The Press.
London, England, 1854-07-22 00:00:00

attitsiastital.

PREFERMENTS AND APPOINTMENTS.
The Rev. J ofseph Haskell, M.A., to the Rectory of East Bark-
with, near Wragby, Lincolnshire.
The Rev. John Keble, M.A., to an Honorary Canonry in the
Collegiate Church of Cumbrae.
The Bev. Charles Berners Penrose, M.A., to the Rectory of
Brecon-ash, near Wymoudham.
The Rev. James Bedingtield, M.A., to the Rural Deanery of
Hozne.
The Rev. Wm. James Dampier, M.A., to be a Surrogate for the
diocese of Rochester.
The Rev. Alfred Strawbridgo, to a Mission in the Punjaub.
The Rev. Wm. Jones, to the Rectory of Bedwas, in the diocese
of Llandaff.
The Rev. R. W. T. Hunt, to the Rectory of Byton, in the
diocese of Hereford.
The Rev. John Buller Hume, MA., to the Incumbency of
Aldermaston, near Reading.
The Rev. Humphrey Davoy Millett, MA., to be Chaplain of
the Blaby Union.
The Rev. Wm. Davies, MA., to be a Surrogate for the diocese
of Llandatf.
The Rev. R. W. Treen Hunt, M.A., to the Rectory of Ryton,
near Presteign, Herefordshire.
The Rev. G. A. Seymonr, 8.A., to the Incumbency of the new
church of the Holy Trinity, Winchester.
The Rev. E. J. Jonas, MA., to the Curacy of St. John's
Episcopal Church. Greenock.
The Rev. T. H. Clark, M.A., to the Curacy of Tidenham, near
Chepstow.
The Rev. R. Smith, M.A., to the Rectory of Kirkby Eleetham,
near Bedale, Yorkshire.
The Rev. IL Twells, M.A., to the Mastership of St. Andrew's-
house, Melds, Somerset.
The following appointments have been made by the Lieut.-
Governor of the Isle of Man:—
Thomas Arthur Corlett., Esq., to be Vicar-General; Rev.
Robert Brown, M.A., to be Episcopal Registrar; and the Rev.
Win. Gill, Rev. Wm. Kermixle, and Rev. Jolla Cannell, to be
Surrogates of the diocese of Sodor and Man, during the vacancy
of the See.
VACANCIES.
The incumbency of St. John's-in-the-Vale, Keswick; worth
1001. a year, in the gift of the Earl of Lousdulo and the land-
owners alternately.
The Incumbency of Wye, near Ashford, Canterbury; worth
1401. a year, in the gift of the Earl of Winchilsea. The Head
Mastership of Wye Grammar School has likewise become vacant.
The Curacy of St. John's Church, Bedwardine, Worcester-
shire ; in the gift of the Rev. John Ryle Wood, M.A.
The Curacy of Liadridge, near Stourport, Hereford; in the
gift of the Rev. Chalks Wilson Landor, M.A.
The Rectory of Uphill, near Aanidge; worth 4001. a year, in
prtvste patronage.
The Rectory of Marcholme, Northamptonshire ; worth 3501. •
year, in the gift of Earl Eitzwilliam. An Honorary Canonry in
Peterborough Cathedra, in the gift of the Bishop, has *leo be-

come vacant.
The Assistant-Curacy of St. Peter le Bailey, Oxford.
The Curacy of St. btephen's Church, Rochester-row, West-
minster; in the gift of the Rev. Wm. Tennant, M.A.
The Curacy (sole charge) of St. Gregory's, Sudbury ; in the
gift of the Rev. John Henley, M.A.
The Curacy of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge; worth 1201. a year
in the gift ofthe Hon. and Rev. R. Liddell, M.A.
The Curacy a Trinity parish, Ely ; worth 1501. a year, in the
gift of the Rev. W. K. Clay, B.L.

FROM THE LONDON GAZETTE.
Tuesday, July 18.

