which might easily be paid off in a year | But so said all who came before us, and or two, many people would think us with just as much apparent reason. "A insane. We prophesy nothing; but this million a year will beggar us," said the we say: If any person had told the patriots of 1640. "Two millions a year Parliament which met in perplexity and will grind the country to powder," was terror after the crash in 1720 that in the cry in 1660. "Six millions a year, 1830 the wealth of England would sur- and a debt of fifty millions!" exclaimed pass all their wildest dreams, that the Swift, "the high allies have been the annual revenue would equal the prin- ruin of us." "A hundred and forty cipal of that debt which they considered millions of debt!" said Junius; "well as an intolerable burden, that for one may we say that we owe Lord Chatham man of ten thousand pounds then living more than we shall ever pay, if we owe there would be five men of fifty thou- him such a load as this." "Two hunsand pounds, that London would be dred and forty millions of debt!” cried twice as large and twice as populous, all the statesmen of 1783 in chorus; and that nevertheless the rate of mor- "what abilities, or what economy on tality would have diminished to one the part of a minister, can save a counhalf of what it then was, that the post-try so burdened?" We know that if, office would bring more into the ex- since 1783, no fresh debt had been inchequer than the excise and customs curred, the increased resources of the 器 had brought in together under Charles country would have enabled us to dethe Second, that stage-coaches would fray that debt at which Pitt, Fox, and run from London to York in twenty- Burke stood aghast, nay, to defray it four hours, that men would be in the over and over again, and that with habit of sailing without wind, and much lighter taxation than what we would be beginning to ride without have actually borne. On what prinhorses, our ancestors would have given ciple is it that, when we see nothing but as much credit to the prediction as they improvement behind us, we are to exgave to Gulliver's Travels. Yet the pect nothing but deterioration before prediction would have been true; and us?. they would have perceived that it was It is not by the intermeddling of Mr. not altogether absurd, if they had con- Southey's idol, the omniscient and omsidered that the country was then rais-nipotent State, but by the prudence and ing every year a sum which would have purchased the fee-simple of the revenue of the Plantagenets, ten times what supported the government of Elizabeth, three times what, in the time of Oliver Cromwell, had been thought intolerably oppressive. To almost all men the state of things under which they have been used to live seems to be the necessary state of things. We have heard it said that five per cent. is the natural interest of money, that twelve is the natural number of a jury, that forty shillings is the natural qualification of a county voter. Hence it is that, though in every age everybody knows that up to his own time progressive improvement has been taking place, nobody seems to reckon on any improvement during the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days.| Our energy of the people, that England has drew near. MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY. (APRIL, 1830.) 1. The Omnipresence of the Deity: a Poem. the Brahmin called out, "Oh stranger, BY ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Edition. London: 1830. Eleventh of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints. what dost thou call this beast ?" 2. Satan: a Poem. By ROBERT MONT-"Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, GOMERY. Second Edition. London: 1830." it is a fine sheep." Then the BrahTHE wise men of antiquity loved to min said, "Surely the gods have taken convey instruction under the covering away my senses;" and he asked pardon of apologue; and though this practice is generally thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay. Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember A pious Brahmin, it is written, made rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit a vow that on a certain day he would Æsop. The moral, like the moral of sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed every fable that is worth the telling, morning he went forth to buy one. lies on the surface. The writer eviThere lived in his neighbourhood three dently means to caution us against the rogues who knew of his vow, and laid practices of puffers, a class of people a scheme for profiting by it. The first who have more than once talked the met him and said, "Oh Brahmin, wilt public into the most absurd errors, thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for but who surely never played a more sacrifice." "It is for that very pur- curious or a more difficult trick than pose," said the holy man, "that I when they passed Mr. Robert Montcame forth this day." Then the im-gomery off upon the world as a great postor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, 66 Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue, callest thou that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, “it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," said the Brahmin, "either thou or I must be blind." poet. In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to proJust then one of the accomplices duce, pass into their character. They came up. "Praised be the gods," said become the parasites and slaves of the this second rogue, "that I have been great. It is melancholy to think how saved the trouble of going to the mar-many of the highest and most exquiket for a sheep! This is such a sheep sítely formed of human intellects have as I wanted. For how much wilt thou been condemned to the ignominious sell it?" When the Brahmin heard labour of disposing the commonplaces this, his mind waved to and fro, like of adulation in new forms and brightone swinging in the air at a holy fes-ening them into new splendour. Hotival. "Sir," said he to the new comer, race invoking Augustus in the most "take heed what thou dost; this is no enthusiastic language of religious venesheep, but an unclean cur.' "Oh Brahmin," said the new comer, "thou art drunk or mad!" At this time the third confederate ration; Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread; Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron; Tasso man then living, except himself, could have produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the literary character so much better than they had done. extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a mad-house: these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which those must submit who, not possessing a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read. This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes From the time of Pope to the present less and less necessary. In the middle day the readers have been constantly of the last century a marked change becoming more and more numerous, took place. The tone of literary men, and the writers, consequently, more both in this country and in France, and more independent. It is assuredly became higher and more independent. a great evil that men, fitted by their Pope boasted that he was the "one talents and acquirements to enlighten poet" who had "pleased by manly and charm the world, should be reways;" he derided the soft dedications with which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own superiority over the pensioned Boileau, and gloried in being not the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale of his writings, realised a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. Whether the old or the new vice be The idea of either of those gentlemen the worse, whether those who formerly looking out for some lord who would lavished insincere praise on others, or be likely to