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    No. 428, June 5, 1858.] THE LEADER. 545

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    ^ ?^ . . ¦ ¦ . ¦ . ... Critics are not t...

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    Blccckwood' xs characteristically politi...

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    CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI. The, Life of Cardin...

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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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    No. 428, June 5, 1858.] The Leader. 545

    No . 428 , June 5 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . 545

    . . T ^^Ffp'pl ' Mitp / ^L/Uvmh-Uvv*- " —

    iriteratuct

    ^ ?^ . . ¦ ¦ . ¦ . ... Critics Are Not T...

    ^ ?^ . . ¦ ¦ . ¦ . ... Critics are not thelegislators , but the judges arid police of literature . They do not makelaws—they interpret and try to enforce th . em . —Edinburgh Review . ¦ - ¦ ' - * - . . . ¦'

    Blccckwood' Xs Characteristically Politi...

    Blccckwood ' xs characteristically political this month , out of seven articles two being devoted to the Indian Mutiny , and two to the state of parties at home . Of the remaining papers , one , entitled .. " Religious Memoirs , " is peculiarly seasonable and good . The writer deals in a thoroughly religious , but at the same time manly , sensible , indignant spirit , with one of the growing evils of the day—the multiplication of weak , wishy-washy , characterless religious biographies . This large class of works has of late been too much overlooked

    or treated too leniently by the critics , probably from the feeling that the subject exempted them from criticism , or that their literary claims were too poor , and their influence too slight to deserve it . This , however , is an entire mistake . Forced as they are on the attention of thousands of young people at a most susceptible age , the educational influence of these books must be great , and often most injurious . Their slipshod English , effeminate sentiment , and tawdry ornament ; their narrow and one-sided views of life ; in a word , their utter want of truth and nature , of depth , insight , and power , must directly tend , not only to deprave the taste and warp the judgment , but to produce radically false notions of duty and life in the minds of youthful and sympathetic readers .

    The few religious lessons avowedly inculcated , and the religious effect actually produced , are no adequate recompense for this injury . Weak sentiment and wordy rhetoric are not the indispensable condition of religious instruction . The highest religious lessons may be taught in simple words , and the noblest religious life set forth in a plain , unvarnished narrative . Why , then , this sticeessionof homilies under the various titles of Christian Merchants , Christian Heroes , and Christian Philosophers , but all alike , all equally without life , power , or individuality ? The examples selected by the critic in Blackioood are the Memorials of Captain Medley Vicars , and a . Biographical Sketch of Sir Heiirv Havelock . Of the latter work lie speaks as follows ¦ : ——' ¦

    Religious literature , however , distinguishes itself by a more daring deficiency of literary skilL than any other branch of the craft can venture on , and takes its standpoint with a more arbitrary determination to see everything from that view , and to adapt everything it finds to -its own good purpose . It would be impossible to find a better example of this peculiarity than in a little volume lately published , which professes to he a . Biographical Shetch of Sir Henry Havelock , and which has been published with as much precipitation as a linendrapcr ' s circular , and certainly suggests an impulse not much different from that of the vorthy shopkeeper , who makes a hasty coup to forestal and anticipate his rival in the trade , and to talce first advantage of a sadden novelty . All this island , in every inch of its space , and heart of its people , has tingled with anxiety , with triumph , and at last with bitter unavailing regret and disappointment , that he who had won such honours should never return

    to receive tliem , at hearing of tlie name which stands upon this smug and complacent title-page . Sir Henry Havelock ! —he who won like an old banneret of chivalry , but , like a modern public servant , never lived to wear , that knightly title and reward - which none ever more gallantly deserved—he who only paused upon his march to fight a battle , and only fought to clear the road for las onward march , and did both impossible achievements for the rescue of the perishing—he who did not live to hear how a whole country traced his steps with tears and cries , and an anxiety as breathless as if evevy man in his band had been a son or a brother ; but did live—a better thing—to know that his work was accomplished , and the blood of his soldiers , and his own noble life , were not spent in vain . It is this man , in the climax of honours and lamentations , while his name is still in every mouth , yet before there can be time for such a record as might possibly preserve his memory with

