The Press. — London, England, 1854-08-12 00:00:00

AUGUST 12, 1854. should be ascribed whatever blame may be justly attached to the plans of operations, or of giving battle, the advance or retreat of the army, or finally of the capitulation. But much as I loved the Duke personally, muoh as I felt many good and amiable qualities in his character, much as I owe to him of gratitude for long kindness to myself, I cannot but acknowledge that he was not qualified to be even the ostensible head of a great army on arduous service. At home he administered the business of our military estab lishments sedulously, zealously, clearly, and impartially ; but he possessed none of the higher qualities which influ ence the fate of a campaign, or turn the fortune of a battle. He was of a cool courage ; he would have stood all day to be shot at ; but he had no active bravery. With a very fair understanding, he had little quickness of apprehension, still less of sagacity in penetrating designs, or forming large views : painstaking, yet devoid of resources, and easily di,heartened by difficulties. Even his good nature and kind temper were injurious ; for it too often happened that he could not bring himself to say No, when he ought to have said No. To these defects must be added habits of indulgence, and a looseness of talking, after dinner, about individuals, which made him enemies, and which in this unfortunate campaign probably excited or inflamed tie rancour of the Russian generals. Of the lieutenant•generals who were associated to the control of our military operation Sir Ralph Abercromby stood foremost. It ought to be unnecessary to speak in praise of such a man ; but even in this book-making age, when we are overridden with biographical memoirs, there has appeared no biography of the good and gallant Aber cromby. When Mr. Dundas selected him to lead, and sent him forward in command of what was the muscle and sinew of our army, there were but two faults to be found with the selection. The general was a little too old for hard service, and he was extremely near-sighted. Allow ing for these defects of nature, Abercromby was a noble chieftain. Mild in manner, resolute in mind, frank, unassuming, just, inflexible in what he deemed to be right, valiant Its the Cid, liberal and loyal as the prowest of black Edward's knights. An honest, fearless, straightforward man ; and withal sagacious and well skilled in his business as a soldier. As he looked out from under his thick, shaggy eyebrows, he gave one the idea of a very good natured lion, and he was respected and beloved by all who served under his command. The portion of this work which is devoted to the war in the Mediterranean from 1801 to 1810 will be read with much interest. The account of the campaign in Egypt contains several of those anecdotes which are like touches to a picture. At page 131 it was hardly necessary to say that Sir Robert Wilson must have been the ingenious author of the " white-handkerchief " device. Of one of the great events of that war the writer gives us an account for which we are grateful ; and, as he was himself present at the brilliant affair, the account is of the greater interest—we mean the famous battle of Maida, of which our Scotch neighbours have by some peculiar process adopted the glory, though the Irish regiment, the 27th (Enniskillen Foot), commanded by their feudal leader, Gen. Cole, mainly contributed to our victory. The fol lowing anecdote of the Enniskillens—a corps not less gallant than their mounted namesakes —is amusing : When we returned to the beach we found that Sir Sidney Smith had arrived during the action, and his flag ship was anchored abreast of our bivouac. He came ashore to compliment the general (though there was no great love between them), and, as he pressed Sir John to sleep on board the Pomper, the general, taking me and his aides•de-camp, went off in the evening. But in the mean time we were amused with an alerte attended by laughable circumstances. A permission had been given that the men of each brigade in turn might refresh themselves by bathing in the sea, the rest lying by their arms. While the Grenadiers and Enniskillens were in the water, a staff officer came galloping in from the front, crying aloud that the enemy's cavalry were coining down! In a moment the troops sprang to their arms and formed ; and Cole's brawny brigade rushing out of the sea, and throwing their belts ovt r their shoulders, grasped their muskets and drew up in line, without attempting to assume an article of clothing. The alarm was utterly groundless ; a Brest dust and an imperfect view of a herd of scampering buffaloes had conjured up a vision of French chasseurs in