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 30. Policy Analysis
31. Logic Models
Part VI. General Issues
32. Ethical Issues in Social Work Research
33. Gender, Ethnicity, and Racial Issues
34. International Research
35. Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
36. Applying for Research Grants
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Editor

8
Preface to the First Edition

Bruce A. Thyer

Welcome to this new Handbook of Social Work Research Methods, a volume specifically written by social workers
for a social work audience interested in learning more about research related to social work practice. Every
chapter has been authored by one or more social workers, most of whom are senior academics with extensive
histories in the worlds of both practice and research. This social work focus is important, given the applied
nature of most of the work and research that we undertake as a separate discipline. Some other social work
research books are simply texts originally written by sociologists for sociology students and then given a
facelift for a social work audience. Others are generalist research texts written by one or more social workers
but that lack the depth possible in an edited handbook such as the present volume, wherein it is possible to
recruit a leading scholar or scholars to write each individual chapter. No one social work researcher (not even
several social work researchers) can legitimately claim extensive expertise in all areas of social work research,
whereas an edited handbook can overcome this all-too-human limitation.

This handbook is organized in a relatively straightforward manner. After an introductory chapter by the
editor, placing the importance of scientific research into its historic and contemporary context, the remainder
of the volume is divided into four major parts. Part I is devoted to quantitative approaches, the type of inquiry
that most readers think of when the word research comes to mind. Introductory chapters present an overview
of these methods of study and introduce topics that are central to most scientific studies-probability theory
and sampling, determining the reliability and validity of measurement methods, how to find suitable
instruments for use in research, and an overview of some statistical methods that are most useful in
quantitative investigations. These introductory chapters are followed by individual chapters authored by expert
researchers presenting information about the various types of quantitative studies, descriptive studies, surveys,
needs assessments, single-systems designs, randomized controlled trials, program evaluations, and cost →
procedure → process → outcome → analysis.

Part II deals with qualitative approaches to scientific research in contrast to quantitative studies, in which
many data are presented in the form of numbers; in qualitative inquiry, data and evidence are justified using
words alone and often lack the numerical focus of quantitative methods. As noted, qualitative studies always
have been an important part of mainstream science, from the beginnings of social work to the present. In fact,
there currently is a resurgence of interest in qualitative methods as applied to social work research. Both
quantitative and qualitative methods share an interest in obtaining reliable and valid information, and the first
chapter in this part is followed by a chapter dealing with a description of the qualitative approach to justifying
research evidence. These two introductory chapters are followed by five chapters that present specific methods
of qualitative research: narrative case studies, in-depth interviews, ethnographic research methods, participant
observations, and grounded theory. Each of these is an important tool that social work researchers may use for
specific purposes. Each has its strengths and limitations, as outlined by some of the foremost qualitative
researchers to be found within contemporary social work.

9
Part III presents four chapters on different forms of conceptual research, approaches to inquiry that might not
fit into either the quantitative or qualitative category—studies on theory development, historical research,
literature reviews, and critical analyses. Depending on its slant, an individual study using these methods may
be more closely aligned with either quantitative or qualitative research methods. For example, a historical
study may be very quantitative in nature (e.g., Almgren, Kemp, & Eisinger, 2000), aimed at presenting
historical “facts” as accurately as possible, perhaps using archival statistical data, or it may be more oriented to
an examination of the perceptions of people who experienced a particular historic event and have diaries,
newspaper articles, and journal editorials as its primary data sources (e.g., Knupfer, 1999). Similarly, reviews
of the literature may involve a focus on aggregating statistical findings across studies (e.g., Gorey, Thyer, &
Pawluck, 1998) or may present a narrative summary of the authors’ impressions of an array of research studies
(e.g., Stubbs & Bozarth, 1994). Each approach has its merits and limitations. The type of research labeled
theory development may be purely conceptual in nature or may involve a presentation of empirical research
studies supportive or disconfirming of a particular theoretical model.

Part IV presents chapters that deal with more general issues—ethical factors in social work research; the
significance of gender, ethnicity, and race variables; comparative international research; the value of
integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches to research; applying for research grants; and disseminating
research findings. Each of these is important to the research process. Increasingly, social work research is
being funded through competitively awarded, externally funded grants. The most sophisticated researcher in
the world who cannot obtain needed funding to undertake important studies will be seriously disadvantaged.
Social work must be grounded in a thorough knowledge of ethical principles and governed accordingly.
During recent years, the research programs of entire universities have been temporarily halted by the federal
government, pending the correction of internal review mechanisms established for the protection of human
subjects. Pity the poor academic social work researcher whose eagerness to collect data prior to obtaining
approval from his or her university's human subjects institutional review board results in a shutdown of all
university-conducted research by the federal government. Obviously, research findings must be disseminated
to the social work community and to others for such findings to be of value to society. The unpublished
research study might as well not have been conducted. Although dissemination is usually construed to mean
“published in a peer-reviewed, hard-copy journal,” other useful vehicles in which to share research information
include conference presentations, electronic journals, articles in popular media, and teaching. Too often, our
research programs teach social workers how to design and conduct research but fail to teach the intricacies of
how to get published. Fortunately, there are some excellent resources available with which to remedy this
deficit (e.g., B. A. Thyer, 1994).

Together, these four parts provide the reader with a comprehensive overview to major research methods used
in contemporary social work. This handbook joins related volumes published by SAGE Publications,
including The Handbook of Social Work Direct Practice (edited by Allen-Meares & Garvin, 2000), The Handbook
of Social Policy (edited by Midgley, Tracy, & Livermore, 2000), and The Handbook of Social Welfare
Management (edited by Patti, 2000). This comprehensive series promises to be an exceedingly valuable, if not
definitive, compilation of scholarly resources for social work students, academics, and practitioners alike.

10
Keep in mind the applied nature of social work research. Our field is not primarily interested in the
development of theoretical knowledge for knowledge's sake alone; we can leave that to the academic
disciplines. As noted by R. Thyer (1759), “The end of all knowledge is to understand what is fit to be done,
for to know what has been, and what is, and what may be, does but tend to that” (pp. 487–488). As a
practicing profession, our mandate is to provide credible evidence regarding what can be done to help solve
societal and interpersonal problems. To the extent that we adhere to this task, we are carrying out the mission
given to us by society at large and expected of us by our clients.

—Bruce A. Thyer

(2000)

11
References
Allen-Meares P., & Garvin C. (Eds.). (2000). The handbook of social work direct practice. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.

Almgren G., Kemp S. P., & Eisinger A. (2000). The legacy of Hull House and the Children's Bureau in the
American mortality transition. Social Service Review, 74, 1–27.

Gorey K. M., Thyer B. A., & Pawluck D. E. (1998). Differential effectiveness of prevalent social work
practice models: A meta-analysis. Social Work, 43, 269–278.

Knupfer A. M. (1999). Professionalizing probation work in Chicago, 1900–1935. Social Service Review, 73,
478–495.

Midgley J., Tracy M. B., & Livermore M. (Eds.). (2000). The handbook of social policy. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.

Patti R. (Ed.). (2000). The handbook of social welfare management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Stubbs J. P., & Bozarth J. D. (1994). The dodo bird revisited: A qualitative study of psychotherapy efficacy
research. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 3, 109–120.

Thyer B. A. (1994). Successful publishing in scholarly journals. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Thyer R. (Ed.). (1759). Genuine remains in verse and prose of Mr. Samuel Butler. London: J. & R. Tonson.

12
Preface to the Second Edition

Bruce A. Thyer

It has been almost 10 years since the first edition of this Handbook of Social Work Research Methods came out in
2001, and much has transpired within the world of social work research to justify undertaking a major
revision. The handbook's basic structure remains the same—an introduction, a series of chapters dealing with
quantitative research methods, a series of chapters dealing with qualitative approaches to social work research,
and a concluding section dealing with cross-cutting topics, such as research ethics, mixed methods, theoretical
research, and so forth. A number of chapters are completely new, reflecting emerging but important topics
having an impact on social work research, topics such as meta-analysis; systematic reviews; the use of quasi-
experimental designs to evaluate practice, naturalistic studies, oral histories, and participatory action research;
logic models; and historical research.

Other significant developments related to social work research include the expansion of the Society for Social
Work and Research. The organization now serves as an international vehicle for promoting high-quality
scholarship through its conferences, awards, and journals program. Readers unacquainted with this
membership organization should consider joining (www.ssw.org). The Campbell Collaboration (C2) has
emerged as a leading international voice in promoting evidence-based practice through the production of
systematic reviews in the areas of social welfare, criminal justice, and education. More than 50 completed
systematic reviews can now be found on the organization's Web site (www.campbellcollaboration.org), each of
which is a gold mine of up-to-date information on the evidentiary status of psychosocial interventions or
assessment methods. The C2 now has a formal social welfare steering group and editorial board, and the
annual C2 conference is a world-class event. Readers are also encouraged to review the Campbell
Collaboration Web site and to consider ways to get involved—help prepare a systematic review, attend the
annual conference, volunteer for an editorial or leadership role, and so on.

Other developments include a social work Topical Interest Group focused on social work being formed as an
element of the American Evaluation Association, and this thriving organization serves as another positive
nexus for social work research (see http://www.eval.org). Also, the Institute for the Advancement of Social
Work Research (http://www.iaswresearch.org) continues its mission of distributing an e-mailed weekly
newsletter, providing research training, providing information to policy makers, and promoting evidence-
based practice. And in a long-overdue initiative, even the venerable National Association of Social Workers
has established a research section on its Web site (http://www.socialworkers.org/research/default.asp), and it
is taking some tentative steps in embracing evidence-based practice.

