The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-08 00:00:00

ELIZA COOK'S JOURNAL. No. I.

There are but few who will fail to welcome this
new publication; none, certainly, who, on welcoming
it, will throw the initial number aside without having
derived from it—what it undertakes to impart—both
amusement and instruction. We greet an old friend
with a new face in Eliza Cook's Journal—one en-
deared to us by the recollection of so many common
joys and sorrows blent together, of so many conge-
nial thoughts and sympathies shared between the
poetess of Alelaia and her readers. Eliza Cook is as-
sociated with the holy memories of • our child-
hood. The simple strains she has sung so
musically in her " unpremeditated verse," call
to the mind of each of us those thousand end one re-

membrances of youth which, trivial as they may ap-
pear in themselves, are beautiful from the fact of their
preservation—the flies of memory embalmed in the
amber of song! Her melodious voice has summoned
up again to our vision the old bLrn, and the
green meadow, and the cowslips, and the pet dog,
and the " story books," once dear to us as fairyland,
and prized as though they had been sacred,
" Beloved as fable, yet believed as truth."
We take a volume of " Eliza Cook" with us when
we stroll between the hedgerows, as naturally as we
take Falconer in a cruise, or Thomson in a fruit-
garden, or Herrick after a merrymaking, as na►urally
as we open Waller in a drawing-room, or Somerville
in a park, or Day in a sugar plantation, or Walton
when we go an-angling. We mail( her pages—

accordingly as it may be summer or autumn:- with a
dead leaf or a pansy; in spring a crocus leaf; in
winter a leaf of holly. The charm of her ballads
is like the air sung by Scrooge's niece, " a
thing you could whistle in two minutes,"
yet with a tone so sweet and plaintive that it revives
in fancy " the merry days when we were young," as
if with the sound of an enchantment. Eliza Cook's

poetry will live—live in the hearts of "the people,"
for ate has ever ministered to nature, truth, and
love—while, to use the comical travestie of one of
those old minor poets of England who are too little
borne in remembrance (Sir John Henry Moore)—
"Full many an elegy has mourned its fate,
Beneath some pasty, cabin'd, cribb'd, confined;
Fu'l many an ode has soared in lofty state,
Fix'd to a kite, and quivering in the wind."
And not only has she sung in tender breathings of "fa-
miliar song ;" she has poured forth stern and inspiring
numbers, calculated to help the work of legitimate le-
gislation, and lead a people to right and noble feeling.
Familiar as we are with the powers of Elie Cook
as a poetess, we rejoice to greet her in her new
character as a literary journalist. Her career in
editing the new periodical here under consideration
opens favourably with the auspices derived fr,:m her
past reputation. She his before her not a cold and
scrutinizing public, but a public whose old friendship
renders her reception only remarkable for its cordi-
ality. We like the plain, honest, home• speaking in
her prefatory remarks, " A Word to my Readers."
But we like still better her musical retrospect of
" Ten Years Ago." Listen to her carolling of all that
has passed during that interval between herself and
those acquainted with her compositions :
" Since then we've mingled cheerfully within our House.
held Room,'
Ye've heard me sing ' Old Dobbin's' worth, and tell
' Old Paicher's' doom,
Ye hailed me in my Murray Plaid,' and listened to my
strain,

When I;ke a baby in a field I wove my Daisy' chain;
Ye took my simple Old Arm Chair,' ye knew it was a
part _ _

Oi Lore's rich cedar tree, that Death had cut down in
my heart:

Ye smiled to sec my Old Straw Hat' laid by with
earnest rhyme,
And chorused when a 'People's Song' awoke }'our spirit
chime;
Oh! many& changeful carol lilt has knitted us I trow,
Since firbt my 'Christmas Holly' fluarishtd, tell years
age."

"Knitted" thus together by those "changeful carol-
lilts," we doubt not but that the poetess and her
readers will be still more amicably blended in sym-
pathy through the medium of her new Journal
Among her contributors we already recognise " Sil-
verpen," known to us so long in the pages edited by
Douglas Jerrold. The present contribution is a
story, suggested by a very beautiful conceit, and
called, somewhat eccentrically, " The Three Hya-
cinths before Heaven." The narrative is calculated to
render every one who peruses it happier. " Proteus"
descants admirably upon the advantages of " Cheap
Reading," and good old Peter Parley, more garrulous
than ever, prattles to his dear little children in " Les-
sons" which we are satisfied will prove very far from
disagreeable. Silverpen has another contribution, most
sensible in argument, on the "Early Closing Ques•
tion." Eliza Cook herself bids us, in prose which almost
rivals her poetry, "Make the best of it ;" and, among
the other papers, we must not forget to mention the
charming and epigrammatic column of "Diamond
Dust." Such is the opening number of Eliza Co3h's
Journal.