The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-01 00:00:00

418 which Egmont had used, he submitted his neck to the stroke. Much of this is very good, and the spitited grouping of the details is well executed; but the style would have been improved by pruning, and more regard to chasteness of expression. " Bright eyes rained influence" is too hackneyed ; " agonies which might have " roused every stone to mutiny, or softened " them to pity," is ridiculous, for though Mark Antony in Julius Cesar takes nearly similar liberties with the stones, it is to be recollected that Shakespeare was putting language into the mouth of an orator, while an historian must rarely indulge in such vehemence of metaphlrical expression. " The cynosure of every eye," and " by the hand of tyranny to his great account," are commonplaces. The entire of that opening paragraph should be carefully revised and pruned. But the narra tive of details which then follows is close, full, and various, and is well calculated to rivet a reader's attention. We must add, also, that the authorities for all the statements in that passage are numerous and appropriately cited. Here is a passage, on the sack of Naarden, exemplifying the fault of Mr. Motley's redun dancy in indignation : It is not without reluctance, bat still with a stern de - termination, that the historian should faithfully record these transactions. To extenuate would be base ; to exag gerate impossible. It is good that the world should not forget how much wrong has been endured by a single na tion at the hands of despotism, and in the sacred name of God. There have been tongues and pens enough to narrate the excesses of the people, bursting from time to time out of slavery into madness. It is good, too, that those crimes should be remembered, and freshly pondered ; but it is equally wholesome to study the opposite picture. Tyranny, ever young and ever old, constantly reproducing herself with the same stony features, with the same imposing mask which she has worn through all ages, can never be too minutely examined, especially when she paints her own portrait, and when the secret history of her guilt is fur nished by the confessions of her lovers. The perusal of her traits will not make us love popular liberty the less. Those sentences have no historical reflection in them; they are little better than common places, and we should like all such passages expunged, as being superfluous. The work abounds with moat curious and interesting matter. A battle on the ice is thus recounted : The inhabitants of Harlem felt that danger. Boss, Alva's stadholder for Holland, had formerly announced the system hitherto pursued at Mechlin, Zutphen, and Naarden, as the deliberate policy of the Government. The King's represen tative had formally proclaimed the extermination of man, woman, and child in every city which opposed his authority, but the promulgation and practice of such a system had an opposite effect to the one intended. The hearts of the Hol landers were rather steeled to resistance than awed into sub mission by the fate of Naarden. A fortunate event, too, was accepted as a lucky omen for the coming contest: A little fleet of armed vessels, belonging to Holland, had been frozen up in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Don Frederic, on his arrival from Naarden, despatched a body of picked men over the ice to attack the imprisoned vessels. The crews had, however, fortified themselves by digging a wide trench around the whole fleet, which thus became from the moment an almost impregnable fortress. Out of this frozen citadel a strong band of well-armed and skilful musketeers sallied forth upon skates as the besieging force advanced. A rapid, brilliant, and slippery skirmish suc ceeded, in which the Hollanders, so accustomed to such sports, easily vanquished their antagonists, and drove them off the field, with the loss of several hundred left dead upon the ice. " 'Twas a thing never heard of before to day," said Alva, " to see a body of arquebusiers thus skir mishing upon a frozen sea." In the course of the next four ar.d-twenty hours a flood and a rapid thaw released the vessels, which all escaped to Enkhuizen, while a frost, immediately and strangely succeeding, made pursuit im possible. The Spaniards were astonished at these novel manceuvres upon the ice. It is amusing to read their elaborate descriptions of the wonderful appendages which bad enabled the Hollanders to glide so glibly into battle with a superior force, and so rapidly to glance away, after achieving a signal triumph. Nevertheless, the Spaniards could never be