suppression of feeling taught by pride, — Epicureanism,
which dwarft Lucretius, though it could not stifle him, — the
overwhelming perfection of the great Greek models, and the
benumbing frost of a jealous despotism, — would not allow
the Romans, except at rare intervals, to be poets. Perhaps
the greatest in their language is Livy.

Such at least must be the opinion of the author of Gebir,
whose writings are more deeply impregnated, than those of any
Englishman of our times, with the spirit of classical antiquity.
In a note on that singular poem, he goes so far as to compare
Livy with Shakspeare, and in one respect gives the advantage
to the Roman. " Shakspeare (he says) is the only writer that
ever knew so intimately, or ever described so accurately, the

160 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

variations of the human character. But Livy is always great."
The same too must have been the opinion of the great historian,
who seemed to have been raised up, after a lapse of eighteen
centuries, to revive the glories of ancient Rome, and to teach
us far more about the Romans, than they ever knew about
themselves. Niebuhr agrees with Landor in praising Livy's
brilliant talent for the representation of human character ; while
in another place he justly complains of Virgil's inability to
infuse life into the shadowy names with which he has swelled
the muster-roll of his poem.

South's sentences are gems, hard and shining: Voltaire's look
like them, but are only French paste.

Kant extends this contrast to the two nations, in his Essay
on the Sublime and Beautiful, where he says, § 4, "In England
profound thoughts are native, — tragedy, epic poetry, and the
massive gold of wit ; which is beat out by a French hammer
into thin leaves of a great superficies."

Some men so dislike the dust kickt up by the generation
they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it.

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as
he is leaping. u.

How much better the world would go on, if people could but
do now and then, what Lord Castlereagh used to deprecate,
and turn their backs upon themselves ! u.

The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on
the verge of truth. ij.

Hardly anything is so difficult in writing, as to write with
ease. u.

Contrast is a kind of relation.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 161

Instead of watching the bird as it flies above our heads, we
chase his shadow along the ground; and finding we cannot
grasp it, we conclude it to be nothing.

There is something odd in the disposition of an Englishman's
senses. He sees with his fingers, and hears with his toes. En-
ter a gallery of pictures : you find all the spectators longing to
become handlers. Go to hear an opera of Mozart's : your next
neighbour keeps all the while kicking time ... as if he could
not kill it without. u.

Excessive indulgence to others, especially to children, is in
fact only self-indulgence under an alias. u.

Poverty breeds wealth ; and wealth in its turn breeds pov-
erty. The earth, to form the mound, is taken out of the ditch ;
and whatever may be the highth of the one, will be the depth
of the other.

Pliny speaks of certain animals that will fatten on smoke.
How lucky would it be for sundry eloquent statesmen, if they
could get men to do so ! u.

The great cry with everybody is, Get on ! get on ! just as
if the world were travelling post. How astonisht people will
be, when they arrive in heaven, to find the angels, who are
so much wiser, laying no schemes to be made archangels !

Is not every true lover a martyr ? u.

Unitarianism has no root in the permanent principles of
human nature. In fact it is a religion of accidents, dep*ending
for its reception on a particular turn of thought, a particular
state of knowledge, and a particular situation in society. This
alone is a sufficient disproof of it.

But moreover its postulates involve the absurdity of coupling
infinity with man. No wonder that, beginning with raising him

K

162 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

into a god, it has ended with degrading him into a beast. In
attempting to erect a Babel on a foundation of a foot square,
the Socinians constructed a building which, being top-heavy,
overturned ; and its bricks, instead of stopping at the ground,
struck into it from the violence of the fall.

Calvinism is not imaginative. To stand therefore, it should
in some degree be scientific : whereas no system pf Christianity
presents greater difficulties to the understanding, none so great
to the moral sense. Heavy as these difficulties are, the unbend-
ing faith of the Swiss Reformer would have borne up under
still heavier. But after a few generations, when zeal subsides,
such a weight is found to be inconvenient ; and men loosen the
articles which press the hardest, until they slip off one after
another. Scepticism however, like other things, is enlarged
and pampered by indulgence : as the current gets more
sluggish, the water gets thicker: and the dregs of Calvinism
stagnate into Socinianism.

A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman : a gentleman, in
the vulgar, superficial way of understanding the word, is the
Devil's Christian. But to throw aside these polisht and too
current counterfeits for something valuable and sterling, the
real gentleman should be gentle in everything, at least in every-
thing that depends on himself, — in carriage, temper, construc-
tions, aims, desires. He ought therefore to be mild, calm, quiet,
even, temperate, — not hasty in judgement, not exorbitant in
ambition, not overbearing, not proud, not rapacious, not oppres-
sive ; for these things are contrary to gentleness. Many such
gentlemen are to be found, I trust ; and many more would be,
were the true meaning of the name borne in mind and duly
inculcated. But alas! we are misled by etymology; and be-
cause a gentleman was originally homo gentilis, people seem to
fancy they shall lose caste, unless they act as Gentiles.

To no kind of begging are people so averse, as to begging
pardon ; that is, when there is any serious ground for doing so.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 163

When there is none, this phrase is as soon taken in vain, as
other momentous words are upon light occasions. On the other
hand there is a kind of begging which everybody is forward
enough at; and that is, begging the question. Yet surely a
gentleman should be as ready to do the former, as a reasona-
ble man should be loth to do the latter. u.

What a proof it is that the carnal heart is enmity, to find
that almost all our prejudices are against others ! so much i*o
indeed, that this has become an integral part of the word :
whatever is to a man's prejudice, is to his hurt. Nay, I have
sometimes found it hard to convince a person, that it is possible
to have a prejudice in favor of another. It is only Christian
love, that can believe all things, and hope all things, even of
our fellow-creatures.

But is there not a strange contradiction here ? The carnal
heart, which thinks so basely of its neighbours, thinks haugh-
tily of itself: while tRe Christian, who knows and feels the evil
of his own nature, can yet look for good in his neighbours.
How is this to be solved ?

Why, it is only when blinded by selflove, that we can think
proudly of our nature. Take away that blind; and in our
judgements of others we are quicksighted enough to see there
is very little in that nature to rely on. Whereas, the Christian
can hope all things ; because he grounds his hope, not on man,
but on God, and trusts that the same power which has wrought
good in him, will also work good in his neighbour. u.

Temporary madness may perhaps be necessary in some cases,
to cleanse and renovate the mind; just as a fit of illness is to
carry off the humours of the body.

A portrait has one advantage over its original : it is uncon-
scious : and so you may admire, without insulting it. I have
seen portraits which have more. u.

A compliment is usually accompanied with a bow, as if to
beg pardon for paying it. a.

164 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the
vessel.

Children always turn toward the light. O that grown-up
people in this would become like little children. u.

Civilization takes the heart, and sticks it beside the head,
just where Spurzheim finds the organ of acquisitiveness. No
wonder she fancies she has elevated man altogether, since she
has thus raised the most valuable part of him, and at the same
time has thus enlarged the highest.

Men have often been warned against old prejudices : I
would rather warn them against new conceits. The novelty
of an opinion on any moral question is a presumption against
it. Generally speaking, it is only the half-thinker, who, in
matters concerning the feelings and ancestral opinions of men,
stumbles on new conclusions. The true philosopher searches
out something else, — the propriety of the feeling, the wisdom
of the opinion, the deep and living roots of whatever is fair
or enduring. For on such points, to use a happy phrase of
Dugald Stewart's {Philosophy of the Human Mind, ii. 75),
" our first and third thoughts will be found to coincide."

Burke was a fine specimen of a third-thoughted man. So
in our own times, consciously and professedly, was Coleridge ;
who delighted in nothing more than in the revival of a dor-
mant truth, and who ever lookt over the level of the present
age to the hills containing the sources and springs whereby that
level is watered. Let me cite an instance of what I mean from
the life of Jeremy Taylor, by . . the title has, Reginald Heber.
So let me call him then. I only anticipate the affectionate
familiarity of future ages, in whose ears (as a friend of mine
well prophesies) the Bishop of Calcutta will sound as strange,
as the Bishop of Down and Connor would in ours. The pas-
sage I refer to is a defense of the good old institution of sizars,
or poor scholars. Its length prevents my quoting it entire ; but
I cannot forbear enriching my pages with some of the conclud-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 165

ing sentences. " It is easy to declaim against the indecorum
and illiberality of depressing the poorer students into servants.
But it would be more candid, and more consistent with truth,
to say that our ancestors elevated their servants to the rank of
students ; softening, as much as possible, every invidious dis-
tinction, and rendering the convenience of the wealthy the
means of extending the benefits of education to those whose
poverty must otherwise have shut them out from the springs of
knowledge. And the very distinction of dress, which has so
often been complained of, the very nature of those duties, which
have been esteemed degrading, were of use in preventing the
intrusion of the higher classes into situations intended only for
the benefit of the poor ; while, by separating the last from the
familiar society of the wealthier students, they prevented that
dangerous emulation of expense, which in more modern times
has almost excluded them from the University." (p. ix.) *

Was it superfluous to quote a passage, which my readers
were already acquainted with ? I rejoice to hear it ; and wish
I could believe they had as good cause for objecting to the fol-
lowing extract from Coleridge's Literary Biography (ii. p. 60),
containing a similar apology for a practice dictated by natural
feelings, but which has often been severely condemned. " It is
no less an errour in teachers, than a torment to the poor chil-
dren, to enforce the necessity of reading as they would talk.
In order to cure them of singing, as it is called, — the child is
made to repeat the words with his eyes from off the book ; and
then indeed his tones resemble talking, as far as his fears, tears,

* The foregoing page was just printed off, when the news came that India
had lost its good Bishop. At the time when I ventured on that passing men-
tion of him, I was little disturbed by the thought of its inadequateness ; know-
ing that it would not offend him, if the passage ever chanced to meet his eye.
He would have deemed himself beholden to the meanest stranger for an offer-
ing of honest admiration, and, I doubted not, would accept my tribute of grat-
itude and affection with his wonted gentleness. And now . . . now that he
has been taken from us . . . why should I not declare the truth ? Though I
should have rejoiced to speak of him worthily, if God had given me the
power to speak worthily of such a man, yet, being what I am, that I have
said no more does not pain me . . . perhaps because my heart seems to say,
that love and sorrow make all gifts equal.

166 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and trembling will permit. But as soon as the eye is again
directed to the printed page, the spell begins anew : for an in-
stinctive sense tells the child, that to utter its own momentary
thoughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as of
another, and a far wiser than himself, are two widely different
things ; and as the two acts are accompanied with widely differ-
ent feelings, so must they justify different modes of enuncia-
tion."

My introductory remarks however, I scarcely need add, apply
to ends only, not to means. For means are variable ; ends con-
tinue the same. The road from London to Edinburgh may be
improved; horses may become swifter, carriages lighter: but
Edinburgh seems likely to stay pretty nearly in the same spot
where it is now.

The next best thing to a very good joke, is a very bad joke :
the next best thing to a very good argument, is a very bad one.
In wit and reasoning, as in the streets of Paris, you must be-
ware of the old maxim, medio tutissimus ibis. In that city it
would lead you into the gutter: in your intellectual march it
would sink you in the dry, sandy wastes of dulness. But the
selfsame result, which a good joke or a good argument accom-
plishes regularly and according to law, is now and then reacht
by their misshapen brethren per saltum, as a piece of luck.

Few trains of logic, however ingenious and fine, have given
me so much pleasure, — and yet a good argument is among
dainties one of the daintiest, — few, very few, have so much
pure truth in them, as the exclamation, How good it was of God
to put Sunday at one end of the week ! for, if He had put it in
the middle, He would have made a broken week of it. The feel-
ing here is so true and strong, as to overpower all perception of
the rugged way along which it carries us. It gains its point ;
and that is all it cares for. It knows nothing of doubt or faint-
heartedness, but goes to work much like our sailors : everybody,
who does not know them, swears they must fail ; yet they are
sure to succeed. He who is animated with such a never hesi-
tating, never questioning conviction that every ordinance of

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 1G7

God is for good, although he may miss the actual good in the
particular instance, cannot go far wrong in the end.

There is a speech of a like character related in Mr. Turner's
Tour in Normandy (i. p. 120). He entered one day into con-
versation with a Frenchman of the lower orders, a religious
man, whom he found praying before a broken cross. They
were sitting in a ruined chapel. " The devotee mourned over
its destruction, and over the state of the times which could
countenance such impiety; and gradually, as he turned over
the leaves of the prayer-book in his hand, he was led to read
aloud the 137th Psalm, commenting on every verse as he pro-
ceeded, and weeping more and more bitterly, when he came to
the part commemorating the ruin of Jerusalem, which he ap-
plied to the captive state of France, exclaiming against Prussia
as cruel Babylon. Yet, we askt, how can you reconcile with
the spirit of Christianity the permission given to the Jews by the
Psalmist to take up her little ones and dash them against the
stones'? — Ah! you misunderstand the sense; the Psalm does
not authorize cruelty: mais, attendez! ce n' est pas ainsi: ces
pierres-la sont Saint Pierre ; et heureux celui qui les attachera
a Saint Pierre ; qui montrera de I'attachement, de Vintrepidite
pour sa religion! This is a specimen of the curious perver-
sions under which the Roman Catholic faith does not scruple to
take refuge."

" Surely in other thoughts Contempt might die." The ques-
tion was at best very thoughtless and illjudged: its purpose was
to unsettle the poor man's faith: it offered no solution of the
doubts it suggested : and no judicious person will so address the
uneducated. But it is cheering to see how the Frenchman
takes up the futile shaft, and tosses it back again, and finds
nothing but an occasion to shew the entireness of his faith.
Moreover, though Mr. Turner hardly thought it, there is much
more truth in the reply than in the question. All that there is
in the latter, is one of those half truths, which, by setting up
alone, bankrupt themselves, and become falsehoods ; while the
Frenchman begins in truth, and ends in truth, taking a some-
what strange course indeed to get from one point to the other.

bufiversittI

168 ' GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Still in him we perceive, though in a low and rude state, that
wisdom of the heart, that esprit du cceur or mens cordis, which
the Broad Stone of Honour inculcates so eloquently and so fer-
vently, and which, if it be severed from the wisdom of the
head, is far the more precious of the two ; while in their union
it is like the odour which in some indescribable way mingles
with the hues of the flower, softening its beauty into loveliness.
No truly wise man has ever been without it : but in few has it
ever been found in such purity and perfection, as in the author
of that noble manual for gentlemen, that volume which, had I
a son, I would place in his hands, charging him, though such
prompting would be needless, to love it next to his Bible.
1826. u.

These words, written eleven years ago, were an expression
of ardent and affectionate admiration for a book, which seemed
to me fitted, above almost all others, to inspire young minds
with the feelings befitting a Christian gentleman. They refer
to the second edition of the Broad Stone of Honour, which
came out in 1823. Since that time the author has publisht
another edition, or rather another work under the same title ;
for but a small portion of the new one is taken from the old.
To this new one, I regret to say, I cannot apply the same terms.
Not that it is inferior to the former in its peculiar excellences.
On the contrary the author's style, both in language and
thought, has become more mature, and still more beautiful:
his reading has been continually widening its range ; and he
pours forth its precious stores still more prodigally: and the
religious spirit, which pervaded the former work, hallows every
page of the latter. The new Broad Stone is still richer than
the old one in magnanimous and holy thoughts, and in tales of
honour and of piety. If one sometimes thinks that the author
loses himself amid the throng of knightly and saintly person-
ages, whom he calls up before us, it is with the feeling with
which Milton must have regarded the moon, when he likened
her to "one that had been led astray Through the heaven's
wide, pathless way." If he strays, it is " through the heaven's

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 169

wide, pathless way ; " if he loses himself, it is among the stars.
In truth this is an essential, and a very remarkable feature of
his catholic spirit. He identifies himself, as few have ever
done, with the good, and great, and heroic, and holy, in former
times, and ever rejoices in passing out of himself into them : he
loves to utter his thoughts and feelings in their words, rather
than his own : and the saints and philosophers and warriors of
old join in swelling the sacred consort which rises heavenward
from his pages.

Nevertheless the new Broad Stone of Honour is not a book
which can be recommended without hesitation to the young.
The very charm, which it is sure to exercise over them, hight-
ens one's scruples about doing so. For in it the author has
come forward as a convert and champion of the Romish
Church, and as the implacable enemy of Protestantism. This
polemical spirit is the one great blemish which disfigures this,
and still more his later work, the Ages of Faith. The object
he sets himself is, to shew that all good, and hardly anything
but good, is to be found in the bosom of the Romish Church ;
and that all evil, and hardly anything but evil, is the growth of
Protestantism. These propositions he maintains by what in any
other writer one should call a twofold sophism. But Achilles
himself was not more incapable of sophistry, than the author of
the Broad Stone of Honour. No word ever dropt from his pen,
which he did not thoroughly believe ; difficult as to us double-
minded men it may seem at times to conceive this. Therefore,
instead of a twofold sophism, I will call it a twofold delusion, a
twofold Einseitigkeit, as the more appropriate German word is.
He culls the choicest and noblest stories out of fifteen centuries,
— and not merely out of history, but out of poetry and ro-
mance, — and the purest and sublimest morsels of the great
religious writers between the time of the Apostles and the
Reformation : and this magnificent spiritual hierarchy he sets
before us as a living and trustworthy picture of what the Ages
of Faith, as he terms them, actually were. On the other hand,
shutting his eyes to what is great and holy in later times, he
picks out divers indications of baseness, unbelief, pusillanimity,

170 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

and worldlymindedness, as portraying what Europe has become,
owing to the dissolution of the unity of the Church. Thus, in
speaking of the worthies of the Reformed Churches, he himself
not seldom falls into the same strain, which he most justly
reprehends in the ordinary Protestant accounts of the middle
ages.

Alas ! whithersoever one looks throughout Christendom,
%v& ave/ioi npciovai bvo Kpareprjs vtv dvdyKtjs,
kcu Tvnos avrirvnos, Koi nrjfi era. 7rr]fxaTi Kelrai.
But it grieves one to the heart to see those blowing the bellows,
who ought to be extinguishing the flame. For, though wrath is
denounced against those who cry Peace, Peace ! when there is
no peace, — against those who would patch up the rent in the
Church by daubing it over with untempered mortar, who think
that indifference to all principle is the best cement of union, and
that to let the bricks lie at sixes and sevens is the surest way of
building up a house of them ; — it must never be forgotten on
the other hand that a blessing waits upon the peacemakers, that
they are the true children of God, and that the most hopeful
method of restoring the unity of the Church is, while we un-
flinchingly and uncompromisingly uphold every essential prin-
ciple, to maintain all possible candour and indulgence with
regard to whatever is accidental or personal.

This is the main difference between the old Broad Stone of
Honour and the new one. The former breathed a fervent long-
ing for the reunion of the Catholic Church : the latter is tinged
with the anticatholic spirit so common among those who would
monopolize the name of Catholics, and is ever breaking out into
hostility against Protestantism. The historical views too of the
former were more correct. For the evidence, which was ample
to vindicate the middle ages from unconditional reprobation,
cannot avail to establish that their character was without spot
or blemish. Nor does that which is erroneous and perverse in
modern times, though well fitted to humble our supercilious
pride, prove that we are a mere mass of corruption. An
apology is a different thing from a eulogy; and even a eu-
logy should have its limits. Nor are hatred and scorn for his

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 171

own age likely to qualify a man for acting upon it and bet-
tering it.

These remarks will be taken, I hope, as they are meant. I
could not suffer my former sentence about the Broad Stone of
Honour to stand without explanation. Yet it goes against one's
heart to retract praise, where love and admiration are undimin-
isht. I trust that nothing I have said will hurt the feelings of
one, who fulfills, as very few men have fulfilled, the idea his writ-
ings give of their author, and whom I esteem it a blessed privi-
lege to be allowed to number among my friends. 1837. u.

Great changes have taken place in the opinions and feelings
of many with regard to the Romish Church since the year
1837. The ignorant, truthless abuse, which had long been
poured out upon her so unscrupulously, has not indeed ceast to
flow, nay, may perhaps be as copious as ever : but it has pro-
voked a reactionary spirit, which is now pouring out apologies
and eulogiums, with little more knowledge, and an almost equal
carelessness about truth. It would be inconsistent with the
character of this little book to engage in such a controversy
here. In other places I have been compelled to do so, and, if
God gives me life, and power of speech and pen, shall have to
do so a»ain and again. For this is one of the chief battles
which we in our days are called to wage because of the word of
truth and righteousness, a battle, about the final issue of which
Faith will not let us doubt, but in the course of which many
intellects will be cast on the ground and trampled under foot,
many may be made captive, and may have their eyes put out,
and may even learn to glory in their blindness and their chains.
Still we know with whom the victory is ; and He will give it
to the Truth, and to us, if we seek it earnestly and devoutly,
with pure hearts and minds, in her behalf.

Now among the delusions and fallacies, whereby divers
minds, apter to follow the impulses of the imagination, than to
weigh the force and examine the consistency of a logical chain,
have been led to deck out the Church of Rome with charms
which do not rightly appertain to her, a chief place I believe,

172 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

belongs to those which the Broad Stone of Honour and the Ages
of Faith have set forth with such beauty and richness. Hence,
though I must reserve the exposition of those fallacies for an-
other occasion, I feel bound to renew my protest against the
misrepresentations of the whole of modern history which run
through both these works, the apotheosis of the Middle Ages,
and the apodiabolosis of the Reformation and its effects. The
author has indeed attempted to reply to my objections in the
Epilogue to his last volume, and stoutly maintains, though with
his usual admirable Christian courtesy, that his pictures do not
give an erroneous impression either of the past or of the pres-
ent. An argument on this issue could not be carried on with-
out long details, illsuited to these small pages. Therefore I
must leave it to the judgement of such as may be attracted to
contemplate the visions of beauty and holiness which are con-
tinually rising up in those works. As these visions, however,
through the revolutions of opinion, have now become deceptive,
I cannot recommend them to the youthful reader, without
reminding him at the same time that the theological and eccle-
siastical controversies of the nineteenth century are not to be
decided by any selection of the anecdotes or apophthegms of
the twelfth and thirteenth, and that, even for the sake of form-
ing an estimate on the worth of any particular period, it is
necessary to consider that period in all its bearings, in its worse
and baser, as well as in its better and nobler features, and in its
relative position with reference to the historical development of
mankind. If the picture of the Ages of Faith here presented
to us were ' faithful and complete, instead of being altogether
partial, it would no way avail to prove that Popery in our days
is the one true form of Christianity, any more than York and
Lincoln minsters prove that the Italians in our days build finer
churches than we do. 1847. u.

Every one who knows anything of Horace or of logic, has
heard of the accumulating sophism : Do twelve grains make a
heap ? do eighteen f do twenty ? do twenty-four ? Twenty-four
grains make a heap ! oh no ! they make a pennyweight. The

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 173

reply was well enough for that particular case : but, as a gen-
eral rule, it is safest to answer such captious questions by a
comparative, the only elastic and nicely graduated expression
of degree which common language furnishes. Do twelve grains
of sand make a heap f A greater than eleven. Are a hundred
yards far for a healthy man to walk f Further than ninety-
nine.

There is another mode of defense however, which some may
think sufficient, and for which I must refer my readers to Aris-
totle's Treatise on Irony. Don't be alarmed at those grains of
sand, said a philosopher to a young man who appeared sadly
graveled by the accumulating sophism. The sophist is only
playing the part of the East-wind in the comedy. But you dis-
like such a quantity of dust blown or thrown so palpably into
your eyes f Then put on a veil.

Friendship closes its eyes, rather than see the moon eclipst ;
while malice denies that it is ever at the full.

If we could but so divide ourselves as to stay at home at the
same time, traveling would be one of the greatest pleasures, and
of the most instructive employments in life. As it is, we often
lose both ways more than we gain. u.

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows,
and so dwindle away into shadows thereof. u.

Not a few writers seem to look upon their predecessors as
Egyptians, whom they have full licence to spoil of their jewels ;
a permission, by the by, which, the Jews must have thought,
was not confined to a particular occasion and people, but went
along with them whithersoever they went, and has never quite
expired. And as the jewels taken from the Egyptians were
employed in making the golden calf, which the Israelites wor-
shipt as their god, in like manner has it sometimes happened,
that the poetical plagiary has been so dazzled by his own patch-
work, as to forget whereof it was 'made, and to set it up as an
idol in the temple of his self-love.

174 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

When we read that the Israelites, at the sight of the calf,
which they had seen molten in the wilderness, and the materials
for which they had themselves supplied, cried out, These are thy

gods, 0 Israel, that brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!

we can hardly repress our indignation at -such reckless folly.
Yet how many are there fully entitled to wear the same triple
cap! I do not mean misers merely: these are not the sole
idolaters of the golden calf nowadays. All who worship means,
of whatsoever kind, material or intellectual, — all, for instance,
who think, like the able Historian of the War in the Peninsula,
that it was wholly by the strength and discipline of our armies,
and by the skill of our general, that we overthrew the imperial
despotism of France, — all who forget that it is still the Lord
of Hosts, who breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in
sunder, and burnetii the chariots in the fire, — all who are heed-
less of that vox populi, which, when it bursts from the heaving
depths of a nation's heart, is in truth vox Dei, — all who take
no account of that moral power, without which intellectual abil-
ity dwindles into petty cunning, and the mightiest armies, as
history has often shewn, become like those armed figures in
romance, which look formidable at a distance, but which fall to
pieces at a blow, and display their hollowness, — all who con-
ceive that the wellbeing of a people depends upon its wealth, —
all the doters on steamengines, and cottonmills, and spinning-
jennies, and railroads, on exports and imports, on commerce and
manufactures, — all who dream that mankind may be ennobled
and regenerated by being taught to read, — all these, and mil-
lions more, who are besotted by analogous delusions in the lesser
circles of society, and who fancy that happiness may be attained
by riches, or by luxury, or by fame, or by learning, or by sci-
ence, — one and all may be numbered among the idolaters of
the golden calf: one and all cry to their idol, Thou art my god!
Thou hast brought us out of the Egypt of darkness and misery :
thou wilt lead us to the Canaan of light and joy. Verily, I
would as soon fall down before the golden calf itself, as worship
the great idol of the day, the great public instructor, as it is
called, the newspaper press. The calf could not even low a lie :

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 175

and only when the words of the wise are written upon it, can
paper be worth more than gold.

And how is it with those who flatter themselves that their
own good deeds have brought them out of Egypt ? those good
deeds which God has commanded them to wrest as spoils from
the land of Sim How is it with those who blindly trust that
their good deeds will go before them, and lead them to heaven ?
Are they not also to be reckoned among the worshippers of the
golden calf? of an idol, which their own hands have wrought
and set up ; of an idol, the very materials of which would never
have been theirs, except through God's command, and the
strength His command brings with it. Surely, whether it be
for the past, or the future, we need a better leader than any we
can either manufacture or mentefacture for ourselves. u.

One evening, as I was walking by a leafy hedge, a light
glanced through it across my eyes. At first I tried to fix it,
but vainly ; till, recollecting that the hedge was the medium of
sight, instead of peering directly toward the spot, I searcht
among the leaves for a gap. As soon as I found one, I discov-
ered a bright star glimmering on me, which I then stood watch-
ing at my ease.

A mystic in my situation would have wearied himself with
hunting for the light in the place where he caught the first
glance of it, and would not have got beyond an incommunicable
assurance that he -had seen a vision from heaven, of a nature
rather to be dreamt of than described. A materialist would
have asserted the light to be visible only in the gap, because
through that alone could it be seen distinctly ; and thence would
have inferred the light to be the gap, or (if more acute and logi-
cal than common) at any rate to be produced by it.

I have often thought that the beautiful passage, in which our
Saviour compares Himself to a Hen gathering her chickens un-
der her wings, — and the sublime one in Deuteronomy, where
Jehovah's care and guardianship of the Jewish nation is likened
to an Eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young,

176 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

spreading abroad her wings, bearing them on her wings, and
making them ride on the high places of the earth, — may be
regarded as symbolical of the peculiar character of the two dis-
pensations. The earlier was the manifestation of the power of
God, and shews Him forth in His kingly majesty : the latter is
the revelation of the love of God, full of all gentleness, and
household tenderness, and more than fatherly or motherly kind-
ness, a.

It has been deemed a great paradox in Christianity, that it
makes Humility the avenue to Glory. Yet what other avenue
is there to Wisdom ? or even to Knowledge ? Would you pick
up precious truths, you must bend down and look for them.
Everywhere the pearl of great price lies bedded in a shell
which has no form or comeliness. It is so in physical science.
Bacon has declared it : Natura non nisi parendo vincitur : and
the triumphs of Science since his days have proved how willing
Nature is to be conquered by those who will obey her. It is so
in moral speculation. Wordsworth has told us the law of his
own mind, the fulfilment of which has enabled him to reveal a
new world of poetry : Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop,
Than when we soar. That it is so likewise in religion, we are
assured by those most comfortable words, Except ye become as
little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The same truth is well exprest in the aphorism, which Charles
the First, when he entered his name on the books at Oxford, in
1616, subjoined to it : Si vis omnia subjicere, subjice te rationi.
Happy would it have been for him, if that which flowed thus
readily from his pen, had also been graven upon his heart ! He
would not then have had to write it on the history of his coun-
try with characters more glaring and terrible than those of ink.

Moreover the whole intercourse between man and man may
be seen, if we look at it closely, to be guided and regulated by
the same pervading principle : and that it ought to be so, is
generally recognised, instinctively at least, if not consciously.
As I have often heard said by him, who, among all the persons
I have converst with to the edification of my understanding, had

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 177

the keenest practical insight into human nature, and best knew
the art of controlling . and governing men, and winning them
over to their good, — the moment anybody is satisfied with him-
self, everybody else becomes dissatisfied with him : whenever a
person thinks much of himself, all other people cease to think
much of him. Thus it is not only in the parable, that he who
takes the highest room, is turned down with shame to the low-
est ; while he who sits down in the lowest room, is bid to go up
higher. u.

Strange feelings start up and come forward out of the inner-
most chambers of Memory, when one is employed, after the
lapse of ten or a dozen years, in revising a work like the pres-
ent, which from its nature must needs be so rich in associations
of all kinds, so intimately connected with the thoughts and feel-
ings and visions and purposes of former days, and with the old
familiar faces, now hidden from the outward eye, the very sight
of which was wont to inspire joy and confidence and strength.
What would be the heart of an old weatherb eaten hollow
stump, if the leaves and blossoms of its youth were suddenly
to spring up out of the mould around it, and to remind it how
bright and blissful summer was in the years of its prime?
That which has died within us, is often the saddest portion of
what Death has taken away, sad to all, sad above measure to
those in whom no higher life has been awakened. The heavy
thought is the thought of what we were, of what we hoped and
purpost to have been, of what we ought to have been, of what
but for ourselves we might have been, set by the side of what
we are ; as though we were haunted by the ghost of our own
youth. This is a thought the crushing weight of which nothing
but a strength above our own can lighten. Else if our hearts
do but keep fresh, we may still love those who are gone, and
may still find happiness in loving them.

During the last few pages I seem to have been walking

through a churchyard, strewn with the graves of those whom

it was my delight to love and revere, of those from whom 1

learnt with what excellent gifts and powers the spirit of man

8* L

178 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

is sometimes endowed. The death of India's excellent bishop,
Reginald Heber, in whom whatsoever things are lovely were
found, has already been spoken of. Coleridge, who is men-
tioned along with him, has since followed him. The light of his
eye also is quencht : none shall listen any more to the sweet
music of his voice : none shall feel their souls teem and burst,
as beneath the breath of spring, while the lifegiving words of
the poet-philosopher flow over them. Niebuhr too has past
from the earth, carrying away a richer treasure of knowledge
than was ever before lockt up in the breast of a single man.
And the illustrious friend, to whom I alluded just now, — he
who was always so kind, always so generous, always so indul-
gent to the weaknesses of others, while he was always endeav-
ouring to make them better than they were, — he who was un-
wearied in acts of benevolence, ever aiming at the greatest, but
never thinking the least below his notice, — who could descend,
without feeling that he sank, from the command of armies and
the government of an empire, to become a peacemaker in village
quarrels, — he in whom dignity was so gentle, and wisdom so
playful, and whose laurelled head was girt with a chaplet of all
the domestic affections, — the soldier, statesman, patriot, Sir
John Malcolm, — he too is gathered to his fathers. It is a
sorry amends, that death allows us to give utterance to that
admiration, which, so long as its object was living, delicacy
commanded us to suppress. A better consolation lies in the
thought, that, blessed as it is to have friends on earth, it is still
more blessed to have friends in heaven.

But in truth through the whole of this work I have been
holding converse with him who was once the partner in it,
as he was in all my thoughts and feelings, from the earliest
dawn of both. He too is gone. But is he lost to me ? O no !
He whose heart was ever pouring forth a stream of love, the
purity and inexhaustibleness of which betokened its heavenly
origin, as he was ever striving to lift me above myself, is still
at my side, pointing my gaze upward. Only the love, which
was then hidden within him, has now overflowed and transfig-
ured his whole being ; and his earthly form is turned into that
of an angel of light.

1837.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 179

Thou takest not away, 0 Death !
Thou strikest: Absence perisheth;

Indifference is no more.
The future brightens on the sight;
For on the past has fallen a light,

That tempts us to adore.

The Romans used to say of an argument or opinion which
spreads rapidly, that it takes the popular mind. I should rather
say, that the popular mind takes the argument or opinion.
Takes it t Yes ; as one takes infection ; catches it, rather, as
one catches a fever. For truth, like health, is not easily com-
municated ; but diseases and errours are contagious.

This being so, how much to be deplored are democratical ele-
ments in a constitution ! Not unless the people are the head of
the State : and I have always fancied them the heart ; a heart
which at times may beat too fast, and perhaps feel too warmly;
but which by its pulsations evinces and preserves the life and
vigour of the social body.

Of what use are forms, seeing that at times they are empty ?
Of the same use as barrels, which at times are empty too.

Men of the world hold that it is impossible to do a disinter-
ested action, except from an interested motive, — for the sake
of admiration, if for no grosser, more tangible gain. Doubtless
they are also convinced, that when the sun is showering light
from the sky, he is only standing there to be stared at. u.

Everybody is impatient for the time when he shall be his
own master. And if coming of age were to make one so, if
years could indeed "bring the philosophic mind," it would
rightly be a day of rejoicing to a whole household and neigh-
bourhood. But too often he who is impatient to become his
own master, when the outward checks are removed, merely
becomes his own slave, the slave of a master in the insolent
flush of youth, hasty, headstrong, wayward, and tyrannical.
Had he really become his own master, the first act of his do-

180 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

minion over himself would have been to put himself under the
dominion of a higher Master and a wiser. u.

By the ancients courage was regarded as practically the main
part of virtue : by us, though I hope we are not less brave,
purity is so regarded now. The former is evidently the animal
excellence, a thing not to be left out when we are balancing the
one against the other. Still the following considerations weigh
more with me. Courage, when not an instinct, is the creation of
society, depending for occasions of action (which is essential to
it) on outward circumstances, and deriving much both of its
character and its motives from popular opinion and esteem.
But purity is inward, secret, selfsufficing, harmless, and, to
crown all, thoroughly and intimately personal. It is indeed a
nature, rather than a virtue ; and, like other natures, when mos>
perfect, is least conscious of itself and its perfection. In a
word, Courage, however kindled, is fanned by the breath ol
man : Purity lives and derives its life solely from the spirit ot
God.

The distinction just noticed has also been pointed out bj
Landor, in the Conversation between Leopold and Dupaty.
" Effeminacy and wickedness (he makes Leopold say, vol. i.
p. 62) were correlative terms both in Greek and Latin, as
were courage and virtue. Among the English, I hear, softness
and folly, virtue and purity, are synonymous. Let others deter-
mine on which side lies the indication of the more quiet, deli-
cate, and reflecting people." At the same time there is much
truth in De Maistre's remark {Soirees de St. Peter sbourg, i. p.
246) : " Ce fut avec une profonde sagesse que les Romains ap-
pellerent du meme nom la force et la vertu. II n'y a en effet
point de vertu proprement dite, sans victoire sur nous-memes ;
et tout ce qui ne nous cotite rien, ne vaut rien." Though mere
bravery was the etymological groundwork of the name, moral
energy became the main element in the idea, and, in its Stoic
form, absorbed all the rest of it.

Much has been written of late years about the spiritual

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 181

genius of modern times, as contrasted with the predominance
of the animal and sensuous life in the classical nations of an-
tiquity. And no doubt such a distinction exists. With the
ancients the soul was the vital and motive principle of the
body: among the moderns the tendency has rather been to
regard the body as merely the veil or garment of the soul.
This becomes easily discernible, when, as in the Tribune at
Florence, we see one of Raphael's heavenly Madonnas beside
one of those Venuses in which the Spirit of the Earth has put
forth all the fascination of its beauty. In the latter we look at
the limbs ; in the former we contemplate the feelings. Before
the one we might perhaps break out into the exclamation of
the Bedouin, Blessed be God, who has made beautiful women !
unless even that thought stray too high above the immediate
object before us. In the other the sight does not pause at the
outward lineaments, but pierces through to the soul ; and we
behold the meekness of the handmaiden, the purity of the
virgin, the fervent, humble, adoring love of the mother who
sees her God in her Child.

But when the source of this main difference between the two
great periods in the history of man has been sought after, the
seekers have gone far astray. They have bewildered them-
selves in the mazy forest of natural causes, where, as the old
saying has it, one can't see the wood for the trees! One set
have talkt about the influence of climate ; as if the sky and
soil of Italy had undergone some wonderful change between
the days of Augustus and those when Dante sang and Giotto
painted. Others have taken their stand among the Northern
nations, echoing Montesquieu's celebrated remark, that this fine
system was found in the woods ; as though mead and beer
could not intoxicate as well as wine ; as though Walhalla with
its blood and its skull-cups were less sensual than the Elysian
Islands of the Blest. A third party have gone a journey into
the East: as if it were possible for the human spirit to be
more imbruted, more bemired by sensuality, than amid the
voluptuousness and the macerations of Oriental religions. The
praise is not of man, but of God. It is only by His light, that

182 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

we see light. If we are at all better than those first men, who
were of the earth, earthy, it is because the second Man was the
Lord from Heaven.

Here let me take up the thread of the foregoing remark
on the two notions concerning the primary constituent of vir-
tue. Courage may be considered as purity in outward action;
purity as courage in the inner man, in the more appalling
struggles which are waged within our own hearts. The an-
cients, as was to be expected, lookt to the former : the moderns
have rather fixt their attention on the latter. This does not
result however, as seems to be hinted in the first of the pas-
sages quoted above, from our superior delicacy and reflexion.
At least the same question would recur: whence comes this
superiority of ours in delicacy and reflexion ? The cause is to
be found in Christianity, and in Christianity alone. Heathen
poets and philosophers may now and then have caught fleeting
glimpses of the principle which has wrought this change : but
as the foundation of all morality, the one paramount maxim, it
was first proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount

This leads me to notice a further advantage which the
modern principle has over the ancient ; that courage is much
oftener found without purity, than purity without courage.
For although in the physical world one may frequently see
causes, without their wonted and natural effects, such barren
causes have no place in the moral world. The concatenation
there is far more indissoluble, the circulation far more rapid
and certain. On the other hand the effect, or something like
it, is not seldom seen without the cause. Not only is there the
animal instinct, which impurity does not immediately extin-
guish ; there is also a bastard and ostentatious courage, gener-
ated and fed by the opinion of the world. But they who are
pure in heart, they who know what is promist to such purity,
they who shall see God, what can they fear ?

The chevalier sans peur was the chevalier sans reproche. It
is with perfect truth that our moral poet has represented his
Una as " of nought afraid : " for she was also " pure and
innocent as that same lamb." u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 183

Truth endues man's purposes with somewhat of immuta-
bility.

" Hell (a wise man has said) is paved with good intentions."
Pluck up the stones, ye sluggards, and break the devil's head
with them. A.

Pouvoir c'est vouloir.

To refer all pleasures to association is to acknowledge no
sound but echo.

Material evil tends to self-annihilation, good to increase.

Graeculus esuriens in coelum, jusseris, ibit. Alas ! the com-
mand has gone forth to the whole world ; but not even the
hungry Greek will obey it. u.

We often live under a cloud ; and it is well for us that we
should do so. Uninterrupted sunshine would parch our hearts :
we want shade and rain to cool and refresh them. Only it
behoves us to take care, that, whatever cloud may be spread
over us, it should be a cloud of witnesses. And every cloud
may be such, if we can only look through to the sunshine that
broods behind it. u.

Forms and regularity of proceeding, if they are not justice,
partake much of the nature of justice, which, in its highest
sense, is the spirit of distributive order.

Purity is the feminine, Truth the masculine, of Honour.

He who wishes to know how a people thrives under a grov-
eling aristocracy, should examine how vigorous and thick the
blades of grass are under a plantain.

Open evil at all events does this good : it keeps good on the

184 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

alert. When there is no likelihood of an enemy's approach-
ing, the garrison slumber on their post. u.

The English constitution being continually progressive, its
perfection consists in its acknowledged imperfection.

In times of public dissatisfaction add readily, to gratify men's
men's wishes. So the change be made without trepidation,
there is no contingent danger in the changing. But it is diffi-
cult to diminish safely, except in times of perfect quiet. The
first is giving ; the last is giving up. It would have been well
for England, if her ministers in 1831 had thought of this
distinction.

Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necroman-
cy, — by consulting the oracular dead. u.

Men of principle, from acting independently of instinct,
when they do wrong, are likely to do great wrong. The chains
of flesh are not formed of hooks and eyes, to be fastened and
loost at will. We are not like the dervise in the Eastern story,
that, having left our own body to animate another, we can re-
turn to it when we please. Much less can we go on acting a
double transmigration between the supernatural and the nat-
ural, wandering to and fro between the intellectual and animal
states, first unmanning and then remanning ourselves, each to
serve a turn. Humanity, once put off, is put off for worse, as
well as for better. If we take not good heed to live angelically
afterward, we must count on becoming devilish.

Men are most struck with form and character, women with
intellect; perhaps I should have said, with attainments. But
happily, after marriage, sense comes in to make weight for us.

A youth's love is the more passionate : virgin love is the
more idolatrous.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 185

When will talkers refrain from evil-speaking? When lis-
teners refrain from evil-hearing. At present there are many
so credulous of evil, they will receive suspicions and impres-
sions against persons whom they don't know, from a person
whom they do know . . in authority to be good for nothing.

Charity begins at home. This is one of the sayings with
which Selfishness tries to mask its own deformity. The name
of Charity is in such repute, to be without it is to be ill spoken
of. What then can the self-ridden do? except pervert the
name, so that Selfishness may seem to be a branch of it.

The charity which begins at home, is pretty sure to end
there. It has such ample work within doors, it flags and grows
faint the moment it gets out of them. We see this from what
happens in the cases, where even such as reject the prior claim
in its ordinary sense, are almost all disposed to maintain it.
Very few are there, who do not act according to the maxim,
that Charity begins at home, when it is to be shewn to faults or
vices, unless indeed they are imaginary or trifling : and few,
very few, are truly charitable to the failings of others, except
those who are severe to their own. For .indifference is not
charity, but the stone which the man of the world gives to his
neighbour in place of bread. u.

Some persons take reproof goodhumouredly enough, unless
you are so unlucky as to hit a sore place. Then they wince,
and writhe, and start up, and knock you down for your imperti-
nence, or wish you good morning. u.

Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quern laeseris. Such is
the devil's hatred of God : and so fiendish is the nature of
hatred, it is seldom very violent, and never implacable and
irreconcilable, except when it is unjust and groundless. In
truth what we hate is the image of our own wrong set before
us in him whom we have injured : and here as everywhere
our past sins are the fuel which make our passions burn the
fierceliest. u.

186 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that
it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness. For
sickness, by the time we feel it to be such, has its own trials, its
own selfishness : and to bear the one, and overcome the other,
is at such a season occupation more than enough for any who
have not been trained to it by previous discipline and practice.

The same may be said of old age, — perhaps with still more
justice, since old age has no beginning.

The feeling is often the deeper truth, the opinion the more
superficial one.

I suspect we have internal senses. The mind's eye, since
Shakspeare's time, has been proverbial: and we have also a
mind's ear. To say nothing of dreams, one certainly can listen
to one's own thoughts, and hear them, or believe that one hears
them, — the strongest argument adducible in favour of our
hearing anything. • . . •

Many objects are made venerable by extraneous circum-
stances. The moss, ivy, lichens, and weatherstains on that old
ruin, picturesque and soothing as they are, formed no part in
the conception of the architect, nor in the work or purpose of
the builder, but are the subsequent adaptations of Time, which
with regard to such things is in some sort an agent, bringing
them under the influences of Nature. And what should fol-
low ? Only that, in obeying the perceptions of the intellect,
and distinguishing logically between accidents and properties,
we turn not frowardly from the dictates of the heart, nor cease
to feel, because we have ascertained the composite nature of
our feelings ; as though it were impossible to contemplate the
parts in a living whole, and there were no other analysis than
dissection. Only this; and thankfulness for that which has
enabled us so to venerate ; and wisdom to preserve the mod-
ifying tints, which have coloured the object to the tone of our
imaginations.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 187

The difference between those whom the world esteems as
good, and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little
else than that the former have been better sheltered from temp-
tation, u.

Political economists tell us that self-love is the bond of soci-
ety. Strange then must be the construction of what is called
Society, when it is cemented by the strongest and most eating
of all solvents. For self-love not only dissolves all harmonious
fellowship between man and man, but even among the various
powers and faculties within the breast of the same man ; which,
when under its sway, can never work together, so as to produce
an orderly, organical whole. Can it be, that Society has been
feeding upon poisons, till they have become, not merely harm-
less, but, as this opinion would make them, the only wholesome,
nourishing diet ? U.

Ghosts never work miracles : nor do they ever come to life
again. When they appear, it is to beg to be buried, or to beg
to be revenged ; without which they cannot rest. Both ways
their object is to lie in peace. This should be borne in mind
by political and philosophical ghostseers, ghostlovers, and ghost-
mongers. The past is past, and must pass through the present,
not hop over it, into the future. u.

What are those teeth for, grandmamma? said little Red-Rid-
inghood to the Wolf. What are those laws for ? might many a
simple man ask in like manner of his rulers and governors.
And in sundry instances, I am afraid, the Wolf's answer would
not be far from the truth. u.

It is a mistake to suppose the poet does not know Truth by
sight quite as well as the philosopher. He must ; for he is ever
seeing her in the mirror of Nature. The difference between them
is, that the poet is satisfied with worshiping her reflected im-
age ; while the philosopher traces her out, and follows her to her
remote abode between cause and consequence, and there im-

188 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

pregnates her. The one loves and makes love to Truth ; the
other esteems and weds her. In simpler ages the two things
went together ; and then Poetry and Philosophy were united.
But that universal solvent, Civilization, which pulverizes to
cement, and splits to fagot, has divided them ; and they are
now far as the Poles asunder.

The imagination and the feelings have each their truths, as
well as the reason. The absorption of the three, so as to con-
centrate them in the same point, is one of the universalities
requisite in a true religion.

Man's voluntary works are shadows of objects perceived
either by his senses or his imagination. The inferiority of the
copies to their originals in the former class of works is evident.
Man can no more string dewdrops on a gossamer thread, than
he can pile up a Mont Blanc, or scoop out an ocean. How
passing excellent may we then hope to find the realities, from
which the offspring of his imagination are the shadows ! since
that offspring, all shadowy as they are, will often be fairer than
any sensible existence.

In a mist the hights can for the most part see each other ;
but the vallies cannot.

Mountains never shake hands. Their roots may touch : they
may keep together some way up : but at length they part com-
pany, and rise into individual, insulated peaks. So is it with
great men. As mountains mostly run in chains and clusters,
crossing the plain at wider or narrower intervals, in like man-
ner are there epochs in history when great men appear in clus-
ters also. At first too they grow up together, seeming to be
animated by the same spirit, to have the same desires and an-
tipathies, the same purposes and ends. But after a while the
genius of each begins to know itself, and to follow its own bent :
they separate and diverge more and more : and those who, when
young, were working in consort, stand alone in their old age.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 189

But if mountains do not shake hands, neither do they kick
each other. Their human counterparts unfortunately are more
pugnacious. Although they break out of the throng, and strive
to soar in solitary eminence, they cannot bear that their neigh-
bours should do the same, but complain that they impede the
view, and often try to overthrow them, especially if they are
higher. u.

Are we really more enlightened than our ancestors ? Or is
it merely the flaring up of the candle that has burnt down to
the socket, and is consuming that socket, as a prelude to its own
extinction ? Such at least has been the character of those for-
mer ages of the world, which have prided themselves on being
the most enlightened. u.

What way of circumventing a man can be so easy and suit-
able as a period t The name should be enough to put us on
our guard : the experience of every age is not.

I suspect the soul is never so hampered by its enthralment
within the body, as when it loves,. Pluck the feathers out of a
bird's wings ; and, be it ever so young, its youth will not save it
from suffering by the loss, when instinct urges it to attempt fly-
ing. Unless indeed there be no such thing as instinct; and
flying real kites be, like flying paper kites, a mere matter of
education : which reminds me to ask why, knowing there are
instincts of the body, we are to assume there are no instincts of
the mind ? To refer whatever we should at first sight take for
such to the eliciting power of circumstances, is idle. Circum-
stances do indeed call them out, at the particular moment when
they try their tendencies and strength, but no more create, or
rather (since creating is out of the question) no more produce
them, except as pulling the end of a roll of string produces it,
— that is, producit or draws it forth, — than flying is produced
or given by the need of locomotion.

To return to the soul : if, — and I believe the fact to be un-
deniable, — human nature, until it has been hardened by much

190 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

exposure to passion, and become used to the public eye, is fond
of veiling love with silence and concealment, while it makes
little or no scruple of exhibiting the kindred sentiment of friend-
ship ; I see no good way of accounting for this, except by refer-
ring such shamefastness of the soul to its sensitive recoil from a
form of affection in which, as Nature whispers, its best and
purest feelings are combined and kneaded up with body. .

The bashfulness which hides affection, from a dread that the
avowal will be ill received, — the fear of bringing one's judge-
ment in question by what some may deem a misplaced choice,
— the consciousness that all choice is invidious, from involving
postponement as well as preference, — all these feelings and
motives, I am aware, have often considerable weight. But they
must weigh nearly as much in the case of friendship. Friend-
ship indeed may be indulged in boyhood, while love is a boon
reserved for our maturity ; and hence doubtless frequently
during youth a fear of being thought presumptuous, if we are
discovered fancying ourselves grown old enough to love. But
this can never furnish the right key to a reserve, which is nei-
ther limited to youth, nor directly acted on by time, which varies
in different countries with their degree of moral cultivation, and
in individuals appears to proportion its intensity to the depth
and purity of the heart in which it cowers. .

The body, the body is the root of it. But these days of adul-
tery are much too delicate to allow of handling the subject
further.

Everybody is ready to declare that Cesar's wife ought to be
above suspicion; and many, while saying this, will dream that
Cesar must be of their kin. Yet most people, and among them
her husband, would be slow to acknowledge, what would seem
to follow a fortiori, that Cesar himself ought to be so too. Or
does a splash of mud defile a man more than a mortifying
ulcer ?

Among the numberless contradictions in our nature, hardly
any is more glaring than this, between our sensitiveness, to the
slightest disgrace which we fancy cast upon us from without,

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 191

and our callousness to the grossest which we bring down on our-
selves. In truth they who are the most sensitive to the one,
are often the most callous to the other. u.

The wise man will always be able to find an end in the
means ; though bearing in mind at the same time that they are
means to a higher end. And this is according to God's work-
ing, every member of whose universe is at once a part and a
whole. The unwise man, on the other hand, he whom the
Psalmist calls the fool, can never see anything but means in
the end. Doing good is with him the means of going to heav-
en ; and going to heaven is the means of getting to do nothing.
For this is the vulgar notion of heaven, — a comfortable sine-
cure, u.

What if we live many and various lives ? each providing us
its peculiar opportunities of acquiring some new good, and cast-
ing away the slough of some old evil; so that the course of our
existence should include a series of lessons, and the world be
indeed a stage on which every man fills many parts. If the
doctrine of transmigration has never been taught in this form,
such is perhaps the idea embodied in the pvOos.

Impromptus in recluse men are likely to be a loisir ; and
presence of mind in thinking men is likely to be recollection.
Cesar indeed says it is so generally (B. G. v. 33). " Titurius,
uti qui nihil ante providisset, trepidare, concursare, cohortesque
disponere; haec tamen ipsa timide, atque ut eum omnia deficere
viderentur : quod plerumque iis accidere consuevit, qui in ipso
negotio consilium capere coguntur. At Cotta, qui cogitasset
haec posse in itinere accidere, ... nulla in re communi saluti
deerat."

Much to the same purpose is Livy's explanation of Philope-
men's readiness in decision, when he suddenly found himself in
the presence of a hostile force : xxxv. 28. It is pleasant to see
theoretical and practical intellects thus jumping together.

192 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Napoleon is well said by Tiedge "to have improvisoed his
whole life." He was Fortune's football, which she kickt from
throne to throne, until at length by a sudden rebound he fell
into the middle of the Atlantic. Whereas a truly great man's
actions are works of art. Nothing with him is extemporized or
improvisoed. They involve their consequences, and develope
themselves along with the events they give birth to. u.

He must be a thorough fool, who can learn nothing from his
own folly. u.

Is not man the only automaton upon earth ? The things usu-
ally called so are in fact heteromatons. u.

Were nothing else to be learnt from the Rhetoric and Ethics
of Aristotle, they should be studied by every educated English-
man as the best of commentaries on Shakspeare.

No poet comes near Shakspeare in the number of bosom
lines, — of lines that we may cherish in our bosoms, and that
seem almost as if they had grown there,- — of lines that, like
bosom friends, are ever at hand to comfort, counsel, and glad-
den us, under all the vicissitudes of life, — of lines that, accord-
ing to Bacon's expression, " come home to our business and
bosoms," and open the door for us to look in, and to see what is
nestling and brooding there. u.

How many Englishmen admire Shakspeare ? Doubtless all
who understand him ; and, it is to be hoped, a few more. For
how many Englishmen understand Shakspeare ? Were Dioge-
nes to set out on his search through the land, I trust he would
bring home many hundreds, not to say thousands, for every one
I should put up. To judge from what has been written about
him, the Englishmen who understand Shakspeare are little
more numerous than those who understand the language spoken
in Paradise. You will now and then meet with ingenious re-
marks on ^articular passages, and even on particular characters,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 193

or rather on particular features in them. But these remarks
are mostly as incomplete and unsatisfactory as the description
of a hand or foot would be, unless viewed with reference to the
whole body. He who wishes to trace the march and to scan
the operations of this most marvellous genius, and to discern
the mysterious organization of his wonderful works, will find
little help but what comes from beyond the German Ocean.

It is scarcely worth while asking the third question: Would
Shakspeare have chosen rather to be admired, or to be under-
stood? Not however that any one could understand without
admiring, though many may admire without understanding
him. Birds are fond of cherries, yet know little about vegeta-
ble physiology.

Some years ago indeed there seemed to be ground for hoping
that the want here spoken of might be supplied by the publica-
tion of Coleridge's Lectures on Shakspeare. For though Cole-
ridge, as he himself says of Warburton, is often hindered from
seeing the thoughts of others by " the mist-working swarm," or
rather by the radiant flood of his own, — though often, like the
sun, when looking at the planets, he only beholds his own image
in the objects of his gaze, and often, when his eye darts on a
cloud, will turn it into a rainbow, — yet he had a livelier per-
ception, than any other Englishman, of the two cardinal ideas
of all criticism, — that every work of genius is at once an
organic whole in itself, and the part and member of a living,
organic universe, of that poetical world in which the spirit of
man manifests itself by successive avatars. These, the two
main ideas which have been brought to light and unfolded by
the philosophical criticism of Germany since the days of Winc-
kelmann and Lessing, he united with tllat moral, political, and
practical discernment, which are the highest endowments of
the English mind, and which give our great writers a dignity
almost unparalleled elsewhere, from their ever-wakeful con-
sciousness that man is a moral, as well as sentient and percip-
ient and thinking and knowing being, and that his relations as
a moral being are of all the most momentous and the highest.
Coleridge's own imagination too enabled him to accompany all
9 m

194 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

other poets in their boldest flights, and then to feel most truly
in his element. Nor could anything be too profound or too
subtile for his psychological analysis. In fact his chief failing
as a critic was his fondness for seeking depth below depth, and
knot within knot : and he would now and then try to dive, when
the water did not come up to his ancles.

Above all, for understanding Shakspeare, Coleridge had the
two powers, which are scarcely less mighty in our intellectual
than in our moral and spiritual life, Faith and Love, — a
boundless faith in Shakspeare's truth, and a love for him, akin
to that with which philosophers study the works of Nature,
shrinking from no labour for the sake of getting at a satisfac-
tory solution, and always distrusting themselves until they have
found one, in a firm confidence that Wisdom will infallibly be
justified by her children. It is quite touching to see how hum-
bly this great thinker and poet hints his doubts, when the pro-
priety of any passage in Shakspeare appears questionable to
his understanding : and most cheering is it to read his assur-
ance, that " in many instances he has ripened into a perception
of beauties, where he had before descried faults ; " and that
throughout his life, "at every new accession of information,
after every successful exercise of meditation, and every fresh
presentation of experience, he had unfailingly discovered a pro-
portionate increase of wisdom and intuition in Shakspeare."
See his Literary Remains, Vol. ii. pp. 52, 115, 139. The
same truth is enforced by Mr De Quincey in his admirable
remarks on the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.

In the study of poetry, as in yet higher studies, it is often
necessary that we should believe, before we can understand :
and through the energy, patience, and perseverance, which
Faith alone can inspire, do we mount to the understanding of
what we have already believed in. How, for instance, should
we ever have discerned the excellences of the Greek drama,
without a previous faith in its excellence, strong enough not to
shrink from the manifold difficulties which would else have
repelled us ? Who would be at the trouble of cracking a nut,
if he did not believe there was a kernel within it? A study

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 195

pursued in this spirit of faith is sure of being continually re-
warded by new influxes of knowledge, not only on account of
the spring which such a spirit gives to our faculties, but also
because it delivers them from most of the prejudices, which
make our minds the thralls of the present. Common men, on
the other hand, are prone to look down on whatever passes
their comprehension, thus betraying the natural affinity between
ignorance and contempt.

Unfortunately Coleridge's Lectures are among the treasures
which the waves of forgetfulness have swallowed up. Precious
fragments of them however have been preserved ; and these,
like almost all his writings, are rich in thoughts fitted to awaken
reflexion, and to guide it. And that there are writers amongst
us, who understand Shakspeare, and might teach others to
understand him, is proved by the remarks on Macbeth just
referred to, as well as by the very acute and judicious Obser-
vations on Shakspeare's Romeo as compared with the Romeo
acted on the Stage. Much delicacy of observation too and ele-
gance of taste is shewn in the Characteristics of Shakspeare's
Women, — one of the happiest subjects on which a female pen
was ever employed. u.

" The German writers (Coleridge is reported to have said)
have acquired an elegance of thought and of mind, just as we
have attained a style and smartness of composition : so that, if
you were to read an ordinary German author as an English
one, you would say, This man has something in him ; this man
thinks : whereas it is merely a method acquired by them, as we
have acquired a style." Letters and Conversations of S. T. C.
Vol. ii. p. 4.

Such pieces of tabletalk are not legitimate objects of criti-
cism ; because we can never feel sure how far the report is an
accurate one, or how far the opinion uttered may have been
modified, either expressly by words, or implicitly by the occa-
sion which prompted it. What is here said is quite true, pro-
vided it be not understood disparagingly. The peculiar value
of modern German literature does not arise, except in a few

196 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

instances, from the superior genius of the writers, so much as
from their being better trained and disciplined in the principles
and method of knowledge. For this advantage they are in-
debted to their philosophical education. Fifty years ago the
common run of German writers were as superficial and imme-
thodical as those of the rest of Europe. The love of system,
which has always characterized the nation, only prevented any
gleam of light from breaking through the clouds of dulness in
which they wrapt themselves. But now, as in most of the
better writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we
may discern the influence of the scholastic logic, in which they
were trained, so one can hardly look into a German work of
the present century, on whatever subject of enquiry, without
perceiving that it is written by a countryman of Kant and
Fichte and Schelling. And surely this is the highest reward
which can fall to the lot of any human intellect, to be thus dif-
fused through and amalgamated with the intellect of a whole
people, to live in their minds, not merely when they are think-
ing of you and talking of you, but even when they are totally
unconscious of your personal existence.

Nay, what but this is the ground of the superiority of civil-
ized nations to savages ? Their minds are better moulded and
disciplined, more or less, by the various processes of education.
In fact training, if it does not impart strength, fosters and
increases it, and renders it serviceable, and prevents its running
waste: so that, assuming the quantity of ability allotted by
Nature to two nations to be the same, that which has the better
system of moral and intellectual culture, will bring up the
greater number of able men.

It is true, the forms of philosophical thought, when generally
prevalent, so as to become fashionable in a literature, will be
used by many without discernment of their value and power.
Many will fancy that the possession of a few phrases is enough
to open the gates of all knowledge to them, and to carry them
at once beyond the wisdom of former ages, without any neces-
sity for personal research or meditation : and imbecility, self-
complacently mouthing big phrases, is more than usually offen-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 197

sive. Perhaps too it is impossible to devise any scheme of
education, which can be reckoned upon for promoting the
development of poetical genius. This is implied in the saying,
Poeta nascitur, non jit. Nor is genius in philosophy, or in art,
though more dependent on foregoing circumstances than in
poetry, to be elicited with certainty by any system. But for
the talents employed in the various enquiries of philology and
science, a great deal may be done by appropriate stimulants
and instruction, by putting them in the right way, and setting
before them the mark they are to aim at. Hence, whenever a
man of genius plants a colony in an unexplored region of
thought, he finds followers ready to join him in effecting what
his own unassisted arm could only partially have accomplisht :
and though stray pieces of ore may be pickt up without excit-
ing much notice, if a mine of truth has once been successfully
opened, it is mostly workt on until.it is exhausted.

Soon after reading the remark of Coleridge's just cited, I
happened to open a German periodical work containing a dis-
sertation on the Amphitryon of Plautus. That play, the writer
observes, differs from all the other Roman comedies in having
a mythological subject, which occasions essential differences in
its treatment ; so that it forms a distinct species : and he pro-
poses to examine the nature of this peculiar form of comedy,
according to its external and internal character ; not to explain
the poetical composition of the Amphitryon, considered as an
individual work of art, but merely to determine the place it is
to hold in the history of the Roman drama. Now this, which
is exactly the plan any intelligent German writer would have
taken in treating the same subject, may exemplify the quality
in German literature spoken of by Coleridge. Here too one
should say, This man knows what he is talking about : and one
should say so with good reason. For in criticism, as in every
other branch of knowledge, prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae
est. He who has got the clue, may thread the maze. Yet the
method of investigation here is totally different from what an
English scholar would have pursued. The notion of regarding
the Amphitryon as a distinct species of ancient comedy, and of

198 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

considering that species in its relation to the rest of the Roman
drama, — the distinction drawn between this historical view of
it, and the esthetical analysis of it taken by itself, — these are
thoughts which would never have entered the head of an Eng-
lish critic, unless he had been inoculated with them either
directly or indirectly from Germany. Deluged as we are with
criticism in every shape, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily,
— many thousands of pages as are written on criticism in Eng-
land every year, — we hardly ever find the glimmering of a
suspicion that there is anything essential in the form of a poem,
or that there are any principles and laws to determine it, or
that a poet has anything to do, except to get an interesting
story, and to describe interesting characters, and to deck out
his pages with as many fine thoughts and pretty images as he
can muster. No wonder that our criticism is so worthless and
unprofitable ! that it is of no manner of use, either in teaching
our writers how to write, or our readers how to read !

Let me allude to another instance. Works containing criti-
cisms on all Shakspeare's plays have been publisht of late
years, by Hazlitt in England, and by Francis Horn in Ger-
many. Nobody can doubt that Hazlitt by nature had the
acuter and stronger understanding of the two: he had culti-
vated it by metaphysical studies : he had a passionate love for
poetry, and yielded to no man in his admiration for Shakspeare.
By his early intercourse with Coleridge too he had been led to
perceive more clearly than most Englishmen, that poetry is not
an arbitrary and chanceful thing, that it has a reason of its
own, and that, when genuine, it springs from a vital idea, which
is at once constitutive and regulative, and which manifests itself
not in a technical apparatus, but in the free symmetry of a liv-
ing form. Yet, from the want of a proper intellectual discipline
and method, his perception of this truth never became an intu-
ition, nor coalesced with the rest of his knowledge : and owing
to this want, and no doubt to that woful deficiency of moral
discipline and principle, through which his talents went to rack,
Hazlitt's work on Shakspeare, though often clever and spark-
ling, and sometimes ingenious in pointing out latent beauties in

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 199

particular passages, is vastly inferior to Horn's as an analytical
exposition of the principles and structure of Shakspeare's plays,
tracing and elucidating the hidden, labyrinthine workings of his
all-vivifying, all-unifying genius. it.

When a subtile critic has detected some recondite beauty in
Shakspeare, the vulgar are fain to cry that Shakspeare did not
mean it. Well! what of that? If it be there, his genius
meant it. This is the very mark whereby to know a true poet.
There will always be a number of beauties in his works, which
he never meant to put into them.

This is one of the resemblances between the works of
Genius and those of Nature, a resemblance betokening that
the powers which produce them are akin. Each, beside its
immediate, apparent purpose, is ever connected by certain deli-
cate and almost imperceptible fibres, by numberless ties of
union and communion, and the sweet intercourse of giving and
receiving, with the universe of which it forms a part. Hereby
the poet shews that he is not a mere " child of Time, But off-
spring of the Eternal Prime." His works are not narrowed to
the climes and seasons, the manners and thoughts that give
birth to them, but spread out their invisible arms through time
and space, and, when generations, and empires, and even relig-
ions have past away, still stand in unwaning freshness and
truth. They have a living assimilative power. As man
changes, they disclose new features and aspects, and ever look
him in the face with the reflexion of his own image, and speak
to him with the voice of his own heart ; so that after thousands
of years we still welcome them as we would a brother.

This too is the great analogy between Genius and Goodness,
that, unconscious of its own excellences, it works, not so much
by an intelligent, reflective, prospective impulse of the will, as
by the prompting of a higher spirit, breathing in it and through
it, coming one knows not whence, and going one knows not
whither ; under the sway of which spirit, whenever it lifts up
its head and shakes its locks, it scatters light and splendour
around. The question therefore, whether a great poet meant

200 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

such a particular beauty, comes to much the same thing as the
question, whether the sun means that his light should enter into
such or such a flower. He who works in unison with Nature
and Truth, is sure to be far mightier and wiser than him-
self. u.

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty
the less ? or a sense the more ?

Some hearts are like a melting peach, but with a larger,
coarser, harder stone.

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popu-
lar election.

Almost every rational man can shew nearly the same num-
ber of moral virtues. Only in the good man the active and
beneficent virtues look outward, the passive and parsimonious
inward. In the bad man it is just the contrary. His fore-
thought, his generosity, his longsuffering is for himself; his
severity and temperance and frugality are for others. But the
religious virtues belong solely to the religious. God hides
Himself from the wicked : or at least the wicked blinds himself
to God. If he practically acknowledge any, which is only now
and then, it is one whose nonexistence is certain, whose fabu-
lousness is evident to him . . the Devil.

We like slipping, but not falling : our real desire is to be
tempted enough.

The man who will share his wealth with a woman, has some
love for her: the man who Can resolve to share his poverty
with her, has more . . of course supposing him to be a man,
not a child, or a beast.

Our statequacks of late years have thought fit to style them-
selves Radical Reformers: and though the title involves an

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 201

absurdity, it is not on that account less fitted for the sages who
have assumed it ; many of whom moreover may have no very
clear notion what the epithet they give themselves means. For
what can a Eadical Reformer be ? Is he a Reformer of the
roots of things ? But Nature buries these out of sight, and will
not allow man to tamper with them, assigning him the task of
training and pruning the stem and branches. Or is a Radical
Reformer one who tears up a tree by the roots, and reforms it
by laying it prostrate ? If so, our Reformers may indeed put
in a claim to the title, and might fairly contest it with the hurri-
cane of last autumn. But what can be the good or comfort of
a reformation, which is only another name for destruction ?

The word may perhaps be borrowed from medicine, in which
we speak of a radical cure. This however is a metaphor
implying the extirpation, or complete uprooting of the disease,
after which the sanative powers of Nature will restore the con-
stitution to health. But there is no such sanative power in a
state ; where the mere removal of abuses does not avail to set
any vital faculties in action. In truth this is only another form
of the errour, by which man, ever quicker at destroying than at
producing, has confounded repentance with reformation, fiera-
fxeXeia with fxerdvoia. Whereas the true Reformer is he who
creates new institutions, and gives them life and energy, and
trusts to them for throwing off such evil humours as may be
lying in the body politic. The true Reformer is the Seminal
Reformer, not the Radical. And this is the way the Sower,
who went forth to sow His seed, did really reform the world,
without making any open assault to uproot what was already
existing. 1837. u.

A writer, for whom I have a high esteem, in the Politics for
the People (p. 222), objects to the foregoing remarks on the
name Radical, and asserts that " there can be no Seminal Re-
form, without Radical Reform first, where Reform is needed at
all. Is the wheat (he asks) sown amidst the stubble, or on the
rush-grown meadow, or on the common covered with heather and
gorse ? Must not the stern ploughshare first be driven through

202 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

the soil, rooting up, right and left, all evil growths of the past,
all good growths grown useless ! Was He not the greatest of
Radical Reformers, of whose work it was said, And now also
the axe is laid to the root of the trees ; therefore every one that
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
Since the first day when the ground was curst for man's sake,
and made to bring forth thorns and thistles, it has been every
true man's lot and duty to be a Radical Reformer, whether on
a small scale or a large. But such Radical Reform is indeed
only a means towards Seminal Reform ; the weeds are only
pluckt up, that the good seed may be put in ; and that seed
every true man is bound to be throwing in as perpetually, as
he is perpetually rooting out the weeds. It is not the Radical
Reformer who is the Destructive ; it is the blind Conservative,
who looks upon the thorns and thistles as holy, instead of feel-
ing that they are God's curse."

In reply to these objections, I will merely point out a couple
of fallacies, as they seem to me, contained in them.

The first is, that the analogy between agriculture and state-
culture is pusht far beyond its due limits. The vegetable crop,
as it has no living soul, no permanent being, — as it has a
merely transient purpose, external to itself, — is swept away at
the end of the harvest, when that purpose is fulfilled. But no
Reformer, however Radical, not even Robespierre, has ventured
to lay down that the generations of mankind are to be swept
away one after another, in order to make room for their succes-
sors. The chain of the human race does not consist of a num-
ber of distinct, annual links: each annual link combines the
produce of a century ; and all these run one into the other. So
too do their habits ; so do their institutions, social and political.
There is no new beginning in the history of the world : or, if
there is one new era, it was introduced by a superhuman Author ;
and even that stretches back through the whole of anterior
history. The French Republicans did indeed attempt to estab-
lish a new era : but the builders of Babel were not more sig-
nally confounded, than they by the powers which they evoked
from hell. The inherent vitality of the nation, after a while,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 203

prevailed over the destroyer, not however without incalculable
misery at the time, and grievous deterioration to the moral
character of the people. Hence I cannot see in what sense we
can speak of " driving the stern ploughshare " through the
social life and institutions of a nation. He who does not know
that a nation has a living, permanent being, and that its organic
institutions are intimately connected with that permanent life,

he who feels no reverence for that being, and the institutions

connected with it, — he who worships his own notions above ,
them, and would set up his own fancies in their stead, — is
sadly lacking in that spirit, which is the primary element in the
character of a wise and practical Reformer.

In the next place it seems to me a total mistake, to apply
the words of the Baptist, — And now the axe is laid to the root
of the tree, &c. — to any work ordained for man. When the
appointed time comes, God does indeed shew forth His justice
by sweeping away that which is utterly corrupt. As He
swept away the cities of the plain, so, when her cup was full,
did He sweep away Jerusalem. Yet even the Son of God, in
His human manifestation, came not to destroy, but to save. He
would have gathered Jerusalem under His wings; but she
would not : therefore was her house left desolate. Assuredly
too this is the only part of His office, which we are called to
discharge. As His ministers, we are to be ministers of salva-
tion, not of destruction. The evil in ourselves indeed we are
to pluck up, branch and root : but in our dealings with others,
unless we have a special office committed to us by the laws of
family or national life, our task will mainly be to contend
against evil by sowing the seeds of good, not by Radical Re-
form, but by Seminal. The satirist, the rhetorician, the moral-
ist, will indeed try the former, and will therefore fail. The
Christian has a higher power entrusted to him, the power of
God's goodness and mercy, — the Gospel of redemption and
salvation, — not the woes of the Trojan prophetess, who could
gain no credence, but the glad tidings of the Kingdom of
Heaven : and if he relies on this one power, he will succeed,
where others must needs fail. For Earth cannot overpower

204 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Hell; but Heaven can. Elijah, under the old Dispensation,
might be commissioned to destroy the worship of Baal by the
sword : such destruction however is ineffectual, transitory : that
which has been destroyed sprouts up again : for the roots dive
beyond the reach of the hoe and pickaxe, even into the depths
of the heart. Hence vou must sow the seed, which will change,
and, as it were, leaven the heart, so that the heart itself will
cast them out convulsively.

This was what our Lord Himself did. Though the Jewish
nation was doomed to perish, every act of His life was designed
to save the Jews, if they would accept His salvation. Nor did
the Apostles go forth to destroy the idols and idolatries of the
nations. In so doing they would have forsaken Christ's way,
and would have anticipated Mahomet's. Thry preacht Christ
and the Resurrection, — Christ crucified, the power of God
unto salvation; and hereby they overthrew the idolatries and
superstitions of the nations, not transitorily, but permanently.
So again at the Reformation, Luther, having the true Apostol-
ical spirit in him, — the spirit of a Seminal, not of a Radical
Reformer, was ever strenuous in resisting all attempts to carry
out the Reformation by destructive, revolutionary, radical meas-
ures. Preach the word of God, he said, — preach the truth;
and the truth will set us free. The shooting of the new leaves
will push off the old ones, far more effectually than the winds
can tear them off. And the former is the human, Christian
procedure : the latter is committed to the blind powers of Na-
ture, though man, acting under the sway of his passions, may at
times become their instrument.

These same principles will also regulate the conduct of the
true Christian statesman. Like Luther, he will be very slow
and reluctant to destroy any ancient institution, knowing that
the temporary evils which may arise from its perversion, are
caused, not by the institution itself, but by the heart and will of
those who pervert it, and that this heart and will would in no
degree be corrected by its destruction. He will indeed find
frequent occasion for lopping and pruning off morbid outgrowths
and overgrowths, as well as for training the healthy growths of

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 205

each successive year: but he will remember that this is his
business, to prune off, not to cut down. The sophists of the
last century, and at the beginning of the present, forgot this :
nor is it sufficiently borne in mind now. They forgot that a
nation has a living, organic growth, which manifests itself in its
constitution, and in its various institutions; they regarded it
rather as a machine, which they might take to pieces, and re-
construct at will, this way or that. These notions, which are
refuted by the teaching of all the greatest political philosophers,
above all of Burke, — and which have been still more signally
refuted by the cracking and breaking up of all such manufac-
tured constitutions, — are so likewise by the two great witness-
es that the history of the world brings forward, to shew the
wisdom and permanence of organic constitutions, expanding and
developing themselves along with the growth of the nation, and
continuing the same, even as man is the same in manhood and
old age as in childhood, notwithstanding the innumerable accre-
tions which he has been continually assimilating and incorporat-
ing with himself. These two great witnesses are Eome and
England. Both indeed had to pass through divers critical tri-
als, when the wilfulness and selfishness of man tried to suspend
and arrest the organic development of the Constitution: and
Rome at last perisht, when that development seemed to have
become a practical impossibility. But each is the witness for
true political wisdom, Rome in the ancient world, England in
the modern. 1851. u.

Nature is mighty. Art is mighty. Artifice is weak. For
Nature is the work of a mightier power than man. Art is the
work of man, under the guidance and inspiration of a mightier
power. Artifice is the work of mere man, in the imbecility of
his mimic understanding. u.

What is the use of it ? is the first question askt in England
by almost everybody about almost everything. When forein-
ers, who have learnt English from our older writers, come
amongst us, hearing such frequent enquiries after use, they

206 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

must fancy they have fallen among a set of usurers. No won-
der so many of them have applied for loans. The only wonder,
as we are not usurers, is how they got them.

Still there are a few things, a husband for one's daughter, a
Rubens, four horses, a cure of souls, — the use of which is
never askt : probably because it is so evident. In those cases
the first question, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, is,
What are they worth $ The worth of a cure of souls! O
miserable money-loving people ! whose very language is pros-
tituted to avarice. Wealth is money: Fortune is money:
Worth is money : and, had not God for once been beforehand
with the world, Providence would have been money too. The
worth of a cure of souls is Heaven or Hell, according as he
who is appointed to it does his duty or neglects it.

You want to double your riches, and without gambling or
stockjobbing. Share it. Whether it be material or intellect-
ual, its rapid increase will amaze you. What would the sun
have been, had he folded himself up in darkness ? Surely he
would have gone out. So would Socrates.

This road to wealth seems to have been discovered some
three thousand years ago. At least it was known to Hesiod,
and has been recommended by him in the one precious line he
has left us. But even he complains of the fools, who did not
know that half is more than the whole. And ever since,
though mankind have always been in full chase after riches,
though they have not feared to follow Columbus and Gama in
chase of it, though they have waded through blood, and crept
through falsehood, and trampled on their own hearts, and been
ready to ride on a broomstick, in chase of it, very few have
ever taken this road, albeit the easiest, the shortest, and the
surest. it.

One of the first things a soldier has to do, is to harden him-
self against heat and cold. He must enure himself to bear
sudden and violent changes. In like manner they who enter
into public life should begin by dulling their sensitiveness to

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 207

praise and blame. He who cannot turn his back on the one,
and face the other, will probably be beguiled by his favorite,
into letting his enemy come behind him, and wound him when
off his guard. Let him keep a firm footing, and beware of
being lifted up, remembering that this is the commonest trick
by which wrestlers throw their antagonists. u.

Gratification is distinct from happiness in the common appre-
hension of mankind ; and so is selfishness from wisdom. But
passion in its blindness disregards, or rather speaks as if it dis-
regarded, the first distinction; and sophists, taking advantage
of this, confound the last. Their confusion however is worse
confounded. For it is not every gratification that is selfish, in
the ordinary acceptation of the term, which implies blame and
sin ; but such only as is undue or inordinate, whether in kind or
degree. Never was a man called selfish for quenching his
thirst with water, where water was not scarce ; many a man
has been justly, for drinking Champagne. The argument then,
if unraveled into a syllogism, would hang together thus :

Some gratifications are selfish :

No gratification is happiness :
therefore,

All happiness is selfish.
I am not surprised that these gentlemen speak ill of logic.

Misers are the greatest spendthrifts : and spendthrifts often
end in becoming the greatest misers. u.

The principle gives birth to the rule : the motive may justify
the exception.

When the Parisians set up a naked prostitute as the goddess
of Reason, they can hardly have been aware what an apt type
she afforded of their Reason, and indeed of all Reason, — if
that divine name be not forfeited by such a traitorous act, —
which turns away its face from heaven, and throws off its allegi-
ance to the truth as it is in God. When Reason has done this,

208 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

it is stark naked, and ready to prostitute itself to every capri-
cious lust, whether of the flesh, or of the spirit. One can nev-
er repeat too often, that Keason, as it exists in man, is only our
intellectual eye, and that, like the eye, to see, it needs light, —
to see clearly and far, it needs the light of heaven. u.

Entireness, illimitableness is indispensable to Faith. What
we believe, we must believe wholly and without reserve;
wherefore the only perfect and satisfying object of Faith is God.
A Faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much
and no more, that will trust thus far and no further, is none.
It is only Doubt taking a nap in an elbow chair. The husband,
whose scepticism is prurient enough to contemplate the possibil-
ity of his wife's proving false, richly deserves that she should
do so. u.

Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in
others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in
his neighbour for what he sees in himself. As to the pure
all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are
impure. u.

Do you wish to find out a person's weak points ? Note the
failings he has the quickest eye for in others. They may not
be the very failings he is himself conscious of; but they will be
their next-door neighours. No man keeps such a jealous look-
out as a rival. u.

In reading the Apostolical Epistles, we should bear in mind
that they are not scientific treatises, armed at all points against
carpers and misconceivers, but occasional letters, addrest to
disciples, who, as the writer knew, were both able and in-
clined to make due allowance for the latitude of epistolary
expression.

But is not this what the Socinians contend for ?

If it were, I should have nothing to say against them. What
I object to in them is their making, not due allowances, but un-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 209

duej — allowances discountenanced by the plainest passages as
well as the uniform tenour of the Sacred Writings, by the whole
analogy, and, so far as we dare judge of them, the prompting
principles of Revelation.

But how shall we discern the due from the undue ?

As we discern everything else : by the honest use of a culti-
vated understanding. If we have not banisht the Holy Spirit
by slights and excesses, if we have fed His lamp in our hearts
with prayer, if we have improved and strengthened our facul-
ties by education and exercise, and then sit down to study the
Bible with enquiring and teachable minds, we need not doubt
of discovering its meaning ; not indeed purely, — for where
find an intellect so colourless as never to tinge the light that
falls upon it ? not wholly, — for how fathom the ocean of God's
word? but with such accuracy, and in such degree, as shall
suffice for the uses of our spiritual life. If we have neglected
this previous discipline, if we take up the book with stupid or
ignorant, lazy or negligent, arrogant or unclean and do-no-good
hands, we shall in running through its pages stumble on many
things dark and startling, on many things which, aggravated
by presumptuous heedlessness, might prove destructively of-
fensive.

What then are the poor to do ?

They must avail themselves of oral instruction, have recourse,
so far as may be, to written helps, and follow the guidance of
God's ministers. But suitable faculties seem indispensable.
Let a man be ever so pious and sincere, if blind, he could not
see the book, nor, if unlettered, read it, nor, if ignorant of Eng-
lish, know the meaning of the words, nor, if half-witted, com-
prehend the sentences. Why suppose that the intellectual
hindrances to mastering the book end here ? especially when
we allow the existence of moral hindrances, and are aware that
they combine with the intellectual in unascertainable and indef-
inite proportions ; if they do not rather form their essence, or at
least their germ. You grant that carelessness and impatience
may hide the meaning of the book from us : you should be sure
that stupidity does not spring from carelessness, nor bad logic

N

210 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

from impatience, before you decide so confidently that stupidity
and bad logic cannot.

Search the Scriptures, said Christ. " Non dixit legite, sed
scrutamini (as Chrysostom, quoted by Jeremy Taylor, On the
Minister's Duty, Serm. II Vol. vi. p. 520, observes on this
text), quia oportet profundius effodere, ut quae alte delitescant
invenire possimus. The Jews have a saying : qui non advertit
quod supra et infra in scriptoribus legitur, is pervertit verba
Dei viventis. He that will understand God's meaning, must
look above, and below, and round about." Now to look at
things below the surface, we must dig down to them. They
who omit this, from whatever cause, be it the sluggishness of
their will, or merely the bluntness of their instrument, — for
this question, though important in judging of the workman, can-
not affect the accomplishment of the work, — will never gain
the buried treasure. Those on the other hand who dig as they
are taught to do, will reach it in time, if they faint not. The
number of demi-semi-Christians in the world no more estab-
lishes the contrary, than the number of drunkards in the world
establishes the impossibility of keeping sober.

But, as Taylor remarks in the same Sermon (p. 509),
"though many precious things are reserved for them who
dig deep and search wisely, medicinal plants, and corn, and
grass, things fit for food and physic, are to be had in every
field." The great duties of a Christian are so plainly exprest,
that they who run may read, and that all who listen may un-
derstand them : expounders of doctrine are appointed by the
Church : and in every case, to every one who truly seeks, suf-
ficient will be given for his salvation.

How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts, when we
are surprised to find our prayers answered ! instead of feeling
sure that they will be so, if they are only offered up in faith,
and are in accord with the will of God. a'

Moses, when the battle was raging, held up his arms to
heaven, with the rod of God in his hand ; and thus Israel

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 211

overcame Amalek. Hence a notion got abroad through the
world, that in times of difficulty or danger the mightiest weapon
man can make use of is prayer. But Moses felt his arms grow
heavy ; and he was forced to call in Aaron and Hur to hold
them up. In like manner do we all too readily weary of prayer,
and feel it become a burthen, and let our hands drop ; and then
Amalek prevails.

Here however the wisdom of the eighteenth century has
devised a substitute, at least for one of the cases in which our
ancestors used to hold up their arms to heaven. Franklin has
taught us to hold up iron bars to heaven, which have the ad-
vantage of never growing weary, and under the guard of which
we may feel sure that the storm will pass over without harming
us. Besides they allow us to employ our hands to better pur-
pose, in working, or eating, or fighting.

Still there are sundry kinds of dangers, from which Frank-
lin's conductors will not secure us : and against these, till the
time when matter shall have utterly choked and stifled spirit,
we still need the help of prayer. And as our flesh is so weak,
that our prayers soon droop and become faint, unless they are
upheld, Christ and the Holy Spirit vouchsafe to uphold our
prayers, and to breathe the power of faith into them, so that
they may mount heavenward, and to bear them up to the very
Throne of Grace. u.

