street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith comes into | of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or the city every morning on the top of one of the Norman French, of which the roots lie in the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those inmost depths of our language; and that he who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries, and of studying the annals of past times, is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape, whose whole communion is with one generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In short, the real use of travelling, and of studying history, is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in reality.

felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully natural. ized, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the king's English. His constant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite; his antithetical forms of expression, constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed; his big words wasted on little things; his harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions which give va riety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers-all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers, and parodied by his assailants, till the public has be come sick of the subject.

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson.

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the pub- Whether he wrote in the character of a dis lic, his style became systematically vicious. appointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, All his books are written in a learned lan- of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he guage in a language which nobody hears wrote in the same pompous and unbending from his mother or his nurse-in a language style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bar- Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under gains, or makes love-in a language in which every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclia talk nobody ever thinks. It is clear, that Johnson as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor himself did not think in the dialect in which of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her he wrote. The expressions which came first reception at the country-house of her relations to his tongue were simple, energetic, and pic- j in such terms as these: "I was surprised, after turesque. When he wrote for publication, he the civilities of my first reception, to find, in did his sentences out of English into John- stead of the leisure and tranquillity which a sonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. rural life always promises, and, if well conThrale are the original of that work of which ducted, might always afford, a confused wildthe Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; ness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of and it is amusing to compare the two versions. diligence, by which every face was clouded. "When we were taken up stairs," says he in and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranone of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out quilla informs us, that she "had not passed of the bed on which one of us was to lie." the earlier part of life without the flattery of This incident is recorded in the Journey as courtship and the joys of triumph; but had follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we danced the round of gayety amidst the murwere to repose, started up, at our entrance, a murs of envy and the gratulations of applause; inan black as a Cyclops from the forge." had been attended from pleasure to pleasure Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. 66 The by the great, the sprightly, and the vain; and Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiwit enough to keep it sweet;" then, after a ousness of gallantry, the gayety of wit, and the pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff it from putrefaction." himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not when a 'oman has a great peard: I spy a great peard under her muffler." But our

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson.

We had something more to say. article is already too long; and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, The characteristic faults of his style are so that he has induced us to read Boswell's book. familiar to all our readers, and have been so again. As we close it, the club-room is before often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous us, and the table on which stands the omelet to point them out. It is well known that he for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There made less use than any other eminent writer are assembled those heads which live forever

on the canvass of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up-the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with a scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir ?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You dont see your way through the question, sir!"

What a singular destiny lias been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a compa nion-to receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity-to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient, is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner, and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe.

LORD NUGENT'S MEMORIALS OF HAMPDEN."

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

moirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such, they well deserve to be attentively perused. They contain some curious facts, which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative, many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly with that kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord Nugent would have been able to collect, from family papers and local traditions, much new and interesting information respecting the ife and character of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, the first of those great We are not sure that even the want of inEnglish commoners, whose plain addition of formation respecting the private character of Mister, has, to our ears, a more majestic sound Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as than the proudest of the feudal titles. In this strikingly characteristic as any which the hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly most minute chronicler-O'Meara, Las Cases, not from any want of zeal or diligence on the Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself-ever recordpart of the noble biographer. Even at Hamp-ed concerning their heroes. The celebrated den, there are, it seems, no important papers relative to the most illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend, Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guaranty the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure, respecting the private pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not an extravagant,

The public life of Hampden is surrounded Dy no obscurity. His history, more particuarly from the beginning of the year 1640 to his death, is the history of England. These me

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD NUGENT. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831.

Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness; who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty. During more than forty years, he was known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and active in the discharge of local duties; to political men, as an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parlia ment, not eager to display his talents, stanch to his party, and attentive to the interests of his constituents. A great and terrible crisis came. A direct attack was made, by an arbitrary government, on a sacred right of Eng. lishmen, on a right which was the chief secu rity for all their other rights. The nation looked round for a defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire Es quire placed himself at the head of his countrymen, and right before the face, and across the path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required; and to every service, the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first order, a most

The story of his early life is soon told. He was the head of a family which had been set tled in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. Part of the estate which he inherited had been bestowed by Edward the Confessor on Baldwyn de Hampden, whose name seems to indi cate that he was one of the Norman favourites of the last Saxon king. During the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, the Hampdens adhered to the party of the Red Rose, and were consequently persecuted by Edward the Fourth, and favoured by Henry the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the family was great and flourishing. Griffith Hampden, high sheriff of Buckinghamshire, entertained Elizabeth with great magnificence at his seat. His son, William Hampden, sate in the Parlia ment which that queen summoned in the year 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell, aunt of the celebrated man who afterwards governed the British islands with more than regal power; and from this marriage sprang John Hampden.

dexterous manager of the House of Commons, | that hatred itself could find no blemish on his a negotiator, a soldier. He governed a fierce memory. and turbulent assembly, abounding in able men, as easily as he had governed his family. He showed himself as competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty sessions. We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned; so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties; so easily expanding itself to the highest; so contented in repose; so powerful in action. Almost every part of this virtuous and blameless life, which is not hidden from us in modest privacy, is a precious and splendid portion of our national history. Had the private conduct of Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had there been even any weak part in the character of Hampden, had his manners been in any respect open to ridicule, we may be sure that no mercy would have been shown to him by the writers of Charles's faction. He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father Those writers have carefully preserved every died, and left him heir to a very large estate. little circumstance which could tend to make After passing some years at the grammar their opponents cdious or contemptible. They school of Thame, young Hampden was sent, have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, at fifteen, to Magdalen College, in the Univer that Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that sity of Oxford. At nineteen, he was admitted the Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry a student of the Inner 'I emple, where he made Martin, that St. John's manners were sullcu, himself master of the principles of the English that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell law. In 1619 he married Elizabeth Symeon, had a red nose. They have made themselves a lady to whom he appears to have been fond merry with the canting phrases of injudiciously attached. In the following year he was zealots. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the scurrilous Denham could venture to throw the slightest imputation on the morals or the manners of Hampden. What was the opinion. entertained respecting him by the best men of his time, we learn from Baxter. That eminent person-eminent not only for his piety and his fervid devotional eloquence, but for his moderation, his knowledge of political affairs, and his skill in judging of characters-declared in the Saint's Rest, that one of the pleasures which he hoped to enjoy in Heaven was the society of Hampden. In the editions printed after the restoration, the name of Hampden was omitted. "But I must tell the reader," says Baxter, "that I did blot it out, not as changing my opinion of the person. Mr. John Hampden was one that friends and enemies acknowledged to be most eminent for prudence, piety, and peaceable counsels, having the most universal praise of any gentleman that I remember of that age. I remember a moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far from him, but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, that if he might choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden." We cannot but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man, who, after passing through the most severe temptations by which human virtue can be ried, after acting a most conspicuous part in a revolution and a civil war, could yet deserve such praise as this from such authority. Yet the want of memorials is surely the best proof

returned to Parliament by a borough which has in our time obtained a miserable celebrity, the borough of Grampound.

Of his private life during his early years, little is known beyond what Clarendon has told us. "In his entrance into the world," says that great historian, "he indulged him. self in all the license in sports, and exercises, and company, which were used by men of the most jolly conversation." A remarkable change, however, passed in his character. "On a sudden," says Clarendon, "from a life of great pleasure and license, he retired to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, to a more reserved and melancholy society." It is proba ble that this change took place when Hamp. den was about twenty-five years old. At that age he was united to a woman whom he loved and esteemed. At that age he entered into political life. A mind so happily constituted as his, would naturally, under such circumstances, relinquish the pleasures of dissipation for domestic enjoyments and public duties.

