The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

I f ittr a t ur t. Novels and Novelists, from Elizabeth to Victoria. By J. Cordy Jeaffreson. Two Vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. A rAnisii beadle aping the dignity of the Sivaker of the House of Commons is hardly more ludicrous than a minor author assuming the airs of an Aristarchus. The dogmatism and arrogance which the world might reluctantly endure from a Warburton, a Johnson, or a Macaulay, are most ridiculous when exhibited by a literary man who has his laurels still to win; and though activity in censure, and energy in attack, count for something in politics, the world of letters demands attainments, and style, and judicial candour from a writer who ventures to pronounce in a peremptory manner upon great literary names. A few years since an author of considerable talents (who has since emigrated to Australia) did no little injury to his reputation by publishing a censorious work " criticizing " all his contemporaries, assailing some, and panegyrizing others. We cannot help thinking that " The Police of Literature " have in ge neral been far too lenient to writers with the flippancy of Lord Jeffrey, but wanting his grace, neatness, and philosophic power. The reading public has a right to be protected , against the e rrors of ambitious novices , who in measuring genius with their two-foot rule " might bring the critical department of Belles Lettres into general disrepute, if their superficiality VI as not exposed. The subject taken by Mr. Jeaffreson in this work is one of the best that could be chosen for a writer who could unite critical capacity with a brilliant style. The Novel has gradually ex panded from an idle toy into an intellectual tool ; it was the amusement of the frivolous in former times—it is now a sort of actual necessity for all classes. How so great and rapid a change came about in one department of literature, and what further developments might be expected in fiction, would be a good theme for a philosophic writer ; but Mr. Jeaffreson cannot rise with the importance of his subject, nor is he oral to the variety of illustrations required by it. He has produced two volumes whose anecdotic matter and miscel laneous contents may suit them for the shelves of a circulating-library, but there is nothing weighty or sterling in the text of his work. He has no style, nor does he appreciate the merits of finished composition. There is no depth in his literary views, and his critical excursions arc only of the empirical, as opposed to the scientific method. lie has no profound views upon fiction, and his knowledge of it is entirely confined to the English school. His first volume contains epitomized biographies of twenty one novelists from Robert Greene to William Beckford; and in his second volume there are no less than eighty-eight ( ! ) "novelists " from Anne Radcliffe to Miss Yonge ! There are 407 pages of the second volume assigned to these "eighty eight," of which Dickens gets 31, Bulwer 22, Thackeray 19, Sir Walter Scott 53, Disraeli 40, Harrison Ainsworth one page, Shirley Brooks 12 lines , Mr. henry Chorley nine lines and a half, Wilkie Collins half a page, Dudley Costello not six lines, Mrs. Gaskell a page and a half; Mrs. Gore two pages ' • Lady Blessington receives thirty pages (!), Miss Landon (L.E.L.) fifteen, and Jane Austen less than four pages, while Mr. Charles Meade receives exactly as much space as is assigned to Miss Marguerite A. Power—just half a page ! Mr. Warren is squeezed into two and a half pages; Maxwell gets fourteen lines; and so on. In short, the mere figures of arith metic, without regard to the quality of the text, show a case of reckless bookmaking. To do justice to his subject, Mr. Jeaffreson should either have given a third volume to his work, or else he should have greatly retrenched the space assigned to some of his subjects. Miss Landon is recollected as a poetess, but is entirely forgotten as a "noveli s t.' English society does not care to remember Lady Blessington, who never wrote a hook that w ill live, and whose personal associa tions were melancholy and worse than equivocal. Mary Wolstonecraft gets twenty pages, though People would like sooner to know something of Irs. Gore, or to be told new particulars about THE PRESS, AUGUST 7, 1858. the admirable authoress of " Pride and Pre- judice." The errors of omission are numerous in this work. here we have no notice at all of such novelists as John Galt, Miss Ferrier, the author of "Tom