- • - -
BANKRUPTS.—GEO. CHA/FER, Commercial-road, Pimlico,
builder—HENßY COTTMAN. Sandgate, Kent, grocer—JAMES
RUSSELL, Chichester, cabinetmaker—WE. ASTIER, Jolnez s'-
hall-buildings, Upper Thames-street, machine printer—A uouSTS
SILVESTRE, Argyll-street, Regent-street., importerof fancy goods
—THOMAS PADLEY SANT, Stepheuson's.terrace, Caledonian-
road, Islington, baker—DAVlD COOPER, Birmingham, pearl-
button manufacturer—GEoßoz FRED. BLOXAM, Dukesland-grove,
Devonshire, horse dealer Wll. PILLING, Shudeltill, Man-
chester, publican—WM. WHALLEY, Stockport, cotton printer—
SAMUEL HoDsoN, Manchester, innkeeper.
SCOTCH SEQUESTRATIONS. —A. J. WARDEN and SON,
Dundee, manufacturers—J. THomtioN,Glfutgow, grocer—BßOWN a
and FINDLAY, Olaagow, patent metallic cask manufacturers—
MILNE, and Co., Aberdeen, manufacturers.
Friday, July 21.
BANKRUPTS—CHARLES FOOT, Ingram-court, Fenchurch-
street, wine merchant—CHAßLES TINDAL Mums, Woodford-
bridge, Essex, underwriter—HENßY HILL, Hampstead, builder
—WILLIAM WATSON, Weeden Beck, Northamptonshire, licensed
victualler—FßEDEßlCK THOMAS Passcorr, Iffacclestield-street
South, City-road, fancy box manufacturer—JOHN HARRINOTON.
Essex, baker—CALEß PIZZIE, Noble-street, City, carpet manu-
facturer—THOMAS GADD, New Fiehbourne, farmer—CHRISTIAN
FRIEDERICK KREIHBORG, Commercial-road East, cheesemonger
—THOMAS ALLISON READw x, Winchester-buildings, Great Win-
chester-street, dealer in shares—Fß►NClS KAY. Sheffield, cut
nail manufacturer—CHAßLES ROLLINSON, Brierley-hill, Stafford,
boot and shoe manufacturer—STEPHEN COOPER, Lyndhurst-
road, Peckham, carpenter.

Commodore Henry Ilyam Martin, C. 8., having attained
his rank of rear.admiral, the command of the Nik, 90-gun
screw-ship, in the Baltic, has been given to Captain George
Rodney Mundy.
The death of Rear-Admiral Henderson, C. 8.,
no less than ten captains to flag rank, on the actin
and reserved half-pay lists. By these promotio
service pension, the appointment of a naval ai(
to the Queen, and the command of the guard
Nik, are vacated.

R., promotes i
dive, retired,
awns a good-
side-de-camp
rd acraw** .1311315
i

JULY 22, 1854.

yittraturt.

1. Night and the Soul. A Dramatic Poem.
By J. Stanyan Bigg. London: Groom.
bridge and Sons.
2. Clytia, and other Poems. By G. Gerard.
London: Bosworth.
3. Haymakers Histories. By Ruther. Lon-
don : Bell.
4. Poetical Tentatives. By Lynn Erith. Lon-
don: Saunders and Otley.
5. Poems. By Matthew Arnold. Second Edi-
tion. London: Longmans.
THAT the poetical element of our literature
could be permanently suppressed by the utili-
tarian spirit of the age has never formed an
article in our literary creed. The love for
poetry is too deeply implanted in human
nature; and, until an entire revolution takes
place in man's character, the sounds of the
lyre, when struck by genius, will always de
light and thrill. A narrow utility may ignore
the important functions of the ideal, but com-
prehensive thinking gives cordial appreciation
to all those pursuits which minister to the
innate love for the beautiful. The fact that
few of our versifiers can be accepted as poets,
in a critical sense, proves nought upon the
alleged decline of love of poetry in our society.
Our classical masters of song are read as much
as ever, and the newest and best editions of
them are sought for with avidity. If a great
English poet were to arise amongst us his
presence would be hailed with enthusiasm.
In the absence of such a genius we feel no
small curiosity in examining the tendency of
our literary rhymesters. For the most part
they are characterised by the same habits.
They behold physical nature with the eyes of
moralists, and try to produce the poetical by
going into ecstasies over landscapes, and
wailing at the discordance between the worlds
of reality and fancy. They are tedious in
description, and lash themselves into contor-
tions over some single lines in which the
thoughts are the merest conceits, expressed in
quaintly-grotesque imagery. Their sensibility
to beauty is often genuine, even to excess, but
their utterances of emotion are very rarely
successful. Even when they find the poetical
in thought, and when their minds are really
stirred by feelings akin to inspiration, their
expressed sentiments jar upon our ears and
irritate our tastes. They forget that in so old
a literature, as the English tongue boasts of,
a very high staulard of execution must be
maintained.
What has struck us most amongst our con-
temporary young poets is their absence of
melodious language. Never was the musical
so prominent as now in our English education ;
and we might expect that our poets would
exhibit a finer sense of harmony. Yet in
most of our aspiring versifiers there is
a singular want of cadence, and, even where
rhyme is preserved, the smoothness of
the verse is neglected. In the last century
the mediocre poets applied a good manner to
paltry matter. Some of the poems imme-
diately before us show the converse.
1. Mr. Bigg calls his " Night and the Soul"
by the title of " a dramatic poem,"—a mis-
nomer in any meaning of the term. His own
mind is essentially moralising, with a tendency
to rhapsody ; and the characters of his poem,
male and female, are only echoes of himself.
He seeks to place himself in the regions of
poesy by brooding over the enigma of ex-
istence, and he seems to suffer from the
" Hamlet disease " of over-reflection. Yet
he has an acute sense of the worthlessness of
a merely speculative mind, and he nervously
describes the unfavourable side of the con-
temp'ative character. With something like
the force of genuine moral passion, he ex-
claims, in the best passage of his poem :
Oh! I have flung me at a mountain's foot
In the still moonlight, and have wept aloud
At
, my own littleness and vanity.
Thou a philosopher, forsooth!" I said,
What hest thou found in that dim world of thine,
Aught half so true and stable as this hill?"
And there it stood, lifting its agged peak
Proudly aloft into the azure dark,

