On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (5)
-
No. 408, January 16, 1858] THE LBADBB. 6...
-
'-«>• i < ^LltBriltttrB * '
-
?":— r-ritiesare not the legislators, bu...
-
Those of our readers who have not alread...
-
THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BROWX. Lectures on t...
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
No. 408, January 16, 1858] The Lbadbb. 6...
No . 408 , January 16 , 1858 ] THE LBADBB . 65
'-«≫• I ≪ ^Lltbriltttrb * '
iCitmitm ? - ,
?":— R-Ritiesare Not The Legislators, Bu...
? " : — r-ritiesare not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not CrtUC jSkel & ws ^ -they interpret a nd try to enforce them .-Edinburgh Review .
Those Of Our Readers Who Have Not Alread...
Those of our readers who have not already read the most attractive and successful book of the season , Dr . Livingstone ' s Travels , will find a lucid and pleasant sketch of its main features in the first article of the current Westminster Review , under the title of ' African Life / The contents of this article present some rather striking points of similarity and contrast to those of another elaborate paper in the same number , entitled ' Morayshire . ' Both are articles of travel and research ; but in the one , the region described is the limited area of a well-known county ; in the other , the vast deserts , prairies , and bush-tracts of an unexplored continent . And we cannot but think that the Review fulfils its true office far better in giving hurried outlines of the new than in elaborating minute points of the old . It is , surely , of far less
importance to furnish archaeological details of facts , geographical or historical , with whose main features we are already familiar , than to give new facts and ideas touching lands and tribes hitherto unknown . In devoting its pages to local topography , the Westminster avowedly follows the lead of the Quarterly and it seems disposed to do for the Scotch counties what the latter journal is doing for the English—give a history of each in successive numbers . As this topographical epidemic seems likely to spread amongst the Quarterlies , we must repeat the opinion already expressed , that however important such histories may be , a Review is not the proper place for them . The history of a county is an independent subject , as much so in its degree as the history of a countrv or a continent , and it should be treated as such—in a separate work not crowded with other articles into the narrow space of a
quarterly Review . It is not the province of a Review to give independent treatises , scientific or historical , but to furnish its readers with brief and lucid expositions and criticisms of what is new in science and philosophy ; of the most important topics of the day , political and social ; and of what is of passing or of permanent and perennial interest in literature , art , and life . Surely , just now there is no such dearth of interesting topics that the Reviews are obliged to poach upon the time-honoured domain of the Archaeological Journal and the Gentleman ' s Magazine . If literary topics are rather scant , scientific , and especially political ones , are abundant enough . With the Indian and Chinese wars abroad , with Indian Reform and commercial
discussions at home , with workhouses crowded with famishing operatives at one end of the town , and cathedrals opened to fill their mouths with musical east wind at the other , there surely can be no lack of subjects of grave and pressing interest . Generally speaking , however , in the selection of its subjects the Westminster Review has few sins to answer for , either of omission or commission . It rarely chooses a dull or unseasonable subject , and as rarely neglects one that is of immediate and practical interest . Notwithstanding the paper on * Moraysliire / and another , entitled * The Religious Weakness of Protestantism , ' less pertinent than impertinent , the present number illustrates this , having two able articles on the commercial crisis , and one on India . The remaining
papers are one on ' Spirit and Spirit-rapping '—a full historical sketch and criticism of the wildest monomania that has recently attacked society ; and one on ' Shelley '—biographical , critical , and sympathetic , but rather diffuse . The two main literary articles of the National Review this quarter are ' George Sand' and Ben Jonson . ' The former , a well-written sketch , contains a juster estimate of the most impulsive , out-spoken , and brilliant of modern French novelists than is usually to be met with in either British or French journals . Madame Dudevant reflects herself in her writings , and she is just the person to create warm friends and bitter foes ; so that most writers
being either partisans or opponents , it is difficult to get on either side of the Channel a fair estimate of her character and works . The article in the National merits the praiso of being a sincere and tolerably successful attempt on the part of an English writer to accomplish a most difficult task—to place himself in Geougk Sand ' s actual position , social and domestic , and estimate her conduct and writings with justice and charity . The article on ' Bon Jonson' is wholly critical , and the criticism is good , being brief , incisive , and just throughout . The following extracts will illustrate the pith aud vigour of tho writing . The first refers to one of the main features of his comedies , tlio second to his minor poems : —
