Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/57

 1893.] 

Mr. Leslie Stephen is a superbly vigorous and trenchant writer. He belongs with Mr. John Morley to that younger school of English radicals who have discarded the rhetorical bravery of the poets and orators of the Revolution, have outgrown the narrowness and harshness of the original Benthamite, have supplemented will by evolution and added culture and the historic sense to Herbert Spencer. Their only fault is that they are at all times sweetly reasonable and on all topics hopelessly and irremediably right. Mr. Stephen has but one weakness—a fondness for parson-baiting, an itching for theological polemic, a desire to do over again the work of Voltaire. He knows better. He has read his Matthew Arnold and his Renan, and is aware that for this gross work "Voltaire suffit." But at times the unregenerate blood grows hot within him, he "bites his thumb," he "remembers his everlasting blow," and sallies forth to confound the orthodox with "An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays" (Putnam). "Why," he passionately exclaims, "when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant"? Why, perhaps because, as Emerson says, "All the Muses and love and religion hate these developments and will find a way to punish the chemist who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory." And if this is so, what is the use of proving by irrefragable logic that the "scepticism of believers" is really more paralyzing to progress than "scepticism about the shifting phantasmagoria of theology." What profits it to combat "the Higher Pantheism" by a demonstration that the dreams of theologians are not more than half true while they last, and that if we will live in dreams we lose our firm grasp of realities? Of what avail solemnly to analyze and refute Cardinal Newman's "Theory of Belief"? Do any thinkers take seriously this "theory of belief," or its author, except as a "stylist" and a "grand old man"? And, when all is said, will Mr. Stephen's seventy pages of close reasoning convince anybody who is not already satisfied with Arnold's quiet affirmation that "Cardinal Newman has accepted a solution which is, frankly speaking, impossible"? The delicate irony of Mr. Stephen's essay on "The Religion of All Sensible Men" will delight the literary epicure. But will it induce one "sensible man" to come out if his interest bids him keep the peace? Does it really bring us any nearer the solution of the painful questions of conscience started in Mr. Morley's "Compromise"? The discussion of the entire problem of persecution in the essay on "Poisonous Opinions" is an admirable philosophic supplement to Mill's essay on "Liberty." But will it make it possible for the Professor of Psychology to deliver his whole thought in any chair in the United States or England? But we are wrong. Superstition and intolerance are always striving for the mastery of the world, and must be combated in many ways. The slow gentle solvents of Renan's irony, of Arnold's freely-playing consciousness, and of Mr. Paters's tolerant interest in all errors that assume picturesque forms, will not suffice. There will always be enough neutrals, lovers of peace and advocates of compromise and accomodation. And so, lest the conflict prove too unequal, the philosophic onlooker, accepting with a grimace the service of the vitriol of Voltaire and the bludgeon of Ingersoll, will gladly welcome the finely-tempered, keen, trenchant blade of Mr. Stephen.

The humorous talent of Mr. Guthrie (F. Anstey) has never been better displayed than in "Mr. Punch's Pocket Ibsen" (Macmillan), described as "a collection of some of the master's best-known dramas, condensed, revised, and slightly rearranged for the benefit of the earnest student." Herr Ibsen's later works are good game for the parodist, and Mr. Guthrie has made the most of his opportunities. One would have to be a very crabbed and uncompromising Ibsenite not to smile at these delightful burlesques, which touch with inimitable skill the weak spots of the works which they parody, and give humorous exaggeration to the points that most clearly lend themselves to satirical treatment. "Rosmersholm," "A Doll Home," "Hedda Gabler," and "The Wild Duck" are thus presented in revised forms, while in "Pill-doctor Herdal" we have "rather a reverent attempt to tread in the footprints of the Norwegian dramatist, than a version of any actually existing masterpiece." The author confesses that "his imitation is painfully lacking in the magnificently impenetrable obscurity of the original, that the vein of allegorical symbolism is thinner throughout than it should be, and that the characters are not nearly as mad as persons invariably are in real life," but even with these drawbacks, "Pill-doctor Herdal" offers no lack of mirthful entertainment. We must find space for one illustrative extract. It should be premised that, after the death of Bygmester Solness, his widow has married Dr. Herdal. Into their household enters Hilde Wangel (who turns out to be no other than Nora of "A Doll Home," emancipated at last), just as previously she had come into Solness's life. The scene we quote is between Herdal and his wife:

(drinks a glass of punch).—You're right enough there. If I had not been called in to prescribe for Dr. Ryval, who used to have the leading practice here, I should never have stepped so wonderfully into his shoes as I did. (Changes to a tone of quiet chuckling merriment.) Let me tell you a funny story, Aline; it sounds a ludicrous thing—but all my good fortune here was based upon a simple little pill. For if Dr. Ryval had never taken it — (anxiously).—Then you do think it was the pill that caused him to—? .—On the contrary; I am perfectly sure the pill had nothing whatever to do with it—the inquest made it quite clear that it was really the liniment. But don't you see,