SOMERVILLE'S LIFE AND TIMES.*
radical and most pernicious misconception of what a good govern- ment is, which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our speculations on government. The great principle which Mr. Mill relies on is, what appears to us a self-evident truth, that even if a * My own Life and Tunes : 1741-1814. By Thomas Somerville, DA., minister of good, implying an all-seeing, despot could be found, the passive state Jedbargh. PublIsdaed by Edmonton and Douglas. Ammo the acquaintances of Dr. Somerville was the now famous minister of Inveresk, whose Memoirs have excited so general an in- terest, and who to his previous titles of honour or dishonour, has recently added that so wittily conferred on him by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose figures of rhetoric are often more welcome than his figures of arithmetic, " The gentleman clergyman." Dr. Somerville, like the Olympian Carlyle, was a gentleman clergyman; -dining pleasantly, fond of play-going, boasting scholarly acquirements, professionally correct, aristocratically pions, standing by his order, his Church, and his religion, with a sober good sense, and an air of refinement, most agrreeable to witness. With less, we believe, of the bon vivant about him than characterized " the pot-wallopping Saddn- cee," he had perhaps less of localizing and individualizing power, less of broad genial sympathy with men and things,- than marked the Jupiter Carlyle of Inveresk. His Memoirs accordingly are less racy, less rich in remark, anecdote, illustration, than the autobiography of his fellow Olympian. On the other hand, Dr. Somerville is an ex- cellent, loveable man ; gentle, tolerant, wise, and good ; seeing life, admiring it in its various forms, mixing with men like Burke, Robert- son, Dugald Stewart, Pitt, Fox, Blair, Erskine, Mackenzie, and Walter Scott, while personally acquainted with the middle and the humbler classes of society. His book too, if less hearty and less vi- vacious than J. Carlyle's, is amusing, agreeable, and graceful. In form and literary finish it isperhaps superior to the Inveresk mi- nister's. There is almost a Queen Ann's air in the style. If not quite Addisonian, it has a touch of the Augustan age of literature in it : a sort of quiet, measured, old-English-gentleman tone in it, that has a great charm for those who, weary of the perpetual sparkle of more recent productions, are satisfied with the calm, steady, dignified, yet easy, prose written by our more immediate forefathers.
Dr. Thomas Somerville, minister of Jedburgh—the author of the Memoirs, which, in fulfilment of his own instructions, are now, at the interval of half a century from their completion, first given to the world—was born on the 26th February (O.S.) 1741. He died on the 16th of May 1830, in the ninetieth year of his age, having lived through the whole of the long and eventful reign of the third George. To the last he delighted in the society of his friends, among whom he included Mr. Lockhart ; to the last he found pleasure in those eloquent companions of our solitude, his books; to the last he kept abreast, says his editor, with the literature of the day; and to the last he took a keen interest in public events and questions, re- taining also an active solicitude for the welfare of every individual member of his flock. Surviving the close of George the Third's reign more than ten years he had lived through strange times, and witnessed important changes. From his personal circle he must have missed many a once bright eye and bounding step that had begun with hint in the morning of life. One fact serves to measure the extent of the inevitable change which this almost fearful longevity induces. He had survived all those of his brethren who were ministers of the Church at the date of his own ordination. He had lived long enough to earn the venerable title of the Father of the Church of Scotland.
The subject of these remarks was, as we learn from his own pages, a descendant from the ancient family of Somerville, of Cambus- nethan, a branch of the Somervilles of Drum, ennobled in the year 1424. About the end of the seventeenth century, and after the alie- nation of the ancestral estate, the head of the Cambusnetban family assumed the title of Corhouse; and, on the death of George Somer- ville, our autobiographer became the only male representative of the Corhouse family. With the great chief of the house, Lord Somervlile, the poet of the " Chase" claimed some remote relationship ; so that the name has been more than once rendered illustrious by those that have borne it : the most distinguished of those who have conferred honour on it being a lady, known to us all as the authoress of the " Con- nection of the Physical Sciences." This lady, whose maiden name was Mary Fairfax, married, after the death of her first husband, Mr. Greig, her cousin, Dr. William Somerville, the eldest son of our author.
