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expressibly foul and vile places of temporary confinement, and the iniquitous procedure in which the inquisitor had unlimited power, and the prisoner no right. With the accession of Alexander I., in 1801, there came a mighty change for the better. He declared that persecution merely served to spread and confirm sectarianism, and that the only true means for eradicating it was kindly persuasion and good example. Every case of sectarianism was to be laid before the council of ministers, and, as the Emperor himself took a lively interest in these matters, most of them were brought to his own cognizance; and many such opportunities were made use of for the further development of his enlightened ideas. Especial favor was shown to the Duchobortsi, for whom Alexander, the friend of the Quakers, had an almost unconcealed liking, though pretending to consider their doctrines as the errors of wellmeaning but misled simpletons; and some of that favor also reached the Malakani. Nicholas, on the other hand, believed the established Church to be the mainstay of the state, and naturally considered sectarians, who all regard the orthodox as "idolaters," to be especially dangerous. There were again endless vexations and extortions, and numerous criminal prosecutions leading to banishment, and some to still severer punishments. Alexander II. almost abolishedpractically though not formally-the criminal

treatment of sectarianism. The press was at liberty to praise the Malakani, although the collection of regulations in matters of sectarianism, secretly printed by the Ministry of the Interior at the beginning of the present reign, continued to describe them as an especially pernicious secta contradiction which the Malakani could not fail to experience in practice. Thus there was, in Alexandroff Gaï, some time after Mr. Wallace's visit, a criminal inquest, because, according to the denunciation of a priest, two orthodox soldiers were said to have been present at a congregational prayer-meeting. The only results, however, were some protocols, and the prayer-meetings continue to be held quite openly. The minor official fry, and even some of the orthodox clergy, are on the very best terms with the Malakani; and officials of good standing, such as Mr. Wallace's traveling companions, do not hide their predilection for the sectarians. The Government itself shows, by the invitation quoted at the beginning of this essay, that it not only understands, but has the courage to acknowledge and utilize, the colonizatory capabilities of the Malakani. The success of this measure is undoubtable, and there is every reason to hope that, in the pursuit of their difficult and noble task, the Malakani will in time get rid of all their recently developed taints. G. M. ASHER (Macmillan's Magazine).

MR. MACVEY NAPIER AND THE EDINBURGH

MR

REVIEWERS.*

[R. MACVEY NAPIER, who succeeded Francis Jeffrey in the editorship of the great Whig "Review," had, of course, a perfect right to preserve the letters which are published in this volume, and to study them in private as much as he pleased. Indeed, for anything that appears to the contrary in the "Introduction" by his son, the present Mr. Macvey Napier, they may have been bequeathed by the original recipient with instructions that they should some day be published. An edition, privately circulated a short time ago, led to “ representations that a correspondence of so much interest ought to be made more accessible," and the present volume is the result; but it might be maintained that the writers of such letters would, if they could have * Selection from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq. Edited by his Son, Macvey Napier.

London: Macmillan & Co.

been consulted, have objected to their publication; and that to send them forth to the world in all their nakedness was, at all events, not a delicate or magnanimous thing to do. "Much might be said on both sides." Paley, in his chapter on the original character of the Christian Morality, remarked that though a thousand cases might be supposed in which the use of the golden rule might mislead a person, it was impossible in fact to light on such a case. That was a hazardous observation, for the truth is that, when we once get beyond elementary conditions of being and doing, we find human beings differ so very widely, and in such utterly incalculable ways, that it is in vain to poll the monitor in the breast on questions that do in fact arise daily-five hundred in a thousand will vote one way, and five hundred in another. "How would you like it yourself?" is a question that elicits the most

discordant replies. I have a very positive feeling that I should have left many of these letters in the portfolio, or put them into the fire; but, when I look about me for a standard which I could take in my hand to Mr. Napier, I am baffled-he might produce one of his own that would silence me on the spot. And, when one has taken up a book to comment upon it with as little reserve as may be, it seems idle, if not Irish, to begin by saying that the most amusing or most fertile things in it ought never to have seen the light.

