The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-09 00:00:00

762 this book. Can he have to learn that talent does not consist in tricks of typography ? We fear he has been spoilt by injudicious praise. He has been flattered into the belief that he is above rules, until now it is a toss-up, so mingled arc his merits and defects, whether he will attain the topmost round of popular authorship or sink into an affected scribbler. Essays, Critical and Imaginative. By Pro fessor Wilson. Vol. I. London : Black woods. THAT literature was made for man, and not man for literature, would seem to be the sort of principle which Professor Wilson, by his manners and writings, endeavoured to estab lish. Considering that man was a composite being—intellectual, moral, and physical—it was the theory of the Professor that these three faculties should each be duly developed. He had not much sympathy with those who achieved great eminence by the exercise of one faculty at the sacrifice of the other two ; and he looked upon all human pursuits—art, science, literature, education, government—as subservient to the one great end of cultivating the whole nature of man We cannot at pre sent discuss the correctness of this opinion ; but that it was the cherished opinion of Christopher North must be the conviction of all who do not refuse to see in the " Noctes .Ambrosianm" and the present Essays some thing more than the mere random ebullitions of a vigorous and sensuous temperament. We believe they were written on principle, and intended as an antidote to the notion—which, however, was even then on the wane—that the country is the birthplace of coarseness and vulgarity, and that country sports and true conviviality are incompatible with a high order cf intellect and a high polish of polite ness. This, the favorite dogma of the wits of the eighteenth century, Wilson delighted to think himself the man chosen to demolish. Hence his maledictions on all who show any symptoms of either physical or moral weak ness—his jovial denunciation of Cockneys and bagmen—his eulogies on good living— and his constant recommendation of a " caulker." It is in the first five or six essays of this volume that these doctrines are specially enforced Yet, in the paper on " Health and Longevity," after having stated that " no man " need write for Ma;. - .Ta with the most distant " chance of admission," unless he eats and drinks on a scale then and there laid down, and of such magnitude as to have satisfied even the giants in Mr H. Ainsworth's "Tower of London"—embracing as it does four meat meals a day,with three quarts of porter,a bottle of claret, four glasses of hock, four of champagne, two of port, and two of Madeira, three jugs of toddy and a caulker after breakfast—he nevertheless goes on to tell us that much of all this kind of exaggeration is assumed— " much of our swilling is imagination "—and so no doubt it was. We do not believe he was habitually guilty of excess, though his strong constitution enabled him to be a free liver without any inconvenience or injury. With an extract from his letters on early rising we have done with this side of his character:— Finally, it is taken for granted by early risers that early rising is a virtuous habit, and that they are all a most meritorious and prosperous set of people. I object to both clauses of the bill. None hut a knave or an idiot—l will not mince the matter—rises early. if he can help it. Early risers are generally milksop-spoonies, ninnies with broad unmeaning faces and grozet eyes, cheeks odiously ruddy. and with great calves to their legs. They slap you on the hack, and blow their noses like a msil•coach horn. They seldom give dinners. " Sir, tea is ready." " Shall we join the ladies? " A rubber at whist, and by eleven o'clock the whole house is in a snore. Inquire into his motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an appe tite fur breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied with three penny rolls and a pound of ham to breakfast, but he must walk down to the pier-head at Leith to in crease his voracity? V 1 here is the virtue of gobbling up three turkey's eggs, and demolishing a quartern loaf, before his Majesty's lieges are awake? But I am now speaking of your red, rosy. greedy idiot. Mark next your pale, sallow early riser. He is your prudent, calculating, selfish money-scrivener. It is not fur nothing he rises. It is shocking to think of the hypocrite saying his prayers so early in the morning, before those are awake whom he intends to cheat and swindle before he goes to bed. Wilson's literary judgmm•nts are charac terised, on the whole, by great fairness, as well as great breadth and power. It may THE PRESS. seem strange to say this, after all the charges of violence which have been brought against him. But his own vindication in the " Loves of the Poets" is quite sufficient. It is too long to quote, but the gist of it