using the dissecting-scalpel dispassionately. It does not follow that such historians are infallible-nor do we endorse Taine's conclusions as to the French Revolution-but at least they are worthy of more respect than the fanatical sort, or those who overcharge their colouring.

Taine insists on justice above all and in all things, and it is all the same to him whether it is violated towards the people or the King, towards one rank or party or another. This standpoint is certainly a noble, a truly liberal one, and hence it is that he, the free-thinker, enters the lists for the clergy and the Church, for the king and the nobility, wherever injustice is dealt out to any of these powers. In the first volume he sets forth the encroachments of the higher classes and the sufferings of the people. Why should he be forbidden in the second to describe the encroachments of the people and the injuries inflicted on the upper classes? Doubtless his speculations will be distasteful to theorists, and politicians will condemn him for having no political views on points which usually call forth party strife; doubtless he refuses to allow either to monarchs or to philosophers the right to rule despotically, to model the world according to their respective fancies, and his impartiality may be censured as lukewarmness by partisans, but it is precisely for these very reasons that his book will awaken the interest and secure the confidence of unprejudiced readers.

A definitive judgment must be deferred till the whole completed work lies before us. The concluding volume may be expected in the year 1887; it will treat of Post-revolutionary France'-i.e. the various changes which have befallen Taine's fatherland during the present century.

IV.

While discussing Taine's works individually, we have taken occasion to explain his critical method; let us now attempt a general survey of this method as running through them all.

When we invite a critic to pass judgment on a book, a picture, an author, a nation, a school of painting, a style of architecture, a national literature-what course will he pursue? He will either compare the object submitted to his criticism with a pattern of the same nature held to be standard or classical, and pronounce it to be good, very good, bad, very bad, second rate, &c., according as it approaches the pattern or diverges from it more or less. Or else he will estimate the worth of the object to be appraised according to the personal impression which it has made on him-i.e. he will only consult his own approval or disapproval. In the former case he is in danger of blaming, in the latter of praising, extravagantly. Now arise the questions how the person of the critic is to be kept apart from his decisions, whether there is a third mode of criticism, and

whether it is possible to attribute convincing force to a critical judgment, instead of regarding it as an opinion or a view. In short, can criticism be made an exact science with absolute and incontrovertible conclusions? One would suppose, considering what human nature is, that an application of the critical faculty in a uniformly mechanical manner, without any regard to the individual feelings of the critic, was an impossibility. But Taine thinks otherwise. He not only believes that this apparently incredible feat can be performed, but even thinks that the results of criticism may be as certain as those of a mathematical problem. And how is this mighty end to be attained? All we have to do-suppose that it is an author who is the subject of criticism-after having read through his works, is to draw up three groups of questions :

(a) Where was the man born? Who were his parents and ancestors? What were the root ideas of his race?

(b) Under what conditions and circumstances was he educated? What position did he hold in society? To what influences was he exposed? How did the spirit of the age affect him?

(c) What were the peculiarities and tendencies of his time, and how did they manifest themselves?

Having obtained certainty on all these points (as if that were so easy!) we shall find the faculté maîtresse of the intellect of the author, the fundamental quality which underlies his capabilities and gives them their peculiar direction, and which, therefore, supplies the key for a definitive adjudication of his merits.

Let us take for example Milton's Paradise Lost. Addison, a critic coming under the first category of those mentioned above, compares Milton's verse with the requirements of Aristotle, and finds that it so answers to them, that this epic is worthy of the highest commendation. Macaulay, a critic of the other category, does not undertake an exact or detailed criticism; he gives glowing praise to the richness of the imagery, the diction, and versification; he is enchanted with the poem, and his judgment is in unison with the favourable impression which it has made on him. And now, how does Taine proceed? After having by the application of his method answered his three test-questions-Race, period of time, surrounding circumstances'-and having thence deduced that Milton's faculté maîtresse is 'the sense of the sublime,' he seeks to prove by examples how this quality finds expression in his life and works. Milton is compared with Shakespeare as a poet; the difference between the two is said to be that Shakespeare is the poet of impulse, Milton of reason. Then Taine goes on to point out, as a consequence of this assumed fact, that Milton's prose writings and minor poems are admirable, whereas the Paradise Lost is a 'sublime but incomplete' poem, a series of reasonings alternating with beautiful images. The leading personages, who were to bear the stamp of

their own individuality, are said to be impersonations of contemporaries; God and the first human pair are transformed into orthodox persons. The genius of the poet, he says, stands out only when he describes monsters and landscapes, or speaks through the mouth of Satan in the tone of a stern republican. If we look closely into the question, we shall find Taine's mode of criticism quite as subjective as Macaulay's. Only the latter confesses his criticism to be subjective, whereas Taine holds his to be objective, which, however, it is only in the sense of 'impartial,' and not in the sense of unprejudiced' or of 'scientifically incontrovertible.'

Were Taine's method really perfect, objective, and infallible, it would necessarily yield the same results in the hands of others as in his own; as in the case of the exact sciences, all difference of opinion would be at an end. But in reality another, armed with Taine's capability of analysis, his keen critical faculty, his comprehensive knowledge, and his charming and effective style, might with the very same method consistently obtain quite opposite results. Taine frequently delights to compare himself to the anatomist wielding the scalpel, to the botanist, or the zoologist. But in the first place these men of science, when they institute their researches, lay aside all human passions, personal predilections, national prejudices, and individual feelings, whereas the critic who can divest himself of all these things in pronouncing judgment is not yet born, and is not likely ever to be born, so long as men remain only human. And, secondly, the anatomist, the zoologist, the botanist can actually make good what he demonstrates in concrete form, for he has the objects bodily before him, while the critic who has to deal with abstract conceptions-such as beauty, goodness, &c.—can only conjecture or surmise, as conceptions are almost always open to various interpretations. Taine's critical method is then not a science, his conclusions are not proofs, they are, on the contrary, often fallacious. Nevertheless his process has, as we have already remarked, the advantage of enhancing the reliability of criticism by continuous grouping of facts and constant endeavour to obtain certainty.

