The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-13 00:00:00

1110 littrature. Curiosities of Literature. By Isaac Disraeli. A New Edition. Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by his Son, the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, Chancellor of her Majesty's Exchequer. In Three Vols. Vol. HI. London : Routledge. ONE, of the greatest merits that any work can possess is that of setting an example, by intro ducing a new school of composition. English literature did not particularly affect the exhibi tion of ana in the French and Italian fashion ; and we think that the "Curiosities of Literature" may be cited as an instance in which the de scriptive talents of a popular essayist are happily combined with the quaint knowledge and out-of the-way research of the compiler of ana. The title of the work, also, contributed to its success, and seldom did a work so well answer its title page. Almost every article in the three volumes is " curious " in some respect or another ; and with the table-talk in Boswell's Johnson, and the lively letters of Horace Walpole, the " Curiosities of Literature" may be placed—always various and always new, and fit for being perused in almost any mood of mind. The amenity of its composer, his easy temper, his suave regard for the cheerful views of life, diffuse an agreeable spirit through its pages such as cannot be looked for amidst the compilations of profounder thinkers who were crabbed in their thoughts and inelegant in their style. It may be, perhaps, true that literature of this kind is more relaxing than bracing, more amusing than instructive, more "bizarre" than brilliant. But Literature, like the Arts, has a great variety of branches in which genius and taste can display their resources. Because we admire the works of the sculptor, the painter, and the architect, we are not therefore to hold lightly the talents of a carver like Grinling Gibbons, or the triumphs in gardening of Le - Notre, or Capability Brown. Lord Macaulay may thunder out his invective against Horace Walpole, yet " Strawberry Hill," with its picturesque accessories, " curiosities " of antiquity, and rich illustrations of bygone days, could only have been produced by a virtuoso; and the witty Frenchman was right in calling Abbotsford " a romance in stone and mortar." Isaac Disraeli's " Curiosities of Literature" was something more, and less (if we may use the facon de parler), than the magnum opus of a great author. lie showed himself in it as a vir tuoso on paper. He brought odd knowledge from musty folios, and made it sparkle in his own gracefully light setting; he took us over contro versial themes, but never lost his temper ; he showed us various sides of disputed critical ques tions, but puzzled neither himself nor his readers in endeavouring to explain the intricate enigmas of philosophy. As we said in our former notices, we must regard the " Curiosities " from the point of view in which the work was composed, and we must not look to find in it the decisive gravity of tone, the judicial weight and fairness that mark the writings of Mr. Hallam. The " Curiosities " is a work which might be attacked by one trained in the narrow and unfair rules of Lord Jeffrey's school of criticism. That eminent reviewer was fond of disparaging works of merit, because they were something different in kind from what he expected. lie disparaged Scott's poetry because it was conversant with Border warfare and illus trative of Gaelic traditions and habits, and did not belong to the moral school of Pope and Crabbe ; whereas a sounder and fairer critic would, in weighing Scott's merits as a poet, be content to have inquired, " Has his verse the resonant energy required for ballad poetry, for describing the combats of Gaelic chieftains, and painting the ever changing colours of the hill and dale of Highland scenery ?" In Art criticism, it is an established canon that works must be criticised from the point of view in which they were designed ; and we certainly think that in critical literature the same rule ought to hold Food. Has the author been just to his own ideas ? Is his learning original or borrowed ? Is his labour genuine, or is he an artful dealer in rhetorical mosaic ? Such are the questions always open to critics, and affording :to ample scope to their acuteness, their knowledge, and their faculty for judicial appraisal of literary merits. THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 13, 1858. With these views, we can have no hesitation in saying that the " Curiosities of Literature " must triumphantly defy the malice of some super ficial snarlers who have sought to wither its fair fame. The reading public has long since made up its mind that the " Curiosities" was a good book, and a fourth generation of readers will confirm the praise bestowed upon it. The Dry asdusts could never produce anything half so interesting, or lively, or entertaining. Isaac Disraeli had one special quality which he knew