Reality, as they stand written for us in Professor | far that your Machinery' is avowedly niecha Gottfried Sauerteig's Esthetische Springwürzel: nical and unbelieved.-what is it else, if we a Work, perhaps, as yet new to most English dare tell ourselves the truth, but a miserable, readers. The Professor and Doctor is not a meaningless Deception kept up by old use and man whom we can praise without reservation; neither shall we say that his Springwürzel (a sort of magical pick-locks, as he affectedly names them) are adequate to "start" every bolt that locks up an æsthetic mystery; nevertheless, in his crabbed, one-sided way, he sometimes hits masses of the truth. We endeavour to translate faithfully, and trust the reader will find it worth serious perusal :

"The significance, even for poetic purposes," says Sauerteig, "that lies in REALITY, is too apt to escape us; is perhaps only now beginning to be discerned. When we named Rousseau's Confessions an elegiaco-didactic Poem, we meant more than an empty figure of speech; we meant an historical scientific fact.

"Fiction, while the feigner of it knows that he is feigning, partakes, more than we suspect, of the nature of lying; and has ever an, in some degree, unsatisfactory character. All Mythologies were once Philosophies; were believed: the Epic Poems of old time, so long as they continued epic, and had any complete impressiveness, were Histories, and understood to be narratives of facts. In so far as Homer employed his gods as mere ornamental fringes, and had not himself, or at least did not expect his hearers to have, a belief that they were real agents in those antique doings; so far did he fail to be genuine; so far was he a partially hollow and false singer; and sang to please only a portion of man's mind, not the whole thereof. Imagination is, after all, but a poor matter when it must part company with Understanding, and even front it hostilely in flat contradiction. Our mind is divided in twain: there is contest; wherein that which is weaker must needs come to the worse. Now of all feelings, states, principles, call it what you will, in man's mind, is not Belief the clearest, strongest; against which all others contend in vain Belief is, indeed, the beginning and first condition of all spiritual Force whatsoever: only in so far as Imagination, were it but momentarily, is believed, can there be any use or meaning in it, any enjoyment of it. And what is momentary Belief? The enjoyment of a moWhereas a perennial Belief were enjoyment perennially, and with the whole united soul.

ment.

"It is thus that I judge of the Supernatural in an Epic Poem; and would say, the instant it had ceased to be authentically supernatural, and become what you call Machinery;' sweep it out of sight (schaff'es mir vom Halse)! Of a truth, that same Machinery,' about which the critics make such hubbub, was well named Machinery for it is in very deed mechanical, nowise inspired or poetical. Neither for us is there the smallest æsthetic enjoyment in it; save only in this way: that we believe it to have been believed,―by the Singer or his Hearers; into whose case we now laboriously struggle to transport ourselves; and so, with stinted enough result, catch some reflex of the ReaIity, which for them was wholly real, and visible face to face. Whenever it has come so

wont alone? If the gods of an Iliad are to us no longer authentic Shapes of Terror, heartstirring, heart-appalling, but only vague-glit tering Shadows,-what must the dead Pagan gods of an Epigoniad be, the dead-living Pagan-Christian gods of a Lusiad, the concreteabstract, evangelical-metaphysical gods of a Paradise Lost? Superannuated lumber! Cast raiment, at best; in which some poor mime, strutting and swaggering, may or may not set forth new noble Human Feelings, (again a Reality,) and so secure, or not secure, our pardon of such hoydenish masking,-for which, in any case, he has a pardon to ask.

"True enough, none but the earliest Epic Poems can claim this distinction of entire credibility, of Reality: after an Iliad, a Shaster, a Koran, and other the like primitive performances, the rest seem, by this rule of mine, to be altogether excluded from the list. Accordingly, what are all the rest from Virgil's Eneid downwards, in comparison ?-Frosty, artificial, heterogeneous things; more of gumflowers than of roses; at best, of the two mixed incoherently together: to some of which, indeed, it were hard to deny the title of Poems; yet to no one of which can that title belong in any sense even resembling the old high one it, in those old days, conveyed,-when the epithet 'divine' or 'sacred,' as applied to the uttered Word of man, was not a vain metaphor, a vain sound, but a real name with meaning. Thus, too, the farther we recede from those early days, when Poetry, as true Poetry is always, was still sacred or divine, and inspired, (what ours, in great part, only pretends to be,)-the more impossible becomes it to produce any, we say not true Poetry, but tolerable semblance of such; the hollower, in particular, grow all manner of Epics; till at length, as in this generation, the very name of Epic sets men a-yawning, the announcement of a new Epic is received as a public calamity.

