Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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But I had entrance through that guarded door,
In honour to the Laureate crown I wore.

When he gets in, he finds himself in a large hall, decorated with
trophies, and pictures, and statues, commemorating the triumphs of
British valour, from Aboukir to Waterloo. The room, moreover, was filled
with a great number of ladies and gentlemen very finely dressed; and in
two chairs, near the top, were seated the Princess Charlotte and Prince
Leopold. Hitherto, certainly, all is sufficiently plain and probable;--
nor can the Muse who dictated this to the slumbering Laureate be accused
of any very extravagant or profuse invention. We come, now, however, to
allegory and learning in abundance. In the first place, we are told,
with infinite regard to the probability as well as the novelty of the
fiction, that in this drawing-room there were two great lions couching
at the feet of the Royal Pair;--the Prince's being very lean and in poor
condition, with the hair rubbed off his neck as if from a heavy collar--
and the Princess's in full vigour, with a bushy mane, and littered with
torn French flags. Then there were two heavenly figures stationed on
each side of the throne, one called Honour, and the other Faith;--so
very like each other, that it was impossible not to suppose them brother
and sister. It turns out, however, that they were only second cousins;
or so at least we interpret the following precious piece of theogony.

Akin they were,--yet not as thus it seemed,
For he of VALOUR was the eldest son,
From Arete in happy union sprung.
But her to Phronis Eusebeia bore,
She whom her mother Dice sent to earth;
What marvel then if thus their features wore
Resemblant lineaments of kindred birth?
Dice being child of Him who rules above,
VALOUR his earth-born son; so both derived from Jove.
p. 29.

This, we think, is delicious; but there is still more goodly stuff
toward. The two heavenly cousins stand still without doing any thing;
but then there is a sound of sweet music, and a whole "heavenly company"
appear, led on by a majestic female, whom we discover, by the emblems on
our halfpence, to be no less a person than Britannia, who advances and
addresses a long discourse of flattery and admonition to the Royal
bride; which, for the most part, is as dull and commonplace as might be
expected from the occasion; though there are some passages in which the
author has reconciled his gratitude to his Patron, and his monitory duty
to his Daughter, with singular spirit and delicacy. After enjoining to
her the observance of all public duties, and the cultivation of all
domestic virtues, Britannia is made to sum up the whole sermon in this
emphatic precept--

Look to thy Sire, and in his steady way
--learn thou to tread.

Now, considering that Mr. Southey was at all events incapable of
sacrificing truth to Court favour, it cannot but be regarded as a rare
felicity in his subject, that he could thus select a pattern of private
purity and public honour in the person of the actual Sovereign, without
incurring the least suspicion either of base adulation or lax
morality....

It is impossible to feel any serious or general contempt for a person of
Mr. Southey's genius;--and, in reviewing his other works, we hope we
have shown a proper sense of his many merits and accomplishments. But
his Laureate odes are utterly and intolerably bad; and, if he had never
written any thing else, must have ranked him below Colley Cibber in
genius, and above him in conceit and presumption. We have no toleration
for this sort of perversity, or prostitution of great gifts; and do not
think it necessary to qualify the expression of opinions which we have
formed with as much positiveness as deliberation.--We earnestly wish he
would resign his livery laurel to Lord Thurlow, and write no more odes
on Court galas. We can assure him too, most sincerely, that this wish is
not dictated in any degree by envy, or any other hostile or selfish
feeling. We are ourselves, it is but too well known, altogether without
pretensions to that high office--and really see no great charms either
in the salary or the connexion--and, for the glory of writing such
verses as we have now been reviewing, we do not believe that there is a
scribbler in the kingdom so vile as to think it a thing to be coveted.

ON THOMAS MOORE

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, July, 1806]

_Epistles, Odes, and other Poems_. By THOMAS MOORE, Esq. 4to. pp. 350.
London, 1806.

