On this page

• Text (2)

  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

• 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

    La . mah . tine has commenced in the feuilleton of La Presse , or to Theophii . jb Gautier ' s novel , Jean and Jeannette , which is just republished from the same source . It is a pleasant bit of filagree work : cobwebs of phrases without any substance ; or , rather , let us call it a bit of Dresden china , equally coquettish , impossible , and charming . The story is simply that of a grande dame disguising herself as a grisette in order that she may inspire a

    genuine passion—tbe salon being a garden where those flowers will not grow ; she meets with a Marquis also disguised as one of the People : they fall incontinently in Jove , marry , ef la toile baisse ! As a characteristic specimen—^ good one—of the style , let us quote this phrase in a description of the heroine : "Sa poitrine intr ^ pidement decolletee e ' telait les plus delicieux ne ' ants , et Ton peut dire que jamais le rien ne fut plus joli . " This is Marivaudage at its best .

    The dramatic censorship has been reestablished , and its first act was to suppress Soijvkstre ' s drame of I / Enfant de Paris . This violent and foolish piece—written upon that odious pattern of flattering the people by painting the poor as incarnations of purity and heroism , tne rich as incarnations of well-dressed scoundrelism—was made by Jules Janin the topic of one of his most characteristic feuilletons . Souvestre was absurd

    enough to reply , alleging that his intentions were riot to vilify the rich , and that J . J . had given an inaccurate report of tbe piece . J . J / s answer is admirable , and might serve as a model for unfortunate critics , who never satisfy an author , whether they praise or whether they blame . On this subject we know nothing that can be added to the wit ' s definition of the criticism which could possibly satisfy an author , ** unqualified praise and all extracted !"

    The censorship seems , however , to have been used with little discretion in this case , for the piece was played to empty benches . But who can pretend to understand censorships ? In Vienna a pamphlet , called CEstereich , Ungarn und die JVpiwodiria , is tolerated , in Pesth it is confiscated ; both Vienna and Pesth are in a state of siege ; both towns belong to the same monarchy , but the book thought permissible in one is prohibited in the other ! The Austrians are an intelligent people . * Tn Prussia , as we recently mentioned , the unhappy bookseller is responsible for his wares . Oh ! why does pot * * * live in Prussia ? A book

    issued in Hamburgh , called Europa , and written by the ex-famous Johannes Ronge of the Holy Shirt , was sold in Berlin by an easy , simple-minded Buchhandler , whose ideas of literature were possibly limited to vague associations respecting dollars and butter , when he was somewhat roughly awakened from his innocence by finding himself condemned for the crime of high treason to four years of hard labour ! The Court of Appeal commuted the sentence into seven months' imprisonment . As Charles Lamb says , after quoting a platitude , " the Germans are certainly a profounder nation than we . "

    Untitled Article

    wordswobth ' s prelude . TJm Prelude , or Growth of a Poet ' s Mind . An Autobiographical Poem . By William Wordsworth . Moxon . Under any but the lowest aspect , that of mere curiosity , this poem must bo regarded as an unintereating performance , and an ambitious failure . We know that terrified critics ( terrified lest they should be suspected of imperfect poetical taste if they talk not grandiloquently of Wordsworth ) have ngreed to rhapsodize its glories—the Athenaum standing alone

    in withholding eulogies , and in quietly indicating its mediocre admiration of the work ; yet our purpose being not to flatter the prejudices of any class , but to express opinions whatever amount of opposition they may excite , we do not hesitate to affirm the poem to he a failure . As an autobiography it is meagre and futile beyond anything of a biographical kind we have seen ; as a philosophical survey of the genesis of a poet ' s mind it fails in distinctness , in grasp , in coherence , and in introspective analysis : the utmost that can be said is that here is a collection of

    anecdotes , mostly trivial , regarding his early life , gathered together without any artistic seme of coordination or mutual irradiation , and written in a stylo Romctimcs lofty , picturesque , and instinct with poetry , but often surcharged with a dense prosaism to be paralleled only by passages from his other works . Coleridge , it is true , called it , when in MS ., " An Orphic tnle indeed , A tnle ilivino of lii ^ h mid pntMinuntc thought * To their own mtuic chuuntcd . "

