1
10
34
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
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Title
A name given to the resource
[Travels in South Kensington]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1882?]
Identifier
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G5601
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: 4 p. ; 18 cm.
Collation: [4] p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Travels in South Kensington'. The review, from 'The Times'. December 9,1882, has been copied in handwriting on 4 pages of blue notepaper headed The Club, Bedford Park, Chiswick.
Creator
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[Unknown]
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[s.n.]
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Book reviews
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ([Travels in South Kensington]), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Decoration and Ornament
Kensington (West London)
Moncure Conway
South Kensington Museum
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8o
Notes.
Mr. Conway’s “ Earthward Pilgrimage ” seems to have produced a
strong impression on both friends and foes in England. In a recent
debate in the House of Commons, Mr. Bouverie, a conservative, spoke
of it as a work of remarkable ability, and quoted passages from it to
show that a revolutionary school of thought on social subjects is grow
ing to strength in Great Britain. “ The Theological Review ” says,
“The book is full of suggestive thoughts, poetically and pointedly
expressed: and though, to a thoughtful and judicious reader, he may
seem extravagant, one-sided and unfair in his statements and represen
tations, the general impression left by the whole is that it is the earnest
and healthy skepticism of a man of real genius.” “ The Academy ”
: peaks of Mr. Conway’s style as possessing “ high intellectual vitality,
the subtle, pointed, exquisite manner, the fertility in sparkling conceits,
striking analogies and similes, happy historical allusions and anec
dotes,” and his charges against the traditional religion, though violent,
as “ so refined and cultivated, so cool, disengaged, full of well-bred
restraint, as almost to persuade us of their moderation.”
“The New York Tribune” says of Mr. Weiss’s new book: “From
the specimens we have given of Mr. Weiss’s trains of thought, our readers
may obtain an idea, correct, although inadequate, of the main drift of this
remarkable volume, which we do not hesitate to pronounce one of the most
original and suggestive which have ever appeared in our native literature.”
“The Modern Epoch in Politics” is a new work by D. A. Wasson,
which will, when published, if we do not mistake, create a “ sensation ” of a
wholesome character.
“The Spiritual Annalist and Scientific Record” is the name of
a new magazine, edited by J. H. W. Toohey, and published in Boston by W.
F. Brown & Co. It is ably conducted.
We shall publish in our next number a carefully prepared paper on “ The
French Commune,” by W. J. Linton, who has had favorable opportunities
for an impartial review of the whole subject.
A friend sends us “ a few new subscribers to help the ‘ boiling pot.’ ”
We wish many others may be as thoughtful, and not forget us during this
“hot weather,” persuaded that the pot will boil itself.
�Notes.
79
and hear the voice of reason everywhere. Do you see Jesus walking
among men as himself only a man, and so lose your heaven-born
Lord? You are restored to your own birthright, and have the priv
ilege of being a son of God yourself. God becomes your present
source of supply, and is no longer “ a Hebrew tradition.” To this in
visible Well you may go and drink and thirst no more.
What then is the burden of all this protest and passion ? It is that
all those hindrances of Church and State which, under pretense of
mediating, are separating mankind from God, shall be removed. Men
claim the present and shining light of God to show them what they
may do for themselves and each other.
The questions of the moral or spiritual life are not affected by the
intellectual or moral stature of Jesus, and no Radical can take other
interest in the discussion than is prompted by the desire to rightly
estimate the characters of all who have lived on the earth and left
their fame to posterity. There seems to be no excuse, however, for
any to set him up, lawyer-like, and try him as a prosecuting attorney
would a criminal. His name has suffered enough from the treatment
of Orthodoxy. Radicals can afford, in all justice, to show him a little
personal sympathy, and especially since they do not propose to ride
into heaven on his back.
Father Taylor’s little prayer, as prayers go, is quite refreshing:
“Blessed Jesus, give us common sense, and let no man put blinkers on
us, that we can only see in a certain direction, for we want to look
around the horizon; yea, to the highest heavens and to the lowest
depths of the ocean.”
Robert Collyer finds a hearty welcome among the Unitarians of
England, in spite of the “ loose way ” of saying things to which he
is adicted. At their Festival he told them, “ I like to meet a company
of Unitarians that will speak out their convictions, and show, as we say
in the West, that they ‘ain’t nothing else, nohow.’” “We are no bet
ter for being Unitarians and at the same time tasting very strongly of
Orthodoxy. “You have a right to feed your hearts on the story of
the past. But I tell you it began to be a (Question whether Egypt was
going to live much longer, when she paid more attention to embalming
her grandfathers than she did to inspiring her children.” He rejoiced
that the Unitarians were not “going to tumble the cream back into
the blue milk.”
Are the signs as hopeful this side the water ?
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[The Earthward Pilgrimage]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[c.1871]
Identifier
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G5714
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 80 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage'.
Creator
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[Unknown]
Publisher
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[s.n.]
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([The Earthward Pilgrimage]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
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i66
CHRISTIANITY AGAIN CONSIDERED.
no earthly law smites him, he still is sinning against God, inflicts
injury on himself. For he that breaks a law of God, whether it be
a material one—in the physical globe or his own body ; or a spiritual
one, in his own soul, or in society, inflicts damage on his own
being; while he who works righteousness by living in obedience to
the law of God, is the better man for it, in himself, alike in time and
eternity. If there be any reader who rejects these statements, I
can only answer in the words of another, “We believe that con
science exists, just as fully as that we believe all men have bones,
and as it seems to us for the same reasons. Why is that to be
struck out of the list of evidence, any more than any physical testi
mony whatsoever ? Surely a more powerful item of evidence, not
only as to the personality of the First Cause, but as to the character
of that personality, could hardly be conceived.”(/)
(a) History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii., p. 253. Second edition.
(b) Church of England Prayer Book, Article 9: Confession of Faith, chap. vi. 6.
(c) Works, vol. iii., p. igg.
(d) R. H. Hutton.
(e) Duration of Future Punishment, by the Rev. George Rogers, p. 4,
(/) The Spectator.
&gain (EonstWlc
HRISTIANITY” is the title of a new book, by M. D. Conway,
M.A., and it is issued by Trubner & Co., of London. It is a
small but striking book. Indeed whatever comes from the pen of
Mr. Conway is always worth perusal. He has a knack of hitting
his opponents straight from the shoulder, of calling a spade a spade,
of denouncing superstition in unmeasured terms. As a preacher
Mr. Conway prefers an “ unfettered pulpit,” from which he can
fearlessly expose the errors and hypocrisy of the popular creed.
We wish there were more unfettered pulpits in the world, occupied
by men of culture and zeal, and “ no longer bribed by the social or
pecuniary endowments of an established creed.”
The book before us should be in the hands of every one who
wishes to be acquainted with the numerous phases through which
Christianity has passed, and we can confidently say that its perusal
will afford both pleasure and profit.
Mr. Conway considers
Christianity under six aspects : its morning state, its dawn, its day, its
decline, its afterglow, and its mosrow, and each of these divisions
receives masterly treatment.
There are several allusions to English Unitarianism, and the
Unitarian Association comes in for a share of the Author's
criticism. We think, however, that Mr. Conway’s strictures
on what he terms the “ professed liberality ” of the Association
are somewhat strong. No Association can exist without obe
dience to certain laws, and the “ fundamental law” which appears
to be so obnoxious to Mr. Conway is not, in our opinion, such an
obnoxious one as he would make it appear.
Personally, we
should like to see an independent Association formed, which should
e
�ANDREW AYLMER: A SKETCH.
167
include all Theists, whether Jews, Unitarians, Brahmins, or
Rationalists, in fact all who worship a supreme Governor of the
Universe, and wish to assist the extension of a Universal Brotherhood
of Man. But reforms whether social or religious are not carried in
a day, so we must be content to plod patiently alsng that road
which leads to the goal we are all aiming at, and we doubt not it
will be reached e’er many years more have been added to the
world’s age.
There are many-paragraphs having especial reference to the
Unitarian faith which we should like to quote, but our space forbids.
We cannot however conclude this brief notice without giving one
or two extracts. On page 89, Mr. Conway writes : “ Where is the
author of our time who defends the wild notion of an eternal
punishment—a punishment without end, and consequently without
purpose—inflicted on millions for a sin they did not commit, and
who have not even determined their own existence!” On page
124 he says:—“ The English Unitarians have an honorable history,
and no page of it is brighter than the last; but they can retain what
they have wn only by following up their advance.” Mr. Conway
brings his book to a conclusion as follows :—“ The highest religion
of to-day is to look and labour for a nobler day. Nor can I think
that new day so distant. For this matter the world of men means
mainly all those who think. The thinkers of the world are but
thinly divided by veils of language and tricks of expression ; speedily
wii^, they pierce these and discover that round the world hearts
beat with one moral blood, and eyes see by one and the same
sunlight. And as thought moves so will the most motionless
masses gravitate; and every sect in the world be subtly consumed
through and through by that popular disgust of bigotry and
hyprocrisy, which will emanate from the fairly awakened con
science and intellect of humanity.”
winter: &
CHAPTER IV.--- A WORD CONCERNING WILL, AND AYLMER’S INFLUENCE.
ACHEL AYLMER, soon after Andrew left home to attend
Mr. Cuthberton’s class at the Institute, dressed herself for
going out to pay a visit to her brother, Benjamin Harton, who lived
in the village of Ronesburn. As he worked the same “ place ” with
Andrew in the Scottingley mine, she was anxious lest the persecu
tion towards her son had been extended to her brother as well.
And then she wanted a talk with him about the whole matter.
Long had she and Joshua chatted over it, but the thing had not
come out any clearer to their minds. As she stood by her hearth
bound husband, to bid him good-bye for her two-hour visit, she saw
the newspaper was by his side, unused, and she had to touch his
shoulder ere he lifted his eyes from the fire. Responsive to her
touch, he said,—
“ Dinna be lang, wife, for I’m nae owre canny the night. Dis
B
�thoo think the laddie troubles aboot his loss o’ wark ? ”
“ Hinny, An’rew winna let his troubles clood his brow. Let’s
hope he dis’na feel them mair than he shows.”
“ Aye, as Ben said once, ‘ he tabs things philosophically.’ ”
“ Aboot that, I dinna kna,” replied Rachel, thoughtfully, “but
sure, as the boy says in one o’ his ain varses,
*
1 The dew o’ heaven is in his heart,’
an’ he’ll mak’ the best o’t, safe enough.”
The old man was comforted, the cloud passed from his face, the
newspaper was resumed, and Rachel wended her way in the direction
of Ronesburn. Approaching Scottingley, which stands between the
cottage and her destination, she saw a larger crowd of men than
usual at the corner of the road leading towards the colliery. This
would not have taken her attention, but, as she came opposite to
them, one, whom she did not recognise in the twilight, left the
crowd, and, as he neared her, said,
“ Mrs. Aylmer, I want a word wi’ ye.”
“ Is’t Will Bardoyle ? Hoo is’t there’s sae mony oot ? Hae
they shut up the public-hoose ? It’s nae a dog-race being made up
or thoo wouldna’ be in’t.”
“Nay, Mrs. Aylmer, we’ve been having a long talk about
Andrew, and I want to see him for the men ; but I suppose he’ll
not be at home for some time, as it is class night.”
“ He’ll no be hame till late, as he’s cornin’ roond for me frae
brother’s after class, but when thoo’s dune here thoo canst find the
way to Ben’s.”
In spite of her concern on Andrew’s account, she could not
help smiling as she said this, for there were a pair of bright eyes at
Ben’s which drew him there, and not against his will.
“ I don’t know if I dare call in to-night,” said Will, in reply,
“ for I have been offered the situation of overman, and I want to see
Andrew first. Ben has’na been out with us, or he would have known
and agreed with what I propose to do, so I’ll just meet Andrew,
and maybe call in with him.”
With a quiet “ good-night ” she passed on toward Ronesburn,
and Will joined the men, who were still talking in clusters.
The men had talked with each other that evening of many
things__ of the franchise, of improvements connected with their work
and their houses, and especially of the treatment Aylmer had been
subjected to; and of these things Will Bardoyle’s mind was full, as
some time after he took the road to Cuthberton, with a view to meet
Andrew. Not meeting him, however, and learning that he had
taken the river-path leading to the Hall, he continued his walk along
the highway, passed Mr.' Pembroke’s villa, and chatted with the old
lodge-keeper until Andrew came out.
Will was some years older than Andrew, but Will could not
have reverenced him more nad he been as aged as he counted him
worthy. Indeed, Andrew had been tne making of Will, for when he
was Aylmer’s present age he was a rough character truly, taking
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christianity again considered
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 166-167 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Christianity' from 'Free World' February,1877.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1877]
Identifier
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G5612
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Christianity again considered), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[Demonology and Devil-Lore]
Creator
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Allen, Grant
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: 6 leaves ; 19 cm.
Notes: Handwritten review on 6 leaves of Savile Club notepaper of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-Lore'. From, 'Mind', July 1879. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[The author]
Date
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[1879]
Identifier
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G5595
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Demonology and Devil-Lore), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway
-
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Text
FROM “THE ACADEMY,” OCTOBER 33st, 1874.
B The Sacred Anthology.”
A Book of Ethnical Scriptures, collected and edited by M-. D. Conway.
London : Triibner & Co., 18.74. 12s.
This book shows what may be achieved by enthusiasm and perseverance. Mr. Conway tells us that
he is not an Oriental scholar, but he has given us what no Oriental scholar has yet given to the world,
though for many years the world has been expecting and demanding something like a Sacred Anthology,
viz., Bcollection of the most important passages from the sacred writings of the East, translated into
■EnfLWh. As Oriental scholars shrank from the undertaking, Mr. Conway set to work, collecting all the
translations which he could find ready to hand, and extracting from them whatever seemed to him of real
valuqH
*
*
*
But Mr. Conway was not dismayed by these difficulties. He knew
what he could, and what he could not do, and by limiting the scope of his undertaking, and giving to his
collection a purely practical character, he has certainly succeeded in accomplishing a useful and important
task. 1 ®‘e believed,” as he tells us, “that it would be useful for moral and religious culture if the sympathy of religions could be more generally made known, and the converging testimonies of ages and races
to great principles more widely appreciated.” If we may judge by the rapid succession of editions, Mr.
Conway has certainly roused by his Sacred Anthology a wide interest in a subject hitherto strSigely
neglected, and he will have rendered an important service, if it were only by dispelling some prejudices
most detrimental to a true appreciation of the value of all religions.
Those who study the history of the human race in all its various phases, from the lowest savagery to
the highest civilisation, know that neither in the most perfect work of discursive thought, nor in the
grandest achievements of creative art, has the human mind put forth all its powers in greater force or
fulness than in religion. We are, from our very childhood, so familiar with the highest religious concep
tions, that it is difficult for us to appreciate the mental struggles by which they were conquered and
secured for us. We forget that the simplest conception of the Divine requires an almost superhuman
effort, and was therefore among most nations ascribed to a divine revelation. We forget that every name
.of the Deity was the reward of more than one sleepless night at Peniel, and that even in a prayer, such
,as the Gayatri, are hoarded up the scant earnings of the patient labours oi many generations. That
.tribes, even in the lowest scale of civilisation, should address a Being whom they have never seen, as their
Father, that they should never for one moment doubt his existence, should regulate their lives by what
they suppose to be his will, should actually offer to him what they value most on earth, may no longer
strike us as extraordinary, but in itself it is more marvellous than anything else in the whole of human
nature.
And what is more marvellous still, is the striking uniformity with which that power of religion has
manifested itself almost everywhere. There are differences, no”doubt, and profound differences between
.the religions of the world, but the similarities far outweigh these differences. Let readers open Mr.
Conway’s Anthology, without looking at the references, and they will find it by no means easy to say
whether any given extract comes from a Jewish, a Mohammedan, or a Hindu source. Mr. Conway has
arranged his extracts according to subjects. We find passages on Charity, Nature, Man, Humility,
Sorrow and Death placed together, and these passages are taken promiscuously from all the sacred books
of the world. No doubt we at once recognise the extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly
when they are given in the authorised version ; but even these, if translated more literally or more freely,
might often be supposed to be taken from the Buddhist Canon orfrom the Chinese King. The same
sentiments, sometimes in almost the same words, occur again .and again in all the sacred books of the
world. * * *
It is hardly surprising that a perusal of Mr. ConwaySacred Anthology should have left on many
.readers the impression of the great superiority of the Biblical extracts, if compared with the rest. The
fact is, that what we call the beauty or charm of any of the sacred books can be appreciated by those only
whose language has been fashioned, whose very thoughts have been nurtured by them. The words of our
own Bible cause innumerable strings of our hearts to vibrate till-they make a music of memories that
passes all description. The same inaudible music accompanies all sacred books, but it can never be
rendered in any translation. To the Arab there is nothing equal to the cadence of the Koran, to us even
the best translation of Mohammed’s visions sounds often dull and dreary. This cannot be helped, but it
is but fair that it should be borne in mind as a caution againsWeclaring too emphatically that nobody
else’s mother can ever be so fair and dear as our own.
One of the most eminent Oriental scholars expressed the following judgment as to the relative merits
of the Sacred Scriptures of the world :—
“ The collection of tracts, which we call from their excellence the Scriptures, contain, independently
■of a Divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important historv,
and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected, within the same compass, from all
other books that were ever composed in any age, or in any idiom. The two parts of which Scriptures
consist are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance in form or style to any that
can be produced from the stores of Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian learning ; the antiquity of
those compositions no man doubts ; and the unstrained application of them to events long subsequent to
their publication, is a solid ground of belief that they were genuine compositions, and consequently
inspired.”
Would any Oriental scholar endorse this judgment now?
We have intentionally abstained from all critical remarks with regard to.the translation of single
passages. Such remarks might be addressed to the translators, but not to Mr. Conway. He deserves
our hearty thanks for the trouble he has taken in collecting these gems, and stringing them together for
the use of those who have no access to the originals, and we trust that his book will arouse a more general
interest in a long-neglected and even despised branch of literature, the Sacred Books of the East.
