DUBLIN' AFTERNOON LECTURES.*

THE eight essays in this series of the Dublin Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art address themselves with a single exception to literary topics. The attractive style in which they are written is in most instances united with solid merit in the thought and matter. From this praise we must, however, except Professor D'Arcy Thompson's History and Philosophy of Story-Telling, and somewhat less unreservedly the Right Hon. Joseph Napier's lecture on Old Letters. In the latter it was apparently the pur- pose of the author to illustrate the feelings awakened in a man's mind on reperusing, after a long interval, the familiar letters of old and almost forgotten friends. In his attempt to unfold this idea, the author, though occasionally suggestive, is not very successful. He commences in a jerky, disconnected manner, as though he experienced no little difficulty in coming at his subject, and when, at length, he has succeeded in overtaking it, it is fre- quently threatening to slip again from his grasp. The leading idea, is in fact, but scantily and imperfectly worked out: The lecture, however, possesses what, under such circumstances, must be called the merit of being by far the shortest in the volume.

The least satisfactory contribution in the whole collection, however, is Professor D'Arcy Thompson's History and Philosophy of Story-Telling, in which we discover little history, and less philosophy. Professor Thompson's style is distinguished by the vices of pedantry, affectation, showy meaningless rhetoric, and tedious, insipid amplification. We cannot with equanimity listen to a scholar who, not to mention more serious inaccuracies, repeat- edly speaks of the " brain " when he means the mind, and who for Goethe (Gothe) invariably writes " Goethe." Professor Thompson overloads his style with similes, metaphors, and epithets which, even when just in themselves, are often out of place, or add nothing to the meaning. In the first half-dozen pages of his lecture there are almost as many faults of style or errors of fact as • The Dublin Afternoon Lecturer on Literature and Aft. Fourth Series. .London: Bell and Daldy. 1867. there are sentences. A Professor of Greek in the present day should know enough of philology to preserve him, when descanting on the origin and development of language, from laying it down as a general principle that "our two-fold sex would lead us insensibly to categorize all outward inanimate objects under two genders ; for, upon close examination, it will be found that a neuter, or third gender exists no more in language than in animated nature." Such a statement as this might be excusable in a Frenchman, ignorant of all languages but his own, in which all nouns not masculine are feminine. But it comes at least a century too late from the mouth of a professional philologist. To confound gender with sex is to confound grammar with phy- siology. If, as the Professor says, "our two-fold sex would lead us insensibly to categorize all outward inanimate objects under two genders," how is it that as a matter of fact men have so rarely been

led to do so? It is still more unfortunate for the Professor's asser- tion that we End whole families of languages in which "our two-

fold sex" has had nothing to do with the matter at all, in which quite a different contrast became the principle of division. Thus, among the native American languages we find the distinc- tion of gender entirely absent. The Red Indian conceived all the objects around him as either living or lifeless ; and accordingly in American grammars we find names are classified not into masculine, feminine, or neuter, but into living or dead, a division at least as philosophical, if not poetical, as that with which we are familiar in the Aryan languages, and which the Professor apparently regards as universal. The principal defect of the essay, however, does not lie in its occasional inaccuracy on minor points, but in the fact that it throws little or no light on its subject, or on anything else but the author's vanity. Space forbids us to trail- . scribe any of the finer bursts of eloquence with which the lecture abounds. The following comparatively prosaic sentences we quote because they appear to contain the essence of the Professor's views in regard to the philosophy of story-telling :— " The substantial part of a good dinner may render a man lazily and sentimentally philanthropic during the period of digestion ; but only the liquid part, and that when taken in perfection as to quality and, in regard to quantity, a trifle beyond moderation, can heighten his intellec- tual sensibilities or expand his intellectual capacity" (p. 170).

• And, later in the discourse, we find the following still less ambigu- ous exposition of the same doctrine :—

" Silenus typifies the coarser effects of the fermented grape juice, and Dionysus that magic influence of the same which opens the heart of man, loosens the tongue, lends new crimson to the cheek, new brilliancy to the eye, new inspiration to the brain To this day, whenever we hold the wine-glass betwixt our eyes and the lamp light, be the con- tents either simmering, cool Champagne, or luscious port, or warming sherry, or soft, silken Bordeaux, or red, potent Burgundy, or thin, dry asmanshanser, or imperial Tokay, still, by their sparkle and their colour divine, we recognize in them all the children of the San God and the genial Mother Earth."

We must do the Professor the justice to say that we do not doubt that his practice is in accord with his theory. With the two exceptions on which we have just dwelt, all the essays in the volume must be pronounced excellent. Mr. G. E. Street's lecture on "Architecture in the Thirteenth Century,"—the only one on Art in the volume,—contains within its limited compass the best introduction to the subject that a layman could desire. Mr. Street very justly says :— " I notice everywhere that though educated men generally have a fair knowledge as to the facts of architecture they very rarely attempt [or are able, he might have added] to form any definite opinion as to why one building is admirable, another blameable. one noticeable for the perfection of art displayed in it, another for the imperfection."

