The Press. — London, England, 1856-05-03 00:00:00

, 424 and old Sir It. Heron. Toasts were drunk with hip, hip, hurrah, eke., and all was very merry. - There is only one allusion, and that of a most cursory character, to Mr. Wilson Croker in these volumes. There is little kindly praise of any working man of letters in them ; and Moore had obviously no esprit de corps with the literary profession. The tone of a sentimental upstart is felt throughout in his glozing praise of " Lords " and " Ladies " and great rulers of society. He rather makes an exception in favour of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall. In recording a visit of a few days from them in l 840, Moore says,— " We found them very agreeable as well as " clever people, qualities not always found " together." Elsewhere he alludes to Mrs. Hall as the writer "of those inimitable Irish stories," but in general he has little to say for his brethren of the pen. He writes one caustic thing of Mr. Abraham Hayward which, as a dictum of Moore, will probably adhere to that learned Queen's Counsel. In de scribing the guests at a dinner at Longmans, Moore mentions " Mr. Hayward, the trans " lator of ' Faust,' but better known as the author " of some late culinary articles in the Quarterly " Review." The conversation at table turned on the merits of " Boz." We are rather sur prised to find Sydney Smith thus brought in desiring to run " Boz ' down : Conversation turned on Boz, the new comic writer. Was sorry to hear Sydney cry him down, and evidently without having given him a fair trial. Whereas, to me it appears one of the few proofs of good taste that "the masses," as they are called, have yet given, there being some as nice humour and fun in the " Pickwick Papers" as in any work I have seen in our day. Hayward, the only one of the party that stood by me in this opinion, engaged me fur a dinner (at his chambers) on Thursday nest. In Sydney Smith's letters there is extravagant praise, written to Mr. Dickens himself, and swallowed accordingly. It struck us at the time of reading it as being too exaggerated for perfect sincerity on the part of Sydney Smith. It is worth notice that the company at the dinner consisted of Sydney Smith himself, Canon Tate, Mr. Merivale, Dr. Lardner, Mr. J. R. M'Cullocb, Moore, their entertainers of Pater noster-row (well qualified to speak on such critical subjects), and Mr Abraham Hayward. A reaction is now beginning to take place against Mr. Dickens, and the question dis cussed above is au " open" one; for since " Uncle Tom" and the striking successes of Mr. Thackeray, the claims of" Buz " are not of the overpowering character first claimed for them. It is, perhaps, worth notice that although Moore gives minute accounts of various dinners at that time, he omits to take the slightest further notice of the literary gentleman who was " better known for his " culinary articles !" and who had engaged Moore to dine. The world has often heard of S 3 dney Smith's celebrated characterisation of Lord John Russell. We get hints here of what the Whirrs thought about it. From the notoriety of the particular passage, the following is well worth notice : A note from Mrs. Smith to say, that Sydney would take me to the Longmans today, if 1 liked. Had already half promised to go with Lardner, but sent a note to put him off. On our way to Hampstead, Sydney talked of his " Letter," rather nervously, as I thought. Forget whether I have mentioned Luttrell's saying to me the other day, " Wel, my dear Moore, could you have conceived any man taking such pains to upset a brilliant position in society as Sydney has been taking lately." In the course of our talk, Smith mentioned his having received a letter lately from Lord Carlisle, in acknowledgment of a copy of the pamphlet he had sent him. Repeated the substance, and, I suppose, nearly the words of the letter, which appeared to me a very polished but pointed condemnation of the pamphlet. Lord Carlisle, it is clear, in writing it, felt himself bound to express, as politely as possible, what lie knew to be the opinion of the persons he lived with on the subject ; and being himself unscathed by the pamphlet, he could of course do it with a better grace. This, how ever, Sydney did not seem to me to feel. The Whigs %yew evidently nettled at Smith having turned his battery upon them, after they had shown their disinclination to make him a Bishop. But what follows is more curious : While we were on the subject, I thought it my duty, also, to tell him what I thought of Ids attack on Lord John ; his repreAenting him to be so totally devoid of feel• ing as to hear with unconcern the loss of the Channel fleet, the dying of a man under en operation for the stone, &c. &c., through his means. This he denied to be the puport or effect of the passage in question, which meant merely, he contended, that