THE DUBLIN POPULAR LECTURES.* WE know of no lectures except

on science delivered in London— and we doubt if they are accessible to that class whom it is an

• L 57e Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art, delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Industry, St. Stephen's Green. Dublin, in April and May, 1804. Second Series. London : Bell and Daldy.

9. Lectures Delivered before the Young Men's Christian AssociaKon during the Year 1864. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co. object to attract to the higher intellectual interests—at all equal in their literary ability to the courses which have been delivered in Dublin in the Museum of Industry' in two successive years, nor of any lectures before the London 'Young Men's Christian Association' at all equal in breadth and manliness of style to those delivered last year before the same association in Dublin. The scientific lectures at the Royal Institution are of course of the best of their kind, but they are scarcely meant to interest a new class so much as to supply wants already awakened. More- over the Dublin popular lecturers have attempted something higher than popular science,—literature and art,—subjects on which it is generally less easy for thoroughly cultivated men to interest deeply the class which is just emerging into intel- lectual life, because they are subjects on which it is far less easy to make the true characteristics of excellence conspicuous to half-cultivated minds, than in the scientific region in which the criterion of excellence is the power of prediction and physical success. The criterion of literary and artistic excel- lence is, in fact, found only in minds of even balance and har- monious perception, and that is a kind of mind which nobody can well bring to his first study of literature, though he may find it there. Consequently a mind of first-rate culture trying to open the treasures of art or literature to minds of little culture has a very difficult task. The finer shades of humour, thought, and sentiment which delight him most, as much require an educated eye to distinguish them as the exact moment of the obscuration of a fixed star by the moon will require a finely- trained astronomical eye to note it with accuracy. In explaining popular science the lecturer has only to be lucid ; in discussing popular literature he has to do what Dr. Johnson so rudely refused to do for some stupid opponent, not only to find his audience a reason, but also an understanding. And this of course is not only much the more difficult task, but if suc- cessfully performed it is the more efficient also for its purpose. It draws out a new sense of beauty, a new insight into the links between different mental characteristics ; it cultivates where scientific teaching only instructs.

And the Dublin lecturers succeed in this. Though men of high culture themselves, they show the greatest judgment in adapting their own insight to the wants of minds not yet accus- tomed to distinguish the subtler literary distinctions. In the first of the two volumes mentioned below, the lecturers on literature and art have frequently succeeded in making the characteristics of great writers so strongly visible as to attract the attention of even the least educated eye. Of course there are degrees of merit among the lectures. Of those of which we are competent to form any opinion, the Dean of Emly's (the Very Reverend W. Alexander's) on Victor Hugo is much the finest,—the com- position indeed of a man of real genius, though not put upon his critical mettle by his audience, which would scarcely have entered into a subtle criticism of Victor Hugo. Next to his lecture come those of Mr. O'Hagan on Chaucer and Mr. Percy Fitzgerald on the Essays of Charles Lamb and Charles Dickens. Dr. Anster's on Ger- man literature is scrappy, and not adequately concentrated on any special writer or special characteristic. The Honourable Joseph Napier's opening address is a little vague, a little abstract, and a little rhetorical. We all know the sort of disquisition on beauty which tells us" There is beauty in form and colour, beauty in the blush of the rose, and greater beauty in the blush of maiden modesty," and we all know that it is not very remunerative. Of Mr. Ferguson's lecture on architecture we are quite incom- petent to speak.

We cannot leave Mr. Alexander's lecture without giving some specimens of his fine translations from Victor Hugo,—transla- tions which only one who was hitnself a poet could have made. Mr. Alexander is in many respects singularly well qualified to enter into and render the genius of Victor Hugo. There is a richness of colour—almost too luxuriant—in his own pictorial imagination which is in striking sympathy with Victor Hugo's swarming and gorgeous fancy; but while of course we are not comparing for a moment the creative power of the able Irish critic with one of the most striking though most erratic of French men of genius, it is impossible to doubt that Mr. Alexander's imagination is more completely under the control of a logical intellect and sound judgment than the marvellous imagination of Victor Hugo. Probably extravagance is of the very essence of Victor Hugo's genius ; in other words, if you could

curb it with reason, if you could awaken it from that vivid, wanton dreaming in which the will is asleep, into such imaginings

as Shakespeare's, in which all the faculties concur, you would destroy its fertility at once. The jarring scream to which his

eloquence so often rises in the midst of his most wonderful scenes is probably only a symptom of a certain imaginative antinomianism which penetrates even the quietest of his delineations. Still few British critics, perhaps no purely English critic, would catch the peculiar splendour of Victor Hugo with anything like Mr. Alexander's brilliancy. Take as a specimen this translation (from Le Legende des Medea) of the passage in which Canute's punish- ment after death for his crime of parricide is painted.

"He pass'd across the sea, the sea that shows The domes of Altona and Elsinore, And Arrhus, with their towers, upon its face.

Night listen'd for the steps of the dark king, But he walk'd silent, being himself a dream.

