Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes Part 14

Everything yielded to the _vigour and ability_ of Cromwell.--i. 130.

The Government, though in the form of a Republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only by the _wisdom, the sober-mindedness, and the magnanimity_ of the despot.--i. 137.

With a vast deal more of the same tone.

But Mr. Macaulay particularly expatiates on the influence that Cromwell exercised over foreign states: and there is hardly any topic to which he recurs with more pleasure, or, as we think, with less sagacity, than the terror with which Cromwell and the contempt with which the Stuarts inspired the nations of Europe. He somewhat exaggerates the extent of this feeling, and greatly misstates or mistakes the cause; and as this subject is in the present state of the world of more importance than any others in the work, we hope we may be excused for some observations tending to a sounder opinion on that subject.

It was not, as Mr. Macaulay everywhere insists, the personal abilities and genius of Cromwell that exclusively, or even in the first degree, carried his foreign influence higher than that of the Stuarts. The internal struggles that distracted and consumed the strength of these islands throughout their reigns necessarily rendered us little formidable to our neighbours; and it is with no good grace that a Whig historian stigmatises that result as shameful; for, without discussing whether it was justifiable or not, the fact is certain, that it was opposition of the Whigs--often in rebellion and always in faction against the Government--which disturbed all progress at home and paralysed every effort abroad. We are not, we say, now discussing whether that opposition was not justifiable and may not have been ultimately advantageous in several const.i.tutional points; we think it decidedly was: but at present all we mean to do is to show that it had a great share in producing on our foreign influence the lowering effects of which Mr. Macaulay complains.

And there is still another consideration which escapes Mr. Macaulay in his estimate of such usurpers as Cromwell and Buonaparte. A usurper is always more terrible both at home and abroad than a legitimate sovereign: first, the usurper is likely to be (and in these two cases was) a man of superior genius and military glory, wielding the irresistible power of the sword; but there is still stronger contrast-- legitimate Governments are bound--at home by laws--abroad by treaties, family ties, and international interests; they acknowledge the law of nations, and are limited, even in hostilities, by many restraints and bounds. The despotic usurpers had no fetters of either sort--they had no opposition at home, and no scruples abroad. Law, treaties, rights, and the like, had been already broken through like cobwebs, and kings naturally humbled themselves before a vigour that had dethroned and murdered kings, and foreign nations trembled at a power that had subdued in their own fields and cities the pride of England and the gallantry of France! To contrast Cromwell and Charles II, Napoleon and Louis XVIII, is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage--it is as if one should compare the house-dog and the wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter was very much to his honour. All this is such a mystery to Mr. Macaulay that he wanders into two theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between pa.s.sing them by as absurdities, or producing them for amus.e.m.e.nt; we adopt the latter. One is that Cromwell could have no interest and therefore no personal share in the death of Charles. "Whatever Cromwell was," says Mr. Macaulay, "he was no fool; and he must have known that Charles I was obviously a less difficulty in his way than Charles II."

Cromwell, we retain the phrase, "was no fool," and he thought and _found_ that Charles II, was, as far as he was concerned, no difficulty at all. The real truth was, that the revolutionary party in England in 1648, like that in France in 1792, was but a rope of sand which nothing could cement and consolidate but the _blood of the Kings--that_ was a common crime and a common and indissoluble tie which gave all their consistency and force to both revolutions--a stroke of original sagacity in Cromwell and of imitative dexterity in Robespierre. If Mr. Macaulay admits, as he subsequently does (i. 129), that the regicide was "a sacrament of blood," by which the party became irrevocably bound to each other and separated from the rest of the nation, how can he pretend that Cromwell derived no advantage from it? In fact, his admiration--we had almost said fanaticism--for Cromwell betrays him throughout into the blindest inconsistencies.

The second vision of Mr. Macaulay is, if possible, still more absurd. He imagines a Cromwell dynasty! If it had not been for Monk and his army, the rest of the nation would have been loyal to the son of the ill.u.s.trious Oliver.

