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Leader (1850-1860), 15th July 1854, Edition 2 of 2, Page 19

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      Satire And Satirists. Satire And Satiris...

      Erasmus from spot to spot;—as in a dark-lantern hunt at school , one got a glimpse of the boy with the lantern , by the occasional flash he threw out . He is in France , Germany , England , —always a little spot of light in places of darkness , superstition , ignorance , violence . But consider how his knowledge was acquired too ; how different was the task of berng ^ scholar then , than in our day , with its grand npparatus of books , maps , globes ; and an intellectual machinery so perfect , that you can turn out moderate literati as copiously as they make pins , getting a few yards of ordinary wire , and working them up , heads and all , in comparatively no time ! To be a great author remains as difficult as ever ; but in the days of Erasmus , you could hardly be a man of attainments without being a man of genius . The first editions of the Classics , works which now are the curiosities of libraries ( and

      I believe fetch large sums , particularly if you can get a copy with the leaves uncnt , which is a bijou ") , were slowly crawling out from the presses of Venice , Florence , and further north sometimes , in Erasmus ' s younger days . He says once , in a letter , that , ' if he could get some money , be wonld bayjirst Greek books , and then clothes . ' There were about three men ai Oxford capable of teaching Greek at that time . The great scholars , in fact , taught themselves , and by huge personal exertions . It was a time of grand energy and indomitable enthusiasm . Europe began to learn , as , centuries before , she had fought , with a heroism that was demonic Erasmus , Budasus , and those who followed these great leaders , were the Vikings of literature . They embarked on the sea of knowledge -with henrts as daring as those with which our forefathers long before had spread their sails on tiie Baltic and the German Oceans 1 " On a very different subject from this , Mr . Hannay writes just as vividly and agreeably . Here are some good thoughts about HORACli AND HIS POETRY . " I esteem Horace as a moralist and satirist ( and the Roman satire Li essentially ethical ; and indeed all great satirists are moralists ) more than as a poet . It -would be more accurate to describe him as a satirist who wrote poetry , than as a poet who wrote satires . A late biographer ( Milman ) deals again with that fatal old question ( so often raised also about Pope ) , was he a poet at all ? The very donbt is dangorous to him ; and unhappily these < loubts just rise when poetry itself is taking a fresh development Who shall deny the charm of . his caiinina—the finish of bis art ? They must be read again and again with pleasure . But it seems tome that the key to the whole question was furnished by Buttmann , when he said , ' Horace is not one of those poets who wrote from aii impulse of Nature . ' It is u certain condition of mind , original and creative , which makes a man a poet ; and that that was possessed by by Horace , I do not see reason to believe . " When one examines liis poems , one sees at the first glance that the creation of many of them was merely artificial . He avails himself of a tradition—of a situation—of some little scene foreign to Borne in place and character ; and this he works up in Italian marble , and gives out as a Latin poem . Thus , many of his lyrics are paintings of old subjects ( Greek subjects on Boman frescoes ) ; imitations of the old classic models of the Archipelago , and the east of the Mediterranean ; and embodiments of a mythology in which lie did not believe . Them , consider the difficulties to which all attempts to treat these poems historically give rise , what are we to make of the Greek names in the lyrics , for irs-tance ? The com . mentators have done their best ; and have endowed the philosophic Horace with such a bev y of Greek acquaintances , particularly damsels , —lute-playing dancing-girls , with ivy-bound heads Or rose-crowned heads , with hair of one form and hair of another ^—that criticism pauses in despair . The acute scholar I qtioted a moment ago takes these young Greek persons to task ; ho exposes Horace ' s contradictions in his statements about them ; shows that one Lalage is quite different from another Lalage ; condemns the notion of their historic existence ; stigmatises those who maintain it as ' gossiping atmecdote-mongers ; ' and lays it down , that nou-resjjyjty is an essential feature of Horace ' s Odes . ' A misconception is thus removed ^ about Horace ' s private life : but , further , one finds many literary difficulties removed likewise . I cannot fancy Horace believing , except in an artistic kind of way , in his mythological subjects . You leave him skill , tact , taste , language ; you conceive him , too , under this theory , a much more natural and coherent being , —as a fine-tasted satirist , and . man of the world , who did , pictures after the Greeks , —than you do if yon suppose him , as the author « f the moral and satirical discourses , to have been directly inspired by old Pagan E iety towards the gods ; or , living in the plain way he did , to have been habitually enchanted y Greek girls and boys , while sitting under the my tie or the vine . I esteem him in his ¦ l yrical capacity , as an exquisite reproducer of old forma ; while , of conrse , the value of his lyrics is immeasurable in this light , as a picture of the ancient life , its beliefs , its sentiments , its gaiety . " One more extract from Mr . Hannay ' s last lecture , treating of Byron , and we must have done . BYRON . AND DON JUAN . " It is to bo remarked , that all the while that ho was indulging in the excesses of his age , ho nov « r believed in that course of life . Ho had to drug his heart and conscience , somehow , before he gave himself up to it . He was always open to remorse ; and when wo talk of his soda-water , let us remember that ho took repentance along with it . There is a strong distinction between the dissipation of a man whose heart is true , and that of our friend the ' pig' of the * garden . ' He doesn't glory in being a pig : on the contrary , lie means to leave the garden * after this one debauch : at all events , lie does not mako a philosophy of it , and assert that , after all , tlio * garden' is the only place for a man . Yet even the dissipation of Byron was but a phase : when wo remember what ho thought , did , read , and wrotOj it can only liavo been a small phase in his . life . And wo know , from his last actions and his last poems , that lie was developing into the high and pure man , of whom what ho had written was the prediction . Don Juan was the state of transition from Byron the Denier to B y ron tlio Positive , the Door . In all hU first works , from Childa Harold to Manfred and Cain , he was at war with the world and with himself ; and these dark

