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¦ ?} & , TIIE LEADEE. [Saturday^
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Critic* a*e net the legislators, "but bl...
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At length cheapness in literature has pe...
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It is an old fault, that of decrying the...
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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Transcript
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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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
¦ ?} & , Tiie Leadee. [Saturday^
¦ ?} & , TIIE LEADEE . [ Saturday ^
Wxttxnhxt
Wxttxnhxt
Critic* A*E Net The Legislators, "But Bl...
Critic * a * e net the legislators , "but blie judges and police of literature . They do not moke laws—fcliey interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
At Length Cheapness In Literature Has Pe...
At length cheapness in literature has penetrated even the sanctuary of . the Circulating Library ! A guinea and a half was surely at all times an . outrageous price to pay for a novel , and became wildly ridiculous in times like the present , when poems are no longer published in guinea quartos , and philosophic treatises no longer add
physical burden to their mental ponderosity . Yet have novel publishers persevered in the old system , which limited the circulation of novels to libraries , and limited even that circulation . At length , Mr . Bbntley has , to use the language of public meetings , " taken a step in the right direction . " Henceforth , he intends to publish fictions by the * most distinguished writers at 3 s . 6 d . a volume , a price which will allow private persons to buy good novels , and induce the libraries to order three copies for one .
Apropos of novels , what can be more charming than this first number of The Newcomes ? It has all Thackeray ' s excellencies , and gives better promise than either Vanity Fair or Pendennis gave at starting . There is such easy strength , such power without effort , in the , writing and in the painting of character . The satire is so delicate , so true , and yet so without bitterness . Any one else would assuredly have made the Bishopess of Clapham a personification of bigotry : he has made her bigoted , domineering ( as all bigotry is ) , stern , ridiculous , and yet kind , conscientious , and womanly . Her tending her sick step-son is as true as her distribution of tracts , especially indicated by that detail of her never hinting a reproach when her own sons took
the fever . Clapham has overshadowed , it has not killed , the woman . Charmingly suggested is the sanguine and improvident curate , who only wants " this chapol to make his fortune ; " and although it is calling for too much credulity to ask us to believe in such extreme innocence as that exhibited by the Indian officer , the indignant protest of that officer at the obscenity ( that "blaspheming against the divine beauty of life , " as Shelley says , ) which offends him . in the Cave of Harmony , is a-manly and well-timed reproof . The Frenchwoman ' s letter is French to the dots over the i ' s , and the crossings of the t ' s . Indeed , there is an abiding ' verisimilitude ^ which is an abiding charm in Thackeray ' s writing ; and we look for twenty months of very peculiar gratification .
It Is An Old Fault, That Of Decrying The...
It is an old fault , that of decrying the times we live in no a «" e over being ideal to itself ; and in this , " our wondrous mother age , " we must not be surprised if our ears are vexed by Jeremiados . % Vo aro not surprised , but we expostulate . In three remarkable organs , Tory , Conservative , and Progressive—Blackwood , Fraser , and the Westminster —we are this month taught to consider our own age as wanting in virtues which distinguished our forefathers . Blackwood , in a very able article « oii Swift , endeavouring to rescue the satirist ' from
the accusations made by Thackeray , considers it a vice peculiar to modern times , and in itself a vile thing-, "this lovo of pulling down tho names of great men of a past ago . " " And Fraser , in a very elaborate and successful investigation of tho vexed question of Queen Elizabeth ' s Morals , adopts the same tone ; while a writer in the Westminster , after an analysis of the Book of Job , as remarkable for its criticism as for its eloquence , runs off into a declamatory- and illogical tirade , amplifying Cahlyltj ' s favourite notion of happiness being quite a secondary consideration , and of our forefathers being so superior in heroism , to us , because they felt no modern " cravings" after happiness . We indicate theso opinions : it is surely not worth Avhilo gravely to discuss
them ? The depreciation of great names is assuredl y no now tendency in human nature ; and as to happiness , tho wholo tirado is founded upon a confusion of terms . If you persist in limiting happiness to a " stake in tho country , " and ignoro tho happiness of leading a life which will bring you to a quite other " stake" if yon insist that 5000 ? . a-year and tho approval of Duchesses is ono forin of happiness but dony that researches in Concliology—deci phoring arrow-headed inscriptions—vexing the great problems of oxistonec—devisin ^ great ; financial schemes—or imposing your idea of God upon the ntartled souls of mon—aro other forms of happiness , our only answer its that yon use a language of your own . / '
. Not , therefore , entering into tho polemics , but looking at these articles rt . s articles , wo cominond them all three to tho reader ' h special attention . Wo cannot a . greo with tho estimate of Swmt but no one , interested in tho subject , should leave this essay unread . ' Bo fore parting with it , lot _ us call attention to a , very common mistake , by which animals aro irrationally removed to a greater dista . nco from man than is warranted by science . " Givo Professor Owjmn part of an old bone , or a tooth , and ho will , on tho instant , draw you tho wholo animal , and toll you its habits and proponsitiofl . What profeflisor has ovor yet boon able to classify tho wondrouB varieties of human
clnrnoter ? ProfewHor Oavion would bo ublo to tell you prociHol y jib inuch of the luimau animal as of tho " other party ; " tho writer is h « r © confounding varietioH in character , —that ia to say , slight mental and moral peculiarities , —with varieties in species and gonna .
