Press.-The steam-engine of moral power, which, directed by the spirit of the age, will eventually crush imposture, superstition, and tyranny. Prize. Do not see Lottery. Prophet.-One who in times past made us a present of the future. Quack. A man who only wants a diploma to make him a regular physician. Quart.-Rather more than a pint, according to the bottle conjurors of the wine trade. Quaker.-A drab-coloured Christian, who uses the second person in his discourse, but generally takes good care of number one in his prac tice. Quibble, Quirk, Quiddit, Quillet.—See Law Proceedings. Reason. The proud prerogative which confers upon man the exclusive power of acting irrationally. Reform. An adaptation of institutions to circumstances and knowledge, demanded as a right by all who are suffering wrongs, and only abused by those who are fattening upon abuse. Renown.-Being known to those who do not know us. Review. A work that overlooks the publications it professes to look over, and judges of books by their authors, not of authors by their books. Rhyme. Often a substitute for poetry, and an antithesis to reason. Ring. A circular link put through the snouts of swine and upon the finger of women, to hold them both in subjection. Romance. Using men and women instead of birds and beasts for the construction of an improbable fable. Royalty. Solitary imprisonment in a crowded court-selling yourself for a crown, and subjecting yourself to slavery in order that you may enslave your subjects. Satire.-Attacking the vices and follies of others instead of reforming our own. Saw.-A sort of dumb alderman, which gets through a great deal by the activity of its teeth. Scandal. The tattle of fools and malignants, who judge of their neighbours by themselves. Sceptre. The plaything of an imperial puppet. Speculation.-See Peculation. Spinster-An unprotected female, and of course a fine subject for exercising the courage of cowards and the wit of the witless. Taste. An imaginary standard, like that of Fashion, on whose capricious changes the most thoughtless bestow the most thought. Tavern. A house kept for those who are not housekeepers. Tinder.-A thin rag, such for instance as the dresses of modern females, intended to catch the sparks, raise a flame, and light up a match. Tomb.-A house built for a skeleton-a covering of sculptured marble provided for dust and corruption. Tongue. The mysterious membrane that turns thought into sound, supplying us at the same time with food for the body, refreshment for the mind, and music for the ear. Trustee. One to whom recent example shows us we should have an eye if we mean him to be trusty. Turnpikeman.-Generally a wretch who either robs you on the king's highway, or makes detected knavery an excuse for brutal insolence. Vanity. Another word for the whole fleeting pageant of human existence. Vapour.-An impalpable emanation from a simple fluid, which promises to be an eventual substitute for human and animal muscles, and to carry on the whole business of the world that depends upon phy ́sical power. Ugliness. An advantageous stimulus to the mind, that it may make up for the deficiencies of the body. Umbrella.-An article which by the morality of society you may steal from friend or foe, and which for the same reason you should not lend to either. Vice. Miscalculation; obliquity of moral vision; temporary mad ness. Voice.-Echo is the only instance of a voice without a body, whereas three parts of our unrepresented population are bodies without a voice. Usury, Law of.-Punishing a man for making as much as he can of his money, although he is freely allowed to make as much money as he can. Watchmen.-Old women. "The fittest they the peace to keep Who have not any power to break it, When they somnambulise at night." Watering Places.-Sundry barren, shingly, chalky spots upon the coast, disfigured with frail lath and plaster bow-windowed tenements, which being supplied with scanty white dimity curtains, a few rickety chairs and tables, and some knotty featherless featherbeds, are considered to be furnished. Hither thousands resort during the six weeks of an English summer, to ride in an improved species of wheelbarrow drawn by jaded donkies or ponies, to sit on the pebbles and pelt them into the sea, to catch cold by walking on wet sands, to lose money in raffles, and enjoy at least one pleasant morning-that on which they return to London. Wedding.-A tragi-comic meeting compounded of favours, footmen, faintings, farewells, prayers, parsons, plum-cake, rings, refreshments, bottles, blubberings, God bless ye's, and gallopings away in a post chaise and four. Wine.