The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-21 00:00:00

THE SUN; LONDON, M'ONDAY EV'ENING; MAY 21, 1855.

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LITERATTIBE.

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Lids day.

War Waits. By Gerald Massey. David Bogue.
We are disappointed. It is at once matter of
surprise and regret to us that better lyrics of battle
than those before us should not have emanated
from the young and gifted writer of the " Ballad
of Babe Christabel." We will not say that they
have been penned too rapidly—for poet can scarcely
dash his thoughts on paper with sufficient swift-
ness, however glib his rhythm or swift his skill in
penmanship. Poetry being in truth not merely a
"faculty divine," but so to speak a species of "di-
vine fury," a " celestial madness. an a'strlont
an afflatus. Wherefore (let us repeat it) we
will not say that these " War Waits"
have been penned too rapidly. ' But we will ven-'
ture to observe that they have been printed with
too much precipitation. At least some pause,
however brief, is advisable bet Ween composition
and publication. At least there should be some
moderate interval before even the 'most "unpre-
meditated verse" be permitted to make its public
appearance. It may be extravagant to insist upon
the nine years recommended by Aristotle. Nature
herself points the moral of rational delay by those
nine months intervening between conception and
delivery. Miraculous gourds, it is true, may
be grown in a single night, but apart from
an actual miracle, a lusus naturce, a genuine phe-
nomenon, there is usually, we all know, a
certain lapse of time between the seed and the
sprout, between the bud and blossom, between the
burgeoning and the efflorescense. As in Nature,
so should' it be in Poetry ; unless, indeed, one aims
at the producing of a mere abortion instead of a
matured offspring of the intellect—a nine days'
wonder instead of a full-grown and perfected crea-
tion, endowed with a vitality calculated to render
its existence prolonged, at any rate, if not abso-
lutely perennial. As with every other general rule
there are in this one also, as a matter of course, extra-
ordinary exceptions. Exceptions no less extraordi-
nary, however, in the records of literature than that
marvel of classic theogony which relates how in
an instant Minerva, fully armed, and resplendent
with all the attributes of her divinity, sprang into
being from the brain of Jove. The birth of a
Pallas of Letters is very far, nevertheless, from
being an incident of particularly frequent occur-
rence. Poets, equally with leaser mortals, would
do well to take a hint from that Psalm of Profes-
sor Longfellow's which recommends how we should,
all of us alike—

" Learn to labour and to wait."
It should be here remarked, no doubt, if only in
simple fairness, that Gerald Massey propitiates
criticism at the outset, in a few lines called the
" Author's Note," prefixed to his " War Waits,"
:where be observes—" These rough-and-ready war
rhymes can scarcely be looked upon as poetic fruit
maturely ripened, but rather as windfalls, shook
down in this wild blast of War." Mere windfalls
in reality they undoubtedly prove to be, windfalls
whirled down prematurely—crude, and bruised,
and soiled with all imaginable disfigurements.
Not as with those autumnal droppings of fruit
celebrated by Alfred Tennyson, where he talks, in
" In Memoriam," of the sudden gust that
" Round the garden swept,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears."
Here—as Napoleon used to say—the pear was not
ripe. A matter of regret to us, looking, as we
will confess we did, for better " War Waits"
than these at the hands of the author of " Babe
Christabel." Mr. Massey writes with shrewd
sarcasm at the beginning of his little bro-
chure of gc Waits" "7I dedicate them to
the memory of John Bright, who fell so recently
and so gloriously fighting the battles of the enemy.
Nevertheless, grievously in the wrong, as we be-
lieve the honourable gentleman to be in his views
in reference to this righteous war against the
Russian Autocrat, we very much qu .stion whe-
ther the tone adopted by the young lyrist
in these bellicose effusions, can be regarded
as in Any way calculated to alter the perverse
opinions entertained in this matter by the member
for the city of Manchester. They breathe
throughout the veritable lust, and madness,
and intoxication of battle. Such an exul-
tant passion for the mere animal frenzy of fighting
as might not unreasonably be reprobated by the
most lax professors of belief in the benign principles
and dogmas of Christianity. Take " The Fifth of
November at Inkerman" for example : and hear
Mr. Massey rejoicing at the overthrow of the Rus-
sians as—
" Still'on they came with face of flame, and storm and
shot and shell.—
! up ! like heaven scalers, as we hurled them, back
to Hell."
Adding a little fuither on—
" And at a bound and with a sound that madly cried to
kill,
The Lion of Old England leapt like lightning from the
hill.
And there he stood superb, tlero' all atat Sabbatle of the
Sword,
And there he slew, with a terrible scorn, his hunters
horde on horde."
Immediately afterwards, our enemies come in
for krather strong words, and the missiles flying
about for rather peculiar epithets.—Ex. gr.
" All Rell seemed bursting on us,
ad the yelling demons
came—

The red-mouthed cannon's fury•tongues lickt all the hills
aflame !
And whistling shell, and sneering shot with devilish
glee went past,
Like fiendish feet and laughter hurrying down the
battle blast." .
Further on the hideous delight in butchery
generated by combat inflames our author's imagi-
nation to such a degree that, scanning the Sea of
Battle with his mind's eye, he cries out—
"But as 'twere River Pleasaunce did our fellows take
that flood,
With a royal throbbing in, the pulse that beat voluptuous,
blood.
The Guards went to the fight in grey, but now they're
gory red,
Christ save them, they're surrounded Leap your
ramparts of the dead," &e.
Surely all this is little better than wading, with
a grin and a shriek of Holy Names, knee deep and
splashed, and blackened, through the blood, and
brains, and bowels of some Human Shamble-house.
It is in precisely the same spirit Gerald Massey cele-
brates the glorious cavalry charge, led by the belted
earl of the nineteenth century, on the famous field
of " Balaklava "—remembering which, our pcet

" Victoria, Victori."

sings :
" We weep not for the Heroes, whom we never more
more shall see,
[Rather weak, not to say somewhat inane and
mawkish.] _ _

We weep we were not' with them in their ruddy revelry.'
An expression smacking rather of the smacking lips
of cannibalism. Yet one which is repeated with
even a ghastlier relish in the verses "After Alma,"
where our soldiers are apostrophised as—
" Brave hearts, with noble feeling fiusht
In ripe and ruddy riot."
In a similar strain, moreover, we find the following
line in "Liberty's Bridal Wreath," put into the
mouths of our veterans—
" We fought till our shirts grew red "
as though they were in truth merely 'slaughter-men
wallowing to the hips and shoulders in the san-
guinary filth of an abattoir ! Nay, in another of
these same "War Waits," the one entitled "Before
Sebastopol," we find our warriors represented not
only as coatless but shirtless, and even stark naked,
as well as stark mad, in the midst of battle—
" One thrilling shout for England, He I
Then naked for the fight, men,
Dash in like fire upon the foe,
And God defend the right, men."
Nevertheless Gerald Massey can, whenever he lists,
sing sweetly and melodiously about the conflict ;
as in that exquisite refrain about " Alma," where
he writes— _

" Let joy or sorrow be in our camp,
'Tie an exultant story,
How England's chosen ones went up
Red Al.ua's hill to glory.
Ah, Victory ! joyful Victory !
Like,Love, thou bringest sorrow ;
But, 0 ! fur such an hour with thee,
Who could nut die to-morrow I"
Others amonghis refrains, however, are by no means
as successful. Instance that one—
" Sing, 0 ! for a jubilant carouse
Awaits us in our far land,
When we shall thrust up conquering brows,
And take our Country's Garland."
To say little of the inelegant "thrust up," nothing
can well be more weak or jarring than the italicised
penultimate in the line preceding. Nothing, if we
except perhaps a still more unfortunate penulti-
mate at page 18—
" Wild voices wail across the sea,—
They cry from many a woe land,—
[Observe the inevitable awkwardness of the rhyme,
in its forced accentuation I]
Revenge ! remember Sinope !
Revenge ! remeinheryoland !"
There is something very fine in, the simplicity of
the opening of " The, Battle March"—
" Now, glory to our England,
As she rises, calm and grand,
With the ancient spirit in her eyes,—
The goodcan Mr.
Sword
Masseyhand mean by. saying !
But what possibly
a little further on—
" May she sit down i' the green o' the day'
And sing her peaceful psalm !"
What on earth is " the green o' the day ?" And
what in the name of all our most authoritative
grammarians from Ruddiman to Lindley Murray,

what is the significance of those unhappy nouns dis-
torted into impossible verbs at page 1 and page 22.
" And again shall she ban= the world up high."
And secondly—.

