be revealed by those mystic characters which have defied the scrutiny of time, and which in later days have only reluctantly yielded a faint glimpse of their mighty intelligence, as it has been wrested from them by modern science; perhaps-for who can tell?-the light that seemed about to peer into these mysterious chambers, may be withdrawn, and a second darkness close for ever over the scene: Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre. DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE. 1811.-March 8. Went to the Oratorio: the same as before, nearly; with the substitution of "Pious Orgies" for an Italian air, by Catalani; which she sang better than I expected. The whole went off more neatly and spiritedly than the former time. Braham aiming rather to show off his own powers, than to give effect to his subject; but transcendant in Deeper and deeper still;" his voice thrillingly tremulous: playful with Mrs. Dickons in "Together," &c. Tinney coarse and heavy, but with prodigious force and depth of tone. Painful effect from Gaskell's countertenor, by sympathetic straining. March 14. Began Edinburgh Review, No. 27. They are disposed, I think, to favour too much Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming; they might have illustrated their conception of his merits, compared with Scott's,* by regarding the former as the Corregio and the latter as the Rubens of Poetry. 15. Edinb. Rev. No. 34, under Mad. Deffand's Letters, remarks of the Castle of Otranto, that the art of exciting surprise and terror, which forms its merit, has been carried so much further by succeeding authors, and that too without the ponderous machinery to which Mr. Walpole has had recourse, that the lustre of his work has become in a great measure eclipsed! This is nearly my opinion, as expressed in my Extracts, and which was strongly controverted in the last Ipswich paper but one (Suffolk Chronicle). 17. Edinb. Rev. No. 87, under Spence on Agriculture and Commerce, justly remarks that it is by assigning to each individual his peculiar task in providing for the wants of society, that men acquire that skill which renders their labour more productive and beneficial; that the greater the number of those who are joined in this partnership of labour and employment, the more valuable will be the produce of their industry; and that Commerce only extends this principle by allowing different nations to make respectively the best possible use of their soil and their industry. All parties in this way gain by an exchange of equivalents. 20. Read Tucker's Introduction to his Light of Nature Pursued. There is a desultoriness in his style and manner, for which I have no mercy, on such topics as he has undertaken to treat; when, for want of sensible images, the utmost accuracy and precision of thought and expression are absolutely necessary to preserve clear and distinct conceptions in the mind. His facility and sweetness of manner are otherwise very captivating, and the defence on the other hand would be, that his disquisition is professedly explanatory, and of course excursive; but what we want on such * The review of Gertrude of Wyoming in the Quarterly, was written by Sir Walter Scott, founded on a review submitted to him by another person.-ED. topics, is the result of investigation, though disguised in the shape of search. March 30. Burney quotes Mason with approbation, as asserting that the ancients had no 66 Harmony," and that what they called so, was merely what we term Melody, speaking of it as distinguished from modulated air, or song. It appears that periodical reinforcements of sound, occurring oftener than twelve times in a second, affect the ear as independent sounds. Dr. Burney distinguishes between equalising the harmony of the several sounds, which he removed, with respect to each other, and making all the twelve several keys equally harmonious by an equal temperament. April 2. The distinction of the Edinb. Review (No. 29), under Hamilton's Parliamentary Logic, between the principles which may be safely and perhaps wisely held and avowed by a theoretic recluse, but which become false and pernicious when acted upon by practical politicians, appears as just as it is original; and I perfectly concur in their ridicule of the attempt to teach the art of reasoning and speaking, which never effect more than a display of the ingenuity of the instructor. Their praise of Johnson's Essay on the Corn Laws, at the close, is liberal and masterly; and evinces a just appreciation of his powers. April 5. Read Prince Eugene's Memoirs of Himself-most lively, and amusing, and exhibiting traits of a very superior mind; full of modesty and candour, eager to hail and embrace congenial merit in an opponent, or even a rival, and trifling with infinite ease, nature, and grace! Marlborough's being greeted with presents, and he with fetes, is very characteristic of the two men. P. 150, he strikingly evinces the superiority of France-one nation, actuated by one will, civilized, and populous-over the Austrian monarchy, composed of five or six differently constituted members, with little attachment to the head. He speaks highly of the French armies, susceptible at once of discipline, fatigue, and enthusiasm, when properly commanded. Death, he acutely remarks, before it erases great recollections, revives them all in the first moment. Of Charles the Sixth, who was very grave, he remarks, that he loved buffoons, as is usually the case with people who are not naturally cheerful. On the subject of the King of Prussia, he remarks-"I had been so successful in the higher tac-. tics, as to care nothing about wheeling to the right or left, and the manual exercise." He more than once expresses his earnest desire at the time to have fallen in battle; not from fatigue of life, but because it was the enthusiasm of a soldier. The sketches which he gives of his battles are so slight, that they would hardly suggest any distinct ideas even to a military man. April 10. Received this morning a most elegant letter from Dugald Stewart, in acknowledgment of my