well how to employ. He had a remarkable sense of knowing how much of profundity or disserta tion a general reader would endure, and he chose his matter and discussed it with a shrewd and artistic sense of how the reader would be affected. Ile saw how much Voltaire had been able to do with popularizing grave subjects, and making them readable by the crowd, while at the same time treating them in literary spirit. Apart from his reading, and acuteness, and ingenious turn of mind, Isaac Disraeli's style makes competition with him a hopeless thing for all the Dryasdusts, who were ever Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep. We shall select some:of the characteristic pas sages in the volume before us. " The History of New Words" is a most entertaining article. In it the author observes : There are three foul corruptors of • language : caprice, affectation, and ignorance ! Such fashionable cant terms as "theatricals," and " musicals," invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity of frivolity. A lady eminent for the elegance of her taste, and of whom one of the best judges, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth, observed to me, that she spoke the purest and most idiomatic English she had ever heard, threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our present fashion able vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have lived to hear the ♦ulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room circles. To lunch, now so familiar from the fe-est lips, in her youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of late among our yuuug ladies, a nice man, whatever it may mean, whether that the man resemble a pudding or something more nice, conveys the offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up I When 1 was a boy, it was an age of bon tow; this good tone mysteriously conveyed a sublime idea of fashion the term, imported late in the eighteenth century, closed with it, Twaddle for a while succeeded bore; hut bore has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new edition of his " Polite Conversation." A dictionary of barbarisms too might he collected from sline wretched neologists, whose pens are now at work! Lord Chester field, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's Dic tionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should add as an appendix," A neological dictionary, con taining those polite, though perhaps not strictly gram matical, words and phrases commonly used, and sometimes understood 'uy the beau-nwnde." To the three sources of corruption of a tongue mentioned by I. Disraeli a fourth might be added —provincialism. Our English language has to some extent suffered from the localisms and from the unidiomatic construction of several Scotch and Irish writers. These provincial writers affect the construction of a language more than its positive diction. If our own Dr. Johnson Latinized the English tongue, the rhetorical style of the Edinburgh Reviewers, and of writers like Burke and others, removed the standard of purity too much from genuine Saxon models. " Horner " has good English, but it is only governess' " English," said a Parliamentary critic, alluding to the artificial mode of speaking employed by Francis Horner. Slang is also a ruinous cor ruption of a language, and several instances might be cited. The annotator on the above passage remarks : The term pluck, once only known to the prize-ring, has now got into use in general conversation, and also into literature, as a term in lieative of ready courage. Such terms as "patent to the public "—" normal condi tion "—" crass behaviour," are i the inventions of the last few years. We have been told that "pluck" originated in the cockpit and not in the prize-ring, and that there was always the phrase about a cock, " He'll " pluck up again." IVe have never met with any public writer or speaker using the phrase "crass behaviour " ; and so applied, the term has no meaning ; but Lord Brougham, as we ourselves well remember, on a memorable occasion used the word " crass ignorance." Against the use of the word " talented," which is originally an Americanism, there were strong protests uttered by the late Mr. Croker and Mr. Lockhart ; but the word seems to have become naturalized, and we observe good writers using it, though one might as well say, "a geniused gentleman." In this article I. Disraeli observes that Cicero invented the term "moral philosophy." This is a mistake. Ethical philosophy was treated of eo nomine by several Greeks before Cicero's time, thou(,•h he used the word mog as an equivalent for the corresponding Greek word. The whole of this article, indeed, would require more critical annotation than has been given to it in this edi. tion. The following passage is curious : A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term which, though unknown to the languag e , conveys a collective assemblage of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of