On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (5)
-
83* THE LEADER/ [No, S88, Aw&nsT 29, 185...
-
3 V tfl>rn^W1*^ ;E^t4v4-U4-4vvt-«- ;
-
•. , . ' • -—•+——Critics are not the leg...
-
We are glad to welcome the reappearance ...
-
CITT POEMS. City Poems. By Alexander Smi...
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.
83* The Leader/ [No, S88, Aw&Nst 29, 185...
83 * THE LEADER / [ No , S 88 , Aw & nsT 29 , 1857 .
3 V Tfl≫Rn^W1*^ ;E^T4v4-U4-4vvt-«- ;
ITitafet
•. , . ' • -—•+——Critics Are Not The Leg...
• . , . ' - —• + ——Critics are not the legislators * but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—tney interpret and try to enforce them .. —Edinburgh Meview .
We Are Glad To Welcome The Reappearance ...
We are glad to welcome the reappearance of the North British Review , after its temporary absence from public and publishing life . This return is , of course , the most effectual refutation of the vague rumours that were afloat touching the severe and hopeless character of the malady from which it suffered . Though sufficiently recovered as to take the air again , the Review is , how-< ever , far from being thoroughly convalescent . It . looks thin and emaciated , s & though still suffering from the effects of the theological fever which loosened its firm-knit joints and brought it to the gates of the grave . Evidently it needs a more strengthening diet , and more active stimulus , than the orthodox ¦ cordials and ghostly consolations which have been freely administered during the late crisis ; and with the generous regimen of its best days it would , no < loubt , speedily regain its former vigour . Whether this , however , will he permitted , seems doubtful . The promise of the present number is certainly not encouraging . It seems to indicate a return to the meagre and acid diet of its worst days , rather than to the rich and varied table of its best . The original prospectus of 1844 is now reprinted as an index to the future
character of the Review . This programme , while liberal in terms , is sectarian in substance , and the Review under its operation never attained anything beyond a very limited circulation . To return to that previous state would be a death-blow to the higher position the North British has recently acquired as an able , independent , and influential journal . The contents of the new number are hardly more reassuring than the preface . Two of the literary papers , for instance , are devoted to religious hymns , and in each case the poetic merit of the compositions reviewed is immensely exaggerated by the religious sympathies of the writers . Now , however valuable such lyrics may be for their feeling , as truthful utterances of the devout heart , the recognition of this ought liot to interfere with a just estimate of their literary worth . And ¦ criticism , in which the perverting influence of severe theological views or aiarrow religious feelings is apparent , can never secure general confidence or respect- It is fair to add , that many of the papers in the present number are free from any such bias ; but this , nevertheless , is clearly the danger to which the Review , under the new management , is specially exposed .
The -first article , on ' Whately ' s Edition of Bacon ' s Essays / is evidently written by one of the Archbishop ' s admiring disciples . The writer , at the outset , notes , as remarkable , the fact , that Whatbh ' s works , while very widely read , have rarely been reviewed in the leading quarterly journals , which he attributes to their special excellence , in being , to a great extent , above criticism . The reverse would be much nearer the truth . Whately has no real originality , and his books , showing only a ready and adroit use of the most commonplace materials , scarcely call for serious criticism . The article is necessarily fragmentary , but here and there the critic gives interesting scraps of information , as in the following passage touching the ' Evil Eye : ' —
Bacon ' s Essay on Envy is the -work of a man who had suffered much from the envious . He passed the earlier and the most active portion of his life in a small , ambitious , intriguing society , in which all were acquaintances and rivals ; and the sovereign—the last and the best despot that England has ever endured—could scatter prizes , such as , in our sober aristocratical community , only Parliament can give , and only once perhaps in a century . All the ambitious , all the covetous , and all the vain , crowded to the court , to contend , by flattery , by subservience , and , we must add , by real service , ' for the favour which , gave power , wealth , and station . Such a court was a hotbed of envy ; and Bacon ' s masterly enumeration of those apt to envy , and of those apt to be envied , is ovidently the result of personal observation and experience . It is remarkable that he appears to have been infected by the Oriental superstition of the evil eye .
" There be none of the affections , " he says , " which hare been noted to fascinate or bewitch , but love and envy : they both have vehement wishes , they frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions , and they come easily into the eye , especially upon the presence of the objects , which are the points that conduce to fascination , if any such , thing there be . "We see , likewise , the Scripture calleth envy an evil eye , and the astrologers call the evil influences of the stars evil aspects ; so that still there eeemeth to be acknowledged , in the act of envy , an ejaculation or irradiation ¦ of the eye ; nay , some have been so curious as to note that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envious eye doth most hurt , are when the party envied is beheld in glory or triumph , for that sets an edge upon envy ; and besides , at such times the spirits of the person envied do come forth most into the outward parts , and so meet the Wow . " We once , in Cairo , conversed on this superstition with an intelligent Caireno , who described it as the great curse of his country , 41 Does the mischievous influence of the evil eye , " wo asked , " depend on tho will of the person whose glance does the mischief ?"
"Not altogether , " ho answered . " An intention to harm may render more virulent the poison of the glance ; but envy , or the deairo to appropriate a thing , or oven excessive admiration , may render it hurtful without the consciousness , or oven against tho will , of the offender . It injures most the thiug that it first hits . Hence tho bits of red cloth that are stuck about the drosses of women , and about tho trappings of camels and horses , and the largo spots of lamp-black which yon may see on the foreheads of children . They are a sort of conductors . It is hoped that they will attract tho glance , and exhaust its venom , " A flno house , fine furniture , a flno oamol , and a fine horse , aro all onjoyod with fear and trembling , lest they should exalte envy and bring misfortuno . A butcher would bo afraid to expose flno meat , lest the evil eye of paasors-by , who might covet it , should taint it , ana make it spoil , or bocoma unwholesome . ' Children are supposed to be peculiarly the objects of desiro and admiration When they are Buffered to go abroad , they art ) intentionally dirty and ill-drosaod ; bat generally they aro kept at home , without air or exorcise , but safo from admiration .
