Маргарет Олифант
Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne
In 1708 Addison lost his post as under-secretary by a change of the ministry, or rather of the minister, it being the habit in those days to form a government piecemeal, a Whig here, a Tory there, as favor or circumstances required, so that it was by no means needful that all should go out or come in together. In fact, no sooner was the under-secretary deprived of one place than he obtained another, that of secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the same office, we presume, as that which is now called chief secretary for Ireland, though its seriousness and power are now so much greater. In those days there was no Irish people to deal with, but only a very lively, contentious, pushing, and place-hunting community—the Protestant English-Irish, which, so far as literature and public knowledge go, has been accepted as the type of the much darker and less simple character of the Celt. The wild, mystic, morose, and often cruel nature of the native race, with its gleams of poetry and dreams of fortune, has turned out a very different thing to reckon with. No such problem was presented to the statesmen of that time. The admixture of Irish blood would seem to go to the head of the Saxon and endow him with a gaiety and sparkle which does not exist either in one race or the other unmixed; and it was with the society formed on this basis, the ascendant minority, contemptuous of every possible power of the people so-called, yet far less unsympathetic than the anxious politicians of to-day, that Addison had to deal. His post was “very lucrative,” we are told—in fees and pieces of patronage, no doubt, for the income was but £2000 a year—and he soon acquired an even greater popularity on the one side of the channel than on the other. Something amiable and conciliatory must have rayed out of the man: otherwise it is curious to understand the popularity in brilliant and talkative Dublin of a stranger whose chief efforts in conversation were only to be accomplished tête-a-tête. But he had the foil of a detestable and detested chief—Wharton, whose corrupt and brutal character gave double acceptance to the secretary’s charm and goodness, and the Tories contended with the Whigs, says Swift, which should speak best of this favorite of fortune. “How can you think so meanly of a kingdom,” he exclaims, “as not to be pleased that every creature in it who hath one grain of worth has a veneration for you?” It is not often that even in hyperbole such a thing can be said.
It was while Addison was in Ireland thus gathering golden opinions that an event occurred which was of the utmost importance to his reputation, so far especially as posterity was concerned. Among the little band of friends over whom he held a kind of genial sway, and who acknowledged his superiority with boundless devotion, was one who was more nearly his equal than any other of the band; a friend of youth, one of those erratic but generous natures whose love of excellence is almost rapturous, though they are unable themselves to keep up to the high level they approve. Steele can never be forgotten where Addison is honored. He had been at Charterhouse and at Oxford along with his friend, and no doubt it was a wonder among the reading men in their earlier days how it was that the correct, the polished, the irreproachable scholar of Magdalen, with his quiet ways, could put up with that gay scapegrace who was perpetually in trouble. Such alliances, however, have not been rare. The cheerful, careless Dick, full of expedients, full of animal spirits, always amusing, friendly, generous in his impulses, if unintentionally selfish in the constant breaches of his better meaning, must have had a charm for the steadier and purer nature which was formed with pulses more orderly. No doubt Steele’s perpetual self-revelation, his unfolding of a hundred quips and cranks of human nature, and unsuspicious rendering up of all his natural anomalies and contradictions to the instinctive spectatorship of his amused companion, helped to endear him to the humorist, who must have laughed till he cried on many an occasion over poor Dick’s amazing wisdoms and follies, without any breach of that indulgent affection which between two men who have grown up together can rarely be said to be mingled with anything so keen as contempt. Steele, it is evident, must have known Addison “at home,” as school-boys say, or he could not have made that little sketch of the household where brothers and sisters were taught to be so loving to each other. While the young hero who had, as in the favorite allegories of the time, chosen the right path, and taken the steady hand of Minerva, instead of that more lovely one of fatal Venus to guide him, was reaching the heights of applause and good fortune, the unlucky youth who chose pleasure for his pursuit had gone disastrously the other way, and fallen into all sorts of adventures, extremely amusing for his friend to hear of, though he disapproved, and no doubt very amusing to the actual actor in them, though he suffered. But Addison was not a mere “spectator” so far as the friend of his youth was concerned. When he began to rise there seems little reason to doubt that he pulled Steele up with him, introducing him to the notice of the fine people, who in those days might make the fortune of a gentlemanly and clever adventurer, and that either by his own interest or that of one of his powerful friends he procured him a place and started him in public life. Steele had already floated into literature, and, whether it is true or not that Addison helped him in the concoction of one play at least, it is clear that he kept his purse and his heart well open to his friend, now a man about town ruffling at the coffee-houses with the best, and full of that energy and readiness which so often strike out new ways of working, though it may require steadier heads to carry them out.
