THE second concert of the British Orchestral

66

The sixth symphony, in D minor, bears the motto, "Gelebt, gestrebt, gelitten, gestritten, gestorben, umworben," which may be roughly paraphrased in English as Life and aspiration, suffering and strife, death and renown." It thus typifies the career of many an artist. In his treatment of this subject it is not always easy to follow the thread of the composer's ideas. Undoubtedly, the third movement, a funeral march, represents the "gestorben," and the brilliant and joyous finale is just as certainly intended to depict the "umworben." Probably also life and its aspirations are meant to be indicated by the first movement; but what in the world the light and playful scherzo which follows has to do with "gelitten, gestritten" I cannot conceive. Leaving this point, however, to be determined by those who are wiser than myself, a few words may be said as to the general character of the symphony. The best portion beyond dispute is the funeral marcha movement which one is almost tempted to compare for breadth and dignity with that in the "Eroica;" the rest of the work is, as regards ideas, of inferior interest. This symphony, more than most of the others, seems to have come from the head rather than the heart, and to be the product of reflection and deliberation rather than of inspiration. The workmanship of the whole, its counterpoints and developments, are wonderfully clever, often really fine; but the work after repeated readings leaves one cold -always excepting the third movement. The subject of the scherzo, for instance, is uninteresting, not to say positively dry; and all the artifices of counterpoint cannot compensate for lack of invention. The same may also be said, though to a less extent, of the finale, in which Raff lavishes all the resources of his ingenuity on a rather commonplace subject. The movement is certainly effective; but how much more effective would it not have been had the composer exercised more care in the selection of his materials.

It is of course possible that impressions derived merely from reading the scores may be modified to some extent when submitted to the test of actual hearing. In the case of the third symphony, I shall be in a position next week to say how far this is the case, as the work is announced for a first performance in London at the Philharmonic Concert on Monday evening.

EBENEZER PROUT.

Society, which took place on the 31st ult., was in many respects a decided improvement on its predecessor. Whether the strictures which have produced any effect it is, of course, impossible to been made in various quarters on Mr. Mount have but it must be said in justice to that gentle man that his conducting at the last concert was not characterised by that lethargy which on some previous occasions has produced such unpleasant results. Beethoven's great Leonora overture, with and spirit which left little to desire, and the prowhich the concert opened, was given with a fire out the evening. The programme contained two mise of this first piece was well sustained throughnovelties of importance. The first of these was Mr. Alfred Holmes's fourth symphony, entitled "Robin Hood," which had never before been performed in public. This work is very far superior in merit and interest to the same composer's "Jeanne d'Arc" recently produced at the Crystal Palace, and noticed on that occasion in these columns. The themes, especially of the first three viduality, and the instrumentation is much more movements, are very pleasing, if of no special indimoderate and tasteful than in the larger and more ambitious work. The second movement, a serenade with a prominent part for the violoncellos, is especially good. The whole symphony was very warmly received, and the composer called forward at its close. The other novelty of the concert was a scena-"Saffo "-for a soprano voice, composed expressly for the society by Signor Randegger, and sung by Mdme. Lemmens-Sherrington. It is after the model set by Beethoven in his "Ah perfido," and Mendelssohn in his " felice," and consists of a recitative followed by a slow movement and a final allegro. The scena is in all respects worthy of its composer, the slow movement being particularly charming. The orchestration is remarkably tasteful and nowhere overloaded. Being excellently sung by Mdme. Lemmens, the piece achieved a thoroughly deserved success. The other features of the concert were Maurer's Concertante in A for four violins with orchestra, a work of but little musical value save as an opportunity for the display of good soloists, and to which full justice was rendered by Messrs. Carrodus, Amor, T. Watson, and Brillante " 'in B minor for piano and orchestra, Betjemann; Mendelssohn's well-known "Rondo played by Mr. Arthur Wilford; the overture to Euryanthe, and a ballad sung by Mdme. Lem

mens.