MAX MULLER.
Other works by the same Author.
“The Earthward Pilgrimage.” Chatto and Windus. 5s.
“Republican Superstitions.” H. S. King and Co. 2s. fid.
Mr. Conway’s works may be obtained by addressing “ The Librarian, South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
London,” where also may be obtained his Pamphlets on W. J. Fox (3d.); Strauss (3<l.); Mill (2d.) ■
Sterling and Maurice (2d.) ; and Mazzini (Id.).
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Sacred Anthology
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Muller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: 1 leaf unnumbered ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'The Academy', October 31, 1874
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874]
Identifier
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G5597
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Sacred Anthology), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
-
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b6223195c8305574977734604d001a6c
PDF Text
Text
SOME BOOKS OF THE MONTH.
141
and political action of the “ Catholic Church ” in England is to be determined
partly by reference to the fact of “ development,” and partly to existing &xcumstances outside her own body. This action is at the present moment
directed to measures of an unprecedented character in this country. Up to
this time the High Church priest has ever exhibited an obsequious deference
to his bishop, and the alliance of Church and State has by him been warmly
cherished, or at any rate patiently acquiesced in. But to continue in the same
path now would be to hazard the whole cause of the Catholic revival, in its
several departments of ritual, discipline, and doctrine. The imperfect representation of the priesthood in the Church’s own assemblies and the Privy
Council’s (lay) jurisdiction in matters of ecclesiastical appeal point to the
glaring necessity of liberating the Church from her “bondage” to the State.
As to the bishops, “ they are, or may be, good administrators, judicious coun1 sellors, active diocesans. They are, or may have been, elegant Greek scholars,
>'| or widely read in German metaphysics, learned Hebraists or acute New Testa® ment critics, successful schoolmasters or popular college tutors. They are, or
r 5 may have been, accomplished musicians or patient observers of natural history,
fl notorious essayists or impartial historians, useful educationalists or cultivated
J ecclesiologists, well born or well connected, or polished and graceful courtiers.
But as Churchmen, as ecclesiastics, as bishops in the Church of God, what can
we say of them as an order ? We can say but this—that one and all accept
the present condition of our disorganised Church as, on the whole, justifiable.
. . . They are, it may be, good results, but still they are results of a bad, vicious,
immoral system; of a system which is utterly un-Catholic; of a system which
they do absolutely nothing to amend, because they hold that, as a system, it
1 may not be amended. And this is one reason why we cannot permit illimitable
4 authority to bishops.”
I In the present era of religious doubt, belief, anxiety, despair, conflict, and
indifference, the soothing accents of the mystic and the romantic idealist fall
J on the ears of men like a tranquillising strain of magic music. Those who are
L familiar with the speeches and writings of Mr. Moncure Conway 1 need «not to
dj be told that he is not as other men are, but that he lives wholly apart from the
1 thronging crowd of sectaries, partisans, champions of orthodoxy or hetero
doxy, Christians and unbelievers. In the first essay, “How I left the
World to Come for that which Is,” the story of many a religious reactionist of
[|
this day is told with vivid and almost ghastly colouring, by means of a
sort of inversion of the story of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” The
•I
■Ji author describes himself as having satisfactorily escaped the City of Destrucid; tion and reached the Celestial City, and, after some sojourn there, as having
d' become heartily wearied with it. The title of the potentate of the city was
*; ‘ The Prince of Otherworldliness,” and his own sole occupation was to sit upon
a; a purple cloud with a golden trumpet, through which he was to utter perq' petually glorification of the prince’s magnificence, and inform him how much
reason he had to be satisfied with himself. He longed to get back to the city
4 he had left, where “there were innocent children passing with laughter and
dance into the healthy vigour of maturity, and Reason, Liberty, Justice,
J -rrQ? “The Eartllward Pilgrimage.” By Moncure D. Conway. London: John Camden
H Hotten. 1870.
I■
I
'|
•I
1
rJ
>' |
I
i|
II
*1
I
1
�142
SOME BOOKS OF THE MONTH.
Wealth, were advancing, and Science was clearing from the sky of Faith every
cloud of fear and superstition.” He effected his escape while the prince’s
liveried servants pursued him, crying, “Infidel! Atheist! Neologist! Pan
theist ! Madman ! ” The solution of the problem was contained in the words of
the interpreter, “ that the city which, from being the domain of the lowly friend
of man, the Carpenter’s Son, has been given over to those who care more for
bishoprics and fine livings than for mankind, has become the City of Destruction;
while that which has cared rather for man whom it can, than for God whom it
cannot, benefit, has become the City of Humanity, which shall endure for ever.”
There is a romantic antiquarianism which curiously sets off the Emersonian
philosophy of Mr. Conway, while a native piety and reverence mixes itself up
strangely with pitiless abomination of sham, tyranny, superstition, and social
injustice of all sorts.
The study of original documents is now getting enforced on all sides as the
only true or possible mode of coming face to face with past history. This per
suasion is more relevant to the case of English than of any other modern
history. The history of England is eminently a “ constitutional ” history; in
fact England is the only modern State that, in any precise sense of the words,
has a constitutional history. In England, every great national movement has
left its impress on the form of government, and the mere caprice of kings or
nobles, the influence of individual men, the accidents of war, and those due to
foreign interference, have told far less on the permanent framework of the State
than the like facts have told in the other nations of Europe. Professor
Stubbs,1 in collecting the early public documents which are at once the key
stones and the key-notes of the English Constitution, has rendered as great
a service to politics as he has conspicuously rendered to education. Magna
Charta, Domesday Book, and even the rather less familiar monuments of early
English policy, as the “The Dialogus de Scaccario,” the statute of Mortmain,
the statute De tailagio non concedendo, and numerous others, are in every
boy’s mouth, and yet the real contents of them are seldom explored. Pro
fessor Stubbs now affords to every one the opportunity of closely studying them
in the original, for which study the connecting historical links supplied by
the editor are of the greatest value.
It is a great service towards the complete discussion of an important political
topic to transform the matter buried in a voluminous report of a Eoyal Commis
sion into a clearly arranged and compendious volume of very moderate size.
This service Mr. KebbeP has rendered for the topic of agricultural’labour.
With the help of his book any one can, almost at a glance, ascertain the true
bearing of all the evidence on the several points to which the Commissioners
addressed themselves. Such points were (1) the extent and effect of field-work
for women and for children of both sexes; (2) food and wages; (3) cottages
and allotments; (4) education; (5) hiring; (6) injurious influences—as the
public-house, and temptations to poach; (7) wholesome influences—as benefit
(1) “Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, from
the Earliest times to the Reign of Edward the First. Arranged and Edited by AA illiam
Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1870.
(2) “ The Agricultural Labourer. A Short Summary of his Position, partly based on
the Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Employment
of Women and Children in Agriculture.” By T. E. Kebbel. London : Chapman and
Hall. 1870.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Earthward Pilgrimage
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Amos, Sheldon
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 141-142 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage'. From 'Fortnightly Review' (5), January 1871. Author attribution from Virginia Clark's catalogue.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1871]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5592
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Earthward Pilgrimage), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Unitarianism
-
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PDF Text
Text
16
THE INTOLERANCE OF HETERODOXY, AND THE
NARROWNESS OF LATITUDINARIANISM.
A recent article in this Magazine directed attention to the remarkable
mutilations to which many well-known Christian hymns had been subjected,
in order that they might find acceptance with the congregation worshipping
at Bedford Chapel, under the leadership of the Rev. Stopford Brooke.
It must have occasioned surprise and mortification in many quarters,
and especially in quarters where Mr. Brooke was known simply
as a competent critic and able literary man, to follow the pastor of
Bedford Chapel in his crusade of slaughter against the hymnology of
Christendom. We had a right to expect at least that the laws of good
taste would not be violated by a public teacher whose writings bear every
sign of a refined and cultivated mind. If certain hymns were unsuited to
the new requirements of the congregation worshipping at Bedford Chapel,
it surely would have been the fairer course frankly to pass them by in the
compilation of the new collection. Such a hymn-book might possibly have
formed a very thin volume, but it would have had an unity of its own.
The inevitable problem arising from such a circumstance is briefly this:
What can be the nature of that intellectual change whose first result, in
the mere sphere of literature, is that a master of criticism sins flagrantly
against the laws of criticism, and a teacher of the broadest tolerance
publishes a book of hymns which, from one point of view at least, may be
considered as masterly a specimen of intolerance as hymnology possesses?
The publication of a book of Christian Hymns, in which every trace of
Christ is carefully eliminated by a cultured and accomplished critic,
preacher, and biographer, would not however be sufficient in itself to justify
the title that stands at the head of this paper. The circumstance is simply
suggestive of a line of criticism which it may be profitable to follow out,
and the material for that criticism is found in two small volumes, which
bear the title of South-Place Discourses. South Place, Finsbury, is the
locale of the well-known Unitarian chapel with which the eloquent
W. J. Fox was for many years connected. His place is now filled by
Mr. Moncure D. Conway, who, however, does not call himself a Uni
tarian. Mr. Conway, too, is a man of fine literary taste; he is well
known in the literary circles of London; and his congregation, like Mr.
Brooke’s, is eclectic in the extreme. Mr. Brooke, however, is a new convert
to Unitarianism, while Mr. Conway, as becomes the traditions of SouthPlace Chapel, is in the van of the new beliefs, and his congregation is composed
of the Pharisees of the Pharisees in the ‘ advanced school ’ of religious
criticism. The order of service adopted at South Place is printed with the
sermons, and it presents a curious study. Occasionally passages from the
Scriptures are read by way of lesson, but oftener the reading is from
�The, Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
17
purely secular publications. Thus the readings for a single service, are as
follows :
‘Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the motion of the
Earth.’
‘ Personal Experiences of George Coombe.’
‘ Professor Clifford on the Publication of Truth.’
In this instance the English Bible is entirely closed. The place of prayer
appears to be given up to what is styled a meditation on such subjects as
‘ Sociability,’ ‘ Little by Little,’ and ‘ Absolute Relativity.’ The service
of song includes such lines as
‘ I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty,
I woke, and found that Life was Duty.’
'Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, and original hymns by A. T. Ellis, F.R.S.
etc., whose discourses are printed together with Mr. Conway’s, and of whose
genius for hymnology the following is a specimen :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell
When Death flits from each to all,
And Life fails upon our ball,
Where or whither it shall dwell.
L
‘ This the darkness I have past,
Darkness haunted still with dreams,
Dread surmises, doubting screams,
Souls staked madly on a cast.’
By, way of ‘ Dismissal,’ after the singing of this hymn, the congregation is
invited to enter upon a somewhat analytical explanation of its scope and
meaning: and we cannot doubt that it needs it. ‘ Doubting screams’ is in
itself a phrase so daring and original, that it alone might well absorb the
entire time devoted to explanation.
But the nature of this programme of worship provokes more than a
mere sensation of curiosity; we cannot but ask, Is this, after all, any intel
lectual advance upon the ordinary manner of worship among the orthodox?
We have a right to press the question, because the assumption which under
lies each of the five discourses by Mr. Ellis, and the ten by Mr. Conway, is
that of complete contempt for orthodox modes and manners. When we
are rebuked for our fanatical regard for the ancient customs of universal
Christendom; when the prayers of the Litany, for example, are held up
for scornful vivisection j when the intellectual blindness, stubbornness, and
prejudice of believers are made matter for repeated ironical compliment, it
is only natural that we should seek instruction from our critics, and
narrowly observe the methods of our adversaries. Mr. Conway tells us
that ‘ the Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye holding
.the Apocalypse of Man.’ He firmly believes that the party he leads is in
�18
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
the van of true progress, that already it has possessed itself of the ‘ shining
summits ’ of the future, and that the world, as it grows in enlightenment,
must needs follow. Is, then, the manner of service here described the best
that he can offer for the future worshippers ? Mr. Conway’s opinions on
the doctrine of inspiration may be widely divergent from ours, but surely, the
sublimest sacred Book the world possesses, is scarcely treated with common
fairness when, in three services out of five, it is not so much as opened. Interest
ing as the 1 Declaration of the Minimite Fathers concerning the Motion of the
Earth ’ may be, we cannot help thinking that the Sermon on the Mount,
or even certain passages of Old Testament poetry, might afford infinitely
higher intellectual, as well as moral, stimulus and comfort; and the 1 Ex
periences of George Coombe ’ must be poor reading as a substitute for the
experiences of the Apostle Paul. The Litany may be offensive to those
who are freed from the ‘ superstition ’ of prayer, for which ‘ Meditation ’ is
made not the incitement but the substitute; but what sort of substitute is
a quarter of an hour’s ‘ Meditation’ on A bsolute Relativity? The hymns
of Wesley, one of which is quoted by Mr. Conway in support of an even
more than usually unfair and distorted criticism, may have literary demerits
as well as literary merits which are sufficiently well established, and are
fairly open to criticism in common with all hymns; but what shall we say
of such a hymn as that already quoted, with its ‘ doubting screams ? ’
Can a more doleful caricature of the holy cheerfulness of a Christian
Sabbath-day’s service be painted, than the picture of a congregation rising
after a ‘ Meditation ’ on 1 Absolute Relativity,’ to sing such a verse as
this :
‘ None has learned, and none can tell,
How Life burst upon our ball,
Whence, diffused to each through all,
Thought upon the Wanderer fell ? ’
Even when a somewhat more cheerful lyric is announced, whose first
lines run :
‘ “ Go, my child,” thus saith the Highest,
“ Warning, cheering, day by day,” ’
we are carefully informed in a foot-note that ‘ the Highest ’ does not mean
the Most High God; but is meant to signify merely ‘ earthly being.
Humanity, speaking by the mouth, and loving with the heart of the wise
and good, at all times and in all places.’ What can be the reason of this
-evident uneasiness lest the name of God by any accident should slip into a
hymn meant for Divine worship! Is there any other solution of this
strange phenomenon, except the terrible hypothesis that the leaders of what
they choose to term ‘ Rational Religion ’ in South Place, do ‘ not like to retain
God in their knowledge’? Yet Mr. Conway is, avowedly, not an atheist; and
if we may judge of his creed by the ten sermons before us, he is still less a
Positivist. If God be worshipped at South Place, why is it necessary to
explain that one of the titles by which we know God really means nothing
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
19
of the sort, but some vague abstraction of Humanity ? If the minister and
congregation of South Place are really inspired with the sublime belief
that they are in the ‘ foremost files of time; ’ that they are emancipated
from superstitions that hold half the world in night; that they are sure of
victorious recognition by the future generations for whom they are heroic
pioneers,—how is it such exalted sentiment finds expression in no more
hopeful hymnology than such doubtful hymns and anthems as we have
quoted, one of them carefully fenced and purged from all suspicion of
God, and another dreary enough to have been sung in the awful blackdraped cathedral of James Thomson’s ghastly dream, where the preacher
is an atheist, and the text is Suicide ? There is a certain brilliance of
rhetoric and paradox about the utterances of the South-Place pulpit:
but surely, after all, that creed must be cursed with intellectual and
spiritual sterility that has such scanty power of inspiration for sentiment
and emotion.
It is in this and similar matters that we see what we have ventured to
call the intolerance of heterodoxy. The process of heterodoxy is essentially
narrowing. It pretends to extreme 1 breadth; ’ in reality it is extreme
narrowness. The fascination that heterodoxy has for the unwary is that it
offers magnificent promises of emancipation from vulgar prejudices; it
assumes that orthodoxy must needs imply a fettered intellect ; that to live
in the light of the faith of Christendom is really to live in spiritual dark
ness j that, indeed, orthodoxy must needs riiean intellectual imbecility, or
intellectual prostitution: while heterodoxy is the proud stronghold of
gigantic minds who have achieved a great deliverance and entered ona glorious
liberty. All this is absurd assumption, but it serves its purpose. This
is one-half of the programme, and it effectually appeals to human vanity
and pride. The other half describes heterodoxy as the higher spirituality j
as the purer and loftier worship, freed from vain and polluting traditions.
And it is this portion of the programme that seduces some higher natures—
young men of more than common earnestness of thought, through their
very earnestness; devout natures, through their very devoutness; though
never even in these rare cases without some side-appeal to the intellectual
pride that loves to have its own way, even though it must emigrate to a
desert in order to secure it. But where is the breadth and charity of view
that heterodoxy promises ? It passes from its criticism of the Bible to its
degradation. In its effort to avoid the habits of worship sanctioned and
sanctified by centuries of devotion, it closes a Book which even Freethinkers have valued as a source of priceless instruction, or it varies the
words of the ‘ Fourth Gospel ’ with the ‘ Experiences of George Coombe.’
In its fear lest it should approach too nearly to the dangerous phraseology
of orthodox hymnology, it hastens to explain away its hymns, and to assure
us that though the Scripture term for God is used, yet nothing of the kind
is meant. Is this breadth or is it narrowness ? Does it not appear as if the
spirit of denial, once admitted into the temple, closes window after window
c2
�20
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy, and the
to the light, until but one outlook is left—the narrow aperture of solitary
dogmatism ? Stripped of the false romance that usually attaches itself to
intellectual adventure, what fascination is there in such a position of
isolated denial ? And whether is the more tolerable, the bondage of this
individual dogmatism which walks in fear of itself, or the wholesome
restraints which are no more than the landmarks of guidance which
experience has set up ?
