Abbreviations
Early Americans referred to various editions of Hume’s works. In the editorial apparatus for this book, some of those particular eighteenth and nineteenth-century editions are referred to, when appropriate. Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Hume’s works are to the following modern editions:
|
EHU = |
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 2000), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. |
|
EPM = |
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 1998), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. |
|
Essays = |
Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1985; revised edition, Indianapolis, 1987), edited by Eugene F. Miller. |
|
History = |
The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols (Indianapolis, 1983), edited by William B. Todd. |
|
THN = |
A Treatise of Human Nature, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford, 2000), edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. |
Other abbreviations used in the editorial material are as follows:
|
ANB = |
American National Biography, 24 vols (New York, 1999), edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. |
|
API = |
American Periodicals, 1740–1900: An Index to the Microfilm Collections (Ann Arbor, 1979), edited by Jean Hoornstra and Trudy Heath. |
|
BAP = |
An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Periodicals, 1741–1850 (Boston, 1977), compiled and edited by Jayne K. Kribbs. |
|
DAB = |
Dictionary of American Biography, 11 vols (New York, 1957), edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone. |
|
DNB = |
Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. |
|
EAE = |
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, 2 vols (New York, 2015), edited by Mark G. Spencer. |
PART I:
INTRODUCTION TO PART I
Hume published his first volume of Essays Moral and Political in 1741.1 A second volume with the same title but different contents was published in 1742.2 By 1748, the 1741 volume had had two more editions with additions and corrections. In 1752 Hume published a new set of essays as Political Discourses, a book which was in its third edition by 1754.3 All of the essays contained in these various editions circulated widely in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America.4 Most eighteenth-century readers of Hume’s essays, in Britain and America, read them as Essays, Moral, Political and Literary in Volume 1 of Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, 4 vols (London, 1753–56). Hume’s Essays and Treatises, known to Hume and his contemporaries as his collected works, was reprinted at least a dozen times in English before the end of the eighteenth century.5 That the Essays and Treatises was available to Hume’s earliest American audience is certain. British editions of the book were imported in significant numbers in the 1760s by colonial booksellers in Philadelphia (such as William Bradford, David Hall, and John Miller), New York (James Rivington and Hugh Gaine), Boston (John Mein), and elsewhere. As early as 1765 colonial newspapers reprinted individual essays from the Essays and Treatises, one of which, “Of the Liberty of the Press,” was accompanied with the instructions to “Read them with Attention!” Even earlier, newspapers such as the Maryland Gazette, the Boston Weekly News-Letter, and Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette evidence scattered references to Hume’s essays, including economic ones.6 In the years before the War for Independence, booksellers continued to stock the Essays and Treatises which was also found with increasing frequency on the shelves of important libraries like the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Association Library Company of Philadelphia, the Union Library Company, and the New York Society Library. Other libraries whose lending records survive, like Harvard University Library and the Hatboro Library, show that Hume’s Essays and Treatises was not only on colonial library shelves, but also frequently borrowed from them. Prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson and John Witherspoon read Hume’s Essays and recommended others to do the same. Other learned Americans, like Ezra Stiles, entered passages from Hume’s Essays into their commonplace books. By the early nineteenth century, the list of American booksellers and libraries supplying Hume’s essays to an expanding American reading public had grown larger than ever before. This ready availability of British editions of Hume’s moral, political, and literary essays explains why no American edition was attempted during the eighteenth century, even though Hume was keen to see one. When Thomas Ewell gave them their first American imprint in 1817, Hume’s essays had long been standard reading in the United States. Ewell’s edition would disseminate Hume’s essays even more widely, as would the reprinting of individual essays in early nineteenth-century American periodicals.7 Before and after its first American edition, Hume’s Essays elicited numerous responses from its American readers.
