TABLE-TALK. AT one of Charles Lamb's delightful Wednesday-night parties the conversation once fell "on persons one would wish to have seen." A conversation, closely allied to that in subject, might be agreeably maintained on persons one would wish to have heard-to have heard, not formally, and in full-dress, as we do in a manner hear them in their writings, but in the easy familiarity of habitual table-talk. Every student of literature, looking reverently back to the memorable men who have awakened thought and the love of knowledge in his own mind, recalls many whose names he would eagerly inscribe amongst the number. Part of the gratification which would be anticipated from such a privilege might be, no doubt, attributable to circumstances altogether independent of the weight and value of the lessons to be listened to, but the most of it would be just as certainly associated with the substantial treasures of instruction to be gathered from the teacher's lips. The feeling would be that which moved Coleridge to exclaim, "O to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom." And it has been, probably, from a recognition of the frequency and strength of this feeling, and a disposition to provide for it as far as possible, that such collections of the sayings of departed worthies as we have at present to rejoice in, have been made. Our own literature has not been eminently rich in publications of this kind. For a long time we had comparatively nothing to put in competition with the affluence of other nations but Selden, of which, indeed, Johnson said that it was better than any of the French. Johnson's own tabletalk, which Boswell had so well preserved, made an immense and invaluable addition to that scanty store. But it did more than this; it set a fashion in biography which has flourished ever since;—a fashion which made a man's conversation, inasmuch as it was worth reporting, and might be reported with propriety, a part of the materials by which he was to be adequately made known to those whom the biographer addressed. From this fruitful source, independently of an increasing number of special collections of table-talk, we are getting to a fair prospect of rivalling our neighbours in their wealth. We have already advanced far beyond the poverty which should occasion discontentedness or shame. Of the three celebrated collections of "Table-Talk" which are now before us, only two are native English. But the great Reformer's conversations, by their solidity and strength, make good a claim to kindred and companionship with those of Selden and of Coleridge. In the peculiar aspect under which we are now to consider them, it would be impossible to find a fitter trio of great men. Stately, earnest, and well-stored with learning, there is no want in either of them of substantial worth or wisdom; whilst each unbends at times with liveliness and ease. With these features of resemblance, Luther's probably was the most impassioned nature, Selden's the severest, and Coleridge's the most complex. Their vocations in the world severally exercised and strengthened inborn dispositions. Luther's career of strenuous, unremitting warfare against monarchs, priests, and scholars could scarcely fail to encourage and increase the coarse vehemence which characterized him; Selden's legal studies and pursuits would be just as likely, in an age when arbitrary power tried its unavailing strength against the law, to confirm him in the strict and stern exactness he was GENT. MAG. VOL. CCII. naturally prone to; whilst Coleridge's unsettled life, spent in great part in making ready the materials of palaces and mansions never to be raised, was just such as would sustain that yearning for magnificent impracticabilities which manifested itself in the youth's beautiful but barren schemes. Luther's "Table-Talk"-like that of Selden and of Coleridge—is an ingathering of the ripened intellectual fruit that fell from him in his latter days. Its authenticity and accuracy are unimpeachable. The zealous disciples who collected it are known to have let slip no opportunity of adding to their precious store, and to have been far too faithful in their idolatry to falsify or forge anything. Unscrupulously eager in their good work, they caught up the sayings of the great man without reserve, and treasured them with reverent care. And those sayings, as we might anticipate from the life-long earnestness and ardour of the man, dwell oftenest on the momentous themes and doctrines which he was never weary of maintaining, and elucidating, and enforcing with his utmost strength. His whole spiritual being was indeed so heartily and utterly absorbed by thoughts and feelings having reference to divine affairs, that whatever he gave utterance to-whether in the highest strain of serious dissertation, or in the lightest and the gayest chit-chat tone, whether polemical or practical in characterwas sure to be more or less deeply coloured with the one predominating hue. But, in the case of all but a very inconsiderable portion of the collected "Table-Talk" before us, the very subjects Luther was discoursing on belonged by indisputable right to the strictest domain of religion. To him, as to every true believer, there was, of course, a sense in which the whole wide compass of a man's concerns on earth, from the smallest of his interests to the greatest, came within those all-embracing bounds; but even in the narrower worldly sense in which the word is used, the subjects of these conversations claim that place. They refer, with scarcely an exception, either to the great positive doctrines of our common Catholic faith, or to the controverted doctrines, on account of which the warfare of the Reformation raged, or to those immutable moralities which Christianity in any of its forms enjoins. It was almost exclusively within the circle of these subjects that the understanding and the heart of the heroic monk lived. On these special themes the "Table-Talk" of Luther presents us with a faithful representation of the weaknesses and strength by which he was distinguished. His indubitable piety and honesty of purpose, and his strong plain intellect, are visible in almost every saying; and so also is the selfconfident, unscrupulous dogmatism, the assumed infallibility, which was one of the conspicuous features of his moral nature. Here is an example of these qualities, with a flavour of the coarseness which he sometimes descended to added :— "Whence comes it that the popes pretend 'tis they who form the Church, when, all the while, they are bitter enemies of the Church, and have no knowledge, certainly no comprehension, of the holy Gospel? Pope, cardinals, bishops, not a soul of them has read the Bible; 'tis a book unknown to them. They are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches; rich, wallowing in wealth and laziness, resting secure in their power, and never for a moment thinking of accomplishing God's will. The Sadducees were infinitely more pious than the Papists-from whose holiness God preserve us. May He preserve us, too, from security, which engenders ingratitude, contempt of God, blasphemy, and the persecution of divine things." Or, in his unmeasured abuse of the wittiest and most learned of his contemporaries, who, as Hallam well says, "diffuses a lustre over his age," it cannot be denied that Luther favours the world with a truer insight into his own nature than into that of his celebrated antagonist. He says, "Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should have been in danger, but that God lent me special aid. In 1525 he sent one of his doctors with 200 Hungarian ducats, as a present to my wife; but I refused to accept them, and enjoined my wife to meddle not in these matters. He is a very Caiaphas. 