The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

928 admit the truth of Scott's remark, that " even in describing the movements of such a group, the native taste of the poet has never suffered his pen to slide into anything coarse or disgusting." See Scott's " Prose INorks," :vii. 244. Mr. Lockhart is yet more profuse of admiration, and doubts if Shakespeare, out of such materials, could have constructed a piece "in which the sympathy-awakening power could have been displayed more triumphantly ." And Allan Cunningham outstrips his predecessors, by affirming that " nothing in the language, in life and character, approaches this song," the Beggar's Opera being a " burial compared to it." Surely this is the burlesque of criticism, and only brings it into contempt. Our opinion there coincides with that of Mr. Willmott, and we observe that in some of the English editions of Burns, intended for popular circulation, " The Jolly Beggars " is omitted. It is, however, a genre piece, and has merit in what has been called " the poetry of " the kennel." Burns has chiefly been written about by Currie, Dugald Stewart, Carlyle, Lockhart, and Wilson. We have never seen an adequate criticism on the art of his songs. Mr. Will mott says : The difficulty of comprehension is specially felt in the poems of humour and common life; where a phrase, or a proverb, to the familiar ear brings with it a train of home recollections and pleasures. In such cases, the dialect is the family accent. Frequently, however, the hindrance is scarcely perceived. In " The Cotter's Saturday Night," nearly every stanza has a different tone. Sometimes he writes pure and simple English ; another passage requires a glossary ; and occasionally he combines the two languages, and blends, with admirable effect, pathos, sublimity, beauty, and homeliness. Dryden said pleasantly of Theocritus, that even his Doric dialect has an incomparable sweetness in his clownishness—like a fair shepherdess in her country russet, talking in a Yorkshire tone. The Scottish songs of Burns suggest the same agreeable comparison ; and a freshness sparkles in every word, like dew cn the heather bell. The "latitudinarianism " of the dialect is very ac commodating to the poet, who is able by this Scottish privi lege to marry the most opposite and discordant rhymes. Sjenser had set the bold example of new spelling a word whenever the exigencies of sound required it; and Burns treated his syllables with the same freedom. True enough : but there was far more atten tion to the laws of poetical method in his songs than hasty readers would suppose. Take, for example, the favorite popular song, " A Red, Red Rose " :- 0, my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June : 0, my hive's like the melodie That's sweetly played in tune. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I : And I will lure thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry. Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi the sun : I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall ran. And fare thee weel, my only luve ! And fare thee weel awhile I And I will come again, my luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile. Passionate intensity could not be more artis tically expressed. The alliterative iteration in " red, red rose," the recurrence of " luve" six times, the skilful repetition of the line, Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rapid change of imagery throughout the song, all mark a thorough proficient in the art of song-writing. We have not space to comment on Burns as a poet, and we have confined ourselves to the " editing" of the volume before us. We must say that Mr. Willmott seems to have missed, like other commentators, the specialty of Burns. In admiration for the genius of the Scotch poet the laws of class and culture seem annihilated. No other poet so powerfully touches the unlettered mind, and never were high and puissant critics so unanimous in wreathing laurels on a bard. What other poet like him is a favorite in colleges and cabins, can dazzle with Pindaric tire, and melt with pastoral sweetness ? Mr. Pitt (as cited by Mr. Will mott) was right in saying that "since Shake " speare no verse had the appearance of " coming so sweetly from Nature" as that of Burns. That must be wonderful genius which can fascinate the first-rate orator and make the labourer iu the field rejoice over its utterance. Wordsworth's lines on Burns (with which Mr. Willmott closes his essay) aro nearly the finest things ever written on Burns We quote them, as they ought to be better kn wn. The third stanza is perfectly true, and is poetically expressed THE PRESS. Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight— Think rather of those moments bright When to the consciousness of right His course was true, — When Wisdom prospered in his sight, And Virtue grew. Yea, freely let our hearts expand, Freely as in youth's season bland, When side by side, his Book in hand, We wont to stray, Our pleasure varying at command Of each sweet Lay. Through busiest street and loneliest glen Are felt the flashes of his pen; lie rules 'mid winter snows, and when Bees fill their hives ; Deep in the general heart of men His power survives. Sweet Mercy 1 to the gates of Heaven This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Efface for ever. But why to him confine the prayer, When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear On the frail heart the purest share With all that live ? The best of what we do and are, JUST GOD FORGIVE! These are most beautiful and affecfng lines, and leave us in a mood above mere criticism. Popular Astronomy. By Francois Arago. Translated from the Original and Edited by Admiral W. H. Smyth and R. Grant, Esq. Two Vols. Vol. T. London : Longmans. WE have been waiting for the second volume of this work, which will conclude Arago's Astronomy; but as it has not yet appeared, though several months have elapsed since the issue of the volume before us, we gladly take advantage of the dull season in publishing to express our admiration of this masterly work, so far as it has gone, and of the very satisfac tory manner in which it has been produced by the editors. The " Popular Astronomy" of Arago already ranks high among scientific classics. It is as an astronomer that Arago's name will descend with most honour to posterity. He was thoroughly master of the subject, and it is characteristic of his intellect that, having com prehended every part of any particular branch of physics, he laboured to place his hearers and readers in as good a position as himself, and to tell them both all that he knew, and, what was next in importance to true know ledge, all that he did not know. He relates an amusing anecdote to excuse the frequency