The Press. — London, England, 1854-05-13 00:00:00

MAY 13,1854. ittraturt. Supplement to Vacation Rambles. By T. N. Talfourd. London: Moxon. WE took up this volume with every desire to be pleased. We knew Talfourd well. Who was there that did not? And, in common with the rest of the world, we esteemed him for the many excellent qualities he undoubtedly possessed. We were disposed to remember rather the virtues or amiabilities of his cha racter than its weaknesses. The time has scarcely yet arrived for a fair estimate of his literary talents; and, as this book greatly re sembles his previous continental sketches, we should, but for some passages in it, have dis missed it with due praise of the author's appreciation of the pleasant and picturesque. His observations on Sir William Follet, how ever, force us to inquire what were his quali fications for sitting in judgment on the most eminent of his legal contemporaries. His character of this distinguished lawyer is so disparaging and so essentially unjust that it would be unfair to allow it to be supposed that the sagacity and candour of the critic are above question. Mr. Justice Talfourd was totally wanting in those higher powers of intellect which would have enabled him to understand and appre ciate a mind like Follett's. His mental, like his physical, temperament was flaccid. He had none of those strongly-marked peculiari ties which violently attract one class of men and violently repel another. He had much sensibility, but it had no deep root. The fleshy form, the warmth of manner, the fluent, bubbling speech, inclining to hysterical effort when he became excited, were characteristic of the man. He had been educated in the " gushing, genial " school of Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt, and had the good fortune to live to witness a very superior development of it in Charles Dickens. He was strongest in sentiment; but his sentiment was not of that kind which, as in the case of Rousseau, wholly possesses and masters a nature. In Talfourd it was judiciously tempered with worldly pru dence, and found convenient expression in rhetorical flourish. Generosity belongs to a different order of being from his ; but he was kindly, and meant to be just. He.was very willing to do good—very unwilling to do harm ; still life has it necessities, and the path which a sergeant-at-law has to tread is not free from sinuosities and thorns. Luckily for his reputation he was affection ately regarded by a large body of friends, to whom the chance of the day committed a great share of the power of directing public opinion through the press. That he well merited this personal attachment every one must allow, but it is a mischievous error of criticism which confounds personal traits with intellectual merit, and turns " troops of friends " into co teries of flatterers. His works are full of prettiness, but we look in them in vain for any evidence of power. We recognise great cultivation, great industry, great fluency, con siderable art, but no originality. In his prose works, and particularly in these " Rambles," his descriptions are smooth, but not graphic. The ut picturapoesis is nowhere to be found, and there is in them a vein—becoming too prevalent in our literature—of bringing the writer, his associates, connections, and friends always before the eye. It is well known that he formed an extravagantly high opinion of his own productions, and that he was induced to rank literary success much above legal emi nence. The notice of Follett is suggested by an entry of his name in the innkeeper's book at Naples, mid as the record is read there occurs a reflection on " the desolation of his rayless " grave." When Follett was in his last illness, honours such as no mere lawyer had ever re- ceived before were lavished on him. A frigate was placed at his disposal to bring him home from Naples ; the Queen was constant in in quiries after his health ; he tendered his resig nation of the office of Attorney-General, but, although he had been incapable of discharging its duties for more than a year before his death, the Prime Minister refused to accept his resig. THE PRESS. nation, saying no other person should hold it whilst Follett lived. Ho died Attorney- General, and when he was borne to that " ray. less grave," in the eastern corner of the Temple Church, the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, and the Home Secretary, were amongst those that held up the pall. A dozen pages of the " Rambles" are filled with para graphs like these : A name dear to the'affections of afew friends ; the waning image of a modest and earnest speaker; and the splendid example of success embodied in a fortune of 200,0001., ac quired in ten years by the labours which hastened its ex tinction—are all this world possesses of Sir William Follett. The poet's anticipation, " Non omnis moriar," so far as it indicates earthly duration, has no place in the sur viving vestiges of his career. To mankind, to his country, to his profession he has left nothing; not a measure con ceived, not a danger averted, not a principle vindicated ; not a speech intrinsically worthy of preservation ; not a striking image, not an affecting sentiment; in his death the power of mortality is supreme. How strange—how sadly strange—that a course so splendid should end in darkness so obscure! No collection of the speeches of Follett has been made— none will ever be attempted—no speech he delivered is read, except perchance as part of an interesting trial and essential to its story, and then the language is felt to be poor, the cadences without music, and the composition vapid and spiritless. Curiously enough, it is argued further on that this advocate, " unmised beyond his office," deserved a statue, though not remem brance : An advocate like Follett, of qualities most happily adapted to his office and unraised beyond it, who has died before he has invested a family with hereditary honours, can only be manifested to another generation by a durable effigy. I am, therefore, glad that a statue, worthy in the felicity of its execution to manifest the personal appear. ance of the child and conqueror of Fortune, holds a place among the effigies of our honoured dead. We have no information as to who is responsible for the publication of this passage; but, whoever that person may be, he would have consulted Judge Talfourd's reputation if he had asked any man wearing either stuff or silk at Westminster whether