BRIMLEY'S ESSAYS. * To late George Brimley belong s to that class
of writers whose public reputation is greater than would be derived merely from tie character of their works, while both fall below the expeo- tafions formed of them by the circle in which they lived. This discrepancy does not arise as Hazlitt and others seem to think, from the partial or mistaken estimate of friends, or from the influence of extraneous circumstances. Friends generally omit to take into account in their estimate of brilliant men, the possession or non-possession of the less showy qualities of steady will and perseverance, which are necessary constituents of genius in its highest sense ; sometimes men fail in these requisites from defect of character, sometimes, as was the case with poor Mr. Brimley, from utter physical weakness. Many qualities of a sub- ordinate kind, are necessary to the actual production of a great work, besides the mere intellectual power of producing it. There must be mental energy, and we think, physical, or at least, nerv- ous vigour. There must be a capacity for sustained labour, and not too fastidious a taste, which has the same effect as weakness, and renders an author unwilling to continue his work when the excitement of novelty has passed away. There should probably be a balance of the faculties so that the entire mind should be " all compact."
To what extent Mr. Brimley might or might not be wanting in the necessary qualities for a greater work than he undertook is a needless speculation. The wonder is that with his health he did se much, not that he failed to accomplish more. His life might almost be called a "long disease." Before the age of manhood he was attacked by a painful and incurable complaint which never left him, sometimes completely prostrated him, and carried him off in his thirty-eighth year, (May 1857,) a time of life at which some men with genius inclined to the thoughtful rather than the imaginative, have hardly began to display their powers. A malady which prevented him even from becoming a candidate for university honours, was not of a nature to permit the undertaking or at least the execution of a great literary work. His health, however, never prevented the most conscientious fulfilment of whatever he did undertake ; he might be compelled to delay his tasks, but he was never negligent in their discharge. His editor, Mr. Clark, observes in his biographical preface, that "papers found after his decease show the pains he took to qualify himself for the responsible duty of a literary judge, by careful study and elaborate analysis of the books he was about to criticize."
These observations rather apply to the man than to the book ; for considered by themselves and not in reference to the ex- pectations raised by the anther, the Essays require no apology. Being essentially critical the papers cannot have the popular at- traction of picturesque narrative or description, or the universal interest of biography, or the more limited but still general inte- rest of natural phenomena, and the employments of industrial life. The Essays, however, have a unity which collected articles do not always possess, and a variety of subject-matter and treatment that prevents monotony. Mr. Brimley had also an acumen and a comprehensiveness which enabled him to seize a question in its breadth and depth, with an inventive logic to conceive felicitous arguments as well as to enforce them by well-chosen illustrations drawn equally from books and nature. He had also a power of analysis, which if at times somewhat fatiguing to the general reader for its minuteness, was well adapted to exhibit the dis- tinctive qualities of the work criticized. This analytical power is displayed throughout the paper, which is perhaps the most cha- racteristic though not the most popular essay of Mr. Brimley, the criticism on Tennyson originally .published in the Cambridge Essays for 1855. The following is a portion of the remarks on Maud. It is the critic's answer to the objections that have been made to the character of the hero of the poem. " Like the hero of Locksley Hall, his view of the life around him, of the world in which his lot is cast, has been coloured by a grievous personal ca- lamity ; and the character of the man is originally one in which the sensi- bilities are keen and delicate, the speculative element strong, the practical Shelley unsteady, the will and active energies comparatively feeble. A Shelley or a Keats may stand for example of his type not perfect men, certainly, but scarcely so contemptible as not to possess both dramatic hate: rest and some claim to human sympathy. Chatterton, a much lower type than either, has been thought a subject of psychological and moral interest, in spite or in consequence of the vulgar, petulant, weak melodrama of his life and death. You see, God makes these morbid, hysterical, spasmodic individuals occasionally, and they have various fates; some die without a sign; others try the world, and dash themselves dead against its bars ; some few utter their passionate desires, their weak complaints, their ecstatic raptures in snatches of song that make the world delirious with delight,— and somehow, for their sake the class becomes interesting, and we are at times inclined to measure the spiritual capacity of an age by its treatment of these weak souls,—by the fact, whether the general constitution of society cherishes such souls into divine lovers and singers of the beautiful, or lashes and starves and chains them into moping idiots and howling madmen. The autobiographer of Maud belongs to this class by temperament, as any one may understand from the turn of his angry thoughts to those social evils which must and ought to excite indignation and scorn in gentle and loving natures that are at the same time inspired with generous and lofty. ideas ; from the speculative enigmas he torments himself with at the prevalence of rapine and pain in creation, at the insignificance of man in a boundless uni- verse, subject to iron laws ; from the penetrating tenderness, the rich fancy, the childlike nazvetd of his love for the young girl who saves him from him- self and his dark dreams. There lies in such a character, from the be • ning, the capacity for weakness and misery, for crime and madness. That capacity is inseparable from keen sensibility, powerful emotions, and ac- tive imagination ; and if events happen which paralyze the will already feeble, "_Bssays. By the late George Brimley, M.A., Librarian of Trinity College, Cam- bridge. Edited by William George Clark, ALA Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Col. -lege. and Public Orator in the University of Cambridge. Published by Parker and Son, London ; and Macmillan, Cambridga. turn the flow of feeling into a stream of bitterness, and present to the ima- gination a world of wrong and suffering, the capacity fulfils itself according to the force and direction of the events."
