LOW AND HIGH LITERATURE.
4 CLOW " literature has received a great impulse in the repeal of the paper duty. The various penny miscellanies, which boast so vast a circulation, are already beginning to find halfpenny competitors, and when the extra duty actually disappears in October, we may expect to see the latter burst into full bloom, and the former stretch their diverting energies to the utmost in order to hold their ground. With the advent of October, those hideous smears of shadow by which the Halfpenny Journal attempts to convey to us a more vivid, impression of "Lord Lionel" and "Lady Edith" than we could gather from the impassioned accents and scornful laughs of which the type informs us, will doubtless pass into the clearer and more intelligent woodcuts of the Parlour, or London, Journal. These, again, may perhaps be transfigured into that eccentric mixture of copper colour, red, and blue, which appear to constitute, at least in this class of periodicals, the ideal of chromo-lithographic art. It is likely that such scenes as the duel at dawn between the Court page and Baron Lolme in St. James's Park, as recently depicted in Rey- nolds's Miscellany, will be delineated with less of that sketchy breadth which suggests a romp among half-formed wizards rising out of a witch's caldron, and that the Lamias, Eudoras, and Nereas who haunt these pages nearly indiscriminately, may be promoted in the early autumn, provisionally at least—until it has been fairly tested how the outlay answers—to something much more like the pretty women whom the text describes. At all events, it is nearly certain that the stream of new paper will be accompanied by a general scramble of penny and halfpenny miscellanies for the patronage of the same class which now peruses the cheap illustrated journals to which we have alluded. And we cannot well evade, therefore, some consideration of the relation between this " low" literature and the corresponding phase in the more costly literature above it. And this relation is really worth careful attention. We are apt to speak of the vulgarities or the disgraceful aspects of this class of periodicals as if they were in a depth far below our own world. In intellectual respects they are, no doubt, calculated for a very much lower standard of taste and cultivation. They are to the productions which fascinate our owu class, very much what the gin-shop is to the club ; they deal in much more coarse and ugly wares ; the writers have not the artistic skill to infuse their stimulants delicately into the veins of true literary creations ; but we can see little evidence that the true moral calibre, tried by any fair or thoughtful standard, is really lower. In subject and grain the novels in the penny mis- cellanies are not so bad as those which amused the middle and higher classes a few generations ago, in the hands of Richardson and Smollett, without incurring even the least opprobrium : and though, of course, the genius of a great artist transmutes the coarsest mate-. rials into something of an altogether different kind, which has a far less pernicious influence on the minds of those who are capable of appreciating its imaginative and intellectual aspect, there is every reason to believe that the majority of the fine ladies and gentlemen who shuddered and laughed over the great novelists of the last cen- tury were far more fascinated by the intensity of the flavour than by the insight of the artist. It is only over those to whom literary genius is visible, that it exerts any protecting spell against the coarse materials which it moulds. And those who read Walpole's high- peppered horrors or Smollett's gross scenes merely for the pepper or the grossness, might as well have studied " The Band of Midnight," " Eudora,"' or the " Court Page."
