The dramatis personæ of this very dull piece are Polites, a magistrate; Physica; Astronomia, daughter to Physica; Arithmetica, in love with Geometry; Logicus; Grammaticus, a schoolmaster; Poeta; Historia, in love with Poetica; Rhetorica, in love with Logicus; Melancholico, Poeta's man; Phantastes, servant to Geographus; Choler, Grammaticus' man.

The piece was so dull and pedantic that even King James could not sit it out. It gave rise, however, to the following humorous epigram:

At Christ Church marraige done before the King,

Lest that those mates should want an offering,

The King himself did offer what, I pray? He offered twice or thrice-to go away.

The Tecnotamia or Marraige of the Arts may have suggested to the Oxford and Cambridge graduates of our day the plan of the two volumes which lie before us. There is this much resemblance between the two, that Physica, Astronomia, Poeta, and the other sisters nine are impersonated by rine graduates of each University, who have taken parts as amateurs in this modern masque of science. But here the resemblance ends. The modern Tecnotamia is as good as the old was indifferent. Instead of insipid abstractions, Poeta's love for Astronomia, relieved only by indecent liberties taken between male sciences and female muses, (proh pador!) we are given nine essays in each volume, which may be taken as favorable specimens of the literary capability of our University men.

In the advertisement to the first volume of Oxford Essays, published in 1855, we were told the tie which unites the different contributors is not that they think alike, but that they belong to the same University. The volume is not intended to advocate any particular set of opinions, theological, social, or political. Each writer is responsible for his own opinions and none but his own; and no attempt has been made to give a general unity of thought to the publication.

The appearance of essays, chiefly literary, not only contributed by University men, but written almost with the University imprimatur, is a novelty in English literature. It seems as if Oxford and Cambridge had determined to prove that they can advance with the times; they have taken up the challenge of the Manchester men and the Useful Knowledge Society, and the present volumes are the first instalment of a reply, to be continued annually so long as their merits are called in question in Parliament.

We commend the idea, and wish it every success. We are not unmindful that a University gave us birth. We write under the shadow of its walls-we are the University "juxta Dublin."

There is another cause at work to stir our old Universities into unwonted activity. The honour men in the old Universities are brought into competition with other honour men from the new. The new system of examinations for civil and military service has founded a University of Universities in Somerset House. Centralization has attacked at last the seats of learning, and sucked even Oxford and Cambridge down the great vortex of competition in London.

We never should have thought that within two years the principle of competitive examination could have taken such hold of the country, and

given a new impulse to our educational establishments, from the oldest to the youngest.

There is nothing new under the sun; and so that which is a novelty of two years' date in this country may have existed for thousands of years in China. Truly, we deserve the name of Fanqui, foreign devil, or barbarian, in this respect. In China, competitive examination has been long carried to such perfection that the prizeboy in the village school may pass on to the provincial town, and thence to the capital of the province. There is but one step from the literary graduate to the government employé. The prime minister is only superior to the peasant because he is a better classic. Old diplomatists and financiers in China take rank out of the College Calendar, as freshmen do with us. All China is a great University. Its eighteen provinces are colleges which send up their good men to take "classes" for the Home Office, or wranglerships for the Horse Guards or Admiralty. The talk of the clubs in Pekin is of that kind with which freshmen regale themselves at а wine" at St. Boniface's the first term of residence. What degree Hung, the long-nailed commissioner, took; how Mandarin Muff-feen was plucked at his great go; how a prime minister man, Choo, took a coach and went through "his smalls." In China,the tenpound householder, if such a class exists, is a University man; the prizes of life are college prizes; learning is not, as with us, a little side avenue, hedged in from the outside world, "with a college at one end and a parish at the other," as Porson said of it. It is the great highway of life, along which all must trudge from the peasant to the premier.

66

Germany, if behind China, is in advance of us in this. There the de

gree is the pass to all promotion. No profession can be practised, no place under government can be sought for, without the requisite diploma. The connection between the Universities and life outside is almost as close as in China.

