against the cause of any court, or any class, or any individual. It is only when the people themselves are divided or indifferent, that partial interests will have a chance of success. the country. If that was the case, if they, uniting with the great majority of reformers, (for those who espoused the ballot were not the majority of the reformers,)-if, uniting with them, they obtained the measure of Reform. it could not be right and proper, or just and fair, to turn round and say, "having obtained The abolition of Slavery will ever be one this advantage, we will make use of it in order of the most remarkable events in the history to obtain the ballot." It had been stated by of mankind. The conversion of the great the hon. member who brought forward this majority of the inhabitants of our West Inmotion, that when his noble friend introduced dia Islands from slaves into freemen-the the Reform Bill, he said that this was a ques- short period in which the change was action not immediately connected with that measure. But he appealed to every gentle-complished-the voluntary gift of Twenty man who was in the last Parliament, and who Millions sterling for so generous a purp se knew the whole proceedings while the ques--the acquiescence of a body of men who tion of Reform was going on, whether the had hitherto resisted any invasion of that promoter of that measure did not contend, that, which they deemed their property-the as far as the representation of the people was peaceable, honest, Christian joy of the concerned, it was considered and proposed as a final measure. He had stated that frequent- emancipated negro, free from scourge, free ly to the House. It might be said, undoubt- from outrage-the exchange of slavish fears edly, that the vote he should give to-night and disguised hatred, for willing obedience would be inconsistent with that which he had to law and the bonds of brotherly love--these given on the motion of the hon. and learned are events in the history of a nation which gentleman; but if he were now to vote for indeed show that peace has her victories! the motion of the hon. gentleman, he should be acting more inconsistently with every thing he had stated during the whole progress of the measure of Reform.* Thus, Lord Althorp interpreted more extensively than any one has done since, the virtual engagement that the Reform Bill was to be carried as a final measure. Of the other great changes introduced under the administration of Lord Grey and Lord Althorp, we have scarcely room to speak. The retrenchment of useless offices -the reduction of salaries-the opening of the China trade-the renewal of the Bank Charter-the restoration and amendment of the Poor Laws-the mitigation of the His declarations, those of Lord Grey, Criminal Law-the improvements in other and those which have been since made, departments of law and administrationseem to have set at rest the formidable pro- will have their place in the history of these When compared with the doings of posal of a New Reform Bill. During the times. last five years, no serious discussion has any Tory administration, during any four taken place in the House of Commons up- years, or any forty years of their rule preon extension of suffrage, or the duration of viously to the Reform Act, the measures Parliament. These seem to have settled introduced and carried by a Whig governdown into acquiescence, more or less cor- ment, between November 1830 and Nodial, in the settlement of 1832. Few ex-vember 1934, appear truly astonishing. amples will be found in history of so great a change, accomplished with so little dis- it is more appropriate to notice the spirit in which these measures were proposed, than to portray, with correctness, their separate details. That spirit was the spirit of English freedom, for which Hampden and Sydney laid down their lives; for the sake of which a faithless King was banished, and the power of France successfully defied. It was that spirit which roused Chatham to oppose the oppression of America, and Fox to vindicate the outraged constitution of his country. Lord Grey learned from Fox, as Fox had learned from Burke, the task of defending and improving the laws of England; the limits to which popular rights should be carried; and the bounds within which popular license should be restrained. turbance. The importance of the reform effected in the representation, can only be measured in a long course of years. On the one hand, it must be admitted that the influence of a free press, and the long habits of Parliamentary discussion, mitigated the evils of a sham representation. On the other hand, the change made was of such a nature that the influence of property was rather diffused than diminished. But the intelligence and union of the new classes of voters will, in any future struggle, ensure the ascendency of the public cause * Hansard, third series, Vol xvii. p 657. But, for our imperfect and limited sketch, From the North British Review. CROMWELL-BY THOMAS CARLYLE. It was neither for democracy nor aristocra ry, nor for the liberty of ancient republics, nor for the perfection of an ideal common- LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF OLIVER wealth, that Lord Grey and Lord Spencer administered the affairs of England. It was to purify and to maintain the English constitution that they gave their lives to labor, and exposed their names to the reproach of the prejudiced, the timid, and the interested. vols. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: We have said, at the commencement of this article, that the time has not arrived for biography. When that time shall come we have no fears that the reputation of the statesmen, who have lately been removed As this is the first opportunity, in the from among us, will be diminished by the course of our critical labors, that we have more intimate knowledge of their lives. been led to notice the very remarkable auThe publication of the Diaries and Memo- thor of the prefixed works, our readers will randa of Sir Samuel Romilly, by his sons, easily pardon us, if we introduce our notice has tended to throw a fuller light upon the of his last publication by some general repure integrity, the scorn of baseness, the marks upon his writings. An author of his love of truth, and the enlightened opinions established reputation is, no doubt, above which distinguished that excellent man. being dependent on contemporary criticism The records of the early studies, and ma- as a certificate for public influence or favor. ture efforts, of Mr. Horner, have preserved, No sentence of ours can make or unmake for lasting memory, the example of an un-him as a literary star of the first magnitude derstanding almost mathematical in the one of those lights by which men steer strictness and severity of its political rea- their way through many deep and dark passoning, combined with a soul the most lofty sages of mental life. Whatever our verdict in its aspirations, the most indignant in its upon him, he will continue to lead or mishatred of oppression, and the most disinter- lead, to enlighten or to dazzle, a large class ested in the pursuit of the people's welfare. of reflective readers. But although we can Neither of these men belonged, by any he- scarcely regard him as a candidate tremreditary tie, to the Whig party; they joined bling before us for our approving nod, critit from sympathy in a public cause, and icism may be as well and usefully bestowed were faithful to that party, and that cause, upon him, as if he were a neophyte stepping to the last moment of their lives. Earl with doubtful tread over the first confines Grey and Earl Spencer were Whigs from of authorship; for our public duty is at least their first arriving at an age to take an in- as much concerned with the performances terest in political questions. But their of those within the circle as in guarding its mature convictions did not belie their early approaches. When an author has overpassimpressions. When Lord Grey, at sixty-ed the clouds and mists of his dawn, and six years of age, undertook a difficult and responsible office; and when Earl Spencer, relinquishing the calm tenor of his private life, gave up his beloved pursuits for a great duty, and a manifest peril-they relied on the patriotism and zeal of the Whig party. Men may differ about the wisdom of their parliamentary measures, or the ability of their civil administration; but the noble, exalted, stainless spirit of these two men, must always be venerated as long as public virtue is admired, and the name of England has its place in history. reached his meridian, he has attained the summit of influence for good or evil; and although the critic's lash may fall ineffectually enough for any purpose of correction on one whose habits are indurated by age and fame, it is not less our duty to endeavor to direct, and, if needs be, to qualify, the tendencies on public taste and opinion, which such popularity promotes. An original and vigorous thinker like Mr. Carlyle, with his scorn of antiquated opinion, and liberty and even license in thought as in language, especially when combined with a picturesque imagination, and a quaint raciness of conception, is, in this age, the master of a very powerful weapon. The courage to think on all subjects with un fettered freedom, and to delineate these with something of the feelings with which thoughts, fresh and unrestrained as they the loyal Lord Mayor and Aldermen of spring, with a touch of unrivalled boldness London might have seen and heard the ason his canvas, is sure, in the hands of a tounding presumption of Wat Tyler, or man of mental genius and power, to raise Jack Cade. him to the station of a thought-compeller All this is plain enough; and if Mr. Car-not a guide merely, but a suggester of lyle were a young recruit, we should be inhabits of thinking, and modes of acting, clined to be very kind to his genius, and as among those over whom his influence ex- blind as we could to his defects. But such tends. We know many greater writers in is not our present mood. We and the pubevery sense, than Mr. Carlyle is; but per- lic have enough of experience of Mr. Carhaps there is no living English author-if lyle to know, that he is the last man that he can properly be called so-who has a requires to be informed of his own merits, stronger and deeper hold on the minds of and that his lamp of light is in no danger the English community. One cannot read of expiring under unencouraged diffidence. his works and then cast them aside. The Of reputation, and deference and flattery, rich display of thought which they contain he has had his fill-too much, perhaps, for indicates still unexhausted veins in the the eradication of those large spreading mind from which it is obtained; and the weeds which deform his luxuriant verdure. reader shuts the volume, or pauses half way, Our purpose rather is, to warn from the to follow out some dimly suggested train of danger, than to prompt to the imitation of deepest and profoundest meaning. Thus, his example. He is a meteor in the literary while other authors may be, in a looser sky, not altogether of benign or prosperous sense, more popular, and more rapidly and portent, attaining, in his erratic course, eagerly read, we doubt if there is any one, some periods of dangerous and ominous whose works have gone more deeply to the conjunction. It may not be uninstructive springs of character and action, especially to show how in some respects this energetthroughout the middle classes. Before, ic and masterly writer exercises a pernicious therefore, drawing the attention of our readers to the last publication in the prefixed list-which yields nothing in singularity or in interest to its predecessors-we think a few pages may be profitably, and we hope agreeably, spent in endeavoring to form some just estimate of Mr. Carlyle's merits as a philosophical writer, and as a guide