The Press. — London, England, 1853-10-29 00:00:00

616 sufficient to condemn it It is among idle soldiers, thus concentrated, that discontents spring up most readily and spread most widely. (2.) The discipline of an army depends in no small degree on the cultivation of a friendly intercourse between officers and men ; and this intercourse is naturally greatest where no Eu ropean society can be obtained ; least where the young captain Or lieutenant finds a daily resource iu the company of his countrymen and brother officers. There aro some characteristic reniarks on dress, of which take the fallowing for sam ple : Even before the men whn invented hanging, the guillotine, the garotte, and embroidered collars to the dress. coats of general (dicers, he who invented stocks and clasps for British soldiers should hu ranked fur venomous imagination in tormenting his fellow•-rrentures. Thu tirbt three are comparatively Illumine. and inclodo a provision for life ; the embroidered collar is but a temporary pillory, like the legs of Shawl's old e u ; but the toddler's hard leather stock and clasp it; daily a bar to all enjoyment, productive of apoplexy in the Indian sun, and a great j ut . pediment in marching. It prevents the free use of the musket in battle ; and when taking to the bayonet, if the stock be nut thrown away, the man is half strangled before *losing in mortal strife. Nearly one hundred pages are occupied with comments on points of practical military detail— dress, equipments, horses, artillery, musketry, and the like. But more general interest attaches to our autho►'s comments on the trans-Indus policy that unhappy frontier being, and always likely to be, in a chronic Fit ate of disturb)) nee, scarcely repressed by 12,000 bayonets and sabres. Sir Charles frankly avows his belief that the mountain tribes of the Deraiat, with an unlimited range of friendly country, inaccessible to ors, in their rear, cannot he subdued. Ile advises, there fore, negotiation, the payment of subsidies (in plain English, black mail), employment of the chiefs as police within their own territory, reduction of the salt tax, and a display of military force at such points as Peshawur in preference to harassing and unfruitful exile ditions into the mountain country The Napieritut hatred of politienbs is well known, and fur its intensity, reasonable or un reasonable, duo allowanco should ho made ; yet in the ensuing paragraph there is truth and sense:— - • A commander is thux (i.e., by the power vested in pulitieni agents of oaring advice unaxkotl, viol plowing it ou record) untieeessouily howled with responsibility, vchirh may comtnkto and olistraet his attention from the rencrill arrangements with which ilia mind t o x einsivoe occupied. The , who Oporto utthaltenix con n level midi him forget that he ran ask tin it advice if he requires it lout when opontativously and authoritatively given, if not adopted, it throow. upon him a very onerous and mis chievoux necessity of explaining hip pintos to subordinates over Wholll he ha. no control. And ills°, to superiors who have a control over hem, and not chary of using their power! In the tradta tronsantionts demanding the ealmeia thought, io-ereey, deeiPflit, nrol F rrnnrea, he firole h•oo. elf a member of a debating tamely, ogi.eo•Ping his men meaourep! it is thus eampaimis arc lost and arnoicA destroyed. ft is thins the military charaeters of e,oninixiid,•e, nr e ruined. Richly they deserve disgrace, however, for their weakness. We want spare for a more detailed notice of this work. which reflects with singular faith fulness the merits and faults of its remarkable author. The time is not come when n full character of Sir Charles Napier can be writ ten ; for, unlike Wellington, whose career had become historical in his own lifetime, the Indian general's last acts were his greatest ; and dentin has not et cooled the enthusiasm of his friends, or appeased the vehemence of enmity and envy. In ono respect it must be conceded that his character fell below the highest type. Conscious of great deserts, he claimed Ina due with an energy which some times seemed to overstep the limits of mo desty ; intolerant of adverse opinion, he showed himself unduly sensitive to small slights; he suffered his trumpet to lie blown somewhat too loudly by friends and relatives ; and exacted a 11011111geWilitil.ifunsought,wouid have been all the more willingly paid The despatches of Wellington, sent of from day to day, have the calmness of history; the nnrra five of