August 19, 2025 • 21 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.
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Chapter fourteen 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. Chapter fourteen,
Mister Brome and Sir Francis Burdette. There is a class
(00:22):
of eloquence which has been described and particularly insisted on,
under the style and title of Irish eloquence. There is
another class which it is not absolutely unfair to oppose
to this, and that is the Scotch. The first of
these is entirely the offspring of impulse, the last of mechanism.
The one is as full of fancy as it is
(00:44):
bare of facts. The other excludes all fancy and is
weighed down with facts. The one is all fire, the
other all ice. The one nothing but enthusiasm, extravagance, eccentricity,
the other nothing but logical deduction and the most approved postulates.
The one without scruple may with reclezeal, throws the reins
(01:07):
loose on the neck of the imagination. The other pulls
up with a curb a bridle, and starts at every
casual object. It meets in the way as a bugbear.
The genius of Irish oratory stands forth in the naked
majesty of untutored nature, its eyes glancing wildly around on
all subjects, its tongue darting forked fire. The genius of
(01:28):
Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the schools,
Its drawling, ambiguous dialects seconds, its circumspect dialects from behind
the visor that guards its mouth and shadows its pent
up brows. It sees no visions but its own said purpose,
its own data, and its own dogmas. It has no figures,
(01:50):
nor no fantasies, but those which busy care draws in
the brains of men, or which set off its own
superior acquirements and of wisdom its scorns to tread the
primrose path of dalliance, it shrinks back from it as
from a precipice, and keeps in the iron railway of
the understanding. Irish Oratory, on the contrary, is a sort
(02:12):
of aeronaut. It is always going up in a balloon
and breaking its neck or coming down in the parachute.
It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and
fancy with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated
metaphors that bursts the slender silken covering of scents, and
the airy pageant that glittered in empty space and rows
(02:34):
in all the bliss of ignorance, flutters and sinks down
to its native bogs. If the Irish orator riots in
a study neglect of his subject, and a natural confusion
of ideas, playing with words, ranging them into all sorts
of fantastic combinations be caused in the unlettered void or
chaos of his mind, there is no obstacle to their
(02:55):
coalescing in any shapes they please. It must be confessed
that the eloquence of the Scotch is encumbered with an
excess of knowledge that it cannot get on for a
crowd of difficulties, that it staggers under a load of topics,
that it is so environed in the forms of logic
and rhetoric as to be equally precluded from originality or absurdity,
(03:17):
from beauty or deformity. The plea of humanity is lost
by going through the process of law. The firm and
manly tone of principle is exchanged for the wavering and
pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion are
reduced to a defunct commonplace, and all true imagination is
buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and
(03:39):
imposing authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the
other is a lifeless skeleton. If the one, in its
feverish and hectic extravagance, resembles a sick man's dream, the
other is akin to the sleep of death, cold, stiff, unfeeling, monumental.
Upon the whole, we despair less at the first than
(04:00):
of the last, For the principle of life and motion is,
after all the primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant
wildness of the one may be disciplined, and its access
is sobered down into reason, but the dry and rigid
formality of the other can never burst the shallower husk
of oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured
(04:23):
by the purilities and affectation of a Phillips, But then
it is redeemed by the manly sense and fervor of
a plunket, and the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit
of a curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom,
eloquence and fancy that flowed from the lips of a
burk in the other we do not think so low
in the negative series, but we get no higher in
(04:46):
the ascending scale than a Macintosh or Brahm footnote. It
may be suggested that the late Lord Erskine enjoyed a
higher reputation as an orator than either of these, but
he owed it to a dashing and graceful to presence
of mind into great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped
of these outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches,
(05:10):
like that of his writings, is nothing or perfectly unert
and dead. Mister Bram is from the North of England,
but he was educated in Edinburgh and represents that school
of politics and political economy in the House. He differs
from Sir James Macintosh in this that he deals less
in abstract principles and more in individual details. He makes
(05:32):
less use of general topics and more of immediate facts.