genius; ne w words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterises these hirelings; he called them answer jobbers. We have not dropped the fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of per. ception in our lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in England —to liberalise; the noun has been drawn out of the verb—for in the Marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now a sect; and to liberalise was theoretically introduced before the Liberals arose. It is curious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our language a very opposite meaning to its recent one. It was syno- nymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have "a liberal villain " and " a most profane and liberal eon. sellor : " we find one declaring " I have spoken too liberally." This is unlucky for the Liberals, who will not— Give allowance to our liberal jests Upon their persons — Beaumont and Fktehet. Dr. Priestley employed a forcible, but not an elegant teem, to mark the general information which had began in his day ; this he frequently calls " the spread of knowledge." Burke attempted to brand with a new name that set of pert, petulant, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as phitosophisns, and the philosophers themselves as ph;lo. sophists.. He would have designated them as literators, but few exotic words will circulate; new words must be the coinage of our own language to blend with the verna cular idiom. Many new words are still wanted. " Answer-jobbers" is an expressive word worthy of the minting of the Dean of St. Patrick's, but the organization which has produced leading articles has destroyed the occupation of " answer , jobbers." We are not sure whether I. Disraeli is right in tracing " liberalize " to the late Lord Lansdowne, but tt is possible that he is correct. In Mr. Hallam's " Constitutional llistory " there is a well-penned contrast between the Whip and the Tories, and the able author uses the phrase " territorial aristocracy,' and he also employs in characterization of the Tories adjective " conservative." It was Mr. Crolk we believe, who proposed that the party opposed to destruction should be called " Conservatives." We believe that the word " radical," in eon , nection with " Reform," can be traced to Horne Tooke. On " Political Nicknames" there some interesting illustrations in this volume Concerning the origin of the words " Whig and " Tory," Disraeli observes : These silly terms of reproach, IVhig and Tory, are ' preserved among us, as if the palladium of British liberty was guarded by these exotic names—for they are not Eng• lish—which the parties so invidiously bestow on each other. They are ludicrous enough in their origin. The friends of the Court and the advocates of lineal succession were, by the republican party, branded with the title r Tories, which was the name of certain Irish robbers; WL. the Court party in return cquld find no other revenge than by appropriating to the covenanters and the republican: of that class the name of the Scotch beverage of soul milk whose virtue they considered so expressive of the; dispositions, and which is called whigg. So ridiculous their origin were these pernicious nicknames, which 1 excited feuds and quarrels in domestic life, and may be said to divide into two great parties this land o f polii freedom. We have seen it contended, also, that " whig gam" was a word used by west-country carrier in Scotland equivalent to the English "gey-ht. of the waggoners. The text is not strictly sem rate about the way that the word :fories cam( into fashionable use. The article on " Palaces built by Ministers' interesting, but several illustrations might added to it. Not only did Walpole bur lioughton, but Chatham, though with lit money to spend, rushed into stone and mortar his seat in Somersetshire, and even made workmen labour by torchlight. From our of observation we should say that politicians have passion for building houses. Lord Brougham the busiest period of his life set about entailing his family seat of Brougham (alias " The Bird's Nest") into the present imposing structure. Sir Robert Peel spent vast sums on Drayton Manor, besides collecting a picture gallery. The Irish agitator, O'Connell, erected a vast barr ack-ike structure, which he called De e Abbey Wilson Cruker built large =or hun d of dent 'hole tical edi- th its mg t ., unar m ; new ;Ist a olarly other, R, but lingi ; d the f per. mina If late .for in :Oen tically tus to iguage sync e eon. 11 100 not— ; term, in hie elge." set of iy the uiahed ph;lo. yators, net be vents- Orthy s, but ading swer• sraeli Lord irrect. there Arhige es the abs s the roker, posed tives." con- ionic T are dupe. irhig ire gill liberty Eng• n each I . The cession title of while .4e than iblicans of sour tf their loos in ill long icy still wlitical Whig • irriere v-ho accu- came ill" is ht be build little rtar in le the tr own lave a F un at a rcing Bird's !. Sir Irish k -like LbbeY•