"0, thou among the nations, for thy might shall yet he
themed."
Something better than all this we had expected
froth Gerald- Massey. Something better than this
he had himself given us the right to anticipate
from the author of the "Ballad of Babe Chris-
tabel." He will infallibly he himself among the
most energetic to protest—when a little time shall
have elapsed-that these raving " War Waits" are
altogether unworthy of him as the lyrist of un-
questionably the largest proMise in the—increasing
and still increasing—crowd of our young Poetic
Adventurers.

The Story of the Legion of Honour. By W.
Blanchard Jerrold. G. Routledge.
A timely and otherwise very acceptable republi-
cation. " The Story of the Legion of Honour"
had already been told by Mr. W. B. Jerrold some-
what
in the manner in which it is here related
its original appearance having been fragmentary
through the columns of a morning contemporary.
Collected together in the little volume before us,
the chapters of the heroic tale have been not in-
considerably enhanced in value by numerous ad•
ditions and emendations. The narrative is
suffused from first to last with that roman-
tic interest which invests, as by a sort of
necessity, everything relating to the marvellous
history of the Emperor Napoleon the Great—that
career of miracles, beginning with the birth of the
hero on the carpet embroidered with classic figures
from the Iliad, to his death under the lurid glare
of a comet, and in the midst of the roaring of a
mighty hurricane.

It will be remembered that when the unfortu-
nate Duke of Newcastle resigned the seals of the
War Department to make way for his. .successor
in 'the person of a gouty valitudinarian, he inti-
mated the intention on the part of her Majesty's
Ministers to create a new " Order of Merit," im-
plying by so many words, however, as he did so,
that this Government order was proposed exclu-
sively as a military reward, and not broadly, and
nobly, and magnanimously as a military and civil,
recompence. Remarking this, Mr. Blanchard
Jerrold has wisely 'recalled to' the recollection of
the multitude, the glorious and inspiriting " Story
of the Legion of Honour"—the star of Napoleon—
the precious reward held out by the great conqueror
alike to the drummer and the marshal, to the
statesman Mad the manufacturer, to the admiral
and the midshipman, to the prince and the pea-
sant. The writer relates succinctly, but most pic-
turesquely, the three chief incidents of this memo-
rable institution—its original creation—its solemn
inauguration—its distribution to the grand army
on the heights of Boulogne. Speaking of
the last-mentioned occurrence as an eye-wit-
ness, what
.says the Duchess d'Abrautes ? " I
saw him inspiring with adoration the ' con-
scripts just snatched from their families, and
while decorating the veterans with the rewards
of former glory, inspiring their juniors with emu-
lation to reap fresh laurels"—(adding, 'as if with a
foreknowledge that, in spite of Bourbon-Legitima-
tists and Orleans-intriguers, in spite of the Landed
kings of Europe and despicable traitors like Fouche
and Talleyrand, there would inevitably come, sooner
or later, the perpetuators of the heroic dynasty)—
Toe Empire was then proclaimed, and _Napoleon
th,e First reigned in France." The idea of his glorious
" Legion" had first been spoken of to a group of his
friends (savans mostly, such as Denon and Arnault)
on the evening of a Monday in the February of
1802, in one of the saloons of the First Consul's
beautiful home of Malmaison. The project for the
creation of the order was first read by Rcederer
to the Council of State, on the 4th of May, follow-
ing,. The project was carried 'on the 14th from
the Senate to the Representatives. It was there-
upon formally accepted by both brandies of the
Legislature. Yet it was not actually carried into
execution until two years later, namely, in the year
rendered memorable by the foundation of the Empire,
and by Napoleon's double coronation at Paris and at
Milan, as tiextt Imperator. On the 15th of July,
1804, the Legion of Honour was inaugurated by a
grand religious and military ceremony under the
dome of the Invalides, where high mass was cele-
brated, the ,Cardinal Caprara officiating. On the
16th ,of August, Napoleon distributed his now
order of merit to his veteran soldiers at Boulogne.
Mr. Blanchard Jerrold relates these more promi-
nent incidents in the annals of the Legion with
graphic ability, and crowns his narrative with
a record of the effects produced throughout
France, and ' ultimately throughout Europe by
the decoration. As a pendant to which his-
tory of Napoleon's imperial order of the Legion
of Honour, the writer submits to public view, at
the end of his little volume, sundry thoughts and
suggestions as to the proposed- new Order of Merit
to be instituted in England. A nobler model for
such an order could not possibly be found than
the Legion of Honour. The proposal that it should
beqr up.kn it the effigy of Victoria, just as the de-
coration of the Legion is emblazoned with that of
Napoleon, is to say the least of it most reasonable.
Not so, surely, as Mr. W. Jerrold himself thinks,
the notion of its being designated either the Order
of the Bee or the Order of King Alfred. The
bee and the violet are the emblems of the Bonaparte
just as the lily was that of the Bourbons. While
to have the order decorated with the effigy of
Queen Victoria, and yet at the same time called by
the name of King Alfred, were, to say nothing more
of it, assuredly rather incongruous. Why not have
the Order of the Oak—a starn or cross having at its
centre the effigy of its royal founder—and as its
motto--

