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    In another part of the Leader we have ex...

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    It is gratifying to observe that the int...

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    The current numbers of the Revue lies De...

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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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    In Another Part Of The Leader We Have Ex...

    In another part of the Leader we have extracted from this week s numbei-of Household Words the opening article , entitled ' Curious Misprint in the JLdinburgh Review , ' in which Mr . Dickens points out the gross and ludicrous blunders committed by a writer who recently attacked him ia the pages of that respectable Blue-book . ¦ As a general rule , it is no doubt alike needless and unwise for authors of established reputation to notice such attacks at all ; but exceptions now and then occur . If the attack , for instance , is particularly false and foolish , and the journal in which it appears is at the same time one of marked authority and influence , it may be desirable for the sake of the is assailed should

    public , as well as of the journal itself , that the author who point this out . Thus , when a similar attack to this of the Edinburgh Review on Mr . Dickens , was made some years ago in the Times on Mr . Tka . ckeea . y , he replied , as our readers will remember , in the delightful ' Essay on Thunder and Small Beer , ' which utterly extinguished the insignificant but pompous critic . Mr . Dickens ' s reply to the rash charges and inept illustrations of the Edinburgh Reviewer is equally happy and triumphant . The exposure of critical incompetence and assumption is so amusing , as well as so instructive , that it was certainly well worth while to make it ; and we are glad ^ therefore , that Mr . Dickens has broken through the common rule of silence in the present case . ' . The article in question is one entitled ' The Licence of Modern Novelists . ' Our readers may remember that in speaking of the Review we noticed this paper , and laughed good-naturedly at the solemn judicial airs the writer assumed , at the . absurdity of which he was guilty in demanding from a humorist a De Lome-like treatise on the Constitution , instead of a pleasant satire of existing abuses , and in attempting to convict a novelist of a serious moral offence on the ground of some trivial discrepancies between his story and the Blue-book account of the events to which he was supposed to refer .

    But we were charitable enough to believe that , however deficient in taste and judgment , a writer who professed such exquisite moral sensibility would at least be scrupulously accurate and just in his own statements . This , it now appears , is an entire mistake . Tbwar ds the close of his . attack on Mr . Dickens , the critic feels he is exposed to the charge of " fighting shadows of his own raising , " and it seems he really combated them with fictions of his own creation . Theonly accuracy lie can pretend to is the narrow lawyer-like accuracy which consists in the careful comparison of words and pages , of dates and

    numbers , aad cannot be safely trusted for much beyond . If he ventures on a general statement , or an historical illustration , he is likely enough to bejutterly false in the one , aad ludicrously oub in the other . Mr . DlCKENS gives examples of both . As an illustration of the former , the reviewer states unconditionally that " the catastrophe of Little Dorrit is borrowed from the recent fall of houses in Tottenhain-court-road . " This statement is not only altogether untrue , but one wliicli " a person of ordinary fairness and information" might easily have known to be false .

    But the most amusing part of Mr . Dickkns ' s article is his exposure of the critic ' s disgraceful ignorance in dealing even with recent facts . The reviewer is , indeed , peculiarly unhappy in the historic proofs of his positions , which he is , nevertheless , rather fond of parading . He reduces Mr . Dickens ' s principal charges against the Government to three , of which the two flrst—the only ones he deals wi th—are these : — " That the business of the country is done very slowly and ill ; and that inventors and projectors of improvements are treated with neglect . " These charges he undcrt akes to answer by- an appeal to facts . How docs he succeed ? "In reply to the first he satisfies himself with the statement that the revenue of the couniry is collected and spent annually , and that this is a complex and tedious

    business . Could there possibly bo a more trivial and irrelevant reply ? In answer to the second charge—that useful plans are neglected—ho appeals triumphantly to the Penny Post and Mr . Rowland Hill . The Government , ho aays , at once " adopted his scheme , and gave him a leading share in carrying it out . " This is a purely historic myth , which exists only in tho miud of the reviewer . ' For a dotailcd statement of how tho Government really dealt with Mr . Rowland Hill wo refer our readers to Mr . Dickens ' s paper . Tho facts of tho caso are briefly these : —Mr , Rowland Hill proposed his plan to the country , and brought it before Parliament ? twenty years ago , in 1837 ; the Government opposed it , and thwarted his efforts in overy way , and did

    not accept it until compelled to do so throe years lator , as a condition of rotaining oflicc . Tlioy still , however , refusod to give tho projector any share in currying out his schomo , quietly shelving him in tho Treasury at first , and soon afterwards gotting rid of him altogether . Public opinion , however , was aroused on his behalf , sixtoon thousand pounds was collootccl and presented to him , and at length , nearly ton years after tho plan was first proposed , through tho pressure from without , its author was appointed to a place in tho Post-oflioo . This poai ; , however , boing a subordinate ono , ho was still continually opposed , and unablo to follow his plans fully out . It was only three yoars ago , justsevontoon aftor ho first proposed his scheme to tho Government , that they gave him tho ' loading share in carrying it out ; ' and it is

    only since then that he has been enabled to effect the more extensive reforms -that have made the Post-office what it now is . Our readers will agree with us , that if this is the only instance the reviewer could bring in reply-to the charge , that the Government is prone to neglect useful plans , he had much better have offered no evidence at all in support of his sweeping assertions and indignant rhetoric . So much for the critic ' s facts . Such stolid blundering is amusing enough , but it is also instructive . It shows that those who bluster moral condemnation against the alleged unveracity of others are not , therefore , to be trusted themselves ; that the man who comes forward witli the solemn fuss of phavasaic zeal to take the mote from a brother ' s eye , has possibly a beam in his own . And it enables us to estimate at their true worth the r facts and assertions of writers who , because their knowledge of law may happen to , be a little beyond ' that of au attorney ' s clerk , ' assume the airs of jurists and philosophers , ^ think themselves entitled to sit in judgment on . poets and humorists of the highest genius , and to impose laws on literature and art ..

