The Press. — London, England, 1857-02-14 00:00:00

162 that very few, we apprehend, will be disposed to give him the mint of being its author We are happy, however, to perceive, by looking into his late edition of Swift's Works, that Mr. Scott is now convinced that the treatment of the Presbyterians, between 1660 and 1088, was a " persecu tion," of which he appeared formerly to entertain some 4 nibts ; and we are not altcgetber without hopes that at aline fhture period his sentiments may undergo such a vvolution as to induce him to admit the justice of the following character of Claverhouse, although he should not be able to claim the linos in which it is so well drawn :-- There, worthy of his masters, came. The despot's champion, bloody Gralime, To stain for aye a warrior's sword, And lead • fierce, though fawning, horde, The Amman bloodhounds of the earth. To hunt tne peasant from hie hearth ! Tyrants! could not misfortune teach, That man has rights beyond your reach ? Thought ye the torture and the stake Could that intrepid spirit break, Which even in woman's breast withstood The terrors of the fire and flood! M'Crie thus generalised some of the points of ridicule urged by Scott : The author's ridicule turns chiefly upon the following points :—that their ordinary conversation was interlarded with Scripture phrases—that they were guilty of gross and ludicrous misapplications of these—that they were con. stantly harping upon certain cant phrasee, expressive of their party opinions, or relating to their ecclesiastical dis. pates—and that the style in which their preachers usually indulged was mean, coarse, incoherent, and rhap sodical. To which M'Crie replied with great force : The people of Scotland, since the Reformotion, have been always well acquainted with their Bible, and it was the natural consequence of this that its language should mingle with their speech, and give a tone to their conver• se.ion and mode of thinking. This, instead of being dis- creditable, is highly honourable to them, and has contii• bated, more than many are aware of, to raise their eisracter, in point of intelligence, above that of the lower orders in any other country. Strangers have remarked the fact, and have been astonished at it, while they were ignorant of the cause. A ploughman in Scotland is not, waat he is everywhere else, a clown, according to the idea which that term usually suggests ; and this distinction he owes chiefly to his familiar acquaintance with his Bible, which he has been accustomed to read, or to hear lead, from his childhood. When he has been so much indebted to it, why should he be hindered from quoting it, or ex• posed to ridicule for employing its phraseology, provided this is done without an intention or a tendency to bur. 'rogue or profane it? With this qualification, we may assert that the Bible is to the common people what the writings of Homer are to the learned ; and every person of good feeling will be as much pleased to hear them adopt. lag a phrase, or quoting a verse, with propriety, from the Scriptures, as to bear a person of literature making the same use of the Greek or Roman classics. By propriety we mean, not elegance and point, but such justness as may be expected from persons in their condition. Among the better informed part even of the English nation, during the seventeenth century, Scripture language was so far feom being uncommon, that we find it used very liberally in both Rouses of Parliament. There are truth and vigour in that passage, but there is some fallacy in its application to the Covenanters. Its remarks rather apply to the Scotch after the diffusion of general intelligence in the last century, and after the long workings of parochial schools. The reviewer then adroitly turned upon Scott with reference to the Edinburgh Annual Register, in which Scott wrote many passages decked with scriptural phrases, and artfully alluded to the address to the Prince Regent from the city of Edinburgh in 1813: If not intended, it is a striking coincidence that the " Tales of My Landlord " should have appeared so seasonably as an antidote to this disposition to puritanical enthusiasm ; and we can scarcely help suspecting that the sermon of Ephraim Macbriar, in particular, is a concealed satire upon the following passage of an Address of the City of Edinburgh :—" It is with far other thoughts, and far happier prospects, that we now again lay our duty at the feet of your Royal Highness, with feelings which can be likened to none but those of the survivors of the primeval world, when, looking forth from the vessel in which they :had been miraculonsly preserved, they per ceived that God had clost-d, in His mercy. the fountains of the deep which He had opened in Hia wrath ; that the wind had passed over the waters and assua4ed the foie.; while