No. 89.

AND

LITERARY CHRONICLE.

A DIALOGUE.

B.-He waives his scruples about the antiquity of a question, which will serve as a peg for some spick and span paradox.

A.-What is the latest which he has suspended upon it?

B.-He asserts that Napoleon ought not to be called a Conqueror, so long as that title is also given

to Alexander and Cæsar.

A.-His exquisite reason?

B.-He says that 'Conquest,' in the modern feudal sense, is synonymous with ' Acquisition,' and that, in the heroic and classical times, no two meanings could be at a wider distance from each other than those which are denoted by these two words. A.-Well?

B.-That Alexander was a classical Conqueror; Napoleon a feudal one; and that we are constantly losing our sense of this difference.

A.-What name does he propose to substitute? B.-He would call Alexander the Vanquisher, or else Napoleon the Acquisitor. The first would be the most correct, because the word Conquest, of right belongs to modern times, but the latter would be most useful in curing the confusion in our notions, because it gives the meaning to one cause which we have hitherto tacitly given to both.

A.-A mere refinement, I think?

B.-Nevertheless, Acquisitiveness, as the phrenologists speak, was actually a much more remarkable characteristic of Napoleon than of Alexander or Cæsar. How strikingly we discover it in his sayings. A.-In his sayings? I do not understand you. B.-Have you never remarked the very great * poverty and feebleness of all the best-known thoughts 5 and phrases which are attributed to Napoleonsetting them in such strong contrast with the life and originality of Cæsar's, for instance.

A.-And to what do you attribute it?

B.-To the circumstance that the thoughts of the one have grown from slips, the other from roots. Whence it happens that Napoleon's look withered and sickly the moment they are taken out of their native soil, and that Cæsar's, into whatever country they may have been transplanted, are as healthy and vigorous now as they were eighteen hundred years

ago.

A.-Illustrate your meaning by an instance. B. Suppose we take the hackneyed one. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.' A--Are you sure that is Napoleon's?

B. The question every one naturally asks; but there is no reason to dispute his property in it, any more than to deny that he was once possessor of

A.-I am again at a loss. If the title be one which will stand against an adverse claim, what signifies it whether it be of descent, purchase, or occupancy?

B.-In spiritual properties the difference is considerable. In every country you will find some honey-suckles and dog-roses, hemlock and nightshade, in the hedge-rows, which every one has a right to appropriate who pleases, but which only children care to appropriate, because almost all, save children, value the beauty of the landscape above the pleasure of possession. Now in this description of flowers or weeds, must be reckoned the saying of which we are speaking. Napoleon did not sow it, nor till the ground which was to

bear it; he merely plucked it. There it was in the fields amidst a thousand others, which shoot up by thousands, every year, from the light sandy soil of

417

Price 8d.

B.-We shall see. Does 'Sublime' mean High?
A.-I apprehend so.
B.--And what does' Ridiculous' mean, Low?
A.-Scarcely.

B.-So I should think, for to say that there is but one step from the 'High' to the 'Low,' is nonsense. There may be but one step; but there is only threequarters of a step to that which is one quarter less low; and only half-a-step to that which is half as low. When the question is one of measure, it cannot signify where you fix unity; but if it does not mean 'Low,' what can it mean?

A.-Vulgar, mean, absurd.

B.-All which are only the antipodes of sublime when it is used figuratively, as low is its antipode when it is used literally; and therefore the same objection applies to them.

A.-May not ridiculous be used in its honest sense as the synonyme of 'Ludicrous?"

A.-By what criterion do you determine that the sentiment is French?

B-The thickness of the outer leaves and a total deficiency of heart are infallible proofs.

A.-I wish you would not resort to those metaphorical expressions. What do you mean by 'outer leaves,' and 'heart?"

B.-If you have leisure we will examine the sentiment, by which means you will perhaps understand

me better. Does it not strike you that there are a great many instances which seem at once to establish

its truth?

