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

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-

quently left the " theological" epoch far behind
us, the tendency of our minds to form theolo-
gical notions is not thereby eliminated ; the
same craving to look beyond the mere order of
visible nature which supplied the debased savage
with his fetish, or made the imaginative Greek
see Dryads in the groves and an Apollo in the
sky, still exists and demands satisfaction. For
this necessity, therefore, Positivism, if it aspires
to embrace the whole of human nature, must
attempt to provide; and, having in its Philoso-
phy absorbed man's contemplative element, and
in its Politics shown him how to occupy his
active powers, must finally include in its sphere
his faculties of emotion and belief; by furnishing
him with a Religion.
Mr. Congreve, who once promulgated some
notions about the Roman empire which history
unaccountably omitted to confirm, and who has
since given his countrymen some advice about
India and Gibraltar which they have somehow
neglected to follow, has now come forward to
attempt a performance in which two or three
writers of note have met with but indifferent
success. In spite of Mr. Lewes's lively exposi-
tion, and Miss Martineau's closely-packed com-
pendium, it may be reasonably doubted whether
the adherents of Positivism in England are
numerous enough to fill a good-sized family pew.
Even Mr. J. S. Mill, though he derived a good
part of his " Sociology " from M. Comte,
fuit in parentem splendid mendax, and recoiled
from the application of his instructor's principles
to the practical art of Politics. When a system
which appeals to its wished-for disciples, in virtue
of its rational character, does not succeed in
reaching them by means of their rational faculties,
it does not seem a very hopeful task to try and
gain admission for it by the avenues of sentiment
and belief. However, Mr. Congreve, who appears
to have that sort of courage which would lead
him to wear a brown hat in Friesland, or propose
the health of Dr. Bernard at a Tuileries banquet,
has come forward as a forlorn hope, to induce us
to accept Positivism by showing what an excellent
substitute it is for Christianity. Because we
refused to take it when we were not satisfied
with our existing philosophies, he expects us to
take it when we are satisfied with our existing
religion. The volume before us consists of " a
Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion,
in thirteen systematic conversations between a
Woman and a Priest of Humanity," and unfolds
in their order the theory of Religion, the
worship, the doctrine, and the regime or mode of
life, private and public, which Positivism ordains.
The following passage expresses clearly enough
its general purport:—

The imaginary beings, whom religion provisionally in-
troduced fur its purposes, were able to inspire lively
affections in man ; affections which were even most power
ful under the least elaborate of the fictitious systems. The
immense scientific preparation required as an introduction
to Positivism, for a long time seemed to deprive it of any
such valuable aptitude. Whilst the philosophical initiation
only comprehended the order of the material world, nay,
even when it had extended to the order of living beings, it
o 'old only reveal laws which were indispensable for our
a!tion, it could not furnish us with ar.y direct object for an
e 'during and constant affection. This is no longer the
oise since the completion of our gradual preparation by the
introduction of the special study of the order of man's
existence, whether as an individual or as a society.
This is the last step in the process. We are now able
to condense the whole of our Positive conceptions in the
one single idea of an immense and eternal Being, Humanity,
destined by sociological laws to constant development
under the preponderating influence of biological and cos•
mological necessities. This, the real Great Being, on
whom all, whether individuals or societies, depend as the
prime mover of their existence, becomes the centre of our
affections. They rest in it by as spontaneous an impulse
as do our thoughts and our actions. This Being, by its
very idea, suggests at once the accred formula of Posi-
tivism :—Love as our principle; Order as our basis; and
Progress as our end. Its compound existence is ever
founded on the free concurrence of independent wills. . . .
Such a Supreme Being is more within the reach of our
feel►ngs as well as of our conceptions, for it is identical in
nature with its servants, at the same time that it is supe-
rior to them. As such it more powerfully excites them
to an activity, the aim of which is its preservation and
amelioration.

Now that the veil is lifted from the shrine, the
reader, it is to be feared, may experience a slight
disappointment. How can "Order" be a basis,
and how can " Progress " be an end ? Progress
must have an end, or the word has no meaning.
And there is something about the " Great Being "
which damps one's religious ardour, and which
nn one, certainly, but a bona-fide Realist of the
middle ages would be competent to appreciate.
But then a mediaeval realist would only appreciate