The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-13 00:00:00

LITERATURE

The Dublin Review. No. VII. New Series.
Burns, Lambert, and Oates.
Judging merely from the current number of the
Dublin Review, we might confidently assert that this
old-established organ of ultramontane opinion is
qualified to take rank side by side with the ablest of
its contemporaries—with the Edinburgh, or with
the Quarterly. But, let it be understood at once
that we speak not here simply because of the
impression produced upon our minds by an exa-
mination, and that, moreover, a very careful exa-
mination, of the individual number here submitted
to our opinion. We speak not of Number Seven of
the New Series, but of the New Series itself. We
speak of the Dublin Review as it has now for
very nearly two years been appearing under its
present entirely new and certainly vigorous
management. Whosesoever may be the directing
hand that has at length contrived to rouse
this once eminent, though latterly little more
than respectable periodical from its late pro-
tracted torpor—it is certainly the hand of one espe-
cially well qualified to conduct a first-class quarterly
as a first-class quarteily ought alone to be con-
ducted. Under this new direction, the Dublin has
re-entered the literary arena like a giant refreshed.
It evidences its capacity, now, if not to hold
its own against all comers, at any rate to
sustain any test of competition that might be ap-
plied to it in the way of a mere comparison of its
literary capabilities with those manifested by the
very ablest of its immediate contemporaries. The
Edinburgh, the Quarterly, the Revue des Deux
Mondes, need not disdain henceforth to recognise in
the Dublin Review (as the latter is now conducted)
a " brother in arms and rival in renown" among
the foremost organs of public opinion ! Among
the organs of all parties, creeds, or divisions—Whig
or Tory, Catholic or Protestant; Evangelical or
Ultramontane. Able, however, though the New
Series of the Dublin has been conspicuously almost
from its very commencement about a year and three-
quarters since—No.Vll., the particular number here
under notice, is so far exceptionally good that it is
certainly the most varied in its contents, the widest
in its range, and the boldest in its outspeaking. Even
when we are the least disposed to coincide with it in
the conclusions at which it arrives, we are constrained
to acknowledge the ability with which its argument
is conducted. Of this fact, the seventh article in this
seventh number affords, to our thinking, a rather
notable illustration. Its theme is "Thiers' Waterloo :"
and it is a theme upon which the particular reviewer
by whom it has been penned expatiates, we are
tempted to say, with equal eloquence and perver-
sity. Everything is regarded by him, doggedly,
determinedly, from one point of view. The bowl
of his argument, so to speak, has a quite obvious
bias from its very starting point. And in tra-
versing the space which intervenes between that
starting point and the predetermined goal it
is so manifestly and (again we must say it) so
perversely bent upon reaching from the very moment
of its setting forth—the writer knows nothing
whatever, from beginning to end, of (that path to
a celestial El Dorado once dreamt of by Dr. Newman !)
the via media ! Not, for him—as a student of Eng-
lish History, of French history, of European history,
the benignant influence emanating from a sense of
the juste milieu. His prejudices and predilections
are always in extremes—even when, as the
facts go, they might be seriously said to be
in extremis. He has no cognisance whatever
apparently of any middle course. He can
recognise no other possibility in the pursuit of
his argument than the going either to the right
hand or to the left. Nay, whichever of those two
sides might be typified as the side of England or the
side of France (otherwise, in those days, Napoleon)
is for him, for the time being, the Right side! Even
though it were put after the paradoxical fashion of
the rhyming celebrant of that famous " Rule of the
Road" which declares—
"lf you turn to the left, you are sure to go right
If you turn to the right, you go wrong !"
It is positively amusing to see how pertinaciously
the Great Emperor is pronounced, at every
individual step, at every turn, in every
particular, to have been entirely and abso-
lutely in the wrong—his opponents, equally as
a matter of course, being always, invariably, com-
pletely, in the right—whatever happens. In this there
is no mincing the matter. And we are expected by
the writer, with a thoroughly good appetite and a
thoroughly good digestion afterwards, to swallow
everything here presented to us, horse, foot, and
artillery ! The object of it all being simply to
invalidate the account of the 18th of June,
1815, as penned in what is, by the Dublin Re-
viewer, tersely particularised as " Thiers'
Waterloo." However—the result is such—with
ourselves at least that so much, too much,
is here said, and written, and argued, to this end
that we rise from a contemplation of the Dublin
Reviewer's view of what is termed Thiers' Waterloo
with a stronger conviction than ever, that there is
more truth in Thiers' account of Waterloo than
we are fit the first blush naturally will-
ing to admit as Englishmen ! And, besides
this, that there was less of blundering on
Napoleon's part, in his conduct of the cam-
paign of Waterloo, while there was, at the
same time, a vast deal more of treachery towards
him on the part of faithless and trusted followers
of his, statesmen like Fouche, soldiers like Grouchy,
than the adulators of the Modern Scipio are
naturally disposed to allow. The ability with which
this particular paper, however, is written through-
out, is, we repeat, conspicuous ; though it is an ability
marred, as we maintain, by its almost ludicrous
one-sidedness. Among the other very miscella-
neous articles constituting the bulk of this new
number of the Dublin Review, there is a very
brilliant one upon an admirably well-chosen theme
for an Essay in a Quarterly, to wit, "Madame de
Maintenon." That pious, gifted, and illustrious
woman, of whom Lord Macaulay has so truly and
wittily remarked that she had so little romance in
her temper, while she had so much in her life !
Francoise de Maintenon, born in a prison (the
prison of Niort) in 1635, dying if not in a
palace, at the least, in a palatial convent (the con-
vent of St. Cyr) in 1719—widow of the buffoon-
poet Scarron, wife of King Louis XIV., that Great
Louis who during the chief part of his long reign was
Lord Paramount of Continental Europe ! Surely
a noble and a most suggestive subject for any
thoughtful reviewer's consideration ! Although the
critic's estimate of Madame de Maintenon's career
and character closes here at a distance of
some two-and-twenty years prior to the actual
period of her death,,leaving her when she was no
more than sixty-two years of age, she who survived
until she was eighty-four—up to the time here
descanted upon, the argument, we may say, is
full and exhaustive. " Rio's Shakspere" is an-
other reviewer's theme, and, in common with the
two others already mentioned, will be found to be
of very general interest.' Another paper of some
ability is the one relating to the " University Ques-
tion." Nevertheless, what we may emphati-
cally call the characteristic articles of the num-
ber have, after all, yet to be mentioned—two
of them especially being arguments of profound
interest and peculiar excellence. First and fore-
most, the opening paper of the number, a sin-
gularly eloquent, though no more than a merely
tentative, exposition of " Holy Scripture in its
Catholic Aspects." Few readers of the Dublin, we
conjecture, will fail to recognise the master-hand
that has with such an easy grace summoned so many
and some of them such eminently suggestive beau-
ties from the pages of the Breviarum Romanum.
The other article here alluded to, as one of almost
kindred excellence, is the ninth, a paper within the
comparatively narrow compass of which will be
found comprised an impressive epitome of the
career of the foremost Roman Catholic subject
of the Crown of these realms the fore-
most, not simply by reason of his ecclesiastical
position among his co-religionists, but view-
ing him solely in his character as a Roman
Catholic. It can hardly be forgotten how very
pointedly this fact of Cardinal Wiseman's pre-
eminence among his co-religionists in England was
indicated only the other day—quite incidently, it is
true, but, for that reason, none the less pointedly—
world-famous
by Dr. John lienry Newman, in his