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KinffS and emperors have turned their hands to making locks and sealing-Wax ambassadresses have collected old stockings for the sake of darning them ' ' and we knew a wealthy old gentleman who devoted himself to making obker s , which he presented to all" the ladies of his acquaintance . It is generally presumed of such people that if they had brains to enable them to do anylhin" better , they would prosecute this voluntaryartisanship with less zeal ; sti" theTcase of these ineapables is one to be charitably smiled at or sighed over not gravely rebuked : we graciously accept the present of their lock or their polcer and say no more about it . But it would be a different affair if these voluntary artisans were to set up shop—if , for example , Lord A , or
Sir B . C , or any other of the tribe of wealthy Englishmen to whom foreigners give the generic title of milord , were not only to amuse himself with making boots , but were to hire a shop frontage , with plate glass , and exhibit his clumsy wares to the public with as much pomp and circumstance as if he were a very Iloby , thereby inducing snobbish people to set the fashion of wearing and crying up Lord A ' s boots , to the depreciation of really well-made articles , and to the great detriment both of human candour and lhe human foot . Political economists and bootmakers , lady-loves and ortho ' .-ocdists , science and aesthetics , would vote the aristocratic Crispin a
nuisance . , , ^ A sufficiently close parallel to this hypothetic case is suggested by Lord Brougham's Lives of Men of Letters , the sig ht of which , republished in a chea-f form , has , we confess , roused our critical gull . Relieved from the laboiirs of his chancellorship , Lord Brougham , we suppose , found a good deal of leisure on his hands ; and how did he employ it ? By taking to what we may call literary lock and poker making—by writing third-rate biographies in the style of a literary hack ! Biographies , too , of men whose lives had already been depicted in all sorts of ways , and presented to us in . all sorts of lights —like Prince Albert ' s face and legs . If we had found Ihese " Lives of Men of Letters" in a biographical dictionary we should perhaps have thought them about up to the average of the piece-work ilations them did
usually to be met with in such comp ; finding , as we more than ten years ago , in an edition de luxe adorned with portraits , and with Lord Brougham's name on the title-page , we felt some simmering indignation at such gratuitous mediocrities in a pretentious garb ; and now that we see them in a cheaper reissue—as if there were any demand for these clumsy superfluities , these amateur locks and pokers—our indignation fairly boils over . We have not the slightest wish to be disrespectful to Lord Brougham . His name is connected with some of the greatest movements in the last half century , and in general , is on the side of the liberal and the just . But he has been a successful man ; his reputation is fully equal to his merit ; society is unanimous in pronouncing that he has done many things well and wisely ; and there is , therefore , no reason why we should be reticent of our criticism wherein our opinionhe lias done some things less wisely and not well .
, , The first thing that strikes us in these Lives is the slovenliness of their style , which is thrown almost ludicrously into relief by the fact that many of Lord Brougham ' s pages are occupied with criticism of other men ' s style The hard-run literary man , who is every moment expecting the knock of the printer ' s boy , has reason enough to renounce fastidiousness ; but his lordship , in the elegant ease of his library , with no call impending but that of the lunch or dinner-bell , might at least , atone for the lack of originality by finish—might , if be has no jewels to offer us , at least polish his pebbles . How far he has done this we will let the reader judge by giving 8 ORK . specimens of the manner in which Lord Brougham contrives
To blunt a moral and to spoil a tale . One of his reproaches against Gibbon ' s style is , that it is " prone to adopt false and mixed metaphors ; " but we doubt whether the Decline mid Fail could furnish us with a more typical specimen of that kind than one which he himself gives us in his life of Voltaire . " Proofs also remain , " says Lord Broiu'ham , " which place beyond all doubt his ( Voltaire ' s ) kindness to several worthless men , who repaid it with the black ingratitude so commonly used ns their current coin by the base and spiteful , who thus repay their benefactors and salee their mm wounded pride by pouring venom o ? i the hand Oat saved or served them . " Again , in the life of Johnson , we read : " Assuredly , we may in vain search all the Mantuan tracery of sweets for any to excel them in the beauty of numbers . " It may be our ignorance of confectionery that prevents us from perceiving what " tracery" can have to < lo with " sweets : ' ns it is , however , we can only explain his lordship ' s
metaphor by supposing tracery to be a misprint for tea-tray , since misprints abound in this volume . Lord Brougham is very frequently quite as infelicitous in his phrases , and in the structure of his sentences , as in his metaphors . For example : " It is none of the least absurd parts of Condorcets Trork , that he , being so well versed in physical and mathematical science , passes without any particular observation the writings ot Voltaire on physical subjects , wlu-n ho was so competent to pronounce an opinion upon their merits . ^ " Condorcet was a man of science , no doubt , a good mathematician ; but he was in other respects of a middling understanding and violentfeelinqs . " " The lady treated him with kindness , apparently as a Child ; his friend St . Lambert did not much relish the matter , being unable to adopt his singular habit oV several lovers at one and the same time intimate W \ th one mistress . " The style of Rousseau ' s Confessions , we are told , is so exnuisitelv crnnhio without any effort , and so accommodated to its subject
Without any baseness , that there hardly exists another example oj the miracles Which composition can perform : ' In the labour of turning his heavy sentehecs , hia lordship is sometime * oblivious of logic . Spunking ot Johnsons % ktin verses to Mrs . Thrnli ! , lie says : " Such offences as / Liltera bkaiaj (« ic-a misprint , of course , for /// Mm ) , " f « v an Adonum in his bupplucs to VThraliadulcis , would have called down his severe censure on any luckloaa Wight of Paris or Edinburgh who should norndventurc have perpeimtod ftem ; nor would his being the countryman of Polignne or ot by t , \ v the fet ' of modern LatinistH , Buchanan , have operated except as an aggravafltMaf the flmlt . " Why should it ? fiEtfcWmbering Sydney Smith '** verdict on Scotch " wut , " wo are not very fcli < ttt * pri * ad ' to findthat Lord Brougham hna some anticipation ot a $ Sch } niun when men will conse to porpotrnte witticisms—when not only will
the lion eat straw like . the ox , but latter-day Voltaires will be as heavy as Scotch lawyers . At least , this is the only way in which we can interpret his peroration to the Life of Voltaire . After an allusion in the previous sentence to " the graces of his style" and " the spirit of his immortal wit , " we read : " But if ever the time shall arrive when men , intent solely on graver matters , and bending their -whole minds to things of solid importance , shall be careless of such light accomplishments , and the writings which now have so great a relish more or less openly tasted , shall pass into oblivion , then , " &c , &c . We confess that we shudder at such a Millennium as much as at one predicted by Dr . Gumming , or planned by Robert Oweji . Another striking characteristic of these Lives of Men of Letters is the way in which the writer ignores what is not only notorious to all the educated world , but notoriously well known to Lord Brougham . The
longfaced gravity with which , he discourses on Voltaire ' s ridicule of religious dogmas , and on Hume ' s abstinence from such ridicule , might lead a very ignorant reader to suppose that Lord Brougham had led a retired life , chiefly in clerical and senile society , and could only with difficult y imagine a man passing a joke on tlie Trinity . He says of Hume that " occasionally his opinions were perceivable" in his conversation , and that one day the inscription on the staircase of the college library , Christo et Musis Jias cedes sacrarunt cives Edinenses , actually " drew from the unbeliever an irreverent observation on the junction which the piety rather than the classical purity of the good town had made between the worship of the heathen and our own . " Astounding ! Even this distant allusion to * such irreverence might have had a pernicious effect by exciting in us an unhealthy desire to know what the irreverent observation was , had we not remembered that Hume had no wit , but only " wut , " so that his joke was probably a feeble
one A still more surprising example of Lord Brougham's i ° norin < r system as a writer is his comment on Voltaire ' s relation to Madame d ° u ChaTelet . He thinks that on the whole there is no sufficient reason for questioning that it was Platonic , and the chief grounds he alleges for this conclusion are : that the laws of French society at that time , as well as now , were exceedingly rigorous , that the relation was recognised by aU their friends , that Voltaire mentions Madame du Chatelet in his letters , and that Frederick II . sent his regards to her ! One would think it did not require Lord Brougham's extensive acquaintance with the history of French society in the days of Voltaire and Rousseau to know that , whatever may be the truth of his conclusion , tie grounds by which he supports it must sound like irony rather than like a grave statement of fact ; and , indeed , he himself , on another page , having laid aside his ignoring spectacles , talks of Grimm being the " professed lover of Madame d'Epinay , " and of St . Lambert being " the avowed lover" of Madame d'Houdetot .
