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AprHj 4,1857.J THE LEADER, 329
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, ILtttrUitir^* #
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Critics are notthelegislators . buttheju...
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The Blight of the * Penal Dissolution se...
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^ The ' iubl'm University Mag>azi»chaa m...
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The second number of Paved with Gold ful...
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In England we have, what is unknown to o...
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The spirited conductors of The Train ann...
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BACON'S METHOD. The Works of Francis Bac...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Aprhj 4,1857.J The Leader, 329
AprHj 4 , 1857 . J THE LEADER , 329
, Iltttruitir^* #
Merature .
Critics Are Notthelegislators . Buttheju...
Critics are notthelegislators . butthejudges and police of literature . They ao not make laws— they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
The Blight Of The * Penal Dissolution Se...
The Blight of the * Penal Dissolution seems to have fallen upon the Magazines this month . We turn over the pages of Blackwood and Fraser with the best disposition in the world to be amused and instructed , and with a confident expectation of agreeable and easy reading , bat we turn and turn , dissatisfied , and disappointed . That this dissatisfaction arises , in some degree at least , from , our own share in the prevailing malady , we are not prepared to deny ; the ear of the time is ill-attuned to delicate thought / and the echoes of the hour are not the echoes of eternal voices .
Certain , at is that our April visitors have a wandering and distracted air , as if they presumed indifference and foreknew ibrgetfuhiess . Itis strange that , habituated as we are in England to the healthy shocks and agitations of public freedom , we cannot permit politics and literature to flourish side by side . When we have a war on our hands , 'literature subsides into Crimean correspondence ; when the stagnation of Parliament is troubled by a crisis of parties , hterature is lost in the wist of addresses to electors . Yet in the old time the most passionate tumult of public life stimulated and sustained the highest manifestations of intellectual activity . They managed these things better
at Athens , in the old . time . Is it that this advanced and progressive England , so vain of its clear-sighted eye for ' business , of its tolerance without love , of its irony without hate , of its ' most unenthusiastic common sense , —is it , we say , that this England is in truth struck , with a sterility of heart and brain which , like a creeping lassitude , is but the announcement of decay ? " Nonsense ! " cries the practical man , with his crushing commonplaces about the steam-engine andVthe telegraph . But what if the steamengine precipitate and the telegraph centralize decrepitude ? Easy gradients and shilling novels for the journey j and , vogue la galere /
All this , however , is a most unaccountable and improper digression from a very simple text . We were merely saying that BlacJcwood ' and Fraser arc not so "interesting as usual this month , and that the electoral distraction may probably be the cause of the deficiency . In Fraser , however , we may recommend a learned , chatty paper on our venerable friend " The Raven , " by a , familiar hand , and " Some Talk about Food , " a good subject curiously and carefully treated . The second article on "Literary Style" discusses Cakxyle , Emerson , Dje QtjrNCET , and RusKm , in a by no means novel style , but the writer ' s
animadversions upon the Jocular School have our hearty and entire concurrence . " Six Months at Kertch" is a lively reminiscence ' of the late war "by an Officer in the Turkish Contingent . A kindly notice of "Deutsche Liehe , " a little German story lately published in England , makes us anxious to be better acquainted with one who can feel and write like this exiled sufferer . He seems to know England as intimately as the author of Doctor Antonio , and he reminds us more than once in these extracts of his great countryman , Jean PATJIi RlCHTER .
Mack wood intimidates and repels us at the very outset by a most deliberate and fatiguing electoral squib in the shape of a " Political Pantomime , " in which the dramatis jpersona ; arc Lord Pai / merston and his colleagues , very thinly and clumsily disguised . So laborious a failure a 3 this Pantomime could only have come to us from the north of the Tweed , where Tory history and Tory satire obtain a sort of national acceptance Doubtless it is our misfortune and not our fault that we find this ponderous lampooning absolutely unreadable . We rush eagerly to " Mr . GilfiPs Love Story . " Tlic present chapters are not quite equal to the preceding , but the hand is the hand of an artist . A friendly welcome to M . Edsiond About's brilliant and witty sketch of modern Greek political and social civilization , Le Hoi des Montafines
introduced to the English public in a notice that will send all who read it to the original volume . Our readers arc not unacquainted with the name of M . Edmon » About , and they know him as a young writer rich in promise ; indeed , we may add , already rich in reputation . We believe we may say without exaggeration , that no Trench writer of our day proves more distinctly his descent from that noble line of intellectual ancestry whose foremost names arc Rabkiais , Montaigne , Moliere , and Voltaire , than Edmond About . There is in his style something of the flavour and freshness and exuberance of Rabelais and Montaigne , something of the force aud breadth and vigour of Molierb , and something of the
brilliant incisive clearness and vivacity of Voltaire . When we say this , we mean that M . About has ¦ quaffed at those perennial fountains ; but we may add that his style is all his own , and bears no trace of imitation . Add to these rare gifts a faculty of close and penetrating observation , an easy and abundant ; humour , an unfailing elegance and dexterity of composition , and you have nearly all tlic elements of more than an ephemeral reputation . It rests " with M . EintOND About to do himself justice ; -lm has no more formidable rivals to fear than his own genius and his own success . Lot him only refuse to let such promise run to waste , let him only contain , himself , and we ' predict for him an enduring name in the literature of Franco mid of Europe .
