NO. II. APRIL, 1822.

SCENE.-The little wainscotted room behind a good fire-a table covered with books and papers, decanters and glasses. TIME-Nine o'clock in the evening:—a high wind without.

Present Mr. CHRISTOPHER NORTH, and Mr. BULLER of Brasennose (seated in arm-chairs at the opposite sides of the fire-place.)

Mr. North. So-Mr. Buller, you've been reading Henry Mackenzie's Life of John Home.* What say you to the book? I am sure your chief objection is, that it is too short by half.

Mr. Buller. It is; for, to tell you the truth, I know very little about the characters with whom Mr. Mackenzie seems to take it for granted that every body is as familiar as himself. Do you remember John Home?

North. Perfectly. I remember going out to his farm-house, in East Lothian, and spending two delightful days with him there, so far back as the year seventy-seven. I was then a very stripling, but I can recall a great deal of what he said quite distinctly. After he came to live in Edinburgh, I was not much in Scotland; but I once called upon him, and drank tea with him here, I think about 1807 or 1808 very shortly before his death. He was, indeed, a fine highlyfinished gentleman-and bright to the last.

Buller. What sort of looking man was he?

North. A fine, thinking face-extremely handsome he had been in his youth-a dark-gray eye, full of thought, and, at the same time, full of fire his hair highly curled and powdered a rich robe-dechambre-pale green, if I recollect, like one John Kemble used to wear a scarlet waistcoat-a very striking figure, I assure you. Buller. He had been a clergyman in his early life!

North. Yes, and, you know, left the kirk in consequence of a foolish outcry they were making about his Douglas. I remember him sitting in their General Assembly, however, as an elder-and once dressed in scarlet; for he had a commission in a fencible regiment.

* In 1822, when his Life of John Home was published, Henry Mackenzie was seventy-five years old. But his reminiscences of the illustrious men whom he had long survived, were vivid to the last, and extremely graphic. When he died, in 1831, he was eighty-five years old.-M.

Buller. Dr. Adam Fergusson,* too, was in the church at first, I think?

North. He was and he went out chaplain to the forty-second, in the Seven Years' War. Colonel David Stewart tells a fine story of his heroism at the battle of Fontenoy. He could not be kept back from the front line.

Buller. “Ιερεύς μεν αλλα Μαχητης, like somebody in Homer. The Scotch literati of that time seem to have been a noble set of fellows. Good God! how you are fallen off!

North. We may thank the Whigs for that—transeat cum ceteris. Buller. I don't exactly understand your meaning. Do you allude to the Edinburgh Review?

North. Certainly, Mr. Buller. They introduced a lower tone in every thing. In the first place, few of them were gentlemen either by birth or breeding—and some of the cleverest of them have always preserved a sort of plebeian snappishness which is mighty disgusting. What would David Hume, for example, have thought of such a set of superficial chattering bodies?

Buller. David Hume appears in a very amiable light in this volume. He was, after all, a most worthy man, though an infidel.

North. He was a man of the truest genius-the truest learningand the truest excellence. His nature was so mild that he could do without restraints, the want of which would have ruined the character of almost any other man. I love the memory of David Humethe first historian the modern world has produced-primus absque sécundo, to my mind! His account of the different sects and parties in the time of Charles I, is worth all the English prose that has been written since. At least, 'tis well worth half of it.

Buller. Why are not his letters published? The few that have been printed are exquisite,—one or two very fine specimens in this very volume and what a beautiful thing is that notice of his last journey to Bath by the poetf—a few such pages are worth an Encyclopædia.

North. What a sensation was produced in England when that fine constellation of Scotch genius first began to blaze out upon the world! You thought us little better than Hottentots before.

Buller. And yet Dr. Johnson always somehow or other kept the first place himself.

North. He could not, or would not, make so good books as other

The Historian. He was chaplain of the 42d Highlanders, in Flanders, until the peace of Aix la Chapelle, and actually joined in the charge of his regiment at Fontenoy. Returning to Edinburgh, he was chosen Professor of Natural Philosophy, but afterwards took the chair of moral philosophy. His chief work is a "History of the Roman Republic." He died in 1816, aged ninety-two.-M.

† David Hume's interesting correspondence has since been collected and published, under the editorship of J. Hill Burton, of Edinburgh. He stands at the head of the modern philosophical skeptics, and his History of England is the most permanent proof of his ability and

researches.-M.

1822.]

JOHN HOME.

157

people, but God knows there was a pith about old Samuel which nothing could stand up against. His influence was not so much that of an author as of a thinker. He was the most powerful intellect in the world of books. He was the Jackson of the literary ring-the judge the emperor-a giant-acknowledged to be a Saul amongst the people. Even David Hume would have been like a woman in his grasp; but, odd enough, the two never met.

Buller. Your Magazine once had a good Essay on Johnson and Warburton..

North. Yes; I wrote it myself. But, after all, Warburton was not Johnson's match.* He had more flame but less heat. Johnson's mind was a furnace—it reduced everything to its elements. We have no truly great critical intellect since his time.

Buller. What would he have thought of our modern reviewers? North. Why, not one of the tribe would have dared to cry mew had he been alive. The terror of him would have kept them as mum as mice when there's a cat in the room. If he had detected such a thing as Jeffrey astir, he would have cracked every bone in his body with one worry.

Buller. I can believe it all. Even Gifford would have been annihilated.

North. Like an ill-natured pug-dog flung into a lion's cage.
Buller. He did not like your old Scots literati.

North. He hated the name of Scotland, and would not condescend to know what they were. Yet he must have admired such a play as Douglas. The chief element of John Home's inspiration seems to have been a sort of stately elevation of sentiment, which must have struck some congenial chords in his own great mind.

Buller. What is your opinion of John Home as a poet?

