It is justly remarked by Schlegel, that the most worthless writers amongst the French, as to matter, generally take pains with their diction; or perhaps it is more true to say, that with equal pains, in their language it is more easy to write well than in one of greater compass. It is also true, that the French are indebted for their greater purity from foreign idioms, to their much more limited acquaintance with foreign literature. Still, with every deduction from the merit, the fact is as we have said; and it is apparent, not only by innumerable evidences in the concrete, but by the superiority of all their abstract auxiliaries in the art of writing. We Eng lish, even at this day, have no learned grammar of our language; nay, we have allowed the blundering attempt, in that department, of an imbecile Yankee, to supersede the learned (however imperfect) works of our Wallis, Lowth, &c.; we have also no sufficient dictionary; and we have no work at all, sufficient or insufficient, on the phrases and idiomatic niceties of our language, corresponding to the works of Vaugelas and others, for the French. Hence an anomaly, not found per haps in any literature but ours, that the most eminent English writers do not write their mother tongue without continual violations of propriety. With the single exception of Mr Wordsworth, who has paid an honourable at tention to the purity and accuracy of his English, we believe that there is not one celebrated author of this day who has written two pages consecutively, without some flagrant impropriety in the grammar, (such as the eternal confusion of the preterite with the past participle, confusion of verbs transitive with intransitive, &c. &c.) or some violation more or less of the vernacular idiom. If this last sort of blemish does not occur so frequently in modern books, the reason is, that since Dr Johnson's time, the freshness of the idiomatic style has been too frequently abandoned for the lifeless me chanism of a style purely bookish and artificial. The practical judgments of Dr Whately are such as will seldom be disputed. Dr Johnson for his triads and his antithetic balances, he taxes more than once with a plethoric and tautologic tympany of sentence; and, in the following passage, with a very happy illustration :-"Sentences, which might have been expressed as simple ones, are expanded into complex ones by the addition of clauses which add little or nothing to the sense; and which have been compared to the false handles and key-holes with which furniture is decorated, that serve no other purpose than to correspond to the real ones. Much of Dr Johnson's writing is chargeable with this fault." We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr Johnson, published immediately after his death, in which, amongst other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes the wellknown lines from the imitation of Juvenal "Let observation, with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru;" and contends, with some reason, that this is saying in effect,-" Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively." Certainly Dr Johnson was the most faulty writer in this kind of inanity that ever has played tricks with language. On the other hand, Burke was the least so; and we are petrified to find him described by Dr Whately as a writer "qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam," and as on that account offensive to good taste. The understanding of Burke was even morbidly impatient of tautology: progress and motion everlasting motion-was a mere necessity of his intellect. We will venture to offer a king's ransom for one unequivocal case of tautology from the whole circle of Burke's writings. The principium indiscernibilium, upon which Leibnitz affirmed the impossibility of finding any two leaves of a The following illustration, however, from Dr J.'s critique on Prior's Solomon, is far from a happy one: "He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought: had often polished it to elegance, dignified it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity; he perceived in it many excellencies, and did not perceive that it wanted that, without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention, and alluring curiosity." The parts marked in italics are those to which Dr W. would object as tautologic. Yet this objection can hardly be sustained: the ideas are all sufficiently discriminated: the fault is, that they are applied to no real corresponding differences in Prior. tree that should be mere duplicates of each other, may be applied to Burke as safely as to nature; no two propositions, we are satisfied, can be found in him, which do not contain a larger variety than is requisite to their justification. Speaking of the advantages for energy and effect in the license of arrangement open to the ancient languages, especially to the Latin, Dr Whately cites the following sentence from the opening of the 4th Book of Q. Curtius:Darius tanti modo exercitus rex, qui, triumphantis magis quam dimicantis more, curru sublimis inierat prælium, -per loca, quæ prope immensis agminibus compleverat, jam inania, et ingenti solitudine vasta fugiebat. "The effect," says he, "of the concluding verb, placed where it is, is most striking." The sentence is far enough from a good one: but, confining ourselves to the sort of merit for which it is here cited, as