This point may recur before we have done; and in the mean time it should be remarked that nothing very momentous, either to the honor or the disgrace of human nature in general, or literary human nature in particular, can be extracted from this correspondence. A late essayist used to tell a true anecdote of a distinguished statesman who had lived many years and seen as many changes as Ulysses. A friend asked him something like this: "Well, now, you have had a great deal to do with mankind, and you have outlived the heats and prejudices of youth; what do you think of men in general?" And the veteran replied: “Oh, I like them-very good fellows; but "-and here we shall mollify his language a little-"but condemnably vain, you know." And really that is about the worst thing you can find it in your heart to say of literary men after running through these letters"very good fellows, but very vain, you know."

Another point which lies less near the surface, and has at least the look of novelty, would perhaps be this: It is the most frequent and most voluminous of the writers who unconsciously tell us the most about themselves; and who, with the pleasing exception of Jeffrey, show us the most of their unamiable sides. But there is comfort for impulsive people in the fact that it is not always the most self-controlled and inoffensive of the writers who win upon us. The Brougham-Macaulay feud runs sprawling through these pages till we are tired of it; and some of poor Brougham's letters are downright venomous. But the total absence of disguise and the blundering boyish inconsistency disarm us. Taking the letters one by one, the moral superiority is with Macaulay on Brougham as against Brougham on Macaulay, but taking the correspondence in the lump, it is something like Charles Surface against Joseph Surface, in another line-only, of course, there is no hypocrisy. While you come to feel for Brougham in his spluttering rages, you feel also that Macaulay, in his too-admirable self-continence, can do very well without your compassion, whatever he may have to complain of. It is easy to discern that Brougham honestly believed in his own superiority to the young rival who outshone him, and yet

that he was inwardly tormented. Macaulay's forbearance was of the kind qui coûte si peu au gens heureux. The editor, Mr. Napier, was, we may conjecture, the greatest sufferer of the three. Much was owed to Brougham as a man of enormous intellectual force; to which, apart from his past services, great respect was due: but Macaulay was by far the best writer, and (to employ a bull which is common enough) incomparably the most attractive contributor. The strength of his hold upon the Review" and its editor is apparent on every tenth page of the book, and comes out forcibly enough in a letter from Sir James Stephen to Mr. Napier. Mr. Napier had written to Sir James, expressing some delicate surprise that no article from his pen had reached the "Review" for a long time. Sir James excuses himself in this fashion :

I know that many of your contributors must be importunate for a place; that you must be fencing and compromising at a weary rate; that there are many interests of the passing day which you could not overlook; and that we should all have growled like so many fasting bears if denied the regular re

turn of the Macaulay diet, to which we have been so long accustomed.

Sir James was an exceedingly busy man, and he was not professedly a man of letters like Macaulay; but we may, if we like, read between the lines in these excuses and find a little pique there, as well as a just sense of an editor's diffi culties.

Another point which lies broadly and prominently upon the surface in these letters is a very unpleasant one. It is scarcely credible how much dull conceit and sheer ignorant arbitrariness there often is in the minds of able and cultivated men. It does not seem even to occur to them that their own range may be limited, and their judgments upon many (or even a few) topics not worth ink or breath. It should hardly be offensive to an ordinary man to be told, or at least to find it tacitly assumed, that he could not have invented fluxions, painted like Rembrandt, or sung like Pindar. Why, then, should it be difficult for any cultivated specialist, of more than ordinary faculties, to make the reflection that he must be deficient in some direction or other? Yet we find in practice that it is not only difficult, but impossible, in the majority of cases. Mr. Napier seems to have invited, or at all events not to have repelled, free criticisms on his Review from the contributors in general, and the outcome is little short of appalling. If ever there was an able man it was Mr. Senior, yet these are the terms in which he allows himself to speak of an article on Christopher North-or rather of Christopher North himself: "The article on

Christopher North is my abomination. I think him one of the very worst of the clever bad writers who infest modern literature; full of bombast, affectation, conceit, in short, of all the vitia, tristia, as well as dulcia. I had almost as soon try to read Carlyle or Coleridge." Now, Mr. Senior was, of course, entitled to dislike Christopher North, and there is plenty to be said against him in the way of criticism; but the charge of "affectation" is foolish, and the whole passage pitched in the most detestable of all literary key-notes. John Wilson was a man of genius, whose personal likings and rampant animal spirits led him most mournfully astray. He was wanting also in love of truth for its own sake; but he was as much superior to Mr. Senior as Shakespeare was to him. And the addition about Carlyle or Coleridge-or Coleridge!-is just the gratuitous insolence of oneeyed dullness. There is enough and to spare of blame ready in any balanced mind for either of these great writers, but they can do without the admiration of wooden-headed prigs, however able. The point, however, is that it never dawns upon the mind of even so clever and cultivated a man as Mr. Senior, that his head may have gaps in it.

Another instance to the same purport may be selected from a letter from Mr. Edwin Ather

stone, the poet-for it would perhaps be hard and grudging to deny him the title, since he found an audience, and I have a vague recollection of having once read verses of his about Nineveh or Babylon which had in them power of the picturesque-meditative order. Now, this is Now, this is the way in which Mr. Edwin Atherstone speaks of Dr. Thomas Brown, the metaphysician: "For myself, I know not a writer, with the exception of Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Scott, from whom I have derived such high delight as from Dr. Brown."

Was ever such a category put on paper before? It is as if a man should say his favorite musical instruments were the organ, the harp, the trumpet, the violin, and the sewing-machine. Brown was one of the most readable of metaphy

sicians; he made some acute hits, and he wrote

elegant verses; but his position in Mr. Atherstone's list is as inexplicably quaint as that of "Burke, commonly called the Sublime," in the epitaph on the lady who "painted in watercolors," and "was first cousin to Lady Jones."

The worst examples of all, however, come from the letters of Francis Jeffrey himself. Jeffrey has been underrated, and he was a most amiable man; but some of the verdicts he thought fit to pronounce upon articles in the "Edinburgh," when edited by Mr. Napier, are saugrenus. In one case he is about suggesting a contributor, to deal with a certain topic, and is

so polite as to say that the name of Mr. John Stuart Mill had struck him: "I once thought of John Mill, but there are reasons against him too, independent of his great unreadable book and its elaborate demonstrations of axioms and truisms."

There might be weighty "reasons against" Mr. Mill, but what his "Logic" could have to do with the question is not clear. It never seems to have crossed Jeffrey's mind that he might be totally disqualified for forming an opinion of a book like that; and, having called it “unreadable" (though to a reader with any natural bent toward such matters it is deeply interesting), he actually puts forward the fact that Mill had written it as a reason against his being intrusted with the treatment of a political topic in a Whig review. Editors are human, and the editorial position is a very troublesome one. An editor may lose his head, as an overworked wine-taster may lose his palate. In a word, allowances must be made; but, after a disclosure or two like this, it is difficult not to conclude that the "Review" owed no more of its success to its former editor than it might have owed to any intelligent clerk. But we can not let Jeffrey go yet. The following passage relates to an article on Victor Cousin:

unreadable thing that ever appeared in the "ReCousin I pronounce beyond all doubt the most view." The only chance is, that gentle readers may take it to be very profound, and conclude that the fault is in their want of understanding. But I am not disposed to agree with them. It is ten times more mystical than anything my friend Carlyle ever wrote, and not half so agreeably written. It is nothing to the purpose that he does not agree with the worst part of the mysticism, for he affects to understand it, and to explain it, and to think it very ingenious and respectable, and it is mere gibberish. He may possibly be a clever man. There are even indications of that in his paper, but he is not a very clever man, nor of much power; and beyond all question he is not a good writer on such subjects. If you ever admit such a disquisition again, order your operator to instance and illustrate all his propositions by cases or examples, and to reason and explain with reference to these. This is a sure test of

sheer nonsense, and moreover an infinite resource

for the explication of obscure truth, if there be any such thing.

Now, the writer of the article in question was Sir William Hamilton. "He may possibly be a clever man, but beyond all question he is not a good writer on such subjects." So much for Jeffrey.

"Nec sibi cœnarum quivis temere arroget artem, Non prius exacta tenui ratione saporum."

Poor Mr. Carlyle is again dragged in, and Sir

William is pronounced "ten times more mystical" than he "mystical" in italics. When a writer, using the word mystical opprobriously, prints it in italics, it is usually safe to decide that he knows nothing of metaphysics. The concluding sentences are instructive examples of editorial self-confidence: "If ever you admit such a disquisition again, order your operator to" do so-and-so. Thus, the treatment of Mill and Hamilton being equally ignorant and inept, there is no escape for the ex-editor. Both verdicts were after the too-celebrated "this-will-neverdo" manner, and that is all.

