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ccnt men. Old Socrates, with his ugly face, | scribes-a kind of Noctes Ambrosiana, swarmhis snub nose, his strong head for standing ing here with bacchanalian babblement and liquor, his restless habits, his subtle irony, the there with sentences and sayings which might inimitable dialogue on which he made his have been washed down with nectar. They enemies to slide down as on a mountain-side are intensely typical of the ancient Grecian of ice, from the heights of self-consequent mind, of its heights and its depths, its unnatusecurity to the depths of defeat and exposure; ral vices and its lofty ideals of art. In their his sublime common-sense, his subtle, yet conception of beauty the Greeks approximated homely dialectics, opening up mines of gold the ideal, but their views of God and of man by the wayside, and getting the gods to sit on were exceedingly imperfect. Hence their disthe roof of the house; his keen raillery, his gusting vices; hence their sacrifice of everypower of sophisticating sophists, and his pro- thing to the purposes of art; hence the sensu found knowledge of his own nescience, is ad-ality of their genius when compared to that of mirably daguerreotyped. With equal power, the Gothic nations; hence the resistance offered the touches lent to him by the genius of his by their philosophers to Christianity, which disciple are discriminated from the native appeared to them "foolishness;" hence Platraits. Plato, to say the least of it, has color-tonism, the highest effort of their philosophy, ed the photograph of Socrates with the tints seems less indigenous to Greece than Aris of his own fine and fiery imagination; or he totelianism, and resembles an exotic transhas acted as a painter, when he puts a favor-planted from Egypt or Palestine. Except in ite picture in the softest and richest light; or Plato and Eschylus, there is little approach as a poot when he visits a beautiful scene by in the productions of the Greek genius to moral moonlight: or as a lover when he gently lifts sublimity or to a true religious feeling. Among up the image of his mistress across the line the prose writers of Greece, Aristotle and De which separated it from perfection. We often mosthenes more truly reflected the character hear of people throwing themselves into such of the national mind than Plato. They were and such a subject; there is another and a exceedingly ingenious and artistic, the one in rarer process that of adding oneself to such his criticism and the other in his oratory, but and such a character. You see a person, who, neither was capable of the lowest flights of added to yourself, would make, you think, a Plato's magnificent prose-poetry. Aristotle glorious being, and you proceed to idealize was, as Macaulay calls him, the "acutest of accordingly; you stand on his head, and out- human beings;" but it was a cold, needle-eyed tower the tallest; you club your brains with acuteness. As a critic his great merit lay in his, and are wiser than the wisest; you add deducing the principles of the epic from the the heat of your heart to his, and produce a perfect example set by Homer, like a theolo very furnace of love. Thus Solomon might gian forming a perfect system of morality from have written David's romantic history, and the life of Christ; but this, though a useful given the latter in addition to his courage, process, and one requiring much talent, is not sincerity, and lyric genius, his own voluptuous of the highest order even of intellectual achievefancy and profound acquirements. All bio-ments, and has nothing at all of the creative in graphers, indeed, possessed of any strong in- it. It is but the work of an index-maker_on dividuality themselves, act very much in this a somewhat larger scale. Demosthenes, Mr. way when narrating the lives of kindred Rogers, with Lord Brougham and most other spirits. And, certainly, it was thus that Plato critics, vastly overrates. His speeches as dedealt with Socrates. The Platonic Socrates livered by himself must have been overwhelmis a splendid composite, including the saga- ing in their immediate effect, but really concity, strength, theological acumen, and grand stitute, when read, morsels as dry and sapless modesty, as of the statue of a kneeling god, as we ever tried to swallow. They are destiwhich distinguished the master; and the phi- tute of that "action, action, action,' on which losophic subtlety, the high imagination, the he laid so much stress, and having lost it, they flowing diction, and the exquisite refinement have lost all. They have a good deal of clear of the disciple. Yet, even Socrates in the pithy statement and some striking questions picture of Plato is not for a moment to be and apostrophes, but have no imagery, no compared to the Carpenter of Nazareth as depth of thought, no grasp, no grandeur, no represented by his biographer, John, the Fish- genius. Lord Brougham's speeches have been erman of Galilee. We shall quote, by and called "law-papers on fire:" the speeches of bye, the fine passage in which Mr. Rogers Demosthenes are law-papers with much less draws the comparison between the two. fire. To get at their merit we must apply the

To Plato as a thinker and writer ample well-known rule of Charles James Fox. He justice is done. Perhaps too little is said used to ask if such and such a speech read against that slipslop which in his writings so well; "if it did, it was a bad speech, if it did often mingles with the sublimity. They are not, it was probably good." On this principle often, verily, strange symposia which he de- the orations of Demosthenes must be the best

in the world, since they are about the dullest | those foibles which history attributes to the real reading in it.