Mr. Street not only endeavours to point out the principles on which just views of architecture depend, but he desires "to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the cause" which commands his own, to make them "enthusiastic about thirteenth-century art, and to promote in some degree its accurate revival at the present day." These purposes, the lecture, from its simplicity and clear- ness, is well calculated to effect. Mr. Street has not indeed the poetic eloquence of Mr. Ruskin, but he is an interpreter of art, whom every cultivated man will read -with pleasure and profit.

Every classical scholar will feel indebted to Dr. Russell, the President of Maynooth College, for his interesting lecture on "Palimpsest Literature and the Labours of Cardinal Angelo Mai in connection therewith." Within the limits prescribed it would be difficult to render a completer account of the subject than is found in this gracefully written little monograph.

It would take us too far were we to enter into a detailed cri- ticism of the three admirable papers which we find, here upon three of our modern English poets. Bishop Alexander's essay on "Matthew Arnold's Poetry," — already reviewed in these columns, — and Professor Ingram's lecture on " Tennyson's Works" are specimens of poetical criticism of a very high order ; while the Right Hon. Thomas O'Hagan's lecture on "Coleridge," in addition to giving a rapid and attractively written sketch of his chequered life, criticizes for the most part with great justice not only his merits as a poet and a philo- sopher, but also his character as a man. On some points, indeed, the views of the lecturers differ from ours ; but in the main there prevails throughout their papers a delicate sense of the beauties and defects of the poets, often a searching appreciation of their deepest thoughts and loftiest inspirations, particularly in the paper by Bishop Alexander—which not rarely throws new light on their writings and conceptions, and from which no reader can fail to reap both pleasure and profit.

The only remaining lecture of which we have yet to speak is that entitled "The History of the English Sonnet," by the Arch- bishop of Dublin, than whom there are few persons we should more willingly hear on such a subject. Of the paper before us we may say that it sums up almost everything which a cultivated reader should know of the history of the Sonnet in England. Com- mencing with an explanation of the laws observed in this kind of poem, Archbishop Trench proceeds to mention the most successful English writers of the Sonnet, from the sixteenth century, when Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, introduced it from Italy, down to the most recent period. In the limited selection of examples quoted in the course of the lecture, there are but one or two which the reader will not .recognize as long-prized gems. It is notorious that no form of versification has encountered so much opposition or found such ardent champions as the sonnet. Metastasio once said of it :—

" In this accursed Procrnstes bed one never feels at ease. Our Tasso has won great honour with his Jerusalem, but among his nine hundred odd sonnets he has not left one that is worthy of his name. Ariosto has just two or three somewhat above mediocrity. In Petrarch, who quite specially devoted himself to the sonnet, I cannot call more than five or six unexceptionable. It is a kind of poetry in which a restricted mechanism overrides all other merits, and in which men of fruitful genius fare much worse than those of barren limited intellect.'

Among the Germans, who first adopted it a century later than the English and Spaniards, the sonnet was not received without favour. Yet Goethe, in his sonnet on the Sonnet,—so cha- racteristically contrasted with that of our own Wordsworth on the same subject,—says, with Metastasio's words haunting his memory,—

" Nur Weiss ich bier mich nicht beqnem zu batten,"

—although a line or two before, in complete opposition to the elegant Italian's opinion, he had said,—

" Denn then die Beschriinkung lässt sich lieben, Wenn sich die Gaiater gar gewaltig regen."

In answer to the objections and prejudices entertained against the sonnet, Archbishop Trench very justly and forcibly says :-

"I am persuaded that this form of verse is capable of being, has shown itself well fitted to be, the vehicle of the loftiest thoughts, the tenderest or the most impassioned emotions ; that there is an amount of the one and of the other of these em- bodied in this form, from which none, capable of enjoying true poetry, should willingly cut themselves off. For, indeed, the mightiest poets of Italy, where the sonnet first saw the light, or of our own land, not urged thereto by any necessity, but of their own free choice, have one after another chosen this form of verse in which to embody and preserve some of their very choicest thoughts."

We remark in this passage, as elsewhere, that Dr. Trench repeats the common opinion that it was "Italy where the sonnet first saw the light." This, however, according to Romance scholars, is not correct. Though very early introduced into the Italian language, it was in the Provencal French that the first sonnets were written. It is, however, no doubt, to the Italian poets that the sonnet owes its subsequent importance, as well as the finished perfection and

strictness of its form.

We must now take our leave of this entertaining little volume, bat not without finally recommending it, notwithstanding one or two blemishes, to the notice of those of our readers who have a taste for wholesome literary sweets.