The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MR. WARREN'S CHEAP EDITION.
Works of Samuel Warren, D.C.L., F.R.S. Vols.
IL, 111., IV. Blackwood and Sons.
The earliest announcement of this elegant and -
popular reissue of the writings of Mr. Warren, we
well remember to have been hailed by ourselves,
not many months ago, in the columns of this news.
paper, with no small degree of satisfaction. A.
little later, and the completion of the first volume
enabled us to congratulate at once author, pub.
lishers, and subscribers upon the justification of
the hopes, each iu their separate capacity might
have originally entertained at the time when the
prospectus of the reprint made its welcome appear-
ance in advertisement. That init:al instalment of
the cheap republication of his writings comprised
the whole of those remarkable effusions whiclifirst
attested the originality of the genius which has
:duce then won for the learned Recorder of Hull a
his elevated awl extended reputation in literature.
It embraced within the limits of a single volume
the entire series of those powerful and affecting.
narratives, known long since so widely and fami-
liarly as the " Passages from the Diary of a late
Physician." A production which, already, time
seems to have ripened into a classic—and one
which experience tells us may be reverted to with
nearly the same certainty of former emotions being
thereby revived, as when the Student of Art revisits
some old gallery adorned with familiar masterpieces,
pictures he knows perhaps by
.heart, and yet the
beauties of which he is well aware he may reperuse
repeatedly only with accessions of pleasurehere
some weird landscape of Salvator, here again some
visage grim and sombre in the darkening shadows
clouded over the canvass by the brush of Rem-
brandt. It is thus, literally, with the pathetic
incidents recounted by Mr. Warren in that first
outpouring of his imagination. There is scarcely
anything of extravagance in the comparison we
have here selected, as illustrative of the effectpro-
duced upon the mind and heart of the appreciative
even by its reiterated contemplation. Every one
cannot but perforce testify the truth of' this who
happens to bear in recollection merely the more
prominent figures and the more conspicuous linea-
ments depicted in those inimitable sketches--
sketches produced with a few rapid but sufficient
touches from the luminous pencil guided by the
master hand of the young romancist. That exqui-
site love-story in miniature, for example, relating
the life and death of the victim of " Consumption." -
That ghastly and appalling memento of the
" Man about , Town.' That most touching and
bewitching delineation of the lady smitten with
" Cancer. And, among the more tragic limnings,
the oddest and drollest little gleams of fun, the
Most bizarre and fantastic celebrations of ridicu-
lousness—the wight with the " Turned Head," or
the unfortunate with the Toothache, swelling gum
and cheek to the size of an apple-dumpling. Alto-
gether, it was true, the book had become, by the
aid of edition after edition, familiar to thousands
of our reading population, long before. the present.
reissue was announced as about to make its ap-
pearance. Its original impressions had, years be-
fore, grown respectably yellowed with age and.
dogs-eared with hard usage at circulating libraries
elsewhere than at Brighton or Cheltenham. Occa-. •
sionally a second-hand copy of the work might be
picked up by a lucky chance among the dirty trea-
sures and gilt-edged rubbish of a casual bookstall.
But a really good and cheap reissue still re-
mained to the mass of book-worms what the
puff-advertisers call a desideratum. Besides,
almost every other writer of any note whatever
was having his effusions supplied A the most m 0,7.
derate cost imaginable to the throng of buyers
called forth by series after series of popular and,
purchaseable publications. For a shilling or two
a railway traveller could drop into his side pocket, ,
together with his damp copy of the Times, a story
by Dickens or an essay by Macaulay. He could wile
away the tedium of a long journey at the tail of a
steam-engine not merely by poring over the " latest
news" in The Sun, or. by laughing over the
" newest jokes" in Punch, but by delivering him-
self up a willing prey to the magic toils woven
about him by Bulwer Lytton and other masters
of the imaginative. It was but reasonable, there-
fore, it was but what was right, and sooner or
later, inevitable, that the " Works of Samuel
Warren" should be placed within reach of the
public in like manner—works which had al-
ready by their own intrinsic merits acquired cele-
brity for their author, not merely at home, but far
and wide over the European Continent. Thanks
to the recognition by the publishers of the advisa-.
bility of this reissue of the writings of Mr. War-
ren those writings have now been supplied to the
book trade cheaply, portably, and abundantly.
