In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity ness had been increased by many years of seone paragraph stands out pre-eminent. The clusion and flattery,-was moved to the most doctrine of Temple-not a very comfortable violent resentment; complained, very unjustone-is, that the human race is constantly de-ly, of Bentley's foul-mouthed raillery, and degenerating; and that the oldest books in every clared that he had commenced an answer, but kind are the best. In confirmation of this doc- had laid it aside, "having no mind to enter the trine, he remarks that the Fables of Æsop are lists with such a mean, dull, unmannerly pethe best fables, and the letters of Phalaris the dant." Whatever may be thought of the tembest letters in the world. On the merit of the per which Sir William showed on this occaletters of Phalaris he dwells with great warmth sion, we cannot too highly applaud his discreand with extraordinary felicity of language. tion in not finishing and publishing his answer, Indeed, we could hardly select a more favour- which would certainly have been a most exable specimen of the graceful and easy ma- traordinary performance. jesty to which his style sometimes rises than this unlucky passage. He knows, he says, that some learned men, or men who pass for learned, such as Politian, have doubted the genuineness of these letters. But of these doubts he speaks with the greatest contempt. Now it is perfectly certain, first, that the letters are very bad; secondly, that they are spurious; and thirdly, that, whether they be bad or good, spurious or genuine, Temple could know nothing of the matter; inasmuch as he was no mor able to construe a line of them than to decipher an Egyptian obelisk.

He was not, however, without defenders. Like Hector, when struck down prostrate by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick crowd of shields

“ ουτις εδυνησατο ποιμένα λαών Ουτασαι ουδε βαλειν· πριν γαρ περίβησαν αριστοί, Πουλυδάμας τε, και Αινείας, και διος ̓Αγήνωρ, Σαρπηδων τ' αρχος Λυκίων, και Γλαυκος αμύμων."

Christchurch was up in arms; and though that college seems then to have been almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no academical society could show a greater array of orators, wits, politicians,-bustling adventurers, who united the superficial accomplishments of the scholar with the manners and arts of the man of the world, and this formidable body resolved to try how far smart repartees, well turned sentences, confidence, puffing, and intrigue, could, on the question whether a Greek book were or were not genuine, supply the place of a little knowledge of Greek.

This Essay, silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both in England and on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The classical scholars, who saw its absurdity, were generally on the side of the ancients, and were inclined rather to veil than to expose the blunders of an ally; the champions of the moderns were generally as ignorant as Temple himself; and the multitude were charmed by his flowing and melodious diction. He was doomed, however, to smart, as he well de-name of Boyle, but in truth written by Atterserved, for his vanity and folly.

Out came the reply to Bentley, bearing the

bury, with the assistance of Smalridge and Christchurch at Oxford was then widely and others. A most remarkable book it is, and justly celebrated as a place where the lighter often reminds us of Goldsmith's observation, parts of classical learning were cultivated that the French would be the best cooks in the with success. With the deeper mysteries of world if they had any butcher's meat, for that philology neither the instructors nor the pupils they can make ten dishes out of a nettle top. had the smallest acquaintance. They fancied It really deserves the praise, whatever that themselves Scaligers, as Bentley scornfully praise may be worth, of being the best book said, as soon as they could write a copy of ever written by any man on the wrong side of Latin verses with only two or three small a question of which he was profoundly ignofaults. From this college proceeded a new rant. The learning of the confederacy is that edition of the Letters of Phalaris, which were of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary rare, and had been in request since the appear-schoolboy; but it is used with the skill and ance of Temple's Essay. The nominal editor address of most able, artful, and experienced was Charles Boyle, a young man of noble men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, family and promising parts; but some older and is disposed in such a way as to seem ten members of the society lent their assistance. times larger than it is. The dexterity with While this work was in preparation, an idle which they avoid grappling with those parts quarrel, occasioned, it should seem, by the of the subject with which they know themnegligence and misrepresentations of a book-selves to be incompetent to deal is quite wonseller, arose between Boyle and the king's derful. Now and then, indeed, they commit librarian, Richard Bentley. Boyle, in the pre-disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, unface to his edition, inserted a bitter reflection der whom they had studied, would have whipon Bentley. Bentley revenged himself by proving that the Epistles of Phalaris were forgeries; and in his remarks on this subject treated Temple, not indecently, but with no great reverence.

Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful usage, who, even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk from all rude collision, and had generally succeeded in avoiding it, and whose sensitive

ped them all round. But this circumstance only raises our opinion of the talents which made such a fight with such scanty means. Let our readers, who are not acquainted with the controversy, imagine a Frenchman who had acquired just English enough to read the Spectator with a dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of "Rowley s Poems" against Percy and Farmer; and they will have some notion of the feat which Atterbury had

the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it was really thought that he had performed.

This description is surely by no means ar plicable to a statesman who had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing himself in seasons of trouble; who has repeatedly refused, in the most critical con junctures, to be Secretary of State; and whe now, in the midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and domestic wars, was quietly writing non sense about the visits of Lycurgus to the Brah mins, and the tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin.

We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about Phalaris was raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal and attachment, wrote the "Battle of the Books ;"-the earliest piece in which his peculiar talents are discernible. We may observe, that the bitter dislike of Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to Swift, seems to have been communicated by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to others who continued to tease the great critic, long after he had shaken hands very cordially both with Boyle and Atterbury.

The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley's answer forever settled the question, and established his claim to the first place amongst classical scholars. Nor do those do him justice who represent the controversy as a battle between wit and learning. For, though there is a lamentable deficiency of learning on the side of Boyle, there is no want of wit on the side of Bentley. Other qualities too, as valuable as either wit or learning, appear conspicuously in Bentley's book;-a rare sagacity, an unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery of all the weapons of logic. He was greatly indebted to the furious outcry which the misrepresentations, sarcasms, and intrigues of his opponents had raised against him;-an outcry in which fashionable and political circles joined, and which was re-echoed by thousands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness-self-confident, even to neg- Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in ligence and proud, even to insolent ferocity, January, 1699. He appeared to have suffered -was awed for the first and for the last time no intellectual decay. His heart was buried -awed, not into meanness or cowardice, under a sun-dial which still stands in his fabut into wariness and sobriety. For once he vourite garden. His body was laid in Westran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; minster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a he wantoned in no paradoxes; above all, he place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, returned no railing for the railing of his ene- who long survived him. Swift was his literary mies. In almost every thing that he has writ-executor, and superintended the publication of ten we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only here that his genius and earning appear to have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here we find none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own luck, which he showed when he undertook to edite Milton; none of that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many of his notes on Horace; none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid himself open to the keen and dexterous thrusts of Middleton; none of that extravagant vaunting and savage scurrility by which he afterwards dishonoured his studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Paucs.

his Letters and Memoirs, not without some acrimonious contests with the family.

Of Temple's character little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him of nolding irreligious opinions, and corrupting everybody who came near him. But the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Burnet, about a man with whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is of very little weight. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a free-thinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen of rank and fashion who made their entrance into society while the Puritan party was at the height of Temple did not live to witness the utter and power, and while the memory of the reign of irreparable defeat of his champions. He died, that party was still recent, conceived a strong indeed, at a fortunate moment, just after the disgust for all religion. The imputation was appearance of Boyle's book, and while all common between Temple and all the most disEngland was laughing at the way in which the tinguished courtiers of the age. Rochester Christchurch men had handled the pedant. In and Buckingham were open scoffers, and MulBoyle's book, Temple was praised in the high-grave very little better. Shaftesbury, though est terms, and compared to Memmius-not a more guarded, was supposed to agree with very happy comparison; for the only particu- them in opinion. All the three noblemen who lar information which we have about Mem- were Temple's colleagues during the short mius is, that in agitated times he thought it time of his continuance in the cabinet, were his duty to attend exclusively to politics; and of very indifferent repute as to orthodoxy. that his friends could not venture, except when Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as the republic was quiet and prosperous, to in- an atheist; but he solemnly denied the charge; trude on him with their philosophical and and, indeed, the truth seems to be, that he was poetical productions. It is on this account, more religiously disposed than most of the that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beauti-statesmen of that age; though two impulses ful prayer for peace with which his poem

"pens:

"Nam neque nos agere hoc patriæ tempore iniquo Possumus æque animo, nec Memmii clara propago Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti."

which were unusually strong in him,-a pas sion for ludicrous images, and a passion for subtle speculations,-sometimes prompted him to talk on serious subjects in a manner which gave great and just offence. It is not even

unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below | he seems to us to have been excessively self the surface of any question, may have been ish, but very sober, wary, and far-sighted in infected with the prevailing skepticism. All that we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in his works; and that the ease with which he carried his election for a university, where the majority of the voters were clergymen, though it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we think, be considered as proving that he was not, as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the habit of talking atheism to all who came near him.

his selfishness;-to have known better than most people know what he really wanted in life; and to have pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity;-never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by bad or by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he desired success,-to prefer security, com fort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from greatness ;--and Temple, however, will scarcely carry with this natural languor of mind, when contrasted him any great accession of authority to the with the malignant energy of the keen and side either of religion or of infidelity. He restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, was no profound thinker. He was merely a sometimes appears to resemble the moderation man of lively parts and quick observation, of virtue. But we must own, that he seems -a man of the world amongst men of let-to us to sink into littleness and meanness when ters, a man of letters amongst men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the ambassador and cabinet councillor; mere politicians by the essayist and historian. But neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot to him any very high place. As a man,

we compare him-we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality,-but with many of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong pas sions and strong temptations, have left to pos terity a doubtful and checkered fame.

VOL. III.-48

212

CHURCH AND STATE.*

[EDINBURGH, REVIEW FOR APRIL, 1839.]

THE author of this volume is a young man | it less the second time, and stil! less the third of unblemished character and of distinguished time; and now it seems to me to be no defence parliamentary talents, the rising hope of those at all." "My good friend," said Lysias, “you stern and unbending Tories, who follow, re- quite forget that the judges are to hear it only luctantly and mutinously, a leader, whose ex- once." The case is the same in the English perience and eloquence are indispensable to Parliament. It would be as idle in an orator them, but whose cautious temper and moderate to waste deep meditation and long research on opinions they abhor. It would not be at all his speeches, as it would be in the manager of strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most a theatre to adorn all the crowd of courtiers unpopular men in England. But we believe and ladies who cross over the stage in a prothat we do him no more than justice when we cession with real pearls and diamonds. It is say, that his abilities and his demeanour have not by accuracy or profundity that men become obtained for him the respect and good-will of the masters of great assemblies. And why be all parties. His first appearance in the cha- at the charge of providing logic of the best racter of an author is therefore an interesting quality, when a very inferior article will be event; and it is natural that the gentle wishes equally acceptable? Why go as deep into a of the public should go with him to his trial. question as Burke, only in order to be, like Burke, coughed down, or .eft speaking to green benches and red boxes? This has long ap peared to us to be the most serious of the evils which are to be set off against the many blessings of popular government. It is a fine and true saying of Bacon, that reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man. The tendency of institutions like those of England is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth, are habitually employed in producing arguments, such as no man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for publication,—arguments which are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language. The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intelligence of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into Parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performances of an Italian improvisatore. But they are fortunate, indeed, if they retain unimpaired the faculties which are required for close reasoning or for enlarged speculation. Indeed, we should sooner expect a great original work on political science-such a work, for example, as the "Wealth of Nations”—from an apothe cary in a country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater in the House of Commons.

We are much pleased, without any reference to the soundness or unsoundness of Mr. Gladstone's theories, to see a grave and elaborate treatise on an important part of the philosophy of government proceed from the pen of a young man who is rising to eminence in the House of Commons. There is little danger that people engaged in the conflicts of active life will be too much addicted to general speculation. The opposite vice is that which most easily besets them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill-informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of talents, of tact, and of intrepidity, ne soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference between the effect of written words, which are perused and reperused in the stillness of the closet, and the effect of spoken words, which, set off by the graces of utterance and gesture, vibrate for a single moment on the ear. He finds that he may blunder without much chance of being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty questions of trade and legislation, he can, without reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having made an excellent speech. Lysias, says Plutarch, wrote a defence for a man who was to be tried before one of the Athenian tri- | bunals. Long before the defendant had learned the speech by heart, he became so much dissatisfied with it, that he went in great distress to the author. "I was delighted with your speech the first time I read it; but I liked

We therefore hail with pleasure, though assuredly not with unmixed pleasure, the appearance of this work. That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his parliamentary avocations, have constructed and proThe State in its relations with the Church. By W. E. pounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory on a great problem in politics

GLADSTONE, Esq., Student of Christchurch, and M. P. for Newark Svo. Second Edition. London. 1839.

is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrines may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become.

Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in many respects, exceedingly well qualified for philosophical investigation. His mind is of large grasp; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illustrate. Half his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination and a scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator,-a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import,--of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the chorus of Clouds affected the simple-hearted Athenian.

signs of much patient thought. It is written throughout with excellent taste and excellent temper; nor is it, so far as we have observed, disfigured by one expression unworthy of a gentleman, a scholar, or a Christian. But the doctrines which are put forth in it appear to us, after full and calm consideration, to be false; to be in the highest degree pernicious; to be such as, if followed out in practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom which the importance of the subject requires, and which Mr. Gladstone both by precept and by example invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, and, we are sure, without malevolence.

Before we enter on an examination of this theory, we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception. It is possible that some persons who have read Mr. Gladstone's book carelessly, and others who have merely heard in conversation or seen in a newspaper that the member for Newark has written in defence of the Church of England against the support ers of the Voluntary System, may imagine that we are writing in defence of the Voluntary Sys. tem, and that we desire the abolition of the Established Church. This is not the case. It would be as unjust to accuse us of attacking the Church because we attack Mr. Gladstone's doctrines, as it would be to accuse Locke of wishing for anarchy because he refuted Filmer's patriarchal theory of government; or to accuse Blackstone of recommending the confiscation of ecclesiastical property because he ω γη του φθεγματος, ως ιερόν, και σεμνον, και τερατώδες. denied that the right of the rector to tithe was When propositions have been established, derived from the Levitical law. It is to be and nothing remains but to amplify and deco- observed that Mr. Gladstone rests his case on rate them, this dim magnificence may be in entirely new grounds, and does not differ more place. But if it is admitted into a demonstra- widely from us than from some of those who ion, it is very much worse than absolute non-have hitherto been considered as the most sense--just as that transparent haze through illustrious champions of the Church. He is which the sailor sees capes and mountains of Lot content with the "Ecclesiastical Polity," false sizes and in false bearings, is more dan- and rejoices that the latter part of that celegerous than utter darkness. Now, Mr. Glad-brated work "does not carry with it the weight stone is fond of employing the phraseology of of Hooker's plenary authority." He is not which we speak in those parts of his work content with Bishop Warburton's "Alliance of which require the utmost perspicuity and pre- Church and State." "The propositions of that cision of which human language is capable, work generally," he says, "are to be received and in this way he deludes first himself, and with qualification;" and he agrees with Bolingthen his readers. The foundations of his broke in thinking that Warburton's whole the theory, which ought to be buttresses of ada- ory rests upon a fiction. He is still less satismant, are made out of the flimsy materials fied with Paley's "Defence of the Church," which are fit only for perorations. This fault which he pronounces to be "tainted by the is one which no subsequent care or industry original vice of false ethical principles," and can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone "full of the seeds of evil." He conceives that reasons on his premises, the more absurd are Dr. Chalmers has taken a partial view of the the conclusions which he brings out; and subject, and "put forth much questionable matwhen at last his good sense and good nature ter." In truth, on almost every point on which recoil from the horrible practical inferences to we are opposed to Mr. Gladstone, we have on which his theory leads, he is reduced some- our side the authority of some divine, eminent times to take refuge in arguments inconsistent as a defender of existing establishments. with his fundamental doctrines; and some- Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this times to escape from the legitimate consequences of his false principles under cover of equally false history.

It would be unjust not to say that this book, though not a good book, shows more talent than many good books. It contains some eloquent and ingenious passages. It bears the

great fundamental proposition-that the Propagation of Religious Truth is one of the prin cipal ends of government, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once.

We are desirous, before we enter on the dis cussion of this important question, to point out