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of its astonishing and overwhelming superiority, and of his magnificent consciousness of his own power, which makes him love to sport with the passions he has himself excited in the breasts of his readers. To speak of it as evincing a complete depravation of mind and intellect, argues nothing, I think, but malice, stupidity, or a degree of prejudice bordering on both. What is published of the personal satire, with which, we are told, the original MS. abounded, is very bad, in point of taste and feeling, and can excite only one sentiment of disapprobation-when levelled at one injured individual in particular, of disgust and indignation. But where his satire is general, it is often as well directed as it is keen and irresistible. Witness his strictures on education, (canto i. st. 40, &c.; canto ii. st. 1, &c.)-on crim. con. actions, (i. 64)—on passion and hypocrisy, (i. 73)-his fine lec ture on "Lead us not into temptation," (i. 80)—on self-deception, (i. 83, 106, &c.)-on the vanity of human wishes, (i. 218.) Then, for deep feeling (setting aside all passages of which the strict moral propriety can be considered as questionable), his reflections on his own advance of years, (i. 214)-that happiness, to be felt, must be partaken, (canto ii. 172) -his exquisite stanzas on moonlight, (ii. 114)-and many, many more.

After all, the principal cause of the very general and total condemnation which Don Juan has met with, in conjunction with the motives already referred to, may, I think, be traced in the spirit of universal exaggeration, which I conceive to be the grand and master vice of the age, and on which, if I had the time for it, I could write a folio. For my own part, I hold Lord Byron to be neither god nor devil, nor a being partly one and partly the other, but a mere man, with very uncommon talents, and at least an equal proportion of faults; and I think we should write not only in better taste, but to better moral effect, if we would only condescend so to consider him. But there is nothing but exaggeration in the world on all subjects. We meet with a Scriptural phrase or allusion in a profane work, and instantly exclaim, Blasphemy! blasphemy!-forgetting, that the Bible being the book in most general circulation of any, and in which we were VOL. VI.

all taught to read before we could even articulate, it is very natural that, when we have occasion for a familiar illustration, we should recur to earliest, first, and most lasting impressions, without any offensive meaning whatever. Are we not every day in our ordinary conversation talking about "the loaves and fishes?" and who ever dreamed that, in doing so, he was giving utterance to a blasphemous parody of one of the greatest and most stupendous miracles recorded in Scripture? At the same rate, we must not speak of a man "having the gift of tongues," or "the pen of a ready writer;" or talk of "Job's comforters ;' or call a man's wife "his rib," or Sir Massey Manasseh Lopez 66 a scape-goat;" or say we wash our hands" of such or such an offence, or use any other of the thousand familiar phrases, which the ha bit, so constantly recommended and strenuously enforced by divines"Nocturna versare manu, versare diurna”

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has culled out of the Old and New Testament, and gradually interwoven with the very form and idiom of our language. To speak seriously, it may shew both bad taste and a defective judgment to make any part or parts of the Holy Scriptures the vehicle either of pleasantry or satire; but it is the vice of exaggeration, displayed in its most offensive and injurious form, which can alone place such venial errors upon the same level with the sin of a direct and wanton attack upon religion, or mention Hone's dull but harmless parodies with the same tone of indignation and abhorrence as is justly excited by Carlile's foulmouthed and impious vituperations. Exaggeration bullies and swaggers in every department of life-in religion, in law, in politics, in science, in literature. Your friend, Dr Morris, is the prince of narrative exaggerators in our day-the very Sir John Mandeville of tourists; nor is his friend (your German Contributor with the hard name) far behind him. poets of the Lake School-Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey-all are exaggerators; and run a great risk, by their exaggeration, of utterly blasting the laurels to which their genius and talents entitle them. I know scarcely a writer of the present day who does not exaggerate, except the mysterious

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author of Waverley. It is exaggeration to detect mortal poison in every glass of fermented liquor, as much as to swear, that potations, three bottles deep, are the only recipe for a clear head and a nervous and masculine understanding. Yet a man has little chance of being heard or attended to on the subject, who does not subscribe implicitly to one or other of the opposite creeds, as set up for "the true catholic faith" by Doctors Lamb and Morris respectively. But in the present days, the grand question of politics absorbs every other; and, if a man be neither a Radical nor an Alarmist, he must find himself (generally speaking) in a very awkward and graceless predicament, much like that ancient worthy of whom the proverb runs," Between two stools," &c. This is my own case; and it is lamentable for me to think how completely out of favour I am with all my friends and acquaintance, for venturing to maintain that the late unlucky business at Manchester was neither a bloody and premeditated massacre (for that, I find, is the approved phrase) on the one hand, nor an act of commendable firmness (a salutary bloodletting, I am told, we ought to call it) on the other.

