The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-21 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

THE E DING tTRG II RE VIEW. No. CLXXX.
Let all ladies and gentlemen connected with
authorcraft abstain from a perusal of the opening
article in this number of the Edinburgh, unless they
are solicitous of obtaining a heartache. The pa per
is evidently from the pen of the accomplished editor,
and is entitled " The Vanity and Glory of Literature: '
After going through the whole of this indirect cri-
ticism
upon books in general, and English books in
particular, we must be permitted to characterize it as
one of the most depressive articles we ever remember
to have encountered. It saddens the whole heart.
It makes one sceptical of any literary immortality,
beyond such colossi of letters as Homer, and Shaks-
pere, and Dante. If read, no matter how negligently,
it must effectually put the extinguisher on the
vanity of all those little minnows and tadpoles
of literature, who expect to live in the re-
tnernbrance of posterity, simply because they have en-
dited a successful magazine story, a tolerable pamphlet
of 32 pige3, or an intolerable book of travels in
three volumes octavo. Should they but once read the
contribution we are alluding to, we warrant them
they will never hold their heads up again with self-
3uffl2iency, or ruffle their crests with ostentation.
The precise nature of the article in question may be
at once conjectured when we remak that the obser
vations of the reviewer are dependent upon the prefix
of that very remarkable and alarming work, " The
London Catalogue of Books published in Great Bri-
! min, with their Sizes, Price 3, and Publishers' Names,
from 1814 to 1846"—a stout volume of 542 closely
printed pages, over which we remember well having
pored three years ago, with precisely such thoughts
as have been here so admirably expressed in the
Edinburgh. Among the happy phrases which are
scattered through the contribution, we must
not omit to mention that capital expression of " the
leakage of the memory"—an intellectual affliction,
from the effects of which we are all of us, more or
less, sufferers. It is also felicitously said that the
majority of the writers who are destined not to live
are " merely embalmed and made mummies of
the reviewer attaching a rather more grim simile to
books than Disraeli the elder, who spoke of them as
" eastern beauties peering through their jalousies."
Incidentally the author pays a rather magnificent and
somewhat premature homage to Mr. Macaulay, clas-
sing his name as an historian with that of Gibbon.
It should be remembered that in the " Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire" we have one of those
extraordinary masterpieces which are intellectually
what the pyramids are physically, whereas in the
" History of England from the Accession of James
II." we possess merely he fragment of a compo-
sition which an adverse destiny may (for all the
reviewer knows to the contrary) render as in.
complete as the preceding commencements of
a similar narrative by Fox, and by Mackin-
tosh. As a sort of sardonic consolation to those who
may be disposed to lament over the prospective
destruction of so many favourites, it is observed that
" The value of books does not depend on their dura-
bility ; nor in truth is there any reason why the
philosopher should be more solicitous about these
wasted and wasting treasures of mind than about the
death of men, or the decay of the cities they have
built, or of the empires they have founded."
There seems a horrible truth in this—though
we concede so much rather reluctantly. It is well,
and, indeed, admirably, because most truthfully said,
that, " perhaps, after all, the greatest of an author's
rewards is the pleasure of composition"—in illustra-
tion of the accuracy of which we recollect that Mr.