There is, indeed, but one fundamental difference between the low literature of the penny and halfpenny miscellanies and the literature which is now multiplying so fast in our shilling magazines and three- volume novels; and this is to us a difference almost pathetic. While the former, or low-class journalists, are obliged, in order to suit the taste of their readers, to keep one department for the vulgar wants and mean interests of their readers—the Answers to Correspondents— and another for their highflown but quite as vulgar idealism in the tales of horror and passion, the more cultivated tastes of the educated classes permit, and even require, a fusion between the two, so that we see our own small and vulgar emotions, and even the very gossip of our own circles, transmuted into more or less idealized shapes, and endowed with a certain halo of fictitious interest. The lower classes of novel-readers don't want to see an image of themselves ; they are weary of the meanness of their lot, and wish to see a mag- nified image of their own desires and passions rather than themselves. But still they cannot get away from the natural craving for gossip and personalities. To read of the dark tragedies of the " House of Drerewater," or the feats of the " Band of Midnight," will not gratify all the feelings which these tragic and passionate narratives arouse. After reading with thrilled hearts that in the immediate neighbourhood of Leicester.square such scenes as the following may still take place, the readers of these miscellanies still long to hear how the same oracular voice which narrates them will judge their own more paltry romances of the kitchen or the shop :
"The Colonel fastened the scarf round Lord Lionel's eyes. He had scarcely done so, when, to his astonishment, the young man felt himself sinking through the floor of the assembly. He seemed, for about five minutes, slowly, and almost imperceptibly, to descend ;• and at the expiration of that time he felt a hand un- fastening the bandage, and looking about him once more, found himself alone with the Colonel in a small, but luxurious apartment, lighted by a pair of large wax candles and a blazing fire. "Three sides of this apartment were covered by shelves, upon which were ranged rows of volumes, bound alike, numbered and dated. Beneath the books the space was occupied by innumerable pigeon-holes, into which papers were thrust. At one side of the fireplace there was an elegant little desk of walnut wood, covered with scarlet morocco ; on the other side, a cabinet, also of walnut wood, furnished with numerous drawers, each of which was fastened by a steel lock of peculiar construction. In this apartment, as in the amphitheatre, Lord Lionel was utterly unable to discover any door or window. "The Colonel stood with his back to the tire, and his hands in his pockets.
" This, my dear Lord Lionel,' he said, reassuming his natural manner, which was celebrated for its vivacity, ease, and polish, 'this is my snuggery. Pray, sit down and help yourself to a glass of wine,' he added, pointing to an exquisitely cut crystal jug, which was filled with claret. ' Yon can make yourself perfectly at home here. We shall not be disturbed by any of the brotherhood ; those who have to work to-night know their work, and will do it.' " ' Strange,' said Lord Lionel, thoughtfully. ' You tell me this, and we are here, two men of the same height, the same size, both unarmed. What if I were a scoundrel, and were inclined to take advantage of my position, and possess my- self of some of the secrets of your order?' " The Colonel laughed long and loudly, and looking at Lord Lionel with a smile of consummate scorn, he said, pointing to the books,—' Those volumes are written in cipher, not one character of which is known to any creature but my- self. Again, you are now in an apartment from which it would be impossible Sr you to escape without my aid. lou might rot here before you would ever die- cover the secret means of ingress and egress. If that does not satisfy you, look at yonder cabinet' " They were seated opposite to each other at the table, some paces from the cabinet of which the Colonel spoke. Lord Lionel fixed his eyes upon the myste- rious article of furniture. As he did so Colonel Bertrand leaned with his elbow rather heavily upon the table; the several drawers of the cabinet burst open with a metallic sound, and at each of the openings there appeared the muzzles of a row of pistols. At the same moment the cabinet slightly revolved, in such a manner as to place the muzzles of the pistols exactly opposite to Lord Lionel Montford. " ' You said I was unarmed, Lord Lionel,' said the Colonel, still smiling; you were rather hasty in your conclusions. Now, my lord, listen to me while I reveal to you the services which I shall expect you to render to the brother- hood.'" Such conceptions, truly grand as they are, do not yet completely satisfy the ideal side of their readers mind. The awe-struck admirers still wish to connect their own lives in some modest way with the magnificent qualities described in Lady Edith or Lord Lionel. Is that hair really auburn or not, which cruel rivals tell " Victoria " is simply red? Who so competent to judge impartially as the great
minds which have delineated the beauty of Eudora, the dark pur- poses of the Princess Pezzilini, and the noble heroism of Malcolm ? Hence on the last page of the paper which contains that affecting narrative, we have the following series of adjudications from the editor's impartial mind :
"Hera.—Victoria D. (auburn).—Eugenie D. (flaxen).—Fannie D. (bright golden).—Kate 1). (golden).—Fred (very light brown).—Polly Lee (very light brown).—Emily (brown).—E. Howie (black).—Bose (very light brown).—Fanny (brown).—Charlotte (dark brown).—Alice Maud (brown).—A. Hungate (light brown).—Ellen (red).—Annie (light brown).—Marian (red).--Sophy E. (brown).