Sir James is better acquainted with the balance of an
argument in old authors, mister Bram with the balance of
power in Europe. If the first is better versed in
the progress of history. No man excels a last in
our knowledge of the course of exchange. He is apprized
(05:53):
of the exact state of our exports and imports, and
scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or Hull.
But he has notice of the bill of lading, our
colonial policy, prison discipline, the state of the hoax, agricultural distress,
commerce and manufactures, the Bouillon question, the Catholic question, the
Bourbon's or the inquisition, domestic trees and foreign levy. Nothing
(06:18):
can come amiss to him. He has at home in
the crooked maces of rotten Boroughs, is not baffled by
Scotch law, and can follow the meaning of one of
mister Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with such variety
and solidity of information, mister Brahm is rather a powerful
and alarming than an effectual debater in so many details,
(06:40):
which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking resolution.
The spirit of the question is lost to others who
have not the same voluntary power of attention or the
same interest in hearing that he has in speaking. The
original impulse that urged him forward is forgotten in so
white a field, in so interminable a career. If he can,
(07:03):
others cannot carry all he knows in their heads. At
the same time, a rope of circumstantial evidence does not
hold well together nor drag the unwilling mind along with it.
The willing mind hurries on before it and grows impatient
and absent. He moves in an unmanageable procession of facts
and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once
(07:23):
and his premise. So anxious is he to proceed on
sure in apple grounds, overlay and block up his conclusions,
so that you cannot arrive at it or nod till
the first fury and shock of the onset is over.
The ball, from the too great width of the caliber
from which it is sent, and from striking against such
a number of hard projecting points, is almost spent before
(07:47):
it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
debtor and creditor account between the government and the country,
post so many actual crime, corruption and injustice against so
much contingent advantage or slow, luggish prejudice, and at the
bottom of the page brings in the balance of indignation
and contempt where it is due but people are not
(08:08):
to be calculated into contempt or indignation on abstract grounds.
For however they may submit to this process where their
own interests are concerned. In what regards the public good,
we believe they must see and feel instinctively or not
at all. There is it is to be lamented a
good deal of froth, as well as strength in the
(08:30):
popular spirit, which will not admit of being decanted or
served out in formal driblets, nor will spleen the soul
of opposition bear to be corked up in square patent
bottles and kept for future use. In a word, mister
Brahms is ticketed and labeled, eloquence, registered and in numerous
(08:50):
Like the successive parts of a Scotch encyclopedia, it is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly,
an extraordinary display of clearness of head, of quickness, energy
of thought, of application and industry. But it is not
the eloquence of the imagination or the heart, and will
never save a nation or an individual from perdition. Mister
(09:12):
Brahm has one considerable advantage in debate. He is overcome
by no false modesty, no deference to others, but then
by a natural consequence or parative reasoning. He has little
sympathy with other people, and is liable to be mistaken
in the effect his arguments will have upon them. He
relies too much, among other things, on the patience of
(09:33):
his hearers and on his ability to turn everything to
his advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of
his tether in vulgar phrase, and often overshoots the mark
set homage. He has no reserve of discretion, nor retentiveness
of mind, or check upon himself. He needs, with so
(09:54):
much wit as much again to govern it. He cannot
keep a good thing or a shrewd peace of information
in his possession. Though the letting out should mar a cause,
it is not that he thinks too much of himself
too little of his cause. But he is absorbed in
the pursuit of truth as an abstract inquiry. He is
(10:15):
led away by the headstrong and overmastering activities of his
own mind. He is borne along, almost involuntarily and not
impossibly against his better judgment, by the throng and restlessness
of his ideas, as by a crowd of people in motion.
His perceptions are literal, tenacious, epileptic. His understanding voracious of
(10:35):
facts and equally communicative of them, and he proceeds to
pour out all as plain as downright shipping or as
old montage, without either the virulence of the one or
the bon arm of the other. The repeated, smart, unforeseen
discharges of the truth jar those that are next to him.