THE PRESS.

Fronting the universe, and welcoming
With rugged bluffness the coquettish light
That danced with child-like glee about its head,
Folding its robe of pines around its breast—
A stately, proud, strong something in the world,
And not like me, a poor soul-sicklied thought
If he had given us many such passages we
should have been more pleased with him, but
the chord which he has once touched finely is
struck by him again and again with.mono.
tonous energy. His poem is nearly two hundred
pages in length, and its greatest faults are its
diffuseness and reiteration. Yet his reflections
are often profound and earnestly expressed,
and some of his single lines—as one in the
foregoing passage—
A stately, proud, strong something in the world,
have intensity. Unequal in his composition,
he has also not sufficiently attended to har-
mony. A bard must fascinate as well as phi-
losophise. Even with his drawbacks, we
have read Mr. Bigg's production with pleasure
for the vigour and felicity of his occasional
passages. Various phases of life are happily
sketched. Thus he describes the many half-
broken hearts and unsuccessful natures that
one meets every day :
Who hath not seen them,—the dead living ones,
With that sad ghastly something—meant to hide
From other eyes the anguish and the woe
That are consuming them,—that something, which
Like the poor pallid ghost of a dead smile
Plays over lips that never shall smile more—
Cold as December moonbeams on snow-drifts ?
And he continues :
Who hath not seen them come where music is,
•
And high-pitched jubilance and merriment,
Like a low, plaintive semi-tone to break
The noisy harmony into pathos, and
Gliding upon the gorgeous lighted rooms,
Like a November gloom let deftly in
Among the golden hours of Summer.
The metaphorical illustrations of Mr. Bigg,
as in the last passage, are frequently too
forced. Thus, in the following lines, the
faults of the Keats school of writers are very
visible :

Ah, 'tis a blissful night! The universe
Is a great rushing hymn of praise to God.
My heart is singing with the happy spheres ;
Not a string jars but all is harmony.
Night is the beautiful black slave of God,
And bends before him ever wrapt in awe,
While her great heart throbs thanks in burning stars!
Such " fancy" is of a Cockaigne pattern, and
not pleasing to English taste.
2. "Clytia" is a sketch in verse of an epi
sode in the slave life of the Southern States of
America. The author seeks to find pathos in
the union of a white planter with a slave
maiden. Their daughter on her father's death
is sold by his creditors, and finally passes into
the hands of a rich lady. Clytia becomes a
cause of jealousy to her imperious mistress,
and is subjected to the discipline inflicted on
Uncle Tom ; but she is finally redeemed by a
lover, who marries her, and all ends happily.
The tale is prettily told, with some sweet
passages. Clythia is thus introduced to us
in a tropical landscape :
And far below the tranquil waters flow'd,
Tranquil and blue as those fair skies above
Whose hue was mirror'd there: a gentle breeze
Eldred now and then the fan-palm's languid leaves,
And trembled in the rose, or sweeping through
Primeval shades, awaken'd into song
The forest's deep•toned lyre, and sway'd the boughs
Of pine and cypress, or with lighter breath
Rippled the waters, till they rose and fell
In soothing sounds.
Upon a bank thereby
A maiden with her book and lute in hand,
Stretch'd on the green sward, whiled the hours away
Of that sweet summer morn. Her glancing eye
Roam'd from the page, and wander'd up and down
Through all the beauties of the sylvan scene,
As if she read them o'er ; and now and then
Her hand would touch a string, and waken forth
One sad sweet note of music, which might seem
To suit her pensive mood ; anon she cast
Her lute aside, and on the book awhile
Her thoughtful glances turn'd.