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners of an accomplished courtier. Even after the change in his habits, "he preserved," says Clarendon, "his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all men." These qualities distinguished him from most of the members of his sect and his party; and, in the great crisis in which he afterwards took

a principal part, were of scarcely less service | the Bold. Comines, who had lived amidst th to the country than his keen sagacity and his wealthy cities of Flanders, and who had visite dauntless courage. Florence and Venice, had never seen a peopl so well governed as the English. "Or selon mon advis," says he, "entre toutes les seigneu ries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, ou la chose publique est mieux traitée, et ou regne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou il n'y a nuls édifices abbatus n'y demolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre."

honesty of men who, dissenting from almost all She died; and the kingdom passed to ore Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from who was, in his own opinion, the greatest mas themselves; who demanded freedom of con-ter of kingcraft that ever lived; who was, in science, yet refused to grant it; who execrated truth, one of those kings whom God seems to persecution, yet persecuted; who urged reason send for the express purpose of hastening re against the authority of one opponent, and volutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom authority against the reasons of another. Bon-Britain has produced, he was at once the most ner at least acted in accordance with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic, only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.

harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and now and then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too Thus the system on which the English small to injure. The policy of wise tyrants princes acted with respect to ecclesiastical af- has always been to cover their violent acts fairs for some time after the Reformation, was with popular forms. James was always oba system too obviously unreasonable to be truding his despotic theories on his subjects lasting. The public mind moved while the without the slightest necessity. His foolish government moved; but would not stop where talk exasperated them infinitely more than the government stopped. The same impulse forced loans or benevolences would have done. which had carried millions away from the Yet, in practice, no king ever held his prerogaChurch of Rome, continued to carry them for- tives less tenaciously. He neither gave way ward in the same direction. As Catholics had gracefully to the advancing spirit of liberty, become Protestants, Protestants became Puri- nor took vigorous measures to stop it, but tans; and the Tudors and Stuarts were as un-retreated before it with ludicrous haste, blusable to avert the latter change as the Popes tering and insulting as he retreated. The had been to avert the former. The dissenting English people had been governed for nearly party increased, and became strong under every kind of discouragement and oppression. They were a sect. The government persecuted them, and they became an opposition. The old constitution of England furnished to them the means of resisting the sovereign without breaking the laws. They were the majority of the House of Commons. They had the power of giving or withholding supplies; and, by a judicious exercise of this power, they might hope to take from the Church its usurped authority over the consciences of men; and from the Crown some part of the vast prerogative which it had recently acquired at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.

The faint beginnings of this memorable contest may be discerned early in the reign of Elizabeth. The conduct of her last Parliament made it clear that one of those great revolutions which policy may guide, but cannot stop, was in progress. It was on the question of Monopolies that the House of Commons gained its first great victory over the throne. The conduct of the extraordinary woman who then governed England is an admirable study for politicians who live in unquiet times. It shows how thoroughly she understood the people whom she ruled, and the crisis in which she was called to act. What she held, she held firmly. What she gave, she gave graciously. She saw that it was necessary to make a concession to the nation: and she made it, not grudgingly, not tardily, not as a matter of bargain and sale, not, in a word, as Charles the First would have made it, but promptly and cordially. Before a bill could be framed or an address presented, she applied a remedy to the evil of which the nation complained. She expressed in the warmest terms her gratitude to ber faithful Commons for detecting abuses which interested persons had concealed from her If her successors had inherited her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might nave died of old age, and James the Second would never have seen St. Germains.

a hundred and fifty years by princes who, whatever might be their frailties or their vices, had all possessed great force of character and who, whether beloved or hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the first time since the day when the sceptre of Henry the Fourth dropped from the hand of his lethargic grandson, England had a king whom she despised.

The follies and vices of the man increased the contempt which was produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a people whose manners were beginning to be strongly tinctured with austerity. But these were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful kind had been discovered; others were suspected. The strange story of the Gowries was not forgotten. The ignominious fondness of the king for his minions, the perjuries, the sor ceries, the poisonings, which his chief favour. ites had planned within the walls of his palace, the pardon which, in direct violation of his duty, and of his word, he had granted to the mysterious threats of a murderer, made him aa object of loathing to many of his subjects. What opinion grave and moral persons residing at a distance from the court entertained respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. England was no place, the seventeenth century no time, for Sporus and Locusta.

This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the wretched Solomon of Whitehall; pedantry, buffoonery garrulity, low curiosity, the most contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and education had done their best to produce a finished spe cimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch accent, were impe fections which might have been found in the