Buller. Dr. Adam Fergusson,* too, was in the church at first, I think?

North. He was-and he went out chaplain to the forty-second, in the Seven Years' War. Colonel David Stewart tells a fine story of his heroism at the battle of Fontenoy. He could not be kept back from the front line.

Buller. Ιερεύς μεν αλλα Μαχητης, like somebody in Homer. The Scotch literati of that time seem to have been a noble set of fellows. Good God! how you are fallen off!

North. We may thank the Whigs for that—transeat cum ceteris. Buller. I don't exactly understand your meaning. Do you allude to the Edinburgh Review?

North. Certainly, Mr. Buller. They introduced a lower tone in every thing. In the first place, few of them were gentlemen either by birth or breeding—and some of the cleverest of them have always preserved a sort of plebeian snappishness which is mighty disgusting. What would David Hume, for example, have thought of such a set of superficial chattering bodies?

Buller. David Hume appears in a very amiable light in this volume. He was, after all, a most worthy man, though an infidel.

North. He was a man of the truest genius-the truest learningand the truest excellence. His nature was so mild that he could do without restraints, the want of which would have ruined the character of almost any other man. I love the memory of David Humethe first historian the modern world has produced-primus absque secundo, to my mind! His account of the different sects and parties in the time of Charles I. is worth all the English prose that has been written since. At least, 'tis well worth half of it.

Buller. Why are not his letters published? The few that have been printed are exquisite,—one or two very fine specimens in this very volume-and what a beautiful thing is that notice of his last journey to Bath by the poett-a few such pages are worth an Encyclopædia.

North. What a sensation was produced in England when that fine constellation of Scotch genius first began to blaze out upon the world! You thought us little better than Hottentots before.

Buller. And yet Dr. Johnson always somehow or other kept the first place himself.

North. He could not, or would not, make so good books as other

* The Historian. He was chaplain of the 42d Highlanders, in Flanders, until the peace of Aix la Chapelle, and actually joined in the charge of his regiment at Fontenoy. Returning to Edinburgh, he was chosen Professor of Natural Philosophy, but afterwards took the chair of moral philosophy. His chief work is a "History of the Roman Republic." He died in 1816, aged ninety-two.-M.

† David Hume's interesting correspondence has since been collected and published, under the editorship of J. Hill Burton, of Edinburgh. He stands at the head of the modern philosophical skeptics, and his History of England is the most permanent proof of his ability and researches.-M.

1822.]

JOHN HOME.

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people, but God knows there was a pith about old Samuel which nothing could stand up against. His influence was not so much that of an author as of a thinker. He was the most powerful intellect in the world of books. He was the Jackson of the literary ring—the judge the emperor-a giant-acknowledged to be a Saul amongst the people. Even David Hume would have been like a woman in his grasp; but, odd enough, the two never met.

Buller. Your Magazine once had a good Essay on Johnson and Warburton.

North. Yes; I wrote it myself. But, after all, Warburton was not Johnson's match.* He had more flame but less heat. Johnson's mind was a furnace-it reduced everything to its elements. We have no truly great critical intellect since his time.

Buller. What would he have thought of our modern reviewers? North. Why, not one of the tribe would have dared to cry mew had he been alive. The terror of him would have kept them as mum as mice when there's a cat in the room. If he had detected such a thing as Jeffrey astir, he would have cracked every bone in his body with one worry.

Buller. I can believe it all. Even Gifford would have been annihilated.

North. Like an ill-natured pug-dog flung into a lion's cage.
Buller. He did not like your old Scots literati.

North. He hated the name of Scotland, and would not condescend to know what they were. Yet he must have admired such a play as Douglas. The chief element of John Home's inspiration seems to have been a sort of stately elevation of sentiment, which must have struck some congenial chords in his own great mind.

Buller. What is your opinion of John Home as a poet?

