MR. JOHN A. HERAUD, EDITOR OF “THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE," TO PROFESSOR WILSON, EDITOR OF "BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE," IN REPLY TO SOME ILL-NATURED REMARKS MADE BY THE LATTER ON THE FORMER IN THE LAST NUMBER OF "OLD EBONY."

TO PROFESSOR WILSON,

SIR,-IN the leading article of the last (CCLXXXVI) Number of Blackwood's Magazine, entitled, "Our Pocket Companions," you have indulged in some remarks on Hope in general, and on Mr. Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope in particular. A paper several years old, in the Quarterly Review, on Mr. Campbell's poetry appears to have offended you; after animadverting on which, you proceed to castigate a passage in one of my productions in the following unjustifiable and unprovoked manner :

A word with John A. Heraud, Esq., author of The Oration on Coleridge, &c. &c. In a Lecture on Poetic Genius as a Moral Power, delivered at the "Milton Institution," occurs this portentous paragraph:

"We have now to do with the poets who exercise activity. Being, we have said, must act—in the neuter and passive, we have detected its eternal operation. But it operates in Time also, and is diligent in reference to sensible ultimates. It is here that the third class of poets are active. Pope, and Campbell, and Rogers, are anxious only for the sensuous form-the channel of expression in which their thoughts shall flow. They prefer Act in its lowest spheres to Being in any. Unconscious of the neuter, and despising the passive, they interpose a set form of speech; and, to do them justice, never dream of publishing themselves for men inspired. If they approach the purlieus of the Eternal and the Ideal, they are sure to blunder. Hence Campbell, at the conclusion of his poem, lights the torch of Hope at Nature's funeral pyre-an error of which any theologian might have admonished him. False and injurious predicator of a state where Faith shall be lost in sight, and in which Hope can have no part; since Hope requires Time for its condition, and has no place in Eternity! Such poets as these are the votaries of the sensuous Present only: what they remember and what they anticipate belong both to this present life-scarcely to the classical past, and little indeed to the theological future. The best of them is rather an essayist on criticism than an essayer in poetry."

As we may have something to say of this Lecture, and eke of the Oration on Coleridge, another day, we (you continue), shall now merely remark that the world will not think the worse of Pope, Campbell, and Rogers, because they 'never dream of publishing themselves for men inspired." Men inspired need

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not take that trouble; for sooner or later--and a few years are of no momentthey will be numbered with the greater or lesser prophets. Men not inspired, but puffed up, may publish themselves for Isaiahs and yet find themselves in the Balaam Box.

It may be very sinful "to despise the passive;" but we cannot think it a serious misfortune to any man" to be unconscious of the neuter," Be this as it may, "John A. Heraud, Esq." who has often "published himself for a man inspired,"* is here guilty of a gross offence to Campbell. His whole Lecture is a series of plagiarisms-as we, at our leisure, shall shew-and he must steal even his insults. But the Quarterly Reviewer always writes like a gentleman —here Mr. Heraud does not; and, servilely adopting another man's error, he pompously emits it as his own truth. He talks of "the purlieus of the Eternal," and the Last Day, as confidently as of the purlieus of Epping Forest, and the Day of the Hunt. We see the curl of contempt on Campbell's poetic lips, and in his poetic eye the smile of disdain.

Such is the style in which you have permitted yourself to remark of a man of whom you know nothing, except from his writings. From the circumstance of a large proportion of these being anonymous, it is very possible that you may have mistaken other people's articles for his, and his for other people's. Hence, I conceive, that you, like many others, have misapprehended my character as a critic and essayist, and suffered your mis-opinion to re-act on your judgement of my acknowledged works. I mention this as possible, since Professor Wilson is not the only literary man who has suffered under error in this respect. As to others, however, permit me to add that their sentiments have altogether changed when they have become aware of the facts. Experience, therefore, teaches me to be charitable in all that regards such mistakes, and I forgive at once Professor Wilson for the irritated tone of the foregoing remarks, which tone evidently proceeds from some motive not to be learned from the surface of the remarks themselves.

It is somewhat singular, that in conversation with a friend, himself a poet of no mean power, I was speculating, only the day before I saw the last number of Blackwood's Magazine, on the remarkable fact, that the criticism of Christopher North had chiefly been expended on the minor poetry of the age, rather than the more ambitious flights occasionally adventured by the English Muse, during his critical reign. This curious fact is acknowledged in the article containing your unprovoked attack on myself. The acknowledgement is in these terms:"Fear not that we are about to indite a critique on Campbell. You know that we never, in all our days, indited a critique on any great poet. No philosophical critic, thank Heaven, are we though we have read the Stagyrite." I leave the acknowledgement as it stands, without pretending to fathom the motive which has dictated so strange a course of proceeding. Dr. Johnson also preferred the lesser to the greater lights of British song--some reason for which I thought fit to guess at in the first of the articles on Milton, which were published in the last volume of this Magazine. But since there is no disputing about tastes, it may, perhaps, be as well to assign none for Mr. Wilson's preferences in this respect; or, if any, I am quite willing to admit the worthiest as the likeliest reasons that actuated him.

Nearly all the criticism that I have written-clearly all that I have

When, where, and how? And if so, what then?

ever written on poetry-has been of the laudatory kind. I have adopted a plan clean contrary to that patronised by yourself. I have chosen the best works of the time for the exercise of what critical talent had been intrusted to my keeping. My articles on Coleridge have been nearly as frequent as your own on Wordsworth, though, I am free to confess, less effective as less powerful-nor always so full as they might and ought to have been, as I have hitherto written under proprietary limitations, from which I believe Professor Wilson has been happily exempt. I too have also written on Wordsworth, and am not unapproved for what I have written, not only as critic but as poet, by Wordsworth himself. The way in which this great man has sought every occasion to speak decidedly in favour of The Judgement of the Flood is exceedingly gratifying to an aspiring mind, that has had to contend with every difficulty. Personally a stranger, as, until very lately, I was to him, I have been continually surprised that he should have solicitously mentioned in his private correspondence me and my works in the terms of the highest esteem. These things, too, have come to my knowledge in the oddest manner; persons unknown to me even by name having sent me extracts from Wordsworth's letters, conceived in somewhat these terms,-" Tell Mr. Heraud, if you know him, that the more I read of his great poem, the stronger is the impression I have of his genius." Others, too, who have returned from a visit to Rydal Mount, have brought similar messages-parties who knew not of the existence of my poem, save by seeing it on Mr. Wordsworth's table.

Now all this (not very remotely) has a bearing on the point stated above-touching the reviewing of the minor or the major poets of the time. I take credit to myself for two things in particular, the review in Fraser of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, and in this Magazine of Ernest; to which I shall have to add, in this number, a criticism on Festus. The remark above alluded to, concerning the extraordinary preference of Christopher North for the modern minor poets, originated in a conversation on the aforesaid article in the July Number of the Monthly on Ernest. Of this poem I had written so warmly, that a suspicion had crept into some minds, more cunning than wise, that that marvellous epic might have been the production of the author of The Judgement of the Flood, and that he was, sub rosa, reviewing his own book. Such minds could not conceive the possibility of one epic poet reviewing another in terms of the highest approbation. They, however, know as little of me as Professor Wilson seems to do. They can as little conceive of literary generosity, as I can of literary jealousy. Why Professor Wilson should have waited until this time-until years after the publication of the works on which he has remarked-before he either alluded to me or them, he can best interpret. I am willing, however, to ascribe it to the cause stated by himself to the course of conduct adopted as the rule of his editorship that "he never in all his days indited a critique on any great poet!"

My conduct, Sir, has been toto cœlo different. To return therefore to Ernest. The reader will recollect that the Editor of this Magazine was at a loss to account for the manner in which the poem of Ernest reached him; to which I may now add, that for a fortnight after the publication of the July review of Ernest, I was ignorant of the author.

After that time, however, I became acquainted with him; and now it is that this subject comes in to illustrate the point that I wish to urge upon, not against, Professor Wilson. In explanation of the mode of transmission, the poet of Ernest stated that the reason why the poem had been so abruptly forwarded to my residence arose from the circumstance of a friend of his insisting on taking a copy to Mr. Heraud, for two reasons: first, because that he was an epic poet, and therefore every new epic poem should by right be presented to him; and, secondly and chiefly, because Mr. Wordsworth had mentioned in such high terms myself to this same friend. Accordingly, a copy was placed in his hands for the purpose of delivery, and, without envelope, was brought by this gentleman from one house to the other, and put in at my door in the manner stated. He then returned to the author of Ernest, saying that he had left the copy at the house. Did I know this friendly go-between? Not even by name. Yet, in total ignorance of all these circumstances, and notwithstanding the objectionable nature of the poem on political grounds, I determined to render justice to the work, influenced by no feeling but that of its poetic excellence. Would Professor Wilson have done this? He reviews no great poem!! Witness, that on the very day in which the Monthly Magazine had the honour of introducing a great poem to public appreciation, Blackwood's Magazine was employed in traducing a long poem-M'Henry's Antediluvians. Such is the difference, it seems, that exists between John Wilson and John A. Heraud!