(10:56):
He does not dislike this state of irritation and collision,
indulges his curiosity or his triumph till by calling for
more facts or hazarding some extreme inference. He urges a
question to the verge of a precipice, his adversaries urge
it over, and he himself shrinks back from the consequence,
scared at the sound himself is made. Mister Bram has
(11:18):
great fearlessness, but not equal firmness, and after going too
far on the forlorn hope, turns short round without due
warning to others or respect for himself. He is adventurous,
but easily panic struck, and sacrifices the vanity of self
opinion to the necessity of self preservation. He is too
improvident for a leader, too petulant for a partisan, and
(11:41):
does not sufficiently consult those with whom he is supposed
to act In concert, He sometimes leaves them in the lurch,
and is sometimes left in the lurch by them. He
wants the principle of co operation, he frequently, in a
fit of thoughtless levity, gives an unexpected turn to the
political machine, which alarms older and more experienced heads. If
(12:03):
he was not himself the first to get out of
harm's way and escape from the danger, it would be well.
We hold, indeed, as a general rule, that no man
born or bred in Scartland can be a great orator
unless he is a mere quack, or a great statesman,
unless he turns plain knave. The national gravity is against
(12:23):
the first, the national caution is against the last. To
a Scotsman, if a thing is it is, there is
an end of the question. With his opinion about it.
He is positive and abrupt, and is not in the
habit of conciliating the feelings or soothing the follies of others.
His only way, therefore, to produce a popular effect, is
(12:45):
to sail with the stream of prejudice and to vent
common dogmas, the total grist, unsifted husks and all from
some evangelical pulpit. This may answer, and it has answered.
On the other hand, If a Scotsman born or comes
to think at all of the feelings of others, it
is not as they regard them, but as their opinions
(13:06):
reacts on his own interest and safety. He is therefore
either pragmatical and offensive, or if he tries to please,
he becomes cowardly and fawning. His public spirit wants pliancy,
his selfish compliances go all links. He is as impracticable
as a popular partisan as he is mischievous as a
(13:26):
tool of government. We do not wish to press this
argument farther, and must leave it involved in some degree
of obscurity, rather than bring the armed intellect of a
whole nation on our heads. Mister Brahm speaks in a
loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes almost approaching to
a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of his subject,
(13:48):
with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless
of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he
has not hitherto been remarkably successful. He is not profound
in cases and reports, nor does he take much interest
in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or show
much adroitness in the management of it. He carries too
(14:09):
much weight of metal. For ordinary and petty occasions, he
must have a pretty large question to discuss, and must
make thorough stitch work of it. He, however, had an
encounter with mister Phillips the other day and shook all
his tender blossoms so that they fell to the ground
and withered in an hour, But they soon bloomed again.
(14:29):
Mister Brawn writes almost, if not quite, as well as
he speaks. In the midst of an election contest, he
comes out to address the populace and goes back to
his study to finish an article for the Edinburgh Review,
sometimes indeed wadging three or four articles in the shape
of rafacamentos of his own pamphlets or speeches in Parliament
(14:50):
into a single number. Such, indeed is the activity of
his mind that it appears to require neither a pose
nor any other stimulus than a delight in its own exercise.
He can turn his hand to anything, but he cannot
be idle. There are few intellectual accomplishments which he does
not possess, and possess in a very high degree. He
(15:12):
speaks French, and we believe several other modern languages, fluently
is a capital mathematician, and obtained an introduction to the
celebrated Carna in this latter character, when the conversation turned
on squaring the circle and not on the propriety of
confining France within the natural boundaries of the rhine. Mister
Brahm is in fact a striking insistence of the versatility
(15:36):
and strength of the human mind, and also in one sense,
of the length of human life. If we make good
use of our time, there is room enough to crowd
almost every art and science into it. If we pass
no day without a line, visit no place without the
company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries
(15:57):
or empty them of their contents. Those who can plain
of the shortness of life let it slide by them
without wishing to seize and make the most of its
golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do.
The more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
If any one possesses any advantage and a considerable degree,
he may make himself master of nearly as many more
(16:18):
as he pleases, by employing his spare time and cultivating
the waste faculties of his mind. While one person is
determining on the choice of a profession or study. Another
shall have made a fortune or gained a merited reputation.
