fect of this "doom of cold" is strikingly expressed by the tale, told by the condemned, being given in eight-line stanzas of one rhyme only-" shadeless rhyme," as it is called in the poem: or as else "The Snow Waste" is a grand Dantesque allegory, in which one who has been guilty, during life, of unnatural cruelty of hate, is condemned to wander for ever in a waste of snow between the corpses of his two victims. The ef- where: Thus they run: ". . . An uncadenced chant on one slow chord "What love is now I know not; but I know I once loved much, and then there was no snow. In another poem, entitled "With the Dead," is related the story of the persecutor who, seeking to betray the Christians in the Catacombs, was condemned to wander for ever up and down their labyrinths. The volume closes with a short and most touching poem entitled "Too Late," a lament of one who in his profligacy has received news of his dying wife, and has arrived only to find her passed away. And thus our present task is done, and the general estimate only of the volumes which we have noticed has to be spoken. From them all, the thought arises that we are for the most part elaborating with credit, rather than originating. We began by speaking of Tennyson and Browning and as we began, so we end. The procession of their followers, and the followers, in them, of all that is best and truest in our literature, is still passing onward: its ranks not yet degenerate, its banners not yet faded. But the eye which pierces where others have not seen-the unbidden step that first treads the wild, are as yet hardly known to us among the poets of our own time. This cannot be because all wilds are inclosed, nor because all dark places are explored. It may have been enough for our age to have witnessed the advent of one great poet; and the way may not yet be prepared among the wrecks of his imitators, for a new path to Fame. have profited well by the patient definition of nature, and the thorough searching of the human heart, which characterize our present school of poets. Fraser's Magazine. MR. DALLAS ON THE SCIENCE OF The Gay Science is the somewhat too suggestive title of a work on the nature of art and the science of criticism, by Mr. E. S. Dallas, which is undoubtedly entitled to occupy a high place in the literature of the subject which it discusses. The sprightliness of the author's style, and the vivacity of his fancy, are sure to obtain for his views a ready hearing from the public; and those even who, like ourselves, are inclined to question his arguments and contest his conclusions, cannot fail to be powerfully impressed by his ingenuity, subtlety, and various erudition. A work of so high a character cannot be properly greeted by the ordinary commonplaces of critical goodwill. The author's aim is a lofty one, and if he has succeeded in doing what had assuredly not been done previously—if he has made criticism a science-then he has established strong claims to wide and hearty recognition. Such a work, from its very nature, must be subjected to a searching Meantime let us use what has been given us. It will be no mean prepara-examination. tion for what may be yet in store, to It cannot be passed by lightly and cursorily; the author is en titled to ask from his critics intelligent and thoughtful assent or deliberate refutation. science of worms, will tell us that it is the most interesting and useful of studies. But I can scarcely imagine that when The great charm of the book is its putting in a word for a science of human clearness. We cannot possibly enter- nature, and for criticism as part of it, tain any doubt of Mr. Dallas's meaning. and when claiming for that science the The arrangement is methodical, the style place of honor, I am fairly open to the limpid and transparent. There is not an charge of yielding to private partiality. obscure passage from the first page to the At all events, in mitigation of such a last. But we must say at the same time charge, let it be remembered that man, that we do not like certain peculiarities too, has the credit of being a worm, and of his writing. There is an occasional that he may be entitled to some of the hardness sentences where, instead of regard of science, were it only as belongthe glow and the blithe movement of ing to the subject of helminthology. We life, we have a steely edge and the may give up the claims which the science glitter of antithesis. "It would be of human nature has to precedence over amusing," he remarks in one place, all the other knowledges, if we can get "to hear what a French critic, with it recognized in popular opinion as a all the blue and gold of Versailles in science at all, were it but as a science of the chambers of his heart, would say worms. And for criticism, as a part of to the master singers of Nuremberg and the science of human nature, it may be other chief towns of Almayne in the remembered that Sir Walter Scott was middle ages; to the honest cobblers that, pleased to describe the critics as caterlike Hans Sachs, were powerful in hon- pillars, and that, therefore, they may have eyed words as well as in waxed threads; a special claim to be regarded