MR. GRANT DUFF'S MISCELLANIES.*

THOUGH we heartily agree, in the main, with the political part of Mr. Grant Duff's Miscellanies, we intend to say little about it. The Member for the Elgin District of Burghs is not the man to put his candle under a bushel, and his political opinions are tolerably well known to most of us. They are solid, sober, and sagacious opinions, for the most part ; but speaking from the stand-point of literary criticism, it can hardly be said that in this volume Mr. Grant Duff has done his best to present them in a permanent form. Addresses and speeches of the kind here offered to the reader are elyeertateetree i; TO Trapeexpij pee rather than. wrijua.ra lc dd. As such, they will scarcely fail, we fancy, to miss that attention which their republication in a beautifully printed octavo would seem to challenge. If this be so, it will be a pity, for there is one essay, at least, of great in- terest and importance, which deserves a better fate than to be neglected, because of its comparatively ephemeral companions. We allude to the "Plea for a Rational Education," and however strenuously we may differ from some of Mr. Grant Duff's views, there can be no two opinions about the service which this essay has rendered to the cause of education in Eng-

* Miseellaniee, Political and Literary. By Mountatuart E. Grant Duff, M.P. London : Ble4121illan and Co. 1878.

land, and about the vigour and vivacity with which it is written. A little more of this vivacity—this "go," to use a slang expression —would not be out of place, we think, elsewhere in this volume. All good Liberals will agree with Mr. Grant Duff, of course, in think- ing that at the present time, "the first task of all good Liberals is to get the government of the country back into the hands of

men who are in sympathy with the sober, reasonable por- tion of the community." But the question of questions is,—

How are we to do it? Mr. Grant Duff says truly, that "the ensuing election will be a fierce struggle between the progressive and retrograde elements of our society, embodied in the names of particular men." The italics are our own, and a mere reviewer may break with brutal frankness the bonds of reticence which bind the tongues of men in Mr. Grant Duff's position. Whose are those names ? We intend no disrespect whatever to the Marquis of Flartington, who plays his hand with laudable self-command, if we venture to doubt whether he will evrr organise victory for his party. The man who made "II gran rifiuto " in 1874, is still the heaven-born leader of the Liberals ; and till he resumes his natural place, or retires from the scene of active politics, the reorganisation of his party seems inaprc- bable.

The lecture on " Egypt " strikes us as the least meritori- ous paper in this collection. It is mere "extract of diary,' and extends, as the author himself says, "to a frightful length." As a lecture delivered at Cullen, it may have suited the patient creatures to whom it was addressed, but that is the most that we can say for it. The next paper, "Must We, then, Believe Cassandra ?" is far more important and interesting. It is a reply to Rocks Ahead, or the Warnings of Cassandra ; and of the two, we prefer Mr. Grant Duff's light- hearted optimism to Mr. Greg's melancholy vaticination. We should be better pleased, though, if the former's logic were always as close and cogent as it nearly always is. But at times, of "the two axes of the brilliance of his accomplishments "- of which phrase more anon—Mr. Grant Duff's "heart" is stronger than his "head ;" and his optimism fishes, so to speak, with a net whose meshes are too large. The following quotation will explain, we hope, what we mean :—

"The words once spoken amongst the Syrian hills will never lose their echo. The saying falsely attributed to Julian is profoundly

true 0 Galilean ! thou bast conquered.' One must not forget, however, that the victory of the Galilean is the defeat of Antichrist ; and the worst Antichrists of our days are the bungling sophists who denounce science and historical criticism, because they do not square with the vile little systems which they, and others like them, have built on these immortal words ; who yelp at (a) our modern masters of those who know,—our Darwins, Htucleys, and Tyndalls, as if these were not doing in their own way the work of God in the world, as much as (B) even those who have, in our times, most perfectly echoed those divine words."

But the oxymel which results from the mixing of a and 3 pro- mises to be a very effervescing compound indeed,—

"otos 'T' raeglut T' kyxias Taltri KICTE1, 8lX0(rTaTOOre al' o sface apoweravois : or, in the words of Mr. Browning's Transcript :— " Soar wine and unguent pour thou in one vessel,

Standers-apart, not lovers, would'st thou style them."

Of the remaining articles, in addition to the " Plea " men- tioned above, one is a panegyric on Balthasar Grecian, a Spanish philosopher who wrote 300 years ago, and the other a panegyric on the famous Andalusian orator who is about to visit England, Emilio Castelar. Mr. Grant Duff's praise is given to both so generously and unstintedly, that in spite of the cordial and just praise which we gave to this writer at the time Mr. Grant Duff's essay on him first appeared, we are forced into playing the part of advocatus diaboli towards both. We are compelled to do so with perfunctory brevity, and must premise that the sententious wisdom of Gracian and the diffuse enthusiasm of Castelar are not to be judged from the weak points which we are induced now to indi- cate. In either case Mr. Grant Duff gives extracts in abund- ance, and even superabundance, by which the reader can check our remarks. We begin, therefore, by directly challenging the practical value of the 300 maxims of Gracian—his numerous other writings have gone by the board—which find so much favour with Mr. Grant Duff and Schopenhauer. "Taking," says the former, "the book as a guide, especially for those who intend to enter public life, I have never chanced to meet with anything which seemed to me even distantly to approach it." We make bold to deny Mr. Grant Duff's major, and his minor also. The beef and mutton of history and biography are far better food for sucking statesmen than the pemmican of pro-

