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    16 THE LEADER. [N(fc3fofc, 'Baturp at ,

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    s*ty* x jLtttrntttW * ; ' . .

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    Critics are not tie legislators, butthej...

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    It is very seldom that a story in a Maga...

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    GREENE AND MARLOWE. Poems of Robert Gree...

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  • 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.

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    16 The Leader. [N(Fc3fofc, 'Baturp At ,

    16 THE LEADER . [ N ( fc 3 fofc , 'Baturp at ,

    S*Ty* X Jltttrntttw * ; ' . .

    % \\ im \ mt .

    Critics Are Not Tie Legislators, Butthej...

    Critics are not tie legislators , butthejixdges and police of literature . JThey do not make la wa— they interpret ana try to enforce -them . —Edinburgh Review .

    It Is Very Seldom That A Story In A Maga...

    It is very seldom that a story in a Magazine excites any enthusiasm , for ' it is very seldom , that the stories are anything more than clever reproductions of what has already been familiar to readers of fiction . Even when the writers get hold of a new idea , or a new character ; they generally fail to give it the truthful or original presentation which alone can produce a vivid impression on the public ; while for the most part , instead of drawing from their own experience the materials of their fiction , they seem irresistibly impelled to draw upon their memories . la Blackwood we have the commencement of a new serial , which , to judge from one number , will fulfil that very condition we have just declared

    to be indispensable to success . It 13 entitled " The Sad Fortunes of the Ker . Amos Barton , " and is obviously the representation in fiction of direct and observant experience . The manner is q ^ uiet , the style concrete , humorous , and easy ; the presentation very vivid , and the story evolved with dramatic skill . The life described is that of a small country tovro , and the time a quarter of a century ago . The farmers , the gentry , the clergyman and his familj , are made to live before our eyes . To give our readers a , taste of this writer ' s quality , we will extract a bit of the scene of Barton ' s preaching at the workhouse , a scene which has a profound and even tragic significance under its humour , showing as it does the extreme remoteness of clerical teaching from the sympathies and intelligence of the lower orders : —

    Bat now Amos Barton has made his way through the sleet as far as the College , has thrown off bis hat , cape , and boa , and is reading , in the . dreary stone-floored diningroom , a portion , of the morning service to the inmates seated on the benches before him . Remember , the new poor-law had not yet come into operation , and $ lr . Barton was not acting as paid chaplain of the Union , but as the pastor who had the cure of all souls in his parish , pauper a 3 well as other . After the prayers he always addressed to them a short discourse on some subject suggested by the lesson for the day , striving if by ; this means some edifying matter might find its way into the pauper mind and conscience—perhaps a task as trying as ' you could well imagine to the faith and patience of any honest clergyman . For , on the veiy first bench , these -were the facea on which his eye had to rest , -watching -whether there was any stirring under th . e stagnant surface .

    Utight in front of him— -probably because he was stone-deaf , and it was deemed more edifying ip hear nothing at a short distance than at a long one—sat " Old Maxum , " as he was familiarly called , liis-real patronymic remaining a mystery to most persons . A fine philological sense discerns in this cognomen an indication that the pauper patriarch had once been considered pithy and sententious in his speech ; bu . t now the weight of ninety-five years lay heavy on his tongue as -well as in his eare , and he sat before the clergyman with protruded chin and munching mouth , and eyes that seemed to look at emptiness . Next to him sat Poll Fodge—known to the magistracy of her country as Mary HJggins — a one-eyed woman , with a scarred and seamy face , the most notorious rel ) el in the workhouse , said to have once thrown her broth over the master ' s coat-tails , and who , in spite of nature ' s apparent safeguards against that contingency , had contributed to the perpetuation of the Podge characteristics in the person of a small boy , who was behaving' naughtily on one of the back benches . Misa Fodge fixed her one sole eye on Mx . Barton with a sort of hatdy defiance .

