348.3. Edmund Henry Barker to EBB

This late entry would have appeared in The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 2.

“Dr Doddridge also wrote some hymns, & though inferior to those of Dr Watts, he gave at least one evidence of his poetical taste and powers in the excellent lines, which he wrote on the motto to the arms of his family, Dum vivimus, vivamus, which are highly commended by Dr Johnson, & represented as containing one of the finest Epigrams in the English language:—

‘Live, while you live,’ the Epicure would say,

‘And seize the pleasures of the present day.’

‘Live, while you live,’ the sacred Preacher cries,

‘And give to God each moment as it flies.’

Lord, in my view let both united be;

I live in pleasure, while I live to thee.”

Chalmers’s Biogr. Dict.

Thetford,

July 31, 1829.

My dear Madam,

I was sorry to learn that you had been obliged to visit Malvern for the reason, which you mention. I am a patient & charitably-minded person, who will never blame even for a long silence till I have heard the cause, & then the cause may be a sufficient excuse or apology. It is my general habit to act on this principle, & I generally find that I was right in supposing all to be right, & no wise man should punish himself twice, 1. in the anticipation of evil, 2. in the reality of it.

A good part of Schottus’s book is certainly written vaguely & without due care. The Scholars of his age often wrote slovenly & cursorily, as if they had only so much time allowed for writing. The Scaligers, Salmasius, & Is. Casaubon, & Henry Stephens were giants; but the last named scholar, though a man of philosophical mind, was at times very careless & slovenly. But then giants do not always put forth their strength.

I never read or saw Dr Owen’s Χζιστολογιά: you have perhaps read it in the Glasgow—edn of 1815, which I find mentd in Dr Watts’ Bibl. Brit. If the 15th ch. be something not very long, I shall be glad to have your transcript of it: most probably it is too long for transcription, & in that case I will take my chance of seeing it hereafter.

I am not master of the Ossianic controversy; I have merely considered a few points; you have my remarks in the text & an appendix to the 2d vol. of the Parriana, which I shall soon be able to send to you. I have delivered my opinion, energetically & positively, in a true barking & canine & cynic spirit, wherever I had an opinion to deliver; you will see that I have not scrupled to question the reasonings of R. P. Knight, Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, & others; I have ‘laid’ them ‘on’ their ‘back’, ‘& cudgelled’ them ‘full sore’; I have thrown out hints, which I wanted space & time to work out to their just extent, but I have thrown light on the subject by amassing authorities, I have argued on just principles of criticism, & hundreds, (if I have as many readers,) will give to me full credit for my knowledge of the controversy, & really my knowledge lies in a nutshell, but my slender knowledge is compensated for by the justness of the strictures, which will admit of no answer.

I am glad to hear that you liked my Squirrel: he has danced to some tune & purpose. Are you aware that the word Squirrel is derived from σκὶουζος? It comes directly from the French écureuil, by corruption, & the French is evidently derived from the Greek word.

The Bp. of Limerick is brother to Judge Jebb, his Nephew, a young Deacon of 24, is likely to be a good writer, if I may judge from an unpublished Sermon, which the Bp. has just sent to me.

A female friend of most exquisite taste with extraordinary talents for composition told to me that she had met with a French Translation of Cicero, which she thought very good indeed; she is no Latinist, & only looked at it as if it were an original work. Well, I could never get out of her the name of the translator. One use of the Translation of Chrysostom is that it shews what the French consider the best parts of Chrysostom, & how those parts read in French? Did you ever read Robinson’s Translation of Saurin’s Sermons? They have all the freedom of an original work. These I could lend to you. Chrysostom reads well even as he stands in the book on Xtian Eloquence. Sprat is a very fine fellow, I assure you, & no Englishman prior to him has written with so much strength, grace, & harmony, & even in our day no man can write better. In fact you could not tell that Sprat’s book was not quite a modern work: there is not a single archaism in the History of the Royal Society.

