street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries, and of studying the annals of past times, is to pre-entitled to rank with the king's English. His serve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape, whose whole communion is with one generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential pro-inversions, so widely different from those perties. In short, the real use of travelling, and of studying history, is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in reality.

of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman French, of which the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully natural. ized, must be considered as born aliens, not constant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite; his antithetical forms of expression, constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed; his big words wasted on little things; his harsh graceful and easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers-all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers, and parodied by his assailants, till the public has become sick of the subject.

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, “If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson.

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the pub- Whether he wrote in the character of a dislic, his style became systematically vicious. appointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, All his books are written in a learned lan- of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he guage in a language which nobody hears wrote in the same pompous and unbending from his mother or his nurse-in a language style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bar- Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under gains, or makes love-in a language in which every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclia talk nobody ever thinks. It is clear, that Johnson as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor himself did not think in the dialect in which of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her he wrote. The expressions which came first reception at the country-house of her relations to his tongue were simple, energetic, and pic-in such terms as these: "I was surprised, after turesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were taken up stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a inan black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The | Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson.

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that he made less use than any other eminent writer

the civilities of my first reception, to find, in stead of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded, and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla informs us, that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship and the joys of triumph; but had danced the round of gayety amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations of applause; had been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain; and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gallantry, the gayety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace.

The reader may well cry out with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not when a 'oman has a great peard: I spy a great peard under her muffler."

We had something more to say. But our article is already too long; and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, il as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the oinelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live forever

on the canvass of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up-the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with a scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You dont see your way through the question, sir!"

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion-to receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity-to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient, is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner, and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe.

LORD NUGENT'S MEMORIALS OF HAMPDEN.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

moirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such, they well deserve to be attentively perused. They contain some curious facts, which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative, many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly with that kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord Nugent would have been able to collect, from family papers and local traditions, much new and interesting information respecting the life and character of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, the first of those great We are not sure that even the want of inEnglish commoners, whose plain addition of formation respecting the private character of Mister, has, to our ears, a more majestic sound Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as than the proudest of the feudal titles. In this strikingly characteristic as any which the hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly most minute chronicler-O'Meara, Las Cases, not from any want of zeal or diligence on the Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself-ever recordpart of the noble biographer. Even at Hamp-ed concerning their heroes. The celebrated den, there are, it seems, no important papers relative to the most illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend, Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guaranty the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure, respecting the private pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not an extravagant,

veneration.

The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity. His history, more particularly from the beginning of the year 1640 to his death, is the history of England. These me

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD NUGENT. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831.

Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness; who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty. During more than forty years, he was known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and active in the discharge of local duties; to political men, as an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parlia ment, not eager to display his talents, stanch to his party, and attentive to the interests of his constituents. A great and terrible crisis came. A direct attack was made, by an arbitrary government, on a sacred right of Eng. lishmen, on a right which was the chief secu⚫ rity for all their other rights. The nation looked round for a defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire Es quire placed himself at the head of his countrymen, and right before the face, and across the path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required; and to every service, the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first order, a nost

The story of his early life is soon told. He was the head of a family which had been settled in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. Part of the estate which he inherited had been bestowed by Edward the Confessor on Baldwyn de Hampden, whose name seems to indi cate that he was one of the Norman favourites of the last Saxon king. During the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, the Hampdens adhered to the party of the Red Rose, and were consequently persecuted by Edward the Fourth, and favoured by Henry the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the family was great and flourishing. Griffith Hampden, high sheriff of Buckinghamshire, entertained Elizabeth with great magnificence at his seat, His son, William Hampden, sate in the Parlia ment which that queen summoned in the year 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell, aunt of the celebrated man who afterwards governed the British islands with more than regal power; and from this marriage sprang John Hampden.

dexterous manager of the House of Commons, | that hatred itself could find no blemish on his a negotiator, a soldier. He governed a fierce memory. and turbulent assembly, abounding in able men, as easily as he had governed his family. He showed himself as competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty sessions. We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned; so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties; so easily expanding itself to the highest; so contented in repose; so powerful in action. Almost every part of this virtuous and blameless life, which is not hidden from us in modest privacy, is a precious and splendid portion of our national history. Had the private conduct of Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had there been even any weak part in the character of Hampden, had his manners been in any respect open to ridicule, we may be sure that no mercy would have been shown to him by the writers of Charles's faction. He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father Those writers have carefully preserved every died, and left him heir to a very large estate. little circumstance which could tend to make After passing some years at the grammar their opponents cdious or contemptible. They school of Thame, young Hampden was sent, have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, at fifteen, to Magdalen College, in the Univerthat Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that sity of Oxford. At nineteen, he was admitted the Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry a student of the Inner Temple, where he made Martin, that St. John's manners were sullcu, himself master of the principles of the English that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell law. In 1619 he married Elizabeth Symeon, had a red nose. They have made themselves a lady to whom he appears to have been fondmerry with the canting phrases of injudiciously attached. In the following year he was zealots. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the scurrilous Denham could venture to throw the slightest imputation on the morals or the manners of Hampden. What was the opinion Of his private life during his early years, entertained respecting him by the best men of little is known beyond what Clarendon has his time, we learn from Baxter. That eminent told us. "In his entrance into the world," person-eminent not only for his piety and his says that great historian, "he indulged him. fervid devotional eloquence, but for his mode- self in all the license in sports, and exercises, ration, his knowledge of political affairs, and and company, which were used by men of his skill in judging of characters-declared in the most jolly conversation." A remarkable the Saint's Rest, that one of the pleasures which change, however, passed in his character. he hoped to enjoy in Heaven was the society "On a sudden," says Clarendon, "from a life of Hampden. In the editions printed after the of great pleasure and license, he retired to exrestoration, the name of Hampden was omit-traordinary sobriety and strictness, to a more ted. "But I must tell the reader," says Baxter, reserved and melancholy society." It is proba "that I did blot it out, not as changing my ble that this change took place when Hampopinion of the person. Mr. John den was about twenty-five years old. At that Hampden was one that friends and enemies age he was united to a woman whom he loved acknowledged to be most eminent for pru- and esteemed. At that age he entered into dence, piety, and peaceable counsels, having political life. A mind so happily constituted the most universal praise of any gentleman as his, would naturally, under such circumthat I remember of that age. I remember a stances, relinquish the pleasures of dissipation moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far from for domestic enjoyments and public duties. him, but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, that if he might choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden." We cannot but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man, who, after passing through the most severe temptations by which human virtue can be tried, after acting a most conspicuous part in a revolution and a civil war, could yet deserve such praise as this from such authority. Yet the want of memorials is surely the best proof