This occasions a remarkable difference between the infant mortality in Europe and . in Egypt In Europe it is the children of the rich who live ; in Egypt , it is the children of the poor . The children of the poor cannot be confined . They live in the fields . As soon as you quit the city , you see in every clover-field a group , of which the centre is a tethered buffalo , and round it are the children of its owner , with their provision of bread and water , sent thither at sunrise and to remain there till sunset , basking in the sun , and breathing the air from the desert . The Fellah children enter their hovels only to sleep , and that only in the winter . In summer , their days and nights are passed in the open air ; and , notwithstanding their dirt and their bad food , they grow up healthy and vigorous . The children of the rich , confined by the fear of the evil-eye to the ' hareenj , ' are puny creatures , of whom not a fourth part reaches adolescence . Achmed Pasha Tahir , one of the governors of Cairo under Mehemet Ali , had 280 children ; only six survived him . Mehemet Ali himself had 87 ; only ten were living afc his death .
" I believe , " he added , " that at the bottom of this superstition is an enormous prevalence of envy among the lower Egyptians- You see it in all their fictions . Half of the stories told in the coffee-shops by the professional story-tellers , of which the Arabian Nights are a specimen , turn on malevolence . Malevolence , not attributed , as ft would be in European fiction , to some insult or injury inflicted by the person who 13 its object , but to mere envy : envy of wealth , or of the other means of enjoyment , honourably acquired and liberally used . " An article on ' English Metrical Critics' is interesting as an intelligent discussion of a subject very imperfectly understood , and in the treatment of which each successive writer seems determined to vindicate a prescriptive right of blundering . The writer in , the North British is no exception : witness his curious discovery that accent ' has no material and external existence at all . ' Of all the false views held and propounded touching accent this may claim the distinction of being the most suicidal and absurd . Of the remaining articles in the number , those on ' French Treatment of Criminals' and * The Indian Crisis' are well worth reading .
Citt Poems. City Poems. By Alexander Smi...
CITT POEMS . City Poems . By Alexander Smith . Macmillan and Co . After a great success it is perilous for an author to appear before the critics ; and this peril is tenfold when the appearance is made in a , second work , because experience proves that the second work is generally inferior to its predecessor in freshness or in power . Shirley was in many respects an advance on Jane JEyre , but in essentials it was inferior . Alexander Smith achieved a great success—in spite of the overpraise of injudicious admirers , in spite of the malice and ridicule of some detractors , he gained a place among the English poets . He has been often harshly and ungenerously dealt with ; but , unhappily , that he lias to bear in common with most distinguished men ; and we have no doubt he has sense enough to see what truth there may be in the criticisms of his opponents , while heartily despisinjr their tone and sentiments .
The new volume of City Poems will require to be read two or three tunes before justice will be done to its merits , because the first impression it produces is that of disappointment . At least this was the impression it produced on us . On recurring , to its pages , we began to modify our first opinion , and finally we came to the conclusion that it held much the same relation to the Life Drama as Shirley holds to Jane . Eyre . The cause of this disappointment seems to us to be the absence of any well-marked character , well-told story , or clearly developed passion—in a word the want of poetic substance—and the cause of the admiration felt on closer scrutiny is the presence of great beauty in the treatment : the poems are poetical talk about subjects rather than vividly conceived pictures . We hear of Horlon , his genius , his dissipation , his love and sorrow , but we do not see him , know situationbut tlie situa
him , feel with him . Squire Maurice is in a tragic , - tion is indicated , not presented : the real pathos and the real difficulty are evaded . The Glasgow boy who tells us of his early sorrows interests us more than either Horton or Maurice , hut even he is far too vaguo in his confessions . A sense of vagueness fatal to the efiect of a story , and giving the whole volume an unfinished air , creates the disappointment wo have alluded to . But on turning back to each of these poems we are impressed with tho sense of exquisite power in the musical utterance of emotion , and of delicate felicity in the use of language . The descriptions are admirable : concrete , picturesque , suggestive . Like most modern poets he is something over-fond of description , caring less for human than for scenic beauties ; what he says of the painter may be said of himself : — An empire ' s full was less in his regard Than sunshine pouring from the rifted clouds On an old roof-tree furred with emerald moss ; A wide grey windy sea bespecked withjbam , A ship beneath bare poles against the rain ; Or thunder steeping all tho sunny wasto In ominous light . In answer to those ridiculous imputations of plagiarism , which , cm the strength of coincidences perfectly unavoidable , and of some remm sconces common to all potts , charge Alexander Smith with making up his poems out of detached sin . iles stolen from others , let this passage be quoted , its length forbidding tho idea of its having been plagiarized from any pngc except Nature ' s : — Inland I wander slow , Muto with tho power tho earth and heaven wield : A black spot aaih aoroaa the golden Jield , And through the air a , crow . Before mo wavera spring ' s firat butterfly ; From out tho sunny noon there starts the cuckoo ' s cry ; Tho daisied meads nre musioul with lambs i Some piny , eomo food , some , white as snow-flakes , Ho In tho doop sunshine , by their silent dams . Tho road grows wide and level to tho foot ; The wandering woodbine through tho hedge is drawn , Unblown its streaky bugles dim and awcot ; KnoQ-dcon in fora stand startled doo and fawn ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 29, 1857, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_29081857/page/18/
-