Now, although there never was a time in which temperance and moderation have been held so cheap, such mean and despicable qualities, as the present; yet every day's experience more and more convinces me, that there never was a time when they were more requisite, nor when their almost universal absence was so much to be deplored and deprecated. To those who are placed in the foremost ranks of the battle, it is as hopeless to preach forbearance as to pour a glass

of oil into the sea for the purpose of allaying a tempest. But to all other descriptions of persons whatever,―to all who are not actually goμax,

I will venture to give a piece of advice, which (if generally followed) may yet save the country-and that is, immediately to change their newspapers and reviews, and take in, for their regular perusal, those only which are of a complexion the very reverse of their own favourite system. This will, for a few mornings, make them only the more angry and out of humour, but the bad effects will not last; as the most furious fire will, in the end, be subdued by the continual sprinkling of cold water, while the smallest augmentation of fuel only tends to keep it in a perpetual blaze. To those who are able to have such command over themselves, I would further recommend, that, in reading, they endeavour (just for the time) to divest themselves of their own prejudices, and put on those of the hostile writer; but this advice will be totally thrown away upon so vast a majority of persons, that it seems almost useless to bestow it. However, the very change in the atmosphere of an apartment heated by party politics, which is produced by the regular daily introduction of sixteen or twenty columns of letter-press of an opposite stamp, is prodigious; and I can assure you, that my own moderation and gentleness (being by nature of that ravenous class of politicians called Whigs) is entirely the result of my adoption of the advice I have given

my only newspaper being the New Times; and your excellent Magazine, with the Quarterly Review, my only literary journals.

METRODORUS.

The above is one of about thirty letters that we have received within the last quarter of a year, containing criticisms on us and on our Journal. We have selected it from the rest on account of its sense, liveliness, and spiritand can scarcely believe it possible that METRODORUS can be a Whig. We have two separate publications in view-first, "Rejected Letters ;" and, secondly, "Rejected Articles." The number of Whigs who write to us is quite astonishing-some in sorrow, some in anger, and some in fear. One or two have tried contempt in the beginning of a letter, but have terminated it in evident consternation.

EDITOR.

ON THE MILITARY ERRORS OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

To Lieutenant Felix Shufflebottom, Royal African Corps, &c. &c.

I HEARTILY congratulate you, my dear Shufflebottom, on your appointment to so respectable a corps as the Royal Africans, and am happy to find, by your last letter, that the climate of Senegal agrees so well with you.Your description of the regimental mess is excellent; the elephant's surloin must cut a magnificent figure at the foot of the table, and the tripes of the hippopotamus (which you describe as delicious) form, I have not the smallest doubt, a very savoury side dish. As for the roasted vulture, I confess, notwithstanding all the stuffing, it is rather too much for me, and the prejudices I have acquired in Scotland will never allow me to admit that your haggis could be improved by being served up in the bag of a Hyena. But as Pliny observes, "in ratione conviviorum quamvis a plerisque cibis singuli temperemus totam tamen cænam laudare omnes solemus, nec ea quæ stomachus recusat adimunt gratiam illis quibus capitur." Lib. 2. Ep. 5. Were it not for the great reliance I place on your veracity, I really could scarcely have credited your eating a couple of ostrich eggs every morning for breakfast, those I once met with in a show of wild beasts being about the size of footballs, but you have always been remarkable for having a devil of a twist.

