The Spirit of the Age Part 7

Within those bounds, the rest is regulated by the laws of man. The division of the produce of the soil, the price of labour, the relief afforded to the poor, are matters of human arrangement: while any charitable hand can extend relief, it is a proof that the means of subsistence are not exhausted in themselves, that "the tables are not full!" Mr. Malthus says that the laws of nature, which are the laws of G.o.d, have rendered that relief physically impossible; and yet he would abrogate the poor-laws by an act of the legislature, in order to take away that _impossible_ relief, which the laws of G.o.d deny, and which the laws of man _actually_ afford. We cannot think that this view of his subject, which is prominent and dwelt on at great length and with much pertinacity, is dictated either by rigid logic or melting charity! A labouring man is not allowed to knock down a hare or a partridge that spoils his garden: a country-squire keeps a pack of hounds: a lady of quality rides out with a footman behind her, on two sleek, well-fed horses. We have not a word to say against all this as exemplifying the spirit of the English Const.i.tution, as a part of the law of the land, or as an artful distribution of light and shade in the social picture; but if any one insists at the same time that "the laws of nature, which are the laws of G.o.d, have doomed the poor and their families to starve,"

because the principle of population has encroached upon and swallowed up the means of subsistence, so that not a mouthful of food is left _by the grinding law of necessity_ for the poor, we beg leave to deny both fact and inference--and we put it to Mr. Malthus whether we are not, in strictness, justified in doing so?

We have, perhaps, said enough to explain our feeling on the subject of Mr. Malthus's merits and defects. We think he had the opportunity and the means in his hands of producing a great work on the principle of population; but we believe he has let it slip from his having an eye to other things besides that broad and unexplored question. He wished not merely to advance to the discovery of certain great and valuable truths, but at the same time to overthrow certain unfashionable paradoxes by exaggerated statements--to curry favour with existing prejudices and interests by garbled representations. He has, in a word, as it appears to us on a candid retrospect and without any feelings of controversial asperity rankling in our minds, sunk the philosopher and the friend of his species (a character to which he might have aspired) in the sophist and party-writer. The period at which Mr. Malthus came forward teemed with answers to Modern Philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and humanity, with abusive Histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with fulsome panegyrics on the Roman Emperors (at the very time when we were reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire) with the slime and offal of desperate servility--and we cannot but consider the Essay as one of the poisonous ingredients thrown into the cauldron of Legitimacy "to make it thick and slab." Our author has, indeed, so far done service to the cause of truth, that he has counteracted many capital errors formerly prevailing as to the universal and indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circ.u.mstances; but he has countenanced opposite errors, which if adopted in theory and practice would be even more mischievous, and has left it to future philosophers to follow up the principle, that some check must be provided for the unrestrained progress of population, into a set of wiser and more humane consequences. Mr. G.o.dwin has lately attempted an answer to the Essay (thus giving Mr. Malthus a _Roland for his Oliver_) but we think he has judged ill in endeavouring to invalidate the principle, instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication of it. There is one argument introduced in this Reply, which will, perhaps, amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.

"It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious pa.s.sage of Judge Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:--

"The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious; but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees: and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.

"This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from the following table of a geometrical progression, in which the first term is 2, and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly, it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of which is doubled at every remove, because each of our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.

_Lineal Degrees._ _Number of Ancestors_.

1 .. .. .. 2 2 .. .. .. 4 3 .. .. .. 8 4 .. .. .. 16 5 .. .. .. 32 6 .. .. .. 64 7 .. .. .. 128 8 .. .. .. 256 9 .. .. .. 512 10 .. .. .. 1024 11 .. .. .. 2048 12 .. .. .. 4096 13 .. .. .. 8192 14 .. .. .. 16,384 15 .. .. .. 32,768 16 .. .. .. 65,536 17 .. .. .. 131,072 18 .. .. .. 262,144 19 .. .. .. 524,288 20 .. .. .. 1,048,576

"This argument, however," (proceeds Mr. G.o.dwin) "from Judge Blackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it, to shew that the race of mankind will ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus, indeed, should have reflected, that it is much more certain that every man has had ancestors than that he will have posterity, and that it is still more doubtful, whether he will have posterity to twenty or to an indefinite number of generations."--ENQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION, p. 100.

