Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

It is singular, and marks the change which has taken place in our moral notions. Formerly poets gave to their personages one only vice or passion, taking care in other respects to render them virtuous, in order that they should be worthy of interest; at the present day, our poets give their personages I know not how many passions and vices, with one only virtue as a counterpoise. And this virtue, weak and solitary, is by no means charged with the task of purifying the corrupted mind in which it has by chance been preserved. It carefully respects the independence of those vices which permit it to dwell with them. Neither is it commissioned to inspire an interest in the spectator; because it is vice which now inspires all our interest, thanks to a certain noble and proud bearing which has been assigned to it, and which has been imitated from the heroes of Lord Byron.

M. Girardin, it will have been remarked from the above extract, is disposed to reproach our Lord Byron as the source from which some of his countrymen have drawn their dark inspiration. This may be true. But without defending our Byron from charges to which he is manifestly exposed, let us say thus much for him, that in his poetry he was still too much a classic not to be a worshipper of the beautiful; that he did not court for itself the monstrous, the ugly; his mind did not willingly associate with what was revolting in outward form or human passion. If there was any thing Satanic, as some were pleased to express it, in his poetry, he was not, at all events, of the hobgoblin or demoniac school. It was the Satan of Milton, with its ruined beauty and clouded dignity, that had taken possession of his imagination. He delighted to depict the pride, the love, the generosity, of hearts at war with man, and not on too good terms with heaven; but still it was their pride, their love, their generosity, that occupied his imagination. They are bad men; he takes care to tell us so himself; but he has not the heart to make them act otherwise than as noble fellows while they are under his guidance. The Corsair, from his very name and profession, is a declared criminal; but this once said, the poet occupies himself and his reader with nothing but what is generous and heroic in Conrad. Byron had no disposition, had a certain antipathy, to paint the virtuous man; but it was a virtue, nevertheless, that attracted his pencil. He felt it necessary, as a preliminary condition, to remove his hero from the category of good men; but this being fairly done, he resigned himself to the natural bent for what is good and great. A Borgia, whether male or female, in all its native deformity, was not the subject to allure him.

Nowhere is the rebuke of M. Girardin of certain of his contemporaries, more dignified, or more justly merited, than where, discoursing on the manner in which the moderns have delineated paternal love, he reproves that exaggeration and falsification which has represented the father describing the affection he bears to his daughter in a style of language devoted to another species of love. Nothing can be more odious and offensive than to transgress, even in language, the bounds between the two affections, and to put into the mouth of a parent, as Victor Hugo and Balzac have done, a style appropriate to the lover speaking of his mistress. But we will not quote these passages from M. Girardin, because they will require long quotations in order to justify the censure contained in them. At the close of the lecture upon paternal love, we find the following general remarks on the composition of a modern French drama; and the slightest acquaintance with this drama will enable the reader to appreciate their justice and analytic accuracy:—

Formerly a dramatic character was an assemblage of qualities good and bad, which, on the one hand, were in conflict amongst themselves, and, on the other, were subjected to some superior law of religion, of honour, or of patriotism. This twofold struggle constituted the interest of the person brought upon the scene, and this superior law, which he strove to accomplish, constituted the morality of his character. According to the incidents of the piece, each passion might take the ascendant, none being represented as irresistible; and the moral law which predominated over the drama, did not prevent this play of the passions—it being visibly suspended during the whole piece over the heads of the personages, and receiving its fulfilment only at the close. In the present day dramatic characters are composed differently. Instead of representing the whole of the character, and the struggle between its good and evil passions, one only passion is selected, which is made violent, irresistible, fatal, the absolute mistress of all the others; that is to say, a part is taken instead of the whole. At the same time the moral law which, in the ancient drama, (i.e. the drama of Racine and Corneille,) sustained also a struggle against the passions—this law which those even avowed who transgressed it, which had always its place in the piece, whether through virtue or remorse—this law also disappears before the ascendency of the sovereign passion. No counterpoise of any kind, whether on the side of rival passions or on the side of duty. What remains, then, to struggle against this arbitrary passion? Nothing but chance—circumstance—the hazard of events. And thus it is that, in the modern drama, the interest resides rather in the strange complication of events than in the shock of opposite passions. The poet has only the power of chance, a power sovereignly capricious, to contend against the passion he has chosen to represent. And thus it is that the modern drama has something also of arbitrary and fantastic. Incidents and theatrical effects are accumulated, but the incidents do not spring from the natural movement of the passions brought upon the stage; they have no longer their cause in the characters of the drama; they issue from the fancy of the poet, who, feeling the necessity of arousing his spectators from time to time, complicates the action after a strange fashion, and aims always at surprise.

