prose of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Browne, would | attained, we too in our degree have to aim at; have been, had they written under the good, let us mark well the road he fashioned for without the bad influences of that French pre- himself, and in the dim weltering chaos rejoice cision, which has polished and attenuated, to find a paved way. trimmed and impoverished all modern languages; made our meaning clear, and too often shallow as well as clear." Finally, as Shakspeare is to be considered as the greater nature of the two, on the other hand we must admit him to have been the less cultivated, and much the more careless. What Shakspeare could have done we nowhere discover. A careless mortal, open to the Universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himself; who, Prometheus-like, will scale Heaven, (if it so must be,) and is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London Playhouse; who, had the Warwickshire Justice let him hunt deer unmolested, might, for many years more, have lived quiet on the green earth without such aerial journeys: an unparalleled mortal. In the great Goethe, again, we see a man through life at his utmost strain; a man that, as he says himself, "struggled toughly;" laid hold of all things, under all aspects, scientific or poetic engaged passionately with the deepest interests of man's existence, in the most complex age of man's history. What Shakspeare's thoughts on "God, Nature, Art," would have been, especially had he lived to number fourscore years, were curious to know: Goethe's, delivered in many-toned melody, as the apocalypse of our era, are here, for us to know. Such was the noble talent intrusted to this man; such the noble employment he made thereof. We can call him, once more, "a clear and universal man ;" we can say that, in his universality, as thinker, as singer, as worker, he lived a life of antique nobleness under these new conditions; and, in so living, is alone in all Europe; the foremost, whom others are to learn from and follow. In which great act, or rather great sum total of many acts, who shall compute what treasure of new strengthening, of faith become hope and vision, lies secured for all! The question, Can man still live in devoutness, yet without blindness or contraction; in unconquerable steadfastness for the right, yet without tumultuous exasperation against the wrong; as an antique worthy, yet with the expansion and increased endowment of a modern? is no longer a question, but has become a certainty, and ocularly. visible fact. We have looked at Goethe, as we engaged to do, "on this side," and with the eyes of "this generation;" that is to say, chiefly as a world-changer, and benignant spiritual revolutionist: for in our present so astonishing condition of "progress of the species," such is the category under which we must try all things, wisdom itself. And, indeed, under this aspect too, Goethe's Life and Works are doubtless of incalculable value, and worthy our most earnest study; for his Spiritual History is, as it were, the ideal emblem of all true men's in these days; the goal of Manhood, which he • German Romance, iv. Here, moreover, another word of explanation is perhaps worth adding. We mean in regard to the controversy agitated (as about many things pertaining to Goethe) about his Political Creed and practice, whether he was Ministerial or in Opposition? Let the political admirer of Goethe be at ease: Goethe was both, and also neither! The "rotten whitewashed (gebrechliche übertünchte) condition of society" was plainer to few eyes than to his, sadder to few hearts than to his. Listen to the Epigrammatist at Venice: "To this stithy I liken the land, the hammer its ruler, And the people that plate, beaten between them that writhes: Wo to the plate, when nothing but wilful bruises on bruises Hit at random; and made, cometh no Kettle to view!" But, alas, what is to be done? License, each for himself, this was at bottom their want. Liberator of many! first dare to be Servant of many: What a business is that, wouldst thou know it, go try!" Let the following also be recommended to all inordinate worshippers of Septennials, Triennials, Elective Franchise, and the Shameful parts of the Constitution; and let each be a little tolerant of his neighbour's" festoon," and rejoice that he has himself found out Freedom,a thing much wanted: "No Apostle-of-Liberty much to my heart ever found I : "Walls I can see tumbled down, walls I see also a-building; Here sit prisoners, there likewise do prisoners sit: Is the world then itself a huge prison? Free only the madman, His chains knitting still up into some graceful festoon?" So that for the Poet what remains but to leave Conservative and Destructive pulling one another's locks and ears off, as they will and can, (the ulterior issue being long since indubitable enough;) and, for his own part, strive day and night