The Sun.
London, England, 1835-07-21 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

EDINBURGH REVIEW. No. CXXIV.
Longman and Co. London. 1835.
If the first article in this Number be not the pro-
duction of Mr. Macaulay, we know not to whose pen
to assign it. The theme is Sir James Mackintosh's
History of the Revolution, and never was theme better
illustrated. It has been produced with evident facility—
currente cala2no,—as is always the case when one
writes from a full mind. The style, too, is singularly
brilliant and forcible ; fertile in allusion ; graphic in
description ; abundant in details ; and rich beyond
measure in a knowledge of the nzinzttice of that portion
of history of which the Reviewer treats. This splen-
did disquisition opens with a character, drawn by a
friendly, but not too flattering hand, of the late Sir
James Mackintosh ; it then proceeds to point out the
numerous mistakes committed by the gentleman who
has been appointed to complete his history, which was
left unfinished at the period of his death ; and con-
cludes with a sketch of the Restoration and the Re-
volution, which, for its ease and vivacity of manner,
strength of colouring, and still more, for its happy ad-
mixture of matter-of-fact reasoning with philosophical
speculation, is superior even to Robertson's Historical
Summary in the introduction to his best work, Charles
the Fifth. 'We must give an extract or two from this
gem. Speaking of the progress of political science, the
Reviewer says—
" We shall not, we hope, be suspected of a bigoted attach-
ment to the doctrines and practices of past generations. Our
creed is, that the science of Government is an experimental
science, and that, like all other experimental sciences, it is
generally in a state of progression. No man is so obstinate an
admirer of the old times, tp to deny that medicine, surgery,
botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, are better under-
stood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the
same with political science. Like those other sciences which
we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer
and clearer, and depositing impurity after impurity. There
was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were
deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchymist ;
and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and
virtuous Statesmen thought it the first duty of a Government
to persecute heretics, to found monasteries, to make war on
Saracens. But time advances, facts accumulate, doubts arise.
Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and
more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the
tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.
They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness.ißut
soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest emi-
nences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest
valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then de-
fective systems, then complete aad harmonious systems. The
sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes
the opinion of a small minority, of a strong majority, of a ma-
jority—of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on, till
schoolboys laugh at the jargon which imposed on Bacon,—till
country Rectors condemn the illiberality and intolerance of
Sir Thomas More."
The description of the joy—phrcnzy rather—which
the nation, almost to a man, testified at the Restora-
tion of Charles the Second, is admirably given in the
following passage, which it will be observed is crowded
with incident, and lives, and glows, and sparkles in

every line :
" The people were ready to place at the mercy of their
Sovereign all their most ancient and precious rights. The
most servile doctrines were eagerly avowed. The most mo-
derate and Constitutional opposition was condemned. Re-
sistance was spoken of with more horror than any crime which
a human being can commit. The Commons were more eager
than the King himself to avenge the wrongs of the Royal
House ; more desirous than the Bishops themselves to restore
the Church ; more ready to give money than the Ministers to
ask for it. They abrogated some of the best laws passed in
the first Session of the Long Parliament—laws which Falkland
had supported, and which Hyde had not opposed. They might
probably have been induced to go further, and to restore the
High Commission and the Star Chamber. All the contempo-
rary accounts represent the nation as in a state of hysterical ex-
citementof drunken joy. In the immense multitude which
crowded the beach at Dover, and bordered the road along
which the King travelled to London, there was not one who
was not weeping. Bonfires blazed ; bells jingled. The streets
were thronged at night by boon-companions, who forced all
the passers by to swallow on their knees brimming glasses to
the health of his Most Sacred Majesty, and the damnation of
Red-nosed Noll. That tenderness to the fallen which has,
through many generations, been a marked feature of the na-
tional character, was for a time hardly discernible. All Lon-
don crowded to shout and laugh round the gibbet where hung
the rotting- remains of a Prince who had made England the
dread of the world,—who had been the chief founder of her
maritime greatness and of her Colonial empire,—who had
conquered Scotland and Ireland,—who had humbled Holland
and Spain,—the terror of whose name had been as a guard
round every English traveller in remote countries, and round
every Protestant congregation in the heart of Catholic em-
pires. When some of those brave and honest, though mis-
guided men, who had sate in judgment on their King, were
dragged on hurdles to a death of prolonged torture, their
last prayers were interrupted by the hisses and execrations of
thousands."
The sketch of Charles the Second is capital ; dashed
off at a heat, with a boldness and freedom of colouring,
that singularly contrast with the careful, polished,
Vandyke-like portrait of Scott. The Reviewer says
of him :

" He had seen, if ever man saw, both sides of human
nature. But only one side remained in his memory. He had
learned only to despise and distrust his species,—to consider
integrity in man, and modesty in woman, as mere acting; nor
did he think it worth while to keep his opinion to himself.
He was incapable of friendship, yet he was perpetually led by
favourities, without being in the smallest degree duped by
them. From a certain easiness which had no connection
with humanity, he submitted, half laughing at himself, to be
made the tool of any woman whose person attracted him, or
of any man whose tattle diverted him. He thought little, and
cared less, about religion. -He seems to have passed his life
in dawdling suspense, between Hobbism and Popery. He was
crowned in his youth with the Covenant in his hand ; he died
at last with the Host sticking in his throat."
The " dawdling suspense" gives a life—a truth--a
breadth of effect to this vigorous portrait, like one of
those sudden gleams of light which we sometimes see
among the broad shades of Rembrandt's heads. To-
wards the close of his Essay, the Reviewer takes the
opportunity of speaking with considerable respect of
Waller. We wonder at this. Waller is no fit subject
of eulogy for any one who reverences consistency or
manliness of character. At one period the advocate
of commonwealths, at another of despotisms ; now
bowing to the ground in presence of Cromwell, and
now licking the (hist at the feet of James ; glorying in
that which should cover an honest man with shame ;
ambitious only of success in little matters, such as
tickling the Court circles with the melody of his rhymes ;
sneering ai excellence which he could not reach, as in
the case of Milton ; apeing the dandy at past eighty,
and practising the hypocrite and buffoon throughout
life—we know of no public man who, possessing so
few claims to admiration, has been so generally ad-
mired as this trimming, namby-pamby poetaster. As
for his verse, the only two good lines he ever wrote are
borrowed from one of old Fuller's quaint conceits ;
and if the shades of Penshurst had nothing more to
boast than the visits of the lover of Sacharissa—whose
very name, by the bye, is characteristic of Waller's
genius, being as cloying and sickly as a sugar-
plum—they would be in a lamentable state as regards
poetical or historical associations.
" Character of the Athenians" contains some shrewd
speculations on this subject, suggested by a notice of
Mitchell's Translation of Aristophanes. The Re-
viewer speaks of this racy old comic writer,who combined
broad humour with fancy and elegance, in a way that no
modern has ever surpassed, in the language of hearty
eulogium, which is his due. The proverbial fickleness,
too, of the Athenians, is well dwelt on, though the
Reviewer is not one of those who are horrified at the
idea of being supposed capable of speaking favourably
of democracies. If the Athenian character have its
black, it has also its white side, in his estimation.
In the review of " Boteler's Voyage to Africa and
Arabia," we are furnished with some curious parti-
culars respecting the great African lake N'yassa, of
which the natives say, " that paddling five or six
hours a day, and resting every night on an island, it
would take them two moons to reach the furthest limits
of the lake ; but that a ship with sails would perform
the voyage in one moon." The Reviewer adds, that
" its breadth is three days good paddling in a canoe.
-The opposite shores are no where visible across the