236 REVIEW.-Fosbroke's Raglan Tour. This scene is well represented by a tasteful frontispiece. The second court is a square, entirely of buildings, and Mr. Fosbroke says of this, "Though it is the worst of the three, because inter alia it is wholly inclosed, and no power upon earth can prevent a square being heavy and formal, manage and decorate it how you will, it has claim to this parcular kind of notice, viz. on two sides for the triumph of ivy, in overcoming bad circumstances; in the other two for architectural grandeur, jewels in old settings.". p. 16. The most beautiful of all is the third court, and Mr. Fosbroke thus enthusiastically but truly says, "Here the vivacity of Raglan is dancing, not in Bacchanalian romps-not in the jumps of Fawns and Satyrs, but in the delicate steps of the Graces and Hours, moving to the lyre of Apollo, around the goddess of Beauty, enthroned and smiling. Without further poetical somnambulism, it is a perfect shrubbery scene, which cannot be surpassed. It is connected in sentiment and imagination with the splendour of the family rank, the Plantegenets of old England, where appear all the signs of the times, grand staircases, up which stalked stately barons and proud dames; and carved fireplaces, where esquires uncased knights of their armour, and the gorgeousness of chivalry displayed its domestic magnificence in silks, velvets, and plumes; in Orientalism, not Gallicism of taste; in manly gowns and beards, not effeminate coats and shorn chins; when men did not assimilate fighting cocks, or dancing dogs; when, as in Grecian statues, they exhibited the natural grace of the human form by a close fit of polished steel, or royalised it by the majesty of flowing robes. It is not possible to give a picturesque character in detail of this very beautiful court. It is the groupe which constitutes the perfection of the whole by a felicitous combination of accidents.”—p.17. Heaviness is further relieved by some lively poetry. We shall give a specimen, which may excite a smile. "Yes (said a lively poetical person), if ever there was a place fitted for lovers to breathe roses, and talk pine-apples, it is Raglan. I was once there, when a young couple were billing and cooing in the distance. Now it has been noted that the courting of two middle-aged or elderly people can never be made the subject of a novel, because there is a wide difference between turtle doves and barn-door fowls. If, therefore, we take young people for the chief actors, they must be made to do as persons of their age are always sure to do, [Sept. viz. commence flirtation, with the hopes of marrying. Elephant Johnson, who seems to have thought that there was no difference between a lover and a Lord Chancellor, says that wooing and marrying ought to form the base of plays and romances, because all people have been in love once; and it therefore becomes a matter in which a general interest can be taken. So'strike the harp to Bragela.' Here are the lines which I wrote about this Cupid and Psyche You shall be so through life. Angels below, like those above, They guard us on our way. You blush,-look down,-but do not speak, Why not?-I've won papa, The time then from mama. "I never saw this ignited young couple again; but I have heard that fortune made them man and wife, -a double-barrelled gun: a better fate than mine, for of me she made a log, I was only burned for charcoal.” The ancient history of the manor, the several styles of architecture, and an interesting account of the Marquis of Worcester, who first discovered the elasticity of steam as a mechanical power, form distinct articles. The church has one particular curiosity. "Over the arch of the chancel, beneath the cornice of the ceiling, is a board, perforated in scroll work, and hollow underneath, forming the top of a long narrow box, and seemingly extending around the cornice of the vaulting. Tradition says that it was constructed upon acoustic principles, for improving sound; and it is certain that the wooden ceilings of churches were construct ed upon such principles." 1831.] REVIEW. Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Croker. Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited by J. W. Croker, Esq. M.P. WE resume our extracts from this interesting publication; confining ourselves, however, to such anecdotes as have not appeared in previous editions, but which the industry of Mr. Croker has enabled him to incorporate. It is related by Boswell that on the 2d of May 1778, he and Johnson dined with a numerous company at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, when the doctor attacked Boswell with such rudeness at some imaginary offence, that the latter shunned his society for a considerable time afterwards; Boswell has omitted to inform us of the particular nature of the offence, but attributes it to Johnson's ill-humour, resulting from the company's paying less attention to him than he was in the habit of receiving. Lord Wellesley, however, has communicated to Mr. Croker the following account of the cause of this quarrel, which probably Boswell's mortified pride would not permit him to do. "Boswell, one day at Sir Joshua's table, chose to pronounce a high-flown panegyric on the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and exclaimed, How delightful it must have been to have lived in the society of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Bolingbroke! We have no such society in our days.' SIR JOSHUA. I think, Mr. Boswell, you might be satisfied with your great friend's conversation.' JOHNSON. Nay, Sir, Boswell is right; every man wishes for preferment, and if Boswell had lived in those days, he would have obtained promotion.' SIR JOSHUA. How so, Sir?' JOHNSON. Sir, he would have had a high place in the Dunciad!' This anecdote Lord Wellesley heard from Mr. Thomas Sydenham, who received it from Mr. Knight, on the authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds himself." Boswell would have found some difficulty in reconciling this anecdote with his own assertion in vindication of Johnson's politeness, that he "had been often in his company, and never once heard him say a severe thing to any one; when he did say a severe thing, it was generally extorted by ignorance pretending to knowledge, or by extreme vanity or affectation." Johnson's affection for his wife is well known. According to his opinion she possessed every virtue under heaven; and he frequently lamented her death in fervid strains of almost papal devotion. 