the reappearance of ancient and well-known moun tains and landmarks, hidden so long under the billows of the inundation, warranted a just and purer conddence that the hour of its fury had passed away." All this parrying is very clever. After all, the truth lies between Scott and his adversary. " 01(1 Mortality" is not history ;" and we must admit that those sublime qualities repre sented in Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" are not to be found in his pictures of the Covenanters, who lived in terrible times of political heat and persecution, when, as Scott remarks in winding up the description of Claverhouse (Dundee), the highest qualities, " - verted b• irty spirit, and inflamed by 'n, are too often combined 1. Lora, and other Poems. By Devon Harris. London : Smith, Elder, and Co SATURDAY, To be saluted by each forest leaf, And turn the tide into a tide of day. To thrill the vine•roots, kiss the buds apart, And touch each erag with glory like a throne. To paint the rainbow on a round of storm, And give back paradise to insect worlds. To tint the snowdrop's page with lines of green, And pile great beds of splendour in the west. To call up quires of music with a glance, And say to waiting myriads, " Up and live !" To see all earth a gorgeous butterfly New lighted on a flower of Life's great tree, Quick ope and shut its wings in rich delight. To make a morning wheresoe'er he looks, Aud gaze upon the universe in flower. Again : The sun of Homer o'er Hymettus rose, Charming to amber all the circling hills, Through the long day the sky was all his own, And when at eve on Hydra's crest he stood Baptising Macedonia with his fire, And flinging from his gorgeous palaces Great larg•esses of glory, he but looked As wailing to be once more owned a god. Of the other poems, several are very good, but we have no space for any further extracts. We advise Mr. Devon Harris, for the next dozen years or so, to make correctness his principal object ; to learn to avoid confusion of epithets, and those distortions of thought, which eau never be poetical, because they can never be the reflection of any reality. Mr. Fletcher's poems (2) are not character ised by the same ludicrous extravagance which marks Mr. Harris's. They are much more simple and natural, and the language more chaste and lucid. Nevertheless he, too, has not escaped infection from the extremely loose style of writing which prevails at present. One of the best pieces in his collection is dis figured by slips of this character I love her, but not with the love which speaks As none but a lover dare ; I love her, but not as one who seeks To woo, and win, and wear : Between us there rolls a dark ravine, Which the future can never fill; But yet by my soul she is crowned a queen, I love her—l love her still. I love her, but not with a love that would seek In a marble•moulded brow, In a flashing eye and a tinted cheek, For a shrine where the heart may bow : My passion is not like the light that leaps And dies on the storm•god's breast, Nor a hectic feeling that ever heaps The fire of its own unrest. How can a ravine "roll"? And again in the last four lines, what is the storm god ? If by the light that leaps and dies upon his breast is meant the lightning, we can only say it might have been much better expressed. We ought never to be left in doubt of the mean ing of a metaphor. Some of the remaining stanzas of this poem contain some pretty touches : I love her, although she can never be more Than a beautiful vision to me, A vessel that touched at a desolate shore, And then swept o'er the fathomless sea ; And though, when she has gone to the tome of her heart, O'er my spirit a shadow will creep, I will lighten the sorrow and lesson the smart lty the image I ever shall keep. I love her, and always the passion will play With a solemn, beneficent light, Whatevee the clouds that encircle my day, Or the stars that illumine my night: And the only return that 1 ask as the due Of a love that for ever will beat, Is a stray thought sometimes for a heart that rings true, And a smile when we happen to meet. " Sweet Sixteen" and " A Bachelor's Reverie„ are both good. They are not very deep, but they dash along, like a brook over the pebbles, with such a pleasant, cheerful sound, that it is impossible not to be charmed with them. " Pass Onward" is another poem of a graver stump, which we admire much; and on the whole we think we may safely recommend Mr. Fletcher to persevere in the path he has chosen. " Queen Eleanor's Vengeance " (3) is de cidedly the best poem in the volume which bears its name. It is a terse and forcible description of the Woodstock tragedy, iu which all poets are fully entitled to believe. It is not free front affectation, and straining after effect by abruptness of language in lieu 2. Cloud • Shadows. By John William Fletcher. London : Longrnans. 