scope, bringing whole hidden galaxies to view."[1] How these "splendid" writers appreciate one another!
Again, a critic of a more sober school, writing in a short-lived journal, of whose contributors Mr. Gilfillan magna pars fuit, declares that to such a mind as his "all things are possible"—that he is at once the liberal clergyman, the candid critic, the true poet, the laborious student, the graceful essayist, the keen censor, the mature philosopher, the speculative enthusiast, the trained theologian—and concludes with the assertion, "For such a mind we feel convinced there is no place of rest. For such a mind it is not a matter of choice or ambition, but of inevitable necessity, to ascend in due course that chair of which we have already spoken[2]—to become the 'common measure' of rising genius—the central truth in the intellect of our time."[3] O ye accepted worthies of contemporary literature—ye master-minds of living authorship—take at once this "notice to quit," and forthwith pale your ineffectual fires before this burning and shining light! Your vocation is gone. Your mission is fulfilled. And he that is least in the kingdom of this new prophet, is greater than you. The days of the Quarterly, Mr. Lockhart, are numbered ;—the reign of Maga, O Sheriff of Orkney, is accomplished;—henceforth be dumb, and. keep still silence, ye singing-men and singing-women, ye Brownings and Tennysons—and barter your histories at the butter-shops, ye Macaulays and Grotes—and light your pipes with your philosophy, ye Hamiltons and Whewells; for lo! at your doors, though ye know it not, is the Coming Man, in the form of a dissenting minister, who is prepared, in broad Scotch, to ask "at" you all sorts of posing questions, if you don’t by-and-by get out of his way. He, the central Sun, being risen, what occasion is there for you to twinkle, twinkle, little stars?
But is Mr. Gilfillan responsible for the latria worship of his idolators? Nay; on the contrary, he is surely sagacious enough to be somewhat vexed by the absurd prostration and mummery of their cultus. But he is tolerably complacent, too; and it is the unwarrantable degree of his self-esteem which emboldens us to this freedom of speech. Little likely is it his spirits should be dashed by ought we can indite. "Not a whit, not a whit." He may pair with Monsieur Trissotin himself in
Cette intrépidité de borine opinion,
Cet indolent état de confiance extréme,
Qui le rend en tout temps si content de soi-même,
- ↑ "Excelsior; or, the Realms of Poesie."
- ↑ The "chair" in question is for him, the Coming Man, who shall "sit as Moderator in the sublime assembly of this age," and who, according to the authority from whom we quote, "must tame us by the purged pre-eminence of fasting, and watching, and prayer, and knowledge, and patience," and "must stand before us as the virgin before the lion (!)—and must ride us as the ship the sea"—and must be at once "the critic, the theologian, and the philosopher, with the soul of a saint, and the smile of a friend, and the face of a man. This man—this angel in plain clothes (!)—this νικη απτερος—who shall recognise the children of light by the freemasonry of kin, is the literary want of our times." And that Mr. George Gilfillan, continues the oracle from which we quote, "possesses such powers, properties, and aptitudes for this office, as have been combined by no other modern author, is a conviction from which, we think, the impartial reader cannot escape."—Palladium, vol. i, pp. 30, 32, 35.
- ↑ "Palladium," vol. i., p. 36.
