Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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But we have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or
absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered
frantic by persecution. It is enough for our present purpose to observe
that the present Church of Scotland, which comprizes so much sound
doctrine and learning, and has produced so many distinguished
characters, is the legitimate representative of the indulged clergy of
the days of Charles II, settled however upon a comprehensive basis. That
after the revolution, it should have succeeded episcopacy as the
national religion, was natural and regular, because it possessed all the
sense, learning, and moderation fit for such a change, and because among
its followers were to be found the only men of property and influence
who acknowledged presbytery. But the Cameronians continued long as a
separate sect, though their preachers were bigoted and ignorant, and
their hearers were gleaned out of the lower ranks of the peasantry.
Their principle, so far as it was intelligible, asserted that paramount
species of presbyterian church-government which was established in the
year 1648, and they continued to regard the established church as
erastian and time-serving, because they prudently remained silent upon
certain abstract and delicate topics, where there might be some
collision between the absolute liberty asserted by the church and the
civil government of the state. The Cameronians, on the contrary,
disowned all kings and government whatsoever, which should not take the
Solemn League and Covenant; and long retained hopes of re-establishing
that great national engagement, a bait which was held out to them by all
those who wished to disturb the government during the reign of William
and Anne, as is evident from the Memoirs of Ker of Kersland, and the
Negotiations of Colonel Hooke with the Jacobites and disaffected of the
year.

A party so wild in their principles, so vague and inconsistent in their
views, could not subsist long under a free and unlimited toleration.
They continued to hold their preachings on the hills, but they lost much
of their zeal when they were no longer liable to be disturbed by
dragoons, sheriffs, and lieutenants of Militia.--The old fable of the
Traveller's Cloak was in time verified, and the fierce sanguinary
zealots of the days of Claverhouse sunk into such quiet and peaceable
enthusiasts as Howie of Lochgoin, or Old Mortality himself. It is,
therefore, upon a race of sectaries who have long ceased to exist, that
Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham has charged all that is odious, and almost all
that is ridiculous, in his fictitious narrative; and we can no more
suppose any moderate presbyterian involved in the satire, than we should
imagine that the character of Hampden stood committed by a little
raillery on the person of Ludovic Claxton, the Muggletonian. If,
however, there remain any of those sectaries who, confining the beams of
the Gospel to the Goshen of their own obscure synagogue, and with James
Mitchell, the intended assassin, giving their sweeping testimony against
prelacy and popery, The Whole Duty of Man and bordles, promiscuous
dancing and the Common Prayer-book, and all the other enormities and
backslidings of the time, may perhaps be offended at this idle tale, we
are afraid they will receive their answer in the tone of the revellers
to Malvolio, who, it will be remembered, was something a kind of
Puritan: "Doest thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no
more cakes and ale?--Aye, by Saint Anne, and ginger will be hot in the
mouth too."

ON LEIGH HUNT

[From _The Quarterly Review_, January, 1816]

_The Story of Rimini, a Poem_. By LEIGH HUNT. fc. 8vo. pp. 111. London,
1816.

A considerable part of this poem was written in Newgate, where the
author was some time confined, we believe for a libel which appeared in
a newspaper, of which he is said to be the conductor. Such an
introduction is not calculated to make a very favourable impression.
Fortunately, however, we are as little prejudiced as possible on this
subject: we have never seen Mr. Hunt's newspaper; we have never heard
any particulars of his offence; nor should we have known that he had
been imprisoned but for his own confession. We have not, indeed, ever
read one line that he has written, and are alike remote from the
knowledge of his errors or the influence of his private character. We
are to judge him solely from the work now before us; and our criticism
would be worse than uncandid if it were swayed by any other
consideration.

The poem is not destitute of merit; but--and this, we confess, was our
main inducement to notice it--it is written on certain pretended
_principles_, and put forth as a pattern for imitation, with a degree of
arrogance which imposes on us the duty of making some observations on
this new theory, which Mr. Leigh Hunt, with the weight and authority of
his venerable name, has issued, ex cathedra, as the canons of poetry and
criticism.

These canons Mr. Hunt endeavours to explain and establish in a long
preface, written in a style which, though Mr. Hunt implies that it is
meant to be perfectly natural and unaffected, appears to us the most
strange, laboured, uncouth, and unintelligible species of prose that we
ever read, only indeed to be exceeded in these qualities by some of the
subsequent verses; and both the prose and the verse are the first
eruptions of this disease with which Mr. Leigh Hunt insists upon
inoculating mankind.

