The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-25 00:00:00

I NOVEMBER 25, 1854. cent and important evidence Mr. Cunningham takes no notice, except in a cursory way at page 334. This point is the more noticeable as we find in the life of " Congreve," in the present edition (vol. ii., p. 234), Mr. Cunningham quotes a passage from a letter, first published in Bell's "Life of Dryden," referring to Dryden's private account of what the town thought of The Double-Dealer. But if Mr. Bell is to be referred to for evidence of the first iin pressions of the town on Congreve's new play, why should not the editor of the present work refer to the same source for evidence to rescue the fame of " glorious John Dryden " from having acted in religion such a part as is implied in the title of Congreve's comedy? But we may here observe, that on the question of Dryden's sincerity the autho rities stand thus : Johnson, Scott, Hal lam, and Bell, are favourable to Dryden; Mr. Macaulay severely hostile ; and Mr. Cunningham appears to have formed no opinion. We may add that in the Dublin Review (vol. xxvi., pp. 420-33) the ques tion is ably argued against Mr. Macaulay. In notes on the ininutite of literary and per sonal history, however, Mr. Cunningham displays a wide range of knowledge. His notes of this nature amount in the whole to many hundreds, and they are usually useful as correcting errors in the text, or supplying information which Johnson would not take the trcuble to collect. In many oases inter esting anecdotes are given. The following seems to have escaped all Garrick's bio graphers : Of David Garrick, thus accidentally brought before me, I have something to tell that is new. His early life was wild, and his father in his will (which I have seen) makes his wife his executrix, and leaves liberal legacies to all his children—David excepted. The only mention of the actor whose death was to eclipse the gaiety of nations and im noverish the public stock of harmless pleasure is as foi -1 iws:—" Item, to my son David one shilling." Captain Garrick, the father, was, when he made his will, Ist January, 1730-7, in London. He died three months afterwards. The future actor was then in his twenty-first year. Not many of Waller's good sayings have been preserved, but the following strikes us as a choice specimen : A motion being made in the House of Commons that such as were chosen to serve in the Parliament trooper s'iluld be faithful' and skillful] riders, Mr. Waller's opinion was demanded, who approved the forme of it as excellent ; " for," ,ayes he, " it is most necessary the riders be faithful least they runne away with their horses, and skillful' least their horses runne away with them."—L'Estrange's Anec doled. In the elucidation of literary history, Mr. Cunningham often displays great vigilance and sagacity. The discovery of a poem by Parr, which had escaped all the poet's editors, through the hints given in Swift's journal, ii. 93, is a remarkable instance of successful re search. Mr. Cunningham is also sometimes very happy in tracking a sentiment or thought through different writers. The oft-quoted line, God made the country, and man made the town, is always referred to Cowper, but Cowley wrote before him, with even stronger emphasis, God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. The propriety of Johnson's term of " meta physical poets " applied to Donne, Cowley, and writers of that class has been much canvassed, but in a note it is shown that Johnson did not invent the term, but found it as it was first used by Dryden and afterwards by Pope. But in some small critical points Mr. Cunningham himself falls into error. Thus, in his preface (xxiv.), he writes : He (Johnson) does not delight in fiction or in blank verse, but likes sterling sense expressed in vigorous Eng lish, and in English hexameters with rhyme. A strange mistake, " English hexameters will rhyme !" and the judgment is no less strangely contradicted lower down : He gives ( I feel and regret) a most undue preference to blank verse over rhyme, and is too uncompromising an advocate for the school of Dryden and Pope ; yet, when his principles are understood, it is easy to read him without falling into his errors. We suppose the preference is meant to rhyme over blank verse. We must notice one contradiction of more consequence which occurs between a passage in the preface and another in the notes. Referring to the story THE PRESS. of Milton having been whipped at college, he says: — That Milton suffered the That Milton was whipped indignity of corporal coffee- at college rests on the autho tion at college is now, among rity of Aubrey, who states the those that read, pretty gene• circumstance in connection rally exploded ; but it will be with other particulars of the long before the impression poet's early life as " from is thoroughly rooted out, ad- his brother, Mr. Christopher winced as it is by Johnson, Milton." Aubrey's accuracy and countenanced by Byron is curiously confirmed by the in a poem like " Don Juan." industry and knowledge of That Shakespeare stole deer, I'. Warton (see Aubrey's and that Milton was whipt at " Lives," iii. 444, and "Mil. college, will long continue ( I ton's Minor Poems," by fear) among the vulgar errors Warton, p. 423). Aubrey of our literature.—Preface. was a curious inquirer, with ample means of information, and no motive whatever for telling a lie.—Notes. We may notice another error on a matter of fact. In the " Lite of Addison," in the second volume, where Johnson refers to the incompatibility of character between Lord Wharton, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Addison, as secretary, (vol. ii., p. 129), Mr. Cunningham subjoins : Though little is to be said in favour of Wharton, I am afraid Johnson has confounded the father with the son— the first marquis with the first duke. The marquis died 1715. Why should Mr. Cunningham " fear that Johnson has confounded " the father and son? He raises a doubt and does not solve it. But the text of Johnson is right. Lord Wharton, the Irish viceroy alluded to in the text, was created Earl of' Wharton in 1706, and Marquis in 1714 (Brydgo's " Collin's Peerage, vol. ix., p. 996). He was the subject of Swift's violent pamphlet " A Short Character," and in Scott's " Swift" there is abundant evidence to show that his character must have been almost as opposite to Addison's as his still more notorious (and more gifted) son, the Duke of Wharton. It was on the father that, in the notes on Burnet's His tory, Swift penned the emphatic sentence, " The most universal villain I ever knew." Of late years there has been some contro versy as to Addison's fame. The most brilliant tribute to his memory we know of