The Press. — London, England, 1854-08-12 00:00:00

760 Yittraturt. Satire and Satirists. Six Lectures. By James Hannay, Author of " Singleton Fontenoy," &c. London: Bogue. In order to estimate this volume fairly we are bound to recollect that it is the substance of spoken lectures, intended fora mixed audience requiring to be interested and amused. It reads like the literary table-talk of a man of the world, hating affectation, and sarcastic in ex posing it. Mr. Hannay places his listeners or his readers at once at their ease. He quickly shows that he is no reticent and guarded dealer in opinions, weighed in scruples, according to apothecary measure. He affects the " plain speaker " in all things, disdains academical subtlety, relying on strong natural powers, and dashes boldly into literary debate. Racy and readable, " Satire and Satirists" is not sufficiently critical to support its title. It is merely a volume of literary sketches, seasoned with the witty lecturer's sarcastic " asides" and peculiar mannerisms. The sub ject of satire should have been discussed with more nicety of distinction and precision of thought than are shown in its pages. In the opening passage the author says :—" A dis " tinct phase of itself in literary story,—a pro " duction taking its own place by the side of " poetry, tragedy, and comedy,—such is satire." A most unsatisfactory definition, and only too characteristic of the structural looseness of the volume. After gossiping about Horace and Juvenal, ho devotes a whole lecture to Erasmus, Sir David Lindsay, and George Bu chanan ; and, while such familiar names as Dryden, Pope, and Swift are commented on at length, Aristophanes and Rabelais are not dis cussed at all. So also, though Junius is criti cised, and some of our living satirical writers alluded to without much felicity, there is no reference to Cobbett, who, as a prose-writer, is as well entitled to satirical celebrity as Churchill is in verse. The word satire, both in criticism and con versation, is more ambiguously applied than any other literary term. Philosophers reflect ing on human nature and pensively ejaculating in pentameters their melancholy ethics have been classed as satirists along with butterfly writers, flitting about ephemeral topics of town-talk. Political partisans with passion ate likings and hatreds, men of action who seized a poet's pen as the best weapon against their foes, have also been included in the same category. Malignant defamers, writing under the inspiration of private revenge, dipping their stilettos in the ink-bottle, have also been honoured with brevet rank in the same mili tant department of literature. Yet between these different classes there exist most im portant distinctions, so wide as to suggest the idea that a stricter classification should be made than the conventional one of referring to one order thinkers and writers with few Common similarities. To the genius, as in the case of Pope, who habitually rises into the philosophic sage, or disports as an inventive humorist like Butler, or soars into the higher regions of poetry like Dryden, we feel the word " satirist " is no adequate expression for the literary excellence. Where we find original ideas, sublime apprehension of eternal truths, and a deep-toned genius for language, the mens divinior united to the es magna sona turum, we feel that the poet has burst beyond the limits which literary traditions and social instincts have assigned to the Churchills of all ages and countries. It is but a loose classi fication to talk of Horace and Juvenal, whose faculties of illustration and invention were so entirely different not only in degree but in kind. Nor do we hesitate to say that we sel dom think even of Dryden as "a satirist." We think of " glorious John " in connection with the glowing thoughts, gorgeous diction, unrivalled faculty of reasoning in verse, that invest him with more classical renown than can be gained in the accusatory mission of the merely satirical writer. Having mentioned Dryden, we are bound to say that with feelings of no common pleasure wo have read Mr. Hannay's generous vindica ti.:u f t 1 :!4 poet from the aspersions of THE PRESS. a celebrated author of our own time of remark• able brilliancy and still more remarkable par tisanship. The character of another great celebrity is discussed with great talent, but too much partiality, by Mr. Hannay. Our readers are aware how for successive generations the name of Swift has been vilified by Whig critics. Yet his works survive their vituperation ; his style in verse and prose is imitated without success ; his " Drapier's Letters " remain the model for popular political writing ; the " Tale of a Tub " survives in full freshness as the best piece of Rabelaisian humour in our lan guage ; and " Gulliver" stands unrivalled amidst modern fiction for its complete origin ality. Against this literary giant little Lord Jeffrey flung handful after handful of polished pebbles. Yet the best piece that ever came from Lord Jeffrey's pen was his essay on Swift. Carefully written, with sentences neatly turned, and with skilfully-sustained incrimina tion, it is above the average of those over praised articles in which obvious thoughts and foregone conclusions are smoothly expressed with the simpering sublimity of an oracular " sub-editor of Providence." Mr. Hannay makes short work of Lord Jeffrey upon Swift : Jeffrey, with his quick Figaro-like tongue, and his dextrous wrist and arm, was fighting and screeching in those days, in the blue-and•yellow livery, against all comers, — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other men living; and he took it into his head to do with this dead one as Charles 11. did with Cromwell and Admiral lllake,—disinter him and hang his bones. Well, one likes energy even in a hangman ; and I am not going to say of Jeffrey's essay that it is not a very capital specimen of its kind. Only, you observe, all understanding of the man is impossible on the system there adopted. There is no attempt in Jeffrey's essay to explain Swift as a problem; it is a brilliant saying and enforcing of everything about Swift that could possibly look bad in a conventional point of view. If your mind is made up on the anti-Swift side, here is pleasant reading for you; if you are neither Whig nor Tory, but a simple lover of truth and nature, who wish to know what the phenomenon of Swift's career meant, here is no help for you. As "a problem " and " a phenomenon" (as suggested by Mr. Hannay) is the truest mode of viewing the extraordinary character of Swift. In much of what Mr. Hannay has said about Swift's right to a generous recognition we agree ; but his pen runs away with him when instead of weighing his character he concludes with a panegyric. He says : Take Jonathan Swift, then, all in all,—with his hopes and impulses, with his high views of nature, and