Mr. Hunt's _first_ canon is that there should be a _great freedom_ _of
versification_--this is a proposition to which we should have readily
assented; but when Mr. Hunt goes on to say that by _freedom of
versification_ he means something which neither Pope nor Johnson
possessed, and of which even "they knew less than any poets perhaps who
ever wrote," we check our confidence; and, after a little consideration,
find that by freedom Mr. Hunt means only an inaccurate, negligent, and
harsh style of versification, which our early poets fell into from want
of polish, and such poets as Mr. Hunt still practise from want of ease,
of expression, and of taste.

"_License_ he means, when he cries _liberty_."

Mr. Hunt tells us that Dryden, Spenser and Ariosto, Shakespeare and
Chaucer (so he arranges them), are the greatest masters of _modern_
versification; but he, in the next few sentences, leads us to suspect
that he really does not think much more reverently of these great names
than of Pope and of Johnson; and that, if the whole truth were told, he
is decidedly of opinion that the only good master of versification, in
modern times, is--Mr. Leigh Hunt.

Dryden, Mr. Hunt thinks, is apt to be _artificial_ in his style; or, in
other words, he has improved the harmony of our language from the
rudeness of Chaucer, whom Mr. Hunt (in a sentence which is not grammar,
p. xv) says that Dryden (though he spoke of and borrowed from him)
neither relished nor understood. Spenser, he admits, was musical from
pure taste, but Milton was only, as he elegantly expresses it,
"_learnedly_ so." Being _learned in music_, is intelligible, and, of
Milton, true; but what can Mr. Hunt mean by saying that Milton had
"_learnedly_ a _musical ear_"? "Ariosto's fine ear and _animal spirits_
gave a _frank_ and exquisite tone to all he said"--what does this mean?--
a fine ear may, perhaps, be said to _give_, as it contributes to, an
exquisite tone; but what have _animal spirits_ to do here? and what, in
the matter of _tones_ and _sounds_, is the effect of _frankness_? We
shrewdly suspect that Mr. Hunt, with all his affectation of Italian
literature, knows very little of Ariosto; it is clear that he knows
nothing of Tasso. Of Shakespeare he tells us, "that his versification
escapes us because he _over-informed_ it with knowledge and sentiment,"
by which it appears (as well, indeed, as by his own verses), that this
new Stagyrite thinks that good versification runs a risk of being
spoiled by having _too much meaning_ included in its lines.

To wind up the whole of this admirable, precise, and useful criticism by
a recapitulation as useful and precise, he says, "all these are about as
different from Pope as the church organ is from the bell in the steeple,
or, to give him a more decorous comparison, the song of the nightingale
from that of the cuckoo."--p. xv.

Now we own that what there is so _indecorous_ in the first comparison,
or so especially _decorous_ in the second, we cannot discover; neither
can we make out whether Pope is the organ or the bell--the nightingale
or the cuckoo; we suppose that Mr. Hunt knows that Pope was called by
his contemporaries the _nightingale_, but we never heard Milton and
Dryden called _cuckoos_; or, if the comparison is to be taken the other
way, we apprehend that, though Chaucer may be to Mr. Hunt's ears a
_church organ_, Pope cannot, to any ear, sound like the _church bell_.

But all this theory, absurd and ignorant as it is, is really nothing to
the practice of which it effects to be the defence.

Hear the warblings of Mr. Hunt's nightingales.

A horseman is described--

The patting hand, that best persuades the check,
_And makes the quarrel up with a proud neck_,
The thigh broad pressed, the spanning palm _upon it_,
And the jerked feather _swaling_ in the _bonnet_.--p. 15.

Knights wear ladies' favours--

Some tied about their arm, some at the breast,
_Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest_.--p. 14.

Paulo pays his compliments to the destined bride of his brother--

And paid them with an air so frank and bright,
As to a friend _appreciated at sight_;
That air, in short, which sets you at your ease,
Without _implying_ your perplexities,
That _what with the surprize in every way_,
The hurry of the time, the appointed day,--
She knew _not how to object_ in her confusion.--p. 29.

The meeting of the brothers, on which the catastrophe turns, is
excellent: the politeness with which the challenge is given would have
delighted the heart of old Caranza.

May I request, Sir, said the prince, and frowned,
Your ear a moment in the tilting ground?
_There_, brother? answered Paulo with an _air_
Surprized and _shocked_. Yes, _brother_, cried he, _there_.
The word smote _crushingly_.--p. 92.