All Religions, — for absolute Pantheism is none, — must of
necessity be anthropomorphic. The idea of God must be
adapted to the capacities of the human imagination. Chris-
tianity differs from all other Religions in this, that its anthro-
pomorphism is theopneustic. U.

A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adver-
sity. A strong and deep mind has two highest tides, — when
the moon is at the full, and when there is no moon. u.

What a pity it is that there are so many words ! When-
ever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying

212 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to
choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a rib-
bon ... or a husband.

Now on a question of millinery, or of man-millinery, I should
be slow to venture an opinion. But style is a less intricate
matter ; and with regard to the choice of words a clear and
simple rule may be laid down, which can hardly be followed
too punctually or too assiduously. First however, as it is a
lady I am addressing, let me advise you to lessen your perplex-
ities by restricting yourself to home manufactures. You may
perhaps think it looks pretty to garnish your letters with such
phrases as de tout mon cceur. Now with all my heart is really
better English : the only advantage on the side of the other
expression is its being less sincere. Whatever may be the su-
periority of French silks, or French lace, English words sound
far best from English lips : and, notwithstanding the example
of Desdemona, one can seldom look with perfect complacency
on the woman who gives up her heart to the son of another
people. Man may leave country as well as father and mother :
for action and thought find their objects everywhere. But
must not feelings pine and droop, when cut off from the home
and speech of their childhood ?

As a general maxim however, when you come to a cross-road,
you can hardly do better than go right onward. You would
do so involuntarily in speaking: do so likewise in writing.
When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the
commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words, as you
would rouge : love simple ones, as you would native roses on
your cheeks. Act as you might be disposed to do on your
estate : employ such words as have the largest families, keep-
ing clear of foundlings, and of those of which nobody can tell
whence they come, unless he happens to be a scholar.

This is just the advice which Ovid gives :

Munda, sed e medio, consuetaque verba, puellae
Scribite : sermonis publica forma placet.

To the same effect is the praise which Chaucer bestows on his
Virginia :

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 213

Though she were wise as Pallas, dare I sain
Her faconde eke full womanly and plain.
No contrefeted termes hadde she
To semen wise : but after her degree
She spake ; and all her wordes more or less
Sounding in virtue and in gentillesse.

Exquisite examples of this true mother English are to be
found in the speeches put by Shakspeare into the mouth of his
female characters. "No fountain from its rocky cave E'er
tript with foot so free : " never were its waters clearer, more
transparent, or more musical. This indeed is the peculiar
beauty of a feminine style, munda verba, sed e medio, consue-
taque, choice and elegant words, but such as are familiar in
wellbred conversation, — words not used scientifically, or tech-
nically, or etymologically, but according to their customary
meaning. It is from being guided wholly by usage, undis-
turbed by extraneous considerations, and from their character-
istic fineness of discernment with regard to what is fit and ap-
propriate, as well as from their being much less blown about by
the vanity of writing cleverly or sententiously, that sensible,
educated women have a simple grace of style rarely attained by
men ; whose minds are ever and anon caught and entangled in
briary thickets of hows, and how-fars, and whys, and why-nots ;
and who often think much less what they have to say, than in
what manner they shall say it. For it is in writing, as in
painting and sculpture : let the artist adapt the attitudes of his
figures to the feeling or action he wishes to express ; and, if his
mind has been duly impregnated with the idea of the human
form, without his intending it they will be graceful : whereas,
if his first aim be to make them graceful, they are sure to be
affected.

When women however sally out of their proper sphere into
that of objective, reflective authorship, — for which they are
disqualified, not merely by their education and habits, but by
the subjective character of their minds, by the predominance of
their feelings over their intellect, and by their proneness to
view everything in the light of their affections, — they often
lose the simple graces of style, which within their own element

214 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

belong to them. Here too may it be said, that " the woman
who deliberates is lost." Going right, not from reflexion, not
from calculating the reasons and consequences of each partic-
ular step, but from impulse, — whether instinctive, or derivative
from habit, or from principle, — when a woman distrusts her
impulses, and appeals to her understanding, she is not unlikely
to stray ; among other grounds, because this seldom happens,
except when some wrong impulse is pulling against the right
one, and when she wants an excuse for yielding to it. Men, in
speech, as in action, may now and then forsake usage ; having
previously explored the principles and laws, of which usage is
ever an inadequate exponent. But no woman can safely defy
usage, unless it be at the imperious, momentary call of some
overpowering affection, the voice of which is its own sanction,
and one with the voice of Duty. When a woman deviates
from usage, to comply with some rule which she supposes to
run counter to it, she is apt to misapply the rule, from igno-
rance of its grounds and of its limits. For rules, though useful
mementoes to such as understand their principles, have no light
in themselves, and are mostly so framed as to fail us at the very
moment of need. Clear enough when all is clear, they grow
dim and go out when it is dark.

The one which has just been proposed, of following your
tongue when you are speaking, is a less sure guide for men
than for women. Men's minds have so often crawled forth,
more or less like a snail stretching out of its shell, from the
region of impulse into that of reflexion, that they may need a
secondary movement to resume their natural state, and replace
the shell on their heads. With them what is nearest is often
furthest off; and what is furthest is nearest. The word which
comes uppermost with them will frequently be the book-word,
not the word of common speech ; especially if they are in the
habit of public speaking, in which there is a strong temptation
to make up for emptiness by sound, to give commonplace obser-
vations an uncommon look by swelling them out with bloated
diction, — to tack a string of conventional phrases to the tail of
every proposition, in the hope that this will enable it to fly, —

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 215

and to take care that the buckram thoughts, in whatever re-
spects they may resemble Falstaff's men, shall at least have
plenty of buckram to strut in. Therefore a man, when Avriting,
may often find occasion to substitute a plainer word for that
which had first occurred to him. But with him too the rule
holds good, that the plainest word, by which he can express his
meaning, is the best. The beginning of Plato's Republic is
said to have been found in his tablets written over and over in
a variety of ways : the regard for euphony, which was so strong
in the Greeks, led him to try all those varieties of arrangement
which the power of inversion in his language allowed of. Yet
after all, the words, as they now stand, and the order of their
arrangement, are the simplest he could have chosen ; and one
can hardly conceive how they could have been other than they
are. This is the secret of the matchless transparency of his
style, through which we look at the thoughts exprest in it,
standing as in the lucid distinctness given by a southern
atmosphere ; so that only by a subsequent act of reflexion
do we discern the exceeding beauty of the medium. Where-
as in most writers the words scarcely let the thoughts peer
dimly through, or at best deck them out in gorgeous hues,
and draw attention to themselves, veiling what they ought to
reveal.

The principle I have been urging coincides with that of Cob-
bett's great rule : " Never think of mending what you write :
let it go : no patching. As your pen moves, bear constantly in
mind that it is making strokes which are to remain for ever."
The power of habit, he rightly observes, is in such things quite
wonderful : and assuredly it is not merely our style that would
be improved, if we bore constantly in mind that what we do is to
last for ever. Did we but keep this conviction steadily before us,
with regard to all our thoughts and feelings and words and pur-
poses and deeds, then might we sooner learn to think and feel and
speak and resolve and act as becomes the heirs of eternity. One
of the main seats of our weakness lies in this very notion, that
what we do at the moment cannot matter much; for that we shall
be able to alter and mend and patch it just as we like by and by.

216 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Cobbett's own writings are a proof of the excellence of his rule :
what they may want in elegance, they more than make up for
in strength. His indeed was a case in which it was especially
applicable. Springing out of the lower orders, and living in
familiar intercourse with them, he knew their language ; he
knew the words which have power over the English people : he
knew how those words must be wielded to strike home on their
understandings and their hearts. His mind had never been
tainted with the jargon of men of letters : he had no frippery to
throw off ere he could appear in his naked strength : he scorned
nourishes and manoovres, and marcht straight with all his forces
to the onset.

In some measure akin to Cobbett's writings in style, though
with differences resulting both from personal and national char-
acter, are those of the honest and hearty German patriot, Arndt,
which did such good service in kindling and feeding the enthu-
siasm during the war with France. He too was a child of the
people, a peasant boy who used to feed his father's cows ; and
his wings had not been dipt in the schools. So was Luther ;
whom one can hardly conceive recalling and correcting a word,
any more than one can conceive the sun recalling and correct-
ing one of his rays, or the sea one of its waves. He who has
a full quiver, does not pick up his arrows. If the first misses,
he sends another and another after it. Forgetting what is be-
hind, he presses onward. It is only in going through one's ex-
ercise, that one retraces a false movement, and begins anew.
To do so in battle would be to lose it.

There is said indeed to be a manuscript of Luther's version
of the first Psalm with a great number of interlineations and
corrections. This however was a translation : and only when a
man's thoughts issue from his own head and heart, can they
come forth ready clad in the fittest words. A translator's aim
is more complicated ; and all he can hope is to approximate
nearer and nearer to it. For no language can ever be the com-
plete counterpart of another : indeed no single word in any lan-
guage can be the complete counterpart to a word in another
language, so as to have exactly the same shades and varieties

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 217

of meaning, and to be invested with the same associations.
Hence a conscientious translator is perpetually drawn in oppo-
site directions, from the wish to accomplish two incompatible
objects, to give an exact representation of his original, and at
the same time to make that representation an idiomatic one.
Difficult as it often must needs be to express one's own mean-
ing to one's wish, it is incomparably more difficult to express
another man's, without making him say more or less than he
intended.

That the practice inculcated above has the highest of all
sanctions, is proved by the Preface to the first edition of Shak-
speare, where the editors say of him, " His mind and hand
went together ; and what he thought, he uttered with that easi-
ness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his pa-
pers." The same thing is true of the greatest master of style
in our days: in the manuscripts of his exquisite Imaginary
Conversations very few words have ever been altered : every
word was the right one from the first. I have also observed
the same fact in Arnold's manuscripts, in which indeed, from
the simple, easy flow of his style, one might sooner expect it.
But Lieber tells us that Niebuhr also said to him, " Endeavour
never to strike out anything of what you have once written
down. Punish yourself by allowing once or twice something
to pass, though you see you might give it better : it will accus-
tom you to be more careful in future ; and you will not only
save much time, but also think more correctly and distinctly. I
hardly ever strike out or correct my writing, even in my dis-
patches to the king. Persons who have never tried to write at
once correctly, do not know how easy it is, provided your
thoughts are clear and well arranged ; and they ought to be so
before you put pen to paper." Thus a style, which appears
most elaborate, and in which the thoughts would seem to have
been subjected to a long process of condensation, may grow to
be written almost spontaneously; as a person may learn to
write the stiffest hand with considerable rapidity. Lieber how-
ever also cites the similar confession in Gibbon's Memoirs ;
which shews that this practice is no preservative from all the
10

218 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

vices of affectation. For anything may become nature to man :
the rare thing is to find a nature that is truly natural. u.

Cesar's maxim, that you are to avoid an unusual word as you
would a rock, is often quoted, especially by those who are just
purposing to violate it. For this is one of the strange distor-
tions of vanity, — which loves to magnify the understanding, at
the cost of the will, — that people, when they are doing wrong,
are fond of boasting that they know it to be wrong. Cesar
himself however was a scrupulous observer of his own rule. A
like straightforward plainness of speech characterizes the Eng-
lish Cesar of our age, and is found, with an admixture of philo-
sophical sweetness, in Xenophon. In truth simplicity is the
soldierly style. The most manly of men coincide in this point
with the most womanly of women. The latter think of the
feelings they are to express ; the former, of the thoughts and
purposes and actions ; neither, of the words.

Not however that new words are altogether to be outlawed.
What would language have been, had this principle been acted
on from the first ? It must have been dwarft in the cradle. Did
thoughts remain stationary, so might language : but they cannot
be progressive without it. The only way in which a conception
can become national property, is by being named. Hereby it is
incorporated with the body of popular thought. Either a word
already in use may have a more determinate meaning assigned
to it : or a new word may be formed, according to the analogies
of the language, by derivation or composition : or in a language
in which the generative power is nearly extinct, a word may be
adopted from some forein tongue which has already supplied it
with similar terms. Only such words should be intelligible at
sight to the readers they are designed for. This is one great
objection to the new Greek words which Mr Bentham scatters
over his pages, side by side with his amorphous, tumble-to-
pieces English ones, like Columbine dancing with Pantaloon.
They want a note to explain what he meant them to mean, and
are just such lifeless things as might be expected from a man
who grinds them out of his lexicon, — such dry chips as may

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 219

drop from a writer whose mind is a dead hedge of abstractions ;
whose chief talent moreover is that of a hedge, to intersect and
partition off the field of knowledge. When words are thus
brought in with a commentary at their heels, it is much as if a
musician were to stop in the middle of a tune, and tell you what
notes he is playing.

To the last of the three classes just mentioned belongs the
terminology of Science, which is almost wholly Greek. No
language was ever so full of life as the Greek in its prime : and,
as there have been instances of seeds which have retained their
vital power for millennaries, the embers of life still linger about
it ; so that two thousand years after, and a thousand miles off,
we find it easier to grow Greek words than English. The plas-
tic character of the language, affording unlimited facilities for
composition, — and in such wise that its words really coalesce,
and are not merely tackt together, — fits it for expressing the
innumerable combinations, which it is the business of Science
to detect. And as Science is altogether a cosmopolite, less con-
nected than any other mode of intellectual action with the
peculiarities of national character, — wherefore the eighteenth
century, which confounded science with knowledge, set up the
theory of cosmopolitism, — it is well that the vocabulary of
Science should be common to all the nations that come and
worship at its shrine.

Of all words however the least vivacious are those coined by
Science. It is only Poetry, and not Philosophy, that can make
a Juliet. It is Poetry, the Imagination in one or other of its
forms, that produces what has life in it. Eschylus, Shakspeare,
Milton, are wordmakers. So are most humorists, Aristophanes,
Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Charles Lamb, Richter: only many of
their words are merely fashioned sportively for a particular oc-
casion, after some amusing analogy, without any thought of their
becoming a permanent part of the language. The true criterion
of the worth of a new word is its having such a familiar look, and
bearing its meaning and the features of its kindred so visible in
its face, that we hardly know whether it is not an old acquaint-
ance. Then more especially is it likely to be genuine, when its

220 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

author himself is scarcely conscious of its novelty. At all
events it should not seem to be the fruit of study, but to spring
spontaneously from the inspiration of the moment.

The corruption of style does not lie in a writer's occasionally
using an uncommon or a new word. On the contrary a mascu-
line writer, who has been led to adopt a plain, simple style, not
like women, by an instinctive delicacy of taste, but by a reflex
act of judgement, and who has taken pleasure in visiting the
sources of his native language, and in tracing its streams, will
feel desirous at times to throw his seed also upon the waters :
and he is the very person whose studies will best fit him for
doing so. Even Cowper, whose letters are the pattern of pure,
graceful, idiomatic English, does not hesitate to coin new words
now and then. Such are, extra-foraneous, which, though he is
so fond of it as to desire that it should be inserted in John-
son's Dictionary, and to use it more than once (Vol. iv. p. 76,
vi. 153, of Southey's Edition), is for common purposes a
cumbrous substitute for out-of-doors, — a subscalarian, "a man
that sleeps under the stairs" (vi. 286), — an archdeaconism
(iv. 228), — syllablemongers (v. 23), — a joltation (v. 55), —
calfiess (v. 61), — secondhanded (v. 87), a word inaccurately
formed, as according to analogy it should mean, not at second
hand, but having a second hand, — authorly (v. 96), — exspu-
tory (v. 102), — returnable, likely to return (v. 102), — trans-
latorship (v. 253), — poetship (v. 313), — a midshipmanship
("there's a word for you!" he exclaims, vi. 263), — man-mer-
chandise (vi. 127), — Homer-conners (vi. 268), — walkable
(vi. 13), — seldomcy (vi. 228). I know not that any of these
words is of much value. The last is suggested by an errone-
ous analogy. "I hope none of my correspondents (he says)
will measure my regard for them by the frequency, or rather
seldomcy, of my epistles." A Latin termination is here sub-
joined to a Saxon word, which such a termination very rarely
fits : and two consonants are brought into juxtaposition, from
which in our language they revolt.

Some of these words may perhaps have been already in use,
at least in speech, if not in writing. It would be both enter-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 221

taining and instructive, were any one to collect the words in
English invented by particular authors, and to explain the rea-
sons which may either have occasioned or hindered their being
incorporated with the body of the language. In some cases no
want of the word has been felt : in others the formation has
been incorrect, or unsupported by any familiar analogy. Learn-
ing of itself indeed will never avail to make words : but in
ages when the formative instinct is no longer vivid, judgement
and knowledge are requisite to guide it. For the best and
ablest writers are apt to err on this score, as we saw just now
in the instance of seldomcy. Thus even Landor {Imaginary
Convers. ii. 278) recommends the adoption of anidiomatic as
an English word ; though our language does not acknowledge
the Greek negative prefix, except in words like anarchy, intro-
duced in their compound state, so that anidiomatical would
exemplify itself; and though unidiomatic would clearly be a
preferable form, which few writers would scruple to use, wheth-
er authorized by precedent or no. Nor, I trust, will Coleridge's
favorite word, esemplastic {Biographia Literaria, i. 157), to
express the atoning or unifying power of the Imagination, ever
become current; for, like others of his Greek compounds, it
violates the analogies of that language. Had such a word
existed, it would be compounded of els iv TrXdrreiv, not, as he
intended, of els ev TtkaTreiv. On the other hand his word to
desynonymize (Biog. Lit. i. 87) is a truly valuable one, as desig-
nating a process very common in the history of language, and
bringing a new, thought into general circulation. A Latin
preposition is indeed prefixt to a Greek theme: but such
mixtures are inevitable in a composite language ; and this is
sanctioned by the words dephlegmate and dephhgisticate : after
the analogy of which I have ventured above (p. 153) to frame
the word desophisticating.

Few eminent writers, I believe,, have not done more or less
toward enriching their native tongue. Thus Rousseau, in one
of his letters in defense of his Discourse on the Influence of the
Arts and Sciences, vindicates his having hazarded the word
investigation, on the ground that he had wisht "rendre un

222 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

service a la langue, en essayant d'y introduire un terme doux,
harmonieux, dont le sens est deja connu, et qui n'a point de
synonyme en francais. C'est, je crois, toutes les conditions
qu'on exige pour autoriser cette liberte salutaire." Sometimes
too an author's bequests to his countrymen do not stay quietly
at home, but travel from nation to nation, and become a perma-
nent part of the language of mankind. What a loss would it
be to the language of modern Europe, if Plato's word, idea, and
Pythagorases, philosophy, with their families, were struck out
of them ! It would be like striking out an eye ; and we should
hardly know how to grope our way through the realms of
thought without them. Again, when we read in Diogenes
Laertius (iii. 24) that Plato irp&ros iv cptkoo-ocpla dvTinobas <ov6-
fxacre, Kai (rroi^etoj/, Kal 8ia\eKTiicr)v, Kal iroiorrjTa, /cat rav nepdrcov rrjv
iniirehov qmcpdveiav, Kal 6eov trpovoiav, we may see from this,
without enquiring into the accuracy of each particular state-
ment, what a powerful lever a well-chosen word may be for
helping on the progress of thought, — how it may embody the
results of long processes of meditation, and present those re-
sults in a form in which they may not only be apprehended at
once by every person of intelligence, but may be used as mate-
rials for ulterior speculations, like known quantities for the
determination of unknown. Various instances of like pregnant
words, in which great authors have embodied the results of
their speculations, — of words " which assert a principle, while
they appear merely to indicate a transient notion, preserving as
well as expressing truths," — are pointed out in the great His-
tory of the Inductive Sciences, in which one of Bacon's worthi-
est and most enlightened disciples has lately been tracing the
progress of scientific discovery throughout the whole world of
Nature.

A far worse fault than that of occasionally introducing a new
word, — which is not only allowable, but often necessary, as
new thoughts keep continually rising above the national hori-
zon, — is that of writing- throughout in words alien from the
speech of the people. Few writers are apter to fall into this
fault, than those who deem it their post to watch and set up a

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 223

bark at the first approach of a stranger. The gods in Homer
now and then use a word different from that of ordinary men :
but he who thinks to speak the language of the gods, by speak-
ing one altogether remote from that of ordinary men, will only
speak the language of the goblins. He is not a mystic, but a
mystifier. u.

There are three genial and generative periods in the history
of language.

The first, and far the most important, is that in which the
great elementary processes are gone through: when the laws
and form of the language are determined, and the body of the
thoughts of a people, whether arising out of the depths of its
own character, or awakened by the objects around it, fashion
and find their appropriate utterance. This is a period of which
little notice can be preserved. We are seldom able to watch
the processes while they are working. In a primitive, homo-
geneous language that working is over, before it comes forward
in a substantial, permanent shape, and takes its seat in the halls
of Literature : and even in a composite language, like our own,
arising out of the confluence and fusion of two, we have scanty
means for observing their mutual action upon each other. We
see them flowing for a while side by side : then both vanish like
the Rhine at Laufenburg : and anon the mingled streams start
into sight again, though perhaps not quite thoroughly blended,
but each in a manner preserving a distinct current for a time,
as the Rhone and Saone do at their junction. In this stage a
language is rich in expressions for outward objects, and for
simple feelings and actions, but contains few abstract terms, and
not many compound words, except such as denote obvious com-
binations of frequent occurrence. The laws and principles of
such compositions however are already establisht: and here
and there instances are found of some of the simplest abstract
terms; after the analogy of which others are subsequently
framed, according to the growing demands of reflexion. Such
is the state of our own language in the age of Chaucer : such
is that of the German in the Nibelungen-Lay ; and that of the

224 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Greek in Hesiod and in Homer : in the latter of whom how-
ever we already hear the snorting of the horses that are draw-
ing on the car of Apollo, and see the sparks that flash up
beneath their feet, as they rush along the pavement of heaven.
Thus far a language has very little that is arbitrary in it,
very little betokening the conscious power and action of man.
It owes its origin, not to the thoughts and the will of individu-
als, but to an instinct actuating a whole people : it expresses
what is common to them all : it has sprung out of their univer-
sal wants, and lives in their hearts. But after a while an intel-
lectual aristocracy come forward, and frame a new language of
their own. The princes and lords of thought shoot forth their
winged words into regions beyond the scan of the people.
They require a gold coinage, in addition to the common cur-
rency. This is avowed by Sir Thomas Brown in his Preface.
" Nor have we addrest our pen or style to the people, (whom
books do not redress, and are this way incapable of reduction,)
but to the knowing and leading part of learning ; as well un-
derstanding, — except they be watered from higher regions and
fructifying meteors of knowledge, these weeds must lose their
alimental sap, and wither of themselves." The Imagination,
finding out its powers and its office, and feeling its freedom,
begins to fashion and mould and combine things according to
its own laws. It is no longer content to reflect the outward
world and its forms just as it has received them, with such
modifications and associations alone as have been bestowed on
them in the national mythology. It seizes the elements both of
outward nature and of human, and mixes them up in its cruci-
ble, and bakes them anew in its furnace. It discerns within
itself, that there are other shapes and visions of grandeur and
beauty, beside those which roll before the eye, — that there are
other sympathies, and deeper harmonies and discords : and for
this its new creation it endeavours to devise fitting symbols in
words. This is the age of genial power in poetry, and of a
luxuriant richness in language ; the age of Eschylus and Aris-
tophanes ; the age of Ennius and Lucretius, — who however
must be measured by the Roman scale ; the age of Shakspeare

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 225

and Milton. It may be termed the heroic age of language,
coming after its golden age, during which, from the unbroken
unity of life, there was no call or room for heroes. Custom
has not yet markt out the limits within which the plastic powers
of the language must be restrained: and they who feel their
own strength, and that of their weapon, fancy there is nothing
they may not achieve with it. Of the new words formed in
this age, many find an echo long after amid the hights of lit-
erature; some are so peculiar, they can fit no place except the
one they were made for ; many fall to the ground and are for-
gotten, when the sithe of summer mows off the rich bloom of
spring.

The third great period in the history of a language is that of
its development as an instrument of reason and reflexion.
This is the age of verbal substantives, and of abstract deriva-
tives from adjectives, formed, in a homogeneous language, after
the analogy of earlier examples, but multiplied far beyond what
had sufficed for a simpler, less speculative generation. The
dawn of this age we see struggling through the darkness in
Thucydides ; the difficulties of whose style arise in great meas-
ure from his efforts to express thoughts so profound and far-
stretching in a language scarcely adapted as yet to such pur-
poses. For, though potentially it had an indefinite wealth in
general terms, that wealth was still lying for the most part in
the mine : and the simple epical accumulation of sentences, by
means of connective particles, was only beginning to give way
to a compacter, more logical structure, by the particles of cau-
sality and modality. In England, as indeed throughout the
whole of modern Europe, the order assigned by Nature for the
successive unfolding of the various intellectual powers, in na-
tions as well as individuals, — an order which, unless disturbed
by extraneous causes, would needs be far more perceptible, as
all general laws are, in an aggregate than in a single unit, —
was in some degree altered by the influx of the traditional
knowledge amast by prior ages. That knowledge, acting more
powerfully, and with more certain benefit, on the reasoning fac-
ulties than on the imaginative, accelerated the growth: of the
10* o

226 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

former, and brought them to an earlier maturity ; a result owing
mainly to the existence of a large class, who, being the chief
depositaries of knowledge, were specially led by their profes-
sion, and by the critical and stirring circumstances of the times,
to a diligent pursuit of all studies concerning the moral and
spiritual nature of man. Hence the philosophical cultivation
of our language coincided with its poetical cultivation : and this
prematurity was the more easily attainable, inasmuch as the
mass of our philosophical words were not of home growth, but
imported ready-grown from abroad ; so that, like oranges, they
might be in season along with primroses and violets. Yet the
natural order was so far upheld, that, while the. great age of our
poetry is comprised in the last quarter of the sixteenth, and
the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the great age of
our philosophy and theology reaches down till near the close of
the latter. Milton stands alone, and forms a link between the
two.

When a nation reaches its noon however, the colours of
objects lose much of their brightness ; and even their forms
and masses stand out less boldly and strikingly. It occupies
itself rather in examining and analysing their details. Find-
ing itself already rich, it lives on its capital, instead of making
fresh ventures to increase it, and boasts that this is the only
rational, gentlemanly way of living. The superabundant activ-
ity, which it will not employ in anything positive, finds a vent
in negativeness, — in denying that any previous state of soci-
ety was comparable to its own, and in issuing peremptory
vetoes against all who would try to raise it higher. This is
the age when an academy will lay down laws dictatorially, and
proclaim what may be said, and what must not, what may be
thought, and what must not, — the age when men will scoff at
the madness of Xerxes, yet themselves try to fling their chains
over the ever-rolling, irrepressible ocean of thought. Nay, they
will scoop out a mimic sea in their pleasure-ground, and make
it ripple and bubble, and spout up prettily into the air, and then
fancy that they are taming the Atlantic ; which however keeps
advancing upon them, until it sweeps them away with their

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 227

toys. The interdict against every new word or expression
during the century previous to the Revolution in France was
only one chapter of the interdict which society then enacted
against everything genial : and here too that restlessness, which
can never be wholly allayed, became negative ; and all that was
genial was in sin. The dull flat of the Henriade abutted on the
foaming hellpool of the Pucelle.

The futility of all attempts to check the growth of a lan-
guage, so long at least as a nation continues to exercise any
activity even in the lower departments of thought, is proved by
the successive editions of the Dictionary publisht by the French
Academy. Not content with crushing and stifling freedom in
the State, Richelieu's ambition aimed at becoming autocrat of
the French language. He would have had no word uttered
throughout the realm, until he had countersigned it. But an-
cient usage and the wants of progressive civilization were too
mighty for him. Every time the Academy have issued their
Dictionary afresh, they have found themselves compelled to
admit a number of new words into their censorial register:
and in the last fifty years more especially a vast influx has
taken place. If we look into their modern writers, even into
those who, like Chateaubriand, while they acknowledge the
power of the present, still retain a reverent allegiance to the
past, we find new words ever sprouting up : and the popular
literature of la jeune France, of those who are the minions,
deeming themselves the lords, of the present, seems in language
and style, as well as in morals, to bear the character of slavery
that has burst its bonds, to be as it were an insurrection of in-
tellectual negroes, rioting in the licence of a lawless, fetterless
will. u.

That in writing Latin no word should be used, unless sanc-
tioned by the authority of Cicero, or of the Augustan age, is, I
believe, a purely modern notion, — and an utterly absurd one,
if extended rto anything else than a scholastic exercise. For
Cicero first taught Philosophy to talk with elegance in Latin ;
and in doing so he often went round the mark, rather than

228 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

straight to it : whereas the fitting of a language to be an instru-
ment of reflective and speculative thought must be the work of
many minds, and of more than one generation. A number of
new ideas were drawn forth by the discipline of adversity dur-
ing the first century of the empire. Repelled from outward
objects, which till then had been all in all to the Romans, men
turned their eyes inward, and explored the depths of their own
nature, if so be they might discover something there that would
stand firm against the shock and amid the ruin of the world ;
while all forms of evil were shooting up in loathsome enormity
on every side. Hence the writers in the days of Nero, and
those in the days of Trajan, had much to say, and said much,
that had never entered into the minds of their forefathers. In
the latter ages of Roman literature attempts were made to re-
vive many antiquated words : but no life could be restored to
them ; and they merely lie like the bones of the dead around a
decaying body. For the regeneration of a language can never
be genuine and lasting, except so far as it goes along with a re-
generation of the national mind : whereas the Roman mind was
dying away, and had no longer the power of incorporating the
new regions of thought thrown open to it. A flood of barba-
risms rusht in : Christianity came, with its host of spiritualities :
all the mysteries of man's nature were to find utterance in
Latin, which had always been better fitted for the forum than
for the schools. It became the language of the learned, when
learning was unfortunately cut off from communion with actual
life, and when the past merely lay as a huge, shapeless shadow
spread out over the germs of the future. Yet, so indispensable
is the power of producing new words to a language, when it is
applied to any practical use, Latin, even after it had ceast to be
spoken, still retained a sort of life, like that which lingers in
the bark of a hollow tree long after its core has mouldered
away : and still for centuries it kept on putting forth a few
fresh leaves. u-

A sort of English has been very prevalent during the last
hundred years, in which the sentences have a meaning, but the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 229

words have little or none. As in a middling landscape the gen-
eral outlines may be correct, and the forms distinguishable,
while the details are hazy and indefinite and confused ; so here
the abstract proposition designed to be exprest is so ; but hardly
a word is used for which half a dozen synonyms might not have
stood equally well : whereas the test of a good style, as Cole-
ridge observes {Biog. Lit. ii. 162), is " its untranslatableness in
words of the same language, without injury to the meaning."
This may be called Scotch English ; not as being exclusively
the property of our northern brethren ; but because the cele-
brated Scotch writers of the last century are in the first rank
of those who have emboweled the substantial, roast-beef and
plum-pudding English of our forefathers. Their precedence in
this respect is intimately connected with their having been our
principal writers on metaphysical subjects since the days of
Locke and Shaftesbury and Thomas Burnet and Berkeley and
Butler. For metaphysical writers, especially when they belong
to a school, and draw their principles from their master's cistern
through conduit after conduit, instead of going to the well of
Nature, are very apt to give us vapid water instead of fresh.
Attaching little importance to anything but abstractions, and
being almost without an eye, except for colourless shadows,
they merge whatever is individual in that which is merely
generic, and let this living universe of infinite variety drop out
of sight in the menstruum of a technical phraseology. They
lose the sent in the cry, but keep on yelping without finding out
their loss : not a few too join in the cry, without having ever
caught the sent. How far this will go, may be seen in the dead
language of the Schoolmen, who often deal with their words just
as if they were so many counters, the rust having eaten away
every atom of the original impress. In like manner, when the
dry rot gets into the house of a German philosopher, his disciples
pick up handfuls of the dust, and fancy it will serve instead of
timbers. Even Greek, notwithstanding the vivacity both of the
people and the language, lost much of its life and grace in the
hands of the later philosophers. Accordingly this Scotch Eng-
lish is the usual style of our writers on speculative subjects.

230 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Opposite to this, and almost the converse of it, is Irish Eng-
lish ; in which every word taken by itself means, or is meant
to mean something ; but he who looks for any meaning in a
sentence, might as well look for a green field in St. Gileses.
Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head :
many, I think, must have a whole crop of them. At least the
words of their orators are wont to roll out just like so many po-
tatoes from the mouth of a sack, round, and knobby, and rum-
bling, and pothering, and incoherent. This style too is common
nowadays, especially that less kindly, and therefore less Irish
modification of it, where the potatoes become prickly, and every
word must be smart, and every syllable must have its point, if
not its sting. No style is so well suited to scribblers for maga-
zines and journals, and other like manufactures of squibs which
are to explode at once, and which, if they did not crack and
flash, would vanish without anybody's heeding them.

What then is English English ? It is the combination of the
two ; not that vulgar combination in which they would neutral-
ize, but that in which they strengthen and give effect to each
other ; where the unity of the whole is not disturbed by the
elaborate thrusting forward of the parts, as that of a Dutch
picture is often by a herring or an onion, a silk-gown or a rut ;
nor is the canvas daubed over with slovenly haste to fill up the
outline, as in many French and later Italian and Flemish pic-
tures ; but where, as in the works of Raphael and Claude, and
of their common mistress, Nature, well-defined and beautiful
parts unite to make up a well-defined and beautiful whole.
This, like all good things, all such good things at least as are
the products of human labor and thought, is rare : but it is still
to be found among us. The exquisite purity of Wordsworth's
English has often been acknowledged. An author in whose
pages the combination is almost always realized, and many of
whose sentences are like crystals, each separate word in them
being itself a lucid crystal, has been quoted several times above.
And everybody has seen the writings of another, who may con-
vince the most desponding worshiper of bygone excellence, that
our language has not yet been so diluted and enervated, but

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 231

Swift, were he living in these days, would still find plain words
to talk plain sense in. Nor do they stand alone. In this at
least we may boast with Sthenelus, that we are better than our
fathers : only they who indulge in such a boast, should remind
themselves of their duty, by following it up with Hector's
prayer, that our children may be much better than we are.
Southey's writings, in style, as in other respects, have almost
every merit except the highest. Arnold's style is worthy of
his manly understanding, and the noble simplicity of his char-
acter. And the new History of Greece is the antipode to its
predecessor in this quality, no less than in every other. —
1836. u.

A word which has no precise meaning, will poorly fulfil its
office of being a sign and guide of thought : and if it be con-
nected with matters interesting to the feelings, or of practical
moment, it may easily become mischievous. Now in a lan-
guage like ours, in which the abstract terms are mostly imported
from abroad, such terms, when they get into general circulation,
are especially liable to be misunderstood and perverted ; inas-
much as few can have any distinct conception what their mean-
ing really is, or how they came by it. Having neither tap-
roots, nor lateral roots, they are easily shaken and driven out
of line ; and one gust may blow them on one side, another on
another side. Hence arises a confusion of tongues, even within
the pale of the same language ; and this breeds a confusion of
thoughts. Of all classes of paralogisms the most copious is that
where a word, used in one sense in the premiss, slips another
sense into the conclusion.

For instance, no small part of the blunders made by modern
theorizers on education may be traced to their ignorance or
forgetfulness that education is something more than instruction,
and that instruction is only the most prominent part of it, —
but the part which requires the least care, the least thought,
and is practically of the least importance. Nor is this errour
confined to theorizers : it has crept into every family. Most
parents, of whatsoever rank or condition, fancy they have done

232 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

all they need do for the education of their children, when they
have had them taught such things as custom requires that per-
sons of their class should learn : although with a view to the
formation of character, the main end and object of education, it
would be almost as reasonable to read a treatise on botany to a
flower-bed, under a notion of making the plants grow and blos-
som. Nay, even those who set themselves to instruct youth,
too often forget that their aim should be to unfold and discipline
and strengthen the minds of their pupils, to inspire them with a
love of knowledge, and to improve their faculties for acquiring
it, and not merely to load and stuff them with a certain ready-
made quantity of knowledge ; which is only power, when it is
living, firmly grounded, reproducible, and expansive.

So again there is a tribe of errours, both speculative and
practical, which have arisen from the mistaking of Administra-
tion for Government, and the confounding of their appropriate
provinces and functions. In our country the Ministry have
lono- been vulgarly termed the Government; and the Prime
Minister is strangely misnamed the head of the Government ;
although they have no constitutional existence, and are there-
fore removable at the pleasure of a soverein or a parliament :
so that, were they indeed the Government, and not merely the
creatures and agents of a more permanent body, we should be
the sport of chance and caprice, as has ever happened to a
people when fallen under a doulocracy. Yet, as they have
usurpt the name, so have they in great measure the executive
part of the office. Thus it has come to pass that, from the
Land's End to John of Groat's House, scarcely a man any
longer remembers that the business of governors is to govern.
Above all have those who call themselves the Government for-
gotten this, persuading themselves that their duty is to be the
servants, or rather the slaves, of circumstances and of public
opinion. The divine exhortation, — He that would he chief
among you, let him he your servant, that is, by his own will and
deed, — whereby we are called to follow the example of Him
who came not to be ministered to, but to minister, — is popu-
larly misread after the Jewish fashion, — Make him your ser-

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 233

vant, yea, your slave, and give him the slave's punishment of the
cross. The centralizing tendency, which rightly belongs to
Government, and which has been extended during the last half
century to all branches of Administration, both on the Conti-
nent, and latterly, after an example rather to have been shunned
than followed, in England, is another instance of the same per-
version. As a government is one, and should embrace all its
subjects with its protecting arms, so it has been thought expedi-
ent that the rule of uniformity, the substitute of the understand-
ing for the principle of unity, should be carried through all
parts of the State, and that the administration should have a
hand, or at least a finger, in every man's business. In specula-
tion too this leads to very erroneous judgements concerning
countries and times in which juster views on the distinctive na-
ture of Government and Administration prevailed. It must be
owing to this general confusion, that in the recent ingenious
and thoughtful Essay On the Attributes of a Statesman, though
by a writer who mostly evinces the clearness of his understand-
ing by the correctness of his language, the Statesman's real
characteristics and duties are scarcely toucht upon: and he
who ought to be the man of the State, whose eyes should be
fixt on the State, and whose mind and heart should be full of it,
shrinks up into the holder of a ministerial office.

No less general, and far more mischievous, is another delu-
sion, by which the same word, ministry, is confounded with the
Church. He who enters into the ministry of the Church, is
said to go into the Church, as though he were not in it before :
the body of the ministers too, the Clergy, are commonly called
the Church, and, by a very unfortunate, but inevitable conse-
quence, are frequently lookt upon as forming, not merely a part,
but the whole church. Hence politically the interests of the
Church are deemed to be separate from those of the State ;
and the Church is accounted a portion of the State : whereas it
should be coextensive and coincident therewith'; nay, should be
the State itself spiritualized, under a higher relation, and in a
higher power. Hence too in ordinary life the still greater evil,
that the more peculiar duties of the Christian profession, as dis-

234 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

tinct from those enjoined by human ethics, are held to be in-
cumbent on the Clergy alone : whereby their labours are de-
prived of help which they might otherwise receive, and which
they greatly need. Indeed they themselves are far too ready
to monopolize their office, and to regard all interference of the
Laity in spiritual or ecclesiastical matters as an impertinent
intrusion. On the other hand the Laity, instead of being in-
vited and encouraged to deem themselves integral members of
the Church, and sharers in all the blessed duties of Christian
fellowship, are led to fancy that these are things in which they
have no concern, that all they have to do with the Church is to
go on a Sunday to the building which bears its name, and that,
if they only bring themselves to listen, they may leave it to the
preacher to follow his own exhortations.

I am not contending that in any of these instances the per-
version in the meaning of the words has been the sole, or even
the main source of the corresponding practical errour. Rather
has the practical errour given birth to the verbal. It is the
heart that misleads the head in the first instance nine times, for
once that the head misleads the heart. Still errour, as well as
truth, when it is stampt in words, gains currency, and diffuses
and propagates itself, and becomes inveterate, and almost ine-
radicable. All that large and well-meaning class, who swell the
train of public opinion, and who, without energy to do right on
their own bottom, would often be loth to do what they recog-
nised to be wrong, are apt to be the lackies of words, and will
follow the blind more readily than the seeing. On the other
hand, in proportion as every word is the distinct, determinate
sign of the conception it stands for, does that conception form
part and parcel of the nation's knowledge. Now a language
will often be wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even than
the wisest of those who speak it. Being like amber in its effi-
cacy to circulate the electric spirit of truth, it is also like amber
in embalming and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom,
although one is not seldom puzzled to decipher its contents.
Sometimes it locks up truths, which were once well known,
but which in the course of ages have past out of sight and been

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 235

forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths, of which,
though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its
framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of divination. A
meditative man cannot refrain from wonder, when he digs down
to the deep thought lying at the root of many a metaphorical
term, employed for the designation of spiritual things, even of
those with regard to which professing philosophers have blun-
dered grossly : and often it would seem as though rays of truths,
which were still below the intellectual horizon, had dawned upon
the Imagination as it was looking up to heaven. Hence they
who feel an inward call to teach and enlighten their country-
men, should deem it an important part of their duty to draw out
the stores of thought which are already latent in their native
language, to purify it from the corruptions which Time brings
upon all things, and from which language has no exemption, and
to endeavour to give distinctness and precision to whatever in
it is confused, or obscure, or dimly seen.

And they who have been studious thus to purify their native
tongue, may also try to enrich it. When any new conception
stands out so broadly and singly as to give it a claim for having
a special sign to denote it, — if no word for the purpose can be
found in the extant vocabulary of the language, no old word,
which, with a slight clinamen given to its meaning, will answer
the purpose, — • they may frame a new one. But he who does
not know how to prize the inheritance his ancestors have be-
queathed to him, will hardly better or enlarge it. A man should
love and venerate his native language, as the first of his bene-
factors, as the awakener and stirrer of all his thoughts, the frame
and mould and rule of his spiritual being, as the great bond and
medium of intercourse with his fellows, as the mirror in which
he sees his own nature, and without which he could not even
commune with himself, as the image in which the wisdom of
God has chosen to reveal itself to him. He who thus thinks of
his native language will never touch it without reverence. Yet
his reverence will not withhold, but rather encourage him to do
what he can to purify and improve it. Of this duty no Eng-
lishman in our times has shewn himself so well aware as Cole-

236 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ridge : which of itself is a proof that he possest some of the
most important elements of the philosophical mind. Nor were
his exertions in this way unsuccessful. Several words that he
revived, some that he coined, are now become current, at least
among writers on speculative subjects : and many are the terms
in our philosophical vocabulary, which a while back were scat-
tered about promiscuously, as if they all stood for pretty much
the same thing, but which he has stampt afresh, so that people
begin to have some notion of their meaning. Valuable contri-
butions toward the same end are also to be found in the writings
of Mr De Quincey ; whose clear and subtile understanding,
combined as it is with extensive and accurate learning, fits him
above most men for such investigations. — 1836. u.

A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubt-
less ... as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on
the reins, and guiding them.

Suppose one's horse runs away, what is one to do ?

Fling the bridle on his neck, to be sure : and then you will
be fit to be prime minister of England.

But the horse might throw me.

That too would be mob-like. They are fond of trampling on
those who have bent and cringed to them. — 1836. u.

Ours till lately was a government of maxims, and perhaps is
so in great measure still. The economists want to substitute a
despotism of systems. But who, until the coming of Christ's
Kingdom, can hope to see a government of principles ?

When a ship has run aground, the boats take her in tow. Is
not this pretty much the condition of our government, perhaps
of most governments nowadays ? The art of governing,
even in the sense of steering a state, will soon be reckoned
among the lost arts, along with architecture, sacred music,
sculpture, historical painting, and epic and dramatic poetry. —
1836. u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 237

If a government is to stand a storm, it should have a strong
anchorage ; and that is only to be found in the past. Custom
attaches men in the long run, even more than personal affec-
tion, and far more than the clearest conviction ; as we see,
among many other proofs, in the difficulty of breaking off a
bad habit, however bad we may acknowledge and deeply feel
it to be.

The power of ancestral institutions has been strikingly mani-
fested of late, on the one hand, in the unwillingness which the
main body even of our Reformers, — in spite of party zeal, in
spite of the charms of rashness and presumption, in spite of the
fascination exercised by the love of destroying, and of rebuild-
ing a new edifice of our own creation, in spite of the delusions
of false theories, — have shewn to assail the fundamental prin-
ciples of the Constitution. On the other hand the same power
has been evinced by the rapidity with which the feeling of the
nation has been resuming its old level, notwithstanding what has
been done to shake and pervert it, not merely by temporary
excitements, but by the enormous changes in the distribution of
wealth, and by the hordes of human beings that have swarmed
wherever Commerce has sounded her bell.

Does any one wish to see the converse, how soon the births
of yesterday grow rotten, and send up a stench in the nostrils
of a whole people ? There is no necessity to cast our eyes
back on the ghastly pantomime exhibited in France, when con-
stitution followed constitution, each gaudier and flimsier and
more applauded and more detested than its predecessors. Alas !
we are witnesses of a similar spectacle at home, where friend
and foe are united in condemning and reviling what half a dozen
years back was cried up as a marvellous structure of political
wisdom, that was to be the glory and the bulwark of England
for ages.

This is the curse which waits on man's wilfulness. Of our
own works we soon grow weary : today we worship, tomorrow
we loathe them. The laws we have imposed on ourselves,
knowing how baseless and strengthless they are, we are impa-
tient to throw off: and then we are glad to bow even to a yoke

238 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

of iron, if it will but deliver us from the misery of being our
own masters. — 1836. u.

Thrift is the best means of thriving. This is one of the
truths that force themselves on the understanding of very early
ao-es, when it is almost the only means : and few truths are such
favorites with that selfish, housewifely shrewdness, which has
ever been the chief parent and retailer of proverbs. Hence
there is no lack of such sayings as, A pin a-day is a groat
a-year. Take care of the pence ; and the pounds will take care
of themselves.

Perhaps the former of these saws, which bears such strongly
markt features of homelier times, may be out of date in these
days of inordinate gains, and still more inordinate desires;
when it seems as though nobody could be satisfied, until he has
dug up the earth, and drunk up the sea, and outgallopt the sun.
Many now are so insensible to the inestimable value of a reg-
ular increase, however slow, that they would probably cry out
scornfully, A fig for your groat / Would you have me be at the
trouble of picking up and laying by a pin a-day, for the sake of
being a groat the richer at the end of the year ?

Still both these maxims, taken in their true spirit, are
admirable prudential rules for the whole of our housekeeping
through life. Nor is their usefulness limited to the purse.
That still more valuable portion of our property, our time,
stands equally in need of good husbandry. It is only by mak-
ing much of our minutes, that we can make much of our days
and years. Every stitch that is let down may force us to
unravel a score.

Moreover, in the intercourse of social life, it is by little acts
of watchful kindness, recurring daily and hourly, — and oppor-
tunities of doing kindnesses, if sought for, are for ever starting
up, — it is by words, by tones, by gestures, by looks, that affec-
tion is won and preserved. He who neglects these trifles, yet
boasts that, whenever a great sacrifice is called for, he shall be
ready to make it, will rarely be loved. The likelihood is, he
will not make it : and if he does, it will be much rather for his

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 239

own sake, than for his neighbour's. Many persons indeed are
said to be penny-wise and pound-foolish : but they who are
penny-foolish will hardly be pound-wise ; although selfish
vanity may now and then for a moment get the better of self-
ish indolence. For Wisdom will always have a microscope in
her hand.

But these sayings are still more. They are among the
highest maxims of the highest prudence, that which superin-
tends the housekeeping of our souls. The reason why people
so ill know how to do their duty on great occasions, is, that
they will not be diligent in doing their duty on little occasions.
Here too let us only take care of the pence ; and the pounds
will take care of themselves : for God will be the Paymaster.
But how will He pay us ? In kind doubtless : by supplying us
with greater occasions, and enabling us to act worthily of them.

On the other hand, as there is a law of continuity, whereby
in ascending we can only mount step by step, so is there a law
of continuity, whereby they who descend must sink, and that
too with an ever increasing velocity. No propagation or mul-
tiplication is more rapid than that of 'evil, unless it be checkt,
— no growth more certain. He who is in for a penny, to take
another expression belonging to the same family, if he does
not resolutely fly, will find he is in for a pound. u.

Few do all that is demanded of them. Few hands are
steady enough to hold out a full cup, without spilling the wine.
It is well therefore to have a cup which will contain something
beyond the exact measure, — to require more than is absolutely
necessary for the end we have in view. a.

One of the most important, but one of the most difficult
things for a powerful mind is, to be its own master. Minerva
should always be at hand, to restrain Achilles from blindly fol-
lowing his impulses and appetites, even those which are moral
and intellectual, as well as those which are animal and sensual.
A pond may lie quiet in a plain ; but a lake wants mountains
to compass and hold it in. u.

TTWT1T VB ttmwl

240 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Is it from distrusting our reason, that we are always so anx-
ious to have some outward confirmation of its verdicts ? Or is
it that we are such slaves to our senses, we cannot lift up our
minds to recognise the certainty of any truths, but those which
come to us through our eyes and ears ? that, though we are
willing to look up to the sky now and then, we want the' solid
ground to stand and lie on ? u.

I was surprised just now to see a cobweb round a knocker:
for it was not on the gate of heaven. u.

We are apt to confound the potential mood with the optative.
What we wish to do, we think we can do : but when we don't
wish a thing, it becomes impossible.

Many a man's vices have at first been nothing worse than
good qualities run wild. u.

Examples would indeed be excellent things, were not people
so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow
them.

Surely half the world must be blind : they can see nothing,
unless it glitters.

A person who had been up in a balloon, was askt whether
he did not find it very hot, when he got so near the sun. This
is the vulgar notion of greatness. People fancy they shall get
near the sun, if they can but discover or devise some trick to
lift them from the ground. Nor would it be difficult to point
out sundry analogies between these bladders from the wind-
vaults of Eolus, and the means and implements by which men
attempt to raise themselves. All however that can be effected
in this way is happily altogether insignificant. The further we
are borne above the plain of common humanity, the colder it
grows : we swell out, till we are nigh to bursting : and manifold
experience teaches us, that our human strength, like that of

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 241

Anteus, becomes weakness, as soon as we are severed from the
refreshing and renovating breast of our mighty Mother.

On the other hand, it is in the lowly valley that the sun's
warmth is truly genial ; unless indeed there are mountains so
close and abrupt as to overshadow it. Then noisome vapours
may be bred there : but otherwise in the valley may we behold
the meaning of the wonderful blessing bestowed upon the
meek, that they shall inherit the earth. It is theirs for this
very reason, because they do not seek it. They do not exalt
their heads like icebergs, — which by the by are driven away
from the earth, and cluster, or rather jostle, around the Pole ;
but they flow along the .earth humbly and silently; and, wher-
ever they flow, they bless it ; and so all its beauty and all its
richness is reflected in their pure, calm, peaceful bosoms, u.

The inheritance of the earth is promist to the godly. How
inseparably is this promise bound up with the command to love
our neighbours as ourselves ! For what is it to inherit land ?
To possess it ; to enjoy it ; to have it as our own. Now if we
did love our fellow-men as ourselves, if their interests, their
joys, their good were as dear to us as our own, then would all
their property be ours. We should have the same enjoyment
from it as if it were called by our name. We can feel the
truth of this in the case of a dear friend, of a brother, — still
more in that of a husband and wife, who, though two persons,
are in every interest one. Were this love extended to all, it
would once more make all mankind one people and one family.
To this end the first Christians sought to have all things in
common : neither said any of them that aught of the things
which he possest was his own (Acts iv. 32). In proportion as
we grow to think and feel that the concerns of others are no
less important to us than our own, in proportion as we learn to
share their pleasures and their sorrows, to rejoice with them
when they rejoice, and to suffer and mourn with them when
they suffer and mourn, in the selfsame measure do we taste the
blessedness of the promise that we shall inherit the earth. It is
not the narrow span of our own garden, of our own field, that
11 p

242 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

we then enjoy. Our prosperity does not bound our happiness.
That happiness is infinitely multiplied, as we take interest in all
that befalls our neighbours, and find an everflowing source of fresh
joy in every blessing bestowed on every soul around us. a.

This great Christian truth is beautifully exprest by Augustin
in his 32d Treatise on St. John, when he is speaking of the
union between the individual Christian and the Church. " Quid
enim ? tu loqueris omnibus linguis ? Loquor, plane, quia omnis
lingua mea est, id est, ejus corporis cujus membrum sum. Dif-
fusa Ecclesia per gentes loquitur omnibus linguis : Ecclesia est
corpus Christi : in hoc corpore membrum es : cum ergo mem-
brum sis ejus corporis quod loquitur omnibus linguis, crede te
loqui omnibus linguis. Unitas enim membrorum caritate con-
cordat ; et ipsa unitas loquitur quomodo tunc unus homo loque-
batur. — Sed tu forsitan eorum omnium quae dixi nihil habes.
Si amas, non nihil habes. Si enim amas unitatem, etiam tibi
habet quisquis in ilia habet aliquid. Tolle invidiam, et tuum
est quod habeo: tollam invidiam, et nieum est quod habes.
Livor separat ; sanitas jungit. Oculus solus videt in corpore :
sed numquid soli sibi oculus videt ? Et manui videt, et pedi
videt, et caeteris membris videt. — Rursus sola manus operatur
in corpore : sed numquid sibi soli operatur ? Et oculo opera-
tur. — Sic pes ambulando omnibus membris militat : membra
caetera tacent, et lingua omnibus loquitur. Habemus ergo
Spiritum Sanctum, si amamus Ecclesiam."

This is the great blessing of marriage, that it delivers us
from the tyranny of Meum and Tuum. Converting each into
the other, it endears them both, and turns a slavish, deadening
drudgery into a free and joyous service. And by bringing
home to every one's heart, that he is something better than a
mere self, that he is the part of a higher and more precious
whole, it becomes a type of the union between the Church and
her Lord. u.

To Adam Paradise was home. To the good among his
descendants home is Paradise.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 243

God's first gift to man was religion, and a glimpse of personal
liberty: His second was love, and a home, and therein the
seeds of civilization. His two great institutions are two great
charters, bestowed on every creature that labours, and on
women. Had they been respected as they ought, no poor folks
would ever have been driven to their work like oxen, and
trampled down into mere creeping things; nor would any
females have been degraded into brute instruments for glutting
the casual passions of the male.

In giving us sisters, God gave us the best of earthly moral
antiseptics; that affinity, in its habitual, intimate, domestic,
desensualized intercourse of affection, presenting us with the
ideal of love in sexual separation ; as marriage, or total iden-
tification, does with the ideal of love in sexual union. Indeed
it bears the same relation to love, that love bears to human
nature ; being designed to disentangle love from sense, which is
love's selfishness, just as love is to disentangle man from selfish-
ness under all its forms. Yet God again has consecrated sense
in marriage ; so that its delights are only called in to be puri-
fied and minted by religion. If they are forbidden to the
appetite, it is to raise their character, and to endow it with a
blessing ; that, being thus elevated, enricht, and hallowed, they
may prove the worthier gift to the chastened and subjected
imagination.

Here let me cite a passage from one of the wisest and most
delightful works of recent times, which, though its author is
sometimes over-fanciful, and not seldom led astray by his Rom-
ish prejudices, is full of high and holy thoughts on the loftiest
subjects of speculation. " La passion la plus effrenee et la plus
chere a la nature humaine verse seule plus de maux sur la
terre que tous les autres vices ensemble. Nous avons horreur
du meurtre : mais que sont tous les meurtres reunis, et la guerre
meme, compares au vice, qui est comme le mauvais principe,
homicide des le commencement, qui agit sur le possible, tue ce
qui n'existe point encore, et ne cesse de veiller sur les sources
de la vie pour les appauvrir ou les souiller ? Comme il doit

244 , GUESSES AT TRUTH.

toujours y avoir dans le monde, en vertu de sa constitution
actuelle, une conspiration immense pour justifier, pour embellir,
j'ai presque dit, pour consacrer ce vice, il n'y en a pas sur
lequel les saintes pages aient accumule plus d'anathemes tem-
porels. Le sage nous denonce les suites funestes des nuits
coupables (iv. 6) ; et si nous regardons autour de nous, rien
ne nous empeche d'observer l'incontestable accomplissement
de ces anathemes. La reproduction de l'homme, qui d'un cote
le rapproche de la brute, l'eleve de l'autre jusqu'a la pure
intelligence, par les lois qui environnent ce grand mystere de la
nature, et par la sublime participation accordee a celui qui s'en
est rendu digne. Mais que la sanction de ces lois est terrible !
Si nous pouvions apercevoir tous les maux qui resultent des
innombrables profanations de la premiere loi du monde, nous
reculerions d'horreur. Nos enfans porteront la peine de nos
fautes : nos peres les ont venges d'avance. Voila pourquoi la
seule religion vraie est aussi la seule qui, sans pouvoir tout dire
a l'homme, se soit neanmoins emparee du mariage, et l'ait sou-
mis a de saintes ordonnances. Je crois meme que sa legisla-
tion sur ce point doit etre mise au rang des preuves les plus
sensibles de sa divinite." De Maistre, Soirees de Saint-Peters-
bourg, i. 59 - 61.

There are persons who would have us love, or rather obey
God, chiefly because he outbids the devil.

I was told once of a man, who lighted a bonfire in his park,
and walkt through it to get a foretaste of hell, and try what it
felt like. Surely he who could do this must often have been
present at scenes which would have furnisht him with a better
likeness. TT

Some men treat the God of their fathers as they treat their
father's friend. They do not deny him ; by no means : they
only deny themselves to him, when he is good enough to call
upon them.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 245

Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.

Ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat t In the first place, all
the sour faces in the world, stiffening into a yet more rigid
asperity at the least glimpse of a smile. I have seen faces too,
which, so long as you let them lie in their sleepy torpour, un-
shaken and unstirred, have a creamy softness and smoothness,
and might beguile you into suspecting their owners of being
gentle : but, if they catch the sound of a laugh, it acts on them
like thunder, and they also turn sour. Nay, strange as it may
seem, there have been such incarnate paradoxes as would rather
see their fellowcreatures cry than smile.

But is not this in exact accordance with the spirit which
pronounces a blessing on the weeper, and a woe on the laugher ?

Not in the persons I have in view. That blessing and woe
are pronounced in the knowledge how apt the course of this
world is to run counter to the kingdom of God. They who
weep are declared to be blessed, not because they weep, but
because they shall laugh : and the woe threatened to the laugh-
ers is in like manner, that they shall mourn and weep. There-
fore they who have this spirit in them will endeavour to for-
ward the blessing, and to avert the woe. They will try to com-
fort the mourner, so as to lead him to rejoice : and they will
warn the laugher, that he may be preserved from the mourning
and weeping, and may exchange his passing for lasting joy.
But there are many who merely indulge in the antipathy, with-
out opening their hearts to the sympathy. Such is the spirit
found in those who have cast off the bonds of the lower earthly
affections, without having risen as yet into the freedom of heav-
enly love, — in those who have stopt short in the state of tran-
sition between the two lives, like so many skeletons, stript of
their earthly, and not yet clothed with a heavenly body. It is
the spirit of Stoicism, for instance, in philosophy, and of vulgar
Calvinism, which in so many things answers to Stoicism, in re-
ligion. They who feel the harm they have received from
worldly pleasures, are prone at first to quarrel with pleasure of
every kind altogether : and it is one of the strange perversities

246 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

of our self-will to entertain anger, instead of pity, toward those
whom we fancy to judge or act less wisely than ourselves. This
however is only while the scaffolding is still standing around the
edifice of their Christian life, so that they cannot see clearly out
of the windows, and their view is broken up into disjointed
parts. When the scaffolding is removed, and they look abroad
without hindrance, they are readier than any to delight in all
the beauty and true pleasure around them. They feel that it is
their blessed calling, not only to rejoice always themselves, but
likewise to rejoice with all who do rejoice in innocence of heart.
They feel that this must be well-pleasing to Him who has filled
His universe with ever-bubbling springs of gladness ; so that,
whithersoever we turn our eyes, through earth and sky as well
as sea, we behold the dvypiBfiov yeXaa-fxa of Nature. On the
other hand, it is the harshness of an irreligious temper, clothing
itself in religious zeal, and not seldom exhibiting symptoms of
mental disorganization, that looks scowlingly on every indication
of happiness and mirth.

Moreover there is a large class of people, who deem the
business of life far too weighty and momentous to be made light
of; who would leave merriment to children, and laughter to
idiots ; and who hold that a joke would be as much out of place
on their lips, as on a gravestone, or in a ledger. Wit and Wis-
dom being sisters, not only are they afraid of being indicted for
bigamy were they to wed them both ; but they shudder at such
a union as incestuous. So, to keep clear of temptation, and to
preserve their faith where they have plighted it, they turn the
younger out of doors ; and if they see or hear of anybody taking
her in, they are positive he can know nothing of the elder.
They would not be witty for the world. Now to escape being
so is not very difficult for those whom Nature has so favoured
that Wit with them is always at zero, or below it. And as to
their Wisdom, since they are careful never to overfeed her, she
jogs leisurely along the turnpike-road, with lank and meagre
carcass, displaying all her bones, and never getting out of her
own dust. She feels no inclination to be frisky, but, if a coach
or a waggon passes her, is glad, like her rider, to run behind a

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 247

thing so big. Now all these people take grievous offense, if
any one comes near them better mounted ; and they are in a
tremour lest the neighing and snorting and prancing should be
contagious.

Surely however ridicule implies contempt : and so the feel-
ing must be condemnable, subversive of gentleness, incompat-
ible with kindness ?

Not necessarily so, or universally : far from it. The word
ridicule, it is true, has a narrow, onesided meaning. From our
proneness to mix up personal feelings with those which are
more purely objective and intellectual, we have in great measure
restricted the meaning of ridicule, which would properly extend
over the whole region of the ridiculous, the laughable, where
we may disport ourselves innocently, without any evil emotion ;
and we have narrowed it so that in common usage it mostly
corresponds to derision, which does indeed involve personal and
offensive feelings. As the great business of Wisdom in her
speculative office is to detect and reveal the hidden harmonies
of things, those harmonies which are the sources and the over-
flowing emanations of Law, the dealings of Wit on the other
hand are with incongruities. And it is the perception of incon-
gruity, flashing upon us, when unaccompanied, as Aristotle
observes (Poet. c. v), by pain, or by any predominant moral
disgust, that provokes laughter, and excites the feeling of the
ridiculous. But it no more follows that the perception of such
an incongruity must breed or foster haughtiness or disdain, than
that the perception of anything else that may be erroneous or
wrong should do so. You might as well argue, that a man
must be proud and scornful, because he sees that there is such
a thing as sin, or such a thing as folly in the world. Yet, un-
less we blind our eyes, and gag our ears, and hoodwink our
minds, we shall seldom pass through a day, without having
some form of evil brought in one way or other before us. Be-
sides the perception of incongruity may exist, and may awaken
laughter, without the slightest reprobation of the object laught
at. We laugh at a pun, surely without a shade of contempt
either for the words punned upon or for the punster : and if a

248 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

very bad pun be the next best thing to a very good one, this is
not from its flattering any feeling of superiority in us, but be-
cause the incongruity is broader and more glaring. Nor, when
we laugh at a droll combination of imagery, do we feel any
contempt, but often admiration, at the ingenuity shewn in it,
and an almost affectionate thankfulness toward the person by
whom we have been amused, such as is rarely excited by any
other display of intellectual power ; as those who have ever
enjoyed the delight of Professor Sedgwick's society will bear
witness.

It is true, an exclusive attention to the ridiculous side of
things is hurtful to the character, and destructive of earnest-
ness and gravity. But no less mischievous is it to fix our atten-
tion exclusively, or even mainly, on the vices and other follies
of mankind. Such contemplations, unless counteracted by
wholesomer thoughts, harden or rot the heart, deaden the
moral principle, and make us hopeless and reckless. The
objects toward which we should turn our minds habitually, are
those which are great and good and pure, the throne of Virtue,
and she who sits upon it, the majesty of Truth, the beauty of
Holiness. This is the spiritual sky through which we should
strive to mount, " springing from crystal step to crystal step,"
and bathing our souls in its living, life-giving ether. These are
the thoughts by which we should whet and polish our swords
for the warfare against evil, that the vapours of the earth may
not rust them. But in a warfare against evil, under one or
other of its forms, we are all of us called to engage : and it is
a childish dream to fancy that we can walk about among man-
kind without perpetual necessity of remarking that the world
is full of many worse incongruities, beside those which make
us laugh.

Nor do I deny that a laugher may often be a scoffer and a
scorner. Some jesters are fools of a worse breed than those
who used to wear the cap. Sneering is commonly found along
with a bitter, splenetic misanthropy : or it may be a man's
mockery at his own hollow heart, venting itself in mockery at
others. Cruelty will try to season, or to palliate its atrocities

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 249

by derision. The hyena grins in its den ; most wild beasts
over their1 prey. But, though a certain kind of wit, like other
intellectual gifts, may coexist with moral depravity, there has
often been a playfulness in the best and greatest men, — in
Phocion, in Socrates, in Luther, in Sir Thomas More, — which,
as it were, adds a bloom to the severer graces of their charac-
ter, shining forth with amaranthine brightness when storms as-
sail them, and springing up in fresh blossoms under the axe of
the executioner. How much is our affection for Hector increast
by his tossing his boy in his arms, and laughing at his childish
fears ! Smiles are the language of love : they betoken the
complacency and delight of the heart in the object of its con-
templation. Why are we to assume that there must needs be
bitterness or contempt in them, when they enforce a truth, or
reprove an errour ? On the contrary, some of those who have
been richest in wit and humour, have been among the simplest
and kindest-hearted of men. I will only instance Fuller, Bish-
op Earle, Lafontaine, Matthes Claudius, Charles Lamb. " Le
mechant n'est jamais comique," is wisely remarkt by De Mais-
tre, when canvassing the pretensions of Voltaire (Soirees, i.
273) : and the converse is equally true : le comique, le vrai
comique, n'est jamais mechant. A laugh, to be joyous, must
flow from a joyous heart ; but without kindness there can be no
true joy. And what a dull, plodding, tramping, clanking would
the ordinary intercourse of society be, without wit to enliven
and brighten it ! When two men meet, they seem to be kept
at bay through the estranging effects of absence, until some
sportive sally opens their hearts to each other. Nor does any-
thing spread cheerfulness so rapidly over a whole party, or an
assembly of people, however large. Reason expands the soul
of the philosopher ; Imagination glorifies the poet, and breathes
a breath of spring through the young and genial : but, if we
take into account the numberless glances and gleams whereby
Wit lightens our everyday life, I hardly know what power min-
isters so bountifully to the innocent pleasures of mankind.

Surely too it cannot be requisite to a man's being in earnest,
that he should wear a perpetual frown. Or is there less of sin-
11*

250 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

cerity in Nature during her gambols in spring, than during the
stiffness and harshness of her wintry gloom? Does not the
bird's blithe caroling come from the heart, quite as much as
the quadruped's monotonous cry? And is it then altogether im-
possible to take up one's abode with Truth, and to let all sweet
homely feelings grow about it and cluster around it, and to
smile upon it as on a kind father or mother, and to sport with it
and hold light and merry talk with it as with a loved brother or
sister, and to fondle it and play with it as with a child ? In this
wise did Socrates and Plato commune with Truth ; in this wise
Cervantes and Shakspeare. This playfulness of Truth is beau-
tifully represented by Landor, in the Conversation between
Marcus Cicero and his brother, in an allegory which has the
voice and the spirit of Plato. On the other hand the outcries of
those who exclaim against every sound more lively than a bray
or a bleat, as derogatory to Truth, are often prompted, not so
much by their deep feeling of the dignity of the truth in ques-
tion, as of the dignity of the person by whom that truth is as-
serted. It is our vanity, our self-conceit, that makes us so sore
and irritable. To a grave argument we may reply gravely, and
fancy that we have the best of it : but he who is too dull or too
angry to smile, cannot answer a smile except by fretting and
fuming ? Olivia lets us into the secret of Malvolio's distaste
for the Clown.

For the full expansion of the intellect moreover, to preserve
it from that narrowness and partial warp, which our proneness
to give ourselves up to the sway of the moment is apt to pro-
duce, its various faculties, however opposite, should grow and
be trained up side by side, should twine their arms together,
and strengthen each other by love-wrestles. Thus will it be
best fitted for discerning and acting upon the multiplicity of
things which the world sets before it. Thus too will something
like a balance and order be upheld, and our minds be preserved
from that exaggeration on the one side, and depreciation on the
other side, which are the sure results of exclusiveness. A poet
for instance should have much of the philosopher in him ; not
indeed thrusting itself forward at the surface, — this would only

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 251

make a monster of his work, like the Siamese twins, neither
one thing, nor two, — but latent within: the spindle should be
out of sight; but the web should be spun by the Fates. A
philosopher on the other hand should have much of the poet in
him. A historian cannot be great, without combining the ele-
ments of the two minds. A statesman ought to unite those of
all the three. A great religious teacher, such as Socrates, Ber-
nard, Luther, Schleiermacher, needs the statesman's practical
power of dealing with men and things, as well as the historian's
insight into their growth and purpose: he needs the philoso-
pher's ideas, impregnated and impersonated by the imagination
of the poet. In like manner our graver faculties and thoughts
are much chastened and bettered by a blending and interfusion
of the lighter, so that "the sable cloud" may "turn forth her
silver lining on the night : " while our lighter thoughts require
the graver to substantiate them and keep them from evaporat-
ing. Thus Socrates is said in Plato's Banquet to have main-
tained that a great tragic poet ought likewise to be a great
comic poet : an observation the more remarkable, because the
tendency of the Greek mind, as at once manifested in their
Polytheism, and fostered by it, was to insulate all its ideas, and
as it were to split up the intellectual world into a cluster of
Cyclades ; whereas the appetite for union and fusion, often lead-
ing to confusion, is the characteristic of modern times. The
combination however was realized in himself, and in his great
pupil, and. may perhaps have been so to a certain extent in
Eschylus, if we may judge from the fame of his satyric dramas.
At all events the assertion, as has been remarkt more than
once, — for instance by Coleridge {Remains ii. 12), — is a won-
derful prophetical intuition, which has received its fulfilment in
Shakspeare. No heart would have been strong enough to hold
the woe of Lear and Othello, except that which had the un-
quenchable elasticity of FalstafF and the Midsummer Night's
Dream. He too is an example that the perception of the ridic-
ulous does not necessarily imply bitterness and scorn. Along
with his intense humour, and his equally intense, piercing in-
sight into the darkest, most fearful depths of human nature,

252 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

there is still a spirit of universal kindness, as well as universal
justice, pervading his works : and Ben Jonson has left us a
precious memorial of him, where he calls him "My gentle
Shakspeare." This one epithet sheds a beautiful light on his
character : its truth is attested by his wisdom ; which could
never have been so perfect, unless it had been harmonized by
the gentleness of the dove. A similar union of the graver and
lighter powers is found in several of Shakspeare's contempora-
ries, and in many others among the greatest poets of the mod-
ern world ; in Boccaccio, in Cervantes, in Chaucer, in Goethe,
in Tieck : so was it in Walter Scott.

But He who came to set us an example how we ought to
walk, never indulged in wit or ridicule, and thereby shewed
that such levities are not becoming in those who profess to fol-
low Him.

I have heard this argument alledged, but could never feel its
force. Jesus did indeed set us an example, which it behoves
us to follow in all things : we cannot follow it too closely, too
constantly. It is the spirit of His example however, that we
are to follow, not the letter. We are to endeavour that the
principles of our actions may be the same which He manifested
in His, but not to cleave servilely to the outward form. For,
as He did many things, which we cannot do, — as He had a
power and a wisdom, which lie altogether beyond our reach, —
so are there many things which beseem us in our human,
earthly relations, but which it did not enter into His purpose
to sanction by His express example. Else on the selfsame
grounds it might be contended, that it does not befit a Christian
to be a husband or a father, seeing that Jesus has set us no ex-
ample of these two sacred relations. It might be contended
with equal justice, that there ought to be no statesmen, no sol-
diers, no lawyers, no merchants, — that no one should write a
book, — that poetry, history, philosophy, science, ought all to be
thrown overboard, and banisht for ever from the field of lawful
human occupations. As rationally might it be argued, that, be-
cause there are no trees or houses in the sky, it is therefore
profane and sinful to plant trees and build houses on the earth.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 253

Jeremy Taylor, in his Exhortation to the Imitation of the Life
of Christ, when speaking of the things which Christ did, but
which are not "imitable by us," touches on this very point
(Vol. ii. p. lxvii). "We never read (he says) that Jesus
laught, and but once that He rejoiced in spirit : but the declen-
sions of our natures cannot bear the weight of a perpetual
grave deportment, without the intervals of refreshment and
free alacrity."

In fact the aim and end of all our Lord's teaching, — to
draw men away from sin to the knowledge and love of God, —
was such, that wit and ridicule, even had they been compatible
with the pure heavenliness of His spirit, could have found no
place in it. For the dealings of Wit are with incongruities,
regarded intellectually, rather than morally, — with absurdities
and follies, rather than with vices and sins : and when it attacks
the latter, it tries chiefly to point out their absurdity and folly,
the moral feeling being for the time kept half in abeyance.
But though there is no recorded instance of our Lord's making
use of any of the weapons of wit, — nor is it conceivable that
He ever did so, — a severe, taunting irony is sanctioned by the
example of the Hebrew Prophets, — as in Isaiah's sublime
invective against idolatry, and in Elijah's controversy with the
priests of Baal, — and by that of St. Paul, especially in the
fourth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. Surely
too one may say with Milton, in his Animadversions on the
Remonstrant, that " this vein of laughing hath ofttimes a strong
and sinewy force in teaching and confuting ; " and that, " if it
be harmful to be angry, and withal to cast a lowering smile,
when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough
ere any be able to say, why those two most rational faculties
of human intellect, anger and laughter, were first seated in the
breast of man." In like manner Schleiermacher, who was gifted
with the keenest wit, and who was the greatest master of irony
since Plato, deemed it justifiable and right to make use of these
powers, as Pascal also did, in his polemical writings. Yet all
who knew him well declare that the basis of his character, the
keynote of his whole being, was love ; — and so, when I had

254 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the happiness of seeing him, I felt it to be ; — a love which
delighted in pouring out the boundless riches of his spirit for
the edifying of such as came near him, and strove with unwea-
riable zeal to make them partakers of all that he had. Hereby
was his heart kept fresh through the unceasing and often tur-
bulent activity of his life, so that the subtilty of his understand-
ing had no power to corrode it ; but when he died, he was still,
as one of his friends said of him, einfunf-und-sechzigjdhriger
Jungling. To complain of his wit and irony, as some do, is
like complaining of a sword for being sharp. So long as
errour and evil passions lift up their heads in literature, the
soldiers of Truth must go forth against them : and seldom will
it be practicable to fulfil the task imposed upon Shylock, and
cut out a noxious opinion, especially where there is an inflam-
mable habit, without shedding a drop of blood. In fact, would
it not be something like a mockery, when we deem it our duty
to wage battle, were we to shrink from using the weapons which
God has placed in our hands ? Only we must use them fairly,
lawfully, for our cause, not for display, still less in mangling or
wantonly wounding our adversaries.

After all however I allow that the feeling of the ridiculous
can only belong to the imperfect conditions and relations of
humanity. Hence I have always felt a shock of pain, almost
of disgust, at reading that passage in Paradise Lost, where, in
reply to Adam's questions about the stars, Raphael says,

The Great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire ; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, He His fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter. When they come to model heaven,
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances, how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb, —
Already by thy reasoning this I guess.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 255

Milton might indeed appeal to certain passages in the Old
Testament, such as Psalm ii. 4, Prov. i. 26 : but the bold and
terrible anthropopathy of those passages can nowise justify a
Christian in attributing such a feeling to God ; least of all as
excited by a matter of purely speculative science, without any
moral pravity. For in the sight of God the only folly is
wickedness. The errours of His creatures, so far as they are
merely errours of the understanding, are nothing else than the
refraction of the light, from the atmosphere in which He has
placed them. Even we can perceive and acknowledge how the
aberrations of Science are necessary stages in her progress :
and an astronomer nowadays would only shew his own igno-
rance, and his incapacity of looking beyond what he sees
around him, if he were to mock at the Ptolemaic system, or
could not discern how in its main principles it was the indispen-
sable prelude to the Copernican. While the battle is pending,
we may attack an inveterate errour with the missiles of ridi-
cule, as well as in close fight, reason to reason : but, when the
battle is won, we are bound to do justice to the truth which lay
at its heart, and which was the source of its power. In either
case it is a sort of blasphemy to attribute our puny feelings to
Him, before whom the difference between the most ignorant
man and the least ignorant is only that the latter has learnt a
few more letters in the alphabet of knowledge. Above all is
it offensive to represent the Creator as purposely throwing an
appearance of confusion over His works, that He may enjoy
the amusement of laughing at the impotent attempts of His
creatures to understand them. u.

Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too, at his
friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him :
and on the other hand it would betray a sorry want of faith, to
distrust a friend because he laughs at you. Few men, I believe,
are much worth loving, in whom there is not something well
worth laughing at. That frailty, without some symptoms of
which man has never been found, and which in the bad forms
the gangrene for their vices to rankle and fester in, shews itself

256 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

also in the best men, and attaches itself even to their virtues.
Only in them it appears mainly in occasional awkwardnesses and
waywardnesses, in their falling short or stepping aside now and
then, rather than in their absolute abandonment of the path of
duty. It is the earthly particle which tints the colourless ray,
and without which that ray is no object of human vision. It
gives them their determinate features and characteristic expres-
sion, constituting them real persons, instead of mere personified
ideas. This too is the very thing that enables us to sympathize
with them as with our brethren, under deeper and gentler feel-
ings than those of a stargazing wonder. Now this incongruity
and incompleteness, this contrast between the pure, spiritual
principle and the manner and form of its actual manifestation,
contain the essence of the ridiculous. The discord, coming
athwart the tune, and blending with it, when not harsh enough
to be painful, is ludicrous.

At times too the very majesty of a principle will make, what
in another case would scarcely have attracted notice, appear
extravagant. The higher a tree rises, the wider is the range
of its oscillations : and thus it comes to pass that there is but a
step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Nor is it merely that
the effect is deepened by the contrast. There is ever a Socratic
playfulness in true magnanimity ; so that, feeling the inadequate-
ness of all earthly raiment, — finding too that, even when it
comes to its home, it must come as a stranger and an alien, —
it is not unwilling to clothe itself, like the godlike Ulysses, in
rags. At nothing else can one laugh with such goodwill, and
at the same time with such innocence and good-humour. Nor
can any laugh be freer from that contempt, which has so errone-
ously been supposed to be involved in the feeling of the ridicu-
lous. The stedfast assurance and unshakable loyalty of love
are evinced, not in blinking and looking aside from the object
we profess to regard, and leering on some imaginary counterfeit,
some puppet of our own fancies, trickt out in such excellences
as our gracious caprice may bestow on it ; but in gazing fixedly
at our friend such as he is, admiring what is great in him,
approving what is good, delighting in what is amiable, and

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 257

retaining our admiration and approbation and delight unsullied
and unimpaired, at the very moment when we are vividly con-
scious that he is still but a man, and has something in him of
human weakness, something of whimsical peculiarity, or some-
thing of disproportionate enthusiasm. . . u.

Every age has its besetting sins ; every condition its attend-
ant evils ; every state of society its diseases, that it is especially
liable to be attackt by. One of the pests which dog Civiliza-
tion, the more so the further it advances, is the fear of ridicule :
and seldom has the contagion been so noxious as in England at
this day. Is there anybody living, among the upper classes at
least, who has not often been laught out of what he ought to
have done, and laught into what he ought not to have done ?
Who has not sinned ? who has not been a runagate from duty ?
who has not stifled his best feelings ? who has not mortified his
noblest desire's? solely to escape being laught at? and not once
merely ; but time after time ; until that which has so often
been checkt, becomes stunted, and no longer dares lift up its
head. And then, after having been laught down ourselves, we
too join the pack who go about laughing down others.

The robbers and monsters of the olden time no longer infest
the world : but the race of scoffers have jumpt into their shoes.
Your silver and gold you may carry about you securely: of
your genius and virtue the best part must be lockt up out of
sight. For the man of the world is the Procrustes, who lays
down his bed across the highroad, and binds all passers-by to it.
To fall short of it indeed is scarcely possible ; and so none need
fear being pulled out; but whatever transgresses its limits is
cut off without mercy. One of these beds, of a newly invent-
ed kind, set up mainly for authors, has blue curtains with yel-
low trimmings ; the drapery of a second is of a dingy, watery
mud-colour: for in this respect Procrustes has grown more
refined with the age : his bed has got curtains. Unfortunately
there is no Theseus to rid us of him : an.d the hearts of the
rabble are with him, and lift up a shout as every new victim
falls into his clutches. Nor do the direct outrages committed

Q

258 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

by such men make up the whole of their mischief. Their bane-
ful influence spreads far more widely. Doing no good to those
whom they attack, but merely maiming or irritating them, they
at the same time check and frighten others ; and delude and
warp the judgement, while they pamper the malignant passions
of the multitude.

But do not these evils amply justify a sentence of transpor-
tation for life against jesting and ridicule ? and would it not be
well if we could banish our wits to grin amuck with savages
and monkies ?

By no means. If people would discern and distinguish, in-
stead of confusing and confounding, they would see that the best
way of putting down the abuse of a thing, is to make it use-
ful. Would you lop off every body's hands, because they might
be turned to picking and stealing ? Neither is the intellect to
be shorn of any of its members ; seeing that, though they may
all be perverted, they may all minister to good. The busy
have no time to be fidgety. He who is following his plough,
will not be breaking windows with the mob. Little is gained
by overthrowing and sweeping away an idol, unless you restore
the idea, of which it is the shell and sediment. Nor will you
find any plan so effective for keeping folks from doing harm,
as teaching them to employ their faculties in doing good, and
giving them plenty of good work to do. u.

No one stumbles so readily as the blind : no one is so easily
scandalized as the ignorant ; or at least as the half-knowing, as
those who have just taken a bite at the apple of knowledge, and
got a smattering of evil, without an inkling of good.

But are we not to beware lest we offend any of these little ones l
Assuredly : we are to beware of it from love ; or, if love
cannot constrain us, from fear. No wise man, as was remarkt
above (p. 167), will offend the weak, in that which pertains to
their faith. For this is a portion of the offense condemned in
the Gospel : it is offending the little ones who believe in Christ.
In the whole too of his direct intercourse with others, the wise
man's principle will be the same: for he will be desirous of

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 259

instructing, not of imposing, and, that he may be able to teach,
will try to conciliate. Thus will he act, after the example of
him, in whom, above all men, we behold the conscious self-abase-
ment and reasonable self-sacrifice of the loftiest and mightiest
intellect, the Apostle Paul. Like St Paul, every wise man
will to the weak become as weak, that he may gain the weak :
like him he will be made all things to all men ; — not in that
worldly spirit which is made all things to all men for its own
ends, — but in order that he may by whatsoever means benefit
some. He who wishes to edify, does not erect a column, as it
were a gigantic I, a huge mark of admiration at himself, with-
in which none can find shelter, and which contains nothing
beyond a stair to mount through it. He will build the lowly
cottage for the lowly, as well as the lordly castle for the lordly,
and the princely palace for the princely, and the holy church
for the holy. Or, if to effect all this surpass the feebleness of
a single individual, he will do what he can. He will lay out
and garnish such a banquet as his means enable him to provide ;
taking care indeed that no dish, which in itself is poisonous or
unwholesome, be set on his table : and so long as he does not
invite those who are likely to be disgusted or made sick, he is
nowise to blame, if they choose to intrude among his guests,
and to disgust themselves. When they find themselves out of
their places, let them withdraw : the meek will. A man's ser-
vants #Dmplained of his feeding them on salmon and venison :
the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego did not like bread or wine :
reason enough for not forcing what they disliked down their
throats : but no reason at all for not giving bread and wine to a
European, or for not placing salmon and venison before such as
relish them.

They who would have no milk for babes, are in the wrong.
They who. would have no strong meat for strong men, are not
in the right. u.

Neither the ascetics, nor the intolerant antiascetics, seem to
be aware that the austere Baptist and the social Jesus are
merely opposite sides of the same tapestry.

260 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

It is a strange way of shewing our humble reverence and
love for the Creator, to be perpetually condemning and reviling
everything that He has created. Were you to tell a poet that
his poems are detestable, would he thank you for the compli-
ment ? The evil on which it behoves us to fix our eyes, is that
within ourselves, of our own begetting; the good, without.
The half religious are apt just to reverse this. u.

If the Bible be, what it professes, a publisht code of duty,
conventional morality at best consists only of man's conjectural
emendations. Generally they are mere fingermarks.

The difference between man's law and God's law is, that,
whereas we may reach the highest standard set before us by
the former, the more we advance in striving to fulfill the latter,
the higher it keeps on rising above us. a.

When a man is told that the whole of Religion and Morality
is summed up in the two commandments, to love God, and to
love our neighbour, he is ready to cry, like Charoba in Gebir,
at the first sight of the sea, Is this the mighty ocean f is this all?
Yes! all: but how small a part of it do your eyes survey!
Only trust yourself to it ; lanch out upon it ; sail abroad over
it: you will find it has no end: it will carry you round the
world. I u.

He who looks upon religion as an antidote, may soon grow to
deem it an anodyne : and then he will not have far to sink,
before he takes to swallowing it as an opiate, or, it may be, to
swilling it as a dram. u.

The only way of setting the Will free is to deliver it from
wilfulness. u.

Nothing in the world is lawless, except a slave.