There is little of geniality iu Jonsons writings . Ho is by nature a satirist , and was possessed by a sottlod conviction that tho display and aatiro of existing manners was the most legitimate function of comedy ; and the mass of ull his amusement is extracted either from the caricature of some individual monstrosity , or from tho affected and ridiculous habits of some particular class . He adopts Cicero ' s definition , " who would have a comedy to bo imitatio vita , speculum conmtetudinis , iinago verltatis . " Tho court especially is a favourite subject with tiim ; and absurd and overcharged as " - ~ Bome-of-his-descriptiona-Boem ,- * -wo-muat ^ -bQ-. cautiQua-ia > diacr « dltin « . ( ihoni . Jonaon , though a caricaturist , was a keen and accurate observer ; he hud little tendency or powor to invent , and n basis of mutter-of-faot no doubt underlies all his fictions . Ho is one of tho boat and oomploteat authorities wo have for ascertaining the manners of the court and city in tlic time of James I .
Ills strength lies in hln wit . Generally it has a special character of its own : it is ponderous built-up mirtli , hoavy unsparing caricature . Ho lays on coat after coat of the aamo paint without relief or variety ; yet ho covers a wider field of wit than most men , and , it would bo diflicult to auy in which department ho has proved himself most successful . The Fox ia most witty , The Siknt Woman tho most humorous , Tho
Alchymist most grotesque . Perhaps his genius leans most ia the latter direction . This is a field of laughter not much occupied in the present day ; perhaps it belongs to a coarser and simpler state of mind than now prevails . Such caricatures as those of Leonardo da Vinci show it in ita rudest forms . It prevailed in . the time of George III . ; Smollett and Gilray are grotesque , Sterne is often so . It is the element of the ridiculous that lies either in the native disproportion or in the voluntary distortion of real things . The figure of Punch is the type of the grotesque . It deals much with the disease and wretchedness and basenesses of human nature , and is more or less inhuman . It is rare in Shakspeare : perhaps the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet , and FalstafFa ragged regiment , are the only instances of it . In Jonson , on the other hand , it is common ; but rather in its moral than physical manifestations . Bartholomew Fair is made up of it , in the most degraded forms ; The Alchymlst , The Staple of Nei 08 The New Inn , contain abundant specimens of it . His worst works are full of instances of his unbounded power of imagining ludicrous situations . Of his minor poems the writer says : —
There is enough thought , harshly expressed , to require an effort to understand them ; and not enough to reward the effort when read . They are weighed down by a sort of inert mass of mind which the imagination has not sufficient power to kindle . It might have sufficed a leaser body of intellect , but it is outjof proportion to what it has to move . Struggling gleams of fire shine through-ar well-heaped mass of materials ; but rarely does tho whole burst into a clear blaze . Now and then , indeed , some exquisite poetical idea may be found , half hidden by the cumbrousness of its expression , as when he compares the serenity of his mistress ' s face to the calmness and life-renewing influence which pervade the air after tempest ; an idea not easily suggested by the lines , " As alone there triumphs to the life All the good , all the gain , of the elements' strife . "
Ther * is gold , and pure gold , in his writings ; but mixed with large lumps of clay . The worst of it is , the clay is as solemnly and carefully hammered out as the gold ; and the author evidently refuses to acknowledge even to himself that it is of any inferior value . Labour Jonson never spared ; he gave all his works the finish his best pains could afford , but he used material in itself incapable of taking a polish . He had a keen incisive wit ; but it is an Andrea Ferrara rather than a rapier . A sort of native unwieldiness is apt to leave its impression in what he writes ; and his rhythm is like his matter , it has a lumbering elephantine motion , full of stops and sudden charges . His epigrams are often sharp-pointed , and witty ; but , like all epigrams , they are dull reading . They are moulded in the Latin type ; and though some of them have point , many of them are only brief occasional poems on a single subject , mostly eulogistic of some particular person . Some of the satirical ones are also probably personal ; but in general aimed at some vicious practice or moral deformity , set forth under an appropriate title , in which , as in the body of the poem , he loves to show his wit . We have epigrams to ' Sir Annual Tilter , ' to ' Don Surly , ' to Sir Voluptuous Beast , ' to ' Fine Grand , ' to Captain Hungry , ' & c .
