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

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