The Press.
London, England, 1854-08-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

or a crafty anagram? Is "T. Percy Jones "
really a gentleman living at " Streatham, in
July, 1854," or is the name but a subtle device to
convey an idea of the present " fusion of
classes " ; an endeavour to show that " Percy "
who was slain in Chevy Chase was of like
flesh and blood with " Jones " who went out
wilfully with Brown, Smith, and Robinson.
Whether Mr. Percy Jones is a man or, as
Wordsworth says, a "wandering voice," we
are all unenlightened, but that, whether man
or myth, he is courageous, his preface leaves
no doubt. " For my part," he says, "if I con-
" scientiously believed that my poetry was not
" worthy of admiration, I never would commit
" the impertinence of asking any one to
" read it. But, though believing that his
poetry is " worthy of admiration," Mr. Percy
Jones has done what no paperstainer ever yet
did before him. He has deliberately become
at times unequal to himself. Homer some-
times nodded, but Jones twaddled with his
eyes open. Horace excused himself by the
example of Homer, but Jones only becomes
stupid in mere pity lest his readers should
become " dark with excess of life." Hark !

I am perfectly aware that this poem is unequal, and that
some passages of it are inferior in interest to others. Such
was my object; for I am convinced that there can be no
beauty without breaks and undulation !
When, therefore, the reader has been raised
to ecstasy by Jones in his grandeur, lest (to use
the only words worthy of Jones, those of Mr.
Phillips's Crystal Palace Handbook) his
" intellect should snap," Jones lays him gently
down in a marsh of dulness and soothes him
with a friendly atmosphere of rigmarole. But
the preface is not eulogistic only : it is defiant.
In the same style that Chickory offers a reward
of 1,0001. to any man in Seven Dials who can
equal his coffee does Jones demand a poem
equal to his own. "I am not," he says, " arro-
" gant enough to assert this is the finest poem
" which the age has produced, but I shall feel
" very much obliged to any gentleman who
" can make me acquainted with a better."
Heralded thus, the reader may prepare to
hear how Firmilian, when alone in his study,
flungaway Aristotle, whom he could not under-
stand, but at each attempt to " attach the
sense " his brain reeled
as a drunken mariner,
Who, stumbling o'er the bulwark, makes a clutch
At the wild incongruity of ropes,
And topples into mud.
Having thus satisfactorily got rid of Aris-
totle, as a good many students nearer than
Badajoz might reasonably do if ignorance
were an excuse, Mr. Firmilian entirely dis-
avows law, physic, and divinity, in neither of
which pursuits, indeed, it would seem ho
would have had much prospect of success, and
adopts a profession in which, at least, the rise
was quicker than in the first; for he says :
I've leaped into the air,
And clove my way thro' tether like a bird
That flits beneath the glimpses of the moon,
Right eastward till I lighted at the foot
Of Holy Helicon, and drank my fill
At the clear spout of Aganippe's stream.
After having taken this draught Firmilian
fell asleep, and the " universal voice of Pan'
gave him the following sage advice as to his
future conduct:—
Be thou no slave of passion. Let not love,
Pity, remorse, nor any other thrill
That sways the actions of ungifted men,
Affect thy course. Live for thyself alone.
Let appetite thy ready handmaid be,
And pluck all fruitage from the tree of life,
Be it forbidden or no. If any comes
Between thee and the purpose of thy bent,
Launch thou the arrow from the string of might
Right to the bosom of the impious wretch,
And let it quiver there! Be great in guilt!
If, like Busiris. thou canst rack the heart,
Spare it no pang. So shalt thou he prepared
To make thy song a tempest, and to shake
The earth to its foundation—Go thy way!
On receipt of these suggestions Firmilian goes
out and informs the moon,
I was born
To make thee and thine astral brethren quake;
And 1 will do it !
and anon goes to sleep, having first decided
on slaying two of his friends, to show Pan
that he attended to his advice. The friends
are slain accordingly, and a similar service is
done for his entire circle of acquaintances.
One of them presents a melancholy example
of the dangers of literary success, for Firrni-
lian flings him flora the top of the'pillar of St.