The journal I edit, Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP), has entered its 20th year as a SAGE journal. Its
most recent impact factor placed it as the third most cited true social work journal, and it now has more than
5,800 individual and institutional subscribers, making it, to my knowledge, the second most subscribed-to
social work journal in the world. It has more than 150,000 downloads of full articles in PDF format from the
journal's Web site annually, which is another measure of its role in disseminating research knowledge. Most

13
readers will be able to gain free hardcopy or electronic access to the journal via their local university library. If
this is not available, you can obtain a free subscription through joining the Society for Social Work and
Research, which continues to support the journal as a benefit for its members. The journal now has an
electronic submission portal for authors to submit their manuscripts through, shortening the time needed to
undertake blind peer review, and it now offers a publish-ahead-of-print feature, in that as soon as page proofs
have been corrected by an author, the article is posted on the journal's Web site with a citable DOI. This
means that scholars can access and cite an author's work months prior to the appearance of the in-print
publication. This gives RSWP all the benefits of a solely electronic journal while retaining the advantages of an
established print journal, such as being picked up by the major citation and abstracting services (e.g.,
PsycINFO, Web of Science), features most electronic journals lack (see
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal200896&currTree=Subjects&level1=M00&).

As with all edited books, the lion's share of the intellectual credit for the work is due to the authors of the
individual chapters that comprise it. I am very grateful to each of them for lending their expertise in preparing
a new or revised chapter reflecting contemporary developments in the topic they have addressed. Since no one
scholar, no matter how adept, can be expected to be completely current in all possible research methods, I
believe that an edited volume such as this one, drawing upon the strengths of many social workers, provides
the reader with more accurate and in-depth information than a work authored by only one or two people. As
before, the editing and production staff of SAGE have displayed a consistent commitment to producing a
high-quality work of value to the profession, and I gratefully acknowledge my debt to them in this regard,
particularly to Kassie Graves. This handbook is a much better product because of their diligent efforts.

—Bruce A. Thyer

(2009)

14
Acknowledgments

The Editor of this volume gratefully acknowledges the help and support provided over a number of years by
Kassie Graves, with SAGE Publications. SAGE Publications would like to thank the following reviewers of
this edition:

Kevin L. DeWeaver
University of Georgia
Maria Dinis
California State University, Sacramento
Michael J. Holosko
University of Georgia
Andrew Scharlach
University of California, Berkeley
Bassima Schbley
Washburn University
Cathryne L. Schmitz
Radford University
Julie Schroeder
Fayetteville State University
Michael Wolf-Branigin
George Mason University

15
Chapter 1 Introductory Principles of Social Work Research

Bruce A. Thyer

The scientific approach to unsolved problems is the only one which contains any hope of learning to deal with the unknown.

—Bertha Capen Reynolds (1942, p. 20)

An emphasis on the value of scientific research has always characterized professional social work education
and practice. Indeed, this emphasis is one of the hallmarks that distinguishes genuinely “professional” services
from other forms of private/public philanthropy and charity and the provision of social care motivated by
religious, familial, altruistic, or philosophical reasons. In the history of social work in North America and
Great Britain, as well as in other European nations, the system of poor laws and other relatively unsystematic
attempts to care for the destitute gave rise during the latter part of the 19th century to an orientation labeled
scientific philanthropy. Coincident with the emergence of “friendly visiting,” settlement houses, formalized
academic training, and other precursors to the professionalization of social work, the development of
charitable services guided by a scientific orientation has evolved to the present day.

Social work historian John Graham provides a good case study on a Toronto charity home for women called
The Haven, established in 1878 by religious elites, that gradually made the transition to a more secularly
oriented and professional service. Graham (1992) describes the completion of this transition in 1927 as
follows:

Professional social work, therefore, had been firmly installed at The Haven, and the last vestiges of the
benevolent philanthropy of the nineteenth century were abandoned. A growing sense of professional
identity moreover demanded a strict delineation between the social worker and the social agency
volunteer. Differentiating the former from the latter was a scientific knowledge base and specialized skills
which were the social worker's alone. (p. 304, italics added)

Such a transition can be said to characterize the majority of social work programs across North America by
the early part of the 20th century. Currently, one widely used definition of social work can be found in The
Social Work Dictionary published by the National Association of Social Workers—“the applied science of
helping people achieve an effective level of psychosocial function and effecting societal changes to enhance the
well-being of all people” (Barker, 2003, p. 408, italics added). Many states further define the practice of
clinical social work, and Florida's definition provides a representative example of the inter-connectedness of
social work and science: “The ‘practice of clinical social work’ is defined as the use of scientific and applied
knowledge, theories and methods for the purposes of describing, preventing, evaluating, and treating,
individual, couple, family or group behavior” (Florida Department of Health, 2008, italics added). These
definitions illustrate the close linkage between the practice of social work and the world of scientific inquiry.

Where do we social workers come from organizationally? We have many roots, but a central one was the

16
establishment in 1865 of the American Social Science Association (ASSA), a generalist organization
influenced by French sociologist Auguste Comte's then novel philosophy of science labeled positivism, which
called for the objective study of human society and behavior using the same tools of scientific inquiry that
were proving so successful in the biological and physical sciences. From the ASSA sprouted numerous
offshoots, some of which thrive to this day, although the parent group crumbled in 1909. From the ASSA, in
1879, emerged the Conference of Charities, which in 1884 evolved into the National Conference of Charities
and Correction (NCCC), described as “a forum for the communication of the ideas and values connected with
scientific charity” (Germain, 1970, p. 9). In turn, the NCCC was renamed the National Conference on Social
Work in 1917. This label lasted until 1957, when it was altered to the National Conference on Social
Welfare, which gradually expired during the 1980s.

More recently, in 1994, a small group of social workers led by Janet B. W. Williams established a new
scientifically oriented social work membership organization known as the Society for Social Work and
Research (SSWR). All social workers with an interest in scientific research in social work are eligible to join.
The SSWR quickly grew from 271 members in 1995 to more than 1,300 in 2009, and the organization has an
active newsletter and program of annual international conferences. The first professional SSWR conference
was held in 1995 in Washington, D.C., and has been followed annually since that time with very successful
and high-quality conferences (see www.sswr.org). The SSWR conferences offer a host of competitively
reviewed symposia, papers, and posters; plenary addresses by prominent social work researchers; and an
awards program that recognizes outstanding examples of recently published social work research. Because of
its superb organization and the top quality of its presentations, the SSWR conference has rapidly become the
preferred venue for social work researchers to present their research findings. Moreover, it has become the
conference of choice for schools of social work to seek interviews with potential new faculty and for potential
new faculty to seek academic positions. In 1999, the SSWR began providing its members a subscription to the
bimonthly peer-reviewed journal Research on Social Work Practice, an independent periodical established in
1991. This growth of the SSWR augurs well for the continuing voice of science within mainstream social
work.

A related but independent development was the establishment of the Institute for the Advancement of Social
Work Research (IASWR) in 1993. The mission of the IASWR is to create infrastructure for social work
research, to lead advocacy efforts to fund social work research, to help stakeholders view social work research
as valuable, to provide training and professional development programs for social work researchers, to
persuade social workers to undertake careers in research, to provide a free Web-based research-focused
newsletter, and to promote disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaboration. Five national professional
social work organizations contributed to the development of the IASWR and are represented on its governing
board. Its original purpose of advocating for the establishment of a federally funded National Center for
Social Work Research failed in the face of fiscal austerity, but the IASWR has expanded its remit as described
above (see http://www.iaswresearch.org/).

Another organizational resource for social work research is the Social Work Topical Interest Group (TIG)
found within the American Evaluation Association (AEA). The AEA has about 5,000 members, and several

17
hundred of these comprise the social work TIG. The AEA holds an annual conference as well as regional
ones, has an active journals program, and provides training and consultation services, and its Web site has a
wealth of useful resources (e.g., locating measurement instruments, how to locate an evaluator; see
http://www.eval.org/aboutus/organization/aboutus.asp).

The National Association of Social Workers is the largest professional social work group in the world, with
about 150,000 members. Almost all are M.S.W. and B.S.W.-level trained professionals, and the organization
primarily serves the needs of its practitioner member base, not those of social work researchers. The NASW
does not host an annual conference but does have one research journal, Social Work Research. A new initiative
is a social work research Web page (see www.socialworkers.org/research/), cosponsored with the IASWR,
which is itself ostensibly independent but is actually housed within the NASW offices in Washington, D.C.

Social work researchers also find welcoming organizational support from various disciplinary (e.g., American
Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, Association for Behavior Analysis) and
interdisciplinary (e.g., American Public Health Association, Association for Advancement of Behavioral and
Cognitive Therapies, American Orthopsychiatric Association, the Gerontological Society of America) groups.
These groups typically have thriving annual conferences, a well-established journals program, and training
opportunities social workers can take advantage of. Thus, both budding and experienced social workers have
ample opportunities to network with research-oriented colleagues both within and outside of the discipline.

18
Scientific Perspectives on Practice
The role of scientific research in social welfare can be seen through many early writings, including an article
titled “Scientific Charity,” presented at the 1889 meeting of the NCCC (cited in Germain, 1970, p. 8), and
one titled “A Scientific Basis for Charity” (Wayland, 1894), which appeared in the influential journal The
Charities Review. Such perspectives culminated in the publication of Richmond's (1917) Social Diagnosis, an
influential text that wholeheartedly extolled the virtues of positivist science. Indeed, in 1921, Richmond
received an honorary M.A. degree from Smith College for “establishing the scientific basis of a new
profession” (cited in Germain, 1970, p. 12).

The possible examples of conference talks, journal articles, chapters, and books illustrating the central reliance
on scientific research as a guiding force within early social work are too numerous to mention further here.
Germain (1970) remains one of the very best reviews of this “ancient” history of our profession. More recent is
the history of the Social Work Research Group (SWRG), a short-lived professional membership organization
established in 1949 that became one of the original seven constituents of the National Association of Social
Workers (NASW) in 1955, transmogrifying itself into the NASW's Research Section. In 1963, this became
the NASW's Council on Social Work Research, where it gradually faded from view by the mid-1960s as the
NASW allowed the research mission established in its bylaws to largely lapse. Graham, Al-Krenawi, and
Bradshaw (2000) have prepared an excellent historical study of the rise and demise of the SWRG.

