Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/700

worth knowing but what they can comprehend; that true philosophy is quite attainable without the labour of years; and that whenever we meet with any thing new, and at first sight unintelligible, the best rule is to take for granted that it is something mystical and absurd. But Mr Jeffray must be well aware, that it is one thing to be the favourite of an age and nation, and another to be reverenced by posterity and the world. So acute a man as he is cannot conceal from himself the fact, that however paramount may be his authority among the generation of indolent and laughing readers to whom he dictates opinion, he has as yet done nothing which will ever induce a man of research, in the next century, to turn over the volumes of his Review. When the foolish works which he has so happily ridiculed are entirely forgotten, the wit which he has expended upon them will lose its point. When the great men whom he has insulted by his mirth shall have received their due recompense in the admiration of our children, it will appear but an unprofitable task to read his shallow and ineffectual pleasantries. The topics which he has handled are so ephemeral, that already the first volumes of his journal have lost a very great part of their interest; and the many writers who have already attained to the first eminence, in spite of all his cavils, have furnished to the world, and to himself, a sufficient proof of the fallibility and perverseness of his judgment. He treated Madame de Stael, when Delphine was published, as a person whose writings would be extremely dangerous, were not her stupidity still more remarkable than her depravity. The world gave sentence in her favour; and he has since retracted his opinion, both of her moral and her intellectual qualities, with a fawning submission, almost as contemptible as the original offence for which it was intended to atone. He trampled upon the youthful genius of Byron, but has since had full time to repent his audacious mockeries of a being, compared with whom in the eyes of the world, he is as nothing. He has spoken of Wordsworth, that first poet of Nature, that mild and lofty spirit, the worthy offspring of Milton, in terms of the same trivial and self-complacent abuse with which a licentious poet once dared to scoff at the most godlike of all the sages of Greece. Walter Scott is the only great poet whom he has uniformly praised; but how poor, and injudicious, and unworthy, has been his commendation! The flow of his verse, the rapidity of his narrative, the strength and vivacity of his imagination—these were qualities which could not escape the observation of the most superficial critic; and upon these Mr Jeffray has abundantly enlarged. But in no instance has he appeared to feel that majestic depth and expansion of thought and feeling, which form the true and distinguishing excellence of this last and greatest of all the poets of romance and chivalry. But I need only recall to your recollection an instance yet nearer to ourselves. When the good and venerable Goëthe told the stories of his youth to a people who all look upon him with the affectionate admiration of children, this foreigner, who cannot read our language, amused his countrymen, equally ignorant as himself, with an absurd and heartless caricature of the only poet, in modern times, who is entitled to stand in the same class with Dante, Calderon, and Shakspeare. These are certainly the most illustrious writers among the contemporaries of Jeffray; and yet he has shewn himself to be incapable of appreciating the genius of any one among their number.

In regard to poetry (and I believe his poetical criticisms are commonly supposed to be among the most brilliant of his productions), it is quite clear, that if he has any proper feelings of its true purpose and excellence now, he had them not when he began his Review, and has since acquired them, not from his own reflection and taste, but from the irresistible impulse of example, and the good sense of a public more wise than its instructors. For the first eight or ten years of the Edinburgh Review, the school of Pope was uniformly talked of as the true one, and the English poets of the present day were disapproved of, because they had departed from its precepts. A true poet has, however, a weapon in his hands, far more powerful than that which is wielded by any critic; and Mr Jeffray, when he perceived the direction which the public taste was taking, at last found it necessary