in the House of Lords would have been a startling thing at any time. 'Anne Boleyn had called God to witness'-Anne Boleyn's celebrated letter was written from the Tower, where also her trial took place.

Queen Catherine had sobbed at severance from her children.' The divorce between Henry VIII. and Queen Catherine was tried, not in the House of Lords, but 'in the great hall of the Black Friars.' The Queen had only one child, afterwards Queen Mary, and in her famous speech on that occasion did not refer to her. Certainly it is futile enough to attempt to rival Mr. Macaulay by associating the House of Lords with interesting recollections' of events which never happened at all, or happened elsewhere. We must not, however, fail to do justice to Sir Archibald's original genius. This is how Mr. Macaulay describes great men:—

There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination, superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit, the ingenuous, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham.

And this is the style preferred by Sir Archibald ::

There was to be seen the noble fore head and serene countenance of Castle. reagh-the same now, in the throes of domestic anxiety, as when he affronted the power of France, and turned the scales of fortune on the plains of Champagne; there the Roman head of Wellington, still in the prime of life, but whose growing intellectual expression bespoke the continual action of thought on that constitution of iron. Liverpool was there, calm and unmoved amidst a nation's throes, and patiently enduring the responsibility of a proceeding on which the gaze of the world was fixed; and Sidmouth, whose courage nothing could daunt, and whose tutelary arm

had so long enchained the fiery spirit which was now bursting forth on every side. There was Eldon, whose unaided abilities bad placed him at the head of this august assembly, and who was now

VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXX.

157

called to put his vast stores of learning to their noblest use-that of holding the scales of justice even against his strongest interests and prepossessions; and there was Copley, the terror of whose cross-examination proved so fatal on the trial, and presaged the fame of his career as Lord Chancellor. There was Grey, whose high intellectual forehead, big with the destinies of England, bespoke the coming revolution in her social state and Lansdowne, in whom suavity of manner and dignity of deportment adorned, without concealing, the highest gifts of eloquence and statesmanship.

How could a man's having a high forehead bespeak a coming revolution? and why should suavity of manner and dignity of deportment' conceal eloquence and statesmanship? Are eloquent statesmen usually vulgar and undignified?

This fine writing is a fair specimen of Sir Archibald's clumsy hurry and effort, but his style has other peculiarities which are conclusive evidence of the haste with which he writes. It is full of stock phrases. Thus he says, at least three times over, in the very same words, that in 1847 A famine of the 13th fell on the 19th century'-viz., in vol. i. p. to, and in vol. iv. pp. 187, 195; and he hardly ever describes the character of any remarkable person without saying that his talents either were or were not of the very highest order.' Thus Lord Grey was gifted by nature with talents of a very high order.' Lord Palmerston's abilities are not only of the highest order, but,' &c.; 'If Lord Melbourne's 'talents were not of the highest order,' &c. Sir James Graham unites to these talents of a very high order.' Mr. Canning's 'talents were of the very first order.' A debate in 1831 elicited talent of the very highest order.' There can surely be no stronger proof of haste, and of that mental poverty which hasty writing produces, than the constant recurrence of catchwords like these. The same thing is proved still more clearly by the frequent and causeless repetitions, and by the endless commonplaces by which the book is disfigured. Every chapter begins with a string of general reflections, mostly absurd, often contradictory, and always commonplace to the last degree, ex

