The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-21 00:00:00

From this point the poem defiesall anal aysis. poet does indeed " glance from heaven to 1, from earth to heaven." The conversa becomes such as might take place between English sailors, who should each possess loquence of the one whom Mr. Albert f used to personate, and who, shut up in the room for half a day, should agree to allow other ten minutes of monologue by turns. reviewer between sleeping and waking may through it, but cannot be expected to give account of the serpentine course of the dis cussion. It is less important to give such an account, as the arrangement and the sentiments • seem to have been generally determined by rhymes. In these rhymes, which seem weak attempts at parodying Mr. Tal s burlesques, the author appears plainly imagine that he has furnished the public a fund of amusement, to supply which sense and arrangement were cheaply sacrificed. Certainly amusing rhymes have been produced ; he must be very grave indeed who not allow himself to be moved by Byron's ye lords of ladies intellectual, over us truly, have not they henpecked you all? we are not amused when such rhymes arc luced by monstrous distortions of language, by le3turbing violently the arrangement of the sen tence, by coining new words. To amuse us, odd coincidences must spring up naturally, not be sought for ; if they betray the labour . was spent in hunting for them, they cease to ludicrous, and become contemptible and pain- We do not laugh at what we learn from him the French call Shakspere, tilton, or any other learned taxpayer. at this : tut still the world is full of serious presages, in spite of all crsmetics still distress ages. at this : Him who in Greek of Romans wrote, Folybius, Which makes us class him as a scribe amphibious. is natural to expect that Mr. Bailey may broach some novelties upon the subject of poetry. the numerous pages, however, which he has -toted to literary criticism, he still adheres rigidly to the principle of admitting nothing but platitudes. or a specimen, however, of the style of the poem, we may as well select the cata logue of Greek authors who, in Mr. Bailey's opinion, ought to be read, as any other passage. Selection, strictly speaking, is not possible in a production of which no part is either better or worse than the rest : Read mighty tEschylus, whose harmonies, Polysyllabic, would in days like these rush critics' jaws, or else their theories ; Mature in thought and sad, wise Sophonles, Patheic, politic Euripides ; losehus, Ilion, Theocritus, and all— i hey are but few—whom minor bards we call; Sage Solon, not forgetful of his claims To rank his own 'mong Athens' noblest names, he very man who would forgive a debtor, :et hold himself severely to the letter ; The awful hymnist Orpheus, hard of fable, Theogius and his fellows ; who so able Paullo-post-prandial truth, at his own table, To teach ? those genial views and moral platitudes (Ii brains the wine warms to its native latitudes? And, barring his tremendous oath don't stagger us, Study the gulden verses of Pythagoras; 'Hie odes of Pindar ; he with Homer shared ie conqueror of the world's divine regard ; Anacreon, Aristophanes, together May quell the effects of Sllizidal weather, The fragments epicene of Sappho fair, Aratus and Alanilius, Pions pair. So far of Greeks in chief. e would willingly learn what principle has presided over this singular selection. If Aratus, the false Orpheus, and the false Anacreon are to classed among Greeks in chief, of what .riters is the second class to be composed ? Who are the " fellows" of Theogius ? and why are they so named ? Again, is it just to charac terize Solon as one " who would forgive a !btor" ? We do not imagine that Solon or other legislator ever pro ?wed to forgive ibtors as a rule, or th a t th e Ti'vreixeilea was due the natural kindliness of the author of that atreme measure. At the same time there is no reason to doubt that Mr. Bailey, if unprecedented circumstances should ever make him the ruler of this country, will cancel all debts on Christian principles. But the most puzzling part of this catalogue is that Manilius should be included among Greek poets. We ourselves may be of °Pinion that a liberal education might be very 310 From The poi earth, I Lion bet three the ek Smith 1 same r each o A revil travel an y so cussion accoun alike SI the ri like w fourd's to inn with both sacrific produc will tie Oh! Ausw But w produc dicturl tence, these and n( that be lud ful. Bat w Mittor Nor a In ßt Nor a Ii It' It broac In till devot rigid! platit style lore Nunn Selec prods vorsl ltea Pot err Ma Pat Mo Tit sa F To Trt Yei 'fh Th Pa ui To St! Tr An Ul Tt Ar We pref, the he viral Wh are teri del an del to tat rea