controversy; and, after professing her unquali- | is that which enables him to receive the fied preference of a piece compounded of great greatest quantity of pleasure from the greatest blemishes and great beauties, compared with number of things. With regard to the author one free of faults, but distinguished by little again, or artist of any other description, who excellence, proceeds very wisely to remark, pretends to bestow the pleasure, his object of that it would be still better if the great faults course should be, to give as much, and to as were corrected-and that it is but a bad spe- many persons as possible; and especially to cies of independence which manifests itself those who, from their rank and education, are by being occasionally offensive: and then she likely to regulate the judgment of the reattacks Shakespeare, as usual, for interspers- mainder. It is his business therefore to as ing so many puerilities and absurdities and certain what does please the greater part of grossiéretés with his sublime and pathetic such persons; and to fashion his productions passages. according to the rules of taste which may be Now, there is no denying, that a poem deduced from that discovery. Now, we humwould be better without faults; and that ju- bly conceive it to be a complete and final jusdicious painters use shades only to set off tification for the whole body of the English their pictures, and not blots. But there are nation, who understand French as well as two little remarks to be made. In the first English and yet prefer Shakespeare to Racine, place, if it be true that an extreme horror at just to state, modestly and firmly, the fact of faults is usually found to exclude a variety that preference; and to declare, that their of beauties, and that a poet can scarcely ever habits and tempers, and studies and occupaattain the higher excellencies of his art, with- tions, have been such as to make them receive out some degree of that rash and headlong far greater pleasure from the more varied confidence which naturally gives rise to blem-imagery-the more flexible tone-the closer ishes and excesses, it may not be quite so imitation of nature-the more rapid succesabsurd to hold, that this temperament and sion of incident, and vehement bursts of pasdisposition, with all its hazards, deserves en- sion of the English author, than from the couragement, and to speak with indulgence unvarying majesty-the elaborate argument of faults that are symptomatic of great beau--and epigrammatic poetry of the French draties. There is a primitive fertility of soil that matist. For the taste of the nation at large, naturally throws out weeds along with the we really cannot conceive that any other apolmatchless crops which it alone can bear; and ogy can be necessary; and though it might we might reasonably grudge to reduce its be very desirable that they should agree with vigour for the sake of purifying its produce. their neighbours upon this point, as well as There are certain savage virtues that can upon many others, we can scarcely imagine carcely exist in perfection in a state of com- any upon which their disagreement could be plete civilization; and, as specimens at least, attended with less inconvenience. For the we may wish to preserve, and be allowed to authors, again, that have the misfortune not admire them, with all their exceptionable to be so much admired by the adjoining naaccompaniments. It is easy to say, that tions as by their own countrymen, we can there is no necessary connection between the only suggest, that this is a very common misfaults and the beauties of our great dramat- fortune; and that, as they wrote in the lanist; but the fact is, that since men have be-guage of their country, and will probably be come afraid of falling into his faults, no one has approached to his beauties; and we have already endeavoured, on more than one occasion, to explain the grounds of this con

nection.

But our second remark is, hat it is not quite fair to represent the controversy as arising altogether from the excessive and undue indulgence of the English for the admitted faults of their favourite authors, and their persisting to idolize Shakespeare in spite of his buffooneries, extravagancies, and bombast. We admit that he has those faults; and, as they are faults, that he would be better without them but there are many more things which the French call faults, but which we deliberately consider as beauties. And here, we suspect, the dispute does not admit of any settlement: Because both parties, if they are really sincere in their opinion, and understand the subject of discussion, may very well be right, and for that very reason incapable of coming to any agreement. We consider taste to mean merely the faculty of receiving pleasure from beauty; and, so far as relates to the person receiving that pleasure, we apprehend it to admit of little doubt, that the best taste

always most read within its limits, it was not perhaps altogether unwise or unpardonable in them to accommodate themselves to the taste which was there established.

