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Untitled Article
XL Thia display of mere elocution is no longer attractive on tiae stag ^ , or in the church and chapel , because it c&nnot be termed good language ¦ , i . e . such language as we may hear in the ne * t chandler ' s shop . XII , Hepce we must conclude , that in order to satisfy tjie refined taste of men of regular culture , and convey to them
a correct intellectual instruction and pleasure , all fine dramatic works , and other genuine sermons and moral homilies , should be translated into the vulgate according to the model of such language as may be habitually used in a chandler ' s shop . Lecturers , and heads of schools and colleges , would therefore do well to institute corresponding establishments for the teaching of polite literature on the above principle , so
as to qualify writers and speakers for addressing " the edu > cated classes " in the most appropriate manner . XIII « There are different standards of morality for the two sexes ; and conventional morality , however opposed to indi- * vidual or general nature , and the particular circumstances , is the true morality .
Such then , is the ' jewel ot criticism , which tae JLondon Jleview h ^ s permitted to culminate on itB forehead , shed * ding " disasterous twilight" over true intellectual power and morality , while it strives to blazon itself forth as the new and improved p hilosophy of dramatic literature . It is all of a piece with the snallowness of saying that a pleasure derived from the mere sound of flowing and varied phrases is what fills the churches and chapels with people ; as if the true cause—whether
rational and sincere , or otherwise—did not lay far deeper than in the organ of hearing ! In the hands of the same writer we find poetry in general , treated after a similar fashion . His very high standard is manifested in various articles . In the article on Crabbes Life and TForks lie says , among other things , " Language employed principally for some necessary or useful purpose , and incidentally for gratification , is prose ; reverse the two conditions , and it is poetry ! " Anybody , therefore , \ yho can write language with such intent , can write poetry !
W ^ must close our " specimens " by observing , that there is a superfluity of gems to be found of equal brilliancy in sundry other articles &nd numbers of the work from which we have quoted . From the thorough-going style in which al ! prqfound insight into the human heart is denied to the old dramatists , pne might suppose that the writer had been brooding over the following passage in a well-known medical work
fif «* When uiau was formed , the Creator , by bestowing on biro the faculty of observation , gave him the power of adding to his stock of present comforts and conveniences , and even pleasure * : l > y observation , he 1 tarns that such causes will always produce &uch effects ; b y this he is informed that fire always burns . He may possess soine
Untitled Article
Tki Lotub * Review y . The Brtiuh Drama . 86 *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 255, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/63/
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