Originally published in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (William Tait) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1832).
Tait.—Well, Mr. Smith, now you have read my prospectus, what do you think of my prospects?—Is there not room for me?
Smith.—Room, man! room! There's always room for those who will make room for themselves.
Tait.—But see you not that I propose to take unoccupied ground?
Smith.—Unoccupied ground! tut, tut; unoccupied ground is barren ground—ground that no man has thought worth the trouble of cultivating. Elbow your way into the thickest of the crowd;—where many are speaking, they are heard best who speak the loudest—where many are shining, they are seen to most advantage who shine the brightest. Look ye, Mr. Tait,—I see you are half-inclined to be frightened by the popular croak of bad times, rivals, and overstocked markets. Heed it not;—our enemies are our best friends, for, by their means, we have conflicts which invigorate us, and conquests which delight us. Oh, what an appetite it gives a man for his supper, to wipe the sweat from his brow and the blood from his wounds! Never does a cock crow with such ecstasy on unoccupied ground, as he does on ground from which he has driven a conquered enemy.
Tait.—Very true, Mr. Smith, very true; but I must contend that there is a demand at this time for a magazine of liberal principles, of independent spirit, bearing upon the times, bringing out the sympathies of mankind.
Smith.—Mr. Tait, listen to my views of political economy in the matter of the book trade. You may talk till doomsday about demand and supply, and all that sort of thing; but I will ask you one plain question:—You have kept shop in Edinburgh some few years, and you have occasionally sold a copy or two of the Waverley novels; do you recollect that, before those novels were published, any customer came into your shop with money in his hand, saying, "Now, Mr. Tait, here is money, which you shall have, if you will produce, or cause to be produced, an interesting and lively narrative, called a novel, but written fifty times better than any novel that has been produced for the last twenty years." Or, in the whole course of your existence, and in all your intercourse with the reading and thinking public, did you ever set your eyes on any individual of whom you could positively pronounce,—"Such an one is in want of a good novel, a good magazine, or a good poem?"
Tait.—Mercy, mercy, my good friend, don't talk about poetry, it puts one in mind of hot-pressed foolscap—of hard-pressed foolshead. There is clearly no demand for poetry. Put anything into the form of verse, and you proscribe it; nobody will read it, and what is worse nobody will buy it.
Smith.—And yet at this moment John Murray is putting forth a large impression of Lord Byron's works. So far from there being no demand for poetry, there is at this moment offered a premium of ten thousand pounds for a really sublime and original poem on any topic which the writer may choose.
Tait, (in great astonishment.)—A what? A premium for the best poem?
Smith.—No, Mr. Tait, no premium for the best, for bad is the best; but a premium for a good one, for a poem that has the life of life, the vigour of strength, the spirit of glory, and the soul of beauty.
Tait.—And who offers the premium?
Smith.—The public—Mark me now. It is the supply that creates the demand. The want of a good book is not felt till a good book is published—then all the world is dying to read it; but if the public, looking for good books, finds nothing but froth, froth, trash, trash, flummery, and mummery—things that have been said a thousand times before said a thousand times worse than ever—thoughts from those who think not, and who cannot think what thinking is—tales from those who have not heads—observations from those who observe not,—it grows disgusted, and rejects reading altogether. Depend upon it, Mr. Tait, the public is not an ass, it knows good from bad; some few readers, who cannot think, will read for reading's sake; but they who can think will prefer their own wordless thoughts to others' thoughtless words. Have you ever seen a thriving citizen sitting down to a well-dressed dinner of three courses; and have you observed, if, sitting at the same table, you were not too busy to observe, with what deep glee and intense delight of application, he has given up his soul to the meats before him? Then you have seen the public with a good book. On the other hand, have you ever seen a lean, gaunt, rib-displaying, hungry dog, prowling about in the vicinity of a slut's kitchen, where divers dirty bones lie begging fer a dog's tooth in the sun; and have you seen the poor beast first take up one and then another, and then another, and then walk away in hungry despair and unfed sorrow? Then you have seen a lover of printed paper, in a reading-room, on the first or second day of the month, mumbling and grumbling over the periodical publications; taking up one and yawning at the first page, taking up another and yawning at the second page; sneering at one that it smells of perfumery, at another that it smells of blood, or at another that it smells of brimstone, or at another that it is scentless, bloodless, fleshless, lifeless, soulless and altogether stark naught, driven at last, in despair of managing to get through an article, to read the advertisements, or to meditate on the meteorological table.
