August 19, 2025 • 37 mins
In Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits, William Hazlitt masterfully captures the essence of his era through insightful monographs on a constellation of literary luminaries. Meet the likes of Jeremy Bentham, the architect of utilitarian philosophy, and William Godwin, who elevated morality beyond human reach. Delve into the minds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Irving, and Sir Walter Scott, as Hazlitt reveals their distinct contributions to literature and society. From the eloquence of Thomas Campbell, known for Pleasures of Hope, to the impactful thoughts of William Wordsworth and Thomas Malthus, Hazlitt provides a vivid portrayal of his contemporaries. Engaging comparisons between the works of Charles Lamb and Washington Irving further enrich this collection, making it a fascinating exploration of the literary landscape of his time. Summary by Craig Campbell.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Jennifer Painter, Chapter twelve, William Gifford. Mister Gifford was originally
(00:25):
bred to some handicraft. He afterwards contrived to learn Latin,
and was for some time an usher in a school,
till he became a tutor in a nobleman's family. The
low bred, self taught man, the pedant, and the dependent
on the great contribute to form the editor of the
quarterly Review. He is admirably qualified for this situation, which
(00:50):
he has held for some years, by a happy combination
of defects natural and acquired, and in the event of
his death it will be difficult to provide him a
suitable successor. Mister Gifford has no pretensions to be thought
a man of genius, of taste, or even of general knowledge.
He merely understands the mechanical and instrumental part of learning.
(01:13):
He is a critic of the last age, when the
different editions of an author, or the dates of his
several performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a
profound scholar, and the spirit of the writer, or the
beauties of his style, were left to shift for themselves
or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial reader.
(01:35):
In studying an old author, he has no notion of
anything beyond adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or
correcting by the collation of various copies an error of
the press. In appreciating a modern one, if it is
an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to
charge him with bad grammar. He scans his sentences instead
(01:58):
of weighing his sense. Or if it is a friend,
the highest compliment he conceives, if possible to pay him,
is that his thoughts and expressions are molded on some
hackneyed model. His standard of ideal perfection is what he
himself now is, a person of mediocre literary attainments. His
(02:19):
utmost contempt is shown by reducing anyone to what he
himself once was, a person without the ordinary advantages of
education and learning. It is accordingly assumed, with much complacency
in his critical pages that Tory writers are classical and
courtly as a matter of course, as it is a
(02:41):
standing jest and evident truism that Whigs and reformers must
be persons of low birth and breeding imputations from one
of which he himself has narrowly escaped, and both of
which he holds in suitable abhorrence. He stands over a
contemporary performance with all the self conceit and self importance
(03:02):
of a country schoolmaster, tries it by technical rules, affects
not to understand the meaning, examines the handwriting, the spelling,
shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a slip of
the pen, and keeps a sharp lookout for a false
concord and a flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane
(03:24):
in his style of judging. It is altogether petty, captious,
and literal. The editor's political subserviency adds the last finishing
to his ridiculous pedantry and vanity. He has all his
life been a follower in the train of wealth and power,
strives to back his pretensions on Parnassus by a place
(03:46):
at court, and to gild his reputation as a man
of letters by the smile of greatness. He thinks his
works are stamped with additional value by having his name
in the Red Book. He looks up to the distinctions
of rank and station, as he does to those of learning.
With the gross and overweening adulation of his early origin.
(04:08):
All his notions are low, upstart servile. He thinks it
the highest honor to a poet to be patronized by
a peer, or by some dowager of quality. He is
prouder of a court livery than that of a laurel wreath,
and is only sure of having established his claims to
respectability by having sacrificed those of independence. He is a
(04:33):
retainer to the muses, a door keeper to learning, a
lackey in the state. He believes that modern literature should
wear the fetters of classical antiquity, that truth is to
be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice, That
power is equivalent to right, that genius is dependent on rules,
(04:55):
that taste and refinement of language consist in word catching.
Many persons suppose that mister Gifford knows better than he pretends,
and that he is shrewd, artful and designing. But perhaps
it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his
dulness is guarantee for his sincerity or that before he
(05:16):
is the tool of the profligacy of others. He is
the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings and narrow hoodwinked
perceptions destroy his feb or supphistry in vain. The creatures
at his dirty work again. But this is less from
choice or perversity than because he cannot help it and
(05:38):
can do nothing else. He damns a beautiful expression less
out of spite than because he does not really understand it.
Any novelty of thought or sentiment gives him a shock
from which he cannot recover for some time, and he
naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and uneasiness occasioned him.
(05:58):
Without referring to venal or party motives. He garbles an
author's meaning, not so much wilfully as because it is
a pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to
take in the context. When a particular sentence or passage
has struck him as quaint and out of the way,
(06:19):
he fly blows an author's style and picks out detached
words and phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels
himself at home, or takes a pride and pleasure in
this sort of petty warfare. He is tetchy and impatient
of contradiction, sore with wounded pride, angry at obvious faults,
(06:42):
more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has the chalkstones in
his understanding, and from being used to long reconfinement, cannot
bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of motion. He may
call out with the fellow in the tempest, I'm not
Stefano but a cramp. He would go back to the
(07:04):
standard of opinions style, the faded ornaments and insipid formalities
that came into fashion about forty years ago, flashes of thought,
flights of fancy, idiomatic expressions. He sets down among the
signs of the times, the extraordinary occurrences of the age
(07:25):
we live in.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
They are marks of a restless and revolutionary spirit.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
They disturb his composure of mind and threaten, by implication,
the safety of the state. His slow, snail paced, bedrid
habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion,
the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature. He has
(07:51):
long been stationary himself and is determined that others shall
remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like letting off
a pistol close to his ear.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He is alarmed and offended.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
The using an elliptical mode of expression, such as he
did not use to find in guides to the English tongue,
jars him, like coming suddenly to a step in a
flight of stairs that you were not aware of.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
He pishes and pshaws at all.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
This exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on what excites
his spleen, his envy, or his wonder, and hurls his
meager anathemas ex cathedra at all those writers who are
indifferent alike to his precepts and his example. Mister Gifford,
in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which
(08:42):
is likely to result from an over anxious desire to
supply the want of the first rudiments of education, that
sort of wit which is the offspring of ill humor
or bodily pain, that sort of sense which arises from
a spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at
(09:03):
and dispute the opinions of others, And that sort of
reputation which is the consequence of bowing to established authority
and ministerial influence. He dedicates to some great man and
receives his compliments in return. He appeals to some great name,
and the undergraduates of the two universities look up to
(09:26):
him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the weight
of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries in black letter
reading into the gap that is supposed to be making
in the Constitution by whigs and radicals, whom he qualifies
without mercy as dunces and miscreants, and so entitles himself
(09:47):
to the protection of Church and state. The character of
his mind is an utter want of independence and magnanimity.