      figures , with their various costumes , and thoir ono note , were expressions of that fact . Misanthropy can be no permanent status for a man ; accordingly , as ho got older , and more tranquil and composed , Jio camo to a pauao in that curoor ; ana in Juan wo find tlio results of tlio pause between the Corsair-viaw ol life nnd the higher stago ( tho hist to which ho attained ) , tho ambition to servo mankind practically in the case of struggling Greece , —an enterprise , ono object of which wna to redeem himsolf in tho opinion of his countrymen . Juati , therefore , i » tho healthiest and most cheerful of his productions ; and in spite of certain levities hero nnd tuore , -which 1 regret as much us any man ( anil -which may servo as a thomp to Stiggins in his leisure hour ) , it is a high and valuable work . Its predominant tono is humorous and satirical ; it is full of sharp good sonso ; nnd it is , in trnth and fact , a work with u . good object . It pictures lifo gonially and soundly ; excites your love of tho beautiful and the lofty ; demolishes cnnl in many u stirring lino ; and , above all , tho utter sonso of weariness and disgust it gives you for tho mere lito of pleasure , and for the false tone of English socioty , is most foonoflcml and healthy . I think it disgraceful , tho vmy in wuioii tins

      t > oolc la olton treated . JL do not consider it a dangerous book to anybody > vlio is nt to road it . A fool horo and thoro may make tho mistake to sunposo that it is mtoiided to Btimnlato him into being aOocknoy-Rochestor ; but tlmt ennnot bo helped . Tho form ia humorous , and tho adventured romantic ; but tho rotiult is tho thing to bo considered . Tho whole poom , aa a pioturo of life , loaves you with a , sensu of melancholy nnd of satiric acorn , —both , howovcr , much > noro natural , nnd hculthy than those excited by his other works . Meanwhile , your best fcolingtj ; havo lo ' cn nwnlcunod by mnny most tender mid most noblo Btrmnu of waling , which havo tukcai your heart by storm . And for tlio rust ? Tho ye at is pk'nsnntiy and gentlemanly buflbonory . nnd fimtiislio nfi ' octution . vhero tlio clement of humour and intellect lins kept tho doubtful matter from being miacliicvoua , ns pure water Jcoeps herbs frosh . Let hh boar in mind , that tho groat humoriHts , froo a « thoy may bo now [ and then , are not tho corrupting twn . if [ wanted to corrupt a youth ( which God lorbui ) , I would not give him Juvenal , or Tristram Shandy , or Don Juan ; tho intullcctnnl exhibition would delight him , and cheok tho miachicf to his feelings : no , 1 would hand him a Jesuit UijU book of moral quoutioiiB 1 "

      With theseexamples of whnt Mho reader may expect to find in Salt re and bannstS i YrQ close our notice of a book which" really deserves attention from the public as an intoroating and xiBoful contribution to tho critical literaturo ol our own times .

      July 15, 1854.] The Leader. 667

      July 15 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER . 667

      Books On Oub Table. Russia And Turkey. B...

      BOOKS ON OUB TABLE . Russia and Turkey . By J . R . M'Culloch , Esq . ( The Travellers' Library . ) Longman , Brown , Green , and Longmans Indian Leisure . Petrarch — On the Character of Othello — Agamemnon — Henriad—Anthology . By Captain Robert Guthrie Macgregor . Smith , Elder , and Co . The Perils and Adventures of Priscilla Eaten . An Historical Tale . John F . Shaw Hogg ' s Instructor . No . 13 . James Hogg Sewell Pastures . By the Author of " Sir Frederick Denvent , " & o . 2 vols . George Eontledge and Co The Assurance Magazine , and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries . No . 14 .

