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ingly we think the rc Voices of Freedom " far Inferior to the " Lyrics of Love . " There is a vein of genuine poetry in the Lyrics . Let him devote a few more years of earnest labour to his art , and he will produce remarkable poems . We say this deliberately , and our readers know how high the standard of excellence by which we distinguished poems from verses . But before he can achieve this excellence he must prune the young luxuriance of his style , and study severely the art of versification ,, in which he is now
most faulty . In this respect , his poems are the work of an " uneducated man "—a man uneducated even in his own art . It may perhaps seem frivolous to insist upon the necessity of laborious study to attain the trifling excellence of versification ; but Art is Form , and Music is essential to Poetry . Call it " trifling" if you will—yet are not the specks and flaws ruinous to Porcelain , which no one heeds in Earthenware ? The cup you drink from , the dagger-hilt you handle , are not more " useful , " though they be chased by Benvenuto Cellini—but was Cellini ' s labour useless ?
Gerald Massey has marred the majority of his poems by excessive carelessness of versification . We will quote but one example , because it unites this fault to his other fault of over-magnificence of language : — " I LOVE MY LOVE , AND MY LOVE LOVES ME . ' ' The life of life ' s when for another we ' re living , Whose spirit responds to ours like a sweet psalter , When heart-smiles are burning , and flame-words out-giving , _^ _ altar !
The fire we have lit on her heart ' s holy O , Love , God ' s religion ! Love , burning and starried , The soul must be beautiful where thou art palaced , I mark where thy kiss-seal is set on the forehead , I know where thy dew of heaven ' s richliest chaliced , For bright breaks that brow through the world ' s slow stain ; And strong is that soul in the battle of duty , Smiling May sunshine thro' life ' s winter-rain , All outward things clothing with inward heartbeauty ! 'Tis writ in the face , whose heart singeth for glee—• I love my Love , and my Love loves me . ' "
Some of these lines it is impossible for us to read metrically — the substitution of the heavy spondee— slow stain , " for such trochees as " beauty "— " duty , " &c , renders the ninth line even more unmetrical than the others . But in spite of faults there are passages of great beauty in this volume . Read this : — BALLAD . " With her white hands claspt , she sleepeth , heart is husht , and lips are cold , Death shrouds up her heaven of beauty , and a weary way I go , Like the sheep without a shepherd on the wintry , norland wold .
With the face of Day shut out by blinding snow . O ' er its widowed nest my heart sits mourning , for its mate that ' s fled Prom this world of wail and weeping , fled to join her Btarry peers , And my light of life ' s o ' ershadowed , where the dear one lieth dead , And I ' m crying in the dark with many fears . " Is not the imagery grand and mournful ? And how fine that closing verse would be if the music answered to it ! " And I ' m crying in the dark with many fears . " Here again is a fragment of genuine song , though it bespeak a youthful singer : —
" ICIIAIS ( M ) . " Seven Hummers' suns have set ! and eartli is once more sweetly flooded With fragrance , for the virgin leaves and violet-banks have budded ; Jleaven claspctli earth , as round the heart , first broodcth Lovc ' h sweet . \ i low ; A blush of flowers ih mantling where the silken grasses grow : Jill thim / s feel summering sunward , golden tidesJlaotl down the . air , Which bums , as angel ' -visitants had left a (/ lory there ! Hut darkness on my aching Hjiirit shrouds the merry shine , I long to /« : « 'l a gush of Spring in this poor heart , of mine . " But we have Home difficulty in malting proper quotations , as the best of theso poems , to our taste , have all appeared in our own columns ; here , however , is a stranger to us : — "TO A WO UK Kit AND Sll VIKRI' . R VOW HUMANITY . " ( Joil blows you Itrave one , in our dearth Your life hath left , a trailing glory , And round tlu > poor hiuu'm homely hearth , We proudly toll your Hufl ' ering ' H Htory . " All iSuvioiir-HoulH lmvo Hacrififii'd , With nought but . noble faith for guerdon , And ere the world hath crown ' tl the Uhrist , The man to death hath borne the burden .
