The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-31 00:00:00

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LiTERATURE.

PROFESSOR WILSON'S WORKS.

.Woctes Ambrosiance. By Professor Wilson. Vols.

I. and 11. Blakwood and Sons.

It is under the genial and competent editorship
of his sop-in-law, Professor Ferrier, that the writ-
ings of John Wilson are at length being republished
collectively. They lead off with his glorious and
e ver- memorable " Noctes Ambiosiame "—among
all his works incomparably the one upon which his
fame will rest as upon its most broad, and solid,
and enduring foundation. A volume is announced
to appear quarterly, until the whole series of these
remarkable and varied compositions shall have
been completed. They will comprise our author's
charming "Tales," his classical "Poems," his inimi-
table " Recreations," his exquisite " Essays," both
critical and imaginative, and, together with these,
his elevating and authoritative " Lectures ou
Moral Philosophy." Besides, of course, the not-
able introductory volumes of the collection, the
four precious tomes, containing (for the first time,
among us, in a separate form), the chef d'ceuvresof the
great departed genius, the recognised magnum opus
among his numerous masterpieces, the poetry, and
the eloquence, and the •humour of his immortal
Noc-rEs AMBICOSIANOL How cordially this tardy
reprint of the " Noctes" ought to be welcomed,
every one must understand who can recall to mind
their periodical issue years ago in the pages of
Blackwood's Magazine, the Olympic throne of King
Christopher, from which flashed the light-
nings of his wit, and pealed in many an
awful volley the thunders of his denunciation.
It is almost to be regretted, we cannot but think,
that Professor Ferrier has enjoyed so perfect an
appreciation of these extraordinary Dialogues, that
he has cherished in their regard an admiration so
complete, so earnest, and so unreservedly out-
spoken that he has not been able, for the life of
him, to refrain from referring to them as they are
here presented to the reader, in the fullness and
entirety of their grand and colossal proportions, in
language that can alone be designated, even when
applied to the Noctes Ambrosiance—language of the
most extravagant hyperbole and of the most fla-
grant exaggeration. It is when, speaking of the
glorious Shepherd of the Noctes, the editor says of
him that "in wisdom he equals the Socrates
of Plato, in humour he surpasses the Fal-
staff of Shakspere," adding that " clear and
prompt he might have stood up against
Dr. J ohnson in close and pezemptory argument,
fertile and copious lie might have rivalled Burke
in amplitude of declamation," Now, even when
applied to that matchless creation the " Shepherd"
of the Noctes Ambrosiance, we must protest against
eulogiums such as these as against some wholly ab-
surd and preposterous fanfarronade. To say that
the idealised Hogg of Professor Wilson equals the
Socrates of Plato in wisdom and surpasses the
Falstaff of Shakespere in humour, to talk of him
as a disputant no less logical than Samuel Johnson,
and no less rhetorical than Edmund Burke, is to
talk sheer stark staring nonsense, nonsense
altogether ludicrous and rhapsodical. Granted
that the hero of the Noctes—for such the Shepherd
unquestionably is even in the presence of North
and Tickler—granted. that the hero of the
Noctes is really wonderful in many ways,
wonderful in eloquence, in wit, in pathos,
and in poetry, wonderful as a humorist, and as an
imaginative improvisatore—yet to say of him that
he equals Plato and surpasses Shakspere, that he
might compete with Johnson and rival Burke, were
to give voice to the babblings of folly in the accents
of rhodomontade. Professor Wilson presented to
the world, no doubt, the veritable apotheosis of
Hogg, in that marvellous delineation of the Et-
trick Shepherd, which is the chief glory of his won-
derful Noctes Ambrosiance. Nevertheless, even the
eminent genius displayed by him in the accomplish-
ment of this literary apotheosis cannot for an in-
stant be deemed any justification whatever of that
mistaken homage on the part of Professor Ferrier,
which has induced the latter to indulge in pompous
panegyrics, wholly out-herocling Herod by their
unjustifiable grandiloquence. Panegyrics spread-
ing out their windy proportions to the
swollen but empty bulk of the mere
puff preliminary. Of all men, Professor Wil-
son himself would have been indisputably the
very one to whom expressions of this ultra-encomi-
astic kind would have been in life the most utterly
repugnant. Of all works, the Noctes Ambrosiance
constitute the very one the most signally indepen-
dent, we might conjecture, of praises thus mon-
strously exaggerated. Let the intelligent reader
of these two astonishing volumes forget, however,
if he can, the prefatory compliments to the dead,
indulged in by Professor Ferrier with such miser-
ably bad taste, when standing, as it were, over the
grave of the great genius recently departed—and
it will be impossible not to acknowledge the judi-
cious skill with which (apart from that one blun-
