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The ‘Fortnightly’—a retrospect.

B.W. Matz: ‘To turn over that file is to find an array of articles by Mr. Herbert Spencer, mostly, as might be supposed, on the subject of his great system of philosophy. Again, we have the Pre-Raphaelites, of Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Bell Scott, as well as of Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Meredith. Nonconformity was given its full voice, but, indeed, taking the mere test of names, to what phase of work or thought did Mr. Morley not give the opportunity of print? Newman, Manning, Mazzini, Freeman, Walter Pater, William Morris, Henry Morley, Max Müller, Symonds, Congreve—that is the kind of contributors’ gallery which opens out.’

The School of Giorgione.

Walter Pater: ‘All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.’

The marbles of Aegina.

Walter Pater: ‘We come at last in the marbles of Aegina to a monument, which bears upon it the full expression of this humanism,—to a work, in which the presence of man, realised with complete mastery of hand, and with clear apprehension of how he actually is and moves and looks, is touched with the freshest sense of that new-found, inward value; the energy of worthy passions purifying, the light of his reason shining through, bodily forms and motions, solemnised, attractive, pathetic. We have reached an extant work, real and visible, of an importance out of all proportion to anything actually remaining of earlier art…’

The beginnings of Greek sculpture 2.

Walter Pater: ‘This whole first period of Greek art might, indeed, be called the period of graven images, and all its workmen sons of Daedalus; for Daedalus is the mythical, or all but mythical, representative of all those arts which are combined in the making of lovelier idols than had heretofore been seen. ‘

The beginnings of Greek sculpture 1.

Walter Pater: The highest Greek sculpture is presented to us in a sort of threefold isolation; isolation, first of all, from the concomitant arts—the frieze of the Parthenon without the metal bridles on the horses, for which the holes in the marble remain; isolation, secondly, from the architectural group of which, with most careful estimate of distance and point of observation, that frieze, for instance, was designed to be a part; isolation, thirdly, from the clear Greek skies, the poetical Greek life, in our modern galleries.

Donatello on the beach.

David Berridge: ‘I remember  ‘Dead Christ supported by Angels’ from the National Gallery’s 2018 Bellini and Mantegna show, the jolt it provided there of a familiar iconography suddenly appearing in a new medium. I hope to see it again in better company than Victorian kitsch’

A partial archive of the New Series.

A partial archive of the New Series, 2009-2023.

A Spell to Lure Apollo.

Alex Wong: ‘The story has its setting in a small and moribund German grand-duchy, about to be absorbed into neighbouring territories, at the turn of the eighteenth century. Duke Carl is a bookish aesthete, seduced by the brighter, more humanistic culture of certain less gloomy and more cosmopolitan realms abroad.’

Freewheeling.

Anthony Howell: ‘This is likely to be a freewheeling article, reviewing books written ages ago and works which have recently come out, and delving into poetry as well as prose, prose by poets, fiction as well as autobiography, and considering publishing houses as well as their books.’

Duties of care in the study of literature.

Alex Wong: ‘To be able to enter into an emotional and ideological world not one’s own, and then to be moved by it, to come to respect it, to empathize with that mode of thought and feeling—whether aesthetic, sentimental or moral—must be, I take it, one of the most important processes involved in the study of old books. It is especially important when the book in question at first seems particularly alien. What I am talking about (knowing that I am saying nothing new) might be described as an engaged, humane, historical awareness, the goal being an expansion of sensibility in which process those foreign things (the works of art) are assimilated.’

The ‘secular monk’ in the rue des Saints-Pères.

Richard Aldington: ‘…the very essence of Gourmont’s thought is that he placed himself quite apart from doctrines and parties. It was a Nietzschean effort to rise “beyond good and evil”. But this uncompromisingly individualist judgment does not necessarily reduce Gourmont to a minority of one. Inasmuch as every one of us is an individual, inasmuch as we exist more or less apart from collective bodies and opinions, Gourmont speaks to us. He speaks to us not as members of groups, not as citizens, but as individuals. He does not assert that he had anything valuable to tell us; he does not pretend to solve anyone’s problems, offers no panacea, makes no promises, cares nothing whether he is read or not, or, if read, whether anyone accepts or rejects his thought.’

The Fortnightly Review under Harris, 1886-1894.

Mrs Courtney’s history continues. Part Four. FRANK HARRIS, THEN A young man just thirty, born in Ireland but by upbringing American, had had a roving education in various American and Continental universities. Who’s Who in America credits him with belonging to eight and adds the perhaps significant parenthesis “(no degrees).” He can hardly had stayed […]

The Fortnightly Review under Morley, 1867-1882.

Mrs Courtney’s history continues. Part Two. MORLEY HAD MADE HIS first appearance in the pages of the Fortnightly in September 1866, when in thoroughly characteristic fashion he attacked the proposed Annexation of Mysore. Only to flutter the pages of his article is to hear once more the trumpets of radicalism sounding the assault, and to […]

Mrs. Courtney’s history of the Fortnightly Review.

By Janet (Hogarth) CourtneyArranged in five parts. Part I: Under Lewes, 1865-1866 Part II: Under Morley, 1867-1882 Part III: Under Escott, 1882-1886 Part IV: Under Harris, 1886-1894 Part V: Under Courtney, 1895-1928 I UNDER LEWES, 1865-1866 THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, LIKE its forerunner The Westminster, was founded and guided by philosophers. It is rather interesting to […]

Excerpt: Literary Architecture.

Ellen Eve Frank: Literary architecture is, consequently, an alive “reasonable structure”: it is a body with a soul. In this context, the building of literary architecture is a composing of pregnant forms: it is pro-creative and full of care.