As early as 1758 William Smith showed an interest in Hume as literary critic when in The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies he compared British assessments of Hume’s evaluation of John Home’s Douglas.8 In the 1770s Hume’s comments on “blacks,” as found in his infamous footnote to “Of National Characters,” were the subject of a heated pamphlet debate in Philadelphia. Richard Nisbet, for instance, quoted Hume with approval in Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture (1773). A passage from Personal Slavery Established, by the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason: Being a Full Answer to the Gloomy and Visionary Reveries, of all the Fanatical and Enthusiastical Writers on that Subject (1773), a pamphlet penned by one of the wittier of Hume’s critics, has been reprinted below. Hume’s place in the debate about Africans continued into the 1790s, though there has not been space to reprint more sources in this volume.9 The nature of Hume’s impact on the debate on the Constitution and especially on the political thought of James Madison in the 1780s has been often contested, but reprinted below are earlier assessments of Hume’s political writings taken from Alexander Hamilton’s The Farmer Refuted (1775). Hamilton, like Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Dickinson before him, saw Hume’s economic and political essays as offering support for a colonial cause which was becoming a revolutionary cause.10 Also in the 1770s colonists such as Ezekiel Russell, “A Freeman,” “Agricola,” and James Chalmers turned to essays such as “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science,” “Some Remarkable Customs,” “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” “Of the Original Contract,” “Of the Protestant Succession,” and “Of the Balance of Trade” to support their stance of conservative moderation.11 Revolutionaries and loyalists both aimed to claim Hume and competed for the right to do so. In his “Continentalist” essays from the early 1780s, Hamilton continued unapologetically to invoke Hume’s name and to borrow ideas from Hume’s essays, just as he would at the Constitutional Convention.12 An essay by “Republicus” in The American Monitor, or the Republican Magazine for 1785, shows that Hume’s essay “Of the Liberty of the Press” was as well known to its American audience in the mid-1780s as it had been to audiences of the 1760s and 1770s.13 Federalists and Antifederalists in the late 1780s referred to Hume’s essays in writings that have not been reprinted in this volume.14 In 1800 when Mathew Carey included an entry for “Liberty of the Press” in his School of Wisdom: or, American Monitor, containing a Copious Collection of Sublime and Elegant Extracts, from the Most Eminent Writers, on Morals, Religion & Government, he reprinted a passage from Hume’s essay,15 as he did under the heading “Liberty” when he quoted from Hume’s essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”16 Not all Americans, however, agreed with what Hume wrote on political subjects. Assessing Hume’s essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” in his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, John Adams labeled Hume an “aristocratical” thinker.17 That criticism had had occasional eighteenth-century precursors, but it was to become a standard reading in nineteenth-century America.18 Some Americans in the early nineteenth century continued to see Hume as a champion of liberty. Robert Fulton in 1807 found in Hume’s essays a theoretical cement with which to bind the United States together.19 Thomas Ewell’s 1817 edition of Hume’s Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics amplified the existing American interest in Hume’s essays. Ewell’s “Preface” and editorial “Notes” are themselves informative of Hume’s American reception and are therefore included in this volume. Hume’s essay “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” was at the center of an exchange of letters on the relationship between “Genius and Passion” published in Baltimore’s Portico magazine in 1817.20 Also in 1817, the National Register reprinted an excerpt from Hume’s “On Refinement in the Arts,” an essay whose message was defended implicitly by contrasting Hume’s moderate stance with a ludicrous view entitled “Memorandums for an Essay against Luxury.”21 Other discussions of Hume’s essays are to be found scattered about in numerous essays, books, and reviews of the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1825, for instance, in an essay he wrote for the North American Review, Jared Sparks showed that Hume’s thoughts on the nature of the relationship between forms of government, on one side, and the arts and sciences, on the other, continued to be on the minds of American readers.22 Early American interest in Hume’s essays was sustained, but varied considerably between commentators and over time. Given the mixed nature of the responses to Hume’s essays, it is unwise to characterize a typical early American reception: it is even difficult to identify, with precision, broad trends of interpretation. But in 1831 when Edward Everett criticized Hume’s essay “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” he did so in a way that suggested Hume was no longer heard as a voice of liberty.23 Americans of the mid-nineteenth century had forgotten much of the earlier reception of Hume’s Essays.
