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All those who suffer the dironic malady of " neglected genius , " and who believe that in this age poetry is a " drug , " because their own drugpoetry does not sell , will attribute the extraordinary success of Alexandbb Smith ' s poems to luck , aceidr at ,-or the " puffery of critics . " We ourselves have been accused of having puffed this bubble . We do not think , however , that our efforts would succeed so well with another kind of bubble , and suspect that if we were to become dithyrambic on Jones , it would not prevent Jones from being considered a drug . Be it luck , or be it genius- ^ or even perhaps a combination of both—Alexander Smith's success is a fact . He has had all the honours
-He has been lauded , he has been abused , he has been learned by heart , and his autographs eagerly sought for . And now finally comes the avatar of fashion : he is to be " taken up" by " the great . " At present ¦ we hear that he is staying on a visit with the Duke and Duchess of Aegtle . This fact will probably excite general misgivings as to his future , " lest his head should be turned , " and " society , " the ' syren , should ruin him . We do not share those misgivings ; we believe that it is only a weak head that can be so turned ; and weak heads would be turned as easily by the flattery of the bourgeoisie as by that of high society . Now , unless we have made a fundamental mistake with regard to Alexander
Smith , he is remarkably endowed with sagacity and direct good sense . Success and flattery may fluster him for a little , and make him feel like a man who has suddenly fallen into the water , rising to the surface with a confused ringing in his ears , and rather a random sense of helplessness , until he gets his head fairly above water , when lie strikes calmly out , and swims with such strength as G-od has given to him .
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The Magazines this month contain much that is interesting . Fraser concludes its very remarkable contribution to history , in the shape of anenquiry into the Morals of Queen Elizabeth , a masterly vindication of Elizabeth ' s character , and a searching analysis of the evidence or want of evidence , upon which the charges against her have been founded . Anatomy , in Long Clothes is the quaint title of a biographical article on Vesalius , the father of modern anatomy . It bears the trace of that able hand which in the same magazine recently described the career of Conead Gesneii , and however removed from the sympathies of the general reader the life of an anatomist might appear , the writer of the present article has contrived to tell the story in a way which will be interesting to all readers . The diificulties with which Vesalixjs had to contend , fighting as he did against
ignorance and pi * ejudice , which , made it seem impious to lay the scalpel on the " human form divine , " furnish the biographer with good material . We will give a specimen of the sublime " bodysnatching" to which this great man of science was doomed , in an age when only dogs and monkeys were allowed to furnish evidence of our wonderful mechanism . While Yesaltus was at Louvain , lie rambled outside the gates with his friend , and came to the Tyburn of Louvain . " Now there had been executed on that spot a noted robber , who , since ho deserved more than ordinary hanging , had been ehainod to the top of a high stake
and roasted alive . He had been roasted b y a slow firo made of straw , that was kept burning at some distance below his foot * In that way there had been a dish cooked for the fowls of heaven , which had been regarded by them as a special dainty . The sweet flesh of the delicatel y roasted thief they had preferred to every other ; his bones , therefore , had been elaboratel y picked , and there was loft suspended on the stake a skeleton dissected out and cleaned by many beaks with rare precision . The dazzling nkoleton , complete and clean , was lifted up on high before the eyes of the anatomist , who had been striving hitherto to piece together such a thing out of the bones of many people , gathered au occasion offered . That was a flower to be plucked from its tall nfceni
"Mounting upon the shoulders of his friend , and aided by him from below young Andreas ascended the charred stake , and tons away whatever bones he found accessible , breaking the ligaments which tied the legs and arms to the main trunk . The trunk itself wan bound b y iron chains so firmly to the stake that it wn , H left there hanging . With stolen bones under their clothes the two young men returned into ijouvain . ' " But in the evening Vesalius went out alone to take another walk did not return in haste , and suffered the town gates to clone against him . ' 0 h-u \ resolved to spend the night afield under the stars ; while honest men ' woro sleeping in their l > edn he meant to Hhare the vigil of | , | K ) thieves . There was the trunk of the skeleton yet to bo bad . At midnight none would dare to brave ( he