761

Simeon Stylites because his poems had reached
a third edition. Having thus disposed of his
visiting list, he proceeds to deal in an equally
summary manner with three ladies whom he
had honoured by permission to live with him.
One of these beauties is a negress, and her
two rivals indignantly exclaim against his
choice :
MARIANA.
A filthy negress !

Abominable!

LILIAN.
Mercy on me ! what blubber lips she has !
MARIANA, furiously to FIRMILIAN.

You nasty thing! Is this your poetry—
Your high soul•scheming and philosophy?
1 hats and loathe you! (To Indiana.)—RlTal
of my shoe,
Go, get thee gone, and hide thee from the day
That loathes thine ebon skin ! Firmilian—
You'll hear of this! My brother serves the king.
My uncle is the chief Inquisitor,
And he shall know of this ere curfew tolls!
What! Shall 1 share a husband with a coal?
To silence their disputes he murders two of
them, and is finally pursued by the Inquisition
and certain " I fines Fatui " till he falls into a
quarry, and, we presume, ends his amiable
existence.
Seriously, we have seldom seen anything
approaching this offensive and absurd non-
sense committed to print. Some of the cha-
racters (e.g., Olivarez, p. 38) apply to each
other epithets which the police reporters, when
compelled to record them, express with a dash,
while the repeated thefts of whole lines from
real dramatists and the perpetual recurrence
of the most vulgar of colloquial cant make
this " spasmodic tragedy " a truly nauseating
dose.
Had it not come before us with all the ex-
ternal appearance of a legitimate literary pro-
duction we should not have bestowed upon it
the notice we have done. Longfellow has
exaggerated some of the worst peculiarities of
the Faust school, and carried mysticism to the
verge of irreverence or blasphemy; but in the
race of absurdity Mr. Percy Jones has fairly
distanced all competitors, and set a brand of
ridicule upon the " spasmodic " school which we
sincerely trust may soon have the effect of
banishing it from print, though it may still
drivel in manuscript.

The Iron Cousin. By Mary Cowden Clarke.

London : Routledge.
MRS. CLARKE has here tried her talents in
a department of literature in which she has
not previously appeared. She has constructed
a clever story, containing a variety of charac-
ters. Many passages are written with vivacity
and humour, but at times her too lively young
ladies have a hoydenish coarseness. Kato
Ireton, the heroine, is drawn as being wilful,
and requiring reform, which gradually takes
place under the influence of her "iron cousin,"
Fermor Worthington, whom she marries at
last, after many misconceptions as to her re-
gard for a certain Mr. Cecil Lascelles. Tho
tone of the novel is healthy and English, but
no illusion is created to make us forget that
we are in the hands of a fictionist. The weak-
est parts are those in which " fashionables"
are sketched, when the writer's pen runs into
caricature. A riding party in Italy is thus
described ; and certainly if Miss Constantia
Smythe were to make her appearance at Rotten-
row we think that few would claim her ac-
quaintance :
There was a dashing girl, named Constantia Smythe,
sister to a young cavalry officer, who looked like her bro-
ther's counterpart, rather exaggerated; for, while he lisped
And used essence on his pocket-handkerchief, and wore
extremely shiny hoots, winch he seemed sadly afraid would
get covered with (host, and had en eyeglass screwed into
his eye to inspect the accurate fitting of his lemon-coloured
kid gloves, she talked in a loud, abrupt voice. stuck her
handkerchief into the breast of her habit. cared nothing
for displaying her boots, dusty or not dusty, in mounting
and dismounting, stared straight at everything. and boldly
at everybody, drew up her riding gauntlets with the tug of
a dragoon, and slashed the skirt of her habit with her
whip, as a man slaps his knee, to give emphasis to her
speech. There was a die-away girl, who languished and
simpered, and protested she was sinking with fatigue, and
fainting with the heat, and swooning with exhatiation and
excitement. There was a sketching OK who was always
begging them to stop, even if they could not wait while
she took sonic " charming bit," or sonic " point of view,"
or some "chiaroscuro effect." There wps a se fatal
girl ;'a poetital girl ; *Ad a scientific* 'girl; wisti'ftb

