Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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_Shepherd._ Wheesht--wheesht--let us keep aff that subject. All men ever
I knew are mad; and but for that law o' natur, never, never, in this
warld had there been a _Noctes Ambrosianae_.

CRUMBS FROM THE "NOCTES"

MISS MITFORD

_North._ Miss Mitford has not in my opinion either the pathos or humour
of Washington Irving; but she excels him in vigorous conception of
character, and in the truth of her pictures of English life and manners.
Her writings breathe a sound, pure, and healthy morality, and are
pervaded by a genuine rural spirit--the spirit of merry England. Every
line bespeaks the lady.

_Shepherd._ I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at
her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi'
sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in
lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o' me, is her
pictures o' poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither
neerdoweels, and o' huts and hovels without riggin' by the wayside, and
the cottages o' honest puir men, and byres, and barns, and stackyards,
and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, and at
the gable-end of farm houses, 'tween lads and lasses as laigh in life as
the servants in her father's ha'. That's the puzzle, and that's the
praise. But ae word explains a'--Genius--Genius, wull a' the
metafhizzians in the warld ever expound that mysterious monosyllable.--
_Nov, 1826._

HAZLITT

_Shepherd._. He had a curious power that Hazlitt, as he was ca'd, o'
simulatin' sowl. You could hae taen your Bible oath sometimes, when you
were readin him, that he had a sowl--a human sowl--a sowl to be saved--
but then, heaven preserve us! in the verra middle aiblins o' a
paragraph, he grew transformed afore your verra face into something
bestial,--you heard a grunt that made ye grue, and there was an ill
smell in the room, as frae a pluff o' sulphur.--_April, 1827._

WORDSWORTH

_Shepherd._ Wordsworth tells the world, in ane of his prefaces, that he
is a water-drinker--and its weel seen on him.--There was a sair want of
speerit through the haill o' yon lang "Excursion." If he had just made
the paragraphs about ae half shorter, and at the end of every ane taen a
caulker, like ony ither man engaged in geyan sair and heavy wark, think
na ye that his "Excursion" would hae been far less fatiguesome?--_April,
1827._

_North._ I confess that the "Excursion" is the worst poem, of any
character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred
sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the sense, as
well as sound. The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite
ineffectual. Then, what labour the builder of that lofty rhyme must have
undergone! It is, in its own way, a small tower of Babel, and all built
by a single man.--_Sept., 1825._

COLERIDGE

_North._ James, you don't know S.T. Coleridge--do you? He writes but
indifferent books, begging his pardon: witness his "Friend," his "Lay
Sermons," and, latterly, his "Aids to Reflection"; but he becomes
inspired by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like
a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney, he might publish a Moral Essay, or a
Theological Discourse, or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political
Harangue, every morning throughout the year during his lifetime.

_Tickler._ Mr. Coleridge does not seem to be aware that he cannot write
a book, but opines that he absolutely has written several, and set many
questions at rest. There's a want of some kind or another in his mind;
but perhaps when he awakes out of his dream, he may get rational and
sober-witted, like other men, who are not always asleep.

_Shepherd._ The author o' "Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner," had
better just continue to see visions, and dream dreams--for he's no fit
for the wakin' world.--_April, 1827._

FASHIONABLE NOVELS

_North._ James, I wish you would review for Maga all those fashionable
novels--Novels of High Life; such as _Pelham_--the _Disowned_.

_Shepherd._ I've read thae twa, and they're baith gude. But the mair I
think on't, the profounder is my conviction that the strength o' human
nature lies either in the highest or lowest estate of life. Characters
in books should either be kings, and princes, and nobles, and on a level
with them, like heroes; or peasants, shepherds, farmers, and the like,
includin' a' orders amaist o' our ain working population. The
intermediate class--that is, leddies and gentlemen in general--are no
worth the Muse's while; for their life is made up chiefly o' mainners,--
mainners,--mainners;--you canna see the human creters for their claes;
and should ane o' them commit suicide in despair, in lookin' on the dead
body, you are mair taen up wi' its dress than its decease.--_March,
1829._

WILL CARLETON

_Shepherd._ What sort o' vols., sir, are the _Traits and Stories of the
Irish Peasantry_ [W. Carleton], published by Curry in Dublin.

