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" Magazine Day" is one illustration of the wide-spread culture of our pge , and a reader forced into the presence of this quarterly and monthly avatar of intellectual activity in England , is amazed at the quantity of learning , sense , wit , style , and originality , ready to supply the demand . " It is no light matter to read the whole of the Magazines ; for there is no single number that comes under notice which does not contain matter worth reading . In the quarterlies we look , of course , for essays ; and we often meet with essays which , under other circumstances , would have been books ; in Germany , they would unhesitatingly have been so . For example , the North British Review , always distinguished by thought , learning , oftentimes originality , has in this current number an article on
Theories of Poetry , which is almost a treatise—and an admirable treatise too ! Carried a little further into the branching details of its wide-spreading subject , it would have been a treatise , and a text-book . It is a review of Mr . Dallas ' s Poetics , and also of Alexander Smith ' s Poems ; and although the style is often cumbrous , and occasionally perverse in what may be called the dissonance of its imagery , it contains more sustained thought and glancing light of suggestion than any review article of the kind we can remember . ^ The writer begins by ranging all discussions on the nature of Poetry under the " imitation-theory" of Aristotle , and the " imagination-theory" of Bacon ; and decides in favour of the latter . It seems to us that the starting-point of such an inquiry , as in all
philosophic inquiries , is first to settle the general question , — -What is Art ? and thence proceed to the specific question , —What is the speciality of Poetic Art ? In such an investigation , it would be found that Art is primarily and essentially not an Imitation , but a Representation ; and the question of imitation , therefore , can only be considered with reference to its representative necessity . If the purpose of the artist be to represent reality , he must of course imitate reality ; but only when he works with such a purpose , and only in . proportion as that becomes his aim , can the standard of reality be applied / This falls in with what the Reviewer teaches—implicitly , if not explicitl }' , —and we quote his definition of the imaginative facultv : —
" The poetic or imaginative faculty is the power of intellectually producing a new or artificial concrete ; and the poetic genius of temperament is that disposition of mind which leads habitually , or by preference , to this kind of intellectual exercise . There is much in this statement that might need explanation . In the first place , we would call attention to the words ' intellectually producing , ' * intellectual exercise . ' These words are not needlessly inserted . It seems to us that the distinct recognition of what is implied in these words would save a great deal of confusion . The phrases ' poetic fire / ' poetic passion , ' and the like , true and useful as they are on proper occasion , are calculated sometimes to mislead . There is fire , there is passion in the poet ; but that which is peculiar in the poet , that which constitutes the poetic tendency as such , is a special intellectual habit , distinct from the intellectual habit of the man of science . The poetic process may be set in operation
by , and accompanied by , any amount of passion or feeling ; but the poetic process itself , so far as such distinctions are of any value , is an intellectual process . Farther , as to its kind , it is the intellectual process of producing a new or artificial concrete . This distinguishes poetry at once in all its varieties , and whether in verse or in prose , from tho other forms of literature . In scientific or expository literature tho tendency is to the abstract , to the translation of the facts and appearances of nature into general intellectual conceptions and forms of language . In oratorical literature , or tho literature of moral stimulation , tho aim is to urge the mind in n certain direction or to induce upon it a certain state . There remains , distinct from either of these , the literature of the concrete , tho aim of which is to represent tho facts and appearances of nature and life , or to form out of them new concrete combinations . "
Among the profoundly appreciative sentences devoted to Alexander Smith , the reviewer , after noticing the " damnable iteration" observable in the young poet ' s topics , says , — " It is easy to make a mock of anything , and particularly easy to mock in a case like this . But Mr . Smith cannot give up the stars and tho sea—no poet can —without ceasing to bo a poet . The starry night , tho son , lovo , friendship , and tho like , arc tho largest entities in the real world and in real experience ; they boar tho largest p roportion in bulk to tho whole real universe ; why should thoy bear a smaller proportion in tho universe of the poet ? Whoever does not think , ay , and speak , inoro of tho stars than of roses , that man ' s soul . lives in a conservatory ; whoever does not think and speak more of the sea than of his inkstand , that msin ' H houI lives in a counting-house . Part of tho greatness of tho old Greek poets , as
compared with Home modern poets , consisted in this , that they had a more proportioned eye for the object ; s and presences of nature , speaking less of tho wings of inflects and the intorior of blue-bellH , and more of tho sky , tho hillw , and tho roar of tho yTCgenn . Lot not Mr . . Smith mind tho critics very much in this matter . If they plague him much more on the point of his ' topics , ' wo advise him to retaliate by ti Bjitire . Jf what tho critics havo mud , however , shall have tho ofleofc of inducing him to extend tho list of bin ' topics , ' ho a « to diminish somewhat the impression of Hiuneness in Iuh imagery , well and good . For our part , though wo think tho world hiiR had nioro splendid men in it than Mare , Anthony , wo withdraw our veto on the use- of that Koman ' n name , whenever it may bo poetically convenient to mention him . Only wo suspect Mr . Smith ' s liking for Anthony proceeds from a Infant lorn / ing for Lho society of Cleopatra . "
There is more than humour in that humorous sentence at the close ; there is insight into Alexander Smith ' s poetic tendency . Turning from the North British to its companion and rival , the British Quarterly , we direct attention to a paper on Electricity and Magnetism ,