— M. Cleveland (brown).—Harriett J. (dark brown).—Pretty Jane (lightlwown).
— Clara (brown).—Day (dark brown).—A. May (auburn).—Ladybird (black).— A. Box (dark brown).—Lmin S. (auburn of fine but not very soft texture).— Ada (decidedly red).—Amy and Lille (golden brown).—Lily G. (dark brown).
"0. I. C. A.—We really do not know what advice you require. You have fallen in love with a young person, and you do not think your addresses would be unacceptable. Then, by all means, declare your feelings at once."
We may smile at the vulgarity of such appeals, but there is to our minds something almost touching in the rapid transition from the high-flown grandeur of these trashy tales to that last page of the journal, where you see a little real humanity peeping out in the shape of a genuine superstitions belief in the oracular power of the " veiled prophet" who has thus stirred up the horrors and the sickly senti- ments of his readers' hearts. There is evidently something of the nature of the confessional in the relation between these editorial shadows and the shopmen and shopwomen who pore over their pages. Young men confide their highest ambitions to that anonymous breast, and receive cautious encouragement with grateful hearts. To the most scrupulous consciences the absolution of the editor appears to give a certain measure of relief. His scientific dictum is apparently accepted as final. The terse replies of the "eminent lawyer," who is "retained by the editor for the purpose," seem to be thought trustworthy on the most important legal questions ; and on the whole we have no doubt that the most popular page in the paper is that in which the various replies—dictatorial, bland, scornful, as occasion re- quires—are given to the various perplexities of vulgar humanity. What these penny journals separate into two distinct departments, that the one may be fuller of glare and shadow, and the other of direct personality, our higher-class novelists blend into a single picture, in which there is no direct introduction of personal egotisms, but at the same time a constant running fire of criticism on the minutest traits of social life and manners, and often even a very morbid preference for the petty deceits, and jealousies, and mean- nesses of life. Instead of answering concrete Fannys and Janes like these penny periodicals, in such terms as the following-
" FANNY and JANE.—You are very foolish to suffer the remarks of your com- panions about your figure to annoy you. Perhaps they are envious of your supe- rior proportions"—
Mr. Sale, Mr. Thackeray, and even Mr. Trollope are always sketch- ing the most delicate pictures of imaginary Fannys and Janes, who are quite as foolish and quite as much annoyed by jealous rivals. Take away the improbability, the horror, and occasionally the gross- ness, from Reynolds's tales, and blend the passionate elements then left with the kind of characters revealed in the "answers to corre- spondents," and we have exactly the same moral calibre—though in a lower rank of life—which we find in the Cornhill Magazine, or &ley Farm; and not so low as that of Temple Bar. No doubt it is far better to have living characters, however mean and paltry, than unalloyed stimulus to the nervous system. No doubt the mere attenuation of these exciting elements in order to suit them to the taste of educated people and lovers of the natural, or rather, perhaps, of "the probable," is in itself a great gain. But we doubt if it is more than an intellectual gain. To tame down your romance till it looks like possible fact, and to inlay your sentiment with the genuine paltriness of human nature, is truer, and therefore better, than to feed the mind alternately on the coarsest food and the most ardent spirits. But then the former satiates much less easily than the latter. No one can read about brigands and profligates for ever. The very art of our better novelists reconciles us to the smallness and trickiness of the life which they portray ; and we question whether Mr. Sala's production, which forms the link between the penny miscellanies and the better magazines,— and whose subordinate contributors are so absurdly high-flavoured that a page or two of "answers to correspondents" would, we think, increase the relish to any who can read such productions,—does not do more real injury in reconciling his readers by the fumes of his unsavoury genius with the ruffianism of the world, than such writers as " Lady Caroline Lascelles" the noble authoress of the " Band of Midnight," can ever effect.
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