or when another not less warlike monarch was hopelessly overthrown by the Persian, and died a miserable slave, exposed to every indignity which the invention of his ungenerous and barbarous conqueror could suggest.
Britain in this event has received a terrible lesson, which we trust her scarce merited and surely most revolting successes in China will not have the effect of wholly neutralizing. The Affghan war, regarded as a war of principle, was eminently unjust; regarded as a war of expediency, it was eminently imprudent. It seems to have originated with men of narrow and defective genius, not over largely gifted with the moral sense. We have had to refer on a former occasion to the policy adopted by Lord Auckland respecting the educational grants to Hindustan. An enlightened predecessor of his Lordship had decided that the assistance and patronage of the British Government should be extended to the exclusive promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India. His Lordship, in the exercise of a miserable liberalism, reversed the resolution, and diverted no inconsiderable portion of the Government patronage to the support of the old Hindustanee education,––a system puerile in its literature, contemptible in its science, and false in its religion. Our readers cannot have forgotten the indignant style of Dr. 204 Duff’s remonstrance. The enlightened and zealous missionary boldly and indignantly characterized the minute of his Lordship, through which this revolution was effected, as ‘remarkable chiefly for its omissions and commissions, for its concessions and compromises, for its education without religion, its plans without a Providence, and its ethics without a God.’ Such was the liberalism of Lord Auckland; and of at least one of the leading men whose counsel led to the Affghan expedition, and who perished in it, the liberalism, it is said, was of a still more marked and offensive character. What do we infer from the fact?
Not that Providence interfered to avenge upon them the sin of their policy: there would be presumption in the inference. But it may not be unsafe to infer, from the palpable folly of the Affghan expedition, that the liberalism in which Lord Auckland and some one or two of his friends indulged is a liberalism which weak and incompetent men are best fitted to entertain. His scheme of education and his Affghanistan expedition are specimens of mental production, if we may so speak, that give evidence of exactly the same cast and tendency regarding the order and scope of the genius which originated them. We have been a good deal struck by the shrewdness of one of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s remarks, that seems to bear very decidedly on this case. Two generals of his acquaintance had failed miserably in the conduct of some expedition that demanded capacity and skill, and yet both of them were unquestionably smart, clever men. ‘I always thought it would turn out so,’ said the Prince. ‘Both these men made open profession of infidelity; and I formed so low an opinion of their taste and judgment in consequence, that I made myself sure they would sooner or later run their heads into some egregious folly.’
It is satisfactory in every point of view that Britain should be at peace with China and the Affghans. War is an evil 205 in all circumstances. It is a great evil even when just; it is a great evil even when carried on against a people who know and respect the laws of nations. But it is peculiarly an evil when palpably not a just war, and when carried on against a barbarous people. It has been stated in private letters, though not officially, that a soldier of the 44th was burned alive by the Ghilzies in sight of the English troops, and that on the approach of the latter the throat of the tortured victim was cut to ensure his destruction. And it is the inference of an Indian newspaper from the fact, that such wretches are not the devoted patriots that they have been described by some, and that the war with them cannot, after all, be very unjust. We are inclined to argue somewhat differently. We believe the Scotch under Wallace were not at all devoid of patriotism, though they were barbarous enough to flay Cressingham, and to burn the English alive at Ayr. We believe further, that an unjust war is rendered none the less unjust from the circumstance of its being waged with a savage and cruel people. The barbarism of the enemy has but the effect of heightening its horrors, not of modifying its injustice. It is possible for one civilised man to fight with another, and yet retain his proper character as a man notwithstanding. But the civilised man who fights with a wild beast must assume, during the combat, the character of the wild beast. He cannot afford being generous and merciful; his antagonist understands neither generosity nor mercy. The war is of necessity a war of extermination. And such is always the character of a war between wild and civilised men. It takes its tone, not from the civilisation of the one, but from the cruel savageism of the other.
December 3, 1842.
PERIODICALISM.
