The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-09 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 9,1858. he was only acting in accordance with the spirit of the age. On the subject of Puritanism and Sir W. Scott, we would beg to call the reviewer's attention to a passage upon that question in a weekly contemporary* of the date of Sept. 18th, in which Sir Walter's testimonies to the worth of Puritanism are all brought together, in rebuttal of Mr. Sanford's charges of unfairness. One more remark, and we have done. At page 410 of this article we find one of those Oaring traits of partiality of which Mr. Sanford and all his class of writers are so unconscious, while so ready to charge others with the same fault. Of the men who refused to push Reform into Rebellion the reviewer says :—" They could " not add to their faith patience, and condoned " the errors of the King because they could not " stomach equality with the King's opponents." Now, pray, why ? What right in the world have we to impute these motives to men like Falkland and hioutrose ? Will any one tell us that a man of Strafford's calibre had any reason to be jealous of Pym? Montrose of Argyle? or Falkland of Essex? But the Royalists must be in the wrong, forsooth, at any price ! And this gross imputation of superfluous motives is the price which even the National is willing to pay.—The next article of note is on Mr. Charles Dickens. The two prin cipal conclusions that we carry away from it are not strikingly novel, yet the whole paper is both interesting and useful That Mr. Charles Dickens belongs to the order of irregular rather than of symmetrical geniuses, and that his best characters are caricatures, are opinions we have long held without being proud of our originality. It is the way in which the paper is worked out, and the style in which it is written, that make it such pleasant reading. Here are some ex amples : He has a very peculiar power of taking hold of some particular traits, and making a character out of them. He is especially apt to incarnate particular professions in this way. Many of his people never speak without some allusion to their occupation. You cannot separate them from it. Nor does the writer ever separate them. What would Mr. Mould be if not an undertaker? or Mrs. Gamp if not a nurse? or Charley Rates if not a pickpocket? Not only is human nature in them subdued to what it works in, but there seems to be no nature to subdue ; the whole character is the idealization of a trade, and is not in fancy or thought distinguishable from it. Accordingly, of neces• city, such delineations become caricatures. We do not in general contrast them with reality ; but as soon as we do, we are struck with the monstrous exaggerations which they present. You could no more fancy Sam Weller, or Mark Tapley, or the Artful I)odger really existing, walking about among common ordinary men and women, than you can fancy a talking duck or a writing bear. They are utterly beyond the pale of ordinary social intercourse. We sus pect, in.laed, that Mr. Dickens does not conceive his characters to himself as mixing in the society he mixes in. He sees people in the street, doing certain things, talking in a certain way, and his fancy petrifies them in the act. He goes on fancying hundreds of reduplications of that act and that speech ; he frames an existence in which there is nothing else but that aspect which attracted his attention. • • • • a Mr. Pickwick moves easily over all the surface of English life from Goswell•street to Dingley Dell, from I)ingley Dell to the Ipswich elections, from drinking milk • punch in a wheelbarrow to sleeping in the approximate pound, and no one ever thinks of applying to him the ordinary maxims which we should apply to any common person in life, or to any common personage in a fiction. Nobody thinks it is wrong in Mr Pickwick to drink too much milk•punch in a wheelbarrow, to introduce worth less people of whom he knows nothing to the families of people for whom he really cares ; nobody holds him respon- sible for the consequences ; nobody thinks there is any thing wrong in his taking Mr. 13cb Sawyer and Mr. Ben• jamin Allen to visit Mr. Winkle senior, and thereby almost irretrievably offending him with his son's marriage. We do not reject moral remarks such as these, hut they never occur to as. Indeed the indistinct consciousness that such observations are possible, and that they are hovering &bent our minds, enhances the humour of the narrative. We are in a conventional world, where the mere elliliVad of common life do not apply, and yet which has all the amusing detail, and picturesque elements, and singular eccentricities of common life. Mr. Pickwick is a per sonified ideal; a kind of amateur in life, whose course we watch through all the circumstances of ordinary existence, and at whose follies we are amused just as really skilled people are at the mistakes of an amateur in their art. His being in the pound is not wrong; his being the, victim of Messrs. Dodson is not foolish. " Always shout with the mob," said Mr, Pickwick. " But suppose there are two mobs," said Mr. Snodgrass. " Then shoat with the loudest," said Mr. Pickwick. This is not in him weakness or time-serving, or want of principle, as in most even of fictitious people it would be. It is his way. • • • • • At the same time it is essential to remember, that how. ever great may be and is the charm of such exaggerated personifications, the best