concentre them upon a single page, sparkling with | Hannah More. To these vanities, light as air in point and antithesis, arranged with a nice art to comparison, he might have added weightier faults, illustrate the most forcible figures of rhetoric, is a and the British public would never have exacted such merciless way of dealing with the subject, though it a penalty. Greater men have acted worse and fared may give compactness, strength, and splendour to the better. One may be guilty of all manner of treason essay. There may be an antithesis of words for which against society, and go at large; but who will forgive the common observer might not have noticed any him for being a servile, fawning sycophant? Well, corresponding antithesis of actions. Foibles, separated suppose the biographer to have done all that is far from one another in point of time, and forgotten alleged against him; to have dogged the steps of the in the circumstances which produced them, may be great man; to have watched him in his out-goings classified in ascending degrees of folly, until they have and his in-comings; to have hung upon his lips, and reached a terrible climax on paper. That which is treasured up his philosophy; to have suffered meekly very nice in fact, may be rendered very disgusting in his rebukes, and sought his approval with smiles description; and most men of healthy morals would bordering on adulation; was there nothing pardonable "suffer some," after their character had been exposed in this? Was there no good trait concealed beneath „; on a post-mortem examination. There is, indeed, no the garb of humility? Had he done all this in gainsaying the conclusions arrived at, and the truth of presence of mere earthly greatness,—had he humbled the admirable analysis; but society cannot look on himself before the insignia of royal power, that might every phase at once, and many men who have passed be deserving of scorn; but to pay unwonted homage tolerably well with the crowd, may be thus crucified on to the attributes of immortal Mind—to sit meekly at starp points, and made the victims of a style of writing. the feet of Gamaliel-this is the best kind of sycoThus Boswell is condemned to unenviable fame for phancy, and cannot be exercised by the dull, the his achievement in literature; and Horace Walpole, ignorant, or the unreflecting. The public are every in spite of his studies, wit, vivacity, and original turn, day guilty of worse weaknesses, when they are carried his eminent appreciation of art, and collections in to the utmost bounds of extravagance; when they terta,-out of that very budget of letters which crown their favourites with roses, and drag them in confirms his reputation, and makes his genius shine triumphal chariots. Consistency is a jewel. What! oat, as well as fills up a chasm in history, is proved to may one almost worship the mere form of external be the most frivolous man of any age or country. beauty without censure, and be scorned for doing Yet it is not more certain that one was the most homage to the might of Intellect? Between the eminent in biography, and the other in letter-writing, two, what comparison is there with regard to worthithan that Macaulay himself is the most admirable of ness? The one temporal-the other eternal; the one apt to be a counterfeit presentment, at the best a mere symbol-the other, the thing itself which the first signifies. What are the best endowments of Venus; the most charming grace ever imagined; the loveliest smiles ever lighted? These must wax old, or be changed to a hideous aspect; but that shall erities. What we propose is, to set down something in extenuation; to throw a little more weight into the scale of "good works," and to show that the world has judged too harshly of James Boswell. But if it should be said that there is little ground of dispute, and that public opinion, when settled down, is infalible, we reply, that our age is not so far remote from his that it should have passed upon him its last judgment. It is not too late that a wrong decision should be revised or rescinded; although the case must soon reach the last court for the correction of errors. It is not too late while the great man yet speaks dogmatically, (and the echo of his voice never dies,) while commentators yet add to the mass of testimony, and these are in turn commented on, and lastly an intolerable sharpness of rebuke is administered to Croker's Boswell's Johnson. Sub judice lis est. We presume that no very grave misdemeanours will be imputed to the man as the reason for which he has been hunted down from age to age, and every rising generation taught to scorn their benefactor. It is not that he was a very strange man, certainly, with peculiar instincts which led him into eccentric modes of action, (for what man has not his weakness ?) that he once walked among the crowds on some gala-day, wearing a placard upon his hat with the inscription "Corsica Boswell," or that once, being in wine, he behaved unseemly in the rigid presence of Mrs. VOL. XIV. "flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements." So far from deserving censure, we should judge the biographer to be worthy of all praise for his conduct, and so far elevated above his detractors as his enthu siasm carried him further in the adoration of genius. The charge lies not so much in the fact of his being a disciple, as in the manner in which he proclaimed himself to be such. But examine it seriously, and the accusation usually made against him falls to the ground. A sycophant is a parasite, and a parasite is one who courts the tables of the rich, and earns a welcome by flattery. It is not the mere act of prostration or outward humility which is sufficient to make up the character. The meaning of the word involves a base or unworthy motive, as when one crouches and fawns like a dog, through fear of chastisement, or plays a servile part to accomplish an unworthy end. The application cannot be made to Boswell, because the bad motive is entirely wanting. Had he been so contemptible