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

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progress must from time to time be superseded,
remodelled, and put out of date by subsequent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 imaginary adventures, scenes
" rarely or never exhibited 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
pieces 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 comic sections 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