The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

They bore her body o'er the sea
To her own Valteline,
They laid her at her mother's side
Beneath the churchyard pine ;
But ah, no more her brother sang,
When digging round the vine !
The " Four Winds " also displays great proficiency.
In The Maid of Messene§ we recognise some
youthful spirit, and a praiseworthy endeavour after
classical excellence. It is a first-rate school exercise,
but as a tragedy written for the world the less said
about it the better. But some of the other poems in
the volume are of a higher order. The " Charge of
the Light Brigade "is vigorous without being affected
or tumid ; and the verses on Sebastopol are creditable
to the writers powers of versification, if not to his
military genius'.
Mr. Archer Gurney's volumed is the last on our
list that we shall notice separately. This gentleman
has long been recognised as a man of great ability
and extensive acquirements; but, not satisfied with
this, he has all his life been advancing claims to the
reputation of a bard, which the would has been very
loth to acknowledge. A small circle of friends and
admirers have assured him of his right to the title,
and he has not, unfortunately, displayed the same
sense and modesty as Virgil's shepherd in disbeliev-
ing them. We feel, however, that Mr. Gurney could
not easily write trash. Much of the present volume
gives evidence of intellectual power, and it shows
great earnestness and warmth of devotion. We
blame no one for giving expression to such feelings
in verse. We only warn them against the self-deceit
which would lead them to Imagine themselves poets.
We quote a few lines of Mr. Gurney's, which afford
a favorable example of his powers :
Still thy broad leaves are growing,
E'en as they bloom'd, old tree,
When 1, through the greenwood going,
My dearest met by thee;
The breezes as then are blowing,
From over the mountains free.
I dreamt in my love-sick fancies
Thy trunk might be bare and hoar,
That the sun scarce woul l waste his glances
On the spot where she roatu'd no more,
Nor that song which all hearts entrances,
Flom the nightingale heav'nward soar,
But earth has no thought even fleeting
For the woes of our mortal race ;
The sunshine which beam'd on our greeting,
Still smiles on the old tryst-place ;
But lonely this heart is beating,
And death doth my love embrace.

Of the remaining volumes on our list we can only
say that, printed for private circulation, such verses
would no doubt be considered elegant and pretty ;
but they really give the writers no claim whatever to
the position of authors. If all the young ladies'
albums in this country were to be ransacked by some
lunatic publisher, and their contents given to the
world in neat red and green volumes with gilt letters
on the back, it would be rather hard upon the unfor-
tunate tribe of journalists to expect them to say
something distinctive about every single authoress.
We confess we cannot undertake a very similar task.
We have read the volumes in question ; they are on
an average below the ordinary run of the Newdegate
prize poems, and scarcely up to the standard which
most educated and cultivated minds could attain if
verse-writing were made their pursuit. This incon-
tinence of rhyme is beginning to be a national
disease. When will the physician appear ?

THE SOCIAL USES OF FICTION.
TO TILE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS."

Sir,—Amongst the arguments by which the secret
friends of transatlantic slavery seek to weaken the
effect of Mrs. Stowe's recent publication, none is
more specious and yet less tenable if thoroughly
scrutinise 1 than the objection, endorsed by the A the-
nteum, that social questions are, as such, without the
province of the novelist. In your last issue you
placed the points of difference on this topic, and the
conclusions (generally adverse to the dictum of the
Athenaum) to which your examination of the respec
tive arguments had led you, before your readers.
Perhaps you will allow me, without trenching on
that part of the subject to which you promise to
return hereafter, to make a few observations on the
case made out by the unfriendly reviewer of " Dred."
As you remark, his dicta are far too sweeping and
generalised. "Serious social questions are not fit or
legitimate subjects for art." This, the refrain of the
whole article, is dogmatic enough, but commands
neither our constrained assent, as such nrlvitylry

The Maid of liessene, and Other Poems. I.ly r.. 11.
Student of Christchurch, Oxford. Longtime.
Sotujs of Early Summer. By Archer Gurney. Longmans.
Poems. By Isa. 'Backwoods.
Waters of Comfort. By the Author of " Visiting my
Relations." Cambridge : Macmillan and Co.
Poems. By Mrs. Mitchell. .1. W. Parker and Son.
I Too. By Beelzebub. Townsend anti Co.
Poems. By Sheldon Chadwick. David Bogue.
The Sea, and Other Poems. By the Scald. hope and Cu.