Madame de Staël has a separate chapter upon Shakespeare; in which she gives him full credit for originality, and for having been the first, and perhaps the only considerable author, who did not copy from preceding models, but drew all his greater conceptions directly from his own feelings and observations. His representations of human passions, therefore, are incomparably more true and touching, than those of any other writer; and are presented, moreover, in a far more elementary and simple state, and without any of those circumstances of dignity or contrast with which feebler artists seem to have held it indispensable that they should be set off. She considers him as the first writer who has ventured upon the picture of overwhelming sorrow and hopeless wretchedness;-that de solation of the heart, which arises from the long contemplation of ruined hopes and irre parable privation;-that inward anguish and bitterness of soul which the public life of the ancients prevented them from feeling, and

their stoical precepts interdicted them from | III.; for all which we shall leave it to our disclosing. The German poets, and some readers to make the best apology they can. succeeding English authors, have produced a Madame de Staël thinks very poorly of our prodigious effect by the use of this powerful talent for pleasantry; and is not very successinstrument; but nothing can exceed the orig-ful in her delineation of what we call humour. inal sketches of it exhibited in Lear, in Ham- The greater part of the nation, she says, lives let, in Timon of Athens, and in some parts of either in the serious occupations of business Richard and of Othello. He has likewise and politics, or in the tranquil circle of family drawn, with the hand of a master, the strug-affection. What is called society, therefore, gles of nature under the immediate contem- has scarcely any existence among them; and plation of approaching death; and that with- yet it is in that sphere of idleness and frivolity, out those supports of conscious dignity or that taste is matured, and gaiety made eleexertion with which all other writers have gant. They are not at all trained, therefore, thought it necessary to blend or to contrast to observe the finer shades of character and their pictures of this emotion. But it is in the of ridicule in real life; and consequently neiexcitement of the two proper tragic passions ther think of delineating them in their comof pity and terror, that the force and origin- positions, nor are aware of their merit when ality of his genius are most conspicuous; pity delineated by others. We are unwilling to not only for youth and innocence, and noble- think this perfectly just; and are encouraged ness and virtue, as in Imogen and Desdemona, to suspect, that the judgment of the ingenious Brutus and Cariolanus-but for insignificant author may not be altogether without appeal persons like the Duke of Clarence, or profli- on such a subject, by observing, that she repgate and worthless ones like Cardinal Wolsey; resents the paltry flippancy and disgusting -terror, in all its forms, from the madness affectation of Sterne, as the purest specimen of Lear, and the ghost of Hamlet, up to the of true English humour; and classes the chardreams of Richard and Lady Macbeth. In acter of Falstaff along with that of Pistol, as comparing the effects of such delineations parallel instances of that vulgar caricature with the superstitious horror excited by the from which the English still condescend to mythological persons of the Greek drama, the receive amusement. It is more just, how vast superiority of the English author cannot ever, to observe, that the humour, and in fail to be apparent. Instead of supernatural general the pleasantry, of our nation, has very beings interfering with their cold and impas- frequently a sarcastic and even misanthropic sive natures, in the agitations and sufferings character, which distinguishes it from the of men, Shakespeare employs only the magic mere playfulness and constitutional gaiety of of powerful passion, and of the illusions to our French neighbours; and that we have not, which it gives birth. The phantoms and ap- for the most part, succeeded in our attempts paritions which he occasionally conjures up to imitate the graceful pleasantry and agreeto add to the terror of the scene, are in truth able trifling of that ingenious people. We bat a bolder personification of those troubled develope every thing, she maintains, a great dreams, and thick coming fancies, which har- deal too laboriously; and give a harsh and row up the souls of guilt and agony and painful colouring to those parts which the even his sorcery and incantation are but traits very nature of their style requires to be but of the credulity and superstition which so lightly touched and delicately shaded. We frequently accompany the exaltation of the never think we are heard, unless we cry out; greater passions. But perhaps the most minor understood, if we leave any thing unraculous of all his representations, are those in which he has pourtrayed the wanderings of a disordered intellect, and especially of that species of distraction which arises from excess of sorrow. Instead of being purely terrible, those scenes are, in his hands, in the highest degree touching and pathetic; and the wildness of fancy, and richness of imagery which they display, are even less admirable than the constant, though incoherent expression of that one sentiment of agonizing grief which had overborne all the faculties of the soul.