to public thought and opinion. influence over the taste and thoughts of his time; and his real powers are so great, and his genius so brilliant and uncommon, that it is all the more our part, as watchful guardians of the public, to point out and condemn his eccentricities when hurtful or absurd. Carlyle's faults, as an author, then, seem to resolve themselves into two great deadly sins, quite heinous enough of themselves, and committed with sufficient perseverance and deliberation to have utterly overwhelmed any ordinary man; one is a fault of manner, the other of substance, and both of infinitely pernicious tendency on the vast multitude of his readers. In some respects, such an analysis presents little difficulty; his merits, as well as his faults, are sufficiently on the surface. No one can read two pages of any of his works without perceiving that his author is a man of powerful and inventive reflection, with a clear eye, in general, for the reality of things, and a very deep disdain for the The character of Carlyle's manner is emrobes and trappings of antiquity and preju- inently eccentric-at least such is the mild dice. The reader finds bold thoughts, term by which some would characterize it. portrayed in language at least as bold, but The strange involution of his sentencesconveying, sensibly and strikingly to the the unlicensed word-coining of his lanmind, the ideal picture which shot across guage, have passed, in a too indulgent age, the author's imagination; and usually pre-as peculiarity or oddness. But we venture senting, in unwonted vividness, some very ordinary truth, the importance of which was never before so strongly perceived. On the other hand, his utter disregard of rule, and perverse rebellion against the ordinary laws of composition, as well as all the conventional propriety of language or belief, would make an unaccustomed reader regard him to give it a more just, if not a more civil epithet. The vice of his writings is the crying evil of the day-the unpardonable offence of affectation. Mere quaintness or peculiarity of style is not always a fault-and sometimes gives point and raciness to an author. There are men who cannot think but in a singular id ever, its rays come struggling, distorted, unnatural, and dim, through the marvellous medium of words-it cannot be called language-in which he chooses to be enveloped. iom of their own, and their language bor-burgh Review, down to the last work upon rows the eccentricity of their thoughts. our list, the cloud of affectation visibly One would not wish old Burton to speak thickens upon him, until, at last, while his otherwise in his Anatomy of Melancholy, genius, perhaps, is burning brighter than and Bunyan's Pilgrim would lose half its charm done into smoother English. But the true secret of their manner consists in the very quality in which Mr. Carlyle is so eminently deficient-simplicity. These authors travelled by a path of their own; but To the students of Carlyle, for whom we they did not, of set purpose, desert the write, to give instances is quite unnecessahighway, and seek out the roughest rocks ry. They know it-and many of his zealand rudest briars to scramble through.- ous admirers, think it, as he does, his greatThey are quaint, but they do not strive after est and chiefest pride. But just to show quaintness. In writing, they only transfer our less informed readers what the unhaltheir thoughts, speaking their own vernac-lowed jargon is, in which he pleases—we ular tongue, such as it is; and without the had almost said, presumes-to speak to endeavor the wretched endeavor to write English ears, let us instance the following a jargon, unlike the speech of any civilized passage from his Introduction to Cromwell's race. The difference between them and Letters :our author, is simply this, that he is extravagant by design, and they are quaint by nature-the grand distinction, in every sphere of life, between simplicity and affec-is tation. To find a man perpetually making a manner, and thinking great things of his own peculiarities in address, is as insufferable in authorship as in society-and as it is a proof of want of breeding in the one case, so it is sure evidence of undignified vanity in the other. "But alas! exclaims he elsewhere, getting his eye on the real nodus of the matter, what it, all this Rushworthian, inarticulate rubits haggard wrecks and pale shadows; what bish continued, in its ghastly dim twilight, with is it but the common kingdom of death ?— This is what we call death, this mouldering dumb wilderness of things once alive. Behold here the final evanescence of formed human things; they had form, but they are changing into sheer formlessness; ancient human speech This is the collapse-the etiolation of human itself has sunk into unintelligible maundering. features into mouldy blank; dissolution; progress towards utter silence and disappearance; disastrous ever-deepening dusk of gods and men!-Why has the living ventured thither, down from the cheerful light, across the Letheswamps, and Tartarean Phlegethons, onwards headed dog? Some destiny drives him? It is his sins, suppose,-perhaps it is his love, strong as that of Orpheus for the lost Eurydice, and likely to have no better issue"!! to these baletul halls of Dis and the three If our author really, by nature, could only write, speak, or think, in this most artificial compost, of which the English language bears but an unworthy proportion to the other elements, one might forget his style in the startling nature of his matter, and admire and applaud the glowing conception, vigor of intellect, and the eloquence, sometimes reaching the sublime, which have given character and fame to his writings. But the peculiarity is not of nature, but of depraved and vitiated taste, and misdirected. conceit. His earlier efforts, which we find This frantic congregation of words may in his collected Essays, were good, vigorous, have a meaning, as every thing he writes