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    fro. 407, Jakitasy 9, 1858.T THE LEADEB....

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    ^>il . M . _„ . 3Lt I?? ftuIXt* •¦

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    Critics are not the legislators, but the...

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    Eraser begins the new year with a number...

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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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Fro. 407, Jakitasy 9, 1858.T The Leadeb....

    fro . 407 , Jakitasy 9 , 1858 . T THE LEADEB . 39

    ^≫Il . M . _„ . 3lt I?? Ftuixt* •¦

    ItteratttrL

    Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...

    Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not GnUM make laws ^ -tney-interpret and try to enforce them .- Edinburgh Review .

    Eraser Begins The New Year With A Number...

    Eraser begins the new year with a number of more than average excellence , most of the articles being equally valuable and interesting . The first , by a literary veteran , Mr . Thomas Keightley , 'On the Life and Writings of Henry Fielding , ' is a contribution towards what is still wanting in our literature—a good biography of the great novelist who founded the realistic school of English fiction . Our great novelists have been unfortunate in their biographers , none of them , with the exception of Scott , and perhaps Goijjsmith , having found one worthy of his fame . In some cases , no doubt , the materials are scanty ; but even where they are tolerably full they have never been turned to good account . Sir Walter Scott ' s own short sketches of his brother novelists are even now the best lives of them we possess , being replete with broad views ,

    masculine sense , and > quiet insight at once critical and sympathetic . Mr . Laurence ' s Life of Fielding , published two years ago , though certainly a great advance on Murphy , was still only a step in the right direction . The life of Fieldeng has yet to be written , and Mr . Keig-htley ' s papers ( a second is to follow ) will furnish useful hints to the future biographer whenever he shall appear . The most striking and attractive article in the January number of Fraser , is , however , one entitled ' Northern Lights—City Poems , and City Sermons , ' by Shirley . It is as readable as it is well worth reading , being written in Shirley ' s pleasantest vein , and Shikkey is generally most instructive when he is most amusing . Manly earnestness speaks in the playful

    irony of his words , and there is a delicate and sterling criticism m the genial flow of Ids familiar talk . With the rich and various observation of life and manners , the keen but kindly insight , the easy , brilliant writing which mark the papers under this signature , the readers of Fraser are already familiar . We are tempted , however , to extract a specimen or two . How good , for example , is the following sketch of a marked feature in Scottish character : — Scotchmen are not merely prolific when looked at from the Registrar-General's point of view : they are prolific in most things . They are prolific speakers . The amount of palaver that takes place in a Scotch Kirk Session or a Scotch

    Town-Conncil passes knowledge . It is a luxury that can be had cheap . It costs them nothing ; and certainly they don't grudge it . I once attended a Town-Council meeting where the subject under discussion was , whether an additional six-and-eightpence should be given to the parish beadle . The wut , wisdom , eloquence , and loquacity of that meeting will haunt us to our dying day . They sat six mortal hours , abased each other like pickpockets , and then , on the motion of a corpulent bailie , adjourned the discussion till the following month . So the unlucky beadle did not get his increase of salary for another month at least ; probably he has not got It yet . For anything I know to the contrary , they may have talked on till this very day . Council The who

    The Kirk Session is a great ally of the Town- . man can ' t get into the one goes into the other ; and between the two , the whole male population ( that part of it , at least , which belongs to the lower grades of the middle class ) become civic or ecclesiastical orators . There is no remote corner in the North which does not boast its burgh Demosthenes , its village Chatham . They are plentiful as blackberries . One knows the man at a glance . He is very seedy around the gills ; hia mouth is large and hungry , like the wolf ' s in Bed Riding-Hood ; he has a permanent soreness about the lower part of the bronchial tube which communicates a solemn aoerbity to his speech . Your Conservative of this class is a line specimen of the order . Ho declaims in the Town-Council against the poor-rates ; his soul is bitter within him when he denounces Mr . Moncrieff and his ' indegeested legislawcion . ' The county paper reports him ; so he speaks like a man who is aware of the responsibility that lies upon him , and who—accepts it .

