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40 THE LEADER. [No. 303, Saturday,
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Oritica are not the legislators, but the...
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The New Year generally introduces new pe...
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
40 The Leader. [No. 303, Saturday,
40 THE LEADER . [ No . 303 , Saturday ,
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Ztttroburt .
Oritica Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Oritica are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh ltetietp .
The New Year Generally Introduces New Pe...
The New Year generally introduces new periodicals . Few last , because few are commenced with sufficient capital , sufficient courage 3 or sufficient knowledge of the public wants . What capital or courage may back the Idler we know not ; but at any rate it has the advantage of being unlike other magazines . It only costs sixpence , and for sixpence gives sixty-four pages of light and varied matter . James Hannay , Shirley Brooks , Blanchard Jerrold , J . C . Jkaffueson , and E . F . Blanchard , contribute stories and sketches . There is a large public for such light matter , and the Idler has a fair chance of finding acceptance .
The Westminster Review opens with an article on Heine , which will be acceptable to many , if only on account of the biographical sketch of that strange and charming writer ; that , and the article on " Athenian Comedy , " are the only literary papers in the number , the claims of literature being , however , amply considered in the valuable quarterly surveys of Theology , Philosophy , Politics , Education , History , Biography , and Belles Lettres ^ which occupy the last hundred pages of the Review . The " Athenian Comedy" is a pleasant , scholarly glance at a very wide and very fascinating subject . The writer compares the licence of personality which distinguished -ABiSTorfiANEs with the rigorous exclusion of politics and personality which
cripples oar comedy : — " An Athenian playwright would have revelled in impersonations of Chatham ' s gout and flannels * Pitt ' s crane-neck ; of Sheridan ' s ruby nose ; and Fox ' s shrill tones and bushy eyebrows . The modem dramatist , who should reproduce them , would not cause even the injudicious to laugh , and would be rewarded for his attempt by a general sibilation . We leave to Gilray and ! Leech this department of the ' comic business * of politics ; and , although our pantomimes occasionally indulge themselves in allusions to the Commissioners of Sewers and Sabbath Observance Bills , such matters are excluded from comedy and even from farce . '
The reason , as BIacaulay would say , is obvious . We will not , imitate the historian , and prove what is obvious by three columns of demonstration ; enough if we refer to the fact that the Theatre is under censorship , and the censor will not allow the most harmless political allusion to pass : e . g ., in the Game of Speculation , " Sir Harry Lester had to say , " The Palmerstonian question is not understood ,, sir , " - ^ -surely a very innocent remark Yet , even that remark was interdicted ! What chance , then , is there of Chatham ' s flannels or Sheridan ' s ruby nose finding a place upon the stage ? The audience of Aristophanes delighted in personalities . We
must not Measureiaa Athenian , theatre ia the season by any modern comparisons . Saa Carlo , La Sealaaod Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarkefc , must hide their diminished heads beside the theatre of the Athenian Iacchus . Four thousand spectators would have " no room for standing , miscalled standing-room , " in the most capacious European playhouse . Twenty thousand spectators were easily accommodated in the huge oval of the Temple of Dionyeius . And how discordant were the ingredients of thi 3 enormous masa . There was little resnect for these Cleon
persons m assemblages . would fiud himself seated beside his" enemy the sausage-seller ; an elbow of atone divided Socrates from Anytus : and the noisiest brawler of the Pnyx might be comfortably niched beside the decorous and respectable 3 Sicias . The government and the opposition occupied indiscriminate benches . There was the party clamorous for war because it supplied SSf ^ p f ^ "f ^ ! ' timber ' and 8 alt P ° ' mixe < 1 U P witfi the ff $ tS « ^ J ) eCaUSe m \ ? ? ? ? ° « ev Tend its fi 8 8 aud honey i » the markets of Thebes and Megara . The high-temple party , vvlich denounced the philosophers ^ atheists , was cheek by jowl with the Wthinking paity , which derided tlie pnesta as impostors ; and there wen the young men , who cried up Euripides as the father of wisdom , close packed with the old men , who abominated him as
tt , 5 ni 7 n f - ?? P ectator » , and to nearly every individual among them , the Old Comedy yielded entertainment and excitement . The demaffoKue « applauded the caricature of Niciaa and Demostheaea , the aristocratsS with equal applause tho portraiture of Cleon ia " the KniKhts . " The SoDhisfcs were " shown up" in Socrate 8 , pale , unshaven , meagre , and modftatfve ¦ S e Ct' 7 LwnaohuB . And , like the modern Parisians , the Athenian ifcSm Af 7 f . them 8 eIve « ' as represented in the old dotard Demus , tie victim of every adviser who . would take the trouble to pick his pockets : Quite otherwise was it when Menandeb wrote of
nv ^ e ^^ C ^ ata M ? f- 1 ta ^ Menaadei < 1 " comedies differed in nearly every respect from that wluch had applauded Aristophanes and 1 is rivals In tl ^ T ^ ° } y ^ T 7- ' « P ° ^ Hfe of Athens hod becomenoatft extinct , at leaat political eontimenta were banialied irrevocably from the stair J It was safe , so long as the J > efrua , va 3 in good spirits , andkS the ^ urse of ali the islands , to hold up to ridicule the groat party-leader : but ifc vvi ill jeatinK . Jtete of "ITon ! ! " ^ - ' ° £ OlitiC " W * - * * by the w « y some amuaing !™«™ t « 1 ? . L' ° n Hu » tin S . " condoled from GKItAiu >' s Korke ) " ^^ S ^^^ -s-. ""
now . Even civilians must see that there is something extremely urgent in the question , when an old officer so distinguished as Sir John Buiigoynb can give evidence like this : — " The educational qualification for an officer entering the army might be very slight ; he would have them , write decently in English from dictation ; would allow the first four rules of arithmetic , "but not fractions , which is going- a little too far ; logarithms too hard , simple equations quite beyond them to acquire ; algebra has little to do with military duties ; " being askod whether it would not be very mischievous that , " while the education of the whole country i 3 progressing , a certain stimulus should not be given to that of officers ? Answers , " No : does not see the greab advantage of education pushed to a great exten t thinks that where stvdies are pushed too far it very often leads to idleness and neglect and dissipation , as much as where they are not . "