This process of contraction and distortion in the intellectual outlook is
strikingly illustrated in some portions of the fifteen discourses that con
tain the views of Mr. Conway and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Conway in his fifth
discourse dwells very strikingly upon what he terms the ‘ morality of the
intellect.’ He says that there may be and is such a thing as intellectual
immorality: ‘ To believe a proposition aside from its truth, to believe it
merely because of some advantage, becomes intellectual prostitution. The
purity of the mind is bargained away.’ In this we heartily agree, and we
do not for a moment suppose that Mr. Conway and his followers have
fallen into the sin he so forcefully repudiates. But it seems to us that the
code of intellectual morality includes many things not covered by the
definition of Mr. Conway. It includes fairness of thought, and soberness
and perfect integrity of judgment. It commands that the balances be held
evenly, that judgment shall be in strict accordance with facts, and that the
verdict should be received and recorded, even though it be adverse to the
claim of the most favourite theory. And it seems to us, upon full and
honest examination, that the ‘higher culture’ of the advanced school has
only resulted in the flagrant violation of each of these laws; that its awards
are partial, its views one-sided, and its judgments of others chiefly distin
guished by wilful distortion and misapprehension. And this is all the more
remarkable because it is the work of trained thinkers, of scholars and
gentlemen, from whom we should at least expect that the intellect would be
free from warp, whatever the deranging bias of the creed.
But as mere matter of human experience, it must be noted that the creed
a man holds is really the lever of his actions, and a greater thinker than
Mr. Conway — Goethe — has remarked that ‘everything depends on
what principle a man embraces ; for both his theory and practice will be
found in accordance therewith.’ Probably the critics of South Place would
vehemently dispute this axiom, for the uselessness of creeds is a favourite
subject for derision, and Mr. Conway has announced that Theology—which
is the scientific statement of creed—‘ is the great enemy of Religion.’ But
so many things are disputed, and so wilfully, with so great a lack of intel
lectual conscientiousness, that this passes for a very small matter. Thus
the most striking discourse of Mr. Ellis—The Dyers Hand—contains a con
temptuous attack on Paley’s argument of design, on this ground,—that to
design is not to invent; that the maker of a watch invents nothing; he
discovers natural laws and properties, and in making his chronometer he is.
simply a designer.
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
21
‘So then (says Mr. Ellis) all that man does with his materials is to put them together.
And we say that grand abstraction, “ Nature,” does the rest. Now if we apply this
to God, we see that some other god must have made the materials, and their laws, and
the laws of their connection, and that He merely puts them together. What a degrading
conception ! The great God, the expression of utter boundlessness, a piecer of other
, gods’ goods 1 Shame on man that he ever inculcated such a doctrine. Shame on
those natural theologians who would found our very reason for believing in the
existence of a God on such transparent fallacies, which can be knocked down like
nine-pins by the first bowl of a cunning atheist 1 ’
But we ask, who ever did inculcate such £ a degrading conception ’ ? Who
but Mr. Ellis ever conceived it ? Boes Mr. Ellis suppose that Paley repre
sents God as only £ the piecer of other gods’ goods ’; or does he really
imagine that this conception of the argument of design, upon which he wastes
so much indignation, is one of the stupid follies of orthodox belief ? It
needs no very £ cunning atheist ’ to bowl down such a conception; but any
candid atheist of average ability will see at a glance that the nine-pins he
knocks down so easily are set up by Mr. Ellis himself, and not by Dr.
Paley. We are well aware that one of the meanings of the Latin word
designo, and one of the meanings of the English word design, is : ‘ to mark
out, to trace out; ’ but who does not also know that the Latin word also
means £ to contrive ’; and that language is largely determined by usage, and
very frequently departs more or less in that process from what was originally
its most prominent meaning ? The average mind understands with perfect
clearness what Paley means by the term £ design,’ and the dictionary is clear
enough. The argument to which Mr. Ellis applies the term £ preposterous
nonsense/ is certainly not Paley’s, but Mr. Ellis’s own quibbling caricature
of Paley’s ; and Mr. Ellis’s whole position is occupied by taking an unworthy
advantage of the fact that one word has often more than one meaning, and
by arbitrarily fastening on that word a meaning far different from that
which the great reasoner obviously attached to it, in accordance with
common usage. Mr. Ellis is welcome to his conception; but it is disingenuous
to assume that ‘orthodox Christendom ’ can in any such manner misinterpret
the language of a standard English writer who is also a consummate
reasoner.
The very same strategy is employed by Mr. Conway in his last discourse
on The Ascension of the Criminal, in which Methodism is introduced, in the
garments of her hymnology, as a witness to the immoralities of orthodoxy.
It is a strategy which requires no genius for either its conception or its
execution; it creates a false assumption, accredits it to orthodoxy, and
then exposes orthodoxy to ridicule for what orthodoxy never said or
thought. If it can be made clear that orthodoxy does not hold what her
critics so confidently assume and assert that she does, the whole attack,
delivered with so much vehemence and passion, is merely a sham-fight
contrived for the entertainment of the South-Place congregation.
It is sufficient to quote from this single discourse to prove that the above
statement is fully borne out by the facts of the case. Thus Mr. Conway
�22
The Intolerance of Haterdoxy, and the
starts with the proposition that 1 religion and morality use totally different
weights and measures. The vilest scoundrel to one may be a saint to the
other.’ The religious instruction provided for the masses teaches them,
says he, ‘ that the supreme rewards of existence are attainable without
reference to life and character. The voice most authentic to the masses says
to them,—In the name of God we declare to you that your thefts, murders,
adulteries, cruelties, and general baseness, may be to man of vast import
ance ; but to God the one question is, Do you believe in His Son or not ? ’
Christianity finds its strongest motives of appeal in a judgment day and
an eternal hell. ‘ Now these,’ says Mr. Conway, £ would be very strong if
they were penalties for immorality; but Christianity ’ (sic, not orthodoxy
merely) ‘ repudiates the idea. Hell, it declares, is for those that forget God,
or do not believe in His Son. Consequently the criminal may snap his
fingers at the day of judgment. . . .Those sects that deal with the masses are
pervaded with a contempt for good works. The Wesleyans sing :
“ Let the world their virtue boast,
Their works of righteousness ;
I, a wretch undone and lost,
Am freely saved by grace;
Other title I disclaim ;
This, only this, is all my plea,
I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.” ’
The charge culminates thus, that Christianity positively discourages ‘ the
formation of self-reliant and moral character ’; in the ‘ plan of salvation no
provision is made for morality. Not one item in it refers to morality.
Morality is not made a condition, nor immorality a disqualification for its
full enjoyment’; so that Christianity is a criminal system—‘ it assures the
criminal, converted after he can sin no more, that heaven has the same
place and rewards for the fife of crime and the life of virtue.’ Indeed,
the success of orthodox Christianity is represented as chiefly due to the
fact that it appeals powerfully to the criminal instincts of mankind, that is
to say, to the instincts of the criminal mind, whose creed is to secure all
the advantages of virtue with the weapons of vice.
We have purposely avoided the more offensive sentiments in this remark
able discourse, simply selecting the brief sentences that indicate the course
of thought pursued in it. We can only ask, with something like amaze
ment, Can Mr. Conway bring himself to sincerely believe that this loath
some monstrosity which he paraded before the congregations assembling at
South Place, and the Athenaeum, Camden-Road, on the 2nd of March,
1879, as orthodox Christianity, is the actual Christianity preached in
so many hundreds of pulpits on every side of him, and sung by so
many thousands of worshippers, from Sabbath to Sabbath ? From what
pulpit has he ever heard it announced that ‘ the supreme rewards of exist
ence are attainable without reference to life and character ’ ? Where has
he heard it proclaimed that ‘ the adulteries, cruelties and general baseness ’
�Narrowness of Latitudinarianism.
23
of mankind are of no importance to God, or that the dreadful penalties of
future judgment pass over the immoralities of men, and fall only upon
those who have departed from the faith of orthodoxy, and have denied the
Divine Sonship of the Saviour ? If a life of baseness and immorality bo
not 1 forgetting God,’ what is ? How is it that a man who is capable of
writing able and sympathetic criticism upon secular subjects, can allow
himself to be so unfair as to take a single hymn, which is the lyrical
expression of personal conviction, expressly designed and designated ‘ For
mourners convinced of sin,’ as a complete summary of orthodox belief,
and to infer from the omission of any mention of the deeds of a holy life
in a solitary verse of Wesleyan hymnology, that the Wesleyans have a
‘ contempt for good works.’
A similar process of criticism, confined to garbled utterances and founded
on omission, might be made to prove the grossest calumnies against the
greatest authors. And how can any man who has read the Gospels and
Epistles, and who knows that it is from the Divine ethics of Christianity
that a thousand pulpits are drawing their inspiration and instruction from
Sabbath to Sabbath, dare to stand up and affirm that Christianity is a
criminal system, and makes no provision for morality! If orthodox
Christianity is a criminal system, how is it that it has proved the most
powerful deterrent from vice ? And if Mr. Conway’s scheme of religion is so
much loftier, why is it that it exhibits itself mainly in false paradox and the
intellectual fireworks of an explosive and yet random criticism, instead of
weaving its mightier spell for the exorcising of the foul spirits that defile
and deform society, and which, according to his view of the case, Chris
tianity encourages, but cannot cast out ? We can only suppose, in charity,
that Mr. Conway knows next to nothing of the Christianity which he so
wantonly caricatures. And what can be a preacher’s notion of the Ethics of
Quotation who, having given one verse of a hymn, is careful to keep
back another verse which would at once refute his calumny:
‘ Jesus, Thou for me hast died,
And Thou in me shalt live,
I shall feel Thy death applied,
I shall Thy life receive?
And what a reckless and audacious contempt for recent history, as well as
for conspicuous and admitted contemporary facts, is betrayed by an able
* public teacher—fair-speaking on all other subjects but Christianity—
who can, within a few yards of Moorfields and City Road Chapel, coolly
tell his disciples that the Wesleyans have ‘ a contempt for good works.’
Who does not know that by the self-same tactics John Wesley and the
Wesleyans have been denounced as ‘ merit-mongers ’ and ‘ Pelagians,’ and
Papistical criers up of the desert and absolute necessity of ‘ good works,’ and
the attempt to sustain the charge has been made precisely on the same principle,
or with the same disregard of principle, as is exhibited by Mr. Conway. Only
�24
The Intolerance of Heterodoxy.
the slightest observation is sufficient to bid back again the spectral de
formity which he has conjured up and misnamed orthodox Christianity.
■The self-styled ‘rational religion’has a strange method of cultivating
and inculcating intellectual morality, when it can deliberately set forth from
both pulpit and press Charles Peace as a representative Christian saint, and
can make his last utterances the typical confession of orthodox piety, in order
to construct a sermon, under the title of The Ascension of the Criminal.
Nor does it shape well with the laws of intellectual morality that it should
be conveniently forgotten in such an attack upon Christianity and Chris
tians, that orthodox Christianity teaches that ‘ faith, if it hath not works, is
dead, being alone ’ (James ii. 17). And surely Mr. Conway’s revolt is not
so much from revelation as from common sense, when he can venture to
quote an obscure Indian myth concerning all animals being once imprisoned
in a monster, and owing their deliverance to co-operation—with the solemn
announcement that this ‘ is a much more moral and scientific genesis of
man than that in the Bible.’
Such, then, is the tolerance of1 heresy. The spirit of denial proves him
self to be no holy iconoclast, who moves onward through the wreck of
crumbling traditions to a larger inheritance of truth. It is simply a
mocking, railing spirit, unable or unheedful to discriminate between good
and evil. We are so often taunted with the bigotry of orthodoxy, the
galling fetters it imposes on the intellect, the fierce anathemas it thunders
forth to all who cast away its shibboleth, that it is time to look our accusers
in the face. It seems to us that the palm of intolerance belongs to hetero
doxy, and its bigotry is all its own. It professes to reject the tyranny of
any standard of faith; but it sets up its own crude standards of faith
nevertheless, in the arrogant egotism of its high priests. It weaves its
boasted ethics from negations; it affirms only to accuse. Of its charity
and tolerance let Mr. Conway’s own discourses bear witness. We are told
that our generation is stricken with the pestilence of doubt, though there
is good reason to believe that large exaggerations are mixed with its
statistics. The infected area is probably much smaller than some think.
However this may be, contemporary literature swarms with smart doubters,
with whom the lack of faith is no longer considered a calamity, but a badge
of intellectual distinction. They invite the novice to the larger air of lib
eral ideas, but the novice soon finds that ‘ free thought ’ has its Inquisition,
and that denial has its dogmas. He flees from orthodoxy because his new
instructors have branded it as narrow and intolerant, to find, when the
awakening comes, and natural revulsion follows fascination, that he has
fallen at the feet of an arrogant heterodoxy, immeasurably narrower and
more intolerant.
D. J. W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism
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Dawson, W.J. [Dawson]
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 16-24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review essay by Rev. W.J. Dawson of 'South Place Discourses' from Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, January 1883. The article is signed D.J.W. but is known to be the Rev. W.J. Dawson.
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[s.n.]
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[1883]
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Book reviews
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The intolerance of heterodoxy and the narrowness of latitudinarianism</span>), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Human</a><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">ist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Heterodoxy
Latitudinarianism
Moncure Conway
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406
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
the barbaric Cosmos, and raised into an independent object of
speculation. Once “ differentiated’ it begins itself to unfold, and
at the same time to gather round it the at first alien facts of
sensation, appetite, and bodily feeling generally. These are in
creasingly matter of inquiry, and theories respecting them take the
hue and shape of the sciences which relate to the material world.
The science of motion evolves, and the idea of orderly sequence
enters into Psychology. Natural Philosophy rises from motion to
force, and Psychology passes from conjunction to causation. Che
mistry tears aside a corner of nature’s veil, and a shaft is sunk in a
mysterious field of mind. The sciences of organic nature receive
a forward impulse, and mind and life are joined in inextricable
union. A philosophy of the universe, incorporating all the
sciences, is created, and Psychology, while attaining increased
independence as regards the adjacent sciences, is merged in that
deductive science of the Knowable which has more widely
divorced, and yet more intimately united, the laws of matter
and of mind.
Art. VII.—The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
1. Deutsche Glassiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und SacherJcldrungen. Begriindet von Franz Pfeiffer. Erster
Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus. 18*70.
2. Das Lehen Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig : B. G.
Triibner. 1865.
TN the history of German literature no period is more inteJl resting, than that short classical epoch at the end of the twelfth
century and the beginning of the thirteenth, which gave rise to the
literature written in Middle High German. More especially does
it attract attention, because within very narrow limits it com
prises many and great names, but above all it is remarkable
because within these limits it saw the birth and death of a new
kind of poetry, a poetry of an entirely different character from
that of the old epic poems. They were grand, massive, and
objective ; the new style was light, airy, plaintive, aod subjective.
To this style belongs the German Minnesong. The songs of three
hundred Minnesingers are preserved all belonging to this short
period. In their themes there is not much variety. The changes
of the seasons, and the changes of a lover’s mood do not in fact
present a wide range of subjects to the lyric poet. And most of
the Minnesongs are confined to these. But the following simile
seems true. If any one enters a wood in summer time, and listens
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
407
to the voices of innumerable birds, he hears at first only a con
fused mixture of strains. In time, however, he distinguishes
now a petulant cry, now a deep bell-like reiterated note, and now
the unbroken song of some joyous chorister. Finally he recog
nises the individual character of each strain, the music runs
clearly in ordered threads,
“ E come in voce voce si discerne
Quan do una e ferme e l’altra va e riede.”
And the Minnesong of this period exhibits a phenomenon not
dissimilar from that described. The subjects and the songs them
selves are likely at first to seem monotonous. Lamentations at
winter, the russet woodlands, and ashen grey landscapes, no less
than the joyous welcomes to spring, are repeated over and over
again. But notwithstanding this, the German Minnesong, as the
rich and peculiar growth of an extraordinary literature, is worthy
of attention. As in the former instance so now in this forest of
song, the listener soon discovers that some notes are clearer and
more solemn than others, and that in them he may follow a
music well worthy the hearing.
The Minnesong is entirely distinct from the lyrics of the Pro
vencal Troubadours. A feminine character has been attributed
to it, and a masculine character to the songs of the South. To a
certain extent this description expresses the difference between
them, but it does so only partially. The Minnesong is certainly
more reticent and coy. It sighs deeply, it smiles and blushes;
it seldom laughs aloud. It is pervaded by an innocent shame.
But it is bold and brave too. It has a scornful contempt for
danger, a profound belief in honour and virtue, and an unutter
able longing for love and beauty.
This is how the Minnesong came to be born. When
Conrad III. led his people to the Holy Land, Louis VII. of
France brought to the same place his French hosts. There,
amidst the magnificence of the East, the German knights
and soldiers listened to the songs of the troubadours who accom
panied the French armies. The “gay science,” as the trou
badours named their art, was then in its bloom. The soldiers
of Conrad were enchanted with the soft melodies and musical
rhymes; they could not forget the rich colours and gallant
romances of the Southern singers when they went back to the
North. They felt indeed that such poetry was not for them. It
had not the deep sentiment, and that inner soul of song which
their sterner natures required. But the Minnesong sprang from
this contact of Teuton and Celt under Eastern skies.
The greatest of the Minnesingers was Walther von der
Vogelweide, with whose life and poems it is proposed to deal
ee2
�408
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
briefly in this paper. And as his works cannot be understood
without reference to the events of his life, and as those events
were controlled by the wider movements of political affairs, it
will be necessary to speak in some detail of the circumstances
which mark the decadence and follow the fall of the illustrious
Hohenstaufen dynasty.
*
. The place and date of Walther’s birth have been matters of
dispute. The former may now be considered as settled, the
second difficulty can only be approximately solved. For while
we are thrown back to Walther’s poems for most of our infor
mation in reference to the events of his life, those poems are by
no means autobiographical, and it is only partially that we can
construct a connected history of the poet’s life.
Quite as many countries have contended for the honour of
being Walther’s birthplace as strove to enrol Homer amongst
their citizens. Switzerland, Suabia, the Rhineland, Bavaria,
Bohemia, Austria, the Tyrol and others have claimed him.