    And he was assuredly a judge whose competence we would not for a moment question in ordinary cases ; but here his judgment was blinded by personal considerations , as indeed the very phrasing of his criticism , plainly shows . One may remark in passing that , although the words " Orphic tale " will have a dim and shadowy grandeur to the ordinary reader , they present nothing but a puzzle to those familiar enough with Grecian literature to have some precise notion of Orphic poems : in its most generalized form , " Orphic tale " would mean , a religious tale ; but any connection possible between The Prelude and an Orphic tale must be as remote as that between John Gilpin and Watts" s By mm . We dismiss this judgment therefore in spite of our respect for the judge . No one could better have exposed the inanity of its philosophical pretensions than Coleridge himself , had it b een the work of Byron or Shelley . On matters of taste differences are admissible ; there is no arguing against feeling . But on matters of philosophy—if anywhere—reason asserts her claim , and brings forward demonstrations to support it . There is a notion current in the vague talk of the day that Wordsworth is a great philosophical poet-r-a notion we hold to be demonstrably incorrect . People here confound the meditative , contemplative spirit of Wordsworth with the creative , ratiocinative spirit of a philosophical poet , as seen in Sophocles , Lucretius , Shakspeare , Dante , Goethe , and others . Take any test of philosophy you please , and Wordsworth will be found wanting . He plans philosophical poems , and their structural confusion and departure from the first principles of Nature betrays his unphilosophic mind . He does not grasp great truths and illustrate them ( to employ the word in its primitive sense of purification ) ; he does not form great conceptions and fill up the outlines with impassioned experience , in t ypical Events and Characters , or in great Representative abstractions . Two of his dominant qualities , closely allied , prevent any grandeur of conception , or of evolution , viz ., picturesqueness and triviality ; these lead him away from what is essential and typical to that which is accidental and particular . Accordingly , although his works are full of picturesque details , they have little that is grand in them except the aspects of landscape nature , and little that is universally true except the reflections of his own personality . But inasmuch as Nature appeals to all minds , and his diffusive egotism meets with responsive feelings , Wordsworth takes possession of us . There lies his strength . He is the greatest descriptive poet that ever lived . He is the greatest egotist that ever lived . But he is not a philosophical poet in any exact meaning of the term . Want of human sympathy and an . incurable bias towards the trivial , prevent his taking his place among the Shakspeares , Miltons , Dantes , and Goethes . In him it is the meanest flower that stirs thoughts too deep for tears—the meanest flower , never the noblest Life ! He revels in the tempests that shake the hills and forests , but the storms that agitate mankind are conflicts that he shuns . What is human interests him only in as far as it is picltircsque ; and he avoids the great theatre whereon the tragic passions and exalted heroisms are displayed , to throw his whole poetic sympathy upon parochial woes ! His bias towards the trivial is irresistiblo , and he glories in it . In verse as ignoble as the thought he says : — " Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star ; Up and down the heavens they go Men that keep a mighty rout ! I ' m no great as tliuy , I trow . Since the day I found thvc out . Little flower ! I'll make a stir Like a great astronomer . " We believe him . He always did make a stir about trivialities of diction , of sentiment , or of thought . «• Wisdom , " he says , " is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar . " And he stoops . But observe , that in stooping he insists on your believing that he rises to a height above the reach of soarers ! Head his modest prefaces . The triviality we speak of pursues us throughout his works , and shows a mind incapable of the perception of general truth and proportion . In endeavouring to trace " maternal passion through many of its more subtle windings , " he selects his example from the silly mother of an Idiot Boy ; in planning his great philosophic poem he selects as a hero a Pedlar ; thus for ever ignoring greatness , nnd never going beyond the narrow circle of his own personality save to fasten upon something small ! The reader will not , it is hoped , so far misconceive

