The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-27 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

TALES OF THE BLEST.
Price!, Thetford, 1840.
SKETCHES AND LEGENDS.

Boone, London, 1840
If there be one thing more than another that
characterizes the present literary age, it is its utter
indifference to poetry—that high and ennobling
art which was so popular among us about fifteen or
twenty years since,l when Moore, Byron, Scott,
Campbell, Wordsworth, and a host of minor satel-
lite-;, were in the full flower of their genius. In
those days we all listened with delight to the chirp-
ings of the singing birds on the slopes of Parnassus;
but now, if a new poet is heard warbling, faintly
and modestly, his " native wood-notes wild," we
" heed not the song of the charmer, charm he never
so wisely," but bid him hold his peace, and hang
up his harp on the willows. It cannot be that we
are become indifferent to poetry because we have
no genius among us, for Tennyson. Browning,
Mikes, Mrs. Norton, and the author of " Festus,"
are authors of undoubted poetic ability ; the great
secret of our indifference must lie in the fact that we
are so wholly taken up with the practical and
matter-of-fact, as to have little leisure, and less
inclination, to cultivate the imaginative. Steamboats
and rail-roads—to say nothing of the increasing
pressure of life's daily business on all of us—have
fairly extinguished the Muse, the majority of whose
most recent productions serve no other purpose, we
fear, than to line portmanteus, or wrap up confec-
tionery. Alas, that the poet should have fallen on
such evil times, and serve but to minister to the
uses of an unimaginative trunk-maker I That his
best odes, lyrics, and elegies—though admired,per-
haps, by the select rew—should scarcely have
power to procure for him a plate of cold beef at a
cook-shop I The only effort of poetic inspiration
with which we are acquainted, that has achieved
anything like an extensive popularity within the
last dozen years, is that remarkable couplet penned
by a youth, who, at the time, was confined in New-
gate for having abstracted—great geniuses are apt
to be eccentric—a gentleman's watch and seals in
the Strand I In the agonies of remorse, the deli-
cate and sensitive feelings of the youth in question
prompted the following lines :
" Him as prigs vot isn't his'o,
Ven he's cotched, viii go to prison I"
In this impressive couplet we are at a loss which
most to admire, the healthy, unsophisticated tone
of its morality ; the musical flow of its rhythm ;
its rigid grammatical accuracy ; or its incompar-
able elegance of expression. Mark, too, its artis-
deal skill and completeness as a whole I Notwith-
standing its epigrammatic brevity, it has a regular
beginning, middle, and end. In fact, it is an epic
in minia:ure—an Iliad in a nut-shell. The poet,
it will be observed, rushes upon his subject with
the same quickness and dexterity with which he,
no doubt, rushed upon his prosecutor's watch
and seals. He states his thesis in the first line,
and sums up his argument on it in the second,
which, as the melancholy result of his own personal
experience, is entitled to every attention. As re-
gards his diction, how fondly the ear lingers on
the melodious monosyllable 44 his'n ;" and is pur-
posely startled by the broad Doric roughness of
the emphatic participle, 44 cotched 1" With all
his genius, Byron never wrote such lines as these ;
Moore has nothing that can be compared with
them ; the inspired Wordsworth alone has ap.
proached them in his poem of 44 Goody Blake.
Yet the gifted author of this couplet, despite its
acknowledged popularity, was actually transferred
the other day at het Majesty's expense to Botany
Bay, which is the only bounty, we understand,
that he ever received from the Crown I Such is
the way in which the highest poetic genius is now
rewarded in this degenerate commonwealth !
But enough of burlesque, now to be serious. Of
the two volumes of poetry before us, one,
"'Tales of the Blest," is by a gentleman named
Barker ; and the other, " Sketches and Legends,"
by Miss Wilkinson—a young lady, who assures
us that she has only just completed her fifteenth
year. And first, as in duty bound, let us speak
of the lady. Her poems ate highly creditable pro-
ductions, exhibiting, not seldom, singular precocity
of thought, and distinguished throughout by skill
and melody of versification. Many of her descrip-
tions—for, like most young writers, she is greatly
addicted to the descriptive—show that she has
looked on nature with the true eye of the poet, as
in the line, " and massive cliffs rise grimly to the
sky," in which a picture is conveyed boldly and
vividly to the imagination by one word. Miss
Wilkinson, however, should beware of indulging in
superfluous ornament. She should allow her ideas'
fair play, and not bury them beneath a weight of
cumbrous imagery. When she has learned to re-
trench and simplify, she will have overcome the
greatest obstacles to her success as a poet. Mr.
Barker's " Tales of the Blest" ;s another work of
promise. His rhymes are flowing, easy, and equally
sustained, and the general turn of the thought re-
minds us of Cowper, whom he seems to have taken
as his model. We should have been glad to have
seen a little mote vigour of sentiment and expres-
sion in his poems ; but this, perhaps, Mr. Barker
imagined was unsuited to the nature of his theme,
which is strictly of a religious character, but has
the rare merit of never degenerating into fanaticism.
We hope to see him soon again in print, though
we cannot venture to promise him that he will be
much read, unless, indeed, he indites 44 Odes to a
Railroad"—" Fancies on a Steam-engine"—or
" Poetic Meditations suggested by a Spinning-
'enny 1"

