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1020 THE LEADER. [Saturday
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Xmvatuvt.
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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Thackeray is not only on the eve of publ...
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The discovery of a lad, a/ready discover...
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PEITCHAED'S HISTORY OF ANIMALCULES. A. H...
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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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1020 The Leader. [Saturday
1020 THE LEADER . [ Saturday
Xmvatuvt.
Xmvatuvt .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not makelaws—tfiey interpret and-try to enforcethem . —Edinburgh Review .
Thackeray Is Not Only On The Eve Of Publ...
Thackeray is not only on the eve of publication with his new historical novel , but is also ,. we have lieard , preparing a cheap edition of Vanity Fair . It will have an immense sale , for it is not a work to be exhausted by a single reading or rereading . Beside Tom Jones , its place will be on every well-ordered bookcase . The French papers announce a forthcoming work of considerable interest , if only executed with moderate skill and trustworthiness , viz ., Memoircs secrets pour servir a VHistoire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand et Catherine J . It is said to be compiled from authentic and inedited documents . Unhappity , French Memoirs , though incomparably amusing , are but little renowned for truth ; and we must wait for the proofs of authenticity before yielding ourselves to these revelations .
Lamartine sends us , via Brussels , a new volume , reprinted from his Conseiller du Peuple ; it contains three Biographies—Jeanne d'Akc , Homer , and Bernard Palissy ; and if the style of these biographies be the style for the French people—for the hut and the atelier—one must form a very singular idea of that people . The platitude and absurdity often disfiguring these improvisations , may be concealed beneath the ample drapery of style , from those who read as they run ; but if once the runners slacken pace , the charm will vanish . Lamartine has the facundia of a Gascon . No one can surpass him in magnificence of verbiage . He is not arrested by a truism , nor obstructed by an absurdity : on and for ever on
the sounding current rolls , bearing on its waves the foam of rhetorical abstraction . And it is meant as Literature for the People ! He will tell them , for instance , apropos of Bernard Palissy ' s courage iu the prosecution of his inventive labours , that " God and Art , both of whom insist on being vanquished , one by the patience of man , the other by his labour , at length yielded him the victory—Dieu et I'Art , qui veulent etre vaincus . ' " He will talk of 'the Greeks ( of whom he is very ignorant , though he talks " familiarly as maidens do of puppy dogs" ) , and by way of instructing the
people will glibly declare " that they had no other religion than that of Beauty" ( a rhetorical phrase , totally destitute of sense ) , adding , that the Greeks are summed up in Plato , Vadorateur de Videe , showing that he is as unacquainted with Plato as with the Greeks . But it is in treating of Homer that he gives full swing to his propensities . He relates as veridical biography , a rose-pink legend of his own , made up of the legends of antiquity . Traditions , however marvellous , he says , are the " erudition of peoples . " lie has his own private reasons for preferring that kind of erudition . His scorn of savants is not simply the scorn a lofty
genius" Soaring in supremo dominion Through tlie azure Holds of air , "feels for the patient worker grubbing at the roots , it is the scorn of a man superbly ignorant of what those roots are . Yet Lamartine , who quotes as authentic the Hymns attributed to Homer (!) , ventures cavalierly to decide on the great question raised by Wolf , of the Homeric unity . To disbelieve in Homer , he regards as " the atheism of genius . * ' We never knew a rhetorician who did not ; and the more unfamiliar with the Homeric
works , the more indignant the protest ! Lamartine , in the innocence of ignorance , says , that if the Minerva sculptured by Phidias were broken in pieces , and yon brought him the several parts , he , on finding those parts so niiirvellously fitting each other , bearing the mark of the same hand , would unhesitatingly declare that the statue was not the work of a hundred sculptors , but of one sculptor . So with Homer . Unhappily , it is not so with Homer . Had he more than a schoolboy ' s familiarity with the Homeric poems , he would know that the parts do not fit in one with another , that the same hand is not visible throughout , but that very
distinct hands arc visible ; he would know that even the scholars who argue in favour of unity , admit the whole of the ninth book to be an interpolation , in open contradiction to tlu ; rest ; that the eighth book should be read in immediate connexion with the eleventh ; and that tin ; latest great defender of unity , Mr . ( Jkotk , gives up the pretended unity of . structure in the Iliad , which he thinks was originally an Aeliilfeis , and subsequently expanded into an Iliad . Indeed , we should be content to rest the evidence of diversity on the twenty-second and twenty-fourth books , the passion and pathos of which arc , we believe , of a much later period , and indubitably of n different band—even the iincienis suspected them .