Cringle's Log," or of Major liamley (" Lady Lee's Widowhood "), or of Banim (" O'Hara Family "), or Gerald Griffin. Neither the writer of " Wlntefriars," nor Mrs. Moberly, nor Lady G. Fullerton, nor Lady Emily Pon sonby, nor Eyre Evans Crowe, nor Dr. Maginn, nor Robert Bell, nor Marmion Savage (" The Falcon Family "), nor a host of other novelists, are mentioned, although Mr. Jeaffreson extols so casehardened a bookmaker as Mr. S. W. Fullom, and gives space to Miss Emilie Marryat, Mr. E. M. Whitty, Mr. Folkstone Williams, Mr. M. F. Tupper, &c. &c. After he has exhausted himself in panegyric upon Mr. Dickens, he finishes off seventy-three novelists in exactly seventy-three pa g es ! And those seventy-three writers will be little obliged to Mr. Jeaffreson for the mode in which he has " done " them. He gives us no notice of henry Brooke, author of " The Fool of Quality"; of Mrs. Sheridan, authoress of " Sidney Biddulph" ; or of Charles Johnston, author of Adventures of a Guinea." lie mentions writers without any reputation, and he omits those whose works made a noise in their day. The prose fictions that came from the pens of Mrs. Jamieson, Sheridan Knowles, and the late Jane Phillips are disregarded by him. Recollecting how identified the publishers of this work are with the literature of fiction, we must express our surprise at such a production as the present, so rich in pretension, and so poor in performance, issuing from their distinguished press. It may be observed that Mr. Jeaffreson speaks of Sir Walter Scott's interesting and genial sketches of the leading novelists of Eng land as " clumsy volumes." (!) We thank thee, Jew, for teaching us that wora. i Miss Edgeworth, n one of her latest and most finished works, pronounced a very different estimate of Scott's " Lives of the Novelists." The errors of commission are almost equal to those of omission : In 1835 Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was made a baronet nominally for his literary merits, but the literary service which won for Bulwer Lytton this questionable dignity was his political pamphlet " The Crisis." His baronetcy was simply au acknowledgment of his political services to Sir R. Peel. (!!) There is a tissue of blunders in this passage. Sir Bulwer Lytton in his life never rendered any political services to Sir It. Peel ; and " The Crisis" was a clever attack on Sir It. Peel on his return from Rome in 1834, when he formed his first Administration. When her Majesty wished to compliment Science and Literature, Lord Melbourne recommended the names of Herschel and Bulwer for baronetcies ; and it was in oppo sition to the economic and financial views of Sir R. Peel that Sir Bulwer Lytton seceded from the Liberal side, and advocated " Protection " in a mast able work. It is a most absurd blunder to assert that Sir R. Peel had aught to do with Sir B. Lytton's baronetcy. Southey was recom mended for such a distinction in 1835 by Sir R. Peel, but the then Poet Laureate declined it. Mr. Jeaffresou evidently never read " The Crisis," but for many reasons such a mistake is quite inexcusable. Again, he makes an absurd blunder in the sketch of the Chancellor of the Exchequer : For years he [Mr. Disraelli directed his cruel satire against those noble houses which he so felicitously nick named " The Venetim Aristocracy," and yet it was by the Venetian Interest that he was mainly raised to his present elevation. (!!) This is a most egregious blunder. The Chancellor of the Exchequer attacked the great Whig families as a " Venetian Interest," who desired to reduce the Monarchy of England into the position of a Doge of Venice. In doing so, Mr. Disraeli followed the hints of Lord Bolingbroke and the speeches of the second Pitt, and supplied original illustrations from his own fertile mind. Mr. Jeaffreson confounds the aristocracy at large with the " Venetian clique." how a writer addressing the public could assert that Mr. Dis raeli was " mainly raised" by the Venetian Interest does pass our comprehension. Errors of this kind — and t he y are not isolated I —greatly detract from the value of this work, m taking it even as a e re compilation. A great defect in it is its entire wa nt of original informa tion. We should like to have got some new and 751 special knowledge about Jane Austen, but Mr. Jeaffreson does little more than tell us what was printed in one of the brief prefaces to Mr. Bent ley's standard edition of one of her inimitable pictures of English genteel life in the country. He quotes what Sir 'Walter