On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
Wihvtfntt.
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
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.
Wihvtfntt.
Wihvtfntt .
Untitled Article
" The Age of Reviews is passed , " we are often told . It would be a matter of regret to us could we believe the assertion ; for whatever improvements may take place in journalism , they can never really make Newspapers supply the one eminent quality of Reviews—we mean the careful and extensive treatment of particular subjects . Reviews enable us to have elaborate essays , in lieu of volumes , on certain subjects , well worth careful treatment , yet not naturally requiring voluminous treatment ; and further admit of criticisms more exhaustive and mature than journalism can pretend to furnish .
In the British Quarterly we always find thought , learning , earnestness , and abundance of antagonistic matter provoking thought . The number just out ( besides very able articles on Oxford and Sir W . Hamilton ) contains two very notable papers , one on the Theology of the Old Testament , and another on Shakspeare and Goethe , both calling for some notice at our hands . The Old Testament is , unhappily for Christianity , so linked on to the New , that the two cannot be separated . The savage Hebrew God , the Lord of Hosts , the "jealous God , visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation , " must be accepted ,
however shocking to one ' s reverence , because the proof of Christ ' s divinity is derived from the fulfilment of prophecies . If , therefore , the Old Testament must be accepted , the acute theologian has to make it acceptable by explaining away the " difficulties" which alarm the timid . In the article before us this is attempted , with an ability we readily , acknowledge , although , we need scarcely say , without in the least altering our opinions . Theological writing is all of one cast . A certain boldness of assertion captivates the willing captive ; and when the rebel confronts this , he finds the bold assertor has " covered a retreat" in an unexpected corner . As an example : —
" As for the hypothesis of a gradual evolution of a pure monotheism out of an original polytheism—an hypothesis which , in various shapes , has found advocates among recent German writers , —we shall content ourselves with saying that when its supporters shall discover some T > asis of fact on which to rest it—when they shall produce a single instance of a nation setting out from polytheism and arguing itself into monotheism , we shall admit that they are entitled to be heard on its behalf . In the meantime all history is against them . " This magnificent paradox will be greedily accepted . When recalcitrants
like ourselves , venture to question it , and say : Had not Greece and Rome their polytheism , and did they not evolve therefrom into monotheism ? we foresee ( experience in polemics having warned us ) that the escape will be made through the words " arguing itself into ! " The Greeks and Romans did not argue themselves into monotheism , they were argued into it ! ( Xenopiianes , Socrates , et id omne genus , were not a " nation . " ) The ergo is plain : The Monotheism of the Jews was no evolution of human thought , but a divine revelation !
Another point mooted , and skilfully mooted , is the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament . The writer ingeniously argues that it is all "figurative , " and necessarily so . " Should any feel . startled at , this assertion , we beg them to consider whether it be possible for us to conceive or speak of God at all positively , except kut' av 8 pa > Trov Of the infinite and the ( denial , as he is in himself , toe can know nothing ; all our knowledge of him must be relative ; and hence we havo no means of conceiving of him except by ascribing to him certain attributes expressive of the relation in which he stands to his creatures . A God without , attributes is to us no God at all . But we can arrive at , the conception of such attributes in God only by instituting an analogy between his relation to bin work and our relation to ours . "
Very true ; but to us it seems that this admitted impossibility of our knowing the Infinite should make us as humble , as we are arrogant in our language , respecting him—should inspire , us with a calm faith , a faith of reliance upon his will , and not make us set up an Image drawn from our own imperfection . We know nothing of him as he is ; but—and here lies the fallacy we are combating—our ignorance . should restrain that very assumption of knowledge implied in " ascribing certain attributes expressive of the relation in which lie stands to us . " Do we know that relation ? When we call God a "jealous God , " do we know the relation which we express by jealousy ? When we say that he is angry at our disbelief , do we know the relation to him of our disbelief ? Do we not rather assume the relation of am , and then argue anthropically from that
assumption ' We have argued elsewhere . in these columns the question of sin , and need not therefore dwell upon it now ; but in the following passage let us eall attention to two general but not very creditable topics , always to be met with in theological writings : the implication of immorality in disbelief , and the insistence on fear as a sound religious basis : — -r " Now it , is certainly not pleasant to think of God iih n being who bates win and will condignly puiimh " it , when one * in bent , on throwing tins glare of human genius over t lie vices and follies of men—and it is undoubtedly very dimigiveablo to believe that , ' ( Jod is angry with men , ' and in ' a terrible ) God , ' when one cannot but have , the consciousness that , in order to make out a case against , the I tilde , he has been ffuiltt / of prettt / extensive falsehood and . misrepresentation . Hut uh there is no logic which rondoru it imperative that objective realities should give way to
Hub-Jective feelings , the nearest advance we can make towards these gentlemen * express our regret that they should have allowed their emotions so to get the bett ! i of their judgment , as to blind them to what enlightened reason , no less than Scri ture , proclaims as a fundamental truth in morals—that God is displeased with ? d must punish sin . Take this away , and you destroy the foundations of moral obli tion , and reduce responsibility to a mere matter of feeling or of convenien ^" Deny that God is susceptible of , anger , and , as Cicero , Seneca , and Lactantius showed long ago , you virtually annihilate religion .- for a God incapable of dis . pleasure is equally incapable of complacency ; a God who cannot punish cannot bless ; and why should one worship or fear a God from whom one has nothing to expect or fear ?"
