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734 THiS LEADER. [SATtriibiY ,
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• ICitottttt. do
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: Critics are not the legislators,'but t...
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In resuming our notice of the Periodical...
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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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734 This Leader. [Sattriibiy ,
734 THiS LEADER . [ SATtriibiY ,
• Icitottttt. Do
• ICitottttt . do
: Critics Are Not The Legislators,'But T...
: Critics are not the legislators , ' but the judges and police of literature . - 'T ^ y not ' . ¦ . , : makelaws—tEey interpret and try , to enforcethera : —EdinburghJtevieu ! . -
In Resuming Our Notice Of The Periodical...
In resuming our notice of the Periodicals , interrupted last week by exigencies of space , we first direct the reader ' s attention to the Prospective Review , b . work always remarkable , and this number particularly so for its paper on Sir William Hamilton , and for an essay on Shakspeare . Two more unpromising subjects than the great Metaphysician and Shakspeabe ( und kein Ende !) could scarcely be proposed to an " Able Editor ; " I these writers have contrived to write valuable papers on the character of I Sir William ' s Philosophy , and on the character of the man Shakspeare . I The first is partly historical and partly expository ; no one interested in s metaphysics should allow it to pass unread , its subtlety and eloquence bel traying the authorship unmistakably . From the paper on Shakspeare j ) . we are tempted to make an extract or two ; for example , this enforcement ^ - of an idea we are repeatedly iterating : — i ¦ " The reason why so few good books are written , is that so few people that can i write know anything . In general an author has always lived in a room , has read ! books , has cultivated science , is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the I best authors , but he is out of the way' of employing his own eyes and ears . He has nothing to hear ana nothing to see . His life is a vacuum . The mental habits of Robert Southey , wliich about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public journals , is the type of literary existence , just as the praise bestowed on it shows the admiration excited by it among literary people . He wrote poetry ( as if anybody could ) before breakfast ; he read during breakfast . He wrote history until dinner j he corrected proof sheets between dinner and tea ; he wrote an essay for the Quarterly afterwards ; and after supper , by way of relaxation , composed the Doctor , a lengthy and elaborate jest . Now , what can any one think of such a life—except how clearly it shows that the habits best fitted for communicating information , formed with the best care , and daily regulated by the best motives , ai'e exactly the habits which are likely to afford a man the least information to communicate . Southey had no events , no experiences . His wife kept house , and allowed him pocket-money , just as if he had been a German professor devoted to accents , tobacco , and the dates of Horace ' s amours . And it is pitiable to think that so meritorious a life was only made endurable by a painful delusion . He thought that day by day , and hour by hour , he was accumulating stores for the instruction and entertainment of a long posterity . His epics were to be in the hands of all men , and his History oj Brazil , the ' Herodotus of the South American Republic ' As if his epics were not already dead , and as if the people who now cheat at Valparaiso care a real who it was that cheated those before them . Yet it was only by a conviction like this that an industrious . and caligraphic man ( for such was Robert Southey ) , who might have earned money as a clerk , worked sflft his days for half a clerk ' s wages , at occupation much duller and more laborious . The critic in the Vicar of Wakefield lays down that you should always say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains ; but in the case of the practised literary man , you should often enough say that the writings would have been much better , if the writer had taken less pains . He says he has devoted his life to the subject—the reply is , ' Then you have taken the best way to prevent your making anything of it . ' Instead of reading studiously what Burgendicius and iEnescidemus said men were , you should have gone out yourself , and seen ( if for bacon tens time in nis