Far otherwise with the golden sentences of Plato. Dry argument, half hot with passion,

is all Demosthenes can furnish. Plato

Socrates, and from that too Protean facility of manners which, though designed by Plato as a compliment to the philosophic flexibility of his character of Socrates, really so far assimilated him with mere vulgar humanity; of one, too, whose sublime and original character is not only Has gifts in their most splendid variety and exhibited with the most wonderful dramatic skill, most harmonious combinations; rich alike in but in a style as unique as the character it empowers of invention and acquisition; equally bodies-a style of simple majesty, which, unlike massive and light; vigorous and muscular, yet that of Plato, is capable of being readily translapliable and versatile; master at once of thought ted into every language under heaven; of one and expression, in which originality and subtlety whose life was the embodiment of that virtue of intellect are surrounded by all the ministering which Plato affirmed would entrance all hearts aids of imagination, wit, humor, and eloquence, if seen, and whose death throws the prison-scenes and the structure of his mind resembles some master-piece of classic architecture, in which the marble columns rise from their deep foundation exquisitely fashioned and proportioned, sur mounted with elaborate and ornamented capitals, and supporting an entablature inscribed with all

forms of the beautiful.

of the Phædo" utterly into the shade; of one, lastly, whose picture has arrested the admiring gaze of many who have believed it to be only a picture. Now, if we feel that the portraiture of Socrates in the pages of Plato involved the very highest exercise of the highest dramatic genius,

cle in the lips of the grossest ignorance, and the maxims of universal charity advocates in the hearts of the most selfish of narrow-minded bigots; in a word, who could be the more than Plato (or rather the many each more than Plato), who drew that radiant portrait, of which it may be truly said "that a far greater than Sacrotes is here?""-pp. 366, 377.

and that the cause was no more than commen"Plato's style," Mr. Rogers proceeds, "is unri- surate with the effect, it is a question which valled he wielded at will all the resources of the may well occupy the attention of a philosopher most copious, flexible, and varied instrument of how it came to pass that in one of the obscurest thought through which the mind of man has ever periods of the history of an obscure people, in yet breathed the music of eloquence. Not less the dregs of their literature and the lowest severely simple and refined when he pleases than depths of superstitious dotage, so sublime a conPascal, between whom and Plato many resem-ception should have been so sublimely exhibited; blances existed, as in beauty of intellect, in the how it was that the noblest truths found an ora delicacy of their wit, in aptitude for abstract science, and in moral wisdom; the Grecian philosopher is capable of assuming every mood of thought, and of adopting the tone, imagery, and diction appropriate to each. Like Pascal, he can be by turns profound, sublime, pathetic, sarcastic, playful; but with a far more absolute command over all the varieties of manner and style. He could pass, by the most easy and rapid transitions, from the majestic eloquence which made the Greeks say that if Jupiter had spoken the language of mortals he would have spoken in that of Plato, to that homely style of illustration and those highly idiomatic modes of expression which mark the colloquial manner of his Socrates, and which, as Alcibiades in his eulogium observes, might induce a stranger to say that the talk of the sage was all about shoemakers and tailors, carpenters and braziers."—p. 334.

Passing over a very ingenious paper on the "Structure of the English Language," we come to one on the "British Pulpit," some of the statements in which are weighty and powerful, but some of which we are compelled to controvert. Mr. Rogers begins by deploring the want of eloquence and of effect in the modern pulpit. There is undoubtedly too much reason for this complaint, although we think that in the present day it is not so much eloWe promised to quote also his closing para-quence that men desiderate in preaching as graph. Here it is, worthy in every respect of the author of the "Eclipse of Faith," and equal to its best passages:

real instruction, living energy, and wide variety of thought and illustration. Mr. Rogers says very little about the substance of sermons, and in what he does say seems to incline to We certainly hold the entire dramatic projec- that principle of strait-lacing which we thought tion and representation of Socrates in the pages had been nearly exploded. No doubt every of Plato to be one of the most wonderful efforts preacher should preach the main doctrines of of the human mind. In studying him it is im- the Gospel, but if he confine himself exclupossible that his character as a teacher of ethics sively to these, he will limit his own sphere of and his life-like mode of representation should power and influence. Why should he not not suggest to us another character yet more won- preach the great general moralities as well? derfully depicted, and by the same most difficult Why should he not tell, upon occasion, great political, metaphysical, and literary truths to purer, sublimer, and more consistent ethics, perhis people, turning them, as they are so susvaded by a more intense spirit of humanity, of ceptible of being turned, to religious account? one whose love for our race was infinitely deeper It will not do to tell us that preachers must and more tender, who stands perfectly free from follow the Apostles in every respect. Christ

