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GritioB aa-e-iiot awLlegialafcoxjj , hut . th © judges trad police of literature . _ They do not ^ akelftWB—tbef interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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IToThhtg is easier to write than a story the machinery of which is supernatural ; nothing , perhaps , more difficult than to achieve complete success with such machinery . When all men believed in ghosts it -was easy to make them sup full of horrors ; now that few men believe in ghosts the task becomes difficult . The supernatural requires a strange union of imagination with reason . Probabilities have to be kept up amid all improbabilities . Edgar Poe is a master in this . Wilkie -Collins promises to rival him , in the story which opens this month ' s Frazer , called " The Monktons of Wincot Abbey "—a story of oar own life , of our own dayin which , however , the supernatural plays as conspicuous and as interesting a part as in " Les Freres Corses" of Dumas- Let Our readers not pass over that story , which we hope will continue for several numbers . Another difficult task is that of writing popular science . Many men write -what , they mean to be popular ; but for the most part they are themselves superficially acquainted with their subjects , and when they have ^ knowledge they want the power of reproducing it in intelligible forms . Tne-writer of a paper in Frazer , on " The Science of Esthetics of Colour , " may be read by any one with pleasure , and will be recognized as the production of one who has thorough grasp and mastery of the aeienee . After a -well-merited tribute to Owen Jones , the great decorative artist of his age , the writer sketches Goethe ' s * ' Theory of Colours , " SOA . reproduces the substance of a paper by Clausius ( which , by the way , the mathematical reader may ffnd translated in the " Scientific Memoirs , " 1853 ) , divesting it of fbrmulse . Passing from Science to the Drama , the reader who has the month's magazines lying strewed upon the table before him may open the Dublin University , and in the paper on the " Dramatic Writers of Ireland " he will learn some curious facts . What a surprise , for instance , to learn that Shiel received seven hundred pounds for the "Apostate , " a play which was only performed twelve times , although supported by Young , Macready , Charles Kemble , and Miss O'Neill . In our day it would be regarded as a failure if a play were performed only twelve times 5 and as to the author ' s receiving seven hundred pounds as his stare of the profits , he would indeed be a lucky wigbt who received that sum after one hundred performances . But in those days there were " authors' nights "the third , ninth , and . we believe , the twentieth , yielded their receipts to him . It may not have been forgotten by our readers that a great sensation was this Spring made in the world of science by an attempt to disprove the great discovery made by Claude Bernard respecting the sugar-forming function of the liver . In noticing Bernard's " Lecons de Physiologie Experimente , " a few "weeks since , we intimated our conviction that his discovery would be found too firmly based to be overturned by his antagonists . The discussion reduced itself to two fundamental facts not difficult of verification , namely : Is there sugar in the vessels going to the liver after a purely animal diet ? and is there sugar in the vessels going from the liver after such diet ? If no sugar be , carried to the liver , and , nevertheless sugar be found carried from it , the conclusion is irresistible : the sugar Hiust be found in the liver . M . LouiaFiguier denied the fact . He said ho always found sugar in the vessels going to the liver ( the vence portce ) , but that its presence was masked by the presence of albuninous substances . The Acadcmie des Sciences appointed a Commission to inquire iuto and decide upon the question of fact . Their report , which is signed by no less a name than that of Dumas , for himBelf , Pelhuge and Rayer , gives the decision unequivocally against M- I ^ iguior , and in favour of M . Bernard . This result will be gladly learned by all lovers of science , for , if M . Bernard has been wrong , 3 ^ erious doubt would have been thrown on any and every result of exporimGjital-phjsioJogy . It is this which has mado us three times allude to the dispute . The report of the Commission will bo found in the lust uumbo , of the " Annnles des Sciences Naturelles . "
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LIFE OF GOETHE . Life and Works of Goethe : toith sketches of his ago und contemporaries . ( From published and unpublished sources . ) 2 vols . By G . H Lewoa . London : David Nutt . For reasons which will bo easily divined , wo have received an injunction to deliver no judgment on this work , but simply to xnnko the render acquainted with its general diameter nnd purpose . Perhaps , if reviewers mpre ^ frequently wrote under such nn injunction , the public would not be a loser : renders / would hove smaller exercise for their iuith ( in critics ) , but they would hove it compensating increaso of knowledge . , Some acquaintance with Goethe is felt to bo indispcneublo in these days .
