them, why has not the haberdasher and the tailor? the latter more especially, since, as it has lately been attempted to be proved, by a learned writer on the subject, that the calling of the tailor is the oldest of all professions whatever; "a calling," says he, "that commenced immediately after the fall: for it was then that mankind sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves clothes." Even upon the subject of the religious bump, upon which I have said so much already, the professors of the new school cannot altogether agree; for while Dr. Gall and Dr. Bojames affirm, that this protuberance on the top of the head indicates the existence of a God, and is the most cogent proof mankind possess of such existence, Dr. Spurzheim contends that it is no proof whatever-that his friends have mistaken the quality-and that it indicates neither religion nor morality; both which, it seems, in the opinion of this enlightened philosopher, have nothing to do with each other: for, "one man," says Dr. Spurzheim, "may be religious without being just, and another may be just without being religious."* Dr. Spurzheim gives to this protuberance, therefore, a different and a far ampler scope, so as to cover, as all his names do, fifty or a hundred qualities at the same time. He calls it, indeed, the organ of veneration, which at first sight appears to have an approach to the name given it by Gall and Bojames; but then he especially tells us, "that this faculty does not determine the object to be venerated, nor the manner of venerating; and that it equally includes the veneration of God, of samts, of persons, or any thing else, however mean or contemptible." Yet this is the organ which Dr. Spurzheim has supposed to have been peculiarly developed in the head of the Saviour. As some amends, however, for his philosophical apostacy upon this point, he makes Dr. Gall's organ of moral goodness, in his explanation, the organ of Christian charity,† for so he expresses himself; introduces a new organ, which Gall will not allow, and a bump which Gall cannot find out, to indicate religious hope and faith, and which he places next to Gall's religious buinp; at the same time totally defeating the value of his amende honorable by adding, that this organ of faith and hope," in persons ENDOWED with it in a higher degree, manifests credulity."‡ Such, then, are a few of the inconsistencies of the new hypothesis, and the discordances of its different professors with each other.

But it may be replied, that there is no reasoning against facts; that the gentlemen I allude to are men of learning and character; and that they have actually determined the moral propensities of a multitude of persons, by a reference to the rules of their own art. I admit the learning and character of these gentlemen, and most freely pay homage to them on this score; but these qualities, though a full security against voluntarily deceiving others, is no proof whatever against self-deception.

There is no science, perhaps, among those professed formerly, and held in the highest estimation, which has fallen into more contempt than that of judicial astrology. Yet this, when it was in fashion, was for ages embraced by men of the greatest learning and talents, and of unblemished integrity; and who, in a thousand instances, foretold events that actually came to pass; and persuaded themselves that they foretold them by the rules of their own art. Such, to confine ourselves to times comparatively recent, were Baptista Porta, Cardan, and Kepler, of the sixteenth century: the first, the most distinguished scholar, and the last two the most distinguished mathematicians of their age; and such were the Abbé de Rancé, the celebrated founder of the monastery of La Trappe, and our own two learned countrymen and poets Cowley and Dryden, in the seventeenth century. And let the school before us, therefore, boast as much as they may upon this subject, we can bring far more numerous instances of individuals as honest, as successful, and incom parably more learned, who have devoted themselves to a science which is now utterly abandoned by every man in the possession of his senses. To talk, therefore, of the occasional success of the physiognomists before us, is to add not a barley-corn to the scale in their favour; since right they must † Ibid. p. 416.

* Physiolog. Syst. p. 415.

&

#Ibid.

sometimes be, upon the common doctrine of chances and the very nature of things; right they may sometimes be, from the common physiognomy of the face; right they may still more frequently be, from the artful and sweeping amplitude of the reply which may be made to cover a variety of tempers or propensities at the same time; and necessarily and infallibly right they do not. profess to be.

