tained that it was Pope Alexander VII. who, in the "disguise of a coalman," came over to England and caused the great fire of London, &c. Aubrey says of him, His manner of studie was thus: he wore a long quilt cap, which came two or three inches over his eies, which served him for an umbrella to defend his eies from the light; about every three houres, his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of ale, to refocillate his wasted spirits; so he studied and drank, and this maintained him till night, when he made a good supper." These are but few of the modes resorted to by literary men to produce mental excitement; many singular contrarieties of disposition they afford us; but we had forgotten Dryden, who used to ply himself with physic and phlebotomy before sitting down to any important work. His fancy would be the least likely to captivate our modern scribes, as we are fast receding from the age of voluntary self-martyrdom. To what curious extremes their habits of mental abstraction would have led, but for the indulgence of authors in such harmless, though singular pastimes, it is difficult to conjecture. Newton, when once engaged on a mathematical subtlety, would suffer nothing to interrupt his investigations. It is related of him that more than on one such occasion he kept the dinner waiting three whole hours; and a similar interval also once intervened in the very act of his assuming his nether garments. Morel, the French writer, possessed such devotion to study, that when the fatal sickness of his wife, and shortly afterwards her death, were announced to him, he could not be prevailed upon to resign his pen, but simply replied, "I am very sorry, she was a good woman." And another learned scribe, no less indifferent to connubial claims, actually devoted the whole of his wedding day to his books. Mason, the author of the "Spiritual Treasury," while engaged upon that work, being called upon by a person in business, gave his name and address; but when the author subsequently referred to the card on which he ought to have written the same, it contained instead the following-Acts ii., v. 2! This is about equal to the divine, who for the first time appearing with spectacles which he did not use, as he placed them over his forehead, being met with the Among the pains and penalties of authorship, the critical censorship of the press has had its share. Cumberland once said, "authors should be shelled like the rhinoceros;" but it would be hard, says one, were the linnet, or the nightingale, to cease from warbling, because they cannot sing in a storm. Severe and unmerited criticism has been but too frequently the bane of literature, although, as in the instance of Byron, it has ultimately tended to elicit the nobler developement of talent, which otherwise might never have been brought into action. Some writers have been driven mad, and others have actually died of criticism. Hawkesworth was a case of the latter, and Tasso the former. Voltaire called these "dreaded ministers of literary justice," la cannaille de la litterature, but he, like Pope, suffered retribution at their hands; and no less remarkable is the fact of the erroneous criticism of some of the learned respecting the productions of other writers-differing in their estimates of literary merit as wide as the world apart. One memorable case might be named here, which went beyond mere criticism: we refer to that of Count Mazarin, who kept a complete collection of the libels written against him-it amounted to forty-six quarto volumes; and there have been also more instances than one of unfortunate writers of state libels, being compelled to recant them in the most emphatic manner-by eating literally their own words. One occurred at Moscow, where the poor advocate of the liberties of the people paid this most unmerciful penalty of his patriotism. A scaffold boing erected in a conspicuous part of the city, with a surgeon on one side, and the knout on the other, our worthy author was compelled to swallow his book leaf by leaf, neatly rolled up like a lottery ticket-taking what the surgical attendant deemed a suitable quantum at a time for a digestible meal, during three whole days in which he accomplished the humiliating task, to the singular entertainment of the populace he had sought to serve. He, at any rate, could subscribe to the sentiment, that a great book is a great bore. An amusing anecdote is related of a certain French writer, who, failing to please the critics of his day, by his avowed productions, afterwards resorted to the expedient of publishing three volumes of poetry and essays, as the works of a journeyman blacksmith. The trick succeeded-all France was in amazement; and the poems of this child of nature this untutored genius -this inspired son of Vulcan, as he was now called, were immediately and enthusiastically praised, even by the very critics who before repudiated the effusions of the same pen. Byron was condemned, among other crimes, for not having dated his first poems from the purlieus of Grub-street; and Keats was barbarously attacked in a similar manner, by no less a critic than Gifford a circumstance, to which has been remotely ascribed the premature decease of that gifted poet; for, on reading the article in question, his feelings became so excited, that he burst a blood vessel, which induced consumption, of which he died at the age of twenty-four. Moore relates that such also was the effect of the savage attack upon Byron, that a friend who happened to call on him shortly after he had read it, inquired whether he had received a challenge, such fierce defiance was depicted in his countenance. It was about the same time that the opposite critical organ commenced a paper on Wordsworth's "Excursion," with the derisive words "This will never do; we give him up as altogether incurable and beyond the power of criticism." The sweet sonneteer of Windermere has fortunately outlived the ignorant intolerance of this sapient censor, as he now occupies the highest honors of the temple of fame. Poor Kirke White was another sad instance of literary assassination: when only seventeen he published his volume of poems, in hopes by its sale of procuring sufficient money to enable him to go to college; but he was doomed to the merciless