-See British compounds. Yawning. An infectious sensation of weariness which a writer sometimes catches from the reader, when, if both parties desire to open their mouths leisurely, they cannot do better than shut the book. OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. WHEN I see a whole row of standard French authors piled up on a Paris book-stall to the height of twenty or thirty volumes, shewing their mealy coats to the sun, pink, blue, and yellow, they seem to me a wall built up to keep out the intrusion of foreign letters. There is scarcely such a thing as an English book to be met with, unless perhaps a dusty edition of Clarissa Harlowe lurks in an obscure corner, or a volume of the Sentimental Journey perks its well-known title in your face. But there is a huge column of Voltaire's works complete in sixty volumes, another (not so frequent) of Rousseau's in seventy, Racine in ten volumes, Moliere in about the same number, La Fontaine, Marmontel, Gil Blas for ever-Madame Sevigny's Letters, Pascal, Montesquieu, Crebillon, Marivaux, with Montaigne, Rabelais, and the grand Corneille more rare, and eighteen full-sized volumes of La Harpe's criticism towering vain-gloriously in the midst of them, furnishing the streets of Paris with a graduated scale of merit for all the rest, and teaching the very garçons-perruquiers how to measure the length of each act of each play by a stop-watch, and to ascertain whether the angles at the four corners of each classic volume are right ones. How climb over this lofty pile of taste and elegance, to wander down into the bogs and wastes of English or of any other literature," to this obscure and wild?" Must they " on that fair mountain leave to feed, to batten on this moor?" Or why should they? Have they not literature enough of their own and to spare, without coming to us? Is not the public mind crammed, choked with French books, pictures, statues, plays, operas, newspapers, parties, and an incessant farrago of words, so that it has not a moment left to look at home into itself or abroad into nature? Must they cross the Channel to increase the vast stock of impertinence, to acquire foreign tastes, suppress native prejudices, and reconcile the opinions of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews? It is quite needless. There is a project at present entertained in certain circles to give the French a taste for Shakspeare. They should really begin with the English. Many of their own best authors are neglected; others, of whom new editions have been printed, lie heavy on the booksellers' hands. It is by an especial dispensation of Providence that languages wear out; as otherwise we should be buried alive under a load of books and knowledge. People talk of a philosophical and universal language. We have enough to do to understand our own, and to read a thousandth part (perhaps not the best) of what is written in it. It is ridiculous and monstrous vanity. We would set up a standard of general taste and of immortal renown: we would have the benefits of science and of art universal, because we would suppose our own capacity to receive them unbounded; and we would have the thoughts of others never die, because we flatter ourselves that our own will last for ever; and like the frog imitating the ox in the fable, we burst in the vain attempt. Man, whatever he may think, is a very limited being: the world has a narrow circle drawn upon it, the horizon that limits our immediate view: immortality means a century or two. Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own proper growth and fittest for it, as rivers and mountains bound countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and over grown. A little importation from foreign markets may be good; but the home production is the chief thing to be looked to. "The proper study of the French is French!" No people can act more uniformly upon a conviction of this maxim; and in that respect I think they are quite right. There was advertised not long ago in Paris an elegy on the death of Lord Byron, by his friend Sir Thomas More-evidently confounding the living bard with the old statesman. It is thus the French in their light salient way transpose every thing. The mistake is particularly ludicrous to those who have ever seen Mr. Moore, or Mr. Shee's portrait of him in Mr. Hookham's shop, and who chance to see Holbein's head of Sir Thomas More in the Louvre. Mr. Moore's face is gay and smiling enough, old Sir Thomas's is severe, not to say sour. It seems twisted awry with difficult questions, and bursting asunder with a ponderous load of meaning. The expression in Holbein's pictures conveys a faithful but not very favourable notion of the literary character of the period. It is painful, dry, and laboured. Learning was then an ascetic, but recluse and profound. You see a weight of thought and care in the studious heads of the time of the Reformation, a sincerity, an integrity, a sanctity of purpose, like that of a formal dedication to a religious life or the inviolability of monastic vows. They had their work to do; we reap the benefits of it. We skim the surface, and travel along the high road. They had to explore dark recesses, to dig through mountains, and make their way through pathless wildernesses. It is no wonder they looked grave upon it. The seriousness indeed amounts to an air of devotion; and it has to me something fine, manly, and old-English about it. There is a heartiness and determined resolution; a willingness to contend with opposition; a superiority to ease and pleasure; some sullen pride, but no trifling vanity. They