which only wants a definite purpose and constructive aim , to make it another illustration of what we were just alluding to . It is an historical sketch of the science , at once popular and philosophical . Here is a passage which , though not new , deserves iteration : — - " There is a curious popular desire to attribute great advances in knowledge to accident , and hence we have the discovery of the means for determining specific gravity by Archimedes , of the law of gravitation by Newton , and of chemical electricity by Galvani , constantly attributed to fortuitous circumstances , whereas we have the evidence in these , and in most other similar examples , of a close system
of inductive research leading up to the final result . As a general proposition it may be affirmed that there are no accidents in science . In those cases even which assume the character of accidental circumstances , it still requires the observation of a well-trained mind to develope the truth . The same set of circumstances may occur repeatedly before the eyes , and under the hands of ordinary men , without attracting their attention ; and even when this is the case , their transient curiosity leads to no inquiry . But that mysterious power , which belongs as an exclusive privilege to genius , seizes the indication , howsoever slight it may be , and advances at onco on the path of discovery . "
We must give another passage , that we may protest against its two-fold inaccuracy : " The investigations of Galvani , of Humboldt , of Aldini , and more recently the delicate researches of Matteucci , Du Bois-Reymond , and others , prove beyond all doubt , that every motion of the body , and every motion of the mind reacting on the material organism , produces an electrical disturbance , the weak manifestations of which can be measured by the delicate galvanometers we now employ . During life , the struggle of antagonistic forces to maintain the requisite equilibrium produces a continual change of state , and consequently as continued an indication of electrical pulsation . When life has ceased , and the full play of chemical
disintegration has set in upon the body , l y ing / in cold obstruction / this all-diffusive power is still detected in its wondrous workings , —it is no less energetic in the disorganized mass than it was in the form in its full beauty of organization . So far from our philosophy leading us to the conclusion that life—vitality , is electricity every step of our inquiry shows us that the physical force is infinitely inferior to that mysterious principle which human science cannot reach . Whether we examine life in the vegetable or in the animal worlds , it so evidently lies beyond the pale of the physical forces which human intellect may try and test its powers upon , that each true philosopher feels the strength of the words—* Hitherto shalt thou come , but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed . '
" Life is beyond the search of the most exalted human intelligence . Vitae Foece in its lowest development is infinitely superior to electricity in its highest manifestations , and it requires no great penetration to perceive subtile powers , which are not yet / dreamed of in our philosophy / beyond these physical forces with , which we are , as yet , so imperfectly acquainted , and these still inferior to that approach to spiritualization which we call life . " The inaccuracy is , as we said , two-fold : as a matter of fact the researches of Matteucci and Du Bois-Reymond , show precisely the reverse of what is here stated . Matteucci contends that the " muscular
current" of electricity rapidly decreases , after the death of the animal , being most rapid in the first eight or ten minutes ; and Du Bois-Reymond's experiments lead him to assert that the diminution of the muscular current is proportional to the diminution of the excitability of the muscle : both have the same termination in the rigor mortis . The phenomenon of the muscular current , therefore , he considers as only possible in the living tissue . The current which has once vanished , in consequence of the rigor mortis , never returns . As a matter of philosophy , the inaccuracy lies in the assumption of a " vital force" infinitely " superior" to electricity . The notion of identity between the two is absurd , we admit ; vitality is vitality , and not electricity ; but vitality itself is not a specific thing , it is a specific condition—a condition dependent not on electricity , but on a series of prior conditions ,
the law of which we believe we have discovered , and which will be announced in a forthcoming work , viz ., Comte ' s Philosophy of the Sciences . Be that as it may , philosophical accuracy demands that , instead of separating " vitality" from all other phenomena , as some specially " mysterious principle , " we must declare it mysterious , indeed , but not more so than the " principle" of crystallization , or of chemical affinity . Why two dissimilar metals , one of which is oxidized by the solution in which they stand , should present the phenomenon of electricity , is as mysterious as why , when an organic cell is placed in a proper medium , it absorbs nutriment , divides itself , by spontaneous fission , and reproduces a cell , in every way similar to itself . Familiarity may blunt our keenness of appreciation , but philosophy teaches us that all is mystery when we pass beyond phenomena . We lift the veil , but mortal eye can only project images upon the background of darkness , it cannot see what shapes are there !
We have only left ourselves apace to indicate in a sentence the review of Jhjpatia , and the paper on Horace , in this same number . The first a learned and thoughtful commentary , the last an amusing and somewhat startling glimpse of Horace from the " London" point of view . Niehuiir illustrated ancient history by a perpetual reference to modern history , and this writer tries to make the life of the Roman poet intelligible by Londonizing Rome , not seriously , but with sufficient piquancy to make the old story interesting . Wo must run rapidly through the Magazines , pausing to recommend Blackwood ' s articles on The Narcotics we indulge in , and on The New Shakspeare Readings . In the former a defence is set up for our " Sooty Bacchus , " as Charles Lamb called it , the divine weed , maligned , but not less cherished : — "Extensively m it is used , it in mii-prising how very fow can ntnto distinctly tho effects which tobacco producer—enn explain tho kind of pleasure tho use of it gives
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce \ iheTa ., —Edinburgh Bevieto .
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762 THE LEADER . [ Saturday , I
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 6, 1853, page 762, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1998/page/18/
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