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No. 421, A pbil 17, 1858.] THE X E A P E...
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- ^ ^ »ire are not the legislators, but ...
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Tee first article in the last number of ...
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SHELLEY. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelle...
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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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No. 421, A Pbil 17, 1858.] The X E A P E...
No . 421 , A pbil 17 , 1858 . ] THE X E A P EJR . ¦ _ 377
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literature-
- ^ ^ »Ire Are Not The Legislators, But ...
- ^ ^ » ire are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . Tbeydo not k" malcelaws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review . - »
Tee First Article In The Last Number Of ...
Tee first article in the last number of the Westviinster Review is on a subject whose title will appear to many at first sight very like a contradiction in terms « The Religion of Positivism . ' It consists of two parts , contributed by different writers ; the first b eing an outline of the religious idea and effort of the Positivists in its more general scope and aim , the second an analysis of M .
Coiite ' s Cate ' ckisme de la Religion Positive , recently translated by Mr . Congbeve - " While repudiating M . Comte ' s minute and dictatorial elaboration of his scheme , the writers believe that the religious notions of Positivism will constitute , in some modified form , the Church of the future . Many who cannot share this anticipation , will readily admit the importance of the truth which the faith of Positivism reflects , though in a distorted and exaggerated form , and which the writers of the article strongly insist on—the necessity of connecting religion more closely with humanity , of finding for it a deeper social root , and investing witli its sacredness the complex whole of human nature and human life . In this point of view the article in the Westminster strikingly coincides with a kindred one in the new number of the National :, entitled '
Religion and Society : Paley and Charming . ' Both signalize the supreme importance of developing the social or human side of religion ( which , in the pages of the National , is Christianity ) that Protestantism has so much neglected ; and both in this faithfully represent the reaction to that one-sidedness which is the great religious aspect of the day . The article in the National starts from the French translation of Channixg ' s ' Life and Works , ' which has recently been published in Paris , with a preface by M . Reuusat , mainly for the purpose of quickening the deadened sense of spiritual and personal freedom in France . The following passage indicates the weakness not only of Channin g ' s point of view , but of more than half the religious teaching of the present day : —
A common life must be the ground of close social union . Channing's teaching tended to make each man conscious of his own individuality—alike in its noblest and its most painful phases—more and more profoundly . He spoke of spiritual life too much as an aspiration , too little as a reality . He sometimes made men feel the infinite distance between themselves and God—the spiritual immensity across which the poor human will must cheerfully work its way—more keenly than the power which , if they would but recognize it , already worked in them . His was often the teaching of want : the aim was distant , the way was long , and for each man solitary . Even the fact of God ' s help had to be painfully realized by an effort of thought . He is apt rather to tell men what they ought to feel on the hypothesis of ' religion , than to ht of reli certaintiesThe tkour / ht
explain to them what they do feel in the lig gious . ' of God ' frequently takes the place in his writings of God . Of course this is often the state of any sincere man ' s mind . But realities , not thoughts of realities , are the basis of all union ; facts , not hopes . And Channing , by the ideal cast which he teaches us to give to every spiritual influence that acts on the mind , —keeping it at arm ' s length till we have weighed and estimated its value , —often turns a certainty into an aspiration . " We know how easy it is to doubt the existence even of the material universe , if we will not follow our first instinct to assume it , but begin instead to discuss what value we are to attach to our impressions ; and it is certainly not less easy to turn spiritual realities into shadows or mere foretastes of the future , by holding aloof from the influence they bring . Westminsterthe
We quote the following short passages , the first from the , second from the National , to show the general identity of view in the two articles : — The religion of the Positivist , then , is pre-eminently that which has man for its object , which believes in man , serves man , and reverences man , man , not as a personal and unrelated being , but man as that collective and independent existence made up of manj' lives and many men , which has lived in the Past , which lives in the Present , and will live in the Future . For individual man is a chimera . Man can only exist as a member of society . The wisdom , the wealth , the decoration and grandeur of life , are the inherited capital of past generations . As the natural blood of our forefathers circulates through our bodily frames , so the moral and intellectual blood of the ancient world has passed into our spiritual veins . The collective life of Humanity ia the true religious idea
Is not the greater part of our spiritual life as a matter of fact , still conditioned by the individual channels of human inuuouce through which we hnve drawn it ( Would ' progress '—would life , as we understand it , —that is , the growth of thoughts and faculties , all of which have immediate and direct concern with the society in which wo are placed , —be longer possible if the very law of our being , the very condition of our conscience , the very spring of our piety , were -annihilated by the annihilation of the other members of that living body of which wo « re part ? It la the condition of human life that wo could not bo children at all without also being brothers . Iho social law of our being reuclics , we ftio confident , to tho deepest depth of our most solitary life . A man's individual Hfo could not grow , nay , could not be that of a man at all , could ho bo truly ' cut off from the community of man ; oven in solitude and isolation it la tho life of a social being so long as it is human .