In all that he attempts. He cannot go alone. He
must have crutches, a go cart, and trammels, or he
is timid, fretful, and helpless as a child. He cannot
(10:08):
conceive of anything different from what he finds it, and
hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect
or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a
natural and deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government,
to the orthodox in religion, to the safe in opinion,
(10:30):
to the trite in imagination, to the technical in style,
to whatever implies a surrender of individual judgment into the
hands of authority, and a subjection of individual feeling to
mechanic rules. If he finds anyone flying in the face
of these or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks
(10:52):
he has them at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul
of them without loss of time. Partly to soothe his
own sense of mortified self consequence, and as an edifying
spectacle to his legitimate friends, he takes none but unfair advantages.
He twits his adversaries, that is, those who are not
(11:14):
in the leading strings of his school or party, with
some personal or accidental defect. If a writer has been
punished for a political libel, he is sure to hear
of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes
on crutches and is out of favor at court, she
is reminded of it. In mister Gifford's manly satire, he
(11:36):
sneers at people of low birth or who have not
had a college education, partly to hide his own want
of certain advantages, partly as well timed flattery to those
who possess them.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
He has a right to laugh.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
At poor, unfriended, untitled genius from wearing the livery of
rank and letters. As footman behind a coronet coach at
the rabble, he keeps good company and forgets himself. He
stands at the door of mister Murray's shop and will
not let anybody pass but the well dressed mob or
(12:12):
some followers of the court. To edge into the quarterly
temple of fame, the candidate must have a diploma from
the universities a passport from the treasury. Otherwise it is
a breach of etiquette to let him pass, an insult
to the better sort, who aspire to the love of
letters and may chance to drop in to the feast
(12:35):
of the poets, or if he cannot manage it thus,
or get rid of the claim on the bare ground
of poverty or want of school learning, he trumps up
an excuse for the occasion, such as that a man
was confined in nugat a short time before.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It is not a lie on the part of the critic.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It is only an amiable subservience to the will of
his betters, like that of a menial who is ordered
to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a knowledge
of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows,
such is his cue from his employers, should at any
(13:16):
rate be kept out of privileged places. Persons who have
been convicted of prose libels ought not to be suffered
to write poetry. If the fact was not exactly as
it was stated, it was something of the kind or
it ought to have been. So the assertion was a
pious fraud. The public, the court, the Prince himself might
(13:38):
read the work, but for this mark of a probrium
set upon it. It was not to be endured that
an insolent plebeian should aspire to elegance, taste fancy. It
was throwing down the barriers which ought to separate the
higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the disloyal.
The paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to
(14:01):
perform quarantine. It was to seem not yet recovered from
the jail infection. There was to be a taint upon it,
as there was none in it. And all this was
performed by a single slip of mister Gifford's pen.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
We would willingly believe, if.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We could, that in this case, there was as much
weakness and prejudice as there was malice and cunning. Again,
we do not think it possible that, under any circumstances
the writer of the verses to Anna could enter into
the spirit or delicacy of mister Keats's poetry. The fate
(14:39):
of the latter somewhat resembled that of a bud bit
by an envious worm, ere it could spread its sweet
leaves to the air, or dedicate its beauty to the sun.
Mister Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised
in the Examiner newspaper. A greater and more unparted offense
(15:00):
probably was that he was a true poet, with all
the errors and beauties of youthful genius.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
To answer for.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Mister Gifford was as insensible to the one as he
was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judge from
the two subjoined specimens, how far the one writer could, ever,
without a presumption equalled only by a want of self knowledge,
set himself in judgment on the other. Outwent the taper
(15:31):
as she hurried in its little smoke in pallid moonshine dyed.
She closed the door, She panted all akin to spirits
of the air and visions wide, no uttered syllable, nor
woe betide.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
But to her heart her.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Heart was voluble, paining with eloquence her balmy side, as
though a tongueless nightingale should swell her heart in vain
and die heart stifled in her dell A case gaistment
high and triple the arch there was all garlanded with
carven imageries of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot grass,
(16:08):
and diamonded with pains of quaint device, innumerable of stains
and splendid dyes, as are the tiger moth's deep damased wings.
And in the midst, among thousand heraldries and twilight saints
and dim emblazonings, a shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of
queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
(16:32):
and through warm ghouls on Madeline's fair breast, as down
she knelt for Heaven's grace, and boon rose bloom fell
on her hands together pressed and on her silver crossed
soft amethyst, and on her hair a glory like a saint.
She seemed a splendid angel, newly dressed save wings for heaven,
(16:54):
for Farroh grew faint, she knelt so pure a thing,
so free from mortal taint, and on his heart revives
her vespers done of all its wreathed pearls, her hair,
she frees unclasped her warmed jewels one by one, loosens
her fragrant bodice by degrees. Her rich attire creeps, rustling
(17:17):
to her knees, half hidden like a mermaid in seaweed,
pensive awhile she dreams awake and sees in fancy Fererce
and Agnes in her bed, but dares not look behind,
or all the charm is fled soon, trembling in her
soft and chilly nest, in sort of wakeful swoon. Perplexed,
(17:39):
she lay until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed her
soothed limbs and soul, fatigued away, flown like a thought
until the morrow day, blissfully havened both from joy and pain,
clasped like a missile, where swart painims prey, blinded alike
from sunshine and from rain, as though a rose should
(18:03):
shut and be a bud again. Eave of Saint Agnes,
with the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines
like these. Let us contrast the verses addressed to a
tuft of early violets by the fastidious author of the
Baviad and Mavead. Sweet flowers that from your humble beds.
