The qualities of the objects, and the particularities of the facts, are known by the assistance of other organs. Besides, this faculty has knowledge of all internal faculties, and acts upon them. It wishes to know all by experience; consequently it puts every organ into action: it wishes to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch; to know all arts and sciences; it is fond of instruction, collects facts, and leads to practical knowledge." Page 430. In the next page he affirms that "crystallography is the result of the organ of form,” and that we do not get the ideas of roughness and smoothness from the touch.-But I will end here, and turn to the amusing account of Dousterswivel in the ANTIQUARY*! * It appears, I understand, from an ingenious paper published by Dr. Combe of Edinburgh, that three heads have caused considerable uneasiness and consternation to a Society of Phrenologists in that city, viz. those of Sir Walter Scott, of the Duke of Wellington, and of Marshal Blucher. The first, contrary to the expectation of these learned persons, wants the organ of imagination; the second the organ of combination; and the last possesses the organ of fancy. This, I confess, as to the two first, appears to me a needless alarm. It would incline me (more than any thing I have yet heard) to an opinion that there is something like an art of divination in the science. I had long ago formed and been hardy enough to express a conviction that Sir Walter's forte is a sort moment. of traditional literature (whatever he accumulates or scatters through his pages, he leaves as he finds it, with very few marks of the master-mind upon it)-and as to the second person mentioned, he has just those powers of combination which belong to a man who leads a bull-dog in a string, and lets the animal loose upon his prey at the proper With regard to Prince Blucher, if he had not "fancy in himself, he was the cause of it in others," for he turned the heads of many people, who "fancied" his campaigns were the precursors of the Millennium. I have at different times seen these three puzzling heads, and I should say that the Poet looks like a gentleman-farmer, the Prince like a corporal on guard, or the lieutenant of a press-gang, the Duke like nothing or nobody. You look at the head of the first with admiration of its capacity and solid contents, at the last with wonder at what it can contain (any more than a drum-head), at the man of" fancy" or of " the fancy" with disgust at the grossness and brutality which he did not affect to conceal. These, however, are slight physiognomical observations taken at random but I should be happy to have my "squandering glances" in any degree confirmed by the profounder science and more accurate investigations of northern genius! ESSAY XV. ON EGOTISM. It is mentioned in the Life of Salvator Rosa, that on the occasion of an altar-piece of his being exhibited at Rome, in the triumph of the moment, he compared himself to Michael Angelo, and spoke against Raphael, calling him hard, dry, &c. Both these were fatal symptoms for the ultimate success of the work: the picture was in fact afterwards severely censured, so as to cause him much uneasiness; and he passed a great part of his life in quarrelling with the world for admiring his landscapes, which were truly excellent, and for not admiring his historical pieces, which were full of defects. Salvator wanted self-knowledge, and that respect for others, which is both a cause and consequence of it. Like many more, he mistook the violent and irritable workings of self-will (in a wrong direction) for the impulse of genius, and his insensibility to the vast superiority of others for a proof of his equality with them.. |