    It Is Gratifying To Observe That The Int...

    It is gratifying to observe that the intemperate and indecent assaults of the Barnacle species of critics upon a great and honoured name in our national literature , have had an effect the very reverse , we imagine , of that which the genial Fraternity of Prigs had designed . The seuse of the honour due , and of the debt of gratitude and reverence ( which only the petty and perverse are incapable of paying ) to genius nobly exercised , has been deeply stirred and warmly vindicated ? Among many other acknowledgments , we find in the August number of The Train a paper , under the title of ' Dialogues of the Living , ' written with true feeling , and with singular discretion and felicity of language , on < Mr . Dickens and his Critics . ' We gladly borrow the sentences with which the ' Dialogue' concludes : —

    When the turmoil of the present century , with all the virulence of its political debate and all the petty jealousies of its literature shall have passed away , when those who penned the stinging epigram or the caustic satire shall be weak , or dead , or dying dying and anxious to give worlds to cancel many a brilliant injustice which their hasty pens have put upon record—then , and not till then , shall we arrive at a calm estimate of the value of the writings of Charles Dickens . Even now I love to picture him far from the din of the critical Babel , surrounded by those delicate and beautiful creations of his fancy , that ideal family , the children of his pen . There , in the twilight of his study , do I see him sitting with his arm round Nell , the favourite child . Her face seems worn and sad , but when she looks up in his eyes , it then

    becomes suffused with heavenly light . At his feet rest little Dombey aad his sister , hand in hand , arid nestling to the-father who has called them into birth . Poor Joe is there , the fungus of the streets , crouching like a dog beside the fire , grateful for food and warmth and shelter . I hear the clumping of a little crutch upoii the stairs , and in hops Tiny Tim , the crippled child . Above them hover the shadowy forms of other children , children who on earth were poor arid suffering drudges , workhouse outcasts that the world had turned adrift , but which are now on high a blessed band of angels . And yet this man , great critics , is only a mere buffoon , and nothing more ? Truly a fit companion for that low player of the olden time , who wrote King Lear ^ and acted at the Globe .

    The Current Numbers Of The Revue Lies De...

    The current numbers of the Revue lies Deux Mondes contain two elaborate articles on Miss Bronte ' s life and works , by M . EitiiiE MoNTiiGtJT ; the first devoted to her domestic life and early years , the second to her literary life and last days . After all that has been written on the subject in this country , these papers may still be read with interest . The writer ' s sympathies are delicate and strong , his judgment clear , truthful , and discriminating , his style fresh and vigorous , and , above all , his point of view is new . This is the striking feature of the articles . Being a foreigner , M . Montegut is able to estimate the relation of faculty and circumstance in the formation of Curreii Belt / s character , the significance of her life and works as a phenomenon of English society , as no Englishman could . In judging of the novols and the

    novelist , we cannot separate ourselves from tho native sou and tho national life out of which they sprang . The reader and the critic share , to some extent at least , the sunshine and tho gloom , the laughter and the tears , the strong passions , and stronger restraints , which helped to form the one and arc reflected in the other . We arc too much immersed in tho social life of the time to become fully conscious of its deepest and most subtle characteristics ; but these are tho very features which a morbidly sensitive nature , a profoundly passionate heart , a curious and keenly analytic intellect like Cukiujr Bull ' s would naturally reproduce . Her contemporaries , therefore , can scarcely fully estimate the historical significance of her Ufo and works as exponents of English society . But a foreigner , if iltly prepared for tho work , may do this perfectly . Being a calm spectator of the social artist and tho national life , ho can carefully compare tho portrait with tho

    original , and judge impartially of both . The difference of national character thus effects at once , abroad , the needful isolation which only distance of time can produce at homo , and foreign criticism becomes a kind of contemporary posterity . To M . Montisgut , Miss Bronte ' s memoir is something more than tho biography of an authoress ; it is n profound and instructive revelation of English life , an historic document of the greatest value . Ho lulls us , at tho outset , that , in his view , it marks a transition , not only between two generations , but betwoon two diilbrout states of society , two ways of thinking and feeling—tho old and new English life . Tho history of Iho Brontis family , the whole life at Huworth , strikingly illustrates this transition , of which while it nfl ' ootod every member of tho family , Charlotte was , m 11 peculiar degree , tho victim and tho martyr . Having- indicated tho general nature of Urn change , M . Mont » 5 oui' discusses the English national character ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 1, 1857, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01081857/page/17/