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delicate and musical passages of " Faust , " defy translation ., and become sometimes commonplace even in the best . This is in the nature of poetry . " There is a tout ensemble of sound as well as of sense in poetical composition , " says Gray , " always necessary to its perfection . "What is gone before still dwells upon the ear and insensibly harmonizes with the present line , as in that succession of fleeting notes which is called melody . " This melody cannot be altered -without altering the effect ; and translation
must alter it . Language is a strangely suggestive medium , and it is in the reflex and vague operation of words upon the mind that the impossibility of translation consists . "Write " The bzigle sounding through the forest home" and suppose the translator to come so near to the original as " The horn resounding through the forest glade" ( and lucky the translator who can come so near !) , will not the two lines affect you differently ? If in so simple a matter the remark holds good , how much more in the involved subtleties of philosophic poetry !
Miss Swanwick , we repeat , has produced an excellent translation , easy , elegant , and poetic—and ( wherever we have compared it with the original ) remarkably accurate . The Iphigenia and the first act of Tasso she had already published ; and in this volume the former is reprinted , Tasso is completed , Egmont and the Faust added , and Scott ' s spirited but careless version of Gb'tz with the Iron Hand revised .
What a volume it is I How rich and various "What thought , poetry , culture , lie expressed in it , and what demands it makes upon the reader ' s culture ! Faust , the greatest poem of modern times , which no man fathoms at a glance , but which years of study make one more and more admire—Iphigenia , that " echo of Greek song , " as Schlegel falsely called it , appealing to the highest culture—Tasso , the delicate poem of a poet ' s life amidst courtly hindrances—Egmont , the free , fresh , historical painting—and Goetz , the picture of a bold and chivalrous robber struggling
singlehanded against the advancing power of civilization , the lawless chieftain in a hopeless stand against law ! All these in one volume for a mere trifle ; and , although the possessor of this volume cannot be said to read Goethe , he may be said to have very considerable aids towards a rough estimate of him . Couple this with the Conversations toith Eckermann , his own Autobiography , and Mrs . Austin ' s volume of Characteristics , and you may learn as much of him as it is possible for the merely English reader to know .
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WUTHEKING HEIGHTS . Wutliering Heights and Agnes Grey . By Ellis and Acton Bell . A new edition revised , with a Biographical Notice of the Authors , a selection from their Literary Remains , and a Preface . By Currer Bell . Smith and Elder . There are various points of interest in this republication , some arising from the intrinsic excellence of the works themselves , others from the lustre reflected on them by Jane Eyre . The biographical notice of her two sisters is plainly and touchingly written by Currer Bell . With their early struggles in authorship thousands will sympathize : —
" One day in the autumn of 18451 accidentally lighted on a MS . volume of verse in my sister Emily ' s handwriting . Of course I was not surprised , knowing that she could and did write verse : I looked it over , and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions , nor at all like the poetry women generally write . I thought them condensed and terse , vigorous , and genuine . To my ear , they had also a peculiar music—wild , melancholy , and elevating . demonstrative
of writing and thinking- was not what is called * feminine '—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice ; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality , and for their reward a flattery which is not true praise . " The bringing out of our little book was hard work . As was to be expected , neither vre nor our poems were
at all wanted ; but for this we had been prepared at the outset ; though inexperienced ourselves , we had read the experience of others . The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom we applied . Being greatly harrassed by this obstacle , I ventured to apply to the Messrs . Chambers , of Edinburgh , for a word of advice ; they may have forgotten the circumstance , but I have not ; for from them . I received a brief and business-like , but civil and sensible reply , on which we acted , and at last made a
" The book was printed : it is scarcely known , and all of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell . The fixed conviction I held , and hold , of the worth of these poems has not , indeed , received the confirmation of much favourable criticism ; but I must retain , it notwithstanding . " Ill-success failed to crush us : the mere effort to succeed bad given a wonderful zest to existence ; it must be pursued . We each set to work on a prose tale : Ellis Bell produced Wuthering Heights , Acton Bell Agnes Grey , and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume . These MSS . were perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the space of a year and a half ; usually , their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal .
"At last Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors ; Currer Bell ' s book found acceptance nowhere , nor any encouragement of merit , so that something like the chill of despair began to invade his heart . As a forlorn hope , he tried one publishing-house more—Messrs . Smith and Elder . Ere long , in a much shorter space thau that on which experience had taught him to calculate , there came a letter , which he opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard , hopeless lines ,
intimating that * Messrs . Smith and Elder were not disposed to publish the MS ., ' and , instead , he took out of the envelope a letter of two pages . He read it trembling . It declined , indeed , to publish the tale , for business reasons ; but it discussed its merits aud demerits so courteously , so considerately , in a spirit so rational , with a discrimination so enlightened , that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done . It was added , that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention .
"I was then just completing Jane Eyre , at which I had been working while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London : in three weeks I sent it off ; friendly and skilful hands took it in . This was in the commencement of September , 1847 ; it came out before the close of October following , while Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey , my sisters' works , which had already been in the press for months , still lingered under a different management . " Critics , we are told , failed to do them justice . But to judge from the extracts given of articles in the Britannia and Atlas , the critics were excessively indulgent , and we take it the great public was the most recalcitrant , and would not be amused with these
strange wild pictures of incult humanity , painted as if by lurid torchlight , though painted with unmistakeable power—the very power only heightening their repulsiveness . The visions of madmen are no t
more savage , or more remote iiom ordinary me . xne error committed is an erro / in art—the excessive predominance of shadows darkening the picture . One cannot dine off condiments , nor sup off horrors without an indigestion . And yet , although there is a want of air and light in the picture we cannot deny its truth ; sombre ,
rude , brutal , yec , neruu uiigwvurueu - stincts of powerful organizations , bred up amidst violence , revolt , and moral apathy , are hero seen in operation ; such brutes we should all be , or the most of us , were our lives as insubordinate to law ; were our affections and sympathies as little cultivated , our imaginations as undirected . And heroin lies the moral of the book , though most people will fail to draw the moral from very irritation at it .
Curious enough it is to read Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of WiMfeU Hull , and remember that the writers were two retiring , solitary , consumptive girls ! Books , coarse even for men , course in language and coarse in conception , the coarseness apparently of violent and uncultivated men—turn out to be the productions of two girls living almost alone , filling their loneliness with quiet studios , and writing these books from a sense of duty , hating the pictures they drew , yet drawing them with austere conscientiousness ! There is matter hero for the moralist or critic
to speculate on . That it was no caprice of a poor imagination wandering in search of an exciting" subject wo are most thoroughly convinced . The three sisters have been , haunted by the same experience . Currer Bell throws more hum anity into her picture ; but Rochester belongs
to the Earnshaw and Heathcliff family . Currer Bell ' * riper mind enables her to paint with a freer hand i nor can we doubt but that her two sisters , had they lived , would also hare risen into greater strength and clearness , retaining the extraordinary power of vigorous delineation which makes their writings so remarkable . The power , indeed , is wonderful , Heathcliff , devil though he be , is drawn with a sort of dusky splendour which fascinates , and we feel the truth of his burning and impassioned love for Catherine , and of her inextinguishable love for him . It was a happy
thought to make her love the kind , weak , elegant Edgar , and yet without lessening her passion for Heathcliff . Edgar appeals to her love of refinement , and goodness , and culture ; Heathcliff clutches her soul in his passionate embrace . Edgar is the husband she has chosen , the man who alone is fit to call her wife ; but although she is ashamed of her early playmate she loves him with a passionate abandon ment which sets culture , education , the world , at defiance . It is in the treatment of this subject that Ellis Bell shows real mastery , and it shows more genius , in the highest sense of the word , than you will find in a thousand novels .