237 "Garrick told Mr. Thrale, however, that she was a little painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural elegance; and he made out some comical sceues, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Piozzi that her hair was eminently beautiful, quite blonde like that of a baby; but that she fretted about the colour, and was always desirous to dye it black, which he very judiciously hindered her from doing. A picture found of her at Lichfield was very pretty, and her daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, said it was like. The intelligence Mrs. Piozzi gained of her from Mr. Levett, was only perpetual illness and perpetual opium." The following characteristic sketch of Garrick, the pupil and friend of Johnson, is given on the authority of Miss Hawkins: "At Hampton, and in its neighbourhood, Mr. and Mrs. Garrick took the rank of the noblesse-every thing was in good taste, and his establishment distinguished-he drove four horses when going to town.' She adds the following description of his personal appearance: I see him now in a dark blue coat, the button-holes bound with gold, a small cocked hat laced with gold, his waistcoat very open, and his countenance never at rest, and indeed, seldom his person; for, in the relaxation of the country, he gave way to all his natural volatility, and with my father was perfectly at ease, sometimes sitting on a table, and then, if he saw my brothers at a distance on the lawn, shooting off like an arrow out of a bow in a spirited chase of them round the garden. I remember-when my father, having me in his hand, met him on the common, riding his pretty pony-his moving my compassion by lamenting the misery of being summoned to town in hot weather (I think August) to play before the King of Denmark. I thought him sincere, and his case pitiable, till my father assured me that he was in reality very well pleased, and that what he groaned at as labour, was an honour paid to his talents. The natural expression of his countenance was far from placidity. I confess I was afraid of him; more so than I was of Johnson, whom I knew not to be, nor could suppose he ever would he thought to be, an extraordinary man. Garrick had a frown and spoke impetuously. Johnson was slow and kind in his way to children." Dr. Johnson's opinion of Painting. "For painting he certainly had no taste, no acquired taste, for his sight was worse *Levett did not know Mrs. Johnson till the year 1746, when she was fifty-seven or eight years of age, and in very ill health. 238 REVIEW-Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Croker. even than his hearing. He even to Mrs. Piozzi professed such scorn of it, as to say that he should sit very quietly in a room hung round with pictures of the greatest masters, and never feel the slightest disposition to turn them, if their backs were outermost, unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he had turned them. In one instance, however, he admitted that painting required a considerable exercise of mind; yet even on that occasion he betrayed what Mrs. Thrale calls his scorn of the art.' Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some picture as excellent. It has often grieved me, Sir,' said Dr. Johnson, to see so much mind as the science of painting requires, laid out upon such perishable materials: why do not you oftener make use of copper? I could wish your superiority in the art you profess to be preserved in stuff more durable than canvas.' Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring a plate large enough for historical subjects, and was going to raise farther observations: What foppish obstacles are these!' exclaimed on a sudden Dr. Johnson: here is Thrale has a thousand ton of copper; you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterward: will it not, Sir?'t Talking with some persons about allegorical painting, he said, I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world." His love of late hours. 6 "Dr. Johnson, as Mrs. Piozzi relates, loved late hours extremely, or more properly hated early ones. Nothing was more terrifying to him than the idea of retiring to bed, which he never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call so. 'I lie down,' said he, that my acquaintance may sleep; but I lie down to endure oppressive misery, and soon rise again to pass the night in anxiety and pain.' By this pathetic manner, which no one ever possessed in so eminent a degree, he used to shock that lady from quitting his company, till she hurt her own health not a little by sitting up with him when she was herself far from well." "Indeed, he has been known to say, Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.' Having nothing in particular to do himself, and having none of his time appropriated, he was a troublesome guest to persons who had much to do. He rose too as unwillingly as he went to bed."