with which he has to confess his ignorance of astronomical phenomena : In the time of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, a lady of the Court who had been to visit the Observatory demanded of Mairan, " Tell me," I pray, "what are the belts ofJupiter ?" "I do not know," immediately replied the Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. " Why," re plied the cu►ious lady, "is Saturn the only planet sur rounded by a ring?" " I do not know," was still the reply of Mairan. The lady growing impatient, then said to him, with a certain degree of rudeness, " What purpose does it serve, sir, to be an academician ?" "It serves, madam, to reply—l do not know." But when Arago had to say, " I do not know," we may be quite sure that the limits of in quiry had been reached in his time, and that no astronomer was in a position to return a more satisfactory answer. He commences his lectures by insisting that " clearness is the politeness of those who " address themselves to the public with a view " to its instruction," and, accordingly, he takes care that his meaning shall be always intelli gible. Occasionally we find repetitions which cannot be regarded otherwise than as blots ; but the fault is trivial in comparison with the great advantage of that full and copious ex planation which he systematically affords on all the topics he handles. He appears to be of the opinion of Bossuet, that a work well divided and tabulated is already half learnt, as his subjects are dissected in an elaborate and useful table of contents. Proposing to make his Astronomy universally intelligible, he is careful to give definitions in the first instance, but herein seems to fall into the error of those persons who suppose that, to communicate the results or the faets of know ledge, is to communicate the knowledge itself. It is one thing for a person to receive SATURDAY, definitions, and another to have that thorough comprehension of them which only can arise from their familiar use in mathematical pro- cesses. The four first books of this volume are pre liminary to the Astronomy itself. They are on Geometry, Mechanics and Horology, Elements of Optics, and Astronomical Instru ments. The author then enters on his; main subject, and treats successively of the stars, the nebulae, the sun, comets, and the planets. The information on all these heads is com plete, and given in a manner so fascinating as to compel the reader to proceed with any sub ject he has once commencel The book on Comets has attracted us the most. Mott of our readers will be familiar with his calculation instituted to dispel the alarm felt that the earth might be destroyed by a comet, that supposing a comet to ap. proach nearer the sun than the earth, there was yet but one chance out of 281 millions of chances that it would strike the earth ; and this doctrine of chances was independent of the design which we must suppose presided over the original constitution of the universe. Remarking on the vulgar fancies which in our day have attended the advent of comets, he gave utterance to a sentiment which our Faraday has had to repeat with increased pungency in reference to the excitement which has attended table-turning and other mystic follies of a like kind : Under the brilliant and superficial varnish with which the purely literary studies of our colleges almost invariably invest all classes of society, we generally find— let us be brief—a complete ignorance cf those beautiful phenomena, of those grand laws of nature, which are our best safeguard against prejudice. In a style more fanciful than he usually in dulges in, he inquires what might be the con dition of our earth supposing it were brought within the scope of a comet of immense dimensions, and thus became its satellite. As a basis of his reasoning, he takes the comet of 1680, which performs its revolution round the sun in a period of 575 years. Our year would then be of that length. Newton computed that when that comet was nearest the sun it experienced a heat equal to 2,000 times that of red-hot iron. But Arago con tends that all such computations are based on very uncertain grounds, and intimates that modifying influences would in all probability take place to screen the earth from so high a temperature. The following is new to us on the mean temperature of space, nor have we ever met with the facts or calculations on which Fourier based his conclusion : Fourier has established, by ingenious considerations, that the mean temperature of space is not so low as it has been imagined to be. He is of opinion that it is not much inferior to that of the terrestrial poles. He fixes it at 50 deg. below the zero point of the centigrade thermometer, If the sun were suddenly extinguished this degree of cold would be felt as well in the region wherein Mercury, Venus, the Earth perform their revolutions as in the region which is furrowed by Uranus, or in regions 100 times, 1,000 times more remote still. It follows, then, that the comet of 1080, by transporting the earth to its aphelion, would do neither more nor less than expose the terrestrial planet to a cold of 50 deg, as it is subject to in the present day in every point of its annual course. Thus, in order to diminish the cold of 50 deg., we should only have to take into consideration the inherent heat of the earth, and the portion of the heat acquired at the perihelion, which was not yet dissipated in space. The author concludes Neither the comet nor the earth will consequently ex perience any of those colds which terrify the imagination. They will be simply of the same temperature as the sue• rounding regions of space. A thermometer placed on their surfaces will mark upon them a temperature 50 deg. below zero ; for, except from physical changes, which we here leave wholly out of consideration, a body can never become colder than the space which surrounds it, and with which it is in continual communication by way of radiation. In 18'20 Captain Franklin and his companions endured at Fort Enterprise colds at 49'•7 centigrade below zero. The mean temperature of the month of December at that locality was 35 deg. below zero. On the other hand, those who may be desirous of consulting the notice which I have devoted to the temperatures of different kinds of animals, will see that it has been demonstrated by experiment that under certain hygrometric circumstances man is capable of supporting a heat of 130 deg. centigrade, a heat 30 deg. greater than that of boiling water. Thus nothing serves to establish that if the earth became a satellite of the comet of 1680, the human race would disappear from thermometric influences. It strikes us as an omission in this elaborate Look on Comets that Arno attempts no ex planation of their probable use in the plane-