The Press.
London, England, 1855-10-20 00:00:00

OCTOBER 20, 1855.

It is now, indeed, admitted that there was more vigour
in the language than in the thoughts, more ridicule than
wit, more invective than refinement of sarcasm. He has
rarely or ever attained to the easy pungency of expression,
and those natural and yet original strokes of character which
distinguish his greatest predecessors in the art. A daring
and clever assault upon living names appeals to other
passions than the passion for poetry, and was sure to com-
mand a temporary success ; but it would probably hays
died, with his own generation unless it had received from
the name of Byron that immortality which it was intended
to confer.

We believe that. opinion to be substantially
true. In this edition the satire is printed
from an original copy, and we may cite the
remarks on the extravagance of the abuse as
being perfectly just:—

So far as his design to humble his reviewers was con-
cerned, the wide sweep of his indiscriminate satire was
mistaken policy. It lightened the censure to Jeffrey and
his associates, that it was shared with nearly every man of
mark in the kingdom. The portrait of the arch•critic,
which was meant for the central figure, iq the least effec•
tive in the group, from the attempt to degrade him to the
level of a type of beings with whom he had not the slight-
est affinity.

There are several differences between the
satire as here printed and that in general
circulation ; and some of the editor's brief
notes are very interesting. On the line,
Beware lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale,

there is a note:—
Here followed, in the first edition—" The name of this
personage is pronounced Broom in the south, but the truly
northern and magical pronunciation is Brough•am, in two
syllables ; " but for this, Lord B. substituted in the second
edition :—" It seems that Mr. Brougham is not a Pict, as
I supposed, but a Borderer, and his name is pronounced
Broom, from Trent to Tay—so be it." The Cevallos
article was written by Jeffrey, who never had the manli-
ness, while he live 9, to relieve Brougham of the odium.
But Jeffrey, perhaps, would also have re-
quired that Brougham (or whoever wrote the
article on " Hours of Idleness") should have
the " manliness" to exculpate him from the
authorship of that harsh criticism. The
editor of a critical publication like the Edin-
burgh of past days was placed in a peculiar
situation. He should be consistent either in
hie revelations or in his reticence.

On the passage in the apostrophe to White,
the editor cites the stanza of Waller :

That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
With which he wont to soar on high.
We think it evident that Byron must have
had this thought from Waller in his mind.
Waller's stanzas, it may also be observed,
were on the subject " To a lady singing a
song of his own composing"--

Chloris, yourself you so excel,
When you vouchsafe to breathe my thought,
That like a spirit with this spell
Of my own teaching I am caught—
which makes the resemblance of the two
passages still closer. But Byron made the
idea his own, with the manly pathos and the
picturesque vividness of his diction.

While the same plumage that had warmed his nest,
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,
is a couplet animated with tho power of
genius. Mere talent could not produce such
intensity of utterance.
We have been pleased in this edition with
finding some of our own marginalia on Byron
anticipated and corroborated. We could cite
several which have not been noticed in former
editions. Thus, for example, in the thirteenth
stanza of the fourth canto of " Childe Harold "
occur the lines :

Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose.

We have always thought that Byron had in
mind the noble passage at the close of the
fourth part of Pope's " Essay on Man," in
which the " bold, bad men " of history are de-
nounced:—

See by what wretched steps their glory grows,
From dirt and sea-weed, as proud Venice rose.
The editor cites the couplet in the notes, and
we do not recollect that the resemblance has
been previously noticed in print. •
Amongst the new readings in this edition
is one of a most remarkable kind, requiring
special notice. In the 182nd stanza of the
fourth canto of " Childe Harold," in the noble
address to the ocean, the first lines were
always printed thus :
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,

Which, as the editor remarks, "is not sense."
In this edition the lines are printed :

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ?
Thy waters wasted them power while they were free.

Certainly a " fine reading " of the passage,
taken from the original MS., as the editor
tells us.
We have not the least doubt but that the
present edition will be one of the most popu-
lar that has yet appeared. Its retrenchment
of superfluous and irrelevant annotation, and
its substitute of original and critical com-
ments, give it a distinctive place. As the
editor's name does not appear on the titlepage,
we shall not take the liberty of mentioning to
whom this able supervision is accredited in
literary circles ; but we may say that we have
often thought that a thoroughly-trained
Church of England divine, with enlarged
habits, thought, and true moral tone of
character, would be the best editor of such an
author as Byron.
Upon the question, " Whether Byron's
" place is fixed in our literature?" we shall
enter at a future time. In the meanwhile we
must record that in our estimation the present
publication is the best of " Murray's British
Classics " that has yet appeared, and we have
no doubt that it will receive the wide apprecia-
tion it deserves.

Maitre Favilla% By George Sand. Paris :

Librairie Nouvelle.
NOBODY in the literary world of Paris thinks
of disputing Mme. Sand's wonderful power
and fascination as a novelist ; but not a few
persons—and amongst them some of no mean
note—laugh to scorn her pretensions as a
dramatist. No doubt, judged by the strict
rules of dramatic criticism, Mme. Sand the
dramatist falls certainly far short of the Mme.
Sand whose novels and romances have gained
her European renown ; but, still it seems to
us that there is much in her plays, even in
the worst of them, which does the highest
honour to her genius, and not a little that is
perfectly unapproachable by the most distin
guished of her competitors. In the art of
constructing a plot, of developing incidents,
and of sustaining vulgar interest until the
crash of the denouement, she is unquestionably
inferior to many a contemporary producer of
flippant vaudevilles and ponderous melo-
dramas ; but who, of all the multitude who
write for the Parisian theatre, can, as she
does, create characters which are really
original and really new to the stage—can
portray them with consummate art and ex-
quisite truth—and can make them speak in a
style which, though of the very highest literary
excellence, is understood of all men, and goes
straight to every heart?
Maitre Favilki, the last play of this distin-
guished authoress—which is now being per-
formed nightly with immense success in
Paris—is of the thorough George Sandian
character. Plot it has none—of incidents it
has scarcely any—of interest, in the ordinary
meaning of the term, it is void. It turns,, in
fact, on nothing more important or dramatic
than a poor crack-brained musician fancying
himself the heir to the title and estates of a
deceased noble, his benefactor and friend, and
acting as such in presence, and with the con-
nivance, of the real heir and owner—a burly
well-to-do merchant—until at last he is rudely
awakened from his illusion. Such a piece
evidently displays but an indifferent know-
ledge of what ordinary people think the
essential requirements of a play, and must
needs be a remarkably sorry specimen of stage
carpentry. Very true. But as Goldsmith, by
the magic wand of genius, transformed a plain,
inoffeusive parish priest into one of the most
charming and excellent of men, and as Sterne
by the same means rendered a dull old cap-
tain dear to every heart, so Geoi ge Sand has
made a poor crazy musician a character which
all muse admire and all must love. In the
hands of an ordinary playwright such a per-
sonage would have been a mere vulgar idiot,
or perhaps a grotesque caricature ; but in
hers he is gentle, kind hearted, and devoted—
he is so generous, that he gives away his
fancied wealth with, the simplicity of a child—
so; good, that he does well to all—so guileless,