53. ‘But though we should give no credit to those ancient authors, there are monuments still extant, one particularly to be seen in our own island, which I think ought to convince every man that the men of ancient times were much superior to us, at least in the powers of the body. The monument I mean is well known by the name of Stonehenge, and there are several of the same kind to be seen in Denmark and Germany. I desire to know where are the arms now, that, with so little help of machinery as they must have had, could have raised and set up on end such a number of prodigious stones, and put others on the top of them, likewise of very great size? Such works are said by the peasants in Germany to be the works of giants, and I think they must have been giants compared with us. And, indeed, the men who erected Stonehenge could not, I imagine, be of size inferior to that man whose body was found in a quarry near to Salisbury, within a mile of which Stonehenge stands. The body of that man was fourteen feet ten inches. The fact is attested by an eye-witness, one Elyote, who writes, I believe, the first English-Latin Dictionary that ever was published. It is printed in London in 1542, in folio, and has, under the word Gigas, the following passage: “About thirty years past and somewhat more, I myself beynge with my father Syr Rycharde Elyote at a monastery of regular canons, called Juy Churche, two myles from the citie of Sarisburye, beholde the bones of a deade man founde deep in the grounde, where they dygged stone, which being joined togyther, was in length xiiii feet and ten ynches, there beynge mette; whereof one of the teethe my father hadde, whych was of the quantytie of a great walnutte. This have I wrytten, because some menne wylle believe nothynge that is out of the compasse of theyre owne knowledge, and yet some of them presume to have knowledge, above any other, contempnynge all men but themselfes or suche as they favour.” It is for the reason mentioned by this author that I have given so many examples of the greater size of men than is to be seen in our day, to which I could add several others concerning bodies that have been found in this our island, particularly one mentioned by Hector Boece in his Description of Scotland, prefixed to his Scotch History, where he tells us that in a certain church which he names in the shire of Murray, the bones of a man of much the same size as those of the man mentioned by Elyote, viz. fourteen feet, were preserved. One of these bones Boece himself saw, and has particularly described.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 156.
‘But without having recourse to bones or monuments of any kind, if a man has looked upon the world as long as I have done with any observation he must be convinced that the size of man is diminishing. I have seen such bodies of men as are not now to be seen: I have observed in families, of which I have known three generations, a gradual decline in that, and I am afraid in other respects. Others may think otherwise; but for my part I have so great a veneration for our ancestors, that I have much indulgence for that ancient superstition among the Etrurians, and from them derived to the Romans, of worshipping the manes of their ancestors under the names of Lares or domestic gods, which undoubtedly proceeded upon the supposition that they were men superior to themselves, and their departed souls such genii as Hesiod has described,
And if antiquity and the universal consent of nations can give a sanction to any opinion, it is to this, that our forefathers were better men than we. Even as far back as the Trojan war, the best age of men of which we have any particular account, Homer has said that few men were better than their fathers, and the greater part worse:
And this he puts into the mouth of the Goddess of Wisdom.... But when I speak of the universal consent of nations, I ought to except the men, and particularly the young men, of this age, who generally believe themselves to be better men than their fathers, or than any of their predecessors.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 161.
54.
55.
56. Hudibras, Part III. ii. 1493.
57. See Forsyth’s Principles of Moral Science.
58. ‘Il buvoit du vin, mais le laissoit volontiers pour du lait, du thé, ou d’autres liqueurs douces.’—Buffon of the Oran Outang, whom he saw himself in Paris.
59. See Mr. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.
60. The figures of speech marked in italics are familiar to the admirers of parliamentary rhetoric.
61. Supplices, 807, ed. Schutz.
62. Matthew xi. 19.
63. ‘He that will mould a modern bishop into a primitive, must yield him to be elected by the popular voice, undiocesed, unrevenued, unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his ministry, which, what a rich booty it would be, what a plump endowment to the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prelate, what a relish it would give to his canary-sucking and swan-eating palate, let old bishop Mountain judge for me.—They beseech us, that we would think them fit to be our justices of peace, our lords, our highest officers of state, though they come furnished with no more knowledge than they learnt between the cook and the manciple, or more profoundly at the college audit, or the regent house, or to come to their deepest insight, at their patron’s table.’—Milton: Of Reformation in England.
64. ‘Much have those travellers to answer for, whose casual intercourse with this innocent and simple people tends to corrupt them: disseminating among them ideas of extravagance and dissipation—giving them a taste for pleasures and gratifications of which they had no ideas—inspiring them with discontent at home—and tainting their rough industrious manners with idleness and a thirst after dishonest means.
