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^ hose < children of a summer star / who lose their way early m this busy world of harsh and cold realities ; who drain the wine of life with fevered lips to the very dregs , exhaust the bitter and the sweet of love , and awake from disenchantment to despair . His last volume of minor poems was published in 1850 ,. and in those few pages there was nothing that bore a later date than 539 . ' 42 To him as to many other greater -men , the reward of fame came late . For many years he had been treated by the serious critics as a trifler ; and although his Conies d'Espagne et d'ltalie , his Spectacle dans tin Fauteuil , and his exquisite lyrics were the delight of women and of young men ; although his life had enough of romance in it to be interesting , it was not until about ten years ' ago that the singular success of one of his Provcrbes ( Le Caprice ) gave a sudden lustre to his name . Two or three more of his Proverbes were subsequently performed at the Francais —// ne faut jurer de rien , II faut qu ' une porte soit ouverte ou fcrme ' e , and his dramatic pieces , La Quenouille de Barberine , Les Caprices de Marianne—with a success belonging rather to the poet than to the dramatist , as the failure of the drama , Andre del Sarto a fine subject wasted , clearlj- proved . It was one thing to compose with a diamond pen a Proverbe , and another to construct a drama of sustained interest and passion . We incline to believe , that it will be for his minor poems that Alfred be Musset will be remembered . In these , the passionate warmth of colour , the reckless elegance , the mocking grace , the almost feminine languor and inconstancy of humour smiling through tears , are infinitely charming . The influence of Byron upon the young countryman of Voltaire is easily perceived , but enough remains of individuality to give the poet a personal rank . His election into the Academy was especially remarked at the time , as it was almost a single instance of pure literature being admitted by the disbanded senators who fill the benches of that august body , and conspire in choice language against the Order that is not of their making . No doubt , his literary title to academic election was a sound one . A romanticist by habit and association , he was always a rigid classicist in theory . But poor Alfred de Musset was not at home in the Palais Mazarin ; and , indeed , wherever he appeared of late , it was as a ghostly visitant from some debraille world . His way of life had become perplexed in the extreme ; silent and shattered was that fragile lute On whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander , a bright stream Once fed with many-voiced waves , a dream Of youth which night and time have quenched for ever ! Peace be with him ! As he wrote of a brother poet of Italy , Leopardi—L'heure derniere vint , tant de fois appelee . Tu la vis arriver sans crainte et sans remord , Et tu goixtas enfin le charme de la mort .
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KARS AND KMETY . Narrative of the Defence of Kara . Historical and Military . By Col . Atwoll Lake , C . B . Bcntloy . The chief value of this book consists in its testimony to the powers of defence possessed by an able officer commanding the resources of a badlyfortified town . Kara was protected , during its long siege , not by its regular system of ramparts and bastions , but by field works , hastily thrown up , almost in the midst of conflict , and on very difficult ground . Though a place of great importance , the key of Asia Minor , and enjoying a military reputation as old as the sixteenth century , its capacities for resisting an attack hud never been developed . Planted between a mountain wall and a vnst plain , at a point , where a river issues from a goi-go of the hills , its ancient fortress rested upon a polygon of rocks—a double lino of curtain walls , four bastions , ai citadel , with a covered way to the water-side , and a sprinkling of little towers . Without , upon the slopes , stood a few detached works of no great solidity ; and in 1828 , Paskicwitch reduced the whole in less than three days , IIow was it , then , that Williams held it for months , and would have retained it altogether , had ho been fairly seconded by his Government ? When ho arrived , the heights wore unoccupied ; it was
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THE OXFORD ESSAYS . Oxford Essays . Contributed by Members of the University . 1857 . J . W . Parker and Son . That it is very possible for a considerable politician to be a quite inconsiderable writer has been proved by others before Mr . Gladstone , who would assuredly have been much better employed in parliamentary duties than in writing the opening article of the Oxford Essat / s , an article which threatens the public with a work on Homer such as will exhaust the subject—and its readers . To write upon Homer now-n-days , unless the writer is a scholastic recluse , or is ambitious of University distinction , it is necessary either to have some new thoughts to utter or some overpowering enthusiasm which must utter itself . Mr . Gladstone writes in the argumentative spirit of a casuist bent on ' reconciling' scripture with science . He is at once cold and exaggerated , his admiration passing all bounds of reason , yet put forward in an argumentative guise . The style is laboured , confused , and commonplace . His capability of treating the subject—or , indeed , of saying any reasonable word about it—may be estimated by what he advances as the motive of his labours , namely , that although ancient Greece honoured Homer , " in later times and in lands where he is a foreigner , I know not if ho has ever yet enjoyed his full honour from the educated world . " This is the latitude of language which public speakers permit themselves , feeling that no one believes what they say ; but in literature such language is almost insulting in its ineptitude . Does Mr . Gladstone believe that Homer has not been honoured 'to the top of his bent ? ' If he believe this in the face of evidence so universal , his sagacity is not remarkable ; if he do not believe it , the assertion is a gratuitous offence . Be it known , however , that in Mr . Gladstone ' s eyes Homer has not yet been sufficiently honoured , and that Mr . Gladstone is to publish a work which will remedy that mistake . Judging from this essay , we predict that the work will leave the question where it was before . Mr . Gladstone conducts his inquiry on ' internal and moral evidence ' This is sufficient for him . But before it can suflice readers they must have some confidence in his power of estimating such evidence . We have no confidence in Mr . Gladstone ' s power j nay our distrust is ineradicable and may bo justified by this one specimen of his discernment—ho thinks ^ Eschylus nearer to Homer in 4 majesty , nature , reality , and historical accuracy than Sophocles or Euripides . ' In one word , matter such as Mr . Gladstone ' s would require a far more attractive style than he can write to make it worthy of attention from serious , busy men . Mr . Grant l 5 utt ' furnishes an interesting and instructive article on ' Sicily , ' very useful for those about to go there , and stimulating readers' to set sail at once for the lovely coast . With Dr . Wilson ' s * Schemes of Christian Comprehension , ' wo meddle not . Mr . Frcoman compares ' Ancient Greece and Mediaeval Italy , ' in an historical essay ; and Mx \ Bridges gives