§ The Doctor's gulosity. "Johnson's notions about eating were nothing less than delicate; a leg of pork : [Sept. boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal pie with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef, were his favourite dainties with regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect he sought for, and professed to desire; and when Mrs. Piozzi first knew him, he used to pour capillaire into his port wine. For the last twelve years, however, he left off all fermented liquors. To make himself some amends indeed, he took his chocolate liberally, pouring in large quantities of cream, or even melted butter; and was so fond of fruit, that though he would eat seven or eight large peaches of a morning before breakfast began, and treated them with proportionate attention after dinner again, yet he has been heard to protest, that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit, except once in his life, and that was when he and the Thrales were all together at Ombersley, the seat of Lord Sandys; and yet when his Irish friend Grierson, hearing him enumerate the qualities necessary to the formation of a poet, began a comical parody upon his ornamented harangue in praise of a cook, concluding with this observation, that he who dressed a good dinuer was a more excellent and more useful member of society than he who wrote a good poem. And in this opinion,' said Dr. Johnson, in reply, all the dogs in the town will join you.'ll "Mrs. Piozzi also relates that he used often to say in her hearing, perhaps for her edification, that wherever the dinner is ill got up there is poverty, or there is avarice, or there is stupidity, in short, the family is somehow grossly wrong: for,' continued he, a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things. One day, when he was speaking upon the subject, Mrs. Piozzi asked him, if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner? So often,' replied he, that at last she called to me, when about to say grace, and said,Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will pronounce not eatable."" Johnson's opinion of Lord Kaimes's writings. "Johnson thought very well of Lord Kaimes's Elements of Criticism; of others of his writings he thought very indifferently, and laughed much at his opinion that war was a good thing occasionally, as so much valour and virtue were exhibited in it. A fire,' says Johnson, might as well be thought a good thing; there is the bravery and address of the firemen in extinguishing Piozzi. 1831.] REVIEW. Sunday Library. it; there is much humanity exerted in saving the lives and properties of the poor sufferers; yet,' says he, after all this, who can say a fire is a good thing?'"'* His prejudices against Scotland. "When his friend Mr. Strahan, a native of Scotland, at his return from the Hebrides asked him, with a firm tone of voice, what he thought of his country? That is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir;" returned for answer Dr. Johnson. Well, Sir!' replies the other somewhat mortified, God made it.' Certainly he did,' answers Dr. Johnson again; but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan ; but God made hell.'"+ Few men had perhaps been more inveterate students than Dr. Johnson. "There is no royal road to learning," was a common saying with him; yet we here find him rather deprecating close application to study, and recommending desultory reading for the acquisition of knowledge. But it is certainly true that his sentiments of one day do not always accord with those of another. "I would never,' said he, desire a young man to neglect his business for the purpose of pursuing his studies, because it is unreasonable; I would only desire him to read at those hours when he would otherwise be unemployed. I will not promise that he will be a Bentley; but if he be a lad of any parts, he will certainly make a sensible man.""t Dr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at by-times when they had nothing else to do. It has been by that means,' said he one day to a boy at Mr. Thrale's, ' that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk. A man is seldom in a humour to unlock his book-case, set his desk in order, and betake himself to serious study; but a retentive memory will do something, and a fellow shall have strange credit given him, if he can but recollect striking passages from different books, keep the authors separate in his head, and bring his stock of knowledge artfully into play: how else,' added he, do the gamesters manage when they play for more money than they are worth?" "§ 239 lection of Sermons from eminent Divines of the Church of England, chiefly within the last half century, with occasional biographical sketches and notes. By the Rev. T. F. Dibdin, D.D. &c. Vol. IV. WE are inclined to value highly this volume (though all are meritorious) because it contains a Sermon by Bishop Huntingford on False Philosophy, which exhibits most beautiful ratiocination. We shall add no more, because we should deem it a wrong to our readers not to give a fine specimen upon an abstruse point: and our limits are bounded. Doing evil that good may come; or, the end justifies the means. "If it be an allowed maxim that men may do evil for the production of some good, then it will not be improbable (because the case has happened) that some persons under the delusion of this principle, may, with a view to some imaginary good, not only refuse you justice, but proceed to treat you with the grossest injustice-may first plunder your property, and then deprive you of life, though on your part no offence hath been committed against either law or equity. Where then would be that security of rights, which from society you are encouraged to expect, and warranted in demanding. "Again, the basis of civil society is mutual confidence. But what man of common prudence will cominit either his property or his person to the care of another, who