ENGLISH THOUGHT IN THE LAST CENTURY,* [SEOOND NOTIOE1 TBERE is
in all history, perhaps, no more striking example of the way in which "impulses" from a very few men or women may spread and grow to great issues, than we may find in tracing—as far as we can—the influence of Butler, William Law, and Wesley. Men as different as William Pitt and Dr. James Martineau have said—very one sidedly, as we hold, for the Analogy is full of true religion—that the Analogy contains "the most terrible persuasives to Atheism," but as a moralist the influence of Butler was profound and far-reaching. What Law and Wesley did is written in lines of light, and how much it all helped to Promote reality even in common life aud general litera- ture will never be known. We miss a good deal, because we are acutely daunted by the bardness,worldiness, and stupid depravity of the times. We must always remember, however, in reading the history of the first part of the century, that we are barely out of the shadow of the Restoration. The purer literature—Thomson and Cowper, for instance—comes so close to our minds, that we are apt to forget this, and that from the death of Charles II. to the accession of George I., is little more than a quarter of a century. A single incident recorded by Lady Cowper in her Diary brings this vividly before the mind. At the coronation of George I. the Countess of Dorchester was present, and stood close to Lady Cowper, then Miss Clavering (Molly Clavering, her fine-lady friends sometimes called her), on the steps of the pulpit iu Westminster Abbey. When the Archbishop of Can- terbury demanded if any present challenged the sovereign right of the monarch about to be crowned, Lady Dorchester looked up at Miss Claveriug, and said, " Does the old fool think that anybody here will say 'No' to his question, when there are so many .drawn swords P" Now, Lady Dorchester had been one of the favourites of James IL, and had been ennobled by him in that capacity. There is in Wollaston a single touch of calm sarcasm, which no one who has studied his portrait will be surprised at. Having referred to the " marriage troth," he remarks, in a foot-note, that "the form is still extant in our public offices, and may be seen by such as have forgot it." If another writer, to whom we will now pass, could have commanded as quiet a touch, his satires would have been inure effective, and his suggestions of the depravity of the times— which Wollaston makes :so real to us by this reticent stroke— more complete.
It is no fault of Mr. Stephen's that he does not take up Young's pixise writings ; but they would have served his pur- pose well, and some of them have been " cribs " for unscrupulous pulpit orators, they are so crammed with clever things. One of the most " pious " of the prose works of this strange, ghoul- like epigrammatist (who iu some respects resembled Sterne) is called A True Estimate of Human Life, in which the Passions arq Considered in a New Light. It was dedicated to Queen Caroline, and was written with an eye to preferment. The " design," as expounded by the reverend author in his appeal, not to say his abject petition, to her Majesty, is to "remove the prevailing mistake that this world is a vale of tears." Mr. Young undertakes to prove that its arrangements are." lavish (even) to the luxuries of man," and that we ought all to be very
* Ilistorg of Ennlinh Moonlit is the Eighteenth Century. By Leslie Stephen. 2 vols. Second Edition. Loadon : &pith, Elder, and Co.
comfortable. This " design " was never carried "beyond its first part," the Queen not having encouraged the author to go- farther with his cheerful task. It is probable that if she road the book, she was puizled by it, or else displeased at the paradoxical conceit of the author. It is the most doleful picture• of human misery ever put upon canvas. And then the author refers the baffled reader to the second part. Now, this was an obvious conjuring trick, which Orator Henley, attitudinising to the "beer-suckers in Butchers' Row," could not have excelled.. The second part of these dissolving views was never exhibited, and human life, so far as Young was concerned, remained the vale of tears he had solemnly declared it was not. There was: also a sermon on the death of King Charles the Martyr. If it does not affirm the divine right of kings—which, indeed, it narrowly escapes doing—it certainly encourages them on " Scriptural" principles to assume the god, affect to nod, and generally to regard. their subjects as a sort of vermin, who are .
of no account, except in the light of the royal beneficence.. Orator Henley could sing or say :—
" Away with the wicked before the King! Away with the wicked behind him! His throne it will bless with righteousness, And we shall know where to find him !"
But Young laid it down, with hungry unction, that even when kings did wrong, it was often vicariously, the people being the real sinners, the monarch only a cat's-paw. This might have.
proved very consoling to Jemmy Dawson, or some other. such victim, if he was fully conscious at the moment of disembowelling. But, perhaps the greatest distinction of Young is to have produced in his poem of the Last Day the most elaborately horrible " Tartareau drench" con- cerning the fate of the lost that can be referred to. The• celebrated passage in Tertullian sinks into insignificance by the side of Young's infernal couplets. It must be remembered that this witty vampire of a divine (who sot up a bowling-green, with an assembly room, in his parish !) is gaily humorous, at the expense of Tillotson and Burnett, on this subject of the life.
On page 452 of Vol. II., we are told by Mr. Stephen that Wordsworth " hated science." Well, Wordsworth, no doubt, said and did inconsistent things ; but if ho hated science (especially for the reason Mr. Stephen gives), Mr. John Stuart.
Mill must not only have drawn a wrong inference, but made a spurious quotation on pages 631 and 632 of his book on Sir. William Hamilton (fourth edition). The words are very strong, and Mr. Mill takes them as ranking Wordsworth with Goethe. and Faraday on the question of the relation of poetry to science. Wordsworth's view of the relation of poetry to science is also stated at some length, in the " Observations" prefixed to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads. He expressly says that "poetry is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science ;" that, "the re- motest discoveries of the chemist or mineralogist" may become "proper objects of the poet's art ; " and that false ornament is had in poetry, because (among other reasons) it is unscientific. We may add, with an eye to a dictum, on page 457 of Vol.
II., that we do not believe Mr. Stephen, or anybody else- beneath the visiting moon, knows what "gave birth to the nature.worship of Wordsworth."
On page 447 of Vol. II., an attack on what no one defends in Ossian is accompanied by the off-hand remark that " nobody can now read it." " Nobody " is a large word,. but it might be made to look small in this case. Not to make-
-a long story, however, see Mr. Emerson in various places, and Mr. Matthew Arnold at pp. 152 to 154 of his book on the Study
of Celtic Literature. Even if a writer is certain that he cannot be convicted of an oversight in multiplying hasty dicta, it is bad policy, because it is sure to arouse unnecessary resentment somewhere, especially when an author's idea of amenity of manner somewhat resembles,—if Mr. Stephen will forgive us, —that of Hood's bullock-driver, who, on being urged by Hood to " try conciliation, my good man," drove his goad into.
the creature's haunch, and turned buoyantly round to Hood with, "'There ! I've conziliated him !" To return, before con- eluding, for just one sentence to a minor point, what is the good of a line or two about a writer like Mrs. Inchbald P The mere general reader goes away empty as he came, while the reader for whom the mere name of the woman calls up her beauty, her plays, her life, and her friends, is simply irritated, even iu the midst of much pleasant matter.
Previous page
