The Press. — London, England, 1855-08-18 00:00:00

liitraturt. The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside and John Dyer. Edited by the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott. London : Routledge. WE do not think that the present specimen of Mr. Willmott's editorial labours is equal to his former example reviewed by us last year (Wor*s of Gray, Collins, &c. PRESS, vol. p. 736). The character of Akenside as a man and a physician is not here sufficiently por trayed, and no one could gather from Mr Willmott's introduction that molly unfavorable particulars have been chronicled about the author of " The Pleasures of Imagination." What was said and written of him by his con temporaries should have been stated, and then Mr. Willmott might have discussed the ques tion how far the " Life " of the poet by the Rev. A. Dyce has vindicated his fair fame. We discern also some slips from Mr. Will mott's pen. The first four lines of the fifth stanza of the ode to Curio run thus : Soon with thy country's hope thy fame extends: The rescued merchant oft tby words resounds : Thee and thy cause the rural hearth defends: His bowl to thee the grateful sailor crowns. Upon which Mr. Willmott says :—" There is " a singular oversight in the fifth stanza, " where crowns' is compelled to rhyme with " ' sounds ' " (note, p. 128). There is no "over eight," as it is obvious that the poet wrote the verse intentionally, being desirious, by the substitution of an assonant for a consonant rhyme, to diversify the triple recurrence of the termination " nds " in the three preced ing lines. The liberty taken by Akenside is not greater than that of Campbell in his " Exile of Erin," where he makes, in the first stanza, the word " Erin " rhyme with "repair ing "; or in his ode to the Greeks, where he writes : Again to the battle, Achaians, Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance. Nor do we concur with Mr. Willmott when he says (p. xxxv.) that " Akenside's real strength " lay in the poetry of eloquence and descrip • " tion " We shall not stay to note the pecu liar phrase " poetry of eloquence "—an ex pression almost as incongruous as "the music of melody," or " the heroism of courage "—but certainly Akenside cannot be recommended for his powers of " description." He wanted the closeness, variety, and gleaming pictu resqueness of phrase necessary for constituting a master of description; as may easily be seen if his best passages in that style are put by the Bide of some of the secondary efforts of Pope, Thomson, Cowper, Goldsmith, or Walter Scott's highland landscapes in " The Lady of the Lake." Mr. Willmott appears to us to have missed the special faculty of his author. Akenside excelled in the poetical utterance of that moral rapture which springs from deep ethical views of life. His Muse frequented the confines which lie between Poetry and Philosophy, and his intellect was evidently much influenced by his medical studies. Of late years our poets have been prone to record the communings of the lone and sensitive spirit with Nature. They have aimed at the melodious and the mystical, but Akenside's emotions partake of " R public " turn, and he bad many of the qualities which would have made a great political speaker. The roll of his verse has always been admired, but his diction is Latinised and rather meagre. He cannot paint in epithets, nor realise effects with a few touching words. We could wish, also, for a more airy and delicate spirit in his poetry. Much of his work reads like a moral treatise in blank verse. In the literary history of " The Pleasures of Imagination" nothing is more curious than the circumstance that it is always neces sary to bind up together the original and the revised copies of the work, as in many in stances the author changed beauties into deformities, and vice-versa. Several instances could be cited. In the original the following well-known passage stands thus : the - - , afla uoinin, tuvugin vpmr, in wnose nos be free from the reproach of increasing Turkey's stances the author changed beauties into Ev'n )et some portion of its ancient wealth deformities, and vice-versa. Several instances Remains, and sparkles in the yellow sand difficulties while pretending to lend her could be cited. In the original the following Of its clear streams, though unregarded now ; aid. Supposing the war to continue, as at Ophirs more rich are fonnd. With easy p g course resent there is ever y chance of its continuin , well-known passage stands thus : The vessels glide; unless their speed be stopp'd Turkey must need further aid, and can, of Look then abroad through nature, to the range By dead calms, that oft lie on those smooth seas course, only pay the interest on one loan by Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres While eery zephyr sleeps ; Men the shrouds drop ; Wheeling unshaken through the void immense; The downy feather on the cordage, hung increasing the amount of the next. Should And speak, 0 man I does this capacious scene Moves not; the flat sea shines itke 'diva? gold, . FranOe and England divide the annwit at Ale THE PRESS. With half that kindling majesty dilate Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar's fate, Amid the crowd of patriots ; and his arm Aloft extending, like eternal Jove When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel, And bade the father of his country, hail ! For lo the tyrant prostrate on the duet, And Rome again is free! So it is usually quoted; and beyond doubt it is the best version. But in the " revised " form the author disiinproved it thus : Or is there in the abyss, Is there, among the adamantine spheres Wheeling unshaken through the boundless void, Aught that with half such majesty can fill The human bosom, as when Brutus rose Refhlgent from the stroke of emsar's fate Amid the crowd of patriots; and, his arm Aloft extending like eternal Jove When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud On Tully's name, and shook the crimson sword Of justice in his rapt astonish'd eye, And bade the father of his country hail, For 10, the tyrant prostrate on the dust, And Rome again is free? Several other instances might be quoted of changes that were not for the better. Mr. Willmott observes : Akenside was always ready to commend the genius of his contemporaries, wherever he found it. Mr. Meyriok possessed his copy of the " Castle of Indolence," in which several passages were marked with special admiration, and particularly the lovely stanza beginning, I care not, Fortune, what you me deny. The stanza here alluded to is indeed a "lovely" one, as Mr. Willmott calls it. We have never seen it remarked that there is a most striking coincidence