equally informing and attractive. And indeed this critique has uncommon interest, for it is not merely an estimate of Pope and of Pope's work particularly, but a vindication, through that estimate, of the claims of the Critical School to a high rank in poetry generally. Johnson is, it must be owned, far more successful in establishing Pope's title to be considered a poet, and a great poet, on his own merits and judged by the standard and touchstones applicable to his work, than in establishing his title to a high place among poets whose achievement must be tested by touchstones applicable to such poets as Homer. Johnson, indeed, solves his critical knot in true Gordian fashion, bringing his otherwise perfectly just and most masterly vindication of Pope to a very lame and impotent conclusion. If the writer of the Iliad were to class his successors, he would assign a very high place to his translator without requiring any other evidence of his genius.' And yet there are no mismeasurements in his appreciation of particular poems, and in his general estimate of Pope no exaggeration. When he contends that Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that constituted genius-invention as displayed in the 'Rape of the Lock' and in the Essay on Criticism,' imagination as in Eloisa,' 'Windsor Forest,' and the Moral Essays, and judgment as in evidence everywhere—who would dispute it?

It would have been well for Johnson's reputation had his scheme not included Collins and Gray. For his judgment of Collins, his innate insensibility to all that constitutes the power and charm of the Odes was no doubt alone responsible; and it is merely an example of an infirmity which never fails to become conspicuous whenever he treats of poetry into which the finer elements enter. To a critic who could say of painting that it could represent but could not inform, who saw in Fleet Street the finest prospect in the world, and who never referred to our old ballad literature except to laugh at it, such poems as the Odes to Fear, to Evening, and on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, could hardly be expected to appeal.

But something more than deficiency in æsthetic sensibility enters into the critique of Gray, as it had

entered into the critique of Milton. For Gray and Gray's circle he could never, in conversation, restrain his dislike and contempt, to both of which he was in the habit of giving very intemperate expression. Gray, he regarded as an affected and effeminate coxcomb, Mason as a prig, and Walpole as a fashionable fribble. When he wrote this Life, Gray had been dead ten years; but Gray's friends and admirers, Mason and Walpole, were alive. Of deliberate injustice Johnson was at all times incapable; and, since the grave had closed over Gray, softening what it seldom fails to soften in the living, and Mason's Life of him had appeared, Johnson would have been forced, had he not been willing, to allow that Gray was no ordinary man. But of Gray's poetry his estimate remained unchanged; and that estimate he took care to express with all the emphasis he could command; partly in selfdefence, to justify opinions formed originally, no doubt, in the heat of prejudice, but to which his critical reputation was committed; and partly to annoy and irritate Gray's admirers, particularly Walpole and Mason. He was more successful in his last object than in his first. A more comprehensive and deplorable exhibition of his infirmities as a critic he could scarcely have given.

Making every allowance for Johnson's ignorance of Pindar and of the Greek poets, and even for all that is indicated in his pronouncement that no man could have fancied he read 'Lycidas' with pleasure had he not known the author, it is astonishing that he could have been capable of such portents of critical opacity and obliquity as his critiques of the 'Bard' and the 'Progress of Poetry. To the Installation Ode, with its exquisite occasional beauties and its majestic evolution, he does not even refer. A few peddling and carping objections to its figures and epithets, and the remark that it suggests nothing to its author which every reader does not equally think and feel, are all that the Ode on the Prospect of Eton College elicits from him. He is so inconsistent as to praise the Elegy for what he blames in the Ode, remarking in commendation that it 'abounds with images that find a mirror in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.' Of Gray's essential and peculiar excellences-the noble evolution and mingled picturesqueness and sublimity of the two great odes; all

those qualities which, in the Ode to Adversity and in the Eton ode, place him at the head of our ethical lyric poetry; his high seriousness, his fine ear and wonderful music, his exquisite sense of style and his consummate mastery of it-of all this Johnson appears to be utterly insensible.

