of insubordination do not occur.’
“‘Cock-a-doo-doo-doo,’ was the reply. Some of the staff found it
hard not to laugh; but the general went on—
“‘If, therefore, the practice does not cease, I’ll draft the men
into West India regiments.’
“‘Cock-a-doo-doo-doo!’
“‘And if any articles pillaged from the inhabitants are detected
in the quarters, or about the persons of the troops—’
“‘Cock-a-doo-doo-_doo_!’ screamed louder here than ever.
“‘Damn that cock—where is it?’
“There was a general look around on all sides, which seemed in
vain; when a tremendous repetition of the cry resounded from
O’Shaughnessy’s coat-pocket: thus detecting the valiant Major
himself in the very practice of his corps. There was no standing
this: every one burst out into a peal of laughter; and Lord
Wellington himself could not resist, but turned away, muttering
to himself as he went—‘Damned robbers every man of them,’ while
a final war-note from the Major’s pocket closed the interview.”
Now this is an anecdote at which every one will laugh; but its effect
might have been vastly heightened by putting a few words of grave
morality and reprobation of the conduct of his troops, into the mouth of
O’Shaughnessy, upon whose character they would have told well. The cock,
in interrupting the thread of his discourse, would thus have afforded an
excellent context. We have scarcely a reader, moreover, who will fail to
perceive the want of _tact_ shown in dwelling upon the _mirth_ which the
anecdote occasioned. The error here is precisely like that of a man’s
laughing at his own spoken jokes. Our author is uniformly guilty of this
mistake. He has an absurd fashion, also, of informing the reader, at the
conclusion of each of his anecdotes, that, however good the anecdote
might be, he (the reader) cannot enjoy it to the full extent in default
of the _manner_ in which it was orally narrated. He has no business to
say anything of this kind. It is his duty to convey the manner not less
than the matter of his narratives.
But we may say of these latter that, in general, they have the air of
being _remembered_ rather than invented. No man who has seen much of the
rough life of the camp will fail to recognize among them many very old
acquaintances. Some of them are as ancient as the hills, and have been,
time out of mind, the common property of the bivouac. They have been
narrated orally all the world over. The chief merit of the writer is,
that he has been the first to collect and to print them. It is
observable, in fact, that the second volume of the work is very far
inferior to the first. The author seems to have exhausted his whole
hoarded store in the beginning. His conclusion is barren indeed, and but
for the historical details (for which he has no claim to merit) would be
especially prosy and dull. _Now the true invention never exhausts
itself._ It is mere cant and ignorance to talk of the possibility of the
really imaginative man’s “writing himself out.” His soul but derives
nourishment from the streams that flow therefrom. As well prate about
the aridity of the eternal ocean εξ ουπερ παντες ποταμοι. So long as the
universe of thought shall furnish matter for novel combinations, so long
will the spirit of true genius be original, be exhaustless—be itself.
A few cursory observations. The book is filled to over-flowing with
songs of very doubtful excellence, the most at which are put into the
mouth of one Micky Free, an amusing Irish servant of O’Malley’s, and are
given as his impromptu effusions. The subject of the improvisos is
always the matter in hand at the moment of composition. The author
evidently prides himself upon his poetical powers, about which the less
we say the better; but if anything were wanting to assure us of his
absurd ignorance and inappreciation of Art, we should find the fullest
assurance in the mode in which these doggrel verses are introduced.
The occasional sentiment with which the volumes are interspersed there
is an absolute necessity for skipping.
Can anybody tell us what is meant by the affectation of the word
_L’envoy_ which is made the heading of two prefaces?
That portion of the account of the battle of Waterloo which gives
O’Malley’s experiences while a prisoner, and in close juxta-position to
Napoleon, bears evident traces of having been translated, and very
literally too, from a French manuscript.
The English of the work is sometimes even amusing. We have continually,
for example, _eat_, the present, for _ate_, the perfect—see page 17. At
page 16, we have this delightful sentence—“Captain Hammersley, however,
_never_ took further notice of me, but continued to recount, for the
amusement of those _about_, several excellent stories of his military
career, which I confess were heard with every _test_ of delight by all
save me.” At page 357 we have some sage talk about “the entire of the
army;” and at page 368, the accomplished O’Malley speaks of “_drawing_ a
last look upon his sweetheart.” These things arrest our attention as we
open the book at random. It abounds in them, and in vulgarisms even much
worse than they.
But why speak of vulgarisms of language? There is a disgusting vulgarism
of thought which pervades and contaminates this whole production, and
from which a delicate or lofty mind will shrink as from a pestilence.
