not covered with dense masses of climbing plants, like those in moister eastern climates, there is still the idea conveyed that most of the steep sides are fertile, and none give the impression of that barrenness which, in northern mountains, suggests the idea that the bones of the world are sticking through its skin."

him that some of the patients of that institution were remarkable for their musical talent, and that their songs and choruses had been received with much fayour by the public; but that he was anxious for the opinion of a really competent musician, both on the abilities and the per'I have refused

6

Space alone forbids our touching on Zum-formance of his pupils. bo and its ruins, with all the associations all other invitations,' said Mendelssohn, which are linked around it, but we combut to your blind people I will come." mend the subject to those who wish a fresh And come he did. The spectacle of the field of thought. In his description of the sightless assembly struck him, and he adgreat Victoria Fall, where, into" a chasm dressed them in the kindest terms. Some twice the depth of the Niagara Fall, the of their compositions were then performed. river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafen- Score in hand, he listened, evidently intering roar," he has made figures alone elo- ested and touched. He was especially quent, and retires in self-imposed insignifi- pleased by a chorus of more pretension cance behind his measuring rod. Why than the rest. He said something in its waste words when the imagination hears praise, particularly commending certain only the roar of many waters? It is always passages, and then told the director that thus with this man; he himself forgets there was no doubt as to the ability of the the discoverer in the discovery, and we rec-writer-that he hoped he would go on ognize him the more eagerly.

MENDELSSOHN.

WHILST waiting for the life of Mendelssohn, which is understood to be in preparation by his son, such an anecdote as the following cannot fail to be welcome. It appeared originally in a recent number of the Gartenlaube, with the signature "Sch, B." and has all the air of being authentic::

At

working, and compose to words of more importance. Seeing a correction in the score, he asked whose it was: and on being told, said, laughing and in the kindest way, 'The alteration is quite right, and makes the passage more strictly correct, but it was better and more striking before;' and then, turning to the blind man, he said, 'Take From the Reader. care that your corrections are always improvements a cultivated ear wants no rules, but is its own rule and measure.' length, to complete the delight of the party not one of whom had had the courage to ask such a favour - he himself begged permission to play them something on the piano. He sat down, and played one of those wonderful free fantasias of his, with which he used so often to enchant his friends. Imagine how the countenances of his blind hearers lighted up, when in the midst of the piece they heard him introduce the chief subject of the chorus they had just been singing! We could all of us have taken him in our arms and pressed him to our hearts! He took his leave with the warmest wishes for the success of the institution and the prosperity of the patients. None of us ever met him again, and in a few years he was removed by death; but he lives, and will live, in his splendid works, no less than in the memory and affection of those who saw and heard him.

"The object of these lines is not to speak of Mendelssohn as a composer, but to preserve from oblivion a little passage in his life; and thus to lay a late though not unavailing garland on his grave. It was in the hot summer of 1842 that he arrived at Zurich on his way from the Alps. No sooner was his name announced in the Tageblatt than his hotel was besieged by a crowd of the most prominent musicians and amateurs of Zurich, eager to invite him to their houses. To all, however, he returned a courteous but firm refusal. The object of his journey to Switzerland was the restoration of his health, already severely menaced; and the physicians had absolutely forbidden him all exertion or excitement Amongst his visitors was the director of the Blind Asylum, who represented to

"The blind man to whom he spoke so kindly is still an inmate of the asylum. He has preserved the chair which the composer used, as a precious relic; and calls it the Mendelssohn chair.""

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-NO. 1130.-27 JANUARY, 1866.

From the North British Review.

ON THE "GOTHIC" RENAISSANCE IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE, AND SOME OF

ITS EFFECTS ON POPULAR TASTE.

1. British Essayists of the Eighteenth Cen

tury.

2. Works of H. WALPOLE, W. SCOTT, CHARLES LAMB, CHARLES DICKENS,

etc.

of whole generations of mankind, and influence in no small degree even the moral judgments of the many who do not seek below the surface of the social current for their views of propriety in conduct.

the whim of a monarch, the eccentricity of a student may give birth to it; but in such cases it is seldom either wide or enduring in its reign. Literary taste worthy of the name, is an affair of growth and education; a result of gradually converging influences, and of intelligible human sympathies. It must have learned to eliminate out of the complex aspects of the world and its affairs, certain features to which men's fancy will IN most cultivated countries and ages, be ready to attach the sense of beauty there has existed, in more or less prominent and fitness, and from these work out relation to other modes of mental develop- its own results, cause and effect at the same ment, a certain literature of fancy and hu- time. So founded and so trained, it will mour, which, growing up side by side with give a character to the notions and feelings the more ideal or scientific productions of the time, aims at no extended flight, but rests on given results, established fashions, and such general views of life and its bearings as are already familiar to the public to which it addresses itself. Such literature may be various in its modes of utterance. It may choose the language of satire or of sentiment. It may aim at reforming the actual state of men's notions and habits, and pointing out anomalies which prescriptive conventionalism has partially disguised; or, on the other hand, it may dwell on those portions of prevailing thought with which the writer is in sympathy, and emit tenderness or humour, in reference, half expressed and half umderstood, to certain conspicuous tendencies of the day. In either case, it is on the traditional, and often superficial ways of thinking of the educated men and women around, that the basis of allusion rests; and the writer's turn of fancy implies observation of human nature, not so much in its abstract principles, as in its connection with temporary conditions of society and mental training.