_North._ Admirable. Truly, intensely Irish. The whole book has the
brogue--never were the outrageous whimsicalities of that strange, wild,
imaginative people so characteristically displayed; nor, in the midst of
all the fun, frolic, and folly, is there any dearth of poetry, pathos,
and passion. The author's a jewel, and he will be reviewed next number.
--_May, 1830._

BURNS

_Shepherd._ I shanna say ony o' mine's [songs] are as gude as some sax
or aucht o' Burns's--for about that number o' Robbie's are o' inimitable
perfection. It was heaven's wull that in them he should transcend a' the
minnesingers o' this warld. But they're too perfeckly beautifu' to be
envied by mortal man--therefore let his memory in them be hallowed for
evermair.--_August, 1834._

_Shepherd_. I was wrang in ever hintin ae word in disparagement o'
Burn's _Cottar's Saturday Night_. But the truth is, you see, that the
subjeck's sae heeped up wi' happiness, and sae charged wi' a' sort o'
sanctity--sae national and sae Scottish--that beautifu' as the poem is--
and really, after a', naething can be mair beautifu'--there's nae
satisfying either paesant or shepherd by ony delineation o't, though
drawn in lines o' licht, and shinin' equally w' genius and wi' piety.--
_Nov., 1834._

LEIGH HUNT

_Shepherd_. Leigh Hunt truly loved Shelley.

_North_. And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt. Their friendship was
honourable to them both, for it was as disinterested as sincere; and I
hope Gurney will let a certain person in the City understand that I
treat his offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt's _London Journal_ with
disdain. If he has anything to say against us or against that gentleman,
either conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other
channel, and I promise him a touch and taste of the Crutch. He talks to
me of Maga's desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian--nay, a
man--his heart and head too would tell him that the Animosities are
mortal, but the Humanities live for ever--and that Leigh Hunt has more
talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon
himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten
falsehoods. Mr. Hunt's _London Journal_, may dear James, is not only
beyond all comparison, but out of all sight, the most entertaining and
instructive of all the cheap periodicals; and when laid, as it duly is
once a week, on my breakfast table, it lies there--but is not permitted
to lie long--like a spot of sunshine dazzling the snow.--_Aug_., 1834.

ANONYMOUS ON COLERIDGE

[From _Blackwood's Magazine_, October, 1817]

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE "BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA" OF S. T. COLERIDGE,
ESQ., 1817

When a man looks back on his past existence, and endeavours to recall
the incidents, events, thoughts, feelings, and passions of which it was
composed, he sees something like a glimmering land of dreams, peopled
with phantasms and realities undistinguishably confused and
intermingled--here illuminated with dazzling splendour, there dim with
melancholy mists,--or it may be shrouded in impenetrable darkness. To
bring, visibly and distinctly before our memory, on the one hand, all
our hours of mirth and joy, and hope and exultation,--and, on the other,
all our perplexities, and fears and sorrows, and despair and agony,--
(and who has been so uniformly wretched as not to have been often
blest?--who so uniformly blest as not to have been often wretched?)--
would be as impossible as to awaken, into separate remembrance, all the
changes and varieties which the seasons brought over the material
world,--every gleam of sunshine that beautified the Spring,--every cloud
and tempest that deformed the Winter. In truth, were this power and
domination over the past given unto us, and were we able to read the
history of our lives all faithfully and perspicuously recorded on the
tablets of the inner spirit,--those beings, whose existence had been
most filled with important events and with energetic passions, would be
the most averse to such overwhelming survey--would recoil from trains of
thought which formerly agitated and disturbed, and led them, as it were,
in triumph beneath the yoke of misery or happiness. The soul may be
repelled from the contemplation of the past as much by the brightness
and magnificence of scenes that shifted across the glorious drama of
youth, as by the storms that scattered the fair array into disfigured
fragments; and the melancholy that breathes from vanished delight is,
perhaps, in its utmost intensity, as unendurable as the wretchedness
left by the visitation of calamity. There are spots of sunshine sleeping
on the fields of past existence too beautiful, as there are caves among
its precipices too darksome to be looked on by the eyes of memory; and
to carry on an image borrowed from the analogy between the moral and
physical world, the soul may turn away in sickness from the untroubled
silence of a resplendent Lake, no less than from the haunted gloom of
the thundering Cataract. It is from such thoughts, and dreams, and
reveries, as these, that all men feel how terrible it would be to live
over again their agonies and their transports; that the happiest would
fear to do so as much as the most miserable; and that to look back to
our cradle seems scarcely less awful than to look forward to the grave.