specimens of them are immensely less excellent, belong to an altogether lower range of intel lectual achievements, than the real depiction of actual • Literary Gazes'.. living men. It is amusing to read of beings out of the laws of morality, but it is more profoundly interesting, as well as more instructive, to read of those whose life in its moral conditions resembles our own. We see this most distinctly when the representations are given by the genius of the same writer. Falstaff is a sort of sack.holding paunch, an exaggerated overdevelopment which no one thinks of holding down to the commonplace rules of the ten commandments and the atatute•law. We do not think of them in connection with hint They belong to a world apart. Accordingly we are vexed when the king discards him and reproves him. Such a fate was a necessary ad• herence on Shakespeare's part to the historical tradition ; he never probably thought of departing from it, nor would his audience have perhaps endured his doing so. But to those who look at the historical plays as pure works of imaginative art, it seems certainly an artistic misconception to have developed so marvellous an unmoral impersona tion, and then to have subjected it to an ethical and pnnitive judgment. Still, notwithstanding this error, which was very likely inevitable, Falstaff is probably the most remark. able specimen of caricature representation to be found in literature. And its very excellence of execution only shows how inferior is the kind of art which creates only such representations. Who could compare the genius, marvel lous as must be its fertility, which was needful to create a Falstaff with that shown in the higher productions of the same mind in Hamlet, Ophelia, and Lear? We feel in stantaneously the difference between the aggregating accident which rakes up from the externalities of life other accidents analogous to itself, and the central ideal of a real character which cannot show itself wholly in any acci. dents, but which exemplifies itself partially in many, whish unfolds itself gradually in wide spheres of action, and yet, as with those we know beat in life, leaves something hardly to be understood, and after years of familiarity is a problem and a difficulty to the last. in the same way the embodied characteristics and grotesque exaggerations of Mr. Dickens, notwithstanding all their !tumour and all their marvellous abundance, can never be fur a moment compared with the great works of the real painters of essential human nature. In his depreciation of Mr. Dickens's young ladies we think the reviewer goes too far. 'We admit, however, that he is faulty in this respect, and would hint that the defect may possibly be con nected with the following one : His works nowhere indicate that he possesses in any degree the passive taste which decides what is good in the writings of other people and what is not, and which per. forms the same critical duty upon a writer's own efforts when the confusing mists of productive imagination have passed away. Nor has Mr. Dickens the gentlemanly instinot which in many minds supplies the place of purely critical discernment, and which, by constant association with those who know what is best, acquires a secondhand perception of that which is best. He has no tendency to conventionalism for good or for evil ; his merits are far removed from the ordinary path of writers, and it was not probably so much effort to him as to other men to step so far out of that path : he scarcely knew how far it was. For the same reason he cannot tell how faulty his writing will often be thought, for he cannot tell what people will think. The concluding paper, on " Professional Reli gion," is a snarling Dissenter's diatribe, and calls for no further comment. We have passed over two or three papers of special rather than general interest, not because we have any doubt of the ability with which they are executed, but because the present number demands all the space we could afford for subjects with which every reader can sympathize. The National Magazine this month gives a very good entertainment. Among the best papers are " Flower Gossip," a nice readable cenversational essay, as the name imports ; an excellent story by Holme Lee, called " Not Married for Love ;" some useful observations on Russia by Mr. Sutherland Edwatids ; and a good copy of verses by Mr. Thorn bury, called " The Epicurean's Garden." Two good engravings are " Rabbit Shooting " and " The Trooper's Stable." The October number of the Art Journal is not less attractive than usual. We have three beautiful illustrations—viz., " The Foot-bath," being a very pretty girl and her maid, with that useful domestic utensil, the foot-pan, the former just showing enough of a shapely leg and angle to tantalize us ; " The Old Mill," a picturesque little rural fragment; and a fine engraving of Pat, accompanied by a suitable memoir. In a paper on the Princess's Theatre, the editors announce their intention of opening their columns to a detailed notice of Mr. Charles Rean's Shakspearian revivals, all of which he intends to reproduce in the final year of his occupancy. The present paper is a critique of his King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, and is highly favourable to Mr. Kean. " The Book of the Thames," by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, has now got as far down as the Dreadnought, and though the parts of the river to many people the most interesting are now