BIOGRAPHY.

12° pp. 193. 12° pp. 177.

English Men of Letters. Edited by JOHN MORLEY. 1. Bunyan. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 12° pp. 173. 2. Chaucer. By ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD. 3. Hawthorne. By HENRY JAMES, Jr. 4. Milton. By MARK PATTISON, B. D. 5. Southey. By EDWARD DOWDEN. 12° pp. 197. New York : Messrs. Harper & Brothers. 1880.

12° pp. 215.

THIS attractive series of biographies of English Men of Letters, which has thus far been chiefly devoted to characters of the classical period of English literature, has now reached its sixteenth volume, with more to follow. The series has been followed in these pages with exceeding interest, despite an occasional défaut, of which we have had reason to complain, such as when subject and author have been displaced, or brought into wrong relations, which unhappy accident, however, has not often happened. Nor has public interest flagged in the biographies, so happily condensed. So far from this being the case, the favor with which the public received them at the outset has, we are informed, steadily increased, for which fact the publishers are to be congratulated.

Let us take such of the series as have not been noticed by the REVIEW, in alphabetical order, rather than that in which they appeared. Beginning with Bunyan we observe that, those who remember the distress experienced in their childhood when reading the affecting accounts of Bunyan's condition during his long confinement, hours which he so profitably employed in writing that world-renowned allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, will feel grateful to Mr. Froude for the commonsense view he takes of his imprisonment. Instead of the "den' "where there was not a yard or court to walk in for daily exercises;" in place of "a damp and dreary cell," with " a narrow chink which admits a few scanty rays of light to render visible the abode of woe," Froude shows that Bunyan was permitted the indulgence the law allowed, and did not allow sometimes, provided his friends would pay for it. His long years of imprisonment the author considers to have been merely nominal at times. He could have been released at any time, by giving his promise to abstain from his peculiar style of preaching.

Mr. Froude gives a more intelligent history of Bunyan than it has ever been our good fortune to read. He is not content to take his information at second-hand, but goes direct to its source -the testimony of his contemporaries, and Bunyan's own account of his life. He gives a most excellent sketch of his life and charac

ter, and shows that it is needless to deplore the lowliness of his birth, or the disadvantages of his education; that the peculiar circumstances surrounding Bunyan best qualified him for his work.

Mr. Froude's analysis and criticism of Bunyan's works are admirable, displaying deep insight into his strange nature. He is not, unhappily, always accurate. The summary way, for example, in which Mr. Froude disposes of the fundamental doctrines of the "Quakers," or the "Children of Light," as they first termed themselves, is, we venture to say, misleading. On page 65, he says that at the outset they disbelieved in the divinity of Christ, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures. Take away these, and whence comes that "light" which George Fox so untiringly enjoined upon the "Friends?" That the primitive Friends denied divinity to the carnal part of Jesus, and denied the resurrection of his body, is beyond dispute; but that they placed implicit faith in the divinity of Christ, is equally beyond dispute. "He that hath the Son of God hath life, and the Father and Son are one, and there is no salvation in any other," says George Fox (The Great Mystery, p. 37. London: 1659). "None knows the person of Christ but with the light that comes from him: None knows the mediator, none knows the Author of their faith, but with the light that comes from Christ: And none knows the Scriptures of truth but with the light: And Christ is the rule of faith, and author of it, and giver" (Ib. p. 56). Also, on page 19 of the appendix of The Battle Door (London: 1660) he calls Christ the "first and the last, which was before tongues were, and stands where they are ended, and he is the Light, Life, Power, Wisdom and Teacher."