Creative power is so rare and so valuable that we should accept even its caprices with gratitude . Currer Bell , in a passage on this question , doubts whether the artist can control his power ; she seems to think with Plato ( see his argument in the iiro ) , that the artist does not possess , but is possessed . " Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff , I do not know : I scarcely think it is . But this I know ; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that at times strangely wills and works itself . He
may lay down rules and devise principles , and to rules and principles it will , perhaps , for years lie in subjection ; and then , haply without any warning of revolt , there comes a time when it will no longer consent ' to harrow the vallevs , or be bound wiih a band in the furrow 'when it ' " laughs at the multitude of the city , and regards not the crying of the driver '—when , refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer , it sets to work on statue-hewing , and you have a Pluto or a Jove , a Tisiphone or a Psyche , a Mermaid or a Madonna , as
Fate or Inspiration direct . Be the work grim or glorious , dread or divine , you have little choice left but quiescent adoption . As for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passive ly under dictates you neither delivered nor could question—that would not be uttered at your prayer , nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice . If the result be attractive , the World will praise you , who little deserve praise ; if it be repulsive , the game World will blame you , who almost as little deserve blame . "
This is so true that we suppose every writer will easily rccal his sensations of being * ' carried away' ' by the thoughts which in moments of exaltation possessed his soul—will recal the headlong feeling of letting the reins slip—being himself as much astonished at the result as any reader can be . There is at such time a momentum which propels the mind into regions inaccessible to calculation , unsuspected in our calmer moods . The present publication is decidedly an interesting one . Besides the two novels of Wuthering Heights
and Agnes Grey it contains the biographical notices already spoken of , and a selection from the poems left by both sisters . We cannot share Currer Bell ' s partiality for them ; in no one quality distinguishing poetry from prose arc they remarkable ; but although their poetic interest is next to nought they have a biographical interest which justifies their publication . The volume is compact , and may be slipped into a coat pocket for the railway , so that the traveller may wile away with it the long hours of his journey in grim pleasure .
•• My sister Emily was not a person of character , nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearest and dearest to her could , with impunity , intrude unlicensed ; it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made , and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication . I knew , however , that a mind like hers could not be without some latent spark of honourable ambition , and refused to be discouraged in my attempts to fan that spark to flame . " Meantime , my younger sister quietly produced sonic of her own compositions , intimating that , since Emily's had given me pleasure , I might like to look at h < rs . I could not but be a partial judge , yet I thought that these verses , too , had a sweet sincere pathos of their
" We had very early cherished the dream of ne day becoming authors . This dream , never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us , now suddenly acquired strength and consistency : it took the character of a resolve . We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems , and , if possible , get them printed . Averse to personal publicity , we veiled our own names under those of Currer , Ellis , and Acton Bell ; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine ; while we did not like to declare ourselves women , because—without at that time suspecting that our mode
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BOOKS ON OUR TABLE . Introductory Lecture on tho Study of Roman Civil Law . Delivered in ' tlio Theatre of Trinity College , Dublin . By John Anster , LL . O . Miehaolnias , 1850 . Longman and Co . Introductory Jlddrasa dtdircred at the Opening of ilia Medical School , Surgeons ' -hull , Edinburgh , Nov . Oth , 18-JU . JJy Georgo Wilson , M . I ) ., Lecturer on ( JliemiHtiy . Edinburgh : Sutherland and Ivnox . These are thoughtful and comprehensive discourses on the study of Law and Medicine by two men of high culture and broad views , having , moreover , in common a
quality seldom found in the lecturer ' s chair—we mean a real poetic faculty , which , though it does not obviously appear in those pages ( indeed , it would be singularly out of place there ) does , nevertheless , tinge their whole thoughts , and gives to what would otherwise be a dry discourse that elevation which impresses the student more than all rhetoric . Dr . Anster ' s lecture especially may be said to address the public at large , besideB the students for whom it was intended JHon ' t and Washington : Historical Studies . By V . fluizot . ( The Popular Library . ) Ueo . Itoutledgo aud Co ,
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Dec . 28 , 1850 . ] © Il $ ft £ && ??? 953
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 28, 1850, page 953, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1863/page/17/
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