| | | | | | | | | | Scotland has the fortune, whether good or bad to be | represented by a rather different order of writers from | what we might have expected. The Scotch are supposed | to be a hard-headed, shrewd, and practical race, and yet | in history the last fruit of the national genius is the | pompous prolixity of Alison. Their poetry has, as its | most marked characteristic, a lyrical simplicity; but the | two Scotch poets of the present day are Alexander | Smith and Aytoun. There is a great deal of deep | thinking and good writing in Scotland, and yet the most | noted Scotch philosopher, perhaps, is Professor Blackie. | We do not mean that persons really acquainted with | Scotland would select his name as that of the first | Scotch philosopher; but he makes himself heard and | read, his name is known, and his immediate hearers | seem to believe in him. Probably, if it were asked in | London who were the most eminent Scotch professors, | classical and philosophical, the name of Professor | Blackie would occur more readily than any other. He | has now published three Discourses on Beauty, which | he tells us he has often delivered as lectures in different | places, and which, after subjecting them to repeated | corrections, he now publishes at the request of his | pupils. They belong to that kind of composition which | is the most painful to read, and the most disagreeable to | criticize. Superficial in thought, loose in language, | wandering in arrangement, they are yet evidently the | work of a man who has a genuine interest in his subject, | who is independent in character, and who unaffectedly | delights in elevated and refined thoughts. Professor | Blackie is a writer who at once provokes criticism and | disarms it; but when we reflect that these are the | elaborate and mature productions of a very well-known | man, who, north of the Tweed, ranks as a philosopher, | we have no choice, and can be prevented by no | sympathy with the writer from saying that these | Discourses on Beauty are, in our opinion, very poor and | very badly written. | Professor Blackie has ranged himself under the school | of philosophers which seeks to arrive at truth by | maliloquent eulogies on nature. In Scotland this school | announces itself as the | | fruit of a reaction against an exactly opposite school, of | which the Edinburgh Reviewers are held up by their | opponents as the execrable type. | | Professor Blackie assures us, | (as the | Professor always calls the nineteenth) | At last the crying began, and arrived at its | climax in Professor Wilson, who, if rather | overpowering with his shooting-jacket rhapsodies, was | a man of originality and real poetical feeling. Professor | Blackie is a humble disciple of the same school, the | chief aim of which is to oppose the greatest amount of | fine writing, big words, and longing after the ideal and | the beautiful, to the caustic wit and homely logic that | once made their adversaries famous. There is a | sensation of wonder constantly excited by these | "Discourses," that anyone | should think it worth his while, page after page, to | make so much ado about nothing. Professor Blackie, for | instance, wishes to say that a hobbledehoy is not poetry, | and this is how he says it: ~~ | | The following is a criticism on Murillo's "Beggar Boy:" | ~~ | | Certain persons of an imaginative cast of character are | thus described: ~~ | | As might be expected, this style of writing on a | philosophical subject leads to the most perfect | platitudes. It is always rather difficult, in writing on | such a topic as Beauty, to avoid saying what is obvious | to everyone; and when | this danger cannot be avoided, the philosopher is apt to | have recourse to the trick of saying the obvious thing in | a non-obvious way. Professor Blackie wishes to | propound the harmless doctrine that the same thing | does not always look equally well in different places | and attitudes. If any human being, who knows that he | has five fingers, does not also know this, he may learn | it from the following passage in which the sublime and | the facetious are adroitly mixed: ~~ | | The facetious sometimes preponderates, as for example: | ~~ | | And sometimes the sublime gains the upper hand; but | no change is made in the obviousness of the thought: | ~~ | | Then, again, Professor Blackie is neither so cogent nor | so candid in argument as we could wish. He is fond of | that curious method of logical attack which consists in | stating your adversary's supposed tenet in a shape in | which neither he nor any other man ever dreamt of | holding it, and then telling him that he is thinks thus | (which he does not), he must be mad or drunk. Thus we | read, | And a few pages | afterwards ~~ | It is safe work tilting against men | of straw; and as no-one | since the Parthenon was first built ever, so far as we are | aware, maintained the extraordinary thesis that it or any | other Greek temple jumped itself together in pieces of | the right length, Professor has the best of the argument. | But sometimes, when the reasoning is a little more | peculiarly his own, it seems to want force and clearness. | A very large woman, we are told, will certainly not be | beautiful; | If Professor Blackie | set himself to find the special reason, the primary cause, | of a large woman not being a beauty, he might surely | have found a better one than that a humming-bird | would not look well in the very improbable event of its | reaching to the size of a hen. | Professor Blackie appears to us to write neither in the | style nor in the temper of a philosopher, but rather in | that of a warm-hearted, impetuous amateur. Still there | is something in his book which attracts us. In the first | place, the author shows much courage in the firmness | with which he protests against the gloomy Puritanism | of his countrymen. Then, his general views on the | elements of Beauty are, we think, sound, although | many objections might be made to details; and so little | power of understanding his opponents is displayed, that | that it is not much to his credit that he has kept clear of | their errors. And lastly, he is animated by a very sincere | wish to raise the standard of education in Scotland. The | knowledge of Plato displayed is not very profound, but | still it shows that the writer has studied Plato with zeal | and honest admiration; and if it be true that Plato is | hardly ever read in Scotland, undoubtedly Professor | Blackie is doing a real service to his countrymen when | he insists on the necessity of their doing so, if their | education is to be a really high one. We can fancy that | these discourses might awaken the interest and | stimulate the application of half-trained lads. But we | must say that we think it a mistake to have published | them, and regret that, at a moment when attention is | being turned in England to the Scotch universities, such | a specimen of Scotch Professorial teaching should be | sent to us.