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    The great subject of Literary conversation this week has been the maladministration of that excellent but perverted institution , the Literary Fund , a fund small enough indeed , and little commensurate with the wants it professes to alleviate , but made still smaller by the abuses which have crept into this , as they creep into every institution not rigorously watched over by the public press . In England , however , we have the immense advantage , of a Press , and a press which , with all its shortcomings , nobly fulfils its office . The Atheneeum , for example , has courageously and untiringly pursued the glaring abuses of the Literary Fund ' s administration , and has drawn other journals to its aid ; even that journal of journals , the Times , has this week lent its influence , so now one may hope for a reform . We have touched on this subject before , and recur to it for the sake of repeating some of the facts and figures brought forward by the Athenaum .

    To begin with figures : — " We liave before us the balance-sheets , signed by the auditors , from 1846 to 1852 , inclusive . Prom these it appears fchat the Fund has received in those seven years from rents and dividends , the interest of capital and property , 7164 Z . 16 * . 7 d . ; by bequests , 294 Z . 10 * . ; and by donations and subscriptions , 6703 ? . 1 * . ; making a total of 14 , 158 Z . 7 s . Id . From this total sum there has been given in relief to 302 claimants—to whom we know not , hut we will assume them to have been men of " learning and genius "—the sum of 93521 . ; leaving a balance of 4806 Z . 7 s . Id . Here , then , there was nearly 5000 L more in the hands of the Committee for benevolent purposes than there were claimants on whom to bestow it . " What became of this surplus ? It appears , that 909 Z . went to swell that reterve fund which already amounts to 35 , OO 0 Z . or 40 , 000 Z . ; and the whole of the remainder —and more , as we shall show—was swallowed up in the expenses of collecting and

    distributing the 9352 Z . " Is it not monstrous that a fund raised for the relief of the poor scholar should be so managed that" Tliis benevolent Committee draw , on an average , 43 benevolent drafts a year , at an average of 31 / . a draft ; and the cost is , also on the average , more than 13 £ . 4 s . 8 d . for each and every benevolent draft of 31 Z . !" The expenses of printing , postage , salary , rooms , &c , of another institution—The Artists' General Benevolent Fund—are shown to be 93 / . per annum , while those of the Literary Fund are 500 / . per annum . To state these things is enough to show the miserable administration of the charity ; but even they are insignificant , compared with other items in the charge made against the societv , as the reader will say on reading this : —

    " Perhaps he may not have heard , that the Society has generously relieved two ¦ widows of one man , —nor that it has granted relief to enable an ingenious youth to pursue his studies and become a ' poor scholar , '—he may not have heard , that ladies have been relieved who were shortly after sent to the tread-mill as beggingletter impostors , —he may not know , that probably one-third of the ' poor scholars ' relieved had no more scholarship than enabled them to compile or write sixpenny story-books for children—that there used to be a suspicion that persons were sometimes relieved as authors of works which were never heard of out of the rooms

    of the Society , —he may not know , that the largest amount , ever granted — double the amount that , at the time , had ever been granted cither to ' poor scholars' or to men of ' learning and genius '—was to the widow of a member of tho Committee , within one month of her husband ' s death ; that same husband , according to tho showing of his will , having few or no debts , and having always had sufficient at his bankers to meet the requirements of the hour , and bequeathing to his wife and children 70001 . ! He may not have heard of these or a hundred other liberalities enacted with closed doors and protected from publicity by the delicacies of the Fund and its Committee . "

    " Closed doors and protected from publicity , " there lies the evil . It will be said that one of tlie features of this society is the delicacy with which it secretly relieves distress ; the poor scholar is relieved , and not humiliated ; the plenteous hand is outstretched to him , and no one hears of it . . This is false ; it is false in principle and false in fact . There is little or no secrecy observed . The fact of relief is always known to a large body of the public , as every literary man will testify . And , moreover , we emphatically declare that the secrecy , if it could be kept , would not be delicate . It is an indelicate delicacy which would desire secrecy . If the poor scholar , smitten with disease , or pressed by want , feels shame in accepting the gracious assistance of wealthier men who have subscribed money to meet such cases as his , he ought not to accent it . He should not do what he

    is ashamed to have known ! Another evil , and one which in our days becomes enormous , on account of the immense increase of periodical literature , is the absurdly pedantic limitation implied in the principle that no man shall be considered as a claimant on the fund unless he have published a book . " Any book will do ; but whole amis of contributions to Encyclopedias , Newspapers , Magazines , Iteviews—u life worthily and laboriously spent in fighting with the jion the great battle of social education--sill these are worth nothing . Why , Mr . Adams himself , our urreat astronomer—wliono title to bo ' a man of learning

    mid genius' is written among the stare , and ban been read by every nation m Kurojio that looks up to them—were lie compelled , in the vicissitudes which rule below , those Hturs , to knock , for its own peculiar and preseribed form of recognition , at the door of this Fund , might bo turiu'd inhospitably away because ho had not written a book ,---disfranchised by a bye-law , —his title-deeds made waste-paper by bis own trust ( H ) . A mini may have blinded himrielf in preparing some learned work ;—but the blindness which arrested tho completion of tho work , at once deprived him of tho harvest for which ho bad iso lo » £ laboured and closed tho doors of the Literary ' Fund against him , "

    Macaulay and Carlyle , a few years ago , though known wherever the English literature was prized , would not have come within this definition of a Literary Man . They had written in reviews , but they had published no books ! And how many names familiar to all—names of men to whom our literature and science are constantly indebted—are by this byelaw struck from off the lists !