(18:26):
Thus prematurely dare to rise and trust your unprotected heads
to cold Aquarius's watery skies.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Retire, attire.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
These tepid airs are not the genial brood of May.
That sun with light malignant glares and flatters only to
betray stern. Winter's rain is not yet past low, while
your buds prepared to blow on icy pinions, comes the
blast and nips your root and lays you low. Alas
(18:58):
for such ungentle bloom, But I will shield you, and
supply a kindlier soil on which to bloom, a nobler
bed on which to die. Come then, ere, Yet the
morning ray has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
and drawn your balmeest sweets away. Oh, come and grace
my Anna's breast. Ye droop fondflowers, But did ye know
(19:22):
what worth what goodness? There reside? Your cups with liveliest tints,
would glow and spread their leaves with conscious pride for
there has liberal nature joined her riches to the stores
of art, and added to the vigorous mind, the soft,
the sympathizing heart. Come then ere, Yet the morning ray
(19:45):
has drunk the dew that gems your crest, and drawn
your balmeest sweets away. Oh, come and grace my anna's breast. Oh,
I should think that fragrant bed might ay, but hope
with you to share years of anxiety repaid by one
short hour of transport. There footnote A was an awkward
(20:09):
bedfellow for a tuft of violets more blessed than me.
Thus shall ye love your little day, And when ye die,
sweet flowers, the grateful muse shall give a verse The
sorrowing maid a sigh, while I alas no distant date
to mix with the dust from whence I came without
a friend, to weep my fate, without a stone to
(20:32):
tell my name. We subjoin one more specimen of these
wild strains, said to be written two years after the
preceding eche Itterum Crispinus footnote B. How aft o dart,
What time the faithful pair walked forth the fragrant hour
of eve to share on thy romantic banks? Have my
(20:56):
wild strains not yet forgot amidst my native plains. While
thou hast sweetly gurgled down the veil, filled up the
pores of love's delightful tale. While ever, as she read
the conscious maid, by faltering voice and downcast looks, betrayed,
would blushing on her lover's neck, recline and with her
(21:18):
finger point the tenderest line MAVIAD, Pages one ninety.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Four, two O two.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yet the author assures us just before that in these
wild strains, all was plain, even then, admire John Bell,
my simple ways, no heaven and hell danced madly through
my lays, no oaths, no execrations.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
All was plain.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yet trust me, While thou, ever, jingling train chime their
sonorous woes with frigid art, and shock the reason and
revolt the heart. My hopes and fears in nature's language,
dressed awakened love in many a gentle breast ibid. Verse
one eight five to ninety two. If anyone else had
(22:06):
composed these wild strains, in which all is plain, mister
Gifford would have accused them of three things. One downright nonsense,
two downright frigidity, three downright doggerel. And proceeded to anatomize them,
very cordially in his way. As it is, he is
(22:27):
thrilled with a very pleasing horror and his former scenes
of tenderness, and gasps at the recollection of watery Aquarius,
he jam satis est, why rack a grub a butterfly
upon a wheel? I wish I was where Ana lies,
for I am sick of lingering here, and every hour
(22:48):
affection cries go and partake her humble beer. I wish
I could, for when she died I lost my awe,
And life has proved since that sad hour, a waste,
unlovely and unloved.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But who, when I am turned.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
To clay, shall duly to her grave repair and pluck
the ragged moss away and weeds that have no business there,
And who with pious hands shall bring the flowers she
cherish'd snowdrops, cold and varlets, and unheeded spring to scatter
o'er her hallow'd mold. And who, while memory loves to
(23:25):
dwell upon her name, for ever dear, shall feel his
heart with passion swell and pour the bitter, bitter tear.
I did it, and would fate allow, should visit, still,
should still deplore but health and strength have left me now,
But I alas can weep no more. Take then, sweet maid,
(23:48):
this simple strain the last I offer at thy shrine.
Thy grave must then undecked remain, and all thy memory
fade with mine? And can thy soft persuasive look that
voice that might with music vie thy air that every
gazer took, Thy matchless eloquence of eye, Thy spirits, folicsome
(24:11):
as good, thy courage by no ills dismayed thy patience
by no wrongs subdued thy gay good humor.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Can they fade? Perhaps? But sorrow dims my eye.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Cold turf which I know more, must view dear name,
which I know more, must sigh a long, a last,
a sad adieu. It must be said, in extenuation of
the low mechanic vein of these impoverished lines, that they
were written at an early age. They were the inspired
(24:47):
production of a youthful lover. Mister Gifford was thirty when
he wrote them. Mister Keats died when he was scarce twenty. Father.
It may be said that mister Gifford hazarded his post
poetical attempts under all the disadvantages of a neglected education.
But the same circumstance, together with a few unpruned redundancies
(25:10):
of fancy and quaintnesses of expression, was made the plea
on which mister Keats was hooted out of the world,
and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities consigned to an
early grave. In short, the treatment of this heedless candidate
for a poetical fame might serve as a warning, and
(25:31):
was intended to serve as a warning to all unfledged taros,
how they venture upon any such doubtful experiments, except under
the auspices of some lord of the bedchamber or government aristarchus,
and how they imprudently associate themselves with men of mere
popular talent or independence of feeling. It is the same
(25:54):
in prose works. The editor scorns to enter the lists
of argument with any proscript bribed writer of the opposite party.
He does not refute, but denounces him. He makes no
concessions to an adversary, lest they should in some way
be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in
the fancied insignificance of others. He only feels himself superior
(26:19):
to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind.
All persons are without common sense and honesty who do
not believe implicitly with him in the immaculateness of ministers
and the divine origin of kings. Thus he informed the
world that the author of table Talk was a person
(26:41):
who could not write a sentence of common English and
could hardly spell his own name. Because he was not
a friend to the restoration of the Bourbons, and had
the assurance to write characters of Shakespeare's plays in a
style of criticism somewhat different from mister Gifford's, judged this
writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style.
(27:04):
And when the latter ventured to refer to a work
of his called an Essay on the Principles of Human Action,
which has not a single ornament in it, as a
specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of
his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great
self satisfaction, said, it was amusing to see this person
(27:26):
sitting like one of Brewer's Dutch boors over his gin
and tobacco pipes, and fancying himself a Leibniz. The question
was whether the subject of mister Gifford censure had ever
written such a work, or not, for if he had,
he had amused himself with something besides gin and tobacco pipes.
