On this page

• Departments (2)
  • 
  • 
• Text (7)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    THE BOURBONS IN SICILY.

  • 

    BIOLOGICAL CRITICISM, f

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Untitled Article

    hope shortly to be in possession of a narrative as to the observations now making , and the facts gathered by those sent to make personal survey of the whole route , which will show what extraordinary advantages would arise from this telegraphic line not only to commerce , but to science and civilization .

    Untitled Article

    T 7 * EMALE talent in the present day is not diffident of its power . JD and shrinks from no subject however difficult . The female author shrinks not from politics , and has , indeed , of late been extraordinarily busy with the course of events now taking place in Italy . We read in this the natural sympathy of women with the principles of freedom and the deeds of valour . Miss Homer has devoted her pen to the story of a hundred years in the Two Sicilies , and the conduct of the Bourbons during that period . She candidly acknowledges her indebtedness to the history of Naples by General Pietro Colletta , recently translated into English ; but we are not aware of the amount of the matter thus imported into the little volume before us , nor what proportion belongs to its nominal author . Nor perhaps is it of importance to award to either a specific share of merit . If the book be a good compilation , as well as a succinct record ( which it undoubtedly is ) of events , it cannot he

    otherwise than acceptable . Of the importance of the events now passing , Miss Homer manifests a due sense . A revolution , she say Si is now in progress , which , though for the present centred ^ in Sicily and Naples , promises to be of greater magnitude and importance than any which have preceded it , and , if successful , it is hoped may prove the last . Miss Horner has a true view of the nature of the struggle now impending . It is not alone , she rightly avers , the resistance of any one oppressed nation against a despotic government , but the assertion of the principle of independence , justice , and a government formed by the many , and for the many , against despotism and legitimacy , or right ( miscalled divine ) of the few . The cause does not belong to one , but to all theEuropean families . Its champions are the educated middle classes , and the most enlightened portion of the aristocracy supported by the people , and led by raonarchs who represent the democratic principle . This , we repeat , is a true view of the matter , and goes far to give us a certain degree of confidence in her

    ¦ book . '"" ¦ ¦" ¦¦ . '¦ ¦ ; ¦ ¦ . ¦ ¦ .. ¦¦ ¦ ' ¦ ¦ ¦ : ' : . " ; ¦ . ' ¦ " .. Her researches into the history of Bourbon misrule for a century have convinced her that the system , so nefariously upheld , is merely " a decayed system , propped r by superstition , soldiers , and police " Itsuresent champipn , Francis II ., is a half imbecile youth , under the guidance of an Austrian stepmother . The cause commands the active co-operation of every true lover of jibe man will seek to isolate himself from its progress . Any notion of a Compromise is idle . The treachery of Ferdinand II . will be repeated by his son , if the slightest degree of confidence should be placedin his promises . Frpni the day which had brought the news of the battle of Novara Ferdinand felt secure , and speedily threw off the mask of constitutionalism , which until then he had maintained . The city became at once a scene of arrests and

    arbitrary violence . The Jesuits returned to Naples on a petition froin ^ fre ^ OTcf tbisn ^^ tendence of all the schools and colleges . Then recommenced the trials by inquisition for political offences . "In the midst of the bitter misery caused by disappointed hopes , and of mourningfamilies , deprived of fathers , husbands , and brothers , who were languishing in horrible dungeons , the King of Naples was rejoicing at the birth of a daughter , on which occasion the Pope presented him with the consecrated golden rose , a gift reserved for favoured sovereigns , or persons of exalted lineage . Thus did self-interest and fear unite men of opposite characters to rejoice together over the ruins of the country which had , given them birth . " We concur with our authoress in the opinion that Europe should not give another opportunity for a similar triumph either to the despot or the pontiff * . ,

    Untitled Article

    more imposing , give a less authentic portraiture ; " and that in this work it has been his object " to arrest these motes of intelligence , now fast eluding the ken of the present generation , and to winnow them on the threshing-floor of biological criticism . " These two last words we have selected as the title for this article , which means a sort of treatise on the literary life of the periods referred to , as svmbolized in anecdotes . ' There is something novel in this view of old subjects , and Mr . Lloyd Winter , in treating them , proceeds epically ; that is , he starts in media res . But we begin at the beginning—which happens to be at the end of his book—with his last chapter , in fact , on ancient and modern oratory .

    The symbolistic nature of early oratory is at first dwelt on ; presenting at once a complete fusion of imagination with reason Physical objects are used to express metaphysical ideas , and accordingly the diction becomes poetic . Next , we have educated oratory , which reproduces with art what the uneducated received from impulse . The earliest specimens of oratory have to be sought fpr in the historians , by whom they were , however , invented as the best imitations they could make of the speeches supposed to have been really delivered . But such historians were under no documentary restraint , and therefore became at will dramatic , personating their characters at pleasure . The Greek historians , says Quintilian , assume a licence almost equal to that of poets ^ The work of Herodotus is but a transition from the epic of history .

    The " Odyssey" and the " Clio" contain very much of the marvellous in common . Xerxes , as he is drawn by Herodotus , and as he is drawn by Diodorus Siculus , exactly describes the difference between the Henry IV : of Shakespeare , and the Henry IV . of Hume . In the latter case we have a dry catalogue of actions and qualities ; in the former , there is nothing less than a dramatic representation . After a while , history , ceasing to be dramatic , becomes oratorical . Set speeches in Herodotus are rare . Xenophon becomes himself his own herd , and sets the pattern of an ideal orator . But Quintilian has given him more credit than he deserves for the Oratorical portions of his workv He makes Persians utter their sentiments in terms of Greek rhetoric . He is not a careful artist .