you could not perceive by Lord THE PRESS. John's manner that he felt it. In the course of our con versation afterwards, he happened, in speaking with great bitterness of Lord Castlereagh, to say something of his indifference to the mischief and ruin he might cause by his measures, which amounted in purport exactly to the same which he has said of Lord John. I therefore in stantly interrupted him, saying, " There, that's precisely the impression you produce in your character of Lord John." " You don't say so ?" he exclaimed. " I assure you," I answered, "that such is the way in which it is viewed by all whom I have heard speak on the subject." " Then I mast certainly," ho said, "set myself right on that point; and as there is a new edition just coming out, I shall not lose a moment in doing it." On our arrival at Hampstead, he absented himself from the drawing•room for a short time, and I found afterwards it was for the purpose of making this correction. It is merely a short note denying that he meant to impute any want of feeling to Lord John. But the arrow hati already sped, and no one now minds the note. Upon which passage Lora John makes no note. There is a point at which reticence pro duces some of the effects of eloquence. One of the pleasantest passages in the volumes is that in which Mrs. Moore ex presses her delight at her husband having received a pension of three hundred a year. It smacks of nature, and its heartiness is welcome after the superficiality of sentiment in many parts of this butterfly style of biography : Sloperton, Tuesday night. My dearest Tom,—Can it really be true that you have a pension of 3001. a year ? Mrs., Mr., two Misses, and young Longman were here to-day, and tell me it is really the case, aid that they have seen it in two papers. Should it turn out true, I know not how we can be thankful enough to those who gave it, or to a Higher Power. The Longmaus were very kind and nice, and so was I, and 1 invited them all five to come at some future time. At present, I can think of nothing but 3001. a year, and dear Russell jumps and claps his hands with joy. Tom is at Devises. The Pugets did not come to tea yester day, Louisa being ill To-day they sent me sonic beauti ful flowers. If the story is true of the 3001., pray give dear Ellen twenty pounds. and insist on her drinking five pounds worth of wine yearly, to be paid out of the 3001. a year. I have been obliged, by the by, to get five pounds to send to Three hundred a year, how delightful ! But 1 have my fears that it is only a castle in the air. lam sure I shall dream of it ; and so I will get to bed, that I may have this pleasure at least; for I expect the morning will throw down my castle. Wednesday morning. Is it. true? lamin a fever of hope and anxiety, and feel very oddly. No one to talk to but sweet Buss, who says, " Now Papa will not have to work so hard, and will be able to go out a little " You say I am so " nice and comical " about the money. Now you are much more so (leaving out the "nice "), for you have forgotten to send the cheque you pi omised. But I can wait with patience, for no one teases me. Only I want to have a few little things ready to welcome you home, which I like to pay for. How you will ever enjoy this quiet every-day sort of stillness, after your late re ception, I hardly know. I begin to want you very much ; for though the boys are darlings, there is still How I wish I had wings, for then I would be at Wexford as soon as you, and surprise your new friends. lam so glad yon have seen the Gonnes ; I know they are quite delighted at your attention. Mr. Benett called the other day on my sons. N.B. If this good news be true, it will make a great difference in my eating. I shall then indulge in butter to potatoes. Mind you do not tell this piece of gluttony to any one. The allusion to the joy of the children of Moore is more affecting in that passage when we recollecthow unfortunately they both turned out But how was it that Moore was not the first to inform his Bessy of the good news, and that in his improved circumstances he had forgotten to send her the cheque he had promised 9 We may, possibly, return to these volumes for a few special extracts, which require detailed notice. In the meanwhile we recommend the two volumes as being, on the v hole, more readable and various than their predecessors, but they will leave Moore's character just Arhere it was. The fair fame of the Whig party has certainly suffered from the memoirs of Lord Holland, Sydney Smith, and Thomas Moore. Oxford Essays. 