improbable inventions. Two persons in one of these plays are under sentence of execution, and the poet hits off the vanity of the one by a stroke worthy of a much greater dramatist. "I have something troubles me," says Pellagrin. "What's that?" asks his friend. "The people," replies Pellagrin," will say, as we go along, 'thou art the properer fellow!" Had the whole character been conceived like that sentence, I should not have forgotten the name of the play, and instead of making a joke, the author would have consummated a creation. Both Madame de Stael and Rousseau appear to me to have possessed this sort of imperfect knowledge. Both are great in aphorisms, and feeble in realizing conceptions of flesh and blood. When Madame de Stael tells us " that great losses, so far from binding men more closely to the advantages they still have left, at once loosen all ties of affection," she speaks like one versed in the mysteries of the human heart, and expresses exactly what she wishes to convey; but when she draws the character of Corinne's lover, she not only confounds all the moral qualities into one impossible compound, but she utterly fails in what she evidently attempts to picture. The proud, sensitive, generous, high-minded Englishman, with a soul at once alive to genius, and fearing its effect-daring as a soldier, timid as a man-the slave of love that tells him to scorn the world, and of opinion that tells him to adore it-this is the new, the delicate, the many-coloured character Madame de Stael conceived, and nothing can be more unlike the heartless and whining pedant she has accomplished. In Rousseau, every sentence Lord Edouard utters is full of beauty, and sometimes of depth, and yet those sentences give us no conception of the utterer himself. The expressions are all soul, and the character is all clay-nothing can be more brilliant than the sentiments, or more heavy than the speaker. It is a curious fact that the graver writers have not often succeeded in plot and character in proportion to their success in the allurement of reflection, or the graces of style. While Goldsmith makes us acquainted with all the personages of his unrivalled story—while we sit at the threshold in the summer evenings, and sympathize with the good vicar in his laudable. zeal for monogamy-while ever and anon we steal a look behind through the lattice, and smile at the gay Sophia, who is playing with Dick, or fix our admiration on Olivia, who is practising an air against the young squire comes-while we see the sturdy Burchell crossing the stile, and striding on at his hearty pace with his oak cudgel cutting circles in the air-nay, while we ride with Moses to make his bargains, and prick up our ears when Mr. Jenkinson begins with "Ay, sir! the world is in its dotage;"-while in recalling the characters of that immortal tale, we are recalling the memory of so many living persons with whom we have dined, and walked, and argued—we behold in the gloomy Rasselas of Goldsmith's sager cotemporary, a dim succession of shadowy images without life or identity, mere machines for the grinding of morals, and the nice location of sonorous phraseology. Perhaps indeed Humour is an essential requisite in the flesh-and-blood delineation of character; and a quick perception of the Ridiculous is necessary to the accurate insight into the True. We can better ascertain the profundity of Machiavel after we have enjoyed the unrivalled humour of his novel. That delightful egotist-half-good-fellow, half-sage, halfrake, half-divine, the pet gossip of philosophy, the-in one word-inimitable and unimitated Montaigne, insists upon it in right earnest, that continual cheerfulness is the most indisputable sign of wisdom, and that her estate, like that of things in the regions above the moon, is always calm, cloudless, and serene. And in the same essay he recites the old story of Demetrius the grammarian, who, finding in the Temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers chatting away in high glee and comfort, said, "I am greatly mistaken, gentlemen, or by your pleasant countenances you are not engaged in any very profound discourse." Whereon Heracleon answered the grammarian with a " Pshaw, my good friend! it does very well for fellows who live in a perpetual anxiety to know whether the future tense of the verb Ballo should be spelt with one / or two, to knit their brows and look solemn; but we who are engaged in discoursing of true philosophy, are cheerful as a matter of course!" Heracleon, the magician, knew what he was about when he resolved to be wise. And yet, after all, it is our constitution and not our learning, that makes us one thing or the other-grave or gay, lively or severe! We may form our philosophy in one school, but our feelings may impel us to another; and while our tenets rejoice with Democritus, our hearts may despond with Heraclitus. And, in fact, it requires not only all that our wisdom can teach us, but perhaps, also, something of a constitution of mind naturally sanguine and elastic, to transmute into golden associations the baser ores of our knowledge of the world. Deceit and Disappointment are but sorry stimu lants to the Spirits! "The pleasure of the honey will not pay for the smart of the sting.' As we know, or fancy that we know, mankind, there is at certain dimness that falls upon the glory of all we see. "The lily is withered, the purple of the violet turned into paleness ;"+ without growing perhaps more selfish, we contract the circle of our enjoyments. We do not hazard-we do not venture as we once did. The sea that rolls before us proffers to our curiosity no port that