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THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS
TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE
LITERARY HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES
THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY
MILTON vs. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR
FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY
A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER
ON SUICIDE
SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE
ENGLISH DICTIONARIES
DRYDEN'S HEXASTICH
POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON
[1854.]
It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine and gloomy a class,that they cannot enter with genial sympathy into any gaiety whatever, but,least of all, when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of theextravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize is not to understand; andthe playfulness, which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid, orabsolutely without meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls havewithdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there remains a largemajority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they havederived from a former paper of mine, 'On Murder considered as one of theFine Arts;' at the same time proving the sincerity of their praise by onehesitating expression of censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me,that perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, and forming oneelement in the general gaiety of the conception, went too far. I am notmyself of that opinion; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, thatit is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this bagatelle tograze the brink of horror, and of all that would in actual realization bemost repulsive. The very excess of the extravagance, in fact, bysuggesting to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the entirespeculation, furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from thehorror which might else gather upon his feelings. Let me remind suchobjectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for turning to accountthe supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms, which, in those days,both at Dublin and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, bycooking and eating them. This was an extravaganza, though really bolderand more coarsely practical than mine, which did not provoke anyreproaches even to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church; its ownmonstrosity was its excuse; mere extravagance was felt to license andaccredit the little jeu d'esprit, precisely as the blank impossibilitiesof Lilliput, of Laputa, of the Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If,therefore, any man thinks it worth his while to tilt against so mere afoam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture on the aesthetics of murder, Ishelter myself for the moment under the Telamonian shield of the Dean.But, in reality, my own little paper may plead a privileged excuse for itsextravagance, such as is altogether wanting to the Dean's. Nobody canpretend, for a moment, on behalf of the Dean, that there is any ordinaryand natural tendency in human thoughts, which could ever turn to infantsas articles of diet; under any conceivable circumstances, this would befelt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism—cannibalism applyingitself to the most defenceless part of the species. But, on the otherhand, the tendency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires andmurders is