3. Owes Eleanor's Vengeance, and odur Poem. By W. C. Bennett. London: Chapman end ' perverted by part babitual opposittOn rc tight 3. I )0d • • good, but • extracts. the next. !ctness his confusion ,f thought, auso they ality. , character- ince which inch more wage more e, too, has. ely loose t present. Lion is dis- kt'aks en, d seek If ain in the od ? If by his breast my say it 'ssed. We the mean- remaining me pretty • Ire we of mart ay f. e that s Reverie„ deep, but pebbles, I, that it is ith them. F a graver nd on the ,mend Mr. .1 he has 3) is de- une which d forcible agedy, iu to believe. straining tge in lieu r. London : a. By W. C. THE PRESS. " with vices and excesses, which deprive them " at once of their merit and of their lustre."_ As we said, this critical pie3e on the Co venanters merits preservation, though it must be read with caution ; and we could desire that it had been impartially annotated. The sermons of M'Crie are not very remarkable as pieces of pulpit eloquence. " The Reforma tion in Italy" is a valuable tract, but we have other works of a more copious character on that subject. In his " Reformation in Spain " 111 r too much weight is given by the author to Blanco White's statements. We observe that the editor never alludes to the subsequent and varied changes in the opinions of Blanco White, which unquestionably detract from the value of his assertions. He was a conscientious but weak man, with graphic vivacity and limited reflective power. RECENT POETRY. " Lou " (11 is a poem of sufficiently marked character to have induced us to read it through twice. We are convinced that Mr. Harris has considerable force of intellect and true poetic imagination ; but both are utterly undisciplined. The design of the poem is exceedingly difficult of apprehension, and every page of it overflows with tumid phraseology and farfetched conceits. It is divided into four parts, entitled " Sorrento," " Vesuvius," " Sea," " Land ! " which seem in tended to correspond with four periods of the poet's life. The first—all calm and sunshine, and groves and fountains, and beds of flowers and banks of moss—is that in which he first meets the lady of his love, Lota, though under what order of beings in this universe we are to range her is at first not easy to divine. If we were asked what she is like in this first canto, we should be obliged to reply in old Cave's language when describing the ghost he had seen-- Why, sir, something of a shadowy be ing." However, as it turns out subsequently that she is a noble English maiden, of sound flesh and blood, and neither mum emanation from Nature, nor " the great subject-object," nor any other "fabulous animal" of a like character, we are not called upon for any subtle analysis of her attributes. She is forbidden, however, by her " God-thundering " sire to marry the poet, and straightway " Sorrento " disappears and we have " Vesuvius." The mountain in question seems intended to typify an eruption of volcanic and withering debauchery. A young gentleman is represented as standing with three young, ladies somewhere near the mouth of the crater ; but what then follows we do not easily understand. Two of the young ladies, however, are swallowed up ; and the remaining couple, after going to sleep in a most extraordinary and uncomfortable position, somewhere in the bowels of the hill, end dreaming that they are the sun and moon, ultimately " see the road to morning," and go forth together sadder and wiser young people. The third part, "At Sea," would appear to signify the period of isolation, reflection, and repentance. The hero longs to inhabit a star where he Might have a whole creation week — Each day an age—to work upon myself; To analyse my chaos point by point. Being compelled to content himself with the earth, he proceeds in the fourth part, entitled " Land," from Cornhill to Cairo ; and, after visiting Greece, winds up at the Crimea, where who, of all people in the world, should turn up but Lota—in the shape of a h os pit a l nurse. The noisy parent, having spent his last thunderbolt, and being now iu the grave, all obstacles to their union are removed, and we are led to suppose they enter into holy wedlock just like ordinary mortals. Such is an outline of this singular poem, which, though we may seem to have rid:euled its extreme nebulousness, does nevertheless contain passages of real beauty, or our readers may he sure we should not have given so much space to it. The following extracts will, we hope, be considerel sufficient proof : How like a god to be a conscious sun ! To see the morn attiring as his bride Binding a vermeil fillet on her brow, Selvaged with gold, and blushing in her haste. Tu drink of dew in chalices of flowers, And flood a valley o'er with golden life.