"In

[APRIL 10, 1875.

thing of the operations of an institution which unostentatiously does an amount of good of which few except its members have any idea.

WE have to announce the death at Saint-Jossemaiden name was Moke; her father was a Belgian ten-Noode (Brussels) of the distinguished pianist, Mdme. Pleyel, in the 64th year of her age. Her

and her mother a German, and she was born at Paris on July 4, 1811. Her first teacher of the piano was M. Jacques Herz; she subsequently of pianoforte manufacturers of that name. Being studied under Moscheles and Kalkbrenner. Her husband, Camille Pleyel, was the head of the firm separated from her husband after a few years of married life, she made the tour of Europe as a virtuoso. In 1848 she was appointed Professor of the Piano at the Conservatoire at Brussels, and held the post until, some five years ago, the state of her health obliged her to resign it.

THE first part of two Farewell Recitals previous to his departure for America was given by Dr. Bülow at St. James's Hall on Wednesday afternoon. On this occasion the programme was entirely selected from the works of Chopin. No gifted Polish composer could be named than Dr. more sympathetic interpreter of the music of the Bülow, whose performance throughout was, it is almost needless to say, excellent. The second and last recital is announced for Wednesday afternoon.

right of most, if not all, of the compositions MR. LAMBORN Cock, the proprietor of the copyof the late Sterndale Bennett, has just published the first volume of what we presume is to be a complete and uniform edition of our distinguished countryman's pianoforte works. We shall defer a detailed notice of the music until the series is

complete, and content ourselves for the present with saying that the present volume contains ten different works, including, among others, the three popular pieces "The Lake," "The Millstream," and "The Fountain," that it is beautifully printed, and that the external appearance of the volume, which is in octavo, is fully worthy of its contents. It is edited by the late musician's former pupil, Mr. Arthur O'Leary, one of the professors of the Royal Academy of Music.

with some new Zeus, whom he contemns, but who is born by Fate's decree to conquer. The flash and flame and force of genius, whereby this conception of Aristophanes is sustained, overpower all criticism. It is only after laying down the book and thinking over it, that we discover what is wanting the aerial beauty which belonged to the true Aristophanes, the delicate drollery which Plato has pourtrayed in the Symposium. Mr. Mr. Browning's Aristophanes roars and ramps, and snorts and bullies, and dominates us with subtlety of intellect and strength of lung. But where in the hundreds of lines which he pours forth can we detect the teacher of the Chorus of the Clouds, the singer of the Birds in their parabasis? He is truly finest, and most artfully depicted, in the passage which describes his feelings when the news of Euripides' death reached him in the midst of his symposium. Mr. Browning soars to a dramatic climax in this masterpiece of powerful delineation.

principles I hate, and by beplastering them with mud confer an immortality upon their names. For the licence of my art I claim prescription, custom, ancient usage. Comedy is coeval with liberty in Athens. You strangers may misconceive its meaning; but we "Rocky Ones," true Attic born, despise such squeamishness as you would foist upon us. This brings me to my real quarrel with your tragic poet. He praises Death, and I praise Life. He glorifies "the out of sight and in at mind." I make the most of what is "good and graspable." Great was Hellas when men took their pleasure in the natural world, when gods were gods above them, and heroes were remembered as more than mortal, and Marathon was fought, and the Parthenon was builded. Then came the brood of Sophists darkening the sky and robbing life of joy; and, after Aischulos, Euripides. Do you think that I, I Aristophanes, could not have written Tragedies, if I had chosen? But seeing how things went from bad to worse, I rather chose to fight. I struck out at the sophist and the demagogue. Any stick will serve to smite a Therefore I did not scorn lies, if they suited my purpose. Granted that what I said of Socrates and of Euripides was selfacknowledged fiction. What then? I need not stand upon stale calumnies. Wait for next year. next year. In my Frogs I'll show you Aischulos against Euripides, the good old age, for which I fight, matched with the new, before god Bacchos for a judge.

cur.