    In the first book of the " Anabasis , " Cyrus is , while in the act of grasping the despotic crown of Persia , represented as depreciating his own future subjects as cowardly barbarians , arid haranguing the Greeks for Greece arid liberty . In the sixth / book of the " Hellenics /' again , he tells us that Autoeles was a skilful orator . He then puts into his mouth scarce a dozen sentences , and those sentences but little to the purpose ; while Gallias , the torch-bearer , speaks more , and far more rhetorically . Evidently he was a bad dramatist ; . but the celebrated dying oration of Cyrus to His ; son demonstrates his

    skill as an orator . " Considered as a rhetorical display , it is undoubtedly one of the finest things of the kind in antiquity . Like the dialogiie already alluded to , it would not have misbecome the lips of Socrates . But for this very reason , it is singularly out of place in the lips of the ancient Persian despot . " Xenophon , in Mr . Windsor ' s opinion ^ is an antique analogon of Boswell , and related to his heroes , as was that obsequious devotee to Dr : Johnson . Thucydides was , according to our critic ' s judgment , far in advance of both Herodotus and Xenbphon , though in order of . time ' coming between them . He reminds us of Voltaire or Montaigne , and , . like is

    them , is inclined to incredulity ^ There an unamiame , sophisticated estimate which interpenetrates all his composition , narrative as well as rhetorical . The speeches of his suppliants are the least supplicatory in style and . manner to be met with in any author . There is no appeal to the feelings or the sympathies , none of the eloquent rhetoric of suffering and despair applying to the memory of piist associations for aid . On the contrary , the style is hard and dry as a problem in Euclid . He shows great difficulty i" ethical discrimination ; but horein he was as his time . He had passed his life amid the hardening scenes of a moral revolution , and had not eseaped ^ he infection . He accordingly speaks with indifference of assassinations and massacres , and details the alternate fates of the Corcyreans

    Helots , and Scionians , without the manifestation of any " virtuous horror , or of the sccva indignatio of the moralist or the satirist . " There is in his pages a " want of ethic portraiture . In this respect Thucydides presents a signal contrast to Tacitus , the Koinnn historian , being as minute as a Dutch painter in his moral delineation . " However artificial in point of style , the speeches of Thucydides are admirably characteristic in point of matter . But they are more palpably counterfeit than those of Herodotus or Xenophon . As debates , they are much more authentic than Johnson ' s Parliamentary reports , and are quite as idiomatic .

    Wo have no space to continue our analysis , and must suffer Sallust , Tacitus , Livy , and Dionysius to remain mere names . Tin . modern historian , with documentary resources , has a manifest advantage over the ancient . " His acquaintance with the rielunH dynasties of his country , though less dramatically paraded , is far more intimate and special thun that which Herodotus had foigncil with Crajsus and CaimbyneH . Ho can realize tho motives , luibifs , and very Jin eaine ^ of his race as vividly as Thucydides did those of Pericles . Anil In is mom fiimiliur with itri truitorH and its scourges than SjilhiHt w'iis with C ' atulino . No dialogue in Xenophon has ever conimaiuiod such credit as those fow sentences which passed between tho victim uml his executioner on the scaffold of Moro . No integral speech in Tacitus or Livy presents half such trustworthy claims us the shortest nummary in Mocuuluy or Hume . " Such is tho value of anecdote , and such its usefulness . When oratory became a separate profession , what it gained in quality it lost in morality . Tho pursuit of eloquence became a pursuit of gnhi . Rhetoricians hired out their services to factions . Democrats to-duy ,

    f ^ ItlTICISM our day takes every possible shape ; the V , ^ reviewer confides to his periodical essay not merely his opinion on the work , which is its nominal subject , but the result of his own studies an an independent thinker . Mr . Arthur Lloyd Windsor is a critic of this sort ; and , as a contributor to the " British Quarterly Keview , " enabled us to interpret tho literary life of tho age of Montaigne and De Foe , and to make a clear sweep of tho ages by a comparison of ancient and modern oratory in three wellwritten essuys , which are reproduced in a handsome volume recently published . But they appear not alone ; they are accompanied with other similar Milton don Swift

    compositions , treating of , Dry , Pope , , Bolingbroke , Harloy , Goldsmith , and the History of Proso Fiction in England . In connexion with Do Foe , wo have likewise sonio account of tho KTOe ~ of ~ Pnmp ) hleteeTing ^ r—lit all-these tho writer implies or expresses a principle , winch he embodies in a proposition ; namoly , that " tho literary life of tho past two centuries , like tlio social , ' has a large clement of unecdoto in it , by the contemplation of which alone it can bo fully realized . " Ho tells us , that " stray waif ' s—straws in tho intellectual atmosphere—not infrequently afford material for tho most ettieacious mental characterization , where tho formal facts of biography proper , though at iirwt sight

    Untitled Article

    • A Century of Dstj / vtiai / t in y « j > tcs and tiicitt / . lly Hunan iiui-uvr , Ktlmonston und iJoiitfliis . t MMcttf or , ¦ Characteriatlex < rf Men , Manner * , and Hooka , l \ y Arthur Lloyd VVImLni' stmIfli li ' . lilniv iiinl (_'»>•

    Untitled Article

    736 >¦ The Saturday Analyst and Leader . [ Aug . 18 , 1860

    The Bourbons In Sicily.

    THE BOURBONS IN SICILY .

    Biological Criticism, F

    BIOLOGICAL CRITICISM . f

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 18, 1860, page 736, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2361/page/8/