    becoming dignity , that the religious trade rushes in to biographise and sell so many editions of . A book is coming by-and-by , we are informed , which -will be the real Life of Havelock . In the meantime , before that can be ready , why should the universal interest run to waste , and be suffered to pass without improvement ? so the sheets fly through the press , and the volumes through the country . It may not be any great honour to Havelock , or a just tribute to his memory ,, but there can be little doubt that it is a sharp and successful stroke of business , honourable to the energy and promptitude of the trade . ...... Nobody knew , as it -would appear , up to the moment of his showing it , what daring and indomitable courage was in this Baptist soldier , who , for a lifetime back , had been holding prayer-meetings in his regiment , and making " saints" of his men . That lie was a brave man , and did his duty , everybody allowed ; but had he diad two years sooner , no one could have

    supposed what amount of undeveloped force lay in his modest grave . This is perhaps the most -wonderful lesson that ever -was drawn from soldier ' s life—how a man may live till he is sixty , brave but riot remarkable , yet nt last die gloriously , the hero of such a fiery , rapid , breathless campaign as might have opened the career of some glorious young conqueror , invincible in his first ardour , and genius , and youth . A strange lesson , and not an encouraging one—showing how God himself does not treat the lives of his servants as so many allegories to draw " lessons" from , but brings about , perhaps , the greatest issue of their existence in the strangest , most inconsequent , unexpected way , and leaves the weightiest act of their lives so near the end , that one feels an instinctive involuntary start of anxious wonder , as if , another moment delayed , Providence would have been too lute . A brave mun does not live and die in order that some one may improve his fortunes into a memoir , and young societies draw

    men s lessons from it ; but if there were such an intention in the life of iiavelock , what a strange , startling , unaccountable problem for a young spirit ! To Have it in him for sixty years , nnd yet to work through all that time without means or power to show it forth-to wait for the hour nnd tho opportunity until just the verge and extent of tho common life of man . But Providence takes no pains to sort and arrange , mid make portable for us , such a lesson as this . Wut can anyone maKoot itt It is not a logical human creation , set and balanced and - mado tho most 01 , but ono of those grand , incomplete , broken-off works of God which point 1 ™ ?\ , mettttln S abovo "or <* a , to the life beyond , wliero these fragments shall „ !?" . to f ? ? . ' an ( l nH - things fulfilled . There are , however , nothing but lcsniU * . 1 • volume - lovelock ' s own letters—fatherly , busbandlike , und 2 " |) IOU 9 ' m wlllch lio « 11 the interest of the book—cannot be Biiui > ly l « ft to tell thf th n 7 i' Ut , mu 8 tbe docketed , and labelled , nnd put up in ImukUch , to prove tiua tlnng or the other thing . He cannot even acknowledge in an address to his

    soldiers , as any good man and leader would , ' " the blessing of God on . a most righteous cause , " but his biographer must put in , Italics , and direct everybody ' s attention to the simple thanksgiving . The opening paper in Fraser this month is another contribution to the rapidly increasing " Shelley Literature" —some interesting reminiscences of the poet by a personal friend , Mr . T . L . Peacock . The lines , entitled , " An Invitation to a Painter , " are so full of country life and breezy freshness , that in reading them we feel an involuntary envy of the happy man who ds able to reply in the affirmative to such a tempting offer . The article on " Recent French Memoirs , " though pretentious in tone , is very poor in style and inaccurate in substance . An elaborate and thoughtful paper on Matthew Arnold ' s Metope is worth reading ; but , for ourselves , we aTc quite satisfied with a briefer dictum on the same work given further on in the number by another critic in a genial notice of Mr . Kin & siey's recent volume of poems .

    Tins month's number of the Dublin University Magazine is an excellent one . The article on " Froude ' s History of England , * in particular , is- about the best review of the work we have seen— -discriminating and just , giving ample praise to the writer ' s rare merits , and frankly signalizing his characteristic defects . " Richard Savage" is the title of a graphic and interesting- biographical sketch . The Magazine is , however , not simply a > literary agent , bat a social power , as the position it has taken on the Trinity College question sufficiently proves . A second paper in the present number amply sustains the charge of mismanagement already brought against the college authorities , and concludes with an appeal to public opinion , that being the only tribunal now from -which there is auy hope of obtaining an . efficient ' , verdict in favour of reform , That such , a verdict will be obtained there can be little doubt , and , if so , the merit of securing it will be greatly due to the exertions of the University Magazine .

