The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-16 00:00:00

THE PRESS, tTANUARY 16, 1858.

new regime, for the new voters will be actuated
by different motives
and pursue differentone
in-
terests to the present ten-pounders. As
instance, it will be the interest of a five-pound
constituency to do away with indirect taxa-
tion, which at present eats up one•third of their
incomes, and substitute direct taxation in its
place, since from it they will altogether be
exempt, their small fortunes not bringing them
within the scope of any workable minimum of

assessment.
We think it therefore probable that the
Whigs would rather join the Conservatives
than the Democrats, if the option we have
mentioned were fairly proposed to them
We doubt whether our author's scheme
would have so good a chance. The principle
of his scheme is the recognition of the in-
equalities of influences in society. This he
calls the timocratic principle. He proposes
to give the franchise to all orders of men who
possess social influence, on that ground alone,
irrespective of any other, and as nearly as
possible in proportion to the degree of in-
fluence they possess. Barristers, physicians,
and engineers, and in general the members of
all learned professions, are to have a definite
voice in the Administration; and skilled
artisans are to have votes, which are to be
denied to ordinary workmen. Now, excepting
that his scheme is more complex, and is based
on less tangible grounds, we do not believe it
would in practice differ much from a simple
property-graduated franchise. A man's social
influence is, if not doubtful. certainly dis-
putable, if he has not managed to acquire
property or income ; and where a ground of
preference cannot be justified to the vulgar by
vulgar methods, it will be found very difficult
to reconcile them to it. A learned weaver or
a philosophic shoemaker will very naturally
question the equity of a law which gives a
political superiority over them to a brielless
lawyer or an unfeed doctor; and if the prin-
ciple is to be carried out, as our author pro-
poses, to the recognition of social influences,
even when separate from any supposed intel-
lectual as well as from any property status,
then we shall certainly introduce into the arena
of politics the paltry rivalries and hatreds of
cliques and coteries. Besides, those whom
this timocratic principle would endow with
votes, although fortune or merit has not en-
dowed them with property, have the same
anti-indirect taxation instincts as the five-
pound voters, with, we will suppose, more
acuteness to detect and a more important
position in society to enable them to wive
effect to their wishes.
Perhaps the highest praise we can bestow
on Mr. Lorimer's book is that it is eminently
suggestive. If too abstract in its teaching, too
much conversant with the politics of- the
schools, too little with those of the world, it is
at least suggestive of practical lines of thought
which may be applied to existing questions.
The spirit pervading it is on the whole emi-
nently Conservative; and in the attempt to
reconcile Conservatism with Progress the
author addresses himself to one of the most
important topics of the day.

Merope. A Tragedy. By Matthew Arnold.
London: Longmans.
MR. ARNOLD has many claims upon the atten-
tion of the public, which are too generally
recognised to demand enumeration here. His
opinion upon any literary question is entitled
to great respect; and we cannot doubt but the
preface to his new tragedy will be read with a
disposition to allow full weight to his argu-
ments. On the acceptance or rejection of
these depends our estimate of the tragedy
itself ; and we have, therefore, thought it better
to lay before our readers in limine so much of
the preface as may acquaint them with the
Professor's own reason for undertaking a
classical drains. :
I am not about to defend myself for having taken the
story of the following tragedy from classical antiquity. On
this subject I have already said all which appears to me to
be necessary. For those readers to whom my tragedy
will give pleasure, no argument on such a matter is re-
quired ; one critic, whose tine intelligence it would hive
been an honour to convince, lives, alas' no longer : there
are others, upon whom no arguments which I could pos-
sibly use would prxlace any impression. The Athenians
fined Phrynichtts for representing to them their own suf.

rerings : there are critics who would fine us fur represent-
ing to them anything else.
But, as often as it has happened to me to be blamed or
praised for my supposed addiction to the classical school in
poetry, I have thought, with real humiliation, how little
any works of mine were entitled to rank among the genuine
works of that school; how little they were calculated to
give, to readers unacquainted with the great creations of
classical antiquity, any adequate impression of their iurm
or of their spirit. And yet, whatever the critics may say,
there exists, I am convinced, even in England, even in
this stronghold of the romantic school, a wide though an
ill-informed curiosity on the subject of the so-called classical
school, meriting a more complete satisfaction than it has
hitherto obtained. Greek art—the antique—classical
beauty—a nameless hope and interest attaches, I can often
see, to these words, even in the minds of those who have
beet. brought up among the productions of the romantic
school ; of those who have been taught to consider clas-
sicalism as inseparable from coldness, and the antique as
another phrasi for the unreal. So immortal, so inde-
structible is the power of true beauty, of consummate
form : it may be submerged, but the tradition of it sur-
vives : nations arise which know it not, which hardly
believe in the report of it : but they, too, are haunted with
an indefinable interest in its name, with an inexplicable
curiosity as to its nature.
But however the case may be with regard to the curiosity
of the public, I have long had the strongest desire to at-
tempt, for my own satisfaction, to come to closer quarters
with the form which produces such grand effects in the
hands of the Greek masters; to try to obtain, through the
medium of a living, familiar language, a fuller and more
intense feeling of that beauty, which, even when appre-
hended through the medium of a dead language, so power-
fully affected me. In his delightful " Life of Goethe," Mr.
Lewes has most truly observed that Groeihe's" Iphigeneia "
enjoys au inestimable advantage in being written in a
language which, being a modern language, is in some sort
our own. Not only is it vain to expect that the vast majo-
rity of mankind will ever undertake the toil of mastering
a dead language, above all a dead language so difficult as
the Greek; but it may be doubted whether even those,
whose enthusiasm shrinks from no toil, can ever so tho-
roughly pens into the intimate feeling of works composed
is a dead language as their enthusiasm would desire.
I desired to try, therefore, how much of the effectiveness
of the Greek poetical forms I could retain in an English
poem constructed under the conditions of those forms;
of those forms, too, in their severest and most definite expres-
sion, in their application to dramatic poetry.
The question at issue is certainly among
the most interesting which can be presented
to the lovers of classical literature. Can this
" curiosity on the subject of the so-called
" classical school" be better gratified through
the medium of a dead or a living language?
And here we feel how limited is our own
province. We do not perceive that either
theory is necessarily at variance with any of
the laws of either taste or composition. It
would almost seem a question to which no
very decisive answer can be returned, and to
admit of different solution by persons of
different temperament. We shall, however,
state to which side we believe the balance of
argument to incline, and justify. as far as we
can, our dissent from Mr. Arnold's view.
In the first place, may we not say of this
" antique classical beauty" that the language
is a part of it? May we not doubt how far
the " form" can be separated from the mate-
rial without injury? Certainly it is the two
together by which that " nameless hope, inde-
" finable interest, and inexplicable curiosity"
have been generated. The embarrassments of
a dead language may he compared to the diffi-
culties and dangers of penetrating to remote
countries. Yet the curiosity and interest at-
taching to the Chinese or the American
Indians was little satisfied by a visit to the
Chinese Exhibition or Mr. Catlin's Ojibbe-
ways. It was still felt that those difficulties
and dangers must be undergone if we would
fully comprehend either the mysterious civi-
lisation of the one race or the rude grandeur
of the other. The interest wo felt in them,
derived from the report of eyewitnesses, per-
suaded us to visit their representatives. Their
representatives alone would never have per-
suaded us to visit them. In like manner, we
cannot believe that Mr. Arnold's " Merope,"
though it may prove interesting to persons
already acquainted with classical literature,
would ever lead those who are unfamiliar with
it to seek out its treasures for themselves.
His own ideas upon this point are at all events
completely contradictory of those which have
hitherto been entertained by poets who were
also scholars. I try to obtain. he says, " through
" the medium of a living, familiar language,
" a fuller and more intense feeling of that
" beauty which, even when apprehended
" through the medium of a dead lan-
, " guage, so powerfully affected me." Stu•
dents have generally been told that they