    Beyond this member of the softer sex , at the en-d of the bench , sat " Silly Jim , " a young man ! afflicted with hydrocephalus , who rolled his head from Bide to side , and gazed at the feint of his riose . These were the supporters of Old Maxum on his right . On his left sat Mr . Fitchett , a tall fellow , who had once been a footman in tlie Oldinport family , and in that giddy elevation had enunciated a comtemptuoua opinion of boiled beef , which had been traditionally handed down in . Shepperton as the direct cause of his ultimate reduction to pauper commons-. . . . Mr . Fitchett had an irrepressible tendency to drowsiness under spiritual instruction , and in the recurrent regularity , with which he dozed off until he nodded and awaked himself , lie looked not unlike a piece of mechanism , ingeniously contrived for measuring the length of Mr . Barton ' s discourse .

    Perfectly wide-awake , on the contrary , was his left-hand neighhour , Mrs . Brick , o » e of those hard undying old worrien , to whom age seems to have given a network of wrinkles , ' as a coat of magic armour against the attacks of winters , warm or cold . The point oh -which Mrs . Brick was still sensitive—the theme on which you , might pessibly excite her hope rihd'fear—was snuff . It Seemed to be an embalming , powder , helping her s ^ iil to do th < S office of salt . And now , ' « k < s out an audience of wMch this front benchfud was a sample ,-with , a certain number of refractory children , over whom Mr . Spratfc , the master of the workhouse ^ exercised on irate surveillance , and I think ; you will admit that the universitytaught clergyman , -whose pffice it ia to bring home the gospel to a handful of such souls , has a sufficiently hard task . For , to have any chance of success , short of miraculous 1 ntervenfiipn , he must bring his geographical , clironological , exegetical mind pretty nearly to the pauper point of View , or » f rib view ; ho must have some approximate conception of the mode in which the doctrines that have so much vitality in the nleof

    num Jus 1 town brain will comport themselves tn vacuo—that is to say , in a brain that is neither geographical , chronological , nor exegetical . It is a flexible imagination that cam take such a leap as that , and an adroit tongue that can adapt its speech to so unfamiliar a position . The Rev . Amos Barton had neither that flexible imagination , nor that adroit tongue . Ho talked of Israel and its sins , of cliosen vos 3 el 8 , of me 1 aschal Iamb , of blood aa a medium of reconciliation ; and he strove in this way to convey religious truth within read of the Fodge and Fitchett mind . This very morning , tho firat lesson was the twelfth chapter of Exodus , and Mr . Barton ' s exposition turned on unleavened bread . Nothing in the world more suited to the simple unaeratanfling than instruction through familiar types and symbols- ! But there ia always this danger attending it , that the interest or comprehension of your heaiera may stop short precisoly at the point where your spiritual interpretation begins . And ? 1 " t ton , tlllB m <> rning succeeded in carrying tho pauper imagination to the doughtub , but unfortunately was not able to carry it upwards from that woll-known object to the unknown truths which it was intended to shadow forth ima

    . Uridirlw ^^ P ?? ity ft ? touting , iln 3 ahod by keeping « tenna" at Cambridge , where thoro are able mathematicians , and butter ia sold by tlio yard , is not on'Sefcd 8 o T thr ° affh Wlli ° Chri 9 tiftq 40 C *™ WUI dl « il ™ wSSmo < K

    In striking contrast to the truth and freshness of these " Scenes of Clerical Life" stands another story in the same Magazine called ¦« a Christmaa Tale , " which once more repeats the thousand times repeated trick of solving a mystery by making the whole story a dream . Nothing but consummate skill could justify so worn-out a device . The review of Aurora Leigrh , though warm enough in eulogy , seems to us ill-directed in its blame . That the story of Aurora Leigh is neither pr 0 . bable , nor goodaw a story , we have already intimated ; but the story of

    Samlet is even more absurd , and Rymer has shown what havoc can be made with Othello , if tested by such criticism . And when the reviewer in Blackwood objects to Aurora Leigh that certain attempts to picture the present * ' would lead to a , total sacrifice pf the ideal , " one is tempted to ask , And what then ? He seems to object to the humorous and satirical passages in this poem on the ground of their modern tone . ; and tries to make out a case against them "by printing them a 3 prose . But this kind of criticism would be injurious to any poet .