We have said that the ' Religion of Positivism' is u reaction against tho onesidedncss of existing faiths , but it is a reaction as extreme and erroneous us that to which it is oppositcl . Tho refonuor , the puritan , tho mystio , the religious enthusiast of every ngo and country , reacting against ft dead faith and a sensuous system , says " Tlic . ro is nothing but the Divine ; wo must become -partaker ^ of- ~ Uio ~ : DivJuo ^ uUu : Q .: L ^ Cftr H ii ° _ * L . beauty and gladness , is but a " waste howling wilctarhcsS ; " a " vale of tears ; " this richly -furnished frumo " a vilo body , " " sinful mid accursed day . " Such a partial faith , however strong and wide-spread , must booh nwnilcst its insufficiency . Outraged Nature will avenge herself ; and ou this partial exhibition Christianity has been loft exposed to assaults , which , ou a broader and truer interpretation , she might have successfully resisted . Itoaotion was inevitable , and we see it on all hands , and in
many various forms , that of Positivism being the most extreme . The Positivist , taking exactly opposite ground to the mystie , says , " There is nothing but the Human ; there is no God but Humanity , and M . Comte is his prophet ; " and thus falls into error equally extreme and still more fatal . . While the mystic destroys man the Positivist dethrones God , and each is guilty of unconscious blasphemy against the truth . Both God and man exist , and no faith can be really catholic which does not recognise and adjust these essentials of religion . The Westminster has also a graphic and well-written article on the ' Boscobel Tracts / and a striking one on ' Party Government , ' to which we should probably revert in another place . Amongst other literary articles of interest in the National we may note as specially worth reading—the first , on Matthew Aknold ' s Merope , and the last , ' The Waverley Novels . '
Shelley. The Life Of Percy Bysshe Shelle...