SATURDAY,

decisions ought to do at least, nor even our partial
concurrence. Admit, as every one must, that fiction
has a higher mission than the supply of so many
thousand volumes per annum to satisfy the cravings
of the literary (!) appetites of the customers at the
circulating library; admit that it has the power, as
it undoubtedly has, of rivetting the attention and in..
fluencing the judgment, and that this power is greater
the more truly life and manners are depicted; and it
is impossible to avoid the conclusion that fiction is
not destined only to exercise a mighty influence on
domestic life and character, but that it is an agent
whose aid may be fitly employed in order to approach,
under the guise of art, and to impress, by the agency
of dialogue and the portrayal of character, the many
who would turn with disgust from social statistics,
and listen without interest to incontrovertible moral
essays. What if a novel cannot adequately treat t f
a broad social question, or furnish a complete solu-
tion of a complex political difficulty ! It does not
follow that it may not throw much, and diffuse still
more, light upon it ; that it may not assist in the
discovery of the solution, whilst preparing the popular
mind for the acknowledgment and acceptance
of the true principles of an equitable settle-
ment, long delayed by the uncompromising spirit
of party and hidden beneath the misrepresentations
of prejudice. Is the novel the only branch of litera-
ture which is liable to be onesided and exaggerated?
1)o party predilections, personal antipathies, straining
after rhetorical effects and striking contrasts, never
lead the historian to propagate as truth coloured
and distorted or partial views of events and persons ?
How few poets, again, are there who do or can give au
unbiassed expression of sentiment on those questions
of the day on which they feel strongly, and entertain
decided convictions ! No blame to them. Those
who hold catholic opinions on either art, or litera-
ture, or politics, or religion, are few, even in an age
like the present, when toleration is comparatively in
the ascendant ; and I doubt whether these large-
minded men are best qualified to carry great
measures, or to infuse their own spirit into others.
I think it is better to hear the different impressions
which the same things make on equally conscien-
tious minds; and to have cx parte statements, rather
than, in an age of inquiry which tries and tests all
things, to forbid their discussion in any form
(whether the essay, the history, the poem, or the
novel), because those who conduct the case will be
more or less advocates. If we have not a judge who
can sift the evidence for us, and lay down the prin-
ciples which must guide our verdict, better to hear
the case on both sides expounded and shown to us
in its strength and its weakness, than to leave the
issue open and evade the responsibility of forming
an opinion. It is very true that (as the Athenceum
argues) a foreigner might draw from the evidence of
our police courts a picture of English life, in which
the exception was described as the rule, and an
entirely false idea given of our manners and charac-
ter ; but he may do the same in an essay or a history
just as well as in a novel. If it is answered that in
the latter case his testimony will be overthrown by
more reliable witnesses, I answer, so will it in the
former; truth and simplicity will prevail there also
over falsehood and exaggeration. Works like " Napo-
leon le Petit" quickly find their level; those
of such writers as Montalembert, Guizot, and
Remusat float above such rubbish, because there
is the buoyancy of truth to keep them up ; and
RO the only novels of the present day which
treat of manners that are likely to live are such as
Lytton's "My Novel " and " The Caxtons," and
Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," " Pendennis," and " New-
comes "—works which, in depicting modern life, rest
their claims, not merely on striking incident and
skilfully-developed plot, or brilliant dialogue —as
most other popular writers do—but which descend
beneath the surface of society, and hold up to view
its inner life. In like manner Bulwer, Disraeli, Miss
Edgeworth, Mrs. Stowe—the forerunners of a large
school of fictionists, who will hereafter find, in the
illustration of current public questions, a sphere in
which they can do good service to society, whilstin-
creasing their literary tame—will continue to influ-
ence the world for good, when the less talented end
less honest publications of others on the same sul-
jects are buried in merited oblivion. A great re-
former said it was a shame to let the Devil have all
the best tunes; I say that, for the same reason, it
would be a shame to debar to the propagation of
social truth the readiest means for conveying it to
"the many." We have no infallible authority on
these, no more than on religions, matters; no index
expurgatorius, in which to place obnoxious rooks ;
and we only punish blasphemous and immoral put-
lications—moral poisons—on the same grounds a,'
I suppose, at some time or other, we shall place a
legislative check on the unlicensed sale of vegetable
and mineral poisons. Free discussion and liberty of
opinion on any controverted subject is what we al
claim ; some of us, perhaps, enunciate very shallow,
bigoted views, but they only go for what they are
worth. We justly hold that this privilege of speech
contains in itself the means of correcting its ex-

.........0

SEPT. 27, 1856.

ceases ; that truth is great, and in the end triumphs.
We may fairly carry the induction to the subject im-
mediately before us, and conclude that, though
novelists might and would often advocate false or
partial views, the general result of their using serious
questions as elements of fictitious interest would be
to diffuse truth, and dissipate error;—at any rate,
this may safely be predicated of the practical
and reflective Englishman. What kinds of sub-
ject-matter are adapted to purposes of fiction,
and what not, is a somewhat difficult inquiry,—for
the promised elucidation of which at your hands
I shall look forward ; but I may remark my gratifi-
cation at finding you have so fully anticipated the
expression of my belief that " Uncle Tom" and
" Dred " exhibit the rarely combined qualities that
are needed to treat such subjects satisfactorily. Nay,
more, those parts of her works which some critics
have condemned as vulgar, impious, and so on
(though not justly obnoxious to such an imputation,
as Mrs. Stowe briefly, but satisfactorily, shows in the
preface to "Dyed"), have a very different aspect
when regarded as necessary parts of a work pro-
fessing a grand social object to what they would if
they occurred in one of humbler pretensions. When
the Spectator argues that the success of " Uncle
Tom " settled the question of the legitimate use of
social questions by the novelist, I do not agree with
him that that popularity did decide the matter, if
he uses the word " success" in its simple sense;
but if he means that Mrs. Stowe's treatment of so
difficult and complex a problem was triumphant
and successful, I fully coincide with him,—and that
the more heartily, because (in opposition to many
abler writers, who cannot, however, I think, have
read her novels through with critical impartiality) I
maintain that she, trusting in the goodness of her
cause, has sternly done justice to slaveholders, slave
institutions, and emancipation difficulties (and thus
practically disproved the arguments of opponents,
who would limit the domains of fiction) ; whilst she
has won herself an enviable reputation by her ex-
posure of a monstrous evil, and her condemnation
of a giant iniquity.—Apologising for troubling you
at such length, I am, sir, yours obediently,
H. L.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.-Szrr. 25.

BOOKS.

The Frithjof Saga.
The Hillii of the Shatentue.

Triibner and Co.
Rutledge

Mars and Stripes ; or, American Impressions, Freemiin
La Bagatelle. Simpkin and 11arshall
Old Memories. A Novel. Newby

Advice to Officers in India. John M'Cosh, M.D.
Allen and Co.
Vernon. A Tale of the Sea. Hall and Virtue
Oat on the Tito:id. Henry Owgan, LL.D.
Hunt and Illackett