North. I think nobody can bestow too much praise on Douglas. There has been no English tragedy worthy of the name since it appeared. 'Tis a noble piece-beautifully and loftily written; but, after all, the principal merit is in the charming old story itself. Douglas is the only true forerunner of the Scotch imaginative literature of our own age. Home's other tragedies are all very indifferent -most of them quite bad. Mr. Mackenzie should not have disturbed their slumbers.

Buller. The natural partiality of friendship and affection—

North. Surely; and it is most delightful to read his Memoir, simply for its overflowing with that fine strain of sentiments. He is like Ossian, "the last of all his race," and talks of his peers as they

* Dr. Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, was more highly praised by Johnson, (in his Life of Pope), than he really deserved. He knew a great deal, but knew few things so as to master them. As an author he was diffuse, coarse, and dogmatical.-M.

This is one of the instances where North's judgment was clouded by his nationality. The tragedy of Douglas by no means merits the high praise here given to it.-M.

should be talked of. One may differ from his opinions here and there, but there is a halo over the whole surface of his language. 'Tis to me a very pathetic work.

Buller. Mackenzie is himself a very great author.

North. A discovery indeed, Mr. Buller! Henry Mackenzie, sir, is one of the most original in thought, and splendid in fancy, and chaste in expression, that can be found in the whole line of our worthies. He will live as long as our tongue, or longer.

Buller. Which of his works do you like best?

North. Julia de Roubigné and the story of La Roche. I thought that vein had been extinct, till Adam Blair came out. But Nature in none of her domains can ever be exhausted.

Buller. But an author's invention may be exhausted, I suppose. North. Not easily. You might as well talk of exhausting the Nile as a true genius. People talk of wearing out a man's intellectual power, as if it were a certain determinate sum of cash in a strong box. 'Tis more like the income of a princely estate-which, with good management, must always be improving, not falling off. A great author's power of acquisition is in the same ratio with his power of displaying. He who can write well might be able to see well-and his eyes will feed his fancy as long as his fingers can hold the pen. Buller. At that rate we shall have three or four more new Waverley romances every year?

North. I hope so. There's old Goethe has written one of the best romances he ever did, within the last twelve months-a most splendid continuation of his Wilhelm Meister—and Goethe was born, I think, in the year 1742. I wish Mackenzie, who is a good ten years his junior, would follow the example.*

Buller. Voltaire held on wonderfully to the last, too.

North. Ay, there was another true creature! Heavens! what a genius was Voltaire's! So grave, so gay, so profound, so brilliant— his name is worth all the rest in the French literature.

Buller. Always excepting my dear Rabelais.

North. A glorious old fellow, to be sure! Once get into his stream, and try if you can land again! He is the only man whose mirth exerts the sway of uncontrollable vehemence. His comic is as strong as the tragic of Eschylus himself.

Buller. We are Pygmies!

North. More's the pity. Yet we have our demi-gods too. In manners and in dignity we are behind the last age-but in genius, properly so called, we are a thousand miles above it. They had little or no poetry then. Such a play even as Douglas would, if published now-a-days, appear rather feeble. It would be better as a

* Instead of Mackenzie's being ten years younger than Goethe, he was four years' older. Mackenzie was born in 1745, Goethe in 1749.—M.

1822.]

MODERN STATESMEN.

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play certainly-but the poetry of Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth, would be in men's minds, and they would not take that for poetry, fine though it be.

Buller. What would people say to one of Shakspeare's plays, were it to be written now?

North. The Edinburgh Reviewers would say it was a Lakish Rant. The Quarterly would tear it to bits, growling like a mastiff. The fact is, that our theatre is at an end, I fear. A new play, to be received triumphantly, would require to have all the fire and passion of the old drama, and all the chasteness and order of the new. I doubt to reconcile these two will pass the power of any body now living. Buller. Try yourself, man.

North. I never will-but if I did, I should make something altogether unlike anything that has ever been done in our language. Unless I could hit upon some new-really new-key, I should not think the attempt worth making. Even our dramatic verse is quite worn out. It would pall on one's ear were it written never so well. Buller. Why? Sophocles wrote the same metre with Eschylus. North. No more than Shakspeare wrote the same blank verse with Milton--or Byron, in the Corsair, the same measure with the Rape of the Lock. Counting the longs and shorts is not enough, Mr. Bachelor of Arts.