It was, however, while Addison was in Ireland that Steele was moved by the most important of these original impulses, an idea full, as it proved, of merit and practical use. Journalism was then in its infancy. A little “News Letter,” or “Flying Post”—a shabby broadsheet containing the bulletin of a battle, a formal and brief notice of parliamentary proceedings, an account of some monstrous birth, a child with two heads, or that perennial gooseberry which has survived into our own time—and an elaborate list of births, deaths, and marriages, was almost all that existed in the way of public record. The post to which Steele had been appointed was that of Gazetteer, which naturally led him to the consideration of such matters: and among the crowd of projects which worked together in his “barmy noddle,” there suddenly surged uppermost the idea of a paper which should come out on the post days, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays which were, up to that time, the only days of communication with the country; a paper written after the fancy of the time, in itself a letter from the wits and the knowing persons in town, revealing not only the existing state of public affairs, but all those exquisite particulars of society which have always been the delight of country circles, and which were doubly sure to please at a time when society was governed by talk, when all public criticism was verbal, and the echoes of the wits in the coffee-houses were blown about on all the breezes. Happy the Sir Harry who, sitting mum over his wine in a corner, could hear these gentlemen discussing what Sunderland or Somers had said, what my Lord Treasurer intended, or, more delightful, the newest incident in the tragedy-comedy of the great duchess—how the queen looked glumly at her over the card-table, or let her stand unnoticed at a drawing-room; and still more deeply blest the parson who had Mr. Addison pointed out to him, and heard the young Templars and scholars pressing him with questions as to when his “Cato” was coming out, or asking his opinion on a set of verses. Such worthies would go back to the country full of these reflections from the world, and tell how the gallants laughed at the mantua which was going out of fashion, and made fun of the red heels which, perhaps, were just then appearing at the Manor or the Moated Grange. Steele saw at once what a thing it would be to convey these impressions at first hand in a privileged “Tatler” direct to the houses of the gentry all over the country. Perhaps he did not perceive at first what a still finer thing to have them served up with the foaming chocolate or fragrant tea at every breakfast in Mayfair.
It is an idea that has occurred to a great many heads since with less success. In these latter days there have been many literary adventurers, to whom the starting of a new paper has seemed an opening into El Dorado. But the opening in the majority of cases does not prove a practicable one—for, in fact, there is no longer any need of news; and the concise little essays and elegant banterings of those critics of the time have fallen out of date. News means in our day an elaborate system, and instantaneous reports from all the world; and one London newspaper—far more one of the gigantic journals proper to America—contains as much matter as half a hundred “Tatlers.” One wonders, if Addison’s genius, and the light hand of Steele, and Swift’s tremendous and scathing humor could be conjured up again, whether such a production, with its mingled thread of the finest sentiments and the pettiest subjects, metaphysics and morals, and the “Eneid” and “Paradise Lost,” and periwigs and petticoats, would find sufficient acceptance with “the fair” and the wise to keep it afloat, or would still go up to sages and fine ladies with their breakfast trays.
