N.—That is your prejudice.
H.—Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a devoted enthusiast, notwithstanding. There are two things I admire in Sir Walter, his capacity and his simplicity; which indeed I am apt to think are much the same. The more ideas a man has of other things, the less he is taken up with the idea of himself. Every one gives the same account of the author of Waverley in this respect. When he was in Paris, and went to Galignani’s, he sat down in an outer room to look at some book he wanted to see: none of the clerks had the least suspicion who it was: when it was found out, the place was in a commotion. Cooper, the American, was in Paris at the same time: his looks and manners seemed to announce a much greater man. He strutted through the streets with a very consequential air; and in company held up his head, screwed up his features, and placed himself on a sort of pedestal to be observed and admired, as if he never relaxed in the assumption nor wished it to be forgotten by others, that he was the American Sir Walter Scott. The real one never troubled himself about the matter. Why should he? He might safely leave that question to others. Indeed, by what I am told, he carries his indifference too far: it amounts to an implied contempt for the public, and misprision of treason against the commonwealth of letters. He thinks nothing of his works, although ‘all Europe rings with them from side to side.’—If so, he has been severely punished for his infirmity.
N.—Though you do not know Sir Walter Scott, I think I have heard you say you have seen him.
H.—Yes, he put me in mind of Cobbett, with his florid face and scarlet gown, which were just like the other’s red face and scarlet waistcoat. The one is like an English farmer, the other like a Scotch laird. Both are large, robust men, with great strength and composure of features; but I saw nothing of the ideal character in the romance-writer, any more than I looked for it in the politician.
N.—Indeed! But you have a vast opinion of Cobbett too, haven’t you? Oh! he’s a giant! He has such prodigious strength; he tears up a subject by the roots. Did you ever read his Grammar? Or see his attack on Mrs. —? It was like a hawk pouncing on a wren. I should be terribly afraid to get into his hands. And then his homely, familiar way of writing—it is not from necessity or vulgarity, but to show his contempt for aristocratic pride and arrogance. He only has a kitchen-garden; he could have a flower-garden too if he chose. Peter Pindar said his style was like the Horse-Guards, only one story above the ground, while Junius’s had all the airy elegance of Whitehall: but he could raise his style just as high as he pleased; though he does not want to sacrifice strength to elegance. He knows better what he is about.
H.—I don’t think he’ll set up for a fine gentleman in a hurry, though he has for a Member of Parliament; and I fancy he would make no better figure in the one than the other. He appeared to me, when I once saw him, exactly what I expected: in Sir Walter I looked in vain for a million of fine things! I could only explain it to myself in this way, that there was a degree of capacity in that huge double forehead of his, that superseded all effort, made every thing come intuitively and almost mechanically, as if it were merely transcribing what was already written, and by the very facility with which the highest beauty and excellence was produced, left few traces of it in the expression of the countenance, and hardly any sense of it in the mind of the author. Expression only comes into the face as we are at a loss for words, or have a difficulty in bringing forward our ideas; but we may repeat the finest things by rote without any change of look or manner. It is only when the powers are tasked, when the moulds of thought are full, that the effect or the wear-and-tear of the mind appears on the surface. So, in general, writers of the greatest imagination and range of ideas, and who might be said to have all nature obedient to their call, seem to have been most careless of their fame and regardless of their works. They treat their productions not as children, but as ‘bastards of their art;’ whereas those who are more confined in their scope of intellect and wedded to some one theory or predominant fancy, have been found to feel a proportionable fondness for the offspring of their brain, and have thus excited a deeper interest in it in the minds of others. We set a value on things as they have cost us dear: the very limitation of our faculties or exclusiveness of our feelings compels us to concentrate all our enthusiasm on a favourite subject; and strange as it may sound, in order to inspire a perfect sympathy in others or to form a school, men must themselves be egotists! Milton has had fewer readers and admirers, but I suspect more devoted and bigotted ones, than ever Shakspeare had: Sir Walter Scott has attracted more universal attention than any writer of our time, but you may speak against him with less danger of making personal enemies than if you attack Lord Byron. Even Wordsworth has half a dozen followers, who set him up above everybody else from a common idiosyncrasy of feeling and the singleness of the elements of which his excellence is composed. Before we can take an author entirely to our bosoms, he must be another self; and he cannot be this, if he is ‘not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’ It was this which gave such an effect to Rousseau’s writings, that he stamped his own character and the image of his self-love on the public mind—there it is, and there it will remain in spite of every thing. Had he possessed more comprehension of thought or feeling, it would have only have diverted him from his object. But it was the excess of his egotism and his utter blindness to every thing else, that found a corresponding sympathy in the conscious feelings of