much succeeded in discovering new truths as in establishing a logical connection amongst old ones. On the other hand, it is not by reserve, whether of affectation or of Smithian jealousy, that the majority of literary people offend at least not by the latter; for, so far from having much novelty to protect against pirates, the most general effect of literary pursuits is to tame down all points of originality to one standard of insipid monotony. I shall not go into the reasons for this. I make my appeal to the matter of fact. Try a Parisian populace, very many of whom are highly cultivated by reading, against a body of illiterate rustics. Mr. Scott of Aberdeen, in his 'Second Tour to Paris,' (1815,) tells us that, on looking over the shoulder of poor stall women selling trifles in the street, he usually found them reading Voltaire, Rousseau, or even (as I think he adds) Montesquieu; but, notwithstanding the polish which such reading both presumes as a previous condition and produces as a natural effect, yet no people could be more lifeless in their minds, or more barren of observing faculties than they; and so he describes them. Words! words! nothing but words! On the other hand, listen to the conversation of a few scandalous village dames collected at a tea-table. Vulgar as the spirit may be which possesses them, and not seldom malicious, still how full of animation and of keen perception it will generally be found, and of a learned spirit of connoisseurship in human character, by comparison with the fade generalities, and barren recollections of mere literati! All this was partially illustrated in the circle to which I was now presented. Mr. Clarke was not an author, and he was by much the most interesting person of the whole. He had travelled, and, particularly, he had travelled in Italy - then an aristocratic distinction; had a small, but interesting picture gallery; and, at this time, amused him -- self by studying Greek, for which purpose he and myself met at sunrise every morning through the summer, and read Eschylus together. These meetings, at which we sometimes had the company of any stranger who might happen to be an amateur in Greek, were pleasant enough to my schoolboy vanity-placing me in the position of teacher and guide, to men old enough to be my grandfathers. But the dinner parties, at which the literati sometimes assembled in force, were far from being equally amusing. Mr. Roscoe was simple and manly in his demeanor; but there was the feebleness of a mere bellelettrist, a mere man of virtù, in the style of his sentiments on most subjects. Yet he was a politician, and took an ardent interest in politics, and wrote upon politics - all which are facts usually presuming some vigor of mind. And he wrote, moreover, on the popular side, and with a boldness which, in that day, when such politics were absolutely disreputable, seemed undeniably to argue great moral courage. But these were accidents arising out of his connection with the Whig party, or (to speak more accurately) with the Opposition party in Parliament; by whom he was greatly caressed. Mr. Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Sheridan, and all the powers on that side the question, showed him the most marked attention in a great variety of forms; and this it was, not any native propensity for such speculations, which drove him into phamphleteering upon political questions. Mr. Fox (himself the very feeblest of party writers) was probably sincere in his admiration of Mr. Roscoe's pamphlets; and did seriously think him, as I know that he described him in private letters, an antagonist well matched against Burke ; and that he afterwards became in form. The rest of the world wondered at his presumption, or at his gross miscalculation of his own peculiar powers. An eminent person, in after years, (about 1815,) speaking to me of Mr. Roscoe's political writings, especially those which had connected his name with Burke, declared that he always felt of him in that relation, not so much as of a feeble man, but absolutely as of a Sporus, (that was his very expression,) or a man emasculated. Right or wrong in his views, he showed the most painful defect of good sense and prudence, in confronting his own understanding, so plain and homely, with the Machiavelian Briareus of a hundred arms the Titan whom he found in Burke: all the advantages of a living antagonist over a dead one, could not compensate odds so fearful in original power. It was a striking illustration of the impotence of mere literature against natural power and mother wit, that the only man who was considered indispensable in these parties, for giving life and impulse to their vivacity, was a tailor; and not, I was often assured, a person deriving a designation from the craft of those whose labors he supported as a capitalist, but one who drew his own honest daily bread from his own honest needle, except when he laid it aside for the benefit of drooping literati, who needed to be watered with his wit. Wit, perhaps, in a proper sense, he had not—it was rather drollery, and, sometimes, even buffoonery. These, in the lamentable absence of the tailor, could be furnished of an inferior quality by Mr. Shepherd, who (as may be imagined from this fact) had but little dignity in private life. I know not how far he might alter in these respects; but, certainly, at that time, (1801-2,) he was decidedly or could be a buffoon; and seemed even ambitious of the title, by courting notice for his grotesque manner and coarse stories, more than was altogether compatible with the pretensions of a scholar and a clergyman. I must have leave to think that such a man could not have emerged from any great university, or from any but a sectarian training. Indeed, about Poggio himself there were circumstances which would have indisposed any regular clergyman of the Church of England or of the Scottish Kirk, to usher him into the literature of his country. With what coarseness and low buffoonery have I heard this Mr. Shepherd in those days run down the bishops then upon the bench, but especially those of any public pretensions or reputation, as Horsely and Porteus, and, in connection with them, the pious Mrs. Hannah More! Her he could not endure. Of this gentleman having said something disparaging, I am bound to go on and add, that I believe him to have been at least a truly upright man — talking often wildly, but incapable of doing a conscious wrong to any man, be his party what it might; and, in the midst of fun or even buffoonery, a real, and, upon occasion, a stern patriot. Mr. Canning and others he opposed to the teeth upon the Liverpool hustings; and would take no bribe, as others did, from literary feelings of sympathy, or (which is so hard for an amiable mind to resist) from personal applications of courtesy and respect. Amusing it is to look back upon any political work of Mr. Shepherd's, as upon his 'Tour to France' in 1815, and to know that the pale pink of his Radicalism was then accounted deep, deep scarlet. Nothing can better serve to expound the general force of intellect amongst the Liverpool coterie than the quality of their poetry, and the general standard which they set up in poetry. Not that even in their errors, as regarded poetry, they were of a magnitude to establish any standard or authority in their own persons. Imitable or seducing there could be nothing in persons who wrote verses occasionally, and as a лúqɛуоv or by-labor, and were themselves the most timid of imitators. But to me, who, in that year, 1801, already knew of a grand renovation of poetic power of a new birth in poetry, interesting not so much to England as to the human mind—it was secretly amusing to contrast the little artificial usages of their petty traditional knack, with the natural forms of a divine art the difference being pretty much as between an American lake, Ontario or Superior, and a carp pond or a tench preserve. Mr. Roscoe had just about this time published a translation from the Balia of Luigi Tansillo a series of dullish lines, with the moral purpose of persuading young women to suckle their own children. ́ The brilliant young Duchess of Devonshire, some half century ago, had, for a frolic a great lady's caprice - set a precedent in this way; against which, however, in that rank, medical men know that there is a good deal to be said; and in ranks more extensive than those of the Duchess, it must be something of an Irish bull to suppose any general neglect of this duty, since, upon so large a scale, whence could come the vicarious nurses? There is, therefore, no great sense in the fundamental idea of the poem, because the abuse denounced cannot be large enough; but the prefatory sonnet, addressed to the translator's wife, as one at whose maternal breast six sons successive' had hung in infancy—this is about the one sole bold, natural thought, or natural expression of feeling, to which Mr. Roscoe had committed himself in verse. Everywhere else, the most timid and blind servility to the narrowest of conventional usages, conventional ways of viewing things, conventional forms of expression, marks the style. For example, Italy is always Italia, Scotland Scotia, France Gallia; so inveterately had the mind, in this school of feeling, been trained, alike in the highest things and in the lowest, to a horror of throwing itself 6 |