us strange pictures of the ' Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages ; ' while ' Montaigne' and ' Thucydides , ' afford Mr . Church and Mr . Sellar opportunities for the agreeable form of critical etude , which writers are never tired of writing , nor readers of reading . The subject of Natural Theology could scarcely have been in better Oxford hands than in those of the Rev . Baden Powell , a man at once candid , philosophical , and orthodox . A propos of the ' Burnett Prizes' he offers . . Some general reflections on the entire state of the question of the evidences of Natural Theology as it stands at the present day , and with reference to the spirit in which it is now viewed both by advocates and opponents . This it is our wish to do in a tone of entire candour—to treat the argument entirely as a philosophical question , where the point at issue is not the truth of the conclusion , but the mode of arriving at it ; involving the necessity for a calm and unbiassed criticism of the evidence on the one hand , and the objections raised against it on the other . How well he bits off the weaknesses and vices in this passage : — From what we have seen of writings of this class at the present day , we cannot but notice some very prevalent characteristic faults . They most commonly evince , in our opinion , too violently polemical a spirit—too narrow and exclusive a tonetoo strong a tendency to strain the argument beyond due bounds—or , when argument is found to fail , too ready a disposition to make up for deficiencies in reasoning by appeals to feeling—by falling back on eloquent religious declamation or orthodox denunciation—too much affectation of a turgid mystical style of cloudy metaphysics , mistaken for scientific reasoning , but unfortunately little adapted to answer the real requirements of earnest philosophical inquiry—to remove or obviate the serious and harassing difficulties and doubts in which so many are involved;—meeting with two little sympathy—or to satisfy the demands of the acute but often ill-directed and illinformed intelligence of the masses , which seldom finds a direct , unequivocating , honest , and adequate response to its fair requisitions . Besides a general sameness of tone and topics , there are some standard subjects of invariable vituperation which most of these writers seem to think it essential to the credit of their orthodoxy to bestow in one unmitigated strain on some obnoxious views and theories : such , for example , as the theory of the physical nature of the vital principle—the nebular hypothesis—Hume ' s doctrine of causation , and , above all , the views of development as expounded by the far-famed author of The Vestiges of Creation . Mr . Baden Powell , noticing the metaphysical arguments in which these writers delight , well says : — When we come to examine critically the most celebrated of these reasonings , such , as the so-called apriori argument of Descartes and Leibnitz ( which is nothing more than a reproduction , in a philosophical form , of that which S . Anselm had revealed to him in a dream ) , it seems hardly to require much formal argument to see that our conceiving the idea of an all-perfect Being—one of whose perfections must be selfexistence—is no more a proof of the reality of that self-existence than it is of any other conception which we may entertain . Yet so powerfully are the minds of men captivated with anything wearing the appearance of abstruseness , especially if professedly favourable to their religion , that it has required the exhaustive criticism and logic of Kant to disabuse the minds of thinking men of so transparent a fallacy , though dignified by the name of the ' ontological' argument . We must close our extracts with one on ' Materialism , ' a favourite bugbear of Natural Theology : — Much very needless discussion has arisen from the impression that the question of materialism , in regard to the vital and intellectual functions of man , is essentially mixed up with that of the existence or nature of God . Yet surely nothing can be more unfounded than to suppose such a connexion ; whichever way we may form our conclusions as to the principle of life and mind in man , it can in no way affect the argument for the existence of a Deity ; if the human life or intellect were ever so entirely the mere result of physical agencies acting on the organised body , it is impossible to see how this could affect the argument from order or design in the natural world : nay , if it were to , it would rat her tend to enhance than to elevate that argument ; since it would only show the more wonderful instance of creative skill and power to educe such marvellous effects as those of vital and mental action out of such simple elementary combinations as the ultimate analysis of the organised body displays . The principle of this argument i . « , we think , an important one , and has many further applications . We will just illustrate it by a single parallel case , which will be familiar to those acquainted with optical science : — If a ray of light could be imagined conscious that in taking the course prescribed by the law of refraction it were following the principle of least action , and by choice selecting the shortest and easiest route compatible with the conditions offered by the refracting medium , this would bo a far less wonderful result than that the unconscious mechanically-constituted series of waves in an insensible ether , or of molecules in a . projected beam , should by necessity fulfil such a law , as a consequence of their preordained nature combined with that of the media they traverse . In like manner , that a conscious immaterial ngent should by volition perform intellectual acts through the medium of an organised bruin , would be a far less wonderful case , than that thebrain itself , by the mere action of determinate physical onuses , should itself be the agent of thought . The materialistic doctrine , if it zcere true , so far from being derogatory to designing wisdom and power , would , in fact , present a far higher and more striking instance of it .
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to 9 . 1857 . 1 T H E LEADER . ^
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Leader (1850-1860), May 9, 1857, page 449, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2192/page/17/
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