written in irregular style, and know not quite accurately how much there is. And now I will pray that the next subject you give me may be an English one- -at least no German one. On that last business I have said enough for a year or two; and innumerable men, women, and children have taken it up; who must see the surface clearly, and know that there is a depth, before you can help to show them what it is. I greatly approved of your friend Empson's acknowledgment that Faust was a wonderful poem, and Lord Leveson Gower a windbag only he led him far too gently over the coals; he should have roasted him there, and made him not Leveson, but a cinder. It is positively the nearest approach we can make to sacrilege in these days, for a vain young man, not knowing his right hand from his left, to take an inspired work, like this of Goethe's, and mangle it into such an unspeakable hash. Let it either be overlooked, or punished by Autoda-fe. I once proposed to Mr. Jeffrey to make a sort of sally on Fashionable Novels, but he misunderstood me-thought I meant to criticise them; and so the matter dropt for the time. The Pelham-and-Devereux manufacture is a sort of thing which ought to be extinguished in British literature; at least, some one in the half-century, a British reviewer, ought to rise up and declare it extinguishable, and prophesy its extinction. But I fear my zeal has somewhat cooled; and perhaps the better method of attack were not to batter but to undermine. The English aristocracy have as much need of instruction as Swing himself. A far finer essay were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be effected till the one party understands and is just to the other. Bentham is a denyer: he denies with a loud and universally convincing voice: his fault 1 "Lord Leveson Gower's Poems and Translations," Art. 12, October, 1830. is that he can affirm nothing, except that money is pleasant in the purse, and food in the stomach, and that by this simplest of all beliefs he can reorganise Society. He can shatter it in pieces-no thanks to him, for its old fastenings are quite rotten-but he cannot reorganise it; this is work for quite others than he. Such an essay on Bentham, however, were a great task for any one; for me a very great one, and perhaps rather out of my road. My brother speaks of preparing some little paper or other to submit to you. Should this take effect, I dare promise that you will look at the performance, and even report that it will not do, or that it will; but shall farther beg you to understand, with all distinctness, that you need stand on no ceremony, that I should never see the paper, except in print, and above all, in matters of that kind, can have no friend and no enemy. However, John's resolutions are no decrees of fate perhaps such a contingency may never arrive. Hoping to hear from you by and bye, I remain, faithfully THOMAS CARLYLE. yours, E. L. BULWER. Cheltenham, February 6, 1831. MY DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you in the first place for the trouble you have been kind enough to take with my paper on Society,' and for the address with which you have. smoothed it into shape. 1 I do not know whether a work on Public Opinion by Mr. Mackinnon has ever been reviewed in the Edinburgh, and I have not here the facility of inspecting former Numbers. But I think, taking that work as a mere text (to the best of my recollection the book itself is scarcely worth analysis), an effective essay on Public Opinion' might be written. The subject would be popular, and not, perhaps, ill adapted to the day. I mention some other subjects that have occurred to me 1. Taxes on Knowledge. 2. Character of William III (laudatory). 1 "Spirit of Society in England and France," Art. 5, January, 1831. 3. Character of Lord Bacon (in vindication). On any of these subjects I should be very happy to treat, to the best of my ability, should you feel disposed to employ For my own part, that on Public Opinion seems the me. most eligible. May I ask you a favour-as an acquaintance-not reviewer? Should you happen to see my volume of verse, will you run over it, and give me your opinion? Let me ask two additional favours. In so doing, will you bear in mind that I have wished to avoid in the longer poem that floridity and glitter of style which characterizes the present school, and the homeliness, the familiarity, and perhaps the commonplace of the language, arises therefore from design-if I may dare so to say -rather than from poverty. The second favour I would ask is, not to judge of the volume by the longest poem only, but also by the Milton, and the minor poems. A third favour, greater than either, is a candid, rude, unmodified opinion, which I assure you I will receive in gratitude-not anger. I believe the satire is the worst part of the long poem.