Is there no love in a mother ' s heart for the Imby in her arms , because she cannot be angry with it when it will grasp the flame of the candle or will pull down that China vase and break it ? " The child knows ' no better , " you will say ; but what is the mother ' s superior wisdom compared with that of the Infinite , who not only knows the weakness of his children but who made that weakness ? Let us quit this disagreeable topic , and announce by way of news that
Edward Miall has in preparation a work to arrest the attention of all speculative thinkers ; it is to be called " The Basis of Belief j or , an Examination of the Claims of Christianity as a Divine Revelation in the light of recognised fact and principle . " Having made this announcement , we turn to quieter themes , and first to the paper on Shakspeare and Goethej before mentioned . It is a psychological study , or rather let us say notes towards such a study , of the two greatest intellects of modern times . The writer very properly repudiates the hackneyed saying : —
"' All that we know of Shakspeare is , that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon ; married and had children there ; went to London , where he commenced actor , and wrote plays and poems ; returned to Stratford , made his will , died , and was buried . ' It is our own fault , and not the fault of the materials , if we do not know a great deal more about Shakspeare than that ; if we do not realize , for example , those distinct and indubitable facts about him—his special reputation among the critics of his time , as a man not so much of erudition as of prodigious natural genius ; his gentleness and openness of disposition ; his popular and sociable habits ; his extreme ease , and , as some thought , negligence in composition ; and above all , and most characteristic of all , his excessive flnency in speech . 'He sometimes required stopping' is Ben Jonson ' s expression ; and whoever does not see a whole volume of revelation respecting Shakspeare in that single trait , has no eye for seeing anything . "
It is absurd to say that Shakspeare has not expressed himself m Ins works ; the truth is , we have so little of a clue to what really may be taken as an expression of himself ; yet many things one can ascertain : — " Let any competent person whatever read the Sonnets , and then , with their impression on him , pass to the plays , and he will inevitably become aware of Shakspeare ' s personal fondness for certain themes or trains of thought , particularly that of the speed and destructiveness of time . Death , vicissitude , the march , and tramp of generations across life ' s stage ; the rotting of human bodies in the earth—these and all the other forms of the same thoug ht were familiar to Shakspeare to a degree beyond what is to be seen in the case of any other poet . It seems to have been a habit of his mind , when left to its own tendency , ever to indulge by preference in that oldest of human meditations , which id not yet trite — 'Man that is born of a woman is of few days , and full of trouble ; he cometh forth as a flower , and is cut down : he fleeth as a shadow , and coutinueth not . ' "
Shakspeare ' s supremacy the writer thinks was in the faculty of expression : — " In other words , Shakspearo was specifically and transcende ntly a literary man . To say that he was the greatest man that ever lived is to provoke a useless controversy and comparisons that lead to nothing between Shakspeare and Cunsar , Shakspeare and Charlemagne , Shakspeare and Cromwell ; to say that he was the greatest intellect that ever lived , is to bring the shades of Aristotle and Plato , and Uacon and Newton , and all your other systematic thinkers grumbling about us , with demands for a definition of intellect , which we arc by no means in a position to give ; nay , finully , to say that he is the greatest , poet that the world has produced ( a thing which we would certainly say , were we provoked to it ) would bo and Milton
unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer and Sophocles , and Dante . What we will say , then , and what we will challenge the world to gainsay , in ™' he was the greatest cxpresser that ever lived . This is glory enough , and it leaves the other question opon . Other men may have led , on tbo whole , greater and more impressive lives than be ; other men , acting on their fellows throug h tho same medium of speech that he used , may have expended a greater power ot thought , and achieved a greater intellectual effect ,, in one consistent direction ; other men , too ( though this is very questionable ) , may have contrived to issue tlio matter which they did address to tbo world , in more compact , and perfect artistic shapes . But no man that ever lived said such Bplondid extempore things on a subjects universally ; no man that , ever lived had this faculty of pouring out on all occasions such a Hood of tho richest , and deepest language , lie may havo liitft rivals in the art of imagining situations ; ho bad no rival in tbo power of sending bod
a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the imnge and y o a situation once conceived . From the-jewelled ring on an alderman ' s finger to , >«' most mountainous thought or deed of man or demon , nothing suggested lta ' ' J ' . ''' bis speech could not envelope and enfold with case . That , excessive fluency wine i aHtonisbcd Hen Jon « on when he listened to Shaknpcare in person , astonish ** uu world yet . Abundance , caso , redundance , a plenitude of word , sound , or mmffiry which , were the intellect at , work only a little lews magnificent , would hoiii « u » u ^ end in sheer bniggimlisni and bombast , are the characteristics of ShakKpcaro ^ style . Nothing is suppressed , nothing omitted , nothing cancelled . On n" ^ tlio poet flows , words , thoughts , and fancies crowding on him as fast as lio ¦ write * , all related to tlio matter on band , and all poured forth together , to two i fall on tbo waves of mi established cadence . Such lightness and case " > < - "" . " ^ nor , and such prodigious wealth and depth in tlio nmtUtr , uro combined » n other writerJ low the matter first accumulatedwhatproportion ot * _
. was , , the acquired capital of former efforts , and what proportion of it wollc ll " 1 * flV - poet ' s mind during and in virtue of tho very act of Hpeoch , it is impossible to 3 >
Untitled Article
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Beviev .
Untitled Article
1070 THE LEADER . [ Satprday ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 6, 1852, page 1070, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1959/page/18/
-