cir thi iiri cat oil THE PRESS, AUGUST '2l, 1858. complete without Manilius being studied at all, and there can be little doubt that Mr. Bailey, • though he recommends others to read him, has not judged it necessary to do so himself. But if he is to be read, Mr. Bailey might nave inferred from his name, if he had no other means of deter mining the point, that the author of the " Astronomica " had better come among the Latin poets. The respectable precedent of Mr. Bailey appears to have encouraged some less-known writer to publish his hazy notions of things in general, his conceptions of what the world is, and of what it would be if he had the manage ment of it, under the title of " Humbug Attacked." We are not going to inflict upon our readers any account of this precious produc tion, in which the confusion originated by the poet has been worse confbunded by the printer. The following four lines, in which the Pope, or standing armies, or some other obnoxious institu tion (for you must consult the poet) is de nounced, will show the character of this poem: — But c )nunon sense is coming, let us hope Will place the standing armies, side the Pope They're both great Humbugs, though well meant no doubt But when we're ripe, may both go up the spout. The italics are in the original. For this publica tion we cannot but think Mr. Bailey in part re sponsible. If so, it is a striking proof of the in fectiousness of folly. We have great respect for Mr. Bailey's powers, or for the powers which he once possessed. Whatever criticism " Festus " might justly incur, it was impossible not to trace in it the marks of a prodigious ingenuity. Not one vestige of that eminent talent can we find in this unfortunate volume. It is to be hoped that Mr. Bailey will yet learn the lesson—deaf to criticism as lie professes himself to be—that for him there is no admission to the levels and the gentle slopes of art, and that if he leaves the third 1 heaven he sinks at once to the region of the damned. A Journey due North. Being Notes of a Resi dence in Russia in the Summer of 1856. By George Augustus Sala. London : Bentley. Tun influence exercised over literature generally by the extraordinary modern growth of periodical p u blications would form a good subject for a literary essay. On the one band it cannot be denied that a good deal of literary talent is thus made available which would formerly have been wasted, while on the other we cannot but regret that much is now comparatively wasted which would formerly have borne rich fruit. The sub ject has been very well illustrated by Mr. Thackeray :—" A man who thinks of putting " away a composition for ten years before he " shall give it to the world, or exercise his own " maturer judgment upon it, had best be very " sure of the original strength and durability of " the work; otherwise, on withdrawing it from " its crypt, he may find that, like small wine, it has lost what flavour it once had, and is only " tasteless when opened. There are works of " all tastes and smacks, the small and the strong, " those that improve by age, and those that " won't bear keeping at all, but arc pleasant at " the first draught, when they refresh and " sparkle." This is quite true, but the misfortune is that people, finding how rapidly and profit ably their sparkling and ephemeral wares are disposed of, no longer feel the same stimulunt to produce anything more durable. They thus acquire a habit of writing which they find it difficult to shake off afterwards, even if they try. But the chances are that they don't, and that into labours intended to be a IC,-;iltle It; rf t. they carry the forced flippancy and fantastic wit that seasons a magazine article. They garnish roast beef with olives, and throw salad dressing over a plum-pudding. These reflections have been specially forced upon us by a perusal of Mr. Sala's volume, which, appearing ;in instalments in Household Words, was amusing enough, though even there it began to halt a little, but now in the shape of a complete volume brings us to a standstill in the middle of it. Not even in Russia can life be of that mu fornily disagreeable texture, or present us with that unvarying series of farcical characters, which Mr. Sala describes to us. Caricatures of things that we know are frequently useful in leading us 6 to a justex appreciation of the object, but carica- 801 tures of things that we don't know must inevitably mislead, and can only very briefly divert. Mr. Sala affects to make a humorous complaint that he is doomed to be unlike everyone else. It is unfortunate that his destiny should have made an exception when it despatched him on his Rus sian mission. On that occasion he was fated to " chaff " very much like every one else, indeed — very much, we mean, like