There is scarcely a district of Germany that has not sought the
honour of being connected with him. All this, however, is a
point of minor interest in the face of his own words—Ze
Osterriche lernt ich singen und sagen. But as a matter of
fact the question has been recently set at rest by the discovery,
in the Royal Library at Vienna, of a MS., which shows the
revenue of the Count of Tyrol towards the end of the 13th
century. Amongst the returns therein recorded is found the
yearly sum paid by the Vogelweide estate, namely, three pounds.
This entry is between those of Mittelwald and Schellenberch,
* The first edition of Walther’s poems, founded upon the Paris MS., was
that by Bodmer and Breitinger, published at Zurich in 1758. In 183S Von
der Hagen sent out a second edition. It was of little value. The first really
critical edition was that of Carl Lachman. Wacknernagel’s edition of 18G2
was also good. Pfeiffer’s edition of 1864 is perhaps, upon the whole, the best.
Its speciality is the excellent commentary which accompanies it, but it is
admirable from every point of view. It is the first edition which has laid the
treasures of Walther’s poetry open to the ordinary German reader. The intro
duction is good, and the prefatory remarks to each poem are well and judi
ciously written. It is provided with explanatory notes, and the glossaries
and index are models of arrangement. Middle High German has been so
long the monopoly of a few students that it is desirable it should be known
that, with a fair knowledge of German, a moderate acquaintance with some
good Middle High German grammar, and Herr Pfeiffer’s book. Walther von
der Vogelweide is easily accessible to all who are interested in Minne song.
There has sprung up rapidly in the last few years a whole body of literature
around the name of Walther von der Vogelweide. Uhland’s book is perhaps
the most widely known: Pfeiffer uses it freely. The best and completest life of
the poet is that by Dr. Menzel. The book is complete and instructive, but
fails to be popularly interesting through abundance of minute historical
details. Where Menzel and Pfeiffer differ, the preference has been given
in this paper to Pfeiffer’s theories. All the references are to Pfeiffer’s edition.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
409
places ten miles apart upon the Eisach. The exact site of the
poet’s house cannot be pointed out, but a wood divided into two
parts still bears, according to investigations made in the winter
of 1863, the double name of Upper and Lower Vogelweide. Of
all the places previously suggested, this alone corresponds with
the indications which the poet gives of his early home.
There is nothing to fix the exact date of his birth; a con
sideration of his poems leads Dr. Menzel to place it earlier than
1168 by, perhaps, ten or twelve years. His life thus comprises
the period of at least sixty years, for we find him in 1228 a bowed
and venerable pilgrim from the Holy Land, ready to lay his head
in its last resting-place. These sixty years were filled by impor
tant events not uninfluenced by the poet.
It is probable that he belonged to the lower ranks of the
nobility. The name of his family and the land-tax which they
paid prevent us from ranking them with the great families of
the time. Probably, too, his childhood was passed amongst the
bowery solitudes of the Tyrol, where a free and happy boyhood,
which he never forgot, grew amid the songs of birds and the
music of waters into a manhood no less musical and free.
Somewhere between the years 1171 and 1183 Walther left
his home for the ducal Court at Vienna. It was then a general
practice for the younger sons of noble families to seek education by
such means as this, and the renown which the Court of Vienna
acquired for the splendour of its pageants and the patronage
which it bestowed upon music and poetry, made it peculiarly
attractive to a youth whose imagination had already been
awakened. And no eager dreams which Walther had dreamed
in the woods of Tyrol were to be rudely banished when he
reached the ducal Court. The star of the German empire never
shone brighter than it did at that time. Then it was that the
old Barbarossa finished his Italian wars. The Church was deve
loping her powers. Chivalry had reached its highest point and
had not begun to decline, and over all Europe swept that in
spiring breeze which hurried away warriors and priests to do
pious duty in the Holy Land. Everywhere there was a keen
atmosphere of new and large ideas. The contact with the East,
even at that time, lent more of magnificence to the national
pomp, and the great festival which Frederick celebrated in
Mayence, at Whitsuntide of the year 1184, stands out still as
the greatest national festival which Germany has celebrated.
All the spiritual and temporal lords of Germany were present.
Princes from far lands, from Italy, France, Illyria, and Sclavonia
assembled with innumerable followers. And it is no wonder if
the centre figure of such an assembly kindled then an enthu
siasm over all the Empire which has never since been extin-
�410
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
guished, however hidden the sparks have lain. For, as a con
temporary averred, “ The flower of chivalry, the strength of do
minion, the greatness of the nation, and the glory of the empire
were united in his single majestic person.” With these great
events the Court of Vienna was closely connected. The Duke
Leopold VI. took the most active interest in the policy of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, and was a conspicuous sharer in the
Mayence pageant. Nor was his own Court behind any other of
that time in such knightly display. With Leopold’s two sons,
the young and promising princes, Frederick and Leopold,
Walther was, as we may divine from later poems, upon terms
of intimacy and affection, which, at least in the case of Frederick,
never suffered change.
But if the stirring spirit of the times did much to give the
poet a love for magnificent energy, the Court at which he resided
furnished him with modes of culture which scarcely another
could. Whatever was graceful and chivalric in life flourished
here, and here the Minnesong was oftenest sung. The master
poet of this early time was Reinmar, the “ nightingale of
Hagenau,” as they delighted to call him, and in him Walther
found the best model for his poems. But it was only for the
lighter poems that Reinmar could serve as a model. Walther's
earnest political lays belong to the sphere of poetry, which
Reinmar’s flight never reached.
Yet the education which
Walther derived from his residence at the Court was gained by
no system of learned instruction, nor at that time (any more
than at present) did courtly culture deem learning requisite.
Life, action, the free circulation of ideas, and a readiness to
receive them were the means of instruction, by using which
Walther acquired the deep knowledge of mankind, and the
perfect command over artistic material which are exhibited in
his poems.
Leopold died in 1194, and was succeeded in Austria by his
son Frederick the Catholic, a youth twenty years of age. For
four years Walther enjoyed under his patronage all that a poet
and a patriot could desire, for the Empire was yet in its splendour,
which seemed to wax rather than to wane. But this splendour
was to meet with a speedy and long-lasting eclipse ; and never
again do we find in the poems of Walther the bright
and careless happiness with which they open. Henry VI. the
successor to Barbarossa, succeeded likewise to that idea of the
Empire, which filled the mind of Frederick. He swayed an
Empire greater than any since the time of Charlemagne, and
possessed qualities which rendered him likely to sway one yet
greater. Regarding himself as the heir of the old Caesars, he
deemed his Empire incomplete until all that belonged to them
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers*
411
should own him as its liege lord. Once more the East should be
won back to the West and far-away kings hold their power only
as vassals to the Kaiser. To follow out this idea, and advance
his power in the East he announced a crusade. All preparations
had been made, part of the Eastern countries had acknowledged
his authority, and much more was about to yield, when suddenly,
on the 25th of September, 1197, at Messina, Henry died.
With him died too the splendour of the German Empire; but
it was to this, as it sank lower and lower, that Walther continually
turned his gaze, and it is this which colours his political
poems, and gives them their significance in the eyes of his
countrymen. Yet it was not only the destruction of so much
glory that caused the change in the tone of Walther’s song.
With the national catastrophe his own fall at the Court of
Vienna was nearly contemporaneous. The exact cause of the
Prince’s disfavour is uncertain, but with the departure of
Frederick the Catholic, on Henry’s crusade, Leopold, who was
Regent, began to withdraw the Court patronage from Walther,
and at Frederick’s death in 1198, Walther found himself com
pelled to leave Vienna.
And here it will be well, before we follow him out into the
dark and troublous times which follow, to refer to those poems
which are associated with this period of his life—associated with
it, though it is impossible to assert with certainty that all the
songs of “ Minnedienst ” which we still have were composed
before he left Vienna.
Walther’s poems fall into two divisions. They are either
Minnesongs, such as court-singers of the time were wont to sing,
differing only in degree of excellence from contemporary lays, or
they are poems of an earnest, religious, and political tendency.
Of these latter we shall presently see something. But certainly
the greater part of the former class belong to the Vienna period.
All the fairest and freshest of these' were written before the
trouble came, and possess that charm of conscious happiness
which does not recur. And although, from the nature of the
poems, it is not possible to refer them to a fixed date, a process
of growth and development is to be traced in them. In Wal
ther’s youth court-poetry had not as yet crystallized into those
rigid forms in which development ceases. Nor was the first
inspiration of a young poet’s fancy likely to exhibit itself in the
mould of artificial excellence, at least as long as that freedom
from care, which external circumstances guaranteed, favoured a
spontaneous and happy production of works of art. For this
reason Menzel, unlike Pfeiffer, is inclined to place many of the
“ Lieder” in a later period. He is inclined to think that Walther
did not submit to conventional trammels until the necessity of
�412
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
finding an audience and patrons became dominant. Be this as
it may, the songs of the early period are undoubtedly pleasing,
and amongst them may be reckoned the exquisite lyrics:—
“ Undei* der linden, an der lieide,”
and
“ So die bluomen uz dem grase dringent.”
We have altogether about eighty of Walther’s “ Lieder,” but
probably many of the earliest are lost. With those that remain,
some German critics (as was to be expected) have endeavoured
to build up a consistent history of Walther’s youth. Little
success, however, has attended the attempt, and the best critics
dismiss the autobiographical theory altogether. Nor is it
necessary to literary enjoyment that the theory should be estab
lished ; it is better to regard these exquisite poems as blossoms
of a happy period. If indeed we think of him as the laureate
of a dazzling and polite Court, the friend and favourite of a
prince only a little younger than himself, amidst the circum
stances of an Empire whose highest glory did not yet seem to
have been reached, in enjoyment of a reputation that was ever
growing, we shall be more prepared to understand the change
that came over the spirit of his verse when the Empire was
racked by internal dissension, and he himself was sent from the
light and kindliness of a Court into the uncertainty of a wander
ing life.
The condition of the Empire was now such that it might well
leave him in doubt where he should find a home. The rightful
heir to the Imperial throne, Frederich the Second, was a child
three years of age. Besides him Henry had left two brothers,
Otto of Burgundy and Philip of Suabia. Henry’s death set
free all those elements of disorder which his iron hand had kept
in subjection. The Pope would not recognise the claims of
Frederick, and Otto and Philip became competitors for the
crown. Philip was indeed willing to act as regent for the child,
but the partisans of the Hohenstaufen dynasty were cold in
their interest for Frederick, and desired to see Philip himself
Emperor. Meanwhile confusion was universal, the Empire was
wasted in a destructive war, its wealth squandered, and its
power broken. The Court of Vienna took the side of Philip,
and Walther became his poet-champion. It was now that he
commenced those poems or “Sprucke ” which were the first of
their kind, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth, exercised
considerable influence upon events. In the Paris manuscript of
his works there is a picture of the poet musing upon the disorder
of the times. He is represented as a bearded man in the prime
of life; a cap covers his curly hair; he wears a rich blue cloak
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
413
and a red coat, and looks pensively to the ground, whilst in his
right hand he holds a scroll of his poems, which winds upwards
between the escutcheon and crested helm of Vogelweide. And
in somewhat similar attitude the first “ Sprtich ” represents him.
“ I sat upon a stone and mused, one leg thrown over the other; my
elbow rested upon my knee, and upon my hand I leant my head,
cheek, and chin. There I mused with much despair what profit it
were to live now in the world. I saw no way by which a man might
win three things that are good. Two of them are Honour and
Wealth, which often injure each other. The third is God’s Favour,
which is more excellent than the two. Would that I might bring
these into one life. But, alas ! it may not be that Wealth and
Honour and God’s Favour should ever come to one heart again ; the
ways and paths are closed against them. Untruth lies in ambush;
Might rules in the highways, and Peace and Justice are wounded sore.
So the Three can come no more till the Two are healed ” (p. 81).
. To Walther, the only method of healing the wounds of Peace
And Justice seemed to be in electing Philip king. In him he
Irecognised a man strong enough and good enough to stay the
disorders of Germany. And his song gave no uncertain sound.
He says:—
“ The wild beast and the reptile, these fight many a deadly fight.
Likewise, too, the birds amongst themselves. Yet these would hold
themselves of no esteem had they not one common rule. They make
strong laws, they choose a king and a code, they appoint lords and
lieges. So woe to you, ye of the German tongue ; how fares order in
your land ? when now the very flies have their queen, and your honour
perishes ! Turn ye, turn ye. The Coronets grow your masters, the
petty kings oppress you. Let Philip wear the Orphan-diadem, and bid
the princes begone ” (pp. 81-2).
The “petty kings’' are the other competitors for the crown.
The “orphan ” is a jewel in the crown of the Roman emperors.
Albertus Magnus, according to Menzel, says of it:—“ Orphanus est lapis, qui in corona Romani imperatoris est, neque unquam alibi visus; propter quod etiam orphan us vocatur.”
Philip’s chief competitor seemed to be Berthold, of Zuriugen,
and he had on his side Adolphus, the Archbishop of Cologne ;
but as Berthold did not prove an open-handed candidate, Adol
phus entered into negotiations with Richard of England, and
(after being well paid for his trouble), consented to crown
Richard’s nephew, Otto of Poitou, on the 12th of July, 1198.
Previously to this, Otto had taken Aix-la-Chapelle, which had
refused to recognise him, and Philip seeing that there was now
no time to be lost, was crowned in the following September, at
Mayence, by the Archbishop of Treves. This coronation, subse
quently deemed insufficient, was performed with great splendour,
�414
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
and gave hopes to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of once more be
holding an united empire.
The diadem of Charlemagne wherein glittered the peerless z
“ orphan” was placed upon Philip’s head, and amongst those
who swelled the train of the young King and his wife Irene was
Walther. The crown, said Walther, seemed made for him.
“ Older though it be than the king, yet never smith wrought crown
to fit so well. And his imperial head no less becomes the diadem, and
none may part the twain. Each lights the other. The crown is
■brighter by its sweet young wearer, for the jewels gladly shine upon
the true prince. Ah! if any one doubts now to whom the Empire
belongs of right, let him but see if the ‘ Orphan’’ so shines upon
another brow. This jewel is a star that finds the true prince.”
Walther’s enthusiasm for the “sweet young” king seems justi
fied by contemporary evidence. An old chronicle says with quaint
.Latinity ;—“ Erat Phillippus animo lenis, mente mitis, erga homi
nes benignus, debilis quidem corpore, sed satis virilis in quantum
confidere poterat de viribus suorum, facie venusta et decora,
capillo flavo, statura mediocri, magis tenui quam grossa.”
We have, however, now two emperors ou the stage. The
Chronicle has described Philip: Otto presented a complete contrast
to the gentle brother of Henry. Nearly the same age as his
rival, he was a man of lofty and commanding stature and
resembled both in person and character his uncle Richard.
His bravery was rash and impetuous, and his unyielding
severity alienated more hearts than his courage could retain.
The literary tastes of the two Emperors exhibited a contrast
no less striking than that presented by their persons. Otto
listened with pleasure to the masculine strains of the Trouba
dours. Philip heard with delight the soft complaining rhymes of
the Minnesingers. It was by these rhymes that Walther won
the favour of Philip and found admission to his court. But there
was need of something else to be done than to listen to the
strains of troubadour or minnesinger, before either of the rival
Emperors could deem his empire safe. Philip had the wider
support, and Otto, perhaps, the more valuable foreign assistance.
Philip had on his side all South Germany, Bohemia, and Saxony.
He was supported, moreover, by many Episcopal princes both in
the south and in the north. Abroad France was his ally. The
centre of Otto’s power was Cologne, then the chief town of Ger
many, and though his kingdom was more contracted than that
of Philip, the inequality was rendered less dangerous by the effi
cient help which his uncle Richard of England was ready to
supply. Thus all Europe was divided into two parts awaiting
the decision of its destiny. This seemed to hang upon the word
a power which had not yet spoken the Papacy.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
415
Now Walther saw clearly enough, nor yet more clearly than the
Pope himself, that whatever dissensions arose between native
princes, the real antagonistic power to the German Empire was
the papal supremacy. For a man now sat upon the papal chair
whose ambition was even more imperial than that of Henry VI.,
and who possessed an energy of character and a subtle power of
statecraft that seemed likely to bring his designs into effect.
Innocent III. had inherited the ambition and the ideas of
Gregory VII. With him he looked upon the Pope as the
rightful source of all power, as above all kings, emperors and
princes, who received from him their unction and their virtue,
and who held their possessions as vassals of the Bishop of Rome.
This notion he caused to prevail in Italy, and there the papal
power regained all it had lost. The two candidates for the Empire
he contrived for some time to keep without a decisive answer, by
means of evasions and deceptions as unscrupulous as they were
diplomatic. Yet he left no doubt in the minds of Otto’s friends
that he preferred the candidature of their monarch, though it
may have escaped their notice that his chief object was the dis
solution of the Empire, which had stood so firmly under the
dynasty to which Philip belonged. It did not escape the notice
of Walther, and he set himself to work against the papal machi
nations with that patriotic and impassioned enthusiasm with
which his love for the German Empire had inspired him. The
Pope seemed to him the incarnation of the anti-national spirit,
and only that king to be worthy of the name who strove once
more to realize the imperial ideal which had animated Germany
under Barbarossa and Henry. Such a monarch he thought at
this time he recognised in Philip. And since Philip, after his
coronation, had met with some successes in the field, and his
rival had been deprived of his chief support by the death of
Richard, it was not unnatural that he should look upon the
festival which Philip held, Christmas, 119.9, as the dawn of a
better era. The dawn of a better era, however, it was not, in
spite of Walther’s joyous song. The war which Philip was now
waging did not advance his cause, and once more we find
Walther at Vienna, reconciled to Leopold, perhaps, through the
intervention of Philip, or, perhaps, with some political commis
sion to the Duke. Meanwhile (1201) Otto advanced as far as
Alsace, and Philip invaded the district of Cologne, when the
long delayed decision of the Pope fell like a thunderbolt. Otto
was declared Emperor by the title of Otto IV., and Philip, with
his followers, was excommunicated. But though this bull
caused more anger than terror amongst the partisans of Philip,
its practical consequences were serious. Many supporters fell
away, and Walther gave utterance to his grief in a poem
�416
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
which deprecates the use of religious weapons for political
purposes.