The whole, in truth, is founded on hypothesis: here it begins, and here it ends; hypothesis, too, unsettled and disputed, in many of its points, among themselves. And yet, planting their feet upon this tottering and unsteady ground, they are perpetually uttering the proud and lofty words, science, proof, and demonstration; than which a more palpable or grosser abuse of terms can never be employed or conceived.

In few words, how grossly imperfect must be the range and condition of that science, which, upon their own showing, is capable of deciphering to us, that this man is a good musician; that, a good painter; a third, a good linguist; a fourth, a good dramatist; a fifth, a good theologian; a sixth, a good murderer; and a seventh, a good thief; and that any or all these may at the same time be ambitious, or courageous, or conceited, or cunning: while, if you ask them whether they are good liars, good backbiters, or good swearers; whether they are inclined to gluttony or sensuality, to wisdom or folly, to sympathy or hypocrisy, to timidity or confidence, to mirth or to melancholy: characters the one or the other of which apply to every one you meet with, whether abroad or at home, they are compelled to acknowledge that their physiognomy or craniognomy does not extend to any one of these qualities, and that nature has either forgotten to put them into the catalogue with which the head is covered, or has marked them so bunglingly and obscurely, that they cannot read the writing.

LECTURE XIV.

ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE PASSIONS.

In an early lecture in the present series I observed that the passions, when called forth and operating, discover themselves by a double influence upon the organs of the body, the EXPRESSION OF THE FEATURES, and the CHARACTER OF THE LANGUAGE. The first we have already noticed; let the second serve as a subject for the lecture before us.

That the presence and operation of the passions give a peculiar style and animation to the language must have been observed by every one who has paid the slightest attention either to his own feelings, or to those of the world around him. The man who is in a state of calm and tranquillity will always have his ideas flow in a calm and tranquil current, and express them in an easy and uniform tenor. But let him be roused by some sudden and violent insult, or by some unexpected stroke of overwhelming joy or sorrow, and the tempest of his soul will give a corresponding tempest to his utterance. His speech, instead of being mild and uniform, will be vehement, energetic, exclamatory, and abrupt; his judgment will be borne down, his imagination ascendant; the face of nature will, in consequence, assume a new aspect, presenting a distorted, an unduly bright, or an unduly saddened picture, according to the nature of the predominant emotion; and the phraseology will partake of the colouring, and become proportionably figurative and fanciful.

This is not a sketch of any particular age or country, but of all ages and all countries; it is a sketch of mankind at large; and we draw from it these two conclusions: first, that the natural language of the passions is strong, ardent, and abrupt; or broken into short sentences or versicles; full of figure

and imagination, and consequently possessing all the radical characters of poetry: and, secondly, that we may expect to meet with the boldest and most frequent use of this kind of language in those periods of every nation in which the passions have been most unrestrained and luxuriant, and therefore in their earliest and least cultivated state; for we have already seen, that in this state the most vehement and energetic passions are in perpetual play and activity.

Now, the whole history of the world will confirm us in these two general corollaries; and it has hence been said, and in a restricted sense said truly, that the language of poetry is older than that of prose. Its principles are founded in nature, and in nature in her simplest and most unsophisticated state and it is to these principles mankind uniformly recur, whenever hurried by a violent shock of feeling from the polished tameness and monotony of colloquial speech. It is then we return to exclamations, interrogations, broken sentences, bold and daring comparisons; and, whether we be indifferent to the world or not, succeed in interesting it in our fate and condition.