der) Professor Ferrier has fulfilled the responsibi-
lities devolving upon him in the discharge of the
grateful duties ofeditorship. How pleasantly he pre-
pares the way for the uninitiated in the mysteries ofthe
Noctes, by identifying one after another the three
masterly interlocutors ! After a perusal of the
editor's delightful "Preface," every one may pro-
ceed with renewed satisfaction and whetted appe-
tite, to the enjoyment of " the feast of reason and
the flow of soul," set forth for general xefection in
these memorable Forty-one Edinburgh Nights'
Entertainment. Seventy-one numbers there were
altogether as originally published at uncertain in-
tervals between the years 1822 and 1835,
in Blackwood's Magazine. But of these no
less than thirty have been judiciously sup-
pressed by the editor, as written by other
and inferior contributors to Maga than Professor
John Wilson, or at the best, as only partly aided
here and there by the wit and wisdom of King
Christopher. Already the United States had set
the example years ago by a republication of the
Noctes Ambrosiance, in two comprehensive editions,
giving the whole seventy-one nights indiscrimi-
nately, the later of these two wholesale reprints hav-
ing been ingeniously edited by the late Dr. Shelton
Mackenzie, the accomplished author of " Titian."
Speaking of Dr. Mackenzie's American edition of
the " Noctes," Professor Ferrier candidly acknow-
ledges that " in spite of some slips and a good many
oversights—(mostly to be explained on the ground
that it was impossible for him to be in possession of
the requisite information)—it is on the whole credit-
able to the industry and good sense of that gentle-
man." High praise, indeed, as coming from the son-
in-law of the gifted writer of the " Noctes," and the
authorised editor of the revised and authentic edi-
tion, here at length put forward by the Messrs. Black-
wood themselves. At length, in this goodly reprint
of Professor Wilson's glorious Noctes, extending as
we have seen to no less than forty-one altogether,
we are permanently placed in possession of the
cream of the whole of the immortal Dialogues—
not with a mere selection from them, but with
everything essentially constituting the great work
hitherto known and henceforth to be more clearly
than ever recognised as the "Noctes Ambrosianie."
Everybody remembers, of course, that the three
principal interlocutors in these same renowned
Dialogues were Christopher North, Timothy
Tickler, and the Ettrick Shepherd. Everybody,
however, is not so distinctly acquainted with the
faot that while North meant John Wilson himself,
and the Shepherd, James Hogg, author of " The
Queen's Wake" and "Kilmeny," Tickler typifyed
in a no less wonderful manner one Robert Sym, a
Writer to the Signet, born in 1750, and who died in
1844, at the patriarchal aged of 94. The character of
Mr. Sym was of course slightly idealised in the person
of Mr. Tickler, as that of Professor Wilson was in
some respects dwarfed and in others expanded in
the imaginary shape of Mr. North, the ever glo-
rious, and terrible, and loveable, and inimitable
Christopher. But with Hogg it was very different
indeed—the prototype being immeasurably sur-
passed by the ideal counterpart. As we have
already expressed it, James Hogg, noble original
though he undoubtedly was in the flesh, enjoyed a
veritable apotheosis iii the Ettrick Shepherd of the
_Nodes Ambrosiano3. The Shepherd of the Noctes,
indeed, may well be described by Professor Ferrier
as " one of the finest and most finished creations
which dramatic genius ever called into existence."
It is in every particular a perfect masterpiece. In
wit, in humour, in grace, m tenderness, in elo-
quence, in poetry of feeling an
is d of description, the
Shepherd of the isNodes altogether won-
derful. Whether hedescribing "Tic
Doloureux" with an irresistible ridiculous-
ness worthy of the creator of Pantagruel, or solilo-
quising about clocks and fiddles, mirrors, sofas,
and kitchen chairs—ho is everywhere, in all moods,
in all phases, without an atom of exaggeration, be
it said, entirely incomparable. Listen to him dis-
coursing in the cool sea-water at Portobello, swal-
lowing brine by the gallon in the wash of the
steam-boat, gasping between whiles—" Em—hem
—umph—humph—whoo—whoo— whurr whurr
herrachvacherach"—while Tickler is spluttering in
the same surge-swell hard by—" Whsy—whsy—
whsy—whugh—whugh—shugh—shugh7ptsngh—
prgugh 1" Hear him fleering at the said Tickler
across the steam of the whisky jug, fragrant with
lemons and sugar, saccharine and acidulated
like his own wise banter ; or hearken to him
as he beards the leonine North even while
within reach of the sweep of his formidable crutch,
telling him—" there's nae denym' that when you
either skaitch or feenish aff,after your am manner,
there's few hauns like Christopher North, either
ancient or modern : but excuse me, sir, for saym',
that, about the tenth tummler or sae, oh, sir, you
are tiresome, tiresome." Everywhere, in any mood,
in any phase, the Shepherd is, we repeat, delicious,
inimitable, incomparable. Ambrose's Tavern, situ-

