mate method. And the history of its preliminary tentatives and curious deviations from the right path becomes a subject of interesting study to those who would trace the development of the human mind. But we would observe that the true method differs from the false, not in introducing any absolutely new rules or practices, but in adhering to good practices and refraining from bad. At no era, when men were sufficiently intelligent to occupy themselves with the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, was the paramount necessity of the observation of facts for a moment denied; at no time would experiment or verification be otherwise than highly valued; at no time would a "generalisation, based upon induction," fail to be appreciated. But such generalisations are of slow growth, and meanwhile one must reason on things around us; and something is seized upon and called a principle, and held up as a torch to try if nature can be seen thereby. Based on the first data of the senses, we have wrought out for ourselves certain laws of motion-but how slowly! Wanting these inductions, the active-minded man (and who will quarrel with his activity? stray as he will, he will find something, if not the thing he sought) conjures up some laws of motion out of fancied analogies between his own human movements and those he sees in the inanimate creation. The true method differs from the false in adhering more and more to the good practices and dropping the bad; and happily the adherence to the good practice becomes more easy at every advance in knowledge, till at length the deviation from it becomes the exception and the rarity. Those who have read critically the works of Roger Bacon assure us that he occasionally lays down with as much precision as his successor Francis Bacon the true aims

of science. He is energetic in discarding authority and fixing his eyes on the realities of nature. Yet, on other occasions, he relapses into a slavish respect for authority, or into vague and fanciful speculations.

No writer has more distinctly brought before us the inevitable disadvantages of "historical position" which the early prosecutor of science laboured under than Mr Lewes. Thus while he, with rigid impartiality, points out the defects of Aristotle, he at the same time furnishes the fullest excuse for them. We sincerely hope that this volume he has given us will be the precursor or instalment of a larger work unfolding the development of science. It will, if prosecuted in the same manner as the present specimen, be a work as instructive in modern science as in ancient or medieval. For this contrast between old mistake and latest discovery leads, as we have said, to perhaps the most attractive and impressive manner of expounding the truths of science.

In this respect

our space has not permitted us to do justice to the present volume. It is full of interesting views or glimpses of the last achievements of science; so that even he who is careless of Aristotle, or indifferent, or opposed to the abstract statements he may meet with about induction, or causation, and the like, will yet find the book entertaining from the choice illustrations drawn from the science of the day. Nor in these days of light reading, and easy writing, should the industry and laborious application involved in such a work as this be forgotten. Mr Lewes has not been contented with quotations or translations made by others he has read extensively, and, above all, must have patiently made his way through those works of Aristotle which even scholars are contented to have glanced at.

VOL XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVI.

M

A WILD, disorderly, insane book! -so one critic might characterise this work of Victor Hugo's. A noble book, full of generous sentiments and bursts of audacious eloquence! -so might another critic, with equal justice, describe it. Both sentences would be just. Never were genius and madness brought so near together as in these pages of Victor Hugo; never, surely, did so much flagrant absurdity find itself side by side with what is truly admirable. Even in point of style the contradictions are unexampled. At one time coarse, and abrupt even to absurdity; it is, at another time, broad and massive as the sculpture of Michael Angelo: again, on other occasions, it will weary us with sentences made intolerably long by the mere enumeration of names or useless repetition of examples. Himself the greatest scourge of pedants, he is more open than any modern author we know to the charge of pedantry-if it be pedantry to rake together names of men and books for no apparent purpose but the display of extensive reading.

The English translator had a difficult task before him. It might well have thrown into despair the most consummate master of our language. Mr A. Baillot (such is the name on the title-page) evidently looked upon his undertaking, from the commencement, as a quite desperate affair. The difficulties were immense; therefore he resolved, once for all, to make no effort to encounter them. He starts off at once, and continues throughout his whole course with a dogged literalism such as we have never seen

equalled; which at times reminds us of nothing so much as those translations of Virgil that schoolboys make, "I sing arms and a man." At times this literalism succeeds remarkably well; but it is a mere chance. Being, so far as we have examined, as accurate as he is literal, this dogged fidelity meets occasionally with its reward. He seems to have felt that no skilful treatment on his part, no delicate handling, no dexterous qualification or happy compromise, would avail to shield the fastidious reader from many a rude shock to his nerves. Therefore he declines to take upon himself the least feeling of responsibility. He plods on from word to word; it is the dictionary translates, not he. It is Victor Hugo who chooses the path; he follows step for step. Sometimes a reference to the original throws a light upon the translation,* but, in general, it must be confessed that the profound obscurity you occasionally meet with in the English is but a too faithful copy of the profound obscurity of the French.

As we have said, the work itself defies criticism. It is useless to raise objections or detect faults: absurdities are too numerous and glaring; they seem perfectly conscious of themselves, and defy you. Yet it would be a still greater mistake to adopt a tone of derision or of contempt. Ridicule is soon checked by some terrible earnestness, and by a display of power that forces respect. One cannot laugh comfortably at the gambols of a giant. What if he should come too near where we ourselves are standing?

