When all the ages, and all suns and worlds,
And souls of men and angels lay in Him,
Like unborn forests in an acorn cup.”
A prospect, the mere sketch of which fills us with concern. If we thought he would listen, we would say—No, Mr Smith; don’t begin in the oldest—leave the “dead eternities” alone, and don’t let your “first chorus,” on any account, be “the shouting of the morning stars.” Rather begin, as you propose to end, with “silence,” than in this melancholy way. Let your thoughts be based on the unalterable emotions of the heart, not on the wild driftings of the fancy. Observe all that strongly appeals to the feelings of others and of yourself—let art assist you to select and to combine—your warm imagination will give life to the conception, and your powers of fancy and language will vividly express it. Don’t set down any odd conceit that may strike you about the relation of the sea and the stars, and the moon; but when you conceive an image which, besides being fine in itself, shall bear essential, not accidental, relation to some part of your theme, put it by till your main subject, in its natural expansion, affords it a fitting place.
Following this course, we trust that Alexander will prove worthy of the many illustrious scions of the house of Smith who have distinguished themselves since Adam, and maintain its precedence over the houses of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Sydney the Reverend—Horace and James of the Rejected Addresses—and William, of the modest and too obscure dramas (noticed by us before), might well become prouder of the patronymic to which they have already lent lustre, when Alexander, mellowed by time, and taught by thought and experience, shall have produced his next and riper work.
THE EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.[[8]]
This extremely interesting work of Dr Hecker’s consists of three several treatises, or historical sketches, published at different times, and here collected in a single volume. They are translated and published under the direction of the Sydenham Society—a society which has been the means of introducing to the medical profession, and to the English reader, some of the most eminent works of German physicians and physiologists. It is seldom, indeed, that their publications are of the popular and amusing description of the one we have selected for notice; but, speaking of them as a series, they are of that high philosophic character which must render them acceptable to every man of liberal education. How far they are accessible to the public at large we have not the means of knowing, nor whether the purchase of any single volume is a practicable matter to a non-subscriber; but, at all events, means, we think, ought to be taken to place the whole series on the shelves of every public library.
The great plague of the fourteenth century, called in Germany The Black Death, from the dark spots of fatal omen which appeared on the bodies of its victims; the Dancing Mania, which afterwards broke out both in Germany and Italy; and the Sweating Sickness, which had its origin in England, but extended itself also widely upon the Continent—these form the three subjects of Dr Hecker’s book. The dancing mania, known in Germany as St John’s or St Vitus’s Dance, and in Italy as the poison of the Tarantula or Tarantism, will be most likely to present us with novel and curious facts, and we shall be tempted to linger longest upon this topic. Readers of all kinds, whether of Thucydides, or Boccaccio, or Defoe, are familiar with the phenomena and events which characterise a plague, and which bear a great resemblance to each other in all periods of history. We shall, therefore, refrain from dwelling at any length upon the well-known terrors of the Great Mortality or the Black Death.
Yet the subject is one of undying interest. The Great Plague is, in this respect, like the Great Revolution of France; you may read fifty histories of it, and pronounce it to be a topic thoroughly worn out and exhausted; and yet when the fifty-first history is put into your hands, the chance is that you will be led on, and will read to the very last page with almost undiminished interest. The charm is alike in both cases. It is that our humanity is seen in its moments of great, if not glorious excitement—of plenary inspiration of some kind, though it be of an evil spirit—seen in moments when all its passions, good and bad, and the bad chiefly, stand out revealed in full unfettered strength. And the history, in both cases, is of perpetual value and significance to us. Plagues, as our own generation can testify, are no more eradicated or banished from the cities of mankind than political revolutions. They read a lesson to us which, terrible as it is, we are still slow in learning.
We are often haunted with the dread of over-population. This fear may perhaps be encountered by another of a quite opposite description, when we read that in the fourteenth century one quarter at least of the population of the Old World was swept away in the short space of four years! Such is the calculation which Dr Hecker makes, on the best sources of information within his reach. If such devastating plagues arise, as our author thinks, from great physical causes over which man has no control, from an atmospheric poison not traceable to his ignorance or vice, and which no advancement in science can prevent or expel, there is indeed room for an undefined dread of periodical depopulations, putting to the rout all human calculations and all human forethought. But on this point we have our doubts.