The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-14 00:00:00

TUESDAY EVENING-, SEPTEMBE

ANECDOTES OF CRITICISM.
(From lliza Cook's Journal)

are surprising when, in opposition to this, we find
Warton declaring that your opinion of Lycidas decides
whether you have a " true taste for poetry or not." But
Boswell's bear could not appreciate Milton. As be con-
fessed to Beattie, he never read him through till he
wanted to get words for his dictionary. Of Shakspere's
sonnets he also wrote—" Of the best it can only be said
that they are not bad." Pope condemned the author of
Hamlet as writing in "the style of a bad age," and re-
gretted that he had not copied Sackville more! "Rare
Ben," too, was indifferent as a critic. Spenser's stanzas
" pleased him not, nor his manner." Shakspere" wanted
art, and sometimes sense. Waller saw nothing in Milton
but "an old blind schoolmaster, who had written a dull
poem, remarkable for nothing but its length?' Milton
preferred Cowley to Dryden. Dryden esteemed Catherine
Philips above Sappho; and asked permission from the
bard of Paradise Loa to turn that poem into rhyme?
It was he, too, who eulogised Lord Halifax as " the
krcatest genius," and Lord Roscommon as equal to Ho-
raca or Virgil. But these were flatteries which should
have made the receivers of them blush. What, how-
ever, could be expected from a critic who admired that
Rymer who tells us that the character of Desdemona is
below that of any ki"chen-maid.

If, in criticism, there were less brilliance end more
charity, bever justice would be distributed between tee
authors who write and the public who read. When I,
as a reviewer, take up my ivory knife, and set down to
cut open the leaves of a new book, what do I invoke, as
the genius, to attend upon my chair? I
am afraid I
think of anything but tho untortunate writer of the
work. My object is to flavour my " article," and if
" our author" can supply spices, well and goof; he shall
supply relish to my periocis; but if unhappily not, ho is
then the mere ground of the dish, and I serve hits up
transmogrified trom his original shape—with onions of
satire, cloves of sarcasm, ginger of vituperation—never
thinking of him, but of making a " stinging review.'
My pen is no quill from the wing
of a pacific goose,
my ink no odorous distillation Irons an Indian wood; the
one is tempered steel—the proper material to stab with
—the other is undiluted gat' to pour into the wound.
All around my table are the busts of brilliant critics,
famous in their day, whose trophies are built upon a
"
pyramid of epics, essays, 13 ries, histories, romances, and
disquisitions, amalgamated into solid bricks, by the
pestle first, and pressure next, of " first-rate reviews."
" One I see mangling some
half-fledged poet;" another
crushing a young singing-bird in its nest; another
quenching the lamp of some ambitious student's inspis
radon. Then I ring my own hammer on the rock, that
en echo may come to me of similar fame, and that my
vanity may be plumed by the idea that some poetaster,
or prosaic dullard has been " extinguished" by a blot of
the terrible liquid, lying, black as Phlegethen, before me.
Lately, however, I have been reflecting on the critical
art and the critic's responsibility; but I am not going to
write a disquisition on either. I have; fur my own edi-
fication, collected some anecdotes to illustrate what I
have been saying, and to show that infallibility is no
more an attribute of the editorial table than it is of
Peter's chair. The victims of great reviews have
mounted to high fame in spite of their reviewers. Man
have fallen into ridiculous errors through their refusal
to acknowledge, or their inability to appreciate genius
when its work is presented tangibly to their observation.
There are some episodes in the history of criticism
which are universally known—how the living fire of
Keats's inspiration was " snuffed out" by an article in
the Quarterly; how Byron was hunted by the Scotch
reviewers until he stood at bay, and reviewed them in
their turn with a vengeance; how Swiit cut to pieces a
whole army of scribes by means of one satirical essay;
how Pope, with a single feather from the goose's wing,
wrote a sacrificial song for a hecatomb of detractors.
Other episodes, however, there hprve been, less known,
but no less remarkable than these.

