Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846

But the philosopher was a dirty fellow after all, and it only does credit to his noble biographer's sense of propriety to admit, that "his conduct must seem strange to all men of right and honourable feelings." In fact, the philosopher seems to have lent his aid very zealously to a correspondence carried on by his sensitive fellow-lodger! with a view to a marriage with a Spanish Marquis Mora. Among other proofs, he went every morning to the post-office to receive the Spaniard's letters for the lady. "I confess," says Lord Brougham, "I am driven, how reluctantly soever, to the painful conclusion, that he lent himself to the plan of her inveigling the Spaniard into a marriage." And this was not the only instance of his by-play. Mademoiselle professed also to have fallen in love with a M. Guibert, known as a military writer. Guibert exhibited his best tactics, in keeping clear of the lady. "All this time, she continued," says his lordship, "to make D'Alembert believe, that she had no real passion for any one but himself." No one can easily suppose that they were not connected in a plan of obtaining for her a settlement in life by marriage. But, if this marriage-intrigue was in every sense, and on all sides, contemptible; what are we to think of the nature of the connexion existing between this sensitive lady and D'Alembert, living for years under the same roof? The whole matter would be too repulsive for the decorums of biography, if it were not among the evidences of that utter corruption of morals, and callousness of feeling, which were finally avenged in the havoc of the Revolution.

D'Alembert's income had been increased by his appointment to the office of secretary to the Academy, in 1772. Unfortunately for his literary fame, it became a part of his duty to write the éloges of the deceased members, an office which he fulfilled with equal diligence and unproductiveness; for, of those unfortunate performances he wrote no less than eighty-three. But the French are fond of fooleries of this kind; a few sounding sentences with them are biography; a few rambling sketches fill up the outline to their taste; and the whole forms a specimen of that eloquence which men are content to admire on the other side of the Channel.

At length his career drew to a close. Towards his sixty-fourth year, his health began to decline. It had never been robust, though his habits had been temperate; but feebleness of stomach, and an organic disease, predicted the approach of his dissolution. He died on the 29th of October 1783, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Notwithstanding his feebleness of body, his intellectual vigour remained – thus adding one to the many proofs of the distinct natures of mind and body. In his intervals of ease, he continued to occupy himself with mathematical investigations. With a deplorable want of feeling, he talked with levity of his approaching departure – an event awful to the best, and, to the wisest, solemn in proportion to their wisdom. He died in the fulness of that scientific reputation which he deserved, and of that literary reputation which he did not deserve; but, by the combination of both, ranking as the most distinguished intellectual name of Europe in his day.

The life of a later philosopher, the unfortunate Lavoisier, gives Lord Brougham an opportunity of rendering justice to an eminent foreigner, and of vindicating the claims of his own still more memorable countrymen, Black and Watt. Chemistry is especially the science of the eighteenth century, as geometry was of the seventeenth. It is a characteristic of that great, however slow, change, which is now evidently in progress through Europe, that those sciences which most promote the comforts, the powers, and the progress of the multitude, obviously occupy the largest share of mental illustration. Of all the sciences, chemistry is that one which contributes most largely to the dominion of man over nature. It is the very handmaid of Wisdom, instructing us in the properties of things, and continually developing more and more the secrets of those vast and beneficent processes by which the physical frame of creation is rendered productive to man. It must thus be regarded as the most essential instrument of our physical well-being. It takes a part in all that administers to our wants and enjoyments. Our clothing, our medicine, our food; the cultivation of the ground, the salubrity of the atmosphere; the very blood, bone, and muscle of man, all depend on chemical evolutions. But it has its still loftier secrets; and the experimental philosopher is constantly stimulated and delighted by his approach to at least the borders of discoveries which promise to give a nobler insight into the laws of matter; to exhibit more fully the mechanism formed and moved by the Divine hand; and to develop the glories of the universe on a scale continually enlarging, and continually more luminous.

