The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-16 00:00:00

THE Sr! T.,7, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENIN'a, OCTOBER l6 1855.

LIT.ERATURI*.

spasmodic versification. tinder the influence of
their jangling numbers Crowding in upon us, as they
sometimes did simultaneously, we have expert-
- enced sensations akin to those produced upon
one's sense of hearing by hearkening to two
; or three cracked and broken winded barrel
i organs grinding away at diihrent tunes toge-
ther under our windows in a Quiet Street.
Fancy the united melodies. of " Pop Goes the
Weasle !" "Ah ! Susannah !" and the " Girl I
left behind me !"
_with a sort of under-tone or
diapason accompaniment of the " Old Hundredth,'
mingled with exporaneous fantasias- on the drum
and pan'spipes—and you may have some notion of
the bewitching effects produced by this mingled
'outpouring of warlike strains, pitched in every
imaginable key, and carolled in all kinds of time,
roared most of them like any sucking dove—with
looks of brass and lungs of leather. Remember
Fiogarth's famous picture of " The Enraged Musi-
cian"---frantically grinning despair from his lattice
with a finger in each ear, and his -features in a
blaze of indignation. ecollect Leech's hardly'
less humorous sketch, in his "Pictures of Life
and Character"—representing at the top of one
page a fellow in the garret blowing himself into a
state of exhaustion on the cornet-a-piston, and an
unfortunate wight of a man-of-letters in a room
below, maddened by the uproar, his slippered feet
paroxysmed from the carpet as he sits infuriatedly
at his writing-table, shreds of his hair still floating
in the atmosphere about him like a halo, one hand
grasped in anguish over his eyes, the other jobbing
a whole sheet* of quills (nibs downwards) on his
desk. Call to mind every conceivable image of
desperation resulting from noise and discord pro-
duced in the outraged name of the goddess-muse
Euterpe, and some faint conjecture may then be
formed of the slowly-prolonged agony with which
we have been fated to listen of late to the " most
sweet voices" of the would-be war-poets—chant-
ing the glories of grapeshot and gunpowder in ac-
cents that might reasonably be mistaken for the
veriest catterwauling on the tiles. Some of the
Manchester cotton with which Mr. Bright would
seem to have deafened himself against all the more
persuasive dictates of patriotism would not actually
come altogether amiss in the din of this mock-
heroic hubbub of penny trumpets. Feeling thus
acutely under the infliction, we are compelled per-
force, in very gratitude, to commend whomsoever
we may discern among the mob of ballad singers
about us, possessing a voice in any way less dis-
sonant than the harsh and guttural voices of his
compeers. It is thus with a sentiment of thank-
fulness that we hail the appearance of Mr. Story.
Listening to him, we feel that there are still left
notes of gentle and heroic vibration in that bat-
tered war trumpet which has latterly, when at the
lips of the majority of aspiring lyrists, emitted
nothing better than a gurgling blast resembling
the hee-haw of honest long-ears yonder cropping
his thistle by the wayside. The introductory ode
in the present collection is addressed by our author
" To Alfred Tennyson, Esq., Poet Laureate"—not
with the versified scurrility of the scribe of " The
Transcendentalists," but rather in the language of
respectful, but earnest expostulation. Mr. Story
bids the Laureate—
deal no more in fiction ;
Trick no hero of the brain ;
Measured verse, and gorgeous diction,
Spent on Myths, are spent in' vain.
Look around. Behold the Real
Far transcend the loved Ideal.
Adding—

alone is distressin;dy provocative of a comparison
with the inimitable and incomparable lyric mas-
terpieces of Thomas Ca.l'pbell. Enough for Mr.
Story if he win for himself the credit due to his
minor melodies (as he has here won it, from. our,-
selves), without thus perversely bringing into con-
trast the twang of a Jew's harp, and what might
be mistaken for the glorious notes from the Clarion
of on Archangel.

Dramas of Calderon : Tragic, Comic, and Te
gendary. Translated front th© Spanish. • B 3
Denis Florence M`Cartity. 2 vols. Cliarlo:
Dolman.

