Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

I shall say nothing of charades, and such sort of unpardonable trumpery: if charades are made at all, they should be made without benefit of clergy, the offender should instantly be hurried off to execution, and be cut off in the middle of his dullness, without being allowed to explain to the executioner why his first is like his second, or what is the resemblance between his fourth and his ninth.

wit and professed wits

I wish, after all I have said about wit and humor, I could satisfy myself of their good effects upon the character and disposition; but I am convinced the probable tendency of both is, to corrupt the understanding and the heart. I am not speaking of wit where it is kept down by more serious qualities of mind, and thrown into the background of the picture; but where it stands out boldly and emphatically, and is evidently the master quality in any particular mind. Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they afford, are seldom respected for the qualities they possess. The habit of seeing things in a witty point of view, increases, and makes incursions from its own proper regions, upon principles and opinions which are ever held sacred by the wise and good. A witty man is a dramatic performer: in process of time, he can no more exist without applause than he can exist without air; if his audience be small, or if they are inattentive, or if a new wit defrauds him of any portion of his admiration, it is all over with him – he sickens, and is extinguished. The applauses of the theatre on which he performs are so essential to him, that he must obtain them at the expense of decency, friendship, and good feeling. It must always be probable, too, that a mere wit is a person of light and frivolous understanding. His business is not to discover relations of ideas that are useful, and have a real influence upon life, but to discover the more trifling relations which are only amusing; he never looks at things with the naked eye of common sense, but is always gazing at the world through a Claude Lorraine glass – discovering a thousand appearances which are created only by the instrument of inspection, and covering every object with factitious and unnatural colors. In short, the character of a mere wit it is impossible to consider as very amiable, very respectable, or very safe. So far the world, in judging of wit where it has swallowed up all other qualities, judge aright; but I doubt if they are sufficiently indulgent to this faculty where it exists in a lesser degree, and as one out of many other ingredients of the understanding. There is an association in men's minds between dullness and wisdom, amusement and folly, which has a very powerful influence in decision upon character, and is not overcome without considerable difficulty. The reason is, that the outward signs of a dull man and a wise man are the same, and so are the outward signs of a frivolous man and a witty man; and we are not to expect that the majority will be disposed to look to much more than the outward sign. I believe the fact to be, that wit is very seldom the only eminent quality which resides in the mind of any man; it is commonly accompanied by many other talents of every description, and ought to be considered as a strong evidence of a fertile and superior understanding. Almost all the great poets, orators, and statesmen of all times, have been witty, Cæsar, Alexander, Aristotle, Descartes, and Lord Bacon, were witty men; so were Cicero, Shakspeare, Demosthenes, Boileau, Pope, Dryden, Fontenelle, Jonson, Waller, Cowley, Solon, Socrates, Dr. Johnson, and almost every man who has made a distinguished figure in the House of Commons. I have talked of the danger of wit: I do not mean by that to enter into commonplace declamation against faculties because they are dangerous; wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, every thing is dangerous that has efficacy and vigor for its characteristics: nothing is safe but mediocrity. The business is, in conducting the understanding well, to risk something; to aim at uniting things that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an extraordinary man is, that he is eight men, not one man; that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense as if he had no wit; that his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honor, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit; wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness – teaching age, and care, and pain to smile – extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this, is surely the flavor of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marl."

influence of association

I remember once seeing an advertisement in the papers, with which I was much struck; and which I will take the liberty of reading: "Lost, in the Temple Coffee-house, and supposed to be taken away by mistake, an oaken stick, which has supported its master not only over the greatest part of Europe, but has been his companion in his journeys over the inhospitable deserts of Africa: whoever will restore it to the waiter, will confer a very serious obligation on the advertiser; or, if that be any object, shall receive a recompense very much above the value of the article restored." Now, here is a man, who buys a sixpenny stick, because it is useful; and, totally forgetting the trifling causes which first made his stick of any consequence, speaks of it with warmth and affection; calls it his companion; and would hardly have changed it, perhaps, for the gold stick which is carried before the king. But the best and the strongest example of this, and of the customary progress of association, is in the passion of avarice. A child only loves a guinea because it shines; and, as it is equally splendid, he loves a gilt button as well. In after-life, he begins to love wealth, because it affords him the comforts of existence; and then loves it so well, that he denies himself the common comforts of life to increase it. The uniting idea is so totally forgotten, that it is completely sacrificed to the ideas which it unites. Two friends unite against the person to whose introduction they are indebted for their knowledge of each other; exclude him their society, and ruin him by their combination.