A matchless source of interest in this most effective and essential of all the sciences, is, that it seems capable of an infinite progress. The chemical philosopher cannot even conceive any limit to its variety, multitude, or utility of purpose. The more he discovers, the more he finds is still to be discovered. Every new property awakens him to the existence of some other property, more capacious and more profound. Every difficulty mastered, only leads him towards some deeper and more tempting problem. And, in addition to the ardour derived from this triumph of our intellectual ambition – as if all the incentives that can act upon man were expressly accumulated upon this pursuit – there is no science in which the actual triumphs are more directly connected with personal opulence. The invention of a new acid or alkali might create unbounded wealth. The discovery of a new principle of the most vulgar use – for tanning leather, for extracting oils, for strengthening soap, for purifying tallow, might place the discoverer in possession of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. But a loftier ambition may still find its field in this science. A chemical discovery might change the face of the world. Gunpowder had already changed the whole form of European society. A chemical discovery might give us the power of managing at our will the storm and the lightning, of averting the pestilence, or of ensuring the fertility of the soil, and the regularity of the seasons. The Divine intention in placing us here, was evidently the perpetual exercise of the human understanding. For that purpose were given the wants, and the remedies of the wants, of man; for that purpose all sciences are perhaps inexhaustible; but of all, the most palpably inexhaustible, the most teeming with immediate results, and the most remedial as to human necessities, is Chemistry – fitted by its extent to supply the largest proportion of human objects, by its power to excite the most eager inquiry, and by its richness to reward the intelligent labour of man, to the last ages of the world.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743, the son of one of the "farmers-general." As the office was nearly hereditary, and was proverbially connected with great opulence, the son of the rich functionary was highly educated. But science soon attracted all his study, and, devoting himself especially to chemistry, he made himself conspicuous among the leading philosophers of his time.

At the age of twenty-two, he presented to the Academy of Sciences an analysis of gypsum. At twenty-five he was admitted a member of the Academy, an unusually early age. In his next year he succeeded his father in his lucrative office. He then married the daughter of another farmer-general, and having made this provision for a life of luxury or public employment, with all that political ambition might offer in the old régime of France, he collected his books about him, shut himself up in his study, and gave up his time, fortune, and energy to the advancement of science.

After occupying himself for a brief period with geology, he commenced his chemical career by refuting the theories alike of Margraff and Stahl on the conversion of water into earth. The chemistry of the gases had made rapid progress in England; and the names of Black, Priestley, and Cavendish, had already attracted the attention of scientific Europe. Lavoisier followed in their track by a series of experiments in the calcination of metals, pursued with remarkable intelligence and industry. The biographer observes that he was now on the verge of two dazzling discoveries – the composition of the atmosphere, and the identity of the diamond with carbon. But he stopped short, and left the glory to more fortunate investigators.

We hasten from the controversies to which the claim of priority in those distinguished discoveries gave rise, and come to the more authentic services of Lavoisier. He was appointed by the minister to superintend the royal manufacture of gunpowder, which his chemical knowledge enabled him greatly to improve. He next, by appointment of the National Assembly, drew up his laborious and valuable memoir on the Territorial Wealth of France. He was now appointed one of the commissioners of the treasury, and introduced an unexampled regularity into the public accounts. He aided the formation of the metrical system, the security of the assignats against forgery, and seems to have borne an active part in every public matter in which practical science was concerned. In the mean time he employed himself in scientific agriculture, and set apart a tract of land on his estate for experimental farming. His style of living in Paris was at once rational and splendid. His house was open twice a-week for the reception of distinguished persons, both foreigners and natives, and especially if they brought with them the recommendation of scientific ability. With the finest philosophical apparatus in the possession of any individual in France, he was constantly carrying on experiments on his own account, or performing them for others whose means could not meet their expense. This conduct, united to remarkable amiability of manners, made him popular, and placed him at the head of French science in his day. But the evil time had come when opulence was to be a crime, and virtue was to be no longer a safe-guard. The democratic triumvirate of 1794 issued an order for the seizure of twenty-seven individuals who had been farmers-general before the Revolution. The true charge was the crime of being opulent. The popular and ridiculous charge was, their having mixed deleterious ingredients with the tobacco. Lavoisier having received information that the order was about to be executed, fled, and remained for some days in concealment. On understanding that his flight might injure the other prisoners, and as his father-in-law was among them, he, with a rash reliance on the public justice, yet with manly generosity, returned to Paris, and gave himself up to his oppressors. The course of the Revolution had been so palpably that of general plunder, that he had long expected the loss of fortune, and proposed, in case of ruin, to begin the world again, and live by the profession of medicine.

But, by a furious act of violence, he was condemned to die. He asked only a few days to complete some experiments which were going on during his imprisonment. The scoffing answer of this merciless tribunal was, that the Republic had no need of philosophers; and on the day after this sentence, the 8th of May 1794, he was hurried to the guillotine with no less than one hundred and twenty-three other victims, who all died within a few hours.