I am glad you received the Numbers of Blackwood's Magazine I sent out to you, and completely agree with you that the articles you mention are beyond all praise. The work, as you say, is truly a national one, and at the present alarming crisis, it is consolatory to reflect, that the taste of that public cannot be entirely vitiated, which gives to such a work the encouragement which it deserves. The circumstance you mention from high authority of a volume of the Magazine having been presented by Mr Bowditch to the king of Ashantee, which he ordered immediately to be translated, is not to be found in the account of the embassy by that writer, although so interesting an occurrence certainly should not have been omitted. The astonishment of the king on reading the "Hospital Scene in Portugal,"

where a French grenadier, having bit off his under lip, crushes the bed-post with his fingers, is extremely well described; and his majesty's extraordinary embarrassment on reading, "the Lake School of Poetry, No I." is very natural indeed. The essay on the Decline of a Taste for Metaphysics" was found quite untranslateable into the Ashantee tongue, and the Monthly Commercial Report seemed, on the whole, to be the paper in which his majesty took most interest. much flattered, however, by the favourable impression my writings seem to have made on the king, when he stated publicly that if the English had any further favours to ask of him, the only ambassador he would receive was Ensign Odoherty. I have already written to Lord Bathurst on this subject, offering my services, should they prove needful, but have not yet received his lordship's answer.

I am

But there is a more important part of your letter to which I must now advert. The passage is as follows:

"On entering on my military career, I trust it will not be presuming too much on your friendship, to request to profit by your military experience. Your talents I well know to be of the highest order, and I likewise know you to be possessed of those fine discriminative powers which cannot fail to render you an admirable judge of the merits of your contemporaries.May I, therefore, request that you would favour me with your observations on the military policy of the great generals of the present age, that you would unveil their defects, expose their errors, and thereby enable a Shufflebottom to profit by the blunders of a Lynedoch or a Wellington." Most unquestionably, my dear Felix, you have a right to make this demand upon me. Your thirst for knowledge is most praiseworthy, and if the small fountain which trickles from Odoherty can contribute to quench it, you are most welcome to the beverage. Drink deeply of this living stream. Though the rill be small, my friend, yet, believe me, it is pure-it flows through a channel uncontaminated, and will nourish the constitution which imbibes

it. In your present situation, too, military knowledge is peculiarly requisite. It is possible you may be employed in a small expedition against the natives, you may command a party of attack on illegal slave-traders, or you may be placed on the staff of some blockhead of a general who, knowing nothing of military manœuvres himself, of course, expects that such knowledge, in great perfection, shall be found in his aide-de-camp. May I not flatter myself, too, that in communicating to you the stores of my own knowledge, I am, in some degree, spreading it through the continent of Africa. By your instruction and example it may be gradually diffused among nations hitherto ignorant of the enlightened policy of war, and, in the course of ages, a woolly-headed Wellington may arise, the scourge of the oppressor, and the conqueror of some Ebony Napoleon. These, my friend, are high speculations, and, therefore, congenial to my disposition; but I cannot allow them to detain me longer.

Laying other considerations aside, however, I see much reason to fear that the partiality of my friends has led them largely to overrate the measure of my military talents. There exists but little connexion between Mars and the Muses; and it may reasonably be concluded, that Shakspeare would no more have proved a Wellington in the field, than Wellington could become a Shakspeare in the closet. To suppose myself, therefore, capable of uniting those talents, in any high degree, would argue a portion of vanity, of which those who know me will be far from supposing me to be possessed. In truth, I am not so, and I assure you, it is with no small dégree of diffidence that I now venture to commit to paper such observations on the military policy of the great generals of the age, as considerable experience and a judgment, perhaps not altogether contemptible, have enabled me to make. Though these letters are chiefly intended for your instruction, yet I shall not hesitate to enlarge the sphere of their utility by giving them to the world, I am not one of those (great as my regard for you certainly is) who

"Would to Felix give up what was meant for mankind," and with a thorough knowledge of

the disadvantages under which I write, I shall commit them to the waters, not doubting but the world shall find them after many days. The difficulties I must expect to encounter, on the present occasion, are numerous and formidable. In the cause of Odoherty versus Wellington, where the plaintiff is an ensign, and the defendant a fieldmarshal, the former unknown by any military exploit, and the latter standing at the very pinnacle of renown, and whose name is irrevocably connect ed with achievements which form the foundation on which much of the superstructure of our national glory has been reared, I well know in what direction the tide of prejudice must run. But, I confess, I shall have underrated its force, if truth is unable to stem it, and if the reason of my contemporaries shall be found to have been swept away by the flood, I shall boldly appeal to other times and other men, when the deluge shall have subsided, and the ark of sound judgment shall once more have found an Ararat to rest on.