"But what if the impossible being once for all quite discarded, the probable be well adhered to; how stands it with fiction then? Why, then, I would say, the evil is much mended, but nowise completely cured. We have then, in place of the wholly dead modern Epic, the partially living modern Novel; to which latter it is much easier to lend that above-mentioned, so essential momentary credence,' than to the former: indeed infinitely easier: for the former being flatly incredible, no mortal can for a moment credit it, for a moment enjoy it. Thus, here and there, a Tom Jones, a Meister, a Crusoe, will yield no little solacement to the minds of men: though still immeasurably less than a Reality would, were the significance thereof as impressively unfolded, were the genius that could so unfold it once given us by the kind Heavens. Neither say thou that proper Realities are wanting: for Man's Life, now as of old, is the genuine work of God; wherever there is a Man, a God also is revealed, and all that is Godlike a whole epitome of the Infinite, with its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every

:

etic efforts, nor can Herr Sauerteig be too loud in its praises. But, on the other hand, whether such effort is still possible for man, Herr Sauerteig and the bulk of the world are probably at issue,-and will probably continue so till that same "Revelation" or new "Invention of Reality," of the sort he desiderates, shall itself make its appearance.

Man. Only, alas, that the Seer to discern this | Truth, what we can call a Revelation; which same Godlike, and with fit utterance unfold it last does undoubtedly transcend all other pofor us, is wanting, and may long be wanting! "Nay, a question arises on us here, wherein the whole German reading-world will eagerly Join: Whether man can any longer be so interested by the spoken Word, as he often was in those primeval days, when, rapt away by its inscrutable power, he pronounced it, in such dialect as he had, to be transcendental, (to transcend all measure,) to be sacred, prophetic, Meanwhile, quitting these airy regions, let and the inspiration of a god? For myself, I, any one bethink him how impressive the (ich meines Ortes,) by faith or by insight, do smallest historical fact may become, as conheartily understand that the answer to such trasted with the grandest fictitious event; what question will be, Yea! For never, that I could an incalculable force lies for us in this consiin searching find out, has Man been, by Time deration: The Thing which I here hold imaged which devours so much, deprivated of any fa- in my mind did actually occur; was, in very culty whatsoever that he in any era was pos- truth, an element in the system of the All, sessed of. To my seeming, the babe born yester- whereof I too form part; had therefore, and day has all the organs of Body, Soul, and Spirit, has, through all time, an authentic being; is and in exactly the same combination and entire- not a dream, but a reality! We ourselves can ness, that the oldest Pelasgic Greek, or Meso- remember reading in Lord Clarendon, with feelpotamian Patriarch, or Father Adam himself ings perhaps somehow accidentally opened to could boast of. Ten fingers, one heart with it,-certainly with a depth of impression venous and arterial blood therein, still belong strange to us then and now,-that insignifito man that is born of woman: when did he cant looking passage, where Charles, after the lose any of his spiritual Endowments either: battle of Worcester, glides down, with Squire above all, his highest spiritual Endowment, that Careless, from the Royal Oak, at night-fall, of revealing Poetic Beauty, and of adequately being hungry: how, "making a shift to get receiving the same? Not the material, not the over hedges and ditches, after walking at least susceptibility is wanting; only the poet, or long eight or nine miles, which were the more series of Poets, to work on these. True, alas grievous to the King by the weight of his too true, the Poet is still utterly wanting, or all boots, (for he could not put them off, when he but utterly: nevertheless have we not centuries cut off his hair, for want of shoes,) before enough before us to produce him in? Him and morning they came to a poor cottage, the owner much else!-I, for the present, will but predict whereof being a Roman Catholic was known to Carethat chiefly by working more and more on less." How this poor drudge, being knocked REALITY, and evolving more and more wisely up from his snoring, "carried them into a litits inexhaustible meanings; and, in brief, speak-tle barn full of hay, which was a better lodging forth in fit utterance whatsoever our whole soul believes, and ceasing to speak forth what thing soever our whole soul does not believe,will this high emprise be accomplished, or approximated to."