Tait.—All this I have seen, Mr. Smith, and so has every body who has eyes. I know that nothing but that which is excellent has a chance of excelling; but I think that I have a double chance of success—from the talent of my contributors, and the comparative originality of my plan.
Smith.—Of the talent of your contributors I have not the slightest doubt; but as to the originality of your plan, be kind enough to enlighten me.
Tait.—I can do it in three words, Liberality, Spirit, Utility.
Smith.—Have we never had them before?
Tait.—Never united.—We have had periodicals of liberal politics, but then they have been tame, flat, and flabby: they have carried with their liberality a mighty weight of dry goods, prosing disquisitions, spoony tales, pointless epigrams, and endless twaddle, which has appertained as much to the politics and interests of the moon as to those of our own miscellaneous and wondrous planet. Their liberality has been the liberality of the editor in inserting articles which must have been heavy enough to break down an iron press and to set the printer's devil yawning. I have sometimes been tempted to imagine that magazine editors have occasionally inserted papers by way of making the writers ashamed of themselves, and shewing the world what vapid nonsense some men can write, when they set about it in good earnest.
Smith.—I believe you, I believe you, Mr. Tait; but you are speaking very boldly, man. Suppose now that I were to let the world know what you have been saying to me; would they not expect, think you, that Tait's Edinburgh Magazine will contain no trash, no balderdash, no flat wishwash, muckery and moonshine?
Tait.—To be sure they would, and so I would have them; and they shall not be disappointed in their expectation. Have I not said in my prospectus—
Smith.—Pish!—beg pardon for interrupting,—but in a confidential conversation like this, what signifies alluding to a prospectus? I want to have from your own lips your own notions of your own words. Now, for instance, you profess liberality. Who in the name of wonder would ever put forth a prospectus professing illiberality?
Tait.—No one professes illiberality: but they put it forth under the cloak of very fine words, with which the foxes of old used to sing the geese to sleep; they talk of venerable institutions, and glorious constitutions, of the pride and envy of surrounding nations, of the test of ages, and the time-honoured pinnacles,—which have just as much meaning as the buzz of a cockchafer;—
Smith.—And are as great a nuisance. I do confess to you, Mr. Tait, that of all mental operations, if mental it may be called,—or to speak more properly, of all uses of the ears, I know none more utterly disagreeable or annoying than listening to a long prosification in the shape of argument in favor of exploded whimwhams, all about nine-tenths of nothing at all.
Tait.—But if you hate the wearisome buzz of pretended argument in favour of Toryism, toadeatory, and the like, what think you of the jesuitical trash and trickery of putting together cock-and-bull stories all about the abominations of the French Revolution, as if every movement in favour of liberty and equal laws were necessarily and inseparably connected with bloodshed and brutality?
Smith.—Capital, Mr. Tait, capital! Oh, I do admire it with all my heart.
Tait.—Eh—what! admire it! Do you believe such tales? Do you not regard such tales and representations as either absolute falsehoods or gross exaggerations?
Smith.—Neither one nor t'other, Mr. Tait. They are all true enough; but peradventure there may be a little poetical embellishment about them,—no more. When I saw the attempt that was made to discredit the cause of Parliamentary Reform by means of dreadful stories of the French Revolution, I smiled—smiled not from any delight or satisfaction that I had in reading the tales, but I smiled at the simplicity of the logic of those good people who used weapons that destroyed their own arguments. Why, man, if these tales be true, and I have no doubt that they are, what a story do they tell of the deep and grinding oppression which drove passive humanity, when it could be no longer passive, to break out into such a dreadful fury of loud resistance. When I read or hear of violence bursting forth, I am naturally led to ask, "Is there not a cause?" My very heart bleeds to think what insolence man must have endured from his fellow man, in the way of political and social oppression, before he could have been driven to that outrageous reaction which appeared in the first French Revolution.
Tait—(attempting to conceal an incipient smile).—But you do not read, Mr. Smith, of any such violence used towards the people of France, by the nobles and clergy, as was used by the people towards the nobility and the clergy.
Smith.—You may well have a difficulty in keeping your countenance, when you affect to think that nothing but physical force can provoke physical violence. You know as well as I can tell you, that insolence is one of the most irritating parts of oppression. A friend of mine, lately deceased, told me, that he was in Paris a few months only before the breaking out of what we now call the first French Revolution, and that, being in a carriage with a French nobleman, a sudden jolt was felt, which led the owner of the carriage to ask his coachman what was the matter. The coachman told his master that it was only a poor man whom they had run over. The nobleman made no other remark than "Pauvre Diable! Tant pis pour lui!" This nobleman, my informant told me, was a perfect gentleman, a most amiable man; but he had been brought up, like the rest of them, from his very cradle, to regard nine-tenths of his fellow creatures with the utmost contempt. So far from considering the horrors of a revolution as any argument for a pertinacious adherence to superannuated crotchets and ancient institutions, I view them as the most irrefragable demonstration of the necessity of conforming to the Spirit of the Times.