      C . and E . Laytoa . Our Friend . A Monthly Miscellany designed for all Classes . John F . Shaw The Southern Quarterly Review . New Series . No . 19 . Trubner and Co Funny Memoirs of Foreign Lands . By Mrs . Harriet Beecher Stowe . 2 vols . Sampson , Low , Son , and Co .

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      ^ ntifniin .

      We Should Do Our Utmost To Encourage The...

      We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itseli . — Qoethe .

      Douche The Second. The Processes Of The ...

      Douche the Second . The processes of the Water-Cure may sound , ridiculous to the uninitiated and considerably alarm those whose ablutions , being constantly of " the lick and promise" character , have an epidermis as much alarmed at the mention of cold water as lovely -woman , is at a cow in Regent-street or at a duck of ferocious aspect in a lonely lane . Nevertheless , the processes are , in reality , extremely agreeable . I cannot deny that they cleanse the skinthey are " open to that objection , " as the man said of the foot-bath ; but I distinctly deny that they are other than exquisite luxuries ; and whatever curative virtue there may be in water , it has certainly the negative merit of being unlike curative drugs , which are not on the whole agreeable to the palate or system . I think , indeed , that if some of the Water-Cure processes could only be called vices j and proved as injurious as alcohol and tobacco , they would be as largely indulged in . The immense and exhilarating animal vigour , and general tendency to " whip one ' s weight in polecats , " which succeeds a good bath and rubbing , are sensual indulgences not to be despised $ and it is only the idea of medical treatment which can suggest the contrary . The human being objects to " treatmenf ^ shudders at black draughts as at sermons ; and drugs are physical sermons , sermons are moral drugs . But if I begin to moralise I shall outrun my space , so let me describe .

      At six o ' clock , a brawny bathmaji with large fat hands tears aside the " blanket of the dark , " and informs you that your bath is ready . If you are to he packed , this is the process : a counterpane is taken off the bed , a wet sheet is placed on it , and yon , in the character of an Antinous or Satyr , as the case may be , dim or dumpy , bandy or obese , recline your form upon that wet sheet , which is then folded very carefully over you ; the blankets are systematically packed round that , and when you are thoroughly swathed in this way , you are left , with your hands pinioned at your side , to represent rudely a perspiring Mummy—the Amenophis of private life— 'in which extremely historical condition you remain for half an hour or an hour . If you consider the well-directed horror of the European mind against damp

      sheets , you will perhaps be startled at this notion of being packed in a wet sheet ; the difference is not in the dampness , but in the packing , " which prevents evaporation , and , consequently , produces a steady suffused glow of warmth , which soothes you into a gentle slumber . I have but one comment to make upon this process , and this is tho inconsiderateness with which tho bathman leaves you packed , instead of remaining to attend to any little wants . Imagine the torture of lying , swaddled and hel p less , while volatile flies career upon your face , or stray hairs tickle you to madness ! Mora serious than this , is the objection that possibly your condition is so low that you have not heat enough to produce the necessary reaction , and may be , as I was at the first trial , obliged to take a cup of hot tea , or some other stimulant .

      To return to the process : You are awakened from your doze by thg return of tho faithful bathman , brawny and assiduous , who after unwrapping you , invites you to get into a long shallow bath of cold water . The luxury of this cold water , aided by his energetic rubbing , is indescribable ! It throw mo at once , historically , into tho Human baths , and made me appreciate tho wiso magnificence of those old sensualists . Getting out of tho bath , I made tho man rub my wet akin with easy vigour ; he then threw a dry shoot over me , and rubbed with energy till I was dry . That rubbing was succeeded by

      a rubbing with a dry blanket , -which in turn wns succeeded by a rubbing with a soit , dry hand . Tho niydUrius of tho toilotto followed , and having oiled my whiskers ( Jt ' or even at Aliilvorn one likes to bo prepared ) I seized , a hill post ( or alpenstock ) , and made a tk-spcnito charge up tho hoights . Tho good docile water patient at this stiiyo of tho proceedings , walka briskly to St . Ann ' s Well , or else whore , and awilla water with bacchanalian gusto ; but I waa not a docile patient , nnd objecting to water taken internall y , both n . 9 a liquid nnd « s ft medicine ; believing-, indeed , the water-drinking to

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), July 15, 1854, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15071854/page/19/