cations, the least truthful, candid, or manly? Where do we find so much as in some of these organs, not only of narrowness of sentiment, of an oblivion of all things on earth lying out of the circle of a few interests, and of slovenly literary faculty, but also of reckless statement, of fulsome adulation of two or three people, and of rabidly malicious insinuation against all who differ from these? Surely a writer might hold firmly to his own religious party, were it the most special that exists, and yet be in the habit of seeing that he really knows or believes a thing before he sets it down. And yet, even when we leave the lower literature of expressly sectarian journals and attend to the articles of able theological controversy that occasionally flame in higher regions, do we not find instances of things asserted as matter of fact, which, had the writer been checked and crossexamined, he would have been obliged to admit were, for him, mere matters of wish, vague supposition, or angry claptrap. For example, when we find champions on one side of the great theological controversy of the present day not answering the arguments they denounce, but making the assertion that all the arguments on the other side have been triumphantly demolished over and over again, so that to reply once more would only be to slay the slain, are we really to believe that the gentlemen speak what they know? There may be men who could, by reason of their great learning, make such an assertion bond fide; and so we suppose there may be men who could say truly they had been in Central Africa. But, if ten men in a room, one after another, were to tell you they had been in Central Africa-much more if you never met anybody that did not, on a particular turn of the conversation, tell you he had been in Central Africa-you would begin to suspect that "having been in Central Africa" was a phrase meaning not at all what the plain words imply, but only that one had read a review of Park's Travels, or had once seen a panorama of the Nile, or had recently met a negro in an omnibus, or

something of that sort. There is no end, however, to the forms of this vice. I have read crushing replies to one heterodox French philosopher, in which the name of the poor man so crushed was uniformly misspelt. Now, I do not deny that one may have a sufficient acquaintance with a philosopher's views, and yet not be able to spell his name. But, to say the least, it looks ill, it looks ill.

2. Another principle of self-discipline, capable of being identified with the former, but worthy of being separately named, is that of Temperance, or Suspension of Judgment. Here, again, it is best at once to go to examples. It is very gratifying in many cases, and at the same time very easy, to call a man from whom we differ an ass, a ruffian, an ape, a reptile, or a lunatic. If we should chance not to like a painting, a capital way of saying so is to pronounce it base. And so, like Dickens's Mr. Boythorn, we may go about always in a rage and hurricane of superlatives— seeing or hearing of nothing wrong, should it be but a misquotation or a small impertinence, but straightway the wrong-doer should be kicked, burnt alive, or hanged, drawn, and quartered. But, if we blaze away our powder at that rate, what is to become of us? Why fire an Armstrong gun when a pistol-shot is enough; why move a battalion in double column to do what may be done by a file-march of six men? The time may come when the biggest and most blackguardly word in the dictionary might with perfect fitness be hurled out-when ass, ruffian, ape, reptile, and lunatic might come forth with a precision of application quite exquisite, and when burning alive, or hanging, drawing and quartering would exactly suit. But, if all your big words have been already in constant service, they have, in fact, been rubbed into little ones; if you have been hanging, drawing, and quartering all your life for peccadilloes, what are you to do with crimes? Here, as in other things, bluster is often but weakness, and the strength most to be dreaded shows

itself in gradation, in the proportioning of energy to occasion, in mildness when there is little to do, in reserve of power when the demand for exertion is moderate, in reserve of power still when that demand increases, still in reserve of power stage after stage of waxing excitement, and only in total paroxysm without reserve in a rare and last extremity.

"But, when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, And flies fled under shade, why then the thing of courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise, And, with an accent tuned in self-same key, Returns to chiding fortune."