A singular sweetness and melody of versification,--smooth, copious, and
familiar diction,--with some brilliancy of fancy, and some show of
classical erudition, might have raised Mr. Moore to an innocent
distinction among the song-writers and occasional poets of his day: But
he is indebted, we fear, for the celebrity he actually enjoys to
accomplishments of a different description; and may boast, if the boast
can please him, of being the most licentious of modern versifiers, and
the most poetical of those who, in our times, have devoted their talents
to the propagation of immorality. We regard his book, indeed, as a
public nuisance; and would willingly trample it down by one short
movement of contempt and indignation, had we not reason to apprehend,
that it was abetted by patrons who are entitled to a more respectful
remonstrance, and by admirers who may require a more extended exposition
of their dangers.

There is nothing, it will be allowed, more indefensible than a
cold-blooded attempt to corrupt the purity of an innocent heart; and we
can scarcely conceive any being more truly despicable, than he who,
without the apology of unruly passion or tumultuous desires, sits down
to ransack the impure places of his memory for inflammatory images and
expressions, and commits them laboriously to writing, for the purpose of
insinuating pollution into the minds of unknown and unsuspecting
readers.

This is almost a new crime among us. While France has to blush for so
many tomes of "Poesies Erotiques," we have little to answer for, but the
coarse indecencies of Rochester and Dryden; and these, though
sufficiently offensive to delicacy and good taste, can scarcely be
regarded as dangerous. There is an antidote to the poison they contain,
in the open and undisguised profligacy with which it is presented. If
they are wicked, they have the honesty at least to profess wickedness.
The mark of the beast is set visibly on their foreheads; and though they
have the boldness to recommend vice, they want the effrontery to make
her pass for virtue. In their grossest immoralities, too, they scarcely
ever seem to be perfectly in earnest; and appear neither to wish nor to
hope to make proselytes. They indulge their own vein of gross riot and
debauchery; but they do not seek to corrupt the principles of their
readers; and are contented to be reprobated as profligate, if they are
admired at the same time for wit and originality.

The immorality of Mr. Moore is infinitely more insidious and malignant.
It seems to be his aim to impose corruption upon his readers, by
concealing it under the mask of refinement; to reconcile them
imperceptibly to the most vile and vulgar sensuality, by blending its
language with that of exalted feeling and tender emotion; and to steal
impurity into their hearts, by gently perverting the most simple and
generous of their affections. In the execution of this unworthy task, he
labours with a perseverance at once ludicrous and detestable. He may be
seen in every page running round the paltry circle of his seductions
with incredible zeal and anxiety, and stimulating his jaded fancy for
new images of impurity, with as much melancholy industry as ever outcast
of the muses hunted for epithets or metre.

It is needless, we hope, to go deep into the inquiry, why certain
compositions have been reprobated as licentious, and their authors
ranked among the worst enemies of morality. The criterion by which their
delinquency may be determined, is fortunately very obvious: no scene can
be tolerated in description, which could not be contemplated in reality,
without a gross violation of propriety: no expression can be pardoned in
poetry to which delicacy could not listen in the prose of real life.

No writer can transgress those limits, and be held guiltless; but there
are degrees of guiltiness, and circumstances of aggravation or apology,
which ought not to be disregarded. A poet of a luxuriant imagination may
give too warm a colouring to the representation of innocent endearments,
or be betrayed into indelicacies in delineating the allurements of some
fair seducer, while it is obviously his general intention to give
attraction to the picture of virtue, and to put the reader on his guard
against the assault of temptation. Mr. Moore has no such apology;--he
takes care to intimate to us, in every page that the raptures which he
celebrates do not spring from the excesses of an innocent love, or the
extravagance of a romantic attachment; but are the unhallowed fruits of
cheap and vulgar prostitution, the inspiration of casual amours, and the
chorus of habitual debauchery. He is at pains to let the world know that
he is still fonder of roving, than of loving; and that all the Caras and
the Fannys, with whom he holds dalliance in these pages, have had each a
long series of preceding lovers, as highly favoured as their present
poetical paramour: that they meet without any purpose of constancy, and
do not think it necessary to grace their connexion with any professions
of esteem or permanent attachment. The greater part of the book is
filled with serious and elaborate description of the ecstasies of such
an intercourse, and with passionate exhortations to snatch the joys,
which are thus abundantly poured forth from "the fertile fount of
sense."