Glancing, then, historically, at the rise and progress of literary taste, we shall be brought to infer, as it seems to us, that in every fresh development science and research first make solid acquisitions; that imagination then seizes on certain characteristic features of the new material as groundwork for romance; and that humour, lastly, weaves her light and airy fabric out of the familiar substance. Or, to vary the metaphor, science heaps up the pyre; imagination fires it with the torch of romance; lastly, humour sports in the lambent glow and brightness of the pervading illumination. Now, in the first two of these processes, some amount of mental exertion is implied in the recipient as well as in the agent. The student labours with the ambition of discovery as well as with the stimulus of curiosity. The poet or romancer creates in his readers that expansion of the imaginative faculty which, when the style and subject possess novelty, gives effort as well as pleasure to the mind. But the humorist's task requires no effort, no exertion for its comprehension. Whatever fanciful patterns he may trace on his canvas, whatever freshness his quaint unexpected treatment may give to his topics, the groundwork must be familiar, and the allusions comprehensible at the merest glance. The taste of his day has been already built up

It follows that this literature, though readily enough appreciated, for better or worse, by contemporaries, requires for its due estimate by the enquirer who loves to know the why and the how of fancy's preferences, some insight into those preliminary stages of mental development which have led, in the order of history, to its formation. True it is, indeed, that fashion in letters, as in other things, would sometimes appear to be a matter of almost accidental caprice; THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1456

by a regular process of education, and he But Milton, in his more elaborate and has only to work with it at his will, avoiding in the license of his conceptions any such innovation as would startle or confuse his readers, if he would not fail in his object. Facility is the essence of his task; facility, that is, as far as concerns the impression made by his work; but assuredly it requires some quality very different from the facility of an ordinary scribbler to blend the familiar with the unfamiliar, the fortuitous with the permanent, in such guise as to secure a lasting reputation for his productions when temporary fashions shall have passed away. Even while he dallies with the familiar stock of ideas, the ground may be shaking under his feet; and if he has not allied his humour with something more than mere conventionalism, he may be doomed to sink into the most ignoble of all limbos, the limbo of vapid triflers, before the next generation shall have winged its flight.

learned style, does fairly represent apart from mere mannerisms of affectation, of which he had none, or obsolete quaintness es of diction, of which he had not manydifferences of artistic touch between his times and our own, which are real and palpable. We select, as an instance of our meaning, a passage of stately measure, and lively and varied illustration, and we only ask the reader to divest his mind of all previous association with the renown of Milton's verse, and with the incomparable portraiture of the " archangel ruined," to which this is a prelude, and say, Would the allusions in the following short passage be at all to the purpose, in kindling the imaginative enthusiasm of a nineteenth century reader? Would they be such as would occur to any save a very fantastic nineteenth century poet as pre-eminently appropriate to his theme? Saturn is reviewing his troops in hell:

"And now his heart

Distends with pride, and hard'ning in his
strength

Glories: for never since created man
Met such embodied force, as named with these,
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warr'd on by cranes; though all the giant
brood

For taste is evanescent in literature as in other things; and this is true notwithstanding the vital hold which the great potentates of genius have retained over human sympathies from generation to generation. "What!" it may be asked, "can taste ever change its verdict in respect of such writers as a Milton or a Shakspeare?" Within certain limits, and to a certain extent, unquestionably it can do so, and has done so. Even the genius of Shakspeare and Mil-That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were join'd, ton expressed itself under conditions which Mix'd with auxiliar gods; and what resounds were suited only to the stage of civilization In fable or romance of Uther's son, and opinion attained by their own contem- Begirt with British and Armoric knights; poraries. Unbounded as is an Englishman's And all who since, baptized or infidel, worship of the one, profound as is his admi- Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, ration for the other, would any one at- Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, tempting a work of genius now, choose ei- Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, ther the topics or the treatment of these When Charlemain with all his peerage fell great masters of the art divine? Preju- By Fontarabia.” dice apart, can we affirm that either Hamlet or The Paradise Lost, masterpieces though they are, accord thoroughly with the canons of taste now accepted for all practical purposes by the educated world? We question the fact on different grounds, and to a different extent; for this we feel glory in confessing, that Shakspeare's immortal verse presents far rarer instances of superannuation, so to speak, than that of Milton, or any other poet of past days we can name. It is in his dramatic plots and Taste, then, we repeat, is evanescent in situations, matters in which he cared not to literature as in other things; and learning to be original or consistent, that we find may be at work preparing a revolution, him frequently out of harmony with our mod- while the established code of aesthetics still ern systems of theatric law. His higher flights governs the workings of imagination and of of poetry, his portraitures of strong emo- humour. This was the case during the lattion, express the workings of the hu- ter half of the eighteenth century in Engman heart in imagery suited for all time. land; and the purpose of our present paper

