The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-23 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENT TO Zbt No. 286.--Voi. VI. fittraturt. POPULAR LITERATURE. Tim address of Lord Brougham on Popular Literature carries the mind back a long way ; further, indeed, than he himself extended the review of that one section of his own multifarious labours. Wonderful, indeed, has been the deve lopment of all literature, but especially of the lighter portion, during the last thirty years. From the " age of quartos," ponderous volumes with ponderous prices, to the cheap and airy fabrics of the present day, which seem, to use the Baconian simile, and in a truer than the Baconian application, expressly intended to float down the stream of time, while graver productions sink to the bottom, what a vast gulf intervenes ! Days distantly loom on the memory, when Constable's Miscellany seemed a rash and innovating specu lation; then, the elder John Murray—under shelter of Dr. Johnson's remark, that books `which may be held readily in the hand are the `best of all; into the popular arena with the "Family Library," and brought some works of really standard merit within the reach of modest purses and equally contracted shelves. Almost at the same time appeared the publica tions of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; yet these, though really recent enough, have been left so far behind by the move ment which they helped to originate that they are already almost as much forgotten as if they belonged to a past century. In organizing so vast a scheme of national self-education, the Society and its promoters showed certainly much of the wisdom of the serpent. IVhatever might be the value of the ideas they had to inculcate, there is no doubt that they took a very effectual method of in culcating them. They formed a signal and so far honourable exception to the laissez-faire system which, time out of mind, has been the rule in England in dealing with all questions of social economy ; and, to a certain extent, they reaped their reward. Not to mend a roof till the rain wets you in bed —not to make a law till all sorts of mischievous practices have had full swing and reaped a p ro fi ta bl e harvest—not to make a drain till insulted nature vindicates her laws by the scourge of cholera —not to reform a railway till you have burnt a bishop, is the good old simple plan on whi c h we have almost uniformly acted. plan th e U seful Knowledge Society, as ithout w t siting far all sorts of quacks and sciolists to rise up and satisfy the nascent demand for solid and reputable intellectual food, hastened forward to anticipate it, and perhaps rather overwhelmed the ' Industrious mechanic with treatises on all kinds of scientific subject s , w hi c h as a general rule certainly had not asked for, and the thorough a pp r eciation of whi c h must be' a comparatively exceptional phe nomenon, even at the present day. Then, findinft that some lighter diet was required, the y Wiled the Penny Magazine —a publication to which, doubtl first d awni ess, many persons can trace the of their interest in science or history, andnwgshopc engravings, in probably many I nore cases than the one Lord Brougham has men tioned, formed no slight stimulus to artistic genius. rt6l. LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 These points, however, being gained, the Society did not apparently think it necessary to proceed further. Hic cestus artemque reponit. Their English Encyclopedie came to a conclusion, and they left it to a "rude and artless race" to carry on the work which they had to a certain extent successfully prosecuted. De Quincey in one of his essays draws an important distinction between the Literature of Knowledge' and the Literature of Power.' The former includes all science or art, all that appeals to the understanding by its usefulness, but which by the very necessity of its own progress must from time to time be superseded, remodelled, and put out of date by subsequent inventions and modes of communication. To the latter belong all works appealing to the imagina tion or affections, and which, by the permanency of the elements they address, are incapable of supersession, and calculated to exercise the same fascination on their latest as on their earliest reader. Philosophers aspiring to influence the whole cycle of human nature should hardly venture to neglect the latter element, however irreeucible to strict laws of production or rigidly defined types. Plato is an authority for whom Lord Brougham and his school would probably feel but slight regard; but the hint in his " Republic " about looking after the composers of stories, in order that the minds of the rising generation ' may be moulded by fiction, much more than ' their bodies by manual care,' is not altogether unworthy of attention at the present day. Fol lowers of such principles would not have confined themselves to useful knowledge alone, but would have provided for "children of a larger growth" that aliment which all ages have taught us that they require, and would have taken