ページの画像
PDF
ePub

On the whole, I spent my time even more happily at Hackney than ever I had done before; having every advantage for my philosophical and theological studies, in some respects superior to what I had enjoyed at Birmingham, especially from my easy access to Mr Lindsey, and my frequent intercourse with Mr Belsham, professor of divinity in the New College, near which I lived. Never, on this side the grave, do I expect to enjoy myself so much as I did by the fire side of Mr Lindsey, conversing with him and Mrs Lindsey on theological and other subjects, or in my frequent walks with Mr Belsham, whose views of most important subjects were, like Mr Lindsey's, the same with my own.

I found, however, my society much restricted with respect to my philosophical acquaintance; most of the members of the Royal Society shunning me on account of my religious or political opinions, so that I at length withdrew myself from them, and gave my reasons for so doing in the Preface to my Observations and Experiments on the generation of air from water, which I published at Hackney. For, with the assistance of my friends, I had in a great measure replaced my Apparatus, and had resumed my experiments, though after the loss of near two years.

See Rutt's edition of Priestley's Works (1831-32), including the autobiographical Memoirs; and Martineau's Essays (vol. i. 1891).

Jean Louis De Lolme (1740-1806) was somewhat inaptly called by Isaac D'Israeli 'the English Montesquieu.' For, born at Geneva, he was an advocate at home, and did not come to England till 1769; and there, in spite of his literary activity, he lived in great poverty, always in debt and repeatedly in prison. Having inherited a small property, he returned to Geneva in 1775. And the work by which he earned his sobriquet, though Englished-by another hand, apparently, in 1775, as The Constitution of England-was written in French, and published at Amsterdam (1771). The translation, which flattered England, reached a tenth edition (with Life, 1853). The work shed no new light on English history: the theory that the excellence of the English constitution depends on the beautiful equilibrium of the several departments or institutions has been not unjustly described as an expanded paraphrase of a single chapter of Montesquieu; and though for nearly a century it remained an authority for lack of better, it has long been superseded by works based on real historical research, and on scholarly and scientific study of records and original documents. In 1772 there had been published anonymously A Parallel between the English Constitution and the former Government of Sweden, mainly an unauthorised translation of part of the Constitution. A History of the Flagellants and Strictures on the Union were two of his half-dozen books and political pamphlets. A quotation from De Lolme in the preface to the 'Junius' letters in 1771 (before any translation had appeared) led the musical-literary Dr Thomas Busby to argue, incredibly enough, that De Lolme was concealed under that terrible nom de guerre.

Robert Orme (1728–1801), historian of India, was born in Travancore, the son of an army doctor in the East India Company's service; was educated at Harrow; and from 1743 till 1758 was himself in the employment of the Company, at first as writer, and ultimately as commissary and accountantgeneral. His health failing, he settled in London in 1760, and wrote his History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from the Year 1745 (1763–78), a work which furnished the favourite reading of Colonel Newcome, and was praised by Macaulay as one of the most authentic and best-written in the English tongue, though tedious from its minute details. Even now some prefer to Macaulay's, for their old-fashioned stateliness and vigour, Orme's account of Bengal, his version of the Black Hole tragedy, and his description of the battle of Plassey. In 1782 he published Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan.

The Black Hole of Calcutta.

[The Nawab of Bengal, Siráj-ud-Daula (Suraja Dowlah), having captured the fort of the Calcutta factory, caused all the prisoners, 146 in number, to be crowded into one small apartment 18 feet square.] In the mean time every minute had increased their sufferings. The first effect of their sufferings was a profuse and continued sweat, which soon produced intolerable thirst, succeeded by excruciating pains in the breast, with difficulty of breathing-little short of suffocation. . . . Attempts were again made to force the door, which, failing as before, redoubled their rage: but the thirst increasing, nothing but water! water! became soon after the general cry. The good Jemautdar immediately ordered some skins of water to be brought to the windows; but, instead of relief, his benevolence became a more dreadful cause of destruction; for the sight of the water threw every one into such excessive agitations and ravings, that, unable to resist this violent impulse of nature, none could wait to be regularly served, but each with the utmost ferocity battled against those who were likely to get it from him; and in these conflicts many were either pressed to death by the efforts of others, or suffocated by their own. This scene, instead of producing compassion in the guard without, only excited their mirth; and they held up lights to the bars, in order to have the diabolical satisfaction of seeing the deplorable contentions of the sufferers within, who, finding it impossible to get any water whilst it was thus furiously disputed, at length suffered those who were nearest to the windows, to convey it in their hats to those behind them. It proved no relief either to their thirst or other sufferings; for the fever increased every moment with the increasing depravity of the air in the dungeon, which had been so often respired, and was saturated with the hot and deleterious effluvia of putrefying bodies, of which the stench was little less than mortal. Before midnight, all who were alive and had not partaken of the air at the windows, were either in a lethargic stupefaction or raving with delirium. Every kind of invective and abuse was uttered, in hopes of provoking the guard to put an end to their miseries, by firing into the dungeon; and whilst some were blaspheming their Creator with the frantic execrations of