7(32

worked bard to impress upon the bystanders the peculiar
characteristic which she chose to adopt as her becoming
individuality. No professional young woman could have
been more assiduous and diligent at her calling than
these amateur young ladies at their trade of self-exhibi-
tion ; yet each of them could, upon occasion, inveigh
against actresses, sneer at singers, and scorn artists of all
kinds,

It is only fair to say that our interest in Kate
Ireton increases as the story advances, and,
on the whole, we derived pleasure from
reading her adventures.

Report of Twenty-one Years' Experience of the
Dick Bequest. By Allan Menzies, W.S.
London : Blackwoods.
THE late Mr. Dick, of Finsbury-square, n native
of Scotland, amassed a considerable i,,rtune
as a West India merchant. He bequeathed
nearly all of it to the maintenance and assist-
ance of country parochial schoolmasters in the
counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray. In
1833 his bequest amounted to the sum of
113,1471. 4s. 7d., and the annual income now
appears to vary from four to five thousand
pounds, expended in gratuities and rewards
to the more meritorious parochial teachers of
the district as indicated in the will.
The bequest was well intended, and is
doubtless productive of advantage, but the
effects can be only partial. The sums allo-
cated to each schoolmaster are small, and the
incitements to successful teaching do not
seem to be much increased. What is really
wanted to raise the position of the educa-
tor, and draw forth all his powers, is to
give him a chance of some of those social
prizes, which operate with such effect in the
pursuits of law and medicine. When educa-
tion shall be made a recognised profession,
and when more of the much-coveted "respec-
tability " be assigned to it, society will be
better served than now by the teachers of the
youthful population. How such an end could
be attained, or what chance there is of reach-
ing it, we cannot here discuss. To a certain
extent, educators of a high rank have had
their services recognised in England, and
many of them have been promoted to the
episcopal bench. But their cases were in all
respects exceptional. They were for the most
part eminent scholars who had acted as private
tutors in royal or noble families, or who had
conducted very select establishments for
teaching the children of families of conse-
quence. When we think of the vast impor-
tance of the functions of a schoolmaster, and
observe the worse than dubious position gene-
rally assigned to him by society, we feel that
the loud-speaking friends to education have
not for the last fifty years adopted very prac
tical methods for achieving their objects,
On the dignity of the schoolmaster's voca-
tion we may quote from the report before us
the opinions of two illustrious intellects,
working in different spheres, and both re-
nowned in their special callings. Hear how
honest Martin Luther speaks on this great
subject :
I will say briefly of a diligent pious school-teacher or
magister, or of whomsoever it is that faithfully brings
up boys and instructs them, that such an one can never be
sufficiently recompensed or paid with money ; as also the
heathen Aristotle says, yet is this calling so shamefully
despised among us as though it were altogether nought.
And we call ourselves Christians !
And if I must or could relinquish the office of preacher
and other matters, there is no office I would more wil-
lingly have than that of schoolmaster or teacher of boys.
For I know that this work, next to the office of preacher,
is the most profitable, the greatest, and the best.
From Luther, the man of moral action, turn
to Niebuhr, the historical investigator and
speculative philosopher :
The office of an instructor of youth especially is a most
honourable one, and one of the happiest callings in life to
a noble heart, despite all the evils which mar its ideal
beauty: it was once the object of my voluntary choice.
We need not mention the opinions of
Arnold and others cited in this volume. Their
reflections, and we may add their regrets, on
the low rank assigned to the educator echo
the expressions of the two great men from
whom we have quoted.
The provision made for their elementary
education has been one of the causes why so
many humble citizens of Scotland have ad-
vanced themselves in the social scale. It was
finely said by a man of genius, while making a

THE PRESS.