indestructibility of enjoyment

Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence, by the memory of it. A childhood passed with a due mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a feeling of calm pleasure; and, in extreme old age, is the very last remembrance which time can erase from the mind of man. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life, from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure: and it is most probably the recollection of their past pleasures, which contributes to render old men so inattentive to the scenes before them; and carries them back to a world that is past, and to scenes never to be renewed again.

happiness as a moral agent

That virtue gives happiness we all know; but if it be true that happiness contributes to virtue, the principle furnishes us with some sort of excuse for the errors and excesses of able young man, at the bottom of life, fretting with impatience under their obscurity, and hatching a thousand chimeras of being neglected and overlooked by the world. The natural cure for these errors is the sunshine of prosperity: as they get happier, they get better, and learn, from the respect which they receive from others, to respect themselves. "Whenever," says Mr. Lancaster (in his book just published), "I met with a boy particularly mischievous, I made him a monitor: I never knew this fail." The cause for the promotion, and the kind of encouragement it must occasion, I confess appear rather singular, but of the effect, I have no sort of doubt.

power of habit

Habit uniformly and constantly strengthens all our active exertions: whatever we do often, we become more and more apt to do. A snuff-taker begins with a pinch of snuff per day, and ends with a pound or two every month. Swearing begins in anger; it ends by mingling itself with ordinary conversation. Such-like instances are of too common notoriety to need that they be adduced; but, as I before observed, at the very time that the tendency to do the thing is every day increasing, the pleasure resulting from it is, by the blunted sensibility of the bodily organ, diminished, and the desire is irresistible, though the gratification is nothing. There is rather an entertaining example of this in Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild," in that scene where he is represented as playing at cards with the count, a professed gambler. "Such," says Mr. Fielding, "was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."

the use of the passions

The passions are in morals, what motion is in physics; they create, preserve, and animate, and without them all would be silence and death. Avarice guides men across the deserts of the ocean; pride covers the earth with trophies, and mausoleums, and pyramids; love turns men from their savage rudeness; ambition shakes the very foundations of kingdoms. By the love of glory, weak nations swell into magnitude and strength. Whatever there is of terrible, whatever there is of beautiful in human events, all that shakes the soul to and fro, and is remembered while thought and flesh cling together, all these have their origin from the passions. As it is only in storms, and when their coming waters are driven up into the air, that we catch a sight of the depths of the sea, it is only in the season of perturbation that we have a glimpse of the real internal nature of man. It is then only that the might of these eruptions, shaking his frame, dissipates all the feeble coverings of opinion, and rends in pieces that cobweb vail with which fashion hides the feelings of the heart. It is then only that Nature speaks her genuine feelings; and, as at the last night of Troy, when Venus illumined the darkness, Æneas saw the gods themselves at work, so may we, when the blaze of passion is flung upon man's nature, mark in him the signs of a celestial origin, and tremble at the invisible agents of God!

Look at great men in critical and perilous moments, when every cold and little spirit is extinguished: their passions always bring them out harmless, and at the very moment when they seem to perish, they emerge into greater glory. Alexander in the midst of his mutinous soldiers; Frederick of Prussia, combating against the armies of three kingdoms; Cortes, breaking in pieces the Mexican empire: their passions led all these great men to fix their attention strongly upon the objects of their desires; they saw them under aspects unknown to, and unseen by common men, and which enabled them to conceive and execute those hardy enterprises, deemed rash and foolish, till their wisdom was established by their success. It is, in fact, the great passions alone which enable men to distinguish between what is difficult and what is impossible; a distinction always confounded by merely sensible men, who do not even suspect the existence of those means which men of genius employ to effect their object. It is only passion which gives a man that high enthusiasm for his country, and makes him regard it as the only object worthy of human attention; an enthusiasm which to common eyes appears madness and extravagance, but which always creates fresh powers of mind, and commonly insures their ultimate success. In fact, it is only the great passions which, tearing us away from the seductions of indolence, endow us with that continuity of attention, to which alone superiority of mind is attached. It is to their passions alone, under the providence of God, that nations must trust, when perils gather thick about them, and their last moments seem to be at hand. The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their passions; by their deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is once formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless, and when men must trust to emotion for that safety which reason at such times can never give. These are the feelings which led the ten thousand over the Carduchian mountains; these are the feelings by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power of Persia: they have, by turns, humbled Austria, reduced Spain; and in the fens of the Dutch, and on the mountains of the Swiss, defended the happiness, and revenged the oppressions of man! God calls all the passions out in their keenness and vigor for the present safety of mankind. Anger, and revenge, and the heroic mind, and a readiness to suffer; all the secret strength, all the invisible array of the feelings, all that nature has reserved for the great scenes of the world. For the usual hopes and the common aids of man are all gone! Kings have perished, armies are subdued, nations mouldered away! Nothing remains, under God, but those passions which have often proved the best ministers of His vengeance, and the surest protectors of the world.