verbs, pensees, and apophthegms. As a guide for men who "intend to enter public life," Plutarch's Lives is incomparably superior to Gracian's Manual. And even were it otherwise, we venture to think that if this Spanish Ecclesiasticus is worth its weight in gold, Bacon's Essays are worth their weight in diamonds. Even as regards the literary merit of Gra,cian, we

are far from being at one with his admirer. Gracian's style is compressed, no doubt, and in one sense he is avaricious of words ; in another sense, he is little less than prodigal. Take the last of his maxims :—

" In one word, be a saint. So i,;; all said at once. Virtue is the common bond of all perfections, and the centre of all felicities. She makes a man discreet, circumspect, sagacious, prudent, sage, brave, reflective, honest, happy, accommodating, truthful, and a universal hero. Three SSS render a man happy,—Sanctity, Soundness of body, and Sageness. Virtue is the sun of the microcosm, or lesser world, and has for hemisphere a good conscience. She is so beauti- ful, that she finds favour with God and man. Nothing is so lovable but virtue, and nothing is detestable but vice. Virtue alone is serious, all else is but jest. One should measure capacity and greatness according to virtue, and not according to the circumstances of for- tune. Virtue alone is sufficient to herself ; she makes men lovable in life, and memorable in death."

It seems to us that there is a strong flavour of copy-book com- mon-place in this congeries of curtail phrases. The "maxim" could lose nothing if it stopped short at the word "hero," and men who are about to "enter public life" will not do wrong, we think, to fill their sack with wares less cumbrous ; with such a couplet as this, for instance :—

"Die Tngend ist das hochste Gut,

Das Laster Weh dem Menschen thut."

In which couplet there lies, to take Mr. Carlyle's hint, the essence of this Oraculo Manual. Space positively forbids us to refer to more than one of the phrases in Mr. Grant Duff's translation. We have already quoted it. It occurs in the second maxim, and literally translated from Schopenhauer, for the original Spanish is not within our reach, it reads thus :—" Heart and Head : the two Poles of the Sun of our Abilities." For this Mr. Grant Duff gives us,—and the original may, of course, bear him out :--" Character and Intellect : the two axes of the brilliance of our accomplishments." And, justified or not by the original, this sentence is unintelligible, or at least, if we may counter one dark phrase with another, it is, to use an American- ism, "a huckleberry above our persimmon." As to Emilio Cas-

telar, it would be better perhaps to say nothing than the very few words which we can spare to him. It is a kindly and generous trait in Mr. Grant Duff's character, that he is always a little prone to over-laud what he admires. In

Castelar's case, nevertheless, he seems at times to be aware, or half aware, of the dubious qualities of his swan. It would be absurd, of course, to doubt that Castelar is a great orator. But has sufficient allowance been made for the audi- ences who have been carried off their legs by his oratory? As a speaker, he is evidently prompt us et Isaeo torrentior. But what verdict would the audience which heard the De Corona be likely to pronounce upon the impassioned rhetoric of this voluble Andalusian? The copious specimens which Mr. Grant Duff has given enable us to form some idea of Castelar as a writer. Some of these specimens are very finely written indeed, as, for instance, the sketch of Frederick the Great. But they convince us that Castelar is a Spanish Lamartine, and not a Spanish Demosthenes. His pen and tongue are apt to run away with him. He is, if we rightly apprehend the meaning of the phrase, emphatically a literary opportunist, and his works, like those of the brilliant Frenchman, are not precisely of the kind which can be left with confidence "to the next ages and to posterity." We have left ourselves no space to deal with Mr. Grant Duff's remarkable "Plea for a Rational Education." It is the most ambitious paper in these Miscellanies, and at the same time, in

our opinion, the most important and the most successful. We can only hastily glance at one subject, out of the many which it discusses, and that is Latin. We cordially agree with the writer in his contempt for the way in which that language is at present taught to little boys. We quite as cordially dissent from his views as to the time in a boy's life when that anguage should be taught, and as to the relative import- ance of that language in education. We do no more, however, than quote with entire approval Frederick the Great's words, and with them leave regretfully this interesting and instructive essay,—" Lateinisch miissen die jungen Leute absolut lernen ; davon gehe ich nicht ab."

We have expressed dissent so often from Mr. Grant Duff in this notice, that we cannot close it without a few words of re- spectful praise. If a little too prone, as we think he is, to. over-laud his favourites, Mr. Grant Duff is always studiously fair to his dislikes. He steers clear of sophisms, and he steers clear of truisms. He states his views with perspicuity, and those views are of the kind which provoke discussion and de- serve to be discussed. Through the whole of his volume, from cover to cover, we have not stumbled on a single platitude; and we can and do recommend these Miscellanies to our readers, as the productions of a well-read scholar, an honest thinker, and. a thoroughly able and intelligent man.