What hypocrites we seem to be, whenever we talk of our-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 261

selves ! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so
proud. a#

Many men are fond of displaying their fortitude in bearing
pain. But I never saw any one courting blame, to shew how
well he can stand it. They who do speak ill of themselves, do
so mostly as the surest way of shewing how modest and candid
they are. __ u#

There are persons who would lie prostrate on the ground, if
their vanity or their pride did not hold them up. u.

How coarse is our use of words ! of such at least as belong
to spiritual matters. Pride and Vanity are for ever spoken of
side by side ; and many suppose that they are merely different
shades of the same feeling. Yet so far are they from being
akin, they can hardly find room in the same breast. A proud
man will not stoop to be vain : a vain man is so busy in bow-
ing and wriggling to catch fair words from others, that he can
never lift up his head into pride. u.

Pride in former ages may have been held in too good repute :
Vanity is so now. Pride, which is the fault of greatness and.
strength, is sneered at and abhorred : to Vanity, the froth and
consummation of weakness, every indulgence is shewn. For
Pride stands aloof by itself; and that we are too mob-like to
bear : Vanity is unable to stand, except by leaning on others,
and is careful therefore of giving offense; nay, is ready to
fawn on those by whom it hopes to be fed. This is one of the
main errours in Miss Edgeworth's views on education, that she
is not only indulgent to Vanity, but almost encourages and fos-
ters it : and this errour renders her books for children mischiev-
ous, notwithstanding her strong sense, and her familiarity with
their habits and thoughts. Indeed this is the tendency of all
our modern education. Of old it was deemed the first business
of education to inculcate humility and obedience : nowadays its
effect, and not seldom its avowed object, is to inspire selfconceit
and selfwill. — 1836. u.

262 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

In the Bible the body is said to be more than raiment. But
many people still read the Bible Hebrew-wise, backward : and
thus the general conviction now is that raiment is more than
the body. There is so much to gaze and stare at in the dress,
one's eyes are quite dazzled and weary, and can hardly pierce
through to that which is clothed upon. So too is it with the
mind and heart, scarcely less than with the body. a.

A newborn child may be like a person carried into a forein
land, where everything is strange to him, manners, customs,
sentiments, language. Such a person, however old, would have
all these things to learn, just like a child.

The religious are often charged with judging uncharitably of
others : and perhaps the charge may at times be deserved.
With our narrow, partial views, it is very difficult to feel the
evil of an errour strongly, and yet to think kindly of him in
whom we see it. a.

Man's first word is Yes ; his second, JVb ; his third and last,
Yes. Most stop short at the first: very few get to the
last. u.

Who are the most godlike of men ? The question might be
a puzzling one* unless our language answered it for us: the
godliest. u.

What is the use of the lower orders ?

To plough . . and to dig in one's garden . . and to rub down
one's horses . . and to feed one's pigs . . and to black one's
shoes . . and to wait upon one.

Nothing else?

O yes ! to be laught at in a novel, or in a droll Dutch pic-
ture . . arid to be cried at in Wilkie, or in a sentimental story.

Is that all?

Why ! yes . . no . . what else can they be good for ? except
to go to church.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 263

Ay ! that is well thought of. That must be the meaning of
the words, Blessed are the poor : for theirs is the Kingdom of
God. v.

At first sight there seems to be a discrepancy between the
two statements of the first beatitude given by St Matthew and
by St Luke (v. 3. vi. 20). But the experience of missionaries
in all ages and countries has reconciled them, and has shewn
that the Kingdom of Heaven is indeed the Kingdom both of
the poor in spirit and of the poor. u.

Religion presents few difficulties to the humble, many to the
proud, insuperable ones to the vain. a.

There are two worlds, that of the telescope, and that of the
microscope ; neither of which can we see with the unassisted
natural eye. o. l.

Surely Shakspeare must have had a prophetic vision of the
nineteenth century, when he threw off that exquisite description
of " purblind Argus, all eyes, and no sight." u.

Some people seem to look upon priests as smuglers, who
bring in contraband goods from heaven: and so a company,
who call themselves philosophers, go out on the preventive
service. u.

Ajax ought to be the hero of all philosophers. His prayer
should be theirs : *Ev be (f)dei Kai okecraov. U.

It has been a matter of argument, whether Poetry or History
is the truer.

Has it? Who could ever feel a doubt on the point? His-
tory tells us everything that has really happened : whereas
Poetry deals only with fictions, as they are called ; that is, in
plain English, with lies.

Gently ! gently ! Very few histories tell us what has really

264 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

happened. They tell us what somebody or other once conceived
to have happened, somebody liable to all the infirmities, physi-
cal, intellectual, and moral, by which man's judgement is dis-
torted. Even this seldom comes to us except at third or fourth,
or, it may be, at twentieth hand ; and a tale, we know, is sure
to get a new coat of paint from every successive tenant. Often
too they merely tell us what the writer is pleased to think about
such a tale, or about half a dozen or a dozen of them that pull
each other to pieces.

Then all histories must be good for nothing.

Softly again ! There is no better sport than jumping at a
conclusion : but it is prudent to look a while before you leap ;
for the ground has a trick of giving way. Many histories, or,
if. you like a bigger word, we will say most, are worth very lit-
tle. Some are only fagots of dry sticks, chopt from trees of
divers kinds, and bundled up together. Others are baskets of
fruit, over-ripe and half-ripe, chiefly windfalls, crammed in with-
out a leaf to part them, and pressing against and mashing one
another. Others again are mere bags of soot swept down from
the chimney through which the fire of human action once blazed.
Still there are histories the worth of which is beyond estimation.
Almost all autobiographies have a value scarcely inferior to
their interest ; not only where the author has Stilling's simple
naivety, or Goethe's clearsighted, Socratic irony, and power of
representing every object with the hues and spirit of life; but
even where his vanity stings him to make himself out a prodigy
of talents, like Cellini, or a prodigy of worthlessness, like Rous-
seau. Other biographies, in proportion as they approach to the
character of autobiography, when they are written by those who
loved and were familiar with their subjects, who had an eye for
the tokens of individual character, and could pick up the words
as they dropt from living lips, are wholesome and nourishing
reading. There is much that is beautiful in Walton's Lives,
though mixt with a good deal of gossip ; and few books so re-
fresh and lift up one's heart, as the Life of Oberlin, Lucy
Hutchinson's of her husband, and Roper's of Sir Thomas More.
Memoirs too, such as Xenophon's and Cesar's, those of Frederic

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 265

the Great, of Sir William Temple, and many others, in which-
the author relates the part he himself took in public life, and
the affairs he was directly concerned in, contain much instruc-
tive information, more especially for those who follow a like
calling. The richness of the French in memoirs, arising from
their social spirit, has tended much to foster and cultivate that
spirit, and schooled and trained them to that diplomatic skill, for
which they have so long been celebrated. Still more precious
is the story of his own time recorded by a statesman, who has
trod the field of political action, and has stood near the source
of events, and lookt into it, when he has indeed a statesman's
discernment, and knows how men act, and why. Such are the
great works of Clarendon, of Tacitus, of Polybius, above all, of
Thucydides. The latter has hitherto been, and is likely to con-
tinue unequaled. For the sphere of History since his time has
been so manifoldly enlarged, it is scarcely possible now for any
one mind to circumnavigate it. Besides the more fastidious
nicety of modern manners shrinks from that naked exposure of
the character as well as of the limbs, which the ruder ancients
took no offense at : and machinery is scarcely doing less towards
superseding personal energy in politics and war, than in our
manufactures ; so that history may come ere long to be written
without mention of a name. In Thucydides too, and in him
alone, there is that union of the poet with the philosopher, which
is essential to form a perfect historian. He has the imaginative
plastic power, which makes events pass in living array before
us, combined with a profound reflective insight into their causes
and laws ; and all his other faculties are under the dominion of
the most penetrative practical understanding.

Well then ! good history after all is truer than that lying . . .

I must again stop you, recommending you in future, when the
wind changes, to tack like a skilful seaman, not to veer round
like a weathercock. The latter is too commonly the practice of
those who are beginning to generalize. They are determined
to point at something, and care little at what. When you have
more experience, you will find out that general propositions, like
the wind, are very useful to those who trim their sails by them,
12

266 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

but of no use at all to those who point at them: the former go
on ; the latter go round. Thucydides, true and profound as he
is, cannot be truer or profounder than his contemporary, Sopho-
cles ; whom, as well in these qualities, as in the whole tone of
his genius and even of his style, he strongly resembles : he can-
not be truer or more profound than Shakspeare. So Herodotus
is not more true than Homer, and scarcely less : nor would
Froissart yield the palm to Chaucer; nor take it from him.
You might fairly match Euripides against Xenophon, barring
his Anabasis : and Livy, like Virgil, would be distanced, were
truth to be the winning-post: at least, if he came in first, it
would be as the greater poet. To draw nearer home, Gold-
smith's poems, even without reckoning the best of them, his in-
imitable Vicar, are truer than his Histories : so, beyond com-
parison, are Smollett's novels than his ; and Walter Scott's than
his ; and Voltaire's tales than his. Nothing, I grant, can well
be truer than Defoe's History of the Plague ; unless it be his
Robinson Crusoe. Machiavel indeed found better, play for his
serpentine wisdom in the intrigues of public than of private
life ; just as one would rather see a boa coil round a tiger than
round a cat. But while Schiller's WaUenstein carries us amid
the real struggles of the Thirty Years "War, in his History it is
more like a shamfight at a review. As to your favorite, Hume,
he wrote no novels or tales that I know of, except his Essays ;
and full of fiction and truthless as .they are, they are hardly
more so than his History.

What do you mean ? History, good history at least, Thu-
cydides, if you choose, tells us facts ; and nothing can be so
true as a fact.

Did you never hear a story told two ways ?

Yes, a score of ways.

Were they all true ?

Probably not one of them.

There may be accounts of facts then, which are not true.

To be sure, when people tell lies.

Often, very often, without. There is not half the falsehood
in the world that the falsehearted fancy ; much as there may

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 267

be ; and greatly as the quantity is increast by suspicion, scratch-
ing, as it always does, round every sore place. Three fourths
of the misstatements and misrepresentations that we hear, have
a different origin. In a number, perhaps the majority of in-
stances, the feelings of the relater give a tinge to what he sees,
which his understanding is not free and selfpossest enough to
rub off. Manifold discrepancies will arise from differences in
the perceptive powers of the organs by which the object was
observed; whether those differences be natural, or result from
cultivation, or from peculiar habits of thought, Very often
people cannot help seeing diversely, because they are not look-
ing from the same point of view. One man may see a full
face ; another, a profile ; another, merely the back of the head.
Let each describe what he has seen : the accounts wrill differ
entirely : are they therefore false ? The cloud, which Hamlet,
in bitter mockery at his own weakness and vacillation, points
out to Polonius, is at one moment a camel, the next a weasel,
the third a whale : just so is it with those vapoury, cloudlike,
changeface things, which we call facts. The selfsame action
may to one man's eyes appear patient and beneficent, to another
man crafty and selfish, to a third stupid and porpoise-like. Nay,
the same man may often find his view of it alter, as he beholds
it in a fainter or fuller light, displaying less or more of its mo-
tives and character. But would you not dike .to take another
turn round ? Every fact, you say, if correctly stated, is a
truth.

Of course : it is only another word for the same thing.

Rather would I assert that a fact cannot be a truth.

You will not easily persuade me of that.

I do not want to persuade you of anything, except to follow
the legitimate dictates of your own reason. I would convince
you, or rather help you to convince yourself, that a fact is
merely the outward form and sign of a truth, its visible image
and body ; and that, of itself and by itself, it can no more be a
truth, than a body by itself is a man : although common opinion
in the former case, and common parlance in the latter, has
trodden* down the distinction.

268 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

I will not dispute this. But in the account of a fact or an
action I include a full exposition of its causes and motives.

It has been said of some books richly garnisht with notes,
that the sauce is worth more than the fish : which with regard
to the Pursuits of Literature may be true, yet the sauce be
insipid enough. In like manner would your stuffing seem to be
worth a good deal more than your bird. This is the very point
where I wish to see you. A historian then has something else
to do, beside relating naked facts : a file of newspapers would
not be a history. He has to unfold the origin of events, and
their connexion, to shew how they hook and are linkt into the
" never-ending, still-beginning " chain of causes and conse-
quences, and to carry them home to their birthplace among
the ever-multiplying family of Fate. It was the consciousness
of this that led the Father of History to preface his account of
the wars between the Greeks and Persians with the fables of the
reciprocal outrages committed by the Asiatics and Europeans in
the mythical ages, and to begin his continuous narrative with
the attack of the Lydians on the Ionians. Moreover, as the
theme of History is human actions; for physical occurrences,
except so far as they exercise an influence on man, belong to
Natural History or to Science ; — the events, I say, which a
historian has to relate, being brought about by the agency of
man, he has not merely to represent them in their maturity and
completion, as actually taking place, but as growing in great
measure out of the character of the actors, and having their
form and complexion determined thereby. So that human
character, as modifying and modified by circumstances, man
controlling and controlled by events, must be the historian's
ultimate object. Having to represent the actions of men, he
can only do this effectively, and so as to awaken an interest
and fellowfeeling, by representing men in action. Now this is
the first object of the poet : he starts, where the historian ends.

But the historian's facts are true ; the poet's are acknowledg-
edly fictitious. When I have read Herodotus, I know for cer-
tain that Xerxes invaded Greece : after reading Homer, I am
left in doubt whether Agamemnon ever sailed against Troy.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 269

And what are you the wiser for being certain of the former
fact ? or what the less wise for being left in doubt as to the
latter ? Your mind may be more or less complete as a chrono-
logical table : but that is all. The human, the truly philosoph-
ical interest in the two stories is much the same, whether the
swords were actually drawn, and the blood shed, or no. Or do
you think you should be wiser still, could you tell who forged
the swords, and from what mine the metal came, and who dug
it up ? and then again, who made the spades used in the dig-
ging, and so on ? or how many ounces of blood were shed, and
how many corpses were strewn on the plain, and what crops
they fattened, and by what birds they were devoured, and by
what winds their bones were bleacht ! Much information at all
events you learn from Homer, of the most trustworthy and valu-
able kind, the knowledge of his age, of its manners, arts, insti-
tutions, habits, its feelings, its spirit, and its faith. Indeed
with few ages are we equally familiar : where we are, we must
draw our familiarity from other sources beside history. Nay,
assume that the facts of the Iliad never took place, that Aga-
memnon and Achilles and Ajax and Ulysses and Diomede and
Helen were never born of woman, nor ever lived a life of flesh
and blood, yet assuredly they did live a higher and more en-
during; and mightier life in the hearts and minds of their coun-
© ©

trymen. So it has been questioned of late years whether
William Tell actually did shoot the apple on his boy's head ;
because a similar story is found among the fables of other coun-
tries. I cannot now examine the grounds on which that doubt
has been raised : but be they what they may, travel through
Switzerland, and you will see that the story of Tell is true ; for
it lives in the heart of every Swiss, high and low, young and
old, learned and simple. A representation of it is to be found,
or was so till lately, in every marketplace, almost in every
house : and many a boy has had the love of his country, and
the resolution to live and die for her freedom, kindled in him
by the thought of TelPs boy ; many* a father, when his eyes
were resting on his own children, has blest him who delivered
them from the yoke of the stranger, and from the possibility of

270 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

being exposed to such a fearful trial, and has said to himself,
Yes . . I too would do as he did,. The true knowledge to be
learnt, whether from Poetry or from History, the knowledge of
real importance to man for the study of his own nature, — the
knowledge which may give him an insight into the sources of
his weakness and of his strength, and which may teach him
how to act upon himself and upon others, — is the knowledge
of the principles and the passions by which men in various
ages have been agitated and swayed, and by which events have
been brought about ; or by which they might have been brought
about, if they were not. Thus in other sciences it matters little
whether any particular phenomena were witnest on such a day
at such a place ; provided we have made out the principles they
result from, and the laws which regulate them.

Yet how can a poet teach us this with anything like the same
certainty as a historian ?

Just as a chemist may illustrate the operations of Nature by
ah experiment of his own devising, with greater clearness and
precision than any outward appearances will allow of. The
poet has his principles of human nature, which he is to embody
and impersonate ; for to deny his having a mind stored with
such principles, is to deny his being a poet. The historian on
the other hand has his facts, which he is to set in order and to
animate. The first has the foot to measure and make a shoe
for : the latter has a ready-made shoe, and must hunt for a foot
to put into it. Which shoe is the likeliest to fit well ?

That made on purpose for the foot, if the fellow knows any-
thing of his craft.

Doubtless. But in so saying you have yielded the very point
we have been arguing ? You have even admitted more than
the equality I pleaded for : you say, the poet is more likely to
bring his works into harmony with the principles of human
nature than the historian. I believe you are right. An illus-
tration from a kindred art may throw some light on our path.
A portrait-painter has all the advantages a historian can have,
with a task incomparably less arduous ; his subject being so
definite, and of such narrow compass : whereas .a poet is in

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 271

much the same condition with a person drawing a head for
what ia not very aptly termed a historical picture : the adjec-
tive ideal, or imaginative, or poetical, would more fitly describe
it. In the former case the artist has the features set before
him, and is to breathe life and characteristic expression into
them ; a life which shall have the calm of permanence, not the
fitful flush of the moment ; an expression which shall exhibit
the entire and enduring character, not the casual predominance
of any one temporary feeling. Hereby, as well as by the ab-
sence of that complacency with which people are wont to con-
template their own features, and of the effort to put on their
sweetest faces, which is not unnatural when their own eyes are
to feast on them, ought a portrait to be distinguisht from an
image in a glass. Yet, notwithstanding the facilities which the
portrait-painter has, when compared with a historian, or even a
biographer, how few have accomplisht anything like what I
have been speaking of! in how few of their works have the
very best painters come quite up to it ! Raphael indeed has
always ; Holbein, Titian, Velasquez, Eubens, Rembrandt, often ;
and a few others of the greatest painters now and then. But
a head, which is at once an ideal and a real head, that is, in
which the features, while they have the vividness and distinct-
ness of actual life, are at the same time correct exponents and
symbols of character, will more frequently be met with in a
poetical picture. As to a historical picture, rightly deserving
of that name, — a picture representing a historical event, with
the persons who actually took part in it, — such a work seems
almost to have been regarded as hopeless. When anything of
the sort has been attempted, it has been rather as a historical
document, than for any purpose of art: and the result has
been little else than a collection of portraits; which is no
more a historical picture, than a biographical dictionary is a
history.

Is it not notorious however, that historical, or poetical paint-
ers, as you call them, are for ever introducing living persons ?

Yes : the greatest have done so. Raphael whose heart was
the home of every gentle affection, has left many records of his

272 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

love for his master, and for his friend Pinturicchio, by painting
himself along with them among the subordinate characters or
lookers-on. The Fornarina too seems to have furnisht the type
for the head of the mother in the Transfiguration, and perhaps
for other heads in other pictures. When he makes use of a
living head however, in representing one of his dramatical or
poetical personages, he does not set it on the canvas, as Rubens
through poverty of imagination is wont to do, in its bare out-
ward reality, but idealizes it. He takes its general form and
outlines, and animates it with the character and feelings which
he wishes to express, purifying it from whatever is at variance
with them. Or rather perhaps, when he was embodying his
idea, he almost unconsciously drew a likeness of the features on
which he loved to gaze. In fact no painter, however great his
genius Or inventive power may be, will neglect the study of
living subjects, and content himself with poring over the phan-
toms of his imagination, or the puppets of his theory ; any more
than a poet will turn away from the world of history and of
actual life. For the painter's business is not to produce a new
creature of his own, but to reproduce that which Nature pro-
duces now and then in her happiest moments, to give perma-
nence to the rapture of transient inspiration, and unity and
entireness to what in real life is always more or less disturbed
by marks of earthly frailty, and by the intrusion of extraneous,
if not uncongenial and contradictory elements. You know the
story of Leonardo, — who himself wrote a theoretical treatise
on Painting, — how he is said to have sat in the market-place
at Milan, looking out for heads to bring into his picture of the
Last Supper. Hence, as Goethe observes (Vol. xxxix. p. 124),
we may understand how he might be sixteen years at his work,
yet neither finish the Saviour nor the Traitor. For it is a diffi-
culty which presses on all such as have ever made a venture
into the higher regions of thought, to discover anything like
answerable realities, — to atone their ideas with their percep-
tions : and the difficulty is much enhanced, when we are not
allowed to deal freely with such materials as our senses supply,
but have to bring down our thoughts to a kind of forced wedlock

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 273

with some one thing just as it is. This is the meaning of what
Raphael says with such delightful simplicity in his letter to
Castiglione : Essendo carestia di belle donne, io mi servo di certa
idea che mi viene alia mente.

There is something too in the immediate presence of an out-
ward reality, which in a manner overawes the mind, so as to
hinder the free play of its speculative and imaginative powers.
"We cannot at such a moment separate that which is essential in
an object, from that which is merely accidental, the permanent
from the transitory : nor, as we were made for action far more
than for contemplation, is it desirable that we should do so.
That which strikes us at sight must needs be that which comes
forward the most prominently. This however can by no means
be relied on as characteristic ; least of all in the actions of men,
who have learnt the arts of clothing and masking their souls as
well as their bodies. Besides we may easily be too near a thing
to see it in its unity and totality : and unless we see it as a
whole, we cannot discern the proportion and importance and
purpose of its parts. Yet there before us the object stands : the
spell of reality is upon us : it is, we know not what : we only
know that it is, and that there is something in it which to us is
a mystery. We cannot enter into it, to look what is stirring
and working at its heart : we cannot unfold and anatomize it :
our senses like leadingstrings, half uphold and guide, half check
and pull in our understandings. If what we see were only dif-
ferent from what it is, then we could understand it. But it is
obstinate, stubborn, changeless, and will not bend to our will.
So we are fain to let it remain as it is, half felt, half understood,
with roots diving down out of sight, and branches losing them-
selves among the tops of the neighboring trees. Thus, whenever
reality comes athwart our minds, they are sure to suffer more
or less of an eclipse. We must get out of the shadow of an
object to see it : we must recede from it, to comprehend it : we
must compare the present with all our past impressions, to make
out the truth common to them all. When one calls to mind
how hard it is, to think oneself into a thing, and to think its
central thought out of it, one is little surprised that Lavater,
12* R

274 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

♦

who on such a point must be allowed to have a voice, should
say in a letter to Jacobi, " I hold it to be quite impossible for
any man of originality to be painted. I am a lover of portraits ;
and yet there is nothing I hate so much as portraits."

You cannot need that I should point out to you how all these
difficulties are magnified and multiplied in history. The field
of operation is so vast and unsurveyable ; so much of it lies
wrapt up in thick, impenetrable darkness, while other portions
are obscured by the mists which the passions of men have
spread over them, and a spot here and there shines out dazzling-
ly, throwing the adjacent parts into shade ; the events are so
inextricably intertwisted and conglomerated, sometimes thrown
together in a heap, — often rushing onward and spreading out
like the Rhine, until they lose themselves in a morass, — and
now and then, after having disappeared, rising up again, as
was fabled of the Alpheus, in a distant region, which they reach
through an unseen channel ; the peaks, which first meet our
eyes, are mostly so barren, while the fertilizing waters flow se-
cretly through the vallies ; the statements of events, as we have
already seen, are so perpetually at variance, and not seldom
irreconcilably contradictory ; the actors on the ever-shifting
stage are so numerous and promiscuous ; so many indistinguish-
able passions, so many tangled opinions, so many mazy preju-
dices, are ever at work, rolling and tossing to and fro in a sleep-
less conflict, in which every man's hand and heart seem to be
against his neighbour, and often against himself ; it is so impos-
sible to discern and separate the effects brought about by man's
will and energy, from those which are the result of outward
causes, of circumstances, of conjunctures, of all the mysterious
agencies summed up under the name of chance ; and it requires
so much faith, as well as wisdom, to trace anything like a per-
vading, overruling law through the chaos of human affairs, and
to perceive how the banner which God has set up, is still borne
pauselessly onward, even while the multitudinous host seems to
be straggling waywardly, busied in petty bickerings and per-
sonal squabbles ; that a perfect, consummate history of the
world may not unreasonably be deemed the loftiest achievement

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 275

that the mind of man can contemplate ; although no one able to
take the measure of his own spiritual stature will dream that it
could ever be accomplisht, except by an intellect far more pen-
etrative and comprehensive than man's. No mortal eye can
embrace the whole earth, or more than a very small part of it.

Indeed how could it be otherwise ? Seeing that the history
of the world is one of God's own great poems, how can any
man aspire to do more than recite a few brief passages from it?
This is what man's poems are, the best of them. The same
principles and laws, which sway the destinies of nations, and of
the whole human race, are exhibited in them on a lower scale, and
within a narrower sphere ; where their influence is more easily
discernible, and may be brought out more singly and palpably.
This too is what man's histories would be, could other men
write history in the same vivid, speaking characters, in which
Shakspeare has placed so many of our kings in imperishable
individuality before us. Only look at his King John : look at
any historian's. Which gives you the liveliest, faithfullest rep-
resentation of that prince, and of his age ? the poet ? or the
historians? Which most powerfully exposes his vices, and
awakens the greatest horrour at them ? Yet in Shakspeare he
is still a man, and, as such, comes within the range of our sym-
pathy : we can pity, even while we shudder at him : and our
horrour moves us to look inward, into the awful depths of the
nature which we share with him, instead of curdling into dead
hatred and disgust. In the historians he is a sheer monster, the
object of cold, contemptuous loathing, a poisonous reptile, whom
we could crush to death with as little remorse as a viper. Or
do you wish to gain an insight into the state and spirit of soci-
ety in the latter half of the last century, during that period of
bloated torpour out of which Europe was startled by the fever-
fit of the Revolution ? I hardly know in what historian you
will find more than a register of dates and a bulletin of facts.
There are a number of Memoirs indeed, which shew us what a
swarm of malignant passions were gathered round the heart of
society, and how out of that heart did in truth proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,

276 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

malice, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, fool-
ishness. Nay, as our Lord's words have often been misinter-
preted, many of those Memoirs might tempt us to fancy, that
these are the only fruits which the heart of man can bring forth.
Would you understand the true character of that age however,
its better side as well as its worse, its craving for good as well
as its voracity for evil ? would you watch the powers in their
living fermentation, instead of dabbling in their dregs? In
Goethe's novels, and in some of his dramas, will you most
clearly perceive how homeless and anchorless and restless man-
kind had become, from the decay of every ancestral feeling,
and the undermining of every positive institution; how they
drifted about before the winds, and prided themselves on their
drifting, and mockt at the rocks for standing so fast. In them
you will see how the heart, when it had cast out faith, was mere
emptiness, a yawning gulf, sucking in all things, yet never the
fuller; how Love, when the sanctity of Marriage had faded
away, was fain to seek a sanctity in itself, and threw itself into
the arms of Nature, and could not tear itself from her grasp
save by death ; how men, when the bonds of society and law
had lost their force, were still led by their social instinct to
enter into secret unions, and nominally for good purposes, but
such as flattered and fostered personal vanity, disburdening
them from that yoke, which we are always eager to cast off, in
the delusive imagination of asserting our freedom, but which
alone can make us truly free, as it alone can make us truly
happy, when we bear it readily and willingly, — the yoke of
Duty. Here, as in so many other cases, while the historians
give you the body, and often no more than the carcass, of
history, it is in the poet that you must seek for its spirit.

But surely it is part of a historian's office to explain by
what principles and passions the persons in his history were
actuated.

Undoubtedly : so far as he can. Sundry difficulties however
impede him in doing this, which do not stand in the way of the
poet. A historian has to confine himself to certain individuals,
not such as he himself would have selected to exemplify the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 277

character of the age, but those who from their station happened
to act the most prominent parts in it. Now these in monarchal
states will often be insignificant. Hence modern historians are
under a great disadvantage, when compared with those of
Greece and Rome ; where the foremost men could hardly be
without some personal claims to distinction. Even Cleon and
Clodius were not so : they belong to the picture of their age, as
Thersites does to that of the Iliad ; and they are important as
samples of the spirit that was hastening the ruin of their coun-
try. Nor can a historian place his persons in such situations,
and make them so speak and act, as to set off their characters.
He must keep to those circumstances and actions which have
chanced to gain the most notoriety, and for which he can pro-
duce the best evidence. This is one of the reasons which led
Aristotle to declare that Poetry is a more excellent and philo-
sophical thing than History ; because, as he says, the business
of Poetry is with general truth, that of History with particu-
lars. Or, if you will take up that volume, you will find the
same thing well exprest by Davenant in the Preface to Gondi-
bert. There is the passage : " Truth narrative and past is the
idol of historians, who worship a dead thing : and Truth oper-
ative, and by effects continually alive, is the mistress of poets,
who hath not her existence in matter, but in reason." That is,
the poet may choose such characters, and may bring them for*
ward in such situations, as shall be typical of the truths which
he wishes to embody : whereas the historian is tied down to
particular actions, most of them performed officially, and rarely
such as display much of character, unless in moments of exag-
gerated vehemence. Indeed many histories give you little else
than a narrative of military affairs, marches and countermarch-
es, skirmishes and battles: which, except during some great
crisis of a truly national war, afford about as complete a picture
of a nation's life, as an account of the doses of physic a man
may have taken, and the surgical operations he may have un-
dergone, would of the life of an individual. Moreover a histo-
rian has to proceed analytically, in detecting the motives and
impulses of the persons whose actions he has to relate. He is

278 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

to make out what they were, from what they are recorded to
have done. Afterward, it is true, he ought to invert the pro-
cess, and to give a synthetical unity to the features he has
made out in detail. But very few historians have had this
twofold power. This may be one of the reasons why, among
the hundreds of characters in Walter Scott's novels, hardly one
has not more life and reality than his portrait of Buonaparte.
The former spring freshly from his genius: the latter is put
together, like a huge mammoth, of fragments pickt up here and
there, many of which ill fit into the others, and is scarcely
more than a skeleton with a gaudy chintz dressing-gown thrown
round him. As historians have themselves had to go behind
the scenes to examine what was doing there, they are fond of
taking and keeping us behind them also, and bid us mark how
the actors are rouged, and what tawdry tinsel they wear, and
by what pullies the machinery is workt. Poets on the other
hand would have you watch and listen to the performance.
Suppose it were a drama by any human poet, from which
position would you best understand its meaning and purpose ?

From the latter : there cannot be a doubt.

The same position will best enable you to discern the mean-
ing and purpose of the Almighty Poet; in other words, to
know truth. Were you to live inside of a watch, you could
neither use it, nor know its use. Were our sight fixt on the
inner workings of our bodies, as that of persons in a magnetic
trance is said to be, we should have no conception what a man
is, or does, or was made for. Sorry too would be the notion of
the earth pickt up at the bottom of a mine. In like manner,
to understand men's characters, one must contemplate them as
living wholes, in their energy of action or of suffering, not
creep maggotlike into them, and crawl about from one rotten
motive to another, turning that rotten with our touch, which is
not so already.

Yet in this respect you surely cannot deny that History is
much truer than Poetry. For, when reading poetry, you may
at times be beguiled into fancying that there are people who
will act nobly and generously and disinterestedly : whereas

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 279

from history we learn to look askance upon every man with
prudent suspicion and jealousy. Almost all the historians I
ever read concur in shewing that the world is wholly swayed
by the love of money and of power ; and that nobody ever did
a good deed, unless it slipt from him by mistake, except because
he could not just then do a bad deed, or wanted to gain a pur-
chase for doing a bad deed with less risk and more profit at
some future time.

Did you never act rightly yourself, purposing so to act, with-
out any evil design, or any thought of what you were to gain ?

Do you mean to insult me ? I hope I do so always.

Are all your friends a pack of heartless, worthless knaves.

Good morning, sir ! I have no friend who is not an honest
man ; and civility and courtesy are among their estimable
qualities.

Wait a few moments. I congratulate you on your good for-
tune, and only wish you not to suppose that you stand alone in
it. I would have you judge of others, as you would have them
judge of you. I would have you believe that there are other
honest men in the world, beside yourself and your friends.

But how can I believe it, when every historian teaches me
the contrary ?

How can you believe that you and your friends are so totally
different from the rest of mankind ?

I don't know. This used to puzzle me ; but, as I could not
clear it up, I left off troubling my head about it.

Let me give you a piece of advice. When your feelings tell
you anything, and your understanding contradicts them, more
especially should your understanding be merely echoing the
verdict of another man's — be not hasty in sacrificing what you
feel, to what you fancy you understand. You cannot do it in
real life, as you proved just now : a running stream is not to
be gagged with paper. But beware also of doing it in specula-
tion : for, though erroneous opinions do not exercise an absolute
sway over the heart and conduct, any more than the knowledge
of truth does, still each has no slight influence, and errour the
most; inasmuch as it stifles all efforts and aspirations after

280 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

anything better, which truth would kindle and foster. En-
deavour to reconcile the disputants where you can. As the
speediest and surest means of effecting this, try to get to the
bottom of the difference, to make out its origin and extent. Try
not only to understand your feelings, but your understanding :
for the latter is every whit as likely to stray, and to lead you
astray. You have just been touching on the very point in
common history which is the falsest. On this ground above all
would I assert that, on whichever side the preponderance of
truth may lie, with regard to untruth and falsehood there is
no sort of comparison.

. To be sure, none. History is all true ; and poetry is all
false.

Alack ! this is just the usual course of an argument. After
an hour's discussion, carried on under the notion that some
progress has been made, and some convictions establisht, we
find we have only been running round a ring, and must start
anew : the original position is reasserted as stoutly as ever.
Well! you remember the old way of settling a dispute, by
throwing a sword into the scale : let me throw in Frederic the
Great's pen, which is almost as trenchant, and to which his
sword lends some of its power. Look at the words with which
he opens his History : " La plupart des histoires que nous
avons sont des compilations de mensonges meles de quelques
verites." I do not mean to stand up for the strict justice of this
censure. But he is a historian of your own school, an asserter
and exposer of the profligacy of mankind. Thus much too is
most certain, that circumstantial accuracy with regard to facts
is a very ticklish matter ; as will be acknowledged by every
one who has tried to investigate an occurrence even of yester-
day, and in his own neighbourhood, when interests and passions
have been pulling opposite ways. In this sense too may we
say, as Raleigh says in a different sense, that, " if we follow
Truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out our eyes."
Therefore, on comparing the truthfulness of History and Poetry,
it appears that History will inevitably have to record many
facts as true, which are not true ; while the facts in Poetry,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 281

being avowedly fictitious, are not false. On the other hand, in
the representation of character, Poetry portrays men in their
composite individuality, mixt up of evil and good, as they are
in real life : whereas historians too often anatomize men ; and
then, being unable to descry the workings of life, which has
past away, busy themselves in tracing the more perceptible
operations of disease. Hence it comes that they give us such
false representations of human character: one of their chief
defects is, that they have seldom enough of the poet in them.

You would have them conjure away all the persons who
have really existed, and call up a fantasmagoria of imaginary
ideals in their stead.

I would have them animate the dry bones of history, that
they may rise up as living beings. Goethe calls the Memoirs
of his life Dichtung und Wahrheit, Imagination and Truth;
not meaning thereby that any of the events narrated are ficti-
tious, but that they are related imaginatively, as seen by a
poet's eye, and felt by a poet's heart. Indeed so far are they
from being fictions, that through this very process they come
forward in their highest, completest reality : so that Jacobi, in
a letter to Dohm, when speaking of this very book, says : " I
was a party to many of the events related, and can bear wit-
ness that the accounts of them are truer than the truth itself."'

How is that possible ? how can anything be truer than the
truth itself?

Did you never hear of Coleridge's remark on Chantrey's
admirable bust of Wordsworth, — " that it is more like Words-
worth than Wordsworth himself is " ? This, we found just now,
a portrait or bust ought always to be. It ought to represent a
man in his permanent character, in his true self; not, as we
mostly see people, with that self encumbered and obscured by
trivial, momentary feelings, and other frippery and rubbish.
Now, as it requires a poet's imagination to draw forth a man's
character from its lurking-place, and to bring out the central
principle in which all his faculties and feelings unite ; so is
the same power needed to seize and arrange the crowd of
incidents that go to the making up of an event, and to exhibit

282 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

them vividly and distinctly, yet in such wise that each shall
only take its due station, according to its dramatic import-
ance, as member of a greater whole. Even for the repre-
sentation of events, as well as of characters, a historian ought
to be much of a poet: else his narrative will be flat, frag-
mentary, and confused. Look at a landscape on a chill, cloudy
day : it seems dotted or patcht with objects : the parts do not
blend, but stand sulkily or frowningly alone. Look at the same
landscape under a clear, bright sunshine: the hills, rockty
woods, cornfields, meadows, will be just the same: and yet how
different will they be! When bathed in light, their latent
beauties come out : each separate object too becomes more dis-
tinct : and at the same time a harmonizing smile spreads over
them all. This exactly illustrates the workings of the Imagina-
tion, which are in like manner at once individualizing and aton-
ing ; and which, like the sunshine, brings out the real, essential
truth of its objects more palpably than it would be perceptible
by the sunless, unimaginative eye. The sunshine does indeed
give much to the landscape ; yet what it gives belongs to the
objects themselves ; just as joy and love awaken the dormant
energies of a man's heart, and make him feel he has much
within him that he never dreamt of before. Sunshine, poetry,
love, joy, enrich us infinitely : but what makes their riches so
precious is, that what they give us is our own : it is our own
spirit that they free from its bondage, that they rouse out of its
torpour. They give us ourselves. Hence, because the true
nature both of events and characters cannot even be discerned,
much less portrayed, without a poet's eye, is it of such impor-
tance that a historian should be not scantily endowed with
imaginative power ; not indeed with an imagination like "Walter
Scott's, which would lead him to represent the whole panto-
mime of life; but with an imagination more akin to Shak-
speare's, so that he may perceive and embody the powers
which have striven and struggled in the drama of life. If his-
torians had oftener been gifted with this truthseeing faculty, we
should find many more characters in history to admire and
love, and fewer to hate and despise. Often too, when forced to
condemn, we should still see much to move our pity.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 283

After all, what you say amounts to this, that a historian
wants imagination to varnish over men's vices.

He wants imagination to conceive a man's character, without
which it is impossible to comprehend his conduct. We are all
prone, you know, to accuse or excuse one another, — a prone-
ness which is so far valuable, as it is a witness of our moral
nature : but unhappily we shew it much oftener by accusing
than by excusing. From our tendency to generalize all our
conclusions, — a tendency which also is valuable, as a witness
that we are made for the discernment of law, — we are wont to
try every one that ever lived by our own standard of right and
wrong. Now that standard is an exceedingly proper one to try
the only persons we never try by it . . ourselves. But to oth-
ers it cannot justly be applied, without being modified more or
less by a reference to their outward circumstances and condi-
tion, to their education and habits, — nay, to the inward bent
and force of their feelings and passions. No reasonable man
will demand the same virtues from a Heathen as from a Chris-
tian, or quarrel with Marcus Aurelius because he was not St.
Louis. Nor will he look for the same qualities in Alcibiades
as in Socrates, or for the same in Alexander as in Aristotle.
Nor again would it be fair to condemn Themistocles, because
he did not act like Aristides, — or Luther, because he differed
from Melanchthon. Only when we have caught sight of the
central principle of a man's character, — when we have ascer-
tained the purpose he set himself, — when we have carefully
weighed the difficulties he had to contend against, within his
own heart as well as without, — can we be qualified for passing
judgement on his conduct : and they who are thus qualified will
mostly refrain from pronouncing a peremptory sentence. To
attain to such an insight however requires imagination ; it re-
quires candour ; it requires charity : it requires a mind in
which the main ingredients of wisdom are duly combined and
balanced. On this point you will find some excellent remarks
in Coleridge's Notes on Hacket's Life of Bishop Williams
{Remains iii. 185). "In the history of the morality of a peo-
ple, prudence, yea cunning, is the earliest form of virtue. This

284 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

is exprest in Jacob and in Ulysses, and all the most ancient
fables. It will require the true philosophic calm and serenity
to distinguish and appreciate the character of the morality of
our great men from Henry VIII. to the close of James I., —
nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia, — and of those of Charles
I. to the Restoration. The difference almost amounts to con-
trast." And again (p. 194): "I can scarcely conceive a
greater difficulty, than for an honest, warmhearted man of prin-
ciple of the present day so to discipline his mind by reflexion
on the circumstances and received moral system of the Stuarts
age (from Elizabeth to the death of Charles L), and its proper
place in the spiral line of ascension, as to be able to regard the
Duke of Buckingham as not a villain, and to resolve many of
the acts of those Princes into passions, conscience-warpt and
hardened by half-truths, and the secular creed of prudence, as
being itself virtue, instead of one of her handmaids, when
interpreted by minds constitutionally and by their accidental
circumstances imprudent and rash, yet fearful and suspicious,
and with casuists and codes of casuistry as their conscience-
leaders."

On the other hand historians are apt to write mainly from
the Understanding, and therefore presumptuously and narrow-
mindedly. Dwelling amid abstractions, the Understanding has
no eye for the rich varieties of real life, but only sees its own
forms and fictions. Hence no faculty is so monotonous; a
Jew's harp itself is scarcely more so; while the Imagination
embraces and comprehends the full, perfect, magnificent diapa-
son of Nature. The Understanding draws a circle around
itself, and fences itself in with rules ; and every other circle it
pronounces to be awry; whatever lies without those rules, it
declares to be wrong. Above all is it perverse and delusive in
its chase after motives. Beholding all things under the cate-
gory of cause and effect, it lays down, as its prime axiom, that
every action must have a motive. Then, as its dealings are
almost wholly with outward things, it determines that the mo-
tive of every action must lie in something external. Now,
since all actions, inasmuch as they manifest themselves in time

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 285

and space, must needs come under the category of causation,
there is little difficulty in tracing them to such a motive, and
none in insisting that it must be the only one. But the outward
motive of an action, when it stands alone, must always be im-
perfect : it can only receive a higher sanction from an inward,
spiritual principle : very often too it will be corrupt. So that
this source will mostly be impure : or, if it be too pure and
clear, nothing is easier than to trouble it: you have only to
tear up a flower from the brink, and to throw it in. Every
good deed does good even to the doer : this is God's law. It
does him good, not merely by confirming and strengthening the
better principle within him, by purifying and refreshing his
spirit, and unsealing the fountains of joy and peace : it is also
fraught more or less, according to the laws of the universe,
with outward blessings, — with health, security, honour, esteem,
confidence, and at times even with some of the lower elements
of worldly prosperity. Every doer of good is worthy of admi-
ration and praise and trust: this is man's instinctive way of
realizing and fulfilling God's law. No good deed is done, ex-
cept for the sake of the good the doer is to get from it : this is
man's intelligent way of blaspheming, and, so far as in him lies,
annulling God's law. This is the lesson which the school of
selfish philosophers have learnt from their father and prototype,
who prided himself on his craft, when he askt that searching
question, Does Job fear God for nought f

You, my young friend, know that it is otherwise with you.
Your conscience, enlightened by your reason, commands you to
uphold that no action can be good, except such as you perform
without a thought of any benefit accruing to yourself from it.
You conceive, and rightly, I doubt not, that you sometimes act
thus yourself. You are confident that your friends do. Hold
fast that confidence : cleave to it : preserve and cherish it, as
you would your honour, that sacred palladium of your soul.
Do more : extend it to all : enlarge it, until, as the rainbow em-
braces the earth, it embraces all those whom God has made in
His image. Cast away that dastardly, prudential maxim, that
you are to trust no one until you have tried him. Let this be

286 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

your comfortable and hopeful watchword, never to distrust any-
one, until you have tried him, and found him fail. Nay, after
he has failed, trust him again, even until seven times, even until
seventy times seven : so peradventure may your good thoughts
of him win him to entertain better thoughts of himself. And
be assured that in this respect, above all others, Poetry knows
far more of God's world ; with whatever justice History may
brag of knowing the most about the Devil's world.* u.

* I cannot deny myself the pleasure of confirming what is here said by the
authority of one of those great soldiers and statesmen whom our Indian Em-
pire breeds, and who has exemplified the power of these principles by his own
wonderful achievements, both pacific and military, on the banks of the Indus.
Major Edwardes, in his very interesting Journal of a Year in the Punjab (vol.
i. p. 57), after speaking of an expedition he undertook into the country of the
savage Vizeeree tribes, relying on the honour of one of their chiefs, adds : " I
pause upon this apparently trifling incident, for no foolish vanity of my own,
but for the benefit of others : for hoping, as I earnestly do, that many a young
soldier, glancing over these pages, will gather heart and encouragement for the
stormy lot before him, I desire above all things to put into his hand the staff
of confidence in his fellow-men.

' Candid, and generous, and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust, —

An errour soon corrected :
For who but learns in riper years
That man, when smoothest he appears,
Is most to be suspected — '

is a verse very pointed and clever, but quite unworthy of the Ode to Friend-
ship, and inculcating a creed which would make a sharper or a monk of
whoever should adopt it. The man who cannot trust others, is, by his own
shewing, untrustworthy himself. Suspicious of all, depending on himself for
everything, from the conception to the deed, the groundplan to the chimney-
pot, he will fail for want of the heads of Hydra, and the hands of Briareus.
If there is any lesson that I have learnt from life, it is, that human nature,
black or white, is better than we think it: and he who reads these pages to a
close, will see how much faith I have had occasion to place in the rudest and
wildest of their species, how nobly it was deserved, and how useless I should
have been without it."

SECOND SERIES

Hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth ; and with labour
do we find the things that are before us : but the things that are in heaven
who hath searched out ? — Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 16.

Vasta ut plurimum solent esse quae inania : solida contrahuntur maxime,
et in parvo sita sunt. — Bacon, Inst. Magn. Praef.

ADYEETISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

This volume is called a second Edition ; for a portion of it was
contained in the former : but more than three fourths are new. The
first eight sheets were printed off ten years ago : hence, in the dis-
cussion on the Progress of mankind, no notice is taken of the views
concerning Development in reference to religious truth, which have
recently been exciting so much agitation and confusion. Indeed
almost all the new matter inserted in this Volume was written above
ten years since, though, in transcribing it for the press, I have often
modified and enlarged it to bring it into conformity with my present
convictions. A succession of other works has hitherto interrupted
the prosecution of this ; and several are now calling me away
from it. But, as soon as I can get my hands free, I hope, God will-
ing, to publish a second Edition of the original Second Volume.
This second Series only goes down to the end of the original First
Volume.

J. C. H.

Rockend, May 10th, 1848,

GUESSES AT TRUTH

In the wars of the middle ages, when the armies were lying
in their camps, single knights would often sally forth to disport
themselves in breaking a lance. In modern warfare too the
stillness of a night before a battle is ever and anon interrupted
by a solitary cannon-shot ; which does not always fall without
effect. Ahab was slain by an arrow let off at a venture : nor
are his the only spolia opima that Chance has borne away to
adorn her triumphs.

Detacht thoughts in literature, under whatsoever name they
may be cast forth into the world, — Maxims, Aphorisms, Es-
says, Eesolves, Hints, Meditations, Aids to Reflexion, Guesses,
— may be regarded as similar sallies and disportings of those
who are loth to lie rusting in inaction, though they do not feel
themselves called to act more regularly and in mass. And
these too are not wholly without worth and power ; which is
not uniformly in proportion to bulk. One of the lessons of the
late wars has been, that large disciplined bodies are not the
only effective force ; Cossacks and Guerillas, we have seen,
may render good service in place and season. A curious and
entertaining treatise might be written de vi quae residet in
minimis. Even important historical events have been kindled
by the spark of an epigram or a jest.

In some cases, as in Novalis, we see youthful genius gushing
13 s

290 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

in radiant freshness, and sparkling and bringing out some bright
hue on every object around, until it has found or made itself a
more continuous channel. And as Spring sheds its blossoms,
so does Autumn its golden fruit. Mature and sedate wisdom
has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in
weighty sentences. Solomon did so: the wise men of India
and of Greece did so: Bacon did so: Goethe in his old age
took delight in doing so. The sea throws up shells and pebbles
that it has smoothed by rolling them in its bosom : and what
though children alone should play with them ? " Cheered by
their merry shouts, old Ocean smiles."

A dinner of fragments is said often to be the best dinner.
So are there few minds but might furnish some instruction and
entertainment out of their scraps, their odds and ends of thought.
They who cannot weave a uniform web, may at least produce a
piece of patchwork ; which may be useful, and not without a
charm of its own.. The very sharpness and abruptness with
which truths must be asserted, when they are to stand singly, is
not ill fitted to startle and rouse sluggish and drowsy minds.
Nor is the present shattered and disjointed state of the intel-
lectual world unaptly represented by a collection of fragments.
When the waters are calm, they reflect an image in its unity
and completeness ; but when they are tossing restlessly, it splits
into bits. So too, when the central fires are raging, they shake
the mainland, and strew it with ruins, but now and then cast up
islands. And if we look through history, the age of Asia seems to
have passed away ; and we are approaching to that of Polynesia.

Only whatsoever may be brought together in these pages,
though but a small part be laid within the courts of the temple
itself, may we never stray so far as to lose it out of sight ; and
along with the wood and hay and stubble, may there be here
and there a grain of silver, if not of gold. tj.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature.

On the outside of things seek for differences ; on the inside
for likenesses.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 291

Notions may be imported by books from abroad ; ideas must
be grown at home by thought.

If the Imagination be banisht from the garden of Eden, she
will take up her abode in the island of Armida ; and that soon
changes into Circe's.

'ov

Why have oracles ceast ? Among other reasons, because we
have the books of the wise in their stead. But these too will
not answer aright, unless the right question be put to them.
Nay, when the answer has been uttered, he who hears it must
know how to interpret and to apply it. u.

One may develope an idea : it is what God has taught us to
do in His successive revelations. But one cannot add to it,
least of all in another age.

Congruity is not beauty : but it is essential to beauty. In
every well-bred mind the perception of incongruity impedes
and interrupts the perception of beauty. Hence the recent
opening of the view upon St. Martin's church has marred the
beauty of the portico : the heavy steeple presses down on it
and crushes it. The combination is as monstrous, as it would
be to tack on the last act of Addison's Cato to the Philoctetes
of Sophocles.

In truth steeples, which belong to the upward-looking princi-
ple of Christian architecture, never harmonize well with the
horizontal, earthly character of the Greek temple. To under-
stand the beauty of the latter, one must see it free from this
extraneous and incompatible incumbrance. One should see it
too with a southern sky to crown it and look through it. u.

Homer calls words winged; and the epithet is peculiarly
appropriate to his ; which do indeed seem to fly, — so rapid
and light is their motion; and which have been flying ever
since over the whole of the peopled earth, and still hover and
brood over many an awakening soul. Latin marches ; Italian

292 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

floats ; French hops ; English walks ; German rumbles along :
the music of Klopstock's hexameter is not unlike the tune with
which a broad-wheel waggon tries to solace itself, when crawl-
in g down a hill. But Greek flies, especially in Homer.

His meaning, or rather the meaning of his age, in assigning
that attribute to words, was probably to express their power of
giving wings to thoughts, whereby they fly from one breast to
another. For a like reason may letters be called winged, as
speeding the flight of thoughts far beyond the reach of sounds,
and prolonging it for ages after the sounds have died away ; so
that the thoughts entrusted to them are wafted to those who are
far off both in space and in time. Above all does the epithet
belong to printing: for, by means of its leaden types, that
which has been bred in the secret caverns of the mind, no
sooner comes forth, than thousands of wings are given to it at
once, and it roams abroad in a thousand bodies ; each several
body moreover being the exact counterpart of all the others, to
a degree scarcely attained by any other process of nature or
of art.

Ta>v war opvlQcov 7r6T€T)vSiv Wvea iroK\a,
%r]va)i/ rj yepdvcov rj kvkvcov 8ovXt^o8eipo)i/,
evda Kai ev0a TroTwvrai dyaXXopevai 7TT€pvye(r(Tivf
ic\ayyr)86v irpoKadi^ovTcov, <rp.apa.yei 8e re Xcipcov.

U.

The Schoolmen have been accused of syllogizing without
facts. Their accusers, those I mean who sophisticate and
explain away the dictates of their consciousness, do worse.
They syllogize against facts, facts not doubtful and obscure,
but manifest and certain; seeing that "to feel a thing in
oneself is the surest way of knowing it." South, Vol. ii.
p. 236.

They who profess to give the essence of things, in most
cases merely give the extract ; or rather an extract, or, it may
be, several, pickt out at chance or will. They repeat the blun-
der of the Greek dunce, who brought a brick as a sample of a
house : and how many such dunces do we still find calling on

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 293

us to judge of books by like samples ! At best they just tap
the cask, and offer you a cup of its contents, having pre-
viously half filled the cup with water, or some other less inno-
cent diluent. u.

When a man cannot walk without crutches, he would fain
make believe they are stilts. Like most impostors too, he
gives ear to his own lie ; till, lifting up one of them in a fit of
passion, to knock down a person who doubts him, he falls to the
ground. And there he has to remain sprawling: the crutch,
by help of which he contrived to stand, will not enable him to
rise. u.

What do you mean by the lords spiritual? askt Madame de
Stael : are they so called because they are so spirituels f How
exactly do esprit and spirituel express what the French deem
the highest power and glory of the human mind ! A large
part of their literature is mousseux: and whatever is so soon
grows flat.

Our national word and quality is sense ; which may perhaps
betray a tendency to materialism ; but which at all events com-
prehends a greater body of thought, thought that has settled
down and become substantiated in maxims. u.

Hardly any period of afterlife is so rich in vivid and raptur-
ous enjoyment, as that when Knowledge is first unfolding its
magical prospects to a genial and ardent youth ; when his eyes
open to discern the golden network of thought wherein man
has robed the naked limbs of the world, and to see all that he
feels teeming and glowing within his breast, embodied in glori-
fied and deathless forms in the living gallery of Poetry. So
long as we continue under magisterial discipline and guidance,
we are apt to regard our studies as a mechanical and often irk-
some taskwork. Our growing presumption is loth to acknowl-
edge that we are unable to walk alone, that our minds need
leadingstrings so much longer than our bodies. But when the
impatient scholar finds himself set free, with the blooming para-

294 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

dise of imagination and thought spread out before him, his mind,
like the butterfly, by which the Greeks so aptly and character-
istically typified their spirit, exulting in the beauty which it
everywhere perceives, both without itself and within, and de-
lighting to prove and exercise its newly developt faculty of
admiring and loving, will hover from flower to flower, from
charm to charm ; and now, seeming chiefly to rejoice in its mo-
tion, and in the glancing of its bright and many-coloured wings,
merely snatches a passing kiss from each, now sinks down on
some chosen favorite, and loses all consciousness of sense or life
in the ecstacy of its devotion.

In more advanced years, the student rather resembles the
honey-seeking, honey-gathering, honey-storing bee. He esti-
mates : he balances : he compares. He picks out what seems
best to him from the banquet lying before him : and even this
he has to season to his own palate. But at first everything
attracts, everything pleases him. The simple sense, whether of
action or of feeling, whatever may be their object, is sufficient.
The mind roams from fancy to fancy, from truth to truth, from
one world of thought to another world of thought, with an ease,
rapidity, and elastic power, like that with which it has been im-
agined that the soul, when freed from the body, will wander
from star to star. Nay, even after the wild landscape, through
which youth strayed at will, has been laid out into fields and
gardens, and enclosed with fences and hedges, after the foot-
steps, which had bounded over the flower-strewn grass, have
been circumscribed within trim gravel walks, the vision of its
former happiness will still at times float before the mind in its
dreams. Unless it has been bent down and hardened by the
opposition it has had to struggle with, it will still retain a dim,
vivifying hope, although it may not venture to shape that hope
into words, that it may again one day behold a similar harmo-
nious universe bursting forth from the jarring and fragmentary
chaos of hollow realities, — that in its own place and station it
may, as Frederic Schlegel expresses it,

Build for all arts one temple of communion,
Itself a new example of their union ; —

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 295

and that it may at least witness the prelude to that final con-
summation, when, as in the beginning, all things will again be
one. u.

Set a company of beginners in archery shooting at a mark.
Their arrows will all fly wide of it, some on one side, some on
the opposite : and while they are all thus far off, many a dis-
pute will arise as to which of them has come the nearest.' But
in proportion as they improve in skill, their arrows will fall
nearer to the mark, and to each other : and when they are fixt
in the target, there is much less controversy about them. Now
suppose them to attain to such a pitch of mastery, that every
arrow shall go straight to the bull's eye : they will all coincide.
This may help us to understand how the differences of the wise
and good, which are often so perplexing and distracting now,
will be reconciled hereafter; when the film of mortality is
drawn away from their eyes, and their faculties are strengthened
to see truth, and to strive after it, and to reach it. a.

Only, if we would hit the truth, we must indeed aim at it.
Else the more we improve in handling the bow, the further
away from it shall we send our" arrows. As for that numerous
class, who, instead of aiming at truth, have merely aimed at
glorifying themselves, their arrows will be found to have re-
coiled, like that of Adrastus in Statius, and to be sticking their
deadly, barbed points into their own souls. Alas ! there are
many such pseudo-Sebastians walking about, bristled with
suicidal darts, living martyrs to their own vain-glory. u.

Heroism is active genius ; genius, contemplative heroism.
Heroism is the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in
action ; fj deias nvos (pvaecos ivepyeia, as a Greek would more
closely have defined it.

These are the men to employ, in peace as well as in war, the
men who are afraid of no fire except hell-fire.

296 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

How few, how easily to be counted up, are the cardinal
names in the history of the human mind ! Thousands and tens
of thousands spend their days in the preparations which are to
speed the predestined change, in gathering and amassing the
materials which are to kindle and give light and warmth, when
the fire from heaven has descended on them. But when that
flame has once blazed up, its very intensity often shortens its
duration. Many, yea, without number, are the sutlers and
pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of
intellect. Many are busied in building and fitting up and
painting and emblazoning the chariot ; others in lessening the
friction of the wheels: others move forward in detachments,
and level the way it is to pass over, and cut down the obstacles
which would impede its progress. And these too have their
reward. If so be they labour diligently in their calling, not
only will they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in
the lowliest task never fails to win ; not only will the sweat of
their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows ;
but, when the victory is at last achieved, they come in for a
share of the glory ; even as the meanest soldier who fought at
Marathon or at Leipsic, became a sharer in the glory of those
saving days ; and within his own household circle, the approba-
tion of which approaches the nearest to that of an approving
conscience, was lookt upon as the representative of all his
brother heroes, and could tell such tales as made the tear glisten
on the cheek of his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes with an un-
wonted, sparkling eagerness.

At length however, when the appointed hour is arrived, and
everything is ready, the master-mind leaps into the seat that is
awaiting him, and fixes his eye on heaven ; and the selfmoving
wheels roll onward ; and the road prepared for them is soon
past over ; and the pioneers and sutlers are left behind ; and
the chariot advances further and further, until it has reacht its
goal, and stands as an inviting beacon on the top of some dis-
tant mountain.

Hereupon the same labours recur. Thousands after thou-
sands must toil to attain on foot to the spot, to which genius

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 297

had been borne in an instant ; and much time is spent in clear-
ing and paving the road, so that the multitude may be able to
go along it, — in securing for all by reflexion and analysis,
what the prophetic glance of intuition had descried at once.
And then again the like preparations are to be made for the
advent of a second seer, of another epoch-making master-mind.
Thus, when standing on the beach, you may see the rpucvfiia, as
the Greeks called it, outrunning, not only the waves that went
before, but those that come after it : and you may sometimes
have to wait long, ere any reaches the mark, which some
mighty, over-arching, onrushing billow, some fluctus decumanus
has left.

That there have been such third and tenth waves among
men, will be apparent to those who call to mind how far the
main herd of metaphysicians are still lagging behind Plato ;
and how, for near two thousand years, they were almost all
content to feed on the crumbs dropt from Aristotle's table. It
is proved by the fact, that, even in physical science, the progress
of which, it is now thought, nothing can check or retard, — and
in which, more than in any other province of human activity,
whatever knowledge is once gained forms a lasting fund for
afterao-es to inherit and trade with, — not a single step was
taken, not a single discovery made, as Whewell observes, either
in mechanics or hydrostatics, between the time of Archimedes
and of Galileo. Indeed the whole of Whe well's History of
Science so strikingly illustrates the foregoing remarks, that,
had they not been written long before, they might be supposed
to be drawn immediately from it. The very plan of his work,
which his subject forces upon him, divides itself in like manner
into preludes, or periods of preparation, inductive epochs, when
the great discoveries are made, and sequels, during which those
discoveries are more fully establisht and developt, and more
generally diffused.

Or, if we look to poetry, — to which the law of progression

no way applies, any more than to beauty, but which, like beauty,

is mostly in its prime during the youth of a nation, and then is

wont to decline, — so entirely do great poets soar beyond the

13*

298 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

reach, and almost beyond the ken of their own age, that we have
only lately begun to have a right understanding of Shakspeare,
or of the masters of the Greek drama, — to discern the princi-
ples which actuated them, the purposes they had in view, the laws
they acknowledged, and the ideas they wisht to impersonate.

And is the case different in the arts ? What do we see in
architecture, but two ideas shining upon us out of the depth of
bygone ages, that of the Greek temple, and that of the Gothic
minster ? Each of these was a living idea, and, as such, capa-
ble of manifold development, expansion, and modification. Nor
were they unwilling to descend from their sacred throne, and
to adapt themselves to the various wants of civil life. But
what architectural idea has sprung up since ? These are both
the offspring of dark ages : what have we given birth to, since
we dreamt we had a sun within us ? One might almost sup-
pose that, as Dryden says, in his stupid epigram on Milton,
"The force of Nature could no further go;" so that, "To make
a third, we joined the other two." If of late years there has
been any improvement, it consists solely in this, that we have
separated the incongruous elements, and have tried to imitate
each style in a manner more in accord with its original prin-
ciple ; although both of them are ill suited for divers reasons
to the needs of modern society. Yet nothing like a new idea
has arisen, unless it be that of the factory, or the gashouse,
or the gaol.

In sculpture, it is acknowledged, the Greeks still stand alone :
and among the Greeks themselves the art declined after the age
of Phidias and Praxiteles. In painting too who has there been
for the last century worthy to hold Raphael's palette ? Even
in what might be deemed a mechanical excellence, colouring,
we are put to shame, when we presume to shew our faces by
the side of our greater ancestors. u.

From what has just been said, we may perceive how base-
less and delusive is the vulgar notion of the march of mind, as
necessarily exhibiting a steady, regular advance, within the
same nation, in all things. Even in the mechanical arts, —

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 299

which depend so little on individual eminence, and which seem
to require nothing more than the talents ordinarily forthcoming,
according as there is a demand for them, in every people, —
although the progress in them is more continuous, and outlasts
that in higher things, yet, when the intellectual and moral
energy of a nation has declined, that decline becomes percepti-
ble after a while in the very lowest branches of trade and man-
ufacture. Civilization will indeed outlive that energy, and keep
company for a long time with luxury. But if luxury extin-
guishes the energy of a people, so that it cannot revive, its civil-
ization too will at length sink into barbarism. The decay of
the Roman mind under the empire manifests itself not merely in
its buildings, its statues, its language, but even in the coins, in
the shape and workmanship of the commonest utensils.

In fact it is only when applied on the widest scale to the
whole human race, that there is the slightest truth in the doc-
trine of the perfectibility, or rather of the progressiveness of
man. Nay, even when regarded in this light, if we take noth-
ing further into account, than what man can do and will do for
himself, the notion of his perfectibility is as purely visionary, as
the search after an elixir of life, or any other means of evading
the pains and frailties of our earthly nature. The elixir of life
we have : the doctrine and means of perfectibility we have :
and we know them to be true and sure. But they are not of
our own making. They do not lie within the compass of our
own being. They come to us from without, from above. The
only view of human nature, as left to itself, which is not incom-
patible with all experience, is not its perfectibility, but its cor-
ruptibility.

This is the view to which we are led by the history of the
antediluvian world. This is the view represented in the prime-
val fable of the four ages ; the view exprest in those lines of
the Roman poet :

Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturas
Progeniem vitiosiorem.

Indeed it is the view which man has in all ages taken of his

300 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

own nature ; whether his judgment was determined by what he
saw within himself, or in the world around him. It is the view
to which he is prompted when his thoughts fall back on the inno-
cence of his own childhood, when he compares it with his pres-
ent debasement, and thinks of the struggles he has had to main-
tain against himself, and against others, in order to save himself
from a still more abject degradation. The same lesson is taught
him by the destinies of nations ; which, wThen they have left their
wild mountain-sources, will mostly meander playfully for a while
amid hills of beauty, and then flow majestically through plains
of luxuriant richness, until at last they lose themselves in mo-
rasses, and choke themselves up with their own alluvion.

Of a like kind is the main theme and subject of poetry. Its
scroll, as well as that of history, is like the roll which is spread
out before the prophet, written within and without ; and the
matter of the writing is the same, lamentations, and mourning,
and woe. When we have swallowed it submissively indeed, it
turns to sweetness ; but not till then : in the words of the Greek
philosopher, it is through terrour and pity that poetry purifies
our feelings. Hence the name of the highest branch of poetry
is become a synonym for every disaster : tragedy is but another
term for lamentations and mourning and woe : while epic po-
etry delights chiefly to dwell on the glories and fall of a nobler
bygone generation. With such an unerring instinct does man's
spirit recoil from the thought of an earthly elysium, as attain-
able by his own powers, however great and admirable they may
be. What though his strength may seem vast enough to snatch
the cup of bliss ! what though his intellect appear subtile enough
to compass or steal it ! what though he send his armies and
fleets round the globe, and his thoughts among the stars, and
beyond them ! he knows that the disease of his will is sure to
undermine both his strength and his intellect ; and that, the
higher they mount for the moment, the more terrible will their
ruin be, and the more certain. He knows that Sisyphus is no
less sure than Typhoeus of being cast into hell through his own
perversity ; and that only through the flames of the funeral pile
can Hercules rise into glory. It was reserved for a feeble-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 301

minded, earth-worshiping, self-idolizing age to find out that a
tragedy should end happily.

Nor will the boasted discovery of modern times, the division
of labour, — which the senters-out of allegories will suppose to
be the truth veiled in the myth of Kehama's self-multiplication,
when he is marching against Padalon to seize a throne among
the gods, — avail to alter this. The Roman fable warns us
what is sure to ensue, when the members split and set up
singly : and the state of England at this day affords sad con-
firmation to the lesson, that, unless they work together under
the sway of a constraining higher spirit, they jar and clash and
cumber and thwart and maim each other.

The notion entertained by some of the ancients, that, when a
person has soared to an inordinate pitch of prosperity, the envy
of the gods is provoked to cast him down, is merely a perver-
sion of the true idea. Man's wont has ever been to throw off
blame upon anything except himself; even upon the powers of
heaven, when he can find no earthly scapegoat. At the same
time this very notion bears witness of the pervading conviction
that a state of earthly perfection is an impossibility. The fun-
damental idea both of the tragic arrj and of the historic vefievis is,
that calamities are the inevitable consequences of sins ; that the
chain which binds them together, though it may be hidden and
mysterious, is indissoluble ; and that, as man is sure to sin, more
especially when puft up by prosperity, he is also sure to perish.
The sins of the fathers are indeed regarded by both as often
visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth genera-
tion ; not however without their becoming in some measure
accessory to the guilt. Were they not so, the calamities would
be as harmless as the wounds of Milton s angels.

This however, which is the essential point in the whole argu-
ment, — the concatenation of moral and physical evil, and the
everlasting necessity by which sin must bring forth death, —
has mostly been left out of thought by the broachers and
teachers of perfectibility. Perceiving that man's outward re-
lations appeared to be perfectible, they fancied that his nature
was so likewise : or rather they scarcely Trifled jhif ■» nfljnrf\

OF THE

'UHI7ERSI!!

302 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and lookt solely at his outward relations. They saw that his
dominion over the external world seemed to admit of an indef-
inite extension. They saw that his knowledge of outward
things had long been progressive ; that vast stores had been
piled up, which were sure to increase, and could scarcely be
diminisht. So, by a not unnatural confusion, they assumed
that the greater amount of knowledge implied a proportionate
improvement in the faculties by which the knowledge is ac-
quired ; although a large empire can merely attest the valour
of those who won it, without affording evidence either way with
regard to those who inherit it. All the while too it was forgot-
ten that a man's clothes are not himself, and that, if the spark
of life in him goes out, his clothes, however gorgeous, must sink
and crumble upon his crumbling body.

The strange inconsistency is, that the very persons who have
indulged in the most splendid visions about the perfectibility of
mankind, have mostly rejected the only principle of perfectibil-
ity which has ever found place in man, the only principle by
which man's natural corruptibility has even been checkt, the
only principle by which nations or individuals have ever been
regenerated. The natural life of nations, as well as of indi-
viduals, has its fixt course and term. It springs forth, grows
up, reaches its maturity, decays, perishes. Only through Chris-
tianity has a nation ever risen again : and it is solely on the
operation of Christianity that we can ground anything like a
reasonable hope of the perfectibility of mankind ; a hope that
what has often been wrought in individuals, may also in the ful-
ness of time be wrought by the same power in the race. u.

I met this morning with the following sentences.

" An upholsterer nowadays makes much handsomer furniture
than they made three hundred years ago. The march of mind
is discernible in everything. Shall religion then be the only
thing that continues wholly unimproved ? "

What ? Does the march of mind improve the oaks of the
forest ? does it make them follow its banners to Dunsinane, or
dance, as Orpheus did of old ? does it improve the mountains ?

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 303

does it improve the waves of the sea ? does it improve the sun ?
The passage is silly enough : I merely quote it, because it gives
plain utterance to a delusion, which is floating about in thou-
sands, I might say in millions of minds. Some things we im-
prove ; and so we assume that we can improve, and are to
improve all things ; as though it followed that, because we can
mend a pen, we can with the same ease mend an eagle's wing ;
as though, because nibbing the pen strengthens it, paring the
eagle's wings must strengthen them also. People forget what
things are progressive, and what improgressive. Of those too
which are progressive, they forget that some are borne along
according to laws independent of human control, while others
may be shoved or driven on by the industry and intelligence of
man. Nay, even among those things with which the will and
wit of man might seem to have the power of dealing freely, are
there none which have not kept on advancing at full speed along
with the march of mind ? Where are the churches built in our
days, which are so much grander and more beautiful than those
of York and Salisbury, of Amiens and Cologne, as to warrant a
presumption that they who can raise a worthier house for God,
are also likely to know God, and to know how to worship him
better ?

In one point of view indeed we do improve both the oaks
and the mountains, both the sea and even the sun ; not in them-
selves absolutely, but in their relations to us. We make them
minister more and more to our purposes ; and we derive greater
benefits from them, which increase with the increase of civiliza-
tion. In this sense too may we, and ought we to improve re-
ligion ; not in itself, but in its relations to us ; so that it may do
us more and more good, or, in other words, may exercise a
greater and still greater power over us. That is to say, we are
to improve ourselves, in the only way of doing so effectually :
we are to increase the power of religion over us, by obeying it,
by submitting our wills to it, by receiving it into our hearts with
more entire devotion and love. u.

Every idea, when brought down into the region of the em-

304 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

pirical understanding, and contemplated under the relations of
time and space, involves a union of opposites, which are bound
together and harmonized in it : or rather, being one and simple
in its own primordial fulness, it splits, when it enters into the
prismatic atmosphere of human nature. Thus too is it with
Christianity, from whatever point of view we regard it. If we
look at it historically, it is at once unchangeable and change-
able, at once constant and progressive. Were it not unchange-
able and constant, it could not be the manifestation of Him who
is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Were it not change-
able and progressive, it would not be suited to him with whom
today is never like yesterday, nor tomorrow like today. There-
fore it is both at once ; one in its essence and changeless, as
coming from God ; manifold and variable in its workings, as
designed to pervade and hallow every phase and element of
man's being, his thoughts, his words, his deeds, his imagination,
his reason, his affections, his duties. For it is not an outward
form : it is not merely a law, manifesting itself by its own light,
cast like a sky around man, and guiding him by its polar con-
stellations : its light comes down to him, and dwells with him,
and enters into him, and, mingling with and strengthening his
productive powers, issues forth again in blossoms and fruits.
Accordingly, as those powers are various, so must the blossoms
and fruits be that spring from them.

If we compare our religious writers, ascetical or doctrinal,
with those of France or Germany, we can hardly fail to per-
ceive that, in turning from one nation to another, we are open-
ing a new vein of thought : so remarkably and characteristically
do they differ. I am not referring to the errours, Romanist or
rationalist, with which many of our continental neighbours are
tainted : independently of these, each picks out certain portions
of the truth, such as are most congenial to the temper of his
own heart and mind. Nor is he wrong in doing so : for the aim
of Christianity is not to stifle the germs of individual character,
and to bring down all mankind to a dead level. On the con-
trary, it fosters and developes the central principle of individu-
ality in every man, and frees it from the crushing burthen with

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 305

which the lusts of the flesh and the vanities of life overlay it ;
as we may observe from the very first in the strongly markt
characters of Peter and James and John and Paul.

So too, if we compare the religious writers of the present
day with those who lived a hundred years ago, — or these with
the great divines of the seventeenth century, — or these with
the Reformers, — or these with the Schoolmen and the mystics
of the middle ages, — or these with the Latin Fathers, or with
the Greek, — we must needs be struck by a number of pecu-
liarities in the views and feelings of each age. The forms, the
colouring, the vegetation change, as we pass from one zone of
time to another : nor would it require a very nice discrimination
to distinguish, on reading any theological work, to what age of
Christianity it belongs. Doctrines are differently brought for-
ward, differently mast : some become more prominent than they
have hitherto been, while others fall into the background. New
chains of logical connexion are drawn between them. New
wants are felt ; new thoughts and feelings arise ; and these too
need to be hallowed. The most powerful and living preachers
and writers have ever been those, who, full of the spirit of
their own age, have felt a calling and a yearning to bring that
spirit into subjection, and to set it at one with the spirit of
Christ.

In this manner Christianity also becomes subject to the law
of change, to which Time and all its births bow down. In a
certain sense too the change is a progress ; that is to say, in
extent. Christianity is ever conquering some new province of
human nature, some fresh national variety of mankind, some
hitherto untenanted, unexplored region of thought or feeling.
The star-led wisdom of the East came to worship the Lord of
Truth, as soon as he appeared upon earth : and already in Paul
and John do we see how the reason of man is transfigured by
the incarnation of the Eternal Word. At Alexandria it was
attempted to shew what system of truths would arise from this
union of the human reason with the divine : and ever since,
from Origen down to Schleiermacher and Hegel and Schelling,
the highest endeavour of the greatest philosophers has been to

T

306 GUESSES' AT TRUTH.

Christianize their philosophy ; although in doing so they have
often been deluded into substituting a fiction of their own, some
phantom of logical abstractions, or some idol of a deified Na-
ture, for the living God of the Gospel. Errours of all kinds
have indeed beguiled Philosophy by the way : yet the inmost
desire of her soul has ever been to celebrate her atonement
with Eeligion : and often, when she has gone astray after the
lusts of the world, this has been in the bitterness of her heart,
because the misjudging sentinels of Religion, instead of invit-
ing and welcoming her and cheering her on, reviled her and
drove her away. Hence too, in those ages when she has been
too fast bound in scholastic chains, she has been wont to utter
her plaint in the broken sighs of the mystics.

"Throughout the history of the Church (says Neander, in
the introduction to his great work), we see how Christianity is
the leaven that is destined to pervade the whole lump of human
nature." The workings of this leaven he traces out with ad-
mirable skill and beauty, and in a spirit combining knowledge
with faith and love in a rare and exquisite union. Indeed the
setting forth of this twofold manifestation of Christianity, in its
constancy and in its progressiveness, is the great business of its
historian. For such a history precious hints are to be found in
the Letters recently publisht on the Kingdom of Christ, one of
the wisest and noblest works that our Church has produced since
the Ecclesiastical Polity. Whereas the common run of Church-
historians are wont to disregard one of the two elements; either
caring solely for that which is permanent in Christianity, with-
out attending to its progressiveness ; or else degrading it into
a mere human invention, which man is to mould and fashion
according to the dictates of his own mind.

After all it must never be forgotten that an increase in ex-
tent is very different from an increase in intensity. Like every
other power, Religion too, in widening her empire, may impair
her sway. It has been seen too often, both in philosophy and
elsewhere, that, when people have fancied that the world was
becoming Christian, Christianity was in fact becoming worldly.

u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 307

The tendency of man, we have seen, is much rather to be-
lieve in the corruptibility, than in the perfectibility of his nature.
The former is the idea embodied in almost every mythology.
It is the idea to which Poetry is led by the contrast between
her visions and the realities of life. It is the idea prompted by
man's consciousness of his own helplessness, of his own cadu-
city and mortality, of his own sinfulness, and of his utter
inability to contend against the powers of nature, against time,
against death, and against sin. Perhaps too, as in looking back
on the past we are fonder of dwelling, whether with thankful-
ness or regret, on the good than on the evil that has befallen us,
so conversely in our anticipations of the future fear may be
stronger than hope. At least it is so with persons of mature
years: and only of late have the young usurpt the right of
determining public opinion. Even in those ages when men had
the best grounds for knowing that in sundry things they surpast
their ancestors, they were still disposed of old to look rather at
the qualities in which they conceived themselves to have degen-
erated ; and they deemed that the accessions in wealth or
knowledge were more than counterbalanced by the decay of
the integrity, simplicity, and energy, which adorned the avdpts
MapaOavonaxoi. In this there may have been much exaggera-
tion, and no little delusion ; but at all events it is a unanimous
protest lifted up from every quarter of the earth, by all na-
tions and languages, against the notion of the perfectibility of
mankind.

The opposite belief, that there is any point of view from
which mankind can be regarded as progressive, so that the
regular advances already made may warrant a hope that after-
ages will go on advancing in the same direction, seems to have
been originally excited by the progress of science, and to have
been confined thereto. Perhaps it may have been by the Ro-
mans, — on whom such a vast influx of knowledge poured in,
as if to make amends for the downfall of everything else, in the
latter ages of the republic, and the earlier of the empire, — that
such a notion was first distinctly entertained. Thucydides was
indeed well aware that Greece had been increasing for centuries

308 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

in power and wealth and civilization; and he strongly urges
that the events of his own time are superior in importance to
any former ones. More than once too he explicitly asserts the
law, which is tacitly and practically recognized by all men, that,
according to the constitution of human nature, we may count
. that the future will resemble the past. But the calamities of
which he was a witness, seemed rather to forebode the destruc-
tion of Greece, than its attaining to any higher eminence ; and
the Greek mind had not learnt to digest the thought that bar-
barians could become civilized. It was not till the age of Poly-
bius that this confession was extorted by the spreading power
of Rome. Nor was it possible for the Greeks to conceive, how
the various elements of their nationality, which were so beauti-
ful in their distinctness, would be fused together, like the Co-
rinthian brass in the legend, by their destroyers, to become the
material of a bulkier and massier, though less graceful and
finely proportioned state. Their philosophers speculated about
the origin and growth of civil society, the primary institution of
governments, and the natural order in which one form passes
into another : but they too saw nothing in the world before their
eyes, to breed hope with regard to the future ; and Plato avows
that, through the frailty of man, even his perfect common-
wealth must contairuttje seeds of its own dissolution.

The theory of ^cyclejn which the various forms of govern-
ment succeed one another, is adopted by Polybius ; who feels
such confidence in it as to declare (vi. 9), that by its help a man,
judging dispassionately, may with tolerable certainty prognosti-
(\#ate what fortunes and changes await any existing constitution.
He goes no further however than to lay down (vi. 51), that in
the life of a state, as in that of an individual, there is a natural
order of growth, maturity, and decay. Men were still very far
from the idea that, while particular states and empires rise and
fall, the race 1s slowly but steadily advancing along its predes-
tined course. Indeed near two thousand years were to pass
away, before this idea could be contemplated in its proper light.
\ It was necessary that the human race should be distinctly re-
garded as a unit, as one great family scattered over the world.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 309

It was necessary that the belief in particular national gods
should be superseded by the faith in the one true God, the Fa-
ther of heaven and earth. It was necessary that we should be
enabled to take a wide, discriminating, catholic survey of all the
nations that have ever risen above the historical horizon ; and
that we should have learnt not to look upon any of them as
wholly outcast from the scheme of God's providence ; that we
should be convinced how each in its station has had a part to
act, a destiny to fulfill.

Even Science as yet could hardly be said to exhibit a grow-
ing body of determinate results : nor was there anything like
a regular progress in it anterior to the Alexandrian school.
Among the Roman men of letters, on the other hand, we find
the progressiveness of science asserted as a law. Ne quis des-
peret saecula projicere semper, says Pliny (ii. 13). The same
assurance is declared by Seneca in the well-known conclusion
of his Natural Questions. Veniet tempus, quo ista quae nunc
latent, in lucem dies extrahat, et loyigioris aevi diligentia. —
Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tarn aperta nos nescisse miren-
tur. — Multu saeculis tunc futuris cum memoria nostri exoleve-
rit, reservantur. — Non semel quaedam sacra traduntur: Mleusis
servat quod ostendat revisentibus. Rerum natura, sacra sua non
simul tradit. Initiatos nos credimus : in vestibulo ejus haere-
mus. These sentences, even after deducting what must always
be deducted on account of the panting and puffing of Seneca's
short-breathed broken-winded style, still shew a confidence of
the increase of knowledge, which was hardly to be found in
earlier times. It is worth noting that this confidence, both in
him and in Pliny, is inspired by the discoveries in astronomy ;
which Whewell remarks (Hist, of the Ind. Sci. i. 90), was "the
only progressive science produced by the ancient world."
With regard to maritime discovery a like confidence is exprest
in those lines of the chorus in the Medea :

Venient annis saecula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus ;
Tethysque novos detegat orbes ;
Nee sit terris ultima Thule :

310 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

lines evidently belonging to a later age than that of Ovid, to
whom the Medea has without sufficient warrant been ascribed.
It /must have afforded some consolation to those who lived when
thkold world was sinking so fast into its grave, and when its
heart and soul and mind all bore tokens of the deadly plague
that was consuming it, to see even this brighter gleam in the
distance. Even this, I say : for the prospect of the progress of
science was not connected with that of any general improve-
ment of mankind. On the contrary Seneca combines it in
strange contrast with the increase of every corruption. Tarde
magna proveniunt. Id quod unum toto agimus ammo, nondum
perfecimus, ut pessimi essemus. Adhuc in processu vitia sunt.
He was not so intoxicated with the fruit of the tree of knowl-
edge, as to fancy, like the sophists of later times, that it was
the fruit of the tree of life. On the contrary he pronounces
that the earth will be overflowed by another deluge, and that
every living creature will be swallowed up ; and that then, on
the retreat of the waters, every animal will be produced anew,
dabiturque terris homo inscius scelerum. Sed Mis quoque inno-
centia non durabit, nisi dum novi sunt. Cito nequitia subrepit:
virtus difficilis inventu est, rectorem ducemque desiderat. Etiam
sine magistro vitia discuntur : {Nat. Quaest. iii. 30).

Nor could the perfectibility of mankind gain a place among
the dreams of the middle ages. The recollections of the ancient
world had not so entirely past away : the fragments of its wreck
were too apparent : men could not but be aware that they were
treading among the ruins of a much more splendid state of civ-
ilization. It is true^-htmian nature was not at a standstill dur-
ing that millenary. A new era was preparing. Mighty births
were teeming in the womb ; but they were as yet unseen.
Men were laying the foundations of a grander and loftier edi-
fice: but this is a work which goes on underground, which
makes no show ; and the labourers themselves little knew what
they were doing. Even in respect of that which raised them
above former ages, their purer faith, while the spirit of that
faith casts down every proud thought, and stifles every vain
boast, they were perpetually looking back, with shame and sor-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 311

row for their own falling off, to the holiness and zeal of the
primitive Christians. Indeed, as by our bodily constitution
pain, however local, pierces through the whole frame, and
almost disables us for receiving any pleasurable sensations
through our other members, thereby -warning us to seek for an
immediate remedy ; so have we a moral instinct, which renders
us acutely sensitive to the evils of the present time, far more
than to those of the past ; thus rousing us to strive against that
which is our only rightful foe. Our imagination, on the other
hand, recalling and enhancing the good of the past, shews us
that there is something to strive after, something to regain. It
shews us that men may be exempt from the evil which is gall-
ing us, seeing that they have been so. Moreover that which
survives of the past is chiefly the good, evil from its nature
being akin to death ; and this good is in divers ways brought
continually before us, in all that is precious of the inheritance
bequeathed to us by our ancestors. Every son, with the heart
of a son, is thankful for what his father has done for him and
left to him : nor will any but an unnatural one, uncover his
father's nakedness, even for his own eyes to look upon it. So
far indeed were men in the middle ages from deeming them-
selves better than their forefathers, or expecting anything like
a progressive improvement, an opinion often got abroad that
the last days were at hand, and that the universal unprece-
dented corruption was a sign and prelude of their approach.

The great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
which opened one world after another to men's eyes, and
taught them at length to know the nature and compass of the
earth and of the heavens, might indeed have awakened pre-
sumptuous thoughts. But Luther at the same time threw open
the Bible to them. He opened their eyes to look into the
moral and the spiritual world, and to see more clearly than be-
fore, how the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.
The revival of letters too, while it opened the. ancient world to
them, almost compelled them to acknowledge that in intellectual
culture they were mere barbarians in comparison with the
Greeks and Romans: and for a long time men's judgements

312 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

were spellbound, as Dante's was by Virgil, so that they vailed
their heads, as before their masters, even when their genius
^____was mounting above them. Hence the belief that mankind had
degenerated became so prevalent, that Hakewill, in the first
half of the seventeenth century, deemed it necessary to estab-
lish by a long and elaborate induction that it was without any
substantial ground.