care that even in the hours of relaxation was percep tible some of that beneficial influence which they claimed to exert. But the Literature of Power' formed no part of the Society's plan ; and the success of the Penny Magazine paved the way fbr numerous publications, which, though they supplied a want for which the promoters of that periodical had %fled to provide, to us seem fiir from being worthy of the unqualified eulogium Lord Brougham bestowed upon them. Why the Society should not have gone further, and why the notion which was to some extent carried out by Miss Martineau should not have been executed on a larger scale, is to be attributed, we imagine, to that spirit of English prudery on the subject of novels which is not even now quite extinct, and which was in uncomfortable vigour at the time to which we allude. Not that it was considered exactly wrong to read a novel : that stigma had been removed by Seat ; but it was not a form of literature in which one ought to confess any particular interest. Novels and their writers were rather below the notice of persons of solid merit, and society amused itself under protest. From the traces which yet liner of this dull spirit,—from the governess-like remarks of prim persons in country towns, who think it "such a waste of time to read novels," and recommend the acquirement of " usefid in thrmation,"—may be conjectured the unhappy condition thirty years ago of a person with a genial taste for fiction, who belonged, like Lord Derby, to the "pre-scientific period," or who could not feed entirely upon Ptarodactyles and the binomial theorem. He descended, ipso facto, to a lower intellectual rank, and found himself 1858. GRATIS. a sort of pariah of a mitigated criminality, among his " well-informed" fellow-creatures. From such scruples, however, as might arise from this taboo the lower classes were entirely free. They did not see any harm in amusing them selves, and they got the amusement where they could. If the Society which seemed to be Owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year,— could not supply them with a Comet vintage, they must put up with the vin-ordinaire of less authoritative purveyors. So the empire of the intellect of the poorer classes, the key to their feelings and tastes, and their wishes for improve ment or relaxation passed out of the hands of Lord Brlugham and his colleagues, into those of Mr. Cassell, Mr. Stiff, and Mr. G. W. M. Rey nolds. And this took place, we imagine, because the Society, having developed the taste for read ing in its supporters, did not accept the inevi table consequence, and either could not or would not supply the demand which that taste was sooner or later sure to create. This repugnance to placing fiction on the same ground with other departments of literature comes out curiously enough in one passage of Lord Brougham's address. Finding that many readers liked nothing but narrative, the Society introduced a large amount of history and biography into their publications ; and then, he tells us, it also became manifest " that imag inary adventures, scenes " rarely or never e xhibited in real life, lively " descriptions of both persons and things removed " from common observation,—in a word, stories, " whether of a romantic or a more ordinary cha " ratter, would fix the attention which the most " interesting realities had failed to arrest." There is an air of surprise if not of alarm about this sentence, a kind of delicacy in approaching the subject, which is rather amusing. It is the sort of tone a Lord Chancellor might use if he wished to state in a grave manner that a ward of Chan cery had exhibited signs of an attachment for one of the opposite sex. "It became apparent that the young lady, not satisfied with the moral conversation of her aunt, and the beautiful ex periments in chemistry which were constantly performed for her instruction, evinced an unusual degree of satisfaction in the conversation of a young Crimean officer ; that the lively descrip tions' with which he entertained her, and the sentiments, whether of a romantic or more ordinary character,' which he communicated, would fix her attention,' which the most in teresting lectures of Owen or Faraday had failed to arrest ';—in a word, that she was in love with him." The result is surely not a very surprising one in either case, but in that of literature, the philosophers, it would appear, were taken some what by surprise; and having, as they conceived, supplied in an unexceptionable manner the pi e ces de resistance of the intellectual banquet, left the wines and dessert to be provided by other caterers. But, was not this a rather imprudent step? You cannot adulterate mechanics or hydrostatics any more than beef or mutton, and the attempt to write c om i c sect i ons would be regarded as an absurdity by the veriest smatterer; but the vinunt &mouton, Poetry and Fiction, like their alimentary counterparts, may by unscrupu lous hands be rendered as unfit for the head as the latter for the stomach, and an attempt to introduce fa-bodied qualities into either usually