A.-A great many; and it is the recollection of them which makes me wonder that you should express so contemptuous an opinion of it. For instance, nearly all the fine speeches, apostrophes,

appeals to Jupiter, Mars, the shade of Henri Quatre; and, above all, the death scenes of the heroes of the border land. French Revolution, strike me as dwelling on the

B.-Very well; do you remember any others? A.-The others which occur to me are different, and serve to furnish another sort of evidence in its support. They are such as the conversation between the Fool and Lear; parts of the trial scene of Fergus M'Ivor; the grave digger's scene; and innumerable others, in which the ludicrous is made subservient to the sublime, and increases its effect.

B. Your double set of instances are weighty; and thus you may comprehend the first part of my sentence respecting this saying of Napoleon's; so far as it can derive strength from outward observations which are to a sentiment what the sun and rain are to a pant; so far it is strong and hence I was induced to say that it was thick in its outer leaves. Now let us look at the sentiment in itself; let us see whether it has any inward coherency, or whether, as I affirmed just now, from having no original seed, it is utterly coreless and heartless.

A. You will have some difficulty in proving that, I think, after having first shewn that there is so much evidence in its favour.

A.-I do not see how that follows, from what we have just said. It need not be any of these, but it may be all of them.

:

B.-What difference did you understand, then, between the 'Ridiculous' and the 'Ludicrous;' a difference of kind, or merely the difference of degree ?

A.-Supposing I said, 'merely of degree,' what would you answer?

B.-That as ridiculousness includes all degrees of itself, the distinction was inadınissible.

A.-Well then, I say, the difference is this: the ridiculous is that which is such by nature; the ludicrous, that which is perceived to be such, or made such by art.

B.-That will suit my purpose sufficiently well, though I think we shall soon arrive at a much more rational classification than that which you suggest. When you say, that the sublime is akin to the 'Ludicrous,' in this sense, what do you mean?

A.-I mean that it is akin to the ridiculous in art and not the ridiculous in nature.

B.-But hold? The ridiculous of art, which you rightly define to be the Ridiculous perceived or created;' becomes, when it is created or perceived -the same in kind and quality with the ridiculous which exists in nature.

A.-I do not exactly see your meaning?

B.-Is not Sir Andrew Aguecheek precisely as ridiculous, and ridiculous precisely in the same sense, as any existing fool in Illyria or England? A.-Certainly.

B.-Then I suppose the distinction which you wish to draw, is not hetween the ludicrous and ridiculous-between the ridiculous of art and of nature, but between the power of perceiving and the thing perceived. In other words, you mean to say, that Napoleon meant to signify, not that the sublime is but one step from the ridiculous but that the perception of the ridiculous is but one step from

what?

A.-The perception of the sublime, I suppose Do you not think this may have been his meaning? B.-But the misfortune is, that it totally destroys his meaning, for the more sense of the ridiculous, and the more sense of the sublime a man has, the less he is likely to make the sublime ridiculous.

A.-But will this explanation account for the phenomena from which you admitted that this sentiment derived some plausibility. As, for instance, my first class-the speeches of the heroes and martyrs in the French Revolution?

B. If you study the French literature of the 18th century, you will be convinced that one calamity had already befallen that nation, which was the loss

of all sense of the sublime; and that another was likely soon to befall it, which was, a loss of all sense of the ridiculous. And what singularly illustrates the truth we have just been elucidating, one of these effects took place through the other. Voltaire, in teaching his countrymen that the business, of ridicule was to parody and counterfeit sublimity, set the two principles at war-took away from wit its natural province, and made such utter confusion between them, that in a very short time it was impossible for a Frenchman to know any thing about either. The effect was not perceived at first, and the other nations of Europe went on imagining

that the French nation had a keener perception of the ridiculous than any existing, till the revolution came and proved that there never had been or could be, a nation which ran so headlong into absurdities from the want of it. And thus the union of sublimity and ridiculousness, instead of proceeding from any law of the human mind which connected them, proceeded from the violation of a law which provided for their constant separation.

