for a man of very extraordinary powers; and when I say that I have read the far greater part of his novels twice, and several three times over, with undiminished pleasure and interest; and that, in my reprobation of the Bride of Lammermoor (with the exception, however, of the almost Shaksperian old-witch wives at the funeral) and of the Ivanhoe, I mean to imply the grounds of my admiration of the others, and the permanent nature of the interest which they excite. In a word, I am far from thinking that Old Mortality or Guy Mannering would have been less admired in the age of Sterne, Fielding, and Richardson, than they are in the present times; but only that Sterne, &c., would not have had the same immediate popularity in the present day as in their own less stimulated and, therefore, less languid reading world.

Of Sir Walter Scott's poems I cannot speak so highly, still less of the Poetry in his Poems; though even in these the power of presenting the most numerous figures, and figures with the most complex movements, and under rapid succession, in true picturesque unity, attests true and peculiar genius.

Though I cannot pretend to have found in any of these novels a character that even approaches in genius, in truth of conception, or boldness and freshness of execution, to Parson Adams, Blifil, Strap, Lieutenant Bowling, Mr. Shandy, Uncle Toby and Trim, and Lovelace; and though Scott's female characters will not, even the very best, bear a comparison with Miss Byron, Clementina Emily, in Sir Charles Grandison; nor the comic ones with Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennet's Beggar Girl); and though by the use of the Scotch dialect, by Ossianic mockhighland motley-heroic, and by extracts from the printed sermons, memoirs, &c., of the fanatic preachers, there is a good deal of false effect and stage trick: still the number of characters so good produced by one man, and in so rapid a succession, must ever remain an illustrious phenomenon in literature, after all the subtractions for those borrowed from English and German sources, or compounded by

blending two or three of the old drama into one—ex. gr. the Caleb in the Bride of Lammermoor.

Scott's great merit, and, at the same time, his felicity, and the true solution of the long-sustained interest novel after novel excited, lie in the nature of the subject; not merely, or even chiefly, because the struggle between the Stuarts and the Presbyterians and sectaries, is still in lively memory, and the passions of the adherency to the former, if not the adherency itself, extant in our own fathers' or grandfathers' times; nor yet (though this is of great weight) because the language, manners, &c., introduced are sufficiently different from our own for poignancy, and yet sufficiently near and similar for sympathy; nor yet because, for the same reason, the author, speaking, reflecting, and descanting in his own person, remains still (to adopt a painter's phrase) in sufficient keeping with his subject matter, while his characters can both talk and feel interesting to us as men, without recourse to antiquarian interest, and nevertheless without moral anachronism (in all which points the Ivanhoe is so wofully the contrary, for what Englishman cares for Saxon or Norman, both brutal invaders, more than for Chinese and Cochin-Chinese?)—yet great as all these causes are, the essential wisdom and happiness of the subject consists in this, that the contest between the loyalists and their opponents can never be obsolete, for it is the contest between the two great moving principles of social humanity; religious adherence to the past and the ancient, the desire and the admiration of permanence, on the one hand; and the passion for increase of knowledge, for truth, as the offspring of reason-in short, the mighty instincts of progression and free agency, on the other. all subjects of deep and lasting interest, you will detect a struggle between two opposites, two polar forces, both of which are alike necessary to our human well-being, and necessary each to the continued existence of the other. Well, therefore, may we contemplate with intense feelings those whirlwinds which are for free agents the appointed means, and the only possible condition of that equilibrium in which our moral Being subsists; while the disturbance