The Discovery Of A Lad, A/Ready Discover...
The discovery of a lad , a / ready discovered , ami not unfamiliar , made with a flourish of trumpets , in the Literary Gazette of last week , deserves passing notice , if only for rectification : — " W"e have this week to correct u blunder of considerable historical hnnortiince , which has remained unexpo . sed , and ¦ in fact undetected , fur Lite , lust , four hundred years . The name of Joan of Are , the heroine of I ' Yiinee , has always heietoforo been wrongly written , not only by lOnglish and other foreigners , hut l > y the J'Yench themselves . Her Veal name , it appears , was Dare , not , d'Arc : —Unit is to nay , plain Joan Dare , not . loan of Are . To he called 'Arc , . loan shoald have been ol noble family , whereas she was the daughter of a common peasant , and served as waitress in an inn ; or . she should have belonged to a place called Arc , whereas she was horn at the village of Doinieiny in ( Miainpagne , commenced Ikt career at Vnucouleui'H , itiul never , so far as it appears , did any oxploils ail Are . The mistaken way of writing the , name no doubt , arose from the folly of . some of the early French
historia ns wishing to make her appear of sufficient good descent to be entitled f the aristocratic de . But it is nevertheless a great wonder that this errone spelling should have become universal , and should never have been discovered T any later historian foreign or French . And the wonder becomes greater still wh ^ we call to mind that Joan Dare has been for so long a period the most mark ^ figure in French history , has been the cherished idol of the French people , has heei the subject of histories , and plays , and poems , and novels innumerable , and has bill p ictures and statues by the score executed in her honour . It is the descendant ' f one of her brothers , a gentleman named Haldat ; , now living -at Nancy , who lias brought to light the fact that the heroine lias never yet been called by her right name ; and it is a little publication of his entitled JExamen Critique de I'Mistoir de . Jeanne Dare , which has just fallen into our hands , that has called our a tte ntion to the subject . The proofs that M . Haldat cites are to our mind perfectly clear
Amongst them is the patent by which King Charles VII . conferred nobility on Joan ' s family ; and in this document the name is written Dare . In fact , if the correct way of writing it had at that time been d'Arc , the patent would no t have been required at all , as the family would have been alread y noble . M . Haldat shows too very clearly that Joan ' s father was named Jacques Dare , that lie was < i common labourer , and that he originally belonged to the village of Septfond . M Haldat concludes by saying , ' I hope that the name will be henceforth written Dare , and that the heroine will be left in undisputed possession of her plebeian origin / We fear , however , that the wish will not bo regarded . However plai n an error may be proved to be , it becomes so venerable by four centuries' duration that it is almost certain to last for ever . "
On reading this passage we were so surprised at the " discovery , " that having for many years been quite familiar with the fact , we turned to Lamartine , feeling certain to find the name Dare there given , even by one so inclined to prefer the " erudition of peoples . " Disappointed we turned to Michelet , and in his Histoire de France , liv . x . chap , ill ., we read Dare distinctly enough . "It is the orthography of Jean Hordal , " says Michelet , " a descendant of her brother's Johannce Dare historia , 1 G 12 . So that one can no longer derive the name from the village of Arc . " We are more surprised at Mr . Haldat ' s fallin g into this blunder , because Michelet ' s chapter on the Maid of Orleans is so celebrated ; the Literary Gazette has more excuse for having followed M . Haldat , though a little journalistic caution would have saved it from the (< wonder" at French Historians not having detected the fact .
Peitchaed's History Of Animalcules. A. H...