We have only apparently wandered from the subject-Mr Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, a remark of mine on which excited the Professor's rash and ill-judged sarcasm. It is not likely, judging from my previous conduct, that, in the passage quoted from my lecture, I should have designed to insult Mr. Thomas Campbell. It is now very many years ago since I co-edited with Mr. Robert Maugham, now Secretary to the Law Institution, and some other gentlemen, a periodical emanating from perhaps the most respectable Debating Society ever established,-a quarterly periodical, called the Philomathic Journal, and which was continued to four volumes. In that Journal, all the poetic criticism is from my pen.-There are elaborate papers on Byron-Hogg-Campbell-Southey-papers on the strength of which I was admitted, by Mr. Southey's recommendation, as a critic into the Quarterly Review. With the paper on Campbell, however, we have mainly to do. In what manner did I then treat Campbell ? Disrespectfully? Far from it. I spake of him in the most affectionate terms, and still retain for him and his poetry the most reverential respect. If, in the moment of rhetorical heat, I apostrophised him as "a false and injurious predicator," he will be the first man to excuse such an outburst of philosophical zeal, into which I am sure that no personal feeling entered. At that moment, the names mentioned were to me nothing-the truth to be illustrated every thing.

To come now, then, to the present alleged insult. John Wilson says that I have stolen it, as I generally do such things, and that the "whole lecture is a series of plagiarisms." Poor man! What can have put him into such a vehement rage? Professor Wilson, however, should be about the last man to charge plagiarism on another. His entire

literary career has been altogether dependant on the existence of other authors. Both in manner and in matter he has done nothing all his life long but iterate and amplify the conceptions of other men. This he has done with exceeding skill-the setting that he has given to quotations has been very masterly-but the excellence of his articles has generally resided in the extracts. The article before us is a series of excerpts and to piece it out, he criticises an old critique in the Quarterly, and a Lecture published two or three years ago by the present Editor of the Monthly. Such is the manner in which John Wilson's papers are made-up.

Nevertheless, John Wilson has no faithfuller admirer, as I proved in the last number of this Magazine,* than the man on whom, without provocation, he has thus fallen foul. Though indebted for all his notions to Wordsworth and Coleridge, and reflecting them after an ad captandum fashion of his own, I strongly favour Wilson's critical writing-even for this very cause-that the Critical should be the Mirror to the Poetic Mind of the age.

To drop the indirect, and to address you again immediately: You say that you design, "at your leisure," to shew the series of plagiarisms of which the lecture on Poetic Genius as a Moral Power consists. With all my heart. I shall then learn something. If that lecture be a series of plagiarisms, I must have had the most extraordinary memory in the world. For, as is well known by the gentlemen at whose request it was delivered, that lecture was not written at all—I had no time to write it -and it was spoken on the spur of the occasion. It arose entirely from an accidental occurrence-from my having been accidentally present at a previous lecture, which was of a platonic character; and the lecturer permitting a slight discussion afterwards. I took part in that discussionthe auditors desired to hear me further on the matter. Shortly afterwards, by special request, an extempore lecture was delivered-a gentleman present wrote the words down from my lips, and from his notes the printed copy was taken.

That a mind in the state of extempore speaking will gather about it numerous recollections and associations is clear-but that it can be said to plagiarise is not so. That the passage from the Quarterly Review might have been in my mind is probable-but I keep no copy of the Quarterly Review, and have no extract of such passage among my papers, nor any recollection of having made such extract. I recollect, however, having perused the article itself, and disapproved of it, quite as strongly as Professor Wilson himself.

After the publication of the lecture, and when I had an opportunity of reading what previously I had only spoken-(for I was not, but certain of my auditors were, at the charge and trouble of the publication),— I doubtless found things loosely expressed, and that in this particular statement I had been led into an error. In the heat and onrush of public speech, a stray recollection had crossed my mind, which, being the readiest illustration at hand, and having no time to examine it, was admitted. I had not, however, to wait, Sir, for your correction. I received it in a much truer form from a strange kind of weekly periodi

* The leading article, entitled, John Wilson's Poetry reviewed by Christopher North.