this noodle of an officer, one of my assistants. In taking leave of this work of Sir Henry Bunbury, it would be unjust not to say that it is one of the most valuable as well as one (if the most interesting contributions to modern history that have appeared for some years. Firmilian ; or, the Student of Beulojoz. A Spasmodic Tragedy. By T. Percy Jones. London : Blackwoods. This truly tragic performance is a puzzle, and the more so from its imprint, "William Blackwood and Sons." It is too dull for bur lesque, and too nonsensical for earnest,—too consistent in absurdity for madness, and too motional for sanity. The very titlepage creates a " spasmodic " desire to know whe ther, like the work itself, it may or may not contain any meaning. Is " Firmillan" a name THE PRESS. or a crafty anagram? Is "T. Percy Jones " really a gentleman living at " Streatham, in July, 1854," or is the name but a subtle device to convey an idea of the present " fusion of classes " ; an endeavour to show that " Percy " who was slain in Chevy Chase was of like flesh and blood with " Jones " who went out wilfully with Brown, Smith, and Robinson. Whether Mr. Percy Jones is a man or, as Wordsworth says, a "wandering voice," we are all unenlightened, but that, whether man or myth, he is courageous, his preface leaves no doubt. " For my part," he says, "if I con " scientiously believed that my poetry was not " worthy of admiration, I never would commit " the impertinence of asking any one to " read it . But, though believing that his poetry is " worthy of admiration," Mr. Percy Jones has done what no paperstainer ever yet did before him. He has deliberately become at times unequal to himself. Homer some times nodded, but Jones twaddled with his eyes open. Horace excused himself by the example of Homer, but Jones only becomes stupid in mere pity lest his readers should become " dark with excess of life." Hark ! I am perfectly aware that this poem is unequal, and that some passages of it are inferior in interest to others. Such was my object; for I am convinced that there can be no beauty without breaks and undulation ! When, therefore, the reader has been raised to ecstasy by Jones in his grandeur, lest (to use the only words worthy of Jones, those of Mr. Phillips's Crystal Palace Handbook) his " intellect should snap," Jones lays him gently down in a marsh of dulness and soothes him with a friendly atmosphere of rigmarole. But the preface is not eulogistic only : it is defiant. In the same style that Chickory offers a reward of 1,0001. to any man in Seven Dials who can equal his coffee does Jones demand a poem equal to his own. "I am not," he says, " arro " gant enough to assert this is the finest poem " which the age has produced, but I shall feel " very much obliged to any gentleman who " can make me acquainted with a better." Heralded thus, the reader may prepare to hear how Firmilian, when alone in his study, flungaway Aristotle, whom he could not under stand, but at each attempt to " attach the sense " his brain reeled as a drunken mariner, Who, stumbling o'er the bulwark, makes a clutch At the wild incongruity of ropes, And topples into mud. Having thus satisfactorily got rid of Aris totle, as a good many students nearer than Badajoz might reasonably do if ignorance were an excuse, Mr. Firmilian entirely dis avows law, physic, and divinity, in neither of which pursuits, indeed, it would seem ho would have had much prospect of success, and adopts a profession in which, at least, the rise was quicker than in the first; for he says : I've leaped into the air, And clove my way thro' tether like a bird That flits beneath the glimpses of the moon, Right eastward till I lighted at the foot Of Holy Helicon, and drank my fill At the clear spout of Aganippe's stream. After having taken this draught Firmilian fell asleep, and the " universal voice of Pan' gave him the following sage advice as to his future conduct: — Be thou no slave of passion. Let not love, Pity, remorse, nor any other thrill That sways the actions of ungifted men, Affect thy course. Live for thyself alone. Let appetite thy ready handmaid be, And pluck all fruitage from the tree of life, Be it forbidden or no. If any comes Between thee and the purpose of thy bent, Launch thou the arrow from the string of might Right to the bosom of the impious wretch, And let it quiver there! Be great in guilt! If, like Busiris. thou canst rack the heart, Spare it no pang. So shalt thou he prepared To make thy song a tempest, and to shake The earth to its foundation—Go thy way! On receipt of these suggestions Firmilian goes out and informs the moon, I was born To make thee and thine astral brethren quake; And 1 will do it ! and