The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-17 00:00:00

LITERA T URE.

OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
By Thomas B. Shaw, B.A.
As Professor of English Literature in the Imperial
Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburgh, the attention
of this leerned and accomplished author has very
naturally been directed to the whole scope
of that superb subject, of which he has
here given us an outline. And although the
volume is comprised in not more than 540
octavo pages, treating of English literature from the
period of its dawn, in the ancient ecclesiastical chro-
nicles, down to the time of our contemporaries, the
treatment of the different writers who have acquired
anything like celebrity or distinction is very seldom
of a superficial character. As an appropriate in-
troduction to the work, Mr. Shaw, in his first
chapter, gives a careful and ingenious analysis of
the origin and structure of the English language,
commenting at the outset upon the oriental parentage
of the early Britons; upon the traces of the Celtic
dialect in the vernacular of England; upon the intro-
duction of the Saxon tongue, and the gradual disuse of
the Saxon inflexions; upon the peculiarity of the English
w and the English th; upon the Latin element; upon the
Gallicisms, arising from the introduction of the Nor-
man French ; upon Neologism, and Chaucerism, and
Euphonism, and the rest of those isms and schisms
which have ultimately produced that glorious language
combining in itself, at pleasure, the sonorous music of
the Greek, the elegant perspicuity of the Latin, the gor-
geous pomp of the Spanish, the mobile delicacy of the
French, and the elastic copiousness of the German.
No panegyric could scarcely be exaggerated as to the
capacity of a language which has produced such
poets as Shakspere and Milton, such orators as
Burke and Chatham, such publicists as Swift and
Halifax, such essayists as Johnson and Addison,
such philosophers as Bacon and Hobbes. This
cannot but have forced itself upon the conviction of
Mr. Shaw during the composition of his compact but
laborious and elaborate synopsis of our literature.
The treasures of this splendid literature he has com-
mented upon in separate divisions. Here it is, however,
that the chief blemish of the work becomes perceptible.
Those divisions are marked too conspicuously by the
characteristic of " generality." As, for example,
in treating of Chaucer and his times—what do we
hear at all, or at least sufficiently, about Gower, and
blind Harry, and Taylor the Water Poet, and the
like early prophets of " Bardianna ?" As we pro-
gress, however, this kind of deficiency becomes
less and less perceptible. Sidney and Spenser
are happily treated of together. Bacon
has a chapter to himself—as he should.
Then is recounted the rise and developement
of the English dramas, beginning with the old mys-
teries and moralities, and attaining the apogee Of its
glory in the age of arlow and Shakspere. Among
the Shaksperian dramatists are of course especially
enumerated—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Messinger,
Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Middleton, Marston,
Ford, and Shirley. Among the great divines—
Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and Isaac Barrow.
John Milton receives the homage accorded to Bacon,
and—absurdly enough—denied to Shakspere,
greater man than either : he is noticed in a chapter
exclusively dedicated to the consideration of his
writings and character. Butler and Dry-
den are subsequently criticised—both satirists,
and one something more than a mere
satirist, a true and glorious poet. Clarendon, Bunyan,
and Locke, the peer, the cobbler, and the middle-
class man, the historian, the allegorist, and the
metaphysician, are brought under view within
the same interval. Then come the wits of
Queen Anne's reign, and conspicuous above them
all the author of the " Dunciad," the wasp
of Twickenham. Next the essayists Jonathan
Swift., Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Samuel
Johnson. Afterwards the great novelists—De Fee,
with his golden story about " Robinson Crusoe ;"
Richardson, with his renowned "Pamella ;" Fielding,
with his immortal " Tom Jones;" Smollett, with his
inimitable narrative of the adventures and
vicissitudes of " Roderick Random ," Sterne,
with that incorrigible, delightful, absurd, capital,
ridiculous, famous, preposterous book—that book
which turns the mind of the reader topsy-turvy and
inside-out, and makes him uncertain whether he's
standing on his head or his heels, whether he's sane
or insane, or awake or dreaming—that book which
Leigh Hunt, in an almost pardonable fit of
enthusiasm, calls the wittiest book in the
world—" Tristram Shandy," glorious Tristram
Shandy ! endeared to us by the eccentricities of " my
Uncle Toby," of Corporal Trim, and of that little
absurd man Doctor Slop, as well as by the goodli-
ness of poor Yorick and the misfortunes of Lefevre !
As a worthy peroration to the chapter on the great
novelists, Mr. Shaw gives an account of the appear-
ance in the world of letters of that favourite of
all English readers, the author of the " Vicar
of Wakefield," dear Oliver Goldsmith. Then
come the great historians David Hume, Wil-
liam Robertson, and Edward Gibbon. The tran-
sition school is considered in reference to Thomson,

