THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.

311

and therewithal it tends in the effect to sever us from our kind, to whom it seems, nevertheless, to unite us in our dreams and visions.

Shepherd. Listenin to you, sir, is like lookin into a well: at first ye think it clear, but no verra deep; but ye let drap in a peeble, and what a length of time ere the air-bells come up to the surface frae the profoond!

North. To the young mind, therefore, James, the indulgence in the pleasures which imagination finds in the silent companionship of books, may be regarded as often very dangerous. It is unconsciously training itself to a separation from men during the very years which should train it to the performance of the work in which it must mingle with them. It is learning to withdraw itself from men, to retire into itself, to love and prefer itself, to be its own delight and its own world. And yet a course meanwhile awaits it, in which the greater part of time, strength, thought, desire, must be given up to avocations which demand it from itself to others; in which it must forego its own delight, or rather must find its delight in service which abstracts it from itself wholly, and chains it to this weary world.

Shepherd. True as holy writ.

North. Life allows only lowly virtue. Its discipline requires of us the humblest pleasures and the humblest service; and only from these by degrees does it permit us to ascend to great emotions and high duties. It is a perpetual denial to ambition and requital of humility.

Shepherd. For mony a lang year did I feel that, sir. An' I'll continue to feel't to the hour I close my een on sun, moon, and stars.

North. But imagination is ambitious, and not humble. It leaps at once to the highest, and forms us to overlook the humble possibilities, and to scorn the lowly service of earth. Not measuring ourselves with reality, we grow giants in imagination; but the dreamed giant has vanished with the first sun-ray that strikes on our eyes and awakes us.

Shepherd. Yet wha will say that the pleasures o' imagination are to be withheld frae youth?

North. They cannot be withheld, James, for the spirit is full of imagination, and has power within itself for its own delusion. But bad education may withhold from imagination

312 IMAGINATION OUGHT NOT TO UNNERVE FOR ACTION.

the nobler objects of its delight, and leave it fettered to life, a spirit of power, struggling and consuming itself in vain efforts. Shepherd. What, then, in plain words, is the bona-feedy truth o' the subjeck?

North. I conceive that it is the habitual indulgence that is injurious, and not the knowledge by imagination of its greatest objects; and I should conceive that if we are to do anything with reference to imagination, it should be, as the years of youth rise upon the mind, to connect its pleasure with the severest action of intellect, by never offering to the mind in books the unrestrained wild delight of imagination; but indulging to it the consciousness of that faculty only in the midst of true and philosophical knowledge.

Shepherd. In science, art, history, men, and nature. Eh? North. The pleasures of literature are thought to make the mind effeminate, which they do, inasmuch as the cultivation of letters is at variance with the service of life. The service of life strengthens the mind, by calling upon it always to labour for a present or definite purpose,—to submit its desires, its pleasures, rigidly to an object. It does not deny pleasure-it yields it; but only in subordination or subservience to a purpose. It requires and teaches it to frame its whole action by its will, and to become master of itself. And whether the purposes of life are good and honourable, or debasing, it has this effect of strengthening the mind for action. It is the part of imagination to raise the mind, and to nourish its sensibility; but it must not be allowed to unnerve and disorder its force of action.

Shepherd. You're beginning to talk like the Pedlar in The Excursion.

North. I do not know that you could pay me a higher compliment, James.

Shepherd. Darkenin counsel wi' the multiplication o' vain words. A' the great moral philosophical writers that I hae read, baith in prose and in verse, are in expression simple, and say, in fact, far mair than they seem to do; whereas Wordsworth amaist aye, and no unfrequently yoursel, are ower gorgeous in your apparel, and say, in fact, less than you seem to do, though it's but seldom you dinna baith utter, even amang your vapidest verbosity, a gey hantle o' invaluable truth.

CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.

313

Tickler. Let us exchange such indefinite generalities for a few pointed particulars, if you please; else, depend on't, Fancy will be falling asleep.-What is your opinion, North, of Croker's Edition of Boswell's Johnson?

North. The same generally-as that of the Westminster Reviewer.

Tickler. Ay! And pray what is that?

North. That it is the best variorum edition since the revival of letters.

Tickler. Croker is certainly one of the cleverest and acutest of living men.

Shepherd. No unlike yourself, sir, I jalouse.
North. He is-and much more.

He is a man of great

abilities, and an admirable scholar. But he is much more than that he is a political writer of the highest order, as many of his essays in the Quarterly Review prove-which are full of the Philosophy of History.

Tickler. Pray, what have you got to say of the charges brought against him, in the last number of the Blue and Yellow, of pitiable imbecility and scandalous ignorance?

North. James, have the goodness to hand me over the seven volumes lying yonder on the small table.

Shepherd. Yon in the east nyuck? There. And here's the Blue and Yellow sittin on the tap o' them like an Incubus.