(27:48):
But our editor, by virtue of the situation he holds,
is superior to facts or arguments. He is accountable neither
to the public nor to authors for what he says
of them, but o it to his employers to prejudice
the work and vilify the writer, if the latter is
not advowedly ready to range himself on the stronger side.
(28:09):
A quarterly review, besides the political tirades and denunciations of
suspected writers, intended for the guidance of the heads of families,
is filled up with accounts of books of voyages and
travels for the amusement of the younger branches. The poetical
department is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions
(28:31):
and a list of quotations. Mister Croker is understood to
contribute the sant Elena articles, and the liberality, mister Canning,
the practical, good sense, mister Disraeli, the good nature, mister Jacob,
the modesty, mister Southey, the consistency, and the editor himself
the chivalrous spirit, and the attacks on Lady Morgan.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It is a double crime and excites a double.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Portion of spleen in the editor when female writers are
not advocates of passive obedience and non resistance. This journal,
then is a depositary for every species of political sophistry
and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that
does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare
(29:19):
faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the
varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of
the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is
as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued
are odious. The intention is to poison the sources of
(29:40):
public opinion and of individual fame, to pervert literature from
being the natural ally of freedom and humanity into an
engine of priest craft and despotism, and to undermine the
spirit of the English Constitution and the independence of the
English character. The editor and his friends systematically explode every
(30:03):
principle of liberty, laugh patriotism, and public spirit, to scorn
resent every pretense to integrity as a piece of singularity
or insolence, and strike at the root of all free
inquiry or discussion by running down every writer as a
vile scribbler and a bad member of society, who is
(30:25):
not a hireling and a slave. No means are stuck
at in accomplishing this laudable end. Strong in patronage, they
trample on truth, justice and decency. They claim the privilege
of court favorites. They keep as little faith with the
public as with their opponents. No statement in the Quarterly
(30:47):
Review is to be trusted. There is no fact that
is not misrepresented in it, no quotation that is not garbled,
no character that is not slandered. If it can answer
the purposes of a party to do so, the weight
of power, of wealth, of rank is thrown into the scale,
gives its impulse to the machine, and the whole is
(31:10):
under the guidance of mister Gifford's instinctive genius of the
inborn hatred, of civility, for independence, of dullness, for talent,
of cunning and impudence, for truth and honesty. It costs
him no effort to execute his disreputable task in being
the tool of a crooked policy. He but labors in
(31:31):
his natural vocation he patches up a rotten system, as
he would supply the chasms in a worm eaten manuscript
from a groveling incapacity to do anything better. Thinks that
if a single iota in the claims of prerogative and
power were lost, the whole fabric of society would fall
(31:51):
upon his head and crush him, and calculates that his
best chance for literary reputation is by blackballing one half
of the competitors as Jacobins and levelers, and securing the
suffrages of the other half in his favor as a
loyal subject and trusty partisan. Mister Gifford, as a satirist,
(32:14):
is violent and abrupt. He takes obvious or physical defects
and dwells upon them with much labor and harshness of invective,
but with very little wit or spirit.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
He expresses a great deal.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why,
except that he seems to be sore and out of humor.
His satire is mere peevishness and spleen, or something worse,
personal antipathy and rancor. We are in quite as much
pain for the writer as for the object of his resentment.
(32:50):
His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness.
He denounces him as a wretch, hateful to God and
man for some one of the most harmless and amusing
trifles that ever were written, and the very good humor
and pleasantry of which we suspect constituted their offense in
the eyes of this draw concur His attacks on Missus
(33:14):
Robinson were unmanly, and even those on mister Mery and
the Della Cruscan school were much more ferocious than the
occasion warranted. A little affectation and quaintness of style did
not merit such severity of castigation footnotes see Mister Mery
was even with our author in personality of abuse. See
(33:38):
his lines on the story of the Ape that was
given in charge to the ex tutor as a translator.
Mister Gibbard's version of the Roman Satirist is the baldest
and in parts the most offensive, of all others. We
do not know why he attempted it, unless he had
got it in his head that he should thus follow
(34:00):
in the steps of Dryden, as he had already done
in those of Pope in the Baviad and Mavead. As
an editor of old authors, mister Gifford is entitled to
considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising
the texts, and for some improvements he has introduced into it.
He had better have spared the notes in which, though
(34:22):
he has detected the blunders of previous commentators, he has
exposed his own ill temper and narrowness of feeling. More,
as a critic, he has thrown no light on the
character and spirit of his authors. He has shown no
striking power of analysis, nor of original illustration. Though he
has chosen to exercise his pen on writers most congenial
(34:46):
to his own turn of mind, from their dry and
caustic vein Massenger and ben Jonson. What he will make
of Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none
of the fiery quality of the poet. Mister Gifford does
not take for his motto on these occasions spirituous, precipitandus est.
(35:09):
His most successful efforts in this way are barely respectable.
In general, his observations are petty, ill concocted, and discover
as little tact as they do a habit of connected reasoning. Thus,
for instance, in attempting to add the name of Messenger
to the list of Catholic poets, a minute critic insists
(35:32):
on the profusion of crucifixes, glories, angelic visions, garlands of roses,
and clouds of incense scattered through the Virgin martyr as
evidence of the theological sentiments meant to be inculcated by
the play, when the least reflection might have taught him
that they proved nothing but the author's poetical conception of
(35:55):
the character and costume of his subject. A light with
the same sinister, short sighted shrewdness be accused of Heathenism
for talking of Flora and series in a poem on
the Seasons. What are produced as the exclusive badges and
occult proofs of Catholic bigotry are nothing but the adventitious
(36:18):
ornaments and external symbols the gross and sensible language, in
a word, the poetry of Christianity in general. What indeed
shows the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Decca,
who is asserted by a critic to have contributed some
of the most passionate and fantastic of these devotional scenes,
(36:41):
is not even suspected of a leaning to popery. In
like manner, he excuses Messenger for the grossness of one
of his plots, that of the unnatural combat, by saying
that it was supposed to take place before the Christian era.