' The name of Danis Florence McCarthy is to us
as that of an old friend iu contemporary literature.
As such it commands from us a welcome of especial
cordiality. We greet it heartily, 9 the symbol of
a young poet not unworthy of being coupled in our
memory with his very promising fellow-country-
man William Allingham. Several seasons back,
the writer of these two attractive volumes pre-
sented himself before the chair of criticism as the
author of a clirming book of " Ballads, Poems,
and Lyrics—Original and Translated," which at
once secured to themselves our attention, by their
mingled evidences of innate capacity and of culti-
vated scholarship. Several of the compositions
comprised in the very miscellaneous collection
making up Mr. McCarthy's maiden performance
as a man of letters, were not slow in eliciting very
• general expressions of admiration, wherever at
least the little volume of verse was fortunate
enough to have penetrated. It was recognised by
the discerning reader to be something better than a
mere jumble of school-made stanzas, bearing in
their unflawed smoothness the tokens of a
glib and fluent mediocrity. It is observ-
able, moreover, that they extorted, espe-
cial eulogium from the principal organs of pub-
lic opinion upon matters of literary taste in the sis-
tee kingdom. Some few among the more enthusi-
astie reviewers, indeed, heaped their praises on the
head of the new aspirant for poetic honours, some-
what in the language of exaggeration. Whereas
the Dublin: Review contented itself with hailing the
volume of " Ballads" (positively) as at once
" hopeful and charming," the more ardent Trinity
Magazine avowed of the writer (comparatively) that
he felt the " dignity of the bard," while the Irish
Quarterly proclaimed its belief (superlatively) that
"our only poet now living" was McCarthy. Mean-
ing, of course, by that widely-embracing pronoun—
the only living poet of Irishmen—Moore having
then but very recently departed, and Ailingham
not having at the time of this impassioned protes-
tation yet • made his modest but effective appear-
ance. However, setting aside the over-muchness
of Hibernian panegyric as-lavished two or three
summers back upon the author of the "Legend of
the Bells of Limerick"—making allowance for the
zeal of national exultation expressed thus ardently
on the advent of the young poet by the Irish Quer:
terly and the Dublin Magazine—it would be diffi-
cult to peruse these "Ballads and Lyrics" of Denis
McCarthy without in some manner participating
in the pleasure so very loudly articulated by the
young poet's reviewing compatriots. It was
scarcely surprising, therefore, that even in England
the book received a welcome of earnest greet-
ing scarcely less cordial than across St. George's
Channel : so that while we ourselves spoke of the
author as exhibiting "poetic talent of no ordi-
nary excellence"—the Literary Gazette observed, i
expressively, if not very elegantly, that the volume
contained " good stuff and poetry too," the Critic
remarking that its verses were " melody itself,"
and even the Atheneum in its sparsely sprinkled
adjectives of praise could yet declare of the pro-
duction, as a whole; that they had not failed to re-
cognise in Mr. McCarthy ;s pages what they con-
ceived to be " the track of the true poetic mind,"
though what that track may resemble (as thus
rather unpleasantly expressed) it would be difficult
to conjecture, unless it might be the slug-like trail-
ing of the silvery slime of Parnassian snaildom !
Howbeit, passing over these tributes of spontaneous
commendation awarded to the first volume issued
through the press from the hand of Mr. McCarthy,
it will be sufficient for us to observe in reference
to that early evidence of his abilities as a lyrist,
and, indeed, for that matter as one skilled very
largely and generally in the manifold arts of versi-
fication, that the volume comprised, among other
commendable performances, a variety of faithful
and melodious translations from the French, from
the Italian, but above all from the Spanish. These,
it now appears, were little more than prepara-'
tive efforts, preliminary to the daring enterprise
upon which the writer has since then adventuzed.
The translation—" principally in the metre of the
original"—of no less than six among the principal
dramas of CALDERON The reproduction in our
mother tongue of as many as half-a-dozen of the
renowned masterpieces of that wonder of the