the copiousness of quotation in Parliament and in newspapers , together with the frequency of articles in Magazines and Heviews on classical writers . Horace is treated of i n this number of the British Quarterly , Aristophanes in Tait , Plato in Hogg ' s Instructor and in the Scottish Edu ,-cational Journal ; and treated ., moreover , by men knowing what they are about . The article oh Aristophanes opens with a glance at a curious and oft-quoted fact , for which many explanations have been unsuccessfull y suggested , namely , that comedy is fugitive and temporal , tragedy is eternal :- — " The mere remoteness of ancient times places us at a disadvantage in speculatinc ' upon their elements of comic delineation . As no age appears poetical to itself , so none appears humorous to another . The distance which lends the enchantments of imagination to the view , robs it of those minutely personal features in which the comic lurks . Great objects loom grander through the mists of antiquity , while smaller are altogether lost in its haze . " We quote this to protest against it . The reason why we do not understand ancient fun ( when we do not understand it ) is simply because laughter , being the result of a perception of incongruity , whenever the standard of the congruous is wanting , whenever we are unable to detect the incongruity , the comic element vanishes . Athenian wit is frequently no wit to us , just for the same reason that London wit is frequentl y unintelligible in the provinces . Othello with a strong Scotch accent would be ludicrous to us , but in Germany or France the incongruity would not be perceptible . The rule then , is this : whenever the incongruity lies in a direction where from universal experience it is perceptible , the fun is universal and eternal . Thus , comedy of manners is fleeting , comedy of character eternal . It all depends on whether we have a standard of congruity whereby to test the incongruity . The article Plato in Hogg ' s Instructor , now a monthly magazine of high character , is the first of a series on the " Men of the Past , " and is really a good study , although , as we think , exaggerated in its estimate of Plato ; but it has for centuries been the fashion to exaggerate in that direction . In the same magazine there is a good paper on Edgar Poe , and the second part of Gilfillan ' s paper on Burke— -but where is De Quincey and his essay on the English Language ? The Two Platos , in ^ lhe Scottish Educational Journal , is a pleasant , gdssipy notice of Plato , the comic dramatist , in contrast with Plato , the dramatic dialectician . The writer quotes a passage from the dramatist which would fall in perfectly with the sentiments of those numerous mild husbands , now daily brought before magistrates , for undue exercise of the marital syllogism , — yvvq yap , r \ v / lev avrrjv del k 6 \ cl £ t ] S , ecrri iravrtov KTrniarav Kpario'Tov , which may be rendered , " For a wife , if eternally you beat her , is the greatest of all treasures "—a sentiment , by the way , which stands in piquant contrast with " Platonic love !" Bentley and the British Journal , this month , are made up of the usual , light magazine papers , calling for no special notice from us ; and a word of " reminder" will suffice for the English Cyclopcedia , the third part of which is now issued , rich in woodcuts and valuable articles .
you can see ) sometning yourseit . -Lora . us some one time boasted in Latin , 'Decent annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone ? and echo answered in Greek , ' Sve , You ass . '" Again , this description of Falstapf , with Hazlitt incidentally touched off : — " We mean that the animal spirits of Falstafl" givo him an easy , vngue , diffusive sagacity , which is peculiar to him . A moroso man , Iago , for example , may know anything , and is apt to know a good deal , but what ho knows is generally all in corners . Ho knows number 1 , number 2 , number 3 , and so on ; but there is not anything continuous , or smooth , or fluent in his knowledge . Persons conversant with the works of Hazlitt will know in a minute what we mean ! Everything which ho observed he seemed to observe from a certain soreness of mind ; he looked at peoplo because they offended him ; he had the same vivid notion of them that a man has of objects wliich grate on a wound in his body . But there is nothing at all of this in Kulstan "; on the contrary , everything pleases him , and everything is food for a joke . Cheerf ' ulnesH and prosperity givo an easy abounding sagacity of mind which nothing clso does give . Prosperous peoplo bound easily over all the surface of things which their lives present to them ; very likely they keep to the surface ; there aro things beneath or above to which they may not penetrate or attain , but what is on any part of the Burl ' ace , that , they know well . ' Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life , ' and they do not lift it . What is sublime or awful above , what i « ' flightless and drear' beneath , —these they may not dream of . Nor is any one pieeo or corner of life ho well impressed on them as on inindn less happily constituted . It in only peoplo who have had u tooth out that reall y know tho dentist ' s waiting-room . Yofc such peoplo , for the time- at least , know nothing but that and their tooth . The easy and sympathizing friend who accompanies them know « everything ; hints gently ut the contents of tho Times , . and would cheer you with Lord Pnhnui-Blon '» replies . Ho , on iv greater Hcale , the inan of painful experience knows but too well what has hurt him , and where and why , but the happy have a . vague- and rounded view of tho round world , and mich * it ih certain , was tho knowledge of Fulntufr , and , with ft limitation , to ho uhowu pro . anjy * - sontly , of SlmkciHportro jiIbo . " ^^^^\ J ^>^^ jp > Therc arc some happy turns of thought and caprices of expression in this 4 & y *\ \ 'Y ' * ' &* ^ w ^ P - Thus it is remarked , and is indeed remarkable , that Shakhi » kaui- ; , ^^ C '^ - - * ' »" ;¦< >'''^ xAh ?^ K ^ y ftn < l delight , is biographically unknown to us , but , nevertheless , f r ^^ viV ^ V . ' ^ X i toW ) 6 is one fact decisively known , —¦ " The reverential nature of the English I VjM ^ ^** ' ""[' ' /¦ ^ I *"" " * carefully preserved what they thought the great excellence of \ ^ \ £ ^\ . ^ . \ \ \ ^ *^ l ) Oet — tlmt lui rna < lc a fortune !" ^ P - ^ r v ¦¦ ' ¦ '* ' \{ % » ^ foreigner would imagine we were a very classical people , judging from ir Bal *^ jt »^^^ ' ? WBWK-yi . ^ MBBBEn : ri ; j : ;;;;; E ^^ ¦ 1 ^ M—_ M-M __
THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS OF THE " VESTIGES . " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation . Tenth Edition . With extensive Additions and Emendations , and Illustrated by numerous Engravings on Wood . J . Churchill . Tenth edition ! In spite of vituperative syllogisms from men of science , and of contemptuous epithets tacked on to off-hand "refutations , " from men of no science—in spite of confident assertion , and adroit insinuation , all pointing at the " atheism" and " superficiality" of this work , we find that iu nine years ten editions have been called for by a bullied public , these editions being for tho most part necessarily large , by reason of their cheapness ; and we do not find that the " profounder" works , written by these more " accurate" and orthodox refuters , are received with anything liko that degree of favour . Tho Vestiges , wo aro constantly assured , " leads to atheism , " is vory inaccurate and shallow , and is the offspring of a " cold and cheerless mater ialism ; " but wo cannot detect its atheism ; wo are by no means sensible of itB shallowness ; and as to tho " cold and cheerless" ism , to which its parentage is ascribed , until wo have- more satisfactory accounts both of it ; and of its antagonist ( " hoi ; and hilarious spiritualism"P ) wo must bo content to range ourselves on tho side of the public—an exfcensivo one—calling for ton editions in nine years . Tho . fact is significant of one of these two things : either the British public has an eager preference for books declared to bo inaccurate , shallow , false , dangerous , and in all respects contemptible ; or there is an uneasy unrest in the minds of men , a painful suspicion , of tho validity of what acknowledged Teachers choose to avow . Oliooso your horn ! ¦ Tho fact is significant also of tho steadily growing conviction that Life , and Life in its most complex form , Society , are . us amenable to rigorous Law as any of tho phenomena of tho inorganic world . A conviction that tho Whole is the manifestation of one infinite Life , tho incarnate activity of God , not in alion indifference , not in estranged subjection ; a conviction that tho progress of Humanity is but another phase in tho universal procession of Life , and that ita history is but one chapter in tho great history of tho universe . Because tho Vestiges prosents the broad outlines of such a , History , its success has been enormous ; and not bocause it is superficial , and has " great charms of style , " as wo aro so frequently informed . Thore has been great exaggeration respecting tho stylo of this work ; porhaps not wholly unintentional exaggeration , aa a womau's beauty is sometimes pruned at tho expense of her intellect * Compared with
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 13, 1853, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13081853/page/16/
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