Before the duel, the following spirited explanation takes place:

The prince spoke low,
And said: Before _you answer what you can_,
I wish to tell you, _as a gentleman_,
That what you may confess--
Will implicate no person known to you,
More than disquiet in _its_ sleep may do.--p. 93.

Paulo falls--and the event is announced in these exquisite lines:

Her _aged_ nurse--
Who, shaking her _old_ head, and pressing close
Her withered _lips_ to _keep the tears_ that rose--p. 101.

"By the way," does Mr. Leigh Hunt suppose that the aged nurses of Rimini
weep with their mouths? or does he mistake crying for drivelling?--In
fact, the young lady herself seems to have adopted the same mode of
weeping:

With that, a _keen_ and _quivering glance of_ tears
Scarce moves her _patient mouth_, and disappears.

But to the nurse.--She introduces the messenger of death to the
princess, who communicates his story, in pursuance of her command--

Something, I'm sure, has happened--tell me what--
I can bear all, though _you may fancy not_.
Madam, replied the squire, you are, I know,
All sweetness--_pardon me for saying so_.
My Master bade _me_ say then, resumed _he_,
That _he_ spoke firmly, when he told it _me_,--
That I was also, madam, to your ear
Firmly to speak, and you firmly to hear,--
That he was forced this day, _whether or no_,
To combat with the prince;--'--p. 103.

The _second_ of Mr. Hunt's new principles he thus announces:

With the endeavour to recur to a freer spirit of versification, I have
joined one of still greater importance--that of having a _free and
idiomatic_ cast of language. There is a cant of art as well as of
nature, though the former is not so unpleasant as the latter, which
affects non-affectation.--(What does all this mean?)--But the proper
_language of poetry_ is in fact nothing different from that of real
life, and depends for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of
what it speaks. It is only adding _musical modulation_ to what a _fine
understanding_ might actually utter in the midst of its griefs or
enjoyments. The poet therefore should do as Chaucer or Shakespeare
did,--not copy what is obsolete or peculiar in either, any more than
they copied from their predecessors,--but use as much as possible an
_actual, existing language,_--omitting of course _mere vulgarisms_ and
_fugitive phrases_, which are the cant of ordinary discourse, just as
tragedy phrases, _dead idioms,_ and exaggerations of dignity, are of
the artificial style, and yeas, verilys, and exaggerations of
simplicity, are of the natural.--p. xvi.

This passage, compared with the verses to which it preludes, affords a
more extraordinary instance of self-delusion than even Mr. Hunt's notion
of the merit of his versification; for if there be one fault more
eminently conspicuous and ridiculous in Mr. Hunt's work than another, it
is,--that it is full of _mere vulgarisms_ and _fugitive phrases_, and
that in every page the language is--not only not _the actual, existing
language_, but an ungrammatical, unauthorised, chaotic jargon, such as
we believe was never before spoken, much less written.

In what vernacular tongue, for instance, does Mr. Hunt find a lady's
waist called _clipsome_ (p. 10)--or the shout of a mob "enormous" (p.
9)--or a fit, _lightsome_;--or that a hero's nose is "_lightsomely_
brought down from a forehead of clear-spirited thought" (p. 46)--or that
his back "drops" _lightsomely in_ (p. 20). Where has he heard of a
_quoit-like drop_--of _swaling_ a jerked feather--of _unbedinned_ music
(p. 11)--of the death of _leaping_ accents (p. 32)--of the _thick
reckoning_ of a hoof (p. 33)--of a _pin-drop_ silence (p. 17)--a
_readable_ look (p. 20)--a _half indifferent wonderment_ (p. 37)--or of

_Boy-storied_ trees and _passion-plighted_ spots,--p. 38.

of

Ships coming up with _scattery_ light,--p. 4.

or of self-knowledge being

_Cored_, after all, in our complacencies?--p. 38.

We shall now produce a few instances of what "_a fine understanding
might utter_," with "the addition of _musical modulation_," and of the
_dignity_ and _strength_ of Mr. Hunt's sentiments and expressions.

A crowd, which divided itself into groups, is--

--the multitude,
Who _got_ in clumps----p. 26.

The impression made on these "clumps" by the sight of the Princess, is
thus "musically" described:

There's not in all that croud one _gallant_ being,
Whom, if his heart were whole, and _rank agreeing_,
It would not _fire to twice of what he is_,--p. 10.

"Dignity and strength"--

First came the trumpeters--
And as they _sit along_ their easy way,
Stately and _heaving_ to the croud below.--p. 12.