But if this unwillingness to bring before our souls, in distinct array,
the more solemn and important events of our lives, be a natural and
perhaps a wise feeling, how much more averse must every reflecting man
be to the ransacking of his inmost spirit for all its hidden emotions
and passions, to the tearing away that shroud which oblivion may have
kindly flung over his vices and his follies, or that fine and delicate
veil which Christian humility draws over his virtues and acts of
benevolence. To scrutinize and dissect the character of others is an
idle and unprofitable task; and the most skilful anatomist will often be
forced to withhold his hand when he unexpectedly meets with something he
does not understand--some confirmation of the character of his patient
which is not explicable on his theory of human nature. To become
operators on our own shrinking spirits is something worse; for by
probing the wounds of the soul, what can ensue but callousness or
irritability. And it may be remarked, that those persons who have busied
themselves most with inquiries into the causes, and motives, and
impulses of their actions, have exhibited, in their conduct, the most
lamentable contrast to their theory, and have seemed blinder in their
knowledge than others in their ignorance.

It will not be supposed that any thing we have now said in any way bears
against the most important duty of self-examination. Many causes there
are existing, both in the best and the worst parts of our nature, which
must render nugatory and deceitful any continued diary of what passes
through the human soul; and no such confessions could, we humbly
conceive, be of use either to ourselves or to the world. But there are
hours of solemn inquiry in which the soul reposes on itself; the true
confessional is not the bar of the public, but it is the altar of
religion; there is a Being before whom we may humble ourselves without
being debased; and there are feelings for which human language has no
expression, and which, in the silence of solitude and of nature, are
known only unto the Eternal.

The objections, however, which might thus be urged against the writing
and publishing accounts of all our feelings,--all the changes of our
moral constitution,--do not seem to apply with equal force to the
narration of our mere speculative opinions. Their rise, progress,
changes, and maturity may be pretty accurately ascertained; and as the
advance to truth is generally step by step, there seems to be no great
difficulty in recording the leading causes that have formed the body of
our opinions, and created, modified, and coloured our intellectual
character. Yet this work would be alike useless to ourselves and others,
unless pursued with a true magnanimity. It requires, that we should
stand aloof from ourselves, and look down, as from an eminence, on our
souls toiling up the hill of knowledge;--that we should faithfully
record all the assistance we received from guides or brother pilgrims;--
that we should mask the limit of our utmost ascent, and, without
exaggeration, state the value of our acquisitions. When we consider how
many temptations there are even here to delude ourselves, and by a
seeming air of truth and candour to impose upon others, it will be
allowed, that, instead of composing memoirs of himself, a man of genius
and talent would be far better employed in generalizing the observations
and experiences of his life, and giving them to the world in the form of
philosophic reflections, applicable not to himself alone, but to the
universal mind of Man.

What good to mankind has ever flowed from the confessions of Rousseau,
or the autobiographical sketch of Hume? From the first we rise with a
confused and miserable sense of weakness and of power--of lofty
aspirations and degrading appetencies--of pride swelling into blasphemy,
and humiliation pitiably grovelling in the dust--of purity of spirit
soaring on the wings of imagination, and grossness of instinct brutally
wallowing in "Epicurus' stye,"--of lofty contempt for the opinion of
mankind, yet the most slavish subjection to their most fatal prejudices--
of a sublime piety towards God, and a wild violation of his holiest
laws. From the other we rise with feelings of sincere compassion for the
ignorance of the most enlightened. All the prominent features of Hume's
character were invisible to his own eyes; and in that meagre sketch
which has been so much admired, what is there to instruct, to rouse, or
to elevate--what light thrown over the duties of this life or the hopes
of that to come? We wish to speak with tenderness of a man whose moral
character was respectable, and whose talents were of the first order.
But most deeply injurious to every thing lofty and high-toned in human
Virtue, to every thing cheering, and consoling, and sublime in that
Faith which sheds over this Earth a reflection of the heavens, is that
memoir of a worldly-wise Man; in which he seems to contemplate with
indifference the extinction of his own immortal soul, and jibes and
jokes on the dim and awful verge of Eternity.

We hope that our readers will forgive these very imperfect reflections
on a subject of deep interest, and accompany us now on our examination
of Mr. Coleridge's "Literary Life," the very singular work which caused
our ideas to run in that channel. It does not contain an account of his
opinions and literary exploits alone, but lays open, not unfrequently,
the character of the Man as well as of the Author; and we are compelled
to think, that while it strengthens every argument against the
composition of such Memoirs, it does, without benefiting the cause
either of virtue, knowledge, or religion, exhibit many mournful
sacrifices of personal dignity, after which it seems impossible that Mr.
Coleridge can be greatly respected either by the Public or himself.