Such are the chief beauties which Madame de Staël discovers in Shakespeare; and though they are not perhaps exactly what an English reader would think of bringing most into notice, it is interesting to know what strikes an intelligent foreigner, in pieces with which we ourselves have always been familiar. The chief fault she imputes to him, besides the mixture of low buffoonery with tragic passion, are occasional tediousness and repetition-too much visible horror and bloodshed-and the personal deformity of Caliban and Richard

told :—an excess of diffuseness and labour which could never be endured out of our own island. It is curious enough, indeed, to observe, that men who have nothing to do with their time but to get rid of it in amusement, are always much more impatient of any kind of tediousness in their entertainers, than those who have but little leisure for entertainment. The reason is, we suppose, that familiarity with business makes the latter habitually tolerant of tediousness; while the less engrossing pursuits of the former, in order to retain any degree of interest, require a very rapid succession and constant variety. On the whole, we do not think Madame de Staël very correct in her notions of English gaiety; and cannot help suspecting, that she must have been in some respects unfortunate in her society, during her visit to this country.

Her estimate of our poetry, and of our works of fiction, is more unexceptionable. She does not allow us much invention, in the strictest sense of that word; and still less grace and sprightliness in works of a light and playful character: But, for glowing descriptions of

nature--for the pure language of the affections-for profound thought and lofty sentiment, she admits, that the greater poets of England are superior to any thing else that the world has yet exhibited. Milton, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, and Gray, seem to be her chief favourites. We do not find that Cowper, or any later author, had come to her knowledge. The best of them, however, she says, are chargeable with the national faults of exaggeration, and 'des longueurs.' She overrates the merit, we think, of our novels, when she says, that with the exception of La Nouvelle Heloise, which belongs exclusively to the genius of the singular individual who produced it, and has no relation to the character of his nation, all the novels that have succeeded in France have been undisguised imitations of the English, to whom she ascribes, without qualification, the honour of that meri

torious invention.

terre, chacun pouvant agir d'une manière quelcon que sur les résolutions de ses représentans, l'on prend l'habitude de comparer la pensée avec l'action, et l'on s'accoutume à l'amour du bien public par l'espoir d'y contribuer."-Vol. ii. pp. 5-7.

She returns again, however, to her former imputation of "longueurs," and repetitions, and excessive development; and maintain, that the greater part of English books are obscure, in consequence of their prolixity, and of the author's extreme anxiety to be perfectly understood. We suspect a part of the confu sion is owing to her want of familiarity with the language. In point of fact, we know of no French writer on similar subjects so concise as Hume or Smith; and believe we might retort the charge of longueurs, in the name of the whole English nation, upon one half of the French classic authors-upon their Rollin and their Masillon-their D'Alembert-their Buffon-their Helvetius-and the whole tribe The last chapter upon English literature re- of their dramatic writers:-while as to repelates to their philosophy and eloquence; and titions, we are quite certain that there is no here, though the learned author seems aware one English author who has repeated the same of the transcendent merit of Bacon, we rather ideas half so often as Voltaire himself-certhink she proves herself to be unacquainted tainly not the most tedious of the fraternity. with that of his illustrious contemporaries or She complains also of a want of warmth and immediate successors, Hooker, Taylor, and animation in our prose writers. And it is Barrow-for she places Bacon as the only lu- true that Addison and Shaftesbury are cold; minary of our sphere in the period preceding but the imputation only convinces us the the Usurpation, and considers the true era of more, that she is unacquainted with the writ British philosophy as commencing with the ings of Jeremy Taylor, and that illustrious reign of King William. We cannot admit the train of successors which has terminated, we accuracy of this intellectual chronology. The fear, in the person of Burke. Our debates in character of the English philosophy is to be parliament, she says, are more remarkable for patient, profound, and always guided by a their logic than their rhetoric; and have more view to utility. They have done wonders in in them of sarcasm, than of poetical figure the metaphysic of the understanding; but and ornament. And no doubt it is so-and have not equalled De Retz, La Bruyère, or must be so-in all the discussions of permaeven Montaigne, in their analysis of the pas-nent assemblies, occupied from day to day, sions and dispositions. The following short passage is full of sagacity and talent.

