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    Kntmiim.

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    Kntmiim.

    Kntmiim .

    Untitled Article

    The Americans have a most undignified susceptibility on the score of their nationality ; and although it is true our writers , both in boots and newspapers , have wounded that susceptibility by their cheap ridicule and ungenerous remarks , nevertheless , the readiness to take offence which they so frequently exhibit , is a weakness one would imagine such a nation ought long ago to have outlived . The French ridicule us , and declaim against us ; but we do not wince , we are not angry , we laugh , or turn aside in contempt .

    Can you imagine the English newspapers being in the least occupied with a supposed insinuation emanating from one of Coopjeb ' s novels or Hawthoen ' s romances P Yet American susceptibility is wounded by a supposed mark of disrespect on Thackeeat ' s part towards Mr . Washington ; and the great satirist has to explain gravely through the Times that in speaking of " Mr . Washington heading the rebels with a courage worthy of a better cause , " he was not insulting the Union , nor throwing a doubt on "Washington and his cause ! Anything more supremely ridiculous is not to be found among the long list of literary offences .

    Apropos of Thackeray , there is an article on his Humourists in the Prospective Review , which well deserves being looked for : it is mainly devoted to the much-vexed question of the Position and Rewards of Literature . Respecting the rewards , in a pecuniary sense , the writer takes very much the same view as that advocated recently in this journal ; but there is manifest contradiction between one part of his argument and another . He contends that the employment of authors by Government is a ruinous mistake : it is yoking Pegasus to the plough , with the double result of bad ploughing and a crippled Pegasus . Yet , towards the conclusion of his article , he cites with approbation Scott ' s advice of not making Literature a profession , adding : —

    There are few cases in which the public has nob cause to regret the adoptionof literature as a profession . There are few writers whose powers are so various so ready , so equable , as to work for money , as conscientiously as they work for fame ; and if a man depends upon his pen for his daily bread , he has a very strong temptation to degrade authorship into bookmaking . " It is very true ; but if it be true that few men can , with success , devote themselves wholly to Literature , and if , on the other hand , they are not to be employed in official labours , because Comedies and Essays , which vrould enrich the

    world , are left unwritten during the long hours of such employment , we ask , —What is the proper position of men of Letters ? It seems to us that there are many offices which Government might reasonably and profitably bestow on men of letters ; and the more Literature becomes , as it is daily becoming , a refuge for unsuccessful professional men , and for the desire of cheap notoriety—the more the market is crowded with / indifferent writers , who render it difficult for good literature to bo adequatel y remunerated , the more imperative is it that those who can really advance the progress of the world , should be facilitated as far as

    practicable , and not left wholly to battle with a " supply and demand " principle . Nevertheless , we wholly disagree with all those who would found a claim upon their unsuccess ; we cannot sympathise Math " neglected genius" winch sots tip claims in no way related to its real deserts—which demands that the pudding should- bo abundant and the praise unstinted . J- 'io ease is simple : If a man wants to make money ho must pursue tho nioncy-making path ; to forsake that for somo pleasauter path , and complain thai , he has wandered from tho goal , is unwise Tho pleasures of Literature have their perils .

    J f a man enter a profession for which Nature has not fluporoininontrj endowed "n , he miiRt bo satisfied with its loascr rewards : if , as is too often tho ca . so with ,.. y |! ' own flelf-confidonoo bunion him into a vocation for which ho is oieally unfit , llo m . j not complain of the public , when the penalty duo to hiu V recoiln upon hinifsolf . There aro peculiar difficulties and a numerous host of * l > l > ointinentH attendant upon tho literary profession : its rewards are unequally , wrl nU ! f ! lmIaIrl J > distributed : itn remuneration often scanty , and always unhi ' i'l ""'/ - - lt il ^ tlliH t ' ' ^ l l » « l HBpirant know when ho entered upon it in in id JJ '"" K » i »« t tho drudgery of tho offico or the counting-house . Ho only '"Ncriinii r " M lmato of Iiirt owu powers , or , at * ho porhapn phrascB it , of tho public

    ^ 'lore in ho much of this "false ostiiuato" ruining tlio prospects of men , IU brooding literature as carrion broods maggots ! ITor tho most part l !) ?) ' miin iliWi ) m railton d'Mw ; havo no justification in ilioir talents a lh " { m'" ™ ' they Mumble through . Thoir fncilo labours issue in unino ' I '' * 11 UHl j (>( ' ' . > - JJolief in 'heir talent makes them evade tho . v <) ra ' > Io law of labour which ensures success ; and tho very evasion of us WW is in itself a proof of want of talent . (( , . IM toinpH n'dpargno pan co qu ' on fait / mhh lui . invHiT HJ > ftros nofcl' >»«¦ w roiitfht without his aid . " Time and severe discipline Ij i . ° ° vcr a ' l tfonuino excellence . Gonuino inaHtory , even in tho liv ^' or Mld mmt !) l " - ( nl flul ) J < H > lH ' wwiW-fl from tho innumerable tontauii d " ° Or ' ^' ' '"'( int . If men bavo tho courage of their convictions , for i { * ' (> 1 H t ) 0 J > ;' ' M « moral qualities of their talents ; if they will labour 10 Bult 0 o * ' ^« result , ami nob simply for tho sake of nioney ; if tho

    high and earnest aim of that reward always carried in the exaltation of the faculties and the inward sense of glory , as the mind long hovering round a truth finally clutches it in an exulting grasp , if that reward be sought , then will the pleasures of Literature throw into insignificance all its pains ; and if to these rewards there come the extraneous rewards of pudding and of praise , do not let us mistake these pleasant results as the signs of real literary reward . No man is indifferent to money ; but in proportion as he estimates the delights procurable by money over the delights procurable in his study , in exactly that ratio is his allegiance to Literature lessened . The fox-hunter would scarcely thank you for the brush he had not ridden for himself , because his real pleasure is in the chase and not in the result ; so , in a far higher sense , the rewards of Literature are in Literature itself . But all are not hunters at the meeting of the hounds ; there are more red jackets than courageous riders ; there are many more writers than men of letters .