By this shallow commonplace Persuer pwading himself or fancying he
(37:02):
could persuade others that the crime in question, which yet
on the very face of the story, is made the
ground of a tragic catastrophe, was first made statutory by
the Christian religion. The foregoing is a harsh criticism and
may be thought illiberal. But as mister Gifford assumes a
(37:23):
right to say what he pleases of others, they may
be allowed to speak the truth of him. End of
Chapter twelve.
Chapter twelve of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Jennifer Painter, Chapter twelve, William Gifford. Mister Gifford was originally
(00:25):
bred to some handicraft. He afterwards contrived to learn Latin,
and was for some time an usher in a school,
till he became a tutor in a nobleman's family. The
low bred, self taught man, the pedant, and the dependent
on the great contribute to form the editor of the
quarterly Review. He is admirably qualified for this situation, which
(00:50):
he has held for some years, by a happy combination
of defects natural and acquired, and in the event of
his death it will be difficult to provide him a
suitable successor. Mister Gifford has no pretensions to be thought
a man of genius, of taste, or even of general knowledge.
He merely understands the mechanical and instrumental part of learning.
(01:13):
He is a critic of the last age, when the
different editions of an author, or the dates of his
several performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a
profound scholar, and the spirit of the writer, or the
beauties of his style, were left to shift for themselves
or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial reader.
(01:35):
In studying an old author, he has no notion of
anything beyond adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or
correcting by the collation of various copies an error of
the press. In appreciating a modern one, if it is
an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to
charge him with bad grammar. He scans his sentences instead
(01:58):
of weighing his sense. Or if it is a friend,
the highest compliment he conceives, if possible to pay him,
is that his thoughts and expressions are molded on some
hackneyed model. His standard of ideal perfection is what he
himself now is, a person of mediocre literary attainments. His
(02:19):
utmost contempt is shown by reducing anyone to what he
himself once was, a person without the ordinary advantages of
education and learning. It is accordingly assumed, with much complacency
in his critical pages that Tory writers are classical and
courtly as a matter of course, as it is a
(02:41):
standing jest and evident truism that Whigs and reformers must
be persons of low birth and breeding imputations from one
of which he himself has narrowly escaped, and both of
which he holds in suitable abhorrence. He stands over a
contemporary performance with all the self conceit and self importance
(03:02):
of a country schoolmaster, tries it by technical rules, affects
not to understand the meaning, examines the handwriting, the spelling,
shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a slip of
the pen, and keeps a sharp lookout for a false
concord and a flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane
(03:24):
in his style of judging. It is altogether petty, captious,
and literal. The editor's political subserviency adds the last finishing
to his ridiculous pedantry and vanity. He has all his
life been a follower in the train of wealth and power,
strives to back his pretensions on Parnassus by a place
(03:46):
at court, and to gild his reputation as a man
of letters by the smile of greatness. He thinks his
works are stamped with additional value by having his name
in the Red Book. He looks up to the distinctions
of rank and station, as he does to those of learning.
With the gross and overweening adulation of his early origin.
(04:08):
All his notions are low, upstart servile. He thinks it
the highest honor to a poet to be patronized by
a peer, or by some dowager of quality. He is
prouder of a court livery than that of a laurel wreath,
and is only sure of having established his claims to
respectability by having sacrificed those of independence. He is a
(04:33):
retainer to the muses, a door keeper to learning, a
lackey in the state. He believes that modern literature should
wear the fetters of classical antiquity, that truth is to
be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice, That
power is equivalent to right, that genius is dependent on rules,
(04:55):
that taste and refinement of language consist in word catching.
Many persons suppose that mister Gifford knows better than he pretends,
and that he is shrewd, artful and designing. But perhaps
it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his
dulness is guarantee for his sincerity or that before he
(05:16):
is the tool of the profligacy of others. He is
the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings and narrow hoodwinked
perceptions destroy his feb or supphistry in vain. The creatures
at his dirty work again. But this is less from
choice or perversity than because he cannot help it and
(05:38):
can do nothing else. He damns a beautiful expression less
out of spite than because he does not really understand it.
Any novelty of thought or sentiment gives him a shock
from which he cannot recover for some time, and he
naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and uneasiness occasioned him.
(05:58):
Without referring to venal or party motives. He garbles an
author's meaning, not so much wilfully as because it is
a pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to
take in the context. When a particular sentence or passage
has struck him as quaint and out of the way,
(06:19):
he fly blows an author's style and picks out detached
words and phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels
himself at home, or takes a pride and pleasure in
this sort of petty warfare. He is tetchy and impatient
of contradiction, sore with wounded pride, angry at obvious faults,
(06:42):
more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has the chalkstones in
his understanding, and from being used to long reconfinement, cannot
bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of motion. He may
call out with the fellow in the tempest, I'm not
Stefano but a cramp. He would go back to the
(07:04):
standard of opinions style, the faded ornaments and insipid formalities
that came into fashion about forty years ago, flashes of thought,
flights of fancy, idiomatic expressions. He sets down among the
signs of the times, the extraordinary occurrences of the age
(07:25):
we live in.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
They are marks of a restless and revolutionary spirit.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
They disturb his composure of mind and threaten, by implication,
the safety of the state. His slow, snail paced, bedrid
habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion,
the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature. He has
(07:51):
long been stationary himself and is determined that others shall
remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like letting off
a pistol close to his ear.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He is alarmed and offended.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
The using an elliptical mode of expression, such as he
did not use to find in guides to the English tongue,
jars him, like coming suddenly to a step in a
flight of stairs that you were not aware of.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
He pishes and pshaws at all.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
This exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on what excites
his spleen, his envy, or his wonder, and hurls his
meager anathemas ex cathedra at all those writers who are
indifferent alike to his precepts and his example. Mister Gifford,
in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which
(08:42):
is likely to result from an over anxious desire to
supply the want of the first rudiments of education, that
sort of wit which is the offspring of ill humor
or bodily pain, that sort of sense which arises from
a spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at
(09:03):
and dispute the opinions of others, And that sort of
reputation which is the consequence of bowing to established authority
and ministerial influence. He dedicates to some great man and
receives his compliments in return. He appeals to some great name,
and the undergraduates of the two universities look up to
(09:26):
him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the weight
of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries in black letter
reading into the gap that is supposed to be making
in the Constitution by whigs and radicals, whom he qualifies
without mercy as dunces and miscreants, and so entitles himself
(09:47):
to the protection of Church and state. The character of
his mind is an utter want of independence and magnanimity.