L

cept when they are crotchety. Imagine a man beginning a chapter about the currency laws with a sentence of which the marginal note is Vicissitudes, and ceaseless chain of events in human life;' or an account of the Polish Revolution of 1830-1, by reflections on the 'terrible wars which have ever prevailed between Europe and Asia;' or interlarding his introductory chapter with paragraphs to this effect, p. 47, 'Effect of general education on general morality' (including a quotation of our old friend, Ingenuas didicisse'); p. 48, Proof of this from various countries; p. 49, Reasons of this peculiarity in human nature;' p. 50, General power of thought over mankind;' p. 51, "Great consequent influence of mind on human affairs.' In the whole of Thucydides' history there is about a page and a half of reflections; in Sir Archibald Alison's almost everything is reflection which is not Annual Register. It shows a wonderful want of sensibility or of knowledge to suppose that any human being cares to know what almost any other human being thinks about most of the subjects on which Sir Archibald dilates with such curious naïveté. There are only two or three views which can be taken of most of them, and the turn of a sentence, or the use of a single epithet, will show as clearly which the writer adopts, as the colour of a ticket shows the class by which a railroad passenger is entitled to travel. The repetitions are as tiresome as the platitudes. We have upon the single subject of the currency the following utterances :vol. i. pp. 30, sqq., 70, 96, 125, 3145, sqq.; ii., 378, sqq.; ii. 665, 750; iv. 58, 202; not to mention innumerable incidental allusions to the subject. A man who cared for his reader's time would simply state his opinion and have done with it.

Such are some of the remarks which are suggested by the general character of the book; but it claims to be not only a political, but also a literary, history of Europe during the last half century. It is not uninstructive to see how a man whose name is coupled with those of the greatest historians of England, and who is supposed by some people to

have added another to their number, treats this great subject. We have separate chapters on English, French, and German literature. In the first, one hundred and two, in the second, forty-three, in the third, fifty-six writers, artists, and actors are severally criticised. It would be mere presumption to attempt to estimate the justice of a great proportion of Sir Archibald's opinions. He must be a bold man who would undertake to express an opinion on the merits of two hundred and one writers upon every sort of subject; but we may notice that in the list of German authors there is no notice of Hegel or of Savigny; in the list of French authors nothing is said of Comte, of Martin, of Laboulaye, of Troplong, or any other jurist whatever; of any French novelist except Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Eugène Sue; of any artist except Le Gros and Vernet. But it is not of Sir Archibald's omissions that we complain. If he had omitted the rest of his critical chapters, his book would have been all the better. What he has done is a great deal worse than what he has left undone. The chapter on English literature appears to us one of the most curious specimens of slipshod gossip that ever called itself either history or criticism. Like the rest of the book in which it occurs, it is at once too long and too short. Too long in proportion to the matter which it contains, and too short in proportion to the matter which it professes to contain. Thus, just twenty pages are devoted to an account of English poetry from the beginning of the century to the present time. It wants no very deep consideration of the subject to show that it would require great knowledge, great patience, and great compression to treat such a subject as it ought to be treated in such a space. If we take Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson as representatives of four very different schools of poetry, and if we attempt to form an estimate of the circumstances which gave to the writings of each of them their peculiar character, we shall see that to criticise them adequately would require a very wide acquaintance not only with the literary history of the country, but with the

1856.]

general tone of various parts of English society. It would be a most curious thing to inquire how it came to pass that, at the same time, the perfect satisfaction of Scott and the perfect dissatisfaction of Byron with the existing state of things should be boundlessly popular with the very same readers. It would tax any man's power to show how far Byron was right, and how far he was wrong, in the position which he assumed towards society; how far his misanthropy had any excuse, and how far it was the result of mere vanity; and to point out the inferences as to the state of society at large which the wonderful development of vanity and selfconsciousness in a man in many ways so remarkable would suggest. On the other hand, the easy satis faction with which Scott accepted and enjoyed whatever he found existing his significant silence upon some of the most important subjects -his archaisms of thought and opinion-his vehement and partially successful attempts to revive at least a semblance of extinct habits and feelings by the absurd enthusiasm which he displayed about such a man as George IV.; the inconsistency between a natural character, manly and simple to the last degree, and an intense love of display and hunger after wealth; all these, and many other matters of the same kind, suggest almost endless comments upon the age which could produce such a man, its feelings, its wants, its strength, and its weakness. The name of Wordsworth suggests other questions no less curious. It is a very remarkable thing that the same age which delighted in Marmion should have produced a large class of worshippers of The Excursion. That one great poet of the nineteenth century should have broken his heart in the endeavour to found a family; that another should have gone on cursing all the world, and particularly himself, for ten or fifteen years, and should have thrown up high rank and hereditary honours to waste his life in idleness in a foreign country; and that a third should have lived for nearly half a century quite contented and independent in what was literally a cottage, and should have

159

passed his whole time in writing volume after volume of poems upon one subject and in one tone,-would seem to throw light upon more than one feature of society.