Napier, dating three yeam after the events with which it deals, betrays the resent ments of the moment. No ilttreatment. no aspersions. would have extorted from the " iron Duke" written words of angry cow plaint ; while his rival loved to wage war with the pen as well as the sword, But these THE PRESS. faults left him in the field. By every army under his command he was beloved ; iu camp his soldier-nature was thoroughly appreciated; nor has a nobler tribute been offered to any public man than when, in the panic that fol lowed Chillianwallah, the voice of universal England pronounced him as the only general who could be trusted to retrieve the lost pres tige of our arms. Of such stuff as his were Roman dictators made; and, if temper and self-command were sometimes wanting, by nu soldier of ancient or modern times have the passion or patriotism and the thirst of glory been displayed in a more eminent degree. The Lire, if the Poete-Laureate. By Wiltshire Stanton Austin, jun., 8.A., Exeter College, Oxon, and John Ralph, M.A , Barrister at- Law. London : Bentley. • WE opened this volume without the least prejudice against the writers, but we can warm* say the same on laying it down. Here are two unknown persons assuming the most opinionative tone on literature, uttering their theta on books and men, as if each of them was the; equal of Lord Jeffrey or Mr. Hallam. We might pass over their flippancy in dealing with past reputations, but their presumption in pronouncing sentence upon their con temporaries is of a more offensive description than either their dulness or inaccuracy. The success of a maiden speech in Parliament de pends, according to a great authority, " upon betraying one's impudence modestly; and for a man in his first literary performances to fall foul of his enntemporaries exhibits an utter want of discretion. Now, in the life of I'yc, whom these biographers have cruelly ex humed, we are arrested with the following offensive note : This reminds as that at the installation of Lord North, at oxford, in 1772, the degree of I).C.L. was conferred on rye among others. lie had assuredly as much right to it as some gentlemen lately bo honoured. Recollecting the many eminent names that were amongst the list of honorary degrees, our readers will exclaim with wonder, " And who are :Messrs. Stanton Austin and Ralph, or what honours have they won in letters, to entitle them in venting their opinions with such precocious arrogance ?" In their preface they have praised themselves for "the production " of a work popular in style, and to be relied "on for its accuracy." On the very opposite page to this of note just quoted we have the fidlowing passage. We print it exactly as it appears in their volume:— - - HP palished in 1827 "A Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace." As we do not belong to that chum of writers who, accord. ing to Mason, in his "Memoirs of W. Whitehead," "gain what they think en honest livelihood by publishing the lives of the living," so also we do not attempt to chronicle nity of the minute circumatancea of the private life of our Laureate. lie died at Pinner, in Dens, in a house which he had purchased there, on August 13th, 1813. Thus it will be seen that poor Pye was a pro digy in psychology, if not in poetry. These writers, who are "to be relied on" as biogra. pliers, record the fact, stranger than any of the qwasi-revelations in biology, that Pyo died in 1813, and published a book for magistrates in 1827! Dead as a man in 1813, and "damned" as a poet long before, his apparition in 1827 (aematins his biographers) must have been as alarming to his contemporaries as his appear ance to the good old King in "The Vision of Judgment"— " The Monarch, mite till then, exelaim'd, 'What, what! Pye come agaiu! No more, no more of that!" But we must proceed to quote one of the most displeasing passages ever brought under our notice. The coarse and highly indecorous way in which these writers refer to a living English lady, and that lady one so respected as Miss Agnes Stricklami, far exceeds any licence of allusion permitted to contemporary critics. Referring to the poet Skelton, they write : " This ribald and ill•living wretch," such is the delicate language of Mies Agnes Strickland, who insinuates that King lienry'a "grossest crimes " resulted from the " eor rnlttion imparted" his former tutor, had been guilty of 1411 unpardonable enormity in the eyes of the Christian clergy of that day. as ik 'imps also in the immaculate ima gination of :Mist. Agnes