to forward the small suffering remnant of Productives, of those who, in true manful endeavour, were it under despotism or under sansculottism, create some what,—with whom, alone, in the end, does the hope of the world lie. Go thou and do like wise! Art thou called to politics, work therein, as this man would have done, like a real and not an imaginary workman. Understand well, meanwhile, that to no man is his political constitution "a life, but only a house wherein his life is led:" and hast thou a nobler task than such house-pargeting and smoke-doctoring, and pulling down of ancient rotten rat-inhabited walls, leave such to the proper craftsman; honour the higher Artist, and good-humouredly say with him: "All this is neither my coat nor my cake, And take no thought of the barges." Goethe's political practice, or rather no-practice, except that of self-defence, is a part of his conduct quite inseparably coherent with the Colite rest; a thing we could recommend to univer- ! To us, meanwhile, to all that wander in sal study, that the spirit of it might be under- darkness and seek light, as the one thing needstood by all men, and by all men imitated. ful, be this possession reckoned among our Nevertheless it is nowise alone on this revo- choicest blessings and distinctions. lutionary or "progress-of-the-species" side talem virum; learn of him, imitate, emulate that Goethe has significance; his Life and him! So did he catch the Music of the UniWork is no painted show but a solid reality, verse, and unfold it into clearness, and in and may be looked at with profit on all sides, authentic celestial tones bring it home to the from all imaginable points of view. Perennial, hearts of men, from amid that soul-confusing as a possession for ever, Goethe's History and Babylonish hubbub of this our new Tower-ofWritings abide there; a thousand-voiced Babel era! For now, too, as in that old time, "Melody of Wisdom," which he that has ears had men said to themselves: Come, let us may hear. What the experience of the most build a tower which shall reach to heaven; complexly-situated, deep-searching, every way and by our steam-engines, and logic-engines, far-experienced man has yielded him of insight, and skilful mechanism and manipulation, vanlies written for all men here. He who was of quish not only Physical Nature, but the divine compass to know and feel more than any other Spirit of Nature, and scale the empyrean itself. man, this is the record of his knowledge and Wherefore they must needs again be stricken feeling. "The deepest heart, the highest head with confusion of tongues (or of printingto scan" was not beyond his faculty; thus, presses,) and dispersed,—to other work; wherethen, did he scan and interpret: let many in also let us hope, their hammers and trowels generations listen, according to their want; let shall better avail them.the generation which has no need of listening, and nothing new to learn there, esteem itself a happy one. Of Goethe, with a feeling such as can be due to no other man, we now take farewell: vixit, vivit. CORN-LAW RHYMES.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1832.] SMELFUNGUS REDIVIVUS, throwing down his critical assaying-balance, some years ago, and taking leave of the Belles-Lettres function, expressed himself in this abrupt way: "The end having come, it is fit that we end. Poetry having ceased to be read, or published, or written, how can it continue to be reviewed? With your Lake Schools, and Border-Thief Schools, and Cockney and Satanic Schools, there has been enough to do; and now, all these Schools having burnt or smouldered themselves out, and left nothing but a widespread wreck of ashes, dust, and cinders, or perhaps dying embers, kicked to and fro under the feet of innumerable women and children in the Magazines, and at best blown here and there into transient sputters, with vapour enough, so as to form what you might name a boundless Green-sick, or New-Sentimental, or Sleep-Awake School,—what remains but to adjust ourselves to circumstances? Urge me not," continues the able Editor, suddenly changing his figure, "with considerations that Poetry, as the inward voice of Life, must be perennial, only dead in one form to become alive in another; that this still abundant deluge of Metre, seeing there must needs be fractions of Poetry floating scattered in it, ought still to be net-fished, at all events, surveyed and 1. Corn-Law Rhymes. Third Edition. 8vo. Lon don, 1831. 2. Love; a Poem. By the Author of Corn-Law Rhymes. Third Edition. 8vo. London, 1831. 3. The Village Patriarch; a Poem. By the Author of Corn-Law Rhymes. 