North. I think nobody can bestow too much praise on Douglas. There has been no English tragedy worthy of the name since it appeared. 'Tis a noble piece-beautifully and loftily written; but, after all, the principal merit is in the charming old story itself. Douglas is the only true forerunner of the Scotch imaginative literature of our own age. Home's other tragedies are all very indifferent -most of them quite bad. Mr. Mackenzie should not have disturbed their slumbers.

Buller. The natural partiality of friendship and affectionNorth. Surely; and it is most delightful to read his Memoir, simply for its overflowing with that fine strain of sentiments. He is like Ossian," the last of all his race," and talks of his peers as they

* Dr. Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, was more highly praised by Johnson, (in his Life of Pope), than he really deserved. He knew a great deal, but knew few things so as to master them. As an author he was diffuse, coarse, and dogmatical.-M.

†This is one of the instances where North's judgment was clouded by his nationality. The tragedy of Douglas by no means merits the high praise here given to it.-M.

should be talked of. One may differ from his opinions here and there, but there is a halo over the whole surface of his language. 'Tis to me a very pathetic work.

Buller. Mackenzie is himself a very great author.

North. A discovery indeed, Mr. Buller! Henry Mackenzie, sir, is one of the most original in thought, and splendid in fancy, and chaste in expression, that can be found in the whole line of our worthies. He will live as long as our tongue, or longer.

Buller. Which of his works do you like best?

North. Julia de Roubigné and the story of La Roche. I thought that vein had been extinct, till Adam Blair came out. But Nature in none of her domains can ever be exhausted.

Buller. But an author's invention may be exhausted, I suppose. North. Not easily. You might as well talk of exhausting the Nile as a true genius. People talk of wearing out a man's intellectual power, as if it were a certain determinate sum of cash in a strong box. 'Tis more like the income of a princely estate-which, with good management, must always be improving, not falling off. A great author's power of acquisition is in the same ratio with his power of displaying. He who can write well might be able to see well-and his eyes will feed his fancy as long as his fingers can hold the pen.

Buller. At that rate we shall have three or four more new Waverley romances every year?

North. I hope so. There's old Goethe has written one of the best romances he ever did, within the last twelve months-a most splendid continuation of his Wilhelm Meister-and Goethe was born, I think, in the year 1742. I wish Mackenzie, who is a good ten years his junior, would follow the example.*

Buller. Voltaire held on wonderfully to the last, too.

North. Ay, there was another true creature! Heavens! what a genius was Voltaire's! So grave, so gay, so profound, so brilliant— his name is worth all the rest in the French literature.

Buller. Always excepting my dear Rabelais.

North. A glorious old fellow, to be sure! Once get into his stream, and try if you can land again! He is the only man whose mirth exerts the sway of uncontrollable vehemence. His comic is as strong as the tragic of Eschylus himself.

Buller. We are Pygmies!

North. More's the pity. Yet we have our demi-gods too. In manners and in dignity we are behind the last age-but in genius, properly so called, we are a thousand miles above it. They had little or no poetry then. Such a play even as Douglas would, if published now-a-days, appear rather feeble. It would be better as a

*Instead of Mackenzie's being ten years younger than Goethe, he was four years' older. Mackenzie was born in 1745, Goethe in 1749.-M.

1822.]

MODERN STATESMEN.

159

play certainly-but the poetry of Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth, would be in men's minds, and they would not take that for poetry, fine though it be.

Buller. What would people say to one of Shakspeare's plays, were it to be written now?

North. The Edinburgh Reviewers would say it was a Lakish Rant. The Quarterly would tear it to bits, growling like a mastiff. The fact is, that our theatre is at an end, I fear. A new play, to be received triumphantly, would require to have all the fire and passion of the old-drama, and all the chasteness and order of the new. I doubt to reconcile these two will pass the power of any body now living. Buller. Try yourself, man.

North. I never will-but if I did, I should make something altogether unlike anything that has ever been done in our language. Unless I could hit upon some new-really new-key, I should not think the attempt worth making. Even our dramatic verse is quite worn out. It would pall on one's ear were it written never so well. Buller. Why? Sophocles wrote the same metre with Eschylus. North. No more than Shakspeare wrote the same blank verse with Milton-or Byron, in the Corsair, the same measure with the Rape of the Lock. Counting the longs and shorts is not enough, Mr. Bachelor of Arts.

Buller. You despise our English study of the classics. You think it carried too far. I understand your meaning, Mr. North.

North. I doubt that. I suspect that I myself have read as much Greek in my day as most of your crack-men. In my younger days, sir, the glory of our Buchanans and Barclays* was not forgotten in Scotland. In this matter again, we have to thank the blue and yellow gentry for a good deal of our national deterioration.

Buller. They are not scholars.

North. They scholars! witlings can't be scholars, Buller. Knowledge is a great calmer of people's minds. Milton would have been a compassionate critic.

Buller. Are you a compassionate one?

North. Sir, I am ever compassionate, when I see anything like nature and originality. I do not demand the strength of a Hercules from every man. Let me have an humble love of, and a sincere aspiration after what is great, and I am satisfied. I am intolerant to nobody but Quacks and Cockneys.

There are five Barclays, whose names are recorded:-Alexander Barclay, translator of the "Navis Stultifera," or Ship of Fools, died 1532; Robert Barclay, author of "An Apology for the Quakers," died 1690; William Barclay, Professor of Law at Angers, in France, and a great civilian, died 1605; John Barclay, his son, author of "Euphoronium," a Latin Satire, and "Aryenis," a romance, died 1621; and John Barclay, of Cruden, who wrote a rare and curious work in verse, now very scarce, called "A Description of the Roman Catholic Church.-M. "The blue and yellow" was the Edinburgh Review, published with a cover of blue and yellow paper.-M.