    Fraser opens with the first part of a new story by the author of Dighj Grand e lively enough , and taking us to new countries ; but the most striking papers in the number are tl Sermons and Sermonizers , " and ** The Triumph of Barbarism . " The first is apropos of Spubgeon , whose brimstone eloquence has made him one of the men of the time ; and indeed it requires but little ability to achieve notoriety in . England if that little be devoted to vociferous damnation . Mawwobm liked to be despised—the English relish being damned . As Charles Lamb said , " I can ' t give up my Hell . " Life is too solemn and dreary in our dismal atmosphere to do without dram

    drinking and the prospect of hell fire . And the prodigal use made of the imagery of hell by Spubgeow , Cummeng , and other amiable teachers , carries with it a fascination which the thousands willingly acknowledge , the more so as the majority of preachers content themselves with the placid utterance of lithographed sermons , price 9 d . each . The lesson taught by Spttrgeon is said by Fraser to be a lesson on the folly of preaching from sermons bought instead of written by the clergymen . We fancy there is something more in it than that , although that doubtless is a great cause of the inefficiency of the pulpit .

    In the article an " Occult Philosophy" a good , defence is made of the old Alchemists , which our readers are advised to meditate . The writer falls into an error , singular in a man of science , in speaking of the old Greek philosophers as " physiologists , " which , although the term applied to them by Aristotle , is in English applied exclusively to those who study the organic sciences . We borrow from him the interesting passage in which he illustrates the idea of Liebig : — - Four bodies ( he says ) , three of them condensed gases , have , we fini , clothed him from head to foot ; all that he wears is composed of oxygen , hydrogen , and carbon , with tho addition of some nitrogen in his boots and coat . He himself is made up of the same four constituents , together with a little calcium and phosphorus . There are , it is true , traces of iron and sodium , and one or two other matters to be

    found in him , but these are accidental and not constitutional . The book ia his hand is a condensation of carbon , hydrogen , and oxygen ; so is the table before Mm ; so is almost everything on and about him , until we come to the watch in his pocket and the shilling in his purae ; . and each of these insignificant -articles requires an element all to itself . Does not this seem like a waste of power , not to say a poverty of invention , on the part of Mother Nature , who , having effected so much by solidifying and combining fouT or five aeriform invisible bodies , forgets her usual economy , and has recourse to new and distinct materials for the manufacture of such very similar substances as gold and silver ? " Doe 3 it not seem more probable that the plan of nature is uniform , and that the same causes , or at least causes similar to them , which produce organic effects , are also the basis of inorganic matter ? If so , it ia probable that the metals aTe capable of decomposition . If they can be decomposed , chemistry shows that it is not impossible to recompose them . We have already outrun our limits , and must reserve for next week the notice of other periodicals .

    Greene And Marlowe. Poems Of Robert Gree...

    GREENE AND MARLOWE . Poems of Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe . Edited by Eobert Bell . J . " VV " . Park or and Son . Thk reading public has far some years been gradually making up its mind as to the real mediocrity of those contemporaries of Shakspeare who , after a well-merited oblivion of many generations , were suddenly ' rehabilitated ' by the lovers of tho Elizabethan drama , and were held up as men of rare genius , interesting not only on account of their connexion with the age ot Shakspeare , but on account of their own splendid though imperfect achievements . Lamb ' s " Specimens of the Dramatic Poets" was a book to give wide to this

    currency false direction of the public taste ; it contained so many real beauties , and was so felicitous and enthusiastic in its criticisms , that even cautious critics thought a new mine of poetic wealth had been detected . We cannot here enter into the examination of so large a question ; but after having given great attention to the " Old Dramatists , " having for marry years studied them in the hope of discovering the pearls of great price which were confidently said to be discoverable there , we foel bound to declare our conviction thnt our labour was wretchedly misspent , and that the " Old Dramatists" no more deserve the serious attention of the present age than the Ainsworths and Jameses will deserve the attention of our descendants , because these novelists happen to ' flourish' in the a « e of Dickeua and Thackeray .

    But whatever may be the opinion entertained of these Old Dramatists as Dramatists , or rather as darin g writers capable of great occasional effec ts there can bo little hope of their gaining tho world ' s attention as writers of poems 5 and this volumo , which Mr . Bell has added to the list of tlio Annotated Edition of tho English Poets , " will task the patience of the most pationt . Tho poems are deplorably mediqoro , Groonc is inferior to

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 3, 1857, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03011857/page/16/