he was at fault in assigning this subordinate position to language, the practice of almost every one of his distinguished successors has been to elaborate a 'poetic diction' far more unlike nature than that which he himself attacked. The whole range of Mr. Tennyson's poems shows a progressive series of ingenious experiments on language. Every work of Mr. Swinburne's is a succession of daring explorations in metre. Yet neither the language of the one poet, nor the versification of the other is a true reflection of the actions or passions of the men among whom they live. To alter the accentuation of words in common use,* to speak of 'rich enow' instead of 'rich enough,' to call a merchant bark 'a dromond,' these are examples of poetic diction' much more glaring than stray lines of classical pedantry, such as,

"Golden Phoebus lifts his reddening fires,'

for which Wordsworth ridicules Gray. Yet licences of this kind are frequent in Mr. Rossetti's poems, and go far to make up the entire style of Mr. Morris. It is the aim of the literary school on all occasions to display instead of concealing their art; nor can we better characterise their manner than by employing the words in which Wordsworth condemns the pedantic imitators of the classics in the eighteenth century. These are poets who think that they are conferring honour on them-selves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites of their own creation.'†

That there is, however, such a thing as 'poetical diction,' distinguishable from the language of prose, we ourselves have no doubt; indeed it is our opinion that it is this which is the essential characteristic of the poet. We take it to be the general function of a poet to find expression for the thoughts and actions of the men among whom he lives, and this he must do by so economising and elevating the idioms of speech in ordinary use, that the reader may at once seem himself to have experienced what is described, and acknowledge that it has been described in the best possible way. Examples of such phraseology are to be

* What are we to say to Mr. Rossetti's new pronunciation of Haymarket'?— Everywhere, be it dry or wet,

And market-night in the Haymarket.'

In his recently published poem, The Last Tournament,' Mr. Tennyson still continues to indulge in archaic and curiously formed words. Such expressions as a carcanet of ruby,' white samit,' 'Lancelot's languorous mood,' 'swine enow,' wan enow,' 'ruby-circled neck,' glossy-throated grace,' are samples of his favourite poetic diction.

found in the writings of Pope, Dryden, and Byron. Pope's character of Atticus is a splendid instance of poetic diction, yet so carefully is the art concealed, so closely does it resemble the language in which men usually communicate their thoughts, that it seems at first sight scarcely more than a spontaneous effort of nature. It is only when we perceive the perfect precision of each word, the nice balance of phrases, and the happy turns of natural rhetoric, which are brought out by the pauses of metre, that we understand why such a consummate masterpiece of language could never have been achieved in prose. To produce such a result required, not only a comprehensive knowledge of the world, but a careful study of English poetical diction in the various stages where it had been taken up by successive masters. The literary poet, on the other hand, aims first of all at being strikingly original; his purpose is to produce a perfectly novel effect of language. He seems to believe that he has the same control over language as the sculptor over marble. Yet even the sculptor is to some extent at the mercy of his material, and must abandon his work if the marble has a fault. Far less liberty has the poet. For language is not like marble the lifeless product of Nature, but a living stream that rises in man, and is altered and augmented by all the fluctuations of human genius. Its bed is the life of a nation, and though its course may be partially guided by the ingenuity of individuals, it is the national character which works out the main channel, and bears on the surface the colours of the religion, the history, and the manners of the people. He who would employ the copious volume of its waters, must obediently keep pace with the stages of its flow. He who, desiring the fresh clearness of the early stream, retraces his steps to divert the water at the source, will soon find his artificial runnels shallow and dry. He, on the other hand, who with bolder genius opposes the full body of the stream, and seeks to bend it into a bed of his own making, may, perhaps, excite astonishment for a moment by the grandeur of his experiments and his apparent triumph over the elements. But the laws of Nature will re-assert themselves; the river of language will make its own way; and though his work may remain as a prodigy of art, it will have given no lasting aid towards guiding and distributing the bounty of

the waters.

ART.

ART. IV.-The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne: including many of his Writings hitherto unpublished. With Prefaces, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy. By Alexander Campbell Fraser, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. 4 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1871.

E

·

ARLY in last year the Clarendon Press of the University of Oxford issued, almost simultaneously, two important works-the Dialogues of Plato,' translated by the Master of Balliol, and The Writings of Bishop Berkeley,' collected and edited by Professor Fraser. These two works bear a striking resemblance to each other in external appearance, each consisting of four handsome volumes of the same hue and size; and in one point, at all events, they have a certain internal similarity, for each is severally designed to bring to the better knowledge of the world a philosopher much spoken of and much misapprehended. In the case of Berkeley, his editor has been enabled to throw light on his modes of thought by the publication, for the first time, of a set of papers, containing his memoranda and diaries, which were known to be in the possession of Archdeacon Rose; and a good deal has been gained by the bringing together of all Berkeley's works, with a careful collation of the different editions. In some cases the alterations which Berkeley introduced, or the omissions which he caused to be made, in subsequent editions of his treatises, are very significant of a change in his philosophical opinions. Professor Fraser has been long known as an authority in the mysteries of the Berkeleian philosophy; and the explanations which he has now afforded in the Introductions, Notes, and Dissertations, which these volumes contain, fully justify the expectation which had been formed of them. It is highly creditable to the delegates of the Clarendon Press to have proposed this edition of Berkeley's works, and it is difficult to conceive their idea better carried out than it has been by Professor Fraser. To his considerable learning in the history of philosophy, and his intimate knowledge of this particular chapter in it, he has added an unwearied diligence in the collection of all possible indications and hints connected with the subject. And he has stated all the results of his investigations in clear and pleasant style without prolixity. An evident sympathy for Berkeley's philosophy tinges his mode of treatment, but without such a sympathy it would have been almost impossible for any one to go through with the labour necessary for the production of these volumes. And, considering his sympathy,