A rule of self-discipline, therefore, with literary genius, ought to be Temperance, or a determination that the words spoken shall be not only words of truth but also words of soberness. In using the phrase Suspension of Judgment as synonymous or nearly so with Temperance, we have, however, indicated a particular extension or application of the rule. It happens to all of us in ordinary society, for example, to be frequently called upon, or at least tempted, to give an opinion upon some subject on which we are really not competent to give one; and public writers are especially liable to this call or temptation. A revolution occurs somewhere abroad, or some important political measure is suddenly brought forward at home, or out of the mere ferment of thought on non-political matters there arises some question for discussion. Straightway there is a rush of the writing-class to the point of commotion; and, for days, weeks, or months, as the case may be, the press teems with articles, pamphlets, letters, and essays on the topic of interest. Now, in the present well-organized state of our public press, it is to be supposed that a great many of those who thus carry on the discussion of important questions as they arise are persons who have had previous acquaintance with these questions, or at least with the data needed for their settlement. A person who writes in an authoritative journal on a

new revolution somewhere in the Austrian dominions is supposed to be well up in the history and politics of the Austrian Empire; and so on. Farther,

there are such things as general principles of human nature, of political economy, of politics, &c., on the faith of which those who are in the possession of them may proceed to argue, in an à priori or deductive manner, on questions suddenly brought before them. Perhaps all the most valid argumentation on social subjects is of this kind. But there are many persons who have neither any adequate prior information. bearing on the questions that are being discussed round about them, nor any apparatus of principles by which to grasp these questions so as to get at sure conclusions. What is to be done in such a case? When all the world is arguing, it is hard to sit by and say nothing-hardest of all for one whose business is speech. Hence the spectacle every day of dogmatism where there is neither knowledge of data nor possession of the requisite apparatus of principles. But, great as are the temptations to this extempore certitude of conclusion beyond the warrant either of one's knowledge or of one's intellectual and moral instincts, it is a proper part of self-discipline to withstand them. So far as a writer's knowledge goes, so far as his instincts, principles, or acquired articles of belief will cut into the question, so far, and no farther, ought he to asseverate. Or, if such a half-and-half course would be cowardly, and there should be an imperative duty of coming to a definite conclusion to be proclaimed and maintained, then there remains this obvious plan of becoming qualified-a study of the question, purposely undertaken. This simple phrase, "A study of the question," is one the habit of repeating which for one's own behoof would do a world of good. It is in the power of the mind, when it is perplexed as to the conclusion to be come to, and yet must come to a conclusion, to do, in a small way, what Government almost always does before it proceeds to legislate on a complex matter-issue a

commission of inquiry, to collect evidence and report. Nay, even when the mind is borne along by faith in certain instinctive or acquired principles so as to see and be sure of the conclusion it will press for, this plan of a commission to collect all the facts, and of suspension of judgment on the chance of new light so to arise, may often be followed with advantage. There have been of late, for example, some cases of garotting in the streets of London by ticket-of-leave men. This shows certainly that something is wrong; but what has happened? Why, on the spur of very natural indignation at this one fact, a sudden leap of a hundred franticallyexcited writers at once to the conclusion, not only that the Ticket of-Leave System is radically wrong, but also that the whole of that Humanitarian movement, as it is derisively called, which, for a generation past, has, under the conduct of able and thoughtful men, and in accordance with the progressive sense of mankind, been modifying the treatment of our criminals, ought to be forthwith reversed, and there ought to be a plunge back again into the grand barbaric system of floggings, starvation, galley-slavery, and hangings of halfdozens at a time. Now, where writers have arrived at this conclusion on general principles, and only take the garottings as an occasion on which to expound it, they are, on our present score, blameless. The cases of such strongly-founded opinion, however, seem to be rare. In the general, the reasoning is simply this : There have been garottings; ergo, by way of cure, let chaos come again! Perhaps no great harm is done. The fury lulls; other voices are heard; and, before there can be action, there is discussion and a balance of conflicting judgments. But how much better that each one should transact within himself as much of the unavoidable confusion of argument as he can, so that, when he speaks, it may be clearly, thoroughly, and wisely!