Howbeit, as goodMistressGlasse saith, "first catch
your bare"—so may we leave ulterior arrangements
like these uutil the necessity for the institution of
some such comprehensive Order of Merit shall have
been fairly admitted by her Majesty's Government.

Thorney Hall ; a Story of an Old Family. By
Holine Lee, author of " Maude Talbot."
Smith and Elder. "
Although this story cannot be compared in inte-
rest or in power with its brilliant predecessor, it
has distinctive features and characteristic energy
which separate and set it apart from the common-
place and ordinary. The records of an old family
have always a peculiar charm for the thoughtful.
A magic spell seems to attract there the attention
and enchain there the interest where the great and
glorious of other days have existed. All of paltry
or trivial appears to have passed away or never to
have been in the spot which Time, the uprooter,
has not effaced but rendered solemn by his flight,
and which the destroying angel of death has made
. sacred in his passage, as from thence were removed
those whose memories were not subject to decay or
oblivion. It was with the homage great minds
have aver yielded to their sway, and the knowledge
of their influence on the noblest elements of our
nature, that the mighty conqueror invoked the
shade of ancient glories, and summoned the spirit
of the past, when he exclaimed to his army in the
Valley of the Nile, " Soldats du haut de ces
pyramides quarante siecles‘ vous coutemplent."
Yet not only in what is grand and sublime do we
suppose those who have gone• before us to have
had priority ; they have reigned paramount
in all that can charm the eye, delight the
sense, and fascinate the taste of man. As
was trtily remarked by an author and orator
of the present day, "The past is embodied
in the beautiful." It is this that renders its pre-
sence so alluring in fietioc and entrancing in song—
that surrounds historical romance with so enduring
a lustre, and flings over the twilight of fable and
the fancies of tradition the rainbow hues of glory.
In the present instance the story is concerning
those who (although of good family) are in a me-
diocre position, and some, indeed, were of a humble
and simple style. The narrative is retrospective,
as is best suited to its tenour ; and the reminis-
cences are related by Grisell Randal, whose brother
Hugh is the hero, and by whose courage and con-
stancy the stigma was removed froni the annals of
his race, and whose dream of youth was realised,
when in manhood he stood the possessor of the
home of his forefathers. He began life the son of
a watchmaker, without friends or fortune, and in
maturity ho had created for himself a position in
regaining his hereditary domain, and became
famous by resuming his ancestral rights. More
difficult and laborious is the task of him who re-
makes and remoulds than of him who originates
and designs. To retrace lost steps and turn back
again the tide of fortune is as stupendous an ordeal
as to conquer 'new kingdoms and discover new
worlds. The career of Grisell, his sister, is not
f
without its struggles and sufferings in the world
feeling as his were in the world of action ler
life was devoted to others, and few appreciated_l
of
as she deserved to be.fo
Her home wasll
troubles of all sorts—vexations unending,
i
pep!ex-
ng, and overwhelming. The too stern doctrines
home again. Her sister
of her father drove away the eldest son in despair,
never to return
thattorght-hearted, returned to the
Marian, anafdteri
paternal abode, having lived long with an aunt,
there desolation to Grisell's heart.
only to bring
heroine was placed in an awful
The unfortunate
position, for Henry Langley,
to whom she was en-
gaged,
captivated by the fresh 'young beauty
of yours; 7,aMs /rian, and instantly remarked to Gri
ter were an apt representation
she and her wiz
sell hadeo A dangerous idea.to creep
f sunshine and s .
into the mind, and, take root in the brain of man