of all methods-that of dramatic evolution by

discourse and action; of one who taught a still

alone was a perfect model, and how easy and deem themselves fatherless children in a fordiversified his discourses! He had seldom any saken world? We think him decidedly too setext. He spake of subjects as diverse from vere also in his condemnation of the use of each other as are the deserts of Galilee from scientific and literary language in the pulpit. the streets of Jerusalem; the summit of Tabor Pedantry, indeed, and darkening counsel by from the tower of Siloam; the cedar of Leba- technical language, we abhor, but elegant and non from the hyssop springing out of the wall. scholarly diction may be combined with simHe touched the political affairs of Judea, the plicity and clearness, and has a tendency to passing incidents of the day, the transient con- elevate the minds and refine the tastes of those troversies and heart-burnings of the Jewish who listen to it. It is of very little use comsects, with a finger as firm and as luminous as ing down, as it is called, to men's level; nowhe did the principles of morality and of reli-a-days, if you do so, you will get nothing but gion. Hence, in part, the superiority and the contempt for your pains-you cannot, indeed, success of his teaching. It was a wide and yet be too intelligible, but you may be so while Not an indefinite and baseless thing. It swept using the loftiest imagery and language. Chalthe circumference of Nature and of man, and mers never" Came down to men's level," and then radiated on the cross as on a centre. It yet his discourses were understood and felt by gathered an immense procession of things, the humblest of his audience, when by the enthoughts, and feelings, and led them through ergy of his genius and the power of his sympaJerusalem and along the foot of Calvary. It thies he lifted them up to his. bent all beings and subjects into its grand purpose, transfiguring them as they stooped before it. It was this catholic eclectic feature in Christ's teaching which, while it made many cry out, "Never man spake like this man," ful, too, of preachers have been the most orhas created also some certain misconceptions of its character. Many think that he was at bottom nothing more than a Pantheistic poet, because he shed on all objects, on the lilies of the valley, the salt of the sea, the thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the rocks of the mountain, and the sands of the sea shore, that strange and glorious light which he brought with him to earth and poured around him as from the wide wings of an angel, as from the all-beautifying beams of dawn.

Mr. Rogers thinks that all preachers aspiring to power and usefulness will" abhor the ornate and the florid," and yet it is remarkable that the most powerful and the most use

nate and florid. Who more ornate than Isaiah? Who spoke more in figures and parables than Jesus? Chrysostom, of the "golden mouth," belonged to the same school. South sneers at Jeremy Taylor, and Rogers very unworthily re-echoes the sneer; but what comparison between South the sneerer and Taylor the sneered at, in genius or in genuine power and popularity? To how many a cultivated mind has Jeremy Taylor made religion attractive and dear, which had hated and despised We think that if Christ's teaching be taken it before? Who more florid than Isaac Tayas the test and pattern, Mr. Rogers limits the lor, and what writer of this century has done range of preaching too much when he says its more to recommend Christianity to certain principal characteristics should be "practical classes of the community? He, to be sure, is reasoning and strong emotion." Preaching is no preacher, but who have been or are the not a mere hortatory matter. Sermons are most popular and most powerful preachers of the better of applications, but they should not the age? Chalmers, Irving, Melville, Hall; be all application. Ministers should remem- and amid their many diversities in point of inber to address mankind and their audiences as tellect, opinion, and style, they agree in this, a whole, and should seek here to instruct their that they all abound in figurative language and judgments and there to charm their imagina- poetical imagery. And if John Foster failed tion; here to allure, and there to alarm; here in preaching, it was certainly not from want to calm and there to arouse; here to reason of imagination, which formed, indeed, the staaway their doubts and prejudices and there to ple of all his best discourses. Mr. Rogers, to awaken their emotions. Mr. Rogers disap- be sure, permits a "moderate use of the imagiproves of discussing first principles in the pul- nation;" but, strange to say, it is the men pit, and says, that the Atheist and Deist are who have made a large and lavish use of it in rarely found in Christian congregations." We preaching who have most triumphantly suc wish we could believe this. If there are no ceeded. Of course they have all made their avowed Atheists or Deists in our churches, imagination subservient to a high purpose; but there are, we fear, many whose minds are we demur to his statement that no preacher grievously unsettled and at sea on such sub- will ever employ his imagination merely to dejects, and shall they be altogether neglected light us. He will not indeed become constantin the daily ministrations? Of what use to ly the minister of delight; but he will and speak to them of justification by faith who must occasionally, in gratifying himself with think there is nothing to be believed, or cf the his own fine fancies, give an innocent and in New Birth who do not believe in the Oid, but tense gratification to others, and having thus