addressed themselves to study as to a duty, and were ready to "leave all and follow it." In the beginning of such an era, the difference between ignorance and learning, between what was commonly known and what was possible to be known, would appear immense; and no pains or time would be thought too great to master the difficulty. Conscious of their own deficiencies and the scanty information of those about them, they would be glad to look out for aids and support, and to put themselves apprentices to time and nature. This temper would lead them to exaggerate rather than to make light of the difficulties of their undertaking; and would call forth sacrifices in proportion. Feeling how little they knew, they would be anxious to discover all that others had known, and, instead of making a display of themselves, their first object would be to dispel the mist and darkness that surrounded them. They did not cull the flowers of learning, or pluck a leaf of laurel for their own heads, but tugged at the roots and very heart of their subject, as the woodman tugs at the roots of an old oak-tree. The sense of the arduousness of their enterprise gave them courage to persevere; so that they left nothing half done. They inquired de omne scibile et quibusdam aliis. They ransacked libraries; they exhausted authorities. They acquired languages, consulted books, and decyphered manuscripts. They devoured learning, and swallowed antiquity whole, and (what is more) digested it. They read incessantly, and remembered what they read, from the zealous interest they took in it. Repletion is only bad, when it is accompanied with apathy and want of exercise. They laboured hard, and shewed great activity both of reasoning and speculation. Their fault was that they were too prone to unlock the secrets of nature with the key of learning, and often to substitute authority in the place of argument. They were also too polemical; as was but naturally to be expected in the first breaking up of established prejudices and opinions. It is curious to observe the slow progress of the human mind in shaking off and getting rid of its trammels, link by link, and how it crept on its hands and feet and with its eyes bent on the ground out of the cave of bigotry, making its way through one dark passage after another, those who gave up one half of an absurdity contending as strenuously for the remaining half, the lazy current of tradition stemming the tide of innovation, and making an endless strug gle of it. But in the dullest minds of this period there was a deference to the opinions of others; an imposing sense of the importance of the subject, of the necessity of bringing all the faculties to bear upon it; a weight either of armour or of internal strength, a zeal either for or against ; a head, a heart, and a hand, a holding out to the death for conscience' sake, a stern spirit of proselytism-no flippancy, no indifferences, no compromising, no pert shallow scepticism, but truth was supposed indissolubly knit to good, knowledge to usefulness, and the temporal and eternal welfare of mankind to hang in the balance. The pure springs of a lofty faith (so to speak) had not then descended by various gradations, from their rocky cliffs and cloudy heights, to find their level in the smooth, glittering expanse of modern philosophy, or to settle in the stagnant pool of stale hypocrisy! A learned man of that day, if he knew no better than others, at least knew all that they did. He did not come to his subject like some dapper barrister who has never looked at his brief and trusts to the smartness of his wit and person for the agreeable effect he means to produce, but like an old practised counsellor, covered over with the dust and cobwebs of the law. If it was a speaker in Parliament, he came prepared to handle his subject, armed with cases and precedents, the constitution and history of Parliament from the earliest period, a knowledge of the details of business and the local interests of the country; in short, he had taken up the freedom of the House, and did not treat the question like a cosmopolite or a writer in a Magazine. If it were a divine, he knew the Scriptures, and the Fathers, and the Councils, and the Commentators, by heart, and thundered them in the ears of his astonished audience. Not a trim essay or a tumid oration, patronising religion by modern sophisms, but the Law and the Prophets, the chapter and the verse. If it was a philosopher, Aristotle and the schoolmen were drawn out in battle-array against you :-if an antiquary, the Lord bless us! There is a passage in Selden's notes on Drayton's Polyolbion, in which he elucidates some point of topography by a reference not only to Stowe, and Holinshed, and Camden, and Saxo-Grammaticus, and Dugdale, and several other authors that we are acquainted with, but to twenty more obscurer names that no modern reader ever heard of; and so on through the notes to a folio volume, written apparently for relaxation. Such were the intellectual amusements of our ancestors! Learning then ordinarily lay-in of folio volumes: now she has come down to oc |