1It contained the following essays: 1. “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” 2. “Of the Liberty of the Press,” 3. “Of Impudence and Modesty,” 4. “That Politicks may be reduc’d to a Science,” 5. “Of the First Principles of Government,” 6. “Of Love and Marriage,” 7. “Of the Study of History,” 8. “Of the Independency of Parliament,” 9. “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” 10. “Of Parties in General,” 11. “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” 12. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 13. “Of Avarice,” 14. “Of the Dignity of Human Nature,” 15. “Of Liberty and Despotism.” For a complete publishing history of Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, and Literary see T.E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1938; reprinted New York, 1983); Eugene F. Miller, “Foreword,” to his edition of Hume’s Essays, pp. xi–xviii; William B. Todd, “David Hume. A Preliminary Bibliography,” in William B. Todd, ed., Hume and the Enlightenment: Essays Presented to Ernest Campbell Mossner (Edinburgh and Texas, 1974), pp. 189–205.
2It contained the following essays: 1. “Of Essay-Writing,” 2. “Of Eloquence,” 3. “Of Moral Prejudices,” 4. “Of the Middle Station of Life,” 5. “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” 6. “The Epicurean,” 7. “The Stoic,” 8. “The Platonist,” 9. “The Sceptic,” 10. “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” 11. “Of Simplicity and Refinement,” 12. “A Character of Sir Robert Walpole.”
3The 1754 edition contained the following essays: 1. “Of Commerce,” 2. “Of Luxury,” 3. “Of Money,” 4. “Of Interest,” 5. “Of the Balance of Trade,” 6. “Of the Balance of Power,” 7. “Of Taxes,” 8. “Of Public Credit,” 9. “Of Some Remarkable Customs,” 10. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” 11. “Of the Protestant Succession,” 12. “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”
4For statistical and other evidence documenting the American circulation of Hume’s essays see Mark G. Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume’s Political Thought in Eighteenth-Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001), “Tables and Figures,” vol. 2, pp. 347–92; Appendix A: Hume’s Works in American Book Catalogues, 1740–1830,” vol. 2, pp. 544–80.
5Known editions are: (London, 1758), 4 vols (London, 1760), 2 vols (London, 1764), 2 vols (London, 1768), 4 vols (London, 1770), 2 vols (London, 1772), 2 vols (London, 1777), 2 vols (Dublin, 1779), 2 vols (London, 1784), 2 vols (London, 1788), 4 vols (London, 1793), 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1800).
6See Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–1865 (New York, 1946), p. 126; M.A. Stewart, “Hume in the Service of American Deism,” in Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti, eds. New Essays on David Hume (Milano, 2007), p. 311; Virginia Gazette [Purdie & Dixon], (25 April 1771), p. 1, and (14 April 1774), p. 2, not reprinted below.
7Ewell’s edition was titled Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. To which is added the answer to his objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine Dr. Campbell. Also, An account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C. and Philadelphia, 1817), selections reprinted below. Examples of the printing of Hume’s essays in early nineteenth-century American periodicals include: “Miscellany. From Hume’s Essays. On the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 3 (4 March 1820), pp. 152–4; “On Divorces,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 3 (29 April 1820), pp. 286–7; “Of Tragedy,” The Theatrical Censor and Critical Miscellany, (4 October 1806), pp. 28–30, (1 November 1806), pp. 95–6; “MARRIAGE-STATE [reprinted Hume’s essay, “Love and Marriage”],” Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, vol. 5 (1819), pp. 12–13. Some of Hume’s other essays were also reprinted in different formats. Hume’s essay “Of the Study of History,” for example, was appended to some American editions of John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters.
8That essay is reprinted below.
9Through the efforts of James McHenry, for instance, the theory that blacks were naturally inferior to whites even became known in America as “Mr Hume’s doctrine.” See McHenry’s letter to this effect in Benjamin Banneker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris, of the Year of Our Lord, 1792; Being Bissextile, or Leap-Year, and the Sixteenth Year of American Independence, Which Commenced July 4, 1776 (Baltimore, [1791]), pp. 2–4. McHenry’s letter was also reprinted as “A letter from Mr. James McHenry, to messrs Goddard and Abgell, containing particulars respecting Benjamin Banneker, a free negro,” American Museum, vol. 12 (1792), pp. 185–7. See also Charles Crawford, Observations upon Slavery (Philadelphia, 1784; reprinted 1790).
10See Benjamin Franklin to David Hume, 27 September 1760, in Leonard W. Labaree, ed., Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1959–), vol. 9, p. 230, not reprinted below; see Jonathan Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the inhabitants of the British Colonies (1767) which makes frequent and significant references to Hume’s essays, not reprinted below.