give him a few guineas in those who now contrive by every art of return for a fulsome dedication seems beggary and bribery to stun the public laughably incongruous. Yet this is with praises of themselves, disgrace exactly what Dryden or Otway would their vocation the more deeply, we shall have done; and it would be hard to not attempt to decide. But of this we blame them for it. Otway is said to are sure, that it is high time to make a have been choked with a piece of bread stand against the new trickery. The which he devoured in the rage of puffing of books is now so shamefully hunger; and, whether this story be and so successfully carried on that it is true or false, he was beyond all ques- the duty of all who are anxious for the tion miserably poor. Dryden, at near purity of the national taste, or for the seventy, when at the head of the lite-honour of the literary character, to join rary men of England, without equal or in discountenancing the practice. All second, received three hundred pounds the pens that ever were employed in for his Fables, a collection of ten thou-magnifying Bish's lucky office, Rosand verses, and of such verses as no manis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's duced to the necessity of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the sustenance of life. But, though we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors from the time of Mæcenas to that of Harley would not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing. razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, thought expedient that the puffer all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all should put on a grave face, and utter the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin, his panegyric in the form of admoniseem to have taken service with the tion. "Such attacks on private cha poets and novelists of this generation.racter cannot be too much condemned. Devices which in the lowest trades are Even the exuberant wit of our author, considered as disreputable are adopted and the irresistible power of his witherwithout scruple, and improved upon ing sarcasm, are no excuses for that with a despicable ingenuity, by people utter disregard which he manifests for engaged in a pursuit which never was the feelings of others. We cannot and never will be considered as a mere but wonder that a writer of such trade by any man of honour and virtue. transcendent talents, a writer who is A butcher of the higher class disdains evidently no stranger to the kindly to ticket his meat. A mercer of the charities and sensibilities of our nature, higher class would be ashamed to hang should show so little tenderness to the up papers in his window inviting the foibles of noble and distinguished indipassers-by to look at the stock of a viduals, with whom it is clear, from bankrupt, all of the first quality, and every page of his work, that he must going for half the value. We expect have been constantly mingling in sosome reserve, some decent pride, in our ciety." These are but tame and feeble hatter and our boot-maker. But no imitations of the paragraphs with which artifice by which notoriety can be ob- the daily papers are filled whenever an tained is thought too abject for a man attorney's clerk or an apothecary's of letters. assistant undertakes to tell the public It is amusing to think over the his- in bad English and worse French, how tory of most of the publications which people tie their neckcloths and eat have had a run during the last few their dinners in Grosvenor Square. years. The publisher is often the The editors of the higher and more publisher of some periodical work. In respectable newspapers usually prefix this periodical work the first flourish of the words " Advertisement," or "From trumpets is sounded. The peal is then a Correspondent," to such paragraphs. echoed and re-echoed by all the other But this makes little difference. The periodical works over which the pub-panegyric is extracted, and the signilisher, or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simpleminded people. "Pathetic," " sublime," "splendid," "graceful," "brilliant wit," That people who live by personal exquisite humour," and other phrases slander should practise these arts is equally flattering, fall in a shower as not surprising. Those who stoop to thick and as sweet as the sugar-plums write calumnious books may well stoop at a Roman carnival. Sometimes to puff them; and that the basest of greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is 66 66 ficant heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with "Times' or "Globe" affixed, though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it than with Mr. Goss's way of making old rakes young again. all trades should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite proper and as it should be. But how any man who has the least self-respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can condescend to persecute the public with this Rag-fair importunity, we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants in the one way as in the other. be easily persuaded by a knot of con noisseurs that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a delicacy of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he cannot distinguish hands, as practised judges distinguish them, that he is not familiar with the finest models, that he has never looked at them with close attention, and that, when the general effect of a piece has pleased him or displeased him, he has never troubled himself to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom he thinks more competent to judge than himself, and It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that his works should come before the public recommended by their own merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If his objects of whose sincerity he entertains no be really such as he may own without shame, he will find that they will, in the long run, be better attained by suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present, we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as Shakspeare's usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham to the author's Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, and at last join in shouting for shouting's sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which has no right to it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependents. doubt, assure him that a particular work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency. Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a poem or a novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the mean time, little or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the The opinion of the great body of the publisher are interested in crying up reading public is very materially influ- the book. Nobody has any very strong enced even by the unsupported asser- interest in crying it down. Those who tions of those who assume a right to are best fitted to guide the public opicriticize. Nor is the public altogether nion think it beneath them to expose to blame on this account. Most even mere nonsense, and comfort themselves of those who have really a great enjoy-by reflecting that such popularity canment in reading are in the same state, not last. This contemptuous lenity with respect to a book, in which a man has been carried too far. It is perwho has never given particular atten- fectly true that reputations which have tion to the art of painting is with re-been forced into an unnatural bloom spect to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest intellect might, unless he had formed his Laste by contemplating the best pictures, fade almost as soon as they have expanded; nor have we any apprehensions that puffing will ever raise any scribbler to the rank of a classic. It is indeed amusing to turn over some late volumes of periodical works, and |