whatever, unless it were either political or obscene. With no seasoning of either sort, "wherefore," he would ask indignantly, should I waste my time upon a poem ?" Porson had read the Rolliad, because it concerned his political party: he had read the epistle of Obereea, queen of Otaheite, to Sir Joseph Banks, because, if Joseph was rather too demure, the poem was not. Else, and with such exceptions, he condescended not to any metrical writer subsequent to the era of Pope, whose Eloisa to Abelard he could say by heart, and could even sing from beginning to end; which, indeed, he would do, whether you chose it or not, after a sufficient charge of brandy, and sometimes even though threatened with a cudgel, in case he persisted in his molestations. Waller he had also read, and occasionally quoted with effect. But as to a critique on Wordsworth, whose name had not begun to mount from the ground when Porson died,* as reasonably and characteristically might it have been put into the mouth of the Hetman Platoff. Instead of Porson's criticisms on writings which he never saw, let us hear Porson's account of a fashionable rout in an aristocratic London mansion: it was the only party of distinction that this hirsute but most learned Theban ever visited; and his history of what passed (comic alike and tragic) is better worth preserving than "Brantome," or even than Swift's "Memoirs of a Parish Clerk." It was by the hoax of a young Cantab that the Professor was ever decoyed into such a party: the thing was a swindle; but his report of its natural philosophy is not on that account the less picturesque :→→→→

"SOUTHEY.-Why do you repeat the word rout so

"PORSON. I was once at one by mistake; and really I saw there what you describe and this made me repeat the word and smile. You seem curious.'

"SOUTHEY. Rather, indeed.'

"PORSON.' I had been dining out; there were some who smoked after dinner: within a few hours, the fumes of their pipes produced such an effect on my head that I was willing to go into the air a little. Still I continued hot and thirsty; and an under-graduate, whose tutor was my old acquaintance, proposed that we should turn into an oyster-cellar, and refresh ourselves with oysters and porter. The rogue, instead of this, conducted me to a

* An equal mistake it is in Mr. Landor to put into the month of Porson any vituperation of Mathias as one that had uttered opinions upon Wordsworth. In the Pursuits of Literature, down to the 15th edition, there is no mention of Wordsworth's name. Southey is mentioned slightingly, and chiefly with reference to his then democratic principles; but not Coleridge, and not Wordsworth. Mathias soon after went to Italy, where he passed the remainder of his life-died, I believe, and was buried-never, perhaps, having heard the name of Wordsworth. As to Porson, it is very true that Mathias took a few liberties with his private habits, such as his writing paragraphs in the little cabinet fitted up for the gens de plume at the Morning Chronicle Office, and other trifles. But these, though impertinences, were not of a nature seriously to offend. They rather flattered, by the interest which they argued in his movements. And with regard to Porson's main pretension, his exquisite skill in Greek, Mathias was not the man to admire this too little: his weakness, if in that point he had a weakness, lay in the opposite direction. His own Greek was not a burthen that could have foundered a camel: he was neither accurate, nor extensive, nor profound. But yet Mr. L. is wrong in thinking that he drew it from an Index. In his Italian, he had the advantage probably of Mr. Landor himself: at least, he wrote it with more apparent fluency and compass.

fashionable house in the neighbourhood of St. James's ; and, although I expostulated with him, and insisted that we were going up stairs and not down, he appeared to me so ingenuous in his protestations to the contrary that I could well disbelieve him no longer. Nevertheless, receiving on the stairs many shoves and elbowings, I could not help telling him plainly that, if indeed it was altered for the worse; and that, in future, I should frethe oyster-cellar in Fleet Street, the company was much quent another. When the fumes of the pipes had left me, I discovered the deceit by the brilliancy and indecency of the dresses; and was resolved not to fall into temptation. Although, to my great satisfaction, no immodest proposal was directly made to me, I looked about anxious that no other man should know me beside him whose wantonness had conducted me thither; and I would have escaped, if I could have found the door, from which every effort I made appeared to remove me farther and farther. * A pretty woman said loudly, ་་་ has no gloves on!"" plied an older one white." "