To us, indeed, the perpetual kissing, and twining, and panting of these
amorous persons, is rather ludicrous than seductive; and their eternal
sobbing and whining, raises no emotion in our bosoms, but those of
disgust and contempt. Even to younger men, we believe, the book will not
be very dangerous: nor is it upon their account that we feel the
indignation and alarm which we have already endeavoured to express. The
life and conversation of our sex, we are afraid is seldom so pure as to
leave them much to learn from publications of this description; and they
commonly know enough of the reality, to be aware of the absurd illusions
and exaggerations of such poetical voluptuaries. In them, therefore,
such a composition can work neither corruption nor deception; and it
will, in general, be despised and thrown aside, as a tissue of sickly
and fantastical conceits, equally remote from truth and respectability.
It is upon the other sex, that we conceive its effects may be most
pernicious; and it is chiefly as an insult upon their delicacy, and an
attack upon their purity, that we are disposed to resent its
publication.

The reserve in which women are educated; the natural vivacity of their
imaginations; and the warmth of their sensibility, renders them
peculiarly liable to be captivated by the appearance of violent
emotions, and to be misled by the affectation of tenderness or
generosity. They easily receive any impression that is made under the
apparent sanction of these feelings; and allow themselves to be seduced
into any thing, which they can be persuaded is dictated by disinterested
attachment, and sincere and excessive love. It is easy to perceive how
dangerous it must be for such beings to hang over the pages of a book,
in which supernatural raptures, and transcendent passion, are
counterfeited in every page; in which, images of voluptuousness are
artfully blended with expressions of refined sentiment, and delicate
emotion; and the grossest sensuality is exhibited in conjunction with
the most gentle and generous affections. They who have not learned from
experience, the impossibility of such an union, are apt to be captivated
by its alluring exterior. They are seduced by their own ignorance and
sensibility; and become familiar with the demon, for the sake of the
radiant angel to whom he has been linked by the malignant artifice of
the poet.

We have been induced to enter this strong protest, and to express
ourselves thus warmly against this and the former publications of this
author, both from what we hear of the circulation which they have
already obtained, and from our conviction that they are calculated, if
not strongly denounced to the public, to produce, at this moment,
peculiar and irremediable mischief. The style of composition, as we have
already hinted, is almost new in this country: it is less offensive than
the old fashion of obscenity; and for these reasons, perhaps, is less
likely to excite the suspicion of the moralist, or to become the object
of precaution to those who watch over the morals of the young and
inexperienced. We certainly have known it a permitted study, where
performances, infinitely less pernicious, were rigidly interdicted.

There can be no time in which the purity of the female character can
fail to be of the first importance to every community; but it appears to
us, that it requires at this moment to be more carefully watched over
than at any other; and that the constitution of society has arrived
among us to a sort of crisis, the issue of which may be powerfully
influenced by our present neglect or solicitude. From the increasing
diffusion of opulence, enlightened or polite society is greatly
enlarged, and necessarily becomes more promiscuous and corruptible; and
women are now beginning to receive a more extended education, to venture
more freely and largely into the fields of literature, and to become
more of intellectual and independent creatures, than they have yet been
in these islands. In these circumstances, it seems to be of incalculable
importance, that no attaint should be given to the delicacy and purity
of their expanding minds; that their increasing knowledge should be of
good chiefly, and not of evil; that they should not consider modesty as
one of the prejudices from which they are now to be emancipated; nor
found any part of their new influence upon the licentiousness of which
Mr. Moore invites them to be partakers. The character and the morality
of women exercises already a mighty influence upon the happiness and the
respectability of the nation; and it is destined, we believe, to
exercise a still higher one: But if they should ever cease to be the
pure, the delicate, and timid creatures that they now are--if they
should cease to overawe profligacy, and to win and to shame men into
decency, fidelity, and love of unsullied virtue--it is easy to see that
this influence, which has hitherto been exerted to strengthen and refine
our society, will operate entirely to its corruption and debasement;
that domestic happiness and private honour will be extinguished, and
public spirit and national industry most probably annihilated along with
them.

