MR. LESLIE STEPHEN'S LITERARY ESSAYS.* READERS of the Cornhill, of

Fraser, and the Fortnightly will be already familiar with the contents of this volume. In these days, • Hours in a Library. By Leslie Stephen, London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1874.

the magazine or review takes precedence of the book. A writer's thoughts appear first in a serial, and afterwards, if considered worthy, are republished in a more permanent form. The mischief is, that a charming magazine article often ceases to charm when placed between the covers of a book. We read periodical litera- ture partly, no doubt, to be instructed, and for the sake of the mental stimulus it affords, but chiefly for the amusement of an idle hour. What we want in it is lightness of touch, a freshness of expression if not of thought, picturesque description, rapidity of movement, a perspicacity of style, and at least as much know- ledge as may place the writer in advance of his readers. The literary man who meets the public in this way soon learns to know the kind of material with which to supply them, and is careful to avoid all prolonged arguments, all elaborate and paren- thetical sentences, all criticism that cannot readily be grasped, and all details that are likely to impede the• flow of the composition. The literature thus produced is not wholly deserving of praise. No doubt it suits exactly the pages for which it is designed, but it will be often deemed wanting in power and permanent worth when it claims a place upon our library-shelves.

These remarks have been suggested to us by a perusal of Mr. Stephen's essays, some of which are really admirable specimens of periodical literature. Good taste, sound judgment, competent knowledge, and an occasional vivacity of expression,—these literary virtues are evident throughout, and will attract and please the reader as he turns over the pages. On the other hand, we do not find in this work the subtle criticism, the fine imagi- nation, or the perfect beauty of utterance, which so attract us in some volumes of biographical and literary criticism that we are drawn towards them again and again, to receive every time some new intellectual impulse, or the pleasure derived from sonorous melody of expression. This is merely saying in other words that Mr. Leslie Stephen, although an admirable writer, does not stand in the front rank of authors or critics. His work is thoroughly well done, but we do not detect in it that vitality which is likely to render it of permanent value. What matter ! If these essays be not read twenty years hence, they are certain to be read now, and cannot fail to raise the reputation of the writer. Five of the papers are devoted to novelists,—De Foe, Richardson, Sir W. Scott, Hawthorne, and Balzac ; there is also an essay on De Quincey, one on Pope as a moralist, in 'which character, it may be remembered, he has been specially praised by Mr. Ruskin, and another on Mr. Elwin's edition of the poet. It will be seen that the table of contents is attractive, and there are few readers who care for what may be called "pure literature" (let no one imagine that we use the words in the sense attached to them by subscribers to the " Pure Literature" Society), who will not be interested in Mr. Stephen's comments and criticism.

To begin at the beginning. The judgment here given of Defoe is, we think, a true one in the main, though we question whether the writer does sufficient justice to this novelist's transcendent power. The morality of Defoe's minor novels, Roxana and Moll Flanders, is very questionable, for the association with mean people and mean vices can have no wholesome tendency. These tales are coarse and often repulsive, and they are all the more repulsive as the work of a comparatively old man ; but their intense realism and minute Dutch painting take powerful hold of us as we read, and they contain passages which of their kind are unsurpassed in fiction. Mr. Stephen allows that in Roxana, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack there are some forcible situations, but be considers that these novels possess "no higher interest than that which belongs to the ordinary police-report given with infinite fullness and vivacity of detail." We might object that this " vivacity " would of itself go far towards destroying any resemblance to the police-report, but the secret of Defoe's power is not to be explained by Mr. Stephen's criticism. The novelist, hard, and dry, and cold as at times he seems, without passion, without ideality, without that love of the beautiful which has inspired many a smaller writer, possessed a strong imagination, and en- chains his readers' attention by the aid of it. To this, and not to any mere accumulation of details, however vivaciously given, is due the enthralling interest of his Journal of the Plague, and still more of his incomparable fiction Robinson Crusoe. Defoe was not a poet, but that story excites the mind in the way in which a great poem excites it. The author's tricks and strange artifices for giving verisimilitude to his details are

but a part, and comparatively a mean part of his art ; his realism has been rivalled, perhaps, by some modern novelists, but the com-

bination of realism with imagination as displayed in Robinson Crusoe is rare indeed. Mr. Stephen is quite ready to allow that Defoe possessed a powerful imagination, but it appears to us he

does not do justice to it as the secret of his strength. Neverthe- less, there is some truth in the following statement :—

"Defoe was above the ordinary standard, in so far, as he did not like most of us, see things merely as a blurred and inexplicable chaos, but he was below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness and dry precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast picture, from which all confusion was banished ; everything was definite, clear, and precise, as in a photograph ; as in a photograph, too, everything could be accurately measured, and the result stated in

figures The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds, though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a Defoe aro almost as rare as those which form the more elevated artist."