to Gray, to Collins, to Shenstone, to Ossian, to Chat-
terton, to Cowper, to Crabbe, and to Burns. After-
wards appear Scott and Southey followed by Moore,
Byron, and Shelley. And ultimately we have amost
entertaining chapter on the modern novelists, Miss
Burney, Miss Mitford, Miss Austin, Miss Edgeworth,
Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Shelley, Mrs. TroDope, Wal-
pole, Lewis, Maturin, James, Ainsworth, Bulwer
(Lytton), Godwin, Galt, Wilson, Banim, Ward,
Lister, Hook, Beckford, llope, Morier, Marryatt,
Warren, and Dickens. " The greatest name in the
contemporary literature of Great Britain," says the
author, "is indubitably that of Charles Dickens."
But few will gainsay the truth of that assertion. Mr.
Shaw, however, has done less justice to Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton; he has evinced either a strange
incapacity to appreciate his genius, or a want of know-
ledge of his writings. A man who has written such
a novel as " Night and Morning," such a romance as
" Zanoni," such a classical story as the " Last Days
of Pompeii," such an historical tale as "Harold,"
such a drama as the " Lady of Lyons," such an epic
as "King Arthur," such essays as those contained in
the " Student," such translations as those of Schiller,
such a history as that of Athens—besides the rest of
his numerous and remarkable compositions, " Pel-
ham," "Eugene Aram," " Paul Clifford," " Ernest
Maltravers," "Alice," the "Disowned," "Deve-
rceux," " Godolphin," " Lucretia," " Rienzi," " Falk-
land," " Eva," Money," the "New Timon," " Ri-
chelieu," the "Pilgrims of the Rhine," &c., &c., &c.
—is not exactly the man to be passed flippantly over,
according to the estimate of Mr. Shaw. Unless the
writer is desirous that his volume should have one con-
spicuous blot, he will certainly, in the next edition,
emend that portion of his " Outlines of English Litera-
ture" where he speaks of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.
Wordsworth, Coleridge, And the new poets—Keats,
Hunt, Hood, Lamb, &c., are finally reviewed ; and a
separate division of the work is devoted to " the stage,
oratory, politics, theology, metaphysics, and journal-
ism." In a work treating of so much it is impossible
but what, in the first instance, it should be marked
by some strange and startling omissions. We should
have expected, for instance, to have found somewhat
on such great historians as Lingard, as Hallam, and
as Sharon Turner, if not upon Keightley and Ma-
caulay.. Taken as a whole, however, and regarded as a
first effort to fill up an extraordinary hiatus in Eng-
lish literature—namely that recounting its rise and
advance—the book is good, and what is more, it will
generally prove welcome. We know of no more
appropriate or valuable present for a studEnt than
Thomas Shaw's "Outlines of English Literature."

CLEMENT LORIMER; or, The Book with the

Iron Clasps. By Angus B. Reach.
The numbers of this, the most interesting of the
serials which have recently appeared, are here col-
lected into a volume, which is got up with that ele-
gance and taste which so pre-eminently distinguishes
all that emanates from the establishment of Mr.
Bogue. The admirable illustrations of Cruikshank
are placed opposite the pages to which they refer, and
this excellent romance of "interest and terror" is now
presented to the public as a whole in a manner
worthy its author and its illustrator.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL.—The annual re-
view of the patients of St. Bartholomew's Hospital took
place on Wednesday last, by the Governors, accom-
panied by several distinguished visitors, who were highly
gratified with the extreme cleanliness of the wards, the
comforts of the poor patients, and the general excellent
condition of the hospital. it must be a source of con-
gratulation to the public to find the funds of this most
ancient establishment so admirably attended to and ably
administered and affording relief to so many thousands
of poor people. It appears from a statement we have
seen that the number of patients relieved in the year
1841 was 35,548, of which 4,724 were in-patients; since
which period there has been a large annual increase, and
in 1848 the number of patients relieved amounted to
71,573, of which 5,826 were in-patients.
Looi AT Yora LETTERS.—A person residing in
the neighbourhood of West Ham received a letter on Sa-
turday morning, which he put in his pocket, with the in-
tention of opening at leisure. Two or three days elapsed,
and the letter escaped his notice; on Tuesday his better
half discovered the letter in the breast pocket of his coat,
which had been put aside to be repaired, and on opening
it she found it came from the executors of a deceased
uncle, who died during the past year in the United States
of America, bequeathing her 3,5001., as well as five of
her sisters the like amount.—lpswich Express,
We have papers from Port Philip
.to the 14th
January. The emigrants that had arrived in the colony
were immediately absorbed at high rates of wages, and
it is stated that quadruple the number would apparently
make no impression on the labour market. 'I his is en-
couraging intelligence to intendisig emigrants, provided
that attention is paid to those departments of labour in
requisition in a new colony. Animal food was at such a
low rate that legs of mutton were sold for 6d. in Mel-
bourne, and fat bullocks, weighing 7 cwt., were told at
24 15s. per head.

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