There is one other consideration which has helped to excite our
apprehension on occasion of this particular performance. Many of the
pieces are dedicated to persons of the first consideration in the
country, both for rank and accomplishments; and the author appears to
consider the greater part of them as his intimate friends, and undoubted
patrons and admirers. Now, this we will confess is to us a very alarming
consideration. By these channels, the book will easily pass into
circulation in those classes of society, which it is of most consequence
to keep free of contamination; and from which its reputation and its
influence will descend with the greatest effect to the great body of the
community. In this reading and opulent country, there are no fashions
which diffuse themselves so fast, as those of literature and immorality:
there is no palpable boundary between the _noblesse_ and the
_bourgeoisie_, as in old France, by which the corruption and
intelligence of the former can be prevented from spreading to the
latter. All the parts of the mass, act and react upon each other with a
powerful and unintermitted agency; and if the head be once infected, the
corruption will spread irresistibly through the whole body. It is doubly
necessary, therefore, to put the law in force against this delinquent,
since he has not only indicated a disposition to do mischief, but seems
unfortunately to have found an opportunity.

ON WORDSWORTH'S "THE
EXCURSION"

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, November, 1814]

_The Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse, a Poem_. By WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH. 4to. pp. 447. London, 1814.

This will never do. It bears no doubt the stamp of the author's heart
and fancy; but unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his peculiar
system. His former poems were intended to recommend that system, and to
bespeak favour for it by their individual merit;--but this, we suspect,
must be recommended by the system--and can only expect to succeed where
it has been previously established. It is longer, weaker, and tamer,
than any of Mr. Wordsworth's other productions; with less boldness of
originality, and less even of that extreme simplicity and lowliness of
tone which wavered so prettily, in the Lyrical Ballads, between
silliness and pathos. We have imitations of Cowper, and even of Milton
here, engrafted on the natural drawl of the Lakers--and all diluted into
harmony by that profuse and irrepressible wordiness which deluges all
the blank verse of this school of poetry, and lubricates and weakens the
whole structure of their style.

Though it fairly fills four hundred and twenty good quarto pages,
without note, vignette, or any sort of extraneous assistance, it is
stated in the title--with something of an imprudent candour--to be but
"a portion" of a larger work; and in the preface, where an attempt is
rather unsuccessfully made to explain the whole design, it is still more
rashly disclosed, that it is but "a part of the second part of a _long_
and laborious work"--which is to consist of three parts.

What Mr. Wordsworth's ideas of length are, we have no means of
accurately judging; but we cannot help suspecting that they are liberal,
to a degree that will alarm the weakness of most modern readers. As far
as we can gather from the preface, the entire poem--or one of them, for
we really are not sure whether there is to be one or two--is of a
biographical nature; and is to contain the history of the author's mind,
and of the origin and progress of his poetical powers, up to the period
when they were sufficiently matured to qualify him for the great work on
which he has been so long employed. Now, the quarto before us contains
an account of one of his youthful rambles in the vales of Cumberland,
and occupies precisely the period of three days; so that, by the use of
a very powerful _calculus_, some estimate may be formed of the probable
extent of the entire biography.

This small specimen, however, and the statements with which it is
prefaced, have been sufficient to set our minds at rest in one
particular. The case of Mr. Wordsworth, we perceive, is now manifestly
hopeless; and we give him up as altogether incurable, and beyond the
power of criticism. We cannot indeed altogether omit taking precautions
now and then against the spreading of the malady;--but for himself,
though we shall watch the progress of his symptoms as a matter of
professional curiosity and instruction, we really think it right not to
harass him any longer with nauseous remedies,--but rather to throw in
cordials and lenitives, and wait in patience for the natural termination
of the disorder. In order to justify this desertion of our patient,
however, it is proper to state why we despair of the success of a more
active practice.

