Marginalia — 1902 historical reading — reading text

some such process of thought passes through the mind of the “practiced” logician, as he makes note of the thesis proposed. He is not aware that he thinks in this way — but, unwittingly, he so thinks. The syllables deposited acquire, in his view, a new character. While afloat in his brain, he might have been brought to admit the possibility that these syllables were variable exponents of various phases of thought; but he will not admit this if he once gets them upon the paper. In a single page of “Mill,” I find the word “force” employed four times; and each employment varies the idea. The fact is that à priori argument is much worse than useless except in the mathematical sciences, where it is possible to obtain precise meanings. If there is any one subject in the world to which it is utterly and radically inapplicable, that subject is Government. The identical arguments used to sustain Mr. Bentham's positions, might, with little exercise of ingenuity, be made to overthrow them; and, by ringing small changes on the words “leg-of-mutton,” and “turnip” (changes so gradual as to escape detection), I could “demonstrate” that a turnip was, is, and of right ought to be a leg-of-mutton. ————— Has any one observed the excessively close resemblance in subject, thought, general manner and particular point, which this clever composition(1) bears to the “Hudibras” of Butler? ————— The concord of sound-and-sense principle was never better exemplified than in these lines(2): — Ast amans charæ thalamum puellæ Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit Aspera amplexu teneræ cupito a — — vulsus amicæ. —— Miss Gould has much in common with Mary Howitt; — the characteristic trait of each being a sportive, quaint, epigrammatic grace, that keeps clear of the absurd by never employing itself upon very exalted topics. The verbal style of the two ladies is identical. Miss Gould has the more talent of the two, but is somewhat the less original. She has occasional flashes of a far higher order of merit than appertains to her ordinary manner. Her “Dying Storm” might have been written by Campbell. ————— Cornelius Webbe is one of the best of that numerous school of extravaganzists who sprang from the ruins of Lamb. We must be in perfectly good humor, however, with ourselves and all the world, to be much pleased with such works as “The Man about Town,” in which the harum-scarum, hyperexcursive mannerism is carried to an excess which is frequently fatiguing. ————— Nearly, if not quite the best “Essay on a Future State.”(1) The arguments called “Deductions from our Reason,” are, rightly enough, addressed more to the feelings (a vulgar term not to be done without), than to our reason. The arguments deduced from Revelation are (also rightly enough) brief. The pamphlet proves nothing, of course; its theorem is not to be proved. ————— Not so: — A gentleman, with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms. — “Who can live idly and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he alone should be called master and be taken for a gentleman.” — Sir Thomas Smith's “Commonwealth of England.” ————— It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing. Still less is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done. ————— Here is something at which I find it impossible not to laugh;(1) and yet, I laugh without knowing why. That incongruity is the principle of all nonconvulsive laughter, is to my mind as clearly demonstrated as any problem in the “Principia Mathematica;” but here I cannot trace the incongruous. It is there, I know. Still I do not see it. In the meantime let me laugh. ————— The “British Spy” of Wirt seems an imitation of the “Turkish Spy,” upon which Montesquieu's “Persian Letters” are also based. Marana's work was in Italian — Doctor Johnson errs. ————— The style is so involute,(2) that one cannot help fancying it must be falsely constructed. If the use of language is to convey ideas, then it is nearly as much a demerit that our words seem to be, as that they are, indefensible. A man's grammar, like Cæsar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. ————— “It was a pile of the oyster, which yielded the precious pearls of the South, and the artist had judiciously painted some with their lips parted, and showing within the large precious fruit in the attainment of which Spanish cupidity had already proved itself capable of every peril, as well as every crime. At once true and poetical, no comment could have been more severe, &c.” MR. SIMMS’ “Damsel of Darien.” Body of Bacchus! — only think of poetical beauty in the countenance of a gaping oyster! “And how natural, in an age so fanciful, to believe that the stars and starry groups beheld in the new world for the first time by the native of the old were especially assigned for its government and protection.” — Now, if by the Old World be meant the East, and by the New World the West, I am at a loss to know what are the stars seen in the one which cannot be equally seen in the other. Mr. Simms has abundant faults — or had; — among which inaccurate English, a proneness to revolting images, and pet phrases, are the most noticeable. Nevertheless, leaving out of question Brockden Brown and Hawthorne (who are each a genus,) he is immeasurably the best writer of fiction in America. He has more vigor, more imagination, more movement and more general capacity than all our novelists (save Cooper), combined. ————— This “species of nothingness” is quite as reasonable, at all events, as any “kind of something-ness.” See Cowley's “Creation,” where An unshaped kind of something first appeared. —— Here is an edition,(1) which, so far as microscopical excellence and absolute accuracy of typography are concerned, might well be prefaced with the phrase of the Koran — “There is no error in this book.” We cannot call a single inverted o an error — can we? But I am really as glad of having found that inverted o, as ever was a Columbus or an Archimedes. What, after all, are continents discovered, or silversmiths exposed? Give us a good o turned upside-down, and a whole herd of bibliomanic Arguses overlooking it for years. ————— “That sweet smile and serene — that smile never seen but upon the face of the dying and the dead” — Ernest Maltravers. Bulwer is not the man to look a stern fact in the face. He would rather sentimentalize upon a vulgar although picturesque error. Who ever really saw anything but horror in the smile of the dead? We so earnestly desire to fancy it “sweet” — that is the source of the mistake; if, indeed, there ever was a mistake in the question. ————— This misapplication of quotations is clever, and has a capital effect when well done; but Lord Brougham has not exactly that kind of capacity which the thing requires. One of the best hits in this way is made by Tieck, and I have lately seen it appropriated, with interesting complacency, in an English Magazine. The author of the “Journey into the Blue Distance,” is giving an account of some young ladies, not very beautiful, whom he caught in mediis rebus, at their toilet. “They were curling their monstrous heads,” says he, “as Shakspeare says of the waves in a storm.” ————— Mr. Hawthorne is one of the very few American story-tellers whom the critic can commend with the hand upon the heart. He is not always original in his entire theme — (I am not quite sure, even, that he has not borrowed an idea or two from a gentleman whom I know very well, and who is honored in the loan) — but, then, his handling is always thoroughly original. His style, although never vigorous, is purity itself. His imagination is rich. His sense of art is exquisite, and his executive ability great. He has little or no variety of tone. He handles all subjects in the same subdued, misty, dreamy, suggestive, inuendo way, and although I think him the truest genius, upon the whole, which our literature possesses, I cannot help regarding him as the most desperate mannerist of his day. P. S. The chief — not the leading idea in this story (“Drowne's Wooden Image”), is precisely that of Michael Angelo's couplet, borrowed from Socrates: Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concerto Che non marmo solo in se non circonscriva. —— Here are both Dickens and Bulwer perpetually using the adverb “directly” in the sense of “as soon as.” “Directly he came I did so and so” — “Directly I knew it I said this and that.” But observe! — “Grammar is hardly taught” [in the United States], “being thought an unnecessary basis for other learning.” I quote “America and her Resources,” by the British Counsellor at law, John Bristed. ————— At Ermenonville, too, there is a striking instance of the Gallic rhythm with which a Frenchman regards the English verse. There Gerardin has the following inscription to the memory of Shenstone: This plain stone To William Shenstone. In his writings he displayed A mind natural; At Leasowes he laid Arcadian greens rural. There are few Parisians, speaking English, who would find anything particularly the matter with this epitaph. ————— Here is a plot which, with all its complexity, has no adaptation — no dependency; — it is involute and nothing more — having all the air of G——'s wig, or the cycles and epicycles in Ptolemy's “Almagest.” ————— “Accursed be the heart that does not wildly throb, and palsied be the eye that will not weep over the woes of the wanderer of Switzerland.” — Monthly Register, 1807. This is “dealing damnation round the land” to some purpose; — upon the reader, and not upon the author as usual. For my part I shall be one of the damned; for I have in vain endeavored to see even a shadow of merit in anything ever written by either of the Montgomeries. ————— Strange — that I should here(1) find the only non-execrable barbarian attempts at imitation of the Greek and Roman measures! ————— Upon her [Malibran] was lavished the enthusiastic applause of the most correct taste, and of the deepest sensibility. Human triumph, in all that is most exciting and delicious, never went beyond that which she experienced — or never but in the case of Taglioni. For what are the extorted adulations that fall to the lot of the conqueror? — what even are the extensive honors of the popular author — his far-reaching fame — his high influence — or the most devout public appreciation of his works — to that rapturous approbation of the personal woman — that spontaneous, instant, present, and palpable applause — those irrepressible acclamations — those eloquent sighs and tears which the idolized Malibran at once heard, and saw, and deeply felt that she deserved? Her brief career was one gorgeous dream — for even the many sad intervals of her grief were but dust in the balance of her glory. In this book(1) I read much about the causes which curtailed her existence; and there seems to hang around them, as here given, an indistinctness which the fair memorialist tries in vain to illumine. She seems never to approach the full truth. She seems never to reject that the speedy decease was but a condition of the rapturous life. No thinking person, hearing Malibran sing, could have doubted that she would die in the spring of her days. She crowded ages into hours. She left the world at twenty-five, having existed her thousands of years. ————— Were I to consign these volumes,(2) altogether, to the hands of any very young friend of mine, I could not, in conscience, describe them otherwise than as “tam multi, tam grandes, tam pretiosi codices;” and it would grieve me much to add the “incendite omnes illas membranas.”(3) ————— This reasoning is about as convincing as would be that of a traveller who, going from Maryland to New York without entering Pennsylvania, should advance this feat as an argument against Leibnitz’ Law of Continuity — according to which