"Les Anglais ont avancé dans les sciences phi losophiques comme dans l'industrie commerciale, à l'aide de la paience et du temps. Le penchant de leurs philosophes pour les abstractions sembloit devoir les entraîner dans des systêmes qui pouvoient être contraires à la raison; mais l'esprit de calcul. qui régularise, dans leur application, les combinai sons abstraites. la moralité, qui est la plus expérimentale de toutes les idées humaines. l'intérêt du commerce, l'amour de la liberté, ont toujours ramené les philosophes Anglais à des résultats pratiques. Que d'ouvrages entrepris pour servir utilement les hommes, pour l'éducation des enfans. pour le soulagement des malheureux. pour l'économie politique la législation criminelle, les sciences. la morale, la métaphysique! Quelle philosophie dans les conceptions! quel respect pour l'expérience dans le

choix des moyens!

"C'est à la liberté qu'il faut attribuer cette émulation et cette sagesse. On pouvoit si rarement se flatter en France d'influer par ses écrits sur les institutions de son pays. qu'on ne songeoit qu'à montrer de l'esprit dans les discussions même les plus sérieuses. On poussoit jusqu'au paradoxe un systême vrai dans une certaine mesure; la raison ne pouvant avoir une effet utile, on vouloit au moins que le paradoxe fût brillant. D'ailleurs sons une monarchie absolue, on pouvoit sans dar ger vanter. comme dans le Contrat Social. la démocratie pure; mais on n'auroit point osé approcher des idées possibles. Tout étoit jeu d'esprit en France, hors les arrêts du conseil du roi: tandis qu'en Angle

and from month to month, with great questions of internal legislation or foreign policy. If she had heard Fox or Pitt, however, or Burke or Windham, or Grattan, we cannot conceive that she should complain of our want of animation; and, warm as she is in her encomiums on the eloquence of Mirabeau, and some of the orators of the first revolution, she is forced to confess, that our system of eloquence is better calculated for the detection of sophistry, and the effectual enforcement of all salutary truth. We really are not aware of any other purposes which eloquence can serve in a great national assembly.

us.

ture-and here we must contrive also to close Here end her remarks on our English literathis desultory account of her lucubrationsthough we have accompanied her through little more than one half of the work before now find room to say any thing of her expoIt is impossible, however, that we can sition of German or of French literature-and still less of her anticipations of the change which the establishment of a Republican gov ernment in the last of those countries is likely to produce,-or of the hints and cautions with which, in contemplation of that event, she thinks it necessary to provide her countrymen. These are perhaps the most curious parts of the work:-but we cannot enter upon them

at present:- and indeed, in what we have already said, we have so far exceeded the limits to which we always wish to confine ourselves, that we do not very well know what apology to make to our readers-except merely, that we are not without hope, that the miscellaneous nature of the subject, by which we have been insensibly drawn into this great prolixity, may have carried them also along, with as moderate a share of fatigue as we have ourselves experienced. If it be otherwise we must have the candour and the gallantry to say, that we are persuaded the fault is to be imputed to us, and not to

the ingenious author upon whose work we have been employed; and that, if we had confined ourselves to a mere abstract of her lucubrations, or interspersed fewer of our own remarks with the account we have attempted to give of their substance, we might have extended this article to a still greater length, without provoking the impatience even of the more fastidious of our readers. As it is, we feel that we have done but scanty justice, either to our author or her subject-though we can now make no other amends, than by earnestly entreating our readers to study both of them for themselves.