3. There is the principle of Sufficient Intellection (allow me the uncouth word), or, let us say rather, of Sufficiently

organized Intellection, Sufficient Logical Strictness. This principle, also, grows out of the preceding, and may be resolved back into it; but it admits of separate development. Within its domain may be brought, among other things, almost all that belongs to the subject of style.

Writers differ very much in their habits of thought and composition. Some are slow and laborious, and, if they produce a page a day, are content; others are swift, exuberant, fluent, and let the written pages fall on the floor, a dozen or twenty at a sitting; others are fast or slow as occasion acts and it pleases the printer's devil. Perhaps it is in our conception of genius that it should be always naturally fluent, and that, if it moves slowly or warily, it is by selfenforced discipline. We hear now-adays of a new mode of literary invention and composition, especially in the department of metaphysics and poetry, or in mixed poetry and metaphysics, discovered by the spirit-rappers. You sit down at a table, you or any other man, with the paper before you and the pen in your hand; you make your mind as nearly a blank as you can; you abjure all effort, all self-consciousness, all thought of this or that; you let yourself swoon into a state of Hindoo trance; you sit, you sit, you sit, and wait. Lo, some time-not the first time perhaps, but some time, if you persevere-a power will seize you; some spirit from the Spirit-world, passing accidentally your way and seeing the opportunity, or descrying you from his place afar off amid the spiritual populations and hierarchies, will elect you as his medium; your whole frame will heave, your whole being tingle; you will become as an Æolian harp moaning to invisible breezes; of itself your hand will begin to move, and over the paper it will rush, writing, writing-O, so marvellously!-till nature no longer can sustain the ecstatic working, and you fall down in exhaustion. Such specimens as we have seen of literature so produced have been, we must say, terrible stuff-stuff that would not be creditable to authorship under the in

fluence of common spirits of alcohol, to let alone supernatural spirits. But in this alleged heavenly mode of composition there is, at least, an image of what, within more natural limits, does often occur when genius is in motion with the steam fully up. The hand moves in writing, and, as it moves, thought after thought comes to it from God knows where. Pshaw! there is no mystery about it-from the mind governed by the laws of association of ideas! Well, that may be one way of expressing it; but, for giving any vivid notion of the reality, it is like angling for Leviathan with a hook. Mind, in the act of inventing or composing, what a miracle it is! A chamber, as we fancy it, and yet a chamber to which there are no walls, no roof, no bounds; a vast transparent space, in the nearer part of which, where it narrows towards utterance, there are the most perceptible stirrings and throbbings, but the whole of which also is clouding and revolving, back to where internal vision ends, and where, for aught that it can tell, there may be Powers and Spirits of the Supernatural moving and causing motion; an orderly reappearing, in that airy space, of recollections that well up or shower themselves down, unbidden or hardly bidden, out of lower or upper depths where they have lain inexplicably concealed; a gradual shaking out, as in distinct flocks, and yet all in definite relation and sequence, of some required or available selection of life's miscellaneous memoranda and old forgotten photographs! Such is the process of thought or intellection, as it is practised by all, and more especially in the production of literature. But it may be practised well or ill, rapidly or slowly, with strong purpose or with weak purpose. Hence, as well as from the differences of original constitution and of experience, the endless varieties in what is called a writer's mode of thought, and in his style or diction.

In all literature, worthy of the name, there should, first of all, be sufficient intellection. The mind should really have been at work, and—whether swiftly