in this to the masons that built the lofty rhyme; marvellously popular science of worms." to tailors that sang like swans while they That passage might have been written by plied the goose; to smiths that filed the author of The Anatomy of Wit. verses not less than iron tools; to bar- But it is only fair to add that, while we bers that carolled cheerily while as yet resent their occasional frivolousness, the the music of Figaro slept untold in the great majority of his illustrations are apt, unborn brain of Mozart, and while as striking, drawn from curious sources, yet, indeed, music, in the modern sense and exceedingly ingenious and enterof the word, had not even glimmered in taining. Nor can it be denied that, in the firmament of human thought." This the main, Mr. Dallas exhibits not a mere is sharp, pointed, brilliant, but essentially fantastic ingenuity, but a true critical artificial. At other times he manifests a too obvious effort to be simple; using, for instance, familiarities of expression which may be tolerated in conversation, but which are not in keeping with abstruse ideas and a weighty argument. He always holds himself well in hand; but, in his determination to avoid excess, he sins in an opposite direction, and his studied moderation is not always free from ostentation. The illustrations to which he so frequently resorts are often admirable; yet they are at times trivial, and at times far-fetched. They are introduced, no doubt, to aid the argument; we suspect that they sometimes embarrass it. He is apt, moreover, like John Lily, and the Euphuists, to run them to death. Take such a passage as this: "Every man lauds his own pursuit. He who is deep in helminthology, or the subtlety. How fine and incisive, for instance, are these remarks upon the complications of imagery: four different senses. There is a famous pas "Sometimes the imagery is even more complicated, and confounds the facts of three or sage in the beginning of Twelfth Night, the description of music: "That strain again: it had a dying fall; Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound There is here such an involution and redupli- Shakespearian in the reduplication of the idea conveyed (a sound, coming o'er the ear, breathing, stealing, and giving odor, and so in the delight and delicacy of its magic, ministering not to one sense but to three), there is also to my mind a clear evidence that whether the word sound were actually penned by Shakespeare, or were only a printer's error, still that upon that word Milton had once alighted, that it caught his fancy, that it became vital within him, and that as a consequence he produced in the Comus a similar involution and reduplication of ideas, though in a somewhat different arrangement? "At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound Notwithstanding the freshness and originality of this passage, who does not feel that nearly all the ideas which are thus connected with dulcet sound-the sound breathing on the ear, stealing on the air, and giving odortrace back to Shakespeare?" Mr. Dallas, therefore, in our opinion, spite of the slight blemishes we have pointed out (and which we have pointed out because we believe that they can be easily removed), is well fitted for the task which he has undertaken. Subtle, erudite, ingenious, eloquent, he will succeed in making good his defence, and in beating back his assailants, if the position which he occupies be not entirely untenable. Is it untenable? and if so, what are its vulnerable points? To the consideration of these questions (which occupy the first volume) we purpose to devote the remainder of this article. The weakness of the book is that its author has got a system. He will reply, of course, that this is its chief virtue. "System is science. Science is impossible without the order and method of system. It is not merely knowledge: it is knowledge methodized. It may be true that over the vast ocean of time which separates us from Plato, nothing has come to us from that mighty mind to be incorporated in modern thought but a few fragments of wreck. Yet these fragments would never have reached us if they had not at one time been built into a ship. When the voyager goes across the Atlantic he may be wrecked; he may get on shore only with a plank. But he will never cross the Atlantic at all if he starts on a plank, or on a few planks tied together as a raft. Our little systems have their day,' says the poet, and it is most true, but in their 6 There is a day they have their uses. momentum in a system which does not belong to its individual timbers, and if we admire the essay, it is not necessary to undervalue more elaborate structures." This reasoning is, to our minds, we confess, essentially unsatisfactory. Observe that Mr. Dallas is dealing with a system which is admittedly not a true system; which has failed to stand the sapping and mining of time; which has been wrecked ;" and his argument, in effect, amounts to this: If a true thought be incorporated with a false system, which must, sooner or later, fall to pieces, its longevity is thereby assured. Now, we assert, on the contrary, that it is more reasonable