than I relaxed a little that spirit of German abstraction which it had prompted; and, though never mixing freely with society, I began to look a little abroad. It may interest the reader, more than anything else which I can record of this period, to recall what I saw within the ten first years of the century that was at all noticeable or worthy of remembrance amongst the literati, the philosophers, or the poets of the time. For, though I am now in my academic period from 1804 to 1808, my knowledge of literary men—or men distinguished in some way or other, either by their opinions, their accomplishments, or their position and the accidents of their lives-began from the first year of the century, or, more accurately, from the year 1800; which, with some difficulty and demurs, and with some arguments from the Laureate Pye, the world was at length persuaded to consider the last year of the eighteenth century.1 1 Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800 will see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the question whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th century or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem with a long and argumentative preface on the point. CHAPTER I A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A LIVERPOOL LITERARY 1 COTERIE It was in the year 1801, whilst yet at school, that I made my first literary acquaintance. This was with a gentleman now dead, and little, at any time, known in the literary world; indeed, not at all; for his authorship was confined to a department of religious literature as obscure and as narrow in its influence as any that can be named―viz. Swedenborgianism. Already, on the bare mention of that word, a presumption arises against any man, that, writing much (or writing at all) for a body of doctrines so apparently crazy as those of Mr. Swedenborg, a man must have bid adieu to all good sense and manliness of mind. Indeed, this is so much of a settled case, that even to have written against Mr. Swedenborg would be generally viewed as a suspicious act, requiring explanation, and not very easily admitting of it. Mr. Swedenborg I call him, because I understand that his title to call himself "Baron " is imaginary; or rather he never did call himself by any title of honour-that mistake having originated amongst his followers in this country, who have chosen to designate him as the "Honourable" and as the "Baron" Swedenborg, by way of translating, to the ear of England, some one or other of those irrepresentable distinctions, Legations-Rath, Hofrath, &c., which are tossed about with so 66 1 From Tait's Magazine for February 1837, where the title was A Literary Novitiate."-M. VOL. II I |