As a contrast let us observe the slave maiden
when exposed in the market-place for public

sale :

And Clytia stood alone ! and at command
Mounted the hateful platform, with a sense
Of something worse than death ; about her face
She shook her hair luxuriant, and droop'd down
The silken lashes o'er her downcast eyes,
Veiling their light. And then amid the throng
A humming murmur of applause arose,
And hearts that had grown hard in scenes like this
Felt half a pang (short lived, indeed, and weak),

687

Beholding in that public gazing-place
A form so fragile and so beautiful !
Oh, with what pleading dignity she stood !
Amazed and half.abash'd, yet with such sense
Of her own wrong as lent a noble grace
And indignation to her bashfulness.
With fair hands folded, and one step advanced,
As if her feet were hasty to be gone,
She stood to meet the gaze of heartless men,—
To hear what hateful price was set upon
The outer form, that held a spirit free
To wander through all space and time, and hold

Communion intimate with God himself!
"The Poet's Grave " and " The Novice " are
amongst the best of the miscellaneous pieces,
and are carefully composed. " The Sailor's
Grave" recals at once a stanza in Mrs. Hemans'
affecting " Graves of a Household "
" And one, o'er hin► the blue wave rolls ;
He lice where pearls lie deep.
He was the lov'd of all, yet none
0 er his low bed may weep ; "
an idea expanded at some length in the
volume before us. Like other aspirants to the
poet's fame, the author of " Clytia " should
be more choice in selecting unworn topics
not treated of by other writers. " The Song
of Death" reminds us of both Shelley and
Mrs. Hemans. Considerable cleverness in
execution, however, is repeatedly shown in
the volume ; but it often happens that the
ideas are familiar, and the perusal of " Clytia"
leads us to think that originality of conception
is wanted in the author's mind. Yet the per-
formance may be praised as full of promise in
a youthful writer, whose mind, with increased
reflection, will acquire more force.
3. " Haymakers' Histories " is a bad se-
lection of subject. The common life of a
dozen women in the humblest class cannot
afford sufficient poetical themes for twelve
cantos in terza rima. We feel that the matter
is unreal, and the manner is monotonous from
the sameness of the metre. The second tale,
" Lucy," one of seduction, is the best in the
collection. It opens in a passage which sug-
gests poetical ideas, but the grammatical
construction is defective in its jumble of
tenses :

If one who on the seabeach walks at night
To watch his lady's bed-time taper burn
Clear from her chamber window in his sight,
Shall, after years, when she is false, return
To that loved shore, hear ocean's midnight swell,
And drop warm tears o'er buried love's cold urn;
He will believe how I am moved to tell,
Knowing such dark reverse, what must be told
Of one known early and beloved so well.
In many other parts of " Haymakers Histo-
ries" there is careless composition, even where
the thoughts have some strength.
4. " Poetical Tentatives " are characterised
by most of the features of our passing school
of poets. The author rhapsodises over ex-
ternal nature, paints forest scenery, and de-
scribes mountain springs, and shows us that
he has often read Wordsworth, Shelley, and
Tennyson. He has more power of feeling the
poetical than of producing it ; and tho creative
is withheld from him. His poem of " The
Day," describing woodland scenery, is the best
in the volume. The following passage is
very pleasing :
Then found we a gray stone, with moss embalmed :
There sat we down, and silent looked around;
For there a mountain river lay in pools,
In twinkling pools, within whose tideless calm,
Under the surface, hung the phantom boughs
That waved and waved in soundless motion there,
And all about us, where the oozing stream
Had given a freshness to the fragrant turf,
There was a beauty, calm and shadow-like;
For there the curling mosses caught the gleams
Of twilight on the emerald of their locks,
And now the sunbeams brightened on the flowers,
And now the shadows softened in their light,
And like a sea-wave in whose voice there dwells
The wind's most gentle sound, so swayed the grass.
And there is much more in the same strain ;
but the mind tires of eternal repetitions of
landscapes, and craves more various reality
for its thoughts than the author of " Poetical
Tentatives " would present.
5. The first edition of Mr. Arnold's "Poems"

was reviewed by us at some length. (PnEss,
vol. i., p. 736). In a brief preface to the pre-
sent edition he reiterates the sentiments
expressed in his previous introduction. In
his concluding words there is a spice of the
sarcastic
Again, with respect to the study of the classical writers
of antiquity; it has been said that we should emulate
rather than imitate them. I make no objection : all I say

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