of;' but he says 'You will not be well until after the bile is got rid of.' He knows after the cause of the malady is removed, that morbid habits are to be changed, weakness to be supported, organs to be called back to their proper exercise, subordinate maladies to be watched, secondary and vicarious symptoms to be studied. The physician is a wise man—but the anserous politician insists, after 200 years of persecution, and ten of emancipation, that Catholic Ireland should be as quiet as Edmonton or Tooting. Not only are just laws wanted for Catholic Ireland, but the just administration of just laws; such as they have in general experienced under the Whig government; and this system steadily persevered in will, after a lapse of time, and O'Connell, quite conciliate and civilize that long injured and irritable people. I have printed in this Collection the Letters of Peter Plymley. The government of that day took great pains to find out the author; all that they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or another, it came to be conjectured that I was that author: I have always denied it; but finding that I deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the Letters in this collection; they had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above 20,000 copies were sold. From the beginning of the century (about which time the Review began) to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who had the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions, and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge, or the lawn of the prelate :-a long and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue-prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your head-reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest dignities of the Church, for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant Dissenters, and no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla-these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes. It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects; and in addition he was sure at that time to be assailed with all the Billingsgate of the French Revolution-Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, Deist, Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide, were the gentlest appellations used; and the man who breathed a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the two Georges, or hinted at the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upon Catholic Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the relations of social life. Not a murmur against any abuse was permitted; to say a word against the suitorcide delays of the Court of Chancery, or the cruel punishments of the Game Laws, or against any abuse which a rich man inflicted, or a poor man suffered, was treason against the Plousiocracy, and was bitterly and steadily resented. Lord Grey had not then taken off the bearing-rein from the English people, as Sir Francis Head has now done from horses. To set on foot a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the wellpaid Whigs are riding in chariots; with many faces, however, looking out of the windows, (including that of our Prime Minister,) which I never remember to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberality is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, may consider himself as a commissioner, and his fortune as made; and to my utter and never ending astonishment, I an old Edinburgh Reviewer, find myself fighting in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, for the existence of the National Church. SIDNEY SMITH. WORKS OF THE REV. SIDNEY SMITH. DR. PARR.* (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1802. Spital Sermon, preached at Christ Church upon EasterTuesday, April 15, 1800. To which are added, Notes by Samuel Parr, LL.D. Printed for J. Mawman in the Poultry. 1801. WHOEVER has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even the Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the peya Oavpa of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the beginning of the world. For his text, Dr. Parr has chosen Gal. vi. 10. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good to all men, esperially to those who are of the household of faith. After a preliminary comparison between the dangers of the selfish system, and the modern one of universal benevolence, he divides his sermon into two parts: in the first examining how far, by the constitution of human nature, and the circumstances of human life, the principles of particular and universal benevolence are compatible: in the last, commenting on the nature of the charitable institution for which he is preaching. feated; the public good is impaired, rather than increased; and the claims that other virtues equally obligatory have to our notice, are totally disregarded. Thus, too, when any dazzling phantoms of universal philanthropy have seized our attention the objects that formerly engaged it shrink and fade. All considerations of kindred, friends, and countrymen drop from the mind, during the struggles it makes to grasp the collective interests of the species; and when the association that attached us to them has been dissolved, the notions we have formed of their comparado not say any hold whatsoever, but that strong and last tive insignificance will prevent them from recovering, I ing hold they once had upon our conviction and our feelings. Universal benevolence, should it, from any strange combination of circumstances, ever become passionate, will like every other passion justify itself: and the importunity of its demands to obtain a hearing will be propor consequences? A perpetual wrestling for victory between tionate to the weakness of its cause. But what are the the refinements of sophistry, and the remonstrances of indignant nature-the agitations of secret distrust in opinions which gain few or no proselytes, and