The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

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1
138 THE PRESS, FEBRUARY 6, 1858.
Conquerors. of Adversity would be those who have clung to
" What Bengal most wants," ho writes, "is him. We cannot imagine that the qualities
the pursuit of knowledge in spite of menial, labnenrgi
ressNineg
" easy intercommunication " : which in the space of a few years made Crom-
other uncongenial employments, depressing poverty or
Good roads should likewise be made at first from the well master of England had never shown dependence, confinement, persecution, diseese, or deficiency
principal place in each district to those in ite neighbour- themselves in any way up to the mature ago of any of the ordinary corporeal senses. The Conquer( '
of Business would include all who have made themselvier:
hood. These ought to be kept in repair. The inland
navigation ought to be encouraged. and every measure at which he entered into public life. Yet it is
conceivable that Cromwell might in another remarkable by their acquirements or achievements is
ought to be adopted, which, by rendering its use more literature or science while beset by the usually
easy, will make more perfect the communication from one age have passed his life without having had the
demands of what is called active life. Finally, the title of
part of this country to the other. opportunity of doing anything which could the Conquerors of Custom would take in all those who,
•
If these measures were adopted, the agriculture of Ben- make him known to posterity. Clive, if horn in their pursuit of knowledge, have had to surmount irupetli-
gal would not require the assistance of Europeans, in order ments interposed by the habits, fashions, or prejudices of
that it might be brought to a very sufticieut state of per- a lower rank of society. might have entered the
the society in which they moved.—Vol i. p. J.
army as a private, and have achieved no higher
faction.
distinction than that of being a courageous If, then, the mere love of knowledge, unac
We have already far exceeded our limits, cm.
, and will conclude for the present with one soldier. There are, in short, instances enough panied by higher gifts, is sufficient to over.
of men whose active qualities were not dis- come the chillness of poverty, the selfishness
more extract as illustrating his power in
played till the occasion called them forth to of wealth, the absorption of business, and the
detectin g
give us ground character. A few weeks after he had
• for believing that there have tyranny of custom, how should it fail to van-
been in India he writes of the natives : been many others whose qualities, for the want quish these obstacles when both the stimuli
The natives, as far as I have observed, are much mite ( f such occasion, were never called forth at all. we have mentioned are present?—when that
k represented. They are the most mischievous, deceitful something which men have agreed
But with regard to Literature we think the indefinable
race of people I have seen or read of. I have not yet met
case is different. We have no belief in the to call genius or inspiration is superadded to
with a Hindu° who had one good quality, even for the
• state of society in his own country, and the l'ilussultnans existence of dumb poetical genius. To assume a qualification sufficient of itself to lift its
are worse ;hen they are. Their meekness and mildness its existence seems, in fact, to be a begging of possessor from obscurity ? If there is any
do not exist. It is tine that the feats which have been the question. What right have we to pre- truth in what we have urged, it seems difficult
performed by Europeans have made them objects of fen.; sutue that any one is a " mute inglorious to believe that the world has really lost, unless
but wherever the disproportion of numbers is greater than Milton " when roved to be a
he can onl ybe pr by early disease or accident, the services of
their dealings and conduct among themselves they are the Milton by ceasing to be mute ? The afflatus any poets or philosophers whose fame it
i most atrociously cruel people I ever heard of. There are which makes a poet—whether he be a Stmt• would have been disposed to preserve. Wu
two circumstances in this country which must occasion ford deer• stealer or a Bideford postman— strongly suspect that we have had all in this
cruelty, and deceit, and falsehood wherever they exist. does not, like the talents of active life, wait line that there was to have. Mr. Carlyle
• highs
ands
low,s i
occasioned a contempt
by of
some death
o f in
the the
tenets natives
of , s
tor occasion to show itself. It seeks for "on would probably go still further and deny the
the religion of both sects, which makes that punish- casion," or rather everything is an occasion to existence of "inglorious Cronswells.'"rhe
. ment a joke, and I may say an honour, instead of it If, under whatever circumstances, a mind age, he says, somewhere or other, is popularly
what it is in our country. All our punishments almost takes simply that view of life and nature supposed to call out the Man ; but it often
are the same, excepting imprisonment and whipping, which which is taken by all the average minds around calls long enough—and no Man comes l Ott
occasion loss of caste, and are, therefore, reckoned too it—if the earth and its familiar objects do not the other hand, it may be said that there is
severe fur the common crimes for which we inflict them
at home. The punishments of the Miissulman Govern- appear to it sometimes a .poFei—a regular crop—of great
• nienta are precisely in the same state. The Hindoos don't Apparelled in celestial light, men ; and that many who would have been
care fur them, excepting they occasion loss of caste ; and The glory and the freshness of a dream, eminent in a weaker time, arc lost in the
the Mussulmans are now so nearly Hindoos, that they
we have a right to suppose that it is a-anti ng splendour of their contemporaries.