12mo. London, 1831. taken note of: the survey of English Metre, at this epoch, perhaps transcends the human faculties; to hire out the reading of it, by estimate, at a remunerative rate per page, would, in few Quarters, reduce the cash-box of any extant Review to the verge of insolvency." What our distinguished contemporary has said remains said. Far be it from us to censure or counsel any able Editor; to draw aside the Editorial veil, and, officiously prying into his interior mysteries, impugn the laws he walks by! For Editors, as for others, there are times of perplexity, wherein the cunning of the wisest will scantily suffice his own wants, say nothing of his neighbour's. To us, on our side, meanwhile, it remains clear that Poetry, or were it but Metre, should nowise be altogether neglected. Surely it is the Reviewer's trade to sit watching, not only the tillage, crop-rotation, marketings, and good or evil husbandry of the Economic Earth, but also the weather-symptoms of the Literary Heaven, on which those former so much depend: if any promising or threatening meteoric phenomenon make its appearance, and he proclaim not tidings thereof, it is at his peril. Farther, be it considered how, in this singular poetic epoch, a small matter constitutes a novelty. If the whole welkin hang overcast in drizzly dinginess, the feeblest lightgleam, or speck of blue, cannot pass un heeded. The Works of this Corn-Law Rhymer we might liken rather to some little fraction of a rainbow: hues of joy and harmony, painted out of troublous tears. No round full bow, that this same aristocratic recognition, which indeed; gloriously spanning the heavens; shone on by the full sun; and, with sevenstriped, gold-crimson border (as is in some sort the office of Poetry) dividing Black from Brilliant: not such; alas, still far from it! Yet, in very truth, a little prismatic blush, glowing genuine among the wet clouds; which proceeds, if you will, from a sun cloud-hidden, yet indicates that a sun does shine, and above those vapours, a whole azure vault and celestial firmament stretch serene. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that here we have once more got sight of a Book calling itself Poetry, yet which actually is a kind of Book, and no empty paste-board Case, and simulacrum or "ghost-defunct" of a Book, such as is too often palmed on the world, and handed over Booksellers' counters, with a demand of real money for it, as if it too were a reality. The speaker here is of that singular class, who have something to say; whereby, though delivering himself in verse, and in these days, he does not deliver himself wholly in jargon, but articulately, and with a certain degree of meaning, that has been believed, and therefore is again believable. To some the wonder and interest will be heightened by another circumstance: that the speaker in question is not school-learned, or even furnished with pecuniary capital; is, indeed, a quite unmoneyed, russet-coated speaker; nothing or little other than a Sheffield worker in brass and iron, who describes himself as "one of the lower, little removed above the lowest class." Be of what class he may, the man is provided, as we can perceive, with a rational god-created soul; which too has fashioned itself into some clearness, some self-subsistence, and can actually see and know with its own organs; and in rugged substantial English, nay, with tones of poetic melody, utter forth what it has seen. looks down with an obliging smile from its throne, of bound Volumes and gold Ingots, and admits that it is wonderfully well for one of the uneducated classes, may be getting out of place. There are unhappy times in the world's history, when he that is the least educated will chiefly have to say that he is the least perverted; and with the multitude of false eye-glasses, convex, concave, green, even yellow, has not lost the natural use of his eyes. For a generation that reads Cobbett's Prose, and Burns's Poetry, it need be no miracle that here also is a man who can handle both pen and hammer like a man. Nevertheless, this serene-highness attitude and temper is so frequent, perhaps it were good to turn the tables for a moment, and see what look it has under that reverse aspect. How were it if we surmised, that for a man gifted with natural vigour, with a man's cha racter to be developed in him, more especially if in the way of Literature, as Thinker and Writer, it is actually, in these strange days, no special misfortune to be trained up among the Uneducated classes, and not among the Educated; but rather of two misfortunes the smaller? For all men doubtless obstructions abound; spiritual growth must be hampered and stunted, and has to struggle through with difficulty, if it do not wholly stop. We may grant too that, for a mediocre character, the continual training and tutoring, from languagemasters, dancing-masters, posture-masters of all sorts, hired and volunteer, which a high rank in any time and country assures, there will be produced a certain superiority, or at worst, air of superiority, over the corresponding mediocre character of low rank: thus we perceive the vulgar Do-nothing, as contrasted with the vulgar Drudge, is in general a