In all that he attempts. He cannot go alone. He
must have crutches, a go cart, and trammels, or he
is timid, fretful, and helpless as a child. He cannot
(10:08):
conceive of anything different from what he finds it, and
hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect
or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a
natural and deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government,
to the orthodox in religion, to the safe in opinion,
(10:30):
to the trite in imagination, to the technical in style,
to whatever implies a surrender of individual judgment into the
hands of authority, and a subjection of individual feeling to
mechanic rules. If he finds anyone flying in the face
of these or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks
(10:52):
he has them at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul
of them without loss of time. Partly to soothe his
own sense of mortified self consequence, and as an edifying
spectacle to his legitimate friends, he takes none but unfair advantages.
He twits his adversaries, that is, those who are not
(11:14):
in the leading strings of his school or party, with
some personal or accidental defect. If a writer has been
punished for a political libel, he is sure to hear
of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes
on crutches and is out of favor at court, she
is reminded of it. In mister Gifford's manly satire, he
(11:36):
sneers at people of low birth or who have not
had a college education, partly to hide his own want
of certain advantages, partly as well timed flattery to those
who possess them.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
He has a right to laugh.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
At poor, unfriended, untitled genius from wearing the livery of
rank and letters. As footman behind a coronet coach at
the rabble, he keeps good company and forgets himself. He
stands at the door of mister Murray's shop and will
not let anybody pass but the well dressed mob or
(12:12):
some followers of the court. To edge into the quarterly
temple of fame, the candidate must have a diploma from
the universities a passport from the treasury. Otherwise it is
a breach of etiquette to let him pass, an insult
to the better sort, who aspire to the love of
letters and may chance to drop in to the feast
(12:35):
of the poets, or if he cannot manage it thus,
or get rid of the claim on the bare ground
of poverty or want of school learning, he trumps up
an excuse for the occasion, such as that a man
was confined in nugat a short time before.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It is not a lie on the part of the critic.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It is only an amiable subservience to the will of
his betters, like that of a menial who is ordered
to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a knowledge
of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows,
such is his cue from his employers, should at any
(13:16):
rate be kept out of privileged places. Persons who have
been convicted of prose libels ought not to be suffered
to write poetry. If the fact was not exactly as
it was stated, it was something of the kind or
it ought to have been. So the assertion was a
pious fraud. The public, the court, the Prince himself might
(13:38):
read the work, but for this mark of a probrium
set upon it. It was not to be endured that
an insolent plebeian should aspire to elegance, taste fancy. It
was throwing down the barriers which ought to separate the
higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the disloyal.
The paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to
(14:01):
perform quarantine. It was to seem not yet recovered from
the jail infection. There was to be a taint upon it,
as there was none in it. And all this was
performed by a single slip of mister Gifford's pen.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
We would willingly believe, if.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We could, that in this case, there was as much
weakness and prejudice as there was malice and cunning. Again,
we do not think it possible that, under any circumstances
the writer of the verses to Anna could enter into
the spirit or delicacy of mister Keats's poetry. The fate
(14:39):
of the latter somewhat resembled that of a bud bit
by an envious worm, ere it could spread its sweet
leaves to the air, or dedicate its beauty to the sun.
Mister Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised
in the Examiner newspaper. A greater and more unparted offense
(15:00):
probably was that he was a true poet, with all
the errors and beauties of youthful genius.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
To answer for.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Mister Gifford was as insensible to the one as he
was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judge from
the two subjoined specimens, how far the one writer could, ever,
without a presumption equalled only by a want of self knowledge,
set himself in judgment on the other. Outwent the taper
(15:31):
as she hurried in its little smoke in pallid moonshine dyed.
She closed the door, She panted all akin to spirits
of the air and visions wide, no uttered syllable, nor
woe betide.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
But to her heart her.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Heart was voluble, paining with eloquence her balmy side, as
though a tongueless nightingale should swell her heart in vain
and die heart stifled in her dell A case gaistment
high and triple the arch there was all garlanded with
carven imageries of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot grass,
(16:08):
and diamonded with pains of quaint device, innumerable of stains
and splendid dyes, as are the tiger moth's deep damased wings.
And in the midst, among thousand heraldries and twilight saints
and dim emblazonings, a shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of
queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
(16:32):
and through warm ghouls on Madeline's fair breast, as down
she knelt for Heaven's grace, and boon rose bloom fell
on her hands together pressed and on her silver crossed
soft amethyst, and on her hair a glory like a saint.
She seemed a splendid angel, newly dressed save wings for heaven,
(16:54):
for Farroh grew faint, she knelt so pure a thing,
so free from mortal taint, and on his heart revives
her vespers done of all its wreathed pearls, her hair,
she frees unclasped her warmed jewels one by one, loosens
her fragrant bodice by degrees. Her rich attire creeps, rustling
(17:17):
to her knees, half hidden like a mermaid in seaweed,
pensive awhile she dreams awake and sees in fancy Fererce
and Agnes in her bed, but dares not look behind,
or all the charm is fled soon, trembling in her
soft and chilly nest, in sort of wakeful swoon. Perplexed,
(17:39):
she lay until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed her
soothed limbs and soul, fatigued away, flown like a thought
until the morrow day, blissfully havened both from joy and pain,
clasped like a missile, where swart painims prey, blinded alike
from sunshine and from rain, as though a rose should
(18:03):
shut and be a bud again. Eave of Saint Agnes,
with the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines
like these. Let us contrast the verses addressed to a
tuft of early violets by the fastidious author of the
Baviad and Mavead. Sweet flowers that from your humble beds.
(18:26):
Thus prematurely dare to rise and trust your unprotected heads
to cold Aquarius's watery skies.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Retire, attire.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
These tepid airs are not the genial brood of May.
