The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-26 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

Biography is the predominant subject in the one hun-
dredth number of the North British Review. There is a
notice of Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, a contribution
touching Walter Savage Lander, a review of Veitch's
Sir William Hamilton, and an account of Ludwig Hol-
berg. Very pleasant reading all these are, and
especially fresh and interesting is the notice of
Holberg, the founder of Danish literature. Up to
the eighteenth century - Heiberg was born in 1634—the
Danes had no national literature. They could indeed boast
of their ancient treasures, but they were more properly
Scandinavian than Danish. In modern times intellectual
barrenness settled upon the country. Some men wrote
in Latin, others of rank repudiated their native language
and wrote in French and German ; but nobody seems
to have written well. The literary food of the middle
classes up to the time of Holberg consisted of meagre
sermons, chronicles, and ballads. It was reserved to the
son of an army officer to achieve an immortal fame as a
comic dramatist---in which department he yields, in the
opinion of many persons, only to Plautus and MolVre—
and at the same time to found a Danish national litera-
ture. How Holberg's family were reduced to beggary,
how lie wandered about in different parts of the world,
how hardly he struggled, and how temperately he lived,
how he achieved a great fame and fortune, are all detailed
in the course of an interesting narrative which is only
too brief. His iniluence was of the most salutary kind.
One of the chief objects which Holberg contemplated in
all his writings was the diffusion of culture through the
whole mass of the people. Not a little to his credit is it
that he claimed to be an instructor in ethics. Add to these
great qualities the merits of founding a Danish literature
and of purifying the Danish language, and the good work
done by Holberg may be appreciated. The article on Sir
William Hamilton is an able summary of Professor Veitch's
able biography, from which we are for the first time learning
the career of one of the leading British philosophers. Be-
yond doubt the Professor has done his work excep-
tionally well. Those who care little for logic and meta-
physics—and they are many--will find this life of Sir
William Hamilton one of the most interesting of biogra-
phies. The life of the philosopher is, as the reviewer
says, the life of a man great in his domestic simplicity
and worth, and Professor Veitch contrives to keep
metaphysics as much as possible in the background. We
have not space to notice this biography in detail ; but
one portion of Sir William's history throws some light
on the management of the Literary Pension Fund, and
deserves to be well known. Sir W. Hamilton was
never a man in very easy circumstances—philosophers,
indeed, never are ; and, with the view of ekeing
out his very limited income, some of the Conservative
party exerted themselves to get him a pension. Lord
John Russell, who was Premier in 1846, replied,
however, that the miserable fund had been well-
nigh exhausted. He could offer Sir W. Hamilton only
£lOO. But this sum the philosopher thought an unfair
recognition of his merits, and, therefore, he respectfully
declined it. Being advised that he was wrong, he expressed
himself grateful for the offer, but thought that the grant
ought not to be published without explanation that it
could be no larger, otherwise it might appear that this
was a full recognition of his claims. But Lord John seems
to have taken offence at the first refusal, and no answer
was returned to this application. At last, in 1849, a
pension of £lOO was granted. Application was made for
an increase after Hamilton's death. But it met with no
success. Lord Palmerston, though the application was
backed by some of the most eminent names in the country,
"had not the money." But he had the money to give
£3OO a year to Professor Wilson, coupled, as the reviewer
says, with the "most gratifying" expression of his lord-
ship's sentiments towards the illustrious man who had,
more than any writer in Britain, exerted himself to make
Whig principles and Whig statesmen contemptible. But,
then, did not his lordship like to bring Whig principles
into contempt? It is a painful story, but it is merely one
item of the numberless difficulties which await literary
men in general, and philosophers in particular. The
article on Walter Savage Lander is noteworthy, chiefly
because the reviewer disposes of the poet's extraordinary
actions by the belief that he was of unsound mind. The
conclusion is a not improbable, and it is certainly an
acceptable one. To get rid of Landor's painful career
by pronouncing hin, mentally affected is a gratifying
resource. The article on Henry C. Robinson is a light
and gossippy review of his diary, suitable to the diary
itself. A review of Lecky's book treats the historian of
European morals rather hardly. Geological Time is all
very well as an argument in favour of Sir W. Thomson's
theory of the world's age ; but the style of dealing with
Professor Huxley is too personal. The opening article is
on Dr. Hanna's " Life of Christ," and is an excellent
resu»tcs of the numerous Lives of our Lord which have
made their appearance of late years in England, France,
and Germany. The writer justly chews no mercy to that
shallowest and most unscientific of critics, Rtnan. Need
we add that the last article of this very good hundredth
number is on the Irish Church Bill.

