The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-26 00:00:00

946 Weir, and Hicks. are elegant and well chosen, and the whole volume is very well calculated to aid us in accepting for reality that picture of rural happiness which perhaps the poet himself might have experienced, though it never could be true of his class. It is doubt ful, indeed, how ti►r the author, conscious of a capacity for more ambitious efforts, could have thoroughly enjoyed the life here por trayed. The Epistles of Osidius Nuso. Faithfully Con verted into a New Measure of English Verse. By John Jumps. London : Bell and Dalby. Bacantv speaking, the end of translation may be said to be first the exhibition of an author's exact meaning, and, secondly, the clothing of it in such appropriate and congenial phrase ology as the language employed by the trans lator may afford. We have very few, if any, translations of classical authors in which these two merits are combined. The first, indeed, may be easily attained by any one possessed of sufficient scholarship and dili gence; and of the second without the first we have au admirable specimen in Pope's " Homer." Although, however, either utility or elegance may be accepted by itself as a sufficient recommendation of such a work, it is difficult to conceive how a person can pass his time less profitably than in writing trans lations which have neither. Wo are sorry to say Mr. Jumps does'ut seem to have one quali fieation for the work he has undertaken. He does'nt understand Latin ; he does'nt under stand rhythm ; he does'nt understand pro sody ; and he does'nt understand poetry. We will take the epistle from Sappho to Phaon as all instance, which will establish all our accu sations. Twice in this epistle Mr. Jumps grossly mistranslates the word celebro—e.y.:— Arva Phaun celebrat diverse Typhoidos .Etnse. The distant .Etna blasts of Phaon's name. Again : Ta (vogue quFe montes celebras Erycina Sicanos. And Erycina of those hills the fame. The word celebro here means to " frequent," or " haunt ;" and Mr. Jumps quite excludes himself from the benefit of any charitable doubt, by a note on the latter passage, in which his meaning is clinched. Further on we have : Quill mihi 411 M Lesbo? Sicelis esse vole. Brief here I'll stay, Sicilia soon to prove. Why, Sappho had no intention of going to Sicily. She only wished to be a Sicilian. Again, she says of Phaon : Hum ne pro Cephalo raperes, Aurora, timebam. Et faceres: sed to prima rapine tenet. Which of course means, " I was afraid that " you would carry off him instead of Cephalus. " And, indeed, you would do it now, if your " first prize did not still occupy you." For this we have these two unintelligible lines : On him, Anrora, was to fear thy rape, But Cephalus was new. Mr. Jumps mistakes faceres for fecisses. In another place he translates tophus by "chalk." And there are innumerable other passages in which he leaves us ery much in doubt whether he understood his author or not. Of quantity Mr. Jumps shows his contempt by using the words " elegiac " and "Thalia" as " elegiac " and " Thalia." And of his want of feeling alike for poetry and rhythm the whole translation is one long instance. How well Ovid says of the spendthrift turned miser : Quasque male amisit, nunc male quFerit opes. The translator loses the whole point of this, and merely says : He scours the waves Lost fortune to regain. Also : Si nisi owe facie poterit to digna videri, Nulls future tua est : nulls future tua est. Shall you love none till by your beauty tried. How inexpressibly poor ! Or : Sive juvat longs fogisse Pelasgida Sappho, (Non tamen invenies cur ego clips fugii) Oh, saltem, THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 26, 1857. But if you wish poor Sappho far away (Hard to conceive such bate) Here the beauty of the original is quite ob scured—the mingled tenderness and vanity which Ovid could express so well But we have already devoted more space to Mr. Jumps than his book is worth, and we take our leave of him with a strong recommenda tion to purchase a dictionary, a grammar, and a gradus. The Garies and their Friends. By Frank J. Webb. With an Introductory Preface by Mrs. Harriett Beecher Stowe. London : Routledge. THE work before us is stated to be from the pen of a free coloured man, and is to be re garded, we presume, as an authorised protest against the injuries and indignities to which his class is subjected by the citizens of the Great Western Republic, " the freest nation upon earth." It comes to us with the sanction of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who vouches for the truth of its facts, and with a further " sub preface" by Lord Brougham, who maintains its literary merits. Against such authorities RS these it might well seem presumptuous to rebel, and we are happy to state we have no intention of doing so. We have no means cf contradicting the facts, and we fully concur in his lordship's admiration of the style. How far the " cuique sua arte credendum' is a safe maxim to rely upon may be a moot point. People will decide upon it differently according to their innate tendencies. Our own opinion is that a practical knowledge of the facts of any case is a recommendation outweighing any danger from the predilections by which that knowledge is usually accom panied. And could we therefore be certain that Mr. Webb was a trustworthy witness to facts we should entertain a high opinion of the utility of his present work, notwithstand ing the possibility that he might have . coloured them somewhat highly. For the credibility ac corded to his work in this country Mrs. Stowe is answerable; and warning our readers that we put forward no claim to guide them upon this head, we shall proceed to offer a few comments on the nature and management of the story. We agree, then, with Lord Brougham that the literary merits of this work are consider able. The characters, whether true types or not of classes in American society, are thoroughly human, and talk and act with an air of reality. The incidents are exciting, and the language both forcible and pure. But there are, nevertheless, grave defects in the management of the story of which we are bound to take notice. The death of the Garies in the middle of the book is a most injudicious contrivance, and destroys the in terest of the remainder. There is nothing left to read for except the exposure of Stevens, for the children of the murdered couple crc so hastily disposed of that we care little for their fate, and that exposure takes place so abruptly that the effect is much impaired. In the second place, the scenes are sketchy ; iu proof of which assertion we may mention the great difficulty we find in selecting anything for extract. The attack upon the houses and property of the coloured men, which is the great event of the book, is not dramatically told ; and if our readers will compare the de fence of Walter's house in " The Garies " with that of the inn in " Hawkestono" they wia un derstand what we mean, and see how great an opportunity was lost. How far " The Garies" he a correct picture of American society is, like the moral of the book itself, beyond our power to determine. We daily hear much of the comfort and in telligence of the working classes in America, yet the description of the Ellis family seems rather overdrawn. The father is a carpenter; but both he, his wife, and his daughters are not perceptibly different from the " ladies and gentlemen" of the story. When, however, we turn from the abstract merits of the tale to the position of the author, our encomium should be much less qualified. Viewed as the production of a social pariah, one of a proscribed clue, who had the greatest difficulty in procuring even the rudiments of a liberal education, "The Garies" must be acknowledged to evidence an intellect of unusual vigour, and an imagi nation of some fertility. It will not suffer by comparison with the works of undoubted masters, and so far must be held to have com pletely answered the end of its publication— i.e., the vindication of the coloured race from the injurious supposition that they are totally unfitted to succeed in the higher pursuits of life. We may say, in conclusion, that the subject. matter, if true, shows, not the urgency of the anti-slavery cry, but rather the urgency of caution and moderation. If public opinion in. a city like Philadelphia can connive at such proceedings, it is clear that society is not ripe for abolitionism. We only mean that this is the impression that Mr. Webb's book will create in England, and however deep the horror excited by such irrational atrocities as those of the Philadelphians, it will yield to the conviction that the abolitionists will only make matters worse by pressing their opinioua at present. 1. Our Indian Army. A Military History of the British Empire in the East. By Captain Rafter. London : Bryce. 2. India : its History, Climate, Productions. With a Full Account of the Origin, Progress, and Development of the Bengal Mutiny, and Sug gestions as to the Future Government of India. By J. H. Stocqueler. London : Routledge. 3. Delhi: the City of the Great Mogul. With an Account of the Various tribes in Hindostan— Hindoos, Sikhs, Affghans, Sc. By Mrs. Colin Mackenzie. London : Bentley. 1. Tue first of the batch of books upon India have appeared. Captain R liter gives a " Military His tory of the British Empire in the East," carefully compiled from the standard works of Thornton and Mill, Malcolm and Orme, and other eminent writers upon India. The book is concisely written. Captain Rafter has managed his materials with skill. The tendency of his political views is in favour of the reform of "the most griping, covetous, and jealous " monopoly that has ever existed "—the East India Company. As Captain Rafter wrote and published his book previous to the present rebellion, the reader will not be surprised at meeting with much praise of the " faithful sepoy :" English readers, in general, seem satisfied with knowing that there is an army of black fellows called sepoys, who, they have some vague idea, are dressed in silks and satins, armed with popguns and daggers of lath, and who go to war, like the Pope's soldiers, with umbrellas over their heads in wet weather. They are astonished, however, when they hear that this army numbers upwards of 3110,000 men of all arms ; that it is one of the best drilled and dis. cipliued forces in existence ; that it has undergone the greatest fatigues, privations, and physical sufferings, with the most indomitable spirit and patience ; and that it has fought some of the most desperate battles that are to be found in the annals of any nation, ancient or modern. Having passed several of his early years in India, and being pretty well acquainted with the real nature of service in that country, the compiler of this volume has under taken the pleasing task of laying before the public, in a concise and popular form, a narrative of the stirring and important events by which this army has disttnguishol itself during the last century, in the formation of an empire such as the world has never before witnessed, and probably never will see again. An excellent comment, we have no doubt, will appear upon this passage in the next edition. 2. Mr. Stocqueler's work is a rapid summary of the history, climate, and productions of the country. Mr. Stocqueler brings down his historical narrative to the present moment. Of the nature of Mr. Stocqueler's views upon the causes and origin or the present rebellion, it will suffice to state that, while he refuses to see in the annexation of Oude any sti mulant to conspiracy, he confines the rebellion to the sepoys, and regards it merely as a fanatical impulse, arising from a dread that loss of caste would follow the use of the greased cartridges. He admits, however, that previous alienation had long existed among the sepoys, who looked upon them selves as hound to us simply by good pay and pen sions. Without passing any definite opinion upon present events, Mr. Stocqueler makes his soup be fore he has caught his hare, and settles the question of the future government cf India. He would have " more simplicity in the machinery of Government." He proposes a Viceroy directly responsible to a Board of Commissioners, presided over by a Secre tary of State—the Board of Commissioners taken from experienced residents in the East Indies, nominated by the Sovereign, and entirely superseding the present Board of Directors. In addition, he advocates the "largest possible infusion " into India of "European agency ;" in point of fact, the eolo