useful, his morals must not be totally unlike those of his contemporaries. If the Iliad should, in a long course of ages, have inflamed the ambition and fe- rocity of a few individuals, even that evil, great as it is, will be far from balancing all the generous sentiments, which, for three thousand years, it has been pouring into the hearts of youth; and which it now continues to infuse, aided by the dignity of antiquity, and by all the fire and splendour of poetry. Every succeeding generation, as it refines, requires the standard to be proportionably raised.
man of thirty-eight, the son of a shopkeeper, who never filled an office, or had the power of obliging a living creature, and whose grand title to this dis- tinction was the belief of his virtue. How honour. able to the age and to the House! A country where such sentiments prevail is not ripe for destruction." Sir James could not but feel, in the narrow circles of Bombay, the great superiority of London society; and he has thus recorded his sense of it :-
"Apply these remarks, with the necessary modi. fications, to those fictions copied from common life In great capitals, men of different provinces, called Novels, which are not above a century old, professions, and pursuits are brought together in so and of which the multiplication and the importance, ciety, and are obliged to acquire a habit, a matter, as well literary as moral, are characteristic features and manner mutually perspicuous and agreeable. of England. There may be persons now alive who Hence they are raised above frivolity, and are di- recollect the publication of Tom Jones,' at least, vested of pedantry. In small societies this habit is if not of Clarissa. Since that time, probably not imposed by necessity; they have lower, but twelve novels have appeared of the first rank-a more urgent subjects, which are interesting to all, prodigious number, of such a kind, in any depart-level to all capacities, and require no effort or prepa- ment of literature (by the help of Sir Walter Scott ration of mind." and Miss Edgeworth we may now at least double the number) and the whole class of novels must
have had more influence on the public, than all other sorts of books combined. Nothing popular can be frivolous. Whatever influences multitudes. must be of proportionable importance. Bacon and Turgot would have contempled with inquisitive admiration this literary revolution."
And soon after, while admitting that Tom Jones (for example) is so far from being a moral book as to be deserving of the severest reprobation, he adds-
"Yet even in this extreme case, I must observe that the same book inspires the greatest abhorrence of the duplicity of Blifil, of the hypocrisy of Thwackum and Square; that Jones himself is interesting by his frankness, spirit, kindness, and fidelity-all vir- tues of the first class. The objection is the same in its principle with that to the Iliad. The ancient epic exclusively presents war-the modern novel love; the one what was most interesting in public life, and the other what is most brilliant in private and both with an unfortunate disregard of moral
The entry under 6th March, 1817, has to the writer of this article, a melancholy inter- est, even at this distance of time. It refers to the motion recently made in the House of Commons for a new writ, on the death of Mr. Horner. The reflections with which it closes must, we think, be interesting always.
"March 6th.-The only event which now ap- pears interesting to me, is the scene in the House of Commons on Monday. Lord Morpeth opened it in a speech so perfect, that it might have been well placed as a passage in the most elegant Eng- lish writer; it was full of feeling; every topic was skilfully presented, and contained, by a sort of pru- dence which is a part of taste, within safe limits; he slid over the thinnest ice without cracking it. Canning filled well what would have been the va- cant place of a calm observer of Horner's public life and talents. Manners Sutton's most affecting speech was a tribute of affection from a private friend become a political enemy; Lord Lascelles, at the head of the country gentleman of England, closing this affecting, improving, and most memorable scene by declaring, that if the sense of the House could have been taken on this occasion, it would have been unanimous.' I may say without exagge- ration, that never were so many words uttered with out the least suspicion of exaggeration; and that never was so much honour paid in any age or nation to intrinsic claims alone. A Howard introduced, and an English House of Commons adopted, the proposition, of thus honouring the memory of a
He might have added, that in a great capi- tal the best of all sorts is to be met with; and that the adherents even of the most extreme or fantastic opinions are there so numerous, and generally so respectably headed, as to command a deference and regard that would scarcely be shown to them when appearing as insulated individuals; and thus it happens that real toleration, and true modesty, as well as their polite simulars, are rarely to be met with out of great cities. This, however, is true only of those who mix largely in the general society of such places. For bigots and exclusives of all sorts, they are hot-beds and seats of corruption; since, however ab- surd or revolting their tenets may be, such persons are sure to meet enough of their fel- lows to encourage each other. In the provin ces, a believer in animal magnetism or Ger- man metaphysics has few listeners, and no encouragement; but in a place like London they make a little coterie; who herd together, exchange flatteries, and take themselves for the apostles of a new gospel.