Diary' sent to him. April 18. Began Hurd's edition of Addison's Works. In a prefixed extract of a letter to Mason, and afterwards in the first annotation to Cato, he insinuates that the time of maturer taste and judgment will come, when Addison will be preferred to Shakspeare-an absurd contrast! In a note on Addison's address to Lord Somers, he justifies the use of the comparative lesser less, he thinks, should be joined with singular nouns, lesser with plural. In a note, on a note of Addison's on Ovid's Phaeton, he considers laid' as the perfect participle of ' lay,' lain' of 'lye.' In the 4th note on Cato, he condemns the now popular phrase of " 'planting daggers in the heart," as strangely unnatural. In the next, he observes, that men of cold passions have quick eyes; a remark strikingly exemplifed in his own person. In his prefixed inscription on Addison, he has cautiously abstained from mentioning his politics, though a conspicuous feature in that great man's life. In a note on the presentation poem of Cato, Hurd employs disingenuity,' instead of disingenuousness;' and afterwards, in the first note on the 'Dialogues on Medals,' observes that substantives terminating in ess,' especially if polysyllables, have an ill effect in our language; but would he use ingenuity instead of ingenuousness!? In a preliminary note on Addison's Latin Poems, he observes, that the Virgilianism so conspicuous in his Latin poetry and his English prose, consists-in opening a subject by degrees, in presenting it first in few and simple terms, and then in enlarging and heightening it by a more distinct and exquisite expression, till the description becomes as it were full blown, and is set before us in all its grace and beauty! This is acute, and I think just. In a note on the Dialogue on Medals, Hurd confirms Dryden's preference of Persius to Lucan as a poet, by remarking that his expressions and descriptions are more pointed and peculiar, in which the essence of poetry consists. May 1. Pursued Hurd's Addison. The satire of the Freethinkers writing against the existence of Fairies, is too fine, if not for my comprehension, for my feelings. At first view, it would seem to carry another edge. Addison speaks of the impressions of grief and terror from a dream, as surpassing the effect of reality. I agree with Hurd, that the stroke when I awak'd,'-is inimitably contrived. May 4. Pursued Hurd's Addison. Hurd always bears unnecessarily hard upon Steele. He seems to have caught some of Addison's spirit, and to endure nó brother next the throne of his favourite. Addison considers the transition from air to recitation, as more natural than the passing from song to plain and ordinary speaking, as in the old English opera; and only complains that we now employ Italian recitation with English words. Hurd (Spectator, No. 94) formally and strongly commends Addison's throwing the preposition to the end of the sentence, as breaking the heavy majestic fambic rhythm of our language, and imparting extreme grace in all the lighter forms of composition; and at the close of the same paper, he remarks that Addison in treating moral subjects shows himself to be in earnest, and not like Seneca solicitous to illustrate himself, rather than the truths he delivers (which are best seen by their own light) in the false grace of an ambitious rhetoric. This is just, and happily expressed. His resolution of "many a man" into " one man of many (No. 105), is surely wrong, and contradicts his own explanation of the sense of the phrase. His representation of Addison's inconsistency respecting Brutus (No. 293) is perfectly just. It is surprising that Hurd, who possessed so acute an eye in detecting the blemishes which occasionally stain the purity of Addison's style, should have been guilty of such flagrant offences in his own. May 6. Pursued Hurd's Addison (Spectator, No. 409). Hurd remarks that the mystery of fine writing consists-1st, In a choice of fit terms; 2nd, In à just grammatical construction of them; 3rd, In a pleasing order and arrangement of them :-by the first, a style becomes elegant; by the second exact; and by the third harmonious. On the latter division he remarks, that this rhythm, this secret charm of numbers, is effected:-1stly, by a certain choice and arrangement of words in the same sentence; 2ndly, of sentences forming a period; 3rdly, of periods forming a paragraph,-and gives some excellent rules on each department; the object of which is to produce a sonorous and numerous flow of language, for ever varied. He considers (No. 411) Addison's papers on the Pleasures of Imagination as by far the most masterly of all his critical works. Addison repeats in this No. one of his thoughts in the Guardian, that a just relish for the beauty of accessible objects, natural or artificial, imparts a sort of property in them. Hurd justly questions Addison's judgment (in the 415th,) that the interior of the Pantheon at Rome, as a piece of architecture, affects the mind more than a Gothic cathedral five times larger in dimensions. No. 410, Hurd objects, and rightly, to the same relative, though indeclinable, serving two verbs which govern a different case in that relative. Waller's explanation of the different sense and proper employment of the verb 'should' and 'would,' is certainly not exact; like shall and will, they seem affected by the person in which they are used: 'I should be guilty of treason if '-' He would be guilty of treason if'- -. The sense is the same, but the terms are not convertible except by a Scotchman. Of Addison, Hurd happily remarks that his sense is deep, though the perspicuity of his style, like a clear medium, brings it up to the eye, and tempts an ordinary observer to look upon it as shallow and superficial. His adopted phrase" blown upon" (No. 464.) he considers as a metaphor from flowers, which being breathed and blown upon, lose at once their fragrance and lustre. Hurd, in No. 446, conceives that the Drama cannot possibly produce reformation, because no play will take that is not adapted to prevailing manners; and to flatter the age is. not the way to reform it. May 11. Looked over the 5th volume of Hurd's edition of Addison. Addison remarks (Spectator 487) that the passions affect the mind with greater strength when we are asleep than when we are awake, and seems to consider it as part of a general principle, that the mind becomes agile and perfect in proportion as it becomes disengaged from the encumbrance of the body. He quotes Fontenelle, as asserting that the ambitious and covetous are to all intents as mad as those who are confined in a madhouse; only they have the good luck to have numbers on their side. Addison (No. 590) quotes the following distich from Cowley: Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, This is the germ of Crabbe's and Campbell's celebrated thought. Hurd depraves, as much as he can, Addison's compliment to Shakspeare, No. 592. Hurd (Guard. 