French Criticism of English Writers.

11

same path. On the same declivity, though more sensibly agitated, may be seen other people, who hope, who agitate, who sing, who enjoy, who tremble, and who imagine that with railroads and schools they will resuscitate the vacillating and palpitating social flame. England herself, despoiled of her Saxon energy and her Puritan ardour, already in the widowhood of her literary strength, deprived of her Byrons and her Walter Scott, what will she become in one hundred years? God knows! And even should the symptoms announced by philosophers be exact even if, in this vast galvanic current of destruction and reconstruction called history, all Europe, the Europe of twelve hundred years, with its laws, its morals, its origins, its ideas, its cycles past, Teutonic and Roman, its pride, its moral life, its physical power, its literatures, should pine away and perish: is it to be wondered at? If we should be destined to undergo the fate of the old Grecian and Roman world, both less in circumference and in duration than our Christian Europe: even should the fragments of the old vase be broken up and ground down to form a new one: of what should we have to complain? Has not the civilization which we call European lasted long enough in time and space? And does the Globe want for more naïve and more innocent regions, which will accept our heritage as our fathers formerly accepted that of Rome, when she had fulfilled her destiny?

"America and Russia, are they not there? Two countries eager to enter on the stage, two young actors who seek applause: both ardently patriotic and usurping: the one sole heir of the Anglo-Saxon genius, the other, who with her Sclavonic spirit, eminently ductile, has patiently entered the school of Neo-Roman nations, and wishes to preserve their traditions. Do we not see other nations behind America and Russia, who during millions of years will continue, if necessary, this eternal labour of civilization.

"We need not despair of the human race, and of the future, even should we westerns sleep the sleep of other old people, sunk in that awakened lethargy, in that living death, in that sterile activity, in that fecundity of eternal abortions, which the Byzantines so long suffered. I fear lest we arrive at this. In Europe, and especially in the South, the people are intoxicated. There is one kind of literature in its dotage, and another delirious. The matter-of-fact or the working man, the mason or engineer, architect or chemist, may deny what I set forth if he be not a philosopher: but we have flagrant proofs. We might discover twelve thousand new acids; air-balloons might be impelled by an electrifying machine; the means of destroying sixty thousand men in a second might be discovered: yet the modern European world would not be less what it is, dead or dying. From the height of his solitary Observatory, hovering over obscure space and the rough waves of the past and future, the Philosopher, whose care is to strike the hours in the days of history, and to announce the changes which take place in the life of the people, will still be obliged to repeat his mournful cry: Europe dies of consumption.""

But in Observatories so very much out of the way, even Philosophers will be suspected of seeing only dimly and distortedly in the direction of Earth, and in a later lucubration M. Chasles leaves little doubt of it. This, which appeared at the close of last month with the title of Du Roman en Angleterre depuis Walter Scott, is quité remarkable for the false point of view at which the survey is taken. Even where the qualities of a writer are tolerably understood, his position, his importance, are absurdly overrated, and laborious wisdom wasted on a trifle. This ludicrous mistake of means and ends is the oldest misfortune of Philosophers in the Clouds. When the Athenian Wit caught Socrates in his Observatory of wicker-work, the sage's occupation was to call forth the genius of geometry to measure the skips of a flea. And here are such books as "Softness" and "Hardness" which, whatever their merits, are certainly little known, treated as features of modern English literature! while of their popularity and its source thus gravely discourseth the profound Philarète Chasles. "England, who forgets nothing, who surrenders nothing, who loves to feel herself old, and whom tradition charms, preserves still the taste for abstract personification: last relic of the symbolism which prevailed in the Middle Ages. She recalls involuntarily, as she reads these Moralities turned into romances, the Dramatic Moralities that were the delight of Christian Europe, when Vice and Luxury encountered on the scene their eternal enemies, Temperance and Virtue "!!

It is little to say after this that Dryden is characterized in the same paper as a very indifferent master of versification, or that the moral tone of Daniel De Foe is described as a Calvinistic severity, the style of a formal, straitlaced, smoothfaced school of appearances! The point of view which exaggerates the mean, must tend to depress the great. And enough has been said to illustrate our present purpose, the exhibition of the general spirit of French Criticism on English writers.

ART. II. Anselm von Canterbury. Dargestellt von G. F.
II.-
FRANCK (Life and Character of Anselm of Canterbury.
By G. F. FRANCK.) Tubingen. 1842.

