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* Thb New Year generally introduces new periodicals . Few last , because few are commenced with sufficient capital , sufficient courage , or sufficient knowledge of the public wants . What capital or courage may back the Idler we know not ; but at any rate it has the advantage of being unlike other magazines . It only costs sixpence , and for sixpence gives sixty-four pages of light and Varied matter . James Hannay , Shirley Brooks , Blan-CHARD Jebrold , J . C . Jeaffreson , and £ . F . Blanchard , contribute stories and sketches . There is a large public for such light matter , and tlie Idler has a fair chance of finding acceptance .
The Westminster Review opens with , an article on Heine , which , will he acceptable to many , if only on account of the biographical sketch of that strange and charming ; writer j that , and the article on " Athenian Comedy /* are the only literary papers in the number , the claims of literature being , however , amply considered in the valuable quarterly surveys of Theology , Philosophy , Politics ,, Education , History , Biography , and Belles Lettres , which occupy the last hundred pages of the Review . The " Athenian Comedy" is a pleasant , scholarly glance at a very wide and very fascinating subject . The writer compares the licence of personality which distinguished Ab . istop £ ia . 'NES with the rigorous exclusion of politics and personality which
now . Even civilians must see that there is something extremely urgent in the question , when an old officer so distinguished as Sir John Burgoyns can give evidence like this : — " The educational qualification for an officer entering the army might be very slight ; he would have them write decently in English , from dictation ; woul J allow the first four rules of arithmetic , but not fractions , which is going a little too far ; logarithms too hard , simple e < ruations quite beyond them to acquire ; algebra has little to do with military duties ; " beiug asked whether it would not be very mischievous that , " while the education of the whole country is progressing , a certain stimulus should not be given to that of officers ? Answers , " No : does not see the great advantage of education pushed to a great extent : thinks that whtre studies are pwhed tco far it 'Very often leads to idleness and neglect and dissipation , as much as where they are not . "
The British Quarterly opens with , a good review of Pbescott ' s " Philip the Second , " which is followed by an excellent analysis of Abago ' s work on " Thunderstorms , "—useful even to those who have Arago , and very interesting to those who have not . The article on " filormonism "' is rather late in the field . The " Songs of the Dramatists " furnishes a rambling , but very agreeable , critical paper . The " Influences of Romanism and Protestantism on Civilisation " elaborately compared ; but if the lion were the painter would the man hold so superb a position ? To our tastes the finest paper in the whole number is that on Browning ' s c < Men and Women , " one of the best and kindest criticisms / we have read for many a day . The
writer deals too vaguely with Browning ' s faults , although he indicates them ; and the impression left by his article is thus somewhat too favourable as an estimate ; but the spirit is noble , and the admiration springs from keen delight / in excellence , not from idle panegyric . It is so seldom that critics have tlie rare courage of admiration . Fulsome and foolish praise is abundant enough—especially on the works of noodles j but enthusiasm for what is really fine is rare in periodical criticism . The writers always try to preserve an air of superiority , which every sentence of their criticism betraj's to he the veriest pretence . Ho >* v well tliought and well expressed is tlic following passage on Browning ' s poetical disposition .:
—Whether , indeed , the precise combination of qualities exhibited by lmn was not such as to show that if he had so chosen from' the first , he could have been quite as remarkable and effective aa a prose-writer as he had become as a writer of verse , might have been lef t an open question . It was enough that , having chosen to becoine a poet , lie had justified the ' choice . He had . doue . so amply . If the special distinction between the thinker or prose-writer , usually ao called , and the poet consists in the fact that the ona in the main tUinlcs directly , aud expresses hia meaning straightforth in words and propositions , conveying it with the least delay to the understanding , while the other thinks rcj ) resentativel >/ and expresses Ms meaning rather in images , phantasies ,, fictitious trains of sceaie and incident , beautiful in themselves , and only involving the meaning in their beauty , then Mr . Browning had proved hia title to be called a poot . Imagine tion "was visibly the faculty he kept most in exercise . Perhaps he had not begun with this as the predominant habit of his mind , but he had by practice
