The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-08 00:00:00

treating the religious difficulty, as if it were a vexatious impediment wantonly raised by hypo crites, is a far more serious fault. Upon the manner in which this difficulty, which appears to the Professor 80 contemptible, is ultimately solved, depends, in our opinion, more than upon A ny other single thing, the religious future of England. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Jefferson Hogg. In Four Vols. London : Idoxon. (Second Notice.) WitATEvEn may be the opinion formed about the literary style of Mr. Hogg, there can be no doubt but that his Life of Shelley contains much most interesting matter. As far as he has yet gone, the contents of his narrative corroborate all that we have heard of Shelley, and assist in creating such a picture of the man as we might have formed from his poems and what has reached us from observers. The account of Shelley's first wife, Harriet Westbrook, is par ticularly fall, and we get a very close insight into the poet's earlier married life; and, recol lecting the dark shadow thrown over it by the suicide of the first Mrs. Shelley, we cannot help perusing the anecdotes of her related here with much interest of a painful kind. The life that Shelley led would have been to any ordinary person intensely " uncomfortable." He was unsettled in opinions, in residence, in circum stances, and even in literary aims. He was groping after a standard by which to test the worth of life, and to adjust the balance between theory and practice, and he had not attained it. On reading many of the passages in his corre spondence, we cannot help thinking of Rousseau, of Werter, and also of Godwin's works. The lofty aims, the aspiring hopes, and the frigid unreality of the metaphysical minds that came before the reading public towards the end of the last century are constantly brought before us. Godwin is an author of whom not much is known in his personal character. his celebrity has greatly gone down, and his works were in many respects alien from the national taste. We think that he appears in rather an attractive light in much of his correspondence with Shel ley. The visit of Shelley to Ireland, with a pur pose of regenerating the people of that country, is described in the second volume at much . length, and was one of the most curious incidents in Shelley's personal career. His residence in Wales is also recounted, and we get some odd reminiscences of Dr. Parr and of John Horne Tooke. Of positively new matter about the poet, the best part is that relative to Harriet Westbrook (his first wife); and every future recorder of Shelley's life must consult Mr. Hogg's pages for any delineation of the poet's wedded history. Of llarriet Shelley's suicide we have heard much ourselves, and the subject was involved in much mystery at the time. We may possibly have to refer to the subject again when the future volumes of this work shall be published. Mr. Hogg states : She often discoursed of her purpose of killing herself some day or other, and at great length, in a calm, resolute manner. She told me that at school, where she was very unhappy, as she said, but I could never discover why she was so, fur she was tiested with much kindness and ex ceedingly well instructed, she had conceived and contrived sundry attempts and purposes of destroying herself. . . . . She spoke of self-murder serenely before strangers ; and at a dinner party I have heard her describe her feelings, opinions, and intentions w.th respect to suicide with prolix earnestness; and she looked so calm, so tranquil, so blooming. and so handsome, that the astonished guests smiled. She once, in particular—l well remember the strange scene and the a:.t•mishmeut of the harmless corn lanY—st a P % thagorean dinner in tl-e house of a medical philosopher, scattered dismay amongst a quiet party of vegetable-eaters, persons who would not slay a shrimp, or extinguish animal life in embryo by eating an egg, by eking, whether they did not feel sometimes strongly in clined to kill themselves. The poor girl's monomania of self-destruction, which we long looked upon as a vain fancy, a baseless delusion, an inconsequent hallucination of the mind, amused us occa sionally for acme years; eventually it premed a sad zeality, and drew ford► many bitter tears. This statement of Mr. Hogg would seem to show that Mrs. Harriet Shelley had been predeter mined to suicide ; but that whole subject will come before us again. Of the poet's visit to Ireland we find many amusing traces. In his Printed address to Irishmen, Shelley said : THE PRESS, MAY 8, 1858. Irishmen must reform themselves, not by force of arms, but by power of mind, and reliance on truth and justice. No Irishman must swerve from the path of day. Be open, sincere, single-hearted. 