A.-And the other class of phenomena, the union of sublimity and ludicrousness, and the subserviency of the latter to the former, how do you explain that? B.-From the opposite cause to that just noted, producing the opposite effect. That true law of connection between the perception of the sublime and the perception of the ridiculous, which had worn out in the French nation, has its highest vigour in the mind of a man of genius. Consequently in never trembling, lest his sublimity should become ridiculous, he is always to exert both the faculties, and to exhibit in the same wonderful work the miracles which are wrought by their united agency. And hence the friendly connection between the scenes of wit and pathos in Shakspeare-hence the easy transition in our minds from the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, to the heath which trembled under the sense of fear. And so let it ever be in literature and art. Let each of their provinces be cultivated to the highest limits of its capacity, and let there be the freest, the most unrestricted commerce between them. Let no port-dues, no prohibiting duties, ever prevent the goods of one from finding their way, by the shortest and easiest route, into the other. Let there be a thorough sympathy between the natures of each - a well-grounded understanding of the other's provincial government and municipal regulations, and let there be one law over them all, deriving its origin and its sanction from that central principle which imparts life to the system, and directs the energies of each part of it, so that it shall best minister to the good of the whole.

life there is within, which they have derived from the mind of their authors. Omitting the first mode of judging, great men are often intolerant to one another, attributing to original perversity, opinions to which, but for accidental circumstances, they would never have given birth. Omitting the second, ordinary men are constantly paying respect to some dicta which their own narrow experience has made plausible, and rejecting others more important, because the evidence of them is beyond their ken. Uniting both, I think we may be able to excuse the very errors which we are correcting, to account for the very phenomena from which we refuse to draw

our inferences.

A.-I shall be happy to join you in making the experiment.

THE LIFE OF LOCKE.

The Life of John Locke, with Extracts from his Correspondence, Journals, and Common-Place Books. By Lord King. 1 vol. 4to. pp. 404. Colburn. London, 1829.

MR. STEWART has observed, with great truth, that

their sympathy or reverence. Nor was Locke a man to separate himself (like Milton) from his fellows, and build up and people in solitude a spiritual kingdom of his own, not governed by the laws of time or custom, nor liable to the changes of vulgar opinion. He had not himself imagination to re-establish the intercourse between the sphere of ideas and the sphere of practice. And feeling most strongly (as, not being endowed with a creative and spiritual imagination, he was right to feel,) the insufficiency of that which seemed to him, and to all around him, a remote and lifeless system, he began to labour in raising up, out of this sensible frame of things, a compacted and lofty tower, such as might in some degree content mankind by a faint resemblance to the height and order of the heaven which they had no longer wings to scale, and which, in their eyes, was divested of the chiefest portion of its glory.

This is, in few and inadequate sentences, our conception of Locke's design. He wished to reestablish in the minds of thinking men the importance of the actual world. This lay trodden under the feet of his contemporary theorists, while the spiritual region had gone afar off, and was beyond his as well as theirs. He, therefore,

Locke is very little read in England. His reputa- raise the sensations and the practical understandings

tion is almost entirely collegiate or foreign. Educated men generally judge of him either from what is known of his works in universities, where they are used as text-books, and of course dessicated and impoverished into mere heaps of dry bones, or from the renown given him by the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, by Condillac and Voltaire, who understood

of mankind into the place of honour and power, which it was so important that something else than mere impulse and guess-work should occupy.

Locke was a virtuous and an humble-minded, as

well as an able and accomplished man, and where his skill and strength were not adequate to conduct his fellows in safety, he willingly paused, and declared his own insufficiency. He found that his own method of leading men back to practice and common sense would take him only a little way in philosophy; but he seldom attempted to push forward desperately, and he confessed the existence of the difficulties which he could not overcome. Even thus he fell into many hazards, and many contradictions; and remained as far as possible from giving the world an entire and methodical exposition.

but little of the books, and nothing at all of the man. Nor is it very wonderful that he failed in making himself easily intelligible to his successors, for he certainly did not very clearly comprehend himself. Honest and modest as he was, he seems to have thought that he was in some degree fitted to write a scientific treatise on the human mind; though he certainly did not fancy that he had produced the complete and circular work which the 'Essay on the Human Understanding' has been called by many of his admirers. On this point we believe that he was mistaken; and we are sure that the million are so still. The service which, in our opinion, Lord King has rendered is the publication of a book that will go far towards convincing every one in how small a degree Locke was a scientific thinker, and how admirable were his practical sense and judg-ings. And there are scarcely any books in which ment, and his social virtues and accomplishments.

