The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-13 00:00:00

assent. After asserting that we carry our hardness, practicality, and materialism even into poetry, he writes : Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, in their loftiest ascents, have this national grip and exactitude of mind. This mental materialism makes the value of English transcen dental genius; in these writers, and in Herbert, Henry More, Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne. The Saxon ma terialism and narrowness exalted into the sphere of intel- lect makes the very genius of Shakespeare and Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations, mate rialistic, its poetry is common sense inspired, or iron raised to white heat. A little further on he says, " The union of " Saxon precision and Oriental soaring, of " which Shakespeare is the perfect example, " is shared in less degree by the writers of "two centuries." Here seems to be "great " cry and little wool." Where is the necessity of dividing Shakespeare's mind after this fashion? There is nothing distinctive or cha racteristic about such criticism as this. Any writer whatever may be treated in the same manner if we choose to call all that is fanciful and imaginative, Oriental ; and all that is clear, precise, and massive, Saxon. We might as well talk of the union of Oriental fleetness and Saxon patience, of which the mule is the perfect example. The remark would be equally true. Yet the writer who brought this forward as a profound and novel ob servation upon natural history would be thought a pompous prig. Mr. Emerson, however, to do him justice, is a warm and judicious admirer of the Elizabethan litera ture, and his general remarks upon it are sound and instructive. " The unique fact in " literary history, the unsurprised reception of " Shakespeare--the reception proved by his " making his fortune, and the apathy proved " by the absence of all contemporary pane " gyric—seems to demonstrate an elevation in " the mind of the people." Mr. Emerson is a strong idealist. The expulsion of Platonism by Locke he regards as a fatal event for Eng lish philosophy. He sees the same sort of defect in our contemporary literature. Of Macaulay he says:— The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that good means good to eat, good to wear, material com modity; that the glory of modern philosophy is its direc tion on "fruit;" to yield economical inventions; and that its merit is to avoid ideas and avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive merit of the Baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old Platonic, its disentangling the intel lect from theories of the all-Fair and all-Good, and pinning it down to the making abetter sick-chair and a better wine whey for an invalid—this not ironically but in good faith— that " solid advantage " as lie calls it, meaning always sen sual benefit, is the only good. The eminent benefit of astronomy is the better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home their lemons and wine to the London grocer. it was a curious result, in which the civi lity and religion of England for a thousand years ends in denying morals and reducing the intellect to a saucepan. The critic hides his scepticism under the English cant of practical. To convince the reason, to touch the conscience, is romantic pretension. The tine arts fall to the ground. Beauty, except as luxurious commodity, does not exist. Pope's poetry is fit to put round a frosted cake ! Walter Scott wrote a rhymed traveller's guide to Scotland ! In a country which has no art, and no traditions, it may not be sur prising that the two great masters of the classic and romantic schools of poetry should be undervalued. If Mr. Emerson chooses to avail himself of this excuse, good ; but he must resign all claim to lecture mankind upon poetry after this proof of his own inability to soar beyond the limits of American culture. With one more quotation from the chapter entitled " The Result," we must conclude our notice : So now we say, that the right measures of England are the men it bred ; that it has yielded more able men in five hundred years than any other nation ; and though we must not play Providence, and balance the chances of producing ton great men against the comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one Shakespeare, one Milton, one Sidney, one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a million foolish democrats. The American system is more democratic, more humane ; yet the American people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books or benefits, than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old riginte, but is not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. The power of performance has not been exceeded—the creation of value. The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is guarded in the indul gence o f hi s w hi m. "M agna Charts," said Itushworth," is s uc h a f e ll ow th a t h e will have no sovereign." By this general activity, and by this THE PRESS. sacredness of individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, for the announce ments of original right which make the stone tables of liberty. We think our readers will agree with us that this is a volume which contains far more that is flattering than is offensive to us. We thank Mr. Emerson for his politeness and good nature. At the same time our real opinion of the work, as a philosophical essay, is not high. It lacks freshness, and reads like a hash-up of old notes and observations, rather than like the lively impressions produced on the mind but yesterday. It is behind the time, and bears very little on any of our social or politi cal exigencies. Jaufry the Knight and the Fair Brunissende. A Tale of the Times of King Arthur. Translated from the French version of Mary Lafon by Alfred Elwes. London : Addey and Co. IT is surprising that greater pains are not taken to supply a better and more elegant descrip tion of literature for the drawing-room table. With a few rare exceptions, the showy volumes which encumber centre-tables are heavy and gaudy. Sometimes the purely grotesque style of " toy-books" is interspersed with the me chanical tameness and conventional insipidity of " Picturesque Annals " and " Books of Beauty." Recollecting the enormous sums spent by our book-buying community, we might expect an ingenious display of thought fulness and taste in catering for the love of art now become so popular. Nor let any cynic say that it would be a waste of intellect to apply talents to mere " toy-books." If " toys " are to be bought, why not have them neat, tasteful, and pretty to the sight? " Flaxman's chessmen are great ornaments to any room, however rich in vertu ; and if books are used, like pictures, for the sake of "furniture," we may as well have them handsome as unpleasing. One thing is certain, that we aro made to pay enough for our books for the drawing-room. A dozen showy engravings, a scant letterpress, a pro fusely gilt cover (which must fade before six months), make had value for a guinea. In a few weeks afterwards one may see the engravings stuck up in the picture windows, and marked for value at eightpence each. In point of fact, we may say that