    Cardinal Mezzofanti. The, Life Of Cardin...

    CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI . The , Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti . With an Introductory Memoir on Eminent Linguists , Ancient and Modern . By C . W . Russell , D . D . Longman and Co . Some years ago , Dr . Russell contributed to the Edinburgh Review a paper on Mezzofanti- which excited considerable interest . It was translated into French , and abridged in Italian , and many suggestions were pressed upon the writer that he should enlarge his essay into a volume . There was a temptation in the idea 3 but there were many difficulties in the way of its development ; To present a clear , full , and unexaggerated biographical estimate of Mezzofanti was hot easy . A contemporary though he was of the living generation , the testimony to his genius is confused and often

    untrustworthy . " When once an individual stands forward as a prodigy a hundred rumours take wing , especially when he is a linguist , and a majority of his admirers are forced to appreciate him in pure faith . Dr . Russell , however , adopted an excellent method of investigation , and his account of the Cardinal , without being depreciatory , is critical throughout , and free from those extravagances which might almost be ' expected to disfigure such a narrative . He has made inquiries of persons in all parts of the world , sometimes at the cost of much pa , tience and labour , to satisfy himself , by the evidence of living representatives of most of the languages ascribed to the Cardinal , whether lie had actually been acquainted with them and to what extent , and the result appears in this elaborate and valuable memoir . We forget to whom tho . epigram of laudation was

    addressed—Thou hast so many languages in store , That only Fame can speak of thee in . morebut it might certainly have been applied to Mezzofanti . However , Dr . Russell does not seek to dilate the proportions of this one figure by concealing the others known to history . In a preliminary memoir he passes in review the great linguists of all ages and countries , including not a few whose acquisitions appear somewhat mythical , a point which he is careful not to forget . It matters little what Aulus Gelli us relates of the glutton Mithridates , and it is even to be suspected that Plutarch told more than he knew of Cleopatra . We think the scepticism of Sir Cornewill I Lewis might be very well applied in these instances . Similar doubts rest upon the reputations , as linguists , of Soliman the Magnificent , of Jonadau . the African , and even of Mirandola , while it is impossible not to believe that ait

    efflorescence of fable brightens the renown of the Cordovese Fernando , and the Admirable Crichton . However , Dr . Russell's sketches of these and a multitude of other reputed linguists arc full of interest , and in some cases form complete miniature biographies . Towards the close of his prefatory memoir , he introduces notices of infant prodigies , and it may warn gome injudicious teachers to know that Jacopo Mtirtino , the Venetian Claudio dellaTalle y Hernandez , John Lewis ( Jandiac , and Christian Henry Heineehen , all wonders of precocity in their Babel powers of speech , wero silent in their coffins before they had quitted infancy—dying respectively at the ages of nine , seven , and four years , from exhaustion or from water on the brain . With reference to the linguists noted by William ltoscoo , has not Dr . Russell forgotten , in his account of Richard Roberts Jones , of Aberdarvan , the parallel character of Dick Roberts , of Liverpool , great in lsmguagcs , dirt , and eccentricity ?

    Dr . Russell avows that a memoir of Cardinal Mezzofaiiti can be little more than a philological essay , and that his utmost hope 5 s to escape the reproach directed by Warburton against Desinuiseau , the biographer of Boilenu , of having u written a book without a life . " But wo scarcely think he is justified in thus declaring the duluess of his own narrative , which is far more eventful and varied tlian might bo anticipated from the author ' s confessions . It is , iu truth , a particularly uttractive mid entertaining story , constructed with great industry , and incorporating a large amount of original ninterials . !" or the early life of Mezzofanti Dr . Itu 6 sell is compelled to rely , in pnrt , upon conjecture , though he conscientiously distinguishes th < s apocryphal from the authentic anecdotes of that period .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 5, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05061858/page/17/