A man who has been for twenty years at work on such matter as is now
before us, and who comes complacently forward with a whole quarto of it
after all the admonitions he has received, cannot reasonably be expected
to "change his hand, or check his pride," upon the suggestion of far
weightier monitors than we can pretend to be. Inveterate habit must now
have given a kind of sanctity to the errors of early taste; and the very
powers of which we lament the perversion, have probably become incapable
of any other application. The very quantity, too, that he has written,
and is at this moment working up for publication upon the old pattern,
makes it almost hopeless to look for any change of it. All this is so
much capital already sunk in the concern; which must be sacrificed if it
be abandoned: and no man likes to give up for lost the time and talent
and labour which he has embodied in any permanent production. We were
not previously aware of these obstacles to Mr. Wordsworth's conversion;
and, considering the peculiarities of his former writings merely as the
result of certain wanton and capricious experiments on public taste and
indulgence, conceived it to be our duty to discourage their repetition
by all the means in our power. We now see clearly, however, how the case
stands;--and, making up our minds, though with the most sincere pain and
reluctance, to consider him as finally lost to the good cause of poetry,
shall endeavour to be thankful for the occasional gleams of tenderness
and beauty which the natural force of his imagination and affections
must still shed over all his productions,--and to which we shall ever
turn with delight, in spite of the affectation and mysticism and
prolixity, with which they are so abundantly contrasted.

Long habits of seclusion, and an excessive ambition of originality, can
alone account for the disproportion which seems to exist between this
author's taste and his genius; or for the devotion with which he has
sacrificed so many precious gifts at the shrine of those paltry idols
which he has set up for himself among his lakes and his mountains.
Solitary musings, amidst such scenes, might no doubt be expected to
nurse up the mind to the majesty of poetical conception,--(though it is
remarkable, that all the greater poets lived or had lived, in the full
current of society):--But the collision of equal minds,--the admonition
of prevailing impressions--seems necessary to reduce its redundancies,
and repress that tendency to extravagance or puerility, into which the
self-indulgence and self-admiration of genius is so apt to be betrayed,
when it is allowed to wanton, without awe or restraint, in the triumph
and delight of its own intoxication. That its flights should be graceful
and glorious in the eyes of men, it seems almost to be necessary that
they should be made in the consciousness that men's eyes are to behold
them,--and that the inward transport and vigour by which they are
inspired, should be tempered by an occasional reference to what will be
thought of them by those-ultimate dispensers of glory. An habitual and
general knowledge of the few settled and permanent maxims, which form
the canon of general taste in all large and polished societies--a
certain tact, which informs us at once that many things, which we still
love and are moved by in secret, must necessarily be despised as
childish, or derided as absurd, in all such societies--though it will
not stand in the place of genius, seems necessary to the success of its
exertions; and though it will never enable any one to produce the higher
beauties of art, can alone secure the talent which does produce them,
from errors that must render it useless. Those who have most of the
talent, however, commonly acquire this knowledge with the greatest
facility;--and if Mr. Wordsworth, instead of confining himself almost
entirely to the society of the dalesmen and cottagers, and little
children, who form the subjects of his book, had condescended to mingle
a little more with the people that were to read and judge of it, we
cannot help thinking, that its texture would have been considerably
improved: At least it appears to us to be absolutely impossible, that
any one who had lived or mixed familiarly with men of literature and
ordinary judgment in poetry (of course we exclude the coadjutors and
disciples of his own school), could ever have fallen into such gross
faults, or so long mistaken them for beauties. His first essays we
looked upon in a good degree as poetical paradoxes,--maintained
experimentally, in order to display talent, and court notoriety;--and so
maintained, with no more serious belief in their truth, than is usually
generated by an ingenious and animated defence of other paradoxes. But
when we find, that he has been for twenty years exclusively employed
upon articles of this very fabric, and that he has still enough of raw
material on hand to keep him so employed for twenty years to come, we
cannot refuse him the justice of believing that he is a sincere convert
to his own system, and must ascribe the peculiarities of his
composition, not to any transient affectation, or accidental caprice of
imagination, but to a settled perversity of taste or understanding,
which has been fostered, if not altogether created, by the circumstances
to which we have already alluded.