On this melancholy and desperate atrocity of republicanism, Lord Brougham makes the following remark, which, though natural in the lips of any human being, has double force as coming from one who has seen the operation of the revolutionary spirit on so large a scale, and during so extended a portion of his public career.

"The lustre," he observes, "which the labours of Lavoisier had shed over the scientific renown of France, the valuable services which he had rendered her in so many important departments of her affairs, the virtues which adorned his character and made his philosophy beloved as well as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with which the tyranny of vulgar faction is sure to recompense the good and the wise, as often as the base unlettered multitude are permitted to bear sway, and to place in the seat of dominion their idols, who dupe to betray, and finally punish them."

Lord Brougham justly reprobates the suspicious silence of the celebrated Carnot on this occasion, and the still more scandalous apathy of Fourcroix, who had been the pupil and panegyrist of the great chemist during many years. He acquits him of the deadly imputation, that he had even been instrumental in sending his master to the guillotine. But he praises, in contradistinction, M. Hallé, who had the honest courage to proclaim Lavoisier's public services before the dreadful tribunal, while he consigns the pupil to perpetual scorn. He was murdered in his fifty-first year.

Lord Brougham's French predilections do credit to his sense of cosmopolitism; but he appears to us somewhat more disposed to conciliate the jealousy of his very irritable French confrères, than to deal rigorous justice. No man deserves the reputation of science but a discoverer. To know all that has been hitherto known on a subject, deserves the character of diligence; to promote the progress of a science by largeness of expenditure, or steadiness of exertion, deserves the praise of liberality and labour; but the man who adds to the science by original invention, who enlarges its boundaries, and detects new principles, is the man alone to whom the name of genius can be applied. Lavoisier was, unquestionably, an important minister of science; he possessed singular assiduity, unwearied zeal, and remarkable sagacity. What these could do, he did; what knowledge could accomplish, he performed; but the inventors were of another country, and of a higher order, and he must be content with the honours due to imitation. Yet he had considerable happiness in the difficult art of communicating his knowledge. His Treatise on Chemistry, though now superseded by subsequent arrangements, is singularly clear; and no great teacher of chemistry has hitherto given the world a more striking example of exactness in detail, and clearness in conception.

His cruel death, too, may be almost said to have continued his services to society. It proved, with irresistible force, the true character of Infidel Revolution. It showed a noble-minded and benevolent man the victim of revolutionary rage; an intelligent, studious, and retired man, obnoxious to the rabble love of ruin; a mild, generous, and patriotic man, the instant prey of revolutionary government, which boasted of its superiority to the vices of kings, of its homage to intellect, and of its supreme value for the virtues of private life. Yet it murdered Lavoisier without a moment's hesitation, or a moment's remorse, and flung the first philosopher of France into a felon's grave.

The biography of Adam Smith gives Lord Brougham an opportunity of pouring out, at the distance of nearly half a century, that knowledge of Political Economy which first brought him into notice. His Colonial Policy, a remarkable performance for a student of eighteen, exhibited in miniature the principles and propensities which his long career has been expended in maturing and moulding. Adam Smith was the idol of all Scottish worship in the last century; and his originality of conception, the weight of his subject, and the clearness of his judgment, made him worthy of the elevation.

Adam Smith's birth was of a higher order than is often to be found in the instance of men destined to literary eminence. He was the son of a comptroller of the customs, who had been private secretary to Lord Loudoun, secretary of state, and keeper of the great seal.

An accident in infancy had nearly deprived the age of its first philosopher, even if it had not trained him to be hanged. At three years of age he was stolen by travelling tinkers, a race resembling the gipsies, and which in that day formed a numerous population in Scotland. But a pursuit being speedily set on foot, he was fortunately recovered. He was well educated, and, after the routine of school, was sent to Glasgow for three years, where he obtained an Exhibition to Baliol College. At Oxford he remained for seven years, chiefly addicted to mathematics – a study, however, which he subsequently wholly abandoned. He had been intended for the Church of England; but whether from dislike of its discipline, or from disappointment in his views, he retired to Scotland, to take his chance of employment in its colleges. In 1748 he settled in Edinburgh, and, for three years, read a course of lectures on rhetoric. His contemporaries, then obscure, became, in some instances, conspicuous; for among them were Hume, Robertson, and Wedderburne. In 1751, Smith was elected to the professorship of Logic in the University of Glasgow, which he soon after exchanged for that of Moral Philosophy.