Spanish stage—Dun Pedro Calderon de la Berea !
The great dramatist of the Iberian Peninsula,
second only, if not equal iu all respects, to the
miraculous Lopez de Vega ! Calderon, like Lopez,
we all know, bore arms in his youth, like
Lopez was afterwards a wearer of the priestly
stole, like Lopez was a prolific and magnifi-
cent playwright. Scarcely so prolific as Lopez
to be sure—but then Lopez, it must be remem-
bered, was a paragon, a mystery, a marvel, a
world-wonder of literary fruitfulness—pouring cut
of his magic inkstand from the nib of his wizard,
pen, as many as " two thousand" original dramas,
according to Bouterwek, or, at any rate, according
to the evidence of Montalvan (his intimate friend
and fellow-labourer) 1,800 plays and 400 autos
sacramentales ! But then Lopez, as we have in-
timated, was an exception, and an astonishment I
Calderon de la Berea, by the side of any other
dramatist but Lopez, must needs be looked upon as
a wonder of literary fecundity, whether in regard
to plot, scene, incident, or character. Flourishing
about the year 16 tO, the mere pick of the writings
of Calderon, spread out to nine quarto volumes, at
the period of their collective republication some 50
years afterwards, namely, in 1689—the three first
of these goodly tomes, containing the choicest of
his comedies, the rest of the huge volumes being
dedicated to the preservation of the religious
dramas already mentioned, the dramas known in
Spain as the autos sacraraeritales. Out of the rarest
of the productions of Don Pedro, his English trans-
lator has selected, as we have said, six-1, El
Principe Constante ; 2, El Secreto a Voces ; 3, El
Media() de Su Honra ; 4, Amar despues de la
Muerte ; 5, El Purgatorio de San Patricio ; and 6,
La Banda yla Flor. It is not by any means, of
course, the first time that Calderon has appeared in
an English dress before the English reading mul-
titude. Analyses of sundry among his numerous
Autos and Comedias have appeared in the Quarterly,
in the Westminster, in Blackwood, in Frazer, and
in the Dublin University Magazine. Ticknor has
spoken at large of them in his History of
Spanish Literature, Hallam has commented upon
them at some length in his " Introduction
to the Literature of Europe"—J. H. has
afforded the English student a glimpse into the
beauties of " El Magic° Prodigioso," under the title
of "Justine," the very same drama which had al-
ready been illustrated by the genius of Percyßysshe
Shelley. Curiously enough, moreover, a work pre-
cisely similar in design to the one here under our
consideration passed through the press almost si-
multaneously with these "Six Dramas of Calderon,"
freely translated by Edward Fitzgerald ! Fortu-
nately it has so happened, however, that while Mr.
McCarthy has taken his six from the "more"
famous among the dramas of Calderon, Mr. Fitz-
gerald has chosen his from the " less" famous—so
that the two collections in no way clash with each
other, twelve of the great dramas of Calderon in-
stead of only half that number being thus presented
to us in the form of metrical translations. Let us
take the gifts the gods have given us thankfully,
with proportionate tributes, awarded from the
right baud and from the left, to the indus-
try and taste, the melody and precision of
Messrs. McCarthy and Fitzgerald. The former
has judiciously accompanied his singularly accurate
version of Calderon with notes and introductions
distributed to each of the remarkable plays trans-
lated—in volume i., to The Constant Prince, The
Secret in Words, and The Physician of his own
Honour, and in volume ii., to Love after Death,
The Purgatory of St. Patrick, and The Scarf and
the Flower. We are precluded by several conside-
rations from entering here at large into any more
detailed examination of these translated dramas
of the great Calderon. The present is no fitting
opportunity, adequate space and appropriate
occasion are alike wanting for any such analysis.
Enough has been already observed, however, to
indicate our belief that an ordeal of this kind
might be passed through very far from discreditably
by the ingenious translator of these six brilliant
and eminently attractive compositions. In placing
his votive wreath at the foot of the pedestal of the
Spanish Euripides, Mr. McCarthy has illustrated
anew the reasonableness of his own claim to that
bay garland of the lyrist to which he directs his
every modest aspiration.