Monckton Mines, in his biographical memento of
John Keats, mentions of that exquisite poet that he
would write verses over night in a sort of rapture, not
caring whether the manuscript were destroyed by the
next morning. Next to the pleasure of composition
is the joy of appreciation. It is cleverly observed by
the Edinburgh reviewer that " the chief glory of all
human literature is, that it is our pledge and security
against the retrogradation of humanity; the effectual
breakwater against barbarism ; the ratchet in the great
wheel of the world, which, even when it stands still,
prevents it from slipping back." The saying is inimi-
tably good ; and the ingenuity of the metaphor is
worthy of Jonathan Swift. As to the character of
the conjectures formed by the critic, from such facts
as that 10,000 new German books on the average
were, until the breaking out of the continental revo-
lution, published annually at the Leipsic fair, the
reader may judge from the following extract:—
" Most pleasant it would be, no doubt, in case human
life were prolonged in some proportion with the sum of
human knowledge—to lay out our studies on a corres-
ponding scale. Possessed of antediluvian longevity, we
might devote some twenty years or so (a year or two
more or less would be of no consequence) to purely
elementary studies and discipline ; the' promising lad'
of fifty might commence his more serious school studies,
under judicious masters, in their full vigour and prime
of three or four centuries; and at the age of ninety or
a hundred, the young student, just entering upon life
(though as yet raw and in xperienced), might be sup-
posed to have laid a tolerably solid foundation, whereon
in the course of his progress towards manhood through
the next two centuries, he might, by due diligence and
perseverance, build such a superstructure as should
justify some pretensions to accurate and sound s -holar-
ship. But alas: we forgot that, even then, the old ob-
structions to universal knowledge would soon be repro-
duced in a now form. The same insatiable curiosity,
and the same restless activity, op( rating through longer
periods, would rapidly extend the circle of science and
literature beyond the reach of even such a student, The
tremendous authors who enjoyed a career of five cen-
turies of popularity, would be voluminous in proportion;
Jeremy Taylor and Baxter, Voltaire and Walter Scott,
would ap )ear but pamphleteers in comparison. Their
opera °nude would extend to libraries. Novels would
be written to which the Great Cyrus and Clelia would
be mere novellettes, wEErein the heroes and heroines
would be married, hanged, or drowned, after a courtship
and adventures of three or tour centuries. The biogra-
phies of the long-lived worthies of such an age would
be composed in forty folios, or more; and the history of
nations projected on a scale which would render De
Thou's huge seven tomes a mere sketch or abstract. The
author who began the history of Athens by a dissertation
on the geological formation of the Acropolis, or the
work of Leibnitz on the house of Brunswick, in which
he commences with his Protogass,' would be but a type
of the prodigious gyrations of such writers; so that the
hopi.less student, toiling after them in vain,' would be
obliged to exclaim with Voltaire's 'little man of Saturn,'
who only lived during five hundred revolutions (or fifteen
thousand of our years), that scarcely had he begun to
pick up a little knowledge, when he was summoned to
depart; and that to live only for such a span is, as one
may say, to die as soon as one is born."

There is wit as well as reason in these vagaries of the
imagination. As a favourable specimen of the
writer's style of illustration, take the following :
" The while gigantic growth of human knowledge
and science may be compared to those deposits whtch
geologists describe, full of the remains of animal and
vegetable life—beautiful once, trod beneficial still. The
luxuriant foliage and huge forest growth of science and
literature which now overshadow us, are themselves
rooted in strata of decaying or decayed mind, and derive
their nourishment from them; the very soil we turn is
the loose detritus of thought, washed down to us through
long ages. In the world of intellect, as in the world of
matter, though vanity' is written on all things, and
oblivion awaits man and his achievements, yet is it also
sublimely true, that in both alike Death is itself the
germ of life; and new forms of glory and beau!), spring
from the dust of desolation."

In the next criticism on the " Physical Atlas,"
a deserved meed of commendation is bestowed upon
the magnificent work now publishing by the Messrs.
Blackwood from the eminent hand of Mr. Alexander
Keith Johnston. Without wishing in any,respect to
depreciate the poetical abilities of Mr. Henry Taylor,
we cannot but think that his "Eve of the Conquest"
and Miscellaneous Poems are rather over than under-
praised in the Edinburgh. The subsequent paper on
" Sacred and Legendary Art," suggested by the ele-
gant compilation of Mrs. Jameson, is exceedingly
agreeable, and gives altogether a very judicious esti-
mate of that lady's capacities as an authoress.