“ I saw,” he says, “ with mine eyes the secrets of the hearts of men
and women. I heard and saw what each one says and does. At
Rome I found a Pope lying, and two kings (Philip and Frederick)
deceived. Then arose the greatest strife that has been or shall be.
The priests and the people began to take opposite sides, a grief beyond
all griefs. The priests laid down their swords and fought with their
stoles. They laid the bann on whom they would and not on whom
they should, and the Houses of God were desolate ” (pp. 81-3).
In March, of this year, those of Philip’s party who were faith
ful, renewed their oath of allegiance, and a formal protest against
the Pope’s decision was sent to Rome. The Pope received it
with consideration but firmness, and fresh successes followed the
arms of Otto. Philip sought to strengthen his connexion with
France, by an embassy, to which Walther was attached. As we
are at present more interested in Walther than in the history of
events, it will be well to mention a conjecture of some critics,
that it was upon his return from this journey that he wrote his
celebrated song (39) in praise of German ladies:—
i.
“ Ye should bid me welcome, ladies,
He who brings a message, that am I.
All that ye have heard before this,
Is an empty wind, now ask of me.
But ye must reward me.
If my wage is kindly,
Something I can tell you that[will please ;
See now what reward ye offer.
ii.
“ I will tell to German maidens
Such a message that they all the more
Shall delight the universe,
And will take no great payment therefor.
What would I for payment ?
They are all so dear,
That my prayer is lowly, and I ask no more
Than that they greet me kindly.
in.
“ I have seen many lands,
And saw the best with interest.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
417
Ill must it befall me
Could I ever bring my heart
To take pleasure
In foreign manners.
Now what avails me if I strive for falsehood ?
German truth surpasses all.
IV.
“ From the Elbe to the Rhine,
And back again to Hungary,
These are the best lands
Which I have seen in the world.
This I can truly swear,
That, for fair mien and person,
So help me heaven, to look upon,
Our ladies are fairer than other ladies.”
Philip’s supporters continued to fall away and to swell the
ranks of Otto ; his ecclesiastical adherents, terrified by the fulminations of the Pope, were amongst the earliest deserters.
Indeed, at one time it seemed likely that the whole party would
be broken up, but the judicious concessions which Philip made
to the Pope turned the current, and Philip’s cause was strength
ened by the accession of the Bishop of Cologne, who, perhaps,
found Otto ungenerous. At any rate he was now willing (upon
the receipt of pecuniary remuneration) to crown Philip and his
wife. This second coronation took place in 1205. We have no
poem by Walther in reference to it. In fact, he was losing faith
in Philip. The Emperor of Germany should have been a man
firm in will and ready in deed. Philip was not realizing this
ideal. A second coronation was in itself a confession of weak
ness. Bachmann imagines that there had even been a per
sonal quarrel between the king and the poet, but the ground
for such a belief seems hard to find. In J 208 Philip was
assassinated, and Otto was now universally recognised as
Emperor.
Without doubt Walther had been much disappointed in
Philip. He had grown up under Barbarossa and Henry, and
the magnificent ideas of the Empire had grown strong with his
growth. Those brilliant anticipations of supreme dominion in
German hands he expected to see fulfilled by Philip, and they
had not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the papal power, which
he detested, was leaving everywhere a contracted sphere for
another Empire, and, when a year before his death Philip be
came, as a matter of political necessity, reconciled to Innocent,
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Walther, whose ideal monarch was no king, but an emperor,
saw with a despair which is reflected in his poems, the dissolu
tion of his hopes.
From 12O4j to 1207 Walther resided at the Thuringian Court.
This is to be gathered from certain indications in his poems,
and from a consideration, of the history of events. Until 1204
Hermann the Landgrave had been on Otto’s, and Walther upon
Philip’s side. The poet’s residence at the Landgrave’s Court
could not, therefore, have belonged to an earlier period. The
exact length of its duration is uncertain : it was probably three
years. And had Walther been able to see the Empire in a
prosperous state, his days might have been as bright under the
“gentle Landgrave” as they had been at the Court of Vienna.
The Landgrave was not only gentle but generous. His Court
was a regular caravansary of warriors and minstrels. “ Day and
night,” says Walther, “there is ever one troop coming in, and
another going out. Let no one who has an earache come hither,
for the din will assuredly drive him wild.” The Landgrave’s
hospitality was, indeed, unbounded. “ If a measure of good
wine cost a thousand pounds no knight’s beaker would be
empty” (p. 99). And later too, upon another occasion, Walther
sings of his host, that he does not change like the moon, but
that his generosity is continuous. When trouble comes, he re
mains still a support. “ The flower of the Thuringians blossoms
through the snow” (p. 109).
About the year 12Q7 Walther found it necessary to leave the
Court. He had not been without enemies there, especially
amongst those of his own craft. Hermann was not to blame
for this, nor did Walther lose his favour; for later on we find
him again at the Thuringian Court. There seems to have been
two parties amongst the Minnesingers, and Walther was in the
minority. For the next two years Vienna was again his home,
and Leopold forgot or forgave the old quarrel that had been
between them. But he did not long remain here, and his life
until 1211 was unsettled, and was spent at various Courts. But
it will be necessary to bring down the history of the nation to
this period, for several great and important events had occurred.
The death of Philip was followed by an interval, in which
lawlessness and crime prevailed throughout the country. Pillage
and incendiarism desolated the inheritance of the Hohenstaufens,
and recalled to the recollection of the superstitious the comets
and eclipses which had appalled them during the previous year.
Many persons thought that the last day was approaching, and Wal
ther found the signs in the heavens corroborated by the unnatural
wickedness of man. “ The sun,” he says, “ has withheld his
light. Falsehood has everywhere scattered her seeds along the
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
419
way. The father finds treachery in his child; brother lies to
brother. The hooded priest, who should lead us to heaven, has
turned traitor.” It was indeed a dark time for Germany, nor
did it at first appear from what quarter amendment should come.
The real representative of the Hohenstaufen line was the young
Frederick, who was now fourteen years old, but this was no time
for a boy-emperor. Many of those who might have protected
his interests had already joined the party of Otto, a party that
openly took the supremacy when Otto declared his intention of
espousing Beatrice, the daughter of Philip, and the storm of
party passion for awhile abated. The interests of the Empire,
too, clearly pointed to Otto as Emperor. Walther saw this, for
Otto was by no means a man who would not follow up the advan
tages which his position gave him. Personally the poet could
feel little cordiality towards the new monarch, whose patronage
of song would little benefit the Minnesingers. And when Otto
received the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope, in
Rome, it was accompanied by no strain of triumph from Walther.
This coronation was in the autumn of 1209. But Otto, instead
of leaving Italy to its ghostly monarch, remained there for a
year, in which time he restored the imperial authority in Nor
thern and Central Italy, and then marched into Southern Italy.
One result of this policy was inevitable. He was excommuni
cated by the Pope, who now put forward the young Frederick, as
king in his stead. Then first, when Otto was under the Papal
bann, did Walther step forward as his fellow combatant for the idea
of the Empire. As reconciliation with the Pope had estranged
him from Philip, so now it was a variance from the same autho
rity that was to place him upon close terms of sympathy with
Otto. And for the next two years we find Walther at the height
of his political influence. .
The Pope, not contented with the declaration of excommuni
cation, set in motion other measures for Otto’s destruction. Once
more he fanned the subsiding embers of civil discord in Ger
many. At the Pope’s call the Archbishops of Mayence and
Magdeburg, the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Meissen, and
the Landgrave of Thuringia, formed a confederation, whose
object was the deposition of Otto, and the elevation of Frederick
to the throne. This confederation was accomplished in the
autumn of 1211, and was joined by the Archbishop of Treves, and
the Dukes of Bavaria and Austria. In February of the following
year Otto returned from his victorious campaign in Italy once
more to German soil, and held a parliament at Frankfort.
In the political complications which followed these circum
stances, we find Walther an influential diplomatist, for it was
undoubtedly through his influence that the two princes of
�420
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Meissen and Bavaria returned to their allegiance to Otto ; and
the princes themselves thanked him for his services upon that
occasion. Further : through his negotiations the crown of Bohe
mia was given to the Margrave's nephew, and to the Duke’s son
as consort the daughter of the Count Palatine, by which union
the Palatinate afterwards passed into the ducal family. These
important negotiations, and the results which attended them,
give us an adequate notion of Walther’s position at this crisis.
The time came when he found the Margrave forgetful (as even
monarchs may be) of former services, but he could still refer with
conscious dignity to the benefits he had conferred upon the Mar
grave’s family: “ Why should I spare the truth ?” he asks, “ for
had I crowned the Margrave himself the crown had even yet
been his” (p. 157).
But Otto had still important ’enemies. Amongst them was
the Landgrave of Thuringia. Whilst engaged in operations
against him he heard of the approach of Frederick, who with a
gathering retinue of supporters was gradually winning the whole
of the Rhineland and North Germany. In 1213 Frederick
ratified his submission to the Pope, and resigned all German
pretensions to the disputed territory in Italy. Thus for awhile
we have the curious spectacle of a Guelph fighting for that
Imperial idea which should have been the heirloom of the
Hohenstaufens, and a Hohenstaufen carrying the banner of the
Papacy.
Whilst thus the power of Frederick was increasing, and the
followers of Otto were falling away, Walther struggled both as
poet and politician against the Pope, and the corrupt use of
ecclesiastical power for political purposes. That he himself
respected the office of the clergy, and that his own religious
convictions were deep-seated, is certain. He viewed, however,
with aversion the struggle of the Papacy for temporal power,
and the humiliation of the German national spirit In a struggle
of this kind he seemed to see the decay of faith, and the immi
nent ruin of the Church herself, and his language to the Pope
was outspoken from the first. He bade him remember that he
himself had crowned and blessed the Emperor (p. 131) ; he
reminded the people that the same mouth which had pronounced
the bann had declared the blessing (p. 132) ; and he referred the
Pope to the scriptural command, that he should render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's (p. 133). The corruption of
the clergy he rebuked almost with the fire which afterwards was
to belong to Luther.
“ Christendom,” he says, “ never lived so carelessly as now. Those
who should teach are evil-minded. Even silly laymen would not com
mit their crimes. They sin without fear, and are at enmity with
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
421
God. They point us to heaven and themselves go down to hell. They
bid us follow their advice, and not their example.”
Again :—
“ The Pope our father goes before us, and we wander not at all from
his way. Is he avaricious ? So are we all with him. Does he lie ?
We all lie, too. Is he a traitor ? We all follow the example of his
treachery.”
And then he calls him a modern Judas. He accuses him of
simony, and hints at his collusion with infernal powers. Against
the Pope’s attempt to collect tithes in Germany he spoke out
strongly, and not without effect, for his poem on this subject
(116) aroused much bitterness.
Yet even in Otto, the Pope’s enemy, Walther did not find an
Emperor like those whose names he loved. His star waned
before that of Frederick. His manners were marred by an
unroyal boorishness; his Court was the scene of drunken and
disorderly revels, and the flower of poetry no longer blossomed
in its ungracious precincts. In 1214 Walther joined the party
of Frederick. With this new allegiance closes the dependent
period of Walther’s life, for Frederick presented him with a
small estate, which he enjoyed until his death. His first feeling
was one of intense delight, and he celebrated the event in a
strain of fervent gratitude (150). However, in the interval
stretching from 1217 to 1220 he does not appear to have resided
there. Probably he did not find it so valuable as he at first
imagined it to be, when he sang his paean as a landholder.
There were ecclesiastical claims upon it, and he was in no mood
to satisfy them with equanimity. At any rate he determined,
after the residence of a year or two, to betake himself to the
Court of Vienna. It was no longer that brilliant home of poets
and fair women which it had once been. The Duke Leopold
was absent in the Holy Land: his two youthful sons were in
need of an instructor and guardian, and it is probable that until
the return of their father Walther undertook their instruction.
In 1219 Walther greeted the Duke with an ode of welcome
(152), and this is followed by a sarcastic poem (120) directed
against the miserly habits of the Austrian nobility. This poem
may perhaps indicate the reason why Walther left the Court of
Vienna, but all reasoning here rests upon conjecture. A quarrel
between himself and Leopold has been surmised, but upon
insufficient grounds. Then, in 1220, we find him at the Court
of Frederick II. His political muse had been silent since
his adoption of Frederick’s cause: his vehement protestations
against the papal influence were hushed : he aided in no agita
tion for the imperial cause. This silence was probably in
[Vol. CI. No. CO. J—New Series, Vol. XLV. No. II.
TF
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The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
accordance with Frederick’s wishes. Honorius III. was now
upon the Papal throne, a man of a different disposition from
that of Innocent.
Four important subjects were still matters of consideration
between the Papal and Imperial Courts:—Firstly, the separation
of the Italian and German crowns; secondly, the supremacy of
Lombardy; thirdly, the succession to Matilda; and fourthly,
the fulfilment of Frederick’s promise to enter upon a crusade.
And so long as no open breach had been made in the friendship
of Pope and Emperor, and whilst Frederick was furthering his
views more by policy than war, there was no room for the efforts
of Walther. From this time, however, till 1223 we find several
political odes dictated by his sympathy with Frederick. After
this period he returned to his own estate, and henceforth his
mind seems to have been occupied with religious ideas and the
support of the Crusaders. He did not cease to urge the German
princes to that holy undertaking. Frederick had, long before,
promised Innocent that he himself would lead an army to the
East; he had delayed to do so during the life of Honorius; he
was punished for his delay with excommunication by Gregory IX.,
and set out upon the crusade in 1228. Amongst his followers
was Walther the Minnesinger.
For it is clear that the bright dream of a restored Empire,
which once filled the poet’s mind, had now given place to
another feeling. Fainter and fainter the hope had grown
which inspired so many of his songs. Barbarossa could not
come again; at least not now, and there was no comfort remain
ing, except in religion. An overwhelming longing for the Holy
Land seized him. The last winter a terrible storm had swept
over the country. What else could it denote than the anger of
God at the negligence of Christians who left the Infidel in
undisturbed possession of his Holy City ? The bands of pilgrims
who passed through town and village did not fail to warn those
who lingered that they were incurring the divine wrath. Terror
and enthusiasm took possession of all, and Walther, old and
worn as he was, left once more his home and his repose. His
steps were turned towards the Alps. He travelled through the
Bavarian Oberland, and the Inn Valley, until he came to the
Brenner Pass. There at the foot of the hills lay the place of his
birth, a place which he had not visited since his boyhood. And.
here he wrote the renowned poem (188) which touchingly and
truthfully depicts his feelings:—
“Ay me! Whither are vanished all my years ? Has my life been
indeed a dream, or is it all true ? Was that aught whereof I
believed it was something? Nay, I have slept and knew it
not.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
423
“ Now I have awakened, and no longer know that which of old was as
familiar to me as mine own hand. People and land where I grew
up from a child, these are become strange to me, as though what
is past had never been.
“ They who were playmates of mine are feeble and old; that which
was wild land is planted and trained; the woods are felled. Only
the rivulet flows as it flowed of old ; otherwise my sorrow were
fulfilled.
“ I scarce win a greeting from those who once knew me well; the
World has become ungracious. Of old I had here many a happy
day ; all has fallen away like the print of a stone on the waters,
alas! for evermore.
“ Ay me ! there is a poison in all sweetness. I see the gall above the
honey. Outwardly the World is fair hued, white and green,
inwardly she is black and dark, and coloured with the colour of
death.
“ Yet if she has misled any one, let him take this to heart, for he may
with slight service be free from great sin. Look to it, knights ;
this touches you. Bear the light helm and thering-linked pano
ply of arms;
“ Also the strong shield, and consecrated sword. Would God that I,
too, were worthy to join in the Crusade. Then should I, for all
my poverty, become most rich, though not in land nor lordly
gold;
“ But I should wear that eternal crown, which the simple soldier may
win by his own spear. Could I but fare that happy journey
oversea, then would my song be ‘Joy!’ and never more ‘Ay
me !’ nor ever more ‘ Alas !’ ”
If Walther sang joyous songs after his return from the
Crusade, these songs are no longer to be found. We cannot
doubt, as has been doubted, that he accompanied the expedition
to the Holy City. Two devotional poems (78, 79) remain, which
were probably written later, but they are not songs of triumph.
His voice does not reach us any more; only the grave at
Wurzburg gives further indications of his fate. For he died,
as they say, in 1229, at the age of seventy-two.
Yet another pleasing memorial. In his will the poet left
a sum of money to provide seed which the birds might gather
every day upon his grave. And four holes for water (still to be
seen) were scooped in the stone that covered him. The birds
no longer derive any benefit from his legacy, it is commuted
into a dole which upon his birthday is given to the choristers of
the Church.
It has already been indicated that Walther’s poems fall into
Ff2
�424
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
two divisions, “Lieder” (songs) and “Spriiche” (poems.) These are
different both in form and purpose. A Lied was intended to be
sung to a musical accompaniment; a Spruch was to be read
or recited. The form of a Lied was artistic and severe, that
of a Spruch admitted of anomalies. Their subjects were also
different. The Lied chanted a lover’s hopes and fears, welcomed
the Spring and Summer, bemoaned the Winter, or a lady’s cold
ness ; the Spruch dealt with ethical situations, or, as is mostly
the case in Walther’s poems, expressed strong political convic
tions. A Minnelied was a complex work of art. It comprised
three elements, which may be named, after the German analysis,
the tone, the time, and the text. The tone was the rhythmical
form or metre into which it was thrown ; the tune was the melody
to which it was sung; the text was the verbal wordingof the poem.