have not a better effect upon them. Secondly, there is no
,i punishment for perjury either in the Hinuloo or Mussel-
in that higher and deeper sense which in The work before us, which has suggested
man law. Their learned *Ay that God punishes that crime, every age has been held to distinguish the
the above remarks, is a new mid enlarged
and therefore man ought not; and as oaths are notwith- poet from the herd of common men. But, it
edition of a very interesting book, on a sub-
standing administered and believed in evidence, no man is
mav be said, what if the conditions of external
/ safe in his person or property, let the government be ever - j
so good. The consequence of all is, that there is more act which can never become obsolete, so long
life are so unfavourable that no noble qualit
Y as human nature retains the desire for dis-
. perjury in the town of Calcutta alone than there is in all can be expected to spring up under their Unction and the capacity for improvement.
Europe taken together, and in every other great town it is influence ? What if the dull routine of daily In his
present issue, which is 'whited and
• the same. toil, and the communion with natures debased bound in a style entitling it to the honours of
by the struggle for mere existence, harden the the library shelf, Mr. Craik probably aspires
The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. finer feelings, and dull the mental eye to all to the suffrages of a class of readers who iii.
By George L. Craik. A New Edition, the subtler aspects of the universe? To this their pursuit of knowledge have had to en-
further question the volumes of Mr. Craik counter none of tha difficulties which his
Revised and Enlarged. Two Vols. Londeu :
will, we think, supply us with an answer. The pages describe. We trust that in so doing he
Murray " pursuit of knowledge " in some form or may not miss that much larger class whose
THERE are few passages in the whole compass other all will admit to be a necessary charac- endeavours after "more light" are likely to
of English poetry more frequently quoted or teristic of literary or scientific genius. We
be materially cheered and strengthened by
referred to than those stanzas of the " Elegy cannot imagine any creative intellect which the contemplation of such examples as they
in a Country Churchyard" in which the poet would not feel both curiosity and sym pa- will find here recorded. The classification set
imagines, among the nameless graves before thy with the labours of its predecessors. We forth in the extract we have given is not
him, the dust of bards. heroes, or statesmen cannot imagine a man writing poetry without
formally carried out, but is here and there
whose undeveloped qualities poverty and oho having read poems, or making steam-engines
referred to, and on the whole appears toler-
scurity have circumscribed within the narrow without having attentively observed other ably exhaustive. The nonadherence to a
limits of a village career. The thought itself, kinds of machinery, or trying to " solve the rigorous system has this advantage, that the
.i, -I derived probably from the less-known lines of " riddle of the universe " without feeling dissa- volumes may be taken up at random, and some-
Waller,— tisfied with, and therefore having become ac- thing interesting always found. There is a
Great Ctesar, on the mountains bred, quainted with, the manner in which others charm about such narratives which is exceed.
k A flock, perhaps, or herd had led : have solved it. In such cases, then, we have ingly attractive, and the author, as we have
He that the world subdu'd fuel been two causes tending to elevate a mind out of its said, has exhumed the memory of a great
)" 4.