The poet Gray held that in a neglected country churchyard, appropriated to only the nameless dead, there might lie, notwithstanding, the remains of undeveloped Miltons, Hampdens, and Cromwells,––men who, in more favourable circumstances, would have become famous as poets, or great as patriots or statesmen; and the stanzas in which he has embodied the reflection are perhaps the most popular in the language. One-half the thought is, we doubt not, just. Save for the madness of Charles, Cromwell would have died a devout farmer, and Hampden a most respectable country gentleman, who would have been gratefully remembered for half an age over half a county, and then consigned to forgetfulness. But the poets rarely die, however disadvantageously placed, without giving some sign. Rob Don, the Sutherlandshire bard, owed much less to nature than Milton did, and so little to learning that he could neither read nor write; and yet his better songs promise to live as long as the Gaelic language. And though both Burns and Shakespeare had very considerable disadvantages to struggle against, we know that neither of them remained ‘mute’ or ‘inglorious,’ or even less extensively known than Milton himself. It is, we believe, no easy matter to smother a true poet. The versifiers, placed in obscure and humble circumstances, who for a time complain of neglected merit and untoward fate, and then give up verse-making in despair, are always men who, with all their querulousness, have at least one cause of complaint more 207 than they ever seem to be aware of,––a cause of complaint against the nature that failed to impart to them ‘the divine vision and faculty.’ There are powers, however, admirably fitted to tell with effect in the literature of the country, for they have served to produce the most influential works which the world ever saw––works such as the Essay of Locke, the Peace and War of Grotius, and the Spirit of Laws of Montesquieu––which, with all their apparent robustness, are greatly less hardy than the poetic faculty, and which, unless the circumstances favourable to their development and exercise be present, fail to leave behind them any adequate record of their existence. It is difficult to imagine a situation in life in which Burns would not have written his songs, but very easy to imagine situations in which Robertson would not have produced his Scotland or his Charles V., nor Adam Smith his Wealth of Nations. We have no faith whatever in ‘mute, inglorious Miltons;’ but we do hold that there may be obscure country churchyards in which untaught Humes, guiltless of the Essay on Miracles, may repose, and undeveloped Bentleys and Warburtons, whose great aptitude for acquiring or capacity for retaining knowledge remained throughout life a mere ungratified thirst.
It has remained for the present age to throw one bar more in the way of able men of this special class than our fathers ever dreamed of; and this, curiously enough, just by giving them an opportunity of writing much, and of thinking incessantly. It is not, it would seem, by being born among ploughmen and mechanics, and destined to live by tilling the soil, or by making shoes or hobnails, that the ‘genial current of the soil is frozen,’ and superior talents prevented from accomplishing their proper work: it is by being connected with some cheap weekly periodical, or twice or thrice a week newspaper, and compelled to scribble on almost without pause or intermission for daily bread. 208 We have been led to think of this matter by an interesting little volume of poems, chiefly lyrical, which has just issued from the Edinburgh press,––the production of Mr. Thomas Smibert, a man who has lived for many years by his pen, and who introduces the volume by a prefatory essay, interesting from the glimpse which it gives of the literary disadvantages with which the professionally literary man who writes for the periodicals has to contend. Periodical literature is, he remarks, ‘to all intents and purposes a creation of the nineteenth century, in its principal existing phases, from Quarterly Reviews to Weekly Penny Magazines. Newspapers,’ he adds, ‘may justly be accounted the growth of the same recent era, the few previously published having been scarcely more than mere Gazettes, recording less opinions than bare public and business facts.’ The number of both classes of periodicals is now immensely great; and ‘equally vast, of necessity, is the amount of literary talent statedly and unremittingly engaged on these journals, while a large additional amount of similar talent finds in them occasional and ready outlets for its working.’ ‘When one or two leading Reviews, Quarterlies, and Monthlies alone existed, they called for no insignificant individual efforts of mind on the part of their chief conductors and supporters, and those parties almost took rank with the authors of single works of importance. But within the last twenty years periodical literature has become extensively hebdomadal, and even diurnal; and, as a necessary consequence, the essays of those sustaining it in this shape have decreased in proportionate value, at once from the larger amount of work demanded, and from the shorter time allowed for its execution. Such essays may serve the hour fairly, but can seldom be of high worth ultroneously.’ ‘The extent and variety of the labours called for at the hands of those actively engaged on modern cheap periodicals can scarcely be conceived by the uninitiated public. If their eyes were 209 opened on the subject, they would certainly wonder less why it is that the literary talent of the current generation does not tend to display itself by striking isolated efforts: they would also more readily understand wherefore parties in the situation of the present writer may well experience some unsatisfactory feelings in looking back on the labours of the past. Though years spent in respectable periodical writing can by no means be termed misspent, yet such a career presents in the retrospect but a multitude of disconnected essays on all conceivable themes, and such as too often prove their hurried composition by crudeness and imperfections.’ The consideration of such a state of things ‘may furnish a salutary lesson to the many among the young at this day, who, possessing some literary taste, imagine that the engagements of common life alone stand in the way of its successful development, and that to be enabled to pursue a life of professional writing in any shape would secure to them both fame and fortune to the height of their desires. They here err sadly. No doubt supereminent talents will sooner or later make themselves felt under almost any circumstances; but the position described assuredly offers no peculiar advantages for the furtherance of that end. Ebenezer Elliot, leaving his forge at eve with a wearied body, could yet bring to his favourite leisure tasks a mind less jaded than that of the littérateur by profession.’ ‘The regular periodicalist, too, of the modern class has usually no more stable interest in his compositions than has the counting-house clerk in the cash-books which he keeps. To publishers and conductors fall the lasting fruits. Let those among the young who feel the ambition to seek fame and fortune in the walks of literature think well of these things, and, above all, ponder seriously ere they quit, with such views, any fixed occupation of another kind.’