Coincident with these organizational and policy developments related to the integration of science and social
work during the past quarter century have been three related perspectives on practice. The first is known as
empirical clinical practice (ECP), the second is called empirically supported treatments (ESTs), and the third is
labeled evidence-based practice (EBP). These are reviewed briefly in turn.

19
Empirical Clinical Practice
Empirical clinical practice was the name of a book authored by social workers Siri Jayaratne and Rona Levy
(1979), who describe the characteristics of the ECP model they espouse: “Empirical practice is conducted by
clinicians who strive to measure and demonstrate the effect of their clinical practice by adapting traditional
experimental research techniques to clinical practice” (p. xiii). The authors focus on teaching social workers
the use of relatively simple research methods called single-system research designs to empirically evaluate the
outcomes of their work. They believe that “clinical practice that can empirically demonstrate its effect provides
the basis for the best service to the client” (p. xiv). They contended that ECP can be adopted by practitioners
using virtually any theoretical model of practice so long as it is possible to measure changes in the client, relate
these changes (provisionally) to social work intervention, and then base future services on these observations.
The authors advocate that social workers should rely on previous research to help guide their choices of
interventions that they offer clients. In their words, “The clinician would first be interested in using an
intervention strategy that has been successful in the past…. When established techniques are available, they
should be used, but they should be based on objective evaluation rather than subjective feeling” (p. 7). ECP
involves the careful and repeated measure of client functioning, using reliable and valid measures repeated over
time, combined with selected treatments based on the best available scientific evidence. Their entire book is
devoted to describing how to do these activities. A similar social work text by Wodarski (1981), titled The Role
of Research in Clinical Practice, advocated for much the same thing—a preference to make use of psychosocial
treatments that scientific research had really demonstrated to be of benefit to clients, measuring client
functioning in reliable and valid ways, and empirically evaluating outcomes with individual clients and larger
groups.

The banner of ECP was picked up by a number of subsequent social workers, and a rather large (and not
uncontroversial) literature has grown around these notions (e.g., Corcoran, 1985; Ivanoff, Blythe, & Briar,
1987; Ivanoff, Robinson, & Blythe, 1987; G. MacDonald, 1994; Thyer, 1996). The influence of ECP has not
been inconsiderable. For example, in 1982, just 3 years following the publication of Empirical Clinical Practice
(Jayaratne & Levy, 1979), the curriculum policy statement of the Council on Social Work Education
(CSWE, 1982) included a new mandate that research courses must now teach “designs for the systematic
evaluation of the student's own practice … [and should] prepare them systematically to evaluate their own
practice and contribute to the generation of knowledge for practice” (pp. 10–11). Similar standards still can be
found in the current CSWE guidelines. Insisting that individual practitioners conduct systematic outcome
evaluations of their own services was a remarkable professional standard, one that has not yet been emulated
by educational and practice guidelines within clinical psychology or psychiatry in the present day. Reid (1994)
provides a nice overview of the rise, influence, and dissemination of the ECP movement.

20
Empirically Supported Treatments
Subsequent to the ECP movement within social work, a related initiative developed within clinical psychology
called empirically validated treatments. During the mid-1990s, the president of Section III (Society for a
Science of Clinical Psychology) of Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological
Association convened a Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, a group
charged with two functions: (a) develop a scientifically defensible set of criteria that can be used to determine
whether a given psychological technique can be called empirically validated and (b) conduct comprehensive
reviews of the research literature, apply these criteria, and come up with, in effect, lists of psychological
procedures that fulfill these criteria and, therefore, can be considered, in a scientific sense, empirically
validated.

The evidentiary standards ultimately decided on by the task force were actually rather modest, consisting of
the following criteria:

1. At least two good between-group design experiments demonstrating efficacy in one or more of the
following ways:
1. Superior to pill or psychological placebo or to another treatment
2. Equivalent to an already established treatment in experiments with adequate statistical power
2. A large series of single-case design experiments (N > 9) demonstrating efficacy that must have done the
following:
1. Used good experimental designs
2. Compared the intervention to another treatment (as in I.A.)

Among the further criteria are that the psychological techniques must be based on well-proceduralized
treatment manuals, that the characteristics of the client samples are clearly defined, and that the positive
effects must have been demonstrated by at least two different investigators or investigatory teams. A
psychological treatment meeting the preceding criteria could be said to be well established. A somewhat less
stringent set of criteria could be followed to potentially label a treatment as probably efficacious (Chambless et
al., 1996).

With the criteria in place, the task force busily got to work in seeing which psychological treatments could be
labeled empirically validated and probably efficacious, and reports soon began appearing indicating empirically
validated interventions for a wide array of psychosocial disorders such as depression, panic disorder, pain, and
schizophrenia. As with the ECP movement within social work, the task force within psychology did not
escape controversy. For one thing, the task force recognized that labeling a treatment as empirically validated
seemed to close the discussion off, implying perhaps a stronger level of research evidence than was justified.
Subsequent reports of the task force used the more tempered language of empirically supported treatments
(ESTs). Entire issues of leading professional journals (i.e., a 1996 issue of Clinical Psychology: Science and
Practice, a 1998 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, a 1998 issue of Psychotherapy Research)
were devoted to the topic, as were considerable independent literatures (e.g., Sanderson & Woody, 1995).

21
The influence of the EST movement also has been strong, and the work of the Division 12 task force was
commented on extremely favorably in Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (Hatcher, 2000). The
volume titled A Guide to Treatments That Work (Nathan & Gorman, 2007), now in its third edition, is an
exemplary resource for social workers seeking relatively current information about empirically supported
treatments for a wide variety of mental health problems. Division 12, Section III (The Society for a Science of
Clinical Psychology) continues its work in defining the criteria and language used to describe empirically
supported treatments and maintains a Web site providing current information on this influential initiative (see
http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/eklonsky-/division12/index.html).

22
Evidence-Based Practice
Coincident with the EST initiatives in clinical psychology have been related activities in medicine labeled
evidence-based practice, defined as “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the current best evidence in
making decisions about the care of individual patients” (Sackett, Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 1997, p.
2). On its face, EBP would not seem to be a radical notion, and indeed, most readers would assume that such
a standard already was in place in most of the health professions. Sadly, to a great extent, this is not the case,
although a small but influential group of health care providers is attempting to make it so. EBP and EST
actually are much more sophisticated variants of the earlier ECP model of social work, but the spirit and
intent of all three movements—ECP (developed within social work), EST (developed within psychology),
and EBP (developed within medicine)—are the same. EBP is gradually supplanting the ECP and EST
initiatives within social work and psychology. The current president of the Society for the Science of Clinical
Psychology (a section of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association) published an editorial titled
“Evidence-Based Psychotherapy: A Graduate Course Proposal” (Persons, 1999), and some social workers
have begun using the EBP language, most notably Gambrill (1999) with her thoughtful article titled
“Evidence-Based Practice: An Alternative to Authority-Based Practice,” which introduced EBP to the social
work literature. The past decade has seen the publication of enough social work books on the EBP topic to fill
a bookshelf. The melding of these disciplinary perspectives into an interdisciplinary human services movement
generically called evidence-based practice seems likely. Consider Persons's (1999) description of EBP:

The evidence-based practitioner:

Provides informed consent for treatment

Relies on the efficacy data (especially from RCTs [randomized clinical trials]) when recommending and
selecting and carrying out treatments
Uses the empirical literature to guide decision-making
Uses a systematic, hypothesis-testing approach to the treatment of each case:
○ Begins with careful assessment
○ Sets clear and measurable goals
○ Develops and individualized formulation and a treatment plan based on the formulation
○ Monitors progress toward the goals frequently and modifies or ends treatment as needed (p. 2)

Well, perhaps Jayaratne and Levy (1979) were simply two decades ahead of their time. An issue of the NASW
News contained an article on the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health and noted, “A challenge in the
near term is to speed transfer of new evidence-based treatments and prevention interventions into diverse service
delivery settings and systems” (O'Neill, 2000, p. 6, italics added). The Surgeon General's report itself states
clearly,

Responding to the calls of managed mental health and behavioral health care systems for evidence-based
interventions will have a much needed and discernable impact on practice…. It is essential to expand the

23
 supply of effective, evidence-based services throughout the nation. (Hatcher, 2000, chap. 8, p. 453)

EBP requires knowing what helps social work clients and what does not help them. It requires being able to
distinguish between unverified opinions about psychosocial interventions and facts about their effectiveness.
And separating facts from fictions is what science is pretty good at doing. Not perfectly, and not without false
starts, but the publicly verifiable and potentially testable conclusions of scientific research render this form of
knowledge building an inherently self-correcting one (in the long run), a considerable advantage over other
“ways of knowing.”

EBP differs from its precursor initiatives in that it does not tell social workers what interventions should be
provided to clients. It does not list so-called best practices, create practice guidelines, or develop lists of
supposedly empirically based treatments. Nor does it unduly privilege certain forms of evidence above all
others. Each of the above three sentences represents common misconceptions of EBP. EBP is actually a
process of inquiry offered to practitioners, described for physicians in Straus, Richardson, Galsziou, and
Haynes (2005), but readily adaptable to providers in all of the human service professions. These steps are as
follows (from Straus et al., 2005, pp. 3–4):

Step 1: converting the need for information (about prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, causation,
etc.) into an answerable question.
Step 2: tracking down the best evidence with which to answer that question.
Step 3: critically appraising that evidence for its validity (closeness to the truth), impact (size of the
effect), and applicability (usefulness in our clinical practice).
Step 4: integrating the critical appraisal with our clinical expertise and with our patient's unique biology,
values, and circumstances.
Step 5: Evaluating our effectiveness and efficiency in executing steps 1–4 and seeking ways to improve
them both for next time.