" Mary Barton" will surely outlive some few
years at least the ordinary duration of the
existence of novels for the circulating libraries ; 'for
its rude naturalness and domestic pathos have already
attracted the attention of two of the quarterlies—the
Edinburgh and the Westminster. The author may
plume himself on having, at any rate, made a
decided " hit"—whatever may be the length of his
reputation. After a careful and searching examina-
tion of some amongst the historical misstatements
made by Miss Strickland in her celebrated " Hitt iry
of the Queens of England"—there is a passing but
earnest allusion to the great work commenced by
Mr. Macaulay as a continuation to Hume or Lin;
gard. The paragraph, although brief, wilt to many be
almost a compensation for the delay of the substantiala
criticism which is looked for ultimately in th
Edin-
burgh. It rather strikes us that the tremendous re-
view of no less than 36 pa ges uwpoonultd ehaveukbeeeonf
Argyll's " Presbytery Dfam ined,"
considerably abbreviated in length, if not lessened in
enthusiasm of panegyric (upon the style), had the
pamphleteer been anything less than a Duke. Upon
the extravagant notice of Monsieur Cru;z,t's
" De-
mocracy in France" we have already commented in
our leading columns. Besides a paper on our "
nancial Prospects," there are Reflections on the
Political State of Germany," giving a very
sketch of the present posture- readable
of that vast
congeries of indemdent, et coalescing prin-
cipalities. The ronaining yontribution, not yet noticed, is well worthy
of ac must serious pe-
rusal, being an excellent commentary on the recent
reforms effected in on., and attempted to be intro-
duced into the other, of our two venerable Universi-
ties. Gladly should' we hear of the general adoption
Sir John of that suggestion of erschell, to the effect
that young men should go throughuwoul a course
of the
Novum Organum. Gladly we recognise the
elevation of the average standard of information among
the pol by the carrying out of the improvements
commenced in regard to the Graces, the Triposes, and
the Syndicates. Gladly, thrice gladly, should we learn
of the following of this wholesome advice—" It would

be a very great advantage, were Government to invite
them (the magnates of- the universities) to recom-
mend to its notice, as is donein Prussia and France,
those whose accomplishments and talents seem to
qualify them eminently for a civil career, or for the
tranquil cultivation of science." The Honourable
Mortimer Plantagenet, and the Reverend Theophilus
Mudge, are no mere fancy profiles, they are finished
miniatures taken from the life with the vividness of
callotype. Such are the eleven articles constituting
the hundred and eightieth number of the Edinburgh.

TEE QUARTE RL Y RE VIE Tr.
No. CLX VIII.
Everybody knows—the thing is already notorious
—that Mr. Macaulay comes in for eighty-two mortal
pages of abuse, vituperation, distortion, spitefulness,
and sneering, in the current number of the Quarterly.
The revenge of the contributor has been carefully
bottled up for eighteen years, and when it comes out
at last, of course it is in a high state of effervescence.
And certainly when we recur to that celebrated cri-
ticism which appeared in the Edinburgh, September,
1831, we cannot feel astonished that the editor of I3os •
well's " Johnson" should feel for a considerable time
particularly tetchy and sensitive—like that assailant
of Kompanee Jehan described by Mr. Thackeray
in a recent number of the " London Charivari,"
as being "as savage as a bear whose head is
sore." For certainly the knout of criticism was not
spared by Mr. Macaulay; every blow was excoriat-
ing, flaying, murderous. The writer was told in one
sentence that " many of his blunders were such as the
reviewer would have been surprised to hare seen any
well-educated gentleman commit, even in conversa-
tion." He was told in another that "the merits of
his performance was on a par with those of a certain
leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined while
travelling from London to Oxford, and which he,
with characteristic energy, pronounced to be as bad
as bad could be, ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and ill
dressed.'" " This edition," said the inexorable critic,
parodying the exclamation of the Doctor, " is ill com-
piled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed."