THE CON SPJRATORS. 3 Vor,s.
Colburn, London, 1840.
The singular conspiracy which was hatched
against Napoleon, when in the height of his power,
and which had numerous agents, even among his
own troops in Spain, Portugal, and Germany,
forms the subject of the two best tales in these vo-
lumes. This conspiracy had for its object the
overthrow of the Imperial domination, and the es-
tablishment of a Republic in France. It was not
intended to take the life of Napoleon, but only to
clip his wings a little, by forcing him to lay down
his sceptre, and accept the office of President for
life—a fact which clearly proves that it was merely
the phantom of power, not the thing itself, for
which the conspirators were contending ; for the
Chief of the French Republic for life would have
had quite as much power to coerce the people to
his will, as the Chief of the French empire. The
change was only one of name, nothing mere. One
of the principal promoters of this aimless, Quixotic
conspiracy—for we can call it nothing better—was
General Oudet, a brave, generous enthusiast,
against whom Napoleon had long entertained an
inveterate dislike, and who was slain in an ambus-
cade, immediately after the great battle of Ws-
gram, in which he had taken a distinguished part,
under circumstances which left little doubt that he,
and several colleagues who were with him at the
time, were waylaid and murdered by command of
the Emperor, to whom the intrigues of the con-
spirators had by so!ne means or other become
known ; and who had adopted this secret, but not
very creditable, method of crushing it. The character
and military career of General Oudet are sketched
with spirit and minuteness in the tale entitled " the
Man without a Name ;" and we have also one or
two vivid glimpses of Napoleon, who, however
does not appear to be much of a favourite with
Mr. Quillinan, the author of these volumes. The
" Sisters of the Douro" refers chiefly to the cam-
paigns of the French and English armies in Portu-
gal„ about the period when the Duke of Welling-
ton was first appointed to the command there ; and
describes divers love scenes between two young
English officers, and two Portuguese maidens, who
reside in comparative seclusion with their parents,
at an old country-house, in whose neighbourlroo
alltl
the Englishmen happen to be quartered. As a
matter of course, the affair ends happily for
parties. The best parts of this tale are those
wherein the author sketches, evidently from his own
personal recollection, the landscape scenery of the
more sequestered districts of Portugal. Here he
evinces unquestionable graphic ability.

MOORE'S POEMS. Vor. H.

Longman, London, 1840.

In his preface to this volume, Mr. Moore men-
tions one or two interesting anecdotes relating to
his trip to the United States, which took place in
the year 1803. Among other eminent individuals
whom he saw there, he particularly remembers Jef-
ferson, of whom he thus speaks :--‘‘ At Wash-
ington I passed some days with the English rai;
Mr. Merry ; and was by him preseiltr
the levee of the President Jefferson,
sitting with Gent Dearborn whom I oufini
. ,
and vre or two
Rime) comprising
cers, and in the same homely cos