While one person is dreaming over the meaning of a word,
another will have learned several languages. It is not incapacity,
(16:38):
but indolence, indecision, want of imagination, and a proness to
a sort of mental tautology to repeat the same images
and tread the same circle, that leave us so poor,
so dull and inert. As we are so naked of acquirements,
so barren of resources. While we are walking backward and
forward between Charing Cross and Temple Bar and sitting in
(17:01):
the same coffeehouse every day, we might make the Grand
tour of Europe and visit the Vatican and the Louver.
Mister Brahm, among other means of strengthening and enlarging his views,
has visited, we believe, most of the courts, and turned
his attention to most of the constitutions of the continent.
He is no doubt a very accomplished, active minded and
(17:22):
admirable person. Sir Francis Burdette, in many respects affords a
contrast to the foregoing character. He is a plain, unaffected
unsophisticated English gentleman. He is a person of great reading, too,
and considerable information, but he makes very little display of these,
unless did it be to quote Shakespeare, which he does
(17:45):
often with extreme aptness and felicity. Sir Francis is one
of the most pleasing speakers in the house, and is
a prodigious favorite of the English people. So he ought
to be, for he is one of the few remaining
examples of the old English understand and old English character.
All that he pretends to is common sense and common honesty,
(18:07):
and a greater compliment cannot be paid to these than
the attention with which he is listened to in the
House of Commons. We cannot conceive a higher proof of
courage than the saying things which he has been known
to say there, and which seen him blush and appear
ashamed of the truth he has been obliged to utter
like a bashful novice. He could not have uttered what
(18:27):
he often did there, if, besides his general respectability, he
had not been a very honest, a very good tempered,
and a very good looking man. But there was evidently
no wish to shine or any desire to offend. It
was painful to him to hurt the feelings of those
who heard him, but it was a higher duty in
him not to suppress his sincere and earnest convictions. It
(18:51):
is wonderful how much virtue and plain dealing a man
may be guilty of with impunity, if he has no vanity,
or ill nature, or duplicity to provoke the contempt or
resentment of others, and to make them impatient of the
superiority he sets up over them. We do not recollect
that Sir Francis ever endeavored to atone for any occasional indiscretions,
(19:12):
or in temperance, by giving the Duke of York credit
for the Battle of Waterloo, or congratulating ministers on the
confinement of Bonaparte at Saint Helena. There is no honest
cause which he dares not avow no oppressed individual that
he is not forward to succor. He has the firmness
of manhood, with the unimpaired enthusiasm of youthful feeling about him.
(19:34):
His principles are mellowed and improved, without having become less
sound with time. For at one period he sometimes appeared
to come charged to the house with the petulance and
caustic sententiousness he had imbibed at Wimbledon Common. He is
never violent or in extremes, except when the people or
the parliament happened to be out of their senses, and
then he seems to regret the necessity of plainly telling
(19:56):
them he thinks so, instead of pummeling himself upon it
or exulting over impending calamities. There is only one air
he seems to labor under which we believe he also
borrowed from mister Horntok or Major Cartwright. The wanting to
go back to the early times of our constitution and
history in search of the principles of law and liberty,
(20:18):
he might well hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. Liberty,
in our opinion, is but a modern invention, the growth
of books in printing, and whether new or old, is
not the less desirable. A man may be a patriot
without being an antiquary. This is the only point on
which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture
(20:40):
of pedantry. In general, his love of liberty is pure
as it is warm and steady. His humanity is unconstrained
and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
head to feel. Nor does prudence always keep a guard
upon his tongue or his pen. No man writes a
better letter to his constituents than the Member for west Minster,
(21:00):
and his compositions of that kind ought to be good,
for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the
idol of the people of Westminster. Few persons have a
greater number of friends than well wishers, and he has
still greater reason to be proud of his enemies, for
his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir Francis
(21:21):
Burdett has often been left in a minority in the
House of Commons, with only one or two at his side.