In that, and similar passages, a sustained feeling and expression not ordinarily associated with Sydney Smith, impresses the reader with its unaffected eloquence and emotion. We close the book reluctantly, for we leave many things unquoted that had the most forcibly impressed us. In the two chapters on the conduct of the understanding, there are most masterly disquisitions on labor and study as connected with the manifestations of genius; on the importance of men adhering to the particular line of their powers or talents, and on the tendency of all varieties of human accomplishment to the same great object of exalting and gladdening life. We would also particularly mention a happy and noble recommendation of the uses of classical study at the close of the chapter on the sublime.

YOUNG POET'S PLAINT

God, release our dying sister!Beauteous blight hath sadly kiss'd herWhiter than the wild, white roses,Famine in her face disclosesMute submission, patience holy,Passing fair! but passing slowly.Though she said, "You know I'm dying."In her heart green trees are sighing;Not of them hath pain bereft her,In the city, where we left her:"Bring," she said, "a hedgeside blossom!"Love shall lay it on her bosom.Elliott.

Alexander after the retreat from Lutzen. – "The Emperor of Russia passed the night of the battle at Pegau, whither his britcka containing his papers and camp-bed had been brought; and, after having been twenty-four hours on horseback, Lord Cathcart and his staff found the bare floor of a cottage so comfortable a couch, without even the luxury of straw, that no one seemed in a hurry to rise when we were informed soon after daylight, that his imperial majesty was about to mount and depart, and that the enemy were approaching to dislodge us. The emperor slowly rode some miles toward the rear, along the Altenburg road, conversing with Lord Cathcart about the battle: he laid great stress upon the report of the commandant of artillery as to the want of ammunition, which he assigned as the principal reason for not renewing the action; he spoke of the result as a victory gained on our side; and it was afterward the fashion in the army to consider it as such, though not perhaps a victory so important in its consequences, or so decisive as could have been wished. At length the emperor observed that he did not like to be seen riding, fast to the rear, and that it was now necessary for him to go to Dresden with all expedition, and prepare for ulterior operations: he then entered his little traveling-carriage, which was drawn by relays of Cossack horses, and proceeded by Altenburg to Penig." —Cathcart.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

SONNETS FROM THE ITALIAN

upon the death of the redeemerby minzoniWhen, in that last, loud wail, the Son of GodRent open graves and shook the mountain's steep —Adam, affrighted from his world-long sleep,Raised up his head; then stark and upright stood:With fear and wonder filled, he moved aroundHis troubled eyes – then asked, with throbbing heart,Who was that awful One who hung apart,Gore-stained and lifeless, on the curst tree bound.Soon as he learned, his penitent hand defiledHis shriveled brow and bloodless cheeks, and toreThe hoary locks that streamed his shoulders o'er.Turning to Eve, in lamentation wild,He cried, 'till Calvary echoed to the cry —"Woman! for thee I've given my Lord to die!"two sonnets on judasby montiiDown on the Temple-floor the traitor flungThe infamous bribe for which he sold the Lord,Then in despair rushed forth, and with a cord,From out the tree, his reprobate body hung.Pent in his throat, the struggling spirit pouredA mingled sound of rage and wildest grief,And Christ it cursed, and its own sin in chief,Which glutted hell with triumphs so abhorred.Forth with a howl at last the spirit fled.Then Justice bore it to the holy mount,And dipping there her finger in the fountOf Christ's all-sacred blood, the sentence dreadWrote on its brow of everlasting woe,Then, loathing, plunged it into hell below.iiDown into hell that wretched soul she flung,When lo! a mighty earthquake shook the ground;The mountain reeled. The wind swept fierce aroundThe black and strangled body where it hung.From Calvary at eve, the angels wending,On slow, hushed wing, their holy vigil o'er,Saw it afar, and swift their white wings, blendingWith trembling fear, their pure eyes spread before.Meanwhile fiends pluck the corse down in the gloom,And on their burning shoulders, as a bier,Convey the burden to its nameless doom.Cursing and howling, downward thus they steerTheir hell-ward course, and in its depths restoreThe wandering soul to its damned corse once more.sonnet upon judasby gianniSpent with the struggles of his mad despair,Judas hung gasping from the fatal tree;Then swift the tempter-fiend sprang on him there,Flapping his flame-red wings exultingly.With griping claws he clutched the noose that boundThe traitor's throat, and hurled him down below,Where hell's hot depths, incessant bubbling glowHis burning flesh and crackling bones around:There, mid the gloomy shades, asunder rivenBy storm and lurid flame, was Satan seen;Relaxing his stern brow, with hideous grin.Within his dusky arms the wretch he caught,And with smutched lips, fuliginous and hot,Repaid the kiss which he to Christ had given.

