Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

down the nave tried to speak, to move, to scream, for he stood at the altar; she could not-she gasped-she stretched out her arms. He turned he saw her-he knew her he was with her-her arm was drawn in his-and through the crowd they darted away across the square towards Oxford-street, unconscious where they were, unconscious of what they were doing. He pressed her arm to his heart, but the mute caress was not returned; he spoke to her in short broken sentences, and no answer passed her lips; still she kept up with him, and walked on with her eyes bent on the ground. He asked, at last, in dreadful agitation, Ginevra! do you hear me?' She stared at him and said 'Yes.' Where have you been? where do you come from?—will you not answer me, Ginevra?' Still she said 'Yes,' in that same strange voice, and gazed on him with the same fixed dull look as before. He turned very pale. A horrible thought occurred to him; one of those thoughts which freeze a man's blood in his veins and make a cold sweat start on his brow; and the while, they stood in one of those crowded London thoroughfares, jostled by hundreds of busy hurrying passers-by-brought together he knew not how an unnatural silence between them-his mind unable to contemplate the next step to be taken-and still they walked on, and still she spoke not. It was as if her spectre was accompanying him. He addressed her again in words of supplication, and still she answered Yes,' in that deep unnatural tone. He almost frantic. She is mad grew -she is mad,' he said to himself. He felt it; he knew it; he had driven her mad!"—Vol. iii. pp. 177-83.

[ocr errors]

With this powerful passage we shall close our analysis of the tale. The reader must be content to unravel the sequel of the plot for himself, though we think it is but common charity to relieve his anxiety by a general assurance that the close is not the least consoling portion of the story.

We cannot conclude, however, without transcribing one other extract, an exposition of the true principles of Catholic charity, and of the true spirit in which it loves to display itself. Would that our poor people had many a Ginevra to feel for their wants, and to let them feel that the sympathy which is tendered is the sympathy of a sister, not of a patroness-of a fellow member of Christ's Body, not of a being of a different race, in whom kindness is condescension, and charity is but a modification of self-love and pride!

"The idea had never even occurred to her, that it was possible to visit the poor in the spirit of harsh dictation and arrogant superiority, which at one time seemed prevalent amongst us, as if their

poverty gave us, in itself, a right to invade their houses, to examine into their concerns, and to comment and animadvert on their conduct in a manner which we would not ourselves endure from

our best friends. It is long before we practically learn, though many among us are learning it by slow degrees, that we should respect the poor, and count it an honour and a blessing to have them always with us' as our Lord told us we should-to cast aside our refinement, our sensitiveness, our delicacy, and our false shame, and perform real offices of love to the poor, not as a matter of display or effort (though there may, and must be, some effort in it at first), but as the natural result of our belief in Christ's words, and our trust in his promises. This was the spirit that made Ginevra's charity so particularly acceptable to the poor, and suffering; it was tender and affectionate, and it was so without constraint. It was as natural to her to take on her knees one of the washerwoman's ragged children, or to kiss the pale forehead of her sick daughter, as it would have been to caress one of Lady Dorrington's little boys, or to embrace Mrs. Warren after an absence of some weeks; and who can measure the amount of sympathy, and of consolation, comprised in those small details, which insensibly tell on the spirits of the sad and the suffering? The advance of civilization the progress of worldly affairs, are gradually tending to a greater assimilation between the different classes of society; but the political barriers may vanish, and the social ones may remain in full force, and even with far more offensive stringency than ever, if the reserve, (it cannot, in all cases, be called the pride) of wealth is suffered to remain in unabated vigour. The real source of influ ence is sympathy; the only means of exercising it is through sympathy; and we may bestow alms without end, and have societies without number, and see no results from our gifts and our labours, till we reach the hearts of the poor-and strange hearts they would be, if the distant nod, and the formal investigations, and the measured terms in which we are wont to address them, were to win them to us and to our objects! Man does not live by bread alone,' is a sentence which has a meaning even short of its highest spiritual sense; there is a germ of feeling in the human breast which springs into existence in the sunshine of another's sympathy, though for years, perhaps, it may have lain cold, and apparently dead, till some have even doubted its existence. But it is worth seeking for in the most unpromising soils; it is a flower which God has planted, and we may find it blossoming in the midst of apparent barrenness, like the Alpine rose in the depths of the glaciers."Vol. iii. pp. 171-74.

Such is " Grantley Manor." We do not mean, of course, to represent it as a perfectly faultless performance; but the drawbacks upon the praise which we have be

stowed are so few and inconsiderable, that we have not heart to mar the pleasure of criticism by dwelling upon them in detail. They regard rather the general arrangement of the plot, than the execution of its several parts; and with a mind so cultivated and a taste so refined as those of the gifted authoress, a little more practice in novel-making will, we doubt not, do more to correct those defects than volumes of criticism could hope to accomplish. If all novels were composed in the spirit which breathes through every line of "Grantley Manor," the critic would soon be released from all responsibility as to the most important and most anxious department of his duty,-that of guardian of the moral and religious principles of the Literature of Fiction.