Passing rapidly over the first few years of life, the writer of these Memoirs, gives us some account of his school and university career, till his ordination and settlement at Minto, in 1764. At a period prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, Presby- terian Scotland was almost fanatically intolerant. It is recorded by our author, that even well-educated persons considered religious communion with Episcopalians as unwarrantable and dangerous, and condemned the growing liberality of sentiment, in some of the more enlightened clergy, as an heretical innovation. The introduction and diffusion of a more catholic spirit, are greatly attributable, Dr. Somerville tells us, to the conversation and preaching of the celebrated George Whitfield. The eloquence of this singular man mitigated anti-Episcopalian prejudice. In their admiration of his oratory, the zealots of the Kirk forgot that he had received holy orders from the hands of a prelate, and had sub- scribed to the articles of the Church of England. When, how- ever, be was required by the clergy of the Secession to abstain from all intercourse with the ministers of the Established Church, and when he refused to comply with this uncharitable request, his popularity declined, " and the wonderful effects of his preaching, like those which happened at Cambuslang, were attributed to dia- bolical influence. Somerville's eulogium of Whitfield, however, is not altogether unqualified. The solemnity and earnestness of his address were, he tells us, degraded by a habit of punning. Of this habit he gives us a curious instance. Mr. Foote, the comedian, bad recently made a visit to Edinburgh, and Whitfield often in- troduced his name in his public discourses. For example : " How- ever much you may admire Mr. Foote, the devil will one day make a foot-ball of him." Following the episode of Whitfield, we find a sketch of the state of Church parties in Scotland. The grand dis- pute which divided the Kirk, took its rise from the parliamentary act of 1711. It concerned the right of patrons, and the question was whether induction into a living should be determined by presentation or by popular election—election by heritors and elders. The discus- sion of the Schism Overture (rejected by a considerable majority of votes), is said to have given occasion to one of the most learned and interesting debates that had ever occurred in the General Assembly. The remarks which Dr. Somerville makes on the good effects of schism are well worth reading. Paradoxical as they may appear, they are yet, we believe really sound and philosophical. In one passage, especially, we are reminded of the general argument of the essay on " Liberty." It is that in which our author maintains the propitious moral tendency of dissent, and its connexion with liberty of conscience and freedom of inquiry. Among the portraits of the ecclesiastical leaders of this period are included those of Robertson, Campbell, Dick, Erskine, Witherspoon, and Mr. Crosbie, the Counsellor Pleydell of " Guy Mannering."
On the 5th of June, 1770, Dr. Somerville was married to Miss Martha Charters, the daughter of the Solicitor of Customs in Scot- land. His translation to the parish of Jedburgh, not long after, was regarded by himself as an instance of singular good fortune. The situation was healthy and pleasant, the stipend the largest in the Presbytery, and the duties not unusually burdensome. The sermons of the new incumbent were mostly of a practical character ; his policy was one of conciliation, for he made no distinction in social intercourse between the families of the Dissenters and those of his own congregation. In the year 1769, Dr. Somerville made a visit to London. The three months which he spent in the metropolis he de- scribes as the most pleasant and not theleast instructive portion of his life. He was incessantly occupied and incessantly amused, attend- ing the courts in Westminster Hall, obtaining frequent access to both Houses of Parliament, lounging in the fashionable coffee-houses, and passing his evenings, when not engaged at private families, either at the theatre or one of the beerhouses which exhibited diversity of cha- racters, particularly those in lower life. His brief notes on men and manners during this period, are entertaininc,b and instructive. Somer- ville was in London, though not present at the debate, when. Fox, then little more than twenty years of age, made his first speech in defence of the expulsion of Wilkes. One of the expressions used by Mr. Fox on that occasion was "he did not know and never would acknowledge the voice of the people of England without the walls of the House of Commons." When Somerville visited London a second time, in 1779, the conduct of the American War was the principal subject of parliamentary discussion. Our author complains of the extraordinary change of sentiment, on the question of the justice of this war, observable in his contemporaries, and affirms that there does not perhaps occur in the annals of Britain a single instance of a war more popular at its commencement than that with our American colonies. In a third visit to London, 1785, Somerville had the good luck to hear Mr. Pitt open the Budget. The tax on servant-maids was then proposed. It was half-a-crown annually. Anti-ministerial libellers represented the then Chancellor of the Exchequer " as utterly insensible to the attraction of female charms," but "Sir James John- stone, of Westerall, who was fond of a joke, set the House in a roar of laughter by saying that he had heard out-of-doors, with alarm and indignation, of the intended exaction, and came to the House to pro- tect the sex against the ungallant rapacity of the minister, but that he had laid his bands so gently upon them that his wrath was ap- peased." In the summer of the same year Somerville passed some days with Sir Gilbert Ellcott, at Minto. Among Sir Gilbert's guests were Windham, Edmund Burke, and his son. During his visit, Somer- ville heard Burke speak on all sorts of subjects—politics, criticism, and theology, and was "astonished at the richness and brilliancy of his language and the universality of his knowledge." The splendid rhetorician spoke of the divine origin of Christianity, disclosing, however, too exclusive a partiality for episcopal governments and ceremonial; he spoke with admiration of Butler's " Analogy ;" he ex- pressed himself in disparaging and even contemptuous terms of the Americans, anticipating the defection of some of the colonies from the Union. "I believe he mentioned the Southern States." Of Washington he spoke with enthusiasm, and said that his character would be transmitted to the latest ages, among the first of heroes and patriots—a panegyric which Somerville thought inconsiderate
indelicate, ndelicate, Governor Elliot of New York being one of the company. Hailing the commencement of the French Revolution as the dawn of a glorious day of universal liberty and happiness, Dr. Somerville found his eyes opened, and his joy converted into bitterness and sorrow, after the Paris atrocities of August and September. Be- lieving the safety of all surrounding nations, and the very existence of civil society at stake, lie pronounces the war with France justifiable and necessary, and regards the spirited measures or Mr. Pitt as the means of deliverance from dangers the most gigantic and formidable. Dr. Somerville, anxious to counteract the diffusive contamination of anarchial principles, was indefatigable in his disinfectant operations. While personal expostulation, in his parish, however, was attended with no success, two pamphets on the French Revolution, published in 1793, were well received. The first of these even obtained the approbation of Dr. Robertson; whose death before the publication of the second, precluded any expression of its merits. The year pre- ceding that sad event, this celebrated historian, interested in Somer- ville's new literary project, advised him not to confine himself to political matters in his history of Queen Anne. This work, as well as that on thepolitical transactions in the reign of William the Third, are said, by the editor of the "Memoirs," to be distinguished by their fairness and impartiality.