Follett obtained his law " out of a page of ' Harrison's Digest.' " That Follett was only a lawyer we believe that he himself was the last man to have denied ; but that he was a great lawyer his profession and his country would quite as readily admit. Those who remember that massive forehead, that determined mouth and speaking eye, which (all but the last) Behnes has so well perpetuated in stone,—those who remember the clear and searching narrative with which his client's tale was told, who can recal the quiet remark by which ignorance was set down or rodomontade demolished,—will have no diffi culty in finding why it was that Follett had brilliant—almost fabulous—success. His mind, as is commonly the ease with the highest in tellects, was of an eminently practical cast. It grappled with the work it had to do, and manifested its superiority, not by extraneous show, but by the completeness of the results it purposed. When Justice Talfourd com plains that Follett " neither exalted his sub "ject by imagination, nor illustrated it by wit, " nor softened its details by pathos," but " went into the arena stripped of all incum " brance to win, and contended studious only " and always of victory," he merely displays his own littleness. For, what should intellect aim at but the realisation of its aims ? Those aims will be essentially distinct in different branches of intellectual exertion. A Newton works for the development of Nature's laws, — a Wellington for the triumph of his country's arms,—a barrister for the success of his client John Noakes. If the aim seem grander in one case than the other, we must rather blame the accident which directs the flow of intellect into different channels than the individual who concentrates its power to achieve the work set before him. But the criticism on Follett is peculiarly ungracious, as his lofty intellect was quenched so early. What would Lord Hardwicke, or Lord Mansfield, or Lord Ellenborough, or almost any great lawyer in our history, have left in the shape of legal principles and recorded judgments had he died at Follett's ago of forty-eight? To that period his life was spent in acquiring the knowledge and maturing the ability which it is but reasonable to assume would have shone splendidly forth had he survived to fill high judicial station. Those same faculties which 447 were lent to the cause of his client would then have been devoted to the service of the publio and the interests of justice. Had Justice Tal fourd lamented the " early dimming " of so brilliant a light, and inferred that opportunity alone was wanting to render so eminent an advocate still more eminent as a judge, he would have shown more discrimination and charity than in these ill-considered remarks, which seem intended to depreciate the ability he could never hope to rival. As for the rest, non °lnnis nurriar is an in trepid boast, and those who venture on it should be sure that they have done the work before they adopt the self-sufficiency of Horace. Here we quit " Vacation Rambles," regretting that a nature so generally amiable as Talfourd's should have suffered its judgment to be warped by envy or misapprehension. The Nations of Russia and Turkey, and their Destiny. By Ivan Golovin. London : Triibner and Co. Ma. IVAN GoLovIN is a refugee, and the state ments of such persons must always be taken with some qualification. He writes, moreover, for a public unusually excited by passing events, and ready to swallow almost any fic tion that tells to the disadvantage of the Russian Court or people. Hence we incline rather to withhold our confidence from the so styled revelations of this work; which, in a literary point of view, is not without merit, being written in a pointed French style, and containing a great deal of matter in few pages. It is a repertory of curious anecdotes and apocryphal statistics. When the author (p. 7) shows himself egregiously incorrect in so simple a calculation as that of the territorial area of Russia, which he reduces far below the reality—when he reviles Nicholas for having at the commencement of his reign hanged "five reformers," these reformers being con spirators taken in arms, who had attempted to raise a mutiny in the army—when he quotes Blanqui, the Socialist and ultra- Democrat, as a " French Conservative "—it is impossible not to read with distrust his vague and sweeping incriminations of whole classes, and the fragments of private history with which he entertains us. They may bo true ; they certainly cannot be refuted; but we should like better authority. On the subject of Turkey Mr. Golovin writes with equal show of knowledge, and, having no personal quarrel to avenge, with more impartiality. He seems to believe in the regeneration of the Ottoman empire, but after a peculiar fashion. The in troduction of the representative systo - (qutere, universal suffrage and the ballot ?) wm lead to Islamism being outvoted, and to till establishment of a Greek nationality. Russihe ho thinks, is aware of this probability, ana, therefore hastens to forestal it by an armed occupation. We need not observe that thid solution of the Eastern question is contrary is that adopted by all the most experienced politicians. Setting aside the question od " pressure from without," it is exceedingly unf likely that the Turks, having arms in their hands, a monopoly of power, and being backed by a vast Mahometan population in Asia, will consent to resign theirhold over the European provinces without a struggle, or that in such struggle they will be defeated. On the future of Russia herself Mr.Golovins' ideas seem to us yet wilder. " Siberia," he says, " is full of the spirit of freedom," and re quires only an increase of numbers to separate herself from Russia. Siberia—whose whole population does not exceed that of London— whose two millions aro scattered over an area of 6,000 miles by more than 2,ooo—whose aborigines are wild and mostly nomad tribes—and whose whole system of govern ment is military and despotic ! Nor do we place much faith in the vision of an " United Slavonic Republic," to be balanced by a French state similarly organised, and another in Germany. Any man may speculate on the destinies of mankind—the future belongs to all—but there is something even ridiculous in an obscure student dismembering Europe on paper, and marking off on his map the boundary lines of imaginary empires. There are many interesting chapters in this book, none more so than those which relate