Thus far we run on smoothly with Lord Brougham; but when he comes to discuss religion, we must occasionally doubt his guidance. For example, in speaking of Smith's lectures on Natural Theology, he denounces the jealousy of those who regard it as other than "the very foundation essential to support its fabric." From this opinion we totally dissent. It is perfectly true that natural religion and revelation are consistent with each other, as must be presumed from their being the work of the same Divine wisdom. But their foundations are wholly distinct. Why did the Jew believe the Mosaic revelation? Simply and solely, because it was delivered to him with such evidences of supernatural origin, in the thunders of Sinai, and substantiated at subsequent periods by miracle and prophecy, that he must receive it as divine. Why did the early converts receive Christianity? Simply on the same direct evidence supplied to their senses. No apostle sent them to examine their notions of the Godhead, or left them to inculcate the doctrines of the gospel by their reason. But he declared his doctrine as a new truth, and gave proof of its truth being divine, by working wonders palpably beyond the power of man. Of course, unless man knew what was meant by the power of the Deity, he could not have comprehended the simplest communication of the apostle. But we are speaking of the foundation of a belief – not the intelligibility of a language. We are entitled to go further still, and say, that the first idea of the being of a God was itself a revelation – a much plainer solution of the extraordinary circumstance, that so lofty and recondite a conception should have existed in the earliest and rudest ages of society; than to suppose that the antediluvian shepherd, or the postdiluvian hunter, should have ever thought of tracing effects and causes up to that extreme elevation, where a pure and supreme Spirit creates and governs the whole. We are entitled even to doubt whether the idea of Spirit was ever naturally conceived in the mind of any human being, difficult as is the conception to a creature surrounded with materiality, with every thought derived from his senses, and with the total incapacity of defining to this hour, or even imagining, the nature of Spirit. It will be fully admitted, that when the idea was once communicated, its reality was substantiated by the frame of nature, by the regularity, the extent, and the beneficence of the great physical system. But the origin was revelation. Lord Brougham quotes Tillotson; but the archbishop had earned his mitre by other means than the vigour of his understanding, and often trifles like other men.

In 1759, Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments– a work of skill and invention, but which has long since fallen into disuse with the intelligent world. It, however, had the rare good fortune of attracting the notice of an individual, possessed at once of the taste to honour, and the will to befriend, a man of original ability. This volume fell into the hands of the celebrated Charles Townsend, who proposed that the author should take charge of the young Duke of Buccleuch, whose mother, the dowager-duchess, he had married. Nothing in the life of Townsend was more honourable to him than this choice, not only for its judgment but for its rarity. The generality of men in possession of affluence think only of themselves, and would value the most common-place gratification more highly than the encouragement of the obscure genius, which wanted only that encouragement to shed a new lustre on its generation. The man of power in general feels its possession the primary object of his patronage, and sees no purpose in the immense opportunity given to him by his rank, but to obtain adherents, and make his power impregnable. Though there may be exceptions, such is the rule; and with this recollection of the established course of things, we give all honour to the memory of the man, without whose patronage the world would probably have lost the ablest work of its century, the immortal Wealth of Nations.

In 1763, Smith was appointed tutor to the young nobleman, resigned his professorship, and went with his pupil to France. After a residence of a year and a half at Toulouse, he travelled in Switzerland, and then, returning to Paris, spent ten months there. His French residence was peculiarly fortunate. It rubbed off the rust of his seclusion; it introduced him to the best society of courtly life; and it brought him into direct intercourse with that whole circle of active intellect and novel philosophy, which made the Parisian coteries at once the most bustling and brilliant of Europe. However the horrid profligacy of the court, and the contemptuous infidelity of high life, might have either disgusted the morals, or startled even the scepticism of the stranger, there can be no doubt of the interest which he felt in the society of such men as Turgot, Necker, D'Alembert, and Quesnay. Smith, some fifteen or twenty years before, had drawn up a sketch of the principles which he afterwards developed in his Wealth of Nations. Political economy was then beginning to take a form in French science. Whether it ever deserved the name of science, or will ever deserve it, may be a grave question. It depends upon such a multitude of facts, and the facts themselves vary so perpetually, the "principles" derived from those facts are so feeble and fluctuating, and common experience so provokingly contradicts, from day to day, the most laboured conclusions, that every new professor has a new theory, and every new theory turns the former into ridicule, itself to be burlesqued by the next that follows. This at least is known, that Fox declared his suspicion of the whole, saying, that it was at once too daring to be intelligible, and too indefinite to be reducible to practice. Even in our day, no two authors on the subject agree; all the successful measures of revenue and finance have been adopted in utter defiance of its dogmas; while all the modern attempts to act upon what are called its principles, have only convulsed commerce, shaken public credit, and substituted fantastic visions of prosperity for the old substantial wealth of England. No occupation could have been fitter for the half-frivolous, half-factious spirit of France. A revolution in revenue was openly regarded as the first step to revolution in power; the political economists indulged themselves in a philosophic conspiracy, and vented their sneers against the government, under pretext of recognising the rights of trade. It took but a little more than twenty years to mature this dexterous contrivance, and the meek friends of free trade had the happiness of seeing France in a blaze.

