material difference between the reprint of a standard book, which has already acquired a fixed reputation, and the composition of a new work of a serious and contemplative cast, especially by an unknown author, and more particularly if it is in opposition to the general current of public opinion. It may safely be predicted of such a work, that if it really contains new and important truths, it will be distasteful to the majority of readers in all classes; and that whatever fame may in future be bestowed on its author, or however widely it may hereafter be read by the public, or command the assent of mankind, he will be in his grave before either effect takes place. Adam Smith, if we mistake not, had died before the Wealth of Nations had got past even a second edition, certainly before its principles had made any material progress in the general mind. Several years had elapsed before a hundred copies of Mr. Hume's History were sold; and he himself has told us, that nothing but the earnest entreaties of his friends induced him, in the face of such a cold and chilling reception, to continue his historical labours. Although, therefore, there exists a steady demand for standard classical works, it is by no means equally apparent that any thing like an adequate encouragement in the general case for the composition of new standard works, is to be found in the present state of society. Few men have the self-denial, like Bacon, to bequeath their reputation to the generation after the next, and to labour for nothing during the whole of their own lifetime; and the chance of finding persons who will do so, is much diminished, when society has reached that period in which, by simply lowering his mode of composition, and descending from being the instructor to be the amuser of men, the author can obtain both profit and celebrity from a numerous and flattering class of readers.

best criticisms of Jeffrey and the splendid essays of Macaulay, which have formed a valuable addition to our standard literature.

The reason why periodical essays, how able soever, seldom succeed in acquiring a lasting reputation, is this. It is too deeply impregnated with the passions, the interests, and the errors of the moment. This arises from the same cause which Bulwer and Cousin have remarked as necessarily changing the character of oratory in proportion to the size of the audience to which it is addressed. Temporary literature necessarily shares in the temporary nature of the passions of which it is the mirror. Every one who is accustomed to that species of composition knows, that if he does not strike at the prevailing feeling of the moment, in the great majority of his readers he will produce no sort of impression, and he will very soon find his contributions returned upon his hand by the editor. "The great talent of Mirabeau,” says Dumont, "consisted in this, that he intuitively saw to what point in the minds of his audience to apply his strength, and he sent it home there with the strength of a giant." That is precisely the talent required in periodical literature; and accordingly, every one engaged in it, is aware that he writes an article for a magazine or review in a very different style from what he does in any composition intended for durable existence. If we turn to the political articles in any periodical ten or fifteen years old, what a multitude of facts do we find distorted, of theories disproved by the result, of anticipations which have proved fallacious, of hopes which have terminated only in disappointment? This is no reproach to the writers. It is the necessary result of literary and philosophical talent keenly and energetically applied to the interests of the hour. It is in the cool shade of retirement, and by men detached from the contests of the world, that truth in social and moral affairs is really to be discovered; but how are we to look for that quality amidst the necessary cravings of an excited age, seeking after something new in fiction, or the passions of a divided community finding vent on politics in the periodical press?

Nor is there the slightest ground for the hope, that the strong diversion of philosophical and literary talent into the periodical literature of the day, has only turned it into a new channel, and not diminished its amount or impaired its usefulness. If we contemplate, indeed, the periodical literature of the day, The great profits which now accrue to every one must be struck with astonishment authors who are lucky enough to hit upon a at the prodigious amount and versatility of popular view with the public, is another cirtalent which it displays. But how much of cumstance which tends most powerfully to that has realized itself in works of a perma- stamp this fleeting and impassioned character, nent or durable character, calculated to instruct both upon our creations of imagination and or delight future ages? Turn to the early periodical effusions of political argument. criticisms of the Edinburgh Review, flowing, as | The days are gone past when Johnson wrote they did, from the able and varied pens of in a garret in Fleet Street the sonorous periods Brougham, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith, and see which a subsequent century have admired, how many of them will stand the test which under the name of Chatham. The vast inthirty years' subsequent experience has afford-crease of readers, particularly in the middle ed? Few persons now read the early critiques in the Quarterly Review, supported as they were by the talent of Gifford, Lockhart, Croker, and Dudley, which affords decisive evidence of the way in which each succeeding wave of periodical criticism buries in oblivion the last. Various attempts have been made to select from the immense mass of these periodicals, such of the pieces as appeared likely to attract permanent interest; but none of them have any remarkable success, if we except the

and lower ranks, has opened sources of literary profit, and avenues to literary distinction, unknown in any former age. A successful article in a magazine or review brings a man into notice in the literary world, just as effectually as a triumphant debut makes the fortune of an actress or singer. But how is this success to be kept up? or how is this profit to be continued? Not certainly by turning aside from periodical literature to the cool shades of medi tation or retirement, but by engaging still more

