The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JULY 17, 1858.

he might have reconciled himself to his situation,
if he had not at this very time experienced the
practical inconvenience of having no parentage
to produce. He fell in love, and, on proposing
marriage, met with a contemptuous repulse.
Maddened with rejection, perplexity, and the
want of somebody upon whom he might charge
his misfortunes, he quarrelled with his guardian,
demanded a supply of money, and left the coun-
try. From 1839 to 1844 he remained absent,
travelling in France for a part of the time,
according to his own account, and for the
rest studying at a German university. When
he returned, it was only to get more money.
This object being attained, he again departed,
and wandered for five years in Spain and
Portugal. In 1849 he returned, received
another remittance, and departed. Once more,
in 1853, his old tutor saw him, again filled
his purse, and bade him farewell. It was, pro-
bably, during this long course of travel that
Hollingsworth made that observation which
more than any other appears to have influenced
his character. Through observing men of diffe-
rent countries, classes, and pursuits, through ex-
tending his acquaintance with the varieties of
human character, he became deeply sensible how
enormous is the error of exclusiveness and par-
tiality in all their thoughts and judgments which
most men commit. He saw each man living in a
narrow inclosure which he called the world,
following a certain local fashion which he called
universal morality, adopting the opinions of a
certain clique which he called truth. Hence the
ruling thought of his mind came to be a con-
tempt for sects, professions, schools—and, in
short, for every shape and name of dogmatism,
and a reverence for the catholic faith of man,
for that unwritten creed, quod semper, quod
übique, quod ab omnibus. This ruling thought he
expresses over and over again in his own head-
strong, reckless, and arrogant manner ; but it is,
notwithstanding, the best thing about him, and
has suggested some of his best verses as well as
some of his worst ; as for example :
I care not for what wigged Learning say,
For Latin Doctor's frown, or critic's dart.
If I should die not with my fleeting day,
I'd live in every good old woman's heart ;
Be known to John the Boots, and Poll the Nurse,
And judged by loving maidens of my land.
Then down with Mystics! Mme shall be the verse
That men may study, children understand.
Certainly, no man devoting himself to poetry,
or to any other liberal pursuit, can do wrong in
persuading himself that the function of learning
in this world has its limits, that the best know-
ledge is that which is common to all—in short,
that it is much to be a scholar or a philosopher,
but more to be a man. A persuasion like this,
however, will be of little benefit to the person in
whom it resides, if it lead him to pour contempt
upon learning and philosophy themselves, and
to consider cultivation and refinement as value-
less because they are not worth all that some
people have imagined them to be. The point-
less
sarcasms which this author flings at a much
better man than himself; the poet NVordsworth,
are just in the conceited strain of the dogmatists
who have provoked his spleen. Because Words-
worth's poems are not universally intelligible,
therefore, forsooth, they must be worthless, and
their author an impostor. There would have
been no difficulty in conceding to any one who
might think it worth while to repeat the truism,
that Wordsworth would have shown greater
mastery of his art if he had succeeded in moving
the hearts of plain people, and had not contented
himself for the most part with addressing a
select audience of educated thinkers. It might
have been readily conceded that Wordsworth is
to some extent the poet of a class, as Pope is to a
still greater extent, as all who have observed what a
difficulty the uneducated find in understanding
his English will confess Milton to be. But the
conclusion that because this is so, therefore
Wordsworth is no poet at all, startles a plain
man, though to Mr. Hollingsworth it is so self-
evident that he demands—
Was England drunk in those old Tory days,
When such wish•wash as hii won gold and praise ?
As in this same poem we, in common with the
whole guild of critics, have had our cuffing
beforehand, we may remark, without any fear for
the consequences, that Wordsworth was never
supposed to have got much gold by his poetry,
and that in the " old Tory days" he received
certainly quite as much sneering as praise, since,

679

right or wrong, the fashion of praising him dates
from the dawn of the present school of criticism.
But that which precedes is still more remarkable.
Ile quotes IVordsworth's lines,

Praise it is enough for me,
If there be but three or four
Who will love my little Rower!

