"Yet were any man to keep minutes of his feelings from youth to age, what a table of variations would they present! how numerous! how diverse! how strange! This is just what we find in the writings of Horace. If we consider his occasional effusions—and such they almost all are—as merely expressing the piety or the passion, the seriousness or the levity of the moment, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for those discrepancies in their features which have so much puzzled professional commentators. Their very contradictions prove their truth. Or, could the face even of Ninon de l'Enclos at seventy be just what it was at seventeen? Nay, was Cleopatra before Augustus the same as Cleopatra with Antony? or Cleopatra with Antony the same as with the great Julius?"
A section half a page in length, and on so trite a subject, ought at least to have boasted a greater distinctness of thought. One would hardly have anticipated that the shifting humours of Horace and the decline of Ninon's beauty (of whom it seems to be gravely asked, whether she could be just the same at seventy as at seventeen,) would be put in the same category. The form of composition adopted by the author has not prevented a frequent confusion of ideas, though it has rendered such a fault less excusable. His mode of progression is "like a peacock's walk, a stride and a stand," yet he often fails to take his single step with firmness and decision.
In a work of this kind, we know not how better to proceed than to examine some of the sections in the order they occur; and, as we have begun at the first page, we shall turn over the leaves of the book, and, without too much anxiety of selection, extract for our comment such as appear best to characterise the authors. Nor shall we attempt to make any distinction between the writers. The larger portion, and to which no signature is affixed, is the composition of Archdeacon Hare; those signed U, are by his brother; and there are occasionally other signatures, as A. and L., and A. and O. L., but what names these stand for we are not informed,—nor are we anxious to know. It is as a specimen of a certain class or coterie of thinkers we have been induced to notice the work, and we would at all times rather assail the thing said than the person who says it. It is remarkable that there is as much harmony between the several parts of the work as if the whole had been written by the same individual; and where inconsistencies appear, they will generally be found in the portions which bear the same signature, and which are the composition therefore of the same writer.
"Philosophy, like every thing else, in a Christian nation, should be Christian. We throw away the better half of our means, when we neglect to avail ourselves of the advantages which starting in the right road gives us. It is idle to urge that unless we do this, anti-Christians will deride us. Curs bark at gentlemen on horseback; but who, except a hypochondriac, ever gave up riding on that account?"
To say that philosophy should be Christian, is very much like saying that truth should be Christian. The philosophy of a genuine Christian will be Christian, we presume, unless he be capable of believing contradictory propositions. Or does the writer mean that that alone is Christian philosophy of which Coleridge has given us a slight specimen, and where the attempt is made to deduce from human reason alone the revealed mysteries of Christianity? What follows is as carelessly penned as it is pointless and vapid. "It is idle to urge that unless we do this anti-Christians will deride us." It would be impossible from the mere rules of grammar to know what it is that anti-Christians would deride us for doing,—whether for going right or wrong. But the illustration, by no means very elegant, which follows, comes to our assistance. As the anti-Christians, are the curs, and the gentleman on horseback the Christian philosopher, and as riding on horseback is certainly a very commendable thing, we discover that it is for going right that the anti-Christians would deride us.
The next is an instance how an observation, good in itself, may be run to death.
"'I am convinced that jokes are often accidental. A man in the course of conversation throws out a remark at random, and is as much surprised as any of the company, on hearing it, to find it witty.'
"For the substance of this observation I am indebted to one of the pleasantest men I ever knew, who was doubtless giving the results of his own experience. He might have carried his remark some steps further with ease and profit. It would have done our pride no harm to be reminded, how few of our best and wisest, and even of our newest thoughts, do really and wholly originate in ourselves,—how few of them are voluntary, or at least intentional. Take away all that has been suggested or improved by the hints and remarks of others,—all that has fallen from us accidentally, all that has been struck out by collision, all that has been prompted by a sudden impulse, or has occurred to us when least looking for it—and the remainder, which alone can be claimed as the fruit of our thought and study, will in every man form a small portion of his store, and in most men will be little worth preserving."
This is carrying his friend's observation "a little further with ease and profit!" It is carrying it to where it is utterly lost in mere absurdity. "Take away all that has been suggested," &c.—(take away all that we have ever learned)—"take away all that has been prompted," &c.—(take away all excitement to thinking, as well as all materials of thought)—and we should be glad to know what "remainder" can be left at all. The paragraph continues thus—
"We can no more make thoughts than seeds. How absurd, then, for a man to call himself a poet or maker! The ablest writer is a gardener first, and then a cook," (two very industrious professions at all events.) "His tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and, when they are ripe, to dress them wholesomely, and so that they may have a relish."
A very succulent image. The next sentence which our eye falls upon is pretty, and we willingly extract it:—