a merit peculiar to the Latin, we must say that the very same position of the verb, with a finer effect, is attainable, and, in fact, often attained in English sentences: see, for instance, the passage in the Duke of Gloucester's soliloquy-Now is the winter of our discontent-and ending, In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. See also another at the beginning of Hooker's Eccles. Polity on the thanklessness of the labour employed upon the foundations of truth, which, says he, like those of buildings," are in the bosom of the earth concealed." The fact is, that the common cases of inversion, such as the suspension of the verb to the end, and the anticipation of the objective case at the beginning, are not sufficient illustrations of the Latin structure. All this can be done as well by the English. It is not mere power of inversion, but of self-intrication, and of self-dislocation, which mark the extremity of the artificial structure; that power by which a sequence of words, that naturally is directly consecutive, commences, intermits, and reappears at a remote part of the sentence, like what is called drake-stone on the surface of a river. In this power the Greek is almost as much below the Latin as all modern languages; and in this, added to its elliptic brevity of connexion and transition, and to its wealth in abstractions "the long-tailed words is osity and ation," lie the peculiar capacities of the Latin for rhetoric. Dr W. lays it down as a maxim in rhetoric, that "elaborate stateliness is always to be regarded as a worse fault than the slovenliness and languor which accompany a very loose style." But surely this is a rash position:stateliness the most elaborate, in an absolute sense, is no fault at all; though it may happen to be so in relation to a given subject, or to any subject under given circumstances." Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords." Reading these words, who would not be justly offended in point of taste, had his feast been characterised by elegant simplicity? Again, at a coronation, what can be more displeasing to a philoso phic taste than a pretended chastity of ornament, at war with the very purposes of a solemnity essentially magnificent? An imbecile friend of ours, in 1825, brought us a sovereign of a new coinage, "which" (said he) "I admire, because it is so elegantly simple." This, he flattered himself, was thinking like a man of taste. But mark how we sent him to the right about; " and that, weak-minded friend, is exactly the thing which a coin ought not to be: the duty of a golden coin is to be as florid as it can, rich with Corinthian ornaments, and as gorgeous as a peacock's tail." So of rhetoric, imagine that you read these words of introduction, "And on a set day, Tullius Cicero returned thanks to Cæsar on behalf of Marcus Marcellus," what sort of a speech is reasonably to be expected? The whole purpose being a festal and ceremonial one, thanksgiving its sole burden first and last, what else than the most " elaborate stateliness?" If it were not stately, and to the very verge of the pompous, Mr Wolf would have had one argument more than he had, and a better than any he has produced, for suspecting the authenticity of that thrice famous oration. In the course of his dissertation on style, Dr W., very needlessly, enters upon the thorny question of the quiddity, or characteristic difference, of poetry as distinguished from prose.+ We could much have wished that he had forborne to meddle with a quas We wish, that in so critical a notice of an effect derived from the fortunate position of a single word, Dr W. had not shocked our ears by this hideous collision of a double " is." ↑ As distinguished from prose. Here is one of the many instances in which a false VOL. XXIV. 5 Z In speaking thus freely of particular passages in Dr Whately's book, we are so far from meaning any disrespect to him, that, on the contrary, if we had not been impressed with the very highest respect for his talents, by the acuteness and originality which illuminate every part of his book, we could not have allowed ourselves to spend as much time upon the whole, as we have, in fact, spent upon single paragraphs. In reality, there is not a section of his work which has not furnished us with occasion for some profitable speculations; and we are, in consequence, most anxious to see his Logic, which treats a subject so much more important than rhetoric, and so obstinately misrepresented, that it would delight us much to anticipate a radical exposure of the errors on this subject, taken up from the days of Lord Bacon. It has not fallen in our way to quote much from Dr Whately totidem verbis, our apology for which will be found in the broken and discontinuous method of treatment by short sections and paragraphs, which a subject of this nature has necessarily imposed upon him. Had it coincided with our purpose to go more into detail, we could have delighted our readers with some brilliant examples of philosophical penetration, applied to questions interesting from their importance or difficulty, with the happiest effect. As it is, we shall content ourselves with saying, that, in any elementary work, it has not been our fortune to witness a rarer combination of analytical acuteness, with severity of judgment; and when we add that these qualities are recommended by a scholar-like