" LIVINGSTONE IN AFRICA."
go THE EDITOR OF THE '' SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Though my conscience does not permit me to allow that / have not given unity to my poem by making Livingstone, as the ideal modern Christian explorer and traveller, with his high aims and faith in ultimate -victory, the centre of it throughout ; yet to the second charge your reviewer brings against me, of occasional' obscurity, I suppose I must plead guilty, since he has so totally misunderstood the passage which he has quoted from Living- stone's soliloquy as not to perceive from the context that Livingstone therein is speaking of the mysterious dispensation of madness, a subject suggested to him by the tale of a negro, which I suppose him to recall as having heard recounted by his bivouac fire, concerning the transformation of a man into it leopard,—a transformation which the man accused of so trans- forming himself for murderous purposes actually believed had indeed taken place, though without the concurrence of his own will. But Livingstone adds, in the last two lines you quote, that, save for Revelation, we are all only a little less bewildered than even such a madman.
I have surely represented Livingstone as indignantly repu- diating the suggestion that civilising missionary labour either has been or will be of no avail ; earnestly convinced, too, from his own experience that the negro is not so black as he has been painted, but abounding in good qualities.—I am, Sir, &c.,
RODEN NOEL.
[We read the passage carefully, and some half-dozen times, without having the slightest suspicion of the true explanation of it.—En. Spectator.]
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