distinguished soever. Sir Walter Scott, indeed, and Sir Edward Bulwer have been made baronets; but, in the first instance, it was on the personal friend of George IV. that this honour was conferred, not the great novelist; in the second, to the literary parliamentary support

deeply in the stirring bustle of the times; by | constitutional usage of this mixed aristocratic catering to the craving for continued excite- and commercial realm, no distinctions of rank ment, or plunging into the stream of turbulent are ever conferred upon literary ability, how politics. If, instead of doing so, he sits "on a hill retired," and labours for the benefit of mankind, and the instruction of posterity in a future age, he will soon find the cold shoulder | of the public turned towards him. He may acquire immortal fame by his labours, but he will soon find that, unless he has a professioner, not the author of England and the English, or independent fortune, he is gradually verging towards a neglected home-the garret. Whereas, if he engages in the pursuit of fiction, or plunges into the stream of politics, he will erelong be gratified by finding, if he has talents adequate to the undertaking, that fame and fortune pour in upon him, that his society is courted, and his name celebrated, and not un-metropolis. The proof of this is decisive. frequently political patronage rewards passing talent or service with durable honours or rewards.

that the reward was given. Both indeed were entirely worthy of the honour; but the honour would never have been bestowed on the Scotch novelist, if he had been unknown in the aristocratic circles of London, and never dined at Carlton House; or on the English, if he had been a stranger to the Whig coteries of the

Look at what we have done for our greatest men, who had not these adventitious aids to court favour. We made Burns an excise officer and Adam Smith a commissioner of customs.

Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that nothing great, either in philosophy, literature, or art, was ever purchased by gold; that genius The influence of this circumstance is very unfolds her treasures to disinterested votaries great; and the want of any such national hoonly; and that but one reason can be assigned nours is an additional cause of the fleeting and why such clusters of great men occasionally ephemeral character of our general literature. appear in the world, that “God Almighty,” in The soldier and the sailor are certain, if they Hallam's words, "has chosen at those times to distinguish themselves, of obtaining such recreate them." But admitting that neither gold wards. Look at the long list of knights comnor honours can purchase genius, or unlock manders of the Bath, in both services, who were truth, the question is, to what extent they may promoted by the last brevet. Nothing can be draw aside talent, even of the highest class, from more just than conferring such distinctions on the cold and shivering pinnacles of meditation these gallant men; they compensate to them the and thought, into the rich and flowery vales of inequality of their fortunes, and stimulate them politics, amusement, or imagination. The to heroic and daring exploits. The successful point is not what they can do, but what they lawyer often comes in the end to take prececan cause to be left undone. Doubtless there dence of every peer in the realm, and becomes are occasionally to be found men of the very the founder of a family which transmits his highest character of intellect and principle, wealth and his honours to remote generations. who, born to direct mankind, feel their destiny, The honoured names of Hardwicke, Loughboand, in defiance of all the seductions of fame or rough, Mansfield, and Eldon, have been transinterest, pursue it with invincible perseverance mitted with princely fortunes to an ennobled to the end. But such men are rare; they sel- posterity. But to literary abilities none of these dom appear more than once in a generation. higher and elevating objects of ambition are Above all, they are least likely to arise, and open. The great author can neither found a most likely to be diverted from their proper family nor acquire a title; and if he does not destiny in an age of commercial opulence and choose to degrade himself by falling in with greatness, or of strong political or social ex- the passions or frivolities of the age, it is more citement. The universal thirst for gold, the than probable that, like the Israelites of old, general experience of its necessity to confer his life will be spent in wandering in the denot merely comfort but respectability-the faci-sert, and he will see only, in his last hour, and lity with which genius may acquire it, if it will condescend to fall in with the temper of the times—the utter barrenness of its efforts, if it indulges merely in the abstract pursuit of truth, how clearly soever destined for immortality in a future age-the distinction to be immediately acquired by lending its aid to the strife of parties, or condescending to amuse an insatiable public-the .ong-continued neglect which is certain to ensue, if works likely to procure durable celebrity are attempted-are so many temptations which assail the literary adventurer on his path, and which, if not resisted by the heroic sense of duty of a Thalaba, will infallibly divert him from his appointed mission of piercing the Idol of Error to the heart.

These causes of danger to our standard literature become more pressing, when it is recollected that, by the fixed practice and apparently

that from afar, the promised land. And yet what is the influence of the soldier, the lawyer, or the statesman, compared to that which a great and profound writer exercises? and what do the monarchs, the cabinets, and the generals of one age do, but carry into effect the principles enforced by the master-spirits of the preceding?

