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Leader (1850-1860), 11th October 1856, Edition 1 of 2, Page 977, Untitled Article

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    • 'IP'H'lMM'jtiti'TV ' ybllK I UlllllZ * \ ¦
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      Untitled Article

      A cuiuous question of literary morals 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 eviJon '" ' 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 them to account , their pens would , run across their paper ratler less rapidly . * ¦' ' ¦ ' .. . ¦ \ . ¦ ¦; ¦ . - ' * . * . . . . . ¦'¦ ¦ ¦ . '¦'¦¦ ¦ ; .. ¦ . "'¦ v ¦¦ :

      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 , even 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 disrespectfully of Cicero ; , certain that we have used strong language in naming Nero . Have we never misrepresented Robespierre and Marat ? Have we told nothing but the truth about Cleopatra and Semiramis ? Have we never insulted Aristoti / e ? These questions may disturb our peace of mind . If when the critic dies ' a friend is to wait 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 lias 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 on all sides . What quarter can be expected by the writer of the article " Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" in the Westminster 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 ; 13 el : jra . via and ' baronial lialls' 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 prime minister . It is clear -that they write in elegant boudoirs , with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen ; that they must be entirely indifierent to publishers' accounts , and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains . It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seein to live ; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life . If their peers and peeresses arc 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 « b c to her ; and she can talk with perfect correctness in any language except English . She is a polking polyglot , a Creuzer in crinoline , l ' oor men ! There are so few of you who know even Hebrew ; you think it something to boast of if , like 13 o-lingbroke , you only " understand that sort of learning , and whut is writ about it ; " and you are perhaps adoring women who can think slightingly of ' you in < dl the Semitic languages successively . We recognize the truth of this also : — You will rarely meet , with * a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide on theological ( questions , —who . lias any suspicion that she is not capable oi' discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and « vil in all church parties , —who docs not see precisely how it is that men have gono wrong hitherto , —and pity philosophers in gener al that they have not had the opportunity of consulting her . Great writers , who have modestly contented themselves with putting their experience into fiction , and have thought it quite a sufiicient task to

      cxchildren , one would think , « can hardly have been denied the indulgence of a doll but it must be a doll dressed in a drab go > vn and . a coal-scuttle bonnet—not a worldly doll , in gauze and spangles . And there are no young ladies , we imagine , —unless they belong to the Church of the United Brethren , in which people are married without sny love-making—who can dispense with love stories . Ihu 3 , for Evangelical young ladies there are Evangelical love stories , in which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of Regeneration and the Atonement . . We hope this drastic medicine may do tlie 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 respect to marriage laws . In this number there is a grave and interesting statement and discussion of the laws relating to tlie " property of married women , " and the means of remodelling those laws . Tlie subject has been taken up by men of such authority and ability , that ere long a change in the laws must come ; and for the discussion of the subject in Parliament such articles as this in the Westminster Revieio will be of great service . How perpetually , in one shape or other , this topic of marriage comes . before us ; sometimes in elaborate essays , at others in episodical digressions , us for instance in the article on " Shelley" in the National ' ¦ ¦ . Review , where ¦ we read : — '* . ¦ ¦ . * ¦'¦ ** ¦¦' ¦ ¦¦ ¦ . ¦ ¦ "¦ : .. ; ' . .. * . ... ¦ * : ;

      There is an ordinance of nature at which men of genius are perpetually fretting , ¦ I ) ut Avhich does more good than many laws of the universe which , they praise : it is ^ that ordinary women ordinarily prefer ordinary men . u Genius , " as Hazlitt would liave 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 . ; ' ¦¦ . ¦ ¦"¦*¦ Again : — ; ¦ ' ; : : ' * : * : . : '¦ ' * . ** , ' . ' ¦ : ¦ ' .. - : .. ' ¦ *' . .. , * ¦ '¦ . ¦ ¦ " ' . '' ¦¦ ¦ ¦ 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 ; lie is too proud arid happy in liis own eager and shifting thoughts to wish to Contrast them with repose . The coihnionplaceuess of life goads huh : placid society irritates linn . Bread is an . incumbrance ; upholstery tedious : he craves excitement ; be wishes to reform mankind . You cannct convince himit is right to sew , in a , world so jhdl of sorrow a ? id evil . . The demands upon our space are too many to allow of anything like a pai'ticular 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-timed passage about Carlyle , from , the very interesting paper on " Personal Influences on our present Theology . " After alluding to tlie state 6 f 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 ag

      This is in a different and deeper strain from that self-sufficient and patronizing tone which small writers often think proper to adopt towards Caria lis ; and coming 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 . Mauston and Saundehs . 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 Creole than the author of In Mejnosiam ) is the occasion of a little essay on the national characteristics of Tennyson ' s poetry ( we should note in passing that the epithet " windy Troy" was IIomkk ' 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 lio in the drama which is here shrouded in mystery , and not in the steps by which the mysLery was revealed ; as a psychological study the position of the two brothers and the wife over the dead body of the child would have been distressing , perhaps , but full of pathos .

      hibit men and tilings as they are , slic sighs over as deplorably deficient in the application of thoir powers . " They have solved no great questions 1 '—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 ' tiseyites , imd ultra-Protestants , and to the perfect establishment of that particular view of Christianity which either 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 littlo like any you have had the fortune or misfortune to meet with , for , as a general rule , the ability of a latly novelist to describe actual life and her fcllow-mcn , ia 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 tho invisible is a totally false picture of the visible . Of that dreary species of novel which the writer christens tlie " whiLe neckcloth , " it is well said :- — _ This species is a kind of genteel tract on a large scale , intended as a sort of medicinal sweetmeat for Low Church young ladies ; an Evangelical substitute for the fashionable novel , as tho May Meetings are a Hubatitute for the Opera . . Even Quaker

      Untitled Article

      LAMENNAIS . ( Euvrns Posthumcs < tc F . Lamennais . Pubiic'es scion levocu . de Vatitcur . Pal E . T ) . Forgucs . raris i 1856 > - Qua readers may remember tlie triaL in which the jiarti prctre recently endeavoured to prevent tho publication of this work , awd failed . From his curliest days of celebrity Lamennais -was a thorn in tho side of ' t \\ Qpurti

      'Ip'h'Lmm'jtiti'tv ' Ybllk I Ulllllz * \ ¦

      Untitled Article

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

      Untitled Article

      October 11 , 1856 ] TH E L E A D E B . 977

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 11, 1856, page 977, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2162/page/17/