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Ap rh* 14,1855Q THE LEADEB, 353
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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The British Quarterly Review opens with ...
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.
Ap Rh* 14,1855q The Leadeb, 353
Ap rh * 14 , 1855 Q THE LEADEB , 353
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ICiteratttre-
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They ao not inakelawa-they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
The British Quarterly Review Opens With ...
The British Quarterly Review opens with an article of unusual excellence . It is on the Italian Literature of the Renaissance , and is evidently the product of a long and assiduous study of a literature studied by few in England , although most cultivated readers devote some portion of their studious leisure to certain parts of it . Most of us read Ariosto , and look into Pui ^ ct ; but few care to make any intimate acquaintance with Boiabdo or Bekni , and still fewer venture among the crowd of less celebrated writers . The author of the article before us has made this Literature a subject of special study , and , as' be expected , has much that is both new and valuable to communicate . Among the excellent points of his essay is the relegation of Puxci , Abiosto , Boiardo , and Berni into the class of Burlesque Writers , denying them the claim to be considered as Epic Poets . In Italy the Morgante and the Orlando have been accepted as serious epics . Ugo Foscolo and Panizzi , two learned Italians , have advocated the same opinion . Of course English and French critics have followed such cuiiiance . But our essayist shows most satisfactorily that upon any
intelligible classification of poetry these works have no claim to be considered as epics . After noting how other writers treat old legends , or the romances of an early age , he adds : — That Pulci and Ariosto did nat attempt in this spirit to divert the public by enshrining in solemn verse the insipid extravagances of the prose romancers , is sufficiently evident from the fact that , instead of pruning down , like Bernardo Tasso , and Alamanni , the inconsistencies of these fictions , they multiply them in every conceivable manner , and exaggerate them until they become a thousand times more ridiculous . If Orlando and his troops , at the famous battle of Roncesvalle , are surrounded by 50 , 000 Saracens , in the Quatre Fils Aymon ; in the Morgante of Pulci they make head against 600 , 000 : if , in Bojardo , Khodomont manages with difficulty to put a troop of Christians to flight ; in the Orlando of Ariosto he routs an entire army as easily as Sancho Panza a flock of sheep ; keeps the populace of a city at bay ; deand flinthen
spatches thousands of them to Orcus by a single stroke of his sword , gs buildings about their ears with the same facility as a child would blow down a castle of cards . If the heroes of the Reali di Francia frequently fight after they have been covered with mortal wounds , the heroes of Berni and Ariosto are not unfrequently found combating with no heads on their shoulders or after having been killed outright . Indeed , Baron Munchausen on the field of Leipsic does not perform so many marvellous exploits , or escape from such extraordinary complicities , as the leading heroes of the Morgante and the Orlando . When the marvellous incidents of the prose romances can be invested with amusing accessories , the occasion is never missed by either Pulci or Ariosto . Of this kind is the story of Orlando ' s fight with the seagull , which he manages to dragon shore by means of a cable tied to an enormous anchor , the ends of which he has fixed into the upper and lower jaws of the monster , in its attempt to gulp down both the boat and himself . Ariosto , when he wishes to aggrandise his objects , has recourse to those amusing contrasts which Swift applies with such ludicrous effect in the travels of Gulliver . Orlando , on the points of the anchor being thrust into the expanded jaws of the sea ork , leaps upon its lower teeth , and having sabred the roof and sides of its mouth , drops , amidst a shower of gore , into his boat , and rows out in a sea of blood . It would certainly be whimsical if the sources whence Burger partly drew his extravagant romance , and the Irish dignitary fed the fire of that wit which threw the gravest divines of Queen Anne ' s reign into convulsions of laughter , should have "been intended as serious descriptions of any phase of existence . . J But . this is not the wholejr f the case . With all the absurdities which the prose writers gravely narrate , ifiey are at" leastI true" to" the mediaeval chevaliers ; in representing them as preserving the integrity of their honour without a stain , and maintaining their plighted word unbroken . For this , however , the only point in which the old chroniclers are faithful to their subjects , they are almost perpetually travestied by the poets in question . Ruggiero ' s fidelity to Bradamant is only preserved so long as temptation is out of the way . Rinaldo attempts the chastity of every woman who seeks his protection , and , indeed , declares that any lady who does not satisfy the desires of her