Like those unfortunate chiefs of the middle ages who were suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish under that load of words which was designed for their defence and their ornament. But it is clear from the remains of his conversation, that he had more of that homely wisdom which nothing but experience and observation can give than any writer since the time of Swift. If he had been content to write as he talked, he might have left books on the practical art of living superior to the Directions to Servants. were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, Yet even his remarks on society, like and might hear Pericles speak four or his remarks on literature, indicate a five times every month. He saw the mind at least as remarkable for nar- plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes: rowness as for strength. He was no he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias master of the great science of human and the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew nature. He had studied, not the genus by heart the choruses of Eschylus: he man, but the species Londoner. No- heard the rhapsodist at the corner of body was ever so thoroughly conversant the street reciting the shield of Achilles with all the forms of life and all the or the Death of Argus: he was a legisshades of moral and intellectual cha-lator, conversant with high questions racter which were to be seen from Is- of alliance, revenue, and war: he was lington to the Thames, and from Hyde- a soldier, trained under a liberal and Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of England he knew nothing; and he took it for granted that every body who lived in the country was either stupid or miserable. "Country gentlemen," said he, "must be unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion;" as if all those peculiar habits and associations which made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a Johnson's friends have allowed that barbarous people." In conversation he carried to a ridiculous extreme his with Sir Adam Ferguson he used si- unjust contempt for foreigners. He milar language. "The boasted Atheni- pronounced the French to be a very ans," he said, "were barbarians. The silly people, much behind us, stupid, mass of every people must be barbarous ignorant creatures. And this judgwhere there is no printing." The fact ment he formed after having been at was this: he saw that a Londoner who Paris about a month, during which he could not read was a very stupid and would not talk French, for fear of giv brutal fellow: he saw that great refine-ing the natives an advantage over him ment of taste and activity of intellect in conversation. He pronounced them, generous discipline: he was a judge compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education, an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil. also, to be an indelicate people, be-, travelling? What did Lord Charlemont cause a French footman touched the learn in his travels, except that there sugar with his fingers. That ingenious was a snake in one of the pyramids of and amusing traveller, M. Simond, has Egypt ?" History was, in his opinion, defended his countrymen very success- to use the fine expression of Lord fully against Johnson's accusation, and Plunkett, an old almanack: historians has pointed out some English practices could, as he conceived, claim no higher which, to an impartial spectator, would dignity than that of almanack-makers; seem at least as inconsistent with phy- and his favourite historians were those sical cleanliness and social decorum as who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no those which Johnson so bitterly repre- higher dignity. He always spoke with hended. To the sage, as Boswell loves contempt of Robertson. Hume he to call him, it never occurred to doubt would not even read. He affronted that there must be something eternally one of his friends for talking to him and immutably good in the usages to about Catiline's conspiracy, and dewhich he had been accustomed. In clared that he never desired to hear of fact, Johnson's remarks on society be- the Punic war again as long as he lived. yond the bills of mortality, are generally Assuredly one fact which does not of much the same kind with those of directly affect our own interests, conhonest Tom Dawson, the English foot-sidered in itself, is no better worth man in Dr. Moore's Zeluco. " Suppose knowing than another fact. The fact the king of France has no sons, but that there is a snake in a pyramid, or only a daughter, then, when the king the fact that Hannibal crossed the dies, this here daughter, according to Alps, are in themselves as unprofitable that there law, cannot be made queen, to us as the fact that there is a green but the next near relative, provided he blind in a particular house in Threadis a man, is made king, and not the needle Street, or the fact that a Mr. last king's daughter, which, to be sure, Smith comes into the city every mornis very unjust. The French footguards ing on the top of one of the Blackwall are dressed in blue, and all the march-stages. But it is certain that those ing regiments in white, which has a very foolish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the artillery." Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a state of society completely new to him; and a salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and those studies which tend to emancipate the mind from the prejudices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance. "What does a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape whose whole communion is with one generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In short, the real use of travelling and of studying history is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in reality. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit| Saxon or Norman-French, of which and his sense in forcible and natural the roots lie in the inmost depths of expressions. As soon as he took his our language; and that he felt a vipen in his hand to write for the public, cious partiality for terms which, long his style became systematically vicious. after our own speech had been fixed, All his books are written in a learned were borrowed from the Greek and language, in a language which nobody Latin, and which, therefore, even when hears from his mother or his nurse, in lawfully naturalised, must be consia language in which nobody ever dered as born aliens, not entitled to quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes rank with the king's English. His love, in a language in which nobody constant practice of padding out a ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson sentence with useless epithets, till it himself did not think in the dialect in became as stiff as the bust of an exwhich he wrote. The expressions which quisite, his