North. Having paid some little attention to the literary history of the period to which they refer, perhaps I may be able to amuse you for half-an-hour by an exposure of some of the betises of this prick-ma-dainty' Reviewer.

Shepherd. Prick-ma-denty-that's ane o' ma words. I've been alloo'd the length o' my tether the nicht on ither topics-and shall be glad noo to listen to you and Mr Tickler.

North. Of course I cannot now go over the whole of the Reviewer's ten pages of conceited and calumnious cavilling, but must restrict myself to specimens.

Shepherd. Ay-on with the specks. Oh! Tickler! doesna he look awfu' gleg?

North. The Reviewer says:- "In one place we are told that Allan Ramsay the painter was born in 1709, and died in 1784; in another, that he died in 1784, in the seventy-first year of 1 Prick-ma-dainty-finical, ridiculously exact.

314

MACAULAY'S REVIEW REVIEWED.

his age. If the latter statement be correct, he must have been born in or about 1713."

Shepherd. Hoo's that, sir? That maun be a blunder o' Croker's.

North. No, James; it is but a dishonest trick of his Reviewer. The age is stated differently in the two notes; but one note is Mr Croker's, and one is Mr Boswell's. Mr Boswell states colloquially that "Allan Ramsay died in 1784, in his seventy-first year;" Mr Croker states, with more precision, that "he was born in 1709; and died in 1784," and Mr Croker is right—see, if you choose, “Biographical Dictionary," voce Ramsay—and thus, because Mr Croker corrects an error, the Reviewer accuses him of making one.

Shepherd. Puppy!

North. Tickler, lend me your ears. The Reviewer says, "Mr Croker says, that at the commencement of the INTIMACY between Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale, IN 1765, the lady was twenty-five years old."

Shepherd. Wha the deevil cares hoo auld she was?

Tickler. Well, North, what then?

North. Why, Mr Croker says no such thing. He says, "Mrs Thrale was twenty-five years of age when the acquaintance commenced," but he does not say when it commenced, nor when it became intimacy. It is Mr Boswell who states, that in 1765 Mr Johnson was introduced into the family of Mrs Thrale; but in the very next page, we find Mrs Thrale herself stating that the acquaintance began in 1764, and the more strict intimacy might be dated from 1766. So that the discrepancy of two or three years which, by a double falsification of Mr Croker's words, the Reviewer attributes to him, belongs really to Mr Boswell and Mrs Thrale themselves!

Tickler. Proceed. I was prepared for misrepresentation.

North. The Reviewer adds-"In another place he says that Mrs Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth. Johnson was born in 1709; if, therefore, Mrs Thrale's thirty-fifth coincided with Johnson's seventieth, she could have been but twenty-one years old in 1765." Now, I find, James

Shepherd. Address yoursel to Tickler.

North. I find, Tickler, that Mr Croker states, that from a passage in one of Johnson's letters, "he suspects," and "it may

be surmised," that Mrs Thrale's thirty-fifth and Johnson's seventieth years coincided. The Reviewer says, that "the reasons given by Mr Croker for this notion are utterly frivolous." I shall look to that instantly; but is it not an absolute misrepresentation to call an opinion, advanced in the cautious. terms of surmise and suspicion, as a statement of a fact?

Tickler. Gross.

North. The creature continues-"But this is not all: Mr Croker in another place assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs Thrale's thirty-fifth birthday. If this date be correct, Mrs Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could have been only twentythree when her acquaintance with Johnson commenced."

Shepherd. What the deevil can be the meanin o' a this bairnly batheration about the age o' Mrs Thrawl, that is, Peeosy ?1

Tickler. Literary history, James.

North. Exposure of a small malignant, James. I observe, my dear Timothy, that Mr Croker does no such thing. He inserted, I presume, the lines under the year 1777, because he must needs place them somewhere; and, in the doubt of two or three years, which, as I have already shown, may exist between Mr Boswell's account and Mrs Thrale's own, he placed them under 1777; but, so far from positively assigning them to that particular year, he cautiously premises, "It was about this time that these verses were written;" and he distinctly states, in two other notes, that he doubts whether that was the precise date. Here again, therefore, his Reviewer is dishonest.

Shepherd. The man that 'ill tell ae lee will tell twunty.

North. The critic adds, "Two of Mr Croker's three statements must be false." But I add, Mr Croker has made but one statement, and that is not impugned; the two discrepancies belong to Mr Boswell and Mrs Thrale, and the falsehood to the Reviewer.

Shepherd. Sherp words.

North. The critic then claps his wings and crows.

"We

will not decide between them; we will only say, that the reasons he gives for thinking that Mrs Thrale was exactly

1 After the death of her first husband, Mrs Thrale married Signor Piozzi, an Italian music-master.