*

"What nails the creature has re"Piano-forte keys wanting the

I pause to say that this, by all accounts which have reached posterity, was really no slander. The Professor's forks had become rather of the dingiest, probably through inveterate habits of scratching up Greek roots from diluvian mould, some of it older than Deucalion's flood, and very good, perhaps, for turnips, but less so for the digits which turn up turnips, What followed, however, if it were of a nature to be circumstantially repeated, must have been more trying to the sensibilities of the Greek oracle, and to the blushes of the Policemen dispersed throughout the rooms, than even the harsh critique upon his nails; which, let the wits say what they would in their malice, were no doubt washed regularly enough once every three years. And, even if they were not, I should say that this is not by any means so strong a fact as some that are reported about many a continental professor. Mrs. Clnt, with the twofold neatness of an Englishwoman and a quaker, told me, that, on visiting Pestalozzi, the celebrated education professor, at Yverdun, about 1820, her first impression, from a distant view of his dilapidated premises, was profound horror at the grimness of his complexion, which struck her as no complexion formed by nature, but as a deposition from half a century of atmospheric rust a most ancient ærugo. She insisted on a radical purification, as a sine qua non towards any interview with herself. The meek professor consented. Mrs. Cl. hired a stout Swiss charwoman, used to the scouring of staircases, kitchen floors, &c.; the professor, whom, on this occasion, one may call "the prisoner, was accommodated with a seat (as prisoners at the bar sometimes are with us) in the centre of a mighty washing-tub, and then scoured through a long summer forenoon, by the strength of a brawny Helvetian arm.

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And now, my dear friend" said Mrs. Cl. to myself, "is it thy opinion that this was cruel ? Some people say it was; and I wish to disguise nothing;-it was not mere soap that I had him scoured with, but soap and sand; so, say honestly, dost thee call that cruel?" Laughing no more than the frailty of my human nature compelled me, I replied, "Far from it; on the contrary, everybody must be charmed with her con

sideration for the professor, in not having him cleansed on the same principles as her carriage, viz., taken to the stable-yard, mopped severely," [“mobbed, dost thee say?" she exclaimed; "No, no," I said, “not mobbed, but mopped, until the gravel should be all gone"], "then pelted with buckets of water by firemen, and, finally, currycombed and rubbed down by two grooms, keeping up a sharp susurrus between them, so as to soothe his wounded feelings; after all which, a feed of oats might not have been amiss." The result, however, of this scouring extraordinary was probably as fatal as to Mambrino's helmet in Don Quixote. Pestalozzi issued, indeed, from the washing-tub like Aeson from Medea's kettle; he took his station amongst a younger and fairer generation; and the dispute was now settled whether he belonged to the Caucasian or Mongolian race. But his intellect was thought to have suffered seriously. The tarnish of fifty or sixty years seemed to have acquired powers of re-acting as a stimulant upon the professor's faney, through the rete mucosum, or through heaven knows what. He was too old to be converted to cleanliness; the Paganism of a neglected person at seventy becomes a sort of religion interwoven with the nervous system-just as the well-known Plica Polonica from which the French armies suffered so much in Poland, during 1807–8, though produced by neglect of the hair, will not be cured by extirpation of the hair. The hair becomes matted into Medusa locks, or what look like snakes; and to cut these off is oftentimes to cause nervous frenzy, or other great constitutional disturbance. I never heard, indeed, that Pestalozzi suffered apoplexy from his scouring; but certainly his ideas on education grew bewildered, and will be found essentially damaged, after that great epoch-his baptism by water and sand.

