Popularity of Mr Tupper's Philosophy.

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This must be our last extract; with it we take our leave of a very interesting book, and of an honest, genial, and kindly hearted gentleman.

Geoffry Hamlyn interests and instructs-Stephen Langton does neither. Mr Tupper's is a very skilful specimen of the novel that bores; well written, carefully constructed, and thoroughly tedious.

No prolonged investigation was needed to discover the work that would most characteristically represent this class. The profuse author of that admirably bound book, The Proverbial Philosophy, the renowned occupant in these days of Flecknoe's ancient throne, having condescended to clothe his wisdom in the trivial form of a two volumed novel, it was evident that the less elaborate and consummate efforts of inferior artists might at once be put aside. The choice was not misplaced. For well-composed, genuine, and effective dulness, Stephen Langton must be without a rival.

After all we do not degenerate. Great men remain among us. Hero-worship is a tribute which we pay too exclusively to the dead. No modern may again witness the vision that blasted Milton's sightless eyes with "excess of light;" nor, mounting Dryden's presumptuous car,

"Guide these coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long resounding pace."

But, on the other hand, Tennyson has made our mother tongue discourse more excellent music than it ever did before; and Cibber and Shadwell must pale their ineffectual fires before the more perfect art, and the more powerful genius of Dr Martin Tupper,—

"For born a goddess Dulness never dies."

We have always regarded the Proverbial Philosophy as the weightiest and most soperific work of modern times. The proverb, it has been said, unites the common-place of many with the weariness of one. If the axiomatic assertion of a great statesmen be well founded, Dr Martin's book of Proverbs is one of the happiest ever written. It has obtained the success it merits. The Proverbial Philosophy is a British classic, and immortal. Its moral platitudes have been plagiarised from everybody. Every sententious sentence is instinct with the noblest truisms. Thus it appeals to a weak but not unpleasant side of human nature. So long as mediocrity is worshipped, and red-tape' reigns, so long as middle aged men are pedants, and young men are prigs, so long will the Proverbial Philosophy be a welcome inmate in our houses, and a sort of gauge of the quality and calibre

of the households.

Stephen Langton, though not of the same order as the Pro

verbial Philosophy, is not unworthy of the talent, cultivation, and gentle and incurable prosiness of its author. That

"In cloudy majesty here dulness shines"

must be owned by every reader; but it is hard to define exactly wherein the great and masterful tediousness of Stephan Langton consists-whence come "the utter weariness and sharp distress" that prey upon the reader. Everything about it, indeed, bores one. The small fastidious affectations, the ever watchful egotism, the absence of palpable absurdity, the conscientious and laboured correctness, the moral and instructive tendency, the old platitudinous proverbial moralising, the faintness of the natural touches, the frequent long pauses occupied by explanatory futilities, the absence of plot, sentiment, denouement, and interest, and the placid lambent dulness which plays over the whole, combine to produce a surprisingly narcotic effect.

The hero is Stephan Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of John, and the soul of the confederacy of the great barons of the Magna Charta. Some of the details, it would appear, are due to the author's imagination; but the greater part of the story, we are given to understand, is warranted by the old chronicles. "Understand me," says Mr Tupper, "as stringing scenes of history on a thread of biography, and as being tolerably accurate in antiquarianism, as well as one can well afford to be without seeming pedantic." If antiquarian precision be necessarily associated with the appearance of pedantry, Mr Tupper is unduly modest. He is the most accurate of historians.

The attempt to illustrate the days of King John is perhaps a little presumptuous. Mighty painters have anticipated Mr Tupper. Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel called Ivanhoe, not yet wholly forgotten even by those who do not know the great Shakesperian drama. The loves of the gentle Robin Hood and the young but matronly Maid Marian (who, in Mr Tupper's book, come like shadows and so depart), formed the theme of one of the sweetest and best of all English pastorals, The Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson. One cannot help wishing that even our Magnus Apollo had avoided such classic and holy ground. The rivalry is curiously unhappy. Instead of the Friar Tuck of Sir Walter, we have a sedate and reputable priest; for sweet Maid Marian, a characterless lady; and the stormy barons of Shakespeare grow peaceful and prosy gentlemen, who would never have had the daring bad taste to extort the Great Charter. "We receive but what we give, and in our life alone doth nature live." Mr Tupper's gentle dulness informs all his creations.

Stephan Langton, according to our author, is born in

Career of Stephan Langton.

405

humble life. He loves his cousin Alice; and, as they are taking a lovers' stroll among the lanes of Surrey, the hero is knocked down, and the lady spirited away by Prince John and his knights to the castle of the Baron of Langley, "a base anticipation of fat Falstaff." Stephan recovers, gets by stratagem into the stronghold, succeeds in setting it on fire, and liberates la bele Aliz. The virtuous love of the cousins is described with considerable unction, and a sort of indecent prudery.