add in the street or lane of Ci-ahriers-roaA, in the
ancient city of Edinburgh, was in truth the scene
of many a gay symposium for John Wilson, and.
Robert Sy m, and James Hogg, and their com-
panions, but the Teri fable " Auibrosian Nights," in
which Tickler, and North, and the Shepherd shone
forth resplendently must be looked for, not in Ga-
briel's-road, but in Blackwood's Maga:ine. Repro-
duced for the delight of after times in these noble
volumes, the "Noctes Ambrosiame " of Professor
Wilson will not fail to sustain some of the loftier
and rarer attributes of his splendid and in many
respects heroic reputation..

MR. DICKENS' NEW STORY.
Little Dorrit. By Charles Dickens. No. 11.
Bradbury and Evans.
A wonderfully clever number is this second in-
stalment of Mr. Dickens's new story of " Little
Dorrit"—a number so replete with " good things"
as almost to dissipate our remembrance of the four
chapters given to the world a month ago by way of
introduction. We obtain at last something better
than a merely tantalising glimpse of Little Dorrit,
the heroine of the tale. We learn all about her
birth and parentage. We discover in her home the
old debtors' prison of the Marshalsea—in her father
the Father of the Marshalsea—in herself the Child
of the Marshalsea. Amy, otherwise Little Dorrit,
proves to be a tiny woman, some twenty-two years
of age, who goes out for so many hours a day to gain
a few shillings by needlework. The youngest of
the family, she is, nevertheless, its chief guide, sup-
port, and protector. The stay of her old white-
headed father William Dorrit, better known by the
name, style, and title of the Father of the Mar-
shalsea I The successor to her poor dead mother—
being, in fact, a strange kind of second mother to her
elder sister Fanny, who is a ballet-dancer, and to her
lucklees brother Tip, who is an unmitigated scape-
grace and an irredeemable ne'erdoweel. Another
member of the Dorrit family there is in the person of
old William Dorrit's brother Frederick—the shabby,
ruined, broken-down uncle of Amy, Tip, and
Fanny, himself a clarionet player in the orchestra
of the very theatre in which the last-mentioned is
permanently engaged as a dansettse. Hero is Mr.
Dickens's wonderful description of old Frederick
Dorrit, the orchestral player of the clarionet.

