Our Library Table. 1. DE PRESSENSE'S Life of Christ. 2. New Poetry: BUCHANAN, WEBSTER, and GIDLEY. 3. BARRY CORNWALL on CHARLES LAMB. 4. FREDRIKA BREMER at Home. 5. Bishop ULLATHORNE on the Management of Criminals. 6. Annals of the French Carmelites. 7. The Birthplace of ST. PATRICK, 8. A Tale of Redemption. 9. Dr. PUSEY'S proposed answer to "Peace through the Truth.” 1. M. de Pressensé occupies the first rank among the learned men of the French Protestant body; and the work* before us may be considered as the contribution of the more orthodox section of that body to the defence of Christianity against the attacks of the infidel party in France. It deserves very high praise, and we are glad to see that it has been thought well to translate it. It is learned, well reasoned, thoughtful, and temperate; evidently the fruit of conscientious study and patient reflection. It contains many suggestive passages: some that strike us as showing great penetration; some that shine with a brilliancy not extinguished even under the inevitable disadvantages of a translation, however well made. It is free from the prolixity and vagueness of the best works of the "orthodox" German Protestants; and its general soundness and moderation contrast wonderfully well with the flimsy and affected extravagancies of M. Renan and the writers of his class. It shows, moreover, a wide acquaintance with much of the literature of the subject, and it is altogether the work of a thorough scholar.. M. de Pressensé first deals with preliminary questions. He asserts the supernatural basis of the Life of Christ against the modern writers, who begin by eliminating all notion of the supernatural. He then glances at the preparation for Christianity in the old world, the remains of primitive religion among the heathen, the positive institutions and miraculous dispensation of Judaism. He gives a short account of the later years of Judaism, from the time of the return from the Captivity, and thus leads us on to the state of the world, and of Palestine in particular, at the Advent of our Lord. These subjects have often been treated in books like that before us, and they present a very tempting field for theory, as well as an occasion for simple narrative. It must be admitted that the system of Philo, the opinions of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and other similar points, are not matters as to which it is easy *Jesus Christ: His Times, Life, and Works. By E. de Pressensé. (Translated.) London, 1866. to form a perfectly clear judgment, or at all events to set it forth for the benefit of others. M. de Pressensé does not indulge in any very wild luxuriance of conjecture. He next passes on to a consideration of the sources from which our knowledge of the Life of Christ must be drawn, the four Gospels. Here, though he would be reckoned as decidedly on the orthodox side, and though he vindicates the genuineness and avows his belief in the inspiration of the Gospels, we fear we can hardly say that he recedes far enough from the scepticism of modern critics to satisfy a Catholic reader. He admits of contradictions between the several Gospels, as in the case of the Genealogies and of the day of the Crucifixion; nor does he reject the hypothesis of actual mistakes in the statements of the Evangelists. Still, his view as to the origin of these sacred records is right in the main, as well as reasonable and sensible; far more so than some theories which have been put forward, we do not say in Germany, the native land of extravagance in hypothesis, but by writers in other countries, such as our own, who have not the excuse of an atmosphere of hallucination to accoun for the absurdities which they have "evolved out of their own consciousness" on this subject. A short chapter follows on the "doctrinal bases of the life of Christ." M. de Pressensé avows that he holds firmly the doctrine of "the Divinity of Christ in his Incarnation;" and declares that he accepts unreservedly the prologue to St. John's Gospel. We fear that he holds this doctrine in a way not very intelligible to a Catholic reader. In fact, his conception of the Incarnation falls far short of the teaching of the Church. As he does not explain himself fully, we need not attempt to do so for him; it is enough to say that he denies distinctly the existence of two natures in our Lord. He" is not," he tells us, "that strange Messiah who possesses, as God, omniscience and omnipotence, while as man, His knowledge and power are limited." When he says that He was made like unto us in all things, he distinctly tells us not only that he means that our Lord was able to sin, but that any other view of His liberty would render it, in his mind, illusory. Speaking of the Temptation, he says, "thus we are compelled to accept unreservedly the mystery of His utter humiliation. If impeccability is claimed for Him, He is withdrawn from the true conditions of earthly life; His humanity remains only an illusion, a transparent veil through which appears His impassible divinity. Being no more like unto us, He is no more ours." This is as bad, though not so absurd, as Dr. Wilberforce's assertion in the pulpit of St. Mary's, Oxford, that our Lord would not have taken our nature upon Him if our Blessed Lady had been conceived without original sin. Of course we cannot expect to find Catholic theology in the writings of an author in M. de Pressensé's position; but it is well to point out its absence, not merely on account of its intrinsic importance, but also because a false and even an inadequate doctrine about the Incarnation must of necessity occasion numberless false or defective interpretations of the words and actions of our Blessed Lord, His teaching, His institutions, His work, and His kingdom. We This, in fact, is the fatal flaw in M. de Pressensé's work. have hitherto spoken only of the first out of the five books of which it is composed. The last four go through the several periods of our Lord's life with much industry and care. If we were criticising them in detail, we might have much to say here and there as to points on which the author seems to have fallen into mistakes; but to do so would extend our notice indefinitely. But it is impossible, as we have said, to understand thoroughly the Gospel history, unless we first have a right faith as to the Person whose life it represents. M. de Pressensé is not wanting in reverence, industry, conscientiousness, or