torment in despair, heaven was implored by others with wild and incoherent prayers; until the weaker, exhausted by these agitations, at length laid down quietly, and expired on the bodies of their dead or agonizing friends. Those who still survived in the inward part of the dungeon, finding that the water had afforded them no relief, made a last effort to obtain air, by endeavouring to scramble over the heads of those who stood between them and the windows; where the utmost strength of every one was employed for two hours, either in maintaining his own ground, or in endeavouring to get that of which others were in possession. All regards of compassion and affection were lost, and no one would recede or give way for the relief of another. Faintness sometimes gave short pauses of quiet, but the first motion of any one renewed the struggle through all, under which ever and anon some one sunk to rise no more. At two o'clock not more than fifty remained alive. But even this number were too many to partake of the saving air, the contest for which, and life, continued until the morn, long implored, began to break; and, with the hope of relief, gave the few survivors a view of the dead. The survivors then at the window, finding that their intreaties could not prevail on the guard to open the door, it occurred to Mr Cooke, the secretary of the council, that Mr Holwell, if alive, might have more influence to obtain their relief; and two of the company undertaking the search, discovered him, having still some signs of life; but when they brought him towards the window, every one refused to quit his place, excepting Captain Mills, who with rare generosity offered to resign his; on which the rest likewise agreed to make room. He had scarcely begun to recover his senses, before an officer, sent by the Nabob, came and enquired if the English chief survived; and soon after the same man returned with an order to open the prison. The dead were so thronged, and the survivors had so little strength remaining, that they were employed near half an hour in removing the bodies which lay against the door, before they could clear a passage to go out one at a time; when of one hundred and forty-six who went in, no more than twenty-three came out alive, the ghastliest forms that ever were seen.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) was indisputably one of the great painters of the world as well as greatest of English portrait painters ; and he holds a place in literature in virtue of his Discourses on Painting, which, though probably revised and touched up by Johnson, Burke, and other friends, reflects Reynolds's own experience and opinion in an admirable style which is mainly his own. According to Mr Monkhouse, his advice to students is permanently valuable, and if we make allowance for the time, his criticisms on pictures and painters are substantially sound. His literary education Reynolds received mainly at his father's grammar-school, his father being a clergyman and schoolmaster at Plympton Earls near Plymouth. Art he studied in London and in Rome, whence he returned in 1752 to rise rapidly to full fame in London. It was he who founded in 1764 that famous literary club of which Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and the rest of the famous circle were members. He was elected president of the Royal Academy on its institution in 1768, and from

1769 (when he was knighted) to 1790 he delivered to the students of the Academy the famous fifteen lectures on the principles and practice of painting. In the fourteenth he pays a generous tribute to Gainsborough. His paper on art in the Idler, his annotations to Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, and his Notes on the Art of the Low Countries all show a cultivated literary style. The extracts are from the first of the Discourses.

Genius and Labour.

It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of Genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations. A Student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always apt to over-rate his own abilities; to mistake the most trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him, for a new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he congratu lates his own arrival at those regions which they who have steer'd a better course have long left behind them. The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they are found to differ in any thing from their predecessors, it is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. But the difficulty on this occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as models of excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest guides.

On whom then can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to excellence? The answer is obvious: Those great masters who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every tye of sympathetic approba tion. There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men ; but how they may be studied to advantage is an enquiry of great importance.

Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real dignity of the Art, and who rate the works of an Artist in proportion as they excel or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on Theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better; and confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying; and think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the minutest part of a favourite picture. This appears to me a very tedious, and I think a very erroneous method of proceeding. Of every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a great part may be truly said to be common-place. This, though it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement. I consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the Student satisfies himself with

the appearance of doing something; he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work; and those powers of invention and composition which ought particularly to be called out and put in action lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of exercise. It is an observation that all must have made, how incapable those are of producing any thing of their own, who have spent much of their time in making finished copies.