as is alleged, the great man, who was above deceit, and not wanting in blunt E ness, would have found him intolerable, and thrust the other not to philosophize, but to collect and him out of his presence. It It is an indirect insult to the memory of the lexicographer to cherish the idea that he would harbour in his path a blockhead or a flatterer, or to warp into an expression of contempt the jocular remarks which he might have applied to the peculiarities of his friend. The attack loses all its speciousness, as the object of Boswell is well known; which was, to write the life of Dr. Johnson, and the illustrious author knew and encouraged the design. The perpetual attendance, and attitude of listening, so offensive in appearance, were necessary to the fulfilment of the plan. If a person were preparing to write a history, and his researches were to be diligent and of any value, would he not push them into every quarter where information could be obtained; into the most unexplored recesses of the library; into the most antique books which time had spared, as well as by personal inquiry to a degree of obtrusiveness which only the cause justified? And how then may one prepare himself to write biography when the subject still lives? There is but one resort, but one fountain of the knowledge which he wishes to acquire, and if he seeks it constantly is there anything mean in this? We know well enough that such is not the usual course adopted. Death is suffered first to reach his "shining mark," and then the biographer begins a vain search to discover that which is irretrievably lost. The record is professedly inaccurate; he can but present the remains of great men-the poor fragments saved out of the rich matériel of their lives. appears that there is great credit to be bestowed on diligent research to recover some worm-eaten memento, and only contempt on the parsimonious care which would prevent it from being lost. There is great rejoicing over some stray fact, but a very cold reception for the "uinety and nine, which went not astray." How many gems and jewels are buried in darkness, which ought to sparkle gloriously in the light! How many pure and beautiful things are lost to literature, which must have been beyond all price, since their very fragments are xpvoetwrepa xpvσoû— more golden than gold! Hence works which are called "Lives" are for the most part failures, and while there are many admirable historians there is but one biographer. Indeed, the requisites for the latter are so different, and so peculiar, that it is to be despaired of whether any greater perfection will be arrived at in this department. Public acts make up history, and are no sooner developed than they find their safe and enduring place in the nation's archives. Out of such a mass, it is the duty of the historian not more to select and arrange, than to reduce to philosophical principles; but it is different with the biographer, where the map extendeth, not over the range of many centuries, but the short space of one man's life. It is the part of the first to deduce the proper lessons, to condense, to arrange the narrative bears the same relation to the events, as the Veni, vidi, vici, of Cæsar to the battle. It is the duty of record, it matters not how much, whatever will serve to lay open the character of the subject. One looks on as from a high point over the immense field, and leaps from promontory to sun-lit promontory; the other conducts you over a circumscribed place in the communion of a spirit, into the bowers of the garden, or the alcove of the library, as with Cowper at Chertsey, or Pope at the shades of Twickenham. The one is read with the cold eye of philosophy, which never shrinks aghast from the bloodiest battles; the other with the warmth of regard and human sympathy. The one is but a game, rendered amusing by the adroit players; the other illustrates a social existence, introduces you to the fireside, where the feelings and affections cluster, and into the circles of friends where wit, genius, and eloquence, flow unconstrained. Who is able to perform the latter office properly, unless it be some friend who sticketh closer than a brother? The great Dr. Johnson in this province falls far below his despised contemporary. The "Lives of the Poets," though admirable, cannot pretend to do this, and are tinctured in many cases by the strong prejudice of the writer, and charged with injustice. The art of biography consists in letting the subject illustrate his own history or character. Plutarch's Lives are rather History, or parts of History. They are written centuries after many of the characters ceased to exist, and some are throw as far back as the heroic ages, and have to do with as veritable personages as Blue Beard or Jack the Giant Killer. The biographer of Dr. Johnson, in accomplishing his work after such a plan, has conferred on the author a kind of immortality independent of the posthumous fame which follows great men, and which would not have been conferred by his works alore, although these retain their rank among the English classics. The stately periods, such as that with whisk Rasselas sets out, all weighed in the balance, and 3 be pronounced with grand intonation; the sesquipedalian words of the Rambler; the pomp of style so characteristic of the man; these have given way to purer taste, and to the chaster graces of the Saxon The public taste has completely shifted since the days of the essayists. New schools have arisen, and thras out the old disciples, who, if they are not forgotte are hastily passed by the crowd, in their desire fresher novelty. In poetry, the cumbersome books f the epic are thrown aside for the livelier cantos of Don Juan; and now none reads, for nobody writes, an epic poem. It is "all the same in prose." T newspaper has taken the place of the essay, and a more exciting romance supplies the place of Richardson's novel. The taste for reading has become too prevalent and too ravenous, either too utilitarian or too spoiled by excessive stimulus, to draw from the "pure wells of English undefiled." The ancient public of the Athenians was in many respects a prototype of the capriciousness of ours. Tí véov deyerat; Is there any news? Who turns to refresh himself with the speculations of Addison, when every news, picture with the highest words of criticism, yet in the paper will furnish him with more exhilarating themes; same breath with the most malignant abuse revile the or examines the gentle limning in the portraiture of painter. The great author and lexicographer is emSir Roger de Coverley? Who reads (except the balmed to all ages. After he emerged from Bolt scholar) Sir Charles Grandison, or Clarissa Harlowe, Court, and his palmiest glory began, it is to all the when any modern novel will afford more bloodthirsty world as though he had never died. But he is before heroes and melo-dramatic heroines? Even the Great us, not wrapped in swathings, or Egyptian balsams; Unknown is thrust aside; and where hundreds read not in a resemblance which does not speak, or in the Scott, thousands are at this moment delighted with statue which cannot give from its dead eyes the the history of “David Copperfield," and the happy expression of the soul. He lives-he moves: we destinies of the gentle Agnes. behold him in his grotesquest attitudes as vividly as Thus, by the inevitable law of change, the most far- if he were now present; we listen to the ipsissima spread reputations must in time become abbreviated, verba, the sharp reply and rejoinder which wound up or fade from their original brightness, while the waters the case at issue, as though his lips moved. The of forgetfulness gather around and threaten to engulf guests arrive, the conversation is enkindled; Burke, the most imperishable works. After all, what do we Fox, Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds are at the know even of those whose reputation is freshest? board. We have the soul of every banquet--the When the best biographers have collected all their very essence of wit which flashed among that brilliant facts, and all the materials they can muster, what a throng. The grave has long closed over the mortal poor, vague, unsubstantial idea do they present of the part of each; the club is extinct, but the spirit of persons they commemorate! Even with the aid of a all is preserved. Who has wrought out this wondercorrect likeness affixed, do we fail to embody the ful achievement? It is time that an end were put character which they set forth, and illustrate by so many to looking the gift-horse in the mouth. If there is traits. We are acquainted with many facts concerning no gratitude in the world of letters, let justice be them; that Pope was irascible, Cowper melancholy, done. Because the biographer had his faults and and Goldsmith a spendthrift; but do we see them, as failings, of which his own family were ashamed, is it were, face to face, or grasp them as with the hand that any reason why he should not have the benefit of of friendship? The written works form but a small the maxim, De mortuis nil nisi bonum? Does that part of the emanations of a great mind; of the afford the shadow of an excuse for more serious sparks and scintillation which attrition kindles. There calumnies, and for certain persons to show their own the flash of wit, so sudden and so subtle in its smartness by attempting to exhibit his folly, and to elements that its very nature is to evanesce; the apt display at the same time their own wit and his want of thought, which must not be changed in its apt ex-it ? If he was willing to render himself ridiculous to pression; the spontaneous eloquence which gathers its passion from the passing object, from the thundercloud which breaks that instant over-head, from the sunshine which bursts suddenly on the valley, from the voice of a small bird, or the expanding beauties of a flower; there are the gorgeons visions painted by a single dash of description-the inspiration enkindled in a moment, but which vanishes like the early cloud, or like the morning dew. Who is there that can watch a man so closely as to lose nothing of the divine essence of genius which is continually escaping as a candescent body throws off its particles of light? There is only one instance in which this has been in any degree accomplished, and that by one who has ever since received for his pains the ingratitude of the Republic of Letters; an ingratitude more obdurate than that of the Athenians, which sometimes relented, and although it banished first, or condemned to death, yet afterward shed tears, and erected statues. We repeat, that no man ever enjoyed the same kind of immortality as the despised Boswell has conferred on his subject. The laurels are fresh and green as yesterday; they will be a century hence as green as they are to-day. He has had justice done to him at the expense of vast injustice to another; he has been grouped with his distinguished compeers in a manner so natural, so life-like, upon the canvass, that posterity extol the his own age, it was for the benefit of posterity, and posterity should be the last to refuse indulgence, or to upbraid him with the folly. Those who were eyewitnesses to his obsequiousness without knowing the object, might justly have entertained for what had the aspect of sycophancy a feeling of disgust. But when the client's grotesque and squalid garb has passed away with the actor from the stage, and nothing but what is pleasant remains; nothing but the great work which cost him such a sacrifice of time, labour, and dignity; it is affectation, it is ingratitude, to heap contempt upon his memory. Let the truth be adhered to. A distinguished writer has pronounced him a man of contemptible parts with the same justice that he has pronounced Xenophon to be a man of small parts who wrote the Cyropædia. In almost the same sentence wherein he sets him down the first of biographers--as much as Homer was the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare the first of dramatists, Demosthenes the first of orators-he declares him to be a man of