It is evident, therefore, that there are a variety of causes, some of a positive, some of a negative kind, which are operating together to depress the character of our literature; to chil the aspirations of genius, or the soarings of intellect; to enlist fancy on the side of fashion, and genius in the pursuit of fiction; to hind down lasting intellect to passing interests, and compel it to surrender to party what was meant for mankind. This is not a class interest; it is an universal concern. It 'nvolves nothing

of nations. Let us not therefore lay the flattering unction to our souls, that the craving for the excitement of fiction, or the realities of mechanical improvement, which have extended so immensely among us, with the spread of knowledge among the middle and working classes, are to prove any antidote to the decline of the highest class of literature amongst us. On the contrary, they are among the most powerful causes which produce it.

Real genius and intellect of the highest cha

ess than the dearest interests and future fate of the nation; for what sort of people will we soon become, if temporary passions, interests, or frivolities, alone engross the talent of the empire; and the great lights of genius and intellect, which might enable us to keep abreast of our fortunes, become extinct among us? What are we to say are likely to be the principles of our statesmen, our legislators, or our rulers, if the elevating and ennobling principles of former times are gradually forgotten, and no successors to the race of giants arise to di-racter, it can never be too often repeated, works rect, purify, and elevate the public mind, amidst only for the future; it rarely produces any imthe rapidly increasing dangers which assail it, pression, or brings in any reward whatever, at in the later and more opulent stages of society? the present. Works of fiction or imagination, What are we to expect but that we are to fall indeed, such as Sir Walter Scott's or Bulwer's into the listless cravings of the Athenians, who novels, or Lord Byron's poetical romances, were constantly employed in seeing and hear- may produce an immediate impression, and ing something new; or to the deplorable destiny yet be destined for durable existence; but such of the Byzantine empire, which, amidst inces- a combination is extremely rare, and is in sant literary exertion and amusement, did not general confined entirely to works that please. produce a single work of genius for a thousand | Those that instruct or improve, destined to a years? And if such mingled talent and frivo- | yet longer existence, have a much slower lity should permanently lay hold of the British growth, and often do not come to maturity till mind, what can we expect but that our latter after the death of the author. end shall be like theirs, and that centuries of progressive degradation and ultimate nationalis arranging the materials of instruction and extinction will terminate the melancholy era of social regeneration on which we have just entered.

The solitary man of genius," says D'Israeli,

tion has often required a whole century to be understood and to be adopted."

curiosity from every country and every age; he is striking out, in the concussion of new light, a new order of ideas for his own times; It is perhaps of still more importance to ob- he possesses secrets which men hide from serve, what, though equally true, is not so gene- their contemporaries, truths they dared not rally admitted, that these causes of degradation, utter, facts they dared not discover. View him so far from being likely to be alleviated or ar- in the stillness of meditation, his eager spirit rested by the progressive extension of the taste busied over a copious page, and his eye sparkfor reading among the middle and lower classes ling with gladness. He has concluded what of society, are, unhappily, too likely to be daily his countrymen will hereafter cherish as the increased by that very circumstance. As it is legacy of genius. You see him now changed; the extension of the power of reading to the mid- and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into dle and working classes, that has, in a great part, his very gestures! Could you listen to the produced the present ephemeral character of our vaticinator! But the next age only will quote literature, and the incessant demand for works his predictions. If he be the truly great auof excitement; so nothing appears more cer- thor, he will be best comprehended by posterity; tain, than that this tendency is likely to aug-for the result of ten years of solitary meditament with the extension of that class of readers. The middle and lower orders, indeed, who are so closely brought into contact with the real difficulties and stern realities of life, will always, in every popular community, cause a large part of the talent and intellect of the nation to be directed, not merely to works of amusement, but works of utility, and having an immediate bearing on the improvement of art, the extension of commerce, or the amelioration of the material interests of society. But these labours, however useful and important, belong to a secondary class of thought, and encourage only a second class of literary labourers. They are the instruments of genius, not genius itself; they are the generals and colonels in the great army of thought, but not the commanderin-chief. "In the infancy of a nation," says Bacon, "arms do prevail; in its manhood, arms and learning for a short season; in its decline, commerce and the mechanical arts." The application of energy, talent, and industry, to material purposes, however useful or necessary those purposes may be, savours of the physical necessities, not the spiritual dignity of man; and the general turning of public effort in that direction is a symptom of the decline

We are no enemies to the conferring the honours of the crown upon the most distinguished of our literary men. To many, such elevation would form a most appropriate reward; to all, a legitimate object of ambition. But we are exceedingly jealous of the influence of all such court favours upon the assertors of political, social, or historical truth. We look to other countries, and we behold the withering effect of such distinctions upon the masculine independence of thought. We recollect the titled and well-paid literature of France, under the Emperor Napoleon, and we ask, what has come of all that high-sounding panegyric? We read the annals of the dignified historians of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and we sicken for the breath of a freeman. We remember it was only under a Trajan that a Tacitus could pour forth the indignation of expiring virtue at surrounding baseness, and we shudder to think how few Trajans are to be found in the decline of nations.