ciVftti if t . lifl nt'f » r 1 f > mir » nr > ft *» nnil V » TrvnorV » f . liia TvYuilf * mind nviin . l t . n it . Hs timl given , it the predominance , and brought bis whole mind roun J to it . He had trained himself , as it were , never to think in . the purely logical manner , but always througli the imagination . Instead of making it the business of bis life , as a writer , to > propound opiniona , to investigate facts , to take up deep vexed questions and speculate on them directly to an issue , or to pen every now aad then a rousing pamphlet on the " present crisis , " he had prescribed it to himself as hte proper work to invent stories—to imagine men and women , either singly or in groups , endowed with such and such characters and surrounded with euch and such circumstances ; and to make these ideal beiuga of his brain act , Bpe&k , thiuk , and sing , so that it should almost aeom in the memory afterwards that they had really existed . Alluding to the probability of Brownin g ' s faults being made the text of renewed assault on the part of critics , the writer says : —
.. But surely , also , there are other critics -who , making it their practice to b thankful for -what is good in a writer , and to regard what is . less agreeable in him if it is persisted in , us something probably inseparable from the good by the vevy structure of his genius , and therefore to be accepted with it , and even , perhaps , on further acquaintance , to bo liked more than at first , will rather welcome the present -work as Bimply an additional gift to tlio public from a writer who lins already of his own free wall pi'eBentecl it -with ao much that is excellent , and will , accordingly , regard it as an opportunity for revising their previous judgment about him , so aa to floe whether it is to stand , or whether it may not bo modified in his favour . We hav « so very ; little literature of the quality which Buownino furnishes , that the utmost e-ncourixgcment should be given to it ; not by denying Browning ' s faults , but by elucidating , as this writer has done , his
remarkable excellencies . The National Review opens with an article on Euward Gibijon ; obviously by the brilliant writer who wrote the " Edinburgh Reviewers > " , although he bas not this time produced so remarkable an essay — althoug h he has not reached the " height of his high argument , "—he has written nn Rrtiolc which none who begin will leave unfinished . Its value docs not consist in an estimate or presentation of Gibbon , but in suggestions « uid auk-g lances . Here is one on education . After describing the desultory rending of boys , lie says
—Besides this sort of education , which eomo boys will voluntarily and naturally give themaelvoB , thoro neoda , of course , aiuother aud inoro rigorous luiul , which must bo improved upon them from without . Tho terrible difficulty of curly lif « —the me of paatora and mastora-t-really ih , that thoy oompol b <» yn to a iliHtinct mastery of that which thoy do not wish to loarn . Thoro in notliinj ; to bo mud for o . precoptur wh , o in not dry . Mr . Carlylo doBoriboa with bitter Htitiro tho fato of ono of hia heroes wko wan obligod to acquire whole Hywtoiiw of infommtiou iu whioh l > e > tho hero , saw no uh « , and whiah ho kept iih fur uh Might bo in i « . vnonut corner of his mind . And thin is tho vory point—dry language , todiovm mivtho mntioB , n thumbed grammar , a dotoatod « lu , to , form gradually nn interior Hopnmto
cripples oar comedy : — "An Athenian playwright would have revelled in impersonations of Chatham ' s gout and flannelsj ; of Pitt ' s crane-neck j of Shekidast ' s ruby-nose ; and Fox ' s shrill tones and bushy eyebrows . The modern dramatist , who should reproduce them , would not cause even the injudicious to laugh , and would be rewarded for his attempt by a general sibilation . We leave to Gilrav and Leech this department of the ' comic business * of politics ; and , although our pantomimes occasionally indulge themselves in allusions to the Commissioners of Sewers and Sabbath