elegance of manner, we suppose it hardly necessary to add, that Dr Whately's is incomparably the best book of its class, since the days of Campbell's Philoso◄ phy of Rhetoric. tio vexata of this nature, both because, in so incidental and cursory a discussion, it could not receive a proper investigation; and because Dr Whately is apparently not familiar with much of what has been written on that subject. On a matter so slightly discussed, we shall not trouble ourselves to enter farther, than to express our astonishment that a logician like Dr Whately should have allowed himself to deliver so nugatory an argument as this which follows:-"Any composition in verse, (and none that is not,) is always called, whether good or bad, a poem, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to maintain." And the inference manifestly is, that it is rightly so called. Now, if a man has taken up any fixed opinion on the subject, no matter whether wrong or right, and has reasons to give for his opinion, this man comes under the description of those who have a favourite hypothesis to maintain. It follows, therefore, that the only class of people whom Dr Whately will allow as unbiassed judges on this question-a question not of fact, but of opinion are those who have, and who profess to have, no opinion at all upon the subject; or, having one, have no reasons for it. But, apart from this contradiction, how is it possible that Dr Whately should, in any case, plead a popular usage of speech, as of any weight in a philosophic argument? Still more, how is it possible in this case, where the accuracy of the popular usage is the very thing in debate, so that-if pleaded at all-it must be pleaded as its own justification? Almsgiving and nothing but alms-giving is universally called charity, and mistaken for the charity of the Scriptures, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to maintain-i. e. by all the inconsiderate. But Dr Whately will hardly draw any argument from this usage in defence of that popular notion. answer is prepared beforehand, by falsely shaping the question. The accessary cir cumstance, as "distinguished from prose," already prepares a false answer by the very terms of the problem. Poetry cannot be distinguished from prose without presupposing the whole question at issue. Those who deny that metre is the characteristic distinc. tion of poetry, deny, by implication, that prose can be truly opposed to prose. Some have imagined, that the proper opposition was between poctry and science; but suppose that this is an imperfect opposition, and suppose even that there is no adequate opposition, or counterpole, this is no more than happens in many other cases. One of two poles is often without a name, even where the idea is fully assignable in analysis. But at all events the expression, as "distinguished from prose," is a subtle instance of a petitio principii. [NOTE. In what is said at the beginning of this paper of the true meaning of the enthymeme, as determined by Facciolati, we must be understood with an exclusive reference to rhetoric. In logic the old acceptation cannot be disturbed.] THE JUNE JAUNT. 66 A CHAPTER OMITTED IN THE LIFE OF MANSIE WAUCH." AFTER Tommy Bodkin had been working with me on the board for more than four years in the capacity of foreman, superintending the workshop department, together with the conduct and conversation of Joe Breeky, Walter Cuff, and Timothy Tape, my three bounden apprentices, I thought I might lippen him awee, to try his hand in the shaping line, espeIcially with the clothes of such of our customers as I knew were not very nice, provided they got enough of cutting from the Manchester manufac ture, and room to shake themselves in. The upshot, however, proved to a moral certainty, that such a length of tether is not chancey for youth, and that a master cannot be too much on the head of his own business. It was in the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old king George the Third-for I recollect the withering branches of lilyoak, and flowers were still sticking up behind the signs, and ower the lamp posts, that iny respected acquain tance and customer, Peter Farrel, the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes, -which he preferred from their not dirtying so easily with the bakehouse -called in upon me, requesting me, in a very pressing manner, to take a pleasure ride up with him the length of Roslin, in his good-brother's bit phieton, to eat a wheen strawberries, and see how the forthcoming harvest was getting on. That the offer was friendly, admitted not of doubt, but I did not like to accept for two-three reasons; among which was, in the first place, my awareness of the danger of riding in such vehicles, having read sundry times in the newspapers, of folk haing been tumbled out of them, drunk or sober, head-foremost, and having got eyes knocked ben, skulls clowred, and collar-bones broken; and, in the second place, the expense of feeding the horse, together with our finding ourselves in meat and drink during the journey, let alone tolls, straw berries and cream, bawbees to the waiter, and what not. But let me speak the knock-him-down truth, and shame the Deil,-above all, I was afraid of being seen by my employers, wheeling about, on a work-day, like a gentleman, dressed out in my best, and leaving my business to mind itself, as it best could. Peter