(July, 1806.)

The Complete Works, in Philosophy, Politics, and Morals, of the late DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Now first collected and arranged. With Memoirs of his Early Life, written by himself.— 3 vols. 8vo. pp. 1450. Johnson, London: 1806.

able and unworthy service. It is ludicrous to talk of the danger of disclosing in 1795, any secrets of state, with regard to the war of American independence; and as to any anecdotes or observations that might give offence to individuals, we think it should always be remembered, that public functionaries are the property of the public; that their character belongs to history and to posterity; and that it is equally absurd and dis creditable to think of suppressing any part of the evidence by which their merits must be ultimately determined. But the whole of the works that have been suppressed, certainly did not relate to republican politics. history of the author's life, down to 1757, could not well contain any matter of offence; and a variety of general remarks and speculations which he is understood to have left behind him, might have been permitted to see the light, though his diplomatic revelations had been forbidden. The emissary of Government, however, probably took no care of those things. He was resolved, we suppose, "to leave no rubs nor botches in his work;" and, to stifle the dreaded revelation, he thought the best way was to strangle all the innocents in the vicinage.

The

NOTHING, we think, can show more clearly the singular want of literary enterprise or activity, in the United States of America, than that no one has yet been found in that flourishing republic, to collect and publish the works of their only philosopher. It is not even very creditable to the liberal curiosity of the English public, that there should have been no complete edition of the writings of Dr. Franklin, till the year 1806 and we should have been altogether unable to account for the imperfect and unsatisfactory manner in which the task has now been performed, if it had not been for a statement in the prefatory advertisement, which removes all blame from the editor, to attach it to a higher quarter. It is there stated, that recently after the death of the author, his grandson, to whom the whole of his papers had been bequeathed, made a voyage to London, for the purpose of preparing and disposing of a complete collection of all his published and unpublished writings, with memoirs of his life, brought down by himself to the year 1757, and continued to his death by his descendant. It was settled, that the work should be published in three quarto volumes, in England, Germany, and France; and a negotiation was commenced with the Imperfect as the work now before us necbooksellers, as to the terms of the purchase essarily is, we think the public is very much and publication. At this stage of the busi- indebted to its editor. It is presented in a ness, however, the proposals were suddenly cheap and unostentatious form; and though withdrawn; and nothing more has been heard it contains little that has not been already of the work, in this its fair and natural mar- printed as the composition of the author, and ket. "The proprietor, it seems, had found a does not often settle any point of disputed bidder of a different description, in some emis-authenticity in a satisfactory manner, it seems, sary of Government, whose object was to on the whole, to have been compiled with withhold the manuscripts from the world, sufficient. diligence, and arranged with connot to benefit it by their publication; and siderable judgment. Few writings, indeed, they thus either passed into other hands, or require the aid of a commentator less than the person to whom they were bequeathed, re- those of Dr. Franklin; and though this editor ceived a remuneration for suppressing them." is rather too sparing of his presence, we are If this statement be correct, we have no infinitely better satisfied to be left now and hesitation in saying, that no emissary of Gov- then to our conjectures, than to be incumberernment was ever employed on a more miser-ed with the explanations, and overpowered

with the loquacity, of a more officious at-pendent of the maxims of tutors, and the tendant. oracles of literary patrons.

We do not propose to give any thing like a regular account of the papers contained in these volumes. The best of them have long been familiar to the public; and there are many which it was proper to preserve, that cannot now be made interesting to the general reader. Dr. Franklin, however, is too great a man to be allowed to walk past, without some observation; and our readers, we are persuaded, will easily forgive us, if we yield to the temptation of making a few remarks on his character.

This self-taught American is the most-rational, perhaps, of all philosophers. He never loses sight of common sense in any of his speculations; and when his philosophy does not consist entirely in its fair and vigorous application, it is always regulated and controlled by it in its application and result. No individual, perhaps, ever possessed a juster understanding; or was so seldom obstructed in the use of it, by indolence, enthusiasm, or authority.