The editor has incorporated with his work some letters addressed to him by friends of his father, containing either anecdotes of his earlier life, or observations on his character and merits. It was natural for a person whose age precluded him from speaking on his own authority of any but recent transactions, to seek for this assistance; and the information contributed by Lord Abinger and Mr. Basil Montagu (the former especially) is very inter- esting. The other letters present us with little more than the opinion of the writers as to his character. If these should be thought too laudatory, there is another character which has lately fallen under our eye, which cer- tainly is not liable to that objection. In the "Table-Talk" of the late Mr. Coleridge, we find these words:-"I doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently origi
After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely carry off any thing worth preserving. You might not improperly write upon his forehead, 'Warehouse to let!" "
We wish to speak tenderly of a man of ge- nius, and we believe of amiable dispositions, who has been so recently removed from his friends and admirers. But so portentous a
we shall only say, that nothing could possibly set the work before us in so favourable i point of view, as a comparison between it and the volumes of "Table Talk," to which we have already made reference- unless, perhaps, it were the contrast of the two minds which are respectively portrayed in these publications.
misjudgment as this, and coming from such a quarter, cannot be passed without notice. If Sir James Mackintosh had any talent more conspicuous and indisputable than another, it was that of appreciating the merits of eminent and original men. His great learning and singular soundness of judgment enabled him to do this truly; while his kindness of na- ture, his zeal for human happiness, and his In these memorials of Sir James Mackin- perfect freedom from prejudice or vanity, tosh, we trace throughout the workings of a prompted him, above most other men, to do powerful and unclouded intellect, nourished it heartily. And then, as to his being a person by wholesome learning, raised and instructed from whose conversation little could be car- by fearless though reverent questionings of ried away, why the most characteristic and the sages of other times (which is the per remarkable thing about it, was that the whole mitted Necromancy of the wise), exercised of it might be carried away-it was so lucid, by free discussion with the most distinguished precise, and brilliantly perspicuous! The joke among the living, and made acquainted with of the "warehouse to let " is not, we confess, its own strength and weakness, not only by quite level to our capacities. It can scarcely a constant intercourse with other powerful mean (though that is the most obvious sense) minds, but by mixing, with energy and de- that the head was empty-as that is incon-liberation, in practical business and affairs; sistent with the rest even of this splenetic and here pouring itself out in a delightful delineation. If it was intended to insinuate miscellany of elegant criticism, original spe- that it was ready for the indiscriminate re-culation, and profound practical suggestions ception of any thing which any one might on politics, religion, history, and all the greater choose to put into it, there could not be a more and the lesser duties, the arts and the ele- gross misconception; as we have no doubt gances of life-all expressed with a beautiful Mr. Coleridge must often have sufficiently clearness and tempered dignity-breathing experienced. And by whom is this dis- the purest spirit of good-will to mankind— covery, that Mackintosh's conversation pre- and brightened not merely by an ardent hope, sented nothing that could be carried away, but an assured faith in their constant advance. thus confidently announced? Why, by the ment in freedom, intelligence, and virtue. very individual against whose own oracular and interminable talk the same complaint has been made, by friends and by foes, and with an unanimity unprecedented, for the last forty years. The admiring, or rather idolizing ne- phew, who has lately put forth this hopeful specimen of his relics, has recorded in the preface, that "his conversation at all times required attention; and that the demand on the intellect of the hearer was often very great; and that, when he got into his 'huge circuit' and large illustrations, most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost himself." Nay, speaking to this very point, of the ease or difficulty of "carrying away" any definite notions from what he said, the partial kinsman is pleased to inform us, that, with all his familiarity with Consulting little at any time with any thing the inspired style of his relative, he himself but his own prejudices and fancies, he seems, has often gone away, after listening to him in his latter days, to have withdrawn alto- for several delightful hours, with divers masses gether from the correction of equal minds; of reasoning in his head, but without being and to have nourished the assurance of his able to perceive what connection they had own infallibility, by delivering mystical ora- with each other. "In such cases," he adds, cles from his cloudy shrine, all day long, to a "I have mused, sometimes even for days after-small set of disciples, to whom neither ques- wards, upon the words, till at length, spon- taneously as it were, the fire would kindle," &c. &c. And this is the person who is pleased to denounce Sir James Mackintosh as an ordi- rary man; and especially to object to his con- versation, that, though brilliant and fluent, there was rarely any thing in it which could be carried away!
