very short time led the opposition; and, like all men of im petuous impulse, he is too rapid in his motions, too fiery in his blood, too abrupt in his turns, too self-centred in his conscious might, too capricious in his temper, and too progressive in his opinions, to be a trust-worthy guide. No man of exalted genius was ever a good leader, or ever had a powerful train behind him. Chatham was a dictator, not a leader. Burke during his life had no out and out followers, save Windham, who was rather one of a constellation Gemini. Fox could never lead but in a storm. Canning gained his richest trophies while Liverpool was at the helm. It is your acute, clear-headed, cautious, common-sense man, like Sir Robert Walpole, that weathers the storm. Besides all this, the versatile being under notice is, we are told, a great talker-the life and ornament of society. Manifold, be sure, the subjects of his conversation. Like Talkative in the "Pilgrim's Progress," he can speak about things terrestrial and things celestial, things moral and things profane. The story runs, that once for some juvenile frolic clapped into the watch-house, he found himself in company with an old soldier. He passed part of the night in talking of the campaigns in which his companion had been engaged; got out of him all the information he possessed; sucked him dry like an orange, and thought he had spent the night to some purpose. He has talked of law with Eldon, of literature with Jeffrey, of fluxions with Leslie, of astronomy with Arago, of bullion with Horner, of orthodoxy with Sidney Smith, of cause and effect with Thomas Brown, of the oriental tongues with Leyden, of border ballads with Scott, of jurisprudence with Bentham, of moral philosophy with Mackintosh, of the evidences of Christianity with Dr. Andrew Thomson, who found him on that subject alone slenderly informed, and disposed to shirk; of the voluntary question with Dr. Harper of Leith; of humanity with Clarkson and Romilly, the latter of whom, when requested on one occasion to edit a book, pleaded want of time, but said, "Take it to that fellow Brougham; he has time for every thing;" and of pulpit oratory with Robert Hall, whom Mackintosh took him to hear-whom he pronounced the most eloquent of orators -requested after sermon to be introduced to-proceeded to compliment on the discourse, till checked by Hall's asking, "But what of the subject, sir? What think you of it, sir? Was it the truth of God, sir?"—words very characteristic of the great preacher, while still steaming with the excitement, and absorbed in the interest of his theme. Of Brougham's talk we can speak only by report. It is said to be singularly abundant, lively and rapid, touching a vast variety of topics, with light, firm, hurrying finger; at times flaming up into eloquence, and generally testifying a rich mind under rare excitement. He is not a lecturer, like Coleridge; nor a hatcher of bon-mots, like Sidney Smith; nor an elaborate discusser of given topics, like Mackintosh; nor a riotous spirit, pouring out its riches in splendid confusion, like Curran; nor an oracle coiled up in the corner of a drawingroom, like Wordsworth. Brougham's talk, like that of Burke and Wilson, is just the involuntary discharge of a full mind. His face is the "ugliest and shrewdest of human faces." Far from a fine, and scarcely a striking face, it has a uniqueness of expression seldom seen; thought, as of centuries of common minds, is written on it in worn characters-it scrutinizes all, while defying scrutiny itself-its famous twitch palpitates out the eternal restlessness of the man-intellect is inscribed upon the brow-passion lurks within the whole; and now and then, as we have often been told, from the soul within the eye darts forth an expression which has an almost withering, blinding, blasting effect upon the beholder. This is not the place, nor, in truth, is the time yet come, for forming a final judgment upon the character of Brougham, as a whole; for fully estimating the influences which he has scattered around him during his career; for weighing his faults and excellencies in an even balance; or for settling the precise room he will fill up in the great general gallery of ages. We may, however, even as to these points, state our impressions. We deem him, then, notwithstanding all his inconsistencies and eccentric notions, to have been from first to last a sincere and honest man, animated by the great motives, and seeking the pure and lofty objects of a patriot, none the less that the activity of his mind and the eagerness of his temper have led him sometimes to pursue them by a tortuous policy. We believe too, that his influence, though on no other than the two questions of slavery and education, has been co-extensive with the limits of the civilized world. As to his faults, looming now so largely to the eye of contemporary and crushed envy, what may be their bulk, when viewed beside his transcendent merits, through the vista of centuries? In what light do we now regard the poltroonery of Demosthenes, the duplicity of Themistocles, the vanity of Cicero, compared to the blaze of their excellencies? So what to a calm spectator in the twenty-second century, will the manœuvres and half-mad freaks of the Lord Chancellor seem, when balanced by the intellect, eloquence, learning, and positive achievements of Henry Brougham? And as to his future place in the grand picture exhibition of the world, we are safe in predicting, that if to the range of Plato, and Demosthenes, and Cicero, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Newton, and La Place, and Burke, and Coleridge, he be not admissible, he must, and will take place with such names as Clarendon, and Bolingbroke, and Chatham, and Pitt, and Fox, and Franklin, and Mirabeau, and Mackintosh; while, for versatility of powers, he will be held to surpass them all. So be it; and so shall it be.— "Dum domus Eneae Capitoli immobile saxum SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. THERE is nothing more remarkable about the literature of this age, than the harmony it has exhibited in many signal instances, between the analytic and the imaginative powers; between the genius which combines, and the intellect which resolves,-between an energetic philosophy, and a most ideal and impassioned poetry. In former times, a profound disconnexion between faculties so seemingly opposite, was taken for granted; a gulf, great, fixed, and impassable, was presumed to yawn drearily between the two regions. Men looked upon a person who combined a lively fancy, with a discriminating judgment, as a kind of prodigy, or, centaur not fabulous. Poetry they thought a disease, or madness in the blood, incompatible either with patient research, or with close and consecutive thought. Philosophy, on the other hand, they defined to be a cold, tame, and wingless thing; exploring the depths of science-yea, gazing on the height of the stars, with an eye which never kindled or softened for a moment. Before passing any harsh sentence on such flagrant conceptions, let us remember that there were cases and circumstances in the ages immediately preceding our own, which accounted for, and, in part, excused their formation. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, intellect and imagination were in close and firm alliance. Luther, and Galileo, and Lord Ba con, and Shakspeare, and Spenser; and, afterwards, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Barrow, Howe, Donne, and Cowley, all added immense subtlety and strength of thought to great copiousness and fervour of imagery. They were all poets; and, if not all metaphysicians, were all, in the true and broad sense of the term, philosophers. They loved life, and books, and men; but they loved quite as well flowers, and trees, and gardens, and running streams, and mountain prospects, and the meaning sculptured in the blue sky, and the silent congregation of the stars. If they did not make nature so profound and peculiar a study as she has become to many in our day, and did not look upon her features with that mystic rapture which many feel, and more assume or aspire to, they loved her every whit as well, and with a fresher, warmer, heartier, and honester affection. Actæon-like, they saw her virgin and divine nakedness, but were not, Actæon-like, as is the case with our modern maddened enthusiasts, devoured by their own thoughts, as by ravening dogs. They were modest and holy worshippers. In the next century matters altered materially for the worse. The Restoration not only came like a blight to wither the roses of poetry, but drew a line of separation between the gardens where they grew and the cold arena of a mechanical science, and a common-sense metaphysics. To poets succeeded wits, and to philosophers philosophists. Even Newton, though with gleams of imagination and passion in his blood, contributed, by the extreme coldness of the external crust of his mind, to this unhappy and unnatural separation. Locke, again, the leader of the psychology of the nineteenth century, has scarcely poetry enough within him to colour a single sentence of his writings, and is, except Hobbes, the best specimen we remember of a clear, bare, snowy and mountainous pile of intellect, deriving, from its extreme elevation, no mystic sublimity, and no fiery |