11For Russell see The Censor, 4 January 1772 and 1 February 1772, not reprinted below. For “A Freeman” see To the Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania, now met in this City (1774), not reprinted below. For “Agricola” see To the PRINTER (1774), not reprinted below. For James Chalmers see Plain Truth (1776), not reprinted below.
12See, for instance, Alexander Hamilton, “The Continentalist No. V,” in Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961–87), vol. 3, p. 77, not reprinted below.
13Other of Hume’s essays were also reprinted in America journals in the 1780s. For instance, in 1784, The Boston Magazine reprinted Hume’s “Essay on Love and Marriage,” vol. 1 (November 1783 [in the volume for 1784]), pp. 15–18, not reprinted below.
14For examples see “Publius,” Federalist #85 in Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers (New York, 1961), pp. 526–7; “A Democratic Federalist,” Pennsylvania Herald (17 October 1787); John Dewitt in the American Herald in Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago and London, 1981), vol. 4, p. 37; “Cato,” “Letter VI, To the People of the State of New-York,” in Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago and London, 1981), vol. 2, p. 122; Civis Rusticus,” Virginia Independent Chronicle, 30 January 1788.
15See pp. 222–3, not reprinted below.
16See p. 211, not reprinted below.
17Selections from John Adams are reprinted below. See also “A Democratic Federalist,” Pennsylvania Herald (17 October 1787), reprinted in Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 3, p. 62, not reprinted below.
18See Charles Lee, The Lee Papers, vol. 1 (1754–76) in Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1871 (New York, 1872), pp. 102–104, 111, not reprinted below; see Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette (27 January 1772), in Hary Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams, 4 vols (New York, 1968), vol. 2, p. 324, not reprinted below.
19Robert Fulton “Communication,” in Albert Gallatin, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals; Made in Pursuance of a Resolution of Senate, of March 2, 1807 (Washington, 1808), selections reprinted below.
20Reprinted below.
21Reprinted below.
22Reprinted below.
23Reprinted below.
1
“Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS,” The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies, vol. 1, no. 5 (February 1758), pp. 203–9.
[William Smith]
The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies was published by William Bradford (1722–91) and edited by William Smith (1727–1803), the first provost of the College of Philadelphia. Printed in Philadelphia, the magazine’s numbers date from October 1757 through October 1758. “Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS” is unsigned; but Smith, as editor, is the most plausible author. The essay reprinted in full below was introduced in the American Magazine for January 1758 where it was remarked that after Douglas:
had run for a long time at Edinburgh, it was also bro’t on the theatre of Covent-Garden in London, March 14th, where it was received with considerable applause. The famous Mr. David Hume endeavoured to prepossess the town in its favour by publishing an extraordinary character of it. But as the piece by no means deserved such lavish encomiums, it was rather hurt than served thereby, as will always be the case when the expectations of the public are raised too high and then disappointed. The characters given of this play by the aforesaid David Hume, and by the authors of the monthly and critical reviews, form a very agreeable contrast, and shall be inserted in our next. (pp. 160–61)
“Dispute about the Tragedy of DOUGLAS” begins by printing the dedication from Hume’s Four Dissertations (London, 1757). Hume dedicated that book to his friend, the clergyman and playwright, John Home (1722–1808). Contrasting Hume’s assessment of Home’s Douglas with reviews from the Monthly Review and the Critical Review, the essay shows that Hume’s literary thought and his character were of interest to an early colonial American audience. This essay would also have popularized the image of Hume as a friend to toleration and free discussion. See Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (1954; second edition, Oxford, 1980), pp. 356–69. On The American Magazine see Jayne K. Kribbs, complier and editor, An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Periodicals, 1741–1850 (Boston, 1977) [hereafter BAP], p. 7; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), esp. pp. 80–82; Wm. David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams, The Early American Press, 1690–1783 (Westport, 1994), pp. 107–108; Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (1810, reprinted New York, 1970), p. 449. On William Bradford see Dennis Barone, “William Bradford,” in American National Biography (New York, 1999) [hereafter ANB], vol. 3, pp. 365–6. On William Smith see A.F. Gegenheimer, William Smith: Educator and Churchman, 1727–1803 (Philadelphia, 1943); Thomas Firth Jones, A Pair of Lawn Sleeves, A Biography of William Smith (Philadelphia and Ontario, 1972); and the entry on Smith by Mark G. Spencer and M. A. Stewart in The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment (New York, 2015) [hereafter EAE], vol. 2, pp. 980–83.
