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

THE PRE S S, OCTOBER 3, 1857.

The Yoble Traytour. A Chronicle. By Thomas

of Swarraton, Armiger. Three Vols. Lon-
don : Printed for Smith, Elder, and Com-
pany, over against St. Peter's Church, in
Cornhill.

THE author of this imitation of the antique
has caught the style of the period he desires
to describe with much natural cleverness,
aided by a good knowledge of the literature of
that time. Doubtless he has gained much in-
formation from Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of
his Humour, yet it never seems to have struck
him that. in his effort to catch the spirit of a
time by aping its style he is doing much the
same as the law-student in that play who
wishes to be drest like Sir Fastidious Brisk,
and is ever one dress in arrear of the courtier
Had he been writing for the approval of Master
Francis Bacon, or Mr. Shakespeare of the
Globe, player, it would be reasonable that he
should have assumed a style with which they
were familiar; but, we presume, he writes for
the nineteenth-century reader, who must find
greater vividness in the style of his own day
than in that of a bygone age, and, grudging
the labour spent upon the early dramatists, is
not likely to approve a work possessing their
difficulty without their merits. More than
this, if we regard such a work as a work of
art, we cannot but think the end proposed
insufficient, and the labour thrown away upon
a mistaken principle. In the excessive care
for minutite, the spirit of the time evaporates.
Compare Mr. Kean's Shakesperian revivals
with Garrick's presentation of Macbeth in
a wig and small sword, and )ou must
acknowledge that the art of the actor who
makes you forget incongruities of dress by
the life thrown into his presentation of the
part, is far superior to that of him who never
shocks your judgment, but never lifts you
beyond it. Mr. Kean and Thomas of S war-
raton, Armiger, give you men dressed in the
style of their time and speaking the dialect of
their time ; Garrick and Scott give you the
men in such a way that you never ask whether
they are dressed at all, or speak any language
save that of the soul. The difference between
such artists and such authors is much the
same as that between Madame Tussaud and
Phidias.

The " Noble Traytour" is the Earl of Essex,
and the story of the novel is the story of his
life. Thus, being spread over a long space of
time, an:l treating of a great number of events,
it lacks the briskness of a single story confined
to one leading incident, and is apt to grow
tedious if read for amusement. But the
sketches of the many great men who people
its pages—Bacon, Shakespeare, Ben Jenson,
Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Philip Sidney, the
Earl of Leicester, and those many others, each
of single eminence equal to the great of other
ages, yet all clustered together in an unequalled
galaxy of greatness—make the chief charm of
the volumes. Here is a specimen, in the per-
son of a gentleman described by the Earl of
Southampton as " a young poet who had writ
" a few sonnets, and had dedicated to him the
" first heir of his invention," whom we shall
have small difficulty in recognising as Wil-
liam Shakespeare, Armiger

It was here, one evening, just before the great pestilence
broke out, that my Lo. Southampton showed a young gen-
tleman to the company, whom he entreated to use respect-
fully, as a hopeful genius and friend of his.
Whereupon William and some othets took note that he
was comely and likely to look at ; having a just mien in
his gait; neither haughty nor servile; for while his brow
was sad his eye was merry. So you migLt know at once
there was gravity without bitterness, and gay humours
chastened from folly; and the graceful smoothness of his
countenance seemed to control and combine these oppo-
sites, making a sweet harmony of character, as do contrary
and diverse sounds, brought skilfully into one consent,
create delightful music.
Truly, for one of gentle blood (if he were such). his nose
was curt, his upper lip especially long. Yet was the former
fine; peculiar, as showing some concrete vigour; and his
mouth, if too full and thick for your painter's conceit of
beauty, enough in its own way, since its smiles were affec-
tionately bent and passionate.
Then there was ever some intelligence 'twist these ostents
and what was passing inward with him. He seemed to
have that repose and power—that life and inspiration
which you may have seen and thought about when watch.
ing the great sea, Infleci. No motion on it bat the sparkle
of the sunbeam. No sound but that imaginary echo in the
tenantless shell. Yet where was the plummet could
fathom the depth of that ocean-mind ? Whose the lithe-