Your observations on Dugald Stewart’s strictures on Sir Uvedale Price’s book are most just, & do not require or admit of anything in reply but assent & consent. I have not examined dates, but I suppose that Sir U.’s Letter to Mr Repton, (for there have been, you know, three or four, perhaps more editions of his book,) was not written subsequently to the article by Dugald Stewart? Now it so happens that Sir Uvedale’s last publication is dated 1810, & Stewart’s Philosophical Essays first appeared in that very year.

Certainly the Greeks found Homer very useful; for they made him a landsurveyor, a topographer, a geographer; he had to settle the boundaries of states, you know. If you asked me to choose what solitary book I would save from a conflagration? I still declare for Cicero on rational grounds of preference. If you asked me what philosopher I would save? I would reply—for science, Aristotle,—for moral philosophy etc. & for style, Plato. If you asked me to choose between Plato & Cicero in reference to style; I should say—Plato is the more sublime, Cicero the more magnificent writer—I regard Cicero’s style as more equably perfect than that of Plato or any writer of any age, because it unites strength, grace, & harmony, as well as grammatical propriety etc. Cicero was the perfect writer, a grammarian, rhetorician, dialectician, moralist, metaphysician, orator, lawyer, senator, legislator, politician, eminent, preeminent, & supereminent in every department. Plato had more imagination, but less judgment,—more originality, but less learning,—more genius, but less cultivation,—more pure intellect, but less mind for the business of life & the interests of mankind,—Plato could write a finer theory of government, but Cicero better knew the wants of the political world, because he had conversed more with mankind. “Citius in mundo genus hominum quam nomen Ciceronis cadet.” Vell. Patere. 2, 66. Sir Wm Jones read Cicero once every year, the whole of him, carcase, flesh, & bones,—Parr was perfect master of his writings—Dr Charles Simmons was never satiated with reading him. Mr Walter Landor has put the thing well & justly. Cicero may be occasionally feeble, but then we must distinguish between his genuine writings & those fathered on him. There is no feebleness to justify the charge of feebleness, in reference to his entire works. He is the only writer who is habitually & universally & scientifically harmonious. Even his esse videatur is singularly soft & musical, but it should not occur so often as to lead to a remark. I meet with few scholars, who are judges of harmony in Latin & Greek, & with many, who have no perception of it in English. Harmony of composition is natural to some writers without any effort,—others aim at it & fail, many very excellent writers are wholly destitute of it.

When you speak of Tacitus’s style as “laying bare in a carious manner the skeleton of thought,” I should be glad if you would furnish me with some examples or illustrations of your remark. Tacitus’s style is most inharmonious, speaking generally; his sentences are too long & too short for harmony; he writes for philosophers, & is above the level of ordinary minds; he is a Raphael in painting, a Virgil in poetry. Ye Gods! what a description of a storm has he given! Find out the passage, for I will not help you to it, & then criticise it, & ask yourself if Dr Joseph Warton (in his ‘commonplace book’ on Pope) was not right in calling Tacitus “a great painter”?