But with us the University system has been a state within a state-a privileged corporation reputed to be skilled in dead languages and pure sciences-but ill adapted to train men

for life, and almost, useless as a preparatory school for political and diplomatic duties.

But suddenly a change has come over our official system. Promotion by interest has been swept away from the public offices, and promotion by merit adopted in its stead. As suddenly almost our old Universities have adapted themselves to this measure of administrative reform. The gates of office have been thrown open to their scholars and prizemen; most of the candidates have succeeded; a few have carried off the highest honours against the educated youth of the three kingdoms. The University whose name we bear, which twenty-five years ago gave birth to our Magazine, though taken by surprise the first year of competitive examinations, has not only recovered its ground, but has taken higher honours in the India and Woolwich examinations than any other University; and as it has made a reputation in one year, so it is resolved to keep it for many years to come.

Whether the spirit of emulation, once aroused, has descended to the bye-paths of literature as well as its beaten tracks, we cannot say. But it appears that Oxford and Cambridge have entered the lists of English literature. Edinburgh, too, has followed their example, and announces a volume of essays as forthcoming with the new year; but where is"the silent sister?" Has Dublin no essayist to compete with Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh? She has measured her strength with her elder and richer rivals in the competition for civil and military appointments. Her success in one direction should encourage her to attempt it in another. We throw out the hint, assured that the talent exists if sought out and encouraged. The editor of "Butler's Analogy," who has condensed an immense mass of learning into the modest compass of a few notes the mathematician whose name is of almost hereditary celebrity in the science of optics, and who has been chosen to preside at the approaching session of the British Association in Dublin another who is known among French savans "Le Savant Irlandais"-a third whose treatise on Conic Sections is

as

already a handbook in Cambridge, so exclusive of any mathematical methods but her own-these are but a few of the Hastati, the front-rank men in the exact sciences; the Principes and Triarii, the rear-rank men in the higher walks of science, could supply even abler essayists and critics. What would the lamented Archer Butler not have given for such an opportunity of wielding the editor's staff and marshalling Polites, Physica, Astronomia, Logica, Grammaticus, and the rest, in a Dublin "Tecnotamia, or Marraige of the Arts ?" The verdict of our Magazine on one of its ablest and earliest contributors, "Poet, Orator, Metaphysician, Divine, nil tetigit quod non ornavit," endorsed as it has been by universal consent since, would have marked him out as the head and front of such an enterprise. Again we ask, where is Dublin?

We would recommend this subject in particular to the members of the Historical Society, among whom no doubt would be found many able contributors to such a volume of Essays.

According to the old theory, a University was a gymnasium for mind, where men were not so much taught as trained; disciplined for life, not apprenticed to a profession. Edu

cation was esteemed as a mental gymnastic; even mathematics, which by the very meaning of the word would imply things to be learned, was not studied as a doctrine so much as a discipline. A great lawyer defended the use of mathematics in Cambridge, as putting a fine edge on the understanding."

The same defence was offered with less reason for the old barbarous logic of Oxford. But a change has been introduced for better or worse; the old monopoly of dead languages and pure mathematics is over; to the old gymnasium has been added a new academy of sciences.

The professorial system has been greatly extended. Every science and almost every language has now its teacher; and with a very little extension of their staff the professors in each of the three Universities could fill forty arm-chairs, and rival the French academy itself. Something between the student and the professor is still wanting; something to

correspond for instance to the privatdocent of German Universities. The University Essays seem to fill this blank. Were a graduate a candidate for a professorship, he could point no testimonial so satisfactory as the essay thought worthy of a place among the eight or nine choice dissertations of the year. Such a privatdocent in the pages of the North British has recommended Professor Fraser to the distinguished honour of filling the chair of Logics and Metaphysics in Edinburgh, and to succeed the late Sir William Hamilton. The advantages of such a serial, as a trial ground for the rising young men of our Universities, is so apparent that we rejoice to observe that the editors of the Oxford and Cambridge Essays are warranted in continuing the series; and before long, we have no doubt, our and every other University will feel themselves bound to publish such a series, as they publish Donnellan or Hulsean lectures.