Each chapter in Straus et al. (2005) addresses one of these steps, and they have been adapted for use by social
workers in an excellent series of entries appearing in The Social Worker's Desk Reference (see Roberts, 2009, pp.
1115–1182). EBP states that social workers need to be familiar with the best available evidence addressing the
questions related to client services and to their particular practice situation and to integrate their appraisal of
this information into an assessment of their own skills, the client's preferences, relevant professional and
personal values and ethical standards, cost, feasibility, and resources. All of these factors are relevant, not just
what the research evidence indicates. And by best evidence, what is meant is not so-called gold-standard
studies such as randomized controlled trials or meta-analyses (see later chapters on these topics in this book)
but simply the best available relevant evidence. If there are no studies of superlative quality, then you locate
and assess those of lesser quality. Lots of evidence can go into the mix, including quasi-experimental studies,
single-subject studies, correlational studies, descriptive work, epidemiological evidence, qualitative
investigations, case histories, theory, and informed clinical opinion. There is always evidence for a social
worker to consult, even if it is not evidence of the highest quality. As with ECP, EBP also encourages
practitioners to evaluate the outcomes of their work with individual clients using a research methodology

24
called single-subject designs.

Another option is for social workers to consult systematic reviews (SRs) of the research evidence related to
various answerable questions involving assessment and interventive methods. The two groups most
responsible for preparing high-quality and independent SRs are called the Cochrane Collaboration (see
www.cochrane.org), focusing on issues related to health care, and the Campbell Collaboration (see
www.campbellcollaboration.org), focusing on social welfare, education, and criminal justice. SRs are prepared
by qualified research teams who obtain articles and reports from all over the world dealing with a specific
issue. These reports are minutely analyzed and critiqued and the collected information summarized in a
readable format, with a take-away message something like Treatment X is well-supported as an effective
treatment for clients with Problem Y; The available evidence indicates that Treatment X is ineffective in helping
clients with Problem Y; Clients with Problem Y who receive Treatment X demonstrated impaired outcomes, compared
to clients who receive no treatment. You can see how this information would be of immense value to social
workers. Here is a sampling of SRs currently available on the Cochrane database that is of relevance to social
workers:

Behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and

adolescents
Family intervention for bipolar disorder
Family therapy for depression
Psychological debriefing for preventing posttraumatic stress disorder
Psychotherapy for bulimia nervosa and binging
Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy for common mental disorders

And here are some found on the Campbell Collaboration Web site:

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for men who physically abuse their partner

Cognitive-behavioral intervention for children who have been sexually abused
Interventions intended to reduce pregnancy-related outcomes among adolescents
School-based educational programs for the prevention of childhood sexual abuse
Work programs for welfare recipients

These systematic reviews represent the highest quality and up-to-date critical appraisals of the existing
research literature addressing particular psychosocial and health problems experienced by social work clients.
They are a wonderful resource for practitioners seeking such information and are integral to the conduct of
evidence-based practice.

To summarize, ECP suggested that social work treatment should be chosen based on support via randomized
controlled studies and that social workers need to evaluate the outcomes of their practice with clients using
single-system research designs. The EST initiative came up with a list of evidentiary criteria needed to label a
given treatment as “empirically supported.” Once these criteria were in hand, lists of psychosocial
interventions meeting these standards were published. EBP provides more of a process to guide clinical and

25
practice decision making, which explicitly embraces evidence from many sources (albeit urging one to pay
particular attention to evidence of the highest quality) and explicitly includes nonscientific considerations such
as client preferences and values into this decision-making process. In many ways, EBP is a more sophisticated
and mature conceptualization of the conduct of practice than ECP and EST, and these latter two initiatives
largely have been subsumed by EBP.

26
On Terms
The preceding brief overview helps to bring us to the present, wherein social work is attempting to really
implement our original aspirations pertaining to being based on a foundation of scientific research. As in most
intellectual undertakings, it always is helpful to begin by defining one's terms. Accordingly, the following
language is being used to help set the stage for subsequent chapters in this handbook.

Research refers to “systematic procedures used in seeking facts or principles” (Barker, 2003, p. 398), and the
phrase scientific method means

a set of rigorous procedures used in social and physical research to obtain and interpret facts. The
procedures include defining the problem, operationally stating in advance the method for measuring the
problem, defining in advance the criteria to be used to reject hypotheses, using measuring instruments
that have validity and reliability, observing and measuring all the cases or a representative sample of those
cases, presenting for public scrutiny the findings and the methods used in accumulating them in such
detail as to permit replication, and limiting any conclusions to those elements that are supported by the
findings. (Barker, 2003, p. 383)

The term empirical is often loosely bandied about in the social work literature, and in some interpretations, it
seems synonymous with the assertion, “If I can see it, then it is real.” Well, evidence obtained via the senses
certainly is a part (and a very important one) of the meaning of the term, but simply having a single person
sense (e.g., see, hear, smell) something does not really suffice for something to be considered a piece of
scientific data. For research purposes, data “should also be obtained through systematic observations capable of
being replicated (i.e., verified) by other individuals and subject to some evidentiary standards” (Thyer &
Wodarski, 1998, p. 2). Perhaps it is true that your neighbor was removed from his bed by aliens one night and
subjected to invasive medical procedures prior to being returned home. But unless others see the abduction
occur, or other evidence is available (e.g., the aliens left unusual objects inside his body), to label this
experience of his as empirical is true only in the loosest sense of the term. Certainly, onetime private events
leaving no detectable evidence behind, or purely subjective experiences, are difficult phenomena on which to
conduct scientific research. This is not to say that such experiences are false or otherwise unimportant, only
that they rarely are the subject matter of science.

27
Some Philosophical Assumptions
Professional social work's dual origins in the worlds of religion and of science require contemporary practice
and research to rest a bit uneasily on a Procrustean bed of philosophical assumptions. The philosophical
positions described in what follows, while for the most part being simply seen as common sense, cannot in any
way be said to be proved or demonstrated to be valid. Each is vulnerable to attack and, indeed, to apparent
refutation, but these views nevertheless have stood the test of both time and practice sufficiently well for us to
have some degree of confidence in them. First, I describe principles that most contemporary researchers
accept as philosophically axiomatic (i.e., self-evident truths), followed by some selected philosophical positions
that are rejected by most scientists today.

28
Some Accepted Principles

Realism: the point of view that the world has an independence or objective existence apart from the
perceptions of the observer

Determinism: the assumption that all phenomena, including psychosocial ones, have physical (as opposed
to metaphysical) causes that are potentially amenable to scientific investigation and discovery

Positivism: the belief that valid knowledge about the objective world can be arrived at through scientific
research

Rationalism: the belief that reason and logic are useful tools for scientific inquiry and that, ultimately,
truthful or valid accounts of human behavior will be rational or logically understandable

Empiricism: a preference to rely on evidence gathered systematically through observation or experiment

and capable of being replicated (i.e., reproduced and verified) by others using satisfactory standards of
evidence

Operationism: the assertion that it is important to develop measures and treatments that can be reliably
replicated by others

Parsimony: a preference to seriously consider the simpler of the available and adequate explanations of a
phenomenon prior to accepting a more complex account

Scientific skepticism: the point of view that all scientific claims (e.g., Treatment X helps clients) should be
considered to be of doubtful validity until substantiated by credible empirical data

Naturalism: the perspective that the world in which we live, the objects, people, and processes that occur
within it, consist of natural phenomena, potentially understandable without any need to invoke
supernatural or metaphysical forces

29
Some Rejected Principles

Metaphysics: explanations involving supernatural, incorporeal, or immaterial entities or factors

Nihilism: the doctrine that all values are baseless and that nothing is known or can be learned

Dualism: the view that the world consists of the two fundamental entities of mind and matter

Reification: attributing reality to an abstract or hypothetical construct (e.g., the superego) in the absence
of adequate evidence supporting the existence of that construct

Circular reasoning: an explanation for human behavior in which causes and effects cannot be
distinguished from each other

Scientism: the theory that the investigational methods used in the natural sciences should be applied in all
fields of inquiry (e.g., values and ethics) and used to answer all questions of interest to social workers

Radical skepticism: also known as Pyrrhonian skepticism, after the Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis. This
position asserts that nothing can be known or, more moderately, that all judgments should be suspended.

Now, certainly, some words of clarification might be needed here because a few of the preceding positions
could be seen as challenging or confusing to the reader. Let us begin with realism. Most of accept the idea that
the world continues merrily along, even though we might not be aware of it—for example, when we are asleep
or under anesthesia. But to accept realism is not to reject the potentially important role of individual
perceptions in the construction of an individual's world. As many of us were growing up, Pluto was said to be
a planet, homosexuality was a mental illness, and, earlier, Galileo was a dangerous heretic in the eyes of the
Church. Now Pluto is not said to be a planet, homosexuality is no longer seen as a mental illness, and Galileo
has been hailed by the Vatican as an intellectual hero! Pluto swims along in the heavens undisturbed by the
votes of astronomers. The nature of one's sexual orientation does not depend on majority votes of a group of
psychiatrists, and Galileo's achievements do not rise or fall according to clerical preferences. To be a realist
means to accept that at least some part of our world has an objective existence, and for many areas of social
work practice, it is these objective realities that are the focus of intervention. Actually, most social workers are
hard-core realists, and it is only a small (but vocal) minority who challenge this notion, mostly philosophically
oriented sherry-sippers located within the academy. The wisdom of social work pioneer Betha Capen
Reynolds remains the mainstream and commonsense view:

At first glance it seems unnecessary to state that, if we believe in a non-capricious and objectively reliable
universe, such belief also includes social and economic forces with which we can cooperate. Actually, we
constantly deny this reliance on objective reality in favor of subjective fantasies. (Reynolds, 1963/1991, p.
315)

30
 and

A second characteristic of scientifically oriented social work is that it accepts the objective reality of forces
outside itself with which it must cooperate. (Reynolds, 1942, p. 24)

Social workers Mantysaari (2005) and Beckett (2007) provide some contemporary perspectives on the
usefulness of realism as a philosophical axiom for social work.

We accept determinism whenever we attempt intervention by the tacit assumption that treatment can have
effects. If we did not believe that clients’ problems or social ills had causes, then what would be the point of
having an entire profession devoted to discovering those causes and remedying them?