It is worth while to consider, for a moment, what was really done by Locke in philosophy, and how it came to be supposed that he had done so much which he in fact never did think of, and so much more which so wise a man could never by any possibility have thought of.

The age in which Locke lived was undoubtedly the least poetical of modern history. The human imagination had scarcely ever been so feeble as it then was. From this resulted an almost entire separation between philosophy and real life. The great truths of metaphysics, which for those who first brought them out into distinct consciousness, were living powers, became bare and meagre abstractions. The imagination, wherever it had been vigorous and creative, had always served to connect, in the mind of the speculative thinker, the ideal with the actual

B.-My object was not very definite when we began to talk, and, as far as I know, I was chiefly occupied with replying to your questions. But if you will have a moral out of every thing, I think we may probably extract one, even from our loose and vagrant dialogue. Do you not think it would be possible to apply the method we have pursued in discussing Napoleon's dictum, to other much more original and important sayings of great men; might it not be a useful exercise to bring to this test many sayings of Dr Johnson and others who have given hogmas to the world, which exercise a silent and strong influence over its opinions and modes of dinking; first examining them outwardly, to see that facts may have suggested them, and what then

individual conceivable forms; and to clothe and exalt the work-day persons and affairs of society with the light of a higher sphere. This was the genuine and healthy state of the human mind. The two worlds, the world of thought and the world of action, remained perfectly distinct, and each in itself complete; while the imagination moved and ministered between them on its etherial ladder, attended by all its troop of angelic spirits. In the age of Locke such was no longer the state of things. The loftier and purer region contained no longer those forms born of imagination, without which that region is an object for the intellect only, and cannot be beneficially brought into connection with actual society. It had, therefore, become a pale abstraction hanging above the heads of men, but incapable of engaging

On the other hand, let us look into his works for what they really contain of excellent, and we find them the productions of one of the clearest and most cautious understandings that ever gave rules for human conduct. They are covered all over with a rich fruitage of good sense and of the soundest feel

you can find fewer propositions fit to become parts of a scientific treatise, or a greater number of useful, serviceable observations.

But see how his writings have been treated by the French. He tried the experiment of making a system out of our sensations, and failed. He was met on all sides by difficulties which sensations could not account for, and of which he was far too wise, too good, too careful for human welfare, and for morality and religion, to deny the existence. But some of the French philosophers, and more especially Condillac, fearing not at all to expose mankind to dangers which the stronger and better-cultivated mind of

Locke had wished to withdraw them from encountering, bravely pushes on to the end with that guidance which the Englishman felt to be insufficient, -tell us that the moral perils which Locke was so honourably afraid of are mere phantoms and delusions, and builds on his foundation a system altogether circular, and towering to the skies, where he had felt that no such thing was possible without shutting out a world of truths to which his quack disciple was utterly indifferent.

'The Life of Locke, by Lord King,' is, as far as his lordship's part in the volume goes, most especially worthless. Two or three rants about toleration, and two or three very needless hits at the church, are almost all that he adds to Locke's papers, and to those facts which might have been found in any biographical dictionary. He attempts nothing like an estimate of the character and writings of the eminent man whose manuscripts he publishes, and does not write one discriminating word as to his influence on society, and on subsequent thinkers. He has throughout modernised the spelling of the papers

communicant, who, when he came to the minister, made a low bow, and knelt down, and then the minister put water into his mouth; which done, he rose, made his obeisance, and went to the other end, where he did the same, and had the wine poured into his mouth, without taking the cup in his hand, and then came back to his place by the south side of the church. Thus did four, one after another, which were all that received that day, and amongst them was a boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old. They have at this church a sacrament every Sunday morning: in the afternoon, at the Calvinists', I saw a christening. After sermon there came three men and three women, (one whereof was the midwife, with a child in her arms, the rest were godfathers and godmothers, of which they allow a greater number than we do, and so wisely get more spoons,)-to the table which i just by the pulpit. They taking their places, the minister in the pulpit read a little of the Institution, then read a short prayer; then another minister, that was below, took the child, and with his hand poured water three times on its forehead, which done, he in the pulpit read another short prayer, and so concluded. All this was not much longer than the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments; for all their service is very short, beside their preaching and singing, and there they allow good measure.' Pp. 13-18.

(To be continued.)

THE NEW FOREST.

The New Forest: a Novel. By the Author of Brambletye House, &c. Three vols. Colburn. London, 1829.

THE work before us is unlike the other novels of the author, in this respect, that the time of its action is within the present century. We are inclined to think that this difference will be unfavourable to the popularity of The New Forest.' People in general like to read of obsolete or outlandish customs; and an author may be pretty sure of finding readers who professes to retail the forgotten scandal of London in the seventeenth century, and Jerusalem in the days of Mark Antony. We can, however, assure the public that if they will take the trouble to examine at all minutely, they will discover the characters and manners of England in our own time, as represented by the author of The New Forest,' to be no less strange and fanciful than those which he has assigned to the Roundheads and the Pharisees. We find in this work, people of the highest fashion described as showing their superior breeding, not by ease and elegance, but by peouliar stiffness and af.

fectation. a heroine (Fanny) designed to be one of the most delightful of those delightful creatures, pretty and lively young ladies, and yet ejaculating

lud at every second sentence. We have a Southampton smuggler, one of the most generous and highminded of men; and a captain (of hussars, we believe,) evidently intended to be a picture of a class, and who is only distinguished from other gentlemen by cowardice and mispronunciation. We might add a dozen more of these extravagances; but they all shrink into obscurity before the dazzling absurdity of the hero.

This young gentleman has been educated in the United States, where he has become an 'Utilitarian.' (Thank Heaven! the word is not English! any more than the thing.) The way in which this prudent personage manifests the principle of Utility," in his conduct, is by throwing about his money (of which he has not much) to every one who is willing to relieve him from it; and by keeping a large stock of the readiest and most profound sensibility for the sufferings of every one around him. Yet, some how or other, it never occurs to this paragon of trans-atlantic philosophy, that his sylogistic pedantry and contemptuous affectation are more annoying to every one he meets than would be the thumb-screw or the rack. Mr. Smith is not, perhaps, aware that there is no proof of a strong propensity to examine every thing by the test of reason, in a fondness for putting bad reasoning into the form of a syllogism. Neither does he seem to know, that a person who should profess to despise the wealthy classes, and should take every oppor

tunity of treating them uncivilly, would simply be kicked in consequence, out of all educated society, with as little mercy as might be shewn to an unlicked North American bear. It is no doubt very true, that there is no natural distinction of ranks, that men are not born with coronets on their heads, or even with WHOLE coats on their backs; and we do not pretend that money is a virtue. But it happens that the richer classes are, in general, the best instructed, and have the most agreeable manners; and a person who does not feel this, is thereby only convicted of not comprehending a kind of merit of which he has none himself. The error of the picture of purseproud arrogance and ignorance, is this, that in the great majority of cases, there is, in truth, more mental cultivation among persons having some property, than among persons having none. And Mr. Smith, by way of writing a novel with a moral, has merely made a gross blunder in 3 vols. 8vo., which has been committed before him by a dozen other writers. The design of his book is, in fact, substantially the same as that of an old novel, 'Hermsprong, or Man as he is not,' which we are convinced the author of The New Forest' never saw, as, if it had fallen in his way, he must have immediately perceived the faults of his own plan.

that a painter loves: detached clumps of trees, breaking its monotony, served to unite its woody boundaries with its area; while a large sheet of water that occupied its centre, was nearly bisected by a long projecting tongue of land, upon which, especially in the sunny evenings of summer, might be seen groups of cattle, or forest mares with their foals, sending their long shadows athwart the golden bloom of the little lake. The view from the opposite side of the gentle eminence on which the village stood, though totally dissimilar, was scarcely less attractive the eye passing over enclosed corn-fields, pastures, and meadows, till it reached the Isle of Wight, the insularity of which not being perceptible to the eye, gave to the intervening channel the appearance of an extensive lake bounded by rugged cliffs and distant mountains.