These notable, and not unfounded, though partial and deep-seeing rather than wide-seeing observations on the great import of REALITY, considered even as a poetic material, we have inserted the more willingly, because a transient feeling to the same purpose may often have suggested itself to many readers; and, on the whole, it is good that every reader and every writer understand, with all intensity of conviction, what quite infinite worth lies in Truth; how all-pervading, omnipotent, in man's mind, is the thing we name Belief. For the rest, Herr Sauerteig, though one-sided, on this matter of Reality, seems heartily persuaded, and is not perhaps so ignorant as he looks. It cannot be unknown to him, for example, what noise is made about "Invention ;" what a supreme rank this faculty is reckoned to hold in the poetic endowment. Great truly is Invention; nevertheless, that is but a poor exercise of it with which Belief is not concerned. "An Irishman with whisky in his head," as poor Byron said, will invent you, in this kind, till there is enough and to spare. Nay, perhaps, if we consider well, the highest exercise of Invention has, in very deed, nothing to do with Fiction; but is an invention of new

ing than he had for himself;" and by and by, not without difficulty, brought his Majesty "a piece of bread and a great pot of butter-milk," saying candidly that "he himself lived by his daily labour, and that what he had brought him was the fare he and his wife had:" on which nourishing diet his Majesty, "staying upon the haymow," feeds thankfully for two days; and then departs, under new guidance, having first changed clothes down to the very shirt and "old pair of shoes," with his landlord; and so as worthy Bunyan has it, “goes on his way, and sees him no more."* Singu lar enough if we will think of it! This then was a genuine flesh-and-blood Rustic of the year 1651: he did actually swallow bread and butter-milk (not having ale and bacon,) and do field labour; with these hob-nailed "shoes" has sprawled through mud-roads in winter, and, jocund or not, driven his team a-field in summer; he made bargains; had chafferings and higglings, now a sore heart, now a glad one; was born; was a son, was a father;toiled in many ways, being forced to it, till the strength was all worn out of him : and thenlay down "to rest his galled back," and sleep there till the long-distant morning!-How comes it, that he alone of all the British rustics who tilled and lived along with him, on whom the blessed sun on that same “fifth

History of the Rebellion, iii. 625.

day of September" was shining, should have chanced to rise on us; that this poor pair of clouted Shoes, out of a million million hides that have been tanned, and cut, and worn, should still subsist, and hang visibly together? We see him but for a moment; for one moment, the blanket of the Night is rent asunder, so that we behold and see, and then closes over him-for ever.