Tait.—There now, you have just expressed my own views of what I mean by liberality. I have no objection to laws, customs, institutions, or the like, so long as they have a meaning, or have a use; but when we have outgrown them, we should cast them away from us as incumbrances. It is well enough for the people of China or Hindostan to go on, from century to century, in their old habits, forms, and customs; but mutability is the very essence of the European constitution. In Europe there is nothing old. Its changeableness is its strength and glory; and those people are the most powerful who have had the most changes. How farcical and ridiculous it is for us, by the side of Hindoos or Chinese, to talk of our venerable institutions and time-honoured laws which have stood the test of ages! We are perpetually changing, and changing in every thing; in laws, which we are continually making and re-making, enlarging, explaining, altering, modelling, and adapting to circumstances; in dress, which scarcely lasts a month in the same shape and colour; in language, literature, arts, cookery, dinner-time, breakfast-time, furniture, beds, bedding, drama, dancing, music, manners, building, smoking, drinking, snuff-taking; in fact, we change so much from generation to generation, that could we see and hear our grandfathers and grandmothers they would appear to us as foreigners. My view, therefore, of liberality, as concerns my Magazine, is, that we should conform to these mutations, and join them in their progress towards something yet more desirable, which we always have in prospect and never in possession. When I speak of liberality, I am not speaking of any ephemeral party, or any crotchety knot of grumblers, but of a broad, generous, right-down, straightforward, upright, honest principle that hates humbug, cuts blarney, explodes cant; that looks facts boldly in the face, and laughs outright at the absurdity of men wearing their grandmother's petticoats, or peering through their grandfather's spectacles. Talk about change! why, sir, what a venerable set of beings are the Hottentots, who have no more social or political mutations than the very beasts of the field!
Smith.—Your liberality, Master Tait, seems to be exceedingly broad and comprehensive. But run you not some risk, with your passion for liberality, of becoming a bigot to liberality? We have heard of such.
Tait.—We have so;—but mind me—my liberality is not so much a matter of excess as of comprehensiveness. I don't so much hate a man for being a Tory, as I love him for being a fellow-creature. We should pity a man for being a Tory in these times. He is a poor creature that the march of events has left behind; he is like a short-legged drummer-boy who cannot keep up with the movement of the regiment; he is a being of a bygone age, singing an old song, telling a forgotten tale; his mind is hung with cobwebs; he is the preter-pluperfect tense of politics; he is an extract from the lumber room where we have thrown our ghosts, witches, and alchymists. We may laugh at Tories—there is no harm in that—inasmuch as no man is morally culpable for doing what he cannot help. But I would not persecute the poor creatures. I would let them live, if it were only for antiquity's sake.
Smith.—But you are speaking of bonâ fide Tories who are such from incompetence of judgment, slowness of perception, or simplicity of heart.
Tait.—Verily, I am; what else are you thinking of?
Smith.—I am thinking there may be some rank coxcombs who, proud of the Belial wit, which can make the worse appear the better cause, or interestedly subservient to their lordly feeders, lend the aid of their little logic to the cause of despotism, by contributing to abuse the public mind, and using, for that purpose, arguments, the hollowness of which they see and know even while they use them.
Tait.—For such I have no lib— Yes—yes—I beg pardon—I have a great deal of liberality for them. I would liberally lash them, liberally expose them. I think it quite enough, Mr. Smith, for man to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea;—I think it quite enough that he should appropriate to himself the speed of the horse, the strength of the ox, the fleece of the sheep, and the plumage of the birds;—man may be content with the mastery which he has over nature, subduing the elements to his use, riding on the waves of the sea, guiding the rivers in their course, catching the vagrant winds, and making the flaming fire his servant; he may be content with all this, without making a slave of his fellow-man, by force, or humbug; as for those who contribute to the slavery of their fellow creatures, by blarney and sophistry, I have for them the utmost liberality of a hearty scorn.
Smith.—Pray, what do you think of the wisdom of our ancestors, Mr. Tait?
Tait.—Which of our ancestors?—our fathers, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers—
Smith.—Or our great-grandmothers?