Mr. Malthus's style is correct and elegant; his tone of controversy mild and gentlemanly; and the care with which he has brought his facts and doc.u.ments together, deserves the highest praise. He has lately quitted his favourite subject of population, and broke a lance with Mr. Ricardo on the question of rent and value. The partisans of Mr. Ricardo, who are also the admirers of Mr. Malthus, say that the usual sagacity of the latter has here failed him, and that he has shewn himself to be a very illogical writer. To have said this of him formerly on another ground, was accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily to be forgiven. Indeed Mr. Malthus has always been a sort of "darling in the public eye," whom it was unsafe to meddle with. He has contrived to make himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes of _Human Perfectibility_ and on the _Poor-Laws_, as Mandeville formerly procured enemies by his attacks on _Human Perfections_ and on _Charity-Schools_; and among other instances that we might mention, _Plug_ Pulteney, the celebrated miser, of whom Mr. Burke said on his having a large estate left him, "that now it was to be hoped he would _set up a pocket-handkerchief_," was so enamoured with the saving schemes and humane economy of the Essay, that he desired a friend to find out the author and offer him a church living! This liberal intention was (by design or accident) unhappily frustrated.

MR. GIFFORD.

Mr. Gifford was originally bred to some handicraft: he afterwards contrived to learn Latin, and was for some time an usher in a school, till he became a tutor in a n.o.bleman's family. The low-bred, self-taught man, the pedant, and the dependant on the great contribute to form the Editor of the _Quarterly Review_. He is admirably qualified for this situation, which he has held for some years, by a happy combination of defects, natural and acquired; and in the event of his death, it will be difficult to provide him a suitable successor.

Mr. Gifford has no pretensions to be thought a man of genius, of taste, or even of general knowledge. He merely understands the mechanical and instrumental part of learning. He is a critic of the last age, when the different editions of an author, or the dates of his several performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a profound scholar, and the spirit of the writer or the beauties of his style were left to shift for themselves, or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial reader. In studying an old author, he has no notion of any thing beyond adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or correcting, by the collation of various copies, an error of the press. In appreciating a modern one, if it is an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to charge him with bad grammar--he scans his sentences instead of weighing his sense; or if it is a friend, the highest compliment he conceives it possible to pay him is, that his thoughts and expressions are moulded on some hackneyed model. His standard of _ideal_ perfection is what he himself now is, a person of _mediocre_ literary attainments: his utmost contempt is shewn by reducing any one to what he himself once was, a person without the ordinary advantages of education and learning. It is accordingly a.s.sumed, with much complacency in his critical pages, that Tory writers are cla.s.sical and courtly as a matter of course; as it is a standing jest and evident truism, that Whigs and Reformers must be persons of low birth and breeding--imputations from one of which he himself has narrowly escaped, and both of which he holds in suitable abhorrence. He stands over a contemporary performance with all the self-conceit and self-importance of a country schoolmaster, tries it by technical rules, affects not to understand the meaning, examines the hand-writing, the spelling, shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a slip of the pen, and keeps a sharp look-out for a false concord and--a flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane in his style of judging: it is altogether petty, captious, and literal. The Editor's political subserviency adds the last finishing to his ridiculous pedantry and vanity. He has all his life been a follower in the train of wealth and power--strives to back his pretensions on Parna.s.sus by a place at court, and to gild his reputation as a man of letters by the smile of greatness. He thinks his works are stamped with additional value by having his name in the _Red-Book_. He looks up to the distinctions of rank and station as he does to those of learning, with the gross and overweening adulation of his early origin. All his notions are low, upstart, servile. He thinks it the highest honour to a poet to be patronised by a peer or by some dowager of quality. He is prouder of a court-livery than of a laurel-wreath; and is only sure of having established his claims to respectability by having sacrificed those of independence. He is a retainer to the Muses; a door-keeper to learning; a lacquey in the state. He believes that modern literature should wear the fetters of cla.s.sical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language consist in _word-catching_. Many persons suppose that Mr. Gifford knows better than he pretends; and that he is shrewd, artful, and designing.

But perhaps it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his dulness is guarantee for his sincerity; or that before he is the tool of the profligacy of others, he is the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings, and narrow, hoodwinked perceptions.

"Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain-- The creature's at his dirty work again!"

But this is less from choice or perversity, than because he cannot help it and can do nothing else. He d.a.m.ns a beautiful expression less out of spite than because he really does not understand it: any novelty of thought or sentiment gives him a shock from which he cannot recover for some time, and he naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and uneasiness occasioned him, without referring to venal or party motives.

He garbles an author's meaning, not so much wilfully, as because it is a pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to take in the context, when a particular sentence or pa.s.sage has struck him as quaint and out of the way: he fly-blows an author's style, and picks out detached words and phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels himself at home, or takes a pride and pleasure in this sort of petty warfare. He is tetchy and impatient of contradiction; sore with wounded pride; angry at obvious faults, more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has the _chalk-stones_ in his understanding, and from being used to long confinement, cannot bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of motion. He may call out with the fellow in the _Tempest_--"I am not Stephano, but a cramp!" He would go back to the standard of opinions, style, the faded ornaments, and insipid formalities that came into fashion about forty years ago. Flashes of thought, flights of fancy, idiomatic expressions, he sets down among the signs of the times--the extraordinary occurrences of the age we live in. They are marks of a restless and revolutionary spirit: they disturb his composure of mind, and threaten (by implication) the safety of the state. His slow, snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature. He has long been stationary himself, and is determined that others shall remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like letting off a pistol close to his ear: he is alarmed and offended. The using an elliptical mode of expression (such as he did not use to find in Guides to the English Tongue) jars him like coming suddenly to a step in a flight of stairs that you were not aware of. He _pishes_ and _pshaws_ at all this, exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on what excites his spleen, his envy, or his wonder, and hurls his meagre anathemas _ex cathedra_ at all those writers who are indifferent alike to his precepts and his example!

Mr. Gifford, in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which is likely to result from an over-anxious desire to supply the want of the first rudiments of education; that sort of wit, which is the offspring of ill-humour or bodily pain; that sort of sense, which arises from a spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at and dispute the opinions of others; and that sort of reputation, which is the consequence of bowing to established authority and ministerial influence. He dedicates to some great man, and receives his compliments in return. He appeals to some great name, and the Under-graduates of the two Universities look up to him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the weight of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries in _black-letter_ reading into the gap, that is supposed to be making in the Const.i.tution by Whigs and Radicals, whom he qualifies without mercy as dunces and miscreants; and so ent.i.tles himself to the protection of Church and State. The character of his mind is an utter want of independence and magnanimity in all that he attempts. He cannot go alone, he must have crutches, a go-cart and trammels, or he is timid, fretful, and helpless as a child. He cannot conceive of any thing different from what he finds it, and hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a natural and deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government; to the orthodox in religion; to the safe in opinion; to the trite in imagination; to the technical in style; to whatever implies a surrender of individual judgment into the hands of authority, and a subjection of individual feeling to mechanic rules. If he finds any one flying in the face of these, or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks he has them at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul of them without loss of time, partly to soothe his own sense of mortified self-consequence, and as an edifying spectacle to his legitimate friends. He takes none but unfair advantages. He _twits_ his adversaries (that is, those who are not in the leading-strings of his school or party) with some personal or accidental defect. If a writer has been punished for a political libel, he is sure to hear of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes on crutches and is out of favour at court, she is reminded of it in Mr.