This word is deservedly a great favourite with the poet; he _heaves_ it
in upon all occasions.

The deep talk _heaves_.--p. 5.
With _heav'd_ out tapestry the windows glow.--p. 6.
Then _heave_ the croud.--_id_.
And after a rude _heave_ from side to side.--p. 7.
The marble bridge comes _heaving_ forth below.--p. 28.

"Fine understanding"--

The youth smiles _up_, and with a _lowly_ grace,
_Bending_ his _lifted_ eyes--p. 22.

This is very neat:

No peevishness there was--
But a _mute_ gush of _hiding_ tears from one,
Clasped to the _core_ of him who yet shed none.--p. 83.

The heroine is suspected of wishing to have some share in the choice of
her own husband, which is thus elegantly expressed:

She had stout notions on the marrying _score_.--p. 27.

This noble use of the word _score_ is afterwards carefully repeated in
speaking of the Prince, her husband--

--no suspicion could have touched him more,
Than that of _wanting_ on the generous _score_.--p. 48.

But though thus punctilious on the _generous score_, his Highness had
but a bad temper,

And kept no reckoning with his _sweets and sours_.--p. 47.

This, indeed, is somewhat qualified by a previous observation, that--

_The worst of Prince Giovanni_, as his bride
Too quickly found, was an ill-tempered pride.

How nobly does Mr. Hunt celebrate the combined charms of the fair sex,
and the country!

_The two divinest things this world_ HAS GOT,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!--p. 58.

A rural spot, indeed, seems to inspire Mr. Hunt with peculiar elegance
and sweetness: for he says, soon after, of Prince Paulo--

For welcome grace, there rode not such another,
Nor yet for strength, except his lordly brother.
Was there a court day, or a sparkling feast,
Or better still--_to my ideas, at least!_--
A summer party in the green wood shade.--p. 50.

So much for this new invented _strength_ and _dignity_: we shall add a
specimen of his syntax:

But fears like these he never entertain'd,
And had they crossed him, would have been disdain'd.--p. 50.

* * * * *

After these extracts, we have but one word more to say of Mr. Hunt's
poetry; which is, that amidst all his vanity, vulgarity, ignorance, and
coarseness, there are here and there some well-executed descriptions,
and occasionally a line of which the sense and the expression are good--
The interest of the story itself is so great that we do not think it
wholly lost even in Mr. Hunt's hands. He has, at least, the merit of
telling it with decency; and, bating the qualities of versification,
expression, and dignity, on which he peculiarly piques himself, and in
which he has utterly failed, the poem is one which, in our opinion at
least, may be read with satisfaction after GALT'S Tragedies.

Mr. Hunt prefixes to his work a dedication to Lord Byron, in which he
assumes a high tone, and talks big of his "_fellow-dignity_" and
independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we know not; perhaps the
_dignity_ of a _fellow_; but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more
unlucky in his pompous pretension to versification and good language,
than he is in that which he makes, in this dedication, to _proper
spirit_, as he calls it, and _fellow-dignity_; for we never, in so few
lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man,
conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse
flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and
fidget himself into the _stout-heartedness_ of being familiar with a
LORD.

OF SHAKESPEARE

[From _The Quarterly Review_, October, 1816]

_Shakespeare's Himself Again! or the Language of the Poet asserted;
being a full and dispassionate Examen of the Readings and
Interpretations of the several Editors. Comprised in a Series of Notes,
Sixteen Hundred in Number, illustrative of the most difficult Passages
in his Plays_--_to the various editions of which the present Volumes
form a complete and necessary Supplement_. By ANDREW BECKET. 2 vols.
8vo. pp. 730. 1816.

If the dead could be supposed to take any interest in the integrity of
their literary reputation, with what complacency might we not imagine
our great poet to contemplate the labours of the present writer! Two
centuries have passed away since his death--the mind almost sinks under
the reflection that he has been all that while exhibited to us so
"transmographied" by the joint ignorance and malice of printers,
critics, etc., as to be wholly unlike himself. But--_post nubila,
Phoebus!_ Mr. Andrew Becket has at length risen upon the world, and
Shakespeare is about to shine forth in genuine and unclouded glory!

