The Press. — London, England, 1854-03-11 00:00:00

MARCH 11, 1854. ittraturt. MOORE AND CROKER. Correspondence between the Right Hon. J. W. Croker and the Right Hon. Lord John Russell; with a Postscript by Mr. C roker, explanatory of his Acquaintance with Mr. Moore. London : Murray. Memoirs and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by Lord John Russell. Volume VI. London: Longmans. ABOUT the period when the disastrous rebellion of 1798 was distracting Ireland there might have been noticed two students in Trinity College, Dublin, who in subsequent times became literary celebrities. The elder of the two was a short, thickset, coarse-looking, chubby-faced lad, shabbily dressed, and with out any outward or visible sign of the fire of genius or the . light of poetical inspiration. He could sing a good song, however, and compose playful verses with much taste and feeling. Amongst his occasional compa nions was a sharp-visaged stripling, evi dently on excellent terms with himself, and with the peculiarly saucy air of self-confidence common to top boys in the sixth form, and to promising young men at universities. His appearance, though slightly bilious even in these youthful days, before passion had scarred his face with the furrows of brooding thoughts, was far more intellectual and more gentlemanly than that of the vulgar youth first mentioned. Both were literary amateurs, and " general readers " rather than hardworking students ; each had obtained academical honours, though not of a very conspicuous kind. Many of their companions and associates might have been chosen as likely to go further and higher on the steep and thorny path towards the height of fame. Both, however, were careless, joyous, and reckless of the cares of life. One of them associated with " United Irishmen," though his fancy was most conversant with erotic poetry, for, when Wolfe Tone plotted and young Emmett raved, he translated Ana creon while talking boyish treason, and chanted " Songs from the Greek" in praise of wine while he made his libations to Bac chus from a more potent and less classical beverage. The other frequented tea-tables, and affected dandyism. He was as regular in his visits to the theatre as to the college chapel, and criticised everybody and everything with an assumed omniscience that distanced all imitation. He was a walking cyclopiedia of Dublin gossip ; he wrote epigrams in albums, and elaborated lampoons ; and he was, in short, so very clever in his way that he did not well know whether he should honour the Church, the Senate, or the Bar, with his prospects of celebrity. For that he would make a noise in the world, and teach people to understand that, after all, nobody could ever be right except himself, and that possibly without his permission Europe never could be managed at all—upon these points this aspiring young collegian had made up his mind ! Such were the lads who in after years wielded, on opposite sides, two of the most active pens ever employed in party politics. Such, in their teens, were the Moore and Croker of our own times ! Little did either of them foresee the sort of life to which they were destined, and that the talents of both would be put in constant requisition by the chiefs of English " party." In literary genius of course the palm must be assigned to the author of the exquisite " Irish Melodies" ; for the powers of his companion's plastic intellect were too often wasted in polemical writing. But the latter was superior in for ce of resolution, in logical combativeness , in a sin g ular .versatility. of intellect man ifested by him as a brilliant debater, a hardworking official, an ingenious essay-writer, an incessant pamphleteer, a for midable reviewer, a lacerating lampooner, and, last not least, an insatiab le anecdotist of all characters in all ages 1 Mr. Croker has often been hardly judged and bitterly criticised. In his long account of his "quarrels with author s " we rather think that, upon the whole, he is the loser, and that THE PRESS. he has often been made to suffer more punish ment than he ever inflicted. For our part, we willingly remember the consistent services which he rendered to the Conserva- tive party, though it is very possible that these very services have been exaggerated. With out now stretching him upon the rack of criti cism, we may make some remarks on his political writings, suggested by his latest ap pearance before a world which had almost forgotten his existence. Mr. Croker has committed one of the most grievous faults in any author—he has written too mach. In his self-assumed office of censor of the politics of England and her empire he appeared too often in his invidious capacity : the recurrence of his reviews was not only too frequent, but his special performances were too diffuse. Readers were tired with the iteration of his acrimony, and the mechanical structure of his style became at last monotonous. The late Dr. Maginn burlesqued in practice the style of Mr. Croker. The " doctor " seemed to have nibbed a shillelagh and written with it, while Mr. Croker appeared to have flagellated au thors with a cat-and-nine-tails dipped in red ink. He established a rope's-end school of criticism, and was not satisfied without his showing us the ropewalk in which his scourges were woven. He so often flourished his lash that at last people began to look on him as compelled, like a gouty foxhunter, to be obliged to crack his whip, for the sake of old habits. Chastising and criticising seemed to him synonymous. He appeared to keep a file of damaging paragraphs ; he was the historian of indiscreet expressions ; and he carefully illustrated obscure particulars of trumpery scandals. He wrote about Empire, the Consti tution, and the Church in a style that made us think at every page of " Martinus Scriblerus" and " P.P. Clerk of the Parish." Mighty questions were treated in a small way ; the cant of the hour was oftener echoed than principles were expounded. " Dame Par " tington, excellent at a slop or a puddle, but " unable to keep out the Atlantic," was a stroke evidently aimed by Sydney Smith at the pe riodical scolding which, with Roman capitals and sentences in italics, used to