The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits | Page 7

monotony, to excite the thrill of imagination like the blankets
made of wreaths of snow under which the wild wood-rovers bury
themselves for weeks in winter? Or the skin of a leopard, which our
hardy adventurer slew, and which served him for great coat and
bedding? Or the rattle-snake that he found by his side as a bedfellow?
Or his rolling himself into a ball to escape from him? Or his suddenly

placing himself against a tree to avoid being trampled to death by the
herd of wild buffaloes, that came rushing on like the sound of thunder?
Or his account of the huge spiders that prey on bluebottles and gilded
flies in green pathless forests; or of the great Pacific Ocean, that the
natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity, and that is to
waft them to the spirits of their fathers? After all this, Mr. Hunter must
find Mr. Owen and his parallellograms trite and flat, and will, we
suspect, take an opportunity to escape from them!
Mr. Bentham's method of reasoning, though comprehensive and exact,
labours under the defect of most systems--it is too topical. It includes
every thing; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather like an
inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. Every possible
suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted as much as
enlightened by this perplexing accuracy. The exceptions seem as
important as the rule. By attending to the minute, we overlook the great;
and in summing up an account, it will not do merely to insist on the
number of items without considering their amount. Our author's page
presents a very nicely dove-tailed mosaic pavement of legal
common-places. We slip and slide over its even surface without being
arrested any where. Or his view of the human mind resembles a map,
rather than a picture: the outline, the disposition is correct, but it wants
colouring and relief. There is a technicality of manner, which renders
his writings of more value to the professional inquirer than to the
general reader. Again, his style is unpopular, not to say unintelligible.
He writes a language of his own, that darkens knowledge. His works
have been translated into French--they ought to be translated into
English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been prosecuted for
the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He might wrap up
high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and it would never find
its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of Manuscript author--he
writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key to. The
construction of his sentences is a curious framework with pegs and
hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance, but
almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous
philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses, formalities,
uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what makes it
worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of acuteness and

meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you could. In
short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single sentence to
express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he omit a
single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to the
world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This is
over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the
nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has acquired
this disability--it is not natural to him. His admirable little work On
Usury, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr.
Bentham has shut himself up since then "in nook monastic," conversing
only with followers of his own, or with "men of Ind," and has
endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style with
the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he thinks
his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever may
be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault with the
purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style.
Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character. He
is a little romantic, or so; and has dissipated part of a handsome fortune
in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible projectors, and, if
he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises or their conclusions,
thinks himself bound in reason to stake his money on the venture.
Strict logicians are licensed visionaries. Mr. Bentham is half-brother to
the late Mr. Speaker Abbott[A]--Proh pudor! He was educated at Eton,
and still takes our novices to task about a passage in Homer, or