it is a piece of natural history. The monks are the larger and more solemn species, to be sure. Swift has taken a good bird's-eye view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a damned spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos. The words Heretic or Papist, Jew or Infidel, labelled on those who differ from us, stand us in lieu of sense or decency. If a man be mean, he sets up for economy; if selfish, he pretends to be prudent; if harsh, firm; and so on. What enormities, what follies are not undertaken for the love of glory?-and the worst of all, are said to be for the glory of God! Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!

LXV

The meaning of all which is, that man is the only hypocrite in the creation; or that he is composed of two natures, the ideal and the physical, the one of which he is always trying to keep a secret from the other. He is the Centaur not fabulous.

LXVI

who is full of secrets is a knave or a fool, or both.

LXVII

The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and material

part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human nature. The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not, and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.'

LXVIII

People cry out against the preposterous absurdity of such representations as the German inventions of the Devil's Elixir and the Bottle Imp. Is it then a fiction that we see? Or is it not rather a palpable reality that takes place every day and hour? Who is there that is not haunted by some heated phantom of his brain, some wizard spell, that clings to him in spite of his will, and hurries him on to absurdity or ruin? There is no machinery or phantasmagoria of a melo-drame, more extravagant than the workings of the passions. Mr. Farley may do his worst with scaly forms, with flames, and dragon's wings: but after all, the true demon is within us. How many, whose senses are shocked at the outward spectacle, and who turn away startled or disgusted might say, pointing to their bosoms, The moral is here!'

LXIX

Mr. L. — asked Sir Thomas who had been intimate with the Prince, if it was true that he was so fine a gentleman as he was generally represented? Sir Thomas made answer, that it was certainly true that the Prince was a very fine gentleman indeed: 'but,' added he, if I am to speak my mind, the finest gentleman I ever saw, was Sadi Baba, the ambassador to Constantinople, from the Usbek Tartars.'

LXX

Man is in no haste to be venerable.' At present, it seems as if there were no occasion to become so. People die as usual; but it is not the fashion to grow old. Formerly, men subsided and settled down into a respectable old age at forty, as they did into a bob-wig,

and a brown coat and waistcoat of a certain cut. The father of a family no longer pretended to pass for a gay young fellow, after he had children grown up; and women dwindled, by regular and willing gradations, into mothers and grandmothers, transferring their charms and pretensions to a blooming posterity; but these things are never thought of now-a-days. A matron of sixty flaunts it in 'La Belle Assemblée's dresses for May:' and certainly M. Stultz never inquires into the grand climacteric of his customers. Dress levels

all ages as well as all ranks.

A CHAPTER ON EDITORS

The Monthly Magazine.]

"Our withers are unwrung.'

[November, 1830.

EDITORS are (to use an approved Scotch phrase-for what that is Scotch is not approved?) a sort of tittle-tattle'-difficult to deal with, dangerous to discuss. A capital subject for an article, great scope, complete novelty, and ground never touched upon!' Very true; for what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common foibles of his tribe. What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in manuscript, turns to a compliment in print-the exception in this, as in other cases, proves the rule-an inference we have endeavoured to express in our motto.

With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and honorary situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they are chosen to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to the reading public; but they soon fancy that the situation has been invented for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who imagine that they are the state. Editors are but men, and easily lay the flattering unction to their souls' that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or the Review they conduct. They have got a little power in their hands, and they wish to employ that power (as all power is employed) to increase the sense of self-importance; they borrow a certain dignity from their situation as arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and they are determined to keep it to the detriment of their employers and of every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should be any thing behind the Editor's chair, greater than the Editor's chair. That is a scandal to be prevented at all risks. The publication they are entrusted with for the amusement and edification of the town, they

convert, in theory and practice, into a stalking horse of their own vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as they might have written it is to have the Editor's mark, like the broad R, on every page, or the N. N. at the Tuilleries; it is to bear the same image and superscription-every line is to be upon oath nothing is to be differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor could have done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in dulness and insipidity.

It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. As Mr. Horne Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Kenyon, There are two parties in this cause-myself and the jury; the judge and the crier of the court attend in their respective places: so in every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties-the writers and the public; the Editor and the printer's-devil are merely the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There is a secret consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the Literary Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than use; and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others froin doing their best. The 'dog-in-the-manger' principle comes into full play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or likelihood, it goes in; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to draw attention, to make a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every objection is weighed: if grave, it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty. One way or other, it might be better; and while this nice point is pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there is no question about.

The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous apprehension of the Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of the contributions on which he has to pass judgment; and the nearer an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw, or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair's-breadth difference, to its final reception. If people are likely to ask, 'Who wrote a certain paper in the last number of -?' the Editor is bound, as a point of honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of more than the allowed average merit, his next care is to spoil by revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is any thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a paternal regard for the interests of the public, he

takes care that their tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossible to continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious appetite for the piquant and high-seasoned, as we forbid children to indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality of style, to disorder the nerves or perplex the understanding: the reader may read, and smile, and sleep, without meeting a single idea to break his repose!

Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying a pepper-corn rent,' or making one's bow on entering a room: it is being let off cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their own: it is like signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede the march of the style; and others are contented and take great pains (with Lindley Murray's Grammar lying open before them) to alter if it is' into 'if it be.' An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your thoughts into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up into short paragraphs: if you make frequent breaks, they turn the tables on you that way, and throw the whole composition into masses. Any thing to preserve the form and appearance of power, to make the work their own by mental stratagem, to stamp it by some fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run away with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master-spirits of the work and of the age! If there is any point they do not understand, they are sure to meddle with it, and mar the sense; for it piques their self-love, and they think they are bound ex-officio to know better than the writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and produces a cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have taken to compare the context and vary the phraseology.

Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of their contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the right from a single supercilious glance, and you in the wrong, after poring over a subject for a month. There are Editors who, if you insert the name of a popular actor or artist, strike it out, and, in virtue of their authority, insert a favourite of their own,-as a dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blanie nobody. The first excites