It was on the immediate foundation of one of Swift’s savage jeux d’esprits that the new undertaking was begun, a mystification which greatly amused the wits then, but which does not, perhaps, appear particularly delightful now. Swift had been seized by a freak of mischief in respect to a certain Partridge, an astrologer, who made an income out of the public by pretended revelations of the future, as is still done, we believe, among those masses, beneath the ascertained audience of literature, who spend their sixpences at Christmas upon almanacs and year-books containing predictions of what is to happen. It occurred to Swift in some merry moment to emulate and to doom the Merlin of the day: and with the prodigious gravity which characterizes his greatest jests he wrote “Predictions for the year 1708,” in which, among many other things, he announced that he had consulted the stars on behalf of Partridge, and had ascertained that the wizard would certainly die on March 29, at eleven o’clock at night, of a raging fever. The reader will probably remember that the jest was kept up, and that, notwithstanding Partridge’s protest that he was not dead at all, Isaac Bickerstaff insisted on asserting that his prophecy had been fulfilled, to the grave confusion of various serious affairs, and the inextinguishable laughter of the wits. It was not a pretty jest, but it brought into being a visionary critic of public matters, a new personage in the literary world, in whom other wits saw capabilities. Steele in particular perceived that Isaac Bickerstaff was just the personality he wanted, and therewith proceeded to make of that shadowy being the Mentor of the time. The design was excellent, the immediate execution cleverly adapted to seize the interest of the public, which had been already amused and mystified under that name. Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff presented his readers with the first number of his journal without charge. “I earnestly desire,” he says, “all persons, without distinction, to take it in for the present gratis, and hereafter at the price of one penny, forbidding all hawkers to take more for it at their peril.” The idea took the town. No doubt there would be many an allusion to this and that which the wits would guess at, and which would to them have a double meaning; but, to do the “Tatler” justice, the kind of gossip which fills the so-called society newspapers in our day was unknown to the witty gentlemen who sometimes satirize a ruffle or a shoe-tie, but never personally a woman. The types of fine ladies who flutter through his pages could never raise a pang in any individual bosom; and when he addressed himself to the reform of the theater, to the difficult duty of checking play and discouraging duels, he had all the well-thinking on his side.
Steele had gone on for some numbers before his new venture attracted the attention of Addison. He recognized whose the hand was from a classical criticism in the sixth number which he had himself made to Steele; and he must have been pleased with the idea, since he soon after appears as a coadjutor, sending his contributions from the Secretary’s office in Dublin. There has been a great and prolonged controversy upon the respective merits of these two friends: some, and first among them Macaulay, will have it that Addison had all the merit of the publication. “Almost everything good in the ‘Tatler’ was his,” says the historian. But there are many who, despite Macaulay’s great authority, find a certain difficulty in distinguishing Addison from Steele and Steele from Addison, and are inclined to find the latter writer as entertaining and as gifted as the former. No question could be more difficult to settle. As we glance over the little gray volumes which bring back to us dimly the effect which the little broadsheet must have had when it appeared day by day, there is no doubt that the eye is oftenest caught by something which, when we look again, proves to be from Addison’s hand. We open, it is by chance, and yet not altogether by chance, upon Tom Folio and his humors; upon the poor poet and his verses; upon some group of shabby heroes, or stumbling procession of country gentlemen which there is no mistaking. But on the other hand it is Steele who gives us that family picture, which reads like the Vicar of Wakefield, yet with a more tender touch (for Mrs. Primrose was never her husband’s equal), showing us the good woman among her family, the husband half distracted with the fear of losing her, the wife for his sake smiling her paleness away. Indeed, we think, in these early essays at least, it would be a mistake for the critic to risk his reputation on the superiority of Addison. He set up no higher standard than that which his friend had raised, but fell into the same humor, adding his contribution of social pictures with less force of moral generally, and more delicacy of workmanship, but no remarkable preëminence. The character of the publication changed gradually as the great new pen came into it; but whether by Addison’s influence or by the mere action of time, and a sense of what suited the audience he had obtained—which a soul so sympathetic as Steele’s would naturally divine with readiness—no one can tell. Gradually the news which at first had regularly filled a column dropped away. It had been, no doubt, well authenticated news, the freshest and best, as it came from the authorized hand of the Gazetteer; but either Steele got tired of supplying it, or a sense of the inexpediency of publishing anything which might displease his patrons and the government, convinced him that it was unnecessary. It is scarcely possible, either, to tell why the “Tatler” came to an end. Mr. Austin Dobson, in his recent life of Steele, gives sundry reasons which do not seem, however, of any particular weight. Steele’s own account is that he had become known, and his warnings and lessons were thus made of no avail:
I considered [he says] that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others, and for that reason and that only chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time confess my life is at best but pardonable. And with no greater character than this a man could make an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele.