PEITCHAED'S HISTORY OF ANIMALCULES . A . History of Infusorial Animalcules , TJving and Fossil . Illustrated by several Hundred Magnified Representations . By Andrew Pritchard , M . K . I . A new edition enlarged . Whittaker and Co . The wonders of the Microscope are not less astounding than those of the Telescope , and far more important in . their revelations . If the one familiarizes the mind with , vast interstellar spaces , wherein God ' s name is writ in worlds , and distends the mind by the grandeur of the conceptions it subserves , the other by its revelations leads us into the mysteries of organization , and renders it possible to trace the laws of organic evolution . Structural Anatomy was impbssiblebefore 1838 , when Scliwann ' s immortal discoveries , founded on microscopic observations , opened the portals of a new science which will revolutionize philosophy . The Microscope , however , is like the traveller , and "tells strange things . " We must not be too ready to give it credence . Partly because it is an instrument difficult to handle ; mainly because Observation itself is " » - mensely difficult , as all philosophers well know . It seems easy to " observe " a fact , and describe what you observe ; but , in truth , " there . ire more false facts than false theories " in science , and it is by knowing windto look for that the best observations are made—a consideration we submit to Faetmen , scornors of theory ; adding thereto the pregnant saying of Bacon , that observation as observation is a blind groping which rathci stupefies than informs the mind : vatja cxperU ntia et xc ( antam . sequent incra palpatio estet homines potius st upej ' aeil q-nain informal
, TJio moral of these remarks points at Khrenberg ' s world-wide ' _ discovcrios . " We arc not backward in our admiration of the industrious zeal with which the J 3 erlin microscopisf . has pursued lor years Ins ol > M . 'ivations , nor are wo insensible- to the impetus given to science by the yeiy exaggeration of his statements , which has provoked inquirers to verily "i refute them ; but we must say that , M r . Pritchard ' s account <> l ftnu Ehronberg has seen in Animalcules has instituted an incurable ; suspn-i " iu our mind of all his observations not amply conlirnied by oilier . lOhrenberg has not scon correctly because be does not , think correctly . t 1 ll 11
I 3 u (< let , us first , give some account , of the volume before uh . IH '" tistically put ; together , but , its very vices of composition enhance itsvalu < a paradox which will cease to be paradoxical directly we inform the rca < in what the vices consist . M r . Pritchard is an assiduous M ieroHcojHsU and a warm admirer of Khrenberg , whose discoveries he introduced '" ' ! English public , in the first , edition of this work in the year ISiMi- In *' '' < however , of confining himself to lOhrcnberg ' s researches , he has ' !''_ ' ' dueed the results arrived at ,, by Kiil / . ing , Hiebold , Dujanlin , and ot l ( ''Jj which derisively overthrow IMireuberg ' s views , so that , althoug h I he h ()() j is composed in n , fragmentary manner , and rends more likea . l >*> o i Jo K Art III 'uoi 'it ill «| i | l i * Ll Jii « iiiiui y inuiuii i , < i imi i \ , nun i i ¦ wi * < ----- .
excerpts on . Infusoria , yet the reader is enabled to correct . IChi'eiilH'ig < ^ of the very imges intended to glorify him . Nor is this l . lio only 1 " " the work . ' . If , embraces a , Jlist-on / ' of A ' ninuiteulcs , their organization , an ^ localities ; a treatise on the Use of ' / he A / ieroseopr , and ! he iimxIch <> ' j ' ^ ' leeting Infusoria , for examination ; a , . section full of ininiil . e au « l va u « i detail on ( llassijication and Description of . Animalcules ; fiml Ul " " . || , twenty steel engravings containing several hundred illiiHf . ra . tioiiH . . " ' more ' than the co . sl , of the work in themselves . Now , all hough il . 'jl ) lS that , the student will miss an organizing band amidst , tlienn " " " . ' jo ) l i and astounding details , if , is also true Unit , he will find no / W o « "tfa | ll / : l ' ^ j no imperfect , philosophy . It is a book of materials—the materials i great interest ,. . y ^ jjl We have said Unit Ehrenberg is to be received with caution , xo
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 23, 1852, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_23101852/page/16/
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