the feeblest and meanest intellect; a contradiction which he himself acknowledges to be strange in the extreme. Now the very idea of writing biography after such a plan was original; and originality is the highest mark, and involves the very idea of genius: but to assert that he who not only conceived the idea, but carried it out successfully, was a fool or a blockhead, is absurd, unjust, COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE' Ir it be true that Man is a thinking animal, par excellence, then does the bulk of the species perform its functions ill enough. This fact is forcibly borne in upon the mind after reading such a book as the one we are about to introduce to the reader. It is the the thinking faculty, but knows how to exercise it to considerable advantage both for himself and others. Many persons will require no further proof of this truth than the fact, that " Companions of my Solitude" is written by the author of "Essays in the Intervals of Business," "Claims of Labour," Conquerors of the New World," and the two volumes entitled "Friends in Council." and contradictory, and ought to brand the calumniator with folly. It argues still greater rashness to appeal to the book itself, after acknowledging it to be a very great work," as the ground and evidence of the charge. Certainly, the pleasure, the instruction to be derived from it ought to banish every such reflection against the author. One generation is too apt to be the mere echo of the opinions of another-work of a thinking man-a man who not only possesses to suffer old errors to slumber, and unjust stigmas to remain. The white flag ought to wave over the grave of the innocent, although for a century that grave has been dishonoured. In that singular work which we have mentioned, is a preservation of the past so remarkable, that we are reminded of the chambers which have been revealed at Herculaneum and Pompeii. There the brush and pencil of the artist are as fresh as the colours of yesterday; but desolation reigns in the solitary courts: the eloquence which prevails there is the eloquence of silence; and only imagination can re-people the deserted halls with the forms of the departed. Time has spared; the progress of decay has been arrested; and the beautiful tints remain fixed and vivid upon the walls. But it is more difficult to render permanent the hues and colouring which genius casts over its most unstudied thoughts, which are only intended to give present delight, to lull the flying pain, or charm the passing hour. Here is a gallery presented to us, yet filled with animation; voices echo in the chambers which have not been deserted; the tapestry moves; the glorious society are there; we enjoy the very soul of the banquet; the hilarious company of wit, learning, and eloquence. For one who has created this strong illusion, or rather preserved a stronger reality, has no better reward been assigned than a fame equivocal as that which attaches to Erostratus, who set fire to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. The evil must one day be repaired. So long as that constellation is seen in the literary heavens, so long shall he who has pointed it out to our admiration shine,-it is true, with diminished light and with a different glory,-but no less a star in the midst of that splendid galaxy. BOULOGNE. A WRECK ON THE COAST. THE firm and vigorous pencil of Stanfield is to be traced in this effective subject. The gray cast of the sky—which still bears traces of the storm-the perfect truth of the shipping- the forcible and well-grouped figures-all betoken the master hand. Boulogne sands have an evil reputation for shipwreck; and the loss, a few years since, of a number of female emigrants on their way to Australia will not soon be forgotten. of To the last-mentioned of these works, the new one bears most resemblance; indeed, it is a sort of con tinuation or supplement to it. It is marked by the same gentle boldness of speculation in matters d thought,-the same decision and tolerance in matters || of conduct and opinion,-the same depth and delicacy in matters of feeling,-the same scholarly and gentlemanly taste in questions of art and society. We may add that there is at times a tone of melancholy in the new book which we never detected in the others; bet, as if to counterbalance this, we have much of the delicate evanescent humour which flashed here and there (always in the right place) over the pages "Friends in Council." Of the style of composition, we need say little more than that it is the only styl which could result from such a combination of menta qualities. There is no surer indication of a man's character than the style he writes. In no case, we imagine, can such an aphorism be more approprie than in the present. The peculiar felicities of out author's style cannot be described accurately, but w may affirm in a general way, that they will be very || much to the taste of those who are not enamoured c the flashy, frothy rhetoric, the glitter, the flippancy, the disagreeable straining after point and wittiness, which prevail so much in the current literature of the day. To all our readers ambitious of good writing we would say, study the style of "Companions of Solitude." See how well it unites dignity with grace, precision and exactness with case! How well conveys the author's meaning, and nothing but the meaning. You have all the right words in their rigt places, and there is no appearance of effort in th arrangement. Each sentence springs gracefully ari It is a rare style naturally out of the preceding one. to have been produced in this excessive nineteer. century; a style that is close and pregnant; Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." Let all who value the purity of our noble Engist language give a hearty welcome to such writers. They will do much towards ridding us of the pestie literary patois of the day, which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. Although the matter in this volume is not divided (1) Companions of my Solitude."-Pickering. |