These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience; but as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them with diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them without regret. There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid You must have no dethat I shall repeat it too often. pendence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour: nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers. Though a man cannot at all times, and in all places, paint or draw, yet the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at all times, and in all places. Both Livy and Plutarch, in describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity, have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellencies which some all their lives vainly expect from Nature. I shall quote the passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the practice I would recommend to the Painter, Sculptor, or Architect.

I cannot help imagining that I see a promising young Painter, equally vigilant, whether at home, or abroad in the streets, or in the fields. Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson. He regards all Nature with a view to his profession, and combines her beauties, or corrects her defects. He examines the countenance of men under the influence of passion, and often catches the most pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad Pictures themselves supply him with useful documents; and, as Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally sketched upon a discoloured wall. The Artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations of Genius is in reality at a loss how to begin, and is at last delivered of his Monsters, with difficulty and pain. The well-grounded Painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to consider his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his Art follow without his exertion. Conscious of the difficulty of obtaining what he possesses, he makes no pretensions to secrets, except those of closer application. Without conceiving the smallest jealousy against others, he is contented that all shall be as great as himself, who are willing to undergo the same fatigue: and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free from the painful suspicions of a juggler, who lives in perpetual fear, lest his trick should be discovered.

Edmund Burke

seems

stood high with his contemporaries as orator, politician, and author, and time has hardly abated his reputation; he still ranks as the most eloquent of our publicists, and, with the possible exception of Bacon, the most philosophical of English statesmen. Burke was born in Dublin, 12th January 1729, the son of a Protestant solicitor; his mother, whose name was Nagle, was a Roman Catholic. He was educated at a Quaker's school at Ballitore in Kildare, and afterwards (1743-48) at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read widely and desultorily. In 1750 he removed to London, and entered himself as a student of the Middle Temple, but he soon to have abandoned his intention of prosecuting the law as a profession. In 1756 he published anonymously a parody of Bolingbroke, a l'indication of Natural Society, in which the paradoxical reasoning of the noble sceptic is pushed to a ridiculous extreme; the majestic style was so skilfully imitated that many of the best judges believed the serious jeu-d'esprit to be Bolingbroke's. In 1757 he published A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which at once secured universal attention, all the more because of its novelty. It relied largely on physiological considerations; objects appear beautiful because they have the power of producing a peculiar relaxation of our nerves and fibres.' The Inquiry was translated into French and German. Its author was soon made free of the society of Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, and the other eminent men of the day; but he was still struggling with difficulties and compiling for booksellers. He suggested to Dodsley the plan of an Annual Register, which that spirited publisher adopted, Burke furnishing a large portion of the original matter for the first year (1759); and he continued for nearly thirty years to write the 'Survey of Events,' in the Register. In 1761 Burke went to Ireland as private secretary to 'Single-speech Hamilton' (Chief-Secretary to the Earl of Halifax, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland). This connection lasted only three years, as Burke's literary impulses rebelled against the conditions imposed-that he must give all his time to his patron. In 1765 he became secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, and was returned to the House of Commons as member for the pocket-borough of Wendover. He soon distinguished himself in Parliament, but the Rockingham administration was dissolved in 1766, and Burke joined the Opposition.

Though he held no office till the downfall of the North Ministry in 1782, Burke's public activity never ceased till his death. His eloquence, political knowledge, and force of character gave him a foremost place in public life. Lord North's long administration (1770-82) was marked by the unsuccessful coercion of the American colonies; by corruption, extravagance,

and reaction. Against this policy Burke and his Whig friends could only raise a strong protest. The best of Burke's writings and speeches Delong to this period, and may be described as a defence of sound constitutional statesmanship against prevailing abuse and misgovernment. His first great pamphlet, Observations on the Present State of the Nation (1769), was a reply to George Grenville; On the Causes of the Present Discontents (1770) treats of the Wilkes controversy. Perhaps the finest of his many efforts are the speech on American Taxation (1774), the speech on Conciliation with America (1775), and the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)-all advocating wise

and liberal measures, which might have averted the mischief that en

sued. In 1773 he made a visit to Paris; in 1774 he had to retire from his seat for Wendover, when he was elected by Bristol. But his support of the proposals for relaxing the restrictions on the trade of Ireland with Great Britain, and for alleviating the laws against Catholics, cost him the seat in 1780, and

encouraged its rulers in strenuous resistance to the Revolution. Burke, alienated on this subject from Fox and the Whigs, became more and more vehement in his denunciations of the French innovations. The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Thoughts on French Affairs, and Letters on a Regicide Peace were marred by the vehemence with which he urged the Government not only to fight the Revolution, but to suppress free opinions at home. Burke died 9th July 1797, and was buried in the little church at Beacons

[graphic]

EDMUND BURKE.