Further on, after a frightful exposure of the faults
heaped together in this same Croker's Boswell's John-
son—the Edinburgh reviewer remarked that the de-
cisions of the editor of the biography on points of
classical learning, " though pronounced in a very
authoritative tone, are generally such that if a school-
boy under our care were to utter them, our soul as-
suredly should not spare for his crying." When he
read that, Mr. Croker must even in his manhood
have again tingled as under the birch. The position
assumed by the reviewer placed the reviewed, to say
the least of it, in an attitude sufficiently ignominious.
He found himself arraigned before the
Tribunal of Letters upon
.a charge of faults in
what the critic contemptuously designated " the
fourth form learning"—upon the misapprehension of
the word "puella ;' upon forgetting that Lucina was
another name for Diana ; upon using the word
6;lvoi in a sense " which no schoolboy would do
without imminent danger of a flogging;" and upon
translating so wretchedly a Latin note sent off jocosely
by Dr. Johnson to Dr. Lawrence [" si per to licet,
imperatur Nuncio Holderum ad me deducere"] that
he at last receives the recommendation to " give an
hour every morning to our old friend Corderius:
• • • • • . . These things have
not been forgotten. Eighteen years roll on : Mr.
Macaulay publishes a book, a History of Eng-
land : the vial of spleen is uncorked and hence
the bitterness which runs through the whole of
this long and elaborate attack upon the historian in
the pages of the Quarterly. The fury of the reviewer,
however, is so blind and overpowering as to miti-
gate in a great measure the effect of its violence.
Ile is altogether too much in a rage to discriminate.
He aims such hard blows, and so fast, that sometimes
he misses—and wounds himself. Even the first line
in Mr. Macaulay's first volume, he won't allow to be
anything else than "a pompous commonplace, that
looks like something and means nothing." He makes
a great fuss about the misapprehension of the word
Brittia in Procopius. lie says, " that some-
times Air. Macaulay strains after verbal effect,
and in his effort loses the point"—quoting
in illustration that beautiful expression, " Arabian
mothers long awed their infants to silence with the
name of the lion-hearted Plantagenet" (the italics are
the Quarterly reviewer's)--and then remarking, with a
kind of hysterical giggle of derision, " This is an
unlucky occasion to introduce the name of Planta-
genet, which assuredly no Arabian ear had ever
heard nor tongue pronounced:' As if the historian
had ever said one syllable about Arabian ears hearing
or tongues pronouncing the name of Plantagenet
What Mr. Macaulay says is, that these Arabian
mothers uttered the "name of the lion-hearted
Plantagenet"—in other words (as any simpleton
might see who was not actually obnubilated by
revenge) Richard. The reviewer is pleased to be
particularly droll at the circumstance that Mr.
Macaulay, instead of copying the literal words
of Burnet, that William 111. was on
one particular day " hunting," has the temerity to
remark that the Stadthulder was then "many miles
qif alter a stag." Upon this says the sagacious critic
—" There wits probably no stag-hunt at all—William
may have been shooting!" 0, wonderful subtlety
of criticism! Probably Yes. Probably No.
Qu'importe Then, again, how the reviewer
catches at the minutest" slip of the pen
imaginable—his eyes a- wide, and his cars
a• cocked ! " The hangman addressed himself to
his office," says the historian inadvertently when
describing the execution of Monmouth. And there-
upon, roars out the critic of the Quarterly, with
a horse-laugh, betokening, one would think, some-
thing more than the discovery of a mare's nest—
" And after all it was not a hangman, but a headsman ;
and a wretched one, too"—the words being printed
in italics just to point out the joke more irresistibly.