An attack so unjust and so arrogant leads naturally to comparisons, which it could be easy to follow out to the signal discomfiture of the party attacking. But without going beyond what is thus forced upon our notice,
On all these points, the "Table Talk ” of his poetical contemporary appears to us to present a most mortifying contrast; and to render back merely the image of a moody mind, incapable of mastering its own imagin- ings, and constantly seduced by them, or by a misdirected ambition, to attempt impracti cable things:-naturally attracted by dim paradoxes rather than lucid truths, and pre- ferring, for the most part, the obscure and ne- glected parts of learning to those that are useful and clear-marching, in short, at all times, under the exclusive guidance of the Pillar of Smoke-and, like the body of its original followers, wandering all his days in the desert, without ever coming in sight of the promised land.
tion nor interruption was allowed. The result of this necessarily was, an excaerbation of all the morbid tendencies of the mind; a daily increasing ignorance of the course of opinions and affairs in the world, and a proportional confidence in his own dogmas and dreams, which might have been shaken, at least, if not entirely subverted, by a closer contact with the general mass of intelligence. Un- fortunately this unhealthful training (pecu- liarly unhealthful for such a constitution) pro- duced not merely a great eruption of ridicu lous blunders and pitiable prejudices, but
seems at last to have brought on a confirmed purpose than to give effect to the enlightened and thoroughly diseased habit of uncharitable- and deliberate will of the community. To ness, and misanthropic anticipations of cor- enforce these doctrines his whole life was ruption and misery throughout the civilised devoted; and though not permitted to com- world. The indiscreet revelations of the work plete either of the great works he had pro- to which we have alluded have now brought jected, he was enabled to finish detached to light instances, not only of intemperate portions of each, sufficient not only fully to abuse of men of the highest intellect and develope his principles, but to give a clear most unquestioned purity, but such predic- view of the whole design, and to put it in the tions of evil from what the rest of the world power of any succeeding artist to proceed has been contented to receive as improve- with the execution. Look now upon the other ments, and such suggestions of intolerant and side of the parallel. Tyrannical Remedies, as no man would be- lieve could proceed from a cultivated intel- lect of the present age-if the early history of this particular intellect had not indicated an inherent aptitude for all extreme opinions, -and prepared us for the usual conversion of one extreme into another.