:

Meanwhile, his Euripides is far-withdrawn and shadowy, a philosophic phantom, dear to all initiated souls, the burgher of no earthly city, the believer in no gods of Greece, but the beloved of God. He speaks, at great length, in his own Herakles, which Balaustion, with a woman's privilege, pours down the ears of half-drunk Aristophanes. But while his Comic antagonist is so carefully displayed, like a cantharus upon the cork of an entomologist, the Tragic poet, assumed to be a far superior being, is only reflected on the mirror of Balaustion's womanly mind. Here again we find dramatic propriety of the first water. tion is speaking. She cannot but presuppose the supremacy of her adopted saint. What then, after all, is the apology of Aristophanes, which gives the title to this n? To follow the drift of Mr. Brownpoem ing in tame prose is tantamount to doing a great poet in the art of psychological analysis injustice. He has added, indeed, nothing with which a careful student of the plays of Aristophanes will not be probably familiar; and he has omitted many subtle nuances inconvenient to his general drift. But he has read, condensed, and reproduced a great part of the resonant Parabaseis and gorgeous rheseis of the poet, and has given these an adequate English form. Shall a real man, argues Aristophanes, pot-valiant in the presence of the spiritual Balaustionshall a real man retire to a cold study or some Salaminian sea-cave, with winds and gulls for audience, and there compose the philosophic comedy of the future? Athens herself, the while, throws all her follies before him to make mirth of, all her vice to scourge. I Aristophanes took up the craft where the Megarians left it; refined upon Telekleides; purified Hermippos; matched Eupolis in elegance, Kratinos in pungency. I added an element of ethereal fancy and divine good taste. Made thus and fashioned for the Comic art, I have now my fling against the sophists who corrupt our youth with law court quibblings, against the sceptics who invade the sanctities of glad old nature-worship, against the moralists who make adultery pathetic and rags picturesque. I single out men as types of the

peace

ments of her antagonist, showing that his claims to prescriptive right are ill-founded, and that Comedy is not coeval with Hellenic liberty, but a fungoid growth on Attic licence; that his boasted preaching of and good custom has proved ineffectual; that his very ideal of life leads to sloth and sensuality; that his comic art consists of tasteless ribaldry; and that he, himself, is the worst sophist by playing false to his true self and reasoning vice into a virtue. One part of her speech may be detached from the rest. She imagines a future time and a far-distant land, where men, recovering the past of Hellas, will wonder why the burghers of Athens walked abroad with no rapiers at their sides, and why the athletes wrestled naked. Study will make them understand the fitness of these customs.

But no study will reconcile them to the incongruity, unseemliness, and shame of the Lysistrata. That distant land is England.

I can fancy that a reader of this last, finest, poem of Mr. Browning will ask: Why trouble us about Euripides, the dead, the excellent, the mummified in the Poetue Scenici? As is the case with all Mr. Browning's work, however, the subject-matter of Aristophanes' Apology serves as a schema for conveying something far more universal than appears upon the surface. That old quarrel between Tragedy and Comedy at Athens, which he has resuscitated, has long ago been settled. It was never so important perhaps as he would have us think; for what are poems, or poets, after all but signs and symbols of a nation's culture? The accurate scholarship and vivid local colouring which make this poem priceless to a student, will repel the general reader; and all of us may cry "Connu!" when we read the prophecy of a new Comic art which shall absorb the Tragic. But no one is really unconcerned with the strife of the spirit and the flesh, idealised humanity and life materially appre hended, which underlies the shadow-duel between Balaustion and Aristophanes, as apprehended by Mr. Browning.