As regards the inspiration of the Scriptures, we also find Mr. Froude's assertions at variance with the facts. The occasion of the first incarceration of George Fox was at his interruption of the priest" in the "steeple-house," who said that by the Scriptures were to be tried all religions, doctrines, and opinions. George Fox denied this saying: "O no, it is not the Scriptures, but it is the Holy Spirit, by which the holy men of God gave forth the Scriptures, whereby opinions, religions, and judgments are to be tried. That was it which led into all truth, and gave the knowledge thereof. For the Jews had the Scriptures, and yet resisted the Holy Ghost, and rejected Christ, the bright morning star, and persecuted him and his apostles, though they took upon them to try their doctrine by the Scriptures, but they erred in judgment, and did not try them aright, because they did it without the Holy Ghost" (Sewel's History of the People called Quakers, p. 37. New York: 1844). This is even more unmistakable in his Great Mystery, p. 62: "The Scriptures were given forth from the spirit of God, and they are the things of God, and the words of God, and they are not known nor understood, but by the spirit of God again, for there is a spiritual understanding." As the above quotations are taken from the first two volumes published by George Fox, they

conclusively prove that "Quakers at their outset " did not "disbelieve in his [Christ's] divinity or in the inspiration of the Scriptures. William Penn refers to Christ as "the flowing of God's life." (Works, Vol. II, p. 417.)

But despite Mr. Froude's frequent recklessness of facts, his Bunyan is a story which fascinates and enchains the reader from the beginning to the end.

2. Chaucer affords evidence of Mr. Morley's usually excellent discrimination in selecting writers for his subjects. Mr. Ward treats his subject exhaustively or nearly so, beginning with the supposed period of Chaucer's birth, and giving a slight sketch of the political condition of England at that time, and of the literature, both French and English. He analyzes Chaucer's genius as represented in his works, and collects the few known isolated facts of his personal history, which gives one a tolerably distinct idea of the man and his writings.

Mr. Ward's critique of Chaucer's poems seems to us preëminently fair. At first, one might question the author's judgment in allowing Chaucer's poetry to lose so little when judged by the modern standard; but the energy and enthusiasm which Mr. Ward has shown in his subject have brought out so many beauties which were obscured in the obsolete language of Chaucer's time, as fully to justify his conclusions.

Altogether it is a timely volume, and will do much toward satisfying the increasing desire of the public to know more of the chief characters of English literature.

3. A good deal is expected now-a-days when Henry James, the younger, puts forth a new book; and the anticipation is not a little heightened when so important a name as Hawthorne's constitutes its subject and title. It seems, indeed, to look at the matter á priori, as if it were something more than a common felicity which brought the subject and author, in this case, together; for, if Hawthorne was a genius almost solitary in his subtle and exquisite proportions-the master of a pure and excellent styleMr. James stands foremost among our modern writers not only for brightness, but for inimitable graces of speech. He relishes a perfect sentence as an epicure an incomparable flavor; and with a quickwittedness which has had the benefit of travel and special training to make it serviceable, he knows how to measure the purport, estimate the nice shading, and the exact meaning of words.

But with all this equipment and in spite of the many excellencies with which his book admittedly abounds, his effort is a little depressing, and-we say it candidly-has disappointed us. Not that it lacks care and precision of statement; not that it lacks a profuse number of his best and happiest sayings; or that it does not give us, in many places, a charming psychological

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analysis of his subject. These are all to be found. are rarely ever wanting, to tell the truth, when Mr. James essays an opinion. But he seems after giving us so much, and even more if you please, to have missed the main thing. We lay the book down, and find our eyes full of the flicker of side lights and pyrotechnic illuminations; but there is no concrete image, no commanding figure—such as it is universally conceded Hawthorne's is-set up before us to overpower, or, at least,to command our imagination.