to believe that the truth will go down with the rotten system to which it is attached, and that it would have fared better had it started originally on its own account. We all remember Sir Thomas Browne's amusing declaration "I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches: they that doubt of these do not deny only them, but spirits, and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort not of infidels, but of atheists." Had the many exquisite reflections that enrich the Religio Medici been scattered through a systematic treatise intended to prove that witches exist, and that those who do not believe in them are atheists, would they have stood a better chance of preservation? But even this is scarcely an adequate illustration, for to the quaint excellence of Sir Thomas Browne's language, rather than to the substantial value of his speculations, do the Religio Medici and the Urn Burial owe their popularity with the modern reader. The craving for system is in fact one of the most dangerous symptoms which a thinker can exhibit; for it infers a twist in the mental structure of its victim. Had the theorist been unembarrassed by the hungry exigencies of a system, he might have thought truly and well; but every suggestion inconsistent with his theory is turned aside from with disrelish, and he condescends to notice those facts only which support or seem to support it. During the reign of Charles II, a pamphlet was written to prove that the stork went to the moon during winter. The author was by nature a shrewd and clever observer; | is but a century old. The other sciences but he was so occupied in making his that take account of human action, are system symmetrical, that he ceased to still in their infancy, and to despair of observe altogether, and his treatise is pro- them is but to despair of childhood. foundly absurd. The physical sciences,. . It is argued that, because we are not at a certain stage of their growth, and able to predict the changes of history, after a certain amount of observation, therefore history cannot fairly be regarded may be usefully systematized; but we as a science; and the argument, though are dealing now with what is confessed- levelled against a science of history, goes ly a spiritual science. And in this de- to deny the possibility of any science of partment of thought we have never seen human nature. In point of fact, howany good that system has achieved-we ever, we can predict a good deal in huare persuaded, on the contrary, that it man history, as, for example, by the aid has worked infinite harm. Philosophies of political economy, a science which is of history, philosophies of the mind, phil- barely a century old. And the reasonosophies of religion, have all ended in ing, if it were sound, would oust geolblank disappointment. From whatever ogy from the list of the sciences, because cause, whether because the facts upon it does not enable us to predict what which the induction proceeded have been changes in the earth's surface are certain insufficient, or whether because the facts to take place in the next thousand years. defied classification, it has been found impossible to label and ticket the operations and processes of the spiritual world. All schemes, from Calvinism downward, which have tried to arrange these matters in a logical way, have failed. And we believe that a system which essays to capture the imagination, to clip the wings of the fancy, to track the dim and perilous pathways of our passions and aspirations, must prove as futile in the end as the "schemes" which have attempted to settle dogmatically the relations that subsist between the finite and the infinite, to look into the workings of the supreme mind, and enable man, by the aid of arithmetic, to square accounts with his Maker. Mr. Dallas tries vehemently to escape from this conclusion. "It is true that mental science has not yet done much for us in any department of study; but it must not be forgotten that the application of scientific methods to the mind and action of man has been even more recent and more tardy than their application to the processes of nature, and that the time has not yet come to look for ripe fruit, and to curse the tree on which it is not found. Any science of a true sort, I have already observed-any science that is but more than guessing, or more than a confused pudding-stone of facts-is now but two centuries old. The most advanced of the sciences that relate specially to human conduct, is the science of wealth, and political economy NEW SERIES-VOL. V., No. 2. .. The fact is, that no science in the world can insure its followers from error, or make its students perfect artists. Chemistry, with all its exactitude, does not save its professors from making a wrong analysis. The votaries of geology are still wrangling about some of its main principles; and were they agreed, it does not follow that they would be able to apply those principles rightly to the various regions of the earth. Polit ical economy, the most advanced of the sciences that have man for their subject, is not all clear and steadfast, and daily the nations bid defiance to its clearest and most abiding truths. Why, then, should a critical science, if there is ever to be one, do more than all other sciences in leading its disciples into a land free from doubt?" Is it true that the philosophy of mind is only two centuries old? What, then, are we to say to Mr. Lewes' remarkable history of philosophy, which chronicles the failures of three thousand years? Political economy, Mr. Dallas truly enough remarks, is little more than a century old. But then Mr. Ruskin is, perhaps, the sole political economist who considers that science a department of the philosophy of morals.