'William Shakespeare:' by Victor

If Achilles should issue from his tent and race madly about the field, going through his martial exercises in some wild maniacal fashion, yet now and then throwing his heavy spear with truest aim and marvellous power, we should look on with more of gravity than mirth. And some such impression is produced by this Titan amongst writers. There is no proposition so rash or monstrous that he fears to assert it; there is no word so harsh, rude, or grotesque that he will not use it. Sometimes this terrible rhetorician heaps word on word, adds name to name, till he leaves us stunned and senseless at the end of his lengthy paragraph. Sometimes he plays with the facts of history with all the petty dexterity of a conjuror, bringing them together from remote epochs for the sake of a little flash, a conceit, a contrast; as if the cloudcompelling Jove were to bring up his clouds from the north to the south merely to produce a faint electric spark. This man, as coarse as Swift, is as tricksy as Dumas. It would weary the most indefatigable critic to follow him through all his rhetorical offences. But then he is a Titan. You see that oak-he split it at one blow. After all the clang and discord and endless fugue of some distracted orchestra, there comes out a burst of music which reminds you of a chorus of Handel's.

It is to that foolish festival of the Tercentenary, of which we hope we shall hear nothing more, that we owe this book, or at least that we owe its dedication to England, and the precise form it has taken. It seems that the son of the author, M. François Victor Hugo, has translated, or is translating, into French the Dramas of Shakespeare; and the father prepared a preface, in which he discoursed of poetic genius in general, and that of Shakespeare in particular. Our "Grand National Festival" suggested the idea of publishing this preface-with some modifications, we presume-as a separate work, and laying it at the

feet of that magnificent statue to Shakespeare which was to be unveiled to the public on this auspicious day. "I dedicate," he says, "to England this 'glorification of her poet.' He, too, has been scandalised that Shakspeare should have no monument in our streets or squares. The fact is undeniable. Throughout all the length of Cheapside, before the Exchange, or the Lord Mayor's, in Piccadilly, in Rotten Row, no statue of the poet !— no monument against which some fellow-poet might lean in reverence! -no statue to teach aspiring youth whose dramas they should read, whose plays they should run to see acted! Woeful deficiency! Mark how he mourns it! and how generously he congratulates us on having at length wiped this stigma from our brow.

"When one arrives in England, the first thing he looks for is the statue of Shakespeare. He finds the statue of Wellington.

"Wellington is a general who gained a battle, with Chance for his partner.

"If you insist on seeing Shakespeare's statue, you are taken to a place called Westminster, where there are kingsa crowd of kings. There is also a corner called Poets' Corner.' There, in the shade of four or five magnificent monuments, where some royal nobodies shine in marble and bronze, is shown to you, on a small pedestal, a little figure, and under this little figure this name, 'WIL

LIAM SHAKESPEARE.'

"In addition to this, statues everywhere. Everywhere, in every street, in every square, at every step, gigantic notes of admiration in the shape

of columns: a column to the Duke of York, which should, this one, take the form of a note of interrogation. montory, there is a high column, similar At Guernsey, by the seaside, on a proto a lighthouse-almost a tower. Eschylus would have contented himself with it. For whom is this? For General Doyle. Who is General Doyle? A general. What has this general done? He has constructed roads. At his own expense? No; at the expense of the inhabitants. A column!"

If such is the fungus-growth of statues if any one who, dying, leaves a regret behind him, and two

or three busy, ostentatious friends who, by their importunities, are able to scrape together the necessary funds, can have a statue, why should we be very anxious to claim the corners of our streets, or the dust of our park, for an effigy of Shakespeare? Why must Shakespeare compete with General Doyle? By all means let General Doyle have his tower. He was, in some fashion, the beneficent genius of Guernsey. He did not, indeed, make its roads with his own money, nor with his own hands; but he made them, nevertheless, by his energy, perseverance, public spirit. A statue might be an honour to him; what could it be to Shakespeare?

Nothing at all, you say; but it will be an honour to ourselves. For our own sakes we ought to cultivate the feelings of reverence and admiration for the great intellects that have lived amongst us. This is true; and if raising statues is one means of cultivating such feel ings of reverence and admiration, raise the statue. We doubt the efficacy of the means; but, at all events, raise the statue where it has some chance of inspiring rever

ence.

Build your temple to great men. Collect under its solemn roof all your great, all that have conspicuously helped to rear and nourish the mind of the nation. If a genuine national movement should arise, prompting honours to the dead for the sake of the living, for the sake of the present and future culture of England, it will not limit itself to one name, however great; it will, of necessity, from the very nature of the object proposed, embrace all that England has produced of eminence in poetry, science, or philosophy.

