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Untitled Article
and plumed figute , springing from her own brain whert it had been engendered , but materials that have come together * like the righteous into the kingdom of heaven , from the eafet and the west , ftrom the north and the south . She acts oh the bid household m&xito , * Keep a thing for seven years , and you will find a use For it . ' She turns every thing to account ; and herein is her skill . By that
faculty of conception , which , some months ago , we described and endeavoured to illustrate as the characteristic of Sir Walter Scott , the great source of that power to charm which his writings possess , she harmonizes all her materials , however incongruous or insignificant they might appear in themselves . By no modern writer except Scott , has this faculty been exhibited in a highefr degree . She knows , that
* Mountains rise by grain on grain , Drops on drops compose the main : ' and she rears and spreads the mountains and oceans of her own fictitious scenery , on the principle which she taught the political unions to celebrate in the glorious chant from which those lines are quoted . Many of her sketches of character , her landscapes ,
her single scenes of human adventure or emotion , might be adduced as exhibitions , seldom surpassed , of the triumphs of this faculty . With her , and indeed the same thing might be said even of Scott himself , it does not seem to extend to the comprehension which is required for the harmonious and perfect construction of an entire story ; the whole is often deficient in that proportion and unity , which may be exemplified in many of the parts taken
separately . But we see not why she should stop short ofthis ; it is a power which may be acquired ; it is only a higher exercise of that which she possesses . Whatever may be acquired , it seems from her past progress , as if she could acquire . Miss Martineau ' s mind is essentially logical , capable of close and continued thought , and animated by singleness of heart in its pursuit of truth . This is the secret of most of the opinions which startled the Edinburgh Reviewer , and which he ascribed to a
c confident imagination , ' which ' must occasionally run wild in the paradise of its own conception ^ . * He talks of rashness of assumption , extravagant enough , unless checked , to proceed to any lengths . ' Miss Martineau is not prone to rashness of assumption , but she is what such persons deem ' ' extravagant' enough when tion , but she is what such persons deem extravagant enough when
guided by a sound principle , and a chain of undeniable deduction , ' to proceed to any lengths . ' Destroy the principle , or refute the logic , and she is ever willing to stop . If neither can be done , why should she stop ? or any one else , except those who would stop reason and humanity for their own convenience ? It was in the strength of a noble fearlessness , produced by the consciousness
of her devotion to truth , and of her mental patience and precision in ascertaining it , that she came forward to expound to tne population at large , those doctrines of political economy in which they 2 E 2
Untitled Article
Poor Latin and Patiper * . STO
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 379, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/19/
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