to
be translated into English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been
prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He
might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and
it would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of
Manuscript author--he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key
to. The construction of his sentences is a curious framework with pegs
and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance,
but almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous
philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses,
formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what
makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of
acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you
could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single
sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he
omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to
the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This
is over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the
nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has _acquired_
this disability--it is not natural to him. His admirable little work _On
Usury_, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr.
Bentham has shut himself up since then "in nook monastic," conversing
only with followers of his own, or with "men of Ind," and has
endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style
with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he
thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever
may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault
with the purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style.

Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character.
He is a little romantic, or so; and has dissipated part of a handsome
fortune in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible
projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises
or their conclusions, thinks himself bound _in reason_ to stake his
money on the venture. Strict logicians are licensed visionaries. Mr.
Bentham is half-brother to the late Mr. Speaker Abbott[A]--_Proh pudor_!
He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about
a passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil