GENERAL

University o MICHIGAN

649

1878.

BARRY CORNWALL.

nation and influential upon its products. So apt a disciple did he become in his teacher's favourite study that, when Hazlitt was about to write his lectures upon the Elizabethan dramatists, it was to Procter in conjunction with Lamb that he applied for information, and from whom he borrowed the finest of the old plays' with which he went down to Winterslow Hut in Wiltshire, and after a stay of six weeks came back to London fully impregnated with the subject, with his thoughts fully made up upon it, and with all his lectures written' (p. 173). Of Hazlitt's power as a thinker and reasoner, and of his acute perception as a critic, Procter's estimate was higher than the world has yet permitted itself to entertain; and one of his last cited sentences is an expression of despair of the age that has forgotten to read Hazlitt.' The masculine intellect,' extensive culture, honest convictions, and fearless courage of the man, marred only by liability to prejudice and turbulence of passion, are incisively delineated in the chapter of reminiscences here devoted to him (pp. 167-182). To Lamb this volume contains only references by the way, Procter's affectionate memories of him being too copious to bear compression into less space than the monograph which he published in 1866.

Of Leigh Hunt he gives a graphic and obviously faithful sketch. The only passage which can be extracted from it is a happy analysis of the side of his character most open to misconstruction :—

He had no vanity, in the usually accepted meaning of the word. I mean, that he had not that exclusive vanity which rejects almost all things beyond self. He gave as well as received; no one more willingly. He accepted praise less as a mark of respect from others, than as a delight of which all are entitled to partake, such as spring weather, the scent of flowers, or the flavour of wine. It is difficult to explain this; it was like an absorbing property in the surface of the skin. Its possessor enjoys pleasure almost involuntarily, whilst another of colder or harder temperament is insensible to it. He had good, but no violent impulses. He was soon swayed, less by his convictions than by his affections. His mind had not much of the debating element in it. His smiles and tears were easy. (P. 199.)

The most finished, if least original, of these contemporary judgments is that on Wordsworth, which lays stress upon the influence of loneliness and poverty in moulding the poet's temperament, and, by sequestering his career from disturbing causes, stimulating his sympathy with outward Nature and the poor and common objects which he found associated with it. The reality of the impressions which this experience has stamped upon his poetry and given it the power of imparting is thus eloquently described :

As you read the verse of Wordsworth, his words frequently have a wonderful influence in assimilating your thoughts to his. You see the bare moors round which the winds sweep, the hills over which the sheep move like a cloud, the sheaves and sheets of snow, the poor cottager and the wandering pedlar, and all that comes to peasant life, its loves and hopes broken down by sickness and old age. VOL. IV.-No. 20. UU

The beggar chirps querulously; the shepherd toils wearily up the mountains. All that is cast upon the world by poverty comes forth, to live, and toil, and die... There are no crownings of kings, nor march of conquerors, no bevies of ladies or courtiers, who laugh and lie, who rise and flourish, and fall like the leaves in autumn; but common human nature pines and fades away, and leaves a sigh in the reader's breast, which it is long before he can forget. (Pp. 142-3.)

Of Coleridge we have a scantier memorial, but including two characteristic stories and one suggestive observation :

He knew little or nothing of the art of painting; yet I have heard him discuss the merits and defects of a picture of the poorest class, as though it had sprung from the inspiration of Raffaelle. He would advert to certain parts, and surmise that it had been touched upon here and there; would pronounce upon its character and school, its chiaroscuro, the gradations, the handling, &c., when in fact it had no mark or merit or character about it. It became transfigured, sublimated, by the speaker's imagination, which far excelled both the picture and its author. (P. 145.)

Scott, Campbell, Southey, Moore, and Rogers are slightly but shrewdly sketched, the salient points of individuality being unmistakably caught, however unfinished be the portrait. Of celebrities in other walks of art Haydon receives the fullest notice; and the kindly intermixture of justice and mercy in these verdicts generally is well illustrated in that passed upon him. Godwin and De Quincey are more cursorily delineated, and probably from too limited a range of observation to deal adequately with natures so mixed. A sympathetic memoir of Edward Irving calls attention to the singular modesty, simplicity, and trustfulness of his character-aspects of it only known to his intimates, and which some of his admirers may be as reluctant to accept as his enemies. A transcript, evidently made while fresh in memory, of a long conversation which Procter had with the painter Stothard, brings out the idiosyncrasies of both speakers with amusing naïveté (pp. 85-90). A pleasant chapter of recollection is lastly devoted to the staff of the London Magazine, to which Procter himself belonged. One of the number receives mention apart-the art-critic, forger, and assassin, Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, a grotesque effort to rehabilitate whose literary reputation was made a few years since on the strength of his admiration for Blake. His clever but very fantastic' essays and the 'great affectation' exhibited in them did not deceive Procter éven at the time; but none of his colleagues were prepared for the discovery that from a man who was absolutely a fop, finikin in dress, with mincing steps and tremulous words, with his hair curled and full of unguents, and his cheeks painted like those of a frivolous demirep, would flame out ultimately the depravity of a poisoner and a murderer.' The account here given of his career in crime is among the most graphic passages in the book.