lover in this respect ought to undergo capital punishment . Neither Astolpho nor Olivero ever keep their word , when they can gain any advantage by breaking it . Now there are none of these variations which are not intended to divert the reader , from the ludicrous manner in which the contest between duty and pleasure is painted , and from the discovery of modern delinquents under the coat of the sworn martyrs to high principle and worth . He does not deny the serious element which is found in these works : — That these poems contain passages as sublime and pathetic as any that are to bo met with in the serious heroic epic , may be readily admitted ; but such passages will be found to be few in comparison with the jocund portions of the work , and are moreover irtterspersed or accompanied with so strong a tincture of the ludicrous as to detract in a great measure from the sympathetic feeling they arc otherwise calculated to produce . The death-bed scene of Orlando in Pulci is affecting until the author winds it up with a farcical description of the Roman doctrine of confession . One of the most pathetic parts of the Orlando Furioso is undoubtedly the death of Zcrbino , nnd the devotion of his faithful spouse , Isabella , to hid remains . The sportive clement is , however , the dominant element , and is in its nature wilful and burlesque : — But the sportful character of these productions ia moro glaringly evinced by the nature of their supernatural machinery and the mode in which it is introduced . If a poet bo in earnest with his subject , ho certainly will never venture to delineate tho supernal agents who preside over the religion of his heroes , except with those inajostio features which command awo and reverence wherever they appear . Without this coumt , nature must fuil to bo adequately represented ; for there never can bo , in tho present construction of things , such a solecism ns men placing faith in beings who Uo not exact tho homngo of tho higher faculties of their minds . Hence all the serious epic writers , whether they believed in tho Huiiernntural agents they employed or not , have exhausted all tho resources of their minds in investing thorn with attributes ofu grand and imposing churacter . Voltniro , while , conducting tho spirit of Henri Quatro through tho Elysiau regions , sinks his doistical notions and writes like a pioua Catholic . Though Cnmoens had tho bad tnsto to roprcsont Christian saints in conjunction with Pagan divinities , as watching over tho destiny of tho bark which
effected the greatest revolution ever witnessed in the commercial history of nations , these beings are invariably introduced with pomp and solemnity , and inspire that awe which dilates the subject to the scale of epic grandeur . No serious poet , from Homer down to Klopstock , ever alludes to supernatural agencies without that gravity which shows for the time being that he is a believer in the pretensions to which they lay claim . Now this principle , so essential to the grave epopse , is completely inverted by Pulci , Ariosto , and their followers . The invariable rule with them is to introduce the agents of religion in some position either at war , with their profession or inconsistent with their dignity , for the . purpose of covering them with ridicule . If these authors should happen to * be occasionally serious , the reader may be assured that priests and monks , angels and demons , are some thousand miles away . Their presence is invariably the signal that the fun is going to begin . In Ariosto the presence of Discord is necessary to create disunion in the Pagan ranks , and that of Silence to
conduct the English contingent of the Christian army stealthily to the enemy ' s encampments . The archangel Michael is despatched by God to engage these two spirits in this mission , and flies to a monastery with th « idea of delivering his instructions to Silence , whom he naturally concludes must be an inhabitant of the cloister . To his surprise , however , the monastery is not the retreat of Silence , but of Discord . The demon having , according to the archangel ' s instructions , kindled the sparks of animosity in the Pagan camp , flies back to his beloved monastery to be present at the election of an abbot . While the malevolent spirit is blowing the fires of enmity among the monks on this occasion , the Pagans settle their differences and again present a united front to the enemy . God is extremely furious with Michael for having neglected to keep Discord in the Pagan camp ; whereat the archangel again seeks the monastery in search of the demon , and having found him in the midst of the monks , who , under his influence , are flinging their breviaries at each other , he administers to the demon a few kicks , and drives him back to his charge by breaking a crozier across