But let the reader listen to the Quarterly reviewer
" showing up" the phraseology of one of the first
m3sters of the English language. " If," says he
derisively, "a regiment of Militia marches into
Bridport, it must come pouring in " of
course it must, say we. "If many wit-
nesses appeared on the Popish plot," he
exclaims again, all a-gog with an astonishment, the
cause of which we can't for the life of us make out,
" they come ' pouring forth' "—of course they do
And he authenticates those wonderful discoveries—
be sure of that—he authenticates them. The one
about the militia, says he, is Vol. I. page 576. That
about the witnesses, is Vol. I. page '237. Yet the
writer is not altogether too cross to be dull—the very
fire of his indignation heats him now and then to the
saying of a good thing—as when, after quoting Mr.
Macaulay's remarks about " the infamous Ti-
mothy Hall," and the " not less infamous
Parker," about the infamy of 'Williams, and the
infamy of Wright, it is observed—" Every great
painter is supposed to make a large use of one parti-
ticular colour. What a monstrous bladierful of
it Mr. Macaulay must have squeezed on his
palette when he took to portrait painting ! " Spiteful
as the words are, yet they are capital to us—they
have the genuine ring of wit. As to the wholesale
charge of plaYiarisms, made by the Quarterly—
pillagings from Mackintosh, and from Joinville, and
even self-robberies from the " Lays of Ancient
Rome,"—it is absolutely preposterous. The absurdity
of the accusation has been so triumphantly disproved
elsewhere, that we only now refer to it
for the sake of calling our readers' attention to
the examples paraded by the Quarterly in pages
604, 606, and 606. If the employment of kindred
adjectives, and sympathetic verbs, and congenial
similes, in the delineation of the same scenes and the
same occurrences, constitute plagiarisms—then is
Mr. Macaulay a plagiarist. But so also for the same
reasons should we regard M. Louis Blanc in refer-
ence to the preceding works of Michelet, and Lamar-
tine, and Carlyle, and Mignet, and Thiers, and a
hundred other historians of the Revolution. So also
is Mr. Grote after Mitford and Thucydides. In fine,
we cannot but express our gratitude to the
contributor to the Quarterly for
mostamus-
hiving
af-
forded us the prrusal of one of
the
ve izhile artwiceleasgwreee
with
can recollecthi
cordially
e ver i
having
_n very
vi
examined.
sen-
tentious opinion, that " thel:?maplde of History
"the is not
the floor for a morris-dance , and
Clio is not to be worshipped in the hmalelasnosfeoTinecripd;
byof Mr. Macaulay as
no
go ft
he course,labours
swibeingcithli"ehtiam.'n' tiawnmevoiuecrawlninto " the squandering of so much
asrurbajye
ecdt hinithtehretesirmepvleerengetterd.
gar-
as
etlhoed rfiagmuartei c
at
fa lenTtruotnh a
pre-
sume so far to differ with ments of Philosophy?' Yet, while
himas wt
toe
rvse•goaurldd
Macaulay in the light of a very
mark
a very great writer, and reavearbyle historian,elogoeat
rhetorician, we would, nevertheless, reiterate the ex-
pressions of our gratitude for the entertainment
extracted by us from this harmless, though malignant,
effort of vengeance.
We have written so much at length upon this final,
but most conspicuous contribution, that we have now
only the opportunity of enumerating the remaining
seven :—" Popular Science," " Hutchinson and Hie-
over, " " The Skerry yore Lighthouse," " Cattle and
Sheep," " The Germanic Confederation and the
Austrian Empire," " Curzon's Visits to Monasteries
in the Levant," and " .M'Farlane's Glance at Revo-
lutionized Italy." Several of these, more particularly
the first, the third, and the fourth, are worthy of this
eminent public2tion.

AN ENGLISH POTTERY IN FRANCE.—As a proof of
the revival of confidence in the stability of the French
Government, and of their power. and willingness to
sustain order and protect property, it may be mentioned
that an Irish gentleman has just purchased one of the
large factories on the banks of the Seine, which was
abandoned during the revolution in February, 1848,
and yesterday he left Southampton for Havre, in the
Courier steamer, accompanied by about thirty of his
workpeople. A great number of his workmou had al-
ready preceded