We suspect, unfortunately for his country, that his tree will
be found to enter its protest on the same side
of the question. Footnote Mister Brahm is not a Scotchman literally,
but by adoption end of Chapter fourteen. The Spirit of
(21:43):
the Age or contemporary portraits by William Hazlitt
Chapter fourteen 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. Chapter fourteen,
Mister Brome and Sir Francis Burdette. There is a class
(00:22):
of eloquence which has been described and particularly insisted on,
under the style and title of Irish eloquence. There is
another class which it is not absolutely unfair to oppose
to this, and that is the Scotch. The first of
these is entirely the offspring of impulse, the last of mechanism.
The one is as full of fancy as it is
(00:44):
bare of facts. The other excludes all fancy and is
weighed down with facts. The one is all fire, the
other all ice. The one nothing but enthusiasm, extravagance, eccentricity,
the other nothing but logical deduction and the most approved postulates.
The one without scruple may with reclezeal, throws the reins
(01:07):
loose on the neck of the imagination. The other pulls
up with a curb a bridle, and starts at every
casual object. It meets in the way as a bugbear.
The genius of Irish oratory stands forth in the naked
majesty of untutored nature, its eyes glancing wildly around on
all subjects, its tongue darting forked fire. The genius of
(01:28):
Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the schools,
Its drawling, ambiguous dialects seconds, its circumspect dialects from behind
the visor that guards its mouth and shadows its pent
up brows. It sees no visions but its own said purpose,
its own data, and its own dogmas. It has no figures,
(01:50):
nor no fantasies, but those which busy care draws in
the brains of men, or which set off its own
superior acquirements and of wisdom its scorns to tread the
primrose path of dalliance, it shrinks back from it as
from a precipice, and keeps in the iron railway of
the understanding. Irish Oratory, on the contrary, is a sort
(02:12):
of aeronaut. It is always going up in a balloon
and breaking its neck or coming down in the parachute.
It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and
fancy with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated
metaphors that bursts the slender silken covering of scents, and
the airy pageant that glittered in empty space and rows
(02:34):
in all the bliss of ignorance, flutters and sinks down
to its native bogs. If the Irish orator riots in
a study neglect of his subject, and a natural confusion
of ideas, playing with words, ranging them into all sorts
of fantastic combinations be caused in the unlettered void or
chaos of his mind, there is no obstacle to their
(02:55):
coalescing in any shapes they please. It must be confessed
that the eloquence of the Scotch is encumbered with an
excess of knowledge that it cannot get on for a
crowd of difficulties, that it staggers under a load of topics,
that it is so environed in the forms of logic
and rhetoric as to be equally precluded from originality or absurdity,
(03:17):
from beauty or deformity. The plea of humanity is lost
by going through the process of law. The firm and
manly tone of principle is exchanged for the wavering and
pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion are
reduced to a defunct commonplace, and all true imagination is
buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and
(03:39):
imposing authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the
other is a lifeless skeleton. If the one, in its
feverish and hectic extravagance, resembles a sick man's dream, the
other is akin to the sleep of death, cold, stiff, unfeeling, monumental.
Upon the whole, we despair less at the first than
(04:00):
of the last, For the principle of life and motion is,
after all the primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant
wildness of the one may be disciplined, and its access
is sobered down into reason, but the dry and rigid
formality of the other can never burst the shallower husk
of oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured
(04:23):
by the purilities and affectation of a Phillips, But then
it is redeemed by the manly sense and fervor of
a plunket, and the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit
of a curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom,
eloquence and fancy that flowed from the lips of a
burk in the other we do not think so low
in the negative series, but we get no higher in
(04:46):
the ascending scale than a Macintosh or Brahm footnote. It
may be suggested that the late Lord Erskine enjoyed a
higher reputation as an orator than either of these, but
he owed it to a dashing and graceful to presence
of mind into great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped
of these outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches,
(05:10):
like that of his writings, is nothing or perfectly unert
and dead. Mister Bram is from the North of England,
but he was educated in Edinburgh and represents that school
of politics and political economy in the House. He differs
from Sir James Macintosh in this that he deals less
in abstract principles and more in individual details. He makes
(05:32):
less use of general topics and more of immediate facts.