0 Irishmen, reform your selves; desire peace arid harmony, benevolence and a spirit of forgiveness; form habits of sobriety, regularity, and thought; accommodate yourselves to the progression of wisdom and virtue, t.) peace, philanthropy, and wisdom. Shelley teaching mental sobriety and toleration of opinions is much like a six-bottle man advo cating teetotalism. Mr. Hogg relates of the visit to Ireland the following story, as told by " the divine poet" : Twice—not oftener, I believe—he spoke to me of his Irish mission. On one occasion, he told me that at a meeting—probably at the meeting of Philanthropists—so much ill-will was shown towards the Protestants, that thereupon he was provoked to remark, that the Protestants were fellow-Christians, fellow•subjects, and as such were entitled to equal rights, to equal charity, toleration, and the rest. He was forthwith interrupted by savage yells; a tremendous uproar arose, and he was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and afterwards, he was even threatened with personal violence. This unseasonable display of popish and party bigotry went far to disgust him with his rash enterprise, to open his eyes, end to convince him that Irish grievances consisted not in a dimial of equal rights, these the Philanthropic Association did not seek, but the power and opportunity to tyrannize over and to oppress their Protestant brehren. The " Irish difficulty" was attempted to be set tled by Queen Elizabeth, James 1., Cromwell, William 111., William Pitt, and Shelley, the last of whom, we think, made the worst hand of the case. Shelley, urged by Godwin, obtained the ac quaintance of Curran, the Irish orator, of whom the poet says with considerable truth : Curran at length called on me. I dined twice at his house. Curran is certainly a man of great abilities, but it appears to me that he undervalues his powers when he applies them to what is usually the subject of his con versation. I may not possess sufficient taste to relish humour, or his incessant comicality may weary that which I possess. He does not posses that mould of mind which I have been accustomed to contemplate with the highest feelings of retsrct and love. In short, though Curran in cbibitably possesses a strong understanding and a brilliant fancy, I should not have beheld him with the feelings of admiration which his first visit excited, had he not been your intimata friend. The " incessant comicality" there spoken of by Shelley spoiled Curran in the opinion of many good judges. The orator kept his humour more under restraint in English society, and relied more on the graver and higher faculties of his brilliant mind. Lord Byron, who met Curran in London society, drew a far more flattering picture of the talents of the Irish wit and orator. We can readily imagine that a mind like Shel ley's must have derived great enjoyment from his first introduction to the glories of Italian literature. Mr. Hogg's account of the poet's reading of Tasso and Ariosto is very interesting. He says:— I procured a sufficient apparatus of approved grammars and dictionaries, and bestowed much of my leisure upon them ; Bysshe, a King in intellect, had always at his com mand a short and royal road to knowledge. It seemed to a superficial observer that he rejected and despised the grammar and the dictionary, and all the ordinary aids of a student; this to a certain extent was the case, but to a certain extent only; he was impatient of such tardy methods of progression; nevertheless he sometimes availed himself of them, and when he condescended to be taught, like a mere mortal, which assuredly he was not, his eagle glance, his comprehensive grasp, his incon ceivable quickness, and miraculous powers and faculty of apprehension, enabled him to seize and to master in minutes what his less highly gifted fellow-learners acquired in hours, or days, or weeks. With much pleasure and profit, and not without a certain edification, we read together the fine poem of TaBBo ; and we kept together, side by side, in this our first exploit and invasion of the lovely language of a lovely land. There was nothing in the slow progress of the long siege of the holy city, or in the quiet episodes, by which the principal narrative is varied, to stimulate his intense and insatiable curiosity, or provoke his constitutional impatience. At the termination of our joint perusal, the slip of paper was carefully placed in the handsome volume to mark our pro grey -t, and whenever we resumed our united study, I saw that it had been honourably suffered to remain at the page where we had left off; there had been no forestalling, no stealing a march. We thus proceeded steadily together, by an equable progression we advanced, and by regular ap proaches we took the sacred city, and finished the poem, our first task. And again : When we came to our second author, it was different— our course of conjoint study no longer ran smooth; it was deranged; the partnership was broken up. The same slow rate of travelling would no longer satisfy my impatient colleague; Ariosto had excited, fascinated him. Bysshe soon discovered that the realms of romance and the inter course of Paladins were his own proper, peculiar element : we could no longer keep together in our chivalry. When 1 had a spare hour for octave thymes, and took down the book for our lesson, I found