But Stephan's success is dangerous; and he finds it necessary to fly to France, where, in a marvellously short space of timethe author considering it, as he says, absolutely necessary to eschew all tediousness-we find him Archbishop of Rheims. Immediately thereafter he is made a cardinal by Pope Innocent III., and nominated to the See of Canterbury, in direct opposition to the wish of his old enemy, John, who refuses to receive him, until brought to reason by the arms of Philip Augustus and the Papal sentence of excommunication. Kneeling before the archbishop and the legate, the dethroned king receives back his crown, and is taken again under the mighty protection of the Church. Stephan, however, is an Englishman as well as a priest, and the great revolt of the Barons is animated by his daring and sagacious patriotism. Having secured the Great Charter (which is very curtly dismissed by Mr Tupper), he again discovers his old love Alice, and, after an edifying interview-the author's material being by this time exhausted-they both die, and the book ends.

The theme is a fine one. The story of the great priest and champion of British freedom is one that might rouse the dullest heart. But the trump of the destroying angel could not waken Mr Tupper; and in his hands a heroic history loses all its noble interest. From beginning to end, the book is thoroughly artificial and unnatural. From beginning to end there is not one touch of nature "to redeem it from the charge of nothingness.' To vindicate the character of Langton is Mr Tupper's professed object; and he has ended by depriving him of any. From a single paragraph of the Old Chronicle, we gain a clearer notion of the intrepid churchman's career than from Mr Tupper's six hundred pages.

It cannot be asserted with justice, that the composition of Stephan Langton is strikingly bad; though sometimes, no doubt, like Dogberry, it is "too learned to be understood;" and we confess our inability to follow Mr Tupper in his sublimer flights. Those of our readers, however, who have not read the book, may be able to comprehend what is pointed at in the following sentence:

"For many days and nights did she reverie about that symbol

chaplet, mutually their life-long allegory: Love and Patience, Remembrance and Faithfulness, Sorrow and Happiness to come —all bound up as in one, though with the five-fold repetition of life's unsabbatic days, on that single circle of imperishable silk, Eternity."

This is pacific. Mr Tupper is very different when aroused. As a specimen of the comminatory style, the following is nearly as effective as the episcopal curse in Tristram Shandy :

"When the Bishops of Ely, London, and Worcester, coming over from their temporary continental refuge for the purpose, promulgated that sentence in England, all men fled from John as from a pestilence. Any might slay him, and none might aid him. His very chancellor and intimate, Hugo de Wells, deserted his evil master, and went over to Primate Langton at Pontivy. The wretched king looked round him on every side, and, save his bloody mercenaries, who now might kill him too, saw no friend, no counsellor, no follower, no helper of any sort in heaven or earth: he was alone-alone with his damned self, and Judas, and the devil!"

But our readers have had enough of this stuff, and we must close. The instructive novel, as pretentiously illustrated by Mr Tupper, has proved too much for us. We are aggravated-we are wearied to death-we are unspeakably bored. The consolation suggested by Heine alone remains to us. "If this book bores you to read it, think how it must have bored me to write it." If Mr Tupper is not altogether exalted above mortal infirmities, his condition, during the composition of Stephan Langton, must have been truly pitiable. No other atonement need be required.

Students of "The New Learning."

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ART. VI.-1. Autobiography and Diary of Mr JAMES MELVILLE, Minister of Kilrenny, in Fife, and Professor of Theology in the University of St Andrews. 1842.

2. Catalogue of the Graduates in the University of Edinburgh since its Foundation. 1858.

THE student of "The New Learning," though a character not yet drawn in romance, stands out on the page of history as clearly defined as feudal lord or bold crusader. He lived in the mythic age of letters. His pen, not less than his sword, founded a commonwealth, which, amid the risings and fallings of empires, bids fair to outlast them all. His studies were the fruitful source of nearly all our boasted advances in literature and science. Surrounded as we are by works of genius, which greatly enhance our enjoyment of life above our forefathers, we too often look back with pity on their ruder age. But let us not forget that by them the foundations of our present happiness were laid. They learned, and taught, and believed, as much for us as for themselves. Our vision may be sharper, our minds clearer, and our judgments more correct in many respects than were theirs: but they raised the platform from which we enjoy our wider views; they scattered the mists which now hang less darkly on our horizon. If students of the "New Learning" had their faults and frailties, as we shall find they had, regret should temper blame, grief should silence laughter.

The phrase "New Learning" has two meanings in English writers. In works written about three hundred years ago, it denotes the theology taught by the reformers in opposition to the false doctrines of the Church of Rome. Divinity in those days was an indispensable branch of education. It was studied by men of all professions and of all ranks. Kings did not disdain to mingle in the frays which its doctrines awoke. The House of Lords was so leavened with the same spirit, that nobles and bishops not unfrequently began their speeches with expounding a text of Scripture. Literary men were often as good teachers. of theology as the ablest clergymen of the age. The poet, who was writing Latin verses one day, might be heard commenting on an Epistle the next: the courtier could urge Scripture arguments for the prerogative of his sovereign, with a skill that might have baffled many an acute theologian. Divinity was the battleground on which our right to freedom of opinion was fought for and won. No wonder, then, that it was studied by the wits and poets of those days, as well as by its professed champions. colder, perhaps a less thankful race, succeeded. Freedom of opinion was justly considered the birthright of man: the

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