On the other hand, this virtue is apt to degenerate into a fault. The effort to prove too much frequently misleads Taine to wander into false paths. He eagerly sweeps along all that serves his purposes, and thus not infrequently falls into self-contradiction. It happens sometimes that he brings forward the same evidence to confirm one assertion, at another time a quite opposite one. By high-sounding generalisations he magnifies phenomena and occurrences, which appear to anyone else quite harmless or unimportant, into weighty and portentous records. He ascribes much too great and wide-reaching an influence to his three forces or 'surrounding circumstances.' However much, as everyone must admit, this influence of race, of sphere, and of the spirit of the age may operate on the life and the activity of

the man, we cannot go so far as to assume that it alone moulds individuality. If so, how does it happen that brothers and sisters can be so unlike one another? Taine is too inductive by half. He appears to set about his reading with all his preconceived theories and foregone conclusions mustered before him, and to note all that seems to him to confirm them, while he ignores all that tells against them. But this is the direct opposite of objectivity, which can only be approached by the deductive process.

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But however far we may be from finding ourselves on the whole in harmony with Taine the philosopher, or rather the anatomist, we must adjudge the highest praise to Taine the writer, the artist. In the former capacity he is, as Zola aptly remarks, a thought-mathematician,' a systematician, a slave to the consistent application of his own theories; and the reading of his works often conveys the impression that we are attending the lectures of a professor of geometry. This side of his nature is the result of his erudition, it is not the side from which we can fairly judge our author. The real Taine must be sought in the other direction-in his style, his pictures, his descriptions, his narrations. The merits which he unfolds here are his own, and are not due to study. The poet Taine, the man of flesh and blood, is far preferable to the cold mechanician Taine. Stripped of the method,' his writings would be all the more beautiful; indeed, this method would play but a miserable part in the hands of a less skilful and gifted writer; it is only Taine's style that holds it above water. In this clear, trenchant, vivid, glowing, luxuriant style stands revealed, as Zola says in Mes Haines, the prodigality and love of splendour which characterise a fine gentleman.' This style is deliberately unequal and unpolished, in order to produce the more powerful effect. We see that nothing is undesigned, that the author has his pen well in hand. It possesses all the glow and inspiration of fancy, though fettered by a 'method' which directly tends to the suppression of fancy. His highly finished diction always accommodates itself to the subject under discussion. Apart from the too frequent heaping up of epithets and metaphors à la Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and Bunyan, we are as much surprised by their suitability as by the ease with which they flow from his pen. This is attributable in great measure to the amount of reading, in which he rivals Macaulay, and the assimilatory power of his memory, akin to that of Buckle. His method is mechanical, analytical; his literary individuality, on the other hand, synthetic in its character. Karl Hillebrand says very gracefully in his Profiles—' In Taine philosophy is only the frame in which the ... always lifelike pictures of times and men are set. It is a pity that in the artist's eyes the frame is more important than the picture, that the latter seems to exist only for the sake of the frame.' It is no exaggeration to call Taine an artist in style.

LEOPOLD KATSCHER.

THE ANIMALS OF NEW GUINEA.

If we consider Australia as a continent, New Guinea, or Papua as it is better to call it, is the largest island in the world. It lies outstretched across the northern frontier of Australia, between 130° and 150° East longitude, and reaches from near the Equator to about 12° South latitude. By recent computations it is estimated to contain an area of about 306,000 square miles-that is, as much as England and France put together. In striking contrast to the parched-up plains of Australia, New Guinea is traversed throughout by ranges of lofty mountains, whence flowing and abundant rivers find their way into the surrounding ocean. It is consequently covered by a luxuriant vegetation; and although large districts are low and swampy, there can be no doubt that the uplands will eventually be found to supply large areas of fertile land suitable for European colonisation.

For reasons that I shall presently enter upon, Papua is of special interest to the naturalist, and, more than one fourth of its vast area having now definitely passed under the sovereignty of Great Britain, a sketch of its fauna, so far as this is known to us, will probably be the more acceptable to English readers. Before, however, I enter upon a discussion of the animals of New Guinea, I propose to give a short account of the principal scientific expeditions whereby our present knowledge of its fauna has been obtained.

The period and merit of the actual discovery of New Guinea are, like many other events of the same nature, a matter of dispute between the earlier Portuguese and Spanish navigators. But the first naturalist who has given us any particulars as to its fauna is undoubtedly Sonnerat,2 a Frenchman. It is, however, doubtful, to say the least, whether Sonnerat ever himself landed on the mainland of New Guinea, and it is even affirmed that he advanced only as far as the Papuan island of Guebé, or the adjoining island of Waigion. Here he may have obtained from native traders the skins of the Paradise birds and other undoubtedly Papuan species, which he subsequently figured and described in his Voyage à la Nouvelle Guinée.

Passing by Carteret and Bougainville, who in 1767 and 1768 touched at certain points on the north coast, we come to our

1 Antonio de Abreu in 1511, and Alvaro de Saavedra in 1528.

2 Voyage à la Nouvelle Guinée 2 vols. Paris, 1776.