Tait.—Or, again, our Protestant ancestors, our Catholic ancestors, or our Druidical ancestors? I cannot affirm or deny anything concerning our ancestors as to their wisdom, or their lack of wisdom, till I know what is meant by the term, "ancestors." If the term be designed to include all who have gone before us, it merely affirms that the present generation is the silliest set of men that have ever dwelt on the face of the earth. Now, where the dickens, for we must not say devil, is the proof of it? Has the world been struck silly all at once, or have we been growing stupider and stupider from one generation to another, so that the farther back we trace our ancestry, the wiser the world was? On this supposition, then, our Catholic ancestors were wiser than our Protestant ancestors, and our Druidical ancestors wiser than all.
Smith.—Capital.—Very well put, Mr. Tait, very well put. I see you are not disposed to swallow words and fancy them wisdom. Definition plays the deuce with humbug. Slang words are bandied about and pass from one to another with such rapidity that they are never examined; but when you catch hold of them and bring their noses to the grindstone of definition, they squeak out peccavi, and vanish into thin air. But you said something about spirit as being one of the recommendations of your magazine. Will you enlighten me a little on that point? You are not afraid of definition.
Tait.—Why, man, don't you know that spirit is breath, and breath is life? By spirit, I mean that my magazine will be distinguished for its life and living interest; that it will talk of that which living people talk and think about; that it will not look like a thing of the last century; that there will be no necessity to examine the date to know whether it be a work of the present or the past age; that it will not merely talk of things that are, but that it will talk of them in the spirit of one that apprehends, feels, and is interested in them.
Smith.—But may you not make it too ephemeral?
Tait.—Not at all. It cannot smack too much of the day. Take up an old magazine that was published in the days of your grandmother's youth, whom you have heard talk of Wilkes and Liberty; and what are you disposed to read in that magazine, now? Not spoony tales all about Damon and Phillis, and fleecy flocks; not essays on friendship and gratitude; not sonnets to the moon, or meditations on moonshine; but the anecdotes, events, biographies and livingnesses of the day. For, how can that which has not a present life expect a future life?
Smith.—I agree with you. There is in composition a fashion as there is in women's bonnets and caps; that which is at one moment superbly elegant is at another exquisitely absurd. I have seen, and for mere curiosity read, articles in old magazines which appear now to be the very quintessence of insipidity and slop; but in the very same magazines have been articles concerning the things and thoughts of the day, not only readable, but well written; so that the very articles which seemed to belong to all time belong to no time, and those articles which have the aspect of the day, have the interest of to-morrow. I can, therefore, readily apprehend your notion of making your magazine a thing of the day. But by spirit, Mr. Tait, some people seem to mean personality, scurrility, scandal, and defamation.
Tait.—A very bad spirit is that, Mr. Smith.
Smith.—I must own to you that when I see authors descending to dirty personalities, quizzing one another's noses, be they snubby or be they puggy, delineating for the amusement of a set of gaping geese all the particularities of a man's domestic life and personal history, I am very much reminded of the grimaces of pantaloon and the sly slaps which a nimble harlequin administers to the clown in a pantomime. I take it for granted that your contributors are gentlemen?
Tait.—They would be very angry if you did not.
Smith.—But is a gentleman, who has a regard for character and decency, a match for a foul-mouthed puppy who cares not what filth he may handle, so that he may bespatter an opponent? If a gentleman be provoked to throw mud upon a scavenger, it is only done with a silver spoon, which holds so little, that the scavenger laughs at it. Besides, they who make it a busines to expose themselves, must be totally invulnerable to such an attempt to expose them.
Tait.—It is even so, Mr. Smith. No, Sir.—The spirit of my magazine shall be a good spirit, sportive and gentle, strong, and pure. It shall not contain the words of recollecting readers, but the thoughts of observing thinkers. You have opened many a book, and shut it again, without reading a word? Have you not?
Smith.—I have, certainly,—but what is the drift of your question?
Tait.—I will tell you. By a mere glance on the printed page, you can see at once whether the book be written in the English language or not.
Smith.—I can so, undoubtedly.
Tait.—And in like manner, can you not see, by a single glance—ay, even without reading a sentence, that there is life and spirit in an article? There is some writing, Mr. Smith, which seems to lay hold of your eyes as soon as you open the book, and which springs up and says, "Come, read me."
Smith.—I have indeed experienced that.
Tait.—And you shall experience a great deal more of it, if you will read my magazine. You shall then see what I mean by spirit, that I do not mean insolence and impertinence; that I do not mean slang and balderdash; that I do not mean personality and dirty satire; but that I mean gladness of soul, elasticity of heart, truth of thought, clearness of expression, and that dexterity of mental distillation which draws from the chaotic wash of an agitated world the essence of truth, of beauty, and of goodness.
