contrary; and certain it is there are some incidents in life so very strange and unaccountable, that it seems to require more than human skill and foresight in producing them. Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same thing, namely, that there was no chance, but instead of it providence, either human or divine. Book xv. ch. 9. The rupture with Lady Bellaston. Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I can not but think, after frequent reflection, that an additional paragraph, more fully and forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood to Lady Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly chastity, would have removed in great measure any just objections,―at all events relatively to Fielding himself, and with regard to the state of manners in his time. Book xvi. ch. 5. That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely detached from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual, is a gift confined to the female part of the creation; many of whom I have heard declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they would, with the utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when such resignation was proved to be necessary for the temporal interest of such lover. I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a sacrifice, and this, without pretending to, or even admiring or seeing any virtue in, this absolute detachment from the flesh. ANOTHER SET OF NOTES ON TOM JONES. Book i. ch. 4. Beyond this the country gradually rose into a ridge of wild mountains, the tops of which were above the clouds." As this is laid in Somersetshire, the clouds must have been unusually low. One would be more apt to think of Skiddaw or Ben Nevis, than of Quantock or Mendip Hills. Book xi. ch. 1. "Nor can the Devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor possibly more welcome to him than a slanderer." The very word Devil, Diabolus, means a slanderer. "And here we will make a concession, which would not perhaps have been expected from us; That no limited form of government is capable of rising to the same degree of perfection, or of producing the same benefits to society with this. Mankind has never been so happy, as when the greatest part of the then known world was under the dominion of a single master; and this state of their felicity continued under the reign of five successive Princes." Strange that such a lover of political liberty as Fielding should have forgotten that the glaring infamy of the Roman morals and manners immediately on the ascent of Commodus prove, that even five excellent despots in succession were but a mere temporary palliative of the evils inherent in despotism and its causes. Think you that all the sub-despots were Trajans and Antonines? No! Rome was left as it was found by them, incapable of freedom. Book xviii. ch. 4. Plato himself concludes his Phædon with declaring, that his best argument amounts only to raise a probability; and Cicero himself seems rather to profess an inclination to believe, than any actual belief, in the doctrines of immortality. No! Plato does not say so, but speaks as a philosophic Christian would do of the best arguments of the scientific intellect. The assurance is derived from a higher principle. If this be Methodism Plato and Socrates were arrant Methodists and New Light men; but I would ask Fielding what ratiocinations do more than raise a high degree of probability. But assuredly an historic belief is far different from Christian faith. No greater proof can be conceived of the strength of the instinctive anticipation of a future state than that it was believed at all by the Greek Philosophers, with their vague and (Plato excepted) Pantheistic conception of the First Cause. S. T. C. JONATHAN WILD.* JONATHAN WILD is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a sustained * Communicated by Mr. Gillman.-Ed. attractive interest for such a ground-work, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than painful interest, the montor, of utter depravity,-Fielding himself felt and endeavored to mitigate and remedy by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy, -admirable specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. vi. Book 2, on Hats,*—brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs, Tories, and Radicals of our own times. Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. iii. c. xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of incredulus odi, or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the truths intended,-I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832. NOTES ON JUNIUS. 1807. STAT NOMINIS UMBRA. As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the poisoned dagger of an assassin. Dedication to the English nation. The whole of this dedication reads like a string of aphorisms arranged in chapters, and classified by a resemblance of subject, or a cento of points. Ib. If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal for the public service has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined, persevering resistance. A longer sentence and proportionately inelegant. Ib. If you reflect that in the changes of administration which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your warmest patriots have, in * In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be celebrated; and the behavior of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural than any other part of this history.' their turn, been invested with the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act passed, has been constant and uniform on the part of government. Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius can not manage a long sentence; it has all the ins and outs of a snappish figuredance. PREFACE. An excellent preface, and the sentences not so snipt as in the dedication. The paragraph near the conclusion beginning with some opinion may now be expected," &c. and ending with "relation between guilt and punishment," deserves to be quoted as a master-piece of rhetorical ratiocination in a series of questions that permit no answer; or (as Junius says) carry their own answer along with them. The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to avoid with equal anxiety a common-place manner, and matter that is not common-place. If ever he deviates into any originality of thought, he takes care that it shall be such as excites surprise for its acuteness, rather than admiration for its profundity. He takes care? say rather that nature took care for him. It is impossible to detract from the merit of these Letters: they are suited to their purpose, and perfect in their kind. They impel to action, not thought. Had they been profound or subtle in thought, or majestic and sweeping in composition, they would have been adapted for the closet of a Sydney, or for a House of Lords such as it was in the time of Lord Bacon; but they are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right, and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House of Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When connected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without abruptness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and antithetical to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong, yet well-skilled to act the part of an honest warm-hearted man, and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never proving it, much less attempting to bottom it, this is the character of Junius ;-and on this character, and in the mould of these writings must every man cast himself, who would wish in factious times to be the important and long remembered agent of a faction. I believe that I could do all that Junius has done, and surpass him by doing many things which he has not done; for example,—by an occasional induction of startling facts, in the manner of Tom Paine, and lively illustrations and witty applications of good stories and appropriate anecdotes in the manner of Horne Tooke. I believe I could do it if it were in my nature to aim at this sort of excellence, or to be enamored of the fame, and immediate influence, which would be its consequence and reward. But it is not in my nature. I not only love truth, but I have a passion for the legitimate investigation of truth. The love of truth conjoined with a keen delight in a strict and skilful yet impassioned argumentation, is my master-passion, and to it are subordinated even the love of liberty and all my public feelings and to it whatever I labor under of vanity, ambition, and all my inward impulses. Letter I. From this Letter all the faults and excellencies of Junius may be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms are just and sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a sneer; the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms of connection; the he and it everywhere substituted for the who and which; the sentences are short, laboriously balanced, and the antitheses stand the test of analysis much better than Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their kind -where is the defect? In this;-there is too much of each, and there is a defect of many things, the presence of which would have been not only valuable for their own sakes, but for the relief and variety which they would have given. It is observable too that every Letter adds to the faults of these Letters, while it weakens the effect of their beauties. L. III. A capital Letter, addressed to a private person, and intended as a sharp reproof for intrusion. Its short sentences, its witty perversions and deductions, its questions and omissions of connectives, all in their proper places are dramatically good. L. V. For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to determine whether your vindication of your friend has been as able and judicious as it was certainly well intended; and you, I think, may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgments he already owes you for making him the principal VOL. IV. R |