As he wrote early in Charles the First's reign, before the
close of the most powerful and brilliant age in the history of
the human mind, one might have thought he would have found
no difficulty in convincing the contemporaries of Shakspeare
and Bacon, that men's wits had not shrunk or weakened. But
a genial age, like a genial individual, is unconscious of its own
excellence. For the element and life-blood of genius is admira-
tion and love. This is the source and spring of its power, its
magic, beautifying wand : and it finds so much to admire and
love in the various worlds which compass it around, it cannot
narrow its thoughts or shrivel up its feelings to a paralytic wor-
ship of itself. Hakewill begins his Apology with declaring,
that, " the opinion of the world's decay is so generally received,
not only among the vulgar, but by the learned, both divines
and others, that its very commonness makes it current with
many, without any further examination." In his Preface he
speaks of himself as " walking in an untrodden path, where he
cannot trace the prints of any footsteps that have gone before
him ; " and, to excuse the length of his book, he pleads his
having " to grapple with such a giant-like monster." Nor does
even he venture beyond denying the decay of mankind. He is
far from asserting that there is any improvement ; only that
there is -^ a vicissitude, an alternation and revolution" (p. 332),
that, " what is lost to one part is gained to another ; and what
is lost at one time, is recovered at another ; and so the balance,
by the divine providence overruling all, is kept upright." " As
the heavens remain unchangeable (he says in his Preface), so
doth the Church triumphant in heaven : and as all things under
the cope of heaven vary and change, so doth the militant here
on earth. It hath its times and turns, sometimes flowing, and

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 313

again ebbing with the sea, — sometimes waxing, and again
waning with the moon ; which great light, it seems, the Al-
mighty therefore set the lowest in the heavens, and nearest the
earth, that it might daily put us in mind of the constancy of the
one, and the inconstancy of the other ; herself in some sort par-
taking of both, though in a different manner, — of the one in
her substance, of the other in the copy of her visage." He also
acknowledges the important truth, that, if there be any deterio-
ration, it has a moral cause. But the conception of a meliora-
tion, of an advance, seems never to have entered his head.

It is sometimes worth while to shew how recent is the origin
o£ opinions, which are now regarded as incontestable and 1
almost self-evident truths. The writer of a letter publisht by j
Coleridge in the- Friend says (Vol. iii. p. 13) : " The faith in
the perpetual progression of human nature toward perfection —
will, in some shape, always be the creed of virtue." .Words-
worth too, in the beautiful answer in which he prunes off some
of the excrescences of this notion, still gives his sanction to the
general assertion : " Let us allow and believe that there is a
progress in the species toward unattainable perfection ; or,
whether this be so or not, that it is a necessity of a good and
greatly gifted nature to believe it." A necessity it is indeed
for a good and highly gifted nature to believe that something
may be done for the bettering of mankind, and for the removal
of the evils weighing upon them. Else enterprise would flag
and faint; which is never vigorous and strenuous, unless it
breathe the mountain-air of hope. It must have something to
aim at, some prize to press forward to. But when we look on
the state of the world around us, there is so much to depress
and to breed despondence, — so much of the good of former
times has past away, so much fresh evil has rusht in, — that no
thoughtful man will hastily pronounce his own age to be on the I
whole better than foregoing ones. Rather, as almost every ex-
ample shews, from meditating on the evils he has to contend
against, — on their number, their diffusion, their tenacity, and
their power, — will he incline to deem it worse. And so far is
the perfectibility of- man from forming an essential article of his'V
14

314 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

creed, that I doubt whether such a notion was ever entertained,
as a thing to be realized here on earth, till about the middle of
the last century.

Even Bacon, the great prophet of Science, who among all
the sons of men seems to have lived the most in the future,
who acknowledged that his words required an age, saeculum
forte integrum ad probandum, complura autem saecula ad perfi-
ciendum, and who was so imprest with this belief, that in his
will he left " his name and memory to forein nations and to the
\ next ages," — even he, in his anticipations of the increase of
knowledge, which was to ensue upon the adoption of his new
method, hardly goes beyond the declaration in the book of Dan-
iel, that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be in-
creast. Let me quote the noble passage, in which, just before
the close of his Advancement of Learning, he gives utterance
to his hopes. " Being now at some pause, looking back into
that I have past through, this writing seemeth to me, as far as
a man can judge of his own work, not much better than that
noise or "sound which musicians make while they are tuning
their instruments ; which is nothing pleasant to hear, yet is a
cause why the music is sweeter afterward : so have I been con-
tent to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play
who have better hands. And surely, when I set before me the
condition of these times, in which Learning hath made her third
visitation or circuit, in all the qualities thereof, — as the excel-
lency and vivacity of the wits of this age, — the noble helps
and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers, —
the art of printing, which communicateth books to men of all
fortunes, — the openness of the world by navigation, which
hath disclosed multitudes of experiments and a mass of natural
history, — the leisure wherewith these times abound, not em-
ploying men so generally in civil business, as the states of
Greece did in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome
in respect of the greatness of her monarchy, — the present dis-
position of these times to peace, — and the inseparable propri-
ety of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth ; —
I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 315

/

of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learn-
ing." And in the Novum Organum (1. cxxix.), where he enu-
merates the benefits likely to accrue to mankind from the
increase of knowledge, he wisely adds, with regard to its moral
influence : " Si quis depravationem scientiarum ad malitiam et
luxuriam et similia objecerit, id neminem moveat. Illud enim
de omnibus mundanis bonis dici potest, ingenio, fortitudine, viri-
bus, forma, divitiis, luce ipsa, et reliquis. Recuperet modo
genus humanum jus suum in naturam, quod ei ex dotatione
divina competit; et detur ei copia: usum vero recta ratio et
sana religio gubernabit."

Thus far all is sound and sure. Bacon's prophecies of the-
advance of science have been fulfilled far beyond what even he
could have anticipated. For knowledge partakes of infinity:
it widens with our capacities : the higher we mount in it, the
vaster and more magnificent are the prospects it stretches out
before us. Nor are we in these days, as men are ever apt to
imagine of their own times, approaching to the end of them :
nor shall we be nearer the end a thousand years hence than we
are now. The family of Science has multiplied : new sciences,
hitherto unnamed, unthought of, have arisen. The seed which
Bacon sowed sprang up, and grew to be a mighty tree ; and the
thoughts of thousands of men came and lodged in its branches :
and those branches spread "so broad and long, that in the
ground The bended twigs took root, and daughters grew About
the mother tree, a pillared shade High overarcht . . . and echo-
ing walks between "... walks where Poetry may wander, and
wreathe her blossoms around the massy stems, and where Re-
ligion may hymn the praises of that Wisdom, of which Science
erects the hundred-aisled temple.

But Bacon likewise saw and acknowledged that Science of
itself could not perfect mankind, and that right reason and pure
religion were wanting to prevent its breeding evil. Although
he had crost the stormbeaten Atlantic, over which men had for
ages been sailing to and fro almost improgressively, and though
in the confidence of his prophetic intuition he gave the name of
Good Hope to the headland he had reacht, yet, when he cast

>]

316 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

his eyes on the boundless expanse of waters beyond, he did not
venture, like Magellan, to call it the Pacific. Once indeed a
voice was heard to announce the rising of peace on earth : but
that peace man marred : the bringer of it he slew : and, as if to
shew how vain such a dream is, Magellan also was slain soon
after he lancht out upon the sea, which in the magnanimous en-
thusiasm of his joy he named the Pacific. Calm too as the
Pacific appeared at first, it was soon found to have no exemp-
tion from the tempests of earth, which have been raging over it
ever since with no less fury than they displayed on the Atlantic
before. If Bacon's hopes were too sanguine in any respect, it
was in trusting that reason and religidh would guide and direct
science. He did not sufficiently foresee how the old idolatries
would revive, — how men would still worship the creature, un-
der the form of abstractions and laws, instead of the living,
lawgiving Creator.

Every age of the world has had its peculiar phase of this
idolatry, its peculiar form and aspect, under which it has con-
ceived that the powers of earth would effect what can only be
effected by the powers of heaven. Every age has its peculiar
interests and excellences, which it tries to render paramount
and absolute. The delusion of the last century has been, -that
Science will lead mankind to perfection. In looking at the his-
tory of Science, it must strike every eye, that, while the growth
of poetry and philosophy is organic and individual, the increase
of science is rather mechanical and cumulative. Every poet,
every philosopher must begin from the beginning. Whatever
he brings forth must spring out of the depths of his OAvn nature,
must have a living root in his heart. Pindar did not start
where Homer left off, and engage in improving upon him : the
very attempt would have been a proof of feebleness. And
what must be the madness of a man who would undertake to
improve upon Shakspeare ! As reasonably might. one set out
to tack a pair of leaders before the chariot of the sun. The
whole race of the giants would never pile an Ossa on this
Olympus : their missiles would roll back on their heads from
the feet of the gods that dwell there. Even Goethe and Schil-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 317

ler, when they meddled with Shakspeare, and would fain have
mended him, have only proved, what Voltaire, and Dryden
himself, had proved before, that " Within his circle none can
walk but he." Nor, when Shakspeare's genius past away from
the earth, did any one akin to him reign in his stead. Indeed,
according to that law of alternation, which is so conspicuous in
the whole history of literature, it mostly happens that a period
of extraordinary fertility is followed by a period of dearth.
After the seven plenteous years come seven barren years,
which devour the produce of the plenteous ones, yet continue
as barren and illfavoured as ever.

Nor may a philosopher, any more than a poet, be a mere I
link in a chain : he must be a staple firmly and deeply fixt in I
the adamantine walls of Truth. If he rightly deserves the
name, his mind must be impregnated with some of the primor-
dial ideas, of life and being, man and nature, fate and freedom,
order and law, thought and will, power and God. He may
have received them from others ; but he must receive them as
seeds : they must teem and germinate within him, and mingle
with the essence of his spirit, and must shape themselves into a
new, original growth. He who merely takes a string of prop-
ositions from former writers, and busies himself in drawing
fresh inferences from them, may be a skilful logician or psy-
chologer, but has no claim to the high title of a philosopher.
For in this too does philosophy resemble poetry, that it is not a
bare act of the intellect, but requires the energy of the whole
man, of his moral nature and will and affections, no less than
of his understanding. It is the ideal pole, to which poetry is^\
the real antithesis ; and it bears the same relation to science, as
poetry does to history. Hence those dissensions among philos-
ophers, which are so often held up as the great scandal of
philosophy, and the like of which are hardly found in science.
They may, no doubt, be carried on in a reprehensible temper ;
that, however, belongs to the individuals, not to philosophy : so
far as they are merely diversities, they may and ought to exist
harmoniously side by side, as different incarnations of Truth.
A great philosopher will indeed find pupils, who will be content

318 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

to be nothing more ; who will work out and fill up his system,
and follow it in its remoter applications ; who will be satraps
under him, and go forth under his command to push on his
frontier. But if any among them have a philosophical genius
of their own, they will set up after a while for themselves ; as
we see in the history of philosophy in the only two countries
where it has flourisht, Greece and Germany. They who have
light in themselves, will not revolve as satellites. They do not
continue the servants and agents of their master's mind, but,
like the successors of Alexander, establish independent thrones,
and found new empires in the regions of thought. Hence too
the other great scandal of philosophy, its improgressiveness,
may easily be accounted for. The essence of philosophy be-
ing, not an acquaintance with empirical results, but the posses-
sion of the seminal idea, — the possessing it, and the being
possest by it, in a spiritual union and identification, — it may
easily happen that philosophers in early ages should be greater
and wiser than in later ones ; greater, not merely subjectively,
as being endowed with a mightier genius, but as having re-
ceived a higher initiation into the mysteries of Truth, as having
dwelt more familiarly with her, and gazed on her unveiled
beauty, and laid their heads in her bosom, and caught more of
the inspiration ever flowing from the eternal wellhead in
aKpoTaTTjs Kopvcfyrjs ndKvrrl-daKos v18t]s. In fact they have no slight
advantage over their successors, in that there are fewer extra-
neous, terrene influences to rise and disturb the serenity of
their vision.

Science, on the other hand, is little subject to similar vicissi-
tudes : at least it has not been so since the days of Bacon.
Neither in science itself, nor in that lower class of the arts
which arise out of its practical application, has any individual
work an enduring ultimate value, unless from its execution :
and this would be altogether independent of its scientific value,
and would belong to it solely as a work of art. In science its
main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something
beyond. Even the Principia, as Newton with characteristic
modesty entitled his great work, is truly but the beginning of a

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 319

natural philosophy, and no more an ultimate work, than Watt's
steam-engine, or Arkwright's spinning-machine. It may have
a lasting interest from its execution, or from accidental circum-
stances, over and above its scientific value ; but, as a scientific
treatise, it was sure to be superseded; just as the mechanical
inventions of one generation, whatever ingenuity they may •
betoken at the time, are superseded and thrown into the back-
ground by those of another. Thus in science there is a contin-
ual progress, a pushing onward: no ground is lost; and the \
lines keep on advancing. We know all that our ancestors knew,
and more: the gain is clear, palpable, indisputable. The dis-
coveries made by former ages have become a permanent por-
tion of human knowledge, and serve as a stable groundwork to
build fresh discoveries atop of them ; as these in their turn will
build up another story, and this again another. Thus it came
to pass that, as the multitudes in the plain of Shinar fancied
they could erect a tower, the summit of which should reach to
heaven, in like manner the men of science in the last century
conceived that the continued augmentations of science would in
time raise them up above all the frailties of humanity. Con-
founding human nature with this particular exertion of its fac-
ulties, they assumed that the increase of the latter involved an
equivalent improvement of the whole. And this mistake was
the easier, inasmuch as scientific talents have little direct con-
nexion with our moral nature, and may exist in no low degree
without support from it.

At all events the advance of science afforded a kind of sanc-
tion to the belief in a continually progressive improvement.
Along with it came the rapid growth of wealth, and of the arts
which minister to wealth, whether by feeding or by pampering
it : and these naturally tend to enervate and epicureanize men's
minds, to " incarnate and imbrute " the soul, " till she quite
loses The divine property of her first being," to lower the dig-
nity of thought, and to relax the severe purity of feeling ; so
that people learn to account happiness the one legitimate object
of all aim, and that too a happiness derived from nothing higher
than the temperate, harmless indulgence of our pleasurable

^

320 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

appetites. Moreover the chief intellectual exploits of the eigh-
teenth century consisted, not in the discovery and establish-
ment of new truths, but in the exposure and rejection of certain
prejudices and superstitions, or of opinions deemed to be such.
Now self-conceit, like every other evil spirit, delights innega-
tiveness, far more than in anything positive and real. So the
boasters went on ringing the changes on their own enlighten-
ment, and on the darkness and ignorance of their ancestors, and
cried exultingly, We are awake / we are awake/ not from any
consciousness of active energy and vision, but because they had
ceast to dream.

In this manner a belief in the perfectibility of man got into
vogue, more especially in France ; although the fearful depra-
vation of morals merely bespoke his -corruptibility, and might
rather have been thought to portend that he was degenerating
into a brute. Rousseau indeed was seduced, partly by the
fascination of a dazzling paradox, and partly by the nervous
antipathies of his morbid genius, to maintain the deleterious-
ness of the arts and sciences, and that the only effect of civiliza-
tion had been to debase man from the type of his aboriginal
perfection. And this notion was not without speciousness, if
the state of French society in his days was to be taken as ex-
hibiting the necessary effects of civilization. Thus, as one
extreme is ever sure to call forth the opposite, the deification of
civilized man led to the setting up of an altar on mount Gerizim
in honour of savage man ; and the age reeled to and fro between
them, passing from the bloody rites of the one to the lascivious
rites of the other, till the two were mingled together, and Mur-
der and Lust solemnized their unhallowed nuptials in the ken-
nel of the Revolution.

Among the apostles of perfectibility, several triedr-to combine
this twofold worship. They mixt up the idea of( progressive-
ness, derived from the condition of civilized man, with a Vague"^
phantom of perfection, placed by the imagination in a supposi-
titious^ state of -nature, a new-fangled golden age, anterior to all
social institutions. Although every plausible argument for anti-
cipating the future progressiveness of mankind must rest on

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 321

the fact, that such a hope is justified on the whole by the les-
sons of the past, they maintained that everything had hitherto \ *
been vicious and corrupt, that man hitherto had only gone fur-
ther and further astray, but that nevertheless, by a sudden turn
to the right about, he would soon reach the islands of the
blessed. Now a thoughtful survey of the past will indeed force p r
us to acknowledge that the progress hitherto has not been uni-
form, nor always equally apparent. We must not overlook the
numerous examples which history furnishes in proof that, ac-
cording to the French proverb, il faut reculer pour mieux sau-
ter. We are to recognize the necessity that the former things, Vf i
Beautiful and excellent as they may have been aftertheir kind,
should pass away, in order that the ground might be prepared
for a more widely diffused and more spiritual culture. But
unless we discern how, through all the revolutions of history,
life has still been triumphing over death, good over evil, we \ I
have nothing to warrant an expectation that this will be so
hereafter. Moreover, though a great and momentous truth is
involved in the saying, that, when need is highest, then aid is
nighest, this comfort belongs only to such as acknowledge that
man's waywardness is ever crost and overruled by a higher
power. Whereas those who were most sanguine about the fu-
ture, spurned the notion of superhuman control ; while they
only found matter for loathing in the present or the past. To
their minds " old things all were over-old ; " and they purpost
to begin altogether anew, and " to frame a world of other
stuff."

Nor did this purpose lie idle. In the work of destruction too
they prospered : not so in that of reconstruction. Asjiie-spirit /
of the age was wholly negative, as men could find nothing to
love or revere in earth or in heaven, in time or in eternity, it
was not to be wondered at that they set up their own under-
standing on the throne of a degraded, godless, chance-ridden
universe. But having no love or reverence, they wrought in
the dark, and dasht their heads against the laws and sanctities,
to which they would not bow. It may be regarded as one of \
those instances of irony so frequent in history, that the moment ,
14* U> u *

322 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

chosen by man to assert his perfectibility should have been the
very moment when all the powers of evil were about to be let
loose, and to run riot over the earth. Happiness was the idol ;
and lo ! the idol burst ; and the spectral form of Misery rose
out .of it, and stretcht out its gaunt hand over the heads of the
nations ; and millions of hearts shrank and were frozen by its
touch. Liberty was the watchword, liberty and equality : and
an iron despotism strode from north to south, and from east to
west ; and all men cowered at its approach, and croucht be-
neath its feet, and were trampled on, and found the equality
they coveted in universal prostration. Peace was the promise ;
and the fulfilment was more than twenty years of fierce deso-
lating war.

The whirlblast came ; the desert sands rose up,

And shaped themselves : from earth to heaven they stood,

As though they were the pillars of a temple

Built by Omnipotence in its own honour.

But the blast pauses, and their shaping spirit

Is fled : the mighty columns were but sand ;

And lazy snakes trail o'er the level ruins.

Yet CondorCet, as is well known, even during the Reign of
'Terrour, when himself doomed to the guillotine, employed the
time of his imprisonment in drawing up a record of his specu-
lations on the perfectibility of mankind : and full of errour as
his views are, one cannot withhold all admiration from a daunt-
lessness which could thus persevere in hoping against hope.

Speculations of this sort are so remote from the practical
common-sense and the narrowminded empiricism, which were
the chief characteristics inherited by English philosophy from
its master, Locke, that the doctrine of perfectibility hardly found
any strenuous advocate amongst us, until it was taken up by
Godwin. The good and pious saw that wealth and luxury had
not come without their usual train of moral evils ; and they
foreboded the judgements which those evils must call down.
Berkeley, for instance, in one of his letters, quotes the above-
cited lines of Horace, as about to be verified in the increasing
depravation of the English people. In his Essay toward pre-
venting the Ruin of Great Britain, occasioned by the failure of

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 323

the Southsea scheme, he says : " Little can be hoped, if we
consider the corrupt degenerate age we live in. Our symptoms
are so bad, that, notwithstanding all the care and vigilance of
the legislature, it is to be feared the final period of our state ap-
proaches." And in his Verses on the Prospect of planting Arts
and Learning in America, after speaking of the decay of Europe,
he adds :

Westward the course of empire takes its way : \ V*/ ^l—3^

The first four acts already past, \J^<L^

A fifth shall close the drama with t£e day : f"^

Time's noblest offspring is the last. — ";s

Hartley too, who, in spite of his material fantasmagoria, ranks
high among the few men of a finer and more genial intellect
during that dreary period, repeatedly speaks of the world as
hastening to its end, and as doomed to perish on account of its
excessive corruption ; and he enumerates six causes, " which
seem more especially to threaten ruin and dissolution to the
present states of Christendom." " Christendom (thus he closes
his work) seems ready to assume the place and lot of the Jews,
after they had rejected their Messiah, the Saviour of the world.
Let no one deceive himself or others. The present circum-
stances of the world are extraordinary and critical beyond what
has ever yet happened. If we refuse to let Christ reign over
us as our Redeemer and Saviour, we must be slain before his
face as enemies, at his second coining." Hartley does indeed
look forward to " the restoration of the Jews, and the universal
establishment of Christianity, as the causes of great happiness,
which will change the face of this world much for the better "
(Prop. 85) : J^ut this is a change to be wrought by a super-
human power, though not without human means (Prop. 84),
and so does not lie within the range of our present inquiry ;
any more than Henry More's beautiful visions, or those of oth-
ers, concerning the millennium.

Hume, than whom few men have been more poorly endowed
with the historical spirit, or less capable of understanding or
sympathizing with any unseen form of human nature, lays down
in his Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,

/.->

324 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

" that, when the arts and sciences come to perfection in any
state, from that moment they naturally, or rather necessarily
decline, and seldom or never revive ; " a proposition which im-
plies a sheer confusion of thought, as though the course and
term of the arts and sciences were the same, and which he tries
to support by the feeblest and shallowest arguments. In his
Essay on Refinement in the Arts, he declares that " such a trans-
formation of mankind, as would endow them with every virtue,
and free them from every vice," being impossible, " concerns
not the magistrate, who very often can only cure one vice by an-
other" Such is the paltry morality, the miserable self-abandon-
ment, to which utilitarianism leads. Recognizing nothing as
good or evil in itself, it will foster one vice, to counteract what
it deems a more hurtful one. He too has what he calls an Idea
of a perfect Commonwealth : but it deals merely with the form
of the government, being drawn up with the purpose of avoiding
the errours into which Plato and Sir Thomas More, he says,
fell, in making an improvement in the moral character of the
people an essential part of their Utopias. Yet what would be
the worth of a perfect commonwealth without such an improve-
ment ? or what its stability ? Hume's name still excites so
much terrour, that it might be well if some able thinker and
reasoner were to collect a century of blunders from his Essays :
nor would it be difficult to do so, even without touching upon
those which refer to questions of taste.

The belief in perfectibility would indeed have chimed in
with many of the prevailing opinions on other subjects ; with
that, for instance, which stript the idea of God of his moral
attributes, or resolved them into partial expressions of infinite
benevolence ; as well as with the corresponding opinion which
regards evil as a mere defect, and entirely discards the sinful-
ness of sin. For, were evil nothing but an accident in our na-
ture, removable by human means, it would argue a cowardly
distrust, not to believe that the mind, which is achieving such
wonders in spreading man's empire, intellectual and material,
over the outward world, will be able to devise some plan for
subduing his inward foe. Yet the Essay on Political Justice

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 325

does not seem to have produced much effect even at the time,
in the way of conviction, except on a few youthful enthusiasts ;
though it added no little to the consternation among the retain-
ers of the existing order of things. So deplorable however
was the dearth of thought in England after the death of Burke,
that, while Godwin's deeper fallacies were scarcely toucht by his
opponents, they buoyed themselves up with the notion that he
had been overthrown by the bulkiest instance of an ignoratio
elenchi in the whole history of pseudo-philosophy, — the Essay
on Population; a work which may have merits in other re-
spects, but which, with reference to its primary object, the ref-
utation of Condorcet and Godwin, is utterly impotent ; all its
arguments proceeding on a hypothesis totally different from
that which it undertakes to impugn ; as has been convincingly
shewn by the great- logician of our times in one of the Notes
from the Pocketbooh of an English Opium-eater. Indeed I
hardly know whether the success of the JEssay on Population,
in dispelling the bright visions of a better state of things, be
not a stronger argument against the perfectibility of man, than
any contained in its pages ; evincing as that success does such
a readiness to adopt any fallacy which flatters our prejudices,
and bolsters up our imaginary interests.

It was in Germany that the idea of the progressiveness of
mankind first revealed itself under a form more nearly ap-
proaching to the truth : which indeed might have been expected ,
from the peculiar character of the nation. As the Germans
surpass other nations in the power of discerning and under-
standing the spirits of other climes and times, they have been
the first to perceive the true idea of the history of the world
in its living fulness and richness : and, here, as in other depart-
ments of knowledge, it is only by meditating on the laws ob-
servable in the past, that we can at all prognosticate the future.

What then is the true idea of the history of the world ?
That question may now be answered briefly and plainly. For
though it may take thousands of years to catch sight of an idea,
yet, when it has once been clearly apprehended, it is wont to
manifest itself by its own light. The generic distinction be-

>

326 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

/ tween man and the lower orders of animals, if we look at them
I historically, — the distinction out of which it arises that man-
! kind alone have, properly speaking, a history, or become the
/ agents and subjects in a series of diverse events, — is, that,
while each individual animal in a manner fulfills the whole
purpose of its existence, nothing of the sort can be predicated
of any man that ever lived, but only of the race. All the or-
gans and faculties with which the animal is endowed, are called
into action : all the tendencies discoverable in its nature are re-
alized. Whereas every man has a number of dormant powers,
a number of latent tendencies, the purpose of which can never
be accomplisht, except in the historical development of the
race ; not in the race as existing at any one time, nor even in
,the whole of time past, but of the race as diffused through the
whole period of time allotted to it, past, present, and to come.
For thus much we can easily see, that there are many purposes
of man's being, many tendencies in his nature, which have
never yet been adequately fulfilled ; though we are quite
unable to make out when that fulfilment will take place, or
whither it will lead us. Moreover there is a universal law, of
which we have a twofold assurance, — both from observation
of all the works of nature, and from the wisdom of their au-
thor, — that no tendency has been implanted in any created
thing, but sooner or later shall receive its accomplishment, —
that God's purposes cannot be baffled, and that his word can
never return to him empty. Hence it follows that all those
tendencies in man's nature, which cannot be fulfilled immedi-
ately and contemporaneously, will be fulfilled gradually and
successively in the course which mankind are to run. Accord-
ingly the philosophical idea of the history of the world will be,
that it is to exhibit the gradual unfolding of all the faculties of
man's intellectual and moral being, — those which he has in
common with the brute animals, may be brought to perfection
at once in him, as they are in them, — under every shade of
circumstance, and in every variety of combination. This de-
velopment in the species will proceed in the same order as it is
wont to follow in those individuals whose souls have been drawn

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 327

out into the light of consciousness. In its earlier stages the
lower faculties will exercise a sway only disturbed now and
then by the awakening of some moral instinct ; and then by
degrees will be superseded and brought into subjection by those
of a higher order, coming forward first singly, and then con-
jointly; with a perpetual striving after the period when the
whole man shall be called forth in perfect harmony and sym-
metry, according to Aristotle's definition of happiness, as yj/vxtjs C
evepyeia tear aperrju reXeiau. In a word, the purpose and end of
the history of the world is to realize the idea of humanity. All V
the while too, as in the outward world there is a mutual adap-
tation and correspondence between the course of the seasons,
and the fruits they are to mature, so may we feel assured that,
at every stage in the progress of history, such light and warmth
will be vouchsafed to mankind from above, as they may be able
to bear, and as their temporary needs may require.

I know not whether this idea was ever fully and explicitly
enunciated by any writer anterior to Hegel. Indeed it pre-
supposes a complete delineation of the process by which the
human mind itself is developt, such as is hardly to be found
prior to his Phenomenology. Even bty Hegel the historical
process is regarded too much as a mere natural evolution, with-
out due account of that fostering superintendence by which
alone any real good is elicited. But the idea was already
rising into the sphere of vision above half a century ago, and
has been contemplated since then under a variety of particular
aspects. Lessing, in one of his latest, most precious, and pro-
foundest works, — a little treatise written in 1780, in which,
after having with much labour purged himself from the nat-
uralism and empiricism of his contemporaries, he reaches the
very borders of a Christian philosophy, — speaks of revelation
in its several stages as the gradual education of the human race.
His prophecy, that the time of a new everlasting Gospel will
come, may indeed startle those who are unacquainted with the
deplorably effete decrepit state of the German church in his
days : and had he not lived in an unbelieving age, he would
have recognized, like Luther, that the Gospel which we have

328 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

already, is at once everlasting and ever-new : else the spirit of
his prophecy has been in great measure accomplisht of late
years, by the revival of religion, and the restoration of the old
Gospel to much of its former power and majesty.

Herder, who treated the philosophy of history in his greatest
work, and who made it the central object of all his studies, yet,
owing to the superficialness of his metaphysical knowledge,
] had but vague conceptions with regard to the progress of man-
kind. He had discerned no principle of unity determining its
course and its end. His genius was much happier in seizing
and describing the peculiarities of the various tribes of man-

;kind, more especially in their less cultivated state, when almost
entirely dependent on the circumstances of time and place :
and such contemplations were better suited to the sentimental
pantheism, into which the spirit of the eighteenth century re-
coiled from the formal monotheism it had inherited, which had
found its main utterance in Rousseau, and with which Herder
was much tainted, like many of the more genial minds of his
age, and of those since.

Kant on the other hand, looking at history in its ordinary
political sense, lays down, in a brief but masterly essay publisht
in 1784, that the history of the human race, as a whole, may be
regarded as the fulfilling of a secret purpose of nature to work
out a perfect constitution ; this being the only condition ' in
which all the tendencies implanted in man can be brought to
perfection. In a later essay, in 1798, he remarks, with his
characteristic subtilty, that, even if we assume the human race j
to have been constantly advancing or receding hitherto, this
will not warrant a conclusion that it must necessarily continue
to move in the same direction hereafter ; for that it may have
just reacht a tropical point, and may be verging on its perihe-
lion, or its aphelion, from which its course would be reverst.
Hence he looks about for some fact, which may afford him a
• surer ground to argue on : and such a fact he finds in the en-
thusiastic sympathy excited throughout Europe by the outbreak
of the French Revolution. This gives him a satisfactory as- N
surance that the human race will not only be progressive here-

in

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 329

after, but has always been so hitherto. Perhaps a subtilty far
inferior to Kant's might shew that this argument is not so very
much sounder than every other which may be drawn from the
history of the world. But his writings in his later years betray
that the vigour of his faculties was declining : and one of the
ways in which the great destroyer was at times pleased to
display his power, was by building a house on the sand, after
razing that on the rock. It was thus that, having swept away
every antecedent system of ethics, he spun a new one out of
his categorical imperative.

During the last fifty years, the idea of history as an organic
whole, regulated by certain laws inherent in the constitution of
man, — as a macrocosm analogous to the microcosm contained
in every breast, — has been a favourite subject of speculation
with the Germans. There are few among their eminent writ-
ers who have not occasionally thrown out thoughts on the
subject : many have treated it, either partially or in its totality,
in distinct works : and it has been applied with more or less
ability and intelligence to the history of religion, of philosophy,
of poetry, and of the arts. In each it has been attempted to
arrange and exhibit the various phenomena which are the sub-
jects of history, not in a mere accidental sequence, after the
practice of former times and of other countries, but as con-
nected parts qf^ a grgakwhoie, — to trace what may be called
the metamorphoses of history, in their genesis and orderly suc-
cession. Of late too these theories have been imported into
France, especially by the Saint-Simonians, but have mostly
been frenchified during the journey, and turned into stiff
coarse abstractions : added to which the national incapacity to
contemplate an idea, makes the French always impatient to
realize it under some determinate form; instead of acknowl- J
edging that it can only be realized, when it realizes itself, and ; ,
that it may do this under any form, if it be duly instilled into
the mind as a living principle of thought. ^

From what has been said, we may perceive that the progress
of mankind is not in a straight line, uniform and unbroken.
On the contrary it is subject to manifold vicissitudes, interrup-

<

U/M.W

330 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

; tions, and delays; ever advancing on the whole indeed, but
often receding in one quarter, while it pushes forward in an-
other; and sometimes even retreating altogether for a while,
that it may start afresh with greater and more irresistible force.
"Wordsworth compares it to "the progress of a river, which
both in its smaller reaches and larger turnings is frequently
forced back toward its fountains by objects which cannot other-
wise be eluded or overcome: yet with an accompanying im-
pulse, that will ensure its advancement hereafter, it is either
gaining strength every hour, or secretly conquering some diffi-
culty, by a labour that contributes as effectually to further it in
its course, as when it moves forward uninterrupted in a direct
line." It is like the motion of the earth, which, beside its
yearly course round the sun, has a daily revolution through
successive periods of light and darkness. It is like the pro-
gress of the year, in which, after the blossoms of spring have
dropt off, a long interval elapses before the autumnal fruits
come forward conspicuously in their stead : and these too anon
decay ; and the foliage and herbage of one year mixes up with
the mould for the enriching of another. It is like the life of
an individual, in which every day adds something, and every
day takes away something: but it by no means follows that
what is added must be more valuable than what is taken
away. u.

When coupled with a right understanding of its object, the
belief in the progressiveness of mankind has no tendency to
foster presumption ; which in its ordinary acceptation it is apt
to do. For the narrowminded and ignorant, being unable to
project their thoughts beyond their own immediate circle, or to
discriminate between what is really essential and valuable in
any state of society, and what is accidental and derives its im-
portance solely from habit, are prone to assume that no condi-
tion can well be endurable except their own, and to despise
those who are unfortunate enough to differ from them, even in
the cut of their coats, as so many Goths or Hottentots. In
fact, this is the usual, as well as the original, meaning of the

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 331

word barbarian : a barbarian is a person who does not talk as
we talk, or dress as we dress, or eat as we eat ; in short, who is
so audacious as not to follow our practice in all the trivialities
of manners. No doubt too there are people to whom it is quite
incomprehensible, how all the world did not die of weariness
and intellectual starvation in the days when there were no
newspapers, or stagecoaches, or circulating libraries, or penny-
encyclopedias. Now such persons grow very proud and loud,
when they fancy they have a philosophical proposition to back
their pretensions: forthwith they enlist as drummers, to beat
the march of mind. And beat it they do deafeningly, at every
corner of a street, in an age of a superficial character, like the
present, the advantages of which strike every eye, while they
keep us from looking at anything beyond, — from observing the
poisonous vermin that swarm amid the luxuriant rank vegeta-
tion, the morass it grows out of, and the malaria it breeds.

It is true, this results in part from that instinctive power by
which habit attaches us to whatever we are accustomed to;
thus, by a wise and beneficent ordinance, adapting our nature
to the endless varieties of our condition and circumstances, and
enabling us to find happiness wheresoever we may be placed.
Here, as in so many other cases, it is by " overleaping itself,
and falling on the other side," by passing out of its own posi-
tive region into that of negativeness, that a feeling, in itself
sound and wholesome, becomes erroneous and mischievous.
At the same time, in so doing it perverts and belies itself. For
it is no way necessary that a fondness for any one object should
so turn the current of our affections, as to draw them away
from all others ; still less that it should sour them against oth-
ers. On the contrary, love, when true and deep, opens and
expands the heart, and fills it with universal goodwill. Where-
as exclusiveness, of whatsoever kind, arises from the monopo-
lizing spirit of selfishness. They who look contemptuously
upon other things, in comparison with the chosen objects of
their regard, do so not from any transcendent affection for those
objects in themselves, but merely as the objects which they
vouchsafe to honour; and because they think it ministers to

X

332 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

their glory to sip the cream of the whole earth, while the rest
of mankind are fain to swallow the skim-milk. In such a tem-
per of mind there is no pure, hearty satisfaction, no pure,
hearty delight even in the very objects thus extolled. If a
person is really at ease, and thoroughly contented with his own
state, he will be glad that his neighbours should feel a like con-
tentment in theirs. Thus patriotism becomes the ground, and
indeed is the only sure ground, of cosmopolitism.
~ When we call to remembrance however, that the course of
time is markt, not by the rectilinear flight, but by the oscilla-
tions and pulsations of life, — that life does not flow in a straight,
conspicuous stream into its ocean-home, but sinks sooner or later
into the subterraneous caverns of death, — that light does not
keep on brightening into a more intense effulgence, but, in com-
passion to the infirmity of our organs, allows them to bathe ever
and anon and seek refreshment in darkness, — that the moral
year, like the natural, is not one continued spring and summer,
but has its seasons of decay, during which new growths are
preparing, — that the ways of Providence in this world, as crost
and interrupted by the self-will of man, are not solely from good
to better, but often, in a merciful condescension to our frailty,
through evil to good, — we shall understand that a more ad-
vanced stage of civilization does not necessarily imply a better
state of society, least of all in any one particular country ; which,
it is possible, may already have played out its part, and be
doomed to fall, while others rise up in its stead. Indeed so far
is our superiority to our ancestors from being a self-evident, no-
torious truth, the best of all proofs of our being superior to them
would be our not thinking ourselves so.

Nay, even if the progress were uniform and continuous, what
plea should we have for boasting ? or how can we dare pride
ourselves on a superiority to our ancestors, which we owe, not to
our own exertions, but to theirs ? how can we allow that supe-
riority to awaken any feeling, except of the awful responsibility
it imposes on us, and of reverent gratitude to those through
whose labours and endurance we have been raised to our pres-
ent elevation ?

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 333

That an acknowledgement of the inferiority of our own times
is no way inconsistent with the firmest assurance as to the gen-
eral progressiveness of mankind, may be seen in the Lectures
on the Character of the Age delivered by Fichte at Berlin in
1804. After laying down, as the scheme of the history of our
world, that mankind are to be trained to render that entire obe-
dience to the law of reason as a freewill-offering, which in their
primitive state they rendered unconsciously to the instinct of
reason, — he divides the life of the human race into five dis-
tinct periods, and describes the present or third period, as " the
epoch of man's emancipation immediately from all binding
authority, and mediately from all subjection to the rational in-
stinct, and to reason altogether under every shape, — the age of
absolute indifference to all truth, and of utter unrestraint with-
out any guidance, — the state of complete sinfulness." At the
same time he declared that this dismal transition-period, — for
drawing the features of which he found abundant materials in
the political, moral, and religious debasement of Germany at
the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, —
was verging on its close ; and that mankind would shortly
emerge from this lowest deep into the state of incipient justifica-
tion. With all his perversities he was a noble, heroic patriot,
great as a philosopher, and still greater as a man : and one re-
joices that he lived long enough to see, what he would deem a
sign that his hopes were about to be fulfilled, the enthusiastic
spirit which animated regenerate Germany in 1813.

Thus, while a right understanding of the course and purpose
of history must needs check our bragging of the advantages of
our own age, neither will it allow us to murmur on account of
its defects. What though the blossoms have dropt off? the fruit
will not ripen without. What though the fruit have fallen or
been consumed? so it must, — seeing that it cannot keep its
freshness and flavour for ever, — in order that a new crop may
be produced. Surely it is idle to repine that a tree does not
stand through the year with a load of rotten apples. Precious \
as may have been the qualities or the institutions which have
past away, we shall recognize that their subsistence was in com-

334 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

patible with the new order of things ; that the locks which curl
so gracefully round the downy, glowing cheeks of the child,
would ill become the man's furrowed brow, and must grow
white in time ; but that then too they will have a beauty of
their own, if the face express that sobriety and calmness and
purity which accord with them ; and that every age in the life
of a nation, as of an individual, has its advantages and its bene-
fits, if we call them forth, and make a right use of them. For
here too, unless we thwart or pervert the order of Nature, a
principle of compensation is ever working. It is in this thought
that Tacitus finds consolation (AnnaL iii. 55) : Nisi forte rebus
cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quemadmodum temporum
vices, ita morum vertantur : nee omnia apud priores meliora ;
sed nostra quoque aetas multa laudis et artium imitanda posteris

Above all, he who has observed how throughout history,
while man is continually misusing good, and turning it into
evil, the overruling sway of God's Providence out of evil is
ever bringing forth good, will never be cast down, or led to
despond, or to slacken his efforts, however untoward the imme-
diate aspect of things may appear. For he will know that,
whenever he is labouring in the cause of heaven, the powers
of heaven are working with him ; that, though the good he is
aiming at may not be attainable in the very form he has in
view, the ultimate result will assuredly be good ; that were man
diligent in fulfilling his part, this result would be immediate ;
and that no one, who is thus diligent, shall lose his precious
reward, of seeing that every good deed is a part of the life of
the world. u.

Another advantage attending the true idea of the progress of
mankind is, that it alone enables us to estimate former ages
justly. In looking back on the past, we are apt to fall into one
of two errours. One class of historians treat the several mo-
ments of history as distinct, insulated wholes, existing solely by
themselves and for themselves, apart from all connexion with
the general destinies of mankind. Another class regard them

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 335

as so many steps in the ladder by which man had to mount to
his present station. Now both these views are fallacious, the
last the most so. For the former may coexist with a lively
conception of individual reality, and contains nothing neces-
sarily disparaging to the men of bygone generations ; though it
will not aid us to discern their relative bearings and purposes.
Whereas, in ascending a ladder, we think the steps were merely
made to get up by, not to rest on ; we seldom pause to contem-
plate the varying prospects which spread out successively be-
fore each; and by a scarcely avoidable delusion, everything
above us being hidden in mist, we mistake our own landing-
place for the summit, and fancy the ladder was set up mainly ¥
for us, in order that we might climb it. Yet our post may be \
less commanding than several lower ones : some fresh obstacle
may have come across us, to narrow our field of view : or our
high th itself may render the objects indistinct. At all events,
when we are looking down on them, we are unable to make out
their proportions, and only perceive how they are connected
with each other, not what they are in themselves. Indeed the
other unphilosophical class of historians are also liable to a /
similar mistake. Not having a right insight into the necessary 1
distinctions of ages and nations, they too measure others byj
their own standard, and so misunderstand and misjudge them, i
In this, as in every jdea Jftej^jte a union of opposites. Man, /

whetner in Ills mHividual, or in his corpo^Sfc4ejcapa"city, is neither/
to be regarded solely as the end of his own being, nor solely as! |W

veil-being of others,\

1

ooin
twofi
eithe

a mean and instrument employed for the well-being of others,!
— nor again as partly one and partly the other, — but as \ C
both at once, and each wholly. Nay, so inseparable is this*
twofold office, and. indivisible, that he cannot rightly fulfill
either, except by fulfilling the other. He has a positive and
significant part to act in the great drama of the world's life :
and that part derives a double importance from not being
designed to pass away like a dream, but to leave a lasting im-
pression on the destinies and character of the race. Moreover
it is by diligently performing the part assigned to him, by top-
ping it, as the phrase is, that he does his utmost to forward the

L

336 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

general action of the drama. So that, to understand any past
age, we should consider it in a twofold light ; first gain the full-
est and most definite conception of its peculiar features and
character ; and then contemplate it with reference to the place
it holds in the history of the world. What was it ? and what
did it accomplish ? These are the first questions : but others
follow them. How came it to be what it was? how did it
arise out of what went before ? and what did it leave to that
which came after ? What phase of human nature did it ex-
press ? what distinctive idea did it embody ? what power did it
realize ? of what truths was it the exponent ? and what portion
of these its attributes has past away with it? what portion
has been taken up and incorporated with the living spirit of the
race?

Let me exemplify these remarks by the manner in which the
history of philosophy has been treated. A number of writers,
of whom Brucker may stand as the representative, have aimed
at little else than giving a naked abstract or summary of the
successive systems which have prevailed ; translating the termi-
nology into that of their own days ; but with scarcely a concep-
tion that every system of philosophy, deserving the name, has
an organic inward, as well as a logical and outward unity, and
springs from a seminal idea ; or that there is an orderly genesis
by which one system issues from another. Yet, seeing that
philosophy is the reflexion of the human mind upon itself, on
its own nature and faculties, and on those supersensuous ideas
and forms which it discovers within itself, the laws and mould
of its being, the history of philosophy, it is plain, must be the
history of the human mind, must follow the same regular pro-
gression, and go through the same transmigrations. Viewed in
this light, the history of philosophy has a pervading unity, and
a deep interest, and is intimately connected with the life of the
race. But in its usual form it merely exhibits a series of logi-
cal diagrams, which seem to be no way concerned with the
travails and throes of human nature, — which are nothing more
than the images of Narcissus looking dotingly at himself ever
and anon in the stream of Time, — and which " come like

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 337

shadows, so depart/' until we are wearied by the dull, ghastly-
procession, and cry, with Macbeth, We '11 see no more.

Inadequate however and tantalizing as such a history is, it
does at least furnish an outline of the forms under which Phi-
losophy has manifested itself: it shews us how multifarious
those forms are, and supplies us with some of the materials for
discerning the law of their succession. We perceive in it how
the appetite of unity has ever been the great characteristic of
the Philosophical mind, and how that mind has ever been drawn
by an irrepressible instinct to bring all things to one, and to
seek the central One in alL Hence these histories are of greater
value, or at least come nearer to fulfilling the idea of a history,
than such detacht observations as Dugald Stewart has strung
together for the sake of exhibiting a view of the progress of
metaphysical philosophy. From the latter no one would be
able to frame any conception of the systems enumerated, unless
he were already acquainted with them. Indeed one should
hardly make out, except from the objections urged every now
and then against the love of system, that there is anything like
a desire of unity in the philosophical spirit, any aim beyond
certain more or less wide generalizations from the phenomena
of the intellectual and material world. Instead of trying to
give a faithful representation of former systems in their indi-
viduality, and their reciprocal connexion, pointing out the wants
they were successively designed to satisfy, shewing how those
wants arose, and how they could not but arise, and then tracing
the evolution of each pervading idea, he has mostly contented
himself with picking out a few incidental remarks, and these
often no way pertaining to the general scheme of systematic
thought, but such reflexions as are suggested to an acute and
intelligent mind by observation of the world. The object which
guides him in the selection of these remarks, is, to shew how
the philosophers of former times caught glimpses of certain
propositions, which he deems to be the great truths of his own
age: and he almost seems to have fancied that the human
mind had been heaving and panting and toiling from the begin-
ning, an! ransacking the quarries of Nature, and building up
15 v

338 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the mighty pyramid of thought, in order that Reid should lay
on the headstone, and take his stand on the summit. Hereby
a method, which is solely applicable to the history of science, is
transferred to that of philosophy. Whereas the worth of a
philosophical system is only to be appreciated in its unity and
integrity, not from two or three casual remarks ; which are a
still more fallacious criterion, than detacht passages are of the
merit of a poem. For the power of drawing inferences from
observation is totally distinct from that of discerning elementary
ideas, and is often found without a particle of it ; for instance
in those who by way of eminence are termed men of practical
minds. 17.

I have been trying to shew that the belief in the perfectibility,
or even in the progressiveness of mankind, is a late growth in
the world of thought, — to explain how and under what form it
originated, and how much of errour has been mixt up with it.
Are we then to cast away the idea of perfectibility, as an idle,
baseless, delusive, vainglorious phantom ? God forbid ! And
in truth He has forbidden it. He forbad it, when He set His
own absolute perfection as the aim of our endeavour before us,
by that blessed command — Be ye perfect, even as your Father
in heaven is perfect.

To deny the perfectibility of mankind is to charge these
words with pompous inanity. They declare that the perfect
renewal of God's image in man is not a presumptuous vision, not
like a madman's attempt to clutch a handful of stars, but an
object of righteous enterprise, which we may and ought to long
for and to strive after. And as God's commands always imply
the possibility of their fulfilment, and impart the power of ful-
filling them to those who seek it, this, which was designed for
all mankind, was accompanied by another, providing that all
mankind should be called to aspire to that sublime perfection,
should be taught by what steps they are to mount to it, and
should receive help mighty enough to nerve their souls for the
work. A body of men was instituted for the express purpose
of teaching all nations to do all the things that Christ had com-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 339

manded, and of baptizing them in the name of Him who alone
can give man the power of subduing whatever there is of evil
in his nature, and oCmaturing whatever there is of good.

Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. This
is the angel-trumpet which summons man to the warfare of
Duty. This, and nothing less than this, is the glorious prize set
before him. Do our hearts swell with pride at the thought that
this is what we ought to be, what we might be? A single
glance at the state of the world, at what we ourselves are, must
quench that pride, and turn it into shame. u.

When quoting Dryden's epigram on Milton (p. 298), I
called it stupid. Is this an indecorous expression to apply to
anything that comes from so renowned a writer ? I would not
willingly fail in due respect to any man of genius, who has ex-
ercised his genius worthily : but I cannot feel much respect for
the author of Limberham, who turned Milton's Eve into a vulgar
coquette, and who defiled Shakspeare's State of Innocence by
introducing the rottenhearted carnalities of Charles the Second's
age into the Tempest. As to his epigram on Milton, it seems to
me nearly impossible to pack a greater number of blundering
thoughts into so small a space, than are crowded into its last
four lines. Does the reader remember it ?

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpast;
The next in majesty: in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go :
To make a third, she joined the former two.

As these lines are on the author of Paradise Lost, we know
who must be the other poets spoken of: else we should hardly
divine it from the descriptions given of them ; which would fit
any other writers nearly as well. For what feature of the Homer-
ic poems is designated by " loftiness of thought " ? what feature
of Virgil by "majesty," — majesty contradistinguish from lofti-
ness of thought f What is loftiness of thought in a poet as exist-
ing without majesty ? what majesty, without loftiness of thought ?
unless it be the majesty of Louis the Fourteenth's full-bottomed

340 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

wig, or of one of Dryden's own stage-kings. For, if there be
not something incongruous in these two qualities, if they had
already coexisted in Homer and Virgil, what is the prodigy of
their union in Milton ? How totally are the characters of the
two poets mist in these words ! They give no notion, or a most
erroneous one, of Homer ; and a very inadequate one of Virgil.
Milton however is so highly favoured, that he unites both quali-
ties. His "majesty" is not, like Virgil's, without "loftiness of
thought ; " nor his " loftiness of thought," like Homer's, without
" majesty."

And the combination of these two elements, which are almost
identical, exhausts the powers of Nature ! This is one of the
blustering pieces of bombast thrown out by those who neither
know nor think what they are talking of. Eschylus, and Sopho-
cles, and Pindar, and Aristophanes, and Dante, and Cervantes,
and Shakspeare had lived, — every one of them having more
in common with Homer than Milton had : yet a man dares say,
that the power of God has been worn out by creating Homer
and Virgil ! and that he could do nothing after, except by strap-
ping them together.

Nor can there well be more complete ignorance of the char-
acteristics of genius. Secondary men, men of talents, may be
mixt tip, like an apothecary's prescription, of so many grains of
one quality, and so many of another. But genius is one, indi-
vidual, indivisible : like a star, it dwells alone. That which is
essential in a man of genius, his central spirit, shews itself once,
and passes away, never to return : and in few men is this more
conspicuous than in Milton, in whom there is nothing Homeric,
and hardly anything Virgilian. In sooth, one might as accu-
rately describe the elephant, as being made up of the force of
the lion and the strength of the tiger.

A like inauspicious star has presided at the birth of many
of the epigrams on great men. The authors of them, in their
desire to say something very grand and striking, have been
regardless of truth and propriety. What can be more turgid
and extravagant than Pope's celebrated epitaph on Newton ?
in which he audaciously blots out all the knowledge of former

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 341

ages, that he may give his hero a dark ground to stand out
from ; forgetting that in the intellectual world also the process
of Nature is not by fits and starts, but gradually, — that the
highest mountains do not spring up out of the plain, but are
approacht by lower ranges, — and that no sun ever rises with-
out a preluding twilight.

The best parallel to Pope's couplet, — for it is scarcely a
parody, — is Nicolai's silly one on Mendelsohn :

Es ist ein Gott : so sagte Moses schon :
Doch den Beweis gab Moses Mendelsohn.

Which may be Englisht without much disparagement by the

following doggerel :

There is a God, said Moses long ago :

But Moses Mendelsohn first proved 't was so.

Far more ingenious than any of the preceding epigrams, —

because it contains a thought, though a false one, — is Bembo's

on Raphael :

Ille hie est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.

Yet, neat and clever as this may be, a true imagination would
revolt from charging Nature either with jealousy or with de-
spondency. She may be endowed with the purer elementary
feelings of humanity. She may be represented as sympathizing
with man, as rejoicing with him or at him, as mourning with
him or over him. But surely it is absurd that she, who is here
called rerum magna parens, she who brings forth all the beauty
and glory of mountains and vallies, of lakes and rivers and seas,
of winter and spring and summer, — she, who every evening
showers thousands of stars over the sky, who calls the sun out
of his eastern chamber, and welcomes him with bridal blushes,
and leads him across the heavens, — she who has gone on for
thousands of years pouring forth bright and graceful forms with
inexhaustible variety and prodigality, — she who fills the im-
mensity of space with beauty, and is ever renewing it through
the immensity of time, — should be ruffled by a petty feeling of
rivalry for one of her children ; or should fear that the power,

342 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

which had seen countless generations and nations, and even
worlds, rise and set, was about to expire, because one of her
blossoms, although it was one of the loveliest, had dropt off
from the tree of humanity.

In all these eulogies we find the same trick. The authors
think they cannot sufficiently exalt the persons they want to
praise, except by speaking derogatorily and slightingly of some
other power. Nature is vilified, to magnify Milton and Ra-
phael ; all the science from Archimedes down to Kepler and
Galileo, for the sake of glorifying Newton. In the same style
is Johnson's couplet on Shakspeare :

Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign ;
And panting Time toiled after him in vain.

What the latter of these two monstrous lines was intended to
mean, it is difficult to guess. For even Johnson's grandiloquence
could hardly have taken this mode of expressing that Shak-
speare violated the unities. The former line is one of the most
infelicitous ever written. Not to speak of that uncouth abstrac-
tion, Existence, which is here turned into a person, and deckt
out with eyes ; what distinguishes Shakspeare above all other
poets, is, that he did not " spurn Existence's bounded reign."
He was too wise to dream that it was bounded, too wise to
fancy that he could overleap its bounds, too wise to be ambi-
tious of taking a salto mortale into Chaos. His excellence is
that he never " spurns " anything. More than any other writer,
he realizes his own conception of the philosophic life, —

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

People are fond of talking about the extravagances of ge-
nius, the exaggerations of the imagination; and when they
meet with something very extravagant and exaggerated, they
regard this as a proof that the writer's imagination was so vio-
lent and uncontrollable, it quite ran away with him. One
might as well deem gouty legs symptomatic of strength and
agility. Exaggerations mostly arise from feebleness and tor-
pour of imagination. It is because we feel ourselves unable to

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 343

vivify an object in its full, calm reality, that we mouthe and
sputter. When Caligula was making preparations for a tri-
umph over an enemy he had never seen, Galliarum proce-
rissimum quemque, et, ut ipse dicebat, a^ioOpia^evrov legit, ac
seposuit ad pompam (Suetonius, c. 47) : and so it is with big
words that authors have been wont to celebrate their factitious
triumphs. Of the writers I have been citing none was remark-
able for imaginative power : even Dryden was not so : in John-
son the active, productive imagination was inert, the passive
or receptive, sluggish and obtuse. His strength lay in his un-
derstanding, which, was shrewd and vigorous, and at times
sagacious. Yet no poet of the rankest, most ill-regulated
imagination ever wrote anything more tumid than this coup-
let on Shakspeare.

To shew how a poet of true and mighty imagination will
praise, let me wind up these remarks by quoting Milton's noble

epitaph.

What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones ?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointed pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument;

And so sepulcred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

The reader may perhaps remind me, that this epitaph, as
written by Milton, contained six more lines ; and that these are
quite unworthy of the others, and prove that the greatest poets
may at times write in very bad taste. True ! the epitaph was
composed in Milton's youth ; and a young poet of genius is al-
ways liable, — the more so on account of that lively suscepti-
bility which is among the chief elements of all genius, — to be
carried away by the vicious taste of his age. He must receive
the impressions of the world around him, before he can mould
them into a world of his own. In omitting the six lines in
question, I have followed the example set by Wordsworth in
his Essay on Epitaphs. Bad however as the conceit in them

344 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

may be, the fault is not one of vapid bombast, but of an unripe
genius, of an over-active ingenuity. The words are not big,
unmeaning sounds, as in the lines quoted from Dryden, Pope,
and Johnson. Milton's epitaph, though it has a flaw in it, is a
genuine diamond, and, when that flaw is cut out, shines in last-
ing brilliancy : while the others are bits of painted glass, gaudy
and glaring, but which, if you handle them rudely, split into
worthless fragments. Or rather they are swollen bladders :
only prick them, and they collapse, and cannot be puft out
again. u.

When searching into the hidden things of God, we are for
ever forgetting that we only know in part. a.

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whither-
soever it has gone : and, as if to shew that the latter does not
depend on physical causes, some of the countries the most civil-
ized in the days of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless
barbarism.

Something like Judaism or Platonism, I should think, must
always precede Christianity ; except in those who have really
received Christianity as a living power in their childhood.

The catholic religion is the whole Bible: sects pick out a
part of it. But what whole ? The living whole, to be sure . .
not the dead whole : the spirit, not the letter. a.

Mere art perverts taste ; just as mere theology depraves re-
ligion.

It is a lesson which Genius too, and Wisdom of every kind
must learn, that its kingdom is not of this world. It must learn
to know this, and to be content that this should be so, to be con-
tent with the thought of a kingdom in a higher, less transitory
region. Then peradventure may the saying be fulfilled with
regard to it, that he who is ready to lose his life shall save

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 345

it. The wisdom which aims at something nobler and more last-
ing than the kingdom of this world, may now and then find that
the kingdom of this world will also fall into its lap. How much
longer and more widely has Aristotle reigned than Alexander !
with how much more power and glory Luther than Charles the
Fifth ! His breath still works miracles at this day. u.

Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly
look for fruit on it in autumn. u.

In character, in affection, the ideal is the only real.

There is but one power to which all are eager to bow down,
to which all take pride in paying homage ; and that is the power
of Beauty. u.

Science sees signs ; Poetry the thing signified. u.

If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne,
who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies
forth a troop of horsemen with drawn sabres and white-plumed
helmets. 1.

A work of genius is something like the pie in the nursery
song, in which the four and twenty blackbirds are baked. When
the pie is opened, the birds begin to sing. Hereupon three
fourths of the company run away in a fright ; and then after a
time, feeling ashamed, they would fain excuse themselves by
declaring, the pie stank so, they could not sit near it. Those
who stay behind, the men of taste and epicures, say one to an-
other, We came here to eat. What business have birds, after they
have been baked, to be alive and singing ? This will never do.
We must put a stop to so dangerous an innovation : for who will
send a pie to an oven, if the birds come to life there ? We must
stand up to defend the rights of all the ovens in England. Let
us have dead birds . . dead birds for our money. So each sticks
his fork into a bird, and hacks and mangles it a while, and then
15*

346 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

holds it up and cries, Who will dare assert that there is any
music in this bird's song t

Let your humour always be good humour, in both senses. If
it comes of a bad humour, it is pretty sure not to belie its
parentage. u.

Shakspeare's genius could adapt itself with such nicety to all
the varieties of ever-varying man, that in his Titus Andronicus
he has portrayed the very dress of mind which the people of
the declining empire must have worn. I can conceive that the
degenerate Romans would clothe their thoughts in just such
words. The sayings of the free-garmented folks in Julius
Cesar could not have come from the close-buttoned generation
in Othello. Though human passions are the same in all ages,
there are modifications of them dependent on the circumstances
of time and place, which Shakspeare has always caught and
exprest. He has thus given such a national tinge and epochal
propriety to his characters, that, even when one sees Jaques in
a bag-wig and sword, one may exclaim, on being told that he is
a French nobleman, This man must have lived at the time when
the Italian taste was prevalent in France. How differently
does he moralize from King Henry or Hamlet ! although their
morality, like all morality, comes to pretty nearly the same
conclusion. I.

He who is imprest with the truth of the foregoing remark,
must needs feel somewhat perplext, when reading Troilus and
Oressida, at the language which is there put into the mouths of
the Greek chiefs : so utterly unlike is it to the winged words of
the Iliad. Hence some of the critics have had recourse to the
usual makeshift, by which they try to shirk difficulties, when
they cannot get over them, and have conjectured that the play
was interpolated by some other poet of the age. But what
other poet could have furnisht the wisdom contained in those
very speeches the style of which appears the most objectiona-
ble? And what would the play be without them? Indeed

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 347

the language in question is not confined to a few speeches, but
runs through almost all the graver scenes. Still it is strange
that Shakspeare, who, with a humble and magnanimous trust
in truth, represented everything just as it was or had been,
merely bringing out the spirit which in real life had been checkt
or latent, should in this instance have departed so far from his
.original, that he is scarcely ever so unlike Homer, as here
where he comes in contact with him. To describe the style of
the Greek debates by one of his own illustrations :

Knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errrant from his course of growth.

It looks just as if Shakspeare had chosen for once to let his
thoughts travel by his friend Chapman's heavy wagon : such is
the similarity between the language of the Greek scenes and
that of Bussy d'Ambois and Chapman's other serious writings.
And doubtless this furnishes the key to the difficulty. Shak-
speare's acquaintance with Homer was through Chapman's
translation ; a considerable part of which was publisht some
years before Troilus and Cressida. Hence Agamemnon and
Ulysses talk with him just as Chapman had made them talk,
and just as Shakspeare would naturally suppose that they had
talkt in Greek.

Perhaps this may help us toward the solution of another
difficulty in this perplexing play. Coleridge, who confesses
that he scarcely knows what to say of it, and that " there is no
one of Shakspeare's plays harder to characterize," has seldom
been less happy in his criticisms than in his remarks on the
Greek chiefs. Nor is Hazlitt less wide of the mark, when he
observes that " Shakspeare seems to have known them as well
as if he had been a spy sent into their camp." At least his
representation of them is totally different in tone and spirit
from Homer's ; as indeed must needs follow from the difference
in their language : for Shakspeare was always alive, in a higher
degree than any other poet, to the truth of the maxim, le style
est Vhomme meme. Yet I cannot think that the difference has
been correctly apprehended by Coleridge, when he says that

348 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

" Shakspeare's main object was to substantiate the distinct and
graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric Epic, into the flesh
and blood of the romantic drama." Assuredly the Homeric
heroes are not mere graceful outlines : they are every whit as
substantial, living flesh and blood as Shakspeare's : only their
moral nature is simpler, and flows more uniformly and contin-
uously, without such a whirl and eddy of thoughts and feelings.
Tieck, who in a note to his edition of the German Shakspeare,
also observes that among all the plays Troilus and Cressida is
unquestionably the most singular, calls it, " a heroic comedy, a
tragic parody, written with the set purpose of parodying the
age of chivalry, the profound political wisdom which overleaps
itself, the shows of love, and even misfortune." These words
seem to express the real character of the play. But still the
question recurs : how came Shakspeare thus to parody the
Homeric heroes ? how came he to conceive and represent them
with all this ostentation and hollowness, ever trying to cheat
and outwit each other, yet only successful in cheating and
outwitting themselves ? Now this, it seems to me, may not
improbably be owing in a great measure to the medium through
which he saw them, and by which they were so much swelled
out and distorted, that his exquisite taste might well take offense
at such pompous phraseology in the mouth of simple warriors :
while the combination of great political sagacity, and shrewd-
ness and depth, more especially in general reflexions, with
hollowness of heart, and weakness of purpose, was what he saw
frequently exemplified among the statesmen of his own age.
Though Agamemnon and his peers were certainly not meant as
a satire on James and his court, yet they have sundry features
in common. u.

A poet, to be popular, ought not to be too purely and in-
tensely poetical. He should have plenty of ordinary poetry
for the multitude of ordinary readers : and perhaps it may be
well that he should have some poetry better than ordinary, lest
the multitude should be daunted by finding themselves entirely
at variance with the intelligent few. This however is by no

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 349

means clear. He who calls to mind the popularity of the Pleas-
ures of Hope, may remark that the artificial flowers in a milli-
ner's window do not want any natural ones to set them off; and
that a star looks very pale and dull, when squibs and rockets
are shining it out of countenance. In truth this has just been
the case with Gertrude of Wyoming, which has been quite
thrown into the shade by its gaudier, flimsier neighbour.

I have known several persons, to whom no poem of Words-
worth's gave so much pleasure as the Lines written while sail-
ing in a boat at evening ; which were composed, as he has told
me, on the Cam, while he was at College. 0, if he had but
gone on writing in that style ! many will say, what a charming
poet he would have been ! For these are among the very few
verses of Wordsworth's, which any other person might have
written ; that is, bating the purity and delicacy of the language,
and the sweetness of the versification. The sentiment and the
exercise of fancy are just raised so much above the tempera-
ture of common life, as to produce a pleasant glow : and there
is nothing calling for any stretch of imagination or of thought ;
nothing like what we so often find in his poems, when out of
Nature's heart a voice " appears to issue, startling The blank
air."

In like manner I have been told that, among Landor's Con-
versations, the most general favorite is that between General
Kleber and some French officers. If it be so, one may easily
see why. Beautiful as some touches in it are, it is not so far
removed as most of its companions, from what other men have
written and can write.

No doubt there is also another reason, — that this Conversa-
tion has something of a story connected with it. For in mere
incidents all take an interest, through the universal fellowfeel-
ing which binds man to man ; as is proved by the fondness for
gossiping, from which so few are exempt. Above all is such
an interest excited by everything connected, however remotely,
with the two great powers which come across the path of life,
— death, which terminates it, — and love, which, to the imagi-
nation even of the least imaginative, seems to carry it for a

350 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

while out of the highway dust, into the midst of green fields
and flowers. Hence it is that all tatiers delight in getting hold
of anything akin to a love-story ; not merely from a fondness
for scandal, but because the most powerful and pleasurable of
human feelings is in some measure awakened and excited
thereby.

Nor is it at all requisite to the excitement of interest by inci-
dents, that the persons they befall should have any depth of
character or passion. On the contrary, such a surplusage often
makes them less generally interesting. Leave out the thoughts
and the characters in Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth : as panto-
mimic melodrames they might perchance run against Pizarro
and the Forest of Bondy. Hence the popularity of novels ; the
name of which implies some novel incident ; and the interest of
which mostly arises from the entangling and disentangling of
a love-story. Indeed this is all that the bulk of novel-readers
care about ; who loves whom ? and by what difficulties their
loves are crost? and how those difficulties are surmounted?
and how the loveknot, after the tying and untying of sundry
other knots, twists about at length into a marriageknot ?

This too is perhaps one of the reasons why the heroes and
heroines of novels have so little character. They are to be
just such persons as the readers can wish and believe themselves
to be, trickt out with all manner of insipid virtues, unencum-
bered by anything distinctive and individual. Then we may
float along in a daydream, with a half-conscious persuasion that
all the occurrences related are happening to ourselves. Here-
by Poetry, instead of lifting us out of ourselves into an ideal
world, brings down its world to us, and peoples the real world
with phantoms. These delusions would be disperst by any
powerful delineation of individual character. We cannot fancy
ourselves Lear, or Macbeth, or Hamlet ; although on deeper
reflexion we perceive that we are heirs of a common nature.

In this sense it is very true, that, as one of our greatest
modern writers once said, incident and interest are the bane of
poetry. For the main subject matter of poetry being man, —
the various modifications and combinations of human character

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 351

and feelings, — the facts it treats of will be primarily actions, or
what men do, exhibiting and fulfilling the inward impulses of
their nature, — and secondarily events, which follow one another
according to an apparent law, and which shew how the outward
world runs parallel or counter to the characters, calling forth
their dormant energies, unfolding them, shaping them, perfect-
ing them. Whereas incidents are mere creatures of chance,
unconnected, insulated, and interesting solely from themselves,
from their strangeness, not from their moral influence. Such
an interest being excited with far more ease, both by the writer
and in the reader, the love of incidents has commonly been
among the symptoms of a declining age in poetry ; as for in-
stance in Euripides, compared with Eschylus and Sophocles, in
Fletcher compared with Shakspeare.

And this is the interest which is injurious to poetry, the
interest excited by strange incidents, and by keeping curiosity
on the stretch. Not that good poetry is to be uninteresting :
but the sources of its interest lie deeper in our inmost con-
sciousness and primary sympathies. Hence it is permanent.
While the interest awakened by curiosity faoles away when the
curiosity has once been gratified, true poetical interest, the
interest excited by the throes and conflicts of human passion, is
wont to increase as we become familiar with its object. Every
time I read King Edipus, the interest seems to become more
intense : the knowledge of the result does not prevent my sym-
pathizing anew with the terrific struggle. So it is in Othello.
Whereas that excited by the Castle of Otranto, or the Mysteries
of Udolpho, is nearly extinct after the first reading. In truth
a mystery is unworthy of the name, unless it becomes more
mysterious when we have been initiated into it, than it was
before. it.

Man cannot live without a shadow, even in poetry. Poetical
dreamers forget this. They try to represent perfect characters,
characters which shall be quite transparent : and so their heroes
have no flesh and blood, no nerves or muscles, nothing to touch
our sympathy, nothing for our affections to cling to. u.

352 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

People stare much more at a paper kite, than at a real one.

Brilliant speakers and writers should remember that coach-
wheels are better than Catherine wheels to travel on.

Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being
grandiloquent. Eloquence is speaking out . . a quality few
esteem, and fewer aim at.

One's first business in writing is to say what one has to say.

Is it ? Dear me ! I never knew that. Yet I have written
ever so many articles in the Hypo-critical Review, laying down
the law how everybody ought to write, and scolding everybody
for not writing accordingly. Surely too my articles must have
been admirable ; for somebody told me he admired them. u.

The best training for style is speech ; not monologues, or lec-
tures ex cathedra, like those of the German professors, of whose
uninterrupted didacticity their literature bears too many marks ;
but conversation, whence the French, and women generally, de-
rive the graces of their style ; dialectic discussion, by which
Plato braced and polisht his ; and the agonistic oratory of the
bar, the senate, and the forum, which makes people speak home,
popularly, and to the point, as we see in our own best writers,
as well as in those of Greece and Rome. For when such a
practice is national, its influence extends to those who do not
come into immediate contact with it. The pulpit too would be a
like discipline, if they who mount it would oftener think as much
of the persons they are preaching to, as of the preacher, u.

An epithet is an addition : but an addition may be an incum-
brance ; as even a dog finds out, when a kettle is tied to his
tail. Stuff a man into a featherbed ; and he will not move so
lightly and nimbly. The very instruments of flying weigh us
down, if not rightly adjusted, if out of place, or overthick. Yet
many writers cram their thoughts into what might not inappro-
priately be called a featherbed of words. They accumulate

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 353

epithets, which weaken oftener than they strengthen ; throwing
a haze over the objects, instead of bringing out their features
more distinctly. For authors too, like all the rest of mankind,
take their seats among Hesiod's vfjmot, ovbe taaaiv oa-co nXiop

As a general maxim, no epithet should be used, which does
not express something not exprest in the context, nor so implied
in it as to be immediately deducible. Above all, shun abusive
epithets. Leave it to those who can wield nothing more pow-
erful, to throw offensive words. Before the fire burns strongly,
it smoulders and smokes : when mightiest and most consuming,
it is also brightest and clearest. A modern historian of the
Cesars would hardly bridle his tongue for five lines together.
In every page we should be called upon to abhor the perfidious
Tiberius, the ferocious Caligula, the bloody Nero, the cruel
Domitian, the tyrant, the monster, the fend. Tacitus, although
not feeble in indignation, either in feeling or expressing it, knew
that no gentleman ever pelts eggshells, even at those who are
set up in the pillory : nor would he have done so at him who
was pilloried in St Helena.

If the narrative warrant a sentence of reprobation, the reader
will not be slow in pronouncing it : by taking it out of his mouth
you affront him. A great master and critic in style observes,
that " Thucydides and Demosthenes lay it down as a rule,
never to say what they have reason to suppose would occur to
the auditor and reader, in consequence of anything said before ;
knowing that every one is more pleased, and more easily led by
us, when we bring forward his thoughts indirectly and imper-
ceptibly, than when we elbow them and outstrip them with our
own." (Imagin. Convers. i. 129.) Perhaps, as is often the
case in criticism, a practice resulting from an instinctive sense
of beauty and fitness may here be spoken of as a rule, the sub-
ject of a conscious purpose : and when it becomes such, and is
made a matter of elaborate study, the practice itself is apt to
be carried too far, and to produce a zigzag style, instead of a
smooth, winding flow. For the old saying, that ars est celare
artem, is not only applicable to works, but in a still more im-

w

354 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

portant sense to authors ; whose nature will never be bettered
by any art, until that art becomes nature. Still, so far as such
a rule tended to make our language more temperate, it could
hardly be otherwise than beneficial. This temperance too, like
all temperance, would greatly foster strength. For we are ever
disposed to sympathize with those who repress their passions :
we even spur them on ; while we pull in those who are run
away with by theirs : and something like pity rises up toward
the veriest criminal, when we see him meet with hard words, as
well as hanging.

There is a difference however, as to the use of epithets, be-
tween poetry and prose. The former is allowed to dwell longer
on that which is circumstantial and accessory. Ornaments may
become a ball-dress, which would be unseasonable of a morning.
The walk of Prose is a walk of business, along a road, with an
end to reach, and without leisure to do more than take a glance
at the prospect : Poetry's on the other hand is a walk of pleas-
ure, among fields and groves, where she may often loiter and
gaze her fill, and even stoop now and then to cull a flower.
Yet ornamental epithets are not essential to poetry : should you
fancy they are, read Sophocles, and read Dante. Or if you
would see how the purest and noblest poetry may be painted
and rouged out of its grandeur by them, compare Pope's trans-
lations of Homer with the original, or Tate and Brady's of the
Psalms with the prose version. u.

It has been urged in behalf of the octosyllabic metre, of
which modern writers are so fond, that much of our heroic
verse would be improved, if you were to leave out a couple of
syllables in each line. Such an argument may not betoken
much logical precision ; seeing that idle words may find a way
into lines of eight syllables, as well as into those of ten : nor is
there any peculiar pliancy in the former, which should render
them the one regimental dimension, exclusively fitted to express
all manner of thoughts. Moreover such omissions must alter
the character of a poem, the two metres being in totally differ-
ent keys ; wherefore a change in the metre of the poem should

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 355

superinduce a proportionate change in its whole structure and
composition. Sorry too must be the verses, which could benefit
by such an amputation. In Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare,
Milton, it would be like improving a hand by chopping off a
finger. If you try the experiment on Pope however, especially
on his translation, you will find that line after line is the better
for being thus curtailed. For you will get rid of many of the
epithets, with which he was wont to eke out his couplets ; and
which, as he seldom exerted his imagination to reproduce the
conceptions presented by his original, were mostly selected for
little else than their sound, and their convenience in filling up
the vacant space.

There is indeed a 'tendency in our heroic couplet, as it is very
unaptly called, to collect idle words ; that is to say, according to
the mode of constructing it which has prevailed since the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century. Gibbon, in some observations
on Ovid's Fasti, remarks that, in the elegiac metre, the neces-
sity that "the sense must always be included in a couplet,
causes the introduction of many useless words merely for the
sake of the measure." The same has naturally been the case
in our verse, ever since it was laid down as a rule that there
must be a pause at the end of every other line. u.

Coleridge, in his Biographia Liter aria (i. 20), suggests that
our vicious poetic diction " has been kept up by, if it did not
wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses, and the
great importance attacht to these exercises, in our public
schools." In this remark, too much efficacy is ascribed to what
at the utmost can only have been a subordinate and secondary
cause. For the very same vices of style have prevailed in
other countries, where there was no such practice to generate
and foster them. Nor in England have they been confined to
persons educated at our public schools, but have been general
among those who have set themselves to write poetry, whether
for the sake of distinction, or to while away idle hours, or to
gratify a literary taste, without any strong natural bent. In-
deed the one great source of what is vicious in literature is the

356 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

want of truth, under all its forms : while the main source of
what is excellent, in style as well as in matter, is the pure love
and desire of truth, whether as the object of the reason and
understanding, or of the imagination. He who writes with any
other aim than that of giving full utterance to the truth which
is teeming within him, — be it with the wish of writing finely,
of gaining fame, or of gaining money, — is sure to write ill.
He who is ambitious of becoming a poet, when Nature never
meant him to be so, is sure to deck himself out with counterfeit
ornaments.

Hence it is that translations are often injurious to literature.
They may indeed be highly beneficial, by promoting that com-
merce of thought, which is the great end of the intercourse
among nations, and of which the lower mercantile commerce
should be the symbol and the instrument. Very often however
a translator goes through his work as a job : and even when he
has entered upon it spontaneously, he will mostly grow weary
after a while, and continue it merely as taskwork. Whether
from natural inaptitude, or from exhausted interest, he makes
no steady, strenuous endeavor to realize the conceptions of his
author, and to bring them out vividly and distinctly, even before
his own mind. But he has put on harness, and must go on.
So he writes vaguely and hazily, tries to make up for the fee-
bleness and incorrectness of his outlines, by daubing the picture
over with gaudy colours ; and getting no distinct perception of
his author's meaning, nor having any distinct meaning of his
own, he falls into a noxious habit of using words without mean-
ing.

For the same reason will the practice of writing in a forein
language be mischievous, and to the same extent ; so far name-
ly as it leads us to use words without a distinct, living meaning,
and to have some other object paramount to that of saying what
we have to say, in the plainest, most forcible manner. An
author may indeed exercise himself not without profit in writing
Latin ; and as people learn to walk with more grace and ease
by learning to dance, he may return to his own language with
his perceptions of beauty and fitness in style sharpened by. the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. #57

necessity of attending to the niceties of a forein tongue, in which
all composition must needs be the work of art. Our principal
Latin poets have been among the best and most elegant English
writers of their time, — Cowley, Addison, Sir William Jones,
Cowper, Landor : and though Milton was over-ambitious of
emulating powers and beauties scarcely compatible with the
genius of our language, his scholarship led him to that learned
mastery over it, in which he stands almost alone.

But when Latin verses are to be written as a prescribed
task, — when, according to the custom of many schools, boys
are prepared for this accomplishment by being set in the first
instance to write what are professedly nonsense verses, as though
stringing long and short syllables together after a certain fashion
had a positive value, independent of the subject matter, — when
they are trained for years to write compulsorily on a theme im-
posed by a master, — it is not easy to imagine any method bet-
ter calculated to deaden every spark of genuine poetical feeling.
In its stead boys of quickness acquire a fondness for mere dic-
tion : this is the object aimed at, the prize set before them.
They ransack Virgil and Horace and Ovid for pretty expres-
sions, and bind up as many as they can in a posy : so that a
copy of some fifty lines will often be a cento of such phrases,
and contain a greater number of ornamental epithets than a
couple of books of the Eneid.

To exemplify this poetical ferrumination, as he calls it, Cole-
ridge cites a line from a prize-poem, — Lactea purpureos inter-
strepit unda lapittos, — which, he says, is taken from a line of
Politian's, — Pura coloratos interstrepit unda lapillos ; adding
that, if you look out purus in the Gradus, you find lacteus as
its first synonym ; .and purpureus is the first synonym for colo-
ratus. They who know how little Coleridge is to be relied on
for a mere matter of fact, will not be surprised to learn, that
lacteus does not occur among the synonyms for purus in the
Gradus, as indeed it scarcely could, nor purpureus among those
for coloratus. It is worth noticing however, as illustrating the
effects of such a process, that the two epithets substituted for
the original ones are both untrue. The original line is a very

358 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

pretty one, even in rhythm superior to the copy : but the water,
though pura, is not lactea ; nor, if it were, could the pebbles be
seen through it : and these pebbles are colorati, of various col-
ours, not, or at least only a few of them, purpurei. u.

Most people seem to think the coat makes the gentleman ;
almost all fancy the diction makes the poet. This is one of the
reasons why Paradise Regained has been so generally slighted.
In like manner many readers are unable to discover that there
is any poetry in Samson Agonistes ; and very few have any
notion that there is more, and of a higher kind, than in Comus.
Johnson for instance, while he says, that " a work more truly
poetical (than Comus) is rarely found ; allusions, images, and
descriptive epithets embellish almost every period with lavish
decoration," — as though these things were the essence of po-
etry,— complains in the Rambler (No. 140), that it is difficult
to display the excellences of Samson, owing to its " having none
of those descriptions, similies, or splendid sentences, with which
other tragedies are so lavishly adorned." So that Johnson's
taste was of that savage cast, which thinks that a woman's
beauty consists in her being studded with jewels, if confluent,
so much the better ; that she can have no beauty at all, unless
she has a necklace and frontlet and ear-rings ; and that, if she
had a nose-ring, and lip-rings, and cheek-rings, and chin-rings,
she would be all the more beautiful. Even allowing that jew-
elry may not be always hurtful to female beauty, especially
where there is little or none for it to hurt, yet there is a mas-
culine beauty, as well as a feminine ; and the former at least
does not need to be trickt out with tinsel. The oak has a
beauty of its own, a beauty which would not be improved by
being spangled over with blossoms. We may remark too that it
is only about the horizon that the sky arrays itself in the gor-
geous pageantry of sunset. The upper heavens remain pure, or
at most are tinged with a slight blush.

The whole of Johnson's elaborate criticism on Samson Ago-
nistes is a specimen of his manner of taking up a flower with
the tongs, and then protesting that he cannot feel any softness

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 359

jn it, — of his giving it a stroke with his sledgehammer, and
then crying, Look ! where is its beauty f " This is the tragedy
(he has the audacity to say), which ignorance has admired, and
bigotry applauded." u.

Perhaps it is when the Imagination flies the lowest, that we
see the hues of her plumage. In Coleridge's Tabletalk (i. 160),
it is stated that, having remarkt how the Pilgrim's Progress " is
composed in the lowest style of English," he added : " if you
were to polish it, you would destroy the reality of the vision :
for works of imagination should be written in very plain lan-
guage : the more purely imaginative they are, the more neces-
sary it is to be plain." I know no better illustration of this,
than the exquisite simplicity of the tales in Tieck's Phantasus ;
the style of which produces a persuasion of their complete re-
ality, as though the author were born and bred in fairy-land,
talking of matters with which he was thoroughly familiar, so
that the wonderful events related seem to be actually going on
before our eyes. This was probably the reason why Cole-
ridge, as he once said to me, considered Tieck to be the poet of
the purest imagination, according to his own definition of the
imagination, who had ever lived.

That the loftiest aspirations of the feelings find their appro-
priate utterance in a like plainness of speech, is proved by the
Psalms : that it is equally fitted to express the deepest myste-
ries of thought by those who have received the highest initia-
tion into them, we see in the writings of St John. On the
other hand fine diction is wont to bring the author into view.
We perceive the conjuration going on, and the vapours rising ;
which subside when the form evoked comes forth into distinct
vision. u.

The beauty of a pale face is no beauty to the vulgar eye.

TJ.

Too much is seldom enough. Pumping after your bucket is
full prevents its keeping so. u.

360 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Do, and have done. The former is far the easiest. u.

How many faithful sentences are written now ? that is, sen-
tences dictated by a pure love of truth, without any wish, save
that of expressing the truth fully and clearly, — sentences in
which there is neither a spark of light too much, nor a shade of
darkness. u.

The great misfortune of the present age is, that one can't
stand on one's feet, without calling to mind that one is not stand-
ing on one's head. u.

The swan on still St Mary's Lake
Floats double, swan and shadow.

A similar duplicity is perpetually found in modern poetry ;
though it is seldom characterized by a stillness like that of St
Mary's Lake. Even in Wordsworth himself we too often see
the reflexion, along with the object. Look for instance at those
fine lines on the first aspect of the French Revolution :

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth
The beauty wore of promise, — that which sets
(To take an image which was felt no doubt
Among the bowers of Paradise itself )
The budding rose above the rose full-blown.

When reading these lines, I have always wisht that the third
and fourth were omitted ; or rather that the whole passage were
constructed anew. For there is much beauty in the thought.
There is an imaginative harmony between the budding rose
and the time when the world was in the bud: although the
rosebud was not yet invested with that secondary interest which
it derives from contrast, that interest through which the aged
feel the beauty of childhood far more deeply than children can ;
and although the beauty of fulfilment, the beauty of the full-
blown rose, is that which shines the most radiantly in the hope-
ful eyes of youth. Such as it is however, the thought is not
duly woven into the context : we seem to be looking at the re-
verse side of the tapestry, with the rough ends of thread stick-
ing out. It is brought in reflectively, rather than imaginatively.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 361

A parenthesis, where it interrupts the continuity of a single
thought, unless there be a coincident interruption of feeling, is
ill-suited to poetry. You will hardly improve your pearl by
splitting it in two, and sticking a pebble between the halves.
The very expression, to take an image, is prosaic. The imagi-
nation does not take images. It discerns the harmonies of things,
the more latent as well as the more apparent : the truths which
it wishes to utter, it sees written in manifold forms by the finger
of God on the mystic scroll of the universe : and what it sees it
speaks of, not taking, but receiving, not feigning that which is
not, but representing that which is. Nor is it quite correct to
say that an image was felt, least of all in Paradise. The inhab-
itants of Paradise did not feel images, but realities : it is since
our expulsion from Paradise, that we have been doomed to take
up our home in a world of shadows. And though the beauty
of promise may have been felt there, the imagination was not
yet so enslaved by the understanding, as to depreciate one kind
of beauty for the sake of exalting another.