cruelties of an attackinthe Monthly Review. How grievously the unjust criticism tortured his sensitive mind may be ga thered from his own words: "This Review," he says, "goes before me wherever I turn my steps, and is, I verily believe, an instrument in the hands of Satan to drive me to distraction." Southey kindly consoled and encoured him to persevere, but wasting disease soon hurried the young poet away, and it was Southey's friendly hand that first gathered his scattered and despised works, and gave them to the world. The philosophic Newton was far from being invulnerable to the shafts of his critical oponents; for even Whiston, the friend of twenty years, forfeited his favor for all time by a single contradiction; for "no man," says he, "was of a more fearful temper." Whiston farther declares, that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton's Chronology in his lifetime, as he firmly believed it would have killed him; and it was the expressed opinion of Dr. Bentley, that Locke's thorough refutation of the Bishop's metaphysics about the Trinity, actually hastened his end. Our sympathies become the more deeply enlisted for the penalties of authorship, when we remember the pains with which the productions of genius have been accompanied; and these are not likely to become overrated by the many. Numerous instances are upon record, proving that the emanations of mind have been attended with severe and laborious industry; and we may as well cite a few, perhaps here. So scrupulously fastidious was Pope as to nicety of expression, that it is known he seldom committed to the press anything till it had passed under his repeated inspection and revision, sometimes keeping it by him even a year or more for the purpose; and his publisher, Dodsley, on one occasion deemed it easier to reprint the whole of his corrected proofs than attempt the needed emendations. Thomson, Akenside, Gray, and Cowper, were equally devoted in their elaboration of a line; and Goldsmith gave seven long years to the perfection of his inimitable production, the Deserted Village: producing, on the average, something like three or four lines per diem, which he thought a good day's work. Hume and Robertson were incessantly laboring over their language-the latter used even to write his sentences on small slips of paper, and after rounding and polishing them to his satisfaction, he entered them in a book, which afterwards was again subjected to a final revision. Many an immortal work, that is a source of exquisite enjoyment to mankind, has been written with the blood of the author, at the expense of his happiness and of his life. Even the most jocose productions have been composed with a wounded spirit. Cowper's humorous ballad of Gilpin was written in a state of despondency that bordered upon madness. "I wonder," says the poet, in a letter to Mr. Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." In a late number of the Quarterly Review, it was justly observed, that our very greatest wits have not been men of a gay and vivacious disposition. Of Butler's private history nothing remains but the record of his miseries, and Swift was never known to smile." Lord Byron, who was irritable and unhappy, wrote some of the most amusing stanzas of Don Juan in his dreariest moods. In fact, the cheerfulness of an author's style is always but a doubtful indication of the serenity of his heart. Burke had all his principal works printed once or twice at a private press before submitting them to his publish er. Scott, Moore, Campbell, and Bulwer, rary industry. He was literally a Johnson and Gibbon were exceptions to these, it is true; they wrote spontaneously, and their first draft was the only one they gave to the press: and yet the majesty and beauty of their diction remain, perhaps, unsurpassed at the present day. The French writers, Rousseau and St. Pierre, carried their scrupulosity to an amusing excess. The former used to write out his new Heloise on fine gilt edged paper, and with the two-fold affection of a lover and a parent, repeatedly rehearsed his effusions to the ravishment of his own delighted ears before sending them to the printer; and the latter transcribed his Paul and Viginia no less than nine times, with the view of rendering it as perfect as any mundane thing may be. It is supposed that above five hunSheridan, it has been well observed, dred of his Lexicons were unsold at watched long and anxiously for a bright the time of his death. These were idea, and when he was visited with placed by his niece and executrix in a one, he sought to attire it suitably, and room at Martin, in Surrey, where for afterwards discovered no less assiduity some years they lay at the mercy of in rewarding it with a glass or two of gen- the rats; and when they came into erous port. Burns was another hard the possession of this lady's executors, worker with his brain; when his fickle scarcely one complete volume could muse jaded, he used to rock himself on be formed out of the remainder, and a chair, and gaze upon the sky, pa- the whole load of learned rags sold tiently waiting her inspiration. He only for seven pounds! A single imperwas fastidious to a fault in the perfec- fect copy recently sold for a larger sum. tion of his phrase and rhythm. The [To be Continued.] same delicate sense characterises Byron THE ELEMENTS OF MORALITY; INCLUDING POLITY.* [Concluded.] Now, let us pause a moment, to recall to mind what our author has promised, and what he has performed. He promised, that he would lay down certain self-evident truths or propositions, analogous to the axioms of geometry, and deduce the elements of morality from them, by "rigorous reasoning." One of these fundamental propositions one of these self-evident truths, he informs us, is his principle of justice. Now, where are the moral rules he has deduced from this? Alas! he tells us, that if we undertake to "draw inferences from the notion of Justice," we shall run into all kinds of "contradiction and confusion." proves this by a specimen of his own. He Thus," says he, "if we say that Justice is Equality, and if we thereupon attempt to make the Property of all citizens always equal, we destroy the conception of Property."