delighted his audience, mere gratitude on their only to recur to his own words, quoted above part will prepare them for listening with more" This faculty, fancy namely, is incomparaattention and interest to his solemn appeals bly the most important for the vivid and atat the close. He says that the splendid des- tractive exhibition of truth to the minds of cription in the "Antiquary" of a sun-set men." It follows that since the great object would be altogether out of place in the narra- of preaching is to exhibit truth to the minds tive by a naval historian of two fleets separa- of men, that fancy is the faculty most needful ted on the eve of an engagement by a storm, to the preacher, and that the want of it is the or in any serious narrative or speech, forget-most fatal of deficiencies. In fact, although a ting that the "Antiquary" professes to be a few preachers have through the agonistic meserious narrative, and that Burke, in his speech-thods, by pure energy and passion, produced es and essays, has often interposed in critical great effects, these have been confined chiefly points of narration descriptions quite as long to their spoken speech, have not been transand as magnificent, which, nevertheless, so far ferred to their published writings, and have from exciting laughter, produce the profound-speedily died away. It is the same in other est impression, blending, as they do, the ener- kinds of oratory. Fox's cloquence, which gies and effects of fiction and poetry with those studied only immediate effect, perished with of prose and fact. him, and Pitt's likewise. Burke's, being at That severely simple and agonistic style, once highly imaginative, and profoundly wise, which Mr. Rogers recommends so strongly, lives and will live forever. has been seldom practised in Britain, except| We have not room to enlarge on some We think Mr.

in the case of Baxter, with transcendent effect. other points in the paper. At all events, the writings of those who have Rogers lays far too much stress on the time followed it, have not had a tithe of the influ- preacher should take in composing his serence which more genial and fanciful authors mons. Those preachers who spend all the have exerted. For one who reads South, ten week in finical polishing of periods and intense thousand revel in Jeremy Taylor. Howe, a elaboration of paragraphs are not the most efvery imaginative and rather diffuse writer, has ficient or esteemed. A well-furnished mind, supplanted Baxter in general estimation. In animated by enthusiasm, will throw forth in a Scotland, while the dry sermons of Ebenezer few hours a sermon incomparably superior in Erskine are neglected, the lively and fanciful force, freshness, and energy, to those discourwritings of his brother Ralph have still a con- ses which are slowly and toilsomely built up. siderable share of popularity. The works of It may be different sometimes with sermons Chalmers and Cunningham, destined as both which are meant for publication. Yet some are in due time to oblivion, are preserved in of the finest published sermons in literature their present life, by what in the first is real have been written at a heat. and in the second a semblance of imagination. From the entire second volume of these adOf the admirable writings of Dr. Harris and mirable essays, we must abstain. "Reason of the two Hamiltons we need not speak. and Faith" would itself justify a long sepaLatimer, South, and Baxter, whom Rogers rate article. Nor can we do any more than alranks so highly, are not classics. Even Jona-lude at present to that noble " Meditation than Edwards and Butler, with all their colos- among the Tombs of Literature," which closes sal talent, are now little read, on account of the first volume, and which he entitles the their want of imagination. The same vital" Vanity and Glory of Literature." It is full deficiency has doomed the sermons of Tillot- of sad truth, and its style and thinking are son, Atterbury, Sherlock, and Clarke. In- every way worthy of its author's genius. deed, in order to refute Mr. Rogers, we have

From Tait's Magazine.
WHO WAS HE?