critical acumen. It would be difficult to find instances in his pages of the inexcusable habit, now so common, of inventing a theory or an explanation first, and supporting it by an obviously unfair and violent use of the text afterwards. His book will, we trust, do great good among his co-religionists; and it will be useful to others, as containing much sensible criticism in answer to Renan and his school. To Catholics, it is gratifying to see such a book proceeding from a religious body in which it can hardly be said that the Divinity of our Lord is insisted on as an article of faith. It seems to show that a struggle will be made by a party of the teachers of that body to preserve something, at all events, of dogmatic truth. Let us hope that the struggle may be rewarded, in those who make it, by a continually nearer approach to the fulness of Catholic doctrine. Should that ever be the case with M. de Pressensé, he will find much to modify in, and much to add to, what he has so honestly and powerfully written concerning the Life of Christ. 2. Mr. Buchanan, who has already made so favourable an impression by his Undertones and Idyls of Inverburn, has followed up his success by a third volume, with the title of London Poems.* This work certainly places him in the front rank of rising authors, and we may expect, if he goes on writing, to see him take a place among the few whose names survive the generation to which they belong. He has not flashed on us with the meteor brilliancy of Mr. Swinburne-a brilliancy which seems already to have become somewhat lurid-but his advance has been gradual and decided, and appears to promise some very high achievements. In his new volume, as will be understood from its name, Mr. Buchanan has undertaken to set free some of the unsuspected springs of poetry which lie beneath the hard and uninviting soil of common London life he sings of the innocent milliner girl passing untouched through scenes rife with evil, nursing the poor clerk who lodges in the same house when he is struck down by fever, and then becoming his wife the artist and his model, who supports a brother and sister by her trade, walking in happy courtship through the streets on Saturday nights: the lonely tailor and his pet starling, and the sempstress with her blind linnet. He hovers over tales of crime * London Poems. By Robert Buchanan. London, 1866. and sudden violence, drawing out the tenderness of affection which is so often given to those who seem to be the outcasts of society and humanity. He gives an elaborate sketch-Attorney Sneak-the sort of character that Crabbe would have delighted to draw. The most striking poems in the volume, at least of this class, are those called Edward Crowhurst and Jane Lewson. The former seems to be founded on the history of Clare. It relates to a peasant poet, admired and patronised for a time by great folk in the literary and social world, then neglected, and at last driven to drunkenness and imbecility by having been tempted to look out of his own sphere of life. The other equally and perhaps more pathetic poem is the story of a poor girl who has been tempted from her home by a deceiver, and is only admitted to it again by her two stern maiden sisters on condition of her hiding from her child, whom they have adopted, the fact that she is her mother. Notwithstanding the dark and uninviting character of some of his subjects, the tone of Mr. Buchanan's poetry is healthy, bright, and genial; sometimes, indeed, we must take into account that he is a poet, and that his own verses (taken from the lines of the artist to his model) must be considered as explaining his philosophy of life. This form and this colour, darling, Are all we apprehend, Though the meaning that underlies them May be utter'd in the end; And I seek to go no deeper Than the beauty and wonder there, Mr. Buchanan disclaims being a follower of the method of any one of the great poets of the day. It is quite true that he is no imitator; he is a true and independent worker in the field of poetry; but no doubt he owes much to those who have gone before him. As Shelley and Keats have been the parents of so much in which our generation delights, so Mr. Buchanan has his obligations to Tennyson and others. He has not neglected that vein of what we may call modern Hellenism, which has been worked to so much profit by most of the favourite writers of our time, and in which some seem inclined to seek almost for a creed as well as for poetry. He has subjoined to his London Poems a few very masterly pieces in a different style-a grand "Death of Roland;" a poem called the "Scaith of Battle," the scenery of which is laid on the north-east coast of Scotland; and another on the "Gift of Eos" to her spouse Tithonus, in which the meaning of the beautiful Greek legend relating VOL. V. FF to the pair is very finely drawn out. Our readers will easily forgive us if we extract a part of this as a fair specimen of Mr. Buchanan's poetry in this style: Eos (to Tithonus). "Nothing, be sure, can wholly pass away! And nothing suffers loss if love remains! My breath dries up the moisture of thy veins; Thereto immortal love, immortal power, Hast sought the highest meed the Gods can give. Immortal Love hath smil'd and bade thee live! In a serener and a purer place, Not amid warriors on a battle plain, Not by the breath of pestilence or woe; But here, at the far edge of earth and main, Whence light and love and resurrection flow,- For lo! the love, the dream, to which is given Become a part of that which cannot cease, And, being beauteous, surely must be glad! Who loveth purely nobler light than theirs ; For him nor weariness nor agony, Purblind appeals, nor prayers ; But circled by the peace serene and holy Of that divinest thought he loved so long, Pensive, not melancholy, He mingles with those airs that make him strong,— A little loth to quit The old familiar dwelling-house of clay; Yet calm, as the warm wind dissolveth it, And leaf by leaf it droppeth quite away. To him the priceless boon To watch from heights serene till all be done ; Glad in each glorious coming of the sun!" Mrs. Webster's Dramatic Studies,* like the work of which we have just been speaking, are the mature production of a writer already well enough known to need no introduction. Some of the sketches are hardly, in the strict sense of the term, dramatic. They * Dramatic Studies. By Augusta Webster. London, 1866. |