As the Cambridge Essays of 1856 have not come to hand as yet, we will take for our comparison the Essays of 1855. There are nine essays in each covering about 316 octavo pages. Whether the number has been limited to nine, from the classical reason that banqueters at a feast of reason must be "not more than the Muses;" or whether the editor steers the University boat with its eightoared essayists, we do not know. It is enough that nine is the limited number. Eight essays on general subjects the ninth closes the list with a defence of the studies of Oxford and Cambridge; like old Polites in the Tecnotamia, who closes the play by setting Astronomy, Geography, and Logic at one by compounding their differences, and so cementing " The Marraige of the Sciences."

The nine essays in each volume may be thus compared together: There are three essays in each on a literary subject; two in each on some of the exact sciences; three miscellaneous, and one, the concluding essay, on the subject of general education and classical studies.

To begin with the three essays on literature. Lucretius and the poetic characteristics of his age pairs off first in the Oxford volume against an essay on the life and genius of Mo

liere in the Cambridge. The two essays are so well matched, that if the rest of the Cambridge crew pulled as strong an oar as their stroke, the race will be sharply contested.

A criticism of Alfred de Musset, a French poet and novelist, by Mr. Palgrave of Oxford, pairs off with a review of Tennyson's poems, by Mr. Brimley of Cambridge.

Mr.

Of Mr. Palgrave's review of Alfred de Musset we can only say "guarda e passa," it may be read and forgotten; there are some just reflections on the subject of French literature, but it will not detain our thoughts half an hour after we close the essay. Mr. Brimley's essay on Alfred Tennyson is written in that good old style of criticism which prevailed until Macaulay set the new fashion of essays in the shape of reviews. Brimley remarks, "An essay upon a poet's writings may take one of two forms. It may either confine itself to an analysis of those writings with a view to discover the source of their power over the sympathies of men, or it may treat of the place the poet occupies in the literature of his time and country." We may thus view the poet either from without or from within; the former is more a biography-the latter more a criticism. Macaulay is an excellent model of the first school of criticism; Mr. Brimley of the second. Mr. Macaulay can describe the poet as a man of fashion; how he lounged on the Mall; at what tavern he dined; how he put on ruffles to go to St. James's, and on his way home was arrested and stripped to his shirt at a spunging-house; such ups and downs delight him. We are dazzled with the same sparkling contrasts in the poems themselves as in the man. Some are the very best, and others the very worst.

To

heighten the superlative, every poet of the age is put in the positive or comparative degree of excellence. Mr. Macaulay never seems to admire anything by itself; he has none of the beauty of repose; he can never, therefore, read the tamer history of a poet's mind, for poets are not formed by contrast with each other, but from quiet communings with na

ture

In which they steal, From all they may be or have been before, Thoughts they can ne'er express yet cannot all conceal.

We have indicated that which is a felt want in criticisms of the Macaulay school, that we may indicate thereby that in which Mr. Brimley excels. He has a fine poetic feeling, and is able to trace the growth of a poet's mind through his works. In 1830, Alfred Tennyson published his first volume of poems when he was an under-graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge; and for a quarter of a century he has been living in that border-land between thought and feeling, where, as in his own dream of the Lotus-eaters, "it is always afternoon."

Poetry with some is a pastime. Byron's first poems were " Hours of Idleness." In his latter days he laid down the lyre for the sword. Moore and Scott and Southey wrote verse for praise and prose for profit. Cowper wrote in lucid intervals, and put on the "singing garments" after writhing in the Nessus-shirt of melancholy madness. Wordsworth was the first professional poet, and Tennyson has adopted poetry in the same spirit. A devotion of a life deserves to be rewarded with success, and we desire to know how he has succeeded. Mr. Brimley has told us this by writing the poet's inner history; by tracing the growth of the poet's mind from Claribel of 1830 to Maud of 1855.

What Wordsworth says of himself is doubly true of Tennyson :

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or snow within a summer's grove;
And you must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love.