holds himself at liberty to betray his trust, and even destroy his friend, provided he doth but intend to appropriate the spoils to some good purpose. "Thus, then, this principle goes to the dissolution of all society; and if so, must be rejected, as not compatible or reconcilable with that state for which man is intended; and in which, when duly constituted, he finds the greater portion of happiness." "But in vindication of this perverse paradox, the public good of society has been pretended. It would however be difficult, nay even impossible, to show that it can be for the public good of society to defeat the very cause and counteract the very ends for which all society is instituted; both which evils this paradox completely works by bauishing confidence, and by violating at pleasure the rights of the society existing. "But its advocate then pleads the good of posterity. Whose posterity? By the sudden death of those whom this maxim may have taken off, he has done his utmost that they shall have no posterity; that they may do evil to produce good, he has taught them to rob and destroy each other, as he has robbed and destroved the men of his own generation. For what was once in itself lawful, must always be lawful; if robbery and assassination be lawful to the maintainer 240 REVIEW. Bourrienne's Life of Buonaparte. of this principle, they will be lawful to his children. And thus by precedent he establishes a maxim, which pursued to its consequences would tend to the utter extinction of all society." "Seen, then, in these points of view, the paradox of doing evil, that good may come of it,' is of all others the most mischievous that ever entered the mind of man." -15-17. 66 Action upon the iniquitous principle reprobated, was common among the ancients; witness the following passage of Livy: Eam [concordiam civium] per aqua, per iniqua reconciliandam civitati esse? (p. 41, ed. Elzevir.) From what we know of Italian subtlety, we are inclined to think that it was a favourite maxim of Roman policy. The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. By M. de Bourrienne, his private Secretary. 3 vols. 16mo. IF a successful General has an unlimited command of men, he will not cease to go to war, and if a successful banker has an unlimited command of money, he will not cease to speculate. Defeat as a consequence of presumption in the former case, and bankruptcy in the latter, are events in the usual course of things. Napoleon ultimately did not trade, but gambled. He was a master in the arts of war and policy; but the cash, the physical resources of France, were exhausted, as to the supply of soldiers, and, in the end of his career, he only shuffled. He existed as a monarch only by victory; and victory was in the end impossible, because his living ammunition was expended. Let us state only an evident fact. Before the capture of Paris in 1814, he had only one army to oppose to two, those of Schwartzenburg and Blucher. Bills were drawn upon him to an amount which he could not answer, and whoever says that he was beat up to 1814, by any other means than that of actually overpowering him by physical necessity, contradicts the only test of truth, History. The Russian expedition was his first commission of an act of bankruptcy, and he never recovered it. It was an indiscretion, a speculation, which he could not repair. Fatalism, Fortune, &c. are silly pretences in his case. These notions are only sound under inexplicable contingencies. But is it an unaccountable thing, that [Sept. Sheriff Wellington sold him up after he had made his last effort to raise the wind? But he was a great man, a wonderful man, and so forth; yes, and what is a great and wonderful man, reduced to irretrievable distress, but a pyramid of Egypt broken into small stones,-a thing to talk about? Moreover, victories are gained, generally speaking, by the inferiority of the enemy-if barbarians through tactics, if otherwise through accidents. The English alone were capable of contending with him in battle, and did so successfully. They picketed him upon the island of Saint Helena; and, in a political view, as to prevention of mischief, acted rightly; but whether petty annoyance of him was not a meanness unbecoming the national character, must be left to those who do not think it sufficient to encage a lion, without torturing him by insult. We come now to the work before us. M. de Bourrienne has booked, like a short-hand writer, in the manner of Boswell, all that Buonaparte said or did in matters of business. He was a most restless creature, eternally, like a job-making lawyer, plotting or doing mischief. He had no idea of retiring with a fortune, and then living at his ease. The nations of Europe were to him only carrion carcases, whither himself, an eagle, attended by ravens, hawks, magpies, &c. could repair to feed and all his study was how to. makeliving kingdoms carcases, whereon he and they could feast. Now the natural history of human birds of prey, is however a most instructive and entertaining study, because it extends knowledge of the world, promotes wisdom, and occupies the mind. But we must declaim no longer. Monsr. de Bourrienne's book, as to matter, is wholly composed of consecutive details, and like Boswell's before mentioned, shows us the man, completely, as to his public life, and therefore well suits such a study. We certainly have not libelled him by our similitude; for we are told (i. 31) that Buonaparte laughed loudly while he was describing the death of an officer, literally severed in two by a bomb-shell. The Legion of Honour was founded to ingratiate the noblesse (ii. 88); and was, with other conciliating measures, a preparatory step for obtaining the empire. So much for him. Josephine had a presentiment, that such an exal |