" He stooped a gOod deal, and plodded along in a slow
preoccupied manner, which made the bustling London
thoroughfares no very safe resort for him. He was dirtily-
and meanly dressed, in a threadbare coat, onoe blue, reach-
ing to his ankles and buttoned to his chin, where it
vanidasd in the pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece of
red cloth with which that phantom had been stiffened is
its lifetime was now laid hare, and poked itself up, at th 3
back of the old man's neck, iato a confusion of grey hair
and rusty stock and buckle which altogether nearly poked
his hat off. A greasy hat it was, and a napless ; impending
over his eyes, cracked and crumpled at the brim, and with a
wisp of pocket handkerchief dangling out below it. his
trowsers were so loag and loose, and his shoes so clumsy
and large, that he shuttled like an elephant ; though how
much of this was gait, and how much trailing cloth and
leather, no one could have told. Under one arm he carried
a limp and worn-out case, containing some wind instru-
ment ; in the same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in
a little packet of whitey-brown paper, from which ho
slowly comforted his p ,or old blue nose with a lengthened-
out pinch, as Arthur Clemnan looked at him."
It is honest Arthur Clennam who hunts up the
family of the Dorrits, and finds them, as we have
seen, located in the ancient debtors' prison of the
Marshalsea. William- Dorrit having been there
years and years, until he has come to be its
Father—the condition of his three chillren being
kept a secret from him to the last, whether it be as
to Fanny's dancing of nights at the theatre, or
as to Tip's being a prisoner like himself, or as to Amy's
beingau industrious little needlewornan. An inkling
is afforded us, through the suspicions of Arthur
Clennam, that the misery to which these luckless
Dorrits have been reduced is in reality traceable to
his own father and mother long years ago, and
that upon him devolve the responsibility of some
noteable expiation. Whether his mysterious con-
jectures be true or false the plot has yet to reveal
during the process of its development. As yet we are
left, like him, conjectures,
merely to vague or at
best to shrewd suspicions. The chapter on Family
Affairs introducing us again to the abominable
Jeremiah Flintwinch, of the cut-down aspect, and
to Arthur's grim old grey-headed mother, who
looks for all the world, when seated at her desk,
with her two hands laid out separately upon it,
and the tall cabinet towering before her, " as if she
were performing on a dumb church organ." The
upshot of this chapter is that Arthur and his
mother become more than ever estranged ; the
former seceding from the business to make way,
as it proves, for the admission into the house of
a new partner, in the person of the horrible
old "cut-down" Jeremiah Fliutwinch. The chap-
ter following introduces us to the Marshalsea,
and makes us acquainted with William Dorrit, its
Father—taking us there (among other times) "at
certain constitutional moments when somebody
came from some Office to go through some form
of overlooking something, which neither lie nor
anybody else knew anything about"—wandering
round the prison " while this somebody tre-
tended to do his something, and made a reality of
walking out again when he hadn't done it—neatly,"
says Mr. Dickens, with his wise, droll, satiric ban-
ter, "neatly epitomising the administration of
most of the public affairs in our right little, tight
little, island." Here—in the old Marshalsea Pri-
son, au evil spot happily now no longer to be found
in London—we are brought face to face with a set
of extraordinarily life-like characters, who are pre-
sented to us one after another in a series of mar-
vellous portraitures. There is, for example, Bob
the benevolent Turnkey, who becomes the god-
father of Little Amy Dorrit, talking to her
tenderly about the green fields " over there,"
full of flowers, buttercups, and daisies, and
dandelions, "and all manner of games"—and
speaking of her father as having played a piano
in the Marshal's house—" like one o'clock—beau-
tiful !" Then there is the Doctor of the Marshal-
sea, once upon a time surgeon of a passenger ship,
who is discovered first of all as one of " two hoarse,
