BULWEK AND HIS BOOK. 381 



and impudence/ that could ever have converted him into one ; he 

 has done his best, and we forgive him. 



. Mr. Bulwer thinks that practical men are the last men in the world 

 whose opinion ought to be taken respecting matters upon which they 

 are practical men, and he illustrates his position thus ; 



" If you want a reform on the stage, you would be told that the best per- 

 formers are the most practical men, they have all an interest in the monopoly 

 they enjoy; poor Kean, accordingly said before the Committee of the House 

 of Commons that he heard the voice, and saw the play of countenance, as 

 well at the back of the centre boxes at Covent Garden, as in the side boxes of 

 the Haymarket. Mr. Kean's answer is the type of most answers, on what- 

 soever point, that you extort from practical men in opposition to thinking 

 men ! they reason according to their interests ; practical men are preju- 

 diced men ; usually knowing the details of their own business well, they are 

 astonished at the presumption of men who think to improve the principle. 



Now, we think, it requires neither a very practical nor a very 

 thinking man to descry the surpassing absurdity of this. Kean's evi- 

 dence was not that of a practical, but of an interested man ; he did 

 not reason according to his interest, he spoke in behalf of it ; it was 

 not an opinion it was a falsehood. Mr. Dowton, a practical man, 

 also, gave directly contrary testimony. 



Mr. Bulwer is seized with a desire to exterminate popular fallacies 

 Bentham had succeeded in destroying a few if Bentham, why not 

 Bulwer ? He discourses of them thus he opines that he has caught 

 one, and he proceeds to slay it after this fashion : 



" When the world has once got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it 

 is to get it out of the world. You may beat it about the head till it seems to 

 have given up the ghost ; and lo, the next day day it is as healthy as ever. 

 The best example of the vitality of a fine saying, which has the advantage of 

 being a fallacy, is in the over-hacknied piece of nonsense attributed to Archi- 

 medes ; viz. " that he could move the earth, if he had any place at a distance 

 from 1 it, to fix a prop for his lever." Your Excellency knows that it is one of 

 the standard allusions, one of the necessary stock in trade for all authors, 

 poets and newspaper writers ; and persons whenever they meet with it, take 

 Archimedes for an extraordinary great man, and cry, " Lord, how wonder- 

 ful !" Now z/Archimedes had found his place, his prop and his lever, and if 

 he could have moved with the swiftness of a cannon-ball, 380 miles every 

 hour, it would have taken him just 44. 963, 540,000,000 years to have raised 

 the earth one inch ! And yet people will go on quoting absurdity as gospel; 

 wondering at the wisdom of Archimedes; and accounting for the unparalleled 

 suicidalism of the English, till we grow tired of contradiction ; for, when ycu 

 cannot convince the Squire Thornhills of the world, you must incur the mor- 

 tification of Moses, and be contented to let them out-talk you." 



Not satisfied with this triumph, he breaks out in a note thus : 

 " Critics have said, ' what a fine idea of Archimdes ! ' but how much 

 finer the fact that refutes it ?" 



We cannot seriously imagine that there are many men in this 

 country, save Mr. Bulvver, who would have committed a logical 

 absurdity like this. Archimedes exemplifies the power of the lever 

 by a strong figure ' ' Give me my lever and a prop, and I will move 

 the earth j" Mr. Bulwer proves that he could do it, very slowly in- 

 deed, and thinks that he has refuted the fact, and exposed the fal- 

 lacy. This comes of walking upon stilts ! 