Although the term positivism is often used as a term of approbation in the social work literature, in reality,
many of the criticisms against it have portrayed a straw man. Most of us believe that scientific inquiry about
the world of our clients and the amelioration of their difficulties can be a useful undertaking. The dominant
philosophy of science in both the natural and social sciences, including social work, has been and remains the
approach generally known as positivism: “A paradigm introduced by August Comte that held that social
behavior could be studied and understood in a rational, scientific manner—in contrast to explanations based
on religion or superstition” (Rubin & Babbie, 2008, p. 642). That simple idea is positivism in a nutshell. We
are all positivists, to some extent (Thyer, 2008b). A clear Comtean influence was evident in a talk given at the
National Conference of Social Work in 1918, when

Ellwood outlined the development of social work. According to him it “began with a theological stage,
passed through a metaphysical stage, and is entering upon its scientific stage.” He holds that “the
scientific stage will be reached when social work passes fully under the domination of science; when it
becomes transfused with the spirit and transformed by the method of modern science…. The social
worker must learn to become a scientific social thinker also. Simple good will and human sympathy are
no sufficient guide for the social worker. They may furnish warmth, but not light.” (Quoted in Karpf,
1931, pp. 71–72)

A statement by U.S. social worker Frank Bruno provides a more mature summary of this position:

Social work holds as its primary axiom that knowledge of human behavior can be acquired and
interpreted by the senses and that inferences drawn from such knowledge can be tested by the principles
of logic. The difference between the social work of the present and of all preceding ages is the
assumption that human behavior can be understood and is determined by causes which can be explained.
We may not have at present a mastery of the methods of understanding behavior, but any scientific
approach to behavior presupposes that it is not in its nature incomprehensible to sensory perception and
inference therefrom. (Bruno, 1936, pp. 192–193)

31
Positivism was also the dominant philosophy of science during the establishment of the British system of
social welfare, as exemplified in the work of founders such as Sidney Webb (see Bevir, 2002) and strongly
influenced American social workers Mary Richmond (Agnew, 2004, p. 117) and Jane Addams. Positivism
itself has spawned many variants, with Halfpenny (1982) listing over a dozen contrasting views. The version
known as logical positivism is no longer generally held to be a viable position, and it is important to not
conflate this particular limited philosophy of science with the more generic and widely accepted approach
defined above (see Bolland & Atherton, 2002).

For the many positivists, traditional abstract philosophical problems are essentially unresolvable by the
methods of science (e.g., What is beauty? What is truth?) and are therefore seen as pseudo-problems and serve
only to distract us from more serious issues. Whether this handbook that you are reading is “real” or whether
you are simply dreaming about it (a nightmare!) cannot be ascertained with certainty by scientific methods.
Thus, positivism dismisses such issues from the purview of science and moves on to the more practical matters
that concern most social workers. Asking provocative philosophical questions, posting tautologies and
conundrums, and pointing out professional paradoxes can be both interesting and fun at times. But if we
become preoccupied with such issues to the extent that we become professionally immobilized, then what was
a harmless distraction has become a destructive influence.

Positivism does not mean that scientific research is the only way in which to discover useful knowledge.
Positivism does not mean that all knowledge obtained from nonscientific sources is incorrect or useless. And
positivism does not mean that any supposed finding obtained from a “scientific study” is free from error or that
science does not make mistakes. Remember the excitement of the discovery of “cold” fusion two decades ago,
with its unfulfilled promise of unlimited, pollution-free energy for humankind? How about the early
astronomer who discovered “canals” on Mars, canals then also claimed to be seen by other astronomers (sorry,
there are no canals on Mars). And if mistakes occur in the relatively “cleaner” disciplines such as physics and
astronomy, then think how much more difficult it can be to design and conduct sound scientific studies in the
field of social work, studies taking place not in a germ-free laboratory using purified reagents but rather in the
hurly-burly of clients’ lives, in the real-world contexts in which social problems exist. Social workers can envy
the bench scientists’ degree of experimental control over their subject matters and the reliability of the findings
they can obtain. Envy, perhaps, but with the appreciation that our field is more intrinsically difficult and
challenging. Research into the causes of social problems and into the development and evaluation of
interventions designed to ameliorate or prevent them can be seen as more difficult and as requiring greater
intelligence and perseverance than rocket science.

Certainty in science is relative, provisional, and fallible, with any given finding always susceptible to being
overturned by new and better data. “Science does not claim to have complete knowledge of the truth or to
have established perfect order out of chaos in the world. It is less an accomplished fact than an attitude”
(Todd, 1920, p. 71). Through scientific research, we may perhaps come closer to nature's truth, even if we are
unable to completely understand it.

Few would argue that rationalism and empiricism are not noble attributes, and most accept that it is necessary

32
for both practice and research purposes to operationalize our measures so as to elevate what we do beyond the
level of art to that of a teachable skill and a communicable method. We make use of parsimony wherever we
check out the simplest and most obvious explanations of a problem first. And scientific skepticism is our
protection against being overwhelmed by an ever growing number of claims. Skepticism flourished during the
Enlightenment as a reaction to traditional theological explanations for things. Scientific skepticism deals in
claims made with respect to areas that are the purview of scientific research. Scientific skepticism is not
applicable to nonscientific claims (but other forms of skepticism might be, e.g., religious skepticism), although
there is some overlap (e.g., testing the claims of fraudulent faith healers, designing and conducting
randomized controlled trials of the purported healing powers of prayer).

Social workers do not usually invoke spiritual explanations for domestic violence, rape, or child abuse and
neglect. Nor are demons usually seen as the cause of unemployment, poverty, or sudden infant death
syndrome. A social worker might subscribe to metaphysics or supernatural beliefs in his or her personal life,
but in professional social work, metaphysical accounts typically are eschewed in favor of material ones.
Nihilism is, in a sense, the reverse of positivism (although social work researchers with a sense of humor have
noted that the opposite of positivism is negativism), basically denying that advances in scientifically supported
knowledge are possible. This view is, of course, refuted each time a new issue of a social work research journal
is published. Few of us are dualists today. We might use the language of the “mind,” but we really know that
we are talking about the physical processes of the brain as opposed to some immaterial entity called the mind
that exists independent of the brain and body. Rejecting the concept of mind is an example of avoiding
reification, and we also avoid reification every time we reject characterological explanations of why people act
the way they do in favor of social, economic, or person-in-environment explanations. Circular reasoning
remains rampant in social work, and it requires careful attention to avoid falling into this trap. Following are a
couple of examples:

In these simple examples, the only evidence in support of the existence of the presumed “cause” (apathy or
alcoholism, actual things said to reside within the person [i.e., characterological traits]) is the very behavior
one is attempting to explain. If the only evidence for the existence of alcoholism is the very drinking that the
alcoholism is said to cause, then despite the appearance of closure in explanation, in reality nothing has been
explained. Pseudo-explanations involving circular reasoning often involve reification as well.

Contrast the preceding examples with the following:

33
In these latter examples, the possible causes are potentially verifiable and not inferred from the behavior that
they are trying to explain. Thus, in a scientific sense, they are much more satisfactory explanations than the
former ones.

The sin of scientism occurs when one ignores the fact that many very important issues of social work policy and
practice are not matters capable (at least not at present) of being resolved by scientific inquiry. Whether or not
same-sex partners should be permitted to be legally married is not a public policy issue on which science can
shed much light. Whether or not pregnant minors should be required to obtain parental consent to undergo
abortions, or whether or not the Georgia state flag should be altered to delete the Confederate stars and bars,
is similarly a matter of values, morality, religion, philosophy, and social justice, not issues particularly capable
of being resolved by scientific research. “The goals of social work are determined in large part by values, or
philosophic rather than scientific considerations, and the means of social work are also affected not only by
considerations of efficiency but also by moral and philosophical convictions” (M. W. Macdonald, 1960, p. 4).
And this is as it should be. Science is modest and knows its limits. It also knows its purview, and although a
great deal of social work is the legitimate subject matter of scientific research, much is not.

Parsimony and operationalism have ample precedents as useful elements of a philosophy of science for social
work research. Take the view of the distinguished American social worker Helen Northen (1982): “The
problem should be based on facts, not inferences, and defined in operational terms … instead of labeling a
person as a rejecting mother, one would describe the behavior that is interpreted as rejection” (p. 74). And
earlier, Mary Richmond (1917) offered this advice: “To state that we think our client is mentally deranged is
futile; to state the observations that have created this impression is a possible help” (p. 362). Epstein (1984)
provides a very instructive overview of the usefulness of parsimony as a basic approach to explanation and
description.

Another point is worth stressing. To advocate for one position (e.g., that social work practice needs to rely
more on scientific research findings) does not imply acceptance of a more extreme position (e.g., that we must
eliminate all “art” from clinical practice). For example, Myers and Thyer (1997) argue that as EBPs emerge,
clients should have a right to be offered those interventions by their social workers as treatment options of first
choice. This has been misconstrued by some to imply that evidence-based or scientific considerations should
be the only voice in practice decisions. Such is not the case. Urging that science be invited to the dinner party
does not mean that other guests cannot attend or should be cast out hungry into the darkness of the stormy
night. Empirical research at present continues to play a relatively minor role in social work practice.
Augmenting practice wisdom, insight, and art with the findings of science would merely seem to be the
hallmark of professional practice, not a threat to these traditional sources of guidance. But what if, one might
ask, the findings of scientific research conflict with the dictates of these other sources of knowledge? At
present, that is a matter of personal choice and conviction. But certainly, forces external to, as well as within,

34
the profession are urging that greater consideration be given to research findings.

35
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 BYRON AND WORDSWORTH

The London Weekly Review.]

[April 5, 1828.