history, and duty ; take him for good and evil, in his greatness and bis littlenesses,—and compare him with the other men of his time :—I will back him as a specimen of manhood, and real honesty, and generosity, and nobility of tendencies, against any of them. This seems perfectly extravagant, and is even inconsistent with the lecturer's suggested view of Swift as " a problem." Glancing lightly over the " Stella and Vanessa" ques tion, Mr. Hannay has taken so lenient a view of Swift's failings, that we do not recognise any of the judicial qualities in his estimate of Vie Dean of St. Patrick's. There are peculiar considerations on the physical health of Swift, and his apprehensions of more than one kind of cerebral disease, which should never be omitted in forming an estimate of his con duct. They are not of a kind proper for oral discussion in a lecture, but we do not perceive that Mr. Hannay appreciates their import ance. We think that Mr. Hannay has gone too far in the constant use of colloquialisms. He seems to scoff at any ordinary finish of style, as if it were too finical for his adoption. In the pungent pages of a popular novel like " Singleton Fontenoy," constant disregard to the rules of composition may be excused, but in a discussion upon literary classics the merely conversational tone is felt to give an air of crudeness to the composition. Such a mode of writing has also the great disadvantage of obtruding the individualism of the author too much on the mind of the reader, and the ex ample, if followed, would be attended with bad effects upon style. Narratives of Some Passages in the Great War witk France from 1799 to 1810. By Lieut. General Sir Henry Bunbury, K.C.B. Lon don : Bentley. WE may conscientiously say in limine that this is a book of great merit and interest, written with the accuracy of an eyewitness, and the mo SATURDAY, desty of a true soldier. The dazzling exploits of the war in the Peninsula, and the greater interest that was attached to the stupen dous successes which struck down Napo leon's power, than to the equally glorious efforts that were made to prevent its rise, have left too much in the shade the achievements of that period which General Bunbury has illustrated in these outlines of military history. In that period there were many gallant soldiers whose names have still to be rescued, some from neglect and some from misrepresentation; and the author has performed the task in a spirit which will command attention and credence ; for he is not afraid to censure where it is necessary, even when it startles our traditional recollec• tions of those to whom he refers. The first personal narrative relates to the unfortunate campaign in North Holland in 1799, when the armies of England and Russia were allied against the advancing power of the French Republic. In this expedition the Duke of York, long the mark for that popu lar slander against individuals which the Whigs were so dextrous in using, became the victim of the blunders or the treachery of the Administration of the day. Great comman ders sent out by great statesmen were finally required to oppose the mighty power that had almost enslaved the world but the most gal lant spirits can do little in the field or on the ocean if they are trammelled by the fears or interests of superannuated clerks who may have been made ministers at home. The slanders against the Duke of York have taken such root that the noble and kind hearted prince will probably share the fate of some other victims of historic ignorance, the tide of falsehood being too full to stem. Yet here is an impartial account by one who was present with the Duke of York in the disastrous cam paign of Holland : When Dumourier quitted Antwerp, Lake advanced with his brigade of Guards to that city, and he there met three weak battalions of the line which arrived from England under the command of Ralph Abercromby. The whole (barely mustering altogether 3,000 rank and file) moved onwards to Bruges and Ghent, while large bodies of Hanoverians and Hessians in British pay were arriving successively in the same neighbourhood. Thus was formed an army of about 17,000 men, which was placed under the command of the Duke of York. Six or seven squadrons of light dragoons and some artillery arrived from England in May, and the columns then moved forward to co-operate with the Austrians on the frontier. But such was the condition of the British infantry at this time, that two of Abercromby's regiments were left behind, as being unfit to appear in the presence of an enemy ! As the British and Hanoverian troops were involved in the disasters which fell upon the allied army in tha cam paigns of 1793 and 1794, a popular outcry was raised in England against the Duke of York. Men were ready to attribute our failures to his unfitness for command, and even our Ministers appeared to assent tacitly to a judg ment which served to throw upon the shoulders of his Royal Highness much of the blame which ought to have rested on themselves. Theirs was the fatal plan of besieging Dunkirk ! theirs the shame of its failure.* In sisting on this selfish project, they drew off not only the Duke of York's force, but some 13,000 subsidised Aus trians likewise, from the great army of the allies, which had been up to that time successfnl in its operations, and was pressing with an overpowering strength upon the de feated and disheartened enemy. With this fatal separation of the armies began the tide of disaster which swept the allies within twelve months beyond the Rhine. General Bunbury's account of the Dutch campaign forms one of the most lifelike pieces of military narrative we have ever met with. His talent in describing the country made the scene of operations, often essential to the better understanding of the occurrences re lated,—has seldom been equalled by military writers. As an instance we may particularly men tion the advance of Sir Ralph Abercromby's co lumn to Hoorn, with the incident of the pan ic. (pp. 10 to 23.) Nor is the general at all deficient in the power of sketching personal character. After enumerating the " council " with which the unfortunate Duke of York was encum bered, and for the blunders of some members of which he suffered, General Bunbury gives the following sketches of the Duke and Sir Ralph Abercromby : To this council, rather than to the Duke of York alone, • Our Government had promised to the Duke the co-operation of a squadron which should attack and bumbird Dunkirk from seaward, while he assaulted the time-worn fortifications from the land aide. Admiral Macbride was lying with this squadron in the Downs; but so far was the Duke from tneeung shV assistance from the navy, that his lines, during the fortnight which he spent before the town, were exposed to a cannonade from half-a-duren gun-boats and Dunkirk privateers: LOrd Chatham was then at the head of our Admiralty.