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      October 11, 1856.] Th E Leidek. 977

      October 11 , 1856 . ] TH E LEiDEK . 977

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      Critics Are Nob The Legislators, But The...

      Critics are nob the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh , Review .

      A Curious Question Of Literarymorals Is ...

      A curious question of literarymorals is raised by the writer-of an . interesting article on the " Gowrie Conspiracy" in the National Review , a question ¦ which concerns us all , critics , historians , and novelists . The writer is indignant with Mr . G . P . R . James for having in a not very widely circulated novel misrepresented James the First , in order to suit the purposes of Fiction ; and he invites Mr . James to self-reflection , asking him how he would like to have his actions misrepresented by a novelist : —

      In reasonable probability he would indict the gifted author for a libel , and recover substantial damages . Let him consider , then , how it is like to stand with himself in the libel-court up above ; and in . what coin damages are said to be paid there . The toleration of ' historical romance , ' little as men know it , is a strange evidence of their disbelief in the continued existence of men and women after they pass off out of this world . If the novelists , and for that matter the historians too , had any real idea that the names with which they deal so freely belong to living persons , who will one day call tliem to account , their pens would run across their paper rather less rapidly .. " . - . - . . . '¦' / ¦ / ¦ . ' . ¦ . - ' ' . . . . ' ¦;¦ . ; . ¦ . ;

      This is quite a new mode of considering the matter- Let us only hope that James the First has lost something of his susceptibility to literary affronts , and . will not be powerfully disturbed by the attacks of James' the Novelist , ev-en supposing that gentleman ' s novels are in great request in celestial circulating libraries . For if the reviewer ' s assertion be true , we are most of us in a bad way . It is probable that we have spoken disi * espectfully of Ciceuo ; certain that we have used strong language in naming Nero . Hiive we never misrepresented Robespierke and Marat ? Have we told nothing but the truth about Cleopatra , and Sjgmijramis ? Have we never insulted Aristotle ? These questions may disturb our peace of mind . If when the critic dies ' a friend is to Avait upon him' for explanation of what he has written , the terrors of death will be considerably augmented . Let us hope that Literature is exclusively secular , mundane : it is our only hope !

      Seriously , we think the responsibility to Truth has quite another basis than the one which the Reviewer would have us accept . Without discussing the matter , let us add that even with mundane existences the critic ' s task is difficult enough , raising enmities oii all sides . What quarter can be expected by the writer of the article '' Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" in the WestminMet-Review . The writers of silly novels cannot be expected to take such a castigation with meek submission , and they will loudly protest that they are not ' appreciated . ' We fancy we detect a truth in the irony of the following passage , but will the silly novelists detect it ?—

      The fair writers have evidently never talked to a tradesman except from a carriage window ; they have no notion of the working-classes except as ' dependents ; ' they think five hundred a year a miserable pittance ; Belgravia and ' baronial halls' are their primary truths ; and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor , if not a prune minister . It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs , with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen ; that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts , and . inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains . It is true that we are constantly struck witli the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live ; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life . If their peers and peeresses are improbable , their literary men , tradespeople , and cottagers are impossible ; and their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both -what they have seen and heard , and what they have not seen and heard , with equal unfaithfulness . How admirably said is the following : —

      Greek and Hebrew are mere play to a heroine ; Sanscrit is no more than a b c to her ; and she can talk with perfect correctness in any language except English . She is a polkiny polyglot , a ( Jreuzer in crinoline . Poor men 3 There are so few of you who know even Hebrew ; you think it something to boast of if , like Uolingbroke , you only " understand that sort of learning , and what is writ about it ; " and you are perhaps adoring tvomen who can think sliyldinghj of you in all the Semitic lawjuaycs successively . We recognize the truth of this also : — You will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who 13 diffident of her ubility to decide on theological questions , —who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church parties , —who does not sec precisely how it is that men have gone wrong hitherto , —and pity philosophers in general that tliey have not had the opportunity of consulting her . Great writers , who have modestly contented themselves with

      putting their- experience into h ' ction , and have thought it quite a sufficient task to exhibit men and tilings as they are , she sighs over as deplorably deficient in the application of their powers . " They have solved no great qucstiona" —and she is ready to remedy their omission by setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity , in a love story , where ladies and gentlemen of good family go through genteel vicissitudes , to the utter confusion of Deists , l ' useyites , and ultra-Protestants , and to the perfect establishment of tliat particular view oi Christianity which , cither condenses itself into a sentence of small caps , or explodes into a cluster of stars on the three hundred and thirtieth page . It is true , the ladies and gentlemen will probably seem to you remarkably little like any you have had the fortune or misfortune to meet with , for , as a general rule , the ability of a lady novelist to describe actual life and her fellow-men , is in inverse proportion to her confident eloquence about God and the other world , and the means by which she usually chooses to conduct you to true ideas of the invisible is a totally false picture of tho visible .

      Of that dreary species of novel which the writer christens the " whilo neckcloth , " it is well said : — _ This species is a kind of genteel tract on a large scale , intended aa a sort of medicinal sweotraeat for Low Church young ladies ; an Evangelicul substitute for tho taanionablo novel , as the May Meetings arc a substitute for tlie Opera . Even Quaker

      children , one would think , can hardly have been denied the indulgence of a doll but it must be a doll dressed in a drab gown and a coal-scuttle bonnet—not a worldlydoll , in gauze and spangles . Aud there are no young ladies , we imagine , —unless they belong to the Church of the United Brethren , in which people are married without any love-making—who can dispense with love stoxies . Thus , for Evangelical young ladies there are Evangelical love stories , in which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by sa-ving views of Regeneration and the Atonement . We hope this drastic medicine may do the patients good , and somewhat diminish the number of silly novels ; but our confidence is not great . Silliness is fertile .