tour in that country, " What a piece of work
the twenty-four letters of the alphabet have to
show for themselves here—the sowers, and
still more the great weeders, of the human
mind !"—(Curran.) One reason why the paro-
chial schools of Scotland have worked so well
is because their teachers in numerous cases
have been enabled to rise into the Presbyte-
rian ministry. Yet, as was remarked by Adam
Smith in " The Wealth of Nations," the
learned professions in Scotland are always
draining the Church of its cleverest members,
while in England the Establishment, with its
splendid prizes, draws into its service many
minds that in other countries would aspire to
eminence in lay pursuits.
The compilers of the voluminous " Report
of the Dick Bequest' have forgotten that
education returns, with critical remarks there-
upon, are no novelties, and that they occupy,
in various forms, a considerable space in our
parliamentary literature. The greater part of
this volume is composed of matter which
points to no new conclusions on the subject of
popular education, and we confess to a feeling
of disappointment on its perusal.

Lord Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh. By the
late Macvey Napier, Esq., Editor of the
" Edinburgh Review " and the " Encyclo
pa3dia Britannica." Cambridge : Macmillan
and Co.
OF these essays the first was contributed to
the " Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin-
burgh," and the second to the Edinburgh
Review. They are written in the tone of the
Scotch philosophy, and exhibit qualified and in-
conclusive determinations on moral questions.
The value of " logic " in the discovery of phy-
sical truth, and the worth of Raleigh's charac-
ter, are left by Mr. Macvey Napier nearly
where he found them ; though certainly much
industry is shown in the collection of authori-
ties proving the estimation in which Bacon's
writings were held by his contemporaries, and
by the eminent minds which followed him
in philosophical speculation. The value of
Bacon's system, however, is a question quite
apart from the attention it excited, and on
this subject very little is said. We do not
admire those "conclusions" in which nothing is
concluded. We once asked a very eminent
literary person (bred at an English university)
"how he liked Mr. Dugald Stewart?" whose
lectures he had assiduously attended ; and
his reply was, "Ah ! he was very clever, and
" sometimes very brilliant ; but he was always
" about it, and about it, and would never solve
"it Too much of the Edinburgh school of
literature might be characterised by the
phrase .we have here quoted. Even in the
preliminary " notice " to this volume we are
told that these reprints are only to be regarded
" as sketches of more extensive works pro-
" jected by their author." And the editor
admits that the sketch of 'Bacon is "not so
" much an exposition of his philosophy, of
" which it gives only a slight and general out-
" line," &c. We confess that we are a little
tired of these " speculative" essays, and we
prefer a style which with less ambitious aims
attains more solid and enduring results. The
view of Raleigh taken by Mr. Macvey Napier,
while attempting to soften, does not really
diminish the force of the imputations against
him, and leaves his character where it was
before.
The essay on Bacon, though of limited de-
sign, presents materials which may be care-
fully consulted by those who would form a
just idea of the extent of his influence.

Military Achievements of the Duke of Wellington
Contrasted with those of Alexander, Pyrrhus,
Hannibal, Casar, Marlborough, Napoleon, and
other Celebrated Commanders. London : Hope
and Co.
THESE volumes are by an old Peninsular and
Waterloo officer, and partake of the eccentri
city of an old soldier who writes for his own
amusement, and who has an intense conviction
of the truth and importance of some peculiar
notions which have occupied his brain for a
number of years past. It is his aim to show
in what respects the Duke of Wellington's

SATURDAY,

character and achievements agreed with, and
in what respects they differed from, the long
line of famous commanders beginning with
the great Cyrus and ending with the great
Napoleon. As the author has been a diligent
reader of military records, ancient and modern,
his lore enables him to supply many curious
parallels, and to show that, after all, the lead-
ing principles of warfare, and by consequence
the qualities necessary to form a great com-
mander, have not greatly varied since Cyrus
issued his " general order " to his army, pre-
paratory to the battle of Thymbra. Those
parts of the work, however, are likely to prove
most welcome in which the author draws from

