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STRAUSS AND RENAN.

An Essay.

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Or the two writers whose works are compared and discussed in the following Essay, those of one, Ernest Renan, are too well known to require much further notice here. Almost immediately on its first appearance it was translated into English, and from particular and especial causes obtained great popularity, or at least notoriety, in this country, as it had already done in that of the Author himself. It was read by, and became known to, many persons who were far from being professed theologians, or indeed theologians at all. Condemned as it had been in France by "Bishops innumerable and the Romish consistory itself," so also in England it was, if read, condemned, if not officially "by Bishops" who happily have no such power among us, at all events unofficially, and by those who take their standard of belief from that which Bishops are supposed to believe. On the other hand, it was read by great numbers who could not be insensible to its attractions. Those attractions were, the novel grace with which it invested a subject hitherto considered too profound, when critically handled, to be fathomed by the unlearned, the unparalleled beauty of its style, the idyllic or pastoral air which it threw around the principal personage, whom it also clothed with a reality unknown before, and whom it placed in the midst of scenery, which the author had

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