puffy, red-faced personages, seated at a ricketty
table in a wretched, ill-smelling little room, playing
at all smoking pipes and drinking brandy"—
the Doctor's friend (one of the two) being " in the
positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness, redfaced-
ness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy," the Doc-
tor himself being in the comparative—" hoarser,
puffier, more redfaced, more all-foury, tobaccoer,
dirtier, and brandier !" Here, however, is his
portrait entire :
" The doctor was amazingly shabby, in a torn and darned
rough-weather sea-j acket, out at elbows and eminently short
of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon
carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trowsors eons
ceivable by mortal man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen.
Childbed?' said the doctor. 'l'm the boy 1' With that
the doctor took a comb from the chimney-piece and stuck
his hair upright—which appeared to be his way of washing
himself—produced a professional ohest or case, of moat
abject appearance, from the cupbo 'rd where his cup and
saucer and coals were, settled his chin in tke frowsy wrap-
per round his neck, and became a ghastly medical scare-
crow."
Besides the Doctor there is Mrs. Bangham, Char-
woman and Messenger to the Marshalsea, who, as
years roll on, ultimately goes very wrong indeed,
being " found oftener than usual comatose on pave-
ments, with her basket of purchases spilt, and the
change of her clients' ninepence short!" These
are the personages who assist at the entrance of
poor Little Amy Dorrit into the world—Bob as
God-father, Mrs. Bangham as Nurse, and the
Doctor as Accoucheur. It is as successor to Mrs.
as Messenger that Tip
Bangham in her capacity
first of all makes his appearance, executing his
commissions in a knowing manner, and ,‘ becoming
of the prison prisonous and of the streets streety."
In the next chapter we learn how it comes to
pass that Little Dorrit gets her sister Fanny in-
structed in opera dancing by an insolvent dancing
master, who takes " a matter of ten reeks to set to
his creditors, lead off', turn the Commissioners, and
right and left back to his professional pursuits."
And how it was that Uncle Frederick, coming tobe
ruined by his brother William, showed no further
sense of the calamity than "leaving off washing hi in-
self when the shock was announced and never
taking to that luxury any more"—resorting
at last, as we have shown, for support, to playing
a clarionet, as dirty as himself, in a small Theatre
Orchestra. Here, however, is an example of
Charles Dickens in his happiest style, as now, once
snore, shining forth in this second number of "Little
Dorrit." It is the exquisite description given by
him of the first interview between the Turnkey,
and the poor Debtor who ultimately becomes
Father of the Marshalsea
" lie was a shy, retiring man ; well-looking, though in
an effeminate style; with a mild voice, curling hair, and
irresolute hands—rings upon the fingers in those days—
which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a hundred
times, in the first halt-hour of his acquaintance with the
jail. His principal anxiety was about his wife.
" ' Do you think, sir," be asked the turnkey, " that she
will bo very much shocked, if she should come to the Late
to-morrow morning ?"
" The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience
that some of 'em was and some of 'cm wasn't. In general
more no than yes. What like is she, you see?' he philo-
sophically asked : that's what it hinges on.'
" She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed.'
" That,' said the turnkey, is agen her.'
" She is so little used to go out alone,' said the debtor,
that I am at a loss to think how she will over make her
way here, if she walks.'
" P'raps,' quoth the turnkey,
coach.
" Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trem-
bling lip. I hope she will. She May not think of it.'
" ' Or p'raps, said the turnkey, offering his suggestions
from the top of his well-worn wooden stool, as he might
have offered them to a child for whose weakness he felt a
compassion, Vraps she'll get her brother, or her sister,
to come along with her. "
" She has no brother nor sister.'
" Vieccanevy,cousin,scricant, young ' oontan, greengrocer.

she'll take a ackney