for himself what it is that gives such pitiful incidents their memorableness; his aim likewise is, above all things, to be memorable. Half the effect, we already perceive, depends on the object, on its being real, on its being really seen. The other half will depend on the observer; and the question now is: How are real objects to be so seen; on what quality of observing, or of style in describing, does this so intense picSo too, in some Boswell's Life of Johnson, how torial power depend? Often a slight circumindelible, and magically bright, does many a stance contributes curiously to the result: some little Reality dwell in our remembrance! | little, and perhaps to appearance accidental, feaThere is no need that the personages on the ture is presented; a light-gleam, which instanscene be a King and Clown; that the scene taneously excites the mind, and urges it to combe the Forest of the Royal Oak, "on the bor-plete the picture, and evolve the meaning, ders of Staffordshire:" need only that the thereof for itself. By critics, such light-gleams scene lie on this old firm Earth of ours, where and their almost magical influence have frewe also have so surprisingly arrived; that the quently been noted: but the power to produce personages be men, and seen with the eyes of a such, to select such features as will produce man. Foolish enough, how some slight, per- them, is generally treated as a knack, or trick haps mean and even ugly incident-if real, and of the trade, a secret for being "graphic;" well presented-will fix itself in a susceptive whereas these magical feats are, in truth, memory, and lie ennobled there; silvered over rather inspirations; and the gift of performing with the pale cast of thought, with the pathos them, which acts unconsciously, without forewhich belongs only to the Dead. For the thought, and as if by nature alone, is properly Past is all holy to us; the Dead are all holy, a genius for description. even they that were base and wicked while One grand, invaluable secret there is, howalive. Their baseness and wickedness was ever, which includes all the rest, and, what is not They, was but the heavy unmanageable comfortable, lies clearly in every man's power: Environment that lay round them, with which To have an open, loving heart, and what follows they fought unprevailing: they (the ethereal from the possession of such! Truly has it been God-given Force that dwelt in them, and was said, emphatically in these days ought it to be their Self) have now shuffled off that heavy repeated: A loving heart is the beginning of Environment, and are free and pure: their all Knowledge. This it is that opens the whole life-long Battle, go how it might, is all ended, mind, quickens every faculty of the intellect to with many wounds or with fewer; they have do its fit work, that of knowing; and therefrom, been recalled from it, and the once harsh-jar- by sure consequence, of vividly uttering forth. ring battle-field has become a silent awe-in- Other secret for being "graphic" is there none, spiring Golgotha, and Gottesacker-Field of worth having: but this is an all-sufficient one. God!-Boswell relates this in itself smallest See, for example, what a small Boswell can and poorest of occurrences: "As we walked do! Hereby, indeed, is the whole man made a along the Strand to-night, arm in arm, a wo-living mirror, wherein the wonders of this everman of the town accosted us in the usual enticing manner. No, no, my girl,' said Johnson; it won't do.' He, however, did not treat her with harshness, and we talked of the wretched life of such women." Strange power of Reality! Not even this poorest of occurrences, but now, after seventy years are come and gone, has a meaning for us. Do but consider that it is true; that it did in very deed occur! That unhappy Outcast, with all her Here, too, may we not pause for an instant, sins and woes, her lawless desires, too com- and make a practical reflection? Considering plex mischances, her wailings and her riot- the multitude of mortals that handle the Pen ings, has departed utterly: alas! her siren in these days, and can mostly spell, and write finery has got all besmutched; ground, gene- without daring violations of grammar, the rations since, into dust and smoke, of her de- question naturally arises: How is it, then, that graded body, and whole miserable earthly no Work proceeds from them, bearing any existence, all is away: she is no longer here, stamp of authenticity and permanence; of but far from us, in the bosom of Eternity, worth for more than one day? Ship-loads of whence we too came, whither we too are Fashionable Novels, Sentimental Rhymes, bound! Johnson said, "No, no, my girl; it Tragedies, Farces, Diaries of Travel, Tales by won't do ;" and then "we talked ;"-and here- flood and field, are swallowed monthly into the with the wretched one, seen but for the twink- bottomless Pool; still does the Press toil: inling of an eye, passes on into the utter Dark-numerable Paper-makers, Compositors, Printness. No high Calista, that ever issued from ers' Devils, Bookbinders, and Hawkers grown Story-teller's brain, will impress us more deeply than this meanest of the mean; and for a good reason: That she issued from the Maker of Men.

It is well worth the Artist's while to examine

wonderful Universe are, in their true light, (which is ever a magical, miraculous one,) represented, and reflected back on us. It has been said, the heart sees farther than the head:" but, indeed, without the seeing heart there is no true seeing for the head so much as possible; all is mere oversight, hallucination, and vain superficial phantasmagoria, which can permanently profit no one.

hoarse with loud proclaiming, rest not from their labour; and still, in torrents, rushes on the great array of Publications, unpausing, to their final home; and still Oblivion, like the Grave, cries: Give! Give! How is it that of

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.*

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1832.]

these. Let us admit, too, that he has been very diligent; seems to have made inquiries perseveringly far and near; as well as drawn freely from his own ample stores; and so tells us to

Esop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise! Yet which of us, in his way, has not sometimes been guilty of the like? Nay, so foolish are men, they often, stand-appearance quite accurately, much that he has ing at ease and as spectators on the highway, will volunteer to exclaim of the Fly (not being tempted to it, as he was) exactly to the same purport: What a dust thou dost raise! Smallest of mortals, when mounted aloft by circumstances, come to seem great; smallest of phenomena connected with them are treated as important, and must be sedulously scanned, and commented upon with loud emphasis.