This reason is, however,—though pretty and just enough had its writer renounced the trade,—a somewhat fantastic one when we reflect that though the “Tatler” ended in January, 1711, the “Spectator” began in March of the same year. The one died only to be replaced by the other. It is said that Addison did not know of his friend’s intention to cut the “Tatler” short, and it was he who was the chief agent in beginning the “Spectator.” Therefore it may have been that the breach was but an impatience of Steele’s, which his slow and less impulsive and more constant comrade could not permanently consent to. No doubt Addison had by this time learned the advantage of such a mode of utterance, and felt how entirely it suited his own manner of work and constitution of mind. The fictitious person of Isaac Bickerstaff was relinquished in the new series: it no longer assumed to give any news. Its contents were less varied, consisting generally of a single essay, and, notwithstanding the impression which the casual reader often has, and which some critics have largely dwelt upon, that the comments of this critic are upon the merest vanities of the time, the hoops, the gold-lace, the snuff-boxes, and patches of the period, it is astonishing how little space is actually taken up with these lighter details, and how many graver questions, how many fine sentiments and delicate situations, afford the moralist occasion for those remarks which he makes in the most beautiful and picturesque English to the edification of all the generations. There is, perhaps, no book which is so characteristic of an epoch in history, and none which gives so clear a conception of the English world of the time. We sit and look on, always amused, often instructed, while the delicate panorama unfolds before us—and see everything pass, the fine coaches, the gentlemen on foot, the parsons in their gowns, the young Templars jesting in the doorways: but always with the little monologue going on, which accompanies the movement, and runs off into a hundred byways of thought, sometimes serious, sometimes gay, often with no particular connection with the many-colored streams of passers-by, yet never obscuring our sight of them as they come and go. There is, perhaps, a noisy group at the door while Mr. Spectator talks, with their wigs in the last fashion, and their clouded canes hung to a button, while they discourse. In one corner there are some two or three grave gentlemen putting their heads together over the latest news; and in another the young fellows over their wine eager in discussion of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Bracegirdle at the theater, or of Chloe and Clarissa, the reigning beauties of society; or perhaps it is a poet, poor Ned Softly, as the case may be, who is reading his last sonnet to his mistress’s eyebrow, amid the laughing commentaries or the ridicule of his companions. What is Mr. Spectator talking of all the while? His discourse does not prevent us hearing the impertinences of the others. Perhaps he is talking of honest love, a favorite theme of his, at which the wits do not dare to laugh in his presence,—or he is telling one of his fables, to which everybody in the midst of his levity or his business gives half an ear at least; or by a caprice he has turned aside to metaphysics, and is discussing the processes of the mind, and how “no thought can be beautiful that is not just”; how “’t is a property of the heart of man to be diffusive, its kind wishes spread abroad over the face of the creation,” and such like; not to speak of graver subjects still to which he will direct our minds on Saturdays, perhaps to prepare us for Sunday, when he is silent. Or he will read aloud a letter from some whimsical correspondent, which the wits will pause to hear, for gossip is ever sweet, but which before they know lands them in a case of hardship or trouble which touches their consciences and rouses their pity. Sometimes the hum of life will stop altogether and even Softly put his verses in his pocket to listen: and on the brink of tears the fine gentlemen, and we too along with them, incontinently burst out a-laughing at some touch that no one expected. But whether we laugh or cry, or are shamed in our levity, or diverted in our seriousness, outside the windows the crowd is always streaming on. There is no separating the “Spectator” from the lively, crowded, troublous, and perplexing scenes upon which all his reflections are made. The young lady looking out of her coach—at sight of whom all the young fellows doff their hats and make their comments, how much her fortune is, who is in pursuit of her, or if any mud has yet been flung upon her—shows to the philosopher a face disturbed with all the puzzles of an existence which nobody will allow her to take seriously. The poor wit who endeavors so wistfully to amuse my lord in