Straight to Mount Savo, gnaw'd by the tooth of Time, Canute went on, and his strange ancestor, Thus greeted, 'Let me for a winding-sheet, 0 Mountain Savo ! whom the storm torments, Cut me a morsel of thy cloak of snow.'

Him Savo knowing dared not to refuse, Whereupon Canute straightway took his sword,

His sword unbreakable, and from the mount—

The mount that shook before his warrior-form- He cut some snow, and gat himself a shroud. He said, 'Old Mountain ! Death gives little light, Where shall I go to look for God ? ' The Mount, With its obstructed gorges, and its sides Deform'd and black, hid in a flight of clouds, Answered, I know not, spectre. I am here!' Be left the icy mountain, and alone, With his brow raised and white snow winding-sheet, Beyond the isles, and the Norwegian sea, Pass'd into the grand silence of the night.

Behind him the dim world went slowly out.

He found himself a ghost, a soul, a king Without a kingdom, naked, face to face With an impalpable immensity.

He paged on, saying, "Tis the tomb : beyond Is God.' When he had made three steps, he called. But night is silent as the sepulchre, And nothing answeed. Under his white shroud Went on Canute. The whiteness of the sheet Gave hope to the sepulchral journeyer, And he went on, when suddenly he saw Upon that strange white veil, like a black star A point that grew, grew slowly, and Canute Felt with his spectral hand, and was aware That a blood-drop had fallen on his shroud_ His haughty head, that fear had never bent, He raised, and stared right forward at the night. But he saw nothing ; space was black—no sound.

'Forward !' said Canute, raising his proud head. There fell a second stain beside the first, - Then it grew larger, and the Cimbrian chief

Stared at the thick vague darkness, and saw naught.

Still as a bloodhound follows on his track, Sad he went on. There fell a third red stain On the white winding-sheet. He had never fled, Howbeit Canute forward went no more,

But turned on that side where the sword arm hangs.

A drop of blood, as if athwart a dream, Fell on the shroud and redden'd his right hand.

Then as in reading one turns back a page,

A second time he changed his course, and turn'd To the dim left. There fell a drop of blood. Canute drew back, trembling to be alone, And wish'd he had not left his burial couch.

But when a blood-drop fell again, he stopp'd,

Stoop'd his pale head, and tried to make a prayer.

Then fell a drop, and the prayer died away In savage terror. Darkly he moved on, A hideous spectre, hesitating, white, And ever as he went a drop of blood Implacably from the darkness broke away,

And stain'd that awful whiteness."

This is long, but the grandeur will excuse its length. We can only add that Mr. Alexander's lecture is full of original transla- tions equaly striking.

Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's lecture on Charles Lamb and Charles Dickens is good but defective. A popular lecturer on Dickens's unrivalled humour as an essayist,—especially when painting it in close comparison with that of Charles Lamb,—was bound to have shown not only its strong but its weak side. The people will never fail to see the infinite fun in Mr. Dickens,—but they are far more likely to fail to see his greatest faults,—his somewhat vulgar sentimentalism, his frequently theatrical manner, his ten- dency to harp on one string till it cracks. All these characteristics are in a contrast so remarkable to the much thinner but much more delicate, subtle, and refined humour of Charles Lamb, that Mr. Fitzgerald scarcely did his duty to his audience by not pointing out the contrast. Lamb's pathos is comparatively -rare, and, when it comes, controlled by the most delicate reserve,—the pathos of unacknowledged tears in smiling eyes. Mr. Dickens's pathos is often true, but always on the edge, very often indeed over the edge, of self-indulgence. Mr. Fitzgerald refers to the pathos in the story of little Paul Dombey's death-bed. Well I yes,—but Mr.

Dickens almost makes you feel that it is a -sweetmeat,--there is a lusciousness as of lollypops in the stream of tenderness he pours out over that death bed ; and any one who has heard him read the scene will notice that he takes a sensuous and almost voluptuous delight in the emotion be has thus expressed. We could go far beyond Mr. Fitzgerald in admiration of Mr. Diokens's humour. But we must say he has failed to touch the true points of the comparison between him and Charles Lamb.

The second volume on our list we must dismiss with brief commendation. The Dean of Emly again appears in it, in a very valuable lecture on the apocryphal gospels. Mr. Whiteside has given some lively and excellent lectures on the comparative "cleanliness, prudence, and industry" of different races in Europe. Lord Dufferiu lectures on ancient Syria, a subject in which his thorough familiarity with modern Syria gives him great ad- vantages, Mr. M'Cosh is earnest, thoughtfuly and narrow in his lecture on "the present tendencies- of religious thought." The Archbishop of Dublin gives a graphie and elegant lecture on Gustavus Adolphus, Professor Cairnes one on colonization, and there are two others on subjects of some interest. "Young Men's Christian Associations" are usually fed on farinaceous food,— intellectual sago or arrowroot. This is not the case with this volume at all events, which is full of ability and manly thought. Dublin is fortunate indeed in its popular lecturers.