ART. XI.-1. The Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George III. By LORD BROUGHAM, &c. Dr. Johnson. Charles Knight and Co., London.

2.-The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson. By the Rev. J. F. RUSSELL. 8vo. Burns: London. 1847.

"BOST

[ocr errors]

OSWELL'S Life of Johnson, emphatically declares no incompetent judge, Mr. Macaulay, in reviewing the book, "is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has distanced all his competitors," &c. Such, too, is the general opinion, maintained from its origin in unimpaired favour now after the lapse of half-a-century. It truly is a work of preeminent excellence in its line, unsurpassed, or rather, as just stated, unrivalled.

66

Nihil majus generatur ipso;

Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum."

For, surely, the meagre collections of anecdotes and pointed sayings, known under the designation of Ana,not even the best of them, the Ménagiana, so enriched by La Monnoye's supplemental tomes; nor Luther's "Collo

quia......in mensa prandii et coenæ observata, et fideliter transcripta;" nor Selden's "Table-Talk,' nor Eckermann's" Gespräche" (or Conversations) with Göethe, can enter into competition with it. And yet this remarkable book is the composition of a writer represented to us as of slenderest endowments, weak even to silliness, and the consequent mark of ridicule to his associates; a contrast of act and mind, and discordance of cause and effect, seldom, if ever, so signally exemplified, unless we place in parallel the noble discoveries in science and the healing art, assignable, we know, to the seemingly least adequate or most incongruous of agencies. To these volumes, however, of such an author, so immeasurably, in appearance, unequal to the performance, will Johnson's fame be mainly indebted for its enduring freshness of preservation through succeeding ages; and as his dictionary must ever be the model and basis of all similar undertakings in our language, so this compilation will continue to be the supplying mine of every essayed notice of his life. Any new attempt, indeed, except in an abridged form, would necessarily be superfluous and uncalled for, exhausted as every source of direct information now is; for little was contributed even by the late prolix memoirs of Madame D'Arblay, the last survivor of the writers admitted to Johnson's familiar converse. The work, as at present published, embodies all the observations or recollections of the friends or acquaintances of Johnson; but if hopeless of further accession of personal anecdote, it still leaves ample room for the elucidation of unexplained, or correction of misrepresented facts, in the existing text and commentaries. This is the pretensionless object of our assumed task on the present occasion; for the Rev. Mr. Russell, as well as Lord Brougham, present nothing of incident, and little of view, additional in interest to what we previously and redundantly possessed. His lordship, indeed, scarcely recognizes a blemish in his friend, Mr. Croker's labours; so that, in various instances of obscurity or inaccuracy in the narrative and notes, the reader is suffered yet to remain in the dark, or in error,-a defect which we shall endeavour to remove, as more especially required in a book of such extensive circulation and general instruction.

One of the most popular branches of literature is biography. Scarcely does the grave close on a person of eminence

in any department of society without exciting an impatient desire for the record of his acts and sentiments,-a desire no sooner expressed than sure to be followed, from fond or speculative motives, by its accomplishment. Since the personal details transmitted to us of Socrates by his disciples, Plato and Xenophon, up to this passing day, these ever prompt memorials have accumulated to thousands; because in their singleness of object, and contracted sphere of consideration, they are at once and easily embraced in fulness of view, often likewise retracing to the reader's memory various impressive analogies of position or self-feeling, while the wider field of general history demands a larger stretch of mental appliance, which is not unfrequently strained to painful exertion, in order to combine varied scenes in consistent association. But in this extensive range of biography, what publication can vie in vivid effect with Boswell's volumes, and the mass of diversified and entertaining instruction, of deeply inculcated moral lessons, and of striking delineations of social life, spread in teeming abundance over their compass? Truly fortunate, indeed, was Johnson in the acquaintance and admiration of so singular a person; for in whom else could he have found so searching an enquirer, or faithful reporter of his movements, principles, or feelings, and we may add, of his wayward habits, prejudices, and faults of temper-an ordeal from which few would, on the whole, emerge less scathed? Boswell suffered nothing to escape his deep-probing curiosity, to slip his recollection, or divert his attention, in drawing this portraiture, which reflects as in a mirror, so true is it to nature, every lineament, mental or physical, of his idolized original. He has, in fact, left us a photographic representation, as we may truly call it, of our great moralist; and most suitable to him are the expressions of M. Daillé, introductory to the Scaligeriana: "Ea est in istos literatorum heroas præpostera religio et quædam idolomania, ut ne verbulum quidem excidere patiatur, quod non avide colligat, et inter preciocissima Keμa sedulo recondat." But happy as Johnson was in his biographer, the latter was not less so in the subject of his elaboration; for of Johnson we are told by Sir John Hawkins, another contributor to his garland of fame, that "One who had long known him observed: In general you may tell what the man to whom you are speaking

« AnteriorContinuar »