We had marked several other ; points for notice , especially that very remarkable criticism of lord Brougham's on the Nouvclle Heloise , in which he implies , that for a lover to remind his mistress that she had allowed him to kiss her , is to tell her what a " forward , abandoned wanton she proved , and his supposition , that because Johnson was sometimes wandering all ni ^ ht in the streets with Savage he must necessarily have indulged in certain vices " in their more crapulous form" ( an unfortunate suggestion to come from the Brougham of Jeffrey ' s letters , who is described as " roaming the streets with the sons of Belial' ) . But we must remember that when indignation makes reviews instead of Juvenalian verses , the result is not equally enjoyable by the reader . So we restrain our noble rage , and say good-by now and for ever to Lord Brougham's Lives of Men of Letters , hop ing that the next time we meet with any production of his we may be able to express admiration as strongly as we have just now expressed the reverse .
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A BATCH OF BOOKS . The World in Vie Middle Ages : an Historical Geography , with Accounts of the Origin and Development , the Institutions and Literature , the Manners and Customt of the Nations in Europe , Western Asia , and Northern Africa , from the close of the Fourth to the middle oft the , Fijleenth Century . By Adolphus Louis Kceppen , Professor of History aud German Literature in Franklin and Marshall College , Pennsylvania . New York : Appleton . London : Trubner and Co . The Native Races of the Russian Empire . By R . G . Latham , M . D ., F . R . S ., & ° - London : H . Baallifere . History of the Dominion of the Arabs in Spain . Translated from the Spanish ofJDr t t / i l . l «„ Afro . Trwnnthnn Fnstor . Vol . 3 . « .. t * . Bonn . JAComUBMrs . Jonathan Foster . Vol . a . rx . vx . ^ oim .
.. . y Mat , Flowers : being Notes and Notions on a few Created Things . By « Acneta . J Lovell JKeeve . Selections from the best Italian Writers , for the Use of Students of the Italian iMnguage By James Philip Lacaita , LL . D . Longmans and Co . The Fall of Poland in 1791 : «/» Historical Tragic Drama , m Four Acts By A Patriot . J Longmans and Co . Mammon ' * Marriage . A Poem in two Cantos . By J . G . H . Saunders and Otley . A Huno irian gentleman , bearded like the parti , not long ago had a difference of opinion with a vendor of literature concerning the monetary value of " De Lolme on the English Constitution . " The great De Lolme —unheard of sacrifice in the trade of letters—was offered for eighteen-nence ! Our Hungarian , unhoroic enough to know the value ot a bargain , oilered a sh illing " What ! " exclaimed Bibliopole , " a shilling for the best author on the Constitutionand ( venturing « n a conclusion from thobeard ) your own \ ji
, _ LI IV vuiiatii « uwii | « n « v » «»~ -. '"" d , . . ¦ r 'J . until countryman too . "—' De Lolme was not a Frenchman , neither am 1 , « i « otu the Magyar noble ; "I am a Hungarian . "— " Wcver nmid , r ^ ° ' ™ ' " ^ dealer , Solved against all difficulties , " are not the Hungarians . «¦ b n » c ««* the French ? " Now , though an extreme case , tins may be taken as nc nmj c representation of the state of popular knowledge on the science o etftno gp iphy . Probably enough Bibliopole only spoko by -some sb » ndi « d autti i of his own stall ; fop to travel no farther than Hungary , ^ " ^ " ^ f J £ occasion to consult the schoolmaster without positive ass ™ « ' JJJJ , ^ ' ergo propter hoc , that the Magyars wore g . vat-gre » t ( le * ™ " > °£ > f ^ SwwJg to the Slavonian * . When every respectable man . a j ; " ^" ^^ ^ re know his own , but the grand pnternfty of overybo . lv el ** , why should tlu ^ " ^ MS Ag ^ SX the '" . daXigeV' as regard , popular know-
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Jtjuy 7 ; ff 855 Jj TECE LEADER MZ
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 7, 1855, page 653, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2098/page/17/
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