Kitabı oku: «Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885», sayfa 20

Metaphors and similes require to be employed with great care, at least by those who value taste and accuracy. I hope I may be allowed to give one example of a more serious kind than those hitherto supplied. The words like lost sheep which occur at the commencement of our Liturgy always seem to me singularly objectionable, and for two reasons. In the first place, illustrations being intended to unfold our meaning are appropriate in explanation and instruction, but not in religious confession. And in the second place the illustration as used by ourselves is not accurate; for the condition of a lost sheep does not necessarily suggest that conscious lapse from rectitude which is the essence of human transgression.

A passage has been quoted with approbation by more than one critic from the late Professor Conington’s translation of Horace, in which the following line occurs: —

 
“After life’s endless babble they sleep well.”
 

Now the word endless here is extremely awkward; for if the babble never ends, how can anything come after it?

To digress for a moment, I may observe that this line gives a good illustration of the process by which what is called Latin verse is often constructed. Every person sees that the line is formed out of Shakespeare’s “after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” The ingenuity of the transference may be admired, but it seems to me that it is easy to give more than a due amount of admiration; and, as the instance shows, the adaptation may issue in something bordering on the absurd. As an example in Latin versification, take the following. Every one who has not quite forgotten his schoolboy days remembers the line in Virgil ending with non imitabile fulmen. A good scholar, prematurely lost to his college and university, having for an exercise to translate into Latin the passage in Milton relating to the moon’s peerless light finished a line with non imitabile lumen. One can hardly wonder at the tendency to overvalue such felicitous appropriation.

The language of the shop and the market must not be expected to be very exact: we may be content to be amused by some of its peculiarities. I cannot say that I have seen the statement which is said to have appeared in the following form: “Dead pigs are looking up.” We find very frequently advertised, “Digestive biscuits” – perhaps digestible biscuits are meant. In a catalogue of books an Encyclopædia of Mental Science is advertised; and after the names of the authors we read, “invaluable, 5s. 6d.”: this is a curious explanation of invaluable.

The title of a book recently advertised is, Thoughts for those who are Thoughtful. It might seem superfluous, not to say impossible, to supply thoughts to those who are already full of thought.

The word limited is at present very popular in the domain of commerce. Thus we read, “Although the space given to us was limited.” This we can readily suppose; for in a finite building there cannot be unlimited space. Booksellers can perhaps say, without impropriety, that a “limited number will be printed,” as this may only imply that the type will be broken up; but they sometimes tell us that “a limited number was printed,” and this is an obvious truism.

Some pills used to be advertised for the use of the “possessor of pains in the back,” the advertisement being accompanied with a large picture representing the unhappy capitalist tormented by his property.

Pronouns, which are troublesome to all writers of English, are especially embarrassing to the authors of prospectuses and advertisements. A wine company return thanks to their friends, “and, at the same time, they would assure them that it is their constant study not only to find improvements for their convenience…” Observe how the pronouns oscillate in their application between the company and their friends.

In selecting titles of books there is room for improvement. Thus, a Quarterly Journal is not uncommon; the words strictly are suggestive of a Quarterly Daily publication. I remember, some years since, observing a notice that a certain obscure society proposed to celebrate its triennial anniversary.

In one of the theological newspapers a clergyman seeking a curacy states as an exposition of his theological position, “Views Prayer-book.” I should hope that this would not be a specimen of the ordinary literary style of the applicant. The advertisements in the same periodical exhibit occasionally a very unpleasant blending of religious and secular elements. Take two examples – “Needle-woman wanted. She must be a communicant, have a long character, and be a good dressmaker and milliner.” “Pretty furnished cottage to let, with good garden, etc. Rent moderate. Church work valued. Weekly celebrations. Near rail. Good fishing.”

A few words may be given to same popular misquotations. “The last infirmity of noble minds” is perpetually occurring. Milton wrote mind not minds. It may be said that he means minds; but the only evidence seems to be that it is difficult to affix any other sense to mind than making it equivalent to minds: this scarcely convinces me, though I admit the difficulty.

“He that runs may read” is often supposed to be a quotation from the Bible: the words really are “he may run that readeth,” and it is not certain that the sense conveyed by the popular misquotation is correct.

A proverb which correctly runs thus: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” is often quoted in the far less expressive form, “Hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Knowledge is power” is frequently attributed to Bacon, in spite of Lord Lytton’s challenge that the words cannot be found in Bacon’s writings.