( spectacle of fleshly horrors , to nay nothing of Hiich ghostly accidents an miidit befal them among coqwes of the wicked , under rain , moon , stars , or flittiiiir nig ht-clouds . Certain , therefore , that no man would M , nw to witness bin offence VesaliuH at midnight again climbed the tree to gather its remaining blossom By main force he deliberately wrested the whole set of bones out of Lhe / t ; ihi > of the great iron fetters , and then having reinoved his treasure to a secret m > ot lie buried it . In the morning he returned homo empty-handed . At Icimiro ( hen $ nd carefully , he smuggled through the gates day after day bone after bone . B ,, j , when the perfect skeleton was not up in his own liousn , be did „<>( , nemplo < o display it openly , and to demonstrate from it , gh ing out that it had been ' brought by him to Louvain from Paris . " h
Another article m tins number , which will not bo left unroiid j H Thoughts on ' Shallot / and Byron , by a hand easily rocogniimblo . || , , ho considered aH a continuation of the paper last month in favour of Popb , and in protest against tho poetical tendency of our age . It ,
fierce , eloquent , abrupt , exaggerated , and startling , the tendency of it being to elevate Byeon ^ , because he recognised a Law which he was perpetually breaking , ( and in so far he must be dear to Orthodoxy , since his very fierceness of misanthropy was homage , as Orthodoxy interprets it , ) and to depreciate Shelley , because instead of saying , " There is a Law , and therefore I am miserable ; why cannot I keep the LawP Shelley says , There is a law , and therefore I am miserable j why should not the law be abolished ? " To any one who accepts this description of the two men , the article will he triumphant in its success- But we do not think those who know and love Shelley will fail to see through this sophisticate statement . Shelley , of course , like all men who think at all , recognised that there was a Law of right and wrong , good and evil , truth and falsehood ; but in the place of that Law , obscuring it , misrepresenting it , pretending to be it , but being in fact a divergent distortion thereof , —was a Law made by man , and not by God ; and this was the Law Shelley said should be abolished . Blaclcwood treats us to one of its admirable analyses of foreign works , in the shape of an . article on Dr . Tschudi ' s Brute Life in the Alpine Regions . From this article , which will specially interest the naturalists , we select a passage about bats : — "They are the owla amongst mammalia ; like them they are dismal , nocturnal , carniverous creatures , unamiable and shy . Our naturalists are probably still far from a thorough knowledge of them , their secret abodes and nocturnal habits rendering this very difficult to attain . And in this respect natuial history receives small aid from man , who loathes the bat , because he does not know that it is his benefactor ; kills it when he can , and throws it away . Strange it is that man has such a profound aversion and almost invincible horror for many animals which are positively useful and no way injurious ! He shuns and persecutes toads and lizards , which destroy so many locusts , worms , spiders , flies , and snails ; blind worms and snakes , which rid him of vermin and ! of mice ; moles , owls , and bats , which are his true benefactors , and should be carefully protected . The last
named are , like swallows , active destroyez-s of insects , and devour millions of beetles , injurious water insects , tree-caterpillars , cabbage-butterflies , night-moths , and May-bugs , and crunch , with their numerous and extremely sharp-teeth , even , the hard-winged dung-beetle . Certainly they have not tha agreeable aspect or the amiable manners of canaries or goldfinches ; they are wild and fierce , and ready enough to open their wide red gullets against the head of man . They are hard to tame , and , when held captive , usually refuse all nourishment . Their musky smell , the thin oily skin of their wings , their tawny hair , their hissing and grumbling , their little tail and their claws , are not particularly attractive ; but one might forgive them all that , and leave them in peace , inasmuch as they do great and good service . Popular superstition classes them as venomous , with toads , frogs , and snakes . They are just as little so as any of these , and have not the absurd passion attributed to them of flying into people ' s hair . Weasels and polecats , martens and dogs , and especially owls , their sworn foes , persecute them sufficiently , to prevent their numbers ever becoming troublesome to man , though he should leave them unmolested . "