A Minnesinger must, therefore, be artist, musician, and poet. Of
the three elements the tone was almost the most important, for it
was no traditional lyric form, but in each case the invention of the
individual poet. No poet could creditably appropriate another’s
metre, nor could any poet repeat without danger to his reputa
tion the same tone upon several occasions. Hence the infinite
variety of tones which characterize the poems of Walther. But
in all this variety one rule prevails—the rule that each stanza
should have three parts (two Stollen and an Abgesang). Each
stanza begins with corresponding portions, and concludes with a
third, differing metrically from the others. To some of Walther’s
poems this triple character is wanting. We may unhesitatingly
assign them to a very early period of the writer’s life. The
following simple little Minnelied is an example :—
“ Winter has injured us every way :
Copseland and woodland are russet and grey,
Where many voices rang merry and gay.
Ah, would that the maidens could come forth to play,
And the birds again carol their roundelay.
“ Would I could slumber the winter through ;
Now, when I waken my heart is low,
In winter’s kingdom of ice and snow.
God knows that at last the winter must go;
Where the ice lingers now flowers will grow.”
To an early period also belongs the poem already referred to,
“ Under der Linden.” It is, perhaps, impossible to reproduce in
English verse the delicate music of this airy lyric. The follow
ing is a literal translation. It preserves the triple division of the
tone:—
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
i.
“ Under the lindens,
On the heather,
Where the couch of us two was,
You may discover,
Both beautiful
Broken flowerbells and grass,
By the woodside in the vale.
Tandaradei,
Sweetly sang the nightingale.
ii.
“ I went, I hastened
To the meadow;
Thither my love had gone before.
There was I welcomed
Lady Mary!
That I am happy evermore.
Did he kiss me ? A thousand times,
(Tandaradei),
See how red my lips are yet.
hi.
“ There he had fashioned
A beautiful
Flowercouch and bed of flowers ;
And laughter arises
In inmost heart,
If any one passes that way;
By the roses he may well
(Tandaradei)
See yet where my head was laid.
IV.
“ That he lay beside me,
Should any know,
(0 God forbid !) I were ashamed.
And what he did with me,
No one—never—
Shall know but he and I alone,
And one dear little bird that sang
Tandaradei,
And he will ever be true.”
425
�426
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
In reference to this poem, Simrock has remarked that the
folksong also is not without instances of lyrics, whose simplicity
throws the magic light of innocence upon situations which would
be intolerable in any other. But in reality to raise a moral
question upon this artless song is wholly inappropriate: the
difficulty for a modern reader is to appreciate the subtle delicacy
and infinite reserve which characterize Minne poetry. To name
his lady’s name was deemed a shameless breach of good taste in a
lover ; and Walther has one indignant poem addressed to those
who sought with some importunity to win such a secret from
him (19). In another graceful little poem (21), he speaks of
his eyes as ambassadors to his lady, ambassadors that return
always with a kindly message. But these eyes are not those of
his corporal vision, for they have long been unblessed by behold
ing her ; they are the eyes of his mind.
“ Es sint die gedanke des herzen min.”
“ Shall I,” asks the poet, “ ever be so happy a man as that she
shall gaze upon me with eyes like mine?”
It was not much, indeed, that the Minnesinger asked from his
lady. That she should smile upon him when he greeted her, or
that, if others were by, she should at least look toward the place
where he stood. A glance threw him into an ecstacyof delight,
yet if his lady endured the presence of other admirers he sank
into the depths of despair. Thence again he rose buoyantly
with the slightest straw of hope. Here is the immemorial
love-oracle (24):
i.
“ In a despairing mood,
I sat me down and pondered.
I thought I would leave her service,
Had not a certain solace restored me.
Solace it may not rightly be called. Alas, no,
It is indeed scarcely a tiny comfort,
So tiny that if I tell you you will mock me,
Yet one is comforted by a little, he knows not why.
ii.
“ Me a blade of grass has made happy,
It tells me that I shall find favour.
I measured this selfsame little blade,
As of old I have seen children do.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
427
Now listen and mark if it does so again.
‘ She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she does not, she does.’
As oft as I have done it, the result is good,
That comforts me ; but one must have faith, too.”
Who the lady was whom Walther wooed is unknown now, if
it was known in his time. It has been conjectured that she
was of low birth, and the following poem (14) gives some
ground for the conjecture. Walther’s treatment of the sub
ject is different from the way in which Horace handled a subject
of similar nature.
i.
“ Maiden, heart beloved of me,
God give thee ever help and aid ;
And were there any dearer name,
That would I gladly call thee.
What can I dearer say than this,
That thou art well beloved of me ? Alas! ’tis this that pains me.
n.
“ They taunt me oft that I
Turn to a lowly maid my song.
That they can never know
What love is, is their punishment.
Love never came to those
Who woo for wealth or beauty. 0 what love is theirs ?
ill.
“ Hate often follows beauty ;
Be none too eager for it.
Love is the heart’s best tenant,
Beauty stands after love.
’Tis love makes lady fair,
Beauty can not do this, it never made lady fair.
IV.
“ I bear it as I have borne
And as I shall ever bear it.
Thou art fair and wealthy enough,
What can they tell me of this ?
�4'28
The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
Say what they will, I love thee.
The crystal ring that thou givest is better than royal gold.
*
v.
“ If thou art faithful and true,
Then I am thine without fear;
Thine—that no sorrow of heart
Can come against me by thy will.
If thou art neither of these,
Then thou canst never be mine. Ah me, should this happen to be!”
In another poem (17), however, he praises his lady’s beauty
with much enthusiasm. The following stanza runs more lightly
into the mould of English verse :—
“ God formed with care her cheeks so bright
And laid such lovely colours there,
Such perfect red, such perfect white,
Here tinted rose, there lily fair,
That I will almost dare to say
On her with greater joy I gaze
Than on the sky and starry way.
Alas ! what would my foolish praise ?
For if her pride should grow,
My lip’s light word might work my heart some bitter woe.”
But in fact it is useless arguing from these poems to the actual
circumstances of the poet’s life. The Minne of this period was
after all rather a subject of the imagination than a passion of
the heart. The nameless lady whose praise a poet sang, be
longed to the ideal portion of his life. We find nowhere among
the poems of the Minnesingers songs which celebrate what we call
“ domestic happiness,” or which look forward to nuptial union.
The ideal and the real were kept widely sundered by the knights
and poets of Minne. In actual life the poet composed and sang
these Lieder at the court of some noble patron, whose approval
was his reward. Often he sang, too, with the hope of receiving
a more substantial recognition, the gift, perhaps, of a small estate
where he might settle, and marry the daughter of a neighbour
ing vassal landholder. For her, however, there were certainly
neither Stollen nor Abgesang. She reared his children, and
directed his frugal household. She managed the estate in sum* A glass ring for pledging a lover’s faith was not unfrequently used in the
Middle Ages by the poorer classes.
�The Greatest of the Minnesingers.
429
mer whilst he visited his patrons, gave orders to his servants and
herself set arrow to bow, if any burglarious miscreant attacked
the house. Possibly the poet appreciated what she did, and was
a good husband and father. But the domestic life lacked poeti
cal utterance ; it was not within the region of the art of the
time. Hence there is an artificial atmosphere about the whole
circle of Minnesong. It does not come into close contact with
real life. It is, if not in opposition, at least in contrast with the
masculine and adult energy by which the German character of
the Middle Ages was marked. Minnesong was of the court,
courtly. It sprang, it is true, from the same source as the great
folk-epic of Siegfried and Brunhild, but the waters of that fer
tilizing stream were diverted now to rise in the private fountains
and tinkling cascades of royal gardens. If Walther’s muse had
been confined to this line of poetry alone, the poems which he
has left us would amply have justified the title which has been
assigned him in this paper. But his large and earnest nature is
inadequately commemorated in such a title. He was the
greatest of the Minnesingers, and he was much more. He
was a politician penetrated with the idea of the necessity of
German union. In his maturer years he applied himself more
and more rarely to the composition of Lieder, and in the later
works there is breathed a very different spirit from that which
animates the lyrics of the Court of Vienna. We find in them
the real life of the poet, as we should expect to find it, when a
poet is possessed by an idea which is neither selfish nor small.
The idea which possessed Walther was a great one, and has
never been absent from the best minds of Germany, the idea of
national union. What suffering, what immense power run to
waste would have been spared that noble country, if the dream of
our Minnesinger had been realized five centuries ago. This
was not to be. Perhaps even now the full attainment is distant.
But it is well for his countrymen to look back upon his pen
sive figure seated, as shown in the Paris manuscript, in the atti
tude of deep thought.
M Ich saz uf eime steine
Und dahte bein mit beine,
Bar uf sast’ ich den ellenbogen;
Ich hete in mine hant gesmogen
Min kinne und ein min wange.
Do dahte ich mir vil ange,
Wes man zer werlte solte leben.”
For strangely enough, the ecclesiastical and political contest
of the present day, has much resemblance to that which was
fought in the times of Walther. To-day, as then, Rome and the
�430
Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.
Empire dispute the point of supremacy. The question at issue
may be disguised and deceive even the wise and far-sighted.
But the present is not the first time that Rome has learnt to
throw an appearance of right over audacious and transcendant
injustice. Five hundred years ago she failed to blind to her
designs the vision of our Minnesinger, and now-a-days, happily
there are men numerous enough and strong enough to be true to
the spirit of these poems of Walther, and to insist upon wrest
ing from the hands of Rome, at least the national education
of their children.
“ Tiuschiu zuht gat vor in alien.”
Art. VIII.—Moral Philosophy
at
Cambridge.
First Principles of Moral Science. A Course of Lectures
delivered in the University of Cambridge. By Thomas
Rawson Birks, Knightsbridge, Professor of Moral Philo
sophy. London : Macmillan and Co. 1873.
EARLY forty years have passed since Mr. Mill, in his review
of Professor Sedgwick’s celebrated Discourse, declared that
“ the end, above all others, for which endowed universities exist,
or ought to exist, is to keep alive philosophy.” The “ studies of
the University of Cambridge” in 1835 were not the studies of
the present year. In every department there has been progress.
Great reforms have been instituted from without: those which
have proceeded from within have still been greater. Unattached
students have received recognition. Dissenters, at first admitted
within college precincts for study and then allowed to graduate,
after many years of probation have been placed on a footingof equa
lity in the competition for college fellowships. The badge ofcreed
has been abolished: the stigma of sex is passing away. Lec
tures and Examinations for Women have been inaugurated, and
there is a fair prospect of the entire removal, at no distant time,
of the intellectual disabilities under which they still labour.
University influence has been extended far beyond the boundaries
of Cambridge by the institution of Local Examinations; and
more recently still, by the official establishment of Courses of
Lectures by university men in provincial towns. New professor
ships have been founded. Degrees are conferred for proficiency
n Moral and in Natural Science. The course of study for the
�1875]
The Civil Service.
of obtaining a good article. By the
time this number is in the reader’s
hands the intentions of the Govern
ment may possibly have been ex
pressed, and whether it determines
to try the scheme of the Commis
sioners at first upon some one office
as an experiment, or to let the
matter drop as one beyond its
energies and strength, it is certain
that the warm thanks both of the
Civil Service and the public are
due to Dr. Lyon Playfair and his
colleagues for the ability with which
they have sifted an almost over
whelming mass of evidence, and for
the courage with which they have
exposed what the real grievances
are under which the public service
suffers.
But though, in our opinion, such
thanks are due, it is evident that,
so far as the Civil Service is con
cerned, they have not been generally
accorded. Mr. Farrer, in the Fort
nightly Review for May has forcibly
answered the three principal objec
tions which appear to have been taken
to the recommendations of the Com
missioners, and though he seems to
attach more weight than we should
to such of the opinions of the Service
as a.re ‘ expressed by their organs
in the press,’ it is undoubtedly a
fact that the report has been re
ceived with much disfavour.
In this, however, the Com
missioners have only shared the
VOL. XI.—NO. LXVI.
NEW SERIES.
729
common fate of all who attempt to
reform professions. The obstinate
resistance offered by the Proctors
to the reformation in Doctors’
Commons will be remembered by
many ; the gloomy predictions with
which the Abolition of Purchase
was greeted by the Colonels in and
out of Parliament are still fresh in
the memory of all. But it is to
be hoped and expected that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, if
clearly convinced that the proposals
of the Commissioners are really
sound and salutary, will have the
courage of his opinion, and will not
sacrifice a national reform to noisy
professional clamour.
Individual
cases of hardship should be met by
liberal or even lavish compensation,
rather than be allowed to constitute
arguments for continuing abuses in
the Public Service.
The Civil Service of England
deserves good and generous treat
ment at the hands of the country.
It has never been servile like that
of Russia; it has never been
‘ bureaucratic ’ like that of France ;
it has never been corrupt like that
of America ; and if the abuses in it
be swept away and steps be taken
to supply it with proper organisation
and payment, it will be in the future,
even more than it has been in the
past, a legitimate source of pride
and strength to the Nation and
Sovereign it serves.
A. C. T.
3 E
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Title
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The greatest of the Minnesingers
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 406-430 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Review of Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, Mit Wort und Sacherklarungen. Begrundet von Franz Pfeiffer, Erster Band, Walther von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1870 and Des Leben Walthers von der Vogelweide. Leipzig: B.G. Trubner, 1865. From Westminster Review 45 (April 1874).
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[s.n.]
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[n.d.]
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CT38
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Book reviews
Germany
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The greatest of the Minnesingers), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
German Literature
Germany
Minnesingers
-
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Text
Literary Notices.
LITERARY NOTICES.
The Earthward Pilgrimage. By Moncure D. Conway. London: John
Camden Hotten. 1870.
Mr. Conway in this book has accomplished a rare feat of intellectual dar
ing in a country where acts of such positive religious non-conformity have
to be paid for, even by such men as John Stuart Mill, with a seat in Parlia
ment. Indeed, the sincerity, the plainness of speech, and fearlessness as to
all consequences, which mark each line of this book, cannot sufficiently be
commended, as manifested amid a people whose mental health is mortally
injured by the cancer of cant. The practical value of the work is, moreover,
enhanced by the popular method in which the subject is treated, which will
probably insure it a wide circle of miscellaneous readers.
The introductory chapter is a very clever parody of Bunyan’s allegory.
The pilgrim has, according to immemorial prescription, journeyed to the
domain of the prince of other-worldliness ; where, after having overcome the
well-known difficulties, he finds himself comfortably settled on a purple cloud,
blowing a golden trumpet: —
“ For a time this was pleasant enough. The purple cloud acted as a screen
against many disagreeable objects. The dens of misery and vice, the hard
problems of thought, the blank misgivings of the wanderers amid worlds
unrealized, were all shut out from view; and though I was expected, as a
matter of course, to say I was a miserable sinner, it was with the distinct
understanding that I was all the more our Prince’s darling for saying so.”
This existence, however, becomes somewhat stale. He is also struck by
some new facts about him. He notices that the wayfarers who now enter
the celestial city in crowds, so far from being worn out from their painful
journey, have a sleek and fat appearance. He converses with some of them,
and learns “ that the celestial railway had been opened, and that this had led
to a tide of immigration. The pilgrim could now travel in a first-class car
riage, and his pack be checked through. A pilgrim has since made the
world familiar with this result of the enterprise of Mr. Smooth-it-away.
His account, however, is, as I have learned, not entirely accurate; for in
stance, the Slough of Despond was not filled up by volumes of French
and German philosophy, but by enormous editions of an English work,
showing the safest way of investing in both worlds. Moreover, it is but just
to say that the engineering feat by which the Hill Difficulty was tunneled is
due to Prof. Moonshine, whose works, showing that the six days of creation
mean six geoligical periods, and that miracles are 'due to the accelerated
workings of natural law, also furnished the patent key by which many pil
grims are enabled to pass with ease through Doubting Castle.” The dan
gers and difficulties now, on the contrary, beset the travelers who would
�Literary Notices.
r-
T57
journey from, not to, the Celestial City; 'and our pilgrim, therefore, prepares
to bend his steps in the direction of the city of Destruction, to which he
must go through the tedious paths of study, ideality, and devotion.
Thus by a glittering thread of fun are we lured on to face the grave prob
lems of the present. The pilgrim lifts the mask from the apparently flour
ishing creed and beholds a death’s head grinning behind. Wherever you
touch what looks like a solid body, the seeming substance, as though you
handled a mummy,'crumbles into dust. There in Canterbury Cathedral an
archbishop is consecrated to the music of the very chant, probably, which
was sung by Augustine and his monks as they marched from the sea-shore
to Canterbury. But now what a mere farce it is, not influenced by nor
influencing the stirring realities around it! Here in St. Albans the ritualists
believe that with the revival of mediaeval candles and vestments they can
also rekindle the old fervent faith that has for ever passed'out of them.
Wherever we turn we may see in fact, what the poet has revealed by the
searing lightnings of lyric wrath, how —
Mouldering now, and hoar with moss,
Between us and the sunlight swings
The phantom of a Christless cross,
Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings.
1
But Mr. Conway does not rest contented with exposing the purely forced
existence of the Christian religion in this country, which, by a capital
stroke of fancy, he likens to the fauna or flora of the tropics, only flourishing
in an English park by the help of an artificial habitat. In his effort to act
as a dissolvent on petrified dogmas he seeks to deprive Christianity of part
of its prestige by demonstrating how its roots have derived their nourish
ment from the buried remains of Hindu, Greek, Scandinavian mythologies.
So far from being a direct and abrupt revelation, it is an organic religious
development which has absorbed into its life the spiritual and ethical sap of
bygone faiths. Thus the cross, that most characteristic symbol of what is
deepest in Christianity, casts its shadow far back on the first glimmer of reli
gious thought. Christmas, believed to be hallowed by the birth of Jesus of
Nazareth, has sacred associations and holly and mistletoe entwined round it
by a gray pagan past, now buried sphyhx-like beneath the accumulated sands
of centuries.. The evil spirits haunting the hill and river sides of mediaeval
Europe were but the transformed shapes of gods and goddesses now luring
the ill-starred wanderer on to eternal perdition. Even the pitiless ugliness
of those images that leer in stone from portal and crypt of the Gothic dome
are but gracious Nix and Elf pressed into the service of Hell.