much prettier man; with a wider, perhaps clearer, outlook into the distance; in innumerable su It used to be said that lions do not paint, that poor men do not write; but the case is alter-perficial matters, however it may be when we ing now. Here is a voice coming from the deep Cyclopean forges, where Labour, in real soot and sweat, beats with his thousand hammers "the red son of the furnace;" doing personal battle with Necessity, and her dark brute Powers, to make them reasonable and serviceable; an intelligible voice from the hitherto Mute and Irrational, to tell us at first hand how it is with him, what in very deed is the theorem of the world and of himself, which he, in those dim depths of his, in that wearied head of his, has put together. To which voice, in several respects significant enough, let good ear be given. Here too, be it premised, that nowise under the category of "Uneducated Poets," or in any fashion of dilettante patronage, can our Sheffield friend be produced. His position is unsuitable for that: so is ours. Genius, which the French lady declared to be of no sex, is much more certainly of no rank; neither when "the spark of Nature's fire" has been imparted, should Education take high airs in her artificial light,-which is too often but phosphorescence and putrescence. In fact, it now begins to be suspected here and there, we go deeper, he has a manifest advantage. But with the man of uncommon character, again, in whom a germ of irrepressible Force has been implanted, and will unfold itself into some sort of freedom,-altogether the reverse may hold. For such germs, too, there is undoubtedly enough, a proper soil where they will grow best, and an improper one where they will grow worst. True also, where there is a will, there is a way; where a genius has been given, a possibility, a certainty of its growing is also given. Yet often it seems as if the injudicious gardening and manuring were worse than none at all; and killed what the inclemencies of blind chance would have spared. We find accordingly that few Frederics or Napoleons, indeed none since the great Alexander, who unfortunately drank himself to death too soon for proving what lay in him, were nursed up with an eye to their vocation: mostly with an eye quite the other way, in the midst of isolation and pain, destitution and contradiction. Nay, in our own times, have we not seen two men of genius, a Byron and a Burns; they both, by mandate of Nature, struggle and must strug gle towards clear Manhood, stormfully enough, | ative Phoenix-ashes of the whole Past." All for the space of six-and-thirty years; yet only that men have devised, discovered, done, felt, the gifted Ploughman can partially prevail or imagined, lies recorded in Books; wherein therein the gifted Peer must toil and strive, whoso has learned the mystery of spelling and shoot out in wild efforts, yet die at last in printed letters, may find it, and appropriate it. Boyhood, with the promise of his Manhood Nay, what indeed is all this? As if it were still but announcing itself in the distance. by universities and libraries and lecture-rooms, Truly, as was once written, "it is only the ar- that man's Education, what we can call Edutichoke that will not grow except in gardens; cation, were accomplished: solely, or mainly, the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the by instilling the dead letter and record of other wilderness, yet on the wild soil it nourishes it- men's Force, that the living Force of a new self, and rises to be an oak." All woodmen, man were to be awakened, enkindled, and pumoreover, will tell you that fat manure is the rified into victorious clearness! Foolish Peruin of your oak; likewise that the thinner dant, that sittest there compassionately desand wilder your soil, the tougher, more iron- canting on the Learning of Shakspeare! textured is your timber,-though, unhappily, Shakspeare had penetrated into innumerable also, the smaller. So too with the spirits of things; far into Nature with her divine Splenmen: they become pure from their errors, by dours and infernal Terrors, her Ariel Melodies, suffering for them; he who has battled, were and mystic mandragora Moans; far into man's it only with poverty and hard toil, will be workings with Nature, into man's Art and found stronger, more expert, than he who Artifice; Shakspeare knew (kenned, which in could stay at home from the battle, concealed those days still partially meant can-ned) innuamong the Provision-wagons, or even not un- merable things; what men are, and what the watchfully" abiding by the stuff." In which world is, and how and what men aim at there, sense, an observer, not without experience of from the Dame Quickly of modern Eastcheap our time, has said: “Had I a man of clearly to the Cæsar of ancient Rome, over many developed character, (clear, sincere within its countries, over many centuries of all this limits,) of