    The City Sermons arc those recently published by the most eloquent of living Scottish preachers , Dr . Gutiirie , which were reviewed last week in the columns of the Times . The writer in the Times signalizes the weakness , not to say absurdity , of the preacher ' s practical suggestions as to the best means for correcting thc ' cvils incident to great cities , which he so eloquently deplores ; and the writer in Fraser traces this weakness to the severe Calvinism of Scottish thoology . " Dr . Gutjirie , " he says , "is a good man , in practice , and apart from his creed ; but when he begins to write of reason , behold how vague and irrelevant he becomes ! Wo do not blame him ; it is the system , not tho man , that is to blamo . A bonovolont Calvinist must regard our ' sins and sorrows ' with blank bewilderment ; do good by stealth , and blush to find it fame—for it is at tho expense of its logic , at the peril of its consistency ; and he must retreat from its speculative and praotioal dilemmas into vague metaphor and windy palavor . " It is certainly rather characteristic of Calvinism that it should call in the strong amm of the law to suppress moral evil , as it emphatically asserts in its fundamental principles tho utter impotenco of all moral menus to change tho individual or reform tho race In its eyes no man is in a more hopeless state ilinn tho merely moral man , nnd no instrumentality is predestined to more oertain failure- than ono which depends for its success on moral influence . A consistent Calvinis ! , therefore , is necessarily a physical-force reformer . The City Poems arc thowc recently published by Mr . Alexander Smith . SiiinLiaY ~^ ably ~ uc"fcTTdS ^ rrSttnTn ^ —Q ? o-4-he-poet > himself ho offers the following sound advico : — So far for Mr . Smith ' s assailants : -will you , Mr . Smith , allow us to any a few words to yourself ? If you cannot work out tho suggestions wo aro going to off or , then wo counsel you in perfect sincerity to conno from wijUing dramatic ,, mid to writo didactic pooms in their plnco . If ydu hud thrown tho vurious rofluotfouu upon nature and human lifo which occupy tho pages of City Pocmtt into a pocticul form resembling Thomson ' s iSwwotta or Wordsworth ' s JZcvcuraion , wo havo no hesitation In saying that you would havo produood an oflfectivo poem . Your thought *! ore quita as original as theirs , your language much' Jiioro torso and pregnant . And yot yonr volume 1 b eminently unsatisfactory and ln « fl < uotlve . WhyV Because you have tried to "bo a

    ¦ dramatist—that is , you have tried to mate « s believe that you were set speaking in your own person : that some one you had imagined and « re * ted was speaking in yam place . You challenge us to estimate you as a dramatist $ and when we read through your book as a drama , and find that it is not a drama ,. we are unavoidably disappointed ; and the apt epigram and the striking reflection , instead of being relished as they would have been had they found an appropriate setting , are read at a fatal disadvantage . A sense of incongruity between Hie form and the material qaite destroys the enjoyment of the reader . We do not say to you , as yet , that you must at once abandon the drama , for there are lyr ical bursts here and there in your volume , where , under the pressure of a strong emotion , you lose the sense of your own personality , that are , we think , essentially dramatic ; but to produce a consistent asd continuous dramatic poem there are many requisites to which you must attend ia . the

    meantime . Why do your Idyls of English life , for instance , differ so much from Mr . Tennyson ' s ? There are many points of resemblance—the rich colouring of feminine loveliness , the vivid descriptions of natural scenery , for instance : and yet , while Mr . Tennyson ' s are complete and satisfying to the mind , yours are not . Why ? Because Mr . Tennyson has gained a clear insight into the characters of the men and women he introduces , and you have not . He gets a firm hold of them in the first place , and , having entered as it were into their hearts , then , and not till then , he writes , and with this result—that they are perfectly natural , perfectly consistent throughout . They are not pieces of brilliant patchwork . They never say anything merely because It is ornamental . When the laureate portrays a boy in a Glasgow factory , for instance , he does not think of putting into his mouth the beautiful descriptions and have

    reflections which make your ' Boy * Poem' in a certain sense the best that you yet written . And why ? Because he wants to bring the peculiar feelings « f a bey vividly before us , and -he has no wish whatever to unrol a picturesque panoramaof the Clyde—no doubt a very good thing in itself , and on a fitting occasion , but quite irrelevant and incongruous to the main work he is then engaged on . Now you do not attend to this law . It is the Clyde , and not the boy , that you care aoout . There is barely an expression in the mouth of any of yonr heroes which is characteristic , which identifies him ; which that man , and that man only , would use . And the result is , that not a single human being stands out clearly or articulately before us in your poetry : we get a dim and confused notion of a throng of somewhat blackened and dirty faces : as far as we can see , all very much alike , and bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the Deus . ex machina who stands in the background and pulls the