I am much surprised at Lord Byron’s haste to return a volume of

Spenser, which was lent him by Mr. Hunt, and at his apparent
indifference to the progress and (if he pleased) advancement of
poetry up to the present day. Did he really think that all genius was
concentred in his own time, or in his own bosom? With his pride of
ancestry, had he no curiosity to explore the heraldry of intellect? or
did he regard the Muse as an upstart—a mere modern bluestocking
and fine lady? I am afraid that high birth and station, instead of
being (as Mr. Burke predicates,) ‘a cure for a narrow and selfish
mind,’ only make a man more full of himself, and, instead of
enlarging and refining his views, impatient of any but the most
inordinate and immediate stimulus. I do not recollect, in all Lord
Byron’s writings, a single recurrence to a feeling or object that had
ever excited an interest before; there is no display of natural affection
—no twining of the heart round any object: all is the restless and
disjointed effect of first impressions, of novelty, contrast, surprise,
grotesque costume, or sullen grandeur. His beauties are the houris of
Paradise, the favourites of a seraglio, the changing visions of a
feverish dream. His poetry, it is true, is stately and dazzling, arched
like a rainbow, of bright and lovely hues, painted on the cloud of his
own gloomy temper—perhaps to disappear as soon! It is easy to
account for the antipathy between him and Mr. Wordsworth. Mr.
Wordsworth’s poetical mistress is a Pamela; Lord Byron’s an Eastern
princess or a Moorish maid. It is the extrinsic, the uncommon that
captivates him, and all the rest he holds in sovereign contempt. This
is the obvious result of pampered luxury and high-born sentiments.
The mind, like the palace in which it has been brought up, admits
none but new and costly furniture. From a scorn of homely
simplicity, and a surfeit of the artificial, it has but one resource left in
exotic manners and preternatural effect. So we see in novels, written
by ladies of quality, all the marvellous allurements of a fairy tale,
jewels, quarries of diamonds, giants, magicians, condors and ogres.
[55]
The author of the Lyrical Ballads describes the lichen on the rock,
the withered fern, with some peculiar feeling that he has about them:
the author of Childe Harold describes the stately cypress, or the
fallen column, with the feeling that every schoolboy has about them.
The world is a grown schoolboy, and relishes the latter most. When
Rousseau called out—‘Ah! voila de la pervenche!’ in a transport of
joy at sight of the periwinkle, because he had first seen this little blue
flower in company with Madame Warens thirty years before, I
cannot help thinking, that any astonishment expressed at the sight of
a palm-tree, or even of Pompey’s Pillar, is vulgar compared to this!
Lord Byron, when he does not saunter down Bond-street, goes into
the East: when he is not occupied with the passing topic, he goes
back two thousand years, at one poetic, gigantic stride! But instead of
the sweeping mutations of empire, and the vast lapses of duration,
shrunk up into an antithesis, commend me to the ‘slow and creeping
foot of time,’ in the commencement of Ivanhoe, where the jester and
the swine-herd watch the sun going down behind the low-stunted
trees of the forest, and their loitering and impatience make the
summer’s day seem so long, that we wonder how we have ever got to
the end of the six hundred years that have passed since! That where
the face of nature has changed, time should have rolled on its course,
is but a common-place discovery; but that where all seems the same,
(the long rank grass, and the stunted oaks, and the innocent pastoral
landscape,) all should have changed—this is to me the burthen and
the mystery. The ruined pile is a memento and a monument to him
that reared it—oblivion has here done but half its work; but what
yearnings, what vain conflicts with its fate come over the soul in the
other case, which makes man seem like a grasshopper—an insect of
the hour, and all that he is, or that others have been—nothing!
 ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY

A Fragment
The London Weekly Review.]
[December 6, 1828.
‘If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be done, chapels had
been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.’

Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling; and Curl, it is added,

when he called on him in the morning, used to ask as a particular
favour for a glass of Canary, by way of ingratiating himself, and that
the other might have a pretence to join him and finish the bottle. He
fell a martyr to this habit, and yet (some persons more nice than wise
exclaim,) he desired that the young Earl of Warwick might attend
him on his death-bed, ‘to see how a Christian could die!’ I see no
inconsistency nor hypocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian,
a sound believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have,
notwithstanding, one or more failings. If he had recommended it to
others to get drunk, then I should have said he was a hypocrite, and
that his pretended veneration for the Christian religion was a mere
cloak put on to suit the purposes of fashion or convenience. His
doing what it condemned was no proof of any such thing: ‘The spirit
was willing, but the flesh was weak.’ He is a hypocrite who professes
what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes
or approves. It might on the same ground be argued, that a man is a
hypocrite who admires Raphael or Shakespeare, because he cannot
paint like the one, or write like the other. If any one really despised
what he affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he
affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this would
be cant. Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words
and thoughts, and not between our belief and actions. The last
constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolutions in the best
of men; it is only the base and dishonest who give themselves credit
with their tongue, for sentiments and opinions which in their hearts
they disown.
I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim—‘The
greater the sinner, the greater the saint’—is so utterly unfounded.
There is some mixture of truth in it. For as long as man is composed
of two parts, body and soul; and while these are allowed to pull
different ways, I see no reason why, in proportion to the length the
one goes, the opposition or reaction of the other should not be more
violent. It is certain, for example, that no one makes such good
resolutions as the sot and the gambler in their moments of
repentance, or can be more impressed with the horrors of their
situation;—should this disposition, instead of a transient, idle pang,
by chance become lasting, who can be supposed to feel the beauty of
temperance and economy more, or to look back with greater
gratitude to their escape from the trammels of vice and passion?
Would the ingenious and elegant author of the Spectator feel less
regard for the Scriptures, because they denounced in pointed terms
the infirmity that ‘most easily beset him,’ that was the torment of his
life, and the cause of his death? Such reasoning would be true, if man
was a simple animal or a logical machine, and all his faculties and
impulses were in strict unison; instead of which they are eternally at
variance, and no one hates or takes part against himself more
heartily or heroically than does the same individual. Does he not pass
sentence on his own conduct? Is not his conscience both judge and
accuser? What else is the meaning of all our resolutions against
ourselves, as well as of our exhortations to others? Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor, is not the language of hypocrisy, but of
human nature.
The hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule in all ages; but
I am not sure that there has not been more wit than philosophy in it.
A priest, it is true, is obliged to affect a greater degree of sanctity than
ordinary men, and probably more than he possesses; and this is so
far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and solemn grimace. But I
cannot admit, that though he may exaggerate, or even make an
ostentatious display of religion and virtue through habit and spiritual
pride, that this is a proof he has not these sentiments in his heart, or
that his whole behaviour is the mere acting of a part. His character,
his motives, are not altogether pure and sincere: are they therefore
all false and hollow? No such thing. It is contrary to all our
observation and experience so to interpret it. We all wear some
disguise—make some professions—use some artifice to set ourselves
off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have
some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though
we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our
credit as much as possible in the back-ground:—why then should we
not extend the same favourable construction to monks and friars,
who may be sometimes caught tripping as well as other men—with
less excuse, no doubt; but if it is also with greater remorse of
conscience, which probably often happens, their pretensions are not
all downright, barefaced imposture. Their sincerity, compared with
that of other men, can only be judged of by the proportion between
the degree of virtue they profess, and that which they practice, or at
least carefully seek to realise. To conceive it otherwise, is to insist
that characters must be all perfect, or all vicious—neither of which
suppositions is even possible. If a clergyman is notoriously a
drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay
claim at the same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace,
is both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between the Abbot and
the poor brother in the ‘Duenna’ is an admirable exposure of this
double-faced dealing. But because a parson has a relish for the good
things of this life, or what is commonly called a liquorish tooth in his
head, (beyond what he would have it supposed by others, or even by
himself,) that he has therefore no fear or belief of the next, I hold for
a crude and vulgar prejudice. If a poor half-starved parish priest pays
his court to an olla podrida, or a venison pasty, with uncommon
gusto, shall we say that he has no other sentiments in offering his
devotions to a crucifix, or in counting his beads? I see no more
ground for such an inference, than for affirming that Handel was not
in earnest when he sat down to compose a Symphony, because he
had at the same time perhaps a bottle of cordials in his cupboard; or
that Raphael was not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was
attached to the Fornarina! Everything has its turn in this chequered
scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-
rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the most callous
effrontery, by erecting a standard of perfection, to which no one can
conform in reality! Thomson, in his ‘Castle of Indolence,’ (a subject
on which his pen ran riot,) has indulged in rather a free description
of ‘a little round, fat, oily man of God—
‘Who shone all glittering with ungodly dew,
If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by;
Which, when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.’

Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it had been
forgotten for a moment? Or even if this motive should not prove the
strongest in the end, would this therefore show that it was none,
which is necessary to the argument here combated, or to make out
our little plump priest a very knave! A priest may be honest, and yet
err; as a woman may be modest, and yet half-inclined to be a rake. So
the virtue of prudes may be suspected, though not their sincerity.
The strength of their passions may make them more conscious of
their weakness, and more cautious of exposing themselves; but not
more to blind others than as a guard upon themselves. Again,
suppose a clergyman hazards a jest upon sacred subjects, does it
follow that he does not believe a word of the matter? Put the case
that any one else, encouraged by his example, takes up the banter or
levity, and see what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He
will turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the vehemence and
asperity of the most bigoted orthodoxy. Is this dictatorial and
exclusive spirit then put on merely as a mask and to browbeat
others? No; but he thinks he is privileged to trifle with the subject
safely himself, from the store of evidence he has in reserve, and from
the nature of his functions; but he is afraid of serious consequences
being drawn from what others might say, or from his seeming to
countenance it; and the moment the Church is in danger, or his own
faith brought in question, his attachment to each becomes as visible
as his hatred to those who dare to impugn either the one or the other.
A woman’s attachment to her husband is not to be suspected, if she
will allow no one to abuse him but herself! It has been remarked,
that with the spread of liberal opinions, or a more general scepticism
on articles of faith, the clergy and religious persons in general have
become more squeamish and jealous of any objections to their
favourite doctrines: but this is what must follow in the natural course
of things—the resistance being always in proportion to the danger;
and arguments and books that were formerly allowed to pass
unheeded, because it was supposed impossible they could do any
mischief, are now denounced or prohibited with the most zealous
vigilance, from a knowledge of the contagious nature of their
influence and contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the greatest
nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, where the
manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination most easily
excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a dictate of common sense
and decency.
One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern times, is
that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such thing as a perfect
Theist, or an absolute Atheist; that whatever may be the general
conviction entertained on the subject, the evidence is not and cannot
be at all times equally present to the mind; that even if it were, we
are not in the same humour to receive it: a fit of the gout, a shower of
rain shakes our best-established conclusions; and according to
circumstances and the frame of mind we are in, our belief varies
from the most sanguine enthusiasm to lukewarm indifference, or the
most gloomy despair. There is a point of conceivable faith which
might prevent any lapse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties
between theory and practice; but this is not to be looked for in the
ordinary course of nature, and is reserved for the abodes of the blest.
Here, ‘upon this bank and shoal of time,’ the utmost we can hope to
attain is, a strong habitual belief in the excellence of virtue, or the
dispensations of Providence; and the conflict of the passions, and
their occasional mastery over us, far from disproving or destroying
this general, rational conviction, often fling us back more forcibly
upon it, and like other infidelities and misunderstandings, produce
all the alternate remorse and raptures of repentance and
reconciliation.
It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate heretic or
confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman Catholic
church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds of music, the
pomp of ceremonies, the embellishments of art, feels himself spell-
bound: and is almost persuaded to become a renegade to his reason
or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers chaunted on the stage, or in
reading an account of a torch-light procession in a romance, a
superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and we are momentarily
charmed out of ourselves. When such is the obvious and involuntary
influence of circumstances on the imagination, shall we say that a
monkish recluse surrounded from his childhood by all this pomp, a
stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other atmosphere,
and all whose meditations are bent on this one subject both by
interest and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank and heartless
mountebank in the professions he makes of belief in it, because his
thoughts may sometimes wander to forbidden subjects, or his feet
stumble on forbidden ground? Or shall not the deep shadows of the
woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity of this feeling, or the
icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to its elevation and its purity?
To argue otherwise is to misdeem of human nature, and to limit its
capacities for good or evil by some narrow-minded standard of our
own. Man is neither a God nor a brute; but there is a prosaic and a
poetical side to everything concerning him, and it is as impossible
absolutely and for a constancy to exclude either one or the other
from the mind, as to make him live without air or food. The ideal, the
empire of thought and aspiration after truth and good, is inseparable
from the nature of an intellectual being—what right have we then to
catch at every strife which in the mortified professors of religion the
spirit wages with the flesh as grossly vicious, or at every doubt, the
bare suggestion of which fills them with consternation and despair,
as a proof of the most glaring hypocrisy? The grossnesses of religion
and its stickling for mere forms as its essence, have given a handle,
and a just one, to its impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says
Voltaire) the Mussulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then
fall to cutting one another’s throats again with the greatest
deliberation and good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at
variance; but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. The
Mahometans are savages, but they are not the less true believers—
they hate their enemies as heartily as they revere the Koran. This,
instead of showing the fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its
universality and indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he
will, as little refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful
passions or gross vices he thinks proper, these cannot occupy the
whole of his time; and in the intervals between one scoundrel action
and another he may and must have better thoughts, and may have
recourse to those of religion (true or false) among the number,
without in this being guilty of hypocrisy or of making a jest of what is
considered as sacred. This, I take it, is the whole secret of
Methodism, which is a sort of modern vent for the ebullitions of the
spirit through the gaps of unrighteousness.
We often see that a person condemns in another the very thing he
is guilty of himself. Is this hypocrisy? It may, or it may not. If he
really feels none of the disgust and abhorrence he expresses, this is
quackery and impudence. But if he really expresses what he feels,
(and he easily may, for it is the abstract idea he contemplates in the
case of another, and the immediate temptation to which he yields in
his own, so that he probably is not even conscious of the identity or
connexion between the two,) then this is not hypocrisy, but want of
strength and keeping in the moral sense. All morality consists in
squaring our actions and sentiments to our ideas of what is fit and
proper; and it is the incessant struggle and alternate triumph of the
two principles, the ideal and the physical, that keeps up this ‘mighty
coil and pudder’ about vice and virtue, and is one great source of all
the good and evil in the world. The mind of man is like a clock that is
always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.
The ideal principle is the master-key that winds it up, and without
which it would come to a stand: the sensual and selfish feelings are
the dead weights that pull it down to the gross and grovelling. Till the
intellectual faculty is destroyed, (so that the mind sees nothing
beyond itself, or the present moment,) it is impossible to have all
brutal depravity: till the material and physical are done away with,
(so that it shall contemplate everything from a purely spiritual and
disinterested point of view,) it is impossible to have all virtue. There
must be a mixture of the two, as long as man is compounded of
opposite materials, a contradiction and an eternal competition for
the mastery. I by no means think a single bad action condemns a
man, for he probably condemns it as much as you do; nor a single
bad habit, for he is probably trying all his life to get rid of it. A man is
only thoroughly profligate when he has lost the sense of right and
wrong; or a thorough hypocrite, when he has not even the wish to be
what he appears. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of
it. To recommend certain things is worse than to practise them.
There may be an excuse for the last in the frailty of passion; but the
former can arise from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition.
Any one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and
aspiration after virtue: but he who maintains vice in theory, has not
even the conception or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err:
fiends only make a mock at goodness.
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

The London Weekly Review.]

[December 13, 1828.

We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of human

nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging of character from
names, and classes, and modes of life. No one is simply and
absolutely any one thing, though he may be branded with it as a
name. Some persons have expected to see his crimes written in the
face of a murderer, and have been disappointed because they did not,
as if this impeached the distinction between virtue and vice. Not at
all. The circumstance only showed that the man was other things,
and had other feelings besides those of a murderer. If he had nothing
else,—if he had fed on nothing else,—if he had dreamt of nothing
else, but schemes of murder, his features would have expressed
nothing else: but this perfection in vice is not to be expected from the
contradictory and mixed nature of our motives. Humanity is to be
met with in a den of robbers; nay, modesty in a brothel. Even among
the most abandoned of the other sex, there is not unfrequently found
to exist (contrary to all that is generally supposed) one strong and
individual attachment, which remains unshaken to the last. Virtue
may be said to steal, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice
and infamy; it clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven
quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart. Again, there is a
heroism in crime, as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their
altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favour, but is a
proof of the heroical disinterestedness of man’s nature, and that
whatever he does, he must fling a dash of romance and sublimity into
it; just as some grave biographer has said of Shakespeare, that ‘even
when he killed a calf, he made a speech and did it in a great style.’
 It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinction and
contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to the system of French
levity and Epicurean indifference. Wherever there is a capacity of
conceiving of things as different from what they are, there must be a
principle of taste and selection—a disposition to make them better,
and a power to make them worse. Ask a Parisian milliner if she does
not think one bonnet more becoming than another—a Parisian
dancing-master if French grace is not better than English
awkwardness—a French cook if all sauces are alike—a French
blacklegs if all throws are equal on the dice? It is curious that the
French nation restrict rigid rules and fixed principles to cookery and
the drama, and maintain that the great drama of human life is
entirely a matter of caprice and fancy. No one will assert that
Raphael’s histories, that Claude’s landscapes are not better than a
daub: but if the expression in one of Raphael’s faces is better than
the most mean and vulgar, how resist the consequence that the
feeling so expressed is better also? It does not appear to me that all
faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only a theory, it were a
pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the
idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail
at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names
of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be
substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire
against them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable
even of feigning such things. So I would contend against that
reasoning which would have it thought that if religion is not true,
there is no difference between mankind and the beasts that perish;—
I should say, that this distinction is equally proved, if religion is
supposed to be a mere fabrication of the human mind; the capacity
to conceive it makes the difference. The idea alone of an over-ruling
Providence, or of a future state, is as much a distinctive mark of a
superiority of nature, as the invention of the mathematics, which are
true,—or of poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood
of our speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves.
The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and dispositions
within us has not only given birth to the Manichean and Gnostic
heresies, and to other superstitions of the East, but will account for
many of the mummeries and dogmas both of Popery and Calvinism,
—confession, absolution, justification by faith, &c.; which, in the
hopelessness of attaining perfection, and our dissatisfaction with
ourselves for falling short of it, are all substitutes for actual virtue,
and an attempt to throw the burthen of a task, to which we are
unequal or only half disposed, on the merits of others, or on outward
forms, ceremonies, and professions of faith. Hence the crowd of
‘Eremites and friars,
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.’

If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknowledge the

jurisdiction of the court. A person does wrong; he is sorry for it; and
as he still feels himself liable to error, he is desirous to make
atonement as well as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by penance, by
sacrifices, or other voluntary demonstrations of obedience, which are
in his power, though his passions are not, and which prove that his
will is not refractory, and that his understanding is right towards
God. The stricter tenets of Calvinism, which allow of no medium
between grace and reprobation, and doom man to eternal
punishment for every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence
against infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical
doctrine of the Stoics) from taking a half-view of this subject, and
considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his
understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the
temptations and frailty of human ignorance and passion. The mixing
up of religion and morality together, or the making us accountable
for every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than
our everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably
to the difficulties of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and
spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to
distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging of
human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of looking into
the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should reveal it to
Heaven; and tries to persuade himself that by shutting his eyes to his
true character and feelings, they will remain a profound secret both
here and hereafter. This is a strong engine and irresistible
inducement to self-deception; and the more zealous any one is in his
convictions of the truth of religion, the more we may suspect the
sincerity of his pretensions to piety and morality.
 Thus, though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy in the
world, I do think there is a great deal of cant—‘cant religious, cant
political, cant literary,’ &c. as Lord Byron said. Though few people
have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise,
we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and affect a
greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things than we really
feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as
dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in
order to produce any effect at all. There was formerly the two hours’
sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the uplifted hands
and eyes; all which, though accompanied with some corresponding
emotion, expressed more than was really felt, and were in fact
intended to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our interest in
anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the outward
symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell the longer
on our words as they are less felt, and hence the very origin of the
term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has succeeded to that of
religion. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty—not
that people do not feel these emotions, but they make too great a fuss
about them, and drawl out the expression of them till they tire
themselves and others. There is a cant about Shakespeare. There is a
cant about Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be
a cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of
attention and interest, and that people would be thought to know
and care rather more about than they actually do. Cant is the
voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment;
hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had
and have no wish for. Mr. Coleridge is made up of cant, that is, of
mawkish affectation and sensibility; but he has not sincerity enough
to be a hypocrite, that is, he has not hearty dislike or contempt
enough for anything, to give the lie to his puling professions of
admiration and esteem for it. The fuss that Mr. Liberal Snake makes
about Political Economy is not cant, but what Mr. Theodore Hook
politely calls humbug; he himself is hardly the dupe of his own
pompous reasoning, but he wishes to make it the stalking-horse of
his ambition or interest to sneak into a place and curry favour with
the Government....
 POETRY

The Atlas.]
[March 8, 1829.

