The Press. — London, England, 1854-04-08 00:00:00

APRIL 8, 1854. " They are still Pagans." " Alas! that the Prince of Dark. ness should possess forms of such !ovelineas! That such beauty of countenance should want that better beauty of the soul ! " He asked of what nation they were. " Angles " was the reply. " Truly," he said, " they are angels! From what province?" " That of Deira." " Truly they must be rescued de ird" (from the wrath of God). " What is the name of their king?" " "Yea," said Gregory, " Alleluia must be sung in the dominions of that king." To be the first missionary to this beautiful people, andwiu this remote and barbarous island, like a Christian Caesar, to the realm of Christ, became the holy ambition of Gregory. His long• suppressed humanity burst forth in this new channel. He extorted the unwilling consent of the Pope : he had actually set forth, and travelled three days' journey, when he was overtaken by messengers sent to recal him. All Rome had risen in pious mutiny, and compelled the Pope to revoke his permission. We have examined both the second and third of these volumes, and their merits sustain our characterisation ; but the whole work is of too great importance for us to discuss in one notice, and we may return to it again for fur ther comments and extracts. Its literary merits will secure for it general attention, as they enhance the author's reputation ; but we should not be surprised if particular inductions in it failed to obtain the approval of a severer school of theologians than that to which the accomplished writer belongs. PROPRIETIES OF LITERATURE. The Autobiography of William Jerdan. With his Literary, Political, and Social Reminis cences. Vol. IV. London : Hall, Virtue, and Co. _ _ . THE memoirs of Mr. Jerdan, desultory in their nature and disappointing in their style, are brought to a conclusion in the fourth volume. As the work has been published by piecemeal, and as it has for some time been before the public, we are spared the necessity of criti cising it; and we are not sorry to be relieved of that task in the case of a veteran journalist whose age and misfortunes call for kindly treatment. We shall avoid, therefore, com menting at all upon this work, especially as it has been ushered into the world under "pecu liar circumstances." But we cannot omit saying a few words on a social question of considerable importance--namely, the assumed right of literary men to make money by intro ducing personal details about the company in which they mixed, while ostensibly mixing in that society as private gentlemen. In all that relates to himself we admit the right of a literary man or an artist to record the leading features of his own life, and put money in his pocket by the sale of his auto biography. But, though he may have a right to be his own Boswell (and the exercise even of that right is not without its perils), he must take special care that he does not act as the unsolicited biographer of his contempo raries. Sincerely desirous to see the profession of letters respected, we feel that the calling of literary men will justly be rendered obnoxious to social prejudices if authors presume to go into society with notebooks, ready to retail to the public, for their personal gain, what they may have heard and seen during " private " intercourse. If it were required to make the profession of literature disreputable, nothing more would be needed than to sanction the practice of letting loose upon society a pack of unauthorised recorders of the sayings and doings of eminent persons speaking and act ing on the supposition that no reporters were present. Talebearers are in some respects worse than talemakers. Facts of a purely per sonal nature when repeated are often far more injurious than the tales of the fictionists, who invent but do not record their stories. Mr. Greedy Gossip, or Mrs. Tittle Tattle, accept ing our invitations with a profusion of thanks, and sitting to our tables while they are think ing all the time of Paternostenrow and making our conversation marketable, are far greater nuisances and infinitely more dangerous than garrulous old Major Longbow at the mess table, or chattering Tom Rigmarole at the club. Of the peril to public character resulting from diaryrnongers we have a most remarkable instance in the case of Moore's Diary, singularly exposed by that gallant nobleman whose decease took place a few days since, the late Marquis 5 , of L on d o nderry. Under date of June 6,182 a calumny of the foulest kind was preserved by THE PRESS. the slanderous pen of Moore against the cha racter of Lord Londonderry's celebrated elder brother. In recording a breakfast at Mr. Rogers's, in company with Lord John Russell, Sydney Smith, Luttrell, Sharpe, &c., Moore writes:—" Talked of Sir Robert Wilson. After " the battle of Leipsic, to the gaining of which " he was instrumental, Lord Castlereagh, iu " sending over to Lord Stewart the public " document containing the order for thanks " to Wilson. amongst others on the occasion, " accompanied it by a private one desiring " Lord Stewart to avoid the thanks to Wilson " as much as he could, in order not to give a " triumph to his party." No sooner did this false and foul calumny on the conduct of his brother meet the eye of the late (Charles William) Marquis of Londonderry than he publicly branded it as a malignant falsehood ; and on the 21st of May, 1863, Lord John Rus sell, in a published letter, expressed " his " deep regret that the passage should have " been published by him, admitting that the story must " be placed amongst the calumnies " that float in the idle gossip of the day." Since then Lord Londonderry has ceased to live. But if it so happened that it was now in 1854 that the fourth volume of Moore's disreputable autobiography was ushered before the public, the calumny might have been passed down to posterity without any chance of being positively and unequivocally refuted. Lord Londonderry, fortunately, lived to expose its want of truth, for we need hardly say that he was the "Lord Stewart" alluded to; but surely it is time that those of us who are ex posed to intercourse with a crowd of parties, of whose personal honour we cannot always be assured, ought to have some security against unauthorised reporters jotting down their memoirs of "people they have met." As journalists, feeling strong sympathies with our literary brethren, we can truly record that amongst the respectable men of letters there are not two opinions on the impropriety and scandal of authors becoming talebearers, and literary men becoming tattlers-general " for " the benefit of their wives and children," stereotyping idle scandal, becoming the Gibbons of supper parties, and chronicling the chit-chat of the tables in order to give extensive value to the " spicy " matter so anxiously asked for by the Curlls of the publishing trade. Such a practice is mean and unworthy of the profession of letters ; and, as journalists, we call for its reprobation. We may remark that no class has been more severely noticed in Moore's mordant memoirs than his literary brethren. He has aspersed several of his literary contemporaries who had less genius but far more integrity and honour than he had, in saying which we pay them no.compliment. We allude to that fact now as reminding our professional brethren that no other class in the community is more vulnerable to the annoyance of literary babbling than those whose editorial duties necessarily expose them to contact with a variety of characters. For the reputation of the literary profession, therefore, we desire that tale bearing in memoirs and unauthorised " revela tions" about living persons " reported " by persons with very superficial acquaintance with the parties gossipped about should be em phatically discouraged. The Duke of Welling ton had a great dislike to military "Boswells." On one occasion in the House of Lords he denied the responsibility of the Horse Guards for some military authorship, sneering snore suo at " the reporters to regiments ;" and we would say, let authors and journalists compose books or essays, but, unless they desire to bring literary men into contempt, let them avoid recording tittle-tattle and printing it as biography. Doine ; or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania. By E. C. Grenville Murray. London : Smith, Elder, and CO. ALTHOUGH Mr. Grenville Murray enters the lists of literature with a "maiden shield," and " does not challenge criticism," it is due to him to state that he has less reason to depre cate it than many authors on the occasion of " a first appearance." But, though an infant in literature, he is not, as is often the case when these events occur, an infant in the eye of the law ; in fact, as we learn from the dedi cation, he has been married for ten years. In an introductory chapter the history and pre sent condition of Moldavia, Wallachia, and those adjoining provinces which were of old the country of the llacians, are succinctly sketched, and the state of their poetical literature especially dwelt upon. After the events of lg4B, "nearly all who have written " in Wallach—poets, historians, or novelists— " were banished ;" and it is, we presume, to this circumstance that we are indebted for the work before us, M. Bolentiniano, a Walla chitin poet, having collected the best of the materials of which it is composed. Carried away by hie admiration for those expatriated authors, Mr. Grenville Murray pronounces a glowing eulogium on the refugees in general, but, in a qualifying footnote, excludes from it all Repub li cans, with whom he has no sympa thy. Indeed, the people he describes aro essentially aristrocratic. Amongst the Boy ards, who are the nobles of Roumania, the distinctions of caste must be nearly as strong as amongst the Hindoos ; for a Boyard of the first class will by no means mingle with his inferiors in rank. So marked, indeed, was the line between them, that, not twenty years ago, a Boyard who paid a visit to another of higher rank was °bilked to wait respectfully ou the threshold of the door till bidden to enter ; nor could he sit down in the presence of his superior till he had been invited to do so three times. A peasant never dared present himself before his lord without &present, the value of which was jealously regulated by custom. ou all public occasions, at balls and festivities, even in churches, the right of precedency is vigorously maintained ; and even among the ladies it is whispered that disputes on this subject have been known to run so high as to end in personal encounters of great liveliness and spirit. French, or a kind of lingua-Frolics, is the language of society. The Zingari, or gipsies, " swarm in Moldo " Wallachia." They worship the sun and the stars; but they differ from our gipsies if, when Mr. Murray says they become " domestics," ho means they enter into voluntary servitude. In England the fettered hawk, with bright, wild eye, escapes not more eagerly from its broken chain than does a gipsy from the slavery of domestic life, which tempting offers have bribed him for a moment to endure. In the Moldo-Wallachian provinces one branch of this strange race are called Netoti: These the proud Boyards in 1831 conde scended to seize and enslave, having first purified them for Christian use by the forcible infliction of baptism. But Mr. Murray is not here very clear in his narrative; for, after mentioning this circumstance, he says of the gipsies generally They are slaves, and can be bought, sold, and punished with impunity. There are still, however, a company of them who preserve their ancient traditions, in almost every village ; and, if the traveller chance to be benighted in some peasant's hut, it is there that he will hear the tender Doine sung, and see a pretty national dance called the " ora," which will often remind b,im of the figures on antique vases. Their dress is notable : they wear full white trousers, a white tunic, and a gay-coloured sash. Their long hair falls in wild disarray beneath their slouched bats, and the long, sweeping moustache gives a marked and chivalrous expression to their splendid faces. The women wear their long hair tied in a bunch behind, and falling in a single tress down the back. They wear a tine long white shift, embroidered with gay coloured silks, instead of a gown ; this is secured by a red woollen sash, beneath which descends the "font," a kind of embroidered apron reaching to the knees. Their feet are bare ; and where, sir wanderer, have you seen more pic turesque figures ? The songs thus introduced Mr. G. Murray describes very justly as having about them something of the character of Nolan: only that instead of belonging to a slow, grave misty nation like the Scotch, they are the songs of a people who lived beneath a summer Ay, and whose dreams were all of sunshine and flowers, of moons and stars, and silver seas. Assuming, then, that the Ossianic resem blance does not extend to the authenticity of these songs, they are interesting as specimens of the modes of thought of a people who are a kind of connecting !ink between the East and the West, who to the warmth of the Oriental imagination add something of the hardihood which belongs to children of greyer skies and greener fields. The " Daughter of the Laurel Tree " is perhaps the best, and certainly as good as any in the book : " Open thy branches, beautiful Laurel Tree, and let me go forth; for it is the hour when the Evening Star bathes her silver hair in the limpid waters of the rivulet." =llllll2