1856. Contributed by Mem bers of the University. London :J. W. Parker and Son. THIS series of essays is evidently the com mencement of a new style of periodicals. The articles are genuine essays, and not half review half-essay, like those in the estab lished Quarterlies. These, as a rule, have very much degenerated of late ; and it is quite certain that there has been till recently a vacuum in literature, which it is possible the Essays are destined to fill. They are written in a clear, elegant, and forcible style; SATURDAY, by men pledged not to w b r iy i v t i e imo m men, too, n x h e te p oi i u ela p v _ !h o t I n o. athreeirreoawllyn sound d al s c s h ll o b l j a e: s t : s o — n ing sits easily. The opening article of the present volume is on " Comparative Mythology," by Professor Max Miiller. The object of the writer is to seek for some rational explanation of the Greek myths, combating both the opinion of Mr. Grote, who denies that their explana- tion is possible, and of those also who regard them as corrupt fragments of a Divine revela tion. For the exposition of his theory ho takes us back to the parent stock of the Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Sanscrit languages,. known to the philologist as the Arian family; and his aim is to prove that myths sprang primarily from the existence of a class of words which from the difficulty of forming abstract nouns became proper names. Some of these original words are t o b e f ound in the Hellenic language, but for some we must go back to the common parent, the Arian. The comparative list of words belonging to these cognate languages, which the Professor here gives us, is exceedingly interesting. The absence of auxiliary verbs in the very early stages of a language would also lead to the same result. "0 ur auxiliary verbs have " had to pass through a long chain of vicissi " tudes before they arrived at the withered " and lifeless form which fits them so well for " the purposes of our abstract prose." We must remember also that " every word during " the inythopteic ages had still ita full original " power. Words were heavy and unwieldy." Thus when Healed calls Nyx (night) the mother of the Hesperides (evening stars), he means no more than we do when we say that " the stars are seen as night approaches "—no more than Tennyson means when he calls the Mouths the daughters of the Year. These, then, are the allegorical myths, but there are many which are not allegorical. These arose from the radical meaning of certain names having " become obscured and forgotten in " the language to which they belong." The Professor then proceeds to explain several Greek and Indian myths on this principle— commencing Ns ith Einlymion, which he sup poses to have been a peculiar dialectical word for sunset, which in classic Greek is derived not from ivat'iw, but from Z'l'Jw. This meaning becoming in time obsolete, " what was told " originally of the setting sun was now told of " a came, which in order to have any meaning "had to be turned into a god or a hero." The three next essays, upon the " Laws of War," " The Land System of Ireland," and " The Raphael Drawings at Oxford," are excel lent in their way, though we cannot uncondi tionally subscribe to all the opinions advanced in the second one. Mr. Morris advocates the fusion of the Encumbered Estates Court with the Irish Court of Chancery—a scheme which has been condemned by some able juris-con sults in the House of Commons. The article on " National Education," by Mr. Temple, is a remarkably clear and calm statement of the present condition of the education question. Of the five schemes which have been at different times proposed— vix., the secular, the denominational, the com• prehensive, the combined, and the voluntary— ho dismisses the first and last as imprac ticable,—the one owing to the strength of English religious feeling, the other to pecu niary difficulties Of the remainder he gives his p : incipal attention to the second and third ; the fourth, which is Mr. Cobden's favorite plan, being, he thinks,. rather local than national, and not likely to :command the sup port of any large party. We extract a brief outline of the three : The denominational method is to have separate schools for the separate religious denominations, and to supply them with a sufficient amount of State aid to enable thou t 3 cover the country. On this plan the Church would have her schools, the Wesleyans have theirs, the Independents have theirs. If two or more sects choose to combine, there is nothing to prevent them, but neither is there any thing to encourage them—such a combination must simply be considered as constituting, for the occasion, a new sect. Every school would, of course, teach the doctrines, and be managed by the representatives or officers, of the deno mination to which it belonged. The comprehensive plan proposes to establish schools in which so much religion shall be taught as all are willing t" agree in. In a country which, besides containing man`' 0 0 e 0 e it e It if s. e ,o re ,0 '0 tl 1. 1' 11 ie IC At 10 IC e, re sc )S in le al p- ta ig is of ig of id Li- to a- ra le n• c- of u- ; ie 13 ly 10 CS Y - ly n 1 0- in Lo