The author, however, does not confine his onslaught to the religious petri
factions of thought. Secular forms of prejudice rouse his indignation no
less. The Madonna is the starting-point which leads him to the Woman’s
Suffrage. He contends that/ woman’s influence on politics would be of
incalculable benefit, and aptly remarks : “ She is inharmonious with every
�158
Literary Notices.
remnant of barbarism, with all that is passing away — with war, with husf>
ing mobs ; but how stands she related with the society for which good men
are striving ? ”
From Moses to Shelley seems also a wide leap, yet the author boldly
takes it, and asserts that wherever a right and true man stands there is
Mount Sinai. Shelley, of course, offers the best possible occasion to casti
gate that spirit of narrow bigotry which was so rampant in school, univer4
sity, church, and state, and is still sufficiently thriving to convert the English
Sunday to a period of monotonous gloom and lethargy. We cannot here
refrain from pointing out the remarkable influence exerted by Shelley over
different classes of minds. Whereas Mr. Morley, for example, in fiis excel
lent article on Byron, speaks of the “ abstract humanitarianism ” of Shelley,
Mr. Conway, on the other hand, selects him as the most typical figure of the
' revolutionary poet. The fact is that his genius transcends either of these
estimates. So far from having less fellow-feeling for the sufferings of hu
manity than Byron, he was so tortured that he might well say, —
“ I am but as a nerve o’er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of the earth.”
i
But he had imbued himself too deeply with the inmost spirit of nature not
to feel the unity of life at all moments of it, and that is a temper of mind
incompatible with the aggressive rebellion which moans and thunders
through Byron’s verse. Shelley, however, brings not “the first streak of
the day of Humanity,” as Mr. Conway says : his soul rather projects the
rays of its genius into an incalculably remote future where the transposed
paradise of Dante and Milton lure on the lagging feet of mankind with the
divine magic of ideal beauty.
From Shelley the transition to Mary Wollstonecraft is natural enough.
This truly brave-hearted woman, the first to agitate the question of the sub
jection of women in that large, liberal spirit more characteristic of the close
of the last century than of our age, should never be named without rever
ence-as having inaugurated the movements whose influence is but now posi
tively manifest. Her name inextricably connected with the protest against
our present marriage laws, she herself an example of the persecution dealt
inexorably by society against any one who dares attack its cherished strong
holds, leads Mr. Conway on to treat of some of the drawbacks and injurious
consequences of that institution. That such but too truly exist no one who
unites perfect sincerity with clearsightedess will deny. Sensuality, hypoc
risy, and moral corruption, are but too often the direct result of a union
which was doubtless intended to act as a safeguard against much misery and
vice. But it is not so much a liberation from without as from within that
must be effected ere there can be any hope of a beneficial renovation in the
relations between the sexes. Else probably confusion, misery, and a thou
sand-fold increase of degradation, would be the result of a change. An
effective re-adjustment of the laws relating to marriage can only be hoped
. i
�Literary Notices.
159
for when the entire position of the female sex will have undergone a radical
transformation through the changes which are even now taking place,
■woman, who has hitherto found hpr most sacred place in the marriage tie,
will never wantonly loosen it; but with her delicate perceptions of moral rectitude, she will also, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that her appar
ently fair domain flourishes at present over bottomless morasses of human
(putrescence; and, if she has but once thought the thought to the end, she
will not stay her feet for any moral cowardice as to the possible effects of
change. There can be no doubt then that this question, like many others,
should, from time to time, be theoretically aired. Though the accumulated
dust which will be set flying in all directions by that process may prove
rather trying to weak lungs and sore eyes, there is no doubt that the act is a
salutary one, and the more disagreeable it is the more should the author be
thanked for taking the office into his own hands.
From a literary point of view we cannot award the same unqualified praise
to “ The Earthward Pilgrimage,” which most unreservedly we give to its
moral qualities. We find in it a certain crudity of material and a diffuse
ness of expression which often seems to grope around its object rather than
hit straight at the heart of it. In one word, the matter collected by vast
and varied reading has not exactly been fused in the heat of the writer’s
own mind, and hence to emerge a re-shapen whole. The parts might, like
ore which has particles of its original bed still clinging to it, be tracked back
to various layers of thought.
But this, we fancy, is less a characteristic of Mr. Conway’s method than of
the American literary process generally. It seems as if the boundlessness
and wealth of the world possessed such an irresistible charm for this young,
impetuous nation, that its writers rush headlong to the four quarters of the
globe to gather in their multitudinous facts, while scarcely allowing them
selves sufficient time to let the accumulated seeds germinate afresh in the
soil of their own minds. What their literature chiefly lacks (with some re
markable exceptions of course) is that distinguishing flavor which imparts
to a product of the intellect somewhat of the quality of good wine, where the
peculiar earthy qualities which nourished it now linger on the palate, trans
muted into an ethereal bloom of taste.
It would, however, be ungracious and hypercritical to dismiss a book,
which will doubtless do more effectual work than many more labored pro
ductions, with any words of dissent or dispraise. What is urgently required
in England is precisely work of a kind that shall leaven the thought of the
great mass of readers. In Germany and France the modern era of free
thought has long ago been victoriously ushered in by such master minds as
Lessing and Voltaire. In England, on the other hand (though at one time
in the van of both these nations as regards philosophical speculation of the
boldest kind), the fact of the body of the people being steeped in Puritanism
necessitates that the work shall be done over again in a more popular form.
The surest way of accomplishing this is by propelling the shafts aimed at
�160
Literary Notices.
superannuated myths and dogmas on the light breath of persiflage. The
chapters in which Mr. Conway has succeeded in raising a hearty laugh at
the cost of the venerable anachronisms that stili flourish amongst us are, in
our opinion, the most useful as well as the most brilliant ones of his book.
Mathilde Blind.
Song-Tide, and other Poems. By Philip Bourke Marston.
erts Brothers. 1871.
Boston : Rob
Mr. Marston, who here prints his first volume of poems, is a son of the
editor of “ The London Atheneum,” and has been afflicted with blindness
from an early age. As we read, however, we are disposed to imagine that
he would resent our saying he has been afflicted; for the day shines in these
verses, the color of roses and the sky are revealed as by sight, the forms of
women, the outlines of landscapes, are clearly defined. This objective life
is a rather surprising element to observe here. But the poems chiefly deal
with the moods of love, absence, anticipation, the joys of music, the sub
jective life of passion. Sometimes the page is a little too Swinburnish.
Where ? asks instantly the reader who dotes upon being referred to an
indelicacy, and likes a critic whose deprecation points a passage clearly
with page and line.
There are fifty or more sonnets, which seem to us the best, though not,
perhaps, the most highly colored and attractive portion of the volume. They
show a refined and gentle taste, and a musical ear. And their simplicity is
a good omen for Mr. Marston, for when he reaches a more mature expres
sion, and busies himself with subjects of a longer breath, he will be fore
armed against the new tendency to verbal dexterities and conflagrations of
style.
„ J. W.
Little Men. By Louisa M. Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.
A delightful book for the young — and the oldest grow young as they turn
its pages. Miss. Alcott deserves and receives, we know, the heartfelt thanks
of all little men and women the world over where her books have found
their way. The publishers’ report shows that everybody who read “ Little
Women ” is reading “ Little Men,” and they will not regret it, we are sure.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Earthward Pilgrimage
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Blind, Mathilde
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 156-160 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: A review from an unknown journal, possibly The Radical, 1871 or 1872, of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage'. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871-2?]
Identifier
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G5591
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Earthward Pilgrimage), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Unitarianism
-
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PDF Text
Text
1874]
899
FRAU RATH.1
HE relations between the in Dr. Bohmer, August Wilhelm
tellectual world and dis Schlegel, and Schelling, affection
ately known to the literary public
tinguished women in Germany are
quite exceptional, and if, on first con as simple ‘ Caroline,’ if she has left
sideration of them, the foreigner is work behind her at all, has left it
amused by a tinge of somewhat fan in writings which pass under
tastic sentimentality, in the end he Schlegel’s name.
But of all gifted women, creative
becomes very favourably impressed
with the earnestness, sincerity, and or only appreciative, none has ever
been more nationally beloved than
amiability which pervade them.
A female artist, be the art she the lady whose name is prefixed to
professes what it may, is pursued this paper—the mother of Goethe,
by the public interest into all the called in her lifetime Frau Aja,
circumstances of her private life and now freshly remembered as Frau
and through all the processes of her Rath. During the year 1871 there
individual culture, and certainly appeared at Leipsic a collection of
receives from the spiritually edu letters to and from Frau Rath,
cated section of the country at edited by Herr Robert Keil; and as
large ample compensation, in en this contained no less than thirtycouragement and affection, for the four new letters from Frau Rath,
domestic sacrifices or social isolation and fifty-three new ones to her, it
the pursuit of art may involve. may be conceived that the interest
Nor is the interest confined only to created by it was considerable. It
those who have succeeded in mani does not, however, appear to have
festing their inner conceptions of life attracted any general attention in
and the world by distinct works or this country; and for readers outside
representations ; others find a warm of that circle which keeps a close
place in the national heart who have eye on German literature a notice
only exhibited an appreciation of of it may contain some novelty.
Katharina Elizabeth Goethe was,
the higher culture, and whose direct
influence has been confined to the as is well known, the daughter of
circles to which their conversation the SchultheissTextor of Frankfurt,
or correspondence extended. The of whom Goethe has related many
memory of Meta (known to us, pleasing traits in the Diclitung uncl
indeed, by hei’ exchange of sen Wahrheit, and whose portrait he
timents with Richardson, the has so prettily sketched as he re
novelist) is chiefly cherished across membered him in the still garden
the Rhine because she so valued at the back of Friedberg Street—
Klopstock and was by him deemed wrapt in his loose dressing-gown
so worthy of love in return ; and the and with a folded velvet cap on
great issues said to be attributable his head, wandering slowly to
to Rahel Levin, wife of Varnhagen and fro, and ministering to the
von Ense, must have had their wants of his pinks, tulips, and
source in her celebrity as an accom hyacinths. Elizabeth (as she more
plished talker, and in the letters commonly called herself) was born
which, with an easy hand, she in 1731, and was therefore only 18
distributed amongst all classes of when the great poet was born. Heri’
society. The intellectual daughter Keil, in the interesting introduction
of the Free Theologian, Michaelis, to his book, has pointed out that in
who was successively the wife of three of his works Goethe has en-
T
1 Frau Rath. Briefwechsel von K. E. Goethe nach den Originalen mitgetheilt von
Robert Keil. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1871.
�400
Frau Fath.
deavoured to depict his mother: in
Goetz von Berlichingen, in Wilhelm,
Meister, and in Hermann und Doro
thea. In looking over the extracts
he has adduced in proof, it strikes
one that the features, few as they are,
of Goetz’s wife, are by far the most
applicable to Frau Rath, as she has
drawn herself in the correspondence
under review. The cheerfulness, the
constancy, the shiftful household
habits, above all, the trust in God,
are each introduced; and, though the
strokes that bring out these traits
are slight, they are drawn with a
firm and masterly hand. How nobly
she shows in this little scene I—
4th Act.—Inn at Heilbronn.
Goetz.—What news, Elizabeth, of my
beloved adherents ?
Elizabeth.—Nothing certain. Some are
killed; some lie in the ToWer. No one can
or will give me closer particulars.
Goetz.—Is this the recompense of fide
lity— of childlike obedience? What be
comes of That it may be well with thee, and
thou mayst live long on the carthl
Elizabeth.—Bear husband! blame not our
heavenly Father. They have their reward:
it was born with them—an independent,
noble heart. In prison—they are free.
The allusion to his own mother,
in what Goethe says about the mo
ther of Wilhelm Meister and the
puppet-show, is very slight; but in
Hermann und Dorothea the love for
and pride in her son, as shown by
Lieschen—-her kind heart, thrift,
and humour—answer to qualities in
Frau Rath, and Herr Keil is con
vinced that the portrait is finished
from affectionate remembrances.
We are content to take his opinion;
but although fully recognising, as
we do, the similar traits, this charac
ter, as a whole, seems to owe some
of its attributes to other sources.
It appears that after the death of
Frau Rath, Goethe had contemplated
a direct poetical representation of
her, and even so late as the autumn
of 1831 he mentioned it to Riemer
as a work in posse and to be called
Aristeia. It was never, however,
accomplished, and Eckermann does
not appear to have even heard of
[September
the project. It is a curious thing
that, good critics as the Germans
are, it was a long time before the
literary imposture conceived by the
celebrated ‘child,’BettinaBrentano,
was fully unmasked ; and even then
the public seemed unwilling to dis
believe what they had once eagerly
accepted. Amongst the letters in
the book called Goethe's Correspond
ence with a Child are several pur
porting to have been written by the
Frau Rath to Bettina; but hardly
any of them answer in character,
tone, orthography, syntax, or any
thing else, to those in this collection.
Considering that Bettina was under
many obligations to Frau Rath, it
is hard to understand how she could
have brought herself to forge these
letters, which are so vapid and
colourless by the side of the genuine
ones ; and, what is worse, invent so
very malicious a scene as the sup
posed interview with Madame de
Stael at Bethmann-Schaaf. It can
not be called less than malicious,
because it was the outcome of a
deliberate attempt to turn the old
lady into ridicule, and to exhibit her
in a contemptible light. Now that
the narrative is known to be false,
it reads so like a caricature that
wonder arises at its long vitality
as a graphic anecdote. But it
would be presumptuous in any
one not German to say he should
have had suspicions from the first.
As it is now relegated to the
regions of ill-natured fiction, an
outline of it may be found curious,
and even instructive, as affording,
by a picture of what the original
was not, some idea of what she was.
Frau Hath (says Bettina) had adorned
herself in a wonderful way: certainly more
in accordance with German eccentricity
than French taste. Three waving feathers
floated from different sides of her head : a
red one, a white one, and a blue—the
French national colours—and had for a
groundwork a field of sunflowers! She
was painted with much art; her large
black eyes discharged flashes of artillery !
Round her neck was twisted the golden
ornament given her by the Queen of Prussia.
Old-fashioned lace of extraordinary richness
�1874]
Frau Rath,.
concealed her bosom. And thus she stood
with her white glace gloves, waving an
elegant fan in one hand, and with the other,
which was uncovered and be-ringed with
glittering stones,—taking an occasional
pinch from her gold snuff-box, on which
was a miniature of Goethe. At length
Madame de Stael arrived, conducted by
Benjamin Constant. As she stepped by
Frau Rath, whose astounding habiliments
were well calculated to disgust her, the
latter stretched out her dress with her left
hand and saluted with her fan, and whilst
thus continuously bowing with great con
descension, said in a loud, clear voice:
‘Je suis la Mere de Goethe.’ On which
the authoress replied, ‘Ah, je suis charmec; ’
and a dead silence fell on everybody.
Bettina professes to have wit
nessed this scene, but it is known
now that she was not in Frankfurt
when Madame de Stael visited that
city. Herr Keil is not disposed to
let Frau von Arnim go scot-free
after this imposture, and quotes
with great approval a satire of long
standing against her, in which the
contrarieties of her character are
depicted, at first with some point,
but afterwards with much tedious
ness. ‘ Half witch, half angel; half
priestess, half bayadere; half cat,
half dove ; half bird, half snake; half
lizard, half butterfly! ’ and so on
to lengths whither English faculties
of being entertained are unable to
follow.
Although the great interest which
Frau Rath created was mainly due,
of course, to her connection with
the national poet, yet, when people
had once made her acquaintance on
this account, they soon became
desirous of increasing it to a friend
ship with her for her own sake.
She was not literary; she had no
gifts of authorship. ‘ I have never,’
she says in a letter to her son,
‘ written even an A. B. C. book, and
my genius will in future guard me
against any possibility of the sort.’
In another place she repudiates,
with great vivacity, the idea of
writing a diary. ‘The good God
will not let me sink so low, that I
should reach the depth of keeping a
iournal. Forbid it, Heaven ! ’ Nor
401
does she seem to have read much;
but she was quite able to appreciate
anything that was put before her,
and could give sensible reasons
for admiring their works, both
to her son and Wieland who was
especially fond of her, and always
supplied her with the new number
of his h/L&rlmr. She delighted
also in the society of intellectual
people; was interested in drawings,
fond of music, and passionately
attached to the theatre. But the
traits in her character which
had such a charm for all who came
within her influence, were her love
of innocent pleasures, her cheer
fulness, her healthy philosophy in
clining always to the hopeful side of
things, and her dread of unrest
which led her to avoid all un
necessary emotions of a painful and
agitating sort, associating them in
her mind rather with, sins than with
the natural sorrows of life. Add to
this that she was, above all, the ‘ gute
Gattin und Deutsche Hausfrau: ’
great in her roasted venison and
fatted capons, and glorious in her
flagons of ‘ tyrants’ blood ’—a Rhine
wine which the Grand Duke, Karl
August, said pulled him through a
severe attack of illness.
In the early part of this collection
of letters, the old Herr Rath Goethe
himself is found, still moving about
that house his son has made so
familiar to everybody, but subdued
and silent, and greatly changed
from the meddlesome, but wellintentioned, father of the first books
of the Dichtung und Wahrheit. He
died in 1782, and for some years
after Frau Rath continued in the
family mansion ; but she sold it in
1795, and a^ a later period took up
her quarters in the Rossmarkt.
She was, of course, after his death
more free to shape her course in her
own fashion, and she has left more
than one charming vignette of her
daily life.
The following is from a letter to
the Grand Duchess Amalie (March
i783) :
�402
Frau Fath.
In the morning I attend to my little
housekeeping and other business matters,
and then my letters get themselves written.