“The style is the man” is frequently attributed to Buffon, although it has been pointed out that Buffon said something very different; namely, that “the style is of the man,” that is, “the style proceeds from the man.” It is some satisfaction to find that Frenchmen themselves do not leave us the monopoly of this error; it will be found in Arago; see his Works, vol. iii. p. 560. A common proverb frequently quoted is, “The exception proves the rule;” and it seems universally assumed that proves here means establishes or demonstrates. It is perhaps more likely that proves here means tests or tries, as in the injunction, “Prove all things.” [The proverb in full runs: Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis.]

The words nihil tetigit quod non ornavit are perpetually offered as a supposed quotation from Dr. Johnson’s epitaph on Goldsmith. Johnson wrote —

 
“Qui nullum fere scribendi genus
Non tetigit,
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.”
 

It has been said that there is a doubt as to the propriety of the word tetigit, and that contigit would have been better.

It seems impossible to prevent writers from using cui bono? in the unclassical sense. The correct meaning is known to be of this nature: suppose that a crime has been committed; then inquire who has gained by the crime —cui bono? for obviously there is a probability that the person benefited was the criminal. The usual sense implied by the quotation is this: What is the good? the question being applied to whatever is for the moment the object of depreciation. Those who use the words incorrectly may, however, shelter themselves under the great name of Leibnitz, for he takes them in the popular sense: see his works, vol. v., p. 206.

A very favorite quotation consists of the words “laudator temporis acti;” but it should be remembered that it seems very doubtful if these words by themselves would form correct Latin; the se puero which Horace puts after them are required.

There is a story, resting on no good authority, that Plato testified to the importance of geometry by writing over his door, “Let no one enter who is not a geometer.” The first word is often given incorrectly, when the Greek words are quoted, the wrong form of the negative being taken. I was surprised to see this blunder about two years since in a weekly review of very high pretensions.

It is very difficult in many cases to understand precisely what is attributed to another writer when his opinions are cited in some indirect way. For example, a newspaper critic finishes a paragraph in these words: “unless, indeed, as the Pall Mall Gazette has said that it is immoral to attempt any cure at all.” The doubt here is as to what is the statement of the Pall Mall Gazette. It seems to be this: it is immoral to attempt any cure at all. But from other considerations foreign to the precise language of the critic, it seemed probable that the statement of the Pall Mall Gazette was, unless, indeed, it is immoral to attempt any cure at all.

There is a certain vague formula which, though not intended for a quotation, occurs so frequently as to demand notice. Take for example – “… the sciences of logic and ethics, according to the partition of Lord Bacon, are far more extensive than we are accustomed to consider them.” No precise meaning is conveyed, because we do not know what is the amount of extension we are accustomed to ascribe to the sciences named. Again: “Our knowledge of Bacon’s method is much less complete than it is commonly supposed to be.” Here again we do not know what is the standard of common supposition. There is another awkwardness here in the words less complete: it is obvious that complete does not admit of degrees.

Let us close these slight notes with very few specimens of happy expressions.

The Times, commenting on the slovenly composition of the Queen’s Speeches to Parliament, proposed the cause of the fact as a fit subject for the investigation of our professional thinkers. The phrase suggests a delicate reproof to those who assume for themselves the title of thinker, implying that any person may engage in this occupation just as he might, if he pleased, become a dentist, or a stock-broker, or a civil engineer. The word thinker is very common as a name of respect in the works of a modern distinguished philosopher. I am afraid, however, that it is employed by him principally as synonymous with a Comtist.

The Times, in advocating the claims of a literary man for a pension, said, “he has constructed several useful school-books.” The word construct suggests with great neatness the nature of the process by which school-books are sometimes evolved, implying the presence of the bricklayer and mason rather than of the architect.

[Dr. Todhunter might have added feature to the list of words abusively used by newspaper writers. In one number of a magazine two examples occur: “A feature which had been well taken up by local and other manufacturers was the exhibition of honey in various applied forms.” “A new feature in the social arrangements of the Central Radical Club took place the other evening.”] —Macmillan’s Magazine.

LITERARY NOTICES

The Dictionary of English History. Edited by Sidney S. Low, B. A., late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, Lecturer on Modern History, King’s College, London; and F. S. Pulling, M. A., late Professor of Modern History, Yorkshire College, Leeds. New York: Cassell & Company, Limited.