Gilford's manly satire. He sneers at people of low birth or who have not had a college-education, partly to hide his own want of certain advantages, partly as well-timed flattery to those who possess them. He has a right to laugh at poor, unfriended, unt.i.tled genius from wearing the livery of rank and letters, as footmen behind a coronet-coach laugh at the rabble. He keeps good company, and forgets himself. He stands at the door of Mr. Murray's shop, and will not let any body pa.s.s but the well-dressed mob, or some followers of the court. To edge into the _Quarterly_ Temple of Fame the candidate must have a diploma from the Universities, a pa.s.sport from the Treasury. Otherwise, it is a breach of etiquette to let him pa.s.s, an insult to the better sort who aspire to the love of letters--and may chance to drop in to the _Feast of the Poets_. Or, if he cannot manage it thus, or get rid of the claim on the bare ground of poverty or want of school-learning, he _trumps_ up an excuse for the occasion, such as that "a man was confined in Newgate a short time before"--it is not a _lie_ on the part of the critic, it is only an amiable subserviency to the will of his betters, like that of a menial who is ordered to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a knowledge of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows (such is his cue from his employers) should at any rate be kept out of privileged places: persons who have been convicted of prose-libels ought not to be suffered to write poetry--if the fact was not exactly as it was stated, it was something of the kind, or it _ought_ to have been so, the a.s.sertion was a pious fraud,--the public, the court, the prince himself might read the work, but for this mark of opprobrium set upon it--it was not to be endured that an insolent plebeian should aspire to elegance, taste, fancy--it was throwing down the barriers which ought to separate the higher and the lower cla.s.ses, the loyal and the disloyal--the paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to perform quarantine, it was to seem not yet recovered from the gaol infection, there was to be a taint upon it, as there was none in it--and all this was performed by a single slip of Mr. Gifford's pen! We would willingly believe (if we could) that in this case there was as much weakness and prejudice as there was malice and cunning.--Again, we do not think it possible that under any circ.u.mstances the writer of the _Verses to Anna_ could enter into the spirit or delicacy of Mr. Keats's poetry. The fate of the latter somewhat resembled that of

--"a bud bit by an envious worm, Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate its beauty to the sun."

Mr. Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the _Examiner Newspaper_: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of youthful genius to answer for. Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one as he was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judge from the two subjoined specimens how far the one writer could ever, without a presumption equalled only by a want of self-knowledge, set himself in judgment on the other.

"Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide: No utter'd syllable, or woe betide!

But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

"A cas.e.m.e.nt high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-gra.s.s, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

"Full on this cas.e.m.e.nt shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a Saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

"Anon his heart revives: her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

"Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest, In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day: Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain; Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray; Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."

EVE OF ST. AGNES.

With the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines like these, let us contrast the Verses addressed _To a Tuft of early Violets_ by the fastidious author of the Baviad and Maeviad.--

"Sweet flowers! that from your humble beds Thus prematurely dare to rise, And trust your unprotected heads To cold Aquarius' watery skies.

"Retire, retire! _These_ tepid airs Are not the genial brood of May; _That_ sun with light malignant glares, And flatters only to betray.

"Stern Winter's reign is not yet past-- Lo! while your buds prepare to blow, On icy pinions comes the blast, And nips your root, and lays you low.

"Alas, for such ungentle doom!

But I will shield you; and supply A kindlier soil on which to bloom, A n.o.bler bed on which to die.

"Come then--'ere yet the morning ray Has drunk the dew that gems your crest, And drawn your balmiest sweets away; O come and grace my Anna's breast.

"Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye know What worth, what goodness there reside, Your cups with liveliest tints would glow; And spread their leaves with conscious pride.

"For there has liberal Nature joined Her riches to the stores of Art, And added to the vigorous mind The soft, the sympathising heart.

"Come, then--'ere yet the morning ray Has drunk the dew that gems your crest, And drawn your balmiest sweets away; O come and grace my Anna's breast.

"O! I should think--_that fragrant bed_ _Might I but hope with you to share_--[A]

Years of anxiety repaid By one short hour of transport there.

"More blest than me, thus shall ye live Your little day; and when ye die, Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall give A verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.

"While I alas! no distant date, Mix with the dust from whence I came, Without a friend to weep my fate, Without a stone to tell my name."

We subjoin one more specimen of these "wild strains"[B] said to be "_Written two years after the preceding_." ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS.

"I wish I was where Anna lies; For I am sick of lingering here, And every hour Affection cries, Go, and partake her humble bier.

"I wish I could! for when she died I lost my all; and life has prov'd Since that sad hour a dreary void, A waste unlovely and unlov'd.

"But who, when I am turn'd to clay, Shall duly to her grave repair, And pluck the ragged moss away, And weeds that have "no business there?"

"And who, with pious hand, shall bring The flowers she cherish'd, snow-drops cold, And violets that unheeded spring, To scatter o'er her hallow'd mould?

"And who, while Memory loves to dwell Upon her name for ever dear, Shall feel his heart with pa.s.sion swell, And pour the bitter, bitter tear?