Observance Bills , such matters are excluded from comedy and even from farce . " The reason , as Macaulay would say , is obvious . We will not imitate the historian , and prove what is obvious by three columns of demonstration ; enough if we refer to the fact that the Theatre is under censorship , and the censor will not allow the most harmless political allusion to pass : e . g ., in the " Game of Speculation / ' Sir Harry Lester had to say , " The Palmerstonian question is not understood , sir , "—surely a very innocent remark I Yet even that remark was interdicted ! What chance , then ; , is there of Chatham ' s flannels or Sheridan ' s ruby nose finding a place upon the stage ? The audience of Aristophanes delighted in personalities . We must not
Measure aa Athenian theatre iu the season by any modern comparisons . San Carlo , La Scala , aud Her Majesty ' s Theatre in the Haymarket , must hide their diminished heads beside the theatre of the Athenian Iacchna . Four thousand Bpectatoi-a would have " no room for standiug , miscalled standing-room , " in the most capacious European playhouse . Twenty thousand spectators were easily accommodated in the huge oval of the Temple of Dionysius . And how discordant were the ingredients of this enormous mass . There was little respect for persons in these assemblages . . Cleon would find himself seated beside his enemy the sausage-seller ; an elbow of stone divided Socrates from Anytus ; and the noisiest brawler of the mi be niched
Pnyx ght comfortably beside the decorous and respectable Mcias . The government and the opposition occupied indiscriminate benches . There was the party clamorous for war because it supplied the Arsenal at the Piraeus ^ ith hemp , timber , and salt pork , mixed up with tho Py j& \? Pea ? » becau * e it could no longer vend its figs and honey in the markets Of 4 . babes and Megara . The high-temple party , which denounced the philosopher as atheiats , was cheek by jowl with the free-tLinking party , which derided the priesta as impostors ; and there were the young men , who cried up Euripides as the father of wisdom , close packed with the old men , who abominated him at tne iatner ot lies . * K ?^ iT ^ ± ^ ° L ^^ rS !«!! 5 _^ *? ^ ™ 7 ^ dividual among them
, applauded the caricature of Nicias and Demosthenes , the aristocratsTffi ^^ 'PP ^ . ^ e por tmture of Cleon in " tho Knights . " The Sophists SSL" ?™ * " J " . Sa <™ tes > Pa ^ , unshaven , meagre , and meditative ; the mathematicians inMeton ; the , Boldiors , full of strangt oaths , and crested like CTT ? ' 'A " * « - And , like tho modern Parisians , the Athenians laughed heartily at themselves , as represented hi the old dotard Demue the vxctim orrery adviser who would ta&e the trouble to pick his poclce ? s ? Quite otherwise was it when Mbnandeb wrote- — The audience nt a representation of Menander ' s comedies differed in sou-lv every reepect from that which had applauded Aristo ^ aneT and his rivals In StiS ™?! ' ?^*^^ ' « P ° «« cal life of Athens had Womo Searfy extinct , at least political sentimenta were baniahed irrevocably from the atace It was safe so long as the J ) emvB was in good spirits , and kept the purae of all a ^ th ^ l ° f np J ° " i ° - Ule tlie F P arty-loaders : but it was Seating * i l ' « e of a Macedonian prefect , or at statesmen whom the irefect wbuld . at any moment acoommodate with a company of the K « ard . The flSSSJ Semb fiad
andif D «^ k Ot , i ^ i ° "" IW * indeed expired together Sdt feK ^^^^ ^ * - " P-umo ' to skc ^ hTbf « rT « litCr aT K ° t ™*!™* * by the w « y some anting wfftS ? 1 ^ ? ™ 1 OU HnntinS ' " condenaed from Gerard ' s works ) " ^ « t \ , f . t ^ ter disc » « K " R- ««« ia and the Allies , " "The House bLSZ' ^^ ^^ yAct , " and " Military Edueatiol" The Mta JnlTJu r rCad 'r ^ CarnCSt * ^ Lena : it is full of knowledge and excellently argued . The subject i , in all men ' s raoutb . just
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fCritics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . Th . ey do not make laws r-they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Ueritw .
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40 T HE LEADE R . [ No . 303 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 12, 1856, page 40, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2123/page/16/
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