But the best wrestler on the green, native obscurity—one, the desire of know- many obscure, though heroic, seekers of
i, i.
has been expanded by Gray into verses which ledge as knowledge ; the other, the conscious truth.
become a part of our common language, ness of ability to make an addition to that find that 'd r. Craik omits Rauch the sculptor
which live in the hearts of thousands, and knowledge. Now, in the volumes before us truthWe are surprised, by the way, to
.
—originally a footman—as well as the elder
- which are no doubt quoted almost every day there figure numerous persons who are seldom Stephenson, from his list. But it is, on the
0 4 by numbers of persons who have never if ever heard of, and who would probably be whole, a very complete one, and no work
troubled themselves to reflect upon the amount new to most of our readers. Who is familiarly could be better adapted for placing in the
of truth which they really contain. To us, we acquainted with the names of Castalio, Nieho •
hands of the young.
i
confess, it has always appeared that, in ap- las Saunderson, Samuel Parkes, Edmond
,
5,,,,.. plying the doctrine of " the great might-have- Stone, or Jerome Stone—the latter of whom
been "to literary genius, Gray has put for- might have been taken as the prototype of the
The Ethics of Aristotle. Illustrated I with
ward a principle which, if not positively false, Pedlar in Wordsworth's " Excursion" ? Yet
Essays and Notes by Sir Alexander Grant,
i as we suspect it is, is at least incapable of they all, like a great many other of Mr. Craik's Bart. Two Vols. Vol. 1., Essays. Lon-
`` being proved true. With its application to heroes, had one thing, and but ono thing, in
don : J. W. Parker and Sou.
the active, as opposed to the intellectual, part common—the love of books, and the attain-
of our nature—to military or political, as op- ment of learning under one or other of the
posed to philosophical or poetical, qualifica- discouragements which are enumerated in the
tions, we should not be disposed to find fault.
There can, indeed, be no question but that the
gifts of practical or administrative energy may
appear to lie dormant because the sphere following paragraph :--.
The various individuals who, in every age of the world,
have distinguished themselves by their devotion to intel-
lectual pursuits in the midst of more or less unfavourable TIIE Essays before us are a most valuablehaild.
skilful exposition of the latest stage of p
of
sophical opinion upon the great subject
which they treat We do not mean to deny to
Sir Alexander Grant the merit of Original
.s
thought: on the contrary, every page contains
within which they are exercised till they be- circumstances might perhaps be conveniently enough corn•
prehended in four classes; to be designated, for shortness i
come known to the world is altogether oho •the-
Ai Aristotle has now been so l
evidence of an intellect at once logical and
piercing. But
sake, the Conquerors of Ignorance, the Conquerors of
genre. A man may take as much trouble, and Adversity, the Conquerors of Business, and the C onquerors 1:
loommi
glillor
investigatedanyentirely that
viewthere
upison.
display as great an amount of sagacity, in of Custom. Under the head of the Conquerors of Igno-
% managing his business or his estate as he ranee would come all who, by their own efforts, have
• i emancipated themselves from ignorance, history. We must add that Sir Alex.
I, would do if placed at the head of a depart- whether by or his
partially or wholly ellunling themselves, or by seeking the ordinary points either of his philosophy
ment ; but unless he has embition, whichs c
anyo. r ee
ofy
and finding instruction notwithstanding the diacourne•e• and tam 1-le freely
surely is not a necessary attribute of practical ment or opposition of friends, the difficuaies arising from whole, perfectly frank
antler's language upon the subj
ect.. is, on the
4 genius, he may find his original occupation
sufficient, and the world will never hear of
hhhibiLs
•- • scantiness of means, a neglected youth, or any of the other
mules which usually produce permaneut illiteracy. The
...---........,..v.,----........,....
, ....e. ,- - • acknowledgesthe which he has
sources upon
•-•-s_ drawn, and the debt which he owes to mune. .
• . -
~,_,____.