65

will obtain through the medium of the ori-
ginal language a fuller and more intense feel-
ing of that beauty which, even when appre-
hended through the medium of a translation,
so powerfully affected them; an.l the dif-
ference between Mr. Arnold's poem and a
translation, though we admit it to be ail that
he claims, is scarcely perceptible beside its
difference from the old Greek.
But, whether Mr. Arnold be right or wrong
in this fundamental idea, it seems to us that
tragedy is nearly the worst form he could have
chosen for its exposition. In the first place, the
present condition of dramatic poetry in Eng-
land is one strong impediment to the success of
his design. But more than this, between
particular schools of poetry, and the con-
ditions of the national mind under which they
flourish, there must surely be a close affinity.
The conditions may change, and with theta
the power of producing a kindred literature ;
while the admiration of mankind for the latter
may still continue. Admiration is often mis-
taken for the power of reproducing something
similar to the admired object, and we cannot
but fear that such is the error into which Mr.
Arnold has fallen. The best Greek tragedies
were interwoven with those awful religious
traditions which had not yet lost their hold
upon the popular heart. As they declined,
tragedy declined with them. It was not so
much because Euripides had less dramatic
power in himself, as because the old material
was slipping from his grasp, that he fell below
the standard of his predecessors ; and the
admiration, and even preference, accorded him
by his contemporaries are much akin to the
preference which the dramatists of. the Re-
storation once enjoyed over Shakespeare.
The latter, like .eEschylus and Sophocles,
wrote when the old superstitions and the new
civilisation were first coming into contact; the
former, like Euripides, in an age of novel, and
therefore fashionable scepticism. The present
age may be an improvement on the Caroline,
but has not regained the simpler faith of the
Elizabethan era. The popular mind, what-
ever its craving after Greek art, is not attuned
to the Greek drama. Nor have we generally
much faith in an attempt to transplant the
poetry or sentiments of one age into
another.
—parvam Trajam, simulataque townie
Pergama, et arentem Xanthi cognounne Trojan

Agnosco
It is with the utmost reluctance, not to say
diffidence, that we apply these remarks to Mr.
Arnold. We have now, however, stated our
own view of the case. It is time to let Mr.
Arnold speak through his own performance.
The following is his account of the plot :
Messenia was at this time ruled by Melantbus, a de-
scendant of Nelms. This ancestor, a prince of the great
house of Lotus, had come from Thessalv, and suc-
ceeded to the Messenian throne on the failure of
the previous dynasty. Melanthns and his race sere
thus foreigners in Messenia, and were unpopular. His
subjects offered little or no opposition to the invading
Dorians : Melanthus abandoned his kingdom to Cres-
phontes, and retired to Athens.
Cresphontes married Merope, whose native country,
Arcadia, was not affected by the Dorian invasion. This
marriage, the issue of which was three sons, connected
him with the native population of Peloponnesus.
He
built a new capital of Messenia, Stenyclaros, and trans-
ferred thither, from Pylos, the seat of government : he at
first proposed, it is said by Pausanias, to divide Messenia
into five states, and to confer on the native Meseenians
equal privileges with their Dorian oonquerora. The
Dorians complained that his administration unduly
favoured the vanquished people : his chief magnates,
headed by Polyphontes, himself a descendant of Hercules,
formed a cabal against him, in which he was slain with his
two eldest sons. The youngest son of Cresphuntes,
-Epytus, then an infant, was
saved b
hi h
s moter, who
sent him to her father, Cypselus, the king of :Arcadia,
under whose protection he was brought up.
The drama begins at the moment wheni/Epytus, grown
to manhood, returns secretly to Messenia to take vengeance
on his father's murderers. At this period Temenus was no
longer reigning at Argos : be had been murdered by his
sons, jealous of their brotherin-law, Deiphontes : the sons of
Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, at variance with
their guardian, were reigning at Sparta.
To say that Mr. Arnold has produced an
excellent imitation of the Attic drama is very
slight praise to a gentleman in his position.
In all external respects it is complete. Yet
we must confess that, however greater in
degree, its excellence is the same in kind as
we attribute to May's continu'ttion of Lueau,
or Rapin's of the Georgics. We have selected
the following passage from the " discovery .

. •
66 THE PRESS, JANUARY 16, 1858.
3,'Are
lhias cow,.
—;th the
his
1ing0....
Reda
_xue,
'..ets 01 L..-
- 41":4 01.11 b to,
--Nw box, tu,

scene of the play, where Merope is about to
mill her sleeping son, who has come from
Arcadia in the guise of a messenger with the
!feigned intelligence of her son's death. She
acts under the belief that the youthful mes-
senger is himself the murderer :
[htssopE advances towards the skeping Emus, with the
axe uplifted. At the same moment ARCAS retiorna.
ARCAS ( to the Chorus).
Not with him to council did the King
Carry his messenger, but left him here.
[sees Mr.aops and Xrrrus.
0 Gods ! . . .

MEROPZ.
Foolish old man, thou spoil'st my blow I

What do I see? . . .

Therefore no words t

KZUOPE.
A murderer at death's door.

A murderer? . . .
XEROPE.

And a captive
To the dear neat-of-kin of him he morder'd,
Stand, and let vengrauee pass !

AlicAs,
Hold, 0 Queen, bold I
Thou knotest not whom thou etrik'st. . . . .

I know his crime.

Unhappy one ! thou strik:;-----
MEROPE.
A most just blow.
ARCAS.

No, by the Gods, thou slay'st--
xsuom.
Stand off!
anus.

Thy son !

The fleet, desperate hunter,
The sout.hful Areas, born of Zeus,
His Seeing mother,
Transform'd Cellist°,
Unwitting fullow'd—
And rais'd his spear.
Turning, with piteous
Distressful longing,
Sad, eager eyes,
Mutely she regarded
Her well-known enemy.
Low moans half utter'd
What speech refus'd her;
Tears courted, tears human,
Down those disfigued
Once human cheeks.
With unutterable foreboding
Her eon, heart-stricken, ey'd her.
The Gods had pity, made them Stars.
Stars now they sparkle
In the northern Heaven;
The guard Arcturus,
The guard-watah'd Bear.
So, o'er thee and thy child,
Some God, Merope, now,
In dangerous hour, stretches his hand.
So, like a star, dawns thj son,
Radiant with fortune and joy.
The play contains other fine passages, espe-
cially the account of the death of lEpytus and
Merope's soliloquy over the supposed mur-
derer, but still nothing to redeem it, in our
opinion, front the radical weakness under
which it labours, or to make us cease to regret
that Mr. Arnold should expend his great gifts
on what we cannot but regard as a crotchet.

Ah I . . . . [She lege the are drop, mid foils insensible.
How many readers will such scenes as these
conduct "to the pure ray of ancient light," as
Lord Wellesley expressed himself? It is, how-
ever, in the choruses that Mr. Arnold displays
big best powers. The following is really a
wonderful, and, if we may be pardoned the
paradox. an original, imitation of the
Greek :

Fifty Years' Reoolleetions, Literary and Personal.
With Observations on Men and Things.
By Cyrus Redding. Three Vols. London :
Skeet.

Mr. Redding is of Cornish extraction, and,
having been educated partly by his father and
partly at a school in the west, set out at the
age of twenty for London. Bath was then in
its glory ; Hounslow-heath was still
place where travellers cocked their pistols and
peered anxiously into the darkness ; Pitt was
just dead. The old coffee-house system still
lingered, not yet superseded by clubs, which
to Mr. Redding are " sullen and silent" insti-
tutions, and objects of natural aversion to one
who has " trifled with the cruet," and expe.
rienced in their full glory the narrow box, the
sanded floor, the alternate " chop" and " steak"
and the long pipe, not unaccompanied with
discussion of higher themes :

TICE CHORUS.

