The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-04 00:00:00

BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.

A very excellent assortment of articles form the May
number of Bentley ; diversified, sparkling, and well-
timed, with but tea exceptions. "Brian O'Linn," capi-
tally illustrated by Leech, is pursued as humourously as
ever ; the writer has a good appreciation of the vis
comica, he sketches a ludicrous situation with singular
drollery, and infuses that plaisance and bonhommie in
the working out of his story which is always so deside-
rated in comic fictions, but so seldom attained. This
aptitude for the ridiculous is, especially in this instance,
well ministered to by the artist already mentioned ; the
fore- shortenei figure of Captain Dsngerfield, doubled up
(in company with a chair) upon the floor of the Glou-
(-ester Coffee-house, is eminently ludicrous—it is the
vraisemhlunce of a pictorial tumble. Miss Costello gives
us in acceptable collection of joltings-by-the-way anent
" Lahore ;" and Mrs. Mathews, that indefatigable caterer
to the lovers of theatrical gossip, commences a new
series of stage anecdotes, under the title of "Tea-Table
Talk," a title selected, we conjecture, rather for its un-
wonted alliteration than for its attractiveness. Colman,
Curran, Erskine, and Stephen Kemble, not forgetting,
of course, the great droll, Charley Mathews himself,
supply texts for bon mots and descriptions which, if they
be not conspicuous as brilliants, pass of, for the nonce,
as very fair paste substitutes. " The Apprenticeship of
Raphael Santi, of Urbino," translated by Lady Duff
Gordon, is, as the heading would alone indicate, well
deserving a perusal; nothing, however trivial in itself; can
be deemed too frivolous, when coupled with the beaut.ful
memory and immortal deeds of the " divine Raphael,"
if pictures can be strictly designated deeds. Another
novellette there is about a smuggler, by Mr. Kingston,
but it may be classed among its numberless predecessors
—the legends of those illicit gentlemen ! Of the verse
in this number we must say somewhat, if it be only in
defence of public patience. It is direfully inane: a
miserable jingle of platitudes, discordant to the ear and
in defiance of the taste of the least fastidious critic. One
miserable thing actually begins thus:—
" Grief parted us,—shame parted us,—
Sin parted us,—weeping for aye,—
Pitiful dread of the world out-hearted us,—
Memory was poisoned—what should we say ?"
We think you should decidedly say nothing at all, rather
than perpetrate such " asphixiated' metre, and such rich
Zummerzetshire rhyme. Ditto of a vulgar parody callod
" The Yard of Clay." " The Cavalier's Hat," by our
old acquaintance Alfred Crow quill, is a very lump of
sugar after such black-draughts: it is a quaint notion
(the hat, not the lump of sugar) neatly compiled into a
confession. Does any one hanker after some knowledge
of " David Hume's Philosophy ?" Let him resort to
the article so entitled in Bentley. Some little labour
has evidently been bestowed upon its arrangement; and
the paper is at once lucid and impartial. " Payment in
Kind," by Paul Prendergast, though an ephemeral trifle,
contains some judicious hints to curmudgeons, and has
a grinning risibility about it besides. Albert Smith,
never lacking in fascetious thoughts, and ever keen in
his observations on the middle classes of the community,
takes occasion, in this fourth installment of " Popular
Zcology," to depict the life of " A Country Medical
Man." The induction of his paper is felicitous in its
drollery, ex. gr.
" There are a great many painful methods of earning
a livelihood . . • . A chimney-sweep's cannot be
a very eligible profession ; and we should pause some
time before we decided upon following that of a
policeman in St. Giles's, a waiter at a night tavern, a
break-of-day coffee retailer, or an after-midnight cab-
man.l Then there are the comic writers ; wretched per-
sons who arc obliged to be
.fanny by the page, and make any
quantity of jokes to order that may be demanded ; but who
are supposed by the world at large to live in a state of con-
stint merriment at their own productions, throwing down
their pen from time to time to scream with laughter at what
they are inventing." (We suspect this to be true over-
much.) " And there are gentlemen in dirty tights and
trunks, and braces worked with faded spangles ; who
dislocate their limbs through the bars of chairs, and
walk on their heads in the gutters, upon mere specula
tion of the available halfpence to be pitched into the
ring, &e."
" Tipperary Hall " improves upon acquaintance,
though we cannot but regard the endeavour as
over venturesome. The "Irish Whiskey Drinker" is
scarcely competent to walk in tho footsteps of Professor. Wilson. Taking our foregoing remarks as a synopsis of
its contents, it must be acknowledged that Bentley is as
hilarious as a May reader could desire.

• THE NEW 4110,177'F1LY.
For several months past to mention the New Monthly
once has been to describe it always, every successive
number being the very counterpart of its predecessor.
This no doubt arises from its amazing quantity of " con-
tinuations." There are no less than six before us at
this moment ; as usual, contributed by Marryatt,
Levinge, Maxwell, James, Oxenford, and that unfortu-
nate wight Mister Jolly Green. To say this, however,
is to observe that the majority of articles are excellent
and the extreme minority the reverse. " The Priva-
teer's Man" has much animation ; " Echoes from the
soaratlnedma,,nße on
an Half-pay"
a Backwoods" much sprightliness ; " Lights and Shadesf
n a
tr Gentleman
"ntoonleittolfe aeminogunniatrofmpedleioa--
crity. Captain Levinge describes that often-described
wonder of the world the falls of Niagara, and although
his pencil is scarcely so vivid as that of Charles Dickens
or Lord Morpeth, the picture of that amazing tumult of
" distracted waters" bears about it the air of truthful-
ness. Mr. Jolly Green in his " Travels and Opinions"
becomes to our thinking more and more intolerable in
his vulgar prolixity about " nothing at all." His
mongrel style, however, half C-allic and half English,
doubtless hath its admirers ; under which conception
we can do no better than transcribe the paraphrase of
Boz—"
May good digestion wait on appetite, and health
on both, and a waiter on all three !" The " Spa-
nish Ballads relating to King Alphonzo the
Wise," though less meritorious than those con-
tributed last month, are not unworthy of Mr.
Oxenford. He has a facility of expression and a just
perception of his author which cannot fail to impart
beauties to his translations. Those versions of ballad

literature, especially the German, should, and of course
will, be collected and published in a separate form : they
would be a boon to the scholarly among readers. " Ahl
do not go 1" is an impassioned lay no doubt, but we
hint it to Mrs. Butler that ber memory has uncon-
sciously reverted to that exquisite song of Shelley's,
" I arise from dreams of thee !" Is it not so ? A corn
parison will show the ideas to be identical, though the
development of them is not to be whispered in the same
breath. " George Canning " is but a meagre account of
that illustrious men ; not compatible in elevation to the
loftiness of his abilities, or impressive enough in man-
ner for the melancholy catastrophe which closed his
career at its zenith—which " extinguished the sun at
noon." The pun in the epitaph written by Canning on
Mrs. Crewe's dog is pert :
Mr. CharlesAnlldoiostnoont itshisr
aa t
hs ae dr qpn
ro
on
sdaai rcy ?i
n"
"Poor Quon lies luried in this dairy,
his poetry :
"Bonnabel " scarcely deserved his signature. "A Pro-
spectus for an Asylum for Decayed Dandies" is a sickly
effort after the lunnoroua ; our heart aches when the