Scott wrote of her, and he might have added what such eminent critics as Coleridge and Lord Macaulay have written of that admirable picture from life. Several of her characters were portraits of persons in her neighbourhood, and information about her could still be obtained. Many people would like to know " Who is Mrs. Gore ? What was her "maiden name? Is she Scotch, English, or " Irish ? and, Where was she educated ?' None of these questions are answered in the string of generalities appended in this work to Mrs. Gore's name, and this want of personal knowledge is shown throughout the two volumes. It is evident, also, that Mr. Jeaffreson has a very limited ac quaintance with the works of the novelists he writes about. We suspect that he never read the writings of Mrs. Radcliffe with anything like due attention. He does nothing like justice to the authoress of "The Mysteries of Udolpho." Full justice has been done her genius by Sir Walter Scott and by Lord Jeffrey, and we cannot forget the compliment paid her by Byron, alluding to Venice, in the fourth canto of " Childe Ilarold" : Of joy the sojourn , and of wealth the mart, And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare" art, Had stamp'd her image in me. Even with the facts of his own volumes be fore him, Mr. Jeaffreson reasons most incon clusively. The authoress of " Jane Eyre " we are told by him " often erred by applying senti " ments she had really heard uttered, and conduct "she had really witnessed, to individuals in a class " she knew nothing about. For instance, no " English ladies of breeding, in the presence of " men, ever insulted a poor governess, as she re " presents Jane Eyre to have been insulted by "women of aristocratic rank in Mr. Rochester's " drawing-room at Thornfield, yet such a scene " would have been perfectly in place in the best " parlour of an uneducated Yorkshire spinner." We are afraid that governesses have often been insulted by women of rank, even in the presence of men, and Jane Eyre (it must be recollected) was the governess of an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Rochester ; and Mr. Jeaffreson forgets the anecdote that he has himself recounted in the life of Mary Wolstonecraft:— On one occasion, in a very large party, Mary entered into along and animated conversation with a lady of rank, who, delighted with her companion, at length begged to know her name and history. " I am Miss —s governess," said Mary with a smile. "Oh !" two flirts of her fan, — a fierce flash of her eyes, and the vulgarian of quality turned away, mentally imploring the hills to fall upon her, and the mountains to cover her ! This instance of what " a vulgarian of quality" could do should not have been forgotten by Mr. Jeaffreson. His want of personal research is a great defect. Thus, with so remarkable a subject as Mary Wol stonecraft before him, he omits to inquire into the history of her two noble pupils. Their natural lives were as romantic in many particu lars as any tales recorded by the novelists. Both of them, unhappily, contributed to the scandals of the peerage, and gave practical illustration of the defects of their teacher's system. The extra ordinary story of one of them has often been told in print, but Mr. Jeaffreson never alludes to it. When attempting to weigh merits or to esti mate character, Mr. Jeaffreson always exagge rates. lie does not keep a fair balance in his praise or censure. Thus he treats us to the following rant about Daniel De Foe : The parish register contains the fullest account extant of his interment :—" 1731, Daniel Defoe, gentleman. To Tindall's ( Lethargy). April al." Tindall's was the general burial-otround for Dissenters. A twinge shakes the nerves as we read that ambiguous word gentleman. It is such a petty title to give Daniel De Foe. The man who, when a beardless youth, saw the truth, and fearlessly declared it—who risked his life for what he Belt to be his duty—who fought zealously, and without fainting, for freedom, and was, without doubt, an instnt ment in the hands of Providence for the preservation of our national religion—for in those days of peril, when the weight of a feather would at times have turned the balance in favour of ktomanism, Protestantism was guarded not by the Anglican priesthood (for they betrayed her), but by the great champions of spiritual freedom, the Nonconformists—the man who laboured effectually in con solidating the sister countries of England and Scotland ; who was the cause of innumerable social reforms, amongst