Orange-grove, kept by a Mr. Reynolds (long since gathered to his fathers), where it was my wont to bury myself chin-deep, devouring WHEN I was a "Devil"-in a printing- Smollett or Fielding, Goldsmith or Defoe, with office in Bath, thirty-five years ago, my infant the appetite of an ogre. As the few stray mind was profoundly impressed with the dig- shillings or sixpences which fate consigned to nity of authorship. Books, the objects of my custody invariably passed into the hands reverential regard and delight from my ear- of the proprietor of the book-stall, he geneliest years, were already becoming something rously winked at my surreptitious studies, and more-a solace and a treasure. There was not only allowed me to stand for hours in a book-stall at the south-east corner of the converse with my favorites, but would some

times permit me to carry a cherished volume It was a fine morning in the beginning of to the shadow of one of the old trees, and June, 1818, that, having carefully cleansed wile away the hours of a casual holiday in the my inky skin, and donned my Sunday jacket, delightful dreams of romance. These delights I set off for the residence of the doctor. Í were, however, for the most part antecedent had travelled the same route a hundred times to my devilhood, the duties of which did not before with the utmost indifference. Now, allow of any very lengthened applications to however, my heart beat with anticipations of my beloved authors. If, when bound appren- delight and awe. I was no longer a mere tice, I grieved over the loss of time for read- messenger sent to deliver a parcel of proofs at ing, I was compensated by increase of funds. the door, and then depart-I was to see and Wages came at the heels of work, and with converse with the mighty magician himself, wages I bought more books-with some half- and actually to bear a part in the portentous dozen of which my pockets were always.well business of the hour. At the end of a long crammed. These, at meal-times, or on town-and narrow lane which opens into the road errands, at early morn and at farthing-candle which skirts Sydney Gardens on the north eve, I read, and read and read, and was a side, there stood a nondescript-looking house, happy "devil." known by the appellation of "Bathwick VilBut, as I said before, I had a prodigious la :" whether it still remains, or whether the idea of an author- a maker of books. Such march of improvement have swept it from the a being was the magician, the man of mys- face of the land, it is impossible for me to say. tery, the hero that my imagination delighted to worship. What would I not give, thought I, for a sight of a real live author?

It was a lone house then, and for the dozen years that I knew it, standing like a gray stone goblin in the centre of a tract of low I was not doomed to languish long in vain; alluvial land, cultivated as market gardens, my desire was destined to be satisfied, and and sprinkled over with the cottages of the more than satisfied in the fullest sense of the poor cultivators. Arrived at the house, and word. In the office where I wrought the having pulled boldly at the bell, and delivered works of the most voluminous author of his my letter of introduction to the care of the time were then in course of completion. For doctor's single servant, a Patagonian specihalf a century had this formidable writer fed men of the Abigail genus, I was in due course the teeming press. Works on all subjects ushered up the ample circular staircase, and had trickled from his pen, like water from a having passed through a little lobby of dark perennial spring. Treatises on Art and and quiet green baize, was introduced into Science, on Commerce and Manufactures, the sanctum sanctorum of the great man, the Geography and History, Poetry and Romance, veritable penetralia of genius. The tall, Polemics and Divinity, Cookery, Carving, and gaunt, and bony she who had led me thus far, Conjuration, Medicine and Morals, and fifty now pointed to a chair, and then noiselessly subjects besides, had already shed their illu- disappeared behind a screen in the further minating influence upon two successive gene- corner of the apartment. Seating myself in rations; and the octogenarian scribe was now perfect stillness, I had now an opportunity of enlightening a third with respect to an art, looking round and making my observations. which he, at least, had good right to teach, I found myself resting in an old-fashioned that, namely, of securing long life. It hap- carved chair in a large octagon-shaped room. pened just as this work was finished, and The windows, fronting the east, commanded a when all his then majesty's lieges who had pleasant view of the course of the canal and seven and sixpence to spare might learn to the valley of the Avon; and the lower squares live to ninety at least, were they but wise of each sash were fitted up with transparent enough to buy the doctor's book-it happen-water-color copies from the works of Hogarth. ed just then, I say, that a very gentlemanly These were all richly colored, and appeared gout crept up into the author's fingers, and to my juvenile judgment the perfection of art. put an effectual stop to his quill-driving. This The wainscotted walls of the rooms were was unfortunate, especially as the old gentle-hung with pictures in every available place : man, by way probably of proving the juvenil- these, too, were mostly water-colors by the ity of his fancy, was contemplating a volume best artists of a deceased generation; they of poems in illustration of a number of wood- were all uniformly framed in neat gilt frames, engravings which had already come to hand. and their number was legion. I afterwards But it is an ill wind that blows nobody good: the gout that disabled the doctor introduced me to his notice, I being chosen by my employer the printer to act as amanuensis to the author, a promotion which I owed to a faculty which I then possessed, of writing, as the compositors were pleased to term it," rather plainer than print."

learned that they were the original designs for the prints illustrating one of the doctor's literary productions in seventy volumes of goodly octavo. Although it was a warm and sunny day in early summer, a cheerful fire sparkled in the grate, near which the doctor's easy chair, a machine of tremendous capacity,

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