feelings which excite little or no sympathy-the neglect of all the usual duties, by which social life is preserved or adorned; and in the pursuit of other duties which are unusual, and indeed imaginary, a succession of airy projects, eager hopes, tumultuevery wise man foresaw, and a good man would rarely ous efforts, and galling disappointments, such, in truth, as commiserate." In a subsequent part of his sermon, Dr. Parr handles the same topic with equal success. The former part is levelled against the doctrines of 'The stoics, it has been said, were more successful in Mr. Godwin; and, here, Dr. Parr exposes, very strong-weakening the tender affections, than in animating men to ly and happily, the folly of making universal benevolence the immediate motive of our actions. As we consider this, though of no very difficult execution, to be by far the best part of the sermon, we shall very willingly make some extracts from it. the stronger virtues of fortitude and self-command; and possible it is, that the influence of our modern reformers may be greater, in turnishing their disciples with pleas for their endeavours for the performance of those which are the neglect of their ordinary duties, than in stimulating extraordinary, and perhaps ideal. If, indeed, the repre sentations we have lately heard of universal philanthropy "To me it appears, that the modern advocates for uni-served only to amuse the fancy of those who approve of versal philanthropy have fallen into the error charged upon those who are fascinated by a violent and extraordinary fondness for what a celebrated author calls "some moral species." Some men, it has been remarked, are hurried into romantic adventures, by their excessive admiration of fortitude. Others are actuated by a headstrong zeal for disseminating the true religion. Hence, while the only properties, for which fortitude or zeal can be esteemed, are scarcely discernible, from the enormous bulkiness to which they are swollen, the ends to which alone they can be directed usefully, are overlooked or de *A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek scholars are, unless they happen to be Bishops. He has left nothing behind him worth leaving: he was rather fitted for the law than the church, and would have been a more considerable man, if he had been more knocked about among his equals. He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, who flattered and feared him [them, and communicate that pleasure which arises from contemplating the magnitude and grandeur of a favourite subject, we might be tempted to smile at them as groundless and harmless. But they tend to debase the dignity, and to weaken the efficacy of those particular affections, for which we have daily and hourly occasion in the events of real life. They tempt us to substitute the ease of speculation, and the pride of dogmatism, for the toil of practice. To a class of artificial and ostentatious sentiments, they give the most dangerous triumph over the genuine and salutary dictates of nature. They delude and inflame our minds with pharisaical notions of superior wisdom and superior virtue; and what is the worst of all, they may be used as "a cloke to us" for insensibility, where other men feel; and for negligence, where other men act with visible and useful, though limited, effect.' In attempting to show the connection between parti may outlive him for a long period; and we all hate each other's crimes, by which we gain nothing, so much, that in proportion as public opinion acquires ascendancy in any particular country, every public institution becomes more and more guaranteed from abuse. cular and universal benevolence, Dr. Parr does not appear to us to have taken a clear and satisfactory view of the subject. Nature impels us both to good and bad actions; and even in the former, gives us no measure by which we may prevent them from degenerating into excess. Rapine and revenge are not less Upon the whole, this sermon is rather the produc natural than parental and filial affection; which latter tion of what is called a sensible, than of a very acute class of feelings may themselves be a source of crimes, man; of a man certainly more remarkable for his if they overpower (as they frequently do) the sense of learning than his originality. It refutes the very refus justice. It is not therefore, a sufficient justifica- table positions of Mr. Godwin, without placing the tion of our actions, that they are natural. We doctrine of benevolence in a clear light; and it almost must seek, from our reason, some principle which leaves us to suppose, that the particular affections are will enable us to determine what impulses of na- themseives ultimate principles of action, instead of ture we are to obey, and what we are to resist: convenient instruments of a more general principle. such is that of general utility, or, what is the same The style is such, as to give a general impression of thing, of universal good; a principle which sanctifies heaviness to the whole sermon. The doctor is never and limits the more particular affections. The duty of simple and natural for a single instant. Every thing a son to a parent, or a parent to a son, is not an ulti- smells of the rhetorician. He never appears to forget mate principle of morals, but depends on the principle himself, or to be hurried by his subject into obvious of universal good, and is only praiseworthy because it language. Every expression seems to be the result of is found to promote it. At the same time, our spheres artifice and intention; and as to the worthy dedicatees, of action and intelligence are so confined, that it is bet- the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, unless the sermon be ter in a great majority of instances, to suffer our con- done into English by a person of honour, they may duct to be guided by those affections which have been perhaps be flattered by the Doctor's