I often dined at the Mitre and the Cheshire Cheese ' •
Johnson and his friends, I was informed, used to do the
same, and I was told I should meet individuals who bad
met them there ; this I found to be correct. The company
then was more select than in later times...... The evening
was the time we thus met, when the day's business was
over. Few then, comparatively, lived at a distance from
their offices or shops ; if they did, it was mostly in
country residences, some way beyond the suburbs of town,
to which they repaired on the Satutday, returning on the
Monday morning...... The left.hand room on entering
the " Cheshire," and the table on the right on entering
that room, having the window at the end, was the table oc-
cupied by Johnson and his friends almost uniformly. This
table and the room are now as they were when I first us
them, having had the curiosity to visit them recently.
They were and are, too, as Johnson and his friends left
them in their time. Johnson's seat was always in the
window, and Goldsmith sat on his left hand.
But these places had their drawbacks :
The coffee-houses used to be crowded in the evenineq;
the conversation often generaL I believe the air in such
places to have been impure ; ventilation was little re.
garded. Many young men died early after their initiation
into a London atmosphere, who had come from breathing
the oxygen of the west of England, and that of the moun-
tain country of Wales in particular, especially those who
had a tendency to consumption, of which I remember
several painful instances among my acquaintances and
countrymen. I believe a London life to be much more
favourable to health now than it was then, nor do I state
my belief unreflectingly. Our improved mode of living
has increased longevity, for, after all, our climate cannot
be materially changed.

O Son and Mother,
Whom the Gods o'ershadow,
In dangerous trial,
With certainty of favour I
As erst they shadow'd
Your race's founders
From irretrievable woe :
When the seed of Lycaoa
Lay fo, lore, lay outcast,
Vallisto and her Boy.
What deep•grsw'd meadow
At the meeting valleys—
Where clear-flowing Ladon,
Moat beautiful of waters,
Receives the river
Whose trout are vocal,
The Aroanian stream—
Without home, without mother,
Hid the babe, hid Areas,
The nursling of the dells?
But the sweet-smelling myrtle,
And the pink-flower'd oleander,
And the green *gnus-entire,
To the West-Wind's murmur,
Rustled round his cradle;
And Maia rear'd him.
Then, a boy, he startled
In the snow-fill'd hollows
Of hi Cyllene
The white mountain-binds ;

To a great part of the present generation Mr.
Redding is, we believe, only known as the
author of the " History of Wines," and as a
prolific writer in magazines. But he has
been devoted to literature almost all his life,
has known many of the celebrities of the
earlier part of the present century, and has
had great opportunities of observation. Most
persons who have lived in the world fifty
years have something to tell, if they only
know how to tell it and the volumes before
us are by no means destitute of interest,
though they have failed in many respects to
meet our expectations. Mr. Redding does
not seem to have been in the habit of keeping
a diary, and dates are consequently scarce in
his pages. No one would wish a book of remi-
niscences to be formally arranged, but some
trace of method is desirable, if only to avoid
puzzling the reader, who cannot be expected
to take the trouble of verifying all the events
mentioned by reference to more exact autho-
rities. We are surprised, too, to find that a
writer so long accustomed to the pen as Mr.
Redding should have paid so little attention
to style. There is certainly less to complain
of iu the outset of the book, but the manner
of expression is everywhere careess—some-
times unintelligible, and sometimes approaches
vulgar pedantry. We meet with such expres •
sions as " attempts to reduce the liberty of the
"press to nihility"—" the individual to which the
" above correspondence alluded "—" my mind
" was not levigated " : such spelling as " ana-
" lize " and " censoriutn " ; and such sen-
tences as the following—" An incident oc-
" curred on seeing the sudden death of a lady
" in the newspapers to which it may not be
" amiss to make allusion" (vol iii. p. 54
" Irving cannot but be happy to have escaped
" from the intrigues of State affairs and the
" class of those whose polished manners only
" add a grace to the unseemliness of conve-
" nience " (ii. p. 350). The press has been
clumsily corrected, and some of the mistakes
are due to the printer, whose punctuation is
of the very worst, and renders many sentences
unintelligible on a first perusal. If these de-
fects have habitually characterised Mr. Red-
ding's productions, we can hardly wonder
that he has attained no higher rank or
greater emolument in his profession.
Still, he has something to say, and
though we cannot agree with most of his opi-
nions, the world will doubtless be grateful for
the traits he has in some instances added to
its conception of well-known characters, and
those who take up his volumes will probably
skim them to the end.

