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    March 3, 1860.J The Leader and Saturday ...

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    UOTER0UR1U3NTS OVERLOOKED.* rpHEUB aro t...

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    * Xi ' Ifo Without And Within; Or, Jrevi...

    verdicts as a critic , a pitiful shallowness and . * . P ^ f ™ . JJ ^ sumption . She had dipped here and there with d i lettante rapidity into a score of literatures , but she had not pierced ^ beyond tne surface of any literature whatever . Criticism , is not obliged to be encyclopedic ; yet this we demand from it , that it should speak only of the things which it thoroug hly knows . Now , ; betraying the grossest ignorance , Margaret Fuller is ocular on a 1 subjects alike ; Sh ? places Bailey above Tennyson , with amusmg > ™ P ^ ee finds fault with Shakspeare , avows her preference for the classical as compared with the romantic , though obviously knowing nothing of what the true classical or the true romantic means , lhe

    most-ambitious performances in this volume are two essays on Groethe . Menzel , in his excellent work on German literature—the -work of a man who , whatever his prejudices and passions , was at _ least thoroughly acquainted with his subject , courageously attacks ( Goethe-. He does not attack him with scurrility , or with fierce invective ; he attacks him ,. if with prophetic warmth , with the honest and honourable weapons of criticism no less . Menzel maintains that m Goethe the form was first predominant , then exclusive . The sense for Divine realities had died . But in Goethe had that sense ever been deep ? Had it ever existed ? These questions have a moral far more than an intellectual bearing ; they have , however , the is

    vaster intellectual bearing from having- a moral bearing-. Poetry as earnest as life , spite of Schiller ' s saying- that while life is earnest , Art is serene and jnyoiis . Through the Whole of Goethe s career lie displayed no earnestness , either as a writer or as a man . A consummate coxcombry , a boundless self-idolatry , pervaded all his doings . That he was a laborious student is , by itself , poor praise . The sons of the Devil have always worked as hard as the sons of God ; sometimes harder . To sever ourselves from the community , that We may dedicate ourselves to Art , is a sacrifice which Art refuses . Goethe treated women : more heartlessly than any other eminent writer . For the sake of Art he was justified in doing tnis , say the outrageous Goetheans . You have to deaden your soul that your mind may toil the more at ease : and Shakspeare would have " been a better poet if he had seduced and basely deserted a score or two of women ! Our conviction is that the Goetheaus , univer-¦

    sally , are humbugs ; and that their master , though a very gifted mortal , was a good deal of a humbug- too . ^ JNow , we do not aver that in reference to Goethe , or m reference to _ anything , Margaret Fuller was a humbug . We simply accuse her of sciolism , pretension , Yankee impertinence , the assumption of the teacher ' s air when the air of the learner would have been much more becoming-.. Frankly , the contents of this volume—most of which have ' appeared in periodicals before—were not worth republishing . They had never aught but a slight and ephemeral interest . Whatever talent Margaret Fuller possessed was impro-visatorial .. She probably talked much better than she wrote , and wise would she have been if she had never written at all . „ The celebrated

    Rahel . Vnrnhagen Von Ense , whom Margaret Fuller in many points resembles , and who was the best German talker of the ^ , had the good sense not to write books ; and though Madame -de Stael wrote well , yet her tongue was so much more eloquent than her books , that slie also would have gained if she had trusted to her tongue alone . Margaret Fuller ' s instincts were , perhaps ^ as generous as her best friends have represented them ; yet she plainly believed in nothing- that could not be well talked about ; What was most fitted fox rhetorical embellishment always most readily found a place in her creed . Hence the abyss of the unutterable—that

