The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-22 00:00:00

TIIE QUARTERLIES.

The New Quarterly _Review. No. VlL—Already
we have more than once taken occasion to commend
the really delightful freshness of style observable in
this new periodical. It evidences a careful and in-
tentional avoidance of the beaten track—shall we
call it the path of dullness?—habitually trodden,
particularly of late, by its quarterly contem-
poraries. Its writers prove, moreover, that they
can be vigorous without being vulgar, rhe-
torical without being grandiloquent, and merry
without allowing their vivacity to degenerate into
burlesque extravagance. Without, too, being in
any way pragmatical, the New Quarterly can, both
in its literary and its political criticisms, reveal an
admirable independence. Under the sarcastic title
of the " Cilician Potsherds," Mr. Burckhardt
Barker obtains a Rowland for an Oliver, in return
for a retort upon a review of his work called "Laren
and Penates." There is much deserved dispraise
lavished upon Lord J. Russellin his recently assumed
capacity as editor—in articles relating to the me-
morials of Charles James Fox, and to Thomas
Moore's voluminous correspondence. Another
chapter is given of the history of our Government
in Hindostan, under the heading "Recent Progress
of the Eastern Question"—a paper from the same
hand to 'which we have before acknowledged our-
selves indebted for similar contributions. A whole-
some corrective is administered to a certain class
of critics, who have recently been doing their
utmost to turn the head of an ingenious young
man named Alexander Smith—trumpetting a little
volume of verse from his hands, crude and unequal
as any maiden-work we have ever
perused,
never yet was trumpetted a " Paradise Lost," as
or
a " Jerusalem Delivered." Of these critics (so-
called) the New Quarterly very sensibly observes :
" It is a fashion with some critics and cliques to take
up' a poet, and whether the poet of the moment turn

out to be an ales imitator of the Tennysonian genus, or
an original songster of less pretension, we are imme-
diately summoned to believe in him by the whole coterie
in chorus. These people regard matters of poetry and
authorship as mere articles of vertu, and would fain earn
a reputation for cleverness by the eccentricity of their
tastes. They are for the most part mystery-mongers of
literature, who wish to spare their own opinions too
searching an analysis, and delight in dealing with sub-
jects transcending sense. The new pet of this class of
persons is Mr. Alexander Smitii ; and they are busy in
destroying any germs of genius within him by their in-
discriminate praise. They are- encouraging his faults,
urging him to fresh outrages on sense, taste, grammar,
and poetry ; and they will, in all probability, cause him
to write more and worse, until he will be in danger of
becoming a burlesque on Bailey, who wrote Festus, and
a travesty on Tennyson. A man of genius like Byron
can rise superior to the censure of false critics ; but he
must indeed be great who shall triumph over flattery ex-
hibited in such large doses at an age so young."
The characteristics of the author who has been thus
extravagantly eulogised, the reviewer truthfully
enough declares to be—" bathos, a sort of luminous
obscurity and imitative mannerism." The hero
of the principal poem in the volume of Mr. Smith
is afterwards facetiously, but, again, most truth-
fully, said to be descriptive of " the strivings and
wrestlings of a soul above buttons, discontented
with its lot, and wishing to be everybody !" Fin-
ally, this only rational critic we have yet read upon
the book, draws his remarks towards a conclusion
by asserting that "To praise Alexander Smith
as others have done, would only be to be-
tray him into further imperfections : it might
urge his Pegasus to bolt over plains of blas-
phemy and bathos, and to plunge into the
dirty waters of licentiousness." Nothing harsh
in all this notice, but is justified by the produc-
tion of " proofs positive" in the shape of most
copious quotations. In the article already referred
to as having allusion to Fox, the following passage
occurs, and is not undeserving of particular notice,
as having reference to the real value of the late
Dr. Allen's reputation :
"It was the fashion of the Whigs of that time to
_ _ _

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think Allen a wonderful man, and it iEia tradition of the
present day that he was so. He wrote one excessively
absurd book, and he committed .the Edinburgh Review
to a considerable quantity of very shallow nonsense
about our Constitutional History. Beyond this he did no-
thing. He appears to have been one of those might-
could-would-or-should sort of men, who have the knack
of twaddling to a clique, and who succeed in impressing
their intimates with an awful idea of what they could
do, if they would only try."
An elaborate essay on " Modern Miracles," or,
in other words, on spirit rapping and table turn-
ing, exposes that enormous humbug, the latest and
greatest of all popular delusions. The subjoined
will afford thq reader a capital notion of—

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THV SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 22, 1853.

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