Or surpris'd, in the glens,
The basking tortoises,
Whose strip'd shell founded
In the hand of Hermes
The glory of the lyre.
But his mother, Callisto,
In her hiding-place of the thickets
Of the lentisk and ilex,
In ber rough form, fearing
The hunter on the outlook,
Poor changeling! trembled.
Or the children, plucking
In the thornishok'd gullies
Wild gooseberries, scar'd her,
The shy mountain•besr.
Or the shepherds, on slopes
With pale•spik'd lavender
And crisp thyme tufted,
Came upon her stealing
At day-break through the dew.
Once, 'mid the gorges,
Spray-drizzled, lonely,
Unclimb'd by man—
O'er whose cliffs the townsmen
Of crag-percli'd Nonacris
Behold in summer
The slender torrent
4 f Styx come dancing,
A wind blown thread—
By the precipices of Khelmos,

The following, though not exactly a literary
anecdote, is too good to be omitted :
I remember a country friend of mine had his pocket
picked of a handkerchief, and was grievously annoyed.
He regarded it as a species of reflection upon his own
vigilance. Determined to be revenged upon some of the
pickpocket tribe, he procured fish-hooks, and had them
fastened into the pockets of an old coat with the barbs
downwards. He, thus accoutred, sallied forth into the
Strand in the dusk of the evening. Amid a crowd at
Charing-cross, be felt a hand in his pocket, and giving
himself • jerk as he said to get the hooks well into the
rogue's flesh, he moved on with his prey closely following.
He then quickened his pace, giving every now and then
another jerk. In this mode, affecting no. to feel the fish
he had hooked, he led the knave clear of the crowd to a
bye street. " Now my fine fellow I have you, don't fish in
my pockets again."
He unbuttoned his coat to slacken the pocket, but in
vain did the thief endeavour to extricate himself, the
hooks were too deep in the hand, so my acquaintance took
out his knife, and whipped off the skirt of the old coat he
had used for the trap, and bade the pickpocket walk off
to a surgeon, as he thought he had been tolerably well
punished.

Mr. Redding, a native of Falmouth, and
conductor for some years of a Plymouth paper,
has much to say on the c►uelties practised in
the navy during the war, and corroborates all
we have heard of unjast courts-martial, and
of captains to serve under whom was almost
worse than death. Such matters gave a
"public-spirited editor" a fine field for expo-
sures. Jekyl at that time went the Western
Circuit, and there are so few anecdotes extant
•to justify his immense social reputation that
we are glad to see the following, slender as its
wit is :

I remember a good.natureti solicitor, who had a large
practice at Tavistock, and kept excellent claret, for whom
Jekyl was retained. This limb of the law wore an enor-
mous white cravat at all times. The witty lawyer began :
" Gentlemen of the jury, I am counsel in this case for a
gentleman well known throughout the county of Devon,
Mr. Frank NV—, remarkable in general for wearing I
pillow about his neck, but sometimes a bolster." I recol-
lect another case by which he set a jury in good humour.
An apothecary kept a villa near the town where he
practised; Jekyl contended he should have been at his
business. " Methinks, gentlemen of the jury, I see this
modern :Esculaoius retired to his Saline farm, cultivating
his plants with his spatula, watering them with his syringe,
and reclining under the shade of his Peruvian bark."

As we have intimated, Mr. Redding's opi-
nions on literary matters are hardly those
which will find favour at the present day. lie
appears to belong to the " classical" school ;
thinks Burke overrated ; gives Scott's poetry