As there are two kinds of rhyme, one that is rhyme to the ear, and
another to the eye only; so there may be said to be two kinds of
poetry, one that is a description of objects to those who have never
seen or but slightly studied them; the other is a description of objects
addressed to those who have seen and are intimately acquainted with
them, and expressing the feeling which is the result of such
knowledge. It is needless to add that the first kind of poetry is
comparatively superficial and common-place; the last profound,
lofty, nay often divine. Take an example (one out of a thousand) from
Shakspeare. In enumerating the wished-for contents of her basket of
flowers, Perdita in the Winter’s Tale mentions among others——
‘Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids.’

This passage which knocks down John Bull with its perfumed and
melting softness, and savours of ‘that fine madness which our first
poets had,’ is a mystery, an untranslateable language, to all France:
Racine could not have conceived what it was about—the stupidest
Englishman feels a certain pride and pleasure in it. What a privilege
(if that were all) to be born on this the cloudy and poetical side of the
Channel! We may in part clear up this contradiction in tastes by the
clue above given. The French are more apt at taking the patterns of
their ideas from words; we, who are slower and heavier, are obliged
to look closer at things before we can pronounce upon them at all,
which in the end perhaps opens a larger field both of observation and
fancy. Thus the phrase ‘violets dim,’ to those who have never seen
the object, or who, having paid no attention to it, refer to the
description for their notion of it, seems to convey a slur rather than a
compliment, dimness being no beauty in itself; so this part of the
story would not have been ventured upon in French or tinsel poetry.
But to those who have seen, and been as it were enamoured of the
little hedge-row candidate for applause, looking at it again and again
(as misers contemplate their gold—as fine ladies hang over their
jewels), till its image has sunk into the soul, what other word is there
that (far from putting the reader out of conceit with it) so well recals
its deep purple glow, its retired modesty, its sullen, conscious
beauty? Those who have not seen the flower cannot form an idea of
its character, nor understand the line without it. Its aspect is dull,
obtuse, faint, absorbed; but at the same time soft, luxurious, proud,
and full of meaning. People who look at nature without being
sensible to these distinctions and contrarieties of feeling, had better
(instead of the flower) look only at the label on the stalk.
Connoisseurs in French wines pretend to know all these depths and
refinements of taste, though connoisseurs in French poetry pretend
to know them not. To return to our text——
‘Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath.’

How bizarre! cries one hypercritic. What far-fetched metaphors!

exclaims another. We shall not dwell on the allusion to ‘Cytherea’s
breath,’ it is obvious enough: but how can the violet’s smell be said to
be ‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes?’ Oh! honeyed words, how ill
understood! And is there no true and rooted analogy between our
different sensations, as well as a positive and literal identity? Is there
not a sugared, melting, half-sleepy look in some eyelids, like the
luscious, languid smell of flowers? How otherwise express that air of
scorn and tenderness which breathes from them? Is there not a
balmy dew upon them which one would kiss off? Speak, ye lovers! if
any such remain in these degenerate days to take the part of genuine
poetry against cold, barren criticism; for poetry is nothing but an
intellectual love——Nature is the poet’s mistress, and the heart in his
case lends words and harmonious utterance to the tongue.——Again,
how full of truth and pity is the turn which is given to the description
of the pale and faded primrose, watching for the sun’s approach as
for the torch of Hymen! Milton has imitated this not so well in
‘cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.’ Cowslips are of a gold
colour, rather than wan. In speaking of the daffodils, it seems as if
our poet had been struck with these ‘lowly children of the ground’ on
their first appearance, and seeing what bright and unexpected guests
they were at that cold, comfortless season, wondered how ‘they came
before the swallow (the harbinger of summer) dared,’ and being the
only lovely thing in nature, fancied the winds of March were taken
with them, and tamed their fury at the sight. No one but a poet who
has spent his youth in the company of nature could so describe it, as
no reader who has not experienced the same elementary sensations,
their combinations and contrasts, can properly enter into it when so
described. The finest poetry, then, is not a paradox nor a trite
paraphrase; but a bold and happy enunciation of truths and feelings
deeply implanted in the mind——Apollo, the god of poetry and day,
evolving the thoughts of the breast, as he does the seed from the
frozen earth, or enables the flower to burst its folds. Poetry is,
indeed, a fanciful structure; but a fanciful structure raised on the
ground-work of the strongest and most intimate associations of our
ideas: otherwise, it is good for nothing, vox et preterea nihil. A literal
description goes for nothing in poetry, a pure fiction is of as little
worth; but it is the extreme beauty and power of an impression with
all its accompaniments, or the very intensity and truth of feeling, that
pushes the poet over the verge of matter-of-fact, and justifies him in
resorting to the licence of fiction to express what without his ‘winged
words’ must have remained for ever untold. Thus the feeling of the
contrast between the roughness and bleakness of the winds of March
and the tenderness and beauty of the flowers of spring is already in
the reader’s mind, if he be an observer of nature: the poet, to show
the utmost extent and conceivable effect of this contrast, feigns that
the winds themselves are sensible of it and smit with the beauty on
which they commit such rude assaults. Lord Byron, whose
imagination was not of this compound character, and more wilful
than natural, produced splendid exaggerations. Mr. Shelley, who felt
the want of originality without the power to supply it, distorted every
thing from what it was, and his pen produced only abortions. The
one would say that the sun was a ‘ball of dazzling fire;’ the other, not
knowing what to say, but determined ‘to elevate and surprize,’ would
swear that it was black. This latter class of poetry may be
denominated the Apocalyptical.
 ENGLISH GRAMMAR

The Atlas.]
[March 15, 1829.

This is one of those subjects on which the human understanding

has played the fool, almost as egregiously, though with less dire
consequences, than on many others; or rather one on which it has
not chosen to exert itself at all, being hoodwinked and led blindfold
by mere precedent and authority. Scholars who have made and
taught from English grammars were previously and systematically
initiated in the Greek and Latin tongues, so that they have, without
deigning to notice the difference, taken the rules of the latter and
applied them indiscriminately and dogmatically to the former. As
well might they pretend that there is a dual number in the Latin
language because there is one in the Greek.
The Definitions alone are able to corrupt a whole generation of
ingenuous youth. They seem calculated for no other purpose than to
mystify and stultify the understanding, and to inoculate it betimes
with a due portion of credulity and verbal sophistry. After repeating
them by rote, to maintain that two and two makes five is easy, and a
thing of course. What appears most extraordinary is that
notwithstanding the complete exposure of their fallacy and nonsense
by Horne Tooke and others, the same system and method of
instruction should be persisted in; and that grammar succeeds
grammar and edition edition, re-echoing the same point-blank
contradictions and shallow terms. Establishments and endowments
of learning (which subsist on a ‘foregone conclusion’) may have
something to do with it; independently of which, and for each
person’s individual solace, the more senseless the absurdity and the
longer kept up, the more reluctant does the mind seem to part with
it, whether in the greatest things or mere trifles and technicalities;
for in the latter, as the retracting an error could produce no startling
sensation, and be accompanied with no redeeming enthusiasm, its
detection must be a pure loss and pitiful mortification. One might
suppose, that out of so many persons as have their attention directed
to this subject, some few would find out their mistake and protest
against the common practice; but the greater the number of
professional labourers in the vineyard, who seek not truth but a
livelihood, and can pay with words more currently than with things,
the less chance must there be of this, since the majority will always
set their faces against it, and insist upon the old Mumpsimus in
preference to the new Sumpsimus. A schoolmaster who should go so
far out of his way as to take the Diversions of Purley for a text-book,
would be regarded by his brethren of the rod as ‘a man of Ind,’ and
would soon have the dogs of the village bark at him. It is said without
blushing, by both masters and ushers who do not chuse to be ‘wise
above what is written,’ that a noun is the name of a thing, i.e.
substance, as if love, honour, colour, were the names of substances.
An adjective is defined to be the name of a quality; and yet in the
expressions, a gold snuff-box, a wooden spoon, an iron chest, &c.,
the words gold, wooden, iron, are allowed by all these profound
writers, grammarians, and logicians, to be essentially adjectives. A
verb is likewise defined to be a word denoting being, action, or
suffering; and yet the words being, action, suffering (or passion), are
all substantives; so that these words cannot be supposed to have any
reference to the things whose names they bear, if it be the peculiar
and sole office of the verb to denote them. If a system were made in
burlesque and purposely to call into question and expose its own
nakedness, it could not go beyond this, which is gravely taught in all
seminaries, and patiently learnt by all school-boys as an exercise and
discipline of the intellectual faculties. Again, it is roundly asserted
that there are six cases (why not seven?) in the English language;
and a case is defined to be a peculiar termination or inflection added
to a noun to show its position in the sentence. Now in the Latin
language there are no doubt a number of cases, inasmuch as there
are a number of inflections;[56] and for the same reason (if words
have a meaning) in the English Language there are none, or only one,
the genitive; because if we except this, there is no inflection or
variety whatever in the terminations. Thus to instance in the present