In the communications from literary men there are some fine instances of just self-consciousness. Tom Campbell writes, with great warmth and alertness, to promise an article upon a new work about the "Nerves"; but shortly afterward writes again, candidly confessing that he had found, upon looking again at the work, that his aptitude for scientific detail was not great enough to enable him to do justice to the subject. A letter from William Hazlitt is so striking, both for its truthfulness and its clearheadedness, as to deserve quoting in full. He had been written to by Mr. Napier for some contributions to the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and he replies, from his well-known retreat at Winterslow Hut, in these terms:

I am sorry to be obliged, from want of health and a number of other engagements, which I am lit

tle able to perform, to decline the flattering offer you make me. I am also afraid that I should not be able to do the article in question, or yourself, justice, for I am not only without books, but without knowledge of what books are necessary to be consulted on the subject. To get up an article in a Review on any subject of general literature is quite as much as I can do without exposing myself. The object of an encyclopædia is, I take it, to condense and combine all the facts relating to a subject, and all the theories of any consequence already known or advanced. Now, where the business of such a work ends, is just where I begin-that is, I might perhaps throw in an idle speculation or two of my own, not contained in former accounts of the subject, and which would have very little pretensions to rank as scientific. I know something about Congreve, but nothing at all of Aristophanes, and yet I conceive that the writer of an article on the drama ought to be as well acquainted with the one as the

other.

The honesty of this is quite refreshing. There is one more letter, of a similar order, which deserves to be signalized. In August, 1843, Macaulay, being pressed for more frequent contributions, writes from the Albany that he can promise, at the very utmost, no more than two articles in a year:

I ought to give my whole leisure to my History; and I fear that, if I suffer myself to be diverted from that design as I have done, I shall, like poor Mackintosh, leave behind me the character of a man who would have done something if he had concentrated his powers instead of frittering them away. There are people who can carry on twenty works at a time. Southey would write the history of Brazil before breakfast, an ode after breakfast, then the history of the Peninsular War till dinner, and an article for the "Quarterly Review" in the evening. But I am of a different temper. I never write so as to please myself until my subject has for the time driven away every other out of my head. When I turn from one work to another, a great deal of time is lost in the mere transition. I must not go on dawdling and reproaching myself all my life.

There is something melancholy in this, admirable as it is. Macaulay had begun to watch the shadow on the dial too closely to permit him to do much miscellaneous work with an easy mind. There is an important lesson for men of letters in the sentence, "When I turn from one work to another, a great deal of time is lost in the mere transition." Here lies the great difference between serious literary work and that of ordinary business, where the mind is solicited by one thing after another in rapid succession. In the first case, time and energy have to be expended in evolving from within a fresh impulse for every topic. The most readable writings of Southey are those which he produced fragment by fragment, on topics for which little renewal of impulse was required. To write a great poem in scraps, all by the clock, was a task which only a very conceited and rather wooden man would have attempted; and the result we know, though there are fine things in Southey's longer poems. A powerful passage by Cardinal Newman on the difficulties of literary work is almost too well known to bear quoting, but a living poet, Mrs. Augusta Webster, has put the case so fairly that Macaulay's shade-which is, of course, a shade that reads everything-may be gratified by seeing in a handy way a few of her sentences:

Occupations of study, scientific research, literary production-of brain-work of any kind that is carried on in the worker's private home with no visible reminder of customer or client-are taken to be such as can lightly be done at one time as well as another, and resumed after no matter what interruptions, like a lady's embroidery, which she can take up again at the very stitch she left her needle

in. Professions of this sort not only admit, but in many instances require, considerable variation in the amount of daily time directly bestowed on them-directly, for the true student is not at his work only when he is ostensibly employed, but whenever and wherever he may have his head to

...

