The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-08 00:00:00

THE PRESS,

former, though fond of sport, have not been
sportsmen ; and the latter, though fond of
books, have not been famous authors. Now,
Wilson we believe really was both ; and hence
the peculiar originality of his works, and the
power of making so much and such high en-
tertainment out of subjects usually considered
the province of one or two minor novelists,
Bell's Life, and the Sporting Magazine. We
are never permitted to lose sight of the philo-
sophy of the thing. It is the Professor's
intense abomination of everything approach-
ing to egotism and subjectivity (if we may use
the term), and the healthy love of objective
nature, which sparkles in every dashing para-
graph, arid lends a charm to every mischievous
caricature which its mere piquancy would
never have afforded. It is this, we say, which
constitutes the distinctive excellence of his
writings, and makes us see that beneath his
broadest fun and most ludicrous exaggerations
he is still " pointing a moral" :

Finally, and to conclude (says he)—as our friend the
Hey. Terence Macgrath is wont to say, after preaching for
a couple of hours—what, it may be asked, are and ought to
be the principal objects of the Lake tourist? We answer,
eating and drinking. Scenery we hold is a subordinate
consideration. Such is the wise conformation of our
animal economy, that few persons of taste can feel happy
without four or fite meals a day. Poets and philosophers
generally require six.

Between the essays we have mentioned at
the beginning and end of the volume are
three literary ones. The first the famcus one
upon Tennyson—the second upon the Ameri-
can poet Bryant—the third on the poetry of
Ebenezer Elliott. A politico-ethical one upon
the punishment of death, and a memoir of
Admiral Blackwood, make up the list.
The review of Cullen Bryant is chiefly
valuable as a proof of Wilson's fairness and
candour and readiness to appreciate excel-
lence wherever he could find it. It is not
likely that with his violent national and anti-
Republican convictions he would have
praised an American poet more than an Eng-
lish one unless he at least believed he ha 4
very strong grounds for so doing. His obser-
vations on America and American literature
generally do him high honour. The review of
Ebenezer Elliott contains the following flue
portraiture of Crabbe

From first to last he loved all poor men—but most
ardently the men in blue ; from them he carried over—
transferred his affection to people in other colours—even
as fur as Quakers, though he was no great admirer of drab;
and comprehended in his affection all ranks up to a duke ;
but his heart to the last found itself most at home among
men of high soul but low degree, who people our stormy
shores in crowds. But he heeded not, in his kindliest
moods, whether their souls were high or low, provided
they had some strength—some character; and whatever
that character was, he saw it as if by intuition, and seer,
too, how it came to be what it was from circumstances
acting on nature, so as to produce infinite varieties of the
same class—the classes being numerous of that strange
creature—man. So attentive was he to circumstances,
that every tale of his is a picture of a life. No two tales—
and he has written hmelreds—but are as different as may
be ; and every one of them is at once so true to nature
that you believe it all happened, and a novel or romance.
We know not what is, if that be not genius. It is a mis-
take to think that he dealt only with the darker passions.
He was conversant with passions of all hues ; well he
loved emotions tender and bright; and of the virtues, none
so dearly as fidelity and truth—witness many a maid, and
wife, and widow, living and dying for lover's or husband's
sake, perfectly resigned with breaking or broken hearts.
And we know not what is, if that be not religion. He
pitied many sins—but some he abhorred; yet he pursued
with his hate the crime, not the criminal,—arol him he
left to remorse, the executioner who occasionally inflicts
capital punishment, but who in most cases uses the rack.
And we know lot what is, if that be not moral philosophy.
He knew all kinds of misery with a learned spirit—but
not an inhumane ; and lie has mapped them out in myste-
rious empires—in lines of blood and of fire. From the
turbulence, and the trouble, anti the terror he had so pro-
foundly studied, his own spirit was free, though they must
hare visited it, passing through without finding any abiding
place even in an abyss. So he could calmly, not coldly,
sing of desperate and fearful things, a looker-on of the
agonies, and a partaker but of the nature out of which
they grow. He read few books writ by man—but they
were among the best—the works of the great native
poets. His library was the Bible and the Book of Nature.
We could prove that—but must not now. Moreover, in
the art of poetry lie is a consummate master. 'renters,
Worth, Wilkie—each of them in his own art is a great
master too ; but in conception, in comprehension, and in
breadth and depth of colouring, Crabbe was greater
than them all three—could you conceive them all three in
one ;—and then, what is paiuting compared with poetry
So much by way of a short imperfect notice of the greatest
poet of the poor.

