The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-09 00:00:00

JUNE 9, 1855. occupying also equally important posts, escape his discriminating abuse. Is it because the latter-named gentlemen have never befriended him, never extended to him their• hospitality, and never overlooked his misconduct? Is it, in short, because he has had no opportunity of spying into their privacy and betraying their confidence? His charges of fraud and dishonesty against tie gentlemen employed in the Foreign•ofice are too absurd, perhaps, to require refutation. Nevertheless, we have thought it right to take nothing for granted, and not to stigmatise as libellous even the assertions of the " Roving Englishman," until we had taken pains to obtain the most precise information. Such information we have been enabled to acquire, and we may assure our readers that the whole account given in this work of the system of agencies established in that department is utterly incorrect. Persons in the diplomatic service generally have an agent in the Foreign office to whom they give a power of attorney to receive their salary, pay it into their banker's bands, and execute other commis• sions for them. So far from tracing with the money which passes through their hands, a diplomatist of rank informs us that they pay the amount into the client's banker's hands on the very day on which they receive it from the Treasury. For his services an agent receives a commission of one per cent. on the client's salary ; and for the years during which most young attaches remain unpaid (it is not every one who is able, like our author•, to obtain his promotion to a paid attacheship in fifteen months) the agent performs the good offices expected of him gratuitously and without feo or reward. _ _ Even in the history of ill-natured gossip—in which congenial study we should expect to find our author quite at home—he occasionally makes absurd mistakes, as when he gravely tells us that Lord Blomfield, our Minister to Prussia, is generally known by the name of Fanny, whereas that silly sobriquet is really ap plied to an envoy in another part of Germany. Mr. Cavendish of the Foreign•ofice, who, we believe, never said a rude word nor did an offensive action to anybody, is vituperated in this volume with an intensity of ill-nature which makes us believe that the mind of its author must be curiously warped and his moral vision jaundiced wiih envy and spitefulness. We are the more confirmed in this opinion because his fiercest attacks are always made on generous or charitable actions. We have already alluded to his sneer at Mr. Gre y for performing in a concert given for a good object in Vienna. The amateur performances given in London under the sanction of her Majesty, and for the noblest purposes, a few weeks back, arouse the " Roving English man's " angriest passions, and he falls in such a rage with kindness and humanity that he re minds us of Robson as the impish lawyer's clerk in The Lottery Ticket, sereaming'and half mad with misthanthropy when he sees good men happy and loving folks comfortable around We wish we could stop here ; but this man, not conter t with calumniating the living, must needs assail the dead. We will pot dwell on this painful topic, but we will leave it to the surviving friends of one of the most popular and best known members of London society, and to the chiefs of that department with which his name is identified, to do justice in their hearts to an old friend, an honourable gentle man, and a most valuable public servant, who is traduced by the writer of this work for no other reason we can divine except that he was a generous and a kindly old' man who was beloved by all who knew him. Few books have issued from an English press so bad in tone, so vulgar in style, so false. in statement, and so malicious in motive, as these " Pictures from the Battle Field." Fuseli recommended his pupils to sup on raw pork when they wished to depict the horrible. The " Roving Englishman" would seem to have a taste for more ghoul-like food ; but though, undoubtedly, he has the " mauvais comr," he dee6 not seem to pos Bess the concomitant "bon estomae " which the French cynic deemed equally indispensa ble for liappipeaq. On 040 contrary, he secp!s TliFl PRESS. to be bilious and jaundiced—everything dis agrees with him, and he disagrees with every body; and it is only as a nuisance which offends one's sense of propriety and calls for abatement that his book claims so much of our space as wo have devoted to it. Poetical Works of James Thomson. Two Vols. Annotation Edition of the English Poets. Edited by Robert Bell. London :J. W. Parker and Son. THE genial season—what Horace Walpole called " the tempestuousness of an English " summer "—is at hand. The time for water parties up the river, sketching in the albums of the charming fair, catching cold and pic turesque effects, and dinners of affected elegance and real expense at the Richmond hotels, is now at baud. There are various interesting questions of a critical character connected with that straggling town of Rich. Mond. " Shall we patronise the Castle or the Star and Garter?" presents a perplexing dilemma; and then, in the half-hour before dinner, if you want an festlietical subject, nothing better can be started than, " Was Thomson a poet ?" for with the. locality and its scenery his name is identified. We seldom saunter about Richmond with out thinking of hint. He lived in its vicinity at the close of his life, and we might suppose that he had specially studied its scenery for certain descriptions in the " Seasons," though the fact is not so. Its rich and mossy land scapes ; its winding river ; its umbrageous groves; its stately though formal old man sions, with their painted gates and quaint stone piers ; and the lazy air of society in that quarter, always bring Thomson, his habits, and his writings, vividly to our mind. Owing to the peculiar disposition of the soil at Richmond, what a Ruskinite would call the " cloudscapes " in that locality, whether seen on a starry night or on a fine day in sprin , , are particularly fine ; for the amplitude of the horizon, with its variety of lights, gives effects of contrasted colour not often witnessed in our scenery of the home counties. In the opening passage of " Spring" Thomson says : And see where surly Winter passes off, Far to the north, and calls his