Had the Protector and the Parliament been suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt that an order of things similar to that which was afterwards established under the House of Hanover, would have been established under the house of Cromwell.--i. 142.

And yet in a page or two Mr. Macaulay is found making an admission-- made, indeed, with the object of disparaging Monk and the royalists--but which gives to his theory of a Cromwellian dynasty the most conclusive refutation.

It was probably not till Monk had been some days in the capital that he made up his mind. The cry of the whole people was for a free parliament; and there could _be no doubt that a parliament really free would instantly restore the exiled family_.--i. 147.

All this hypothesis of a Cromwellian dynasty _looks_ like sheer nonsense; but we have no doubt it has a meaning, and we request our readers not to be diverted by the almost ludicrous partiality and absurdity of Mr. Macaulay's speculations from an appreciation of the deep hostility to the monarchy from which they arise. They are like bubbles on the surface of a dark pool, which indicate there is something rotten below.

We should if we had time have many other complaints to make of the details of this chapter, which are deeply coloured with all Mr.

Macaulay's prejudices and pa.s.sions. He is, we may almost say of course, violent and unjust against Strafford and Clarendon; and the most prominent touch of candour that we can find in this period of his history is, that he slurs over the murder of Laud in an abscure half-line (i. 119) as if he were--as we hope he really is--ashamed of it.

We now arrive at what we have heard called the celebrated third chapter --celebrated it deserves to be, and we hope our humble observations may add something to its celebrity. There is no feature of Mr. Macaulay's book on which, we believe, he more prides himself, and which has been in truth more popular with his readers, than the descriptions which he introduces of the residences, habits, and manners of our ancestors. They are, provided you do not look below the surface, as entertaining as Pepys or Pennant, or any of the many sc.r.a.p-book histories which have been recently fabricated from those old materials; but when we come to examine them, we find that in these cases, as everywhere else, Mr.

Macaulay's propensity to caricature and exaggerate leads him not merely to disfigure circ.u.mstances, but totally to forget the principle on which such episodes are admissible into regular history--namely, the ill.u.s.tration of the story. They should be, as it were, woven into the narrative, and not, as Mr. Macaulay generally treats them, st.i.tched on like patches. This latter observation does not of course apply to the collecting a body of miscellaneous facts into a separate chapter, as Hume and others have done; but Mr. Macaulay's chapter, besides, as we shall show, the prevailing inaccuracy of its details, has one general and essential defect specially its own.

The moment Mr. Macaulay has selected for suspending his narrative to take a view of the surface and society of England is the death of Charles II. Now we think no worse point of time could have been chosen for tracing the obscure but very certain connection between political events and the manners of a people. The restoration, for instance, was an era in manners as well as in politics--so was in a fainter degree the Revolution--either, or both, of those periods would have afforded a natural position for contemplating a going and a coming order of things; but we believe that there are no two periods in our annals which were so identical in morals and politics--so undistinguishable, in short, in any national view--as the latter years of Charles and the earlier years of James. Here then is an objection _in limine_ to this famous chapter--and not _in limine_ only, but in substance; for in fact the period he has chosen would not have furnished out the chapter, four-fifths of which belong to a date later than that which he professes to treat of. In short, the chapter is like an old curiosity-shop, into which--no matter whether it happens to stand in Charles Street, William Street, or George Street--the knick-knacks of a couple of centuries are promiscuously jumbled. What does it signify, in a history of the reign of Charles II, that a writer, "_sixty years after the Revolution_" (i. 347), says that in the lodging-houses at Bath "the hearth-slabs" were "freestone, not marble"--that "the best apartments were hung with coa.r.s.e woollen stuff, and furnished with rush-bottomed chairs"?--nay, that he should have the personal good taste to lament that in those Boeotian days "_not a wainscot was painted_" (348); and yet this twaddle of the reign of George II, patched into the times of Charles II, is the appropriate occasion which he takes to panegyrise this new mode of elucidating history?--...