As for the essay on Mr. Tennyson, no bygone
(Maoism has auy chance of affecting the

1073

public estimate of his genius. We can per-
fectly understand the feelings with which
Wilson regarded him. But we look upon
Professor Ferrier's apology as wholly irrele-
vant and mistaken. " When this review was
" written," we are told, " Mr. Tennyson had
" published none of those grander and more
"finished compositions which have given him
" a place among the immortals." But in 1832
" Locksley Hall," the poet's own favorite, with
its long, deep, billowy music; the exquisite
grace and pathos of those most beautiful of
pastorals the " Gardener's Daughter" and the
" May Queen;" the passion of " tEnone," and
the philosophic pleadings of the " Two
Voices," had all been given to the world.
But Tennyson is a poet who to be fully appre-
ciated requires to be read for the first time in
youth, when the passions are just awakening,
when the heart is growing inquisitive, and
when all nature is suggestive of something
sweeter than we have yet known. What-
ever Wilson could admire he cordially and
honestly acknowledged, but his heart was
with the past, and he left it to younger critics
to do homage to the poet of their own genera-
tion.

The essay upon " Capital Punishment " is
thoughtful and carefully reasoned out, and
matches well with that upon " Popular Educa-
tion " in the preceding volume. The style of
his argument induces us to believe that had
he lived till now it is very likely he might
have come round to an opinion adverse to the
infliction of capital punishment in any case.
In the present essay he only argues against
the expediency of its infliction for any crime
short of murder, and points out with valuable
precision ani terseness the inutility of attempt-
ing to repress offences by sanguinary laws.
His arguments in favour of its continuance in
extreme cases are urged with little force, this
indeed not being the point at which his efforts
arc directed ; and he rather assumes the fact
that it is never likely to be abolishes', and that
it must therefore be justified, than endeavours
to find any foundation for it in reason or
theory. At the commencement of the essay
there is an admirable passage on reflecting
humanity in legislation. After showing that
in past times cruel punishments arose from
the revenge which Bacon has termed a wild
kind of justice, he proceeds :

In thus referring the origin of punishment to pas-
sionate sentiments, we at once explain its excess. Be-
cause it is the property of such passionate feelings to
justify to themselves their own acts. Offended justice and
offended power have this in common, that they never
question the extremity of their resentment. It will be
clear to those who inquire into such conditions of society,
that, constituted as the life of man there is, turbulent and
ungoverned, their spirit of understanding dark, and every-
thing new and indeterminate amongst them, they could
refer to nothing else but in the individual case to the
sentiment of the occasion ; that those impetuous dictates
of feeling to which they did refer performed a most impor-
tant set-vice ; for that, unless they had acted fearlessly and
vehemently under such impulses, there would have been
a total relinquishment of all government among them—
the worst state into which any society can fall. Therefore.,
when that state of society is come in which men deliberate
with reflective humanity, and strong in the knowledge and
experience of ages, upon their own legislation, they have
to separate entirely the history of punishment, as it may
exist among them, from the consideration of its principles.
For in one they see the natural resources of uninstructed
men ; but what they seek for themselves in the other, is
the highest wisdom of possible human government.

This spirit of reflecting humanity in legislation we
scarcely find, except in Christian Europe; and there not
till its latest ages. The diffusion of these humane senti•
ments has gradually abolished many modes of torturing
punishment, and has taken from the punishment of death
very generally the enormities with which it used to be
accompanied. But the softenings of justice are generally
to he ascribed rather to the natural influence of a milder
spirit, which revolted from shocking inflictions, than to
much study of legislators to conform their general laws to
the wisest principles. The fearful appendages—the
hideous ostentatious of the punishments, have dropped
away ; but the reconstruction of their codes upon the
wisdom which the age possesses, is a work yet to be done
—for most of them, yet to be begun. It seems as if great
progress indeed, both intellectual and mural, were required
to enable men to detach themselves in idea from the
system to which their minds have been moulded; and to
reform it according to the measure of their understanding
and feeling.

Our readers will easily see that the second
volume of essays contains a no less varied
fund of entertainment and information than
the first, and we recommend them to add it to
their bookshelves without delay.