Mr. Coleridge, too, was an early and most ardent admirer of the French Revolution; but the fruits of that admiration in him were, not a reasoned and statesmanlike apology for some of its faults and excesses, but a resolu- tion to advance the regeneration of mankind at a still quicker rate, by setting before their And it is worth while to mark here also, eyes the pattern of a yet more exquisite form and in respect merely of consistency and of society! And accordingly, when a full- ultimate authority with mankind, the advan-grown man, he actually gave into, if he did tage which a sober and well-regulated under- not originate, the scheme of what he and his standing will always have over one which friends called a Pantisocracy-a form of so- claims to be above ordinances; and trusting ciety in which there was to be neither law either to an erroneous opinion of its own nor government, neither priest, judge, nor strength, or even to a true sense of it, gives magistrate-in which all property was to be itself up to its first strong impression, and sets in common, and every man left to act upon at defiance all other reason and authority. his own sense of duty and affection! Sir James Mackintosh had, in his youth, as This fact is enough:-And whether he af- much ambition and as much consciousness of terwards passed through the stages of a Jaco- power as Mr. Coleridge could have: But the bin, which he seems to deny-or a hotheaded utmost extent of his early aberrations (in his Moravian, which he seems to admit,-is really Vindicia Gallica) was an over estimate of the of no consequence. The character of his un- probabilities of good from a revolution of derstanding is settled with all reasonable men: violence; and a much greater under-estimate As well as the authority that is due to the of the mischiefs with which such experiments anti-reform and anti-toleration maxims which are sure to be attended, and the value of set- he seems to have spent his latter years in tled institutions and long familiar forms. Yet, venting. Till we saw this posthumous publi- though in his philanthropic enthusiasm he did cation, we had, to be sure, no conception of miscalculate the relative value of these op- the extent to which these compensating max- posite forces (and speedily admitted and rec-ims were carried; and we now think that few tified the error), he never for an instant dis- of the Conservatives (who were not originally puted the existence of both elements in the Pantisocratists) will venture to adopt them. equation, or affected to throw a doubt upon Not only is the Reform Bill denounced as the any of the great principles on which civil so- spawn of mere wickedness, injustice, and ciety reposes. On the contrary, in his earliest ignorance; and the reformed House of Com- as well as his latest writings, he pointed mons as "low, vulgar, meddling, and sneering steadily to the great institutions of Property at every thing noble and refined," but the and Marriage, and to the necessary authority wise and the good, we are assured, will, in of Law and Religion, as essential to the being every country, "speedily become disgusted of a state, and the well-being of any human with the Representative form of government, society. It followed, therefore, that when brutalized as it is by the predominance of de- disappointed in his too sanguine expectations mocracy, in England, France, and Belgium !" from the French Revolution, he had nothing And then the remedy is, that they will recur to retract in the substance and scope of his to a new, though, we confess, not very com- opinions; and merely tempering their an- prehensible form, of "Pure Monarchy, in nouncement, with the gravity and caution of which the reason of the people shall become maturer years, he gave them out again in his efficient in the apparent Will of the King!" later day's to the world, with the accumulated Moreover, he is for a total dissolution of the authority of a whole life of consistency and union with Ireland, and its erection into a sepa- study. At no period of that life, did he fail rate and independent kingdom. He is against to assert the right of the people to political Negro emancipation-sees no use in reducing and religious freedom; and to the protection taxation - and designates Malthus' demon- of just and equal laws, enacted by representa-tration of a mere matter of fact by a redundant tives truly chosen by themselves: And he never uttered a syllable that could be con- strued into an approval, or even an acquies- cence in persecution and intolerance; or in tae maintenance of authority for any other
accumulation of evidence, by the polite and appropriate appellation of "a lie;" and repre- sents it as more disgraceful and abominable than any thing that the weakness and wick- edness of man have ever before given birth to.
We fear we have already transgressed our just limits. But before concluding, we wish to say a word on a notion which we and pretty generally entertained, that Sir James Mackin- tosh did not sufficiently tum to profit the talent which was committed to him; and did much less than, with his gifts and opportuni- ties, he ought to have done. He himself seems, no doubt, to have been occasionally of that opinion; and yet we cannot but think it in a great degree erroneous. If he had not, in early life, conceived the ambitious design of executing two great works,—one on the principles of Morals and Legislation, and one on English History; or had not let it be under- stood, for many years before his death, that he was actually employed on the latter, we do not imagine that, with all the knowledge his friends had (and all the world now has) of his qualifications, any one would have thought of visiting his memory with such a reproach.