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    —^ if There is something to our minds peculiarly significant in the naivet of immorality which French novels and French plays often exhibit . The straightforward disregard of decency and honesty sometimes shown , is as nothing compared with the little expressions which escape the unconscious writer . The one may be supposed necessary for the " interest" and " excitement" of the work , the other is a real betrayal . A novelist , for

    example , may make his blackguard interesting and his cut-throat amiable , without our inferring that he is destitute of moral sense ; as an orator may talk terrible nonsense about " tyrants" and the " vile multitude" without our suspecting a deficiency of human sympathy . But as you detect a man ' s insincerity by the twinkle in the corner of his eye , and a certain indescribable something in the accent of his voice , so may you detect the writer ' s moral standard in an occasional phrase . To our minds , there is

    nothing more impure in Balzac , who dealt liberally in hideous subjects , than his describing one of his heroines ( a virtuous and model mother ) as having for her son the winning ways of a courtezan , —elle avait pour son Jils les graces d ' une courtisane ! It is but a phrase , but what a state of feeling it implies ! "We were led into this moralizing by a passage in the young Dumas ' s new volume of Contes et Nouvelles . The story from which we take it is a pretty , and , in what is called " the moral , " a moral story ; but the unconscious revelation we leave for your judgment ; a married woman is

    writing to her lover , explaining why she will not follow him . "I am not free , " she says ; " my family , society , public opinion , and , must I say it ? my husband , too , have claims on me : Je ne suis pas libre , fappartiens a ma famille , au monde , a Vopinion , et dois-je le dire ? h mon mari ! The quiet , careless way with which the husband is slipped in here among the considerations which prevent her elopement , is amazing . Pauvres maris !

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    Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—tEey interpret and try to enfoTcethem .-EdtnburghXevxev .

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    378 THELEADER , [ Saturday ,

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    HQRACE . The Odes of Horace , translated into unrhymed metres , with Introductions and Notes By F . W . Newman . John Chapman Quinti SoYatii Flacci Opera Omnia . With a Commentary . By the Rev . A . J . Macleane . Whittaker and Co HoKi . CE—the hatred of schoolboys and the delight of grown men—the one classic who may be called a companion ; who was neither a great poet , nor a noble man , but whose long experience is expressed in facile verse of a light , and sometimes even poetic , tone ; furnishing happy images and happier phrases for most of the incidents of ordinary life ; who teaches ub , as Voltaire says in his Epistle to Horace : — " A jouir sagement d ' une honnete opulence , A vivre avec soi-meme , a servir ses amis , A se moquer tin peu de ses sots ennemis , A sortir d ' une vie ou triste , ou fortunee , En rendant grace aux dicux de nous l ' avoir donnee . ( verses Horace himself might have written ) , is among the few poets utterly untranslatable , yet desirable to have translated . Ovid ' s love stories , Virgil ' s pastorals and epic , Lucretius ' s grand philosophic poem , Lucan ' s turgid eloquence , and Martial's jokes , may all bo rendered so as not absolutelyjto leave the reader without an inkling of the originals : not so Horace . And for these reasons : — Translation of poetry we hold to bo next to impossible ; an imitation , more or less accurate , may be given , or another poem substituted in its place ; but so long as po ^ ems remain what they are , poems will be untranslatable ; for , as Goethe profoundly says , Art depends on Form ( gestaltuntj ) , and you cannot preserve tho Form in altering the Form . Words , especially in poetry , have a potency of association independent of tkeir significance- as representative signs ; there is a mingling of sound and sense , a delicacy of shades of meaning , and a power of awakening associations , which the instinct of tho poet enables him to control , and which cannot bo passed into a foreign language , if tho meaning be also preserved . Few Englishmen , for example , can understand tho audacity of llacino ( so highly applauded by the French ) , in introducing the words chien and sel into poetry : dog and salt may be used by us without danger ; but on the other hand , we may not talk of entrails in the way the French do . Then , again , suppose instead of Leigh Hunt's favourite illustration" How sweet tho moonlight sleeps upon the bank , " Shalcspearo had written" How soft tho moonlight slumbers on the bank , " the idea would have been tho same , tho metaphor tho same , hut who does not see tho difference in tho effect P Wherever the substance is of equal importance , or nearly equal importance , with the form , tho poem bears translation with the loss of only tho form ; but wherover , tin in Horace , it ih not tho ntory , the drama , tlie thought , or tho subject-matter which makes the poem interesting , but rather the happy elegance of expression applied to thoughts and feelings of no unuHual depth , then translation becomes utterly futile . Ah well make lace ruffles out of hemp ! Professor Newman is not insensible to this . He says : —¦ " Undoubtedly a great poet can never bo fully translated from a more powerful into a less powerful language ; it is as impossible as to execute in noft wood tho copy of a marble statue . Yet some approximation may be attained , which yive » to tho reader not only a knowledge of the » ul > ntnnce , but a filling of tho form of thought , and a right conception of tho ancien t tone of mind , Hitherto our poetical

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 16, 1853, page 378, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1982/page/18/