J. A. SYMONDS.

Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterwards First Marquess of Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence. By Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. Vol. I, 1737-1766. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1875.)

years

of

WILLIAM FITZMAURICE, the son of John, first Earl of Shelburne, was born in Dublin on May 20, 1737, and passed the first his life in a remote part of the south of Ireland, beneath the roof of an old grandfather. This relative appears, from the candid description given us by his grandson, not to have been one of the most estimable of beings. "My grandfather," writes Lord Shelburne, in the autobiography now for the first time published by his great-grandson, the author of this interesting memoir,

"did not want the manners of his country nor the habits of his family to make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character which can be imagined, obstinate and inflexible; he had not much understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no education except what he had in the army, where reputation for personal bravery and activity." he served in his youth with a good degree of Living with this harsh relative, the future statesman regretted the effect it had upon mental training.

his

"I had no great chance of a very liberal education," he says, 66 no great example before me; no information in my way except what I might be able to acquire by my own observation or by chance; good breeding within my own family, which made part of the feudal system; but out of it nothing but those uncultivated, undisciplined manners, and that vulgarity which makes all Irish society so justly odious all over Europe."

At the age of sixteen the young man was entered at Christchurch; but before going up to Oxford he paid a visit to London, where his father introduced him to Lord Chesterfield and to Lord Granville.

"I saw them the same morning," he writes, "and happening to go to Lord Chesterfield first,

...

to say to himself that it was so strong that most things returned to him with stronger force the second time than the first. He was so attentive to forming his own taste that he would not look at a bad print if he could avoid it, wishing not to hazard his eye for a moment. It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was violent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue, and patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which may be judged by the leading features of his life without relying on any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to everything else he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. What took much from his character was that he was always acting, always made up and never natural, in a perpetual state of exertion, incapable of friendship or of any act which tended to it, and constantly upon the watch and never unbent. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head, thin face, long aquiline nose and perfectly erect. He was very well-bred, and, preserved all the manners of the vieille cour, with a degree of pedantry, however, in his conversation especially when he affected levity."

But if such things are done in the green tree, what can be expected of those done in the dry? If Lord Shelburne is so candid a friend to the faults and virtues of the Great Commoner, with whom he was apparently on the best of terms, can we be surprised that he should draw, with rather more than his usual allowance of shading, the characters of Bute and Fox, with whom he had quarrelled, and whose political creed he disliked? Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice warns us that when the noble author sketches his descriptions of these his former colleagues, "he was no doubt partly under the influence of subsequent transactions;" and the warning is not unnecessary. Lord Shelburne's estimate of the character of Bute and Fox must be accepted with rather more than the customary grain of salt allowed for the prejudice and bitterness of writers when commenting upon their rivals.

We repeat in conclusion that this biography, when finished, will be a most valuable addition to our politico-historical literature. If we can judge of the volumes that have to come by the one already issued, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice is well fitted for the task he has set before him. It is not given to every one to possess the necessary qualities which constitute both the able editor and the agreeable writer, but Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice performs his double duties not only in a happy style, but with care, good taste, and an appreciation of authorities that in these days of slipshod references is most commendable. We shall watch for his second rolume with much interest.

ALEX. CHARLES EWALD.

English Portraits. By C. A. Sainte-Beuve.

Selected and Translated from the "Cau

series du Lundi." (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875.)

THE anonymous translator of this book (whose identity can, we think, be recognised without the exercise of any great literary clairvoyance) may fairly count two points

in his favour-a good intention and considerable audacity. It has been not uncommonly held that translations of purely literary works are, except as intellectual exercises for the translator, mistakes; and it is quite clear that no kind of translation is beset with such difficulties as translation of criticism. The man who attempts to represent in one language the poetry of another has a good many little helps, he is less bound to the letter than the prose translator; the poetical styles of most languages have a good deal in common; and metre, rhythm, and the like, serve as fences to keep him from straying. Moreover, though it be true that middling poets are no poets at all (a remark, by the way, which our translator quotes from Pope as if it were that writer's property), still there is no doubt that middling verse, as verse, finds a more favourable reception, indeed is more tolerable, than middling prose as prose. To translate one of the Causeries worthily, an amount of labour, learning and literary ability would have to be brought to the task which would be quite capable of producing original work of the highest excellence, and which would be much better spent in the production of such work. We are sorry to say that the present occasion, whatever may have been the with the labour, the learning and literary ability are conspicuously absent. A writer so careless or so unskilful in word-craft that he employs the adjective "brilliant" to qualify the episode of such a life as that of Mary Stuart, is clearly unfit for the task of Englishing Sainte-Beuve, and the use of such words as "indiscriminating" and "to emolliate" is not reassuring. After these proofs of incapacity one is scarcely surprised to come across such "She had to entice Darnley into the snare by a feigned renewal of tenderness, who was then recovering from the or as this: "He fears lest the small-pox; last volumes would not bear marks of this." There is, moreover, an irritating affectation in the use of the word Madam which con