n They laid in . waters , deep and dark , Their corner-stones , who ' ve built in beauty—On earth ' s old heart , their Triumph arc ! To crown with glory , lives of duty . " In fieriest forge of martyrdom , The sword of soul must weld and brighten , Tear-bathed from fiercest furnace come—The lives , heroic-temper'd—Titan ! " Our heart-strings lordliest music make , When swept by Suffering ' s fiery fingers , And thro' soul-shadows , starriest , break Thought-harmonies , on God ' s true singers . " Take heart ! tho' sown in tears and blood , No seed of all Love ' s leaven hath perisht , Tho' dropt in desolate byeways , God Some glorious flower hath rear'd and cherisht . " Take heart ! the rude dust , dark to-day , Soars a new-lighted sphere to-morrow , And wings of splendour burst the clay , That clasps us in Death ' s fruitful furrow . " Our parting advice to him is this : study versification in the works of Milton , Coleridge , Shelley , &c—cultivate simplicity of diction—write incessantly , but publish nothing for some time . The reason of the last counsel is that by incessant practice men learn to master language , but by premature publication they learn to look upon themselves as masters before their apprenticeship is served . We believe that Gerald Massey has the true organization of a poet ; but poets are made as well as born .
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HISTORY OF HOMCEOPATHY . The British Journal of Homoeopathy . S . Highley . { Second Notice . ) There are so many projects before the public in these busy days , some good , some bad , and some perfectly indifferent , but quite as pretentious as the others , that a slow and honest Englishman is bound in honour to demand of every single scheme or its schemer , that some feasible cause be shown why its claims should and must be sifted , before he will even entertain it for a moment . For our own part , being both somewhat slow of conviction , and also
indifferently honest , we approached the noiseless , but deep-rooting and fast-growing phenomenon of homoeopathy in a former number , with circumspection , self-possession , and even wariness . We did not wish to defile our fingers with the thing at all , unless we should find it possessed of a respectable introduction to our notice . But certainly the number and varied qualities of its lay-adherents , the literary and scientific respectability of its medical illustrators , together with the character and career of its learned , conscientious , and immensely industrious architect , have removed all our proverbially
national reluctance to extend the rule of fair play to a new thing , and a foreign thing , and especially a transcendental-looking thing . Having thus satisfied ourselves that the new practice of physic is at least a scientific , literary , and popular phenomenon of our age , full of interest to the student of human nature , if not to the student of medicine , it is not easy to avoid the suspicion that it is actually possible that homoeopathy owes its unquestionable vitality to some soul of truth that is in it . It is a momentous inquiry ; momentous for the readers of the Leader , which welcomes every new thought , so it be self-consistent and positive ; momentous for
the public , whose good is the final cause of the art of healing diseases ; and momentous to every single heir of the thousand ills of flesh . These columns , however , are not the ' place for the discussion and settlement of so great and so technical a question . It must he finally adjudicated upon by the medical profession ; and it will be so in the course of time , perhaps sooner than royal colleges are aware . In fact , it ik being gradually decided on already . In the mean time we have investigated the matter as neither unscientific nor uninterested spectators , in order that we might not continue wholly ignorant of what , is going on around us ; and the result of our little researches ia as follows : —
It seems that Hippocrates never inculcated any theoretical principle of healing in ho many words , notwithstanding his'being the founder of the dogmatic or rational school of doctors among the Creeks . He was more occupied with the description of diseases than with tho scientific cure of them . It is abundantly evident , however , that he chose his medicines on account of their supposed antagonism to the disease , as conceived of under his pathology , which was as crude a doctrine as ever managed to obtain currency . A disease imagined to consist in an excess ot dry was cured by sufficientdoses of moist ;; too much hot was subdued by added cold ; and so forth ; different medicines and means being considered the proper
ve-These fellows were very likely successful now and then ; but they must often have fired in the dark ; and it was a horrid attitude of mind to stand in . The Methodists were content to classify diseases . The Episynthetics tried to combine rationalism , empiricism , and methodism into one sound and comprehensive system . The Eclectics bethought themselves of distilling the good things out of Episynthetism , so as to catch the subtle essence of all the schools ! The Pneumatics or Spiritualists actually attributed all the diseases of the body to the governing spirit , and endeavoured to deal with it accordingly .