Victor Hugo, we may be sure, sees in the monument an honour which England pays to itself, not to Shakespeare. After describing an imaginary programme, in which the Commons, the Peers, and Queen Victoria, all take their several parts, he says, "It is honour

It

"A monument," he proceeds to say, is an example. The lofty head of a great man is a light. Crowds, like the waves, require beacons above them. is good that the passer-by should know there are great men. People may not have time to read; they are forced to stumble against the pedestal; they are see. People pass by that way, and almost obliged to raise the head and to glance a little at the inscription. Men escape a book, they cannot escape the statue. One day, on the bridge of Rouen, before the beautiful statue due to David d'Angers, a peasant, mounted on an ass, said to me, 'Do you know Pierre Corneille?' 'Yes,' I replied. 'So do I,' he rejoined. And do you know the Cid?' I resumed. 'No,' said he. "To him Corneille was the statue."

An amusing anecdote, which does not, however, very happily illustrate the efficacy of teaching by statues. The peasant on his ass looked up at the statue, and made acquaintance with it, and knew Corneille quite satisfactorily. Corneille was to him that bronze or marble.

But England's disgrace is now at an end.

"At the very moment we finished writing the pages you have just read, was announced in London the formation of a committee for the solemn celebra. tion of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. This committee will dedicate to Shakespeare, on the 23d April 1864, a monument and a festival, which will surpass, we doubt just sketched out. They will spare nonot, the incomplete programme we have thing. The act of admiration will be a striking one. Every confidence is due to the Jubilee Committee of Shakespeare-a committee composed of persons highly distinguished in the press, the peerage, literature, the stage, and the Church. Eminent men from all countries, representing intellect in France, in Germany, in Belgium, in Spain, in Italy, complete this committee, in all points of view excellent and competent. Another committee formed at Stratford-on-Avon seconds the London committee. We congratulate England."

opens with a brief sketch of the life of Shakespeare, which we shall be readily excused from following. Victor Hugo seizes hold of the few traditional incidents which make up what is popularly called the life of Shakespeare. Of the man's life we really know nothing. That these materials are not submitted to much critical investigation, may be judged from the following in

stance :

"Shakespeare's life was greatly embittered. He lived perpetually slighted; he states it himself. Shakespeare had permanently near him one envious person, Ben Jonson, an indifferent comic poet, whose début he assisted."

But the author soon quits Shakespeare to launch into general discussions upon men of genius, art and science, the aims of poetry, and the like, Shakespeare reappearing from time to time to receive his meed of praise.

There is no apparent method in the book. We might begin at the end, or in the middle, read the chapters in what order we pleased, we should not find the confusion increased, nor the effect diminished of those admirable passages we should occasionally stumble on.

Here is a novel theory of criticism

"Supreme art is the region of equals. "The chef-d'œuvre is adequate to the chef-d'œuvre.

"As water when heated to 100° C. is incapable of calorific increase, and can rise no higher, so human thought attains in certain men its maximum intensity. Eschylus, Job, Phidias, Isaiah, St Paul, Juvenal, Dante, Michel Angelo, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven, with some others, mark the 100° of genius.

"The human mind has a summit. "This summit is the Ideal. "God descends, man rises to it." You are a little surprised at the list presented to you of men of genius who have reached the summit, and sit each one on his own throne. You are told that there are men of genius of a secondary order ranging under these, Milton under Shakespeare, Horace under

Juvenal, Molière under Rabelais ; and you ask why, if there are degrees of merit between Molière and Rabelais, there are none between Rabelais and Juvenal, or Juvenal and Eschylus? What is it that constitutes these men of the first line a separate class, so that they are unapproachable, and not open to comparison even amongst themselves? The answer is, They possess the Infinite! They have attained the Absolute! Many distinguished men, Sophocles, Plato, Virgil, and others that he names, have excellences of their own, and may be free from the apparent blemishes of these giants of the human race, but they have not the Infinite.

"What fails them? That which the others have

"That is the Unknown.
"That is the Infinite.

"If Corneille had that' he would be

the equal of Eschylus. If Milton had that,' he would be the equal of Homer.

equal of Shakespeare.'

If Molière had 'that,' he would be the

To reason against such infinite nonsense would be almost as absurd as to assert it. Some of our own writers are extremely fond of applying the word infinite to works of art. What they mean by it they have never taken the trouble to

tell us. Perhaps they may gather

a useful hint from the reductio ad absurdum which is here presented to them of their favourite mode of criticism. A sense of the infinite we can understand; but this belongs to the nature of the subject, and cannot be a test of the merit of the artist.

If a list were to be drawn up of the equal chiefs of literature, no two men would perhaps insert the same names in it; and certainly there is not another man living who would draw up the same list of these Infinites as Victor Hugo has done. Who but he would have picked out Juvenal from all the Romans, or Rabelais from all the Frenchmen? Who but he would have put these two on a line with Homer and Shakespeare? A curi