every human breast, and shattered to pieces the pride of rank and circumstance by the pride of internal worth or upstart pretension. When Rousseau stood behind the chair of the master of the château of —, and smiled to hear the company dispute about the meaning of the motto of the arms of the family, which he alone knew, and stumbled as he handed the glass of wine to his young mistress, and fancied she coloured at being waited upon by so learned a young footman—then was first kindled that spark which can never be quenched, then was formed the germ of that strong conviction of the disparity between the badge on his shoulder and the aspirations of his soul—the determination, in short, that external situation and advantages are but the mask, and that the mind is the man—armed with which, impenetrable, incorrigible, he went forth conquering and to conquer, and overthrew the monarchy of France and the hierarchies of the earth. Till then, birth and wealth and power were all in all, though but the frame-work or crust that envelopes the man; and what there was in the man himself was never asked, or was scorned and forgot. And while all was dark and grovelling within, while knowledge either did not exist or was confined to a few, while material power and advantages were every thing, this was naturally to be expected. But with the increase and diffusion of knowledge, this state of things must sooner or later cease; and Rousseau was the first who held the torch (lighted at the never-dying fire in his own bosom) to the hidden chambers of the mind of man—like another Prometheus, breathed into his nostrils the breath of a new and intellectual life, enraging the Gods of the earth, and made him feel what is due to himself and his fellows. Before, physical force was every thing: henceforward, mind, thought, feeling was a new element—a fourth estate in society. What! shall a man have read Dante and Ariosto, and be none the better for it? Shall he be still judged of only by his coat, the number of his servants in livery, the house over his head? While poverty meant ignorance, that was necessarily the case; but the world of books overturns the world of things, and establishes a new balance of power and scale of estimation. Shall we think only rank and pedigree divine, when we have music, poetry, and painting within us? Tut! we have read Old Mortality; and shall it be asked whether we have done so in a garret or a palace, in a carriage or on foot? Or knowing them, shall we not revere the mighty heirs of fame, and respect ourselves for knowing and honouring them? This is the true march of intellect, and not the erection of Mechanics’ Institutions, or the printing of two-penny trash, according to my notion of the matter, though I have nothing to say against them neither.
N.—I thought you never would have done; however, you have come to the ground at last. After this rhapsody, I must inform you that Rousseau is a character more detestable to me than I have power of language to express:—an aristocrat filled with all their worst vices, pride, ambition, conceit and gross affectation: and though endowed with some ability, yet not sufficient ever to make him know right from wrong: witness his novel of Eloisa. His name brings to my mind all the gloomy horrors of a mob-government, which attempted from their ignorance to banish truth and justice from the world. I see you place Sir Walter above Lord Byron. The question is not which keeps longest on the wing, but which soars highest: and I cannot help thinking there are essences in Lord Byron that are not to be surpassed. He is on a par with Dryden. All the other modern poets appear to me vulgar in the comparison. As a lady who comes here said, there is such an air of nobility in what he writes. Then there is such a power in the style, expressions almost like Shakspeare—‘And looked round on them with their wolfish eyes.’
H.—The expression is in Shakspeare, somewhere in Lear.
N.—The line I repeated is in Don Juan. I do not mean to vindicate the immorality or misanthropy in that poem—perhaps his lameness was to blame for this defect—but surely no one can deny the force, the spirit of it; and there is such a fund of drollery mixed up with the serious part. Nobody understood the tragi-comedy of poetry so well. People find fault with this mixture in general, because it is not well managed; there is a comic story and a tragic story going on at the same time, without their having any thing to do with one another. But in Lord Byron they are brought together, just as they are in nature. In like manner, if you go to an execution at the very moment when the criminal is going to be turned off, and all eyes are fixed upon him, an old apple-woman and her stall are overturned, and all the spectators fall a-laughing. In real life the most ludicrous incidents border on the most affecting and shocking. How fine that is of the cask of butter in the storm! Some critics have objected to it as turning the whole into burlesque; on the contrary, it is that which stamps the character of the scene more than any thing else. What did the people in the boat care about the rainbow, which he has described in such vivid colours; or even about their fellow-passengers who were thrown overboard, when they only wanted to eat them? No, it was the loss of the firkin of butter that affected them more than all the rest; and it is the mention of this circumstance that adds a hardened levity and a sort of ghastly horror to the scene. It shows the master-hand—there is such a boldness and sagacity and superiority to ordinary rules in it! I agree, however, in your admiration of the Waverley Novels: they are very fine. As I told the author, he and Cervantes have raised the idea of human nature, not as Richardson has attempted, by affectation and a false varnish, but by bringing out what there is really fine in it under a cloud of disadvantages. Have you seen the last?
H.—No.