the English are a public who can better afford to buy such a class of what we may call " furniture-books " than other nations, and that is the reason why we should ask more value for our money. The volume before us is a superior book to works of its class. Its letterpress gives an antique subject to the idle reader (who must be presupposed in cases of this kind). But the engravings are the more valuable part of the work They are designed to illustrate the volume in a style half serious half whim sical, and possess considerable artistic merits. Some of the aptitude for producing " the material sublime" in the style of the late John Martin is shown by Dore's teeming fancy and facile hand. He excels in drawing buildings; and his Gothic battlements and towering pillars have wondrous height, light ness, and symmetry, but there is a tendency to Pxaggeration. In the third pl a t e (p. 35), the illustration to Estout de Vcrfeil is con ceived in an overstrained style. Such a mighty castle would never be built under a rock that would completely expose Its wardens, even in the days of the sling and the crossbow. The castle, and magic work, all in flames (p. 82), is brilliantly conceived and boldly drawn, though the engraving is rather cloudy. The ideas of flame, whirlwind, and desolation are most vividly presented to the mind. The scene in the wood (p 109) is cleverly imagined, but the hag wants weird intensity, and is too like one of Mr. Maclise's stalwart viragos ; and the ermine robe is not in character, and re minds one of Mme. Tussaud's " sumptuous effects." Tho scene of Jaufry with Augier's daughter—the winding path, the steep glen, the giant's figure near the shattered tower — is romantic and airy, and highly expressive of strong colour. The procession of the SATURDAY, wedding train (p. 157), and the winding river meandering through a Champaign coun try, is highly poetical, though parts of the engraving are rather crude. Turning to the letterpress, we may observe that it is an advantage in a drawing-room book to have original matter. In the present instance, a tale of chivalry, illustrative of the Provencal literature, is given to the reader. The preface to the Frenoh version says : The literary world of France scarce knows the extent of its own riches. In the catacombs of its libraries and archives there is a heap of unknown jewels which would give a new and brighter lustre to its poetic wreath. The "great age" did not even suspect their existence; the eighteenth century passed over without bestowing on them a glance; and if, in our days, a few of our learned brethren have conceived the idea of drawing them to light, the rumour of their labours, which moreover were both super ficial and incomplete, never got beyond the doors of the Institute There still remains, then, more especially as regards the south, to open up the lode of this mine of gold—a virgin mine as yet, inasmuch as Sainte-Palaye, Rochegude, Ray. nouard, and Fauriel have but scraped upon its surface— and reanimate, in a poetic point of view, the middle ages, too easily sacrificed at the period of the Renaissance, too severely proscribed by the University. Fed, in truth, from our entry into college with the literature of Greece and Rome, which, however admirable in form, is but sober in invention, we can have no conception of those works wherein the imagination of France, youthful, vigorous, and gay, blossomed in full freshness like a rose in spring. Some judgment may be formed of the value of the poems rhymed by the troubadours in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the romance which is now presented to the public. Dragged from the dust beneath which it has lain buried for six hundred years, the romance of "Jaufry " is translated for the first time; and, when we consider the merit of the story, we may add, without fear of contradic ticn, that it deserved such honour long ago. . . Let the reader call np in his mind apavilion of Smyrna or Granada, with columns of white marble light and grace ful as those of the Alhambra, with elegant trelliswork, glass of varied hues, and filled with a pervading tone of warmth—the warmth of a May sun—and he will have some notion of the romance of "Jaufry and the Fair Brunis sende "—few things being more piquant, more fresh, more fanciful, or which better reflect the charming caprices of a southern imagination in the middle ages. Feudal society revives therein entire, with all its fairy doings, its knightly fictions, its manners, and its grand lance•thrusts ; and,such is the interest of the tale, that we allow ourselves to be carried away by it with as much pleasure as our ancestors must have felt when it was told to the sounds of the min strel's viol in the great castle-hall, or beneath the shadow of the tent. There is exaggeration here, and the enthu siastic Frenchman is in issimo, like many French critics, when treating of " romantic " literature. In England, from the vast resources of our ballads, we can more coolly estimate the valne of Provençal literature. The trou badours borrowed much from the ancient bards of Britain, as evidently appears from their popular tales, and they helped them selves latterly from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth ; but unquestionably they gave brilliant costume to the fictions of our remote forefathers. They commingled their jubilant strains in praise of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and of Charle magne and his heroes. The translator from the French version says in his preface:— As answerable for the fashion and material of the cos tume, I may be permitted to say a few words concerning the rule which has guided me in producing it. Keeping in view that the original romance is a poem in form and composition, I have endeavoured !n my translation still to preserve the poetic character ; and, though compelled to base my work upon a prose version, I have tried within certain limits rather to restore its original shape than allow it, by the second ordeal to which it is thus subjected, to lose it altogether. The rules of literature, like those of science, are inexorable. The translator has attempted a species of composition which is neither poetry nor prose, and which fatally recall Macpherson's " Ossian " to a critic's memory. Thus, the version opens : 'Twos on the day of Pentecost, a feast which to Carlisle had dawn a host of knights, that Arthur, King of Briton's isle, his crown placed on his brows, and to the old monastic church proceeded to hear mass. And with him went a brilliant train, the Knights of the Round Table. There were Sir ()swain, Lancelot du Lac, Tristrem, and Ivan bold, Erie frank of heart, and Que: the seneschal, Percival and Calogrant, Cliges the worthy, Coadis the handsome knight, and Caravis short i' the arm ; the whole of his bright court, indeed, was there, and many more whose names I have forgot. When mass was done, they to the palace home returned 'mid laughter and loud noise, the thoughts of each on plea sure only bent. Each on arrival gave his humour play. Some spoke of love, and some of chivalry, and some of ventures they were going to seek. Quex at this moment came into the hall, holding a branch of apple in hit, hand. All made room for him, for there were few who did not