Farrel, however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back-loan with my stick in my hand,-Peter having agreed to be waiting for me on the road-side, a bit beyond the head of the town. The cat should be let out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse, the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie,-as, do what ye like, women will make their points goodshe having overcome me in her wheedling way, by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of my betters. That we had a most beautiful drive I cannot deny; for though I would not allow Peter to touch the horse with the whip, in case it might run away, fling, or trot ower fast,—and so we made but slow progress-little more even than walking; yet, as I told him, it gave a man leisure to use his eyes, and make observation to the right and the left; and so we had a prime look of Lasswade,-and Newbottle Abbey,-and Melville Castle, and Dryden woods,-and Hawthornden, and the paper mills, and the bleachfield, and so on. The day was bright and beautiful, and the feeling of summer came over our bosoms; the flowers blossomed and the birds sang; and, as the sun looked from the blue sky, the quiet of nature banished from our thoughts all the poor and paltry cares that embitter life, and all the pitiful considerations, which are but too apt to be the only concerns of. the busy and bustling, from their awaking in the morning to their ly ing down on the pillow of evening rest. Peter and myself felt this forcibly, he, as he confessed to me, having entirely forgot the four pan-soled loaves, that were, that morning, left by his laddie, Peter Crust, in the oven, and burned to sticks; and, for my own part, do what I liked, I could not bring myself to mind what piece of work I had that morning finished, till, far on the road, I recollected that it was a pair of mouse-brown spatter dashes for worthy old Mr Mooleypouch. Oh, it is a pleasant thing, now and then, to get a peep of the country. To them who live among shops and markets, and stone-walls, and butcherstalls, and fishwives,-and the smell of ready-made tripe, red herring, and Cheshire cheeses, the sights, and sounds, and smells of the country bring to mind the sinless days of the world before the fall of man, when all was love, peace, and happiness. Peter Farrel and I were transported out of our seven senses, as we feasted our eyes on the beauty of the green fields. The bumbees were bizzing among the gowans and blue-bells; and a thousand wee birds among the green trees were churm-churming away, filling earth and air with music, as it were a universal hymn of gratitude to the Creator for his unbounded goodness to all his creatures. We saw the trig country lasses bleaching their snowwhite linen on the grass by the water side, and they too were lilting their favourite songs. All the world seem ed happy, and I could scarcely believe -what I kent to be true for all that that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milkcows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure; the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;-and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their carts. And then the rows of snug cottages, with their kailyards and their gooseberry bushes, with the fruit hanging from the branches like ear-rings on the neck of a lady of fashion. How happy, thought we both,-both Peter Farrel and me, -how happy might they be, who, without worldly pride or ambition, passed their days in such situations, in the society of their wives and children. Ah! such were a blissful lot! During our ride, Peter Farrel and I had an immense deal of rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel. To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader's time, and of my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that. However, when Peter came to the years of discretion, Peter had sense enough in his noddle to discover, that "a rowing stane gathers no fog;" and having got an inkling of the penny-pie manufacture when he was a wee smout, he yoked to the baking trade, tooth and nail; and, in the course of years, thumped butter-bakes with his elbows to some purpose; so that, at the time of our colleaguing together, Peter was well to do in the world-had bought his own bounds, and built new ones could lay down the blunt for his article, and take the measure of the markets, by laying up wheat in his granaries against the day of trouble-to wit rise of prices. "Well, Peter," said I to him, " seeing that ye read the newspapers, and have a notion of things, what think ye, just at the present moment, of affairs in general?" Peter cocked up his lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon's nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said,— "Is it foreign or domestic affairs that you are after, Maister Wauch? for the question is a six quarters wide one." I was determined not to be beat by man of woman born; so I answered with almost as much cleverality as himself, "Oh, Mr Farrel, as to our foreign concerns, I trust I am ower loyal a subject of George the Third, to have any doubt at all about them, as the Bonaparte is yet to be born that will ever beat our regulars abroad-to say nothing of our volunteers at home; but what think you of the paper spe cie-the national debt-borough reform-the poor-rates-and the Catholic question?" |