It is a curious and, to persons of our opinions, not unsatisfactory circ.u.mstance, that, though Mr. Macaulay almost invariably applies the term _Tory_ in an opprobrious or contemptuous sense, yet so great is the power of truth in surmounting the fantastical forms and colours laid over it by this brilliant _badigeonneur_, that on the whole no one, we believe, can rise from the work without a conviction that the Tories (whatever may be said of their prejudices) were the honestest and most conscientious of the whole _dramatis personae_; and it is this fact that in several instances and circ.u.mstances imprints, as it were by force, upon Mr. Macaulay's pages an air of impartiality and candour very discordant from their general spirit.

We are now arrived at the fourth chapter--really the first, strictly speaking, of Mr. Macaulay's history--the accession of James II, where also Sir James Mackintosh's history commences. And here we have to open to our readers the most extraordinary instance of _parallelism_ between two writers, unacknowledged by the later one, which we have ever seen.

Sir James Mackintosh left behind him a history of the Revolution, which was published in 1834, three years after his death, in quarto: it comes down to the Orange invasion, and, though it apparently had not received the author's last corrections, and was clumsily edited, and tagged with a continuation by a less able hand, the work is altogether (bating not a little ultra-Whiggery) very creditable to Mackintosh's diligence, taste, and power of writing; it is indeed, we think, his best and most important work, and that by which he will be most favourably known to posterity. From that work Mr. Macaulay has borrowed largely--prodigally-- helped himself with both hands--not merely without acknowledging his obligation, but without so much as alluding to the existence of any such work. Nay--though this we are sure was never designed--he inserts a note full of kindness and respect to Sir James Mackintosh, which would naturally lead an uninformed reader to conclude that Sir James Mackintosh, though he had _meditated_ such a work, had never even begun writing it. On the 391st page of Mr. Macaulay's first volume, at the mention of the old news-letters which preceded our modern newspapers, Mr. Macaulay says, that "they form a valuable part of the literary treasures collected by the late Sir James Mackintosh"; and to this he adds the following foot-note:

I take this opportunity of expressing my warm grat.i.tude to the family of my dear and honoured friend Sir James Mackintosh, for confiding to me the materials collected by him _at a time when he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken._ I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compa.s.s, so n.o.ble a _collection of extracts_ from public and private archives. The judgment with which Sir James, in great ma.s.ses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable and rejected what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.--i. 391.

Could any one imagine from this that Mackintosh had not only _meditated_ a work, but actually written, and that his friends had published, a large closely printed quarto volume, on the same subject, from the same materials, and sometimes in the very same words as Mr. Macaulay's?

The coincidence--the ident.i.ty, we might almost say--of the two works is so great, that, while we have been comparing them, we have often been hardly able to distinguish which was which. We rest little on the similiarity of facts, for the facts were ready made for both; and Mr.

Macaulay tells us that he worked from Mackintosh's materials; there would, therefore, even if he had never seen Mackintosh's work, be a community of topics and authorities; but, seeing as we do in every page that he was writing with Mackintosh's volume before his eyes, we cannot account for his utter silence about it....

Having thus shown Mr. Macaulay's mode of dealing with what forms the chief and most characteristic feature of his book--its anecdotical gossip--we shall now endeavour to exhibit the deceptive style in which he treats the larger historical facts: in truth the style is the same--a general and unhesitating sacrifice of accuracy and reality to picturesque effect and party prejudices. He treats historical personages as the painter does his _layman_--a supple figure which he models into what he thinks the most striking att.i.tude, and dresses up with the gaudiest colours and most fantastical draperies.