    strings of the puppet-show . The absence of vital energy is fatal to a dramatist . His actors must stand on their own feet , and not be indebted to any one else for support . And to the true dramatist this is congenial work . He has no satisfaction in describing—he must embody It is a necessity of his nature . Now , our Scotch poet always seems thankful to get back to description . There he feels that he is on terra firma . He can describe a passion in two lines ; he cannot embody one in forty pages . We say to Mr . Smith , Select your subject , and then force your characters to worlc out their story , vnthout a sing le word of description or explanation . Embody , do not describe . The result will be , no brilliant poetic mirage certainly , but , if you have the dramatic power in you at all , genuine smiles , genuine tears . And this brings us to speak of the selection of a subject . There are , it appears to us , two or three fundamental mistakes in Mr . Smith ' s principle of choice . Before leaving the Magazine we ought to say that it contains an excellent translation of Goethe ' s Helena , by Mr . Theodore Martin .

    Blaclcwoad opens the year with a dissertation on Hunger and Thirst , which has the merit of being at once popular and scientific , the facts collected being really interesting , and the explanations given lucid and complete . A good review of Debit and Credit , the German novel recently introduced to English readers by Chevalier Bunsen , follows . One of the best articles in the number is that on the Scottish Universities . Judicious , almost judicial , intone , sound in argument , and extremely seasonable . The writer takes a middle course between the extreme reformers and their opponents , explaining the true character of the Scotch university system as opposed to the English , urging , that this character should be retained in its integrity , temperate reforms by which this may be best secured . From the well-written and acute article on B ^ rangeb wo can only afford space for the following extract , which will , however , probably tempt many readers to seek the article for themselves : —

    There * re no abrupt breaks in the songs of Bel-anger . They are not a succession of verses cut into arbitrary bits , but dainty little separate existences , tuning their periods with an intuitive music , long enough to interest the fancy , and not too long to burden it . And they are not songs of passion . This extraordinary chansonnier * , of all things in the world , thinks proper to confess that he has never had the luck to know tho love of romances and poets , and his verses accordingly lack that charm ; but if they are not love-songs , they aro , what is still better for their purpose , songs about everything —sparks struck on the moment from every passing blaze of popular emotion , from every event in one of tho most crowded chapters of history ; and it becomes possible to understand , through the interpretation of Be ' ranger , the real weight of that saying , which does not , seom to have much application to our literature and country , though it is perpetually quoted in regard to them , " Let who will make the laws , if I make the songs . "

    This fundamental difference , however , makes it very strange that any one should eall Berangor the Burns of France . It would be almost as just to call him the Milton . The burning heart of tho Ayrshire poasant bears as Httlo resemblance to the lively intellect of tho Parisian bourgeois aa tho lightning does to tho lamp . True , they havo both written songs ; but the songs of tho Scot are songs of passion , fiery effusions of an exuberant and overflowing ardour—words that burn . There is an effusion , an abandon ( strungo that wo should find names for this wild overflooding exuberance in a language which produces so few examples of it !) , a plunge of tho ontiro spirit into tho uttoranco in tho verses of Burns , which does not exist , nor a shadow of it , in Bdrangor . Wild mirth , wild lovo , wild despair , all the big passions of a giant , glow in tho songo of tho ploughman ; but us for tho Parisian , ho has not very much to do with passions . Ho is not a Burns , startling tho quiet with his great emotions , iio isWaTATmcTibTiF ^ spiration of a poet , ho is , nevertheless , simply a citizen , living as every body olaeaoea , thinkliur as everybody else think * throwing bin sentiments about everything treeiy turna

    , from him in lively and melodious voncb , In happy refrains , in delightful or expression , which ono loves to take into one ' s lips , as a child does a bonbon , it » s no * love ™ , it is not nfeiisuro-seuken ! who flnd expression for thoir fancies provided to tueir hand by tho chamonnkr . It is everybody who lives In tho same ago , who seoo tho same ovont , who shares with him In tho universal sentiment . Ho is not socking popularity by a choice of popular thomos ; but , living in the midst of tho common world , he , flings what ho thinks about what ho sous , and tho people , whom tho eamo events havo moved porhaps to similar fancies , crowd round him in delighted surpriao ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 9, 1858, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09011858/page/15/