The British Quarterly opens with a good review of Prescott 3 " Philip the Second , " which is followed by an excellent analysis of Arago's work on " Thunderstorms , "—useful even to those who have Akago , and very interesting to those who have not . The article on " Mormonisrn " is rather late in the field . The " Songs of the Dramatists " furnishes a rambling , but very agreeable , critical paper . The " Influences of Romanism and Protestantism on Civilisation " are elaborately compared ; but if the lion were the painter would tlie man hold so superb a position ? To our tastes the finest paper in the whole number is that on Browning ' s " Men and Women , " one of the best and kindest criticisms " we hay « read for many a day . The
writer deals too vaguely with Browning s faults , although he indicates them ; and the impression left by his article is thus somewhat too favourable as an estimate ; but the spirit is noble , and the admiration springs from keen delight in excellence , not from idle panegyric . It is so seldom that critics have the rare courage of admiration . Fulsome and foolish praise is abundant enough—especially on the works of noodles ; hut enthusiasm for what is really fine is rare in periodical criticism . The writers always try to preserve an air of superiority , which every sentence of their criticism betrays to he the veriest pretence . How well thought and well expressed is the following passage on Browning ' s poetical disposition : —
Whether , indeed , the precise combination of qualities exhibited by lani \ va 3 not such as to stow that if he had so chosen from the first , lie could have been quite as remarkable and effective as a prose-writer as he had become as a writer of verse , might have been left an open question . . It was enough that , having chosen to become a poet , he had justified the choice . He bad done so amply . If the special distinction between the thinker or prose-writer , usually so called , and the poet consists in the fact that the one in the main thinks directly , and expresses his meaning straightforth in words and propositions , conveying it with the least delay to the understanding , while the other thinks representatively , and expresses his meaning rather in images , phantasies , fictitious trains of scene and incident , beautiful in themselves , and only involving tire meaning in their beauty * then Mr , Browning had proved his title to be called a poet .
Imagination wa 3 visibly the faculty he kept most in exercise . Perhaps he had not begun with this aa the predominant habit of bis mind , but he bad by practice given it the predominance , and brought his whole mind round to it . He had trained himself , as it were , never to think in the purely logical manner , but always through the imagination . Instead of making it the "business of Lis life , as a writer , to propound opinions , to investigate facts , to take up deep vexed questions and Bjeculate on them directly to an issue , or to pen every now and then a rousing pamphlet on the " present crisis , " lie had prescribed it to himself as his proper work to invent stories—to imagine men and women , either singly or in groups , endowed with such and such characters and Barrounded -with such and such circumstances ; and to make these ideal beings of » hia brain act , speak , think , and sing , so that it should almost seem in the memory afterwards that they had really existed .
Alluding to the probability of Browning ' s faults being made the text of renewed assault on the part of critics , the writer says : — ^ But surely , also , there are other critics who , making it their practice to b thankful for what is good in a writer , and to regard what is less agreeable in him if it : is persisted in , as something probably inseparable from the good by tho very atructuro of his genius , and therefore to "be accepted with it , and oven , perhaps , on farther acquaintance , to bo liked more than at first , will rather welcome the present work aB simply an additional gift to the public from a writer who has already of his own free will presented it with so much that is excellent , and will , accordingly , rognrd it as an opportunity for revising their previous judgment about him , so as to see whether it is to stand , or whether it may not bo modified in his favour . "We have so veryj little literature of the quality which Bkowninu furnishes , that the utmost encouragement sliould be given to it ; not by denying Browning ' s faults , but by elucidating , as this writer has done , his
remarkable excellencies . • The National Review opens with an article on Edward Gibbon ; obviously by the brilliant writer who wrote the " Edinburgh Reviewers ; " ami , although he has not this time produced so remarkable an essay—although lift has not reached the " height of his high argument , "—he has written an article which none who begin wall leave unfinished . Its value does not consist in an estimate or presentation of GinnoN , but in suggestions nn « l sulc-ghmcea . Hero i 3 one on education . After describing the desultory rending of boys , he says
—_ Besides thin sort of education , which some boys will voluntarily and naturally give thomaelvefc , there ne ^ da , of course , another and inoro rigoroun kind , which muat be imprettBod upon thorn from without . The torriblo diflioulty < , f early lifo —tho use of piuitorw and masters—really in , that thoy oompol boyu to u dintiuot mastery of that winch thoy do not wish to learn . Thoro to nothing to bo Baid for a preceptor wlio ia not dry . Mr . Carlylo demu-iboft with bitter fmtiro tho fate of ono of hi » hor « os who w « 8 obliged to ncquiro wholo uynloinn of information in whioh be , tho Uoro , wvw no use . and which ho kept aw far an might bo iu a vaount corner of his mind . And thw is tljo very point—dry lnnguago . todioun tnnthumntioB , a thumbed grammar , a dotoatod eluto , form gradually an interior Hupiuute
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 12, 1856, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12011856/page/16/
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