    If , then , it be true that men of letters are not rewarded according to their claims , the reason is , because their claims are irrelevant . It is in their work , in the " still air of delightful studies , " in the pains and pleasures of intellectual travail and paternity , true reward resides . What lies beyond , is a mercantile question . They should ascertain the wants of the market before entering it . Then , again , as to the pleadings of improvidence , the reviewer well says : — ¦ " Why the man of letters—who relying on the proceeds of an eminently uncertain profession—is yet profuse of time and mone y : eaten up by bad companions and evil habits : imprudent in the manifestation of his best feelings and his worst desires alike—should wonder that his career ends in the Court for the relief of Insolvent Debtors : or the Fleet , as would have been the case fiftr years

    ago—lt is impossible to conceive . And it is equally impossible to estimate his claim upon the justice of the public who has bought and paid for his books whatever plea he may put forth for its compassion ! Yet this , or something like this , has been the career of most , if not all of those men of letters , whose distresses have so often been used 'to point the moral' not of their own folly , but of the public ingratitude . What adventure was ever more wild , what imprudence could be more startling , than that of Cha tterton , in coming to . London with no better reliance fora subsistence than his own genius and the Kowley fabrications ? Had he found a judicious patron : had Walpole—on whom , by the way , he had little claim or none—chosen to have acted the part of a friend , the result might have been different ; but what else could be expected when fortune was thus staked on one cast of the dice ? What declamations have not been expended on the melancholy death of Otway I Yet Otway , the son of a beneficed clergymanleft

    , Christchurch without a degree , ineffectually tried hiw fortune upon the " stage , was known , though penniless , as one of the most dissolute of men about town ; lost by misconduct the commission in the army procured for him by the kindness of a friend ; earned in his disgrace a precarious livelihood by writing for the theatre , and died wretchedly , as has been described . There is no magic in genius which can prevent a , life like this from ending in the workhouse . Drunkenness and irn-> rovidence will have this appropriate retribution , though associated with genius which has charmed the world . Poor Steele would have been no richer than he was had old Duchess Sarah made him her heir ; and there have been literary men , of whom we may select Southey as an honourable example , who would have preserved a manly self-respect , and earned a decent competence in straits "reater than those of Steele . " °

    Untitled Article

    In the same review there is a remarkable article in reply to Newman ' s new chapter in the Phases of Faith , on the Moral Perfection of Jcsiw . There is no mistaking the splendid eloquence of this writer , nor his strange ingenuity of indirect logic ; bright as a snake and shifty as an eel , he is fascinating and exasperating beyond all his contemporaries . There is a certain grandeur of pLiusibility about him ; ho gives errors such a massive or olao such an alluring aspect , that you reject them almost with regret . What , for example , can Boom more suicidal tluin the admission that we are not to conceive the chiivaeter of Christ as it in depicted in the Gospels , but as it has revealed itself in tho great masses of Christian history F Yet this he does : <

    ' Wo aro further willing to confess , that if we wore wholly Hli-an ^ ra to tho transactions of this world , and , knowing nothing () f j fcf 4 V ; lHt ' ; md prvMmt , wm > merely introduced to the biography of Johus among : i marts of oilier personal records and memorials of life and thought , it -in doubtful whether we should . uvula tt out with anything approackiuij to Ihcfvdhuj we . who attack to it . " This evidence , being direct , he sets aside , iu favour of tho following , which is va . # ue , indirect : — " But the measure of tho grandest btung . s cannot bo falcon by any private

    standards or contemporary memoirs : and , lilxton / in ( heir blotjrapki / writ laiyc . Tho power of thoir personality is but incipient in ' th «* ir own generation ; and " its quality , not less than its intennity , grown oloarer as ! , Iio dimeiiHioiiH of i ( , agency enlarge . Ah Plato thought it needful , in his invcH % af , ion of Momln , to Htudy their embodiment in the magnified Hoalo and conspicuoUK orders of tho Htato , ho ih it impossible to apprchond might tho person of . Jomiih without watching t , l , npraid of Ins shadow over the agon , and throwing back upon him tho dMirjictoriHtic-N of tho Christian faith . "

    Now it requires little thought steadily dim-tod to this question to recognise at once a confusipn between influence and ehanieler . Tho position is wholly beside the hearings of the argument . Wo ten I ; n , man ' s influence through history ; we do not test his chnracter . IT instead of our vivid picture of Mautin Lvviiim we were to substitute an ideal of Protestantism , and dechiro that to bo tho truer portrait , would niiy one believe us P

    Wo might go through ilw artiolo , and piek many holes in it , which however , would not in tho least alter our opinion of its ( ino < jualities W ^ o prefer citing a curious passage : — "Tlmt UliriHtumloni ban boon in tho habit of giving very inditloruiiL ro ; i , HoiiH fol ito ixthofH , wo aro well iwaru ; iwil , i ' ov tluj mowt i > u , vt , thy uwro curtain tho boliof

    Untitled Article

    Critics axe not ttie legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce thein—Edinburgh Seviete .

    Untitled Article

    November 26 , 1853 ] ' tl 1 U 5

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 26, 1853, page 1145, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2014/page/17/