' A clump of lofty elms and lime-trees, branchless for some distance from the ground, but tufting over luxuriously at top, formed an arch across the road leading to the village, around which numerous flights of pigeons were generally to be seen wheeling and careering; while beneath its aperture might be discerned the low spire of the church embosomed in foliage. Athwart the strag. gling irregular central road of Thaxted, dignified by the name of the High-street, hung the sign of the chief inn, exhibiting a most bellipotent Saint George on a fiery white horse, having obviously the best of it in a conflict with a portentous green dragon, who seemed to be complaisantly opening his mouth for the express purpose of swallowing his adversary's javelin. The building to which this flaring daub was prefixed, was an ancient low edifice, constructed with solid timbers blackened on the

We subjoin a part of the first chapter, which pleasantly reminds us of Miss Mitford's sketches :

6

On the southern verge of the New Forest, in Hampshire, and at no great distance from the sea, stands a large and populous village, to which, for special reasons of our own, we shall assign the fictitious appellation of Thaxted. Its situation and appearance were much more picturesque than might have been expected from its vicinity to the sea, an element which, in our northern latitudes, generally imparts a sterile and unlovely character to the contiguous shores, either preventing altogether the growth of trees, or giving such a stunted, warped, and cankered appearance to those that struggle against the chalky soil and stormy winds, as to make them rather disfiguring than ornamental to the scenery. Such was not the case at Thaxted, which was sufficiently removed from the great landscape-spoiler to be beyond the reach of its baneful influence, and yet near enough to derive from it all those scenic embellishments which so

eminently enhance the beauty of a rich land view, by affording occasional glimpses of the gleaming sea, or a white sail, caught beneath the boughs of noble trees, athwart the undulating hollows of the intervening downs, or over an enclosed and cultivated level. The village stood upon the extreme edge of a heath, not of such extent as some of those which, forming spacious openings

in the interior of the New Forest, are extensive enough to deserve the name of

"Vast savannas, where the wand'ring eye,
Unfixed, is in a verdant ocean lost;"

and yet sufficiently large to give breadth, distance, and picturesqueness, to the surrounding scenery. Its opposite extremity was bounded by the forest, forming woody bays and promontories, alternately receding from, and advancing into, the heath; now opening upon some deep dark vista, athwart whose distant gloom the deer were

A sharp-pointed gable, fretted with half-decayed oak wood, crowned the front! and the roof was of large sandstones, covered with moss and house-leek, from the midst of which issued a ponderous red brick chimney, placed edgeways, and surmounted with numerous ragged mouldings. The upper story projected over the lower, and the cornice that divided them had sunk considerably on one side, without, however, appearing to have injured the general solidity of the building, which, humble as it was, constituted the most important structure in the High-street.

6

In passing the irregular assortment of barns, sheds, shops, and houses, thatched, tiled, and slated, that made up the straggling village, the attentive traveller might observe, from the various inscriptions, that there seemed to be but four names in the whole place, the two first exhibiting the unmeaning monosyllables of Wilks and and Stubbs, and the remaining two the more rural com

pounds of Penfold and Haslegrove, which, with various baptismal distinctions, were perpetually alternated and interchanged; while

a

physiognomist would have been

tempted to imagine, from the similarity of the faces surrounding him, that the owners of these four appellations

had successively intermarried until the whole village had

become, as it were, one numerous family. They who have derived their notions from the golden age or the patriarchal times, might dream that such a mutually connected society, inhabiting so beautiful and sequestered a retreat, would form an united brotherhood of peace and

love; while they who contemplate our peasantry, “as truth will paint them, and as bards will not," will not widely err in forming a very different conclusion. In most large families, indeed, the claims of consanguinity are too apt to be forgotten in opposing interests, and the consequent feelings of jealous rivalry; in which respect, the greater part of the inhabitants of Thaxted, "a little more than kin and less than kind," offered no exception to the general rule. Towards the end of the village the road branched off in two directions round a little green, furnished with a finger-post, of which, according to the

boards was broken off, and the other rendered totally illegible; while a milestone on the opposite side of the road was equally unserviceable, from its figures having been carefully punched out and obliterated. In front of the green stood the stocks, the neglected state of which attested either the orderly habits of the villagers, or the remissness of the constable; and behind this crumbling machine was a pool of muddy water, termed the hors pond, on the poached margin of which might usually be seen six or eight ducks performing their toilet with