ཇ་ ༢་ ༦

Now, in comparison of an Orson like this man of Yverdun-this great Swiss reformer, who might, perhaps, have bred a pet variety of typhus fever for his own separate use what signify nails, though worse than Caliban's or Nebuchadnezzar's?

of every woman is an idea so sheltered by the tenderness and sanctity with which all but ruffians invest that organ of maternity, that no man scruples to name it, if the occasion warrants it. He suppresses it only as he suppresses the name of God; not as an idea that can itself contain any indecorum, but, on the contrary, as making other and more trivial ideas to become indecorous when associated with a conception rising so much above their own standard. Equally, the words, affliction, guilt, penitence, remorse, &c., are proscribed from the ordinary current of conversation amongst mere acquaintances; and for the same reason, viz., that they touch chords too impassioned and profound for harmonising with the key in which the mere social civilities of life are exchanged. Meantime, it is not true that any custom ever prevailed in any class of calling a woman's bosom her neck.Porson goes on to say, that, for his part, he was born in an age when people had thighs. Well, a great many people have thighs still. But in all ages there must have been many of whom it is lawful to suspect such a fact zoologically; and yet, as men honouring our own race, and all its veils of mystery, not too openly to insist upon it, which, luckily, there is seldom any occasion to do.

Mr. Landor conceives that we are growing worse in the pedantries of false delicacy. I think not. His own residence in Italy has injured his sense of discrimination. It is not his countrymen that have grown conspicuously more demure and prudish, but he himself that has grown in Italy more tolerant of what is really a blameable coarseness. Various instances occur in these volumes of that faulty compliance with Southern grossness. The tendencies of the age, among ourselves, lie certainly in one channel towards excessive refinement. So far, however, they do but balance the opposite tendencies in some other channels. The craving for instant effect in style as it brings forward many disgusting Germanisms and other barbarisms-as it transplants into literature much slang from the street-as it re-acts painfully upon the grandeurs of the antique scriptural diction, by recalling into colloquial use many consecrated

operates daily amongst journalists, by the temptations of apparent strength that lurk in plain-speaking or even in brutality. What other temptation, for instance, can be supposed to govern those who,

needlessly offend us by the very coarsest English word for the Latin word venter? Surely the word stomach would be intelligible to everybody, and yet disgust nobody. It would do for him that affects plain-speaking; it would do for you and me that revolt from gross-speaking. Signs from abroad speak the very same language, as to the

century. Formerly, it was treason for a Spaniard, even in a laudatory copy of verses, to suppose his own Queen lowered to the level of other females by the possession of legs! Constitutionally, the Queen was incapable of legs. How else her Majesty contrived to walk, or to dance, the Inquisition soon

anxieties of the Cæsars. All these powers, and some others belonging to less dignified functions, were made to run through the same central rings (or what in mail-coach harness is called the turrets): the "ribbons" were tossed up to one and the same imperial coachman, looking as amiable as he could, but, in fact, a very truculent personage, having powers more unlimited than was always safe for himself. And now, after all this change of things, what was to be the name? By what title should men know him? Much depended upon that. The tremendous symbols of S. P. Q. R. still remained; nor had they lost their power. On the contrary, the great idea of the Roman destiny, as of some vast phantom moving under God to some unknown end, was greater than ever: the idea was now so great, that it had outgrown all its representative realities. Consul and Proconsul would no longer answer, because they represented too exclusively the interior or domestic fountains of power, and not the external relations to the terraqueous globe which were beginning to expand with sudden accelerations of velocity. The central power could not be forgotten by any who were near enough to have tasted its wrath: but now there was arising a necessity for expressing, by some great unity of denomination, so as no longer to lose the totality in the separate partitions the enormity of the cireumference. Anecessity for this had repeatedly been found in negotiations, and in contests of ceremonial rank with oriental powers, as between ourselves and China. With Persia, the greatest of these powers, an instinct of inevitable collision* had, for some time, been ripening. It became requisite that there should be a representative officer for the whole Roman grandeur, and one capable of standing on the same level as the Persian king of kings; and this necessity arose at the very same moment that a new organization was required of Roman power for domestic purposes. There is no doubt that both purposes were consulted in the choice of the title Imperator. The chief alternative title was that of Dictator. But to this, as regarded Romans, there were two objections-first, that it was a mere provisional title, always commemorating a transitional emergency, and pointing to some happier condition, which the extraordinary powers of the officer ought soon to establish. It was in the nature of a problem, and continually asked for its own solution. The Dictator dictated. He was the greatest ipse dixit that ever was heard of. It reminded the people verbally of despotic powers and autocracy. Then again, as regarded foreign nations, unacquainted with the Roman constitution, and throughout the servile East incapable of understanding it, the title of Dictator had no meaning at all. The Speaker is a magnificent title in England, and makes brave men sometimes shake in their shoes. But, yet, if from rustic ignorance it is not understood, even that title