That Mr. Croker should undertake to edit Boswell's Life of Johnson, was a praiseworthy but no miraculous procedure: neither could the accomplishment of such undertaking be, in an epoch like ours, anywise regarded as an | event in Universal History; the right or the wrong accomplishment thereof was, in very truth, one of the most insignificant of things. However, it sat in a great environment, on the axle of a high, fast-rolling, parliamentary chariot; and all the world has exclaimed over it, and the author of it: What a dust thou dost raise! List to the Reviews, and "Organs of Public Opinion," from the National Omnibus upwards; criticisms, vituperative and laudatory, stream from their thousand throats of brass and leather; here chanting lo paans; there grating harsh thunder, or vehement shrewmouse squeaklets; till the general ear is filled, and nigh deafened. Boswell's Book had a noiseless birth, compared with this Edition of Boswell's Book. On the other hand, consider with what degree of tumult Paradise Lost and the Iliad were ushered in!

not found lying on the highways, but has had to seek and dig for. Numerous persons, chiefly of quality, rise to view in these Notes; when and also where they came into this world, received office or promotion, died, and were buried (only what they did, except digest, remaining often too mysterious,)-is faithfully enough set down. Whereby all that their various and doubtless widely-scattered Tombstones could have taught us, is here presented, at once, in a bound Book. Thus is an indubitable conquest, though a small one, gained over our great enemy, the all-destroyer Time; and as such shall have welcome.

Nay, let us say that the spirit of Diligence, exhibited in this department, seems to attend the Editor honestly throughout: he keeps everywhere a watchful outlook on his Text; reconciling the distant with the present, or at least indicating and regretting their irreconcilability; elucidating, smoothing down; in all ways, exercising, according to ability, a strict editorial superintendence. Any little Latin or even Greek phrase is rendered into English, in general with perfect accuracy; citations are verified, or else corrected. On all hands, moreover, there is a certain spirit of Decency maintained and insisted on: if not good morals, yet good manners, are rigidly inculcated; if not Religion, and a devout Christian heart, yet Orthodoxy, and a cleanly, Shovelhatted look,-which, as compared with flat Nothing, is something very considerable. To swell such clamor, or prolong it beyond Grant too, as no contemptible triumph of this the time, seems nowise our vocation here. At latter spirit, that though the Editor is known most, perhaps we are bound to inform simple as a decided Politician and Party-man, he has readers, with all possible brevity, what manner carefully subdued all temptations to transgress of performance and Edition this is; especial-in that way: except by quite involuntary indily, whether, in our poor judgment, it is worth laying out three pounds sterling upon, yea or not. The whole business belongs distinctly to the lower ranks of the trivial class.

Let us admit, then, with great readiness, that as Johnson once said, and the Editor repeats, "all works which describe manners, require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less ;" that, accordingly, a new Edition of Boswell was desirable; and that Mr. Croker has given one. For this task he had various qualifications: his own voluntary resolution to do it; his high place in society unlocking all manner of ar chives to him; not less, perhaps, a certain anecdotico-biographic turn of mind, natural or acquired; we mean, a love for the minuter events of History, and talent for investigating

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. including a Tour to the Hebrides. By James Boswell, Esq.-A new Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F. R. S. 5 vols. London, 1831.

cations, and rather as it were the pervading temper of the whole, you could not discover on which side of the Political Warfare he is enlisted and fights. This, as we said, is a great triumph of the Decency-principle: for this, and for these other graces and performances, let the Editor have all praise.

Herewith, however, must the praise unfortunately terminate. Diligence, Fidelity, De. cency, are good and indispensable; yet, without Faculty, without Light, they will not do the work. Along with that Tombstone information, perhaps even without much of it, we could have liked to gain some answer, in one way or other, to this wide question: What and how was English Life in Johnson's time; wherein has ours grown to differ therefrom? In other words: What things have we to forget, what to fancy and remember, before we, from such distance, can put ourselves in Johnson's place and so, in the full sense of