his dullness betrays to that critic not so much the soul of a toady, as that of the anxious father with children that starve at home. His young fellows, though they look so careless, have their troubles too. Wherever that keen eye turns another group shows through the crowd, or a lonely whimsical figure as distinct as if there was no one but he. Save perhaps on those Saturdays when he plays his soft accompaniment to Milton’s grand, sonorous organ he is never abstracted or retired from men: on all other occasions, though he is thinking of a great deal else, and has his mind absorbed in other themes, this busy world of which he forms a part is always with him. Sometimes he permits us to see him over their heads only, seated on his familiar bench at his table, from whence he delivers his homilies, with all these figures moving and re-moving on the busy pavement in the foreground; sometimes we are admitted inside, and watch them through open door and window by his side: but he is never to be parted from the society in which he finds his models, his subjects, his audience. Like other men he takes it for granted that the fashion of his contemporaries is to go on forever. For posterity that smiling, keen observer takes no thought.
But of all things else that Addison has done there remains one preëminent figure which is his chief claim to immortality. The “Campaign” has disappeared out of literature; “Cato” is known only by a few well-known lines; the “Spectator” itself, though a work which no gentleman’s library can be without, dwells generally in dignified retirement there, and is seldom seen on any table but the student’s, though we are all supposed to be familiar with it: but Sir Roger de Coverley is the familiar friend of most people who have read anything at all, and the acquaintance by sight, if we may so speak, of everybody. There is no form better known in all literature. His simple rustic state, his modest sense of his own importance, his kind and genial patronage of the younger world, which would laugh at him if it were not overawed by his modesty and goodness, and which still sniggers in its sleeve at all those kind, ridiculous ways of his as he walks about in London, taken in on all sides, with his hand always in his purse and his heart in its right place, are always familiar and delightful. We learn with a kind of shock that it was Steele who first introduced this perfect gentleman to the world, and can only hope that it was Addison’s idea from the first, and that he did not merely snatch out of his friend’s hands and appropriate a conception so entirely according to his own heart. To Steele, too, we are indebted for some pretty scenes in the brief history: for Will the Huntsman’s wooing, which is the most delicate little enamel, and for the knight’s own love-making, which, however, is pushed a little too near absurdity. But it is Addison who leads him forth among his country neighbors, and to the assizes, and meets the gipsies with him, and brings him up to town, carrying him to Westminster and to Spring Gardens, in the wherry with the one-legged waterman, and to the play. The delightful gentleman is never finer than in this latter scene. He has to be conveyed in his coach, attended by all his servants, armed with “good oaken plants,” and Captain Sentry in the sword he had worn at Steinkirk, for fear of the Mohocks, those brutal disturbers of the public peace whom Addison justly feels it would be unbecoming to bring within sight of his noble old knight.
As soon as the house was full and the candles lighted my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit that he made a very proper centre to a tragick Audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend’s remarks because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end; one while he appeared much concerned for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to know what would become of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache’s obstinate refusal to her lover’s importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence, “You can’t imagine, sir, what ’t is to have to do with a widow.” Upon Pyrrhus, his threatening afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his head and murmured, “Ay! do it if you can.” This part dwelt so much upon my friend’s imagination that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, “These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray,” says he, “you that are a critick, is this play according to your dramatick rules, as you call them? Should your People in Tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of!”
The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. “Well,” says the Knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, “I suppose we are now to see Hector’s Ghost?” He then renewed his attention, and from time to time fell a-praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom, at his first entering, he took for Astyanax; but we quickly set him right in that particular, though at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to see the little boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him.