antithetical forms of exprescame first to his tongue were simple, sion, constantly employed even where energetic, and picturesque. When he there is no opposition in the ideas exwrote for publication, he did his sen- pressed, his big words wasted on little tences out of English into Johnsonese. things, his harsh inversions, so widely His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. different from those graceful and easy Thrale are the original of that work inversions which give variety, spirit, of which the Journey to the Hebrides and sweetness to the expression of our is the translation; and it is amusing great old writers, all these peculiarities to compare the two versions. "When have been imitated by his admirers we were taken up stairs," says he in and parodied by his assailants, till the one of his letters, a dirty fellow public has become sick of the subject. bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 46 Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that he made less use than any other eminent writer of those strong plain words, Anglo Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her relations, in such terms as these: "I was surprised, after the civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded, and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla informs us, that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have ic general received only from posterity: To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner and that careless table-talk the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe. JOHN HAMPDEN. (DECEMBER, 1831.) Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD NUGENT. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1881. WE have read this book with great We had something more to say. But our article is already too long; and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvass of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Lang-pleasure, though not exactly with that ton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face, scamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir ?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!" What a singular destiny has been It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close resemblance to a passage in the Rambler (No. 20.). The resemblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord Nugent would have been able to collect, from family papers and local traditions, much new and interesting information respecting the life and character of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, the first of those great English commoners whose plain addition of Mister has, to our ears, a more majestic sound than the proudest of the feudal titles. In this hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly not from any want of zeal or diligence on the part of the noble biographer. Even at Hampden, there are, it seems, no important papers relating to the most illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend Sir John Eliot. Lord Eli t has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence. The across the path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required; and to every service the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first order, a most dexterous manager of the House of Commons, a negotiator, a soldier He governed a fierce and turbulent as intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resoIntion expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guarantee the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure respecting the private pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not ex-sembly, abounding in able men, as travagant veneration. easily as he had governed his family. The public life of Hampden is sur-He showed himself as competent to dirounded by no obscurity. His history, rect a campaign as to conduct the basimore particularly from the year 1640 ness of the petty sessions. We can to his death, is the history of England. scarcely express the admiration which These Memoirs must be considered as we feel for a mind so great, and, at the Memoirs of the history of England; same time, so healthful and so well and, as such, they well deserve to be proportioned, so willingly contracting attentively perused. They contain some itself to the humblest duties, so easily curious facts which, to us at least, are expanding itself to the highest, so connew, much spirited narrative, many ju- tented in repose, so powerful in action. dicious remarks, and much eloquent Almost every part of this virtuous and declamation. blameless life which is not hidden from us in modest privacy is a precious and splendid portion of our national history. Had the private conduct of Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had there been even any We are not sure that even the want of information respecting the private character of Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as strikingly characteristic as any which the most minute chronicler, O'Meara, Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell him self, ever recorded concerning their heroes. The celebrated Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned great-weak part in the character of Hampness, who found glory only because glory den, had his manners been in any relay in the plain path of duty. During spect open to ridicule, we may be sure more than forty years he was known that no mercy would have been shown to his country neighbours as a gentle- to him by the writers of Charles's facman of cultivated mind, of high prin- tion. Those writers have carefully preciples, of polished address, happy in his served every little circumstance which family, and active in the discharge of conld tend to make their opponents local duties; and to political men as odious or contemptible. They have an honest, industrious, and sensible made themselves merry with the cant member of Parliament, not eager to of injudicious zealots. They have told display his talents, stanch to his party, us that Pym broke down in a speech, and attentive to the interests of his that Ireton had his nose pulled by constituents. A great and terrible crisis Hollis, that the Earl of Northumbercame. A direct attack was made by land cudgelled Henry Marten, that St. an arbitrary government on a sacred John's manners were sullen, that Vane right of Englishmen, on a right which had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a was the chief security for all their other red nose. But neither the artful Clarights. The nation looked round for a rendon nor the scurrilous Denham defender. Calmly and unostentatiously could venture to throw the slightest the plain Buckinghamshire Esquire im putation on the morals or the manplaced himself at the head of his coun-ners of Hampden. What was the trymen, and right before the face and opinion entertained respecting him by |