The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 3, 1857.

Guards Blue, ho goes through a variety of
adventures, " shaves," and scrapes, all of which
are told with vivacity and spirit, and an evident
knowledge of the kind of life described, which
nothing of course but a tolerably wide ex-
perience can have given. Prudent persons
will probably consider that the worst trait re-
corded of the hero is his marriage with his
tutor's daughter, but may pardon so evil an
example on finding that this early indiscre-
tion is the menus of getting him into
numerous difficulties, and proves an insupe•
cable obstacle when, at a more rational age,
he meets with a girl of a more suitable station
in life, whom under other• circumstances he
would have been glad to marry. A cornet in
the Blues, privately united to a dressmaker,
and attempting to enjoy simultaneously all
the fun of mess-dinners, theatres, the turf, and
general society, not unnaturally absents him-
self a good deal from the domestic hearth ;
and the lady, with the impulsiveness natural
to her class, on the supposed discovery of
some marital peccadilloes, sets off inconti-
nently with her father for the Continent,
leaving her spouse to the uncontrolled enjoy-
ment of his own devices and the prospect of
an inextricable entanglement with a young
lady who supposes him to be an unmarried
man. Having got the hero into this dilemma.
we leave him, in accordance with our usual
practice, to the curiosity of such readers as
may feel benevolently or sympathetically in •
terested in Mr. Arthur Pembroke's history,
assuring them that they will meet with no
lessons of puritanical morality, a good deal of
fun, and nothing approaching to dulness.
Of course,in a novel which has very little plot,
it is rather hard to say where adventure ends
and digression begins, and Lord William Len-
nox is not always perfectly successful in draw-
ing the line ; but he is generally amosing even
when " off the road," and his " notes and
queries" on the epoch of forty years since
will doubtless be acceptable to those who, like
him, look back with fondness to the age when
" the play" was a fashionable amusement,
when railroads had not superseded spanking
teams, and the Black Dog at Bedfont was a
shrine of solemn celebration. The hero's
scenes of "The Story of My Life" are told so
circumstantially that it is not easy to make
extracts, and so we must take our leave of
Lord William Lennox and his spirited novel,
recommending those of our readers to send
for it who are either in want of a lively fiction,
or who, for statistical purposes, are anxious to
be informed how a man may amuse himself
when he has no responsibility, plenty of money
—or credit—and nothing to do.

Reliques of Ancient Poetry. By Thomas Percy,
Lord Bishop of Dromore. Edited by Robert Aris
Willmott. London : Routledge and Co.
MR. WIT.I.MOTT has aimed at producing a popular
" Percy " in one volume, and with this view has
omitted one or two essays that seemed too anti-
quarian, and has condensed Bishop Percy's notes and
illustrations, adding a biographical sketch of the
original compiler of the " Reliques" that pretends
to no great literary merit, but is useful for its pur-
pose. We highly approve of his idea, and see no
cause to find fault with his execution of it. It is to
be hoped that, by this edition, many who were before
ignorant of Percy's " Reliques " may become ac-
quainted with those ballads that inspired Words-
worth with some of his happiest ideas, fragments of
which glitter with undiminished lustre throughout
the plays of Shakespeare, and have received the most
sincere testimonies of admiration from others only
second to him in the scale of poetry.
Mr. Willmott's share in the production of this
edition is not such as to call for much acknowledg-
ment. tie has " derived advice and instruction
" from sundr) hooks which promote the intelligent
" enjoyment of the Reliques,' " has attentively con-
sidered, and he hopes modified, the punctuation with
advantage to the clearness of expression, and has
endeavoured to improve and enlarge the glossaries
by consulting such works as "Dictionary
of Archaic Phrases," and Wright's "Obsolete and
Provincial English." Such labour is the part and
duty of an editor, and must not be praised as being
more than such on the ground that it is neglected
by many for the pleasanter occupation of venting
pretentious notes that contain nothing new and no-
thing relevant.