: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal No. 448 Volume 18 New Series July 31 1852 by Various Chambers Robert Editor Chambers William Editor - Periodicals Chambers's Edinburgh Journal

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Editor: William Chambers Robert Chambers

CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

BOOK-WORSHIP.

A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer genius; but in so doing they still belong to their own--they still wear the garb which stamps them as appertaining to a particular epoch. Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower and chief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as a link between the two generations of the past and the future; but of that future--so much changed in habits, and feelings, and knowledge--they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers, form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting.

In the present century, the French and German critics have begun to place this reverential feeling for the 'classics' of a language upon a more rational basis. In estimating an author, they throw themselves back into the times in which he wrote; they determine his place among the spirits of his own age; and ascertain the practical influence his works have exercised over those of succeeding generations. In short, they judge him relatively, not absolutely; and thus convert an unreasoning superstition into a sober faith. We do not require to be told that in every book destined to survive its author, there are here and there gleams of nature that belong to all time; but the body of the work is after the fashion of the age that produced it; and he who is unacquainted with the thought of that age, will always judge amiss. In England, we are still in the bonds of the last century, and it is surprising what an amount of affectation mingles with criticism even of the highest pretensions. It is no wonder, then, that common readers should be mistaken in their book-worship. To such persons, for all their blind reverence, Dante must in reality be a wild beast--a fine animal, it is true, but still a wild beast--and our own Milton a polemical pedant arguing by the light of poetry. To such readers, the spectacle of Ugolino devouring the head of Ruggieri, and wiping his jaws with the hair that he might tell his story, cannot fail to give a feeling of horror and disgust, which even the glorious wings of Dante's angels--the most sublime of all such creations--would fail to chase away. The poetry of the Divine Comedy belongs to nature; its superstition, intolerance, and fanaticism, to the thirteenth century. These last have either passed away from the modern world or they exist in new forms, and with the first alone can we have any real healthy sympathy.

One of our literary idols is Shakspeare--perhaps the greatest of them all; but although the most universal of poets, his works, taken in the mass, belong to the age of Queen Elizabeth, not to ours. A critic has well said, that if Shakspeare were now living, he would manifest the same dramatic power, but under different forms; and his taste, his knowledge, and his beliefs would all be different. This, however, is not the opinion of the book-worshippers: it is not the poetry alone of Shakspeare, but the work bodily, which is preeminent with them; not that which is universal in his genius, but that likewise which is restricted by the fetters of time and country. The commentators, in the same way, find it their business to bring up his shortcomings to his ideal character, not to account for their existence by the manners and prejudices of his age, or the literary models on which his taste was formed. It would be easy to run over, in this way, the list of all our great authors, and to shew that book-worship, as contradistinguished from a wise and discriminating respect, is nothing more than a vulgar superstition.

And the general reader, be it remembered, is virtually the age. It is for him the studious think, the imaginative invent, the tuneful sing: beyond him there is no appeal but to the future. He is superstitious, as we have seen, but his gods are few and traditional. He determines to make a stand somewhere; and it is necessary for him to do so, if he would not encumber his literary Olympus with a Hindoo-like pantheon of millions. But how voracious is this general reader in regard to the effusions of his own day! What will become of the myriads of books that have passed through our own unworthy hands? How many of them will survive to the next generation? How many will continue to float still further down the stream of time? How many will attain the honour of the apotheosis? And will they coexist in this exalted state with the old objects of worship? This last is a pregnant question; for each generation will in all probability furnish its quota of the great books of the language, and, if so, a reform in the superstition we have exposed is no longer a matter of mere expedience, but of necessity. We are aware that all this will be pronounced rank heresy by those who assume the style of critics, who usually make a prodigious outcry when a great author is mutilated, even by expunging a word which modern decency excludes from the vocabulary of social and family intercourse. This word, however--supposing it to represent the mortal and perishing part of an author's productions--belongs not to him, but to his age; not to the intellectual man, but to the external and fleeting manners of his day and generation. Such critics usually take credit to themselves for a peculiarly large and liberal spirit; but there seems to us, on the contrary, to be something mean and restricted in views that regard the man as an individual, not as a portion of the genius which belongs to the world. Yet, even as an individual, the man is safe in his entirety, for there is no project of cancelling the printed works extant in our libraries, public and private. The true question simply is: Are great authors to be allowed to become practically obsolete--and many of them have become so already--while we stand upon the delicacies and ceremonies of Book-worship?

OUR TERRACE.

London has been often compared to a wilderness--a wilderness of brick, and so in one sense it is; because you may live in London all the days of your life if you choose--and, indeed, if you don't choose, if you happen to be very poor--without exciting observation, or provoking any further questioning than is comprised in a demand for accurate guidance from one place to another, a demand which might be made upon you in an Arabian desert, if there you chanced to meet a stranger. But London is something else besides a wilderness--indeed it is everything else. It is a great world, containing a thousand little worlds in its bosom; and pop yourself down in it in any quarter you will, you are sure to find yourself in the centre of some peculiar microcosm distinguished from all others by features more or less characteristic.

About half-past nine, or from that to a quarter to ten, comes the postman with his first delivery of letters for the day. Our Terrace is the most toilsome part of his beat, for having to serve both sides of the way, his progress is very like that of a ship at sea sailing against the wind. R'tat he goes on our side, then down he jumps into the road--B'bang on the other side--tacks about again, and serves the terrace--off again, and serves the villas, and so on till he has fairly epistolised both sides of the way, and vanished round the corner. The vision of his gold band and red collar is anxiously looked for in the morning by many a fair face, which a watchful observer may see furtively peering through the drawing-room window-curtains. After he has departed, and the well-to-do merchants and employers who reside in the villas opposite have had time to look over their correspondence, come sundry neat turn-outs from the stables and coach-houses in the rear of the villas: a light, high gig, drawn by a frisky grey, into which leaps young Oversea the shipbroker--a comfortable, cushioned four-wheel drawn by a pair of bay ponies, into which old Discount climbs heavily, followed perhaps by his two daughters, bound on a shopping-visit to the city--and a spicy-looking, rattling trap, with a pawing horse, which has a decided objection to standing still, for Mr Goadall, the wealthy cattle-drover. These, with other vehicles of less note, all roll off the ground by a quarter after ten o'clock or so; and the ladies and their servants, with some few exceptions, are left in undisputed possession of home, while not a footfall of man or beast is heard in the sunshiny quiet of the street.

The quiet, however, is broken before long by a peculiar and suggestive cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, our black cat and familiar, has caught the well-known accents, and with a characteristic crooning noise, and a stiff, perpendicular erection of tail, he sidles towards the door, demanding, as plainly as possible, to be let out. Yes, it is the cats-meat man. 'Ca' me-e-et--me-yet--me-e-yet!' fills the morning air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline voices--for there is a cat to every house--and points thirty aspiring tails to the zenith. As many hungry tabbies, sables, and tortoise-shells as can get out of doors, are trooping together with arched backs upon the pavement, following the little pony-cart, the cats' commissariat equipage, and each one, anxious for his daily allowance, contributing most musically his quota to the general concert. We do not know how it is, but the cats-meat man is the most unerring and punctual of all those peripatetic functionaries who undertake to cater for the consumption of the public. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster, occasionally forget your necessities, or omit to call for your orders--the cats-meat man never. Other traders, too, dispense their stock by a sliding-scale, and are sometimes out of stock altogether: Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from year's end to year's end, and never, in the memory of the oldest Grimalkin, was known to disappoint a customer. A half-penny for a cat's breakfast has been the regulation-price ever since the horses of the metropolis began to submit to the boiling process for the benefit of the feline race.

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