or laboriously matters not, if the result is equally attained-should have produced something sufficiently valuable or interesting that did not before exist. This qualification "that did not before exist is an essential one. It sweeps into nothing, as not really literature at all, save in the etymological sense of smearing or daubing, vast masses of what is every day offered as literature. But, in connexion with this matter of sufficient intellection, one might have a grievous fault to find with a great deal of the most honest and strenuous literary criticism of our time. Whether it is that many of our critics are themselves stunted and broken-winded authors, or whatever else is the cause, certain it is that there is largely diffused through our British critical world a notion as if "sufficient intellection" consisted always in low intellection, in good plain intellection within limits. There are critics, and perfectly honest critics, who fly at every appearance of richness, involution, height, subtlety, picturesqueness, largeness, depth, exuberance, or enthusiasm of thought, like a bull at a red rag. The great masters of our literature that are dead and gone, in all of whom some combination or other of these qualities is apparent-why else are they called great-these, of course, they do not meddle with. Verse also they generally, though not always, let alone-regarding it perhaps as a form of literature prescriptively licensed for all kinds of intellectual ingenuity and braggardism. They reserve their attacks for Prose. There is but one style of prose that they have any patience for, though they do admit that it is capable of some legitimate range of variation in the matter of syntax-that which may be called good business prose, such as intelligent and educated persons use in ordinary conversation. Anything beyond such plain business prose, or the proximate developments of it, irritates them exceedingly. Now, it is useless to argue on the matter with such critics themselves. They labour under an incurable incapacity of seeing reason on the subject. They have never caught

a glimpse of the principle which it ought to be the chief effect, one would think, of all liberal and academic education to impress upon those who have partaken of its benefits-to wit, that, on every subject and in every department, the well-being of the world depends on power of indefinite advance from what is ordinary or proximate, on the concession to as many as choose of liberty of intellection on and on, according to their own methods, even till, it may be, they are out of sight, not only of the general multitude, but of all save the fleetest few. Fancy a Mathematics, for example, that should now consist, or that should all along have consisted, only of the ordinary mathematics in use in good society, and of its proximate developments! It ought to be seen that, with certain variations due to the nature of the case, the same holds good of Literature-that, so far from literature being, or being required to be, a reproduction of the ordinary talk of common society, there is no fragment of literature of any kind whatever that, through six consecutive lines, answers exactly to this description; and that, in all superior literature, the very peculiarity that makes it superior consists in excess of deviation from this standard, or in the protraction into a business of hours, weeks, months, or years, of what appears in ordinary conversation only at its very best, and then only in gleams or crude suggestions. In short, nothing is more important than that, in theory at least, there should be vindicated for literature, and for prose literature as well as for verse, the right of untrammelled representation, whether as regards matter or as regards form, of whatever any mind, however extraordinary, can, by its most energetic or most persevering action, evolve or generate. Practically, by reason of the power which really thoughtful and cultivated critics do wield, a large amount of our truly best and greatest literature has the benefit of this safeguard. Hence every year we see books of the highest power, in certain kinds-books of calm, laborious thought, or of delicate and

ingenious investigation-taking their place not only without challenge, but with nearly unanimous welcome. But there are kinds of literature which, though theoretically legitimate, are not so safe practically. They are those kinds in which very exuberant, very rich, very vehement, or very impassioned genius is apt to manifest itself—those kinds which are the least held in check, not only by contemporary expectation, but even by literary precedents, and which, in respect of style and form, tend to, or actually end in, what (to save farther trouble of exact description by using popular terms) may be called Prose-poetry, Eloquence, Magniloquence, or Rhapsody.

Nevertheless, without exculpating the critics, here too we may say that the writers often enough have themselves to blame. Throwing aside, as not worth speaking of, all these masses of so-called eloquent writing, appearing every day, which are simply eloquence on false pretences those heaps of turgid, verbose, grandiose, sentence-making, in which, when they are duly compressed, there is not the size of a pin's-head of real thought or meaning, and which often. are but a species of conscious charlatanry -throwing these aside, and attending only to such gorgeous, or eloquent, or otherwise strangely-motived prose as may be the natural and necessary element of real genius of certain extraordinary kinds, one may assert, and support the assertion by instances, that, though such writers must always expect to work against a stronger current of critical irritation and opposition than others, yet much of the irritation and opposition they do encounter arises from neglect of the rigid self-discipline which they, above others, require. By them, too, there is often a neglect of those two principles of self-discipline which have been already specified-the principle of negative truthfulness, and the principle of temperance or suspension of judgment. The mere rigorous recollection and application of these two principles would clear the writing of such men of much that is objectionable in it. Put