give up our internal, and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a
sound without substance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay
more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that
others believe and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in
the secret of the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at
work, the nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or
power to get the management of it, he shall keep possession of the
public ear by virtue of a cant-phrase or nickname; and, by dint of
effrontery and perseverance, make all the world believe and repeat
what all the world know to be false. The ear is quicker than the
judgment. We know that certain things are said; by that circumstance
alone we know that they produce a certain effect on the imagination of
others, and we conform to their prejudices by mechanical sympathy, and
for want of sufficient spirit to differ with them. So far then is
public opinion from resting on a broad and solid basis, as the
aggregate of thought and feeling in a community, that it is slight and
shallow and variable to the last degree--the bubble of the moment--so
that we may safely say the public is the dupe of public opinion, not
its parent. The public is pusillanimous and cowardly, because it is
weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions
but upon suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading-strings,
and would have it thought that its decisions are as wise as they are
weighty. It is hasty in taking up its favourites, more hasty in laying
them aside, lest it should be supposed deficient in sagacity in either
case. It is generally divided into two strong parties, each of which
will allow neither common sense nor common honesty to the other side.
It reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and believes them
both--or if there is a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and
Hessey told me that they had sold nearly two editions of the
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays in about three months, but that
after the Quarterly Review of them came out, they never sold another
copy. The public, enlightened as they are, must have known the meaning
of that attack as well as those who made it. It was not ignorance then
but cowardice that led them to give up their own opinion. A crew of
mischievous critics at Edinburgh having fixed the epithet of the
_Cockney School_ to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the
p