As many as four volumes have by this time ap-
peared.—to attest the worth of the series as a collec-
tive republication. Volumee One we have already
noticed—the volume comprising the whole of
the " Diary of a Late Phpician." Volumes Two
and Three followed soon afterwards—containing a
carefully revised reprint of "Ten Thousand a
Year," one of the most celebrated novels of the
age, and among- la his works Mr. Warren's un-
(toubted masterpiece. How vividly we recall to
mind the period of its original, and then strictly
anonymous, appearance. How well we remember .
the eagerness with which we all looked ont, month
after month, for the new chapters of itin Black-
wood's Magazine. How we wondered as to 'the
secret of the authorship. How the reading of the
story agitated our hearts and imaginations. What
profound emotions were excited by the astonishing
fluctuations of fortune related by that unseen,
unknown wizard of the purely fictitious.
What varying sentiments were roused within
us as the tale proceeded. How completely
we realised the individuality, the positive,
substantitl existence, of the different person-
ages introduced. How we sympathised with
Charles Aubrey, and mused, as we followed his
footsteps in that " strange eventful history," over
the solemnity and grandeur of that noblest spectacle
of the gods—a good man struggling with misfor-
tune. How we admitted into the sanctuary of our
more idealised affections his sister, the beautiful
Kate—the Una in that forest of difficulties. How
we loved the very name of their dear old Yatton—
the end and object of all that frightful and harrow-
ing litigation. The Novel had long superseded
the Drama, and that novel of " Ten Thong
sand a Year," wondrously fulfilled in its turn
the office of the drama as defined by Shakspere.
It was a mirror held up to this nineteenth century
—a mirror reflecting all its motley and contrast-
ing peculiarities, its meanness and its magnificence,
its symmetry and its distortion, its privations and.
its luxuries, good and bad, rich and poor, the sordid,
the magnanimous, the patrician, the parasite, the
despicable, the pathetic, the ridiculous. Scarcely
a grade of society but in it had its appropriate
type or representative. Scarcely a portion of our
social institutions but was in it, either directly or
indirectly, illustrated. And illustrated, too, so
amusingly, so readily, so satirically, so attrac-
tively. With what abounding ease the writer
at pleasure speared some "flying folly" with
the piercing point of his pen-ef-sarcasm, or,
reversing his grey goose feather,. tickled one
at will into peals of genial and wholesome laughter.
How humorously, for instance, he made that
wretched Tittlebat Titmouse run the gauntlet of
absurdity, from the beginning to the end—from
the days when he out-gented gentism, with the
almost equally abominable Huckaback, to the
time of his horrid familiarity with the high
and mighty, the Right Hon. the Earl of Dred-
dlington ! Can any of us ever forget the
wretch dyeing his hair carefully of a bright
bottle-green ? Have we, any of us, forgotten,
his astonishing old Tag Rag by driving to the
liar shop, in that emblazoned cab with the
_high-
stepping horse, and those lavender kid gloves dain-
tily handling the reins over the lacquered apron I
And then—Oily Gammon ! That Arbaces of every..
day-life. A creation as complete, and vivid, and.
immortal as Pecocuranie. What genius in the
conception of that one character alone I What
consummate art in every line and tint of its magi.
cal and life-like delineation ! Remembering all this,
and much more, in regard to " Ten Thousand a-
year," we have reason to felicitate the world at
large nowadays, at our steam-boat whams and
railway termini, that
if he list, provide any one can henceforth,
himself before starting ott
a journey with some such literary masterpiece
for just two or three of the smaller coins in circu-
lation. The compactness of the
(in a collected form) of Mr. Warren'spopular reissue
writings may
be recognised as perhaps best illustrated by the last
of the four volumes of it which have already made
their appearance. It comprises, in one thin oc-
tavo, besides the exquisite and comprehensive dis-
course upon the
"Moral and Intellectual Dove-
lopment of the Present Age —a literary microcosm,
in which an astonishing mass of knowledge is
really wonderfully epitomised and bound together
by a chain of solemn and elevating reflections—
together with a revised edition of the " A.pologue
of the Crystal Palace," accompanied by a " Preli-
minary Exposition"--the whole of that enthralling
romance "Now and Then," founded upon a tale
of Circumstantial Evidence, the story penned with
such surprising swiftness between late on the 20th
of November and early on the 9th of December,
1847, a narrative in which the virtues of old Adam
Ayliffe are so movingly,
wisely, and eloquently
celebrated. Volumes like those here particularised.
must, we doubt not, be cordially welcome to the •
present, as we are fully satisfied they will long : -
continue to be prized by many a subsequent, gw
'nation.