The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

used by me were only for private identification, not to
misrepresent myself as a farmer, which I was not.
Mr. Bright had the same degrading opinion of the press
as Mr. Cobden. He it was, if the rumours in League
circles did not belie him, that so fatally operated on the
Warwickshire paper as to extinguish it in a fortnight.
Indeed, oue of his brothers, in giving me particulars of his
career in 1846, confirmed this delicate little rumour.
Subsequently, in a conversation with Mr. Bright himself,
it was alluded to, when he observed that the less 1 said
about it the better. He applied to me, Itt4:l-4, as Mr.
Cobden did, to write letters as a farmer of a certain locality.
He hinted at having operated on one or more agricultural
papers circulating in Durham, North Yorkshire, and
Northumberland. I adhered to my rule not to write as
that which I was not; and not, by professing to be Tory
and half-and-half Protectionist, to " insinuate," as Mr•.
Cobden phrased it, letters into Protectionist journals.
Mr. Bright said, if I wrote certain articles and gave them
to him, I need not know nor care what became of them.
He got them in private from my own hand. I knew no
more until I saw them in north•country papers, signed
" A Farmer who Sells his Corn at Newcastle." From
these agricultural papers they were reprinted by the
League as genuine farmers' letters, and circulated univer-
sally as such !

We really did not know before that Mr.
Bright, whose yea ought to be yea, and nay,
nay, was such an accomplished Jesuit. Hero
is a picture of " the Manchester School " in a
railway carriage
Mr. Cobden had engaged a compartment of a carriage
for himself, Mr. Bright, Dr. Bowling, one or two others,
and me. Amongst other topics my literary services to the
League were brought up, and the eulogy of them, and of
myself [to my face), was at once extmvagant and, to me,
painful. Dr. Bowling, however, took but little part in this
colloquy. Presently, and more than once, the name of a
distinguished public man was introduced. I then knew
nothing of this gentleman but by report. From report I
held him in esteem. The effect of what I heard now was
to degrade him in my estimation, until I thought him very
bad indeed. And this would have continued to be my
opinion had not subsequent inquiries, and some personal
knowledge, convinced me that he was, as he still is, one of
the most amiable, morally upright, and honourable of
gentlemen. Dr. Bowring, I ought to say, suddenly
dropped out of the conversation, and answered not a word,
when he heard this most excellent gentleman fall under
the insinuations of those self-satisfied and arrogant censors.
Yet, before many days had passed, I saw, and wondered as
I saw, those censors shaking him by the hand, and politi-
cally caressing him.
In all my subsequent private intercourse with the lead-
ing Leaguers I had to listen to some unseemly story about
somebody's private life. But the oddest thing was that
they in like manner hinted ill-natured things of one
another.

When the Cobden testimonial was being collected, in
181f)-47, I had to listen to remarks on Cobden which
were neither a credit to him nor to the persona making
them.

The remainder of the volume is principally
occupied by disputes about money. Into these
we shall not enter further than to say that,
according to Mr. Somerville, Mr. Cobden ob-
jects to arbitration in private affairs—at least,
when the former offered to refer certain pe-
cuniary claims he had upon the League and
Mr. Cobden to arbitration, the apostle of in-
ternational arbitration opposed the proposition
by every means in his power. It is due to Mr.
Somerville to add that his demand was subse
quently admitted to be just, and paid. And,
whatever may be our opinion of Mr. Somer-
ville's conduct in publishing Mr. Cobden's
letters and repeatitg his conversations, it
should not be forgotten that Mr. Hume, and
other members of the House of Commons,
have in Parliament borne testimony to his
veracity and integrity.

Murray's British Classics. The Works of Oliver
Goldsmith. Edited by Peter Cunningham.