What we have at present is a mere scantling of the great work _in
procinctu_--[Greek: _pidakos ex ieraes oligaelizas_]--sixteen hundred
"restorations," and no more! But if these shall be favourably received,
a complete edition of the poet will speedily follow. Mr. Becket has
taken him to develop; and it is truly surprizing to behold how beautiful
he comes forth as the editor proceeds in unrolling those unseemly and
unnatural rags in which he has hitherto been so disgracefully wrapped:

Tandem aperit vultum, et tectoria prima reponit,--
Incipit agnosci!--

Mr. Becket has favoured us, in the Preface, with a comparative estimate
of the merits of his predecessors. He does not, as may easily be
conjectured, rate any of them very highly; but he places Warburton at
the top of the scale, and Steevens at the bottom: this, indeed, was to
be expected. "Warburton," he says, "is the _best_, and Steevens the
_worst_ of Shakespeare's commentators"; (p. xvii) and he ascribes it
solely to his forbearance that the latter is not absolutely crushed: it
not being in his nature, as he magnanimously insinuates, "to break a
butterfly upon a wheel!" Dr. Johnson is shoved aside with very little
ceremony; Mr. Malone fares somewhat better; and the rest are dismissed
with the gentle valediction of Pandarus to the Trojans--"asses, fools,
dolts! chaff and bran! porridge after meat!" With respect to our author
himself, it is but simple justice to declare, that he comes to the great
work of "restoring Shakespeare"--not only with more negative advantages
than the unfortunate tribe of critics so cavalierly dismissed, but than
all who have aspired to illumine the page of a defunct writer since the
days of Aristarchus. As far as we are enabled to judge, Mr. Becket never
examined an old play in his life:--he does not seem to have the
slightest knowledge of any writer, or any subject, or any language that
ever occupied the attention of his contemporaries; and he possesses a
mind as innocent of all requisite information as if he had dropped, with
the last thunderstone, from the moon.

"Addison has well observed, that 'in works of criticism it is absolutely
necessary to have a _clear and logical head_.'" (p.v.) In this position,
Mr. Becket cheerfully agrees with him; and, indeed, it is sufficiently
manifest, that without the internal conviction of enjoying that
indispensable advantage, he would not have favoured the public with
those matchless "restorations"; a few specimens of which we now proceed
to lay before them. Where all are alike admirable, there is no call for
selection; we shall therefore open the volumes at random, and trust to
fortune.

"_Hamlet_. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?"

This reading, Mr. Becket says, he cannot admit; and he says well: since
it appears that Shakespeare wrote--

"For who would bear the _scores_ of _weapon'd_ time?"

using _scores_ in the sense of stripes. Formerly, _i.e.,_ when Becket
was _in his sallad days_, he augured, he says, that the true reading
was--

--"the scores of _whip-hand_ time."

Time having always the _whip-hand,_ the advantage; but he now reverts to
the other emendation; though, as he modestly hints, the epithet
_whip-hand_ (which he still regards with parental fondness) will perhaps
be thought to have much of the manner of Shakespeare.--Vol. i, p. 43.

"_Horatio_.--While they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb, and speak not to him!"

We had been accustomed to find no great difficulty here: the words
seemed, to us, at least, to express the usual effect of inordinate
terror--but we gladly acknowledge our mistake. "The passage is not to be
understood." How should it, when both the pointing and the language are
corrupt? Read, as Shakespeare gave it--

--"While they _bestill'd_
Almost to _gelee_ with the act. Of fear
Stand dumb," &c.--that is, petrified (or rather icefied) p. 13.

"_Lear_. And my poor fool is hang'd!"

With these homely words, which burst from the poor old king on reverting
to the fate of his loved Cordelia, whom he then holds in his arms, we
have been always deeply affected, and therefore set them down as one of
the thousand proofs of the poet's intimate knowledge of the human heart.
But Mr. Becket has made us ashamed of our simplicity and our tears.
Shakespeare had no such "lenten" language in his thoughts; he wrote, as
Mr. Becket tells us,

"And my _pure soot_ is hang'd!"

Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for _pure_; while the _s_ in
_soot_ (sweet) was scarcely discernible from the _f_, or the _t_ from
the _l_.--p. 176.

We are happy to find that so much can be offered in favour of the old
printers. And yet--were it not that the genuine text is always to be
preferred--we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder
as it stood.

"_Wolsey_.--that his bones
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them."

A tomb of tears is ridiculous. I read--a _coomb_ of tears--a _coomb_
is a liquid measure containing forty gallons. Thus the expression,
which was before absurd, becomes forcible and just.--vol. ii, p. 134.

It does indeed!

"_Sir Andrew_. I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had'st
it?" Read as Shakespeare wrote: "I sent thee sixpence for thy
_lemma_"--_lemma_ is properly an _argument_, or _proposition assumed_,
and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.--p. 335.