insight, courage, and real appli- he had the clearest understanding and concable force of head and of heart, to search structive comprehension; all this was his for; and not a man of luxuriously distorted Learning and Insight: what now is thine? character, with haughtiness for courage, and Insight into none of those things; perhaps, for insight and applicable force, speculation strictly considered, into no thing whatever: and plausible show of force,-it were rather solely into thy own sheepskin diplomas, fat among the lower than the higher classes that academic honours, into vocables and alphaI should look for him." betic letters, and but a little way into these!The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice. A hard saying, indeed, seems this same: that he whose other wants were all beforehand supplied; to whose capabilities no problem was presented except even this, How to cultivate them to best advantage, should attain less real culture than he whose first grand problem and obligation was nowise spiritual culture, but hard labour for his daily bread! Sad enough must the perversion be where preparations of such magnitude issue in abortion; and a so sumptuous Art with all its appliances can accomplish nothing, not so much as necessitous Nature would of herself have supplied! Nevertheless, so pregnant is Life with evil as with good; to such height in an age rich, plethorically overgrown with means, can means be accumulated in the wrong place, and immeasurably aggravate wrong tendencies, instead of righting them, this sad and strange result may actually turn out to have been realized. But what, after all, is meant by uneducated, in a time when Books have come into the world; come to the household furniture in every habitation of the civilized world? In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for the eye that will look well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself, if not resolved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed; if not to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to the opening of the inward sense, which is the far grander result. "In Books lie the cre And now, when kenning and can-ning have become two altogether different words; and this, the first principle of human culture, the foundation-stone of all but false imaginary culture, that men must, before every other thing, be trained to do somewhat, has been, for some generations, laid quietly on the shelf, with such result as we see,-consider what advantage those same uneducated Working classes have over the educated Unworking classes, in one particular; herein, namely, that they must work. To work! What incalculable sources of cultivation lie in that process, in that attempt; how it lays hold of the whole man, not of a small theoretical calculating fraction of him, but of the whole practical, doing and daring and enduring man; thereby to awaken dormant faculties, root out old errors, at every step! He that has done nothing has known nothing. Vain is it to sit scheming and plausibly discoursing: up and be doing! If thy knowledge be real, put it forth from thee: grapple with real Nature; try thy theories there, and see how they hold out. Do one thing, for the first time in thy life do a thing: a new light will rise to thee on the doing of all things whatsoever. Truly, a boundless significance lies in work: whereby the humblest craftsman comes to attain much, which is of indispensable use, but which he who is of no craft, were he never so high, runs the risk of miss ing. Once turn to Practice, Error and Truth will no longer consort together: the result of Error involves you in the square-root of a ne- brings, and as he brings it? Let us be thank : gative quantity; try to extract it, or any earthly substance or sustenance from it, if you will! The honourable Member can discover that "there is a reaction," and believe it, and wearisomely reason on it, in spite of all men, while he so pleases, for still his wine and his oil will not fail him but the sooty Brazier, who discovered that brass was green-cheese, has to act on his discovery; finds, therefore, that, singular as it may seem, brass cannot be masticated for dinner, green-cheese will not beat into fireproof dishes that such discovery, therefore, has no legs to stand on, and must even be let fall. Now, take this principle of difference through the entire lives of two men, and calculate what it will amount to! Necessity, moreover, which we here see as the mother of Accuracy, is well known as the mother of Invention. He who wants every thing, must know many things, do many things, to procure even a few: different enough with him, whose indispensable knowledge is this only, that a finger will pull the bell. ful, were it only for the day of small things. Something it is that we have lived to welcome once more a sweet Singer wearing the likeness of a Man. In humble guise, it is true, and