politeness, but long sanctioned by the approbation of mankind, than to they can never be much edified by his meaning. Dr. enter into a process of reasoning, and investigate the re- Parr seems to think, that eloquence consists not in lation which every trifling event might bear to the gene- exuberance of beautiful images-not in simple and ral interests of the world. In his principle of universal sublime conceptions-not in the feelings of the pasbenevolence, Mr. Godwin is unquestionably right. That sions; but in a studious arrangement of sonorous, exoit is the grand principle upon which all morals rest- tic, and sesquipedal words: a very ancient error, which that it is the corrective for the excess of all particular corrupts the style of young, and wearies the patience affections, we believe to be undeniable: and he is only of sensible men. In some of his combinations of words erroneous in excluding the particular affections, be- the Doctor is singularly unhappy. We have the din cause, in so doing, he deprives us of our most power-of superficial cavillers, the prancings of giddy ostentaful means of promoting his own principle of universal tion, fluttering vanity, hissing scorn, dank clod, &c. good; for it is as much as to say, that all the crew ought &c. &c. The following intrusion of a technical word to have the general welfare of the ship so much at heart, into a pathetic description, renders the whole passage that no sailor should ever pull any particular rope, or almost ludicrous. hand any individual sail. By universal benevolence, we mean, and understand Dr. Parr to mean, not a barren affection for the species, but a desire to promote their real happiness; and of this principle, he thus speaks: 'I admit and I approve of it as an emotion of which general happiness is the cause, but not as a passion, of which, according to the usual order of human affairs, it could often be the object. I approve of it as a disposition to wish, and, as opportunity may occur, to desire and do good, rather than harm, to those with whom we are quite unconnected.' It would appear, from this kind of language, that a desire of promoting the universal good were a pardonable weakness, rather than a fundamental principle of ethics; that the particular affections were incapable of excess; and that they never wanted the corrective of a more generous and exalted feeling. In a subsequent part of his sermon, Dr. Parr atones a little for this over-zealous depreciation of the principle of universal benevolence; but he nowhere states the particular affections to derive their value and their limits from their subservience to a more extensive philanthropy. He does not show us that they exist only as virtues, from their instrumentality in promoting the general good; and that, to preserve their true character, they should be frequently referred to that principle as their proper criterion. In the latter part of his sermon, Dr. Parr combats the general objections of Mr. Turgot to all charitable institutions, with considerable vigour and success. To say that an institution is necessarily bad, because it will not always be administered with the same zeal, proves a little too much; for it is an objection to political and religious, as well as to charitable institutions; and, from a lively apprehension of the fluctuating characters of those who govern, would leave the world without any government at all. It is better that we should have an asylum for the mad, and a hospital for the wounded, if they were to squander away 50 per cent. of their income, than that we should be disgusted with sore limbs, and shocked by straw-crowned monarchs in the streets. All institutions of this kind must suffer the risk of being governed by more or less of probity and talents. The good which one active character effects, and the wise order which he establishes, 'Within a few days, mute was the tongue that uttered these celestial sounds, and the hand which signed your in denture lay cold and motionless in the dark and dreary chambers of death.' In page 16, Dr. Parr, in speaking of the indentures of the hospital, a subject (as we should have thought) little calculated for rhetorical panegyric, says of them If the writer of whom I am speaking had perused, as I have, your indentures, and your rules, he would have found in them seriousness without austerity, earnestness without extravagance, good sense without the trickeries of art, good language without the trappings of rhetoric, and the firmness of conscious worth, rather than the prancings of giddy ostentation.' The latter member of this eloge would not be wholly unintelligible, if applied to a spirited coach horse; but we have never yet witnessed the phenomenon of a prancing indenture. It is not our intention to follow Dr. Parr through the copious and varied learning of his notes; in the perusal of which we have been as much delighted with the richness of his acquisitions, the vigour of his understanding, and the genuine goodness of his heart, as we have been amused with his ludicrous self-importance, and the miraculous simplicity of his character. We would rather recommend it to the Doctor to publish an annual list of worthies, as a kind of stimulus to lite. rary men; to be included in which, will unquestionably be considered as great an honour, as for a commoner to be elevated to the peerage. A line of Greek, a line of Latin, or no line at all, subsequent to each name will distinguish, with sufficient accuracy, the shades of merit, and the degree of immortality conferred. Why should Dr. Parr confine this eulogomania to the literary characters of this island alone? In the university of Benares, in the lettered kingdom of Ava, among the Mandarins at Pekin, there must, doubtless, be many men who have the eloquence of Bappovos, * Πάντες μὲν σοφοί. ἐγὼ δε Ωκηρον μὲν σέβω, θαυμάζω dè Báppovov, kai piλe Taiλwpov. See Lucian in Vita Damenact. vol. ii. p. 394.-(Dr. Parr's note.) |