‘If travellers would frequent this country with a view to examine its grandeur and beauty, or to explore its varied and curious regions with the eye of philosophy—if, in their passage through it, they could be content with such fare as the country produces, or at least reconcile themselves to it by manly exercise and fatigue (for there is a time when the stomach and the plainest food will be found in perfect harmony)—if they could thus, instead of corrupting the manners of an innocent people, learn to amend their own, by seeing in how narrow a compass the wants of human life may be compressed—a journey through these wild scenes might be attended, perhaps, with more improvement than a journey to Rome or Paris. Where manners are polished into vicious refinement, simplifying is the best mode of improving; and the example of innocence is a more instructive lesson than any that can be taught by artists and literati.
‘But these parts are too often the resort of gay company, who are under no impressions of this kind—who have no ideas but of extending the sphere of their amusements, or of varying a life of dissipation. The grandeur of the country is not taken into the question, or at least it is not otherwise considered than as affording some new mode of pleasurable enjoyment. Thus, even the diversions of Newmarket are introduced—diversions, one would imagine, more foreign to the nature of this country than any other. A number of horses are carried into the middle of the lake in a flat boat: a plug is drawn from the bottom: the boat sinks, and the horses are left floating on the surface. In different directions they make to land, and the horse which arrives soonest secures the prize.’—Gilpin’s Picturesque Observations on Cumberland and Westmoreland, vol. ii. p. 67.
65. ‘The necessary consequence of men living in so unnatural a way with respect to houses, clothes, and diet, and continuing to live so for many generations, each generation adding to the vices, diseases, and weaknesses produced by the unnatural life of the preceding, is, that they must gradually decline in strength, health, and longevity, till at length the race dies out. To deny this would be to deny that the life allotted by nature to man is the best life for the preservation of his health and strength; for, if it be so, I think it is demonstration that the constant deviation from it, going on for many centuries, must end in the extinction of the race.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. v. p. 237.
66. ‘Rome, le siège de la gloire et de la vertu, si jamais elles en eurent un sur la terre.’—Rousseau.
67.
68. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. v. book iv. chap. 8.
69. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. v. book iv. chap. 8.
70. See Xenophon’s Memorabilia.
71. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. v. book iv. chap. 8.
72.
73. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. v. book iv. chap. 8.
74.
75. ‘If it were seriously asked (and it would be no untimely question), who of all teachers and masters that have ever taught hath drawn the most disciples after him, both in religion and in manners, it might be not untruly answered, Custom. Though Virtue be commended for the most persuasive in her theory, and Conscience in the plain demonstration of the spirit finds most evincing; yet, whether it be the secret of divine will, or the original blindness we are born in, so it happens for the most part that Custom still is silently received for the best instructor. Except it be because her method is so glib and easy, in some manner like to that vision of Ezekiel, rolling up her sudden book of implicit knowledge, for him that will to take and swallow down at pleasure; which proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction, as it was heedless in the devouring, puffs up unhealthily a certain big face of pretended learning, mistaken among credulous men for the wholesome habit of soundness and good constitution, but is, indeed, no other than that swoln visage of counterfeit knowledge and literature which not only in private mars our education, but also in public is the common climber into every chair where either religion is preached or law reported, filling each estate of life and profession with abject and servile principles, depressing the high and heaven-born spirit of man, far beneath the condition wherein either God created him, or sin hath sunk him. To pursue the allegory, Custom being but a mere face, as Echo is a mere voice, rests not in her unaccomplishment, until by secret inclination she accorporate herself with Error, who being a blind and serpentine body, without a head, willingly accepts what he wants, and supplies what her incompleteness went seeking: hence it is that Error supports Custom, Custom countenances Error, and these two, between them, would persecute and chase away all truth and solid wisdom out of human life, were it not that God, rather than man, once in many ages calls together the prudent and religious counsels of men deputed to repress the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of Error and Custom, who, with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of humour and innovation, as if the womb of teeming Truth were to be closed up, if she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not with their unchewed notions and suppositions; against which notorious injury and abuse of man’s free soul, to testify and oppose the utmost that study and true labour can attain, heretofore the incitement of men reputed grave hath led me among others, and now the duty and the right of an instructed Christian calls me through the chance of good or evil report TO BE THE SOLE ADVOCATE OF A DISCOUNTENANCED TRUTH.’—Milton: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.
76. Ιλ. Ζ. 261.
77. The words in italics are Lord Monboddo’s: Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. preface, p. 79.
78.
79. The reader who is desirous of elucidating the mysteries of the words and phrases marked in italics in this chapter may consult the German works of Professor Kant, or Professor Born’s Latin translation of them, or M. Villar’s Philosophie de Kant, ou Principes fondamentaux de la Philosophie Transcendentale; or the first article of the second number of the Edinburgh Review, or the article ‘Kant,’ in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis, or Sir William Drummond’s Academical Questions, book ii. chap. 9.