Where, among uncultivated tribes, the passions chiefly called into exercise have been of the pleasurable and sprightly kind, such as we have already seen are the natural result of warmth and beneficence of climate, of tranquil scenery, and an atmosphere perfumed by the rival odours of spontaneous blossoms and balsams, the rude burst of delight has assumed a more regular or measured character, and been uttered in the form of chant or brisk melody, with such corresponding attitudes or movements of the body as might best co-operate in proving the exuberant gayety of the heart. And hence music and dancing are nearly of as early origin as poetry: they were prompted by the same impulse, and had a direct tendency to heighten each other's power; while ingenuity soon taught the more dexterous of the tribes to imitate musical sounds by the invention of the simple instruments of pipes and rebecks. The Greek philosophers ingeniously and perhaps correctly ascribed the first carols of the human voice to an imitation of the wild notes of the birds; and the first idea of musical instruments to the occasional whispers of the breeze among beds of hollow reeds. Lucretius has expressed himself upon this subject with so much sweetness, that I lament the constraint I feel under of quoting him before a popular audience rather in a translation than in his native beauty and elegance; yet the following verses will, I-presunie give a faint idea of the high merit of the original:

And from the liquid warblings of the birds
Learn'd they their first rude notes, ere music yet
To the rapt ear had tuned the measured verse;
And Zephyr, whispering through the hollow reeds,
Taught the first swains the hollow reeds to sound;
Whence woke they soon those tender-trembling tones
Which the sweet pipe, when by the fingers press'd,
Pours o'er the hills, the vales, the woodlands wild,
Haunts of lone shepherds and the rural gods.
Thus soothed they every care, with music thus
Closed every meal, for rests the bosom then.
And oft they threw them on the velvet grass,
Near gliding streams, by shadowy trees o'erarch'd,
And, though no gold was theirs, found still the means
To gladden life. But chief when genial Spring
Led forth her laughing train, and the young year
Painted the meads with roseate flowers profuse,-
Then mirth, and wit, and wiles, and frolic, chief
Flow'd from the heart; for then the rustic Muse
Warmest inspired them; then convivial sport
Around their heads, their shoulders, taught to twine
Foliage, and flowers, and garlands, richly dight;
To loose, innumerous time their limbs to move,
And beat with sturdy foot maternal earth;
While many a smile and many a laughter loud
Told all was new, and wondrous much esteem'd
Thus wakeful lived they; cheating of its rest
The drowsy midnight; with the jocund dance
Mixing gay converse, madrigals, and strains,
Run o'er the reeds with broad recumbent lip
As, wakeful still, our revellers through night

Ff

Lead on their defter dance to time precise,
Yet cull not costlier sweets, with all their art,

Than the rude offspring earth in woodlands bore.

Nature is ever the same; and hence music, and dancing, and poetry, and impassioned language are to be found at this moment, in all their energy and irregular wildness, among the barbarians of North America, those of the Polynesian islands, and even the negro tribes of Africa: while not unfrequently we hear an equally daring and figurative diction, though of a very different kind, vented by the last in a state of Mexican or West Indian slavery, alternately intermixed with terrible execrations on the heads of their cruel taskmasters, and with the most piteous longings for freedom and their native land.

In like manner it existed, and was even cultivated with systematic attention, among the earliest savages of the hyperboreal snows, the Goths, Scythians, or Scandinavians; nor less so among the Celtic tribes of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland. The scalds of the former, and the bards or druids of the latter, were always held in the highest dignity and admiration; their persons were esteemed sacred; their rhapsodies were in measured flow, and had an enthusiastic effect in rousing their fellow-countrymen to arms, to religious rites, or funeral lamentations; in rehearsing the dangers they had encountered, and the victories they had gained; and in stimulating them to a contempt of torment and death under every shape, in the high career of heroic exploits, and the glory of living in the national hymns of future ages.

Such was the death-song of Regner Lodbrok, a Danish prince of the eighth century, and one of the most celebrated scalds of his day. It mischanced the warrior to fall into the hands of his enemies, by whom he was thrown into prison, and condemned to be destroyed by serpents. In this situation he solaced himself with rehearsing all the exploits of his life; and the following is a part of the ferocious verses he composed in the immediate prospect of the fate reserved for him, translated word for word by Olaus Wormius from the Runic original: "He only regrets this life who has never known distress: he who aspires to the love of virgins, ought always to be foremost in the roar of arms. In the halls of our father Balder (or Odin) 1 know there are seats prepared, where in a short time we shall drink ale out of the hollow sculls of our enemies. In the house of the mighty Odin no brave man laments death. I come not with the voice of despair to Odin's hall.” Mr. Gray has been peculiarly happy in inspiriting the old patriotic bard of Cambria with a similar contempt of death. The entire description is well known to every one; but it cannot be too often repeated, and ought not to be neglected on the present occasion. The picture of his standing on the battlements of Conway Castle, and terrifying the English conqueror with his dying prophecy, as the latter was descending the shaggy steep of Snowdon, is exquisite and inimitable.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of wo,