The consequences of living in a refined and literary community, are nearly of the same kind with those of a regular education. There are so many critics to be satisfied-so many qualifications to be established-so many ri vals to encounter, and so much derision to be hazarded, that a young man is apt to be deterred from so perilous an enterprise, and led to seek for distinction in some safer line of exertion. He is discouraged by the fame and the perfection of certain models and favourites, who are always in the mouths of his judges, and, "under them, his genius is rebuked," and his originality repressed, till he sinks into a paltry copyist, or aims at distinction, by extravagance and affectation. In such a state of society, he feels that mediocrity has no chance of distinction: and what beginner can expect to rise at once into excellence? He imagines that mere good sense will attract no attention; and that the manner is of much more importance than the matter, in a candidate for public admiration. In his attention Dr. Franklin received no regular education; to the manner, the matter is apt to be neand he spent the greater part of his life in a glected; and, in his solicitude to please those society where there was no relish and no en- who require elegance of diction, brilliancy of couragement for literature. On an ordinary wit, or harmony of periods, he is in some danmind, these circumstances would have pro-ger of forgetting that strength of reason, and duced their usual effects, of repressing all accuracy of observation, by which he first prosorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and posed to recommend himself. His attention, perpetuating a generation of incurious me- when extended to so many collateral objects, chanics: but to an understanding like Frank- is no longer vigorous or collected;-the stream, lin's, we cannot help considering them as divided into so many channels, ceases to flow peculiarly propitious; and imagine that we either deep or strong;-he becomes an unsuc can trace back to them, distinctly, almost all cessful pretender to fine writing, or is satis the peculiarities of his intellectual charac-fied with the frivolous praise of elegance or

ter.

vivacity.

Regular education, we think, is unfavour- We are disposed to ascribe so much power able to vigour or originality of understanding. to these obstructions to intellectual originality, Like civilization, it makes society more in- that we cannot help fancying, that if Franklin telligent and agreeable; but it levels the dis-had been bred in a college, he would have tinctions of nature. It strengthens and assists contented himself with expounding the methe feeble; but it deprives the strong of his tres of Pindar, and mixing argument with his triumph, and casts down the hopes of the port in the common room; and that if Boston aspiring. It accomplishes this, not only by had abounded with men of letters, he would training up the mind in an habitual veneration never have ventured to come forth from his for authorities. but, by leading us to bestow a printing-house; or been driven back to it, at disproportionate degree of attention upon any rate, by the sneers of the critics, after the studies that are only valuable as keys or in- first publication of his Essays in the Busy struments for the understanding, they come Body. at last to be regarded as ultimate objects of This will probably be thought exaggerated; pursuit; and the means of education are ab- but it cannot be denied, we think, that the surdly mistaken for its end. How many contrary circumstances in his history had a powerful understandings have been lost in powerful effect in determining the character the Dialectics of Aristotle ! And of how of his understanding, and in producing those much good philosophy are we daily defraud- peculiar habits of reasoning and investigation ed, by the preposterous error of taking a by which his writings are distinguished. He knowledge of prosody for useful learning! was encouraged to publish, because there was The mind of a man, who has escaped this scarcely any one around him whom he could training, will at least have fair play. What- not easily excel. He wrote with great brevi. ever other errors he may fall into, he will be ty, because he had not leisure for more volu safe at least from these infatuations: And if minious compositions, and because he knew he thinks proper, after he grows up, to study that the readers to whom he addressed himGreek, it will probably be for some better self were, for the most part, as busy as him. purpose than to become critically acquainted self. For the same reason, he studied great with its dialects. His prejudices will be perspicuity and simplicity of statement. His those of a man, and not of a schoolboy; and countrymen had then no relish for fine writais speculations and conclusions will be inde-ing, and could not easily be made to under

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