Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/62

326 lence attributed to him which he had not manifested, or a defect of which he had not been guilty; and the work itself, after the personal interest excited by its author had passed away, was dispassionately tried, and in spite of its manifold excellencies consigned to oblivion. As it was, however, such was its immediate reception, that six months after its appearance a third edition was in demand, which he prepared accordingly, with the following defiance to his reviewers in the preface:

"I do now return thanks to God, that he hath saved these speculations (whatever they be) from the premature grave into which the aristocracy of criticism would have hastened them; and that two large editions are now before the world, which can judge for itself whether the work be for its edification or not. I have been abused in every possible way, beyond the lot of ordinary men, which, when I consider the quarters whence it hath come, I regard as an extraordinary honour. I know too well in whom I have believed to be shaken by the opposition of wits, critics, and gentlemen of taste, and I am too familiar with the endurance of Christians, from Christ downwards, to be tamed by paper warfare, or intimidated by the terrors of a goose quill. Even as a man I could have shaken a thousand such unseen shapeless creatures away from me, and taken the privilege of an author of the old English school, to think what I pleased, and write what I thought; and most patiently could I have born exile from the ranks of taste and literature, if only the honest men would have taken me in. But as a Christian, God knoweth, I pray for their unregenerate souls, and for this nation which harboureth such fountains of poison, and is content to drink at them. Their criticisms show that they are still in the gall of wickedness and the bonds of iniquity, and I recommend them once more to look unto themselves, and have mercy upon their own souls."

But the head and front of Mr. Irving's literary offences, and the chief subject of merriment or condemnation with his judges, had been his antiquated style of English his obvious imitation of the great masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Upon this point, therefore, he was most earnest to defend himself; and for this purpose he states that Hooker, Taylor, and Baxter, in theology Bacon, and Newton, and Locke, in philosophy and Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, in poetry, had been the chief objects of his study. "They were the fountains," he adds, "of my English idiom; they taught me forms for expressing my feelings; they showed me the construction of sentences, and the majestic flow of continuous discourse. I perceived a sweetness in every thought, and a harmony in joining thought to thought; and through the whole there ran a strain of melodious feeling which ravished the soul, as vocal melody ravisheth the ear. Their books were to me like a concert of every sweet instrument of the soul, and heart, and strength, and mind. They seemed to think, and feel, and imagine, and reason all at once, and the result is to take the whole man captive in the chains of sweetest persuasion." Having thus, as he opines, completely exonerated himself by such sacred examples, Mr. Irving again turns with tenfold ardour upon those losel critics who, in pronouncing his condemnation, had condemned not only him, but the honoured company in which they found him. The following is but a portion of his terrible objurgation:

"’They are not always in taste!’ But who is this Taste, and where are his works, that we may try what right he hath to lift his voice against such gifted men? This taste, which plays such a part in these times, is a bugbear, an ideal terror, whose dominion is defended by newspaper scribblers, reviewers, pam-