There he thrives, not by any approving experience or knowledge of his works, but through blind faith in his original German public. And back he flies afterwards to Germany, as if carrying with him new and independent testimonies to his merit, and from two nations that are directly concerned in his violent judgments; whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a careless reverberation of his first German character, from those who have far too much to read for declining aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare that effort to themselves. Schlosser has simply had his old passport vise'd up and down Europe; fresh passports he has none to show. Thus it is that German critics become audacious and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, Dr Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, by means of introductory letters floating them into circles far above any they had seen in homely Germany, are qualified by our own negligence and indulgence for mounting a European tribunal, from which they pronounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels presented arms to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he rode in a carriage of Queen Adelaide's; and Von Raumer immediately conceived himself the Chancellor of all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to universal Europe, upon all questions of art, manners, politics, or any conceivable intellectual relations of England. Schlosser meditates the same career.

But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words from an English translation? I do so only because this happens to be at hand, and the German not. German books are still rare in this country, though more numerous (by one thousand to one) than they were thirty years ago. But I have a special right to rely on the English of Mr Davison. "I hold in my hand," as gentlemen so often say at

public meetings, "a certificate from Herr Schiosser, that to quote Mr Davison is to quote him." The English translation is one which Mr Schlosser "durchgelesen hat, und für deren genauigkeit und richtigkeit er bürgt" [has read through, and for the accuracy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. Mr Schlosser was so anxious for the spiritual welfare of us poor islanders, that he not only read it through, but he has even aufmerksam durchgelesen it [read it through wide awake], und geprüft [and carefully examined it]; nay, he has done all this in company with the translator. "Oh, ye Athenians! how hard do I labour to earn your applause!" And, as the result of such Herculean labours, a second time he makes himself surety for its precision; "er bürgt also dafür wie für seine eigne arbeit" [he guarantees it accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were it not for this unlimited guarantee, I should have sent for the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait; and all complaints on this score I defy, above all from Herr Schlosser.*

* Mr Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who ought to have a keen eye for the English version of his own book, after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr Davison with general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the original: they tell their own story. And one of these I here notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter-not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. ii., in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his attempt to introduce the notion of nega tive greatness into philosophy. Negative greatness! What strange bird may that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr Schlosser was not wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of nega tive quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting

In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr Schlosser, the critic has a right to an extra allowance of desultoriness for his own share; so excuse me, reader, for rushing at once into angry business.

Of Swift, Mr Schlosser selects for notice three worksthe "Drapier's Letters," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "Tale of a Tub." With respect to the first, as it is a necessity of Mr S. to be for ever wrong in his substratum of facts, he adopts the old erroneous account of Wood's contract as to the copper coinage, and of the imaginary wrong which it inflicted on Ireland. Of all Swift's villanies for the sake of popularity, and still more for the sake of wielding this popularity vindictively, none is so scandalous as this. In any new Life of Swift the case must be stated de novo. Even Sir Walter Scott is not impartial; and for the same reason as now forces me to blink it-viz., the difficulty of presenting the details in a readable shape. "Gulliver's Travels " Schlosser strangely considers

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spun out to an intolerable extent." Many evil things might be said of Gulliver; but not this. The captain is anything but tedious. And, indeed, it becomes a question of mere mensuration, that can be settled in a moment. A year or two since I had in my hands a pocket edition, comprehending all the four parts of the worthy skipper's adventures within a single volume of 420 pages. Some part of the space was also wasted on notes, often very

the algebraic meaning of a negative quantity [so generally misunderstood as a negation of quantity, and which even Sir Isaac Newton misconstrued as regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From this little brochure I am satisfied was derived originally the German regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through the idea of polarity, indifference, &c. Oh, Mr Schlosser, you had not geprüft p. 5 of vol. ii. You skipped the notes.

idle. Now the first part contains two separate voyages (Lilliput and Blefescu); the 2d, one; the 3d, five; and the 4th, one; so that, in all, this active navigator, who has enriched geography, I hope, with something of a higher quality than your old muffs that thought much of doubling Cape Horn, here gives us nine great voyages of discovery far more surprising than the pretended discoveries of Sinbad (which are known to be fabulous), averaging quam proximè forty-seven 16mo pages each. Oh, you unconscionable German, built round in your own country with circumvallations of impregnable 4tos, oftentimes dark and dull as Avernus-that you will have the face to describe dear excellent Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff, and subsequently of Newark, that "darling of children and men," as tedious. It is exactly because he is not tedious, because he does not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds him "intolerable." I have justly transferred to Gulliver's use the words, "darling of children and men," originally applied by the poet to the robinredbreast; for it is remarkable that "Gulliver" and the "Arabian Nights" are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting and jostling each other. This was the case from its first publication, just one hundred and thirty years since. "It was received," says Dr Johnson, "with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made it was read by the high and the low, the learned and the illiterate. Criticism was lost in wonder.” Now, on the contrary, Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises; which we could bear, if the criticism were even ingenious. Whereas, he utterly misunderstands

* "By the poet:"-viz., Wordsworth.

*

Swift; and is a malicious calumniator of the captain; who, luckily, roaming in Sherwood Forest, and thinking, often with a sigh, of his little nurse, Glumdalclitch, would trouble himself slightly about what Heidelberg might say in the next century. There is but one example on our earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate applause as "Gulliver;" and that was "Don Quixote." Many have been welcomed joyfully by a class—these two by a people. Now, could that have happened had it been characterised by dulness? Of all faults, it could least have had that. As to the "Tale of a Tub," Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapours, that no system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube through which he might gain a glimpse of the English truth and daylight, or we gain a glimpse of Schlosser sitting over his German black-beer. It is useless talking to such a man on such a subject. I consign him to the attentions of some patriotic Irish

man.

Schlosser, however, is right in a graver reflection which he makes upon the prevailing philosophy of Swift—viz., that "all his views were directed towards what was immediately beneficial, which is the characteristic of savages."

* "Little nurse: "-The word Glumdalclitch, in Brobdingnagian, absolutely means little nurse, and nothing else. It may seem odd that the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, however kind to him, by such an epithet as little; and the reader may fancy that Sherwood Forest had put it into his head, where Robin Hood always called his right hand man "Little John," not although, but expressly because John stood seven feet high in his stockings. But the truth is, that Glumdalclitch was little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and (says the captain) "little of her age," being barely forty feet high. She had time to grow certainly, but, as she had so much to do before she could overtake other women, it is probable that she would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a little stiffenger—very little, if at all, higher than a common English church steeple.