Smith, on his return, shut himself up in his study in Kirkcaldy for ten years. His friends in vain attempted to draw him from his solitude to Edinburgh: he steadily, we may almost say magnanimously, refused; and at the end of the tenth year, in 1776, he explained the mystery, by the publication of the two quarto volumes of his Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The work was received with general congratulation; it was regarded as a new science, although it is well-known, as stated in the introduction to the biography, that many others had previously discussed the same subjects. Smith's views, however, were so much more comprehensive, his division so much more distinct, and his remarks so much more practical, that he deserved all the credit of the architect who combines in beauty and utility the beams and pillars which he finds scattered on the ground. And here we advert to the obvious benefit of that patronage which had been extended to this very able man by Townsend. The annuity which had been settled on him as tutor, had enabled Smith to give up the whole of his time, and the whole powers of his mind, during those ten years, to this great work. During nearly twenty years of lecturing, on the other hand, in which his pen was necessarily employed without ceasing, he seems to have published but one work, The Theory of Moral Sentiment. That he constantly formed ingenious conceptions, may be easily admitted; but that he wanted either time or inclination to complete them, is evident from the fact, that he never suffered them to appear in print, and that one of his dying directions was, that they should be destroyed by his executors.

He was now a man of fame, and to enjoy it came up to London, where he resided for two years in the midst of the best society, political and literary, to be found in England. He was now to be a man of fortune as well as of fame; he was appointed a commissioner of the customs in Scotland. He returned to Edinburgh, and commenced the agreeable life of a man at once distinguished, and opulent to the full extent of his simple desires, in a society whose names are still regarded as the lights of Scotland. He lived hospitably, and entertained good society, but he wrote no more; he was growing old, and Lord Brougham evidently thinks that the duties of his office exhausted his spirits and occupied his time. But those duties always partook largely of the nature of a sinecure; and there is every reason to doubt whether they could have worn down a man of regular habits, and who had been trained to the routine of daily business by an apprenticeship of a quarter of a century. The greater probability is, that Smith felt that he had done enough for fame; that, knowing the world, he was unwilling to expose himself to the caprices of critical applause; and that he even felt how inadequate the early theories which found admirers in the lecture-room, might be to sustain a character already brought into full publicity by his own volumes. The fact is certain, that he produced nothing more. In July 1790, he died, at the age of sixty-seven. It was his custom to give a supper on the Sunday evening to a numerous circle of friends. How far this entertainment, which was more consistent with the latitude of his Paris recollections, was reconcilable with the decorums of Scotland, we cannot say. But on one evening, after having destroyed his manuscripts, finding himself not so well as usual, he retired to bed before supper, and as he went, said to his friends, "I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." He died in a very few days afterwards.

Lord Brougham has obviously expended his chief labour on the life of this favourite philosopher, of whom, fifty years ago, every Scottish economist was a devoted pupil. Times are changed, yet this intelligent biographer has given a very ample and accurate, so far as we can judge, analysis of the Enquiry. But he would have greatly increased the obligations of the reader, by giving some portion of his treatise to the questions which modern artifice has devised, and modern infatuation has adopted.

An interesting "memoir" of Johnson commences the volume; but the topic would lead us too far. The biographer gives that literary Samson full applause for the strength of his understanding, the boldness of his morality, and the pungency of his wit. Rather to our surprise, he pours out an eloquent panegyric on Boswell. That we are indebted to this versatile personage for one of the most amusing and instructive collections of reminiscences in the history of authorship, will be readily conceded. But this is the first time of our hearing a demand that we should pay him any more peculiar homage. But Lord Brougham is himself the head of a school: his ipse dixit demands acquiescence, and none can doubt that, if he is singular in his dogmas, he deserves attention for the vigour of his advocacy.