It is very difficult to condense into any manageable s.p.a.ce the proofs of a general system of acc.u.mulating and aggravating all that was ever, whether truly or falsely, reproached to the Tories, and alleviating towards the Whigs the charges which he cannot venture to deny or even to question. The mode in which this is managed so as to keep up some show of impartiality is very dexterous. The reproach, well or ill founded, which he thinks most likely to damage the character of any one he dislikes, is repeated over and over again in hope that the iteration will at last be taken for proof, such as the perfidy of Charles I, the profligacy and selfishness of Charles II, the cold and cruel stupidity of James, the baseness of Churchill, the indecent violence of Rochester, the contemptible subserviency of his brother, Clarendon, and so on through a whole dictionary of abuse on every one whom he takes or mistakes for a Tory, and on a few Whigs whom for some special reasons of his own he treats like Tories. On the other hand, when he finds himself reluctantly forced to acknowledge even the greatest enormity of the Whigs--corruption--treason--murder he finds much gentler terms for the facts; selects a scapegoat, some subaltern villain, or some one whom history has already gibbeted, "to bear upon him all their iniquities,"

and that painful sacrifice once made, he avoids with tender care a recurrence to so disagreeable a subject....

After so much political detail it will be some kind of diversion to our readers to examine Mr. Macaulay's most elaborate strategic and topographical effort, worked up with all the combined zeal and skill of an ex-Secretary-at-War and a pictorial historian--a copious description of the battle of Sedgemoor. Mr. Macaulay seems to have visited Bridgwater with a zeal worthy of a better result: for it has produced a description of the surrounding country as pompous and detailed as if it had been the scene of some grand strategic operations--a parade not merely unnecessary, but absurd, for the so-called battle was but a bungling skirmish. Monmouth had intended to surprise the King's troops in their quarters by a midnight attack, but was stopped by a wide and deep trench, of which he was not apprised, called Buss.e.x Rhine, behind which the King's army lay. "The trenches which drain the moor are," Mr.

Macaulay adds, "in that country called _rhines_." On each side of this ditch the parties stood firing at each other in the dark. Lord Grey and the cavalry ran away without striking a blow; Monmouth followed them, too, soon; for some time the foot stood with a degree of courage and steadiness surprising in such raw and half-armed levies; at last the King's cavalry got round their flank, and they too ran: the King's foot then crossed the ditch with little or no resistance, and slaughtered, with small loss on their own side, a considerable number of the fugitives, the rest escaping back to Bridgwater. Our readers will judge whether such a skirmish required a long preliminary description of the surrounding country. Mr. Macaulay might just as usefully have described the plain of Troy. Indeed at the close of his long topographical and etymological narrative Mr. Macaulay has the tardy candour to confess that--

little is now to be learned by visiting the field of battle, for the face of the country has been greatly changed, and the old _Buss.e.x Rhine_, on the banks of which the great struggle took place, has long disappeared.

This is droll. After spending a deal of s.p.a.ce and fine writing in describing the present prospect, he concludes by telling us candidly it is all of no use, for the whole scene has changed. This is like Walpole's story of the French lady who asked for her lover's picture; and when he demurred observing that, if her husband were to see it, it might betray their secret--"O dear, no," she said--just like Mr.

Macaulay--"I _will have the picture_, but it _need not be like_!"

But even as to the change, we again doubt Mr. Macaulay's accuracy. The word _Rhine_ in Somersets.h.i.+re, as perhaps--_parva componere magnis_--in the great German river, means _running_ water, and we therefore think it very unlikely that a running stream should have disappeared; but we also find in the Ordnance Survey of Somersets.h.i.+re, made in our own time, the course and name of _Bussck's Rhine_ distinctly laid down in front of Weston, where it probably ran in Monmouth's day; and we are further informed, in return to some inquiries that we have caused to be made, that the _Rhine_ is now, in 1849, as visible and well known as ever it was.