Sir James is better acquainted with the balance of an
argument in old authors, mister Bram with the balance of
power in Europe. If the first is better versed in
the progress of history. No man excels a last in
our knowledge of the course of exchange. He is apprized
(05:53):
of the exact state of our exports and imports, and
scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or Hull.
But he has notice of the bill of lading, our
colonial policy, prison discipline, the state of the hoax, agricultural distress,
commerce and manufactures, the Bouillon question, the Catholic question, the
Bourbon's or the inquisition, domestic trees and foreign levy. Nothing
(06:18):
can come amiss to him. He has at home in
the crooked maces of rotten Boroughs, is not baffled by
Scotch law, and can follow the meaning of one of
mister Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with such variety
and solidity of information, mister Brahm is rather a powerful
and alarming than an effectual debater in so many details,
(06:40):
which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking resolution.
The spirit of the question is lost to others who
have not the same voluntary power of attention or the
same interest in hearing that he has in speaking. The
original impulse that urged him forward is forgotten in so
white a field, in so interminable a career. If he can,
(07:03):
others cannot carry all he knows in their heads. At
the same time, a rope of circumstantial evidence does not
hold well together nor drag the unwilling mind along with it.
The willing mind hurries on before it and grows impatient
and absent. He moves in an unmanageable procession of facts
and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once
(07:23):
and his premise. So anxious is he to proceed on
sure in apple grounds, overlay and block up his conclusions,
so that you cannot arrive at it or nod till
the first fury and shock of the onset is over.
The ball, from the too great width of the caliber
from which it is sent, and from striking against such
a number of hard projecting points, is almost spent before
(07:47):
it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
debtor and creditor account between the government and the country,
post so many actual crime, corruption and injustice against so
much contingent advantage or slow, luggish prejudice, and at the
bottom of the page brings in the balance of indignation
and contempt where it is due but people are not
(08:08):
to be calculated into contempt or indignation on abstract grounds.
For however they may submit to this process where their
own interests are concerned. In what regards the public good,
we believe they must see and feel instinctively or not
at all. There is it is to be lamented a
good deal of froth, as well as strength in the
(08:30):
popular spirit, which will not admit of being decanted or
served out in formal driblets, nor will spleen the soul
of opposition bear to be corked up in square patent
bottles and kept for future use. In a word, mister
Brahms is ticketed and labeled, eloquence, registered and in numerous
(08:50):
Like the successive parts of a Scotch encyclopedia, it is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly,
an extraordinary display of clearness of head, of quickness, energy
of thought, of application and industry. But it is not
the eloquence of the imagination or the heart, and will
never save a nation or an individual from perdition. Mister
(09:12):
Brahm has one considerable advantage in debate. He is overcome
by no false modesty, no deference to others, but then
by a natural consequence or parative reasoning. He has little
sympathy with other people, and is liable to be mistaken
in the effect his arguments will have upon them. He
relies too much, among other things, on the patience of
(09:33):
his hearers and on his ability to turn everything to
his advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of
his tether in vulgar phrase, and often overshoots the mark
set homage. He has no reserve of discretion, nor retentiveness
of mind, or check upon himself. He needs, with so
(09:54):
much wit as much again to govern it. He cannot
keep a good thing or a shrewd peace of information
in his possession. Though the letting out should mar a cause,
it is not that he thinks too much of himself
too little of his cause. But he is absorbed in
the pursuit of truth as an abstract inquiry. He is
(10:15):
led away by the headstrong and overmastering activities of his
own mind. He is borne along, almost involuntarily and not
impossibly against his better judgment, by the throng and restlessness
of his ideas, as by a crowd of people in motion.
His perceptions are literal, tenacious, epileptic. His understanding voracious of
(10:35):
facts and equally communicative of them, and he proceeds to
pour out all as plain as downright shipping or as
old montage, without either the virulence of the one or
the bon arm of the other. The repeated, smart, unforeseen
discharges of the truth jar those that are next to him.
