‘Eubulides. In your language, O Demosthenes! there is a resemblance to the Ilissus, whose waters, as you must have observed, are in most seasons pure and limpid and equable in their course, yet abounding in depths, of which when we discern the bottom, we wonder that we discern it so clearly: the same river at every storm swells into a torrent, without ford or boundary, and is the stronger and the more impetuous from resistance.
‘Demosthenes. Language is part of a man’s character.
‘Eubulides. It is often artificial.
‘Demosthenes. Often both are so. I spoke not of such language as that of Gorgias and Isocrates, and other rhetoricians, but of that which belongs to eloquence, of that which enters the heart, however closed against it, of that which pierces like the sword of Perseus, of that which carries us away upon its point as easily as Medea her children, and holds the world below in the same suspense and terror.—I had to form a manner, with great models on one side of me and Nature on the other. Had I imitated Plato (the writer then most admired) I must have fallen short of his amplitude and dignity; and his sentences are seldom such as could be admitted into a popular harangue. Xenophon is elegant, but unimpassioned, and not entirely free, I think, from affectation. Herodotus is the most faultless, and perhaps the most excellent of all. What simplicity! what sweetness! what harmony! not to mention his sagacity of inquiry and his accuracy of description: he could not, however, form an orator for the times in which we live. Aristoteles and Thucydides were before me: I trembled lest they should lead me where I might raise a recollection of Pericles, whose plainness and conciseness and gravity they have imitated, not always with success. Laying down these qualities as the foundation, I have ventured on more solemnity, more passion: I have also been studious to bring the powers of action into play, that great instrument in exciting the affections, which Pericles disdained. He and Jupiter could strike my head with their thunderbolts and stand serene and motionless: I could not.’ I. 233.
The Dialogue in the second volume between Pericles and Sophocles breathes the spirit of patriotism and of antiquity, perhaps in a still higher strain, with a bastard allusion, we suspect, to recent politics. The Conversations between Aristotle and Callisthenes, and between Lord Chatham and Lord Chesterfield, (also in the second volume), contain an admirable estimate, equally sound and acute, of the characters of Aristotle and Plato. Our critic appears to have studied and to have understood these authors well. In our opinion, he rates Cicero too high; we do not mean as to style or oratory, but as a thinker. In this respect, there is little memorable, or new, or profound, in him; and ‘he was at best’ (as it has been said) ‘but an elegant reporter of the Greek philosophy.’ Neither can we agree that his historian, Middleton, is so entirely free from affectation as our author supposes. It is Lord Chatham who is made to pronounce the panegyric upon Locke, as ‘the most elegant of English prose writers,’ which, if our author were not a deliberate paradox-monger, might seem an uncivil irony. His eulogist does not mend the matter much by his definition of elegance, which one would think intended as a test of Lord Chesterfield’s politeness. He makes it to consist in a mean between too much prolixity and too much conciseness. Now, (supposing this to be intended seriously) Mr. Locke was certainly one of the most circuitous and diffuse of all writers. This distinguished person neither excelled in the graces of style, according to our author’s singular assertion, nor was he (according to the common opinion) the founder of the modern system of metaphysical philosophy. The credit of having laid the basis of this system, and of having completed the great outline of the plan, is beyond all question due to the philosopher of Malmesbury. Mr. Locke’s real forte was great practical good sense, a determination to look at every question, free from prejudice and according to the evidence suggested to him, and a patient and persevering doggedness of understanding in contending with difficulties, and finding out and weighing arguments of opposite tendency. The most valuable parts of his celebrated Essay are those which relate not to the nature but to the conduct of the understanding; and on that subject, he often proves himself a most sage and judicious adviser. Mr. Locke’s Treatise on Education (with all its defects, and an occasional appearance of pedantry), laid the foundation of the modern improvements in that important branch of study; and his book upon Government (written in defence of the Revolution of 1688) remained unimpeached up to the period of the battle of Waterloo. The author of the Essay on Human Understanding undoubtedly ranks as the third name in English philosophy, after Newton and Bacon; yet perhaps others, as Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Hartley, and, even in our own times, Horne Tooke, have shown a firmer grasp of mind, as well as greater originality and subtlety of invention, in the same field of inquiry. This opinion may, however, be thought by some petulant and daring, not to say profane; and we may be accused, in forming or delivering it, of having encroached unawares on the exercise of Mr. Landor’s exclusive right of private judgment and free inquiry.
The controversy between the Abbé Delille and our author in person, of which Boileau is the leading subject, is an amusing specimen of verbal criticism. All that it proves however is, that this kind of criticism proves nothing but the acuteness of the writer, and also that those poets who pique themselves on being most exempt from it are the most liable to it. Pope is an example among ourselves. Those who are in the habit of attending to the smallest things, do not see the farthest before them; and, in polishing and correcting one line, they overlook or fall into some fresh mistake in another. The altering and retouching, after a lapse of time, or during the probation of Horace’s ‘nine years,’ is sure to lead to inconsistency and partial oversights. Mr. Landor, in some instances, we imagine, confounds humour with blunders. Thus the truism in the line—
‘Que, si sous Adam même, et loin avant Noë,’
we should consider as a mere piece of naïveté, in the manner of La Fontaine. We will give up, however, without scruple, Boileau’s mock-heroics, as we would some English ones of later date. But his satire and his sense we cannot relinquish all at once, though he was a Frenchman, and, what is still worse, a Frenchman of the age of Louis XIV.! It is hard that a people who arrogate all perfections to themselves should possess none; nor can we think that so vast and magnificent a reputation as their literature has acquired, could be raised, as Mr. L. would persuade us, without either art or genius? The Dialogue between Kosciusko and Poniatowski (a subject capable of better things) is remarkable for nothing but a mawkish philanthropy, and a problematical defence of General Pichegru for betraying the Republic and leaguing with the Bourbons. We have nothing to say to this; but, as our author has dedicated one of these volumes to General Mina, will he forgive our recommending him to write a third, in order to inscribe it to Balasteros?
When our literary dramatist attempts common or vulgar humour, he fails totally, as in the slang Conversation entitled Cavaliere Punto Michino, and Mr. Denis Eusebius Talcranagh. The interview between David Hume and John Home is another failure, at least in so far as relates to character. The author represents the latter as a quiet contented parish minister,—the fact being, that soon after the publication of his play, he abandoned the clerical profession, and went about a fine gentleman, with a blue coat and a pigtail. Horne Tooke’s collision with Dr. Johnson produces only some meagre etymologies and orthographical pedantry, and a tolerably just and highly pointed character of Junius; that between Washington and Franklin only a dull recipe for curing the disorders of Ireland. Prince Maurocordoto and General Colocotroni defend the Greeks, in the Twelfth Conversation of the second volume, on very new and learned principles; but as we have no skill in wood craft, nor in flat-bottomed boats, we pass it over. The last Conversation (supposed to take place between Marcus Tullius Cicero, and his brother Quintus, on the night before his death) is full of an eloquent and philosophic melancholy, which makes it on the whole our favourite:—that between Lopez Banos and Romero Alpuente, we dare be sworn, is the author’s; at least it had need, it will be caviare to the multitude. Par example.
‘Banos. At length, Alpuente, the saints of the Holy Alliance have declared war against us.