his personal experience. The success of tho
Persians at Thymbra, he says, was mainly
owing to the fact that their troops formed in
line, while the Egyptians formed in column ;
and the proceedings at Waterloo, he urges,
prove the soundness of Cyrus's judgment in
this disposition :
The first operation to which I have to advert arose out of
Napoleon's first grand attack on the left and left centre of
the allied position, which I cannot better describe than in
the language of Mr. Cannon, in the " Record of Service of
the 92nd or Gordon Highlanders," published by him under
the authorities at the Horse Guards:—
" The moment the Belgians were seen running past the
regiment, to the rear, the 3rd battalion Royals, and 44th
on its right in brigade, moved to the point abandoned, and
for some time maintained their ground in a manner
becoming British soldiers. The 9.nd was at this time
reduced to less than 300. A column of 3.000 was in
position in front of the regiment, which was concealed by
the nature of the ground. The French commander, having
possessed himself of so advantageous a post, and teeing
the troops give way, considered everything gained, and
ordered arms.
" This was the state of affairs when General Pack
galloped up to the regiment and called out, ' 92nd, you
must charge ; for all the troops to your right and
left have given way !' Three cheers from the regiment
expressed the devoted readiness of every individual in the
ranks. The French did not show a large front. The
regiment formed four deep, and in that compact order
advanced until within twenty paces, when it fired a volley
and instantly darted into the heart of the French column,
in which it became almost invisible in the midst of the
mass opposed to it.
" While the regiment was in the set of charging, and
the instant before* it came in contact with the enemy, the
Scotch Greys came trotting up in rear of its flanks, when
both corps shouted,' Scotland fur ever !' The column was
instantly broken, and in its flight the cavalry rode over it.
" The result of this dash, which only occupied a few
minutes, was a loss to the enemy of two eagles and 2,000
men ; those + that escaped doing so without arms or knap-
sacks.
" After this brilliant affair, Sir Denis Pack rode up to
the regiment, and said, ' You have saved the day, High-
landers ; but you must return to your position ; there is
more work to be done.' "
The issue of this inimitable charge—the total rout
and entire destruction of a French column of 3,000 picked
infantry, 20 to 30 files in depth, by a force not a tenth
part of their number, formed four deep—proves in a most
striking manner the folly of sending troops into action
formed in such masses, however slender the ranks of the
opposing force may be. Columns of 3,000 or 4,0(t) men,
when moving to an attack, must invariably suffer great
losses from the fire of an opponent, while they can inflict
but little loss in return—for he must be a bad marksman
indeed who cannot hit so prominent a target, whether his
weapon be a nine-pounder, a common musket, or a mime
rifle. At Quatre Bras the 92nd, about 000 strong, charged,
by the pers mal order of the Duke himself, a French
column estimated by the latter at front 1,200 to 1,400,
many files deep; the consequence was the immediate re-
treat of the enemy, almost all of whom falling by the fire
of their pursuers, not more than from 200 to 3110 effecting
their escape—a fact which General Lord Raglan, the pre-
sent Master-General of the Ordnance, can testify.
Passages like these, which are scattered
thickly through the volumes, must always be
interesting ; but we fear that, from our gallant
officer's comparative inexperience in literary
composition, his circle of readers is likely to
be a small one. His decided views on certain
subjects will probably he received as evidence
of monomania ; and we wish, while acknow-
ledging the sincerity of his piety, that he had
been more reserved in his decisions on the
interposition of Providence in military mat-
ters.

• It was after the 92nd came in contact with the enemy that
the Greys so opportunely arrived and cheered, a fact which the
author can attest, he having been knocked down by the horse of
one of the privates in front of the hedge, and on the ground oc•
copied by the French, when the 92nd charged, and within a
couple
yof yards of where three French officers were I) ing
severel wounded, but whc, despite their wounds, could not
resist the temptation afforded them of enjoying a laugh the
expense of the unfortunate.
4. Of the 3,000 one officer only escaped, afact which the author
received from that officer himself, who, being severely wounded
in the leg. crawled on his hands and knees upwards of half a
mile, until he got out of range of shot. On being shown the
92nd regiment at I'aris, and assured that it was not quite 300
strong when it charged, lie became very much excited, declaring
that nothing of so disgraceful a character had ever occurred in
the French army before.