English compositions, perfectly simple, and has; but for all practical purposes it might perfectly intelligible, marked by an agreea- as well have none. Unless the encumble and graphic power of description, and bered sense is searched for with more dilia vein of manly humor-sometimes even gence than any author is entitled to exact of wit. They want, perhaps, the boldness, from his readers, they might as usefully as well as the finish of maturer authorship, study the incoherent ramblings of a lunabut they have merit enough to indicate, not tic. It is mere impertinence in composionly the powers of an original and compre- tion to keep the public groping and strughensive mind, but also complete command gling after the writer's train of thought, over the language. It is not the want of through a mass of language, thrown dispower, but the want of will to write purely, jointedly together, where, if it be worth which has betrayed him into his present expressing at all, there can be no difficulty wilderness of words. Tracing his progress in expressing it intelligibly and simply. from his first contributions to the Edin- We have the less tolerance or patience the same fault. We mean Mr. Dickens. His Pickwick Papers, like Carlyle's early works, although colored by a ground-tint of humor, were good racy English. But the demon of affectation seems now to have taken undisputed possession of his style; and unless he make a vigorous and determined effort, and that speedily, against the obtrusive fiend, he will end in mediocrity a literary career, begun more brightly and advanced more rapidly than that of any writer of the day. We may be told that Carlyle's style is not really affected-that it is only Germanized-that much study of the German has not made him mad exactly, but so impressed the form and manner of German authorship on his mind, that he cannot, if he would, either think or write otherwise. But-to write after the fashion of lawyers-this plea of intoxication-of having drunk too deeply at Teutonic springs, only aggravates the offence; and we are glad of an opportunity of speaking our mind on a subject which has never, we think, received sufficient consideration in English criticism. for this wretched vice of style, that it is a defect far too prevalent among writers of the present day, and not only debases and deforms genius, otherwise great, but threatens to injure, seriously and permanently, the purity of our language. Mere mannerism is, perhaps, a fault into which practice leads all men. Each has his own style of touch-his own hand-writing. But that mannerism, which has affectation for its development, and vanity for its source which glories in, and strives after the peculiarities, to avoid which is the object and endeavor of the finished artist, is the great curse of our modern literature. Bentham, for instance, was a mannerist to such an extent, that his French translator is far more intelligible than the English original. But his mannerism was not affectation, but sprung directly from the habits of his mind. His object, unlike our author's, was really and honestly to express, in words which he thought the simplest and clearest, the principle or position he wished to enforce. He failed in this, chiefly because his logic was too close for his command of language. Rabelais rioted in words with as little re- It must strike every one, that if the afstraint as Carlyle, but in the hearty laugh- fectation of peculiarity is a crime against ter-loving enjoyment which tinges every pure composition, the affectation of the pepage of his works, there is not a vestige of culiarities of another is infinitely more repaffectation; his grotesque style being used rehensible and unworthy. Imitators of on all occasions to assist and give point to all degrees are more or less a servile race; his meaning. But the affecters of manner- and we cannot but consider it a disgrace ism love it for its own sake; and in modern and degradation to any author to prefer times many a brilliant genius, besides our making his style a translation from a forauthor, has sacrificed his powers to this un-eign language, to forming it on the pure fortunate weakness. The simplicity of model of his own. Such a writer may Wordsworth-the mysticism of Coleridge think powerfully, and his style may be stri-were mere affectation; and what exuber- king and his thoughts original; but he ant power and inborn melody of soul, did it not in their case fetter and confine! There could not be a better illustration of the fault than Wordsworth. With poetical powers perhaps more genuine and pure than any of his contemporaries, and capable of reaching any height of allowed freedom and expansion, he was the absolute slave of affected simplicity. Real simplicity he had none. On the contrary, his No doubt Mr. Carlyle views this matter warmest admirers must admit that he was, differently. He perhaps believes that he of all poets, the most studiously artificial in is capable of remodelling the English lanhis manner and the structure of his verse. guage on his German standard; and it is But that simplicity which he had not, he probably this rather complacent belief that strove after-attaining, as he thought, a has induced a man of his native power to requality, which, like the plumes of a butter-nounce so completely all pretensions to fly, was destroyed by the effort to snatch it. purity or scientific correctness in composiAnother eminent writer, with powers of ation. This, however, is, we need not say, very remarkable order, is, we are sorry to a consummation which, however desirable, see, sinking below his naturally high level by | is beyond Mr. Carlyle's power, and which, who endeavors to write one language in the idiom of another, necessarily produces a monster. The human head on the horse's neck was not a more wanton exercise of the artist's license "Credite Pisones, isti tabulæ fore librum Persimilem, cujus, velut ægri somnia, vana Finguntur species.' |