Except a few of the highest, such as Shakespeare, who possess that masculine power of thought that they create sympathy if they do not already find it, poets in general attract us only because we are attracted to them. We must love them ere they seem worthy of our love. Their beauty is that of woman, not to be understood until felt. Not to love them is to loathe them; there is no middle point between. Where there are the strongest sympathies, there are also the strongest antipathies. The poet is, of all men,

Dowered with the hate of hate-the scorn of

scorn

The love of love.

The gentler forms of poetry act upon other natures as latent electricity; they either conduct or repel it silently from them; it is only once in a century that a poet breaks like a lightning flash, rending a way for himself through conductors or nonconductors of feelings alike.

Shakespeare does not seek for latent sympathy. Every man is a Shakespearian. He places himself en rapport with universal human nature, but it is not so with Tennyson. His humour is wayward, his pathos a "dainty grief," dainty grief," and his language more elegant than robust. To relish him thoroughly we must have educational tastes in common, and a heart strung to the same key of feeling.

Shakespeare is his own interpreter --Tennyson demands and repays such criticism as Mr. Bristed's. The critic, too, is in entire rapport with the poet. Both are Cambridge men, and Tennyson is read and quoted in Cambridge as he is nowhere else. A freshman at Trinity orders a copy of Tennyson his first term as surely as he gets the University Calendar, and knows more of it by heart than of any book but the Calendar. It is as out of place with Potts' Euclid or Snowball's "Plane and Spherical” as a geranium in a milliner's window sill in London; but the flower is loved because it is out of place, for it looks and smells of green fields; and so Cambridge men, who tread the hard high-way of demonstration on "the Wrangler's Walk," love the one green alley which windingly allures, and, when off the calculus, turn to refresh themselves with Tennyson.

The third literary essay in the Oxford volume is "on Persian literature." The third Cambridge essay to pair off with it is " on the Relation of Novels to Life," by Fitzjames Stephen. In this case again we incline to prefer the Cambridge essay. Mr. Cowell's essay on Persian literature does not indicate very wide research, or the essay is not much better than the ordinary "fillings" of a good Quarterly Review. One of the University eight is expected to pull a longer and a stronger stroke than an ordinary Thames wherryman.

Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's Essay on the relation of Novels to life lays down the law of novel writing, interspersed with some very just criticisms on the novelists of the day.

"The first requisite," he says, 66 of a novel is that it should be a biography-an account of the life or part of the life of a person. When this principle is neglected or violated, the novel becomes tiresome; after a certain point it ceases to be a novel at all, and becomes a mere string of descriptions."

He instances, as examples, the Memoirs of a Cavalier and Robinson Crusoe. Judged by this rule, Mr. Dickens' novels are defective. Fielding's Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews are bona fide histories of those persons, whilst Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist are a series of sketches of all sorts of things and persons, united by various grotesque instances and interspersed with projects for setting the world to rights.

Mr. Stephen thus defines a novel as "a fictitious biography." He rejects from the class of novels books written primarily for the purposes of instruction, or for the sake of illustrating a theory. "They do not," he says, "fall within this definition, because they are not properly speaking biographies."

By this definition, Mr. Stephen excludes from the class of novels not only such works as Plato's Dialogues or the Pilgrim's Progress, but even fictions founded on fact. As fiction is not admitted as a mere vehicle for opinions, so it is not to be used as a mere embellishment of facts. He cites as an instance of the latter, M. Bungeron's Trois Sermons sous Louis XV. The difference between a novel and a drama is this, that the drama is the representation of an individual-the novel the description of a life.

Mr. Stephen's definition of a novel is narrow and arbitrary. It is true that the old novels were biographies, but in those times novel-writing had not become an estate in the realm. Hamlet's advice to treat the players well, for they were the abstract and brief chroniclers of the times, is true now of our novelists. They are our historians, politicians, dramatists, moralists, philosophers, and almost our religious teachers. The novel, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed up every other conjuring rod

it must copy, therefore, some of the parts and proportions of every other.

It savours, therefore, somewhat of