The Press. — London, England, 1855-05-12 00:00:00

MAY 12, 1855. meeting with serious reverses. The first ac tions of the campaign are stated to have re sembled in their general features the combats lately fought in the Crimea It is a curious circumstance, indicative of the lasting impress which nature has put upon all the families of the European race compared with the Asiatic, that these battles of Groohow and Sieroczyn bear the closest resem blance to those of lnkermann and Balaklava in after flutes. The Poles resisted the enormous masses of the Russians with the same intrepidity and firmness, in front of l'raga, that the English did their assailants, five times their own number, in front of Sebastopol ; and if a gallant allied force had come up at the close of the day, to ren der the balance somewhat more equal, the result would have been the same on both occasions. The Polish squadrons threw themselves on the Muscovite artillery with the same intrepidity as the English light horse, in after days, on the shores of the Crimea; and, like them, atter passing through the guns, charged and routed the enemy's cavalry, three times more numerous than their own, in rear. Dwernicki's leading was the prototype of that of Lord Cardigan. These facts lead to a conclusion of great and lasting importance for the interests of civilisation and freedom in future times. This is, that the forces of Europe, animated by the spirit of liberty and the energy of intelligence, are still as superior to the hosts of Asia as they were in the days of Marathon and Plates; and that the ceaseless encroachments and menacing strength of Russia is not owing to any advantage which the Asiatics possess in courage over the Europeans, but to the greater foresight of its tioverument, and unity of purpose in its inhabitants,—qualities in which the people of the West, unfortunately, are often as deficient as they are superior in vigour and knowledge. The brilliant victory gained by the Poles over Rosen's army is remarkable for the panic which seized on the Russian forces. The Russian centre was broken by a brilliant charge of Polish cavalry : Upon this the whole of Rosen's corps took to flight, and nothing but the darkness of the night, and the extreme exhaustion of the Polish troops, who had marched and fought since the preceding midnight, saved any part of them from destruction. As it was, the Poles took six thou sand prsoners, besides inflicting an equal loss in killed and wounded on the enemy, who diapered in all direc tions, no longer preserving even the appearance of an army. Such of them as could be reached by the Polish horse surrendered without resistance; the peasants brought in great numbers who were straggling in the woods ; awl so great was the consternation of the Muscovites, that next morning the extraordinary spectacle was exhibited of two peasants, without arms, bringing to the Polish head quarters twelve Russian soldiers, whom they allowed to carry their muskets, to avoid the trouble of taking them from them ! The army of Menschikoff seems to have been similarly disorganised after its defeat at Alma ; and it is now evident that the allied commanders missed the fortunate moment for securing the brilliant success of their enter prise. The Russians prevailed over the Poles at last by the same policy that they unscrupu lously adopt in all their wars. The lives of the men were recklessly sacrificed ; thousands fell, but thousands more were marched for ward. The Russian commanders act on the principle that life is cheap, and that no sacri fice of blood is to be esteemed which enables them to gain ground, or even to inflict loss— though comparatively far inferior—on their opponents. At Ostrolenka the Russians lost 10,000 men, and though compelled to with draw counted the battle a victory, as it cost the Poles a loss of 7,000. The desperate tenacity with which the Russian troops hold their ground, in spite of enormous loss, warn us that we must prepare for a frightful carnage when once hard fighting recommences in the Crimea. The noble struggle of the Poles was disfigured by one lamentable episode : History may well take a pride in recording this moving scene, in which noble parts were played by great actors on the tragic theatre of the world ; but it would be well for the annals of Poland if the narrative of the change of government at Warsaw could stop there. Un fortunately, a very different scene was exhibited by the mobs in the capital. Excited by the approach of the Russians and the declamations in the clubs, as the Jacobins of Paris had been by the advance of the Duke of Brunswick in 1792, they broke out into similar ex cesses. The massacre in the prisons of Warsaw on the 15th and 16th of August, 1831, is a fit oompanion to that in the prison of Paris on the 2nd and 3rd September, 1792. A furious mob, excited by the declamations of the violent orators in the clubs, and exclaiming, " Treason ! treason !" collected in the streets ; and the whole armed force having been sent into the intrenched camp, the Government had no means either of suh•luing it or de fending themselves. They first invaded the Palace, where they overturned the Government, and then proceeding to the State prisons, they broke in and murdered all the 54t0 vrisoners, including Jaukowai Itud Bukowai, who An Iliad rising out of one campaign. Even the gay muse of Prior recognised the necessity of premeditation and design, upon undertaking a panegyric of the war. " When " I first thought of writing upon this occasion," says Prior, "I found the ideas so great and " numerous, that I judged them more proper " for the warmth of an ode than for any other " sort of poetry"; and so he took Horace for his model, raised the English general to the level of Drusus, and transferred to " Great Anna" the honours that were paid to Au gustus. It is quite certain that none of the bards of the Alma and Inkermann found " the ideas so great sad Putooloas " as to Morel -- - ;---•_-___________•_ - - - THE PRESS. had been tried to please the club., for their want of suc cess in Volhynia, b u t ac quitted. Forty•seven persons, including several Russian prisoners, and several uncoil• nected with politics, and confined for debt, fell victims to the fury of the populace on this calamitous occasion. Next day the Government, utterly powerless either to avert calamity or punish crime, gave in their resignation. They were succeeded by a new set of rulers, composed of the most violent of the clubs, at the head of which was Krukowieckski, whose talents were considerable, and energy of character well known. The last hope of the Poles vanished with their defeat before the walls of Warsaw, and thenceforth the Emperor Nicholas, by the extreme severity of his rule, endeavoured to make further resistance impossible. How well he has