his head and shoulders . We are doing the writer an injustice by quoting only such passages ; our space , however , forbids us from doing more than give the reader a taste of the writer ' s quality . On the adverse argument , he says : — The arguments by which the opposite view has been maintained , besides involving a certain amount of inconsistency , do not singly carry with them much force . Ginguene ' , while classing the Morgante and the Mambriano among poetry of the burlesque kind , seems to think that the Orlando Furioso may pass muster as a serious poem , because it does not exceed the limits of that amount of comic humour which the romantic epic may receive without subverting its gravity . With this concession , Foscolo and Panizzi very naturally contend that the Morgante ought to be included in the same category . The principle which the French critic applies to Ariosto the Italian critics apply to Pulci . It admits of this easy answer : that if the ludicrous in these compositions did not destroy their serious character , there would remain no mark by which the grave epic could be distinguished from the burlesque , or in . other
words , the actual representation of an heroic action from its travesty . Foscolo cites the case of Homer and Shakspeare , and Panizzi , with the zeal of a disciple , follows him . But if these bards be examined , their jests will never be found out of their proper place . Let it be supposed , however , that Homer had represented Venus kicking- the shins of Achilles , the only part where that gentleman was vulnerable ; or that Shakspeare had dressed the ghost in Hamlet in pantaloons , and made him deliver extravagances about the Roman doctrine of purgatory ; would either of the Italian critics believe , if such jokes were repeated wherever the supernatural was introduced , that either of the bards in question could have the slightest claim to rank- as serious poets , merely because in some ordinary scenes they had preserved- a grave countenance ? . It is the invariable rule of Shakspeare in his tragediesjp put his jests in the mouths of his lowest characters . It is a rule almost as invariable with Pulci and Ariosto to reserve their whimsicalities for their gravest personages . If such be not the distinguishing feature of the burlesque epic , we ask our opponents to draw the line between the Pucelle and the Henriade .
These extracts will doubtless send the reader to the Review itself for fuller acquaintance with the writer ' s views . The same Review also contains an interesting paper on " Watt and his Inventions , " and a powerful bit of polemical writing on " Our New Religion , " directed against Comte , Newman , Theodobe jPakkeb ,. & c . The London Quarterly Review keeps to the pirbmisen 6 T"it 3 ~ eMly " nuinb " ers , ' and is ably written . " The Albigenses" is an interesting historical essay ; " The Prisons of the Continent" contains much curious information ; ' " Joseph Addison" is a survey of our classic writer , which , although pleasant to read , was not imperatively called for , the writer having nothing new to communicate . " British Costume , Mediseval and Modern , " is a gossipping , erudite paper on a subject of very general interest . In one passage the writer says : —
There is no part of our costume , either male or female , that has not already passed from one extreme of absurdity to another , and been most admired at its highest point . Coats have been worn with voluminous skirts dangling about tho wearer ' s heels , and with scanty lapels descending six inches below tho waist . Coat-sleeves at one time fitted skin-tight ; and more than once have been so wide as to sweep the ground . Flapped waistcoats , which , in tho time of George I ., reached nearly to the stocking , were soon cut so short as to bo nearer the arm-pits than the thigh . The close * fitting , tightly-strapped trouser contrasts ludicrously enough with the trunk-hoso of tho sixteenth century , stuffed out with five or six pounds of bran to such an extent that , as an Harleian manuscript tells us , alterations had to bo made in tho Purliament-House , bo as to afford additional accommodation for tho Members' seats . And in a note on this passage we read : —
It is related that a fast man of tho time , on rising to conclude a visit of ceremony , had tho misfortune to damage his nether integuments by a protruding nail in his chair , so that , by tho time ho gained tho door , tho escape of bran was so rapid as to cause a state of complete collapse ! It may have been that similar mishaps caused the substitution of wool or hair for bran , which afterwards became common , llolmo , in his « Notes on Dress , " says , " A law was mndo against such as did stuffo their bryches to make them stand out : whereas , when a certain prisoner ( in these tymos ) was accused for wearing such breeches contrary to law , ho began to excuse l >> msolf of tho offence , and endeavoured by little and little to discharge himself of that which ho did wouro within them ; ho drew out a pair of sheets , two taUc-cloaths , ten napkins , four shirts , a brush , a glosHO , a combo , and nightcaps , with other things of uao , saying , ' Your Lordship may understand that because I have no safer store house , these pockets do servo mo for a roomo to lay my goods in ; and though it bo a strait prison , yqt it is a storehouse big enough for thorn ; for I have many thing * moro yet of value within them . ' And' so his discharge was accepted wul well laughed at . Tho Journal of Psychological Medicine usually contrives to give greater
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 14, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14041855/page/17/
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