we have not already seen. About this time, too, our ambition changes its character-it becomes more a thing of custom than of ardour. We have begun our career-shame forbids us to leave it; but I question whether any man moderately wise, does not see how small is the reward of pursuit. Nay, ask the oldest, the most hacknied adventurer of the world, and you will find he has some dream at his heart, which is more cherished than all the honours he seeks -some dream perhaps of a happy and serene retirement which has lain at his breast since he was a boy, and which he will never realize. The trader and his retreat at Highgate are but the type of Walpole and his palace at Houghton. The worst feature in our knowledge of the world is, that we are wise to little purpose-we penetrate the hearts of others, but we do not content our own. Every wise man feels that he ought not to be ambitious, nor covetous, nor subject to emotion—yet the wisest go on toiling, and burning to the last. Men who have declaimed most against ambition have been among the most ambitious; so that, at the best, we only become wise for the sake of writing books which the world seldom values till we are dead-or of making laws and speeches, which, when dead, the world hastens to forget. "When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." + * Jeremy Taylor, Sermon vi. Part 2. Jeremy Taylor. Contemplations of the State of Man. me. * * Ir was deep night, and the Magician suddenly stood before "Arise," said he, " and let us go forth upon the surface of the world." I rose, and followed the sorcerer until we came to the entrance of a cavern. Pursuing its subterranean course for some minutes,-with the rushing sound of prisoned waters loud and wild upon the ear, we came at length to a spot where the atmosphere struck upon my breath with a chill and earthy freshness; and presently, through a fissure in the rock, the sudden whiteness of the moon broke in, and lit up, partially, walls radiant with spars, and washed by a deep stream, that wound its mysterious way to the upper air. And now, gliding through the chasm, we stood in a broad cell, with its lofty arch open to the sea. Column and spire (brilliant with various crystallizations-spars of all hues) sprang lightly up on either side of this cavern-and with a leap, and a mighty voice, the stream, whose course we had been tracking, rushed into the arms of the great Sea. Along that sea, star after star mirrored its solemn lustre-and the moon, clad in a fuller splendour than I had ever seen gathered round her melancholy orb, filled the cavern with a light that was to the light of day what the life of an angel is to that of a mortal. Passionless, yet tender steadfast-mystic-unwavering-she shone upon *This tale, complete in itself, is extracted from a work at present crude and unfinished, but which I may hereafter remodel and complete-a philosophical Prose-Poem, in which, through the means, sometimes of humour, sometimes of terror, certain social and metaphysical problems will be worked out. I need scarcely say that the chief task in such a composition would be to avoid any imitation of the Faust. The Narrator is supposed to have been with the Magician amidst the caverns of the interior of the Earth. the glittering spars, and made a holiness of the very air; and in a long line, from the cavern to the verge of heaven, her sweet face breathed a measured and quiet joy into the rippling billows- "smiles of the sea." * A few thin and fleecy clouds alone varied the clear expanse of the heavens-and they rested, like the cars of spirits, far on the horizon. And, "Beautiful," said I, "is this outward world-your dim realms beneath have nothing to compare with it. There are no stars in the temples of the hidden earth-and one glimpse from the lovely moon is worth all the witchfires and meteors of the Giant palaces below." "Thou lookest, young Mortal," said the Wizard in his mournful voice, "over my native shore. Beside that sea stood `my ancestral halls-and beneath that moon first swelled within my bosom the deep tides of human emotion-and in this cavern, whence we now look forth on the seas and heavens, my youth passed some of its earnest hours in contemplations of that high and starred order which your lessened race-clogged with the mire of ages-never know: for that epoch was far remote in those ages which even tradition scarcely pierces. Your first fathers-what of their knowledge know ye?-what of their secrets have ye retained? their vast and dark minds were never fathomed by the plummet of your researches. The waves of the Black Night have swept over the Ancient World-and all that you can guess of its buried glories are from the shivered fragments that ever and anon Chance casts upon the shores of the modern race." "Do we sink, then," said I, "by comparison with the men of those distant times? Is not our lore deeper and more certain?-Was not their knowledge the offspring of a confused and labouring conjecture ?-Did they not live among dreams and shadows, and make Truth itself the creature of a fertile Imagination ?" "Nay," replied the shrouded and uncertain form beside me -"their knowledge pierced into the heart of things. They consulted the stars-but it was to measure the dooms of earth; -and could we raise from the dust their perished scrolls, you would behold the mirror of the living times. Their prophecies -(wrung from the toil and rapture of those powers which ye suffer to sleep, quenched, within the soul)-traversed the wilds of ages, and pointed out among savage hordes the cities. and laws of empires yet to be. Ten thousand arts have moul * Eschylus' Prometheus. |