From the Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the National Portrait Gallery.

from that time till 1794 he represented Malton. When the disasters of the American war brought Lord North's Government to a close, Burke was Paymaster of the Forces under Rockingham (1782), as also under Portland (1783). After the fall of the Whig Ministry in 1783 Burke was never again in office, and, misled by party feeling, he opposed Pitt's measure for Free Trade with Ireland and the Commercial Treaty with France. In 1788 he opened the trial of Warren Hastings by the speech which will always rank among the masterpieces of English eloquence. He opposed Pitt's Regency Bill (1788); and from this time forward his energies were mainly absorbed by the French Revolution, then 'blackening the horizon '-to use one of his own metaphors. His Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) reached an eleventh edition in a year, was read all over Europe, and powerfully

field, where in 1768 he had purchased the estate of Gregories. During his whole political life his private affairs were sadly embarrassed; he had to borrow money to buy that estate, and he was always deep in debt. Two pensions were granted him in 1794, when

a proposal to raise him to the peerage as Lord Beaconsfield was arrested by the death of his only son.

Burke ranks as one of the foremost orators and political thinkers of England. He had vast knowledge of affairs, a glowing imagination, passionate sympathies, and

an inexhaustible wealth of powerful and cultured expression; but his delivery was awkward and ungainly, and speeches which captivate the reader only served to empty the benches of the House of Commons.

The splendour of even his least happy disquisitions, the various knowledge which they display, the rich imagery with which they abound, and the spirit of philosophical reflection which pervades them all, stamp them among the foremost literary productions of their time; such a flood of rich illustration had never before been poured on questions of State policy and government. At the same time, Burke was eminently practical in his views. His greatest efforts will be found directed to the redress of some existing wrong or the preservation of some existing good-to hatred of actual oppression, to the removal of useless restrictions, and to the calm and sober improvement

of the laws and government which he venerated, without coining to himself Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution.' Where inconsistencies are found in his writings between his early and later opinions, it may be argued that they consist largely in matters of detail or in expression. He wished, he says, to preserve consistency, but only by varying his means to secure the unity of his end: 'When the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, he is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.' When the Revolution broke out, his sagacity enabled him to foresee the dreadful consequences which it would entail upon France and the world; he became the victim of a fixed idea, and his enthusiastic temperament led him to state his impressions in language sometimes overcharged and even bombastic, though sometimes full of prophetic fire. In one of the debates on the Revolution, after mentioning that he understood that three thousand daggers had been ordered from Birmingham, Burke drew one from under his coat, and throwing it on the floor, melodramatically exclaimed, 'This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France-this is your fraternisation!' The orator's imagination was not always under the control of perfect taste; many of his utterances were absurdly hyperbolical; on the other hand, some of his similes and illustrations were especially by enemies-accounted 'low.' In his reply to Pitt on the Commercial Treaty with France in 1787, he maintained that the Minister had contemplated the subject with a narrowness peculiar to limited minds-'as an affair of two little counting-houses, and not of two great nations. He seems to consider it as a contention between the sign of the Fleur-de-lis and the sign of the old Red Lion for which should obtain the best custom.' Replying to the argument that the Americans were our children, and should not have revolted against their parent, he said: 'They are Our children, it is true, but when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a stone. When those children of ours wish to assimilate with their parent, and to respect the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?' His account of the illassorted administration of Lord Chatham is no less ludicrous than correct. 'He made an administration so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented, and whimsically dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement, here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; king's friends and republicans ;

on.

Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask: "Sir, your name?" "Sir, you have the advantage of me;" "Mr Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons." I venture to say it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed.'

From the Speech on Conciliation with
America, 1775.

Mr Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over the great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst [the first Earl, 1684-1775] might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et qua sit poterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which-by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils-was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, lord-chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him: Young man, there is America-which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate,

« 前へ次へ »