on

sentences as:

case

stantly occurs. Madam Sand is bad enough, and we should like to know whether this writer speaks of his friends as Madam Smith and Madam Brown. But Madam de Longueville is simply ridiculous.

terms.

Of the original part of the volume we cannot conscientiously speak in more favourable In a very long introduction of nearly 120 pages the author gives an account of Sainte-Beuve's life and writings which might have been better done in ten. of the life there is not much to be said; and of the writings, unless by a person competent to subject them to a finished study, there is not much worth saying when it has been once stated that Sainte-Beuve, abandoning the old lines of cut-and-dried criticism, gained for himself a great place among the newer and truer race of critics who precultivated mind, and to represent the image fer to turn on the subject the mirror of a in artistic language. The specimens of his work which are given should be a sufficient

comment on this statement.

These specimens, which the translator has selected as likely to be peculiarly interesting to English readers, give (or rather would give but for the drawbacks already men

tioned), a fair enough notion of their author's style and manner. The translator has not, however, shown much judgment in giving the first place to the study on Mary Stuart, which is quite unworthy of its author, show. ing neither power of appreciation, nor grace of treatment. The essay on Chesterfield which follows is in a much happier vein, and does far more justice to that most charming writer than any English criticism with which we are acquainted. Benjamin Franklin is the subject of the next, and the treatment will give readers previously unfamiliar with Sainte-Beuve a very good idea of the critic's favourite and perhaps most successful mode of treatment, in which he addresses himself rather to the life and character than to the work of his hero or heroine. The somewhat similar dealing with Gibbon is decidedly interesting, be cause it shows, what is rare in Sainte-Beuve, a distinct critical fault, an actual relapse into the evil ways of elder criticism. There is, of course, nothing to justify this charge in the mere fact that Sainte-Beuve does not much like the Decline and Fall-that perhaps the greatest of histories, the only history that one reads again and again with constantly renewed pleasure and profit, does not inspire him with any great enthusiasm. Without instancing such cases as De Quincey and Hazlitt, whose imperfection of sym pathy is equally anomalous and notorious, we may say that even in the serenest critical mind there is often here and there a twist which no amount of thought and culture will quite smooth and straighten. We do not and cannot like our respective Dr. Fells, and there is an end of it. Therefore Sainte

Beuve is quite entitled not to like Gibbon. But, unfortunately, he shows us the reason of his dislike, and this reason is critically bad. "Gibbon," he says, "is not of the order of geniuses, is not even one whose talent

touches or stirs up men." And why? Because, forsooth, "a thunder-clap is never heard;" because "he has not Montesquieu's breathless shout on reaching the bank;" because "he never collects things in a startling point of view." Now, inde pendently of the very questionable character of the standard here set up, which seems to require from an historian the sensational tableaux of a melodramatist, this is exactly the old fault of first drawing up an arbitrary dogmatic rule, and then accepting or rejecting according to its application, instead of examining the subject on its own merits. We seem to hear again the old burden, “A hero ought to be white; therefore Othello is a bad play."

The two essays which stand last, the famous studies on Cowper, and on Taine's History of English Literature, make amends by showing their author quite at his best. In both his affectionate appreciation of mediocrity (perhaps it would be fairer to say, of something just short of supremacy) is admirably presented, and the memorable defence of Pope, and of "literature that dares to be literary," which the latter essay contains, is worthy to be read and read again by every student of letters. We sincerely hope that this book may lead many persons to study the Causeries in the original; we wish we were paradoxical enough to believe that this result may be