Looking at the subject from another point of view, the literary questions, properly so called, which are connected with the English poetry of the last century are extremely curious. How and why did it happen that the influence which Pope had exercised over two generations was broken up? What was the model which suggested to Scott and Byron the octosyllabic metre which in their hands became so popular? What relation did the lyrics of Campbell bear to our earlier lyrical poetry? How far have the old classical models retained, and how far have they lost, their influence over the metres popular in the present day? What inferences are to be drawn from the popularity of Campbell in one, and from that of Tennyson in another, generation? These, and other questions like these, are a few of the points which would be handled by a man who had any real claim to write about the English poetry of the two last generations. Let us see how Sir Archibald employs his twenty pages. Memorable,' he declares, in poetic annals is the age which produced seven such poets as those who have now been considered, and immortal would be the British Muse if she never added another string to her lyre.' The poets who give occasion to this graceful eulogium are Scott, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Mrs. Hemans. We make the total, ten; and inasmuch as they are all described in pretty much the same terms, we are at a loss to guess which are the three who are not referred to. The space given to Mrs. Hemans is considerably longer than that which is allotted to Shelley, and about the same as is given to Coleridge or Rogers. Besides the abovementioned names, Sir Archibald considers three more strings of the British lyre in the persons of Crabbe, Joanna Baillie, and Tennyson. Why Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Hemans should be noticed, whilst Keats, James Montgomery, Bishop

Heber, Praed, and Macaulay are left unnoticed, we cannot conceive; but for what we have not received let us be truly thankful. Of the thirteen writers to whom he has referred in this part of his chapter, Sir Archibald has hardly stated a single fact, and has made no one remark in the least degree worth making. His method of criticism is perfectly uniform; he always begins with a quantity of the most commonplace compliments, and always ends with a few little moral sentiments, some of which please him so much that he repeats them several times. Speaking, for example, of Scott, he says, 'Thence his passport to immortality. Nothing ever permanently floated down the stream of time but what was buoyant from its elevating tendency.' This mixture of hydrostatics and morality is so charming, that in his criticism of Crabbe he

repeats it twice. Crabbe,' he says, 'is forgotten because his lines want the lofty spirit, the elevating tendency which is the only passport to immortality; and a little further, 'Time ever vindicates the immortal destiny of man; nothing can permanently float down its stream but what is buoyant from its elevating tendency.'

The whole amount of the information which Sir Archibald has to give about Scott is as follows:That in early life he was in the volunteer yeomanry; that as a child he lived near the Tweed, and was educated at Edinburgh; that he travelled a good deal in Scotland; that his works are remarkable for close observation of nature; that he 'delineated the passions of the heart; that he might have attacked religion if he had liked, but did not; that it was on the noble that his affections were fixed;' and that his later novels are not so good as the early ones. Is there any one statement in this which can excite the interest or add to the knowledge of a single human creature? Sir Archibald expands it into three and a half pages, by those beauties of style which are so familiar to him. For example, he spins out the simple statement that Scott was familiar with Scotch scenery and character, thus:

On the mountain's brow, by the glassy

lake, he engraved the features of the land on his recollection; by the cottage fireside he stored his mind with the feelings and anecdotes of the peasantry; amidst the castle ruins he realized in fancy the days of chivalry. The poetic temperament of his mind threw over the pictures of his memory the radiance of imagination, without taking away (why should it?) the fidelity of the recollection.

From three pages and a half of this kind of flabby eloquence we cannot even extract such simple facts as the dates of Scott's birth or death, the circumstance of his

having been an advocate, or the fact that his novels were avowedly a commercial speculation, from which some of their most distinctive peculiarities are derived. The general impression which any one who knew of information would derive from nothing of Scott from other sources Sir Archibald Alison, would probably be, that he began life as a yeomanry officer, and after his retirement from that profession wrote poems and novels.