Considered merely in a literary point of view, the work is most
execrable. He rambles from one subject to another in the most wayward
and capricious manner; either from indolence, or ignorance, or weakness,
he has never in one single instance finished a discussion; and while he
darkens what was dark before into tenfold obscurity, he so treats the
most ordinary common-places as to give them the air of mysteries, till
we no longer know the faces of our old acquaintances beneath their cowl
and hood, but witness plain flesh and blood matters of fact miraculously
converted into a troop of phantoms. That he is a man of genius is
certain; but he is not a man of a strong intellect nor of powerful
talents. He has a great deal of fancy and imagination, but little or no
real feeling, and certainly no judgment. He cannot form to himself any
harmonious landscape such as it exists in nature, but beautified by the
serene light of the imagination. He cannot conceive simple and majestic
groupes of human figures and characters acting on the theatre of real
existence. But his pictures of nature are fine only as imaging the
dreaminess, and obscurity, and confusion of distempered sleep; while all
his agents pass before our eyes like shadows, and only impress and
affect us with a phantasmagorial splendour.

It is impossible to read many pages of this work without thinking that
Mr. Coleridge conceives himself to be a far greater man than the Public
is likely to admit; and we wish to waken him from what seems to us a
most ludicrous delusion. He seems to believe that every tongue is
wagging in his praise--that every ear is open to imbibe the oracular
breathings of his inspiration. Even when he would fain convince us that
his soul is wholly occupied with some other illustrious character, he
breaks out into laudatory exclamations concerning himself; no sound is
so sweet to him as that of his own voice; the ground is hallowed on
which his footsteps tread; and there seems to him something more than
human in his very shadow. He will read no books that other people read;
his scorn is as misplaced and extravagant as his admiration; opinions
that seem to tally with his own wild ravings are holy and inspired; and
unless agreeable to his creed, the wisdom of ages is folly; and wits,
whom the world worship, dwarfed when they approach his venerable side.
His admiration of nature or of man, we had almost said his religious
feelings towards his God, are all narrowed, weakened, and corrupted, and
poisoned by inveterate and diseased egotism; and instead of his mind
reflecting the beauty and glory of nature, he seems to consider the
mighty universe itself as nothing better than a mirror in which, with a
grinning and idiot self-complacency, he may contemplate the Physiognomy
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Though he has yet done nothing in any one
department of human knowledge, yet he speaks of his theories, and plans,
and views, and discoveries, as if he had produced some memorable
revolution in Science. He at all times connects his own name in Poetry
with Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Milton; in politics with Burke, and
Fox, and Pitt; in metaphysics with Locke, and Hartley, and Berkely, and
Kant--feeling himself not only to be the worthy compeer of those
illustrious Spirits, but to unite, in his own mighty intellect, all the
glorious powers and faculties by which they were separately
distinguished, as if his soul were endowed with all human power, and was
the depository of the aggregate, or rather the essence of all human
knowledge. So deplorable a delusion as this, has only been equalled by
that of Joanna Southcote, who mistook a complaint in the bowels for the
divine afflatus; and believed herself about to give birth to the
regenerator of the world, when sick unto death of an incurable and
loathsome disease.

The truth is that Mr. Coleridge is but an obscure name in English
literature. In London he is well known in literary society, and justly
admired for his extraordinary loquacity: he has his own little circle of
devoted worshippers, and he mistakes their foolish babbling for the
voice of the world. His name, too, has been often foisted into Reviews,
and accordingly is known to many who never saw any of his works. In
Scotland few know or care any thing about him; and perhaps no man who
has spoken and written so much, and occasionally with so much genius and
ability, ever made so little impression on the public mind. Few people
know how to spell or pronounce his name; and were he to drop from the
clouds among any given number of well informed and intelligent men north
of the Tweed, he would find it impossible to make any intelligible
communication respecting himself; for of him and his writings there
would prevail only a perplexing dream, or the most untroubled ignorance.
We cannot see in what the state of literature would have been different
had he been cut off in childhood, or had he never been born; for except
a few wild and fanciful ballads, he has produced nothing worthy
remembrance. Yet, insignificant as he assuredly is, he cannot put pen to
paper without a feeling that millions of eyes are fixed upon him; and he
scatters his Sibylline Leaves around him, with as majestical an air as
if a crowd of enthusiastic admirers were rushing forward to grasp the
divine promulgations, instead of their being, as in fact they are,
coldly received by the accidental passenger, like a lying lottery puff
or a quack advertisement.