It has been said, and truly said, that though praise is ever a pleasing task, it is generally an unprofitable one, because it is more frequently from the errors than the excellencies of a character that a useful lesson can be derived. We are at little pains to follow our neighbours while they walk in the straight paths of rectitude and virtue, but we take mighty good care to shun their footsteps when we see them tumble into a coal-pit, or stick in a bog. Thus it is with the character of great men. The more admirable parts are generally beyond our imitation, but we can all avoid their failings, and profit by their errors. Few men can ever expect to draw teeth or write papers on the corn bill, with the facility which long practice and extraordinary talents have given to the Editor of the Scotsman and Dr Scott, but we can all despise the vulgar and plebeian insolence, of the one, and avoid writing jocular songs on our deceased friends like the other. In examining the character of common men, the dross is generally very easily separated from the ore, but it is not so with those whom we have long been accustomed to gaze upon with admiration and respect. The blaze of their fame illuminates only their achievements, while their defects are shrouded in almost impenetrable gloom.

How few of those whom the name of Professor Leslie has reached, as that of the first physical philosopher of the age, have heard, or probably ever will hear, of his little innocent fopperies, his quadrille dancing, and his bouquet of artificial flowers! The case, I admit, is not exactly in point, because I am now treating, not of personal foibles, but of professional errors. But the utility of the task I have undertaken has been already sufficiently demonstrated, and if there shall be found any one who, after reading these pages, is disposed to dispute it, he may rely on it that there exists some radical fault either in Odoherty's understanding or his own.

In writing of the errors of the Duke of Wellington, sorry indeed should I feel, to be considered one of those malignant and unpatriotic individuals, who having vainly attempted to obstruct him in his career of glory, would now gladly return to their former miserable avocation, and by ignorant censure and false insinuation, endeavour to tarnish the lustre of his fame in its meridian. No. A task like this may be still safely entrusted to the Conductors of another Journal, whose impiety and want of British feeling, have been castigated with so much talent and justice in the former Numbers of that Miscellany, in which it is my intention that these letters shall appear. Yet, after all, the labour has been a superfluous one. De stroy as often as you please its little web of petulant sophistry, expose the mean artifices by which the structure of calumny has been reared, lay open the total want of honourable and consistent principle by which that Journal has been distinguished from its commencement-the brutal propensity will still remain-the vile appetite increases by the garbage on which it is fed, and we shall soon find the creature at its dirty work again. But professing as I do to feel not a less ardent but a more discriminating admiration of this great General than is entertained by the world at large, it may be proper that I should seize this opportunity of recording my sentiments of his professional merits;-and surely it will be sufficient for the fame of Wellington that it be acknowledged, that in promptitude of decision, fertility of resource, and self-possession in the hour of danger, he is perhaps sur

passed by none, and certainly equalled by few. Yet these qualities, though originally the gift of nature, are undoubtedly increased by experience, and the warmest admirers of his character need not scruple to admit, that the Wellington of Talavera was a general very far inferior to the Wellington of Vittoria and Waterloo. But it is his praise, that he was ever found equal to the difficulties he was called on to encounter; that he profited not only by the errors of others, but by his own; and that, as the progress of the war, and the increased exertions of the enemy, demanded on his part higher resources and a more profound policy, the call was never made in vain. In the most perilous circumstances his confidence never failed, he grew as it were with the dangers that surrounded him, and when they were measured in the hour of trial, his genius was found to overtop them all. His unalterable confidence in his own powers, forms one of the most prominent features of his professional character. During the conduct of a protracted and difficult war of eight years, he on no occasion assembled a council of war, nor ever collected the sentiments of the generals of the army with regard to its operations. Instead of shrinking from responsibility, he assumed it all, he personally directed every movement of the different corps of his army, and left nothing at any time to the discretion of his generals, but what was absolutely called for by the necessity of the case. He was the living soul of the army, the great vivifying centre round which the minor planets revolved, and whose eccentric orbits were all designated by himself. How far this feature in his character may have contributed to, or diminished his success, is a problem now impossible to be solved. Most probably it has occasionally done both. There are many situations in which promptitude and energy of decision are of more importance than extreme accuracy of judgment, where instant action is required, and delay or vaccillation ruinous. But I can conceive no experience so great-no judgment so profound, as to be incapable of being added to and informed by the counsel and suggestion of others. Even of the mind of Wellington this will not readily be predicated, and still less readily admitted, if it be so.

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