    the drift of these remarks , as to suppose us insensible to the depth of feeling , the brooding solemnity of thought , and the unusual loveliness of imagery and diction which can be found scattered through Wordsworth ' s works . As a man for ever communing with Nature and with his own soul , and producing poetry unique in our literature , we assent to the highest claims set up for him ; but as a philosophic poet we unhesitatingly pronounce him mediocrity itself . We can quote beauties with any of his admirers ; but our sense of his deficiencies , prosaisms , pedantries , and trivialities equals our admiration of his merits . Nay , more—while pur enjoyment of much that he has written is intense , we feel a strong personal dislike to the man . Not that we ever saw him : the repulsion grew as we grew familiar with his mind ; and the reports of those who knew him intimately and loved him , have only deepened that feeling , for they all , without exception , paint him as intensely selfish ; while not one generous action is recorded , nor does one deep friendship —soul reciprocal with soul—give warmth and vitality to a life of solitary self-worship . The Prelude , it would be easy to show , fails in every requisite of a philosophical exposition and conception of what it purposes to be , viz ., the genesis of a poet's mind . Only those unaccustomed to anal ysis , or unable to read beneath the efflorescence of imagery the substantial meanings forming the organic structure of a poem , can be deluded for an instant . The topics selected have no interdependence ; they are recorded more like the capricious wandering s which memory makes over the past , leaping from anecdote to anecdote , governed by casual associations not obedient to a predetermined plan . The successful portions are those wherein he traces the influence of nature on his opening and his growing mind . The first two books entitled " Childhood" and " Schooltime , " though not of high philosophical pretensions * do in some sort carry put his intention , and these contain the loveliest passages . We will quote a few . In an article like the present , where so much antagonism is forced upon us we may be spared from quoting any bald , prosaic pages , and give our readers the relief of beauty as a set off ; that will also prove we do not grudge our admiration when due : — " Was it for this That one , the fairest of all livers , loved To blend his murmurs with my nurse ' s song . And , from his alder shades and rocky falls , And from his fords and shallows , sent a voice That flowed along my dreams ? For this , didst thou , t ) Derwent ! winding among- grassy holms Where 1 was looking on , a babe in arms . Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts 'lo more than infant softness , giving me , Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind , A foretaste , a dim earnest , of the calm That Nature breathes among the hills and groves . When he had left the mountains and received On his smooth breast the shadow of those towers That yet survive , a shattered monument Of feudal sway , the bright blue river passed Along the margin of our terrace walk ; A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved . Oh , many a time have 1 , a five years' child , In a small mill-race severed from his stream , Made one long bathing of a summer ' s day ; Basked in the sun , and plunged and basked again Alternate , all a summer ' s day , or scoured The sandy fields , leaping through flowery groves Of yellow ragwort ; or when rock and hill , The woods , and distant Skiddaw ' s lofty height , Were bronzed with deepest radiance , stood alone Beneath the sky , as if I had been born On Indian plains , and from my mother's hut Had run abroad in wantonness , to sport A naked savage , in the thunder shower . " Fair seed-time had my soul , and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear : Much favoured in my birthplace , and no less In that beloved Vale to which erelong We were transplanted—there were we let loose For sports of wider range . Ere I had told Ten birthdays , when among the mountain slopes Frost , aud the bieath of frosty wind , had snapped The last autumnal crocus , ' twas my joy , "With store of springes o ' er my shoulder hung , To range the open heights where woodcocks run Along the smooth green turf . Through half the night , Scudding away from snare to snare , I plied That anxious visitation ;—moon and stars Were shining o ' er my head . I was alone , And seemed to be a trouble to the peace That dwelt among them . Sometimes it befel In these night wanderings , that a strong deaire O ' ernowered my better reason , and the bird Which was the captive of another ' s toil Became my prey ; and when the deed was done I heard among the solitary hills Low breathings coming after me , and sounds Of undiatinguiBhable motion , steps Almost as silent ae the turt they trod . " Alluding to the chequered vicissitudes of life he finely says : — " Dust as we are , the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music ; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements , makes them cling together In one society . How strange that all The terrors , pains , and early miseries , Begrets , vexations , lassitudes interfused Within my mind , should e ' er have borne a part ,

    Untitled Article

    * m $ >!» * % 9 * % tt + [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 17, 1850, page 496, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1850/page/16/