* *Milton preferred Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost; and we observe that Mr. Ruskin, in his latest work, Sesame and Lilies, describes his properly to be called a book, that I have yet work on political economy as "the only book, written myself the one that will stand (if any 16 The capricious element of human mo- he exclaims, the difference between our tive can hardly, at least, be held to influ- art and the art of Greece Greece, where ence the laws by which gold multiplies. a recognized standard of taste prevailed. Nations may choose to maintain a pro- We offer a prize for the best poem or the tective policy; but their prejudices do best design-how wretched are our prize not change the fact that free trade is poems and our prize designs! But in favorable to the increase of wealth. It Greece the offer of prizes produced the is possible that the Pope still holds, in most brilliant results. "When a Greek his official capacity, that Galileo was a drama was acted at Athens it was a prize heretic; but the fact which Galileo af- drama; and we are told that Eschylus firmed is not now controverted by any won the honor so many times, that Sophsane creature. History cannot predict; ocles in the end beat Eschylus, and neither, adds Mr. Dallas, can geology. that Euripides in like manner had his But geology is as yet only in its infancy: triumphs. The comic dramatist, Meso far, it is little more than the observa- nander, was drowned in the Piræus, and tion and record of the changes that have the story goes, though it is only a story, taken place in the earth's surface; but that he drowned himself in misery at seeunless Mr. Dallas is prepared to main- ing his rival, Philemon, snatch from him tain that these changes are governed, the dramatic ivy crown. Corinna, it will not by invariable law, but by the caprice be remembered, won the prize for lyric which the freedom of the will in man verse from Pindar himself. Whether it implies, he will be willing to admit, we be a fact or not about the poetical contest should suppose, that the time is coming between Homer and Hesiod, and the when it will be able to predict. Till prize of a tripod won by the latter, the that time comes, in short, however sci- tradition of such a contest is a voucher entific its methods may be, it cannot for the custom and for the honor in legitimately be called a science. At one which it was held. At the Pythian time astronomy could only tell us where games prizes for music and every sort a comet had been-now it can predict of artistic work were as common and as when it will return; once it could tell us famous as the prizes for horse-races and only where a planet was-now it can foot-races. To realize such a state of tell us where a planet should be found. things in our time, we must imagine A professor of chemistry, Mr. Dallas says, poets, painters, and musicians assembled sometimes makes a wrong analysis: why on Epsom Downs to contend for the honshould we judge more harshly of the pro- ors of the games with colts, the sons of fessor of mental science? But, in the Touchstone and Stockwell, and fillies, the one case, the disturbing element is ad- descendants of Pocahontas and Beeswing. mittedly in the analysis-if the analysis Why should that be possible in Greece be correct, a correct result is inevitable; which is impossible now? Why do we in the other, we do not say that any one draw the line between jockeys who ride method is wrong-we say that the sub- racehorses, and poets who ride their Pegstance experimented upon is too volatile asus-offer prizes for the grosser animals, and capricious for analysis. And the ex- and produce results that have made Engperience, not of a couple of hundred, but lish horses the first in the world, while of a couple of thousand years, confirms the most magnificent offers can not get a the conclusion. Mr. Dallas appears to fit monument for the greatest Englishfancy that this is a materialistic skepti- man of the present century? The excism: we hold it to be essentially a spirit-planation is not far to seek it lies in the ual skepticism—a skepticism which finds that the soul of man is independent of, and superior to, the sequences of natural law. uncertainty of judgment, in the waywardness of taste, in the want of recognized standards, in the contempt of criticism." Is this a true explanation of the difference? It is, at best, only partially true. There was, undoubtedly, greater uniformity in the methods of Greek art—a uniformity to be attributed to national idiosyncrasy rather than to the conscious |