But if Wordsworth at times has this blemish in common with
his contemporaries, he has excellences peculiarly his own. If
in his pages we see both swan and shadow, in them at least the
waters are still ;

And through her depths St Mary's Lake

Is visibly delighted;
For not a feature of the hills

Is in the mirror slighted. -^

In the two editions of Wordsworth's poems publisht since the
former one of this little book, the lines just objected to have
been altered; and the passage now stands thus:

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, — that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of Paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full-blown.

By this change a part of the foregoing remarks has been
obviated : still I have not thought it necessary to cancel them.
16

362 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

For their justice, so far at least, is confirmed by the great poet's
compliance with them : and of esthetical criticism that portion
is the most beneficial practically, which discusses details with
precision. General views of literature, whether theoretical or
historical, are valuable, as enlarging the mind, and giving it a
clew to the labyrinth, which since the invention of printing has
been becoming more and more complicated every year. To
authors however they have mostly done harm, seducing them to
write from abstract notions, or after the fashion of bygone ages,
instead of the promptings of their own genius, and of the liv-
ing world around them ; as has been exemplified above all by
numberless abortions in the recent literature of that country
where such speculations have had the greatest vogue. Minuter
criticism on the other hand, which was the kind most cultivated
by the ancients, and which contributed to the exquisite polish
of their style, has few votaries in England, except Landor,
whose style bears a like witness to its advantages. Hence, by
a twofold inversion of the right order, that which ought to be
ideal and genial, is in modern works often merely technical ;
while in the objective, technical parts blind caprice disports
itself.

Besides it is pleasant to find a great writer showing defer-
ence to one of low degree ; not bristling up and stiffening, as
men are apt to do, when any one presumes to hint the possibil-
ity of their not being infallible ; but listening patiently to objec-
tions, and ready to allow them their weight. Perhaps however
Wordsworth may at times allow them even more than their due
weight: and this may have been the origin of many of the
alterations, which readers familiar with the earlier editions of
his poems have to regret in the later. Thus for instance it is
"in deference to the opinion of a friend," that, in the beautiful
ballad on the Blind Highland Boy, he has substituted the turtle-
shell for the tub in which the boy actually did float down Loch
Leven. Yet, though the description of the household tub in
the original poem was perhaps needlessly minute, and too broad
a defiance of the conventional decorums of poetry, the change
seems to introduce an incongruous feature into the story, and to

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 363

detract from its reality and probability, giving it the air of a
fiction. It militates against the great original principle of
Wordsworth's poetry; which was, to shew how the germs of
poetical feeling and interest are not confined to certain privi-
leged classes and conditions of society, but are. spread through
every region of life ; and that, where the feeling is genuine and
strong, it will invest what might otherwise be deemed mean
with a moral dignity and beauty. Were the incident an in-
vention, there might be some plea for deriding the poet, whose
imagination dwelt among such homely utensils: but the fact
having been such as it was, the alteration is too much after the
fashion of those with which the French translators of Shak-
speare have thought it became them to ennoble their original ;
too much as if one were to change Desdemona's handkerchief
into a shawl. A jester would recommend that Peter Bell's
ass should in like manner be metamorphosed into a camel.
Yet surely the vessel in which Diogenes lived, and Regulus
died, and on which Wesley preacht, might be mentioned, even
in this treble-refined age, without exciting a hysterical nausea,
or setting people's ears on edge. Else the poet, who has not
been wont to shew much fear of his critics, might be content to
throw it out as a tub for the whale.

Even in such matters the beginning of change is as when
one letteth out water: none knows where it will stop. The
description of the turtle-shell, which at first was in the same
tone with the rest of the poem, was not held to be sufficiently
ornate. Coleridge objected to it (Biog. Lit. ii. 136) ; very un-
reasonably, as it seems to me, considering that the ballad is
professedly a fireside tale told to children, and that this its char-
acter was studiously preserved throughout. Indeed exquisite
skill was shewn in the manner in which the story was carried
into the higher regions of poetry, yet without ever deviating
from the most childlike simplicity and familiarity of expression.
Coleridge's objections however led the author to bring in five
new lines, more after the manner of ordinary poetical diction ;
but which are out of keeping with the rest of the poem, and
would be unintelligible to its supposed audience. When the

3 04 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

turtle-shell was first introduced, they were told that sundry cu-
riosities had been brought by mariners to the coast :

And one, the rarest was a shell,
Which he, poor child, had studied well-,
The shell of a green turtle, thin
And hollow : you might sit therein
It was so wide and deep.

'T was e'en the largest of its kind,
Large, thin, and light as birch-tree rind;
So light a shell, that it would swim,
And gaily lift its fearless rim
Above the tossing waves.

These lines set the shell before the children's eyes, place
them in it, and give life and spirit to the story. But now their
childly brains are bewildered, by hearing that, among the rar-
ities from far countries,

The rarest was a turtle-shell ;
Which he, poor child, had studied well,
A shell of ample size, and light
As the pearly car of Amphitrite,
That sportive dolphins draw.

And, as a coracle that braces
, On Vaga's breast the fretful waves,
This shell upon the deep would swim,
And gaily lift its fearless brim
Above the tossing surge.

Alas ! we too often find those who have to teach children,
explaining ignotum per ignotius ; and at times one is much
puzzled to do otherwise. But is this a thing desirable in itself?
and can it be a judicious improvement, to give up a clear, sim-
ple, lively description, for the sake of a few fine words, which
leave the hearers in a mist ? u.

In the former volume I made some remarks on the inexpedi-
ency of substituting any other word for the first that comes into
our head. The main reason for this is, that the word which
comes first is likely to be the simplest, most natural expression
of the thought. Where, from artificial habits of mind, this is

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 365

not so, a less plain word may be made to give place to a plainer
one with advantage. But there is a further consideration.
The first word will often be connected with its neighbours by
certain dim associations, by which, though they may never have
been brought into distinct consciousness, it was in fact suggested
in the second-sighted travail of writing. These associations are
afterward lost thought of. In reading over the passage, it
strikes us that some other word would look better in the place,
be more forcible, more precise, more elegant, more harmonious.
Now there is always something tempting in a change, as in
every exercise of power and will : it flatters us to display any
kind of superiority, even over our own former selves : we are
glad to believe that we are more intelligent than we were :
and through the influence of these motives we readily assume
that the change is an improvement, without considering whether
the new word is really better, not merely in itself, but also
relatively to the context. They who are nice in the use of
words, and who take pains in correcting their writings, must
often have found afterward that many of their corrections were
for the worse ; and I think it must have surprised them to
observe how much further and more clearly they saw during
the fervour of composition, than afterward when they were look-
ing over what they had written, and examining it critically and
reflectively. Hence Wordsworth in his last editions has often
restored the old readings, in passages which in some of the
intervening ones he had been induced to alter. For instance,
the beautiful little poem on the Nightingale and the Stock-
dove began originally,

0 nightingale ! thou surely art
A creature of a-jiry heart.

This expression, as one might have expected, offended the
prosaic mind of the Edinburgh Reviewer ; and though the poet
was not wont to hold Scotch criticism in much honour, he com-
plied with it so far as to alter the second line, in the edition of
1815, into A creature of ebullient heart. The new epithet how-
ever, though not without beauty, does not introduce the follow-
ing lines so appropriately, or bring out the contrast with the

366 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

stockdove's song so strongly, as its predecessor ; which accord-
ingly in the recent editions has resumed its place.

That an author, when revising his works some years alter,
will be much more liable to such forgetfulness of the thoughts and
feelings which prompted the original composition, is plain ; above
all, if he be a poet, whose works must needs have a number of
unseen threads running through them, and holding them together.
" In truly great poets (as Coleridge tells us he was taught by
his schoolmaster), there is a reason, not only for every word,
but for the position of every word." Not that the poet is dis-
tinctly conscious of all these reasons : still less has he elab-
orately calculated and weighed them. But when he has ac-
quired that genial mastery of language, which is one of the
poet's most important attributes, his thoughts clothe themselves
spontaneously in the fittest words. So too, when the mind is
fully possest with the idea of a work, it will carry out that idea
in all its details, preserving a unity of tone and character
throughout. In such a state it is scarcely less impossible for a
true poet to say anything at variance with that idea, than it
would be for an elm to bear apples, or for a rosebush to bring
forth tulips. Whereas, when we look at the lines just cited, it
seems clear that the author must have quite forgotten the
scheme of his poem, and his purpose of telling it in a language
adapted to the understandings of children ; or he could hardly
have compared his turtle-shell to "the pearly car of Am-
phitrite," and " the coracle on Vaga's breast."

Besides a poet's opinions both with regard to style and to
things, his views as to the principles and forms and purposes of
poetry and of life, will naturally undergo material changes in
the course of years ; the more so the more genial and progres-
sive his mind is. Hence, in looking back on a work of former
days, he will often find much that will not be in unison with his
present notions, much that he would not say, at least just in the
same manner, now. The truth is, the whole poem would be
differently constructed, were he to write it now. And this, if it
appear worth the while, is the best plan to adopt, — to rewrite
the whole. Thus Shakspeare, if the first King John and Lear

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 367

are youthful works of his, as there is strong reason for believing,
rewrote them throughout in the maturity of his life, when, being
possest with new ideas of the two works, he gave them a new
and higher and mightier unity. Whereas a partial change will
merely introduce that disharmony and jarring into the poem,
which the author finds in his own mind. How would Oomus
have been frostbitten, had Milton set himself to correct it in his
old age after the type of Samson Agonistes ! The inferiority
of the Gerusalemme Gonquistata to the Liberata may indeed be
attributable in great measure to the disease that was preying
on Tasso's mind. But Schiller too, and even Goethe, when cor-
recting their youthful works, have done little but enfeeble them.
In learning and science subsequent researches may expand or
rectify our views : but where a work has an ideal, imaginative
unity, that unity must not be infringed : and the very fact of an
author's finding a repugnance between his present self and the
offspring of his former self, proves that the idea of the latter
has past away from him, and that he is no longer in a fit state
to meddle with it. Even supposing, what must always be
questionable, that the changes in his own mind are all for the
better, the old maxim, Denique sit quod vis, simplex duntaxat
et unum, which even in morals is of such deep import, in
esthetics is almost absolute.

Of incongruities introduced into a work by a departure from
its original idea, there is an instance in Wordsworth's poem on
a party of Gypsies, — a poem containing several majestic lines,
but in which from the first the tone, as Coleridge observed,
was elevated out of all proportion to the subject. Nor has this
disproportionateness been lessened, but rather rendered more
prominent, by the alteration it has undergone. The objections
made in several quarters to the feeling exprest in this poem led
the author to add four lines to it, protesting that he did not
mean to speak in scorn of the gypsies ; for that " they are
what their birth And breeding suffers them to be, — Wild out-
casts of humanity." Now this may be very true ; and a new
poem might have been written, giving utterance to this milder
feeling. But it looks like a taint from the grandiloquence of

368 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the former lines, when " all that stirs in heaven and earth " is
called to witness this protestation. Nor can one well see why
a poem needing it should be retained and recognized. Above
all, there is an abrupt sinking, when the gorgous lines which go
before are followed by this apology. If the gypsies are merely
" what their birth And breeding suffers them to be, Wild out-
casts of humanity," how can it be said that " wrong and strife,
By nature transient, are better than such torpid life " ? And
though the words, by nature transient, as applied to wrong and
strife, express a deep and grand truth, alas 1 they are not so
transient as the stationariness of the poor vagrants. "Why
again do the stars reprove such a life? Surely the lordly
powers of Nature have something wiser and juster to do, than
to shame a knot of outcasts, who are " what their birth and
breeding suffers them to be." If they needs must reprove,
though they hardly look as if they could, they might find many
things on earth less congenial and more offensive to their heav-
enly peace. It might afford a wholesome warning to reformers,
to observe how, in a poem of less than thirty lines, the author
himself by innovating has shaken the whole structure.

Another poem, which seems to me to have been sadly im-
paired by alteration, is one of the author's most beautiful works,
his Laodamia. When it was originally publisht in 1815, the
penultimate stanza, which follows the account of her death, ran

thus :

Ah, judge her gently, who so deeply loved !
Her, who in reason's spite, yet without crime,
Was in a trance of passion thus removed ;
Delivered from the galling yoke of time,
And these frail elements, — to gather flowers
Of blissful quiet mid unfading bowers.

In the edition of 1827 this stanza was completely remoulded,
and appeared in the following shape :

By no weak pity might the gods be moved.
She who thus perisht, not without the crime
Of lovers that in reasonTs spite have loved,
Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime,
Apart from happy ghosts, — that gather flowers
Of blissful quiet mid unfading bowers.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 369

Here one cannot help noticing the ingenuity with which the
words are twisted about, to mean the very opposite of their
original meaning. Yet even in such things it is better not to
put new wine into old bottles. When a totally different idea is
to be exprest, it is far likelier to be exprest appropriately in
words of its own, than in a set of cast-off words, which had
previously served to clothe some other form of thought. What
chiefly strikes us however in the new stanza, is the arbitrari-
ness with which the poet's judgement has veered round ; so
that, after having raised Laodamia to the joys of Elysium, he
suddenly condemns her to endless sorrow. In the later edi-
tions indeed, the fourth line has been altered into " Was doomed
to wear out her appointed time ; " whereby she is elevated from
the lower regions into Purgatory, and allowed to look for a
term to her woes. Yet still the sentence first past on her is
completely reverst. The change too is one contrary to the
whole order of things, both human and divine. They who
have been condemned, may be pardoned : but they who have
already been pardoned, must not be condemned. This is the
course even of earthly judicatures. Man has an instinct in
the depths of his consciousness, which teaches him that the
throne of Mercy is above that of Justice^ that wrath is by
nature transient, and that a sentence of condemnation may be
revoked, but that the voice of Love is eternal, and that, when
it has once gone forth, the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.

On first perceiving this change, one naturally supposes that
some new light must have broken upon the poet, or rather some
new darkness ; that he must at least have discovered some fresh
marks of guilt in Laodamia, of which before he was not aware.
But it is not so. Her words, her actions, her feelings are just
what they were. The two or three slight alterations in the
former part of the poem are merely verbal, and no way affect
her character. If she was " without crime " before, she must be
so still : if she is * not without crime " now, so must she have
been from the first. The change is solely in the author's mind,
without the slightest outward warrant for it: not a straw is
16* x

370 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

thrown into the scale : his absolute nod alone makes it rise or
sink. The only difference is, that he quotes the passage of Vir-
gil where the shade of Laodamia "is placed in a mournful
region, among unhappy lovers." But surely Virgil's judgement
in such a manner is not to overrule that of a Christian poet.
Although the wisdom of the heathens was in certain respects
more spiritual than that which has been current of late years,
this is not one of the points in which we should appeal to their
decision. The eternal law, by which the happiness and misery
of man are bound up with his moral and spiritual condition, was
but dimly recognized in the popular traditions- of the ancients.
The inmates of Tartarus were rather the vanquisht enemies of
the gods ; and being so regarded, the contemplation was not so
painful to the moral sense : nor did it imply the same presump-
tion in the judgement which cast them there. No one would
now take Virgil as an authority for placing the whining souls of
infants, wailing over the shortness of their lives, and those who
had been condemned by unjust sentences, along with suicides, in
the same mournful region. Nor would all who have perisht
through love, whether with or without crime, be consigned to
the same doom ; so as to make Phedra, Procris, Eriphyle, and
Pasiphae, the companions of Evadne and Laodamia. The in-
troduction of Evadne, so renowned for her heroic self-devote-
ment, proves that Virgil was guided in his selection more by
the similarity of earthly destiny, than by any moral rule : and
every one may perceive the poetical reason for enumerating the
martyrs, as well as the guiltier victims, of passionate love ; in-
asmuch as it is among these shades that Eneas is to find Dido.
My reason however for referring to the Laodamia was, that
it is a remarkable instance how the imaginative, ideal unity of
a work may be violated by an alteration. It is said that Wind-
ham, when he came to the end of a speech, often found himself
so perplext by his own subtilty, that he hardly knew which
way he was going to give his vote. This is a good illustration
of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and of the uncertainties
which attend its practical application. Ever since the time of
the Sophists, Logic has been too ready to maintain either side

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 371

of a question ; and that, not merely in arguing with others, but
even within our own bosoms. The workings of the Imagina-
tion however are far less capricious. When a poet comes to the
end of his work, it does not rest with him to wind it up in this
way or that.

"What ! may he not do as he pleases with the creatures of his
own fancy?

A true poet would almost as soon think of doing as he pleased
with his children. He feels that the creations of his imagina-
tion have an existence and a reality independent of his will ;
and he therefore regards them with reverence. The close of
their lives, he feels, must be determined by what has gone be-
fore. The botchers of Shakspeare indeed have fancied they
might remodel the catastrophes of his tragedies. One man
would keep Hamlet alive, — another, Romeo, — a third, Lear.
Yet even these changes are less violent, and more easily excusa-
ble, than the entire reversal of Laodamia's sentence. For in
every earthly, outward event there is something the ground of
which we cannot discern, and which we therefore ascribe to
chance: and though in poetry the necessary concatenation of
events ought to be more apparent, the unity of a character may
still be preserved under every vicissitude of fortune. But the
ultimate doom, which must needs be determined by the essence
of the character itself, cannot be changed without a correspond-
ing change in the character.

Horace has warned painters against combining a man's head
with a horse's neck, or making a beautiful woman terminate in
the tail of a fish. Yet in both these cases we know, from the
representations of centaurs and mermaids, the combination is
not incompatible with a certain kind of beauty. Indeed there
is something pleasing and interesting in the sight of the animal
nature rising into the human. The reverse, which we some-
times see in Egyptian idols, the human form topt by the animal,
— a man for instance with a horse's head, or a woman with a
fish's, — would on the other hand be purely painful and mon-
strous ; unless where, as in the case of Bottom, we look on the
transformation as temporary, and as a piece of grotesque hu-

372 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

mour. But far more revolting would it be to see a living head
upon a skeleton, or a death's head upon a living body. In mor-
al combinations the contrast may not be so glaring : yet surely
in them also is a harmony which ought not to be violated. The
idea of the Laodamia, when we view it apart from the ques-
tionable stanza, is clearly enunciated in those fine lines :

Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for this end, —
For this the passion to excess was driven, —
, That self might be annulled, her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to love.

But as the poem ends now, it directly falsifies this assertion.
It shows that the excess of love cannot annull self; that, — so
far is the bondage of self from being the fetters of a dream,
opposed to love, — the intensest love, even when blest with the
special favour of the gods, is powerless against the bondage of
self. Protesilaus seems to be sent to the prayers of his wife
for no purpose, except of proving that they who hear not
Moses and the prophets, will not be persuaded even when one
rises from the dead. Had the poet's original intention been to
consign Laodamia to Erebus, the whole scheme of the poem
must have been different. Her weakness would have been
brought out more prominently ; and the spirit of Protesilaus
would hardly have been charged with the utterance of so many
divine truths, when his sermon was to be as unavailing as if he
had been preaching to the winds. The impotence of truth is
not one of the aspects of human life which a poet may well
choose as the central idea of a grave work. u.

The reflective spirit is so dominant in the literature of the
age, and it is so injurious to all pure beauty in composition, that
perhaps it will not be deemed idle trifling, if I point out one or
two more instances in which it seems to me too obtrusive.
And I will select them from the same great master of modern
poetry; not only because his works stand criticism, and reward
it better than most others, so that even, when tracking a fault,
one is sure to light upon sundry beauties ; but also because he

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 373

is eminently the poet of his age, the poet in whom the best
and highest tendencies of his contemporaries have found their
fullest utterance.

There are few lovers of poetry but will remember the admi-
rable account of the sailor in the Brothers ; who

in his heart
Was half a shepherd in the stormy seas.
Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds
Of caves and trees ; and when the regular wind
Between the tropics filled the steady sail,
And blew with the same breath through days and wee
Lengthening invisibly its weary line
Along the cloudless main, he, in those hours
Of tiresome indolence, would often hang
Over the vessel's side, and gaze, and gaze;
And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam
Flasht round him images and hues that wrought
In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye
Below him, in the bosom of the deep,
Saw mountains, saw the forms of sheep that grazed
On verdant hills, with dwellings among trees,
And shepherds clad in the same country gray,
Which he himself had worn.

Beautiful as this passage is, it would be all the better, I
think, if the first of the two lines printed in italics were omit-
ted, and the emphasis of the second diminisht. At present they
rather belong to a psychological analysis, than to a poetical rep-
resentation, of feelings. It is true, the vision would be the
effect of " feverish passion : " it would be visible u even to the
organs of the bodily eye." So it is true, that a blush is caused
by a sudden suffusion of blood to the cheek. But, though it
might be physiologically correct to say, that, in consequence of
the accelerated beating of the heart, there was such a determi-
nation of blood to the face, — the part of the body most ap-
parent to him by whom the blush was occasioned, — that the
veins became full, and the skin was tinged by it ; yet no poet
would write thus. The poet's business is to represent the effect,
not the cause ; the stem and leaves and blossoms, not the root ;

374 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

that which is visible to the imagination, not that which is dis-
cerned by the understanding : although by bringing out the im-
portant moment, which he selects for representation, and by
insulating it from the extraneous circumstances, which in ordi-
nary life surround and conceal it, he enables us to disceern the
causes more immediately, than we should do when our thoughts
are bewildered in the maze of outward realities.
Or look at this little poem :

Let other bards of angels sing,

Bright suns without a spot :
But thou art no such perfect thing:

Rejoice that thou art not.

Such if thou wert in all men's view,

A universal show,
What would my fancy have to do ?

My feelings to bestow ?

Heed not, though none should call thee fair:

So, Mary, let it be !
If nought in loveliness compare

With what thou art to me.

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,

Whose veil is unremoved,
Till heart with heart in concord beats,

And the lover is beloved.

This poem again, it seems to me, would be exceedingly im-
proved by the expulsion of the second stanza. The other
three have a sweet, harmonious unity, and express a truth,
which if any one has not felt, he is greatly to be pitied. But
the second stanza jars quite painfully with the others. Even
if the thought conveyed in it were accurately true, it would be
bringing forward the internal process, which in poetry ought to
be latent. It is only a partial truth however, which, being
stated by itself, as though it were the whole truth, becomes
false. Beauty is represented, according to the notions of the
egoistical idealists, as purely subjective, as a mere creation of
the beholder : whereas it arises from the conjoint and recipro-
cal action of the beholder and the object, as is so exquisitely
expressed in the last stanza. Beauty is indeed in the mind, in
the feelings : were there not the idea of Beauty in the beholder,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 375

T

associated with the feeling of pleasure, nothing would be beau-
tiful or lovely to him. But it is also in the object : and the union
and communion of the two is requisite to its full perception.
According to the second stanza, the uglier a woman was the
more beautiful would she be : for the more would our fancy
have to do, our feelings to bestow. And conversely, the more
beautiful she was, the more destitute would she be of beauty.

Besides there is an unpoetical exclusiveness and isolation in
grudging that what we deem beautiful should be beautiful " in
all men's view," and in speaking scornfully of what is so as " a
universal show." The poet will indeed perceive deeper and
more spiritual beauties than other men ; and he will discern
hidden springs and sources of Beauty, where others see noth-
ing of the sort : but he will also acknowledge with thankful-
ness, that Beauty is spread abroad through earth and sea and
sky, and dwells on the face and form, and in the heart of man :
and he will shrink from the thought of its being a thing which
he, or any one else, could monopolize. He will deem that the
highest and most blessed privilege of his genius is, that it en-
ables him to cherish the widest and fullest sympathy with the
hearts and thoughts of his brethren. u.

" There is one class of minds (says Schelling, Philosophische
Schriften, i. 388), who think about things, another, who strive
to understand them in themselves, according to the essential
properties of their nature." This is one of the momentous dis-
tinctions between men of productive genius, and men of reflective
talents. In the history of literature we find examples without
number, how, on eating of the Tree of Knowledge, we are ban-
isht from the Tree of Life. Poets, it is plain from the very
meaning of the word poetry, if they have any claim to their
title, must belong to the class whose aim is to think and know
the things themselves. Nor poets only: all that is best and
truly living in history, in philosophy, and even in science, must
have its root in the same essential knowledge, as distinguisht
from that which is merely circumstantial.

Here we have the reason why Poetry has been wont to

376 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

flourish most in the earlier ages of a nation's intellectual life ;
because essential knowledge is not so apt then to be overrun,
and stunted or driven awry, by circumstantial, production by
reflection. In all poetry that is really such, if it pretend to
more than an ephemeral existence, as in all life, there must be
a mysterious basis, which is and ever must be incomprehensible
to the reflective understanding. There must be something in
it which can only be apprehended by a corresponding act of
the imagination, discerning and reproducing the incarnate idea.
Now that which cannot be comprehended by the reflective un-
derstanding of others, can still less have been produced by an
act of the poet's own reflective understanding. Its source must
lie deep within him, below the surface of his consciousness.
The waters which are spread out above that surface, and which
are not fed by an unseen fountain, are sure to dry up, and will
never form a living, perennial stream. Indeed, if we look
through the history of poetry, we find, in the case of all the
greatest and most genial works, that, though their beauty may
have manifested itself immediately to the simple instinctive feel-
ings of mankind, ages have past away before the reflective under-
standing has attained anything like a correct estimate and anal-
ysis of their merits. For they have been truly mysterious, and
have indeed possest a hidden life. But of most modern works
it may be said, that they have been brought down to the level
of the meanest capacities. That which is designed to be the
most mysterious in them, is thrust the most conspicuously into
view. They need no time, no study, to detect their beauties.
Knowing from their own consciousness how unimaginative men
are wont to be, the authors interline their works with a com-
mentary on their merits, and act as guides through their own
estates. It is much as if all the leaves and flowers in a garden
were to be suddenly gifted with voices, and to begin crying out
in clamorous consort, Come and look at me, how beautiful I am!
What could a lover of Nature do amid such a hubbub, but seek
out a tuft of violets, which could not but still be silent, and bury
his face in it, and weep ?

The examples hitherto cited, of the harm done to poetry by

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 377

the intrusion of reflexion, have referred merely to lesser points
of detail, and have been taken from the works of one who is in-
deed a poet of great imaginative power ; although he too, as all
men must, bears the marks of his age, of its weakness, as well
as of its strength. There have been writers however, in whom
the shadow has almost supplanted the substance, who give us
the ghosts of things, instead of the realities, and who, having
been taught to observe the ideas impersonated in the master-
pieces of former ages, think they too may start up and claim
rank among the priests of the Muses, if they set about giving
utterance to the same ideas loudly and sonorously. They for-
get that roots should lie hid, that the heart and lungs and all
the vital processes are out of sight, and that, if they are laid
bare to the light, death ensues : and they would fain stick
their roots atop of their heads, and carry their hearts in their
hands. Instead of representing persons, we are apt to describe
them. Nay, to shorten the labour, as others cannot look into
them, and see all the inward movements of their feelings, they
are made to describe themselves.

Some dramatic writers have been wont to preface their plays
with descriptive accounts of the characters they are about to
bring on the stage. Shadwell, for instance, did so : the list of
the dramatis personae in the Squire of Ahatia fills three pages :
and a like practice is found in Wycherly, Congreve, and other
writers of their times. Indeed it accords with the nature of
their works, which are chiefly remarkable for wit, — a quality
dealing in contrasts, and therefore implying the distinct con-
sciousness necessarily brought out thereby, — and for acuteness
of observation, where the observer feels himself set over against
the objects he is observing : so that they are rather the offspring
of the reflective understanding, working consciously in selecting,
arranging, and combining the materials supplied to it from with-
out, than of any genial, spontaneous, imaginative throes. Jon-
son too prefixt an elaborate catalogue of the same sort to his
Every Man out of his Humour : and in him again we see a
like predominance of reflexion, though in a mind of a higher
and robuster order : nor are his characters the creations of a

09 THS

UHI7BIISIT7

378 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

plastic imagination, blending the various elements of humanity
indistinguishably into a living whole ; but mosaic constructions,
designed to exhibit the enormities and extravagances of some
peculiar humour. All such lists are merely clumsy devices for
furnishing the reader with what he ought to deduce from the
works themselves. It is offensively obtrusive to tell us before-
hand what judgement we are to form on the persons we read of.
It prevents our regarding them as living men, whom we are to
study, and to compare with our idea of human nature. Instead
of this we view them as fictions for an express purpose, and
compare them therewith. We think, not what they are, but
how they exemplify the proposition which the writer designed
to enforce : and wherever the author's purpose is prominent,
art degenerates into artifice. In logic indeed the enunciation
rightly precedes the proof. But the workings of poetry are
more subtile and complicated and indirect : nor are our feelings
so readily toucht by what a man intends to say or to do or to
be, as by what he says and does and is without intending it.
Thus we involuntarily recognise the hollowness of all that man
does, when cut off from that spring of life, which, though in
him, is not of him. Moreover to the author himself it must
needs be hurtful, when he sets to work with a definite pur-
pose of exhibiting such and such qualities, instead of living,
concrete men. It leads him to consider, not how such a man
would speak and act, but how on every occasion he may display §
his besetting humour ; which yet in real life he would mostly
conceal, and which would scarcely vent itself, except under
some special excitement, when he was thrown off his balance,
and made forgetful of self-restraint.

Still the humours and peculiar aspects of human nature thus
portrayed by the second-rate poets of former times are those
which do actually rise the most conspicuously and obtrusively
above the common surface of life, and which not seldom betray
themselves by certain fixt habits of speech, gesture, and man-
ner ; so that there is less inappropriateness in their being made
thus prominent. But the psychological analysis of criticism
has enabled us to discern deeper and more latent springs, and

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 379

more delicate shades, of feeling in the masters of poetry : and
those feelings, which are only genuine and powerful when
latent, are now drawn forward into view, whereupon they
splash and vanish.

For example, no sooner had attention been called, some fifty
years ago, to the powerful influence exercised by Fate, as the
dark ground of the Greek tragedies, than poet after poet in
Germany, from Schiller downward, set about composing trage-
dies on the principle of fatality ; each insisting that his own
was the true Fate, and that all others were spurious and ficti-
tious. And so in fact they were: only his was no less so.
Nor could it well be otherwise. When the Greek tragedians
wrote, the overruling power of Fate was a living article of
faith, both with them and with the people; as everything
ought to be, which is made the leading idea in a tragedy.
Since a drama, by the conditions of its representation, addresses
itself to the assembled people, if it is to act strongly upon them,
it must appeal to those feelings and thoughts which actually
hold sway over them. Tragic poetry is indeed fond of draw-
ing its plots and personages from the stores of ancient history
or fable; partly because the immediate present is too full of
petty details to coalesce into a grand imaginative unity, whereas
antiquity even of itself is majestic ; partly because it stirs so
many personal feelings and interests, which sort ill with dignity
and with solemn contemplation; and partly because a tragic
catastrophe befalling a contemporary would have too much of
painful horrour. Yet, though the personages of tragedy may
rightly be taken from former ages, or from forein countries, —
remoteness in space being a sort of equivalent for remoteness
in time, — still a true dramatic poet will always make the uni-
versal human element in his characters predominate over the
accidental costume of age and country. Nor will he bring
forward any mode of faith or superstition as a prominent agent
in his tragedy, except such as will meet with something respon-
sive in the popular belief of his age. When Shakspeare wrote,
almost everybody believed in ghosts and witches. Hence it is
difficult for us to conceive the impression which must have been

380 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

made on such an audience by Hamlet and Macbeth : whereas
the witches in the latter play now, on the stage, produce the
effect of broad, fantastical caricatures ; and so far are we from
comprehending the power which the demoniacal apparitions
exercised over Macbeth's mind, that they are seldom seen
without peals of hoarse, dissonant laughter. In like manner
Fate, in the modern German tragedies, instead of being awful,
is either ludicrous or revolting. As it is not an object of faith,
either with the poet or his hearers, so that they would hardly
observe its latent working, he brings it forth into broad day-
light ; and his whole representation is cold, artificial, pompous,
and untrue. While in Greek tragedy Fate stalks in silence
among the generations of mankind, visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children and grandchildren, — rrjs pev ff &rr<M
7r68es' ov yap eV ov8ei TLiXvarai, aXX apa rjye kcit avbp&v Kpaara
/3atV«, — on the modern German stage it clatters in wooden
shoes, and springs its rattle, and clutches its victim by the
throat. u.

Your good sayings would be far better, if you did not think
them so good. He who is in a hurry to laugh at his own jests,
is apt to make a false start, and then has to return with down-
cast head to his place. u.

Many nowadays write what may be called a dashing style.
Unable to put much meaning into their words, they try to eke
it out by certain marks which they attach to them, something
like pigtails sticking out at right angles to the body. The finest
models of this style are in the articles by the original editor of
the Edinburgh Review, and in Lord Byron's poems, above all,
in the Corsair, his most popular work, as one might have ex-
pected that it would be, seeing that his faults came to a head
in it. A couplet from the Bride of Abydos may instance my
meaning.

A thousand swords — thy Selim's heart and hand —
Wait — wave — defend — destroy — at thy command.

How much grander is this, than if there had been nothing

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 381

between the lines but commas ! even as a pigtail is grander
than a curl, or at least has been deemed so by many a German
prince. Tacitus himself, though his words are already as solid
and substantial as one can wish, yet, when translated, is drest
after the same fashion, with a skewer jutting out here and
there. The celebrated sentence of Galgacus is turned into
He makes a solitude — and calls it — peace. The noble poet
places a nourish after every second word, like a vulgar writing-
master. Or perhaps they are rather marks of admiration,
standing prostrate, as Lord Castlereagh would have exprest it.
Nor are upright ones spared. u.

Are you quite sure that Pygmalion is the only person who
ever fell in love with his own handiwork ? u.

" In good prose (says Frederic Schlegel) every word should
be underlined." That is, every word should be the right word ;
and then no word would be righter than another. There are
no italics in Plato.

What! asks Holofernes; did Plato print his books all in
romans ?

In mentioning Plato, I mentioned him whose style seems to
be the summit of perfection. But if it be objected that the
purpose of italics is to give force to style, which Plato, from
the character of his subjects, was not solicitous about, I would
reply, that there are no italics in Demosthenes. Nor are there
in any of the Greek or Roman writers, though some of them
were adepts in the art of putting as much meaning into words,
as words are well fitted to bear.

Among the odd combinations which Chance is ever and anon
turning up, few are more whimsical than the notion that one is
to gain strength by substituting italics for romans. In Italy
one should not be surprised, if for the converse change a man
were to incur a grave suspicion of designing to revive the pro-
jects of Rienzi, to be expiated by half a dozen years of car-
cere duro. Nay, the very shape of the letters would rather
lead to the opposite conclusion, that morbidezza was the quality
aimed at.

382 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Two large classes of persons in these days are fond of under-
lining their words.

It is a favorite practice with a number of female letter-writ-
ers, — those, I mean, who have not yet crost over the river of
self-consciousness into the region of quiet, unobtrusive grace,
and whose intellectual pulses are always in a flutter, at one
moment thumping, the next scarcely perceptible. Their con-
sciousness of no-meaning worries them so, that the meaning,
wThich, they are aware, is not in any words they can use, they
try to put into them by scoring them, like a leg of pork, which
their letters now and then much resemble.

On the other hand some men of vigorous minds, but more
conversant with things than with words, and who, having never
studied composition as an art, have not learnt that the real force
of style must be effortless, and consists mainly in its simplicity
and appropriateness, fancy that common words are not half
strong enough to say what they want to say ; and so they try
to strengthen them by writing them in a different character.
Men of science do this : for words with them are signs, which
must stand out to be conspicuous. Soldiers often do this : for,
though a few of them are among the most skilful in the drilling
and manouvring of words, the chief part have no notion that a
word may be louder than a cannon-ball, and sharper than a
sword. Cobbett again is profuse of italics. This instance may
be supposed to refute the assertion,- that the writers who use
them are not verst in the art of composition. But, though
Cobbett was a wonderful master of plain speech, all his writ-
ings betray his want of logical and literary culture. He had
never sacrificed to the Graces; who cannot be won without
many sacrifices. He cared only for strength ; and, as his own
bodily frame was of the Herculean, rather than the Apollinean
cast, he thought that a man could not be very strong, unless he
displayed his thews. Besides a Damascus blade would not
have gasht his enemies enough for his taste : he liked to have
a few notches on his sword.

To a refined taste a parti-lettered page is much as if a musi-
cian were to strike a note every now and then in a wrong key,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 383

for the sake of startling attention. The proper use of italics
seems to be, when the word italicized is not meant to be a mere
part of the flowing medium of thought, but is singled out to be
made a special object of notice, whether on account of its ety-
mology, or of something peculiar in its form or meaning. As
the word is employed in a different mode, there is a sort of rea-
son for marking that difference by a difference of character.
On like grounds words in a forein language, speeches intro-
duced, whether in a narrative or a didactic work, quotations
from Scripture, and those words in other quotations to which
attention is especially called, as bearing immediately on the
point under discussion, may appropriately be printed in italics.
This rule seems to agree with the practice of the best French
writers, as well as of our own, and is confirmed by the best edi-
tions of the Latin classics, in which orthography, punctuation,
and the like minuter matters, are treated far more carefully
than in modern works. u.

What a dull, stupid lake ! It makes no noise : one can't
hear it flowing : it is as still as a sheet of glass. It rolls no
mud along, and no soapsuds. It lets you see into it, and
through it, and does nothing all day but look at the sky, and
show you pictures of everything round about, which are just as
like as if they were the very things themselves. And if you
go to drink, it shews you your own face. Hang it! I wish
it would give us something of its own. I wish it would roar
a little.

Such is the substance of Bottom's criticisms on Goethe,
which in one or other of his shapes he has brayed out in many
an English Review. Sometimes one might fancy he must have
seen the vision which scared Peter Bell.

Nor is Goethe the only writer who has to stand reproved,
because he does not pamper the love of noise and dust. Nor
is it in books alone that our morbid restlessness desires to find
a response. The howling wind lashes the waves, and makes
them roar in symphony. This is a type of the spirit which
revels in revolutions. u.

384 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Why do you drug your wine t a merchant was askt by one of
his customers.

because nobody would drink it without.

Is it not just so with Truth ? Bacon at least has declared
that it is : and how many writers have lived in the course of
three thousand years, who have not acted on this persuasion,
more or less distinctly ? nay, how many men who have not dealt
in like manner even with their own hearts and minds ? u.

We have learnt to exclaim against the yew-trees which are
cut out into such fantastical shapes in Dutch gardens, and to
recognize that a yew-tree ought to be a yew-tree, and not a
peacock or a swan. This may seem a trivial truism ; and yet
it is an important truth, of very wide and manifold application :
though it does not involve that we are to let children run wild,
and that all Education is a violation of Nature. But it does
involve the true principle of Education, and may teach us that
its business is to educe, or bring out, that which is within, not
merely, or mainly, to instruct, or impose a form without. Only
we are not framed to be self-sufficient, but to derive our nour-
isment, intellectual and spiritual, as well as bodily, from with-
out, through the ministration of others ; and hence Instruction
must ever be a chief element of Education. Hence too we
obtain a criterion to determine what sort of Instruction is right
and beneficial, — that which ministers to Education, which
tends to bring out, to nourish and cultivate the faculties of the
mind, not that which merely piles a mass of information upon
them. Moreover since Nature, if left to herself, is ever prone
to run wild, and since there are hurtful and pernicious elements
around us, as well as nourishing and salutary, pruning and
sheltering, correcting and protecting are also among the prin-
cipal offices of Education.

But the love of artificiality is not restricted to the Dutch, in
whom it may find much excuse from the meagre poverty of the
forms of Nature around them, and whose country itself thus in
a manner prepared them for becoming the Chinese of Europe.
There are still many modes in which few can be brought to

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 385

acknowledge that a yew-tree ought to be a yew-tree : and when
we think how beautiful a yew-tree is, left to itself, and crowned
with the solemn grandeur of a thousand years, we need not
marvel that people should be slower to admit this proposition
as to things less 'majestic and more fleeting. Indeed I hardly
know who ever lived, except perhaps Shakspeare, who did
acknowledge it in its fulness and variety : and even he doubt-
less can only have done so in the mirror of his world-reflecting
imagination. At all events very many are most reluctant to
acknowledge it, and that too under the impulse of totally oppo-
site feelings, not merely with regard to persons whom they dis-
like, and whom they paint, like Bolognese pictures, on a dark
ground, but even with regard to their friends, whom they ought
to love for what they are. Yet they will not let their friends
be such as they are, or such as they were meant to be, but pare
and twist them into imaginary shapes, as though they could
not love them until they had made dolls of them, until they saw
the impress of their own hands upon them. So too is it with
most writers of fiction, and even of history. They do not give
us living men, but either puppets, or skeletons, or, it may be,
shadows : and these puppets may at times be giants, as though
a. Lilliputian were dandling a Brobdignagian. For bigness with
the bulk of mankind is the nearest synonym for greatness, u.

A celebrated preacher is in the habit of saying, that, in
preaching, the thing of least consequence is the Sermon : and
they who remember the singular popularity of the late Dean
Andrewes, or who turn from the other records of Bishop Wil-
son's life to his writings, will feel that there is more in this
saying than its strangeness. The latter instance shews that the
most effective of all sermons, and that which gives the greatest
efficacy to every other, is the sermon of a Christian life.

But, apart from this consideration, the saying just cited
coincides in great measure with the declaration of Demosthe-
nes, that, in speaking, Delivery is the first thing, and the second,
and the third. For this reason oratorical excellence is rightly
called Eloquence.

17 v

3g6 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Commonly indeed the apophthegm of Demosthenes has been
understood in a narrower sense, as limited to Action, whereby
it becomes a startling paradox. Even Landor has adopted this
version of it, and makes Eschines attack Demosthenes on ac-
count of this absurdity, in his Conversation with Phocion;
while Demosthenes, in that with Eubulides, adduces this as a
main distinction between himself and Pericles, expressing it
with characteristic majesty : u I have been studious to bring the
powers of Action into play, that great instrument in exciting
the affections, which Pericles disdained. He and Jupiter could
strike any head with their thunderbolts, and stand serene and
immovable : I could not." And again a little after : " Pericles,
you have heard, used none, but kept his arm wrapt up within
his vest. Pericles was in the enjoyment of that power, which
his virtues and his abilities well deserved. If he had carried
in his bosom the fire that burns in mine, he would have kept
his hand outside."

Still this interpretation seems to have no better origin than
the passages in which Cicero, when alluding to the anecdote of
Demosthenes (Be Orat. iii. 56. Be Clar. Orat. 38. Orat. 17),
uses the word Actio. Many errours have arisen from the con-
founding of special significations of words, which are akin, both
etymologically and in their primary meaning, like Actio and
Action. But I believe, the Latin Actio, in its rhetorical appli-
cation, was never restricted within our narrow bounds : indeed
we ourselves reject this restriction in the dramatic use of acting
and actor. The vivid senses of the Romans felt that the more
spiritual members of the body can act, as well as the grosser
and more massive ; and they who have lived in southern climes
know that this attribute of savage life has not been extinguisht
there by civilization. Indeed the context in the three passages
of Cicero ought to have prevented the blunder : his principal
agents are the voice and the eyes : " animi est enim omnis actio,
et imago animi vultus, indices oculi : " and he defines Actio to
be "corporis quaedam eloquentia, cum constet e voce atque
motu." Even after the mistake had been made, it ought to
have been corrected, by the observation that Quintilian (xi. 3)

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 337

has substituted Pronunciatio for Actio. But the whole story is
plain, and the exaggeration accounted for, when we read it in
the Lives of the Ten Orators ascribed to Plutarch. Every-
one has heard of the bodily disadvantages which Demosthenes
had to contend with. No man has more triumphantly demon-
strated the dominion of the mind over the body; for few
speakers have had graver natural .disqualifications for oratory,
than he whose name in the history of oratory stands beyond
competition the foremost. Having been cought down, as we
term it, one day, he was walking home despondently. But
Eunomus the Thriasian, who was already an old man, met him
and encouraged him: so too did the actor Andronicus still
more, telling him that his speeches were well, but that he
failed in action and delivery (XfiVoi be ra rij* liroKpio-ecos). He
then reminded him of what he had spoken in the assembly ;
whereupon Demosthenes, believing him, gave himself up to the
instruction of Andronicus. Hence, when some one askt him
what is the first thing in oratory, he said viroKpuns, Manner, or
Delivery ; what the second ? Delivery ; what the third ? De-
livery. In this story there may perhaps be some slight inac-
curacies ; but in substance 'it agrees with Plutarch's account in
his Life of Demosthenes, § viii.

We may deem it an essential character of Genius, to be
unconscious of its own excellence. If a man of genius is a
vain man, he will be vain of what is not his genius. But we
are very apt to overrate a talent, which has been laboriously
trained and cultivated. Thus Petrarch lookt to his Africa for
immortality, and Shakspeare to his Sonnets, more, it would
seem, than to his Plays. Thus too Bacon " conceived that the
Latine volume of his Essayes, being in the universal language,
might last as long as bookes last ; " though other considerations
are also to be taken into account here. No wonder then that
Demosthenes somewhat overvalued an attainment, which had
cost him so much trouble, and in which the speech of Eschines,
— What would you have said, if you had heard the beast him-
self? — proves that he had achieved so much in overcoming the
disabilities of his nature ; so much indeed, that Dionysius (irepl

388 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

rrjs \cktiktjs ArjfioaOevovs deivorrjTos, § xxii.) says, that lie was
acknowledged by all to be the most consummate master of
viroKpia-is. His own experience had taught him how the effect
of a speech depended almost entirely upon its delivery, by the
defects of which his earlier orations had been marred; as
Bacon, in his Essay on Boldness, after giving the erroneous
version of our anecdote, remarks : u He said it, that knew it
best, and had by nature himself no advantage in that he com-
mended." The objections which are subjoined to this remark,
are founded mainly on the misunderstanding of what Demos-
thenes had said.

Still, though there is a considerable analogy between the
importance of manner or delivery in speaking and in preaching,
it should be borne in mind that nothing is more injurious to the
effect of the latter, than whatever is artificial, studied, theatrical.
Besides, while, as a friend observes, im-oKpio-is has often been a
main ingredient in oratory under more senses than one, when it
enters into preaching under the sense denounced in the New
Testament, it is the poison, a drop of which shivers the glass to
atoms. In fact the reason why delivery is of such force, is that,
unless a man appears by his outward look and gesture to be
himself animated by the truths he is uttering, he will not ani-
mate his hearers. It is the live coal that kindles others, not
the dead. Nay, the same principle applies to all oratory ;
and what made Demosthenes the greatest of orators, was that
he appeared the most entirely possest by the feelings he
wisht to inspire. The main use of his vrroKpia-is was, that it
enabled him to remove the natural hindrances which checkt
and clogged the stream of those feelings, and to pour them forth
with a free and mighty torrent that swept his audience along.
The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by the exaggerations
of party-spirit was often compared to Demosthenes, seems to
have arisen wholly from this earnestness, which made up for
the want of almost every grace, both of manner and style, u.

Most people, I should think, must have been visited at times
by those moods of waywardness, in which a feeling adopts the

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 339

language usually significant of its opposite. Oppressive joy-
finds vent in tears ; frantic grief laughs. So inadequate are the
outward exponents of our feelings, that, when a feeling swells
beyond its wont, it bursts through its ordinary face, and lays
bare the reverse of it. Something of the sort may be discerned
in the exclamation of Eschines just quoted. No laudatory term
could have exprest his admiration so forcibly as the single
word Brjpiov. u.

The proposition asserted a couple of pages back, that genius
is unconscious of its own excellence, has been contested by my
dear friend, Sterling, in his Essay on Carlyle. In his argu-
ment on this point there is some truth, which required perhaps
to be stated, for the sake of limiting the too exclusive enforce-
ment of the opposite truth : but there is no sufficient recogni-
tion of that opposite truth, which is of far greater moment in
the present stage of the human mind, and which Mr. Carlyle
had been proclaiming with much power, though not without his
favorite exaggerations. I will not take upon me to arbitrate
between the combatants, by trying to shew how far each is in
the right, and where each runs into excess : but, as Sterling
adduces some passages from Shakspeare's Sonnets, in proof
that he was not so unconscious of his own greatness, as he has
commonly been deemed, I will rejoin, that the distinction
pointed out above seems to remove this objection. If Shak-
speare speaks somewhat boastfully of his Sonnets, we are to
remember that they were not, like his Plays, the spontaneous
utterances and creations of his Genius, but artificial composi-
tions, artificial even in their structure, and alien in their origin,
hardly yet naturalized. Besides there is a sort of conventional
phraseology, handed down from the age of Horace, and which
he had inherited from that of Pindar, whereby poets magnify
their art, declaring that, while all other memorials of greatness
perish, those committed to immortal verse will endure. In
speaking thus the poet is magnifying his art, rather than him-
self. But of the wonderful excellence of his Plays, we have
no reason for believing that Shakspeare was at all aware;

390 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

though Sterling does not go beyond the mark, when he says,
that, " if in the wreck of Britain, and all she has produced, one
creation of her spirit could be saved by an interposing Genius,
to be the endowment of a new world," it would be the volume
that contains them. Yet Shakspeare himself did not take the
trouble of publishing that volume; and even the single Plays
printed during his life seem to have been intended for play-
goers, rather than to gain fame for their author.

I grant that, in this world of ours, in which the actual is ever
diverging from or falling short of its idea, the unconsciousness,
which belongs to Genius in its purity, cannot be preserved un-
defiled, any more than that which belongs to Goodness in its
purity. Miserable experience must have taught us that it is
impossible not to let the left hand know what the right hand
is doing ; and yet this is the aim set before us, not merely the
lower excellence of not letting others know, but the Divine
Perfection of not knowing it ourselves. The same thing holds
with regard to Genius. There are numbers of alarums on all
sides to arouse our self-consciousness, should it ever flag or lag,
from our cradle upward. Whithersoever we go, we have bells
on our toes to regale our carnal hearts with their music ; and
bellmen meet us in every street to sound their chimes in our
ears. Others tell us how clever we are ; and we repeat the
sweet strains with ceaseless iteration, magnifying them at every
repetition. Hence it is next to a marvel if Genius can ever
preserve any of that unconsciousness which belongs to its es-
sence ; and this is why, when all talents are multiplying, Genius
becomes rarer and rarer with the increase of civilization, as is
also the fate of its moral analogon, Heroism. Narcissus-like it
wastes away in gazing on its own loved image.

Yet still Nature is mighty, in spite of all that man does to
weaken and pervert her. Samsons are still born ; and though
to the fulness and glory of their strength it is requisite that the
razor should not trim their exuberant locks into forms which
they may regard with complacency in the flattering mirror of
self-consciousness, the hair, after it has been cut off, may still
grow again, and they may recover some of their pristine vigour.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 391

But in such cases, as has been instanced in so many of the
most genial minds during the last hundred years, the energies,
which had been cropt and checkt by the perversities of the so-
cial system, are apter, when they burst out afresh, for the work
of destruction, than of production, even at the cost of perishing
among the ruins, which they drag down on the objects of their
hatred.

Of the poets of recent times, the one who has achieved the
greatest victory over the obstructions presented to the pure ex-
ercise of the Imagination by the reflective spirit and the restless
self-consciousness of modern civilization, there can be little
question, is Goethe : and the following remarks in one of Schil-
ler's letters to him may help us to understand how that victory
was gained, confirming and illustrating much of what has just
been said. " Your attentive observation, which rests upon ob-
jects with such calmness and simplicity, preserves you from the
risk of wandering into those by-paths, into which both Specu-
lation and Imagination, when following its own arbitrary im-
pulses, are so apt to stray. Your unerring intuitions embrace
everything in far more completeness, which Analysis labori-
ously hunts out ; and solely because it lies thus as a whole in
you, are you unaware of your own riches : for unhappily we
only know what we separate. Minds of your class therefore
seldom know how far they have penetrated, and how little rea-
son they have to borrow from Philosophy, which has only to
learn from them. Philosophy can merely resolve what is
given to her : giving is not the act of Analysis, but of Genius,
which carries on its combinations according to .objective laws,
under the dim but sure guidance of the pure Reason. — You
seek for what is essential in Nature ; but you seek it by the
most difficult path, from which a weaker intellect would shrink.
You take the whole of Nature together, in order to gain light
on its particular members : in the totality of its phenomena you
search after the explanation of individual objects. From the
simplest forms of organization, you mount step by step to the
more complex, so as at length to construct the most complex of
all, man, genetically out of the materials of the whole edifice of

392 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Nature. By reproducing him, so to say, in conformity to the
process of Nature, you try to pierce into his hidden structure.
A great and truly heroic idea ! which sufficiently shews how
your mind combines the rich aggregate of your conceptions into
a beautiful unity. You can never have hoped that your life
would be adequate for such a purpose ; but the mere entering
on such a course is of higher value than the completion of any
other ; and you have chosen like Achilles between Phthia and
immortality. Had you been born a Greek, or even an Italian,
and been surrounded from your cradle by exquisite forms of
Nature and ideal forms of Art, your journey would have been
greatly shortened, or perhaps rendered wholly needless. The
very first aspect of things would have presented them in their
necessary forms ; and your earliest experience would have led
you to the grand style in art. But, as you were born a Ger-
man, as your Greek mind was cast into our Northern world,
you had no other choice, except either to become a Northern
artist, or by the help of reflexion to gain for your imagination,
what the realities around you denied to it, and thus by a sort of
inward act and intellectual process to bring forth your works as
though you were in Greece. At that period of life, at which
the soul fashions its inner world from the outer, being sur-
rounded by defective forms, you had received the impressions of
our wild, Northern Nature, when your victorious Genius, being
superior to its materials, became inwardly conscious of this
want, and was outwardly confirmed in its consciousness through
your acquaintance with the Nature of Greece. Hereupon you
were forced to correct the old impressions previously graven on
your imagination by a meaner Nature, according to the higher
model which your formative spirit created ; and such a work
cannot be carried on, except under the guidance of ideal con-
ceptions. But this logical direction, which the spirit of reflex-
ion is compelled to take, does not agree well with the esthetical
processes through which alone the mind can produce. Thus
you had an additional labour ; for, as yOu had past over from im-
mediate contemplations to abstractions, you had now to transform
your conceptions back again into intuitions, and your thoughts

GUESSES AT TRUTH. . 393

into feelings ; because it is only by means of these that Genius
can bring forth. This is the notion I have formed of the course
of your mind ; and you will know best whether I am right. But
what you can hardly know, — because Genius is always the
greatest mystery to itself, — is the happy coincidence of your
philosophical instinct with the purest results of speculative
Reason. At first sight indeed it would seem as though there
could be no stronger opposition than between the speculative
spirit, which starts from unity, and the intuitive, which starts
from multiplicity. But if the former seeks after Experience
with a chaste and faithful purpose, and if the latter seeks after
Law with a free, energetic exercise of thought, they cannot
fail of meeting halfway. It is true that the intuitive mind deals
only with individuals, and the speculative with classes. But if
an intuitive spirit is genial, and seeks for the impress of neces-
sity in the objects of experience, though it will always produce
individuals, they will bear the character of a class : and if the
speculative spirit is genial, and does not lose sight of experi-
ence, while rising above experience, though it will only produce
classes, they will be capable of life, and have a direct relation
to realities."

There are some questionable positions in this passage, above
all, the exaggerated depreciation of the northern spirit, and ex-
altation of the classical, from which misjudgement Goethe in
his youth was one of our first deliverers, though in after years
he perhaps gave it too much encouragement, and which exer-
cised a noxious influence upon Schiller, as we see in his Bride
of Messina, and in the frantic Paganism of his ode on the Gods
of Greece. But the discussion of these questions would re-
quire a survey of the great age of German literature. My rea-
sons for quoting the passage are, that it asserts what seems to
me the truth with regard to the unconsciousness of Genius, and
that it sets forth the difficulty of preserving that unconscious-
ness in an age of intellectual cultivation, shewing at the same
time how it has been overcome by him who of all men has done
the most in the way of overcoming it. A mighty Genius will
transform its conceptions back into intuitions, even as the tech-
17*

394 • GUESSES AT TRUTH.

nical rules of music or painting are assimilated by a musician
or a painter, and as we speak and write according to the rules
of grammar, without ever thinking about them. But it re-
quires a potent Genius to carry this assimilative power into the
higher regions of thought. u.

When a poetical spirit first awakens in a people, and seeks
utterance in song, its utterances are almost entirely objective.
The child's mind is well nigh absorbed for a time in the objects
of its perceptions, and is scarcely conscious of its own existence
as independent and apart from them ; and in like manner the
poet, in the childhood of a nation, — which is of far longer du-
ration than that of an individual, because the latter is sur-
rounded by persons in a more advanced state, who lift and
draw him up to their level, whereas a people has to mount step
by step, without aid, and in spite of the vis inertiae of the
mass, — the poet, I say, in this stage, seems to lose himself in
the objects of his song, and hardly to contemplate himself in
his distinctness and separation. Nor does he make those dis-
tinctions among these objects, which the refinements of more
cultivated ages establish, often not without arbitrary fastidious-
ness. All things are interesting to him, if they shew forth life
and power : the more they have of life and power, the more in-
teresting they become : but even the least things are so, as they
are also to a child, by a kind of natural sympathy, not by an
act of the will fixing itself reflectively upon them, according to
the process so frequently exemplified in Wordsworth. Thus
we see next to nothing of the poet in the Homeric poems, in
the Niebelungen, in the ballads of early ages. To represent
what is and has been, suffices for delight. Nothing further is
needed. Poetry is rather a natural growth of the mind, than a
work of art. The umbilical chord, which connects it with its
mother, has not yet been severed.

In youth the objects of childish perceptions become the ob-
jects of feelings, of desires, of passions. Self puts forth its
horns. Consciousness wakes up out of its dreamy slumber;
but the objects of that consciousness, which stir and excite it,

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 395

are outward. Hence it finds vent in lyrical poetry ; but this
lyrical poetry will be objective, in that it will be the vivid utter-
ance of actual feelings, not a counterfeit, nor a meditative anal-
ysis of them.

Moreover in both these forms poetry will be essentially and
thoroughly national. Indeed all true poetry must be so, and all
poetry in early ages will be so of necessity. For in the early
ages of a people all its members have a sort of generic charac-
ter : the individualizing features come out later, with the pro-
gress of cultivation ; and still later is the introduction of forein
elements ; which at once multiply varieties, and impair distinct
individuality. But a poet is the child of his people, the first-
born of his age, the highest representative of the national mind,
which in him finds an utterance for its inmost secrets. The
vivid sympathies with nature and with man, which constitute
him a poet, must needs be excited the most powerfully, from
his childhood upward, by those forms of outward nature and of
human, with which he has been the most conversant ; and when
he speaks, he will desire to speak so as to find an answer in the
hearts of his hearers. In the ballad or epic he merely exhib-
its the objects of their own faith to them, of their own love and
fear and hatred and desire, their own views of man and of the
powers above him, their favorite legends, the very sights and
sounds, the forms and colours, the incidents and adventures,
they are most familiar with and most delight in. As the Ger-
man poet has said,

Think you that all would have listened to Homer, that all would have read

him,
Had he not smoothed his way to the heart by persuading his reader,
That he is just what he wishes? and do we not high in the palace,
And in the chieftain's tent see the soldier exult in the Iliad?
While in the street and the market, where citizens gather together
All far gladlier hear of the craft of the vagrant Ulysses.
There the warrior beholdeth himself in his helmet and armour ;
Here in Ulysses the beggar perceives how his rags are ennobled.

In like manner the lyrical poetry of early ages is the national
expression of feeling and of passion, of love and of devotion, —
national both in its modes and in its objects.

396 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

This however is little more than the blossoms which are scat-
tered, more or less abundantly, over a fruit-tree in spring, and
which gleam with starry brightness amid the dark network of
the leafless branches. As the season advances, Nature no longer
contents herself with these fleeting manifestations of her exu-
berant playfulness : the down on the boyish cheek gives place
to the rougher manly beard, the smile of merriment to the se-
date, stern aspect of thought : she strips herself of the bloom
with which she had been toying, arrays her form in motherly
green ; and, though she cannot repress the pleasure of still put-
ting forth flowers here and there, her main task is now, not to
dally with the air and sunshine, but to convert them into nour-
ishing fruit, and living, generative seed. Feeling, passion, de-
sire, kindling often into fervid intensity, are the predominant
characters of youth. In manhood, when it is really attained to,
these are controlled and subjugated by the will. The business
of manhood is to act. Thus the manhood of poetry is the drama.
The continuous flow of outward events, the simple effusion of
feelings venting themselves in song, will not suffice to fill the
mind of a people, when it has found out that its proper calling
and work is to act, to shape the world after its own forms and
wishes, to rule over it, and to battle incessantly with all manner
of enemies, especially those which the will raises against itself,
by struggling against the moral laws of the universe.

Now the whole form, and all the conditions of dramatic po-
etry, according to its original conception, — which is an essential
part of its idea, — imply that it is to be addrest, more directly
than any other kind of poetry, to large bodies of hearers, who
assemble out of all classes, and may therefore be regarded as
representatives of the whole nation, and that it is to stir them
by acting immediately on their understanding and their feelings.
Hence the adaptation to them, which is requisite in all poetry,
is above all indispensable to the drama ; and it belongs to the
essence of dramatic poetry to be national. So too it has been,
in the countries in which it has greatly flourisht, in Greece, in
Spain, in England. In France also comedy has been so, the
only kind which has prospered there. For as to French trage-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 397

dy, it is a hybrid exotic, aiming mainly at a classical form, yet
omitting the very feature which had led to the adoption of that
form, the chorus, and substituting a conventional artificiality of
sentiments and manners for the ideal simplicity of the Greeks.
It was designed for the court, not for the people.

In these latter times a new body has sprung up, to whom
writers address themselves, that which Coleridge jeers at under
the title of the Reading Public. Now for many modes of au-
thorship, for philosophy, for science, for philology and all other
ologies, indeed for prose generally, with the exception of the
various branches of oratory, it has ever been a necessary con-
dition that they should be designed for readers. With regard
to these the danger is, that, in proportion as the studious read-
ers are swallowed up and vanish in the mass of the unstudious,
that which, from its speculative or learned character, ought to
require thought and knowledge, may be debased by being popu-
larized. The true philosopher's aim must ever be, Fit audience
let me find, though few. But, through the general diffusion of
reading, a multitude of people have become more or less con-
versant with books, and have attained to some sort of acquaint-
ance with literature. This is the public for which our modern
poets compose. They no longer sing ; they are no longer doiSoi
bards : they are mere writers of verses. Instead of sounding
a trumpet in the ears of a nation, they play on the flute before
a select auditory.

This is injurious to poetry in many ways. It has become
more artificial. It no longer aims at the same broad, grand,
overpowering effects. It is grown elegant, ingenious, refined,
delicate, sentimental, didactic. Instead of epic poems, in which
the heart and mind of a people roll out their waves of thought
and feeling, to receive them back into their own bosom, we have
poems constructed according to rules, which are not inherent
laws, but maxims deduced by empirical abstraction; and we
even get at length to compositions, like some of Southey's, in
which materials are scraped together from the four quarters of
the world, and the main part of the poetry may often lie in the
notes, — not those of the harp awakening the bard to a sympa-

398 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

thetic flow of emotion, but of the artificer exhibiting the pro-
cesses of his own craft. A somewhat similar change comes
over lyric poetry. It takes to expressing sentiment, rather than
feeling ; though here may be a grand compensation, as we see
eminently in Wordsworth.

But to no kind of poetry is this revolution of the national
mind, this migration out of the period of unconscious produc-
tion into that of reflective composition, more hurtful than to the
Drama. Hence, when a nation has had a great dramatic age,
as it has been an age of intense national life, like that which
followed the Persian wars in Greece, and the reign of our Eliz-
abeth, so has it been anterior to the age when reflexion became
predominant, and has been cut short thereby. Hence too in
Germany, as the effect of the religious Schism, in which the
new spirit did not gain the same political ascendency as in Eng-
land, and that of the Thirty Years war, — unlike that of forein
wars, which unite and concentrate the energies of a people, —
was to denationalize the nation, the period, which would else
have been fit for the drama, past away almost barrenly ; and
when poets of high genius began to employ themselves upon it,
in the latter half of the last century, the true dramatic age was
gone by, so that their works mostly bear the character of postu-
mous, or postobits. In Goethe's dramas indeed, as in all his
works, we find the thoughts and speculations and doubts and
questionings, the feelings and passions, the desires and aspira-
tions and antipathies, the restless cravings, the boastful weak-
nesses, the self-pampering diseases of his own age, that is, of an
age in which the elementary constituents of human nature have
been filtered through one layer of books after another : but for
this very reason his dramas are wanting in much that is essen-
tial to a drama, — in action, the proper province of which is the
outward world of Nature and man, — and in theatrical power,
being mostly better fitted for meditative reading than for scenic
representation.

The special difficulty which besets the poets of these later
days, arises from this, that they cannot follow the simple im-
pulses of their genius, but are under the necessity of comparing

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 399

these every moment with the results of reflexion and analysis.
It is not merely that the great poets of earlier times preoccupy
the chief objects and topics of poetical interest, and thus, as has
been argued, drive their successors into the byways and the
outskirts of the poetical world, and compell those who would
excell or emulate them, to betake themselves to intellectual an-
tics and extravagances. Whatever of truth may lie in this
remark, is merely superficial. Every age has its own peculiar
forms of moral and intellectual life ; and Goethe has fully
proved that an abundant store of materials for the creative
powers of the Imagination were to be found, by those who had
eyes to discern them, in what might have been deemed an utter-
ly prosaic age. The difficulty to which I am referring, is that
which he himself has so happily exprest, when, in speaking of
some comparisons that had been instituted between himself and
Shakspeare, he said : Shakspeare always hits the right nail on
the head at once ; but I have to stop and think which is the right
nail, before I hit.

It is true, that from the very first certain rules and maxims
of art, pertaining to its outward forms, became gradually estab-
lisht, with which the poet is in a manner bound to comply, even
as he is with the rules of metre. But such rules, as I have already
said, are readily assimilated and incorporated by the Imagina-
tion, which recognizes its own types and processes in them, and
grows in time to conform to them without thinking of them.
This however is far more difficult, when analysis and reflexion
have dug down to the deeper principles of poetry, and it yet
behoves us to shape our works according to those principles,
without any conscious reference, conforming to them as it were
instinctively. That this can be done, we see in Goethe ; and
the observations of Schiller quoted above are an attempt to
explain the process. An instance too of the manner in which
the Imagination works according to secret laws, without being
distinctly conscious of them, is afforded by Goethe's answer,
when Schiller objected to the conclusion of his beautiful Idyl,
Alexis and Dora. After giving one reason for it founded on
the workings of nature, and another on the principles of art,

400 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

which reasons, it is plain, he had been quite unconscious of,
though he had acted under their influence, until he was called
upon for an explanation, he adds : " Thus much in justification
of the inexplicable instinct by which such things are produced."
For an example of the opposite errour, I might refer to what
was said some twenty pages back about the manner in which
Fate has been introduced in a number of recent German trage-
dies, much as though, instead of the invisible laws of attraction,
we were called to gaze on a planetary system kept in motion by
myriads of ropes and pullies. A like illustration might be
drawn from the prominency often given to the diversities of
national character ; with regard to which point reflexion of late
years has attained to correcter views, and, in so doing, as is for
ever the case, has justified the perceptions of early ages. Among
the results from the decay of the Imagination, and the exclusive
predominance of the practical Understanding, one was the losing
sight of the peculiarities of individual and of national charac-
ter. The abstract generalization, man, compounded according
to prescription of such and such virtues, or of such and such
vices, was substituted for the living person, whose features
receive their tone and expression from the central principle of
his individuality. Hence our serious poetry hardly produced a
character from the time of Milton to that of Walter Scott. On
the other hand, among the ideas after which the foremost minds
of the last hundred years have been striving, is that of individ-
uality, and, as coordinate therewith, of nationality, not indeed in
its older forms, as cut off from the grand unity of mankind, but
as a living component part of it. That this idea, though it had
not been philosophically enunciated, preexisted in the poetical
Imagination, we see in Shakspeare, especially in his Roman
plays. In Shakspeare however this nationality is represented
rightly, as determining and moulding the character, but not as
talking of itself, not as being aware that it is anything else than
an essential part of the order of Nature. Coriolanus is a Ro-
man ; but he is not for ever telling us so. Rome is in his
heart : if you were to anatomize him, you would find it mixt
with his lifeblood, and pervading every vein : but it does not flit

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 401

about the tip of his tongue. Indeed so far is the declaration of
what one is from being necessary to the reality of one's being,
that it is more like the sting of those insects which die on the
wound they inflict.

To turn to an instance of an opposite kind : Muellner, a Ger-
man playwright, who gained great celebrity in his own country
about thirty years ago, and some of whose works were lauded
in England, — who moreover really had certain talents for the
stage, especially that of producing theatrical effect, having him-
self been in the habit of acting at private theatres, thereby
making up in a measure for the want of the advantage possest
by the Greek dramatists and by Shakspeare, of studying their
art practically, as well as theoretically, — tried in like manner
to make up for his want of creative Imagination, by dressing
his tragedies according to the newest, most fashionable receits
of dramatic cookery. His art was ostentare artem, through fear
lest we might not discover it without. There is no under-
current in his writings, no secret working of passion: every
vein and nerve and muscle is laid bare, as in an anatomy, and
accompanied with a comment on its peculiar excellences. His
personages are never content with being what they are, and
acting accordingly : they are continually telling you what they
are; and their morbid self-consciousness preys upon them so,
that they can hardly talk or think of anything except their own
prodigious selves.

Thus in his tragedy, called Guilt, which turns in great part
upon the contrast between the Norwegian character and the
Spanish, a Norwegian maiden comes in, saying, lam a Norwe-
gian maiden; and Norwegian maidens are very wonderful
creatures.^ A Spanish woman exclaims, / am a Spanish ivo-
man ; and Spanish women are very wonderful creatures. Even
a boy is stript of his blessed privilege of unconscious innocence,
and tells us how unconscious and innocent he is. To crown the
whole, the hero enters, and says : / am the most wonderful be-
ing of all: for lam a Norwegian ; and Norwegians are won-
derful beings: and I am also a Spaniard ; and Spaniards also
are wonderful beings. The North and the South have commit-

z

402 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ted adultery within me. Out on them! there 's death in their
kiss. I am a riddle to myself. Pole and Pole unite in me. I
combine fire and water, earth and heaven, God and the devil.
The last sentences are translated literally from the orio-inal.
They were meant to be very grand, and probably excited
shouts of applause : yet they are a piece, of turgid falsetto.

In a certain sense indeed there is a truth in these lines, so
far as they set forth the inherent discords of our nature, a truth
to which all history bears witness, and which comes out more
forcibly at times and in characters of demoniacal power. But
it is as contrary to nature for a man to anatomize his heart and
soul thus, as it would be to make him dissect his own body.
The blunder lies in representing a person as speaking of him-
self in the same way in which a dispassionate observer might
speak of him. It is much as if one were to versify the ana-
lytical and rhetorical accounts, which critics have given of
Shakspeare's characters, and then to put them into the mouths
of Macbeth, Othello, Lear, nay, of Juliet, Imogen, Ophelia, and
even of the child, Arthur.

Yet in Hamlet himself, that personification of human nature
brooding over its own weaknesses and corruptions, that only
philosopher, with one exception, whom Poetry has been able to
create, how different are all the reflexions ! which moreover
come forward mainly in his soliloquies; whereas Muellner's
hero raves out his self-analysis in the ears of another, a woman,
his own sister, the very sight of whom should have made him
fold up the poisoned leaves of his heart. The individual, per-
sonal application of Hamlet's reflexions is either swallowed up
in the general confession of the frailty of human nature ; or
else they are the self-reproaches and self-stimulants of irreso-
lute weakness, the foam which the sea leaves behind on the
sands, when it sinks back into its own abysmal depths, and the
dissonant muttering of the waves, that have been vainly lashing
an immovable rock. So that they arise naturally, and almost
necessarily, out of his situation, out of the conflict with the
pressure of events, which he shrinks from encountering, and
thus are altogether different from the practice of modern writ-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 403

ers, who make a man stand up in cold blood, and recite a dis-
sertation upon himself, carried on, with the interposition of
divers similar dissertations recited by others, through the
course of five acts.

To make the difference more conspicuous, it would be in-
structive to see a soliloquy for Hamlet written by one of these
modern playwrights. How thickly would it be deckt out with
all manner of floscules ! for the same reason for which a
tragedy-queen wears many more diamonds than a real one.
The following might serve as a sample.

I am a prince. A prince a sceptre bears.

Sceptr.es are golden. Gold is flexible.

Therefore am I as flexible as gold.

'T is strange ! 'T is passing strange ! I 'm a strange being !

None e'er was stranger. I was born in Denmark;

In Wittenberg I studied. Wittenberg !

Why Wittenberg is set amid the sands

Of Northern Germany. So stood Palmyra

Amid the sands of Syria. Sand ! Sand ! Sand !

I wonder how 't was possible for Sand

To murder Kotzebue. • Sand flies round and round

And every puff of wind will change its form.

Thus every puff of wind will change my mind.

Ay, that vile sand I breathed at Wittenberg

Has rusht into my soul ; and there it whirls

And whirls about, just like the foam that flies

From water-wheels. It almost chokes me up.

So did it Babylon. That baby loon !

To build his city in the midst of sands !

But that was in the babyhood of man.

Now we are older grown, and wiser too.

I live in Copenhagen by the sea.

That is the home of every Dane. The sea !

But that too waves and wavers. So do I.

I am the sea. But I am golden too,

And sandy too. 0 what a marvel 's this !

I am a golden, sandy sea. Prodigious !

Ay, ay ! There are more things in heaven and earth,

Than are dreamt of in our Philosophy.

Nor are these aberrations and extravagances, these prepos-
terous inversions of the processes of the Imagination, trying to
educe the concrete out of a medley of abstractions, confined to
Germany. They may be commoner there, because the German

404 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

mind lias been busier in philosophical and esthetical specula-
tions : and when they are found in our own poetry, there may
be more of genuine poetical substance to sustain them. But I
have cited some passages in which the reflective spirit has
operated injuriously on Wordsworth ; and, if we look into Lord
Byron's works, we shall not have to go far before we light on
examples of similar errours. For he is eminently the prince of
egotists ; and, instead of representing characters, he describes
them, by versifying his own reflexions and meditations about
them. It has been asserted indeed by a celebrated critic, " that
Lord Byron's genius is essentially dramatic." But this asser-
tion merely illustrates the danger of meddling with hard words.
For no poet, not even Wordsworth or Milton, was more unfit-
ted by the character of his mind for genuine dramatic composi-
tion. He can however write fine, sounding lines in abundance,
where self-exaltation assumes the language of self-reproach, and
a man magnifies himself by speaking with bitter scorn of all
things. Such are the following from the ooening soliloquy in

Manfred.

Philosophy, and science, and the springs

Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,

I have essayed; and in my mind there is

A power to make these subject to itself:

But they avail not. I have done men good:

And I have met with good even among men:

But this availed not. I have had my foes ;

And none have baffled, many fallen before me:

But this availed not. Good or evil, life,

Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,

Have been to me as rain unto the sands,

Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,

And feel the curse to have no natural fear.

Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth.

Or look at this speech in Manfred's conversation with the

Abbot :

My nature was averse from life,
And yet not oruel ; for I would not make,
But find a desolation : — like the wind,
The red-hot breath of the most lone simoom,
"Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er
The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 405

And revels o'er their wild and arid waves,
And seeketh not, so that it is not sought,
But being met is deadly ; such hath been
The course of my existence.

Now if in these lines he and his be substituted for /and my,
and they be read as a description of some third person, they may
perhaps be grand, as the author meant that they should be.
But at present they are altogether false, and therefore unpoetir
cal. Indeed it may be laid down as an axiom, that, whenever
the personal pronouns can be interchanged in any passage
without injury to the poetry, the poetry must be spurious. For
no human being ever thought or spoke of himself, as a third
person would describe him. Yet, such is the intelligence shewn
in our ordinary criticism, these very passages have been cited
as examples of Lord Byron's dramatic genius. u.

There is a profound knowledge of human nature in those
lines which Shelley puts into Orsino's mouth, in the Cenci (Act
II. Sc. ii.).

It is a trick of this same family

To analyse their own and other minds.

Such self-anatomy shall teach the will

Dangerous secrets : for it tempts our powers,

Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,

Into the depth of darkest purposes.

This is not at variance with what has been said in these last
pages, but on the contrary confirms it. Self-anatomy is not an
impossible act. It belongs however to a morbid state. When
in health, we do not feel our own feelings, any more than we
feel our limbs, or see our eyes, but their objects, the objects on.
which they were, designed to act. On the other hand, when any
part of the body becomes disordered, we feel it, the more so,
the' more violent the disorder is. The same thing happens in
an unhealthy state of heart and mind, when the living commun-
ion with their objects is blockt up and cut off, and the blood is
thrown back upon the heart, and our sight is filled with delusive
spectra. If the Will gives itself up to work evil, the Conscience
ever and anon lifts up its reproachful voice, and smites with its

406 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

avenging sting ; whereupon the Wilt commands the Under-
standing to lull or stifle the Conscience with its sophistries, and
to prove that our moral nature is a mere delusion. Hence
Shakspeare has made his worst characters, Edmund, Iago,
Richard, all more or less self-reflective. Even in such charac-
ters however, it is necessary to track the footsteps of Nature
with the utmost care, in order to avoid substituting a shameless,
fiendish profession of wickedness, for the jugglings whereby the
remaining shreds of our moral being would fain justify or pal-
liate its aberrations. Evil, be thou my Good! is a cry that
could never have come from human lips. They always modify
and mitigate it into Evil, thou art my Good. Thus they shake
off the responsibility of making it so, and impute the sin of their
will to their nature or their circumstances. Yet in nothing have
the writers of spurious tragedies oftener gone wrong, than in
their way of making their villains proclaim and boast of their
villainy. Even poets of considerable dramatic genius have at
times erred grievously in this respect, especially during the im-
maturity of their genius : witness the soliloquies of Francis
Moor in Schiller's Titanic first-birth. Slow too and reluctant
as I am to think that anything can be erroneous in Shakspeare,
whom Nature had wedded, so to say, for better, for worse, and
whom she admitted into all the hidden recesses of her heart,
still I cannot help thinking that even he, notwithstanding the
firm grasp with which he is wont to hold the reins of his solar
chariot, as it circles the world, beholding and bringing out every
form of life in it, has somewhat exaggerated the diabolical
element in the soliloquies of Richard the Third. I refer espe-
cially to those terrific lines just after the murder of Henry the
Sixth.

Down, down, to hell, and say, I sent thee thither,
/, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed 't is true, that Henry told me of:
For I have often heard my mother say,
I came into the world with my legs forward.
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,
And seek their ruin that usurpt our right ?
The midwife wondered, and tbe women cried,
0, Jesus bless us ! he is born with teeth.

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 407

And so I was ; which plainly signified,

That I should snarl, and bile, and play the dog.

Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, •

Let hell make crookt my mind, to answer it.

I had no father ; I am like no father :

I have no brother ; I am like no brother :

And this word, Love, which greybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me : lam myself alone.

Of a like character are those lines in the opening soliloquy
of the play called by his name :

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass, —
I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,
Deformed, unfinisht, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionably,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them ; —
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant On my own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
lam determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

How different is this bold avowal of audacious, reckless wick-
edness, from Edmund's self-justification !

Why bastard? wherefore base ?
When. my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue.

How different too is Iago's speech !

And what 's he then, that says, I play the villain ?

When this advice is free I give, and honest,

Probable to thinking, and indeed the course

To win the Moor again. For 't is most easy

The inclining Desdemona to subdue

In any honest suit : she 's famed as fruitful

As the free elements. And then for her

To win the Moor, — were 't to renounce his baptism,

All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, —

408 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

His soul is so enfettered to her love,

That she may make, unmake, do what she list,

Even as her appetite shall play the god

With his weak function. How am 1 then a villain,

To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,

Directly to his good ?

After which inimitable bitterness of mockery at all his vic-
tims, and at Reason itself, how awfully does that sudden flash
of conscience rend asunder and consume the whole network of
sophistry !

Divinity of hell!'
"When devils will their blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now.

If we compare these speeches with Richard's, and in like
manner if we compare the way in which Iago's plot is first
sown, and springs up and gradually grows and ripens in his
brain, with Richard's downright enunciation of his projected
series of crimes from the first, we may discern the contrast be-
tween the youth and the mature manhood of the mightiest
intellect that ever lived upon earth, a contrast almost equally
observable in the difference between the diction and metre of
the two plays, and not unlike that between a great river rush-
ing along turbidly in spring, bearing the freshly melted snows
from Alpine mountains, with flakes of light scattered here and
there over its surface, and the same river, when its waters have
subsided into their autumnal tranquillity, and compose a vast
mirror for the whole landscape around them, and for the sun
and stars and sky and clouds overhead.

It is true, Shakspeare's youth was Herculean, was the youth
of one who might have strangled the serpents in his cradle.
There are several things in Richard's position, which justify a
great difference in the representation of his inward being. His
rank and station pampered a more audacious will. The civil
wars had familiarized him with crimes of lawless violence, and
with the wildest revolutions of fortune. Above all, his deform-
ity,— which Shakspeare received from a tradition he did not
think of questioning, and which he purposely brings forward so

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 409

prominently in both the speeches quoted above, — seemed to
separate and cut him off from sympathy and communion with
his kind, and to be a plea for thinking that, as he was a monster
in body, he might also be a monster in heart and conduct. In
fact it is a common result of a natural malformation to awaken
and irritate a morbid self-consciousness, by making a person
continually and painfully sensible of his inferiority to his fel-
lows : and this was doubtless a main agent in perverting Lord
Byron's character. Still I cannot but think that Shakspeare
would have made a somewhat different use even of this motive,
if he had rewritten the play, like King John, in the maturity of
his intellect. Would not Richard then, like Edmund and Iago,
have palliated and excused his crimes to himself, and sophisti-
cated and played tricks with his conscience ! Would he not
have denied and avowed his wickedness, almost with the same
breath ? and made the ever-waxing darkness of his purposes,
like that of night, at once conceal and betray their hideous enor-
mity ? At all events, since the justifications that may be alledged
for Richard's bolder avowals of his wickedness, result from the
peculiar idiosyncrasy of his position taken along with his physi-
cal frame, he is a most unsafe model for other poets to follow,
though a very tempting one, especially to young poets, many of
whom are glad to vent their feelings of the discord between
their ardent fancies and the actual state of the world, in railing
at human nature, and embodying its evils in some incarnate
fiend. Besides the main difficulties of dramatic poetry are
smoothed down, when a writer can make his characters tell us
how good and how bad he designs them to be. tr.

Some readers, who might otherwise incline to acknowledge
the truth of the foregoing observations, may perhaps be per-
plext by the thought, that the tenour of them seems scarcely
consistent with that Christian principle, which makes self-
examination a part of our duty. To this scruple I might
•reply, that corruptio optimi Jit pessima; for this involves the
true explanation of the difficulty. But the solution needs to
be brought out more plainly.
18

410 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Now it is quite true that one of the main effects produced
by Christianity on our nature has been to call forth our con-
science, and, along therewith, our self-consciousness, into far
greater distinctness ; which has gone on increasing with the
progress of Christian thought. This however is only as the
Law called forth the knowledge of sin. The Law called forth
the knowledge of the sinfulness of the outward act, with the
purpose of making us turn away from it, even in thought, to
its opposite. The Gospel, completing the work of the Law,
has called forth the knowledge of the sinfulness of our inward
nature ; not however to. the end that we should brood over the
contemplation of that sinfulness, — far less that we should
resolve to abide and advance therein ; but to the end that we
should rise out of it, and turn away from it, to the Redemption
which has been wrought for us. To have aroused the con-
sciousness of sin, without assuaging it by the glad tidings of
Redemption, would have been to issue a sentence of madness
against the whole human race. One cry of despair would
have burst from every heart, as it was lasht by the stings of
the Furies : 0 wretched man that I am, who will deliver me
from this body of death f And the echo from all the hollow
caverns of earth and heaven and hell would only have an-
swered, Who t

In truth, even in this form of self-consciousness, there is
often a great deal of morbid exaggeration, of unhealthy, mis-
chievous poring over and prying into the movements of our
hearts and minds ; which in the Romish Church has been stim-
ulated feverishly by the deleterious practices of the confession-
al, and which taints many of the very best Romish devotional
works. A vapid counterpart of this is also to be found in our
modern sentimental religion. In the Apostles, on the other
hand, there is nothing of the sort. Their life is hid with Christ
in God. Their hearts and minds are filled with the thought
and the love of Him who had redeemed them, and in whom
they had found their true life, and with the work which they
were to do in His service, for His glory, for the spreading of
His kingdom. This too was one of the greatest and most

GUESSES AT TEUTH. , 41 1

blessed among the truths which Luther was especially ordained
to reproclaim, — that we are not to spend our days in watching
our own vices, in gazing at our own sins, in stirring and raking
up all the mud of our past lives ; but to lift our thoughts from
our own corrupt nature to Him who put on that nature in order
to deliver it from its corruption, and to fix our contemplations
and our affections on Him who came to clothe us in His perfect
righteousness, and through whom and in whom, if we are united
to Him by a living faith, we too become righteous. Thus, like
the Apostle, are we to forget that which is behind, and to keep
our eyes bent on the prize of our high calling, to which we are
to press onward, and which we may attain, in Christ Jesus.

I cannot enter here into the questions, how far and what
kinds of self-examination are necessary as remedial, medicinal
measures, in consequence of our being already in so diseased
a condition. These are questions of ascetic discipline, the
answers to which will vary according to the exigences of each
particular case, even as do the remedies prescribed by a wise
physician for bodily ailments. I merely wisht to shew that, in
the Christian view of man, no less than in the natural, the
healthy, normal state is not the subjective, but the objective, that
in which, losing his own individual, insulated life, he finds it
again in Christ, that in which he does not make himself the
object of his contemplation and action, but directs them both
steadily and continually toward the will and the glory of God.

Of course the actual changes which have thus been wrought
in human nature by the operation of Christianity, and which are
not confined to its religious aspect, but pervade all its move-
ments, will justify and necessitate a corresponding difference in
the poetical representations of human characters. Still the poet
will have to keep watch against excesses and aberrations in this
respect ; and this has not been done with sufficient vigilance, it
seems to me, in the passages which I have found fault with.

u.

The general opinion on the worth of an imaginative work
may ultimately be right : immediately it is likely to be wrong ;

412 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and this likelihood increases in proportion to the creative power
manifested in it. The whole history of literature drives us to
this conclusion. There have indeed been cases in which the
calm judgement of posterity has confirmed the verdict pro-
nounced by contemporaries : but, though the results have been
the same, the way of arriving at them was different. What
Jonson said of him, in whom, above all other men, the spirit of
Poetry became incarnate, is true of Poetry itself: " it is not of
an age, but for all time." In the very act of becoming an im-
manent power in the life of the world, it advances, as our com-
mon phrases imply, beyond its own age, and rises above it.
Now, from the nature of man, there are always aspirations and
yearnings in him, which soar beyond the ken of his understand-
ing, and depths of thought and feeling, which strike down below
it : wherefore no age has ever been able to comprehend itself,
even what it is, much less what it is striving after and tending
to. A Thucydides or a Burke may discern some of the princi-
ples which are working and seething, and may guess at the con-
sequences which are to be evolved out of them. But they who
draw the car of Destiny cannot look back upon her : they are
impelled onward and ever blindly onward by the throng press-
ing at their heels. Far less can any age comprehend what is
beyond it and above it.

Besides much of the beauty in every great work of art must
be latent. Like the Argive seer, ov 8o<elv aptarov, aXX' elvai
0eX«. Such a work will be profound ; and few can sound depth.
It will be sublime ; and few can scan highth. It will have a
soul in it ; and few eyes can pierce through the body. Thus the
Greek epigram on the History of Thucydides, —

T£2 (piXos, el aocpos ei, Xa/3e /x' cs X*Pas ' 6* &e ire(pvKas

Nrj'is Movadaiv, pfyov, a pq voeeis.
Ei fit yap ov TrdvTeao-i /3ards • iravpoi £' dydaavro, —

may be regarded as more or less appropriate to every great
work of art. So that Orator Puff's blunder, in spending as
many words on a riband as a Raphael, did not lie solely in the
superior merits of the latter, but also in the greater facility with

GUESSES AT TEUTH 413

which all the merits of the former were sure to be discerned.
At the Exhibition of the King's pictures last year (in 1826),
Grenet's Church, with its mere mechanical dexterity of perspec-
tive, had more admirers, ten to one, than any of Rembrandt's
wonderful masterpieces, more, fifty to one, than Venusti's picture
of the Saviour at the foot of the Cross : for you will find fifty
who will be delighted with an ingenious artifice, sooner than one
who can understand art. Hence there is little surprising in
being told that Sophocles was not so great a favorite on the
Athenian stage as Euripides: what surprises me far more is,
that any audience should ever have been found capable of de-
riving pleasure from the severe grandeur and chaste beauty
of Sophocles. Nor is it surprising that Jonson and Fletcher
should have been more admired than Shakspeare : the contrary
would be surprising. Thus too, when one is told that Schiller
must be a greater poet than Goethe, because he is more popular
in Germany, one may reply, that, were he less popular, one
might perhaps be readier to suppose that there may be some-
thing more in him, than what thrusts itself so prominently on
the public view.

We are deaf, it is said, to the music of the spheres, owing to
the narrowness and dimness and dulness of our auditory organs.
So is it with what is grandest and loveliest in poetry. Few
admire it, because few have perceptions capacious and quick
and strong enough to feel it. Lessing has said (vol. xxvi. p.
36) : "The true judges of poetry are at all times, in all coun-
tries, quite as rare as true poets themselves are." Thus among
my own friends, although I feel pride in reckoning up many of
surpassing intellectual powers, I can hardly bethink myself
of more than one possessing that calmness of contemplative
thought, that insight into the principles and laws of the
Imagination, that familiarity with the forms under which in
various ages it has manifested itself, that happy temperature
of activity not too restless or vehement, with a passiveness
ready to receive the exact stamp and impression which the
poet purpost to produce, and the other qualities requisite to

414 GUESSES .AT TRUTH.

fit a person for pronouncing intelligently and justly on ques-
tions of taste.*

How then do great works ever become popular ?

In the strict sense they very seldom do. They never can be
rightly appreciated by the bulk of mankind, because they can
never be fully understood by them. No author, I have remarkt
before, has been more inadequately understood than Shakspeare.
But who, among the authors that make or mark a great epoch
in the history of thought, imaginative or reflective, has fared
better? Has Plato? or Sophocles? or Dante?, or Bacon? or
Behmen? or Leibnitz? or Kant? Their names have indeed
been extolled ; but for the chief part of those who have extolled
them, they might as well have written in an unknown tongue.
Look only at Homer, whom one might deem of all poets the
most easily intelligible. Yet how the Greek critics misunder-
stood him ! who found everything in him except a poet. How
must Virgil have misunderstood him, when he conceived him-
self to be writing a poem like the Iliad ! How must those per-
sons have misunderstood him, who have pretended to draw
certain irrefragable laws of epic poetry from his works ! laws
which are as applicable to them, as the rules of carpet-making
are to the side of a hill in its vernal glory. How must Cowper
have misunderstood him, when he congealed him ! and Pope,
when he bottled up his streaming waters in couplets, and col-
oured them till they were as gaudy as a druggist's window!
Here, as in numberless instances, we see how, as Goethe says
so truly, every reader

Reads himself out of the book that he reads, nay, has he a strong mind,
Reads himself into the book, and amalgams his thoughts with the author's.

Nevertheless in the course of time the judgement of the
intelligent few determines the judgement of the unintelligent
many. Public opinion flows' through the present as through a
marsh, scattering itself in a multitude of little brooks, taking any

* This was written in 1826. Since then the opinion here exprest has been
justified by the Essay on the Irony of Sophocles, which has been termed the
most exquisite piece of criticism in the English language.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 415

casual direction, and often stagnating sleepily ; until the more
vigorous and active have gone before, and cut and embankt a
channel, along which it may follow them. Thus on the main it
has one voice for the past ; and that voice is the voice of the
judicious : but it has an endless consort, or rather dissonance of
voices for the present ; and amid a mob the wisest are not likely
to be the loudest. For they have the happy feeling that Time
is their ally ; and they know that hurrying impedes, oftener
than it accelerates. At length however, when people are
persuaded that they ought to like a book, they are not slow in
finding out something to like in it. Our perceptions are trac-
table and ductile enough, if we earnestly desire that they should
be so. u.

Sophocles is the summit of Greek art. But one must have
scaled many a steep, before one can estimate his highth. It is
owing to his classical perfection, that he has generally been the
least admired of the great ancient poets : for little of his beauty
is discernible by a mind that is not deeply principled and im-
bued with the spirit of antiquity. The overpowering grandeur
of Eschylus has more of that which bursts through every con-
ventional barrier, and rushes at once to the innermost heart of
man. Homer lived before the Greeks were cut off. so abruptly
from other nations, and their peculiar qualities were brought
out, in part through the influences of their country, which
tended to break them up into small states, and thus gave a po-
litical importance to each individual citizen, — in part through
the political institutions which sprang out of these causes, and
naturally became .more democratical, — in part through the
workings, moral and intellectual, of Commerce, and of that
freedom which all these circumstances combined to foster.
Hence his national peculiarities are not so definitely markt. In
many respects he nearly resembles those bards in other coun-
tries, who have lived in a like state of society. Therefore, as
a child is always at home wherever he may chance to be, so is
Homer in all countries ; and thus on the whole he perhaps is
the ancient poet who has found the most favour with the mod-

416 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ems, grossly as, we have just seen, even he has often been mis-
understood. Next to him in popularity, if I mistake not, come
Euripides and Ovid ; who have been fondled in consequence of
their being infected with several modern epidemic vices of style.
They have nothing spiritual, nothing ideal, nothing mysterious.
All that is valuable in them is spread out on the surface, often
thinly as gold leaf. They are full of glittering points. Some
of their gems are true ; and few persons have eyes to distin-
guish the false. They have great rhetorical pathos ; and in
poetry as in life clamorous importunity will awaken more gen-
eral sympathy than silent distress. They are skilful in giving
characteristic touches, rather than in representing characters;
and the former please everybody, while it requires a consider-
able reach of imagination to apprehend and estimate the latter.
In fine they are immoral, and talk morality. u.

When a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often
means that he does not see himself in it : which, if it is not a
comedy or a satire, is likely enough.

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than
what he condemns, of his character, information, and abilities.
No wonder then that in this prudent country most people are
so shy of praising anything.

Most painters have painted themselves. So have most
poets ; not so palpably indeed and confessedly, but still more
assiduously. Some have done nothing else. u.

Many persons carry about their characters in their hands
not a few under their feet. . it.

What a lucky fellow he would be, who could invent a beau-
tifying glass ! How customers would rush to him ! A royal
funeral would be nothing to it. Nobody would stay away, ex-
cept the two extremes, those who were satisfied with themselves
through their vanity, and those who were contented in their

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 417

humility. At present one is forced to take up with one's
eyes ; and they, spiteful creatures, wont always beautify quite
enough. u.

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, ac-
tor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper,
all in one, and audience into the bargain. u.

A great talker ought to be affable. Else how can he look to
find others so ? Yet his besetting temptation is to speak, rather
than to hear. u.

C'est un grand malheur qu'on ne peut se battre qu'en com-
battant. u.

Nothing is accounted so proper in England as property.
En France le propre est la proprete. • u.

I have mentioned individuality of character above (p. 105)
among the distinctive qualities of the English. Not however
that it is peculiarly ours, but common to us with the other na-
tions of the Teutonic race, between whom and those nations in
whose character, as in their language, the Latin blood is pre-
dominant, there is a remarkable contrast in this respect. Lan-
dor, having resided many years among the latter, could not fail
to notice this. " I have often observed more variety (he makes
Puntomichino say) in a single English household, than I be-
lieve to exist in all Italy." Solger (Briefwechsel, p. 82) has a
like remark with reference to the French : " A certain general
outward culture makes them all know how to keep in their
station, each doing just as his neighbours do; so that one seldom
meets among them with that interesting and instructive origi-
nality, which in other nations is so often found in the lower
orders. In France all classes have much the same sort of edu-
cation, a superficial one enough, it i3 true ; but hence even the
meanest are able to hold up their heads."

Talk to a dozen Englishmen on any subject : there will be

18* AA

418 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

something peculiar and characteristic in the remarks of each.
Talk to a dozen Frenchmen : they will all make the very same
remark, and almost in the same words. Nor is this merely a
delusive appearance, occasioned by a stranger's inattention to the
minuter shades of difference, as in a flock of sheep an inexperi-
enced eye will not discern one from another. It is that the ge-
neric and specific qualities are proportionally stronger in them,
that they all tread in the same sheeptrack, that they all follow
their noses, and that their noses, like those of cattle when a storm
is coming on, all point the same way. A traveler cannot go far
in the country, but something will be said about passports. I
have heard scores of people talk of them at different times.
Of course they all thought them excellent things : this belongs
to their national vanity. What surprised me was, that they
every one thought them excellent things for the self-same
reason, — because they prevent thieves and murderers from
escaping ... a reason learnt by rote, concerning which they
had never thought of asking whether such was indeed the fact.
Let me relate another instance in point. I happened to be
in Paris at the time of the great eclipse in 1820, and was
watching it from the gardens of the Tuileries. Several voices,
out of a knot of persons near me, cried out one after the other,
Ah, comme c'est drole ! Regardez, comme c'est drole. My own
feelings not being exactly in this key, I walkt away, but in
vain. Go whither I would, the same sounds haunted me. Old
men and children, young men and maidens, all joined in the
same cuckoo cry : C'est bien drole ! Regardez, comme c'est
drole. Ah, comme c'est drole. Paris had tongues enough ; for
these are never scarce there. But it seemed only to have a
single mind: and this mind, even under the aspect of that
portent which " perplexes nations," could not contain or give
utterance to more than one thought or feeling, that what they
saw was bien drole. u.

The monotonousness of French versification is only a type
of that which pervades the national character, and herewith, of
necessity, the representative and exponent of that character,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 419

their literature, since the age of Louis the Fourteenth. But
this ready suppression, or rather imperfect development, of
those features which constitute individuality of character, is
common, as I remarkt before, more or less to all the nations of
the Latin stock : and it is scarcely less noticeable in the Ro-
mans, than in the rest. Indeed this is one main difference, to
which most of the others are referable, between the literature
of the Greeks and that of the Romans. Hence, for instance,
the Greeks, like ourselves and the Germans, had dramatic
poetry, the essence of which lies in the revelation of the inner
man ; whereas the Roman drama, at least in its higher depart-
ments, was an alien growth. Moreover in Greek literature
every author is himself, and has distinctive qualities whereby
you may recognize him. But every Roman writer, as Frederic
Schlegel has justly observed, " is in the first place a Roman,
and next a Roman of a particular age." That portion of him
which is peculiarly his own, is ever the least. Pars minima
ipse sai. You may find page after page in Tacitus and Seneca
and the elder Pliny, which, but for the difference of subject,
might have been composed by any one of the three: and if
Lucan had not written in verse, the trio might have been a
quartett. tj.

The Romans had no love of Beauty, like the Greeks. They
held no communion with Nature, like the Germans. Their one
idea was Rome, not ancient, fabulous, poetical Rome, but Rome
warring and conquering, and orbis terrarum domina. S. P. Q.
R. is inscribed on almost every page of their literature. With
the Greeks all forein nations were fidpfiapoi, outcasts from the
precincts of the Muses. To the Roman every stranger was a
hostis, until he became a slave. Only compare the Olympic
with the gladiatorial games. The object of the former was to
do homage to Nature, and to exalt and glorify her excellent
gifts ; that of the latter to appease the thirst for blood, when it
was no longer quencht in the blood of foes. None but a Greek
was deemed worthy of being admitted to the first : but a Roman
would have thought himself degraded by a mimic combat, in

420 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

which the victory lay rather with the animal, than with the
intellectual part of man. He left such sport to his jesters,
slaves, and wild beasts. To him a triumph was the ideal
and sum total of happiness: and verily it was something
grand. u.

Milton has been compared to Raphael. He is much more
like Michaelangelo. Michaelangelo is the painter of the Old
Testament, Raphael of the New. Now Milton, as Wordsworth
has said of him, was a Hebrew in soul. He was grand, severe,
austere. He loved to deal with the primeval, elementary forms
both of inanimate nature and of human, before the manifold,
ever multiplying combinations of thought and feeling had shaped
themselves into the multifarious complexities of human char-
acter. Both Samson and Comus are equally remote from the
realities of modern humanity. He would have been a noble
prophet. Among the Greeks, his imagination, like that of
Eschylus, would have dwelt among the older gods. He wants
the gentleness of Christian love, of that feeling to which the
least thing is precious, as springing from God, and claiming
kindred with man.

Where to find a parallel for Raphael in the modern world, I
know not. Sophocles, among poets, most resembles him. In
knowledge of the diversities of human character, he .comes
nearer than any other painter to him, who is unapproacht and
unapproachable, Shakspeare ; and yet two worlds, that of "Hu-
mour, and that of Passion, separate them. In exquisiteness of
art, Goethe might be compared to him. But neither he nor
Shakspeare has Raphael's deep Christian feeling. And then
there is such a peculiar glow and blush of beauty in his works :
whithersoever he comes, he sheds beauty from his wings.

Why did he die so early ? Because morning cannot last till
noon, nor spring through summer. Early too as it was, he had
lived through two stages of his art, and had carried both to
their highest perfection. This rapid progressiveness of mind
he also had in common with Shakspeare and Goethe, and with
few others. u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 421

The readers of the Giaour will remember the narrow arch,
over which the faithful are to enter into Paradise. In fact this
arch was the edge of the sword, or rather of the arched scimi-
tar. Hereby, if they wielded it bravely and murderously, the
Mussulmen thought they should attain to that Garden of Bliss.
Hence too did they deem it their duty to drive all men thither,
even along that narrow and perilous bridge ; far more excusa-
ble in so doing, than those who have used like murderous
weapons against their Christian brethren, in the belief that they
were casting them, not into heaven, but into hell. Even in
minor matters the sword is a perilous instrument whereby to
seek one's aim. Compulsion is not, and never can be convic-
tion. They exclude each other. u.

Musicians, at least dilettanti ones, are apt to complain of
those who encore a tune, as having no true feeling for the art.
It should be remembered however, that the peculiarity of music
is, that its parts can never be perceived contemporaneously, but
only in succession. Yet no work of art can be understood,
unless we have conceived the idea of it as a whole, and can dis-
cern the relations of its parts to each other as members of that
whole. To judge of a picture, a statue, a building, we look at
it again and again, both in its unity and in its details. So too
do we treat a poem, which combines the objective permanence
of the last-mentioned arts, with the successive development be-
longing to music. But until we know a piece of music, until
we have heard it through already, it is scarcely possible for any
ear to understand it. The sturdiest asserter of the organic
unity of works of art will not pretend that he could construct a
play of Shakspeare or of Sophocles out of a single scene, or
even that he could construct a single speech out of the preced-
ing ones ; although, when he has read and carefully examined
it, he may maintain that all its parts hang together by a sort of
inherent, inviolable necessity. The habit of lavishing all one's
admiration on striking parts, independently of their relation to
the whole, does indeed betoken a want of imaginative percep-
tion, and of proper esthetical culture. In true works of art too

422 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

the beauty of the parts is raised to a higher power by the living
idea which pervades the whole, as the physical beauty oi
Raphael's Virgins is by their relation to their Divine Child.
But for that very reason do we gaze on them with greater
intentness, and return to them again and again. Nay, does not
Nature herself teach us to encore tunes ? Her songsters repeat
their songs over and over, with endless iteration. u.

Wisdom is Alchemy. Else it could not be Wisdom. This is
its unfailing characteristic, that it " finds good in everything,"
that it renders all things more precious. In this respect also
does it renew the spirit of childhood within us : while foolish-
ness hardens our hearts, and narrows our thoughts, it makes us
feel a childlike curiosity and a childlike interest about all things.
When our view is confined to ourselves, nothing is of value,
except what ministers in one way or other to our own personal
gratification : but in proportion as it widens, our sympathies
increase and multiply : and when we have learnt to look on all
things as God's works, then, as His works, they are all endeared
to us.

Hence nothing can be further from true wisdom, than the
mask of it assumed by men of the world, who affect a cold in-
difference about whatever does not belong to their own im-
mediate circle of interests or pleasures. u.

It were much to be wisht that some philosophical scholar
would explain the practical influence of religion in the ancient
world. Much has been done of late for ancient mythology,
which itself, until the time of Voss, was little better than a con-
fused, tangled mass. Greek and Roman fables of all ages and
sexes were jumbled together indiscriminately, with an inter-
loper here and there from Egypt, or from the East ; and,
whether found in Homer or in Tzetzes, they were all supposed
to belong to the same whole. Voss, not John Gerard, but John
Henry, did a good service in trying to bring some sort of order
and distinctness into this medley. But he mostly left out of
sight, that one of the chief elements in mythology is the relig-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 423

ious. His imagination too was rather that of a kitchen-garden,
than either of a flower-garden, or a forest : his favorite flowers
were cauliflowers. Since his days there have been many valu-
able contributions toward the history and genesis of mythology
by Welcker, Ottfried Mueller, Buttmann, and others ; though
the master mind that is to discern and unfold the organic idea
is still wanting.

Mythology however is not Religion. It may rather be re-
garded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for
dogmatic theology. In addition to this, we require to know
what was the Religion of the ancients, what influence Religion
exercised over their feelings, over their intellect, over their
will, over their views of life, and their actions. This too must
be a historical work, distinguishing what belongs to different
ages, giving us fragmentary representations where nothing
more is discoverable, and carefully eschewing the attempt to
complete and restore the fragments of one age by pieces
belonging to another. Here also we shall find progressive
stages, faith, superstition, scepticism, secret and open unbe-
lief, which slid or rolled back into new forms of arbitrary
superstition. u.

Many learned men, Grotius, for instance, and Wetstein, have
taken pains to illustrate the New Testament by quoting all the
passages they could collect from the writers of classical an-
tiquity, expressing sentiments in any way analogous to the doc-
trines and precepts of the Gospel. This some persons regard
as a disparagement to the honour of the Gospel, which they
would fain suppose to have come down all at once from heaven,
like a meteoric stone from a volcano in the moon, consisting of
elements wholly different from anything found upon earth.
But surely it is no disparagement to the wisdom of God, or to
the dignity of Reason, that the development of Reason should
be preceded by corresponding instincts, and that something
analogous to it should be found even in inferior animals. It is
no disparagement to the sun, that he should be preceded by the
dawn. On the contrary this is his glory, as it was also that of

424 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the Messiah, that, in the words with which Milton describes His
approach to battle, " far off His coming shone." If there had
been no instincts in man leading him to Christianity, no yearn-
ings and cravings, no stings of conscience and aspirations, for it
to quiet and satisfy, it would have been no religion for man.
Therefore, instead of shrinking from the notion that anything
at all similar to any of the doctrines of Christianity may be
found in heathen forms of religion, let us seek out all such
resemblances diligently, giving thanks to God that He has
never left Himself wholly without a witness. "When we have
found them all, they will only be single rays darting up here
and there, forerunners of the sunrise. Subtract the whole
amount of them from the Gospel, and quite enough will remain
to bless God for, even the whole Gospel. u.

Everybody knows and loves the beautiful story of the dog
Argus, who just lives through the term of his master's absence,
and sees him return to his home, and recognizes him, and re-
joicing in the sight dies. Beautiful too as the story is in itself,
it has a still deeper allegorical interest. For how many Ar-
guses have there been, how many will there be hereafter, the
course of whose years has been so ordered, that they will have
just lived to see their Lord come and take possession of His
home, and in their joy at the blissful sight have departed!
How many such spirits, like Simeon's, will swell the praises of
Him who spared them that He might save them.

"When watching by a deathbed, I have heard the cock crow
as a signal for the spirit to take its flight from this world.
This, I believe, is a common hour for such a journey. It is a
comfortable thought, to regard the sufferer as having past
through the night, and lived to see the dawn of an eternal day.
Perhaps some thought of this kind flitted through the mind of
Socrates, when he directed his sacrifice to Esculapius. Mr.
Evans has thought fit, in his life of Justin Martyr, when com-
paring the end of Justin with that of Socrates, to rebuke the
the latter as "a mere moralist," who "exhibited in his last
words a trait of gross heathen superstition." Surely this is

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 425

neither wise nor just. It was not owing to any fault in Socra-
tes, that he was not a Christian, that he was " a mere moralist.*
On the contrary, it is a glorious thing that he should have been
a moralist, and such a moralist, amid the darkness of Heathen-
ism ; and his glory is increast by his having recognized the
duty of retaining a positive worship, while he saw its abuses,
by his having been a philosopher, and yet not an unbeliever.
I never could understand how it is necessary for the exaltation
of Christianity to depreciate Socrates, any more than how it is
requisite for the exaltation of the Creator to revile all the
works of His Creation. u.

The Rabbis tell, that, when Moses was about to lead the
children of Israel out of Egypt, he remembered the promise
made to Joseph, that his bones should be carried with them,
and buried in the Land of Promise. But not knowing how to
make out which were the real bones of Joseph, among the
many laid in the same sepulcre, he stood at the entrance of
the sepulcre, and cried, Bones of Joseph, come forth ! "Where-
upon the bones rose up and came toward him. With thankful
rejoicing he gathered them together, and bore them away to
the tents of Israel.

Strange as this fable may seem, it is the likeness of a stranger
reality, which we may see in ourselves and in others. For
when our spirits, being awakened to the sense of their misery
and slavery, are roused by the voice of some great Deliverer
to go forth into the land of freedom and hope, do we not often
turn back to the sepulcres m the house of our bondage, in
which from time to time we have laid up such parts of ourselves
as seemed to belong to a former stage of being, expecting to
find them living, and able to answer the voice which calls them
to go forth with us ? It is only by repeated disappointments,
that we are taught no longer to seek the living among the
dead, but to proceed on our pilgrimage, bearing the tokens of
mortality along with us, in the assurance that, if we do bear
them patiently and faithfully, until we come to the Land of
Life, we may then deposit them in their true home, as precious

426 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

seeds of immortality, which though sown in corruption and
dishonour and weakness, will be raised in incorruption and
glory and power. e.

"When will the earth again hear the glad announcement, that
the people bring much more than enough for the service of the
work, which the Lord commanded to make (Exod. xxxvi. 5) ?
Yet, until we bring more than enough, at least until we are
kindled by a spirit which will make us desire to do so, we shall
never bring enough. And ought we not? Your economists
will say No. They, who would think the sun a useful creature,
if he would come down from the sky and light their fires, will
gravely reprehend such wasteful extravagance. At the same
time no doubt they will continually be guilty of far greater and
more wasteful.

Among the numberless marvels, at which nobody marvels,
few are more marvellous than the recklessness with which
priceless gifts, intellectual and moral, are squandered and
thrown away. Often have I gazed with wonder at the prod-
igality displayed by Nature in the cistus, which unfolds hun-
dreds or thousands of its white starry blossoms morning after
morning, to shine in the light of the sun for an hour or two,
and then fall to the ground. But who, among the sons and
daughters of men, — gifted with thoughts " which wander
through eternity," and with powers which have the godlike
privilege of working good, and giving happiness, — who does
not daily let thousands of these thoughts drop to the ground
and rot? who does not continually leave his powers to draggle
in the mould of their own leaves ? The imagination can hardly
conceive the bights of greatness and glory to which mankind
would be raised, if all their thoughts and energies were to be
animated with a living purpose, — or even those of a single
people, or of the educated among a single people. But as in a
forest of oaks, among the millions of acorns that fall every
autumn, there may perhaps be one in a million that will grow
up into a tree, somewhat in like manner fares it with the
thoughts and feelings of man.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 427

What then must be our confusion, when we see all these
wasted thoughts and feelings rise up in the Judgement, and
bear witness against us !

But how are we to know whether they are wasted or not ?

We have a simple, infallible test. Those which are laid up
in heaven, those which are laid up in any heavenly work, those
whereby we in any way carry on the work of God upon earth,
are not wasted. Those which are laid up on earth, in any
mere earthly work, in carrying out our own ends, or the ends
of the Spirit of Evil, are heirs of death from the first, and
can only rise out of it for a moment, to sink back into it for
ever. u.

People seem to think that love toward God must be some-
thing totally different in kind from the love which we feel
toward our fellow-creatures, nay, as though it might exist with-
out any feeling at all. If we believed that it ought to be the
same feeling, which is excited by a living friend upon earth,
higher and purer, but not less real or warm, and if we tried
our hearts, to see whether it is in us, by the same tests, there
would be less self-deception on this point ; and we should more
easily be convinced that we must be wholly destitute of that, of
which we can show no lively token. a.

The difference between heathen virtue and Christian good-
ness is the difference between oars and sails, or rather between
gallies and ships.

God never does things by halves. He never leaves any
work unfinisht : they are all wholes from the first. There are
no demigods in Scripture. What is God is perfect God. What
is man is mere man.

The power of Faith will often shine forth the most, where
the character is naturally weak. There is less to intercept and
interfere with its workings.

428 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

In the outward course of events we are often ready to see
the hand of God in great things, but refuse to own it in small.
In like manner it often happens that even they, who in heavy
trials look wholly to God for strength and support, will in lesser
matters trust to themselves. This is the source of the weak-
ness and inconsistency betrayed by many, who yet on great
occasions will act rightly. a.

A blind man lets himself be led by a child. So must we be
brought to feel, and to acknowledge to ourselves, that we are
blind ; and then the time may come when a little Child shall
lead us. u.

Love, it has been said, descends more abundantly than it
ascends. The love of parents for their children has always
been far more powerful than that of children for their parents :
and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a
thousandth part of the love which God has manifested
to us ? A.

By giving the glory of good actions to man, instead of to
God, we weaken the power of example. If such or such a
grace be the growth of such or such a character, our character,
which is different, may be quite unable to attain to it. But if
it be God's work in the soul, then on us too may He vouchsafe
to bestow the same gift as on our neighbour. a.

In darkness there is no choice. It is light, that enables us
to see the differences between things : and it is Christ, that
gives us light.

What is snow? Is it that the angels are shedding their
feathers on the earth ? Or is the sky showering its blossoms
on the grave of the departed year ? In it we see that, if the
Earth is to be arrayed in this vesture of purity, her raiment
must descend on her from above. Alas too ! we see in it, how
soon that pure garment becomes spotted and sullied, how soon

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 429

it mostly passes away. There is something in it singularly ap-
propriate to the season of our Lord's Nativity, as Milton has so
finely urged in his Hymn.

Nature in awe to Him

Had doft her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize.

Only with speeches fair

She wooes the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,

And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw ;

Confounded that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

For this, as well as for other reasons, it was happy that the
Nativity was placed in December. u.

Written at Cambridge, January 15th, 1817.

Mighty Magician, Nature ! I have heard

Of rapid transformations, — in my dreams

Seen how with births the mind at freedom teems, —

Seen how the trees their gallant vestments gird

In Spring's all-pregnant hour. But thou excellest

All fabled witchery, all the mind's quick brood;

Even thyself thou dost surpass. What mood

Of wanton power is this, in which thou wellest

From thy impenetrable source, to pour

A flood of milk-white splendour o'er the earth !

Shedding such tranquil joy on Winter hoar,

More pure than jocund Spring's exulting mirth, — •

A joy like that sweet calmness, which is sent

To soothe the parting hour, where life is innocent.

Yes, lovely art thou, Nature, as the death

Of righteous spirits. Yesternight I sate,

And gazed, and all the scene was desolate.

I wake, and all is changed, —as though the breath

Of sleep had borne me to another world,

The abode of innocence. Still a few flakes

Drop, soft as falling stars. The sun now makes

The dazzling snow more dazzling. Flowers up-curled

In sleep thus swiftly scarce their bloom unfold,

As these wide plains, so lately blank, disclose

Their lilied face. The nun, whose streaming hair

430 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Is shorn, arrayed in spotless white behold :

And Earth, when shorn of all her verdure, glows,

In her bright veil, more saintly and more fair.

An hour have I been standing, and have gazed
On this pure field of snow, smooth as a lake,
When every wind is husht ; and no thought brake
The trance of pleasure which the vision raised.
Or, if a thought intruded, 't was desire
To lean my fevered cheek upon that breast
Of virgin softness, and to taste the rest
Its beauty seemed to promise. But the fire
Would not more surely mock my erring grasp.
No faith is found, no permanence, in form
Of loveliness, not e'en in woman's. Love
Must stand on some more stable base, must clasp
Round objects more enduring, life more warm:
His only food the soul, his only home above.

And now another thought intrudes to mar

The quiet of my musings, like a sound

Of thunder groaning through Night's still profound,

And lures me to wage reckless, impious war

Against the beauty of that silver main, —

To violate it with my feet, to tread

O'er all its charms, to stain its spotless bed, —

As some lewd wretch would a fair virgin stain.

Whence this wild, wayward fantasy ? My soul

Would shrink with horrour from such deed of shame.

Yet oft, amid our passions restless roll,

We love with wrong to dally without aim.*

Alas ! too soon the angel visitant

In Nature's course will leave our earthly haunt.

January 17th, 1817.
I said, our angel visitant would flee
Too soon, unknowing with what truth I spoke.
For he is gone, already gone, like smoke
Of mists dissolving o'er the morning lea.
The faint star melts in daylight's dawning beam;
The thin cloud fades in ether's crystal sea;
Thoughts, feelings, words, spring forth, and cease to be:
And thou hast also vanisht, like a dream
Of Childhood come to cheer Earth's hoary age,
As though the aged Earth herself had dreamt, —
Viewless as hopes, fleeting as joys of youth ;

* " To dally with wrong that does no harm." Coleridge, Christabel.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 431

And, bright as was thine air-born equipage,

It only served fallaciously to tempt

With visionary bliss, and bore no heart of truth.

How like to Joy in everything thou art !

Who earnest to smile upon our wintry way,

Like in thy brightness, like in thy decay,

A moment radiant to delude the heart.

And what of thee remains ? Nought, — save the tear

In which thou diest away ; — save that the field

Has now relaxt its bosom late congealed,

As frozen hearts will in some short career

Of gladness open, looking for the spring,

And find it not, and sink back into ice ; —

Save that the brooks rush turbidly along,

Flooding their banks : thus, after reveling

In some brief rapturous dream of Paradise,

In passionate recoil our roused affections throng. u.

The French rivers partake of the national character. Many
of them look broad, grand and imposing; but they have no
depth. And the greatest river in the country, the Rhone, loses
half its usefulness from the impetuosity of its current.

True goodness is like the glowworm in this, that it shines
most when no eyes, except those of heaven, are upon it. u.

He who does evil that good may come, pays a toll to the devil
to let him into heaven.

Many Italian girls are said to profane the black veil by tak-
ing it against their will ; and so do many English girls profane
the white one.

The bulk of men, in choosing a wife, look out for a
Fornarina : a few in youth dream about finding a Belle
Jardiniere. u.

We are so much the creatures of habit, that no great and
sudden change can at first be altogether agreeable . . . unless it
be here and there a honeymoon. A.

432 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

Our appetites were given to us to preserve and to propagate
life. We abuse them for its destruction. a.

The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the im-
pressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are
black ones.

None but a fool is always right ; and his right is the most
unreasonable wrong.

The difference between a speech and an essay should be some-
thing like that between a field of battle and a parade. v.

What do our clergy lose by reading their sermons ? They
lose preaching, the preaching of the voice in many cases, the
preaching of the eye almost always.

Histories used often to be stories. The fashion now is to
leave out the story. Our histories are stall-fed : the facts
are absorbed by the reflexions, as the meat sometimes is by the
fat. u.

C'est offreux comme il est pale I il devroit mettre un peu de
rouge : cried a woman out of the crowd, as the First Consul
rode by at a review in 1802. She thought a general ought to
shew a little blood in his cheeks. One might say the same of
sundry modern philosophical treatises. u.

Some persons give one the notion of an abyss of shallowness.
These terms may seem contradictory ; but, like so many other
contradictions, they have met and shaken hands in human
nature. All such a man's thoughts, all his feelings, are super-
ficial ; yet, try him where you will, you cannot get to a firm
footing. u.

A historian needs a peculiar discernment for that which is
important and essential and generative in human affairs. This

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 433

is one of the main elements of the historical genius, as it is of
the statesmanly. u.

A statesman should have ears to hear the distant rustling
of the wings of Time. Most people only catch sight of it,
when it is flying away. When it is overhead, it darkens their

view.

u.

La France, c'est moi, disoit Louis XIV. Mais son ambition
n'etoit que mediocre : car, le monde, c'est moi, dit tout le
monde. u*

An epicure is said to have complained of a haunch of veni-
son, as being too much for one, yet not enough for two. Bona-
parte thought the same of the world. What a great man he
must have been then ! To be sure : ambition is just as valid a
proof of a strong and sound mind, as gormandising is of a strong
and sound body. u.

The memory ought to be a store-room. Many turn theirs
rather into a lumber-room. Nay, even stores grow mouldy and
spoil, unless aired and used betimes ; and then they too become
lumber. u.

At Havre I saw some faces from the country, which remind-
ed me of our old monuments, and shewed me what the beauties
must have been, that inspired the chivalry of our Henries and
Edwards. They were long, almost to a fault, regular, tranquil,
unobservant, with the clearest, freshest bloom. At Rouen these
faces are no longer met with ; and one finds oneself quite in
France, the only country in civilized Europe where beauty is of
the composite order, made up of prettiness, liveliness, sparkling
eyes, artificial flowers, and a shawl, — the only region between
Lapland and Morocco, where youth is without bloom, and age
without dignity.

Expression is action ; beauty is repose.

19 BB

434 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

People say, St. Peter's looks larger every time they see it.
It does more. It seems to grow larger, while the eye is fixt on
it, even from the very door, and then expands, as you go for-
ward, almost like our idea of God.

Hie Rhodus ; hie salta. Do not wait for a change of out-
ward circumstances ; but take your circumstances as they are,
and make the best of them. This saying, which was meant to
shame a braggart, will admit of a very different and profounder
application. Goethe has changed the postulate of Archimedes,
Give me a standing-place, and I will move the world, into the
precept, Make good thy standing-place, and move the world.
This is what he did throughout his life. So too was it that Lu-
ther moved the world, not by waiting for a favorable opportu-
nity, but by doing his daily work, by doing God's will day by
day, without thinking of looking beyond. We ought not to
linger in inaction until Blucher comes up, but, the moment we
catch sight of him in the distance, to rise and charge. Her-
cules must go to Atlas, and take his load off his shoulders per-
force. This too is the meaning of the maxims in Wilhelm
Meister : Here, or nowhere, is Herrnhut : Here, or nowhere, is
America. We are not to keep on looking out for the coming of
the Kingdom of Heaven, but to believe firmly, and to acknowl-
edge that it is come, and to live and act in that knowledge and
assurance. Then will it indeed be come for us. u.

The business of Philosophy is to circumnavigate human na-
ture. Before we start, we are told that we shall find people
who stand head-downwards, with their feet against ours. Very
many won't believe this, and swear it must be all a hoax. Many
take fright at the thought, and resolve to stay at home, where
their peace will not be disturbed by such preposterous visions.
Of those who set out, many stop half way, among the antipodes,
and insist that standing head-downwards is the true posture of
every reasonable being. It is only the favoured few, who are
happy enough to complete the round, and to get home again ;
where they find everything just as they left it, save that hence-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 435

forward ■ they see it in its relations to the world, of which it
forms a part. This too is the proof that they have indeed com-
pleted the round, their getting back to their home, and not feel-
ing strange, but at home in it. u.

The common notion of the Ideal, as exemplified more espe-
cially in the Painting of the last century, degrades it into a mere
abstraction. It was assumed that, to raise an object into an
ideal, you must get rid of everything individual about it. Where-
as the true ideal is the individual, purified and potentiated, the
individual freed from everything that is not individual in it,
with all its parts pervaded and animated and harmonized by
the spirit of life which flows from the centre.

This blunder however ran cheek by jowl with another, much
like a pair of mules dragging the mind of man to the palace of
the Omnipotent Nonentity. For the purport of the Essay on
the Human Understanding, like that of its unacknowledged
parent, and that of the numerous fry which sprang from it, was
just the same, to maintain that we have no ideas, or, what
amounts to the same thing, that our ideas are nothing more than
abstractions, defecated by divers processes of the Understanding.
Thus flame, for instance, is an abstraction from coal, a rose from
a clod of earth, life from food, thought from sense, God from
the world, which itself is only a prior abstraction from Chaos.

There is no hope of arriving at Truth, until we have learnt
to acknowledge that the creatures of Space and Time are, as
it were, so many chambers of the prisonhouse, in which the
timeless, spaceless Ideas of the Eternal Mind are shut up, and
that the utmost reach of Abstraction is, not to create, but to
liberate, to give freedom and consciousness to that, which ex-
isted potentially and in embryo before. u.

The word encyclopedia, which of late years has emerged
from the study of the philosopher, and is trundled through
every street and alley by such as go about teaching the rudi-
ments of omniscience, is an example how language is often far
wiser than the people who make use it. The framers of words,

436 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

as has been remarkt already (p. 228), seem not seldom to have
been gifted with something like a spirit of divination, which en-
abled them to see more than they distinctly perceived, to antici-
pate more than they knew. The royal stamp however, which
was legible when the word was first issued, is often rubbed off;
and it is worn down until one hardly knows what it was meant
to be. The word encyclopedia implies the unity and circularity
of knowledge, — that it has one common central principle, which
is at once constitutive and regulative : for there can be no circle
without a centre ; and it is by an act emanating from the centre,
that the circle must be constructed. Moreover the name im-
plies that in knowledge, as in being, there is not merely a pro-
gression, but a returning upon itself, that the alpha and omega
coincide, and that the last and fullest truth must be the selfsame
with the first germinal truth, that it must be, as it were, the
full-grown oak which was latent in the acorn. Whereas our
encyclopedias are neither circular, nor have they any centre.
If they have the slightest claim to such a title, it can only be as
round robins, all the sciences being tost together in them just as
the whim of the alphabet has dictated. Indeed one might
almost fancy that a new interpretation of the name had been
devised, and that henceforward it was to mean, all knowledge in
a penny piece. u.

Dugald Stewart, in trying, at the beginning of his Philosophy
of the Human Mind, to account for the prejudice commonly en-
tertained in England against metaphysical speculations, urges
" the frivolous and absurd discussions which abound in the writ-
ings of most metaphysical authors," as the justifying cause of
this prejudice. Hereby, it appears shortly after, he especially
means " the vain and unprofitable disquisitions of the School-
men.*' No doubt too he would subsequently have rankt " the
vain and unprofitable disquisitions " of Kant and his successors
along with them. Here we find a singular phenomenon in the
history of causation. A cause, which acts attractively in its
own neighbourhood, is assumed to act repulsively at a distance,
both in time and in space. The Scholastic Philosophy, which so

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 437

fascinated the thoughtful in its own age, the modern Philosophy
of Germany, by which almost every intellect in that country
has been more or less possest and inspired, are the cause why
we in England and in these days care so little about the Philoso-
phy of the Human Mind. Conversely he may perhaps have
consoled himself by arguing, that, as so few people in his days
cared about the Philosophy of the Human Mind, multitudes, ac-
cording to the law of compensation, will take the deepest inter-
est in it hereafter ; and that Reid's Philosophy is like a rocket,
which has nothing very captivating while one holds it in one's
hands, yet which will spread out into a stream of light, when it
mounts to a distance. But O no ! These very speculations,
which are condemned as " vain and unprofitable," are the spec-
ulations which come home to men's hearts and bosoms, and stir
and kindle them. When we are told that we are bundles of
habits, that our minds are sheets of white paper, that our
thoughts are the extract of our sensations, that our conscience is
a mere ledger of profit and loss, we turn to the practical busi-
ness of life, as furnishing nobler subjects to occupy our time
with. When we are told of our immortal, heavenborn nature,
of the eternal laws of Reason, of Imagination, of Conscience,
we start out of our torpour ; and our hearts respond to the
voice which calls us to such contemplations. Surely the coun-
trymen of Locke and Hume and Hartley and Reid and Priest-
ley and Paley might have nearer reasons for disregarding meta-
physics, than those found in the subtilties of Scotus and Aqui-
nas, — of whom, be it remembered, they knew nothing. u.

A similar habit of thought led the same writer to say, in his
Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, prefixt to the Sup-
plement to the Encyclopedia Britannica (p. 25) : " In modern
times this influence of names is, comparatively speaking, at an
end. The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a
particular system of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exer-
cising their own judgements, to exhibit to them an outline of
the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for their future
examination." Now what is the result of this change ? That

438 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the pupil's mind is mazed and bewildered in a labyrinth of
outlines, — that he knows not whither to turn his steps, or
where to fix, — that the "future examination" is postponed
sine die, — and that he leaves, the university knowing a little
about everything, but knowing nothing. No good was ever
effected by filling a student's mind with outlines. It is to sow
the husk, instead of the kernel.

" It was in consequence (Mr. Stewart adds in a Note) of
this mode of conducting education, by means of oral instruction
alone, that the different sects of philosophy arose in ancient
Greece." One might have fancied that this instance would
have sufficed to shew what a powerful influence may be exer-
cised in this manner, by a teacher who knows how to act upon
the minds and the affections of his hearers ; wherefore the aim
of a wise teacher should be to make the most of so useful an
instrument, taking care to apply it to a right purpose. For
what example does the history of literature present of a study
flourishing as Philosophy did in Greece ? In fact the worst
thing about it was its over-luxuriance, which needed pruning
and repressing. But no. The oracles of history, like all others,
are two-edged. Let them speak as loudly and distinctly as they
may, they are not to be understood, unless the hearer is willing
to understand them. Where this will is wanting, a person may
prefer the barrenness which has surrounded the Edinburgh
metaphysical chair, to the rich, ever-teeming tropic landscape
of Greek Philosophy.

Cherish and foster that spirit of love, which lies wakeful,
seeking what it may feed on, in every genial young mind :
supply it with wholesome food : place an object before it worthy
of its embraces : else it will try to appease its cravings by
lawless indulgence. What your system may be, is of minor
importance : in every one, as Leibnitz says, there is a suffi-
ciency of truth : the tree must have life in it ; or it could not
stand. But you should plant the tree in the open plain, before
your pupil's eyes : do not leave him to find out his way amid
the windings of a tangled forest : let him see it distinctly, by
itself; and no matter to what highth it may rise, his sight will

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 439

overtop it ; though, when it is surrounded by others, he cannot
scan its dimensions. Plunge as deep as you will into the sea
of knowledge ; and do not fear his being unable or unwilling to
follow you. The difficulty itself acts as a spur. For in this
respect the mind is unlike a sword : it will be sharpened more
effectively by a rugged rock, than by a whetstone. It springs
up strongest and loftiest in craggy places, where it has had to
commune and wage battle with the winds.

The cautious avoidance of difficult and doubtful points by
a teacher in a university implies an ignorance of the suscepti-
bility and subtilty of the youthful mind, whenever its feelings
go along with its studies. He who is to win the race, must not
stop short of the goal, or go wide of it, through fear of running
against it : meta fervidis evitata rotis, — this will be his aim.
Would Columbus have discovered America, if he had been
merely trained to fair-weather, pleasure-boat sailing? Could
Shakspeare have written Lear and Hamlet, if some Scotch
metaphysician had "prepared him for exercising his own judge-
ment," by " exhibiting an outline of the different sciences to
him, and suggesting subjects to his future examination " ? Con-
crete is said to be the best foundation for a house ; and it is by
the observation of the concrete, that Nature trains the thinking
powers of mankind. This her method then, we may be sure,
will also be the most efficient with individuals.

Besides, this calling upon the young, at the very moment
when they are first crossing the threshold of the temple of
Knowledge, to sit in judgement on all the majestic forms that
line the approach to its sanctuary, tends to pamper the vice, to
which the young are especially prone, of an overweening, pre-
sumptuous vanity. Under judicious guidance they may be
trained to love and reverence Truth, and all her highpriests :
but more easily may they be led to despise the achievements of
former times, and to set up their own age, and more especially
themselves, as the highest objects of » their worship. This too
must needs be the result, when they are taught to give sen-
tence on all the great men of old, to regard their own decision
as supreme, and to pay homage solely to themselves. What

ffUFIVBRSITr))

440 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

will, what must be the produce of such a system ? Will they
not be like the Moralist in "Wordsworth's Poet's Epitaph f
who

has neither eyes nor ears,
Himself his world, and his own God :

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling
Nor form, nor feeling, great or small,
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all-in-all.

17.

A strong and vivid imagination is scarcely less valuable to a
philosopher, than to a poet. For the philosopher also needs
that the objects of his contemplation should stand in their living
fulness before him. The first requisite for discerning the rela-
tions and differences of things is to see the things themselves
clearly and distinctly. From a want of this clear, distinct per-
ception, the bulk of those who busy themselves in the construc-
tion of philosophical systems, are apt to substitute abstractions
for realities ; and on these abstractions they build their card-
houses by the aid of logical formules. No wonder that such
houses are soon overthrown, nay, that they topple ere long
through their own insubstantiality.

Nevertheless an imaginative philosopher has continual occa-
sion for exercising a more than ordinary selfdistrust. Among
the manifold aspects of things, there are always some which
will appear to accord with his prepossessions. They will seem
in his eyes, under the colouring of these prepossessions, to fit
into his scheme, just as though it had been made for them.
But whenever this is the case, we should be especially dis-
trustful of appearances. For a prima facie view of things
cannot be a scientifically or philosophically correct one. It will
have more or less of subjective, relative truth, but can never
be the truth itself, absolutely and objectively. Whatever our
position may be, it cannot be the centre ; and only from the
centre can things be seen in their true bearings and relations.
Yet, by an involuntary delusion, consequent upon our separa-
tion and estrangement from the real Centre of the Universe, —

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 441

the Centre that does not abide in any single point, but at every
point finds a Universe encircling it, — we cannot help assuming
that we ourselves are that centre, and that the sun and moon
and stars are merely revolving around us. u.

Prudens inquisitio dimidium scientiae. The first step to
self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind
of knowledge, except by a like process. We must fall on our
knees at the threshold ; or we shall not gain entrance into the
temple. u.

They who are in the habit of passing sentence upon books, —
and what ignoramus in our days does not deem himself fully
qualified for sitting in the seat of the scorner ? — are apt to
think that they have condemned a work irretrievably, when
they have pronounced it to be unintelligible. Unintelligible to
whom ? To themselves, the self-constituted judges. So that
their sentence presumes their competency to pronounce it : and
this, to every one save themselves, may be exceedingly ques-
tionable.

It is true, the very purpose for which a writer publishes his
thoughts, is, that his readers should share them wTith him.
Hence the primary requisite of a style is its intelligibleness :
that is to say, it must be capable of being understood. But
intelligibleness is a relative quality, varying with the capacity
of the reader. The easiest book in a language is inaccessible
to those who have never set foot within the pale of that lan-
guage. The simplest elementary treatise in any science is
obscure and perplexing, until wre become familiar with the ter-
minology of that science. Thus every writer is entitled to
demand a certain amount of knowledge in those for whom he
writes, and a certain degree of dexterity in using the imple-
ments of thought. In this respect too there should not only be
milk for babes, but also strong meat for those who are of full
age. It is absurd to lay down a rule, that every man's thoughts
should move at the selfsame pace, the measure of which we
naturally take from our own. Indeed, if it fatigues us to keep
19*

442 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

up with one who walks faster, and steps out more widely than
we are wont to do, there may also be an excess on the other
side, which is more intolerably wearisome.

Of course a writer, who desires to be popular, will not put
on seven-league boots, with which he would soon escape out of
sight. Yet the highest authority has told us, that " the poet's
eye Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,"
taking the rapidity of vision as a type for that of the Imagina-
tion, which surely ought not to lag behind the fleetest of the
senses. In logical processes indeed transitions are less sudden.
If you wish to bind people with a chain of reasoning, you must
not skip over too many of the links ; or they may fail to per-
ceive its cogency. Still it is wholesome and bracing for the
mind, to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the
effect of a walk in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an
Essay of Bacon's for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or of
Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climb-
ing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good. Set the
tortoise to run against the hare ; and, even if he does not over-
take it, he will do more than he ever did previously, more than
he would ever have thought himself capable of doing. Set the
hare to run with the tortoise : he falls asleep.

Suppose a person to have studied Xenophon and Thucydides,
till he has attained to the same thorough comprehension of them
both ; and this is so far from being an unwarrantable supposi-
tion, that the very difficulties of Thucydides tempt and stimu-
late an intelligent reader to form a more intimate acquaintance
with him : which of the two will have strengthened the student's
mind the most ? from which will he have derived the richest and
most lasting treasures of thought ? Who, that has made friends
with Dante, has not had his intellect nerved and expanded by
following the pilgrim through his triple world ? and would
Tasso have done as much for him ? The labour itself, which
must be spent in order to understand Sophocles or Shakspeare,
to search out their hidden beauties, to trace their labyrinthine
movements, to dive into their bright, jeweled caverns, and con-
verse with the sea-nymphs that dwell there, is its own abundant

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 443

reward ; not merely from the enjoyment that accompanies it,
but because such pleasure, indeed all pleasure that is congenial
to our better nature, is refreshing and invigorating, like a
draught of nectar from heaven. In such studies we imitate
the example of the eagle, unsealing his eyesight by gazing at
the sun.

South, in his sixth Sermon, after speaking of the difficulties
which we have to encounter in the search after truth, urges the
beneficial effect of those difficulties. " Truth (he says) is a
great stronghold, barred and fortified by God and Nature ; and
diligence is properly the Understanding's laying siege to it ; so
that, as in a kind of warfare, it must be perpetually upon the
watch, observing all the avenues and passes to it, and accord-
ingly makes its approaches. Sometimes it thinks it gains a
point; and presently again it finds itself baffled and beaten off:
yet still it renews the onset, attacks the difficulty afresh, plants
this reasoning, and that argument, this consequence, and that
distinction, like so many intellectual batteries, till at length it
forces a way and passage into the obstinate enclosed truth, that
so long withstood and defied all its assaults. The Jesuits have
a saying common amongst them, touching the institution of
youth, (in which their chief strength and talent lies,) that Vexa-
tio dat intellectwm. As when the mind casts and turns itself
restlessly from one thing to another, strains this power of the
soul to apprehend, that to judge, another to divide, a fourth to
remember, — thus tracing out the nice and scarce observable
difference of some things, and the real agreement of others, till
at length it brings all the ends of a long and various hypothesis
together, sees how one part coheres with and depends upon an-
other, and so clears off all the appearing contrarieties and con-
tradictions, that seemed to lie cross and uncouth, and to make
the whole unintelligible, — this is the laborious and vexatious
inquest, that the soul must make after science. For Truth, like
a stately dame, will not be seen, nor shew herself at the first
visit, nor match with the understanding upon an ordinary court-
ship or address. Long and tedious attendances must be given,
and the hardest fatigues endured and digested : nor did ever

444 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

the most pregnant wit in the world bring forth anything great,
lasting, and considerable, without some pain and travail, some
pangs and throes before the delivery. Now all this that I
have said is to shew the force of diligence in the investigation
of truth, and particularly of the noblest of all truths, which is
that of religion."

For my own part, I have ever gained the most profit, and the
most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think
the most : and, when the difficulties have once been overcome,
these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only
in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections.
For this point too should be taken into account. We are wont
to think slightly of that, which it costs us a slight effort to win.
When a maiden is too forward, her admirer deems it time to
draw back. Whereas whatever has associated itself with the
arousal and activity of our better nature, with the important
and memorable epochs in our lives, whether moral or intellect-
ual, is, — to cull a sprig from the beautiful passage in which
Wordsworth describes the growth of Michael's love for his na-
tive hills, —

Our living being, even more

Than our own blood, and, — could it less ? — retains

Strong hold on our affections, is to us

A pleasurable feeling of blind love,

The pleasure which there is in life itself.

If you would fertilize the mind, the plough must be driven
over and through it. The gliding of wheels is easier and rap-
ider, but only makes it harder and more barren. Above all, in
the present age of light reading, that is, of reading hastily,
thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, unfruitfully, when most books
are forgotten as soon as they are finisht, and very many sooner,
it is well if something heavier is cast now and then into the
midst of the literary public. This may scare and repell the
weak : it will rouse and attract the stronger, and increase their
strength by making them exert it. In the sweat of the brow is
the mind as well as the body to eat its bread. Nil sine magno
Musa labore dedit mortalibus.

Are writers then to be studiously difficult, and to tie knots for

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 445

the mere purpose of compelling their readers to untie them ?
Not so. Let them follow the bent of their own minds. Let
their style be the faithful mirror of their thoughts. Some minds
are too rapid and vehement and redundant to flow along in lucid
transparence ; some have to break over rocks, and to force a
way through obstacles, which would have dammed them in.
Tacitus could not write like Cesar. Niebuhr could not write
like Goldsmith. u.

Train the understanding. Take care that the mind has a
stout and straight stem. Leave the flowers of wit and fancy to
come of themselves. Sticking them on will not make them
grow. You can only engraft them, by grafting that which will
produce them.

Another rule of good gardening may also be applied with
advantage to the mind. Thin your fruit in spring, that the
tree may not be exhausted, and that some of it may come to
perfection. u.

There are some fine passages, I am told, in that book.
Are there? Then beware of them. Fine passages are
mostly culs de sacs. For in books also does one see

Rich windows that exclude the light,

And passages that lead to nothing. XJ.

A writer is the only person who can give more than he has.
It may be doubted however whether such gifts are not mostly
in bad money. it.

Fields of thought seem to need lying fallow. After some
powerful mind has brought a new one into cultivation, the same
seed is sown in it over and over again, until the crop degener-
ates, and the land is worn out. Hereupon it is left alone, and
gains time to recruit, before a subsequent generation is led, by
the exhaustion of the country round, to till it afresh. u.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.

446 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful, but
whether it is true. When we want to go to a place, we don't
ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but
whether it is the right road, the road pointed out by authority,
the turnpike-road.

How poorly must he have profited by the study of Plato, who
said, Malo cum Platone errare, quam cum istis vera sentire J
A maxim of this kind may indeed serve for those who are not
ordained to the ministry of Truth. The great bulk of mankind
must in all things take much for granted, as everybody must in
many things. They whose calling is to act, need to have cer-
tain guiding principles of faith to look up to, fixt like stars high
above the changeful, and often storm-rent atmosphere of their
cares and doubts and passions, principles which they may hold
to be eternal, from their fixedness, and from their light. The
philosopher too himself must perforce take many things for
granted, seeing that the capacities of human knowledge are so
limited. Only his assumptions will be in lower and commoner
matters, with regard to which he will have to receive much on
trust. For his thoughts dwell among principles. He mounts,
like the astronomer, into the region of the stars themselves, and
measures their magnitudes and their distances, and calculates
their orbits, and distinguishes the fixt from the erring, the solar
sources of light from the satellites which fill their urns from
these everlasting fountains, and distinguishes those also, which
dutifully preserve their regular, beatific courses, from the vagrant
emissaries of destruction. He must have an entire, implicit
faith in the illimitable beneficence, that is, in the divinity of
Truth. He must devoutly believe that God is Truth, and that
Truth therefore must ever be one with God.

Cicero, I am aware, ascribes that speech (Tusc. Quaest. i.
17) to the young man whom he is instructing ; a circumstance
overlookt by those who have tried to confirm themselves in
their faintheartedness, by pleading his authority for believing
that a falsehood may be better than Truth. But he immedi-
ately applauds his pupil, and makes the sentiment his own:

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 447

Made virtute : ego enim ipse cum eodem illo non invitus errave-
rim. It is plain from this sentence, the evidence of which
might be strengthened by a number of others, that what Cicero
admired so much in Plato, was not his philosophy. On the
contrary, as he himself often forgot the thinker in the talker, so,
his eye for words having been sharpened by continual practice,
he was apt to look in others also at the make of the garments
their thoughts were arrayed in, rather than at the countenance
or the body of the thoughts themselves. He had told us him-
self a little before : Hane perfectam philosophiam semper judi-
cavi, quae de maximis quaestionibus copiose posset ornateque
dicere. Thus what he valued most in Plato, was his elo-
quence ; the true unequaled worth of which however is its per-
fect fitness for exhibiting the thoughts it contains, or, so to say,
its transparency. For, while in most other writers the thoughts
are only seen dimly, as in water, where the medium itself is
visible, and more or less distorts or obscures them, being often
turbid, often coloured, and often having no little mud in it, in
Plato one almost looks through the language, as through air,
discerning the exact form of the objects which stand therein,
and every part and shade of which is brought out by the sunny
light resting upon them. Indeed, when reading Plato, we
hardly think about the beauty of his style, or notice it except
for its clearness : but, as our having felt the sensations of sick-
ness makes us feel and enjoy the sensations of health, so does
the acquaintance we are forced to contract with all manner of
denser and murkier writers, render us vividly sensible of the
bright daylight of Plato. Cicero however might almost have
extracted the Beauties of Plato, as somebody has extracted the
Beauties of Shakspeare ; which give as good a notion of his
unspeakable, exuberant beauty, as a pot pourri gives of a
flower-garden, or as a lump of teeth would give of a beautiful
mouth.

As to Plato's pure, impartial, searching philosophy, Cicero
was too full of prejudices to sympathize with it. Philosophy
was not the bread of life to him, but a medicinal cordial in his
afflictions. He loved it, not for itself, but for certain results

448 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

which he desired and hoped to gain from it. In philosophy he
was never more than an Eclectic, that is, in point of fact, no
philosopher at all. For the very essence of the philosophical
mind lies in this, that it is constrained by an irresistible impulse
to ascend to primary, necessary principles, and cannot halt until
it reaches the living, streaming sources of Truth ; whereas the
Eclectic will stop short where he likes, at any maxim to which
he chooses to ascribe the authority of a principle. The philo-
sophical mind must be systematic, ever seeking to behold all
things in their connexion, as parts or members of a great or-
ganic whole, and impregnating them all with the electric spirit
of order; while the Eclectic is content if he can string together
a number of generalizations. A Philosopher incorporates and
animates; an Eclectic heaps and ties up. The Philosopher
combines multiplicity into unity; the Eclectic leaves unity
straggling about in multiplicity. The former opens the arteries
of Truth, the latter its veins. Cicero's legal habits peer out
from under his philosophical cloak, in his constant appeal to
precedent, his ready deference to authority. For in law, as in
other things, the practitioner does not go beyond maxims, that
is, secondary or tertiary principles, taking his stand upon the
mounds which his predecessors have erected.

Cicero was indeed led by his admiration of Plato to adopt
the form of the dialogue for his own treatises, of all forms the
best fitted for setting forth philosophical truths in their free ex-
pansion and intercommunion, as well as in their distinctness
and precision, without chaining up Truth, and making her run
round and round in the mill of a partial and narrow system.
But he has nothing of the dialectic spirit. His collocutors do
not wrestle with one another, as they did in the intellectual
gymnasia of the Greeks. After some preliminary remarks,
and the interchange of a few compliments characterized by
that urbanity in which no man surpasses him, he throws off the
constraint of logical analysis; and his speakers sit down by
turns in the portico, and deliver their didactic harangues, just
as in a bad play the personages tell you their story at length,
and of course each to his own advantage. You must not inter-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 449

rupt them with a question for the world ; you would be sure to
put them out.

But if the love of Plato is a worthless ground for preferring
errour to truth, still more reprehensible is it to go wrong out of
hatred or contempt for any one, be he who he may. Could the
Father of lies speak truth, it would be our duty to believe him
when he did so. u.

In the preface to Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, there is a
sentence, which at first thought may remind us of Cicero's say-
ing about -Plato, and may seem analogous to it, but which, when
more closely examined, we perceive to be its diametrical oppo-
site. That unhappy enthusiast, who, through a calamitous
combination of circumstances, galling and fretting a morbidly
sensitive temperament, became a fanatical hater of the perver-
sions and distortions conjured up by his own feverish imagina-
tion, there says : " For my part I had rather be damned with
Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to heaven with Paley and Mal-
thus." Here however, if we look away from the profaneness of
the expressions, the meaning is grand and noble. Such is the
author's faith in truth and goodness, and his love for them, he
would rather incur everlasting misery by cleaving to them, than
enjoy everlasting happiness, if it could only be won by sacrificing
his reason and conscience to falsehood and coldhearted worldli-
ness. Thus this sentence at bottom is only tantamount to that
most magnanimous saying of antiquity, Fiat justitia, ruat coe-
lum: which does not mean, that the fulfilment of Justice would
be the knell of the Universe, but that, even though this were to
be the consequence, even though the world were to go to rack,
Justice must and ought to be fulfilled. The mind which had
not been taught how Mercy and Truth, Righteousness and Peace
were to meet together and to be reconciled for ever in the
Divine Atonement, could not mount to a -sublimer anticipation
of the blessed declaration, that Heaven and Earth shall pass
away, but the word of God shall not pass away.

At the same time Shelley's words exhibit the miserable delu-
sion he was under, and shew how what he hated, under the

CC

450 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

name of Christianity, was not Christianity itself, but rather a
medley of antichristian notions, which he blindly identified with
it, from finding them associated with it in vulgar opinion, u.

The name Eclectic is often misused nowadays, by being
applied to such as will not surrender their reason and conscience
to the yoke of a dogmatical system, anathematizing everything
beyond its pale, — to those who, recognizing the infinite fulness
and plastic life of Truth, delight to trace it out under all mani-
festations, and to acknowledge that, amid the numberless errours
and perversions and exaggerations with which it has been mixt
up, it has still been the one source of a living power in every
mode of human opinion. Thus I have seen the name assigned
to Neander, and to other writers no less alien from the Eclectic
spirit. This however is mere ignorance and confusion.

The Eclectic is a person who picks out certain propositions,
such as strike his fancy or his moral sense, and seem edifying
or useful, from divers systems of philosophy, and strings or
patches them together, without troubling himself much about
their organic unity or coherence. When the true philosophical
spirit, which everywhere seeks after unity, under the conviction
that the universe must reflect the oneness of the contemplating
as well as of the Creative Mind, was waning away, dilettanti
philosophers, who were fond of dabbling in the records of prior
speculations, arose both among the Greeks and at Rome : and
of these, Diogenes Laertius tells us (i. § 21), Potamo of Alex-
andria introduced €KkeKTiKT)V atpe<rti>, iicke^dfxevos ra dpea-avra if*
eKdo-TTjs TQ>v alpeo-ewv. That is to say, he may have been the
first to assume the name ; but the spirit which led him to do so
was already wisely diffused. Indeed little else in the way of
philosophy gained much favour, from his ■days, at the beginning
of the Roman empire, down to the first coming forward of the
Schoolmen.

This procedure may best be illustrated by the wellknown
story of Zeuxis, who took the most beautiful features and
members of several beautiful women to make a more beautiful
one than any in his Helen. In fact this story is related by

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 451

Cicero at the beginning of the second Book of his work Be In-
ventione, with the view of justifying his own design of writing a
treatise, in which, he says, " Non unum aliquod proposuimus
exemplum, cujus omnes partes, quocumque essent in genere,
exprimendae nobis necessario viderentur ; sed, omnibus unum
in locum coactis scriptoribus, quod quisque commodissime prae-
cipere videbatur, excerpsimus, et ex variis ingeniis excellentis-
sima quaeque libavimus." He adds that, if his skill were
equal to that of the painter, his work ought to be still better,
inasmuch as he had a larger stock of models to choose from :
" Ille una ex urbe, et ex eo numero virginum, quae turn erant,
eligere potuit: nobis omnium, quicumque fuerunt, ab ultimo
principio hujus praeceptionis usque ad hoc tempus, expositis
copiis, quodcumque placeret eligendi potestas fuit." That such a
process, though the genius of Zeuxis may have corrected its
evil, is not the right one for the production of a great work of art,
— that a statue or picture ought not to be a piece of patchwork,
or a posy of multifarious beauties, — that it must spring from an
idea in the mind of the artist, as is exprest by Raphael in the
passage quoted above (p. 273), will now be generally -acknowl-
edged by the intelligent; though it continually happens that
clever young men, such as Cicero then was, fancy they shall daz-
zle the sun, by bringing together a lamp from this quarter and
that, with a dozen candles from others. Cicero himself, in his
later writings on the same subject, followed a wiser course, and
drew from the rich stores of his own experience and knowledge.
But how congenial the other practice was to the age, is proved
by Dionysius, who sets up the same ^story of Zeuxis, in the
introduction to his Judgement on Ancient Writers, as an example
it behoves US to follow, ml rrjs ocftJW' fax^s d7rav0i£eo-dai to

KpflTTOV.

On the other hand they who are gifted with a true philo-
sophical spirit, who feel the weight of the mystery of the uni-
verse, on whom it presses like a burthen, and will not let them
rest, who are constrained by an inward necessity to solve the
problems it presents to their age, will naturally have much
sympathy with those in former ages who have been impelled

452 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

by the same necessity to attempt the solution of similar prob-
lems. They will, or at all events ought to regard them as
fellow-workers, as brothers. The problems which occupied
former ages, were only different phases of the same great prob-
lem, by which they themselves are spell-bound. Whatever
there was of truth in the solutions devised of yore, must still
retain its character of truth, though it will have become partial,
and can no longer be regarded as absolute. As in Science the
later, more perfect systems incorporate all the truths ascertained
by previous discoveries, nay, take these truths as the materials
for further researches, so must it also be, under certain modifi-
cations, in Philosophy. Hence to call a philosopher an Eclec-
tic on this account is a mere misapprehension of the name, and
of the laws which govern the development of the human mind.
It is just as absurd, as it would be to call Laplace and Herschel
Eclectics, because their speculations recognize and incorporate
the results of the discoveries of Newton and Kepler and Galileo
and Copernicus, nay, of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, so far as
there was truth in them.

On this topic there is a remarkable passage in the 12th
Chapter of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, where the au-
thor says that the doctrines of Leibnitz, " as hitherto inter-
preted, have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz himself,
in a most instructive passage, describes as the criterion of a
true philosophy, namely, that it would at once explain and col-
lect the fragments of truth scattered through systems apparently
the most incongruous. The truth, says he, is diffused more
widely than is commonly believed ; but it is often painted, yet
oftener maskt, and is sometimes mutilated, and sometimes, alas,
in close alliance with mischievous errours. The deeper how-
ever we penetrate into the ground of things, the more truth we
discover in the doctrines of the greater number of the philo-
sophical sects. The want of substantial reality in the objects
of the senses, according to the Sceptics, — the harmonies or
numbers, the prototypes and ideas, to which the Pythagoreans
and Platonists reduced all things, — the ONE and ALL of
Parmenides and Plotinus, without Spinozism, — the necessary

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 453

connexion of things according to the Stoics, reconcilable with
the spontaneity of the other schools, — the vital philosophy of
the Cabbalists and Hermetists, who assumed the universality of
sensation, — the substantial forms and entelechies of Aristotle
and the Schoolmen, — together with the mechanical solution of
all particular phenomena according to Democritus and the re-
cent philosophers, — all these we shall find united in one per-
spective central point, which shews regularity and a coincidence
of all the parts in the very object, which from every other point
of view must appear confused and distorted. The spirit of sec-
tarianism has been hitherto our fault, and the cause of our fail-
ures. "We have imprisoned our own conceptions by the lines
which we have drawn in order to exclude the conceptions of
others."

The observations of Leibnitz here referred to are so interest-
ing, — both as an expression of his own genius, which was
always seeking after harmony and unity, and as the anticipa-
tion of a truth which was to come out more distinctly in the
subsequent expansion of philosophy, but which had to lie dor-
mant for nearly a century after he uttered it, and which even
now is recognized by few beyond the limits of the country where
it was uttered, — that I will quote what he says on the subject.
It occurs in his first letter to Remond de Montmort, written in
1714, not long before the close of his long life* of meditation, and
is also pleasing as a record of the growth of his own mind. " J'ai
tache de deterrer et de reunir la verity ensevelie et dissipee
sous les opinions des differentes sectes des Philosophes ; et je
crois y avoir ajoute quelque chose du mien pour faire quelques
pas en avant. Les occasions de mes etudes- des ma premiere
jeunesse, m'y ont donne de la facilite. Etant enfant j'appri3
Aristote ; et meme les Scholastiques ne me rebuterent point ;
et je n'en suis point fache presentement. Mais Platon aussi des
lors, avec Plotin, me donnerent quelque contentement, sans parler
d'autres anciens, que je consultai. Par apres etant emancipe des
ecoles triviales, je tombai sur les Modernes ; et je me souviens que
je me promenia seul dans un bocage aupres de Leipsic, appelle le
Rosendal, a l'age de quinze ans, pour deliberer si je garderois

454 ' GUESSES AT TRUTH.

les Formes substantielles. Enfin le Mecanisme prevalut, et me
porta a m'appliquer aux Mathematiques. II est vrai que je
n'entrai dans les plus profondes, qu'apres avoir converse avec
M. Huygens a Paris. Mais quand je cherchai les dernieres
raisons du Mecanisme, et des loix meme du mouvement, je fus
tout surpris de voir qu'il etait impossible de les trouver dans les
Mathematiques, et qu'il falloit retourner a la Metaphysique.
C'est ce qui me ramena aux Entelechies, et du materiel au
formel, et me fit enfin comprendre, apres plusieurs corrections
et avancemens de mes notions, que les monades, ou les substances
simples, sont lest seules veritables substances ; et que les choses
materielles ne sont que des phenomenes, mais bien fondes et
bien lies. C'est de quoi Platon, et meme les Academiciens pos-
terieurs, et encore les Sceptiques, ont entrevu quelque chose ;
mais ces messieurs, apres Platon, n'en ont pas si bien use que
lui. J'ai trouve que le plupart des Sectes ont raison dans une
bonne partie de ce qu'elles avancent, mais non pas tant en ce
qu'elles nient. Les Formalistes, comme les Platoniciens, et les
Aristoteliciens, ont raison de chercher la source des choses dans
les causes finales et formelles. Mais ils ont tort de negliger les
efficientes et les materielles, et d'en inferer, comme faisoit M.
Henri Morus en Angleterre, et quelques autres Platoniciens,
qu'il y a des phenomenes qui ne peuvent §tre expliques meca-
niquement. Mais de l'autre cote les Materialistes, ou ceux qui
s'attachent uniquement a la Philosophic mecanique, ont tort de
rejetter les considerations metaphysiques, et de vouloir tout ex-
pliquer par ce qui depend de l'imagination. Je me flatte d'avoir
penetre l'Harmonie des differens regnes, et d'avoir vu que les
deux parties ont raison, pourvu qu'ils ne se choquent point ; que
tout se fait mecaniquement et metaphysiquement en meme temps
dans les phenomenes de la nature, mais que la source de la
mecanique est dans la metaphysique. II n'etoit pas aise de de-
couvrir ce mystere, parce qu'il y a peu de gens qui se donnent
la peine de joindre ces deux sortes d'etudes." Vol. v. pp. 8, 9.
Ed. Dutens.

In his third Letter to Remond, Leibnitz recurs to the same
subject. "Si j'en avois le loisir, je comparerois mes dogmes

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 455

t

avec ceux des Anciens et d'autres habiles hommes. La verite
est plus repandue qu'on ne pense ; mais elle est tres souvent
fardee, et tres souvent aussi enveloppee, et meme affoiblie,
mutilee, corrompue par des additions qui la gatent, ou la ren-
dent moins utile. En faisant remarquer ces traces de la verite
dans les Anciens, ou, pour parler plus generalement, dans les
anterieurs, on tireroit Tor de la boue, le diamant de sa mine, et
la lumiere des tenebres ; et ce seroit en effet perennis quaedam
Philosophia. On peut meme dire, qu'on y remarqueroit quelque
progres dans les connoissances. Les Orientaux ont de belles
et de grandes idees de la Divinite. Les Grecs y ont ajoute
le raisonnement et une forme de science. Les Peres de l'Eglise
ont rejette ce qu'il y avoit de mauvais dans la Philosophic des
Grecs ; mais les Scholastiques ont tache d'employer utilement
pour le Christianisme, ce qu'il y avoit de passable dans la Phi-
losophic des Payens. J'ai dit souvent aurum latere in stercore
illo scholastico barbariei ; et je souhaiterois qu'on put trouver
quelque habile homme verse dans cette Philosophic Hibernoise
et Espagnole, qui eut de l'inclination et de la capacite pour en
tirer le bon. Je suis sur qu'il trouveroit sa peine payee par
plusieurs belles et importantes verites." p. 13.

That Philosophy, in the last sixty years, has been advancing
at no slow pace toward the grand goal, which Leibnitz descried
from afar, by a Pisgah view of the land he himself was not
destined to enter, will not be questioned by any one acquainted
with the recent philosophers of Germany. One of the clearest
proofs German Philosophy has exhibited of its being on the
road toward the truth, has lain in this very fact, that it has been
enabled to appreciate the philosophical systems of former ages,
as they had never been appreciated previously. If we look, for
instance, into Dugald Stewart's Historical Essay, we find no
attempt even to do anything of the sort. As I have said above
(p. 337), he merely selects a few remarks or maxims from the
writings of preceding philosophers, such as at all resemble the
observations of his own philosophy, or the received maxims of
his own age, and takes no thought about anything else, nor
even about the coherence of these remarks with the rest of the

456 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

systems they belong to. On the other hand, if we turn to
Hitter's History of Philosophy, or to Hegel's Lectures, — to
mention two of the chief examples of what has been repeated
in many others, — we see them endeavouring to estimate all
prior systems according to their historical position in the pro-
gressive development of human thought, to shew what truths it
was the especial province of each to bring out, and how each
fulfilled its appointed work. In England this method has been
applied to the history of Science by Dr Whewell, to that of
Philosophy in the History of Moral Philosophy publisht in the
Encyclopedia Metropolitana.

Now that 'this historical, genetical method of viewing prior
systems of philosophy is something totally different from Eclec-
ticism, nay, is the direct opposite to it, will not need further
proof. But it is termed conceited and presumptuous, to pre-
tend to know better than all the wisest men of former times,
and to sit in judgement upon them. This however is sheer
nonsense. Conceit and presumption may indeed shew them-
selves in this, as in every other mode of uttering our thoughts :
but there can hardly be a better corrective for those evil ten-
dencies, than the attentive, scrutinizing contemplation of the
great men of former times, with the view of ascertaining the
amount of the truth they were allowed to discern, the power of
the impulse they gave to the progress of the human mind. If
we know more in some respects than they did, this itself is a
ground of gratitude to them through whose labours we have
gained this advantage, and of reverence for those who with
such inferior means achieved so much. It is no way deroga-
tory to Newton, or Kepler, or Galileo, that Science in these
days should have advanced far beyond them. Rather is this
itself their crown of glory. Their works are still bearing fruit,
and will continue to do so. The truths which they discovered
are still living in our knowledge, pregnant with infinite conse-
quences. Nor will any one be so ready and able to do them
justice, as he who has carefully examined what they actually
accomplisht for the advancement of Science. So too will it be
with regard to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, to Anselm and

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 457

Bacon and Leibnitz. The better we know and appreciate what
they did, the humbler it must needs make us. Nay the very
process of endeavouring faithfully and carefully to enter into
the minds of others, as it can only be effected by passing out
of ourselves, out of our habitual prepossessions and predilec-
tions, is a discipline both of love and of humility. In this
respect at all events there can be no comparison between
such a Philosophy, and an exclusive dogmatical system,
which peremptorily condemns whatever does not coincide
with it.

Of course this profounder Philosophy, which aims at tracing
the philosophical idea through its successive manifestations, is
not exempt from the dangers which encompass every other form
of Knowledge, especially from that which is exprest by the sep-
aration between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
My dear friend, Sterling, says, in one of his letters (p. xxxviii.) :
" Cousin makes it the peculiar glory of our epochj that it en-
deavours to comprehend the mind of all other ages. But I fear
it must be the tendency of his philosophy, while it examines
what all other philosophies were, to prevent us from being any-
thing ourselves. — We must live, not only for the past, but also
for the present. Herein is the great merit of Coleridge : and
I confess for myself, I would rather be a believing Jew or Pa-
gan, than a man who sees through all religions, but looks not
with the eyes of any." How far this censure may apply to
Cousin, we need not enquire ; but there seems no reason why
it should attach to that form of Philosophy, of which we have
been speaking, more than to any other. In all speculation, of
whatsoever kind, there is a centrifugal tendency, which requires
to be continually counteracted and kept in check. This would
appear to have been the peculiar work of Socrates in Greek
philosophy, as it had been previously of Pythagoras, and as it
was that of Bacon in Science. But, though the Tree of Knowl-
edge is not the Tree of Life, the Tree, or rather the scrubby
underwood of Ignorance is quite as far removed from it : nor
shall we turn the Tree of Knowledge into it, by lopping off its
20

458 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

expanding, sheltering branches, which spread out on every side,
and converting it into a Maypole. u.

There are a number of points, with regard to which we un-
derstand the ancients better than they understood themselves.

Does this seem strange ? Mount a hill : will you not descry
the outlines and bearings of the vallies or plains at its feet, more
clearly than they who are living in the midst of them ? That
which was positive among the ancients, their own feelings, the
direct power which their religion, their political and social insti-
tutions, their literature, their art exercised upon them, they
undoubtedly understood far better than we can hope to do.
But the relations in which they stand to other nations, and to
the general idea of human nature, the particular phase of that
idea which was manifested in them, the place which they occu-
py in the progressive history of mankind, — and in like manner
the connexion between their language, their institutions, their
modes of thought, their form of religion, of literature, of phi-
losophy, of art, and those of other nations, anterior, contempo-
raneous, or subsequent, — of all these things we have far better
means of judging, than they could possibly have. Thus they
were more familiar with their own country, with its mountains
and dells and glens, its brooks and tarns, than any foreiner can
be : yet we have a clearer view of its geographical position
with reference to the rest of the earth.

Moreover such a general comparative survey will enable us
to adjust the proportions of many things, which, in the eyes of
persons living in the midst of them, would be exaggerated by
propinquity, or coloured and distorted by occasional feelings.
In fact the postulate of Archimedes is no less indispensable for
knowledge. To comprehend a thing thoroughly we need a
standing-place out of it.

Such a ttov o-t£> has been supplied for us all by Christianity.
Therefore Christian Philosophy and Christian Science have an
incalculable advantage of position over every other form of
knowledge. U.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 459

It might be allowable for a heathen to say of himself, with
somewhat of selfcomplacency, that he was Nullius addictus
jurare in verba magistri. As a body, when it is losing its unity,
and resolving into its parts, is fast crumbling into nothingness,
and as an ochlocracy is no more than a noisy prelude to anarchy,
so is Polytheism to Atheism. Whenever we find a real relig-
ious feeling in any ancient writer, we may also discern a dim,
though perhaps scarcely conscious recognition of Unity, of one
supreme Deity, behind and above all the rest, who permits the
gods of Olympus to play round his feet, smiling on their sports,
or, if they become too wanton and boisterous, checking them
with a frown. For any moral influence on its votaries, the
worship of many gods is scarcely more powerful than no wor-
ship at all.

Besides it was the misfortune of Roman literature, that, as in

that of the French, there was in it

No single volume paramount, no code,
No master spirit, no determined road.

Such must needs be wanting, where political or social interests
predominate over those which are more purely intellectual.
Neither Poetry, nor Philosophy will thrive, when anything is
standing by to overshadow them. They lose their dignity, and
cannot walk freely as the handmaids of any other queen than
Religion. The Greeks, on the other hand, had such a u volume
paramount," a volume as to which their greatest poets might
boast that their works were merely fragments from its inex-
haustible banquet. Whereas the Romans had nothing, with
regard to which they could enjoy the comfortable feeling, that
they might cut and cut and come again. Their dishes, like
those of our neighbours, were kickshaws, which, having already
been hasht up a second time, were drained of their juices, and
unfit for further use. If any of them became a standing dish,
it was only, like artificial fruit, to be lookt at.

This want of a nest-egg is a calamity which no people can
get the better of. There is scarcely any blessing so precious
for the mind of a nation, as the possession of such a great na-
tional heirloom, a work loved by all, revered by all, familiar to

460 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

all, from which all classes for generation after generation draw
their views of Nature and of Life, which thus forms a great
bond of intellectual and moral sympathy amongst all, in which
all ranks may meet, as in a church, and all may feel at home.
How fortunate then are we in England, inasmuch as, — over
and above that which, wherever it has not been withdrawn from
the people by a shortsighted, narrowminded, selfseeking policy,
is the " Volume Paramount," and the bond of union for all
Christendom, — we have also the richest Eldorado of thought
that man ever opened to man in the gold and diamond-mines of
Shakspeare ! Paradise Lost too may claim to be rankt as one
of our volumes paramount, of our truly national works, which
have mingled with the life-blood of the people. Indeed Erskine,
I have been told, used to say, that, in addressing juries, he had
found, there were three books, and only three, which he could
always quote with effect, Shakspeare, Milton, and the Bible.

Moreover Horace's boast was the simple, naked utterance of
that Eclectic spirit, which I have been speaking of as charac-
terizing his age, and which is always sure to prevail among such
as are especially termed men of the world. Nor was it a less
apt expression of his own personal character. For he was the
prototype, and hence has ever been the favorite, of wits and
fine gentlemen, of those who count it a point of goodbreeding
to seem pleased with everything, yet not to be strongly affected
by anything, nil admirari. As the chief fear of such persons
is, lest they should dishonour their breeding by betraying too
strong feelings on any matter, Horace's declaration just meets
their wishes. The pleasantest of dilettanti, he could add, Quo
me cunque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes, without any regret at
the thought that everywhere he was a hospes, that nowhere had
he a home. Chance was to him a more acceptable guide than
any master ; and he drifted along before the wind and tide, re-
joicing that he had no pole-star to steer by.

In him, I say, such a boast might be excusable. But for a
Christian moralist to take these lines as his motto seems strange-
ly inappropriate. For we Christians are far happier than the
poor guideless Heathens. "We have a Master ; and we know

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 461

that His words are always true, and that they will be true eter-
nally. Above all, for Johnson to make such a parade of master-
lessness, as he does by prefixing these lines to the Rambler ! for
Johnson, who, whatever want of deference he might shew toward
other masters, had one master ever close at his elbow, to whose
words he was always ready to swear, a master too who never
scrupled to try his patience by all sorts of wayward commands,
— even himself, his own whims, his own caprices, his own im-
perious wilfulness. In fact this is usually the case with those
who plume themselves on their unwillingness to bear the yoke
of any authority. They are mostly the slaves of a despot, and
therefore spurn the notion of being the subjects of a law. They
have a Puck within their breasts, who is ever leading them "up
and down, up and down : " and, as he is " feared in field and
town," both in town and field they stand alone. Or else he
" drops his liquour in their eyes ; " and then the next thing they
look upon, " Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, Or meddling
monkey, or on busy ape, They will pursue it with the soul of
love." Hence, though it is very true that Johnson was JSTullius
addictus jurare in' verba magistri, — except indeed to his own
words, — it was hardly becoming to make this state of sheer
negativeness a matter of boast. If one is to boast at all, it
should be grounded on something positive, on something imply-
ing an act of the reasonable will, not on our being carried quo-
cunque rapit tempestas, which can only land us in the Limbo of
Vanities.

Will it be deemed a piece of captiousness, if I go on to object,
as others have done before, to the title of the Rambler ? But
that too seems to have little appropriateness for a person who
seldom rambled further than from one side of his armchair to
the other, from one cell in his brain to another. His reading
is indeed said to have been always very desultory ; so that one
of his biographers thinks it questionable, whether he ever read
any book entirely through, except the Bible. If this was in-
deed the fact, it would form the best intellectual apology for his
criticisms. At all events his habit arose from that peculiarity
which marks all his writings, as well as all the anecdotes of

462 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

him, his incapacity for going out of himself, and entering into
the minds of others, his inability to understand and sympathize
with any form of human nature except his own. He only lookt
into a book to contemplate his own image in it ; and when any-
thing came across that image, he turned to another volume.
This is not rambling, but staying at home in a home which is no
home, inasmuch as a home must have some one beside oneself
to endear and consecrate it.

By some it may be thought that the misnomer of the Rambler
receives a kind of justification from the circuitousness of the
author's style. This however is not rambling : it would be live-
lier, if it were. It merely rolls round, like the sails of a mill,
ponderously and sonorously and monotonously, yet seldom grind-
ing any corn. In truth it would seem constructed for the purpose
of going round a thing, and round it, and round it, without ever
getting to it. His sentences might be compared to the hoops worn
by ladies in those days, and were almost equally successful in dis-
guising and disfiguring the form, as well as in keeping you at a
distance from it In reading them one may often be puzzled to
think how they could proceed from a man whose words in con-
versation were so close and sinewy. But Johnson's strength, as
well as his weakness, lay in his will ; and in conversation, when an
object that irritated him stood before him, his words came down
upon it, more like blows, than words. In reasoning on the
other hand, in that which requires meditation or imagination,
the will has little power, except so far as it has been exercised
continuously in the formation and cultivation of the mind. A
man cannot by a momentary act of the will endow himself with
faculties and knowledge, which he does not possess already ;
though he can make himself pour out words, the bigness of
which shall stand in lieu of force, and their multitude in lieu of
meaning. How such a style could gain the admiration which
Johnson's gained, in an age when numbers of men and women
wrote incomparably better, would be another grave puzzle, un-
less one remembered that it was the age when hoops and
toupees were thought to highten the beauty of women, and full-
bottomed wigs the dignity of men. He who saw in his glass

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 463

how his wig became his face and head, might easily infer that a
similar full-bottomed, well-curled friz of words would be no less
becoming to his thoughts. Nor did he miscalculate the effect
upon his immediate readers. They who admired the hairy wig,
were in raptures with the wordy one. v.

Young men are perpetually told that the first of duties is to
render oneself independent. But the phrase, unless it mean
that the first of duties is to avoid hanging, is unhappily chosen ;
saying what it ought not to say, and leaving unsaid what it
ought to say.

It is true, that, in a certain sense, the first of duties is to be-
come free ; because Freedom is the antecedent condition for the
fulfilment of every other duty, the only element in which a rea-
sonable soul can exist. Until the umbilical chord is severed,
the child can hardly be said to have a separate life. So long
as the heart and mind continue in slavery, it is impossible for a
man to offer up a voluntary and reasonable sacrifice of himself.
Now in slavery, since the Fall, we are all born ; from which
slavery we have to emancipate ourselves by some act of our
own, halfconscious, it may be, or almost unconscious. By some
act of our own, I say ; not indeed unassisted ; for every parent,
every friend, every teacher is a minister ordained to help us in
this act. But, though we cannot by our own act lift ourselves
out of the pit, we must by an act of our own take hold of the
hand which offers to lift us out of it. The same thing is im-
plied in every act of duty ; which can only be an act of duty,
so far as it is the act of a free, voluntary agent. Moreover, if
we ascend in the scale of duties, we must also ascend in the
scale of freedom. A person must have cast off the tyrannous
yoke of the flesh, of its frailties and its lusts, before he can be-
come the faithful servant of his country and his God.

Hence we perceive that the true motive for our striving to
set ourselves free is, to manifest our freedom by resigning it,
through an act to be renewed every moment, ever resuming
and ever resigning it ; to the end that our service may be en-
tire, that the service of the hands may likewise be the service of

464 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

the will ; even as the Apostle, being free from all, made him-
self servant to all. This is the accomplishment of the great
Christian paradox, Whosoever will be great, let him be a minis-
ter ; and whosoever will be chief let him be a servant.

Nothing can be more thoroughly opposed to the sublime hu-
mility of this precept, than the maxim which enjoins indepen-
dence. At best Independence is a negative abstraction, and
has merely assumed the specious semblance of reality, amid
the multitude of indistinct, insubstantial words, which have
been driven across our language from forein regions ; whereas
Freedom is something positive. So far as our dictionaries,
which in such matters are by no means safe guides, may be
relied on, the word independence, in its modern acceptation,
can hardly have come into use till after the Revolution. The
earliest instance of it cited is from Pope, but is such as shews it
must already have been a familiar expression. Nor is it ill
suited to that age of superficial, disjointed, unconnected thought,
when the work of cutting off the present from the past began,
and people first took it into their heads, that the mass of evil in
the world was the result, not of their own follies and vices, but
of what their ancestors had done and establisht. That such an
unscriptural word should not occur in our Bible, is not surpris-
ing : for Independence, as an attribute of man, if it be traced
to its root, is a kind of synonym for irreligion. Nor, I believe,
is it to be found in this sense in any writer of the ages when
men were trained by the discipline of logic to think more closely
and speak more precisely. Primarily however the word seems
to have come from the Latinity of the Schoolmen, — for the
Romans never acknowledged either the word or the thing sig-
nified by it, — and to have been coined, like other similar terms,
for the sake of expressing one of those negations, out of which
Philosophy compounds her idea of God ; hereby confessing her
inability to attain to a positive idea. Thus, in Baxter's Metho-
dus Theologiae Christianae, God is said to be, with reference
to causation, Noncausatus, Independens. In his Reasons of the
Christian Religion, he says : " The first universal matter is not
an uncaused, independent being. If such there be, its inactivity

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 455

and passiveness sheweth it to want the excellency of indepen-
dency." Jackson (B. vi. c. 3) speaks of philosophers, who
" allot a kind of independent being to immaterial substances."
In Minshew's Guide into the Tongues (1625), Independencie is
explained by Absoluteness of oneself, without dependence on an-
other, which points to a like usage as already existing.

In this sense Segneri writes: Vindependenza e un tesoro
inalienabile di Dio solo. When thus used, the word expresses
an attribute which belongs exclusively to the Deity, in the only
way in which our intellect can express it, by a negation of its
opposite. But, when applied to man, it directly contravenes
the first and supreme laws of our nature, the very essence of
which is universal dependence upon God, and universal inter-
dependence on one another. Hence Leighton, speaking of
disobedience, says (Serm. xv.) : "This is still the treasonable
pride or independency, and wickedness of our nature, rising up
against God who formed us of nothing." "With this our right-
ful state Freedom is not irreconcilable : indeed, if our depend-
ence is to be reasonable and voluntary, Freedom, as I have
already said, is indispensable to it. Accordingly Shakspeare,
in his Measure for Measure (Act iv. sc. 3), has combined the
two words : the Provost there replies to the Duke, / am your
free dependent ; where free signifies voluntary, willing. Now
in a somewhat different sense we ought all to be free dependents.
But nobody can be an independent dependent. As applied to
man, independent can only have a relative sense, signifying that
1 he is free from certain kinds of dependence. In this sense
Cudworth often speaks of the heathen belief in several inde-
pendent gods, that is, not absolutely, in the signification exem-
plified above, but independent of each other. In this sense too
the name was assumed by the religious sect who intended
thereby both to express their rejection of all previously estab-
lisht authority, and their notion that every particular congrega-
tion ought to be insulated and independent of all others. So
again the American war was not to assert the Freedom, but
the Independence of America. Thus things came to such a
pass, that Smollett wrote an ode to Independence, calling it, or
20* dd

466 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

her, or him, " Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye." Nay,
even Wordsworth, in one of his early poems, after describing
the scenery round the Lake of Lucerne, wrote : " Even here
Content has fixed her smiling reign, With Independence, child
of high Disdain," a line scarcely less objectionable in point of
taste, than as glorifying the child of such a parent.

Moreover Freedom is susceptible of degrees, according to
the capacity for Freedom in the person who attains to it.
There is one Freedom in the peasant, who is unable to read,
and whose time is wellnigh engrost by bodily labour, but who
humbly reveres the holy words proclaimed to him on his one
day of weekly rest ; and there is another Freedom in the poet,
or philosopher, or statesman, or prince, who, with a full con-
sciousness of the sacrifice he is making, well knowing what he is
giving up and why, and feeling the strength of the reluctances
he has to combat and overpower, increast as it is by the increast
means of gratifying and pampering them, still in singleness of
heart devotes all his faculties to the service of God in the vari-
ous ministries of goodwill toward men. There is one Freedom
in the maiden, who in her innocence scarcely knows of sin,
either its allurements or its perils, and whose life glides along
gently and transparently amid flowers and beneath shade ; and
another Freedom in the man, the stream of whose life must
flow through the haunts of his fellow-creatures, and must re-
ceive the pollution of cities into it, and must become muddy if
it be turbulent, and can only preserve its purity by its majestic
calmness and might. There was one Freedom in Ismene, and
a higher and nobler in Antigone. There was one Freedom in
Adam before his Fall, and another in St Paul after his con-
version. Yet, though everywhere different, it is -everywhere
essentially the same. Although it admits of innumerable gra-
dations, in every one it may be entire and perfect : and, wher-
ever it is entire and perfect, all lesser distinctions vanish. One
star may indeed appear larger and brighter than another : but
they are all permitted to nestle together on the impartial bosom
of Night, and journey onward for ever, one mighty inseparable
family. Nay, those which seem the smallest and feeblest, may

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 467

perchance in reality be the largest and most splendid ; only our
accidental position misleads our judgement.

Independence on the other hand neither admits of degrees,
nor of equality, neither of difference, nor of sameness. In fact
nothing in the universe ever was, or ever can be, or was ever
conceived to be independent ; except forsooth the atoms of the
Corpuscular Philosophy : and even this Philosophy was con-
strained to acknowledge, that a hubbub of independent entities
can produce nothing beyond a hubbub of independent entities.
Hence, after rarifying the contents of its logical airpump, until
there was no possibility for anything to exist therein, it was
forced to turn the cock, and let in a little air, for the sake of
giving its atoms a partial impulse, and thus bringing them to
coalesce and interdepend.

Let it not be said that this is a fanciful quibble about words,
and that Independence and Freedom mean the same thing in
the end. They never did ; they do not ; they cannot. Inde-
pendence is merely relative and outward : Freedom has its
source within, in the depths of our spiritual life, and cannot sub-
sist unless it is fed by fresh supplies from thence. Its essence
is love ; for it is love that delivers us from the bondage of self.
Its home is peace ; from which indeed it often strays far, but
for which it always feels a homesick longing. Its lifeblood is
truth, which alone can free us from the delusions of the world,
and of our own carnal nature. Whereas the essence of Inde-
pendence is hatred and jealousy, its home strife and warfare :
it feeds upon delusions, and is itself the greatest It was not
until the true idea of Freedom, as not only reconcilable with
Law and Order and the obedience and sacrifice of the Will, but
requiring them imperatively to preserve it from running riot
and perishing in wilfulness, was fading away, that the new
word Independence was set up in its room. Since that time
the apostles of Independence in political and social life, and
of Atheism, that kindred negation, in religion, have so be-
wildered their hearers and themselves, that it is become very
difficult to revive the true idea of Freedom, and to make peo-
ple understand how it is no way necessary, for the sake of be-

468 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

coming free, to pull down the whole edifice of society, with all
its time-hallowed, majestic sanctities, and to scatter its stones
about in singleness and independence on the ground. Yet
assuredly it would not be more absurd to call such a multitude
of scattered, independent stones a house, than to suppose that a
million, or twenty millions, of independent human beings, each
stickling for his independence, and carrying out this princi-
ple through the ramifications of civil and domestic life, can
coalesce into a nation or a state. There is need of mortar :
there is need of a builder, yes, of a master builder : there is
need of dependence, coherence, subordination of the parts to the
whole and to each other. u.

A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks
freely. u.

The most bigoted persons I have known have been in some
things the most sceptical. The most sceptical notoriously are
often the greatest bigots. How account for this ? except on
the supposition that they are trees of the same kind, accidental-
ly planted on opposite hillocks, and swayed habitually by the
violence of opposite and partial gusts, which have checkt their
growth, twisted their tops, and pointed their stag-heads against
each other with an aspect of hatred and defiance.

The prophet who was slain by a lion, had a nobler and more
merciful death than Bishop Hatto, who was eaten up by rats.
Neither the crab, that walks with its back foremost, nor the
polypus, that fittest emblem of a democracy, ranks so high
among animals, that we should be ambitious of imitating them
in the construction of the body politic. Indeed it seems an in-
stinct among animals, to hang down their tails ; except when
the peacock spreads his out in the sunshine of a gala day, with
its rows of eyes tier above tier, like the vista of a merry theatre.
Unless Society can effect by education, what Lord Monboddo
holds man to have done by willing it, and can get rid of her tail,
it will be wisest to let the educated classes keep their natural
station at the head. u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 469

At Avignon I saw some large baths in the garden by the
temple of Diana, built on the foundations of the old Roman
ones. Does anybody bathe here now? we askt; for we could
see no materials for the purpose.

JVb ; the guide answered. Before the Revolution, the rich
used to bathe here : but they wanted to keep the baths to them-
selves ; and the poor wanted to come too ; and now nobody comes.

What an epitome of a revolution !

Few books have more than one thought : the generality in-
deed have not quite so many. The more ingenious authors of
the former seem to think that, if they once get their candle
lighted, it will burn on for ever. Yet even a candle gives a
sorry, melancholy light, unless it has a brother beside it, to
shine on it and keep it cheerful. For lights and thoughts are
social and sportive : they delight in playing with and into each
other. One can hardly conceive a duller state of existence than
sitting at whist with three dummies : and yet many of our prime
philosophers have seldom done anything else. u.

To illustrate signifies to make clear. It would be well if
writers would keep this in mind, and still better, if preachers
were to do so. They would then feel the necessity of suiting
their illustrations to their hearers. As it is, illustrations often
seem to be stuck in for the same reason as shrubs round stables
and outhouses, to keep the meaning out of sight. u.

Apollo was content to utter his oracles, and left the hearers
to make out their interpretation and meaning. So should his
priests, poets. They should speak intelligibly indeed, but orac-
ularly, even as all the works of Nature are oracular, embody-
ing her laws, and manifesting them, but not spelling them in
words, not writing notes and glosses on themselves, not telling
ycu that they know the laws under which they act. They
are content to prove their knowledge by fashioning themselves
and all their courses according to it: and they leave man to
decipher the laws from the living hieroglyphics in which they
are written. u.

470 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

The progress of knowledge is slow. Like the sun, we can-
not see it moving; but after a while we perceive that it has
moved, nay, that it has moved onward. u.

A cobweb is soon spun, and still sooner swept away.

We all love to be in the right. Granted. We like exceed-
ingly to have right on our side, but are not always particularly
anxious about being on the side of right. We like to be in the
right, when we are so ; but we do not like it, when we are in
the wrong. At least it seldom happens that anybody, after
emerging from childhood, is very thankful to those who are
kind enough to take trouble for the sake of guiding him from
the wrong to the right. Few in any age have been able to
join heartily in the magnanimous declaration uttered by Socra-
tes in the Gorgias : " I am one who would gladly be refuted, if
I should say anything not true, — and would gladly refute an-
other, should he say anything not true, — but would no less
gladly be refuted than refute. For I deem it a greater advan-
tage ; inasmuch as it is a greater advantage to be freed from
the greatest of evils, than to free another ; and nothing, I con-
ceive, is so great an evil as a false opinion on matters of moral
concernment."

With some such persons indeed, Hermann says he has met,
after speaking of the prevalence of the opposite spirit, in the
Preface to his second Edition of the Hecuba : " Turn maxime
irasci aliquem, quum se jure reprehensum videat, aliorum ex-
emplis cognovi. Nee mirum : piget enim errasse : illud vero
mirum, si quos sibimet ipsis irasci aequius erat, iram in eos
effundunt, a quibus sunt reprehensi, quasi horum, non sua sit
culpa, vidisseque errorem gravius peccatum sit, quam commi-
sisse. Sed inveni tamen etiam qui veri quam suae gloriae studi-
osiores non solum aequo animo et dissensionem et reprehensionem
fervent, verum etiam ingenue confiterentur errorem, atque adeo
gratias agerent monenti." In act such persons, I am afraid, are
rare ; though in profession it is common enough to find people
consenting to the declaration with which Sir Thomas Brown

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 471

closes his Preface : " We shall only take notice of such, whose
experimental and judicious knowledge shall solemnly look upon
our work, not only to destroy of ours, but to establish of his
own ; not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain and diluci-
date, to add and ampliate. — Unto whom we shall not conten-
tiously rejoin, or only to justify our own, but to applaud or
confirm his maturer assertions ; and shall confer what is in us
unto his name and honour, ready to be swallowed in any worthy
enlarger, as having acquired our end, if any way, or under any
name, we may obtain a work so much desired, and yet deside-
rated of truth."

But it is no way surprising that abstract truth should kick
the beam, when weighed against any personal prejudice or pre-
dilection ; seeing that, even in things of more immediate human
interest, we are often beguiled by our selfishness into desiring,
not that which is desirable in itself, but that which we have in
some manner associated with our vanity and our personal credit.
If a misfortune which a man has prognosticated, befalls his
friend, the monitor, instead of sympathizing and condoling
with him, will often exclaim with a taunting tone of triumph :
Did rCt I tell you so ? Another time you '11 take my advice . . .
as if any one would be willing to take advice from so cold-
hearted and unfriendly a counsellor. There are those too, I
am afraid, who would rather see their neighbours suffer, than
their own forebodings fail. Jonah is not the only prophet of
evil, whom it has displeased exceedingly, and who has been very
angry, because God is a gracious God, and merciful, slow to
anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil.
The beautiful apologue of the gourd is still, and, I fear, ever
will be, applicable to many. Indeed what are our most cherisht
pleasures, for the loss of which we are the angriest, even unto
death t but commonly such gourds, for which we have not la-
boured, nor made them grow, which came up in a night, and per-
isht in a night. On them we have pity, because they were a
shadow over our heads to deliver us from our griefs, and be-
cause their withering exposes us to the sun and wind. Yet let
a man once have turned his face against his brethren, — and

472 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

that, not for the wickedness of their hands or of their hearts,
but merely for their holding some opinion or doctrine which he
deems erroneous : it is not unlikely that he will be loth to see
Nineveh spared, that great city, wherein are more than six-score
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand
and their left hand, arid also much cattle. u.

The last words of the foregoing quotation remind me, that,
in estimating the motives for and against any measure or meas-
ures, we rarely, if ever, look beyond the manner in which men
will be affected thereby. Our lordly eyes cannot stoop to no-
tice the happiness or misery of the animals beneath us. Indeed
no one, except God, cares for more than a small particle of the
universe. In reckoning up the horrours of war, we never
think about the sufferings of the much cattle. I shall not for-
get a deserved rebuke which I received years ago from Wil-
liam Schlegel. He had been speaking of entering Leipsic on
the day after the battle ; and I askt him whether it was not a
glorious moment, thoughtlessly, or rather thinking of the grand
consequences which sprang from that victory, more than of the
scene itself. Glorious I he exclaimed : how could anybody think
about glory, when crossing a plain covered for miles with thou-
sands of his brethren, dead and dying? And what to me was
still more piteous, was the sight of the poor horses lying about so
helplessly and patiently, uttering deep groans of agony, with no
one to do anything for them.

Among the heroic features in the character of our great com-
mander, none, — except that sense of duty which in him is
ever foremost, and throws all things else into the shade, — is
grander than the sorrow for his companions who have fallen,
which seems almost to overpower every other feeling, even in
the flush of a victory. The conqueror of Bonaparte at Water-
loo wrote on the day after, the 19th of June, to the Duke of
Beaufort : " The losses we have sustained, have quite broken
me down ; and I have no feeling for the advantages we have
acquired." On the same day too he wrote to Lord Aberdeen :
" I cannot express to you the regret and sorrow with which I

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 473

look round me, and contemplate the loss which I have sustained,
particularly in your brother. The glory resulting from such
actions, so dearly bought, is no consolation to me ; and I cannot
suggest it as any to you and his friends : but I hope that it may
be expected that this last one has been so decisive, as that no
doubt remains that our exertions and our individual losses will
be rewarded by the early attainment of our just object. It is
then that the glory of the actions in which our friends and
relations have fallen, will be some consolation for their loss."
He who could write thus, had already gained a greater vic-
tory than that of Waterloo : and the less naturally follows the
greater. U.

Most men work for the present, a few for the future. The
wise work for both, for the future in the present, and for the
present in the future. u.

There are great men enough to incite us to aim at true great-
ness, but not enough to make us fancy that God could not exe-
cute His purposes without them.

Man's works, even in their most perfect form, always have
more or less of excitement in them. God's works are calm
and peaceful, both in Nature, and in His word. Hence
Wordsworth, who is above all men the poet of Nature, seldom
excites the feelings, because he is so true to his subject. a.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much ; vices almost always
too little.

As art sank at Rome, comforts increast. Witness the baths

of Caracalla and Diocletian,

We sever what God has joined, and so destroy beauty, and
lose hold of truth, a.

It is quite right there should be an Inquisition. It is quite

474 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

right there should be autos-da-fe. The more the better, if they
are but real ones. There should be an Inquisition and autos-da-
fe in every country, yea, in every town, yea, on every hearth,
yea, in every heart. The evil hitherto has been that they have
been far too few. Every man ought to be an inquisitor ; every
man ought to perform autos-da-fe ; often accompanied by death,
not seldom by torture. Only his inquisition should be over
himself; only his autos-da-fe should consist in the slaying of
his own lusts and passions, in the firy sacrifice of his own stub-
born, unbelieving will.

These would be truly autos-da-fe. It is no act of faith for
me to offer up another as a victim. On the contrary it is an
act of unbelief. It shews I have no faith in my brother's
spiritual nature. It shews I have no faith in the power of God
to work upon his heart and change it. It shews I have no
faith in the sword of the Spirit, but hold the sword of the flesh
to be mightier.

Nor again can Faith exist in opposition to Love. Faith is
the root of Love, the root without which Love cannot have any
being. At times the root may be found, where, the plant has
not yet grown up to perfection. But no hatred, or other evil,
malign passion can spring from the root of Faith. Wherever
they are found, they grow from unbelief, from want of faith, —
from want of faith in man, and from want of faith in God.

Moreover such autos-da-fe would be sure of effecting their
purpose, which the others never can. They would be accept-
able to God. They would destroy what ought to be destroyed.
And were we diligent in performing them, there would be no
need of any others.

This Inquisition should be set up in every soul. In some
indeed it may at times be in abeyance. The happiest spirits
are those by whom the will of God is done without effort or
struggle. To this angelic nature however humanity can only
approximate, and that too not at once, but by divers steps
and stages, at every one of which new autos-da-fe are re-
quired, u.

GUESSES. AT TRUTH. 475

Some people seem to think that Death is the only reality in
Life. Others, happier and rightlier minded, see and feel that
Life is the true reality in Death. u.

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Is it indeed so ? Alas
then for England ! For surely we profess to serve both ; and
few can doubt that we do indeed serve one of the two, as zeal-
ously and assiduously as he himself can wish. But how must it
be with our service to the other ? u.

They who boast of their tolerance, merely give others leave
to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A wal-
rus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they
really are. a.

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what
we are, but what we ought to be. a.

Many people make their own God ; and he is much what
the French may mean, when they talk of le bon Dieu, — very
indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything,
but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong.
Such a god is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone.

The errours of the good are often very difficult to eradicate,
from being founded on mistaken views of duty. a.

Truly a river is a very wilful thing, going as it will, and
where it will.

How should men ever change their religion ? In its abase-
ment honour prevents them, in its prosperity contempt. From
their hights they cannot see, because they are so high, in their
lowliness they dare not see, because they are too lowly.

476 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted
receiver the mind cannot use its wings, — the clearest proof
that it is out of its element.

How different are summer storms from winter ones ! In
winter they rush over the earth with all their violence ; and
if any poor remnants of foliage or flowers have lingered behind,
these are swept along at one gust. Nothing is left but desola-
tion ; and long after the rain has ceast, pools of water and mud
bear token of what has been. But when the clouds have
poured out their torrents in summer, when the winds have spent
their fury, and the sun breaks forth again in its glory, all things
seem to rise with renewed loveliness from their refreshing bath.
The flowers glistening with rain-drops smell sweeter than be-
fore ; the grass seems to have gained another brighter shade of
green ; and the young plants, which had hardly come into sight,
have taken their place among their fellows in the borders ; so
quickly have they sprung up under the showers. The air too,
which may previously have been oppressive, is become clear
and soft and fresh.

Such too is the difference, when the storms of affliction fall
on hearts unrenewed by Christian faith, and on those who abide
in Christ. In the former they bring out the dreariness and
desolation, which may before have been unapparent. The
gloom is not relieved by the prospect of any cheering ray to
follow it, of any flowers or fruit to shew its beneficence. But
in the truly Christian soul, though weeping endure for a night,
joy comes in the morning. A sweet smile of hope and love
follows every tear ; and tribulation itself is turned into the
chief of blessings. a.

We never know the true value of friends. While they live,
we are too sensitive of their faults j when we have lost them,
we only see their virtues, A.

So however ought it to be. When the perishable shrine has
crumbled away, what can we see, except that which alone is
imperishable ? u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 477

How few are our real wants ! and how easy is it to satisfy
them ! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable, a.

The king is the least independent man in his dominions, —
the beggar the most so. A.

Multafiunt eadem sed aliter, Quintilian (n. 20. 10) has justly
remarkt. I have spoken above (p. 387) of the efficacy of man-
ner in oratory ; and every attentive observer must perpetually
have noticed its inestimable importance in all the occasions and
concerns of social life. So great indeed is its power, and so
much more do people in general value what their friend feels
for them, than what he does for them, that there are few who
would not look on you more kindly, if you were to meet their
request with an affectionate denial, than with a cold compli-
ance.

Nay, even when the materials are the very same, and when
they are arranged in the selfsame order, much will depend on
the manner in which they are combined and groupt into sep-
arate units. An ice-house is very different from a nice house ;
and a dot will turn a million into one.

A like thought is exprest in the following stanza, which

closes a poem prefixt by Thomas Newton to the Mirror for

Magistrates.

Certes this world a stage may well be called,
Whereon is plaid the part of every wight:
Some, now aloft, anon with malice galled
Are from high state brought into dismal plight.
Like counters are they, which stand now in sight
For thousand or ten thousand, and anon
Removed stand perhaps for less than one.

The mind is like a trunk. If well packt, it holds almost
everything ; if ill packt, next to nothing.

To say No with a good grace is a hard matter. To say Yes
with a good grace is sometimes still harder, at least for men.
With women perhaps it may be otherwise. I wonder how

478 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

many have married for no other reason, than that they had not
the strength of mind to say JVb. u.

Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good rider,
should exercise its influence without appearing to do so, should
be ever active, both as a support and as a restraint, yet seem
to lie easily in hand. It must always be ready to check or to
pull up, as occasion may require ; and only when the horse is a
runaway, should the action of the curb be perceptible. a.

Many expressions, once apt and emphatic, have been so
rubbed and worn away by long usage, that they retain as little
substance as the skeletons of wheels which have made the
grand tour on the Continent. They glide at length like smoke
through a chimney, not even impinging against the roof of the
mouth ; and after a month's repetition they leave nothing be-
hind more solid or more valuable than soot. Words gradually
lose their character, and, from being the tokens and exponents
of thoughts, become mere air-propelling sounds. To counter-
act this disastrous tendency, Boyle, it is said, never uttered the
name of God, without bowing his head. Such practices are
indeed liable to mischievous abuse : a superstitious value will
be attacht to the outward act, even when it is separated from
the inward and spiritual: and it is too well known that the
eyes have often been ogling a lover, while the fingers have
been telling Ave-Maries on a rosary. It may be too, that,
among the educated, listlessness of mind is rather encouraged
by any recurring formal motion of the body. Else there is a
value in whatever may help us to preserve the freshness and
elasticity of our feelings, and enable the heart to leap up at the
sight of a rainbow in manhood and in old age, as it did in child-
hood. Even the faults of our much abused climate are thus in
many respects blessings. They gave a liveliness to our enjoy-
ment of a fine day, such as cannot be felt between the Tropics.

How then is our nature to be fitted for the joys of Paradise ?
How can we be happy unceasingly, without ceasing to be hap-
py ? How is satisfaction to be disentangled from satiety ? which

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 479

now palls upon the heart and intellect, almost as much as upon
the senses. A strange and potent transformation must be
wrought in us. Our hearts must no longer be capricious : our
imaginations must no longer be vagrant : our wills must no
longer be wilful.

The process by which this transformation is to be brought
about, is set forth by Butler in his excellent chapter, the most
valuable perhaps in the whole Analogy, on a State of Moral
Discipline; where he shews that, while passive impressions
grow weaker by repetition, " practical habits are formed and
strengthened by repeated acts." So that the true preparation
for heaven is a life of godliness on earth. At the same time
we should remember how, as Milton says with character-
istic grandeur in the first chapter of his Reason of Church-
Government, u it is not to be conceived that those eternal efflu-
ences of sanctity and love in the glorified saints should be
confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is prescribed,
but that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand vagancies
of glory and delight, and with a kind of eccentrical equation
be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy and felicity." u.

"Whatever is the object of our constant attention will natu-
rally be the chief object of our interest. Even the feelings of
speculative men become speculative. They care about the
notions of things, and their abstractions, and their relations, far
more than about the realities. Thus an author's blood will
turn to ink. Words enter into him, and take possession of
him; and nothing can obtain admission except through the
passport of words. He cannot admire anything, until he has
had time to reflect and throw back its cold, inanimate ima^e
from the mirror of his Understanding, blind to every shape but
a shadow, deaf to every sound but an echo. Inverting the
legitimate process, he regards things as the symbols of words,
instead of words as the symbols of things. u.

Literary dissipation is no less destructive of sympathy with
the living world, than sensual dissipation. Mere intellect is as

480 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

hard-hearted and as heart-hardening as mere sense ; and the
union of the two, when uncontrolled by the conscience, and
without the softening, purifying influences of the moral affec-
tions, is all that is requisite to produce the diabolical ideal of
our nature. Nor is there any repugnance in either to coalesce
with the other : witness Iago, Tiberius, Borgia. u.

The body too has its rights ; and it will have them. They
cannot be trampled upon or slighted without peril. The body
ought to be the soul's best friend, and cordial, dutiful helpmate.
Many of the studious however have neglected to make it so ;
whence a large part of the miseries of authorship. Some good
men have treated it as an enemy ; and then it has become a
fiend, and has plagued them, as it did Antony. u.

The balance of powers in the human constitution has been
subverted by that divorce between the body and the mind,
which has often ensued from the seductive influences of Civili-
zation. The existence of one class of society has been ren-
dered almost wholly corporeal, that of the other almost solely
intellectual, — but intellectual in the lowest sense of the word,
and so that the intellect has been degraded into a caterer for
the wants and pleasures of the body, instead of devoting itself
to its rightful purposes, the pursuit, the enforcement, and the
exhibition of Truth. Moreover the pernicious, debilitating
tendencies of bodily pleasure need to be counteracted by the
invigorating exercises of bodily labour ; whereas bodily labour
without bodily pleasure converts the body into a mere machine,
and brutifies the soul. u.

What a loss is that of the village-green ! It is a loss to the
picturesque beauty of our English landscapes. A village-green
is almost always a subject for a painter, who is fond of quiet
home scenes, with its old, knotty, wide-spreading oak or elm or
ash, its grey church-tower, its cottages scattered in pleasing dis-
order around, each looking out of its leafy nest, its flock of
geese sailing to and fro across it. Where such spots are still

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 481

found, they refresh the wayworn traveler, wearied by the inter-
minable hedge-walls with which " restless ownership," — to use
an expression of Wordsworth's, — excludes profane feet from
its domain consecrated to Mammon.

The main loss however is that to the moral beauty of our
landscapes, that to the innocent, wholesome pleasures of the
poor. The village-green was the scene of their sports, of their
games. It was the playground for their children. It served
for trapball, for cricket, for manly, humanizing amusements, in
which the gentry and farmers might unite with the peasantry.
How dreary is the life of the English husbandman now !
" double, double toil and trouble," day after day, month after
month, year after year, uncheered by sympathy, unenlivened
by a smile, sunless, moonless, starless. He has no place to
be merry in but the beershop, no amusements but drunken
brawls, nothing to bring him into innocent, cheerful fellowship
with his neighbours. The stories of village sports sound like
legends of a mythical age, prior to the time when " Sabbathless
Satan," as Charles Lamb has so happily termed him, set up his
throne in the land.

It would be a good thing,, if our landed proprietors would try
to remedy some of the evils which the ravenous lust of prop-
erty has wrought in England during the last century. It would
be well, if by the side of every village two or three acres were
redeemed from the gripe of Mammon, and thrown open to the
poor, — if they were taught that their betters, as we presume
to call ourselves, take thought about other things, beside the
most effectual method of draining the last drop from the sweat
of their brows. Something at least should be done to encour-
age and foster the domestic affections among the lower orders,
to make them feel that they too have a home, and that a home
is the dearest spot upon earth. I do not mean, by institut-
ing prizes for those whose cottages are the neatest, or by giving
rewards for good behaviour to the best husbands and wives, the
best sons and daughters. Such rewards, unless there be some-
thing of playful humour connected with them, as was the case
with the old flitch of bacon, do far more harm than good, by
21 ee

482 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

robbing virtuous conduct of its sweetness and real worth, turn-
ing it into an instrument of covetousness or of vanity. The
only reward which is not hurtful, is a kind word, or an approv-
ing smile : for this, delightful as it is, is so slight and transient,
it can never find place among the motives to exertion.

All that ought to be done, all that can be done beneficially, is
to remove hindrances which obstruct good, and facilities and
temptations to evil, and to afford opportunities and facilities for
quiet, orderly, decorous enjoyment. When encouragement is
given, it should be by immediate personal intercourse. The
great Christian* law of reciprocation extends to the affections
also. Indeed with regard to them it is a law of Nature. We
cannot gain love and respect from others, unless we treat them
with love and respect.

The same reason which calls for the restoration of our vil-
lage greens, calls no less imperatively in London for the throw-
ing open of the gardens in all the squares. What bright
refreshing spots would these be in the midst of our huge brick
and stone labyrinth, if we saw them crowded on summer even-
ings with the tradespeople and mechanics from the neighbouring
streets, and if the poor children, who now grow up amid the
filth and impurities of the allies and courts, were allowed to run
about these playgrounds, so much healthier both for the body
and the mind ! We have them all ready : a word may open
them. He who looks at the good which has been effected by
the alterations in St James Park, he whose heart has been
gladdened by the happiness derived from them by young and
old, must surely think the widest extension of similar blessings
most desirable : and the state of that Park shews that no mis-
chiefs are to be apprehended.

At present the gardens in our squares are painful memen-
toes of aristocratic exclusiveness. They who need them the
least monopolize them. All the fences and walls by which this
exclusiveness bars itself out from the sympathies of common
humanity, must be cast down. If we do not remove them vol-
untarily, and in the spirit of love, they will be torn and trodden
down ere long perforce, in the spirit of wrath. u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 483

It is a blessed thing that we cannot enclose the sky. But
who knows ? Will not " restless ownership " long in time, like
Alexander, for a new world to appropriate ? and then a Joint-
stock Company will be establisht to send up balloons for the
purpose. Parliament too will doubtless display its boasted
omnipotence by passing an Act to grant them a monopoly, com-
manding the winds to offer them no molestation in their enter-
prise, and enjoining that, if any planet be caught trespassing, it
shall be impounded, and that all comets shall be committed
forthwith for vagrancy. u.

Quaerenda pecunia primum est ; Virtus post nummos. But
that post never arrives ; at least it did not at Rome, whatever
may be the case in England. The very influx of the nummi
retarded it, and kept Virtus at a distance. In fact she is of a
jealous nature, and never comes at all, unless she comes in the
first place. That which is a man's alpha will also be his omega ;
and, in advancing from one to the other, his velocity is mostly
accelerated at every step. u.

Messieurs, Mesdames, voici la verite. Personne n'e'coute.
Personne ne s'en soucit. Personne n'en veut. Peutetre on ne
m'a pas entendu. Essayons encore une fois. Messieurs, Mes-
dames, voici la veritable verite. Elle vient expres de l'autre
monde, pour se montrer a vous. On passe en avant. On s'en-
fuit. On ne me regarde que pour se moquer de moi. Mal-
heureux que je suis, on me laissera mourir de faim. Que faire
done? II faut absolument changer de cri. Messieurs, Mes-
dames, voici le vrai moyen pour gagner de l'argent. Mondieu !
Quelle foule ! Je ne puis plus. J'etouffe.

C'est une histoire que est assez commune. u.

One now and then meets with people on whose faces, in
whose manner, in whose words, one may read a bill giving
notice that they are to be lett or sold. They also profess to be
furnisht : but everybody knows what the furniture of a ready-
furnisht house usually is. tr.

484 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Nothing hides a blemish so completely as cloth of gold. This
is the first lesson that heirs and heiresses commonly learn.
"Would that equal pains were taken to convince them, that the
havino- inherited a good cover for blemishes does not entail any
absolute necessity of providing blemishes for it to cover !

Sauve qui peut ! Bonaparte is said to have exclaimed at
Waterloo, along with his routed army. At all events this was
the rule by which he regulated his actions, in prosperity as well
as in adversity. For what is Vole qui peut I but the counter-
part of Sauve qui peut ? And who are they that will cry to
the mountains, Cover us, and to the rocks, Fall on us, but they
who have acted on the double-faced 'rule, Vole qui peut, and
Sauve qui peut f

What an awful and blessed contrast to this cry presents itself
when we think of Him of whom His enemies said, He saved
others : Himself He cannot save ! They knew not how true the
first words were, nor how indissolubly they were connected with
the latter, how it is only by losing our life that we can either
save others or ourselves. u.

Few minds are sun-like, sources of light in themselves and
to others. Many more are moons, that shine with a derivative
and reflected light. Among the tests to distinguish them is
this : the former are always full, the latter only now and then,
when their suns are shining full upon them. u.

Hold thy peace 1 says Wisdom to Folly. Hold thy 'peace !
replies Folly to Wisdom.

Fly ! cries Light to Darkness : and Darkness echoes back,
Fly!

The latter chase has been going on since the beginning of
the world, without an inch of ground gained on either side.
May we believe that the result has been different in the contest
between Wisdom and Folly ? tr.

People have been sounding the alarm for many years past all

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 485

over Europe against what they call obscurantism and obscurant-
ists ; that is, against a supposed plot to extinguish all the new
lights of our days, and to draw down the night of the middle
ages on the awakening eyes of mankind. That such plans,
mad as they may appear, are not too mad for those who live in
a world of dreams, — that there are human bats, who, having
ventured out into the daylight, fly back scared to their dark
haunts, and would have all men follow them thither, — we
know by sad recent examples. But, even without this special
cause, the alarm is timely : indeed it can never be out of time.
For the true obscurantists are the passions, the prejudices, the
blinding delusions of our nature, warpt by evil habits and self-
indulgence ; the real obscurantism is bigotry, in all its forms,
which are many, and even opposite. There is the Pharisaic
obscurantism, which would put out the earthly lights, and the
Sadducean, which would put out the heavenly : and these, in
times of peril, when they are trembling for their beloved
darkness, combine and conspire. Nor has any class of men
been busier in this way, than many of those who have boasted
loudly of being the enlighteners of their age. In fact they
who brag of their tolerance, have often been among the fier- .
cest bigots, and worse than their opponents, from deeming them-
selves better. u.

If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will
neither be divine, nor able to divine.

No animal continues so long in a state of infancy as man ;
no animal is so long before it can stand. And is not this still
truer of our souls than of our bodies ? For when are they out
of their infancy ? when can they be said to stand ? Yet, till
they can, how much do they need a strong hand to uphold
them !

Alas for the exalted of the earth, that oversight is oversight !

Many a man has lost being a great man by splitting into two

486 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

middling ones. Atone yourself to the best of your power ; and
then Christ will atone for you.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming
better than you are. u.

Age seems to take away the power of acting a character,
even from those who have done so the most successfully during
the main part of their lives. The real man will appear, at first
fitfully, and then predominantly. Time spares the chisseled
beauty of stone and marble, but makes sad havock in plaster
and stucco. p.

The truth of this remark has been especially evinced in
France, owing to the prevalent artificialness of the French'
character. Hence the want of dignity in old age, noticed
above (p. 433). Of course too this deficiency has been most
conspicuous upon the throne of the Grand Monarque, even
down to the present times. In this respect at least Bonaparte
was a thorough Frenchman. Huge events succeeded each
other in his life so rapidly, that he lived through years in
months ; and adversity tore off the mask from him, which age
cracks and splits in others.

"We have the heavenly assurance that the path of the just is to
shine more and more unto the perfect day. But this blessed truth
involves its opposite, that the path of the wicked must grow
darker and darker unto the total night . . . unless he give heed
to the voice which calls him out of this darkness, and turn to
the light which is ever striving to illumine it. u.

Self-depreciation is not humility, though often mistaken for it.
Its source is oftener mortified pride. a.

The corruption and perversity of the world, which should be
our strongest stimulants to do what we can to remove and cor-
rect them, are often pleaded by the religious as excuses for
withdrawing from the world and doing nothing. How unlike is

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 487

this to the example of Him, who concluded all under sin, that
He might have mercy upon all, that He might take their sinful
nature upon him, to purify it from its sinfulness ! a.

How oft the heart, when wrapt in passion's arms,
Reels, by the tumult stunned, or conscience- wounded,
Or deafened with the trumpet-tongued alarms
The victim's selfdevotedness has sounded!

What then remains ? a gust of half-enjoyments,
That, twisting memory to a vain regret,
Prepares for age that saddest of employments,
A desperate endeavour to forget.

Help, help us, Spirit of Good! and, hither gliding,
Bring, on the wings of Jesus intercession,
The firy sword o'er Eden's tree presiding,
To guard our tempted fancies from transgression.

The devils, we are told, believe and tremble. Our part is to
believe and love. But it is hard to convince people that noth-
ing short of this can be true Christian faith. So, because they
are sometimes terrified by the thought of God, they fancy they
believe, though their hearts are far away from Him. a.

At the end of a hot summer, the children in the streets look
almost as pale and parcht as the grass in the fields : and every
object one sees may suggest profitable meditations on the inca-
pacity of all things earthly, be they human, animal, or vegeta-
ble, to support unmixt, uninterrupted sunshine ... a truth which
the sands of Africa teach as demonstratively, as the Polar ice
teaches the converse. u.

The story of Amphion sets forth how, whatever we may have
to build, be it a house, a city, or a church, the most powerful of
all powers that we can employ in building it, is harmony and
love. Only the love must be of a genuine, lasting kind, not a
spirit of weak compromise, sacrificing principles to expedients,
and abandoning truths for the sake of tying a loveknot of er-
rours, but strong from being in unison with what alone is true

48g GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and lasting, the will and word of God. Else the bricks will
fall out, as quickly as they have fallen in. u.

Philosophy cannot raise the bulk of mankind up to her level :
therefore, if she is to become popular, she must descend to theirs.
This she cannot do without a twofold grave injury. She will
debase herself, and will puff up her disciples. She will no long-
er dwell on high, beside the primal sources of truth, uttering
her voice from thence, pouring the streams of wisdom among
the masses of mankind. She will come down, and set up a
company to supply their houses with water at a cheap rate.
Whereupon ensues the blessing of competition between rival
Philosophies, each striving to be more popular, that is, more
superficial than the others. In such a state of things, it is al-
most fortunate if the name of Philosophy be usurpt by Science,
wrhich, as dealing with outward things, may with less degrada-
tion be adapted to material wants, and from which it is easier
to draw practical results, without holding deep communings with
primary principles.

There is only one way in which Philosophy can truly become
popular, that which Socrates tried, and which centuries after
was perfected in the Gospel, — that which tells men of their
divine origin and destiny, of their heavenly duties and calling.
This comes home to men's hearts and bosoms, and, instead of
puffing them up, humbles them. But to be efficient, this should
flow down straight from a higher sphere. Even in its Socratic
form, it was supported by those higher principles, which we
find set forth with such power and beauty by Plato. In Chris-
tian Philosophy on the other hand, the latter has come down
from heaven, and the angels are continually descending and
ascending along it. Were this heavenly ladder withdrawn or
cut off, our Philosophy, — that part of it which sallied beyond
the pale of empirical Psychology and formal Logic, — would
become mere vulgar gossip about Expediency, Utility, and the
various other nostrums for diluting and medicating evil until it
turns into good. U.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 439

In the lower realms of Nature, all things are subject to
uniform, unvarying, calculable laws. To these laws they sub-
mit with unswerving obedience ; so that with regard to the
heavenly bodies we can tell what has been thousands of
years ago, and what will be thousands of years hence, with
the nicest precision. As we enter into the regions of Life,
we seem almost to enter into the regions of Chance. We
can no longer predicate with the same confidence concern-
ing individuals, but are obliged to limit our conclusions to
genera and species. Still there is a universal order, a mani-
fest sequence of cause and effect, a prevailing congruity and
harmony, until we mount up to man. But when we make
man the object of our observations and speculations, whether
as he exists in the present world, or as he is set before us in
the records of history, inconsistencies, incongruities, contradic-
tions are so common, that we rather wonder when we find an
instance of strict consistency, of undeviating conformity to any
law or principle. Disorder at first sight seems the only order,
discord the only harmony. Yet we may not doubt that here
also there is an order and a harmony, working itself out, al-
though our faculties are not capable of apprehending it, and
though the calculus has hitherto transcended our powers. At
all events, to adopt the image used by Bacon in a passage
quoted above (p. 314), if we hear little else than a dissonant
screeching of multitudinous noises now, which only blend in
the distance into a roar like that of the raging sea, it behoves
us to hold fast to the assurance that this is the necessary pro-
cess whereby the instruments are to be tuned for the heavenly
consort. Though Chaos may only have been driven out of a
part of his empire as yet, that empire is undergoing a perpet-
ual curtailment; and in the end he will be cast out of the
intellectual and moral and spiritual world, as entirely as out of
the material. u.

It would be very strange, unless inconsistencies and contra-
dictions were thus common in the history of mankind, that the
operation of Mathematical Science, — emanating as it does
21*

490 GUESSES AT TEUTH.

wholly from the Reason, and incapable of moving a step, except
so far as it is supported by the laws of the Reason, — should
have been, both in England and France, to undermine the
empire of the power from which it proceeds, and which alone
can render it stable and certain. Such however has been the
fact ; and it has been brought about in divers ways.

Attempts were made to subject moral and spiritual truths to
the selfsame processes, which were found to hold good in the
material world, but against which they revolted as incompatible
with their free nature. Then that which would not submit to
the same strict logical formules, was treated as an outcast from
the domain of Reason, and handed over to the empirical Un-
derstanding, which judges of expediency, and utility, and the
adaptation of means to ends. Sometimes too this faculty,
which at best is only the prime minister of Reason, its Maire
du Palais, was confounded with and supplanted it.

Hence the name itself grew to be abused and wholly mis-
applied. A man who fashions his conduct so as to fit all the
windings of the world, and who moreover has the snowball's
talent of gathering increase at every step, is called a very
reasonable man. He on the other hand, who devotes himself to
the service of some idea breathed into him by the Reason, and
who in his zeal for this forgets to make friends with the Mam-
mon of Unrighteousness, — he who desires and demands that
the hearts and minds of his neighbours should be brought into
conformity to the supreme laws of the Reason, and that the
authority of these laws should be recognized in the councils of
nations, — is by all accounted most unreasonable, and by many
pitied as half mad.

It may be that this was the natural, and for a time irrepres-
sible consequence, when Mathematics enlisted among the retain-
ers of Commerce, and when the abstractions of Geometry,
being employed among the principles of Mechanical construc-
tion, could thus be turned to account, and .were therefore
eagerly embraced for purposes of trade. Profitable Science
cast unprofitable Science into the background : she was ashamed
of her poorer sister, and denied her. The multitude, the half-

GUESSES. AT TRUTH. 491

thinking, half-taught multitude have always been idolatrous.
In order to be roused out of their inert torpour, they require
some visible, tangible effigy of that which cannot be seen or
toucht. Thus the same perverseness, which led men to worship
the creature instead of the Creator, led them also to set up
Utility as the foundation of Morality, and to substitute the occa-
sional rules and the variable maxims of the Understanding for
the eternal laws and principles of the Reason. u.

We ask, what is the use of a thing? Our forefathers askt,
what is it good for ? They saw far beyond us. A thing may
seem, and even to a certain extent be useful, without being
good : it cannot be good, without being useful. The two qual-
ities do indeed always coincide in the end : but the worth of a
criterion is to be simple, plain, and as nearly certain as may be.
Now that which a man in a sound and calm mind sincerely
deems good, always is so : that which he may deem useful, may
often be mischievous, nay, I believe, mostly will be so, unless
some reference to good be introduced into the solution of the
problem. For no mind ever sailed steadily, without moral
principle to ballast and right it.

Besides, when you have ascertained what is good, you are
already at the goal ; to which Utility will only lead you by a
long and devious circuit, where at every step you risk losing
your way. You may abuse and misuse : you cannot ungood. u.

So far is the calculation of consequences from being an in-
fallible, universal criterion of Duty, that it never can be so in
any instance. Only when the voice of Duty is silent, or when
it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the conse-
quences of a particular action, and calculate how far it is likely
to fulfill what Duty has enjoined, either by its general laws, or
by a specific edict on this occasion. But Duty is above all con-
sequences, and often, at a crisis of difficulty, commands us to
throw them overboard. Fiat Justitia ; pereat Mundus, It
commands us to look neither to the right, nor to the left, but
straight onward. Hence every signal act of Duty is altogether

492 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

an act of Faith. It is performed in the assurance that God
will take care of the consequences, and will so order the course
of the world, that, whatever the immediate results may be, His
word shall not return to Him empty. u.

It is much easier to think right without doing right, than to
do right without thinking right. Just thoughts may, and wo-
fully often do fail of producing just deeds.; but just deeds are
sure to beget just thoughts. For, when the heart is pure and
straight, there is hardly anything which can mislead the under-
standing in matters of immediate personal concernment. But
the clearest understanding can do little in purifying an impure
heart, the strongest little in straightening a crooked one. You
cannot reason or talk an Augean stable into cleanliness. A
single day's work would make more progress in such a task
than a century's words.

Thus our Lord's blessing on knowledge is only conditional :
If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them (John xiii.
17). But to action His promise is full and certain : If any
man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it is
of God. John vii. 17. . u.

One of the saddest things about human nature is, that a man
may guide others in the path of life, without walking in it
himself; that he may be a pilot, and yet a castaway. u.

The original principle of lots is a reliance on the immediate,
ever-present, all-ruling providence of God, and on His inter-
position to direct man's judgement, when it is at a fault. The
same was the principle of trials by ordeal. But here, as in so
many other cases, the practice long outlasted the principle
which had prompted it. Although the soul fled ages ago, the
body still cumbers the ground, and poisons the air. Duels, in
which a point of honour is allowed to sanction revenge and
murder, have taken the place of the ancient judicial combats ;
and, after losing the belief which in some measure justified the
religious lotteries of our ancestors, we betook ourselves to mer-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 493

cenary lotteries in their stead. The motive was no longer to
obtain justice, but to obtain money, — the principle, confidence,
not in all-seeing, all-regulating Wisdom, but in blind, all-con-
founding Chance. u.

The greatest truths are the simplest : and so are the greatest
men. u.

There are some things in which we may well envy the
members of the Church of Rome, — in nothing more than in
the reverence which they feel for whatever has been conse-
crated to the service of their religion. It may be, that they
often confound the sign with the thing signified, and merge the
truth in the symbol. We on the other hand, in our eagerness
to get rid of the signs, have not been careful enough to pre-
serve the things signified. We have sometimes hurt the truth,
in stripping off the symbols it was clothed in.

For instance, they can allow their churches to stand open all
day long; and the reverence felt by the whole people for the
house of God is their pledge that nobody will dare to rob or
injure it. The want of such a reverence in England is per-
haps in the main an offset from that superstitious hatred of
superstition and idolatry which was so prevalent among the
Puritans, through which they would drag the Communion-table
into the middle of the nave, and turn it into a seat for the low-
est part of the congregation, and would seem almost to have
fancied that, because God has no regard for earthly beauty or
splendour, He must needs look with special favour on meanness
and filth, — that, as He does not respect what man respects, He
must respect what man is offended by. The multitude of our
sects too, which, if they agree in little else, are nearly unani-
mous in their hostility to the National Church, has done much
to impair the reverence for her buildings; more especially
since the practical exclusion of the lower orders from the min-.
istry, while almost all the functions connected with religion are
exercised by the clergy alone, has in a manner driven those
among the lower orders, who have felt a calling to labour in the

494

GUESSES AT TRUTH.

work of the Gospel, into societies where they could find a field
for their activity and zeal.

In fact this prejudice, as it is termed, has shared the same
fate with our other prejudices, — that is, with those sentiments,
whether evil or good, the main source of which lies in the
affections, — and has been trampled under foot and crusht by
the tyrannous despotism of the Understanding. Not that the
Understanding has emancipated us from prejudices. Liable as
it is to err, even more so perhaps than any of our other facul-
ties, — or at all events more self-satisfied and obstinate in its
errours, — our prejudices have only lost what was kindly and
pleasing about them, and have become more inveterate, and
consequently more hurtful; because the bias and warp which
the Understanding receives, is now caused solely by selfishness
and self-will; whereby it becomes more prone than ever to
look askance on all things connected with the ideal and imagi-
native, the heroic and religious parts of our nature.

How fraught with errour and mischief our present systems
of Moral Philosophy are, may be perceived from the tone of
feeling prevalent with regard to such matters, even among the
intelligent and the young. I was at a party the other day,
where the recent act of sacrilege in King's College Chapel (in
1816) became the subject of conversation. An opinion was
exprest, that, if a man must rob, it is better he should rob a
church than a dwelling-house. I lookt on this as nothing else
than one of those paradoxes, which ingenious men are ever
starting, whether for the sake of saying something strange, or
to provoke a discussion ; and for which therefore their momen-
tariness and unpremeditatedness are mostly a sufficient excuse.
Still, deeming it a rash and dangerous intrusion on holy ground,
I took up my parable against it. To my astonishment I found
that the opinion of every person present was opposed to mine.
It was their deliberate conviction, resting, they conceived, on
grounds of the soundest philosophy, that to rob a church is bet-
ter than to rob a dwelling-house. The argument on which this
conviction was based, may easily be guest : for of course there
was but one, — on which all rang the changes, — that a man

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 495

who robs a dwelling-house runs a risk of being led to commit
murder; whereas robbing a church is only robbing a church.
Only robbing a church ! Let us look, what is the real nature
and tendency of the act, which is thus puft aside by the help of
this little word, only.

In doing so I will waive all such considerations as are drawn
mainly from the feelings. I will not insist on the cowardliness
of plundering what has been left without defense, or on the
treacherousness of violating that confidence in the probity of
the people, which leaves our churches unguarded ; although
both these considerations add a moral force to the legal enact-
ments against horse-stealing, and would justify them, if they
wanted any further justification than their obvious necessity.
Nor will I urge the moral turpitude of being utterly destitute
of that reverence, which every Christian, without disparage-
ment to his intellectual freedom, may reasonably be expected to
entertain for objects sanctified by the holy uses they are devoted
to. Notwithstanding my persuasion of the inherent wisdom of
our moral affections, I will pass by all the arguments with which
they would furnish me, and will agree to look at the question
merely as a matter of policy, but of policy on the highest and
widest scale, in the assurance that, if the affairs of men are in-
deed ordered and directed by an All-wise Providence, the paths
of moral duty and of political expediency will always be found
to be one and the same.

If however we are to test the evil of an act, not by that
which lies in it, and which it essentially involves, — by the out-
rage it commits against our moral feelings, by its violation of
the laws of the Conscience, — but by its consequences; at all
events we should look at those consequences which spring from
it naturally and necessarily, not at those which have no neces-
sary, though they may have an accidental and occasional con-
nexion with it, like that of murder with robbery in a dwelling-
house. Now it is an axiom of all civil wisdom, which, con-
firmed as it is by the experience of ages, and by the testimony
of every sage statesman and philosopher, it would be a waste
of time here to establish by argument, that, without religion, no

496 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

civil society can subsist. That is to say, unless the great mass
of a nation are united by some one predominant feeling, which
blends and harmonizes the diversities of individual character,
represses and combines the waywardness of individual wills,
and forms a centre, around which all their deeper feelings may
cluster and coalesce, no nation can continue for a succession of
generations as one body corporate, or a single whole. There
may indeed be many diversities, and even conflicting repug-
nances among sects; but there must be a religious feeling
spreading through the great body of the people; and that re-
ligious feeling must in the main be one and the same : it must
have the same groundwork of faith, the same objects of rever-
ence and fear and love : else the nation will merely be a com-
bination of discordant units, that will have no hearty, lasting
bond of union, and may split into atoms at any chance blow.
A proof of this is supplied by the dismal condition of Ireland :
for, though the opposite forms of Christianity which have pre-
vailed there, have so much in common, that, notwithstanding
the. further instance of Germany to the contrary, one cannot
pronounce it impossible for them to coalesce into a national
unity, the effect hitherto has only been endless contention and
strife. Therefore whatever violates or shakes the religious
feelings of a nation, is an assault on the very foundations of its
existence. But that every act of sacrilege, unless it be visited
by general abhorrence, must weaken and sap these religious
feelings, will hardly be questioned. Wherever such feelings
exist, an act of sacrilege must needs be regarded as an outrage
against everything sacred, and must be reprobated and punisht
as such. Although it is not directly an outrage against human
life, it is one against that which gives human life its highest
dignity and preciousness, that without which human life would
be worth little more than the life of other animals. Hence, of
all crimes, it is the most injurious to the highest interests of the
nation.

Besides, should sacrilege become at all common, — which
may God in mercy to our country avert ! — it would be neces-
sary to station a watchman or sentry to guard all our churches,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 497

or else to remove everything valuable contained in them, as
soon as the congregation disperst. And what a brand of igno-
miny would it be to us among the nations of Christendom, that
we are such inborn, ingrained thieves, as to be unable to re-
strain the itching of our hands even in the holy temples of our
religion ! What a confession of shame would it be, that, in the
consciousness of this incurable disease, we had been forced to
legislate for the sake of checking the increase of this our bosom
sin, and had taken a lesson from the pot-houses, to which
the refuse of the people resort, and where the knives and forks
are chained to the table ! that we should be unable to trust
ourselves, to put the slightest trust in our own honesty, even
when religion is superadded to the ordinary motives for preserv-
ing if! Yet, if we have learnt any lesson from our own his-
tory, and from that of the world, it should be, that the most
precious part of a nation's possessions, no less than of an indi-
vidual's, is its character : wherefore he who damages that char-
acter, is guilty of treason against his country. The only
protection which a nation, without signing its own shame-
warrant, can grant to the altars of its religion, is by inflicting
the severest punishment on those who dare to violate them.
They ought to be their own potent safeguard. A dwelling-
house is protected by its inmates ; and so ought a church to be
protected by the indwelling of the Spirit whom the eye of
Faith beholds there.

Moreover burglaries naturally work out their own remedy.
Householders become more vigilant ; the police is improved ;
the law is strengthened. But, when Faith is shaken, no out-
ward force can set it up again as firmly as before ; and that
which rests on it falls to the ground. The outrages committed
against the visible building of the church, unless they are ar-
rested, will also prove hurtful to the spiritual Church of Christ.
Nine tenths in every nation are unable to distinguish between
an object and its attributes, between an idea and the form in
which it has usually been manifested, and the associations with
which it has ever, and to all appearance indissolubly, been con-
nected. Such abstraction, even in cultivated minds, requires

498 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

much watchfulness and attention. The bulk of mankind will
not easily understand, how He, whose house may be plundered
with impunity, can and ought to be the object of universal rev-
erence, how He can be the Almighty.

I will not speak of the moral corruption which is sure to
ensue from the decay of religion in a people. Among the
higher and educated classes, we may have divers specious sub-
stitutes, in the cultivation of reason and the moral affections, the
law of honour and of opinion, which may preserve a decorous
exterior of life, even after the primal source of all good in the
heart is dried up. But for the lower orders Religion is the only
guardian and guide, that can preserve them from being swept
along by blind delusions, and the cravings of unsatisfied appe-
tites and passions. If they do not fear God, they will not fear
King, or Parliament, or Laws. What does not rest on a heav-
enly foundation will be overthrown.

Thus, even if a burglary were necessarily to be attended by
murder, it would be a less destructive crime to society than sac-
rilege. Human life should indeed be sacred, on account of the
divine spirit enshrined in it. Take away that spirit ; and it is
worth little more than that of any other animal. For the sake
of any moral principle, of any divine truth, it may be sacri-
ficed, and ought to be readily. He who dies willingly in such
a cause, is not a suicide, but a martyr. To deem otherwise is
propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas. u.

So diseased are the appetites of those who live in what is
called the fashionable world, that they mostly account Sunday
a very dull day, which, with the help of a longer morning sleep,
and of an evening nap, and of the Parks, and of the Zoologi-
cal Gardens, and of looking at their neighbours' dresses, and at
their own, they contrive, as it only comes once a week, to get
through. Yet of all days it is the one on which our highest
faculties ought to be employed the most vigorously, and to find
the deepest, most absorbing interest.

With somewhat of the same feeling do the lovers of excite-
ment regard a state of peace. It is so stupid ; there's no news :

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 499

no towns have been stormed, no battles fought. We want a
little bloodshed, to colour and flavour our lives and our news-
papers. How dull must it have been at Rome when the tem-
ple of Janus was shut ! The Romans however were a lucky-
people ; for that mishap seldom befell them.

It is sad, that, when so many wars are going on unceasingly
in all parts of the earth, — the war waged by the mind of man
against the powers of Nature in the fulfilment of his mission
to subdue them, — the war of Light against Darkness, of
Truth against Ignorance and Errour, — the war of Good
against Evil, in all its numerous forms, political, social, and
personal, — it is very sad that we should feel little interest in
any form, except that which to the well-being of mankind is
commonly the least important u.

When I hear or read the vulgar abuse, which is poured out
if ever a monk or a convent is mentioned, I am reminded of
what the Egyptian king said to the Israelites : Ye are idle, ye
are idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the
Lord. To those who know not God, the worship of God is
idleness. u.

Idolatry may be a child of the Imagination ; but it is a child
that has forgotten its parent. Idolatry is the worship of the
visible. It mistakes forms for substances, symbols for realities.
It is bodily sight, and mental blindness, — a doting on the out-
ward, occasioned by the want of the poetic faculty. So that
Religion has suffered its most grievous injury, not from too
much imagination, but from too little.

The bulk of mankind feel the reality of this world, but have
little or no feeling for the reality of the next world. They
who, through affliction or some other special cause, have had
their hearts withdrawn from the world for a while, and been
living in closer communion with God, will sometimes almost
cease to feel the reality of this world, and will live mainly in
the next. The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both, so

500 " GUESSES AT TKUTH.

as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings, to
keep our mind's eye and our heart's eye ever fixt on the Land
of Promise, without looking away from the road along which
we are to travel toward it. a.

To judge of Christianity from the lives of ordinary, nominal
Christians is about as just as it would be to judge of tropic
fruits and flowers from the produce which the same plants
might bring forth in Iceland. a.

The statue of Memnon poured out its song of joy, when the
rays of the morning sun fell upon it : and thus, when the rays
of divine Truth first fall on a human soul, it is scarcely possible
that something like heavenly music should not issue from its
depths. The statue however was of stone : no living voice
was awakened in it: the sounds melted and floated away.
Alas that the heavenly music drawn from the heart of man
should often be no less fleeting than the song of Memnon's
statue ! u.

Seeing is believing, says the proverb ; and most thoroughly
is it verified by mankind from childhood upward. Though,
of all our senses, the eyes are the most easily deceived, we
believe them in preference to any other evidence. We believe
them against all other testimony, and often, like Thomas, will
not believe without seeing. Hence the peculiar force of the
blessing bestowed on those who do not see, and yet believe.

Faith, the Scripture tells us, comes by hearing. For faith is
an assurance concerning things which are not seen, concerning
things which are beyond the power of sight, nay, in the highest
sense, concerning Him whom no man hath seen, and whom His
Son, having dwelt in His bosom, has declared to us. Its pri-
mary condition is itself an act of faith in a person, in him who
speaks to us ; whereas seeing is a mere act of sense. u.

All knowledge, of whatsoever kind, must have a twofold
groundwork of faith, — one subjectively, in our own faculties,

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 501

and the laws which govern them, — the other objectively, in
the matter submitted to our observations. We must believe
in the being who knows, and in that which is known : know-
ledge is the copula of these two acts. Even Scepticism must
have the former. Its misfortune and blunder is, that it will
keep standing on one leg, and so can never get a firm footing.
We must stand on both, before we can walk, although the
former act is often the more difficult. u.

Nobody can be responsible for his faith. For how can any
one help believing what his understanding tells him is true ?

But all teachers of Christianity have believed the contrary.

That is, because they were all insolent and overbearing, and
wanted to dogmatize and tyrannize over mankind. Now how-
ever that people are grown honester and wiser, and love truth
more, they will no longer bow the knee to the monstrous absurd-
ities which priestcraft imposed on our poor blind ancestors.

Bravo ! you have hit on the very way of proving that a
man's moral character has nothing to do with his faith. Plato's
of course had nothing.

Why ! his vanity led him to indulge in all sorts of visionary
fancies.

Dominic's had nothing.

He was such a bloody ruffian, that he persuaded himself he
might make people orthodox by butchering them.

Becket's had nothing.

He believed whatever pampered his own ambition, and that
of the Church.

Luther's had nothing.

His temper was so uncontrolled, he believed whatever flat-
tered his passions, especially his hatred of the Pope.

Voltaire's had nothing ; nor Rousseau's ; nor Pascal's ; nor
Milton's : nor Cowper's. All these examples, — and thousands
more might be added; indeed everybody whose heart we
could read would be a fresh one, — prove that what a man
believes is intimately connected with what he is. His faith is
shaped by his moral nature, and shapes it. Pour the same

502 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

liquid into a sound and a leaky vessel, into a pure and a tainted
one, will the contents of the vessels an hour after be precisely
the same ?

In fact the sophism I have been arguing against, — mere
sophism in some, half sophism, half blunder in others, — comes
from the spawn of that mother-sophism and mother-blunder,
which would deny man's moral responsibility altogether, on the
ground that his actions do not result from any cause within the
range of his power to determine them one way or other, but
are wholly the creatures of the circumstances he is placed in,
and follow the impulses of those circumstances with the same
passive necessity, with which the limbs of a puppet are moved
by its wires. u.

The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of
woman. The foundation of political happiness is faith in the
integrity of man. The foundation of all happiness, temporal
and eternal, is faith in the goodness, the righteousness, the
mercy, and the love of God. u.

A loving spirit finds it hard to recognize the duty of pre-
ferring truth to love, — or rather of rising above human love,
with its shortsighted dread of causing present suffering, and
looking at things in God's light, who sees the end from the
beginning, and allows His children to suffer, when it is to work
out their final good. Above all is the mind that has been re-
newed with the spirit of self-sacrifice, tempted to overlook the
truth, when, by giving up its own ease, it can for the moment
lessen the sufferings of another. Yet, for our friend's sake, self
ought to be renounced, in its denials as well as its indulgences.
It should be altogether forgotten ; and in thinking what we are
to do for our friend, we are not to look merely, or mainly, at
the manner in which his feelings will be affected at the moment,
but to consider what will on the whole and ultimately be best
for him, so far as our judgement can ascertain it. a.

To suppress the truth may now and then be our duty to

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 503

others : not to utter a falsehood must always be our duty to
ourselves. a.

A teacher is a kind of intellectual midwife. Many of them
too discharge their office after the fashion enjoined on the He-
brew midwives : if they have a son to bring into the world,
they kill him ; if a daughter, they let her live. Strength is
checkt ; boldness is curbed ; sharpness is blunted ; quickness is
clogged ; highth is curtailed and deprest ; elasticity is dampt
and trodden down ; early bloom is nipt : feebleness gives little
trouble, and excites no fears ; so it is let alone.

How then does Genius ever contrive to escape and gain a
footing on this earth of ours ?

The birth of Minerva may shew us the way : it springs forth
in full armour. As the midwives said to Pharaoh, It is lively,
and is delivered ere the midwives come in* u.

Homebred wits are like home-made wines, sweet, luscious,
spiritless, without body, and ill to keep. U.

If a boy loves reading, reward him with a plaything; if
he loves sports, with a book. You may easily lead him to
value a present made thus, and to shew that he values it by
using it.

The tasks set to children should be moderate. Over-exer-
tion is hurtful both physically and intellectually, and even
morally. But it is of the utmost importance that they should
be made to fulfill all their tasks correctly and punctually. This
will train them for an exact, conscientious discharge of their
duties in after life. v.

A great step is gained, when a child has learnt that there
is no necessary connexion between liking a thing and doing
it. a.

By directing a child's attention to a fault, and thus giving it

504 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

a local habitation and a name, you may often fix it in him more,
firmly ; when, by drawing his thoughts and affections to other
things, and seeking to foster an opposite grace, you would be
much more likely to subdue it. In like manner a jealous dis-
position is often strengthened, when notice is taken of it ; while
the endeavour to cherish a spirit of love would do much toward
casting it out. a.

I saw two oaks standing side by side. The one was already
clothed in tender green leaves ; the other was still in its wintry
bareness, shewing few signs of reviving life. Whence arose
this ? The influences of the sun and air and sky must have
been the same on both trees : their nearness seemed to bespeak
a like soil : no outward cause was apparent to account for the
difference. It must therefore have been something within,
something in their internal structure and organization. But
wait a while : in a month or two both the trees will perhaps be
equally rich in their summer foliage. Nay, that which is slow-
est in unfolding its leaves, may then be the most vigorous and
luxuriant.

So is it often with children in the same family, brought up
under the same influences : while one grows and advances daily
under them, another may seem to stand still. But after a time
there is a change ; and he that -was last may even become first,
and the first last.

So too is it with God's spiritual children. Not according to
outward calculations, but after the working of His grace, is
their inward life manifested : often the hidden growth is unseen
till the season is far advanced; and then it bursts forth in
double beauty and power. a.

You desire to educate citizens ; therefore govern them by
law, not by will. What is individual must be reared in the
quiet privacy of home. The disregard of this distinction occa-
sions much of the outcry of the pious against schools. Religion
must not be made an engine of discipline.

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 505

A literal translation is better than a loose one ; just as a cast
from a fine statue is better than an imitation of it. For copies,
whether of words or things, must be valuable in proportion to
their exactness. In idioms alone, as a friend remarks to me,
the literal rendering cannot be the right one.

Hence the difficulty of translations, regarded as works of art,
varies in proportion as the books translated are more or less
idiomatic ; for in rendering idioms one can seldom find an equiv-
alent, which preserves all the point and grace of the original.
Hence do the best French books lose so much by being trans-
fused into another language : a large part of the spirit evapo-
rates in the process. To my own mind, after a good deal of
experience in this line, no writer of prose has seemed so un-
translatable as Goethe. In dealing with others, one may often
fancy that one has exprest their meaning as fully, as clearly,
and as forcibly, as they have in their own tongue. But I have
hardly ever been able to satisfy myself with a single sentence
rendered from Goethe. There has always seemed to be some
peculiar aptness in his words, which I have been unable to
represent The same dissatisfaction, I should think, must per-
petually weigh upon such an attempt to translate Plato ; whom
Goethe also resembles in this, that the unapproachable beauty
of his prose does not strike us so much, until we attain to this
practical conviction how inimitable it is. Richter presents dif-
ficulties to a translater, because he exercises such a boundless
liberty in coining new words, whereas we are under great
restraint in this respect. In attempting to render the German
metaphysicians, we are continually impeded by the want of an
equivalent philosophical terminology. But Goethe seldom
coins words ; he uses few uncommon ones : his difficulties arise
from his felicity in the selection and combination of common
words. u.

Of all books the Bible loses least of its force and dignity and
beauty from being translated into other languages, wherever
the translation is not erroneous. One version may indeed ex-
22

506 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

cell another, in that its diction may be more expressive, or
simpler, or more majestic : but in every version the Bible con-
tains the sublimest thoughts uttered in plain and fitting words.
It was written for the whole wrorld, not for any single nation
or age ; and though its thoughts are above common thoughts,
they are so as coming straight from the primal Fountain of
Truth, not as having been elaborated and piled up by the
workings of Abstraction and Reflexion.

One reason why the translaters of the Bible have been more
successful than others, is that its language, in the earlier and
larger half, belongs to that primitive period, when the native
unity of human thought and feeling was only beginning to
branch out into diversity and multiplicity, when the chief
objects of language were the elementary features of outward
nature, and of the heart and mind, and when the reflective
operations of the intellect had as yet done little in bringing out
those differences and distinctions, which come forward more and
more as we advance further from the centre, thereby diverging
further from each other, and by the aggregate of which nations
as well as individuals are severed. Owing to the same cause,
the language of the Bible has few of those untranslatable idio-
matic expressions, which grow up and multiply with the ad-
vance of social life and thought. In the chief part of the New
Testament on the other hand, a like effect is produced by the
position of the writers. The language is of the simplest ele-
mentary kind, both in regard to its nomenclature and its struc-
ture, as is ever the case with that of those who have no literary
culture, when they understand what they are talking about, and
do not strain after matters beyond the reach of their slender
powers of expression. Moreover, as the Greek original be-
longs to a degenerate age of the language, and is tainted with
many exoticisms and other defects, while our Version exhibits
our language in its highest purity and majesty, in this respect
it has a great advantage.

But does not the language of Homer belong to a nearly
similar period ? and has any writer been more disfigured and
distorted by his translaters ?

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 507

True ! The ground of the difference however is plain. The
translaters of Homer have allowed themselves all manner of
liberties in trying to shape and fashion and dress him out anew
after the pattern of their own age, and of their own individual
tastes ; and against this he revolted, as the statue of Apollo or
of Hercules would against being drest out in a coat and waist-
coat. Whereas the translaters of the Bible were induced by
their reverence for the sacred text to render it with the most
scrupulous fidelity. They were far more studious of the matter,
than of the manner ; and there is no surer preservative against
writing ill, or more potent charm for writing well. Perhaps, if
other translations had been undertaken on the same principle,
and carried on in a somewhat similar reverential spirit, they
would not have dropt so often like a sheet of lead from the
press.

At the same time we are bound to acknowledge it as an
inestimable blessing, that our translation of the Bible was made,
before our language underwent the various refining processes,
by which it was held to be carried to its perfection in the reign
of Queen Anne. For in those days the reverence for the past
had faded away ; even the power of understanding it seemed
well-nigh extinct. Tate and Brady's Psalms shew that the
Bible would have been almost as much defaced and corrupted
as the Iliad was by Pope ; though, as a translater in verse is
always constrained to assume a certain latitude, there would
have been less of tinsel when the translation was in prose. .

Yet the less artificial and conventional state of our language
in the age of Shakspeare was far more congenial to that of the
Bible. Hence, when the task of revising our translation, for
the sake of correcting its numerous inaccuracies, and of remov-
ing its obscurities, so far as they can be removed, is under-
taken, the utmost care should be used to preserve its language
and phraseology. u.

Philology, in its highest sense, ought to be only another
name for Philosophy. Its aim should be to seek after wis-
dom in the whole series of its historical manifestations. As

508 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

it is, the former usually mumbles the husk, the other paws the
kernel. , u.

Chaos is crude matter, without the formative action of mind
upon it. Hence its limits are always varying, both in every
individual man, and in every nation and age. u.

A truism misapplied is the worst of sophisms.

One of the wonders of the world is the quantity of idle, pur-
poseless untruth, the lies which nobody believes, yet everybody
tells, as it were from the mere love of lying, — or as though
the bright form and features of Truth could not be duly brought
out, except on a dark ground of falsehood. u.

Not a few Englishmen seem to travel abroad with hardly
any other purpose than that of finding out grievances. Surely
such people might just as well stay at home : they would find
quite enough here. Coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans
mare currunt. it.

The most venomous animals are reptiles. The most spiteful
among human beings rise no higher. Reviewers should bear
this in mind; for the tribe are fond of thinking that their
special business is to be as galling and malicious as they
can. u.

Some persons think to make their way through the difficul-
ties of life, as Hannibal is said to have done across the Alps,
by pouring vinegar upon them. Or they take a lesson from
their housemaids, who brighten the fire-irons by rubbing them
with something rough. u.

Would you touch a nettle without being stung by it ? take
hold of it stoutly. Do the same to other annoyances ; and few
things will ever annoy you. u.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 509

One is much less sensible of cold on a bright day, than on
a cloudy. Thus the sunshine of cheerfulness and hope will
lighten every trouble. u.

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in
the barometer, indicate little else than the changeableness of
the weather. u.

In a controversy both parties will commonly go too far.
Would you have your adversary give up his errour ? be be-
forehand with him, and give up yours. He will resist your
arguments more sturdily than your example. Indeed, if he is
generous, you may fear his overrunning on the other side : for
nothing provokes retaliation, more than concession does. u.

We have all been amused by the fable of the Sun and the
Wind, and readily acknowledge the truth it inculcates, at least
in that instance. But do we practise what it teaches? We
may almost daily. The true way of conquering our neighbour
is not by violence, but by kindness. O that people would set
about striving to conquer one another in this way ! Then
would a conqueror be truly the most glorious, and the most
blessed, because the most beneficent of mankind. u.

When you meet a countryman after dusk, he greets you, and
wishes you Goodnight ; and you return his greeting, and call
him Friend. It seems as though a feeling of something like
brotherhood rose up in every heart, at the approach of the
hour when we are all to be gathered together beneath the
wings of Sleep. In this respect also is Twilight " studious to
remove from sight Day's mutable distinctions," as Wordsworth
says of her in his beautiful sonnet. All those distinctions
Death levels; and so does Sleep.

But why should we wait for the departure of daylight, to
acknowledge our brotherhood? Rather is it the dimness of
our sight, the mist of our prejudices and delusions, that sepa-
rate and estrange us. The light should scatter these, as spir-

510 GUESSES AT TEUTH.^

itual light does; and it should be manifest, even outwardly,
that, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with
another. u.

Flattery and detraction or evil-speaking are, as the phrase
is, the Scylla and Charybdis of the tongue. Only they are set
side by side : and few tongues are content with falling into one
of them. Such as have once got into the jaws of either, keep
on running to and fro between them. They who are too fair-
spoken before you, are likely to be foulspoken behind you. If
you would keep clear of the one extreme, keep clear of both.
The rule is a very simple one : never find fault with anybody,
except to himself; never praise anybody, except to others, u.

Personalities are often regarded as the zest, but mostly are
the bane of conversation. For experience seems to have as-
certained, or at least usage has determined, that personalities
are always spiced with more or less of malice. Hence it must
evidently be our duty to refrain from them, following the
example set before us by our great moral poet :

I am not one who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk,
Of friends who live within an easy walk,
Or neighbours, daily, weekly, in my sight.

But surely you would not have mixt conversation always
settle into a discussion of abstract topics. Commonly speaking,
you might as well feast your guests with straw-chips and saw-
dust. Often too it happens that, in proportion as the subject of
conversation is more abstract, its tone becomes harsher and
more dogmatical. And what are women to do? they whose
thoughts always cling to what is personal, and seldom mount
into the cold, vacant air of speculation, unless they have some-
thing more solid to climb round. You must admit that there
would be a sad dearth of entertainment and interest and life in
conversation, without something of anecdote and story.

Doubtless. But this is very different from personality.
Conversation may have all that is valuable in it, and all that is

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 511

lively and pleasant, without anything that comes under the
head of personality. The house in which, above all others I
have ever been an inmate in, the life and the spirit and the joy
of conversation have been the most intense, is a house in which
I hardly ever heard an evil word uttered against any one.
The genial heart of cordial sympathy with which its illustrious
master sought out the good side in every person and thing, and
which has found an inadequate expression in his delightful
Sketches of Persia, seemed to communicate itself to all the
members of his family, and operated as a charm even upon his
visiters. For this reason was the pleasure so pure and healthy
and unmixt; whereas spiteful thoughts, although they may
stimulate and gratify our sicklier and more vicious tastes,
always leave a bitter relish behind.

Moreover, even in conversation whatever is most vivid and
brightest is the produce of the Imagination, — now and then,
on fitting occasion, manifesting some of her grander powers, as
Coleridge seems to have done above other men, — but usually,
under a feeling of the incongruities and contradictions of hu-
man nature, putting on the comic mask of Humour. Now the
Imagination is full of kindness. She could not be what she is,
except through that sympathy with Nature and man, which is
rooted in love. All her appetites are for good ; all her aspira-
tions are upward ; all her visions, — unless there be something
morbid in the feelings, or gloomy in past experience, to over-
cloud them, — are fair and hopeful. This is the case in poetry:
the deepest tragedy ought to leave the assurance on our minds
that, though sorrow may endure for a night, even for a long, long
polar night, joy cometh in the morning. Nor is her working dif-
ferent in real life. Looking at men's actions in conjunction with
their characters, and with the circumstances whereby their char-
acters have been modified, she can always find something to say
for them ; or, if she cannot, she turns away from so painful a
spectacle. It is through want of Imagination, through the in-
ability to view persons and things in their individuality and
their relations, that people betake themselves to exercising
their Understanding, which looks at objects in their insulation,

512 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and pries into motives, without reference to character, and
rebukes and abuses what it cannot reconcile with its own
narrow rules, and can see little in man but what is bad.
Hence, to keep itself in spirits, it would fain be witty, and
smart, and would make others smart. u.

What is one to believe of people-? One hears so many
contradictory stories about them.

Exercise your digestive functions : assimilate the nutritive;
get rid of the deleterious. Believe all the good you hear of
your neighbour ; and forget all the bad. u.

Sense must be very good indeed, to be as good as good non-
sense, u.

Who does not think himself infallible ? Who does not think
himself the only infallible person in the world ? Perhaps the
desire to be delivered from the tyranny of the pope within their
own breasts, or at least of that within the breasts of their breth-
ren, may have combined with the desire of being delivered from
the responsibility of exercising their own judgement, in making
people readier to recognize and submit to the Pope on the
Seven Hills. At all events this desire has been a main impel-
ling motive with many of the converts, who in various ages
have gone back to the Church of Rome. u.

All sorrow ought to be Heimweh, homesickness. But then
the home should be a real one, not a hole we run to on finding
our home closed against us. u.

Humour is perhaps a sense of the ridiculous, softened and
meliorated by a mixture of human feelings. For there cer-
tainly are things pathetically ridiculous ; and we are hard-
hearted enough to smile smiles on them, much nearer to sorrow
than many tears.

If life was nothing more than earthly life, it might be sym-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 513

bolized by a Janus, with a grinning Democritus in front, and a
wailing Heraclitus behind. Such antitheses have not been un-
common. One of the most striking is that between Johnson
and Voltaire. u.

The craving for sympathy is the common boundary-line be-
tween joy and sorrow. u.

Many people hurry through life, fearful, as it would seem, of
looking back, lest they should be turned, like Lot's wife, into
pillars of salt. Alas too ! if they did look back, they would see
little else than the blackened and smouldering ruins of their
vices, the smoking Sodom and Gomorrah of the heart. u.

Tva>6i o-eavror, they say, descended from heaven. It has taken
a long journey then to very little purpose.

But surely people must know themselves. So few ever think
about anything else.

Yes, they think what they shall have, what they shall get,
how they shall appear, what they shall do, perchance now and
then what they shall be, but never, or hardly ever, what they
are. u.

It is a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's (Vol. x. p.
465), that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol
for the mysteriousness of nature, propounds to Edipus, is only
another way of expressing the command of the Delphic Oracle,
yvw0i a-eavrou. And, when the answer is given, the Sphinx
casts herself down from her rock : when man does know him-
self, the mysteriousness of Nature, and her terrours, vanish
also ; and she too walks in the light of knowledge, of law, and
of love. u.

The simplicity which pervades Nature results from the ex-
quisite nicety with which all its parts fit into one another. Its
multiplicity of wheels and springs merely adds to its power;
and, so perfect is their mutual adaptation and agreement, the

fxj* Of THl^^^

B

•UHITBRSITTJ

514 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

effect seems inconceivable, except as the operation of a single
law, and of one supreme Author of that Law. u.

The exception proves the rule, says an old maxim, which has
often been greatly abused. As it is usually brought forward,
the exception in most cases merely proves the rule to be a bad
one, to have been deduced negligently and hastily from inade-
quate premisses, and to have overreacht itself. Naturally
enough then it is unable to keep hold of that, on which it never
laid hold. Or the exception may prove that the forms of the
Understanding are not sufficiently pliant and plastic to fit the
exuberant, multitudinous varieties of Nature; who does not
shape her mountains by diagrams, or mark out the channels of
her rivers by measure and line.

In a different sense however, the exception does not merely
prove the rule, but makes the rule. The rule of human na-
ture, the canonical idea of man is not to be taken as an average
from any number of human beings : it must be drawn from the
chosen, choice few, in whom that nature has come the nearest
to what it ought to be. You do not form your conception of a
cup from a broken one, nor that of a book from a torn or foxt
and dog's-eared volume, nor that of any animal from one that
is maimed, or mutilated, or distorted, or diseased. In every
species the specimen is the best that can be produced. So the
conception of man is not to be taken from stunted souls, or
blighted souls, or wry souls, or twisted souls, or sick souls, or
withered souls, but from the healthiest and soundest, the most
entire and flourishing, the straightest, the highest, the truest,
and the purest. u.

Men ought to be manly: women ought to be womanly or
feminine. They are sometimes masculine, which men cannot
be ; but only men can be effeminate. For masculineness and
effeminacy imply the palpable predominance in the one sex, of
that which is the peculiar characteristic of the other.

Not that these characteristic qualities, which in their proper
place are graces, are at all incompatible. The manliest heart

GUESSES AT TKUTH. 515

has often had all the gentleness and tenderness of womanhood,
nay, is far likelier than the effeminate to have it. In the Life
of Lessing we are told (i. p. 203,) that, when Kleist, the Ger-
man poet, who was a brave officer, was discontented at being
placed over a hospital after the battle of Rossbach, Lessing
used to comfort him with the passage in Xenophon's Cyropedia,
which says that the bravest men are always the most compas-
sionate, adding that the eight pilgrims from Bremen and Lu-
beck, who went out to war against the enemy, on their first
arrival in the Holy Land took charge of the sick and wounded.
On the other hand the most truly feminine heart, in time of
need, will manifest all the strength and calm bravery of man-
hood. Among the many instances of this, let me refer to the
fine stories of Chilonis, of Agesistrata, and of Archidamia, in
Plutarch's Life of Agis. Thus too, amid the miserable specta-
cle just exhibited by the downfall of royalty in France, it is on
the heroic fortitude of two illustrious women that the eye re-
poses with comfort and thankfulness, the more so because it is
known that in btfth cases the fortitude sprang from a heavenly
source. In the history of the former Revolution also the
brightest spots are the noble instances of female heroism, aris-
ing mostly from the strength of the affections.

That quality however in each sex, which is in some measure
alien to it, should commonly be kept in subordination to that
which is the natural inmate. The softness in the man ought to
be latent, as the waters lay hid within the rock in Horeb, and
should only issue at some heavenly call. The courage in the
woman should sleep, as the light sleeps in the pearl.

The perception of fitness is ever a main element in the per-
ception of pleasure. What agrees with the order of Nature is
agreeable ; what disagrees with that order is disagreeable.
Hence our hearts, in spite of their waywardness, and of all the
tricks we play with them, still on the whole keep true to their
original bent. Women admire and love in men whatever is
most manly. Thus Steffens, in one of his Novels, {Malkolm ii.
p. 12), makes Matilda say: "We women should be in a sad
case, if we could not reckon with confidence on the firmness

516 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

and steadfastness of men. However peacefully our life may-
revolve around the quiet centre of our own family, we cannot
but be aware that in the wider relations of life many things are
tottering and insecure, and can only be upheld by clearness of
insight, by vigorous activity, and by manly strength; without
which they would fall and injure our own quiet field of action.
The place which in earlier times the rude or the chivalrous
.bravery of men held in the estimation of women, is now held
by firmness of character, by cheerful confidence in action, which
does not shrink from obstacles, but stands fast when others are
troubled. The manyheaded monsters which were to be con-
quered of yore, have not disappeared in consequence of their
bearing other weapons; and true manly boldness wins our
hearts now, as it did formerly." Hence it was only in a mor-
bid, corrupt state of society, that a Wertherian sentimentalism
could be deemed a charm for the female heart. Notwithstand-
ing too all that has been done to pamper the admiration of tal-
ents into a blind idolatry, no sensible woman would not immeas-
urably prefer steadiness and manliness of "character to the
utmost brilliancy of intellectual gifts. Indeed she who gave
up herself to the latter, without the former, would soon feel an
aching want. Othello's wooing of Desdemona is still the way
to the true female heart.

On the other hand that which men love and admire in
women, is whatever is womanly and feminine, that of which
we see such beautiful pictures in Tmogen and Cordelia and
Miranda, in

The gentle lady married to the Moor,

And heavenly Una with her milkwhite lamb.

Among a number of proofs of this I will only mention the
repugnance which all men feel at the display of a pair of blue
stockings.

One of the few hopeful symptoms in our recent literature is,
that this year (1848) has been opened by two such beautiful
poems as the Saint's Tragedy and the Princess ; in both of
which the leading purpose, though very differently treated, is to
exhibit the true idea and dignity of womanhood. In the latter

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 517

poem this idea is vindicated from the perversions of modern
rhetorical sophistry ; in the former, from those of the rhetorical
and ascetical sophistry of the middle ages, not however with the
idle purpose of assailing an exploded errour, but because this
very form of errour has lately been reviving, through a sort of
antagonism to the other. In a year when so many frantic de-
lusions have been spreading with convulsive power, casting
down thrones, dissolving empires, uprooting the whole fabric of
society, it is a comfort to find such noble assertions of the true
everlasting ideas of humanity. u.

What should women write ?

That which they can write, and not that which they cannot.
This is clear. They should only write that which they can
write well, that which accords with the peculiar character of
their minds. For thus much I must be allowed to assume, — it
would take too long here to argue the point, — that, as in their
outward conformation, and in the offices assigned to them by Na-
ture, and as in the bent and tone of their feelings, so in the struc-
ture of their minds there is a sexual distinction. Some persons
deny this ; those, for instance, who are delighted at hearing that
the minds of all mankind, and of all womankind too, are sheets of
white paper, and who think the easiest way of building a house
is on the sand, where they shall have no obstacles to level and
remove in digging for the foundations ; those again who are in-
capable of mounting to the conception of an originating power,
and who cannot move a step, unless they can support them-
selves by taking hold of the chain of cause and effect ; those
who, themselves being the creatures of circumstances, or at
least being unconscious of any power in themselves to with-
stand and controll and modify circumstances, are naturally prone
to believe that every one else must be a similar hodge-podge.
But as the whole history of the world is adverse to such a notion,
as under every aspect of society it exhibits a difference between
the sexes, varying indeed, to a certain extent, according to their
relative positions, but markt throughout by a pervading analogy,
which is reflected from the face of actual life by an unbroken

518 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

series of images in poetry from the age of Homer down to Tieck
and Tennyson, there is no need of combating an assertion, de-
duced from an arbitrary hypothesis, by the very persons who
are the loudest in proclaiming that there is no ground of real
knowledge except facts.

Now to begin with poetry, — according to the precedence
which has always belonged to it in the literature of every peo-
ple, — some may incline to fancy that, while prose, from its con-
nexion with speculation, and with action in the whole sphere of
public life, belongs especially to men, poetry is rather the femi-
nine department of literature. Yet, being askt many years ago
why a tragedy by a lady highly admired for her various talents
had not succeeded, I replied, — though, I trust, never wanting
in due respect to that sex which is hallowed by comprising the
sacred names of wife and sister and mother, — that there was
no need to seek for any further reason, beyond its being written
by a woman. For of all modes of composition none can be less
feminine than the dramatic. They who are to represent the
great dramas of life, the strife and struggle of passions in the
world, should have a consciousness of the powers, which would
enable them to act a part in those dramas, latent within them,
and should have some actual experience of the conflicts of those
passions. They also need that judicial calmn£ssingiving every
one his due, which we see in Nature and in History, but which
is utterly repugnant to the strong affectionateness of woman-
hood. A woman may indeed write didactic dialogues on the
passions, as Joanna Baillie has done with much skill ; but
these are not tragedies. Nor is epic poetry less alien from the
genius of the female mind. So that, of the three main branches
of poetry, the only feminine one is the lyrical, — not objective
lyrical poetry, like that of Pindar and Simonides, and the choric
odes of the Greek tragedians, — but that which is the expres-
sion of individual, personal feeling, like Sappho's. Of this class
we have noble examples in the songs of Miriam, of Deborah, of
Hannah, and of the Blessed Virgin.

The same principle will apply to prose. What women
write best is what expresses personal, individual feeling, or

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 519

describes personal occurrences, not objectively, as parts of
history, but with reference to themselves and their own
affections. This is the charm of female letters : they alone
touch the matters of ordinary life with ease and grace. Men's
letters may be witty, or eloquent, or profound ; but, when they
have anything beyond a mere practical purpose, they mostly
pass out of the true epistolary element, and become didactic or
satirical. Cowper alone, whose mind had much of a feminine
complexion, can vie with women in writing such letters as flow
calmly and brightly along, mirroring the scenes and occupations
of common life. In Bettina Brentano's there is an empassioned
lyrical eloquence, which is often worthy of Sappho, with an
exquisite naivety peculiarly her own. Rachel's, with a piercing
intuitive discernment of reality and truth, which is peculiarly a
female gift, have an almost painful subtilty in the analysis of
feelings, which was forced into a morbid intensity, partly by
her position as a Jewess, in the midst of a community where
Jews were regarded with hatred and contempt, and partly by
the acutest nervous sensitiveness, the cause of excruciating suf-
ferings prolonged through years.

Memoirs again, when they do not meddle with the intrigues
of politics and literature, but confine themselves to a simple
affectionate narrative of what has befallen the authoress and
those most dear to her, are womanly works. Of these we have
a beautiful example in those of the admirable Lucy Hutchin-
son ; and there is a pleasing grace in Lady Fanshawe's. Mad-
ame Larochejacquelein's also are delightful ; but these, I have
understood, were made up out of her materials by Barante.

Moreover, as women can express earthly love, so can they
express heavenly love, with an entire consecration of every
thought and feeling, such as men, under the necessity which
presses on them of being troubled about many things, can hardly
attain to ; as we see for instance in the writings of Santa Te-
resa, of St Catherine of Sienna, of Madame Guyon.

Books on the practical education of children too, and story-
books for them, such as Miss Lamb's delightful Stories of Mrs
Leicester's School, lie within the range of female authorship.

520 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

But what say you to female novels ?

"Were I Tarquin, and the Sibyl came to me with nine wagon-
loads of them, I am afraid I should allow her to burn all the
nine, even though she were to threaten that no others should
ever be forthcoming hereafter. One may indeed meet now and
then with happy representations of female characters and of do-
mestic manners, as in Miss Austen's novels, and in Frederika
Bremer's. But the class is by no means a healthy one. Novels
which are works of poetry, — novels which transport us out of
ourselves into an ideal world, another, yet still the same, — nov-
els which represent the fermenting and contending elements of
human life and society, — novels which, seizing the follies of
the age, dig down to their roots, — novels which portray the
waywardnesses and self-delusions of passion, — may hold a
high rank in literature. But ordinary novels, which string a
number of incidents, and a few common-place pasteboard char-
acters, around a love-story, teaching people to fancy that the
main business of life is to make love and to be made love to,
and that, when it is made, all is over, are almost purely mis-
chievous. When we build castles, they should be in the air.
When we indulge in romantic dreams, they should lie in the
realms of romance. It is most hurtful to be wishing to act a
novel in real life, most hurtful to fancy that the interest of life
resides in its pleasures and passions, not in its duties ; and it
mars all simplicity of character to have the feelings and events
of common life spread out under a sort of fantasmagoric illu-
mination before us. u.

Written in the Album of a lady, who, on my saying one
evening, I was not well enough to read, replied, " Therefore
you will be able to write something for me"

You cannot read . . therefore, I pray you, write :

The lady said. Thus female logic prances :

From twig to twig, from bank to bank it dances,

Heedless what unbridged gulfs may disunite

The object from the wish. In wanton might,

Spring-like, you tell the rugged skeleton,

That bares its wiry branches to the sun,

Thou hast no leaves . . therefore with flowers grow bright.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 521

Therefore ! Fair maiden's lips such word ill suits.

From her it only means, I will, I wish.

She scorns her pet, — unless he puts on boots,

Straight plunges through the water at the fish,

Nor lets I dare not wait upon I would:

For what's impossible must sure be good.

Therefore ! With soft, bright lips such words ill suit.

Man's hard, clencht mouth, whence words uneath do slip,

May wear out stones with its slow ceaseless drip.

But ye who play on Fancy's hope-strung lute,

Shun the dry chaff that chokes and strikes her mute.

Yet grieve not that ye may not cleave the ground,

And hunt the roots out as they stray around :

'T is yours to cull the blossoms and the fruit.

Therefore could never yet link earth to heaven :

Therefore ne'er yet brought heaven down on earth.

Where therefore dies, Faith has its deathless birth:

To Hope a sphere beyond its sphere is given :

And Love bids therefore stand aside in awe,

Is its own reason, its own holy law. u.

1834.

Female education is often a gaudy and tawdry setting, which
cumbers and almost hides the jewel" it ought to bring out. a.

Politeness is the outward garment of goodwill. But many
are the nutshells, in which, if you crack them, nothing like a
kernel is to be found. a.

With what different eyes do we view an action, when it is
our own, and when it is another's ! A.

We seldom do a kindness, which, if we consider it rightly,
is not abundantly repaid ; and we should hear little of ingrati-
tude, unless we were so apt to exaggerate the worth of our
better deeds, and to look for a return in proportion to our own
exorbitant estimate. a.

A girl, when entering on her teens', was observed to be very
serious ; and, on her aunt's asking her whether anything was
the matter, she said, she was afraid that reason was coming.

One might wish to know whether she ever felt equally seri-

522 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

ous, after it had come. If so, she differed from most of her
own sex, and from a large part of the other. But the shadows
in the morning and evening are longer than at noon.

Eloquence is speaking out . . . out of the abundance of the
heart, — the only source from which truth can flow in a pas-
sionate, persuasive torrent. Nothing can be juster than Quin-
tilian's remark (x. 7, 15), " Pectus est, quod disertos facit, et
vis mentis : ideoque imperitis quoque, si modo sint aliquo affectu
concitati, verba non desunt." This is the explanation of that
singular psychological phenomenon, Irish eloquence ; I do not
mean that of the orators merely, but that of the whole people,
men, women, and children.

It is not solely in the Gospel that people go out into the
desert to gape after new spiritual incarnations. They have
sometimes been sought in moral deserts, often in intellectual.

The book which men throw at one another's head the often-
est, is the Bible ; as though they misread the text about the
Kingdom of Heaven, and fancied it took people, instead of
being taken, by force.

Were we to strip our sufferings of all the aggravations which
our over-busy imaginations heap upon them, of all that our im-
patience and wilfulness embitters in them, of all that a morbid
craving for sympathy induces us to display to others, they would
shrink to less than half their bulk ; and what remained would
be comparatively easy to support. a.

In addition to the sacrifices prescribed by the Law, every
Israelite was permitted to make freewill-offerings, the only
limitation to which was, that they were to be according as the
Lord had blest him. What then ought to be the measure of
our freewill-offerings ? ought they not to be infinite ? e.

Many persons are so afraid of breaking the third com-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 503

mandment, that they never speak of God at all ; and, to make
assurance doubly sure, never think of Him.

Others seem to interpret it by the law of contraries ; for
they never take God's name except in vain. So apt too are
people to indulge in self-delusions, that many of these have
rankt themselves among the stanch friends and champions of
the Church. u.

On ne se gene pas dans cette vie : on ne se presse pas pour
l'autre. u.

A sudden elevation in life, like mounting into a rarer atmos-
phere, swells us out, and often perniciously. u.

What would become of a man in a vacuum ? All his mem-
bers would bulge out until they burst. This is the true image
of anarchy, whether political or moral, intellectual or spiritual.
We need the pressure of an atmosphere around us, to keep us
whole and at one. u.

Pantheism answers to ochlocracy, and leads to it ; pure
monotheism, to a despotic monarchy. If a type of trinitarian-
ism is to be found in the political world, it must be a govern-
ment by three estates, tria juncta in uno. k u.

A strong repugnance is felt now-a-days to all a priori rea-
soning; and to call a system an a priori system is deemed
enough to condemn it. Let the materialist then fall by his own
doom. For he is the most presumptuous a priori reasoner,
who peremptorily lays down beforehand, that the solution of
every intellectual and moral phenomenon is to be sought and
found in what comes immediately under the cognisance of the
senses. u.

What is sanscuhtterie, or the folly of the descamisados, but
man's stripping himself of the fig-leaf? He has forgotten that
there is a God, from whom he needs to hide himself; and he

524 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

prostitutes his nakedness in the eyes of the world. Thus it is
a step in the process which is ever going on, where it is not
counteracted by conscience and faith, of bestializing human-
ity. u-

It is a favorite axiom with our political economists, — an
axiom which has been far more grossly abused by the exag-
gerations and misapplications of its advocates, than it ever can
be by the invectives of its opponents, — that the want produces
the supply. In other words, poverty produces wealth; a
vaccuum produces a plenum.

Now Ucvia, it is true, in the Platonic Fable, is the mother of
"Epa>s. But she is not the mother of TIopos. On the contrary it
is, when impregnated by Ilopos, that she brings forth *Epm, who
then, according to the chorus of the Birds, may become the
parent of all things. This Greek fable, which is no less
superior to the modern system in profound wisdom than in
beauty, will enable us to discern the real value of the above-
mentioned axiom, and the limits within which it is applicable,
and at the same time to expose the fallacy involved in its ex-
tension beyond those limits.

Want is an ambiguous term. It means mere destitution ; and
it means desire : it may be equivalent to Uevla, or to "Epos.
These two senses are often confounded ; or a logical trickster
will slip in one instead of the other. Mere destitution cannot
produce a supply: of itself it cannot even produce a desire.
There is no necessity by which our being without a thing con-
strains us to wish for it. We are without wings ; but this does
not make us want to have them ; nor would such a want cause
a pair to shoot out of our shoulders. The wishing-cap of For-
tunatus belongs to the cloud-land of poetical, or to the smoke-
land of philosophical dreamers.

The wants which tend to produce a supply, are of two kinds,
instinctive and artificial. The former seek after that, a desire
of which has been implanted in us by Nature ; the latter after
that, which we have been taught to desire by experience.
Thus, in order that "Epcos should spring from Ucula, it is neces-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 525

sary that she should have been overshadowed by ndpos, either
consciously or unconsciously. The light must enter into the
darkness, ere the darkness can know that it is without light, and
open its heart to desire and embrace it.

Even with reference to Commerce, from which our axiom
has been derived, we may see that, though the want, when cre-
ated, tends to produce a supply, there must have been a supply
in the first instance to produce the want. Thus in England at
present few articles of consumption are deemed more indispen-
sable than potatoes and tea ; and vast exertions are employed in
supplying the want of them. But everybody knows that these
wants are entirely artificial, and that they were produced gradu-
ally, and very slowly by the introduction of these articles, which
now rank among the prime necessaries of our economical life.

If we take the principle we are speaking of in this, its right
sense, it has indeed been very widely operative, in the moral
and intellectual, as well as in the physical history of man. In
fact it is only the witness borne by the whole order of Nature to
the truth of the divine law, that they who seek shall find. Our
constitution, and that of the world around us, have been so ex-
quisitely adapted to each other, that not only did they harmo-
nize at the first, but all the changes and varieties in the one
have called forth corresponding changes and varieties in the
other. It is interesting to trace the adjustments by which acci-
dental deficiencies are remedied, to observe how our bodily
frame fits itself to circumstances, and seems almost to put forth
new faculties, when there is need of them. The blind learn, as
it were, to see with their ears ; the deaf, to hear with their eyes.
Let both these senses be taken away : the touch comes forward
and assumes their office. In like manner the physical charac-
ters of men, in different stages of society are modified and
moulded by the wants which act on them. Savages, for
example, have a strength and sharpness of perception, which in
civilized life, being no longer needed, wears away.

Thus, if a want is of such a kind as to give rise to a demand,
it will produce a supply, or some sort of substitute for it. In
other words, the nature and extent of the supply will depend in

526 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

great measure on the nature and extent of the demand. But
when the same axiom is applied, as it often has been, to prove
the uselessness of those great national institutions, which are
designed to elevate and to hallow our nature, — when it is con-
tended, for instance, that our Universities are useless, because
the want of knowledge will produce the best supply, without the
aid of any endowments or privileges conferred or sanctioned by
the State, — or that the want of religion will produce an ade-
quate supply, without a national Establishment, — the ground
is shifted ; and the argument, if pusht to an extreme, would
amount to this, that omnia Jiunt ex nihilo.

Here is a double paralogism. It is true indeed, as I have
admitted above, that, if a want be felt, so as to excite a desire
and a demand, it will produce a supply of some sort or other.
This however is itself the main difficulty with regard to our
intellectual and moral, above all, our spiritual wants, to awaken
a consciousness and feeling of them, and a desire to remove
them. Where a certain degree of supply exists, such as that
of knowledge in the educated classes of society, custom and
shame and self-respect will excite a general demand for a some-
what similar amount of knowledge. But, if it is to go beyond
those limits in any department, it can only be through the influ-
ence of persons who have attained to a higher eminence ; so
that here too the supply will precede the demand. On the
other hand they who have had any concern with the education
of the lower classes, will be aware of the enormous power which
the vis inertiae possesses in them, and what strong stimulants
are required to counteract it. As to our spiritual wants, though
they exist in all, they are so feeble in themselves, and so trod-
den under foot and crusht by our carnal appetites and worldly
practices, you might as well expect that a field of corn, over
which a regiment of cavalry has been galloping to and fro, will
rise up to meet the sun, as that of ourselves we shall seek food
for our spiritual wants. Even when the Bread of Life came
down from heaven, we turned away from it, and rejected it.
Even when He came to His own, His own received Him not.

Moreover, if we suppose a people to have become in some

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 527

measure conscious of its intellectual and its spiritual wants, so
that an intellectual and spiritual demand shall exist among them,
they in whom it exists will be very ill fitted to judge of the
quality of the supply which they want. They may distinguish
between good tea and bad, between good wine and bad, though
even that requires some culture of the perceptive faculty. But
with regard to knowledge, especially that of spiritual truth,
they will be at the mercy of every impudent quack, unless
some determinate provision is made by the more intelligent
part of the nation, whereby the people shall be supplied with
duly qualified guides and instructors.

That such institutions, like everything else here on earth, are
liable to corruption and perversion, I do not deny. Even solar
time is not true time. But correctives may be devised ; and in
all such institutions there should be a power of modifying and
adapting themselves to new wants that may spring up. This
however would lead me too far. I merely wisht to point out
the gross fallacy in the argument by which such institutions are
impugned. u.

The main part of the foregoing remarks was written many
years ago, on being told by a friend, that he had heard the
argument here refuted urged as quite conclusive against our
Universities and our Church-establishment, by certain Scotch
philosophers of repute. The fallacy seemed to me so glaring,
that I could hardly understand how any persons, with the slight-
est habit of close thinking, could fail to detect it. Hence I was
a good deal surprised at reading in a newspaper several years
after, that Dr. Chalmers, in the Lectures which he delivered in
London in 1838, had complained at great length and with bit-
terness, of some one who had purloined this reply to the eco-
nomical argument from him, and who had deprived him of the
fame of being the discoverer. As these Lectures are printed
in the collection of his Works, this complaint must have been
greatly mitigated, and is degraded into a note. Honour to the
great and good man, who, having been bred and trained in an
atmosphere charged with similar sophisms, was the first, as it

528 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

would seem, to detect this mischievous one, or at least to expose
it ! But surely, of all things, the last in which we should lay
claim to a monopoly or a patent, is truth. Even in regard to
more recondite matters, it has often been seen that great dis-
coveries have, so to say, been trembling on the tongue of sev-
eral persons at once; and he who has had the privilege of
enunciating them, has merely been the Flugelman in the army
of Knowledge. If others utter a truth, which we fancy we
have discovered, at the same time with ourselves, or soon after,
and independently, we should not grudge them their share in
the honour, but rather give thanks for such a token that the dis-
covery is timely, that the world was ready for it, and wanted it,
and that its spies were gone out to seek it. u.

Amo, or some word answering to it, is given in the gram-
mars of most languages as an example of the verb ; perhaps
because it expresses the most universal feeling, the feeling
which is mixt up with and forms the key-note of all others.
The disciples of the selfish school indeed acknowledge it only
in its reflex form. If one of them wrote a grammar, his in-
stance would be :

Je m'aime. Nous nous aimons.

Tu t'aimes. Vous vous aimez.

II s'aime. lis s'aiment.

Yet the poor simple Greeks did not know that cfuXelp would
admit of a middle voice. u.

The common phrase, to he in love, well expresses the immer-
sion of the soul in love, like that of the body in light. Thus
South says, in his Sermon On the Creation (vol. i. p. 44):
" Love is such an affection, as cannot so properly be said to be
in the soul, as the soul to be in that." u.

Man cannot emancipate himself from the notion that the
earth and everything on it, and even the sun, moon, and stars,
were made almost wholly and solely for his sake. Yet, if the
Earth and her creatures are made to supply him with food, he

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 529

on his part is made to till the Earth, and to prepare and train
her and all her creatures for the fulfilment of their appointed
works. If he would win her favours, he must woo her by
faithful and diligent service. There should be a perpetual re-
ciprocation of kind offices. As the Earth shared in his Fall,
so is she to share in his redemption, waiting, with all her crea-
tures, in earnest expectation for the manifestation of the sons of
God. At present, if he often treats her insultingly and domi-
neeringly, the Earth in revenge has the last word, and silences
and swallows him up. u.

Two streams circulate through the universe, the stream of
Life, and the stream of Death. Each feeds, and feeds upon
the other. For they are perpetually crossing, like the serpents
round Mercury's Caduceus, wherewith animas Me evocat Oreo
Pallentes, alias sub Tartara tristla mittit. They began almost
together; and they will terminate together, in the same un-
fathomable ocean ; after which they will separate, and take
contrary directions, and never meet again. u.

If roses have withered, buds have blown :
If rain has fallen, winds have dried :
If fields have been ravaged, seeds are sown:
And Wordsworth lives, if poets have died.

For all things are equal here upon earth :
'T is the ashes of Joy that give Sorrow her birth:
And Sorrow's dark cloud, after louring awhile,
Or melts, or is brightened by Hope to a smile.

Where the death-bell tolled, the merry chime rings :
Where waved the cypress, myrtles spread:
When Passion is drooping, Friendship springs,
And feeds the Love which Fancy bred.

The consummation of Heathen virtue was exprest in the
wish of the Roman, that his house were of glass : so might all
men behold every action of his life. The perfection of Chris-
tian goodness is defined by the simple command, which however
is the most arduous ever laid upon man, not to let the left hand
23 hh

530 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

know what the right hand does. For the eye which overlooks
the Christian, is the eye which sees in secret, and which cannot
be deceived, the eye which does not need glass as a medium of
sight, and which pierces into what no glass can reveal. u.

Hardly any dram is so noxious as praise ; perhaps none : for
those whom praise corrupts, might else have wrought good in
their generation. Like Tarquin, it cuts off the tallest plants.
Be sparing of it therefore, ye parents, as ye would be of some
deadly drug : withhold your children from it, as ye would from
the flowers on the brink -of a precipice. Whatsoever you en-
join, enjoin it as a duty ; enjoin it because it is right ; enjoin it
because it is the will of God ; and always without reference to
what man may say or think of it. Reference to the opinion of
the world, and deference to the opinion of the world, and con-
ference with it, and inference from it, and preference of it
above all things, above every principle and rule and law, hu-
man or divine, — all this will come soon enough without your
interference. As easily might you stop the east wind, or check
the blight it bears along with it. Ask your own conscience,
reader ; probe your heart ; walk through its labyrinthine cham-
bers ; and trace the evils you feel within you to their source :
do you not owe the first seeds of many of your moral diseases,
and the taint which cankers your better feelings, to your having
drunk too deeply of this delicious poison ?

At first indeed it may seem harmless. The desire of praise
seems to be little else than the desire of approbation : and by
what lodestar is a child to be guided, unless by the approving
judgement of its parent ? But, although their languages on the
confines are so similar as scarcely to be distinguishable, you
have only to advance a few steps, and you will find that you
are in a forein country, happy if you discover it to be an ene-
my's, before you become a captive. Approbation speaks of the
thing or action : That is right. What you have done is right.
Praise is always personal. It begins indeed gently with the
particular instance, You have done right ; but it soon fixes on
lasting attributes, and passes from You are right, through You

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 531

are a good child, You are a nice child, You are a sweet child, to
that which is the cruelest of all, You are a clever child. For
God in his mercy has hitherto preserved goodness from being
much fly-blown and desecrated by admiration. People who
wish to be stared at, seldom try hard to be esteemed good-
Vanity takes a shorter and more congenial path : and the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge is still, in a secondary way, one of
the baits which catch the greatest number of souls. When a
child has once eaten of that fruit, and been told that it is wor-
thy to eat thereof, it longs for a second bite ; not however so
much from any strong relish for the fruit itself, as from the hope
of renewing the pleasing titillations by which the first mouthful
had been followed. This longing in time becomes a craving,
the craving a gnawing raVenousness : nothing is palatable, save
what pampers it ; but there is nothing out of which it cannot
extract some kind of nourishment.

Yet, alasl it is on this appetite that we rely, on this al-
most alone, for success, in our modern systems of Education.
We excite, stimulate, irritate, drug, dram the pupil, and then
leave him to do what he pleases, heedless how soon he may
break down, so he does but start at a gallop. Nothing can in-
duce a human being to exert himself, except vanity or jealousy :
such is our primary axiom ; and our deductions are worthy of
it. Emulation, emulation, is the order of the day, Emulation in
in its own name, or under an alias as Competition : and only
look at the wonders it has effected : it has even turned the hue
of the Ethiop's skin : it has set all the blacking-mongers in
England emulating and competing with each other in white-
washing every wall throughout the country. Emulation is de-
clared to be the only principle we can trust with safety : for
principle it is called : although it implies the rejection and de-
nial of all principle, of its efficacy at least, if not of its existence^
and is a base compromise between principle and opinion, in
which the things of eternity are made to bow down before the
wayward notions and passions of the day. Nay, worse, this
principle, or no principle, is adopted as the main spring and
motive in a scheme of National, and even of Religious Edu-

532 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

cation, by the professing disciples of the Master who declared,
that if any man desires to be first, he shall be last, and whose
Apostle has numbered Emulation among the works of the flesh,
together with adultery, idolatry, hatred, strife, and murder.
We may clamour as we will about the unchristian practices of
the Jesuits : the Jesuits knew too much of Christianity, ever to
commit such an outrage against its spirit, as to make children
pass through the furnace of the new Moloch, Emulation.*

But let me turn from these noisy vulgar paradoxes, to look
at wisdom in her quiet gentleness, as in Wordsworth's sweet
language she describes the growth of her favorite,

A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

The air of these simple words, after the hot, close atmosphere
I have been breathing, is as soft and refreshing as the touch of
a rose-leaf to a feverish cheek. The truth however, so exqui-
sitely exprest in them, was equally present to persons far wiser
than our system-makers, the authors of our popular tales. The
beautiful story of Cinderella, among others, shews an insight
into the elements of all that is lovely in character, seldom to be
paralleled in these days.

Ought not parents and children then to be fond of each
other ?

You, who can interrupt me with such a question, must have
a very fond notion of fondness. Whatever is peculiar in fond-
ness, whatever distinguishes it from love, is faulty. Fondness
may dote and be foolish : Love is only another name for Wis-
dom. It is the Wisdom of the Affections, as Wisdom is the Love
of the Understanding. Fondness may flatter and be flattered :
Love shrinks from flattery, from giving it or receiving it. Love
knows that there are things which are not to be seen, that there
are things which are not to be talkt of; and it shrinks equally
from the thought of polluting what is visible by its gaze, and of

s~ — "-

* This was written in 1826. Since then the worship of Emulation has
been assailed in many quarters ; and the system of our National Schools has
been improved. Still tbe idol has not yet been cast down; and what was
true in matter of principle then, is just as true now.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 5*33

profaning what is unutterable by its prattle. Its origin is a
mystery : its essence is a mystery : every pulsation of its being
is mysterious : and it is aware that it cannot break the shell,
and penetrate the mystery, without destroying both itself and
its object.* For the cloud, which is so beautiful in the dis-
tance, when the sunbeams are sleeping on its pillow, if you go
too near and enter it, is only dank and dun : you find nothing,
you learn nothing, except that you have been trickt. Often
have we been told that Love palls after fruition ; and this is the
reason. When it has pluckt off its feathers for the sake of
staring at them, it can never sew them on again : when it is
swinish, it is in a double sense guilty of suicide. Its dwelling
is like that of the Indian God on the lotus, upon the bosom of
Beauty, rising out from the playful waters of feelings which
cannot be fixt : and it cannot turn up the lotus to look under it,
without oversetting and drowning itself; it cannot tear up its
root, to plant it on the firm ground of scientific conviction, but
it withers and dies. Such as love wisely therefore, cherish the
mystery, and handle the blossom delicately and charily ; for so
only will it retain its amaranthine beauty.

There is no greater necessity for a father's or mother's love
to vent itself in bepraising their child, than for the child's love

* Since the above was written, I have met with the same thoughts in a
pamphlet written by Passovv, the excellent lexicographer, during the contro-
versy excited by the attempt to introduce gymnastic exercises as an instru-
ment of education. " If our love for our country is to be sincere, without
ostentation and affectation, it cannot be produced immediately by instruction
and directions, like a branch of scientific knowledge. It must rest, like every
other kind of love, on something unutterable and incomprehensible. Love
may be fostered: it may be influenced by a gentle guidance from afar: but,
if the youthful mind becomes conscious of this, all the simplicity of the feel-
ing is destroyed; its native gloss is brusht off. Such too is the case with the
love of our country. Like the love for our parents, it exists in a child from
the beginning; but it has no permanency, and cannot expand, if the child is
kept, like a stranger, at a distance from his country. No stories about it, no
exhortations will avail, as a substitute: we must see our country, feel it,
breathe it in, as we do Nature. Then history may be of use, and after a time
reflexion, consciousness. But our first care ought to be for institutions, in
which the spirit of our country lives, without being uttered in words, and
takes possession of men's minds involuntarily. For a love derived from pre-
cepts is none." Tumziel, p. 142.

534 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

to vent itself in bepraising its father and mother. The latter is
too pure and reverential to do so : why should the former be
less reverential ? Or can any object be fitter to excite rever-
ence, than the spirit of a child, newly sent forth from God, in
all the loveliness of innocence, with all the fascination of help-
lessness, and with the secret destinies of its future being hang-
ing like clouds around its unconscious form ? On the contrary,
as, the less water you have in your kettle, the sooner it begins
to make a noise and smoke, so is it with affection : the less there
is, the more speedily it sounds, and smokes, and evaporates,
talking itself at once out of breath and into it. Nay, when
parents are much in the habit of showering praises on their chil-
dren, it is in great measure for the sake of the pleasing vapour
which rises upon themselves. For the whirlpool of Vanity
sucks in whatever comes near it. The vain are vain of every-
thing that belongs to them, of their houses, their clothes, their
eye-glasses, the white of their nails, and, alas ! even of their
children.

Equally groundless would be the notion that children need to
be thus made much of, in order to love their parents. Such
treatment rather weakens and shakes affection. For there is
an instinct of modesty in the human soul, that instinct which
manifests itself so beautifully by enabling us to blush; and,
until this instinct has been made callous by the rub of life, it
cannot help looking distrustfully on praise. Thus Steffens, in
his Malkolm (i. p. 379), represents a handsome, manly boy,
whom a number of ladies treated with vociferous admiration,
caressing and kissing him, and calling him a lovely child, quite
an angel. "But he was very much annoyed at this, and at
length tore himself away impatiently, prest close to his mother,
and complained aloud and vexatiously : Why do they kiss and
caress me so t I can't bear it" A beautiful contrast to this is
supplied by Herder's recollections of his father, as related by his
widow (Erinnerungen aus Herders Leben, i. p. 17). "When
he was satisfied with me, his face grew bright, and he laid his
hand softly on my head, and called me Gottesfnede ( God's peace :
his name was Gottfried). This was my greatest, sweetest re-

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 535

ward." This exemplifies the distinction drawn above between
praise and approbation.

The very pleasure occasioned by praise is of a kind which
implies it to be something unexpected and forbidden, and not
more than half deserved. Besides, as I have already said, the
habit of feeding on it breeds such an insatiable hunger, that
even a parent may in time grow to be valued chiefly as minis-
tering to the gratification of this appetite. Hence would spring
a state like that described by Robert Hall in his sermon on
Modern Infidelity (p. 38) : " Conceive of a domestic circle, in
which each member is elated by a most extravagant opinion of
himself, and a proportionable contempt of every other, — is full
of little contrivances to catch applause, and, whenever he is not
praised, is sullen and disappointed."

Affection, to be pure and durable, must be altogether objec-
tive. It may indeed be nurst by the memory of benefits re-
ceived ; but it has nothing to do with hope, except the hope of
intercourse and communion, of interchanging kind looks and
words, and of performing kind deeds. Whatever is beside
this, is not love, but lust, it matters not of what appetite, nor
whether of the body or of the mind. u.

What a type of a happy family is the family of the Sun!
With what order, with what harmony, with what blessed peace,
do his children the planets move around him, shining with the
light which they drink in from their parent's face, at once on
him and on one another ! u.

How great is the interval between gamboling and gambling.
One belongs to children, the other to grown up people. If an
angel were looking on, might he not say ? Is this what man
learns from life ? Was it for this that the father of a new gen-
eration was preserved from the waters of the Flood ? u.

0 that old age were truly second childhood ! It is seldom
more like it than the berry is to the rosebud.

536 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

Few things more vividly teach us the difference between the
living objects of Nature and the works of man's contrivance,
than the impressions produced, when, after a lapse of years, we
for the first time revisit the home of our childhood. On enter-
ing the old house, how strangely changed does everything ap-
pear ! We look in vain for much that our fancy, uncheckt by
the knowledge of any other world than that immediately around,
had pictured to itself; and we turn away in half incredulous
disappointment, as we pass from room to room, and our memory
calls up the various events connected with them. It almost
seems to us as though, while our minds have been expanding at
a distance, the familiar chambers and halls must have been
growing narrower, and are threatening, like the prison-tomb in
Eastern story, to close upon all the joys of our childhood, and to
crush them for ever.

But, when we quit the house of man's building, and seek for
fellowship with the past among the living, boundless realities of
Nature, all that we had lost is regained ; and we find how
faithful a guardian angel she has been, and how richly she re-
stores us a hundredfold the treasures we had committed to her
keeping. The waters of the peaceful river, winding through
the groves where the child delighted to wander, speak to us in
the same voice now, in which they spoke then ; and, while we
listen to them, the confiding lilies upborne no less lovingly on
their bosom, than when in early days we vainly tried to tear
them from it, are an emblem of the happy thoughts which we
had cast upon them, and which they have preserved for us until
we come to reclaim them. The bright kingfisher darting into
the river recalls our earliest visions of beauty; and the chorus
of birds in the groves seem not only to welcome us back, but
also to reawaken the pure melodies of childhood in its holiest
aspirations. In like manner, as we walk under the deep shade
of the stately avenues, the whisperings among the branches
seem to flow from the spirits of the place, giving back their
portion of the record of our childish years ; and we are reminded
of the awe with which that shade imprest us, and of the first
time we felt anything like fear, when, on a dark evening, the

GUESSES AT TEUTH. 537

sudden cry of the screech-owl taught us that those trees had
other inhabitants, beside the birds to which we listened with
such delight by day.

Thus the whole of Nature appears to us full of living echoes,
to which we uttered our hopes and joys in childhood, though the
sound of her response only now for the first time reaches our
ears. Everywhere we, as it were, receive back the tokens of
a former love, which we had too long forgotten, but which has
continued faithful to us. Hence we shall return to our work in
the world with a wiser and truer heart, having learnt that this
life is indeed the seed-time for eternity, and that in all our acts,
from the simplest to the highest, we are sowing what, though it
may appear for a time to die, only dies to be quickened and to
bear fruit. e.

May we not conceive too, that, if a spirit, after having past
through the manifold pleasures and cares and anxieties and
passions and feverish struggles of this mortal life, and been
removed from them by death, were to revisit this home of its
antemortal existence, it would in like manner shrink in amazed
and sickening disappointment from the narrow, petty,, mean,
miserable objects of all its earthly aims and contentions, and
would at the same time be filled with wonder and adoration, as
it contemplated the infinite wisdom and love, manifested both in
the whole structure and order of the Divine Purposes, and in
their perfect correspondence to its own imperfectly understood
wants and desires ? u.

As well might you search out a vessel's path

Amid the gambols of the dancing waves,

Or track the lazy footsteps of a star

Across the blue abyss, as hope to trace

The motions of her spirit. Easier task

To clench the bodiless ray, than to arrest

Her airy thoughts. Flower after flower she sips,

And sucks their honied fragrance, nor bedims

Their brightness, nor appears to spoil their stores ;

And all she lights on seems to grow more fair.

Fuller,- in his Good Thoughts in Worse Times, has a passage
23*

538 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

on Ejaculations, in which he introduces the foregoing image so
prettily, that I will quote it. " The field wherein bees feed is
no whit the barer for their biting. When they have taken their
full repast on flowers or grass, the ox may feed, the sheep fat,
on their reversions. The reason is, because those little chemists
distill only the refined part of the flower, leaving the grosser
substance thereof. So ejaculations bind not men to any bodily
observance, only busy the spiritual half, Avhich maketh them con-
sistent with the prosecution of any other employment." u.

When we are gazing on a sweet, guileless child, playing in
the exuberance of its happiness, in the light of its own starry
eyes, we are tempted to deny that anything so lovely can have
a corrupt nature latent within ; and we would gladly disbelieve
that the germs of evil are lying in these beautiful blossoms.
Yet, in the tender green of the sprouting nightshade, we can
already recognize the deadly poison, that is to fill its ripened
berries. Were our discernment of our own nature, as clear as
of plants, Ave should probably perceive the embryo evil in it no
less distinctly. p.

A little child, on first seeing the Thames, and being told it
was a river, cried, No, it can't be a river : it must be a pond.
His notion of a river had been formed from a little brook near
his home ; and the largest surface of water he was familiar
with was a pond. Happy will it be for that child, if, when all
his notions are modified by long experience, he still retains such
simplicity and reverence for the past, as to maintain the claim of
the little brook to the name, which, he once supposed, especially
belonged to it.

In the infancy of our spiritual consciousness how much do
we resemble this child! Every thought and feeling, in the
little world in which our spirits move, becomes all-important :
each " single spot is the whole earth " to us : and everything
beyond is judged of by its correspondence to what goes on
within it. If we perceive anything in others different from
what we deem to be right, we are apt to exclaim, like the little

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 539

child, that it cannot be right or true : and thus our minds grow
narrow and exclusive, at the very time when they have received
the first impulse toward their enlargement. Such a state re-
quires much gentleness and forbearance from those who are
more advanced in their course, and have learnt to mistrust
themselves more, and to look with more faith for the good
around them, whatever its form may be. For the mind, when
it is first " putting forth its feelers into eternity," is peculiarly
sensitive, and needs to be led gradually, and to be left much to
the workings of its own experience. If it is met repulsively,
by an assumption of superior wisdom, it may either be driven
back into a mere worship of self, in its various petty modes and
forms ; or, should the person be of a bolder temper, he will cast
off all faith in that, which he once accounted so precious, and,
instead of recognizing the germ of manhood in his infant state,
and waiting for its gradual development, will be tempted to deny
that there was any kind of life or light in it.

If, in the birth and growth of the outward man, the imperfect
substance is so sacred in the eyes of Him who forms it, that all
our members are written in His book, and that He looks not at
what it is in its imperfection, but at what it is to be in its perfec-
tion, how infinitely more precious and sacred should we esteem
the development of the inner man ! with what love and rever-
ence should we regard each member, however imperfect at first,
and shelter it from everything that might check or distort its
growth! , f.

It is a scandal that the sacred name of Love should be given
by way of eminence to that form of it, which is seldomest found
pure, and which very often has not a particle of real love

in it. u.

In those hotbeds of spurious, morbid feelings, sentimental
novels, we often find the lover, as he is misnamed, after he has
irreparably wronged and ruined his mistress, pleading that he
was carried along irresistibly by the violence of his love : and
I am afraid that such pictures are only representations of what

540 GUESSES AT TKUTH.

occurs far more frequently in actual life. Not that this ab-
solves the writers. For, instead of allaying and healing the
disease, they irritate and increase it. They would even per-
suade the victim of it that it is inevitable, nay, that it is an
eruption and symptom of exuberant health. If however there
be any case, in which it is plain that Violence is only Weak-
ness grown rank, the bastard brother of Weakness, it is this.
Such love is not the etherial, spiritual, self-consuming, self-puri-
fying flame, but the darkling, smouldering one, that spits forth
sparks of light amid volumes of smoke, being crusht and
almost extinguisht by the damp, black, crumbling load of the
sensual appetites. So far indeed is sensual love from being the
same thing with spiritual love, that it is the direct contrary, the
hellish mask in which the fiend mimics and mocks it. For,
while the latter enjoins the sacrifice of self to its object, and
finds a ready obedience, the former is ravenous to sacrifice its
object to self. u.

"It is strange (says Novalis) that the real ground of cruelty
is lust." The truth of this remark fiasht across me this morn-
ing, as I was looking into a bookseller's window, where I saw
Illustrations of the Passion of Love standing between two vol-
umes of a History of the French Revolution. The same con-
nexion is pointed out by Baader in his Philosophical Essays (i.
p. 100). " This impotence of the spirit of lies, his inability to
realize himself or come into being, is the .cause of that inward
fury, with which, in his bitter destitution and lack of all per-
sonal existence, he seizes, or tries to seize upon all outward
existences, in order to propagate himself in and with them, but
with and in all, being merely a destroyer and devourer, like a
fierce flame, only brings forth a new death and new hunger, in-
stead of the sabbatical rest of the completed, successful mani-
festation and incarnation. Hence the real spirit and purpose
of murder and lust is one and the same, in every stage of
being." Again, in another passage, he says (p. 192): " He
who is not for Me is against Me ; and where the spirit of love
does not dwell, there dwells the spirit of murder. This is

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 5 41

proved even by those manifestations of sin or hatred, which
seem the furthest removed from the desire of destruction or
murder ; as for instance in the case with which the impulse o£
lust transforms itself into that of murder, whether the latter
displays itself merely physically, or psychically, in what the
French call perdre les femmes.,> The same terrible affinity is
exprest by Milton in his catalogue of the inmates of hell.

Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons. —

Peor his other name, when he enticed

Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,

To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.

Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged

Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove

Of Moloch homicide ; lust hard by hate. -p.

What is meant by Universal Philanthropy ? Love requires
that its object should be something real, something positive and
definite ; as is proved by all mythologies, in which the attributes
of the Deity are impersonated, to satisfy the cravings of the
imagination and of the heart : for the abstract God of philoso-
phy can never excite anything like love. I can love this indi-
vidual, or that individual ; I can love a man in all the might of
his strength and of his weakness, in all the blooming fulness of
his heart, and all the radiant glory of his intellect : I can love
every particular blossom of feeling, every single ray of thought :
but the mere abstract, bodiless, heartless, soulless notion, the
logical entity, Man, " sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans ev-
erything," affords no home for my affections to abide in, no sub-
stance for them to cling to.

But, although reality and personality are essential to him
whom we are to regard with affection, bodily presence is by no
means necessary to the perception of reality and personality.
Vain and fallacious have been the quibbles of those sophists,
who have contended that no action can take place, unless the
agent be immediately, that is, as they understand it, corporeally
present. Homer and Shakspeare have not ceast to act, and
will not so long as the world endures. Nor does this action at
all depend on the presence of their works before us. They

542 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

cannot put forth all the energies of their genius, until they have
purged themselves from this earthly dross, and become spiritual
presences in the spirit. For nothing can act but spirit : matter
is unable to effect anything, save by the force it derives from
something spiritual. The golden chains, by which Anaxagoras
fabled that the sun was made fast in the heavens, are only a
type of that power of Attraction, or, to speak at once more
poetically and more philosophically, of that power of golden
Love, which is the life and the harmony of the universe.

True love is not starved, but will often be rather fed and
fostered, by the absence of its object. In Landor's majestic
language, in the Conversation between Kosciusko and Ponia-
towski, " Absence is not of matter : the body does not make it.
Absence quickens our love and elevates our affections. Ab-
sence is the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal beauty."
Love too at sight, the possibility of which has been disputed by
men of drowthy hearts and torpid imaginations, can arise only
from the meeting of those spirits which, before they meet, have
beheld each other in inward vision, and are yearning to have
that vision realized. u.

Life has two ecstatic moments, one when the spirit catches
sight of Truth, the other when it recognizes a kindred spirit.
People are for ever groping and prying around Truth ; but the
vision is seldom vouchsafed to them. We are daily handling
and talking to our fellow-creatures ; but rarely do we behold
the revelation of a soul in its naked sincerity and fervid might.
Perhaps also these two moments generally coincide. In some
churches of old, on Christmas Eve, two small lights, typifying
4he Divine and the Human Nature, were seen to approach one
another gradually, until they met and blended, and a bright
flame was kindled. So likewise it is when the two portions of
our spiritual nature meet and blend, that the brightest flame is
kindled within us. When our feelings are the most vivid, our
perceptions are the most piercing ; and when we see the fur-
thest, we also feel the most. Perhaps it is only in the land of
Truth, that spirits can discern each other ; as it is when they

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 543

are helping each other on, that they may best hope to arrive
there. u.

The loss of a friend often afflicts us less by the momentary
shock, than when it is brought back to our minds some time
afterward by the sight of some object associated with him in
the memory, of something which reminds us that we have
laught together, or shed tears together, that our hearts have
trembled beneath the same breeze of gladness, or that we have
bowed our heads under the same stroke of sorrow. So may
one behold the sun sink quietly below the horizon, without
leaving anything to betoken that he is gone ; while the sky
seems to stand unconscious of its loss, unless its chill blueness
in the East be interpreted into an expression of dismay. But
anon rose-tinted clouds,: — call them rather streaks of rosy
light, — come forward in the West, as it were to announce the
promise of a joyous resurrection. u.

There are days. on which the sun makes the clouds his char-
iot, and travels on curtained behind them. Weary of shining
before a drowsy thankless world, he covers the glory of his
face, but will not quite take away the blessing of his light ; and
now and then, as it were in pity, he withdraws the veil for a
moment, and looks forth, to assure the earth that her best friend
is still watching over her in the heavens ; like those occasional
visitations by which the Lord, before the birth of the Saviour,
assured mankind that he was still their God. u.

Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven; nothing is
nearer than Heaven to Earth. u.

i" will close this Volume with the following Ode to Italy,
written by my Brother nearly thirty years ago, in November,
1818. What would then have been deemed a very bold, rash
guess, may now perhaps be regarded as a prophecy about to
receive its fulfilment. ■ The interest which every scholar, every
lover of poetry and art, every reverent student of history, must

544 GUESSES AT TRUTH.

feel in the fate of Italy, was deepened in my brother by his
having been born at Rome.

ITALY.

Strike the loud harp ; let the prelude be,

Italy, Italy !
That chord again, again that note of glee . .

Italy, Italy !
Italy ! 0 Italy ! the very sound it charmeth ;
Italy ! 0 Italy ! the name my bosom warmeth ;

High thoughts of self-devotions,

Compassionate emotions,

Soul-stirring recollections,

With hopes, their bright reflexions,
Rush to my troubled heart at thought of thee,
My own illustrious, injured Italy.

Dear queen of snowy mountains,

And consecrated fountains,
With whose rocky heaven-aspiring pale

Beauty has fixt a dwelling

All others so excelling,
To praise it right, thine own sweet tones would fail,

Hail to thee! Hail!
How rich art thou in lakes to poet dear,
And those broad pines amid the sunniest glade

So reigning through the year,
Within the magic circle of their shade

No sunbeam may appear !

How fair thy double sea !

In blue celestially
Glittering and circling! — but I may not dwell

On gifts, which, decking thee too well,
Allured the spoiler. Let me fix my ken

Rather upon thy godlike men,
The good, the wise, the valiant, and the free,
On history's pillars towering gloriously,
A trophy reared on high upon thy strand,

That every people, every clime

May mark and understand,
What memorable courses may be run,
What golden never-failing treasures won,
From time,

In spite of chance,

And worser ignorance,
If men be ruled by Duty's firm decree,
And Wisdom hold her paramount mastery.

GUESSES AT TRUTH. 545

What art thou now ? Alas ! Alas !

Woe, woe !
That strength and virtue thus should pass

From man below !
That so divine, so beautiful a Maid
Should in the withering dust be laid,
As one that — Hush! who dares with impious breath

To speak of death?
The fool alone and unbeliever weepeth.
We know she only sleepeth;

And from the dust,
At the end of her correction,
Truth hath decreed her joyous resurrection:

She shall arise, she must.
For can it be that wickedness has power
To undermine or topple down the tower
Of virtue's edifice?

And yet that vice
Should be allowed on sacred ground to plant
A rock of adamant ?
It is of ice,
That rock, soon destined to dissolve away
Before the righteous sun's returning ray.

But who shall bear the dazzling radiancy,

When first the royal Maid awaking
Darteth around her wild indignant eye,

When first her bright spear shaking,
Fixing her feet on earth, her looks on sky,
She standeth like the Archangel prompt to vanquish,
Yet still imploring succour from on high !

0 days of wearying hopes and passionate anguish,

When will ye end!
Until that end be come, until I hear

The Alps their mighty voices blend,
To swell and echo back the sound most dear
To patriot hearts, the cry of Liberty,

1 must live on. But when the glorious Queen
As erst is canopied with Freedom"^ sheen,
When I have prest, with salutation meet,
And reverent love to kiss her honoured feet,

I then may die,
Die how well satisfied!
Conscious that I have wateht the second birth
Of her I've loved the most upon the earth,

Conscious beside
That no more beauteous sight can here be given :
Sublimer visions are reserved for heaven.

II

INDEX.

*** The Publishers are indebted to Major Pears for kindly permitting them to print
this Index from one in manuscript which he had prepared for his own use.

Absence — different effect of — as to

the works of Nature and those of

Man, 536.
Abuse and use, 157.
" Abuse I would use." 103.
"Actio," full and restricted meanings

of, 386.
Actions, double source of, 30.
Affliction, use of, 25; in Christians

and in others, 476.
Age lavs open the character, 486.
" Ages'of Faith," 169, 172.
Ajax's prayer, 263.
Ambition, 35; none in heaven, 161,

433.
Amo — why given as an example in

grammars, 528.
Amphion, story of, 487.
Ancients — Greeks and Romans con-
founded under this title, 89 ; animal

and sensuous life of, 181 ; understood

by us better than by themselves,

458.
Annoyances and nettles, to be handled

firmly, 508.
Anthropomorphism, 211.
Appetite, use and abuse of, 432.
Approbation, 530.
A priori reasoning, 523.
Archery, a lesson from, 295.
Architecture, Christian and Greek,

291.
Arguments, good and bad, 166 ; truth

in bad, 167.
Argus, story of the dog, 424.
Aristocracy, 146, 183.
Aristotle, the best commentator on

Shakspeare, 192.
Art, and science the expounders of

Nature, 45; mere, perverts taste,

344.
Artificiality, 384.
Association (of ideas), 183.
Atheism, 38, 476.

Atonement, 486.

Augustine quoted, 242.

Autos-da-fe within ourselves desirable,

474.
Avignon, incident at, 469.

Baader quoted, 540.

Bacon, 155; quoted, 21, 38, 69, 70,

314.
Beatitudes of Matthew and Luke, 263.
Beautifving glass, 416.
Beauty ^ 88, 359, 374; power of, 345;

and expression, 433 ; and truth lost

by severing what God has joined,

473.
Bees suck but do not spoil; 538.
Begging pardon, begging the question,

162.
Bentham, 152.
Bible, translations of the, 505 ; misuse

of the, 522.
Bigotry, 485 ; and scepticism, 468.
Biography, 264.

" Blessed are they that weep," 245.
Blind, the, need leading, 428.
Blindness, 239.
Blossom and fruit, 345.
Body, rights of the, 480.
Books, judgment of, 416; which most

profitable and most loved, 444; of

one thought, 469.
Brilliant speakers or writers, a caution

for, 352.
" Broad stone of honour," 168, 172.
Brotherhood, human, 509.
Brown, Sir Thomas, quoted, 470.
Butler, Bishop, quoted, 479.
Byron, 404.

Cesar, Julius, quoted, 191.
Calvinism, 162.

Capital punishment, threat of, inju-
rious, 91.
Carlvle and Sterling, 389.

548

INDEX.

Catholic religion, 344.

Chalmers, Dr. 527.

Changes, in a household or in the
state, 16 ; political, 184 ; not agreea-
ble, 431.

Chaos, 508.

Character, to judge of, 208 ; one sure
standard of, 416 ; how carried, 416.

" Charity begins at home," 185.

Childhood, 262 ; spiritual, to be gently
treated, 538.

Children, turn to the light, 164; their
tone in reading, 165 ; how to be re-
warded, 503 ; how to be tasked, 503 ;
a needful lesson for, 503; their
faults, how to be corrected, 504;

• unequal growth of, 504.

Christian ministry, argument for a
learned, 21; candour, 163; writers
of various times and countries com-
pared, 305.

Christianity, 156, 157 ; and Paganism,
virtues of, 13 ; its threatenings tan-
gible, promises not so, 15; means
employed in its first establishment,
21 ; various aspects of, 304; its effect
upon literature, 80 ; the great civil-
izer, 344; commonly preceded by
Judaism or Platonism, 344 ; not to
be judged by the lives of Christians,
500.

Christmas, 22.

Church, and ministry, 223; robbery
in a, 494.

Cicero quoted, 105, 451; and Plato,
446.

Civilization, 164; tends to barbarism,
445 ; an evil result of, 480.

Clergy and laity, 234.

Close boroughs, and forty shilling free-
holders, 88.

Clouds and sunshine, 183.

Coast, view of, 16.

Cobbett, 109, 382 ; quoted, 215.

Cobweb on a knocker, 240.

Cobwebs, 470.

Cock-crow, the hour of death, 424.

Coleridge, 178, 235 ; quoted, 165, 195,
452; on Shakspeare, 193.

Colonization, 94.

Commandment, the third, 522.

Commerce, 24.

Compliments, 163.

Compulsion in religion, 435.

Concession in argument, 509.

Confidence, 158, 208.

Congruity, essential to beauty, 291.

Connoisseurship, 148.

Conscience and reason superseded
by the understanding, the conse-
quence, 89.

Constitution-mongers, 85, 86, S7.

Contrast, 160.

Controversy, effect of concession in,
509.

Convents, vulgar abuse of, 499.

Conversation, 510.

Corruption, human, 538.

" Count Julian," author of, 60.

Courage, 180, 182; "and faith, 38;
moral, 475.

Cousin, 457.

Cowper, 220.

Creation, folly of reviling the works
of, 260.

Crimes and vices, 473.

Criminals, 91.

Criticism, English, 197; the most ben-
eficial kind, 362.

Critics, 22 ; modern, 257.

Curiosity, 44.

Custom,* absurd adherence to old, 102.

D'Alembekt, quoted, 20.

Dante and Homer, 79.

Dead, authority of the, 184.

Death, 16; of a friend, 543.

Death's doings, 177.

Deformity, personal, its effect upon
character, 409.

De Maistre, quoted, 180, 243.

" Demand produces supply," fallacy
in the saying, 524.

Democracy, 179, 468 ; tendency of, 90.

Demosthenes, apophthegm of, 386.

Deserts, new incarnations often sought
in, 522.

Detraction and flattery, 510.

Devil and swine, 156.

Differences and likenesses, 290.

Difficulties, how surmounted by some,
508.

Digestion, mental, 512.

Diodorus Siculus quoted, 63.

Discipline, 478.

Disgrace, from without, and self-in-
flicted, 190.

Disinterestedness, 179.

Do and have done, 360.

Doctrine, effect of evil, 157.

Donne quoted, 135.

Dress, 262.

Dryden's epigram on Milton, 339.

Duels, 492.

Dunged field, smell of, 200.

Duty above all consequences, 491.

Earnestness, a proof of sincerity, 27.

Earth, and man must reciprocate ser-
vices, 528; conceivable effect of
revisiting after death, 537

Ease in writing, 160.

INDEX,

549

Eclecticism, 448, 450, 460} and true
philosophy, 451, 456.

Economy, 238.

Education, 22, 503; female, 90, 521;
and instruction, 231 ; one defect of
modern, 261; true principle of, 384.

Edwardes, Herbert, quoted, 286.

Elevation, effect of, 523.

Eloquence, and grandiloquence, 352;
Irish, 522.

Emulation, 531.

Enclosing, 483.

Encoring a piece of music justified,
421.

Encyclopaedia, 435.

End and means, 191.

England and Greece compared, 83;
and France, 160.

English, a peculiarity of the, 161;
constitution, 184; various styles of
writing, viz. Scotch, English, Irish-
English, &c. 228; individuality of
character among, 417; travellers,
508.

Enlightenment, modern, 189.

Enthusiasm, 13.

Epigrams, infelicitous on great men,
340.

Epistles, the apostolical, 208.

Epithets, use and abuse of, 352.

Error, contagious, 179.

Erskine, saying of, 460.

Essence and extract, 292.

Establishments, necessity for national,
526.

Evangelization, 96.

Evans' censure on Socrates, remarks
on, 424.

Events, learning from and judging
from, 89.

Evil, natural bias to, in man, 25 ; and
good, 183; speaking and hearing,
185 ; and good, where to be looked
for and dwelt on, 260; doing that
good may come, 431 ; of the world
no excuse for withdrawing from it,
486.

Example, 240.

" Exception proves the rule," abuse
of the maxim, 514.

Faces, 483.

Failures in life, 160.

Faith, 427, 500, and courage, 38; en-
tire if true, 208; Christian, 487; no
one responsible for his, 501.

Fearless men, 295.

Feeling, and opinion, 186; wayward,
speaking in the language of its
opposite, 388.

Female, 116.

Fickleness in women, 20.

Fine passages in a book, 445.

Flattery and detraction, 510.

Folk, 114.

Folly, 192 ; is always right, 432.

Fondness not love, 532.

Forms, 179, 183.

Fox, George, quoted, 133.

Fragmentary writing, 290.

Freedom and 'independence, 463.

Free-thinkers and free-thinking, 468.

French Eevolutions, 84; character,
$4, 486 ; ditto, symbolised by French
rivers, 431; phrases in English
writing, 212; and English charac-
teristics, 293 ; want of individuality
among, 417, 418 ; beauty, 433.

Friend, true value of a, never known,
476; loss of a, 543.

Friendship, 39; and malice, 173; the
duty of, 502.

Full cup, 239.

Fuller, quoted, 105, 537.

Gamboling and gambling, 535.

Genius, never satisfied with the out-
ward expression of its conceptions,
69; unpopularity of, 148 ; compared
to a pie of blackbirds, 345; and
goodness, analogous, 199; and na-
ture, analogous, 199; and talent,
375 ; unconscious of its excellence,
389.

Gentleman, defined, 162.

German literature, 195 ; modern
drama, some absurdities of, 401 ;
philosophy, 455.

Ghost seers, political and philosophi-
cal, 187.

God, his gifts to man, 243; denial of,
244; vile motive to love, 244; his
work perfect, 427; his name taken
in vain, 523.

Godliness, 262.

Godly, promises to the, 241.

Goethe, 81, 391; English criticisms
upon, 383 ; difficulty of translating,
505.

Gold, a good cover for blemishes, 484.

Good, and evil, 184; from evil, 183;
and bad in the world's estimation,
difference between, 187; actions,
God to have the glory of, 428; men,
errors of, 475.

Goodness, difference between Chris-
tian and heathen, 427; like the
glow-worm, 431.

Gospel, and law, 175; influence of,
181; preceded by some rays of
truth in heathen forms of religion,
423.

550

INDEX.

Government, 236, 237; and adminis-
tration, 232.

Governors and governed, 187.

Grace of God, 428.

u Graeculus esuriens," 183.

Gratification and happiness, 207.

Great men, 473; compared to moun-
tains, 30, 188 ; in history how few,
296.

Great works seldom popular, 414.

Greatness, vulgar notion of, 240 ; sim-
plicity of, 493.

Greece and England compared, 83;
poetry of, 159.

Greek poets, 52 ; literature, 74 ; effect
of sea and mountain scenery upon,
74; poets and historians were sol-
diers and statesmen, 76 ; their clear-
ness of vision, 77.

Growth, in good and in evil, 486 ; phy-
sical, intellectual, spiritual, 504.

Guides may go astray, 492.

Habit, power of, 431, 478.

Hall, Robert, quoted, 535.

Handsomeness, 43.

Happiness, foundations of domestic, of
political, of eternal, 602 ; domestic,
535.

Hare, Augustus, 178.

Hatred of those we have injured, 185.

Hazlitt on Shakspeare, 198.

Head and heart, 19.

Heart, like a melting peach, 200;
stunned and erring, prayer for guid-
ance, 487.

Heaven, preparation for, 478; and
earth 543.

Heber, Reginald, 178; quoted, 164.

Hedge, a star shining through a, 175.

Hegel, quoted, 125, 513.

Hell, 244.

Hermann, quoted, 470.

Heroism and genius, 295.

" Hie Rhodus, hie salta," 434.

History and poetry, which is truer?
263 ; style of modem, 431 ; a quali-
fication for writing, 431.

Hobbes, 152.

Home, 242 ; sickness, 512.

Homer, 50; and Dante, 79; transla-
tions of, 506.

Honour, 19, 183.

Horn, Francis, quoted, 81.

Human nature, 184, 299; imperfec-
tion, 255.

Humility, 176 ; false, 260.

Humour, 346, 512.

I, 105, 139, 142; "and my king," 120.
Ideal, and real, 345; the true, is no

abstraction, but the individual freed
and purified, 435.

Ideas, 291 ; and notions, 291.

Idolatry, 34, 499; sundry kinds of,
173 ; a kind of, 475.

" If roses have withered," &c. 529.

Ignorance, easily scandalised, 258 ; to
be conciliated, 258.

Illustrations, 469.

Imagination, and feelings, truths of,
188; migrations of the, 291; as
needful to the philosopher as to the
poet, 440 ; needful to religion, 499.

Imaginative works, general opinion of,
ultimately right, presently wrong,
411.

Incarnation of Christ, 34.

Incongruities, 371.

Independence, 477 ; and freedom, 463.

Individual, 116.

Individuality, decay of, among the
English, 113; of character among
the English, 417.

Indulgence to children, is self-indul-
gence, 161.

Infallibility of self, 512.

Infancy, 27 ; of the soul, 485.

Infection, moral, 158.

Ingratitude, mistaken talk of, 521.

Inquisition and autos-da-fe within our-
selves necessary, 473.

Instincts of the mind, 189.

Institutions, abandonment and res-
toration of, 35; power of ances-
tral, 237.

Instruction an element of education,
384.

Intellect, uncontrolled and unpurified,
480.

Intentions, good, 183.

Ironv, use of, sanctioned by the Scrip-
tures, 253.

Irregulars, value of, in literature, 289.

" Italy," an ode, 543.

Jacobinism, 43, 137.

Jealousy, 149.

John the Baptist and Christ, opposite
sides of one tapestry, 259.

Johnson, 461; his couplet on Shak-
speare, 342 ; his criticism on Milton,
358.

Jokes, often accidental, 28 ; good and
bad, 166; one should not laugh
hastily at one's own, 380.

Jonah's gourd, 471.

Joseph's bones, fable of, 425.

Joyful faces, 25.

Judgment, of men's actions, 103 ; ex-
cuse for uncharitable, 262.

Juliet, 39.

INDEX.

551

Kant quoted, 160.

Kindness, 238 ; conquest by, 509;
mostly well repaid, 521.

Kindred spirit, recognition of, 542.

Kites, real and paper, 352.

Knowledge, 164; acquisition of, con-
trolled by God's providence, 71;
modern teachers of, 90 ; and imagi-
nation, first delights of, 293; pro-
gress of, 470 ; of divine things is but
partial, 344; grounded on faith, 500.

Landor, W. S. quoted, 23, 160, 180,
353, 542.

Language, 158, 216, 223, 231 ; a barom-
eter, 150.

Latin, 227.

Laughter, 245.

Law, and gospel, 175; human and
divine compared, 260 ; and slavery,
260.

" Le monde c'est moi," 433.

Learning, 153.

Leaves, a lesson from, 31.

Leibnitz, 452; quoted, 453.

Letter- writers, male and female, 518.

Liars, 162.

Liberty and slavery, 179.

Life, definition of, 19 ; wh v granted to
some, 22 ; and death, 475 ; symbol-
ized, 512 ; two ecstatic moments
of, 542; and death likened to two
streams, 529.

Light, 428; and darkness, 40, 484;
through a hedge, 175.

Lines, on wild scenery, 30 ; the shep-
herd boy's ambition, 35 ; the moon,
40; night, 43; " abuse I would use,"
36 ; snow, 428 ; snow dissolving, 430 ;
the heart stunned and erring, prayer
for guidance, 487; written in an
album, 520 ; " If roses have with-
ered," 529; bees suck but do not
spoil, 537 ; Italy, 544.

Literary dissipation, 480.

Literature, detached thoughts in, 289 ;
national, value of a u volume para-
mount" in, 459.

Littleness of the great, 24.

Lives, successive, 191.

Logic, female, 520.

London and Paris, 18.

Looking-glass, a motto for, 158.

Lot's wife, 513.

Lotteries, 492.

Love, 104, 189, 532, 539, 541 ; a mar-
tyrdom, 161 ; of youths and of vir-
gins, 184; Christian, 241; to God,
427 ; descending and ascending, 428 ;
and harmony, power of, 457; the
phrase "to be in love," 528; of

parents and children, 533 ; spiritual
and sensual, 539; bodily presence
not necessary to, 541.

Lust, the ground of cruelty, 540.

Lying, wonderful love of, 508.

Madness, temporary, 163.

Malcolm (Sir J.), 178,511.

" Malo cum Platone errare," &c, 446.

Mammon worship, 475.

Man, effect of his fall upon moral sen-
sitiveness, 19; nature of, 149, 152;
his works but shadows, 188 ; an au-
tomaton, 192 ; his works and those
of God, 473; and the earth must
reciprocate services, 528.

Management, 31.

Mankind, 43.

Manliness and womanliness, 514.

Manner, importance of, 477.

March of intellect, vulgar notion of,
298.

Marriage, 148, 242 ; proofs of love in,.
200.

Mastery of self, 179, 239.

Materialism, over estimates the im-
portance of mechanical inventions,
70 ; presumption of, 523.

Means, worship of, 174; and end, 191.

Mechanical inventions, use and abuse
of, 73.

Medea, 141.

Memnon, music from the statue of,
500.

Memorials, 25.

Memory a store-room, 433.

Men and women, 184.

Metaphysics, causes of prejudice
against in England, 436.

Metre, heroic, 354.

Meum and tuum, 15.

Milton, 60, 420; absurd criticisms
upon, 60; Dryden's epigram upon,
339; his epitaph on Shakspeare,
343; Johnson's criticism on, 358;
quoted, 254, 429, 479, 541.

Minds, like a sheet of paper, 432 ; some
like suns, some moons, 484.

Ministry and Church, 233.

Mirth, 245.

Misers and spendthrifts, 207.

Mist, effects of, 188.

Mistrust, 208.

Modern times, spiritual genius of,
180.

Modesty, true, 18.

Money, pursuit of, 484.

Moon, 18 ; lines on the, 40.

Moral qualities like flowers, 25.

Morality, conventional, compared with
the B'ible, 260.

552

INDEX.

More, Sir Thomas, life of, quoted, 128;

Henry, quoted, 134.
Motives', inferior moral, 23 ; judgment

of, 147 ; a vile one to love God, 244.
Mountain scenery, 30; tour, pleasure

of, 37.
Mountains compared to great men,

188.
u Multa fiunt eadem sed aliter," 477.
Music, 28.

Mystic and the materialist, 175.
Mysteries of antiquity, 157.
Mythology and religion, 422.

Names, power of, 144.

Napoleon, 24, 192; his paleness, 433.

National strength, 87.

Nature, expounded hy art and science,

44 ; and art mutually expound each

other, 45; love of, in Homer, 50;

art, artifice, 205; simplicity of, 513;

and art, difference between their

works, 536.
Necromancy, 184.
Niebuhr, 71, 160; quoted, 87, 217.
Night, thoughts, 43; levelling effect

of, 509.
Nineteenth century characterised by

Shakspeare, 263.
No and yes, difficulty of saying, 477.
Notions and ideas, 291.
Novels, 350 ; evil of, 520 ; sentimental,

539.
Novelties in opinion, 164.
" Nullius addictus jurare in verba

magistri," 459.

Obscurantism, 484.

Offerings, free-will, 522.

Old age, 535.

Oracular and written wisdom, 291.

Oratory, 28, 105, 385.

Ordeals, 492.

Order, 478 ; in the universe, man an

apparent exception, 489.
Originality of thought rare, 28.
Ostracism, modern, 37.
Overfulness, 359.
Oversight, 485.

Painters and poets paint themselves,
416.

Painting and poetry contrasted, 58;
compared with history, 270; and
poetry, 345.

Pantheism, monotheism, and trinita-
rianism, and their likes in politics,
523.

Paris and London, 18.

Parishes should interchange their ap-
prentices, 15.

Parliamentary reform, 104.

Pedantry apparent, 44.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish, 239.

" Pereant qui ante nos," &c, 44.

Perfectibility, human, 299, 307, 330,
334, 338.

Period, 189.

Permanence of our words and deeds,
215.

Persecution, religious, 421.

Personality, and unity, 36 ; the bane
of conversation, 510.

Philanthropy, 541.

Philip Van Artevelde, author of, 60.

Philology and Philosophy, 507.

Philosophers' view of priests, 263.

Philosophical teaching, true and false,
438.

Philosophy, Christian, 19 ; and poetry,
187 ; the circumnavigation of human
nature, 434; of the human mind,
436; German, 455; divine, 485;
popular, 488.

Phrenology, 78.

Picturesque, origin of taste for, 45;
love of, 47, 49; no descriptions in
ancient poets, 50.

Picturesqueness, 25.

Pilgrim's Progress, Coleridge upon,
359.

Pishashee, 17.

Plain language, power of, 359.

Plato, his style, 215; and Cicero, 446.

Poet, his belief, 36; his sympathy
with the world around, 67; his
business, 469.

Poetic vision, 200; diction, how viti-
ated, 354.

Poetical dreamers, 350.

Poetry, 22, 37, 290, 375; sources of,
36; ancient and modern, 53; and
painting contrasted, 58; worth of,
90; and verses, 147; of the 18th
century, 148; and philosophy, 187;
study of, 194; and history, which
is truer? 263; to be popular must
not be too poetical, 348; intrusion
of reflection into, 376; its various
forms in the different stages of a
people's life, 394; true, must be
national, 395 ; the drama, the man-
hood of, 396; injured (especially
the drama) by diffusion of reading,
397; reflective spirit, injurious to,
397.

Poets, modern, special difficulties of,
398; which of the ancients most
popular, 416.

Polemical artillery, 103.

Politeness, 521.

Political unions and enmities, 29;

INDEX.

553

changes, 184; economists, an axiom
of theirs examined, 524.

Pollarded nations, 84.

Polygamy in England, 36.

Poor-laws, 40; use of the poor, 262;
want of places of recreation for,
481.

Pope, his translation of Homer, 60;
his epigram on Newton, 340.

Portraits, 163.

Potential and optative moods, 240.

u Pouvoir e'est vouloir," 183.

Poverty, 158 ; and wealth, 161.

Praise, and blame, public men must
be indifferent to, 206 ; of others, use
to be made of, 475 ; evil of, 530.

Prayer, 211.

Preaching, 385; true earnestness es-
sential in, 3S8; written sermons,
432.

Prejudice, 13, 16, 25, 163 ; outweighs
truth, 471.

Presence of mind, 191.

Present age, one characteristic of, 361.

Pretenders on crutches, 243.

Pride and vanity, 261.

Priests and philosophers, 263.

Princess, the, 516.

Principle, men of, 184; and motive,
207.

Privateers, 24.

Prizes for neat cottages, &c, censured,
481.

Prodigality, good and evil, 426.

Productive and reflective minds, 375.

Progress, dislike of, 160.

Progressiveness of mankind, 306, 330,
334, 338; and perfectibility of man-
kind, opinions regarding, at different
periods, 307, 330.

Property and proprete, 417.

Prose writing of the 17th century,
148.

Providence, recognition of, in small as
well as great events, 428.

Prudence, Christian, 39.

Punic war, 16.

Purity, 180, 182, 183.

Pygmalion, more than one, 381.

" Qu^erenda pecunia primum est,"

&c, 483.
Quakerism, 132, 136.

Radical, Reform, 200, 201.
Rambler, 461.
Raphael, 420.

Reading, desultory, 156 ; light, 444.
Reality of character, 486.
Reason, unhallowed, 207 ; distrust of,
240; and imagination, 371; its au-

24

thority undermined by science, 4S9 ;
its name abused ana misapplied,
490 ; a serious matter, 521.

Reflective spirit in modern literature,
372.

Reform, 201.

Reformers, an objection to, answered,
27.

Religion, 13, 188 ; consequences of re-
garding it as an antidote, 260; diffi-
culties of, 263 ; notion of improving,
302 ; what was its practical influence
in the ancient world, 423; difficulty
of changing, 475 ; essential to civil
society, 495.

Religious works, permanence of, 98;
duty, sum of, 260.

Repentance in sickness or old age,
186.

Reproof, reception of, 185.

Reptiles and reviewers, 508.

Resolutions, sudden, 509.

Responsibility, moral, 501.

Restlessness, love of, 383.

Revealed knowledge, 27.

Revelations before our Saviour, 543.

Reverence for sacred things, 493.

Reviewers and authors, 159 ; and rep-
tiles, 508.

Revision of a writer's works, 366.

Revolutions, 469.

Rhine, its influence upon German na-
tional character, 82.

Rhone, 30.

Riches, intellectual, their advantages
and disadvantages, 154; doubled by
sharing, 206.

" Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat ,"
245.

Ridicule, 247; consistent with love,
255 ; use and abuse of, 257 ; fear of,
257.

Right, difficulty of doing, 43 ; men love
to be in the, 470 ; doing and right
thinking, 492.

Roman Catholicism in the Tyrol and
at Rome contrasted, 32 ; poets, few,
the cause, 159; and Greek charac-
ters contrasted, 419.

Romans, 135; want of individuality
among, 419.

Rome, 23, 25 ; want of truthfulness at,
34; as art sank, comfort increased
at, 473.

Romish church, contest with, 171; in
some things to be envied, 493.

Roper's Life of More quoted, 128.

Rose-leaf stained, 147.

Ruins and their accidents, a lesson
from, 186.

Rule oroved by exception, 514.

554

INDEX.

Sacrilege, a discussion upon, 494.

Saint Peter's, 31, 32, 434.

Saint's tragedy, 516.

Sans culotterie, 523.

" Sauve qui peut," 484.

Scepticism, 500 ; and bigotry, 468.

Schiller quoted (letter to Goethe),
391.

Schlegel (Wm.) 472.

Schleiermacher, 253.

Schoolmen and their accusers, 292.

Schubert quoted, 109.

Science and poetry, 345.

Scriptures, holy, 208 ; sanction the use
of irony, 253.

Sea, effect of its presence on national
character, 80.

Self-anatomy, morbid, 402, 405.

Self-conquest (French), 417.

Self-depreciation not humility, 486.

Self-distrust, the first step to self-
knowledge, 441.

Self-examination, Christian, 409; its
abuse, 410.

Self-knowledge, 513 ; first step tOj 441.

Self-love, 154, 187; warps the judg-
ment, 521.

Self-mastery, 179, 239.

Self-reflectiVe characters in Shak-
speare, 406.

Self-sacrifice, 416.

Selfishness, 472 ; in religion, 144.

Sense and nonsense, 512.

Senses, not necessarily the only me-
dium of perception, 20; internal,
186.

Shadow and substance, 161.

Shadows, 173.

Shakspeare, 43, 192, 193, 389 ; his ge-
nius, 346; Troilus and Cressida,
346; self-reflective characters in,
406 ; quoted, 140, 406.

Shallowness (in character), abvss of,
432.

Shelley, quoted, 405; "I had rather
be damned with Plato," &c, 449.

Sheridan, 64.

Siddons, Mrs., 142.

Sinking in the world, 104.

Sins, bodilv, more curable than men-
tal, 26.

Sisters, moral anti-septics, 243.

Sizars, 164.

Slavery, 34.

Smoke", fattening on, 161.

Snow, 428, 429 ; dissolving, 430.

Society, progress of, compared to a
waterfall, 31.

Socinians, 208.

Socrates, his last hour, 424; his mag-
nanimous saying, 470.

Solar system, a type of a happy fam-
ily, 535.
Solger quoted, 81, 417.
Song, 88.

Sophism, accumulating, 172.
South and Voltaire, 160; quoted, 26,

443.
Speaking, the best training for style,

352 ; and writing, in what different,

432.
Speculative habits, result of, 479.
Spirit, effect of the Holy, compared

with the sun, 25, 39.
" Spirituel," 293.
Squares of London, exclusiveness of,

482.
Statesmanship, 236, 433; Christian,

204.
Steffens, quoted, 515.
Sterling and Carlyle, 389 ; quoted, 457.
Stewart, Dugald, 436, 438.
Storms, summer and winter, 476.
Strength (and weakness) of mind,

211.
Study, proper for youth of a free

country, 14 ; course of, 89.
Style in writing and speaking, 104,

211, 227; simplicity of, 212, 21S;

that of women, 213; of Plato, 215;

speaking, the best training for, 355 ;

in writing, 363, 441; the dashing,

380; practice of underlining, 381;

in writing, must be intelligible, 441;

but should demand some exertion

in the reader, 441.
Sufferings, how they may be lessened,

522.
Sun on a cloudy day, 543.
Sunday, prevalent feeling regarding,

498.
Sunshine, effect of unvaried, 487 ;

effect of natural and mental, 509.
Sympathy, craving for, 513.

Talkers, great, 417.

Talking, 105.

Tares and wheat, parable of, 103.

Taste, 148.

Taylor, Jeremy, quoted, 253.

Teachers, sometimes fail to learn, 492;

compared to the Hebrew midwives,

503.
Tell, William, story of. 269.
Temptation, our secret love of, 200.
Theatre, every man has his own, 417.
Third-thoughted men, 164.
Thirlwall, 80.

Thorwaldsen, anecdotes of, 68.
Thou and you, use of by ancients and

moderns, &c, 121, 138.
Thought, 164; fields of, need to lie

INDEX.

555

fallow, 445; like light, is social and
sportive, 469.

Thrift, 238.

Tieck, quoted, 110; Coleridge's esti-
mate of. 359.

Time no agent, 37.

Tinsel, man's love of, 91.

To-day, to-morrow, yesterday, 157.

Tolerance, sometimes another name
for indifference, 475.

Tragedy, Greek and German, 379; ob-
solete modes of faith or superstition
not to be introduced into, 379.

Translations, 505; injurious to litera-
ture, 356.

Translator, duty of a, 217.

Transportation," 91, 100.

Travel, 173.

Truism misapplied, 508.

Trust, 285.

Truth, 183, 245 ; like wine, to be palat-
able must be drugged, 384 ; difficul-
ties in search of, most beneficial,
443; all importance of, 446; to be

I referred to Plato, 447 ; and beauty
ost by severing what God has
joined, 473; and money, compara-
tive estimate of (French), 483 ; to be
prefered to love, 502 ; and falsehood,
502; no monopoly or patent in, 628;
first sight of, 542.

Truthfulness in writing, 360.

Turner's tour in Normandy quoted,
167.

" Turning the back on oneself," some-
times desirable, 161.

Unbelief, 211.

Understanding, the consequence of its
superseding conscience and reason,
89 ; wit, fancy, 445.

Unitarianism, 39, 161.

Use and worth, 205.

Usefulness and good, 491.

Vacuum, effect of, 523.

Vanity, 18; fair, 20; and pride, 261.

Variations of feeling, 13.

Veil, the white, profaned as often as

the black, 431.
Verses, nonsense, 357.
Vice, 90, 240.

Village green, loss of the, 480.
Virtue, disbelief in, 19 ; with the an-

cients and with us, 180, 182 ; heathen
and Christian contrasted, 529.

Virtues of the good and of the bad
man, 200.

Voltaire and South, 160.

" Volumes, paramount," 459.

Wants, real and imaginary, 477,

War, 498 ; horrors of, 472.

Warmth of lowly places, 240.

Wastefulness of moral gifts, 426.

We and I, 106.

Wellington on his losses in battle, 472.

Wife, mistress, mother, 36 ; choice of

a, 431.
"Wight," 114.
Wilfulness, 475.
Will, 260.

Winged words, 291.
Wisdom, its kingdom not of this world,

344; is alchemy — finds good in

everything, 422 ; and folly, 484.
Wise, intellect of the, 22.
Wit and wisdom, 245; home-bred,

503.
Womanliness and manliness, 514.
Woman's heart, strength of, 515.
Women, what should they write ? 517 ;

and men, 184; their style in writing,

213.
Words, 231; new, 218; winged, 291;

their force worn awav by use, 478.
Wordsworth, 360, 361," 365, 367, 372,

473, 532; quoted, 360, 361, 364,367,

373, 374.
Work, to be done day by day as it

arises, 434; of the wise, 473.
World, the need to feel the reality of

this and the next, 499; clinging to

this (French), 322.
Worlds, telescopic and microscopic,

263.
Worship of God accounted idleness

499.
Worth and use, 205.
Writers, 445; pernicious, 147; com-
pared with the Jews, 173.
Writing, object of, 352 ; good and bad,

353.

Yes and No, 262 ; difficulty of saying,
477.

Zeuxis, story of, 45

THE END.

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