Herod the Great, and his father Antipater, owed the favour of Rome, and, finally, the throne of Judæa, to the seasonable election which they made between Rome and Persia; but made not without some doubts, as between forces hardly yet brought to a satisfactory equation.

VOL. XIV.-XO. CLVIII.

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means nothing. Of the proudest Speaker that England ever saw, viz., Sir Edward Seymour, it is recorded that his grandeur failed him, sank under him, like the Newgate drop, at the very moment when his boiling anger most relied upon and required it. He was riding near Barnet, when a rustic waggoner a-head of him, by keeping obstinately the middle of the road, prevented him from passing. Sir Edward motioned to him magnificently, that he must turn his horses to the left. The carter, on some fit of the sulks (perhaps from the Jacobinism innate in man), despised this pantomime, and sturdily persisted in his mutinous disrespect. On which Sir Edward shouted—“Fellow, do you know who I am?" "Noo-ah," replied our rebellious friend, meaning, when faithfully translated, no. "Are you aware, Sirrah," said Sir Edward, now thoroughly incensed, "that I am the right honourable the Speaker? At your peril, sir, in the name of the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, quarter instantly to the left." This was said in that dreadful voice which sometimes reprimanded penitent offenders, kneeling at the bar of the House. The carter, more struck by the terrific tones than the words, spoke an aside to "Dobbin” (his “thill” horse), which procured an opening to the blazing Speaker, and then replied thus-"Speaker! Why, if so be as thou can'st speak, whoy-y-y-y-y," (in the tremulous undulation with which he was used to utter his sovereign whoah-h-h-h to his horses), Whoy-y-y-y didn't-a speak afore?" The waggoner, it seemed, had presumed Sir Edward, from his mute pantomime, to be a dumb man; and all which the proud Speaker gained, by the proclamation of his style and title, was, to be exonerated from that suspicion, but to the heavy discredit of his sanity. A Roman Dictator stood quite as poor a chance with foreigners, as our Speaker with a rustic. "Dictator! let him dictate to his wife; but he sha'n't dictate to us." Any title, to prosper with distant nations, must rest upon the basis of arms. And this fell in admirably with the political exigency for Rome herself. The title of Imperator was liable to no jealousy. Being entirely a military title, it clashed with no civil pretensions whatever. Being a military title, that recorded a triumph over external enemies in the field, it was dear to the patriotic heart; whilst it directed the eye to a quarter where all increase of power was concurrent with increase of benefit to the State. And again, as the honour had been hitherto purely titular, accompanied by some auctoritas, in the Roman sense [not always honour, for Cicero was an Imperator for Cilician exploits, which he reports with laughter], but no separate authority in our modern sense. Even in military circles it was open to little jealousy: nor apparently could ripen into a shape that ever would be so, since, according to all precedent, it would be continually balanced by the extension of the same title, under popular military suffrage, to other fortunate leaders.

Who could foresee, at the inauguration of this reform, that this precedent would be abolished? who could guess that henceforwards no more triumphs (but only a sparing distribution of

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