Such as his temperance and candour are in secution. We are sure we treat Mr. Coleridge politics, they are also in religion; and recom-with all possible respect when we say, that mended and excused by the same flagrant his name can lend no more plausibility to ab- contradiction to his early tenets. Whether he surdities like these, than the far greater names ever was a proper Moravian or not we care of Bacon or Hobbes could do to the belief in not to inquire. It is admitted, and even stated sympathetic medicines, or in churchyard ap- somewhat boastingly in this book, that he was paritions. a bold Dissenter from the church. He thanks heaven, indeed, that he "had gone much farther than the Unitarians!" And to make his boldness still more engaging, he had gone these lengths, not only against the authority of our Doctors, but against the clear and ad- mitted doctrine and teaching of the Apostles themselves "What care I,' I said, for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? My cons ience revolts?—That was the ground of my Unitarianism." And by and by, this infallible and oracular person does not hesitate to declare, that others, indeed, may do as they choose, but he, for his part, can never allow that Unitarians are Christians! and, giving no credit for "revolting consciences" to any one but himself, charges all Dissenters in the lump with hating the Church much more than they love religion-is furious against the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and Catholic Emancipation, and at last actually, and in good set terms, denies that any Dis- senter has a right to toleration! and, in per- fect consistency, maintains that it is the duty of the magistrate to stop heresy and schism by persecution if he only has reason to think that in this way the evil may be arrested; adding, by way of example, that he would be ready "to ship off-any where," any mission- aries who might attempt to disturb the un- doubting Lutheranism of certain exemplary Norwegians, whom he takes under his special protection.
We know of no code of morality which makes it imperative on every man of extra- ordinary talent or learning to write a large book:-and could readily point to instances where such persons have gone with unques- tioned honour to their graves, without leaving any such memorial-and been judged to have acted up to the last article of their duty, merely by enlightening society by their lives and conversation, and discharging with ability and integrity the offices of magistracy or legis We are tempted to say more. But we de-lation, to which they may have been called. sist; and shall pursue this parallel no farther. Perhaps we have already been betrayed into feelings and expressions that may be objected to. We should be sorry if this could be done justly. But we do not question Mr. Cole- ridge's sincerity. We admit, too, that he was a man of much poetical sensibility, and had visions of intellectual sublimity, and glimpses of comprehensive truths, which he could neither reduce into order nor combine into system. But out of poetry and metaphysics, we think he was nothing; and eminently dis- qualified, not only by the defects, but by the best parts of his genius, as well as by his temper and habits, for forming any sound judgment on the business and affairs of our actual world. And yet it is for his preposter- ous judgments on such subjects that his memory is now held in affected reverence by those who laughed at him, all through his life, for what gave him his only true claim to admira- tion! and who now magnify his genius, for no other purpose but to give them an opportunity to quote, as of grave authority, his mere deli- rations, on reform, dissent, and toleration-his cheering predictions of the approaching mil- lennium of pure monarchy-or his demonstra- tions of the absolute harmlessness of taxation, and the sacred duty of all sorts of efficient per-
But looking even to the sort of debt which may be thought to have been contracted by the announcement of these works, we cannot but think that the public has received a very respectable dividend—and, being at the best but a gratuitous creditor-ought not now to withhold a thankful discharge and acquittance. The discourse on Ethical Philosophy is fuli payment, we conceive, of one moiety of the first engagement, and we are persuaded will be so received by all who can judge of its value; and though the other moiety, which relates to Legislation, has not yet been ten- dered in form, there is reason to believe that there are assets in the hands of the executors, from which this also may soon be liquidated. That great subject was certainly fully treated of in the Lectures of 1799-and as it appears from some citations in these Memoirs, that, though for the most part delivered extempore, various notes and manuscripts relating to them have been preserved, we think it not unlikely that, with due diligence, the outline at least and main features of that interesting disquisi- tion may still be recovered. On the bill for History, too, it cannot be denied that a large payment has been made to account-and as it was only due for the period of the Revolu tion, any shortcoming that may appear upon
But, in truth, there never was any such debt or engagement on the part of Sir James: And the public was, and continues, the only debtor on the transaction, for whatever it may have received of service or instruction at his hand. We have expressed elsewhere our estimate of the greatness of this debt; and of the value especially of the Histories he has left behind him. We have, to be sure, since seen some sneering remarks on the dulness and uselessness of these works; and an at- tempt made to hold them up to ridicule, under the appellation of Philosophical histories. We are not aware that such a name was ever ap- plied to them by their author or their admirers. But if they really deserve it, we are at a loss to conceive how it should be taken for a name of reproach; and it will scarcely be pretended that their execution is such as to justify its application in the way of derision. We do not perceive, indeed, that this is pretended; and, strange as it may appear, the objection seems really to be, rather to the kind of wri- ting in general, than to the defects of its exe- cution in this particular instance the objector having a singular notion that history should consist of narrative only; and that nothing can be so tiresome and useless as any addition of explanation or remark.