The Romans in Scotland , and Athens in 1853 , are two articles which will be read with interest . But there is something more than interest in the concluding paper on The Narcotics we Indulge in . Opium , hemp , and coca are treated as hop and tobacco were before , with great knowledge , clearness of exposition , and admirable impartiality : — "It will strike the reader of the present article as somewhat remarkable , that modern , perhaps more impartial and truth-loving inquiry , should strip so many of these narcotic indulgences of the horrid and repulsive aspect they have always hitherto worn . We find now that they have all a fair side as well as a foul , and that it becomes a question for reaHonab ' e discussion whether an- educated population , trained to the exerci . se of a reasonable self-control , might not be safely left to avail themselves of the strangely fascinating enjoyments thoy are capable of affording , without much risk of their becoming the source of any greatly extended after-misery . But when , it may be pertinently asked , can we hope to aeo the mass of our population so trained to self-denial and self-restraint V
In the Dublin University-Magazine , pigs are honoured by a display of erudition and sympathy in their behalf which must extort approving grunts from the moat indifferent of porkers . The article is entitled Pig Lore ; and , as a slight taste of its quality , read thin : — "It seeniH difficult to , account for the almost universal connexion of swine with religious ceremony . Tin ; ancient Romans sacrificed the sow to Bacchus and to Oeres ; while he amongst them who uuamncioudi / desecrated tho public holiday , or feriw pubUav , might utone for the offence by sacrificing a pig , though he whose disobedience was htUtntimuU , was deemed to have transgressed beyond reparation . Homer , amongst various epithets which he bestows upon . Artemis , speaks of her
as one ' rejoicing in the wild boar and stag . ' Tho ArgiveH offered the sow to Aphrodite , the ( Joddess of Love and Beauty ; while , in a very different region of the earth , the natives of the . Sandwich Jslew still sacrifice the pig to Tele , the witch goddess who personilieH the crater qf JCeranea . The mythology of the Kasfc represents that when the earth was hidden away by the malice of the , t j iant Jhnani / aLs / mva , tho ( Jod Vinnu assumed tho fonn ' of a mighty boar , with fiery tusks , and rooted iL up from tho depths of I ' atalas , restoring it to its proper place , and thus dignifying the pig , in | , h <; estimation of a large portion of the peop le of A sia , by associating it with his third , or Valiant , Avatar ; in commemoration of which he is sometimes represented in Hindu temples with the head of a pig . "
The Colloquies <>/ ' ICrasnuits furniHh another entertaining paper ; l » it readers will prolmbly neglect everything for the very hiunordiiH paper , by tho author of the " Hm . | 1 (!| () l . o |' " | , | , e Albany , " in which ho describes «•" . Kr . cu-rsion to the Limbos . 'We can only find room for thin vinion of the hotel-koeper ' . s hell , ns sketched by the demon hiniNelf : — "Then ho gave me Homo details of this most appropriate punishment that could possibly be inflicted on tho Bonifaces ; bow they were to be arraigned and convicted at their own burn ; bow they were to be scorched , in iiccda ar . cn / oricvi , l > y their own wax-candles ; how all tho caravanserais in Turkey , and all tho inns in Itussia and Spain were to give up their legions of fleas to stock tho bedrooms with ; how they wen ) to be inexorabl y doomed to drink their own wines pure ; how they were to be served and waited on through endless ages by their own waiters ; novr their own interminable billa were to bo ineaentod to them every morn ing and evory
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Critics are not tiie legislators . but the judges and police of literature , They do , not make la-ws—they interpret and try to enforce them--Edinburgh , Meview , .
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1072 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1853, page 1072, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2011/page/16/
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