___________________________________
Dispute about the Tragedy of
DOUGLAS.
[Continned [sic] from our last.]
Characters, &c. of DOUG- LAS, a Tragedy.
Mr. HUME’s Dedication of his Four Dissertations, which were published, at London, in the beginning of February.
To the Rev. Mr. HOME, Au- thor of DOUGLAS, a Tragedy.
My dear Sir,
IT was the practice of the ancients, to address their compositions only to friends and equals; and to render their dedications, monuments of regard and affection, not of servility and flattery. In those days of ingenuous and candid liberty, a dedication did honour to the person to whom it was addressed, without degrading the author. If any partiality appear’d towards the patron, it was at least the partiality of friendship and affection.
Another instance of true liberty, of which ancient times can alone afford us an example, is the liberty of thought; which engaged men of letters, however different in their abstract opinions, to maintain a mutual friendship and regard; and never to quarrel about principles, while they agreed in inclinations and manners. Science was often the subject of disputations never of animosity. Cicero, an, [sic] academic, addressed his philosophical treatises, sometimes to Brutus, a stoic; sometimes to Atticus, an epicurean.
I have been seized with a strong desire of renewing these laudable practices of antiquity, by addressing the following dissertations to you, my good friend: for such I will ever call and esteem you, notwithstanding the opposition which prevails between us, with regard to many of our speculative tenets. These differences of opinion I have only found to enliven our conversation; while our common passion for science and letters served as a cement to our friendship. I still admired your genius, even when I imagined, that you lay under the influence of prejudice; and you sometimes told me, that you excused my errors, on account of the candor and sincerity which, you, thought, accompanied them.
But to tell truth; it is less my admiration of your fine genius, which has engaged me to make this address to you, than my esteem for your character, and my affection to your person. That generosity of mind which ever accompanies you; that cordiality of friendship, that spirited honour and integrity, have long interested me strongly in your behalf, and have made me desirous, that a monument of our mutual amity should be publicly erected, and, if possible, be preserved to posterity.
I own too, that I have the ambition to be the first who shall in public express his admiration of your noble tragedy of Douglas; one of the most interesting and pathetic pieces that was ever exhibited on any theatre. Should I give it the preference to the Merope of Massei, and to that of Voltaire, which it resembles in its subject; should I affirm, that it contain’d more fire and spirit than the former, more tenderness and simplicity than the latter; I might be accused of partiality: and how could I entirely acquit myself, after the professions of friendship which I have made you? But the unfeigned tears which flowed from every eye, in the numerous representations which were made of it on this theatre; the unparalleled command which you appeared to have over every affection of the human breast; these are incontestable proofs, that you posses the true theatrical genius of Shakespear and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one, and licentiousness of the other.
My enemies, you know, and I own even sometimes my friends, have reproached me with the love of paradoxes and singular opinions; and I expect to be exposed to the same imputation, on account of the character which I have here given of your Douglas. I shall be told, no doubt, that I had artfully chosen the only time when this high esteem of that piece could be regarded as a paradox, to wit, before its publication; and that not being able to contradict, in this particular, the sentiments of the public, I have, at least, resolved to go before them. But I shall be amply compensated for all these pleasantries, if you accept this testimony of my regard, and believe me to be, with the greatest sincerity, dear Sir, your most affectionate friend, and humble servant, DAVID HUME.
Edin. Jan. 3, 1757.
CRITICAL REVIEW, March 1757.
These critics begin this article with quoting the passage of Mr. Hume’s dedication which ends, I might be accused of partiality [293.]—and then say, “And so indeed, in our opinion, he might, with great justice: for though we are ready to allow much of the bias of friendship and affection, yet would we beg leave to put this author in mind, that there is something also due to truth, taste, and judgment, which we cannot think any man hath a right to sacrifice, even to the most intimate private connections.”
They next observe, that the well-known line in Horace,
Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu,
though adopted by modern critics as an incontestable maxim, has spoiled many more good plays than it has made; that it was a law utterly unknown to the masters of the Grecian theatre, those models of perfection; that their tragedies consisted of one continued act, longer or shorter according to the subject, together with the occasional interruption of the chorus; that there can be no more impropriety in a tragedy of three acts than in a comedy of two, many of which have been lately seen; and that the universal opinion concerning the small merit of the two first acts of Douglas, makes it presumable that this piece might admit of some contraction.