the whole tribe of contemporary small jokers, whose taste is vitiated by their professional exigencies. For, as a distin guished Latin scholar once confessed that his judgment of a new poem was now always affected by its adaptability to Latin verse,—a considera tion that he never for the life of him could pre vent being uppermost in his mind,—so arc these gentlemen's views of existence generally adulter ated from the source by the necessity of consider ing how best to cut it up into funny paragraphs. We willingly admit that Mr. Sala's fun is a very favourable specimen ; so favourable, indeed, that we regret the tone of his book all the more. But Mr. Sala was not required to write "A Journey due North" to convince the world of his abilities. We are indebted to him, we believe, for many most delightful papers in the work from which this volume is republished. And, however much we may regret some of the results of periodical-writing, it would be ungrateful in the extreme to deny its many charms. Mr. Sala, then, is a gentleman not only of quaint wit, but also, we should surmise, of considerable intellec tual power; a person, in fact, well qualified, had he set about the task in a different spirit, to give us a really good idea of Russia and the Russians. Unhappily for our information and his own fame, he has chosen to write as a wag ; and as a specimen of waggery, accordingly, the present volume must be judged. And here let us anti cipate an objection that gentlemen of Mr. Sala's class are in the habit of raising to such criticism. Their favourite retort is that an amusing book may be instructive as well as a dull one, and that if you do not think so you are a fogy and a bore. Now, it is very far from us to deny the Horatian pre cept concerning the useful and the pleasant; but there is a pleasantry that encumbers a sub ject as well as a pleasantry that adorns it. Readers of " Eothen " will understand at once what we mean by the latter. We shall now give an extract from Mr. Sala to show what we mean by the former. Mr. Sala wishes to describe a Russian bazaar : I can imagine no better way of conveying a polpfible notion of things I have seen in this strange land than to institute comparisons between things Russian. which my reader will never kuow, 1 hope. save through the medium of faithful travellers, and things familiar to us all in London and Paris. So. If you take one avenue of the glorious Palms Royal, say that where the goldsmith and jeweller' stops are, and with this non - Mine the old colonnade of the ItegenVe Quadrant; if to title you add a dwarfed semblance of the Piorzt in Covent-garlen—especially as regards the coffee•stalls at early morning; if you throw in a dash of the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey—taking care to U routinize all the Gothic, but keeping all the chequered effects of chiaro-oscuro ; if, still elaborating your work, you piece on a fragment of that musty little colonnade out of Lower Regent-street, which ought to belong to the Italian Opera house, but doesn't, and at who-e corner Mr. Seguin's library used to be ; if, as a final architectural effort, you finish off with a few yards of the dark entry in Canterbury Cathedral yard, and with as much as you like (there is, not much) of that particularly grim, ghostly, and mildewed arcade at the Fields corner of Great Queen-street, Lincoln's inn : if you make an architectural salmagundy of all these ; spice with a flavour of the delightful np-and-down, under the-basement and over-the-tiles streets of Cheater ; garnish with that portion of the peristyle of the Palace of the Institute in Paris, where the print stalls are: and serve up hot with reminiscences of what old Exeter 'Change must have been like; you will have something of a skeleton notion of the outward appearance of the Gostinnui-ilvor. To people who had seen it this might be a laugh able, possibly a vivid, sketch. But what kind of impression does it convey to any one else ? Would not a few lines of simple description, by a writer who can really describe, have been in finitely preferable? Yet two-thirds of the work are written in this kind of fashion. As, how ever, we only wish to do Mr. Sala full justice, we shall confine our subsequent extracts to pas sages that possess real merit, and show his pic torial power very strongly. Here we have the Russian cabman : Here is the portrait of the lochvostchik in his habit as he lives. He is a brawny square-built fellow, with a broad bully-beef face, fair curly air cropped round his bead in the workhouse-basin fashion, blue eyes, and a bushy beard. I have seen some specimens of carroty whiskers, too, among the Ischrostcbiks, that would do honour to the bar of Eng land. His face is freckled and puckered into queer