80. Πρωτευς Ὀλβοδοτης, Proteus the giver of riches, certainly deserves a place among the Lares of every poetical and political turncoat.
81. See the Βατραχοι of Aristophanes.
82. informi limo glaucaque exponit in ulva.
83. Coleridge’s Lay Sermon, p. 10.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid. p. 21.
86. Ibid. p. 25.
87. Ibid. p. 27.
88. Ibid. pp. 45, 46 (where the reader may find in a note the two worst jokes that ever were cracked).
89. Ibid. p. 17.
90. ‘Some travellers speak of his strength as wonderful; greater they say, than that of ten men such as we.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 105.
91. Esquisse d’un Tableau historique des Progrès de l’Esprit humain.
92. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 139.
93. Ibid. p. 193.
94. Ibid. p. 191.
95. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 181.
96. Ibid. p. 182.
97. Cottle’s Edda, or, as the author calls it, Translation of the Edda, which is a misnomer.
98. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 237.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid. p. 252.
101. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 252.
102. Ibid.
103. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 226.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid. p. 236.
106. Ibid. p. 226.
107. Ibid. p. 228.
108. Ibid.
109. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 273, et passim.
110. Ibid. p. 258.
111. Ibid.
112. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 249. It is curious, that in the fourth article of the same number from which I have borrowed so many exquisite passages, the reviewers are very angry that certain ‘scandalous and immoral practices’ in the island of Wahoo are not reformed: but certainly, according to the logic of these reviewers, the Government of Wahoo is entitled to look upon them in the light of ‘ruffians, scoundrels, incendiaries, firebrands, madmen, and villains’; since all these hard names belong of primary right to those who propose the reformation of ‘scandalous and immoral practices’! The people of Wahoo, it appears, are very much addicted to drunkenness and debauchery; and the reviewers, in the plenitude of their wisdom, recommend that a few clergymen should be sent out to them, by way of mending their morals. It does not appear, whether King Tamaahmaah is a king by divine right; but we must take it for granted that he is not; as, otherwise, the Quarterly Reviewers would either not admit that there were any ‘scandalous and immoral practices’ under his government, or, if they did admit them, they would not be such ‘incendiaries, madmen, and villains,’ as to advocate their reformation. There are some circumstances, however, which are conclusive against the legitimacy of King Tamaahmaah, which are these: that he is a man of great ‘feeling, energy, and steadiness of conduct’; that he ‘goes about among his people to learn their wants’; and that he has ‘prevented the recurrence of those horrid murders’ which disgraced the reigns of his predecessors: from which it is obvious that he has neither put to death brave and generous men, who surrendered themselves under the faith of treaties, nor re-established a fallen Inquisition, nor sent those to whom he owed his crown to the dungeon and the galleys.
In the tenth article of the same number the reviewers pour forth the bitterness of their gall against Mr. Warden of the Northumberland, who has detected them in promulgating much gross and foolish falsehood concerning the captive Napoleon. They labour most assiduously to impeach his veracity and to discredit his judgment. On the first point, it is sufficient evidence of the truth of his statements, that the Quarterly Reviewers contradict them: but on the second, they accuse him, among other misdemeanours, of having called their Review ‘a respectable work‘! which certainly discredits his judgment completely.
113. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 249. The reader will be reminded of Croaker in the fourth act of the Good-natured Man: ‘Blood and gunpowder in every line of it. Blown up! murderous dogs! all blown up! (Reads.) “Our pockets are low, and money we must have.” Ay, there’s the reason: they’ll blow us up because they have got low pockets.... Perhaps this moment I’m treading on lighted matches, blazing brimstone, and barrels of gunpowder. They are preparing to blow me up into the clouds. Murder!... Here, John, Nicodemus, search the house. Look into the cellars, to see if there be any combustibles below, and above in the apartments, that no matches be thrown in at the windows. Let all the fires be put out, and let the engine be drawn out in the yard, to play upon the house in case of necessity.’—Croaker was a deep politician. The engine to play upon the house: mark that!
114. This illustration of the old fable of the mouse and the mountain falls short of an exhibition in the Honourable House, on the 29th of January 1817; when Mr. Canning, amidst a tremendous denunciation of the parliamentary reformers, and a rhetorical chaos of storms, whirlwinds, rising suns, and twilight assassins, produced in proof of his charges—Spence’s Plan! which was received with an éclat of laughter on one side, and shrugs of surprise, disappointment, and disapprobation on the other. I can find but one parallel for the Right Honourable Gentleman’s dismay:
This Spencean chimaera, which is the very foolishness of folly, and which was till lately invisible to the naked eye of the political entomologist, has since been subjected to a lens of extraordinary power, under which, like an insect in a microscope, it has appeared a formidable and complicated monster, all bristles, scales, and claws, with a ‘husk about it like a chestnut’: horridus, in jaculis et pelle Libystidis ursae!
115. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 271.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid. p. 258.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid. p. 273.
120. Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. p. 276.
121. Ibid. p. 260.
122. Ibid. p. 192.
123. ‘To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation, that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power; nor can any species of prostitution promote general depravity more, than that which destroys the force of praise by showing that it may be acquired without deserving it, and which, by setting free the active and ambitious from the dread of infamy, lets loose the rapacity of power, and weakens the only authority by which greatness is controlled. What credit can he expect who professes himself the hireling of vanity however profligate, and without shame or scruple celebrates the worthless, dignifies the mean, and gives to the corrupt, licentious, and oppressive, the ornaments which ought only to add grace to truth, and loveliness to innocence? Every other kind of adulteration, however shameful, however mischievous, is less detestable than the crime of counterfeiting characters, and fixing the stamp of literary sanction upon the dross and refuse of the world.’—Rambler, No. 136.
124. Deorum injurias diis curae.—Tiberius apud Tacit. Ann. I. 73.
125. ‘Besides all these evils of modern times which I have mentioned, there is in some countries of Europe, and particularly in England, another evil peculiar to civilised countries, but quite unknown in barbarous nations. The evil I mean is indigence, and the reader will be surprised when I tell him that it is greatest in the richest countries; and, therefore, in England, which I believe is the richest country in Europe, there is more indigence than in any other; for the number of people that are there maintained on public or private charity, and who may therefore be called beggars, is prodigious. What proportion they may bear to the whole people, I have never heard computed: but I am sure it must be very great. And I am afraid in those countries they call rich, indigence is not confined to the lower sort of people, but extends even to the better sort: for such is the effect of wealth in a nation, that (however paradoxical it may appear) it does at last make all men poor and indigent; the lower sort through idleness and debauchery, the better sort through luxury, vanity, and extravagant expense. Now, I would desire to know from the greatest admirers of modern times, who maintain that the human race is not degenerated, but rather improved, whether they know any other source of human misery, besides vice, disease, and indigence, and whether these three are not in the greatest abundance in the rich and flourishing country of England? I would further ask these gentlemen, whether, in the cities of the ancient world, there were poor’s houses, hospitals, infirmaries, and those other receptacles of indigence and disease which we see in the modern cities? And whether, in the streets of ancient Athens and Rome, there were so many objects of disease, deformity, and misery to be seen as in our streets, besides those which are concealed from public view in the houses above mentioned? In later times, indeed, in those cities, when the corruption of manners was almost as great as among us, some such things might have been seen as we are sure they were to be seen in Constantinople, under the later Greek Emperors.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 194.
126. ‘Omnia, quae nunc vetustissima creduntur, nova fuere. Inveterascet hoc quoque: et, quod hodie exemplis tuemur, inter exempla erit.’—Tacitus, Ann. XI. 24.
127. Drummond’s Academical Questions.—Preface, p. 4.
128. Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 280.
129. Malthus on Population, book i. chap. vii.
130. Sophocles, Antigone, 850. (Ed. Erfurdt.)
131. ‘It is notorious, that towards one another the Indians are liberal in the extreme, and for ever ready to supply the deficiencies of their neighbours with any superfluities of their own. They have no idea of amassing wealth for themselves individually; and they wonder that persons can be found in any society so destitute of every generous sentiment as to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and to live in ease and affluence regardless of the misery and wretchedness of members of the same community to which they themselves belong.’—Weld’s Travels in Canada; Letter XXXV.
132. See the Edda and the Northern Antiquities.
133. ‘The civilised man will submit to the greatest pain and labour, in order to excel in any exercise which is honourable; and this induces me to believe that such a man as Achilles might have beat in running even an oran outang, or the savage of the Pyrenees, whom nobody could lay hold of, though that be the exercise in which savages excel the most, and though I am persuaded that the oran outang of Angola is naturally stronger and swifter of foot than Achilles was, or than even the heroes of the preceding age, such as Hercules, and such as Theseus, Pirithous, and others mentioned by Nestor.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 76.
134. See Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess. The following extracts from the Satyr’s speeches to Corin will explain the allusion in the text.
135. ‘There are very few women who might not have married in some way or other. The old maid, who has either never formed an attachment, or who has been disappointed in the object of it, has, under the circumstances in which she has been placed, conducted herself with the most perfect propriety; and has acted a much more virtuous and honourable part in society than those women who marry without a proper degree of love, or at least of esteem, for their husbands; a species of immorality which is not reprobated as it deserves.’—Malthus on Population, book iv.