^ The ' Iubl'm University Mag>Azi»Chaa M...
^ The ' iubl ' m University Mag > azi » chaa manifested renewed strength and fininialion of late ; and tho April number , although not remarkable , is sufficiently
varied and attractive . It has become a fashion of late for our Universities to put forth their own individual contributions to periodical literature . We take up the London University Magazine with the interest we always feel in the happy audacities of youth . Of course there is an essay on " Alfred Tennyson , " and a critical one too ; but we are more struck by a paper on "Essays and Essayists , " indicative of much discursive and desultory reading in French and English literature of the best periods , and of reading- well sifted and turned to the best account . The article on " Sir Robert Peel" is singularly calm and mature in manner , and very carefully written .
Another serial well deserving a word or two of commendation is the Commercial Travellers' Magazine , designed to be the special organ of that most valuable and intelligent body of men , who carry with their samples so much good sense and so much native humour and shrewd fun from one end of the kingdom to the other , and whose c room' is redolent of good company . We are not surprised to find every page of their Magazine marked with some of the best characteristics of tlie order ; practical , business-like brevity , compact fulness , quick , smart , hard-hitting humour , and shrewd utility . Such papers as the "" Chemistry of 3 eer , " the ¦ " Greeks in . London , " "Silk , and its Substitutes , " are notable for their pithy substance ; but the lighter articles are also quite above par . "Spectacles" discourses ( in the first person ) on the theatres with the practised sagacity of a man who knows what he is talking * about , and talks well . We honestly and heartily commend this Magazine to our " thirty thousand" friends in town and country .
The Second Number Of Paved With Gold Ful...
The second number of Paved with Gold fulfils and improves upon the promise of the first . The authors have the peculiar advantage of an intimate and profound knowledge of then- subject , and a thorough sympathy with the life they portray . The description , of St . Lazarus Industrial School in the present number we had marked for extract , but our space forbids . There are many sincere lovers of their kind who have not the courage to wade through- 'Blue ? Books , but who in these pages will find daguerreotyped , as it were , the living beings of that half of "the world which the other half ignores .
In England We Have, What Is Unknown To O...
In England we have , what is unknown to our neighbours over the water , a . sporting literary public . In France the " sportsmen" Cwho invariably dress like ostlers ) may be counted : many of them are arduous readers of Ruff's Guide and of Bell ' s Life , and to be stable-minded is their highest ambition : but there is no public , properly so called , for whom sporting life possesses a natural and native interest . Such there is in England , and such may there long continue to be ; in sporting matters we are frankly and decidedly conservative . Aslc Mamma belongs to this literature , pure and undefiled , for home consumption ; and to many of us there is rare zest in the hearty animal spirits which distinguish it from every other . The author of " Handley Cross" has won his spurs as a sporting serial novelist s and he enjoys the inestimable distinction of being illustrated by Leech , who seems to have passed half his life in the saddle . Nothing truer or more enjoyable than bis hunting scenes can be imagined ; if his pencil were not that of a universal humorist , he would deserve to be called the artist of " the Brush "
The Spirited Conductors Of The Train Ann...
The spirited conductors of The Train announce a series of personal sketches of Men of Mark , and they inaugurate the gallery very worthily with a portrait of " William ItussehV' known to all the habitable globe as the " Correspondent of the Times . ' A plcasanter name could not have been selected to begin , with j and as the writer of these sketches , Mr . Edmlitnd Yates , knows how to discourse with honest sympathy and hearty admiration about a man whom all who know him love and honour , we trust lie may be equally successful in sketches demanding the exercise of a judicious criticism as well as the impulse of a strong regard .
Bacon's Method. The Works Of Francis Bac...
BACON'S METHOD . The Works of Francis Bacon . Edited by James Spedding , Robert Leslie Ellis , and Douglas Penon Heath . Vols . I . and II . Longman and Co . ( Second Auticlb . ) Mb . Exlis , in his admirable General Preface to the Philosophical Works , undertakes to settlo one of the most diversely agitated questions in the history of Bacon ' s influence . As an exposition of Bacon ' Method , and as a criticism on its essential defects , this is in our opinion the finest essay which has yet appeared . Mr . Ellis remarks , as all historians have done , the confidence with -which Bacon always speaks of his invention as one universally applicable . and in all cases infallible . Its absolute certainty reduces all minds to nearly the same level . Ho compares it to a pair of compasses
which enable all men to draw a perfect circle , whereas without the compasses no miin can draw a perfect circle . Bacon , moreover , always considered knowledge ab correlative with power , in idem coincidunt , a glaring contradiction , unless by knowledge something different bo intended from that which is ordinurily implied in the word ; and different it was , in Bacon ' s conception , since ho always assumed that the knowledge of the cause will enable us to produce the effect . " Therefore the sure way , though most about , to make gold , is to know the causes of the several natures before rehearsed , and the axioms concerning the same . For if a man can make a metal that hath all these properties , let men dispute whether it be gold or no . " Tlic * natures' referred to are what we cull abstract qualities , and what lie calls " Forms ; " and they are held to be very few .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 4, 1857, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04041857/page/17/
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