    grandest temple of God—frightened her away from its very brink . The utlerable was her world . Altogether , too much fuss has been made about her . We had , besides works of her own , three volumes of her " Memoirs ; " and now wo have this obese tome , containing nothing of mark or merit . An impartial biography of her might be made an interesting- book . This we advise some one of her more sober friends to undertake . Brave deeds never grow old , though the cleverest ofleading articles and of improvisatorial essays are old the day after they are written ; and there was a strong element of braverv in Martrarot Fuller . Nothing- that she ever wrote would

    we snatch irom oblivion . Commonplaces in the newest Yankee garb are still commonplaces . But Margaret Fuller herself , as a singularly courageous woman , wo would place among- the saintly and the heroic . Ts there not enough in her death to hallow and atone ? . Till nearly forty years of ago Margaret Fuller had lived with her large-abounding treasure of afl ' ections unbestowed . Visiting- Italy , she cast the treasure into the bosom of the Marquis Ossoli . To her home across the Atlantic she was convoying him and a beloved babe , when all three perished in the waves within eight of that liomo . Our shriek over -the cruel waters , winch thus th and tho

    so remorselessly devour * is at once the aubliniest epiap snblimest oulogfy . Wu foul as if there must have boon something exceedingly beautiful and godlike in this woman since we rnourn her so fervently . Margaret Fuller is immortal , not for what she did , but for what she suffered . We love hor , because she was one of those who lovo much . And it is . they who love much , and not the Icings and queens of literature , who make society sacred and pure . Thou didst strive to bo eloquent , poor Margaret , but the billows lamenting ; ovev thy ocean grave , over the grave of thy husband and child , nre more eloquent than thou !

    March 3, 1860.J The Leader And Saturday ...

    March 3 , 1860 . J The Leader and Saturday Analyst . 209

    Uoter0ur1u3nts Overlooked.* Rpheub Aro T...

    UOTER 0 UR 1 U 3 NTS OVERLOOKED . * rpHEUB aro two ways of doing everything thatis to l >© done ; JL the straightforward way , and the oblique way—two ways of taking a town , of making- a proposal for ^ marriago , of Bottling ft * Unfaronrronta Overlooked . By tho author of " JNomieh intorlorB . " Two vole . London : A , Bo « tlo £ . 18 ( 50 .

    peace , or of writing- a book . Of the dozen other ways which gather round these two we say nothing- ; but erery action may be referred to one of these classes—the manly , open , straightforward ; and the indirect , secret , and sneaking . Good old John Bunyan , whose authority on such a question is not to be despised , tells us that there are two ways of entering-, even the Heavenly City ; the one at the strait gate , the other over the wall ; but lie show ' s us also where the indirect way leads , even when the intruder has trodden on the golden floors of the New Jerusalem itself . Such thoughts naturally suggest themselves to the conscientious reviewer , who , having ; read through a vast quantity of nonsense , if not exactly , to use a Carlyleism , " clotted , "' still of the undigested

    kind , finds that the whole , gist of the nonsense aforesaid 13 to bring back England under the Papal rule . Indeed , were not the manner inexcusable , the matter is sometimes funny enough on account of the distance from the truth to Which the author contrives to get ; and as from the weakness of the -artillery and the badness of aim no considerable harm can be done , it affords a pleasurable excitement to find certain masked batteries opening at the English nation in general and Church in particular . The author wisely keeps to the anonymous , but then so did Junius , and other great writers who have wished to carry out a great social revolution . Slat nominis unibrci ; so may it be with " Undercurrents . " thus off

    We think it wise to begin our review by letting a fog signal , since , no doubt , the subscribers to Mudie ' s will send , dear innocent young ladies , for " Undercurrents , " under the idea that it is a deeplv interesting novel , full of plot and passion , illustrating the adage that still waters run deep . . It is nothing of the sort ; \ t is a mere farrago > Hbelli , containing sketches of --London and Paris life , contrasted always to the benefit of the latter . As for the " undercurrents , " they , alas ! have been overlooked a dozen times before , and each sketch has been done many hundred times better by such men as Mr . Sala , in his " Twice round the Clock , " Mr . Hollingshead in his recent work , and Mr . Hain Friswell , m " Houses with the Fronts off . " The only thing which those writers have not done , is what this writer has done , namely ,