All these memorials belong to the first half of Procter's octo

genarian life, although not chronicled until the verge of its decline had been reached. Of his later intimacies he has left no reminiscence beyond brief notices of Mr. Carlyle and the poet Beddoes, but the catalogue of them might have included the name of almost every one who had attained eminence in letters or art either in England or America. His house was for many years one of the most frequented literary salons in London; and that the acquaintances there formed ripened in several instances into friendships is illustrated by the selection here made from the letters addressed to him. It is to be regretted that there was no means of supplementing this by a more varied assortment of his own. To judge from the few extracts here made, and from others which I have had an opportunity of reading, he was possessed of no common skill in what is now almost a lost art.

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Beyond the special circle of his intimates, the singular disinterestedness and benevolence of Procter's character made him a general favourite. He impressed every one who came near him,' says Mr. Fields, as a born gentleman, chivalrous and generous in a marked degree; and it was a habit of all who knew him to have an affection for him.' Unvarying testimony to the same effect is borne by those associated with him either in the course of his professional practice as a conveyancer or his official career as a Commissioner of Lunacy. In the latter capacity he discharged his onerous and ungrateful duties with so much zeal and efficiency, that his fellowcommissioners were urgent to retain his nominal service long after his health had failed, and were induced with difficulty to acquiesce in his resignation.

Towards the close of his life, when precluded from society by physical weakness, his chief solace, next to the devoted attention of his wife and children, was in the company of books. In one of the fragments of verse found among his papers, and here for the first time published, his love for them finds utterance with much of his old grace:

All round the room my silent servants wait,
My friends in every season, bright and dim;

Angels and seraphim

Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low,

And spirits of the skies all come and go

Early and late;

From the old world's divine and distant date,,

From the sublimer few,

Down to the poet who but yester-eve

Sang sweet and made us grieve,

All come, assembling here in order due.
And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,
With Erato and all her vernal sighs,
Great Clio with her victories elate,
Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.

O friends, whom chance and change can never harm,
Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die,
Within whose folding, soft, eternal charm

I love to lie!

Retaining to the last his mental powers and the sweetness and simplicity of childhood,' Procter passed away in his eighty-eighth year. The traditions of the great literary epoch of which he was the latest survivor could not have been linked to our own by a more beloved and venerable name.

HENRY G. HEWLETT.

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.1

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE is a subject which has always been of considerable interest to philosophical minds; but, as most of you are probably aware, the interest attaching to this subject has of late years been greatly increased by the significance which it has acquired in relation to the theory of Descent. The study of Animal Intelligence being thus, without question, fraught with high importance to the science of our time, in adducing before this illustrious assembly some of the results which that study has yielded, I shall endeavour to treat them in a manner purely scientific. I shall try, as much as possible, to avoid mere anecdote, except in so far as it is desirable that I should put you in possession of a few typical facts to illustrate the various principles which I shall have occasion to expound. I shall seek to render apparent the more important of the issues which the subject, as a whole, involves, as well as the considerations by which alone. these issues can be legitimately settled. I shall attempt to state my own views with the utmost candour; and if I shall appear to ignore any arguments opposed to the conclusions at which I shall arrive, it will only be because I believe those arguments to admit of easy refutation. And, in order that my exposition may be sufficiently comprehensive, I shall endeavour to point out the relations that subsist between the intelligence of animals and the intelligence of man. The aim and scope of the present lecture will therefore be to discuss, as fully as time permits, the facts and the principles of Comparative Psychology.

As human intelligence is the only order of intelligence with which we are directly acquainted, and as it is, moreover, the highest order of intelligence known to science, we may most conveniently adopt it as our standard of comparison. I shall therefore begin by very briefly detailing those principles of human psychology which we shall afterwards find to be of the most essential importance in their bearings on the subject which I have undertaken to discuss.

When I allow my eyes to travel over this vast assembly, my mind receives, through their instrumentality, a countless number of im

› An evening lecture delivered before the British Association at Dublin, August 16, 1878.