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. A.UOTST 18 » 1855.] THE L11DEB. $0 5
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ICittrattlK * ^ VUW U ^
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—- ^ Critics are not the legislators, bu...
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Man's incessant ambition is to-be a Prom...
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Some weeks ago we alluded to an announce...
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THE NOVELS OF M. HJENDRIK CONSCIENCE. Th...
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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Transcript
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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.
. A.Uotst 18 » 1855.] The L11deb. $0 5
. A . UOTST 18 » 1855 . ] THE L 11 DEB . $ 0 5
Icittrattlk * ^ Vuw U ^
ICtterahm .
—- ^ Critics Are Not The Legislators, Bu...
— - ^ Critics are not the legislators , but tne judges and police of literature . They do not make lawa—they interpret and . try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
Man's Incessant Ambition Is To-Be A Prom...
Man ' s incessant ambition is to-be a Prometheus , and for the most part he succeeds only in being a Frankenstein ; to create seems a necessity of his nature , and having created some monster , he flies from it in terror . This creative activity lias peopled ( and desolatedj the world with Gods and Devils , Kobbolds and Witches , Fairies and Imps ; but of them it is not our present cue to speak , we have minor offspring of the creative faculty to deal with in the shape of the Entities named Maladies . Who does not talk of the Gout flying to his stomach as if the Gout were a winged spirit , or of Fever attacking Joras , as if Fever were as distinctively real a " party" Jonjes himself : one who not only attacks , but must in turn " be attacked " by the skilful Medicus ? Jones then becomes the imaginary theatre of a terrific combat—Fever versus Medicus—with the prospect of a coffin , and the certainty of a long bill !
It will be said , perhaps , these are but figures of speech . But nothing is more dangerous in science than a figure of speech , owing to the tendency of man to realise abstractions , and to believe in the reality of his own figments . Figures of speech are still to many , and were once to all , expressions which indicate profound belief in the entities named . The slow results of Science are gathered into the one simple formula that every organ has its function , and every disease is a disturbance of one or more functions ; but this formula would have been utterly incomprehensible in the early stages of our history , when every malady was regarded as the anger of a Deity—when the arrows of the plague came from the clanging bow of the offended Apollo—ju . st as in our own nineteenth enlightened century the Magi-of our
Church have ascribed the cholera to the anger of Heaven , and the potato blight to the Mavnooth grant . Medicine , indeed , spoke from a tripod ; the first physicians were the priests , who acted as mediators between the offended gods and the stricken patients Jfous avons change tout cela . To priests ¦ w e leave the cure of souls ; the cure of bodies is undertaken by Colleges of Physicians and patent-medicine manufacturers . Why ? Because the dim perception of some relation between organ and function early arrested attention , and no sooner was attention so arrested than the offended deity faded from the field of vision . One of the most interesting chapters in the history of Science is that which traces the gradual secularisation of the study of medicine ; and we close this somewhat long preamble by directing the reader ' s attention to an admirable sketch of that history given in a recent number of the lieviic dcs Deux Mondes , in
an article < fh the " Life and Writings of Hippocrates , ' in which the writer , availing himself of the recent publications of Littrk and Daremberg , presents an amusing as well : is a philosophic view of the state of medical knowledge in the days of IIirrocBATUs . Curious it is from our modern standing-point to sec Hippocrates grieving that " the ancients" had already exhausted nil that was grand and beautiful in scientific discovery , leaving nothing for him and his contemporaries but such small gleanings as the stubble of the times might afford ! The old story ! No age is ideal to itself . And yet there is this difference to be noted between the present and the past , namelv , that we of the present having such unmistakable evidence of Progress , are prone to mingle with our retrospective admiration a prospective enthusiasm , which to the men of the past would have seemed unjustifiable . We are no more satisfied with To-day than Yesterday was satisfied with itself ; but we To-day , while looking back on the Yesterday , also look
forward to the Morrow . In this article , from which wo keep wandering , there is , among other piquant matters , a passage on the Food of the Ancients , which we must borrow for the reader ' s amusement and astonishment . The common notion is that the ancients were much simpler in their dishes than ^ ve are—perhaps so , at least in earlier days—but , as we lenrn here , their viands were more various ; for , besides the domestic animals and the game oaten by us , they ate many animals we never think of touching , except in the last extremity . They did not disdain the hedgehog , the donkey , the cat , the dog , nor that horseflesh which , ns our school-geography used to tell us , " is publicly sold
in the markets of Norway , " and which Isn > oiu : Gbopfbot Saint-IIilaire has recently declared to be eminently nutritious ; nay , what is more , they considered dogllcsh to bo equal in nutritive value to chicken , and placed the donkey on a par with the ox . Pork they considered the most indigestible of all , and fit only for artisans and athletes . It would be difficult to persuade John Bull to dine olfa sirloin of donkey , or to ask the waiter to bring him " ribs of dog -with fried toadstools , " so strong is prejudice : we eat oysters , and a few other molluscs , and shudder at the mention of snails . Wo eat mushrooms and truflles > vith gusto , and believe all other fungi to be poisonous . Nor can Famine itself displace our fours . Hud the Greeks better digestions , or woro their dogs and donkeys move succulent than ours P
In the aamo licvue there is an article on the . English School of Art m the Grande Exposition ) written by Gustave Pi « anchk , and containing a series of judgments on our painters which will interest English readers , oven where most violently in contradiction with English opinions . Tho tone is magisterially arrogant , as usual with Gubtavk Pi ^ anchu , but some of the criticism
^ clear-sighted enough . „ A review of Jjean Retnaui >' s attempt to reconcile Philosophy and Religion ( in his recent work Terre et C % rf > will interest speculative readers , who may also be referred to the article on ^ La Philosophie Spiritualiste" in the Revue Contemporaine : not that we commend this latter article for its opinions , or for any substantive value it possesses , but it serves to show some of the currents of thought in France at this moment . While touching thus allusively on speculative philosophy , we may notice , for the benefit of certain readers , the appearance of Hebbekt Spenceb ' s Principles of Psychology , which now lies on our table , and of which , in due course , we will speak more precisely ; but many will not need to await our notice , and for them it is enough to mention the publication .