Besides the article already referred to , Fraser has another very striking article on Alexander Smith and A lexander Pope , paradoxical eloquent , erroneous , yet ha-rd-hitting , and calculated to do our young poets great good , if its exaggeration do not frustrate its truth . Here is a . sentence , for instance , whioh seems to us bombastic in jftg exaggeration .: —• " . , << f In Pope ' s writings , whatsoever he may not find , he will find the very excellences after which our young poets strive in vain , produced by their seeming opposite , which are now despised arid discarded ; naturalness produced by studious art ; daring sublimity by striet self-restraint ; depth by clear simplicity "; pathos by easy grace ; aud a morality infinitely more merciful , as well as more righteous ., than the one now in vogue among the poetasters , by honest faith in God . "
The writer ' s object is to warn young poets against their metaphysical tendencies , vagueness of expression , and redundant ornament . In the following he touches upon what has very generally been felt as a blot in the followers of Shelley , —we mean a cheap and easy blasphemy , which is meant to be startling : — - "It will be answered that all this blasphemy is not to be attributed to the author , but to the man whose spiritual development he intends to sketch . To which we reply , that no man has a right to bring his hero through such a state without showing how he came out of the slough , as carefully as how he came into it , especially when the said hero is set forth as a marv ellously clever person ; and the last scene , though full of beautiful womanly touchesand of a
, higher morality than the rest of the book , contains no amende honorable , not even an explanation of the abominable stuff -which the hero has been talking a few pages back . He leaps from the abyss to the seventh heaven ; but , unfortunately for the spectators , he leaps behind the scenes , and they are none the wiser . And next ; people have no more right , even for dramatic purposes , to put such language into print for any purpose whatsoever , than they have to print the grossest indecencies , or the most disgusting details of torture and cruelty . No one can accuse this magazine of any fondness for sanctimonious cant or lip-reverence ; but if there be a * Father in Heaven , ' as Mr . Smith confesses that there is , or even merely a personal Deity at all , some sort of common decency in speaking of Him should surely be preserved . No
one would print pages of silly calumny and vulgar insult against his earthly father , or even against a person for whom he had no special dislike , and then excuse it by , ' Of course I don't think so : but if any one did think so , this would b « Ta very smart Avay of saying what he thought . ' Old Aristotle would call such ' an act 'banauson ; ' in plain English , blackguard ; and we do ' not see how it can be called anything else , unless in the case of some utter brute in human form , to whom there is no coenum , and therefore no obscoemim ; no fanum , and therefore no pvofanum . ' . The common sense of mankind in all ages has condemned this sort of shamelessness , even more than it has insults to parental and social tics , and to all which raises man above the brute . Let Sir .
Smith tako note of this , and lot him , if he loves himself , mend speedily ; for of all styles wherein to become stereotyped the one which he lias chosen is the worst , because in it the greatest amount of insincerity is possible . There is a Tartarus in front of him , as well as an Olympus ; a hideous possibility very near him of insincere impiety merely for the purpose' of startling ; of lawless fancy merely for tho purpose of glittering ; nnd a still more hideous possibility of a , revulsion to insincere cant , , combined T » ith the same lawless fancy , for the purpose of keeping avoII with the public , in which to all appearances one of our most popular novelists , not to mention the poet whose writings are most analogous to Mr . Smith ' s , now lies wallowing . "
1 lie writer has carried eo far his antagonism to the new school , that ho actually quarrels with Alexander Smith because his images are " not dependent on the nature of the things themselves , but on the private fancy of the writor . " He dcojarea the waves do not pluck at the moon , but only seem to do so . " Or , again , in a passage which has been already often quoted as exquisite , and in its way is so— ' Tho bridegroom sou Is toving tviih tho shore , his wedded Inido ; And in the luhioj . snNii . s nmrriuK" joy lit ; docorutcsImr tawny l > ro \ v with ' shells , Jtoliros n puce , to , S ( ., ; h ' lair she looks , Then proud , runs up to kins her . ' Exquisite ]? Yes ; but only exquisitel y pretty . It is untrue—a falso explanation of the rush and recoil of tho waves . We learn nothing by these linos ; we gain no fresh analo-y between the physical and tho spiritual world , not even between two different parts of the physical world . " Lot us ask tho writer whether it is true as a matter of fact that tho moonlight sleeps upon the bank , or whether wo " loam anything" b y the Htatoment of , Prometheus that tho waves had a multitndinous laughtor f Iho test is an absurd ono ! Kambliiig tlmi ! diNcuraivo through tho periodicals , wo pause at the following hues by one of our young Poets- real Toots .- " ON THIS JMCAI'H OV ( iKNKUAL KIR OHAKLKS NAITKK . " ™ ou ] i } . Wm" wor < i <] < - ' ' -. . Yet when a warrior dies lake thiH one , to bin knell a puke reboUudy—Our world in poorer by a noble Jiian . Nai'iuii in huHhM— iierce conqueror of Hdndo And ritfhteoiiN ruler , through a sickly frame , hhatter'd with war , tho Hjnritual fire JMazed torohliko on the battle ' s van ward surge ; And over gr « at HubmiHKivo monarchies Shone steady nnd beni / m . From east tolwoHt AH true men huil'd the heroic fulgouey Ut from Truth ' s allar ; hut tho fal « o nnd moan iruiiHfixM with myn Jijco liayonots , eowuf'd « u » d curo'd . A noble man—in two words , not in ono , And _ J « , ngland bankrupt for the di « br « nco 1 Yet Jhnglund kuew him uud n richer wreath
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1853, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08101853/page/16/
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