of stature more or less marred in its development; yet not without a genial robustness, strength and valour, built on honesty and love; on the whole, a genuine man, with somewhat of the eye and speech and bearing that beseems a man. To whom all other genuine men, how different soever in subordinate particulars, can gladly hold out the right hand of fellowship. The great excellence of our Rhymer, be it understood then, we take to consist even in this, often hinted at already, that he is genuine. Here is an earnest, truth-speaking man; no theorizer, sentimentalizer, but a practical man of work and endeavour, man of sufferance and endurance. The thing that he speaks is not a hearsay, but a thing which he has himself known, and by experience become assured of. He has used his eyes for seeing; uses his So that, for all men who live, we may con- tongue for declaring what he has seen. His clude, this Life of Man is a school, wherein voice, therefore, among the many noises of our the naturally foolish will continue foolish Planet, will deserve its place better than the though you bray him in a mortar, but the natu- most; will be well worth some attention. rally wise will gather wisdom under every dis- Whom else should we attend to but such? advantage. What, meanwhile, must be the The man who speaks with some half shadow condition of an Era, when the highest advan- of a Belief, and supposes, and inclines to tages there become perverted into drawbacks; think; and considers not with undivided soul, when, if you take two men of genius, and put what is true, but only what is plausible, and the one between the handles of a plough, and will find audience and recompense; do we not mount the other between the painted coronets meet him at every street-turning, on all highof a coach-and-four, and bid them both move ways and byways; is he not stale, unprofitalong, the former shall arrive a Burns, the able, ineffectual, wholly grown a weariness of latter a Byron: two men of talent, and put the the flesh? So rare is his opposite in any rank one into a Printer's chapel, full of lampblack, of Literature, or of Life, so very rare, that tyrannous usage, hard toil, and the other into even in the lowest he is precious. The auOxford universities, with lexicons and libraries, thentic insight and experience of any human and hired expositors and sumptuous endow-soul, were it but insight and experience in ments, the former shall come out a Dr. Franklin, the latter a Dr. Parr!— However, we are not here to write an Essay on Education, or sing misereres over a "world in its dotage," but simply to say that our CornLaw Rhymer, educated or uneducated as Nature and Art have made him, asks not the smallest patronage or compassion for his rhymes, professes not the smallest contrition for them. Nowise in such attitude does he present himself; not supplicatory, deprecatory, but sturdy, defiant, almost menacing. Wherefore, indeed, should he supplicate or deprecate? | It is out of the abundance of the heart that he has spoken; praise or blame cannot make it truer or falser than it already is. By the grace of God this man is sufficient for himself; by his skill in metallurgy, can beat out a toilsome but a manful living, go how it may; has arrived too at that singular audacity of believing what he knows, and acting on it, or writing on it, or thinking on it, without leave asked of any one: there shall he stand, and work, with head and with hand, for himself and the world; blown about by no wind of doctrine; frightened at no Reviewer's shadow; having, in his time, looked substances enough in the face, and remained unfrightened. What is left, therefore, but to take what he hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement, how small soever: palabra, again, were it a supreme pontiff's, is wind merely, and nothing, or less than nothing. To a considerable degree, this man, we say, has worked himself loose from cant, and conjectural halfness, idle pretences and hallucinations, into a condition of Sincerity. Wherein, perhaps, as above argued, his hard social environment, and fortune to be “a workman born," which brought so many other retardations with it, may have forwarded and accelerated him. That a man, Workman, or Idleman, encompassed, as in these days, with persons in a state of willing or unwilling Insincerity, and necessitated, as man is to learn whatever he does traditionally learn by imitating these, should nevertheless shake off Insincerity, and struggle out from that dim pestiferous marshatmosphere, into a clearer and purer height,betokens in him a certain originality; in which rare gift Force of all kinds is presupposed. To our Rhymer, accordingly, as hinted more than once, vision and determination have not been denied: a rugged, homegrown understanding is in him; whereby, in his own way, he has mastered this and that, and looked into various things, in general honesty and to purpose, |