M. Girardin has a lecture upon suicides, in which he attacks that sentimentality—a mixture, in reality, of weakness and impatience—which in modern literature, and in modern life, often conducts to suicide. The following passage will be acknowledged to be eloquent, and even poetic, unless our translation of it shall have entirely obscured its beauty. After having described the proud and philosophical suicides of ancient Rome, he adds:—

There is another species of suicide more in credit in our days, which is rather occasioned by the weakness and impatience of men than by the violence of their passions, or the eccentricity of their philosophies. This species of suicide is so much the peculiar malady of our times, that we are tempted to think that men are now for the first time infected by it. But no; there exists a literature which has already expressed this our state of restlessness and disquietude, which has described men consuming with melancholy in the midst of riotous joys, and seeking suicide rather as the natural termination of their career than the remedy of their evils. It is the literature of the fathers of the church.

I find amongst the homilies of St Chrysostom a certain Stagyra who was possessed by a demon. To be possessed by a demon is certainly not a malady of our times; but yet we do not wander from our theme. For the demon of Stagyra—it is melancholy, despondency, or, in the much more powerful expression of the Greek, it is athumia—exhaustion of all energy, all vitality of the soul. This is the demon of Stagyra. He is one of those sick and agitated souls who think they belong to the selected portion of mankind, because they want the energy of the vulgar; who contrive for themselves pleasures and afflictions apart from the rest of the world, and who (last trait of weakness and impatience) at once despise and envy the simplicity and the calm of those whom they call little souls. Stagyra, in order to deliver his spirit from its disquietudes, had entered into a monastery; but neither there did he find the peace and lightness of heart which he craved; for man finds at first, in solitude, that only which he brings to it. Stagyra complains to the saint—and the complaint is curious, for it indicates the knowledge of a cure for the evils which torment him, and shows that Stagyra, like many other patients, had neither resolution to support his disease, nor to accept its remedy. 'You complain,' says St Chrysostom, 'that while you, with all your fasts, and vigils, and monastic austerities, have failed to appease your disquietudes, others who, like yourself, had been tormented by the demon of melancholy, while living in the midst of idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence, have found a remedy in marriage, and felt themselves cured the moment they became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction. It is not, then, because life is devoid of pleasure, that men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced, it is true, like a gnawing worm, through all the luxuries of the Roman world; there was no resource against it, either in beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent repasts, or the combats of gladiators, or Milesian tales, or the voluptuous pictures which garnish the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Athumia poisoned all, and the demon possessed the voluptuary in the midst even of the debauch. But if, fatigued with these alternate pleasures and disgusts, he adopted regular and simple manners, married and had had children, then, as if by enchantment the demon quitted him. No more despondency, no more bitterness. The spirit of the possessed was revived, refreshed, renewed by the caresses of his children. There is no demon, not even the demon of melancholy, which dares to encounter the presence of a little child. There is in the innocent fresh breathing of these creatures, something mortal to evil spirits, and a cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all demoniac possession.

What is it, in fact, which man requires, in order to escape from this athumia, this exhaustion of the heart? Hope—a future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live, he despairs and dies. Well, the very charm of children, that which has ranked them, from of old, amongst the blessings of God, is this, that they form the future of every family— that they sustain in every house that sentiment by which the soul of man lives. Children represent the future, and in a form the most joyous and attractive. It is this which constitutes their irresistible fascination—it is this which sheds around their little heads that light of happiness and joy which reflects itself on the countenances of the parents—which warms the heart—which gives to the poor the force to labour, and to the miserable the force to live. Blessed be infancy, which chases the demon!—Blessed be infancy, which keeps alive in each family the sentiment of hope, indispensable to run as the air and the light!

Amongst the faults of his contemporaries, M. Girardin remarks a disposition to materialize the expression of passion, depicting it constantly by violent physical distortions; and also, a tendency to carry that expression to the extremity of rage, where, as he finely observes, all distinction between the various passions is lost, and man deserts his rational nature.

According to the ancient classic imagination, when passion becomes excessive, the man disappears; and this, he adds, is the foundation of what we call the philosophy of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.

In the course of this censure he makes use of a common-place expression, which, we think, includes a common-place error, and therefore we pause for a moment to take notice of it. "It is the pretension of modern art," he tells us, "to say all. What then is left to the imagination of the public? It is often well to trust to the spectator to complete the idea of the poet or the statuary."

This is a mode of expression frequently made use of. Even Lessing has sanctioned it, when in his Laocoon, he speaks of "the highest expression leaving nothing to the imagination."