iSitWe Who « re -unable to study him -directly , find : him mentioned by great authorities-as the intellectual father , or grandfather of this * ge , which is said to be living chiefly on the ideas it lias inherited from him . Accordingly , they are eager for some specific information as "to what he has really done : they get translations of Gotz and Faust , and Egmont , andTasso , and lend a too reliant ear to " Lines from the German of Goethe . " The result is , that they are in some wonderment how Goethe cam be called the greatest of modern poets . They read translations of Wakrheit und Dichtunff , Wilhelm Meister , and the Wahlverwandtschaften , and while they find some -wisdom and beauty which they understand and appreciate , they perhaps find much more which seems to them not at all wisdom or beauty , and they have generally a sense that a clue is wanted . _ For readers thu 3 baffled , few books can be more interesting than one which will give them such a history of Goethe the Man as will throw light on Goethe the Writer—such a descriptive and analytical account of his works as will enable them to conceive the artistic merits which have won him . the supreme p lace among modern poets , such a natural history of his various productions as will show how they were the outgrowth of his mind at different stages of its culture . Again , the real student of Goethe who has sought a commentary on his works in that huge mass of correspondence and criticism , and biographical material called Goethe Literatur—who has groaned over Diintzer , and nodded over "Viehoff—who has felt the difficulty of reconciling conflicting statements and opinions about Goethe ' s character , and of discerning through the cload of criticism and comment the true relation of the works to the man , will welcome the aid of any honest labourer in the same field , of any one who has diligently gone over this confused heap of documents ,, and not simply filed them , chronologically , as the respectable Viehoff has done , but given a sort of balance-sheet , briefly exhibiting their relative importance . Such a student may be unable to concur in the point of vie ~ sr adopted , he may differ as , to many conclusions , but the very extent oE his knowledge w ill cause him to value a candid and intelligent opinion on a subject in which he has experienced the difficulty of forming such an opinion , and he will at least be interested to see presented in a panorama the way over which he has himself wearily travelled . Readers of Goethe ' s autobiography have , we imagine , generally been disappointed when they have found it abruptly break off while he is in the bloom of youth , and just before his entrance on his Weimar career . Many of them , too , have probably felt that it was for the most part something like an Italian landscape painted with a northern sky , and thafc it gave them little idea of what the writer was when the young blood was rushing throug h his veins , and the young enthusiasms impelled his lips and his pen . They have been tantalized by the abundance of wise dissertation on othea men , and the paucity of details about himself , and , on the whole , they have felt that the autobiography has rather stimulated their curiosity than satisfied it . The means of satisfying that curiosity have been increasing with the- lapse of years , through the publication of interesting portions of correspondence and contributions of narrative by the personal friends of Goeth e , so that it is now possible for the biographer to fill in . a multitude of details unnoticed in the autobiography , and to correct its too frigid colouring by the warm tints of his own early letters , and the light thrown by the testimony of early friends . Tn this way we may get a picture of Goethe ' s youthful life , of -which the autobiography forms , indeed , a principle source , but only one among many sources . Such a picture it is Mr . Lewes ' s object to give through the greater part of his first volume , in which his course is side by side with the autobiography . His work , he tells us in his preface , has been long on the anvil : it was commenced ten years ago , and during tue interval we presume he has been on the watch for all information that mig ht enrich his stock of materials or modify his conclusions . Having rewritten the first volume during a residence in Germany last winter , he has wrought into his narrative everything that he considers valuable in subsidiary documents , and fitted in fragmentary hints so as to render them , significant . By th ; s means he gives vividness and reality to Goethe's student-life at . Liepzigand Strasburg , which seem so vague and distant in Goethe ' s own grave and allusive mode of telling the story . But the part of the youthful life which gains most in fullness and distinctness is the Wetalar , or , rather , the Werther period— -thanks to the timely publication last year of the volume called Goethe and JVerther , containing letters ot Goethe , and illustrative documouts , which bring into clear daylight his relation to Charlotte BuiF , the heroine of Werther , and to her' husband , Kestner , and show us , as by a daguerrotype , what the young Goethe of thoso days actually was—how ardent , ingenious , loving-, and loveable . This was the period of the famous Sturm und Drang tendency , by which Goethe was just so far intoxicated as to be inspired with the greatest work that tendency produced—Gotz von Bcrlichingen . Germany had not yet recovered from its astonishment at the bold innovation of this drama , when a now and yet stronger sensation wns excited by the appearance ofWorthor . Mr . Lewes thus sketches tho characteristics of the period , of which G ' ote and JVerther are the in tensest expression : — Gotz is tho greatest produce of tho Sturm und Drang movement . As wo before hinted , this period is not nimply one of Titnnic hopes and mcdiiewl retrospections , it is also one of unhealthy sontimcntalism . Goethe , tho great rcpresciituiivo poet of his day—tho secretary of his age—gives us masterpieces "which charactcmo both theso tendencies . Ueside the insurgent Gotz stands tho dreamy Werthcr . And yut , accurately an these two works represent two active tendencies of that time , they aro both far rcmored above tho perishing cxtnivflyancies of that time ; they arc both ideal expressions of tho ago , and aa free from the disease which corrupted it an dioiitho himself was free from the weakness of his contemporaries . liYilk . cs used to .-my lltut ho hud never boon a Wilkito . Goutho was never a Werthor . To appreciate tho diaUnco which separated him and his work from his sentimental contomponiri < ' - > Ji'ul thoir works , wo must study tho characters of such men aa Jaooii , KHngor , IVagii'T , and Lcnz , or wo must roa < l such works as Wuldcmar . It will then ho plain v . hy Goethe turned -with aversion from such works , hia own included , when a few years had cleared his insight ., nnd nettled his aims , Thou also will ha seen tho difl ' vrcnco between Genius which idealizes the spirit of . tho ngo , and Taloot which panders lo it . It "was , indeed , a strange epoch ; tho mirct was tho unrest of disease , > ' !»< ' _''** extravagances were morbid Hyniptoins . In tho letters , memoirs , and novel- * , which
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 3, 1855, page 1058, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2113/page/14/
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