The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 12, 1857.

1210

" far." But we are wandering from our subject.
The introductions prefixed by Mr. Parry to
each separate play leave nothing to be desired
in the way of explaining the plot or the scenic
accessarics ; while the copious index of Teren-
tian phraseology at the end of the volume is
in itself a treasury of wealth to those who
would loarn to write colloquial Latin with
accuracy, ease, and freedom.

1. Rides and Reveries of the late Mr. yEsop Smith.
Edited by Peter Query, F.S.A. [Martin F. Tup-
per.] London : Hurtit and Blackett.

NOTICES.
TALES.

2. The Rival Kings ; or, Overbearing. By the
Author of " Sidney Grey," &c. London : Kent
and Co.

3. Almost ; or, Crooked Ways. A Tale. By Anna
Lisle. London : Groombridge and Sons.
4. Howard Plunkett; or, Adrift in Life. A Novel.
By Kinahan Cornwallis. In Two Volumes. Lon-
don : Whittaker and Co.

5. The Demon of Gold. By Hendrik Conscience.
London: William Lay.
6. John H. Steggall: a Real History of a Suffolk
Man. Narrated by Himself. Edited by the
Author of " Margaret Catchpole." London : Simp-
kin, Marshall, and Co.

7. Mervyn Clitheroe. By Harrison Ainsworth.
London : Routledge.
8. Davenport Dl4llll. By Charles Lever. London :
Chapman and Hall.
9. Paved with Gold. By Augustus Mayhew.
London : Chapman and Hall.
INDIA.

10. Opinions on the Indian Army. By Colonel John
Studholme Hodgson, Bengal Army. London :

Allen.

11. India and Europe Compared. By Lieutenant-
General Juhn Briggs, F. 8.5., of the Madras
Army. Loudon : Allen.
12. A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoita.
By James Hutton. London: Allen.
POEMS.

13. The Travels of Prince Legion, and Other Poems.
By John Le Gay Brereton. London : Longmans.
Melancholy and Other Poems. By Thomas Cox.
London • Saunders and Otley.
15. Oran, and Other Poems. By Alexander T. M'Lean.
London : Bogue.
10. Normiton ; with Other Miscellaneous Pieces.
By Mary C. Hume. London : John W. Parker
and Son.
17. Aladdin ; or, the Wonderful Lamp. By Adam
Oehlenschlager. Translated by Theodore
Martin. London : John W. Parker and Son.
18. London Lyrics. By Frederick Locker. London :
Chapman and Hall.
19. Poem of Oisin, Bard of Erin. From the Irish.
By John Hawkins Simpson. London : Bosworth
and Harrison.

I.We have to thank the Soloman of the nineteenth
century for this introduction to his friend, whose
thoughts are as original, whose conceptions are as
striking, whose modes of expression are as pointed
as those that have made the " Proverbial Philosophy"
a standard book over the habitable world, and bidden
the genius of Plato pale before that of Tupper.
Some may be inclined to lament that one the stay
and prop of this generation should have devoted his
hours to a consideration of such trivial topics as
those of the volume before us, when he might better
have refuted Aristotle, or reconciled St. Paul's with
his own Christianity. Bat this objection is without
due grounds. Did not Newton leap over a gate to
test the force of the wind, aril derive the law of
gravity from the fall of an apple ? Who knows what
a greater than Newton may not deduce from a more
nnnromising subject ?
Let us see. Mr. £,op Smith was a hunchback
who rode several steeds, and thought several
thoughts. Mr. Tupper catalogues four ponies that
have borne the thinker, though he, unaccountably,
makes no mention of a humbler animal that seems
to have hal some share in producing the Reveries,
and a still greater share iu editing them. Mr..Esop
Smith appears to he a philosophical 'limbs,
parvis componere magna. He has something to say
on Rifles, on Football, on Marriage, on Cuckoos, on
Ticket-of-Leavers, on Critics, on Divorce, on Old

Maids, on the Ballot, and last, not least, on nimself.
We cannot help regretting that Mr. Tupper (we beg
his pardon for the Mister, but we fell into zit accident.
ally) has discarded the style with which his chief
publication has made us familiar, and written in the
barbarous prose that suits our Bacons and Lockes.
Let us venture to present a few of his new dis-
coveries in his old style :

WHY MR. SMITH WAS CHRISTENED IF.SOP.
Why was I christened Xsop ? Because I was
surnamed Smith.