Lord Byron fares little better than the Wizard of the North,' as Sir Archibald characteristically calls Sir Walter. Of all the problems which modern English literature affords, none is more curious than that which is supplied by Byron. No man ever illustrated so completely the diseases characteristic of the society of his day; no man ever exercised a wider or a more transient influence. Sir Archibald has given much such an account of him as would appear in the columns of a second-rate newspaper when the critic in ordinary was out of town, and had relegated his duties to some hanger-on hovering between the condition of a printer's devil and a penny-a-liner. Byron, we are told, was not antiquarian in ideas,'-as if people were generally antiquarian in their coats and waistcoats, but was 'in an especial manner the poet of high life. In order 'to please the high-born dames of London' he often delineated the corsairs of the Archipelago and the maids of Grecce.' His fame rests

1856.]

seen through the eye of genius, produced the poem of Childe Harold, which has rendered his name immortal.' And that is all he has to say about it, except that he afterwards speaks of its thoughtful, yet picturesque pages.' Does this kind of criticism convey any notion at all to those who have not read Childe Harold, or add anything to the knowledge of those who have? Has it any specific meaning whatever which would not apply to Scott's poems quite as well? Why should not The Lady of the Lake have been called a splendid moving panorama seen through the eye of genius?' and why might not Childe Harold have suggested the remark that the poetic temperament of the author's mind threw over the pictures of memory the radiance of imagination?' Sir Archibald's description is about as instructive as if he had distinguished the dress of the two poets by saying that Scott usually wore a coat and waistcoat, and Byron ahatanda pair of trousers. Sir Archibald's opinion of Byron's plays is singular. He says that they do not come home to our hearts,' and that they are addressed to 'minds as high strung and poetical as his own. Does he mean that they are too good or too bad to be that passport to immortality,' which he refers to as constantly as if he were a literary gendarme? How was Byron's mind high strung? Was it his conduct to his wife, or his misanthropy, or his debauchery, or his indecency, or his petulant vanity, or his mean attacks on defenceless women, that gave him a title to that epithet, whatever it may mean? How can a play which is too wild for ordinary life, too extravagant for theatrical representation, which 'does not come home to the heart,' and wants the elements of enduring fame,' be suited for high strung and poetical minds?' It is, however, useless to inquire into the matter, for Sir Archibald's method is to use epithets, especially laudatory epithets, without any particular reference to the substantive to which they are attached.

His criticism on Don Juan is perhaps still more remarkable. Don Juan is different; there is

161

much in it which unhappily too powerfully rouses every heart. But although romances or poetry in which genius is mingled with licentiousness often at first acquire a very great celebrity, at least with one sex, they labour under an unsurmountable objection-they cannot be made the subject of conversation with the other.' Would any human being learn from this that Don Juan was beyond all comparison the most pungent satire in modern English literature, or that it was written in a metre entirely new in English poetry, and exquisitely adapted to its purposes? Would he be able to form the slightest conception of the spirit of the poem, or of its connexion with the career of Byron and the state of the society in which he lived? Yet no one can have read it without perceiving that it is incomparably the most characteristic book of its time; and that without some acquaintance with it, it is impossible to understand Byron at all. We do not mean to defend what we have always considered one of the wickedest books that ever was written; but to say that because Don Juan can hardly be made the subject of conversation by persons of different sexes, its lasting celebrity is impossible,' is to betray the strangest ignorance or simplicity. Has the reputation of Aristophanes, of Rabelais, of Swift, of Voltaire, of Rousseau, been ephemeral? Is not Fielding the greatest of English novelists ? And yet, though none of these writers, perhaps with the exception of Rousseau, appears to us so wicked as Byron, all of them are much more indecent.

The criticisms of Moore, Campbell, and Rogers are on a level with those of Scott and Byron. We should certainly infer from them that their author was to some extent acquainted with Campbell, though we cannot agree with him in thinking that 'we may despair of the fortunes of the species when the admiration for the Pleasures of Hope begins to decline.' We suspect that very few of the young and ardent' of the present generation 'turn to it as fraught with the noblest aspirations of our nature.'

In the account of Moore we