But this grand piece of the military topography of a battlefield where there was no battle must have its picturesque and pathetic episode, and Mr. Macaulay finds one well suited to such a novel. When Monmouth had made up his mind to attempt to _surprise_ the royal army, Mr. Macaulay is willing (for a purpose which we shall see presently) to persuade himself that the Duke let the whole town into his secret:--

That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was no secret in Bridgwater. The town was full of women, who had repaired thither by hundreds from the surrounding region to see their husbands, sons, lovers, and brothers once more. There were many sad partings that day; and many parted never to meet again. The report of the intended attack came to the ears of a young girl who was zealous for the king. Though of modest character, she had the courage to resolve that she would herself bear the intelligence to Feversham. She stole out of Bridgwater, and made her way to the royal camp. But that camp was not a place where female innocence could be safe. Even the officers, despising alike the irregular force to which they were opposed, and the negligent general who commanded them, had indulged largely in wine, and were ready for any excess of licentiousness and cruelty. One of them seized the unhappy maiden, refused to listen to her errand, and brutally outraged her. She fled in agonies of rage and shame, leaving the wicked army to its doom.--i. 606, 7.

--the _doom of the wicked army_, be it noted _en pa.s.sant_, being a complete victory. Mr. Macaulay cites Kennett for this story, and adds that he is "_forced_ to believe the story to be true, because Kennett declares that it was communicated to him in the year 1718 by a brave officer who had fought at Sedgemoor, and had himself seen the poor girl depart in an agony of distress,"--_ib_.

We shall not dwell on the value of an anonymous story told _three-and-thirty years_ after the Battle of Sedgemoor. The tale is sufficiently refuted by notorious facts and dates, and indeed by its internal absurdity. We know from the clear and indisputable evidence of Wade, who commanded Monmouth's infantry, all the proceedings of that day.

Monmouth no doubt intended to move that night, and made open preparation for it, and the partings so pathetically described may have, therefore, taken place, and the rather because the intended movement was to leave that part of the country altogether--_not_ to meet the King's troops, but to endeavour to escape them by a forced march across the Avon and into Gloucesters.h.i.+re. So far might have been known. But about _three_ o'clock that afternoon Monmouth received intelligence by a spy that the King's troops had advanced to Sedgemoor, but had taken their positions so injudiciously, that there seemed a possibility of surprising them in a night attack. On this Monmouth a.s.sembled a council of war, which agreed that, instead of retreating that night towards the Avon as they had intended, they should advance and attack, provided the spy, who was to be sent out to a new reconnoissance, should report that the troops were not intrenched. We may be sure that--as the news only arrived at three in the afternoon--the a.s.sembling the council of war--the deliberation-- the sending back the spy--his return and another deliberation--must have protracted the final decision to so late an hour that evening, that it is utterly impossible that the change of the design of a march northward to that of an "_attack to be made under cover of the night_," could have been that _morning_ no secret in Bridgwater. But our readers see it was necessary for Mr. Macaulay to raise this fable, in order to account for the poor girl's knowing so important a secret. So far we have argued the case on Mr. Macaulay's own showing, which, we confess, was very incautious on our part; but on turning to his authority we find, as usual, a story essentially different. Kennett says--

A brave Captain in the Horse Guards, now living (1718), was in the action at Sedgemoor, and gave me the account of it:--That on _Sunday morning, July 5_, a young woman came from Monmouth's quarters to give notice of his design to surprise the King's camp _that night_; but this young woman being carried to a chief officer in a neighbouring village, she was led upstairs and debauched by him, and, coming down in a great fright and disorder (as he himself saw her), she went back, and her message was not told.--_Kennett_, in. 432.

This knocks the whole story on the head. Kennett was not aware (Wade's narrative not being published when he wrote) that the King's troops did not come in sight of Sedgemoor till about three o'clock P.M. of that Sunday on the early morning of which he places the girl's visit to the camp, and it was not till late that same evening that Monmouth changed his original determination, and formed the sudden resolution with which, to support Kennett's story, the whole town must have been acquainted at least twelve hours before. These are considerations which ought not to have escaped a philosophical historian who had the advantage, which Kennett had not, of knowing the exact time when these details occurred....