The other papers of the volume consist of a selection from arti des contributed to Fraser's Magazine, or to this journal. Besides the qualities already mentioned, we think there will be found in all of them a fulness of matter and closeness of style, which more strongly impresses on a reperusal, than in the rapid reading of periodical literature ; and few now-a-days will read periodicals thoughtfully. Of these articles the two best are "The Angel in the House' and " Wordsworth's Poems." " The Angel in the House " is taken by Mr. Brimley as the occasion for a very striking survey of the passion of love as treated by the poets, and to sug- gest that married life should be taken up as a poetical theme. The argument is fairly and ingeniously urged ; but we think the author ascribes too little weight to the struggle with opposing influences when true love does not run smooth, and overlooks the consequent uncertainty of the termination ; and it is in struggle and suspense that the greatest poetical interest after all consists. Courtship is love in action, marriage would be love didactic. The essay on " Wordsworth's Poems" exhibits a wide It is not only a notice of the poet's life and an estimate of genius, but contains a survey of the three other great poets of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Byron, Scott, and Shelley. Each of these is nicely yet broadly discriminated as regards their respective genius and its effects. That of Byron is more espe- cially truthful in its criticism, penetrating in its observations, and profound in its moral. The following is but a portion.
"Lord Byron's poems are the actual life-experience of a man whose birth and fortune enabled him to mix with the highest society, and whose charac- ter led him to select for his choice that portion of it which pursued pleasure as the main, if not the sole object of existence. Under a thin disguise of name, country, and outward incident, they present us with the desires which actuated, the passions which agitated, and the characters which were the ideals of the fashionable men and women of the earlier part of this century. Limited and monotonous as they are in their essential nature, ringing per- petual changes upon one passion and one phase of passion, the brilliance of their diction, the voluptuous melody of their verse, the picturesque beauty of their scenery, well enough represent that life of the richer classes, which chases with outstretched arms all the Protean forms of pleasure, only to find the subtle essence escape as soon as grasped, leaving behind in its place weariness, disappointment, and joyless stagnation. The loftiest joys they paint are the thrillings of the sense, the raptures of a fine nervous organiza- tion ; their pathos is the regret, and their wisdom the languor and the sa- tiety of the jaded voluptuary. These form the staple, the woof of Lord Byron's poetry, and with it is enwoven all that which gives outward variety and incessant stimulating novelty to the pursuits of an Englishman of fashion. These pursuits are as numerous, as absorbing, and demand as much activity of a kind as those of the student or the man of business. Among them will be found those upon which the student and the man of business are employed, though in a different spirit, and with a different aim. Thus we frequently, see among the votaries of pleasure men who are fond of literature, of art, of politics, of foreign travel, of all manly and active enter- prim ; but all these will be pursued, not as duties to be done, in an earnest,
hopeful, self-sacrificing that scorns delights and lives laborious days,' but for amusement, for immediate pleasure to be reaped, as a resource against ennui and vacuity."
We learn from the preface that this collection was primarily intended as a " memorial " of the departed, and some of his friends conceived it would hardly occupy a higher rank. It has been already intimated that such is hardly the case ; for the Cri- tical Essays of the late George Brimley are worth reprinting for their own merits. They may be read with pleasure and profit as comprehensive and deep-thoughted criticisms, where thejudg- ment is always conscientious, generally sound, and. copiously en- riched by illustrative material.
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