The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-28 00:00:00

7E LONDON RE VIE W—No. IV.
Sinzpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1836.
Here are viands suited to every palate. The philo.
sopher, whose calm dispassionate gaze extends over
centuries of human history ; the poet in fact, or in
desire, who seeks to make his name coeval with his
country's literature ; the politician of the season, the
noisier for being poor, despised and neglected ; and
the critic of the hour, whobelieves that he is the first min
of the age, if he but succeed in elevating himself to the
head of some club-housecoterie by whom scandal is more
cultivated s than taste—will each find food wherewithal
to whet, if not to satiate his appetite in this Number
of the " London Review." The philgio,'per will, as
matter of course, turn •to thq review of Gniznes
" Lectures on European Ci‘!:.;:zation"—one of the first
works of the kind published in Europe within the last
twenty years. .Why it has not yet been translated into
English, we cannot for the life of us understand. A
bookseller, who would undertake to bring it out in
monthly volumes, under the superintendence of a-faith-
ful translator, well versed in the philosophy of modern
France, would unquestionably realize a profit by
the speculation, besides rendering
serviceh most important
Ensh troe
aad e xr,se.ry
The
hu
em epr_oenvsi 'find intelligent class' of
wer observes, with great
justice, that the bulk of English writers of the present
day, know not)-,i'mg of the literature of modern France,
apart fri-.,m a few of the works of Victor Hugo. Of course
t'bt minority form a respectable class ; but of these
very few have troubled themselves with works uncon-
nected with the events of the first Revolution. IVIM.
Guizot and Thiers are well known as historians ; but
the lectures of the former--the best ever delivered on
the civilization of mankind—have been little more
than heard of in the literary circles of London. We
highly approve of the spirit in which the Reviewer
has introduced the subject of them : we are still better
pleased with the -distinction which he has made be-
tween M. Guizot the Minister of Louis Phillippe,
and M. Guizot the Philosophic Lecturer and Profes-
sor of History. As M. Guizot's lectures embrace a
system, and as the merits of a system cannot be ex-
plained within the compass devoted to newspaper cri-
ticism, we must refer our readers to the lectures them-
selves ; and, in the absence of them, to the Article
now before us. The extracts are numerous and well
selected; the commentary upon them is just and dis- •
crirninating ; and the general opinions sound, bespeak-
ing the Revievver a man of enlarged views, and very
considerable information.
Tile poet, and the lovers of poetry, will find matter
for reflection in the Review of M. Victor Hugo's
poetical and prose worixs, which the editor assures 113
is from the pen of one of the first French critics of
the present (lay. As this article is to be the first of
a series, we shall give the Foreign Reviewer's
op;:nion of his distinguished countryman in his own
words. We may as well observe that the following
extract is a fair, and we are of opinion, a correct
specimen of the Reviewer's style, which is not wanting
in terseness and vigour :
" Monsieur Victor Hugo made his (Nut in literature by
the worst of all apprenticeships—that of academic prizes.
It augurs no good of a young man, when he'winds up his
imagination to order, undertakes to find wisdom or poetry at
a time and on a.subject prescribed, and aims at seeming
before he has learned to be. A mind really destined to
accomplish great things has, if we are not mistaken, a sort
of chastity of soul, to which the glories of a prize-poem
inspire repugnance rather than desire. M. Victor Hugo,
at little more than fifteen years of age, was a candidate for
the prize of 'poetry at tke Academie Francais°. He
merited the prize, say his biographers, but did not obtain it,
on account of two verses in which he spoke of his fifteen
years, and in which that illustrious body suspected a trick.
The subject of the composition was, the Advantages of
Study. Those who can write, about them at fifteen , are
little likely ever to know them. -
" From 1818 to 1820 M. Victor Hugo gained succes-
sively three prizes from the Academie des Jeux Flora. ux of
Toulouse : the last of these procured him the degree of
maitre es jeux floraux. Paris had been in an extacy about
his fifteen years ; Toulouse was in extacy about his seven-
teen years. M. de Chateaubriand termed. him a boy of
genius,' an imprudent compliment, calculated to inflate the
boy with the self-importance of a man, and
render him
vain of a genius which he did not yet possess. The
mother of the young poet had cause to tremble at these
words, as though they were a bitter irony. There is no
such thing as a boy of genius. There are boys who have
become men of genius, at the price at which genius is
granted to man, namely, after having drunk deeply of
human life in its varieties and profundities : for genius is
but the philosophy of human life. Such phrases as that of
M. de Chateaubriand are of disastrous effect. They in-
toxicate the boy who has been baptized with them ; they
are a morbid stimulus to him ; they give him pretznsions to
all the exalted qualities which *he is yet unpossessed of ;
they resemble lime spread on the roots of a young tree,
which makes it produce, prematurely, fruits of no flavour.
In nothing is greater reserve necessary with a child of high
promise, than in prophecies and hoT•oscopes of this nature.
Beware- of nursing them into an early passion for display :
like flowers, they should be let grow, and unfold themselves
in their own time. The robust and restless tenant who is
named Genius will take up his abode only in a strongly-
built and already well-furnished house.
" No one- is much to blame, however, for the direction
which was first impressed upon the mind of the young poet.
By the very nature of his talent,which the time is now come
for characterizing,--M. Victor Hugo was adapted for pre-
cocious successes, and the factitious honours of Academies.
He possessed in an eminent degree the kind of ability which
succeeds in that class of competition ; a facility in dressing
up common-places, and an abundance of fancy ; two en-
dowments which do not wait for maturity of years, and
which may sometimes give the air of a profound thinker to
a boy who has nothing in him but a felicitous recollection
of what he has seen or read. Fancy is the sole talent of
M. Victor Hugo : therein consist his claims to constitute
an era in the literature of his country, in which there is not.
a single instance of an eminent writer who has had nothing
but Fancy. By this it is that he has acquired his tumul-
tuous celebrity, and created so great a stir among the young
men. Fancy—a rich, fervid, luxuriant Fancy—that quality
which, though the result of mere memory, commonly usurps
the title of Imagination ; with a very ordinary degree of
sensibility, and without the controul of reason, hut capable
sometimes of putting on the guise of the former, and
sometimes accidentally hitting upon results coincident with
the latter—this is a complete description of M. Victor
Hugo."