hides of hot and cold , moist and dry , salt and sweet The intellectual character of this great father in fact , was that of a naturalist rather than an investigator of effects and causes ; and he dealt with patients and their maladies rather like a nurse than a grounded and principled physician . The empirics opposed the Hippocratic theorizers about humours and spirits : and asserted that experience without principles , and without seeking principles , is the only guide to the treatment of each individual case . Their practice must , therefore , have been sometimes according to one principle and sometimes according to another , no principle whatever being either intended or thought of .
The Arabians having done nothing either good or bad for medicine , except in the way of polypharmacy , as being the legitimate ancestors of our sapient corporation of apothecaries , the pneumatic theories of the later Greeks were revived and modified by Van Helmont and Stalh . John Brown , of Edinburgh , restored the ancient methodism , classifying diseases under two heads , and dividing all medicines into two kinds , stimulants and sedatives . But the predominant school of modern times , that of Boerhaave and Hufeland , Sydenham and Cullen ,
Baillie and Andral , Gregory and Clarke , seems to be a somewhat mingled and disorderly hive . They have tonics , diluents , antispasmodics , as if they were Hippocratists ; they have mercury for syphilis , and Jesuit ' s bark for ague , as if they were Empirics ; they have a procrustean nosology , by which they classify and even treat diseases as if they were Methodists or Brunonians ; in short , they prudently take whatever they can get , like genuine Episynthetists , as they are : while a more refining spirit , here and there , proceeds to the elegant inanity of eclecticism . Be it repeated that the predominant school of physicians in Great Britain , what
with their tonics and other class-medicines , their specifics , their chemicals , and their depletions , are the true and unmistakeable perpetuators of the episynthetic method . This is , perhaps , the wisest way of all ; it certainly looks very knowing and comprehensive at first sight , but it does not even pretend to a distinct scientific principle of cure . Indeed , it is to be noticed that none of all the schools so much as aims at a principle of cure . They have theories of disease , conjectures concerning the secret actions of medicine , and much experience of cure ; but no principle of cure , properly so called . They do not ^ even profess to have sought out and discovered a law of cure . Hahnemann does .
We find that Hahnemann rejected the idea of founding the treatment of diseases upon the ( hitherto always temporary ) theory of their intimate nature , despised the practice of a dull empiricism , repudiated the classification of maladies as a guide to the management of individual cases , and denounced with tremendous energy the prevalent adoption of cither a stupid mixture of all-foregoing systems , or u dainty do-nothing eclectical procedure . In short , he protested against anything that had been done in the art he loved , with the sole exception of one thing , and that had never succeeded in raising itself to the dignity of a great and effective doctrine— -at least until he seized it in liin
embrace , and impregnated it with newness of life . Almost from time immemorial , there had existed a little organic seed of theory in Latin or Christian medicine expressed and handed down in the wellknown alliterative conceit , Similia simililms $ anantur ; a maxim meaning , that similar diseases cure one another . Generally speaking , when one disease comes in upon another in a poor creature
tho first in tmspended until the « econd has run its course , and then the original one resumes and finishes its career ; hut oareful observers had noticed that if the supervening be similar to tho current disease , the latter is not only suspended but cured . The popular manner of treating a slight burn by holding it to tho fire , and Kentish ' s universally-accredited treatment of tho severest burns with hot turpentine , are familiar illustrations of the
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418 && $ $ , e& % ev . [ Satpbday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 3, 1851, page 418, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1881/page/14/
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