is this :—That severity is not always a proof of partiality— that when a critic has thoroughly made up his mind that such and such a work is rubbish, and the author an impostor, he is then at liberty to castigate him secundem artem—but that real dishonesty and partisanship consists in a man forcing himself to think every one who differs front him a fool, and that of this spirit there is no evidence whatever in the pages of Blackwood. Wilson had a right to say this ; and certainly in the present Essays his praises of Cowper and Byron —two men most essentially unlike himself—are refuta tions of the charge in question. But, to waive the matter of personalities, some of the best literary criticism in the language is to be found in this volume. The first fifteen or sixteen pages of the review of " The Man of Ton" contain an unrivalled account of English satire from Dryden to Gifford. We call attention to the passage upon Cowper : Never were the principles of the real wealth of nations more grandly expounded, illustrated, and enforced— national honour, faith, freedom, patriotism, independence, religion, all sung in magnificent strains, kindled alter nately by the pride and indignation of a Briton exulting in, or ashamed of, the land of saints and heroes. No want of individual portraits of fools, knaves, and even ruffians. The same man, who was well satisfied to sit day after day beside an elderly lady, sewing caps and tippets, except when he was obliged to go and water the flowers, or feed the rabtits, rose up, when poetry came upon him, sinewy and muscular as a mailed man dallying for a while with a two-edged sword, as if to try its weight and temper, when about to sheer down the Philistines. Cowper goes forth in his holy ire like a man inspired and commis sioned. You see his soul glowing and burning with fires kindled on the altar of religion. He comes strong from the study of the old prophets. And in some of his most magnificent marches you think that you hear the Bible transformed into another shape of poetry, the essence being the same, nor are the sacred strains profaned by being sounded to a lyre smote by such a hand—a hand uplifted duly, many times and oft, besides night and morn, in prayer, and ever " open as day to mebing charity." How he sheds sudden day into the midnight darkness of London, lying bare with all her sins and iniquities ! The dark city quakes as she is suddenly brightened, and stands confessed in all her guilt, in which she dares not to glory, now that the hand of Heaven seems stretched forth to avenge and destroy. There is nothing in Byron of such sustained majesty as Cowper's Expostulation with this Queen of the Cities of the earth—nor even in Wordsworth. The following vigorous passage upon Petrarch's Laura is from a review of Mrs. Jameson's "Loves of the Poets":— Laura was virtuous. Brit how that could be, it sur• passed the impure imaginations of the many French reps and demireps whom, in various ages, it has been the taste of the unprincipled philosophers, and so forth, in France, to esteem wits, and whom not a few priggish and pedantic coxcombs even in Britain, desirous of being thought men of fashion and of the world forsooth, smelling all the while of crucibles or parchments. have chattered of in uncouthest criticism, flirting with the very bones of the beldam— such as that heartless profligate, Madame do Deffand, and others too odious to name. An Englishwoman knows and feels better ; and sees nothing so very laughable or ab• surd in the belief that the beloved of Petmrch preserved her virtue in spite of all the strains of impassioned genius " perilous to hear." Truth and honour dwelt of old in Italy, in the citadel of the female heart, as they do now in the same holy fortress, in England; and Laura has found a champion of her own sex, whose vindication might soothe her shade, and chase away all shame from her down•looking eyes, inspired by the insults of the painted prostitutes that rolled the wanton eye. and trolled the wanton tongue, in the contemptible Court of the Regent— the court not of love, but of lust, and of which the ladies, imperfect Poissardes, hail all the chastity, and but half the politeness, of the Parisian fishmarket. Here again is an illustration of surpassing felicity, from " Days Departed," by Mr. Bowles:— Such being the nature of true poets and true poetry, and such the light in which they are regarded by the race whom they elevate—what, pray, it may be asked, did Mr. Jeffrey mean, t'other day. by saying that all the poets of this age are forgotten ? There are few people whom w,• love and admire more than Mr. Jeffrey—though we believe he does not know it : but why will he, in his elegant and graceful way, speak such nonsense? Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, are, he assures us, already all forgotten —or nearly so—fading away—mere specks on the distant horizon of men's clouded memories! Why, our dear sir, you might just as well affirm that the stars are forgotten because thousands of coach (tile of people, coming and going to and front crewing parties, arc not at the lime aware that the heavens are full ,f them—that shepherds are watching by them on the hills—and sailors sailing by them on the seas—and astronomers counting them in observatories—and occasionally discovering one SATURDAY, that had been invisible to the mole•eyes of men since the creation. His essay on " The Education of the People" we recommend to general perusal, believing it to contain in a small space all that can be said on the theory of this important subject, and to be such a logical statement of the nature, risks, and benefits of general education, as can nowhere else be found. The Professor decides in favour of raising popular educa tion to the highest possible standard. The concluding essay of this volume is upon Wordsworth. In the comparison herein con tained between Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, Wilson has reached the summit of critical excellence. The concluding portion of his remarks on Lord Byron is truly beautiful:— Byron looks back to the tombs of those great men " that stand in assured rest "; and gazing, as it were, on the bones of a more gigantic race, his imagination then teems with corresponding births, and he holds converse with the mighty in language worthy to he heard by the spirits of the mighty. It is in this contrast between his. august conceptions of man, and his contemptuous opinion of men, that much of the almost incomprehensible charm, and power, and enchantment of his poetry exists. We feel ourselves alternately sunk and elevated, as if the hand of an invisible being had command over us. At one time we are a little lower than the angels; in another, but little higher than the worms. We feel that our elevation and our disgrace are alike the lot of our nature ; and hence the poetry of Byron, as we before remarked, is read as a dark, but still a divine revelation. He thinks Scott, though inferior in many respects to his two great contemporaries, the most unequivocally original of the three. " He is the greatest of war poets." Of Wordsworth it is said that he adds "to the great and essen• " tial faculties of the poet the calm and self " commanding powers of the philosopher ;" also, " all the poets of the age have given up " to him the palm in that poetry which com " mences with the forms and hues and odours " and sounds of the material world. He has " brighteuied the earth we inhabit to our eyes— " he has made it more musical to our ears—he " has rendered it more creative to our imagi " nations." We must remember that when this was written Tennyson was yet unknown. We have been greatly delighted with the perusal of this volume, and we think the Essays likely to prove much greater public favorites than the " Noctes." They are full of wit, wisdom, and humour, with hardly any taint of the coarseness with which the latter work would sometimes displease the most tolerant and partial reader. Kars, and Our Captivity in Russia. By Colonel Atwell Lake, C.B. London: Bentley. COLONEL LAKE has reasonably anticipated that any authentic memoranda concerning the gallant and ever-memorable defence of Kars will be welcome to the British public. His narrative, though an agreeable and unpre tending record of the interesting and momen tous events of the scige, relates more to the captivity of the British defenders of Kars than to their vigorous resistance of the enemy— a scientific and professional work on that sub ject being in preparation by Colonel Lake, which he hopes may be useful to his brother officers of Engineers. Kars surrendered on the 28th of November, 1855 ; and then commences the most interest ing portion of Colonel Lake's volume. On the evening of that day the English officers dined with General Mouravieff, and drank champagne, while the starved Turks were en tertained with bread and soup, of which " some " of the poor famished creatures ate so vora " eiously, that even this simple fare was fatal " to them, and they died of repletion in a few " hours." The Colonel thus describes his own sensations upon retiring to bed that night •- My feelings on retiring to bed I shall not easily forget. I was pervaded by a calm sense of security,—an absence of the trying responsibility which had, for months, become a habit of mind. The thought that there were no longer any risks or terrors to he endured—and that night, even in the camp of an enemy, might bring repose—that I should no longer be aroused from my short sleep by the uncertain sounds of an attack, the roar of cannon, or the rattle of musketry,—this pleasant vacuity from fear and care lulled all my senses like a gentle opiate—and 1 soon fell asleep. These sensations, however, soon proved to be very deceptive. What had become almost a normal state of mind and body was not to be shaken off in a day. I