Gray thought Voltaire had no genius but for writ-
ing pla3s, and scorned the most exquhito productions
of Rousseau. '• David Hume," he said, " was an infant
all his life, though unhappily he was taught to read and
write."

obviously, therefore, when poets begin predicting, and
announcing the distribution of renown, for their cootena-
poraries, it is not always true that—

The name
Of poet and the prophet is the same.
On the contrary, the most lauded writers have
frequently had the most short-lived reputations.
Peter Pinder, though translated into many languages,
is now decaying in the dust; and after the ephemeral
brilliance of la few seasons' popularity, thousands of
names vanish and dissipate like vapours from the
hill. Maccabe gives a good satirical imitation of one
of these exuberant panegyrics, supposed to be a friendly
criticism from the Mudford Chronicle:—" Ferdinand
Count Schwellinbach.—A tale of the Sclavonic race.—
We welcome with delight this new proof of the genius
of the author of Baptista, or the Traitor's Grave. It is
indeed, an unlooked-for accession to the stores of ro-
manlic fiction, with which oar literature happily
abounds. In it we find the broad and genial humour of
Fielding; the cutting sarcasm of Smollett; and the deep
tone of feeling and sentiment which pervades the works
of Sterne; the whole worked up with a power which is
only displayed at intervals in the splendid fictions of
Scott; and a sunny gleaminess which is only seen stream-
ing over the page of Avon's bard!"
Exaggerated this may seem, but I have read as un-
diluted encomiastics on the most squalid performances in
our own day. Criticism, however, is far more honest
than it was fifty years ago, and far more judicious. Good
writers may be "cut up, or, which is worse, they may
be
while quacks may be puffed into an evanes-
cent
candid tone in the critical literature of the day. After all,
nergeineocwtend; but on the whole, there is a temperate and
w time is the great judge. Mighty floats of folios,
octavos, and shining hot-pressed "twelves,"
perpetually drifting into oblivion; but the stars of
ragheruottealleltvieh: shine with an eternal lustre. Dr. Howard,
during the reign of George the Second, collected copies
of more than tour hundred editions of Horace. That is
the true monument of an author's fame. Meanwhile,
use of it, and it is to be hoped that this branch
of literature will rise to the elevation it deserves to cc-
p 1., for one, since I began these remarks, have
mingled some honey with my ink, and taken the quill of
cihrutog however,
theiry er , the critics have great power; they are improv-
a dove instead of the steel pen, so that with this soft
quivering pinion, dipped in a phial of sweeter solution,
the books I review iu future, shall with more charity be
treated ! THE CRITIC REPENTANT.

There never was, for instance, a more extraordinary,
a more absurd, a more impudent criticism, than that of
Rymer upon the tragedy of Othello. lie said it was
" a bloody farce, without salt or savour, that fillsthe head
h
yimbeo,o wasks— thoughtperhaps ciseided the a judicious man;
with vanity, confusion, tintamarre, and jingjel angle:,
rNeuvwiewßed a goodymer,in hmisant
to
lite-
rary fate of several authors. Yet, if the public accepted
his opinion, how, much injustice was there not com-
mitted. Nearly equal in impertinence was a a
s poet,e
infer
inferior
to Pope. Tobserva-
tion of
that
remark,S
h a ks
however,pe re was
from such a man,
though it startles, does nct astonish us. lie was utterly
incompetent to appreciate the richness, sweetness, and
beauty of that poetic nectar which flowed from the lips
of him who was our noblest muse. He said, that the
only excellence of the dramatic minstrel, Who„ melo-
dies gushed as though "Ilyssus were in his throat," was
his wit, and that among his merits rhythmical modulation
was by no means to be included.
. _

After this, I do not so greatly wonder that a dull,
dry, and dusty mathematician once told us that Milton's
Paradise Lost is " worth nothing, because it proves
nothing." This scientific pedant would have valued
,
p
mere highly the solution of an algebraical roblem or
an ingenious disposition of straight lines, curves, and
cones. Figures arithmetical he loved, but figures of
3, Churchyard, of
speech, or flowers of thought, he could by no possi-
bility understand. Pe
a
swchoirenhe d
a Gray'scontemporary
criticeo us ;la
earn, with the most
r
amusing condescension,—" This
i little poem, how-
ever humble its pretensions, s not without ele-
gance or merit 1" What, however, can surprise us,
whenraveier a
Goldsmith's
a reviewersmiTfli:smsyct
prod in the Monthly set down his
T ;
when Wordsworth
h
~
whenas the s
'c'
Scott
tr bhoass b
e,
dry,een compared to
d r a b .coated
proser o beent
Homer; when Rogers has been eulogise as " superior
to Coleridge, Shelley, or Moore;" when Shakspere has
as
tbe l describedak lakes;" s ;
been sneered at by Ben Jonson as an ignoramus, be.
cause he makes Bohemia a maritime country; and when
it has been pronounced of Shelley's
poetry, as it was by
Gifford, that its chief characteristic is, " its total want
of meaning.