With haggard eyes the poet stood

(Loose his beard and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor to the troubled air),

And with a master's hand and prophet's tire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

The detail of the prophecy is too long for quotation; but the following fragments, which form its opening and ending, ought by no means to be

omitted.

Helm, nor hawberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant! shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears

From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!—

Fond, impious man! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud
Raised by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me!-with joy I see

The different doom our fates assign.

Be thine despair, and sceptred care

To triumph and to die are mine.—

He spoke: and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

The first of these descriptions is derived from a people of Gothic or Scythian origin, whose ferocity of manners I have formerly pointed out, and endeavoured to account for the second refers to a race of Celts or Cymbrians, for the most part of milder affections, and some tribes of which appear at a very early era of their history, and even in the infancy of civilization, to have evinced a tenderness of sentiment, a fecundity of imagery, and a cultivation of style, that are truly wonderful, and have never been satisfactorily accounted for. And I now particularly allude to the traditional poems of the Highlands and the adjoining isles, so well known from Mr. Macpherson's translation, and occasional interweavings. Such is the elegance and delicacy of taste, as well as sublime genius and national enthusiasm, of these singular productions, that Dr. Johnson, as many of us may perhaps recollect, was to the last an infidel as to their genuineness. The first, however, has been sufficiently ascertained of late by the indefatigable and valuable exertions of the Highland Society, formed for the express purpose of inquiring into the nature and authenticity of the poems of Ossian, the Homer of the Highlands; whose report has been published by Mr. Mackenzie, their liberal and enlightened chairman. They have sufficiently established the important fact, that Ossian is not an imaginary being; that his name and general history are at this moment preserved by tradition over the whole of the Highlands and the Hebrides; and that several of his poems, to an extent of many hundred lines, as literally rendered by Macpherson, still live in the memory of many of the oldest inhabitants, of the simplest manners, and who are incapable either of writing or reading, having been taught them by their fathers in early life, as their fathers had in like manner received them from a long line of progenitors through an immemorial period. These poems, or fragments of poems, have in various instances been taken down in the original Gaelic, from the mouths of the venerable reciters by persons of the greatest respectability, many of them appointed for this purpose by the Society I am now speaking of; and on being compared with each other, and with Macpherson's version, have been found to possess a close and literal agreement, in many instances through a range of some hundreds of lines, particularly in the important poems of Caricthura and Fingal. While, to enable the public to form a fuller judgment upon the subject, and to free themselves from every charge of prejudice, the committee, in their very excellent report, have not only given an unmutilated copy of their correspondence, but extensive specimens of the original Gaelic itself, together with a new and verbal translation as well as Mr. Macpherson's version.

Against such evidence it is impossible to shut our eyes; and admitting it, we must conclude with the committee, that, though Mr. Macpherson may have taken occasional liberties with the text from which he translated, omitted some passages, and supplied others that were perhaps lost, yet that the poetry called Ossianic is genuine; that it was common, and in great abundance; that it was peculiarly striking and impressive, and in a high degree eloquent, tender, and sublime. Of the epoch in which Ossian flourished we can form a tolerable guess: for, with occasional references to several of the earlier Roman emperors, and especially to Caracalla, the son of Severus, who by Ossian is called Caracal, we find through the whole of his accredited poems a total unacquaintance with the Christian religion; and hence he can scarcely