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 few 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-shortened figure of Captain Dangerfield, doubled up
(in company with a chair) upon the floor of the Glou-
cester Coffee-house, is eminently ludicrous—it is the
vraisemblance of a pictorial tumble. Miss Costello gives
us an 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 Sand, 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 beautiful
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 called
" The Yard of Clay." " The Cavalier's Hat," by our
old acquaintance Alfred Crowquill, is a very lump of
sugar after such black-draughts: it is a quaint notion
(the hat, Rot 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
Zoology," 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. Then there are the comic writers ; wretched per-
sons who are obliged to be funny by the page, and make any
quantity of jokes to order that may be demanded ; but who
arc supposed by the world at large to live in a state of con-
stant 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, &c."
" Tipperary Hall " improves upon acquaintance,
though we cannot but regard the ende.avour as
over venturesome. The "Irish -Whiskey Drinker" ts
scarcely competent to walk in the footsteps ofs Professorno_
Wilson. Taking our foreoin
its contents, it must be acknowledgedgremrkths aa
st
aßeyntleriiss as
f
hilarious as a May reader could desire.

THE NEW MONTHLY.
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
Backwoods" much sprightliness ; " Lights and Shades
of a Gentleman on Half-pay" no little amount of plea-
santry ; and " Beauchamp" a tone of singular medio-
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 " fobbing at all." His
mongrel style, however, half Gallic 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. "Al]!
do not go 1" is an impassioned lay no doubt, but W
hint it to Mrs. Butler that her memory
of ha;ers,nnooa.
sciously reverted to that exquisite songbiie
lo though the
" I arise from dreams of thee 1" Is it not s ?
n will show the ideas to be identical,
the
same
partso
be whispered in ,
development of them is not to
but a meagre account of
breath. "George Canning " is.A com
impressive enough in
loftiness of his abilities, or
tobe which closed his
that illustrious man ; not compatible in elevation to the
man-
ner for the melancholy costar, p
extinguished the sun at
h written by Canning on
noon."career atThites
pzuenniinth—thowehpiihtep
P Quon lies buried in this dairy,
is pert
" o
Mrs. Crewe's dog
And is not this a sad quondary?"

Mr. Charles Ilooton is rather prosaic in his poetry :
"Bonnabel " scarcely deserved his signature. " A Pro-
spectus for an Asylum for Decayed Dandies" is a sickly
effort after the humorous ; our heart mina whoa the

author intends us be merry. Kenealy has a curiou
morceau entitled

A THOTJGHT.

"Life—like a lute, whose string; some tense, some low,
Discourse delicious music—is most i;WeZ'!;
When in pursuits diversified employ'd—
Pleasure this hour and wisdom in the next."

Such are the component parts of this magazine, mis-
cellaneous both in selection and ability. A paper spark-
ling with much drollery, and spangled with many classic
recollections, undertakes to defend the gold curtains
round the boxes of her Majesty's Theatre against all
fractious disputants. We have already transcribed it
entire in out, columns. It is a pleasant, witty, apropos
contribution.