Could anything be more delightful than this genial picture? We have all met in later years a certain Colonel Newcome, who is very like Sir Roger, one of his descendants, though he died a bachelor. But the Worcestershire knight was the first of his lineage, and few are the gifted hands who have succeeded in framing men after his model. Those little follies which are so dear to us, the good faith which makes the young men laugh, yet feel ashamed of themselves for laughing, and all the circumstances of that stately simple life which are so different from anything we know, yet so lifelike and genuine, have grown into the imagination of the after-generations. We seem to know Sir Roger from our cradle, though we may never even have read the few chapters of his history. This is the one infallible distinction of genius above all commoner endowments. Of all the actors in that stirring time Sir Roger remains the most living and real. The queen and her court are no more than shadows moving across the historic stage. Halifax, and Somers, and Harley, and even the great Bolingbroke, what are they to us? Figures confused and uncertain, that appear and disappear in one combination or another, so that our head aches in the effort to follow, to identify, to make sure what the intrigues and the complications mean. But we have no difficulty in recollecting all about Sir Roger. We would not have the old man mocked at any more than Mr. Addison would, but kiss his kind old hand as we smile at those little foibles which are all ingratiating and delightful. In that generation, with all its wars and successes, there was, perhaps, no such gain as Sir Roger. Marlborough’s victories made England feared and respected, but cost the country countless treasure, and gave her little advantage; the good knight cost nobody anything, and made all the world the richer. He is one of those inhabitants who never grow old or pass away, and he gives us proof undeniable that when we speak of a corrupt and depraved age, as we have reason to do, we have still nobler reason for believing—as the despairing prophet was taught by God himself in far older times: that however dark might be the prospect there were still seven thousand men in Israel who had never bowed the knee to Baal—what we learn over again, thank Heaven! from shining example everywhere, that there are always surviving the seed of the just, the salt of the earth, by whose silent agency, and pure love, and honest truth, life is made practicable and the world rolls on.
Sir Roger is the great point of the “Spectator,” as the “Spectator” is the truest history of the time. It contains, however, beside, much that is admirable and entertaining, as well as a good deal that was temporary, and is now beyond the fashion of our understanding, or, at least, of our appreciation. Addison’s criticism, or rather exposition, of Milton, which no doubt taught his age a far more general regard for that great poet, is well enough known, but yet not nearly so well known as Sir Roger, and not necessary now as it was then. When these criticisms began it is evident that Addison, as well as his friend Steele, had made a great advance from the time when the young Oxford scholar left Shakspere out of his reckoning altogether, and considered “Old Spenser” only fit to amuse a barbarous age. Though the balance of things had not been redressed throughout the English world, yet these scholars had come to perceive that the greatness of their predecessors had been, perhaps, a little mixed up; that Cowley was not so mighty a genius as their boyhood believed, and that there were figures as of gods behind which it was shame to have misconceived. Throughout all, the meaning was wholesome, and tended toward the elevation of the time. Steele had it specially at heart to discourage gambling, and to put down the hateful tyranny of the duel. And both writers used all their powers to improve and raise the character of theatrical representations, keeping a watch not only over the plays that were performed, but also over the manners of the audience, who crowded the stage so that the players could scarcely be seen, and played cards in their boxes, and used the public entertainment for their own private quarrels and assignations. It is curious, too, to note how these authorities regarded the opera, the new form of amusement which had pushed its way, against all the prejudices of the English, into fashion. Addison himself, indeed, wrote an opera which was not successful; but he did not love that new-fangled entertainment. He devotes two or three numbers to the description of it, for, says he, “There is no question our grandchildren will be very anxious to know the reason why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand.” It is evident by this that his age had not reached to the further sublimity of believing that when the utterance is musical there is no need of understanding at all. “One scarce knows how to be serious,” he adds, “in the confutation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice. If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment.” We wonder if our “Spectator” would be less affronted now by the constant adaptation of equivocal French plays to the English stage, than by the anomaly of a representation given in language which nobody understood? He would, perhaps, feel it to be an advantage often not to understand, and doubt whether the English after all “have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature.”