In 4 vols. Vol. I. Loudon : Murray.
STANDARD editions of our great English classics
have become imperatively necessary, in conse-
quence of the number of inaccurate reprints
of our popular writers. The readers of cheap
literature care little about the accuracy of the
text of the works, whose greatest triumph is to
find numerous readers in spite of i nelegant typo-
graphy, and to provide excessive blunders upon
execrable paper. Higher reasons, also, re-
quire a close authentication of the text of our
first-rate English classics. Our noble language
has been in constant perils from a host of
assailants. In the last and through a great
part of the present century our English was
endangered by Gallicism and the various
provincialisms introduced by Scotch and
Irish writers, as well as orators of no common
power. The influence of Hume, Gibbon, and
Johnson were not favourable to the purity of
our mother tongue; and when journalism,
contemporaneously with the French Revolu-

65

tion, became a " Fourth Estate," the number
of writers bred in a rhetorical school intro-
duced a vehement and exclamatory style
of composition. Burke's familiarity with
" Sponser's Faerie Queene " (some of whose
scenes are laid in that part of Ireland where
he passed his childhood) had fortunately
given him a richly-various diction, which
diminished the evil of the Latinism in the
structure of his sentences. Then came Scott's
and Miss Edgeworth's novels, the precursors
of a host of popular works in which the
common speech of the peasants was imitated.
Along with these came the jargon resulting
from continental travelling and the example
at one time really "fashionable " of tesselating
conversation with fragments from—Babel.
Against such foreign incursions and provin-
cial insurrections our language would have
Wien if it had not prodigious resources in
reserve. First of all, and worth all the rest,
was the " English Bible," with its vast wealth
of purely English words. Of the literary in-
fluence produced by such a work it would be
needless to speak. Again, there was the poet
of England—Shakspeare--whoso diction testi-
fied to the intensely English character of his
writings. Constantly studied by authors,
orators, and divines, it would be difficult tx;
say for how much healthy conservatism of our
national language we are indebted to his im-
mortal example. The publication of " Perey's
Beliques," also, was a fortunate circumstance
at a time when "Hume's History" and "John-
son's Essays" wore giving dangerous examples.
" Cowper's Poems " was another counteracting
cause. To an extent that is almost incon-
ceivable the poetry of the bard of Olney in-
fluences the young ; and we need hardly say
that ho was attached to English idioms and
words. The essayists in the Edinburgh Review,
while they erred in setting the example of too
rhetorical and declamatory models, preached
the doctrine of " pure English," which they
did not always practise. Mr. Thomas Carlyle,
also, held forth upon the importance of a true
Saxon style, while he modestly employed a
system of grammar, neither Greek, nor Latin,
nor German, nor English, but a fantastic re-
bellion against the peculiar laws of each. But,
though the study of German literature is on
the increase, we suspect that the days of Ger-
manised English have gone by.
America and the colonies are present sources
of danger to the English tongue. The Yankees,
we are afraid, will never rest until they ge-
nerate a dialect of their own, almost as distant
from English as broad Scotch itself. Wo re-
peat that against all these dangers the popu-
larity of our standard writers is the best
protection; and, in that point of view, the
correctness of these editions becomes a subject
of almost national importance.
" Goldsmith " was a good choice in coin•
mencing the present series of " Murray's
Standard Classics." What author is more
universally read by all classes, the high and
the low, and at all seasons, in the gaiety of
youth, and in the pensiveness of age ? He
charmed our fathers, he charms ourselves amid
the dinning noise of a contentious generation,
and he will continue to delight our descen-
dants, while pure minds and tender hearts can
be moved with the pathetic and the beautiful.
Apart from his genius, his language has the
advantage of being an excellent model of the
middle style—level without being tame, and
equable without monotony. His writings are
at once standard in merit, popular in their
nature, classical in their fame ; and, though
the same thing may be said of sonic other
authors, of few can it be said in the same
degree.
For the present edition Mr. Peter Cunning-
ham is responsible. Avoiding the evil of su-
perfluous annotation, he has not encumbered
the pages with learned trivialities, after the
examples of some other literary critics. He is
an editor, not a commentator, and he does not
confound these functions. He does not inge-
niously affect doubts for the purpose of die
playing his perspicacity, nor catch at remote
allusions for the object of inflicting upon
us some parallel passages from other au-
thors. Concentrating his attention upon the
text, he has endeavoured to present to us the
writings of Goldsmith, as the author himself
actually left thorn revised.