They then proceed to examine separately the fable, characters, sentiments, and diction, which we shall give in their own words, viz.
The striking resemblance of the Plot, in its principal features, to others which have been so lately treated by our modern tragic poets,* were it ever so interesting, would greatly diminish our pleasure in the representation.
The Discovery is, perhaps, made too early, and casts a disagreeable shade over all the other scenes.
The Catastrophe is awkwardly brought about, the jealousy of Randoph too precipitately caught, and without foundation. Besides that it doth not sufficiently appear what advantages Glenalvon would reap from the effects of this discord, as it might possibly have ended, not only in the destruction of Norval, (or Douglas,) but also in the death of Matilda, the woman he loved.
To this we may add, that the fate of Douglas and Matilda, who are both innocent, is scarce reconcileable with poetical justice, which seems to have been violated by their deaths; so that the audience have reason to cry out with Lady Randoph,*
Hear, Justice, hear; are these the fruits of
virtue?
As to the Characters, there is scarce one in it, except Douglas; which indeed is tolerably well supported.
The Sentiments which we meet with in this tragedy, though but thinly sown, are for the most part adapted to the characters, and make their appearance with some degree of propriety; and to them it is, in our opinion, that Douglas is principally indebted for its success.
When Lady Randoph tells us, in the first act, that she took an equivocal oath she never would marry (because at this time she was already married) one of Douglas’s name, she adds the following reflection, which naturally arises on the occasion.
Sincerity,
Thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave
Thy onward path! altho’ the earth should
gape;
And from the gulf of hell destruction cry,
To take dissimulation’s winding way.
What Anna says on the pleasure Lady Randolph took in looking on young Norval, before she knew him to be her son, is extremely pretty:
How fondly did your eyes devour the boy!
Mysterious nature, with the unseen cord
Of pow’rful instinct, drew you to your
own.
Matilda, in describing her husband, says,
On his piercing eye
Sat observation;* on each glance of tho’s
Decision follow’d, as the thunderbolt
Pursues the flash.
When she hears the news of the landing of the Danes, she cries out,
How many mothers shall bewail their sons!
How many widows weep their husbands
slain!
Ye dames of Denmark! ev’n for you I feel,
Who, sadly sitting on the sea-beat shore,
Long look for lords that never shall return.
These, with some other strokes of nature equally pleasing and just, pleaded strongly with the audience in favour of Douglas.
In regard to the Diction of this tragedy, we shall only observe, that though it is the part in which its most sanguine admirers have placed its greatest merit, we cannot agree with them in this determination. With superficial judges, as ranting will pass for passion, and bombast for sublimity, low and vulgar expression may also be mistaken for simplicity. From a studious affectation of this, an author may often deviate into very mean and servile language. For instance: Lady Randolph tells us, that war with foreign foes is not so hateful
As that which with out neighbours oft we wage.
and, by way of informing us she was with child, she says, she was
As women wish to be that love their lords.
Says Anna,
The hand that spineth uneven thread of
life,
May smooth the length that’s yet to come
of yours.
* When I had seiz’d the dame by chance
he came,
Reson’d, and had the lady for his labour.
The bless’d above upon their golden beds†
When the prisoner is brought in, in the beginning of the third act, he cries out,
I know no more than does the child unborn
Of what you charge me with.
As I hope
For mercy, &c.
Honey’d assent!
How pleasing art thou to the taste of man,
And woman also?‡
A rude and boist’rous captain of the sea
Fasten’d a quarrel on him.
Having no lacquey but pale poverty.
Let no man after me a woman wed,
§ Whose heart he knows he has not, tho’
she brings
A mine of gold.
You look (says Glenalvon to Norval)
As if you took the measure of their minds,
And said in secret, You’re no match for me.
Imposes silence with a stilly sound.
The lines above quoted may, for ought we know, be much extolled by some critics; and Mr. David Hume, may, if he pleases, call them a close imitation of nature, and a pattern of true simplicity: we should notwithstanding rather be inclined to rank them in the number of vulgarisms, and much beneath the dignity of tragical expression.
