The Express.
London, England, 1853-06-13 00:00:00

PIELDINO.

What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of na-
ture, was that by which the anther of these tales was en-
dowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken
our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we be-
lieve in his people—speculate gravely upon their faults or
their excellences, prefer this ore or that—deplore Jones's
fondness for drink and play, Booth's fondness for play
and drink, and the unfortunate position of the
wives of both gentlemen—love and admire those
ladies with all eur hearts, and talk about them
as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morn.
ing in their actual drawing rooms, er should meet them this
afternoon in the park! Wbat a genius! what a vigour!
what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a
wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery ! what a vast
sympathy ! what a cheerfulness ! what a manly relish of
life ! what a love of human kind ! what a poet is here !
watching, meditating, brooding, ereatin? ! What multi-
tudes of truths has that man left behind him! What gene-
rations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly ! What
scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of
thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a
courage he had ! What a dauntless and constant cheerful-
ness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all
the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It
is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the
man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which
he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor
melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his gene-
rous human kingness never surrendered.

The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness.
He wrote so quickly and carelessly that he was forced to
make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to de.
eel's him. He had a small share of book learning, but a
vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and
taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with
gentlemen ushers of the court, with men and women of
fashion ; with authors and with wits, with the inmates
of the spunging•houses, and with the frequenters of all
the dubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked
in all company because he liked it ; and you like to see
his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a box full
of children at the pantomime. He was not of those
lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged
them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired,
I think, more than any man who ever wrote ; and
full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by
calling you to share his delight and pod humour. His
laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been
invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried u much as
the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has
a relish for beauty and goodness wh he meets it. He
admired Shakapeare affectionately, and more than any man
of his time; and, according to his generous expansive
nature, called upon all hie company to like what he liked
himself. He did not damn with faint praise ;he was in the
world and of it; and his enjoyment of life presents the
strangest contrast to Swift's savage indignation, and Addi-
son's lonely serenity. Permit me to read to you a passage
from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar
humour: the subject is the same, and the mood the very
gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man,
the most trifling sad the most solemn, the humourist takes
upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters
know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his
philosophy and deseribes the end of mankind :

" Amend, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne,
While each pale sinner hung hie head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
Offending race of hump kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who end through pride
You who in different sects were shamed,
And come to see each other damn'd ;
(So some folk told you, bat they knew
No more of Jove's design' than you.)
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent your freaks no mere ;
I to such blockheads set my wit,
I damn such fools—go, go, you're bit V "

Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how
different a 'voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster
Abbey (Spectator, No. 26) : " For my own part, though I
am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melan-
choly, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep
and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most
gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of
the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I
read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire
goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a
tombstone, my heart melts with compassion ; when I see
the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of
grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned
that I do not think Addison a heart melted very much,or that
he indulged very inordinately in the "vanity of grieving.")
"4When," he goes on, " when I see kings lying by those
who deposed them : when I consider rival wits placed
side by aide, or the hely men that divided the world with
their contests and disputes,—l reflect with sorrow and
astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and de-
bates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on
the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years
ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be
contemporaries, and make our appearance together."
Our third humourist comes to speak upon the same sub-
ject. You will have observed in the previous extract.
the characteristic humour of each writer—the subject
and the contrast—the fact of Death, and the play of 1
individual thought, by which each comments on it;
and now hear the third writer—death, sorrow, and
the grave, being for the moment also his theme.
" The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in
the Taller, " was upon the death of my father, at
which time I was not quit,' five years of age : but was
rather amazed at what all the house meant, than pots-'
sussed of a real understanding why nobody would play
with us. I remember I went into the room where his
body lay and my mother sate weeping alone by it. I
had my battledore in my hand and fell a beating the
coffin, and calling papa; for, I know not how, I bad
some idea that he was locked up there. My mother
caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all pa-
tience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood
of tears, ' Papa could not hear me, and would pixy with
ma no more : for they were going to put him under-
ground, whence be would never come to us again.' She
was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there
was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her
transport, which methonght struck me with an instinct
of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve,
seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my
heart ever since."

Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds
and men? "Fools, do you know anything of this mys-
teay ?" says Swift, stamping one grave and carrying his
scorn for mankind actually beyond it. Miserable, purblind
wretches, how dare you pretend to comprehend the In-
scrutable, and hew can your dim eyes pierce the unfathom-
able depths of yonder boundless heaven ? Addison, in a ,
much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the
same sentiment ; and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the
contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity.
"Look what a little vain dust we are ;" he says, smiling
over the tombstones, and catching as is his wont, quite a
divine eilulgence as he looks heavenward ; he speaks in
words of inspiration almost, of "the Great Day, when we
shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance
together."
The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will
speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, it'ads you

up to his father's coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother
weeping and hipped( an unconscious little boy wondering at
her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand
and confidingly asks your sympathy. " Ste how good and
innocent and beautiful women are," he says—. how tender
little children !" Let us love these and one another, bro-
ther—God
they—God knows we have need of love and pardon. So it 1,
is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own •
voice, and prays his awn prayer.
When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that
charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can
refuse it ? One yields to it as to the frank advance of •
child, or to the appeal of • woman. A man is seldom more
manly than when be is what you call unmanned—the source
of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the in-
stinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and
unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If
Steele is not our friend, he is nothing. He is by no means
the most brilliant of wits ner the deepest of thinkers ; but
he is our friend : we love him, as children love their love
with en A. because he is amiable.