The only legitimate and safe reward of the highest class of literary merit, next to the consciousness of discharging its mission, is to be

found in the prolongation of the period during which its profits are to accrue to the family of the author. We at once concede that even this motive, higher and more honourable than that of present or selfish gain, will never be sufficient to induce the loftiest class of genius or intellect to produce any great work. It is an overpowering sense of public duty-an ardent inspiration after deserved immortality the yearnings of a full mind, which must be delivered that are the real causes of such elevated efforts. They are given only to a few, because to a few only has God assigned the power of directing mankind. But, admitting that the divine inspiration is the fountain of truth-the "pure well of genius undefiled" -the point to be considered is, how is the stream which it pours forth to be kept in its proper channel?-how is it to be prevented from becoming rapidly merged in the agitated waves of human passion, or sunk in the bottomless morasses of interest or selfishness? By giving something like perpetuity to the rights of authorship, this can be best effected; because it is by so doing that we will most effectually ally it to the purest and most elevated motives which, in sublunary matters, can influence mankind.

Look at the merchant, the lawyer, the manufacturer, at all who amass fortunes, and leave the colossal estates which gradually elevate their possessors to the ranks of the aristocracy, and fill up in that class the chasms which fortune, extravagance, or the extinction of families, so often produce. What are the motives which animate the founders of such families to a life of exertion, and produce the astonishing effects in the accumulation of wealth which we daily see around us? It is not the desire of individual enjoyment; for, whatever his son may have, the father seldom knows any thing of wealth but of the labour by which it is created. It is not even for the distinction which he is to acquire during his own lifetime, that the successful professional man or merchant labours; for, if that were his object, it would be far more effectually and more pleasantly gained, by simply spending his wealth as fast as he made it. What, then, is the motive which animates him to a life of labour, and stimulates him through half a century to such incessant exertions? It is the hope of transmitting his fortune to his children-of securing the independence of those most dear to him; it is the desire of founding a familyof leaving his descendants in a very different rank of life from that in which he himself moved, or his fathers before him. They know little of the human mind who are not aware that this desire, when it once takes hold of the mind, supplies the want of all other enjoyments, and that it is the secret, unobserved cause of the greatest individual and national efforts that have ever been achieved among mankind.

a merchant or lawyer would toil for fifty years,
if he knew that he could only expect an eight
and-twenty years' lease of his fortune?
"Give
a man," says Arthur Young, "a seven years
lease of a garden, and he will soon convert it
into a wilderness: give him a freehold in an
arid desert, and he will not be long of convert-
ing it into a garden." Is it probable that the
industry of Great Britain would continue, if
the old Jewish system of making all estates
revert to the nation at the end of every fifty
years were to be introduced, or Bronterre
O'Brien's more summary mode of dividing
every fortune at the death of the owner were
put in practice? Truly, we should soon be-
come an ephemeral and fleeting generation in
wealth, as well as literature, if such maxims
were acted upon; and "to-day let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die," would at once
become the order of the day.

If the combined force of all these circumstances be taken into consideration, it must be evident to every impartial mind, not only that it is not surprising that new standard literature has of late years so much declined amongst us, but that the only wonderful thing is, that it has not sunk much more than it has. The causes which produce great and sustained efforts in every other department of human activity, are not only withheld from the highest class of literary or philosophical exertion, but the persons engaged in them are perpetually exposed to the disturbing and detracting influence of the prospect of fame and fortune being attained by condescending to cater for the passions or wants of the moment. To the continued energy and activity of the merchant or manufacturer, we offer the possession of unbounded wealth, and the prospect of transmitting an elevated, perhaps an ennobled race to future times. To the soldier or the sailor we hold out a vast succession of titled rewards, and, to the highest among such race of heroes, hereditary peerages-the deserved reward of their valour. To the indefatigable industry and persevering energy of the lawyer, we offer a seat on the Woolsack, precedence of every temporal peer in the realm, the highest temporal dignities and hereditary honours which the state can afford. What, then, do we offer to the philosopher, the poet, or the historian, to the leaders of thought and the rulers of nations, to counteract the attractions of immediate or temporary ambition, and lead them abreast of their brethren at the bar, in the field, cr the senate, to great and glorious efforts, to durable and beneficent achievement? Why, we present them with petty traders anxiously watching the expiration of eight-and-twenty years of copyright, or hoping for the death of the author, if he has survived it; and ready, with uplifted hands, to pounce upon the glorious inheritance of his children, and realize for their own business-like skill and mercantile capital the vast profits which had been bequeathed by genius to the age which followed it.

To the due action of this important principle, however, a certain degree of permanence in the enjoyment of the fortune acquired is indispen- It is a total mistake, to imagine that the sable. Men will never make such long-con-profits of works of imagination, unless they tinued or sustained efforts for a temporary or are of the very highest class, ever equal those bassing interest. Does any man suppose that which in the end accrue to the publishers of