Smith.—By my troth, Mr. Tait, but I begin to think that the world has had a great loss in not having had your magazine before.
Tait.—I think so too, and as it has fasted so long, I hope it will now set to with a good appetite.
Smith.—I see now what you mean by spirit, the truth is, that you mean poetry.
Tait.—Poetry! No, no, Mr. Smith, poetry will not do, the world has outgrown it: there is no relish for it: the very sight of verse is a kind of noli me legere.
Smith.—My dear fellow, I am not talking about verse; verse has grown into disrepute, because it has so frequently lacked poetry. For my own part, I love poetry so deeply, and so dearly, that I can scarcely bear the sight of verse. It is like the empty house of a departed friend—
"Its echoes, and its empty tread,
Do sound like voices from the dead."
Poetry is not in the eye or the ear, nor is it at the finger-ends; it consists not in the distortion of words, or subversion of sentences, or in jingling epithets linked to limping nothings. Poetry is that mental electricity, whereby the heart holds living converse with the soul of nature, and the living invisible spirit of the material and visible world. Poetry is every where, and in every thing, in light and in darkness, in joy and in sorrow, in love and in hatred, in form and in colour, in motion and in rest, in day and in night, in summer and in winter, in cities and in deserts, in prose, and, sometimes, but not always, in verse.
Tait.—Ay, ay, poetry, as you speak of it, is all very well. I have no objection to it; the more of it the better. There would b# some utility in that.
Smith.—Ah! now my good friend, I am delighted to hear you talk of utility and poetry in one breath. I must confess to you, that when I first read your prospectus, and saw the word utility, I began to have qualms about spinning jennies and steam-engines, and all the apparatus of meat, drink, and clothing, as if a man's whole being consisted in nothing but eating mutton chops, and wearing breeches.
Tait.—You must then have had very narrow views of my views.
Smith.—My good sir, you must know that there is a set of men in this strange world of ours, who, when they once get on a hobby, will ride it to all manner of excess and absurdity, and there is perhaps no word in the language that has been made such a fool of as the word utility. It has been construed to mean nothing but the visible and tangible; nothing but that which has a direct and positive tendency to fill the belly or cover the back. Your super-super-utilitarian Quixote would tear all the fringe from our curtains, would dash the capitals from our columns, and the gold from our gingerbread. When I was a young man, and had a little propensity to quizzing, which, I now trust, I have totally subdued, I once asked an old maid, who was prodigiously wise and sagacious, which was most useful, a fiddle or a frying-pan.
Tait.—And she decided in favour of the frying-pan?
Smith.—To be sure, she did; and you will find that to be the case almost all the world over, that second-rate wits, and deputy wise-acres, think nothing useful that does not contribute to the support of life, as if being were of more importance than well-being. They speak of the useful and the ornamental, as if the one were opposed to the other, and, as if that which is ornamental is not useful.
Tait.—lI'll tell you what, Mr. Smith, I have a very great respect for you, and a good opinion of your discernment; and, therefore, I take it for granted, that you merely wanted to draw me out on the subject of utility; but, if I could believe that you deliberately thought me such an ass as to be an utilitarian of the class you are alluding to, I should be very much tempted to hand you to the door, and to make you a present of a kick for a keepsake.
Smith.—You are safe enough from all such temptation, for, if I had ever suspected you to be guilty of such high-treason against common sense as not to see the use of ornament, I never would have darkened your doors with the shadow of my earthly tabernacle.
Tait.—So far, Mr. Smith, am I from denying or doubting the utility of ornament, that I absolutely hold that the very value of all the substance of life and being consists in its susceptibility of ornament. Is not sight a blessing? Is not the eye a most eminently useful organ of the body? Yet, wherein consists the glory and beauty of its usefulness? Is it merely useful in preventing us from knocking our noses against a post, and breaking our shins against chairs and tables? Or, is it not principally useful in feeding the soul with forms of beauty, and delighting the heart with the substance of sublimity? Ornament is the perfection, the refinement, the acme of utility. Every thing that contributes to the enjoyment of our being, and the perfection of our nature, is useful; and what is life without beauty and embellishment?
Smith.—Very good, Mr. Tait, very good, If your magazine should be a beautiful, it will be a useful production.
Tait.—And, if it be useful, it will be beautiful, for use and beauty are inseparable.
Smith.—Now I understand you. If you adhere to these principles your Magazine must do,—shall do. If it be not well received by the public, never again believe a word you hear from any man of the name of Smith.