It is not that the allusions here are to obscure or unknown subjects, but simply that they magnify a set of ideas whose vividness is of the past; and that the progress of thought and restlessness of inquiry have opened up new departments of knowledge and new aspects of old facts, since the days when Milton's mind was stored, which have had the effect of stimulating fancy in a fresh direction.

will be to note the formation of the new taste, or, as some would call it, the subjective style which then set in, glancing at it first in its of composition, is distinctly outlined in varudimental stages, and then in its later de- rious sketches and narratives contained in velopments; and to indicate some charac- the essays of the "Man of Feeling." With teristic points in which the humour and Mackenzie and Sterne, indeed, the transifancy of this our later age differ from those tion to the modern novel of sentiment may of the century preceding. be said to have been fully made, in all particulars, save that one of reference to previous conditions of social history, to which we desire now to direct more especial attention.

thing stilted and unreal about it. It is the loyalty of the trained pupil, not of the enthusiastic votary. It seldom makes very active demands on the imagination, or even on the minor quality of fancy. The truth is, that to understand the Past as past, was not the curiosity or the relaxation of that day. Moral and metaphysical inquiries were the real stimulus to thought; and the classic allusions which blended with them, however graceful and apposite, were essentially of a conventional type.* Still, as we have said, they constituted the one standard of appropriate illustration and indisputable authority. The poetic art of Virgil, the

The parents of the elder generation living amongst us, were born into a world, the choicest mental recreation of which still consisted mainly of the numerous Essays, which now, in their attire of sober brown calf, fill Now, in all the discursive belles-lettres of some of the least frequented corners of a the eighteenth century, there is more or "gentleman's library," and to the practised less, it cannot fail to be perceived, a cereye are to be recognized almost instinctively tain tone derived from the traditions of by their dimensions, their colour, and their classical literature, shown in a constant honoured but not solicited place on the allusion to ancient poets, historians, and shelves. A complete collection of the best philosophers, an implied admission of their known and most popular of these essays authority as supreme in all disputed points, would extend to not less than forty volumes. and often a direct imitation of their style Historically, they are distributable into three and method. It is no doubt a formal kind cycles: the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian of adhesion throughout. There is someof the close of Queen Anne's and beginning of George I.'s reign; Dr. Johnson's Rambler and Idler, Hawkesworth's Adventurer, Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, Moore's World, Colman's Connoisseur, all in the last decade of George II.; and the Mirror and Lounger of Henry Mackenzie, the Observer, and many others besides, which made their appearance from 1779 onwards to near the end of the century. In these essays, accordingly, we may expect to find, partly by the proof positive of constant citation, partly by the proof negative of marked omission, what were the sort of references and allusions in matters of taste which were current among our ancestors, the standards which they accepted as orthodox; the class of ideas which they rejected as uncouth, or passed over as unobserved or irrelevant. And we cite these periodical writings, and not novels or tales, as the true representatives of the dilettante literature of their day, first, be cause novels, properly so called, were of later date than many of them; secondly, because novels, in Fielding's and Richardson's time were simply delineations of character and adventure, not as they now arc, over and above this, the vehicles of speculative generalities; and, thirdly, because these essays themselves frequently contained certain germs of the fanciful or philosophical novel or disappointment and satiety" (Byron) "have hallowed their human griefs by a pathos wrought characteristic of later times. Thus in the from whatever is magnificent, and grand, and loveSpectator we have the half-burlesque, half-ly in the unknown universe; or the speculations of sentimental description of Sir Roger de Cov- a great but visionary mind" (Shelley) have raised, upon subtlety and doubt, a vast and irregular pilé erly and his doings and sayings, in which of verse, full of dim-lighted cells and winding galAddison, by one of those sympathetic strokes leries, in which what treasures lie concealed! That which mark true genius, anticipated the pic-templation another; those who were addicted to was an age in which poetry took one path and conturesque old-world likings which are now so the latter pursued it in its orthodox roads; and commonly taken for granted. At a later many, whom Nature, perhaps, intended for poets, the wizard Custom converted into speculators or date, the purely sentimental cast of fiction, critics." The Disowned, chap. xiv.

There is an eloquent passage in one of Sir Edward Lytton's novels upon the literary character of the eighteenth century. "At that time," he says, "reflection found its natural channel in metaphysical inquiry or political speculation, - both valuable perhaps, but neither profound. It was a bold, and a free, and an inquisitive age, but not one in which thought ran over its set and stationary banks, and watered even the common flowers of verse; not dreams of Epicurus; Shakspeare lavished the mines of a superhuman wisdom upon his fairy palaces and enchanted isles; or the beautifier of this common earth" (Wordsworth) "have called forth

one in which Lucretius could have embodied the

The motion of the spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought;