PERIODICALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4170, 30 June 1875, Page 2

PERIODICALS.

THE QtTAHTERLY Opens-with an article, severe, but not one" whit too severe, upon the far famed "Greville Memoirs." This most amusing but shameless work has been the theme of all reviewers Joe the past six months. The sense ef literary decency and common morality shownbjr-its1 author has been severely commented upon ia. all quarters. We have not, however, seeai anything more severely true than this: " A mixture of lies," says Bacon, " dothevee add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken from men's minds vain.- --------' opinions, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like vinum d<enwnum, but i& would leave the minds of a number of iner. poor shrunken things." If this book were subjected." to a similar operation—if vain opinions, false valuations, and imaginations as one would—i£all the ingredients to which its popularity Is mainly owing were taken from it, the result would be much the same: it would be left a, poor shrunken thing, a thing of shreds and patches, like Jack's coat (in. the " Tale of a Tub "), when the gold lace and embroiderywere stripped off. ]S To amount of correction, ocrevisiou would remove the all-pervading tainfeof cynicism, or confer the estimable quality of" truth. . ■ ". . We are not aware that we have overstepped by a hair's breadth the strictest limits of literary courtesy in our strong condemnation of this book. We have tacitly assumed that; Greville wrote the most objectionable passages without a view to publication, and that MrReeve published them without intending to injure w annoy anybody. What is done can.not be undone. But a grave error has been, committed, which must not and (we think) -will. not be repeated. We venture to prophesy-that? • the remaining portions of the journal-will not see the light in our time—certainly not in the same crude, mischievous, unsatisfactory form. Nor will the world be much the loser should any meditated publication of the same sort be deferred for the next hundred years. If coa.teruporary history cannot be written without the aid of such memoirs, we had rather da without contemporary history—we can wait; for it is our firm conviction that any information or entertainment which may be derived from them is far more than counterbalanced by the annoyance they create, the distrust they inspire, the angry feelings thay fester, and th& false impressions of character and conduct they diihise. We are so sick unto death of tbe veryname of the Prince Consort that we are prey

- disposed to dislike any notice of Mr Martin's< •work. At the same time, this notice is by *no means so fulsome in its adulation as many others we have seen. It is impossible, however, to recommend it, because it is written ■aader the erroneous theory that thia Prince at any rate could do no -wrong. " The Life of Christ," by.Br /Farrar, isa kindly and very sympathetic review of the great work. Probably nine^tenths of its readers -will be inclined to agree with the general estimate;of the work. There is something disappointing in it^after all. Had Mr Farrar not been rafting "as a believer to believers," he inight'have claimed ex- • eruption from all obligation to deal with the history m its theological .aspects ; but his attempt to represent the Effe of Christ in its human-surroundings," apart from those ideas -which are the basis of,its unity, seems to us a mistaken effort. TheKfesus of Dr Farrar's life is he who played, a sinless child, among the .flowers of .Nazareth ; the saintly teacher whom (jahlean fishermen, adored in the simplicity of their ignorant literalism ; the holy martyr in whom his Roman executioner recognised a Veritable Son-.of God: it is seldom he in whom humanity beholds itself ideally portrayed. The subject of his narrative move's before us like one of ourselves; save that at times He is withdrawn into a region of "mystery, or works wonders that are beyond our faculty to explain. It is a beautiful and a striking picture—the picture, notwithstanding Dr Farrar's efforts -to _ the contrary, of a superhuman man, painted, so far as was possible, in the colours of onr own and of past experience. But the Christ of the Gospels is no superhuman man. Through these fragmentary media we catch glimpses of >a-Divine radiance that is obscured in the endeavour to piece them together. " I write the Life of Christ?—l:" wrote Lavater to Herder, . " Never ; the Evangelists have written it as it can and ought to be written." And his instinct was true. The Life that is Itself the keystone in the arch of history, binding two worlds together, the present and the past, has nothing to gain by reconstruction. To enable mankind to realise its meaning, this is a legitimate, nay, the highest aim of the individual, be he critic, artist, antiquarian, or theologian : but to recast the Life itself—to translate the inspired poetry of i^s origin into the prose of common day—to it-present its ideal progres--sion iii the chronological sequence of history— to bring the Divine mystery of its close within the grasp of finite sense—this is to attempt the impossible, and iii so far as he has made the - attempt Dr Farrar has failed. Two other papers in this number are exceedingly legal. " The Judicial Investigation of Truth " will, however, repay perusal of lawyer and layman. Witness the following :— Advocates who are not high-minded practise -cross-examination of the severest type, as a habit, upon almost every witness they take in hand. If the subject of the operation is nervous, irascible, or muddle-headed, there is no limit to the contradictions and confusion which may thus be imported into his evidence. To a..great extent, blundering statements thus extorted from a witness are set right on re-exam-matiow ; and a Judge can do very much ■ to rectify, by a few judicious qustions, the distorted narrative which is produced by a savage - cross-examination working upon the "mental or physical weakness of a feeble witness. But ' the upshot of the testimony in any case despends, at last, .ihnost a.s much upon the temperament of tha witness and the adroitness with which he is handled, as upon the truth of the story he tries t) tell. AXL'tliis, of course, introduces an element of •j choice, an element of skill, into the process ■'Tvhich largely jpterfere with its accuracy as a means of eliciting truth. Still, the wit of man has not been aile to devise.a better method of taking testimoiy than the 2s Tisi Prius practice which we havt described, and there can be no • doubt that in all cases where there is a substan- ■ tial conflict ofevidence it must (subject to some modifications'in detail) be maintained. Perhaps the worsffeature of it is, that it is just when a witness is diliberately telling an unexpected .tale eoncaeted for the occasion that cross examinatira is lease effective. If a witness gives evidniee based-Tipou the truth, but perverted exactly where the interests of his party require it, it is very often practicable to laud him in con- • tradictions vhich discredit his veracity altogether ; but where his evidence is pure 'invention, either as to one material point or as to the whole narrative, there are often no data on which the cross-examining counsel can work. THE EDIXBUKGK lias a very r.ble paper upon Mill's Essay on Theism. We cannot congratulate the reviewer, however, upon the citation of Pascal, "which piece of very bad reasoning he applies to Mill's proposition about the Deity. There is,' nevertheless, one unassailable method of dealing with such arguments as those 2th- Mill presents to us. " It is a profound remark of Pascal that, although man is always ] >rone to deny the iucomj >rehensible, yet nothing is demonstrably certain but those things whose conversed manifestly false. Hence whenever a proposition is unintelligible, instead of passing judgment on it and rejecting it on that account, the wiser course is to examine its opposite, and if that be manifestly false it may boldly be affirmed that the former proposition is true, though it may be incomprehensible. ■ ■ It follows from the mutual dependence of all things and of all conditions of existence, that those conditions of life which appear to Mr Mill to be noxious, cruel, and unjust, are just as necessary and useful as those which he conceives to be pleasurable ; for, except in the utilitarian philosophy, to seek pleasure and to fly from pain are not the sole ends of existence. We do not assert that Omnipotence could not have made a different sort of world, but we do contend that the world, being designed for the moral purposes we discern in it, could not lie very different from its actual condition. Take ■for example the great facts of mutual destruction, disease, decay, ami death, which appear so revolting to Mr Mill. These are obviously the inseparable-conditions of a state of being of brief duration, by means of which an inexhaustible flow of successive generations passes on"wards through a limited sphere of space and time, and the world is perpetually renewed. In the article upon " Archibald Constable " we are introduced into a comparatively new and exceedingly interesting region. There is probably no other position, certainly no other position so little elevated, from which so much may be seen and heard as that of the successful publisher. Though popular authors >seem to-require little aid beyond that of the printer, and the cultivators of learning and science rarely obtain it, they are all compelled, as matters have arranged themselves, to employ ■ publishers if they are not employed by them"; . and the contact which results is often'not the .less friendly and familiar, in consequence of ■ the independent relations in which they stand ito^each other. Xor is it for purposes ofobserv--ation n.eivly that the publisher's position is .unique. It is not as a spectator only, but as an .actor that he mingles in the drama. The role ■which lie plays is no doubt a subordinate one. He neither supplies the piece nor adjusts the cast. But, though neither purveyor nor cook, ihis finger is in every pie ; nay, there are many pies that, but for his finger, would never have • been pies at all. The difficulties which beset Sir Walter Scott, and the conduct towards him of the house, which, so to spe.ik, rendered his genius profitable by their courage, are •well told here: A forgotten satirist well says— •' The active principle within Works on'some brains the effects of gin." rCa_dell caught the intoxication of the "active principle," and even whei> the comparative ill success of " Peveril of the Peak " had led Sydney Smith to exclaim, "'The next must be better or it will be the last;" and when Cadell himself was so sensible of the risks his house had incurred that he actually attempted to bolt, we find him writing to Mr Constable : "I said "to Sir Walter, one of those days, I would as soon stop a winning horse as a successful author with the public in his favour. It is our interest iii every point of view to encourage him on." •Such advice, from a man who was accustomed to reproach him for his rashness, and of whom Scott spoke as " the pendulum to the clock," •was not thrown away on Constable. Money :and the most costly presents were showered •down upon Abbotsford. It did not rain but it 'poured; anil Scott bought, and built, and kept •open house with all the bounty of his generous •and genial nature. At last <; Queutin Durward" is"" frostbit/ and the publishers have to stop their horse. Hurst and Co. write, "We regret to say that we have no orders for ' Q.D.;" and Constable says:— " There are KiOO copies left this morning, and few second orders have yet come in. People in the country hardly believe that another work can be so soon after ' Peveril;' .. . There is no satisfying the public, and in the midst of much applause of ' Quentin,' I sometimes .hear murmurs about its coming too quick for the pocket. There is unparalleled genius in the works of the author of ' Waverly'—but novelty has helped their sale." Scott was not dismayed : *' The mouse who only trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul;" but the immediate source of supply was •stopped, and the bills were running, though they would scarcely float. The final catastrophe, apart from the character of the actors, has no peculiar features. The cast is very different, but the piece is a mere wdniary bankruptcy, with every scene and shift of which every lawyer is well, and most . merchants are too well, acquainted. When their money was gone, the party exhausted each others credit. It was the common story of .accommodation bilk at longerand longer dates, " The Agricultural Labourer in Enrdand," and the inevitable "Life of the Prince Consort," r,re the most interestinc of the lemaiuing papers. °