'Qui Satanum non odit, amet tua carmina Erasme, And again : "Shame upon thee, accursed wretch! 'Tis a mere Momus, making his mows and mocks at everything and everybody, at God and man, at Papist and Protestant, but all the while using such shuffling and double-meaning terms, that no one can lay hold of him to any effectual purpose. Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse upon Erasmus.” On his own shewing, Luther was unfortunate in the characters of his adversaries. Fellow, wretch, knave, or villain is the gentlest designation they receive; although it must be confessed that Erasmus fares worse in this respect than any of the others. But Erasmus had, with the learned of Europe for an audience, triumphantly opposed Luther on one of his most erroneous and most dearly-cherished opinions. We say one of his most erroneous opinions, for this "Table-Talk" reveals many. It is indeed curious to see how faithfully so stout a reformer of delusions still clung to some of the most absurd. Instances of this will be met with in abundance in the section "Of the Devil and his works." The conversation falling on the "witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm-yards," Dr. Luther said,— "I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them. . . . 'Tis said this stolen butter turns rancid, and falls to the ground when any one goes to eat it. He who attempts to counteract and chastise these witches, is himself corporeally plagued and tormented by their master, the devil. Sundry schoolmasters and ministers have often experienced this. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God: what, then, must be His wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high-treason against Divine Majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God." In the same section we meet with an account of the origin of diseases which would seem to have been overlooked by all our busy sanitary boards. If Luther's authority may be taken for the fact, "No malady comes upon us from God, who is good, and wishes us well; they all emanate from the devil, who is the cause and author of plagues, fevers," &c. But the most extraordinary of these absurdities is the following story:"The Emperor Frederic, father of Maximilian, invited a necromancer to dine with him, and, by his knowledge of magic, turned his guest's hands into griffins' claws. He then wanted him to eat, but the man, ashamed, hid his claws under the table. "He took his revenge, however, for the jest played upon him. He caused it to seem that a loud altercation was going on in the court-yard, and when the Emperor put his head out of window to see what was the matter, he by his art clapped on him a pair of huge stag's horns, so that the Emperor could not get his head into the room again until he had cured the necromancer of his disfigurement. I am delighted when one devil plagues another. They are not all, however, of equal power." But it would be doing gross injustice to a man of singular piety and invincible courage,-who laboured with heroic resolution in a well-nigh hopeless cause, to let it be supposed that any considerable collection of his sayings could be made without including anything more worthy of his great renown than what we have now quoted. As a whole, the Table 66 Talk" of Luther is no doubt valuable rather for the insight which it gives us into his strange yet interesting mental nature, than for any particular excellence of thought or style which it discloses, or any particular edification which it is able to afford. It contains, however, much that many readers will not fail to find enjoyment in-many powerful expositions of religious truth, many ardent exhortations to the strict observance of our Christian duties, and much, even amidst its darkest intellectual errors, of a devout feeling which has seldom been surpassed in its intensity or fervour by that of any of the uninspired promulgators of the Divine Word. Luther was, indisputably, far less of a profound philosopher or exact scholar than of an energetic and impassioned man of action, apt at guiding with a master's hand the dispositions of his fellow-men; and of such a nature we must not look for any of the noblest evidences in unpremeditated and often inconsiderate conversations. Between the "Table-Talk" of Luther and that of Selden there is a great disparity. Selden's is a book fit to be bound up with Lord Bacon's "Essays," to form a breviary of human wisdom. Embracing, for the most part, only subjects of a great and general interest, and discoursing on them with a happy union of the rarest erudition and profoundest reason, in a style at once clear and terse, it would be hard to mention another work which is at the same time as rich and brief. The admirable Biographical Preface which is in this editiona prefixed to the "Table-Talk," prepares the reader, by its delineation of Selden's intellectual character, for this singular excellence in his discourses. The wise and moderate course which he maintained amidst the turmoil of the times, the resolution with which he upheld that which he deliberately regarded as the right, the close and searching study by which his convictions were prepared, and the well-merited regard which his learning and his wisdom won for him in the end, exhibit the very qualities which would be looked for in one who could talk, in his habitual mood, as wisely and as winningly as Selden does in these invaluable scraps. In reference to the opinion entertained of him in the Long Parliament, the editor cites a passage in which we are told,— "He appears to have been regarded somewhat in the light of a valuable piece of national property, like a museum or great public library,-resorted to, as a matter of course, and a matter of right, in all the numerous cases in which assistance was wanted from any part of the whole compass of legal and historical learning." 66 The various and extensive knowledge lavished in these discourses makes such a testimony to his reach of learning and his readiness quite credible. A very attractive feature of Selden's Table-Talk," and one in which his conversations differed widely from his writings, is the apt and homely illustrations he was evidently fond of making use of. A good deal of the unrivalled liveliness and charm of some of our older literature was promoted-if not, indeed, sometimes produced-by the same means. In the "Table-Talk" of Selden it is employed with happiest effect; not merely enlivening the manner, but impressing and enforcing the conclusion-he desires to convey. Examples of this kind of merit, in which the substance of an essay or a homily is suggested to us in a few lines, will be not unacceptable to the reader. Here is one on "Friends:" "Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet." Again, the remark on "State" involves a wise lesson,-worthy, probably, of wider application:— "Mr. Singer's, one of Mr. Russell Smith's beautiful series of reprints. |