Now, Sir Nathaniel maketh humble confession that he is possessed of a morbid interest in the black arts, as comprised in German and American book-work. Show him a branch of the tree of knowledge of good and
complacently canvassed at a Recordite tea-party, as the said novelist's newest tale in a Christmas ball-room.Guided by the eulogies of his disciples, and by the wonted promissory tone of his own preliminary statements, one is impelled to expect a great deal from Mr. Maurice. One is led to expect a rich supply of positive instruction. But, saith the proverb, Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed. That beatitude was not for us, in our study, such as it may have been, of his writings. Disappointed we were. But then we had expected much.With a respectful O salve! the inquirer approaches him, like Charinus with his
"Ad te advenio, spem, salutem, auxilium, consilium expetens:"
too often to find that his Pamphilus might say,
"Neque pol consilii locum habeo, neque auxilii copiam."
Admirable things there are, beyond question, in Mr. Maurice's books. First and foremost, there is that solemn sincerity of religious feeling, in the sacred presence of which one feels both attracted and awed, and for the sake of which one can still assent to the title of "divine" and "divinity," as applied to a certain class of men and class of writings. There is freshness and freedom of thought; a superiority to the peddling platitudes of routine theology; a candid scrutiny of other-sidedness, in place of a prepossessed devotion to one-sidedness only. There is an outspoken caveat against the intellectually conventional when it involves the morally false, an unflinching inquisition of masked pretence, and a resolve to wrest forth the lie from out her right hand. There is a habit of philosophic reflectiveness; there is critical acumen and sensibility; there is scholarship, and steady industry in research. There is an intense yearning after practical results—evident in the political and social schemes which his adversaries rebut as so intensely unpractical. And there is a manly, nervous, forcible style—the style of a man who weighs his words, and that too in the balance of the sanctuary.Nevertheless, his writings leave one strangely dissatisfied. Quite provoking is the alliance they present of lucid premiss with lame and impotent conclusion. The conclusion is often that in which nothing is concluded. When you fancy yourself surest of his drift, presto! he's arguing something else. Those against (or in behalf of) whom his controversial essays are intended, are heard to say, with perfect justice—"He often enters into our difficulties and admits their full force, but then he flies off to some aspect of truth that he thinks we have neglected, and never meets the objection or refers to it again. He flits from side to side, taking first a turn at sympathy with his opponents to show us how well he understands our position, and how true (though one-sided) he esteems it; and then he hurries off to sympathise with an opposite conviction, and leaves us anxiously expecting sentence, or at least a definite issue, which never comes." The faculty of ready sympathy—of taking observations from his foeman's stand-point—is indeed one of his worthiest traits, and the main cause probably of his popularity in partibus infidelium. But the very accuracy with which he catches the features of alien creeds, and the ease with which he seems to identify his plastic habit of thought with theirs, only serve to enhance the mortification which ensues when his finale comes about. The eager catechumen, hopeful of large results from his instructions, will, in most cases we fear, feel himself at last in the poet's mood, when thus confessing his experience:
"Much I question'd him;
But every word he utter'd, on my ears
Fell flatter than a caged parrot's note,
That answers unexpectedly awry,
And mocks the prompter's listening."
Perhaps it may not be quite superfluous to add to this overgrown note a reminder, that its contents, as affecting an English Churchman, are no way apropos of the American author—but that the note is wholly an excrescent excursus, due
