The Press. — London, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 12, 1857. 1210 " far." But we are wandering from our subject. The introductions prefixed by Mr. Parry to each separate play leave nothing to be desired in the way of explaining the plot or the scenic accessarics ; while the copious index of Teren tian phraseology at the end of the volume is in itself a treasury of wealth to those who would loarn to write colloquial Latin with accuracy, ease, and freedom. 1. Rides and Reveries of the late Mr. yEsop Smith. Edited by Peter Query, F.S.A. [Martin F. Tup- per.] London : Hurtit and Blackett. NOTICES. TALES. 2. The Rival Kings ; or, Overbearing. By the Author of " Sidney Grey," &c. London : Kent and Co. 3. Almost ; or, Crooked Ways. A Tale. By Anna Lisle. London : Groombridge and Sons. 4. Howard Plunkett; or, Adrift in Life. A Novel. By Kinahan Cornwallis. In Two Volumes. Lon don : Whittaker and Co. 5. The Demon of Gold. By Hendrik Conscience. London: William Lay. 6. John H. Steggall: a Real History of a Suffolk Man. Narrated by Himself. Edited by the Author of " Margaret Catchpole." London : Simp kin, Marshall, and Co. 7. Mervyn Clitheroe. By Harrison Ainsworth. London : Routledge. 8. Davenport Dl4llll. By Charles Lever. London : Chapman and Hall. 9. Paved with Gold. By Augustus Mayhew. London : Chapman and Hall. INDIA. 10. Opinions on the Indian Army. By Colonel John Studholme Hodgson, Bengal Army. London : Allen. 11. India and Europe Compared. By Lieutenant- General Juhn Briggs, F. 8.5., of the Madras Army. Loudon : Allen. 12. A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoita. By James Hutton. London: Allen. POEMS. 13. The Travels of Prince Legion, and Other Poems. By John Le Gay Brereton. London : Longmans. Melancholy and Other Poems. By Thomas Cox. London • Saunders and Otley. 15. Oran, and Other Poems. By Alexander T. M'Lean. London : Bogue. 10. Normiton ; with Other Miscellaneous Pieces. By Mary C. Hume. London : John W. Parker and Son. 17. Aladdin ; or, the Wonderful Lamp. By Adam Oehlenschlager. Translated by Theodore Martin. London : John W. Parker and Son. 18. London Lyrics. By Frederick Locker. London : Chapman and Hall. 19. Poem of Oisin, Bard of Erin. From the Irish. By John Hawkins Simpson. London : Bosworth and Harrison. I.We have to thank the Soloman of the nineteenth century for this introduction to his friend, whose thoughts are as original, whose conceptions are as striking, whose modes of expression are as pointed as those that have made the " Proverbial Philosophy" a standard book over the habitable world, and bidden the genius of Plato pale before that of Tupper. Some may be inclined to lament that one the stay and prop of this generation should have devoted his hours to a consideration of such trivial topics as those of the volume before us, when he might better have refuted Aristotle, or reconciled St. Paul's with his own Christianity. Bat this objection is without due grounds. Did not Newton leap over a gate to test the force of the wind, aril derive the law of gravity from the fall of an apple ? Who knows what a greater than Newton may not deduce from a more nnnromising subject ? Let us see. Mr. £,op Smith was a hunchback who rode several steeds, and thought several thoughts. Mr. Tupper catalogues four ponies that have borne the thinker, though he, unaccountably, makes no mention of a humbler animal that seems to have hal some share in producing the Reveries, and a still greater share iu editing them. Mr..Esop Smith appears to he a philosophical 'limbs, parvis componere magna. He has something to say on Rifles, on Football, on Marriage, on Cuckoos, on Ticket-of-Leavers, on Critics, on Divorce, on Old Maids, on the Ballot, and last, not least, on nimself. We cannot help regretting that Mr. Tupper (we beg his pardon for the Mister, but we fell into zit accident. ally) has discarded the style with which his chief publication has made us familiar, and written in the barbarous prose that suits our Bacons and Lockes. Let us venture to present a few of his new dis coveries in his old style : WHY MR. SMITH WAS CHRISTENED IF.SOP. Why was I christened Xsop ? Because I was surnamed Smith. MI my ancestors' Christian names began with an .E dipthong. One, my great great grandfather, was Xneas, a schoolmaster. His son rEolus lost his wealth on the South Sea Bubble. zEschines my grandfather by legal eloquence thriving Christened his son „Esculapius, a worthy and skilful physician. And since my name is Xsop, I fable, and am a hunchback. FOOTBALL. Football is great fun, for ell except the football. Let the fool listen to the sage : many men re semble footballs. The football is over-humble : I, the wise man, say it. Such thoughts came into my mind, and peopled ils inner chambers The sober fruit of reflection withover•runnings of fancy, Fancy, brilliant indeed, but poor to the thought it covers, As I saw some National Schoolboys having a game at football. 2. "The Rival Kings" is a capital children's story, brought to bear upon one of the worst of juvenile faults, and calculated to awaken in children more conscientiousness, without any unwholesome morbid ness, than the majority of such tales with which we are acquainted. 3. "Almost, or Crooked Ways," is a tale of crime and passion, not without power and some dramatic skill. It is pitched, perhaps, in somewhat too high a key, but will probably be popular with the lovers of exciting fiction. 4. " Howard Plunkett" is a story with a singu larly involved plot, which persons fond of mystery will doubtless read with interest. The scene is laid alternately in Ireland and America, so the reader may be prepared for wonders. 5. " The Demon of Gold" is a good story of a Dutch usurer. Some of the characters are rather well pointed. The forgery of a will is one of the incidents ; and it may be read without weariness. 6. " The Narrative of John Steggall " is so fully characterised on the titlepage as to render any ex planation of ours superfluous. The career of one who began as a gipsy, and ended, after many vicissi tudes, as a clergyman, edited by the author of " Margaret Catchpole," speaks for itself. We need only say it contains many striking scenes, and is written in an earnest though homely and somewhat puritanical spirit. 