1074

The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral,
and Metaphysical. By W. Fleming, D.D.
London : Griffin and Co.
THE design and execution of this "Vocabulary"
are both so excellent that we hope it may be
followed by other books of a similar kind.
Vocabularies of science would be especially
desirable, as, through the enlargement of the
boundaries of knowledge, new terms are con-
tinually introduced, of which sonic specific
explanation is needed. Terms which, when
first applied in special departments of pur-
suit, are purely technical are apt to come into
general use as those pursuits are extended ;
and this is more commonly the ease when the ,
pursuits are attractive in themselves, and
when the terms peculiar to them readily ad
mit of wider signification titan was at first
accorded to them. The language of philo-
sophy has on the whole been less extended in
m idern day than that of other sciences,
many terms which have lately come into coin-
nom use—as objective and subjective, analysis
and synthesis—having previously been well
e .tablished in our tongue Other words, how-
ever, now commonly used, have not found a
place in our standard dictionaries ; as exoteric
and esoteric, aesthetic, with such logical terms
as ci priori and (i postertort. It is a great merit
in this vocabulary that, while it gives the
signification of such philosophical terms as
are not found in ordinary dictionaries, it also
expressly defines the sense in which ell philo-
s )phical terms are used by the most exact
writers ; and it, will thus help to avoid that
m Aerial source of error which arises from
writers attaching widely different signifiea
tious to the same word. In proportion as the
language of philosophy becomes fixed, we
may hope that its reasoning will become more
solid. and its conclusions more certain. Dr.
Fleming is Professor of Moral Philosophy in
the University of Glasgow. He sustains the
reputation of his countrymen for metaphysical
acuteness, and, with pardonable partiality,
draws largely on the works of Scotch pro-
fessors for his definitions A few extracts
will show his plan, and the admirable manner
in which he has carried it out. Let us take
A priori and A posteriori :
A PRIORI, and A POSTERIORI.—" There are two general
ways of reasoning, termed arguments a priori and a poste-
riori, or according to what is usually styled the synthetic
and analytic method ; the one lays down some previous,
self-evident principles ; and, in the next place, descends
to the several consequences that may be deduced from
them ; the other begins with a view of the phenomena
themselves, traces them up to their original, and by de-
veloping the properties of these phenomena, arrives at the
knowledge of the cause."—King, Essay, pref., p. 9.
By an a priori argument a conclusion is drawn from an
antecedent fact, whether the consequence be in the order
of time or in the necessary relation of cause and effect.
By the argument a posteriori we reason from what is conse-
quent in the order of time to what is antecedent, or from
effect to cause. An individual may fall ender suspicion of
murder for two reasons: he may have coveted the de-
ceased's property, or he may be found with it in his posses-
sion ; the former is an a priori, the latter an a posteriori
argument against him.—Aristot., .llstaphys., lib. 5, cap. 11.
DEMONSTRATION.
Many other illustrative passages are given
from celebrated metaphysical writers ; so that
the person consulting the vocabulary is sure
to obtain both a precise and a comprehensive
sense of the signification of the term he refers
to, while the student may profitably examine
the book as an introduction to, or companion
of, his philosophical course. The word syn-
cretism will afford some idea of the learning
exhibited by the author in his explanation of
terms :
SYNCRETISM ( eTLOVITITIAO;, from I'vrxin7ifir, accord-
ing to Plutarch, 1)e Fraterno amore, to unite, like the Cre-
tans, when all the rival towns of the island united against
the common foe )—is opposed to eclecticism in philosophy.
Eclecticism (q. r.), while it takes from various systems,
does so on the principle that the parts so taken, when
bronght together, have a kind of congruity and consistency
with one another. Syncretism is the jumbling together of
different systems or part of systems, without due regard to
their being consistent with one another. It is told of a
Roman consul that, when he arrived in Greece he called
before him the philosopiiens of the different schools, and
generously offered to act as moderator between them, in
order to bring about an agreemect. Something of the same
kind was proposed by Charles V. in reference to the dif-
ferences between Protestants and Papists ; as if philosophy,
and theology, which is the highest philosophy, instead of
being a search after truth, were a mare matter of diplo•
macy or compromise—a playing at protocols. But Syncre-
tiAns does not necessarily aim at the reconciling of the
doctrines which it brings together ; it merely places them
in juxtaposition.