anon goes to sleep, having first decided on slaying two of his friends, to show Pan that he attended to his advice. The friends are slain accordingly, and a similar service is done for his entire circle of acquaintances. One of them presents a melancholy example of the dangers of literary success, for Firrni lian flings him flora the top of the'pillar of St. 761 Simeon Stylites because his poems had reached a third edition. Having thus disposed of his visiting list, he proceeds to deal in an equally summary manner with three ladies whom he had honoured by permission to live with him. One of these beauties is a negress, and her two rivals indignantly exclaim against his choice : MARIANA. A filthy negress ! Abominable! LILIAN. Mercy on me ! what blubber lips she has ! MARIANA, furiously to FIRMILIAN. You nasty thing! Is this your poetry — Your high soul•scheming and philosophy? 1 hats and loathe you! (To Indiana.)—RlTal of my shoe, Go, get thee gone, and hide thee from the day That loathes thine ebon skin ! Firmilian— You'll hear of this! My brother serves the king. My uncle is the chief Inquisitor, And he shall know of this ere curfew tolls! What! Shall 1 share a husband with a coal? To silence their disputes he murders two of them, and is finally pursued by the Inquisition and certain " I fines Fatui " till he falls into a quarry, and, we presume, ends his amiable existence. Seriously, we have seldom seen anything approaching this offensive and absurd non sense committed to print. Some of the cha racters (e.g., Olivarez, p. 38) apply to each other epithets which the police reporters, when compelled to record them, express with a dash, while the repeated thefts of whole lines from real dramatists and the perpetual recurrence of the most vulgar of colloquial cant make this " spasmodic tragedy " a truly nauseating dose. Had it not come before us with all the ex ternal appearance of a legitimate literary pro duction we should not have bestowed upon it the notice we have done. Longfellow has exaggerated some of the worst peculiarities of the Faust school, and carried mysticism to the verge of irreverence or blasphemy; but in the race of absurdity Mr. Percy Jones has fairly distanced all competitors, and set a brand of ridicule upon the " spasmodic " school which we sincerely trust may soon have the effect of banishing it from print, though it may still drivel in manuscript. The Iron Cousin. By Mary Cowden Clarke. London : Routledge. MRS. CLARKE has here tried her talents in a department of literature in which she has not previously appeared. She has constructed a clever story, containing a variety of charac ters. Many passages are written with vivacity and humour, but at times her too lively young ladies have a hoydenish coarseness. Kato Ireton, the heroine, is drawn as being wilful, and requiring reform, which gradually takes place under the influence of her "iron cousin," Fermor Worthington, whom she marries at last, after many misconceptions as to her re gard for a certain Mr. Cecil Lascelles. Tho tone of the novel is healthy and English, but no illusion is created to make us forget that we are in the hands of a fictionist. The weak est parts are those in which " fashionables" are sketched, when the writer's pen runs into caricature. A riding party in Italy is thus described ; and certainly if Miss Constantia Smythe were to make her appearance at Rotten row we think that few would claim her ac quaintance : There was a dashing girl, named Constantia Smythe, sister to a young cavalry officer, who looked like her bro ther's counterpart, rather exaggerated; for, while he lisped And used essence on his pocket-handkerchief, and wore extremely shiny hoots, winch he seemed sadly afraid would get covered with (host, and had en eyeglass screwed into his eye to inspect the accurate fitting of his lemon-coloured kid gloves, she talked in a loud, abrupt voice. stuck her handkerchief into the breast of her habit. cared nothing for displaying her boots, dusty or not dusty, in mounting and dismounting, stared straight at everything. and boldly at everybody, drew up her riding gauntlets with the tug of a dragoon, and slashed the skirt of her habit with her whip, as a man slaps his knee, to give emphasis to her speech. There was a die-away girl, who languished and simpered, and protested she was sinking with fatigue, and fainting with the heat, and swooning with exhatiation and excitement. There was a sketching OK who was always begging them to stop, even if they could not wait while she took sonic " charming bit," or sonic " point of view," or some "chiaroscuro effect." There wps a se fatal girl ;'a poetital girl ; *Ad a scientific* 'girl; wisti'ftb kW lb