passed, the book is still almost as pleasant reading as ever. The Englishwoman's Journal has now reached its eighth number, and may fairly be supposed to have passed through all the perils of infancy. " Domestic Life " is a lively and truthful article , and the series of " Female Artists " is continued by an inisraining memoir of Mlle. de Fanveau, about whom we sup pose the generality of English readers know very little. The remaining papers are of average merit. Titan contains an amusing and thoroughly true paper called "My First Lock-up," from which we make the following extracts : PuLICEMAN. We came upon a small knot of people looking on with blank faces at a woman lying on the ground, whom two policemen—officers, I ought to call them —were attempt ing to drag away. I would gladly have hurried past, but the " addition " insisted on an investigation of the circum stances. Certainly I saw the policeman kick this wretched creature; certainly they dragged her along the pavement by the arms, and struck her, till she rose upon her feet. She was intoxicated, I have no doubt of it. She may have been disorderly, for aught I know; but she was a woman, and my blood boiled to see her treated like a dog. Trembling with indignation and nervousness, and hating popularity, but drawn into it like a moth to the flame, I, Sydebotham—l, the quiet man, gave vent to my feelings, and, addressing tha " Akers," said,— " Taks care of her ; remember she is a woman." " fake that man into custody," was the immediate answer, and the next moment I was pinioned by a third menial of the law. THE MAGISTRATE. My case came on at last ; and I had the pleasure of being again put in the dock with the wretched creature I had interceded for. She was fined five and dismissed. My case was evidently far more im portant., As the policeman in the box repeated the false account he had given before the inspector, I considered it due to myself to cross-examine him. I had reason to regret this measure. Stingem, who was all politeness at first, in terrupted me impatiently. He was evidently annoyed at being kept longer than necessary. "If you intend to be your own counsel," he said, " I should advise you to seek professional assistance." Of course the policeman re turned a flat denial to all my questions, and I was about to call my witness when Stingem again interfered. " On your own admission," be said, " 1 can decide the case. I am amazed to find that a man of your cloth "(I looked at my quiet, black frock-coat) " should attempt to rescue the creature at sour side, whom you dignify by the name of woman. I cannot sufficiently reprobate your con duct," and so on for some five minutes. I was astonished at the loud tones and emphatic manner he employed, but I soon perceived that he was speaking for the press, repre rented by two somewhat scrubby gentlemen at my right hand. He concluded by fining me forty shillings, and I left the court. The same evening I was amused to read a highly coloured account of the proceedings in an evening paper, in which, for the first time in my life, I was described as a " fashionably-attired individual." We had a good laugh at home over the whole affair ; bat I can assure you that if my first lock-up has made me a wiser man, It has also added not a little to the sad view one is forced sometimes to take of human nature, and raised in me a distrust of the police of which I was innocent before. The Gordian Knot and Davenport Dunn both in crease in interest, and, as we have before said, seem likely to prove better than anything hitherto given to the world by their talented authors. A Compendium of History from the Creation to the Commencement of the Christian Era. By A. H. London : Hamilton. ALTHOUOII somewhat more than three thousand years have elapsed since "The Preacher" com plained that of the making of books there was no end, the nuisance has certainly not abated with the progress of time. A notable instance of bookmaking now lies before us. The compiler affects to have supplied a want frequently regretted by " persons engaged in tuition "—that of a " concise and simple " work on history, which should at once comprehend " in one consecutive train all the leading and most " important facts, and unincumbered by dry and " wearisome details." But bow does the reader imagine this " obvious void " has been filled up ? Simply by abridging so much of Rollin's "Ancient History " as refers to the affairs of Greece from the earliest times to the death of Cleopatra. Many passages, indeed, are appropriated without even a verbal alteration, and still more are dis tinguishable only by a slight transposition of the clauses of a sentence. Then, this compendious history disposes of Egypt in a single page, and of the Assyrian empire in three—without any attempt being made to turn to account the re searches of modern travellers. Of the Romans no notice whatever is taken until they were mixed up with the affairs of Greece, while the other nations of antiquity are all equally consigned to an impa rtial oblivion. A page suffices for the expo 'don of the Grecian mythology, and four are devoted o the seven wise men ; while the "succinct accoun f the poets " and other illustrious men of Greece" embraces 110 more than Homer, Herotiotus, Hesiod, Archilochus, Stesichorus, Simonides, Anacreon, Thespis, and Sappho. Still, if there be any one who desires to become familiar with the spirit and—we may add — the letter of Rollin's History without that amount of II