MI my ancestors' Christian names began with an
.E dipthong.
One, my great great grandfather, was Xneas, a
schoolmaster.

His son rEolus lost his wealth on the South Sea
Bubble.

zEschines my grandfather by legal eloquence
thriving
Christened his son „Esculapius, a worthy and
skilful physician.
And since my name is Xsop, I fable, and am a
hunchback.

FOOTBALL.

Football is great fun, for ell except the football.
Let the fool listen to the sage : many men re-
semble footballs.

The football is over-humble : I, the wise man,
say it.
Such thoughts came into my mind, and peopled
ils inner chambers

The sober fruit of reflection withover•runnings
of fancy,
Fancy, brilliant indeed, but poor to the thought it
covers,

As I saw some National Schoolboys having a game
at football.

2. "The Rival Kings" is a capital children's story,
brought to bear upon one of the worst of juvenile
faults, and calculated to awaken in children more
conscientiousness, without any unwholesome morbid-
ness, than the majority of such tales with which we
are acquainted.
3. "Almost, or Crooked Ways," is a tale of crime
and passion, not without power and some dramatic
skill. It is pitched, perhaps, in somewhat too high
a key, but will probably be popular with the lovers
of exciting fiction.
4. " Howard Plunkett" is a story with a singu-
larly involved plot, which persons fond of mystery
will doubtless read with interest. The scene is laid
alternately in Ireland and America, so the reader
may be prepared for wonders.
5. " The Demon of Gold" is a good story of a
Dutch usurer. Some of the characters are rather
well pointed. The forgery of a will is one of the
incidents ; and it may be read without weariness.
6. " The Narrative of John Steggall " is so fully
characterised on the titlepage as to render any ex-
planation of ours superfluous. The career of one
who began as a gipsy, and ended, after many vicissi
tudes, as a clergyman, edited by the author of
" Margaret Catchpole," speaks for itself. We need
only say it contains many striking scenes, and is
written in an earnest though homely and somewhat
puritanical spirit.
7. We have received the firstfive numbers of" Mer-
vyn Clitheroe," by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. It is
written in the author's best style. Full of those genial
pictures of English life and that wealth of incident
for which the author is celebrated, without, at the
same time, running into those extravagancies by
which some of his works are a little marred. We
like the story very much. The materials now before
us promise to work up into a very striking and in-
teresting fiction. _ _

8. Mr. Lever's story of " Davenport Dunn" continues
very amusing. The interview in the present number
between Annesley Beecher and Grog Davis is un-
commonly clever.
9. " Paved with Gold " still is occupied with the
progress of Captain Crosier's passion. The captain
however, we think, a little more dilatory than his
fraternity would usually be found under the same
circumstances.

10. Mr. Allen has given us three useful and interest-
ing volumes bearing respectively on the military, the
civil, and the social aspects of India. General
Hodgson having been for some years a commander
of irregular cavalry, must necessarily possess
valualle experience on the subject of which he
treats. His style is not winning, and his reflections
are sometimes deficient in novelty, but whoever will
take the trouble to separate the facts from the busk
will not have laboured in vain. The general was
one of the late Sir Charles Napier's most valued
officers, and proved himself on more than one occa-
sion a man of courage and conduct.
11. The work of General Briggs is of a much more
extensive character. It is in fact a complete hand-
book of India. Race, religion, education, finance,
civil service, army, roads, canals, agriculture, and all
kinds of public works, and last of all Government,
are all expounded in turn ; and an immense quantity
of useful information, accompanied with maps and

statistics, afforded to the public. We cannot of
,ourse vouch for the accuracy of all the general's
facts and theories. But as far as we can judge from
the careful character of his statements, and the
modesty of his opinions, this little volume cannot
mislead us much, and we do not hesitate to recom-
mend it as a general household manual.
. . _ _

12. "A History of the Thugs and llacoits," by Mr.
Hutton, a gentleman well known for his intimate
acquaintance with India, and his observation of
social customs, is an entertaining, lively, and curious
volume, and we regret we have no space to offer our
readers a specimen of its style, or of the singular in-
formation with which it abounds.

