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fmrahm.
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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This is Magazine week, and after an eage...
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The necessary intolerance ot all Establi...
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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Poems. By James Hu...
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Ar01605
Fmrahm.
_fmrahm .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—tney interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
This Is Magazine Week, And After An Eage...
This is Magazine week , and after an eager rush at Bleak House , the muchenduring critic anticipates the slow filtration through Book Clubs and Lending Libraries by a serious reading of serials in one fell swoop . As Charles Mathews , in the farce he is now playing , pays in one day all the visits , writes all the letters , and makes all the presents necessary to a courtship in due form , and which , under ordinary circumstances , would occupy at least a month , so have we critics to concentrate the month ' s magaziniana in a day . There is Blackwood , with customary amount of customary politics , which we assiduously skip and turn with more congenial _feelings to the new Scotch storv , Katie Stewart , or to Bulwer ' s
My Novel . The article on Alphonse Karr is a pleasant criticism , introducing a most agreeable and spirituel writer , of whom we have often spoken . Bentley _' s Miscellany opens its battery of " light" articles with a memoir of Alison , the historian , of whom a most imposing and _Alisonian bust is given . One does not look for anything but eulogy in a memoir , yet discrimination is desirable even in _eulogy , and the writer " makes us stare " by sentences of this kind : — " The general qualities of his history are an austere gravity in its reflections on facts , and an almost painful conscientiousness as to the completeness and accuracy with which the facts themselves are stated . " The History of Europe has undeniable merits :
but if two qualities could have been selected for which it is remarkable , wordy shallowness in reflection and provoking inaccuracy are those qualities . Fraser , besides its continuations of Hypatia and Captain Digby Grand , treats us with another of its deli ghtful natural history articles on Fish Tattle , where learning and antiquarian prattle mingle with real gusto . In his denunciation of Conger eels- —that luxury of Greece and Rome—he forgets , or does not know , the immense capabilities of soup which reside therein , and which Jersey cooks , in our young days , prepared with cunning hand ! Condemn not the Conger till you have tasted his writhing hideousness expressed in soup !
The mention of fish naturall y brings before us a little pamphlet , just published b y Messrs . Reeve and Co ., on The Artificial Production of Fish , which suggests " thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls " ( unless our souls have been wont to contemplate the obvious truth ) respecting Man ' s power over Nature . That Nature is prodigal of Life we all know ; and like prodigals is very wasteful . Man ' s intervention tends to arrest that waste . Not onl y does it increase the average length of life , but greatly increases the average numbers that survive the chances and the perils to which organized beings are subject . A female carp will deposit something like a quarter of a million eggs ; a sturgeon six or seven millions ; a
salmon several hundreds . Yet of these very few arc really fecundated , or grow into fish , on account of the accidents which destroy them , not to mention the quantity devoured by other fish . Two humble fishermen of France have recently directed their attention to this matter , and have devised a plan by which all , or the greater part of , these eggs may be fecundated , and rivers stocked with iish to an incalculable amount . The pamphlet before us describes that simple plan , and gives much more information on the subject . The discoverers have merely watched the operations of Nature , aud guarded against the thousand accidents which interrupt those operations . The eggs grow within the ovaries of the female until they become burdensome to her , and she relieves herself of them by
pressing her stomach against the pebbles , or any other substance , at the ; bottom of the water . The eggs flow from her into a hole which she prepares for them . B y a similar process the male relieves himself of the mill , which flowing on the eggs fecundates them . The . iish then cover up these eggs with sand or pebbles , and leave them to become lish iu due course . All , therefore , that Man need do is to isolate these eggs from the destructive accidents of rivers , and to furnish the . m with all the necessary conditions . This has been accomplished b y the simple ! plan of Gkiiin and _Khmy _, who , under the patronage of the ( Jovernment , have stocked streams and rivers in various parts of France . In a report made by Dr . 11 ' a . xo , to the Ara demy of Sciences ; in l _. Sl !) , we read that these men had formed a
p iece of water , belonging exclusivel y to them , in which they have now between live and six millions of trout , aged from one to three years There is news to Uy-fishers , and gentlemen whose trout streams lire impoverished !
The Necessary Intolerance Ot All Establi...
The necessary intolerance ot all Establishments is the shadow which accompanies their light . As _lton . KAU admirabl y said , every Protestant churned Papal infallibility . To til protest ant _fnl Ptepc line llilile a fa , -main , and experience of tho papa ! pretensions of every sect should have taught the author of To 'ihink or not lo Think , that no more charity was to be expected from Independent Dissenters , than from other infallible teachers . Three students of » S 7 . Jo / iu ' s-tcood New College are expelled for heresy . Tho . heresy does not seem clear . The whole case is pitiable . The College _plan ' s a contemptible part , sueh us must infallibly injure it , not only in flu minds of those who think with Tknnynon—There lives more iiiith in honest doubt Uolicve me , than in half the creeds ;
The Necessary Intolerance Ot All Establi...
but also in the minds of all who think of the great office which every College assumes in training the souls of young men . And yet the part plaved by the College seems inevitable . If any doubt is to be allowed , why not all doubt ? and against that the whole spirit of the College rises in indignant protest . It is not a Thinking Shop , as Aristophanes jeeringly styled the School of Socrates . It is not a place where Youth is led upwards through Free Inquiry to Faith . On the contrary , it abhors and denounces Free Inquiry as born of Satan . It has the Truth" to teach , and Dr . Harris is the Prophet . The Principal of New College is the Pope ; to doubt what he teaches is to be heretical . Laughable and pitiable , this is . nevertheless , inevitable .