-Yours truly, ED. LYTTON BULWER. Hertford Street, March 1, 1831. MY DEAR SIR,-I am gratified and obliged by the kind. tone of your last letter, which convinces me that I had misconceived the spirit of your former one. 6 I think, on the whole, the subject of Public Opinion' may be somewhat too vague. The only literary article I can at present think of may perhaps be of a nature little consonant to these stirring times, and though much that is new may be said, the subject itself is a little old. I mean an article on the writers of Queen Anne's time. I should very much like to write you an essay on Hobbes, the character of his writings, moral and political. But I am unconscious how far you would allow me to express my admiration of that very extraordinary and not very fashionable thinker. Nothing else at this moment occurs to me. Few new books seem to me worth reviewing three months after date, and of those few scarcely 1 "The Siamese Twins. A Satirical Tale of the Times." any of a nature which I feel myself competent to analyse. As to foreign literature, I am but a poor proficient in modern languages. If anything, however, occurs to me, I will communicate with you thereon, and I shall be always happy to receive any suggestions from yourself as to subjects. By the way, whenever you have leisure, perhaps you will be kind enough to point out in my article on Society the faults of style to which you allude. A fault once seen is easily altered. All the difficulty of amendment lies in discovering it one's-self. I am almost sorry now that I ventured to ask you to look at the Siamese Twins. So bitterly has it been abused, and so coolly commended by friends whom I know to be both kind and discerning, that I have lost all good opinion of it, and feel sore when its very name is mentioned. The fact is, at all events, that the satire is weak and poor, and this fault throws odium on all the rest. To-day is the Great Reform Day. in the secret, but I join with the rest of expectation.-Adieu, my dear Sir. yours, You are most probably 36, Hertford Street, April 9, 1831. MY DEAR SIR,-I thank you for sending me the intended article on the Siamese Twins. You speak of it frankly; I will imitate your example. As a review of the Siamese Twins, it is, as you say, honest-it may be lenient-nay, complimentary. As the first and only notice of me and my works, I view it in a different light. Nor do I hesitate to observe, that I scarcely consider it "fair" to any author, for a Journal to pass over in silence all the works he had put forth which had proved successful, and to seize the only opportunity of noticing him, in the only work which, in its own judgment, was a failure;-a failure, too, which from no more indulgent estimate of the merits of the book than its decriers had formed, the said Journal was about to emblazon and insist upon. Nor can it be said in my case that the successful works uncriticised were less adapted to the nature of the Reviewing Journal than the unsuccessful work selected for public condemnation. Scarce a single recent novel of the smallest pretensions-not to excellence, but to common circulation. -but has been reviewed by the Edinburgh. Mine only have been passed over. To success was opposed the contempt of silence; failure only has been honoured by remark. For favour or hostility I care little of those I do not speakbut in the most hostile criticism I look for a certain fairness. I say what I have said, openly, and if I express my opinion to you before the publication of the article in question, it is solely because I would not be considered disingenuous in suppressing now the sentiments I may utter hereafter; and because I feel that, in giving vent to them, I oppose an obstacle that to both of us should be considered insurmountable, to the alteration or suppression of the article thus strictured. I should indeed have just cause for resentment—one that I do not look to receive from your hands, and of a nature that I could not persuade myself to forgive-were any change whatever made in the article that has produced this letter: that change would seem to impute to me making the above observations an unworthy sentiment and a dishonourable hope. To yourself at present I can feel no soreness. On the contrary, I estimate, and am grateful for the evident kindness of your intentions. I know well with what different eyes the author and the critic must, of necessity, look at the same point. Wrapped in his own creations, the one surveys the questions that relate to them in all the delicate and subtle bearings to which the other can best afford but a rapid and desultory glance. It is not easy to say who errs the most often-perhaps the author.-Believe me yours truly, ED. LYTTON Bulwer. |