N OWA blasts. Any one who in the early days of April has stood on the Terrace at Richmond-park, and seen a spring shower carried by a south western breeze across the large plain around Twickenham, cannot fail to appreciate the vivid force of these two lines. In scenery and society around Richmond the natural and artificial are curiously blended. Patrician families of high pretensions inhabit pic turesque demesnes. Rich traders, happy horticulturists, gloat over their coffers and their greenhouses. The glories of Nature are in that district rather encroached upon by the genteel ; the beautiful park is environed by pretentious paddocks ; Combe Wood has its smirking cottages ornees ; and the Alpine region of Kingston-hill is reclaimed by Chancery barristers and thriving innkeepers. The beauties of the country and the life of towns, the sentiment of the soul and the acquirements of the intellect—in short the idiosyncracy of Thomson—are forced upon us as we steal along, and forget, while crying " How charming I " that we shall probably be late for the train. And thus we are arrived at the question, which we have often heard eagerly discussed, " But was Thomson a poet ? " We have not two opinions on that subject, and it is one of the few literary questions on which the reflections of advanced years sup port the prepossessions of youth. Thomson Unquestionably was a poet of a very high order, limited in his range, but original in his walk, and on the whole deserving of his extensive fame. He wrote of nature, and his descrip tions have charmed generations differing from each other in all social, religious, and political opinions. lie described the external world chiefly from an insular point of view; but wherever the English tongue is cultivated thoughtful minds recur with eagernetfs to the author of the " Seasons." In truth there was in Thomson a great affluence of qualities to support the poetical character. He had a potiarkapc power of diction, glowing, copious, b 9 and ornate. His mind was well stocked with acquired knowledge. He had a pure heart, an elevated soul, and an aspiration to excel in deeds of high intellectual emprise. These qualities should carry a literary spirit very high ; but Thomson had something more besides, and in that " something more " may be discerned his special originality. The distinctive and permanent merit of Thomson, considered cr►tically, is his union of a metaphysical intellect with a sanguine glow of genial enthusicutin and intense enjoyment of nature. A thoughtful Scotch intellect and a sentimental English character are found in Thomson. He is more discursive, argumenta tive, and ethical than the English poets who have won their laurels on moral themes Cosmopolite philosophy in his works is con stantly blended with descriptions of those landscapes which all the Cockneys can admire. Yet in his love of liberty there is nothing sour, insipid, or malignant. His spirit of freedom is classical, and is not the inspiration of an " anti-everything-established" kind of mind. A thinker as well as a describer, a being social Us well as imaginative, is realised to us in his works. Hence his poetry has been so much enjoyed by self-educated minds, and by the great crowd of well-meaning persons, who cannot ascend to the high abstractions of Coleridge and Shelley, and to whoiu the Greek classics are as a terra incognita. His genuine love of nature supports him triumphantly in spite of the cumbrous, quaint, and antiquated rhetoric of his muse. He studied his subject closely and variously ; he chose it carefully ; he wrote upon it leisurely; and he had his reward in identifying himself with it perma nently. It is upon this latter point that the edition of his works by Mr. Bell is of such interest. It would be difficult in the whole library of English poetry to find two volumes that differ so much in merit as the first and second volumes of Thomson's works as here presented to us. Mr. Bell says, with perfect truth : The reader who now opens these poems for the first time will be struck by the remarkable contrast in manner, taste, and metrical structure between the early and the later pieces ; while to the reader who has hitherto formed his opinion of Thomson upon the " Seasons " alone, this con• treat will appear still more extraordinary. it is difficult to believe that the two volumes are the productions of the same writer ; and if the care, of Thomson's reputation, by the exercise of a controlling discretion, were within the legitimate province of an editor, there would be no hesitation in rejecting nearly the whole of the first volume. The first volume is chiefly occupied with his complimentary effusions (for which he wanted tact, subtlety, and sportive vivacity of fancy), and with his tedious rhetorical rhapsody on " Liberty," with its versified and cold com monplaces on stilts about Greece, Rome, ancient and modern Italy, and Britain. He might just as well have taken the encyclopae dias for a subject, if such imposing compila• tions had then been in fashion. His own moral enthusiasm induced the poet to think that he could communicate his feelings to the world. But he wanted subject. "To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton," "To the Me mory of Lord Talbot," " Britannia,"—these were themes on which Thomson was wordy, insipid, and utterly without effect. But how different was the case when he described the verdant mead. the shady prove, the corn-field with the gleaners, the winter landscape, and the vicissitudes of nature. Not less different was it, also, when in the " Castle of Indolence " he wrote from himself, and infused much of his own psychology into that harmonious effusion of a contemplative spirit and indolent idealism. The second of these volumes is based upon reality, while the first is merely rhetorical —sounding verse without striking thoughts—ambitious efforts without actual impulses. The lesson taught to writers by the difference of merit between these two volumes could scarcely he ez• aggerated. Mr. Bell has collected many particulars about Th o mson's habit o s f life. Thomson completed the poem of " Winter " at s o n the publisher at Charing cross; andof ii b Mr li . a ß n eql, as if emulous of rivalling Mr. Peter Cunningham, tells us, in a nate : Minim was succeeded in his business by Egerton, who ;emoted to the house now is the occupation et Ins slimes-