7. We have received the firstfive numbers of" Mer vyn Clitheroe," by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. It is written in the author's best style. Full of those genial pictures of English life and that wealth of incident for which the author is celebrated, without, at the same time, running into those extravagancies by which some of his works are a little marred. We like the story very much. The materials now before us promise to work up into a very striking and in teresting fiction. _ _ 8. Mr. Lever's story of " Davenport Dunn" continues very amusing. The interview in the present number between Annesley Beecher and Grog Davis is un commonly clever. 9. " Paved with Gold " still is occupied with the progress of Captain Crosier's passion. The captain however, we think, a little more dilatory than his fraternity would usually be found under the same circumstances. 10. Mr. Allen has given us three useful and interest ing volumes bearing respectively on the military, the civil, and the social aspects of India. General Hodgson having been for some years a commander of irregular cavalry, must necessarily possess valualle experience on the subject of which he treats. His style is not winning, and his reflections are sometimes deficient in novelty, but whoever will take the trouble to separate the facts from the busk will not have laboured in vain. The general was one of the late Sir Charles Napier's most valued officers, and proved himself on more than one occa sion a man of courage and conduct. 11. The work of General Briggs is of a much more extensive character. It is in fact a complete hand book of India. Race, religion, education, finance, civil service, army, roads, canals, agriculture, and all kinds of public works, and last of all Government, are all expounded in turn ; and an immense quantity of useful information, accompanied with maps and statistics, afforded to the public. We cannot of ,ourse vouch for the accuracy of all the general's facts and theories. But as far as we can judge from the careful character of his statements, and the modesty of his opinions, this little volume cannot mislead us much, and we do not hesitate to recom mend it as a general household manual. . . _ _ 12. "A History of the Thugs and llacoits," by Mr. Hutton, a gentleman well known for his intimate acquaintance with India, and his observation of social customs, is an entertaining, lively, and curious volume, and we regret we have no space to offer our readers a specimen of its style, or of the singular in formation with which it abounds. In these days the spread of fashion is rapid, and the wave of education, growing ever wider and shallower, stimulates to an ephemeral fertility whole classes of the people before contented to be barren. The crop to which this kind of soil is specially favourable is poesy—as thin land produces the gayest flowers— and the bard of whom the whole crowd is most sedu lously imitative is Mr. Tennyson. Fifteenth -rate rhymsters hit off his style now as easily as, eighty years ago, they did Pope's. But they are all as much alike as two peas, except as far as they may respectively select different moods of their midel. One (13) adopts the careless, tavern style, and maunders of the time when he and a friend Discussed poetics over Cavendish And pure Wenlivet. Another (14) is stronger in the word-painting business : Last night I wander'd outside the land of sleep, Although I bath'd my temples with the puppy sap, Drank deep of opium, thought of pearly streams where creep The masses gray, and ivy mantles lap The aged alders and the willows green. Or walks with " Melancholy" : Slow wandering 'neath a shady yew, Whose roots suck moisture from the moat, She views the water's yellow hue Along the putrid ditches float, Where crested billows kiss the brink Of milldams, with a jaundiced lip, And airy bubbles nod and wink To clouds that o'er the marshes skip. Away she rambles down the glen, Beneath the aged alder trees, To hear the spear tops of the fen Strike up their hollow melodies As murmuring winds slow by them pass; Or in the silence of the night, 'Mid wavy beds of yellow grass, Fading beside the stagnant pool, She views the red leaves falling light In Autumn's lap so plentiful. Or tells us how— Here it was that lovely Ela, left s ithult a parent's care, lioam'd like fairy nymph the woudlandb, in the pure anti _ breezy air,— Ere advancement, creeping slowly, had its earnest march begun, Ere the waving cornfields glittered to the rising summer's sun; Ere the early dawn of science light to craving minis could yield ; Ere the sturdy wrists of labour made the heath a fruitful field ;- 11rushld the dewdrops from the meadows, at the early blush _ of dawn ; Cull'd the violet from the rude bank ; plueled the daisy from the lawn ; Heard the speckled lark a-warbling through the bright and sunny sky; Saw the wavelets bend the bulrush, as they faintly inur mur'd by; Saw the swallow skim the river, first when spring leap'd on the plain; Saw the leaflet opening slowly to the balmy breeze and rain ; Roani'd the sterile hills and valleys, light at heart, fresh as the day, Till a knavish baud of suitors plaun'd to take her fur a Prey Forc'd from scenes of early childhood, cross'd the heath . land, cross'd the sea, - To some bleak secluded castle in the wilds of Normandy. These are good lines indeed, but t h e pleasure we experience in reading them is analogous to the gra tification felt by a certain race of savages in the flavour of a certain kind of wine, obtained under very peculiar circumstances, whoreof an account may be read in Oliver Goldsmith's " Citizen x)f the World." Mr. Brereton and Mr. Cox are the only two in our present list who strictly come under the definition of Tennysouians. " Oran " (15), " Normiton " (16), and " Aladdin " (17), are dramatic—the latter trans lated by a gentleman with, of course, pretensions of a totally different °raer to the poetasters we have been compelled by journalistic exigencies to rank him with. " Aladdin " contains some passages of beautiful versification, but we cannot say we have read it with pleasura as a whole. The other two possess just that degree of musical mediocrity which h&.