The Press. — London, England, 1855-10-20 00:00:00

OCTOBER 20, 1855. It is now, indeed, admitted that there was more vigour in the language than in the thoughts, more ridicule than wit, more invective than refinement of sarcasm. He has rarely or ever attained to the easy pungency of expression, and those natural and yet original strokes of character which distinguish his greatest predecessors in the art. A daring and clever assault upon living names appeals to other passions than the passion for poetry, and was sure to com mand a temporary success ; but it would probably hays died, with his own generation unless it had received from the name of Byron that immortality which it was intended to confer. We believe that. opinion to be substantially true. In this edition the satire is printed from an original copy, and we may cite the remarks on the extravagance of the abuse as being perfectly just:— So far as his design to humble his reviewers was con cerned, the wide sweep of his indiscriminate satire was mistaken policy. It lightened the censure to Jeffrey and his associates, that it was shared with nearly every man of mark in the kingdom. The portrait of the arch•critic, which was meant for the central figure, iq the least effec• tive in the group, from the attempt to degrade him to the level of a type of beings with whom he had not the slight est affinity. There are several differences between the satire as here printed and that in general circulation ; and some of the editor's brief notes are very interesting. On the line, Beware lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale, there is a note:— Here followed, in the first edition—" The name of this personage is pronounced Broom in the south, but the truly northern and magical pronunciation is Brough•am, in two syllables ; " but for this, Lord B. substituted in the second edition :—" It seems that Mr. Brougham is not a Pict, as I supposed, but a Borderer, and his name is pronounced Broom, from Trent to Tay—so be it." The Cevallos article was written by Jeffrey, who never had the manli ness, while he live 9, to relieve Brougham of the odium. But Jeffrey, perhaps, would also have re quired that Brougham (or whoever wrote the article on " Hours of Idleness") should have the " manliness" to exculpate him from the authorship of that harsh criticism. The editor of a critical publication like the Edin burgh of past days was placed in a peculiar situation. He should be consistent either in hie revelations or in his reticence. On the passage in the apostrophe to White, the editor cites the stanza of Waller : That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die Espied a feather of his own, With which he wont to soar on high. We think it evident that Byron must have had this thought from Waller in his mind. Waller's stanzas, it may also be observed, were on the subject " To a lady singing a song of his own composing"-- Chloris, yourself you so excel, When you vouchsafe to breathe my thought, That like a spirit with this spell Of my own teaching I am caught— which makes the resemblance of the two passages still closer. But Byron made the idea his own, with the manly pathos and the picturesque vividness of his diction. While the same plumage that had warmed his nest, Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast, is a couplet animated with tho power of genius. Mere talent could not produce such intensity of utterance. We have been pleased in this edition with finding some of our own marginalia on Byron anticipated and corroborated. We could cite several which have not been noticed in former editions. Thus, for example, in the thirteenth stanza of the fourth canto of " Childe Harold " occur the lines : Venice, lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose. We have always thought that Byron had in mind the noble passage at the close of the fourth part of Pope's " Essay on Man," in which the " bold, bad men " of history are de nounced:— See by what wretched steps their glory grows, From dirt and sea-weed, as proud Venice rose. The editor cites the couplet in the notes, and we do not recollect that the resemblance has been previously noticed in print. • Amongst the new readings in this edition is one of a most remarkable kind, requiring special notice. In the 182nd stanza of the fourth canto of " Childe Harold," in the noble address to the ocean, the first lines were always printed thus : Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, Which, as the editor remarks, "is not sense." In this edition the lines are printed : Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? Thy waters wasted them power while they were free. Certainly a " fine reading " of the passage, taken from the original MS., as the editor tells us. We have not the least doubt but that the present edition will be one of the most popu lar that has yet appeared. Its retrenchment of superfluous and irrelevant annotation, and its substitute of original and critical com ments, give it a distinctive place. As the editor's name does not appear on the titlepage, we shall not take the liberty of mentioning to whom this able supervision is accredited in literary circles ; but we may say that we have often thought that a thoroughly-trained Church of England divine, with enlarged habits, thought, and true moral tone of character, would be the best editor of such an author as Byron. Upon the question, " Whether Byron's " place is fixed in our literature?" we shall enter at a future time. In the meanwhile we must record that in our estimation the present publication is the best of " Murray's British Classics " that has yet appeared, and we have no doubt that it will receive the wide apprecia tion it deserves. Maitre Favilla% By George Sand. Paris : Librairie Nouvelle. NOBODY in the literary world of Paris thinks of disputing Mme. Sand's wonderful power and fascination as a novelist ; but not a few persons—and amongst them some of no mean note—laugh to scorn her pretensions as a dramatist. No doubt, judged by the strict rules of dramatic criticism, Mme. Sand the dramatist falls certainly far short of the Mme. Sand whose novels and romances have gained her European renown ; but, still it seems to us that there is much in her plays, even in the worst of them, which does the highest honour to her genius, and not a little that is perfectly unapproachable by the most distin guished of her competitors. In the art of constructing a plot, of developing incidents, and of sustaining vulgar interest until the crash of the denouement, she is unquestionably inferior to many a contemporary producer of flippant vaudevilles and ponderous melo dramas ; but who, of all the multitude who write for the Parisian theatre, can, as she does, create characters which are really original and really new to the stage—can portray them with consummate art and ex quisite truth—and can make them speak in a style which, though of the very highest literary excellence, is understood of all men, and goes straight to every heart? Maitre Favilki, the last play of this distin guished authoress—which is now being per formed nightly with immense success in Paris—is of the thorough George Sandian character. Plot it has none—of incidents it has scarcely any—of interest, in the ordinary meaning of the term, it is void. It turns,, in fact, on nothing more important or dramatic than a poor crack-brained musician fancying himself the heir to the title and estates of a deceased noble, his benefactor and friend, and acting as such in presence, and with the con nivance, of the real heir and owner—a burly well-to-do merchant—until at last he is rudely awakened from his illusion. Such a piece evidently displays but an indifferent know ledge of what ordinary people think the essential requirements of a play, and must needs be a remarkably sorry specimen of stage carpentry. Very true. But as Goldsmith, by the magic wand of genius, transformed a plain, inoffeusive parish priest into one of the most charming and excellent of men, and as Sterne by the same means rendered a dull old cap tain dear to every heart, so Geoi ge Sand has made a poor crazy musician a character which all muse admire and all must love. In the hands of an ordinary playwright such a per sonage would have been a mere vulgar idiot, or perhaps a grotesque caricature ; but in hers he is gentle, kind hearted, and devoted— he is so generous, that he gives away his fancied wealth with, the simplicity of a child— so; good, that he does well to all—so g u ileless, _l5 that he thinks ill of none—in a word, so ez cellont and so sympathetic, that he almost makes one wish the world were peopled with such lunatics as he. And thou how he talks ! With what naive simplicity he brands the hard selfishness of the generality of mankind iu these civilised days—with what unaffeoted and unconscious warmth he exalts all that is good, and generous, and noble! In listening to him we sigh to think that men are as they are, and wonder why they are not as they ought to be. In listening to him we feel the heart grow softer, and we entertain bettor feel ings towards our kind. Stage-craft is, no doubt, a capital thing in its way ; but all the stage craft in the world would never have given the French theatre a Maitre Favillti. And, for our part, we infinitely prefer the crazed but worthy musician, and his kindly sayings and kindly doings, to all the skilful combinations of dramatic ingenuity, and all the hackneyed conventionalism of dramatic character. We like originality of conception. and we see it in him ; we like freshness of dialogue, and we have it from. him and his interlocutors ; and we admire a sound, healthy, moral tone,—and such is the tone of the new play. PERIODICAL LITER A! .......... QUARTERLY REVIEWS. WE have several Quarterly Reviews before us ; but we are disappointed to find , that so few of them have articles on the war. It is from these elaborate publi cations that we have a right to expect mature views on the prasent position of Europe, and on the policy of the contest in which we are engaged, more espe cially at a time when it is generally conceded that the struggle is assuming a new character. But un fortunately the two Reviews of greatest influence and ability are silent on this vital topic. The Quarterly altogether abjures modern politics, as unsuited to its years and gravity, and seems to think nothing in that line worth attending to subsequent to the age of " Pitt and Fox." Pitt and Fox supply a paper at the end of the number of eighty pages, very able and well informed, commencing with " William Pitt, the " second son of Lord Chatham, was born on the 28th " May, 1759," and bringing down his history to his appointment as Premier in his 24th year ; but the essay seems to us deficient in breadth, as it assuredly is in novelty. An article on Huet, a French philosophic divine, whose chief claim to remembrance is that he assisted to edit the Delphin classics, is followed by one on " School Sermons." A very laudatory critique on Mr. Thackeray tells us that " men, women, and children talk, act, and think " in his pages exactly as they are talking, acting, " and thinking at every bow of the day," yet " every " character is an original conception." A closely written article skims the cream from the "Caldwell " Papers, and the next introduces us to the " Charities and Poor of London." Then we come to some dis criminating remarks on "Latin Dictionaries," to " Brougham and Arago on Men of Science," finish. ing with the Pitt and Fox paper. We have a sure warrant that whatever papers appear in the Quarterly will be good of their kind ; but, then much mutt de pend on their kind, and it seems to us that. the Review has very little relation to that atmosphere of thought and movement in which we live. There is very little to connect the number with the date on the titlepage, September, 1855. We think this is a mistake, and that the editor in his great care to se lect subjects which no one will object to, and in his zeal to get them treated by adequate literary ability, overlooks the fact that he is living in one of those agitated and momentous periods of European history when men's minds are so intently occupied with the present as to care little for the past. The Westminster this quarter touches upon one or two social questions, and treats them closely. The article upon the " Temperance Movement" altogether denies that the remedy for drunkenness is to estab lish a Maine liquor law in England, bin suggests that amusements of a healthful and intellectual character should be provided for the people to wean them from the publichouse. "Dr. Cumming, and his Works," meet with critical and thoughtful treat ment. " His mind," says the reviewer, "is not of the "'pietistic order.' He is at home in the external, " the polemical, the historical, the circumstantial, " and is only episodically devout and practical." A full article upon the " Position of Woman " traces her treatment in the earlier ages of the world. It is to the laws of Justinian, the writer considers., we must look for those principles of justice which assign to her the elevated position she is entitled to till. The article upon " Theism" is one, we imagine, which will not oenefit the Westminster. Its tone is apparently Atheistical; but that is not, we believe, the design of the writer. Vased upon pant's systems