THE .EMPIRE IN FRANCE
The following petition of the fathers of families
and labourers, for the re-establishment of the Empire,
is now being circulated for signature among the
lowest classes in Paris :
" Messieurs les Senateurs,—
" 1. Considering that in a country like ours—that in
France (no matter what the constitution may be) all in-
terests are necessarily placed under the influence, and,
moreover, under the truly sovereign influence, of the
person who is the Chief of the State;
" Considering, consequently, that as to who is or is
not Chief of the State ought not to be made a periodi-
cal question—no matter whether there be 10, 15, or 20
years between such periods—unless, indeed, the interests
of the country are at such epochs to be periodically and
fatally affected, simply by the doubt and uncertainty
which weigh upon them, since they cannot foresee what
kind of a future the new Chief of the State will prepare
for them;
pre"B2td.ehCcy h
onsifdelroi,nglst,hoart
20a
years,
cannot possibly knowr of a family, under a
under what political conjunctures he will provide for the
marriage of the son or the daughter that just now he
fondles on his knee;
"Considering, consequently, that a presidency of 10,
15, or 20 years cannot possibly altogether and justly
satisfy the loftiest and sweetest sentiments of paternal
and conjugal love;
" And that, were it otherwise, the births ought in a
very peculiar manner to correspond to the peculiar exi-
gencies of this periodical renovation of the executive
power;
" 3Considering, likewise, that under a presidency of
10, 15, or 20 years the industrious and provident work-
man is equally troubled in .his prudence, in his love of
labour, by the uncertainty in which, under an unstable
Government, he finds the political conditions which
ought at some future day to promote him from the po-
sition of a labourer to that of an employer;
" Considering that under such institutions the savings
of the workman, for the purpose of at a future time em-
ploying labour, can only commence at certain stated pe-
riods in which the sovereign power changes hands—who,
then, could think of founding an establishment, or un-
dertaking any other responsibility within the period of
she
two or three years which precede the election of the
Chief of the State?

The truth is, that there can be no absurdity imagined
which has not been perpetrated by critics, ht one time or
another. Time, however, cures the little stings inflicted
by the feeble. The day has gone by when readers of
the Literary Gazette would submit to be told by that
journal that " Queen Mab" was " a mere mass of bloated
words," or that " Adonais" exhibited nothing but " in-
curable absurdity." Fortunately also the day has long gone
by when that periodical would open its columns for any
critic to effuse through them such spleen of a malignant
soul. The " late remorse of love" has made amends to
the fame of the poet, and if the cheap flatteries of poste-
rity atone anything for the wrongs endured in life, they
have been amply yielded in the ‘. immortals" which
now grace the Roman tomb of Keats, and have made
another Lycidas of Shelley, who does not " float upon
his watery bed without the weed of some melodious
tear."

Byron and Wordsworth were harshly used by
their reviewers ; but they could themselves criticise
harshly, and let us add, unjustly. The latter spent
hours with Thomas Roscoe, railing at Campbell, and de-
scribed the most magnificent lay of Burns as " over-
rated stuff—miserable insanity, without a thought, with-
out an image." We all remember how bitterly he was
himself assailed by the roaming poet of Newatead Ab-
bey, who seldom missed the opportunity to aim a blow
at the—

Clumsy, frowsy poem, called the "Excursion,"
Writ in a manner that is my aversion.
Or at " the warbling waggoner," whose rhymes he com-
pared to the cracking of a ploughman's whip. From
the same pen also descended those reckless lashes which
galled " Bob Southey, turncoat Southey, that incar-
nate lie,"—epithets with which a poet bhould never soil
his page. Nor did Byron ever display himself more
unworthy of his genius thvia when he spoke of the beau-
tiful writings of Dean Milman, as effusions from the cur
of verse, who ploughs for every line," though he was.
perhaps, more correct when he likened the stanzas of
Tabso's biographer to " gilded icicles."
the author of Childe Harold was in the humour to utter
a sarcastic thing, he little eared on whom or what his
arrows fell, whether on Campbell's "drouthy hippoorene,"
or Wordbworth's " crsz-d beyond ail hope ; or
" drunken Coleridge," or "quaint and mouthY Southey;
or Walter Savage Landor, that " des mouthed Bceo-
clan." Byron, also, if he could spit venom on an enemy,
was capable of superb laudation on a friend—so on
doors--
When, however,