My Exile in Siberia. By Alexander Herzen.

flurst and tlackeit.

These remarkable volumes are a continuation of
the memoirs of a distinguished Russian refugee
now in London, where, about a year ago, the first
instalment made its appearance in the Russian lan-
guage, under the title of "Prison and Exile."
Portions of this having appeared in a translated
form, and been favourably noticed in the "Revue
des Deux Mondes" and the " Athenaeum"—a filer-
man translation also having been published at
Hamburg—the author has been induced to resume
his pen, and make further revelations of the secrets
of that vast prison house, his country, in connec-
tion with his personal history. At any previous
period, and under ordinary circumstances, a work
.of this description, from the hands of an intelligen'
native, would have been regarded with consider
able interest; but at the present time these volumes
possess unusual claims on public attention and re-
spect ; and for these reasons. We are engaged in
warwith Russia, and the writer is a Russian author
of the highest reputation who has been persecuted
for his liberal opinions since his twenty-first year,
and has erected a battery in London in the shape
of " the first Russian free press," from which he
assails it he stronghold of despotism by discharging
broadsides of light among his benighted and abused
fellow-countrymen, with whom, by the way, he is
very popular. The character of the man, and the
tone of the memoirs, may be gathered from the
notice of him by Madame Pulszky, who, in the
preface to a translation of a Russian novel, speaks
of him as "a distinguished Russian refugee,.who
endeavours to blend German philosophy, French
political theory, and English practical common
sense with his original Russian nature." A de-
scription the accuracy of which the readers of the
memoirs will never for a moment be inclined to
dispute. Having been arrested and sent from
Moscow in 1831 as an exile to Siberia for an alleged
offence against despotic authority, of which he was
innocent, he was again exiled there in 1839, shortly
after his return—only succeeding in obtaining a
passport abroad in 1847, when he quitted Russia,
possibly for ever, after a thirteen years' per-
secution by the Czar. During this period he
had ample experience of Russian official life
in its various forms, including the police,
all of which he caustically describes," though
as the reader feels, without exaggeration, if with
heart-wrung bitterness. What sort of life that is,
we would refer the reader to the work itself to
discover ; but it may be described, in' brief, as
one in which the sycophant, the scoundrel, and the
slave only can thrive, and from which honest and
liberal-minded men reap little other harvest than
insult and persecution. This being the, case, the
condition•of the people may be inferred; provided
no drawback is permitted.the imavination, for it is
hardly poSsible to be worse. The reader is intro-
duced to a host of characters, some of them quite
original, others familiar, and all graphically and
forcibly delineated, the author succeeding in en-
abling him to realise what Russian life is, and what
a horrible despotism we are contending against.
The author's revelations of Nicholas brand the
memory of that tyrannical drill-sergeant with a vin-
dictive meanness, which some may deem incredible,
but which is quite in keeping with other phases of
his character. The present Emperor figures more
respectably, but is not credited with that force of
character required to lay the axe to the root of the
huge abuses which impede the march of civilisation
his do ntaioa3.

Take a Boy, by birth connected
With Imperial pomp and state,
And describe him thence dejected
• By aihunderbolt of fate,
Which—into Lis young house driven—
Strews it to each point of heaven !
Sing the youthful Outcast wandering
Over lands that hold but foes;
Yet where'er he wanders, pondering
To his ills a glorious close ;
One sad Spirit hovering o'er him, •
And a hero's path before him !
Following the fortunes of his hero, he says—
Sing him to a prison taken,
And when Fear his life would claim,
Lo I his Captor—awed and shaken
By the spell-word of his name—
Spares it,—the damnation dreading
WhiCh would fellow his bloodshedding!
After stanzas, implying the celebration Of the 1848
Revolution and the 1852 Coup d'Etat—the heroic
act of Manfin February and of One in December
—the lyrist bids the Laureate sing of his hero
Sing him Power Imperial wielding,
Not as one to empire born ;
But the Toiling Millions shielding,
Whom a king-by-birth might scorn.
• Pamper, kings ! the favoured classes—
He is Monarch of the Masses !
Sing him—heir to war and glory—
Slighting glory gained by war ; •
Coveting, for laurels gory,
Bloodless palm-wreaths—fairer far;
Marshalling—a Moral Movement ;
Heading armies of Improvement !
•
Sing him thus triumphant—wanting
But one peal to fix his sway ;
• And his wondrous Fortune` granting
• That, too, in her wondrous way—
. War.which waked in distant regions,
Gratifies his martial legions ;
War—to rescue from oppression
Weak states, overborne by strong ;
War—to check unjust aggression,
Help the Right, and crush the Wrong ;
War—to spill men's blood like water,
Waged for Ends that hallow Slaughter !
Sing him in that war a Leader,
Prompt, for those high Ends, to strike ;
Then, concluding, bid thy reader
-Show, in tale, -or song, his Like !
Proudly for thy Hero claim him,
And the Third Napoleon name him !
Among the "Songs of the War" which follow this
earnest but simple Ode upon "The Third Napo-
leon," we would select--as about the happiest—the
following :