We must here conclude. We have exhausted our time and our s.p.a.ce, but not our topics. We have selected such of the more prominent defects and errors of Mr. Macaulay as were manageable within our limits; but numerous as they are, we beg that they may be considered as specimens only of the infinitely larger a.s.sortment that the volumes would afford, and be read not merely as individual instances, but as indications of the general style of the work, and the prevailing _animus_ of the writer. We have chiefly directed our attention to points of mere historical inaccuracy and infidelity; but they are combined with a greater admixture of other--we know not whether to call them literary or moral--defects, than the insulated pa.s.sages sufficiently exhibit. These faults, as we think them, but which may to some readers be the prime fascinations of the work, abound on its surface. And their very number and their superficial prominence const.i.tute a main charge against the author, and prove, we think, his mind to be unfitted for the severity of historical inquiry. He takes much pains to parade--perhaps he really believes in--his impartiality, with what justice we appeal to the foregoing pages; but he is guilty of a prejudice as injurious in its consequences to truth as any political bias. He abhors whatever is not in itself picturesque, while he clings with the tenacity of a Novelist to the _piquant_ and the startling. Whether it be the boudoir of a strumpet or the death-bed of a monarch--the strong character of a statesman-warrior abounding in contrasts and rich in mystery, or the personal history of a judge trained in the Old Bailey to vulgarize and ensanguine the King's Bench--he luxuriates with a vigour and variety of language and ill.u.s.tration which renders his "History" an attractive and absorbing story-book. And so spontaneously redundant are these errors-- so inwoven in the very texture of Mr. Macaulay's mind--that he seems never able to escape from them. Even after the reader is led to believe that all that can be said either of praise or vituperation as to character, of voluptuous description and minute delineation as to fact and circ.u.mstance, has been pa.s.sed in review before him--when a new subject, indeed, seems to have been started--all at once the old theme is renewed, and the old ideas are redressed in all the affluent imagery and profuse eloquence of which Mr. Macaulay is so eminent a master. Now of the fancy and fas.h.i.+on of this we should not complain--quite the contrary--in a professed novel: there is a theatre in which it would be exquisitely appropriate and attractive; but the Temple of History is not the floor for a morris-dance--the Muse Clio is not to be wors.h.i.+pped in the halls of Terpsich.o.r.e. We protest against this species of _carnival_ history; no more like the reality than the Eglintoun Tournament or the Costume Quadrilles of Buckingham Palace; and we deplore the squandering of so much melodramatic talent on a subject which we have hitherto reverenced as the figure of Truth arrayed in the simple argments [Transcriber's note: sic] of Philosophy. We are ready to admit an hundred times over Mr. Macaulay's literary powers--brilliant even under the affectation with which he too frequently disfigures them. He is a great painter, but a suspicious narrator; a grand proficient in the picturesque, but a very poor professor of the historic. These volumes have been, and his future volumes as they appear will be, devoured with the same eagerness that _Oliver Twist_ or _Vanity Fair_ excite--with the same quality of zest, though perhaps with a higher degree of it;--but his pages will seldom, we think, receive a second perusal--and the work, we apprehend, will hardly find a permanent place on the historic shelf-- nor ever a.s.suredly, if continued in the spirit of the first two volumes, be quoted as authority on any question or point of the History of England.

LOCKHART ON THE AUTHOR OF "VATHEK"[1]

[From _The Quarterly Review_, June, 1834]

[1] "Italy: with sketches of Spain and Portugal. In a series of letters written during a residence in these Countries." By William Beckford, Esq., author of _Vathek_. London, 1834.

Vathek is, indeed, without reference to the time of life [before he had closed his twentieth year] when the author penned it, a very remarkable performance; but, like most of the works of the great poet (Byron) who has eloquently praised it, it is stained with poison-spots--its inspiration is too often such as might have been inhaled in the "Hall of Eblis." We do not allude so much to its audacious licentiousness, as to the diabolical levity of its contempt for mankind. The boy-author appears to have already rubbed all the bloom off his heart; and, in the midst of his dazzling genius, one trembles to think that a stripling of years so tender should have attained the cool cynicism of a _Candide_.