and comments upon them as follows :
Praise is enough? Egad! methinks so too.
Pronounce his flower, floor; and then 'twill do.
But " praise it is." What pretty mode of speech!
Which he it is, his friends it is, would teach.
We are not by any means sure that we under-
stand this refined criticism. It appears, how-
ever, that the critic supposes Wordsworth to
have written praise it is enough for praise is
enough, inserting the it for the sake of metre.
Of course the reader sees that this is quite a.
mistaken view of the passage. But it is not im-
portant to discover Hollingsworth's precise
meaning; the amusing insolence of the
will appear to the reader when we haveshallissae
produced some specimens of his own diction. It
is a light thing to observe that rhymes as im-
perfect as that of four and flower occur fre-
quently in the "Legend of Childe Erconwold."
Stanzas like the following are common :
Our sheen pranked earls, our sceptred lord full thought
And woe-foreboding gloom.
laSlow follow Tostig's come that it be brought
To kingly tomb.
Full thought for full of thought, and that it be
brought for while it is brought ! " What pretty
mode of speech !" Again, we have, " Thou wert
fault, thou darling one, of this," fault being
written for cause. " Ah, Booth, 'tie pine to
tell," is far from an elegant phrase. We do not
wish to weary our readers with any more of these
races of diction ; but they are as " plenty as
blackberries " in the poem. Not less common
are lines totally destitute of metre ; e.g. :
But followed by long black shadow flickering with each
head.
It was unfortunate that Mr. Hollingsworth
should choose to bring the charge of incorrect
diction against so careful a writer as Words-
worth, when his own poetry abounds with gram-
matical errors more than any other poetry that
we remember to have read.
It is equally unfortunate that he should charge
Wordsworth with writing for a class. The
" Legend of Childe Erconwold" is written for
one of the narrowest cliques that can be men-
tioned—for the clique of Anglo-Saxon scholars.
It is strictly an antiquarian poem, abounding in
words, phrases, and allusions, both unintelligible
and unattractive to the uninitiated. We should
like to know what " John the Boots and Poll
the Nurse " would make of the following
passage :
What elvish mood.—what filet bloody crime]
Makes thee to wander at this :inked time?
To walk the brag one's road like outlawed thrall ?
To come where spae-wires dwell, and ling-eels crawl ?
Love-blinking maid will make thee sorrow less.
There's nought for
.thee in this drear unkedness.
It is true that most of the outlandish words we
have italicised are explained in notes at the
bottom of the page ; but we think that John the
Boots would soon grow tired of a language
needing such continual explanation. It is true,
also, that Dr. Sexton applauds the use of these in-
comprehensible words. This was only likely if,
as we presume, Dr. Sexton belongs to Hollings-
worth's Anglo-Saxon clique. His observation is
as follows :
Hollingsworth had an intense love for that grand and
expressive language, Anglo-Saxon, now so much neglected
for the barbarous jargon--semi-Latin cum French—which
prevails so erensively in our literature.
We cannot understand this except as a sneer
at the language which has been spoken in Eng-
land for the last five or six centuries, and an
implied recommendation to us to return to the
standard of the classical period of our tongue,
which we suppose to be the time of Alfred the
Great. Certainly ever since the Norman Conquest
our language has been more or less a barbarous
jargon, by which Dr. Sexton appears to mean a
compound language. We certainly do feel it an
objection to this rather radical measure of reform
that it would oblige us t 6 part for ever with the
whole literature we have hitherto been so proud
of, and which has the misfortune of being written
in this jargon ; that it would oblige us, in short,
to shut up Shakespeare, and confine.ourselves for
the future to the lucid page of ingsworth
We have, however, no intention to Ildby that this

A

680

rather long and very uncouth legend has its
merits. The vice of a thoroughly affected and
at the same time clumsy style does indeed so
pervade every page that the reader can scarcely
ever derive from the perusal a moment's pleasure
altogether unmixed with disgust. Ile will often
observe, however, that the author has eloquence,
has fresh feeling, has unborrowed and genuine
convictions. We have not space, and if we had
we should, perhaps, want inclination, to give our
readers an account of the ot. It is verymarti-
ficial ; it has a middle, perhaps, even a beginning,
but it certainly has no end. We must not indeed
regard the poem as a finished one, and therefore
it would the less repay an elaborate analysis. We
shall content ourselves in concluding this critique
with extracting the best passage we have been
able to find :
Can ye tell us, learned sages,
What can make but years of ages ?
Knows nor time, nor spaoe, nor bound?
Wings the dull slow day and morrow,
Gives new hope, and sweetens sorrow,
Making earth to fairy ground ?
Angels call it, " Bliss of Heaven;"
Souls embodied, " Sin forgiven ;"
Here on earth men name it " Love ;"
Fiends e'er hating," Hell's worst paining;"
'Tis the Might o'er all things reigning,—
God below and God above !
• •

Wherefore, while her ♦ows so bless me,—
While those little hands caress me,—
Say, ye wises.. of the wise,
How con i, nor learned, nor gifted,
With her smile be thus uplifted
Far above your paradise?
Love can whisper, learned sages,
Truths ye'd find in musty pages ;
Tell a child what ye'd be told.
But full oft ye like nought better
Thin your cheerless deadening letter;
Like your gilding more than gold.

On the 16th of September, 1853, Mr. Hol-
lingsworth sailed from Liverpool in the Ameri-
can emigrant ship, Isaac Wright. On the 28th
the ship struck on a rock, N.N.W. of Cape
Clear, and was obliged to put back into port.
Before the vessel reached the Mersey the cholera
had broken out on board, and carried off forty-
seven persons. Inquiries were instituted among
the survivors by Holling,sworth's friend, Mr.
Melladew, but to no purpose ; and it was only
" when the unclaimed portmanteau and carpet-
" bag turned up" that he knew that of the
corpses hastily committed to the deep in the hour
of confusion and terror the wilful and unfortu-
nate but strong-minded poet and Anglo-Saxon
scholar was one.

The Art of Extempore Speaking : Hints for the
Pulpit, the Senate, and the Bar. By M.
13autain, Vicar-General and Professor at the
Sorbonne. Translated from the French.
London : Bosworth and Ilarrison.
Ttix literary merits of this volume justify the
translator's experiment in giving an English ver-
sion of it ; and yet the contents of the work are
not quite equal to its title. Public speaking in
general, and pulpit eloquence more particularly,
are treated of by the author; but we have been
disappointed in those portions of his treatise in
which "extempore" speaking is dealt with. M.
Bautain is thoroughly acquainted with what the
ancient critics have written on the art of oratory ;
and his chair at the Sorbonne, as well as his ex-
perience in the pulpit, have given him practical
knowledge of the vocation of a public speaker.
We have read better practical treatises on the art
of public speaking than this essay, but its special
merit lies in the exact and vivid description of
the trials to which a public speaker is exposed,
besides a correct appreciation of the difficulties
which he has to surmount. The volume does
not teach a novice how he can learn to speak
fluently on the spur of the occasion (and it would
be only charlatanism to Imam to do so), but it
certainly gives many valuable hints to those who
are studying the practice of public speaking.
In England, public speakers arc made more by
experience than by theoretical rules. Our society
has a distrust of declaimers, and our audiences,
high and low, arc in many instances governed
more by "who says it " than by " what has been
said." Lord Castlereagh was a successful Par-
liamentary leader, though he was no orator ;
and Lord Althorp (Earl Spencer) had great
nfluence over his followers at the time of the