dismayed, and were always apt scholars, even if an enemy were the teacher. Alva immediately ordered seven thousand pairs of skates, and his soldiers soon learned to perform military evolutions with these new accoutrements as audaciously, if not as adroitly, as the There are several curious and quaint cita tions in the excellent and learned notes authenticating the text. We may cite one from the pasquinade against Don John of Austria : The following squib, taken from a MS. calleetion of pasquilles of the day, shows what was a very general opinion in the Netherlands concerning the parentage of Don John and the position of Barbara Blomberg. The lines—versos they axe nut—have some ingenuity THE PRESS, MAY 1,1858. —sed at Ai Buac Cesarts fihiva ease saris est Multi amen de ejus /itre dututaveie—acre Cujus ergu &bum eum dicunt Itall—/tali Verum meter sitis est note iu nostril republ ir;otTacteausegit in BrgbantiA tor voe r re—hoere Crimea est ne trui amplesu unius Cesaria taus generosi—Oßl Pluribue ergo usa iu vita est—ita est Seu poet Cessna congressum non yens ante—ante Tace garrula as tale quipplam loquare—guare lieacis qua pone attioiendum dizerit Belgium insigne-4ns, etc. etc. eta. Vera Satiriques contra Dom Jean d'kutriche, MS. Bibl. de Bourg., 17,524. One would think that when Dean Swift wrote his "Echo on Woman," he had the foregoing squib before him : Shepherd: What must I do when woman will be kind? Echo—Be kind. Shepherd: What mast I do when woman will be cross? Echo—Be cross. Shepherd: Lord! What is she that can so turn and wind? Echo—Wind. Shepherd: Is there no way to moderate ber anger? Echo—Hang her. _ _ We recommend this work to the attention of our readers, as being most interesting in its matter, and as presenting an authentic and spirited narrative of one of the most remark able portions of the history of Modern Europe. THE QUARTERLIES.* IN the present number of the Quarterly several very interesting topics are handled with va rious degrees of ability. Strong literary articles are the first two and the sixth—on Dr. Johnson, on Bohemia, and on the art of Public Speaking, respectively. The first mentioned paper is founded upon Boswell's Letters, and takes much the same view of his character as we remember to have seen in the Dublin University Magazine about a year ago— i.e., a medium between Carlyle and Macaulay, and attributing Boswell's close attendance upon Johnson to his real relish for wit, rather than to his love of goodness on the one hand, or innate sycophancy on the other. In this opinion we fully concur, and we are glad to see it sanctioned by so high an authority as the leading quarterly periodical. While, however, agreeing with the estimate herein given both of Johnson and his biographer, we are sorry to see so unfavourable a description of one of the brightest stars in that accom plished circle of which the Doctor was the centre. We are unwilling to believe that Gold smith can really deserve such an accumulation of epithets as " awkward, envious, conceited, " and dissolute." That he was awkward may be true, but that was his misfortune. His envy and conceit were, we suspect, no greater than that of very many literary men, who do far more injury to their contemporaries by anonymous detraction, than the simple exhi • bition of spleen on poor Goldsmith's part could ever have accomplished. His jealousy and vanity lay only on the surface ; beneath you found a generous appreciation of his con temporaries, and of Johnson above them all. We should remember also—a fact that is too frequently forgotten—that Goldsmith's contri butions to English literature were, after all, superior to anything which Johnson had done up to the time of Goldsmith's death. The Dictionary, of course, we exempt from the comparison. But certainly, if there is any one of Johnson's works which can be thought to place him on a level with the author of " The Vicar of Wakefield," " The Deserted Village," and " She Stoops to Con quer," it is the " Lives of the Poets," which did not appear till Goldsmith's place in Gerard-street knew him no more. Of course we do not mean to imply a doubt of Johnson's intrinsic superiority. His powerful and lumi nous intellect placed him far above the rivalry of any man of that generation. But no doubt Goldsmith may sometimes have fairly thought that his own more purely literary greatness was unduly obscured by the side of Johnson's conversational prowess. That he should have felt sore at the inferior part ho was sometimes condemned to play, cannot be wondered at. He knew, like Addison (if Addison ever really said it), that he could " draw for a thousand pounds ;" and it was mortifying to be exposed before strangers be- • 1. The Quarterly Review, April, 1853. Murray —S. The Edinburgh Review. Lougmans-3. The Westminster Review. John Chapman -1. The National Reeiew. Chapman and Hail —b. The London Review. ileylin. cau p h n j ut e s o r :sate!. thet Aee possi bilityllBtts e e r oo h f f e ht ih h s ea rdpresent forgotten ga r the cel h e i s shui h most i h n e atveer N e v i i sa l t l iho t gi a s k ee e sapr u leye p t yweoafhia. career. W e from• picture of them t od he er m a an o "literary le tte m rs a , • its b man," a s distinguished ph It shows us what he may be. Till past middle e. life there was nothing to distingui s h J o h n on from any ordinary journali s t or magazines writer of the present day. H e li ve d their life and talked their talk, and th oug h h e di sliked the drudgery, never seems to have suspected that this in either of gaining his livelihood was wanting either dignity or ea rnes t ness. He did not in the least set himself up as a re former of society at large, or gi ve hi mse l f the airs of a man who was above his business. He brought his merchandize to market in all sin cerity of heart; nor could he have understood why it was less honourable to get a gu i nea f or an opinion on a book than for one upon a legal case. We dwell the more on this aspect of Johnson's character that it has lately be come the fashion in certain quarters to sneer at " the literary man," as such. And we take this opportunity, therefore, If reminding all these delicate, kid-gloved critics that in so doing they must consent to include one of the half-dozen names which have created an epoch in our literature. " Fictions of Bohemia" is a review of various recent works relating to that land of liberty. It is written in a genial and sympathetic style, and with more appre ciation of the subject than we should have expected from the Quarterly Review. The greater portion of this article is devoted to Parisian Bohemia—to the student with his ingenious shifts, and the grisette with "her " facile pleasures and merry industry "—the only objection to it being that it is a little behindhand, the two principal French works on which it is founded having been out for three or four years, and already treated at length in various periodicals. Mr. Whitty's " Friends of Bohemia" is cursorily passed over, though the British Bohemian is a curious study, and the more so, indeed, as he lives in an atmosphere so uncongenial to all around him. There is one question with regard to all this race that we should like to see solved. Do the Bohemians ever grow old ? We never hoard of one who did. Either whisky or wedlock is usually fatal to these gallant spirits before they arrive at middle age. Pauci guys a'quus amavit Jupiter—the few who rise to writing in the Times may perhape live and die old men in their " dear native country," but these great men, dis yeniti, are rare instances, as rare as a swallow in November or a wood cock in June. And, indeed, we think " what becomes of the Bohemians" would be just as interesting and puzzling a question to literary inquirers as what becomes of the first men• tioned bird of passage has been to naturalists like White and Jesse. We now pass on to a paper upon public speaking, which is capitally written, terse, and complete. But we must protest against the injustice done to Boling broke here, as to Goldsmith in a previous article. No one who has ever read attentively the letter to Sir William Wyndham, the poli tical tracts, and "The Case of Dunkirk Con sidered," could possibly deny that these aro models of a political style—a clear sweep of luminous logic, language at once sinewy and elegant, and periods easy and unlaboured, but occasionally terminating in points far more effective than that artificial flow of rhetoric in which later English writers have indulged to excess As a set-off to this reviewer's remarks, we shall quote the opinion of Lord Brougham, in his contributions to the Edinburgh Re view :—" If Bolingbroke spoke as he wrote, ho " must have been the greatest of modern orators, as far as composition goes, for ho " has the raciness and spirit, occasionally even " the fire, perhaps not the vehemence, of Fox, " with richer imagery and far more correct " diction—the accurate composition of Pitt, the " sionally the depth, of Burke, w thout his withc p i o i u n s fi n n e i :s t . 1 y e lmmoorset grace learning, and var a l e nd ' c c i " wearily-elaborate air; his speech never . de " generates for an instant into disser,tat_iolne. " which Burke scarcely ever avoids. 1 as able as political article of the Quarterly