Not the least repulsive manifestation of this leprosy is to be found in
the author’s blind and grovelling worship of mere rank. Of the Prince
Regent, that filthy compound of all that is bestial—that lazar-house of
all moral corruption—he scruples not to speak in terms of the grossest
adulation—sneering at Edmund Burke in the same villainous breath in
which he extols the talents, the graces and _the virtues_ of George the
Fourth! That any man, to-day, can be found so degraded in heart as to
style this reprobate, “one who, in every feeling of his nature, and in
every feature of his deportment was every inch a prince”—is matter for
grave reflection and sorrowful debate. The American, at least, who shall
peruse the concluding pages of the book now under review, and not turn
in disgust from the base sycophancy which infects them, is unworthy of
his country and his name. But the truth is, that a gross and contracted
soul renders itself unquestionably manifest in almost every line of the
composition.
And this—_this_ is the _work_, in respect to which its author, aping
the airs of intellect, prates about his “haggard cheek,” his “sunken
eye,” his “aching and tired head,” his “nights of toil” and (Good
Heavens!) his “days of _thought_!” That the thing is popular we
grant—while that we cannot deny the fact, we grieve. But the career of
true taste is onward—and now more vigorously onward than ever—and the
period, perhaps, is not hopelessly distant, when, in decrying the mere
balderdash of such matters as “Charles O’Malley,” we shall do less
violence to the feelings and judgment even of the populace, than, we
much fear, has been done to-day.
-----
[3] Nickname for the populace in the middle ages
[4] Callimachus—_Hymn to Apollo_.
* * * * *
_Ballads and other Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Author
of “Voices of the Night,” “Hyperion,” etc.: Second Edition. John
Owen: Cambridge._
“_Il y a à parier_,” says Chamfort, “_que toute idée publique, toute
convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand
nombre_.”—One would be safe in wagering that any given public idea is
erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the majority;—and
this strictly philosophical, although somewhat French assertion has
especial bearing upon the whole race of what are termed maxims and
popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the quintessence of folly.
One of the most deplorably false of them is the antique adage, _De
gustibus non est disputandum_—there should be no disputing about taste.
Here the idea designed to be conveyed is that any one person has as just
right to consider his own taste _the true_, as has any one other—that
taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no law,
and measurable by no definite rules. It must be confessed, however, that
the exceedingly vague and impotent treatises which are alone extant,
have much to answer for as regards confirming the general error. Not the
least important service which, hereafter, mankind will owe to
_Phrenology_, may perhaps, be recognised in an analysis of the real
principles, and a digest of the resulting laws of taste. These
principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, and these laws as readily
susceptible of system as are any whatever.
In the meantime, the inane adage above mentioned is in no respect more
generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously quoted than by the
admirers of what is termed the “good old Pope,” or the “good old
Goldsmith school” of poetry, in reference to the bolder, more natural,
and _more ideal_ compositions of such authors as Coëtlogon and
Lamartine[5] in France; Herder, Körner, and Uhland in Germany; Brun and
Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegnér, and Nyberg[6] in Sweden; Keats,
Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow in
America. “_De gustibus non_,” say these “good-old-school” fellows; and
we have no doubt that their mental translation of the phrase is—“We
pity your taste—we pity every body’s taste but our own.”
It is our purpose, hereafter, when occasion shall be afforded us, to
controvert in an article of some length, the popular idea that the poets
just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression, and to other
meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain readers:—to
demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) that such
poetry and _such alone_ has fulfilled the legitimate office of the muse;
has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and unquenchable desire existing in
the heart of man. In the present number of our Magazine we have left
ourselves barely room to say a few random words of welcome to these
“Ballads,” by Longfellow, and to tender him, and all such as he, the
homage of our most earnest love and admiration.
The volume before us (in whose outward appearance the keen “taste” of
genius is evinced with nearly as much precision as in its internal soul)
includes, with several brief original pieces, a translation from the
Swedish of Tegnér. In attempting (what never should be attempted) a
literal version of both the words and the metre of this poem, Professor
Longfellow has failed to do justice either to his author or himself. He
has striven to do what no man ever did well and what, from the nature of
language itself, never _can_ be well done. Unless, for example, we shall
come to have an influx of _spondees_ in our English tongue, it will
always be impossible to construct an English hexameter. Our spondees,
or, we should say, our spondaic words, are rare. In the Swedish they are
nearly as abundant as in the Latin and Greek. We have only “_compound_,”
“_context_,” “_footfall_,” and a few other similar ones. This is the
difficulty; and that it _is_ so will become evident upon reading “The
Children of the Lord’s Supper,” where the sole _readable_ verses are
those in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. We mean to
say _readable as Hexameters_; for many of them will read very well as
mere English Dactylics with certain irregularities.