Some Weeks Ago We Alluded To An Announce...
Some weeks ago we alluded to an announcement of a Russian Reviewunder the auspices of the distinguished exile Alexasdbe Hebzen . The first number will appear next week , and the spirit of the Review may be judged by the announcement of letters from Victok Hugo , Mazzini , Michjexet , and Pbocdhos . M . LouisJBjlakc has , we hear , promised an article for the second number , and M . Hebzen has received from Russia a collection of unpublished poems of Pouchkike and Lebmontoff , which until now , thanks to the Russian censorship , have never seen the light of day . This Review will possess an interest of curiosity only for English readers , as it is printed in Russian exclusively : but the existence of such a propaganda marks out the latent perihjgof Russian " stability . " What if Russia herself , and not France , should be the herald of the next revolution in Europe ?
The Novels Of M. Hjendrik Conscience. Th...
THE NOVELS OF M . HJENDRIK CONSCIENCE . The Curse of the Village ,, and The Happiness of being Mich . Two Tales . Lambert and Co Veva ; or , The War of the Peasants . Lambert and Co . The Lion of Flanders ; or , The Battle of the Golden Spurs . An Historical Romance . Lambert and Co . From one of the prefatory puffs attached to these translations we gather two important facts . First , that the revival of Flemish literature took place in
the year 1830 ; and secondly , that M . Hendrik Conscience is the chief among the writers by whom this amazingly recent revival has been brought about . These two facts explain the otherwise unaccountable notoriety , in the way of foreign translations , which the books placed at the head of this notice have obtained . A national literature which is only a quarter of a century old is a curiosity in Europe , and the chief , man connected with the literature is necessarily , in virtue of his position , a curiosity also . He is the Infant Phenomenon of the world of books , and he gets notice accordingly in
all sorts of right-seeing quarters . Apart from the exceptional circumstances which surround him , M . Conscience cannot , as it appears to us , lay claim to any special attentions from the reading public . He has a new literary stage and new literary scenery at his disposal ; and if he could add to these new actors and actresses , dressed entirely in a costume of his own devising , and speaking sentiments of his own inventing , he might , as times go , really and truly start a new school . This , however , is exactly what he cannot do . He is not an original writer . Flemish nam « s , customs , and costumes are plentiful enough hi bis novels ; but there is no such thing as an original character , or a new thought in any one of the three books which , we have read for the purpose of writing this notice .
. . M . Conscience is most successful in his short stories . We have already , if our recollection serves us rightly , helpe d to draw attention to some of these as presented in a lately-published translation . They are prettily and simply written , and they afford the reader pleasant glimpses here and there at quaint local customs . They are happily too short to allow the author ' s want of executive dramatic power ( for he has dramatic feeling ) in the development of story and characters , to be sensibly felt . Without any positive novelty of idea at the bottom of any one of them , they are still very agreeable reading—partly because they do not claim attention for too long a time , and partly because they do not require the writer to rise to heights which he is not strong enough to scale successfully .
Thus , the p'leasantest of the books now before us is the first on our list ; for the stories , though tediously minute here and there , are of the moderate length , to which , in our opinion , M . Conscience should always restrict himself ? Vie Curse of the Village is the grog-shop , and the story is written on the temperance side , witU the usual temperance arguments . The second talc and the best , The Happiness of Being Mich , points quaintly and amusingly enough the old grovelling moral that people should be always content with such things as they have . With every disposition to see the best side ol these stories , it is impossible not to be struck by the want of hfe-hkc individuality which the characters in them exhibit . What Scott did with the poor people of Scotland—what Dickens does with tho poor people of London land i
—is what M . Conscience cannot do with the poor people ot G ers , erhaps it is hard to try the chief of the new Flemish school of novel writing by the high standard of the chiefs of the old English school . Let us go a little lower , and measure him by the height of Miss Edgeworth or M ^ Austen . Even then , comparing what he has brought out ; o * the pcopio about him with what they brought out of the people about them , he cornea before us sndly empty-handed . Testing him ogam by the * ™^* ££ S he still loses . Dafuic can sec in one uttlo provincial town of * JJS of hta than M . Conscience can see , judging b y what wo IwvcjJJ fe , f writings , in all Flanders . Is the Flemish popuh choraefcr to d ^ this f Is there no genuine nationality in thy » ai » on i- v fa classes it may be so ; but surely diking ' ^^ ^ ositive characaniong tho lower . Down among the neonio thu o iusu i teruufcH to be found in Flandoivs ^ cWwiwro . ; tho scaic ^ _ y f K ^^ Z ^\ Jo ^ X J ^ : l lw distinctive and o ^ nal .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 18, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18081855/page/15/
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