" 4. Considering, then, that to stake the person of the
Chief of the State upon the chances of a periodical elec-
tion is as much as to say that a father of a family shall
never be happy
for, the future of that family; that he shall not enjoy
and safe, and looking at, and providing
the love of his children; and that the provident labourer
shall not be confident and happy in his love of labour
and his legitimate ambition to become an employer of
labour;

" But, considering, above all things, that our genera-
tion would violate all the duties it owes to succeeding
generations, if, enamoured of anarchy in its concerns, it
were not, with all dispatch, to create an established state
of things for the future—if it allowed our political in-
stitutions to tend to individualise the principle of re-
sistance—since there is no length of life of individuals or
generations—and, least of all, ours, which can succeed
in drying up to its source the principle of evil and of evil
passions;

To whom are given
The lyre and laurels of triumphal song,
He won them well and may_ he wear th-s,
This miscslled criticism,the
however, aids little
victory of solid literature over the concoctions of
quackery. It is no less ridiculous than that of the
Irishman, who once reviewed a poem in which the
word key was rhymed with sea, He seriously declared
Churchill,
it was a barbarous blunder, or at least a poet's license
carried beyond the limits of the most extended tolera-
This Milesian critic was probabl
tion. " For," he concluded, " to justify the rhyme, kay
must be supposed to be pronounced ke '' e I
most offensive instance of critical vulgarity
fi
h i
as brothers a
poet,
itsh the same
"drivellingcraft,
andVlVi hi son le
tellsdilonu 131hig,i puss gene-
ration,th bay
nature uninspired, untaught by art." But perhaps the
imany years ago by the Dublin University Review, which
.tle resembled then the mild and equitable censor now
reigning The
under a similar title in the Irish capital.
reviewer had exhausted his acidulous ink upon one of
Campbell's poems ; he had not another fierce word to
Say; he he had not a point left to attack; a line remaining
froaissect. But his rancour was not yet
Campbell should write ill, since he had
was afforded
satisfied. So
m the book he turned to the author, and was suffi-
cientlyder C gross to tell his readers that there was no won-
and This, never-
theless, like those of a dead haddock."
, s, though more direct! - a wag perhaps
less malicious y expresse ,
than the insinuation of a famous London
rtheviewer, when, after speaking of Th,alaba, he added
is ungracious sentence :—" Of Mr. Southey himself we
know. nothing, and we desire to know nothing.'" eyes cold
Philosophers pretend to be careless of opinion; but
own works; but Keats, as I have said, P
vets, whatever they affect, very seldom are indifferent.
Wordsworth proiessed never to read a criticism on his
the hand of Gifford; Kirk White was
and stung him just as he was emerging blasted by one
critique;wounded Racine
a single stroke of raillery perished under
almost to death; Hawkesworth is said to have died un-
der the assaults of reviewers, who swarmed like wasps
reviewers
of popularity; Pope under the tortures inflicted
by
~.,' Dennis; and even Newton cut short a friendship of
into the sunshine
.-en'y years' duration with one who bad uttered an un-
favourable criticism on some of his works.
If, however, some authors have been injured by their
was the Literary Gazette which won a laurel wreath for
L. B. L. it was Southey who gate girk White a name;
it was Leigh Hunt who rescued John Keats from the as-
persionsowe of those who wished to tie their heavy reviews
to his genius, and sink it into oblivion. And in proportion
as the reviewer is great, does the exultation of the au-
thor he praises rise. Sheridan broke into tears of joy
damia"
when he learned that Byron had uttered a laudation of
iris powers. In some instances, indeed, the panegyric
of the amiably-dieposed has been as absurd, though not
was said that his
so contemptible, as the detraction of the envious or un-
kind. Ilszlitt, for example, declared that the " Lao-
Good poets are
nut easy to determine which is most injurious to the
author,—_thin unscrupulous rancour, or that inconsi-
derate Partiality; whether Turner lost more when it
yoke of
Egg." or Rogers, when his compositions were described
and
de dsanumbestiomfes
false
poi
fctteunr ebsa were e r e
critics,
as superior to those of Coleridge and Shelley.
—tells ue that when
because jealous. Anna Seward,—who was herself
vain enough to boast that she could translate an ode of
Darwin had published his " Botanic Garden," in
couplets, he never would read blank verse again.
Samuel Johnson, ends his review of " Paradise
Lost" by saying, that its perusal is rather a duty
than a pleasure; he also said that the diction
or Lycidas was harsh, and its rythm unpleasiug; " be
W°lll4l
"IT a (4,g that should read that poem twice."
" What then," asked a lady, "must become of me, who
can say it by heart?" "Die," replied the Goth, " ot a
surfeit of bad taste." Now the contradictions of genius