In respect to Arria, I am abundantly patient, & quite willing to hear you out, whether you speak in a voice of thunder, breaking the cedars of Lebanon, or whisper with Angelic softness, calming universal nature into repose. You are very ingenious, very acute,—you have so many circles within which you move, that I chase you in vain, but catch you I must. The difference, then, between your reasoning & mine, is this;—you argue hypothetically, when you say that Arria could not (or ought not to) think about the glory of the deed. Now hypothetical reasoning may be true or false, & there lies the danger of it; for very few persons can discriminate fairly in matters of reasoning,—even persons of the brightest genius cannot do it, but Johnson, (when he chose,) & Parr (always) could. A single fact, or a fair & legitimate, necessary & unavoidable inference from a fact, will overturn such reasoning. To prove to you that Arria was not, or could not be presumed to be, insensible to the glory of the deed at the time of its execution, at the same time to confirm the propriety of Pliny’s remarks, which you had questioned, & also to shew to you that personal or selfish considerations mingled themselves in cases of the most heroic self-devotion, & apparently the purest patriotism, I referred to the memorable words of Lord Nelson, Victory or Westminster-Abbey! You should have seen, & had you seen, you would have candidly admitted that this reference actually settled the question; for you must never forget, now or at any time, single or married, young or old, that no hypothetical reasoning can be allowed in argument against a plain fact;—even Aristotle, the greatest logician that ever lived, would find it a vain attempt to overturn plain fact by subtle reasoning. You cunningly evaded the force of the argument by saying—“A simple, not a complex motive actuated him; & that motive was patriotism. When you love others, you desire their love; he loved his country, & desired her love: ‘Victory or Westminster-Abbey.’ Let us conquer for England, or die regretted by England—let us meet her smile, or deserve her tears.” I give to you full credit for this ingenuity, but you λακτίΖεις πζὸς κέντζον: for the very mention of Westminster-Abbey involves the cognate ideas of a public funeral & a monumental inscription. The glory of the deed, then, was present to his mind, assuredly it was; & yet I do not at all question the purity of his patriotism. You do not state the case fairly, when you speak of two co-existent & co-active motives;—I have never expressed any such opinion;—I do say that Arria & Nelson were actuated by more than one motive, & as you allowed no merit to the former, if she had any feeling of glory, I shall insist on it that you allow none to the Latter, unless your justice is as partial as your reasoning! There was one predominant motive, & so far it was simple; but other & weighty considerations passed over the mind, & you must not charge against Arria as a crime or failing, that in the hour of trial she possd the same feeling of glory, which actuated even the mind of Lord Nelson; both were human beings, & must be judged by the laws of human nature, & not by an ideal standard of perfection in your own mind, founded, we may suppose, on Angelic nature. This is that serious errour of judgment, which leads men to condemn the Seraphic Young, bece they are shocked to find that the author of the Night Thoughts solicited preferment at the age of 80; in the same way they talk about the vanity of Cicero, Erskine, & Parr, & the prejudices of Johnson. That is, they have a standard of perfection in their own minds, by which they will judge human nature in spite of their own daily experience, & in spite of the laws of human nature. You are young, &, dear Madam, make haste to shake off all such fetters on your judgment, & judge of man by human nature only. As we had not settled the discussion about Arria, I thought it better not to introduce into the Parriana either your remarks or my own. You will soon see in that book what I had written before I ever made any remarks to you, & if you find anything unsound in the reasoning, you must mention it to me, & let us fight it out like two Eton-boys. I still think, from your candour & love of truth, that in the end you will agree with me about the general merit of Martial’s Epigram.

The passage, to which I referred you in my Junius, is in p. 434, above Howard, to-wit the passage about the King of France, where Burke has multiplied synonymous words with prodigious effect. The opposite metorical excellence is called by Longinus ἀσύνδετον, whence the modern critics use the word πολυσύνδετον to express the reverse. You remember in the 1st Philippic, Demosth. says, ῎Ατακτα, ἀόζιστα, ἀδιόζθωταἅπαντα: this is the figure ἀσύνδετον.

Somehow I have mislaid Peter Heylin.

I lend to you Berger, & see what you can make out of him.

I send to you one of the promised books, & shall be glad to have your remarks on it; for I hope to improve this book greatly, when I arrive at a second edition, & your hints may be useful. You must dispense my quack medicines for me, i.e. you must circulate my circulars, & like other quack-doctors, you must kill all to whom you admister [sic] the medicine!

I remain, dear Madam,

Most truly your friend,

E. H. Barker

Aug. 2, 1829.

Address, on integral page: Miss Barrett / Hope-End / Ledbury.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

Enclosure:

Cicero:—

On perusing the following extract from Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations 2, 199. you will see that he agrees with me as to the value of Cicero’s compositions:—

“Let us try to think as rightly as Cicero, & to express our thoughts as clearly; we may then as easily pardon those, who discover a few slight faults in our writings, as he would pardon us, were he living, for pointing them out in his. The two most perfect writers, (I speak of style,) are Demosthenes & Pascal; but all their writings put together are not worth a third part of what remains to us of Cicero; nor can it be expected that the world will produce another, (for the causes of true eloquence are extinct,) who shall write at the same time so correctly, so clearly, so delightfully, so wisely,” [& above all, so virtuously.] [1]

1. Brackets are the author’s.

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