Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/358

 342 CRITICAL STUDIES Spirit ; the spirits of those whose names are the titles of the poems, speak in the first person ; and in these cases, so far as I can see. Dr. Wilkinson sinks to the level of the ordinary mediums (save that we can absolutely confide in his sincerity, however much he may be mistaken), who allege communications from the spirits of the departed. Such communications assert no claims to divine inspiration ; these human spirits, by the admission of the Spiritists themselves, are like their human counterparts, good and bad, truthful and false; a large proportion of those who do communicate being those who are handiest as nearest to the earth-plane, are in fact much below the average, very gross, very deceitful, rather simious than human. Most of the initial and name titles quoted in my last, with some others, belong to pieces thus dictated by mere human spirits, as W. S. and M. S. (apparently uncle and aunt of the writer), Hahne- mann, Mesmer, Sir Robert Peel, England (Cromwell's spirit speaks), Berzelius, Kant, Tears of Swedenborg. I lay no particular stress on the point that all his speakers speak one speech, that is in the same style ; as Emerson says of his master : " All his interlocutors Swedenborgenise ; " for the medium might fairly answer : " Each instrument must render the music in its own way ; a violin, a violoncello, a piano, and a cornet, would not utter identical sounds in giving the same air, their key-notes and timbres must vary ; but if they are accurately tuned the air will be the same from all. But I do lay stress upon the fact that each of these spirits expresses such an estimate of himself as is very probably (I might even venture to say, assuredly) Wilkinson's, and very improbably