is from Dugald Stewart, in his "Preliminary Disserta tion in the Encyclopedia Britaunica. The influence of Addison on popular thought is there stated with great power. But Mr. Cunningham has no allusion to it, though it is well worth citing. Addison was the favourite author of the brilliant Canning, and his in fluence can be seen in the ease and graceful smoothness of the orator's speeches. Mr. Cunningham might have added much inter esting matter to many of his notes by referring to the persons with whom particular poets have been favourites. As we think more favourably of Crabbe when we know that his " Phoebe Daw son " was the last poetry read to Charles Fox and Sir Walter Scott, so we take pleasure in knowing that Addison on the " Immortality of the Soul " was the last book of any kind read to Burke on his deathbed, and at his special desire. In the last century it was fashionable to quote from Prior in Parliament, from the time when Lord Chatham made his admirable quotation from "The English Padlock "—as applied to America. The last time we recollect Prior being quoted in the Senate was by the late Earl Grey. In his dexterous defence of Lord Clarendon in the " Birch Scandal," Lord John Russell gracefully applied an unhack neyed quotation, alluding to the Order of the Garter : Those emblems Cecil did invest, And gleamed on wise Oodolphin's breast. There was a question at the tune where the lines were to be found, and some egregious errors were made, as some M.P.'s who were looked on as authorities said they were " from Prior " ! They are from the nearly-forgot ten Tickell, iu his verses to the Earl of Sun derland (Dodsley's Collection, vol i., p. 39). The mention of Tickell's name recals us to one of Mr. Cunningham's notes. Johnson, in his life of that poet (vol. ii., p. 323), remarks upon his translation of the first book of the " Iliad " : Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other circumstances concurred, Pope always in his Art of Sinking " quotes this book as the work of Addison. Mr. Cunningham subjoins : See chapter xii., where, after quoting several instances from the rival tra nslation, be adds, " or these of the same 1121. hand," quoting Addison's lines on Sacheverell. See " Mis cellanies, the last Volume," Bro., 1728. p. 81. Dr. Young, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Harte, and Lord Lyt telton, each of them assured me that Addison himself cer tainly translated the first book of Homer.—Warfon on Pope, ii. 248, ed. 1782. Steele, in the Dedication to Congreva of Addison's " Drummer," challenges the reputed translator of the first book to produce a second. But if Mr. Cunningham referred to the edition of the " Miscellanies " for 1732 he would find that the version is referred to distinctly in the twelfth chapter as Tickell's, under the abbre viated references Ti. Horn. 11. The work is excellent in its typography, and remarkably cheap. A handsomer or more convenient edition of British Classics for his library no gentleman need desire ; and, though iu this case we should have preferred a freer style of critical commenting, yet we are by no means inclined to underrate the extent and value of Mr. Cunningham's labours. He has, we learn, long contemplated editing the book, and been for years collecting his materials. There may be some difference of opinion as to the style of annotation which should have been adopted, but every one must acknowledge that Mr. Cunningham has illustrated the text with a vast amount of curious and useful in formation, which sensibly adds to the value of the book, and must greatly conduce to the pleasure of the reader. A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies. By Mrs. Jameson. London : Longmans. Mits. JAMESON'S volume is made up of frag• ments, ethical, autobiographical, theological, literary, and artistic. These fragments are all distinguished by elegance of sentiment, but they are more egotistical than we were prepared to expect from this lady's previous writings, and they are, on the whole, marked rather by fanciful feeling than depth of thought. Mrs. Jameson must by her own account have been an extraordinary child. Her auto biographical fragment relates to her life be• tweet' her fifth and tenth year. When six years old, she says I suffered from the fear of not being loved where I had attached myself, and froin'the idea that another was pre furred before we, such anguish as had nearly killed me. She was remarkable also for a vindictive spirit of rather a peculiar kind recollect that when one of those set over me inflicted what then appeared a most horrible injury and injustice, the thoughts of vengeance haunted my fancy fur months : but it was an inverted sort of vengeance. 1 imagined the house of my enemy on fire, and rushed through the flames to rescue her. She was drowning, and I leaped into the deep water to draw her forth. She was pining in prison, and I forced bars and bolts to deliver her. If this were magnanimity, it was not the less vengeance ; for, observe, I always fancied evil, and shame. and humiliation to my ad. versaty ; to myself the role of superiority and gratified pride. She was left to conquer this spirit as she best could, and thus, she remarks, it always " has been, and always must be, with all " strong natures." She recollects that she had " an early, instinctive, boundless delight " in external beauty," and, with unusual dis crimination in a child, she could analyse the source of the pleasure she felt in poetry : It was this intense sense of beauty which gave the first zest to poetry : I losed it, not bemuse it told me what I did not - know, but because it helped me to words in which to clothe my own knovrleqe and perceptions, and reflected back the pictures unconsciously hoarded up in my mind. This was what made Thomson's " Seasons " a favourite book when I first began to read for my own amusement, and before I could understand one half of it. In her youthful reading Khc seems to have had a peculiar faculty of getting impressions of evil from some books, and good from others. Thus she relates : I remember impressions of vice and cruelty from some parts of the Old Testament and Goldsmith's " History of England," which I shudder to recal. She recollects also that some tracts and stories by Mrs. Hannah More did her much " moral mischief." Shakspeare, on the con trary, though surely not less emphatic in examples of vice and cruelty than either of the above hooks, only gave her delight:— I hail read him all through between seven and ten years old. lie never did me any moral mischief. He never soiled my mind with any disordered image. What was ex ceptionable and coarse in language. I passed by without attaching any meaning whatever to ft. _ y...