he

he is wonderfully impartial, and leaves the reader in a position to judge for himself of the merits of Berkeley's thought.

The life of Bishop Berkeley is very interesting in itself, and an acquaintance with it is a considerable help towards estimating the character of his philosophy. Professor Fraser justly complains of the slightness and meagreness of previously existing biographies, and of the difficulty, at this distance, of supplying the missing details. Yet, on the whole, when we have gone through the 'Life and Letters' now furnished, especially with the addition of Berkeley's private Commonplace Book and his Diary in Italy, we feel that we have got very near the man, and, for practical purposes, know enough about him. The butterflydown indeed is gone. The grace and charm of colloquial manner, which Berkeley must have had in so high a degree, is lost. But it is the universal fate of mortals that their colloquial individuality dies with them. From this fate only two have been exempt-Socrates and Dr. Johnson-of each of whom it might be said, καὶ νῦν ὑπὸ γαίας πάμψυχος ἄνασσει, ' after death he reigns in fulness of life.' Berkeley's wife, who had seen something of the world, spoke of him as 'the greatest wit of the age.' But now not a mot of him remains. His letters are, on the whole, little representative of him. Most of those which remain are taken up with business, and are addressed to his friend and agent Tom Prior, for whom he had much regard, but whom he hardly treats as an equal. Other letters are, for the most part, somewhat stiff and jejune. We can only infer the excellence of Berkeley's conversation from its known effects, from the eagerness with which his society was sought out by those who had the pick of London, and from the way in which he not only fascinated people for the moment, but also deeply impressed them.

Berkeley was one of the darlings of the human race; one of those who cannot fail to be prosperous, because they make all men anxious to serve and help them. The spell which he exercised over the regards and likings of other men was one of the most remarkable features of his history and character.

as, by conjecture, we can analyse the secret of this spell, it consisted in the half Irish sweetness and pleasantness of his nature, combined with a rare freedom from all irregularities of temper, from all pride, peevishness, and self-assertion, from all cantankerous dispositions of whatever kind; combined, in short, with real goodness, and also with that which is so great a charm in society a rich flow of unpedantic ideas.

Gifted with the power of attracting the love of others, Berkeley lived like a lily of the field, or as a bird of the air, only very

rarely

And the

rarely having occasion to take thought for the morrow. life which he led was, until his health began to decline, full of sunshine and prosperity, and rich in that sort of happiness which he most desired and appreciated. Often characterised by noble and even chivalrous aims for the good of mankind, it was yet not a life of self-sacrifice. For these aims were envisaged under the form of the ideally beautiful, and were chosen for their own sake. Berkeley's ethical system has been described as a theological utilitarianism;' we find him in his early Commonplace Book identifying pleasure with the summum bonum, and his whole life is an exemplification of the Platonic doctrine that we should learn to take pleasure in good things. To his happily balanced nature good always presented itself under the form of pleasure.

6

he was

Berkeley belonged to an English Cavalier family, connected with the noble house of Berkeley of Stratton, which settled in Ireland in the time of Charles II. Berkeley was born in 1685, probably at Dysert, in the picturesque valley of the Nore, county Kilkenny. His primary education must have been efficiently conducted, for the first remaining record of him shows that at the precocious age of eleven years admitted into the highest class but one of the Duke of Ormond's school at Kilkenny, which has been called the Eton of Ireland,' and which had been attended by Swift some fifteen years previously. In the year 1700 Berkeley entered Trinity College, Dublin, and traditions point to his having been considered eccentric in those days, when his juvenile enthusiasm was untempered by his subsequent experience and the polish of the world. He appears to have passed through the ordinary curriculum of studies with distinction and applause, and in 1707 he was admitted a Fellow. Trinity College, Dublin, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, seems to have been full of a good deal of intellectual activity; and in 1705 Berkeley and his friends formed a Society to promote their investigations in the New Philosophy of Boyle, Newton, and Locke. The rules of this Society are preserved for us in Berkeley's Commonplace Book, now for the first time published by Professor Fraser, which is one of the most interesting records of the formation of a philosopher's mind ever given to the world. The Commonplace Book represents Berkeley's studies and thoughts, and probably also many of the questions discussed in the society of his academical friends; it contains his tentative jottings in philosophy, apparently from about his eighteenth till about his twenty-second year,' and it was, in short, his private preparation for those works which he, ere long, in rapid succession produced.