succeeded may partly be conjec tured by the submissive attitude of Poland at the present moment. Sir A. Alison, however, concludes his volume with a flourish on the necessity of reconstituting the kingdom. " Poland must be restored by an effort of " united Europe." The rear is, lest the time for achieving an object in itself so desirable has not imaged by. In 1855 we are paying the penalty of Lord Palmerston's refusal to enter into an alliance with France and Austria for the protection of Poland in 1831 On this and on many other subjects the volume throws reflected light on the circumstances of our present state, while ably and instructively recording the vast changes which followed immediately on the July revolution and the fall of the Wellington Government. CONTEMPORARY POETRY. IF the divine afflatus could be computed by weight, we have an excellent opportunity just now of submitting it to that test. Upwards of fifty volumes of verse, or thereabouts, the produce of the last few months, are piled up on our table; and this collection, prodigious as it is, only partially represents the recent activity of the poetical element amongst us. It may be doubted whether any other depart ment of literature, singly considered, was equally prolific in the same peiiod. Put into the scales even against the novels—making a reasonable allowance for the typographical expansion of that branch of industry—we suspect the verse-books would kick the beam. But neither the influence, nor the intrinsic merits, of any species of intellectual produc tion can be estimated by quantity. Nor is it a decisive evidence of the existence of a par ticular mania for music that such a vast number of singers should burst out into full chorus simultaneously, like birds at the ap proach of spring. They may have misunder stood the signs of the season ; they may have mistaken Juliet for the east. Poetry, like much commoner things, is subject, more or less, to the laws of political economy, and must be ultimately regulated by the principle of supply and demand. There may be an over-supply of poetry, as of indigo or cotton. Inspiration, like speculation, may have its warehouses filled with unsaleable goods. And this consideration conducts us at once to the peculiar case of the poet, which, in some respects, differs from that of all other pro ducers. In the first place, it should be remembered that it is not by the number of books that are printed, but by the number of books that are read, the tendency of the age in a special direction can be determined. Publishers thorotighly understand this. The ledger is an infallible commercial thermometer of the fluctuations of the popular taste ; and hence it generally happens that when the demand for a particular class of works falls off, the whole class insensibly disappears. Thus it was with the romances of the Ratcliffe school, to select a familiar example. The most con summate art could not now revive an interest in them; and, therefore, nobody makes the attempt. But the poet is not governed, guided, or instructed by the admonitions of experience. His eyes are fixed on the stars, and he walks straight into the mantling pool of instantaneous oblivion at his feet. He prints whether he is read or not. He re fuses to accept contemporary judgment as a criterion of the prudence of inviting its ver diet, die hail a way of appealing to posterity 453 which renders him indifferent to present failure. If he be neglected by his own age, he has the comfortable consolation of knowing that the next age will do him justice. Conse quently, the great accumulation of verse must be accounted for on grounds wholly inap plicable to any other kind of books. It is a crop quite independent of the ordinary laws of vegetation and culture. It requires neither sunshine, nor favorable soils, nor preparatory tillage. It springs up in the night, anywhere, and anyhow, with a luxuriance more remark able for fecundity than vigour or usefulness ; and it has also the peculiar property of the cockle, that its growth cannot be checked, in spite of all the efforts of the husbandmen— that is to say, the critics—to clear it out from the corn. To what extent any of the poems before us have been, or are likely to be, read, we cannot, of course, pretend to predicate ; but it is evident that the publication of the bulk of them may be referred, not to the reliance of the booksellers on present cash returns, but to the happy faith of the authors in future laurels. The dainty care bestowed on the garniture of most of them—the immense dis proportion between the cost of the outside and the value of the inside—and the elabora tion of the external ornaments, like those of mummies destined for posterity, betray that inextinguishable belief in a distant public which is certainly not one of the foibles of the Row. It would be impossible to found upon these poems any satisfactory theory concerning the poetical development of the•present age. We cannot collect from them any suggestions towards such a speculation. No particular style predominates amongst them ; no para mount idea, or purpose, animates this band of straggling musicians. They seem to sing, for the most part, out of mere idleness, or the vagrant pleasure of making a noise, just as turbulent little boys 'whistle through the streets. There are some few exceptions, which we shall note in passing ; but fur the rest, the nineteenth century might be a period of energetic action or bucolic repose, of chivalry and romance or calculation and shop keeping, for any light they threw upon it— with the exception of the single topic of the war. This subject, indeed, occupies a con siderable share of the attention of the poets, and they exhibit upon it the same sort of zeal with which certain indefatigable minstrels diffuse through the metropolis the triumphs of a popular air. These writers may be con sidered as forming a distinct class, and as being entitled to precedence by virtue of the seasonableness of their theme. We will, therefore, begin with them, and then proceed to the consideration of the miscellaneous residue. It will strike the most casual reader of modern heroics that battles and victories are no longer approached with the careful prepa ration displayed by former poets on similar occasions. We look in vain for a plan, for large pictures, or even expressive details. The utmost that appears to be accomplished is a sudden burst of verse, in which the writer gives vent to a few hasty images, without stopping to put them in order, or to shape them into a whole. It is as if a worker in metals were to aim at no farther results than the sparks he strikes out of the anvil. This was not the way in which the " Annus Mira bilis " was wrought, in which Waller celebrated the defeat of the Turks, or Addison sang the glories of Marlborough—