He was a work of Nature, a thinking and sensitive machine, which set going must work on like the rapidest wheel moved by steam; so rapid sometimes as to acquire invisibility as it revolved before your eyes.
The fly-wheel—that wonderful invention of machinery that carries the largest wheel over the dead point—in him was vanity, and it never allowed its machinery to pause; it was, therefore, quite impossible for it to ask itself if it went wrong when it never stopped. All Donaldson knew about right and wrong was that what he achieved was perfect—that, even if a little wrong, the reason was not quite within reach of vulgar scrutiny.
Cookesley was the first to take unfavourable notice of his “Jashar;” Perowne was the next. Neither wrote of it dispassionately, but this was in no very unkind spirit. Their criticism was as they felt to be just. The origin of “Jashar” was partly told by Donaldson in his reply, but he was not over-candid in his details. From his account he was only going to pursue a course that others had taken: Welcker, in collecting the fragments of Æschylus; Meinche, in doing the same for the Comœdians; and so on for Alcæus and the Lyric Poets, without a thought, he said, on their part of also doing what he had done for Jashar—an omission at which he expressed his great surprise.
Now, the surprise he here expresses is not a real transcript from his memory; the labours of which he speaks he had been long acquainted with. He had himself edited the works of Pindar, with the fragments of his lost compositions; which circumstance would have included him among those at whose shortcomings his astonishment was expressed. But I may say he only imagined himself so astonished, on writing his Præfatio; for I know perfectly well that one evening, when dining with Sir Thomas Cullum, the worthy baronet showed him Knights’s volume, with plates, “On the Worship of Priapus,” and that it so attracted his fancy that he borrowed it and took it home. He showed it to me soon after—it might have been the next day—and told me that he had caught from it an interpretation of a certain text of Scripture, viz. Genesis iii. 8-15.
Out of this, and a certain plate, came “Jashar,” which, whether true or false, scholarly or unscholarly, is a wonderful intellectual feat; and if the subject is susceptible of treatment under new accretions of knowledge, justice must be accorded it as a first and bold attempt. The part relating to the worship of Priapus, which immediately follows the Prolegomena, is a marvellous evolution of the verses cited.
The details would be in place if printed in an anatomical work; perhaps next to that they are best buried in Latin.
XLIX.
It was an easy task for a scholar like Perowne to penetrate Donaldson’s plot, but the marvel is that it should have deceived its author, who had so acute a mind. The pointing out of its obvious fallacies was a vexation, but the replying was a pleasure, and was intended for a fresh literary feat. The worst of it for Donaldson was that the day of invective had gone by; the finest satire that could be written would have remained unread. It was therefore a poor substitute in the case for a sound refutation, which alone could have extricated the offending scholar from his dilemma.
Perowne almost justly accused Donaldson of maliciousness; but I believe that it was boast, an attempt of the criticised to establish his superiority to criticism itself, unaware of the weakness of his weapon, the use of which a century before might have led to his being called the greatest controversionalist of his day; and, though his invective was powerless, he believed that he should be so esteemed in a century to come.