that my adventurous comrade had gone ahead a canto or two ; or, perhaps, that the mark had been transferred to another volume. In reading for the first time a composition of such overpowering, over whelming interest —exciting, stimulating, provoking—it was absolutely impossible to wait for me, or for anyone; for Roland furiously mad through love, or even for the fair Angelica herself, much more to expect the uncertain and scant leisure of a law student. The Divine Poet eagerly devoured the marvellous production of a brother poet, re turning to it incessantly, and reading it through repeatedly, again and again. He spoke of the unparalleled poem with wild rapture during our walks, and read aloud to me de tached passages with energy and enthusiastic delight ; but he could not control his feelings enough for us to go through the " Orlando Furiosi" hand in hand, as we had marched to the conquest and liberation of Jerusalem . he soon lelt me to find my way, as I best might, out of the enchanted forest. The easy, flowing style of Afloat.) pre sent.; fewer difficulties than the elaborate stanzas of Tasso, and was propitious to his speedy way. U The Italian poets must have exercised great poetical influence over Shelley, and traces of it might, we think, be found in some of his compo sitions. We should have expected that Two would have charmed him more than Ariosto, and we surmise that the increased pleasure which Mr. Hogg speaks of was attributable in some degree to the acquired facility of inter preting the language. Scattered up and down through the biography are some desultory reminiscences of distinguished literary celebrities, which will amuse many readers who do not feel sympathy with Shelley. The following anecdote of Dr. Parr is entertain ing : Notwithstanding all his efforts, the Reverend Doctor Samuel Parr could not get himself made a bishop : in order, therefore, to spite the more fortunate Lords Spiritual and their archdeacons, be took it into his head to wear the cassock, which he maintained is, according to the canons, the proper dress of a priest. It is also generally worn at the two Universities, but never there without the gown, as lie wore it : moreover, the pushing priest. in his canonical costume, had the satisfaction, such as it was, of p .swing for a bishop in the streets, and with strangers. The doctor was in full flower at that time—covered with bloom, in- deed ; puffing himself, and being puffed, parading and praising himself at every point of the compass. The singn• larity of his clerical vesture attracted much observation and continual criticism : it might tie in accordance with the canons of the Church, of which nobody knew anything, but it was contrary to long-established usage, and with this all the world was acquainted. The Countess openly threatened to ask him, why he alone of priests wore the proper and peculiar dress of priesthood; but she was assured that it was a delicate in quiry, a sore point, and he must not be spoken to on the subject. However, she bad betted Bye guineas, it was re ported, that she would publicly ask him why he wore the cassock. Despising all friendly cautions, and in defiance of warnings and admonitions, she bodly persevered in her contumacious design. " Pray, Dr. Parr, how long have you taken to wear pet ticoats ?" she said to him one day at a large dinner-party. There was no answer, and the company laughed ; and thereupon the audacious lady triumphantly repeated the question in a louder voice. " Ever since your ladyship has taken to wear the breeches." She won her bet certainly, but she earned her live guineas: We had marked many passages for extract, but our citations will give our readers a faithful idea of the variety of contents in this work. Its desultory character and its want of arrangement are great drawbacks in the pleasure of reading it, and there are many pages in it which ought to have been omitted. For want of a proper table of contents and summary of the chapters, re ference to its pages is difficult, and the work is far too long. Mr. Hogg has intruded himself most unnecessarily on the reader, and one-third of the contents of the two volumes are ana on Mr. Hogg himself. Yet, in spite of these defects, we look forward with much interest to the future volumes. The Catechism of Positive Religion. Translated from the French of Auguste Comte. By Richard Congreve. London : J. Chapman. WHATEVER value may be attached to Positive Philosophy as a theory professing to supersede all other systems, and to be the flower and con summation of human science, those who have studied it could hardly have failed to be startled at the slight provision it apparently makes for some of the deeper needs of our nature—its slender recognition of the purely spiritual side of humanity. In the words of one of its critics, "the problem of moral evil is left a dark and " cheerless mystery; while the anticipations of " the good are all buried in the sepulchre of a "stern and rugged materialism." When we have passed from the "metaphysical" to the "positive" stage of science, and have _ ve conse-