The personal portraiture of the Life and Times of Dr. Somerville, if not always very vivid, is certainly very various. Statesmen, poets, divines, historians, celebrities, good and bad, all pass before us at this literary mirror. Dr. Dodd, Peter Pindar, Wesley, who had seen so many "possession of the devil," Fox, with his ever-moving fingers, catching the drops that fell from the wax candles, and turning and forming them into little pellets, Pulteney, Dundas, Siddons, Garrick, and many more, once famous in their day, receive some commemora- tion in this autobiographical chronicle. Not the least valuable por- tion of the work is that which contains a retrospect of the state of society in Scotland, and the condition of the country in the early period of the author's life. A constituent part of the Memoirs—as completed in 1814,—the editor believes it to have received some additions in 1827 or 1828, in one of which years it formed the has of a paper read by Dr. Somerville before the Royal Society of Edin- burgh. The Retrospect, as we now have it, forms a very agreeable series of illustrations, from which we derive a tolerably clear notion of the social condition of Scotland above a hundred years ago. The subjects of these bird's-eye views of life, are very numerous. Dress, diet, furniture, servants, amusements, schools, manufactures, post- offices, public-roads, stage-coaches, all receive appropriate notice. The state of agriculture, the value of land, religious observances, the administration of public affairs, social habits, sanitary improvements, charitable associations and literature, are also briefly reviewed, with occasional comments, on the contrast presented by the world of to- day and the world of a hundred years since, generally, if not invariably, to the advantage of the latter. In toleration, in temperance, in refinement, in knowledge, in all external ameliorations, the ago in which we now live is entitled, if we are to believe Dr. Somerville, to adopt the Homeric boast, and proclaim itself better than its prede- cessor. In our author's youth, inoculation was still unpractised, and small-pox slew its thousands, both in childhood and advanced life ; the fever rose, a poisonous exhalation, from marshy ground; the free use of water was unknown, and pure air was an absolute luxury. In or about that primitive period there were no banks in any of the country towns, and not later than the year 1720, the father of John, Duke of Roxburghe, used to receive 1001. monthly by the waggon from Scotland, for the expenditure of his family while he resided in London. Before the year 1750 there were, perhaps, not more than two turnpike roads in all Scotland ; the pariah ways were unfit for wheel carriages, and in bad weather altogether impracticable. Few rivers then were spanned with bridges, and travellers often perished in attempting to ford them in flood-time. In 1756 there were no stage-coaches except on the post-road between Edinburgh and Ber- wick. That which ran from the Scotch to the English metropolis, dragged its slow length along, once a month, and took ten days in the accomplishment of its task. In those days "religions bigotry was a bar to social intercourse, and circumscribed the charities of life. The ghost still haunted the house or lurked in the wood ; every misfortune was ascribed to diabolical agency, and the supposed instruments of this Satanic influence were at once objects of popular terror and popular execration. So late as 1775 or 1776, the witch was still scored above the eyebrows, till the blood came, to avert the baneful effects of her incantations ; and the summary vengeance often in- flicted on the unhappy victims of a degrading superstition, was unopposed and unpunished by the representatives of the law."
In estimating this bygone period, however, we must not forget that there was good as well as evil in it, as in appraising the general improvement we must not omit to register the accompanying losses. Of these losses the chief would seem to be, "The obliteration of the old landmarks which formally indivi- dualized the different members of the community," inducing a cer- tain monotonous assimilation of character. To this loss of origi- nality we must add that also of the old ease, frankness, gladness of heart, family attachment, and loyalty, with their natural concomitant —a knowledge of family history, which distinguished the Scotch men and women of the past century. These good old things have dis- appeared, or declined, with other old things not so good—the old in- tolerance, the old superstition, the old intemperance and rivalry in drinking. Potations then were fast, frequent, and furious; though the revellers were ill provided with one of the principal appliances. "I have seen," says Dr. Somerville, " a single glass go round a large company." We have more glasses now, and fewer drinkers. Is the exchange so bad ? Surely not. We may, indeed, regret the loss of much that was cheery, manly, racy, and original in those old days, but we shall hardly wish them back again. To do that, at any rate, we must first adopt the opinion of our good doctor's border toper, who, lamenting over the degeneracy of the rising generation, de- clared that, "it was a better world when there were more bottles and fewer glasses."
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