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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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Ax lengtB cheapness in literature has penetrated even the sanctuary of the Circulating Library ! A guinea and a half was surely at all times an outrageous price to pay for a novel , and became wildly ridiculous in times like the present , when poems are no longer published in guinea quartos , and philosophic treatises no longer add
physical burden to their mental ponderosity . Yet have novel publishers persevered in the old system , which limited the circulation of novels to libraries , and limited even that circulation . At length , Mb . BENTiiEY has , to use the language of public meetings , " taken a step in the right direction . " Henceforth , he intends to publish fictions hy the most distinguished writers at 3 s . 6 d . a volume , a price which will allow private persons to buy good novels , and induce the libraries to order three copies for one .
Apropos of novels , what can be more charming than this first number of The Newcomes ? It has all Thackeray ' s excellencies / and gives better promise than either Vanity Fair or Pendennis gave at starting . There is such easy strength , such power without effort , in the writing and in the painting of character . The satire is so delicate , so true , and yet so without bitterness . Any one else would assuredly have made the Bishopess of Clapham a personification of bigotry : he has made her bigoted , domineering ( as all bigotry is ) , stern , ridiculoiis , and . yet kind , conscientious , and womanly . Her tending her sick step-son is as true as her distribution of tracts , especially indicated by that detail of her never hinting a reproach when her own sons took
the fever . Clapham has overshadowed , it has not killed , the woman . Charmingly suggested is the sanguine and improvident curate , who only wants " this chapel to make his fortune ; " and although it is calling for too much credulity to ask us to believe in such extreme innocence as that exhibited-by the Indian officer , the indignant protest of that officer at the obscenity ( that " blaspheming against the divine beauty of life , " as Siikt . lsy says , ) which offends him in the Cave of Harmony , is a man ty an < l well-timed reproof . The Frenchwoman ' s letter is French to the dots over the i ' s , and the crossings of the t ' s . Indeed , there is an abiding- verisimilitude , which is an abiding charm in Thackeray ' s ' writing ; and we look for twenty months of very peculiar gratification .
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It is an old fault , that of decrying the times we live in , no age ever being ideal to itself ; and in this , " our wondrous mother age , " wo must not be surprised if our ears are vexed by Jercmiades . Wo are not surprised , but we expostulate . In three remarkable organs , Tory , Conservative , and Progressive—lUachwood , Fraser , and the Westminster —we are this month taught to consider our own age as wantinoin- virtues which distinguished our forefathers . IHacJcwood , in a very able article on Swift , endeavouring to rescue the satirist from
the accusations made by Thackeray , considers it a vice peculiar to modem times , and in itself a vile thing , "this love of pulling down the names of great men of a past age . " And Fraser , in a very elaborate and successful investigation of the vexed question of Queen Elizabeth' ' s Morals , adopts the same tone ; while a writer in the Westminster , after an analysis of tho Booh of Job , as remarkable for its criticism ' for its eloquonco , runs oil * into a declamatory and illogical tirade , amplifying Cahlylp / s favourite notion of happiness being quito a secondary consideration , and of our forefathers being so superior in heroism to us , because they felt no modern " cravings" after happiness . We indicate these opinions : it is surely not worth while gravely to discuss them 1 Tho depreciation of great names \» assuredly no new tendency in- human nature ; and as to happiness , the whole tirade is founded
upon a confusion of terms . If you persist in limiting happiness to a " stako in the country , " and ignoro the happiness of leading a life which will bring you to a quite other " stake "—if you insist tlmt 50001 . a-year and the approval of Duchesses is one form of happiness , but dony that researches in Conchology—deci phering arrow-headed inscriptions vexing tho great problems of existence—deviHing great financial schemes—or imposing _ your idea of God upon the ntartled isoulfl of men—are other forms of happiness , our only answer iw , that yon use a language of your own .
Not , therefore , entering into the polemics , but looking at thoso articles as articloH , wo commond thorn all three to tho reader ' s Hpe , ci ; tl attention . ' Wo cannot agree with tho estimate of Swift , but no one , intorostod in the subject , should leave thin es . sa , y unread . ' JJe-for ' o parting with it , let us call attention to a , very common mistake , by which animals are irrationally removed ( , <> a , greater distance from man than is warranted by science . " Givo Professor Owkn part of an old bone , or a tooth , and ho will , on the instant , draw you the wholci animal , stud toll you j t « habHn and propensities What professor lias ever yot boon able ^ classify tho wondroiiH varieties of human
chirinitor'P Professor Owion would bo ablo to tell you procisoly as much of tho human animal ' an of tho " other party ; " tho writer is hero confounding varieties in character , —that , is to way , alight mental ami niora . 1 j ) r *; uiiaritioKwith variotiofl in species and gomiB .
Besides the article already referred to , Eraser has another very striking article on Alexander Smith and Alexander Pope , paradoxical eloquent , erroneous , yet hard-hitting , and calculated to do bur younw poets great good , if its exaggeration do not frustrate its truth . Here is a sentence , for instance , which seems to us bombastic in it 8 exaggeration : — - „ tc In Pope ' s writings , whatsoever he may not find , he will find the very excellences after which our young poets strive in vain , produced by their seeminJ opposite , which are now despised and discarded ; naturalness produced by studious art ; daring sublimity by strict self-restraint ; depth by clear simplicity * pathos by easy grace ; and a morality infinitel y more merciful , ' well as more righteous , than the one now in vogue among the poetasters , by honest faith in God . "
' ^ The writer ' s object is to warn young poets against their metaphysical tendencies , vagueness of expression , and redundant ornament In the following he touches upon what has very generally been felt as a blot in the followers of Shelley , —we mean a cheap and easy blasphemy , which is meant to be startling :- — "It will be answered that all this blasphemy is not to be attributed to the author , but to the man whose spiritual development he intends to sketch To which we reply , that no man has a right to bring his hero through such a state without showing how he came out of the slough , as carefully as how he came into it , especially when the said hero is set forth as a marvellously clever person ; and the last scene , though full of beautiful womanly touches and of a
higher morality than the rest of the book , contains no amende honorable , riot even an explanation of the abominable stuff which the hero has been talking a few pages back . He leaps front ' the abyss to the seventh heaven ; but unfortunately for the spectators , he leaps behind the scenes , and they are none the wiser . And next ; people have no more right , even for dramatic purposes , to put such language into print for any purpose whatsoever , than they have to print the grossest indecencies , or the most disgusting details of torture and cruelty . No one can accuse this magazine of any fondness for sanctimonious cant or lip-reverence ; but if there be a * Father in Heaven , ' as Mr .
bmith confesses that there is , or even merely a personal Deity at all , some sort of common decency in speaking of Him should surely be preserved . No one would print pages of silly calumny and vulgar insult against his earthly father , or even against a person for whom he had no special dislike , and then excuse it by , ' Of course I don't think so : but if any one did think so , this would be a very smart way of saying what he thought . ' Old Aristotle would call such ^ an act ^ banauson ; ' in plain English , blackguard ; and we do not see how it can be called anything else , unless in the case of some utter brute in human form , to whom , there is no coenum , and therefore no obsccenum ; no fanum , and therefore no profanum . ' The common sense of mankind in all
ages has condemned this sort of shamelessness , even more than it has insults to parental and social ties , and to all which raises man above the brute . Let Mr . Smith take note of this , arid let him , if he loves himself , mend speedily ; for of all styles wherein to become stereotyped the one which he has chosen is the worst , because in it the greatest amount of insincerity is possible . There is a Tartarus in front of him as well as an Olympus ; a hideous possibility very near him of insincere impiety merely for the purpose of startling ; of lawless fancy merely for the purpose of glittering and a still more hideous possibility of a revulsion to insincere cant , combined with the same lawless fancy , for the purpose of keeping well with tlio public , in which to all appearances one of our most popular novelists , not to mention the poet whose writings are most analogous to Mr . Smith ' s , now lies wallowing . "
The writer has carried so far his antagonism to the new school , that he actually quarrels with Alexander Smith because his images arc not dependent on the nature of tho things themselves , but on tho private fancy of the writer . " He declares tho waves do not pluck at the moon , but only seem to do so .
"Or , again , in a passage which has been already often quoted as exquisite , and in its way is so— ' Tho bridegroom sea Is loving wiih the sslion-, his wedded bride ; And in the fu Intis . s of Ms ninrriugo joy ift ! decorates lmr tunny lu-ow with shells , Ilniiics n p , \ c / C , to m-o how fair . slid looks , Thru proud , rims up to lciM her . ' Exquisitoljj ? Yes ; but only exquisitely pretty . It is untrue—a false exp lanation of the rush and recoil of the waves . Wo . learn nothing by these lines ; we gain no fresh analogy betu-non the physical and the spiritual world , not even between two different parts of the physical world . "
Lot us ask the writer whether it is true as a matter of fact that tho moonlight sleeps upon tho hiuik , or whether wo " learn anything" by tho statement of Prometheus that tho waves had a inuliitndmons laughter ? Tho test is an abmird one ! Kambling limn diHcuruivc through tho periodicals , wo pause at tn 0 following lines by one of our young Poets—roal Poots : CC ON THE DKATII OK fJKNKRAI , Silt . OUAIU . US JVAPTKK . " Would War wore ( lend 1 ... Yet when a warrior dies Like tliihi one , to bin knoll a , pulse rebounds— - Our world is poorer by a noble man .
JNai'ikh . in huKhYl — fierce conqueror of Scindo And righteoun ruler .. Through a-widely frame , ShaUer'd with war , the Hjiiritual fire Blazed torehliko on the battle ' n van ward fliirgo ; And over great Hubnriasive nionarohieH Hliono wtimdy and benign . From cant toflwesfc All duo men hail'd the heroic fulgency Lit fromTruth ' H uKar ; but the falno and moan TraiiNfixW with rayn liko bayonotn , eower'd and curft'd . A noblo man—in two words , not in one , And Kngland bankrupt for tho diiTorenco J Yet . Ungliuid Icu-w him , and a richer wreath
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Critic * are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They db not make laws-r-biiey interpret and try to enforce thezn . —Edinburgh Rarieta .
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m . THE LEADER . [ Saturday
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1853, page 976, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2007/page/16/
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