Douglas, upon the whole, with all its imperfections, (and what piece is without some?) is infinitely superior to Barbarossa, Athelstan, and the rest of those flimsy performances with which we have been visited for some years past: and if the author is careful to improve that genius for dramatic writing which is visible in this essay, we have reason to expect something that may do still more honour to the English stage. We should not indeed have dwelt so long on the little obvious faults to be found in this tragedy, had not Mr. David Hume, whose name is certainly respectable in the republic of letters, made it absolutely necessary. ——Every addition of praise to any work beyond its real and intrinsic merit, will always be found in the end prejudicial to it; as the same moisture which feeds and nourishes the plant, may, if poured on in too great abundance, overwhelm and destroy it.
We shall conclude this article, by quoting the following lines from the epilogue which, though very short, is one of the best which we ever remember to have heard on the stage. After briefly observing, that there is nothing so absurd as a ludicrous epilogue, our author
——sadly says, that pity is the best,
The noblest passion in the human breast:
For when its sacred streams the heart o’er
flow,
In gushes pleasure with the tide of woe;
And when its waves retire, like those of
Nile,
They leave behind them such a golden soil,
That there the virtues without culture
grow,
There the sweet blossoms of affection blow
This surely is infinitely more rational after a tragedy, than the pert jokes, witticisms, and loose conceits, which an unfeeling audience generally meets with, to help them to wash away the little tincture of virtue which they may possibly have received from a serious performance.
CHARACTER from the MONTHLY REVIEW, May 1757.
When the town, by a tedious succession of indifferent performances, has been long confined to censure, it will naturally wish for an opportunity of praise; and, like a losing gamester, vainly expect every last throw must retrieve the former. In this disposition, a performance with but the slightest share of merit, is welcomed with no small share of applause; its prettinesses exalt us into rapture; and the production is compared, not with our idea of excellence, but of the exploded trash it succeeds. Add to this, that the least qualified to judge, are ever foremost to obtrude their opinions; ignorance exclaims with excess of admiration; party roars in its support; and thus the trifle of the day is sure to have the loudest voices, and the most votes in its favour: nor does it cease to be the finest piece in nature, till a newer (and consequently a finer) appears, to consign it to oblivion.
Do these men of applause, who can so easily be brought
To wonder with a foolish face of praise,
deserve our envy, or our censure? If their raptures are real, none but the ill-natured would wish to damp them; if fictitious, stupidity only can sympathise with their pretended felicity.
As, in company, the loudest laugh comes generally from the person least capable of relishing the conversation; so, in criticism, those are often most easily pleased, whose sensations are least exquisite in the perception of beauty. The glutton may like the feast, but the delicacy of the epicure alone can distinguish and enjoy the choice, the disposition, the flavors, that give elegance or spirit to the entertainment.
To direct our taste, and conduct the poet up to perfection, has ever been the true critic’s province; and though it were to be wished, that all who aim at excellence would endeavour to observe the rules he prescribes, yet a failure in this respect alone should never induce us to reject the performance. A mechanically exact adherence to all the rules of the drama, is more the business of industry than of genius. Theatrical lawgivers rather teach the ignorant where to censure, than the poet how to write. If sublimity, sentiment, and passion, give warmth, and life, and expression to the whole, we can the more easily dispense with the rules of the Stagyrite; but if languor, affectation, and the false sublime, are substituted for these, an observance of all the precepts of the ancients will prove but a poor compensation.
We would not willingly have applied this last observation to the performance now before us; but when a work is obtruded upon us, as the consummate picture of perfection, and the standard of taste.
Ne, quodcunque volet, poseat sibi fabula credit.
Let candour allow this writer mediocrity now; his future productions may probably intitle him to higher applause.
With respect to his present tragedy we could, indeed, enter on a particular examen of the beauties or faults discoverable in the diction, sentiment, plot, or characters; but, in works of this nature, general observation often characterises more strongly than a particular criticism could do; for it were an easy task to point out those passages in any indifferent author, where he has excelled himself, and yet these comparitive beauties, if we may be allowed the expression, may have no real merit at all. Poems, like buildings, have their point of view, and too near a situation gives but a partial conception of the whole. Suffice it, then, if we only add, that this tragedy’s want of moral, which should be the ground-work of every fable; his unfolding a material part of the plot in soliloquy; the preposterous distress of a married lady for a former husband, who had been dead near twenty years; the want of incidents to raise that fluctuation of hope and fear, which interest us in the catastrophe, — are all faults we could easily pardon, did poetic fire, elegance, or the height-enings of pathetic distress, afford adequate compensation: but these are dealt to us with a sparing hand.