The first thought that suggests itself upon taking up Messrs. Cassell & Company’s “Dictionary of English History” is “why was this important work not done long ago?” The want of such a book of reference is not a new one but has been long felt by students and amateurs of history. Indeed there is hardly a man or woman who has not at some time or other felt the need of furbishing up his or her historical knowledge at short notice. One may hunt the pages of a history by the hour and not find the date or incident he wants to know about. The editors of this stout volume, Sidney J. Low, B.A. and F. S. Pulling, M.A., have made the successful attempt to give a convenient handbook on the whole subject of English history and to make it useful rather than exhaustive. The present work is not an encyclopædia, and the editors are aware that many things are omitted from it which might have been included, had its limits been wider, and its aim more ambitious. To produce a book which should give, as concisely as possible, just the information, biographical, bibliographical, chronological, and constitutional, that the reader of English history is likely to want is what has been here attempted. The needs of modern readers have been kept in view. Practical convenience has guided them in the somewhat arbitrary selection that they have been compelled to make, and their plan had been chosen with great care and after many experiments. It should be said that though the book is called a Dictionary of English History that the historical events of Scotland, Ireland and Wales are included. The contributors for special articles, have been selected from among the best-known historical writers in England, and no pains have been spared to make this book complete in the field it has aimed to cover.

That high authority, the London Athenæum, has the following words of praise for this work: —

“This book will really be a great boon to every one who makes a study of English history. Many such students must have desired before now to be able to refer to an alphabetical list of subjects, even with the briefest possible explanations. But in this admirable dictionary the want is more than supplied. For not only is the list of subjects in itself wonderfully complete, but the account given of each subject, though condensed, is wonderfully complete also. The book is printed in double columns royal octavo, and consists of 1119 pages, including a very useful index to subjects on which separate articles are not given. As some indication of the scale of treatment we may mention that the article on Lord Beaconsfield occupies nearly a whole page, that on Bothwell (Mary’s Bothwell) exactly a column, the old kingdom of Deira something more than a column, Henry VIII. three pages, Ireland seven and a half pages, and the Norman Conquest three pages exactly. Under the head of ‘King,’ which occupies in all rather more than seven pages, are included, in small print, tables of the regnal years of all the English sovereigns from the Conquest. There is also a very important article, ‘Authorities on English History,’ by Mr. Bass Bullinger, which covers six and a quarter pages, and which will be an extremely useful guide to any one beginning an historical investigation.

“Many of the longer articles contain all that could be wished to give the reader a concise view of an important epoch or reign. Of this Mrs. Gardiner’s article on Charles I. is a good example. Ireland is in like manner succinctly treated by Mr. Woulfe Flanagan in seven and a half pages, and India by Mr. C. E. Black in six, while the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8 has an article to itself of a page and a half by Mr. Low. Institutions also, like Convocation, customs like borough English, orders of men such as friars, and officers like that of constable, have each a separate heading; and the name of the contributors – including, besides those already mentioned, such men as Mr. Creighton, Profs. Earle, Thorold Rogers, and Rowley, and some others whose qualifications are beyond question – afford the student a guarantee that he is under sure guidance as to facts.”

Personal Traits of British Authors. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Procter. Edited by Edward T. Mason. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Ibid. Byron, Shelley, Moore, Rogers, Keats, Southey, Landor.

Ibid. Scott, Hogg, Campbell, Chalmers, Wilson, De Quincey, Jeffrey.