But within the narrow compass now left us we must not indulge in
anything like critical comment. Our readers will be better satisfied
perhaps with a few brief extracts from the original poems of the
volume—which we give for their rare excellence, without pausing now to
say in what particulars this excellence exists.
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow
Came a dull voice of woe,
From the heart’s chamber.
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.
As with his wings aslant
Sails the fierce cormorant
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
Down came the storm and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed
Then leaped her cable’s length.
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
The rising moon has hid the stars
Her level rays like golden bars
Lie on the landscape green
With shadows brown between.
Love lifts the boughs whose shadows deep
Are life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him who slumbering lies.
Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers
On the hearth-stone of my heart.
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more
Deafened by the cataract’s roar?
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star.
Some of these passages cannot be fully appreciated apart from the
context—but we address these who have read the book. Of the
translations we have not spoken. It is but right to say, however, that
“The Luck of Edenhall” is a far finer poem, in every respect, than any
of the original pieces. Nor would we have our previous observations
misunderstood. Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are
fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His
artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception of
the _aims_ of poesy _is all wrong_; and this we shall prove at some
future day—to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics are all
_out of place_. He has written brilliant poems—by accident; that is to
say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional
habit of thinking—a habit deduced from German study. We do not mean to
say that a didactic moral may not be well made the _under-current_ of a
poetical thesis; but that it can never be well put so obtrusively forth,
as in the majority of his compositions. There is a young American who,
with ideality not richer than that of Longfellow and with less
artistical knowledge, has yet composed far truer poems, merely through
the greater propriety of his themes. We allude to James Russel Lowell;
and in the number of this Magazine for last month, will be found a
ballad entitled “Rosaline,” affording excellent exemplification of our
meaning. This composition has unquestionably its defects, and the very
defects which are never perceptible in Mr. Longfellow—but we sincerely
think that _no American poem equals it_ in the higher elements of song.
-----
[5] We allude here chiefly to the “David” of Coëtlogon, and _only_ to
the “_Chûte d’un Ange_” of Lamartine.
[6] C. Julia Nyberg, author of the “Dikter von Euphrosyne.”
* * * * *
_The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Lord Brougham,
to which is Prefixed a Sketch of his Character. Two volumes. Lea
and Blanchard._
That Lord Brougham _was_ an extraordinary man no one in his senses will
deny. An intellect of unusual capacity, goaded into diseased action by
passions nearly ferocious, enabled him to astonish the world, and
especially the “hero-worshippers,” as the author of Sartor-Resartus has
it, by the combined extent and variety of his mental triumphs.
Attempting many things, it may at least be said that he egregiously
failed in none. But that he pre-eminently excelled in any cannot be
affirmed with truth, and might well be denied _à priori_. We have no
faith in admirable Crichtons, and this merely because we have implicit
faith in Nature and her laws. “He that is born to be a man,” says
Wieland, in his ‘Peregrinus Proteus,’ “neither should nor can be
anything nobler, greater, nor better than a man.” The Broughams of the
human intellect are never its Newtons or its Bayles. Yet the
contemporaneous reputation to be acquired by the former is naturally
greater than any which the latter may attain. The versatility of one
whom we see and hear is a more dazzling and more readily appreciable
merit than his profundity; which latter is best estimated in the silence
of the closet, and after the quiet lapse of years. What impression Lord
Brougham has stamped upon his age, cannot be accurately determined until
Time has fixed and rendered definite the lines of the medal; and fifty
years hence it will be difficult, perhaps, even to make out the deepest
indentations of the _exergue_. Like Coleridge he should be regarded as
one who might have done much, had he been satisfied with attempting but
little.
The title of the book before us is, we think, somewhat disingenuous.
These two volumes contain but a small portion of the “Critical and
Miscellaneous Writings” of Lord Brougham; and the preface itself assures
us that what is here published _forms only a part of his anonymous
contributions to the Edinburgh Review_. In fact three similar selections
from his “Miscellaneous Works” have been given to the world within a
year or two past, by Philadelphian publishers, and neither of these
selections embrace any of the matter now issued.
The present volumes, however, are not the less valuable on this account.
They contain many of the most noted and some of the best compositions of
the author. Among other articles of interest we have the celebrated
“Discourse on the Objects, Pleasures and Advantages of Science”—a
title, by the way, in which the word “pleasures” is one of the purest
supererogation. That this discourse is well written, we, of course,
admit, since we do not wish to be denounced as blockheads; but we beg
leave to disagree, most positively, with the Preface, which asserts that
“there was only one individual living by whom it could have been
produced.” This round asseveration will only excite a smile upon the
lips of every man of the slightest pretension to scientific acquirement.