" 5. Lastly, Messieurs les Senateurs, considering, on
the other hand, that experience has already proved that
the generous self-denial of the Prince Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte, who desired to remain President for ten years
in order the more fully to propitiate the reconciliation of
parties, has produced exactly the reverse of the effect
which the heir of the Emperor in his ardent love for the
country desired;

" Considering that the old parties do all they can to
trouble all existing interests with their hopes, because
under the present institutions these hopes may indeed, at
certain periods, make a legal appearance before the
country;
" Considering that these hopes would not, of course,
dare to cling to institutions which would not allow them
to persuade the people of their future legality;
" And to believe the contrary is to overlook altogether
the economical position, and the state of the finances of
the chiefs of the old parties, as well as their well•known
prudence; •
"Considering that, by a strange mixture of ingrati-
tude and blindness, the old parties, abusing the great
and noble disinterestedness of the Prince Louis Napo-
leon, turn the same into weapons of discord and con-
fusion ;

"6. Considering, in one word, that the present can-
not be tranquil, which means that it cannot be fit for
business, labour, and trade, so long as the political future
remains doubtful, and that the political future must
always remain doubtful so long as the person of the Chief
of the State, under whose interest are, necessarily, all
the great moral and material interests of the conntry,
remains exposed, though merely in theory, to the chances
of an election;
" 7. Considering, moreover, that hereditary power in
France will, for the future, have no other support than
the people's love and its twice, and so grandly within
fifty years, merited gratitude to the family of the
Emperor;
" Messieurs les Ssnateurs,__ . . .

" Thlt the father of a faMily may be at ease as to the
future of his children, and remain untroubled by the
uncertainties of our political future; that industrious and
intelligent labourers may not suffer from the same un-
certainty in the legitimate hope of providing for their
old days, for themselves and their families, the just re-
ward of their labour and their frugality;

" For this purpose have the undersigned, confiding in
your high wisdom and Providence, the honour moat re•
spectfully to pray that you will make use of the right
which the existing Constitution confers upon you, for
the interest of the future of the country, in order to re-
establish political authority on its truly national and
popular basis—the only one which suits our age—viz.,
hereditary tenure of Sovereign power in the family of
Bonaparte.

GREAT CALIFORNIAN LINE OF TELEGRAPH.--The
route selected for this
ftelslleigssreianspsibtph,peeix,mrtueennesndeiinnregg over
their
2,400 miles,
as
Natchez, stated bi yn
the
ee
statecommittee o report to
the Senate of the United States, will commence at the cityof
on the Rio Grande, thenctehtrooutgbhe
Texas to El Paso
of the Gila and Colorado rivers, crossing at the head of the
Gulf of California to San Diego on the Pacific, and then skirt-
ing the coast to Monterey and San Francisco. The committee
report, that if this line of wires be established, the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans will, for commercial communications, become
as it were as one ; and that intelligence will be conveyed from
London to California and India in a shorter time than was re-
quired ten years since to transmit a letter from Liverpool to
Janudne,ifnorMayede
l with and
two
woof
New York. northern
DEATH OF THE LAST SURVIVOR OF KEPPEL'S
ACTION.—Mr. D. F. Hainsselin, father of Mr. D. Hainsselin,
auctioneer, of Devonport, died' on the 3d instant, aged 92
of Keppel's action. He was also at the celebrated relief of
years. Mr. Hainsselin was supposed to be the last survivor
Gibraltar, at the taking of St. Eustatia and other West India
islands, in the Monarch, which led the ♦an in Rodney's
action ; in the skirmish with the French fleet off Plymouth ;
ohnichthhee 2h9atdh
the of
m
thethe R
twoo a
latterl G eo George, ew,
bare. —23/vmouth Anonah