In these days the spread of fashion is rapid, and the
wave of education, growing ever wider and shallower,
stimulates to an ephemeral fertility whole classes of
the people before contented to be barren. The crop
to which this kind of soil is specially favourable is
poesy—as thin land produces the gayest flowers—
and the bard of whom the whole crowd is most sedu-
lously imitative is Mr. Tennyson. Fifteenth-rate
rhymsters hit off his style now as easily as, eighty
years ago, they did Pope's. But they are all as
much alike as two peas, except as far as they may
respectively select different moods of their midel.
One (13) adopts the careless, tavern style, and
maunders of the time when he and a friend

Discussed poetics over Cavendish
And pure Wenlivet.

Another (14) is stronger in the word-painting
business :

Last night I wander'd outside the land of sleep,
Although I bath'd my temples with the puppy sap,
Drank deep of opium, thought of pearly streams where

creep
The masses gray, and ivy mantles lap
The aged alders and the willows green.
Or walks with " Melancholy" :
Slow wandering 'neath a shady yew,
Whose roots suck moisture from the moat,
She views the water's yellow hue
Along the putrid ditches float,
Where crested billows kiss the brink
Of milldams, with a jaundiced lip,
And airy bubbles nod and wink
To clouds that o'er the marshes skip.
Away she rambles down the glen,
Beneath the aged alder trees,
To hear the spear tops of the fen
Strike up their hollow melodies
As murmuring winds slow by them pass;
Or in the silence of the night,
'Mid wavy beds of yellow grass,
Fading beside the stagnant pool,
She views the red leaves falling light

In Autumn's lap so plentiful.
Or tells us how—

Here it was that lovely Ela, left s ithult a parent's

care,
lioam'd like fairy nymph the woudlandb, in the pure anti

_
breezy air,—
Ere advancement, creeping slowly, had its earnest march

begun,
Ere the waving cornfields glittered to the rising summer's

sun;
Ere the early dawn of science light to craving minis could

yield ;
Ere the sturdy wrists of labour made the heath a fruitful
field ;-
11rushld the dewdrops from the meadows, at the early blush

_
of dawn ;
Cull'd the violet from the rude bank ; plueled the daisy

from the lawn ;
Heard the speckled lark a-warbling through the bright and
sunny sky;
Saw the wavelets bend the bulrush, as they faintly inur-
mur'd by;
Saw the swallow skim the river, first when spring leap'd on
the plain;
Saw the leaflet opening slowly to the balmy breeze and

rain ;
Roani'd the sterile hills and valleys, light at heart, fresh as
the day,
Till a knavish baud of suitors plaun'd to take her fur a
Prey
Forc'd from scenes of early childhood, cross'd the heath-
.

land, cross'd the sea, -
To some bleak secluded castle in the wilds of Normandy.
These are good lines indeed, but the pleasure we
experience in reading them is analogous to the gra-
tification felt by a certain race of savages in the
flavour of a certain kind of wine, obtained under
very peculiar circumstances, whoreof an account may
be read in Oliver Goldsmith's " Citizen x)f the
World."

Mr. Brereton and Mr. Cox are the only two in our
present list who strictly come under the definition
of Tennysouians. " Oran " (15), " Normiton " (16),
and " Aladdin " (17), are dramatic—the latter trans-
lated by a gentleman with, of course, pretensions of
a totally different °raer to the poetasters we have
been compelled by journalistic exigencies to rank
him with. " Aladdin " contains some passages of
beautiful versification, but we cannot say we have
read it with pleasura as a whole. The other two
possess just that degree of musical mediocrity which

h&.