      If the Westminster Review is severe on the follies of one small class of women , it is earnestly striving to enlighten the public on the injustice under which , all women live with l'espect to marriage laws . In this number there is a grave and interesting statement and discussion of the laws relating to the property of married women , " and the means of remodelling those laws . The sub j ect has been taken up by inen of such auth ority and ability , that ere long a change in , the Uvws must come ; and for the discussion of the subject in Parliament such articles as this in the Westminster Review will be of great . service-How perpetually , in one shape or other , this topic of marriage conies before us ; sometimes in elaborate essays , at others in episodical digressions , as for instance in the article on " Shelley" in the National Review , where we read : —

      Uhere is an ordinance of nature at which men of genius are perpetually fretting , but which does more good than many laws of the universe which they praise : it is ' , that ordinary women ordinarily prefer ordinary men . " Genius , " as Hazlitt would have said , " puts them out . " It is so strange ; it does not come into the room as usual ; it says " such things : " once it forgot to brush its hair . The common female mind prefers usual tastes , settled manners , customary conversation , defined and practical pursuits . And it is a . great good that it should be so . Nature has no wiser instinct . The average woman can make happy the average man ; good health , easy cheerfulness , common charms , suffice . Asrain : ¦ *¦' - ¦ .. ' ¦ :. ¦ .. ¦ ... •¦ . •¦ : , ¦;

      Some eccentric men of genius , have , indeed , felt , in the habitual tact and serene nothingness of ordinary women , a kind of trust and calm . They have admired an instinct of the world which they had not—a repose of mind they could not share . But this is commonly in later years . A boy of twenty thinks he knows the world ; he is too proud and happy in his own eager and shifting thoughts to wish to contrast them AV'ith repose . The commonplaceness of life goads him : placid society irritates him . Bread is an incumbrance ; upholstery tedious : he craves excitement ; lie wishes to reform mankind . You cannot convince him it is right tosew , in a world so full of sorrow and evil . The demands upon our space are too many to allow of anything like a particular account of the articles in the two Reviews from which we have been citing , and all we can do is to squeeze in a well-tinned passage about Caulvjle , from the very interesting paper on " Personal Influences on our present Theology . " After alluding to the state of opinion subsequent to the French Revolution the writer says : —

      Something else was needed than , a new form of the discarded materialism , and freethinking , and sensationalism of the last age . In truth , Scottish logic and metaphysics had run dry , and by resort to them was no baptism of regeneration to be found . While many still wandered there in hope , there came out of the desert a Scottish votes , who had descried an unexhausted spring , and led the way to it bystrange paths . Thomas Carlyle gave the first clear expression to the struggling heart of a desolate yet aspiring ; time , making a clean breast of many stifled unbeliefs and noble hatreds ; and if unable to find any certain Saviour for the preseui , at least preparing some love and reverence to sit , ' clothed and in right mind , ' for the Divine welcome , whenever it might come . la the reader surprised that ive keep a niche for the author of lfaro- Worshi j * in our gallery of theologians f He it so . The officials of St . Stephen's were also surprised at the proposal to put Cromwell ' s eiHgy among the statues of the kings . We will only say , that whoever doubts the vast influence of Carlyle ' s writings on tlie inmost faith of our generation , or supposes that influence to be wholly disorganizing , misinterprets , in our opinion , the symptoms of the time , and is blinded by current phraseology to essential facts .

      This is in a different and deeper strain from that self-suflicient and patronizing tone which small writers often think proper to adopt towards Cak .-lylk ; and coining from one who by no means shares Carlyle's opinions , it is the more significant . Before closing this article we must mention the National Magazine , a new weekly periodical , edited by Messrs . Marston and Saunjjeus . It promises to be an attractive twopenny worth of fiction , essays , and illustrations . A portrait of Tennyson ( which makes the poet appear more like a defiant cruole than tho author of In Mamoriam ) is the occasion of a little essay ou

      the national characteristics of Tunnyson ' s poetry ( we should note in passing that the epithet " windy Troy ' was IIomisr ' s before Tennyson ' s ); and " Biarritz" is a very pleasant sketch of a bathing place which , now that it is Imperial , will of course become fashionable . Wilkie Collins contributes a mysterious story , well told , as usual with him , but scarcely worth the telling—at least in that form , since the real interest of such a story would Ho in the drama which is hero shrouded in mystery , and mot in the steps by which the mystery was revealed ; as a psychological study the position of tlie two brothers and tho wife over tho dead body of the chiLd would have been distressing , perhaps , but full of pathos .

      Lamenna.Is. (Huvrcs Vosthtmes Da I<\ Lam...

      LAMENNA . IS . ( Huvrcs Vosthtmes da I <\ Lamcntuiis . Publics scion Ic vozu de Vautcur , Par E . J ) . Forgues . Paris , 1850 . Oun readers may remember the trial in which the parti'prctrc recently endeavoured to prevent tho publication of this work , and failed . From his earliest days of celebrity Lumennais was a thorn in tlic side of the parti

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 11, 1856, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11101856/page/17/