SHELLEY . The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley . By Thomas Jefferson Hogg . In Four Volumes . Vols . I . and II . Moxon . We have already spoken of this work as being valuable on account of the materials of which it is composed . Mr . Hogg knew Shelley intimately for some years ; he possesses several letters from the poet to himself ; he recollects many anecdotes of his life and habits ; and the friends and relatives of the departed genius have placed in his hands various documents which help to confirm what we already knew less perfectly . But here our commendation of the work must end . Of the spirit in which it is written we can only speak in terms of the severest reprehension . Mr . Hogg has chosen to turn a biography of one of the best and most generous of men into an occasion for snarling at and -vilifying the friends of that man ; and he has introduced into a work which should have been written in the largest and most liberal spirit a tone of petty egotism , a habit of depreciating all noble effort for the advancement of the world , such as would have wakened
Shelley ' s astonishment and contempt . Mr . Hogg , the gentleman who apparently esteems himself the only fit biographer of the . Republican Shelley , is a Tory , —one who seems proud of that preposterous appellation ; a thorough . Church and State man ; and a holder of the grotesque opinion that it was a pity the poet of Liberty did . not take kindly to the five-bottle gentry , instead of mixing himself up with " vulgar , needy" Radicals ! Well , perhaps in that case Lord Eldon would not have deprived the poet of his children ; but the world would have lost one of the most fiery , seraphic , and golden-tongued advocates of human rights , one of the noblest utterers of divine dreams of progress . Mr . Hogg would have been all the more pleased , and posterity-all the less . " The poor fellow , " writes Thomas Jefferson , compassionately , " was very unfortunate in his political connexions . " Perhaps , however , Shelley himself was the best judge of that matter , after all . Very astounding is it to be told that the clergy of the Church of England were well affected towards ShelUy , knowing , as we all do , that the High Church organs in the press maligned him by every artifice of exaggeration , misrepresentation , and falsethat the inlaw
hood . And it is equally startling to find it asserted son-- ana disciple of Godwin was essentially aristocratical in his feelings and opinions — a dreamer who took r . o interest in existing politics , but who merely amused himself with fanciful republics after the Platonic model . The Masque of Anarchy , ' and the pamphlet in favour of Parliamentary Reform , shall settle that question . In the latter " work , Shelley speaks of thrones and aristocracies as symbols of the world ' s childhood , necessary for a time , but doomed to perish . It is impossible , indeed , to conceive any one more ludicrously unfit to bo the biographer of the author of The Cenci than he who now comes forward , assertin g his pretensions with such a huffing air . Whatever Shelley was , notthat is
that Mr . Hogg is not ; whatever Shelley was , Mr . Hogg . The antithesis is complete ; and of this we are certain—that the book before us would have given Shelley the deepest pain . It is the production of a very worldly-minded man . Great is the biographer ' s worship of power , position , and success ; immense his contempt for any one below the level of a baronet or of an heir to landed property . To be poor is to be rascally ; to work for your living—especially with your pen—is base and wretched ; to be a Radical is to be " necessarily vulgar . " The profession of the law has been degraded by the invasion of sordid middle-class people . Mr . How writes in the spirit of a footman , and smiles with complacent admiration ? it his own plush . His pen distils venom with a cruel disregard of tho and makes attacKS
pain it may give or the injury it may cause ; no cowaruiy under cover of a pretended delicacy which refuses to mention names while indicating persons , and which thus bars the opportunity of reply . A blighting cynicism crawls over tho page , and darkens tho beauty of the poet ' s character by its intercepting shadow . A biographer should be able to sympathize with the mind of him whose Life ho writes ; but Mr . Hogg , though a professed admirer of Shelley , has clearly no identity of feeling with him . Nor docs he possess any of tho other requisite qualifications . Ho is a washy critic and a clumsy writer , who apparently considers thut the functions of a biographer are sufficiently discharged if ho can spangle his narrative with paltry sarcasms and feeble wit . Mr . Hogg speaks with astonishing insolence and presumption of several famous reputations 5 and often in a perfectly gratuitous manner . Tho members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ( araow whom wore such men as Lord Brougham , Lord Denman , Lord John i ? ., «^ ii t ~ .., i Ai » iinm ivr ^ HhII / ujj . Mr . Rowland Hill . & c . "> are described
ns-a ~ set ~ otf ~" conceited ,-seltauti 8 fied : i _ pcra ^ busied themselves for a time in diffusing , at a low price , in shabby pam . phlots , what they accounted useful knowledge ; " and greatly does Mr . Uogg rejoice thut " the soup-kitchen of scionce ' " soon shut up '—which , however , it was not . Leigh Hunt is " a pert journalist" for having dared to call the Prince Regent " an Adonis of fifty . " Sydney Smith was a . noisy , impudent , shallow , clerical jester , " wlio " shot out cartloads of rubbisli with an overpowering din . " but sometimes said a good thing by acoi-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 17, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_17041858/page/17/
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