Our disappointment is the more severe, because Mr. James' long and now almost habitual residence abroad might have been to him an added resource-and given some hope that he would be able to forestall the full verdict of the future. But, curiously, this privilege has produced in his mind an almost acetous fermentation in respect of America and American topics, which— occasionally shown in mild passages in some of his former books -has here developed into cockneyism, and a sort of cosmopolitan snobbery that leans so far, and with such horror, from supposed littleness aud provinciality, as really to come back to it. Mr. James should be acute enough to know that the eagle is not constantly telling us he is not a wren; he trusts his size and demeanor and attitude to observing eyes. If any bird were really to assume such lofty airs, and were to scream insistently and with painful iteration that his view point was not the earth, but the sky, we should look up to see something anserine or webfooted, which had somehow managed to reach the serene height of some Serbonian bog. That catholic cultus, of which Mr. James is so enamored, and which marks the true cosmopolitan, is not mastered by "cathedrals" or " sovereigns," or "courts," or "universities," or "museums," good as they may be to live among and to possess; it is even superior to them. It does not suffer irreparably, we suspect, from all the other negatives, which Mr. James so solemnly catalogues-a list nearly as bereaving as that famous medley in Hood's " November" ;-nor will it shrivel up and die, if-horror of horrors—it knows" no Epsom nor Ascot!"

All that fine condescension, therefore, with which Mr. James pats America and Hawthorne on the back, and pities too, while he pats, is not criticism of any thing else so much as it is criticism of Henry James. It prompts and compels us to ask,-who is this bumptious youth who has so far outgrown his American old clothes? The pity of it all is, that Mr. James is a young writer who has unquestionably high gifts, and might well afford to be quite above his juvenile-not to say comical and amusing-solicitudes.

It is also singular that he should have so misread Thoreau as to say of him, as he does on page 94: "He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial-he was parochial. It is only at his best that he is readable.' The author who could write this must either have forgotten Thoreau's work, or else must

have read it through the wrong end of some strange mental telescope. Thoreau was certainly not a cosmopolite after the James ideal— some would say, instead, "academian"—but he saw more in Concord than some writers would extract from the whole Cosmos; and it would be hard to discover the wonder, beauty and pith of poetry, if they are not to be found in his literary excursusses.

But we are glad to have Mr. James deliver himself on this theme, even in the way he has chosen to posture. We would not have missed the multitude of pleasant flavors that are to be found in what he has, at least, daintily served. For all these we heartily thank him. But he has failed completely in the task which so many looked to him to execute, and has left the perfect critic, and the synthetic conspectus of Hawthorne-the one to be discovered, and the other to be written.

4. MR. PATTISON'S Milton has something of the effect of a photograph, as compared with other biographies of the poet that mainly present him as a high British classic-which he undoubtedly is-and exhibit him, as Mr. Masson does in his six large volumes, as part of a large and liberal painting, or historic picture. In this little book the reader sees Milton, and little else, to draw off his attention from the principal figure. Milton is represented especially as a poet, and one having also many of the faults and vanities of other men; and we are thankful for such a plain and simple style of narrative and criticism, in which nothing. is extenuated and nothing set down for mere biographical effect. The great Puritan was naturally a very meditative bookworm, always nourishing himself on grand visions, and always hoping to find an opportunity of performing something in the highest style of the poetical art. He was, in fact, as great a visionary as Bunyan or Coleridge, and, like most poets, was in a great degree unfitted for the circumspect rough work of the world about him. He was always dreaming-especially when at the age of twentyfive, he went in a secretive sort of way and married Mary Powell, a country girl of seventeen, who could never bear his quiet ways, his roomful of books, and no company, and who went away from him at the end of the honeymoon, meaning never to return.

Mr. Pattison gives a just estimate of Milton's mind and learning; and we can easily see that the poet had the pedantry of his age, with a lofty Puritan contempt for those who did not love learning and poetry, and with another sort of contempt which provoked him to "throw dirt" at his learned adversaries. People have affected to praise his prose, which was really an ill-regulated and disorderly prose-very far inferior to that of his contemporary, John Dryden and, for a quiet bookworm of poetical feelings, his language could be of a very termagant sort. But he was out of his element in prose, and the duty of doing something in the debates of the time and the work of his Latin Secretaryship of the Council of State distracted and drew away his mind from the