REYNARD THE FOX.[2 - Reynard the Fox – a renowned Apologue of the Middle Ages reproduced in Rhyme. By S. Naylor. Longman & Co. London: 1845.]

The natural history of the Cockney has been frequently illustrated, and never so successfully as in time past in the pages of Maga. But nature is inexhaustible in all her creations. You might study a lifetime, and yet not fully master the properties of one of those little Infusoria that wriggle or spin about in a phial of foul or fair water, and a still wider subject of study is of course supplied by any larger animal, such as a Cockney, placed as he is a little lower than the angels, and half-way down, or there abouts, between a man and a chimpanzee.

Upon careful inquiry it would probably be found, that in most nations the population, though all purporting to be men and women, consists in a good measure of beings that stand several degrees below the point of humanity. France, among several specimens of a higher order, has occasionally shown that a considerable proportion of its inhabitants was a hideous cross between the tiger and the baboon. Holland has had its Grotius and its Erasmus, but the otter and the beaver breed make up the mass of those who go by the name of Dutchmen. There has been no want in Germany of clear-sighted men, but the mole, the bat, and the owl furnish a large contingent to the ranks of its literati. In other nations we see a greater or less preponderance of the wolf or the bear, the goat or the goose, the ass, the hog, or the hippopotamus. Such being the universal condition of the world, we should rather be proud than otherwise, that, in England, we can boast of a secondary tribe, made, perhaps, by some of nature's journeymen, but that yet imitate humanity so respectably, so amiably, and so amusingly, as the Cockney must be admitted to do.

A Cockney is by locality very much what a tailor is by trade. Though a remote sub-multiple of a man, he is enterprising, indefatigable, cutting his way to his object through every thing with a ready tongue and a quick wit. Yet he is deficient in some qualities indispensable to the species homo. Courage the Cockney undoubtedly possesses, because he is always among those who are said to rush in where others fear to tread. But veneration is utterly wanting in his composition; and here the resemblance to the tailor is conspicuous; as we never knew a single snip that had the slightest reverence for any thing under heaven – if, indeed, the assertion should not be made in still broader terms. In the tailor this effect, defective, comes by an obvious cause. The intolerable liberties which the vulgar fraction is permitted to take with people's persons, divesting the best and bravest of us of the halo of heroism that surrounds us at a distance; and the fact that the great mysteries of dress, the paraphernalia of our dignity and decency, and the chief emblems of our manhood and domestic authority, emerge exclusively from the hands of this insignificant but indispensable maker of men, are enough to extinguish within him all sentiment of respect for any thing human or divine. The Cockney arrives at a similar state of easy and impudent non-chalance by a different process. Littered in London, and living there all his life, he is proud of its position among cites; and he comes, by a natural process of reasoning, to ascribe its importance to its connexion with his own person and people, and to see nothing better or greater in the universe than himself and what belongs to him. The feeling grows with his growth, and is fed by a full indulgence in all the good things with which the land of Cockayne abounds, and which the most morose of mortals must admit to be eminently conducive to self-complacency.

The Cockney, thus devoid of all diffidence in himself, is prepared for every thing in the scale of human thought or action; pleasuring or politics, theatricals or theology, an Epping hunt or an Epic poem. In literature we may say of him, nearly in the words applied by Dr Johnson to Goldsmith, that there is scarcely any kind of composition that he does not handle, and none that he handles which he does not adorn with graces all his own.

It is wonderful, however, to see with what success a Cockney can sometimes disguise himself. He will write you a book, in which, several pages on end, you think you are reading the thoughts of some ordinary mortal. But the cloven foot always appears before you are done with him. In poetry, indeed, you can go but a short way till the cat is let out of the bag. That unfortunate letter R! No lessons in elocution, no change of climate, can eradicate the deep-seated mischief of its mispronunciation in a Cockney whose years of pupilarity have been passed on the spot of his birth.