Strickland. Thu Church that could denounce marriage and countenance brothels was scandalised that one of its ministers should be so obtuse SATU RDAY, to all no•ions of decorum as to enter that state which it had solemnly pronounced dishonourable. Preferring t4i obey the moral rather than the ecclesiastical law, his name was loaded with disgrace, and, merit• Skelton being a priest, and having a child by his wife, every one cried out, ' 0 ! Skelton hath a child, fie on him !' " It would be vain to look for either sense or taste in biographers who iu their preface speak of their attempt "to arrange, under a " new class i fication, all interesting portion of " our literary and dramatic annals," and choose " The Lives of the Poets Laureate " as the basis of their " new " critical system! From Ben Jenson to Wordsworth there were thir teen poets appointed to the office of Laureate, and amongst thorn were Shadwell, Tate, Eus den, Cibber, Whitehead, and Pye. A glance at such names exposes the absurdity of the truly ridiculous plan of the present work. To the lives of IlOrydeu and Colley Cibber the same space is allowed by these writers, each receiving forty-one pages ! To Wanton seventeen pages are given, and to White head twenty-nine! They allot eight pages and a half to Nicholas Rowe, and to Nahum Tate they give twenty-seven! Cibber has written his own "autobiography" in a style of graphic felicity entirely unappreciated by these compilers. His descriptions of erni• uent actors and actresses aro very clever ; and one passage, which beautifully laments the fleeting glory of histrionic laurels, has been much admired. "Pity it is," says Cibber, " that the charms of fine acting cannot, like the beauties of poetry, be their own record, that the animated graces of the player can live no longer than the instant breath and motion which present them, or at best. can but faintly glimmer through the memory of a few surririny spectators ! Moore quotes this passage in his " Lifo of Sheridan," with the remark that the sentiment of Cibber could not have gained in power, even if it had been expressed in poetry; but of that and many other excellent passages these biographers of the " Laureates ' take no notice. Of their want of acumen let us offer a specimen. Referring to Cibber, they say Writing of the Earl of Chesterfield, he says, " Having often had the honour to bo the butt of his raillery, I must own I have received more pleasure from his lively man ner of raising the laugh against me, than I could have felt from the smoothest flattery of a serious civility." Eng lish literature presents few instances of such abject toady ism. If they had said " utter coxeombry " in place of " abject, toadyism" they would have been near the mark. It was the vanity and folly of Cibber both to talk and write in the Lord Fop • pington style but these biographers miss the points of his character. Although the pages of this volume, in its present form, show neither sound criticism, brilliant style, nor deep research, they may yet be made useful, if not ornamental. " I saw an excellent thing in your last essay," said O'Connell to a pam phleteer who was dull enough to have written these " lives of the laureates." " What was it? what was it?" eagerly cried Seriblerus. "It Avas— t, mutton pie !" replied the other; and, in return for the dull and bitter dicta of this heavy volume, we present the compilers with " that excellent thing " of O'Connell, which, if pro perly digested, may do them much benefit. A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin ; frith a Peep into the Polar Basin. By Commander E. A. Inglefield. London : Harrison. MIR volume contains, with appendices, 232 pages. It is illustrated by drawings of inter esting points in the Arctic regions. They are beautifully tinted, and bring vividly before the mind the craggy headland, the islets, the lofty mountain, the ice and snow, that eon stitute the winding labyrinth of the frozen realm, which rises silently sublime out of the glassy sea. Captain Inglefield—for we are happy to state that he has been promoted from the rank of commander since the publication of this book—has been directed to hold himself in readiness to submit his drawings to the Queen. On the 10th of July, 1352, his ship, the Isabel, a screw-schooner of 149 tom,. tripped an chor and sailed and steamed from Peterhead for the Arctic regions. She belonged to Lady Franklin. who gave her to Captain Inglefield on certain conditions, which conditions ho has ably performed. The crew numbered