TILE

" QUARrEttLY REVIEW.

There can, I suppose, be little doubt as to the author-
ship of the first article in the Qitartcriy Review. The
renders of the fnmou.e article on the Talmud, which
.Rppeared about eighteen months ago, will remember that

its author shortly afterwards started for Egypt and the
Levant, and will have noticed the announcement of his
recent return. This article is evidently the first fruits of
Dr. Deutsch's visit. For th.ongh " The Eastern Chris-
tians " has at the head the book written some time ago
by Mr. Arthur Arnold, formerly the Athens correspon-
dent of the Times. now the• editor of the Echo,
it is not once referred to, but the whole article
is a narrative of what the writer saw with his
own eyes. It is a narrative, in fact, not a
review. And a very sad narrative it is. The Eastern
Christians are split up into numerous sects, all hating
each other, and differing only in the intensity of their
hatred. Nor is this all. Some are greedy, others cunning,
others lazy, others all three, and not one of theni is worth
the compassion which is so abundantly I:estowed in
England he "oppressed'' Christia, ~,ets of the
"Moslem tyrant." If anyone still believes that the
Mahometan is a despot, and the Christian a martyr, let
him read this article, and he will be abundantly unde-
ceived. The Copts of Egypt are the best or the least bad of
the lot ; and of these Eastern Christians, as of the others,
Dr, Deutsch says, "We recommend our
..own Western
Christians to love their brethren at least wisely, before
they love them, perhaps, too well."
" Scientific versus Amateur Administration " is one long
and heavy indictment against self-government, as shewn
in our poor law, our railways, our municipal insti-
tutions, our administration of justice. It is some-
what startling to find the quarterly organ of

Toryism denouncing amateur magistrates. We are told

that they were all well enough in the old days, when the
parson or the landlord was the only educated man in the
neighbourhood, and when the law was much less complex
than it is now. But in these days we need men trained in
legal habits, men who make the law a profession, and have
therefore thoroughly mastered it. In a word, the Quarterly
advocates paid magistrates against unpaid J.P.'s. Cor-
porations, boards of guardians, railway boards, are treated
with even less courtesy than the country justices. The
fundamental error at the root of our local management
and government is, that we are endeavouring to apply a
system (admirable in the days of scattered populations and
small towns) to a nation of thirty millions living

in huge cities. In the United States this error
is carried even farther, and the result • is such
shameless corruption in all departments that Americans
themselves are taking alarm, and asking what is to be
done.

The reviewer of Sir John Coleridge's "Life of
Keble" tells the story of the life pleasantly enough, but
gives no new facts. The article is written from the
Anglican point of view, by one who believes in a Eucha-
ristic presence, but not in that local material presence
which is held by Mr. Bennett and others of the nec-
Catholic school. The reviewer (are we wrong in guessing
him to be the Bishop of Oxford?) &hews his sympathies
by the passing remark that all the principal seceders from the
Oxford school to Rome—Newman, the two Wilberforces,
Manning, Dodsworth, Faber, and Anderdon, had been
brought up in the "Evangelical" school
The reviewer complains that Sir John Coleridge has
not made use of more materials. There was Keble's corre•
spondence with Newman and with Pusey, neither of which
stores has been resorted to. The book is made up almost
entirely of the correspondence with the author. No one
supposes that this arises from any desire on his part to
bring his name prominently format d.
"But the damage to the work r:aches far beyond this.
It imparts to Mr. Keble throughout these pages a mono-
tony of thought, feeling, expression, and view, which is
the inevitaVe consequence of giving, the reach and
compass of his intellectual life, the is of that
life to one mingle friend whom he knew thurotighly, and
to whose pitch of mind he, for very love, when in direct
commtuncatiop with him, always attuned his own. The
consequence that we have .a perpetual repetitiun of
Keble a la Coleridge, and a great lack of Kebioae nut tird."
The concluding paragraph of this critique is worth
quoting :

"Such he (Keble) was ; so he lived amongst us; so
he passed away from us. Never aiming at acquir-
ing influence, he exerted it in the highest measures on
everyone who came within his reach, and, widely beyond
his immediate sphere, upon the Church at large. He
took a resolute part in all the most stirring controversies
of his time ; and yet no one could ever point to a word of
his written or spoken which had inflicted (me needless
wound upon anyone opposed to him. He gave England's
sacred literature the high boon of " The Christian Year."
He gave England's Church the learning of a deep divine,
the love and trust of a loyal son, the labours of a devoted
priest, and the pattern of a saint; and he died, as he had
lived, the vicar of Hursley."

Yes ; and that last fact will ever be a scandal and
seproach against the dispensers of Church patronage,