How different is the effect of that Eastern tale of our own days, which Lord Byron ought not to have forgotten when he was criticising his favourite romance. How perfectly does _Thalaba_ realize the ideal demanded in the Welsh Triad, of "fulness of erudition, simplicity of language, and purity of manners." But the critic was repelled by the purity of that delicious creation, more than attracted by the erudition which he must have respected, and the diction which he could not but admire--

The low sweet voice so musical, That with such deep and undefined delight Fills the surrender'd soul.

It has long been known that Mr. Beckford prepared, shortly after the publication of his _Vathek_, some other tales in the same vein--the histories, it is supposed, of the princes in his "Hall of Eblis." A rumour had also prevailed, that the author drew up, early in life, some account of his travels in various parts of the world; nay, that he had printed a few copies of this account, and that its private perusal had been eminently serviceable to more than one of the most popular poets of the present age. But these were only vague reports; and Mr. Beckford, after achieving, on the verge of manhood, a literary reputation, which, however brilliant, could not satisfy the natural ambition of such an intellect--seemed, for more than fifty years, to have wholly withdrawn himself from the only field of his permanent distinction. The world heard enough of his gorgeous palace at Cintra (described in _Childe Harold_), afterwards of the unsubstantial pageant of his splendour at Fonthill, and latterly of his architectural caprices at Bath. But his literary name seemed to have belonged to another age; and, perhaps, in this point of view, it may not have been unnatural for Lord Byron, when comparing _Vathek_ with other Eastern tales, to think rather of _Zadig_ and _Ra.s.selas_, than

Of Thalaba--the wild and wondrous song.

The preface to the present volumes informs us that they include a reprint of the book of travels, of which a small private edition pa.s.sed through the press forty years ago, and of the existence of which--though many of our readers must have heard some hints--few could have had any _knowledge_. Mr. Beckford has at length been induced to publish his letters, in order to vindicate his own original claim to certain thoughts, images, and expressions, which had been adopted by other authors whom he had from time to time received beneath his roof, and indulged with a perusal of his secret lucubrations. The mere fact that such a work has lain for near half-a-century, printed but unpublished, would be enough to stamp the author's personal character as not less extraordinary than his genius. It is, indeed, sufficiently obvious that Mr. Rogers had read it before he wrote his "Italy "--a poem, however, which possesses so many exquisite beauties entirely its own, that it may easily afford to drop the honour of some, perhaps unconsciously, appropriated ones; and we are also satisfied that this book had pa.s.sed through Mr. Moore's hands before he gave us his light and graceful "Rhymes on the Road," though the traces of his imitation are rarer than those which must strike everyone who is familiar with the "Italy." We are not so sure as to Lord Byron; but, although we have not been able to lay our finger on any one pa.s.sage in which he has evidently followed Mr.

Beckford's vein, it will certainly rather surprise us should it hereafter be made manifest that he had not seen, or at least heard an account of, this performance, before he conceived the general plan of his "Childe Harold." Mr. Beckford's book is entirely unlike any book of travel _in prose_ that exists in any European language; and if we could fancy Lord Byron to have written the "Harold" in the measure of "Don Juan," and to have availed himself of the facilities which the _ottima rima_ affords for intermingling high poetry with merriment of all sorts, and especially with sarcastic sketches of living manners, we believe the result would have been a work more nearly akin to that now before us than any other in the library.

Mr. Beckford, like "Harold," pa.s.ses through various regions of the world, and, disdaining to follow the guide-book, presents his reader with a series of detached, or very slenderly connected sketches of _the scenes that had made the deepest impression upon himself_. He, when it suits him, puts the pa.s.sage of the Alps into a parenthesis. On one occasion, he really treats Rome as if it had been nothing more than a post station on the road from Florence to Naples; but, again, if the scenery and people take his fancy, "he has a royal reluctance to move on, as his own hero showed when his eye glanced on the grands caracteres rouges, traces par la main de Carathis?... _Qui me donnera des loix_?-- s'ecria le Caliphe."

"England's wealthiest son" performs his travels, of course, in a style of great external splendour.

Conspictuus longe cunctisque notabilis intrat--