-p. 149. Now, Mr. Whewell offers this as a proof that we should not attempt to draw inferences from the notion of Justice; and we admit, that it is a conclusive proof, that he, at least, should not attempt to deduce the elements of morality" from such a source. Why, then, did he attempt to do it? Why did he undertake to give us a chain of consequences flowing from this great principle of justice, as the bright and beautiful truths of geometry flow from definitions and axioms? We are now told. that these consequences are not to be defined by us at all, but by the law of the land! Instead of mathematical deductions from self-evident truths, we have moral rules deduced from the laws of civil society; and which are, therefore, as fluctuating and changeable, as the source from which they are derived. We scarcely know, which the more to admire, the magnificence of the promise, or the insignificance of the performance, Mr. Whewell con tends, as we have seen, that we cannot deduce any conclusions from the notion of Justice, without running into "contradiction and confusion;" and hence, the practical rule of justice is to be deriv ed from the law of the state. It would be wrong to conclude from this, howtory doctrine. For although he teachever, that he does not hold a contradices, that we dare not make any practical application of the great principle of justice, independent of the law of the land; yet he declares, on the other hand, that "the State has, for one of its offices, to remove out of the Laws all that is unjust, so as to make them more and more just."-p. 148. "States Laws continually more and more just." may aim at constantly making their p. 149. But how the law-giver is to But let us suppose that it should hap- *The Elements of Morality; including Polity. By William Whewell, D. D., author of the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. In two volumes. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-street. pp. 401 and 426. VOL. XIX.-NO. CI. pose, he not only teaches that the great" Ideas" of Truth, and Justice, and Goodness, which spring from the moral nature of man, are dark, vague, and floating notions, leading only to "contradiction and confusion ;" but he also labors, in every conceivable way, and in some that were not conceivable, to impress the mind of the reader that the law of the land is, in Great Britain at least, the very perfection of Reason. He wishes "each rising generation" to derive "its education from the existing Laws and Customs of the Nation," and to be deeply "imbued with a belief that these Laws, and the Maxims which they imply, are right and just" so that the stability and consistency of the State will be preserved."-p. 151. "We often find expressions of the Legislator, or of the Jurists who comment upon the Law, which imply that they could not conceive a Law which did not aspire to be just." -p. 83. Fortunately, we know nothing of such legislators and jurists; but it is quite certain, that our author could not clearly conceive of the injustice of a British law, if of any other. Shall we suppose, that the great "Idea of Justice? given by the moral nature of man, is in conflict with the "Fact supplied by the Law?" If so, our author will remind us, that "The Idea and the Fact cannot be separated."-p. 149. Justice without the law is a blind guide; we can only see what justice is by looking at its image reflected in the law. If our author has read, with much care, the Equity Jurisprudence of Story, from which he professes to have borrowed so freely, he must have seen, it appears to us, how unmeaning is the obsolete jargon about the perfection of reason manifested in the common law of England. Surely our author has not forgotten the great and wonderful changes which have so recently been effected in that law, in spite of the insane eulogies that its admirers have lavished upon it. Nor will the idle flatteries and compliments of our author, (the one-hundredth part of which we have not noticed,) prevent other wholesome reformations which are destined to be wrought in it. We should not have dwelt upon this subject so long, if, in seeking to do honor to "the Law," the author of the 66 Elements had done no violence to Morality. He every where speaks of the Law as fixed," and of Morality, independent of human law, as more flexible,"-p. 331; as something dark and uncertain in its determinations. Hence, we must be permitted to say, that he has given us a very rigid and despotic system of law indeed, but an exceedingly loose system of morals: not that it excludes any thing good; but that, along with the good, it includes every thing bad. The low philosophy of Hobbes, and the "immutable morality of his great antagonist, Cudworth; the brightest precept of recollection, and the darkest blunders of reason; are here united by the flimsiest ties of sophistry. Though our author did not, as he tells us, intend to treat of moral philosophy, but only of the elements of morals; yet has he decided the two great questions about which moral philosophy is chiefly conversant. The first of these questions is, whence do we derive the ideas of right and wrong, or under what circumstances do they arise? This question has been decided in the works before us, as we have seen, by referring the origin of our moral sentiments to the operation of human laws. The second question is, what are the characteristics of right and wrong, or how are they distinguished from other things? This question the author likewise disposes of in his attempt to illustrate "the idea of moral goodness." "We conceive human actions," says he, "to be absolutely right, when they are conformable to the Supreme Rule of human action."-p. 156. What, then, is this supreme rule? We are told a great many things about it, but what it is, we cannot so easily learn from our author. "The supreme law of our actions must be a law for all powers of action. It must include the whole of our nature. Its rule for affection and design must be, not that they shall be extinguished, but that they shall be right affection and right desire," &c., &c. But what is the rule? Why, "the conceptions to which Morality directs our desires and affections, may be collected, in a general way, from what has been said of the conceptions from which the impulses of Morality urge us. As Morality calls us from anger, malice, covetousness, lying, |