That sun with light malignant glares and flatters only to
betray stern. Winter's rain is not yet past low, while
your buds prepared to blow on icy pinions, comes the
blast and nips your root and lays you low. Alas
(18:58):
for such ungentle bloom, But I will shield you, and
supply a kindlier soil on which to bloom, a nobler
bed on which to die. Come then, ere, Yet the
morning ray has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
and drawn your balmeest sweets away. Oh, come and grace
my Anna's breast. Ye droop fondflowers, But did ye know
(19:22):
what worth what goodness? There reside? Your cups with liveliest tints,
would glow and spread their leaves with conscious pride for
there has liberal nature joined her riches to the stores
of art, and added to the vigorous mind, the soft,
the sympathizing heart. Come then ere, Yet the morning ray
(19:45):
has drunk the dew that gems your crest, and drawn
your balmeest sweets away. Oh, come and grace my anna's breast. Oh,
I should think that fragrant bed might ay, but hope
with you to share years of anxiety repaid by one
short hour of transport. There footnote A was an awkward
(20:09):
bedfellow for a tuft of violets more blessed than me.
Thus shall ye love your little day, And when ye die,
sweet flowers, the grateful muse shall give a verse The
sorrowing maid a sigh, while I alas no distant date
to mix with the dust from whence I came without
a friend, to weep my fate, without a stone to
(20:32):
tell my name. We subjoin one more specimen of these
wild strains, said to be written two years after the
preceding eche Itterum Crispinus footnote B. How aft o dart,
What time the faithful pair walked forth the fragrant hour
of eve to share on thy romantic banks? Have my
(20:56):
wild strains not yet forgot amidst my native plains. While
thou hast sweetly gurgled down the veil, filled up the
pores of love's delightful tale. While ever, as she read
the conscious maid, by faltering voice and downcast looks, betrayed,
would blushing on her lover's neck, recline and with her
(21:18):
finger point the tenderest line MAVIAD, Pages one ninety.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Four, two O two.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yet the author assures us just before that in these
wild strains, all was plain, even then, admire John Bell,
my simple ways, no heaven and hell danced madly through
my lays, no oaths, no execrations.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
All was plain.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yet trust me, While thou, ever, jingling train chime their
sonorous woes with frigid art, and shock the reason and
revolt the heart. My hopes and fears in nature's language,
dressed awakened love in many a gentle breast ibid. Verse
one eight five to ninety two. If anyone else had
(22:06):
composed these wild strains, in which all is plain, mister
Gifford would have accused them of three things. One downright nonsense,
two downright frigidity, three downright doggerel. And proceeded to anatomize them,
very cordially in his way. As it is, he is
(22:27):
thrilled with a very pleasing horror and his former scenes
of tenderness, and gasps at the recollection of watery Aquarius,
he jam satis est, why rack a grub a butterfly
upon a wheel? I wish I was where Ana lies,
for I am sick of lingering here, and every hour
(22:48):
affection cries go and partake her humble beer. I wish
I could, for when she died I lost my awe,
And life has proved since that sad hour, a waste,
unlovely and unloved.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But who, when I am turned.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
To clay, shall duly to her grave repair and pluck
the ragged moss away and weeds that have no business there,
And who with pious hands shall bring the flowers she
cherish'd snowdrops, cold and varlets, and unheeded spring to scatter
o'er her hallow'd mold. And who, while memory loves to
(23:25):
dwell upon her name, for ever dear, shall feel his
heart with passion swell and pour the bitter, bitter tear.
I did it, and would fate allow, should visit, still,
should still deplore but health and strength have left me now,
But I alas can weep no more. Take then, sweet maid,
(23:48):
this simple strain the last I offer at thy shrine.
Thy grave must then undecked remain, and all thy memory
fade with mine? And can thy soft persuasive look that
voice that might with music vie thy air that every
gazer took, Thy matchless eloquence of eye, Thy spirits, folicsome
(24:11):
as good, thy courage by no ills dismayed thy patience
by no wrongs subdued thy gay good humor.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Can they fade? Perhaps? But sorrow dims my eye.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Cold turf which I know more, must view dear name,
which I know more, must sigh a long, a last,
a sad adieu. It must be said, in extenuation of
the low mechanic vein of these impoverished lines, that they
were written at an early age. They were the inspired
(24:47):
production of a youthful lover. Mister Gifford was thirty when
he wrote them. Mister Keats died when he was scarce twenty. Father.
It may be said that mister Gifford hazarded his post
poetical attempts under all the disadvantages of a neglected education.
But the same circumstance, together with a few unpruned redundancies
(25:10):
of fancy and quaintnesses of expression, was made the plea
on which mister Keats was hooted out of the world,
and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities consigned to an
early grave. In short, the treatment of this heedless candidate
for a poetical fame might serve as a warning, and
(25:31):
was intended to serve as a warning to all unfledged taros,
how they venture upon any such doubtful experiments, except under
the auspices of some lord of the bedchamber or government aristarchus,
and how they imprudently associate themselves with men of mere
popular talent or independence of feeling. It is the same
(25:54):
in prose works. The editor scorns to enter the lists
of argument with any proscript bribed writer of the opposite party.
He does not refute, but denounces him. He makes no
concessions to an adversary, lest they should in some way
be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in
the fancied insignificance of others. He only feels himself superior
(26:19):
to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind.
All persons are without common sense and honesty who do
not believe implicitly with him in the immaculateness of ministers
and the divine origin of kings. Thus he informed the
world that the author of table Talk was a person
(26:41):
who could not write a sentence of common English and
could hardly spell his own name. Because he was not
a friend to the restoration of the Bourbons, and had
the assurance to write characters of Shakespeare's plays in a
style of criticism somewhat different from mister Gifford's, judged this
writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style.
(27:04):
And when the latter ventured to refer to a work
of his called an Essay on the Principles of Human Action,
which has not a single ornament in it, as a
specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of
his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great
self satisfaction, said, it was amusing to see this person
(27:26):
sitting like one of Brewer's Dutch boors over his gin
and tobacco pipes, and fancying himself a Leibniz. The question
was whether the subject of mister Gifford censure had ever
written such a work, or not, for if he had,
he had amused himself with something besides gin and tobacco pipes.
(27:48):
But our editor, by virtue of the situation he holds,
is superior to facts or arguments. He is accountable neither
to the public nor to authors for what he says
of them, but o it to his employers to prejudice
the work and vilify the writer, if the latter is
not advowedly ready to range himself on the stronger side.