We are personally acquainted with at least a dozen individuals who could
have written this treatise _as well_ as the Lord Chancellor has written
it. In fact, a discourse of this character is by no means difficult of
composition—a discourse such as Lord Brougham has given us. His whole
design consists in an unmethodical collection of the most _striking_ and
at the same time the most _popularly comprehensible facts_ in general
science. And it cannot be denied that this plan of demonstrating the
advantages of science as a whole _by detailing insulated specimens of
its interest_ is a most unphilosophical and inartistical mode of
procedure—a mode which even puts one in mind of the σκολαστικος
offering a brick as a sample of the house he wished to sell. Neither is
the essay free (as should be imperatively demanded in a case of this
nature) from very gross error and mis-statement. Its style, too, in its
minor points, is unusually bad. The strangest grammatical errors abound,
of which the initial pages are especially full, and the whole is
singularly deficient in that precision which should characterise a
scientific discourse. In short, it is an entertaining essay, but in some
degree superficial and quackish, and could have been _better_ written by
any one of a multitude of living _savans_.
There is a very amusing paper, in this collection, upon the authorship
of Junius. We allude to it, now especially, by way of corroborating what
we said, in our January number, touching the ordinary character of the
English review-system. The article was furnished the Edinburgh Quarterly
by its author, who, no doubt, received for it a very liberal
compensation. It is, nevertheless, one of the most barefaced impositions
we ever beheld; being nothing in the world more than a tame
_compendium_, fact by fact, of the book under discussion—“The Identity
of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character Established.” There is
no attempt at analysis—no new fact is adduced—no novel argument is
urged—and yet the thing is called a criticism and liberally paid for as
such. The secret of this style of Review-making is that of mystifying
the reader by an artful substitution of the interest appertaining to the
text for interest aroused by the commentator.
* * * * *
_Pantology; or a systematic survey of Human Knowledge; Proposing
a Classification of all its branches, and illustrating their
History, Relations, Uses, and Objects; with a Synopsis of their
leading Facts and Principles; and a Select Catalogue of Books on
all Subjects, suitable for a Cabinet Library. The whole designed
as a Guide to Study for advanced Students in Colleges,
Academies, and Schools; and as a popular Directory in
Literature, Science and the Arts. Second Edition. By Roswell
Park, A. M., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in
the University of Pennsylvania, &c. Hogan and Thompson:
Philadelphia._
The title of this work explains its nature with accuracy. To human
knowledge in general, it is what a map of the world is to geography. The
design is chiefly, _to classify_, and thus present a dependent and
clearly discernible whole. To those who have paid much attention to
Natural History and the endless, unstable, and consequently vexatious
classifications which there occur—to those, in especial, who have
labored over the “Conchologies” of De Blainville and Lamarck, some
faint—some very faint idea of the difficulties attending such a labor
as this, will occur. There have been numerous prior attempts of the same
kind, and although this is unquestionably _one_ of the best, we cannot
regard it as the best. Mr. Park has chosen a highly artificial scheme of
arrangement; and both reason and experience show us that _natural_
classifications, or those which proceed upon broad and immediately
recognisable distinctions, are alone practically or permanently
successful. We say this, however, with much deference to the opinions of
a gentleman, whose means of acquiring _knowledge_, have been equalled
only by his zeal in its pursuit, and whose general talents we have had
some personal opportunity of estimating.
We mean nothing like criticism in so brief a paragraph as we can here
afford, upon a work so voluminous and so important as the one before us.
Our design is merely to call the attention of our friends to the
publication—whose merits are obvious and great. Its defects are, of
course, numerous. We mean rather to say, that in every work of this
nature, it is in the power of almost every reader to suggest a thousand
emendations. We might object to many of the details. We _must_ object to
nearly all of the belles-lettres portion of the book. We cannot stand
being told, for example, that “Barlow’s ‘Columbiad’ is a poem of
considerable merit;” nor are we rendered more patient under the
infliction of this and similar opinions, by the information that Vander
Vondel and Vander Doos (the deuce!) wrote capital Dutch epics, while
“the poems of Cats are said to be spirited and _pious_!” We know nothing
about cats, nor cats about piety.
The volume is sadly disfigured by typographical errors. On the
title-page of the very first “province” is a blunder in Greek.
* * * * *
_The Student-Life of Germany: By William Howitt, Author of the
“Rural Life of England,” “Book of the Seasons,” etc. From the
unpublished MS. of Dr. Cornelius. Containing nearly Forty of the
most Famous Student Songs. Carey & Hart: Philadelphia._