James Russell Lowell. Poems. By James Hu...
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL . Poems . By James Hussell Lowell . Routledge * Were a market record to be kept of our intellectual imports , and the " doings" in poets and novelists registered as eggs and cheeses are , people would , perhaps , be surprised to see how the literature of our American kinsmen is spreading amongst us . Who does not remember the smart snub of their literary pretensions by Sydney Smith , which brought down the reply of the crack Yankee reviewer , who refuted the sarcasm by instancing a dozen writers of whom Europe was content to be ignorant ? The reviewer could make a far better reply now ! English editions of American authors crowd our booksellers' windows . Emerson has been
reprinted , m whole or in part , in three forms . Hermann Melville , Edgar Poe , Hawthorne , Dana are well known ; Holmes is beginning to bo known , though slowly , for though he ranks among his countrymen as the first in wit , our own present literature is so very rich in that particular , that we can " compete with the foreigner" ( as the politicians say ) , and scarcely need that article from him . But evidences of a distinctly original literature are beginning to be apparent in America , and we shall no longer have to deal with them as savages do with Europeans , getting glass beads and Birmingham buttons in exchange for ivory and gold dust !
Truly , until w _ithin these last few years , the literary aspect of America was melancholy enough . Washington Irving had to complain in a half sad , half humorous manner that the English people seemed to wonder that he could write elegant English . He had to devote an essay ( he , a man so English in sentiment ) to our mis-representations of his countrymen . The bitterer Americans ferociously abused , their countrymen for their "servility" to British criticism . Everywhere they strove to throw off that degrading influence—they declared » tliat they ought to have a "national" literature—a literature ( to quote their favourite image ) that
would match their " Niagara ! " Yet with all this noise their devotion to the good old mother country ' s writings remained passionate and intense . When they wanted to praise Cooper they called him the " American Scott ; " each young poet of promise was their own particular "Tennyson ; " and we are not sure how many verbose bigots the North American lieview protested to be American A s ! The history of their literature is , indeed , full of excitement—quarrels—hates—aspirations—exacerbations . There is something quite touching in watching the eagerness with which they snap up every little crumb of literary promise . Their " Poets of America " number some hundreds—and there are " _Feftnale Poets " to
match . Each collection is a gigantic "Poet ' s Corner , " admitting almost every rhymer in the land . Our holy little nook in Westminster Abbey would not hold half of them , if they were stowed there "in bulk" up to the roof . All this activity—this eagerness to give notoriety to everybody ( for each of the above-mentioned collections lias little "Memoirs" of tho luminaries ) had some promise in it . But why was the " nationality" so much insisted on ; or , at least , why was " British " influence handled with such asperity ? Borne imitated CI recce . And yet the Yankees are our relations , and they seem , or try to seem , disgusted that their intellectual faces should show a family likeness ! Did they expect that a slip from the British oak would produce something better than acorns the very first
seasonr Ihey should have had a little more moderation ; and learned from Dr . Watts ( for some of them have imitated even Dr . Watts ) that their "little hands wore never made" to tear their brother ' s critical eyes . Let it bo fairly admitted that Ihey have made their literature in our image , as they could not but do ; and force us not to apply chemical tests to their authors , to reveal the quantity of Cibbonisni in their _Proseott—of Tennysonianism in their Longfellow- —the traces of the use of Cockney perfumes in the millinery wares of Willis . Nationality is a noble thing , but not this unjust pretence to it . We most heartily admire their great mountains and hikes—we were sorry when _Fhnerson fold us that—¦
The ( nod who made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land With little men . ' We art ! glad that if in our blood that , rules in that noble continent . Affile slime time we should remember with grief tbat , " IWunibo-, J umbo ' s " worship is Uie leading intellectual feature even of the mountains of the moon ; und heartil y admiring [ Niagara , ( except when if is introduced iu verse ) , wc must not Jet ourselves bo deafened by it . We have spoken thus freely on certain little weaknesses , that our readers might the more confidingl y lake on trust what uo have to say with equal emphasis of flic hopeful aspect of American letters which wc
set out with remarking . A breath of genius , as steady as a . trade wind , breathes through all fhe books of . Melville the spirit of . 'Hawthorne is as fresh , healthy , and rich as the beautiful plant ( call us not sentimental !) , " with its locks of siller gray , " his namesake . And in Lowell , of whom we have now something fo say specially , wc recognise a line-minded , high spirited , original inaii-ol ' -leffors , deserving I . o be better known here . Wc have heard of him , now and then , for the last , few years , by fits ami starts just as the westerly winds blow fragments of bin work in our way . He is ono of tho Boston literati ; which we specify not without due reason , for America has its distinct seats of polite letters . . Now York hath one set ol writers Boston another— Philadel phia a third . And Uoston , perhaps , would not forgive us if we did not give hex her fair cluim openl y'
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 3, 1852, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03071852/page/16/
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