155) calls Madame Maintenon the most virtuous as well as accomplished woman in the world. I should have expected him to be too prudish for such an assertion; but he relied on the private marriage. May 21. Read, as I walked, Johnson's Marmor Norfolciense, original edition ; -a highly curious tract, in Johnson's happiest and most playful style of ridicule. It might safely have been re-published: for the irony is too recondite, I should think, to have been very extensively mischievous, even at the time of publication, and Johnson's political reputation is quite impassive. May 25. Looked through the 5th and last volume of Hurd's Addison. On Freeholder (No. 140), Hurd remarks, that Congreve had a great deal of wit; but a man must have a furious passion for it, that can read his comedies with pleasure or even patience.' I cordially agree with him; on No. 45, he agrees that wit and humour employed as satire, never reclaimed vice or folly, but thinks they may do better: viz., prevent it. Pascal he calls the sublimest, as Addison was the most cultivated genius of modern times. I cannot see (p. 285) how the belief in legendary* miracles proves that they were preceded by true ones, so that the very credulity of the Fathers is an argument for the truth of Christianity. Miracles are surely a very obvious appeal for the truth of a divine interference; and if mankind can be imposed upon at one time, they may at another. I admit they will be more readily received when the mind is prepared for their reception. ETHIOPIA VERSUS EGYPT. BY THE AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN ETHIOPIA. 99 THE Ethiopia of which Meroe was the Metropolis, as described by Herodotus, Diodorus, Josephus, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, is acknowledged without dispute by all the learned, and by all travellers, to be the country above the First Cataract, extending thence not less than eight hundred and fifty miles along the valley of the Nile to the ancient capital. There are only vague reasons for supposing that eity was at one extremity of the kingdom; but very many arguments in confirmation of the opinion, that the metropolis must have been in the interior of the country. The greatness and power of Ethiopia are evinced by the fact of three of its kings having reigned as conquerors over Egypt for the space of forty-five years. This circumstance does not rest on the simple testimony of Manetho. The assertion of that historian is confirmed by the monumental inscriptions in Egypt, and by the remains of a splendid temple in Ethiopia, built by Tirhaka, the last of these monarchs; the date of whose reign, as well as the coincidence of name and title, prove him to have been the Tirhaka of Holy Writ. think, then, that I am not too bold in asserting, and shall have no difficulty in proving to the unprejudiced reader, that the country which subdued for a time this most powerful of all ancient kingdoms; which could adventure to compete for the empire of the world I with the Assyrian princes; which successfully resisted the expeditions of Semiramis and Cambyses; and of the former magnificence of which such splendid monuments of art still exist, must have been powerful and extensive. And a dispassionate examination of the geological, historical, and monumental evidence upon the subject, would, I flatter myself, convince even the author of the article in the Edinburgh Review, who calls me his opponent, that Ethiopia must have been a more ancient kingdom than Egypt, and therefore may have been the birth-place of the arts and sciences. It would at least induce him to withdraw the bold and gratuitous assertions, that Shendy, as it existed before the Pasha's invasion, was 'probably more flourishing than the ancient Meroe'; that such as Metammah, still more desolate than Shendy, is at present, "such must have been the ancient capitals of Ethiopia"; and that, because the whole population of the country between Egypt and Abyssinia, the Red Sea, and both banks of the Nile, does not now exceed a million, therefore it hardly could have been greater in ancient times. I have stated that the first great source of the power of Meroe was probably the extreme fertility of the soil, and the abundance of her harvests. Those banks which are now in a great many instances covered with the sand * Certainly the belief in legendary miracles cannot prove that they are preceded by true ones; but in the first place, without the authority of the true miracles, the false or legendary one would not have been invented; and the belief in the true one, led the unsuspecting and devout mind too readily to assent to the false. Whether mankind is imposed upon or not, as Mr. Green supposes to be the case, can alone be proved by the evidence attending the miracles. That they may be imposed upon, is no proof that they are: that a thing may be false, is no proof that it is not true. Besides, the Gospel miracles are to be taken in conjunction with the other evidences of Christianity: they are intimately connected with the Prophecies; in fact, they form part of them; they are connected also with the internal evidence of the Christian Religion; and it is this cumulative evidence that is to be considered.-ED. |