(10:56):
He does not dislike this state of irritation and collision,
indulges his curiosity or his triumph till by calling for
more facts or hazarding some extreme inference. He urges a
question to the verge of a precipice, his adversaries urge
it over, and he himself shrinks back from the consequence,
scared at the sound himself is made. Mister Bram has
(11:18):
great fearlessness, but not equal firmness, and after going too
far on the forlorn hope, turns short round without due
warning to others or respect for himself. He is adventurous,
but easily panic struck, and sacrifices the vanity of self
opinion to the necessity of self preservation. He is too
improvident for a leader, too petulant for a partisan, and
(11:41):
does not sufficiently consult those with whom he is supposed
to act In concert, He sometimes leaves them in the lurch,
and is sometimes left in the lurch by them. He
wants the principle of co operation, he frequently, in a
fit of thoughtless levity, gives an unexpected turn to the
political machine, which alarms older and more experienced heads. If
(12:03):
he was not himself the first to get out of
harm's way and escape from the danger, it would be well.
We hold, indeed, as a general rule, that no man
born or bred in Scartland can be a great orator
unless he is a mere quack, or a great statesman,
unless he turns plain knave. The national gravity is against
(12:23):
the first, the national caution is against the last. To
a Scotsman, if a thing is it is, there is
an end of the question. With his opinion about it.
He is positive and abrupt, and is not in the
habit of conciliating the feelings or soothing the follies of others.
His only way, therefore, to produce a popular effect, is
(12:45):
to sail with the stream of prejudice and to vent
common dogmas, the total grist, unsifted husks and all from
some evangelical pulpit. This may answer, and it has answered.
On the other hand, If a Scotsman born or comes
to think at all of the feelings of others, it
is not as they regard them, but as their opinions
(13:06):
reacts on his own interest and safety. He is therefore
either pragmatical and offensive, or if he tries to please,
he becomes cowardly and fawning. His public spirit wants pliancy,
his selfish compliances go all links. He is as impracticable
as a popular partisan as he is mischievous as a
(13:26):
tool of government. We do not wish to press this
argument farther, and must leave it involved in some degree
of obscurity, rather than bring the armed intellect of a
whole nation on our heads. Mister Brahm speaks in a
loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes almost approaching to
a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of his subject,
(13:48):
with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless
of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he
has not hitherto been remarkably successful. He is not profound
in cases and reports, nor does he take much interest
in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or show
much adroitness in the management of it. He carries too
(14:09):
much weight of metal. For ordinary and petty occasions, he
must have a pretty large question to discuss, and must
make thorough stitch work of it. He, however, had an
encounter with mister Phillips the other day and shook all
his tender blossoms so that they fell to the ground
and withered in an hour, But they soon bloomed again.
(14:29):
Mister Brawn writes almost, if not quite, as well as
he speaks. In the midst of an election contest, he
comes out to address the populace and goes back to
his study to finish an article for the Edinburgh Review,
sometimes indeed wadging three or four articles in the shape
of rafacamentos of his own pamphlets or speeches in Parliament
(14:50):
into a single number. Such, indeed is the activity of
his mind that it appears to require neither a pose
nor any other stimulus than a delight in its own exercise.
He can turn his hand to anything, but he cannot
be idle. There are few intellectual accomplishments which he does
not possess, and possess in a very high degree. He
(15:12):
speaks French, and we believe several other modern languages, fluently
is a capital mathematician, and obtained an introduction to the
celebrated Carna in this latter character, when the conversation turned
on squaring the circle and not on the propriety of
confining France within the natural boundaries of the rhine. Mister
Brahm is in fact a striking insistence of the versatility
(15:36):
and strength of the human mind, and also in one sense,
of the length of human life. If we make good
use of our time, there is room enough to crowd
almost every art and science into it. If we pass
no day without a line, visit no place without the
company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries
(15:57):
or empty them of their contents. Those who can plain
of the shortness of life let it slide by them
without wishing to seize and make the most of its
golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do.
The more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
If any one possesses any advantage and a considerable degree,
he may make himself master of nearly as many more
(16:18):
as he pleases, by employing his spare time and cultivating
the waste faculties of his mind. While one person is
determining on the choice of a profession or study. Another
shall have made a fortune or gained a merited reputation.