himself—and there is no measure of visible quantity for the more or less results of application. . . . The literary man probably fares the worst of all. He is not merely not protected by the manual part of his processes, but it is his danger. It is so easy-what anybody can do at any time!.... Of course the simple fact is, that it is more difficult for this class of persons to practice their vocations under the drawback of perpetual breaks, actual and (what comes to nearly the same thing) expected, than it is for "business men." Let the attention of the solicitor, for instance, busied on the points of an intricate case, be perforce diverted to another matter, there is lost from that case just the time diverted, and a little extra to allow for the mind which returns to any interrupted course of thought, never returning to it exactly at the point at which it was forced to leave it. But there are the recorded facts; the direct conclusions to be drawn remain unaltered; nothing has disappeared, nothing has lost its identity. But suppose, let us say, a dramatist, devising his crisis after hours, perhaps days, of gradual growth, to the moment when he sees it before him as a reality. . . . Force his attention away, and he has lost, not merely the time he needed to

complete a spell of works, with something over for the difficulty of resuming, but the power of resuming. All has faded into a haze; and the fruit of days, maybe, has been thrown away at the ripening, for such moments do not come twice.

There are but few of Mr. Napier's own let ters in this volume, so that we have only indirect means of measuring his idea of his editorial rights or duties as against contributors. There is one case in which Macaulay complains strongly of certain excisions, and there is another in which he defends certain phrases of his own which appear to have offended the taste of Mr. Napier, who found them undignified, if not slightly vulgar. He submits of course-all the mutilated ones submit-and he says he submits "willingly"; but all the while we can too plainly see the wry faces he is making. Mr. Napier was, apparently, a purist in the matter of style; but there is something almost grotesque in the spectacle of a man of his quality correcting Macaulay. It reminds one of cet imbécile Buloz.* The case of Leigh Hunt was very different, for he sometimes went to the extreme verge of decorum-quarterly review decorum, that is—and beyond it. But we may safely conclude that Macaulay knew much better than his editor how to turn a sentence, or when the use of a French locution was desirable for ends of literary effect. Upon this subject of imported phrases Mr. Na

* One, at least, of the contributors whom Buloz tor

tured (George Sand wrote that she wished him "au

diable" ten times a day, only he held her purse-strings) used to date his letters in this style: "A vingt-cinq lieues de cet imbécile Buloz.❞

VOL. VII.-29

pier was, it seems, very punctilious, for with Mr. G. H. Lewes he must have had a brisk correspondence about it. Mr. Lewes, who was then a young writer, anxious to get his feet well planted, submits, with every possible expression of acquiescence, one might almost say, of abject agreement; but it is easy to see that his complithis little matter with Napier, easily and decisiveance was forced. Macaulay in his discussion of ly lays down the true guiding principle: “The first rule of all writing-that rule to which every other rule is subordinate-is that the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers. All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought to bend to this consideration."

This, indeed, exhausts the subject; and leaves the editor only one question to solve—namely, whether the writer whom he employs has presumably a meaning fit to be conveyed to the readers of his periodical. Upon that point he must use his own judgment; but it was idle for a man like Mr. Napier to criticise the phrasing of a man like Macaulay, who had ten thousand times his reading. For it is upon the "reading" that the matter very largely turns. The force of a quotation or a phrase imported from a foreign tongue depends, not upon the bare meaning of the words, but upon the suggestiveness of certain associations. This does not necessarily imply that the precise context is recalled, or certain hackneyed trifles from Lucretius and Horace, and a score of such chips in porridge, would be indecent. If it be said that all this implies that an editor should be omniscient, or at lowest an omnivorous reader, the reply is, that it certainly does-unless the principle adopted in the conduct of the periodical be the more recent one of choosing contributors largely on account of their names, and then leaving them to answer for their own sins, if any. One thing is clear, that if a man like Jeffrey—or like Napier-could be shown the number of blunders he made in mutilating the writings of his contributors, he would feel very much humiliated. Thackeray complains very bitterly of the suppression of some of his touches of humor, and his sufferings at the hands of a critic like Mr. Napier (able man as he was) must have been terrible indeed.

The system recently adopted, of having every article signed, has not yielded the results which were predicted or expected by those who so long struggled to get it introduced. It has led to "starring" more outrageous and more audacious than any that was ever seen upon the stage, and to mischief far more serious. The worst of these is the substitution of a spurious sort of authority for the natural influence or weight of the writing,

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