Further on in the volume, Mr. Stephen writes with carefully measured praise of Scott himself, and from many of his remarks on that great novelist we must express our dissent. He thinks that the " Wizard " has already lost very much of his power ; hints, or observes he has heard it hinted, that Scott is dull ; asks whether the decay of interest in his novels is not due to some- thing more than the lapse of time, and other similar questions, which, he says, it is a painful task to examine impartially. The writer's remarks appear to be suggested by Mr. Carlyle's cele- brated essay, which, if we accept Mr. Carlyle's criticism, is no doubt extremely derogatory to the genius of Scott. Mr. Stephen is far from receiving it without objection. He thinks that what the essayist says of Shakespeare might in his earlier years have applied as well to Scott. He does not allow that Scott wrote with preposterous haste, or merely for money ; but he seems to accept the statement that the Waverley Novels are addressed entirely to the every-day mind, and that "for any other mind there is next to no nourishment in them." If Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Stephen, so far as he follows him, are right here, then Goethe, and Coleridge, and Hawthorne, and Keble, and Robertson of Brighton, and other notable men, were utterly mis- taken in their opinions. But were they thus mistaken ? We think not, and that Mr. Carlyle's error lies partly in expecting to find in these romances what cannot be found in them. What if Scott had no "great gospel" to deliver ? All poets are not prophets. Some surely may be allowed to sing for the joy of singing, and so benefit the world indirectly by increasing

the stock of harmless pleasure. Much more than this might be said in defence of Scott, and we might even venture to hint our gratefulness that Scott did not, as a story teller, attempt to write what was "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction." Scott's rivals in the art of novel-writing have multiplied since his death. We have had greater novelists in one department or in another, but we question whether Scott is not as dear as he

ever was to Englishmen and Scotchmen all the world over ; and the variety of editions of his works now publishing justifies us in the belief that he is still one of the most popular of authors,—be is certainly one of the healthiest and most delightful.

We must not attempt to follow every line of thought suggested

by Mr. Stephen's Hours in a Library. An able and elaborate article on Balzac will interest many readera ; others will appreciate and thoroughly enjoy the estimate of Hawthorne, to whose pecu- liar and exquisite genius Mr. Stephen does ample justice. Of Richardson, so much has been said of late years, that little is left to say. Mr. Stephen is not quite accurate in his remark that this novelist's works never enjoy the honours of cheap reprints, and

despite of much in them that is stilted, wearisome, and twaddling, we believe that they will always retain a high place in the litera-

ture of fiction. Whether Pamela is or is not moral, no doubt the author intended it to be so,—in any case, we can- not agree with Mr. Stephen that it is not amusing, and Clarissa Harlowe is assuredly the most pathetic tale ever written.

Richardson, says Mr. Stephen, has invented two characters, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, which have still a strong vitality ; he might have added Lovelace, whose name is familiar everywhere as the type of an attractive libertine. Mr. Stephen, however, regards him as a "fancy character, who has every merit but that of existence." Two noticeable articles in the volume are devoted to Pope. The critic is severe in his remarks on Mr. Elwin's edition of the poet, and wonders, as others have done, that a writer who finds so much to denounce and so little to admire in Pope should have spent so much exhausting toil in editing his works. On one point we entirely agree with

Mr. Stephen. Pope was neither a philosopher nor a theo- logian, and we do not read his poetry either for its philosophy or

theology. We may regret that there is much in the poetry which we cannot admire or even approve, but an elaborate argument to expose the unsoundness of his views is labour thrown away. With this qeotation we must close our notice of Mr, Stephen's pleasant volume :—

"Nothing is more vexatious than to find oneself launched in a vast philosophical and theological controversy when we expected a judicious criticism; to have a learned and laborious editor treating Pope as if he were Strauss, Ronan, or Comte ; to be told that his arguments are childish, and at the same time to be treated to elaborate refu'ations of them as though they were likely to be dangerous to our faith; to find that the editor has forgotten the critic in the sound divine, and mixes sermons with his notes ; and to be wearied out with the one question about Pope, which is utterly uninteresting to every reasonable human being at the present day, namely, how far he was or was not sound in his theological views."