The politician—more especially if like D'lsraeli the
younger, he have the privilege- of shortening the lives
of Ex-Chancellors, by boring them with after-dinner
disquisitions on the drowsy subject of " our glorious
Constitution in Church and State"—had better turn at
once to the Review of that youth's much-talked-of,
though unread " Vindication." F'oor. D'lsracli is sadly_
mauled by his merciless critic, in whose hands he is
as powerless as Sancho in the blanket. The article
on "Newspaper Taxation" has already been notieetl.in our
columns ; and the strictures "on the Aristocricy" are
but a re-hashing of a stale dish served ur, with sick-
ening regularity in every Number of the t, Westminster
Review." Gleig's " Chronicles of 'Waltham" is on
the severe side—albeit, we think the castigation which
is given to the Tory Parson and political Novelist
falls very short of the Reverend Gentleman's deseke.
That the chastisement has been administered with profit
to thq culprit we greatly doubt ; but the example may
nave a salutary influence on future clerical recipients
of Whig bounty. Lord John Russell promoted Mr.
Gleig in opposition to'the remonstrances of the Libe-
rals ; and the object of his Lordship's bounty rewards
his patron by writing,
,aitiiilovtehe
ltopeborpilneg
of
fiatt Pngaltarnond'sl,
principles into odium v
Surely men may
,rmbaecltiharin theitable,reavnivdificliabtejoraillotfovibpoeorst,..
without expending ,

Last week three men armed with sabres, aiiJ having
their faces covered with blue cloth, except the eyes, entered
the house of M. Mouton, collector of the taxes at Mer-
jaux, near Lisieux, in Calvados, and carried off 5,000 E
The robbers remained half an hour in the house, in the
presence of two men and two women, whom they Compelled
to blind themselves, and made their escape wit!aout being
recognised.— Gqq4enzi's Messenger.