While one person is dreaming over the meaning of a word,
another will have learned several languages. It is not incapacity,
(16:38):
but indolence, indecision, want of imagination, and a proness to
a sort of mental tautology to repeat the same images
and tread the same circle, that leave us so poor,
so dull and inert. As we are so naked of acquirements,
so barren of resources. While we are walking backward and
forward between Charing Cross and Temple Bar and sitting in
(17:01):
the same coffeehouse every day, we might make the Grand
tour of Europe and visit the Vatican and the Louver.
Mister Brahm, among other means of strengthening and enlarging his views,
has visited, we believe, most of the courts, and turned
his attention to most of the constitutions of the continent.
He is no doubt a very accomplished, active minded and
(17:22):
admirable person. Sir Francis Burdette, in many respects affords a
contrast to the foregoing character. He is a plain, unaffected
unsophisticated English gentleman. He is a person of great reading, too,
and considerable information, but he makes very little display of these,
unless did it be to quote Shakespeare, which he does
(17:45):
often with extreme aptness and felicity. Sir Francis is one
of the most pleasing speakers in the house, and is
a prodigious favorite of the English people. So he ought
to be, for he is one of the few remaining
examples of the old English understand and old English character.
All that he pretends to is common sense and common honesty,
(18:07):
and a greater compliment cannot be paid to these than
the attention with which he is listened to in the
House of Commons. We cannot conceive a higher proof of
courage than the saying things which he has been known
to say there, and which seen him blush and appear
ashamed of the truth he has been obliged to utter
like a bashful novice. He could not have uttered what
(18:27):
he often did there, if, besides his general respectability, he
had not been a very honest, a very good tempered,
and a very good looking man. But there was evidently
no wish to shine or any desire to offend. It
was painful to him to hurt the feelings of those
who heard him, but it was a higher duty in
him not to suppress his sincere and earnest convictions. It
(18:51):
is wonderful how much virtue and plain dealing a man
may be guilty of with impunity, if he has no vanity,
or ill nature, or duplicity to provoke the contempt or
resentment of others, and to make them impatient of the
superiority he sets up over them. We do not recollect
that Sir Francis ever endeavored to atone for any occasional indiscretions,
(19:12):
or in temperance, by giving the Duke of York credit
for the Battle of Waterloo, or congratulating ministers on the
confinement of Bonaparte at Saint Helena. There is no honest
cause which he dares not avow no oppressed individual that
he is not forward to succor. He has the firmness
of manhood, with the unimpaired enthusiasm of youthful feeling about him.
(19:34):
His principles are mellowed and improved, without having become less
sound with time. For at one period he sometimes appeared
to come charged to the house with the petulance and
caustic sententiousness he had imbibed at Wimbledon Common. He is
never violent or in extremes, except when the people or
the parliament happened to be out of their senses, and
then he seems to regret the necessity of plainly telling
(19:56):
them he thinks so, instead of pummeling himself upon it
or exulting over impending calamities. There is only one air
he seems to labor under which we believe he also
borrowed from mister Horntok or Major Cartwright. The wanting to
go back to the early times of our constitution and
history in search of the principles of law and liberty,
(20:18):
he might well hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. Liberty,
in our opinion, is but a modern invention, the growth
of books in printing, and whether new or old, is
not the less desirable. A man may be a patriot
without being an antiquary. This is the only point on
which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture
(20:40):
of pedantry. In general, his love of liberty is pure
as it is warm and steady. His humanity is unconstrained
and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
head to feel. Nor does prudence always keep a guard
upon his tongue or his pen. No man writes a
better letter to his constituents than the Member for west Minster,
(21:00):
and his compositions of that kind ought to be good,
for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the
idol of the people of Westminster. Few persons have a
greater number of friends than well wishers, and he has
still greater reason to be proud of his enemies, for
his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir Francis
(21:21):
Burdett has often been left in a minority in the
House of Commons, with only one or two at his side.
We suspect, unfortunately for his country, that his tree will
be found to enter its protest on the same side
of the question. Footnote Mister Brahm is not a Scotchman literally,
but by adoption end of Chapter fourteen. The Spirit of
(21:43):
the Age or contemporary portraits by William Hazlitt
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