(28:09):
A quarterly review, besides the political tirades and denunciations of
suspected writers, intended for the guidance of the heads of families,
is filled up with accounts of books of voyages and
travels for the amusement of the younger branches. The poetical
department is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions
(28:31):
and a list of quotations. Mister Croker is understood to
contribute the sant Elena articles, and the liberality, mister Canning,
the practical, good sense, mister Disraeli, the good nature, mister Jacob,
the modesty, mister Southey, the consistency, and the editor himself
the chivalrous spirit, and the attacks on Lady Morgan.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It is a double crime and excites a double.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Portion of spleen in the editor when female writers are
not advocates of passive obedience and non resistance. This journal,
then is a depositary for every species of political sophistry
and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that
does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare
(29:19):
faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the
varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of
the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is
as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued
are odious. The intention is to poison the sources of
(29:40):
public opinion and of individual fame, to pervert literature from
being the natural ally of freedom and humanity into an
engine of priest craft and despotism, and to undermine the
spirit of the English Constitution and the independence of the
English character. The editor and his friends systematically explode every
(30:03):
principle of liberty, laugh patriotism, and public spirit, to scorn
resent every pretense to integrity as a piece of singularity
or insolence, and strike at the root of all free
inquiry or discussion by running down every writer as a
vile scribbler and a bad member of society, who is
(30:25):
not a hireling and a slave. No means are stuck
at in accomplishing this laudable end. Strong in patronage, they
trample on truth, justice and decency. They claim the privilege
of court favorites. They keep as little faith with the
public as with their opponents. No statement in the Quarterly
(30:47):
Review is to be trusted. There is no fact that
is not misrepresented in it, no quotation that is not garbled,
no character that is not slandered. If it can answer
the purposes of a party to do so, the weight
of power, of wealth, of rank is thrown into the scale,
gives its impulse to the machine, and the whole is
(31:10):
under the guidance of mister Gifford's instinctive genius of the
inborn hatred, of civility, for independence, of dullness, for talent,
of cunning and impudence, for truth and honesty. It costs
him no effort to execute his disreputable task in being
the tool of a crooked policy. He but labors in
(31:31):
his natural vocation he patches up a rotten system, as
he would supply the chasms in a worm eaten manuscript
from a groveling incapacity to do anything better. Thinks that
if a single iota in the claims of prerogative and
power were lost, the whole fabric of society would fall
(31:51):
upon his head and crush him, and calculates that his
best chance for literary reputation is by blackballing one half
of the competitors as Jacobins and levelers, and securing the
suffrages of the other half in his favor as a
loyal subject and trusty partisan. Mister Gifford, as a satirist,
(32:14):
is violent and abrupt. He takes obvious or physical defects
and dwells upon them with much labor and harshness of invective,
but with very little wit or spirit.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
He expresses a great deal.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why,
except that he seems to be sore and out of humor.
His satire is mere peevishness and spleen, or something worse,
personal antipathy and rancor. We are in quite as much
pain for the writer as for the object of his resentment.
(32:50):
His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness.
He denounces him as a wretch, hateful to God and
man for some one of the most harmless and amusing
trifles that ever were written, and the very good humor
and pleasantry of which we suspect constituted their offense in
the eyes of this draw concur His attacks on Missus
(33:14):
Robinson were unmanly, and even those on mister Mery and
the Della Cruscan school were much more ferocious than the
occasion warranted. A little affectation and quaintness of style did
not merit such severity of castigation footnotes see Mister Mery
was even with our author in personality of abuse. See
(33:38):
his lines on the story of the Ape that was
given in charge to the ex tutor as a translator.
Mister Gibbard's version of the Roman Satirist is the baldest
and in parts the most offensive, of all others. We
do not know why he attempted it, unless he had
got it in his head that he should thus follow
(34:00):
in the steps of Dryden, as he had already done
in those of Pope in the Baviad and Mavead. As
an editor of old authors, mister Gifford is entitled to
considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising
the texts, and for some improvements he has introduced into it.
He had better have spared the notes in which, though
(34:22):
he has detected the blunders of previous commentators, he has
exposed his own ill temper and narrowness of feeling. More,
as a critic, he has thrown no light on the
character and spirit of his authors. He has shown no
striking power of analysis, nor of original illustration. Though he
has chosen to exercise his pen on writers most congenial
(34:46):
to his own turn of mind, from their dry and
caustic vein Massenger and ben Jonson. What he will make
of Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none
of the fiery quality of the poet. Mister Gifford does
not take for his motto on these occasions spirituous, precipitandus est.
(35:09):
His most successful efforts in this way are barely respectable.
In general, his observations are petty, ill concocted, and discover
as little tact as they do a habit of connected reasoning. Thus,
for instance, in attempting to add the name of Messenger
to the list of Catholic poets, a minute critic insists
(35:32):
on the profusion of crucifixes, glories, angelic visions, garlands of roses,
and clouds of incense scattered through the Virgin martyr as
evidence of the theological sentiments meant to be inculcated by
the play, when the least reflection might have taught him
that they proved nothing but the author's poetical conception of
(35:55):
the character and costume of his subject. A light with
the same sinister, short sighted shrewdness be accused of Heathenism
for talking of Flora and series in a poem on
the Seasons. What are produced as the exclusive badges and
occult proofs of Catholic bigotry are nothing but the adventitious
(36:18):
ornaments and external symbols the gross and sensible language, in
a word, the poetry of Christianity in general. What indeed
shows the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Decca,
who is asserted by a critic to have contributed some
of the most passionate and fantastic of these devotional scenes,
(36:41):
is not even suspected of a leaning to popery. In
like manner, he excuses Messenger for the grossness of one
of his plots, that of the unnatural combat, by saying
that it was supposed to take place before the Christian era.
By this shallow commonplace Persuer pwading himself or fancying he
(37:02):
could persuade others that the crime in question, which yet
on the very face of the story, is made the
ground of a tragic catastrophe, was first made statutory by
the Christian religion. The foregoing is a harsh criticism and
may be thought illiberal. But as mister Gifford assumes a
(37:23):
right to say what he pleases of others, they may
be allowed to speak the truth of him. End of
Chapter twelve.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.