Mr. Mason, the compiler of these volumes, has a keen sense of that taste which exists in all people (and certainly it is a kind of curiosity not without its redeeming side) which prompts a hearty appetite for personal gossip about appearance, habits, social traits, methods of work and thought concerning distinguished men. Yet there is another side to the question, however interesting such information may be. This is specially in gossip about authors. The literary worker puts the best part of himself in his writings. Here all the noble impulses of his nature find an outlet, and in many cases he thinks it sufficient to give this field for his higher traits, and puts his lower ones alone into action. No man is a hero to his valet. A too near acquaintance, and that is just what the editor of these volumes seeks to give us, is always disillusioning. The conception which the author gives of himself in his books is often sadly sullied and belittled, when we come to know the solid body within the photosphere of glory, which his genius radiates. Yet it is as well that we should know the real man as well as what is commonly known as the ideal man. It enables us to guard against those specious enthusiasms, which may be dangerously aroused by the brilliant sophistries of poetry or rhetoric. Knowing the actual lives and habits of great men is like an Ithuriel spear, often, when we study teachings by its test. But putting aside the desirability of knowing intimately the lives of great authors on the score of literature or morals, it cannot be denied that such information is of a fascinating sort. Mr. Mason has gathered these personal descriptions and criticisms from all sorts of sources. Literary contemporaries, accounts of friends and enemies, the confessions of authors themselves, family records, biographies, magazine articles, books of reminiscence – in a word every kind of material has been freely used. Authors are shown in a kaleidoscopic light from a great variety of stand-points, and we have the slurs and sneers of enemies as well as the loving admiration of friends. Descriptions are pointed with racy and pungent anecdotes, and it is but just to say that we have not found a dull line in these volumes. Mr. Mason has performed his work with excellent editorial taste. There is a brief and well-written notice appended to the chapter on each author, and a literary chronology, the latter of which will be found very useful for handy reference. These racy volumes ought to find a wide public, and we think, aside from their charm for the general reader, the literary man will find here a well-filled treasury of convenient anecdote and illustration, which, in many cases, will save him the toil of weary search. In these days of many books, such works have a special use which should not be ignored.

Italy from the Fall of Napoleon I. in 1815, to the Death of Victor Emmanuel in 1878. By John Webb Probyn. New York: Cassell & Company, Limited.

“Italy from the Fall of Napoleon I., in 1815, to the Death of Victor Emanuel, in 1878,” by John Webb Probyn, is just ready from the press of Cassell & Company. In noticing this important work we can do no better than to quote from the author’s preface. “The purpose of this volume,” writes Mr. Probyn, “is to give a concise account of the chief causes and events which have transformed Italy from a divided into a united country. A detailed history of this important epoch would fill volumes, and will not be written for some time to come. Yet it is desirable that all who are interested in the important events of our time should be able to obtain some connected account of so striking a transformation as that which was effected in Italy between the years 1815 and 1878. It has been with the object of giving such an account that this volume has been written.” Mr. Probyn lived in Italy among the Italians while this struggle was going on, and he writes from a close knowledge of his subject.

Harriet Martineau (Famous Women Series). By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The distinguished woman who forms the subject of this biography is less known and read in America than she should be, and it is to be hoped that this concise, lucid and well-written account of her life and work will awaken interest in one whose literary labors will merit perusal and study. Miss Martineau was one of the precursors of that movement for the larger life and mental liberty of her sex, which to-day has assumed formidable proportions, and indulged, we need hardly say, many strange vagaries. Miss Martineau began to write at an early age and soon began to impress herself on the public mind, though it was for a long time suspected that she was a man. The whole tone of her mind and intellectual sympathies was eminently masculine, though on the emotional and moral side of her nature she was intensely feminine. An early love disappointment, as has been the case with not a few literary women, shut her out from that circle of wifehood and motherhood in which she would have been far more happy than she was ordained to be by fate. Yet the world would have been a loser, so true is it that it is often by virtue of those conditions which sacrifice happiness that the most precious fruits of life are bestowed on the world. It would be interesting to follow the literary career of Miss Martineau, if space permitted, as her life was not only rich in its own results but interwoven with the most aggressive, keen and significant literary life of her age. To the world at large Miss Martineau, who had a philosophical mind of the highest order, is best known as the translator of Comte, of whose system she was an enthusiastic advocate. Her translation of Comte’s ponderous “Positive Philosophy,” published in French in six volumes, which she condensed into three volumes of lucid and forcible English, is not merely a masterpiece of translation, but a monument of acumen. So well was her work done, that Comte himself adapted it for his students’ use, discarding his own edition. So it came to pass that Comte’s own work fell out of use, and that his complete teachings became accessible only to his countrymen through a retranslation of Miss Martineau’s original translation and adaptation. Remarkable as were her philosophical powers, her work in the domain of imagination, though always hinging on a serious purpose, was of a superior sort. A keen and successful student of political economy, she wrote a series of remarkable tales, based on various perplexing problems in this line of thought and research. In addition to these, her pathetic and humorous tales are full of charm, and distinguished by a style equally charming and forcible. She might have been a great novelist had not her fondness for philosophical studies become the passion of her life. She was an indefatigable contributor to newspapers and magazines on a great variety of subjects, though she generally wrote anonymously. It was for this reason that her literary labors, which were arduous in the extreme, were comparatively ill-paid, and that life, even in her old age, was no easy struggle for her. The work, among her voluminous writings, on which her fame will probably rest as on a corner-stone, is “A History of the Thirty Years Peace.” This is a history of her own time, pungent, full of powerful color, though often sombre, impartial yet searching, characterized by the sternest love of truth, and couched in a literary style of great force and clearness. She showed the rare power of discussing events which were almost contemporary, as calmly as if she were surveying a remote period of antiquity. The Athenæum said of this book on its publication: “The principles which she enunciates are based on eternal truths, and evolved with a logical precision that admits rhetorical ornament without becoming obscure or confused.” Another remarkable work was “Eastern Life,” the fruit of research in the East. In this she made a bold and masterly attack on the dogmatic beliefs of Christianity. The end and object of her reasoning in this work is: That men have ever constructed the Image of a Ruler of the Universe out of their own minds; that all successive ideas about the Supreme Being have originated from within and been modified by the surrounding circumstances; and that all theologies, therefore, are baseless productions of the human imagination and have no essential connection with those great religious ideas and emotions by which men are constrained to live nobly, to do justly, and to love what they see to be the true and right. The publication of this book raised a storm of opprobrium, for England was then far more illiberal than now. Yet it is a singular fact that, in spite of her free-thinking, Harriet Martineau had as her intimate friends and warm admirers some of the most pious and sincere clergymen of the age. She died in 1876 at the age of seventy-four, after a life of exemplary goodness and brilliant intellectual activity, honored and loved by all who knew her, even by those who dissented most widely from her beliefs. She was among those who ploughed up the mental soil of her time most successfully, and few, either men or women, have written with more force, sincerity and suggestiveness on the great serious questions of life.