No one ever had such a droll correspond
ence. Every month I clear my desk out,
and I never can do so without laughing.
Inside the scene is that of heaven—all
class distinctions done away with, and
high and low, saints, publicans, and sin
ners, in a heap together! A letter from
the pious Lavater lies, without animosity,
by the side of one from the actor, Gross
mann. In the afternoon my friends have
the right to visit me ; but they all have to
clear out by four o’clock, for then I dress
myself, and either go to the play or else
pay calls. At nine I am back again home.
On Saturdays she used to assemble
around her a party of girls (Samstagmiidel). Frau Rath was a rare
hand at games, and had an extraor
dinary gift for relating stories in
an effective way. In Goethe’s poet
ical account of the hereditary origin
of the different elements in his own
character and person, the lines
Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur,
Die Lust zu fabuliren—
From mother dear the frolic soul, ’
The love of spinning fiction—
is strictly true.
Another aptitude Frau RatlTpossessed—one which perhaps more
than aDy other tends to make a
genial companion—was her ready
talent for jumping with the humour
of any of her friends. The witty
hunchback, Fraulein von Gochliausen, who was lady in waiting to
the Duchess Dowager Amalie, and
whose astounding adventure with
her bedroom door is told with much
humour by Mr. Lewes in his Life of
Goetlie, had a fancy for writing
doggerel, or what is called in
Germany ‘ Kniittel-vers,’ and often
indited letters to Frau Rath, con
ceived in this form. Not to be
behindhand, Frau Rath always
answered in the same false gallop,
and acquitted herself at least as well
as the Fraulein; both, it must be
confessed, often trembling on. the
verge of gibberish. I our lines,
however, by Frau Rath, Herr Keil
lias prefixed to his book, for the
sake of the motherly pride and
[September
tenderness which, in their rough
way, they express :—
In Versemachen habe nicht viel gethan,
Das sieht man diesen wahrlich an,
Docli habe ich geboren ein Knabelein schon,
Das thut das alles gar trefflich verstehn.
No great things have I done in rhyme,
As you may judge, at any time ;
But I a handsome lad can claim
Who knows full well the tuneful game.
In selecting a few extracts from
different letters, the choice will be
guided chiefly by the light they
seem to throw on Frau Rath’s
character and circumstances; but,
before these are given, a letter to
her of Goethe himself seems to claim
to be translated, as illustrating a
point of great interest in his history.
It is new, we believe, to the general
English public, and puts strongly
and clearly the view he took of his
situation at Weimar, and how he
was convinced, notwithstanding the
fears of his friends lest the work of
the Artist should suffer from the
position of the Minister, that the
freedom from pettiness and con
striction, and the insight into the
world, his increased rank gave him,
were essential to his culture, and
would end in his complete develop
ment. Events showed he was
triumphantly right.
August ii, 1781.
The Devin du Village arrived yesterday
with Melchior’s work. I have up to this
had neither time nor quiet to answer your
last dear letter. And yet it was a great
joy to see expressed once more tho old
familiar sentiments, and to read them in
your own handwriting. I entreat you not
to be troubled on my account, nor to let
anything mislead you. My health is far
better than I could have expected or hoped
in former days ; and if it but last me for
at least the bulk of my work still remain
ing, I sHall by no means have reason to be
dissatisfied with it. As for my position
itself, notwithstanding considerable draw
backs, it has much that is most desirable
for me; and the best proof of this is. that
I cannot think of any other with which I
could at present manage at all. No one
can conceive that it would be becoming in
me to be wishing, out of mere hypochon
driacal uneasiness, to be otherwise situated
than I am. Merck and others judge my
position quite wrongly : they see only what
�Frau Fath.
1874]
403
I sacrifice, not what I gain ; and they can
not understand that I become daily richer,
whilst I daily give up so much. You re
member the last time I was with you,
before I accomplished the move here, and
the conditions then existing: had they
continued, I should certainly have come to
misfortune. The disproportion between
the narrow and slowly-moved citizen
circle and the breadth and activity of
my being would have driven me mad.
With all my lively imagining and fore
casts of human affairs I should have con
tinued unacquainted with the world, and in
a state of perpetual childhood, and this
state, through self-conceit and cognate
faults, would have grown unbearable to
itself and every one around. How much
more fortunate it was to find myself in
relations, for which indeed I was no match,
but where I had the opportunity, through
inany errors of misunderstanding and hasti
ness, of learning to know myself and others,
and where, left to fate and my own resources,
I had to go through many trials, not in the
least necessary for hundreds of men, but of
which, for the completion of my culture, I
was sorely in need! And now, to be in my
element, how can I wish for a happier posi
tion than one which has for me something
of infinity about it ? For not only do new
capacities develop themselves in me daily
■—my notions grow clearer, my power in
creases—my acquirements are extended—
my discernment corrected, and my mind
rendered more active—but I find daily
opportunity of directing my endowments—
it may be towards great objects, or it may
be towards small.
affectionate interest. It is very
pleasing to observe the way in
which she and, indeed, many other
correspondents introduce trifling
matters about Goethe, as if quite
casually, but purposely so intro
ducing them doubtless to delight
the mother’s heart. Goethe does
not seem to have written directly
to the Frau Rath very often, and
therefore these side views of him
were especially welcome. The
Duchess calls him all sorts of nick
names ; at one time Dr. Wolff, at
another friend Wolff; but perhaps
the choicest title is ‘ Hatschelhans,’
which may be translated by any
fond, nonsensical word; ‘ sweet
poppet ’ will do as well as another.
In replying, Frau Rath, at the be
ginnings and endings, makes use of
those profound expressions of respect
for rank which were then universal
in Germany in intercourse between
citizens and the nobility; but in the
body of the letter she lets loose her
high spirits, and is completely her
self. Amidst all her fun and satire
she seldom omits some aphorism of
her homely philosophy, and in times
of any trouble she expresses herself
as being entirely supported by it.
In the first gloom of her widow
Then, after dwelling on the folly hood she thus writes to the
it would be to throw up a post so Duchess:—
suited in many respects to him, the
All future joys must be sought for
writer adds:—
amongst strangers, and out of my own
Meanwhile believe me that a large
measure of the good heart with which
I endure and work, proceeds from the
thought that all my sacrifices are voluntary,
and that I have only to put the posthorses to, and to find with you again a
competency and a pleasant life in which
the repose would be absolute. And with
out this outlook, to regard myself, as in
hours of distress I cannot but do, as a
bondsman and day labourer to my own
necessities, would be a far more painful
task.
Fare thee well.
good old friends.
Weimar.
liemember me to my
house, for there—all is still and vacant as
in the churchyard. It was far otherwise
once!
But since, throughout nature,
nothing remains in its own place, but whirls
into the eternal rolling circle, how can I
suppose I am to be an exception ? Frau
Aja expects nothing so absurd. . Who
would distress himself because it is not
always full moon, or because the sun now
(October) is not so warm as in July ? If
the present is only well used, and. no
thoughts entertained of how things might
be otherwise, one gets fairly through the
world, and the getting through is—all said
and done—the main thing.
Frau Aja, she says, is determined
to keep her good temper and spirits,
The Dowager Duchess Amalie and to drive away the foul fiend as
figures frequently in this volume, he was driven away in the time of
and always writes in a strain of King Saul. Then she adds :—
VOL. X.—NO. LVII.
G-.
NEW SERIES.
F F
�404
Frau Rath.
Herr Tabor (your Highness will re
member the name at least) has provided
splendidly for our amusement. The whole
winter we are to have the play! Won’t
there just be fiddling and trumpeting!
Ha! I should like to. see the evil spirit
who dare trouble me with melancholy!
Just one Sir John Falstaff would put him
to the rout. We had such a gaudium with
the old dog.
This ‘ gaudium ’ is a very favourite
word with Frau Rath, and other
pet phrases are ‘ Summa summarum,’ ‘ per ssecula saeculorum,’
‘ lirum larum,’ &c. They quite
give the hall-mark to her letters,
and the absence of it from Bettina’s
imitations is a blemish—viewing
forgery as one of the mimetic arts.
We have glimpses of an interchange
of presents. Frau Rath, with many
apologies for the liberty, sends the
Duchess some biscuits, and the
Duchess works a pair of garters for
her dear old friend. The garter
letter is one of the new ones; but
Mr. Lewes had seen it at Weimar,
and mentions it in his biography.
There are fourteen letters from
Wieland to Frau Rath, but only
one reply; that however, though
not new, is characteristic. Merck
had been staying with her, and she
had found, after his departure, a
letter to Wieland, which he had
written but never posted. She sent
it on, and writes herself:—
Dear Son,—Merck was three days with
us. When he was gone, I searched in his
room and cleared it out, which in the case
of poets is a very necessary task, as you can
sufficiently judge by the letter which preceded
this. For that poor letter would have lain
where it was, and never have reached its place
and destination, had Frau Aja had less in
sight into the poet-nature. But, thank
God, she is not yet out of practice, though
for these three years Herr Wolfgang
Goethe has no longer gladdened her house,
but allowed the light of his countenance to
shine at Weimar.
Wieland appears in a very amiable
aspect. His genuine pride in and
affection for Goethe, his entire
freedom from literary self-compla
cency, his cheerfulness, openness,
and affection are all delightful at
tributes. He is very funny about
[September
his little son. He married late in
life; and when the baby came, of
course, as is usual in such cases,
there never was such a baby ! He
begs Frau Rath to kindly overlook
his own thin body and spindle legs,
as he belongs, he says, to an age
when it was usual for poets to
dispense as much as possible with
the physical, and concentrate their
powers in their heads. Taking
this into consideration, and re
membering also the amount of
Agathons, Idris, Amadis, Biri
binkers, Gerons, &c., he had already
produced, he must say he thinks
the baby in every way creditable
to him. We like to have Goethe
called by him ‘ Brother Merlin, the
magician.’ It is not always easy
to take the second place, after you
have held the first, even although
your good sense may tell you it is
your place; but Wieland does it
with infinite grace. To one of the
Fraulein von Gochhausen’s letters
he adds a postscript to his ‘ liebes
Miitterchen ’ to say they were all at
Ettersburg, and that a little pastoral
piece by brother Wolf (Goethe)
had made him twenty-five years
younger. He sends his best com
pliments ‘an den guten lieben Papa,’
which means the old Rath. There
is yet another postscript to this
same epistle by the old Duchess :
‘ Dear Mother, I and my donkey
are here too.—Amalie.’
Goethe had taken with him to
Weimar from his home at Frank
fort a man named Philipp Seidel,
who was employed both as secre
tary and servant. Frau Rath en
deavours to get side glimpses of
her son every now and then through
this intelligent domestic, and there
is a letter from him describing the
performance of the West Indian, in
which Goethe (or, as Philipp has it,
the Geheime Legations Rath) played
Belcour, dressed in a white coat,
with blue silk waistcoat and
breeches; and when painted and
surmounted by a white dress wig,
looked in Philipp’s eyes very hand-
�1874]
Frau Fath.
some. Indeed, one can well imagine
he looked so in everybody’s eyes.
All were amateurs except two. The
Duke took the part of O'Flaherty,
and Musaeus that of the Lawyer;
Eckhof, the actor of whom Lessing
had so high an opinion, was Stockwell, and Madame Wolf, a profes
sional singer, also played. As we
have mentioned Philipp, we must
introduce the name of Elizabeth
Hoch — ‘ Lieschen ’ — a favourite
maid-servant of Frau Rath. To
her Goethe was never anything
more than ‘our young master,’ but
she lived to see the statue put up
to him at Frankfurt. To so genial
a person as Frau Rath it came
natural to make the relations of
mistress and servant very pleasant,
so that Lieschen stayed with her to
the last; and marrying when the
old lady was gone, though then
nearly fifty years old, she lived on
to the spring of 1846.
In January, 1784, Frau Rath
opened communications with Fried
rich von Stein, the son of the Baron
ess von Stein, with whom Goethe
exchanged tender sentiments and
savoury sausages, in the droll fashion
of the day, and whose correspond
ence with the poet is so well known.
The boy was only eleven, but he
served admirably the purpose to
which Frau Rath was desirousof put
ting him—that of chronicling little
events in which Goethe took apart.
‘ Don’t you think, now, you might
manage to keep a little diary, and
just pop down things that happen
before you, and then send it to me
once a month ? A few words would
do : “ Goethe was at the play last
night;” “ to-day we had company;”
and so on.’ Such was the'purport of
her first letter, and the lad seems to
have caught at the idea, and writ
ten regularly, and to have felt an
extraordinary interest in telling all
particulars about Goethe, to whom
he was greatly attached. Some of
the letters of Frau Rath to this boy
are truly charming, and convey hn
idea of the peculiar fascination she
405
exercised over the young. In send
ing him two silhouettes of herself,
she writes:—
In person I am reasonably tall and
reasonably stout; have brown hair and
eyes, and could represent tolerably well
the mother of Prince Hamlet. Many per
sons—amongst them the Princess of Dessau
—declare there could be no mistake about
Goethe being my son. I do not find it so;
but there must be something in it, it has
been said so often.
In another letter she gives an
account of a fire at the theatre,
which caused great loss to the
director, Grossmann. A subsequent
curious scene is described, which
could scarcely have happened
out of Germany. They soon got
the theatre open again, and played
‘ Der Teutsche FLausvater,' in which
the manager took the part of
the painter; but before it began,
the curtain drew up and discovered
Grossmann in his half-burnt coat,
and with his head and hands tied
up in rags. He then came forward,
surrounded by his six children, all
weeping bitterly, and delivered a
speech. The audience wept sympa
thetically, and the manager with
drew amidst thunders of applause.
The young Stein paid Frau Rath
a visit in the autumn of 1785, and
Goethe, writing to Knebel, says
‘ Fritz is in Frankfurt, and will
most likely see Blanchard go up this
week.’ Blanchard was a French
man who earned a great reputation
by going up in fire balloons—an
excessively dangerous feat, to which
our modern ascents in gas balloons
are mere child’s play. Fritz, how
ever, did not see him, as the very
common occurrence of the balloon
being burnt took place. Room must
be found for an amusing remini
scence of his visit, which Frau
Rath calls up in answering a letter
that announced the boy’s safe
arrival at home. Everything, she
says, reminds her of him—the pears
he used to eat while she had her
tea, and then the fun they had
dressing up fine, and getting them
selves powdered and puffed.
�406
Frau Bath.
And then the vis-a-vis at table, and how
at two o’clock (I must admit, often very
rudely) I hunted my cherub into the
Fair; and how we met again at the play
house and came back home together, and,
lastly, the drama for two characters in the
hall, where fat Katherine attended to the
lighting, and Greineld and Marie repre
sented the audience—that was sport in
deed!
This Friedrich, in later life,
entered the Prussian political ser
vice, and died in 1844, holding a
high appointment at Breslau.
In August, 1797, Goethe took
Christiane Vulpius and his son
August to visit Frau Rath, who re
ceived them, most kindly. She
always alluded to Christiane as her
dear daughter, and sometimes wrote
to her in terms of sincere affection.
She lived to see Goethe married to
her. August had a great attach
ment to his grandmother, and ex
pressed himself very feelingly at
her death,
The only letters in this collection
which are disappointing are those
to the actor, Unzelmann. For
once, Frau Rath seems a little to
lose her simplicity and freshness;
there is an extravagance in the ex
pressions—the sentiment is pitched
too high, and a flavour of passion
ate affectation is perceptible to
which 4 beautiful souls ’ and other
fantastic beings were at that time
sadly addicted. Sometimes she
rallies and is her own healthy self
again, but the mere fact of writing
to Unzelmann seems sooner or later
to necessitate a bit of overstrained
writing.
As the book wears to its close the
reader becomes aware that Frau Rath
has changed with the cbangingyears,
and has lost some of the vivacity
so conspicuous in the earlier pages.
The jolly housewife who used to
sing hep son’s song of 4 The King
and his Flea,’ and call on the guests
for a chorus ; who poured out her
choice wine, and enjoyed nothing so
much as 4 ein lierzliches gaudium,’
and in her yearly feast could cater
nobly for forty friends, tones down
[September 1874
gradually to a calm and unexcitable
old lady, retaining, however, to the
last her easily-amused temperament,
and enjoying great peace of mind
from her belief that God could
safely be trusted. And so, with no
regrets for the past, and no feverish
curiosity about the future, her wellordered life drew to its end. She
had read the flower of Goethe’s com
positions, and had had the pride of
knowing that Germany recognised
him as its greatest man ; and with
this proud thought she might well
sing Nunc
Her death
seems at last to have been some
what sudden, as we gather from a
letter in which August announced
the event to his mother; but faith
ful Lieschen was with her, tenderly
caring for her. And she had inti
mation at least that her hour was
near, for, with characteristic calm
ness and foresight, she had made
every arrangement for the funeral,
descending so far into details as to
order wine and biscuits for the at
tendants. The date of death was
September 13, 1808 ; and on the
15th the remains were laid in the
old Frankfurt Friedhof, where, on
the right hand as you enter, a recent
gravestone now marks the spot.
Herr Keil has performed his task
as editor with much completeness.
He has selected from other pub
lished sources several interesting
letters, and has so pieced them in
with his original matter that shape
and proportion are given to the
volume as a whole. Those who are
conversant with German publica
tions—a largely increasing section
of the public—will know that the
days of botanical drying-paper and
half-impressed black letter have
passed away, and that Leipsic and,
perhaps still more, Berlin now vie
in beauty of typography and ele
gance of finish with Paris. Herr
Keil’s book is quite up to the
standard of the day in its clear
type and excellent paper, and is fur
nished, moreover, with convenient
indices.
J. W. Sherer.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frau Rath
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sherer, J.W.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 399-406 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Includes bibliographical references. A review of Frau Rath, Briefwechsel von K.E. Goethe nach den Originalen von Robert Keil. Lepizig: Brockhaus, 1871. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1874
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT36
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Frau Rath), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Katharina Elizabeth Goethe
Women