But with all its limitations and defects, the Lives of the Poets' is a great work. There is no mistaking its note, it is the note of a classic. Its style, distinguished and original, is in the happiest accordance with what it expresses and is a model of its kind. In every page we instinctively feel that a master, sure of himself and morally as well as intellectually justified in such confidence, is addressing us. Serious deductions have no doubt to be made for infirmities of various kinds and originating from various causes, but they are more than compensated; and what compensates them has added importantly and permanently to the common stock of intellectual wealth. The work has almost as much value and certainly as much interest for the student of life as for the student of books. From the comments and observations on human nature and the world of men scattered throughout the biographical portions may be culled an anthology of wit and wisdom which need fear comparison with no similar anthology in the world. It is rare indeed to read two consecutive pages without being arrested by some shrewd or wise reflection, some moral truth generalised in felicitous aphorism, or some epigram, sarcastic or serious, as pointed and pungent as the best in Tacitus or La Rochefoucauld. Few books exist which possess so many attractions or in which so much that instructs and informs, and so much that amuses are mingled. As a contribution to criticism, the least that can be said for it is that, on the poetry and polite literature characteristic of the eighteenth century, and on the writings of the early fathers of that literature, it is an indispensable and imperishable commentary; that, even where it is misleading and unsound, it is yet instructive; and that there is no book in our language which, to a critical education, would contribute so much which is furthering and so much which is illumining.

J. CHURTON COLLINS.

Vol. 208.-No. 414.

H

Art. V.-THE RELIGIONS OF THE FAR EAST.

II. JAPAN.

1. Le Bouddhisme Japonais. By Ryauon Fujishima. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1889.

2. The Religions of Japan. By W. E. Griffis. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895.

3. Shinto the Way of the Gods. By W. G. Aston, C.M.G. London: Longmans, 1905.

4. Die Sekten des Japanischen Buddhismus. By H. Haas. Heidelberg: Evangelischer Verlag, 1905.

5. Developments of Japanese Buddhism. By Rev. A. Lloyd. Trans. of Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xxii, 1894.

6. Le Shinntoïsme. By M. Revon. A series of articles still in course of publication in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions.' Paris: Leroux, 1904.

7. Handbook to Japan. By B. H. Chamberlain and W. B. Mason. London: Murray, 1907.

8. Things Japanese. By B. H. Chamberlain. Fifth edition, revised. London: Murray, 1905.

9. Wisdom of the East Series: The Way of the Buddha; The Classics of Confucius; The Sayings of Lao Tzu, etc. Edited by L. Cranmer Byng and S. A. Kapadia. London: Murray, 1907.

THE general conditions of religious life in Japan are similar to those in China. Religions are not mutually exclusive; in practice people usually follow more or less the external observances of two; fanaticism and sacerdotalism are absent or discouraged. Yet one is conscious of a different atmosphere. Though the Japanese are not much more pious than the Chinese, their creeds share in the vigour, intelligence, and good order which characterise their other institutions; their superstitions are less ridiculous and more artistic; and the predilection for didactic ethics, so marked in China, is absent. The Japanese are not wanting in either public or private ethics, but the connexion between worship and morality does not impress them. The old national religion, Shintoism, is non-moral. Buddhism is occupied with the saving of souls and with such aspects of individual

conduct as are necessary for that task, but not with the politico-ethical morality so dear to the Chinese mind.

The Japanese often seem irreverent; some awe may attach to a place or person, such as the shrines of Ise or the Mikado, but rarely to a doctrine or a deity. A Japanese priest in Kyōtō showed me a representation of the death of Buddha with roars of laughter. I have never seen a convincing explanation of the propriety of Japanese laughter and am not sure, as some would have us believe, that it is always in place; but in this case the priest was not a scoffer. It may be said that there was nothing unusual in his laughter, for a Japanese will smile in announcing his parent's death. But the habit seems to show that religion and death are treated with friendly familiarity and do not inspire the distant reverence felt by both Mohammedans and Christians.

Japanese religion has received comparatively little attention in Europe. Griffis seems to be the only author who has devoted a separate book to it as a whole; and his 'Religions of Japan' still remains the best introduction to the subject. But an admirable compendium of information is contained in Murray's Handbook to Japan (by Chamberlain and Mason) under the sections Shinto Buddhism, and lists of gods and goddesses. Much of interest will also be found scattered in Chamberlain's 'Things Japanese.' In addition to the works noticed below a number of valuable papers by Sir E. Satow and others are contained in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Haas'' Sekten des Japanischen Buddhismus,' though only a little pamphlet, gives a singularly clear and complete statement of the doctrines, divisions, and present conditions of Japanese Buddhism.

Japan has at present two religions, Shintoism and Buddhism, the latter divided into many sects. To these may be added two other elements-ancestor-worship, practised by both Shintoists and Buddhists, and Confucianism. Historically the influence of Chinese religion and philosophy has been great; but, except in the case of Buddhism, it did not take the form of definite creeds, so that in statistics based on names and figures it disappears.

Different views have been held as to the connexion between Shintoism and the ceremonies observed in honour