make its appearance, always punctual to the day, but in its matter almost as grotesquely anachronous as Guy Fawkes in November, or the artillery corps of the Hoxton Volunteers in the old pantomime at Sadler's Wells. Much of his literary character might be traced to his own idiosyncrasy, affected by the prolonged prac tice of controversy. Of all kinds of writers, none are so unwea ried in their vocation as polemical scribes. Habituated to controversy, they exult in dis putation. They asperse where they cannot confute, they deride where they cannot over come. After a course of years they become callous even to the most hostile criticism. Never smarting under defeat, to combat and to conquer appear to them identical. Rebound ing with Antican agility from every overthrow, with untiring nerves and audacious front, they taunt their conqueror, and again chal lenge him to the fray. They resolve never to acknowledge a defeat, so long as they can em ploy woman's miserable privilege of having the last word. For our part, our strongest exception to Mr. Croker's writings is, not so much their defi ciency in practical suggestiveness and want of original thought, as that they essentially mis represented the genuine tone of the Conserva tives of England. The gentlemen of England can, when provoked, play their part in a fight as well as, if not better, than others; and it is because they are manly and bold, that they dislike what is habitually sour, peevish, or splenetic. Nor do they look upon all society from that class point of view which might be inferred from Mr. Croker's writings. They never asked particularly into the antecedents of Mr. Croker when they accepted the aid of his abilities; but, from the pervading tone of his writings, it might be supposed that they were hostile to the rise of men without an an cestor. Too much of the style of Silverforkton politics was in all of Mr. Croker's productions; and the wretched aphorism " That nothing " good can come out of Bloomsbury " might 231 be printed as an epigraph to his essays, if the questionable experiment of reprinting them Should be attempted. There was little genial love for the people, or cordial sympathy with their aspirations, in his writings. Pugnacity, not philanthropy, was apparently his animating motive ; and we may see in our own day how such a spirit is quite alien from the feeling of a gentry which earnestly strives to legislate for the weak, the helpless, and forgotten. It may also be observed that, unlike the case of other political writers of notoriety, Mr. Croker never founded any school ; and in literature and painting there is no more decisive proof of conspicuous merit than becoming an exemplar. Bolingbroke, Swift, Burke, Junius, all had their avowed imitators ; and, even in our days, we have seen the influence upon political writing of the pens of Lord Brougham and the late William Cobbett. So in journalism, any one familiar with the political press of the last twenty years can have seen the power resulting from two pens—which we name with honour—one held by Mr. Fonblanque, by whose imitators his flash is oftener pro duced than his fire ; and the other wielded by that potent controversialist, whose master dom over the English tongue is only to be equalled by his efficiency as a popular writer —the eloquent and erudite Dr. Gifford. The fact that Mr. Crokor found no imitators would seem to suggest that his merits wore mingled with many faults. His fierce attacks were not sufficiently relieved by tho fun and humour which impart geniality to composi tion, and amuse those who are careless about the issues of debate. In his early days youth ful vivacity gave something of a joyous tone to his satirical e ff usions. Thus, when ho cri ticised the Dublin actors in his " Familiar Epistles," the severe was set off with the jocose, and the tartness of his strictures was forgotten in his mirthful manner. So, when he drew the ludicrous picture of a subaltern actor of the name of Williams, he showed that he could mingle together the comical and caustic " Next Williams comes, the rude, the rough, With face most whimsically gruff : Aping the careless sons of Ocean, He scorns each tine and easy motion; Tight to his sides his elbows pins, And dabbles with his hands like fins. Would he display the greatest woe, He slaps his breast, and points his toe. Is merriment to be exprest, He points his toe and slaps his breast. His turns are swings, his touch a thump, Hia feelings fits, his step a jump. And, violent in all his parts, He speaks by gusts, and acts by starts ! " But as he has grown older he has become more fierce and less fanny, and we have read articles from his mordant pen evidently com posed under the delusion of mistaking the bitter for the brilliant, written with the purpose of a satirist, but exhibiting only the perform ances of a scold. Yet it would be very unjust to throw upon Mr. Croker all the faults of his peculiar style. He first became a writer in days when between the hostile camps in politics there was not the chivalrous amenity of later times. The dema gogues and the popular debating societies of forty years since were coarse, scurrilous, and downright savage in their tone ; the Court was unhappily rife with scandals ; and person ality, supported by facts, and intensified with virulent insinuations, was systematically used by avowed incendiaries and malignant con spirators against the Constitution. Against such noxious pests of the State rose-water would have been innocuous ; they were en countered with effusions as unsavoury and more efficacious than their own ; and the proverb about those who have sparring matches with the sable climbers of chimneys was shown to be applicable to the professional critics who choose for their special pursuit the bravos in an opposing host. After a few years their style begins to savour of the shambles, and fancy pictures them with a knife from the stall rather than with the rapier of the gallant. To two of the parties concerned most in the correspondence before us many of these re marks apply. Both Moore and Mr. Croker were party-writers from first to last, active in skirmish, incessant in attack, in many instances _~_ ,- a. d MilEibi