between the tone of its thinking and an affecting passage in Jeremy Taylor s " Holy Living,' where in the chapter on " Contentedness," after particularising the various mischances of life, Taylor gloomily bursts forth : What now! Let me look about me. They have left me, the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse; ant unless I list they have not taken away my merry countenance. . . . I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and 3ee the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights— that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself. And he that bath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and punish. ment, who loses all those pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. The passage in eatenso is one of the most beau tiful in Jeremy Taylor's writings ; and we surmise Thomson recollected it when he wrote that stanza so deservedly admired by Mr. Willmott. For his biographical sketch of DYER Mr. Willmott has been furnished with some mate rials by the poet's descendant, Mr. W. H. Dyer Longstaffe, but they are not of much importance. "The Fleece," as a poem, is de preciated too much by general readers, but we can scarcely give it such high praise as Wordsworth and Mr. Willmott claim for it. In an original letter, now first published by Mr. Willmott, the poet writes : The work of my little " Fleece " I regard as part of my business ; it generally accompanies my sermon, and takes up half my pocket. And I can inform you that I am almost got to the end of my warp. I begin to see it plainly, and with the pleasure that Xenophon and his soldiers had when they gained the sight of the Euxine, and cried out, "The sea!—the sea!" The following particulars are not without interest : The eldest daughter of the poet is represented by Mr. W. H. Dyer Longstaffe, F.S.A., author of "A History of Darlington ;" his eldest brother, Robert, by the widow of Sir Charles Napier, the late Governor of Soinde; and Mr. Justice Cresswell, of the Common Pleas, is also a descen dant. From Mr. Willmott's propensity to go into fits of admiration, his estimates of poetry cannot always be relied on. Thus all the italics in the following passuge describing " a calm at sea" belong to Mr. Willmott:— See, through the fragance of delicious airs, That breathe the smell of balms, how traffic shapes A winding voyage, by the lofty coast Of Sofala, thought Ophir, in whose hills Ev'n yet some portion of its ancient wealth Remains, and sparkles in the yellow sand Of its clear streams, though nnregarded now ; Ophirs more rich are found. With easy course The vessels glide; unless their speed bestopp'd SATURDAY, Fus'd in the fire ; or like the marble floor Of some old kook wide ; but where so wide, In old or later time, its marble floor Did ever temple boast as this, which here Spreads its bright level many a league around? At solemn distances its pillars rise, Sofal's blue rocks, Musembic's palmy steeps, And lofty Madagascar's glitte►ing shores. That is, indeed, vehement admiration. Many will see only musical rhetoric in the foregoing passage, and the closing lines at once suggest cadences borrowed from Milton. So also Mr. Willmott calls the following rough verses " beautiful stanzas " : Have my friends in the town, the busy, gay town, Forgot such a man as John Dyer ? Or heedless despise they, or pity the clown, Whose bosom no pageantries tire ? No matter, no matter, content in the shades— Contented ! why everything charms me— Fall in tune all adown the green steep, ye cascades! Till hence rigid Virtue alarms me. Till Outrage arises, or Misery needs The swift, the intrepid avenger: Till sacred Religior, or Liberty bleeds— Then mine be the deed, or the danger. This readiness to go into eostacy seriously detracts from Mr. Willmott's judgment. Of the poets illustrated by him in this edition, it may be said that Thomson and Cowper have completely overshadowed them. Any peculiar merits possessed by Akenside and Dyer have been far exceeded in " The Seasons " and " The Task." The genteel comedies of Arthur Murphy and Cumberland would still rank high were it not for the overpowering brilliancy of Sheridan; and the kind of merit discernible in " The Pleasures of Imagina tion " and " The Fleece," is far more visible in other moral poets in our literature. Mr. Willmott composes gracefully, and has a wide command of reading. We should like to meet with him on some theme chosen by himself, in which he could write with more independence than while merely commenting on the productions of others. Should the Money required to pay the Expenses of the War be raised by Loans or by Taxes Pp. 63. London : Binns and Goodwin. THE matter of this essay is more important than might be supposed from its title. It is in some respect a history of national debts, and though it has been published for some weeks, yet as it con terns topics of permanent interest, we shall endeavour to place some of its most prominent points before our readers. The author, to show the importance of his inquiry, briefly mentions the cost of the last two wars : In the war with America in nine years we expended 117 millions, or at the rate of 13 millions per annum; in that with France in twenty-four years 1,126 millions, or 47 millions per annum. And on these figures he remarks : It is probable that the present war will cost more yearly than the American, although not so much as the French, which was greatly enhanced by subsilies, and by our having to raise large sums to pay the interest upon the money borrowed in the same war. This was written before the last financial statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Our total expenditure for the year is now estimated at ninety millions, an increase of pearly forty millions since the war broke out. But this forty millions is independent of the loan of five millions granted to Turkey. Looking at the financial condition of that country, and the continued expenditure which the war will impose on her, it is doubtful whether considerations of policy alone, apart from sentiments of generosity, would justify us in exacting from her the payment of in terest upon this sum. We are sorry, for our own part, that the Opposition did not reso lutely oppose to the last the principle of a loan to Turkey, as certain ultimately to enor mously increase her embarrassment's, and advocate a direct subsidy in its place, that we might know exactly what the addition to our responsibilities would be, and that we might be free from the reproach of increasing Turkey's difficulties while pretending to lend her aid. Supposing the war to continue, as at present there is every chance of its continuing, Turkey must need further aid, and can, of 788