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Untitled Article
knowledge in mechanics ; and , if he is attentive to cause and effect he may obtain the means leading to great knowledge in mechanics . But such and no more , is given to man . " *
It is to be hoped that we have shown , to those who required such showing " , tnat the old dramatists were men to whom- great knowledge was originally given , and who also possessed great acquired knowledge of a ditFerent kind from mere mechanics , and the art of displaying language or diction . They were the bold and manly representatives of that primitive order of the best and earliest poets of all nations , who have ever written
from an implicit faith in nature , and no faith at all ill any pragmatical accoucheur of the muses . The time is at hand when their principles will be more generally recognized and understood , and nobody will listen for a moment to the formal proposals of systematic aid from the practitioners of such " regular culture , " whose craft will proportionately fall into contempt and ridicule . JDonde estabas ?—and an echo answers , " donder
This writer in the London Review may possibly have some worthy admirers . Such a circumstance will make no difference either way ; but he should not , therefore , forget that the old dramatists and Charles Lamb , have also a rather stronger body of admirers—meaning by strength , the capacity of showing reasons for " the ^ aith that is in them . " The general insult and defiance might as well have been omitteu in his
attempt to criticise works , concerning- which he is so shamefully and laughably uninformed . What he considers absurd , is discovered , when analyzed , to contain the finest principles of human passion and intellect ; what he admires " from his soul " is sure to turn out something quite unworthy of notice . It is just like the Literary Gazette talking about literature ! As we have no doubt but this reviewer has a very mediocre opinion of such writers as Lamb and Hazlitt , he cannot
reasonably accuse us of much vanity in saying that he is at liberty to consider the present article as proceeding from one of that school—with the additional circumstance of being alive . It will make his faction—the myosuran—excessively uncomfortable , but tend to abate a general nuisance . We shall conclude this vexatious articleby hazarding a few conjectures touching the characteristic impulses which have induced
such an attack on the old dramatists , on Lamb , on the British Drama in general , and on those who would reform the stage . It has been continually witnessed in periodical literature , that when a reviewer has had to deal witn a work concerning the subject and fundamental principles of which he was profoundly ignorant—a sealed book to one of his natural incapacity he has almost always been found to commit himself to fSee tbe V ° ndon Practice , "by Jewel . C , III . Sec . I .
Untitled Article
B 56 The London Review v . The British Drama .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 256, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/64/
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