This most miserable arrogance seems, in the present age, confined almost
exclusively to the original members of the Lake School, and is, we
think, worthy of especial notice, as one of the leading features of
their character. It would be difficult to defend it either in Southey or
Wordsworth; but in Coleridge it is altogether ridiculous. Southey has
undoubtedly written four noble Poems--Thalaba, Madoc, Kehama, and
Roderick; and if the Poets of this age are admitted, by the voice of
posterity, to take their places by the side of the Mighty of former
times in the Temple of Immortality, he will be one of that sacred
company. Wordsworth, too, with all his manifold errors and defects, has,
we think, won to himself a great name, and, in point of originality,
will be considered as second to no man of this age. They are entitled to
think highly of themselves, in comparison with their most highly gifted
contemporaries; and therefore, though their arrogance may be offensive,
as it often is, it is seldom or ever utterly ridiculous. But Mr.
Coleridge stands on much lower ground, and will be known to future times
only as a man who overrated and abused his talents--who saw glimpses of
that glory which he could not grasp--who presumptuously came forward to
officiate as High-Priest at mysteries beyond his ken--and who carried
himself as if he had been familiarly admitted into the Penetralia of
Nature, when in truth he kept perpetually stumbling at the very
Threshold.

This absurd self-elevation forms a striking contrast with the dignified
deportment of all the other great living Poets. Throughout all the works
of Scott, the most original-minded man of this generation of Poets,
scarcely a single allusion is made to himself; and then it is with a
truly delightful simplicity, as if he were not aware of his immeasurable
superiority to the ordinary run of mankind. From the rude songs of our
forefathers he has created a kind of Poetry, which at once brought over
the dull scenes of this our unimaginative life all the pomp, and glory,
and magnificence of a chivalrous age. He speaks to us like some ancient
Bard awakened from his tomb, and singing of visions not revealed in
dreams, but contemplated in all the freshness and splendour of reality.
Since he sung his bold, and wild, and romantic lays, a more religious
solemnity breathes from our mouldering Abbeys, and a sterner grandeur
frowns over our time-shattered Castles. He has peopled our hills with
Heroes, even as Ossian peopled them; and, like a presiding spirit, his
Image haunts the magnificent cliffs of our Lakes and Seas. And if he be,
as every heart feels, the author of those noble Prose Works that
continue to flash upon the world, to him exclusively belongs the glory
of wedding Fiction and History in delighted union, and of embodying in
imperishable records the manners, character, soul, and spirit of
Caledonia; so that, if all her annals were lost, her memory would in
those tales be immortal. His truly is a name that comes to the heart of
every Briton with a start of exultation, whether it be heard in the hum
of cities or in the solitude of nature. What has Campbell ever obtruded
on the Public of his private history? Yet his is a name that will be
hallowed for ever in the souls of pure, and aspiring, and devout youth;
and to those lofty contemplations in which Poetry lends its aid to
Religion, his immortal Muse will impart a more enthusiastic glow, while
it blends in one majestic hymn all the noblest feelings which can spring
from earth, with all the most glorious hopes that come from the silence
of eternity. Byron indeed speaks of himself often, but his is like the
voice of an angel heard crying in the storm or the whirlwind; and we
listen with a kind of mysterious dread to the tones of a Being whom we
scarcely believe to be kindred to ourselves, while he sounds the depths
of our nature, and illuminates them with the lightnings of his genius.
And finally, who more gracefully unostentatious than Moore, a Poet who
has shed delight, and joy, and rapture, and exultation, through the
spirit of an enthusiastic People, and whose name is associated in his
native Land with every thing noble and glorious in the cause of
Patriotism and Liberty. We could easily add to the illustrious list; but
suffice it to say, that our Poets do in general bear their faculties
meekly and manfully, trusting to their conscious powers, and the
susceptibility of generous and enlightened natures, not yet extinct in
Britain, whatever Mr. Coleridge may think; for certain it is, that a
host of worshippers will crowd into the Temple, when the Priest is
inspired, and the flame he kindles is from Heaven.