The leaving something to the imagination can mean this only, that the expression of the artist is suggestive, and kindles thought, and in fact conveys more than is found in its literal interpretation. Now, whatever is highest in art, and especially in poetry, is pre-eminently suggestive; and the highest expression does in fact leave most, or, in other words, suggest most, to the imagination. M. Girardin, in common with many others, speaks of this suggestive quality, the characteristic of the highest form of art, as if it were the result of a voluntary surrender of something by the poet to the reader, as if it were an act of moderation on his part. Surely the poet does not proceed on the principle of saying half, and permitting us to say the other half—out of compliment, perhaps, to our understanding, and as a little bribe to our vanity. The more vivid and powerful his expressions, the more must he leave, or rather the more must he give, indirectly as well as directly, to the imagination of the reader. He will sometimes even bestow what he himself never possessed. The great poet, in pouring out his feelings, must always give something less and something more than was in him at the time.

It has been the fashion to illustrate the principle of leaving something to the imagination, by the ancient picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, where we are told that Agamemnon, the father, was painted hiding his face in his robe. The expression of grief and horror had been given in the countenance of the other bystanders, and it was left to the imagination to divine what passion would have been seen depicted on the face of Agamemnon if that robe had been torn aside. Lessing, and after him M. Girardin, have indeed given a different account of the intention of the painter. The Greek artist, say they, sedulously avoided that distortion of features through excessive grief, which was incompatible with beauty of form. They would tone down the expression, as Lessing argues that the sculptor did in the features of Laocoon, until it became consistent with the lines of beauty. Timanthes, therefore, finding that, in order to render with fidelity the expression of Agamemnon, he must admit such a distortion of the features as would violate the rule, chose rather to veil the countenance. But we would suggest that something else must have weighed with the artist; for if it was an acknowledged principle of Greek art rather to sacrifice a portion of the passion, so to speak, than to admit a distortion of the features, why should Timanthes have felt any scruple, in this instance, in modifying the expression of the father's countenance in obedience to a known rule of art? Why should he have thought himself obliged to resort to the expedient of concealing the face?

We make bold to adopt neither one account nor the other. We neither believe that Timanthes concealed the expression of the father's face upon some principle of "leaving it to the imagination of the reader," nor that he acted in obedience to the rule of art which Lessing lays down with so much ingenuity. We are persuaded that Timanthes painted Agamemnon in the attitude he did, simply because it was the most natural—because it was, in fact, the only attitude in which it was possible to conceive a father present at the sacrifice of his own daughter. Other spectators might have looked on with different degrees of grief or horror, but we feel that the father could not look; he must veil his head. This natural attitude, bespeaking the grief it only seemed to hide, was no doubt highly expressive.

And in this point of view, it may afford no bad illustration of that suggestive language of poetry, which sometimes throws the veil, not to conceal the passion, or to leave it to another imagination to discover, but as the best means of betraying it.

We repeat that we do not profess to give any thing approaching to an analytical review of the lectures of M. Girardin; the illustrations, being taken from the poetry of another nation, would often require a length of explanatory detail quite inconsistent with our limits. We persist, therefore, in regarding them in the one point of view already indicated-namely, as a protest against certain vitiated tastes and deleterious sentiments which prevail at the present day.

We again revert, therefore, to the lecture upon suicide, for the sake of a remark that we find there upon Werther, and on its celebrated author. It is rarely that we hear any one speak out so plainly upon Goethe. After speaking of the "moral vitality" which supports the fatigues and inures us to the self-denials of life, he says:—

There are characters, on the contrary, who we perceive, at first sight, are predestined to die. Ardent and enthusiastic, wanting force and patience—life is evidently not made for them. Such is Werther. Goethe had not created him to live, and he knew this well; so that when some German author, I know not whom, undertook to correct the catastrophe of the romance, and make Werther live instead of committing suicide, Goethe said—'The poor man has no idea that the evil is without remedy, and that a mortal insect has stung our Werther in the flower of his youth.'

What is this mortal insect that has stung the youth of Werther? Mistake it not, it is the spirit of doubt, the spirit of the eighteenth century; and it is not Werther only that the insect has stung—it is Goethe himself. Goethe belongs to the eighteenth century; he is its disciple, its heir; he is, like it, the sceptic, but he is also the poet. It is this which conceals his universal doubt. Besides, as he perceived, with that admirable tact which accompanies his genius, that his scepticism would injure his poetry, he has laboured to correct its influence, and, for this purpose, has called to his aid all the resources of art and science. He has adored nature, he has been a pantheist, he has distributed God everywhere, to compensate for not having him in his own heart; he has adored Greece, and rendered a sort of worship to beauty such as the Greeks conceived it, and endeavoured to find an enthusiasm in the arts; he has adored the south, and sung the Land of the orange grove, because the south is the region of strong faiths, and is repugnant to scepticism; he has adored the middle ages, because they were ignorant of doubt, everywhere he has sought to cure the wound of that insect which had stung his youth. But no; his scepticism pierces through all his enthusiasm, and the very variety of his inspirations proves his indifference. He is neither philosopher, nor devotee, nor Christian, nor pagan, nor courtier, nor citizen, nor of times ancient or modern, nor of the north, nor of the south-or rather, he is all these at once. He is the echo of nature, he repeats to us all her harmonies; but he fails to add that utterance, which unites so well with the harmonies of the world the utterance of his own heart. Ask of Goethe to represent man and nature in all their variety and extent, and he will do it. There is one thing you must not ask of him—himself. This self fails in Goethe; not the self which knows it is a great poet, and will to be one; but that other self, which has a thought, a principle to contend for, which, in short, believes in something. It is there the insect stung; both in Goethe and in Werther.