that score, may be fairly held as compensated in the history of the world for the last two by the voluntary advances of value to a much hundred years? above all, what useful lesson greater extent, though referring to an earlier could be learned, for people or for rulers, from period. a mere series of events presented in detail, without any other information as to their causes or consequences, than might be in ferred from the sequence in which they ap peared? To us it appears that a mere record of the different places of the stars, and their successive changes of position, would be as good a system of Astronomy, as such a set of annals would be of History; and that it would be about as reasonable to sneer at Newton and La Place for seeking to supersede the honest old star-gazers, by their philosophical histories of the heavens, as to speak in the same tone, of what Voltaire and Montesquieu and Mackintosh have attempted to do for our lower world. We have named these three, as having attended more peculiarly, and more impartially, than any others, at least in modern times, to this highest part of their duty. But in truth, all eminent historians have attended to it-from the time of Thucydides down- wards;--the ancients putting the necessary explanations more frequently into the shape of imaginary orations and the moderns into that of remark and dissertation. The very first, perhaps, of Hume's many excellences consists in these philosophical summaries of the reasons and considerations by which he supposes parties to have been actuated in great political movements; which are more completely abstracted from the mere story, and very frequently less careful and complete, than the parallel explanations of Sir James Mackintosh. For, with all his unrivalled sa gacity, it is true, as Sir James has himself somewhere remarked, that Hume was too little of an antiquary to be always able to estimate the effect of motives in distant ages; and by referring too confidently to the princi ples of human nature as developed in our own times, has often represented our ancestors as more reasonable, and much more argumenta- tive, than they really were.
We have no longer room to expose, as it deserves, the strange misconceptions of the objects and uses of history, which we humbly conceive to be implied in such an opinion; and shall therefore content ourselves with asking, whether any man really imagines that the modern history of any considerable State, with its complicated system of foreign rela- tions, and the play of its domestic parties, could be written in the manner of Herodotus? or be made intelligible (much less instruct- ive) by the naked recital of transactions and occurrences? These, in fact, are but the crude materials from which history should be con- structed; the mere alphabet out of which its lessons are afterwards to be spelled. If every reader had indeed the talents of an accom- plished Historian,-that knowledge of human nature, that large acquaintance with all col- lateral facts, and that force of understanding which are implied in such a name and, at the same time, that leisure and love for the subject which would be necessary for this particular application of such gifts, the mere detail of facts, if full and impartial, might be sufficient for his purposes. But to every other class of readers, we will venture to say, that one half of such a history would be an in- soluble enigma; and the other half the source of the most gross misconceptions.
Without some explanation of the views and motives of the prime agents in great transac- tions of the origin and state of opposite inte- rests and opinions in large bodies of the people and of their tendencies respectively to as- cendency or decline-what intelligible account could be given of any thing worth knowing
That there may be, and have often been, abuses of this best part of history, is a reason only for valuing more highly what is exempt from such abuses; and those who feel most veneration and gratitude for the lights afforded by a truly philosophical historian, will be sure to look with most aversion on a counterfeit. No one, we suppose, will stand up for the in troduction of ignorant conjecture, shallow dog matism, mawkish morality, or factious injustice into the pages of history-or deny that the shortest and simplest annals are greatly prefer able to such a perversion. As to political partiality, however, it is a great mistake to suppose that it could be in any degree ex- cluded by confining history to a mere chroni cle of facts-the truth being, that it is chiefly in the statement of facts that this partiality displays itself; and that it is more frequently exposed to detection than assisted, by the ar guments and explanations, which are supposed to be its best resources. We shall not resume what we have said in another place as to the merit of the Histories which are now in ques
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