These remarks have been elicited by a disappointment we have recently suffered, in being led to purchase the book referred to at the commencement of this article. We saw it advertised by an alluring title – "Reynard the Fox – a renowned Apologue of the Middle Ages reproduced in Rhyme." We bought the book, and were delighted with its appearance. A quaint, antique, cream-coloured binding – a golden vignette on the outside, of the fox making his obeisance to Noble the king of the beasts, and the lioness his spouse – a beautiful paper and type within, with red and blue illuminations interspersed at the heads of chapters and paragraphs; – all this combined to whet our appetite for a delicious treat. We read the preface and introduction, if not with pleasure, at least with patience, and with wonderfully few misgivings as to the truth, the worst feature in them being the tendency to Carlyleism, to which, however offensive in itself, custom has made us somewhat callous. But we had not perused a page or two of the reproduction in rhyme itself, when we discovered that we were wandering in the regions of Cockneyland, with one of its most distinguished natives for our guide.

Our immediate purpose is to offer an exposition, not of the old Reynard, but of its present "reproduction." We may say, however, that we think the original work is one peculiarly ill-suited to be appreciated or reproduced by one of Mr Naylor's compatriots. It is a product of true genius, humour, and sagacity. The author must have looked at beasts and men with a keen eye, and from the vantage ground of a contemplative mind; and he has worked out his thoughts in a plain and simple style of illustration, and embodied them in easy and natural language. There is much merriment in his work, but no straining after wit. There is all the knowledge of the day that an accomplished man could be expected to possess, but no parade of learning. There is no quaintness in the style, and no effort in the verse. The age of Hudibras had not come; and that of the Ingoldsby Legends, or Miss Kilmansegg, was still further off. The old Flemish writers of Reynard exhibit judgment as well as talent, and their Low Saxon successor, though himself a reproducer, has asserted a claim both to freedom and originality. The quiet, sensible, unaffected treatment of their subject, which these old versifiers exhibit, where the topics offered so much temptation to burlesque and extravagance, is the thing of all others least likely to be comprehended or relished in the meridian of Bow Bells.

But, then, Goethe has successfully translated the book; and, therefore, Mr Naylor must do the same. This is a common mode of syllogising in Cockayne. Homer, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, have done such and such things, and therefore a Cockney is to do them also. Whatever may be the precise minor premise involved in this argument, we venture to suggest a doubt of its soundness. Mr Naylor tells us he has followed Alkmar's and Goethe's example, "mindful ever of the requisitions insisted on by Novalis in all paraphrastic translations, that they should convey accurately an idea of the first type, whilst, at the same time, the translator made his author speak after that appreciation of his work which exists in his own mind, no less than according to the poet's original conception." Mr Naylor may have succeeded in making his author speak after that appreciation of his work which exists in his own mind; but if the "first type" of Reynard had been no better than the reproduction gives us an idea of, the shapeless and sickly cub would not have lived an hour into the thirteenth century.

Before Mr Naylor resolved on reproducing Reynard in English rhyme, he should have inquired whether it was not already as well done as he was likely to do it. In his elaborate enumeration of his predecessors in the task of translation, he thus writes: – "There is also said to be a translation of Reynard into English doggerel, by one Soltau, a German" – "known," as he adds in a note, "as the translator of Hudibras into German." We have now before us the translation so slightingly alluded to, published at Hamburg in 1826. In all external and physical recommendations, this homely volume is far inferior to the London reproduction; but we shall immediately give our readers an opportunity of judging whether the doggerel of "one Soltau, a German," is not at least as good as that of "one Naylor, a Cockney."

Take the opening of the poem, which, in the original, is full of freshness and spirit, with all the joyousness of a holiday scene.

Soltau

"It happen'd on a Whitsunday,
When woods and fields look'd green and gay,
When balmy flow'rs and herbs were springing,
And feather'd folks were sweetly singing;
The morn was fine, the weather clear,
And fragrant odours fill'd the air,
When Noble, sov'reign king of beasts,
Proclaim'd a court and public feasts.
His loyal subjects, lords and commons,
Obey'd their master's royal summons;
And many a valiant knight and squire
To court repair'd in grand attire,
With their attendants, great and small —
'Twas difficult to count them all."

Naylor

"Now Pentecost, the feast, by some
Call'd 'merry Whitsuntide,' was come!
The fields show'd brave, with kingcups dight,
And hawthorns kercheft were in white:
Her low-breathed lute the fresh'ning rill
Unto the waken'd woods 'gan trill;
Whilst, hid in leafy bower remote,
The cuckoo tuned his herald-note;