After discussing the character of modern French literature, there remains the important question to determine, how far the state of literature represents the state of society—how far the one is a faithful picture of the other. Upon this subject M. Girardin concludes his volume with some excellent remarks; but here we must also conclude our notice of this interesting work.

LORD ELDON

In a free country, if there ever was or will be a truly free country besides our own, the life of every public man ought to be written. All would supply a lesson of more or less value; and it is upon lessons of that order that the vigour of the rising generation can alone be trained. Undoubtedly, in the mixed qualities of human nature, there might now and then be formidable displays; the development of the heart might often startle the eye which looked to it for healthy action; the machinery of the mind would require to be examined with the hand of charity as well as the hand of science: but the general result must be knowledge—always interesting, and often of the highest value; for the tendency of manners is, to disappoint that research. The habits, the associations, almost the general peace of society, unite in covering the actual nature of man with a uniform aspect. The unquestionable effect of civilization is, not merely to smooth the inequalities of the surface, but to conceal the actual material—the rough, the hard, the cold, or the pernicious within. But there is no one operation of man, by which human nature is so deeply and so distinctly penetrated and tested, as a true narrative of the career of men acting a prominent part in the world. History is comparatively feeble to this powerful searcher. Its heroes and heroines are placed so palpably on a stage; its dramatis personae are so distant and so disciplined; its positions are so openly arranged for effect, that the nearest approach is only conjecture, as the nearest approach to reality is only illusion. Courts and campaigns are not human life. Kings and ministers, in their court pageantry, are scarcely more entitled to the name of human beings. They are factitious forms, showy spectacles, glittering effigies. But strip off the state costume; stand beside them while they are unconscious of a spectator; enter into their minds; seize their motives; measure their impulses: it is only then that we discover their affinity to the family of man, and by their vigour and virtue model our own.

The life of the Earl of Eldon is an important addition to public biography. Written by a lawyer, it has the advantage of professional knowledge—by a man of a certain experience in public, and even in official life, it exhibits that practical knowledge of affairs which nothing but practice can gain—and by a man of literary accomplishment, it adds, to its more solid merits, those graces of style which supply the last attraction to a work of manly utility. We feel even, in some degree, an uncritical, yet a not less authentic satisfaction in giving our tribute to the work of one connected with a family, whose name brings to the public mind such deep recollections of fine ability finely employed—of talents combined with the noblest triumphs of past genius and of forms and countenances eminently fitted to represent the grand and beautiful of the classic drama of England.

The father of Lord Eldon was William Scott, a merchant of good means and good repute at Newcastle, his principal business being connected with the coal trade. He lived to be seventy-nine years old, and his wife (a second marriage) to be ninety-one. By her he had thirteen children, of whom John (Lord Eldon) was the eighth. William (Lord Stowell) was born in 1745, the year of the Scottish invasion, in Heworth, where his mother had been sent for her accouchement, to avoid the perils, Newcastle then expecting a siege. After her return to Newcastle, she gave birth to John, June 4, 1751. The house was situated at the end of one of those narrow streets, which in the native dialect are called chares, the extremity being a "chare-foot." A bar story is told of a judge on circuit, who hearing a witness depose that he had seen three men come out of a "chare-foot," desired the jury to disregard his evidence altogether, as none but a madman could say that he saw three men come out of the "foot of a chair." Lord Eldon appears to have been so fond of the jest, that he once stated in the Court of Chancery, that "he had been born in a chair-foot." At the suitable age, John and his brothers were sent to the Foundation Grammar School of Newcastle, then under the headship of one Moises, fellow of Peterhouse. His predecessor had been Dawes, the well-known author of the "Miscellanea Critica"—an able scholar, but only an additional example of the frequent insufficiency of scholars to teach. Dawes was eccentric, and injured the reputation of the school. His predominant propensity while in Newcastle was bell-ringing. On his leaving that place he adopted a new taste, that of rowing. If Moises had any peculiar taste, it seems to have been flogging.