    to cry as he pokes his pen into each social- sore , " There , you see ! look at it ; is it not bad ? --Protestantism has done this ; it ' s all through that wretched . Faith ! Oh , ; they manage these things better in France ! ?> This quotation he even takes for one of his chapters ; we do not say that he ever uses any of our ^ words , but he constantly infers as much or more . " Caparisons , " as we learn from thrice blessed Mrs . Malaprop , are " . odorous ; " these are especially odorous . ' . ' .. ' .. . . . , .. Perpend ; therefore ! and let us learn , that in " clerical dehnquency , " for which the author quotes the case of a dissenting minister , we are far and away lower than the -continental nations ; that we have " barbarous amusements , " in support of which the author cites " a poor old fruit woman , whom we saw the other day so tormented by a number of rude schoolboys , just turned out of class , that she was crying and wringing her hands with vexation . ' He might as well have cited Mrs . Gamp being " chaffed ' by Hailey absolutel

    Junior . Let us also learn that recruiting sergeants y kidnap boys of fifteen for the army ! That we have open day robbery in our streets ! That we indulge—brutal nation!—in public executions 5 and that cock fighting , prize fighting , boxing- matches , ( and , to a certain extent of cruelty , we may ^ add horse racing ) are witnessed by women—and children too , Sunday after Sunday , m suburban London—that centre of decorum of humanity . " That we have also prize fights—learn it , ye backers of Sayers and the Bonicia boy—we have discovered in these " Undercurrents" hitherto overlooked ' " ' —that in this nineteenth century there are a set of monsters called prizefighters , and moreover that Irishmen get drunk in London , and are often very brutal ! " Why then , to quote Master Pompoy , "hqre be truths , I hope ! " Well piny the author write , "Wo aro aware that our fellow countrymen do not relish being-reminded of these peculiarities , especially when facts are brought home to them in such a way that they cannot be controverted , and we expect to be very unpopular for speaking so uie

    plainly . " Poor martyr 1 "holikes to be despised "—so cuu samuy Mawworni . Again , says this deep philosopher , " We tulk very glibly and very Igudly of the barbarity and cruelty of bparush brigands and Roman banditti , o £ the savage insolence and cowardly violence of their attacks ; we talk also of the moral frailties of other nations , of their voguery and chicanery , and of many similar vices which wo attribute so unsparing ( sic ) to thorn . Has it never occurred to us that all wo say of them , thoy may with far nioro reason affirm of us P" Of course , wo , wretched cioatures ! wo aro . ust oh und , « ay worse , than your Spanish brigand or . your Roman bandit . I hose shall booif look

    gentlemen aro mild , good , easy men to us . We , wo at home , " in what way tho ties of nature-, tho obligations of propriety , and the laws of God and man are violated und mocked ; how all tho restraints of religion and civilization aro set tuifde , ana uncurbed passions reign unchecked , savo when thoy clash with one ( mother , and produce a conflict and a complication of violence and disorder . " Thore's a climax for you ! Lovers of youu country , you who have an afl ' eotion for our little England , this priceless gem set in a silver sea , " think , with tour * in youv oyes , wlmfc a dew of thieves , of robbers , ruffians and miirdorera , it hatU become . There is a little book published in Paris , called ' ' Lea Voritea Am . UB . an . tes : " this might be called " Loa Mensonges Ainusantes . wXn from it , « i &) gst othqr things that Sunday is kept more sacredly in Paris than in London , and that even » & pro < m v <> rb < d has boon drawn up against a tavern-keeper of Montig > y ,, « 0 department of the Aiano , for having supplied rttr ^ mmt ^ nomo individuals bolonginiy to tho commune oa Sunday during Dxvma

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 3, 1860, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03031860/page/13/