THE CHARACTER OF BURNS

by ebenezer elliott

Perhaps no falsehood has been more frequently repeated, than that men of genius are less fortunate and less virtuous than other men; but the obvious truth, that they who attempt little are less liable to failure than they who attempt much, will account for the proverbial good luck of fools. In our estimate of the sorrows and failings of literary men, we forget that sorrow is the common lot; we forget, too, that the misfortunes and the errors of men of genius are recorded; and that, although their virtues may be utterly forgotten, their minutest faults will be sure to find zealous historians. And this is as it should be. Let the dead instruct us. But slanderers blame, in individuals, what belongs to the species. "We women," says Clytemnestra in Eschylus, when meditating the murder of her husband, and in reply to an attendant who was praising the gentleness of the sex, "We women are – what we are." So is it with us all. Then let every fault of men of genius be known; but let not hypocrisy come with a sponge, and wipe away their virtues.

Of the misfortunes of Cowper we have all heard, and certainly he was unfortunate, for he was liable to fits of insanity. But it might be said of him, that he was tended through life by weeping angels. Warm-hearted friends watched and guarded him with intense and unwearied solicitude; the kindest hearted of the softer sex, the best of the best, seems to have been born only to anticipate his wants. A glance at the world, will show us that his fate, though sad, was not saddest; for how many madmen are there, and how many men still more unfortunate than madmen, who have no living-creature to aid, or soothe, or pity them! Think of Milton – "blind among enemies!"

But the saddest incident in the life of Cowper remains to be told. In his latter days, he was pensioned by the crown – a misfortune which I can forgive to him, but not to destiny. It is consoling to think, that he was not long conscious of his degradation after the cruel kindness was inflicted on him. But why did not his friends, if weary of sustaining their kinsman stricken by the arrows of the Almighty, suffer him to perish in a beggars' mad-house? Would he had died in a ditch rather than this shadow had darkened over his grave! Burns was more fortunate in his death than Cowper: he lived self-supported to the end. Glorious hearted Burns! Noble, but unfortunate Cowper!

Burns was one of the few poets fit to be seen. It has been asserted that genius is a disease – the malady of physical inferiority. It is certain that we have heard of Pope, the hunchback: of Scott and Byron, the cripples: of the epileptic Julius Cæsar, who, it is said, never planned a great battle without going into fits; and of Napoleon, whom a few years of trouble killed: where Cobbett (a man of talent, not of genius) would have melted St. Helena, rather than have given up the ghost with a full belly. If Pope could have leaped over five-barred gates, he probably would not have written his inimitable sofa-and-lap-dog poetry; but it does not follow that he would not have written the "Essay on Man;" and they who assert that genius is a physical disease, should remember that, as true critics are more rare than true poets, we having only one in our language, William Hazlitt, so, very tall and complete men are as rare as genius itself, a fact well known to persons who have the appointment of constables. And if it is undeniable that God wastes nothing, and that we, therefore, perhaps seldom find a gigantic body combined with a soul of Æolian tones; it is equally undeniable, that Burns was an exception to the rule – a man of genius, tall, strong, and handsome, as any man that could be picked out of a thousand at a country fair.

But he was unfortunate, we are told. Unfortunate! He was a tow-heckler who cleared six hundred pounds by the sale of his poems: of which sum he left two hundred pounds behind him, in the hands of his brother Gilbert: two facts which prove that he could neither be so unfortunate, nor so imprudent, as we are told he was. If he had been a mere tow-heckler, I suspect he would never have possessed six hundred shillings.

But he was imprudent, it is said. Now, he is a wise man who has done one act that influences beneficially his whole life. Burns did three such acts – he wrote poetry – he published it; and, despairing of his farm, he became an exciseman. It is true he did one imprudent act; and, I hope, the young persons around me will be warned by it; he took a farm, without thoroughly understanding the business of farming.