THERE are several different points of view from which the life
and times of Anselm might be considered. From most of them
some light will be thrown on the history, and from all of them at
least on the historian. The patronizing contempt of Hume, who
holds that it is difficult to speak of the discussions of the Council
of Bari with the requisite decency and gravity, is highly illus-
trative of the eighteenth century, if not of the eleventh: and to
men born in a less self-satisfied generation, the fashions of seventy
years ago seem as strange as those which were then ridiculed at
the distance of seven hundred. A philosopher and historian,
who could see nothing in the struggles of the early Norman
kings with their primates but the conflict of law and right with
selfish priestly usurpation, has become almost as obsolete in his
mode of thought, as an Archbishop of Canterbury discussing the
logical subtleties with a Greek ambassador before an Italian
council. In our own time it seems as if there was more danger
of error from the spirit of partisanship and the love of theory
than from carelessness. A modern Anglo-Catholic might sym-
pathize with Anselm too warmly for impartial observation; and
we know that in his successor, Becket, the graphic and ingenious
Thierry has seen only an exponent of Saxon resistance to Norman
tyranny. However, in both cases history has made an advance.
The relation of conqueror and subject is a vera causa, an existing
fact, if not an all-sufficient solution of historical problems; and in
the study of the past, as in the social intercourse of every day,
the blindest predilection is keener-eyed than contempt.
No German,
in any book, treats any question as trifling, and our author is
neither a Catholic controversialist, nor a patron of conquered
nations, but a philosopher and a disciple of Hegel; and it is of
Anselm's philosophical character that he principally treats.
are by no means sure that he does not thus stand nearer the
subject of his biography, than he could have done in any other
position. A man who thinks will soon arrive at a few questions,
which with many attempts at solution make up the sum of all
philosophy. Neither Plato nor Hegel could have a very different
task from that which Anselm proposed to himself as a speculator.
Yet if the philosopher was of no age, the monk and archbishop
was peculiarly of his own time; and we confess that either by the
author's fault or our own we have failed in deriving from his

M. Franck has adopted none of these courses.

We

book any definite notion of the relation between Anselm's historical career and his metaphysical system. It is, however, interesting to know that they were in fact coexistent, and therefore compatible.

"If we are to arrive," says M. Franck, "at a closer knowledge of the Middle Ages, it is above all things necessary to bring out in a concrete shape their individual leading phenomena: not till then is it possible for the problem of marking more accurately the intellectual development of this period to receive a thoroughly satisfactory solution.

One of these leading phenomena (Haupterscheinungen) is Anselm. As a champion of the Church and a pious ascetic, he approached near to the ideal of a perfect character which prevailed in his own time; as a thinker, he stands at the head of one great department of scholastic philosophy. In the work before us his outward career is narrated with little force or unction, as if it was, like himself, an Erscheinung, a casual form of reality. We regret the omission of the minuter touches of character which his friend and biographer Eadmer might have supplied; above all we lament the almost entire absence of miracles, notwithstanding the abundant supply which, as M. Franck intimates, he found ready to his hand. An account of them in connexion with so good and wise a man would have been a useful contribution to the history of the Middle Ages. In the second book, Anselm as a doctrinal theologian (Dogmatiker), his biographer is more at home. Being and Essence and God and Eternity are familiar thoughts to him, and he treats of them with a readiness and decision which contrasts favourably with his somewhat tedious account of the quarrels between the primate and the king. The language in this latter part of the work is accordingly clearer and easier than in the former.

Anselm was born of a noble family at Aosta in Piedmont, in the year 1033. Under the influence of a religious mother he displayed an early tendency to a monastic life, which was strengthened by his love for study, and by his feeling at the same time of the insufficiency of mere knowledge. M. Franck thinks that the state of learning at the time accounts for the sense of emptiness and insufficiency which he felt. No doubt it was very insufficient; but as the sole instrument of happiness we believe it is quite as insufficient now. Anselm knew enough to know that he had much to learn, and that the intellect might find more food than it could consume; but he no doubt became conscious that he was not a mere intellect, but a man with feelings and duties. For the proper development of the affections which is found in domestic and social life, the time offered little

facility to a peaceful and studious man: and the common opinion of the age had assigned to them the different function of adding warmth to devotion in the retirement of the cloister. In early life he left his home in consequence of disagreements with his father, and after travelling for some years in France and Burgundy, he came to Bec in Normandy to study under the celebrated Lanfranc, who was prior of the monastery there. To mortify his intellectual vanity by the overshadowing proximity of so great a divine, Anselm became a monk at Bec, in the year 1060, at the age of twenty-seven. Three years afterwards his modest wish was frustrated by the promotion of Lanfranc to the Abbacy of Caen, and his own appointment to succeed him as prior. His superior, the Abbot Herluin, formerly a Norman warrior, had himself founded the monastery, and raised it to eminence through the reputation of Lanfranc: he had always chosen as his own peculiar department the management of the external affairs of the convent, and as he was now old and infirm, the whole burden of the government of the monks fell upon Anselm. Ill qualified by nature for worldly business, and unwilling to interrupt his religious exercises and philosophical meditations, he shrank from dealing with the jealousies and intrigues of his convent, and entreated Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, to relieve him of his dignity. But the church could not afford to lose the services of so faithful an adherent, and perhaps Maurilius in refusing the request may have known that where unity and obedience are the final end of government, gentleness and simplicity of character in the ruler is more effective than wisdom. It is when outward action is required, as in the political management of nations, that the virtuous and humble enthusiast becomes an impracticable and dangerous disturber. The monks of Bec can scarcely have persevered in their jealousy of a prior, who according to his friend and biographer, Eadmer, could never be persuaded that he was deceived or wronged.

"When Baldwin and other faithful followers reproved him for this in a friendly way as excessive simplicity and want of prudence, he answered with simple astonishment, What is this? are they not Christians? and if they are Christians, would they for any advantage knowingly lie in violation of their faith? It is nonsense (nihil est). Why, when they are talking to me they are so earnest in their statements, and swear so on their faith to the truth of them, that I might be accused of an unbelieving disposition, if I refused to believe that they are supported by the very strength of truth.' This he said, thinking that they would not do to him what he knew that he would not do to any one. Afterwards, however," proceeds the good monk, "he found out the real state of the case, and did not believe them quite so im