returned to Parliament by a borough which has in our time obtained a miserable celebrity, the borough of Grampound.

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners of an accomplished courtier. Even after the change in his habits, “he preserved," says Clarendon, "his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all men.' These qualities distinguished him from most of the members of his sect and his party; and, in the great crisis in which he afterwards took

honesty of men who, dissenting from almost all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves; who demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it; who execrated persecution, yet persecuted; who urged reason against the authority of one opponent, and authority against the reasons of another. Bonner at least acted in accordance with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic, only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.

She died; and the kingdom passed to one who was, in his own opinion, the greatest master of kingcraft that ever lived; who was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening revolutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom Britain has produced, he was at once the most harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and now and then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too small to injure. The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic theories on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His foolish talk exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans or benevolences would have done. Yet, in practice, no king ever held his prerogatives less tenaciously. He neither gave way gracefully to the advancing spirit of liberty, nor took vigorous measures to stop it, but retreated before it with ludicrous haste, blustering and insulting as he retreated. The English people had been governed for nearly a hundred and fifty years by princes who, whatever might be their frailties or their vices, had all possessed great force of character, and who, whether beloved or hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the first time since the day when the sceptre of Henry the Fourth dropped from the hand of his lethargic grandson, England had a king whom she despised.

Thus the system on which the English princes acted with respect to ecclesiastical affairs for some time after the Reformation, was a system too obviously unreasonable to be lasting. The public mind moved while the government moved; but would not stop where the government stopped. The same impulse which had carried millions away from the Church of Rome, continued to carry them forward in the same direction. As Catholics had become Protestants, Protestants became Puritans; and the Tudors and Stuarts were as unable to avert the latter change as the Popes had been to avert the former. The dissenting party increased, and became strong under every kind of discouragement and oppression. They were a sect. The government persecuted them, and they became an opposition. The old constitution of England furnished to them the means of resisting the sovereign without breaking the laws. They were the majority of the House of Commons. They had the power of giving or withholding supplies; and, by a judicious exercise of this power, they might The follies and vices of the man increased hope to take from the Church its usurped the contempt which was produced by the authority over the consciences of men; and feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecofrom the Crown some part of the vast preroga-rous gallantries of the Court, the habits of tive which it had recently acquired at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.

gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a The faint beginnings of this memorable con- people whose manners were beginning to be test may be discerned early in the reign of strongly tinctured with austerity. But these Elizabeth. The conduct of her last Parliament were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful made it clear that one of those great revolutions kind had been discovered; others were suswhich policy may guide, but cannot stop, was pected. The strange story of the Gowries was in progress. It was on the question of Mono- not forgotten. The ignominious fondness of polies that the House of Commons gained its the king for his minions, the perjuries, the sorfirst great victory over the throne. The con- ceries, the poisonings, which his chief favourduct of the extraordinary woman who then ites had planned within the walls of his palace, governed England is an admirable study for the pardon which, in direct violation of his politicians who live in unquiet times. It shows duty, and of his word, he had granted to the how thoroughly she understood the people mysterious threats of a murderer, made him an whom she ruled, and the crisis in which she object of loathing to many of his subjects. was called to act. What she held, she held What opinion grave and moral persons refirmly. What she gave, she gave graciously. siding at a distance from the court entertained She saw that it was necessary to make a con- respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchincession to the nation: and she made it, not son's Memoirs. England was no place, the grudgingly, not tardily, not as a matter of bar-seventeenth century no time, for Sporus and gain and sale, not, in a word, as Charles the First would have made it, but promptly and cordially. Before a bill could be framed or an address presented, she applied a remedy to the evil of which the nation complained. She expressed in the warmest terms her gratitude to her faithful Commons for detecting abuses which interested persons had concealed from her If her successors had inherited her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might nave died of old age, and James the Second #culd never have seen St. Germains.

Locusta.

This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the wretched Solomon of Whitehall; pedantry, buffoonery, garrulity, low curiosity, the most contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and education. had done their best to produce a finished specimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch accent, were impe fections which might have been found in the