Weird Tales by E. T. W. Hoffman. New Translation from the German, with a Biographical Memoir, by J. T. Beally, B.A. In two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Hoffman, the German romancer, to most English readers who know of him, is a nomen et preteria nihil, yet in his own land he is a classic. His stories are mostly short tales or novelettes, for he appears to have lacked the sustained vigor and concentration for the longer novel, like our own Poe, to whom he has been sometimes likened in the character of his genius. Yet how marvellously unlike Poe’s are the stories in the volumes before us! The intense imaginativeness, logical coherence and lofty style which mark Poe are absent in Hoffman. Yet, on the other hand, the latter, who like his American analogue revels in topics weird and fantastic, if not horrible, relieves the sombre color of his pictures with flashes of homely tenderness and charming humor, of which Poe is totally vacant.

Hoffman, who was well born, though not of noble family, received an excellent education. He studied at Königsburg University, where he matriculated as a student of jurisprudence, and seems to have made enough proficiency in this branch of knowledge to have justified the various civil appointments which he from time to time received during his strange and stormy life, only to forfeit them by acts of mad folly or neglect. He was by turns actor, musician, painter, litterateur, civil magistrate and tramp. Gifted with brilliant and versatile talents, there was probably never a man more totally unbalanced and at the mercy of every wind of passion and caprice that blew. Had he possessed a self-directing purpose, a steady ideal to which he devoted himself, it is not improbable that his genius might have raised him to a leading place in German literature. Yet perhaps his talents and tastes were too versatile for any very great achievement, even under more favorable conditions. As matters stand he is known to the world by his short tales, in which he uses freely the machinery of fantasy and horror, though he never revolts the taste, even in his wildest moods. Yet some of his best stories are entirely free from this element of the strained and unnatural, and show that it was through no lack of native strength and robustness of mind, that he selected at other times the most abnormal and perverse developments of action and character as the warp of his literary textures. Hoffman’s stories are interesting from their ingenuity, a certain naïve simplicity combined with an audacious handling of impossible or improbable circumstances, and a charming under-current of pathos and humor, which bubbles up through the crust at the most unexpected turns. We should hardly regard these stories as a model for the modern writer, yet there is a quality about them which far more artistic stories might lack. It is singular to narrate that some of his most agreeable and objective stories, where he completely escapes from morbid imaginings, are those he wrote when dying by inches in great agony, for he, too, like Heine – a much greater and subtler genius – lay on a mattrass grave, though for months and not for years. The stories collected in the volumes under notice contain those which are recognized by critics as his best, and will repay perusal as being excellent representations of a school of fiction which is now at its ebb-tide, though how soon it will come again to the fore it is impossible to prophecy, as mode and vogue in literary taste go through the same eternal cycle, as do almost all other mundane things.