NAPOLEON RULES AGAIN.
The baffled but still glorious Chief
Was sent to exile sad and far,
And his brave legions, filled with grie,,
Laid down their arms, and turned from war.
They sat by many a cottage light, •
And there, when hours of toil 'were o'er,
In earnest tone they, night by
night,
Told tales of their Great Emperor.
They told how first his fame arose,
How soon the chief of men was he,
And how he passed the Alpine snows,
And how he marched through Italy.
They told how vanquished Austria sued,
How Prussia's king his vassal grew,
And how the Northern Czar, subdued,
Became his humble suppliant too.
They told how, when he held his court,
With all the pomp that Empire brings,
Thither did Europe's Queens resort,
And Europe's far-descended Kings.
They told how virtual sway he bore
From Moscow to the shores of Spain,
And how a prouder crown be wore
Than pressed the brows of Charlemagne!
All this was drank with greedy ear—
E'en boys, their grandsires' knees before,
Stood open-mouthed, snd pressed to hear
Those tales of the Great Emperor.
They told how, to chastise the Czar,
In his own land he sought the foe,
And how the conquerors in the war
Were conquered by the frost and snow.
They told how then the Kings-by-right
From that disaster courage drew,
And how at last their banded might
The Hero crushed on Waterloo.
They told how, in a distant isle,
Tit' illustrious Chief was Captive now,
And here an angry flush, a while,
Would tinge the speaker's downcast brow ;
And then would come a sigh—a pause--
. A deep emphatic whisper then ;
" France ne'er will be the France she was,
Until Napoleon rules again !"
This, too, was drank with greedy ear—.
E'en boys, their grandsires' knees before,
Stood open-mouthed, and pressed to hear
Those tales of the GREAT EmpEßou.
Those boys grew up to stripling, bold,
And those bold striplings up to men,
Who cherished, like their fathers old,
Dreams of the Empire back again.
They felt---dt deemed—themselves enslaved,
They scorned the Bourbon's idle state,
And nought but foreign bayonets saved
The throne of that Legitiwate.
Another and another came
Fair France's regal seat to fill ;
But still she sighed for one loved Name,
The symbol of a mightier will !
At length, and with no dubious voice,
That loved Name's HEIR she called to sway ;
And well he justifies her choice
Who comes as England's Guest today.
We greet him with the heart's applause,
We echo back his people's strain ;
" France is again the France she was,
For—her Napoleon rules again !"
The commemoration of '‘ is not to be men-
tioned with that only one
among the " War
Waits" of Gerald Massey, in which the self-taught
" poet and tailor" sang, in a spirit worthy of him-
self, how—

The Third Napoleon : an Ode. To which are added
Songs of the War. By Robert Story. Second
Edition. John Hearne.

A pink pamphlet of 32 pages octavo—presenting
to us what Sheridan spoke of as "a rivulet of
rhyme running through a meadow of margin"—
is the aspect of this little collection of war lyrics,
preceded by an ode celebrating the life and fortunes
of the Third Napoleon. Mr. Story, in spite of
being occasionally dull, inartiticial, and inharmo-
nious, proves nicontestibly hero and there that he
has the true " stuff " In him, and that he lacks
neither the faculty for the appreciation of the heroic
nor the blended enthusiasm and sensibility essential
for its adequate inanifestation. There have been
several attempts already (we remember the cir-
cumstance at this moment somewhat painfully) on
the part of our very few poets and of our very nu-
nierous poetasters to cornmeal()) ate the incidents
of the present war with Russia, by songs, odes,
sonnets, dirges, poems, elegies, and, all manner of

England's chosen ones went up
Red Alma's hill to glory !"

Again, the celebration of the cavalry charge at
a,byiii‘ir.Stor7T, dwindles into insignifi•
cßaanl
caek lbayv
the tidc, of mennyson's—although the
merits of the poem written by the Laureate upon
that sublime theme appear, in our judgment, to
have been greatly exaggerated by the more infa-
tuated among his many admirers. As to Mr.
Story's Battle of the Baltic," the mere name