Buller. You despise our English study of the classics. You think it carried too far. I understand your meaning, Mr. North.

North. I doubt that. I suspect that I myself have read as much Greek in my day as most of your crack-men. In my younger days, sir, the glory of our Buchanans and Barclays* was not forgotten in Scotland. In this matter again, we have to thank the blue and yellow gentry for a good deal of our national deterioration.

Buller. They are not scholars.

North. They scholars! witlings can't be scholars, Buller. Knowledge is a great calmer of people's minds. Milton would have been a compassionate critic.

Buller. Are you a compassionate one?

North. Sir, I am ever compassionate, when I see anything like nature and originality. I do not demand the strength of a Hercules from every man. Let me have an humble love of, and a sincere aspiration after what is great, and I am satisfied. I am intolerant to nobody but Quacks and Cockneys.

* There are five Barclays, whose names are recorded:-Alexander Barclay, translator of the "Navis Stultifera," or Ship of Fools, died 1532; Robert Barclay, author of "An Apology for the Quakers," died 1690; William Barclay, Professor of Law at Angers, in France, and a great civilian, died 1605; John Barclay, his son, author of "Euphoronium," a Latin Satire, and Aryenis," a romance, died 1621; and John Barclay, of Cruden, who wrote a rare and curious work in verse, now very scarce, called "A Description of the Roman Catholic Church.-M. "The blue and yellow" was the Edinburgh Review, published with a cover of blue and yellow paper.-M.

Buller. Whom you crucify, like a very Czar of Muscovy ! North. No, sir, I only hang them up to air, like so many pieces of old theatrical finery on the poles of Monmouth-street.

Buller. But to return to John Home and Henry Mackenzie-I confess, I think the History of the Rebellion in 1745 is a far better work than it is generally held to be.

North. Why any account of that brilliant episode in our history must needs be full of interest, and Hume being concerned so far himself, has preserved a number of picturesque enough anecdotes; but on the whole, the book wants vigor, and it is full of quizzibles what can be more absurd than his giving us more pages about the escape of two or three Whig students of Divinity from the Castle of Doune than he spends upon all the wild wandering of the unfortunate Chevalier ?

Buller. The young Pretender.

North. The Chevalier-the Prince, sir. My father would have knocked any man down that said the Pretender in his presence.

Buller. Ask your pardon, Christopher. I did not know you were a Jacobite.

North. Had I lived in those days I should certainly have been one. Look at Horace Walpole's Memoirs, if you wish to see what a paltry set of fellows steered the vessel of the State in the early Hanover reigns. It is refreshing to turn from your Bedfords, and Newcastles, and Cavendishes, to the Statesmen of our own times.

Buller. Wait for fifty years till some such legacy of spleen be opened by the heirs of some disappointed statesman now living.

North. There is something in that, sir; but yet not much. Sir, nobody will ever be able to bring any disgraceful accusations against the personal honor and probity of the leading Tory statesmen who now rule in England. They are all men of worth and principle. They have their faults, I believe, but no shameful ones.

Buller. Whom do you place highest?

North. Lord Londonderry without question. He wants some of the lesser ornaments which set off a public man—I mean in his style of speaking*—but sense, sir, and knowledge, and thorough skill in affairs, are worth all the rest a million times over; and he has something besides all these, that distinguishes him from every body with whom he can at present be compared-a true active dignity and pith of mind-the chief element of a ruling character, and worth all the eloquence even of a Burke.

Buller. His fine person is an advantage to him.

He was so deficient as a speaker, confused in ideas, and unable to put them, properly, into sentences, that Byron said he was an orator framed in the fashion of Mrs. Malaprop. In action he was bold and decisive, in manners gentle and courtly. He committed suicidē in August, 1822, while George IV. was in Scotland.-M.