However, as we have perceived some dawnings of gennius [sic] in this writer, let us not dwell on his imperfections, but rather proceed to shew on what particular passages in this performance we have founded our hopes of his brightening, one day, into stronger lustre.
Those parts of nature, and that rural simplicity, with which the author was, perhaps, best acquainted, are not unhappily described; and hence we are led to conjecture, that a more universal knowledge of nature will probably increase his powers of description. The native innocence of the shepherd Norval, is happily expressed. It requires some art to dress the thoughts and phrases of the common people, without letting them swell into bombast, or sink into vulgarity: A fault generally charged upon the English authors, who are remarked by their neighbours of the continent to write too much above, or too much below every subject they undertake to treat upon.
Glenalvon’s character is strongly marked, and bears a near resemblance to Shakespaer’s [sic] Richard. It is thus delineated in the first act.
Anna. Why speaks my Lady thus of Randolph’s heir?
Lady Rand. Because he’s not the heir of Randolph’s virtues.
Subtile and shrewd, he offers to mankind
An artificial image of himself:
And he with ease can vary to the taste
Of different men, its features. Self-deny’d,
And master of his appetites he seems:
But his fierce nature, like a fox chain’d up,
Watches to seize unseen the wish’d-for prey
Never were vice and virtue pois’d so ill,
As in Glenalvon’s unrelenting mind,
Yet he is brave, and politic in war.
The following passage is an oblique panegyric on the union, and contains a pleasing gradation of sentiment. The lines marked in Italics demand particular distinction.
La. Ran. War I detest: but war with foreign
foes,
Whose manners, language, and whose looks
are strange,
Is not so horrid, nor to me so hateful,
As that which with our neighbours oft we
wage.
A river here, there an ideal line
By fancy drawn divides the sister kingdoms
On each side dwells a people similar,
As twins are to each other,——
Both for their valour famous through the
world,
Yet will they not unite their kindred arms
And if they must have war, wage distant
war,
But with each other fight in cruel conflict?
Gallant in strife, and noble in their ire,
The battle is their pastime. They go forth
Gay in the morning, as to summer sport:
When evening come, the glory of the morn,
The youthful warrior, is a clod of clay.
It may not be improper to observe, before we take our leave of this performance, that it was first acted with great applause in Edinburgh; but made its appearance in England under a peculiar disadvantage. The commendation a man of taste and learning had bestowed on it previous to its representation here, perhaps raised too much expectation in some, and excited a spirit of envy and critical prejudice in others. Possibly, indeed, that gentleman, in some degree, sacrificed his taste to his friendship. However, if this was the case, he will sustain no great loss with regard to his reputation; since he may gain as much on the one hand, as he can lose on the other: the worst that can be said, amounting only to this, that the benevolence of his disposition prevailed over the rectitude of his judgment.
*It is so like Merope, especially in the beginning, that it is impossible not to feel the similitude: the sentiments must be consequently alike in many places. Lady Randolph, on sight of Norval, reflects upon her lost child, and says,
He might have been like this young gallant stranger,
And pair’d with him in features and in shape.
Merope, we may remember, talks of Dorilas exactly in the same manner.
*[Here, and in some other places, alterations were made, with the author’s approbation, in the Edinburgh edition.]
*This seems to have been borrowed from Milton:
On his brow
Deliberation sat, and public care Par. Lost.
*The first of these verses rhymes like the old monkish tales, and in the second is a vulgar expression.
†What ideas can we form of ease and pleasure in lying on a golden bed? Which we may suppose was accompanied with a bolster of adamant, and marble pillows, for softness.
‡He might as well have gone on, and said, ay and of children too.
§Here ten long words do creep in one dull line.
We meet also with, timeless death, the tip-toe of expectation, array’d in nature’s case, water-wasted armies, the wicked of the heart, &c. which, we cannot greatly admire.