Of the remaining papers we may note , as well worth reading , one on' Colonel Mure and the Attic Historians' — a defence of Thucydides against the attacks of the gallant and learned scholar ; and another ou ' Hashish '—a very interesting account of that seductive narcotic .
The Works Of Samuel Browx. Lectures On T...
THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BROWX . Lectures on the Atomic Theory , and Essays Literary and Scientific . By Samuel Brown . 2 vols . Edinburgh : Constable and Co . The writings of Dr . Samuel Brown are of permanent value , and deserve a place in every philosophical library . Sir William Hamilton , erudite and cautious as he was , declared that the lectures on the atomic theory entitled their author to take rank among true discoverers ; Dr . Brown could appreciate this judgment pronounced upon an hypothesis to the elaboration of which he devoted the whole of his purely scientific life , for he had been struck by the opinion of Mitscherlich that it takes fourteen years to discover and establish a single fact , even in chemistry . The hypothesis stated was that of the positive unity of matter , atoms being to be conceived , for chemical purposes , as extended substances , placed at distances measurably
great , which can be no more described as solid than as liquid or gaseous , seeing that all these three states are equally modified conditions of their aggregation . According to the existing view , as the editor explains , placing the two theories in apposition , atoms are conceived of as solid nuclei , centres of attractive and repulsive force , placed at distances immeasurably small , not only absolutely but relatively to their own dimensions . Dr . Brown held that the forces , movements , actions , and reactions of atoms , though subsensible , are as conceivably within the power of mathematical induction and geometrical calculus as those of the supersensible or heavenly masses , while the older theory is that their shapes , sizes , and mutual action and reaction interfere with all possibility of calculating their forces and movements . Dr . Brown ' s belief was that the production of a true tertium quid by the chemical combination of two equal and similar atoms is conceivable , while ,
according to the former hypothesis , no tertium # ««/ could thus arise otherthan that represented by tho smallest possible mass of oxygen , as distinguished from the two atoms of oxygen , which constitute it . The four lectures developing these ideas and bringing them * into practical relation with the concrete details of the science' are remarkable , not only as scientific expositions but for their lucid style and logical method , and the acquaintance thoy show with large and various departments of literature . Students should place these compositions on their shelves and take them down often , for thoy are of no common worth , and might well lead tho most superficial intp abstruse scientific inquiries . Dr . Brown , who lectured at Edinburgh with tBe
lute Edward Forbes , possessed the art of rendering philosophy almost light reading , while he avoided none of its heights or depths , or passages of tho remotest obscurity . We turned with interest to his treatise on alchemy and the alchemists , concerning which the Americans have set afloat so ingenious u tueQi : y .. ^ Hjjs jdejLkihat suggested by aplain interpretation of the hermetic writings , apart from syinFolisiir ^ dHiieroglyt Jhyr-Barlro ^ vasnoHgnonui ^ of tho doubts still hovering over tho subject , or that Scnligor ' a quotation ot a title from Zozimus tho Panupolito , vaguely referred to also by Olnus Borrichius , has never been authenticated . Whence did tho word Alchemy originate 'i From tho tradition Ohema , narrating the intercourse ot the genii with the daughters of men , or from the antique name ot kgypt , mentioned by Plutarch P The question remains unanswered . Hermes Trismegistus himself is u most my thical porsouago ; and Dr . Browa very
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 16, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16011858/page/17/
-