In

of the same constitutes our sense of life. Thus in the ancient Tragedy, the lofty struggle between irresistible fate and unconquerable free will, which finds its equilibrium in the Providence and the future retribution of Christianity. If, instead of a contest between Saxons and Normans, or the Fantees and Ashantees,— -a mere contest of indifferents! of minim surges in a boiling fish-kettle,-Walter Scott had taken the struggle between the men of arts and the men of arms in the time of Becket, and made us feel how much to claim our well-wishing there was in the cause and character of the priestly and papal party, no less than in those of Henry and his knights, he would have opened a new mine, instead of translating into Leadenhall Street Minerva Library sentences, a cento of the most common incidents of the stately self-congruous romances of D'Urfe, Scuderi, &c. N.B. I have not read the Monastery, but I suspect that the thought or element of the faery work is from the German. I perceive from that passage in the Old Mortality, where Morton is discovered by old Alice in consequence of calling his dog Elphin, that Walter Scott has been reading Tieck's Phantasies (a collection of faery or witch tales), from which both the incident and name is1 borrowed.-April 8,2 1820.

Thought and Language.

I believe that processes of thought might be carried on independent and apart from spoken or written language. I do not in the least doubt, that if language had been denied or withheld from man, or that he had not discovered and improved that mode of intercommunication, thought, as thought, would have been a process more simple, more easy, and more perfect than the present, and would both have

Read "are."

2 The two previous paragraphs relating to Scott are extracted from the same letter. For other observations on Sir Walter's writings, see the paragraphs headed" Popularity," and "Scott's Poetry," on pp. 320 and 321.

included and evolved other and better means for its own manifestations, than any that exist now.'

Charles Lamb's Christianity.

No, no; Lamb's scepticism has not come lightly, nor is he a sceptic. The harsh reproof to Godwin for his contemptuous allusion to Christ before a well-trained child, proves that he is not a sceptic. His mind, never prone to analysis, seems to have been disgusted with the hollow pretences, the false reasonings, and absurdities of the rogues and fools with which all establishments, and all creeds seeking to become established, abound. I look upon Lamb as one hovering between earth and heaven; neither hoping much nor fearing anything.

It is curious that he should retain many usages which he learnt or adopted in the fervour of his early religious feelings, now that his faith is in a state of suspended animation. Believe me, who know him well, that Lamb, say what he will, has more of the essentials of Christianity 'than ninety-nine out of a hundred professing Christians. He has all that would still have been Christian had Christ never lived or been made manifest upon earth.

Miracles.

I deprecate a literal still more than an ideal religion. The miracles may be fairly illustrated by the familiar example of a lecture with experiments at the institution. A man ignorant of the law whence these conjurations proceeded would be acted upon in a very different manner, when compared with the philosopher who, familiar with the law, or the principle whence they emanate, and with which they are congruous, sees in them only the natural results, hardly the confirmation, of that which had previously been known. Compare this with the no-results

1 This fancy is on a par with that of Rogers: :- "It is a favourite fancy of mine that perhaps in the next world the use of words may be dispensed with,-that our thoughts may stream into each other's minds without any verbal communication."-Table Talk, 1856, p. 43.

obtained from meteorology, a science so misnamed, which so far from being in its infancy is not yet in its fetal state. The meteorological journals are as little to be relied upon, as would be the account of a ploughman, taken to an experimental lecture at the institution. Ignorant of the law and the principle, he would give an account of the results, so different from the actual facts, that no one could conjecture a law from his evidence. So with the miracles. They are supererogatory. The law of God and the great principles of the Christian religion would have been the same had Christ never assumed humanity.

Atheism.

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of mind to be an atheist.

Rulers and Men of Letters.

All men in power are jealous of the pre-eminence of men of letters; they feel, as towards them, conscious of inferior power, and a sort of misgiving that they are, indirectly, and against their own will, mere instruments and agents of higher intellects.

Men in power, for instance Lord Castlereagh, are conscious of inferiority, and are yet ashamed to own, even to themselves, the fact, which is only the more evident by their neglect of men of letters. So entirely was Mr. Pitt aware of this, that he would never allow of any intercourse with literary men of eminence; fearing, doubtless, that the charm which spell-bound his political adherents would, at least for the time, fail of its effect.

Christabel.

If I should finish "Christabel," I shall certainly extend it and give new characters, and a greater number of inci